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bladekindeyewear · 3 years

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HS^2 bloggin’ mainline 2020-12-25

I’m not going to spend time BLOGGING an upd8 on Christmas morning!

...yes I am who the fuck am I kidding. (Bonus stuff and Hiveswap are still well on hold though.)

So are we gonna follow up on the main ship? Probably not, right, with that perfect Karkat point to cut away, right? We’re just going to leave Roxy’s question hanging, as well as makeouts etiquette, and leave while having seen a COUPLE FRAMES of non-possessed canon Jade with only whatever fun fanart was inspired across the internet by the moment to tide us over????

Yeah, probably.

Ugh, more Dirk. I guess it’s overdue. :(

> CHAPTER 16. Welcome to my Secret Lair

Oh huh, I guess not? So... Jane’s, or Rose and Kanaya’s?

Karkat stays for longer than John thought he would. They talk a bit, but mostly they are quiet. Eventually, Karkat gets called away on yet more important war business, leaving John with one final touch on the shoulder. John leans into it in response, though he’s a bit ashamed of chasing down a sliver of physical affection so soon after obliterating Karkat’s evening like he had.

Pretty much, yeah. Can’t blame either of them.

When Karkat is finally gone, John still doesn’t move. It isn’t as though he has nowhere else to go, since there are quite a few places he might attempt to make himself useful, for better or for worse.

You’re still abandoning the task that was explicitly yours to protect your literal kid and his friends, but, oh well. Low-point. Dave dead, house dead, broke news, I get it.

He just doesn’t feel ready for that yet. The remnants of his house are still smoldering, and he can’t stop staring at them. It would make sense, he thinks, to want to root around through the rubble for anything that’s still intact; some half-charred keepsake to claim as the last thing left that’s still his. But he doesn’t want to do it, and he doesn’t want to think about it. And he still can’t move.

Can’t move. No Breath huh? What’s going to get him to, then?

> (==>)

Oh boy, that might help. XD She’s pretty good at that.

> (==>)

Still with the waistline gap. And was his phone always yellow like his God-Tier shoes?

ROXY: hey john can u do me a quick solid ROXY: actly idk how quick itll be but its definitely solid ROXY: harry anderson says i just missed u being here but could u skip back on over?

Nice, huh! No judgment, just a hey-any-chance-you-could-swing-back. He sort of needs to be needed right now, in a simple, almost everyday non-judgmental way I guess. (That’s what he NEEDED anyway-- whether he deserved it though is up for debate.)

ROXY: i need help w/smth and yr darling boy is holed up in his room working on some fuckin craft project or other and cant be bothered

YES SEW JOHN A BETTER FITTING FUCKING OUTFIT

ROXY: and now that me and u are freshly on speakin terms again i might as well take advantage of that olive branch and put u to work ROXY: assumin you havent died in an air raid, that is ROXY: which id also be interested in knowin about so if u wld be so kind as to reply instead of leavin me hangin

Heheheh. Gosh Roxy is always the best.

JOHN: yea yea sorry im here. JOHN: i just had a hard time getting my phone out of these fucking tiny pants.

Hah.

JOHN: and also my house is bombed out so i'm kinda grappling with that. JOHN: but i honestly am not sure how much longer i need to sit around staring at it. trying to align my memories of my youth with whatever is happening right now so JOHN: short version is no i’m not dead, and yeah i can come back over there and help you out. ROXY: oh sweet yr alive and down to do manual labor its a win/win JOHN: see you soon.

Yep! Pulled away from all the metaphorical, ultra-meaningful bullshit, back to some brass tacks with some easy humor. Definitely something Roxy can do well.~

> (==>)

EXCUSE ME. What is that outfit and pose. Did you--

ROXY: sup ROXY: follow me ROXY: well were just going to my room so i guess technically u know the way JOHN: haha ok.

Did you invite him over for the manual labor of banging you while your son is sewing in the other room

Or maybe the labor is making him a new sibling. JFC

Is this plan part of why we got the sudden content warning that was mocked or was that mainly for Hiveswap

John follows, trying to shake the ominous feeling he got from what she’d just said. He’d been in and out of this house a lot in the past few days. Why should this be any different?

I DUNNO JOHN DOES THIS SEEM DIFFERENT TO YOU

> (==>)

Yea this seems like a fucc room.

JOHN: it’s not like i could forget! ROXY: ya i guess u only really saw the living room when you were here the other day but i have changed some stuff up ROXY: done a lil redecoratin here n there

So it’s MORE of a fucc room than previously >__>”

ROXY: may have to do a smidge more if my old bff decides im next on the list for bombing out ROXY: but so far so good

Ah geez.

ROXY: just a coupla exploded cars in the yard from some shenanigans our dear son and his friends were in but u kno it is what it is!!!

Well, that’ll buff out easy.

ROXY: can i get u anything? ROXY: just made some coffee JOHN: no, uh, i’m good.

Of course she has a fancy handled winecoffeeglass (and the handle does look ridiculous but it’d be too hot to hold otherwise)

Roxy shrugs and swirls her own coffee around in her novelty mug. John looks around. A lot about the room is the same. The family photos, the rug. There’s a lot more cat stuff in there now, though. The bed is new. John feels like he’s about to take a test he hasn’t studied for. He makes himself focus on what she’s saying.

That would be the feeling.

> (==>)

MY GOD. Roxy is so fucking good at this holy shit

She KNOWS she’s making him squirm and she loves it

JOHN: so uh anyway. JOHN: what was this favor? ROXY: yo why dont u just come rest yr tush for a bit ROXY: take a lil relax next 2 me here JOHN: haha uh. JOHN: roxy i uh. JOHN: im flattered, but i don’t know if that’s really the right step right now. JOHN: don’t get me wrong, everything seems so fucked up right now that when i try to think about what might actually BE the right step, it feels like a huge cartoon question mark might physically manifest over my head. JOHN: but I’m not sure if um rekindling our physical relationship is really the best--

So is Roxy trolling him, about to reveal she wasn’t thinking of sex and was just making things seem sultry? Or just had “lol jk” as an option-select, maybe.

> (==>)

ROXY: r u kiddin me rn egbert JOHN: i’m not? unless you were, in which case yeah lets say i was also kidding. JOHN: oh my god, i’m sorry, i don’t know why this making me freak out.

OH NOOO NOT THE DISDAAAAIN - CRITICAL HIT D:

ROXY: i remember our past boot knockin with fondness but that is a situation im not interested in revisiting

boot knockin XD

ROXY: look john ROXY: i was trying to be polite about it ROXY: offering u sustenance n rest n all ROXY: but you look like shit ROXY: i just wanted to catch up on the whole heinous war situation were in and maybe check in on e/o before leaping strait to the real n actual nonsexual manual labor favor i have in mind for u JOHN: oh.

Hey, she can’t help looking sexy she’s too good at it.

Is the manual labor moving the crashed cars? Can’t Roxy pull that off on her own, or... banish the cars to the void or something? (Oh, but WOULD she want to do it on her own when she can rope in John and bring him down to earth by giving him a useful task? And admittedly his strength and wallet would make things easier.)

John feels his shoulders unbunch. Of course. Yeah. He’s almost embarrassed by how relieved he feels. So what if his ex wife wanted to hook up? Shouldn’t that be a situation he could navigate? Don’t people like to find solace in human physical connection during dire times? Why did the idea of it make his mind white out in panic more than, say, any number of the traumas he just experienced?

Probably some gender stuff mixed up in there too, June.

He doesn’t know, but he believes Roxy that he must look pretty haggard. He probably feels haggard? Maybe sitting down will feel better.

Just put your feet up yeah

> (==>)

WHAT A CUTE IMAGE

JOHN: sorry. like i said, my "how to react to stuff" meter is completely fucked right now. ROXY: thats fair bud

she’s used to being patient with you don’t worry otherwise you never would’ve gotten this far

ROXY: real fast i do need to do a quick takeback of all that shit i said last time we talked about janey not being literally the most evil person we knew or whatever ROXY: i guess i was hopped up on arguin or somethin since that was before we hit our conversational vibe bc of course u were right and i shoulda listened

Ouch. Yeah, we saw just lately just how far off the deep end she was. (Where was that funny upd8 reaction art summarizing the bit where Kanaya was holding Tavros hostage and Jane was transparently debating “hmm do I let my son die?” and Kanaya and Tavros were just looking at each-other flat-mouthed nervous? I REALLY wanted to share that but I don’t usually want to reblog or put most stuff HS^2 not under a read-more, for spoiler purposes, usually.)

ROXY: im just glad ur ok ROXY: or like alive JOHN: yeah, jury's still out on "ok" but, you know. ROXY: ya ROXY: u said ur house is gone?? JOHN: yep. JOHN: completely. ROXY: jeez ROXY: i would ask how ur feelin but like the answer 2 that has got 2b "prtty bad"

Talk it ouuuut~~ get those feels out there and articulated john

JOHN: yeah. JOHN: i mean. JOHN: no? JOHN: it’s weird. JOHN: it feels like it should be a bigger deal, I guess? JOHN: like it’s my HOUSE. JOHN: but mostly it always felt like my dad’s house? JOHN: and when i started living there after i moved out of here, it was like i crammed myself back into whatever was left of my kid self? JOHN: and it didn’t feel good, but it at least was familiar, you know? JOHN: like living there let me feel closer to my dad, trying to be like the way i remember him, or like how i remember him wanting me to be, or something? JOHN: and i didn’t realize how much i hated doing that until i saw it all go up in flames. JOHN: so i guess i could have used my powers to stop the fire and save whatever was left of the place, but i couldn’t bring myself to do it. JOHN: like some fucked up part of me was glad i got there too late? JOHN: so i just sat there, watching, trying to figure out why watching my house burn down felt like i was being released from prison. JOHN: and even now i keep trying to explain it away, as though it’s because of how fucked up everything else is that it made me feel good. JOHN: but that’s just bullshit. JOHN: it DID feel good. JOHN: i DO feel free. JOHN: sorry.

I was kind of saying some Breath/Blood stuff at the time of him losing his last tie to his stubborn sticking-to-his-kid-self bit? Except now we’re mixing it in with June Egbert and his gender-identity questions too.

ROXY: no need 2 apologize ROXY: we just delved in2 my whole gender thing last time so it seems fine for u to have a turn JOHN: i didn’t say it was a gender thing.

Oh shit

ROXY: well no i just meant like i did some sharing ROXY: like referrin 2 the topic i brought up when we chatted last ROXY: but like now that u mention it ROXY: *meaningful pause* JOHN: … JOHN: i JOHN: ROXY: lol well we can move on 2 the favor part if youd rather ROXY: stick a lil pin in that topic n come back 2 it when u have had sleep

Are you just INCREDIBLY incisive Roxy or have you and John talked about this before?

ROXY: like i said the other day its not like this shits figureoutable in 1 sitting anyways JOHN: yeah... ROXY: sooooooo ROXY: movin on

It’s just fine for Roxy to slow-roll this yeah, if she’s going to pry open that door a little

ROXY: dont be mad but theres a part of the house u didnt know abt the whole time u lived here JOHN: what? ROXY: yea ROXY: i got a secret lair ROXY: for my sciences

OH FUCK YES SCIENCE LAB, of COURSE Roxy would want a cool science lab basement because she always wants a cool science lab basement

ROXY: and i get to it via a transportalizer underneath our bed ROXY: which is 2 heavy 2 move by my lonesome so i just needed to borrow some o your aforementioned powers of wind

Okay no. Wait. What the fuck?

First of all, as funny and MSPaintAdventures-y as furniture being in the way of things is, why would you block it with a bed too heavy to move, but,

Second of all, more importantly, how is a GOD-TIER ROXY not strong enough to lift a heavy bed?!?!?!? Either she’s lying to get John involved in things or this is a gendered cop-out because these characters are superheroes at the TOP of their echeladders, given obnoxiously powerful video-game strength and athletics only to then have ascended into DEITIES. God-Tier Roxy could probably have lifted a bed like that when she was SEVENTEEN! And now she’s an ADULT, out-of-shape or otherwise! If this were a whole CAR I might be willing to handwave it, but just a heavy BED?!? And none of the GUYS are going to have this much trouble lifting a bed like this, are they?? This just feels like following classic cartoony gender tropes in the complete absence of these characters’ super powers, what the fuck, and also Roxy if you didn’t make it Transportalizer-only access you could have given it an entrance you could phase through with your fancy powers to get to. FUCK.

This feels stupid.

ROXY: so if u dont mind woosh away JOHN: uh ok, well... JOHN: a secret science lair, sure, i can deal with that. JOHN: why not! JOHN: it doesn’t work out great when i do the windy thing indoors, though. ROXY: aight then no wind bending just use your mangrit

Roxy flexes, the corner of her mouth pulled up into a familiar grin. John feels his guts, so recently calmed, twist up into knots again. Her eyebrows shoot up and the smile loosens. He must have shown something on his face.

You’re already THIS sensitive about gendertalk?

ROXY: ok or just like push when i push ROXY: we both got sick muscles ROXY: no other adjectives necessary JOHN: yeah ok. ROXY: on 3?

Please, please reinforce the idea that they both have sick strength, because they fucking do and the idea that Roxy actually a hundred percent NEEDED John to do this is BS.

> (==>)

JOHN: holy shit? ROXY: sorry to lop yet another huge scoop onto ur lil brains ice cream revelation sundae JOHN: so wait, if this thing's always been under the bed, how’d you get down here before without me? ROXY: well thats neither here nor there john JOHN: i mean it is kinda. Here. ROXY: fine ok checkmate ROXY: i dont ACTUALLY need ur nerdgrit for this escapade ROXY: like im sorry but i said it ROXY: i mostly just wanted to see you and show u wats down here

THANK FUCKING CHRIST.

If that wasn’t actually just a lie to get him involved I was going to stay SO mad. Of COURSE Roxy can move a fucking BED no matter how heavy it is. OF COURSE.

ROXY: and also uve been ~sent for~ JOHN: ok but like ROXY: john i am inviting u 2 my inner sanctum ROXY: i am literally bringing out the word "sanctum" in case u werent already clued in 2 how cool this is ROXY: so do u wanna go into my secret lair or wat JOHN: yeah!? JOHN: yes? i guess? ROXY: aight good

Yes John of course you want to stop fighting it

ROXY: then as they told me in the hospital before lil h a was born ROXY: just push

eyeroll, but yeah, of course

> (==>)

Oh cool, sprite form version of her loungewear.

> (==>)

Sorry for my compulsion to post every full-frame image of Roxy in this awesome outfi-WERE YOU KEEPING CALLIOPE UNDER YOUR BED THIS WHOLE TIME?!?????

That’s like... almost a fucking metaphor isn’t it???? For the relationship you preferred in the other timeline and possibly THIS one TOO or

ROXY: hey callieee i got him ROXY: o damn john sorry i shoulda also told u callies here weve been hangin out again ROXY: 1 more freak for ur bean

Oh huh, so this isn’t an always thing. And these two can get close in more than one timeline where it would’ve worked out nicely. :)

JOHN: oh it's ok, my bean feels pretty well adjusted to freakage at this point so keep them coming if you like! ROXY: k cool i will JOHN: do i get to know what that big thing under the sheet is? ROXY: hmmmmmm no JOHN: oh ok. JOHN: are you sure? i mean, it seems like a pretty prominent feature of the room. JOHN: space. JOHN: wherever we are. ROXY: and a totally mysterious n COMPLETELY inconspicuous feature it will have to remain for now ROXY: we r kinda in a hurry here fyi ROXY: and by that i mean ROXY: we are in precisely the amount of hurry that means im excused from having to a that specific q rn JOHN: right, sorry. JOHN: i will pay no attention to the object behind the curtain. ROXY: u catch on fast egbert ROXY: anyway theres more cool info coming so just follow me

I don’t have any big theories. Is it just the Hiveswap device or something? If Calliope helped with it it’d help explain the Cherubic theme.

> (==>)

JOHN: so... this is all downstairs? JOHN: it seems like you had a lot of work done. ROXY: well no not x actly ROXY: were in the old meteor JOHN: under the house??? ROXY: ok so ROXY: in hindsight it may have been a bit misleading 2 say like ROXY: "downstairs" ROXY: in reference to a place which is hells of buried underground and may not actually be literally under the house ROXY: but there is no time to explain all that rn john so instead im going to refer u to my adorable little green friend here CALLIOPE: #U_U# ROXY: (hehe) CALLIOPE: *AHEM* CALLIOPE: hi john! CALLIOPE: long time no see. ^u^

Cherubs just really like dark cavelike places full of weird tech don’t they.

> (==>)

THEY’RE SO CUTE

JOHN: oh, uh. hey callie! JOHN: it sure has been a while huh. JOHN: now that i think about it, the last time the three of us hung out like this... CALLIOPE: was when i was aggressively third wheeling yoUr prenUptial coUrtship? CALLIOPE: if yoU dont mind, john, i'd rather not rehash that period of oUr lives. CALLIOPE: it was more than a little painfUl for me. JOHN: oh. JOHN: god, jeez, i'm sorry. i didn't mean to-- CALLIOPE: hee hee john i am only pUlling yoUr leg, don't worry. CALLIOPE: if anything i was personally a little thrilled with how things shook oUt in that respect. CALLIOPE: imagine, if yoU will, a yoUng cherUb raised in solitUde, whose only solace was the convolUted and tUmUltUoUs romantic schemata she projected onto her only friends from another Universe. CALLIOPE: and then fUrther imagine that this yoUng cherUb, throUgh varioUs even *more* convolUted contrivances, ended Up in the company of those selfsafe friends as an eqUal participant in their sphere of social discoUrse! CALLIOPE: it is a joy the like of which yoU possibly cannot fathom. u_u

Reinforcing that things turning out this way was in fact the FANTASY that Calliope was writing over in the Canon timeline. Just, heavily, HEAVILY implied that the Candy timeline is -- or at least originated as -- Calliope’s fanfiction as a Muse of Space, and its competition for audience interest with canon is the essential conflict between alt!Calliope and Dirk (or Dirk and Andrew Hussie).

CALLIOPE: so to pUt it simply, getting to experience sUch emotional drama myself was an impossibly enriching experience. CALLIOPE: possibly a first for my species! CALLIOPE: it's actUally qUite interesting, if yoU ROXY: *nudge* CALLIOPE: oh, right. yes. i'm getting a little carried away, haha. CALLIOPE: argh, i'm sorry, this is not how i planned to begin this vital conversation.

Vital conversation? What sorta truth-bombs are coming?

CALLIOPE: but to sUmmarise, what i was trying to say is: CALLIOPE: don't beat yourself Up aboUt it john. CALLIOPE: besides, hUman divorces are even more fascinating than i had ever imagined, and being able to witness yoUrs in motion was an honoUr. CALLIOPE: so i consider Us aboUt even at this point. JOHN: hahaha!!! JOHN: okay, well that's good to know! CALLIOPE: ^u^

Holy SHIT that was savage! And we’ll NEVER know whether or not she really intended it so savagely, either.~

JOHN: so um... JOHN: i hear that there's this big secret thing you wanna tell me about? CALLIOPE: oh right, yes of course! CALLIOPE: let me jUst say first of all how thrilled i am that yoU're on board. CALLIOPE: i wasn't sUre if yoUr natUral inclinations woUld have preclUded yoUr coming to such a place as this, and yet here yoU are. CALLIOPE: this whole endeavoUr will be *so* mUch easier with yoUr help.

Uh oh.

Hopefully babies aren’t involved.

JOHN: oh! well, shucks. JOHN: not really sure what that means but i'm just glad to be of use somewhere, haha. JOHN: which, speaking of somewhere, CALLIOPE: ah right, right. yoU're probably a little cUrioUs as to where the dickens we are. CALLIOPE: how much do yoU know aboUt black holes? JOHN: um... like, the big space things? CALLIOPE: they aren't always big actUally, and in fact their relative smallness is practically their defining qUality. JOHN: oh. CALLIOPE: bUt okay i think we are on the same page. CALLIOPE: so, what if i told yoU that we are inside of a black hole right now.

Oh dear, we’re getting into the canon/noncanon divide?

JOHN: um... JOHN: like, HERE? JOHN: we just transportalized into a black hole? CALLIOPE: no, i mean, what if oUr whole WORLD was inside a black hole. JOHN: ok.

Yeah, that’s gonna be John’s reaction. “ok.” Pretty much inevitable.

CALLIOPE: earth c, or at least oUr version of it, has, from the moment we crossed the victory threshold, been inside a black hole. JOHN: ok. CALLIOPE: and not just any black hole, bUt the very black hole in which the green sUn Ultimately met its demise, allowing oUr victory in the first instance! JOHN: huh! ROXY: ("huh!") ROXY: (rofl my fucking ao egbert) JOHN: (shhhh!)

And Roxy enjoys his non-reaction reactions as much as we do, hehe.

CALLIOPE: bUt, paradoxically, the critical moment which determined its capture within the black hole happened *after* that point. CALLIOPE: i refer of coUrse to yoUr decision not to retUrn to the mediUm and fight my brother. JOHN: wait, wait. JOHN: you mean, the meat and candy thing? JOHN: oh my god. JOHN: you mean i actually DID make a mistake that day. CALLIOPE: well, that's not exactly what that-- JOHN: ugh, i fucking KNEW it! JOHN: i'm so sorry. JOHN: i'm so sorry that i put the earth inside a black hole everyone. ): ROXY: john ROXY: listen ROXY: u have got to get out of this mindset i am begging you JOHN: ):

Yeah shake him out of this shit.

ROXY: your choice literally didnt matter ROXY: the whole thing was symbolic in the first place ROXY: literally symbolic in the case of the picnic i mean come on ROXY: it was just some steak and a plate of candy suckers JOHN: oh. CALLIOPE: i mean, i wouldn't go so far as to say that the meal we shared was unimportant, given the sacred significance of the two options i presented. CALLIOPE: but yes, yoUr choice of snack was infinitely less important than the choice which it presaged. CALLIOPE: and even then, calling it a choice woUld be sorely misleading. CALLIOPE: think of it like a coin flip. CALLIOPE: the series of events that led to Us being trapped beyond the event horizon of an Ubermassive black hole could be considered "tails", while the events which would have occUrred otherwise could be considered "heads". CALLIOPE: since both were possible, and paradox space is the way it is, they actUally both happened. and we jUst "happened" (hee hee) to get tails instead of heads. JOHN: you mean we ended up with the bad possibility. CALLIOPE: not at all! since both possibilities depend on one another's existence, it really doesn't make sense to call them "right" or "wrong". they both just "are". JOHN: o...kay... CALLIOPE: u_u

Yeah, it’s going to take a bit more than that to convince him he didn’t make the “wrong decision”.

CALLIOPE: i realise that this may be a lot to process. CALLIOPE: it's easy to forget that this wasn't obvioUs to everyone from the beginning. CALLIOPE: anyway, the reason i went on this tangent in the first place was to explain that the space we are standing in right now has a special significance, in that it is the location which corresponds to the black hole's singUlarity. JOHN: oh, wow. JOHN: um. JOHN: ok so, sorry if this is a dumb question to ask suddenly, but what does being inside of a black hole actually... mean for us? JOHN: is that bad? JOHN: is it like in movie, um, JOHN: shoot. JOHN: roxy what was that matthew mcconaughey movie from your earth that we watched? ROXY: u mean interstellar JOHN: RIGHT. JOHN: the one with the organ. JOHN: man. i cried at that movie so much. ROXY: lol u can say that again ROXY: iirc at least part of y u got so weepy was the fact that u couldnt believe a version of earth existed where ppl got 2 watch more mcconaughey films than you JOHN: listen. JOHN: i simply don't think you all appreciated the gift you were given. CALLIOPE: i don't believe i'm familiar with this particular film ^u^;; ROXY: oh dont worry cal you didnt miss much JOHN: (gasp)

This is all gold

ROXY: but the important point is that no its not really an interstellar type situation here egbert ROXY: ur not gonna enter a weird time vortex and change the trajectory of a little girls life with the power of love JOHN: aw.

Dammit, now we have to be on the lookout for that possibility. Or it did sort of already happen more than once to John. ...Whatever.

CALLIOPE: to go back to your original question, john. CALLIOPE: it's not strictly speaking "bad" for Us to be inside of a black hole, mUch thoUgh that contradicts most of what anyone knows about them. CALLIOPE: of coUrse, if we had fallen into it, that woUld be a whole other kettle of fish. CALLIOPE: the tidal forces woUld have stretched Us all into spaghetti and then ripped us apart! CALLIOPE: bUt the natUre of oUr arrival was more akin to simply "being" here, sUddenly. one moment we were not, and the next moment we were, and somehow always had been. CALLIOPE: in everyday, practical terms, being inside of a black hole has very little bearing on Us. CALLIOPE: i mean, the natUre of space and time is a little finicky in here, bUt for the most part it doesn't seem to be anything too oUt of the ordinary. CALLIOPE: bUt beyond that, it means that we are sealed away from the rest of existence. CALLIOPE: oUr sphere of inflUence is limited to the sphere of the black hole's bounding horizon. CALLIOPE: as far as everyone else is concerned, we might as well not even exist! JOHN: is there no way we could let anyone know that we're in here...? CALLIOPE: almost certainly not!

No? So this doesn’t have to do with the divide?

CALLIOPE: there are very few ways for anything to escape the kind of predicament that we are in right now. one of them is to be an all-powerfUl being with control over the very fabric of space, with the energy of two Universes at yoUr disposal. CALLIOPE: in which case, escape woUld become rather trivial, if a little Unscientific. JOHN: ok. i am going to assume that we can't just do that. CALLIOPE: yoU've hit the nail on the head, UnfortUnately. U_U CALLIOPE: the method i described was the one employed by my alternate self, who yoU may recall crashed through the event horizon in the body that once belonged to jade harley. CALLIOPE: she departed through a pUnctUre she created in the black hole's surface shortly after consUming my brother, a deed which provided her with the necessary "oomph", and which was frankly rather breathtaking to watch. =u= CALLIOPE: bUt Upon her departUre, the rift closed for good. as far as i can see, there's simply no way for Us to commUnicate with the world oUtside the black hole.

What the heck? Calliope SAW all this? Is this her Muse powers at work, letting her observe these things, or was she there? And John certainly did NOT see ANY of what Calliope just said happen.

CALLIOPE: i woUld certainly be very sUrprised to find oUt that anyone had managed sUch a thing!

So we’re going to find that out if we haven’t already. Maybe something to do with the way Vrissy just conks out narcoleptically?

JOHN: ...right. JOHN: so... let me just get this straight. JOHN: knowing that we're inside of a black hole... does that actually change anything? JOHN: like, can't we just go on living like normal? CALLIOPE: oh absolUtely not. CALLIOPE: i don't know if yoU've noticed john bUt this world is on the brink of a total cataclysm. JOHN: oh.

Um, what?

CALLIOPE: oUr exclUsion from the overarching coUrse of events which governs all reality means that oUr existence here is liable to dramatic and violent Upheaval. CALLIOPE: to pUt it another way, becaUse nothing in here "matters", we are likely to be sUbjected to things which are a bit bats in the belfry, for no reason other than it's totally insignificant to the wider canon of reality. CALLIOPE: and mUch thoUgh i am personally titillated by some of the conseqUences of this predicament, it is a degrading way for Us to live. u_u JOHN: that's... certainly one way to put it, yeah...

No plot-armor for your entire timeline, I guess, yep. Outside of canon, we can imagine and write about ANYTHING happening to the characters, or just drop their existence entirely, much like a doomed offshoot timeline. It’s a plot stability that depended heavily on the threat of Lord English and being trapped in a story, and without it things are bound to see a BIT chaotic (or “degrading” if you view it as subjected to the whims of fanfic writers, certainly).

CALLIOPE: at first, i believed that this was simply necessary. Us playing tails to oUr coUnterparts' heads, the black to their white, and so forth. CALLIOPE: bUt over the years i have come to the conclUsion that this is simply not kosher. ROXY: its total bs is what it is CALLIOPE: right, yes. CALLIOPE: a steaming pile of bUllshite. CALLIOPE: and so we have decided that something needs to be done aboUt it.

Ah fuck. You’re going to regulate non-canon? “Canonize” it? Is the fact that you eventually succeed at whatever it is you’re trying to do part of why we have the story presented to us in this bifurcated structure?

ROXY: this is finally where u come in jegbert ROXY: we gots quests for yous CALLIOPE: hee hee, yes. CALLIOPE: or *a* quest, to be specific. JOHN: oh boy! ROXY: (this fkin nerd i s2g)

Roxy and Calliope setting him on this quest as a Rogue of Void and a Muse of Space feels fitting.

JOHN: i'm not sure how i can go about freeing us from a hellish space prison, but i'm up for giving it a try i guess? JOHN: i have... literally nothing better to be doing at this point. except for maybe hanging out with harry anderson. ROXY: nice save lol

YEAH WE’RE STILL GLOSSING OVER HOW YOU LEFT HIM UNPROTECTED, JERK

ROXY: but u dont need to worry abt busting us outta space jail tbh ROXY: thats not ur problem to fix JOHN: oh. JOHN: i'm... not sure i follow, then. ROXY: i mean yeah ur gonna obvs facilitate it in a sense ROXY: but only by going and busting the person who can actually help us outta normal earth jail CALLIOPE: we need yoU to free vriska from the clUtches of oUr misgUided friend jane, and bring her here, to the singUlarity. ROXY: weve been calling it the plot point CALLIOPE: yes, the plot point is a key part of oUr plan. CALLIOPE: as far as we have been able to sUrmise, the only remaining method for escaping oUr grim confinement depends on leveraging the UniqUe properties of this location to create an event of sUch catalcysmic proportions that it simply cannot be contained within the black hole any more. CALLIOPE: something SO dramatic, so hyper-relevant, that it becomes ontologically impossible for anyone to ignore it. CALLIOPE: for that, we need an individUal of sUfficient narrative cloUt, so to speak. CALLIOPE: and to liberate her, who better than the embodiment of the aspect of freedom itself? CALLIOPE: ... CALLIOPE: phew. okay, i'm finished. CALLIOPE: CALLIOPE: sorry, that took longer than i expected to go throUgh.

..............................

OOooooh, kay.

Whatever this is, it’s going to be really weird and PROBABLY infuriating and/or shippy, and I’m probably not going to like it. Plus it seems like it’s some sort of inverse belated canonization of some other black-hole-rescue theories I went on about at some point. Although, related to that link, “aspect of freedom” if anyone wasn’t paying attention! That’s a (sorta-)canon mention of the purpose of it!

They’re going to attention-wh-- attention-hog themselves out of the black hole so that they’re “considered canon” too, or close enough. Huh.

ROXY: what r u talking about cals that was great ROXY: i could listen 2 u plotsplain for years CALLIOPE: oh you >u< ROXY: fyi this was why i wanted u to get a move on eggbread ROXY: so callie could have more time 2 infodump ROXY: thats love bitchhhhhh JOHN: hahaha. JOHN: ok, well, i think i understood all that?

Love with who? Callie, John, both?

In reality, John isn’t sure what most of this means. But on balance, it feels okay? He’s gone back and forth about a hundred times in the last week about where his place in everything is, so he might as well ride this out. Plus, the last time a Lalonde kind of told him to do something, he thinks that he chose not to, and look where that got him. And it’s not like he has other plans. He may as well do this! It’s at least going to get him involved in things again, if nothing else. He turns to go, and then hears a sound. It’s the sound of feet and knocking on doors, echoed through stone and digital static.

Oh shit. Is Andrew trapped behind some fourth walls behind the curtains.

> (==>)

Oh RIGHT also that DEVICE is where they want to bring Vriska. Are they going to overturn part of canon itself with a super-retcon thus making this timeline unbelievably relevant or--? Maybe make all the PESTERQUESTS canon or something?! I don’t know. Maybe they’re INTENTIONALLY starting the game like Vriska wanted to??????

Guh, this is something so big that I don’t WANT to theorize about it, do I.

JOHN: did you hear that? ROXY: wha ROXY: oh yeah uh ROXY: i may have messaged rose and kan and jade to check on them too ROXY: so its prob onea them showin up ROXY: they don’t need to know bout all this tho ROXY: we got time to chat with them b4 u go get vriska

No, even if it’s a knock at the somehow-top-level-house-even-under-buried-- oh, right, maybe it’s covering in part a monitoring system that looks up there. But still, part of that sound was DOUBTLESS these two hiding something, all standing in front of the curtain like that.

JOHN: i’ll go stall em. ROXY: thx babe ROXY: oh is it 2 soon for that joke or JOHN: no, weirdly enough, that one’s fine. ROXY: oh good ok see u up there soon!

How is calling your significant other “babe” not cool REGARDLESS of gender?! Like wasn’t that always cool? --Oh wait is it because they’re not together or... but... guh, I don’t know.

Anyway, see y’all after the holidays at least.

#Homestuck #hs2 #Homestuck Liveblog #upd8 #Homestuck^2 #spoiler #spoilers #Roxy Lalonde #John Egbert #Calliope

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scarletbluebird13 · 3 years

Note

Hi! Could I request some general MK fluff headcanons?

*Screams into the void* Nonnie, I’m so very sorry this took a v e r y long time for me to do for you -- I hope you can forgive me. So, without further adieu, here’s your request - I sincerely hope it’s to your liking and my apologies if the wait was most certainly not worth it. To you and the other people who requested: I’m so sorry for the long wait and if I made you feel ignored. Thank you so much for your patience, I really do appreciate it. <3

PSA: I’d gotten this request *quite* a while ago and had begun working on it that week. At the time, Kazuomi’s “Lover Occultus - First Night” had not been released. I’d begun working on this December 4, 2020. To this day (March 14, 2021) I’ve yet to read Kazuomi’s “Lover Occultus - First Night.” (i’m well aware I’m a horrible writer and mk fan - sue me)

for what it was worth, it was worth all the while

Kazuomi:

It’s just another wednesday night

Except it’s not

Kazuomi being - well, Kazuomi - decided to take you on a trip

It was, like everything else he does, spontaneous

All you did to get swept up in this madness was become someone important to him

If you hadn’t walked into his office when you had, he was going to personally go to your apartment and drag you out of there

So really, you saved him the trip

When he told you he was taking you on a trip, you were confused

“When?”

“Now”

You not having a suitcase packed or anything wasn’t an issue

Kazuomi had a bunch of stuff in the closet for you

Of course, it wouldn’t be kazuomi if a little bet was involved

You really wanted to know where you were going

But he refused to say

SO the second the words “How about a bet?” fell from your lips,

Never one to stray from wagers, he stopped what he was doing, and smirking a bit, looked slightly over his shoulder, waiting for you to continue

“I get to ask you three - and only three - questions about where it is we’re headed. You have to answer truthfully, and I can’t outright ask you where it is we’re going. After I’ve asked the questions, I get one shot at guessing where we’re going. If I win, you have to watch a Tom Cruise movie with me and you’ve got to actually pay attention to the movie.”

“What if you lose?”

“Choose your prize.”

“Oho, I get to choose?”

“I’m going to regret this later, but yes, you can choose.”

“I want to see a picture of you when you were little - the most recent one you have on your phone.”

You grumbled, but agreed.

Aaaand, of course, Lady Luck was on Kazuomi’s side again (although, when is she not?)

So you had to start digging through your phone looking for a picture.

That bastard had the biggest smirk on his face

He teased you the whole flight, wondering what kind of picture he’d get to see

Finally, after what seemed like 50 hours (more like 12 hours, to be exact), the private plane landed

Well, you’d never guessed here, of all the other places Kazuomi could’ve taken you.

You were in Mexico.

Kazuomi’d taken you to the country his adoptive father would bring him to on vacations.

Your heart felt a twinge of pain, but mostly, you melted at the fact that Kazuomi’d want to bring you somewhere so close to his past - to him.

The rest of the day (since the time and flight did a number on the both of you) you’d headed to a hotel together, opting to get some rest before exploring

But Kazuomi woke you up

It was dark out, and you were still a bit tired

But he had that boyish look in his eye

And you knew you couldn’t go back to sleep then - not when he got excited like this

Not that you’d ever tell him, but you thought this boyish side to him was adorable

He got you out of bed, and asked you to follow him

“Not like I could go back to sleep anyway” was your response

“I want to show you something”

He led you to the rooftop,

Mexico City’s lights glistening below the both of you

The rich smell (and sounds) of street vendors selling elotes and carne asada to passersby filled your senses

Curiously, you looked down and admired the world beneath your feet

“Lay down”

You turned around and found Kazuomi laying on his back, eyes looking to the celestial world above you rather than the glittering one below

Following his lead, you let yourself down beside him, still wondering why Mexico of all places, and why bring you here -- and why did he wake you up

He wrapped one arm around you, and as if reading your mind, said

“I didn’t have a lot growing up. Everyday, before I met my adoptive father, I was on the streets - not knowing if I’d live to see the next day. But then one day, that changed. I was adopted, and lived out a grand life with him. I never again had to worry about living to the next day - which, before my time on the streets, was something I took for granted.”

“I’m lucky to have someone by my side - you. I get to bring you to these places - the ones where I visited on holidays. During a time when I was safe again - where it wasn’t me against the world or the elements.”

“I mean, yeah, it was bad - but there was some semblance of hope.”

“In my mind, back then, the world I knew was cruel and dark. Hateful. Corrupt. Sinister. Cold. Unforgiving. Merciless. The days were hard, but the nights were harder. Then again, the nights weren’t so bad. That’s because when I thought all the world was bleak, I’d lay down, get ready to sleep - but when I did, I always saw the stars. They’re always in clusters. Never alone. They shine, and give off so much light - they’re beautiful.”

“When I thought all the world was bleak, the stars proved me wrong. They’re proof that even when things get bad, when everything seems dark, there’s a glimmer of home somewhere out there. And I want to believe that because they’re always in clusters they’re never really alone - and we’re never really alone.”

“I wanted to bring you here because you’re that important to me. You’re worth my secrets - knowing my every mystery. So I wanted to show you this. The stars. The things that restore my wonder, awe, and hope when I thought there was nothing. They’re what made me want to build resorts for people, so they’d never feel that depth of loneliness that I’ve felt.”

He looks over at you, a sense of sadness hanging there, in his eyes, nearly snuffing out the boyish look you’d seen in him not five minutes before.

“That’s enough of me, now, show me that picture of you.” He says, a smirk tugging at his lips, attempting to erase the melancholic grip around his heart.

Thankful you brought your phone with you, you pulled it out, showing Kazuomi a picture of you when you were about five.

You’re wearing a dress, covered in mud, and crying.

Kazuomi’s smirk dissolved into a laugh, trying not hard enough to hold back a laugh following his snort

You explain that you were playing in the park when you’d slipped on a patch of mud, somehow scraping your knee in the process

He couldn’t hold back anymore

The image of a cherubic, muddy, crying version of the strong, capable woman before him made him forget where he was

Although on any other day you’d hate the fact he was laughing at you, you were okay with it.

For a long time, Kazuomi’s smile was barely a ‘smile’

For so long he’d been in pain, and he’d been burying it.

Now though - he had you.

He chose to bring you to a place close to his heart - after he’d been saved.

He opened up to you and told you a story about the stars up above that helped him get through it.

And you made him laugh

As you lay there, looking at him, laughing, you decided to engrave this moment in your mind.

You promised yourself then;

When things got hard for him again, you’d be there. Ready to help him through whatever may stand in his way.

Yuzuru:

Blankets of white covered everything in sight

Christmas lights decorated the streets

every woman envied you - you were beautiful, smart, had wit, but most of all;

You were the only one who captivated Yuzuru

The only one he made those eyes at -

You were the only one who held his heart

And he made sure you knew that

Every winter, when the snow coated everything, he’d take you to a winter festival in the heart of Tokyo

Ice and snow sculptures alike littered the area, food stands selling warm food stood at attention beside the gaming booths.

Children chase each other, their mothers following close behind badgering their children to wear the scarves and hats they’d left behind.

Seated beside Yuzuru on a bench, you watch two children playing together: a boy and a girl.

He’s running in circles away from her, and she roars as she chases him.

Thinking the scene adorable, you chuckle a bit as you rest your head in the palm of your hand, your elbow digging into your thigh.

Suddenly, a welcome warmth makes its presence known on your otherwise numb free hand.

“They’re cute.”

“Yeah.” you say, enchanted by the children

“What do you think about becoming a mother?”

Surprised at the sudden question, you face him, seeing he’s completely serious - then again, Yuzuru’s not one who’d say something like that in a joking manner.

“It’s something I’d want, but with my line of work, it’s dangerous - not only for me, but for the kid.”

You say, turning back to look at the children innocently playing - not a care in the world.

“That makes sense - but you are open to becoming a mother, aren’t you? It is something you want?”

“Yeah, I’m still open to it - what’s with all the questions, by the way?”

“I thought it was an important discussion. Especially if we’re to get married one day.”

The way he nonchalantly said that almost made you think you’d merely imagined that last bit

“Afterall,” he continues

“You are the only woman I’d want to be the mother of my children.”

A promise of the future, made to you.

Did he know how flustered that made you?

Probably. Probably not.

Did he know if he’d chosen to have this conversation at a party with all those shabby women gathered around him they’d be seething?

Absolutely not.

He’s a bit oblivious that way.

And yes, the jealousy can get suffocating, but it makes you happy to think that Yuzu’s already thinking this far ahead - for the both of you.

The man who’s known solitude all of his life, fantasizes of a future with you - of a life with no more solitude. A life where you’re together (yes, maybe Victoria’ll be the third wheel - but she’s okay. Afterall, it still brings a smile to your face when you think back on her interrupting you two that night - when Yuzuru’s temperature steadily increased--).

Kei:

You two had a small little date planned for the day

What seemed to be a simple date at his place, drinking tea

Turned into one of the more peaceful days in both your lives.

Before either of you knew it, he’d fallen asleep on your shoulder.

Probably because he’d just returned from having to do some work at the embassy and prior to that - deal with something that’d come up back in London.

How long had it been since he’d properly slept?

Despite him being weary and tired, he’d kept his promise to go on a date with you when he returned.

Kei’s heart’s been scarred and broken far too many times, so for this angel with tattered wings to sleep next to you

Made you smile

He may not know how to properly express himself

But for you?

He’d do just about anything

You looked at his sleeping face for just a bit longer, doing everything you could to spread this moment out longer.

Just a bit more

Memorize his scent mixed with the smell of the tea

Feel his soft warmth against your skin - a blanket of fortitude against the cold

Commit the sound of his breathing and the pulses of his heart to memory

Remember the way his eyelashes slightly quiver against his porcelain cheeks

Remember this moment, for the both of you

Because honestly, you could be sent on a mission tomorrow, he could leave for London this afternoon, and you two’d never have this moment of isolated serenity again.

Well, for a while, anyway.

Wanting to protect the resting devious angel at your shoulder, you couldn’t help but slide into a comforting rest yourself.

And there you two remain, the perfect picture of devotion and protection. Serenity and grace. How long would this illusion last? This fragile moment frozen in glass and tainted by the amber hues of the setting sun?

Probably not long, but for what it was worth, it was worth all the while.

Boss:

A rare day off for the both of you.

It seemed like a once-in-a-lifetime thing that’d only happen well -- only once.

He’d taken you to the observatory

Just a day of walking around, looking at different constellations and sitting in that one dark room looking up at the ceiling where millions upon millions of tiny little stars gleamed

You were breath taken by the sight, and never would’ve looked away

Except

Boss caressed your cheek with his long fingers, all the warmth and gentle care in the world seeming to be at the tips, gliding across your cheek

You look over at him

“I love the way you look at the stars”

Embarrassed, your cheeks turning a bright rosy pink, visible even under the artificial cover of night, you cover it up with a quick quip, turning your head to the side.

“Well that’s the way you look at soy sauce.”

Nonetheless, he chuckles and holds your head close

Chin resting atop your head and hand running down your back, he whispers - quiet enough you almost can’t hear him;

“Always so quick to get flustered ...But that’s okay. As long as I’m the only one capable of flustering you, just as you are me.”

#Kazuomi Shido #kazuomi #shido #yuzuru shiba #yuzu #yuzuru #shiba #kei sojima #kei #sojima #boss #MK #mas kiss #masquerade kiss #fluff #HC #love 365 #voltage inc

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mood-swings-for-days · 5 years

Text

Thunderstorm Ι Ch. 1 Ι JJK

Pairing: Jungkook x Reader

Genre: Angst, Smut, Werewolf!au

Word count: 5, 283

Warnings: Characters in a less than healthy state of mind, violence, slight body horror, an addicted to cigarettes Jungkook (don’t do drugs, kids!)

Summary: An accidental encounter triggers a series of events that shatter your monotonous life. A new relationship starts to develop, following the stages of a thunderstorm.

Note: Written under the influence of beautiful music

1 2 3 4

Chapter 1: Wind

The heavy downpour served as white noise to you. Dull jazz seeped all around you and into the cracks of your conscious as you stared blankly at the floor. The clock behind you ticked rhythmically, but it felt like time was no longer a thing. The aisles were void of customers for hours and a while ago you had started wondering if the minimum wage was worth all the time you’d wasted in this tiny shop. Days were getting duller as the months passed, having fallen into the same simple routine, you had become so impassive. Long ago you stopped counting the minutes until your shift ended, because you had nowhere to go anyway, which resulted in you going home late on multiple occasions. Your roommate never questioned it, not even when you came back well past midnight. You two didn’t talk much anyway.

The small bell ringing as the door opened brought your mind back into the room, but you didn’t look up.

“Good evening.”

The customer didn’t bother to return your greeting and proceeded to walk between the aisles of overpriced goods. His wet shoes made a rhythmic squelching sound along the tiles. Absentmindedly you thought to mop the floors before you locked up for the night. Some moments later the customer came over to where you were sitting behind the cash register. With a dry exhale you pushed yourself from the chair you were slumped over in. The customer pushed a bottle of water and some cheap cigarettes toward you. His hands were bony, pale, and raw and bruised along the knuckles. Out of instinct you looked up to see his face. He was at least a foot taller than you, dressed in all black and completely soaked in rainwater. His dripping black bangs fell into his eyes and he wasn’t really trying to make eye contact, instead staring down at his stuff on the counter. Over all he looked like an average twenty-something year old dude, nothing in particular struck you as odd except for his beaten up hands. You scanned his things without much contemplation.

“That’ll be 6,75.”

He dug into the pocket of his jeans and threw a damp, slightly crumpled ten-dollar bill on the counter. You reached into the cash register for his change as he started opening the pack of cigarettes before even exiting the store. Clamping one between his lips, he pocketed the $3,25 you gave him and turned to walk out. The door was halfway open when he stopped. The sound of pouring rain from outside becoming even louder.

“Shouldn’t you be going home?” You heard his voice for the first time. Turning to look at the clock, it was ten thirty and your shift had ended over an hour ago. The bell rang as the door fell shut. You watched his blurry silhouette through the glass as he lit his cigarette and disappeared into the rain.

In the next thirty minutes’ no one else came in while you moped the floor and counted the shop turnover. In another ten minutes you had locked the place up and were headed home in your 1972 ford f100. The windshield wipers fighting the onslaught of rainwater was about the only dynamic thing in your drive back until you noticed a guy walking down your side of the road several feet down. You recognized him to be the customer from earlier. He was walking with his hands in his pockets, completely defenseless against the downpour. As you were approaching him, something came over you. Your truck passed him and slowed down to a stop. A few moments later he peeked through your passenger side window with a cocked brow. You reached over the gear stick and opened the door for him.

“It’s raining.” You pointed, hesitating what to say “We’re headed the same way and figured you needed a ride.”

The guy looked at you blankly for a few seconds as the heavy rain seeped into the interior of your car. The longer he measured you up, the more you wondered if offering him a ride was a bad idea in the first place. He took his undoubtedly wet cigarette out of his mouth and flicked it behind your car.

“I appreciate it, but don’t you think offering random strangers a ride is a bit reckless.”

You blinked at him, fully realizing he was right, but you shrugged anyway.

“Are you getting in or not? My car’s getting wet.”

With a chuckle he climbed into the passenger seat and pulled the door shut. You started your truck back up and proceeded to drive without another word. The stranger rolled down his window and lit another cigarette, a dry one. The smell of smoke and wet asphalt flooded the car. He was leaning his elbow against the open window and taking frequent drags from his cigarette, looking at the forest of pine trees that was lining the side of the road.

“Sorry ‘bout that, but I was dying for a smoke. My last two got pretty messed up cause the rain.” He informed you and you didn’t really mind. The cold air seeping from outside was pleasant on your skin and there was something nostalgic about the smell of cigarette smoke inside this car.

“My name’ s Jungkook.” He offered “In case you were wondering.”

“Y/n”

Aside from that little exchange, the car ride was mostly silent. Jungkook kept looking out the window while you sneaked glances at him from the corner of your eye. You turned down the road circling the forest and headed for your house. He never mentioned where he was going and somehow you forgot to ask.

“So, where do you need me to drop you off?”

Jungkook glanced at you briefly and shrugged. “Anywhere around here’s fine. I’m not gonna make you drive me home.”

It was a couple miles down the road from your house when you stopped. You turned your attention towards Jungkook and found him looking at you already. By the time you arrived the downpour had somewhat subsided.

“Thank you.” He said simply but made no move to try and get out of the car.

You nodded, not really knowing what you were supposed to say. Picking him up off the road was kind of a spur of the moment decision, but you didn’t really want to tell him that. He was looking at you calmly with big brown eyes and a smile. For a few moments you allowed yourself to examine his face. There wasn’t anything spectacular about his features per se, but he was handsome in a weirdly alluring way. You chalked it up to your perpetual lack of contact with the opposite sex. Still, you couldn’t help the way your eyes followed his tongue as it poked out to wet his bottom lip. Now that the window on his side had been rolled up you could smell the rain and smoke on his clothes, but there was also something else, something particularly masculine about his scent. It wasn’t cologne and it most definitely wasn’t sweat, but it smelled familiar. There were a lot of little things about this guy that you seemed to pick up on. It really had been a while, you thought, since you last looked at a guy like that. Jungkook also seemed to look at you with interest as the thoughts stumbled around in your brain. The smile he wore a second ago had given way to a somewhat unreadable expression. He blinked once, twice and leaned toward you. Your breath hitched when his cold lips touched yours. It’s like static burned you for a moment and you flinched. When he pulled back you were left with the taste of cigarette smoke on your mouth.

“Thanks,” he repeated “but don’t ever pick a random person up off the road again, no matter how hard it’s raining. Others might not have your best intentions in mind and you never know what might be sitting in your passenger seat.”

You just kept looking at him wordlessly. You couldn’t decide if the kiss or the gentle scolding he was giving you bewildered you more. Jungkook sighed softly and reached for the door.

“Goodnight.” He offered for the last time and exited the car

“Night.” You mumbled quietly, but he heard you. You followed his movements as he rounded the front of your truck. In the headlights his eyes flashed for a brief second before he walked off. Just like an animal’s eyes, you thought absentmindedly as you watched his back disappear the further he went. You just stood still until you could no longer see him and then looked down at where he was sitting just a minute ago. The worn out leather of the seat was still very much wet. Your mind went blank and you just stared at the wet spot his body had left. Suddenly your desire to figure out what happened fizzled out. Passively you reached for the key and restarted your truck.

When you got home your roommate was fast asleep on the couch with a movie still running on TV. You turned it off, ate a bowl of cereal for dinner and quickly fell asleep to the sound of raindrops against your window.

Your sleep was far from peaceful though. Months ago your dreams had disappeared and every morning you woke from a forgetful slumber. Tonight however images of dark looming pines and a voice carried by the wind haunted the minutes of unconsciousness you managed to obtain between tossing and turning. Your boots were sinking into the muddy grass, lining the forest floor. The wind felt painfully cold against your bare skin as you looked around for the source of the incoherent whispers you were hearing. Seconds later you were sitting up in your bed thoroughly disconcerted and making sure you were alone in the room. Laying back down you blacked out again almost immediately. Back into the woods, the wind was howling all around you, warning of an upcoming thunderstorm. The full moon kept coming in and out from between the clouds and in the brief moments of clarity you frantically looked around. The tall pines swayed against the force of the wind, throwing moving shadows that were suspiciously reminiscent of the human form. You just kept running blindly, being driven by some internal force to keep looking. The damp air around you was both freezing and suffocating. Your breath was coming out in white puffs the faster you ran, slipping on moss and stumbling over your own feet. And that damned whispering could still be heard all around you. The wind only seemed to amplify it. Abruptly, you stopped. Where were you going exactly? Were you running to where you assumed the exit of the forest to be or were you running towards the supposed source of the whispering? Your escape came unexpectedly when you opened your eyes for the umpteenth time that night. Your eyelids felt so heavy and your body was aching, your limbs felt cold and heavy. With a trembling exhale you stared out your window. Just beyond your back yard you could see the very forest that made your night so restless. By now the rain had stopped, the sky was clearing and just behind the pines you could see dawn approaching. A heavy yawn tore from your lungs and you couldn’t resist the fatigue anymore. Falling against the pillow you slipped into deep, dreamless sleep.

The next few weeks trickled by uneventful as ever. Your faithful routine once again becoming inescapable. In the morning you went to work, doing twelve hour shifts five days a week, sometime around nine or ten you went home, ate whatever was most convenient at the time and fell asleep. In comparison to your time awake, your dreams were wild. Running around the woods for hours on end, clinging to every little sound or movement and waking up on multiple occasions with chilled skin and goosebumps all over. On your days off your body desperately tried to recover from all the sleepless nights. You frequently passed out all over the place. On the kitchen table, on the couch while watching a movie, in bed every time you laid down, and even on the toilet a few times, literally anywhere you stayed immobile for an extended period of time. All the sleep however had the opposite effect on you. Instead of getting some rest you felt like the exhaustion was crushing you. Human interactions started to sound like white noise to you and your vision was blurry, so much so you stopped driving your truck to and from work in fear of losing control and crashing. You took the 45-minute walk twice every day with a blank stare ahead and zero sense of your surroundings. The damned woods kept you company, lining your periphery with all their rustling branches and unseen inhabitants.

Soon enough the new university year was about to start, reminding you why exactly you chose to stay in this wilting part of the world in the first place. However, starting your lectures didn’t exactly bring with them the sense of purpose you were hoping to obtain. The only things that added to your routine were a whole bunch more school work to do and a certain bubbly character to accompany you in what little free time you had left. Your childhood best friend was back from her trip abroad to start another year at university. Your obscure dreams never ceased to keep you on the brink of existence and anything you tried to do took twice as long as it normally would, which left you with very little free time and patience to deal with Yara.

You two were huddled up in a tight booth at the back of your local café, sitting opposite each other with your laptops open and a lengthy MS Word document on your screen.

“Writing essays is damn near impossible!” Yara pouted and sipped on her sugary latte.

You directed your attention toward her over the laptop screen. Her short, pumpkin-orange hair was held back by two bow-shaped clips on either side. It stood out against her pale skin and fluffy white sweater. You followed the carmine smudge her lips left on the rim of her drink and couldn’t help but think how the sugary beverage perfectly matched her sweet attitude and appearance. You on the other hand had picked up the habit of drinking copious amounts of bitter black coffee in your attempts keep your sanity.

“You know,” Yara picked up a different tone to her voice “ever since I came back you’ve been acting kind of…” she paused to study your face for a moment “kind of off, I guess. You’re like a shell of your former self.”

A shell of your former self? Yeah, that was one way to put it, you chuckled. Yara was staring at you with the intensity of a stubborn preschooler. A hint of irritation clenched in your chest at that expression she wore. How were you supposed to tell her that some random guy kissed you after you picked him up off the road in the dead of night and you’ve been having this oddly specific dream disrupting your sleep when she was looking at you like that. To be honest you didn’t think the two were connected in any particular way just because they happened to happen on the same day. The look on her face however was really starting to annoy you. Her cheeks were slightly puffed out, lips pursed and eyes narrowed with the silliest kind of determination. Deep down you knew it was only her ever insatiable curiosity that drove her to ask about your life.

“What are you scowling at me for?” Yara grumbled without breaking eye contact.

“How about you mind your own fucking business for once!” Your built up irritation suddenly exploded in her face. The annoying look of determination quickly disappeared and for once Yara seemed to be caught off guard. She stared at you wordlessly and you were already starting to regret your outburst.

“Yara, I -”

“Y/n, you can yell at me if that helps, but something really is wrong with you.” You couldn’t meet her eyes anymore; guilt was eating away at your conscious. When did you become like this? Was your life that pathetic that you felt threatened by your best friend trying to catch up because you had nothing to offer but an outlandish story about some guy and a stupid dream? Maybe you were jealous because Yara had her life together? It was your own fault for choosing to live your life so monotonously, waiting for some magical event to break up your routine. It was your own fault for deciding to deprive yourself from things like traveling, human interactions and meaningful relationships. And it wasn’t like you were building your future either. You were simply trapped by your insecurities and fear of ‘what ifs’, fear of commitment and at the same time inability to let go.

“Hey, don’t freeze up like that!” Yara’s gentle touch pulled you from your destructive self-criticism. “If you feel uncomfortable, I won’t ask again. I’m just worried, because you seem to be in pretty rough shape.”

The genuine warmth you found when you finally looked into her eyes felt like a punch to the gut. There you went again, distancing yourself from the person who had your best intentions in mind. Yara had been with you through it all, you realized, and she was interested in your because she was your friend, not because she was being nosy or trying to poke fun at you. Seriously, what was wrong with you to immediately feel threatened?

“I’m sorry.” You struggled and failed to mask the tremble in your voice.

“Stop beating yourself up over it.” You flinched “That’s not a healthy state of mind to be in, believe me.”

You breathed s heavy sigh, but decided to be honest with her.

“I’ve been having some trouble sleeping lately…” You started a bit hesitantly “… There’s this weird dream that I keep waking up from and I can’t seem to get rid of it. It’s really stupid, I keep hearing someone whispering and then I start running through the woods, and I don’t know where I’m going, and I keep waking up before I can figure it out. Every time I fall asleep everything starts all over again and I’m sick of it. I wake up at least 5 or 6 times every night and it’s been driving me insane for weeks.”

Yara quietly waited for you to finish your rant. All throughout your gaze kept bouncing between her and the table in front of you, checking for any sign of mockery, but it never came.

“Have you ever tried to go out there?” She suggested out of nowhere

“Go out where?”

“Out in the woods.” Yara shrugged “Dreams are a form of expression of our subconscious desires, you know. Your dream seems straightforward enough and I don’t really think there’s some hidden meaning behind it.”

You were looking at her suspiciously. “You know there’s bears and stuff in the woods, right?”

“Look, I wouldn’t be suggesting this if I had a better idea. Next time you wake up from that dream, get some bear spray and a flashlight and go out there for a bit. I mean, if you have a better idea, I’m listening.”

“I don’t know, I haven’t really thought about any solutions, so I guess this is something.”

“If it makes you feel any better, I’ll come over. When you decide to go out there, wake me up and I’ll be waiting for you to come back.”

“That could work.” You nodded “There’s something else I want to tell you.”

“I’m not going anywhere.” Yara smiled

“The day my dreams started… God, I hate the way that sounds, but back when it started I accidentally stayed late at work. It was raining really heavily and this guy came in the store and -”

Your words died in your throat when you saw a familiar face walk in through the door of the coffee shop. You hadn’t seen him in over a month, but there he was in all his dark and looming glory. Jungkook walked over to the barista with his hands in his pockets and you hated the way your adrenaline spiked at the sight of him. Yara was staring at you in silent bewilderment, but you couldn’t muster the strength to look away from him.

“That’s him. That’s the guy I’m talking about.”

“Who?!” Yara shrieked as she whipped her orange head around to scan the vicinity of the café.

Upon hearing the unnaturally loud noise, Jungkook slowly turned around to look for the source. His eyes quickly zeroed in on Yara blatantly staring at him. They had a brief stare down, during which you just wanted to crawl under the table and out of sight. Just as suddenly as before Yara Jolted her head back around to look at you instead.

“Isn’t that… oh, what’s his face? Jeon Jungkook?”

But you couldn’t answer her because, now that Yara wasn’t serving as a distraction, Jungkook’s attention had shifted to you. He looked good, better that the first time you saw him anyway. This time he was dry, wearing simple torn blue jeans and a long black jacket. His hair was covered by a beanie and there was a seemingly empty backpack swinging on his shoulder. Jungkook picked up his drink from the counter and turned to leave, offering you a small nod as a parting gift. Your eyes followed him out the door and through the window. Just like he did over a month ago, he stopped to pull a cigarette out and light it before proceeding to walk away.

“Sooo,” Yara started “what’s up with you and that Jungkook guy?”

Embarrassment tinted your cheeks red upon realizing you had been caught. Yara was grinning at you and you could practically see the onslaught of questions that were bubbling up in her throat. By the time you started speaking she was barely holding back.

“It’s nothing special, calm down.” You attempted to counteract her excitement. “He was my last customer for the night and while I was driving back home I saw him walking down the road in the rain. I don’t know why, but I gave him a ride. That’s all. The weird thing is that my dreams started that same night. I don’t think it’s related, but I thought I’d mention it anyway.”

You decided to skip the part where he kissed you, because you weren’t sure what that was about.

“That’s it?” Yara stared at you with the most disappointed face “And here I was thinking you two hooked up in your dad’s old truck.”

“Told you it’s nothing special.” You sipped on your now cold coffee and the bitterness of it gave you chills. You didn’t even like coffee in the first place. “Anyway, how do you know him?”

Yara shrugged “I know pretty much everyone in our university.” Upon seeing your confused expression, she continued “Yeah, I even noticed him attending some of our lectures. He always sneaks into class late. Dude’s a freaking magician, I can never catch him when he comes and goes. He’s pretty cute, but is also kinda weird and always keeps to himself. I’ve seen him hang out with very few people, I guess he has a tight friend circle or something.”

You just sat back and listened in awe to all the information she was feeding you about this guy you’ve never seemed to notice before. Since when was Yara this well educated about people’s lives, you wondered.

“He’s not much of a player too, despite what people think. I heard he’s hooked up with two or three girls that were older than him and already graduated by now. That’s about it.”

Yara nodded in satisfaction when she finished her little resume of Jungkook’s history on campus. You guess she was people watching every time you assumed she was spacing out. You couldn’t help the laugh that escaped you at the thought of Yara eavesdropping on people’s conversations and keeping tabs on people she never even talked to.

You two stayed in the coffee shop until closing time, rekindling your relationship and laughing wholeheartedly at each other. After you left, you ate doughnuts for dinner and went back to your place, determined to watch movies until you both passed out.

A random horror movie was playing on the TV and you seemed to be the only one paying attention. Yara was buried somewhere under an ungodly amount of blankets, dozing off repeatedly but trying her damnedest to stay awake. Her half-conscious face was bobbing up and down and she released yawn after yawn until she finally gave in. She fell face first into the blankets and started snoring softly. For a while you tried to follow suit, but sleep never came by to take you. Still you stubbornly squeezed your eyes shut and tried to find the most comfortable position. On TV the movie was still playing so you decided you might as well watch it. Maybe it could work some magic and put you to sleep. The movie was about a train breaking down in the middle of the woods. As you watched the looming drone shots of the foggy forest you couldn’t escape the weird feeling crawling up your chest. Overwhelming curiosity was eating you alive and making you excited at the thought of finally figuring out what was pulling you into the woods. Perhaps this was what was keeping you awake. A part of you wanted to just get up and go already, but, as stupid as it may sound, the other part felt like it wasn’t right to do it without being woken up from your dream. You felt like a little kid being told that Santa wasn’t coming unless they were asleep. It was so stupid but you still hesitated to get up.

Some howling returned your attention to the movie. You didn’t realize it was a werewolf movie when you picked it. You hated this kind of stuff so you immediately reached for the remote and switched it off. The sound of howling gave you the chills and you didn’t want to deal with this bullshit tonight. Blocking the sound from your memory you curled in on yourself and pulled the blankets tightly around you. Not soon enough your eyelids started getting heavy.

Your dreams were unnervingly tranquil. Instead of the frantic running you were used to, there was only darkness. Thick, unmoving darkness rendered your eyesight useless. At your sides, your fingers twitched nervously. The only familiarity presented itself in the form of a cold breeze, brushing against your bare skin and raising goosebumps in its wake. You strained your ears for even the slightest noise, but you heard nothing. You didn’t know what to do with yourself, your limbs felt too heavy to move and your heart was hammering in your chest.

Smoke? You sniffed the air around you. Cigarette smoke. The wind was carrying it, swirling it around you and blowing it away. Immediately, you thought about Jungkook and felt mildly irritated. Of course the only time you wanted to experience the damned dream this would happen. You blamed Yara and the amount of personal information about Jungkook she dumped on you earlier. A smile stretched across your face and you let your guard down. You couldn’t get mad because you finally had normal human interactions in your life.

You felt warmth slide up your arms. You flinched but couldn’t move. It was the oddest feeling because it felt like human touch, but you couldn’t sense a human presence. It caressed you from your palms, all the way to your shoulders and back. Moving down your spine slowly, it reached your waist and gently tugged you backward. Your shoulders were met with something firm that emanated even more warmth. Everything felt strangely natural, the touch felt familiar on your body and you seemed to relax right into it. The smell of cigarette smoke was stronger now, blended with the scent of fresh linen and something sweet. You inhaled it in big gulps, almost burning the fragrance into your mind. The more you leaned into it, the presence behind you became more solid, more real. Cold breath spilled along your neck and chest and you didn’t even try to stop the prominent chill that made your spine bow against the firm body behind you. Your hands shifted from your sides to reach backward, your fingers came in contact with a rough fabric you recognized to be denim. Your shoulders were pressed into something much softer like a hoodie, you guessed. Every fiber of your being screamed at you to turn around, but you were scared that this lovely feeling would vanish if you did. So you kept your movements soft and slow, carefully sliding your hand up your chest. You felt electricity prick at your fingertips the closer you got. Agonizingly slow they slipped over the swell of your breast, over your ribs and collarbone and up your throat and jaw. You held your breath the closer you got, just a little bit more, you reached back. Your fingers flinched when they made contact with hot, silky smooth skin. You ventured further, your palm sliding shyly along it, shaking slightly. Your hand was wrapping around the back of someone’s neck, you realized when your fingers touched soft, short hair. The person leaned into your hesitant touch and for the first time you felt his chest expand with a deep inhale against your back. If you focused hard enough, you could even feel his rapid heartbeat onto your shoulder blade. You couldn’t see or hear a thing but, God, you other senses were going into overdrive. Every cell in your body tingled in anticipation of the slightest stimulation and this person’s scent was so pungent all around, you could taste it in your throat.

A howl tore through the matter of your fantasy. The sound came so suddenly through the silence, that it made tears pool at the corners of your eye. Your body was completely stripped of warmth when a gust of wind slammed into you from behind and left you shivering. Cold droplets started to rattle against your shoulders and when you opened your eyes you were once again faced with the image of tall looming pines. The whispering was also coming back in full force and it only seeped to grow louder the longer you listened. The sudden onslaught of noise made tears stream down your face. Just as the whispers started to morph into screams, you felt a suffocating pain erupt in your throat. Instinctively you squeezed your hands against it until you realized, there was blood pouring out between your fingers.

Your body shot up with a screeching inhale. Your hands unconsciously palmed at your throat. You stared right ahead into the darkness of your living room, everything was just as you had left it, Yara was cuddled up under her blanket pile, undisturbed. Your body was trembling and heavy tears rolled down your cheeks and into your lap.

“Fuck this.” You croaked in a tiny voice “What the fuck just happened?!”

You turned to look out the window. The first rays of sunlight were starting to creep over the horizon. One thing’s for sure, you weren’t going into the forest anytime soon.

...

Disclaimer: I didn’ come up with the name Yara myself, but instead got influenced by @kinktae ‘s story. Other than that the character has been made up by me. Just giving credit where it’s due.

#bts #bts smut #jeon jungkook #jungkook #bts jungkook #bts fanfction #bts angst #jungkook fanfic #jungkook smut #jungkook angst #bts scenarios #bts drabble #jungkook x reader #jungkook x y/n #bangtan #bangtan boys #smut #angst #ggukienet

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starlling-writes · 4 years

Text

Bewitching Monsters - Leshen

Series Rating: 18+ Chapter Contains: swearing, sexual scenes Pairing: f/genderfluid BeMo Masterlist ☆ Writing Masterlist

A/N: If you reblog this, PLEASE DO NOT TAG IT AS WEND*GO! This is not a wend*go. While the leshen in this story might shift and appear similar to the common image of a one, it’s completely unrelated to any of the Indigenous Americans’ folklore of said creature. Sure, it’s a more well known tag than leshen, but that’s not the point. If I see you tagging this as wend*go, you’re gonna get blocked.

— — —

My limbs stung like hell as heat returned to them. Sitting up was a struggle, but I needed to move, needed to get my circulation up. I didn’t recognize where I was. It was a cozy log cabin a bit smaller than my own home. I didn’t remember how I got here.

After escaping the castle of some murderous vampires, I hopped on my broom and started my way home. I avoided the train, knowing they’d look for me there. Flying would take longer, but I was banking on the vampires checking my home and moving on by the time I got there. I also banked on Vérus not putting up with any lookout they might try leaving.

My broom was only able to carry me a few hours away before it needed to recharge. By then I was well into the woods. I took my cloak from my haversack to keep warm. While I didn’t need to worry about its warmth spell running out, it wasn’t a true solution against the cold. I quickly realized my folly in my rushed decision to stay off the beaten paths. There were plenty of dead branches around for a fire. But without some sort of shelter, this situation would quickly become as deadly as the one I just escaped from.

Someone had to have rescued me. But who? And how far off my path had they taken me?

“Hello?” I tentatively called out. The only things I heard were the crackling fire and the wind hissing outside.

Walking sent needles up through my legs. I wobbled my way through the house, checking the rooms, finding no one. The smell of fresh bread led me to the kitchen. There was a small loaf sitting on the table, cooling on a cloth, and the sight of it made my stomach grumble.

“Help yourself.”

I screamed and whipped around. I tripped over my feet and my hip met the edge of the table. Ignoring the pain burning in my side, I met the concerned eyes of a moth. If I had met them outside, I would have easily mistaken them for a snow sculpture if they stood still. Even their robes were icy white.

“Careful.” They tentatively held out a hand towards me, ready to assist. “Take it slow. You’re safe here. My name is Theophania.”

“Hello.” I bowed my head; it was a bit late for greetings but better than never. “You can call me Witch.”

“What were you doing in the woods?”

“Running from death.”

“Well you nearly meet it anyways.” She went to the fireplace and removed the lid from the cauldron hanging over the fire. The rich scent of stew wafted around me. “Soup is nearly done. Please, relax. You can eat in here or out on the couch. You can even eat while in the bath, if you so choose.” She laughed lightly to herself as she stirred the stew.

“I’m sorry, but where exactly am I?”

Theophania set down the spoon and replaced the lid on the cauldron. She turned and looked at me, her eyes haunting voids that revealed nothing. Her antenna, however, drooped back, giving me a sense of unease. “You’re in der Schwarzwald. Or Feldberg Forest, as most outsiders call it.”

You’ve heard tales of these woods. The forest was an entity of its own, one obstinately set against letting any society try to tame it. It wasn’t a place to go wandering. Tales say, if you were lucky, you’d just wander for endless hours and end up roughly where you started. If you weren’t lucky, the woods would become your grave. It was hard to say what stories were true and what ones were fanciful tales for entertainment.

As my situation sunk in, Theo slowly nodded. “Rest up. You’ll be meeting the waldschrat soon.”

Waldschrat—who or what was that?

Theo was a lovely host during the two long days before I met the waldschrat. She gave me space, cooked phenomenal meals, and it was beyond cozy to snuggle with her on the couch while drinking tea.

While all that was nice, it didn’t dissuade my anxiety.

I knew it was time the moment Theo walked into the room. Her antennas were down flat and she held her hands tightly in front of her. I threw on my cloak and boots and followed her out.

The walk was silent, save for the crunching of snow under my feet. I thought of using my broom but now didn’t feel like the time to use any magic. Gods, the silence was imposing. Did anything else live in these woods? There were no other houses along our walk. I didn’t even find eyes watching from the shadows.

Theo stopped and I almost ran into her. My focus had been scattered everywhere else but snapped to mass of branches and moss in front of us. There was no snow on it. She grabbed my arm and yanked me down to my knees like her. Curse the freezing snow. As soon as she released me, I adjusted my cloak under the knees to fight against the chill.

The air rushed from behind us and swirled in a mini cyclone around the snowless mound. Then it moved. The mound grew and contorted, taking on the form of a satyr. A nightmarish satyr. A skull emerged from the branches, a raccoon I think. Blue fire sparked to life in its eyes. Ah. Waldschrat must be their term for leshen, I thought.

“Sorcerer,” crept a voice, like a whisper grew legs and skittered around like a frantic bug. “How did you come by my favor?”

It would be easier to answer if I knew what their favor was. The leshen approached, shifting as they did. Now they looked like a cervitaur with a fox skull—still nightmarish too. They hooked a claw under the twig necklace. Clarity struck. “A vampire named Aleril gave it to me before I fled Castelul Corvinilor.”

“Ah. Him.” They pulled their claw away, letting the necklace fall against my skin. It no longer felt like metal. I wanted to look, to see if it was different now, but I didn’t dare look away from the leshen. “Tell me, sorcerer. Can you cast a Grand Rite?”

“I can.”

“Then how about a bargain? I shall take you to the edge of my woods, if you perform the Rite.”

“Forgive my forwardness—why do you need a Grand Rite?”

The leshen shifted again to an amorphic mound of underbrush and detritus. “Sustenance has become scarce. I am hoping the Rite will help aid in the matter.”

Surely there were better rituals than the Grand Rite for such a thing, but I didn’t argue. “Has a druid not been able to help?”

“There’s no longer any close enough to bargain.”

“I see.” I wasn’t sure how much help I could be. I wanted to help; but as a witch, I wasn’t sure if what they were offering would equal the payment for such a ritual. I called to the Grand Scales. The ibis was sitting in its nest and regarded me for a long moment before making its decision. As I thought, the ritual required more. Hopefully the leshen won’t mind. “I can perform the Rite. However, as I am a witch, my magic will cost more than just safe travel.”

Judging by how they shifted back to a looming, monstrous form complete with wolf skull, I’d say the leshen wasn’t fond of my response. “What are your demands then?”

It was taking everything I had not to shiver. “As this is your forest, I’ll need you to participate in the Rite with me and lend some of your magic to the spell.”

They cocked their head like a quizzical animal. “Is that all?”

“No,” I hesitated. “I’ll need a spell in return.”

“What spell?” they growled.

Finding words was difficult now. “The Scales weren’t very… concise on that part. But there’s some spell you know that I apparently require.” When they didn’t respond, I rambled on. “Of course, I wouldn’t teach the spell with anyone else; and I swear by the Grand Scales to not abuse it. Or maybe you could just cast it for me when I need it, that way you don’t even have to teach it—”

“Very well,” they cut me off.

The rest of the day, and into the next, everyone prepped for the ritual. There were a surprising number of forest folk now. Mostly, they gathered enough ribbon for the maypole—and dying more red ribbon. Some prepared food for a small feast afterwards. All simple work, but time consuming.

When it was time for the ritual, it was amazing to see how beautiful the ritual space was. Eight saplings circled the center, stretching up and meeting in the center to form a cage around the area I’d perform the Rite. At the top of the trees, the ribbons were secured in a red-white alternating pattern. Faerie lights bobbed around, giving off gentle light.

I approached the central area and noticed delicate runes carved into the saplings. In the middle laid a bed of furs. Hopefully they’d be enough to keep me warm because I wouldn’t be able to rely on my cloak during the ritual. I sat down and started meditating, getting into the proper headspace.

By the time I was ready, the leshen was already patiently waiting beside me in a humanoid form with an elk skull. “You ready?” I asked.

“At your leisure,” they nodded.

I removed my robe and shivered as goosebumps instantly covered my body—skyclad outside in winter was a bitch. I settled before my singing bowl, thankful for the furs. I picked up the mallet, hit the edge three times, then slowly drew the mallet around the rim of the bowl. The hum hung in the air as I carried out the start of the ritual. Just before the note died out, I rang the bowl three more times.

Then the band kicked up. Okay, it wasn’t much of a band, but there were enough drums, a couple fiddles, and a flute to make a nice tune. Other members of the forest took up their ribbons. I moved over to the leshen and straddled over them. They already shifted their form appropriately. Then, on cue, the forest dwellers started weaving the maypole ribbons as I lowered myself down onto the leshen’s phallus.

A creature like a leshen had no need for sex, so I wasn’t surprised by their lack of skill. But I was fine with doing all the work. It actually made it easier to channel the magic that way. I leaned forward, splaying my hands across their chest and pushing them down. This position was much better than lotus. A growl rumbled from the leshen. Then they grabbed my hips and met my rhythm. Either they were a quick learner or I was very wrong about my initial assumption.

I was not complaining.

The leshen surprised me further when I felt a large press against my entrance. I let out a gasp then glanced down between my legs. Before, the leshen’s phallus had been basic and human. Now it had a lovely knot towards the base of the shaft.

“Would you prefer I changed back?” they asked.

“No, it’s fine. I was just surprised.” I pushed down and relished how the knot stretched me. It was even more delightful as it popped in and out of me as I continued riding them. How was this the first time I fucked someone with a knot? Sure, I had a dildo or two with them, but they obviously didn’t have the same wonderful power that the leshen was putting into their thrusts.

“Fuck me from behind,” I panted. If I wasn’t so focused on the ecstasy I would have been more impressed—and maybe a bit creeped out—by how the leshen simply flowed and shifted, reforming behind me while they never stopped thrusting deep into me.

Perks of a shifter species.

Another great thing was that, since the leshen was mostly wood, it felt like I was being spanked with a paddle with each pump. Would they leave my ass red and bruised? The thought sent a rush of excitement pulsing through me.

I wouldn’t be surprised if I came before the maypole finished.

Holding myself up grew difficult. I slid down onto my forearms, my face burying into the warm furs. I no longer needed their warmth. My fingers dug into the fur as moan after moan rocked out of me. I was drowning in bliss.

The leshen’s grip constricted tight around my lower body. I wasn’t sure about them, but I wasn’t going to last much longer. Between the knot, the paddling, and the tight binding… Damn, this had been such a turn of events. I was grateful now for all the circumstances that led to this wonderful Rite.

My orgasm hit and washed through me, blocking out the world for a moment. After the initial wave of pleasure, I focused and weaved the energy we had built for the spell. The leshen release their grip and sat back on the furs beside me. I gradually got to my feet—with a little help from them—and finished off the ritual. If this Rite didn’t help bring fertility to this forest, I had no idea what would.

With the ritual done, I plopped back down on the furs, stretched, then curled up on my side. “I’m going to take a nap now, if that’s alright.”

The leshen leaned over and nuzzled my hair. They pulled my discarded cloak over me before settling against my back. “Rest well, little one.”

— — —

A/N: If you reblog this, PLEASE DO NOT TAG IT AS WEND*GO! This is not a wend*go. If I see you tagging this as such, you’re gonna get blocked.

BeMo Masterlist ☆ Writing Masterlist Story: Previous — Next

#monster love #exophilia #exophilia fiction #writeblr #leshen #shifter #forest monster #forest king #forest guardian #ancient one #old god

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void-tiger · 5 years

Text

Gentron Week: Days 1-3

Characters: Takashi “Shiro” Shirogane, Ryou “Jiro” Shirogane

Prompts: Bed-Sharing/Sleepovers; Clothes-Sharing; Soulmate AU (sorta), Hand-Holding

Canon Compliant?: NOPE! Not even a little, although canonical events are referenced.

Other Notes: ...I started this with Sunday’s prompt, got behind, then realized that it fit with the first three days, anyway. Hope that’s alright.

He’d been back for almost a phoeb now, thanks to the combined efforts of Jiro, his Team, and his Lion. And after he got back there was a bit of a scramble trying to sort out immediate things like Lion bonds, then of course the much more mundane ones as well. Like sleeping arrangements. Clothes. Who owned what with the small stockpile of belongings after months-to-years in space between them and the lines already blurred.

When they first rescued Shiro from the Void of Black Lion’s inner quintessence field, there hadn’t been time to figure these things out beyond who flew with Black and their Team. And after that what time hadn’t been spent fleeing Haggar’s repeated assaults was spent running repeated tests over both Jiro and Shiro for any lasting “presents” left by the witch, or any lasting damage from his time spent suspended at the subatomic level for so long. Then remedial drills as well as he reintegrated back into the Team and they had to relearn how to form Voltron...again.

But after they exhausted every drill, and after they could confidently form yet a third version of Voltron with their current Team (Shiro was disheartened to learn about Keith defecting to the Blades after his stint as Voltron’s leader. He still hoped to reach his friend, to let him know he was still alive, that the Team and Shiro both wanted him to return home), and after��Allura and Coran were finally confident that both Shiroganes had a clean bill of health (and NO nasty spells and implants leftover) ...they could finaly rest.

Only, they still hadn’t sorted through who owned what. Or who even had bigger claim to Shiro’s old room.

But like with his bond with the Black Lion, Jiro practically shoved Jiro into his old room, only pausing long enough to grab himself a fresh set of bedclothes, with Lance insisting Jiro crash with him. (Shiro was pretty sure that the tank and sleep pants he himself had ended up wearing actually belonged to Jiro. Not him.) But sleeping alone in a dark, quiet room proved unbearable. It was too easy for Shiro to return to that listless floating he experienced while suspended in the Void, body free from all the aches and pains he’d long since reconciled as his “normal” but only his mind kept intact.

Well, mostly.

Only...

Soft, steady snores competed with his own gulped and held shallow panting. His right side felt lopsided and pinned down by a weight that wasn’t from his now-absent Galran prosthetic. And for all the Black Lion’s efforts to make him comfortable while he was stored as atoms within the Lion’s quintessence, he’d never felt warm. Or felt anything at all, really. And the Lion’s quintessence certainly hadn’t smelled like laundry detergent. Come to think of it, Shiro didn’t quite remember making it back to his bunk.

Slowly his eyes adjusted to the Castle’s night cycle gloom. Soft green light cast shadows against his sleeping clone’s pale skin, ragged scar, and inky black hair. Shiro felt his eyes flutter closed as they were dragged down by tiny, but dense, dense weights. Like mini neutron stars. Shiro felt himself lulled back to sleep, drifting not in Voltron’s Void, but the innocence of stars that space once held for him.

In the morning, neither spoke about the previous night. But to his bemusement the room had somehow converted into holding two stacked bunks where there was only one previously overnight.

Jiro wrenched himself awake with a silent scream. His sheets stuck to his skin thanks to a dripping sheen of cold sweat as well as lay tangled around his legs and feet. As did the image still vivid behind his mind’s eye

He scrubbed his face furiously and sniffed reflexively, glaring at his ruined bedding. Even if the could get back to sleep again, no way was he going to be able to sleep in that. With measured movements in an attempt to not shake the shared alcove and wake his brother in the upper bunk, Jiro softly set his bare feet down against the frigid floor. He then cautiously groped his single hand in the dark until he finally felt a bed corner, then tugged. The mattress rose about half an inch before slamming back down. Jiro barely bit back a curse.

The sheets, however, stayed firmly tucked for all his trouble. Naturally. Yet another reminder about Why He Needed His Own Prosthetic. Or at least his own bayard. He’d prefer not borrowing Shiro’s.

The sheets above him rustled as he heard Shiro stifling a yawn. “Jiro, what are you doing.”

Jiro winced. “N-nothing,” he murmured as he fought to keep his voice steady. “Go back to sleep.”

“Ry.”

Jiro knew that tone. That sympathetic I’m the Black Paladin and Leader and Your Big Brother so you better tell me And Deal With It tone.He’d used it himself against Shiro more than once. He hated being on the receiving end. Especially when Shiro felt the need to switch to using some form of “Ryou” to further his point. “Just remaking my bed,” Jiro hedged.

“At 2:30 in the morning?” Takashi pressed.

Jiro remained silent. The bunk shifted as Shiro’s feet scraped against the rungs. Shiro gently nudged his brother to scoot over with his right shoulder. Jiro obliged. He heaved an exasperated sigh when Shiro immediately started untucking the sheets and gathering them into the center of the mattress as one, wadded bundle.

Of course Shiro could. Shiro had a bayard that could double as an arm while they both waited for new prosthetics.

“Nightmare or memory,” Shiro asked abruptly.

Jiro squeezed his eyes shut. “Vision,” he finally choked out in a strained whisper. “I’ll just...” Jiro cleared his throat thickly as he grabbed the damp bundle of sweaty bedding.

“Ry,” Shiro called again. “We can deal with that tomorrow.”

“But--”

Shiro tossed a fresh set of bed clothes at him, forcing Jiro to drop the bundle as he reflexively tried to catch the set thrown at him with his non-dominant hand. Jiro shot Shiro a baleful glare. Shiro toothily grinned.

“Fine,” Jiro mumbled through a faceful of pantleg, then stalked out of the room and into the bathroom to change. He flipped the light on, immediately wincing at the sudden, harsh light, then glanced down at the set Shiro tossed at him. It wasn’t a fresh tank and sweatpants, oh no. It was that quiznacking Black Lion Onesie, with the right sleeve already zipped off.

When Jiro returned, he found Shiro sitting crosslegged atop a newly remade bed with fresh sheets, face illuminated by the glow of a datapad resting in Shiro’s lap while he rested his chin in his left hand. The bayard sat deactivated on top of the bed next to him.

“You’re gonna kill your eyesight that way,” Jiro snarked.

Shiro glanced up and shrugged nonplussed. “It’ll get fixed again by the next pod visit.”

Jiro balled up his discarded pajamas and chucked them at Shiro. They struck Shiro’s face with a wet-sounding smack before landing in his brother’s lap.

“Okay, first of all, gross,” Shiro drawled dryly. “Second, is that the thanks I get for remaking your bed, brother dearest?”

“You earned that and you know it,” Jiro dead panned.

“Fair.”

Shiro wadded up the sweaty clothes, then tossed them at the heap of used bedding already shoved into a corner. However, he still didn’t budge from Jiro’s bunk.

Jiro sighed in exasperation. “Look...I appreciate you putting my bed back together, but are you gonna move or not.”

“Not just yet, Ry,” Shiro said seriously.

Jiro swallowed. “Ryou” again. That didn’t bode well. “Alright...” he said apprehensively. “But no way can I sleep between the sheets in this thing. It’s way too stuffy.”

Shiro chuckled softly with a small smile. “You don’t get it, do you.”

“Apparently not, unless you tell me,” Jiro huffed impatiently.

“You’re right, that thing is way too hot to sleep in--”

“Think you do need your eyes checked, afterall,” Jiro interjected sardonically.

“Hush,” Shiro scolded lightly with a playful swat to the back of Jiro’s head. Jiro continued to glare balefully, but without any real heat to it.

“--but that’s not exactly the point,” Shiro continued. “The Team made that for me when they threw an impromptu surprise slumber party.”

“...And think you need a reminder of the definitions of ‘impromptu’ and ‘surprise’,” Jiro remarked. “And yes, I do remember.” He tapped his temple. “So what’s your point.”

Shiro rolled his eyes. “It’s the Team’s reminder that I’m not alone to sort things. that they--and the Black Lion--are always gonna be there if they can. And I’m reminding you that that extends to you, too.”

Jiro’s eyes squeezed shut as he tensed around the way his breathing tried to hitch. The vision, which already left him raw, flashed resh into his mind’s eye once again. As did the loss of his Lion Bond--or rather, how he never had one, not really--although technically he knew that wasn’t Shiro’s intention. Shiro wasn’t that cruel. His hand clenched around the fabric pocket of the onesie until his knuckles turned white.

“Hey,” Shiro called again urgently. “You still with me?”

Jiro nodded stiffly. He gulped down more air as he tried to stuff down the impending sob that threatened to erupt out. A hitched hiccup escaped instead for his trouble.

Gently Shiro unwound Jiro’s hand from his death grip against the fabric until he could hold Jiro’s hand in his own, shifting so that his good arm and shoulder could support his brother. “I’m sorry. That didn’t help, did it,” Shiro murmured apologetically.

Jiro shook his head furiously. A few traitorous tears leaked out to trail down his cheeks and nose and stinging the ragged scar across his face, before splattering against the tacky thing. Jiro felt Shiro hug him tighter, promptint the violent sob to finally escape. Shiro simply held him closer, but thankfully one-armed. Jiro didn’t know how he’d react if the bayard shifted into Shiro’s prosthetic and rubbed it in even further.

“Which one was it?” Shiro asked softly.

“They chose you,” Jiro finally bit out around his sobbing. “She...the witch. She tu-turn-ned me against them. I wasn’t...I wasn’t strong enough to stop her! A-and they chose you!”

Shiro’s eyes closed. Of course it was that vision, which happened to be his own worst nightmare. Of course, despite his best intentions, lending the silly onesie only made things worse. But, secretly Shiro was glad that Ryou was processing things this way, instead of...

Jiro’s tears gradually slowed into steady, shallow hiccups as they finally spent. For now. Snot and saline still continued to flow from his eyes and nose. Jiro’s face wrinkled in disgust and embarrassment. Shiro wordlessly passed him a box of tissues from the alcove’s shelf. Jiro accepted it and sniffed.

“But how have things happened in this Reality?” Shiro finally said softly.

“They...the Team found you,” Jiro answered hesitantly with a sniff. “I didn’t have to die.”

Shiro hummed his confirmation. “And you were the one to find me. The Black Lion placed the bracelet Princess Allura made me around that prosthetic,” Shiro reminded him. “And you never hurt anyone. Our Team found another way to...” Shiro faltered, then swallowed thickly. “...to bring me home.”

Shiro felt Ryou nod against him. Good. Maybe his words were reaching his twin.

“And even if that did happen, it wouldn’t be your fault. Not now. Not ever.”

A spike of anger shot through Jiro’s chest as a memory of a different vision shoved its way forward. Shiro’s voice through his lips. Lance not contradicting him. No one contradicting him. But he swallowed that resentment back down. Shiro didn’t need to know. He’d sort that one out on his own, or take it to the grave.

Jiro felt Shiro staring at him in bemusement, but thankfully his brother didn’t push it.

“Besides,” Shiro continued. “Is Allura responsible for what Empress Allura has done?”

“No,” Jiro ground out vehemently.

“Then neither is our Team. This Team would never do that. And if for what ever reason they did try it, I’m eating my arm. Then kicking their butts no-handed.”

Despite himself Jiro laughed. And silently he supposed that Shiro’s logic applied to Shiro and That Other Shiro as well (the Shiro that wasn’t him...quiznack this was complicated.) Somehow they had avoided That Reality, although Jiro desperately wished that he wasn’t the one dealing with all the aftershocks as space and time realigned and knitted itself back together. Not that he’d with that on anyone... (the witch included. Especially the witch. He shuddered to think about what she could do with that knowledge.)

“...okay,” Jiro finally whispered tightly. “Although then you really would have two robot arms.”

Shiro barked out a laugh then reached over and tapped Jiro’s right stump. “Technically I already did. Or will.”

Jiro chuckled again, then yawned. Exhaustion dragged at every joint and limb. The vision and his outburst left him feeling emotionally wrung out and spent, but he was still suspicious if sleep would come. Or what it would hold this time.

Shiro released him, then laid down on this side, scooting until his back was flush against the alcove wall and left Jiro with most of the room on the narrow mattress. Jiro rolled his eyes and huffed in exasperation. He placed the tissue box, abandoned datapad, and Shiro’s bayard back onto the alcove shelf above them, passed the folded throw blanket at the foot of the bed to his belligerent brother--really, that should’ve been the first thing to clue him in as to Shiro’s intentions--and settled in on Shiro’s other side. Shiro poked Jiro’s left shoulder and grinned.

Jiro huffed a laugh. “You’re impossible.”

Shiro merely grinned harder. “You know you love me, Roo,” Shiro teased in sing-song.

Jiro rolled his eyes then shoved Shiro’s shin with his foot. “Keep telling yourself that, Kashi.”

“Hey!” Takashi squawked indignantly. “No kicking allowed!”

“Technically this was your idea,” Ryou snorted. “You should’ve know better, older brother dearest,” he added sweetly.

“I’d say I should ask the witch for a new twin, but I’d rather not know how many more models she made,” Takashi grumbled.

Jiro scooted closer to Shiro. Shiro gently nudged him back to make more room. Jiro obliged, then rested his head under Shiro’s right stump.

“We’ll get her back for that...right?” Ryou asked tentatively.

“Definitely,” Takashi growled. “And I’d pay good GAC to see Allura saiyan blast that witch at least once when we do.”

“Think I could get Hunk to make a popcorn basket to hold over that?” Ryou quipped.

“Dork,” Takashi laughed.

“Technically you’re calling yourself that, Shiro.”

“Mmm. And who recently actually took tactical advice from Return of the Jedi?”

“...I’m glad you’ve forgiven me for that,” Jiro said softly.

Shiro nudged him gently with his shoulder. “I’m still not happy about that, no,” he admitted. “But...I understand. I’m not sure what I would’ve done instead if in your shoes, honestly.”

“Well, thanks for that, anyway,” Jiro mumbled.

“Hey. It all worked out. And regardless as to why or how, I’m glad that you’re my brother.”

“I’m guessing that you’re meaning--?”

“Both, yeah.”

Jiro grinned inwardly. He opened his mouth to reply, but Shiro’s breathing had already slowed to soft, steady snores.

He’d have preferred having his own thoughts and own memories and own identity from the start, he mused. And he’d definitely have preferred being born Shiro’s real twin instead of subbing as a replacement for a stillborn one. But...at least this way he could understand Shiro a bit better. In a sense the two had shared a soul for a time, albeit not quite as literaly as in That Other Reality. And besides: what better way to use Haggar’s “gift” than to better protect and support his brother?

With one final, vindictive grin Jiro felt himself drift to sleep, lulled by the slow, gentle thuds of a twin heartbeat.

#gentron week #bed sharing #clothes sharing #hand holding #takashi shirogane #jiro shirogane #twinganes #cloneganes #VeeLaDee FixIt #mentions of LionPride and Blackbox #drabble #oneshot #family shenanigans #hurt&comfort

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serendair · 5 years

Text

The last 12 hours were a wild ride of emotions yet again in the Banana Fish fandom. And it wasn’t the first time in this story that we went through all 5 stages of grief within a few hours just to repeat the cycle shortly after.

The whole thing came down with the last episode airing or more like coming to the dreaded inevitable end that some of us (me included) hoped until the last second they averted somehow and do the biggest plottwist in plottwist history. Obviously it didn’t happen and Mappa stayed true to their word when they said they will stay faithful to the manga.

So last night we all went through “stage 1 - denial and isolation” where we all (at least those I talked to and read posts of) sat there crying our hearts out over the loss of a fictional character. (Please don’t get me wrong here especially since I’m totally on board with all of you. It took me 10 minutes to stop the sobbing and even longer to stop the tears. So I by no means try to belittle the reactions to this tragic end of a beloved character. I’m just in disbelieve over myself mostly that I can get so attached that I feel such strong and deep feelings over - and let’s face it - fiction! That as such is a huge proof of how capable Yoshida Akimi is when she can create a story that evokes such a big resonance even on emotional levels. That requires quite some skill. And Mappa translated this to animation in an extraordinary way. I’m drifting off though so back to topic.)

The same night shortly after we already moved on to “stage 2 - anger” seeing all those posts on social media expressing (for the most part) their disapproval for the ending which to my distaste peaked in insults and threats towards the creator and the animation studio. I’m willing to think that this is only a momentary feeling lead by anger because I want to believe that I’m dealing with reasonable people that know to behave and express themselves better than that usually. (Again, this isn’t the point of this post either.)

“Stage 3 - bargaining” already was scratched at some point (and extended while I was sleeping lol) because there were already discussions about how and why Garden of Light didn’t make it into the animation. There were voices of approval and of disapproval from all sides and while I must say that I do like GoL as it does give us closure of some sort, I’m almost happy or relieved that they didn’t animate it (yet). Yes, I think the animation made it a little more obvious compared to the manga that Ash actually died instead of just slept in the library but it still isn’t as ultimate as watching/reading GoL and be certain that this was indeed death. After all the manga as well as the anime without GoL does leave room for interpretation (even though a small one and I might be talking in denial here, but it is there). At least you can bend it enough to give fanmade sequels that include Ash without having it to be an AU some space to develop. Heck it even leaves a lose end to pick up for Mappa or any other animation studio buying the rights and continue close this story one way or another.

So not animating GoL might have been a deliberate decision by the animation studio Mappa for several reasons. Of course they knew what they were getting themselves into when they picked up this project as the end was not only already written but very well known to those who read the manga somewhere during the last 40ish years. Therefore the reactions regarding the story and it’s strongly discussed ending were known. They knew what was coming and yet stood strong to their word translating the manga to animation as is and did an amazing job at it (I’m not happy about the ending of that story at all but you have to admit that the show was a great piece of work. After all without the anime I would have never gotten to know the manga or the story in general and I’m sure I’m not the only one and I’m really grateful for that). And we have to keep in mind at this point that it’s not Mappa who decided on the ending but the creator Yoshida Akimi did 40 years ago. This is her story and we don’t know about contracts and copyrights and who has to say what about how the story may or may not be adjusted. Yes it is possible that Mappa might have had the chance to change the ending but didn’t, we don’t know that, but rumour has it that the staff wasn’t pleased having to produce the story with this outcome. (Apparently there was an interview of some sort where someone of Mappa stated this but I don’t have access to the source so I can’t say anything for certain. If I do get my hands on it will certainly edit it to this. That being said, if someone reading this has the link to first hand information I’d be so grateful if you could share it with me/us!) So taking this assumption into account I can imagine them deciding against GoL for just the fact that it leaves a small but existing open end that can be picked up not only by fans but professionals once the copyright is gone (Yes this would mean after Yoshida Akimi passed away and it wasn’t fixed otherwise in a contract somewhere. Not wishing her anything bad this means we most likely won’t see it anytime soon but from manga to anime was a 40 years gap so we can wait another 40 years, right? Bargaining right there...)

Anyways. Where I’m trying to go with this post is basically “stage 3 - bargaining” because what else might it be that I’m about to say? Maybe I’m still stuck in denial but please hear me out (if you haven’t left after this wall of text already lol)

With episode 24 the story should be over. Right? Maybe there’s room to adapt the prequels “Angel Eyes” and “Private Opinion” or the sequel “Garden of Light” but from all we know so far the anime was planned to conclude within 24 episodes and those were delivered. Topic’s over. Or is it? Well... part of the bargaining that started yesterday were the following screenshots of streaming platforms (thank you @cyberiin and @buy-goldbye for providing me with the screenshots as I have no access to those platforms):

Clearly if the show is over the timers should have stopped and it most definitely should not say “to be continued”. I pushed that thought aside last night when I went to bed thinking that this is just an automated thing of these platforms and it will be gone once they update the information. So I went to bed with my broken heart thinking that this is the last image we get on the character relationship chart:

Only to wake up to an updated one:

Different character picture. No longer greyed out as all the other dead characters still are (including Lao). Ash as stubborn looking as always refusing to obey anything or anyone (including his own death?). Name still greyed out but that changed while I was writing to a white name:

So needless to say that this is getting my hopes up but I don’t want to hope too much. At this point this can mean anything or nothing. Maybe this is just Mappa’s way of coping with the fact that they didn’t like the ending either but had to follow contracts (as assumed by rumoured statements talked about before) trying to solidarize with fans and giving them at least an open end. That of course only applies if what is rumoured actually is true. It might mean something entirely different of course but this only leads to speculations I have no basis for besides my hope that they will still turn this thing on us. Why I’m still hoping although the story is over? Well not only the character relationship chart changed within a few hours after Ash’s “death” but noone cared to stop timers either. Quite the contrary even IMDb is in denial with us and the fact that official media sites like these don’t update the information but leave it open says a lot in my humble opinion:

I don’t know what to do with the information. Nothing is confirmed at the time I’m writing this and this

being published while I’m still typing isn’t helpful either. All of the above leads my naive mind and bleeding heart to the conclusion that there is a happy ending coming somehow but honestly all you can take from this is that apparently the show isn’t over yet and they still have something up their sleeve for us.

I’m sorry everyone that I don’t have anything profound to say or give you more insight than you already have. In the end this is just me rambling and ranting on about the current status quo and shouting out into the void in hopes my wish for a happy end will be granted.

How do you all feel about this? Come talk and share your thoughts. Am I delusional for believing in it still or are you with me? I’m curious! Let me know :)

#banana fish #ash lynx #banana fish anime #banana fish official art #banana fish idk #my own

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noplanlife · 5 years

Text

Consideration

Summary: Prince Osomatsu can be surprisingly considerate, when he wants to be.

This is the eighth chapter of a multichapter fic! Please find the rest here!

The dream is the same, yet not, because this time you know that you’re dreaming. You cannot change the course of events that you know will inevitably take place in this dream. As before, as always, you will carry a bouquet of red roses that you cannot afford to drop, and yet you will drop them all the same. The flowers will burst into coins, and you will awake screaming and fearing punishment for your failure.

This time, you know that you’re dreaming, but still you cannot jolt yourself out of your nightmare. Following the projected course of this dream is an obligation. You always meet the obligations given to you.

Then, the dream changes, just slightly.

The thorns on the red roses cut into your palms, sending blood coursing down your wrists and onto the billowing skirts of your white dress. As you step into a multi-colored ray of light cast by a circular, stained glass window somewhere behind you, you come to the belated realization that you are in a chapel. Your distraction makes you lose your footing, and the toe of your shoe catches on your bloodied skirts.

You tip forward, tripping like you always do at this part of your nightmare. Crimson petals burst into the familiar, chiming song of scattering gold coins.

The dream changes, more drastically, now.

Two hands--one male, one female--seize you by a wrist each and wrench you back and out of the light. A shadow moves forward, and Osomatsu steps into the place where you had been standing before. He doesn't even look your way as he falls to his knees so that he may gleefully scoop the steadily growing pile of gold coins into his hands.

A pair of large doors slam in your face, and you wake up.

You awaken to the dark of either the very late night or very early morning. A cold sweat has your skin slick and uncomfortable underneath your nightclothes, and the pitched void bears down on you like a weight upon your chest. Your scrambled thoughts race in a frenzy towards the familiar comfort of logic, though it takes far too long for your liking for you to finally realize you are under no real threat.

It was a nightmare. The same nightmare as before, mostly. And nightmares could not hurt you.

With an exasperated groan, you drag your hand up across your face and over the top of your head, pushing your damp hair back and away from your brow. It’s difficult not to be frustrated with your subconscious for pulling you from your valuable sleep for something as silly as some figment of your imagination. You know that some people believe that nightmares are the product of what you truly feel in waking, but you’ve never cared for silly superstitions. Anything, even your fears, could be conquered if you worked hard enough and focused on your duties.

Still, your knees are shaking when you finally manage to drag yourself out of bed. You startle at your reflection in the mirror when you go to rinse yourself off, and your heart simply refuses to stop pounding against your ribs. Annoyed, you resolve to distract yourself with busy work and make way towards your now familiar office.

You make it about halfway there before a hand lands on your shoulder and nearly sends your soul fleeing from the mortal coil in your terror. A scream catches in your throat, and you ungracefully flail your arms until your elbow collides with the face of the mysteriously corporeal spectre. The ghost lets out a pained grunt, and a familiar voice whines,

“Owwww, what was that for!?”

One hand clasped over your chest, you whirl around to find Osomatsu ruefully clutching his nose and sending you a particularly wounded look to match his injury. For whatever reason--likely that he’s not some ghost, not that you believe in such things--seeing who it is truly sets you at ease. The tension melts out of you, and you heave a relieved sigh as you reach out and grab at Osomatsu’s arm.

“You scared me! Please, have the decency to warn someone before you sneak up on them in the middle of the night!” you chide him, though without any malice. Osomatsu is still rubbing his nose and sending you pitiful looks as he replies,

“That’s the whole point of sneaking up on someone in the first place. Sorry I scared you, though. As an older brother, I just can’t pass up that kind of opportunity when I see it, you know?”

You shoot him a flat look.

“And your brothers react less violently than I do?”

Osomatsu laughs heartily, and shakes his head.

“Oh, no, way more. But they also scream louder than you do, so it’s totally worth it.”

You feel as if the fact that Osomatsu is not deterred by his brothers’ violence in the slightest tells you something important about his character. Perhaps that he is deterred by very little if there is a substantial chance he’ll be amused. Or, maybe, that he’s just learned to ignore negative reinforcement. You’re leaning towards the latter.

“Anyway,” you decide to change the subject, eager to move away from this incident before Osomatsu may choose to seize on the opportunity to tease you mercilessly. “What are you doing up so late?”

You appraise the prince before you, and note he is still wearing the same clothes he wore earlier in the day. Loose strands of red and black hair are falling out of his typical, slicked back style in excess, indicating that he’s made no effort to re-apply whatever gel he uses when he gets ready in the late morning. Unthinkingly, you reach out with both of your hands and begin trying to smooth his hair out of his face right when he starts to answer your question.

“Well, you know, I had things to do and-hey! What’re you..?”

Osomatsu flinches back, unprepared for the abruptness of your hands on him. You offer him no chance to retreat further, fixated on your task as you are. It’s something small you can focus on--an easy distraction from the fear you’d felt earlier. Once Osomatsu seems to realize that you mean him no harm, he stops trying to get out of the gentle hold you have on his face. You don’t notice the way his eyes widen, or the fact that he’s started enthusiastically leaning into your touch until he says,

“Soft, right?”

You meet his eager, bright gaze as you push back his hair. It is soft. Unbidden, you imagine combing your fingers through his dark tresses, your nails dragging across his scalp, and the prince staring up at you with a lidded gaze as he practically purrs under your attentions. You yank your hands away from him as if they could betray your thoughts via your touch.

“Messy,” you answer back, refusing to give him the validation. You are rewarded for your stubbornness with another whine, and Osomatsu seizing one of your wrists so as to place your hand on his cheek. The skin is just a bit prickly. For whatever reason, it’s never occurred to you that he probably shaves. Maybe you never thought he actually tried to take care of his appearance. Not that you think he’s unattractive, but-

“Noooo, don’t stop. Your hands are soft, n’ they feel good and stuff,” Osomatsu whines without shame, nuzzing his nose against your palm. You flush, frowning at him, but don’t make an effort to try and take your hand back. Once Osomatsu realizes you don’t mean to leave, he drops your hand from his hold. For a fleeting moment, you think he’s releasing your hand because you gave him what he wanted. You are thus unprepared for when he throws his arms around you in full and holds you close. When you try to pull away, Osomatsu only squeezes tighter until you give up and slump against him. You’re trying to will away the flush on your cheeks when you hear Osomatsu murmur against your ear, “So, why’re you up so late, Princess?”

“I, ah…”

Osomatsu sets his chin atop of your shoulder, his temple leaning against yours as he muses, “Unlike me, you’re boring and go to sleep at a normal time. But now you’re up. Much as I like the idea of havin’ all sorts of time after dark with you to myself, I can’t help but wonder what’s got you out of bed.”

Through your clothes, you can feel him dragging his fingers down across the dips and rises of your spine. You clench your fingers into his shirtfront, focusing on repressing the goosebumps rising across your skin and answering his question at the same time.

“I just...had a nightmare, is all. It was silly,” you admit in a rush. Osomatsu pulls back to assess you, his expression surprisingly concerned. You’d expected he’d leap at the chance to tease you for something like this.

“You gonna tell me what it was about?”

Your mind conjures the image you’d had of him greedily gathering up your coins back in your nightmare. Shame curdles your blood, so you purse your lips and shake your head.

“Gonna be stubborn about it?” Osomatsu accuses you airly. With lowered lids, he gives you a knowing look. “Fine, fine, I get it. Don’t tell old Osomatsu. But you’ll change your mind. My brothers always do. Or did. Man, they’re so uncute nowadays.”

He has a wistful look in his eyes that makes you feel warm. You’re glad that he knows he’ll be able to reunite with his brothers soon.

“Really, it was silly. If it was serious, I’d tell you. We promised we’d be honest with each other from now on,” you remind him. You set your hands against his chest and lean back to give him a reassuring smile. Osomatsu immediately leans down and bumps his nose against yours as he breathes,

“Okay, honestly, I think you’re super cute. Especially when you try to lie because you’re really bad at it.”

“I am not-”

“Buuut, you just gotta promise to tell me when you’re ready.”

You take in a deep breath and lean to the side so that you can press your lips to his cheek. Osomatsu jolts as soon as you kiss him, a gust of air rushing past your ear as if you’d sucker punched him. You pat him on the chest, once, and pull away as he gapes at you.

“I will make sure to do just that. Thank you, Osomatsu.”

#osomatsu san #osomatsu #osomatsu x reader #garbage fic for garbage boys #i hope you liked your personal space while it lasted

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anotherweepingwoman · 6 years

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Pepita’s Window (Coco Fic)

Summary: When a window of opportunity opens for him, Héctor sees his chance to reach Coco. If only Imelda could understand . . .

—

20 days later

—

Pepita has been absent since Miguel returned home.

Héctor catches Imelda looking out the window with eyes that dart past towers and gondolas and linger over corridors of air. When she draws the curtains closed, her shoulders rise.

She looks lonely, he thinks.

(was this what it was like — ?)

Alebrijes cross between worlds without rules. Héctor has studied their habits and concluded that most migrate for food. For all they are spirits sustained by magic, the instinct to feed remains strong even in the land of the dead—for the alebrijes. Héctor mostly sticks to drinking, himself.

Hungry alebrijes are hard to persuade. Héctor has tried. His best attempt was with a homing pigeon that had taken to roosting on one of the Shantytown catwalks. After it had tired of flapping away, he had managed to tie a little note to one sharp foot. But it had flown away altogether before he could teach it to home in on Coco.

The expectant curve to Imelda’s back, the tightness of her grip on one curtain, the way she holds the other far enough away to seem to be gazing into a void—it says something. Héctor has never had the opportunity to observe a family alebrije before. All he knew of Pepita before was the blur of color and the taste of fear.

They’re messengers, he knows. Not that he’s ever had his own. He’s never connected that deeply to an animal. Dante, who kisses his hands and curls at his feet while he sits and writes at the desk in the guest room, more properly belongs to Miguel. Héctor is thinking about writing a ditty. There’s something about being pitied by a street dog, he thinks.

(The one time Héctor attached a letter and a collar around his neck, Dante destroyed them both. Clawed the leather straight off, ate the paper. Héctor hasn’t attempted to send him back to Miguel again.)

He thinks about writing — and writes about that thinking — and never can quite manage to write anything worth sharing. Since his death he’s carried a packet of poems and letters and drawings for Coco. What started as a notebook that fell apart some seventy years ago has become a mass of stained, folded, and wrinkled pages held together with blackened rubber bands and found string. He’s managed a single sustained paragraph since his last failed attempt to see her, the fragment of the beginning of an account of how he met Miguel. Somehow it's easier to scribble illegibly in the margins of the page — half-formed descriptions of things Miguel would do and say that Héctor only remembers because he finds himself missing them — than to tell the whole story.

Héctor spends most of his time wondering whether his daughter would even want to read anything he's written.

Every night he leaves the desk and pulls back the curtains Imelda draws shut every morning, then opens the window. When he swings himself onto the ledge, and scoots to the very edge, he can see unfamiliar details of the winding staircase that connects this level of homes and shops with the church and copse of dead trees below and the next layer of dwellings arranged like tiers of candles above. How often he'd climbed that path in hopes of a glimpse of Imelda! But this was never her window. The de la Cruz tower sits like a snuffed torch in the distance. While he kicks in its direction, Dante sniffs at him from behind, leaving cold trails on Héctor's spine.

The ambient light is too strong, he thinks. Even as he continues straining his eyes, he knows the only way he’d see the catwalks would be if they caught fire.

Still, wherever he looks, he can see families.

Smoke rises from the electric plants. Steam from the factories. Fog glides off the lake and collects in layers that both obscure and reveal, shifting like cotton pulled down to the threads, and there comes a point when he feels as though he were dissolving with it.

Like this, he forgets he belongs anywhere.

Sunrise announces itself so abruptly he’s always surprised; so does Imelda. She knocks on the door before entering every morning and he still startles like she was unexpected. Something shoots through him when he hears the cool tap of her feet on the tiles. That energy he’s come to associate with the idea of crossing the bridge.

The charged smell of earth after rain.

It’s different for her, he knows. She’s only there because she has a routine. Once she must have come into this room to dust and wipe down the furniture. Now that he occupies it, she's taken to inspecting the grime settled between the fractures in his bones.

Her greeting is always a variation on the same. "Why don’t you sleep?" she says today.

The question never fails to make him uncomfortable; he leans backwards from his perch instead of answering. He knows this makes him look ridiculous.

"Did I marry a monkey?" she'd snapped the first time, making something in his chest swoop. "Get down from there at once."

"Stop acting like a child," she says each time after that; he tries to pretend he heard the word marry and not child. "And close the window."

Somehow he always complies. Somehow he ends up holding his wrist and pulling out the chair (staring at its reed bottom, the flowers painted onto the wood), making himself small in it while she spreads out her tools on the desk. She’s always armed with something: dental picks, pincers, scissors, horsehair brushes of varying stiffness, combs of translucent horn, rags, white setting tape, bone polish, bleach powder. Leave it, he wants to say, only that he doesn't want to sound ungrateful. Talk to me, he thinks to her averted gaze, only that it isn’t his place to push. Flirtation seems out of the question, not that he would even know where to start. She picks over minute cracks in his arms like a mortician who sees not a dead person but a job.

He could appeal to her as a patient, he thinks, treat the truth like a set of symptoms. I'm afraid of disappearing in my sleep, he could say. So I don't. Sleep, that is. Not since the day I woke up here.

And — there's something else . . . I don't know. I can't move right. Everything feels wrong. Stiffer than it should be. Maybe if you stopped picking at me, it would go away ...

But he doesn't want her to feel guilty.

He wants to fold in half for even thinking it. He wishes he'd apologized sooner.

"I'm sorry," he says, even though her shoulders will rise and send phantom pains through his middle. The accompanying image — steam collapsing into shoes, into gleaming black horses streaking away from him in the darkness, into the devastation of knowing he's powerless to stop them — is nothing. The notion of escaping horses was a trick played on him by his dying mind. Even this replay is only an illusion, easily banished with a word.

"Imelda," he says, and finds himself disoriented anyway. Searching for guidance through a beat, then another.

When he remembers what he wanted to say, the resolve sends a shake through his limbs. "Imelda, I —"

She's yanking his arm into its former position before he realizes he's forgotten to keep speaking.

"Stop fidgeting," she snaps.

As he watches, she bends over to pick at the sand that has accumulated in a groove.

The loss of his chance always leaves him stunned. He stares into her hair, seeing nothing but its deep black gleam.

Eventually it occurs to him to wonder how they always end up here. Memory stirs, reminding him that if there's been one constant, it's that he's always been an idiot.

He just wishes she would look at him. "Imelda —"

"You live in my house now, Héctor."

The discord of it — how completely unrelated her words are to what he'd wanted to say — leaves his jaw hanging.

"You need shoes and proper clothes," Imelda says, reliably skirting over the issue of his bones that never heal; the bones she somehow always then begins to appraise with an intensity bordering on viciousness. "What will Coco think if you show up to her arrival looking like vagabond?"

"You mean like I did with you?" he almost said once. "I don't know if I'll even last that long," he almost said another time. "Isn't that what she expects?" he finds himself always thinking but has still managed not to say.

Thank you, he's learned to say after the silence becomes oppressive between them, even though it makes her shoulders swell like waves preparing to crash. I hate that you won’t look at me, he always thinks as he says, Thank you for —

What was it he was going to say?

A distracting rhythm has crept over his thoughts — the thumping sound Dante's tail makes when it wags against the floor. Bewildered enough to turn and watch, Héctor sees that Dante's wings have unfolded.

Something new is happening, he thinks, almost feeling like he could be interested.

As he continues to watch, Dante's ears perk in the direction of the wall. His tongue slips into the air like a smile. On a hunch, Héctor glances at the window.

He's not sure why he's surprised. "Imelda," he says.

"Can't you see I'm busy?"

He looks at her bowed head and thinks about remaining silent. Remembers the rise of her shoulders.

Glances at the window and is once more rewarded by color. "Isn’t that your alebrije?"

"What?"

She turns — their eyes seem to meet —

Suddenly Imelda is dropping the sand-pick into her apron, scrambling to her feet. Héctor reaches out to steady her on instinct, but doesn't manage to touch.

She's already half-way to the door.

"Can I get up now?" he asks her retreating back only to watch her disappear into the hall.

The room seems to resonate with jealousy.

Of course he can’t compete with a cat. "Am I supposed to just sit here?"

Dante offers no answer, seemingly caught up in the process of realizing that Imelda has left the door open. Without another glance at Héctor, he bounds to his paws and half-flies, half-scrabbles his way out of the room.

Héctor thinks about following him out. He's halfway to his feet when he hesitates.

It doesn’t feel right, abandoning Imelda’s ritual. Even though he doesn’t understand it, even though it makes him feel like he's a grubby child in her eyes, a husband she no longer wants but thinks she has to care for out of some overdeveloped sense of duty — even though she's the one who's just walked away —

Even then, he thinks. He was the one who left when it mattered.

(There’s something too about not knowing how any of it started. The missing origin. What little he remembers has only returned to him in fits and spurts, mostly from sitting in the window. That is to say, he remembers the window — remembers stumbling to the window of an unfamiliar room with a strange dog — Dante, but he hadn’t known that then — trotting at his heels. The room had smelled overpoweringly of powders and pastes. Imelda had appeared, somehow. I don't want to wake up, he thinks he said, because he also remembers her expression like stone. Maybe that’s how it started, with him raving like a lunatic. Or . . .)

A creak from rafters overhead; he looks up to see dust floating from the ceiling. Pepita, no doubt.

He can already guess her direction. Héctor has never been inside Imelda’s room, but he’s been told that Pepita likes to perch on the balcony rails.

Surely he can get up for a moment. He wouldn’t even have to leave the room. Just for a peek around the corner. Just —

"Ay, Pepita!" he hears Imelda saying right as he sticks his head into the hallway. "I was so worried!"

The door is open, he sees, revealing some of the room he’s wondered so much about. The room set at a perpendicular angle to all the rest. Imelda herself is hidden by walls, but he can see a segment of her open window, the curtains billowing in the breeze.

He doesn't see Pepita, which is ideal for his purposes. Nearest the door, he sees, Imelda keeps a wooden washstand. He can see the rim of the basin and a pitcher stored on a shelf beneath — colorful tin-glazed earthenware in contrast to the plain iron in his room. Partly-burned candles rest on the stand in a pottery tree of life; it's a stand-out piece, making Héctor pause to note how the interlocking branches of the tree rise from a skull base adorned with brightly-painted calaveritas, owls, and marigolds to form the three candleholders. She still likes beautiful things, he thinks as he looks beyond to a commode with a sewing machine. Black with gold lettering, somehow also splendid to look at, with purple fabric laid out beside it — she must be making a new dress, the pattern doesn’t match her current one . . .

"She was with Coco."

Héctor is startled to see Julio. How and why Julio came to be standing across from him in the hallway are not the only mysteries. The wistfulness in his voice says more than Héctor can currently process.

"With Coco?" he repeats, and blinks several times as his mind sorts the useful from the nonsense. Imelda has been here the whole time, unless she has magical powers . . .

"Good girl," he hears Imelda say, sounding both pleased and like she’s only just holding herself back from giving a scolding.

Pepita was with Coco, he realizes. Of course — and yet. "How do you know?"

Julio's expression is hidden beneath his hat and mustache. His silence seems to say that he knows in the same way Héctor ought to know, that Héctor would know if he'd only never left home to play music for the world.

"Does ... does she send messages?" Héctor says, aware he sounds desperate and not able to care. Is that how you know? he thinks to himself.

"She watches over the living family from time to time," says Julio. "But . . ."

Héctor sees steam and horses gleaming. He nearly forgets to breathe.

"You don’t say," he says, because part of him is conscious that Julio has said something about Imelda and control and that he is expected to respond.

The rest of him has loped off and is plotting. Pepita, if he remembers hearing correctly, sleeps on the roof — right over his own head. Pepita travels to Santa Cecilia — Pepita heads straight to Coco . . .

"Hey, you okay there?"

"What?" Héctor says, irritated by the interruption.

Fortunately, he's trained his smile to be automatic. This gives him enough time to reconstruct the question.

I wish you were Coco, he thinks. "Ah, don't you worry," he says, squinting against the sense that his eyes have revealed too much. "I feel great! Couldn’t be better!"

He winks for good measure, fully aware that every border guard in the land of the dead would now be on high alert (or rolling their eyes). Julio seems merely unsettled. Probably concerned for his health.

Who cares, Héctor thinks as he retreats to wait for Imelda and her sand-pick. He settles himself in the chair, crosses one leg over the other, and folds his arms behind his head. As a thought occurs to him, he can’t help but smile winningly at the window.

Finally, a plan that will work!

This has to work, Héctor thinks as he climbs out the window that night.

His plan is very simple. It’s also probably illegal, but he’s not worried about that. All he has to do, he tells himself, is convince Pepita. And why shouldn’t she be convinced? From what Héctor has gathered of the news, Pepita is an excellent judge of character. Any grudge she might have felt against him in the not-so-distant past . . . belongs to the past. Héctor has moved on, hasn’t he?

Pepita has as well, he thinks confidently. She’s not Imelda’s alebrije because she’s stupid.

Flinging himself over the iron railing is easy. Righting himself in a way that accounts for his bad leg is harder. Seeing Pepita in actuality—horned, winged, clawed, gigantic, and glowing like a haunted train compartment—sends him stumbling, flailing for a moment before he can stand before her, slouched and wincing, as a supplicant.

She's lying on her side with her belly protruding like she's treated herself to the moon. Relaxed, he tells himself. That's good, isn't it?

She also looks like a dragon in the dancing purples and golds of the city lights, a dragon jealously guarding what is precious to it. Héctor lowers his head to limit the image. "Hola, ah, Pepita," he hears himself say.

Pepita doesn’t move, except for her ears, which twitch in his direction.

He never actually planned a speech, he realizes. Somehow this always happens; as always, he has no choice but to barrel on. He opens his mouth to think of something and hears a nervous chuckle. "I heard you were ... in Santa Cecilia?"

Héctor can feel the artificiality of his smile. Pepita seems unimpressed as well, her tail swishing once in what might be irritation.

"Look," he says, hoping she thinks his tone sounds more serious than cajoling. Years of subsisting on pity have only made him more of a beggar, and no amount of self-awareness seems to change that. "I, ah, . . . have a favor to ask. If you’re not too busy," he adds on sudden, ridiculous impulse. "If you can . . . understand."

As he says the last word, he shuffles forward. Just a little, just to see — there, her tail curls and lifts, the feathers spreading like knives in a performer’s fist.

Héctor’s mind is prone to producing pictures, and has now supplied him with the image of Pepita swinging that tail like a sea-serpent bashing a ship. "You see," he continues, and is proud of how his voice doesn’t waver, "it’s about Coco. I wrote her a letter, just in case . . . you know, I might not get to see her, and I thought . . . eh, maybe you could take it to her?"

Pepita's tail swishes, reminding him even more of a snake. Give her a reason! he thinks past his sense of dread.

"Por favor?" he says, at a loss — and for want of words, reaches into his vest pocket for the letter and the ball of twine. They seem heavy in his hands, the thick paper only Imelda's money could buy and the ball that scratches against bone. And yet when he glances down at them, imagines them against Pepita's bulk, they seem like nothings.

Nothings that remain to him priceless. He looks to Pepita with eyes widened by recollection. "I asked her to make you the most delicious dinners once she gets this. You want it, you got it! The biggest fish in all of Santa Cecilia! Only ... the best of the best for Pepita ..."

Héctor starts at a sensation like a paper cut over his ribs; he's been cradling the letter like he would a forgotten red hoodie, too tight and too close. First the letter, then the twine slips from his hands as he fumbles on his bad leg — he keels forward to juggle both —

And lets out a strained laugh as he straightens with prizes recaptured. His little blunder has led him far too close to Pepita. Close enough, he thinks, that she could kick him off the roof if she wanted, or smash him into the wall that surrounds it, the base of the next house, or . . .

He’s not Ernesto, he tells himself, and tries for a smile he hopes she can hear in his voice. "So . . . what do you say, eh?"

Pepita seems unmoved. Her ears are no longer even directed at him, flicking instead in every other direction. Watching this display of indifference, it occurs to Héctor that he could have been smarter. Unwilling to risk another letter-eating incident, he’d locked Dante out of his room. Now he sees no reason Dante couldn’t have come with him. Even a letter-eater has uses. In fact, Dante might have even known how to put Pepita into a sympathetic mood!

Idiot idiot idiot, he thinks. Perhaps he should return indoors, fetch Dante, maybe search the house for leftover snacks from a previous Día de Muertos — he doesn’t think they’re one of those families that receives more offerings than can be eaten right away, if that were the case they’d have a kitchen — and he doesn’t know the house that well, there’s a risk to being caught rummaging where he shouldn’t — but — knowing Imelda, knowing how she always keeps a reserve on principle, maybe there’s a pantry somewhere —

Movement slashes across his thoughts like claws to the face; he staggers backwards instinctively and hears a sound like coals hissing in a steam engine that trips him up even further. Pepita, he realizes with his bad leg still seesawing through the air, his balance on the other leg managed only through experience.

She’s looking at him. Héctor holds onto this thought as he finds stable ground. Somehow she’s transformed from the fat, contented beast of a moment before into a sphinx. He almost expects her to bare her fangs and issue a riddle.

"Pepita?" he says, feeling almost lighter under her gaze. The steady beam of it. He clutches the letter to his heart, flattens his hands against it like a vassal asking a boon of his queen. "Will you help me?"

Had he a heart, it would be pounding. Her pupils encompass nearly a third of each eye; they’re oddly soft. Somehow this makes him feel especially vulnerable. He can feel his own eyes darting, fleeing direct contact but still seeking her consideration. Please, he thinks.

She turns her massive head. Gazes past the railing with the same serene contemplation he’d thought was for him. Could’ve kicked him in the chest, for all the difference he feels.

Can’t even convince a cat, he thinks. Even a kid could’ve done better.

"I know I don’t deserve it," he says past the bitterness. "Believe me, I know that even better than you. But if you would just try and understand . . ."

He thrusts out the letter that she doesn’t see. The sight makes him recall some of what it actually says. The secrets that had poured out of him earlier that day in anticipation of this moment.

(Your mother is trying to make me presentable. I think she's worried I'll scare away her customers. She shouldn’t worry. Don’t you start worrying, too. I haven’t set one bare toe in the workshop. Promise. Actually I don't want to see it, Coco. Not because I’m not proud of your mother. I am, very much so. She’s remarkable. You know, when I found out she became a zapatera, I wasn’t surprised. Don’t make that face — I really wasn’t. Your mother is like the earth . . .)

The point isn’t what the letter says. The point is that it’s his own flesh-and-blood heart and that Coco deserves to know she has it. "This letter . . . it’s for Coco. Not for me, do you understand? I can’t change the past. Even if I could, I’m not . . . I make mistakes. I’ve made too many mistakes. The past is the past. This is for the future, Pepita."

Héctor closes his eyes.

He’s never needed an audience to perform, but this isn’t a performance, it’s a confession. And Pepita could well be made of stone. "You see, at least, with this, she would know."

(The day you were born was the happiest day of my life. Wanting and failing to come home to you — has been my prison.)

"She’d know . . . she’s always been loved."

Nothing.

The absence of reaction from Pepita sends his mind spinning, drifting through the silence in search of any input, any input at all. It’s not quite a defeat if he can write another letter about it later, a letter about how Pepita taught him to listen to the forms of sound. The wind and all it carries. Strains of music. Y me muero por volver. He likes that song, he thinks, picking up on distant laughter and the rattle of the copse of dead trees.

(Your mother tells me you love to dance.)

He’s picturing that movement — his daughter in her favorite pink dress, twirling and grinning like an imp — when he hears a new element, hard and resonant.

Claws and wings.

His eyes fly open.

Pepita, shimmering like torches in the rain.

She’s standing, he realizes, head bowed like an invitation — and he doesn’t think another second before springing onto her back.

The hope in his chest feels like something wriggling, alive. A butterfly held captive.

Incredibly, Pepita isn’t trying to claw off its wings.

He touches a hand to her fur, unable to quite believe that she’s tolerated his boldness. Fear that she’ll toss him off in the next second reminds him to act. "Muchas gracias," he says, feeling overwhelmingly grateful and exceedingly reckless as he leans forward to tie the letter to one of her horns. "You don’t know what this means to me . . . heh? Wait! No, no, wait —"

Héctor has enough presence of mind to stuff the letter back into his vest.

"— wait, wait, Pepita wait, stay down, please — wait — no!"

One hand is still caught in the pocket when he’s hurled forward — he can see and smell nothing but fur. Some preservation instinct has him nonetheless finding a hold on her neck.

The next thing he knows, they're shooting into the sky.

She can’t take me with her, is his horrified thought. The twine is swept out of his fingers before he can react, twirling for an instant in the corner of his eye before an invisible vortex sucks it out of sight.

If this is for something I did, I'm already sorry, he thinks but feels too sick too say.

As though she could hear him anyway, Pepita reacts with a forceful beating of her wings. Suddenly they're angling into a corridor between towers — slicing into a bank of fog so thick Héctor becomes convinced they're going to crash into something and has to force himself to close his eyes — Pepita's fur has become clammy from the water, harder to cling to and somehow that much smellier — he can't look —

— can't breathe —

Eventually the terror subsides enough for him to become aware they're still flying. All at once he realizes that the air has become much colder — that he can no longer hear the towers swaying and creaking, not even the bells and whistles and cables of the gondolas.

Pepita, he thinks, has not made a sharp turn in some while. He chances a glance beyond where his hands are gripping her fur and sees that her wings are spread for gliding.

Where is she going? he wonders.

Perhaps it's the thinner air, but Héctor is suddenly confident that he's not going to fall off at the slightest move. With the sort of caution he expects he would have developed into a habit if he'd lived to Imelda's age, he lifts his upper body into a proper sitting position. This turns out to be much less difficult than imagined, so he leans to the side as much as he dares.

The sight makes him feel dizzy.

Not because he is dizzy — because he can see the pyramids for the bridges. The bridges are gone, of course, the space where they should be a watery ravine. Even so . . .

They're flying over bridge-space like it’s nothing.

Numbly, he observes. Seen from the air, the edge of the world is almost unimpressive. The pyramids look like layered cakes, the stations atop them — Héctor’s dizziness grows as he notes pink bienvenidos, the accursed blue glow of each set of domed roofs — like baubles at a child’s birthday. Taken together, the entire assemblage reminds him of the rays of a stylized sun.

(A thought that would pull out memories of Imelda's white guitar if he let it. He doesn’t.)

He can see a number of alebrijes. There are less of them out here than he’d have expected. Of course they’re still well-fed from the holiday. Still. If he were an alebrije, he’d be crossing all the time. Like that blue blob there. It wiggles and wriggles, wiggles and wriggles, wiggles and wriggles and wriggles and wriggles as it flies over the water, never once seeming to doubt that its wings will hold its weight.

Feeling returns to Héctor as though he’d been scalded. Of course it’s the dumb animals that get to cross, he thinks to himself.

Just looking at that thing, that lucky, lucky, lucky whatever it is — it makes him raise a fist and shake it. For a moment, he can’t help but look at his own hand, wishing it held actual power.

When he glances back down at the lake, the alebrije has disappeared.

"Hey!" Héctor says to the universe in general. It crossed and I didn’t see, he thinks as he slams his fist into Pepita’s back.

Everything crosses without me.

A change in the sound of the air makes him glance behind him. Maybe he shouldn’t have punched Pepita, he thinks. Her wings have started flapping in an ominous way. Except that his was such a little punch. How would she have even felt it?

He twists, trying to see past the blue whorls of her horns to her eyes, her muzzle, to some form of expression. He sees nothing, but she seems calm. If her muscles are twitching beneath him, that’s probably just because she’s going to —

tilt —

swerve —

plummet —

"You crazy cat!" he shouts, one cheek buried in her neck and his eyes closed. The air rushes past his skull like it intends to scrape off a layer of bone. If he hadn’t managed to somehow grab hold — he doesn’t want to think about it, actually —

By the time Pepita evens back into a glide and Héctor has realized he isn’t going to lose his head to the wind, the blue blob is forgotten. Héctor is even feeling a little proud of himself. He’s managed to hold on so far, hasn’t he? Maybe he can learn to fly.

Dream on, músico.

Better than what Imelda would say if she found him splattered on a pyramid, he thinks, then shakes his head. He doesn’t want to know what Imelda would have to say about any of this, and . . . he bites down on his jaw to clear the image, then pushes himself up for a better look at the new surroundings.

Impossible.

That’s not air.

Héctor finds himself reaching out before he can think better of it. He doesn’t touch anything — they’re not close enough — but somehow he knows that if he touched that, it would feel like honey.

The barrier.

The barrier between worlds.

Like a curved black mirror it reflects them in flight, Pepita a rush of luminescence, his own figure a shadowy blur. Héctor has a regular aversion to the sight of himself as a skeleton. He prefers to remember himself as he was alive. But when he looks into the reflection, the barrier somehow becomes clearer.

Somehow — for the first time — he feels like he can almost understand it. The nature of his cage.

Wind rushes into his skull and sweeps through his hair. He closes his eyes, relishing how it almost feels like being touched.

When he opens them again, he sees the spread of Pepita's wings, visible down to the smallest bones in the glow of peacock markings. The vanes of her feathers barely flutter as she glides. He looks at the mirror and thinks he can see smooth streaks from the air she’s moved. (Paint against paint, he thinks.) Flickering between the lines — like an accident, a flashlight aimed in the wrong direction — is a bluish haze with holes for eyes and a nose.

I have a face, he thinks.

I still have a face.

How strange.

Something rises in the place where he once had a stomach. Once he used to write songs about this feeling.

If only he could reach out and — touch —

Touch it and become air.

Suddenly he’s frightened.

Watching Pepita glide is no longer breathtaking; instead, he sees her for what she is, a creature from another plane. She could be flying without him right now, he thinks as he leans forward, as he scratches her neck in an urgent rhythm.

"Hey!" he yells. "I can’t cross, remember?"

Either his words don’t carry or she doesn’t understand them. There has been an emotion building in Héctor and he’s suddenly conscious of it, of the shift in him like water that has begun to simmer.I can’t, he thinks. I can’t cross I can’t cross —

Pepita dips, briefly sending him floating in his seat.

She’s carrying them even closer, he realizes as the vertigo subsides. Without me, he thinks. Pepita will fly through, leaving him to bounce against the barrier like a rubber ball, then fall . . . all the way down to the lake . . .

Phantom pains arch across his middle. He lifts a hand and pushes down on his head, thinking it will be the first part of him to separate. The wind flowing into his eyes is no longer comforting, and he finds himself closing them against the stream.

At least there are no horses here, he tells himself.

No shoes. No earth, either. Water will swallow him once more, but it will be different from when he swallowed poison. And the clouds.

They won’t seem so far away, he thinks, when he’s falling through them.

Imelda, he thinks with renewed ache.

Coco.

But his daughter’s image won’t come.

Each night we are apart, Héctor thinks past his surprise. He presses his eyes more firmly shut, thinking darkness could help. As he continues to sing in his head, the words finally conjure — two black eyes grinning up at him from under the bed — giggles, the best reward —

— Julio’s wife, an unimaginable category — don’t think of that —

— Miguel’s confidante — no, this is wrong — she forgets things, says Imelda — a toothless old woman, confined to a wheelchair, says Victoria — papá, she used to say so sweetly — you know, she isn’t a child any longer —

(unlike you)

— you need shoes and clothes, and she doesn’t —

His eyes spring open.

The wind drives his eyes back into his skull, reminding him where he is. This is nothing like dying, he thinks as his teeth begin to grind. For one, he already knows what’s going to happen. For another, dying was faster . . .

Out of some sort of morbid curiosity, thinking he might as well see where he’ll end up splat, he glances to the side.

One of Pepita’s wingtips has slid into the barrier.

Héctor is only distantly aware of his hand falling from his head to his side. Like metal pushing through mercury, he thinks, fascinated in the same way he used to be with picking his own scabs while alive.

The double pleasure of eliminating a barrier and satisfying an itch — and this is no easily unveiled scab, and yet somehow — somehow the barrier is thinning where Pepita’s wing touches it.

Shimmering away in all directions like water divided by a magical staff.

Impossible, he thinks as he sucks in a lungless breath of air. Beautiful, as he lets it out slowly through his teeth.

There are lights behind this magic waterfall.

Héctor knows the punishment of lifting the veil without permission — he’s failed to reach the bridge enough times to collect stories. All magic has a payment. A photo for passage on Día de Muertos. But not even he would risk cheating, dare crossing outside of the designated window.

And yet.

It’s right there.

The world beyond lies under cover of night. It’s so . . . saturated, the darkness. A black mantle that makes him conscious of the flood of city lights behind him in a way he hasn’t quite been before.

He'd forgotten, he thinks. He'd forgotten what nights could be like in the land of the living.

What else — what else —

Pepita sways beneath him, a brief loss of control that makes him aware of the air between his skull and wig. Before he can reach up to pat the wig down, she's angling even closer, her feathers sinking deeper into the barrier. Like fire eating at paper, larger thin patches appear around her wing.

Héctor no longer has room in his heart to be frightened.

"That’s —"

Because he would know that belfry anywhere — the plaza lit for the night —

"Pepita!" he shouts, uncaring that she must already know. "It's Santa Cecilia!"

Pepita makes a snorting sound, her head moving like she can't believe it took him this long. Héctor could almost kiss her on the neck. Instead, he falls into a free position, legs kicked out wide from her sides and arms raised above him like points in a star, and laughs.

Laughs again, both from disbelief and awe.

What he’s seeing — it’s straight out of a dream.

A dream.

You dreamer, Imelda used to say. When will you get your head out of the sky?

I’m in the sky, he thinks dreamily.

There — he feels himself straighten, his grin becoming a guffaw — an illuminated series of interlocking red and white roofs that can only be part of the mercado, the permanent market. It’s gotten so big! And he doesn’t need the large painted letters to know the hotel on sight —

"Look at all those cars!" he shouts. There aren't many of them, but he'd never thought to imagine even one. "Unbelievable!"

Most are red or yellow streaks at the town perimeter; a few glitter at him from under lamps. Light glances off these rarer creatures like a skittish cat evading a petting. Héctor can't even begin to formulate a comparison to his own world of gondolas or trams.

How much he’s missed!

(and for what)

Something in him deflates, which is no good.

I still know my way around, he tells himself. How many people can say that after a hundred years?.

"Watch this!"

Pepita completely misses the puff of his chest, his broad gesture at the streets. But Héctor doesn’t need an interested audience to perform. "I can name them all!"

He points, clicks his fingers at the calle principal. Grins to offset the lingering remnants of that deflated, despairing feeling. "Calle Miguel Hidalgo, Calle . . ."

In the space between waiting for recognition to activate and realizing that he might have forgotten the name after all, it occurs to him that he doesn’t know where Coco lives.

What if he’s passed her already?

Imelda wouldn’t have kept their house, he thinks as he starts searching for it in what suddenly seems like a photograph of black race-horses taken in pitch darkness. Assuming the house still exists; from here, everything looks so damn similar he can’t be sure. But even if it does — where the devil is Calle Aurora — he expects it belongs to someone else. Imelda must have found something better . . . something further away from the plaza, perhaps . . . unsullied by his memory, purely hers and theirs . . .

( Your mother has a house of doors and walls. You never have to see anyone else, not if you don’t want. Even the windows keep out sound when you close them.)

The more certain he becomes that he’s missed the house, the house that could be Coco’s, the antsier he becomes. The less of the world he sees.

I tried, he thinks, and not hard enough.

What is he supposed to do?

Maybe they have a directory on the other side, he thinks. He could . . . attempt to cross, and if it works . . .

It could never work.

But it’s the only idea he’s got, and so easy to picture — starting slow and careful, testing the barrier first . . . he’s fantasizing now about taking off one of his arms with the other, leaning over as far as he genuinely dares, and reaching past the window Pepita has created with his extended double arm. If he touches air instead of solid wall . . . if he doesn’t dissolve . . .

You’re loco, he tells himself. Alebrijes aren’t bound to the same rules; that’s why Pepita can have an effect on the barrier. Even if she could still fly on the other side, she wouldn’t be able — he wouldn’t be able —

So what. He has to try and — and —

(and what?)

Héctor has already twisted in his seat, both hands planted like a gymnast preparing to spring from a pommel. A century spent trying and failing to cross won’t end with him forfeiting his first and only real chance, he thinks. Santa Cecilia — Coco is already racing past him like horses he has to catch, black and gleaming and writhing like distant smoke —

He shakes his head clear. Grabs his left arm.

The ripple of Pepita’s muscles shifting beneath him sends him buckling in his seat, scrambling for a hold. In that moment, he sees the future.

"No!" he shouts.

(she only listens to Mamá Imelda, you know, said Julio)

Like firemen emerging from a burning house with charred bodies in their arms, like everything wrong that comes into the world, Pepita’s wing surfaces from the barrier — taking the window with it.

"Bring it back!" he says, throwing his leg to position himself so he can pound on her neck with all the little strength he has. "Bring it back!"

Pepita’s answer is to plunge.

"How can you be so cruel!" he shouts, uncaring that he’s barely clinging to her neck. If he could shed tears, he would be howling. "I hate you! I hate you! I —"

"— hate you," he says as they land on the roof, too dizzy and too defeated to speak in more than a mumble.

Pepita sniffs the air as though she were an innocent kitten and had not just spent the entire journey back pulling crazy aerial stunts and deliberately frightening Héctor out of his wits.

Blue smoke curls from her mouth. Her ears fold back, and she stares over the railing for some unknown reason, as there's nothing to see but strings of lights and the neighboring houses. Stone balconies and drawn windows, he thinks. Roofs made of tile instead of tin.

Héctor has already lost interest in finding out what she sees when it occurs to him to dismount. He doesn’t put further effort into the thought, simply letting gravity overtake his already slumped body. He slides down a wing with his eyes closed, loses his head on a snag — manages to catch it but not reattach it as he slams to a landing on his knees.

Distantly he wonders if he’s lost a rib.

He feels like he could sob. If there were water in him. The thought makes him feel empty. Like the time the floods had washed away his shack and all the books in it, the letters, the alcohol and hard-earned cigarettes, the lipsticks and his collection of plastic jewels — and the time after that, and the —

He lifts his head back onto his shoulders. Folds his arms around the cold comfort of his ribs.

Something rougher than sandpaper and smellier than a slaughterhouse seems to pick him up from behind — lifting him by his fraying vest —

— dropping him to slide up against the back of his head. "Hey!" he says, hands flying to his skull.

It’s no surprise to discover that Pepita has licked most of his wig into a standing position. Bad enough that Imelda thinks he’s a child, he thinks as he pats the hair right back down. He really doesn’t need her monster cat to think so too.

He must have muttered that aloud, for Pepita snorts like twenty horses that have galloped themselves sick. "Yeah, yeah," he says, picking himself up from his knees and dusting them off. "Such a good alebrije, ganging up on old Héctor like a —"

He hadn't realized he was turning in her direction. When he looks up from his knees, he finds himself looking directly into one of her yellow eyes.

" — don't eat me," he hears himself say as he freezes in place, because her eye is like magic symbol that will kill him if he mispronounces the spell, or banish the light from his existence, or flatten what has dimension until its essence is gone.

Under her gaze, he can only think about sprinting away. The strength he usually calls upon to escape from lenders and authorities seems like a memory as faint and absurd as the thought of having muscles and veins.

If you eat me, Imelda will . . .

But maybe this is what Imelda wants, he thinks. Maybe she’d even be happier if he were banished and gone. The thought sends phantom pains through his middle, makes him have to shake his head free of horses.

Pepita’s eye, he thinks, is like the slitted window of an old fort; arrows might shoot out at any moment. Metaphor is how he thinks, and right now he’s thinking of a possible defense.

"Okay, so I don’t hate you," he says.

To his surprise, he finds that he means it. The reason becomes obvious when he thinks about it. The true cause of his misery is not Pepita, he realizes: the true cause sits in a prison cell across the lake, no doubt wishing he’d thought to poison a child’s drink.

Héctor feels the burning shame of belatedly coming to know what he becomes when he isn’t fully himself. It’s almost as bad as realizing what a horrible example he’d been setting for his own great-grandson.

You’re an embarrassment.

Of course Imelda doesn’t want this.

He reaches up to ruffle his hair. "You know, emotions, you say things you don't mean — ah —"

Pepita has lowered her head as though she plans to lick him again, making Héctor forget what he was going to say. Disgusting blue tongue, he thinks as he backs away.

Something’s wrong, he thinks as he feels a joint bend the wrong way, shifting his weight to his wobbly leg. Somehow he’s miscalculated again — there’s something about the magic holding him together, he’s sure of it — it feels stiffer than when he’d thought he was really dying, yet somehow far more stifling —

(like age, real age)

— instead of vaulting away as planned, he’s teetering in place like a drunk trying and failing to dismount a horse.

How much dignity is it possible to lose in an evening?, he wonders once he’s balanced, reaching up to adjust his hat.

He touches air.

Right. He’d left his hat behind to climb the balcony.

There’s something about reaching for a hat that isn’t there that makes him realize how silly he must look. When he glances at Pepita, she blinks with the slowness of a mimic exaggerating a gesture.

She’s laughing at me.

What’s new, he thinks as his hands drop to his sides. "You know what?" he says, wishing once more that he’d come better prepared. Bribes sometimes made someone shift from laughing at you to laughing with you. "It’s late! I should be getting back, you should be getting your beauty rest . . . "

He puts on a smile that feels crooked. He thinks about the letter, about how out-of-sorts he feels. He’s not gonna convince Pepita to take it with her, not tonight, even if he already knows he’ll spend the hours until morning thinking about how he could.

She’s stopped looking at him anyway, staring instead at something beyond the railing. Some other alebrije, he guesses. He takes this as his cue to leave, and is standing before the railing when he realizes what he hasn’t said.

"Hey, ah . . ."

Thanks for showing me the sights.

Her ears flick as though she’s annoyed. "See you around," he says.

Not what he’d planned on saying, he thinks as he swings himself over the railing. You idiot, he thinks as he shinnies down a pipe. Pepita had shown him Santa Cecilia. What demon had possessed him to say he hated her? And then he’d barely apologized!

Héctor is standing on the window ledge when it hits him: he could go back and apologize. Properly, this time. The night is still young . . . he’s not feeling nearly as tired as a moment before . . . if he does things right, Pepita might be motivated to take him back . . . to take his letter . . . why hadn’t he thought of this before?

He curses aloud.

"I was wondering if you would come back."

The sound of Imelda’s voice should probably be sending him into a panic. Instead it makes him feel numb.

She’s been waiting.

Héctor can’t process that thought. He clenches his teeth, ducks into the window, and drops onto the floor.

The room is duskier than the outdoors. He struggles for a moment to make her out against the shadows cast by the washstand, the dark masses of the desk and the bed. Then he realizes she isn’t wearing purple, that she’s seated on the bed in a white nightgown he’s never seen before. Dimly he notes a darker shade — orange, perhaps — sewn into the patterned collar.

Her posture could be made of stone.

How long have you been waiting here? he wants to ask. "I thought you were asleep," he says.

"I was," she says, "until your dog came and woke me."

"Ah," he says, fighting the instinct to slouch. Leaving Dante behind had not just been stupid, it had been royally stupid. "You know, I . . . I wasn’t planning on leaving the house."

"Of course," she says in the voice he remembers, that horrible voice from the day he left. "That’s why you went to the roof."

"Well, yes, but —"

"That’s also why you had to climb out the window like a robber instead of taking the stairs."

Héctor should not be setting his lips like a stubborn child. And yet he is. "How was I supposed to know you have stairs?"

"You could have asked."

Héctor’s eyes have adjusted to the point where he can make out her expression. She looks like he imagines he’d feel if she’d told him she was in love with another man.

His jaw works for a moment.

The words come out in an unplanned burst. "You can stop assuming whatever it is you’re assuming."

Her eyes flash. "And what is that?"

"The worst," he says, and hates that he sounds petulant. There’s something wounded and pacing inside of him, something he usually keeps caged in writing.

Don’t let it out, he thinks.

He straightens and pretends he doesn’t see her brow darken at the same time. "I was just talking to Pepita."

"I see," she says, sounding for all the world like he’s just confessed to gambling all their savings away. "You were talking to my alebrije. Naturally you couldn’t ask me first."

Naturally, he thinks, and has to open his mouth and stretch the corners several times to combat how it’s written all over his face. "I didn’t want to wake you."

"I’m your wife!"

"That’s not —" he feels his knees buckling, his posture collapsing, and runs a hand over his eyes. There’s something hot and bitter forming in his middle. "You wouldn’t understand."

"Oh? I wouldn’t understand? I know exactly what you were up to, Héctor!"

Then what’s the problem? he wonders. "You do?" he says.

"You think I wouldn’t hear you stomping all over the roof like a lout, sweet-talking my own alebrije?"

Héctor feels his mouth fall open. Not only does Imelda think even worse of him than he’d realized, he also doesn’t understand how she could have heard him and still be drawing such conclusions. "Sweet-talking?"

"You’re lucky you’re not floating in pieces on the lake! And then you tried to fly! You fool, what if you’d fallen off?"

"I didn’t want to fly," Héctor hears himself say as he sags even further into himself. Would it be better if she thought the worst of him and left him alone, he wonders, or better if she thought the worst of him and still worried herself sick? "I wanted to send a letter to Coco."

"For what? Your daughter is not your imaginary friend. She will be here, Héctor. Here, with us, in this home. Not off in the sky with the rest of your head!"

Ah.

He doesn’t like this bitter feeling, the hot spread of it. And yet some things about him, Imelda has just never seemed to understand. "Yes, but she isn’t here now, and —"

"How old are you, twelve? You have to wait like the rest of us."

He lets the words reverberate. Tries to acknowledge the good intentions behind them. Wraps his arms around his ribcage, holding in the bitter tracks left in his middle by his by trains of thought.

"Imelda, I don’t know if I can."

"Of course we know! Miguel promised to take care of it. How can you have so little faith in your grandson?"

"It’s not that," he says, even though it’s true he doesn’t believe Miguel can 'take care of it’. That it is the problem, he thinks. Héctor has every faith in Miguel. But he can also tell that Coco only remembers him in odd fits.

His bones aren’t healing; if Imelda’s daily ministrations have revealed anything, it’s that. Something is wrong with him besides; he’s losing control of his body, becoming stiffer and wobblier and who knows what else. In short, what they’ve asked is the impossible. Miguel may have toppled a century of deeply rooted beliefs, but he can’t cure dementia.

"Then what?"

Héctor has been staring at the floor; his gaze snaps up in time to see Imelda stand. Her expression is as dark as the time she’d found him folded up with a bottle of tequila on the path below, and her finger wags in the same way it had before she’d grabbed the bottle and threatened to smash it over his skull.

"Ever since you came home," she says as he remembers how he’d simply shot to his feet and bolted, "you've been wrapped in your own head. Never leaving this room unless asked, writing god knows what to Coco, sitting in that damn window like you can’t stand to be here . . . tonight Victoria asks you a question three times before you answer!"

Something has been simmering in him for a while.

Suddenly it’s boiling. "It's like you don't even see us!" she continues. "If you can't be here for this family, Héctor —"

"And what do you want me to do?" he hears himself shout. "Go along with your little fantasy? Lie to all of you? Would that make you happy?"

"What?"

You want a nice, happy, family. You want me to look the part. But you don’t want me, he thinks and somehow can’t say. "How am I supposed to be here if I'm about to dissolve?"

"Nonsense!"

"It isn't nonsense!" he says, grabbing at his hair with both hands. "Everyone has forgotten me. Miguel didn't even recognize me until it was almost far too late! And you think that’s going to change because Coco managed to hold on just a little longer?"

Somehow he’s begun pacing. He throws up his hands. "She's already forgetting again, Imelda, I can feel it . . . and there's no picture. My time is up!"

"What, so you think you have to give up as well?"

The boiling something shoots through to his skull. "Give up? I never give up. I never, not once —" he shakes his head, amazed once more by how little she understands him.

Bitterness offers a strange clarity; it also unleashes thoughts he prefers to keep chained in darkness. The more he thinks them, the less conscious he becomes of how similar he must look to when he’d rounded on Ernesto and Miguel. "And don't lie to me. None of you want me here! You’ve all got your own routines, your perfect lives. Who needs Héctor except for a laugh? Rosita pities me. Julio’s decided I’m a lunatic! Victoria — Victoria barely speaks to me — and she wasn't asking me a real question, you know, she just wanted me to pass her a magazine! So I made a sad joke about it, so what? I am sad! You — you're my wife, and you can’t even bring yourself to touch me unless it’s with a sharp instrument!"

He becomes conscious that he’s shaking. "I see this family. I see far more than you think! You’re all deluding yourselves if you think you want me here except to feel better about your own guilt!"

What did I just say.

As the walls absorb the echo of words — words he can’t take back, words that have soured the air — Héctor realizes he doesn’t know when Imelda's expression turned from anger to horror. But her wide eyes, the tremble he sees in her lashes and shoulders —

She looks small, he thinks with the numbness of watching the beginnings of a flood. I’ve hurt her.

The flood-waters are already catching up to him. I’ve hurt her, he thinks, and wishes the floor were the flower-bridge, that it would swallow him whole.

"I didn’t mean that," he says.

"You did," she whispers.

"I . . . shouldn’t have said those things," he says, only to realize this sounds like a confirmation. "I’m sorry."

The words — completely inadequate, he thinks — seem to reflect back at him from the walls, to further poison the silence.

(Your mother called me the love of her life. Miguel was there too. Maybe you could ask him I think I was hallucinating. She sang, too, so it must have been a dream. Do you remember how beautifully she used to sing when we were all together?)

He looks to his bare feet, seeing for the first time how wrong they must seem to her. Imelda takes pride in her shoe-making. It must unsettle her to be married to someone who could seemingly care less.

(My shoes lost their soles, so I sold them to a man who wanted them for his art. There’s a pun in there somewhere, mija.)

"I know you're doing your best," he says past the thick ring that has somehow formed in his voice. "And I'm grateful for that."

Silence.

He’s shot himself in the foot, he thinks, and feels his brow furrowing, resisting what he knows he has to say.

It had been easier to die, he thinks as his eyes sink shut. "If you want me to leave—"

—then I will, he’d wanted to say. But the sound of Imelda’s inhale on the want, ragged all the way to the leave, had left him gulping air instead.

(As the echo drifts into silence, he recalls the beginning of someone else’s poem. ¿Palabras? Sí, de aire, y en el aire perdidas. Octavio Paz, Héctor thinks, you had it right.)

Imelda takes in another breath.

"I wanted you to say something," she says in a voice like a burning stick being snuffed in water. "I’ve . . . been waiting for it."

Waiting? he thinks. Repeating the word in his head makes it only slightly less confusing.

He knows she’s been waiting. But for something else, he thinks. For Pepita to appear in the window. Unless — the thought unfolds with the same clarity he associates with finding a good rhyme — waiting is the same to her as crossing the bridge is to him. A never-ending state.

He doesn’t like the parallel. Something in him actively resists it, and his eyes fly open as though to clear the images —

Imelda, he sees, has buried her face in her hands. He reacts before he can think, taking a step in her direction.

"Imelda —"

She lets out a sound too close to anguish. His leg buckles like someone stole the tibula; the rest of him, including his outstretched arm, has stopped dead.

You were right, he thinks, letting his arm fall. I haven’t seen you. Not really.

Otherwise he would have anticipated this.

Héctor is brought out of his thoughts by an ache in his leg; he can feel annoyance passing over his face as he is forced to shift his weight to the other one.

Get your head out of the sky, he thinks, both because Imelda was right and because he wants to banish all further thought of his disintegrating bones.

"It was wrong of me to yell," he says, and finds himself reaching around his middle. "It was — all of it, it was wrong of me. Perdóname, Imelda. "

She turns away with a jerkiness that speaks to pride. The line of her shoulders tells a different story.

When he feels the spark of phantom pain, he thinks it deserved.

"You sound like a broken record," she says in a voice that makes it sound like she’d been smoking through pleurisy. "Don’t you understand how tired I am of your apologies?"

The words surprise him like a pike in murky water. He hadn’t anticipated them, and their immediate presence sends a shiver down his back. "What?" he says, wrapping his arms more tightly around himself. "What are you saying?"

"I —" She twists towards the bed, showing him shoulders plated together like a shattered mountain.

"I don't know," she says.

Héctor watches her lower herself onto the edge of the mattress; in the slow motion of the act, he sees an old woman.

Here we are together, and I only make you lonely, he thinks, looking to the hunched curve of her spine, the way her elbows dig into her nightgown to support the hands shielding her face.

"I do want you here," she says. "But . . ."

But what? he wonders, and finds himself thinking back to how he’d found her sitting on the bed, wondering if he would ever come back. Does she really think I don’t want to be here?

The question sparks something restless and unsatisfied, but it also gives him an idea. He reaches into his inner vest and removes the letter. Coco’s name on the front has become smudged from condensation. Just as well, he thinks.

He isn’t going to think about what the letter contains. "If you won’t hear another apology," he says, "at least consider taking this."

Imelda hasn’t dropped her hands from her face.

"The reason I left tonight," he says, hearing a tremble in his voice.

As he steps forward to somehow see the plan through, she unfolds — chin and spine lifting, eyes appearing in narrow slits — like a queen whose mere presence has transformed a rock into a magnificent throne. He hesitates, unsure now whether to hand it to her (is he brave enough?) or to set it beside her on the bed.

Imelda’s hand comes to hover over the space to her left. She pats it once like she’s issuing a decree.

"My clothes —"

"Sit."

He sucks in a breath. Imelda hates it when his street clothes touch her freshly washed linens.

"It can be washed," she adds in the tone that used to make potential suitors claim she was the coldest woman on earth.

She wouldn’t bother with that tone if she wanted to get rid of him, he thinks. After what he’s pulled, Héctor knows better than to hope — and yet. He can’t help it. Her hand is like a butterfly that he wants to catch; he keeps his eyes trained on it out of fear she might suddenly change her mind, leaving him to bumble after her without a net.

Blind to what his own hands are doing, he uses habit to pull two sheets of writing paper from the desk. Somehow he manages to lay them out on the bed at a respectful distance and seat himself upon them.

When he hands her the letter, she takes it.

Fixes her gaze on the edges as she turns it over in her hands. "You can read it," he says.

(He knows this is a bad idea. Some of the things he’d written should never have seen the light of day, least of all been addressed to Coco. But he’s willing to take a gamble for symbolism. Imelda, he also thinks, would never open Pandora’s box.)

She sets the letter on her lap, fingers resting around the smudge of Coco’s name. "You've written me many, many letters," she says.

Héctor bites down on his lower jaw. A jitter runs through his middle, visibly displacing bones, and he covers it by stretching out his legs.

Not this subject, he thinks.

His instincts cry at him to deflect. Instead he finds himself taking the bait. "You read them?"

"Not a single one," Imelda says.

This is a blow.

One he should have seen coming. He doesn’t know why he expected anything else. He looks down at his hands and grimaces.

Fool. Of course she threw them away.

"That is, at the time," she says. "I’ve started to read them now."

Héctor feels himself start. He turns to look at her with a dim sense of shock.

"You have?"

She kept them, he tells himself. She kept them — she’s reading them —

Imelda seems to be looking out the window, but her eyes are distant. Héctor knows that look from himself, knows she sees nothing but the past and the words turning in her mind. He knows better than to pry.

"Why?" he hears himself say.

Something passes over her expression like a veil. Héctor finds himself tilting backwards in his regret, his hands pulling at his hair. She cared enough not to throw them out — but that wasn’t enough for you, was it — no, you had to make her feel guilty —

"They’re not very good," he says, running a hand over his eyes. "I mean, I knew you weren’t reading them — I said a lot of stupid things." He inhales as though the air could give him strength.

Looks down until he can gather his hands in his lap. "As usual."

Imelda snorts.

Héctor turns, somehow thinking he might see a smile. Instead, she stiffens under his regard. The straighter she sits, the remoter she seems.

"Your letters say when and where you died but not how," Imelda says in the voice she must use when she oversees the workshop, when she finds disorder in someone’s work. She sneaks over a glance, too brief for him to catch more than the gleam of her eyes.

Didn't you know? she seems to be saying.

No, I was blissfully ignorant, he thinks, feeling something twist through his skull as Imelda continues, "I want to know how he did it."

Does it matter? he wonders. I was criminally stupid either way.

"Poison," he says.

He can feel her shock even while staring down at his hands. She'd been expecting something else, he thinks. They’ve been living in separate worlds for so long, she doesn’t even know he’s the infamous Chorizo. Even Gustavo had made the leap.

I’m so sorry, man, he’d said in his postcard, the postcard signed by the entire orchestra. Héctor’s biggest concern had been how they’d found out his new address; the last thing he needs is for that knowledge to become public. If we’d known it was real poison — we’d never — I swear —

In hindsight, Héctor thinks he couldn’t have been more oblivious. Cheech had died of food poisoning. And it had taken hours for him to die.

Not minutes.

"How, Héctor."

He kicks into the air before he can stop himself. Runs his upper jaw against the bottom teeth.

"Only for you," he says before he even realizes he’s speaking his bitterness. He ignores how her brow furrows.

Looks to the window and the dark tower in its frame. The way his eyes slide shut, he feels like a wounded animal dragging itself into a dark cave. "I don't know where Ernesto got it or what it was," he says. "We'd been fighting for weeks. I was homesick. I . . ." he trails off against the ball of frustration that has lodged in his phantom throat.

She’s been reading your letters, she knows your excuses."It doesn't matter. He knew I wanted to leave. The day I packed up my bags was the day he poisoned me."

From the completeness of the silence, Héctor can tell Imelda expects him to continue.

He runs his teeth against one another, listening to the clacking of enamel, the popping he associates with aches. The dentist who’d replaced his cracked tooth with the gold one — what was his name? a charitable sort of fellow, he’d accepted the charro suit as trade . . . whatever. You’ve been gnashing your teeth, the dentist had said through a glistening mouth. Even the markings around his skull had been a blinding white. Memory isn’t everything, amigo. Keep this up and you’re going to ruin your —

"I told him," Héctor makes himself say, "to hate me if he wanted. Somehow I knew he already did. I should have . . . but he proposed a toast. To our friendship. And I thought . . . no, I wanted him to mean it."

He doesn’t see any of it as he speaks. The empty tower in the window is illustration enough. "I didn't taste the poison. He walked me to the train station. It was like we’d never fought . . . I saw the steam coming from the train and the shoes you bought me for my birthday . . ."

A flash of white in the corner of his eye, like a moth. Imelda, Héctor realizes.

He looks down and sees her feet rising and falling in their slippers as though she were practicing sliding in and out of heels. Her nightgown flutters with the erratic movement.

"— and then I was here," he finishes, uncomfortably aware that he somehow managed to drag the story out.

It’s odd. Telling her the truth has somehow made it less of a weight, yet it also seems to have transferred that weight to her. He knows this makes sense but can’t quite wrap his head around it. What makes him uncomfortable isn’t the cold reality of the past, it’s that he can tell they’re reacting differently and somehow can’t seem to feel it.

Has he upset her? The question at least suggests an action, and he finds himself craning his neck forward to catch a glimpse of her face.

But Imelda doesn’t want to be read. She’s gazing down, expression concealed by the proud curves of her cheekbones. Héctor looks to her hands for guidance. They’re spread out like dead starfishes over the letter on her lap.

Whatever she’s thinking, he decides, he can’t let her think it.

"I went to the Department of Records, you know," he says, managing to keep his voice even.

But his sense of calm suddenly feels brittle, like a surface that only belatedly registers the crashing of forces below.

(Back then, he recalls, he’d still thought of Ernesto as a friend. No longer as his best friend, perhaps, no longer even as a friend he’d want to see more than once a year, but still —

He should have realized the truth the moment he'd seen the anonymous death certificate, the place and manner of burial.)

"Ernesto never identified me," he continues, looking at her stiff fingers to remind himself why any of it matters. "So . . .

I’ve never blamed you, he thinks but somehow cannot say. Suddenly this whole detour feels presumptuous. Because you wouldn’t have known to put up my photo doesn’t at all have to mean you would have put it up if you’d known.

He can’t shake the idea that she’d felt happier, freer — more empowered without him. "I guess he left us both in the dark," he hears himself say.

"He left you to rot in the streets," she says with the sharpness he associates with that time Coco had thrown a tantrum and smeared his best suit with her breakfast. "He left —"

Héctor is glad Imelda doesn’t finish the sentence. He sits back, feet briefly bobbing in the air.

At least she seems to be feeling better.

"The poems you wrote me," Imelda says.

Tone registers before words. Héctor hears an edge that suggests both a question and a demand.

Then her meaning hits him, scattering all other thoughts. "What?"

"There were trains in them, and . . . horses made of clouds," she says, helping him realize that she means the poems he’d sent in this world. "Shoes," she adds with the same hesitancy he remembers from when they used to read poetry together, the hesitancy he’d attributed to humility at the time. Now he hears insecurity — fear that she hasn’t understood, that she isn’t clever enough. That his is somehow a form of speech beyond her.

Somehow he suspects she’d felt that way in life, only that he’d never seen. "I know, they’re dumb," he says.

He wishes she hadn’t brought them up. The last things he’d seen in life, in his mind they rhyme. Steam and shoes — gleam and accuse — (lose and booze, train and pain) — they’re connections. Weak connections, sure. Words. Together a bare-bones skeleton.

(window and widow and limbo, he’d scribbled in the margins of the letter. He hasn't written a full poem since he gave up music some twenty years ago; something in him has fossilized, making it harder and harder to think in meter and connect stony nouns with lively verbs.)

Not even a real skeleton, those words, not even a thing — at best a spirit skeleton, held together by will and air and ink on paper. Still better than nothing. Together they'd banished the memory of dying, helped him remember where he wanted to be and why.

He’d never dreamed that his way of expressing that to Imelda would also make her feel insecure.

"Héctor . . ."

In spite of himself, he feels defensive. "They’re just poems."

"Beautiful poems," she says.

Héctor hears the words as though he’d slipped off a rotten catwalk into the lake and could make out laughter from above. He shakes his head to try and clear it.

"You were trying to tell me something," Imelda continues.

Something, he thinks as his teeth clash.

"I wish I could have listened," she says. "Perhaps we would . . . But I wouldn’t, I couldn't believe. Because how — how could you still want me, Héctor?" He shakes his head again, several sentences behind. Is love a something? he thinks.

Imelda is still speaking. "It was easier not to know."

Her voice evokes pictures of pain. He sees her collapsed against a black wall, supporting herself on unsteady legs.

Or maybe he’s just projecting.

Suddenly he wonders if there’s even a difference between what will hurt her and what she wants to hear. I don’t know how you can even think that question, he could say. What more do you want me to do to prove that I love you, he could say, but that’s even worse.

"I’ve missed you," he hears himself say. "Since the second you kissed me goodbye. You were right the whole time. I shouldn’t have left. And I wish . . . Imelda, I wish I’d listened."

The memory of her face — pinched with suppressed anger and unshed tears, his last of her in life — decides him. Whatever made her think whatever strange things she thinks, he was the one who’d made her think them by leaving in the first place.

After all the harm he’s caused, he really should have more to say for himself. You’re right, I’ve been everywhere but here, he should say. Could say. I see that now. I want to change that. If you’ll let me. If you can understand — I can’t always be here. Not because of you. Because I have to think about the future, because there’s no future with me in it. I want a life here with you, Imelda, more than anything in the world, but even if I could somehow deserve it . . .

Against his hand, something tentative. Like a kitten exploring its surroundings for the first time.

Thoughts too scattered to continue, he glances down. The glance turns into a stare, for he’s unable to quite believe — her hand atop his own, reaching down to lift his fingers.

"I’ve missed you too," she says, and when he looks up from their hands he sees her gazing at him with a trembling mouth.

He reacts before he can think, lifting her hand to his mouth. The bone feels strange against his skull as he kisses it.

"Imelda," he says.

He hasn’t kissed someone since the day they said goodbye. Perhaps Imelda can tell, for the spell seems to break — she turns sharply towards the window as though she can’t bear to hear her name from his mouth. At least she’s still holding my hand, Héctor thinks past the sinking in his chest.

He can feel it showing on his face. What now, he thinks, wishing he had someone to offer him guidance. He settles their hands on the neutral space of the mattress and feels like a puppet drooping from slack fingers, about to collapse into himself. With a wobbly smile that hides nothing, he reminds himself that Imelda is not a prize to be won. She’s given enough, he thinks as he follows the direction of her gaze.

To his surprise, there’s something to see. A wobbling, wriggling, luminescent blur of color in the air.

Dante, Héctor realizes as he registers the sound of barking. No other alebrije on the planet looks that much like a wind-up toy sputtering in a bath.

"He’s going to crash," says Imelda, sounding breathless.

A yelp from outside.

Héctor reacts without thinking — pulls his hand free and leaps. He manages to arrive in front of the window in time to see Dante skid past the frame with his snout raised like a terrified elephant —

Héctor’s bones have scattered across the room before he can process the impact.

"Ay!" he can hear Imelda saying as he blinks himself back to awareness. "I told you to bring him back, not to break him."

Héctor would shake his head if he could; as it is, he concentrates on pulling himself back together. Firm hands on his hair tell him that Imelda has chosen to help. He closes his eyes, wondering if he should pretend to be slower at this than he really is.

She’s twisted his head back onto his spine and stepped away before he can decide. He tries to keep his expression light and finishes the job in a sitting position.

The room is filling up with the sound of Dante’s panting, reminding Héctor of Imelda’s words. Bring him back, she said, he thinks as he opens his eyes.

Imelda is kneeling with both hands planted on the ground, her gaze directed under the bed as though she’s checking for missing bones. Dante stands beside her with his tail down but wagging. One ear cocks up and his eyes seem to widen as he notices Héctor watching them.

Suddenly Héctor is holding an armful of wriggling dog. He buckles under the weight, but his hands manage to slip under Dante’s ears and scratch them. Guess we’re even, he thinks.

As he ducks a lick aimed at his eye, he catches sight of Imelda smiling.

There’s a monkey flying in his chest. If he isn’t careful, his mouth is going to snap like a string stretched to its limit around a tuning peg.

He welcomes the distraction of Dante’s next lick, and can’t help it — he laughs. "How come she doesn’t get kisses?" he hears himself say as he pats the dog’s snout.

Héctor only realizes what he’s said when he sees a streak of white in his peripheral vision.

"Imelda —"

Watching her march to the door, he can’t find the words to stop her. He can feel his hands dropping to his sides. The dim awareness that Dante has retreated out of his line of sight.

Did you ever love me? he wonders.

Imelda’s wrist-bones rotate as she twists the door handle. Héctor finds himself dully surprised when the handle doesn’t crack under her grip.

When she takes a step back instead of following the door’s outward swing, he assumes —

"Mamá Imelda!"

"And just what do you think you’re doing?" says Imelda.

Héctor realizes that his jaw has fallen open.

The open door has created a black rectangle, and when he peers at it — remembering to shut his mouth in the process — he can see reflections. Spectacles, round and opalish — that soapy sheen of glass eyes recently washed for bed . . .

Imelda isn’t going anywhere, Héctor realizes.

. . . familiar outlines that begin to set themselves apart from the black.

"Explain yourselves."

The tone of Imelda’s voice makes Héctor feel like someone has dunked him into a warm bath. He knows this posture — remembers it from when Imelda would catch him sneaking Coco sweets. It’s easy to fall into picturing the exaggerated rise to her brow, the way her eyes have become big and knowing beneath her lashes. Ready to pierce through lies like searchlights aimed into fog.

"Well you see —"

"— in our defense —"

Here we go again, Héctor thinks, carried by that warm, watery feeling into forgetting when he is.

"— you were very loud —"

"— we thought we heard a crash —"

"— so we were just about to knock!"

Rosita, he realizes with a start. She wasn’t there when he was alive.

She sounds too perky for his tastes as she continues, "You know, to make sure everyone was alright!"

"We’re fine," Imelda says, and taps a foot impatiently.

"Of course —"

"— we can see that now —"

A cold nose nudges Héctor in the ribcage, making him realize he’s still sprawled out on the floor. Setting one hand on Dante’s skull, he uses the leverage to push himself off the ground.

Imelda says something about going back to bed that Héctor ignores in favor of calculating when to let go of the support Dante presents. He feels shakier on his feet than he’d like to be, but the deciding question is whether it would more embarrassing to be caught using a dog as a crutch or to be seen flailing for balance . . .

"Are you alright, Papá Héctor?"

Héctor lets go of Dante at the same time he nearly loses his footing.

Victoria, he thinks, and: she heard me.

It’s the only reason she would call him — the only reason she would — use that word.

When the floor doesn’t swallow him the way it should, Héctor finds himself looking everywhere but at the door. The shape of reproachfulness, he thinks. "I, ah . . ." He subsides into scratching the top of his head.

"We’ll talk about it in the morning," says Imelda.

Imelda makes it sound like Victoria is the one at fault. The idea that either of them could think that spurs him into action. "I didn’t mean any of it," he says, blindly stepping into one of Dante’s paws and eliciting a yelp. "Forget you heard anything!"

He waves his hands at the door like a hermit who only knows how to communicate with forest animals.

"Heard what?" says Victoria.

Almost simultaneously, the twins add:

"We were sleepwalking."

"Collectively."

"So we couldn’t have possibly heard anything," says the twin who can only be Oscar.

Héctor shakes his head, appreciating the effort and also hating it. He wishes he had spent the past century rehearsing apologies instead of excuses for the police. "I —"

But Dante has butted him in the leg, sending him swaying off balance. He spends a moment glaring before he realizes he was supposed to be explaining himself.

"Well, except for the crash, of course —"

"— because it woke us up —"

"I think we’ll be going now," says Julio.

"It doesn’t matter," Victoria says almost at the same time.

The two pairs of reflecting spectacles turn towards another, as though the twins are deciding whether to protest these interruptions. Then they shake to either side, becoming a shining blur.

"Right, we’re going back to sleep."

"Good night."

"Yes, good night!"

"Sleep well!" Rosita adds, and if Héctor didn’t know any better, he’d think she was winking.

Right before Imelda closes the door, Héctor sees a new set of spectacles — feminine ovals instead of the twin’s circles — turned towards the room.

He buries his face in his hands.

"It’s alright," says Imelda in a low voice.

"Why did I say those things," he says to himself.

"You didn’t say anything they didn’t need to hear."

"Yes, I did —"

"Héctor," she says in a tone that makes him drop his hands to see her. Her expression is hard to read. "You’re allowed to be angry."

"Angry?" he repeats, and not understanding the word, moves on. "I don’t think they needed to hear any of that, Imelda." Hands flying to his hair, he begins to pace. "Why does a house with so many walls carry voices so well. . ."

"I’ve been waiting for you to be angry," Imelda says. "I thought you should be."

"That doesn’t make any sense," he says. One of his hands has reached the back of his head; the hair there is brittle and waving away from his head, reminding him that Pepita ruined it. He considers pulling the wig off to smooth it all down, then finds himself irritated for even thinking about something so trivial.

"It makes perfect sense," says Imelda, her voice unusually flat. "You have every reason to resent me. I resented you."

Resented as in past tense, Héctor thinks. "But not anymore?"

She’s drawn back in a posture he recognizes as somewhere between wanting to roll her eyes at him and thinking she should slap him with her shoe. His expression must reveal too much. "I didn’t say that."

"I don’t blame you," he says, shrugging past the sting.

"You should."

He recoils at the idea, and yet bitterness bubbles up all the same. "I wish you hadn’t assumed the worst of me," he hears himself say. Even if I am an idiot. "But I can also see why you did. I’m not much of a prize."

The last thought comes even to him as a surprise. It feels right, though, he thinks as he frowns down at his hands.

Right, he thinks as he forces himself to toss his shoulders back. He should say something to diffuse the tension.

As he draws up blank, he wonders whether it would be smarter to leave. Imelda has been giving him so many mixed signals . . . he doesn't know what she wants from him.

He doesn't want to be angry. He doesn't want to leave, either, even if that's what he's proven himself best at. But he's also at his wit's end, and if Imelda can't make up her mind . . .

Héctor is so caught between the words that he somehow anticipates will be hurtful, even if they also seem necessary, and his own hurt, he doesn’t immediately take notice of the white flutter. When Imelda begins straightening his vest, he has to blink a few times before he can bring himself to glance down.

She looks like somewhere-betweenness herself. Her mouth could be tightening with the desire to murder someone in the next five minutes, but her eyes are clear like the lake-edge in sun.

"We’re a right pair of fools," she says.

He can’t help but smile at that, although it feels more like a twitch than something relaxed. She reaches up to cup his cheek.

"Enough assumptions," she says.

The light in her eyes — it takes him back in time. I’m tired of waiting for you to make up your mind, she’d said, close enough for him to see the smooth little moons under her eyes. Tired of me already? he thinks he’d said. Idiota, she’d said, staring him down as though daring him to run. He remembers thinking about it, thinking it might be better than facing the impending rejection. He remembers how she’d yanked him down by the collar, back into reality.

That same bravery — the bravery that had made her look straight into his eyes with the open windows of her own, made her initiate that first kiss — he sees it in her now.

Imelda.

Te amo.

One day, he’ll work up the courage to say it again.

"I smell like dog," he notes.

"You could use a washbasin," she agrees. "And some sleep."

Héctor smiles. Imelda tucks a lock of hair behind a nonexistent ear and smiles herself. They look at each other.

(Maybe it wasn’t a dream, Coco, he thinks.)

She makes him feel brave. He puts his hands on her shoulders, lets them slide to her neck and up to where her cheeks meet her hair. Thumbs brush where skin once formed little moons.

"I want to be here," he says, letting his touch linger. Once he’d chased this feeling, thinking it belonged in words. Longing had also been fear — fear that life without a form would simply slip through his fingers.

(He doesn’t want to think about all the times he’d abandoned a moment to run to his desk and write a poem about it. He doesn’t want to think about the consequences, the rotten years. Already he can feel the seed for a song germinating inside him. But not here, he thinks. Not now.)

He’s still afraid. When he looks at her, really looks at her, he sees her eyes closed, long lashes trembling.

She’s beautiful, but he doesn’t trust himself. Imelda as he remembers her was always so clear-eyed. What she wanted, she demanded and took. He can’t remember her different except on the days he’d left, when she’d communicated with puffy eyes and pointed silence. Her emotions had suffused the house like the smell of sulphur before an explosion. Idiota that he’d been, he hadn’t recognized the warning signs for what they were until everything was charred from the fire (until he was dead).

Suddenly no longer brave, he lets his hands fall.

She catches one with the speed he remembers from when they would dance their feet to shreds. There’s something both uncertain and like a promise in her eyes.

"I want you here too," she says.

Really? he could say. "I know," he says.

"Good."

She smiles, only a twinge self-conscious. Something rises in him, quiet like reverence and dizzy like awe.

Imelda, he thinks, clearly means fearless.

(warrior rhymes with courier, and he’s going to feed Dante that letter before he writes Coco a new one.)

He looks into her eyes, and —

— and he wants to be here, Imelda thinks. After everything that’s happened . . . only Héctor would be loco enough to mean it.

Imelda thinks: he always made me a little crazy.

What she wants, she thinks, is the determination she sees when their gazes meet. Knowing she’s still got it — tightening her hold on his hand and watching his eyes flicker like a working camera, the desperate wish to leave no second unpreserved. This is what she wants, this moment, this now: watching him stumble over his own feet as she leads them to the door, the bubble that spreads past her chest. The buoyancy that lifts her from the toes.

Only Héctor.

Right before she turns the handle, Imelda glances out to where Pepita and Dante are chasing each other outside, pirouettes framed by the window.

Gracias, she thinks.

—

A few months later

—

"Not much further," he says.

Coco smiles. Holds his hand as she waddles up the steps. He tightens his fingers over hers.

Imelda pries open the door to the roof with the same kind of strength she uses to tackle murderers. As daylight floods into the staircase, Héctor blinks at how her figure becomes a silhouette emblazoned with dancing rays.

She strides out onto the roof with her boots clicking in the way that makes him think of charged earth. Ordinarily he would spring to his toes to keep up with her; today he hangs back to match Coco's shuffling pace.

His daughter's hand on his arm steadies him too, helps him appreciate the difference between having the time to see the world and sprinting past it — running into it blind. Between how he could live and how he actually has. The thought makes him look down to the shoes Imelda made for his birthday.

For when Coco arrives? he’d asked. For your feet, you dreamer, she’d said.

He can’t help but smile.

"I could get used to this," he hears himself say.

"Used to what?"

Coco speaks so rarely — Héctor tells himself it’s because the past few days have been so hectic, because she’s a natural listener, but he knows Imelda thinks it could be a function of age, that she might have even forgotten how to converse — he finds himself turning to her with greater sharpness than the words deserve. "Sorry, mija," he says, rolling his shoulders to loosen the tension that appeared there. "Sometimes I talk to myself."

"Sometimes I sing to myself," she says with such mischief he completely discards thoughts about age, about how she’ll never walk without reliving phantom aches, about how her eyes never seem to fully open. Suddenly he’s walking with his little girl as she clings to his hand and spouts the most charming nonsense ever invented under the sun, and —

He’s laughing. "No!"

"Oh, yes. Want to hear?"

"How could I say no?"

But Coco’s expression has sobered. He follows her gaze, thinking he might have to jump in and do something, only to realize she’s looking at Imelda and Pepita, huddled together up ahead.

"It’s alright," he says, and then wonders why he’s passing on the family habit of speaking about music only in whispers.

Idiot.

He clears his throat, hoping to project his voice to sound reassuring. "Things are different now, mija."

Coco remains silent.

How do I make her see, he thinks, that it isn’t her mother’s fault. That I gave up music too. That some memories are so painful, you can’t keep going if you’re constantly being reminded of them.

"Hola, Pepita," he says as they approach.

Rarely has he been so glad to see those yellow eyes.

Coco has yet to be properly introduced to her mother’s alebrije. She knows about her; Pepita had flown Héctor and Imelda to the Department of Family Reunions when ordinary transportation had seemed to them too slow. But Coco had gone home with Julio and the others on the tram, and things have been so busy since. This is the first time they’ve been able to come up to the roof.

"I remember you, gato," Coco says.

There’s an undercurrent to her voice that makes him glance over. Coco looks the way Héctor thinks he might feel if someone told him that a childhood rival was marrying into the family.

"You used to sit in my window," she continues. "And find me when I was dancing."

Is that bad?, Héctor wonders as he tries to pin down the note of amused resignation — or is it tempered dislike? — he still hears in her voice.

When he looks to Pepita for clues, her ears slant downward as though acknowledging the words. Then she blinks in the way that always reminds him of mimes.

It’s a kiss, Imelda had told him. You’re joking, he’d said, because that possibility had never crossed his mind. I never make jokes, she’d said, and — he’s pretty sure she had been joking, because she’d rolled her eyes at his slack-jawed expression, pulled him down by the bandana, and kissed him. Like that? he’d asked in his daze. No, idiota, she’d said . . .

But this does not help him decipher what Pepita is trying to communicate at the present moment. She seems placid enough, but if there’s history between her and Coco, if for some unfathomable reason she doesn’t like Coco . . .

"Pepita has been watching over us for a long time," says Imelda.

She speaks with a slight edge, if not enough to convince him there’s a danger. Imelda would be warning Coco away if there were, he thinks. Instead, she’s petting a red patch of muzzle with her gaze fixed on her hands; there's almost a rise to her shoulders.

Defensive, he thinks, wondering if he should ask her about it later. Hopefully not because of me.

But when he imagines Imelda and Coco fighting for some other reason, the picture appeals to him even less.There has to be something we can all agree on, he thinks, stepping forward.

Pepita takes note, the black almond of her pupil sliding to follow his progress like a diva gliding across a stage.

"Good alebrije," he says as he touches a glowing yellow streak. Though cool on the exterior, the fur becomes warmer as his fingers pass down to that elastic barrier between him and her bones — her flesh.

(Look at this, Coco, he could say. Magic.)

He scratches the skin in the way that’s earned him purrs in the past. "Pepita saved Miguel’s life. Isn’t that right, Imelda?"

"More than once," says Imelda.

It occurs to Héctor that he’s no longer holding Coco’s hand. He turns and sees his daughter standing exactly where he’d left her. She looks small from here, and confused, the bone of her brow dipping into her sockets.

Perhaps she’s frightened, he thinks as he holds out an arm to her. And no wonder — who in their right mind would dare approach such a fearsome-looking creature?

"Don’t worry," he says, trying to draw her attention to his arm by stretching it to the limits of the socket. "She doesn’t bite."

Imelda clears her throat in a way that tells him he shouldn’t have brought biting into the picture.

"Pepita knows Coco," she says as he feels the onset of his automatic smile, the one that covers the most territory because it includes a shrug, a wince, and the makings of a charming grin.

Imelda glares when she sees it, adding, "There’s nothing to fear."

"I'm not afraid," says Coco.

Héctor turns to see her shambling forward, fingers pinching both sides of her dress as though holding it helps her stay balanced. She smiles as she takes his outstretched hand.

As she comes to stand beside him, her other hand settles on a tuft as green as a parrot.

"She must like you very much, papá," says Coco in a tone that can only be teasing. "Me, she only ever got into trouble."

He feels his mouth falling open. Trouble? he wonders as he finds himself staring at the markings on her forehead and cheekbones and chin, the markings that identify him as her father, because the symbols are exactly the same. My little girl, in trouble?

I wanted her to take after Imelda.

"Yeah," he hears himself say, even as his mind supplies him with one horrible scenario after the other. Drugs, breaking the law . . . "Pepita and I, we go way back . . ."

"Hardly," says Imelda.

The scoff in her tone could be wounding; to Héctor, it’s a call back to reality. When he glances her way, he sees a twist to her mouth. Hard to read, but there’s something to how her lashes quiver over her eyes. Like a butterfly, he thinks, opening and closing its patterned wings to stay warm.

She’s thinking of the past.

Suddenly he can no longer imagine Coco in real trouble. Imelda, he thinks, would never have allowed it.

Her scoff plays back in his mind, warming him to an idea. The more he speaks of the present, he thinks, the less they’ll dwell on what could have been.

"No, I’m serious," he says. "You wouldn’t believe some of the things we’ve done together. Eh, Pepita?"

Coco is smiling, so he pats the yellow streak for emphasis and continues, "Once we flew all the way to Santa Cecilia —"

"What?"

Héctor is about to continue the story when it hits him.

I never told her.

Imelda’s eyes are wide. Héctor can already feel his expression morphing into a crooked smile, his eyes falling into a squint. The less he sees, the easier it tends to be to come up with an escape.

"That was an exaggeration, of course," he says, wishing Imelda didn’t look exactly the way he’d expected she would upon learning how close he’d come to dissolving out of existence. "We were just looking at Santa Cecilia. You know, from a completely safe distance."

"There is no safe distance!" Imelda shouts. "Were you trying to get yourself killed?"

Maybe, he thinks, and realizes that the word must be written all over his face. Imelda seems horrified.

As his jaw sets into something more childish than he’d like, he finds himself avoiding Imelda’s gaze — by looking Pepita in the eye. This close, he can see red veins. The yellow looks like yolk, or like a glazed ceramic sun.

"Pepita had it under control," he says slowly, because it’s only just dawning on him now that this is true.

Far from ruining his dream, she might just have saved him from a completely unnecessary, unnecessarily horrible final death.

Why does it always take him so long to think of these things? he wonders, feeling his eyes expanding against the sockets. If he’d actually tried to cross — who knows if he’d be here — here with Coco and Imelda right now —

Imelda was right. As usual.

(And even now he still feels the longing to cross. Jealous of Dante, who gets to comfort Miguel over losing Coco. Héctor doesn't know why he can't ever simply be content with what he has.)

"I want to go flying," says Coco.

"What?"

"Great idea!" says Héctor, too relieved by the change in subject to think about what he’s saying.

"Héctor," Imelda says.

He turns and sees that Imelda is staring at him, her head tipped towards Coco’s feet and lips silently moving as though she thinks he wouldn’t get the point otherwise. She can barely walk, she seems to be saying.

Isn’t that exactly why we should do it? he tries to say with his eye sockets.

Imelda turns from him with a huff. "As I keep trying to tell your father," she says, "flying is not for everyone."

Héctor can feel his own frown. The thing is, he understands not pressing Coco into anything she doesn’t want to do. But this is something she wants. How long has it been since he could give her something she wanted?

For a moment he sees poems and letters, the package wrapped in shiny pink paper Imelda found at the market.

(He’s not afraid to give it to her, he tells himself. Even if Coco thinks less of him after she sees into his heart, he’ll be happy knowing she has the material evidence of his love. He’s just . . . waiting for the right moment.)

One thing after the other, he thinks.

"I’ll go with her," he says.

As he turns to see Coco’s reaction, he notices that her hand is still gripping his. He looks into her eyes — so deeply recessed in the sockets, it’s nearly impossible to tell whether she’s fully aware or dozing.

But they seem to flash for a moment, as though to say I'm not everyone.

She also squeezes his fingers with surprising force. "I’d like that, papá."

"That's my girl!" he says.

If his voice betrays how nervous he really feels, he's too focused on what has to be done next to dwell. He pats Pepita's back to illustrate. "Here, I'll help you up."

"Héctor —"

Coco nods, letting go of his hand. He grabs her by the waist before Imelda can voice further protest.

"One, two, three!" Héctor swings her onto Pepita, marveling at his own ability to do so. The stiffness he feels has only become more pronounced with time, as though someone has been tying invisible bands between his bones while he's been sleeping. He still hasn't gotten used to it. Still expects his body to react one way, only to find himself off-balance when it doesn't. But the tradeoff — the strength he finds he possesses in moments like this —

Every second spent flailing like a maniac is worth having the power to help his daughter move, he thinks as he clambers up a wing to sit behind her.

She glances at him over her shoulder. When their eyes meet, she smiles like she means to spill a secret. You can’t tell anyone, she used to say. Her smile is exactly the same as he remembers. Only that her hair is now whiter than bone, and her mouth is almost entirely black, and her eyes are no longer bright and round, but horizontal slits peeking out of swollen sockets. And there’s something — a gleam when she looks at him, almost like a crow.

I must look like such a kid to her.

He smiles back, but somehow has lowered his chin so that his bangs flop into his eyes. There is no better reminder of his own shabbiness. Imelda had always been the one to cut his hair, and he hadn’t wanted anyone else to do it while he was on the road; now his hair is permanently too long, the physical reminder of his failure.

You deserved — you deserve — more.

Héctor distracts himself by looking to Imelda. She’s leaning into Pepita’s muzzle as though she’s kissing it.

"Imelda?" he asks, and reaches out with a hand even though he knows full well she doesn’t need the help, simply because he wants her to know she deserves every gallantry he can offer.

She doesn’t move.

Does she disapprove that much? he wonders, finding himself lowering his arm a little.

"Mamá," says Coco.

Imelda pats Pepita once. Steps away with a little nod, like she’s just concluded an act of business.

"You’re coming, right?" he asks, hating the catch in his voice.

When was the last time we did something together, all three of us?

"I didn’t think I was invited," she says.

"Come on, you know that isn’t true." As he hears his own words, he winces. That’s not how you talk to your wife.

Coco is listening.

He takes in a breath. Something opens as his ribcage expands, a rush of feeling that spreads as contrition across his face. "Please come with us."

Imelda has been pressing her hands together, rotating them at each touch. Now she looks at him with something dark in her eyes.

She’ll be getting me back for this later, he thinks as she reaches for his hand, and yet can’t bring himself to be worried. She swings herself up with the elegance of a professional dancer, treating his hand more as a hindrance than a help — and yet. When she slides into place behind him, he feels his shoulders begin to relax.

"Where are we going, papá?"

He opens his mouth and realizes he only has terrible answers. They can’t leave this world. Wherever they end up going, it won’t be the same as if she’d been able to leave Santa Cecilia while alive.

"Not to the barrier," Imelda says.

"Is there something you want to see?" he says to stall.

"I want to see the clouds," says Coco with the firmness she must have developed to deal with so many grandchildren. She doesn’t sound like a child in the least, and yet for a moment he sees her as she was — sprawled out on the floor with paper and pastels, biting her lip as she scribbled what she claimed to be trees and birds and sky.

"There are plenty of those," says Imelda.

The idea of touching the clouds with his girls — Héctor doesn’t know what to do with this feeling.

"You know," he says for no reason he can discern, "the others are afraid to fly. When they see how brave you are, maybe they’ll see they don't have to be frightened."

"Because we came home," says Coco.

Great going, he thinks, feeling his spine sag into a slouch. Remind her of how you never came home.

Suddenly there’s a hand on one of his — Coco is pulling it forward, placing it around her middle.

"I like that plan, papá."

Imelda has wrapped his ribcage from behind. There are no words for this feeling, this feeling as he puts his free hand over one of hers.

"Hold on," she warns.

Héctor squeezes both of their hands, and finds he can speak again. "I won't let you go."

Pepita beats her wings like she plans to shake the earth with her might — and then they're both touching ground and soaring.

—

end notes:

This story was inspired by BabyCharmander's incredible story Neither Can You, specifically chapter six, which has the most wonderful Pepita in existence. I also draw heavily from Charles Simic's Poem.Héctor is referring to Octavio Paz's poem Destino del Poeta.

For the purposes of this story — I wanted a situation where there was no structure like the mealtime to guarantee that Héctor would interact with the family — I’ve assumed here that food is a limited commodity beyond the holiday. Only those with an overabundance of offerings have kitchens for storing spirit food / plating it up for parties. Alcohol has something of a different status in this story, which is why Héctor has had access to it in the past — being itself a "spirit", I thought "spirits" might be easier to procure or even be subject to different rules. Water is assumed here as a plentiful natural resource since the whole place is built on a lake.

In the deleted scene of Miguel crossing the bridge (storyboards that follow a different logic from the end product, to be sure), the bridges disappear after the holiday. Since alebrijes are still crossing between worlds, I assumed that the land of the dead retains an edge / boundary where the bridges would otherwise end. In this story, it’s thicker than it would be on Día de Muertos.

If this story had remained confined to its seed — the image of Héctor looking into the barrier and seeking both himself and Santa Cecilia — and I could draw, that scene would take place at dawn. Timing issues arising from story logic means it is now set in the middle of the night.

Coco's relationship with Pepita is based on the novel, where Imelda uses Pepita to track Coco's movements as a young woman (and interrupt a dancing date with Julio). I figured that Pepita had been sitting in her window even before her memory began to fade, and that she was able to put two-and-two together once she saw Pepita's eyes.

I thought of including more scenes from Imelda's perspective — she had a lot to say about the months in-between — but decided the story was already too long. Her paragraph riffs on Elizabeth Bishop's Casabianca, which itself is a riff on the poem Casabianca, also written by a female poet.

I am much indebted to the Coco fan community on tumblr; much of the inspiration for this story comes from you.

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rwbyremnants · 6 years

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NOTE: Sorry about the wait there, but I hopefully can get the next chaps out a lot sooner! Thanks for all the reviews, I'm always given a little Mana Boost when I read them!

=Chapter 11

Within a little over a week, Weiss had completed her tour stops at St. Louis, Tulsa, Dallas, Austin, and Little Rock. Each show was a tremendous success, with media attention across all platforms. Thanks to Yang, any unwanted photos were unusable, and there had been seemingly no further slip-ups in security. Business as usual.

Not only that, but many of the fellow security staff and makeup crew had noted that Weiss seemed far happier than she ever had before, and that she was a lot kinder and more forgiving when they made mistakes. Even though there were bigger divas in the business, she had not been exactly “easy” to work with before. She was like a brand new woman, even if they didn’t know precisely why.

There were social benefits for Yang, as well. As time went on, she was growing more and more confident in not just her job, but with the staff and the crowds in general. Despite her flirtatious nature, Yang had an ingrained habit of avoiding talking if she was able to, but now it was no longer an issue. There wasn't the horrible feeling in the background that people would know her secret instantly, and the fear of anyone finding out had simply… vanished. For the first time in her life, she was starting to finally feel not partially, but fully comfortable in her own skin.

Alas, they couldn't allow their relationship to become public knowledge. There was too much of a risk to her career, with not just the media attention, but the backlash from her father. Considering he had pushed her into becoming a Christian singer when she was young, he certainly would not approve of her straying this far from “the path of righteousness”. But that didn't mean that cuddling, kissing and other things had to be off limits. They just had to remain behind closed doors.

As it neared midnight over a week after their relationship became so much more physical, their next destination still hours away, the couple got hungry. The crew had stopped for a nap break, anyway, so she and Yang zipped off a few miles down the road to a small coffee house along the highway. This time of night, there were only a few people inside, but that was preferable; less attention to be raised.

"So, what you having?"

“Hmm,” Weiss mused as she looked down the page of the menu. “I’ll try the… what is a ‘Po Boy’, anyway?”

“Sandwich,” the squat woman taking their order told her. “One of the better ones on the menu, I can tell you that.”

“Oh.” Glancing at Yang, she shrugged and said, “Then I’ll try one of those, and some of your fries with a light sprinkling of sea salt. And a lemonade.” The woman scribbled down the order – though she had rolled her eyes at the salt request – then looked over at the blonde.

"I'll have a fully loaded waffle, extra bacon, and a coffee with cream and sugar." She smiled up at the woman, placing the menu down in the small holster at their side as she left, then gazed over the room. It was a quaint enough little place, neon lights around the front counter to give off a fifties appearance, red leather seating on the booths and bar seats, a jukebox sat to one side that was turned off for some reason. If it were twelve in the afternoon rather than the morning, a place like this would usually draw a decent crowd in such a small town.

“Maybe I should have tried a milkshake,” Weiss hissed to Yang once the woman had moved off. “Or should I say ‘chocolate malt’? It would suit this atmosphere.”

"Milkshakes, fifties-looking joint… I should have worn my leather jacket. We coulda sang ‘Greased Lightnin’!" She glance over at the jukebox again. "Shame that’s out of commission. The quiet makes it a lil spooky."

Shrugging, Weiss pulled a packet of Sweet N’ Low out of the holder and began turning it in her fingertips, simply to busy her hands. They wanted to reach out and take Yang’s, but again, that would be a public display of affection - which they had both agreed was out of the question.

“Guess it does. At least it’s not on and playing one of my songs, though.”

"Good luck trying to get that ol' thing to work,” a rather tall blonde woman behind the bar called up, having either heard part of their conversation, or at least seen Yang staring over at it. “Broke a couple o' weeks ago. Had to hire my lil' brother to come in and play the guitar and sing all last week to keep the lunch hour entertained." As she went to fetch more cream for the coffee, she gestured toward the corner. "Hell, if you want music, guitar's right over there."

Smiling demurely, Weiss said, “No, thank you.” Then she lowered her voice to add, “I don’t want anyone recognizing my singing voice; plus, if I play the guitar I’m sure to break a nail. I only play while we’re recording and I’m not making ‘appearances’.”

Yang continued to stare for a moment, shrugging her shoulders lightly as the woman brought their coffees. One black, the other with cream as requested. Once she had gone, Yang chuckled. "Would you believe me if I told you I used to play?"

“Really?” The polite smile turned into one of genuine interest. “Xiao Long, there are more layers to you than meets the eye. What did you play? Lead, bass?”

"Lead. I only ever had an acoustic guitar before, but I had to sell it when I moved. Haven’t played in a little while, but I still remember some of the little tunes I made up." Taking a sip of java, she began to sink into her seat happily. "Ahhhhh, that's the stuff…"

That made Weiss contemplative for a moment, even as she was watching how happy Yang was to be sipping at her coffee. Eventually, she opened the packet of sweetener and poured it into her cup, but she was still thinking as she sipped the bitter liquid.

Then, right around the time their waitress brought out her lemonade, she suddenly blurted out, “Show me.”

It was said in the middle of her sip, and thus suddenly made her eyes snap open wide, and made her almost spit what she had in her mouth out. Thankfully she could swallow, but it didn’t erase the bug-eyed look.

"S-scuze me?! Weiss, that’s- c’mon, I know you’re suddenly all about dirtying up your ‘squeaky clean’ image, but we’re in the middle of a restaurant!"

"Not that you dolt! You’re terrible! I meant the guitar," Weiss whispered with a coy smile, fingertips playing around the rim of her coffee cup. "Right here, right now. Show me what you got."

Another gaze around the room was needed before she made her decision. It wasn't a very big audience. Weiss, three truckers sat up at the bar, one lonely police officer half asleep in one of the corner booths, and the two waitresses. Even so, she was years out of practice. Would Weiss want to hear her sounding like a cat on a fence?

But as she stared down at the coffee cup, the less she was beginning to care. Weiss liked her, and she was already the musician in their relationship; there was no real impetus to “impress” her when she definitely wouldn’t be impressed. That removed a lot of the stage fright. Besides, they had only come in for a quick meal, then they would be gone. And frankly, Yang could always fall asleep in the bus before it was brought up again.

"Ah, fuck it." Before she could talk herself out of it, Yang stood from the table.

Pleased both that she was getting her way, and that Yang would be displaying whatever level of skill she might have, her employer turned in her chair to face the corner where Yang was just pulling the guitar into her lap. Though the diva promised herself she would not react negatively, even if Yang couldn't carry a tune in a bucket; after all, she did say it had been quite some time since she last touched a guitar.

For a few short moments, Yang ran her fingers over the strings, playing a few quiet chords to test the sound. It seemed in tune, she thought. Then she played a few notes of a simple medley; nothing memorable, just to test its sound and refamiliarise herself with it after so long. Then she made sure her chair was faced as much toward Weiss as she could get it, staring down at the strings as she prepared. Tapping her foot to a somewhat slower rhythm than Weiss's songs would be, she mouthed in time with the beat.

"One, two, three, four…”

The gentle melody that began to flow out of the instrument was one that very much suited the sleepy atmosphere of such a small town at that time of night. It wasn't a song that had been on the radio, or in the background of the movie.

Which Weiss was certainly listening for. Yang wasn't lying when she said she had written a few tunes. Still, the way she had talked about her playing made her think it was a simple three-chord ditty, just something she had messed around with – maybe a slight variance on a popular song. But this was something completely new, and completely beautiful. Rough around the edges, and she heard a few notes in there that Yang had missed slightly, but clearly that was more a by-product of being out of practice than of lack of talent. The tune itself was completely captivating, effortless.

Yang, all of it was Yang.

By the time the strings fell silent and the spell broken, she was startled to see their plates of food were now on the table. So engrossed had she been in the strains of the guitar that she hadn't even noticed them being brought along. Hastening to fill the void left by the song, she began to clap, and the other patrons clapped, as well – one man wolf-whistled, probably mostly because Yang was a beautiful blonde. Maybe they hadn't enjoyed it quite as much as Weiss, but they definitely didn't hate it.

It wasn't something Yang expected at all. Perhaps polite applause from Weiss, but not from everyone present, including the two waitresses behind the counter. Looking toward them with a blush on her face, she placed the guitar back in the corner, offering a small curtsy to those looking her way before she rejoined Weiss.

"That…" The normally self-assured diva tried to form words for several seconds; she only succeeded in gesticulating weirdly. Finally, she reached across the table and grasped Yang's forearms as hard as she could. "YOU!"

Looking back toward her with eyes as wide as she could possibly manage in her somewhat sleepy state, she raised her shoulders hesitantly. Had she really stank that bad? "I told you I was a lil' rusty, but, yeah, that's that."

"Rusty? You… you are just…" Sitting back with wide eyes, Weiss chuckled just a little. "How dare you!"

Taking up her knife and fork, Yang could only keep her hands busy by cutting up her waffle, staring down at her plate to avoid eye contact. "What? I mean I just… I had a lot of free time when I made it up. Never claimed it was gonna take the world by storm, just that it was-"

"How DARE you keep this talent a secret, you jerk! I can't believe that all this time, I've had a gifted musician standing around and beating people up for me!"

Although flattered, which was somewhat obvious by the red cheeks behind the cup as she had another sip of the coffee, Yang continued to be modest about such a performance. Complimenting her looks was something she could accept pretty easy, but anything else was beyond her ken.

"’Gifted’, huh? You don’t have to butter me up. I mean it's nothing like your songs." She put the mug down, tucking into a slice of the waffle to fill the brief silence.

"The hell it’s not!" Taking a breath, she wiped a hand down her face, smearing a tiny bit of her mascara in the process. She was too distracted to notice. "You… I mean, okay yes, my songs are normally more glam-pop-oriented, but there's definitely room on the radio for breezy guitar pop like yours! What do you call that one?"

Looking upward in thought, she quickly swallowed what mouthful she had, already preparing the next bite before she could answer that question – a preemptive escape route. "It… doesn't have a name yet, I guess. Never bothered to think of one. But I remember writing it when…"

"When WHAT?!" But she noticed Yang was wincing at her outbursts, and being evasive, so she cleared her throat and tried to compose herself. "Sorry. I mean, when did you write it?"

“Well...” She began to lean in toward Weiss, quickly gazing around the room to make sure no one was listening in. It was a too sensitive subject to be yelled out loud. "I started writing it before I came out to Blake, as kind of a way of… y’know, venting my feelings. Had to do something. And I kept working on it before I came out to my dad and Ruby, too. I mean, you can't really tell from just a melody with no words, but it's sort of my way of trying to get me to accept myself? I guess. Um, nevermind."

"Oh…" Now Weiss felt stupid for having pushed so much; those parts of Yang's life were still very sensitive, even though she was so far along in her journey. There did seem to be a secret pain behind the melody, but she was so used to hearing songs day in, day out, that she sometimes didn’t pay much attention to the meaning that the music itself could carry. "Well… you can play it for me anytime you need to vent about it again. It's beautiful. Absolutely, hauntingly beautiful."

"Hey, don't sweat it. I don't mind you knowing its origin." But just before she finished the rest of her meal, a thought seemed to have crossed her mind. As much was obvious by the way she stared in the general direction of the guitar and smiled to herself. "It'd be even prettier with lyrics, I think. One of those 'this is who I am' songs rather than 'this is who I'll screw'. Don't think it'd ever sell well on the radio, but it would be nice if it was… out there. For anybody who needs it, or whatever. Not that I’m any kind of singer – trust me. My girl singing voice is almost as bad as my guy singing voice was."

All the diva did while listening was continue to make her way through her po' boy - which turned out to be tasty, even if a tad spicier than her palate was normally comfortable with. Her mind was racing, trying to make sense of all this new and fascinating information she had just been handed. She’d never expected this. Seemed her bodyguard was full of surprises.

A few moments of silence followed as both finished their meals, Yang draining the last of her coffee. Which as it turned out, was doing nothing to really wake her up; she was lucky to have even kept her eyes open all this time. But as she sat and waited for Weiss to finish her drink, she smiled contentedly. It was always nice being out with her girlfriend – even if it was still fresh and new.

“Well, it’s a shame you didn’t show me this talent of yours before now,” Weiss sighed as she set down her own fork. “We could have enjoyed some random duets all along the tour.”

“Stop,” Yang laughed easily. Then she came over wistful, staring down into her empty cup. "Wish I still had a guitar so I could play it more often, if you like it that much. Guess I could do air guitar."

"Do you?" she replied, playing it cool. "Then perhaps you should put aside a little money. We could even make a stop at a music store in a few days, so you can price them. Could lead to a whole new career path of busking in the park."

"Maybe once the tour is over, sure. But for now, I'd rather focus on beating people up for you." She winked. Not quite tired enough to completely change her personality just yet. “But apparently I suck at that and should become a street performer, huh?”

"That's… I was kidding, of course you're good at your job!" Weiss blustered, frowning at Yang as she set down her lemonade for the final time.

"You're damn right I'm good at my job. Saved your ass, remember?" They were at a point now when the subject of the knifeman could be brought up. At least, it could between those two. To anyone else, Weiss would be silent, not want to say a word. But with Yang, making light of the danger was a way of coping.

Finally, Yang rose from her seat, pacing out from their table as she waited for the diva. With a grumbled "Yeah, yeah," she eventually joined her, leaving a twenty on their table to cover the meal. But her mind was still deep in thought about Yang's playing. How could she not know she could play to please the angels themselves?

As they crossed the parking lot to get back to the bike, it seemed Yang's state of tiredness was becoming more and more apparent. She was wobbling in her footsteps occasionally, constantly yawning, struggling to keep her eyes open… How on earth could she ride the bike like this? It was only a five-minute ride, but she knew she wouldn't make it that far. But perhaps…

"Hey Weiss?" she asked tiredly, trying to hold off another yawn. "How about you drive?"

"How ab…" Her eyes went wide as she turned back to blink at Yang. "This is your baby though! You told me over and over – I couldn't dream of trying, I've only driven a motorcycle like, twice!"

"And that's still way more than I expected and throws me off whenever you say it." Passing her one of the helmets, and fastening her own in place, she had to yawn yet again. "Look, you're more awake than me. And it's only five minutes down the road. I'll be right there with you, okay?"

Weiss's eyes went to the motorcycle. There was fear there, and hesitation… but also a gleam of interest. She loved riding on the back of it, and wanted to be in charge of that power herself. Wanted to feel the handlebars thrum under her own palms.

"Are you sure?" she asked, turning away from the bike. Away from temptation. "I mean, I'd pay for everything if I put a scratch on it, of course, but I still don't want to hurt your ride."

"Thought you liked feeling me pressed up against your back." Yet again, she smirked to her, even giving a small wink. Of course Yang would refer to their sleeping habits and the things that drove Weiss mad with need in the middle of a serious chat. It was in her nature.

Cheeks only pinkening the slightest bit at the provocation, she sauntered over to the bike, calling over her shoulder, "Sometimes I think you like my ass more than the rest of me." But she put on a good show of throwing her leg over the bike, letting Yang get just the tiniest glimpse of her strawberry-patterned underwear under her skirt before it settled.

It only made Yang growl with joy as she climbed on behind her, budging herself forward as much as she could so she was right behind her. Allowing her arms to settle around her, she taunted by deliberately pushing her hips up against Weiss's backside a moment.

"Well, you do let me get pretty close to it. A lot."

A gust of flustered air pushed from Weiss's nostrils. No, she couldn't feel terribly much through all the fabric, but knowing what was back there made a tingling begin that she would have to ignore if she wanted to drive properly.

"Okay, so…" She slipped the key into the ignition, made sure she had the brake applied, and then turned the key. Instantly, the motor roared to life. "Anything else I should remember?"

"Works the same as a regular Yamaha, but the accelerator is tweaked. So just keep it slow and steady; don’t rev too fast," she warned, giving a small squeeze around her waist as she finally lifted her legs off the ground, giving Weiss full control.

They peeled out from the parking lot. Weiss did a good job of taking things rather slow - other than once or twice when her hand slipped and they took off like a shot, but she managed to bring everything back under control again within a block or two. Gradual decreases kept them from wiping out completely.

All the while, the warm presence of Yang against her back was such a comfort that she found it hard to be all that frightened of losing control. They both knew what they were doing; Yang simply had more practice, that was all. Meanwhile, Yang kept her hands on her girlfriend, watching the road ahead as though she were driving herself. Weiss was quite good once she had gained her confidence, just as well as Yang was a decent musician when she gained hers. In her tired state, she did manage to lean into Weiss's neck, giving it a small kiss as they continued the gentle pace.

"Am I doing okay?!" Weiss demanded in a voice nearly an octave higher than usual as they idled at a red light.

"You're doing fine!" She squeezed her slightly closer in the moment they'd stopped, pressing yet another kiss to her cheek. From how soppy she was being on their journey, it was obvious she was on the verge of falling asleep.

When they finally made it back to where the bus was parked, she leaned Yang against the side of the trailer hitched to the back before pushing the bike inside on her own. It wasn't easy for her thin arms, but she managed. Then she locked it up and led Yang inside their living quarters, patting her tired shoulders in sympathy.

By the time they got ready for bed and slid into the sheets, they were already on the road. The driver would be going all night so that they were most of the way back up toward Indianapolis by the time they woke up; he sometimes swapped out with one of the other roadies who wad guiding the bus full of Weiss’s entourage.

"Yang?" she whispered while snuggling up against Yang's back, just to see if she was asleep yet.

Nuzzled into the pillows and the sheets, Yang shuffled her head very slightly when she heard her name called, whispering very quietly, "Yeah?"

The younger woman debated for a moment. "I'm sorry for pushing you for the story about that song. Didn't think it would be so personal - but that's no excuse for me being pushy."

"You didn't push." The words were so quiet compared to her normal voice. Clutching the sheets to pull more of them onto herself, she continued, "Maybe one day, you'll have your own song like that. One about… coming out."

"Maybe," Weiss breathed into her blonde mane as she began to drift herself. "We'll see."

Under the sheets, Yang held the hand that Weiss had on her stomach tightly. At this time of night, it was too late for her to make up jokes, or even to lie; she was at her most honest. She might as well be drunk.

"I know it's hard for you. All this. You didn't want to be like me, because you don't wanna disappoint your dad, or your religion or whatever. But listen – you're not messing up, or hurting anybody. You are who you are. And that's perfect as it is, whatever it is."

Weiss's eyebrows knitted as she listened. Yang was trying to soothe her about things she hadn't even been thinking that deeply upon, but once said… she couldn't deny they were true. Her lyrics stuck to such surface topics as boys and "girl power" and partying because digging into anything deeper was terrifying. She didn't want to put herself out there, to challenge people's perceptions. Especially not those of her family. But Yang was right; she was who she was. Fighting it would have made her miss out on this glorious relationship. So maybe she should push her boundaries a little after all.

As she drifted off to sleep, the awakening diva also thought she might know exactly where to start…

#white noise #freezerburn fanfic #freezerburn #weiss x yang #yang x weiss #rwbyremnants

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