#fic: everybody's naked and there's a country to run
Note
Do you know of any fics that are being regularly updated? Like current fics where the next chapter is being upload every tot days? I miss having a new chapter of a fic to look forward to reading 🥲🥲 please and thanks ♡♡
One way to check is to go on A03 and in work search, select the relationship you want - "Blaine anderson/Kurt Hummel" and you can select Works in Progress. Currently here are a handful updating regularly, if i don't mention your fic, please feel free to let me know. ~Jen
Undiscovered By @heartsmadeofbooks chap 1/?
All Blaine Anderson needs is a little help to put himself through school. That’s all. But he’s going to get so much more than he hoped for when he meets Kurt Hummel, the successful, sexy workaholic who in turn needs someone to make the loneliness disappear.
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Klueless by @kurtsascot chap 4/22
It’s 1995. Kurt’s a senior at McKinley High, and he’s looking to lose his virginity and get his love life in order before he goes off to college.
Unfortunately, Blaine, the pretentious son of Burt’s ex-wife, is in Lima to intern for Burt’s congressional reelection campaign, and Kurt is stuck dealing with him until the election is over.
~~~~~
14 Stones of A curse by Anna_Timberlake @shame-is-a-wasted-emotion chap 5/15
“It's the only way to break the curse, Kurt. Believe me.”
These were the words that had driven 29-year-old Kurt Hummel to take a long break from his prestigious job at Vogue.com and travel approximately 3300 miles. He didn't know if it was true. But if it was, will he be able to break the long impending curse of his soulmate? Welcome to the journey of Kurt Hummel discoverying his past self and his soulmate.
Soulmates and fantasy- AU and reincarnation.
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Falling for you By @bitbybitwrites chap 4/5
Doctor!blaine, florist!Kurt, Dadfic, Christmas
~~~~~
And longer fic, updating weekly/monthly:
Sonder by @gleefulpoppet chap 77/?
Kurt is one of the most respected and talked about men in the fashion industry and business world. His app Style•Revolution is the fastest-growing app in history, still rising after three years. Recently, he moved the company to Seattle to be at the heart of the newest technology epicenter in the United States. Yet, with all his success, experience keeps teaching him to be wary of people’s motives who want to be close to him, and he wonders if he’ll be alone forever. Or maybe this city has plans for him that he can’t imagine when his gaze locks with a mysterious, honey-hazel-eyed busker.
~~~~~
Out of Eden By @wowbright chap 64/75 est
As a gay Mormon, Kurt Hummel has decided to go the rest of his life without falling in love. But toward the end of his two years as a missionary in Germany, Elder Anderson moves into his apartment—and Kurt's best-laid plans fall apart.
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Head over Feet By @spaceorphan18 chap 8/15
After Kurt and Blaine broke up the second time, they went their separate ways, living their separate lives in New York City. Fifteen years later, a retirement party brings them back together into each other's orbit, with surprising, for both of them, consequences. Are they able to fit each other into their already complicated and messy lives? And are these newfound feelings real? Or just echoes of a past relationship?
~~~~~
The Queen's Passageway By @coffeegleek Part 4 of one shots of Everybody's Naked & There's a Country to Run verse
This is an expansion upon the one-shot, Passage Ways, chapter 12 of One-Shots in the Everybody’s Naked & There’s a Country To Run verse. You don't have to know the verse to read it.
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Unsung Heroes
I love this idea @mostlymaudlin, thank you so much for tagging me! I tried to focus on fics that had less than 200 kudos, with the exception of one that I'm including as a BONUS (and I'll explain why when the time comes).
A Man of Letters, or Five Times Baz Retreats, and the One Time He Doesn't: By @palimpsessed
Summary: After the war with Napoleon, all Simon wants is peace and quiet in the country with his friend Penny, but night terrors and panic attacks weren't the only surprises awaiting him back home. Dowager Lady Salisbury saw news of Simon's exploits abroad and arrived on his doorstep with the shocking revelation that he was her grandson. At his grandmother's insistence, Simon accompanied his newfound family to London, overwrought by excitement at the chance to finally belong, and anxiety from the struggle to fit his new role.
Baz is heir to two very wealthy and well-respected families in England, but that hasn't stopped tongues from wagging. Baz has always been more interested in fashion and philosophy than in helping his father run the estate, and he refuses to settle down. Despite his recent sterling showing at Oxford, Baz's father has begun to lose all patience with his recalcitrant son. Matters went from bad to worse when Baz's fiancé threw him over only days after their engagement became public, rekindling rumours the family hoped to quash. Against his father's wishes, Baz has trooped off to London for another season with his friends, but the looming death knell of his good name has soured his last act of rebellion.
I love this fic for so many reasons, including that it was a COTTA fic, and that I love anything that Pal writes. But also the fact that it was SO CLEVERLY written! It's told through a series of letters either by Simon or by Baz, and the last chapter is just... SIIIIIIGH. I don't want to spoil too much because it is SO worth the read. :D
Just like Everybody Else Does: By DefinitelyYou (not on tumblr as far as I know)
Summary: It’s not the most embarrassing situation I’ve ever found myself in, but it’s still well embarrassing. Might even be in my top five, up there with the time I spelled my shirt and trousers off in Ms. Possibelf’s class, leaving me only in my pants, socks, and trainers. I’m not nearly as starkers this time around, but I still feel naked, emotionally speaking.
I’m standing in the middle of the clearing in the Wavering Wood on a makeshift dance floor surrounded by magicked fairy lights while possibly the most depressing song I’ve ever heard rings through the clearing. I’ve been deserted by both my girlfriend and my nemesis, and everyone is watching my next move.
This author is BRILLIANT! And I know most people are more familiar with their other fic, How Shall I Love Thee When You are Gone? (With good reason, that fic is amazing). However, I found that this fic doesn't get nearly as much love as it should. I remember clicking on it because I love that song, and then being completely struck down with the angst and pining. Highly, highly recommend this fic.
The Window of Opportunity Series: By basiltonjeans (not on tumblr as far as I know)
Summary: Simon Snow meets Baz Pitch when he's eight years old, and they become the best of friends.
With every year that passes, their friendship becomes more and more complicated.
When Simon is eleven, he loses Baz, and is forced to pick up the pieces and move on.
When Simon is old enough to truly get a grasp on the situation, he realises it's been love all along. He just hopes it's not too late.
or; every year, something in Simon's life has changed. One thing always remains consistent: Baz.
This SERIES! You guys! This is one of my absolute all time favourite series. I read it a few years ago, when I just joined the fandom, and I remember when they posted the final two fics. I know, it's technically cheating because it isn't one fic, but 4, but I am telling you, these fics are wonderful. It has childhood friends to enemies to missed opportunities, to reconnection... Just a bucketful of warmth.
BONUS ROUND
Black Sheep: By @f-ing-ruthless-baz
Summary: “What’s her name?��
“Whomst?”
He’s been drinking. Of course.
“The girl who suddenly started appearing in your Instagram posts a few weeks ago,” I say. I don’t want to fight him on this tonight. (This morning, I guess.) “I assume she will no longer be appearing in them?”
“Oof. Niall. You’re so clever,” he says. “You should have been top of the class at Watford, instead of that twat.
”I snort a laugh, despite myself. “That twat was your best friend.”
Dev makes a noise akin to pffffpfhhhthtttthh! “He was my cousin. You were my best friend, you dick.”
“Stop, you’re making me blush.”
“Anyway,” he says after an extra long beat, “her name’s not important.”
It's been over a year since Dev and Niall left Watford--and Dev left England altogether. Since he left Niall behind.
So I know I said I would stick to fics under 200 kudos, and this fic beats that amount (also I thought I had bookmarked this fic, turns out I DIDN'T), but THIS FIC NEEDS MORE LOVE! Naturally I love everything that FIRB writes (and they know this), but this fic opened up the world of DeNiall for me. I never really saw them together until I read this fic. FIRB is so good with words and writing complex emotions.
Including those I've tagged above, I'm also tagging @carryonsimoncarryonbaz, @fight-surrender, @amywaterwings, @ninemagicks, @martsonmars, @aroace-genderfluid-sheep, @captain-aralias and @wellbelesbian
#spread some love#love this idea so much!!!#bookmark tag#belle babbles#I need to read CO fics again#there are so many fics being recced that LOOK SO GOOD#and I'm here all... so this fic is from 2019...
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Delicate
This is technically a sequel to last year’s Dad Mirio fic but can be read on its own! Everyone’s favorite Wholesome Dilf continues to live rent-free in my brain.
“I miss you soooo much,” Mirio says for the fifth time in the past twenty minutes. You give him a comforting smile from your side of the screen, you know how he feels. Your husband’s been gone for three days now helping with a disaster in Osaka, and he probably won’t be home for the rest of the week. It’s hard being married to one of Japan’s top heroes, you think to yourself. You wish you could be there with him, putting your training to good use where it’s needed, but your current assignment is too important to ignore. It’s as if he can read your mind from the other side of the country. “How’s my buddy doing?”
You smile and tilt your camera down to show off your heavy stomach. At eight months pregnant, you’re sidelined from hero work no matter what the crisis is. “He’s alright,” you confirm. “I think he’s bored without you around, though.” He lets out a little whine that’s almost heartbreaking; it’s obvious where he’d rather be right now. You take pity on him and drop the phone level with your belly to give him a better view.
“Hey buddy,” he coos. “I promise, I’ll finish as fast as I can so I can come home to you and Mama soon.” You feel movement inside you as he talks. You don’t know how good your baby’s hearing is, especially through the video chat, but you’re sure that he’s reacting to his father’s familiar voice. “I can’t wait to get back and feel how strong you’re kicking in there. I bet you’re driving Mama crazy!” You relax further into your pillows and let him babble on to your bump about his day saving civilians and clearing out rubble, only a little lonely when you look over at the empty half of your bed. You really do miss him, your house is far too quiet and calm without his usual energy filling it.
You yawn after a few more minutes and glance at the time. “Sorry, it’s getting kinda late. Would you mind if we called it a night for now?”
He smiles, but you can tell that he’s trying to hide his disappointment. “No problem, I know you need your sleep. We’ll talk again tomorrow, okay?” You agree and tell your husband you love him before hanging up the phone and settling in for bed. You’re tired, but you’ve gotten too comfortable with him sleeping beside you and it takes awhile to fall asleep on your own.
You spend the next morning balancing your laptop over your swollen belly while you browse through maternity clothes. There’s a local shop that promises same-day delivery, and you treat yourself to a few things for your last month. You read through your email, a magazine wants a quick interview for an article about hero families and you’re happy to answer their questions. It’s hard to move too much in your condition, but you make sure to do the prenatal exercises your doctor recommended and then have a nice long shower. Your new clothes arrive and you leave them on the dresser for now while you eat lunch and call your family. It still seems too quiet in the house without Mirio, and you’re getting bored when your phone finally rings and your face lights up at his name.
“Hey sweetheart! I’ve got a surprise for you!”
You can hear the smile in his voice and it warms your heart. “Is it dinner? I think somebody in here’s really craving steak tonight.”
He laughs. “You’ll see. Just have a seat on the couch and close your eyes for a second, okay?”
This isn’t the weirdest thing he’s requested over the phone, and you obey. “Alright, they’re closed. What are you planning, Lemillion?”
“You can open your eyes in three...two...one…” his voice disappears from the phone, all you hear is the background noise of birds chirping.
“Mirio?” Your eyes are still closed.
“SURPRISE!”
You jump in shock and drop your phone, your eyes flying open. He’s standing in front of you with the biggest grin on his face, completely naked. It takes you a second to realize he must have phased through the front door to surprise you. You struggle to stand but fail, and he has to pull you up himself into his arms for a deep kiss. “You’re home early! How’d you manage that?”
“The others knew how much I wanted to get home, with you being pregnant and all, and everybody worked extra hard to cover for me so I could leave first.” You owe every single one of them a thank you gift. “Boy, that Uravity is amazing with rescue work!” Oh, you owe her twice as much after this.
“I’m glad you’re home,” you sigh happily. Your husband drops to his knees in front of you and pushes your shirt up to kiss your stomach, rubbing his hand where he feels a faint kick.
“Me too. I missed our family so much.” His arms wrap around you and he rests his head against your middle. You run your fingers through his hair, both of you taking a minute to relish your little reunion. It’s only been a few days, but it was more than enough to make you homesick for each other.
He stands back up after a bit and you head for the hallway. “You should go grab your phone off the porch and take a shower. I’ve got a bit of a surprise for you too, when you’re done.” He’s happy to obey and you follow him down the hall, pausing at the front door then into the bedroom. You wait for the bathroom door to shut and then spring into action as fast as you can. You clothes come off; you kick them under the bed instead of wasting precious time trying to pick them off the floor.
You reach for the new clothes on the dresser and find the outfit you’d picked for his welcome home gift. The bra is made out of soft white lace so flimsy it looks like it’ll tear if you breathe too hard. It ties closed with a ribbon in the front and your clumsy fingers finally form a decent bow on the third try. A skirt attaches beneath the cups and just skims your thighs, the two halves of it parted to show off your obvious pregnancy. You’re lucky that the matching underwear ties on the sides with more ribbon; you’re not sure you’d be able to get them on without five minutes of struggling if you had to step into them.
You look at yourself in the mirror and adjust the skirt of your lingerie. Despite the sheer fabric leaving little to the imagination, you look sweet. Innocent. Delicate. A grin spreads across your face; it’s perfect.
You get dressed just in time; you hear the shower turn off and the door opens a second later. “There, all clean and-” Mirio freezes at the sight of you and you see his fingers twitch against the towel wrapped around his waist. “Oh, wow. You look...just, wow.” He’s crossed the room faster than you can react, strong arms wrapping you in a tight, warm hug. “You’re so gorgeous like this, babe.”
You lean into his body; you’ve missed this while he was gone. “Well, it’ll be awhile before we can do this again. I figured we should really enjoy ourselves while we still can.” He nods and gives you a surprisingly gentle kiss. You can tell he’s holding back his strength for your benefit and the knowledge makes your heart flutter.
Mirio recovers from his surprise quickly and returns to his usual unstoppable energy. “I’m gonna make you feel so good, I promise!” His bigger hand is warm around yours as he guides you to your bed, losing his towel in the process. You don’t hide your staring; his body is gorgeous after so many years of training and you could look at him for hours. He sits back against the headboard and carefully brings you with him to straddle his lap, and you feel his cock already growing hard against your thigh. “We’ll take it easy,” he promises. “I know we have to be a little more gentle now since you’re so big-” You stare down at Mirio silently, but he continues. “What? You are big, that’s a good thing. You’re growing our baby in there, he needs all that room!” You just shake your head; you can’t really feel annoyed when he’s this sweet.
He looks up at you with pure affection written all over his face and leans into your touch as you run your fingers through his damp hair. “How can you be this buff and this adorable?” It’s not the first time you’ve asked as much, and every time he laughs you off with a faint blush on his cheeks. You lean in for another kiss while his hands move from your hips over your ribs to the front of your slip.
“This is so pretty, you should keep it on.” He gives your chest a squeeze and you whine, too sensitive from the hormones wrecking havoc on your body. You knew your breasts were going to get bigger, but they’ve turned out to be overachievers and you’ve jumped up two cup sizes already. “They’re still really sore, huh?” You nod and he offers you a comforting smile as he plays with the bow before finally tugging it open. Your nipples are already hard, and you don’t miss how he licks his lips when his thumb brushes over one. “I could help you with that, if you want.”
“Mirio…” You love your husband and all his enthusiasm, but you’re well aware that he can be a little too eager and get carried away. He’s being careful now as his fingers trace against your warm skin, his touch barely teasing you. He pulls you closer; you can feel the smile on his lips as he leans into your neck. He follows your pulse, down your collarbone to leave kisses at the swell of your breast and you sigh. “Okay,” you agree. “Just remember to-”
“I know, be gentle. Don’t worry babe, I’m gonna take good care of you.” He pushes your lingerie out of the way to get a better view at your heavy chest and appreciates the sight of it. “Man, our kid’s not gonna be lacking on calcium, is he?”
“I love you, please stop talking.” He laughs but obeys, his tongue flicking over your nipple and making you squirm in his arms. He does it a few times and you let out a little gasp when he takes you into his mouth. “Go easy,” you remind him, but he’s already distracted with his task. You asked your doctor about doing this before and were told it was perfectly fine, but you can’t quite shake the thought that it’s a little weird as Mirio begins to suck at your tender nipple.
You’ve tried this before, but every time he’s been too rough in his excitement and you’ve had to yank his head away from you in pain. Tonight though, he’s trying his best and after a few seconds of discomfort there’s an unfamiliar tingle deep in your breast as your body responds to his stimulation. “It feels weird,” you groan, but your fingers thread into his hair so he won’t pull away. “It’s not bad, just weird.” You’re not entirely sure you like what he’s doing, but you’re willing to continue until you figure it out. His tongue brushes over you with a slightly different motion, and something in you clicks into place. “Can you do that again? I think I liked that.”
His laughter is muffled but still obvious and you can feel the smile against your skin. Mirio’s happy to assist, one strong hand settling on your back to keep you steady. It wasn’t a mistake; he repeats his movements and you realize that it feels good. It feels really good, you have to admit, as his eyes slip closed so he can focus entirely on pleasing you like this. You hold him tight to your body, fingers running through his messy hair while you enjoy the affection so happily given. You’re still sensitive though, and after a few more minutes you start to get overwhelmed and have to pull him away.
“It tastes good.” His grin is huge as he licks his lips. “It’s sweet, just like the rest of you.” You’d roll your eyes if he wasn’t so cute. He gives your breast a gentle squeeze and earns another whimper from you, then turns his attention to the other one. “Don’t want this side feeling left out, right? Lucky I’m here to take care of everything!” Your heart skips a beat, you’re so in love with this silly, wonderful idiot. You don’t get a chance to respond, once his mouth is back on you it’s hard to do anything besides pant and whine for him.
You squirm against him, his dick pressing against your thigh and your panties doing very little to hide how much you’re loving this. “Miriooo,” you moan, and the look in his eyes is nothing but pure happiness that makes you melt. “You always take good care of me,” you coo, reaching down to stroke his cock lightly. “You’re so good to me, honey.” He pulls you closer and releases your chest to look up and meet your eyes.
“Babe, I’m just giving you what you deserve. You’re literally making a brand new, little person in there. If that’s not worth being extra nice, I don’t know what is.” He really has no idea how perfect he is. His thumb brushes over your nipple and your body is so sensitive now it makes you shudder. “Alright now?”
You stop for a second to consider. Your breasts do feel a bit lighter, there’s less pressure weighing down on you after his help. “Yeah, thanks. You’re the best, really.”
He brushes off your compliment in favor of pulling at the strings holding your underwear together. “Just doing my job, miss.” He groans at the sight of you fully naked and traces a finger along the lips of your cunt. You hadn’t noticed just how wet you were getting as he’d worked on your nipples, but now two of his fingers slip inside you with no effort. “I love you so much,” he says with another kiss.
You buck into his hand mindlessly, too eager for his touch after only a few days. You want to hold off and come with his dick buried inside you, but you can’t deny yourself when you’re this needy already. “I want it,” you whine pitifully.
His other hand gives your hip a reassuring squeeze. “I know, baby. You can have whatever you want, just tell me.” His thumb swirls over your clit and he doesn’t miss the jolt that runs down your body. “Right there, huh? My pretty little wife wants me to make her come?” His smirk is playful and there’s a glint of mischief in those friendly eyes.
“Mirio, please.” Hearing him talk like that does something to you and you hide your face in the crook of his neck.
His hand moves faster and your pussy clenches tight around his fingers. “It’s alright, I’ve got you. Just let yourself go for me.” His voice is so warm and soothing, you can’t resist. Your orgasm is marked with desperate whispers in his ear as his hand moves gently between your thighs to urge you on. “That’s it, honey. You’re so good, I want more of you.”
It takes you a minute to calm down before you’re able to pry your sweaty face away from his shoulder. His fingers leave you aching to be filled again, and you swallow hard when you watch him bring them to his mouth to lick them clean.
“That’s my girl,” he smiles like the sun and you look away, almost embarrassed by the affection between you two. You can’t see anything past your swollen belly, but you can feel his thick cock ready for a turn. “Are you up for more? It’s fine if you need to wait-”
You fumble blindly for his cock until the tip presses just outside your cunt. “I want you inside me. Here, Mirio. Your pretty little wife wants to make you come.” The blush spreading across his face at your words is a special reward of its own. His hips thrust upward to enter you while he slowly pulls you down to meet him, and your mouth falls open in a long moan. “Fuck, Mirio. We’ll have to wait a couple weeks after he’s born and it’s gonna suck so bad.”
He hasn’t put much thought into this fact and you can practically see the gears in his head turning. “Well then, I guess we’d better make it count while we still have the chance,” he says finally. He’s always so much stronger than you, even when you’re not in such a delicate condition, and easily sets a steady pace moving you up and down his dick. You cling to his shoulders to steady yourself as you ride him, pressing your tongue into hs mouth to devour his sounds. This may be the peak of happiness, with your sweet husband pounding away inside your excited pussy, showering you with compliments about how great you are and how perfect your little family is going to be. “And once he gets a little older, we can start working on his siblings!”
Your hips falter in their rhythm at the suggestion. “S-siblings? Already?”
He grins back at you. “Of course! We need five or six, at least!”
“Five or six…” you repeat, suddenly distracted by the thought of doing this another half-dozen times. You don’t know why you’re surprised, it’d be more of a shock if he didn’t have infinite love to share. The idea doesn’t bother you, and you find yourself returning his smile with a smirk of your own. “You really wanna fill me up that much, Lemillion?”
You’re not expecting his thrusts to speed up so much or for him to pull you down so hard you’re gasping for air. “God, babe. So much. I think about it like, all the time now. You have no idea.” He stops to kiss you again, and your cunt squeezes hard around him. “I can take more time off of work,” Mirio insists mindlessly, getting far too ahead of himself. “I bet I can hold so many babies at once.”
You laugh, he’s so ridiculous sometimes. “Let’s just focus on this one for awhile, okay?” He nods, trailing his lips down your throat to feel how fast your pulse is racing for him. You can feel another orgasm building, and that he isn’t far behind. You were only apart for three days but it seems like far too long. “You’re really, really the best.”
He cups your sweaty face in one hand, the look in his eyes so soft and loving it takes your breath away. There aren’t enough words to describe how much you love him right now, and clearly it’s the same for him. Wordlessly he releases you and drags his hand down your body, stopping to tweak your nipples and making you cry out. His fingers drop to rub firmly against your clit, and your back goes rigid. “Miri-ohh. Just like that, I’m gonna...there, fuck.” You clamp down hard on his cock with a loud moan and he holds you tight, supporting your overworked body while you come. “Here,” your voice is ragged. “Your turn, I know you’re dying to come inside me.”
“You’re amazing, honey.” That last compliment is all he gets out before his pace goes sloppy and you feel him flooding your pussy with a low groan. “You’re so amazing.”
You cling to him while he gradually wears himself out and stay wrapped up in his arms for the next few minutes. Eventually, there’s a firm kick in your belly that informs you that someone noticed all your movement and he’s not happy about it. Both of you laugh as you separate; you flop down on the bed while Mirio cleans you up and finds you a comfy, oversized shirt and fresh panties to wear. It’s still fairly early, and you won’t be tired enough to sleep for a few hours.
“Now that was a welcome home gift. You should just wear that around the house until you have the baby, it looks really great on you.”
You ruffle his messy hair. “I don’t think it would survive the entire month around you,” you tease. You stretch your arms above your head and feel a grumble in your stomach. “So, the surprise wasn’t steak for dinner tonight?”
He’s in too good of a mood to even think of denying you. “It is now!” He’s already fumbling for his phone to look up menus. “Whatever you wanna eat, just say the word!”
Sometimes you wonder how you ever got so lucky.
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The One Where Cardan Got Kicked Out Of The Bar (1)
Our resident dumbass High King got himself and Jude kicked out of the bar. Thank you to everybody on the JurdanNet Discord who helped draft this entire fic, it wouldn’t be here without you. For the record, this was supposed to be a one shot, but it’s becoming a multichapter, so here you go.
Warning: Smut involved (17+)
One of the High King and Queen of Faerie’s favorite place to spend time together is a mortal bar. Doesn’t matter where the bar is, as long as there is alcohol, or so Cardan Greenbriar says. The one thing Cardan doesn’t like about the mortal bars are the people who hit on his wife. Jude Duarte, on the other hand, enjoys this very much because it gives her the opportunity to fight, one of her favorite pastimes. Of course, the sight of seeing Jude fight arouses something in Cardan, after all that is his wife, but just once, he would love to be the one to take down the stranger.
One night at a bar located in New York City, a strange and magical place that Cardan finds so fascinating, probably because it is so different from Elfhame, Cardan is granted his wish. When Cardan had gotten up to use the bathroom, a man had come to take his spot, and for once in her life, Jude was too drunk to defend herself. Seeing this sent Cardan into a rage and he quickly came up behind the guy, tapping him on the shoulder.
“Excuse me, but I believe the lady asked you to stop,” Cardan slurred. Nobody said that he wasn't drunk either, but he’s had years of experience.
“Buddy, I don’t know who you think you are, but I think you should leave me and the lady alone. I’ll decide when it’s time to stop.” The attitude of the man alone was enough to infuriate Cardan, but the sentence brought his anger to a whole other level.
“My name is Cardan Greenbriar, and that is my wife!” and the next thing the man knew he was being thrown across the bar, almost through the wall.
Everybody around them was instantly on their feet, unsure of whether to help the man or restrain Cardan.
“I think you’ve killed him.” Jude was looking over with a pleased smile on her face. “How does it feel to kill?”
“I didn’t kill him, there’s birds flying around his head. He’ll be fine.” Cardan shrugged it off, knowing that a knockout was better than death, especially since he was so against killing people. It was one thing for Jude to kill somebody, in the name of the crown or otherwise, it was quite another for Cardan to take a life.
“Are you sure those aren’t the splinters of wood from the wall you just threw him through?”
“Like I said, he’ll be fine Jude, darling. But… we should probably get going. Those guys don’t look too fine.” Cardan pointed at the 3 hulking mortal men coming their way. Hurriedly, Jude and Cardan exited the bar, only to have the door slammed in their faces and a rough don’t ever return shouted through it.
“Great!” Jude explained, “You just got us kicked out of the bar.”
“Yeah, but there are a ton of other bars to go to. It’s only one bar, and besides, I don’t want to inhabit a place that lets people flirt with married women. Especially when their husband is right across the room.”
“Oh yes, so heroic, Mr. Cardan ‘that’s my wife’ Greenbriar. I could’ve handled myself.” After the ordeal, Cardan could see that Jude was sobering up, but it still wasn’t enough for her to have been able to handle herself against a mortal trying to take advantage of her. “Whatever, let’s just go home.”
Just as they were about to reach a safe place for their return, Jude received a ping on the phone that she borrowed from Vivi.
“Cardan… look at what you did. We are banned from every bar and club in the country, possibly the whole world.”
Cardan furrowed his brow. “For one fight? That doesn’t make sense.”
“How about for the fact that you threw the guy through the wall. With one punch.”
“Oh.”
Grabbing two pieces of ragwort weed from his pocket, conjuring up two ragwort steeds for them to get home. Soon they were safely inside of Elfhame, making their way towards the palace and their bedroom.
Jude, still drunk, reached for Cardan, pulling his lips to hers. Not one to say no to his wife, Cardan greedily kissed her, pulling Jude to the bed as they removed their mortal clothing. Once they were fully unclothed, Cardan gently laid Jude down on the bed, separating their lips as he pulled the covers over her. Jude struggled, obviously expecting something more from Cardan, but he gently shushed her, with a command to stop struggling.
Although Jude may have been the more forceful one in the marriage, there was still some stuff Cardan could get away with in the bedroom, and ordering his wife around was one of those.
Once Jude was safely ensconced in the blankets, Cardan went over to his side, cuddling up to his wife. His full length pressed up against her, and while he may have regretted saying no to Jude mentally, his body wasn’t going to be very forgiving. Soon, though, exhaustion overtook them both, from ruling all of Elfhame and their brawl at the bar, and the alcohol in their systems, and Jude and Cardan found themselves fast asleep until late in the morning.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The next morning, Jude was on a mission.
“You got us kicked out of almost all the bars in the world, now you can help me find at least one that will let us in.”
“What? Wait, why do I have to help?” Cardan said groggily. He had just woken up, and was feeling the effects of a hangover due to the cheap alcohol from the night before.
“Because I said so, and because you are the reason we are in this mess in the first place.”
“Ugh, fine.” Cardan grumbled but rolled out of bed, pulling on a robe and making his way to the desk where Jude was pouring over the mortal laptop she had somehow configured into working in Faerie. Not the Cardan was complaining. He was currently watching a show called Lucifer on this Netflix app and the lead seemed like just his type. If Cardan wasn’t entirely enthralled by Jude, he would probably be trying to court the Tom Ellis chap.
As they looked over the mortal Google maps, trying to find at least a single bar, Cardan absentmindedly rubbed his hand across Jude’s back. Finally, just when he was beginning to lose focus for the fifteenth time, Jude spotted something.
“There!” she cried, although her voice was hoarse so it sounded more like a whisper. She was pointing to a spot in a remote-looking part of Canada. “It’s a biker bar, and they say that everyone is welcomed, no matter how bad, ugly, anything. There is also no notice for it saying that we are banned.”
“Guess we found our new spot, then. Now, we’ve got other matters to attend to, after all, it is the weekend, and we should have some time to ourselves.” Cardan grinned at his wife, who slowly slid her eyes to his own. There was a gleam there that had been missing moments before, which meant she knew exactly what matters she was talking about. Jude had wanted to start something last night, and Cardan fully intended to finish it now that they were both sober.
“Yes, my king, we should,” Jude purred, rubbing her arm across Cardan’s thigh. Goosebumps formed along his arms and legs, as well as his bare stomach. The robe he was wearing really did nothing to help Jude’s advances, which was really unfair considering that she was in a tank top and mortal leggings.
Jude pulled Cardan to his feet and pulled the robe off of his shoulders. She tried to take the lead in this, and normally Cardan would let her, but he was feeling very authoritative at the moment. He grabbed Jude’s hands and pulled her to the middle of the room. “Kneel.”
At the command, Jude began to glare at Cardan, knowing full well where this was going. However, she did as he asked, getting down onto her knees, still fully dressed.
Cardan tutted disapprovingly. “Something seems wrong with the picture, don’t you agree Jude, dear. It appears that I am fully unclothed, and you are not.” Jude’s fingers found the hem of her tank top, and she began to pull it over her stomach. From where Cardan was standing over her, he saw the swell of her breast bounce as she released them from the top, obviously not wearing any mortal contraptions to contain them.
As she began to stand again to remove her leggings, Cardan pushed Jude back to the ground, with both tail and hands. “Have I given you permission to stand yet?” Jude shook her head. “I’m sorry, what was that?”
“Yes, my king.” There was a tinge of bitterness in her voice at being forced to submit, but Cardan could see the full force of his actions reflected in her eyes as she looked up at him.
“Better,” Cardan said. “You may stand now.” Cardan knew that to anyone else, he would come across as cruel, but he also knew that this was the exact thing that Jude needed in order to find release. Once she was fully naked, Cardan pushed her onto the bed, arms and legs splayed.
“Now, for a test of your control. You are not to move until I say you do, unless you want to be restrained. Do you understand?”
“Yes, my king,” Jude breathed, as Cardan began to kiss his way up her stomach, pausing to individually kiss each breast. Jude moaned as Cardan moved his way up to her neck and began slowly kissing and sucking at the point where her shoulder met her neck. Cardan’s tail slowly made its way down her leg wrapping itself around her left ankle and rubbing softly against it. True to her word, she remained still, not even flinching at his cold fingertips as they found her thighs and began to travel upwards. Cardan began to run a finger down her core, and at the same time began to move his lips closer to her mouth.
“Remember, Jude dear, my sweet villain, don’t move a muscle.” And with that reminder, Cardan slid a finger inside of her, catching her cry of pleasure with his mouth. There was a buck of her hips, and a tightening of her hands on the sheets, but that was the only movement displayed by Jude.
“Good girl,” he whispered as he slid his finger in and out, in and out. Once she was used to that, Cardan added a second finger, joining the first one in its ministrations.
“Please my king, I am going to come.” Cardan knew that Jude was telling the truth, but he was still in control, and therefore he would make Jude beg for it. And beg she would.
“Cardan,” she gasped, “please, Cardan my king. Please.” There were tears beginning to form in the corner of Jude’s eyes, and Cardan gave a slight dip of his head, acknowledged by a sign of relief. Removing his fingers from between Jude’s legs, Cardan lined himself up.
Before he entered his wife, however, he paused. “What do you say, Jude dear?”
“Please my king.” With that, Cardan sheathed himself inside of Jude, allowing them both to adjust before beginning to move, sliding in and out, getting deeper and deeper. It wasn’t long before Jude was crying his name, all pretenses of control lost as she gripped his hair, and Cardan let her. He followed his wife as she went over the edge.
Cardan remained inside of Jude long after they were done, just holding his wife, and enjoying the moment together. He finally slid out, rolling over until he was spooning Jude, and although it was only afternoon, soon tumbled into darkness. His tail had moved from where it had remained around Jude’s ankle to her thigh, brushing soothing strokes up and down, reaching the underside of her cheeks.
This time when he woke up, Jude was still in bed. However, she was glaring at him, and Cardan could almost see the daggers in her eyes, caused by his actions from earlier in the day.
“You are so getting paid back for that,” she said, poking him in the chest. Cardan only rolled his eyes before pulling her closer and saying “You love me.” Jude pushed him away, untangling herself from the sheets and Cardan as she got up and walked over to the bathroom.
“Now, I don’t know about you, but we’ve got people to meet and a bar to check out. I’m going to clean up, but feel free to join me.” To say that Cardan was quick to get out of bed was an understatement as he rushed to join his wife in the bathroom, preferably for a round two.
If you want to be tagged, send me an ask... some of you aren’t permanent tags, but if you want to be, just tell me. I hope you all enjoyed!
@ireallyshouldsleeprn @theoceanfaewriter @snusbandxknifewife @angelofmusic223 @slightlyrebelliouswriter23 @clockworkgraystairs @sweetlyvillainous @b00kworm
#jurdan#Folk of the Air#tfota#jude duarte#cardan greenbriar#bar#bar fight#our resident dumbass#cardan thats my wife greenbriar#fanfiction#holly black#i hope that you like this#smut#steam#fluff#cardan is a good husband#tusermonique
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OFFAL HUNT REMASTERED LIVEBLOG // CHAPTER 14
IN THIS EPISODE OF THE OFFAL HUNT LIVEBLOG:
On the other end of the line, Cinder let out a tight sigh. “Yeah. Okay, well—I’m in a difficult position right now. I’m balancing a lot. So, that wasn’t, you know, directed at you or whatever… I’m just trying to deliver you to Atlas. That’s all.”
“Yeah,” Glynda said. “This apology sucks.”
CINDER FALL TRIES TO HAVE MANNERS. AND FAILS. BUT SHE TRIES.
it’s been a WHILE but i’m STILL HERE!!!!!!!!! also i’m a little late to the draw and also unlike w/ prior chaps i did actually read this one when it came out so i’ve had my first run already. BUT that means i actually get 2 Focus so lets get this party started
so we’re now entering into the New Umbraroot Arc which Frightens me on a deep and intrinsic scale because now i have no padding to ready me for whatever the Hell is going to occur, but i do know it will be gay(er) than the current content was (is/shall be) and here’s the proof
It had only been a day, but the sound of Cinder’s voice was a relief to Glynda’s senses.
glynda that’s gay. hey. hey. glynda have u been told yr a lesbian. lesbeeb. besbion--
“Not at all.” Thank god. It was one thing to be traveling with Cinder Fall. It was entirely another to have her checking in on Glynda’s well-being.
cinder: my well-being is SHIT but thankfully there’s someone nearby doing WORSE than me, which makes me feel better at least,
“Oh.” Our sounded strange in her mouth.
my favourite thing abt any gay media and content is that it’s gay in ways that hettie(tm) nonsense can only dream of being. when a story is abt a guy and a gal all the romantic tension comes from like. looking at a tiddy or getting naked or w/e the shit. here? it’s literally found entirely in the use of the word our. such power. i love it.
I went from unknown to one of Atlas’ most wanted overnight, which is charming… And also annoying, because they refuse to stop pasting wanted posters on every street corner.
i feel like cinder is the type of bitch to send pics of them back to emerald like ‘is my face ACTUALLY that janky??? my hair is a state. you think they’ll use a selfie if i ask nicely???’
Cinder hummed, affirmative. “Which would be unnecessary, if you hadn’t reported me.”
Glynda returned, “I wouldn’t have reported you if you hadn’t been committing a crime.”
glynda you snitch. you narc. you bootlicker. does be gay do crime mean NOTHING to you,
We left a funny taste in her mouth, almost as strange as when Cinder had said our. She tried not to examine it too closely.
again. look at this shit. this is real slowburn hours. this is how u DO IT.
Her heart was beginning to feel like a pin cushion with all the needles pulled out, little holes left in their wake.
would i be showing my age if i glanced at this and wondered if it were a reference to the inciting og offal hunt inspiration fic or. it does doesnt it. okay moving on.
“Okay.” And then, in an effort to change the subject to something lighter: “I’ve never broken into a country before.”
glynda’s complete and continuous inability to actually like. do what she plans on doing is SO funny to me. she’s going to be stealthy, she says, throwing a man aside in obvious fashion. i’m going to be subtle, she says, being as conspicuous as possible. she’s a disaster and i live for it.
"The Faunus." Cinder's voice was cold. "Don't speak to her."
this part of this fic is subtitled ‘cinder’s rank opinions time’, apparently. not that u can tell. but it is. dsfhgjsdfghjghfjdk
In the silence that followed, Glynda thought of the stunted horns jutting above Cinder's hairline at the restaurant.
Glynda murmured, "That’s a horrible thing to say."
"Don’t start." There was no concession in her words. “I mean it.”
“...I just didn’t expect that from you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
There was something in Cinder’s tone that told Glynda that nothing she said would be correct. She said nothing.
cinder’s! rank! opinions! time! honestly this section victimises me the MOST as i very famously cried over an earlier section in which cinder thought abt all the faunus she grew up with, so i know that kc and diesel were looking to hurt me directly. that said i DO find it funny that cinder, yet again, looks like a pile of shit. she can’t do anything right. naturally inclined to be the villain completely unintentionally. what a moron.
A harsh laugh. “What do you think we are, friends?”
“Well, no—um. Not really, but—”
YOU SEE. CINDER. PLEASE. £10 FOR U TO BEHAVE FOR FIFTEEN SECONDS.
“Then, just—just listen to me. I’m going to get us there. I p-promise.” There was a soft sound, like disgust or the prelude to a gag. “Urgh, your soul—give me more space.”
cinder: i’m inclined to being an asshole
glynda: every time yr mean 2 me i’ll make u feel worse
cinder: ah no. ah shit. i have to be nice??? ah fuck. what the shit is this.
Glynda thought of Ozpin. It wasn’t a comforting thought—more like the memory of a near-accident, like sliding on ice and feeling the world shift beneath you. It was a flinch-thought, and it would have made her miserable instead of just homesick had she not shut it out so quickly.
god the writing in this fic is so especially pristine. everything feels so real and visceral and you just know Exactly how that feels. it’s brilliantly punchy and i adore the way u get have the exact sensation click into place. it’s SO good.
She wondered if it was the same moon Bacia and Vivienne had looked upon. If they had felt the same beneath its pale light. The Great War had seen two shatterings of the moon, so perhaps it had appeared different, but… Glynda couldn’t help but wish that it was something they shared, even lifetimes apart.
👈😎👈
actually im a little nervous abt doing fingerguns because WHAT IF SMTHNG HAS CHANGED... but i think this bit is. safe. maybe. diesel. kc. am i safe,
Glynda closed her eyes and tried to feel out that instinctual power within her. Tried to know herself better. It resonated around her like a water in a tank, nearly palpable.
again this is just GREAT storytelling. i just LOVE how well kc and diesel turn abstract ideas into such physical manifestations it’s completely unreal. r y’all seein this shit???
upon checking his number, she’d discovered it had been blocked.
i love that glynda is abt as knowledgeable abt little jumps like this as the reader is. are we surprised as a reader? yes. is glynda also surprised? HELL YEAH SHE IS. SHE AIN’T GOT A FUCKIN CLUE MY DUDE.
Remembering the notes to herself not to trust Winter, Glynda opened the log hesitantly.
glynda no yr sending read receipts to yr future gf and thats a bad move on everybodys part
The indicator showed this wasn’t the first time Glynda had accessed the message. She couldn’t remember doing so.
OH NO BITCH U ALREADY DID
“Special Operative Schnee, things are…” Glynda paused, searching for something suitably vague to say. “Proceeding.
do you see what i mean abt glynda’s ineptitude. it’s slapstick levels of ridiculous and i’m living for it.
Do you suspect she’s attempting to cross the border?”
“Maybe.”
‘sure,’ glynda says. ‘you could word it like that if you wanted to.’
“Bold of her, if nothing else. She should know there will—” Glynda skimmed through the rest of the paragraph to reach the end, the corners of her mouth curling. “—can make arrangements. Let me know if there’s anything else you need.”
HGSDFGKHJSFDGHKJDF JESUS CHRIST
its like in fallout 4 when someone tells u important info and when u click past it the main character just goes ‘uh huh’ ‘yeah’ ‘okay’ ‘sure’ ‘mm-hm’ as the text boxes whizz by GLYNDA PLEASE
Bubbles appeared, showing that Cinder was typing. Glynda waited.
And waited.
And waited.
The bubbles appeared and disappeared four times.
She flipped back to Cinder’s conversation and found that, after all that time, Cinder had finally settled on a reply.
It said:
“Good.”
i just had to pair these up for a second if only to say: dis me lol
okay let’s double back for a second just to cover this Juicy Lore:
If you’d like, I can arrange a bouquet of flowers to be left at your mothers’ memorial site. My thoughts are with you.”
For a long moment, Glynda simply stared at the screen. [...] In quick succession, she realized that it had been sixteen days since she’d met with Cinder in the restaurant and that it was soon to be the anniversary of her mothers’ deaths.
WHAT IS THIS LORE MA’AM AND MX??? **MA’X**??? firstly idk what the HELL the Black March tragedy is but im fascinated but also: did u have to do that. can ONE person in this fic not have [spoilers redacted cant say that yet no sir] problems??? no??? die. dsfhjgghjkfsddf
Glynda picked herself up from the armchair, neat and tidy, and disassembled into bed, pulling the covers up to her throat. With her Semblance, she turned off the lights. She closed her eyes.
It was quiet. Cold. The only thing she felt was the weight of her soul.
Her Scroll buzzed. Glynda answered it.
“Glynda.” It was Cinder. “I can feel that.”
okay following on from cinder’s text message, i just. love that cinder’s having such direct repercussions to her shitty shitty actions. like this is all tying together in some 👈😎👈 instances but having cinder be her usual callous self and having to literally turn around and start fucking Being Nice For Once is VERY gratifying. fuck you you lil round-faced one-braincelled baby. time to learn to have some Manners. jgdsfghsdfghfjd
She’d simply resigned to the loneliness of having no one to trust but Cinder, and then, not even having her.
... thats gay. hey lads is that gay? its gay. it feels gay.
On the other end of the line, Cinder let out a tight sigh. “Yeah. Okay, well—I’m in a difficult position right now. I’m balancing a lot. So, that wasn’t, you know, directed at you or whatever… I’m just trying to deliver you to Atlas. That’s all.”
“Yeah,” Glynda said. “This apology sucks.”
this feels like a reference to 👈👈👈😎👈👈👈 (IS IT. AM I RIGHT. IT IS ISNT IT) but also: LOOK AT CINDER GO. TRYING. BADLY. BUT TRYING. i love her she sucks so much shes such a dumbass. feel the consequences. feel them.
Glynda chided herself; Cinder Fall wasn’t capable of remorse, but she was more than capable of simple math. It seemed the worse she treated Glynda, the worse she herself would feel.
glynda: she’s doing this because it makes her feel better, not me
cinder in like idk 20 chapters down the line:
(i guess thats another 👈😎👈 moment but for GOOD REASON)
There was a shift, like Cinder was rolling over, or maybe propping herself up. Was she in bed also? It triggered the remembrance of Glynda’s own physicality, and she turned over as well, searching in the dark for the nightstand and the lamp upon it. The light clicked on. The room brightened. Glynda settled in, ready.
OOOOOH THE PARALLELS. glynda turning the lights off and sinking into darkness and the void versus perking up and sitting up and turning the lights on when talking to cinder!!!!!!! POETIC CINEMA. OOF. OOF. HOW DOES FIFTEEN POINTS OF LOVE TASTE.
“Great! Lovely. Glad to hear it.” Fangs rounded out the words like scissors. A pleasant sense of satisfaction unfurled in Glynda’s chest. “So, once upon a fucking time—”
there were two gays and they were enemies to lovers but didnt know it yet. but they will be.
THATS CHAPTER 14 BABEY!!!!!!!! i LOVED this chap and i can rly feel kc and diesel gearing up for umbraroot. its great being able to like. feel the shift of focus goin on here and im SO ready to see this arc play out. once again offal hunt is the best fic ever made. this is a fact.
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hey! fics where blaine has a high place in society plz ? thank u!
You could try the wealthy!Blaine tag, or royal!Klaine. There's quite a few there. ~ Jen
Some newer fics:
Seven by @scatter-the-stars
How far would you go for someone you love? For Kurt, that means doing the unimaginable. But if it means saving his dad, he's willing to take that risk. A risk that has him leaving his home to go states away to spend a week with the last person he ever expected to meet. Over the course of the next seven days, things don't go as planned, or thought.
Can seven days change everything?
~~~~~
King of My heart by soprano-squad
New York high society– fraught with gossip, lies, and a rigid social hierarchy. A hierarchy that some would do anything to climb the ranks of…
Essentially: Kurt is filthy rich. Blaine is even richer. Blaine is blackmailed into an arranged marriage with Kurt, who doesn’t know the truth behind their engagement. Banter, pining, smut, and spending obscene amounts of money ensues.
~~~~~
Indigo dreams by @gleefulpoppet
Blaine Anderson is rich, revered in his profession, and a powerful man in New York. After years of what has become nothing more than a weekly routine, he takes selected clients and models to the trendy, upscale nightclub—Indigo Dreams—to wine, dine and entertain them. What happens when a new dancer takes center stage and captures Blaine’s soul with those beautiful color-changing eyes?
~~~~~
For Richer, For Poorer by @bananacabana
For Blaine, dating has never been easy. Time after time, he ends up with sleazy guys who are only interested in one thing: his impressive bank account. When he meets Kurt, however, Blaine decides to ‘play it poor’, with the hopes that someone might actually like him rather than how much money he earns.
~~~~~
Or the cracky:
Everybody’s Naked & There’s a Country to Run by @coffeegleek
A take on the "prince/king!Blaine and prince/king!Kurt are getting married and have to do it while naked in front of their loyal subjects" trope. It’s pure crack taken seriously. I’m blaming the heat. The fic started as this wisp of an idea and a single funny Kurt line. It was supposed to all be fast paced and instead sometimes dissolves into a bit of world building, exposition, and Kurt feelings. I do try my best and hope that at least some of the jokes and humor land. It also developed a full blown plot that has a beginning and an end.
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Beautiful Distraction
Summary: The heat and humidity in Lemoyne is frustrating. So is laundry. So are emotions. The burgeoning feelings you have for the widow from Colter are making chores difficult.
Ship: Sadie Adler x F!Reader
Word Count: 1.5k
Rating: G, nothing super crazy here just a short fluff piece that popped in my head today.
Notes: My first attempt at a wlw fic and my first attempt at a Red Dead Redemption fic, hope y’all like it!
Also on AO3 here
If there was one thing in this world you hated, it was the humidity of the swamp. If there was one thing you hated more than that, it was laundry. It was your turn on washing duty, the least favorite of the long list of chores that were not your favorite. The washboard scratched up your fingers and staying on your knees made your back hurt. But fair was fair, and it was your turn in rotation.
You’d been with the gang a few months, it wasn’t your first choice. Troubles you’d rather not revisit meant this was the safest place for you. Safety in numbers and all that.
If you’d had it your way, you’d be doing some of the harder work. Feeding the horses or chopping the firewood. You had tended to fields, fed the pigs, gotten dirty for most of your life. If there’s one thing ol’ Grimshaw hated it was dirty.
Then Sadie had shown up, back in Colter, all sadness and heartbreak. You’d felt for her then, tried to be a friend along with the other girls. Figured she’d be gone when you got to Valentine, but she stuck around. Y’all got on like a house on fire; two farm girls in a world of gangsters. For her, it was revenge. For you, it was survival. Tough world out there for a girl with no one to provide.
You understood the need for the gang to lay low, but of all places, why Lemoyne? You thought you’d left this place far behind, after what the raiders had done to your parents’ farm. But here you were again. In the swamp and the stickiness, the humidity making your heavy skirt cling to you as you did the washing. Sweat rolling down your neck but finding no breeze for relief; only adding to the general discomfort of the current times.
This morning Sadie had threatened to murder Pearson over the crap chores she had to do. Arthur had taken her into town with him so she could have some space and, frankly, that made the day kind of boring. You spent most of your time together, doing the chores the other ladies didn’t want to. It was easier to pass the time with a kindred spirit. Something about Sadie just made you happier, when she wasn’t in camp you’d find yourself back on edge again.
You related to her in ways you couldn’t relate to anyone else in camp. Y’all understoodeach other. Understood what it was like to lose people, what it was like to work for a living. You liked her. Maybe a little toomuch.
For years you’d been aware of your inclinations towards women over men. At first, you’d thought it was from a place of jealousy. This girl’s hair was so pretty and looked so soft; or this girl had the prettiest green eyes you’d ever seen and yours were no match for their depth. One woman’s breasts were nicer, or maybe her voice was softer. They were always compared to yourself, without you realizing you weren’t actually jealous at all. Attempts to date men were lackluster at best. You just couldn’t see what the big draw was. Men were coarse and mean, you could count the number of decent ones you’d met on one hand.
Things changed during your twenties. Some drunks in a saloon had offered you and a friend 30 bucks to make out. Flat broke and desperate for food, you did. That’s when you realized that lust and attraction were supposed to have sparks, that those things you’d called jealousy were admiration. You wanted to be the one running your fingers through that pretty and soft hair or staring into those deep green eyes of an old friend or hearing a soft gentle voice whispering in your ear.
Sadie was just something else. The honey blonde hair, the quick and easy laugh, that low country drawl hardened by years of hard work. You’d never met a woman like her, and you were pretty sure you never would again. But these things were still frowned upon, and with her being a widow you were sure she could never feel the same. These had been the thoughts swirling amid your frustrations. The culmination of the heat, the sweat, this place, Grimshaw’s griping, and your unrequited feelings had brewed up the perfect storm.
When you saw Sadie come sauntering back into camp, you felt an even deeper pang of frustration. And saunter was the word for it, she’d gotten some new duds in Rhodes and you couldn’t help but stare. She had her pistol belts swung down low on her hips, her cloud of blonde hair pulled back messily with her wide hat brim covering her eyes. She looked like a hero from the Saint Denis picture shows and you completely lost focus on the washing. You sat there staring, not moving, not daring to.
Now you were certain you’d never meet anyone like her again. The pure audacity she had to have to do that, in this camp full of outlaws. To step up and say Nah, screw you guys and your ‘woman’s work’, I’m gonna be one of you or damn you all to hell; without actually saying a word at all. And now she was walking towards you, and you couldn’t even speak. It was like being caught in the crosshairs.
She flicked the brim of her hat up and turned one corner of her mouth into a mischievous grin as she approached you, “Whatcha think, Y/N? Pretty spiffy huh?” She spun around posing, waiting for your opinion.
“You…you look amazing, Sadie,” you stammered out. She was beautiful; absolutely stunning in fully being herself for the first time since you met her in Colter.
“As long as I look like someone oughta take me seriously,” she laughed as she sat on the ground next to you, propping herself up with her arms behind her back. Her shoulder was uncomfortably close to yours, making any concentration impossible. “I swear, Y/N, these fellas don’t know nothin’. Think if you’re a woman all you’re good for is cookin’ and cleanin’. Grimshaw don’t help none.”
“Everybody’s gotta do their part, I guess,” you say, unable to look away from Sadie’s face. The setting sun was illuminating the loose hair falling from her messy ponytail, giving her an almost angelic glow. She was so fierce, like a wildfire. In quiet moments like these, the bravado faded. You could see her. The softness in her eyes, holding back the hurt she still felt at the loss of her husband. The small smile in the corners of her lips, hinting at happy memories being recalled. The faint flush on her cheeks, highlighting the smattering of freckles from her time outside in the sun. She could tell you so much without saying a word, without even knowing she was telling you at all.
Her eyes always drew you in, bright and hazel, warm like the sun. They practically glittered when she was happy, and you loved seeing that. Like you were seeing it just then.
“You alive in there, Y/N? You’re awfully quiet, and you been starin’ at me for a while.”
Shit. Busted. You were so caught up you hadn’t noticed she’d been looking right back at you. It was strange for you to be at a loss for words, and yet here you were.
“Sorry, Sadie, I guess I was just caught up,” you smile at her apologetically, she just laughs.
“So, tell me honestly, cuz your opinion is the one I care about most here,” she says as she leans in closer to whisper, “Do I actually look cool, or do I look like I’m tryin’ too hard?”
“You’re beautiful, Sadie,” you say almost breathlessly before you can stop yourself. She’s only inches from your face, your mind is in a haze unable to think clearly.
“Ya really think so, Y/N?” she says softly, leaning in even closer.
“Y-Yes…” you stammer, “I’ve always thought so.” You can feel the heat rise to your cheeks. This is a new situation, a completely different Sadie than the one that left camp this morning.
“Glad to hear it,” she said as she stared deep into your eyes. You felt vulnerable, almost naked. Like she could read your innermost thoughts.
Before you could register what was happening, you felt her hand on your chin as she captured your lips in a surprisingly soft kiss. You were frozen, too shocked to react. You still couldn’t quite believe it had happened as she pulled away, smirking.
“I’ll see ya around, Y/N,” she said as she stood to leave. She tipped her hat and walked away towards the tent she shared with Karen, spurs jingling with each step. All you could do was stare.
“I don’t mean to pry,” a voice from behind you said. You turned to see Charles working on a wood carving near the fire; you hadn’t known anyone else was nearby. “If I were you,” he said, “I would go after her.”
That snapped you out of it. Washing abandoned, you set off in search of Sadie.
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Lovely Zen Week | Day 5: Princess and Knight
Hey guys! I’ll probably be in Japan right now, so I won’t be able to reply to your messages or comments ^^; But this fic is inspired by all the k-dramas I watch lmao :))
I started writing about Zen the knight but then I thought...why not make Zen into a Korean knight? ^^ This is purely a work of fiction of course, and details have been altered for the story! ^^ There’ll probably be loads of discrepancies haha but I hope you guys enjoy ♥
Moonlight Part 1
Hyun Ryu dreamed of becoming a Royal Guard
Defending their land, keeping the peace, and watching over the entire kingdom
He lived for it
His family hated it, of course
Why become a servant of the land when you could live in comfort?
His family was not nobility, but they were scholars who did not need to tend the fields or manage the stables
Not servants
Besides, they did not want the extra attention
Having a son with silver hair was embarrassing enough
Why add to their…oddness?
But Hyun saw the chaos and devastation caused by local bandits and pillagers
Saw how foreign men kept visiting their lands, as though they were interested in the prosperous kingdom
And it was one night, when Hyun was in deep sleep
That a dream —no, a nightmare —flooded his mind
Images of their people, running away in fright
Homes burning, children crying, blood staining the grass in the fields
Blood turning the rivers crimson
The blood of his family on his hands
He woke in a drenched sweat, shivering from the horrifying images
A familiar pull in his gut
And he clenched the sheets on his bed
It was no ordinary dream
In the silver-haired teenager's heart, he knew
The dream would become reality one day
So despite his family’s pleas, he enlisted in the kingdom’s army and lived in the Royal Palace
They didn’t know it yet, but he would defend them one day
He would miss them terribly, but he can’t let his dream turn into a reality
So Hyun Ryu trained every day, wanting to be the best guard in the kingdom
The moment he entered the Palace, everybody noticed his unique appearance and his handsome features
The Palace ladies would sneak glances at the young boy who trained with the Imperial Army, trading giggles and exchanging longing sighs
But the ladies’ attention only earned jealous glares from the other guards-in-training
Not to mention Hyun’s superiors
They trained him harder than any of the new recruits
Pushed him to his limits
Until late one night, the young boy sneaks out of their quarters and sits by the small pond in the palace
No one could see him as tall weeds and greenery obscured the pond
Hyun Ryu sits by the edge of the water and winces as the fresh cuts on his arm sting
He takes off the top of his robes and lets out a breath
The fabric of his clothes are making his wounds ache
Hyun looks at the bright moon, his resolve wavering
But he knows he cannot give up now
The memory of the nightmare is still fresh in his mind
And he cannot allow his home to go into ruin like his dream
He would do anything to defend it
As he’s deep in thought, the weeds behind him rustle and he tenses, ready to make a run for it in case his superiors found him
But his eyes widen as he sees a young lady stepping out from behind the weeds
She gasps, eyes wide as she takes in the half-naked young man before her
Sitting there with wide crimson eyes, his handsome features accentuated by the moonlight
The young lady averts her gaze and Hyun hurriedly pulls on his clothes
A hiss escapes him as the wounds sting upon rubbing against the fabric and the young lady is drawn towards him, sneaking a glance towards the young man
She spots the gashes on the young man’s body and she unconsciously steps towards him
“Those look painful,” she comments, looking at his chest, at the small scratch marks
Hyun gives her a pained smile as he slowly pulls on his robes
“I fell a lot of times today. The pebbles on the ground kept scraping against my clothes that I tore them and got the scratches. Don’t worry though,” he chuckles, “I heal really fast.”
Then he realizes he’s in the presence of a lady of the palace —one of the court ladies in training?
“A-ah, I’m sorry!” he exclaims but the young lady touches his hand, stopping him from completely putting on his robes
“I can help you,” she says, meeting his gaze
Hyun Ryu gulps
Her hazel eyes are gentle, her hands soft against his callused one
And he lets his clothes fall back down, revealing his upper body to her
The young lady reaches into her clothes and pulls out a small box
“I fall a lot too,” she tells him, not looking at him as she opens the box and dips her slender fingers into some sort of cream
“So one of the physicians gave this to me as a gift, to help with the wounds.”
Hyun inhales sharply as her fingers touch the gashes on his arms
Then he relaxes as the cool cream soothes his wounds, her light touch sending a thousand bolts of electricity throughout his body
It’s as though his senses are heightened; but he can’t notice anything else but her
Her flawless pale skin
The curve of her neck
The shape of her lips
Those mesmerizing eyes…
“What’s your name?” he asks her, his curiosity burning
The girl finally looks at him and smiles
“My name is MC, how about you?”
“I’m Hyun Ryu,” he replies, smiling back at her
“I’m sorry for troubling you, Miss MC.”
“Oh no, it’s alright! I’m glad I can help,” she says to him, moving on to his other wounds. “And please, call me MC.”
“MC,” Hyun says again, liking the way her name sounded
“What are you doing here this late at night, MC? It’s quite dangerous to roam the palace at night.”
MC laughs, “I could say the same about you, Hyun Ryu.”
“Well, I’m going to be a royal guard,” Hyun replies.
“But you’re not yet a guard, so you have no permission to be here as well.”
Hyun chuckles, “Then this will be our little secret~”
MC grins but then her cheeks turn pink and Hyun’s heart does weird flips inside his chest
“A-ah, Hyun…your chest.”
Hyun looks down and notices that she had put the cream all over his wounds, except for the ones on his chest
He turns red as well
“You don’t have to do that, MC,” he says, suddenly feeling nervous, “I already feel ten times better!”
He pulls on his clothes as MC settles into the space beside him
He looks at her and she’s staring at the moon
Hyun wanted to ask what she is thinking, but decides against it; it isn’t any of his business, and he doesn’t want to scare her away by forcing her to talk to him
So the two settled into a comfortable silence as they watch the moon together
After half an hour has passed, Hyun is startled by a hand tugging at his clothes
When he looks at her, MC hands him the box
“A gift,” she tells him, “for keeping me company tonight.”
Then she gets to her feet
“Wait!” he calls softly
“…Can I see you again, MC?”
MC blushes but a small smile plays on her lips
“Perhaps. Good night, Hyun Ryu. Good luck on the training grounds tomorrow!”
He did see her again after that night though
They met up once a week, when the moon was at its highest point in the sky
And they sat by the pond and talked about the most trivial of things
He chuckles as he recalls her words to him during one of their meetings
“Zen.”
“What?”
“You can call me Zen.”
“Why would I call you that, Hyun?”
“Because we can’t reveal our relationship, jagiya. But if you’re in trouble and you need me, just scream out ‘Zen!’ and I will hear you no matter where I am. I’ll run to you and protect you.”
“…Zen sounds like a funny name.”
“Hm? You think it’s funny? Well, I can always think of a different n—“
“I love it.”
“Oh? You do? Jagi, do you mean it?”
MC giggles
“Yes…I love everything about you…Zen.”
Hyun never felt happier in his entire life before
He trains as hard as he can during the day, wanting to be stronger, enduring all the hardships his superiors puts him through
And every night he would lay in his cot, imagining her face in his mind
Excitedly awaiting their next encounter
He already knows it
He is in-love with this wonderful court lady
Even though it is against the rules to have relationships with anybody in the palace
Suddenly, he wishes they were both free from the palace
So they could live a peaceful life together without rules between them
But his dream still haunts him and he holds onto the faces of his family
And he vows to himself that he will save his family and his country first before asking for her hand in marriage
He is finally given a task
All his hard work paid off and despite all the bullying from his comrades and superiors, Hyun Ryu managed to earn their respect
He never gave up and he worked twice as hard as anybody in the army
Due to his age, he would be assigned to guard one of the royal family instead of performing the more dangerous tasks
But if he manages to fulfill his duties well, they may promote him to a higher rank
Hyun can’t wait to tell her all about it
But for now, he makes his way towards a different part of the palace
To where the king’s consorts stayed, along with the other princes and princesses
He reaches the quarters he has been told to guard and he nods to the guard he’s about to relieve from duty
When suddenly, the doors to the pavilion opens
And he stops in his tracks
Because there she is…
MC
Dressed...in regal clothes…
Hyun nearly drops his sword
MC raises her eyes as she descends the stairs, and their gazes meet
He could see her surprise written all over her beautiful face as well
Her foot misses the next step in her shock
And her court ladies scream as MC falls
But Hyun runs forward, dropping his sword to the ground as he reaches for her
MC falls forward and he catches her in his arms, her face dangerously close to his
A blush appears on her face and Hyun is about to speak when the court ladies scream and hurry towards MC
“Princess! Are you alright?”
Princess
Oh God
P R I N C E S S
She tries to stand and Hyun assists her, but she winces and Hyun panics
“M—Princess,” he catches himself before focusing on her, “Are you okay?”
“My foot —it feels like I twisted it,” MC replies
“Princess, let me assist you,” he tells her, before wrapping an arm around her shoulders then bending down and scooping her legs with his other arm, carrying her in his arms
The court ladies assist him into laying her down on her bed but MC isn’t even thinking of the pain at the moment
She’s looking at him, his face merely inches from her, his expression filled with worry
Her heart pounds against her chest as she feels his strong arms around her, lifting her as though she weighed nothing
She’s never seen him in his uniform before, but she knows she will be dreaming about Hyun Ryu like this from now on
He sets her down gently and she resists the urge to cling to him, to ask him never to let her go
But…
But he must hate her now
She never told him she is a princess
A daughter of a concubine…But a princess nonetheless
But how could she tell him? She cherished those nights with him
Would he have treated her the same if he had known she is royalty?
Hyun Ryu looks at her and she stares back at those crimson eyes before he bows and runs off, probably to call the royal physician
MC wonders if it’s the last time she’ll ever be able to talk to him again
…and if it is, then she just lost her chance to tell him her true feelings
Aaaaaaaand I didn’t have enough time to finish this ^^; I still have some stuff in store for this fic and I will finish it when I get home! <3 Sorry for the cliffhanger! ;;; See you guys again in a few days! ^^ <3
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wish upon a scintilla of hope
word count: 4849 worth of fluff and idk like 5% of chensung because they’re such cute best friends
a/n: i spent so long on this only @simplyaroha knows. jael i’m so sorry for keeping you waiting LOL. and i want to gift @chenleplanet with this because ryne your love for chenle is unreal and ily <3 i also want to gift @jenoist with this as vivi you’re the nicest and you make me cry jscudnvifjsdb ily2. lastly, gifting you, a reader, with this because i’m thankful that you’re reading this (or going to?). if this is my first fic you’re reading then hello i hope you stay and read my future tales ahaha. if this isn’t the first then hey!! thanks so much for staying. i really appreciate it! merry early christmas everybody. p.s. italicised words are for dream talks and texts in case you get confused
chenle clapping cuz i finally finished this thousand weeks long thing. gif belongs to @nakamotens :) there’s already a watermark on the gif but i’m just doing what’s right
The 11th night of each month—the only night when you don’t dream. Tons of people labour under the misapprehension that they don’t dream every night, but that’s simply because they don’t remember what they were dreaming of.
Tonight, an endless tenebrosity stretches before you.
You think of ‘Hey’, and immediately the word appears in the darkness, faint and in the colour of snow.
There’s no reply. Which sucks as this means you’ll have to spend the next seven hours or so in total nothingness, unless the person at the other end of the country (or world, you don’t know for sure) answers you. It should’ve been somewhere near an hour when a foggy yet enthusiastic ‘Hi!’ comes into view.
Sorry, I was catching up on some homework, it continues.
What time is it? you think instantly.
My phone tells me it was 1:04 am the last time I saw it.
You should start going to bed earlier, loser, you respond.
Communicating with soulmates would’ve been a lot easier if names aren’t eschewed. You’ve tried thinking about the most uncommon names, but they refuse to come to light. This explains why you and your soulmate decided to call each other ‘loser’ on the fourth encounter a few months ago. It’s not the cutest, but it’ll have to do.
Don’t tell me what to do, loser.
Fine. What do YOU want to do?
I don’t know.
You sigh, if that’s even possible at this moment. Do people sigh while dreaming? You assume they do. Tell me more about yourself then. The only thing I know about you is that you’re an annoying boy.
His reply comes a little late. You got the gender right but the adjective wrong. Now let me go to sleep.
You’re already sleeping, dork.
You can almost hear him chuckle. You feel a wistful longing for his voice.
I’m just kidding. What do you want to know about me? His words emerge, a colon and right bracket following close. They join the string of words disappearing above.
The hall is snug after walking in the icy wind outside. The assembly that all students attend religiously will begin in a few minutes. Your eyes dart from one student to another, in search of a boy with lilac hair. But he finds you first.
“I’m right here, Y/N!” Chenle yells, clamping his hands on your shoulders with the largest grin on his face.
“I wasn’t looking for you,” you say, turning around to face him.
His smile seems to get wider if that’s feasible. “Yeah, I believe you.”
You know you’ve lost when a smile threatens to surface.
Every school year starts off with students sitting according to their classes. However, by mid-February (sometimes earlier), the rule is long broken with students scattered everywhere in the hall with their companions from other classes or grades. One clear example is a senior hanging out with a junior, and in this case, Mark and Donghyuck, who are laughing over the funniest joke they’ve ever heard.
“Let’s go look for Jisung,” Chenle says. He clasps your wrist and pushes through the crowd. You feel a strong beat of your heart, something you experience whenever he does that. His touch feels like wearing gloves on a snowy winter day, tucking yourself under a blanket on a cold winter night. You shake your head. You shouldn’t be feeling like this. You can’t be feeling like this. Chenle isn’t your soulmate.
But… It’s okay to prefer someone to your soulmate, right?
You decide that it’s wrong as soon as the question slips. This feeling for Chenle, you convince yourself, is patently temporary. Besides, Chenle doesn’t like you in that way. It’s indubitable.
It also feels extremely strange to enjoy being around someone so much, especially if that someone isn’t who you talk to every 11th night of the month.
Maybe you don’t even like Chenle. So what if you feel accomplished when he laughs heartily at your jokes? So what if your eyes light up every time you see someone with lilac hair on the street (not very often), only to be disappointed when said person wasn’t who you thought it was? So what if you associate love songs with him? So what if your stomach flutters whenever he grabs your hand? So what—
“Y/N? Y/N!” Chenle waves his hand before your face. You blink at him.
“You okay? You seem to be deep in thought,” he continues. He has no idea.
He waves to Jisung. The latter has two empty seats beside him, and he beckons both of you over.
The hall is calmer than before, with most already seated down. Chenle sits between you and Jisung. They start talking about everything imaginable, frequently laughing mid-sentence. Your heart melts at this exuberant duo, and you often catch yourself staring at the older of the pair.
Someone catches you doing so too.
“Somebody’s real busy.”
You snap out of your reverie to see Jisung looking at you knowingly.
Chenle has a look of confusion and embarrassment on his face. “Are we boring you?”
You shake your head just as the principal taps on the microphone twice.
“I’m sorry. I know this isn’t really your thing,” Chenle resumes. At this point, you don’t even know what he’s talking about in the first place.
“It’s okay, Chenle,” you reassure him. “You— Both of you never bore me.”
You spend the next hour listening to the principal drone on about God knows what and stealing glances at a boy with lilac hair and inappropriate laughter.
“What’s your soulmate like?” Chenle asks you from his desk. His highlighter is poised over a page of his science textbook as he waits for a reply.
You look up from your calculus worksheet and eye him sceptically from where you’re sitting on the wooden floor of his bedroom. “That’s new.”
“I’m just curious.”
You turn your attention back to the paper resting on your lap as his question replays in your head. You’re at his house studying for a test, mainly to seek for warmth. It isn’t snowing, but it’s freezing. You’d left your house keys on your desk and aren’t keen to be outdoors making beats with your teeth. Also, no one will be home until dusk.
“He’s nice,” you murmur. “Funny.”
Chenle goes back to highlighting some texts, occasionally writing on Post-it notes. “Do you, uh, like him?”
If you were brave, you would say, “No. I like you.”
But you aren’t, so you say, “I guess.”
Chenle’s tense shoulders sag. He leans his back on the chair, tapping his pen on the edge of his desk.
“What about you? Do you like your soulmate?” you question. You look at the naked trees outside with gnawing uneasiness in your stomach.
“Yeah"—his cheeks redden slightly—"but I…
“Nothing. We’re supposed to be studying.” He pulls his chair closer to the desk and uncaps another highlighter. You want to argue that he’d started talking first but decided against it.
The next time he talks to you is to ask you what you want to have for dinner.
You spend your days taking tests, hanging out with friends, and being muddled by Chenle’s behaviour.
“Did I say something wrong?” You and Jisung are standing outside the soccer field, the question accompanied by your foggy breath tumbling out your mouth before you can stop it. Jisung stops observing the senior practising his kicks and turns his head to look at you.
“What?”
“It’s nothing. Chenle’s just being strange.”
Jisung clears his throat. “He is?”
You spot Chenle running wildly on the field, engaged in a friendly match with some sophomores.
“Not now. But when we’re alone he becomes awkward.”
“Maybe he, I don’t know, likes you?” Jisung pushes his bangs out of his face. “How’s alone time with him?”
You look down at the ground, fingers gripping the fence, face pink from the cold and something else. “Don’t phrase it that way.”
“Here comes lover boy.”
You grimace at his words. Chenle skips towards you and Jisung, his hair sticking to his forehead and shirt soaked in sweat despite the numbing temperature. Jisung wraps a towel around the older and helps him put on his coat. “That was fun. Thanks for waiting for me.”
Chenle reaches for your hand and freezes at once.
Jisung doesn’t seem to notice anything. He takes off first, shoving his hands in his winter coat. “Remind me to hit you when I can feel my hands again.”
Chenle chuckles, and you can’t say you relate to Jisung. It feels like you’re touching hot coal.
Chenle once told you receiving coals for Christmas wasn’t bad at all. “Just burn them and roast marshmallows.”
You had watched the fire flicker through his eyes.
Chenle’s hair is dyed a hazelnut brown colour when you see him in school. It’s as if your lungs are caught in a mesh and entangled. The air feels thick and suffocating.
“What do you think?” is the first thing he says when your eyes meet.
You force yourself to breathe. “What happened to lilac hair? That was such a look, man.”
“I got tired of people giving me weird looks.”
And why would people do that? You can’t understand why a change of his hair colour has this big of an effect on you.
You shrug, trying to look nonchalant. “It looks good on you.”
You nearly miss the way his face reddens as he looks down at his dirty Converse.
“Y/N…
Y/N.
Y/N!”
“What do you want, Chenle?”
“Look at me.”
He raises his right hand up to your left cheek and draws comforting, tingly circles with his thumb. Then he’s leaning in, closer. He looks at you through half-closed lids before coming closer. Closer.
“Y/N. I…”
You feel your heart throbbing loudly in your ears, like drums beating on the street during festivals.
You don’t feel anything on your lips. But your eyes stay closed.
“Y/N.”
You love hearing your name roll so effortlessly off his tongue. You love it. You love him.
“Y/N. I—”
“You what?”
“I swear if you don’t get up right now I’ll really kill you!”
You shoot up from your laying position, your hair a mess and your eyes swollen with sleep. Jisung stands at the foot of your bed, his hands on his hips as he lours at you.
“What are you doing in my room?” you ask, groggy.
“Are you serious?”
You free your legs from your woollen blanket and shudder when your feet touch the gelid floor.
“We were supposed to study at Chenle’s, remember?” Jisung sighs. “Clearly not.”
You give him a bashful smile, eyeing the bedroom doorway.
Jisung taps his foot impatiently. “He isn’t here. He’s helping his mum with groceries.”
“I wasn't—”
“Just get ready and meet us at his place, Y/N.” He gives you one last look before disappearing down the hallway. “Your face is red. Do you want me to open the windows?”
“I thought you were joking!” You uncap the half-filled bottle then cap it after a second. “Who associates Jisung with textbooks and homework?”
Jisung throws a tiny ball of paper at you. “Judgemental. I do study.”
“Stop it, you two,” Chenle chuckles. “Let’s actually get stuff done. We can also ask Y/N since she’s the smartest one here.”
“She is?” Jisung snorts. He earns a punch on the arm from you while your face glows with embarrassment.
So the three of you study. Chenle and Jisung have tests on different subjects this week but you don’t. You work on your assignment, which is a research on a historical building. Apart from occasional questions from the duo, the room is otherwise quiet. It’s slowly getting dark, the sun dipping below the horizon.
You look at Chenle discreetly. His eyelids are pink from him rubbing them. He looks cute when he’s serious and focused. There’s a knock on the door before Chenle’s mum pops her head into the room and smiles. “Dinner’s ready if any of you are hungry. Don’t overwork yourselves, alright?”
There are hums and nods, then the room is quiet again. It can’t have been more than five minutes when Jisung says, “Guys! It’s snowing!”
Turns out there are only little specks of snow, much to everyone’s (Jisung’s) disappointment. With the assignment and scrawled notes forgotten in Chenle’s bedroom, you and the pair stand outside just in case white flakes fall again, wriggling about to stay warm.
“This is annoying,” Jisung groans.
Chenle nudges him playfully. “There are a lot more days to come, Jisung.”
Jisung merely shrugs and says he’s hungry. Everyone trudges back into the house, relieved to soak in its warmth.
It’s late when Jisung leaves Chenle’s house, which is starting to slowly lose its heat. The sky is an inky black but there are no visible stars due to the light-polluted city that Chenle lives in. You sit on his cabin bed, head tilted towards the night sky, watching a scintilla in the midst of the darkness.
Your eyes drift to Chenle. He yawns and rubs his eyes for the nth time.
“Hey,” you say softly. “Take a break.”
He stifles another yawn, pushes his arms in the air and stretches. “My mum will murder me if I fail this class again.”
“She did tell us not to overwork ourselves.”
His smile appears. He pushes his chair back and ambles towards the bed to sit beside you. “What are you doing?” He bumps his shoulder against yours.
You point to the tiny spark in the sky.
“Ooh,” he gushes. “Let’s make a wish.”
“That’s not a shooting star, Chenle.”
“That’s fine. I made a wish at camp last year when I thought I saw one. Until I realised it was Renjun throwing a piece of trash across the campsite.”
One end of Chenle’s lips is lifted, and soon both of you are collapsing into gales of laughter.
“What did you wish for?” Chenle asks.
You shake your head, grinning. “Secret.”
It’s the 11th night of the month again. You go to bed quite early, feeling completely knackered from interminable assignments. You wait and wait, looking at lyrics of your favourite song arise as you think of it.
This soulmate of yours sure sleeps late.
All of a sudden, a Hey pops up.
Hi, you reply in your head.
Sorry, I forgot that it’s the 11th.
I have a question.
What is it?
You pause, letting the words disappear as they go higher. You think of your question. Do you like anybody?
Yeah.
He awaits what you have for him next.
Then, have you confessed to that person?
No. I’m too scared to do that.
How do you cope?
Uh, I have a blog where I write what I want to say to her. Yeah, it’s cheesy so go ahead and laugh at me.
You feel yourself smiling. No it’s not. It’s cute.
I can show you it if you want. No one knows about it except for my best friend, only because I foolishly left the page open while I went to the bathroom. That’s how embarrassed I feel about it. But now you know.
I’m honoured.
The website and username he uses show up in a minute. You know the website well, however, he has an odd username—practically like everyone on this planet. It reminds you of Chenle with his strange usernames for all eight of his accounts.
“Why 'dirtykitchenfloor’?” you had choked out. “'terrifyingpickle’. I’m leaving.”
Chenle had grabbed your hand, all but laughing. “Don’t. I have six more.”
You there? These two words knock you back to the blackness.
Yeah. I was thinking about some stuff.
Like the person you like?
What? No. Thanks for reminding me though, I’ll go think about him now.
HAHAHA—pause—well have fun. I’ll be here, roaming.
You imagine the lilac-now-hazelnut hair boy standing beside you outside in the snowy city. The street lamp winks as snow starts to pile up atop and around it. His hair is sprinkled with stardust and snowflakes. His eyes twinkle and his hand feels like a cup of hot chocolate. The fallen snow feels soft beneath your shoes.
Everything feels right.
“I think I’m in love,” Jisung says dreamily.
It’s a frosty afternoon, and you find yourself again with Jisung and Chenle, everyone either sprawled on Jisung’s bed or floor. Drinks and bags of snacks litter the ground. No one pays attention to them.
A weird noise escapes Chenle’s mouth. “With who?”
“My soulmate.”
You snigger and say, “They’re called soulmates for a reason.” You then remember that Chenle isn’t yours. You also don’t know if it’s bad that your soulmate likes someone else. You figure it isn’t, knowing you’re not breaking any hearts around here and you like someone else too.
Jisung prattles on about his soulmate. You nod blankly, and catch Chenle gazing at you. He points to Jisung covertly before shaking his head and rolling his eyes. There’s a beam on your face.
“You aren’t even listening to me,” Jisung groans. “Stop flirting with each other.”
“At least I have someone to flirt with,” Chenle sneers.
A thick shade of red mantles your cheeks. “S-stop talking nonsense.”
Chenle looks at you the way a child would look when he’s caught going through presents on the night before Christmas. A reddish hue branches out across his fair complexion.
Jisung’s frown steadily turns into a soft knowing smile. “Since I’m done talking about my amazing love life, it’s your turn. The smarter person starts first.”
The branch tapping on the windows is the only thing disturbing Jisung’s hushed bedroom. You wonder why he hasn’t gotten rid of it. You’d find it difficult to fall asleep on a blustery night.
“So none of you are smart? Not a surprise to me, I guess,” Jisung teases.
“My soulmate has a blog where he writes what he wants to say to the person he likes down,” you begin, ignoring Jisung’s raillery.
Jisung lets out an impressed-sounding “huh” the same time Chenle says, “That’s stupid.”
A grim line forms on your mouth as you stare at him. “I don’t think it is.”
"Really?” Chenle coughs deliberately. “That seems so cowardly.” Jisung cocks his head a little to the right twice out of habit, a small smile playing on his lips as he watches the exchange between you and Chenle. “I think it’s stupid too,” the younger of the pair blurts out.
Chenle glares at Jisung. “No, it’s not.”
“You said it was! I’m just agreeing with you.”
“I’m just… just agreeing with Y/N.”
You snicker as they start to banter. They stop and stare at you, and soon the room is filled with three friends who are attacked by uncontrollable laughter.
Jisung wipes at his eyes and after he’s calmed down, he says, “I wanna love like Y/N’s soulmate.”
“Me too,” Chenle says, albeit having a faraway look in his eyes.
“Don’t you already?”
“Sh-shut up!”
“Sh-shut up!” Jisung mimics. Chenle simply gets up and flicks Jisung’s forehead. He whines in pain and flicks the former back. You sit up on the spot on Jisung’s bed and smile.
Happy. Happy is what you feel.
You don’t know how you or Chenle do it, but it’s three in the morning when you finally shut your laptop and let out a wavering cry. “I’m done. Spent.”
“Let’s get some sleep.” Chenle yawns, lumbering to his bed and pulling the sheets over his entire body.
“Throw me a pillow and blanket.”
“What?” Chenle peers at you. “You’re not sleeping on the floor. It’s not carpeted and it’s freezing.”
“I’ll be fine, worrywart.”
“Who even says that?” He gives you a blue pillow dotted with white clouds and a soft blanket. “You wanna swap spots instead?”
“Go to sleep, Chenle.” You tuck yourself under the blanket, which comes with his scent and a hint of flowery laundry detergent. With heavy and teary eyes from yawning too much, you lie facing the ceiling, the floor a tad cold for comfort. Your mind threatens to drag you to sleep, until a weak voice breaks the silence of the night.
“Are you asleep?”
“Yes,” you mumble, your eyes shut, hardly able to contemplate what you’re saying.
He laughs lightly. “I can’t sleep. Talk to me.”
“Nice.”
“Y/N.”
“Chenle,” you mutter, pulling the blanket up till it covers your chin.
“Cat.”
“Dolphin.”
Right now you’re starting to wake up. You lie on your side and prop the side of your head in your palm, facing him. He mirrors your position.
“I actually hate you,” you quip.
“No you don’t.”
“Right for once.”
He closes his eyes, his head drooping. You study his soft features, feeling your eyes beginning to close again. Your head hits the pillow and you pull the blanket over your shoulder. Your teeth chatter slightly, but that’s okay—you’re too tired to care anyway.
You wake up when the sky is still black and starless. Chenle’s scent seems to have gotten stronger. You sit up, using your elbows as support, only to see the bed empty and rumpled. Something breathes against your arm, and you almost smack yourself from pulling back too fast.
There you see Chenle curled up beside you on the ground like a foetus. His blanket is thrown over you, but it’s riding off his body, his tummy exposed to the cold. You remove his blanket from yourself and cover him up to the neck. He stirs but stays asleep, sighing with satisfaction.
“You’re an odd one,” you whisper in the unlit room. “I don’t mind it one bit.”
You mirror his position this time, dreams taking you on different adventures—all of them with this boy who makes you feel warmer this winter.
“You chose to sleep on the floor when you have a bed,” you say between munches of your cereal the next morning.
“I didn’t choose.” Chenle dips his bread in your bowl of milk. “I fell off the bed.”
“Ha ha. Remind me to laugh again later.”
Tap tap.
Jisung stands at the door. Chenle opens it to reveal him clad in a sweater, coat and fuzzy pants with matching shoes.
“Pfft, what are you wearing?” you joke. You spoon some cereal into your mouth.
“Yes good morning and thanks for inviting me to the sleepover,” Jisung says, throwing his bag on the floor and plopping himself down on the high stool opposite you.
Chenle returns to the stool to your left. He pulls his bread apart and waves a piece at Jisung. “You turned us down!”
“Oh right. Because you two are boring.”
“And somehow you like hanging out with us?” you say with amusement.
“Whatever,” Jisung says. “So… are the two of you a thing now?”
Chenle splutters on his juice, orange liquid flying out his mouth. You feel the heat on your face even though the cold air that followed Jisung in is still lingering in the kitchen.
“Are you okay?” Jisung laughs, slapping him on the back.
You rub your temples. “It’s too early for this.”
“I thought you talked things through last night.”
“Just shut up, Jisung. Eat your cereal,” Chenle rebukes. He hops off the stool to go wash his mouth at the sink. Jisung shakes his head in disappointment.
can you come out now? reads Chenle’s text at 12 in the morning.
You compose a new message. I don’t plan on getting murdered by either one of my parents tonight
please
omg fine. why are you here so late
i just wanted to see you
Your heart leaps in your chest. ok chenle.
You drape your woollen blanket around you and lift your window up, feeling like those furtive teenagers in movies. An icy gust of wind slaps your cheeks, but the coldness dissipates when you see Chenle stomping on the crunchy ice on the gravel path outside, his hands shoved deep into his coat pocket.
“You okay?” you say after jumping from your window sill (cautiously).
“Can I ask you a question?” he says with foggy breath.
“Yeah. I mean we’re already here.”
He closes his eyes and gulps. “Can I kiss you?”
“Chenle…”
He blocks your view by putting his hand before your eyes. “Don’t look at me. I’m embarrassed.”
You grab his arm with your shaky one and pull him towards you. He’s so close your cloudy breaths mingle. It’s a test to see who makes the first move.
He does.
And your lips feel like it’s on fire.
He really is an odd one, but you don’t mind it one bit.
You fall asleep with pink cheeks that night and the feeling of Chenle’s hand at the back of your neck, spreading warmth throughout your body.
Hey loser. I kissed him. You’re starting off bold tonight. You couldn’t care less.
In a split second, your reply comes. Really?
Yes, really.
How was it?
It was… I don’t know.
Like you were going to melt? Like you were floating with the clouds?
Yes. Very much.
I felt like that too.
You think of the winter spice jelly sitting in the fridge, knowing completely how it feels. Because you’re just as stiff as it is.
You refuse to analyse the words. Ohh, you kissed her too?
I did. I went to her house 30 minutes before it turned 12. Stood outside considering if I should just go home and keep my feelings bottled up forever, or put our friendship at risk by doing it.
You feel like tearing up. I think you did the right thing.
Me too.
You search for the hazelnut hair boy in the crowded hall. It’s been tougher as almost everyone has that same hair colour. Mark and Donghyuck are chaffing each other; a group of juniors—Renjun, Jeno and Jaemin—enters the hall, chatting incessantly. Pretty much a common sight to see.
A hand rests on your shoulder from behind.
“I know I know,” Chenle grins. “You weren’t looking for me.”
“You knew?” you ask. Both of you move to a less packed area.
He nods. “But it was after I told you about the blog.”
“Why didn’t you say something?”
“I thought you were smart enough to figure it out.”
You scoff, but a smile forces its way onto your face.
“I guess I’m smarter than you in some way,” he adds, punching you lightly on the biceps.
“Guys!” Jisung bounces towards you and Chenle. He eyes you suspiciously, before moving his attention to Chenle. “So… Are you two a thing now?”
You exchange glances with Chenle.
“Shut up, Jisung.”
Jisung doesn’t get an actual answer, but you’re sure he knows when he laughs with you and Chenle.
“I can’t believe you have a blog filled with your feelings about me,” you tease. “How cheesy.”
“Can we not talk about that now?” Chenle groans, covering his face with his hands. “You said it was cute.”
“It is.”
“I’ll just delete it later and stop liking you.”
You reach for his hands, fisting and trapping them in your palms. “No. I need to read it when you start losing feelings for me.”
“Then I guess you won’t be reading it at all.”
You and Chenle walk under the jet black sky side by side, enjoying the wind’s whispers. His tickles your palm with his pinky and says, “I have more stuff I want to say to you.”
“Go ahead.”
“You’ll have to wait for the 11th.”
You realise your wish came true even before you made it.
a/n: hey!! you made it to the end! for this i want to say thank you once again and i hope you enjoyed this. low-key found the part where renjun threw trash across the campsite funny LOL
#nct#nct dream#nct scenarios#chenle scenarios#nct chenle#zhong chenle#nct fluff#chenle fluff#soulmate#soulmate!au#it's 6 am rip#jet lagged ok#falalalala lalalala
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Kings and Queens {Epilogue}
Summary: A Throne of Glass AU inspired by the Breakfast Club (1985). Five students come together for Saturday detention, and realize they are not all that different. You can read previous chapters here.
Author’s Note: I hope you all have liked my story. I loved writing it, and I truly hope it made each of you smile, and feel. Thank you, thank you, thank you for reading, and uplifting me along the way.
Announcement: On October 31, on one of my favorite holidays, I will be starting a new fic called, The Prince and the Princess. It is a prequel to Kings and Queens and will follow Aelin and Rowan, during the summer they spent together before Sophomore year. It will be deeper and more intricate than this fic, and I am very excited to share it with all of you.
As for the epilogue.....Enjoy. :)
Dorian
6:45 p.m.
I was hiding in the pantry.
Aedion’s house was as nice as I expected it to be. His mother had inherited a lot of money when his grandmother died, he had said, and the house was the icing on top of the cake.
Everyone could go anywhere they wanted, except the upstairs bedroom at the end of the hall.
That’s my mother’s room, he’d explained as we were setting up stacks of red solo cups next to a huddle of glass bottles filled with alcoholic beverages I had only heard of, accidentally, while scrolling on the internet. She’s at her boyfriend’s tonight…..but, it’s just better not to go in there. Trust me.
I did. Trust him. So, I would stay away, and enforce the rule to the others as well.
“People typically show up around seven,” he had smiled only moments before, popping the top off a beer and taking a swig. “Although, people also like to be fashionably late.”
I tried to nod enthusiastically, seeming confident and ready. But I ended up telling him I was going to search for the chips we had bought at the supermarket, and ended up in the pantry, instead.
“Deep breaths, Dorian,” I muttered to myself. “Shit. Who am I kidding…..I’m going to vomit.”
“Dorian?” a knock came from the other side of the sliding door. “You get lost looking for the chips? Because they’re on the counter. You know, where you put them an hour ago.”
He opened the door, not waiting for me to reply, and gave me a withering look. “I can take you home, if you want.”
“No.” I sighed, shaking my head. “No, I’m not going home.”
Aedion had said I could stay with him for as long as I needed to, and I was grateful for his offer. I still felt dirty, though. Rebellious. Not necessarily in a bad way……Just in a way I didn’t know how to handle.
“I’m fine,” I lied. “I’m fine, I’m good, I’m great.”
“You’re also a terrible liar.”
“Thank you,” I choked out, as the doorbell rang.
Nearly twenty times in a row.
“Don’t worry,” Aedion grinned as I froze. “There is only one person who rings my doorbell so obnoxiously.”
Aelin let herself in, Rowan in tow, before Aedion could even take a step toward the door.
“Dorian!” she smiled, her cheeks rosy from the cold breeze. Rowan probably had something to do with it, too, judging from the raspberry patches along the base of her neck. “Ready to enjoy yourself?”
What did that even mean? “I – yes.”
“Add a little oomph and you’ll almost sound confident,” she winked.
Yeah. I was going to faint.
Aelin
7:00 p.m.
Rowan and I had spent the afternoon in his apartment, which he lived in alone, and could afford thanks to his parent’s will, in which they left him a great deal of cash. He seemed to be doing okay by himself, considering. He didn’t have much, but that’s because he didn’t need much (his words, not mine). I didn’t argue, though. Not as he heated me up a warm bowl of chicken noodle soup and sat on his futon, talking to one another about everything that had happened in the last few years, and kissing until our lips grew chapped.
When we got to Aedion’s, I was surprised, and equally impressed, to find Dorian there. He looked sick, but that was to be expected. He was there, though.
And I assumed he was never going back home, because what he would find if he did….
“Here,” I grabbed a glass bottle off the counter and popped the top. “Drink this.”
Hesitantly, he grabbed the bottle. He took a sip……and spit it right back out.
“Ignore the taste,” I laughed. “Trust me, it gets better if you keep drinking.”
“Peer pressure,” he mumbled as he took a heavy drink.
I wasn’t sure if I was worried or impressed that it took so little convincing on my part.
Aedion was pacing back and forth, glancing at the clock every other minute.
He was waiting for Lysandra.
“She’ll come,” I whispered, so that only he could hear, just before the doorbell rang again.
After running to the door, then trying to play it cool, Aedion opened the heavy wooden slab only to find a herd of his teammates, along with their lady friends
Either his popularity was not too much damaged by the rumors, or no one in their right mind would turn down a hot party and free booze.
As people began to flood in, Rowan pulled me aside. “Hey.”
“Hi,” I grinned, taking his hand as he pulled me around the corner, into the hallway that led to the garage door.
His lips pressed against mine, hungrily, before he graced me with a smile. “Has it been an hour yet?”
Let’s only stay for an hour, I had said, before hopping out of his truck. Then, take me back home….
The word home had just slipped out, but I couldn’t help it. Being with him earlier did feel like home. More than staying with Arobynn ever had. It felt safe, and warm, and loving, and honest. I never wanted to be anywhere different.
Rowan had just smiled at me, and brushed my hair behind my ear. I would love to take you back home, Fireheart.
“We’ve been here five minutes,” I laughed, leaning up to kiss his cheek. “I’ll make you a deal: Beat me in beer pong, and we can be gone in thirty minutes.”
He pretended to take this into heavy consideration, rubbing his chin with his thumb and forefinger. Then, “Deal.”
Rowan
7:20 p.m.
Aelin was much better at beer pong than expected. She must have had quite a bit of practice.
Or luck.
Then again, I was distracted. I couldn’t keep my eyes off her, couldn’t stop thinking about our afternoon wrapped in one another’s arms.
She knew it, too, which is why she kept leaning down with her elbows on the kitchen table…..so that I could see directly down the center of her tank top.
Tease.
I called her as much.
You like it, she mouthed back.
I did.
“Damn,” Aedion whistled, coming up beside me and tossing an arm around my shoulder. “You’re getting your ass kicked. Wasted yet?”
If someone would have told me the day before that I would be laughing at something Aedion Ashryver said to me, that I would actually enjoy his company….I would have slapped them in the face before walking away.
But, I laughed. “Not yet.”
Although a slight buzz was coming on.
“Get used to it,” Aedion shook his head. “Aelin likes to win.” He glanced where I was staring, at the ivory skin and black bra, and rolled his eyes. “Good luck.”
“Oh shit.”
I turned, and blinked, surprised to find that the words had come from Dorian.
I waved my hand in front of his face, but he remained staring into space, his mouth hanging open.
“Uh, Dorian?”
Nothing.
“Are you okay?”
When he refused to answer again, I followed his gaze.
In the doorway of the kitchen stood a white-haired, golden eyed beauty.
Manon Blackbeak.
“Uh,” Aelin called from across the table, above the music and the noise. “Is Dorian okay?”
“I’ve got this,” Aedion winked, tossing his arm around Dorian while holding a red solo cup in the opposite hand. “Come, young Dorian.”
Aelin groaned. “Poor Dorian. Aedion is not as smooth as he thinks he is.”
Maybe I was wasted, or maybe I had simply forgotten what it was like to feel joy, but I looked at Aelin Galathynius and laughed, harder than I had in a long, long time.
Lysandra
8:00 p.m.
I didn’t want to seem too eager.
I told myself I would arrive at 7:45…..
I’d been standing outside the front door for fifteen minutes.
People had been going in and out, all of whom I had seen in the hallways at school. They didn’t seem to notice me standing next to the bushes, but it didn’t bother me as much as it used to.
Deep breath, I told myself, take a deep breath and then go in. He’s waiting for you.
Then a little voice inside my head whispered, No he’s not.
“Lysandra?”
I hadn’t even noticed the door opened, and surely did not notice Aedion coming out of it.
“Fuck,” I jumped. I hadn’t even had time to prepare.
“The mouth of a sailor,” he smirked, dawdling toward me, “the appearance of a Greek goddess.”
Rolling my eyes, I cursed at how easily he could make me smile. “I was……about to come in.”
“I’ve been watching you for the last fifteen minutes.”
“Creep.”
He grinned, handing me a cup half-full of clear liquid. “I’m glad you came.”
“What did I miss?”
“Well,” he sighed, walking with me around the corner of his country home, “Rowan’s getting his ass kicked in beer pong. And Dorian is currently dancing sloppily around Manon Blackbeak. He’s a lightweight.”
Someone ran past us, swinging his shirt above his head and screaming, I’m naked, bitches.
“These parties get wild fast,” I observed, taking a sip from my cup, a familiar burn tingling my throat.
“Yeah,” Aedion agreed, shoving a hand into his pocket. “Everybody wants to forget something, it seems.”
I dwelled on his words for a moment, a comfortable silence wedged in between us as we made our way up the empty black porch.
Well, empty except for the couple making out in the corner.
We sat on the porch swing, a soft fire going in the fire pit in front of us.
His calloused hand brushed softly alongside mine, and a terrified, nervous sensation swept through my body that I happily embraced.
“I am glad you came,” he said, repeating himself from earlier, a soft twinkle in his beautifully colored eyes. “Very glad.”
“Me too,” I smiled, and meant it.
Aedion
8:30 p.m.
Rowan and Aelin swept through the back door, pausing when finding Lysandra lying her head in my lap by the outdoor fireplace.
The snow was no longer falling, but I loved the cold. The briskness by the fire…..I would never grow tired of it.
There was no wind, it was simply a calm, starry night in the country.
It was perfect.
They took a seat across from us, Rowan in a fold out chair and Aelin in his lap.
I found her eyes and smiled. I was glad she found some sort of happiness, some form of kindness, in her crazy, hectic world.
I prayed that it would last.
As Rowan opened his mouth to speak, the door swung open and Dorian fell through it.
I mean - he fell through it, tumbling face first onto the frigid wood.
When he didn’t move, I rushed to his aid.
“Dorian?” I picked him up by the back of his shirt, and hauled him into sitting position. “D, you okay?”
When his face found mine, there was a sloppy grin plastered on it……and a series of red lip prints on his cheek, and his neck.
Apparently, he did okay with Manon.
“I…..” he slurred, and laughed hysterically before continuing, “am n-never going home.”
A breathy laugh escaped me as I helped him to his feet, and sat him in a chair by Rowan’s. As soon as his ass hit the metal, his dark-haired head fell into Rowan’s lap.
His broad-shoulders stiffened, then fell as Dorian’s eyes closed, as to say, Ah, what the hell.
“Let him sleep it off,” Aelin murmured, suppressing her grin.
Rowan grunted in agreement before placing his arm gently around Aelin’s shoulder, allowing her to rest her head gingerly against his shoulder.
Yes, I hoped it lasted.
“What do we do now?” Lysandra asked, sweeping her legs back onto my lap as I sat across from my cousin.
“Another toast?” Aelin suggested, raising her plastic cup high in the air.
“Do the honors,” I smiled, raising my own.
“I hope we all find the happiness we deserve,” she began, glancing sidelong at Lysandra as she did so. “I hope we are not afraid to live the lives we want to live.”
“To courage,” Lysandra agreed, taking my hand as she lifted her cup. “And newfound friendship.”
“To love,” Rowan whispered, barely audible above the cackle of the fire. “Both lost and found.”
“To running toward something greater,” I added, watching Dorian fall into a steady sleep. “And the start of a new, happy life.”
“Promise me on Monday…..” Aelin paused, biting her lip before she continued, “Monday, we will all sit together. At lunch. In the cafeteria.”
Lysandra was the first to smile. “Promise.”
Our cups hit one another’s, and a bond was formed, a promise made.
A sense of peace flooded my mind, my core. I did not know much about life, or the world beyond what I had come to know: football, keeping to myself at home, throwing parties every weekend to forget. The teenage years were a nightmare. High school sucked.
But, for the first time in a long time, I felt like everything was going to be okay.
And as I looked around the circle at the others, at my friends, I felt like they were thinking the exact same thing.
For those who say one day, eight hours, cannot change the course of someone’s life: they’re wrong.
The end :)
@bigbangt1963 @throne-of-ashes-and-beauty @sarah-akhavan@gcarroll@kortanna@nightquart @notjustanyoldfangirl@superhuman-imagines@iwouldtrusthagridwithmylife@callmeladytypewriter@saybell1994@2-bookmaster-2 @eye-of-elena @shadowsinger-fireheart@inejcalmarekaz@viridiantopaz @books-are-friends-not-objects@raven-the-dark-titan@theantisocialbookworm310@whydoyoucareaboutmyusername
#kings and queens tog#throne of glass#fanfic#dorian#manon#manorian#aelin#aedion#rowan#lysandra#epilogue#the end
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Our Laughter is Your Coffin
Hannapocalypse fic / on AO3 / on FFnet
Maybe ten years after
For @erinthesails who wanted spooky witchy stuff. There’s really only one topic I’ve managed not to touch on after all these years, so this is that. Happy october!
As Daumantas dropped his stack of firewood beside the pit, Worth picked up Conrad’s discarded rag and swung it around his head, pinning it underneath his chin like a kerchief. “Heh,” he said, “guess who I am.”
Conrad reached back and snatched it off him, his hands black with the same grease that stained the rag. “For fuck’s sake, that’s filthy.”
Hanna leaned back on the grass, warming the soles of his ratty sneakers by the tiny fire. “You’rrreeeee,” he said, “the lady from Turchany, with the angry dog.”
Worth bumped a hip against the side of the RV, whose hood was pulled back to reveal the non-Euclidean geometries of the warlock engine. Hanna had tried reaching out to the spirit who made it for them a while earlier in the night, but all he’d gotten in the scrying glass was the sound of screaming crows and bones clicking together. It had kind of freaked him out, to be honest? Like, normally he just did or didn’t manage to reach the person he was calling. He wasn’t sure what to make of interference like this.
“They were nice people,” Conrad said, a note of warning in his voice. “Just because they dress differently than you—”
“Everybody’s dressing weird these days,” Hanna piped in, lowkey hoping to avoid another pitched row while they were potentially stranded in the rural backwater of Oregon, America’s weirdest jungle. “I can’t wait until people start having to spin their own wool again, we’re gonna get the most star trek-looking craziness in this country.”
“People will most likely just revert to ancient styles,” Daumantas remarked, from the other side of the firepit. “For simplicity’s sake. A simple tunic is difficult to get wrong.”
“Ain’t nobody gonna be caught dead wearin’ a toga in this country,” Worth said. He passed a wrench to Conrad, who took it without looking up. “I’m wearing jeans till the denim stops comin’, then I’m goin’ bare ass naked.”
“Oh dear god,” Conrad muttered. “I’m not spending my undeath watching your bare ass.”
“Too bad, I already committed to it.”
“We’re getting a divorce.”
Hanna hid a grin in his shoulder. Daumantas looked at him across the pale licks of stripling fire. His green-gay lips twitched up in a smile. Thank goodness those early years of hissing and spitting were over, for his mental health if nothing else. He had been about to run out of patience there at the end. It was only a shame they had wasted so much time… well it was fine for them, he guessed, they had forever to catch up on lost time.
His smile faltered for a moment, but there was no one to see it happen so it didn’t really count. Not everyone had their kind of time.
The RV park was as quiet as it was dark, even the night birds fluttered away to somewhere less busy with people. Hanna loved being around people, especially nowadays when they spent so much time on the road between settlements, but the quiet of the forest was alright too when he had a chance to stretch out. Turchany had been loud with old folks talking fast in Russian and ringing church bells, children speaking in a pidgin language that pitched and fell in and out of Hanna’s understanding. By the time they left, he’d been worn out from trying to keep up with all of it, and he had tried to keep up with all of it.
More and more lately, he was finding himself exhausted from trying to keep up with everything happening around him. Conrad just reminded him that he wasn’t as young as he used to be, but Hanna knew that wasn’t it. Every day he was trying to wring a drop more out of the world, to make the sunlight last a little longer.
Hanna didn’t realize he’d been vaguely listening to the chatter of Worth and Conrad going back and forth until the sound suddenly stopped. He glanced over to the RV and found them both paused, heads in the air like dogs listening for the sound of a car door slamming. They moved more and more in tandem these days, which was probably natural considering they were the same species now, but still Hanna found it kind of funny.
“What’s up?” he said. “You hear something Lassie?”
“Fuck off, Hanna,” Worth said, shaking it off first.
“I thought I heard something,” Conrad muttered, still watching the depth of forest before him. “Like a car. But there’s no road. I don’t see where it could be…”
Worth frowned, and so did Hanna. It was never a good sign when Conrad didn’t rise to a little good-natured baiting.
“I’m going to check it out,” Conrad said. He set down his tools and wiped off his hands absently.
“The fuck you are,” Worth said.
“Just stay with Hanna, okay? I’m only going scouting.” Conrad started to methodically unbutton his shirt, starting with the cuffs.
“Put your shirt back on, sweetheart. I’ll do it if you’re so goddamn set on recon.”
Conrad flicked his shirt over the doctor’s head and shucked off his pants in the ensuing sputter. “You’re a bad flyer and everybody knows it,” he said. “Don’t be such a control freak. I’ll be right back.”
“Control freak?” Worth said, livid now. He ripped the shirt off his face.
“Shh!” Conrad said. He glared into the woods, far past anything Hanna could make out with regular human day vision. There might have been a flicker in the depth of black, something grey or white between the branches. Could have been an owl. But it probably wasn’t.
In a puff of red smoke, there was the tiny adorable version of Conrad. It flapped a couple times, gaining altitude, and then swooped into the darkness.
Worth swore and ripped off his own shirt, throwing it to the ground with a stomp. His scarred back and arms flashed pearlescent in the firelight. “D’you see where it went?” he said, throwing his shoes across the grass.
Hanna squinted into the night. He pushed his glasses down his nose, trying to get his far vision to work on his side for once. In the darkness, in the crowd of foliage, he thought he saw—was it a flash of firelight reflected back at him? Red metal?
“Ten o’clock,” he said, sharply.
In a puff of flaxen smoke, Worth was gone all at once.
Hanna bit his lip. “What do you think, Daumantas?” he said. “Should we get armed?”
“Better safe than sorry,” the zombie said, already walking briskly towards the camper. “Do you want something?”
Hanna shot the darkness a look. “Nah,” he said, digging a sharpie out of his pocket. “I got it.”
Across the back of his hand, Hanna marked out a complex interlocking combination of wards. One line slid cleanly into the next, creating a sigil that he’d slowly perfected over a decade of working in the bumping-and-thumping industry. After a moment of consideration, he switched hands and drew down the three barred Russian orthodox cross, just in case. It always pays to speak the local language.
Daumantas settled onto the grass next to him after a moment, Worth’s shotgun hooked over his shoulder, the barrel broken open for easy loading. Daumantas was a stickler for gun safety. He was cool like that.
“I don’t hear anything,” Hanna said. “Could be a good thing?”
“Could be,” the zombie allowed.
They sat in silence for a moment.
“So,” Hanna said, “was I in the middle of the Titanomachy, or…?”
“I believe we had just gotten into the division of heaven,” Daumantas said. “Zeus gets Olympus, I presume.”
But before Hanna could pick up the story again (they had already finished Norse mythology during last month’s stakeout, and somehow Daumantas already knew everything about Irish myths), there was a distinct metallic rumble from the darkness.
“What was—” Hanna started to say.
The motorcycle that crashed through the underbrush was black, glinting and old fashioned, disappearing and then reappearing as it wove through the underbrush. Hanna was on his feet before Daumantas, but he was too fast for his own good. He stumbled, tripping over Worth’s haphazardly discarded shoes, and in the urgency of the moment his friend kept running forward, not realizing that he was running alone. Hanna scrabbled at the grass, furious with himself, as the zombie ducked into the trees and even the gold glint of the shotgun was lost among them. Hanna smashed his palm into the ground, hissing. His hand hit Conrad’s grease cloth, and with a sigh, he pocketed it.
God damn it, god damn it, how was he going to find any of them now?
He picked himself up and clapped the dirt from his hands, and started walking. The RV park was located past the edge of the old suburbs, not too far from some abandoned rural neighborhoods. As far as he knew, everyone was headed in the opposite direction from those, but there was still the possibility of an odd house out, something up ahead that they could all rally at. Maybe he could catch up…
It felt like an awfully long time that he hiked forward, but there was no sign of anyone but himself in the dark. The rumble of motorbike was completely silent now, and the night birds were either avoiding him or had decided to take a break for the night. Hanna grimaced. He was about to pour a little energy into a light spell when a pair of spots in the darkness ahead of him caught his eye. They were about the color and dimness of an ember, but the closer he got, the more they seemed to be up off the ground.
Hanna ducked out from under the trees and found himself in a yard knotted with roots, too heavy and gnarled to be the hemlock pines he had just left. He carefully picked his way over them to the sagging wooden fence, where two red embers burned out at him through the skull of a jackolantern. It was carved with heavy, rough strokes, more geometric than artful. Definitely not one of the fun zany ones like he’d used to see in the craft stores. There was something ominous about its wide sockets, about its heavy handed geometry. Hanna rocked back nervously on his toes. It was barely the end of September. While he was all about getting into the holiday spirit, somehow this didn’t feel very… spirit-y. Spiritual, maybe.
“Hello?” he called. “Anybody home? Sorry to bother you, I was just wondering if my friends passed by here-?”
He pushed the gate open with a deep, mournful creak, and snatched his hand back. Yikes. “You need some oil, my friend,” he said. On a whim, he pulled Conrad’s grease cloth out of his back pocket. “Well, it’s not much,” he said, rubbing at the hinges with the blackest part of the rag, “but I guess it’s better than nothing, huh buddy?”
The gate swung shut behind him, maybe a whisper quieter.
The house was propped up on cinderblock pillars like a trailer, and the steps seemed to shudder under his feet. He climbed them in a quick leap—Daumantas would absolutely kill him if he got his foot stuck in somebody’s porch step in the middle of all this—and stumbled forward to knock on the door. The windows were all black, hollow and warped with age. Maybe the jackolantern was a fluke? Maybe nobody lived here. Hanna coughed, awkwardly, and knocked again.
“Hello?” he called. “If it’s not too much trouble—has anyone seen my friends pass by?”
The gate creaked open behind him like a shot, and Hanna whirled to find an old woman on the path, watching him narrowly from beneath a kerchief. The stiff style of the dress Hanna recognized from Turchany, where all the women over thirty and some of the younger ones too had dressed like that, but not even the older ones had worn aprons like that.
“I smell American,” she said, in a heavy rumbling accent.
Hanna raised his hand. “Me, sorry,” he said. “I don’t smell that bad do I? I swear I just took a shower in Turchany.”
The old woman’s hands were full of firewood. “Oh,” Hanna said, “um, can I help you with that?”
She regarded him narrowly for a minute more, and then she nodded. “Here,” she said, “take half. I keep other half.”
Hanna took his half of the stack and followed her inside, marveling at the strangeness of the décor. For what had looked an awful lot like a hovel from the outside, the inside was weirdly beautiful. The wood of the wall itself was carved with patterns of what he thought might be flowers and birds, or maybe skulls and insects. The old woman dropped her stack of wood at the edge of the fireplace-oven.
“Call me Baba,” she said. Her teeth glinted strangely as she almost-smiled, brushing her hands on her apron.
“Um,” Hanna said, wracking his brain for what he’d learned in the last couple of days, “like grandmother?”
But she was already walking away. “Make fire,” she told him, over her shoulder. “Easy for strong boy like you.”
“I’m thirty,” Hanna said, feeling depressed all over again. He bent over the fireplace.
“You are,” Baba said, “and you are not.”
Hanna paused, tinder grasped in his hands. He finished making the fire slowly, goosebumps running up and down his arms. “What do you mean?” he said, striking a match against the brick oven.
“You were sixteen,” Baba said, “when you died.”
Hanna whirled, and in the blossoming firelight he saw the old woman standing among a swarm of pale hands, each of them emerging disembodied from the darkness. Her shadow flickered against the wall, changing the shapes of flowers to skulls, birds to bugs. In the warp of her shadow, specks of light reflected the crescent of her teeth.
“Put back together with curse,” Baba said, holding her palm open in the air, as a green-glinting hand deposited a heavy looking bowl there. “Baba Yaga knows curses. You were child, then you walk into coffin between worlds, and then you return.”
Hanna pressed a hand to the floor and carefully levered himself up. “Far be it from me to argue with evidence,” he said, “but I gotta point out, you’re not supposed to be a thing.”
Baba Yaga reached up and plucked a pestle from another waiting hand. “I will keep in mind, eh?”
Hanna moved, mostly sideways, across the floor. At the far end of the hall, the heavy carved door was bleeding green light from underneath its threshold. Glossy enameled plates hung from the bottoms of the cupboards. The cups in the cupboards were uncomfortably cranial in shape.
“So is this the part where you try to eat me?” Hanna asked, laying a hand on the dining table.
“You are not my usual house guests,” Baba said. “You are different. One thing is like another, yes?”
Hanna considered the table for a moment, and then sat down in a chair. “That’s a no then? I just want to be sure.”
“I do not eat dead things.”
Hanna screwed up his face, taking a little offense at that despite his best efforts. He got this all the time from vampires, but that didn’t mean he liked it. “I’m not dead,” he said. “Daumantas is dead. Doc and Connie are dead. I’m the living one.”
“You rot. You do not grow up. Is this living?”
Hanna swallowed. “What’s behind the spooky door?”
Baba Yaga finally turned back to him. The hands all around her continued passing items to each other, a flurry of busy movement, each with their own task, but she was still. “One foot in grave,” she said, “that is what Americans call it. My house is grave and foot. ”
“I don’t think that’s how the idiom is supposed to work.”
“I tell it to you in Russian, next time,” she said, in a way that implied just enough warning.
Hanna pressed a hand to his chest, where the ache of his staples had grown old enough that even he forgot about it a lot of the time. He didn’t like to think about what he’d done to himself, all those years ago. He hadn’t had a choice.
“Boys who go down into grave come back wiser,” Baba Yaga said. There was a frown on her wrinkled face that seemed softer, almost knowing. “Is necessary. Fire from gods. Life from underworld.”
Necessary for fairy tales, maybe. “Can you…” Hanna said, digging fingers into his chest, “fix me?”
Baba Yaga limped towards him. For the first time, he noticed the dull thump of her left leg hitting the floor, polished porcelain or something worse peaking from under her skirts. He didn’t understand how he could have missed it. She bent down over him, eyes glinting darkly in their sunken sockets, and laid her hands over his chest.
“It’s not that I’m complaining,” he babbled, clutching at the edge of the table with trembling fingers, “it’s just that I kind of like being alive and it would be a lot easier to stay that way if my entire body wasn’t slowly putrefying from the inside out? I mean lots of people have it worse than me, no doubt about it, but still I don’t think it’s asking too much for maybe like a normal amount of weird hormonal shit and pulled muscles and if I stay like this I don’t think I’ll make it to forty and all my friends are immortal and it’s not fair—”
Baba Yaga clapped a hand over his mouth, and it was only then that he realized he was crying. After a moment, she pulled her hand away again.
“I just really,” he whispered, “want to spend a little more time with them.”
She pulled back. Up close he could see that all her teeth were the color of iron in her mouth, and they flashed when she spoke. “Is worth a year of your life? Your soul? How badly you want this?”
Hanna thumbed water out of his eye. Gosh, that was embarrassing. He hadn’t cried in front of a stranger in years. “Pretty badly,” he admitted.
“I cannot solve problem,” the old woman said. “I patch. Like clothes. Maybe more years than you have otherwise.”
“Anything,” Hanna said. “Anything you can do, ma’am.”
She reached up, and from a hand that unfurled out of the darkness, she plucked a needle and thread.
“I need open these up,” she said, tapping one of her talon fingers against his staples. “Lie on table.”
Hanna took a deep breath, and then pulled his shirt over his head. Seemed like everybody was getting shirtless tonight. Maybe he could talk Daumantas into doing it too, when he found him. He felt a twinge of guilt for getting so wrapped up in his own stuff, while everyone else was out there chasing specters, but then—didn’t he remember something like that from the fairy tales?
“What’s it gonna cost?” he said, folding his shirt over the back of the table.
Baba Yaga threaded her twine through the eye of the needle, closing one eye as she did it. “I will take truth from you,” she said. “Once you tell me, you will not ever speak it again. Think carefully.”
Hanna lay down on the table. He thought about secrets—about his mother’s face twisted into something hateful and inhuman, about the color of the picnic blanket they used to spread under the tree in the backyard, about the box he’d lived in for months before Worth found him in that alley, delirious and bleeding out. He thought about fevers and postcards, about promises and pills.
“It has to be something important, right?” he said. “Or it’s not fair.”
The old woman took her sewing scissors from her pocket, the blades shaped like a heron’s beak, and cut away the flesh from the staples. Hanna buried his teeth in his lip and his nails in the wood, thinking—I’ve survived worse than this, this is nothing.
Her blunt fingers were surprisingly gentle as she peeled him open, sucking her teeth as she surveyed the damage. Hanna stared hard at the ceiling. He knew what she would find there.
Worth had never talked about what he’d seen in Daumantas’ stomach, when Ples ripped it open and left the clean up for the rest of them. Sometimes he wanted to ask. He wanted to know if what was inside his friend was like the thing inside of him. Maybe they’d have this in common. But he was too afraid, and it was too ugly—every time he even thought about it, he tasted blood. The truth was, he’d been alone for so long… even after these years, and they were great years, the best years…
“Do you want that secret now or later?”
The old woman drew a length of twine through her teeth and bit it in half. “When you are ready.”
Looking up at the firelight on the wooden ceiling, Hanna had the terrible feeling that he was staring at the lid of his coffin.
“When the plague was coming through,” he said, “back when it all started, I stopped and helped a hitchhiker in the Midwest. I knew it was contagious, I mean, who didn’t? And Daumantas made me promise I wouldn’t get near any other humans until we’d figured out what it was all about. He was, like, adamant about it. But then I saw this guy on the side of the road, and…”
The red sand had been climbing into angry dust devils down the shoulder of the road; Hanna remembered the white sun and the black asphalt, the red dust devils. It seemed like such an awful place to be stuck, one dying man in the dust and the sun and the asphalt.
“I know I caught it from him,” Hanna said. “When I came down with it, I knew I got it from him. He didn’t make it, and I did. Part of me wanted—it didn’t seem fair that I—”
Hanna sighed and turned his head. White and red and black, the shadows against the fire. He knew that they were symbolically dense colors, the first three color words ever invented by human language, the catholic triad. To him, somewhere between now and then, they had become death colors.
“I was always trying to die, I guess,” he said. “Like, I thought I deserved it? And now that it seems like I’m really going to, all I want to do is live.”
“Big change,” Baba Yaga observed, neutrally.
“Yeah well,” he said, with a grim smile, “that’s the power of friendship. I’m being corny but I mean it too.”
“No one survives coffin alone,” Baba Yaga said. “Always there is doll, or mouse, or gate.”
“They’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” Hanna said. “I don’t know what I did to get so lucky.”
Once the witch had sewn up his chest again, Hanna sat at the table sipping soup from a bowl that almost certainly had been a human skull at some point.
“So Baba Yaga is real,” he said. “Man, have I got egg on my face. I can’t believe I walked right into that one. What are you doing in America anyways?”
She shrugged, sipping on her own soup. “Where there are Russian children lost in woods, there is Baba Yaga.”
“Soooo you’re like the Baba Yaga, or a Baba Yaga?”
“I see no difference.”
“Hmmm,” Hanna said. “That’s a language barrier thing I guess. Are you like a species?”
“No.”
“Like…. an occupation?”
“No.”
Hanna opened his mouth, but there was a knock at the door before he could go any further.
“Your friends,” Baba Yaga said.
Hanna sat bolt upright. “Oh shit!” he said, “I can’t wait to show them this place. If you like me you’re gonna love them, I promise, they’re all spectacularly undead.”
He pushed away his chair and trotted over to the door, but he faltered as his hand touched the wood, just short of the handle. He turned back to the table.
“I know what you did for me is worth more than some depressing memory,” he said. “At the risk of looking a gift horse in the mouth, I gotta ask. How come?”
The old woman sipped her soup, somehow managing to look derisive and regal as she did it. “You put grease on squeaky gate. You are good boy.”
The knocking came at the door again, more impatient now. “Hanna!” a muffled voice shouted. And then, indistinctly, “I swear I smell him—no—it’s that or a carcass somebody hid under these stairs—”
Hanna threw the door open. “Guys!” he said. “You’re not gonna fucking believe whose house this is.”
Conrad, first at the door, wrinkled his nose. “Was, I hope you mean,” he said. “Hard to imagine anyone living in that.”
Hanna froze. He turned, already knowing what he was about to see—the inside of the cabin was speckled with moonlight from the sooty, broken windows, and the table was empty. Everything was fuzzy and vague with a layer of grime that was at least ten years in the making, cold and decaying.
“Aw man,” he said, “she Nickelodeon Halloween Special’d me.”
Conrad sniffed him. “You smell off,” he said. “Did you eat a bowl of potpourri or something?”
Hanna smiled nervously. “It’s kind of complicated,” he said.
He’d never talked to the guys about his condition, except for Worth, who had heard a little bit of it that first night in the alley when Hanna had been feverish and certain that he was dying at last. He knew that they all talked about it behind his back, but it had always been… too hard to look directly at. It had been almost fifteen years since they first met. Maybe it was time to bite the bullet.
Anyways, things were going to be different now, weren’t they? And all it had cost him was… was…
He leaned his head against the door jamb, frowning. When he reached for it, he caught flashes of red and white and black, but they were gone like dust devils through his fingers. “I traded a—well I think it was—a memory?”
“Is a memory something you can trade?” Daumantas asked, tilting his head.
“Apparently. Not sure how it would work for you—we should look into that, there might be a central mechanic that we can leverage somehow, if it goes one way it ought to go the other way too—Worth, what have you got over there?”
Worth dangled a red motorcycle helmet from his finger, smug as the cat that got the canary. “Ya missed all the fun,” he said.
“He’s never going to shut up about it,” Conrad sighed.
“I’m the fastest,” Worth said, grinning at Hanna.
Boy, he loved these jerks. He nudged Conrad’s side and dug in his pocket for the rag. “You dropped this,” he said.
“Oh,” Conrad said. “I guess I did.”
Hanna closed the door behind him and followed the guys down the stairs, out into the yard. The weight of the lost memory stilled weighed on him, but the shape of it remained indistinct, no matter how hard he tried to pry the colors apart. Truth, she had said. She had wanted truth. He remembered something about taboos from the fairy tales, about truths that one dare not speak.
Hanna fell back in step beside Daumantas, watching the ember red eyes of the jackolantern flicker and die as they passed. “I don’t tell the truth a lot, do I?” he said.
“You mean well,” Daumantas replied.
“I feel like I owe you guys more than that, though.”
Daumantas reached out and, without hesitation, looped his arm through Hanna’s. They walked arm in arm through the yard, into the darkness of the woods. “I have the upmost faith in you,” he said. “Always. I wouldn’t be here now if I didn’t.”
Although the woods were close and the ground was rough, Hanna closed his eyes. It was alright not to see everything, just for a minute. He had enough time. If he wanted to just listen to the sound of his friend’s footsteps in the soft darkness, that was alright too.
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I was tagged (months ago?) by my best bat-friend @exaggeratedspecificity to name 15 songs that I love, and I was really inspired by her emotional stories behind her choices so I thought I’d put a little effort into mine, too.
But the thing is, when I start thinking back to songs that mean something to me, like super personally...well, sometimes I just don’t want to remember things. I got really sick when I was 11 and now it’s systemic and chronic, and it turned me schizophrenic starting about age 16 and that lasted for another 15 years. Music, literally, kept me alive. It was my best friend, the one thing I could trust. It was how I found validation for the fucked up things I was seeing and the way I felt. It’s how I spoke to the outside world---anyone who knew me then got at least one mix-tape from me, sometimes dozens. I would take lyrics and write stories about my friends with them. I had to go home and get lyrics down on paper instead of going to parties. When I rode the train cross-country, I lugged my 300 disc CD book the whole way, clutched to my chest. I kind of want to be buried with my headphones in but I’m a little worried I’ll wake up from being dead when the battery runs out.
Anyway, in the last few years...basically since I discovered Supernatural, music has taken on a whole new meaning for me. Life in general has changed. It’s better. It’s more fun, more interesting. I’ve found a creative outlet, and especially concerning music, I’m not slathering my experiences, my insanity, my feelings of loss and isolation and paranoia and confusion all over it. I’ve learned how to step outside my little fear-bubble and enjoy music from a whole new angle. So I thought, instead of going through my 130 gigs of music and forcing myself to think about those songs that I love for personal reasons and thus scratching at emotional scars and scabs of my real life, I’d do something more fun for me and pick my 15 favourite songs that exemplify my 15 long Supernatural fics, because since I’ve been writing, my life has improved by leaps and bounds and there’s not a single traumatic memory attached to the experience.
That was really long-winded.
With You by Matt Simons: This is from the soundtrack to Sense Of Life, which is my first published fic. I’m so glad I wasn’t really ‘in the fandom’ when I wrote this, because I never would have had the guts to write it if I’d known how much most shippers don’t like OFC. I would have worried too much about Mary-Sue’ing or whatever whatever. What I wanted to write about was giving the boys something to love, and then taking it away from them, because if they aren’t hurting, what’s the point? So I gave Sam a separated-at-six-months twin sister, and Dean a sick angel, then I gave them reasons to all get naked in a room together, because little did I know, Plot Productive Porn™ would be my go-to writing device. Anyway, looming over the whole fiasco is John Winchester’s A+ parenting, which sets this story up in the first place, and I was so gleefully fulfilled when I randomly heard this song somewhere while writing the fic. I was like, yesperfect.
My job to control you,
darling, though I barely know you,
hoping you grow tired and start giving in.
Spout of holy water
pour it on my only daughter
maybe there's a shot she'll begin again.
So wrong
Lucky With Disease by Elbow: I think this would be Crowley’s favourite band. That said, this is one of my most favourite wincestiel songs and is perfect for Wash It Away---the first fic I wrote, and it shows. A few OOC things, but I just went with what I picked up from the light smattering of gifs that had crossed my dash---I hadn’t even seen a single episode of the show yet. My least favourite fic, but still...it’s not terrible, and I love the dynamic of hurt-angry!Dean and fixer!Sam and Cas falling somewhere in between, willing to do whatever it takes to help. I definitely stuck to the first two characterisations for the rest of my writing.
Fell like a crippled crow
Spinning through and breaking branches
I'm in a bad way
Call my friends, they'll know what to do
Not as handsome as my brother
But I've been lucky with disease
And yes, I'm a better friend
Than I've ever been a lover
And that's not saying much
But I'm not saying much today
Make Me Wanna Die by The Pretty Reckless: In some different timeline, all I’m doing is writing Megstiel. But Never The Same is all I’ve managed and it’s typical---crazy!Cas and caretaker!Meg, bees, honey. Okay, honey as lube and bees around quivering nethers, but that ‘oh what the fuck okay fine’ sentiment is there that I always loved so much about Meg.
I had everything
Opportunities for eternity
And I could belong to the night
Then your eyes
Your eyes
I can see in your eyes
Your eyes
You make me wanna die
I'll never be good enough
You make me wanna die
Adolescence by Brown Bird: Rise Above It is my goriest fic to-date, and the sort of weird, sinister nature of this song seems perfect for it. Another wincestiel fic in the same vein of WIA but I think I got the characters down a little better. Dean can’t stand himself and thinks he hates Castiel for caring about him, and Cas, par for the course, makes things worse trying to make it better, but Sam knows just where to dig into the bloody mess to get it all right again.
So long adolescence of the frightened soul
You're entering the ritual
Lay down your every fear upon the altar child
Prepare to play the man's role
Stay strong the sound of screaming's just the sacred rite
Of death begetting new life
We are here but for the grace of everything divine
It's the providence that we must find
If (don’t ever blame yourself) by Last Days of April: People who can write early-season wincest are my heroes, okay. Dean’s a different animal now, isn’t he? I’m not even remotely suggesting he’s better one way or the other, just that he’s harder for me to grasp in the first couple of seasons. Harder for me to find his voice, and I can’t even say I really ‘got it’ with The Dawn Breaks...because I don’t fucking remember writing this fic at all. I have no idea where it came from, but it’s dark and dirty and Sam is toeing the line of making himself into the same monster that hurt Dean in the first place, but in the end, he pulls it off.
If it is hard to bear
I'll hold the weight
If there are things you ain't
I'll compensate
But you should never blame yourself
Put the blame on everybody else
'cause they don't see what I see
If no one understands
I'll understand
Lovers’ Eyes by Mumford and Sons: ngl, the entire soundtrack for Becoming Less Defined is my favourite song. I fucking nailed it with these songs: perfect combo, perfect order, perfect atmosphere, but this song in particular showcases my particular obsessive trope here. I’m so fucking proud of this ’verse, and I’m climbing the walls to get back to it and finish it. I can’t leave omega-tainted!Dean and Wall-crumbled!Sam and sweet, insane omega!Jensen in limbo. I mean, there’s actual Purgatory to get to, after all.
Were we too young, our heads too strong
To bear the weight of these lovers’ eyes
I feel numb beneath your tongue
Beneath the curse of these lovers’ eyes
But do not ask the price I pay
I must live with my quiet rage
Tame the ghosts in my head
That run wild and wish me dead
Complicated Shadows by Elvis Costello: It’s hard to get Dean alone sometimes, but this song really conjures up that early-season hero that I was talking about before, and writing Turn In Early was supposed to be just a little jerk-off fic, some imaginative Deancest, but because I’m the worst, it’s all slathered in gentle pain.
Well you know your time has come and you're sorry for what you've done
You should've never have been playing with a gun
In those complicated shadows
Well there's a line that you must toe
And it'll soon be time to go
But it's darker than you know in those complicated shadows
John’s Star by The National: A reminisce fic, Dean’s B.S., 2001 is a rare moment of self-reflection for Dean, but he’ll only go so far back. I love the idea of Stanford-era!Dean, sidelined, a captive audience, listening to music he probably would never on his own terms, and hearing lyrics that just fucking hit home. There’s nothing explicit about this fic, no overt wincest, but it’s there, especially with songs like this.
I don't ever want you to come home again
I don't want to hear your call, your voice in my room
I am divine, my arms are stronger than rivers
And when you feel that way, you want to feel that way again
Forever
Once ruined, baby you stay ruined
Evidence by Faith No More: The sleaze that undercurrents all of Mike Patton’s music is perfect for Dress Me Down, a jealous!Jensen J2/Genevieve blackmail fic, because you can just hear Jensen lying to himself through the music.
If you want to open the hole
Just put your head down and go
Step beside the piece of the circumstance
You got to wash away the taste of evidence
Wash it away
Evidence, evidence, evidence
Got to taste evidence
I didn't feel a thing
It didn't mean a thing
Look in the eye and testify
I didn't feel a thing
Anything you say, you know you're guilty
Hands above your head and you won't even feel me
You won't feel me
Sedated by Hozier: I would normally pick Great Expectations by Elbow for this, but the dangerous, powerful carelessness of this song fits Something To Share just as well. Schizophrenic, self-destructive and self-harming!Sam and totally out of his depth!Dean make deals and promises to each other and I just really, really love this fic okay leave me alone I’m fine.
You and I nursing on a poison that never stung
Our teeth and lungs are lined with the scum of it
Somewhere for this, death and guns
We are deaf, we are numb
Free and young and we can feel none of it
Something isn't right, babe
I keep catching little words but the meaning's thin
I'm somewhere outside my life, babe
I keep scratching but somehow I can't get in
So we're slaves to any semblance of touch
Lord we should quit but we love it too much
Knock Me Out by Linda Perry: Back to my a/b/o ’verse with Between Two Minds, and we find poor Dean, omega-tainted and feeling like he can’t be loved, finally, finally starting to trust his little brother again.
You knocked me out
You bit my lip
You held me down and kept me sober
Through all this time
With no regret
I guess that's just the way I liked it
Maybe, when I'm free
I'll realize all he really wanted
To share all the peace
Something I never wanted
So wait, don't go
Seems as though it's getting scary
So please, don't you go
Feels Like by Buck 65: A song no one will listen to for a fic that no one reads. Dreamy, plinking piano for a fic that started out as a dream. My favourite artist with my favourite ending I’ve ever written. Give Buck and A Steep Fall a chance.
She found the lost boy, eyes that are crying closes
Glad to be unhappy, boy gives her dying roses
Ecstatic agony and nights of arousing glories
Hungry hearts and hands that tell ten thousand stories
Open wounds and the one word that filed under
Her endless eyes have known hardship and wild wonder
Kisses that cure and moments that cured the kiss
Under a spell and maybe there's no words for this
I Drove All Night by Roy Orbison: The Mixtape Thing wasn’t supposed to be a fic, but I had to talk about why the songs were picked for the prompt ‘date night at the MoL Bunker’, and suddenly there was a sweet little wincest fic. Yeah, ‘sweet’. My fans were very surprised too.
What in this world
Keeps us from falling apart
No matter where I go I hear
The beating of our one heart
I think about you
When the night is cold and dark
No one can move me
The way that you do
Nothing erases this feeling between me and you
Tell Me by Moby ft. Cold Specks: An alternative ending to BLD, But Then Again is the best thing I’ve written so far. J2/wincest/abo and so fucking full of angst and longing and good goddamn is it dirty. I’m so proud of it and myself for pulling it off, and even if I lose two more friends over it (i’m not bitter i’m very bitter), it’s still wonderful in my mind.
Didn't have the heat
I gave you memories
Come deeper please
I got nowhere to stay tonight
Won't you make me stay?
Keep your clear eyes on the prize
And as I'm there
Bring me to your knees
Baby Blue by Wolf Parade: Kill The Lights is the one unfinished fic on this list but I’m so close it counts. Fifty-nine songs to choose from. Five playlists. Over 100,000 words, and choosing one song to represent this brutal MCD fic is easy. Since it’s written from Sam’s POV, some of my favourite songs are the ones I imagine from Dean’s, and this is perfect.
You're like a fool on fire
To the water so blue
I will come undone
And I will run to you
Sometimes we are an open flower
Sometimes we are an open wound
Sometimes we are a kind of echo chamber, wherein
You're all fire and brimstone
And I'm all that, too
Burning blue for you
LISTEN
tagging @zmediaoutlet @omgbubblesomg @theboringprincess @chiisana-sukima @hazeldomain @indigoneutrino @dreamsfromthebunker @bruisedmickey and anyone else who wants to do this (and if you’ve already done it, no worries ;)
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