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chosonore · 3 years

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part three | epiphany

epiphany [noun. a moment when you suddenly feel that you understand, or suddenly become conscious of, something that is very important to you ]

pairing: kamo noritoshi/f!reader

summary: your relationship with noritoshi was like a game of cat and mouse; no matter how hard you tried to escape from him, he would always find his way back to you.

wordcount: 9.1k

content/warnings: friends to enemies to lovers, language, angst, smut!!!!, dom!noritoshi, noritoshi is mean, oral sex, fingering, begging, edging, biting? (he gives u a bite like once), dry humping, riding, lowercase intended [UNEDITED]

a/n: i... will not comment on this. lmfao i can’t believe i wrote all of this filth. please have mercy on me, this is the first time i’ve every written smut and i’m not really good at it fhuewhiu (⁄ ⁄•⁄ω⁄•⁄ ⁄) i think this is the angstiest chapter by far but i promise, no more from the next chapter on! i hope you enjoy (´｡• ᵕ •｡`) ♡ will also add the series playlist to the masterpost so check it out if you wanna!

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noritoshi watched as you angrily stormed out of the room, slamming the door forcefully. he leaned back against the wall, staring up at the ceiling. now you've gone and done it. the words came out harsh and hurtful, force of habit deeply engraved into his brain. never was it his intention to hurt you so deeply, to push you away. but it was the only way to protect you from his family. noritoshi was well aware that he was a mere pawn in the stupid game that the clans were playing. he was the golden child, only accepted into the family because of his cursed technique. the cruelty he experienced was something he would never forget. he seeked revenge, for his mother and himself. but this was his own problem to handle, not wanting to drag his mother or you into this mess.

for years, noritoshi had suffered quietly, his only motivation being the protection of his mother and you. rarely did he ever show any emotion, nor did he know many to begin with - but he knew he loved you. his suppressed adoration brought out ugly facettes of his personality: jealousy, frustration, anger. if his family ever caught wind of how much he loved and cherished you, it'd be the end for the both of you. he didn't doubt that they'd already arranged a partner for him to marry. noritoshi hated how they held onto traditions that had no place in this time any more. how they still engaged in these petty clan fights when now it was most crucial to stick together. he swore to himself, as soon as he would become clan head, everything was going to change. but until then, he had to get through this.

how much longer he could deal with this, he wasn't sure. it did bother him that you got so much attention from everyone else; it irked him even more to see that you flirted back sometimes, completely unaware of the effect you had on them. his heart yearned to be yours. as much as he didn't want to be selfish, he couldn't help but indulge. noritoshi still felt your lips on his, your smooth skin, how pliable you were in his arms and how you gave in, into him. was it unfair of him? he supposed so. if he ever got the chance to explain the entire issue to you, he would have to beg for your forgiveness, undoubtedly.

summer rolled around faster than you’d anticipated - it meant that you could finally get some room to breathe and just do nothing for a while. the third years had graduated a week prior, making you feel a little sad and wistful. you’d miss todo a lot now that he left the school but made him promise that he would drop by whenever possible. noritoshi however- you hadn’t spoken a word to him ever since that incident. it was frosty between the two of you, even the teachers had noticed and tried to not let you close to each other. while you hadn’t thought about him in a while, sometimes the thoughts were creeping up on you. some type of closure would have left you feel more at ease but having talked to your mum about the issue, it helped you move on. regardless of how he had made you feel, you would live your life for yourself now.

summer break was long and you didn’t have anything in particular planned - the two main events were your summer vacation with miwa as well as your training camp at tokyo tech. the spring tournament also had its good sides, you guessed, you were able to ask shoko and gojo to teach you over the summer. having witnessed shoko’s healing abilities first hand, you were hellbent to become as good as her. never again would you feel anxious and useless about your skills, you would become an excellent on field healer. you were looking forward to spending time with everyone there as well, especially since yuta was coming home for the summer break. you couldn’t shake the little crush you had on him, it creeped up on you whenever you talked on the phone or texted each other. subconsciously, you hoped that something would bloom out of it but hope was a fickle thing that could quickly turn into misery.

before you left for tokyo, you decided to visit your parents at the kamo estate, hoping that you wouldn’t run into noritoshi on your way there. as far as you knew, he was busy on missions, rarely ever coming home. you greeted the guard at the front entrance, making your way to your family’s little house near the outskirts of the estate. despite the uncomfortable atmosphere that was surrounding the entire estate, you still couldn’t help but fall in love with the gardens and sculptures over and over again. you couldn’t lie, growing up here was wonderful. deciding to make a little detour to the koi pond, you skipped towards the arch bridge. below you, the fish were happily swimming around, glimmering in all kinds of colours. you peered at them, leaning against the railing. as a child, you always liked to dip your feet into the water on hot summer days, promptly earning a disapproving glare from your mum. you always ignored her though, claiming that she couldn’t stop you from getting some kind of refreshment.

as you watched the koi and took in your surroundings, footsteps made you halt in your musings. one of the kamo elders must have gone on a stroll around the gardens; you whirled around to greet the person. your throat grew dry and constricted when you saw noritoshi walking towards you, looking so casual and carefree in his loosely tied yukata. should you greet him? after all, this place was his in some way. but your friendship (could you even call it friendship?) ended on a bad note, did you really owe it to him? neither of you made a sound until he stood next to you, leaning against the railing. you tried your best not to look at him and focused on the pond below you, staring so intensely that you thought you might have lasered some holes in the surface beneath you.

how much longer would you stand here? could you just leave? but then, wouldn’t it be even more awkward? not that you cared anyways. you hadn’t talked to each other in months. as you pushed away from the railing, noritoshi cleared his voice and turned his body towards you.

“y/n.”

you froze in your steps, looking at him like a deer in headlights. behind you, the wind was rustling up the leaves, adding to the tense and awkward atmosphere. you tried not to scream at him in frustration - it would only end up in yet another fight. yet, noritoshi looked strangely vulnerable in this state, seemingly not knowing what to say to you either. it appeared he simply spoke to you without considering how to further the conversation. he looked like he wanted to reach out to you but simply didn’t know how. you couldn’t fall for this - it had happened before.

“how have you been? i heard you’re going to tokyo tech for training,” he started after a moment of hesitation and gave you a wry smile. huh? you were confused. why was he asking you about this now? it was because of megumi and yuta, wasn’t it.

“it’s… it’s none of your business,” you said with a strained voice. even though you felt uncomfortable with his presence around you, you couldn’t take a step away from him. perhaps you were hoping for an explanation from his side. perhaps you were just relieved to see he was okay, after all the missions he’d already been sent on. “i don’t see how i owe you an answer after… everything that happened between us.”

noritoshi stayed silent, balling up his fists. “you’re right. i’m sorry,” he mumbled, hiding his hands in the sleeves of his yukata embarrassed. “i… i want to explain myself. at least as much as i can tell you and if you’re okay with it. can we move it somewhere more private? i don’t want any of the elders seeing us.”

you hesitated. on one hand, noritoshi sounded sincere but your history spoke for itself. and yet, you couldn’t bring yourself to deny him. like a moth to flames, you were always drawn to him. like the center of your universe, everything revolved around him. curiosity got the better of you, nodding before you could stop yourself. noritoshi let out a sigh in relief, stepping towards a more secluded area on the estate, one that you were very familiar with. as children, you used to spend time there a lot, hidden from your parents eyes and without any care in the world. the little corner was surrounded by tall cherry trees, adorned with smaller bushes and a little bench underneath the tree crowns. as noritoshi made his way there, he glanced behind him, making sure that you wouldn’t just leave him and vanish. true to your word, however, you trudged behind him and kept your distance. not once did you look him in the eyes, avoiding his gaze altogether. you were afraid it would make you weak in your resolve, walls crumbling and falling apart like paper mâché.

arriving at the bench, the two of you sat far apart, mirroring the distance between your hearts. you reminisced the old times, the memories making you queasy. whenever you spent time here as children, you would sit close to each other and read books together or just told each other stories. all that’s left was bitterness, heavy and suffocating on your tongue. “what is it that you wanted to tell me?” you questioned him, folding your hands on your lap. you were clenching your hands hard to keep them from trembling, not wanting to show him any weakness.

noritoshi was questioning his own resolve - he shouldn’t tell you anything, should’ve stayed away from you. the yearning was too strong; it was one of the few times he would ever get to see you again before being sent to yet another mission. noritoshi wanted to be selfish, to savour your presence until he was satisfied. maybe you would understand, at least a little bit. he didn’t expect you to forgive him, nor did he think you would let him crawl back into your space. but being close to you was enough.

“i know no amount of apologizing is going to make this better or even take the pain you’ve felt from my treatment but i want you to know that i’m really sorry. you didn’t deserve that whatsoever. i can’t tell you the exact reason why but- but i don’t want to leave you in the unknown any longer,” noritoshi recited his reasons so fast that you almost weren’t able to follow. with each word, your confusion visibly grew. but instead of feeling anger, as you should have, your heart grew heavier with disappointment. his confession was somewhat of closure but not quite. why couldn’t he tell you the reason? was it really so important? important enough to hurt you? you couldn’t understand and you didn’t want to.

“i don’t understand. why can’t you tell me? in case you didn’t realize yourself, this entire thing makes no sense. i don’t understand why you suddenly started hating me. we were close friends, we grew up together. are you telling me you never felt that way? that you weren’t and still aren’t able to trust me with this… reason? and why would you dump this onto me now? i would’ve been content not knowing anything at all,” you vented frustrated, sending him a glare. noritoshi was taken back by your outburst, gnawing at his bottom lip as he looked at you guiltily.

“i… fuck, i don’t know how to explain this without giving away too much, okay? i know it’s stupid but it’s complicated and i don’t want to drag you into this. i trust you, more than i trust anyone but this wasn’t… it wasn’t because i didn’t trust you,” noritoshi took a deep breath. “my entire goal was to protect you by keeping you away from me. and yeah, that was the only way.”

“but why-”

“now that i’ve left school, i’ll most likely be traveling a lot… i won’t be able to see you, let alone keep my eyes on you to make sure you’re okay. i just wanted to be fucking selfish for once, just needed to see you again. you don’t want to see me, i get it. i’ve been nothing but cruel to you and i don't expect you to ever forgive me. but i promise i'll make it up to you."

"noritoshi," you clenched your jaw, brows furrowed as you leaned over, jabbing your finger at his chest. "i don't want to play this game of cat and mouse with you. let's just stay away from each other, okay? nothing good comes out of it anyways. either you want me by your side or you don't, easy as that. you don't get to decide when to get back into my life just because you feel like it."

you just couldn't show him how hurt you were. whatever opening you would reveal, noritoshi would use it against you. he had always been and will always remain your weak point. you made peace with the fact that he was your first love but would probably not be your last. a dam broke inside you as you felt the warmth of his chest, memories flooding your senses. that day was long forgotten, exiled out of your memories until now. there was never a moment that allowed you to reflect on it. you couldn't shake the feeling that there was more to it and his confession had confirmed the suspicions. noritoshi wasn't the type to engage with people he strongly disliked, much less be intimate with them. there was more to it that he simply refused to disclose to you. you had to put an end to this endless circle - a clean cut until the two of you were ready to face each other again.

taking a deep breath, you withdrew your hand and clutched it to your chest. "this isn't going to work out the way it is. you keep pulling and pushing, without giving me an explanation and- and i'm tired of it. i'm tired of getting hurt. i used to like you a lot, i had a crush on you-"

"you what?" noritoshi visibly paled, unnoticeably inching closer to you. he never realized.

"-and i kept hoping that one day you would return the feelings. i'm a fool, for thinking we could ever get anywhere," you smiled bitterly, slowly getting up from the bench. "let's go back to being enemies, okay? pretend this never happened. it's obvious we need to grow as people, independently from each other. maybe it's good that we'll go separate ways… if fate wants it, we'll find back to each other. and hopefully by then, you'll have a good explanation."

conflicted, you didn’t take another step, staring down at him. he looked small and meek as he sat there with his usually broad frame hunched over and kept his eyes on the grass below him, fiddling with his fingers. as if sensing your gaze on him, noritoshi tilted his head to look at you. his mind was elsewhere, far far away. he didn't realize he was staring at you with blank eyes until you came closer and leaned down concerned. you were so close to him, he could almost feel your breath fanning across his skin. you liked him. noritoshi fucked up, majorly, and he felt like everything was slipping from his fingers. his carefully constructed walls, the mask he kept on at all times and the unwavering resolve to push through until he'd become the head of the clan, they all came crumbling down when you announced that you would leave for an indefinite amount of time.

"don't leave," the words came out like a whisper, barely audible in the chimes of the wind. your eyes widened ever so slightly at his words, heart clenching at the sight of such a vulerable noritoshi - a reflection of your 'toshi. he reached out to you, hesitantly glasping your hand in a weak grip. as if he was afraid, prepared even, that you would go anyways. "please," he pleaded a second later, intertwining your fingers with his. like the wings of a hummingbird, your heart was fastly beating at this display of intimacy. it made you feel warm and cold at the same time, filling you with dread and the looming fear of consequences.

but what would he do if his last source of hope would leave him? ever since his mum left, he sparsely had contact with her until the contact eventually ceased to be. never did she reach out to him or react to his attempts to rekindle the relationship. throughout his adolescent years he had lonely, the guilt gnawing at his conscience. if only he could be stronger, more resilient. stand up to the elders and stand tall and proud, being nobody else but him. you gave him hope, that he could someday return to you, even if it remained a simple friendship. a beacon of light would always be one as there was always light at the end of the tunnel. panic filled his head as he realized that you would abandon him and this time it would be final.

"i'm sorry, i'm sorry," noritoshi mumbled in a begging tone and slowly drew you closer, until you stood between his legs. his face was basked in the evening light, accentuating all the features you liked about him. his kind, steel blue eyes that harboured depths of emotion and mystery like a restless ocean. his long hair that flowed with the wind, not being wrapped up in the bindings for once. the wisps of hair that framed his slim face. it was an unusual sight, making your heart clench in melancholy. he looked so innocent like this, the gentleness in his facial expressions more visible now. as if feeling your resolve slipping away, he took the opportunity to wrap his arms around your waist and pressed his face in your chest, exhaling shakily and slowly. you let him, gently petting his hair.

underneath his breath, noritoshi murmured something. his voice was muffled in the fabric, making it difficult to understand what he was saying. you made a confused sound, leaning down slightly to better listen to him. not expecting him to move as well, you suddenly found yourself face to face with him and much closer than before. "i love you," he breathed out, pressing his lips against yours in a fluid motion. they felt scalding against yours, as if reminding you to stay away and yet soft, inviting you back in. finally gasping for air, you pulled away, fingers coming up to touch your tingling lips. noritoshi gave you a hopeful look, fingers dancing across the expanse of your back.

slowly, you backed away from him, avoiding his glance. you were in shock, not being able to process his confession. the entire confrontation had quickly escalated and you weren't able to follow. though the words made your heart clench, you couldn't help but feel like they were empty words. empty, simply thrown into the mix to elicit some kind of reaction from you. "i'm sorry, noritoshi. i- i can't return this, nor do i… i don't feel like i can believe you," you told him with a heavy heart. he opened his mouth, about to retort something when you cut him off. "please just let us move on from this, okay? i- i'll leave now." you sprinted away from him, tears stinging in your eyes. how could words that you've always wanted to hear hurt this much? how dare he play with your emotions like this, using your weakness to his advantage. he wasn't serious, and you were sure of it. there was no way in hell, after all those years that he'd spent being a menacing asshole.

love was a fickle thing but what was it between noritoshi and you? treading the line between love and hate, tilting more towards the other but not quite. never far apart and connected to each other like an invisible thread of fate was intertwined between you. it wasn't love and it wasn't hate but everything in between.

you stared at the piece of paper in your hands, mildly offended. how dare gojo? why would he do this to you? yeah right, because he liked to see you suffer. and he wasn't even here to get an earful from you. clenching your teeth, you tossed the note on your table and moved towards your closet to pack. it was no use complaining about it, in the end the mission had to be accomplished either way. years you'd gotten away with rarely ever meeting noritoshi. the sorcerer community wasn't big to begin with but with skill and determination, you were able to dodge every encounter. the handful of times you met, he always kept his distance though you always felt his watching eyes on you. megumi had told you that noritoshi was to become clan head soon - the elders had finally given in and the handover would be taking place soon.

apparently noritoshi had proven himself to them, both in strength and leadership skills. even you had taken notice of this. you'd only caught a brief glimpse at him at the last gathering but could tell that he had matured, exuding an authoritative and strong aura. but you had grown as well, no longer the meek girl you had been. you were more confident in your skills now thanks to your diligent training with shoko and yuta. moments of insecurity rarely entered your mind anymore. the relationship, or rather lack thereof, between you was rather frosty now, merely limited to an awkward greeting or a simple nod. the tension was palpable, no one wanted to come in the line of fire. for the most part, people had left you alone and not dared asking about the issue, not even your own mum. but of course, gojo then had to enter and send you on this stupid mission that apparently had to be done in pairs. you would’ve been fine with anyone but noritoshi.

it was a rather unpleasant curse that you had to deal with, gojo told you that it required two people to keep it in check. though you didn’t understand his reasoning, seeing as noritoshi was a grade one sorcerer now. gojo had simply left you a note on your door after he left for his own business (pure cowardice, in your opinion). the note let you know that you would be staying overnight, gojo had already booked a hotel room for you and gave you instructions for the report that you had to fill out later. you were to meet up with noritoshi at the hotel before then heading out to investigate, work out a strategy before attacking. you sighed, tossing the bag near the door before crawling in your bed. how would you face him again, for an extended period of time, after all those years of silence? it was best to just get it over and done with, efficiently and quickly. depending on how fast you were, you might even be able to catch the last train home. you couldn’t sleep, feeling restless and anxious about the entire situation. still, you closed your eyes, trying to get your mind to rest. but all that floated around in your brain was the sound of rustling leaves, accompanied with soft lips on yours.

coincidentally, noritoshi was already in the city the curse was situated at, deciding to then check into the hotel first before you’d meet up. he would be lying if he said he wasn’t nervous - he didn’t know how to navigate the entire mission with minimal communication. he knew you didn’t want to talk to him, choosing to give him curt and snappy responses instead. cooperating was out of question, you disliked his presence and he could feel it. seeing that gojo had coordinated this (instead of doing the mission himself, like he was supposed to), noritoshi didn't expect anything to go well. weeks prior, gojo had pestered him about the title that was bestowed upon him. "so what's your first deed as the kamo clan head?" he had questioned noritoshi, grinning from ear to ear. noritoshi had shrugged and simply told him that he would go about his day. there were no plans, not yet at least. "so you're not gonna go and woo your lady?" this all knowing idiot. just thinking about it made his blood boil again.

noritoshi’s patience was already wearing thin upon seeing that gojo had booked one room for the two of you. with one bed only. he swore that gojo's secret skill was to give everyone headaches. complaining was useless, the hotel couldn't give him another room as everything was booked out due to it being the summer holidays. they'd deal with it somehow, even if he would have to sleep on the floor. noritoshi was placing his bag and outerwear in the closet when the door clicked, signaling that you'd arrived. for a brief moment, your eyes met but as soon as they did, your eyes had flitted somewhere else. you placed your bag on a nearby chair, rummaging in it until you found your sword and other supplies that you would be taking with you.

noritoshi remained silent, not wanting to upset you. he waited until you were ready to go, soundlessly following you. it was awkward but expected. at first, he was somewhat able to tell what you were looking for and gave you pointers in the right direction. it seemed to irritate you and you started venturing off on your own, simply leaving him behind. it frustrated him, after all you had a job to be done and needed to be as careful as possible. as a result of your uncooperativeness, it took longer than usual to map out a strategy. even longer because you refused to follow his suggestions and rather made up your own, knowing full well that they weren't as efficient.

the aftermath was… rather unpleasant. while there were no casualties, the two of you looked absolutely filthy and were in need of a good shower. noritoshi was angry, he didn't want to blame you but the entire situation got incredibly messy because of your stubborn head. hadn't you attacked him on your own, he would've been able to get rid of the curse swiftly. you'd snapped at him, asking him what his problem was. after all, the mission was finished and over with. involuntarily, noritoshi had to snort. you came back to the hotel late, far past midnight and still, you had the nerve to nag on him the entire way there. he'd let you use the shower first before hopping in himself. without a word you left the hotel room to grab yourself some snacks, stomach growling in protest.

noritoshi was seldom petty; as he put his robe on and entered the room, discovering that you hadn't come back yet, he promptly decided to give you a taste of your own medicine and stubbornly take the bed. what would you do about it now? he was peacefully reading a book in the dim lighting of the room when you came back. you almost dropped the snacks that you grabbed, narrowing your eyes at him. noritoshi ignored you, turning another page in the book unbothered. huffing in annoyance, you stomped over to the other side of the bed. noritoshi continued to ignore you.

"i'm not sharing a bed with you," you stated, crossing your arms in defiance. you didn't have any other solution but you were not going down without a fight.

noritoshi just narrowed his eyes at you and replied equally annoyed: "childish much, huh? just put some pillows between us if it bothers you that much. we're adults, for fuck's sake. and we've shared beds before, so i don't know what your problem is."

at this point you were fuming, you'd rather sleep on the floor than go anywhere near him. you wanted to wipe that stupid look off his face because you knew he was right and he knew it too. you were being childish and you couldn't deny it. there was no real reason to the quarrel, you wanted to be as insufferable as possible.

"it's different now!" you hissed indignantly. noritoshi looks at you incredulously, not getting your point. "you're a man now and- and it makes me uncomfortable!"

truthfully, it was more the fact that you were painfully aware of his presence now. noritoshi hadn't noticed but your feelings came crashing back in, filling the entirety of your being with yearning. each and every time he came too close, you dashed and didn't give him the opportunity to look at your face. the pained expression on your face was obvious, you weren't able to hide it. despite the hostility, you couldn't help but care. no matter how much you denied it, you would always habour feelings for him and were very much attracted to him.

"that's why i told you to put pillows between us??"

okay, that's it. "i can't stand being anywhere near you! you're a prick and i hate you," you snarled at him. to seal the deal, you hurled one of the pillows at him and watched triumphantly as it hit his chest. the angry look in noritoshi's eyes, however, told you that you fucked up. gritting his teeth, he tossed his book aside and lunged to grab you. you squeaked in surprise and wiggled out of his grasp, wrestling out of his arms until you stumbled and awkwardly landed on the bed, beside him. noritoshi keeps a tight grip on you, glaring down at you. now you've really crossed the line.

all confidence left your body when he hissed: "what. is. your. problem." you fucked up, royally. once noritoshi was mad, you were in for a ride. it was best to keep him in good spirits, appease him a little so he would ease up. you scrambled panicky and tried to apologize, pathetically wiggling in his arms.

"i'm sorry, i'm sorry! i didn't mean it, please let me go!"

noritoshi kept a steel grip on you, moving between your legs and pinning your hands to the mattress. his face inched closer, you could feel his breath fanning across your neck. you stayed still, breath hitched as you waited for his next move. noritoshi's voice was raspy, lilting with an emotion that you couldn't decipher. "you're being a brat, y/n. look at yourself, you've hurt me… tsk, how are you going to make it up to me?"

you couldn't tell whether he was joking or genuinely hurt - your intuition told you that he was simply playing with you as payback. no matter how far away you strayed, you always seemed to find yourself back in this position. he was hypnotizing, alluring even. not giving him a reply, you stared at the ceiling, frozen in thought. while you'd been intimate on more than one occasion, noritoshi had never acted this way. so… possessive and strict, the tone in his voice told you that he wasn't up for any more quarreling. you were at a loss for words.

noritoshi, not being happy with not receiving an answer, decided to take matters in his own hands. he nipped at your neck playfully, making you yelp in surprise before pressing kisses against your neck. your skin was tingling, shots of electricity moving up your spine. when there was no objection on your end, noritoshi took it was an okay to continue. hands squeezing yours, he resumes his work, giving you soft and almost unnoticeable kisses. other times, he was pressing harder, sucking your skin gently. you wondered whether he left some marks - delirious on pleasure, your mind focused back on him.desire overtook you, no longer was your rationality at the forefront. in the depths of your heart, an emotion that rarely made an appearance emerged. it was flooding your senses, your conscious and mind, begging you to give in.

by the time noritoshi reached your lips, you were writhing. you expected him to kiss you but then he stopped, making you involuntarily whimper. you wanted more, wanted to savour it. a small smile found its way onto his lips as he brushed your hair back and cupped your chin, making you look at him.

and you swore that he knew, he just had to know what a mess he's already made of you in such a short amount of time as he asked, "what's wrong hm? what do you need, baby?" you fell for it, hook line and sinker. you thought to yourself, fuck it, the opportunity was right there. he may be an insufferable dick and you might fight more than you get along but the opportunity was there and god, did you want to be selfish. for just one night, you wanted to be his. you leaned up to kiss him but noritoshi pulled back, clicking his tongue, repeating again and this time more firmly, "what do you need?"

you couldn't help but stare at him, how his slightly damp hair framed his face, his chest that was exposed by the loosely tied bathrobe and how it revealed parts of his thigh. you wanted to see more of him, touch him. there was a burning feeling inside your chest, it was clawing at your skin, trying to break free. you grew more restless as he stayed still and gave you a stern look until you grasped the hem of his sleeves and whimpered quietly, "please kiss me."

it felt like an eternity until he pressed his lips against yours, everything that was so unmistakably him flooded your senses. his scent wrapped around you until your brain couldn't make out any more coherent thoughts other than him. 'toshi, 'toshi, 'toshi, your 'toshi. he moved so languidly; his lips were warm and soft but bruising at the same time, kissing you with fervour. you began to ease into the kiss, letting go of all your inhibitions. you could worry about it later, you'd decided, this is a future you problem. you wiggled in his hold, hands coming up to push at his bathrobe. noritoshi didn't budge and continued to kiss you, sucking your bottom lip - your hands became more restless, desperate to touch him. he made an unenthused noise, biting your bottom lip as if warning you to not push him. still, he somehow obliged and sat back on his heels, taking his bathrobe off and throwing it haphazardly to the side.

he looked ethereal, somewhere in the distance you thought you can hear angels singing. you reached out to touch him again, earning you yet another warning glance from him. “where do you get the confidence to do whatever you want after that little stunt you pulled earlier?” he questioned you in a low voice. whatever snarky remark you had on your tongue was thrown out of the window when noritoshi leaned down to touch you, slowly pushing your oversized shirt up to reveal your shorts, then your bra.

your breath hitched in your throat, you couldn't tell what he was thinking because even in this state he kept his perfect poker face on. and when he undressed you, you almost felt embarrassed of how eager you were to rid yourself of your clothes. yet you felt exposed - noritoshi didn't make a sound as he just studied you as if you were a luxurious meal presented on a silver plate, the sound of his breathing alone making you squirmish. he didn't give you the satisfaction of a compliment nor did he let you know what he thought, instead leaning down to kiss you again.

before you could deepen the kiss, he’s already moved down to your neck. you mewled in disappointment, wrapping your arms around his neck and burying your hands in his hair. this time, he let you touch him, too absorbed in his mission to paint the skin of your neck in hues of red and purple. noritoshi moved lower when he was finally satisfied with his work of art, you’re a great canvas, he thought to himself. the burning feeling in your chest was flaring up again, you felt uncomfortably hot and the only relief you got was him touching you. he must know, he was doing this on purpose. you were convinced. a surprised gasp left your lips when his tongue swiped across your nipple before wrapping his lips around it. his fingers flicked the other one and- oh god did it feel so electrifying, so delicious, so good. you moaned his name, gently tugging on his hair as he continued his ministrations. “noritoshi,” you whimpered, trying to grind against his thigh. “please- please touch me.” he moved faster than you could react, snapping the waistband of your panties against your skin.

“i am touching you,” noritoshi responded matter-of-factly, cupping your breasts. “is this not enough?” you shook your head, making him chuckle. he took his sweet time, lathering your chest with the utmost attention. at this point you were sure you’d soaked through your panties and onto the sheets and you were desperate. finally, his lips left your nipple, his breath grazing them, making you shiver. he seemed to enjoy it, enjoy the effect he has on you, how you were writhing for him and him only. with swift movements, he removed your panties and your legs were thrown over his shoulders - how are his shoulders so broad - and he pressed kisses to your inner thighs. “look at you,” he cooed, glancing up at you. “you’re so wet for me and i haven’t even touched you here yet. are you craving me?”

“yes,” you mewled truthfully, wiggling your hips slightly. you missed how his face lights up in delight, loving how you’re slowly but surely coming undone for him. he was placing kisses everywhere but where you wanted him, where you needed him. you were at his mercy, he alone decided the pace. the desperate little tugs at his hair left him unbothered, you couldn't even move properly because he was keeping a tight grip on your hips, holding them down onto the mattress. “do you want me?” you nodded quickly. “then beg.”

"i'm not- i'm not gonna fucking b-" you didn't get to finish your sentence as noritoshi gave your inner thigh a bite.

"language," he hissed in irritation. "we can do this all night, baby. i don't have any qualms about keeping you here, making you squirm until you know not to treat me like that." to emphasize his threat, his hands languidly stroked your inner thighs, inching closer to your heat. goosebumps raised across your skin. noritoshi paid no mind to your laboured breathing or how you stared at him in disbelief. you would not beg him more than this, this stupid asshole, who did he think he is to expect you to do as he says? as if sensing that your attention wasn't on him anymore, one of his hands reached up to pinch your nipple.

you felt his fingers grazing your pussy, flicking over your clit but not quite touching it. yet the pleasure, coupled with the sharp pain of his pinching, was enough to make you delirious. you moaned his name, hips rutting up slightly to meet his hand. noritoshi pulled away abruptly and made you whine in frustration. "noritoshi!" you whimpered again, closing your eyes in embarrassment. "please just- just touch m-"

you felt another, harder pinch, tingles shooting straight to your core. "look at me," noritoshi growled and you opened your eyes quickly, not wanting to disappoint him again.

"please touch me, please just… i need you, need your lips or fingers," you struggled to find the right words, huffing in frustration at your weak attempt to persuade him. "please make me cum, please. i'll be good for you, i promise, i promise. wanna be good for you."

a sardonic smile graced noritoshi's lips, your begging music to his ears. he almost wished you could see yourself like this - the yearning evident in your eyes, your glossy eyes. what would you say? how quickly your resolve had crumbled, even though you'd vowed to yourself to keep him at an arm's length away from you. what was more heavenly to his ears are your moans and he intended to draw every last bit out of you tonight.

when his tongue finally made contact with your cunt, a loud moan leaves your lips, you almost sob in relief. your thighs trembled slightly, threatening to close but noritoshi was quick to pry them open and delved deeper into your heat. he alternated between lapping at your folds, then dragging his tongue across your clit before giving it a suck. your hips rocked against his face, meeting his movements as if it was already second nature to them. you thought you were seeing stars when you inched closer to your climax. tugging at his hair you whimpered out his name, letting him know that you're close, so close. that's when he pulled away, smirking at you as your high slowly ebbed away. you made a noise in protest, brows pinching in frustration but noritoshi just cooed at you condescendingly.

"you seem to forget who's in control here," he tsked at you, dragging his thumb across your clit. your hips jerked. "but, baby, you look so pitiful, i might just feel sorry for you."

hope sparked in your eyes when he pressed a brief kiss to your lips before slipping his fingers past your folds, his thumb drawing circles on your clit. "ride my fingers," he commanded and you reacted immediately, eagerly rutting against his fingers. you missed the dark glint in his eyes, the look that tells you you were not easily let off the hook whatsoever. pleasure was clouding your judgement, heightening your sensitivity to his touch. a loud moan fell from your lips when noritoshi curled his fingers, hitting a spot that otherwise was difficult for you to reach. your hand came up to cover your mouth, too embarrassed about other guests possibly hearing you.

noritoshi withdrew his fingers, thumb pressing against your clit. you gasped desperately, pawing at his chest to plead him to continue. "i want to hear you. don't you dare hide your moans," he told you, only sliding his fingers back into you when you complied. noritoshi was still kneeling, watching as you moved your hips against his fingers with fascination. while you'd kept a steady rhythm at the beginning, it was getting more and more sporadic. you were close again, noritoshi could tell. and yet it wasn't enough, he had to get you closer to the edge to then break you after.

"o- oh fuck," you cursed, gripping the sheets tightly as noritoshi moved his fingers, repeatedly hitting the spot that made your toes curl. you were to close, you could cum, soon-

"noritoshi!" a frustrated sob resounded from you as he pulled away, looking down at you with a satisfied smirk. your hands came up to wipe the tears that were welling in your eyes. you bit your bottom lip to keep yourself from crying as you watched him pop his fingers in his mouth, licking your essence from them. the sight alone made you feel hot and bothered. in the dim light of the room, noritoshi looked downright sinful. the way his broad frame was casting a shadow over your form, his glistening eyes, the sheen of sweat on his body and how his hair was hanging in his face.

"please let me cum, please! i- i want you so bad, want you in me… noritoshi, please give me it," you begged quietly, crawling towards him. noritoshi felt his heart soften at your cute face - you were so easy to read, he enjoyed teasing you. small hands reached out for the bulge in his boxers, experimentally pressing and nudging at it. noritoshi hissed uncomfortably; he was painfully hard and ready to cum as well but he couldn't, not yet. wanted to play with you more, mapping out the entirety of your body until he memorized how you reacted to his touch.

swiftly flipping positions, he pulled you on top of him, placing you directly above his crotch. you sank down immediately, sighing shakily as you pressed your cunt against the bulge. the boxers had to come off, they were the last barrier. you had to feel his skin on yours, wanted to be closer. noritoshi's hands shot out to stop you, giving you a warning look. you understood, withdrawing your arms to rest on your sides. pressing his bulge against you, he guided your hips to move against it, folds dragging across the fabric of his boxers. the friction was delicious, especially when he rutted against you, pressing against your clit. it took you a few tries until you figured out a comfortable rhythm, placing your hands against his chest as you moved on your own.

noritoshi kept his eyes on you. brushing your hair out of your face so he could get a better look at you, he then rested them near your thighs. "are you close?" he inquired when your movements became quicker and you nodded in reply, giving him a pleading look. he raised his eyebrows at you, shaking his head ever so slightly. "you don't get to cum without my permission."

he could see the conflict and hesitation, dancing in your eyes, how you were contemplating to go against his commands. noritoshi's heart filled with pride when you slowed down, thighs trembling from the restraint you kept on yourself. "good girl," he rewarded you, leaning up to kiss you. you whimpered against his lips, wrapping your arms around his neck to pull him closer. you were a sight to behold, noritoshi mused. slick spread across the fabric of his boxers and your thighs, kiss-bruised lips and the love bites that were blooming across your chest. he was proud to be able to have this effect on you.

it didn't take long until you were close again, this time begging and pleading him to let you continue. noritoshi supposed he toyed around enough, ready to give you what you were so desperately craving. lifting you up slightly, he pushed his boxers down and reached to the side, fumbling with the drawers of the night table before being able to pull out a condom. you watched in curiosity, as he put it on then lined his member up against your pussy. he dragged the head of his cock against your clit a couple of times, making you jump in surprise before letting you sink down. a long, relieved moan left your lips as you felt him fill you up to the brim. you'd never felt this full and good. jerking your hips against his slightly, your legs trembled as he perfectly hit that spot inside you effortlessly. his name fell from your lips like a mantra, letting everyone know that he was the one pleasuring you.

noritoshi let you adjust to him before wrapping his arms around you to keep you in place, driving his hips up against yours in an almost punishing tempo. your lips parted in a silent scream, no sounds leaving them other than heavy breaths. "f- fuck, noritoshi! i'm so close, please let me have it, please-" you begged sobbing. you didn't think you could survive another edging, it would utterly crush you. knowing that you were at his mercy, you complied with his orders. never had you felt this much pleasure, with anyone. noritoshi accomplished what others could never - setting your nerves ablaze with a simple touch.

"cum for me." your orgasm washed over you like a tsunami, leaving you writhing in his arms until you rode it out. noritoshi continued to move against you in a languid tempo, lovingly pressing kisses across your face. you slumped against his body exhausted, aftershocks still wracking through your body. he stroke your back gently, giving you a short kiss. "can you take another one?" he asked, making you look at him. though your mind was hazy, you could tell that he was caring, wanting to make you feel as comfortable as possible despite his mean side. you nodded, your words slurred as you told him: "mhmm, still want you, all of you."

noritoshi was laying you on the mattress, freezing mid-way as he hovered above you. could it be? there was no way. he brushed the thought off quickly, leaning down to kiss you. you sloppily returned the kiss, blindly moving your hands around until you found his, intertwining them happily. swiftly, he entered you again - now taking his sweet time. the pace was slow but filled with force, making you see stars. you wrapped your legs around his waist, heels digging into his skin. you blinked in confusion as noritoshi whispered sweet nothings into your ear. tears welled up in your eyes as you looked at him - you wanted him, so so much that it hurt you. you imagined you weren't in this situation, that this was simply intimacy between lovers. that you were his and he was yours, with no care in the world.

driving his hips against yours faster now, you could tell that he was close. lifting your hips to meet his movement, you whimpered against his lips. you wanted to pleasure him as much as he did you. the sight of his screwed shut eyes, panting heavily as he came, it nearly knocked the wind out of your lungs. noritoshi buried his face in the crook of your neck, whimpering quietly as he thrusted a few more times before coming to a halt. for a few minutes, you remain in this position, basking in the afterglow. he removes himself from you, telling you to stay put as he left to get some wet towels from the bathroom. as you laid there, your cunt wasn't the only thing that felt empty.

your eyes were glossing over and you were once again reminded of the fact that you couldn't have him. that he’s not your ‘toshi. you sat up slowly, spotting the mirror across the room. you stared at your reflection in your mirror, horrified at all the marks noritoshi had left behind and suddenly it dawned on you that you don’t understand why. you didn't care about each other - why would he mark you like this? your heartbeat sped up at the thought of him possibly, maybe, returning your feelings. that he wasn't just toying with your feelings to get back at you.

noritoshi returned, giving you a small smile as he signaled you to lift your arms a little so he could wipe you down. the gentleness in his actions made you sniffle emotionally; he paid attention to every single detail, making sure not to miss a spot. once done, he placed the towel on the nearby chair then returning to wrap you in the blankets and cradling you against his chest like a baby. the sound of his breath nearly lulled you into sleep. you leaned against his chest, sinking into the blankets. "are you okay? was i too rough?" noritoshi asked after a moment of silence. you didn't reply. why was he acting like this? as if you were a couple, as if he really cared.

"y/n? you don't have to reply, but at least give me a hand sign, so i know you're okay," he repeated again, looking at you with furrowed eyebrows. you turned your head away from him, trying to hide your tears. it wasn't long before you started crying uncontrollably, hiding your face in your hands. noritoshi started panicking, fussing over you and tried to pry your hands away so you would look at him. repeatedly shaking your head, you pushed him away from you.

"w- why couldn't you always be this gentle to me?" the words finally left your mouth, accusatory. "i- i didn't deserve any of this treatment and i still struggle to understand why it happened. i should hate you, hate you so much and yet i don't? why can't you love me the way i love you?"

speechless, noritoshi pulled away from you, arms sinking to his sides. it made you sob even harder, thinking that he was going to leave you again, like he always did. he never stayed, only came to wreck havoc, leaving you to pick up the pieces. "y/n, i'm sorry, i-" he drew you in, pressing you against his chest. you were confused at your own outbreak of emotions, not sure how to calm down. "i'm not sure what you thought, but i meant it when i told you that i love you, all those years back," noritoshi mumbled, pressing a kiss to the crown of your head.

you shook your head vehemently. "i don't believe that, not for one second. you've hurt me for so long and suddenly you had a change of heart?"

"i know it's hard to believe, but i promise i'm not lying. i do love you. with all my heart," noritoshi lifted your chin slightly, wiping the tears from your eyes. gently, he kissed you. "back then, i wasn't able to tell you but… things have changed now and i'll tell you, okay? but not now, tomorrow-"

"no! you'll just leave again and act like nothing happened and i-" you panicked, clinging onto him as dread washed over you again. he was going to leave again, the mission was over after all and you'd go separate ways again.

"i'm staying." noritoshi said firmly, holding your hands so you couldn't flail around anymore. "i'm not leaving you, okay? go to sleep, i know you're exhausted… when you wake up, i'll be there. we'll discuss things in the morning."

"promise?"

"i promise."

you didn't know why but this time, you trusted him. at least a little bit more than before. nodding slightly, you pressed your small frame against his. noritoshi's calming scent wrapped around you, lulling you into sleep. he watched as you fell asleep in his arms, pressing a kiss to your forehead before he settled as well, closing his eyes.

"i love you, y/n."

p.s.: i hurt myself writing this too haha but i swear this was it with the angst

#jujutsu kaisen #noritoshi kamo #kamo noritoshi #noritoshi #noritoshi x reader #noritoshi kamo x reader #kamo noritoshi x reader #noritoshi kamo x you #noritoshi x you #kamo noritoshi x you #noritoshi kamo imagines #kamo noritoshi imagines #noritoshi imagines #jujutsu kaisen imagines #fic: sanguine #writing

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zirkkun · 3 years

Photo

🤍ULR Speed Date Event Results - Part 3/5!💛

Metacrit got third place with 25 submissions! He was the hardest to select for, since he’s a lot more picky about the people he hangs around than the others are. There were only two I narrowed the options down two while reading them,

🤍 CozyCandle 💛 Corvus

But only one of them snagged a date of course. You can read who along with the story either under read more or on AO3!

🖤--✨--❤️

Undertale (c) Toby Fox Underlust by @/nsfwshamecave Underlust Reimagine by myself

Thank you for your support, but do remember to support and read Underlust (18+) if you can!

ulr masterpost || ulr main tag || ulr ask box || ulr comic beginning || kofi?

... the anon who submitted under the name Corvus!

🤍💛🤍💛🤍💛🤍💛

Metacrit still wasn't exactly used to the concept of being on the Surface, so seeing someone who proclaimed himself to be "not the going out sort of person" was a bit more enlightening to read. While the Surface was something new to experience, something new to let him become beyond what he used to be… the concept of forgetting your past and leaving everything behind was a lot more difficult than he anticipated.

Nevertheless, he wanted to try something different, at least. He already knew most of monsterkind, so why not try to find out more about humanity? Well, as it turned out, a lot of aspects he didn't like about monsterkind still bled over into humanity -- especially being overly flirtatious, apparently… but, luckily, there were some stray few who didn't like it, at least. Though, he wasn't really all that certain how much people would be willing to believe the trauma that came from even so much as a cheesy pickup line, regardless.

"Metacrit? You okay?"

His attention was brought back to the table in front of him, which was set up for an extremely casual "tea party" of sorts: a few light sandwiches and a pitcher of store-bought tea. The human had tried to insist that he should make some tea for the two of them, but, while Metacrit had no idea how to make it himself, really didn't want him to go through all the trouble of doing that, and settled on this instead. Which… was lackluster at best.

Metacrit's date sat diagonal to him. His eyes blinking with concern lacing his expression while he nervously anticipated Metacrit's response.

Metacrit merely smiled, releasing a soft sigh. "Yes, I'm fine. Sorry about that." He reached for and took a sip from the half-empty glass of tea in front of him. "What were we talking about again?"

The human frowned, but the concern seemed to be wiped from his face. "Uh… I don't really remember. Something about human and monster cultural differences? We went all over the place."

"That's true as well," Metacrit chuckled. He crossed one leg over the other in his seat as he set down his glass. "I seem to recall you saying you enjoyed things like art and enjoyed 'art museums'?"

Laughing slightly, the human responded, "Yeah, I like going to art museums, but like I've said before I don't really like going out very much. But it is nice to historical pieces and the varying amounts of art styles people use all over the world. Shows are also interesting -- like, plays, movies, stuff like that. Something where people are acting. They also vary by place to place and it's neat to see how the actors take their roles."

Metacrit's expression lit up the more the human described things, even though it may have just been the basics of art itself. He couldn't help but find it all fascinating, no matter how trivial it may seem. "The diversity of human culture never manages to not shock me. It's… just so much," Metacrit replied in amazement.

"Ahah, well… it's not exactly that great in a lot of cases. I think some aspects of monster culture are things we could learn from." The human took a sip of tea.

Metacrit, almost insulted, scoffed the moment he suggested that. "Excuse me? What aspect about monster culture could even be remotely better than humanity's?"

"Gender comes to mind first," he answered immediately. "Humans have an age-old binary system that makes it really difficult for anyone who doesn't fit either side to be accepted, making the whole situation really… complex, to put it in the lightest terms possible."

Well, Metacrit hadn't really considered this to be an aspect of human culture at all. The concept of only having one side or the other seemed… bizzare to him. While he tried to wrap his head around it for the sake of conversation, it wasn't working. What if someone can't choose? What happens? What if someone fits in the middle? Doesn't like either option? There's… two isn't enough choices for even monsterkind -- and humanity is much larger in population. He can't fathom the idea of being forced one way or the other.

"Though, maybe I'm speaking a bit too bluntly. I don't know exactly how things are seen in monster culture -- maybe there's something that still makes that situation non-ideal too."

The human's additional statement is what finally sparked something for Metacrit to continue talking about. Luckily -- luckily? -- for him, this was applicable.

"There is one aspect that doesn't quite fit the normal 'decide your gender when you're out of stripes' situation that most monsters have," he began. "Ghosts don't exactly work exactly the same as most other monsters. They're incorporeal, firstly, and they don't usually age either. They don't really have a time where ghosts are "in stripes." Some say that ghosts are made from fallen monsters' ashes… but I really don't want to think about that." He shook his head. "Point is, ghosts usually tend to go by 'they' or 'it' more than anything else. When they become corporeal by possessing something, that's when most ghosts choose something to identify themselves as, but not all change."

"Really?" the human asked. "I didn't realize there were subcultures for monsters too."

Metacrit half-nodded. "You could call it that, I suppose," he replied. He tossed back and forth the idea of telling the fact that he, himself, was once a ghost, but didn't want to dive down the rabbit hole of his past. Especially since, the reasoning behind becoming corporeal… his reason for his current body…

He tugged at his cyan jacket sleeve.

The reason that she…

It was the human accidentally dropping a sandwich, letting it fall apart entirely, that woke Metacrit back to reality this time. "... whoops," the human muttered, staring at the mess of various condiments and slices that were sprawled across the wooden table. There was a brief moment of awkward silence before Metacrit sliced through it with his own laughter.

He pushed back his seat as he started to stand up. "Don't worry about it. I'll get it," Metacrit replied.

"Wait -- I can clean it up, I'm the one who dropped the sandwich anyway --"

"Don't worry! You're my guest after all. Besides, everyone makes mistakes, I don't mind cleaning it up."

#undertale #undertale au #underlust au #underlust reimagine #underlust reimagine event #underlust reimagine metacrit #zircon arts #zircon writes

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imaginedhaven · 3 years

Text

Rules of Engagement: Chapter Thirteen

Link to Masterpost

Well, it seems you guys were as torn as I was about what to do with the fact that I finished this chapter so quickly, so I figured I’d go ahead and get it out so I can turn my attention to the next few updates sooner! We’re definitely getting toward the end of my outline now, probably 3 or so more chapters and then an epilogue.

Without further ado...

~*~*~

Aedion paced in the hallway before Aelin’s door, fingers harshly combing through his own golden hair. Whitethorn had stopped by briefly earlier and let him know she had awoken, which meant he needed to visit, needed to speak with her.

That said, he still wasn’t entirely certain what he was going to say to her.

The first thought that had come to mind was to forbid her from ever taking such risks with her own life again. He’d relished that thought for several moments, and it was still sorely tempting, but he knew even without asking that she would never listen to it. Aelin would never be content to rule from the sidelines; no, she would be a queen that would lead by example, never shying away from even the most difficult task.

He’d know that for years now, and he loved her for it. Once this mess was over and she could be crowned, he intended to swear it on her blood and his for all to know. It was difficult, though, to accept that her dedication would occasionally lead her to be injured as she had been.

He hadn’t seen the marks himself, of course, not being stupid enough to get between Whitethorn and Aelin in such a delicate moment, but he’d gotten reports from the healers. He was elated and proud and terrified all at once every time he thought of what he’d heard; elated because he served someone so strong, proud because she’d taken everything he’d taught her and put it to uses he never would’ve imagined, terrified by the thought of her ever doing something this risky again.

He was still debating exactly what he would say when the door opened, Aelin peeking back out at him. “Are you going to come in, cousin, or are you going to wear a hole through the floor?” she teased.

He quickly entered her room, and she closed the door again behind him. “Before you say anything, we have much to discuss,” she said quickly. “And I have both forgiveness and a favor to ask.”

Aedion sat quietly at her desk, struck dumb by the admission and knowing in that moment that his cousin and queen already had his forgiveness, regardless of what she said next.

“There’s been a lot I have kept from you over the past few years,” she admitted. “You know it, I know it. Perhaps in time I’ll be able to tell you about it. But… for now, know that what I’ve done closed a door on a chapter of my life I can never forget, but would just as soon move past.”

Aedion nodded his understanding. “I hope you’ll find it within yourself to tell me one day. You know I’ll listen to anything you have to say.”

She looked at him from where she stood beside her bed, a sad smile tugging at the corners of her lips. “I know, cousin,” she said. “Perhaps another day. Only… only Rowan knows everything, now. Even Lysandra only knows a piece of the story. Everyone else is dead.”

“So you did kill him, then. The criminal you set out to catch.” He hadn’t truly doubted it, but hearing it from her was different from reading reports.

Aelin nodded, looking away with a grimace. “It had to be done.”

Aedion crossed the room then, tugging her into an embrace. “I wish you hadn’t felt you needed to do it alone, is all,” he said, soft but fierce. “I read the reports. I don’t disagree with your assessment, but I wish I could’ve helped.”

“You did, though,” she said into his chest. “You were there to find me. Rowan says you made sure we weren’t followed.”

“I did. But you know I would’ve gone in with you, right?”

“I know,” she replied. “It’s why I couldn’t tell you beforehand. I had to do this alone. Besides, if you had gone in all of Erilea would know it was a move by Terrasen against someone who was ostensibly an Adarlanian citizen.”

Aedion nodded. Now that the situation had been resolved, he could understand the reasons she had acted as she did. That hadn’t made it any easier to bear in the moment, though.

She continued to speak. “I know we haven’t openly spoken of our future roles, but I’m certain by this point you know I’d like to bestow the honor of the blood oath on you.”

Aedion felt a thrill rush through him at the confirmation of his hopes. “I’d hoped to hear you say that, someday. That isn’t usually done until after the coronation, though, so why are you addressing it now?”

Aelin sighed. “The events that led us here were part of a bigger scheme. I’m working now to put all of the pieces together, but in the end I may need to give the oath to another as well. I know that’s not how it’s been done in Terrasen, and I’m not going to set out to do it, but…”

“You’re talking about Whitethorn,” he realized. “Do you think your oath could break Queen Maeve’s?”

“I’m not sure,” she admitted. “Much knowledge about the blood oath has been lost, at this point. But if that’s the only way… well. I wanted to make certain that you could at least get it first, if you wanted, in the event that you can’t be the only one.”

Aedion frowned, uncertain of how to feel. On the one hand, he understood her desire to free the warrior from a bond that had revealed itself to be an entrapment. On the other, a royal of Terrasen giving the blood oath to more than one sworn fighter hadn’t been done for centuries.

“I’ll take it once you’re crowned, and not one moment sooner,” he decided. “If it comes to pass that you must give it to another, I can learn to live with that, but the ceremonial oath is mine.”

Aelin finally smiled at him. “It’s always been yours. You know that, right? Ever since we were children.”

“I’m glad to hear you say it,” he admitted, finally releasing her and sitting back down at her desk.

“There’s more we must discuss. About the coming weeks, and about what I think is likely to come to pass based on what I’ve learned.”

Aedion leaned forward. “Tell me what I need to know.”

~*~*~

Dorian smiled as Aelin stepped into his office. “I had hoped you would come to see me,” he said as she closed the door behind her. “I am glad to see you seem to be recovering well from your… ordeal.”

“Chaol tells me he had to tell you everything,” she replied softly. “I’m afraid I must apologize for my deception. I told him you were better off not knowing or being involved.”

So they were getting straight to the point, then. Dorian could work with that. “Tell me, was this entire courtship simply to gain access to Rifthold?”

“No!” Aelin looked horrified. “No, it was convenient that the trail led here, but if that had been the only reason I would simply have asked to visit you. I did come to speak with you about our arrangement, though.” Her fingers twisted nervously at the ring he noticed she was wearing on her thumb, the ring he had given her upon her arrival. “I also came to ask a favor.”

Dorian leaned forward, curious. “What part of our arrangement did you wish to discuss?”

Aelin glanced at the door behind her and then smiled sadly at him. “Do you think we could’ve been happy, in another life?”

It was a strange question, and Dorian wasn’t exactly certain how to respond. “Is there a particular reason you’ve been thinking about this?”

“The past few days have come with a lot of realizations for me, chief among them that I no longer wish to live a lie.” At this revelation, she twisted the ring off of her thumb altogether.

Dorian breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank the gods,” he muttered.

Aelin lifted an eyebrow, though her own relief shone in her eyes. “Would it truly have been such a nightmare, to be blessed by my company for the rest of our lives?”

“Terrible, I’m certain, though I have a feeling I’ll be burdened with your company regardless,” he teased.

“I was hoping you’d say that. You truly have been a friend this entire time, and I don’t want to lose that when I return home.”

As he watched, she moved to set the ring between them on his desk. Before she could, though, he rested a hand on top of hers. “Keep it. I meant it as a gift for you knowing that in a perfect world we would both be going our separate ways around this time.”

Aelin glanced down at their hands and then back up at him before throwing herself around the desk and wrapping her arms around him.

To his credit, Dorian only hesitated out of surprise for a moment before returning her embrace. After a few moments, he ventured to speak. “I believe you mentioned you had a favor to ask, and I presume the favor isn’t telling my parents that we aren’t to wed after all.”

Aelin laughed. “No, but I think you might enjoy it all the same. Shall we venture toward the library? I’ll tell you all about it as we go.”

Dorian chuckled and offered his arm. “I already like this favor.”

They were about halfway to the library when Aelin began to speak. “As you know, I only have a few short weeks left in Adarlan. That’s not a lot of time, and I need to work as quickly as possible while involving only those I can trust.”

“I’m honored to be considered among that select group,” he replied.

“You should be,” she grinned back. “I recently came into knowledge that threatens not only my kingdom, but yours as well. I’m afraid I can’t provide too many details right now, as I have only my suspicions and I do not wish to accuse anyone without proof.”

“Of course not. So you wish me to help you obtain proof.”

Aelin nodded. “I need to find the oldest histories you possess on Doranelle, and I need to know all I can about the different bonds the Fae possess and create, including the blood oath. You know the libraries here better than I, and I know you would enjoy a chance to spend more time in there.”

“Are you certain we wouldn’t work out?” Dorian teased. “You truly offer me the best things.”

Rather than respond verbally, Aelin turned them into a little alcove and kissed him.

He responded automatically, one hand settling on her waist and the other sliding into golden hair. They pressed together for a few short moments before breaking apart at the sound of a startled intake of breath and hurried footsteps fading into the distance, Aelin glancing up at him with a wry smile. “You’re good at that,” she murmured. “But if I had to venture a guess, I would presume you didn’t feel anything either.”

It was true. Despite there having been nothing objectively wrong with the contact, he couldn’t help but compare it to the few stolen moments he’d had with Sorscha. What was more interesting to him, though, was the last word she had spoken. “So you found someone you would rather be kissing?”

A rare blush graced Aelin’s features then, and she looked away. “There’s very little that can come of it right now.”

“Why not?” Dorian asked as he leaned against the wall. “Your warrior prince certainly seems very interested in you.”

His gamble paid off with the reward of her turquoise eyes going wide and her hand physically covering his mouth. He had guessed correctly, then. “Quiet,” she hissed. “Have you no sense of tact?”

Dorian grinned beneath her hand before pulling it away. “It’s not one of my best talents, no.”

Aelin grumbled wordlessly in response and dragged him into the library. “If you have time to mock me, you have time to make yourself useful. Where do we begin?”

And so they dove into the shelves of Rifthold’s library in search of answers, Dorian leading her into the darkest corners where the oldest and least-read tomes were kept and where they would remain for most of the day.

~*~*~

Several weeks passed, and soon it was time for Aelin and her escort of friends to leave Adarlan. She had spent most of her days with Dorian, reading through every book she could get her hands on that might grant her insight to her problems. Her evenings were spent with Aedion, carefully planning her next move while Lysandra prepared Evangeline for bed.

She had seen precious little of Rowan since she had killed Arobynn. She had been so busy learning as much as she could in the time she was given, and he appeared to be avoiding her as well. She couldn’t be certain of why, and every time it occurred to her to simply visit her carranam and demand answers he was conspicuously absent. She was trying not to let it bother her; after all, he was certainly preparing for their inevitable separation just as much as she was. Perhaps reducing the amount of time he spent with her was his idea of easing their parting later on.

Thankfully, between reading and planning and wondering what on earth was going on with Rowan she had had precious little time to attempt to sleep. It was truly for the best; ever since the events of several weeks prior she had had a difficult relationship with sleep and with dreams. Besides, the less time she spent sleeping the more time she had to compile the results of her research.

The day before she was to leave Rifthold, Aelin slipped into town and paid for messages to be sent to Orynth as well as to several of her friends. They deserved to be updated on the dissolution of her engagement to Dorian, and she suspected she would require aid from several of them in the days to come. She also left a copy of her summary of all she and Dorian had learned on the prince’s desk, knowing he would be as interested as she in the results of their work.

Lysandra had already assisted her with packing, and so she found herself with nothing left to distract herself after the evening meal. Before she knew it, she found herself dozing in the warm light of the candle she’d lit at her desk.

Some time later, after the candle had long since blown out, Aelin awoke with a scream and the memory of lines of fire along her back.

Trembling, she made her way to the couch before the fireplace, setting it ablaze even though it was the height of summer and she didn’t need the warmth. The soft crackling soothed her nerves, as did the material of the blanket she drew around her shoulders. She was so entranced by the sounds of the fire that she almost missed the sound of her door opening.

Rowan stood in the doorway, concern and hesitation warring on his face. “Are you… I heard…”

Before he could either finish his question or think better of it and leave, Aelin launched herself at him.

Rowan’s arms came around her waist, though the surprise on his face suggested this was more automatic and less deliberate. Before he could rethink his response, she burrowed closer and rested her face against the muscles of his neck and shoulder, delicately inhaling the pine-and-snow scent that rose to meet her and reminded her of home.

She felt more than heard him speak as he finally found words. “What’s wrong?”

Rather than directly answer his question, she asked one of her own. “Do you ever stop seeing them in your dreams? The things that happen to you. The things you did. The people you did them to, or the people who suffered because of you.”

Rowan sighed, his arms tightening around her in response. “Do you want an honest answer, or a comforting one?”

That alone was answer enough, but she replied nonetheless. “I think by this point we’ve agreed to be honest with each other, don’t you?”

As he led her back to the couch, the warrior was clearly gathering his thoughts. Finally, with troubled green eyes, he said, “They never leave you altogether. Or if they do, they haven’t left me yet. But it does get easier, in time. The dreams come less frequently. I find it helps to remind yourself of the end goal. Yes, you killed an assassin king. But given the same knowledge and the same set of decisions, I know you would do it again. And for what it’s worth, I think you made the right decision.”

As he spoke, she felt the nervous trembling leave her, only to be replaced by exhaustion. “I’m so tired,” she said simply.

“You know you could come to any of us if you’re having trouble sleeping, right?” There was a moment’s pause and then his fingers were in her hair, delicately carding through the golden waves.

She sighed happily and relaxed into the touch. “Aedion’s got a child keeping him up at night now. He hardly needs any help from me.” And Rowan had been doing whatever it was that had been keeping him away from her, though she chose not to bring it up. Not now, when he was so close and everything felt so right.

“Surely your prince would be all too happy to assist.” There were the faintest traces of disdain curling around his soft accented voice, almost too faint for her to detect. Was Dorian correct? Was it possible that Rowan…?

Hesitantly, hardly daring to believe she was actually doing so, she lifted a hand and traced a trembling fingertip along the swirls of the tattoo that marked the side of his face. When she was close to his ear, she let her touch graze over the delicate point she found there before skimming down to his jaw.

His hand caught hers, long fingers wrapping around her wrist, and when she glanced at his face his eyes were flat with anger. “Don’t touch me like that,” he snarled, and she snatched her hand away as though she had been burned.

“I—I’m sorry,” she stammered. “Gods, Rowan, I’m so sorry.”

But he didn’t reply, except to quietly stalk out of the room and carefully close the door behind him.

Aelin stared after him, as though focusing on the door could make him come back to her. How had she misread the situation so terribly? Where had everything gone so wrong? She’d been certain, so certain, that if she’d approached him she would be welcomed, or even gently let down, but this…

Aelin shook her head. On second thought, she wasn’t certain why she had ever expected anything different. He’d lived for several centuries longer than her, and already had and lost a perfect mate. By comparison, how was a demi-Fae who had several years before finding out if she would Settle into immortality supposed to compare?

Despite the sorrow and rejection swirling around in her core, though, she was only all the more resolved to see her plan through.

She only hoped Rowan could forgive her eventually.

~*~*~

The moment the door closed behind him, Rowan shifted, sending a breeze to open the nearest window before he flew through it. The currents of wind rushing high above the palace were a match for his state of mind, all fast-paced panic and swirling eddies of confusion, and he circled the palace several times before soaring along the river nearby.

It didn’t take him long at all to realize that his reaction to her touch had been a mistake, and not just because it had stopped something he’d been quietly longing for. Allowing her to continue would’ve been the simplest way to follow the orders his queen had sent and disrupt her courtship with Prince Dorian, even if it had broken what was left of his heart along the way.

His hawk let out a shrill cry as he dove for the water and then quickly climbed again, high enough to remain out of sight to the humans below. He had been doing a terrible job of following that order, truth be told, and he knew he would be punished for it once he returned home to Doranelle. Once his queen learned that he had spent several weeks avoiding Aelin and her prince, all because he had seen them kissing on his way to the library and been unable to control his own reaction to the sight…

Another cry into the night that would forever go unanswered issued from his beak. He was supposed to be better than this, stronger than this, more controlled than this. He should have allowed the night to continue, to whatever end. He was under no illusions that a future queen such as Aelin could possibly actually want a battered and scarred fighter like him for anything longer than a handful of nights, but a few careful hints of such activities could have easily ruined her courtship and allowed his orders to be fulfilled. And yet he couldn’t bring himself to do it, had panicked instead of allowing the princess to use him for whatever unstated and misdirected desire she’d felt.

He’d thought he had long since given up self-preservation as an instinct, from the moment he had discovered Lyria’s death and proceeded to lose himself as well. Perhaps he still had; the consequences of running away in the moment to protect a heart he’d long thought permanently frosted over would be severe, painful, and likely unending.

Would it be worth it in the end? What had Aelin even hoped to achieve with such a gesture? Was she simply seeking company to forget her fears and regrets for a night? If she was, why hadn’t she gone to her prince for comfort? Was it that she hadn’t planned on seeking someone out, but he had made himself available?

Rowan dove for the river again, hoping the winds rushing past him would take his spiral of confused thoughts with them. He didn’t know what to do next, he realized. He would have to return with Aelin to Terrasen for at least a few more weeks, until he deemed her training to be complete.

That was perhaps the one thing he could be genuinely proud of in this whole situation. Once she had gotten past whatever had been blocking her from shifting, her powers had blossomed. After weeks of careful tutelage her control was almost everything he could ask for, especially from a fire-wielder. As she did not have the guarantee of centuries to perfect her craft, there was only but so much more he could reasonably expect her to learn. Not to mention that he was hardly the best teacher for control in purely academic settings such as those she would likely find herself in. No, he had hardened his magic into a weapon just as he had trained his body to be one. For all her appreciation of the art of fighting, and for all of her evident skill, it was likely that she would never see true battle.

It was a shame, in a way, that a warrior-queen such as herself would find herself so leashed. Perhaps her prince would see fit to allow her to handle any conflicts they found themselves embroiled in, seeing that her skills with a blade far outmatched his.

Regardless of her future, he would have to depart sooner rather than later. He wasn’t certain if it would be better at this point to linger as long as possible, or to return to her immediately and declare her training complete so he could depart and never see the way she and the prince behaved around each other again.

Either option meant talking to Aelin at least one more time, and he knew immediately that she would deserve an explanation for his actions. She would never ask for one; no, she had asked for shockingly little from him from the moment they had met. Perhaps she even felt as though she didn’t deserve one. It would be easy for him to simply declare her training done and leave, or even for him to rejoin her company and never say a word about what had passed between them. But it wouldn’t be right.

No, he would talk to her and explain that he had panicked. He would explain that the delicate nature of their situation meant that nothing could come to pass between them, that his heart couldn’t take it if they came together in such a way only to be torn apart.

Quickly, he turned back toward the palace and called on the winds to carry him faster. The longer he lingered, the harder it would be to say what would be required of him. And so he flew, making for the window he had left open and shifting rapidly once he landed.

A careful knock on her door gave no reply, and he sighed quietly. Perhaps she had finally managed to find sleep, or perhaps she was ignoring him. If she was ignoring him, it would certainly be nothing less than what he deserved. He found that he was unable to leave the question unanswered, though, and so he thought a silent plea for her forgiveness before carefully opening the door.

The bed was carefully made, and there was no sign of the princess. Perhaps she had gone to speak with her friend or her cousin. A darker part of his mind whispered that perhaps she had sought out her prince after all. But no, a closer look at her room revealed two of the bags she had packed to be missing.

Aelin had fled in the middle of the night, leaving no indication in the room as to where she was going or what she was doing.

Shit. He was in deep, unending shit, and he had no idea how he was going to explain this to any of the people likely to ask.

~*~*~

Tagging:

@ireallyshouldsleeprn @queen-of-glass @fangirlprincess09 @sassys-world @morganofthewildfire @superspiritfestival @perseusannabeth @sis-it-dont-add-up @jlinez @julemmaes @emilyoftheshadows @thegoddessofyou

#haven writes #rules of engagement #rowaelin

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theoi-crow · 4 years

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hello! I was wondering if you could provide examples of how you weave the deities into your daily life aside from food offerings, I come from a strict Christian household and mixing that with being autistic, it's hard for me to figure out what that entails when posts say that! I really would like to show my gods more love, but it's hard lacking energy from chronic pain & depression, so if this is too personal that's okay I was just looking for some inspiration!!! thank you so much either way 💖

Hi!

I avoid following a schedule with the gods because I also have a lack of energy from chronic pain and depression that flares up from time to time.

Do not follow a schedule when you have these problems, instead go with the flow.

Feel out what you feel drawn to and ignore things that say "Fridays are sacred to Aphrodite so do something for her on those days" because when Friday rolls by, you might be feeling drawn to Apollo or another god instead.

Also look at your normal schedule and what you naturally do in those instances and weave the gods into them. Bring the gods into your life instead of trying to make your life about the gods. As amazing as they are, the gods want you to live a life you enjoy without always feeling guilty for ignoring some arbitrary rule someone listed on tumblr.

Having said that: this is what my life looks like.

Morning:

-Wake up and say good morning to the gods.

-Brush teeth/shower and talk to Aphrodite and Apollo because Aphrodite does self-care and grooming and Apollo focuses on health and hygiene.

-pick out outfit and do makeup and talk to Aphrodite about my day or put on music I know either Aphrodite or the gods will enjoy. Music that makes me think of and feel the gods. No point in adding the song Eros and Apollo by the Studio Killers if you don't like the song.

-i go to college and on my way I offer a joke to Hermes. I also envision myself covered in Ares energy so anyone on the street sees my street face (aka don't you dare talk to me). Before Ares, I was always getting sexually harassed by creeps on my way to school, now I put my music on blast and think "murder" while I charge my way to school. I had a guy approaching me, but because my music was too loud, I could feel Ares go "Tell that ******* your busy and keep walking." My life has seriously improved 1000%!!!

-when I enter the school, I say hi to Athena who is the patron goddess of my particular school (she's technically the school mascot, but I don't like calling her that.)

-when I do anything school related, I envision Apollo (god of knowledge) helping me absorb new information. I ask Athena to help me strategically study with Apollo. (I will be writing a post about why I work with Apollo when dealing with aquiring new information versus Athena because while wisdom is important, knowledge is also important for gathering new information)

Afternoon:

-listen to music on my way home and mentally talk to the gods about what I learned and what I should post on Tumblr or anything personal happening in my life at the time. I especially talk to Hermes and Aphrodite because I'm traveling and cleansing my emotions. I also talk to Ares, again because my street face keeps people from harassing me.

-then I either do my homework or answer asks, but either way I talk to Apollo about them and imagine what he'd be saying about these items.

Evening:

-i relax and talk about my day with the gods as a way of doing a personal review.

-I unwind by going on Tumblr and seeing posts about the gods and feeling them looking over my shoulder and making comments about their cute followers and how much they love them.

-At night, my they/them wife and I have a tradition of making up stories every night for the last 10 years. We're both story tellers, they want to write books and I always have so many story ideas I never know what to do with them. But now, we tell the stories to the gods and we can feel them huddle up and make comments like,

Hermes: "But have they discovered his identity?"

Athena: "No, they think they figured it out but Aela said they weren't sure."

Aphrodite: "I ship the detective and the masked vigilante, it's like he wants to know his identity but he is also addicted to the chase!"

Ares: "and then when he was about to expose him, he decked him right on the goddamn face!!!"

Apollo: "I predict the vigilante is the cop the detective has a crush on. You know, the one he works with? I think he's messing with the evidence.

-after the story ends we go to sleep and wish the gods a good night.

This is just one of the different kinds of days in my life but it's not every day, just an example. Some days I get so distracted by my own personal affairs that I forget to talk to the gods. Some days I don't feel the gods at all. Some days I focus on one god more than the others, etc.

A very important note: in my post I kept saying "talking to the gods" and some people may imagine me having a two way conversation where the gods would talk to me as clear as if I were talking to another person. This isn't the case. It does happen on occasion but MOST of the time, I'm mentally telling the gods about things that remind me of them, or things that are on my mind. Sometimes the gods don't respond or I don't feel the gods around at all.

This is okay. Even when the gods are not present at the time, they always get the message. Kind of like when you email or text someone instead of a direct conversation. The person will still get it but it might be later.

As far as you being autistic, the gods adjust their energy and communication method to best connect with you. This is the number one reason why I don't like people speaking on behalf of the gods, because everyone is different and the gods communicate in a way that will be the most effective and clearest to the specific devotee. Everyone is different so the gods adjust themselves accordingly.

And as far as growing up Christian goes (something else we both have in common) please understand that your subconscious mind is still adjusting itself to your new life and still has Christian guilt that will make you second guess your current religion.

You will also be tempted to do Christian things with your new religion like see myths as biblical truth and think the gods are mad at you for not doing something a specific way or wonder if you are actually doing things you are supposed to be doing and trying to find "the truest form" of the religion.

That doesn't work here because Christianity came from Catholicism which was created with a very set formula by the Roman empire, different Christian religions changed the formula to match their new laws regarding that religion but they still have a rigid formula.

The ancient Greek religion is so personalized and changes depending on the region and a lot of religious documents that we now have have mostly come from Athens, one of MANY different regions and they all worshipped the gods differently.

Please understand that the only thing that counts is what works for you. The gods love that you are working with them but they want you to live your life in the truest way that feels right to you.

Here's a masterpost that will help: (LINK)

I hope this helps!

May the gods connect and communicate with such clarity that their messages become as clear as the songs birds sing in the spring.

#paganism #hellenic paganism #pagan #Greek gods #hellenic polytheism 101 #hellenic deities

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the-light-followed · 4 years

Text

EQUAL RITES (1987) [DISC. #3; WITCHES #1]

“‘Where does it say it?’ said Granny triumphantly. ‘Where does it say women can’t be wizards?’

The following thoughts sped through Cutangle’s mind:

…It doesn’t say it anywhere, it says it everywhere.

…But young Simon seemed to say that everywhere is so much like nowhere that you can’t really tell the difference.

…Do I want to be remembered as the first Archchancellor to allow women into the University? Still…I’d be remembered, that’s for sure.”

Rating: 6/10

Standalone Okay: Yes

Read First: Yeah, if you like magic and bad puns, you’ll be fine.

Discworld Books Masterpost: [x]

* * * * * * * * * *

Equal Rites does not mess around. It’s early Discworld, so you’ve still got a little bit of that High Fantasy vibe to it, where sometimes Pratchett just spews fantastical-sounding terms and concepts so that the reader can’t forget that This is Fantasy, We Are Not in Kansas Anymore, Folks! And to be perfectly honest, a lot of the plot, especially the early stuff, is kind of forgettable. There’s a lot of people talking to people about doing stuff before the actual doing gets done, if you know what I mean.

But that doesn’t really matter, because Equal Rites has important shit to say and, by god, Pratchett is going to say it. And in case you didn’t bother to read the book itself, you can tell just by looking at the title that a) it’s about gender inequality in the magical community, and b) there’s going to be puns. So many puns. Sir Terry, please, take pity on me. I just don’t have the time to go around explaining to every person I meet on the street why this kind of thing makes me absolutely batshit feral for the Discworld.

I love it so much.

Anyway. Equal Rites is the story of Eskarina Smith, or Esk, the first ever female to be born a wizard. The whole concept of ‘the eighth son of an eighth son is chosen by the magical staff of a dying wizard to become a new wizard’ brings up a lot of questions for me—a lot of questions that will never be answered—but if I ignore that and just accept that it’s true, then by Discworld tradition Esk is undeniably a wizard. She is the eighth, uh, child of an eighth son, chosen at birth by the magical staff of a wizard who promptly dies and decides to be reincarnated as a weirdly randy tree and then, later, as an ant.

…Cool, I guess.

More importantly, and also by Discworld tradition, Esk undeniably cannot be a wizard, because she’s born female. Honestly, Pratchett might as well have named this Sit Down and Shut Up While I Talk About Gender Roles and Gender Inequality, You All Are Going to Listen to Me Because I’m Going to Make Bad Puns While I Do It.

Over the course of the book, Pratchett does some deep dives into what it means to be a witch, what it means to be a wizard, how they’re the same, how they’re different—and why none of that actually matters. For something published over thirty years ago, I think Equal Rites holds up incredibly well as a conversation on gender and society, and it’s still just as relevant as ever. It just goes to show that a) writing with thought, kindness, and care makes for a timeless product, and b) society really hasn’t made that much progress since 1987, has it? It’s a little sad that the issues Pratchett wants us to think about here are still just as recognizable and just as common in the world as they were thirty-three years ago.

(Kind of as a side note, there are definitely things I don’t think Pratchett considered about the basic premise he’s set up, namely that just because Esk was born with a certain set of genitals, it doesn’t necessarily mean anything about her gender. I’ve seen a lot of discussion, especially on the internet, about trans Esk, and trans wizards and witches, and what that would mean for the Discworld universe—really interesting stuff, things people should definitely look into, but not what I’m going to focus on here. I would highly recommend that people think about it, especially cis people like me. It would be wrong to go through Equal Rites without even bringing it up, even if I read the text as more as a discussion of gender roles rather than gender identity. Since Pratchett was a cishet man writing this in the 80s, I’m also willing to bet it’s what he was intending. But it’s still an important conversation to have.)

Anyway, let’s jump in and look at the dichotomy that Pratchett is setting up for us!

What is a witch? What is a wizard? How are they the same, and how are they different? Why does that split matter?

I did the messy work of going through my copy of the book and highlighting every instance where definitions are provided for ‘witches’ and ‘wizards,’ specifically so that I could run a compare-contrast, and I want to point out right off the bat that basically all of the details on so-called ‘defining’ features of these two schools of magic are provided through characters and their POV—direct dialogue and thoughts—not by word-of-god narration or omniscient POV. So, obviously, we have to run all this through the internal bias filter; this stuff is all what people believe about wizards, witches, and magic, not necessarily how things are.

What makes a witch, according to Equal Rites:

Magic out of the ground

Dress in black to look the part

Witches bow. They’ve got to be different from everyone else; it’s “part of the secret” (headology)

Cunning, old (or they try to look it)

Suspicious, homely, and organic magic

Appearance of magic can do more work than actual magic (headology)

“Leaving the world as it was and changing the people”

They can “Borrow” and work gently

“Fighting her [Granny] was like swatting a fly on your own nose”: if you don’t struggle and make waves, you can do a lot with less outright power

Do the messy, practical stuff, not just the flash

Always, “without exception, women”

What makes a wizard:

Magic out of the sky

Over-the-top ways of dressing up to look the part, often with robes and sequins

“Books and stars and jommetry.” (Granny absolutely does not know what geometry is, or what it is for.)

“Talked too much and pinned spells down in books like butterflies,” and looked at “numbers and angles and edges and what the stars are doing”

Wise, old

Powerful, complex, and mysterious magics

Magic is condensed out of the air and into the staff, and used by the wizard

“Magic changed the world in some way, wizards thought there was no other use for it”

Can’t “Borrow,” only take/seize control

Too busy with the “infinite” and “never noticing the definite”

Always, “without exception, men”

Witches “normally work with what actually exists in the world,” while a wizard can give thoughts shape, “put flesh on his imagination.” Witches learn to walk softly and move over and around an obstacle, while wizards puff up and fight to go straight through it.

Witches “need a head.” Wizards “need…a heart.”

In short, witches are self-taught, intuitive, grounded in reality, and fluid in their magic use—when they actually use it at all. They work with what they feel and what they know about the world. Wizards are academics and learn from set rules and their books, and their magic is often over-complex, overpowered, and difficult to control. Wizards are more rigid and structured in their magic use—ritualistic, even—but less connected to reality or grounded in the real world.

And, of course, both groups wear fabulous outfits and dramatic pointed hats!

Just look at ‘em. Such wonderful weirdos.

The more I look at the ‘definitions’ like this, all laid out and proper, the more I start to think that the witches who do things we would consider ‘bad’ witchcraft are just correctly using elements of wizardry. For example, think about Mrs. Earwig, with her books and rituals, her special tools and fancy dress code; even though she doesn’t focus on the world around her or the people in it, the way a ‘good’ witch would, she’s good at what she does, and so certain in herself that she can stare down the glamor of the Queen of the Elves without flinching in The Shepherd’s Crown. On the other hand, we have our classic ‘bad’ wizard, Rincewind, who demonstrates some exceptionally witchy tendencies—he’s excellent at headology even if actual magic isn’t really in his wheelhouse, as Interesting Times makes pretty obvious. And despite the fact that he’s a coward-sprinter who’d really rather avoid danger if at all possible, when it comes down to it, he’s still the man who’ll put himself between the world and a great evil with nothing but trembling knees, a spine reluctantly turned from water to iron, and a half-brick in a sock. As Granny would say, he walks the line.

So, really, what does gender actually have to do with it? Why is there a distinction at all? Is it actually important?

And to make a long novel short, what Pratchett is saying in Equal Rites is that it’s not. There’s no difference between witchcraft and wizardry that actually makes for a good reason for a gendered split. Men aren’t inherently better at math and academia, or as Granny says, “jommetry;” women aren’t inherently more practical, emotional, or intuitive. That’s a social construct, not a biological one.

And beyond that, even, there’s no real reason for the two ‘types’ of magic to be split up at all. They might be different ways of operating, but it’s all magic. Anyone could do either. Or neither. Or both.

There’s an early conversation between Death and the wizard whose mix-up with his staff marked Esk as a wizard—just after the man has died, when he’s realized that he’s passed his magic along to a female and, in his mind, made a terrible mistake. “I was foolish,” he says, “I assumed the magic would know what it was doing.” But instead of agreeing, Death tells him, “PERHAPS IT DOES.”

It all comes down to what Esk calls magic beyond magic—the reality of the thing beyond the concepts we’ve created to define and confine it. If we’ve invented these distinctions between ‘types’ of magic, between ‘types’ of gender and the self, then what remains once we’ve removed them? What happens when we peel them away and see what’s left behind? Why do we cling to our invented categories, the things that limit both sides and create conflict?

I really like that Equal Rites never puts Esk into a specific category. She doesn’t end the book as a ‘true’ wizard or a ‘true’ witch, but she also doesn’t fully reject either. As sad as I am that Pratchett never goes much deeper into Esk (her brief appearance in I Shall Wear Midnight doesn’t actually explain much), I’m fine with not having a concrete answer. One, the other, both, neither—it’s not the point. Magic is magic. People are people. Gender is, honestly, irrelevant. Beyond the academic divides we’ve made for ourselves, it’s all the same stuff given different names. Esk does magic, and she is herself, and in the end, she’s not bound by the limitations that witches and wizards put on their reality.

Infinite possibilities!

It’s something the other wizards and witches never get to have. They’re so locked into what they believe magic to be, what they believe themselves to be, that they never really look outside those boxes.

It’s wild to me that the concept Pratchett is introducing here—specifically about wizards and witches and gender—basically disappears as long as Esk does. Esk is a really cool character; the idea of female wizards and male witches is fascinating. I want more of all this. So, I’m genuinely sad that Esk doesn’t reappear again until the Tiffany Aching books, specifically I Shall Wear Midnight—in 2010, more than twenty years after Equal Rites was published. And we don’t get another wizard or witch or magic-user in general working outside their typical gender alignment until Geoffrey appears in 2015 in The Shepherd’s Crown and asks to become a witch, and even then, the witches take to calling him a ‘calm-weaver’ instead.

I like that the idea eventually comes full circle. I don’t like that the circle takes thirty years, and goes basically unacknowledged in the meantime.

But the point Pratchett is making is still there in the Discworld, and it never really goes away. Remember how I said earlier that this stuff—all this ‘witches do and are x, wizards do and are y, that’s how it has to be’ nonsense—it’s all what people believe about magic and such, not how things are? Pratchett and Discworld are huge on belief. Belief shapes reality, belief becomes real, and we see that over and over again. But part of what Pratchett is saying here is that even if we all believe in something, then it doesn’t mean that it’s right. Just because something is doesn’t mean it should be.

More importantly, though, it also doesn’t mean we’ve locked ourselves in place. Esk proves that much. We learn. We grow. We change our understanding of our reality and ourselves, and we believe something different. And then the world changes, too.

* * * * * * * * * *

Side Notes:

We get to see Granny Weatherwax for the first time! She’s absolutely fabulous and I love this sharp-tongued bitter old lady so much. In later books starring the witches we will focus in a lot more on Granny herself as a witch and a person, rather than just as a teacher.

Granny Weatherwax is said to live in the village of Bad Ass in Equal Rites. In future books, she will live in Lancre.

There actually aren’t that many footnotes in this one. Since I kind of just…expect footnotes to appear in every book Terry Pratchett touches, despite the fact that they’re super rare everywhere else, it’s almost weirder to not see a footnote every page and a half.

Esk does some magical nonsense—mainly by not realizing the magic she’s doing should be impossible—that ends up “changing the Discworld in thousands of tiny ways.�� This is probably part of Pratchett’s attempt to slowly shift what he started establishing in The Colour of Magic to what we’ll see in later Discworld books, moving from High Fantasy to more of a, I don’t know, steampunk-y magical surrealism? What even is the Discworld, I ask you? It’s impossible to describe. But what Esk does to it here is described as follows: “the wavefront of probability struck the edge of Reality and rebounded like the slosh off the side of the pond which, meeting the laggard ripples coming the other way, caused small but important whirlpools in the very fabric of existence. You can have whirlpools in the fabric of existence, because it is a very strange fabric.”

We get our first mention of sourcerers here in Equal Rites, but they’re not very well defined. We’re just told that they’re now extinct. They’ll turn up in a lot more detail in a couple books, of course, once we get to Sourcery.

Favorite Quotes:

“I know what I mean, she told herself. Magic’s easy, you just find the place where everything is balanced and push. Anyone could do it. There’s nothing magical about it. All the funny words and waving the hands is just…it’s only for… She stopped, surprised at herself. She knew what she meant. The idea was right up there in the front of her mind. But she didn’t know how to say it in words, even to herself.”

“‘But,’ he said, ‘if it’s wizard magic she’s got, learning witchery won’t be any good, will it? You said they’re different.’ ‘They’re both magic. If you can’t learn to ride an elephant, you can at least ride a horse.’”

“The old witch yanked the staff out of its shadow and waved it vaguely at Esk. ‘Here. It’s yours. Take it. I just hope this is the right thing to do.’ In fact the presentation of a staff to an apprentice wizard is usually a very impressive ceremony, especially if the staff has been inherited from an elder mage; by ancient lore there is a long and frightening ordeal involving masks and hoods and swords and fearful oaths about people’s tongues being cut out and their entrails torn by wild birds and their ashes scattered to the eight winds and so on. After some hours of this sort of thing the apprentice can be admitted to the brotherhood of the Wise and Enlightened. There is also a long speech. By sheer coincidence Granny got the essence of it in a nutshell.”

“‘Never mind what I said, or common sense or anything. Sometimes you just have to go the way things take you, and I reckon you’re going to wizard school one way or the other.’ Esk considered this. ‘You mean it’s my destiny?’ she said at last. Granny shrugged. ‘Something like that. Probably. Who knows?’”

“Animal minds are simple, and therefore sharp. Animals never spend time dividing experience into little bits and speculating about all the bits they’ve missed. The whole panoply of the universe has been neatly expressed to them as things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks.”

“‘Why are you holding that broomstick?’ he said. Esk looked at it as though she had never seen it before. ‘Everything’s got to be somewhere,’ she said.”

“Why was it that, when she heard Granny ramble on about witchcraft she longed for the cutting magic of wizardry, but whenever she heard Treatle speak in his high-pitched voice she would fight to the death for witchcraft? She’d be both, or none at all. And the more they intended to stop her, the more she wanted it. She’d be a witch and a wizard too. And she would show them.”

“‘Million-to-one chances,’ she said, ‘crop up nine times out of ten.’”

“For a moment he nursed the strangely consoling feeling that his life was totally beyond his control and whatever happened no one could blame him.”

#discworld #equal rites #witches #esk #granny weatherwax

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the-hellion-studio · 4 years

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Whom A God Loves Dies Young

This is the story of how Joey and Grant got together, from its bloom to its wither. This isn’t a happy story. Bittersweet at best.

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Masterpost

Chapter 5- Fallen From Grace

PREVIOUS CHAPTER

They didn't see each other much after that. Grant was terrified of seeing Joey again. Luckily for him, Joey was avoiding him like never before. At first they passed each other in the corridors every now and then. Grant did threaten him the few last times. Joey always bit back, scratched, growled, used his dark powers to make Grant cry. Grant did get a little violent after a while. It was just a slap, just a shove against a wall, just a "I'll fucking hurt you". A sharp tug on his hair, a raised fist ready to strike. Grant often "won", as he was physically stronger than the tinier man. He always regretted hurting him but he never had the self control to avoid it. And Joey didn't have to look at him like that. He could just ignore him. He should be grateful he didn't punch or kick him. He made his nose bleed, but he could have done worse. Much worse.

He wasn't sure he had seen him in a week now. He knew he may have went a little too far. He overreacted, that's true, he could admit that. But you don't play with people's feelings like that. You don't start building something with someone to just throw them away like that. Everything felt too heavy on his heart. If only he could talk about it to someone... He didn't really have friends. Maybe he should talk to Samuel. He felt like the musician would be of good advice. But Grant was afraid he would take Joey's side. It's true, after all, he knew him for much longer than he knew Grant. And he clearly was in the wrong. He couldn't talk about it anyways. Who would care? It's just some stupid heartbreak. It's just what Joey does. He felt so ashamed and dumb to have fallen for him. He knew he should get over it. He heard rumors of a broken wrist. That was his fault.

Joey deserved it.

He didn't.

He did.

He didn't.

Grant couldn't decide. Everytime he was in the studio he could feel Joey was near. He wanted him dead. He was blinded by rage. The moment he was home he was crying in his bed, needing to be in his arms, needing to have him by his side. Why couldn't he decide between the two? He hated him. He broke his heart. But despite being shattered in pieces it was still beating for him. That made him sick. He wanted to apologise to Joey. He wanted to forget everything and start over. The other side of his mind craved revenge and violence.

Joey wanted to hurt Grant. Those corridor attacks were still keeping him up at night. But it was comforting to know Grant hated him that much. Maybe it was over, at last. His wrist was unusable because of him. It was encased in a splint, his hand numb and weak. He tripped down the stairs, that's what he told Henry. He couldn't say the truth. What would Henry tell him?

Why did you do that, Joey? What did Grant do to you? He shouldn't have went that far, that's true, but why did you have to act like that? If you love him and he loves you, what's stopping you?

He would be right. What's stopping him? He didn't know. Or maybe he did, but he didn't accept it. Either way, it was a mystery. He wanted to be in Grant's arms. He wanted to kiss him, see his smile and his pretty golden eyes, touch his hair... Why did he mess everything up like that? He panicked. He couldn't confess his feelings. He was too proud...? No, too ashamed. Ashamed of having fallen in love so easily. Ashamed that he showed how he really was so soon. He regretted bitterly to have destroyed what he had with Grant. But it was probably for the better. He wouldn't have been able to handle a relationship. Though nothing would have changed from how it was before... He should stop thinking about that. Why did he even come to work today? It's not like it was useful. He couldn't draw. He couldn't write. He did some storyboarding with Henry, that's all. His hand was still unusable. Everytime it hurt it reminded him of that evening. Grant's broken voice, screaming through tears. His own ragged breathing. Everytime it hurt it made him cry. Hard, painful sobs. His vision blurred, his brain replaying the scene over and over. His wrist cracking. Henry's worried hand over his shoulder. It always ended in Henry's arms, in his comforting embrace, his shirt wet with Joey's tears. He didn't know why he was crying. He assumed it was frustration and pain. He had no idea. Joey never talked to him about Grant. He didn't see the point. It was his own personal life, after all. He'd been trying to avoid his ex boyfriend lately. He didn't want to him to see him like that. He didn't deserve to be comforted. Especially by Henry. The poor man had enough on his mind already.

The day passed slowly. Joey was locked in his office, trying to make sense of the scripts he wrote the day before. He was not right handed for sure. It was undecipherable. Since he was too exhausted to work much more, Joey decided to leave early. Still after everyone else, but early to his standards. He walked down the service stairs from his office to Samuel's floor slowly. He heard a door click in front of him. He didn't want to turn on the light.

Maybe he didn't hear him yet.

Grant's thick shadow was easily noticeable on the opposite end of Samuel's office. He stopped breathing. He stopped moving. What could he do? He was paralyzed by rage-no. He was paralyzed by fear. He was terrified. Grant was there. What would he do now? Grant wasn't moving too. He definitely saw him.

A hesitant gasp.

Ruffle of fabric.

The lights turning on.

Grant staring at him.

He didn't look aggressive. He looked tired. His eyes red from crying. His hair dirty and his beard unshaved. He was scared too.

"Joey- I'm..."

Inexcusable. Shut your fucking mouth.

"Uhm... Can we talk?"

Dead silence. Joey was petrified. Grant knew coming closer was a bad idea. He kept his distance, but moved to be in the way of the staircase to exit the building. That answered his question.

"Please listen to me. I shouldn't have reacted like that. In your office. In the hallway. I shouldn't have done that. I shouldn't have hurt you. I'm sorry- I mean it. It's not a way to treat someone. No matter what they did to you... I see that now. I don't know what took over me... I love you still. I'm sorry for what I did. I won't try making any excuses, there are none." He took a deep breath. It was hard for him. Joey was staring at him blankly. He couldn't believe it.

"You're the bad one here. You're no angel. Don't start thinking I'll forgive you." Joey hissed, raising his injured wrist to mark his point.

Seeing it, Grant started crying. He looked down. He was the one who did that.

"I'm so sorry..." He whispered, hiding his face in his hands.

"I don't fucking care that you are! I should be the one crying!"

Joey raised his voice, feeling he had power over Grant, now that he was crying.

"But I'm not gonna fucking cry today. Not for you. I have no pity. I have no regrets."

Grant was breathing hard. He felt angry again. He didn't want that today. He wanted to show he was better. He didn't want to hurt Joey anymore. He should let him scream his head off until he calms down. That's how everyone did with him. It worked usually. He wiped the tears off of his face with a hand, struggling to calm down.

"You're miserable."

"I don't want to fight."

"Oh? Not anymore? I thought you loved hurting me. You've had enough of it?" Aggressive. Sharp. Loud.

"Yes. It was so mindless of me. I'm so sorry of how much I hurt you." Weak. Scared. Shaky.

"Yeah? Well that wrist isn't gonna unbreak itself now huh?"

Grant dared looking up at Joey, fighting to not break down into sobs again. Joey's face was burning red from anger. He took a step forward.

"You can't erase what's done, Grant. You can't just forget about everything and start over."

Oh, if Joey could. Grant realised what he did was wrong. Joey's heart was aching more than his wrist. He wanted to forget everything. He could forgive Grant. It was his own fault after all. Seeing Grant in this state hurt. But he couldn't change directions now. None of them deserved it. Grant should keep hating him. It wasn't fair for him. Grant got closer to Joey as well.

"I could. I would for you. I love you. I love you. I'd do anything for you..."

...I love you too.

No, he couldn't.

When Grant moved he freed the way to the stairs. Joey could escape now. Or, Joey could run in Grant's arms. Forget everything. Be happy again. Keep each other warm in the upcoming winter cold. Revive the love and everything that happened this summer. He needed it. He was falling.

No.

He won't allow that to happen.

He glared at Grant. Apathetic. Cold. His blue eyes right in his. Grant sniffed.

"I don't know what you want. I never loved you. You're a burden. You hurt me. I don't know what you're trying to do right now. I don't know why you're still trying to talk to me. How can you still say you love me? I'm not made for this. I'm tired. I'm broken. I'm a ruin. I can't be happy. Not with you. Not with anyone. I don't deserve it and You don't either. I don't know why I'm like this but at this point I don't care. I'm stressed. I want relief. I want blood. Hurting myself isn't enough anymore. I'm sorry fate decided you were to be the victim." Joey's voice was shaking.

What was he saying? Grant was starting to panic.

"What?"

"Shut the fuck up! I can't fucking stand your voice! I can't fucking listen to it anymore!"

"Joey you're out of your mind! Please calm down! I beg you!" Grant pleadingly whispered, trying not to give in to his feelings. Joey often spiraled down like this. When he was getting tired or in the morning when he was hungover and needed a drink.

"Deep breaths. Focus on your hands. Or look at the floor." He knew he wasn't the best person to help him right now, but there was nobody else besides them in the building and Grant always helped him with that during the four months they lived as a couple.

"I'm here." He took a few steps forward.

Joey hissed, lunged forward. He punched him in the stomach with all his strength. He didn't think. He just reacted.

"I DON'T WANT YOU TO CARE ABOUT ME!"

Grant's breath was cut sharp from the hit. His vision was blurry. Absinthe pushed him back effortlessly. His face flushed red in anger. His eyes glistening with tears. Grant took a sharp, wheezy breath. Time felt like it stopped.

"Please get back!" He raised his hands in a defensive manner, still knocked out by the punch. He took a few steps backwards but Joey closed the distance between them again. "I don't want to fight!"

Joey barked, baring his teeth.

"I'll fucking kill you!"

"Get back! Calm down I beg you! Joey!"

Grant started crying again, he didn't know what to do. He couldn't try anything but compromise. Try to calm him down. He wanted this to be over. He moved back again, trying to find a wall to hold onto. Joey sure didn't miss him. He grabbed on some metal. Oh. It's the elevator door. He leaned against it, trying to breathe normally again. He was too panicked to be functional.The elevator wasn't inside anymore. It has been removed for reparations. There is just an empty tunnel straight down to the abyss.

And Joey knew that.

"I'll throw you down there. It will all be over."

What? Grant looked behind him. His heart skipped a beat. His breathing stopped again. He sprung back towards Joey. He couldn't talk, he couldn't run away. He shook his head, his eyes wide open in fear, staring at Joey. The shorter man was right in front of him. His face blank, his eyes shiny. He grabbed him by the collar of his shirt. Pushed him back. Grant could feel the cold air raising from the depths of the studio.

"Joey no! Please calm down I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'll leave this place, I'm begging you let me go! You'll never see me again I swear! If you want me to leave I'll do it!"

Oh, he won't ever see you again, Grant.

It still wasn't too late, surprisingly. Joey knew that. He could back off. He could melt down into tears and have Grant comfort him. He would do it, he's stupid. But giving up now would be a sign of weakness. He started something, he'll finish it. Even if that was gonna destroy what remained of himself. He couldn't stop looking into Grant's eyes. Full of tears, full of fear. He didn't want to die. Joey didn't want him to die. Joey loved him.

"I'm gonna do it!" He growled, shaking Grant a little. He was trying to motivate himself.

Grant whined in distress.

"I'll throw you down there!"

He won't.

He couldn't.

There was no going back now. He couldn't let his feelings hold him back from what had to be done. He took one last look into Grant's eyes.

He did it.

NEXT CHAPTER

#batim #bendy and the ink machine #batim au #batim fanfic #hellion studio #death and taxes #hellion's stories #wagldy #tw blood #tw violence #tw murder #tw character death #tw mentions of self harm

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inawickedlittletown · 4 years

Text

I’m With You (2/?)

Summary:

Having a crush was nothing to be ashamed of...lying to the family and friends of said crush about being the guy’s boyfriend, that was a whole other problem. When Buck saves the life of Andrew Diaz and accidentally makes a nurse think that he’s Andrew’s boyfriend, Buck soon finds himself lying to Andrew’s firefighter friends/coworkers as well as Andrew’s family including Andrew’s very suspicious and attractive brother, Eddie.

Based on the 1995 movie While You Were Sleeping.

Words: 4,930

Notes: The fic title comes from the song of the same name by Vance Joy. Listen to it, it is perfect. Enjoy. :)

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Masterpost

Previous Chapter

“You know I’m not really his boyfriend, right?” Buck asked Olivia when he managed to corner her.

Although Andrew’s co-workers had left soon after they arrived because they were still on the clock, and Athena had gone with them, Andrew’s grandmother and aunt were both still in the room with him. Buck had managed to slip out with the excuse that he was getting something to drink. Instead he went to find Olivia.

“What do you mean?” she asked. “But you said you were—”

“I didn’t,” Buck said. “I — I mean, I see him every day because he gets coffee at Coffee Time and I’ve noticed him. Of course, I have. But I’ve never really talked to him. Today I heard him yell and I ran to help and things just kinda got away from me and—“

“I am so sorry!” The nurse said. “I can explain. It’s all my fault but I did overhear you and now—“

Buck let out a sigh. “I shouldn’t have come here. And I feel bad. Lying to them. They’re first responders and just nice, you know?”

Buck hung his head.

“What if...what if you just kept it up?” The nurse asked. “For now, I mean.”

“And when he wakes up?”

Buck had been able to tell with absolute surety that Andrew’s friends and family were good people but one of them was a police officer and she might very well arrest him for all his lying.

“We...we’ll figure something out.”

His sister Maddie would have told him to come clean, that honesty would get him farther than anything else might. It was just too bad that his sister wasn’t really around to tell him to do the right thing. Buck hadn’t heard from her in years. It was when he found himself in troublesome spots that he thought of her because Maddie was the one that was good at dealing with tough situations and it made Buck wish that he could call her and hear her voice. She never answered when he called, though, and so Buck had long given up on it.

He doubled back to the room Andrew had been put in just in time to see the doctor checking him over. Pepa was still there with Isabel and they both waved him in. Buck noticed immediately that the doctor didn’t look happy.

“What — is he okay?” Buck asked.

The doctor didn’t answer.

“Oh, perfect. You didn’t leave,” Pepa said. “We wanted to invite you to dinner tomorrow night. At Bobby and Athena’s. Since Andrew’s kept you from us we figure it’s high time we get to know you.”

Buck froze. Coming up with an excuse felt like the right thing to do but his mind went blank. He had no plans. If he were honest, he hadn’t had plans with anyone in a long time. It kind of came with the territory of having a job that required him to be up at 5am in the morning and also not having any real friends. Or family, for that matter.

“We want you there,” Isabel jumped in. “And if you say no we’ll keep asking.”

“I—”

They were both looking at him with such eagerness that Buck nodded. Isabel clapped her hands together and Pepa grinned at him and then immediately asked for his phone number. Buck rattled it off without thinking and a moment later he had a text with an address.

The doctor was still checking over Andrew and Buck didn’t like the way that he was still frowning and glancing at Andrew’s chart.

“I something wrong?” Buck asked.

“What?” Isabel asked. “Pepa, que esta pasando?”

[“Pepa, what is happening?”]

“It seems the initial tests were inconclusive,” the doctor said. “I want to do a few more tests, but I think Andrew might be in a coma.”

Isabel gasped and clutched at her chest. Pepa’s hand was on her mother’s shoulder and she too looked tense.

“What does that mean?” Buck asked. “Will he be okay?”

“The coma is likely in response to his head injury. The body is repairing itself,” the doctor said but Buck noted how he didn’t say one way or the other that Andrew would be alright.

“So, he’ll be okay,” Isabel said.

“I will have someone monitor him and take him up for a few more tests. We’ll know more then,” the doctor said.

When Buck looked at Andrew again, he was hit with a wave of sadness. He may not really be Buck’s boyfriend, but Buck still had feelings for him. He felt for that man and he wanted him to be okay. He needed him to wake up.

“He’s going to be fine,” Pepa said and Buck hadn’t even heard her move or come around to him until her hand was on his back. “Andrew’s always been strong and hardheaded. He’ll be fine.”

Buck nodded.

They sat in silence for a while after that and Buck felt the guilt again. He needed to tell them the truth. It didn’t seem like a good time seeing as Isabel looked paler than before. Pepa seemed to have noticed that her mom wasn’t doing all that well because they had a quick conversation in Spanish just as a couple of doctors entered the room.

“Hello,” one of them said. “We’re here to take Mr. Diaz up for a few tests.”

After the doctors rolled him away, Pepa stood up. “Buck, I have to take her home. This is a lot for her.”

“Of course,” Buck said.

Pepa smiled at him. “Are you — will you stick around?”

“Stick around?” Buck asked.

“Here,” Pepa said. “I don’t want Andrew here on his own. Since you’re here I feel more comfortable leaving him.”

Buck couldn’t pretend that he wasn’t shocked about the confidence and trust that they were already handing him. And here he was lying to them and making them believe something that wasn’t true at all. He felt like such an asshole.

“I can. Yes. I can hang out,” Buck said. It was really the least that he could do and if he were honest with himself he had nowhere else to be and no one else to be with.

“Oh good,” Isabel said. “That’s a relief. This was just — it was unexpected and Andrew’s parents are in Texas which...obviously you know that already.”

Buck just nodded. “I’ll stay. Keep him company.”

“Good, good. And text me or call if anything happens when the doctors bring him back. You have my number now.”

Pepa hugged Buck, pressing a kiss on his cheek. “Thank you so much, Buck. I’m happy he found you.”

Buck knew that he was blushing and then Isabel was hugging him. “Sweet boy,” she said. “Gracias.”

[“Thank you.”]

They were both almost out the door when Pepa turned back to look at Buck. “Oh, and don’t forget about the dinner. You don’t have to bring anything. Just yourself. We all just want to get to know you better.”

They were nice decent people. They were kind and welcoming and apparently had not even a bit of a problem with their grandson/nephew possibly being interested in men. Andrew was lucky to have family like that and not just family but this group of friends that showed up at his bedside at the hospital and that cared enough to want to know his significant other. And selfish as it was, Buck wanted to have just a taste of it before everything went to shit and these people never wanted to see him again.

“I — I’m looking forward to it,” he said. “Thank you for inviting me.”

Both Isabel and Pepa smiled at him before they left.

Buck left the hospital in search of coffee after a few minutes. He ran into Olivia again and she gave him a smile and wave as if she wasn’t at least partially responsible for the mess that he was in. He took a walk around the hospital before he got back to Andrew’s room. Andrew still wasn’t back so Buck busied himself on his phone for a while until eventually he was rolled back into the room.

“How is he?” Buck asked, jumping to his feet.

“There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong. His head injury is causing a coma but it’s a minor bleed that should clear out on it’s own. Andrew is breathing on his own and his vitals are good. He’ll wake on his own sometime in the next few days. It’s just a matter of waiting.”

“Okay,” Buck said. “Thank you.”

He texted the information to Pepa.

Andrew looked peaceful on the hospital bed. Maybe a bit pale but still so nice to look at.

“I wish I’d taken the chance to speak to you,” Buck said. “This could be very different. I could have just been your friend.”

Andrew was so completely still on the bed. It was easier to talk to him that way, to just explain everything that had happened and to apologize.

“And the worst part is that I don’t really know you,” Buck said, “so I don’t even know how you’ll react when you hear about this or if you’ll even know who I am. This is just such a big giant mess.”

Buck grabbed his phone and he scrolled through social media. Now that he knew Andrew’s name, he looked him up. His Instagram was miraculously not set to private so Buck took a quick look. There were a few selfies, a picture of a firetruck, one of the coffee cup from Coffee Time and a random one of the sunset. Not a whole lot to go on. It told Buck everything that he already knew about him.

“And here’s the thing. I’m lonely. I’m so lonely that it’s easier to make up some story in my head about what it might have been like to actually talk to someone like you. Have you ever felt like that, like everyone else around you has someone and you’re just this single lonely person? From the look of your friends and family, I doubt that. And I hope you realize how lucky you are to have them and to do what you do because I’m sure you love your job. And I wish I had that — that I was passionate about something enough.”

The doctor returned to check up on Andrew after a while and Buck hung back while he did, not sure what to make of it all until the doctor turned to look at Buck.

“You’re the boyfriend,” he said.

“Yes,” Buck said. “Is — is something wrong?”

“Just checking him over again. Everything looks fine, really.”

“Other than the coma,” Buck said.

The doctor gave a short nod. Buck watched the doctor write something in Andrew’s chart and then he left after giving Buck a nod and Buck turned back to look at Andrew.

“You know, you better wake up. You have to. I don’t know what I’ll do if you don’t. I would have to keep the lie going or I would need to tell them and — well, once you wake up I’ll have to tell them. Tell you.”

Andrew was as still as ever. Olivia stopped by after a while.

“How are you doing?”

“Okay,” Buck said. “I have no idea what I’m doing, but I’m okay. And it’s going to blow up on my face and that’s okay too.”

Buck stayed for a bit longer even after Olivia left him. It was when he felt that he was starting to nod off that he got up and gathered his things. Buck was sort of surprised that no one had tried to send him away considering visiting hours were surely over. It was probably the work of Olivia.

It was getting dark out when he got back to his car and drove home. He should have been home hours earlier and yet somehow he’d managed to get himself involved in something ridiculous. His very best hope was that a few years down the line he could look back at the situation and laugh. And maybe if he was really lucky, Buck didn’t come out of it hurt or possibly arrested.

Buck picked up Chinese on his way home and like every day, he took the stairs up to his apartment even though there was an elevator available and then he opened his door and he stepped into the dark and lonely space.

Ali had been the one to help him pick out the apartment. The realtor had been convinced that they were a couple the entire time which had been at least amusing during the tours of apartment after apartment after apartment until they settled on the last one they viewed.

It was the open space that sold it for Buck and having his bedroom up in a loft was cool too. Plus, he had a balcony. It wasn’t huge, but it was just him and Buck loved it. He loved that it was his place and that he felt at home there even if sometimes he did feel lonely. Ali often suggested that he get a pet but Buck wasn’t really into cats and a dog would make him feel guilty for not being around all the time.

Andrew in comparison probably didn’t feel lonely. He had all that family and friends and from what he could tell they were very close. Buck could admit that it did make him a bit jealous.

Family was a bit of a sore subject with him. A sister that never reached out or responded to him and parents that were so far removed, Buck didn’t think he’d heard from them more than once when he left home. Sometimes he wondered about what might happen if he called them or went back to Pennsylvania to visit and yet he just never wanted to. His parents had always been the distant types that shouldn’t have had kids. They weren’t bad people...they just weren’t parental. Maddie had played a huge part in raising him and then after she left, Buck had pretty much just been on his own. And then he left too and his parents barely even blinked.

Buck ate on his couch in front of his tv, lazing there for a while until he forced himself to clean up his food and head to bed. Having to go into work at 5am made it so that Buck was never in bed later than 10pm. Even on his days off, Buck was an early riser.

His bedroom was up the stairs and Buck dragged his feet as he walked up, stumbling into his bathroom to wash his face and brush his teeth before he got undressed down to his underwear and just climbed into his bed. He sighed as his head hit the pillow and he didn’t let himself think about how the next day might go.

Buck didn’t even think about Andrew or his family and friends the next morning until he walked past the spot out on the street where he found Andrew at which point he had to stop. That was where Ali found him.

“Hey. You okay?”

“Kind of,” Buck said. “Things got a little strange yesterday.”

As they got the Coffee Time ready to open, Buck filled her in on everything that happened after he left work the day before.

“And she just looked so happy at the prospect of her grandson getting married,” Buck said. “But also she’s older and I didn’t know how she was going to handle it if I just told them it was all a lie.”

Ali was in the middle of refilling the coffee in one of the machines but she paused to look at him. “Buck, eventually the truth will come out. Probably better sooner than later.”

“I know,” Buck said with a groan.

The morning went quick, even the downtime and he and Ali got to just hang out for a while, cleaning and restocking things for the lunch rush. He got a text from Pepa asking if he was going to stop by the hospital and to once again extend the invitation to dinner. Buck left it unanswered for a while, but then it felt rude not to answer.

“Who are you texting?” Ali asked.

“Andrew’s aunt,” Buck said.

Ali just shook her head at him. “Buck, you are so far in this that I’m already having second hand embarrassment about how this will all end up.”

He went straight to the hospital after work despite the judging look that Ali gave him when he told her where he was going. At the very least, Buck knew that he would have Ali in his corner in the end. Just like he always did.

Buck found Chimney in the hospital room when he arrived.

“Hi,” Buck said. “Didn’t know anyone would be here.”

“Sorta expected you to be here, kid,” Chimney said.

“I was — I had work. But I came straight here.”

Chimney nodded.

It was surprisingly not awkward to talk to someone that was basically a stranger.

“Oh. Where do you work?”

“Coffee Time,” Buck said.

Chimney perked up at that and pointed at him. “Oh, oh, is that how you met? He does go there practically every day.”

“Uh,” Buck said and then he nodded. “Yeah.”

Chimney chuckled. “The keeper of the coffee and the coffee addict. I guess that makes sense.”

Buck shrugged his shoulders.

“Speaking of, coffee sounds good right about now. Want one?”

“Sure,” Buck said and he watched as Chimney got up and left the room and then he was alone with Andrew again.

He looked just like the last time that Buck saw him and still just as attractive. It wasn’t fair how attractive he was. Not fair at all. Without thinking, Buck reached over and touched his cheek in a gentle caress. His skin was soft and smooth too.

“You’ve been way too much trouble for me,” Buck whispered. “And Ali was right the entire time. Should have just done more than handed you your coffee.”

Andrew was so still. It felt like he was talking to no one.

“And your family is kind of wonderful. I haven’t even known them long, but they are. I just feel so horrible. I’m sitting here lying to all of them. Damn, I’m the biggest coward. And I’ll have to tell them eventually and I just don’t want any of them to hate me or for you to hate me. It wasn’t even really my fault.” Buck sat back in the chair and he groaned. “I just — I have Ali and that’s it. My sister Maddie is non-existent and I don’t even know why. My parents aren’t — I haven’t spoken to them in ages and it’s fine. This is my life, you know, but it doesn’t make me less lonely. But lying isn’t...I can’t keep this up.”

Maybe he just needed to man up and tell them. He could do it at the dinner, he could admit to the whole thing and just hope for the best or at least be done with all of it because there was a man in a hospital bed that deserved none of this and his family didn’t deserve it either.

“I’ll come clean,” Buck said. “Tonight. I’ll tell them the whole thing about how Olivia misunderstood and then how she just blurted out that I was going to ask you to marry me even though we’re not even dating or even know each other. I will. I can do that.”

Buck nodded to himself. He would do it.

That’s when he heard a cough behind him. Chimney.

“Uh, so you’re not Andrew’s boyfriend, then?”

Buck’s eyes fell closed as if that would get rid of Chimney standing off to the side holding two cups of coffee. He’d overheard everything.

“I—”

“Let me get this straight,” Chimney said, cutting him off. “You’ve been lying this entire time. Well, it’s been what, a day?”

Buck let his eyes open and he looked at Chimney. “I’m sorry,” he said. “And I’ll — I’ll go. I shouldn’t even be in here and—”

Chimney set down the coffee cups and he settled down in the chair at the other side of Andrew’s bed. “No, kid, don’t go. Explain it to me because from what I heard just now you didn’t do this maliciously.”

So, Buck did. He told him about the crush and about how seeing Andrew was a highlight of his day. How Buck had been minding his own business and heading home when he heard Andrew yell out. He’d done only what anyone else might have done. And then he’d been worried so he went to the hospital even though he should have known he wouldn’t be able to actually see him.

“But I’m an idiot and I need to stop talking out loud. That nurse Olivia, she made some assumptions and I didn’t correct her and then I was in here and then everyone was here and I tried to say something but I couldn’t. Now, here we are.”

“Here we are,” Chimney said and followed it with a whistle. “And I thought I was bad at the whole dating thing. You know, we did wonder, because Andrew as far as we knew was as straight as an arrow. But we don’t judge and Hen always says that sexuality is a fluid thing but he’s always had girlfriends.”

“Of course he’s straight,” Buck said because even there he couldn’t win.

Chimney chuckled and then he reached for his coffee cup and he motioned for Buck to grab the other.

“Look, lying isn’t exactly the best thing you could have done. But it seems to me like things just got out of hand here and I know it was probably overwhelming when we all arrived yesterday. You should still come to dinner at Bobby and Athena’s and I would advise you to tell them all the truth.”

“I will,” Buck said. “You’re not angry?”

Chimney shrugged. “I mean, I’m not thrilled. But I heard you, and from what I can tell you’re lonely. Alone. I know what that’s like. And I also know what it’s like to find somewhere to belong.”

“But I haven’t,” Buck pointed out. “This is all a lie, isn’t it? And the moment I come clean than that’s it. I don’t belong here. I’m not anything to him or any of you.”

Chim didn’t respond to that and Buck figured that he probably had no idea how to respond.

It made him feel worse to have Chimney react the way that he was as if he understood Buck’s actions and didn’t judge him for it. He was definitely a bit amused, but he also didn’t seem too upset over it.

“Anyway,” Chimney said eventually, “I’m going to head out. I’ll see you tonight. And don’t worry too much.”

Buck had no idea how he was expected to not worry.

“Oh, and hey,” Chimney said, “give me your number.”

They exchanged numbers and in mere seconds, Chimney had texted him.

Hi, Liar

Buck just rolled his eyes and Chimney laughed.

It was a bit boring to hang out at someone’s bedside. Once Chimney left, patting Buck on the shoulder before he did and still laughing. Being with Andrew made him feel a little less lonely.

“I know you don’t know me,” Buck said. “I hardly know you too. I just know that you’re a firefighter and that you hold the door open for people when you come into the coffee shop even when you’re in a rush. I know that you have good people around you. Friends and family. And I know that you could probably have anyone you wanted because you look — well, like that. And I’m pathetic for hanging out here and for just thinking for even a moment that I could have a chance with you. I just wanted to say I’m sorry even though you’re not even really here to deal with any of this.”

He didn’t speak again for a while, but he kept his eyes on Andrew until his phone vibrated with incoming texts. It was Ali asking him if he’d come clean yet. But he would. He would do it and he would go home and then call Ali and tell her all about it. He probably would never see any of them again. Not even Andrew. Buck wouldn’t blame them.

When the doctors and a few nurses arrived to check on Andrew, Buck figured it was time to go. He was glad that he hadn’t run into Olivia again, but as he was walking past the reception desk someone called his name.

“Hi, you’re Mr. Diaz’ boyfriend, right?”

He almost said no, but then he nodded.

“We have his belongings for you,” the man behind the desk said and then he came out with a sealed clear bag. “Everything that was on him.”

“Oh. Thanks,” Buck said. “But maybe it’s best if you pass it on to his aunt.”

“She told us to hold onto it for you.”

“Oh,” Buck said.

Buck took the bag when it was offered to him. He would just hand it over to them at dinner after he told them that he’d lied. It was a clear bag so he could see what was inside. A wallet, a phone, a bit of change, key, a swiss army knife, and a dog collar with what appeared to be a newly printed name tag that read: Legolas. It sounded like a familiar name but Buck couldn’t place why. Mostly, he was left wondering where the dog that the collar belonged to was.

It felt strange to get home with the intent of leaving his house to go somewhere. It made Buck realize that he’d been perhaps isolating himself too much. While Ali may have been his only real friend, the two of them rarely hung out outside of work these days. Buck had made excuses the last time she wanted to go out to club with him.

He showered and changed his clothes and was in the middle of getting his shoes on when a text from Pepa came in making sure that he was still coming. His stomach churned. He really didn’t know how things were going to go. For all that Chimney reacted well and expected the rest of them to understand, Buck couldn’t make himself expect any of their reactions to be the same. He had lied to them and kept the lie going and that just wasn’t okay.

Buck stopped at a liquor store to pick up a bottle of wine and then he went into the store next to it because he figured he should bring something more than just alcohol. He settled for mini cupcakes. The drive over to Bobby and Athena’s house felt short and long all at once and then when he was parked outside their house, the nerves hit. He really didn’t know any of these people. If he had somehow actually been Andrew’s boyfriend, he wondered if things would have been any easier. Buck was still trying to get himself together when someone knocked on his window, making him jump.

It was Hen. Another woman stood just behind her with an adorable little boy at her side. Buck rolled down the window.

“Hey,” he said.

“So, you getting out of that car any time soon?” Hen asked with a grin.

Buck nodded. “I was.”

“Hen, leave the poor boy alone. He’s going through a lot right now.”

Buck shook his head. He grabbed the wine bottle and the cupcakes, rolling the window back up and then turning off the ignition. When he got out of the car, Hen stepped back.

“I’m Karen, by the way,” the woman standing behind Hen said. “Hen’s wife. This is our son Denny.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” Buck said, extending his hand out to Karen who seemed more than lovely. Denny looked at Buck with some interest, but even Buck could tell that the kid was a little on the shy side.

“Anyway, come on, they’re probably all waiting,” Hen said.

Buck followed them towards the house. Hen didn’t even knock, she just let herself in. Buck took in a breath before he stepped into the house and closed the door behind him. Karen was waiting for him, but Hen had gone right down the steps and was already being greeted by Athena.

“They can be a lot,” Karen said, “but they’re all good people and we love Andrew. So anyone that he dates and saves his life is more than welcome here. Come on.”

Buck looked around. He spotted Chimney right away and got a nod and smile from him. Athena was talking with Hen and Buck spotted Bobby in the kitchen. Denny was already sitting at the coffee table with two other boys and there was a teenage girl sitting in an armchair near them. Pepa and Isabel were sat near her with another man that Buck didn’t know and when Pepa spotted him she stood up at once. Isabel looked in his direction as well, smiling wide.

“Buck, you made it,” Isabel said.

Buck smiled back. “I did. Um, thank you for inviting me.”

Pepa made it to his side, pulling him into a hug just as the man that was sitting with Isabel turned in Buck’s direction.

Next Chapter

Notes: So, Chimney knows. I had a hard time figuring out who would know first but Chimney felt like the right choice in the end. And we'll finally have Eddie in the next chapter. Thanks for reading. Let me know what you thought of this chapter. :)

#911 fox #buddie #buddie fic #911 fic #buck x eddie #911 #fic #my fic #911 fox fic #I'm With You

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aria-i-adagio · 5 years

Text

I’ve Got that Taste in My Mouth Again

Masterpost

Fandom: The Arcana

Chapter Rating: Lime

Five years ago. Dema.

At the beginning of the plague, Vesuvia's bars and taverns had been quiet. People were trying to avoid contact with anyone who might be carrying the plague. But as the sickness continued, as it became clear that no one and no where was safe, the bars grew boisterous with people seeking a break from unrelenting bleak scenes of the dead being carted away to mass graves like so much refuse. When the sun set, the city turned into a massive wake, toasting the memories of the dead and the dying, and frantically clinging to what life was left.

Julian's preferred bar was on the south side of the city. It was loud and chaotic, with cheap food and even cheaper alcohol; although, they did brew a particularly good stout that I could pretend was a sufficient supper. At least, it felt enough like a sufficient supper. Between Anna’s death and Asra leaving after that . . . disagreement, my appetite hadn’t yet recovered. Even if it had been nearly a month.

Inevitably as the night continued, the tables would be pulled back to the walls, leaving space for dancing along to music from a motley group of instrumentalists and singers. I was three weeks into working with Julian and several drinks into the night when he offered a hand and pulled me onto the dance floor, whirling about to a fast tune. Still laughing - the first real laugh since Asra had left - I swung away from him and back into my seat next to Artemis, other than Asra my only particularly close friend in Vesuvia. She smiled and pushed my beer back to me.

“Good to see you laughing again.”

I cooled the beer back off with magic and gulped some down. “Have you heard from Sibyl?”

Artemis looked down at her drink. “Not since the port closed down. The last letter she sent was from her cousin's in Prakra, so at least I know that she and the baby are safe.” She lifted the stein of beer to her lips and drank deeply. “I'm glad they left.”

“But you stayed.”

“My place is here.” Artemis, like both her mothers, was a midwife in the city. In her mind, that extended to the city as a whole, even if her wife and her child left for safety.

"Sibyl understood?”

“She wanted to stay. But we agreed it was more important to get Eurydice out when we could.”

I didn’t feel like I could leave either. Not even - especially - after my aunt died. Apothecary, herbalist, it might be informal, but at least I was doing some good here. Not the usual, useless mess that I had been for the past four years. Asra didn’t understand. “I wish . . .”

“Ah, Dema.” Artemis wrapped an arm around my shoulders and pulled me into a tight half hug. “He'll come back. He always does. Then you'll have a different problem.” Her eyes cut over to where Julian is ordering himself another round of drinks.

I glanced to the other side of the room where Julian was chatting with a table full of laborers, based on the animation of his hands and arms he was telling another one of his dubiously factual and consistently entertaining stories.

“I like him. Really like him.”

“I’ve noticed.” She leaned her head on my shoulder. “Other than Asra, I’ve never seen you taken with someone for longer than a week or two.”

“What do you think?”

“How many have you had, child? You’ve never asked me something like that before!”

“I haven’t felt, well, not like this anyway -”

My thoughts were cut off by Julian flopping down on the other side of the booth, back to the wall and feet on the bench. He flung one arm over his forehead and sighed dramatically. “Ugh, almost as exhausting here as work! Everyone wants something.”

“Oh, be quiet, boy,” Artemis scolded as she sat back up. A good sign, actually, Artemis only scolds people she likes. Other people get polite comments or death glares. “You love every second of it.”

Julian’s grey eyes twinkled as he picks up the drink he had left on the table. “Guilty as charged.” He took a sip, made a face, and slid it across the table to me. “That’s even worse warm, you don’t think you could, my dear?”

“Of course.” I snagged the drink and spun the glass in my hands, chilling the combination of cheap rum and god knows what else back down to a temperature that might approach drinkable.

“Mmm . . . much better. I might be coming around on this magic thing. Oh, before I forget.” He pulled a folded piece of paper from his shirt pocket and slid it across the table to Artemis. “Two addresses for you to get one of the midwives to check on. Baby at the first who isn’t growing as well as he should be. Oldest daughter at the second is expecting, and they didn’t have a name of a midwife. No plague at either.”

“Thanks. I’ll get it to the right people.” She took the paper and glanced at it before tucking it away into her shirt. The midwives guild had broken the city down into districts and divided themselves up between houses that had seen the plague and ones that happened to try to limit the spread of the contagion. Artemis volunteered for plague houses after Sibyl left the city, as she at least wouldn’t be taking it home to anyone. Risk reduction, presumably. Not that anyone had figured out exactly how the plague transmitted itself. “Now, while we’re on caretaking, did either of you eat anything today?”

Julian laughs, and I hold up my stein of dark beer. “Plenty of calories here!”

She rolled her eyes at me, and I relented. “Hard boiled eggs and a salad when I went home to put the chickens up for the night.”

“Good girl. And you?”

“Some kind of meat pie in the afternoon.” He shrugged. “Not sure how old it was.”

“Julian Devorak, don’t put it past me to show up at your clinic and make you eat. You're one of the few doctors I don't find to be an insufferable twit!" She probably could carry out the threat. Artemis is nearly as tall as he is and at least five times more intimidating. She got up from the table and rearranged the scarf draped around her neck. “Okay you two. I’m out. Back on call tomorrow morning.” Leaning over to kiss my cheek she whispered in my ear. “He's good for you.”

Julian lifted a hand to her in parting then settled back into the booth, working on his drink with the beginnings of a dark look in his gray eyes. “I do not want to think about the morning.”

The morning. I don’t like to think about mornings either. The wagons do their rounds to cart the dead to the docks, to ferries that will take the bodies to mass graves on an island in the harbor. And more people will wake to find their joints swelling and eyes turned red. Then the knocks on my door, at Julian’s clinic, looking for whatever little, insufficient help we have to offer them. “Then let’s not.” I finished the rest of my beer and set the stein down harder that was truly necessary. I slid out of the both and extended my hand to him. "Another dance, Dr. Devorak?”

He was smiling when he looked up at me, and I knew for certain that I was lost. That this was hopeless. I wanted to see that smile again and again. He curled his fingers around mine and levered himself off the bench. "My dear, I was terribly afraid you wouldn't ask."

I pressed myself against him, face barely reaching his chest, when the dance allowed. He smelled of liquor and medicinal herbs, and underneath that salt and the sea. The music slowed and his hands rested on my waist for a moment, then slipped just a little lower. There was a question in his eyes when I looked up, and in response, I put my hands over his and shamelessly slid them even lower inviting him to curl his long fingers around my ass. He looked lost for a moment, then lifted me up easily. I tossed my arms around his shoulders for balance, and he leaned his face close to my ear.

“What about him?”

Hands behind Julian's neck, I twisted the ring if Asra's that I still wore on my finger.

“Fuck him. I love him.” If my answer contradicted itself, I didn't care because both statements were true. Asra had left me, and Julian was here. Here encouraging the work I wanted to do anyway, not trying to pull me away, convince me that I was too damaged, too mad, too sick in the head to make decisions for myself. “But he doesn't own me. Never has.” I tangled my fingers in Julian's curly hair. “You, I like. Quite a bit.”

“I, um, like you too.” He blushed. With color spreading across his pale cheeks, he’s adorable. I slid along his body, as he sets me back down onto the floor. With my feet on the ground, the top of my head barely reached his sternum. I took his arm and led him back to the table tucked in the back corner, where our almost empty drinks and my satchel have been reserving our spot.

He gestured to the barmaid for another round. “So -” He wrapped an arm around my shoulders. “Is this okay?”

In response I snuggled against him. He's warm, and it's nice to be held at the end of day that involved as much death as all the days now do. “It's good even.”

The barmaid returned and set down another one of the awful cocktails Julian drinks and a tumbler with two fingers whiskey for me. (It wasn't too atrocious if I got had a couple beers before switching over). As she walked away, she gave me a smile and conspiratorial wink.

Julian's forearm draped across my chest, heavy against my breast. He tossed back half of his drink and looked down at me. “This probably isn't a good idea.”

I sipped my whiskey and imagined that it has something akin to layers of sweetness and smoke beneath the firey burn that coats my mouth. It doesn't, but no matter. “Honestly, I'm not known for making good decisions.”

He laughed then scooped me up into his lap, another few inches closer to his pretty lips. “I'm not either. Uh, known for good decisions."

“Well then.” I set my drink back down on the table and curved one hand around his face. “We'll make quite the feckless pair then.”

I didn't have to pull him down for a kiss. Reading my intent, he leaned down to me. The first kiss was hesitant, close mouthed. I pulled him back and worked my mouth around his bottom lip tracing it with my tongue, until his mouth was mine, and his hands were tight on my back, and a couple of the other patrons were cheering us on.

He broke away, blushing again, biting his own lip. “Maybe we should, uh, go take a walk?”

“I think that's a good idea.”

“Mmmm, me too.”

“Then maybe it's actually a bad one. If you know, we both think it's good.”

He grinned. “Do you care if it is?”

“No.” I tossed back the rest of my whiskey, and he finished his drink. We settled our tabs at the bar and left. I held on to Julian's arm in the street. I was pleasantly buzzed, and I liked the feeling of him beside me.

The water in the canal glinted red in the moonlight, a dilute version of the red that colored the eyes of those who caught, then succumbed to the plague. Part of the reason the bars were doing such good business was because beer was far safer to drink at this point. Beer and rain water. The rich were bringing in barrels from the springs above the palace, but most of the city couldn’t afford to do so. We stopped on a bridge over the canal and looked up at the moon.

“It doesn't seem right that the night sky is still so beautiful.”

Julian picked me up and sat me on the bridge railing. “I'm glad it is. There might has well be something beautiful left. Uh, other than you.”

“I'm not beautiful.” Cute, yes. Pretty, maybe on a good day, but beautiful, no.

“I thought you were beautiful when first time I saw you. Even with your hair tied under a bandana and eyes that hasn't slept in days.”

I had dozed some in the last week before Anna died, while I was trying desperately to keep her alive. The night after the bonfire I fed almost everything in the apartment upsider to died down I passed out in the back room and slept for hours. The hangover when I woke up only increased my desire to be dead as well. But that wasn’t a helpful line of thought. Not when I had something, someone far more pleasant to think about in front of me.

“Hmph. Flatterer.” I wrapped my legs around his waist and leaned my head against his shoulder, trying to banish the memories - such as I had them - of those following days. He embraced me back, clever hands untying the band that held my hair in a sensible braid and loosening it.

“I've been daydreaming for weeks about playing with your hair.”

I pressed a close mouthed kiss to the spot where his jaw and neck met and ran my fingers into his hair. “Same.” Sitting on the railing, my face was level with his, the right height for kissing, and we did, until we were threatening to lose our balance and topple into the canal.

Julian's room above the clinic was closer. He paused on the steps to rub Brundle's belly. The dog kicked her back leg in delight, and gave me a baleful look when Julian's hand left her to tug me up the stairs after him. In contrast to the orderly clinic downstairs, the room he slept in was a chaotic bachelor's nest, clothes tossed haphazardly over the backs of chairs, a perch set up near a partially open window for the raven that sometimes followed him around to land on. The window was in a dormer, but half of the ceiling sloped down along with the roof. Well enough for someone short like me, but that meant he couldn't stand up straight in a decent portion of the space.

“It's not, um, much.”

“It's fine. My shop is a disaster right now. Well, not the shop, but I haven't put the upstairs back to rights yet.” Everything had been scrubbed, multiple times, but the bedroom was still devoid of any soft surfaces: curtains, pillows, blankets, even the mattress - I had fed all those into a fire. I was sleeping in backroom, nestled in a pile of cushions and blankets that smelled of cardamom and sandalwood and smokey tea - of Asra were I honest with myself.

He sat down on the bed and took my hands, pulling me to him. “Is this still something you want to do? It's fine if -”

“Yes, but -” The but surprised me. I had had other lovers before, usually just someone from a bar for one or two nights. Once - for several months while her ship was dry docked for repairs - a beautiful sailor with wild hair and hands that had an extra knack for tying knots. But even then, it was just physical attraction, just sex, no emotional attachment. When the repairs were finished, we said goodbye, and she sailed away, and Asra had my full attention again. But, this was . . . different, somehow. Confusing in a way I couldn't attribute to alcohol or stress.

“But what?”

“Maybe just keep to kissing tonight. Hands are okay.”

He smiled up at me. “That's fine. I don't want to do anything you don't.”

I climbed on top of him, straddling his hips. “And you? Is this still a good bad idea, Julian?”

He got a strange look in his eyes. “It's actually Ilya.”

“What?”

“My name. I, uh, use Julian, here at least it sounds more normal here, in Vesuvia. But Ilya is my given name.”

“Huh. I like it. Il-ya.”

He chuckled. “Not quite. The connection between the first and last syllables is softer.” He repeated it and I tried again, earning another laugh. “Closer.”

“I'll get it.”

“Mmm.” He pressed his forehead against mine. “I'm sure you will. Your tenacity is impressive. And your name is curious. It's an, um, nickname at home. But for a boy's name - Dmitri. You sure it's not short for anything?”

I shrugged. “I'm pretty sure my parents just liked the way it sounded. Or it was easy to yell when I was in trouble.”

“Oh, did you get in trouble a lot?”

“All the time. Definite problem child.” It wasn’t a lie; it just wasn’t a completely truthful answer to the question he meant. I didn't get in trouble a lot when I was little. I was the dreamy kid in the corner reading a book, or digging clay out of the creek bank to mold into trinkets that I would lose hours painting. I didn't become the problem child until later. Much later actually. And then I never figured out how to stop. “What about you? When did you start raising hell?”

“Oh, I was incorrigible as a child! Drove my grannies and my sister to distraction.”

“That’s not hard to imagine. And you were only worse as a teenager.”

“Absolutely.” He pressed his forehead against mine, quiet for a moment. “Then I had this brilliant - I mean it, uh, seemed brilliant at the time - idea to leave home. Go see the world. Have an adventure or two. Too young to realize that I was too young.”

“How old were you?”

“Seventeen, give or take a couple months. Decided I’d go become a soldier. Ended up with a group of mercenaries. They didn’t ask too many questions. And I was tall for my age.”

I laughed. “You're still tall for your age."

"And you're still short for yours, darling." He did his hands from my waist to my back pressing me against him and easily tucking my head under his chin.

"Did you even know how to fight at seventeen?”

“I’ll have you know that I am perfectly competent with a sword. But, I ended up as the company doctor’s assistant. He told me I was too damn young to be in battle. I didn’t agree at the time, but well, he was right.”

“Seems to have worked out for you, Doctor.” Seventeen didn't seem that young. I had left home for seventeen, but I left home for libraries and lectures, not for battle and blood.

“Hmm, yeah, well enough. You’re not from Vesuvia either. How’d you end up here?”

“My parents sent me. To live with my aunt after -” I stopped, breath catching in my throat, and rubbed at my scarred left arm. “Well, that doesn’t matter.”

He ran his thumb over my cheekbone, and I was once again struck by just how kind his eyes are. Not the eyes of anyone who was ever intended to be a soldier. I curled close against him again, head on his shoulder. Catching the change in my mood - ever so observant, perceptive - he rubbed small, soothing circles on my back.

"I envy people who don't have things that they don't like to talk about." He tangled his fingers in my hair. "You're beautiful whether you believe it or not, my dear."

"I'm not usually like this." At least, I'm not usually like this when I'm not depressed, and I can't afford to be depressed. Not right now. When there's so much that needs to be done and Asra's gone and . . .

"Like what?”

"Scared of someone judging me. Usually I just don't care."

"What makes me different?”

"I -" I felt like I was seventeen again. Away from home for the first time and terrified of being rejected as some naive farmer's daughter. Or twenty two and sure that all anyone will see is a fuck up to stay away from or to pity. "I don't know. But I -"

"Darling." He pushed my hair back from my face and kissed my forehead. "I'm also terrified that you'll get to know who I am and decide you don't like me."

"Really?" I sat back on his knees and examined his face for any hint of mockery.

"Really." He twined his fingers through mine, holding our hands between us. "Terrified, mortified, petrified, stupefied." He kissed the back of my hands, first the left, then the right. "So, um, should we be brave together and just see where this goes." He tilted his head dinner, biting his bottom lip as he does.

I leaned forward and pressed my mouth to his. "Yes. Let's."

a/n: chapter title from PULP, “Feeling Called Love” and yes, one line of dialogue is lifted from A Beautiful Mind

Next chapter.

Masterpost

#the arcana #the arcana fanfiction #julian devorak #julian x apprentice #julian x mc #fan apprentice #dema #my writing #whatever i've done

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spnfanficpond · 5 years

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November 2018 Pond LiveChat Recap

We had a great time chatting with Rhi, @kittenofdoomage!!! Thank you so much for joining us!

We talked about getting readers, interacting with readers, and how Tumblr has made it more and more difficult with their changes for new writers to get noticed. Details from our discussion with Rhi under the cut, as well as notes on what we’re working on in the Pond!

Q: Do you wait until you are done writing a series before you begin posting, or do you post as you write?

I wait until I'm done writing a series. At some point, the idea will catch me and I have to write the entire thing, which will take about three days. Editing for another 1-2 depending on my betas and then it gets released in its entirety on Patreon (my patrons like reading the entire fic in one go, they're paying for it so I'm not gonna make 'em wait) and comes out in chapters on Tumblr about three-four weeks later. I hate feeling like I'm making people wait too long and then shit happens like it did with three of my permanently hiatused fics.

Q: Well, as for why we're here, Rhi, you get so many asks every day. How do you have such involved readers?

A lot of my readers who respond are regulars. I have those who pop up with the odd "this is awesome" and those who will write long involved reviews which I love!

Q: Do you think there's anything in particular that you do that encourages people to interact with you?

Yeah, I'm open with people and pretty approachable. I like discussing things, plot points, characters, anything really. There are very few things that trigger me, too. I have only three specific things that will turn me away from a fic. I think my lack of triggers helps with people who need someone like that to talk to.

Q: Do you ever ask around and try to figure out what people are looking to read to try and help boost your reader count or do you just draw inspiration from your own ideas?

At the moment, I'm mostly working on commissions, so it's other people's ideas. I'm lucky that most of my Patrons and commissioners are very patient with me and know up front that I have no specific time limits. I will write it but I can't force it. And I won't force it because that leaves everyone with a shit story.I never put an idea away forever though. I write them all down. If inspiration hits for something, I write it there and then because I never know if I'll get that mojo back.

Q: Has there ever been an Idea that has caught you by surprise when you start it as one thing but it ends up as something else?

Only about six thousand times.

Over The Hills And Far Away that I'm writing now, was supposed to only be a Dean x reader but my reader decided to go and have chemistry with Sam too.

Q: Have you noticed a bump in followers after you do anything specific?

I always have a bump in followers after Sinful Sunday. Unfortunately, I always end up with a bump in unsolicited dick pics and porn bots, too, so a purge usually follows. When I post new characters or fandoms, too. I've recently picked up a bunch of Marvel followers.

Q: As a big blog, you must also get some hate. How do you deal with that?

They don't like me because I play with them and their insults are like water off a duck's back with me. Unless they bring my kid into it. I shut an entire set of blogs down when that happened. That's also why I no longer post anything to do with my daughter. I will avoid using her name wherever possible. If I'm in a bad mood, I ignore it. If I'm feeling like an utter bitch, I'll tear them a new asshole.

Q: Rhi, it sounds like you have a lot on your plate with family, work, and writing. Is there anything in particular that keeps your creativity flowing so you don't burn out?

I try and do something different every day. Painting, gaming, going for a walk - it's important for me not to spend all my time on one thing. Even if it's just cleaning. I also listen to a lot of music - Classic Rock on Absolute Radio is my fav. Actually, my favorite time to think about fics is when I'm about to go to sleep.

Q: I'm not sure how to even ask this, but I came into the spn fic fandom a little late and so I'm finding it difficult to gather new followers. Do you have any advice? I have a master post with the few pieces I've written but I've gotten a lot of flack for writing OCs...

Tumblr is not helping with regards to gaining new followers lately. Tags aren't working if you're an NSFW blog, no one can search anything. The only thing I can suggest is reblogging, asking other authors if they'll read your work.

[Other suggestions from the chat included submitting fics to @dirtysupernaturalimagines and the Pond, joining other people’s writing challenges (The Pond’s S14 Challenge is here, @thing-you-do-with-that-thing is always running challenges, and @mrswhozeewhatsis has a tag #writing challenge on her blog). Also, “Tumblr loves porn” and the fandom loves Dean, in particular, so writing more Dean smut will get you more readers. Just adding “Dean x Reader” to the tags, even if the relationship is barely mentioned, will get you more readers. Sam will get you the same result, but to a lesser extent. Rhi got bigger writing ABO fics, and carved out a niche for herself with them to the point she’s considered the ABO expert in reader insert fics. Another tip was to strip OC’s of names and defining physical features, since OC’s don’t get a lot of love. Many “Y/N”’s are actually just OC’s without a name. Also, if you’re writing a story that will eventually have smut, list “eventual smut” in the tags.]

Q: Random question: a bunch of us smaller blogs have noticed a drop in reblogs over the last year or so, and I'd be curious to know if, as a bigger blog, you've seen anything like this as well?

Absolutely. A year ago I was getting about 10-20k notes a day. Now, if I hit a thousand, it's a good day and I'm expecting to take a massive hit because of Sinful Sunday, if they don't entirely delete my blog.

Q: Does anyone have any idea why the notes have all dropped so much? Is it a glitch in notes? People being more apprehensive to reblog nsfw things because of all the nsfw fear going on?

Community responses: The posts with outside links not showing up in searches is related to bots and porn blogs that only reblog posts to add a link to a sketchy outside web page. Several months ago, though, Tumblr started the “best stuff first” algorithm (which can be turned off in your dashboard settings, but not everyone knows this), and that pushed posts with few notes to the bottom of the dashboard feed. Since you never really get to the bottom, those posts never get seen. Tags and reblogs to build up note counts are the only way to combat this. Now, messing with the search functions means that there will be no new readers without blogs that just reblog fics, like the Pond and @dirtysupernaturalimagines and such.

[Editor’s Note: Rhi told us she’s working on a UPS Driver!Sam fic!! I’m excited. “What can Brown do for me?” YES, PLEASE!]

What’s coming up in the Pond:

Angel Fish Award nominations are due by the end of the month, so you have less than a week to submit yours and gain an entry for every nomination into the raffle! Win fabulous prizes just for spreading love! HOW COOL IS THAT? (Also, don’t forget to submit your own fics to the Pond so that other Pond members can easily find them and nominate them!)

Note: Please use the submission form to submit nominations. Asks do not allow you to include a link to the fic, and sometimes we can’t find what you’re nominating, especially now that Tumblr searches don’t work.

Design contest to find a Pond graphic! Entries are due by the end of the month, so less than a week away! So far, we have ONE (1) entry! (I mean, it’s a pretty fabulous entry, but still!) Winner gets their choice of swag with their design on it!!

SPNFanFicPond Season 14 Weekly Episode Writing Challenge - Since we didn’t have a new episode this past Thursday, the previous week’s challenge is still collecting submissions. (Honestly, there’s no deadline on any of them. Post a fic using a prompt from any week, and you’ll still be added to the masterpost and reblogged on the Pond blog.)

New Member Spotlight Post coming soon! Check out last month’s post here!

Still accepting additions and discussion about the Warning Tag List (tags to be used to assist folks in avoiding triggers and protect their mental health, not be confused with tags to help people find or avoid preferences). Reply or reblog the post itself, or send an ask to the Pond with suggestions!

Plans are in the works to try and make the blog more app-friendly. Please be patient with us in the meantime!

Plans to expand the beta program to make it easier to find the type of beta you need are also on the to-do list.

Housekeeping Note: If you send an ask to the Pond and do not get a response in a couple of days, please notify one of the admins (Michelle - @mrswhozeewhatsis, Mana - @manawhaat, or Kale - @aprofoundbondwithdean) via IM and let us know!

Thanks to everyone who joined us this month and made it an awesome conversation!! Can’t wait for next month!

Next month’s discussion: Giving feedback to other writers and how a beta reader can help your writing! Joining us will be @littlegreenplasticsoldier!

Be there Dec. 15th at the usual time! (Los Angeles - 2PM, New York - 5PM, London - 10PM, Melbourne - Sunday 9AM)

#spnfanficpond #chat room #spnfanficpond live chat #THE CHAT ROOM #pond chat

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farfanfiction · 6 years

Text

Loyalty to the Pack: Part 3

Pairing: John Seed x Joseph Seed x Reader x Jacob Seed

AUs: Omegaverse, werewolves

Warnings: Cursing, angst, little bit of fluff, mentions of cheating (kinda), mentions of depression and anxiety, big fucking self-hate warning, mentions of sex, mentions of blood, mentions of suicidal thoughts

Word Count: 4,046

A/N: Thank you guys for getting me past 10 followers! I’m very, very grateful to each and every one of you! For all of you who have read Far Cry: Absolution (highly recommended), Holly isn’t an utter bitch in the book like she’s portrayed here, this is mainly because I needed a character everyone can absolutely despise. And also for competition of sorts. I just wanna admit something. This series is very special to me, it’s my best series by far and it’s inspired by my life in some way. The self-hate, depression, and anxiety are deprived from my real-world experiences, and writing and playing video games, in general, help me release all those emotions. The message this story is trying to get across is, no matter what, do what makes you happy. No one is in charge of what you are or how you're gonna live your life, you decide that. Give me some feedback on what I could do better or what I did alright, where you wanna see this whole mess go, or something you just don’t understand. The gif is not mine.

Masterpost My Omegaverse Rules

You gave him a look as he finished his little speech. You wish he wasn't serious, but this was John you were talking about. Even though he said it in a joking manner, he wasn’t joking. His rules were all too real and demanding. He simply smirked at your frustration. You knew you had to calm down, he just enjoyed your reactions. You denied him this simple pleasure by gripping your wrinkled dress and tried to muster up a friendly smile.

“Since we’re both on the same level, why don’t we get you settled.” He stated, reaching into the back pocket of his dark jeans. He pulled out a small, black radio and talked into it in a low voice. Quiet enough so you wouldn’t hear.

With a silent mumble, you turned to the side and whispered, “I’ll get you fucking settled.” You scrunch your nose in disapproval when the Alpha heard you. Putting his large hand on the speaker and leaning over to look at you with his menacing blue eyes.

“What was that Omega?” he crooned in a sickly sweet voice. He knew exactly what you said. He was just trying to test his control over you, well not today buddy. You turned around and said nothing. He simply stared you down and then went back to his conversation on the radio. The person on the other side seemed pissed. Clearly yelling, but not loud enough for you to hear it.

After a few more minutes of yelling between the Alpha and the person on the other line, the garage door swung open. A young woman with long brown hair stepped into the fluorescent lights. Her scent immediately hit you. Beta. She was a Beta with a scent as boring as any other Beta in Eden’s Gate. Omegas and Alpha usually smelled exciting, but Betas barely had a scent. This Beta had that scent, yes, but she had an undertone of something strictly Omega. It didn’t feel like a natural smell, more artificial than anything. This woman was definitely trying to be something she wasn’t.

She gave a wink John a wink when she noticed him. Then proceeding to saunter over to him, her tight fitting dress swaying with each step. It was as if you weren’t there at all.

He gave her a small smirk, different than the one he gives you. More lustful than anything else. His bright blue eyes were full of want for this Beta. Something that shouldn’t occur to werewolves unless there wasn’t enough Omegas around. There was something definitely going on here.

“This is Holly. She’ll show you around the Ranch.” He stated, not turning his attention to you. He continued to stare at ‘Holly’. You turned to look at her, a look of distaste on your face. Your (e/c) eyes showing pure and utter hate for this Beta even though you just met her three minutes ago.

You walked to the door and waited for her to come. She blew John a small kiss and John just smiled. Pure happiness coating his face. He combed his brown hair back and watched as Holly finally led you out of the garage. She didn’t look back at you as she walked like she wanted to forget that you were even there. You guess in some way, you couldn’t blame the Beta. Her and John clearly had something going on between them. Far more than a short fling.

She said nothing as she led you into the main house. It was as big as the outside. Antler chandeliers hung from the ceiling and animal furs and statues decorated the floors and walls. The furniture looked rather expensive with its shiny leather finish. Come to think of it, everything looked expensive. What made the Ranch appear as if it was apart of Eden’s Gate was not only the ridiculous amount of heavily armed guards outside but the Book of Joseph displayed on a nearby shelf with the ability to be viewed from almost every angle. Its pristine white and gold cover shinned in the sunlight. as if it was from Heaven itself.

This was true, God did command Joseph to write the book. So, it did come directly from Heaven in a way. You believed in this, in Joseph, in God. The only two things you really believed in at the moment. The Father buried these beliefs in your heart and made it so the only thing you knew about was the Father, God, and the Great Collapse. Even if you wanted to believe in anything else, you couldn’t.

The book itself drew you in as if by some kind of force. You reached up onto the shelf and grabbed the book with delicate hands. The very feel sending shivers down your spine and settling in your very bones. It felt smooth under your fingertips as you traced the cross of the church. Its shape like a burst of golden light. The light of a true prophet.

When you put down the book, you notice a picture frame next to it. It held a photo of the Seed brothers, younger looking then they do now. John stood to one side of Joseph. His brown hair was wild and untamed as it fell over his blown pupils. He wore a droopy smile on his face as he stared at the camera. What made him look odd was the fact the Alpha was wearing an expensive looking suit, pristinely clean and ironed and his beard was completely gone.

Joseph stood next to him, his brown hair falling onto his shoulders. His beard was long and messy, clearly needing a trim. His clothes were battered and worn, unlike his typical attire. Despite all that, he still wore a soft smile on his face and his deep blue smiled along with him.

Jacob was the worst looking out of all of them. His hair and beard were an absolute mess. Clumps of red were tangled so much it didn’t even look like hair. His clothes were worse than Joseph’s. All bloody and utterly destroyed. But, just like his brothers, a small smile was present on his pale, blotchy red face.

They all seemed so happy, despite looking so… so miserable. You had heard the stories of Joseph looking for his brothers...fuck, everyone apart of the pack knew the tale well. This was probably taken when they all found each other. The amount of happiness, joy, and love they must have felt that day seemed to be out of this world. A feeling that couldn’t possibly be yours with the situation you found yourself in.

A loud cough interrupted your staring. You turned around to see the Beta looking at you with what you could only describe as a bitch face. Holly’s pretty face was scrunched up as she stared you down for wasting her precious time. “You know I don’t have to do this. John didn’t just ask me to help you, I did it out of the kindness of my heart. So, let’s not waste that kindness and leave.” She harshly whispered. You just hoped either God or John heard her. Maybe if you were lucky, both of them.

‘The kindness of her heart’ sounded forced. As if she was trying to score brownies points with John. To you, she was trying too hard. This Beta clearly had him wrapped around her little finger. He seemed desperate to please her and vice versa. You just hoped when you had your first heat, something John thought you already had, he wouldn’t deal with Holly. A wish that couldn’t possibly happen. If pups weren’t involved, why be tied down by an over emotional and needy Omega? Betas were a good enough fuck when you were in a rut.

You simply nodded at her statement, not wanting to stir the pot more. She gave an annoyed sigh and led you to the stairs. You watched as she climbed the steps, the temptation of making her have an accident higher than it’s ever been in your life. Just being an Omega would restrain you from wanting to kill anything, but clearly, that half of you wanted that as much as the rest of you.

You simply bit your lip in frustration and followed her onto the porch. You stopped for a minute and took in the view. The plants and flowers looked far better from up here, minus the men with guns walking around. Not wanting to be scolded again, you quickly got behind her. Holly soon stopped in front of a pair of large double-doors. She opened one door and practically pushed you inside. You let out a small howl and the faint smell of distressed Omega wafted off of you in light waves.

To end this shitty tour, the Beta proceeded to slam the door, living you alone with your thoughts. You looked at your bedroom and gave a long, heavy sigh. It was small with a double bed, dresser, closet, and a couch. A small bookshelf was pushed into a corner as well, the only book on it was the Book of Joseph and a journal about werewolf behavior. Not a lot of thought and care went into this, just haphazardly put together. It was as if no one gave a damn, which was probably true.

You flopped onto the bed with the haphazardly placed sheets and buried your head in a pillow. A whimper fell past your lips as you wished for your mother. Someone to at least comfort you as you made this hard transition. Soon the whimpers turned into sobs and sobs into full-blown wailing. Snot running down your (s/c) face and onto the white sheets. The salty tears mixed with the snot and you honestly didn’t care. The crying continued for hours. Your mind switching from one problem to the next until nothing was left but sadness and the want to leave. In a last attempt to clean up, you brought your white lace sleeves to your face and whipped away the snot and tears. There was no point in keeping it clean, it was going into the trash after this.

You fell asleep soon after, dreaming of something far better than this. An Alpha that genuinely wanted to be mated to you, pups that could actually exist with a different person, and a whole new look on life if this one didn’t end up so shity.

You woke up the next morning as miserable as the last. Not ready to get out of bed and join society as a fellow wolf and member of Eden’s Gate. You looked out the window, noting the sun slowly peeking its way above the horizon. Your stomach gave a small growl at the lack of food. You hadn’t eaten anything both from the nerves of getting baptized and the gut-wrenching news of being John’s Omega. There wasn’t much room for an appetite.

Deciding to make breakfast for yourself and John, like the kind person you were, you got up and headed downstairs. This is where your lack of direction kicked in. That bitch Holly only showed you where your room was. So, finding the kitchen would take forever. You headed outside, still in your dirty dress and stopped a passing wolf. “Hey!” You called out to him. The Beta turned to look at you, confusion taking over his face. He gave you a look and then lifted a finger to point at himself.

“M-me?” He called out, a slight stutter to his voice. You gave a nod and he trotted over. Tripping as he walked. This guy definitely wasn’t trained by Jacob.

“Do you know where the kitchen is?” You asked, not missing a beat. He nodded and gently took hold of your smaller hand. He held it like glass as he walked you back inside the Ranch. The Beta led you to the double doors near the living room. He opened them and there appeared a large kitchen. Far larger than someone like Jonathan Seed needed.

Without further hesitation, you got started on making the food. Making fresh squeezed orange juice, homemade pancakes and a side of fruit and sausages. You put it all on a little tray for him and headed upstairs, just hoping his office or bedroom was near yours. You wandered onto the balcony and peeked around every corner just to find this son of a bitch. Finally, you found it. The French doors kinda gave it away. You gave a small knock to the wood. Your anxiety now taking control. Your mind was asking you if this was a good idea, if he would actually appreciate it, or if he even wanted to look at your ugly mug.

Your chest began to tighten and black spots filled your vision when John didn’t answer. Maybe he wasn’t in there? Was he out working? These questions began to combine inside your anxiety filled mind, making a cocktail of negative feelings and outlooks. You held your breath and you knocked again, a little harder this time. A muffled “come in,” sounded through the door and banging was heard before the French doors flew open.

John peeked his head out of the room and stared at the tray. His hair was a mess and sweat dripped down his forehead. It was as if he ran a mile, ragged breaths escaped him as he tried to get a word out. He looked down at the tray and frowned. “Thanks for the breakfast, but I already ate.” He licked his plump lips somewhat seductively as he stared back in the room. A figure flew behind him and onto his bed.

“I would leave now. There’s nothing else for you to do for me.” He stated before polity slamming the door in your face. You gawked at the wood before pure anger took over. You whispered every curse in the book as you walked down the stairs and out the back door to the backyard. You walked to the edge of the yard and threw the tray out the side of the mountain hill. You waited for the sound of expensive china to shatter before you headed back in.

Holly was definitely in there with him. Getting her grubby Beta hands on your Alpha! Wait, your Alpha? John hadn’t even mated you yet, he was still up for grabs.

This is probably how envy felt, a sin that felt so right, but so wrong. The feeling of jealousy was a strong one with its emotions and the want for what Holly had. Something she didn’t need.

You muttered more curses as you walked to your room. You slammed the door, just praying its wood would splinter and John would have to pay to fix it. You flopped onto your bed and stared at the wood ceiling.

The untamed envy from before made its way back like a snake in the garden. Slithering through the tall grass before it strikes, bringing forth a wave of emotions, each more intense and painful than the last. Sadness and anxiety was the most potent. Making your chest heavier with each passing breath like it had moments before.

John… He caused this. Made your anxiety worse with his cocky, yet sexy attitude. He mislead you into believing you were safe with him. That you were going to be an actual mate to him, come time for your first heat. If an Alpha wasn’t during that time, you would be either terribly injured or dead. Heats were painful, fall more painful without a mate.

The pain in your chest got worse as you tried to suck in breath after breath. Each bone only giving a little oxygen. Tears dripped down your (s/c) face from the mere pain and sadness of not being with your Alpha. What scared you the most wasn’t the anxiety attack, but the fact that John was innocent in your eyes, no matter how much he hurt you in the past two days.

The pain continued on for what seemed like forever. The scent of an Omega in pain wafted off you so much, it felt like it was dripping onto your skin and soaking your dress. For how long the attack went on, John didn’t show up. Probably too busy with Holly to care.

You soon fell asleep, completely exhausted from your cry fest. You slept for so long, that it was about two in the morning when you woke up again. The sun was long gone and the number of armed guards was beginning to build back up for the tonight’s watch.

You changed into a more comfortable outfit and whipped away any evidence of crying. You made your way downstairs to see John in the living room. Holly was nowhere in sight, thank the Father. “Well well, look who’s up finally awake,” John stated, not even looking in your direction. He was too busy buttoning his shirt to notice you. As he buttoned, you could clearly see fresh scratches running down his chest. Some of them dripped with a little bit of blood.

Not wanting him to stain his shirt and hear his complaining, you walked to the kitchen and grabbed a towel, wetting it at the sink. You walked back and grabbed his hand before he could button it all the way. You began to dap his chest with the wet towel. It was firm and it seemed like he exercised with how much muscle was under his tan skin. He clearly looked like a twig that even you could snap when you first saw him

The Alpha just looked at you as your Omega instincts took over, caring for a member of your pack. Even if he was a jackass. “I never expected for this kind of thing to happen with you. But don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining.” You gave him a glare but continued to tab at the blood. When he was clean, you threw the bloodied towel away and began to head upstairs.

“Wait, (Y/N)...” You turned around, a surprised look on your face when he said your name. You didn’t even know John knew your name. Your family was made up of typical members of Eden’s Gate. Working under the Father, God, and the Heralds. Attending sermons and most importantly, preparing the bunkers for the Great Collapse. The Great Collapse was something that wasn’t taken lightly in the Project at Eden’s Gate. The people of Hope County said you were crazy but did Joseph care? No, of course not. It was him and his flock’s business when it came to surviving the end of the world as God has planned. They would be saved later.

The only person who was expected to know everyone who was apart of the project was Joseph. To have John figure out your name was special in an awkward sort of way. “What?” You whispered. You turned to look at him, your (e/c) eyes heavy with dark circles.

“Thank you.” You simply gave a nod and then proceeded to walk up the stairs. Wait, there was one last thing you needed to know. Where was he going?

“Where are you going anyway?” Where would he even be going this late other than a sermon?

“Joseph’s having a late night service for some… select children.” His was hesitant about the word children. He definitely knew something you didn’t and he was not going to tell anytime soon.

“Ok…” The room became quiet when you had nothing else to see. You simply watched as John headed out the door to his garage. He then drove off, giving a wave as he went down the long driveway. You gave a wave from the window and headed back to bed, just praying everything was ok.

It wasn’t, everything was far from ok. There was a hefty amount of commotion coming from outside when you woke up. You walked to the window to see patrols coming in trucks, wave after wave of gun-toting men and women. Some even in wolf form, stalking the perimeter. They appeared to be looking for something or someone, whoever they were.

The faint sound of heavy footsteps could be heard outside your door, getting louder as the person got closer. Suddenly, your door was thrown open and John ran in, out of breath.

“The Father was almost arrested. The sinners are on the run, but I need you to stay here while I go find them by plane.” Wait, the Father was almost taken? That means everything was true. The Devil, Hell, a Whitehorse, and most importantly the Great Collapse. The Collapse has begun.

“Wait, wait, Alpha don’t go.” John stopped at the word Alpha. You mentally slapped yourself from being so stupid. The Omega inside you was fearful for her Alpha, even though he wasn’t hers. He wasn’t yours. He can’t be, he had that Beta, Holly.

He stepped towards you, his Alpha ready to comfort this Omega. He had an urge to protect his mate even if she wasn’t his yet. “Omega…” He breathed out, soft yet firm. To show you he was in charge of this situation. He gently grabbed your cheeks and leaned in. He touched his forehead with yours and there was an instant connection. You could feel his thoughts, his emotions as they raced through his head. One of them was so strong you could feel it swelling at the bottom of your gut. Fear. The great John Seed, the Baptist, the Inquisitor of Eden’s Gate, feared for his flock’s safety, his brothers’ safety, his sister’s and most importantly, yours. He feared for you, he actually liked you in some way.

You two felt such comfort as you both shared your fears with each other. The Alpha slowly pulled away until your lips were just centimeters from each other. You slowly leaned in, not sure what you were doing. You barely knew this man for three days and you were already trying to kiss him. John flinched just a bit and pulled away. A squeezing sensation formed in your chest from the rejection.

“Be safe, Omega,” John whispered, his blue eyes staring intensely into yours. Before you could say anything, he was gone and the faint sound of a plane engine filled the dark sky.

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prepare4trouble · 6 years

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Star Wars Rebels fanfic - The Right Direction (1/6)

Little By Little AU Masterpost

Honestly, I suggested the title for this one without even considering the link to the title of the last fic. It’s not a sequel or anything, but it does refer to the idea of taking a step in the right direction, which Ezra definitely wasn’t doing in the previous story.

Hera woke feeling hair on her face. Caught in that moment between sleep and wake, reluctant to commit fully to the idea of consciousness, she didn’t move. Instead, she wrinkled her nose, trying to soothe the tickling sensation. It worked, after a fashion, but only for a second. When she stopped and tried to relax again, it returned, stronger than ever.

Still not opening her eyes — to do so would mean accepting that she was awake — she backed away, just slightly. Keeping her body in contact with Kanan’s, she moved her head back so that the stray strands of hair no longer touched her face. She exhaled softly through her nose, encouraging them to move a little further away, all the time trying to keep her movements to a minimum in the hopes that she wouldn’t disturb him.

She didn’t remember whether she had set an alarm the night before, it was a habit for the most part, but one that she did forget occasionally, when she knew there was nothing pressing to do early the next morning.

Only, there was something to do. Not base duties like mission briefings or repairs, but something equally as important. She needed — they needed — to talk to Ezra.

She wasn’t sure what time it was. It was tough to be certain until she turned on the light and looked at the clock. While she slept, the light level in her quarters was always dim; there were no windows and the lighting was controlled entirely by electronics. Back when she had spent most of her time in space, she had thought it would be nice to have a porthole to view the universe from her quarters, but now they were based on Atollon she was thankful for the lack of natural light; it meant it was easier for her to choose her own hours.

Not, of course, that she often allowed herself to sleep through the day no matter how late she had fallen into bed the night before.

Unfortunately, it mean that on rare occasions like this, she had no way to gauge the time by the light level. It might still be the early hours of the morning, or she could have slept half the day away. If she wanted to know one way or another, she would have to move, and potentially wake Kanan in the process.

Although, to be fair, he had woken her enough times by stealing the blanket that even if it was too early to get up, disturbing him would almost feel fair.

She waited, lying next to him, feeling the warmth of his body. It had been some time since she had been faced with this kind of a dilemma in the morning. So long, in fact, that she had forgotten about it until it happened again. Just like the problem of the hair that was somehow tickling her face again.

She frowned and edged a little further away. It didn’t make sense. He hadn’t moved — she knew he hadn’t, she had been right there next to him the whole time and she would have felt it — and as far as she knew, human hair wasn't capable of independent movement. It should stay where it was placed, but somehow it never seemed to work that way.

Hair was strange stuff. She liked the way it looked, but she was forever glad not to have any attached to her own head. Humans must be used to it, or maybe their scalps were less sensitive, but she couldn’t imagine feeling that all day long.

It didn’t seem to bother Kanan though. He stirred just slightly in his sleep, adjusted his position in her bed, edged away just a little, and took the blanket with him. Again.

She let him this time. During the night she had fought back, struggling to keep the blanket to herself, but she was awake now, and he was still asleep. If she disturbed him now, it would be purely out of revenge. As fair as that sounded, he needed to rest every bit as much as she did. More, maybe. He hadn’t been sleeping well lately.

He hadn’t told her that of course, but she could tell just by looking at him that the previous night hadn’t been his only sleepless night. There was a weariness to him that she recognised because she felt it herself. Not all of it could be healed by sleep. What was happening with Ezra was hard on all of them, but — except of course for Ezra himself — she suspected it was hardest for Kanan.

But just as he had said himself the previous night, if he had any hopes of helping Ezra, really helping him, that was something that he was going to have to get over. He needed to put a stop to the idea that what was happening was a tragedy. They needed to be positive.

Well, no. False positivity wouldn’t help anybody. But they did need to stop mourning. They needed to move forward so they could help Ezra do the same.

She had no idea how they were going to do that. She didn’t even know how to begin.

She still needed to know the time. If she had slept the day away, that meant she was wasting more time by continuing to lay there. If the day had already begun, she needed to be up, and preparing for her next move. She raised a hand slowly, moving inch by inch, still careful not to disturb Kanan as her fingers traced the wall and found the angled edges of the light switch. She pressed it, and blinked as light flooded the room.

Kanan didn’t react. The sudden brightness like that would have woken her if she had still been sleeping, but the switch had made no sound, and he was unable to perceive any difference in the light level. Just like Ezra would soon…

No.

She pushed the unhelpful thought forcibly from her mind before she could complete it. She propped herself up on one elbow and looked down at the sleeping form next to her, warm and cosy in far more than his fair share of her blanket. It wasn’t as late as she had worried it might be. She could allow herself a few more moments.

With the light on now, she could see now that Kanan’s hair was free from the band he normally used to hold it back; that was why it had been tickling her face as much as it had. She couldn’t remember whether it had been that way when he had come to her the night before, or whether it had worked itself loose during the night. Either way, the result was a tangled mess that was going to take him a long time to comb through. She didn’t envy him that. She glanced over at her dressing table, where he had used to keep a comb just for that purpose; it was gone. It had been a long time since he had stayed over, and she had no idea where she might have put it.

Once, a long time ago now, she remembered combing out his hair with her fingers, coaxing the tangled strands into something neater and more presentable, fascinated by the texture of it. It hadn’t been the first time she had touched it, but one of the first. He had sat still, trying not to wince when her fingers snagged in a knot and tugged on the skin of his scalp.

She cringed herself at the memory, unable to imagine the sensation but sure it must be uncomfortable.

Maybe human heads were less sensitive than twi’leks’?

Or maybe she was overthinking something irrelevant to put off thinking about other, more important things.

“It’s been a while, huh?”

Kanan’s voice startled her as it cut through the silence of her quarters, and Hera almost flinched. She didn’t, but she was certain he sensed it anyway.

If she hadn’t just heard him speak, she wouldn't have known he was awake. He hadn’t moved, his eyes remained closed, and he looked completely at peace. For a moment, she wondered whether he was talking in his sleep, but he had never done that before. Once or twice, he had screamed, but never spoken.

Maybe he had been awake the whole time that she had, laying there, pretending to sleep, sensing her as she watched the gentle movement of his chest as he breathed next to her.

“A while since I slept over, I mean,” Kanan clarified.

She nodded, she had already known what he meant. The last time they had done this had been before they established the base on Atollon. “Too long,” she agreed.

“And I still say your bunk is more comfortable than mine, by the way. You can claim they’re all the same as much as you like; I don’t believe you.”

She smiled. The last time they had had that discussion, he had invited her into his quarters to test out his bunk for herself. She hadn’t needed too, she had already known hers was better.

“Hey, it’s my ship,” she told him. “I was the only one here for a long time; of course I took the best quarters.”

He turned over, rolling onto his back. His eyes were still closed, but he no longer appeared to be asleep. He smiled in a satisfied way. “So you finally admit it,” he said triumphantly. “Honestly, I wasn’t sure. I thought maybe I just sleep better when I’m with you.”

No, hers was definitely better. “Could be that too,” she agreed.

“I guess we should do this more often then,” he told her. “Maybe alternate between my quarters and yours, really test out the theory.” He propped himself up just slightly on his elbows. “How’d you sleep?”

Better than she had in months. That didn’t mean she was going to let him get away with hogging the blanket. “It might have been better if you’d been able to share the covers,” she told him.

He frowned thoughtfully, his brow creasing above still-closed eyes, and it occurred to her that the last time they had woken up together, he had been able to see her. She remembered the way his eyes had slowly traced the outline of her body underneath the covers, not even pretending that he wasn’t appreciating the view.

Kanan detangled the blanket from around his body and tugged it in her direction. He rolled over to face her, bringing the blanket with him, then pulled her in a little closer, bringing her into the warmth.

She resisted the urge to relax too much. “Don’t,” she said. “I don’t want to get too comfortable again, we need to get up.”

“Ten more minutes?” Kanan asked.

She sighed and closed her eyes. “Five,” she allowed.

****

Hera woke again with a start, disoriented and absolutely certain that it had been longer than five minutes. Something was missing. She reached out and found the bed still warm where Kanan had been moments earlier, but he was gone. She opened her eyes and scanned the room quickly. He wasn’t difficult to find, standing by her desk in nothing but a pair of shorts. As she watched, he ran his hand over the clothing she had slung over the back of her chair ready to wear the next day, exploring the fabric with his fingers.

“Kanan?” she asked

He stopped suddenly, and turned in her direction. He didn’t look embarrassed exactly, but it did seem like he hadn’t intended to be seen. “I didn’t mean to wake you,” he said.

She sat up and put her feet on the floor. “You didn’t,” she told him. Although, she had woken not long after he had gotten up and started doing whatever he was doing, so maybe… “I don’t think you did, anyway,” she added. “What are you doing?”

“Just…” he checked the empty seat of the chair with a sweep of his other hand and frowned. “Looking for my robe.” He folded his arms and narrowed his eyes slightly in her direction. “You didn’t move it, did you?”

She shook her head. “I haven’t gotten out of bed since last night.”

“Because you’ve done it before.”

Hera shook her head. “No I…” she hesitated. He was right, she had, actually. She glanced around the room, hoping to find the missing item of clothing and end the discussion, but it didn’t appear to be anywhere. “That was totally different,” she reminded him.

“Because I could see that my clothes had all disappeared back then?”

Normally, when this came up, it was in the context of practical jokes, silly stories, things that they could laugh about when they were alone together. It was a happy memory. Right now, Kanan actually seemed upset about it, and she wasn’t sure what to do with that.

She didn’t think he was upset though. Not really. At least, not about something that happened years earlier. He turned his attention to the surface of the desk. She had left it scattered with work from the previous day, but he ran his hand millimeters from the surface itself, not disturbing anything she had left there.

“I hung it up when I took it off last night,” he told her. “I put it on the hook by your bed. I know I did.”

Instinctively, she glanced at the hook; it was empty. She checked the floor nearby, in case the robe had fallen off, but it wasn’t there either. “It’s not there now,” she told him.

He let out a frustrated sigh. “I know it’s not there,” he said. “Why do you think I’m looking over here?”

He had a point. He also seemed far more irritated by this than he should have been. “What’s wrong?” she asked him. “Really?”

He leaned heavily against the wall. “Nothing,” he said.

“I know you better than that, Kanan,” she told him.

He sighed, then reconsidered. “Fine. It’s just, I should be past this. Yesterday I was telling Ezra to keep track of where he puts things, then the very next day… Sometimes I think the Force is just messing with me. You’re sure you didn’t…”

Hera winced. Now that he explained it, it made perfect sense. “Sorry,” she said, “I haven't touched it.”

For a moment she thought he was going to argue, insist that she must have done something. He appeared to consider it, then dismiss the idea. “Okay,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

She folded her arms and smiled, trying to evoke a better memory. “And the one time I did move your clothes was totally different. For a start, it was funny,” while this would have just been cruel. “And I did give them back.” She had, too, after a while. But only after she had told him what she had done, and watched, laughing as he searched under rocks and behind trees for a while.

It wasn’t as though he hadn’t gotten his own back a few times, in other ways, but she had known what they were payback for.

It all felt so long ago now, back in the early days of Kanan’s time on the Ghost, when it had seemed new and strange to have him there, when they were just learning to be comfortable with each other, pushing the boundaries of what they could get away with.

They had taken a short break together, just a few hours on a secluded moon, setting the Ghost down not far from the edge of a lake. They had lain together on the grass and looked at the shapes in the clouds, planned a future they already knew they weren’t going to have, and they had taken a swim in the cool water, diving and splashing until they were so tired and content that all they wanted to do was lay down and sleep. Hera had wanted a bit of entertainment before she did.

That had been the day that she had learned that when humans were embarrassed, sometimes their entire bodies blushed.

Kanan appeared to be too trapped in the present to relive the past right now. He shook his head and ran a hand through his knotted hair. It snagged almost immediately and he disentangled his fingers without bothering to try to complete the maneuver. Any other time, that would have been funny, right now he just looked so frustrated and lost that all she wanted to do was help. She almost wished she had hidden the thing, so that she could give it back.

“Maybe I wasn’t wearing it,” he said. “I had a lot on my mind last night. Maybe I just forgot.”

He had definitely been wearing something, though she couldn't say with any certainty what it had been. One thing that she knew was that if he had turned up at her door in the middle of the night wearing nothing but the tight pair of shorts he had on now, she would have remembered.

She looked around the room again, but there was nothing, no evidence that he had even been there except for the fact of his presence. It was baffling. “You must have put it somewhere else,” she said, and checked the drawer underneath the bottom bunk. There was nothing there but her own personal effects. “Don’t worry about it, we’ll find it another time.”

Kanan sighed. He folded his arms self-consciously across his bare chest. “Well, this definitely won’t raise questions if I’m seen slinking back to my own room when I leave here.”

Hera raised an eyebrow. “Slinking? Ashamed to be seen with me?”

“What?” He shook his head vehemently. “No, of course not! I just mean, it’s not very…” he shrugged, “…dignified.”

She had to laugh at that. “When have you ever been dignified?” She balled up the blanket they had slept under the night before. “Here,” she told him, and tossed it in his direction. He tensed for a split second before he reached out to his side and easily caught it in the air.

He explored it with his hands for a moment, discovered that it wasn’t the robe that he apparently still thought she might have hidden, then wrapped it around his shoulders, bunched at the top so that it didn’t trail on the ground. “Great, thanks,” he said, unenthusiastically, and sank into the chair by her desk. He drummed his fingers on the tabletop. “So,” he said. “Ezra.”

Hera shivered in the sudden loss of the warmth from her blanket. She rubbed her hands up and down the tops of her arms. They were going to have to talk to Ezra, and they were going to have to do it sooner rather than later. But not that soon. Not until she had a warm shower and a hot caf. And not until Kanan had some clothes on.

The blanket that he was holding around him like a cape had slipped open a little at the top, and part of his chest was exposed. “We’ll discuss it over breakfast,” she said. “I can’t talk to you like that, you’re too distracting.”

Kanan grinned widely at that, and made no attempt to cover up. “I was trying to get dressed,” he said. “Someone moved my robe.”

He had a point. He also still seemed to think she was behind its disappearance. Well, at least he didn’t seem so frustrated about the whole thing anymore. “Fine, take ten minutes to get your ‘dignity’ back, and I’ll get the caf ready.”

Kanan nodded. He got to his feet still holding the blanket loosely around his shoulders. “Ten minutes,” he agreed, and headed for the door.

part 2

#star wars rebels #swr fanfic #little by little #kanan jarrus #hera syndulla #semi-naked Kanan #because I think we all need that sometimes #I miss kanan #he was still alive in the show when I wrote this chapter #if the last chapter sucks it's because I wrote it through tears while trying to write a happy scene #anyway #fic #reblogs and comments are so appreciated

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voidwaren · 6 years

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Whale Song Pt. 3

Okay, so, I don’t have the best of reasons for totally missing my own deadline on this one, except for the fact I was stubbornly unhappy with what I had at the time. I’m much more happy with it now, which is why I’m publishing, and, since I waited a little longer, it also has about 3,000 words more than it did Halloween night, which makes it my biggest Whale Song update yet. Hopefully you guys like it!

This update brings us about two-thirds through the Whale Song story, so we’re almost all done.

But I digress and present: Whale Song Part 3. Same warnings as always apply, enjoy.

Warren is Strange/Whale Song Masterpost

The first day that trails the vision is spent in apprehension, both for Warren and for Nathan, though they handle it vastly differently from one another. Fueled on by a lack of sleep and a large helping of bickering, Warren’s entire being is in knots. He tries his best to act normal, which is easy thanks to his lack of need to socialize given that it’s a weekend, but Nathan is a clear ball of nerves from the moment he leaves Warren’s side to return to his own room in the morning and continued into Warren seeing him again when he ventures out into the courtyard to hang with Max. Warren hasn’t seen him hunch his shoulders that high since a time before this loop even existed, a clear indicator (one of many, Warren now knows) that something wasn’t right with Nathan that day.

Nathan’s with his usual cronies near the fountain, sitting on the edge with his leg up in a way he probably thought made him look edgy and cool (and, okay, it kind of did) and Hayden calls Warren’s name and gives him a wave when Warren passes by their general line of sight. Warren hesitantly waves back, taken a little off-guard by the sudden friendly gesture from someone who previously probably didn’t even know Warren’s name, and Hayden grins at him. Warren doesn’t approach them, but Nathan makes sure to catch Warren’s eye and Warren gives him a shake of the head in what he hopes is reassurance nothing has manifested from his strange encounter with the phantom whales. At least, not in the short amount of time they’d been apart.

He’s not sure his message gets across, but Nathan could always text him if he really needed to. Warren wasn’t going to throw himself into the shark pool just to get some clarification established. For now, Warren just wants to see Max and forget about the day before, because, if the whales did mean anything, he didn’t expect the meaning to reveal itself right then and there. That would be an anomaly to everything else that had happened, and Warren wasn’t counting on anomalies. He only hoped that wouldn’t be his undoing.

Though he’d tried his best to push the whales from his mind, it occurs to him as he’s sitting with Max on a picnic table a little ways from the Academy, with a pizza between them, that Max’s journey with time had included unusual pieces that his had not—namely in the form of a phantom deer she had mentioned seeing a few loops back. He’d never thought before that maybe the deer wasn’t so much a ghost as it was a vision, like the whales had been for him, but now he wondered if it had been exactly that. He’s not sure Max would expect Warren to know about it, since he can’t remember if this version of her had told him (it was difficult keeping all the discrepancies apart, okay, even for someone like him), but he knows she’s spoken to the janitor at the academy about something or another, and maybe the two were connected in some way. Or, maybe, she’d just have some better insight on what the whales could mean.

As long as he kept the details to himself, Warren figures, asking couldn’t hurt, right?

Famous last words, something whispers in the back of his mind, and he has to blatantly ignore it as he goes to open his mouth.

“What do you know about whales?” Warren breaks in, leaning on the table between them.

“Whales?” Max repeats through the mouthful of pizza she had just bitten off. She chews it thoughtfully, then swallows. “They’re sea-dwelling mammals and they’re really big?” she tries.

“Well, duh,” Warren replies. “But what about, like, spiritually? What do they represent and stuff, that mystical shit.”

Max cocks an eyebrow at him. “What?” she laughs hesitantly. “What would I know about that kind of mumbo-jumbo?” There’s enough confusion in her statement that, for a brief moment, Warren thinks it must not have been this loop that she confided in him about the ghost deer she’d seen guiding her places during her journey. He pushes that away, though, because the ghost deer wasn’t important, and maybe she might not have even seen it this time. It didn’t matter. She had definitely spoken to what’s-his-name, though. He knew that much.

Warren shrugs. “You talk to that creepy janitor all the time, and everyone knows he’s got some weird boner for the Native American foundations of the land the school’s on. He talks about the squirrels and whatnot all the time. Thought maybe whales had come up,” he says in an attempt at nonchalance, then tries not to wince at himself, because ouch. Not the smoothest transition he’d ever executed, but Max doesn’t seem to notice. Warren decides not to let that wound his ego.

Well, not too much.

“Hey, Samuel’s actually a pretty nice guy,” Max protests, setting her half-eaten slice of pizza down. “Okay, yeah, he’s a little weird,” she amends when Warren just looks at her, “but he’s really interesting to talk to, and he has a lot of things to say that you probably haven’t thought about, Mr. I’m-a-man-of-science. Have you ever actually held a conversation with him before?”

“No,” Warren admits. “I’ve never had a reason to.”

“Well, now you do. You should ask him about the whales if you’re so keen to know.” Max frowns slightly, cocking her head. “Why do you want to know about whales?”

Warren hesitates. He had no proof his vision of the whales was anything more than his brain messing with him, and Nathan was already panicking enough over the incident for three people, so maybe Max’s involvement wasn’t needed just yet. Warren promised himself he’d involve her at some point if it was more than Warren was hoping it would be, because she’d kill him if he left her out. She still reminded him sometimes that he hadn’t told her anything in his past loops—something Warren regretted admitting in the first place, because she never would have known if he hadn’t told her.

“Symbolism might have played a larger part in everything that happened than I thought it did when it was happening,” Warren tells her instead, “and whales are important to the town, right? So, now that it’s all said and done, I want to know everything I didn’t before.”

Max gives him a mildly pitying look. Warren finds with surprise that it annoys him slightly—he didn’t want to be pitied, even by Max. “Wouldn’t it just be easier to let this all go?” Max reaches a hand out and puts it on Warren’s arm. “Dwelling on it might only make it worse for you, Warren, and everything’s already had too much time to crack a hammer on your skull.”

Warren could hear what she didn’t say: the incident had changed him. He’d known that fact long ago, that he’d never be the same Warren he was before this had all happened to him. That he was still Warren, but this Warren had demons the other never could have imagined existed. Not to him. Not for him. Warren had, for better or worse, changed. Grown.

For Warren himself, the change had been gradual, over a period of months that nearly completed half of a year. It wasn’t unnatural for someone as young as him to change in that span of time, he knew that much, but most people his age didn’t relive the same horrific month enough times for it to drastically change who they were. The change had been gradual, yes, but it was stark, the difference of who he’d become to whom he’d been.

For Max, though, the change had happened in a matter of days. Possibly even overnight, because he couldn’t quite remember how he’d acted that final first day he’d woken up beyond the breakdown he’d had in Nathan’s room. It must have been a shock to her, whatever it is she had witnessed in a timespan so much shorter than Warren’s own, and it spoke volumes to Warren that she hadn’t immediately called him out on it when it had happened.

Warren presses his lips together, pushing a breath out through his nose. “I can’t let it go,” he tells Max quietly. “That’s just who I am. When I need to know something, I have to know it. Now that there’s time to, I can’t let it go.”

A small smile quirks Max’s lips. “You’re such a nerd. This is why you’re so good at your sciences.”

Warren returns the smile for a beat, but falls back to frowning again. “This isn’t science, though. Not the science I’m used to. Core science? Real, solid chemistry and physics and weather phenomena with formulas and sense to back them up? I can do that. I can do that any day of the week. This?” Warren waves a hand through the air, resisting the urge to scrub it through his hair out of habit, because his fingers were still slick with pizza grease. “This crap? The crap that fueled my little journey through shitty timey-wimey bullshit? I don’t know how to do this beyond fumbled theory, and not even to the point where I could even comprehensively explain exactly what happened to me. This is Stephen Hawkins-level weird science. This is string theory and alternate dimensions and ‘a butterfly flaps its wings and shit we’re all dead’ level stuff that has formulas without examples behind it to render it solidly true, because, yes, it probably does exist, but how can I prove it? Hell, I can’t even prove it happened to me.”

And that was possibly the part that killed him the most. The farther he got into the timeline he was now firmly stuck in, the more he questioned if any of it had actually happened. He had no proof, nothing but his own word and the occasional fact he shouldn’t have known. No one would believe him if he tried to explain to someone who could help him, either. Not even if Max helped him with her side of the story. In fact, her time powers and assertion that they existed was a lot of what kept Warren from flat out starting to wonder if it might have all been in his head. It was all just too … unreal. Without Max, Warren doesn’t know what he’d think.

“I’m smart,” Warren asserts immediately, because he certainly was, “but I’m not Stephen Hawkins. I can’t just snap my fingers and decide it’s a done deal because it happened and there’s a little theory to it, and because people trust my word in the realm of science so it’s accepted by many. Max, I need to know.”

Max stares at him, seemingly shocked into silence at Warren’s ramble. Or, Warren thinks rationally, something he said, because he rambles all the time and it never affects her like this. Warren waves his hand in front of her face. “Max? Hello? You’re not in some food coma, are you? Because that’s not actually a thing, it’s really just—”

“A butterfly,” Max cuts in. Her tone is confused, even mystified. Warren drops his hand.

“Yeah? It’s just a saying to explain—”

“No, Warren. A butterfly, I saw— I have a picture—well, Chloe does,” Max scrambles through her words, wiping her hand on her jeans and then turning to dig around in her bag. Warren watches her, unsure of what she was trying to explain. She’d never mentioned a butterfly before. After a moment, she pulls out her phone and says, “I have a picture of it, but I gave it to Chloe.”

Warren’s brain clicks. “You think it was a sign?” he tries, because maybe it hadn’t been a deer this time. Or maybe there had just been more signs, ones even Warren hadn’t known about.

“I don’t know what it was,” Max admits once she’s finished tapping away at the screen. Almost immediately, her phone buzzes, and she taps the screen before flipping the phone around to face Warren. On the screen is a picture of a polaroid, and the polaroid is of a bright blue butterfly. Warren’s stomach drops. It must be clear on his face, because Max leans forward. “Bizzaro, right? I found it in the bathroom the same day I saw the storm in Jefferson’s classroom. I thought it was just escaped from the science lab or trapped in from outside or something, but now that you mention butterflies, do you think it was something more?”

Warren stares at the picture, his heart firmly nestled in his gut. “That’s a Blue Morpho,” he says quietly, gravely, then, like he’d forgotten to breathe, he gasps. Max frowns at him inquisitively. “Blue Morphos don’t— They’re not native to North America. Especially not Oregon. Especially not in the middle of October.” Warren sits back and covers his mouth with his hand for a second. “Have you seen one since?”

“Since my time powers stopped? No.”

Tension Warren doesn’t realize had built up in his chest eases at Max’s words. It wasn’t concrete, but maybe the whales had been nothing but a reminder of things he’d forgotten. Something subconsciously repressed in his mind resurfacing to make sure he didn’t forget what he’d been put through.

But I’d never seen the whales, Warren thinks, and a trickle of cold cuts through his relief. How did I see them then? How did I know what they looked like?

Movies, he tries to tell himself. He doesn’t try to think of where he might have seen beached whales before, because he’s afraid he hasn’t.

What else could it possibly be?

“Mind if Chloe stops by?” Max asks suddenly, pulling Warren back to the present.

“Oh, shit, actually,” he starts, abruptly reminded of what he’d resolved to do. He reaches out and wraps his fingers around Max’s wrist. Max doesn’t pull away, but her smile turns confused. “I want to tell Chloe about the time loops,” Warren explains quietly, like anyone would be able to hear them. Which is ridiculous, because no one else is there.

Max’s expression turns first to surprise, then to doubt, and then—surprisingly—to worry. “Are you sure about that, Warren?”

Warren hesitates. “Should I not be?”

“It’s your story. I trust Chloe with my life, but …” Max pauses. “You know Chloe. She’ll be upset she didn’t know when everyone else did, and she might not understand, but once she gets over herself, she’ll guard that secret with everything she’s got.”

Warren’s memory flashes back to the night they’d ambushed Jefferson, to the short conversation he’d had with Chloe in the car, and he shakes his head slowly. “I think she’ll understand,” he tells Max. Max’s eyes narrow momentarily, but then she shrugs and taps something out on her phone.

“We’d better finish this pizza before she gets here,” she announces, picking up her pizza slice again. “She’ll be here soon, and she’ll demolish whatever we leave out in the open.”

Warren snorts and takes a slice, but his mind is elsewhere, and, despite the fact he assured Max Chloe would understand, nerves still eat at him. Mixed with the apprehension from yesterday, it just makes him feel sick.

Thankfully, Max seems preoccupied with the idea of Chloe coming by, and she doesn’t notice a thing.

If Warren had aimed for elegance in his execution when it came to telling Chloe his story, he misses his mark by a mile.

“I got stuck in a time loop,” Warren blurts abruptly, the first words he’d said since Chloe had arrived. Chloe, laughing over a slice of pizza, cuts herself off and gives Warren one of those “Are you going insane?” looks he’s gotten so used to getting. She’d only arrived a few minutes ago, and, after greeting both Max and Warren, immediately helped herself to the remains of the pizza on the picnic table. A conversation hadn’t even really started, but, now, there’d be no chance for it to, and Warren wouldn’t have to worry about never managing to slip his confession in. He tells himself that’s pretty much what he’d been aiming for, if only so he can’t dwell on the way he couldn’t even start a conversation before diving into the deep end.

Max freezes where she sits when Warren’s words hit the air, her face completely draining of color in one go. Her eyes flick to Chloe, then back to Warren. She doesn’t say anything.

“What?” Chloe says, looking between him and Max. “Time loop? The fuck you talkin’ ‘bout, Graham?”

Warren licks his lips, readying himself to explain. “Remember how Max could control time in short bursts,” he starts, and Chloe nods to show she’s following, her lips curled to one side in a phantom smirk, “Well,” he continues, “she wasn’t the only one with weird time shit interfering with her life.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Chloe exclaims, sounding half-amused and half-annoyed, like she thinks he’s trying to pull the wool over her eyes in some sort of trick or prank. She reaches across the table and socks Warren in the arm. Warren winces, but when neither he nor Max laugh or ease up on their serious manner, Chloe stiffens, the humor visibly draining from her face to be replaced with something harder. “What? You were able to control time, too? What the hell, Warren? Why didn’t you take Max’s place when she and Prescott—”

“Chloe, not like that,” Max tells her, her hand on Chloe’s upper arm to stop her from continuing. Chloe frowns down at Max, then gives Warren a bewildered look.

Warren takes a deep breath. “I was stuck in a time loop.”

Silence falls between them for a bare moment, then Chloe’s eyes harden and bore into Warren as if they could scalp him alive. “Explain,” she demands, and there’s no room to argue.

Warren explains. When he first starts, he stumbles over himself, cutting off and backtracking, because the beginning was the hardest for him to put into words, even though it all had started with him simply thinking it had been an elaborate nightmare.

More than once, Chloe turns her confused gaze onto Max as if asking her if she believed what was coming out of Warren’s mouth, but Max only nods at her each time she does, and, eventually, Warren gets some semblance of the start of everything out into the air. Then, he starts on everything else, and he knows he can’t keep the strain out of his voice as he ventures deeper into his tale.

Despite knowing he was free from it all, talking about it, especially at length, still wasn’t easy for Warren to do. The same went for researching what possibly could have happened to him—as much as he wanted to do it and tried to, the fact it was all done and over with made the ordeal no easier to look into than it had been when he’d been in the midst of it all happening around him.

Though Chloe’s aggression from her misunderstanding remains on her face when Warren first starts, it steadily melts away into confusion, and then to disbelief. She doesn’t interrupt Warren as he struggles through his story, and from beside her Max’s attention switches from split between Chloe and Warren to solely on Warren as he touches on things he’d only told Nathan before. Their attention on him is rapt, and when Warren cuts himself off suddenly to grind his teeth together in the frustration he still felt over specific parts of the loops, they wait patiently for him to relax enough to continue.

“A time loop,” he finally repeats once he’s reached what he felt was enough of an end, because the rest of the story they already knew. “It was all a fucking time loop. It took me four—no, five tries, but I must have gotten it all right this time, because all of it stopped.”

Chloe looks at Warren silently, her mouth turned in a frown and her forehead wrinkled in an expression Warren can’t quite decipher. Max watches her, her eyes straying to Warren once, twice, as they wait for Chloe to speak, and then she does.

“Shit,” is all she says, but the single word is full of disbelief and acceptance, and Warren knows she understands why he’d kept it all from her until now.

Her hand snakes out and grasps his for a brief moment, her eyes on his, and they share a wordless moment, Max watching on. Warren pulls back with a short nod, then pushes himself from the picnic table and clutches the front of his shirt, unsure of how to explain he wanted to go. Thankfully, he doesn’t need to say anything, because Max stands up and walks around the table to pat him on the back.

“I’ll call you later, okay?” she tells him softly.

“Yeah,” he agrees, and his thanks are in his tone. Max pats him on the shoulder once, and then he’s free, and Warren turns and walks away.

He walks the path back to Blackwell silently, his thoughts racing around in his head, ghost whales completely forgotten in the wake of remembering his journey, and he stays within himself up until he makes it to the front of the dorms, where he nearly walks face-first into Trevor just as he’s leaving.

“Ack!” Trevor grunts, turning on his heel to avoid Warren. He just barely makes it—but he trips down the first step for his trouble. “Hey, Graham-man,” Trevor says immediately, as if he didn’t just pretty much nearly get steam-rolled by Warren not paying attention to where he was walking. Warren gives him a nod, but this isn’t enough for Trevor. “What’s up? You look like someone died.”

Warren, despite himself, winces, and Trevor’s half-joking expression falls immediately to alarm. “Shit, dude, I’m sorry,” he backtracks, holding his hands out and looking like he personally killed whomever he thought had died. “I was kidding, I didn’t mean any disrespect. Are you okay?”

“What? No, Trevor.” Warren waves his hands like it could dispel what was currently happening. “No. No one died, stop. I’m fine, I didn’t mean to run you off like that, I wasn’t watching where I was going.”

Trevor’s shoulders visibly relax. “Oh, shit. No worries there. You sure you’re all right though?”

Warren tries to keep his expression neutral, because he really just wants to get back into his room and chill. “Yeah, thinking too hard about weird science stuff.”

Trevor laughs. “You are the smart kid in this school. Hey, I’m heading out, but if you need me, hit me up, yeah?”

Trevor seems to think Warren will do just that, because he doesn’t wait for Warren to respond before he’s gone, and Warren is left at the front doors of the dorms with a rejection held on his tongue. Not because he didn’t want to talk to Trevor, but because he doesn’t have Trevor’s number.

Did Trevor have Warren’s number? How would he have gotten his hands on that?

Warren shakes his head in confusion, then absconds to his room for the night.

“The fuck are you supposed to be?” Nathan asks Warren a handful of days later, frowning and eyeing up Warren like he was an unwanted piece of meat placed before him.

“I’m The Doctor.” Warren holds his arms out and looks down at himself. Was it not obvious? “Wait, let me get my screwdriver out.”

Nathan only squints at him as he digs around in his pockets and procures his sonic screwdriver replica, which lights up when he pushes the button on the side. Nathan looks between the screwdriver and Warren himself uncomprehendingly. “Doctor of what?” he finally says.

Warren wilts. “No, you’re supposed to ask, ‘Doctor who?’”

“Oh,” Nathan says, nodding his head with realization, “you’re from that one show with the hot redhead.”

“Is that really all you remember about a show I’ve played at least three times with you in the same room?”

“Yup,” Nathan says, popping the end of the word with a look of boredom as his gaze wanders and surveys the room they’re standing in. It’s mostly bare; the boxes and coolers at his and Warren’s feet are filled with what will be decorating and supplying the party that night. His gaze centers on the doorway and Warren follows it, but no one is there. It’s only the two of them, which made Warren wonder not for the first time why he was even dragged out of his dorm room so early.

Warren huffs, causing Nathan’s eyes to flick back to him. “And what are you supposed to be?” he challenges, gesturing to Nathan’s outfit with his screwdriver. “A greaser? A blond Danny Zuko? Something along those lines?”

Nathan looks down at his leather-jacket-clad arm and shrugs. “Fucked if I know. I don’t do this shit anymore, this is all Vic’s idea. She figures the fancy shit out and I handle the other aspects of the party.”

“Is this you handling it?” Warren teases, shoving his screwdriver back into his pocket and bending down to open up one of the coolers.

Nathan stops him by putting his foot on the lid of the cooler before Warren manages to get it open. “Yes,” he says shortly, looking down his chest at Warren when he gives Nathan an annoyed look over being thwarted. “We’ve got two hours to get everything stocked and in the right place. Victoria will be here to start decorating soon, and once she’s going she’s not going to let anyone stop. She’s like a rabid Rottweiler with streamers and dry ice when she’s in her zone.”

Warren wrinkles his nose and stands back up. Nathan’s moved onto a cardboard box and is in the middle of prying the flap open. “Two hours? You’ll need me, like, an hour tops. I’m quick once I know what I’m doing, and the party doesn’t even start until eight.”

“So you’ll be here for it early, big fucking deal. Stop twisting my nads.”

Warren rolls his eyes. “I don’t need to be here for it early, I’m not going to the party.”

That stops Nathan in his tracks. He turns to Warren sharply, and for a flash of a second Warren can swear he sees a look of disappointment on Nathan’s face, but the expression is clearly one of annoyance once Warren gets a good look at it, and he decides he must have willfully imagined any disappointment.

“You’re not staying for the party?” Nathan asks. Despite his expression, there’s no aggression in his tone, just inquiry.

“No, going out with Max, Chloe, and Kate.”

“Kate?” Nathan scoffs. “I didn’t realize Jesus was big on begging for candy from strangers.”

“We’re not trick-or-treating,” Warren corrects, walking to Nathan’s side and bending to open the box Nathan had abandoned. Nathan doesn’t move to help, he only watches Warren wrench it open on his own. “We’re going to that haunted walk thing they’re holding in town.”

“Oh, yeah,” Nathan says quietly. “Forgot they did that.”

Warren looks up at Nathan with a frown, curious of the unusually quiet tone, but Nathan only cocks an eyebrow at him as if asking him to challenge it, so Warren decides to let it go. He wanted to have a nice Halloween, and an argument with Nathan over anything wasn’t the way to start that.

“If you really want me to,” Warren continues, pulling rolls of streamers and lights out of the box rapidly as a flash of black leather appears in the doorway, followed by the form of Victoria in attractively-tight leather pants, “I’ll stop by when we’re done and see how everything’s going.”

Warren doesn’t miss the snort Nathan gives him in return even under the commands Victoria starts barking at them to get everything out. “Do what the hell you want, Graham. No one gives a shit where you go.”

Warren scoffs and wants to call Nathan out on his pretty-blatant lie, but he never gets a chance to, because Victoria shuffles him off to one corner with a line of paper skulls and Nathan to another with a cooler of alcohol, and, in the whirlwind of everything, Warren doesn’t catch sight of Nathan again.

“Chloe!” Max screeches, shoving Chloe’s arm out of her face. A thick, white web of silly string falls from her flowy sleeve to the ground, and Chloe cackles with laughter at the reaction she got from Max. Max—dressed as a pirate along with Chloe in an inside joke Warren doesn’t quite understand—whips her pirate hat off to whack Chloe with it, and Chloe turns to sprint out of the way, shoving past a man in a zombie outfit as she goes, with Max hot on her heels. Warren watches them leave him, and they’re quickly lost to the crowd.

“They look like they’re having fun.” Warren turns his head to find Kate, dressed in a long traditional Mexican dress, looking into the crowd with a smile. “Am I late?” she asks, turning the smile on Warren. He returns it.

“Nah, we just got here. Chloe somehow already got her hands on a can of that glow-in-the-dark string stuff they make the webs out of. Max hates it.” As if to punctuate his statement, a very clear screech of “CHLOE!” follows his words, and both he and Kate glance at one another and share a laugh. “Love the skin paint,” Warren tells her once he’s regained control of his vocal cords, circling a finger around his own face to indicate, as if it weren’t obvious. “Dia de los Muertos?”

“La Catrina,” Kate confirms, pulling a fan from the pocket of her traditional dress and opening it with a snap of her wrist. She hides her face behind it, then gives him a wink. “I thought it would be nice to honor an important Mexican figure. I couldn’t get the hat she’s usually depicted wearing, but I tried to at least get the makeup and flowers down.”

Warren takes a moment to look at her. She does indeed have large fake flowers woven in a crown around her blonde head, and her hair is free from its usual bun in a half-up, half-down hairstyle Warren couldn’t name if he tried. It’s a shockingly good look on her, and the elaborate white, black, and red face paint that she wears only accentuates the fact she’s more attractive than Warren had ever bothered to notice.

“It looks great,” Warren tells her, trying to ignore the way his tongue is suddenly sticking to the roof of his mouth. “Did you know Catrina can even be traced back to the Aztecs? They had their own version of her, and she also shows up in other cultures around the world.”

Kate tilts her head in consideration, still smiling at him. The smile pulls something in Warren, and he suddenly realizes that this is the first time he’s really ever seen Kate smile. That this is the first time he’s ever really seen her so happy. “I didn’t know that. That’s pretty cool, Warren,” she tells him, and he blinks back to the present, pushing the past away again. “You’re the Eleventh Doctor, right?”

Warren looks at her in surprise. “You watch Doctor Who?”

“A little. I haven’t seen all of it, but I know one doctor from another.”

Warren’s heart does the fluttery little dance it always does when he realizes he’s being given the opportunity to rant about something he loves, but he’s thwarted from his attempt at discussing the show with her by the reemergence of Max and Chloe. Chloe slaps Warren on the back, cackling, and Warren stumbles over his feet from the force of it. Max looks less than pleased at the strings of goop hanging from her costume, but there’s a small smile playing on her lips, so Warren knows she’s not really upset.

“Everyone ready for some bogus Halloween shenans?” Chloe questions them cheerfully, grinning wide enough to show a majority of her teeth. Kate claps her hands excitedly.

“Yes! What do you have planned, Captain?”

“Captain,” Chloe repeats, impressed, then elbows Warren with one arm and Max with the other. “I like her thought process. Captain! Nice ring to it.”

“Chloe,” Max groans, rolling her eyes.

“Okay, okay! Let’s round the gardens and nab some of the free refreshments, and then hit up the haunted house.”

Max tilts her head. “They have a haunted house here?”

“Hell yeah, they do!” Chloe sings.

“It’s usually the most popular event, they go all out,” Kate adds on. “Usually the makeup is so good it looks real.”

“It’s all that Prescott money,” Chloe mock-whispers from behind the back of her hand.

“At least it’s being used for something cool.”

“God forbid it be used to shape the town up!” Chloe presses a hand to her heart mockingly, her eyes turning in their sockets. Kate giggles from behind her hand, once again glowing with excitement and happiness Warren has never once seen her exhibit, and then Chloe is hooking an arm around both her and Max’s waists and directing them into the crowd, leaving Warren to trail along behind them.

The house is dark, creepy, and vaguely dangerous-looking, but Warren figures that’s the point of the whole aesthetic thing that came with the holiday. This is the first year he hasn’t spent the entirety of the Halloween night deep in a Halloween-special D&D campaign, usually penned and DM’d by himself, and one look at the house teeming with people both his age and older in costumes that look a little too professionally put-together to be simple drugstore purchases makes him think that maybe this was the wrong year to go and break that tradition.

He hasn’t spoken to most of his D&D friends since getting accepted into Blackwell, and he blames that mostly on himself, though the general distance that getting accepted into a senior-only school at the age of sixteen creates was also at fault for the lack of communication between them. Warren had anticipated the time it would consume to attend Blackwell, but he hadn’t anticipated the distance it would put between him and his former friends, despite how close they’d been when he’d been attending regular school. That had been a blow that he’d tried not to think about during the time he’d been at the academy (and at home, because they didn’t visit—they always were too busy, and he knows that there’s more to the excuse than just the word itself, but he doesn’t question it, because he’s been too busy for them and it wasn’t fair to do so when they didn’t to him), and then managed to completely forget in the wake of the loops when they were everything he knew. He occasionally thought about it now, but it wasn’t anything close to how much he’d thought about it before, when he’d been so lonely and wanting for a friend.

Warren might have had a massive crush on Max back when he’d first started school with her, but there had been more to his want to hang out with her than just the crush. He’d been lonely, and she’d been relatively accepting of him in a way that was different from the almost-encroaching attention Brooke gave him, and it gave Max a pull Warren couldn’t ignore.

Also, she was—is—really cute. That hadn’t hurt anything.

But he’d been lonely, and his friends had fallen to the wayside where they could no longer be reached. Now, he had friends in the form of Max, Chloe, Brooke (whom had surprisingly let up recently, though he didn’t know why, because it’s not as if he had ignored her each time she came to him with want for discussion), Kate, and, of course, Nathan, and he wouldn’t trade them for his old crew in any moment. Not even this one, even though they house they were about to enter looked a lot less like something he wanted to experience when he could be weaving a good, epic game of Halloween D&D.

Not that he was about to wimp out on Max, Chloe, and Kate, who were gathered around him and chattering excitedly about the house as they grew closer to it in the slow line. He could do this, it was only a house of lights, props, and actors. Not all that different from the movies he loved watching, actually.

The ghoul at the front takes their pre-paid tickets, and into the dry-ice-filled doorway they go.

This isn’t so bad, Warren thinks to himself when another bloody bride screams at him for leaving her at the altar. She writhes against a wall, her bouquet clasped firmly a hand that’s missing a few fingers, and Warren’s so busy watching her that he nearly runs into the guy in overalls that revs a blade-less chainsaw into the air above his head. Kate yelps from his side, latching onto his arm, and Warren momentarily wonders where the hell Chloe and Max have gotten diverted to when he and Kate are scare-ushered into the next room of the house by bloody-chainsaw-man.

“Oh no,” Warren hears Kate whisper, her grip tightening, as the room fills with a wave of dry ice and a myriad of neon lights filter through a sudden strobe that starts up. The light of the room is just bright enough that Warren can navigate around, but the smoke, flashing, and colors distort the way and cause him to need to stop ever few steps to right himself again.

The howling and cackling that the actors are doing doesn’t help anything, either.

“Where’s the exit?” Kate calls to Warren, still holding onto him.

“No fucking clue,” he answers, craning his neck to look around and becoming temporarily distorted when the strobe starts up faster. “Shit. Can’t a guy have a little seeing room?”

An actor screeches a laugh in response to his request, and Warren only sighs in annoyance. This was the point of the house, but they could make it a little easier to traverse, dammit.

“Oh!” Kate says suddenly. “I think I see the way out!”

“What?” Warren asks, looking over her head to see where she’s facing, but he doesn’t see anything. “Where?”

“There!” Kate pulls on Warren’s arm, guiding him, but a sudden dizziness hits just as he starts taking a step in the direction she’s trying to lead him. “Warren?” Kate asks in concern, just as blackness starts to ring his vision.

“Fuck,” Warren hisses. The strobe pulses against his eyes, keeping him from regaining coherence. “I’m fine, I just need a second,” he tells Kate when he feels her grip suddenly go slack, but when he glances down at her to give her some form of reassuring expression, he nearly starts to scream.

Lights flash against her empty sockets, and cracks spider web around the pale, washed-out structure of the skull that grins back at him. It’s not Kate looking back at him, it’s her skeleton. It’s her after she’d fallen, after she’d lost all hope, before anyone had figured out that in the end she could be saved from herself and from the darkness that enveloped her.

Warren stares through the rapid flashing that illuminates the shattered bones over and over again, his scream caught in his throat with his breath, all mental processing ceased completely. He can’t blink. He can’t breathe. He doesn’t know what’s happening, but he knows he’d saved Kate this time. This wasn’t her he was looking at—that version of her was no more. This is not Kate.

Not Kate.

Not.

Kate’s broken skull shakes from side to side, as if it’s telling him no, and then, with another flash, it’s Kate again. His Kate; alive Kate, looking at him with such concern that Warren nearly falls to his knees in a combination of relief and breathlessness. He gulps down a breath he couldn’t take before, and tries his best to tell her it was the dry ice fucking him up. His voice cracks, tongue fumbling, and Kate’s eyes widen from beneath the white and black and red paint that surrounds them. The lie must get across to her, because the next thing he knows, she’s tugging on his arm again and pulling him into the next room. Luckily for him, it’s the one adjoined to the exit, and she pulls him out just as one of the actors stops howling long enough to ask if everything’s all right.

“Warren?” she calls to him while he blinks rapidly, eyes on his feet and brain a fuzzy scream of static. What the hell was that? It couldn’t have been a premonition, it couldn’t have been. Kate—right here, holding his arm and trying her best to check on his current well-being without forcing him Kate—was not who she had been when she’d been ready to throw herself to her death. Right? The Kate back then rarely smiled, rarely seemed excited about anything. This Kate had found something in her life, friends or help, or maybe both. She was better. Right?

Right?

Warren’s eyes stray to Kate’s worried face. Her eyebrows shoot up with relief, face leaning closer, and Warren shakes himself.

“Sorry,” he coughs out. “Too much dry ice.”

“You looked like you were having a panic attack,” Kate says. Her hands haven’t released Warren’s arm yet, and he doesn’t try to shake her off. He doesn’t really want to. “Has that happened before?”

“No.” Yes. “That was new.” That happened to him when he saw the whales on the beach. “I don’t know why it happened, but I’m okay.” You caused it. You caused it, Kate. You caused it when you killed yourself over and over and he had no idea he could save you.

Warren was not okay.

“Maybe we should get you back to your room.”

“Get who back to their room?” Max asks, emerging from the house with Chloe by her side. Chloe’s shaking slightly, but she has the remains of a grin on her face. “What’s going on?”

“Warren had some sort of attack,” Kate tells them before Warren can signal to her not to say anything. Both Max’s and Chloe’s expressions sober, and then all eyes are on Warren. Warren blanches.

“No, no. Dry ice, lights, I got dizzy and shit. Probably getting sick.”

Chloe’s face screams “bullshit detected”, but thankfully she doesn’t call him out on it. Warren knows there’s no way she could know about the vision of the whales, but he wonders if she’s made her own conclusions about things since he’d told her about his loops. He doubts it, but Chloe’s always been the more suspicious of the three of them—Nathan not included.

“We’ll walk you back,” Max offers, though it sounds like an order, and Warren holds up his hands and procures his best guilty face.

“No, come on, I can get to my room on my own easily. I want you guys to stay here and do more shit, it’s only …” Warren pauses with his phone in his hand, Nathan’s number on the screen and the timer beneath it telling him he’d been calling Nathan for the past forty-six seconds. “Shit,” Warren hisses, ending the call and hoping voicemail hadn’t picked anything up. “I’ll head back, it’s just a headache. You guys stay, I don’t want to be reason Halloween is a bust.”

Max worries her lip, and none of them make any move to protest. “All right,” Chloe finally amends, though she sounds like she doesn’t want to. “If that’s what you want, but you have to keep in contact with us for the rest of the night so we know you didn’t die.”

Warren huffs and rolls his eyes. “I’m not going to die, I’m just going to go back to my room and rest.”

Chloe snorts, her smile reemerging, and Warren agrees to keep them updated for as long as he’s awake. They accept this, and Warren leaves them to the rest of their Halloween activities in favor of retreating to his room.

Warren looks at his feet the entire trek back, even down the hallway to his room, thinking about the—vision?—the entire way, and he doesn’t notice he has a visitor until he very nearly runs into him.

“Oh, Nathan,” Warren says in mild surprise, blinking at the form of Nathan hunching over by the wall next to his door. Then, he frowns, the time of night registering as incompatible with Nathan’s presence. “Wait a second, what are you doing here? The party’s still going on.”

Nathan shrugs and scuffs the toe of his shoe on the carpet, hands shoved into the pockets of his jacket. “Making sure Price kept you in one piece. Heard you saying something about coming back here in your butt-dial.”

Oops. So Nathan had picked up when Warren had accidentally called him. Great.

“Aw Nathan,” Warren coos instead of apologizing, smirking and moving to unlock his door. “You do care.”

Nathan scoffs, not offering a response, and follows Warren into his room. He secures a spot on the bed before Warren’s really noticed, and Warren decides to start shedding some of his costume, the bulk of it feeling heavy in the warmer air of the dormitories.

“You planning on staying?” Warren asks Nathan when Nathan seems settled and comfortable where he’s chosen to sit.

Nathan’s face twitches, like the question annoys him. It probably does. “Guess so. You’re not coming to the party, and I don’t feel like shitting around VIP area with Vic and Hayden busy schooling Trevor’s ass.”

Warren cocks an eyebrow. “Shitting around?”

“Shut the hell up,” Nathan tells him, then throws a pillow at him when he starts snickering.

“Don’t give Trevor a hard time,” Warren says once he’s been pelted. “He’s been relatively nice to me lately, and I don’t want to see him getting frozen to death by that glare Victoria has.”

“Tell her that, I’m not her keeper.”

Warren wrinkles his nose. “And risk getting hit myself? Hell no. Trevor can handle himself, never mind.”

“That’s what I thought, pussy. What are you doing back, was the hay ride too scary for wittle Warren’s heart?”

Warren glares at Nathan, but doesn’t offer him an answer, and, somehow, Nathan manages to realize that means something had happened, and Warren was back in his dorm because of it. “Well? Spill it, Graham.”

Warren presses his lips together, debating on actually telling Nathan of the episode (he didn’t want to call them visions—they weren’t real; Kate was alive, and she was going to stay that way this time) instead of some bullshit excuse, but, before he can stop himself, he blurts out, “I tripped out over the strobe lights tonight.”

Nathan only blinks at him. “What?”

“I freaked out in one of rooms in the haunted house we went to. There was dry ice and strobe lights and laser lights and … I guess it all, I don’t know, triggered something. I started to see shit that wasn’t there.”

A wrinkle appears between Nathan’s eyebrows and he squints. “Shit that wasn’t there? What kind of shit?”

“Like.” Warren hesitates, struggling to find the words he needed to explain in a way that Nathan would be able to understand. “Like, Kate was dressed as La Catrina tonight—”

“La who the fuck?”

“She’s—ugh, you know. The skeleton lady, death, she’s an icon of the Mexican holiday, Dia de los Muertos. A lot of people dress as her for Halloween, too, but she’s a massive part of the Mexican tradition.”

Nathan pauses for a second, thinking, then snaps his fingers. “The skull makeup? With the crazy colors and lacy designs and shit?”

“Yeah—well, no, that’s probably a sugar skull design they’re trying to mimic, but same basic concept. Same holiday. Yes.”

Nathan nods, satisfied with the confirmation, then waves his hand impatiently for Warren to continue.

“Right, well, she was dressed as La Catrina, so, like, you know, skull makeup. You could tell it was her and everything, and it wasn’t like it looked exactly like a real skull or whatever, but, the lights. They, like.” Warren scrubs a hand over his mouth, annoyed with his struggle over his words. “They can distort vision, you know, that’s what they’re usually used for, but instead of seeing Kate’s makeup distorted on her face, or with her face or whatever, I saw … just, a skull. A real skull. With her hair and everything, but bones instead of skin and flesh beneath it.” Warren closes his eyes. “They were broken.”

Nathan doesn’t say anything. Warren keeps his eyes closed through the silence, the image of Kate’s fractured skull pasted in the darkness of his eyelids, and he waits.

“She fell from the top of the dorms,” Nathan finally says quietly.

“Jumped,” Warren corrects, his tone clipped. She hadn’t fallen—that implied there had been some sort of accident. Kate had wanted to kill herself. Kate had jumped.

“Jumped,” Nathan parrots, softly, unexpectedly, and Warren opens his eyes again. Nathan’s looking at him from where he’s slouched over in Warren’s bed, elbows on his knees and hands loosely weaved together at the fingers, seemingly uncomfortable with what was happening between them, but somehow still obviously sympathetic. Warren didn’t understand it. “Did you ever see it? Her?”

Warren nods. “Every time it happened, yeah. Except the one where she was saved, obviously. And this time.”

Nathan winces—winces—and Warren suddenly, desperately wants to know what’s happening inside Nathan’s mind right in that moment.

“That’s fucked up,” he says, head turned to the side, and, Warren realizes with a start, he sounds guilty. Pained and guilty.

“Nathan,” Warren starts, but stops when Nathan’s eyes flick back to Warren’s, and the expression on his face is one of a challenge. Warren drops the want to reassure him, but then it surges back, and he counts his blessings before he allows himself to only say, “You saved her this time, and that’s the part that really matters.”

Nathan doesn’t respond, but his hard blue eyes bore into Warren. Then, he grunts, shakes his head, and falls back against the bed, his leg starting up a bounce Warren hadn’t realized was missing from the picture. Warren sighs, shedding the last of his costume so he was left in his undershirt and slacks, and then goes to fumble with his drawers.

“What are you looking for?” Nathan asks from behind him.

“Movie collection.” Warren turns, the located flash drive in his grip. “Wanna join?”

“That question is going to get really fucking old one of these days,” Nathan hisses, which means yes. Warren sets up a playlist of old spooks on his laptop and then goes to the bed, nudging Nathan over until there was room, and settling in. They watch quietly as Dracula stalks across the screen, and then Warren hears Nathan mutter quietly, “It was just in your head, you know.”

Warren glances at him out of the corner of his eye, unwilling to miss the movie despite having seen it a number of times before. “I know. It just shook me up some.”

“It can’t hurt you,” Nathan continues, his tone strangely firm. “It’s all in your head.”

Warren frowns, then fully looks at Nathan. Nathan’s looking back at him, his face a mask of steel beneath the furrowed brow he wore. “You don’t think it’s a sign everything’s going to happen again?”

“No,” Nathan says, without question or hesitation. “I think it’s all in your head. I think it’s all that vicious bullcrap catching up with you now that you know you’re really done.”

Warren feels his mouth twitch as he tries to reign in the crushed expression he knows his face wants to display. “You think I’m going insane?”

Nathan waits a beat, then shrugs. “I think you might just be as crazy as I am.”

And, despite the way the words might have sounded, Warren knew Nathan had meant it as a reassurance. And that, Warren realizes as he turns back to the movie again, was what he had really wanted to hear.

#life is strange #warren graham #nathan prescott #warren is strange #grahamscott #drabble

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crackmyheart · 7 years

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Badlands: Chapter 3: New Americana (Kellic)

a/n: hey i’m a piece of shit when it comes to updating but if you’ve been following me for a while then you already know that. i want to finish this story as well as cataclysm and i miss writing a lot. i hate writing big long author’s note so yeah i’m not dead and i put my heart and soul into this chapter like i do with everything else so i hope you enjoy, the situation shown in this chapter was inspired by halsey’s “new americana” music video

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MasterPost

By the time May rolls around, Kellin and Vic have rebuilt their relationship back to the “friendship” level, though neither of them dare to take it any farther. The memories of their long-ago fling are still there, of course, but they’ve started to fade in the wake of something new and different. They’ve started going on late-night outings together again like they used to, but there’s less of the thrill that they felt when they were younger. Both of them have hardened since those days, and now they walk the streets like seasoned veterans, wishing they were still blissfully unaware of just how much worse things could get.

Tonight, as they’re roaming side by side throughout the city, they pass by a familiar corner, one that everyone was talking about only days ago. It’s right at the edge of a particularly busy and cop-infested street, where a small group of people protested—and were, inevitably, shot down. Literally.

“This is where that protest was the other day,” Kellin says, “isn’t it?” It’s not even a question—they already know for a fact that this is exactly where those protesters stood.

“Yeah,” Vic replies, gritting his teeth, his face darkening. “It is.”

Though it’s far from the first protest in Badlands history, there’s been an increase in these sorts of events in the past few weeks—and, as a result, the amount of police brutality has also increased. It’s been a flurry of tear gas, shootings, and violent seizures of protesters who haven’t been seen since their arrests, and while Vic has mentioned it once or twice, Kellin hasn’t heard him properly speak on it. They can probably guess how he feels, though, if his disdain for the police remains intact.

Vic picks up his pace, turning suddenly and jaywalking across the street, headed in the opposite direction of the busier areas. Kellin follows him curiously, calling, “Vic, what...?”

Vic hops into a nearby alleyway, then sits down on the ground with his back against the wall. He gestures for Kellin to sit down next to him, and with questions on their lips, they do. “What’s wrong?” they ask softly.

Now that they’re alone and close together, Kellin can decipher Vic’s emotions more easily. He’s truly angry, and he’s not holding anything back.

“It just...it makes me so....” He shakes his head, scowling, eyebrows furrowing. “I can’t even begin to describe how upset it makes me. How angry. That to protest is to commit suicide, because no protester is ever seen alive afterward. I hate how the police have control over all of us, how the few in power have everything while the rest of us fight each other for scraps. Those protesters didn’t deserve to be treated the way they were. People like you and I don’t deserve to be beaten for having opinions, for daring to speak out against our situation. They just want us to sit down and shut up, to deal with our suffering alone and without complaint, and if we don’t, they’ll make us.” He glances back up at Kellin, his lip trembling, a gleam in his eyes the likes of which Kellin hasn’t seen in years.

“You’re right,” Kellin says, their voice cracking. He’s said everything that they’ve been thinking but that they were always too afraid to say.

“I try to hide it,” Vic continues, his voice staying about the same in volume but growing in intensity. “I try to just live my life. I get high to forget how angry I am. But you know I’ve never been one to ignore injustice, to turn a blind eye to cruelty, and I hope to God that I never will be. I can’t just deal with it, Kellin. I can’t. I won’t. Maybe that’s my fatal flaw, but I don’t fucking care. I’d rather die at the hands of some ruthless, power-hungry cop who shoots first and asks questions later than have to live the rest of my life like this.”

Kellin nods slowly, something exciting and terrifying starting to flow through their veins. “Me too,” Kellin says, hoping those few words convey to Vic just how much he’s moved them with just one rant. “Me fucking too.” Their heart has started pounding with fear and rage, breaking through the numbness that’s enveloped them since Justin’s death. All of a sudden, they feel rebellious and alive for the first time in a long time, and it feels so fucking good.

“Hey,” Vic says suddenly, seeming to partially shake off his anger. “So, I know this seems kinda random, but I’ve been meaning to introduce you to some of my friends, show you a little hangout of ours. Or, well, it’s mostly theirs, but I come around sometimes. It’s a good place to be if you wanna sorta let loose, and it’s not too far from here.”

“Okay,” Kellin says almost immediately, hopping to their feet. Right now, they’d let Vic take them anywhere. They’d follow him to the ends of the earth if it would mean that they’d get to feel this way. “Let’s go.”

Vic leads the way, into an area of Badlands with smaller, more run-down houses, as opposed to the skyscrapers with big neon signs and apartment complexes with hundreds of windows. He walks like he’s on a mission, not slowing down until he reaches the back entrance of a long, one-story building. Kellin can tell immediately, though, that while it may have been abandoned originally, it is nowhere near uninhabited. They can faintly hear the pounding bass of music playing from inside, and through the small window in the door, they can see flashes of light and moving silhouettes. Vic doesn’t bother knocking; it’s too loud in there to be heard, and besides, it’s not like the door is locked. The warehouse itself is in a kind of obscure place, an area Kellin doesn’t visit too often, so it’s not likely to be a particular hot spot for bored cops looking for people to arrest (though they could probably find some).

As soon as Vic opens the door, he and Kellin are greeted with blasting music, heat, and an odd smell that seems to be a mixture of sweat, smoke, and other substances. As Vic heads inside, Kellin closing the door behind them, they’re approached by a tall, skinny guy with a fair amount of tattoos, including an owl on his neck. “Hey, Vic!”

“Tony,” Vic replies with a grin. “Long time no see.”

Tony glances over at Kellin, raising an eyebrow suggestively. “Is this who you’ve been abandoning us for?” he says teasingly. “Have you officially become that person who leaves all their friends for the person they’re dating?”

“Hey!” Vic says indignantly, but he’s still smiling. “Don’t act like you and Mike didn’t leave us all to go fuck in the bathroom when you two first got together. Besides, I didn’t know when the right time was to introduce you. Also,” he adds, “we’re not dating.”

Part of Kellin had been hoping he wouldn’t comment on that.

“Hi,” they say. “I’m Kellin. Need any drugs? I’ve got loads. Vic can vouch for me.”

Tony laughs, briefly surveying the room that they’re in, which has no shortage of stoned or intoxicated people in it. “I think we’re good for now,” he says (an understatement). “But I’ll be sure to hit you up next time.”

Kellin takes a moment to fully take everything in. They’re in the back room (which makes sense, considering they entered through the back door), and the door is wide open to reveal a long hallway with people scattered around, some sitting down against the wall, others roaming from room to room. The music is coming from an old but still clearly functional stereo in one corner of the room, and a makeshift tinfoil disco ball hangs from the ceiling, creating occasional shards of white when the light hits it just right. It seems like it should have the vibe of a large party, but it feels more personal somehow. Everyone clearly knows each other, and the few people dancing around in the middle of the room are more messing around than anything Kellin would expect on the dance floor of a nightclub.

“This is our little home away from home,” Vic says. “As for the people who come here, it’s mostly a conglomeration of smaller friend groups that have just sort of converged into one big friend group.” He makes his way toward the hallway, beckoning for Kellin to come with him. “I can show you around.”

Kellin nods, still in too much awe to say much of anything. It feels as though everyone in this building is connected. In here, they don’t really feel like loners on the very fringes of society. They don’t feel like outsiders at all.

Vic nods to a few people hanging out in the hallway, passing a joint around. He explains to Kellin that usually the only reason doors are closed is if some people are using the room for sex. Some couples are still publicly making out, though, and according to Vic, sometimes there are casual lap dances or strip teases going on. But it’s not just intimacy, either; there are also people practicing their fighting skills with each other, as well as various games taking place, ranging from spin the bottle to card games to billiards (Jaime, another one of Vic’s friends, has a rich uncle who apparently gave him a pool table for his birthday).

The rest of the inside of the building is decorated similarly to the back room, filled with stolen things as well as handmade decorations like the disco ball. “Most of the stolen items are my handiwork,” Vic says with a proud half-smile.

Kellin rolls their eyes, laughing a little. “Oh, quit bragging, cat burglar.”

For as long as they’ve known him, Vic’s most prominent talent has been his ability to steal. It’s true that he sells most of the things he finds, but he also keeps his favorite items, either for his own home or, evidently, this place. Not only does he steal large, conspicuous items (such as the neon Miller Lite sign) with ease; he also has the stealth and agility of a cat burglar, often climbing through windows and across roofs to take things from apartments on the third story or higher. Kellin’s seen him in action before, and it’s pretty damn impressive.

“Aw, come on,” Vic says playfully as the two sit down on a mattress in one corner of the room with the Miller Lite sign in it. “You’ve gotta admit, it’s kinda awesome.”

Kellin nods, only milliseconds away from replying when all of a sudden, in the distance, they hear someone busting a door open, followed by screaming.

Kellin and Vic both stand up immediately, and everyone else around them stops whatever they were doing in confusion and alarm. The music in the back room shuts off abruptly, and then Kellin can hear very clearly the loud, harsh voices of men shouting: “Line ‘em all up!”

The cops.

Already people have started for the front entrance, but the police must have come in that way, too; they’re blocking every escape route, and hardly any of the rooms have windows in order to keep the inside hidden. Before anyone can even think of a plan, they’re all ushered into one of the windowless rooms, harshly shoved or prodded with guns. Most of them protest, Kellin and Vic included, but it’s no use—within half a minute, every single person in the building has been rounded up and shoved into the room, guarded by a multitude of hostile police officers.

“Which one of you was it?” one of them demands, pacing back and forth and glaring menacingly. “We got an anonymous tip from someone who overheard a couple of you freaks slandering us earlier tonight. Contacted us while following you from deeper in the city, and we found you at this place.” He zeroes in on Kellin, Vic, and a few other people that look kind of like them, namely Tony and Vic’s brother, Mike. “We’ve got an idea of what you look like, so don’t bother trying to hide.”

Kellin’s heart drops down into their stomach. Realistically, anyone hanging out in this building could’ve been talking shit on the police, but they’re pretty sure they know the exact conversation that this guy is referencing.

Fuck. They grit their teeth, taking a deep breath in an attempt at staying calm. We should’ve been more careful. We shouldn’t have said anything at all.

“You have no right to just round us up like this,” an indignant voice protests. Kellin, whose gaze has mostly been trained on the floor, looks up, only somewhat surprised when they realize that the speaker is none other than the person standing right next to them.

“Who do you think you are?” Vic says defiantly. Everyone’s eyes are on him now, but he doesn’t seem to care. “Even if one of us was ‘slandering’ you guys, you know what? You should be getting shit for the way you all treated those protesters, and for the way you’re treating us right now. Where did our right to free speech go, huh?”

“You never had it,” another officer snaps. “For as long as you are within the confines of this city—which will be forever—you have never had, nor will you ever have, the right to speak freely if you are going to encourage rebellion.”

“So what are you gonna do about it?” Vic snaps back, becoming more and more enraged by the second. “What if you can’t figure out which one of us said that shit? What if we all deny it? Are you gonna arrest all of us? Or are you just gonna pick one of us and say, ‘Yeah, let’s just say it was that one?’ In fact, why didn’t you bring your witness with you to pick us out—”

With that, the first officer to speak steps forward and grabs Vic by the collar of his shirt. “The person in question wished to remain anonymous.” He grins, showcasing a mouthful of too-perfect teeth. “Besides, with the way you’re talking, I think we’ve already found our culprit.”

“Wait!”

Kellin doesn’t even realize that the word is out of their mouth until the officer turns to look at them and narrows his eyes.

“Don’t hurt him. He’s innocent,” they lie, their heart pounding with fear as they try to keep their voice steady. “He’s just making a spectacle of himself so he can protect me.”

“Kellin—” Vic starts, eyes widening in shock.

“It was me,” they continue, shooting a glance at Vic that they hope says, Let me handle this. “And I’m not sorry.” Their voice grows stronger, making their claim sound more convincing.

“I think it’s true,” one of the other officers pipes up, gesturing to Kellin. “This kid looks familiar.”

Kellin looks the first officer straight in the eye, attempting to match the defiance that Vic demonstrates so effortlessly. “It was me alone. Arrest me, imprison me, I don’t care.”

The second officer to speak cracks a wicked smirk. “Who said anything about prison?”

Before anyone can react, Kellin feels rough hands grab them from behind, yanking them backward out of the lineup. They yelp as both their arms are twisted behind their back and they’re pulled out of the room, which soon erupts with protests. Vic’s voice is the loudest of them all, shouting nothing but Kellin’s name, as if he doesn’t know what else to say.

Kellin struggles in the officers’ iron grip, but it’s no use; before they know it, they’ve been escorted down the hall and shoved out the front door. Two cops hold onto them, one grabbing each arm and leading them down to the sidewalk, where one of the men harshly pushes them down onto the rough concrete, causing them to scrape their knees. Kellin curses themself for deciding to wear shorts in the warmer weather, but within a few seconds, they realize that scraped knees will soon be the least of their problems.

They’re no longer bound, but they barely have the time to even think about climbing to their feet before one of the cops smacks them hard in the back of the head with the barrel of his gun. Kellin lowers their head, instinctively covering it with their hands, but it doesn’t stop any of the cops from hitting them again, this time on the shoulder with a baton.

Kellin glances up briefly and notices that a crowd is gathering around, even though it’s late at night. From what they can see, it looks like most of them are members of the proletariat, all living a similar situation to Kellin’s. They’re not cheering or booing—they’re just standing there, watching with grave expressions on their faces. On the one hand, Kellin wishes that at least one of them would try to help, but on the other hand, they can understand why no one would want to, why no one would dare.

“This,” one of the cops says to the crowd as the baton slaps Kellin’s hands, “is what happens when you conspire against us.”

“I wasn’t—” Kellin’s sentence is cut off by another particularly hard smack to the back of the neck.

“This is what happens when you disobey!” the cop continues, raising his voice while Kellin sinks down further and further, feeling weak and helpless, knowing that even if they try to escape, they’ll just be caught and punished even more.

The hits of the baton stop for a short moment, but only so that another one of the cops can tackle Kellin, shoving them onto their stomach and then forcing them to lie on their back. And then he swings his baton again.

That’s around the time that Kellin tries to check out, tries to just endure the pain. The blows are fueled with the officer’s rage at being disrespected, as well as his hatred of Kellin’s “kind.” They can tell that their face is a mess of blood and swelling, but they don’t even care—they’ve already accepted that this is probably how it’s going to end, beaten to death slowly and painfully so that their mangled body can be used as propaganda to keep the rest of Badlands in line. It’s happened to so many others before.

And then: a flash of darkness, too quick to make out, tackling the cop with a short battle cry. The person jabs the cop in both eyes, then swipes the baton from out of his hand, tiny and nimble and quick. “Get up!” they say, reaching out to Kellin as someone else, someone bigger and stronger, keeps the cop pinned to the ground.

Kellin scrambles to their feet, all dizziness and pounding pain, and the person—a girl named Lynn, they realize now from a brief introduction earlier—guides them away from the action. As they take the scene in, it becomes clear that the people inside the building have led an attack on the cops—an attack to rescue Kellin.

“Oh my God,” Kellin gasps in awe as Lynn leads them down a quieter side street, where a car is parked on the side of the road and already running—and in the driver’s seat waits Vic.

“Go somewhere safe,” Lynn says as she opens the passenger side door for Kellin, who falls into the seat with a sigh. “We’ll take care of it. Don’t worry about us.”

“You be safe, too,” Vic replies softly. “Or, well, as safe as you can be.”

“It’ll be alright,” Lynn says, her eyes gleaming with determination, with an incredible will to live. “We’ll probably have to find a new hangout spot, but as long as we’re alive, we’ll be alright.” She closes the passenger side door and then rushes back to the scene, wielding the cop’s baton like a baseball bat. In the low light of the moon, she looks like a street warrior.

“I’ve got a place for us to go,” Vic says, immediately putting the car into drive and peeling out of their spot. “I hope you’re okay.”

Kellin shrugs, staring down at their hands. “I just feel so pathetic,” they admit. “I gave up so easily. I thought I was going to die. And you all...you’re risking your lives for me.”

“It’s easier when you’re in a large group,” Vic says. “Never forget: you’re the one who risked your life to protect me. It was only right that we do the same for you. Bravery will come back to you—I know it will.”

Kellin gazes over at Vic, their heart swelling with emotion. “Thank you,” they whisper, hoping that Vic will understand the magnitude of those two words.

“We stick together,” Vic says. “All of us.”

Back in January, Kellin wouldn’t have believed such a statement. But they’ve been wrong before.

#kellic #kellic fanfiction #update

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