#i promise you as someone who researches this for a living it is all the same thing over and over
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If a "new" form of antisemitism ever surprises you, you don't know enough about antisemitism. I can promise you that every single form of antisemitism, both from the left and the right, all share at the very least several centuries (if not millenia) of history. It's all the same stereotypes repackaged to appeal to whoever the target audience is and dressed up in modern terms to reflect whatever values they're trying to sell you.
Pagan antisemitism is the same as Christian antisemitism. Christian antisemitism is the same as Muslim antisemitism. Muslim antisemitism is the same as new age antisemitism. New age antisemitism is the same as Nazi antisemitism.
It is all the same, it hasn't changed in over three thousand years. You need to educate yourself on the origins of antisemitism or you won't know something is antisemitic unless it's someone screaming "Death to the Jews." If you fail to recognize the antisemitism in front of you that is dressed up in language you agree with, you will fall for it.
#jumblr#judaism#jewish#frumblr#jewish history#jewblr#jewish stuff#jew tag#jewish things#i promise you as someone who researches this for a living it is all the same thing over and over#nothing is new#humanity did not fundamentally change after the holocaust#you are not immune to propaganda#you are not smarter than people who inacted pogroms#you are not different nothing about you makes you incapable of atrocities#thats why you need to educate yourself so you know it when you see it
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AGOT Dash simulator
⚔️ ser-bran Follow
Going climbing again today!! Trying the highest tower in Winterfell 😝
⚔️ ser-bran Follow
hopital
☀️ dornedaydreams Follow
JON ARRYN DEAD 🦀🦀🦀🦀
🍇redwhined Follow
Girl what did he do to you
☀️ dornedaydreams Follow
Old and busted
🐉 conquerors-girl Follow
That new Khaleesi in the grass sea is fourteen. She should be learning her letters from a septa!
🐉 conquerors-girl Follow
Just found out she’s pregnant…I need Drogo to get Rhaegar’ed IMMEDIATELY
⬛️ bro-in-black Follow
Mormont just gave the 5’6 fourteen year old asshole bastard who’s been here five minutes his ancestral sword. I will take us all out with wildfire
🕊️littlestbird Follow
Was snooping for the spider today and I overheard Lord Ned asking about a book of noble family lineages and physical traits after whipping his head back and forth between Robert and Queen Cersei’s kids for like five minutes straight
🕊️ littlestbird Follow
Which could mean nothing
🍋 ladyjonquil Follow
First tourney today guys!!! I’m sososo excited the knight of the flowers literally gave me a rose! If he wins I might be his queen of love and beauty omgfggnnd
🐺 nymeriiia Follow
LMAO TWINK DOWN!
👁️thosuand-eyes-and-one Follow
Lost thirty dragons betting on Ser Jamie for the twelfth time. Can someone who’s good at budgeting help me. my family is dying
🐈⬛ lordpounce Follow
🦀 KING ROBERT DEAD 🦀
⭐️ lancel-the-lancer Follow
🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀
👑 lannisportlady Follow
🦀🦀🦀🦀
🌲 house-whoare Follow
Lmao y’all are acting like Jofferys any better when there have literally been reports of him skinning cats alive
🐕 thehounddawg Follow
How do those Baratheon boots taste
🌫️ quite-quiet-isle Follow
THE PRINCE IS LITERALLY A BARATHEON
🏹 flea-top Follow
I hate this stupid city watch job so fucking much. Someone manifest an execution or something so I have some entertainment while I walk the parapets by the Sept of Baelor
🏹 flea-top Follow
By the mother this can’t be happening
🔥 Targupdates Follow
Exiled princess Daenerys Targaryen has been seen stepping out of her husbands pyre with three dragon hatchlings on her shoulders
Keep Reading
🦁Lann1girl Follow
Guys please don’t buy into this type of stuff, do your own research. These gossip accounts are a bunch of targ loyalists. Dragons died out during the dance please do not spread false information!
🧜♀️ womanderly Follow
Cersei Lannister isn’t gonna fuck you man
🔥 red-rhollor Follow
ALL WILL BOW TO STANNIS BARATHEON, TRUE KING OF THE SEVEN KINGDOMS. IT HAS BEEN WRIT FOR CENTURIES IN FIRE AND IN ICE, HE IS THE PRINCE THAT WAS PROMISED. HE WILL BANISH THE DARKNESS.
🐦⬛ wallravens Follow
????
🪷lys-living Follow
Girl what
🌊 father-rhoyne Follow
Is there lead in the dragonstone water
🌞 sunspearsss Follow
So glad to witness episodes of true psychosis on this website
🌏 westerosi-heritage-posts Follow
Heritage post
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Hey, guys! I've been receiving a ton of messages in response to my last post. It's reminding me of how I first discovered shifting. I feel like doing a little story time since Ive just passed the three-year mark of my discovery, and I've been reminiscing with friends about it.
I remember being in a very dark place when I stumbled upon shifting. I was depressed, and very suicidal. Yet, there was this unshakeable optimism inside me that I was meant for an extraordinary life. Despite my mental state, I had a lot of knowledge of subliminals and the law of attraction (-_-). These gave me hope, but they weren't enough tbh. I didn't want to attract my dream life through practicing gratitude or becoming a magnet for my desires or whatever. Nor did I want to have to listen to subliminals for years on end to achieve my goals. My list of desires was so long, and I needed everything to change that going step by step and waiting years for each one to manifest just wasn't feasible.
But I refused to give up. One day, after a particularly hard day of being sad per usual, I searched on Quora for something like "fastest most powerful subliminals on YouTube ever" (Y’all 😭😭). Among the recommended sub creators, I found a video called "Desired Life: Reality Shifting". The description promised everything I had ever wanted: waking up with all your desires fulfilled permanently in short. It piqued my curiosity so much. Could I really just wake up with my dream life, family, house, wealth, all based on my scripts and imagination?
Growing up, I was a heavy maladaptive daydreamer. From ages 10-17, I created alternate lives in my head, telling myself I would go there someday. I was always doing SATs (State Akin to Sleep), and I think that's what kept me from ending it all. I was constantly in the wish fulfilled state, even though I didn't know what that was at the time.
Back to my story, I went into the comments of that video and came across a guy who claimed that after a week of using this subliminal, he woke up with a new life as a multi-millionaire living in his dream penthouse. I messaged him, and he gave me his Instagram which showcased his luxurious life. He had what seemed like a perfect relationship, he was very attractive, had so many cars, and travelled 24/7 while having a six figures amount of followers. He was living proof that this wasn't just scripting. Also the law of attraction community is known for their mad expensive coaching.. like hundreds of dollars per hour for questions and he was answering it all for free something I didn’t see the law of attraction community. And I talked to him for hours! He never got mad, he had proof, and he was kind, proof and the behavior of someone who really had mastered the art of life.
After our conversation, I spent the next couple of months doing research. I found numerous stories about glitches in the matrix, accidental shifting, people entering parallel realities, and eventually, shifting communities on platforms like Amino and Reddit. It was stuff I already believed in and did in my imagination; I just didn’t know there was a term for it.
Then I got reminded of a memory that I had seriously repressed bc it was so fucking weird. When I was 6 and my brother was 3, we were absolutely obsessed with dodo birds. One day, we were outside playing, and on god time seemed to stop. Out of nowhere, a dodo bird appeared. I know you’re probably like “maya be so fr rn you were a kid” but no, This wasn't just our young imaginations running wild - there was a bird that was huge, dinosaur-like, exactly how dodos are described in books and pictures we had.
Then things got weirder. Suddenly it started raining eggs. Big, large eggs everywhere it was so gross and my brother and I were a mess. We were young, sure, but not stupid. We knew this wasn't normal. My brother and I rushed inside to tell our dad. When I managed to drag him outside, he was furious, accusing me of throwing eggs everywhere. To this day, he tells the story of the time I "trashed the backyard with eggs." And every time, I'm like, "Dad, where would I get that many eggs?" We didn’t have eggs but so he assumed I stole them and we went inside for hours and it was magically cleaned. So he also tells the story of how responsible I am and how I took accountability for my actions even as a child. I didn’t clean that shit bro and I tell him that too and he just laughs it makes me so mad.
My brother, who knows I'm into reality shifting (though he doesn’t really believe in it), can't explain that day either. He often shrugs it off as a "glitch in the matrix," which honestly, well no duh it is a shift dummie. He does believe in manifesting but only bc he has seen me use it and he experiences the good things I manifest as well. They’re the same thing anyways but that isn’t the point
The reason I'm bringing up this bizarre childhood memory is because during my months of research into shifting, I found countless stories of accidental shifts, people entering the void, entering parallel universes, time glitches, examples of the Mandela effect first hand, glitches in the matrix and etc. It was like uncovering a myriad of experiences that confirmed what I already believed: we can change and choose our reality. I just didn’t know the phenomena had a name. Obviously in the future I came across other things like the law of assumption, the void state, etc etc but this was where it started.
I wish I had saved all those fascinating stories, posts, and blogs. I might go back and compile everything I found because they were so real and enlightening. It will probably take forever tho if I do choose to do that, but I think it's worth sharing.
In the meantime, check out this accounts of accidental shifts that my friend shared with me this account https://instagram.com/tessicavision?igshid=OGQ5ZDc2ODk2ZA== based off the Glitch in the Matrix subreddit which is also a goldmine of people experiencing similar phenomena. It helped me make sense of my own experiences and might do the same for you.
I don’t want this to be too long and I already got to the point I think! but regardless stay curious and realize you’re really not that special. I mean ofc you are, i mean this is not some tumblr thing teens girls discovered or created and isn’t even limited to “spiritually/manifesting inclined people” I think at the beginning of my journey people talking about accidental shifts and such, inspired me more than purposeful success stories because they really have no reason to lie and they were looking for answers just like I was.
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Being Adam's Daughter (both in life and in heaven)
I've run out of ideas someone please send something to my inbox + I need to keep this blog at least semi active somehow. I spent too long researching to write this please clap
-you were the only daughter to Adam and Eve. You were born into sin via Eve. You spent your entire childhood wishing you could visit the garden of Eden and see what was so bad about it that your mother had to eat the fruit of knowledge after God specifically told her not to.
-you were also very suspicious of your brother, Cain. Though you didn't know it, he showed wrath, envy and gluttony towards your brother, Abel. You, being born a woman, were raised to never question a man, especially not one older than you, so you never got in between their fights.
-then the day came that Cain killed Abel, the brother you were closer to. You witnessed the murder but your parents did not; you did as you were raised to do and didn't speak a word of what you saw. Cain threatened your life if you told them he had killed Abel, so you kept your mouth shut.
-as you lived your life you grew closer to God, closer even than Adam. You spent your days worshiping him, thanking him for every meal you ate, preaching to your parents about how good he was. Adam would always respond with something along the lines of, "hell yeah he's good, he made me!" and Eve would just smile.
-it was late one night when you saw your mother fall victim to the worst sin of all-debauchery with Lucifer himself. You caught her and Lucifer together, doing things you could never describe as the sweet little girl you were. You didn't understand the severity of it at the time but you ran back home and told your father that his wife and your mother was, in your words, "making friends" with the fallen angel who stole Adam's first wife, though you'd yet to have been told the story about Lilith yet.
-Adam stormed out and took you with him, you pointing him in the direction of Lucifer and Eve. He told you to wait behind a bush and he confronted Eve for sleeping with Lucifer. She wouldn't admit how many times she had done so. You were innocent and didn't understand the concept of "sleeping together", you were unsure why your father was so mad. He told Eve she was no better than Lilith, who you'd never heard of before and you suddenly had a lot of questions. Adam bid Eve his final goodbye and told her that if she ever came to him again he would kill her. You were stunned to hear this but seeing how you were raised, you didn't question it. It terrified you however.
-following your father home you asked him who Lilith was. Adam briefly explained that Lilith was his first wife, who refused to submit to him, and she fell in love with Lucifer and resided in Hell. In a rare moment of kindness he knelt to your level and placed his hands on your shoulders. "[Y/N], you're my only daughter and the only woman left in my life. Promise me, you'll never fall into the follies of sin," he spoke in a wavering voice. You understood how serious this was and nodded your head in agreement. He took you back to his hut, his hand in yours.
-you spent the remainder of Adam's life comforting him over the loss of Abel and Eve. You told him about how you saw Cain kill Abel and Adam sentenced Cain to live alone somewhere else, leaving only you and him. Throughout Adam's life on earth he always told you how much he loved you and how he expected to see you in Heaven when your time came.
-as time went by you never had any children, leaving that to other women God created. After learning the harsh reality of what your mother did you never wanted to risk falling in love with the wrong person, so you kept to yourself and became a traveling healer, helping those who were sick and hurt through God's will. You did this until you were around your middle ages, and God called you to Heaven. It was time for you to be with Adam.
-you were met by Sera, the high Seraphim. She told you your time had come, and you had been good enough to come to Heaven. You had done what your mother and brother failed to do, you lived a good and justified life and worked in God's mysterious ways. She brought your soul to Heaven.
-once you arrived in Heaven you saw how much of a dick Adam had become. He was proud, he was gluttonous and he was a jerk. He was always flaunting to the women in Heaven about how he was the first human soul to arrive there, likely to get them in bed with him. You were disgusted by it.
-when Sera brought Adam to the side and introduced you, his daughter, to him he was so stoked. "[Y/N]! You made it at last! That's daddy's little girl!" He rubbed your hair with his first and hugged you. He encouraged you to tell him what earned you a place in Heaven and you were proud to tell him of your years as a traveling healer and of how close you became to God. He was smiling the entire time.
-fast forward a little while, and the ranks of Hell were growing. Adam kept the extermination a secret from you, knowing it would break your sensitive heart to hear that countless souls who could have very well been your mother or brother, were being killed. His little secret was that he killed them both in the first extermination.
-as time went by you remained oblivious to the extermination, Adam never wanting you to know. But that fateful day came, when Adam told you he had to "take care of business", and promised you he'd be back later. He left with Lute, who you considered your true mother, and that was the last time you saw him.
-when Lute arrived back in heaven you rushed to her with glee in your eyes, asking where your father was. You were so excited to know what his business had been and if he'd carried out God's will. Your smile faltered when you noticed Lute clutching Adam's halo in her hand, her other arm missing entirely. Whatever had happened, had been serious. You begged her to let you heal her the best you could but she refused.
-with shame in her eyes she told you Adam died fighting and the last word he spoke was your name. She told you in detail about how she saw the light die in his eyes, his smile slowly falling as he bled out. She admitted to you about the yearly extermination and how he had made the decision to go back twice as fast to stop the hotel, which you had only heard whispers of.
-before Lute left to confront Lilith, she hugged you with her remaining arm and promised to take care of you the way Adam would have wanted her to, and that even though she could never replace him, she would do everything in her power to make you feel loved, wanted and accepted no matter what. She finished by telling you she had an errand to run, but when she was back she would give you Adam's halo to remember him by.
-you were in tears, clutching her remaining arm by the time she had finished speaking. All you could do is nod your head, too choked on tears to give a real response. You couldn't believe your father was dead and gone for good. Sniffling, all you could say at the end was, "thank you mom". Lute kissed your forehead and promised she would be back very shortly to give you his halo.
#hazbin hotel#hazbin hotel x reader#hazbin hotel adam#hazbin hotel adam x reader#hazbin hotel adam x daughter reader#hazbin hotel adam x child reader#hazbin hotel x child reader#hazbin hotel x daughter reader
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the self-concept
hellour! this is gonna be a long post!
.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.
i was studying for my social psychology course today (for context i'm a psych major) and read something that might be helpful for everyone who's been having doubts about manifestation subconsciously being part of our everyday lives—as opposed to something made up by the internet.
the information i'm about to provide is from actual sociologists and psychologists, so this is rooted in studies. i promise i'm not about to pull info out of my ass! this is mainly just a very very brief summary of the self concept chapter we're reading about in class.
side note, i named all the researchers in case you wanna check out their work yourself! i made this post to provide insight about our self-concept and clear limiting beliefs. :)
what is self-concept?
so we hear the term self-concept a lot in the manifestation community. Neville, Edward, Sammy, Dr Joe Dispenza, bloggers on tumblr… all of them talk about it all the time. but what does it actually mean?
the self-concept refers to the total sum of beliefs that people have about themselves. it consists of cognitive molecules that social psychologist Hazel Markus called self-schemas. these are the beliefs about ourselves that guide the processing of self relevant information. but what does this actually mean?
well, self-schemas are to the self-concept what books are to a library. if someone asks about yourself, you will probably answer with something quick like: “i am a woman” or “i am a student.” those simple attributes are part of your self-schema; if we want to go deeper, body weight is also a self-schema. for people who regard weight as a crucial part of their beliefs, something simple like a gym trip with friends or buying stuff at the supermarket may trigger thoughts about the self. but if a person is aschematic (not concerned by a certain attribute) about body weight, no thoughts will pop up.
we already know that the self is a special object of our attention. whether its a thought or a song, our consciousness is like a spotlight. this means that it can shine on one object at one point in time, yet shift rapidly from one object to another and process information outside of awareness. in this spotlight, the self is at the forefront of our minds. its what's most important to us at that moment. keep this in mind for later!
to finish with the explanations, neurologist Oliver Sacks highlighted two important points about the self:
🩷 there is a private “inner” self, and an “outer” self we show to others. if we don’t self reflect to understand how were feeling, how will we understand our emotions and actions?
🩷 the self is heavily influenced by social factors.
now–what does that last point mean? well, what we think about ourselves is rooted from childhood. if we grow up hearing “you’ll never amount to anything” or “you’re my favorite child” (extreme examples i know), then that's what we’ll ingrain in our self-concept. this notion brings me to the fun stuff–the studies!
is self-concept scientifically proven?
psychologist Gordon Gallup performed a series of studies where he put animals in front of a mirror to test if they could recognize themselves. at first, they vocalized and greeted themselves in the mirror (my dog did this too when he was a pup, he would bark at his own reflection and play with it), but after several days, only great apes seemed capable of self recognition, using the mirror just like any other human would. grooming themselves, making faces… in short, they recognized themselves!
why do i bring this experiment up? well, this proves that the concept of “me” is necessary to define our self-concept. we must first recognize ourselves as Something to become Someone.
using that same study in humans, this process of self-recognition begins between 18-24 months. which means that from this point onwards we start to define Self (consciousness).
you might read this and–admittedly–think: “oh this blog post hasn’t said anything about manifestation!” true, but i want to present the basics or self-concept first to understand how it affects our daily thoughts!
there was another experiment we talked about in one of my lectures (i do not remember who performed this study specifically, but Dr Patrick Heck did one similar to this one and the results were the same), where participants were told to take a test. half of them were told to boast about themselves, and the rest were instructed to describe themselves modestly. naturally, participants who spoke highly of themselves scored higher on these tests than participants who didn’t. so… you all see where i’m going with this.
remember how i said to keep the “consciousness is a spotlight” paragraph in mind? i’ll finally touch on it with this next and last thing i’m gonna talk about (in this post at least!).
we already established that the first step in the evolution of our self-concept is the ability to recognize ourselves as Someone. the second step, however, involves social factors. sociologist Charles Horton Cooley introduced the term looking-glass self to suggest that other people serve as a mirror in which we see ourselves. and another sociologist by the name of George Herbert added that the only way to know ourselves is by imagining the opinions of our significant others and applying them to our self-concepts. sounds familiar?
how do i change my self-concept?
Neville mentioned the “mirror-self” on his conferences too. he said that one of his favorite techniques to better his Self was to imagine a loved one speaking kindly of himself. in his book Your Faith is Your Fortune, Neville wrote: “Stop trying to change the world since it is only the mirror. Man’s attempt to change the world by force is as fruitless as breaking a mirror in the hope of changing his face. Leave the mirror and change your face. Leave the world alone and change your conceptions of yourself. The reflection then will be satisfactory.”
since the self-concept is a library (our perception of Self) made out of self-schemas (books brought to us by our peers), we can see that sometimes, what we think of ourselves is just an amalgamation of beliefs implanted to us by the people in our lives. so if we were given these books we don’t like, why should we keep them in our library?
to change these negative beliefs we have about ourselves, all we have to do is replace them with positive ones. i know, i know, this is what every person who studies loa and manifestation regurgitates over and over. its nothing that hasn’t been posted to numerous blogs or twitter threads before.
however, the point about this whole post is to tell you why that is the only way to change your self-concept. if your daily thoughts are filled with phrases like: “my sp doesn’t want me” and “i’m so broke” or “what’s the point? this is all worthless anyways.” STOP. DROP. CHANGE.
journal. write your limiting beliefs in your ipad, paper, wood, stone–whatever.
use your hands to apply muscle memory. once you have them, CROSS THEM OUT!
i can’t manifest = I CAN MANIFEST EVERYTHING I WANT
i hope i shift tonight = I KNOW I SHIFT EVERY NIGHT
i wish i had money = I HAVE ALL THE MONEY I WANT AND MORE
just those small changes are enough to rewire your entire self-concept. also, exposure. the more exposure you have to something, the more insecure it will make you. if you’re having a hard time manifesting, remove all blogs, twitter accounts, and people that limit your beliefs. less exposure to negativity = less negativity reflected in your self-concept.
problems with the Self will always be there. if you remove a negative belief, another will pop up. all you can do is learn more about your “inner” self and recognize how you’re feeling. what you can do is focus on the positives, and automatically, your self-concept will change.
persist in the assumption until it becomes your reality!
.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.
thank you all for making it this far! just in case, the book i got this information from is Social Psychology 11th Edition authored by Kassin, Fein and, H.R. Markus. there’s a lot of interesting information on this academic book that is similar to the ones Dr Joe Dispenza has written, so i could make another post like this in the future! take care!
#loa tumblr#law of assumption#loassumption#self concept#informative#social psychology#neville goddard#reality shifting#psychology#shiftblr#reya singh#shifting#edward art#quantum jumping#void state#research
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would you ever write something filthy for winter soldier? no pressure btw!
Experiments
Pairing || Winter Soldier x Female!Reader
Summary || HYDRA conducts sexual experiments on specimen The Winter Soldier.
Word Count || 2901
Contents & Warnings || Smut, Angst, Dark Themes — NSFW, 18+ Only, Minors DNI, non-con, explicit content/language, sub!soldat, implied torture/murder/blood, restraints, unprotected vaginal sex, size kink, oral (male receiving), handjob, multiple orgasms, forced orgasm, overstimulation, exhibition, creampie, bodily fluids.
Authors Note || The answer is yes sweet nonnie :D And I really love how this turned out. This is my first time writing for WS so please be kind :) Remember, read the warnings! I’m not responsible for your content consumption. Don’t like it, don’t read. And definitely don’t slap a label on just to be petty. There are no [ ] in the text below btw. Also apologies for no readmore cut. It’s currently bugged out and fucks up the text below.
Disclaimer || English is not my first language so I apologise for any mistakes or misunderstandings!
Masterlist
You had no idea how long you had been in this stuffy and dim-lit room. Minutes? Hours? Days? It felt like an eternity but also like no time had passed at all. It was easy to lose track of it when you had no inclination whether it was day or night out. The room and its surroundings were bleak and dull, giving nothing away about your location.
How did you end up in this situation? Naked with strangers watching—discussing, researching, contemplating. And with a stranger's cock in your grasp? Making him come again, again, and again—an endless cycle of climax.
It all seemed like a blur now. A past from another time. A dream? A nightmare?
They promised good pay. Money that was beyond imaginable, but you had to take this with you to the grave. This experiment that you yourself had signed up for could never reach the light of day.
Tell anyone, and they will torture and mutilate you beyond recognition. Killing and dumping your body in a ditch.
Although the men were vicious beyond anything, they told you countless times that under any circumstances, you could leave. You were not here out of force. They would keep you safe. You had signed up for this, and whenever you wanted to terminate the deal you had sealed, you were allowed. But you could never, ever tell another living soul about what you had seen or experienced.
It felt like a week, but in reality, it had only been a day or so since these men had come and picked you up from your home—blindfolding and plugging your ears. Due to their safety and yours, you could not know where you were being taken.
After hours of traveling by car, train, and plane—taking all transportation possible—you had arrived. To where you did not know. A military bunker of some sort, possibly. Somewhere cold and emotionless. An unknown country.
Your blindfold and plugs were removed, and you sat in a dark room. A hanging bulb from the ceiling cascaded a weak source of light throughout the space. The chair and table were metal and cold.
Opposite you sat a man dressed in uniform. Narrowing your eyes and inspecting him further, you saw it was the same man you had come in contact with when you had signed up for this mysterious experiment.
“Papers for you to sign,” he uttered in a thick Russian accent. His face and tone were stoic.
He explained the contract in detail. And there was a particular phrase that stood out to you. That made no sense. The Asset. It was mentioned numerous times.
You knew what you had come here for. A sexual experiment of some sort. But nowhere in the contract did it say who you were conducting it with. There was no name. No details about any appearance or anything. Only that you would perform with someone or something named The Asset.
“He has no name.” The man spoke. “He is not a person. Do not try to humanize him. He is a tool. A weapon. Nothing more. But if you have to call him something, you may refer to him as Soldat. And do not worry. He cannot hurt you.”
“Why am I doing this? W-what’s the purpose?” You muttered while avoiding his emotionless gaze.
“We have to experiment and see if he is breakable. If someone can ever bend his will and programming with sexual torture.”
Your train of thoughts and flashbacks were cut short by the sound of fingers tapping on glass behind you and the roar of metal chains rattling in front of you.
“Please continue, miss,” the same thick Russian accent bellowed from behind.
“O-oh,” you exhaled as you came back to your senses. The coldness of the small room pierced your naked skin. The sounds of inaudible chatter in a foreign language and beeping of instruments flowed through your ears. And your eyes adjusted to what was in front of you.
Soldat.
He held all your attention now as you peered at him through your thick lashes. The surroundings were not relevant anymore. The people watching and observing were not relevant anymore—only him.
The beefy and nude man was held in chains. His arms restrained so that he couldn’t touch you. Couldn’t hurt you, for that matter.
His head hung low, peering down at you. His long hair cascaded down his face and stuck to his sweaty forehead, but you could still see some of his features. He held an intense expression. It was hard to decipher. His jaw clenched tightly, and his dark eyes were wild. Pain? Pleasure? Did he actually enjoy the sexual torture? It was hard to tell. He never spoke. Deep groans and grunts that rumbled in his throat were the only sounds to ever come out of him. The sounds gave you an impression that he may actually enjoy this vicious ordeal.
Although powerless, he looked powerful and rough from where you were positioned on your knees. Fuck, he was huge. All of him. God, he was hot. The sight in front of you was like a lewd porno.
You and he were covered in cum, sweat, and spit—a concoction of erotic slickness. Hot and disgusting at the same time. It made the acts you performed on him that much effortless.
You felt the heaviness of his cock in your grasp again as you returned to yourself. And once you tugged on it tighter, he roared loudly and clenched his body tight and hard. The muscles underneath his skin became deliciously defined. And the plates on his bionic arm whirled every time he flexed.
His red and angry cock twitched in pain and pleasure. Raw due to your repeated acts on him—handjob, blowjob, and having him nestled deep inside your pussy. Making him come again and again.
The thick and protruding veins along his shaft pulsed underneath your palms as you jerked him faster. Tighter. Sloppier.
“Fuck,” you mumbled as you took in the sight of his impressive cock, making your mouth water at the anticipation of having him on your tongue again.
With a needy moan, you took him in your mouth. Suckling his head as both your hands sloppily worked the rest of him. Swirling your tongue on his sensitive tip as your lips wrapped beautifully around him.
Soldat groaned as you sucked him to perfection—cum and spit dribbling out of your mouth and making a beautiful mess all over yourself and him.
His hands may be bound, but the rest of his body was boundless, and he bucked his hips into your mouth. The tip of his cock tickled the back of your throat. You coughed and struggled, and he rumbled deeply in response. Seeming satisfied with you choking.
When you couldn’t handle the abuse to your throat anymore, you release his cock with a pop. You spat the excess saliva onto his length and let the slickness coat the entirety of him.
As both your hands worked his entire cock again—base to tip, you took his heavy sack into your mouth—licking and sucking. Enjoying the weight of his balls on your tongue—moaning against him.
You peered up at him again with hooded eyes. He seemed to enjoy the dirty sight—your mouth and hands full of his cock and balls. A messy perfection kneeling before him.
A smirk tugged on his lips before he hissed sharply through his teeth as you pulled his sack harshly and then let it drop from your mouth.
He was close again. Nearing his fifth? Or was it maybe the sixth orgasm since you started? You had lost count.
The Russian officer was right. Soldat was no ordinary man. No one would have been able to withstand so many orgasms in such a short time. It was extraordinary to witness. Could he really keep climaxing till the end of times?
Soldat’s chest heaved as the torturous pleasure built. His thick thighs trembled, and his cock twitched, anticipating another earth-shattering and messy release.
He bellowed a cry through his gritted teeth as he came hard once again. The chains rattled as he tugged on them. He bucked his stuttering hips into your grasp as he spurted ropes and ropes of thick white cum from his red tip and made a mess all over himself and you. The sounds of pleasure and torture—grunts, groans, roars, and subtle whines, surfaced despite his clenched jaw.
You never stopped stroking him. Never stopped milking his poor and sensitive cock for all its seed. God, there was so much. You were in awe of him—eyes wide and mouth ajar. It was like a drug to you. Seeing the man above you come so intensely undone.
In the beginning, you had felt bad due to how wrong the situation actually was. But the more he came, the more you craved it. You needed it just as much as breathing.
“Good boy,” you mumbled as you gave a final tight tug on his cock. He hissed at the sensitivity and then exhaled as you released his twitching and aching cock from your hold.
For the first time, he looked finished. Exhausted as he dropped his head backward. His throat bobbed as he swallowed thickly and tried to catch his breath. Had he reached his breaking point?
You gave him a break. He deserved that much by enduring this pleasurable torture. But the men in charge were impatient.
“Please don’t stop, miss. He is not allowed to rest.” The same accent uttered behind the glass.
Soldat’s eyes were on you now. Watching intensely as you got to your feet. You hissed as you stood upright. The uncomfortable and solid concrete floor bruised your knees and made your thighs stiff.
His abused cock twitched once you stood before him in all your nude form. His chains rattled again as he tried to reach forward to touch you. The plates on his bionic arm whirled. Did he want to hurt you? Punish you for torturing him? Or was there something else he wanted?
He stared intensely at you with his jaw clenched and eyes wild like an animal—examining your body like a predator would a prey. He groaned and licked his lips, hungry for more of what you had to offer. How much till he could bear no more?
When he saw you become nervous under his gaze, he bit his tongue and relaxed back into his seat.
“Please continue, miss,” the Russian man pressed you on. Becoming impatient with the waiting.
You trembled as you sat on top of Soldat—sore yourself from all the previous activities you had performed on him—hours of torturous pleasure. He let out a satisfied groan as you found your place on his lap.
You were so unbelievably close now. Your sweaty bodies pressed together, front to front. It was so hot, so erotic feeling his warm skin against yours. Feeling his delicious and defined muscles underneath your palms as you ran them down his broad torso.
His cock nestled against your dripping pussy. Yours and his juices mixed as you grinded on him, making him rock hard again.
With a breathless moan, you took his cock in your grasp again, loving the feel of him in your hand. Soldat sucked in a breath through his teeth as you pumped his bruised and slick length before you lined up his bulbous head with your entrance.
For the first time since you sat on him, you found his dark gaze as you lowered yourself onto his thick girth, thighs trembling. You winched at the pleasurable sting as he stretched out your velvet walls, inch by inch. It was so much to take in.
A deep groan sounded from his throat at the friction on his sensitive cock. His head fell back, eyes closed, and his teeth drew blood as he bit his bottom lip. His body clenched again at the sensual torture.
“Fuck, you’re huge,” you whined as his cock nestled balls deep inside your pussy.
His dark eyes found yours again. And although they were scary and wild, you couldn’t break from his intense stare. An animalistic groan rumbled in his chest, and his hands clenched in tight fists. His menacing aura compelled you to start riding him.
With your hands clasped at the back of his neck, steadying yourself, you started bouncing on his thick length. Slow, to begin with. Letting the ridges and veins of his cock caress delicately against your walls. Your jaw slacked as you enjoyed the teasing penetration.
But Soldat was impatient. He tried to push his body further into yours despite the constriction of his chains as he bellowed a deep roar. His hips bucked upwards brutally, forcing the entirety of him in you. You cried as his swollen head hit deep inside.
As he continued to snap his hips up into your aching pussy in quick motions, you met his movements with your own forceful ones. The sound of wet skin clapping, deep moans, groans, and soft whimpers drowned out the chatter and beeping of instruments behind.
Your sweaty bodies moved and danced effortlessly together—a seductive second act to the lewd porno.
Without thinking, you pressed your lips to his hard. Soldat took advantage of having his touch on you for the first time. He groaned as he moved his lips hurriedly against yours. Parting them to explore your mouth further.
The kiss was messy and needy—tongue and spit mixed together. Breathless moans and whimpers shared between you as your lips moved passionately—savouring the intoxicating taste.
As you pulled away, desperately needing a breath due to the exertion of your movements, he captured your bottom lip between his teeth, tugging on it as you pulled apart. He managed to nip your lip at the last second, puncturing through the skin and creating a little bleeding cut. He groaned while you moaned at the violent action. His animalistic and cruel nature was beyond hot.
It was hard to tell how long you had been fucking for—riding his cock brutally. It was all so intoxicating—the sounds, the touches, the tastes, the delicious penetration. It clouded all your senses. It made you aware of nothing but him—his massive body and cock.
You were approaching your first orgasm since you started this erotic experiment with The Asset. And with the way your body trembled and the firm tightness in your stomach begged to snap, you knew your release would wreck you—dissolving you into a messy state of whimpers and possibly a blackout.
You braced yourself by wrapping your arms around his neck—clinging desperately to him. Puncturing your nails into the skin of his back—leaving marks.
Soldat’s body tensed, anticipating another rocking release as he ground his teeth and roared like a caged animal. The chains rattled as he pulled on his restraints. His huge arms flexed, and his delicious muscles contorted beautifully, making him look even bigger.
You could see a hint of pain and discomfort in his features at having his cock tormented and overstimulated to the extreme. But another part of him, the darkest flicker in his eyes, couldn’t get enough of the torturous pleasure.
You leaned your forehead against his, which had his tenseness ease up to a degree. Yours and his parted lips brushed as you became so engrossed with the anticipation of your shared release.
“Fuck,” you whimpered as you grounded yourself deeper onto his pulsing cock that was nearing its release. And with a last few sharp thrusts of his hips into your quivering pussy, hitting your sweet spot repeatedly, you and he came hard—an explosion of noises and numbing pleasure rocked your bodies.
His cock twitched violently as he spurted his thick and warm cum into your awaiting womb, covering your fluttering walls with his seed. Making you feel full and satisfied. Yours and his hips stuttered and lost their rhythm as you tried to move against each other despite the soul-crushing and body-crippling sensation.
Your sounds of passion were muffled against his sweaty skin as you nuzzled your face into the crock of his neck. His ones roared so loudly in your ear—moans, groans, growls, making your whole body vibrate and convulse.
The pleasure seemed to last for an eternity as you savoured each erotic and sensual sensation with Soldat.
A wave of darkness shadowed over you as it became too much after a while. The pleasure too intense for your weak body to handle. Your movements started easing into a delicate dance as you used the last bit of strength to cling onto Soldat’s colossal frame.
Yours and his chest heaved in perfect rhythm as you stilled completely on him. His cock buried deep inside you still.
His warm body against yours was a comfort from the raging ache your own pulsed. His hot breath brushing your skin a soothing sensation.
How could a man that was claimed to be inhuman, dangerous, a weapon, feel so comfortable? Feel so right?
You hummed softly as you nuzzled further into him. Tired and drained from the hours of exertion that accumulated into a fiery ending.
The demands of the men in charge for you to continue were nothing but a muffled sound.
You felt yourself slip. Slip into darkness, tired and satiated, as the last thing your consciousness remembered was the soft lulling of the menacing man you were clinging onto.
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Astrology Placements Observations
This is just from my own personal research after studying lots of chart. So don’t come for me
Mars Virgo people are the true freaks. Virgo rules over acts of service, these are the people that’s going to know every little thing about your body and how to please you!
Aquarius moons are either social butterflies or very introverted
Mercury 3h or 6h knows what the are talking about okay! Mercury is at home when it’s in these houses.
Pisces Venus/Venus 12h people are prone to attracting narcissistic people in love. These people want to see the good and idolize what their partner could be. You all need to start seeing people for who they are at moment. Stop looking at them red flags like carnivals flags and start seeing them as stop signs.
Libra rising has been through some things in their love life. your love life has been a battlefield due to having Aries 7h. The day y’all start learning the word NO and setting boundaries with people then it’ll get better
Taurus Mercury people love to cuss and cuss a lot. You guys are really good at it too! Tell me I’m not the only ones to notice this?😅
Mars 1h people may have been in lots of fights growing up. You may be prone to having lots of accidents as well, be careful around knives.
Saturn 9h may be skeptics when it comes to religion or spiritual topics. You guys need to see some proof before it happens. On the flip side, you can be religious and firm in your traditional beliefs.
Jupiter 4h can indicate someone moving around a lot to different city or countries. You guys have to have new experiences in your lives
Aries 10h can excel in any chosen career that they choose to be in. The key to success is having the passion to want to do it
Venus-Saturn aspect- people have a timeless classic look about them. They may dress from a different era.
Saturn 7h doesn’t always mean you’re going to marry late in life. It could mean that your partner is older than you, or you can be older than them. They could be mature, they could own a business, your partner could be a past life connection and it coming back this lifetime to fulfill that duty. The same can be said with the Venus-Saturn aspect
Pluto-Venus aspect goes through the biggest spiritual growth through love. They’ve been through some painful experiences in love but out of that came lots of growth.
Venus-Uranus aspect has a very unique fashion aesthetic
Mercury-Uranus aspect has a restless mind, you guys have a million things you want to do and say. You guys may talk fast too.
Scorpio are only “obsessed” with their partners or anyone is when then they genuinely love you to the core. Other than that, I promise scorpios don’t be thinking about y’all like that😅
Mars Cancers people anger scares me more than Mars Aries folks😭don’t ever get on these people bad side.
Saturn 10h peeps, you guys will get the public recognition and respect you deserve the older you get so hang in there
Chiron 1h don’t be so hard on your physical bodies, you guys are beautiful okay!
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Spiraling Thoughts (W.M)
Wanda Maximoff x Fem!Reader (Modern AU)
Summary: Wanda's spiraling thoughts get between both of you.
Warning: Hurt/Comfort angst, swearing words.
Requested: Yes
A/N: Hello! Another post, another angst from me. I didn't proof read this, sorry in advance for typos. More angsts are on their way :D Anyway, happy reading!
Main Masterlist
Happy and excited. That’s how you feel right now because today is the day you have been waiting for. You have been crossing the dates on the calendar to today’s date. A red “Moving day!” is written on the calendar.
You have packed all your belongings. Stacks of boxes are ready. Your brain tells you that you might need two trips to drive all of them with your car to Wanda’s place.
You have been dating Wanda for an amazing year and a half. Both of you are head over heels in love with each other. You have been giving hints for a few months that you are ready to move in together. Since then, it has been the talk you both have. A month ago, your girlfriend finally agreed to live together.
You are so thrilled and Wanda is happy if you are happy. She knows it from how much you talk about it.
Since then, Wanda has been reorganizing her place for your belongings to fit in. She loves simplicity, her place wasn’t the biggest but it was enough for her to live alone. Wanda tried to prepare everything for you when the day came. Being the overthinking she is, she even did some research on do’s and don'ts or tips for this relationship’s big change.
“I’ll be leaving soon. See you soon,babe!” you texted her. Wanda checks the time then puts her phone down disappointedly. You are late again. The only thing about you that she doesn’t like. Wanda is a punctual person, she hates being late. To watch you being late or waiting for someone who is late is torture to her. Every second slowly but surely irritates her even though she tries not to.
Wanda’s mind starts to spiral before she knows it. All other anxious thoughts force their way to re-exist.
She starts to think what if she has to deal more about being late because of this certain bad habit of yours. What if there are other untolerable habits or differences that show up after both of you living together for some time that might have a domino effect in her relationship with you? Or what if all of this is too soon? Is she actually ready for this? Or is she just doing this to make you happy? What happens if things don’t work out between both of you?
What if…? What if..? What if..? These two words are really pushing Wanda’s to the edge. Her heartbeat starts to double in speed. Her fingertips start to get colder and her hands seem to shake. It’s getting harder for her to breathe. Emotions slowly overfill her heart and mind.
Your Sokovian girlfriend is panicked and scared by now from her overthinking mind. Everything seems spinning. The ticking from the clock on the wall sounds louder gradually in her mind breaking the muffled sound around her. An hour later, the doorbell finally lets her get a break from everything she is experiencing.
Wanda rushes to the door even though her steps feel so heavy. She knows it must be you with all of your stuff, moving in with her. Oh dear, the closer she gets to the door, the heavier her heart feels. Thoughts flash in her mind for a second, the thoughts that you for sure don’t want to hear.
“Hi babe!.” You greet her followed by an apology as you give her a hug. An awkward smile curved on her face. Wanda tries to hold back her spiraling feelings, she is trying hard.
Wanda hugs you back but you know her pretty well, you notice even the slight difference but you try not to overthink. “Y/n, you are late again.” Flat yet irritated was her tone no matter how much she tried to hide it. Wanda glances at the boxes in your car to avoid your gaze whenever you try to look at her.
“I know, I’m sorry. I’m working on my punctuality more, Wanda. I promise.” you apologized. You thought that being late was the reason why Wanda seems a little off.
“Well, that’s what you promised three months ago and still, nothing changed.” a snarky comment forced its way out of her lips and you got caught off guard by it. Your forehead creases your eyes while you mind quickly try to figure out what’s going on.
“I’m sorry, Wanda.”
The view of her shrugging her shoulders and her smile slides down to a frown as she turns around then walks away from you. “Wanda, what’s wrong?” you ask and follow her.
Wanda picks up her pace a little to be away from you. “Nothing.” That was all her answer to you. Again, her eyes avoid yours. Everytime you get closer to her, Wanda would move further from you. Walking around from one room to another, she cleans randomly as her steps shift from one spot to another.
“I don’t think we should bring your boxes in yet, detka.” Wanda suggests. Your stomach churns a little after hearing her idea. You love hearing her calling you with any pet names but this time, you are not a fan of it because of the tone.
“Why?” Your eyebrows furrowed. You are waiting for her answer anxiously, standing behind her.
“I’m still cleaning this house, Y/n. That’s why.” Wanda’s tone is slowly filled by such resentment. Her voice raises a little.
“Wanda, the house looks fine and very clean. I know you pretty well. You are cleaning randomly, moving around from one spot to another right now. You only do it when you are upset or something bothers you.”
“No, I’m fine. We can just keep your stuff in your car tonight until I’m done with this house.” Wanda’s tone gets colder.
“Wait, what? What did you mean? Keep them in my car overnight?” your forehead puckered in confusion. “You heard me.” she responds while continuing whatever she is doing with a pout that looks more and more obvious.
“What about my clothes and—” you try to get more clues on what’s going on but Wanda didn’t let you finish. “You can wear mine or borrow whatever you need..”
“But, you told me that everything’s ready. I even made sure with you yesterday about today and you said yes. Something is off, Wanda. Tell me, what’s wrong?” you rambled.
“Nothing..is wrong, y/n.” Wanda denied all your words. You noticed she looks way more unease. You follow her yet Wanda still avoids you from being too close to her.
“No, something is wrong Wanda. You smile differently. You–”
“Y/n..” she calls.
“You didn’t hug me the way you usually do. You–”
“What are you talking about?” Wanda tackled your assumption with the pretend confusion.
“Yeah, you know what I meant, Wanda. You clean randomly and—”
“Oh come on! What stupid theory was that? You should’ve known me, for crying out loud! I..love..to clean.” Wanda lets out her irritation and anger through the way she puts down things.
“You clean loudly. Sometimes you put things or close stuff loudly when you are upset.” you lined up more supportive examples. Wanda walks away from her bedroom to the living room, leaving you but you are determined to get the answer. “Fuck, y/n. Just please stop.” Despite the curse word, Wanda still tries to suppress her voice that’s raising up angrily as she starts to feel cornered.
You take a spot in front of her to block her path of avoidance.“No. No. I won’t stop until I get my answer. What’s going on? Why on earth that all of sudden I can't unload the boxes. I’m really confused right now. There’s–”
She didn’t let you finish once more. “I already told you why.” she gives you a second of death glance before she takes the sideway to walk away from you again.
“Yes, you did but it wasn’t the truth Wanda. You lied. Are you getting cold feet about us living together?” Just like that, your question instantly stopped Wanda and she snapped as she turned around to you.
“What if I am?!” Wanda can no longer keep herself together. She finally spilled the painful truth. meanwhile you are too shocked to respond to it. A soft gasp forced its way to be heard. You swallow hard and your heart drops in a millisecond before the brunette continues to pour her thoughts out.
“What if I’m freaking out right now? This whole thing is too soon, too early or whatever we can call it.” words after words and thoughts after thoughts flowed in such anger the more her mind thought about it.
“Too soon? Wanda, you agreed about this. We have been talking about us living together. We plan this. I thought you wanted it to happen as much as I wanted to?” you argue back with a pinch of genuine confusion.
“Do i, y/n? Or was I on board with it just because you keep giving me hints of what you want? You wanted the truth, right? There it is!” Wanda places both of her hands on her hips as she looks away just so you won’t catch her eyes slowly turning glossy from tears.
After a few seconds of pausing her words, she continued. “You were late coming here, it’s your habit. We both know that. What if you never change? What if there are other things, habits or — or — or differences that trigger us to argue? Imagine if we turn to that couple who fight constantly. What if it doesn’t work out for us?”
Your head hangs low, you look down somewhere random. Anywhere but her eyes. You shake your head slowly followed by a disbelief chuckle. “Wow, you talked like I WILL be or I am the cause that everything won’t work out between us in the future while you are actually the one that shattered the dream that we had. Oh I’m sorry, babe. Let me rephrase that, MY dream, not yours.” you lift up your head and look at her eyes mid sentence and let sarcasm end it.
Your heart aches. In your point of view, Wanda is being unfair to you and it provokes more words out of you. “So you changed your mind?”
Her voice fills the room before the deafening silence ate it all up. You can hear her take a harsh breath. “Y/n—”
“It’s a yes or no question, Wanda.” you demand her answer as you keep looking at her.
Wanda clenches her jaw in silence but it was an obvious shortcut to reach your conclusion. It was enough for you to dig out the answer.
“Y/n, can you just—” Wanda once more trying to avoid your question but you are not having it.
“Leave? Don’t worry, Wanda. I will. I’m gonna go home.” With that, you turn around and walk towards the door. You were hoping that she will try to stop you from leaving but a gut twisting fact shows that she doesn’t even try and just stands there, looking down in an expression that you can’t really decipher. You slammed the door as you walked out that made Wanda flinch a little.
What just happened? Is it over? Was I being selfish? What on earth is going on? Both of you are lost in your own thoughts and questions with no answers. Despite all the thoughts, Wanda stays where she is. She doesn’t know what she feels right now, everything is overwhelming for her even until right this second. She feels drained and tears slowly fill up to the brim of her eyes. Every beat of her heart hurt her. The room feels like an airtight box. Her knees laden. Without her control, the tears finally rolled down her cheeks.
Your brain is multitasking between thinking and focusing on driving. Your knuckles turn white from squeezing the steering wheel as you drive. The more you look at the boxes that are reflected on the back mirror of your car, the more heartache you feel. The day that was supposed to be one of the happiest days in your relationship with Wanda went downhill in a blur. It all happened so fast, too fast actually. Your mind is still processing everything that just happened on your whole way back to your place.
This was the first big fight ever in your relationship and Wanda.
_____
You and Wanda give each other space for two days. That one text she sent you and you didn't reply, Wanda took it as you needed your time alone.
While waiting in silence, Wanda starts to ponder, not just one but many things. Everything that happened that day kept playing in her head over and over again bringing her sense to the surface.
Wanda slowly admits to herself that she was too harsh on you and her anxiety got the best of her. Guilt starts to build up in her heart. Her mind has been filled up with everything about you. Without you, Wanda feels empty and she doesn’t like how it feels when you are not around her. Her heart is longing for your presence and affection. She misses the cheerful side of you that always breaks the silence around the house. All your jokes, laughs and your companion always make her days so meaningful
Wanda’s memory starts to remind her that you indeed have tried your best to fix the bad habits for her as much as she does for you. RIght now, she feels like a fool for forgetting about it.
A week has passed, the more she tries to give you the space and time you need, the harder it gets for her and the more she misses you. Her love for you finally conquered all of her overthinking thoughts. She knows she can’t live without you. Wanda loves you too much to lose you.
_____
With a heavy heart, you just started unpacking the first sealed box that you brought to Wanda's house.
You exhaled harshly right after you heard a knock on your apartment door. You are really not in the mood for having visitors but you get up anyway just in case it’s something important. You see Wanda through the peeping hole.
You stayed quiet behind the door and decided not to answer it. You hear another knock and Wanda softly talks. “Detka, it’s me. Please open the door for me.” You can’t deny that you miss her with every bit in you. As much as you want to let her in, you are still hurt with what happened.
“I know you are in there, y/n. It’s your day off today and I see your car too.” Wanda paused for a little bit and waited for your answer.
Your heart feels heavier from hearing her tone that sounds sadder second by second.
“Y/n, sweetheart, please. I need to tell you that I’m sorry, truly sorry. I miss you. Please let me talk with you.” Wanda’s voice turns shakier while trying to keep herself together from all the sadness and pain she is having from her guilt. You see her through the peeping hole one more time only to find her wiping her tears. It was just a little tear but you know it’s a lot for her.
Wanda heard you finally unlock the door and it’s slowly ajar. She sees you turn your back on her as she walks in. Sparky runs to you and you pet him for a little bit. Wanda waits for you to turn around and see her.
A smile instantly shows up at the same time with her emotional tears as soon as you turn around. “Hi, my love.” she pauses her words once more. The pet name she just called you with
“Hi.. you–uh you lost your spare key?” you ask. You really want to hug Wanda, you don’t like seeing her green eyes get all teary but you hope your small sarcastic question will hide it.
“No, I still have it but I just didn’t want to just walk in here unannounced just in case you– you don’t want to see me.” Wanda slowly lets out her understanding answer. Her eyes search for yours.
You always love how Wanda is so thoughtful and respect your personal space too. It hits you too, some guilt slowly shows up.
Wanda notices the box that you were unpacking. Her lips slightly open in surprise.
“Are you unpacking the boxes?” she asked awkwardly.
“Yeah, I have to.” you start to make yourself look busy to avoid more eye contact with her. You unpack more boxes and walk around just like Wanda did.
Wanda’s reaction is different from yours. She quickly grabs your wrist gently but firm enough to catch your attention.
“Y/n, I have something to say. Can you look at me please?”
Her sad tone finally drags your eyes to her glossy green eyes. "Okay, Wanda. I'm all ears." you stated.
Wanda takes a deep breath slowly as she holds your hands before she starts her ramble. “I’m so sorry for how I was and what I said that day. My–my anxiety and overthinking got the best of me. I should’ve talked about it with you in a better way. I promise I will work on my overthinking and will talk about it together.” She pauses while her thumbs rub the back of your hands.
“Days without you really got me thinking. It’s so quiet without you, your voice, even your texts and I don’t like it. I miss us. I miss doing a lot of things with you, I miss your jokes and laugh. I even miss waiting for you to get ready while I’m worried that we are getting late.” Wanda lets out an awkward little chuckle at the end to distract you from noticing her being vulnerable.
You stand closer to her as she continues. “I’m sorry. Please give me another chance. I really don’t like my girlfriend being away from me too long. I promise I’ll work on my bad habits.” Wanda runs her perfect looking fingers through your hair gently.
Your heart melts under her touches and who can say know to those gorgeous eyes? Not even you.
“Apology accepted. I will always give you chances because you always do the same to me.” you giggle a little. You put both hands on her shoulders right away after she pulls you closer.
“I love you.”
“I love you too, Wanda”
Both of you instantly tangle in a long soft kiss. You miss her sweet lips touching yours. You and Wanda let out relieved sighs in the kiss. She feels alive again having you so close to her. She doesn’t want to lose you anymore but you can feel that she stops the kiss. Wanda pulls her face away from you. She looks at you dearly.
“Did you notice Sparky’s new collar’s tag?” Wanda asked in a whisper.
“No, what is it?” you asked back but your curiosity doesn’t want to wait so you call him only to find him standing behind you.
You turn around to pick him up as you notice his new collar. "Aaw it's a key shape collar with I Love You engraved on it. That's so sweet. Ouh does it mean you want me to move in with you now?" You ask Wanda while giving Sparky some love and not paying attention to what your girlfriend is doing behind you. She chuckles nervously.
"Well, turn it around and check it out." Wanda gives you a clue and shortly after she hears you let out a surprised gasp.
Will you marry me?
It's engraved in the back of Sparky's collar. You quickly turn around only to find Wanda gets on one knee, holding an opened box with a ring in it.
"Malyshka, it has been a great year since you came to my life. Everything has turned so beautiful since then and when we were away that long, I felt devastated. I don't want us to be like that anymore. I promise we will communicate better to work on our bad habits, problems and solve them together. I just want us to grow better and grow old together. I promise I will be a better wife than I was as your girlfriend. Will you marry me, Y/n Y/l/n?" Her eyes twinkle with hope and love for you.
Bubbles of joy burst in you and spread the thrill all over you. Your eyes and Wanda’s get teary at the same time as she sees you smile from ear to ear. You are speechless.
“Is that a yes? Say something please, y/n? Should I take that as a yes?” Row of questions line up out of her. Her hands are a little shaky. Your heart beats faster. You know you blush so hard because you can feel the rush in you. You nod eagerly. “Yes! Of course Yes!”
Both of you start to laugh in tears of happiness and Wanda puts the ring on your finger. You pull her up to hug and kiss her shortly after. Sparky barks and wags his tails. Excitedly licks your cheeks and Wanda’s in turns in the warmest group hug that always feels like home to you.
“Let’s come home, detka.”
“You are my home.” you replied and Wanda sealed your lips with more short loving kisses. Both of you smile in the kisses.
A/N: Welp, that's all from me today. I hope you like it. Let me know what you think. Comments and reblogs are highly appreciated. Follow me for more.
Cheerio!
Taglist: @madamevirgo @musicinourlips @unstable-sapphic-hoe @fanboy7794 @chloe7076 @b0mbdotc0m @trikruismybitch @ichala @californianwhiterabbit @honey-sweet-hiraeth @imfuckinggenius @sxfwap @chaekhan @daenerys713 @luvmcgrath @stupidsapphicsstuff @pattypavo @imdoingsortagay @marvelwoman-sugarbaby @frvny @fluffyprettykitty @franfineashell @heyyoweveryone @ygtft-chen @yaaskasey @sweeet-likeeee-cinnamonn @paumxmff @dopeyouth @beaniejennie @ineedafinghug @idkwhatimwriting @lucydiibi @mainly-rebloging-fics-i-like @gloriousfoxruins @grxvitye @mcubreakdown101 @aos22 @wandanatstan @paulawand @yeeterthekeeper @femalehomosexual666 @snowdrop1026 @modernmonalisa @nothingisrealanyway @idamaemann @sweeterlust @royalityofmultifandom @playboysaleen @peabrain112 @gwhaley127 @harleyswanda @bodhi-j @darth-rain @cristin-rjd
#wanda maximoff#wanda maximoff x you#wanda maximoff x y/n#wanda maximoff x reader#wanda maximoff fanfic#wanda maximoff angst#wanda maximoff fluff#wanda maximoff imagine#wanda maximoff au#marvel modern au#wanda maximoff fanfiction
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Iron on my Tongue
Isaac x Reader
Isaac has a bad feeling about your meeting. (Isaac's POV)
Warnings: anxiety, description of blood, death of character
@chilliesillie and @kieran-rhoades created a vivid image of this scene in my mind so here it is written for you my loves<3
I hope I was able to capture this the way you imagined!
✧⋄⋆⋅⋆⋄✧⋄⋆⋅⋆⋄✧⋄⋆⋅⋆⋄✧⋄⋆⋅⋆⋄✧✧⋄⋆⋅⋆⋄✧
It’s a dim afternoon, grey clouds are settled in the sky with a promise of rain later and the wind is chilly. My partner isn't with me right now, maybe if they were I would be enjoying the weather more. I hope they make it back home before the shower.
They're out on their own business, a meeting with a client I introduced them to. As much as I'd like to pride myself in my improvements thus far, I still can't quite let them leave the house to meet someone completely unknown to me. Whatever client I hand over to them are well researched and kept on tab to ensure their meeting environment is a safe one and they’ll be able to get back home to me.
I still have my doubts regardless, but I can't control their every move. They deserve to live. It’s funny because they tell me the same thing, "Isaac you deserve to live, without the worry and torment."
I don't think I'd ever be who I am today without them. The day I met them all those months ago, I'd never believed it if someone told me we'd not only be partners in my field of work, but also lovers. They're the one thing that means the most to me and I absolutely cannot let them get hurt. I trust them, and I know they'll do their best to stay safe but the underlying worry still bothers me.
There's this unusual feeling in my chest, the kind I haven’t experience in a while and worst of all, I'm not sure why it's there. It's bearable, but it's not. A distant but static feeling that hazes over my body and clouds my senses.
I take a sip of my coffee and its burns my tongue. It's hot, way too hot.
"Fuck" I pinch the space between my eyebrows and sigh.
My luck hasn't been the best today, but maybe a shower would wash away whatever this is and I can finally settle down. I push the cup aside and head for the bathroom, peeling the clothes from my body.
I let the water slide off my skin, the only thing on my mind is them. I could chalk this feeling up to just my anxiety, but this is more. This is an additional weight that presses against my chest and squeezes at my heart. An extra burden to carry on my shoulders, one I'm unfamiliar with yet I distantly relate to. Some sort of gut feeling that’s pointed in some unknown direction. I could easily pick up my phone and call them but their voice rings in my head.
"Here's the deal Isaac, no calls from you this time. We have to work something out little by little until you're comfortable with me leaving the house. Instead of you calling me, I'll call you before and after my meeting. Deal?"
I agreed to it of course. I want to be better. For them I want to be better, so each time I think of calling, I turn my phone screen down. I know their meeting started at 3pm and lasts about two hours, so I'm expecting a call at 5.
I step out the shower, tying my robe at the side. The first thing I do is glace at the clock.
4:55
I should be receiving that call soon, and since a shower did absolutely nothing to sooth my nerves, I'm hoping their voice will.
I'm back in the kitchen again, my phone sitting in front of me and I reach for the coffee I had left earlier. I take a sip and now it's too cold. What a day. I dump it down the sink without a second thought, it’s not important right now anyways.
5 o'clock rolls around and I'm impatiently bouncing my knee. There isn’t a single notification from them. 10 minutes. I'll wait 10 minutes and then I'll call. The feeling in my chests grows heavier and heavier and I'm counting down every second. I can't look away from my phone, waiting and hoping to see my screen light up.
5:07
That's basically 5:10 right? If I call now, it wouldn't make a difference. I frantically find their contact and click the small button near it. I take a deep breath, then exhale. It's okay. They'll answer and say their meeting ran a little late and scold me for not waiting a full 10 minutes like I promised. Nothing bad is going to happen. I’m able to fool neither my mind nor my heart.
It rings, and rings, and rings... then disconnects.
There’s no answer. My heart rate picks up and I call again.
Same as before, it rings but no answer.
I attempt to call again, but the phone slips from my grasp. I hadn't noticed it before but my palms are clammy and covered in sweat, cold sweat. I drag them against my robe and quickly snatch the phone off the floor, skipping a call entirely to find their location.
The little icon is not at their meeting location, it’s not at the coffee shop they enjoy visiting, its nowhere close to home. Instead it stays stagnant at a foreign location, a maze-like pathway between a block of buildings.
I’m unsure about almost everything at the moment, but one thing I know for certain is that I need to find them. I leave my house right away. I call until their voicemail is engraved into my skull. I send text after text, but there’s still no response. I check their location again but the only icon that moves is my own as I get closer to my destination.
The rest of the way I need to continue on foot. I have a gun tucked into the waist of my pants and I don’t know what awaits me, or if I’ll even be able to fight it but if I don’t find them I might go completely insane. My stomach turns at the scent, and sight before me. It’s a dirty alleyway, much dirtier than the one I found them in. It makes me sick. The unease in my body casts over me like a giant shadow and it’s starting to make sense. It feels like a rat in my stomach trying to claw its way through my mouth. I hate it. I hate it so much.
I find their phone, their bag and random sheets on paper scattered through path. They’re covered in muddy footprints and soaked in murky water. Something bad happened, that much I knew, but there’s 3, 4, 5 maybe 6 pairs of footprints here. They were outnumbered.
“Name!” I yell. “Where are you?”
I run further and further down but there’s no sign of them. My heart is pounding against my chest and I’m so so scared. I’m looking everywhere but there’s no one here. I grip onto my hair in frustration. Where are they? Did those people take them away? Who were they? There’re hundreds of people who’d want to hurt me but specifically WHO?
“I-Isaac…?” a weak voice calls behind me.
I’m overcome with relief when I hear them, but the state I see them in as I turn around fills me with worry and rage.
They’re holding onto the mouldy walls, sliding down to the ground when they couldn’t support themselves anymore. Their body and clothes are covered in mud and dirt, ripped and bruised. I rush over to them, supporting their weight against my own body.
I’m worried, so worried but I’m relieved they’re still here. I’m relieved they’re still alive.
“God, Pickle” I place a hand against their back, its warm and wet, and they wince in pain at the pressure. “Where are you hurt? Who did this to you?”
“Isaac,” they smile up at me, a hand reaching for my face. “You came. I knew you’d come.”
I hold their hand against my cheek. “Of course, my love. I’ll always find you I promised to protect you always.”
“My knight.” Their voice comes out faint and dull.
“Yours, always yours.” I lean down to kiss them, gently on their lips. It was supposed to be a simple kiss, more as reassurance to my self than them but I taste iron against my tongue, metallic and salty. I pull away abruptly and their body bends forwards choking on coughs as the red liquid spills from their lips. Blood.
It's on the concrete, my pants and my hands? The hand I had against their back… It's covered in blood?
Their jacket wasn’t soaked with water? The warmth I felt wasn’t from their body? It was their blood.
“Isaac.” Their hand is on my face again, pulling me from my thoughts. “You’re *cough* spacing out my darling.”
I don’t bother responding, pulling their jacket off their shoulder. Red, it's all red. Their shirt is soaked through and through with blood and ripped in multiple areas. Stabs, fuck they were stabbed.
“No no no!” I panic. “I need to do something, I need to get you out of here!”
“Isaac please, I can barely move. Its’s *cough* gonna be okay, just please stay here with me.”
“How could I let this happen to you? Why not me instead?” I feel tears roll down my cheek and I’m terrified.
“It’s not your ugh fault Isaac. Please, for my sake, don’t blame yourself.” Their voice continues to weaken. I feel stupid for honouring their request of just staying here, but some part of me knows that there’s nothing I can do now.
“Isaac, I love you”
“Yes, I know my love. I love you too, I love you more than anything.” I feel like a child again, crying my eyes out. I should be the one comforting them, but my voice is filled with fear and my breathing is unsteady.
“Thank you… for all you’ve done for me.” Their voice fades in and out. “Please don’t ever forget me”
Their hand falls from my face but I catch it pressing it back onto my skin. “No, you have to keep your eyes open! Please! Keep your eyes open name! Don’t let go of me!”
“I’m… sorry Isaac. I don’t think I can.” They barely whisper, their eyes struggling to stay open.
“No please, not now! I’ve only just gotten you, you- you can’t leave me yet.” I held them close, sobbing into their hair.
We never made it home before the downpour. I stayed there with them to the very end. I held them in the freezing cold until their breaths slowed. I held them until the warmth drained from their body and they also grew cold. I stayed there until left me for good.
I held my composure, for their sake, wrapping them in my jacket and took them home. I washed their body until they were completely clean before tucking them into bed. One last time, they were by my side. Tomorrow they’d be resting in my garden resting among the flowers, and my mother would finally meet the love of my life. I hope she’d be proud of me, I hope they’d reflect fondly of me.
I hope they’d forgive me for the things I must do in the future.
I hope they’ll shield their eyes and stay blind to the things I will do. Every last breath of mine will be used to avenge them. I will find those who are responsible for this, and I’ll make sure they regret it.
I couldn’t protect as a knight, so I will destroy everything as a shadow.
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Lucien who now lives full time in the Day Court knowing the truth (think white robes and cold crown and makeup omg) and who has been in love with IC reader since getting to know her while he was there.
She's now visiting on some Night Court business (research, negotiation, etc.), and he's decided to put on his full Lucien teasing charm to woo her.
Sunlight in a Bowl.
Summary: Did he just... no. Of course not.
•○●⛦●○•
A/n: I didnt realise how much i loved this idea until i wrote it 😭 thank you soo much my darling anon for sending in this request, i had soo much fun writing it lol, it was like it took no effort, came to me soo easy 🥹
also, posting this an hour early for funsies 🤭
i promised no angst so theres no angst @milswrites
anyways, enjoy!
•○🌑○•
The day court was beautiful.
That was all Y/n could think of as a sentry led her towards Helion's private receiving chambers, all other adjectives having flown out of her head the moment Azriel had dropped her on the border of Day court, from where she'd winnowed herself to the palace.
The white houses, the red and gold roofs, the sunlight shining from above and reflecting from pools of water and the Palace right in the center of it all, the colourful market in the town square...
It was safe to say Y/n was ready to move to Day court, already having forgotten that she was here on a mission from Rhysand.
She was ready, bags packed, no questions asked.
So busy was she gaping at the beautiful architecture of the palace, the artwork reigning her in like some trick of hypnotism, she didn't realise the sentry had come to a stop outside two large oak doors.
Unfortunately, that meant she smacked right into his back before she realised.
Her cheeks blazing, Y/n stumbled back as she glanced up at the male, who had an amused smile on his face.
"I merely stumbled. My dress is a little long."
He nodded. "Never said you did not stumble. I believe it must be hard to walk around in your too long knee length dress."
Blood rushed into Y/n's ears as she looked down at the dress that... only reached her knees, realising he was right.
Fuck.
She cleared her throat, standing at attention, avoiding his eyes.
From her peripherals, she could see him grinning as he knocked on the door, waiting until a voice called out to let them in.
The male opened the door, holding it open for Y/n. She hurried in, resisting the urge to just die as he closed the door behind her.
So much for making a good first impression.
Y/n shook her head, trying to dislodge the lump now forming in her throat at the upcoming conversation.
Being an introvert and shy was a hard job, one Y/n was very good at.
But being introverted and shy while being an emissary? Now that was the job of someone that Y/n would consider god.
And exactly why Y/n had been so against the idea of her becoming an emissary when Rhysand suggested it, knowing she would rather live a life alone in the middle of nowhere and probably become the next Weaver than become an emissary.
Alas, she was the only researcher Rhysand had at his disposal, so now she had been sent to read through as many libraries and books in day court as possible to aid in Feyre's second pregnancy.
It hadn't been confirmed yet whether the babe was winged, but Rhysand and the inner circle thought it best to start researching in advance just in case the babe did have wings and to prevent the second pregnancy ending up the same way the first did, and this time with no one to save them.
"Y/n! Always a pleasure to see you!" Y/n met the warm honey eyes that belonged to Helion, a smile spreading on her face unprompted.
"Helion." She greeted, walking forward and directly into his open and inviting arms, squeezing him back when he wrapped his arms around her.
"I hope the journey was not too hard?"
Y/n laughed, pulling away. "All I had to do was winnow, Helion, why would it be hard?"
Helion grinned, then turned to glance at something behind him.
With horror, Y/n realised that it was not something, it was someone.
Her panicked eyes shot to Helion, remembering that Rhys said Y/n wouldn't have to interact with anyone other than the day court high lord.
"Ah Y/n, meet my son, Lucien. Though I'm sure you've met before."
Y/n swallowed, then let her eyes wander to Lucien. Which, definitely not a good idea, considering Y/n was suddenly drooling and looking away like he had burned her eyes.
She had only looked at him for a moment, but that moment was enough for Y/n to have taken note of how ravishing he looked.
Ravishing?!? Get a grip Y/n.
Y/n attempted to calm her racing heartbeat by taking deep breaths, trying not to think of all the golden skin on display that was not covered by the white robe, the gold crown adorning the head of fiery red.
Trying especially hard not to think about the way his skin glowed with happiness and the beautiful, flirtatious smile adorning those plush, soft lips.
"We- we have met before."
"That's amazing! So if introductions are not needed, I'll take my leave."
Y/n knew her eyes were bulging out of her head at this point, but she did not really care as she gaped at Helion's retreating back. She continued to stare until he reached the doors, then turned to wink at her like he was in on a secret she was not.
Bastard.
Y/n, not knowing what to do, glanced at Lucien, who, in the perfect son-of-bastard way, sent her a cocky grin.
Y/n glared at him at that, pretending like the blush on her face was because of anger and not because she was shy.
"I don't know if Rhys informed you, but I will be helping you out today with the research."
Y/n's eyes widened, staring at him like he'd claimed to have met the Mother herself.
Which, Y/n would have been less surprised to hear, but that was the talk for another day.
"I- no one told me."
Lucien shrugged, that infuriating smile still on his face. "It came up last moment when my father had to leave to handle some important matters."
Y/n nodded sadly, mentally encouraging herself that she could do this.
With a sigh, she gestured at him. "Lead the way."
•○🌑○•
"Are you hungry yet?"
Y/n reigned in her sigh of exasperation.
For the past hour, Lucien had been hovering around Y/n, bothering her with stupid questions and trying to get her to go somewhere else. Where, Y/n could not for the life of her figure out.
She glanced up at him, finding his arms crossed over his chest, a careless grin on his face as he leaned against the desk she sat at.
She also noticed how he stood a little too close to just be acting like a caring host, but she ignored it, just like she ignored the bulging, mouth watering muscles in his arms.
"I am sorry Lucien, but my stomach does not consider me worthy of food at the moment. I will let you know once it decides I deserve to eat."
He laughed at that, his head thrown back, his chest vibrating with how genuine the sound was.
Y/n's eyes dropped to the strong column of his throat, his Adam's apple bobbing as he glanced back down to her, grinning. Y/n noticed the dimple that made an appearance in his cheeks, but she pretended she was still mad at his constant nagging and turned back to the thick bound tomes she had open in front of her.
Y/n got a moment of reprieve before he drew her attention again.
But this time he did not ask her if she was hungry or if she was thirsty.
No, he pushed off from the table, and Y/n watched him from the corner of her eyes as he walked to the back of her chair.
She was curious, of course she was, but also glad that he would let her do her studies.
Also sad that he was leaving, but no one needed to know that.
But suddenly, two arms were caging her in against the table, and Y/n startled at the sudden heat of being caged against the wood by someone who quite literally had the heat of autumn court fire in his blood and the warmth of day court sun in his blood.
"What are you doing?!" Y/n yelped, trying to keep quiet in the library.
His breath tickled the hair at the side of her neck as he leaned in.
"I am just wanting to inquire when your stomach will deem you worthy of eating."
"Oh my god." Y/n mumbled, her blood tinting her face red. "Stop it Lucien!"
"Not until you tell me you will go out to eat with me. Tell me, will giving you the sun in a bowl convince you?"
Y/n only kept getting redder in the face, and to try to cover it up, she slapped her hands over her face.
He tsked. "That sounded like it hurt."
Y/n paused for a moment, then mumbled out- "It did."
He laughed again, and something about having him so close to her, so free and vulnerable did things to Y/n. She spread her fingers, peeking out to find his eyes closed, his teeth glinting softly in the sunlight streaming in through the stained glass windows.
She stared at him, slowly letting her hands fall into her lap, not realising she was staring.
Or maybe not caring.
His laughter slowly died down, the sound still ringing softly in Y/n's ears until it faded away.
He met her eyes, happier than Y/n had ever seen, and gave her a soft smile.
"So?"
Y/n sighed, the sound so exaggerated she would have laughed any other time.
"Fine."
For good measure, Y/n rolled her eyes at him before she turned back to the dusty tomes sitting on the rich wood desk.
She could practically feel his grin as he dipped closer, planting a kiss on her cheek.
Y/n's eyes flew wide, turning to gape at him as he straightened.
"So, a bowl of sunlight. In the receiving room before sunset?"
Y/n choked out an okay.
The bastard had the audacity to wink at her as he turned and strutted away, his careless demeanour already enchanting Y/n's malfunctioning brain.
She watched his retreating back until she couldn't anymore, then straightened to stare at the words that now made no sense to Y/n because she was so busy trying not to think about the plans she now had for the evening.
Did he just...
Y/n blinked, glancing once to the archway he'd just disappeared into.
Did he just ask me out on a date?
Y/n shook her head.
No, it was just not possible.
Lucien? Asking Y/n out on date?
Y/n wanted to laugh at herself for even thinking that. Lucien would never...
Fuck.
Despite herself, Y/n began to smile, and hope.
What have I gotten myself into?
It was going to be hurting her brain to think so much about it, but she couldn't care less about it.
Still smiling, Y/n returned to her work, now trying to stop focusing on him and start doing the thing she was actually here for.
It's going to be a long day.
•○🌑○•
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#acotar#lucien x reader#acotar fanfic#mating bond#a court of thorns and roses#lucien fluff#acotar fandom#acotar series#fluff#lucien fic#sarah j maas#acotar headcanon#acotar writing#acotar fluff#acotar x reader#reader insert#lucien vanserra#lucien acotar#pro lucien vanserra#lucien#Lucien fanfic#lucien vandaddy#pro lucien
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(rated m for mature)
Ava’s room is the last sacred space in their apartment. A room that belongs to Ava, and Ava only. The living room is shared space, of course. Their breakfast bar holds both of their tea mugs: Ava’s in the shape of a bulldog holding a bone, her own a dark gray and white plaid pattern. The bathroom has a small stand with both of their toothbrushes and two face cloths on small hooks, one on each side of the sink. The face of the kitchen refrigerator is littered with pictures and ticket stubs and small post-it-note drawings they’ve both accumulated over the last few months.
We exist, Beatrice, Ava likes to tell her. If we died and someone came to pack us up, they would know we both existed here.
It’s a morbid thought, but it rotates in her mind for days afterwards. They exist. They exist together, in this shared space. There’s two of everything - a testament to a life shared between two people who found comfort in each other. Who found a home. Their shoes are by the front door, their bills are on the counter, their sweaters tangle into knots on the couch where they dare cross the line Beatrice has drawn between them.
Ava’s room is a line. She doesn’t cross it. She lets their shared existence fill every corner of the apartment except for Ava’s bedroom. She’s never crossed the threshold. Even on the day Ava moved in, she dutifully passed her boxes from the living room, marveling at the idea that one person who existed in a single dorm room for a handful of months could accumulate so many things.
She’s not sure that Ava even noticed. If she did, she didn’t say anything about it. Because she’s kind and takes Beatrice’s actions into consideration with the sort of care no one else in her life has ever shown.
But that’s par for the course. Ava is unlike anyone else in her life.
It’s why Beatrice is so careful. She’s gotten used to having this unusual, perfect thing in her life. She’s gripping it tightly with two hands, firm enough to keep it in one place but soft enough that it doesn’t break. It took her years to learn that grip and only a month with Ava to master it in a whole new way.
She should know by now, after seven months, that being careful around Ava is never careful enough.
“Blue or green?” she hears Ava call from inside her room.
Beatrice sighs, resting her pencil tip against the page she’s taking notes on. “Ava.”
Ava’s head pops around the doorframe. She’s smiling in a way a younger Beatrice would have called dashing or roguish. It’s charming. Infuriatingly so. Ava knows it—has never forgotten it since the time Camila said it out loud one night when Ava convinced them to try roller skating at some wooden rink nearby. That smile is a weapon, a carefully drawn bow whose range Beatrice can never escape from.
“Blue or green?” she repeats.
“I’m afraid I need a bit of context, Ava.”
Beatrice resists the urge to rub tiredly at the space between her eyes. Finals week is upon them. She’s prepared - has been preparing all semester - but then her Early Christian Women’s professor gave her some last minute feedback to restructure her entire research paper. It’s left her molded to the stool at the breakfast bar for the last three days, the entire top of it covered in color-coded index cards and texts she’s expressly forbid Ava from going anywhere near.
Ava pinky promised that she would listen. Beatrice would have accepted a confident “okay,” but Ava had taken it a step further, tightening her grip on Beatrice’s pinky and pulling her whole hand up to her mouth as Ava kissed her own fist, eyes on Beatrice the whole time.
“There. Now it’s really a promise.”
Beatrice thinks maybe she didn’t have enough friends growing up. Or that she didn’t have enough friends like Ava growing up. Because she’d never heard of this particular kind of promise. Shannon had made a face when Beatrice asked her about it. No, I’m not making fun of you, Shannon assured her. I just mean… Bea. Come on.
Beatrice does not come on, but the next time Ava makes her promise she won’t throw all her sources out the window and develop a list of new ones, she quickly presses her lips to the outside of her own hand, eyes darting to Ava’s face. Just as a test. Just to see if she’s doing this right.
She must have. Ava beamed for hours.
“Blue paint or green paint?” Ava expands.
“For what?”
Ava extends her arm past the doorway into Beatrice’s view. A small bucket of paint, hardly larger than a box of baking soda, dangles from her fingers.
She holds back the long-suffering sigh building in her chest. “Ava.”
“I’m painting my room.”
“You’re-” Beatrice turns, notecard on Thecla abandoned. “You’re painting your room?”
Ava frowns at her like she’s the one who just announced that she’s completing a home makeover project. “I told you this.”
“You didn’t.”
“I did.” Ava’s arm drops to her side, and she leans a little further around the doorway.
Beatrice shakes her head. “You most certainly did not. Because I would have remembered that.”
“You can’t remember everything I say.”
I do. The thought nearly makes its way to Beatrice’s tongue, but she bites it back. She certainly can’t admit that, though she thinks Ava would, if she was in her position. Ava has always been more free in her words, in her certainty.
“I would have remembered this,” she repeats.
Ava shakes her head. “I definitely told you I was doing this. I asked if you wanted to go pick out-”
Her forehead wrinkles into a frown that Beatrice immediately wants to smooth away. She can feel Ava’s skin under her fingertips, warm and soft. She blinks.
“Huh. Maybe I mentioned it to Mary, now that I think about it.” Her face brightens without Beatrice’s help. “I guess I’m telling you now.”
“You can’t- You can’t paint your room.”
Ava nods like she understands. “I can’t paint it alone, no. I’ll need help. Oh! A paint party!”
“No, I mean-” Beatrice takes a deep breath. “We would lose our security deposit if you paint the walls. It’s in our rental agreement.”
That doesn’t seem to bother Ava. “We can just paint it back when we move out. Or if we never do, then no one will ever know.”
If we never do. The words are like a lightning bolt in her chest. If we never do implies that Ava has thought about living with her indefinitely. That Ava has considered the possibility of a future where they're still in each other’s lives, where they’re still living in this same apartment doing the same things together. Movie nights and take out and reading while Ava watches something on TV, and talking about the few hours they spent apart and deciding where to take weekend trips and what new household decoration Ava is going to talk her into.
Their life in shared spaces, for everyone who visits to see.
Forever roommates.
The thought is too overwhelming for her to breathe properly.
“So, will you help me pick a color?” Ava continues on as if Beatrice isn’t slowly burning from the inside out. “I’m thinking green. Blue seems more like your color. Hey! We can paint your room next.”
Beatrice shakes her head. “Ava, no.”
Ava either doesn’t hear her, or pays her no mind. “I got this cool mint color. It looks like mint chocolate chip ice cream!”
“Mint,” she repeats, voice strangled.
Ava beams. “It looks like our toothpaste.”
Dread washes over her, as cold as ice cream out of the freezer against her tongue. Their toothpaste is a frightfully minty green color that always catches Beatrice off guard no matter how many times a day she’s brushed her teeth, even after the ;five months since Ava started buying it. It’s a sickly green, almost. Certainly not something that should be on a wall, let alone four of them. Ava’s room would glow, practically radioactive.
“No,” she insists. “Not that color.”
“Come see it. Then you’ll understand.”
She moves without meaning to, without giving much thought to it. Ava calls like a siren, and she swims out to meet her. She gets as far as the couch before the water comes up to her chin and she stops again.
“I don’t think you should paint your room.”
Ava waves away her concern. “It’ll be fine. The whole room is just so… white. We need a little color in our lives, Bea. A little bit of… spice.”
“A little bit of spice.”
“You know. Excitement.” Ava is firmly in the doorway now, paint can hanging at her side. “We can’t live with white walls forever.”
Why not? she wants to ask. She grew up with white walls. Pristine ones. Washed down every week by their housekeeper. Sanitized. She pauses. Ava might have a point.
But their landlord would not approve of it. And Beatrice intends to stick by the rules. She opens her mouth to say so, but Ava cuts her off.
“Come here. Just have a look.” She pads forward on bare feet and curls her fingers around Beatrice’s wrist, tugging her forward gently enough that Beatrice could step back, break their connection if she needed to.
She doesn’t. Not yet.
But she gets closer and closer to Ava’s doorway, to the raised threshold that separates her from this last sacred space. Ava is stepping back over it, eyes on Beatrice, and then her toes are bumping against it and she stops. Their arms stretch between them for a moment before Ava catches up and steps forward so they hang loosely again.
Ava waits for her. Always waiting for her. It’s not fair, she thinks. It’s not fair that she’s always waiting for me.
“So, I have something to admit,” Ava says slowly, pulling her out of her head. She’s smiling sheepishly, her head ducked a little as she searches Beatrice’s face. “I might have already painted a few swatches on the wall.”
“Ava.”
“Just a few,” she rushes on. “Small ones. Like, the size of a book. A small one! I’m sorry, I just wanted to see what they looked like.” She strokes her thumb over Beatrice’s wrist. “The mint kind of looks horrible,” she admits.
Beatrice fights that never-ending sigh again. “Of course it does.”
“But the other green looks good! It’s kind of turquoise-y, actually.” Ava’s forehead wrinkles into a frown that lingers for just a second. “Greener than a normal turquoise, though. Almost like the sea. Like - okay, just look.”
Ava’s hand falls away, and she takes a step back into her room. She’s looking at the wall, eyes moving quickly over what Beatrice assumes is the paint swatches she’s done there.
She eases her weight onto the ball of her foot. The floorboard creaks under it. Ava is still looking at the wall, still studying her choices. Beatrice feels a ripple of fear race through her. It’s just a room. Their apartment is made up of rooms. But it’s Ava’s room. Opening this door, crossing this line - she’s not sure she can come back from that.
Ava meets her eyes again and tips her head in that effortlessly endearing way, a soft smile on her face that immediately ebbs the fear away. Ava crooks a finger in her direction, beckoning her forward. It’s like a piece of string loops its way around Beatrice’s wrist and it pulls.
“You’re going to like the turquoise,” Ava says just quietly enough for Beatrice to hear. Another siren’s call.
She’s a strong swimmer. She can survive this. Her toes brush the raised threshold, and then they’re curled over the other side of it as her shoulders breach the doorway. The air shifts. She feels a little lightheaded. The lights seem dimmed, lowered. She holds her breath and waits for God to strike her down, and when nothing happens, she silently exhales a thin stream of air.
She doesn’t go further than that. Her body doesn’t seem to want to move past the invisible line that goes from the ceiling down directly to the floor. Her eyes immediately go to the wall Ava was looking at.
She was correct. The mint looks horrible.
“I know,” Ava says, reading her mind. “It looked a lot better at the store. Maybe it’s the light?”
It takes Beatrice a minute to reply, almost as if the words were a trade for tipping forward into Ava’s room. “I don’t think different lighting is going to help this.”
Ava studies it for another moment before she nods decisively. “You’re right. But what about this green-turquoise?” She moves and touches her finger to the wall. It comes back with a sticky greenish color. She frowns at it. “Huh. Thought it’d dry.”
“I like it,” Beatrice allows. “But Ava-”
“I promise we’ll paint it back. I just…” Ava stops, running a hand through her hair. She leaves behind a smudge of turquoise on her forehead, disappearing into her hair. “It’ll be easy to paint back. Please, Bea?” She clasps her hand in front of her, holding them to her chest. “Pleeeease?”
They both realize she’s going to give in at the same moment. Beatrice didn’t think she had any tells, has always prided herself on being someone fully in control of their actions, emotions, and facial expressions. Lessons learned from her parents that she actually appreciated. Expressive got you in trouble, gave too much away. She spent years tightening up to prevent anyone from knowing too much.
Ava does not carry the same burden. And Ava, it appears, has learned to recognize when Beatrice is on the cusp of expressing too much, of giving in. Maybe she’s giving it away in the quick pull of the corner of her mouth. Maybe there’s something in her eyes, a flicker of acceptance. Maybe she clenches her hand into a fist, a small flex of her muscles. Maybe she shifts her weight. Maybe she blinks too many times.
Whatever it is, Ava sees it in her. And she grins, the light in the room becoming impossibly brighter.
“I want nothing to do with this,” is what she decides to say.
Ava claps her hands together. “You won’t regret this.”
“I’m sure I will.”
It doesn’t dim Ava’s smile. “When I’m done, you’ll see how much it brings this place to life. And then we talk about your room. And the living room! Oh, and wouldn’t the kitchen look so great if we painted it some kind of blue? I saw a swatch at the store that looked exactly like the water in the Blue Grotto. I want to go there one day. I always thought it would look-”
Beatrice steps back. Something that was fizzling inside of her fades, though she didn’t know it was there until she felt its absence. Ava is still going on – the bathroom would look good in pink. With black and white tiles on the floor – but Beatrice feels a sense of calm come over her, and she takes her first deep breath since she crossed the threshold.
Ava stops. “I’m getting ahead of myself,” she says sheepishly.
“It’s okay.” And it is. Beatrice doesn’t mind getting swept up in Ava’s elaborate plans. “But I’m going to go back to my homework.”
Ava flashes her a thumbs up. Her finger is still stained turquoise. “Okay. But you’re not studying for too long. We can’t have a repeat of this weekend.”
Beatrice feels her face flush. “I swore I went to bed.”
“You did. Standing in front of the refrigerator. I thought you were going to fall over.”
“I’m very disciplined.”
Ava grins. “Well, put a cap on studying tonight. When I’m done with the first coat, we’re going to get something to eat.”
She pretends to be annoyed by this, just because she likes the way Ava narrows her eyes playfully and shakes a finger at her. She’s not disappointed when Ava does exactly that before turning back to the stool she stole from the kitchen where she’s stacked two small paint cans, one open and one closed, and a paint roller.
Crossing the room back towards her homework is easier than going the distance from it to Ava’s room. She feels lighter with each step. She sits back down, her intention to focus on this paper she’s supposed to submit in two days (but feels nowhere near completion). Work, then break. As long as she works for the next hour, at least, then she can offer to buy Ava Indian food and ask her to watch a documentary about a filmmaker befriending an octopus. Cedrick, in her Study of Film elective, had suggested it to her. She doesn’t think it’ll be hard; Ava has said more than once that she thinks octopi are cute.
But as thoughts of Ava and octopi float in her head, some of the words Ava just mentioned start to register in Beatrice’ brain. Ava never mentioned the Blue Grotto before. They’re inching closer to the end of the school year and she doesn’t know Ava’s plans yet. Does she want to go backpacking across Europe? Alone? Will Beatrice have to haunt the corners of the apartment waiting for her to come back? Will Ava be different when she comes back? Will she forget about Beatrice?
Will she find a new forever-roommate in another city and leave Beatrice on her own?
Her homework is suddenly the furthest thing from her mind. She can’t focus on Eve or Thecla or their impact on the religious narrative. She can only think about the possibility of spending the summer alone - Mary and Shannon are going on a graduation trip across Spain, and Camila secured a summer internship with a tech startup company, and even Lilith found a program that allows her to travel for the few months before the start of the fall semester.
Beatrice’s big plan is to work at the campus library, splitting her time between shelving books, starting her graduation capstone project, and Ava. The practical side of her knows she should try to make that time an even three-way split, but the more she thinks about the coming months, the more adventures she keeps coming up with in her head. Things she wants to do and try with Ava, because she knows it’s on Ava’s list. They could visit the Prado Museum. Take a long weekend and travel to some seaside town where Ava could practice swimming in the waves. They could find new restaurants and new hiking trails. She’d even let Ava convince her to try roller skating. Again.
Beatrice hasn’t told her yet, but she has the whole summer mapped out. And Ava is embedded into every bullet point of that. It just hadn’t occurred to her that Ava might have her own plans. Ones that didn’t include Beatrice.
“Ow!”
Beatrice’s head snaps up. The sudden noise is followed by a heavy thud, thud and a rattle as something hits the floor. She’s up and moving before she has time to second guess herself, crossing the apartment in long strides until she’s reaching Ava’s room.
She crosses the threshold in a breath, suddenly plunged into the smell of paint and the sight of the bright lights Ava has rigged up in the center of the room. It nearly blinds her and she quickly looks at the ground.
Ava is lying on the thick, plush navy rug at the bottom of the bed, body curled in on itself as she clutches her foot. A small unopened can of paint is rolling slowly away from her towards the corner of the room. Ava groans loudly and turns her face into the rug as her whole body expands with a breath.
Beatrice drops to her knees, ignoring the dull ache that rockets up her thighs into her hips. She grabs Ava’s shoulders, turning her onto her back as her eyes scan Ava’s face for any blood or bruises. Her hands follow the same path, tucking Ava’s hair behind her ear and trailing her thumbs across the flat of Ava’s cheeks.
“What happened? Are you hurt?”
Ava’s eyes flutter closed, and Beatrice immediately becomes concerned about a concussion. Her fingers slide to the base of Ava’s head, and she applies a little pressure to tip it back. Ava’s still blinking up at her but as the light reflects against the honeyed color of her irises her pupils shrink. Beatrice heaves a relieved sigh. No concussion.
“Bea,” Ava groans again. She turns her face into Beatrice’s palm. “I think I broke it.”
Beatrice’s hands fall from Ava’s face and skim down her shoulders to her elbows, cupping them gently. “Let me see,” she says softly.
Ava shakes her head. “Just leave me behind.”
A rush of fondness ripples through her. She presses her fingertips into Ava’s bare arms, the sleeves of her This may be cheesy but I feel grate t-shirt brushing against the backs of Beatrice’s knuckles. “Ava,” she urges.
“No, it’s too horrible.” Ava’s grip tightens on her foot and she immediately winces.
Beatrice slides her hands down to Ava’s slowly. She curls her fingers into the spaces between Ava’s and her foot, pushing them back until she has enough room to free Ava’s foot from its self-imposed prison. There’s a bruise already forming at the base of her toes on the top of her foot, blooming across the first three toes. She ghosts her thumb across it and Ava flinches slightly.
Beatrice’s lips purse into a frown. “I’m sorry.”
“S’okay.” Ava rolls completely onto her back, staring up at Beatrice. She’s still blinking rapidly and Beatrice is worried about a delayed concussion now.
“I think you’ve bruised it.” She presses down, gentler this time. Ava draws in a breath but doesn’t flinch away. “I don’t think anything is broken.”
Her hand drifts higher, curling around Ava’s ankle bone. It’s delicate under her fingers, the point rounded. Her other hand, still resting on Ava’s foot, goes to her other shin. There’s nothing but an expanse of smooth and warm skin under her palm.
“Good,” Ava says faintly. Her eyes go to Beatrice’s hand, lingering.
Beatrice’s eyes follow. Oh. She quickly pulls her hands away, cheeks suddenly hot.
“I didn’t mean to-”
“You don’t have to-”
They both pause, staring at each other. The air feels electric, goosebumps running up Beatrice’s arms. Her chest feels tight with unspoken words. She looks away first.
Ava’s hand on her own pulls her eyes back around. She looks at Beatrice for a long moment before she smiles a little. There’s something on her face that Beatrice can’t read, but it settles the rising tide of fear in her chest and she feels it ebb away into nothingness.
It’s not unusual, the sense of calm that comes with a simple look from Ava. It’s a peace that feels second nature now. It’s odd how seven months with Ava has untied almost all the knots her life created. Seven months isn’t very long - a blip on the radar, really. She’s had the same study group for longer than that. But these seven months have felt so monumental that it seems to have lasted years.
But Ava is monumental, so really, it does make sense.
Still. Her hands got ahead of her head. She touched before she thought, and now she’s kneeling on Ava’s floor with her hands hovering between their bodies, and Ava’s eyes are even more honey-colored than usual. The lights reflecting off the white walls makes her feel like she’s under a spotlight on a stage where everyone can see her, here in Ava’s room.
In Ava’s room, across the threshold. Completely across it.
A line she hasn’t crossed, a step she hasn’t taken. The room rushes in on her suddenly. She’s hyper aware of the faint chemical smell of paint, the too-bright lights, the rough fibers of the rug against her bare ankles, the way Ava’s laundry seems to be crawling out of the basket in the corner.
“I’m-”
“Don’t apologize.”
“I didn’t mean-”
“Bea.”
“I’ll just-”
“Beatrice.”
Beatrice blinks. Ava’s hand has turned over in hers, her palm up. “Yes?”
“Help me up?”
Beatrice blinks again. “Oh. Yes.” She shifts back onto her heels and grabs Ava’s wrist, fingers spread to distribute her grasp so she doesn’t pull Ava’s wrist off her arm, and gently leads her forward. She wobbles as she rises, leaning into Beatrice for support, and Beatrice quickly winds an arm around her waist to steady her as she stands. They’re so close that Beatrice can feel the way Ava is breathing, the push of her ribs against Beatrice’s hand. She helps her to the bed carefully, cautious of the paint around them, and sits her down gently.
There’s more turquoise paint along her forehead, and dried paint on her fingers, and Beatrice wants to find a clean washcloth, wet it, and gently wash it away. She does the next best thing.
She picks up a rag next to the small container of water Ava must be using to clean the brushes and dips the corner into it, wetting it. She hands it to Ava and waits as she rubs furiously at her finger, washing the paint away.
“What happened?”
Ava sighs, eyes narrowing as she looks at the unopened paint can on the ground. It’s rolled across her room away from them. Luckily, the open can remains in place on the stool, the paintbrush hanging precariously on the edge of it.
“I went to reach for the paintbrush and knocked it off. Freaking thing landed on my foot. Obviously.”
Beatrice’s free hand goes to Ava’s foot. Her thumb sweeps across the bruise. Ava’s fingers flex against the back of Beatrice’s forearms. “You are lucky it didn’t break anything.”
Ava shudders. “Manuel, one of the guys on my floor when I lived in the dorms, he broke his foot the first month in. He had to wear a big walking boot for weeks. It was so ugly.”
“It would hardly go with your outfits,” Beatrice agrees.
“How would I even get my jeans on?” Ava frowns thoughtfully. “I’d have to walk around in my underwear all day.”
Beatrice nearly chokes on a cough, but she swallows it back down, uncomfortable in her throat. “I think… I think you could remove it to put your clothes on,” she says, her voice too light to be her own.
Ava’s face flushes unusually. “Oh, right. Of course.” She starts to smile wickedly. “Don’t want me walking around in my underwear, of course.”
Beatrice doesn’t quite hide her blush like she hid her cough. Because she has envisioned Ava walking around in her underwear before, just with one of Beatrice’s big sweaters dusting her thighs and coming down over her hands. She quickly blinks, turning the image to black in her mind. It was a passing thought, just once. She never had it again. It was unfair to Ava to even begin to form that picture in her mind. It flashes in her head like a bang now and she tightens her grip on Ava’s wrist, suddenly aware she’s still holding on.
She goes for a strangled joke. “It would prevent Lilith from coming over.”
It was the wrong thing to say. Ava latches onto it. Her eyes light up. “Consider it done.”
Beatrice immediately concerns herself with something else. Ava’s foot.
“Let me get you some ice,” she says. Her voice doesn’t waver this time. Shannon, if she knew about this, would be proud. She’d praise Beatrice’s restraint, call it admirable.
Shannon would also probably tell her that she should do something that would completely change the trajectory of her friendship with Ava. So maybe the Shannon in her mind should be a little quieter.
“I don’t think I need ice.”
Beatrice looks down at the bruise, darker now, and then gives Ava a pointed look. It has the desired effect. Ava’s cheeks pinken and she smiles sheepishly. Beatrice nods, assured in her success, and carefully extracts her hands from Ava’s foot, standing.
“I’ll be right back,” she promises. “Don’t forget the paint on your forehead”
Ava carefully taps her foot, higher than the bruise. “Not going anywhere.”
Beatrice could argue that Ava could go somewhere. It’s not broken. It’s uncomfortable, of course. She once flexed her foot at the wrong moment and kicked a pine board toes-first. The bruise remained for weeks and the slight limp from accommodating the pain had lasted a little longer than that.
But Ava wipes her forehead carelessly and falls back onto her bed, hands hanging over each side of the bed in a T-shape as her legs dangle off the end. Her shirt rides up her flat stomach revealing a sliver of skin Beatrice wants to run her fingernail over. Ava’s eyes are closed, head tipped back just enough for her chin to lift up, exposing the long unbroken line of her neck.
Beatrice looks away before another thought rushes unbidden into her mind. Her cheeks burn.
“I’ll be right back,” she repeats, unnecessarily. Ava hums on the bed.
She doesn’t linger, striding out of the room and across the apartment. She opens the freezer, welcoming the blast of cold air against her face. She takes a moment, almost forgetting why she’s standing there. But Ava calls her name from the bedroom, and Beatrice remembers quickly. The ice maker hasn’t worked in a few weeks - she makes a mental note to have Mary look at it before she calls her landlord - but Ava only found that as an excuse to buy increasingly ridiculous ice cube trays.
It takes her a minute to decide between ice cube shapes. Ava went a little crazy online, buying shark fin-shaped ones, brain-shaped ones, ones shaped like ice monsters and another set shaped like centipedes. Beatrice decides on ones shaped like rubber ducks, twisting the silicone tray so they pop out. She wraps them in a cloth quickly so her hands don’t get too cold.
Crossing the room feels like a walk she’s made a hundred times before. She knows in her mind that it’s only been twice but now that she’s opened the flood gate, her feet move her without thought. Past the books and notes she’s abandoned, the armchair, the couch. She pauses just before Ava’s bedroom, toes against the threshold.
She crosses it as easily as she exhales.
Ava is still laying on her back, an approximation of a cross as she rests with her eyes closed. Beatrice watches her chest rise and fall as she breathes in and out evenly. There’s a beauty in simplicity, she’s always thought so. Ava only strengthens that.
“Ice,” she says quietly, unsure of why she doesn’t want to say anything at all. She doesn’t want to break this moment, startle Ava and ruin the weightlessness of it.
Ava cracks one eye open, a half-smile on her face. “You’re back.”
Beatrice holds out the ice. Ava crooks a finger at her, beckoning her closer. She hesitates. Ava pushes up, resting on her elbows now.
“I think we’ve established that I don’t bite.” That smile turns wicked again. “Unless you ask nicely.”
Her fingers clench around the ice, and she feels the cold bite at her skin. But she stays still, not giving anything else away.
Ava sits up, foot dangling over the end of the bed. She rests her palms flat against the comforter before she pushes up and stands. She puts her weight down on her foot and her leg buckles almost instantly.
Beatrice doesn’t think, arms looping tightly around Ava’s waist and pulling up her. Her fingers slide into the dips of Ava’s back, the ice trapped between one of her palms and Ava’s skin. Her feet tangle with Ava’s. Their hips are nearly pressed together, almost no space between them. Ava exhales in a noisy rush, lips twisted in a grimace. Beatrice feels the hot air against her collarbone.
“Are you okay?”
Ava tilts her head back slightly. “Would you believe me if I said yes?”
Beatrice’s mouth flickers in a smile. “No.”
“Then we’ll just assume the answer.” Ava’s hands are wrapped tightly around her elbows and her fingers flex against the back of Beatrice’s arms. “Wow. Do you work out?”
“You know that I do.” She keeps her voice light.
Ava’s fingers dance further up her arms, under the hem of her sleeve. She squeezes again, gently. “Yeah, well knowing you do, seeing you do it, and feeling its effects are three very different things.”
Her fingers are maddening, burning hot against Beatrice’s skin. Ava rubs her thumb in a small circle over her bicep.
“Really, Bea. You could probably crush an egg with these things.”
She frowns. “Why would I want to crush an egg?”
“Well, it’d be a way to spice up breakfast.” She presses gently, dimpling the skin. “And a killer party trick.”
Beatrice fights a shiver despite the way her skin feels like it’s burning. “I don’t go to parties.”
But that’s a lie. She does when Ava invites her. She thinks of the party they went to, the spinning disco lights and the way Ava’s body pressed against hers in the hot swell of sweaty, drunken students. She thinks of Ava slumped over on their couch later, saying she’d wait for Beatrice.
That voice that sounds just like Shannon’s whispers that it means exactly what Beatrice hopes it means. She’s never been good at telling Shannon to stop, but this is easy enough to sweep under the mental rug so it remains unknown and unseen.
Truth unknown and unseen is still truth, Shannon has said before. I read that on Pintrest.
Beatrice shakes the memory from her mind and focuses on the facts in front of her: Ava. Ava, close enough to breathe in. Close enough that Beatrice could eliminate the mere inches between them and-
“I bet you’d go to more parties if you had a party trick,” Ava interrupts.
“I doubt it.” But Ava is grinning and Beatrice can’t help but smile back. “But I’m sure you could convince Mary to give it a try.”
“I mean, Mary has decent biceps, but I don’t think she could crack an egg.”
Beatrice shakes her head. “Why an egg? Why not, I don’t know. A walnut.”
“A walnut. These are good goals.” Ava squeezes Beatrice’s bicep once more to emphasize her words. “Let’s start with an egg and work our way to something more advanced.”
The flex of Ava’s fingers against her skin pulls her from her next thought. It’s not that she didn’t notice the lack of space between them, it’s just that it’s rushing in on her now. It’s dizzying, the way Ava is standing so close. Beatrice tries to breathe in, but her chest pushes out until it nearly brushes Ava’s and she’s sucking all the air back into her lungs just as quickly.
Ava notices, eyes dropping down past Beatrice’s chin and neck before they dart up again, crinkling at the corners. She takes a step back, dropping to the bed again, the ice in her hand. She pulls one leg up under her, chin resting on her knee as she puts the ice against her bruising foot.
Beatrice blinks, oddly cool air rushing in where Ava’s body had been despite the humid air of their apartment as the spring pushes towards the hot summer. “You’ll need to ice that for a bit.”
Ava nods, adjusting the ice for a moment before she looks up and says, “So, first time?”
Beatrice frowns. “Administering first aid?”
“First time being in here. Properly, I mean.” Ava looks around, throwing one arm wide. “What do you think?”
Beatrice takes stock of her situation. It’s technically her third time being in here, but Ava is right. She’s in here properly now. Not just over the threshold or charging through barriers because Ava’s been injured. She crossed the line intentionally this time. And she remains, the walls of Ava’s room coming at her from each side without boxing her in.
Ava’s laundry flows from the hamper. Her bed isn’t quite made, but isn’t quite a mess. There are books stacked on the desk in a way that tells Beatrice Ava hasn’t opened them in some time. Hobbes sits next to them. A series of pictures is on the wall opposite her desk, ones of her and Ava and the rest of their friends. Beatrice’s eyes catalog each inch, committing it to memory in a place where she knows she’s going to see it for a very long time.
“You’re missing the best part,” Ava says. Her voice is quiet, like she’s afraid to startle Beatrice. She waits until Beatrice looks before she points upward.
Beatrice’s eyes follow the imaginary thread from Ava’s fingertip to the ceiling. She nearly gasps.
White-green stars dot the ceiling, filling all the space. Spider web-thin lines connect some of them, forming constellations she recognizes from the pictures Ava has shown her and the ones Ava has pointed out on rare nights when she can convince Beatrice to go out to the quad and lay on the grass to watch the night pass by. Some of them she doesn’t and she focuses on those ones, studying their shapes and trying to decide what they look like.
“Apus.” Ava’s finger moves, tracing the lines she’s drawn between the glow-in-the-dark stars. “We call it the Bird of Paradise. Derived from the Greek word apous, which means ‘footless’. There’s a story that birds of paradise were once believed to have been footless.”
“I don’t believe I know what a bird of paradise looks like,” she admits.
“My mom loved them. She’d never seen one in person, but she liked looking at pictures of them. They have these large plumes. They look so soft.” Ava sighs wistfully. “There was a nun, in the orphanage when I was first there, that called me a bird of paradise.” She pauses, eyes darting to Beatrice. “Because I was footless, you know? She reminded me of my mom. She didn’t stay long, but she was nice.”
Beatrice’s heart clenches as it always does when Ava talks about her past. But this is a softer ache, a longing to thank this woman who showed Ava a sliver of mercy.
“And that’s Grus, the crane,” Ava continues. “Originally, it was part of another constellation, Piscis Austrinus. But a Dutch astronomer defined it as its own separate constellation. Its brightest star is Al Na’ir. It’s Arabic for ‘bright one’ which feels a little on the nose.”
Beatrice studies its shape, noting the bigger star that Ava must have defined as Al Na’ir. “Why do you like this one?”
Ava thinks for a moment. “Did you know that cranes have the ability to fly over the Himalayas? They can. They can go as high as 8,000 meters. Imagine being that high up, feeling the wind in your hair.” She blinks, looking off towards the wall littered with paint swatches. “I spent so long tied to one place that the idea of being able to fly over a mountain, to graze the tip of it with a set of wings, sounded like a fairytale.”
Beatrice slides her hand over Ava’s, fingertips resting in the dips between her knuckles. “I think we could hike the Himalayas one day, if you wanted to.”
Ava looks down at their hands and blinks before her eyes meet Beatrice’s. “You think so?”
“I think you could do anything you want to do.”
Ava doesn’t blink this time, doesn’t even look away. “If I can do anything I want to do, I want to…” She pauses, tongue darting out to wet her bottom lip.
Beatrice waits, but the rest of Ava’s sentence doesn’t come. She clears her throat. “What do you-”
“Did you see that one?” Ava asks, interrupting her and pointing up at the ceiling.
Beatrice blinks, startled at the intensity of Ava’s voice. She searches Ava’s face but it’s unreadable, a mix of something Beatrice can’t quite put a name to. So she looks up helplessly, searching for what Ava is pointing at.
“That’s Drago.”
“The dragon,” Beatrice translates. “What’s his story?”
Ava shrugs. “He’s just fucking cool.”
A sharp laugh slips out from between her lips and Ava grins widely back at her.
“So, you like it, then.” Ava looks around her room and nods to herself. “It’s a pretty great room, isn’t it?”
“It’s very… Ava,” Beatrice allows. She’s smiling though, hoping that her words don’t sting.
“Isn’t that all I can hope for?” Ava sighs and turns her hand over so her palm presses against Beatrice’s. “But can I ask another question?”
When she breathes out, “anything”, she means it.
Ava hesitates still. “You never come in here,” she says slowly. “Why not?”
Something tightens in her chest. Words rise in her throat and she swallows them back down, a reflex more than anything else. Ava must notice something pass over her face or feel the way that Beatrice’s hand jumps in hers, because strong and warm fingers stroke up her wrist as they lock around the bone, keeping her anchored to the moment.
“You don’t have to answer that,” Ava rushes on. “I’m just… curious, I guess.” She smiles crookedly. “Does it smell in here?”
Yes. Like something deep and woodsy and so uniquely Ava.
Ava’s nose wrinkles. “Does it? Because if it does, I-”
“It doesn’t.” Beatrice’s voice is too loud. “It doesn’t,” she says, softer now.
Ava’s frown doesn’t smooth out. “Then… why?”
It’s not you, it’s me, her mind supplies. She doesn’t say that. She thinks about how to put it into words, how to unpack all the things she tidied away and put in a cedar chest, locking it tight. Nothing comes from it, just an empty explanation that won’t make sense if she says it out loud.
But Ava is her best friend. And if it doesn’t make sense, if the words don’t come out right, she’ll wait patiently for Beatrice to try again. She’ll sit here, one leg tucked up as ice melts through a washcloth and she’ll wait for Beatrice to find the right words.
I’d wait for you forever, Ava had said, lips loose with party punch. And Beatrice believed her.
Ava makes her brave. Brave enough not to make an offhand joke and turn the conversation back on the open can of paint and the paintbrush quickly drying out.
Instead, she clears her throat and straightens up, the first thing she does when an image of her parents enters her mind. And Ava doesn’t let go of her wrist, moving with her instead, ebbing and flowing with her seamlessly. Beatrice turns to face Ava, watching Ava mirror her, and she exhales out the tension building in her muscles.
“Bea, if you don’t want to-”
“I do.”
She does. Holding onto these things makes her feel heavy. And almost more than anything - but not more than wanting Ava - she wants to be lighter.
Ava shakes her head. “I’m serious.”
Beatrice grips Ava’s other hand, their arms tangled around each other. “I… I have to.”
“Okay,” Ava says softly. Her smile is the same. “Whatever you want to tell me, I want to hear.”
Ava isn’t always sledgehammer, she realizes. She thinks of her as a hammer, crashing into everything and leaving a wake of needed destruction in her wake. But Ava is also a set of picks, quietly and discreetly slipping into the lock around her. For all the stomping around she does, all the things she knocks over in her haste to get from one moment to the next, she’s also deft, hands built with finesse.
Beatrice tries to find the start. Was it Penelope Marshall? Was it the start of boarding school? Was it her parents finding her journal when she was thirteen? Was it all the time she spent with the diplomat’s daughter? Was it her fifth birthday when she cried because her parents bought her the dress with the pink frills instead of the bicycle she wanted?
“My parents…”
“I hate them.”
She doesn’t chide Ava for saying so. A deep, angry part of her hates her parents too. She smiles humorlessly. “They sent me to boarding school, as you know. When I was thirteen. Right at Christmas time. I remember it because it was my present that year. An ‘opportunity to further my education in an environment that would foster appropriate and lifelong lessons’,” she quotes. She can remember the brochure she’d been given unceremoniously, a smiling girl on the front. Even in print, Beatrice could see the hollow light in her eyes.
“Appropriate,” Ava scoffs. “Like anything they did was appropriate.”
Beatrice feels Ava’s pulse thunder under her fingers. “They said it would give me a framework for my life. Lucille Thomason had graduated from there a year before and she was going to Oxford, on her way to inheriting her mother’s social calendar. My mother always fawned over her at dinners. ‘Lucille is following the plans her mother set out for her. Lucille has accomplished so much at such a young age.’”
“Lucille sounds like a loser.”
“Lucille sounded exactly like the daughter my mother wanted.”
Ava frowns softly. “You know that you’re leagues above whoever Lucille is.”
“I didn’t think so,” she admits. “Lucille was someone to admire. Her achievements were something to strive for. She had something I so desperately wanted when I was younger: my mother’s approval. And so, when they presented the option-” She stops herself. “It wasn’t an option. But when they presented their plan, I reconciled myself with it by reminding myself that Lucille was leading a very successful life.”
“There’s more to life than success,” Ava says gently.
Beatrice smiles a little. “To you. To me. But to my parents, there is nothing more.” She takes a deep breath. “And if they were framing it as me taking an opportunity to lead a successful life, then they would forget about… the things they were discovering about me.”
Ava immediately tenses. The Beatrice she is now knows it for what it is: an attempt to contain her anger. The Beatrice she was months ago would have worried. Was Ava afraid of her? Was Ava disgusted by her? The thoughts had swirled that movie night. What if she did admit to a crush on Patricia Velasquez? Would this new person she wanted so badly to be around, without knowing why, suddenly change her mind once she found out the truth?
But Ava hadn’t. Ava won’t. Beatrice knows it with every fiber of her being. There are very few absolute truths in the world, but this is one of them.
“They read my journal, you know,” she continues. The words are coming out easily, this tiny fissure in her chest cracking open as Ava looks at her with wide and trusting eyes. “A new girl started school at the beginning of the term. Her name was Mina. Her father was in banking, I believe. She had the bluest eyes I had ever seen in my life.”
Ava scoffs lightly. “Blue eyes.”
She skims the pad of her thumb over Ava’s wrist. “One day, our hands brushed. It was something simple, innocent. She was passing me a paper, and we miscalculated the distance. I’m sure it meant nothing to her.”
“It meant something to you,” Ava guesses.
“I was thirteen. Everything meant something.” Beatrice sighs, feeling her chest rise and fall heavily. “And anything that meant something to me went into my journal. I just didn’t know that what went into my journal eventually landed in my parents’ hands.”
“So those bastards went through your private journal and read about some girl who touched your hand,” Ava hisses. “I swear, the minute I meet them, it’s fist to face. They don’t call me The Piraya for nothing, you know.”
“No one calls you that.”
“They might call me that, you don’t know. I have a whole superhero persona you don’t know about.” Ava puffs out her chest a little bit.
“The name Piraya implies you’re more of a villain than a superhero.”
“I’m a villain’s villain. How’s that?”
The trickle of despair of dragging this up again fades as Ava’s smile widens. She knows what Ava is doing. But she doesn’t stop her, grateful for the brevity and the way it makes her feel like she’s grounded in something, not floating listlessly and endlessly in her terrible memories.
“I mean it.” Ava’s voice drops, low and serious. “I’ll be their worst nightmare.”
“I’m afraid that role is already taken,” she says quietly. “Though, I don’t think they intended for it to be their daughter.” She sighs. She used to be her mother’s doll. But once she started moving her own parts, she found herself moving in the opposite direction.
“Bea,” Ava whispers. She tightens her grip on Beatrice’s wrist.
“I remember I wrote that touching her hand was as if the heavens opened up and I finally understood what song the angels were singing. We were in the middle of a poetry unit, and I fancied myself quite good at it.” She lets out a dry chuckle. “When I found them in the kitchen one night holding onto my journal I foolishly thought they had found out I was reading Emily Dickenson instead of studying for my science exam.”
Beatrice remembers coming down the stairs, flushed with the late November cold. Mina had invited her for dinner the next night, and she promised to show Beatrice the new video game she got. Beatrice didn’t care about those kinds of things, but no one else had gotten an invitation to Mina’s. Beatrice felt special.
But her parents’ faces had stopped her in her tracks. She didn’t notice her journal at first. It was made to look discreet, not to stand out. It had blended into her mother’s dark skirt, and it wasn’t until her mother raised it into the air that she saw it for what it was.
They asked her to explain herself. She wasn’t sure what they wanted her to explain, not at first. She stumbled through an apology about delaying her studying; she’d do it immediately and ask her teacher for an extra take home lesson. She scrambled through a rushed explanation about having new friends meant more opportunities for networking. With new friends, she could join a new club. It would do well on her list of extracurriculars.
It wasn’t until her mother spit out the name Mina that she had any idea of what she was supposed to be afraid of.
“What did they say?” Ava asks gently.
“They didn’t have to say much. There were questions about who Mina was. My mother had a particular talent of making something that wasn’t a swear sound like it. And she hissed Mina’s name like it was the dirtiest word she could say.”
Beatrice thinks of Mina now. Where was she? What was she doing? Beatrice never heard from her after she left. No letters, no calls. She came and went in her life so quickly, it was as if Beatrice made her up. The only sign that she had been there was the page missing from her journal, returned to her the night before she left for school.
“They demanded to know what she had done to me. What had I done to her? I was so confused. She had touched my hand. I certainly hadn’t…” Beatrice’s chest hitches at the thought. “It was a fleeting moment, but I learned that fleeting moments were the most damaging ones. That,” she says dryly. “And that locks do nothing to keep a determined person out.”
“Locks are meant to keep people out,” Ava all but hisses. She sighs, working her fingers up Beatrice’s arm to her elbow. They rest in the dip of her arm, right over the thin vein under Beatrice’s skin. “God, Bea. I’m so sorry. They were - are - horrible. No one should have had to go through that. Especially not you.”
Especially not you, Ava says. Like Beatrice is better than anyone else. Like she should exist under different rules.
“Of course you’re afraid,” Ava says quietly, speaking to herself. She raises her voice, talking to Beatrice now. “Of course you’re worried about even - Jesus, Bea. Touching a girl’s hand?” She looks down as if she’s suddenly noticing how she’s knotted herself around Beatrice’s arm. She laughs dryly. “What would they say if they saw us now?”
Ava means what if they saw me comforting you? Not what if they saw how I touch you like nothing else matters?
The answer would be the same: her mother would simply set fire to the room.
The chasm is widening now. She’s cracked the seam on these memories, and her mind is cycling through the events that followed: a new suitcase set, pink with her name on an address tag; a set of starched uniforms that felt like coarse wool against her skin; a final meal in her parents’ formal dining room, the chef-of-the-week uncaring of her dislike for persimmons; a single plane ticket pressed into her hand and a dismissive nod as a car pulled away from the airport, leaving her alone.
She tells Ava this in stilted words, as if narrating someone else’s life. But then it starts to sink in, the anger. And it spreads in her belly, burning into a rage. She feels the moment the numbness transitions to an inferno. She hears herself exhale the word alone and something snaps.
“They had no right,” she says. Even through her anger, the words surprise her.
Ava’s voice sounds hoarse, unused. “They didn’t.”
“I was a child. Their child.” Her hand clenches tightly into a fist, Ava’s hand moving with the flex of her forearm muscle. “A ‘problem’ arose and they just…” She stops. “They strung me along until I was no longer of use to them.”
“You are not a problem.” Ava's voice is low, burning hot in the rapidly closing space between them, in a tone she’s never heard before.
Beatrice almost startles, confused. She had nearly forgotten that Ava was here, so consumed in her story. But now she’s noticing her.
Her eyes flash. The tops of her cheeks pinken slightly. She’s angry. Beatrice has seen her on more than one occasion get angry on her behalf. The mere thought of her parents seems to send her into a flurry, but the anger in her eyes now is nearly staggering.
“You’re not,” she says again, insistent to the point of almost desperation. “Beatrice, you are not a problem.”
And Beatrice, blinking, already falling, dives deeper into love with her.
-
Ava feels her cheeks go hot with a liquid anger that roils in her blood. She’s been angry before - angry at Bea’s parents, even. But this feels like pure molten rage. All of the pieces are slotting together: a young girl who just wanted to make her parents proud; who saw someone - touched someone so innocently - and felt the world shift; who didn’t understand why a cliff rose up between her and the people who were supposed to love her more than anything; who trusted so completely and had it thrown back in her face as if she was the one who somehow failed.
Ava’s fingers tighten until her fingernails cut deep half-moon shapes into her palm. She pulls the words out from between her teeth like nails scratching the floor.
“You are not a problem.”
Bea blinks. The broiling heat in her stomach softens its edge, replaced by the confusion in Bea’s eyes as she blinks again.
“You’re not,” Ava insists. She tugs Bea’s hand, pulling her closer until they’re pressed together, an almost-sweaty slide of the skin of their knees bumping together. Bea blinks a second time, mouth parting slightly. “Beatrice, you are not a problem.”
She needs Bea to believe her. She’s never needed anything more in her whole life. She could live without air. She could make it minutes without oxygen. But she can’t live with another second of Beatrice believing her parents’ poison.
She coaxes Bea another inch closer. “Do you hear me?”
Bea’s mouth parts further, something on the tip of her tongue. Ava squeezes Bea’s hand a little tighter. “Do you hear me?”
“I hear you,” Bea says faintly.
Ava isn’t satisfied. “You need to believe it. You’re not a problem. You’re-” She softens her grip, thumbs Bea’s wild pulse. “You’re-”
“Don’t say perfect,” Bea whispers, eyes slamming closed. “Please don’t say perfect.”
Ava hesitates. She was going to say perfect. She was going to say frustratingly perfect. But she can pivot. There are a million other things she can call Bea - courageous, intelligent, kind, beautiful. All things she’s told Bea before and all things she’d tell her a million times more.
“Human,” she lands on. Bea’s eyes open slowly. “You’re human, just like every single other person on this big rock orbiting in space. You live like everyone else. You laugh, you cry. You love, just like everyone else. And none of that- not who you are or who you love, or even the special little rules you have for tea that took me forever to learn - not a single part of you is a problem.”
The space between Bea’s eyes wrinkles in thought. Ava usually holds herself back, usually just wishes to press it flat gently. But the line between them is so thin now that she doesn’t think twice about it, reaching up and resting her thumb between her brows, pushing gently until the skin relaxes.
“Can I tell you a secret?” she asks in a whisper. Bea holds so many of her secrets, one more won’t hurt.
Bea nods slowly.
“When I first met you, I was so… intimidated.” Bea’s eyes widen slightly and Ava nods. “I was. You seemed so… cool. Composed. Not at all affected by someone who crashed into your table with the grace of a… what did you call it?”
“A newborn foal,” Bea says lightly.
Ava grins, her smile widening when some of it reflects in Bea’s face. “A newborn foal. That’s a giraffe, right?” She doesn’t wait to be corrected. “I thought, I need to know who this is and I need to know everything about her right now or I’m going to combust.”
Bea rolls her eyes, the motion of her eyes disrupting Ava’s thumb, still on her forehead. She doesn’t drop her hand, being bold and dragging the blunt ends of her fingernails against the smooth skin just above Bea’s eyebrow.
“You’re very dramatic.”
“Did I pretend to be anything else?” Ava shakes her head when Bea opens her mouth. “Don’t answer that. Just know.” She sobers, breathing in and exhaling the most truthful thing she thinks she’s ever said in her life. “The minute I met you, I knew you were something spectacular. I knew you were going to change my life.”
A weight hangs between them now. Bea looks shy under it, her head ducking slightly. Ava’s fingers slip, nearly burying into Bea’s hair. She drops her hand back into her lap but curls it over Bea’s, not quite wanting to let go yet.
“Can I tell you a secret now?” Bea asks, eyes still on the space between them.
Ava nods without being seen. “Anything.”
“I never really felt like that.”
“Like what?” Ava frowns. “Spectacular?”
“Human.” Bea looks up. “I spent so long feeling like… an other. That feeling like a human just didn’t… I couldn’t make sense of that. It took some time.”
Ava smiles gently. “But you got there.”
“After-” Bea stops herself, pulling her lips in as if she’s trying to keep something from erupting out. Ava watches the thin stream of air work its way through her nose, and catches the slight shine of Bea’s eyes, the way they seem to sparkle as unshed tears fill them.
“Hey,” she says softly. “No. No, don’t cry.” She drops Bea’s hands, cupping Bea’s face. Her thumbs brush along the flats of Bea’s cheeks. “I don’t know what to do when pretty girls cry,” she admits.
Bea laughs, choked and watery. “Neither do I. But it never stops me from telling you that Lilith doesn’t actually hate you no matter how much of her fancy vodka you drink.”
“One time,” Ava mutters, lips pulled back in a smile as she pretends to be annoyed.
It works. Bea’s smile seems a little stronger. “Ava,” she says quietly.
Ava strokes down a line of freckles absentmindedly. “Yeah?”
“Can I tell you another secret?”
“You can tell me you’re responsible for bringing down the Vatican, for all I care.”
Bea doesn’t laugh, worrying her bottom lip between her teeth instead. Ava wants to press down against the smooth skin but she stops herself before her thumb drifts that low. That perfect, soft-looking skin, a breath away. She focuses, pulling herself back into the moment.
Bea’s voice is nearly a whisper when she says, “Someone thought I was spectacular once.”
“Just once?”
Another silence. Ava tightens her jaw. Listen, don’t talk. She can do that. She can be still. It’s something Bea has taught her - just be still. Just wait. It will come to you when you stay in one place. So, she’s been waiting, patient against every urge within her to jump up and down and scream.
Sometimes, these feelings for Bea are so big in her chest that she feels like she’s going to explode into a hundred stars. She pictures herself shattering as the unspoken words build in her until they can’t go anywhere but out. But Bea is something to wait for. Bea is someone Ava doesn’t mind standing still for. She knows it’s there. She knows the feelings aren’t just her and that Bea needs to find her way forward. Ava just needs to be the flashlight in the distance, waiting for Bea to find her.
“At least, I thought she thought I was spectacular,” Bea continues, almost as if she didn’t hear Ava. “She said- well, she said something close enough to it.”
Ava can feel another piece of the puzzle slotting into place. Another brick that makes up Bea’s nearly-impenetrable walls. For every one Ava manages to crack and loosen, another suddenly rises in its place. But she feels like this time, it falls and nothing slots into place.
She doesn’t stop herself from touching a freckle this time, tapping out a song she heard years ago before her hands drop again. “Was she pretty?”
She’s clumsy on a good day. Boisterous on others. But Bea is doing that thing again, learning how to run without knowing how to walk. And Ava is practicing. She’s trying so hard. She stays so still that Bea could almost imagine her gone.
“People are pretty in different ways,” Bea finally says. It’s a very diplomatic answer, something so very Bea that Ava breaks her stillness to smile. “All the other girls wanted to be her. I remember someone saying that her hair was so shiny, she must brush it a hundred times on each side before bed.”
Ava can’t help herself. “Is that why your hair is always so perfect? Are you secretly combing it until your wrist hurts?”
“A brush through wouldn’t kill you, Ava.”
“Speak for yourself.”
Bea’s growing smile flickers out. “I suppose it didn’t matter if she was conventionally pretty. I…” Ava watches the way she shores herself up against an invisible storm. “I thought she was beautiful.”
“What was her name?” she asks quietly.
“Penelope Marshall.” Bea says it like a prayer.
“Penelope.” Ava suddenly creates an image in her mind. A girl with wide brown eyes, bronze skin, a perfect smile of perfect teeth, a button nose, long and shiny hair.
Bea swallows and Ava feels the click of her jaw under her palms. “She was in my year, her room just down the hall from me. We were partners in Latin.”
“I bet she copied all her answers off your test.”
“Maybe once or twice,” she admits. “She certainly did not always do her homework on time. But Sister Magdalene liked her and simply turned a blind eye every so often.”
Bea’s cheeks are warming. Ava can see it in the way they pinken.
“It’s silly, but… I remember the first time she smiled at me. I had conjugated the verb, sum, to be, in the pluperfect subjunctive. She had been trying for the better part of an hour, but the switch from esse to fui for the tenses was always confusing to her.” Bea smiles slightly. “When I gave her the answer, she smiled at me and it felt like…”
“Like the world kind of tilted off its axis?”
Bea looks surprised. “Yes. Exactly that.”
“I’m familiar with the feeling.”
Because she is. So, so, deeply familiar with the feeling. The first time she saw Bea, that first smile she got as she bumbled her way through cleaning up the few drops of tea that spilled, the world went sideways and it hasn’t completely righted itself since.
“It’s peculiar, that feeling. It sticks with you, doesn’t it?” Bea looks down. “I used to dream about it,” she admits.
“That’s normal, Bea,” she says gently.
Bea looks up again. “Is it? Because it didn’t feel normal. It felt… other. Strange. Like a rock in the pit of my stomach. Penelope would touch my arm over our Latin text, and I could see my parents poring over my journal, looking for any otherness that might exist between us.”
“She made you happy, though.”
“I thought I made her happy as well.”
Ava doesn’t need Bea to tell her the rest. She can imagine how it went: touches as they broke down a dead language, sitting with their shoulders brushing at meals, giggling as they studied in what Ava assumes must have been a massive and cold library. She can imagine the small strands of Bea’s hair slipping from her bun across her cheeks and Penelope pushing them back behind her ear with quick fingers.
Ava lets herself be selfish and do that same thing now. Bea’s face turns slightly into her hand. Not enough that she probably even notices.
“When did she kiss you?”
Bea looks surprised again and Ava’s hand falls away. “How did you-”
“A good guess,” she lies. Because she knows that having Bea there and not kissing her is God’s strongest battle. She has been a good soldier.
She’s not sure how much longer she can be good.
“A few months into the semester.” Bea’s voice goes taut. “She invited me to study for her biology test. On the recommendation of our teacher, she told me. I imagined it was a lie; she had the same grades as I did.” Her cheeks pinken. “We were reviewing the different biological features of various aquatic animals and she…”
“She kissed you over the cod?” Ava says, voice a little strangled.
Bea meets her eyes. “It was my first kiss. Everyone I knew had theirs already, but I thought that if this is what I was waiting for, it was worth it.”
“The best things are worth waiting for.”
“I’d read about whirlwind romances in novels. Girls in the dormitories talked about it. Boyfriends they had back home that they saw on holiday weekends. But it was nothing like kissing behind locked doors. It couldn’t be. No one else could be experiencing what I did. It was so uniquely ours. Do you know what I mean?”
She does. It means closed doors. It means secrets. Bea reads it on her face because she can see something close to shame bloom across Bea’s cheeks.
“It was just for us,” Bea confirms. “A secret not even my parents, kilometers away, would learn of.”
Ava has never been one for secrets. She doesn’t like the way they taste in her mouth. You’re keeping your own, a voice like Mary’s reminds her. But that secret isn’t really a secret, is it? Because Mary knows. And Shannon knows because Mary knows. And her favorite barista, Lucy, knows it. JC knows it. The belayer at the rock climbing place and the guy at the one party she dragged Bea to and Lilith and Camila - they all know.
Bea knows too. Ava feels the truth of that in every crevice of her heart. Bea knows. Bea isn’t going to do anything about it - she feels that truth too. But the list of people Ava is hiding this from is shorter than the list of people who know it.
“You loved her.”
Bea’s smile is sad, far away. “First kiss, first love. I was convinced we would graduate and run away together. She would lie in my bed propped up on one arm talking about Paris and Rome and the places we could travel as soon as we got away from school. I’d felt so futureless when I arrived, but now I could imagine a million possibilities.”
Ava thinks of making a joke. Something about Bea jet-setting across all of Europe with a pretty girl, exactly the kind of lifestyle she deserved. But she knows this story doesn’t have a happy ending.
“She told me she loved me. More than anyone she loved in her life. She said we were young, but it doesn’t matter. You just feel love louder, she would tell me. I…” Bea takes a deep breath. “Mina may have been the first girl to touch my hand, but Penelope…”
Bea goes quiet long enough that Ava nudges her hand gently. “She…”
Bea’s eyes clear a little. “She touched me in other places. In other ways.”
Ava guesses the next part of this story too. “You wanted to tell someone and she wanted you guys to stay a secret.”
Bea laughs, short and sharp. “I wish it had been that simple. I wish I had been enough to stay a secret. Instead… She must have learned my parents’ trick. When someone becomes unseemly, when it becomes ugly and unwelcome, you simply… strike it from the record. Forget it ever existed. Send it away to boarding school and hope for the best. Or-or pick a new Latin partner and create an ocean that feels uncrossable.”
“Bea,” Ava says quietly.
“I could have accepted it was all done. An ending. I’m sure I could have. But instead I was…” She shakes her head. “Have you ever had someone you thought you were in love with look at you and tell you that none of it mattered? That it was girls being girls and that whispered promises in the corners of classrooms were never more than just a game? A joke?”
“Bea.”
But Bea has a haunted look in her eyes, like she’s somewhere else than Ava’s bedroom with its overflowing laundry and rumpled comforter and the paint swatches on the wall. Ava imagines she’s back in a girls dormitory standing in front of a pretty girl who is cutting her down to bits.
“She told me that none of it was real. It was wrong. It was just something to do. She wasn’t like that,” Bea says, voice just as haunted. “She promised that she wouldn’t tell, because she didn’t want people to think there was anything wrong with her.” An empty laugh, sardonic and hollow in a way that Ava’s never heard, escapes Bea’s lips. “Don’t worry, she said, I wouldn’t want people to think there was something wrong with you, either. I suppose in some twisted way, she still cared.”
The thing about Ava is that she’s always capable of more than she thinks she is. They said she’d never walked; now she runs across campus after Mary. They said she’d never be smart enough to go to university; now she’s in the front row of all her classes, her scholarship enough to make sure she doesn’t need to worry about her degree. They said she’d never make friends; now she has six of them who make every single day something more than she ever hoped.
They said she’d never fall in love; now she has Bea.
And when she doesn’t think she can go a little further, push a little harder, she thinks of Sister Frances and the way she told Ava that she’d never be capable of anything.
But she’s capable of this: setting everyone on fire who ever hurt Bea.
Her anger unleashes like a wildfire, and it swells in her chest so brightly that for a moment she can’t breathe. She can’t see straight. She’s imagining Penelope again but all of the softness is gone and she’s a cutting monster knocking Bea to the ground. She tightens her hand into a fist so tightly that sharp pinpricks echo in her palm from her fingernails.
She doesn’t realize she’s nearly growling until Bea’s fingers are working hers apart, smoothing them flat.
“Ava, it’s alright.”
“It’s not.” Her voice sounds stretched thin. “She’s not.”
“She’s gone.”
“But she’s still here.” Ava shakes her head insistently. “She’s still stuck in here.” She presses a single finger over Bea’s heart. “She still has all this space to be cruel. And when I meet her - not if. I’m going to find her - I’m going to make her suffer. I’m going to-”
“You can’t go on a one-woman crusade because someone hurt my feelings.”
Ava stares. “Hurt your- Bea, she didn’t hurt your feelings. She broke them.”
Bea straightens up slightly. “I’m not broken.”
Ava softens instantly, like someone turning out a light. “No. No, you’re not Bea. Of course you aren’t. There’s nothing wrong with you.” She ducks her head, catches Bea’s eyes, and smiles a little. “You’re incredible. You are spectacular. I promise you that.”
Bea exhales. “I’m embarrassed to say someone had such a hold on me.”
“That’s not embarrassing. That’s human.” Ava raises a cautious hand to Bea’s cheek again. “That’s wonderfully, perfectly human.”
“She just…” Bea takes a deep breath. Ava’s hand slips to her jawline. “My whole world ended in a single minute. Everything I did after that felt… fraught. I couldn’t trust her, couldn’t trust anything anymore. I was constantly looking over my shoulder, wondering if she was going to change her mind and tell someone how different, how terrible I was. She made me… nervous.”
She made me… nervous, Ava thinks.
Ava feels the soft skin between her eyes wrinkle as she works the words over in her mind. Of course Penelope made Bea nervous. Of course she made Bea doubt everything - every friendship, every interaction. Of course she held so much power over the way Bea engaged in the world. Of course she-
Oh.
Bea, who doesn’t linger too long when she’s looking at Ava. Bea, whose cheeks go pink when Ava dusts a hand down her bare shoulder. Beatrice, who is always the gentleman, always the one to hold back when they seem to be teetering on this invisible line of why aren’t we.
Of course Bea is going to be scared of what their friendship could become. Because she had this happen. She put her whole heart into something only to be told how wrong it was when it was over, how wrong she was, and that none of it was real.
Ava has been wondering why Bea is so afraid of what they could be. She thought if she proved herself, if she stayed when she could have run, then Bea would understand. She thought Bea would look at her and see someone worthy enough of falling in love with. She thought, some nights when the stars on the ceiling just weren’t enough light, that there was something wrong with her. Something that Bea wasn’t telling her because she was too nice to let Ava down so cruelly.
But it’s not her. It’s not Bea. It’s all the ghosts of Bea’s past stacked up against an ‘Enter’ door that are stopping Bea from pulling it open. It’s all these things outside of Ava’s control that’s holding them back.
It all comes together so neatly in her mind. Bea is not going to make the first move. She never was. She’s been leading Ava to this place, but she can’t make the final step. She’s loading the gun but she can’t pull the trigger. She’s putting this in Ava’s hands and hoping that Ava doesn’t break it in two.
Ava’s clumsy on a good day. Boisterous on others. But she’s also been practicing so hard at being still and maybe that was the wrong thing to do. Maybe Bea needs her to move, to run ahead and give in first.
Ava takes a deep breath, feeling it expand in her chest. It’s loud, roaring in her ears. Bea looks at her curiously. Maybe she doesn’t know that Ava has put it all together. Maybe she’s just as confused as Ava was a second ago. But Bea is smart. No, she’s not just smart, she’s Ava-smart. And she can read Ava like one of the dog-eared books littering their breakfast bar.
“Bea.” Her voice is remarkably steady.
Remarkable, because her whole body feels like it’s moving, vibrating at a frequency unable to be heard by the human ear. She catches Bea’s wrist in her fingers, locking them tightly around the delicate bone.
Bea is still, eyes dropping down to where their skin meets. “Yes?”
“Beatrice.”
Her hand is the thing shaking now as it rises up between them and slowly presses to Bea’s cheek, fingernails curling around her jaw. She feels it move as Bea swallows, hears the slight click of it as the silence magnifies. Bea’s eyes widen and she nearly pulls away, Ava’s hand on her face the only thing stopping her.
“Ava, I…”
Ava imagined their first kiss. She’s dreamed of it almost from the moment she met Bea, already wondering what it would be like before she knew who Bea really was - before she knew how good it was going to be. But she read something somewhere about how knowing someone enhanced the experience of loving them. How something steeped in history made the love richer. And the history she has with Bea may be short, but it is rich. Bea knows all her secrets and now she knows all of Bea’s.
So, fucking kiss her, a voice like Mary’s demands.
And isn’t Mary always telling her she has to listen better?
She only closes her eyes just before their lips touch. She wants to see Bea’s face and is rewarded with the fluttering of delicate eyelashes, the slight parting of Bea’s lips, the quiet hitch of her breath and the way her throat bobs as she tries to hold it back. Her hand slips to the back of Bea’s neck, pulling just until her top lip brushes Bea’s bottom one.
Her eyes slip closed as Bea’s bottom lip slips between hers and they’re kissing. They’re kissing. Bea is warm and soft and still. She stays there, intent in the way her mouth clings to Bea’s. I’m here. I’m kissing you. I’m choosing you. And you’re spectacular.
Bea shudders, her whole body coming alive, and she surges forward as Ava starts to pull away. The air goes out of her lungs and she tips backwards a little and she panics, unwilling to break apart now that Bea is kissing her back. But Bea’s hand goes past her, holding her up as she exhales against Ava’s mouth.
They’re so close together, their knees knocking. Bea’s mouth presses hot against hers, closed mouths clinging to each other. She can’t believe it, can’t believe they’re finally kissing and Bea isn’t running - she’s closer as Ava’s shoulders fall back against the bed, Bea’s hand curled around her shoulder as she settles against Ava’s side. Her free hand has found the hem of Ava’s shirt and her knuckles are brushing against the sensitive skin above Ava’s navel, steady and warm.
It’s Bea who takes the hesitant step forward, her lips parting just enough that Ava’s slide, and then Ava can feel Bea breathing as she kisses a little harder, mouths open against each other. It’s Bea who takes a less hesitant step again, the tip of her tongue ghosting along Ava’s bottom lip.
Ava pulled down the last brick, but Bea was a roaring river behind the dam and she kisses like she’s been uncorked. Her fingernails dig into the soft flesh beneath Ava’s shoulder, her knuckles press into Ava’s stomach, and she kisses with reckless abandon.
“Bea,” Ava whispers between kisses. She’s never been one for religion but maybe she’s been worshipping the wrong gods. Maybe this is who she should have been praying to all along.
Bea hums pleasantly against her mouth. She’s bolder now, kisses a little more frenzied. Ava understands. She tightens her hand at the base of Bea’s neck, pulls her closer. Her other hand slides down the flat of Bea’s stomach and curls around her hip bone, thumb stroking over the soft fabric of her sweatpants.
She thought kissing Bea would be amazing but she was wrong. It’s life-altering. She can see everything shifting to accommodate the way Bea’s lips press, hot and open-mouthed, against her own. She’s going to be completely altered after this, her life now in two separate parts: Before Kissing Bea and After Kissing Bea.
Bea’s hum burns into a low moan as Ava’s fingers dig more insistently into the dip of her hip. Ava is addicted now. She kisses harder, body starting to move as she rolls, a leg going over Bea’s until she’s bracketing Bea’s hips. She slides her mouth along Bea’s jaw to just below her ear, following the way Bea pants at the sensation of her teeth against smooth skin.
She needs to be closer. She needs nothing between them. She sits up, holding her weight as she works her fingers in her shirt and lifts it high and off her shoulders. She tosses it onto the corner, adding to the laundry pile, and sits above Bea in her bra with the flamingos on it, her chest heaving in anticipation.
Bea stares up at her, her face flushed and her lips bruised. Hesitant hands go to Ava’s waist, fingers flexing experimentally as they settle just above the hem of her shorts.
“Hi,” Ava whispers.
Bea nods, the line of her throat bobbing. Ava watches as her eyes track down her body, shoulders down to the sliver of skin just above her shorts. It takes her a minute to look back up and meet Ava’s eyes.
“Is this-?”
“Yes,” Bea interrupts. Her fingers feel purposeful now, like she’s burning her fingerprints into Ava’s skin. “I… I want this.”
A niggling thought works its way into Ava’s mind. Just a breath of hesitation. “You’re sure?”
Bea sits up, hands sliding to the small of her back. She blinks, eyes wide but focused. “Ava, I’ve wanted this for…”
“So long,” Ava finishes.
“So long.” Bea’s eyes flutter and she leans forward, mouth brushing over Ava’s collarbone. She feels her eyelashes against her throat. “Are you sure you want me?”
Me, she says unspoken. Me out of everyone else you could have.
Ava puts two strong fingers under Bea’s chin, lifts her face up until their eyes meet. I’ve never wanted anything more sounds too small. But it’s the only way she can think to say it. And when she does, Bea’s smile brightens the room.
Bea presses her lips to the pulse thudding in Ava’s neck, gentle teeth scraping against the skin. Ava breathes in sharply at the feeling of it, of Bea’s fingers working steadily up her back until they’re hesitantly touching the clasp of Ava’s bra. Ava is brave enough for both of them. She reaches back and loosens it, the fabric falling away from her chest. She tosses that away too.
Ava hisses softly when Bea’s fingers skate up her stomach to cup her breast. Her hand is burning, and Ava pushes into it so she can feel herself on fire. It only grows hotter when Bea kisses her collarbone again, teeth a little more insistent as she makes her way down to her own hand.
Ava pulls at the bottom of Bea’s shirt, freeing it from where she’s sitting on it, and pulls gracelessly until it’s over her head and somewhere by the door. She traces the lines of Bea’s navy bra until she finds the clasp and undoes it, flinging it away.
“I’m not going to make a joke about your boobs,” she whispers into Bea’s temple. Her tongue swirls over sensitive skin at Ava’s chest. “But just know that I really want to.”
Bea lifts her head. “I appreciate your restraint.”
“Saint Ava, they call me,” she babbles. “Patron Saint of-”
Her words are swallowed up in a gasp as Bea presses a hand down purposefully down on her waist. It sends a shiver through her and pulls a little bit of a moan from the hollow of her throat, Bea’s eyes widening slightly in surprise.
Ava tucks some of the loose strands framing Bea’s face back behind her ear, cheeks just a little red. “Before we… Before we do anything else, you need to know that I’m not going to be normal about this. Like, at all.”
Bea walks two fingers up her side, using ribs like steps. She moves them across her chest, brushing against her nipple. Ava shivers again. “I don’t know that I’m much interested in normal,” she admits.
Ava arches into her touch. “I’d hope not, considering how much you’re into me.”
She pauses, breath caught in her lungs as she waits for Bea’s reaction. Bea looks up with wide, imploring eyes. She searches for something on Ava’s face, and Ava hopes beyond hope that she finds it.
Not because she needs Bea’s hand to keep doing what it’s doing. Not because she wants to slip her fingers beneath Bea’s waistband. Not because she wants to hover over Bea and nose down the long stretch of what she’s sure is perfect skin from her chest to her belly button.
Because she wants all those things. But she also wants Bea to know she’s safe. That it’s okay to want her. That Ava is going to be someone she can trust, that Ava won’t treat her like something that’s going to break but will hold her gently regardless.
It feels big, to say that. But Bea is right there, a fingertip away, with her lips bruised and her hair starting to tangle around Ava’s fingers, and she thinks: I’m never going to come back from this. I’ll never be the same. What she feels is undeniable and real, the most real thing she has ever known and she would never, ever want to go back, even if she could.
“I am,” Bea finally says, voice a breathless whisper.
“A lot?” Ava asks, a sliver of neediness in her words.
Bea nods, unblinking. “A lot, yes.”
Ava makes a show of breathing a sigh of relief, a relieved smile on her face. “Well, that’s embarrassing for you.”
“Ava.”
Ava buries her reply in a kiss, fingers curling around Bea’s shoulders as she slowly inches her backward onto the bed until Ava is a shadow hovering above her. She wonders what the hollow of Bea’s throat tastes like, and she smiles into the kiss as she realizes she doesn’t need to ask. She breaks away from Bea’s mouth, kissing over the point of her chin and the underside of her jaw and down to the dip of her throat, teeth nipping at sensitive skin as Bea’s breath hitches. She can feel fingers flex at her waist and then tighten more purposefully.
Sensitive neck, she catalogs. She wants to make a list, grow it until she knows all of the places that cause Bea to make that breathless noise.
Bea’s fingers are insistent at her neck, drawing her back up until they’re kissing, harder than they have before. Bea kisses with lips and teeth, her tongue soothing away the nips, while one hand works its way to Ava’s waistband, curling into the thick denim fabric of her jeans.
She would have been satisfied with some heavy making out. Her skin is already burning where Bea’s bare chest is pressed against hers. She can live with this. But Bea doesn’t seem to be able to live with just this. Ava feels the back of her knuckles against her stomach as Bea pops the button of her jeans and works down the zipper. It’s so loud in the silence.
Ava kisses her way down Bea’s throat again then goes lower, tongue leading the way as she flicks the tip of it over a pebbled nipple. There it is again, that breathless noise. The fingers at her waistband freeze, tighten around the denim, and then release. Ava’s hand goes to Bea’s other breast, and she feels it press into her palm as Bea arches her back slightly.
Ava dares to go lower, kissing over the swell of Bea’s breast and down to her navel. She slides back on Bea’s legs, her fingertips light against Bea’s skin above her hip bones.
“Ava,” Bea breathes. She reaches down, hands reaching for Ava’s chin. Ava kisses the center of Bea’s palm as strong fingers curl around her jaw. “Ava.”
She doesn’t know what Bea’s trying to say, but she doesn’t need to. She can feel the heat radiating off Bea, the anticipation. She hooks two fingers in the waistband of Bea’s study-sweatpants, the ones she wears on all-nighters where she’s going to fall asleep sitting up, and starts to work them down a little as Bea’s hips lift off the bed.
She rests her forehead in the dip of Bea’s hip. She’s never believed in a God, but she does believe there’s a higher power out in the cosmos, and they’ve suddenly found her worthy of this gift: Bea stretched out across the sea of her comforter with her eyes closed and her chin tipped into the air as her chest rises and falls with increasingly harder breathes and her hips arching just slightly until Ava feels her against her forehead.
Because shit, this is holy.
A hand snakes its way into her hair, blunt fingernails scratching against her scalp. She can feel them trembling slightly. Ava wants to feel the whole of Bea tremble. She kisses down as she pulls Bea’s sweats down until they’re past the top of her thighs to her knees.
This feels like a moment they can’t come back from. And looking up at Bea, at the way those dark eyes stare into hers and the hand in her hair tightens slightly, she doesn’t want to come back from it. She wants to never, ever come back from this. She only wants what happens on past this moment.
She works Bea’s underwear down until they’re on the floor with her sweatpants in a tangled heap, and she noses her way lower until it’s nothing but heat and something slick against her tongue. Bea keens, hips lifting high off the bed, and Ava presses down hard against them with flat palms, keeping Bea down in one place.
The hand tightens in her hair, Bea’s knees tighten around her shoulders, trapping her in this crystalline moment. She rolls into it, tongue working more steadily as she feels Bea’s hips start to roll in response. She dips lower and soars higher, an unknown melody working into her mind and guiding her as Bea lets a sigh loosen from her throat.
Her hand climbs until she feels Bea’s breast against her palm, and she works her fingers over sensitive skin. Bea’s hand traps hers in place, palm burning. She can feel Bea’s legs start to tremble, and she licks a little more precisely, a little more purposefully.
She swirls, she drives forward and pulls away. She finds a rhythm until Bea’s whole body starts to tighten into an invisible line, pulled taut by an some unseen string. Ava doesn’t stop, even as Bea’s legs tighten around her. Even as that hand in her hair pulls a little harder. Even as Bea’s breathing swells into a hard pant and she lets out a strangled cry of Ava’s name.
She doesn’t stop until Bea’s body melts into loose muscles, until Bea’s hand goes slack in her hair. Everything is hot against her skin. Her tongue eases away, laving up and over Bea’s hip to her navel and charting a slow course to the center of her chest until she’s back at the hollow of Bea’s throat, teeth nipping as she feels Bea’s chest rise and fall rapidly against her own.
Bea draws another ragged breath, a hand up over her red face.
Ava pulls it away and kisses Bea hard, their mouths sliding together. Bea’s fingers curl around her throat, holding her in place when Ava tries to pull away. A tongue dips behind her teeth. Bea inhales sharply, stealing the air from Ava’s lungs.
Bea, still panting softly, hooks a leg under her and twists, rolling until Ava is on her back, and Bea is hovering over her, eyes dark and flashing.
The air punches its way out of Ava’s throat. If she’s cataloging the things that turn her on, this has just gone to the top of the list, right after the way Bea tastes and the feeling of her mouth sliding against hers.
“Bea.” Her voice is strangled and warped between them.
But Bea doesn’t answer her. She works her fingers purposefully down Ava’s front, sliding beneath her waistband without fanfare, without hesitation. Ava’s legs part with a half-breath, the other part of it stuck in her throat.
Then it’s nothing but an overwhelming sensation and the soft sound of Bea panting in her ear as Ava feels the world start to tighten around her. Bea’s breath is replaced by a white static, and there’s a fullness in her that she knows she’s going to be chasing for a while. Her hips lift and fall, a rhythm she knows without having to think about it. She rides it out, settles into it like she’s known it all her life and then-
And then-
Then she’s soaring, hips off the bed and her whole body shaking as she tries to focus on the rhythm again, the whole dance gone from her mind as it’s replaced by fireworks exploding, one after another. She can feel Bea’s hand on her, in her, and nothing else. She’s disconnected from reality except for where Bea is touching her. Floating weightlessly in an in-between where nothing but this feeling and Bea, hot against her side, exist.
She crashes back down, the world slamming back into her head as her legs clench, Bea’s hand between them. Strong fingers slide away and stroke across her thighs before they go up and curl around her side. Her breath comes hard, her pulse pounding in her head. She squeezes her eyes tightly, afraid to open them and see that the whole world has been turned upside down.
She wouldn’t care if it was, is the problem. She wouldn’t care if she suddenly found herself light years away where there was no oxygen in the solar system. As long as Bea is next to her, she doesn’t care.
She opens her eyes slowly and turns her head, finding Bea looking back at her with liquid pools for eyes.
“Hi,” she breathes, the word sticking in her throat.
Bea smiles softly. “Hi.”
“That was…” She inhales raggedly. “It’s never been like that.”
Because I’ve never been in love, she doesn’t say out loud.
Bea is biting on her bottom lip, eyes searching Ava’s face. “Me either,” she finally says.
Ava hums, content and boneless. “We are so doing that again. Soon,” she promises. “When I can feel my legs, it’s over for you.”
Bea laughs a little. “Okay, Ava.”
Ava lets her eyes close again and when she opens them, Bea is still looking at her. It doesn’t unsettle her. She lets Bea drink her in, and she lets her own eyes follow the lithe line of Bea’s body.
“Boobs,” Ava sighs. She curls one hand around Bea’s breast, no intention in the movement.
Bea wiggles around as if it tickles slightly, but she just settles more tightly against Ava’s side.
“I’m going to be insufferable,” she warns.
“So I can expect more jokes about my boobs.” Bea walks two fingers up her side and across her chest, pressing over where her heart is. “What else?”
Ava inhales shakily. “Anything else you want.”
“Anything?”
“Anything,” she promises. “Whenever you want. I’ll be a court jester for you, babe.”
Bea’s face pinkens at the name, but she holds Ava’s gaze for another moment before she rests her head between Ava’s shoulder and neck. “I do find you marginally funny,” she admits lightly.
Ava grins, the smile lazy. “See? You need to tell more people how funny I am. Mary doesn’t believe it.”
The blush doesn’t fall from Bea’s face. “Please don’t talk about Mary while we’re naked.”
“Why not? She’ll think it’s hilarious.” But Ava stretches her neck and kisses Bea’s temple. “But okay. Just this time.”
“I appreciate it,” Bea murmurs. It’s familiar, the exasperation, but it’s tinted with this whole new feeling. A new depth. “Ava?”
“Hmmm,” Ava hums, sleep pressing against her body.
“I can tell you later.” Fingers brush hair off her damp forehead. “Close your eyes for a little bit.”
“Just a little,” she agrees. “And then I’m making you stir fry.”
Warm lips press against the hollow of her throat, humming an okay against her skin. Bea settles against her side as a warm and welcome weight.
She doesn’t remember falling asleep, but she knows she goes quietly and calmly, and that Bea is still there, still pressed against her side, molded to her like she was never meant to be anywhere else.
-
She wakes up to the smell of paint. Her eyes take a minute to adjust to the light in the corner but she pushes up on her elbow, the comforter over her sliding down to her waist. She blinks as Bea comes into focus.
“You’re painting?”
Bea turns. She’s barefoot, in her underwear again, and one of Ava’s cropped t-shirts that has a white cat in red shadows and I’m not cute I’m purr evil written on it. It hangs a little higher on her and Ava can see the swell of her breasts through it.
She’s the most beautiful woman Ava has ever seen.
And she’s blushing. “I didn’t want to wake you.”
Ava sits up more fully, stretching her arms above her head. She watches, a slightly smirk on her face, as Bea’s eyes drop to her chest. But she doesn’t push. There’s time to tease Bea about staring at her boobs. All the time in the world, really.
“How long was I asleep?” She looks at the wall. Bea has nearly finished the whole thing.
“Not long.” Bea puts the paint can down on the stool, balancing the paintbrush on the edge of it. “But you looked…”
“Like a dead fish?” She’s aware of the way she sleeps, limbs thrown about and head rolling back. Years of being unable to move makes it so she never stops now, even sleeping.
“Peaceful,” Bea finishes. She’s hesitating, torn between wanting to do something and worrying about doing it.
So, Ava takes the lead, leaning in until she’s kissing Bea. She feels Bea sigh into it and knows it was the right move, that it’s what Bea wanted to do. She wants Bea to know she can do this whenever she wants. Bea kisses back almost instantly, sliding into an already-familiar rhythm.
She pulls away, a smile on her face. “Hi.”
Bea is a little breathless when she says hi back.
“I thought we weren’t painting.”
Bea looks back at the wall, most of it covered already. “You were right. About leaving our mark on this place. Someone needs to know we were here.”
“If we ever move out.”
Bea smiles. “If we ever move out.”
Ava pulls her legs up under her and Bea’s hand into her lap. “The only place I plan on moving is into your room. Or you can move in here, since we’re already decorating.”
“Oh?” Bea says. Her voice seems tight, like she’s holding something back.
A wiggle of doubt worms its way into her mind. “I mean, if you want to. No pressure. I’m more than happy to stay here and we can pretend like-”
“I don’t want to pretend,” Bea interrupts. She seems surprised by the firmness in her words and she sucks in her lips for a second before she shakes her head. “I wasn’t sure if you- I know you just kissed me but maybe that was you letting me down and-”
“Bea.” Ava waits until Bea’s mouth snaps closed. “I don’t want to pretend. I’ve been waiting months to kiss you, and unless you tell me otherwise, I plan on kissing you at least a hundred times a day.”
Some of the tension drains from Bea’s shoulders. “A hundred.”
“Give or take another hundred.” Ava grins. “One kiss for every time I’ve thought about kissing you the last seven months. Spread out, of course. Otherwise we’d probably be stuck in this apartment for days, just kissing.” She narrows her eyes playfully. “That might not be the worst thing to happen, though.”
“I’d miss finals,” Bea points out.
“Do you really need to pass them? Aren’t you teaching the classes at this point?”
Bea rolls her eyes, fond and exasperated. “Ava.”
“Bea.” She rolls her eyes back. “Fine. If you won’t lock yourself away to make out with me for days on end, what else are you willing to offer me?”
Bea is quiet for a long moment, her hand twisting in Ava’s as she thinks of something. Ava can see it pressing against her teeth, can practically feel the tension of whatever Bea wants to say radiating off her and lighting up the whole room. Ava waits it out patiently, knowing that whatever Bea has to say will be worth it.
She stays still. She waits. Bea has a way of bringing out all of the things in her that no one else has bothered to look for before. And after another minute, Bea looks up.
“Me.”
Ava’s heart clenches in her chest. “You.”
“I’m willing to offer me. Just… me. If you’re willing to accept.”
Ava turns Bea’s hand over in hers and presses two fingers to the thudding bundle of nerves at the base of her wrist. Bea looks down at where they meet and her eyes stay locked there for a moment while Ava watches her.
“If you think there’s anything just about you, then you don’t know the Beatrice I know,” Ava finally says. “Because I’ve never thought there was anything just about you. You always leave the light on for me. And you never make me do the dishes alone. And you don’t mind mushrooms on your pizza. You keep soda in the apartment and you always vacuum when I’m not home.”
A funny smile graces Bea’s face. “I think that makes me good for you.”
“The best,” she agrees. Her smile softens. “I’ve never thought there’s anything just about you. You’re incredibly kind, trustworthy. You’re humble - maybe too humble,” she jokes. “And considerate. And insanely intelligent. Hilarious. My best friend.” She pauses. “And I’m pretty sure you’re the love of my life.”
Bea inhales sharply.
“I know that’s, like, a lot. And I don’t need you to say it back, because I’m not trying to pressure you. But saying it all has lifted some kind of weight off my chest. Like, I didn’t know I was suffocating under not saying anything but I guess that I was,” she babbles. “But honestly, you don’t need to-”
“Ava,” Bea says patiently. She waits until Ava snaps her mouth shut and mimes zipping it closed. “My parents…”
“I’ll kill them,” Ava says cheerfully, looking guilty when Bea’s eyes cut to her. She closes her mouth again.
“My parents made me believe that love had to be earned. That if I wanted it, I had to work for it.” She takes a breath, astonishingly steady. “But you’ve never done that. You’ve never made me work for it. You’ve just… given it. It’s who you are.”
Ava’s smile wavers a little. “Because you don’t need to deserve love.”
“I didn’t know that before you.” Bea shakes her head. “I’ve had to unlearn a lot of things since meeting you. Like that. Like how to not be afraid. Like how to eat pizza. All these things that were so ingrained in who I was that I didn’t think I’d ever know anything different.” She reaches up and cups Ava’s cheek. “You changed all of that for me.”
She thinks Bea is saying I love you. She thinks Bea is saying You’re the love of my life, too.
And then Bea, spectacular Bea, looks into her eyes and says exactly that. “I love you. I’ve loved you since you spilled tea on my very important notes, and I’ve fallen in love with you every day since.”
Ava feels relief flood through her like a dam breaking. “That’s good. That’s really, really good. Because it would be embarrassing to be sitting here naked telling you how much I love you if you’re not going to say it back.”
Bea shakes her head but she’s smiling. “Ava.”
“Beatrice.” Ava curls a finger under Bea’s chin and beckons her forehead. She kisses her slowly and sweetly before she pulls back. “Kiss one of a hundred today.”
A blush spreads across Bea’s face. “You’re not really going to count, are you?”
“I’m going to keep a tally, that’s how serious I am.” She kisses Bea again. “Number two.”
Bae rolls her eyes and when Ava kisses her a third time, she opens her mouth, tongue brushing Ava’s bottom lip. It leaves her breathless when Bea pulls back.
“If I knew getting you in my room would have ended up like this, I would have tried a lot harder,” she says, eyes still closed.
Bea’s lips press against her cheek, then under her eye. “I wasn’t ready for that,” Bea whispers against her skin.
Ava doesn’t open her eyes. “I know you weren’t.”
Bea’s forehead rests against hers. “I am now.”
“It’s okay if you’re not. I won’t stop loving you.”
Bea’s breath ghosts across her mouth. “I am. I’ve never been ready for anything more in my life.”
“Not even your finals? Because you’re really ready for those, even if you think you aren’t.” She feels Bea start to argue more than she sees it, eyes still closed. “I’ve never met anyone who studies as much as you study. Seriously, you’re a beast when it comes to notecards and colored highlighters and-”
She does stop this time as Bea’s lips press against her. She hums, sinking into it. “Oh,” she says when Bea ebbs away. She finally opens her eyes.
Bea is smiling, beautiful and wide. “More than my finals. If only because I’m still not convinced of Thecla’s real contribution to modern religions.”
“I don’t know who Thecla is, but she’s never been less relevant to my interests right now.” Ava twists a strand of Bea’s hair, resting on her cheek, around her finger. “She could be Jesus’ mother for all I care.”
“She’s not-”
“I know she’s not.” Ava grins. “But I like the way you look when I say something wrong.” She presses her finger to the space between Bea’s eyes. “Like you’re not sure if you want to lecture me or kiss me. For the record, I’m very much in favor of the second option.”
Bea’s lips pull up in a slight smile. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
Ava breathes in deeply, letting the air fill her lungs as she stretches her arms over her head, noting the way Bea’s eyes follow the lift of her chest. She smiles to herself. Maybe Bea is a boob-girl. She’ll have to weaponize that knowledge for later.
“I think I promised you stir fry.”
Bea opens her mouth to argue.
“And I’m hungry,” Ava says over her. “And can be trusted with a knife. So, I will be making you stir fry, because it’s the one thing I’m good at. And I want to impress you.”
Bea’s smile is fond, and Ava thinks back to the first time she saw it, how it was aimed at Camila and how she wished one day it would be a smile for her. And now here she is, Bea in her shirt and an I love you between them and a smile that is reserved just for her.
“So let me make you stir fry and you can come sit and study some more. In my shirt. Which, by the way, is very sexy.” She winks.
Bea rolls her eyes. “Mine was quite tangled up in the comforter, and this was just the most easily accessible.”
“You have a bedroom about a hundred feet away,” Ava feels the need to point out. Bea’s eyes narrow and Ava grins. “But for the record, I really like seeing you in it.”
Bea blushes a little but stands and opens Ava’s drawer, pulling out a pair of underwear - Ava’s favorite, yellow with pineapples on them - and then a big t-shirt she stole from Mary that has a pug with a pair of aviators on printed across the front. She hands them to Ava.
“No pants?” she asks as she pushes the comforter down and wriggles into her underwear. She pulls the t-shirt on, huffing her hair out of her face.
“No pants,” Bea says simply.
Oh. Okay. She grins and stands up, curling her hands around Bea’s waist and pulling her in. “This is going to be so good. I know it.”
Bea smiles, swaying slightly with her when Ava starts to go back and forth on her feet. “I know it too.” She presses her lips to Ava’s forehead and speaks against it. “Thank you, Ava,” she breathes.
Ava frowns. “For what?”
Bea pulls back and tucks a strand of Ava’s hair back behind her ear. “For waiting for me to be ready.”
“Of course I waited. I love you,” she says easily.
Bea’s smile widens. “I know.”
Ava beams back at her, feeling like everything has slotted into place so neatly. She never wants this moment to break, never wants it to go away. She wants to remain forever in this room with Bea in her arms and the rest of the world somewhere else doing whatever it is they’re doing. All that matters is this moment, these kisses between them, the possibility of what the next moment brings.
She can’t wait.
#THE WAIT IS OVERRRRRRR!!!!!!#sirens going off#warrior nun#forever roommates#guys this took so long i am so sorry but i hope it's worth it#rated m for mature audiences kids#there was so much to this that i didn't even know where to start but eventually we got there#everyone say thank you kay thank you kay#GUYS GUYS there is one more piece to this and it will be compleeeete#elmofire.gif#okay please like this i'm needy and hungover#i got tickets to noah kahan and i feel INVINCIBLE!
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Nick's so far under the bus that they might as well change the oil while they're under there.
Okay, because I'm a bit of a masochist and I have adblockers...
I'm going to count how many times James throws Nick under the bus:
@2:40 – 'This fell upon Nick as well, as a non-binary person on the ace spectrum, they wanted to include asexuality and non-binary representation to our videos. But because Nick's experience is not universal – There is no universal experience – people felt that we were delegitimizing their own experiences because we focused on Nick's.' (The reason we were acephobic was because we (meaning Nick) didn't think other ace people had problems and when it was pointed out to us by The Ace Couple that ace people did, in fact, face discrimination and conversion therapy, we (meaning James) accused them of homophobia and sicced their followers on them.)
@6:38 – 'The work Nick and I were doing on the channel...' (Because Nick was here too! Not just me!)
@10:46 – 'I was much more interested in the production of the videos than the writing of them, at this point. So after three or four videos, I brought Nick on as a main writer for the channel. The idea is that they would write the vast majority of the scripts. I would film, voice, and edit the videos and we'd split the money that came in.'(Nick was the main writer for the channel! In case you forgot...)
@14:40 – 'And then my mom died... and I became completely useless. I couldn't think straight, at all, so Nick had to completely take over writing duties.'(DID I MENTION NICK WAS THE MAIN WRITER. ALSO MY MOM DIED; FEEL SORRY FOR ME)
@19:44 – 'When Nick got back, he believed the script needed a first page rework. This was also when he told me he was going to be moving back to Ontario permanently soon as he wanted to live closer to family and live in a bigger city with more opportunities. This was a punch to the gut for me. We'd been living together since 2015 and had become quite dependent on each other. I felt like there was no way I could make this movie without him.'(We couldn't make the movie we promised because SOMEONE DECIDED TO MOVE and since I'm co-dependent on him, I moved with him and screwed up everything. Oopsie.)
@26:32 – 'But by accepting as many sponsors as we did, which became very important when Nick and I started living apart and suddenly had two rents to pay, we ended up needing to produce even more videos. Which, along with the work on Telos and making sure everything was okay with my dad while living thousands of kilometers away meant I had even less time for writing – putting more stress on Nick and leading to even more copy and pasting from me.' (See what you did, Nick?! We have to pay TWO rents now and we need to make even MORE videos. I'm not creepily co-dependent on my asexual ex-roommate at all!)
@32:50 – 'I know what misinformation had made its way into our past videos. That was not something we intended; in some cases it was information I was told by people I considered experts. In other cases it was information that we had researched. In other cases it was things that Nick had learned in university.'(Nick told me some of this stuff! ((which is fair because NICK ADMITTED HE DOESN'T DO RESEARCH)) In other cases it was because I assumed I knew what happened because I'm the smartest person I know so of course Lesbians had it easier! I just forgot that Radcliffe Hall's books were banned and destroyed because of that head injury I talked about earlier.)
And here's an honorable mention where the smug “I'm smarter than you” BS comes to visit:
'To those who say I plagiarized the plot from the novel Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix – Read the book. It's nothing like the plot of the movie. And 'The Final Girl' is a trope in horror movies so if using the Final Girl trope is plagiarism then basically everyone who's made a slasher movie since Texas Chainsaw Massacre owes the Toby Hooper estate some money.'
So, much like how James doesn't understand why people aren't upset at him because of citation issues, he doesn't understand that it's not the fact that he's using the 'Final Girl' trope... it's the fact that he stated the book as a favorite of his and then... suddenly he's writing a movie about the aftermath of the Final Girl. And given the plagiarism, it can not be taken in good faith.
First off, if you just google 'First Final Girl', it just says Texas Chainsaw Massacre is one of the earliest examples. Another possibility for the 'First Final Girl' was actually Black Christmas which was released the same day in Canada so it is literally tied.
Secondly; the final girl trope is not required for slasher movies. One of the first 'proto-slasher' movies was actually Psycho so there were a few good decades between that and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. (I could try and make a case that Lila Crane should count as a Final Girl; maybe even Mrs. Bates/Norman as a subversion... but I'm not that invested or interested.)
So... James was true to form, he just wanted to be a smug asshat and try and seem smart over something easily googled.
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Late Night Introspection | Zayne/Reader
About: A drabble on Zayne's reasons for becoming a doctor. Was it for himself? Or was it.... for you?
Pairing: Zayne/Reader
Notes: Might be invalidated as the story goes on though haha... But I like the idea of Zayne deciding to be a doctor in order to protect you in ways you cannot.
“By helping her, Zayne… You help yourself.”
The words Grandma Josephine uttered on that fateful day still lingered in his mind, even hours after you’ve left the hospital. She made him promise to take care of you on her behalf, to be with you every step of the way as you lived your life.
Like a parent giving their blessing to a potential spouse.
Zayne ran his fingers through his tousled hair, mentally waving that stray thought away. Perhaps in a perfect world where tragedies such as these didn’t happen, she would’ve given him her blessing but… That was not the case now. And in a twisted way, if the disaster 14 years ago didn’t happen, he wouldn’t have met you.
14 years ago he made a decision, a decision that was made because of you.
He still remembered the day when you proclaimed to everyone that you will become strong and become a hunter so you won’t have to rely on someone and be afraid when another disaster strikes, that you will be someone who would protect everyone around them.
“I will be your protector one day! Just you guys watch!”
And in that moment, a thought appeared in the forefront of his mind–
“Then who protects the protector?”
He wasn’t the only one who had the same thought however. Caleb immediately interjected, snorting at your antics.
“Then who will protect you, dummy? What if you get injured?”
“I won’t! Because you two will have my back, right?”
“That’s not how it works–”
Indeed, that was not how the world worked. Even the mightiest hunter will fall, despite all the challenges they faced and overcame. And so when you turned to Zayne and asked him what he would be in the future, he simply said–
“A doctor.”
“Why?”
“Someone has to take care of you when you’re hurt.”
“I won’t get hurt!”
“Sure.”
So he did. The decision was made. He began his journey into the field of medicine and worked tirelessly to get here. Even though contact between you and him lessened over the years, he had never forgotten his decision, his promise to be by your side when you needed him the most.
As Zayne gained renown and respect within the field over the years, many research facilities and academic institutions had tried to lure him to have him work for them. He refused them all, however. He joined the field not for money, nor for fame and respect.
But for you.
“You’re good at not giving into temptation.” You jokingly said then. He had no intentions from straying from his path, especially not when you became a hunter despite all the heart conditions you had. He had specifically chosen to study cardiology because he was aware of the problems you had since the disaster. And while there are many capable doctors in said field, he just couldn’t rest easy.
The thought of you being transferred to someone else’s care made him apprehensive. Why should you rely on another’s care when he could do it instead?
When he knows you and your heart better than the others ever will?
The sudden ‘ping!’ resounded throughout his office, bringing him out of the recess of his thoughts. He picked up his phone and the corners of his mouth lifted when he saw who it was, contacting him this late at night.
“Sorry for calling so late earlier. I just needed to know the truth… I’m still reading through them.”
“Go to sleep, it’s late. The documents will still be there when you wake up.”
Just like he will when you wake up.
He will always be here, as long as you need him.
#love and deep space#love and deepspace#love and deep space zayne x reader#love and deepspace zayne x reader#i feel like this hc will be invalidated later on but welp#it is what it is#would anyone be interested in smut about these guys#cause man the art where theyre only in a towel like my god#i saw it and i was like ok i need them
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Q&A: The Phantom Broadway Proshot
Happy 36th Birthday to Phantom of the Opera's opening night on Broadway! We should be celebrating at the Majestic. The show never should have closed.
In order to create "new" ish POTO Broadway content, @or-what-you-will and I promised to answer your questions about the proshot on POTO Broadway's birthday. Find our summary of the Proshot here.
We got dozens of questions, which we've consolidated into 14 questions. Read them all past the cut!
Wait, what’s the Phantom Proshot?
The Phantom Proshot is an archival copy of the original Broadway cast and production of Phantom of the Opera, filmed at the evening performance with a live audience on May 25, 1988. The New York Public Library, Theatre on Film and Tape Archive at the Performing Arts Library at Lincoln Center has archival copies of Broadway, Off-Broadway, and Regional theater going back to 1970. You can’t view currently running shows, so since Phantom ran for so long, it was under lock and key.
2. How do I see the Pro-Shot?
Pretty simple how to guide here on the NYPL website.
We are both NYPL cardholders and made a reservation in advance. You are required to state why you are accessing the recording as they exist for archival and research purpose. Both of us are published authors and researchers under our real names.
Here's a picture of the room we were in from NYPL's website. We had an appointment and were set up in a room with lots of monitors. We were seated at monitors next to each other with two sets of headphones and had one set of controls to pause/rewind etc. There are 20 monitors in the room and it was pretty full that day. This was not my first time at the TOFT and it’s always had a good number of people around.
3. Can someone get a boot of it/send me the link to it? Pleeeeease?
No. Seriously, stop asking about this. Stop joking about this. It’s not online, and never will be. All of the recordings are on digital media (videodiscs or DvDs) in the basement and only library staff get to touch them. Don’t be the person who tried to do this and ruins the archive for everyone else. You can’t even bring electronic devices into the room.
4. Why won’t they release it to the public? And who the heck does it benefit to keep this locked away?
It isn’t. It was locked away when the show was actually running. It is available to the public. We are the public! We have library cards and went to a public library and watched it for $0! It’s owned by the library so the public can see it! At the library!
The availability of us to access it now that the show has closed is what constitutes public release. There were several other phans, members of the public there to see it after us, and the library allowed them to max out the number of monitors the library allows people to view on. They had a later appointment and were watching disc one when we were on disc two. I’m sure there was someone after them too. Were we all wearing Phantom gear? Also yes.
(@or-what-you-will here) The library is not allowed to show recordings of anything currently running on Broadway, presumably because of fears about economic loss from those who own the rights to the musicals. The library does not own the rights to the musicals in the archive, and there are likely a lot of stipulations the library has to follow to be able to have recordings like this.
As someone who works in a library doing digitization work, libraries and the media they contain are very complicated. TOFT likely has the rights to show it under a very limited license, and to make copies for preservation purposes only, but things like this mean they would not be able to do anything like put it online or charge for it or do anything that would be them acting as though they owned the copyright (as opposed to the physical media). This is why when a library or archive has a book or tapes they don’t usually have the right to photocopy the entire book or digitize the entire tape and put it online (unless it is in public domain), however, if you go in person you can see it all you want. Someone else (usually the creator) owns the right to distribute or copy, and libraries and archives can get in a lot of trouble for violating it.
The copyright is still owned by the holders of each respective musical’s copyright. It’s essentially like when you buy a DVD and you are technically not supposed to copy that DVD but you can invite your friends over to watch it at your house. Copying it and distributing it violates copyright. Putting it online violates copyright. If the library violated copyright it would likely lose the ability to archive musicals altogether. If you copied the DVD it would be a lot harder to find out who put it up because the DVD is owned by lots of people, though you could still be prosecuted by the law. If the library did, they would know immediately who did it because they are presumably the only ones with a copy of this recording.
Likewise if someone took a bootleg recording of a show and distributed it, the copyright holders wouldn’t know it existed. If they found out that individual would then be eligible to be prosecuted under the law. Because the library is a public institution, if they were found out to be doing this, it would be the library itself that would get in trouble and it would damage their reputation, their funding, and quite possibly the funding and reputation of libraries around the world. A lot of this is done on trust. The copyright holders trust the library as a public institution and the library has a lot more stakes in the game than a single person recording the show and distributing it.
It’s a very tenuous agreement at times, and likely the library is only allowed to even record because there are so many protections in place and they have a history of enforcing these rules. These agreements also usually cover digitization and preservation, but again, violating them could have those abilities taken away as well. It’s all tied up in copyright law and the library has no control over that. I have talked to archivists where I live who have to record performances with tape over the lens because it’s considered for preservation and they want to make sure it cannot be possible to profit off of it in any way.
When the show goes into public domain they will be able to put it online all they want without fear of repercussions, but until then, unless those agreements change, we are all limited by the whim of the copyright holders.
5. Hello! Is the pro shot you watched what this clip is from https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cp2_80CJqI3/?igsh=MWNja2wwYWw4OHUwbw== ?
I know all of us here on Tumblr were freaking out that they maybe had a copy of the pro shot when this came out. Thank you! (@imstillhere-butallislost)
Not the proshot, it's a press reel. It has its own cool story though! Answered this here.
6. How good of a shot was it? I know you said ProShot but is it a ProShot like Hamilton or just a camera recording the whole stage at once?
I’d definitely say it was Hamilton pro-shot quality as to what was available at the time between image quality and mixing up of close ups and wide shots. I’ve watched other proshots and many just park a camera in the back of the orchestra and call it good. Cats in particular had multiple cameras but just did close-ups when they felt like it, not when it made sense or added anything. As @or-what-you-will explained in their re-blog, Phantom was one of the first proshots where they had a soundboard plug in, and let me tell you, with the exception of a few moments in Act 1 where Sarah Brightman maxes out her mic, the sound was delicious. Have we talked about how Judy Kaye is singing over the overture (yes, that’s Judy Kaye, original Carlotta, warming up!)? Or that you can hear every single word of Notes I and Prima Donna and Notes II, which usually just sounds garbled because everyone is singing over one another? Actually hearing words that I sort of know exist changed my experience of the show for me.
7. How did the tempo seem, compared to the pace of the show at the end of its run? I saw the show a few times in the last few years, and the music seemed significantly faster in person than it sounded on the London cast recording. I’ve always wondered if that was just a difference between the London and NY productions, or if the tempo just sped up over the years.
Uh…normal pace??? I’ve watched a lot of boots and most solidly clock in 2:15 of run time. This was no different. There are definitely some that run a little faster. London during Earl Carpenter’s 2023 run was notorious as he had to catch a train. It does seem to have settled back out. I will say, the music does always feel more intense in person because the whole place just vibrates.
8. I'm curious about the comment about the Ratcatcher? I think I remember that character from a film adaptation, but was he ever in the ALW musical? (@lord-valery-mimes)
Yes, Ratcatcher is still in the musical, even now. It’s a blink or you miss it type of moment. If you hear a thud and a scream right before Madame Giry tells Raoul “He lives across the Lake, Monsieur”, the thud is the ratcatcher running across the travelator.
9. Does Christine really recognize the Phantom in PONR from his boner?
No, but at this point she probably already know it’s him and has been trying to get through the scene, but definitely acts surprised because, well, that’s surprising. But it’s definitely the moment where the Vibes Are Officially Off.
10. Can Sarah Brightman act?
Yes! All three of the trio have far more nuanced performances on stage. Sarah doesn’t act the way that we do see many later Christines (including late 80s and early 90s Christines), but she absolutely created the blueprint for the role. Her “Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again” is missing some soul, but at the end of the day she was one of a kind, and she made some very strong acting choices.
11. there anything unexpected? Any interpretation that stood out to you and particularly striking but didn’t stick around as others took on the roles and put their own spin on things?
Guys, I want to talk about Steve Barton as Raoul. The man made choice, after choice, after choice. And yet we have had so many Raoul’s that are kind of just strutting about looking pretty. Some seem to even forget they’re onstage during Final Lair. It can be such a juicy role if the actors choose to make it that way but so few do.
Besides some small details I mentioned, the show did maintain its integrity through its 35 year run, which is truly remarkable.
(@or-what-you-will here) Seconding what Flag said, Steve Barton brought so much more to the role than I’m used to seeing, and it really opened my mind to what Raoul could be.
The blocking in PONR did surprise me, I knew they had changed it but I hadn’t realized how much. I always found the kind of pinwheeling arm thing Christine does with the phantom strange, so it was a pleasant surprise to find that they didn’t do that at all, the embrace from behind made more sense to me.
I also found after she took his hood off no one really ran out, the phantom and Christine got to have their moment. The blocking where they (the managers and Raoul) run out and tell Christine to stay makes no sense with their motivations to stop him. The more recent blocking where Christine motions them to stay in place as the phantom sings the All I Ask of You Reprise makes way more sense with the characters’ motives and matches this original blocking much more.
12. Also are you truly working on a research project? If so, how is progress and where might we find your final results when it’s complete?
To quote Dr. Who, “Spoilers.” Yes, always. Both of us have day jobs that have us doing research, but I can’t promise I’ll put it on here when complete since I keep fandom and real life separate. Sorry to dodge this one but getting into specifics about this starts to identify us.
(@or-what-you-will here) Seconding what Flag said.
13. Hi there, I was wondering if I could ask you a general question about the NPL’s archive. Something about the language on their website made it sound like viewers could only watch a recording “once”. I wasn’t sure if that meant “once per visit” (i.e. you can’t sit there for 8 hours restarting the tape every time it ends) or “once” as in forever (like, once you’ve watched a recording you are never allowed to request it again). Did you have any clarification? I wasn't sure if the librarians explain the policies when you arrive at your appointment. Thank you for providing so many details about the Phantom pro-shot and offering to answer our questions! That's really kind of you!
You’re welcome! So if there’s nobody after you, you can hang out with the media as long as you want. However, we did have another group come in about 90 minutes after us. That gave us enough time to watch both acts with all the rewinds we wanted. We watched PONR and parts of Final Lair like five times. On a previous TOFT trip I watched two shows and was there for like six hours. The prohibition is on coming back and watching the recording again. I have no idea how strict they are about this, although I suspect it’s to keep people from monopolizing certain media. Would I want to try to watch the proshot again in the future? Probably! I know there’s stuff I missed, or I’d see something different depending on what I’m working on. The TOFT is also an absolutely incredible resource and I have so many other shows I’d like to check out.
(Will here) They do log on your library account when you visit that you visited and what you saw. However, if you have accessibility needs that would require you to watch in multiple viewings or something along those lines, I would talk to them about it, because I’m sure they’d be able to work with you to figure out something so you wouldn’t have to sit through the whole thing in one shot.
14. > Barton Raoul’s “There is no Phantom of the Opera” comes off more as “Christine this is just some dude” vs “he doesn’t exist at all.”
Could you elaborate on this part? I'm having trouble imagining how that would be conveyed. (also, thanks for sharing your notes on the procast!) @clutzyangel
You're welcome! Yes, he's telling Christine that the Phantom is a human, flesh-and-blood man, not some fantastical creature. I've seen many Raouls who seem to try to convince Christine that the Phantom doesn't exist at all. Barton's Raoul seems to understand that he's a man with ulterior motives possibly duping Christine.
And he's not wrong.
#phantom of the opera#poto#alw phantom#phantom proshot#happy birthday phantom broadway#phantom broadway#michael crawford#sarah brightman#steve barton#judy kaye#andrew lloyd webber#nypl#research#I wish Phantom were still be on broadway#we should all be wilding out at the majestic
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In the Cabin
Your move to another city ends up horribly wrong when you’re kidnapped by five men who mistake you for their real target. That still doesn’t stop them from having a little fun.
Sukuna/You | Toji/You | Getou/You | Gojo/You | Nanami/You
Warnings: Rape/Non-con, degradation, pet names
Notes:
Cross-posted on Ao3
Five chapters total
Female reader
Chapter index at the end of chapter one
Support my writing
Chapter 1: Sukuna
What time is it?
You have no idea.
What day is it?
You have no idea.
What are they going to do with you?
You have no fucking idea.
All you know is that one day you’re settling in your new home; the next you’re gagged, drugged, and tossed around in a car that led you to a cabin in the woods. Before ending up in this room that's oddly furnished, someone blindfolded you, tied your hands behind your back, and forced you to walk. But, he isn't acting alone.
You felt the presence of two others on either side of you as your shoes went from walking on dry, dead leaves and branches to a solid wooden floor. The damp, musty odour of the forest slowly morphed into something that smelled like a mix of fresh wood, cooked meat, and booze. Along with the steady footsteps of the others, you also occasionally heard the creak of the floorboards. You were suddenly made to stop, but you were not sure where. Then, you heard something akin to someone flopping onto a couch in front of you.
“Are you sure she's the right one?”
You heard calm footsteps behind you.
“She looks kinda different from the photo, doesn’t she?”
You almost winced from the strong scent of cigars.
“Kinda different?" Again with the footsteps. Then, a scoff. "They don’t look anything alike.”
“But the instructions say it’s the woman living at…”
The rest fell on deaf ears as you sensed someone in front of you, and you did your best to remain calm and collected when you felt large hands on your shoulder.
“Sukuna, what are you doing?”
"Research." Then, a long finger went underneath your chin and tilted your head up. “What’s your name?” You were trembling now, and as soon as you looked down, whoever stood in front of you immediately tilted your head back up. “Are you deaf? What. Is. Your. Name?”
So, you said it as calmly as you could.
The silence was deafening, and your palms started sweating. You nervously licked your lips as your heart raced out of fear.
“What were you doing in that house?”
It was another voice this time.
“I just moved there,” you said a little too quickly. “A few weeks ago.”
“Great. That confirms it. We were too late.”
“Yeah, and who’s to blame?”
“You’re no better than me, Loser.”
You winced when you heard something like a knife being forcefully stabbed into the wood.
"You're scaring her, Toji."
"And is that my problem?"
“I… I promise I won’t say anything,” you said. “Please just let me go.”
You never thought silence could be so frightening.
“Well…” You could put a name to a voice this time. This was Sukuna, and you could almost hear the smirk. “You're already here. It'd be awfully rude to just let you go without taking care of you first, Princess.”
And that’s how you end up in this small room that has nothing useful for your escape. You’re sure. You checked. Perhaps more than 100 times. But, it still has a bed, a small empty nightstand, a window that’s far too high for you to reach, and a bathroom with a working toilet, sink, and shower. The man who locked you in here left you with literally nothing but the clothes off your back. The only positive is that you’re no longer blindfolded and restrained.
You’re sitting on the very edge of the bed when the door suddenly opens. You immediately stand and see a tall man with pink spiked hair slightly pushed up at the front. There are odd markings on his face with similar ones on his toned upper body that are loosely covered by a black tank top. He has a hand in the deep pocket of his black pants when he ominously closes and locks the door behind him.
“Comfortable?”
His voice is deep, and he’s looking at you like a lion at his prey.
“What do you want?” you ask coldly.
He keeps walking, and you keep stepping back until you feel the wall behind you.
“What’s with that tone?”
Then, he smiles, one that raises all kinds of alarms and sends a chill to the very tips of your toes. You quickly move to the side, but he effortlessly grabs your wrist. No matter how much you struggle, he eventually pins you against the wall, the place right where he wants you.
"You think you can get away?" he asks in that disgustingly honeyed voice. His grip tightens around your wrists so much that it hurts. "Perhaps this is fate that we found you instead, Princess."
"Why are you keeping me here if I'm not the one you're fucking looking for?"
"We make the best out of every situation." His gaze lands on your lips and then back at your eyes. His smile grows bigger. “See, here’s the thing…” He leans closer, and you turn your head away. But then you feel his lips on your neck, and you attempt to kick him when his hands fly from your wrists to your knees. He forces your legs open and wedges himself between them before his hands find his brutal grip around your wrists again. “The others don’t want you to leave. But…” He bites your neck, and you let out a short scream because of the unexpected pain. “I’ll let you under one condition.”
As much as you want to move, you can’t out of fear and horror that you’ll rub against something you don’t want to.
“Stop…” You feel his bites travelling past your collarbone. “Stop!”
His hand is around your neck, making you look like a fish out of water. His grip is teasing, allowing you air and then forcefully taking it away. You’re desperately clawing at his hand as he says:
“Talkative women are such a pain in the fucking ass.”
His mouth is on yours as his hand snakes to the back of your head and into your hair to keep you in place. Your mind is frantic, your heart is racing, and your body is trembling at the bold and unwelcome intimacy. Suddenly, he thrusts his hips, forcing a gasp, which is when he slides his impatient tongue into your mouth.
He tastes like strong alcohol, but it’s oddly your favourite kind. Your hands on his shoulders slowly loosen their grip as your mind slowly turns to mush with how he takes your breath away and gives it back. No. It’s wrong. You don’t want this. You shouldn’t want this. But his insistent mouth coupled with his hungry and dominating tongue spins you round and round and round… until you can’t tell right from wrong.
The arrogant smirk you feel when you kiss him back is the single sign he needs. Well, not that he needs one.
His lower half keeps you against the wall as his hands rip your shirt and it falls onto the floor beside him. The blaring alarms in your head are screaming at you, but his kisses give you no opportunity for any objections until…
“Now, this is how I like my women.”
Your eyes widen at his low voice, and in the blink of an eye, your beautiful breasts are exposed to him.
“Wait…” you say, but the breathlessness in your voice gives you away. "Stop!"
You let out another choked cry when his hand finds your neck. The other forcefully squeezes what’s been on his mind ever since he saw you. His thumb circles your nipple, and he loosens the grip around your neck just enough for you to gasp.
“Didn’t you hear me the first time?” he asks. His teeth nip your bottom lip. “I hate talkative women.”
He keeps his hand around your neck, silencing your cries as your pants and panties are the next to go. He chuckles as he grabs your ankle when you try to kick him. He keeps your leg raised as he smiles which you can only describe as psychotic.
“I thought you were enjoying this just as much as I am.” He leans close to your face, and you smell the alcohol that you love on his breath. “You’re only making it easier for me.” His gaze takes its time wandering down your fully naked body. “A body like that… You’re definitely one of a kind.”
He dips his head between your legs, and the satisfied, breathless gasp that leaves your trembling lips erases what’s left of your fraying dignity. His hungry beast of a tongue ravages you, drawing sounds that should only be heard between lovers. Yet, here you are with your eyes shut tight, unable to control your twisted desire to want more. His hands are on your inner thighs, keeping your legs open, as he plays you like a fucking fiddle. This isn’t right. You know it’s not right, but he knows how to make you crumble faster than anyone has ever had. When he strikes fire, your pent-up frustration pours into his mouth where he savours every taste.
Shame. Disgust. Relief.
That’s all you feel when he gets the reward for his work. But to him, he relishes in the pleasure of getting the delicious taste of you and a satisfying moan that’s like music to his ears. He arrogantly licks his lips while standing upright but keeps your body against the wall with his lower half.
"Well, fuck, you taste better than what I've had in a while, Princess."
You quietly whimper when he releases his heavy sex from the constraints of his pants. Your body trembles yet the sight fuels an adrenaline you’ve never felt before. You know he’s expecting you to cuss him out. But, you don’t. Instead, you spit on his face, and then you say:
“Fuck you.”
You attempt to run, but you don't get far when he grabs you, forcefully pushes you against the wall, and pries your legs open. His eyes turn dark, and you scream when you feel the strong force of his fully erected sex into yours. It’s only one thrust but it hits a place deep inside of you, a place no lover has ever explored before. Soon, your feet are no longer touching the floor. One leg rests on his arm while his hand is on your ass. Your other leg drapes loosely beside his narrow waist, and his other hand is beside your head.
“The only thing I like about talkative women”—his smile curls into a nasty smirk—”is how much I can make them scream.”
His unrelenting thrusts make tears fall from your eyes. You’ve had rough lovers, but this man… you can feel that he chases his pleasure alone.
“Hngh..." you breathe in between the grunts and the quiet pants.
You close your eyes as the pain you feel dissolves into pure, twisted bliss.
Your legs are dangling on either side, and both of his hands are beside your head as your walls tightly clench around him every time he thrusts back in, drawing the lewdest of noises from your sweet mouth.
He’s had his share of women, but you… no, your sex is nothing like he’s ever had. You hug him as tight as a glove, refusing to let him leave the place that feels like it belonged to him.
Eventually, your legs wrap tightly around him, and your hips fall into rhythm with him. His hands grab your ass, forcing you to move faster as his eyes wander from your increasingly lewd expressions to your bouncing breasts that rub against him with every bounce.
What a fucking sight.
Your thighs clench around him, and when he pushes into you again, both of you come undone.
You feel the low rumble of his chuckle. You want to get away from him, but he tightly squeezes your ass, and you feel his high deep inside your womb. Then, when you can’t feel it anymore, he suddenly lets you go. The strength in your legs hasn’t returned, so you drop to the floor as some of his seed flows out from your sex.
“How fun was that?” he asks with a grin. “I’d do it all over again.”
By the time you get to your feet, he already has his pants on.
“You exceeded my expectations.” He looks over his shoulder at your ripped clothes. "I’ll think about convincing the others to let you go.”
You clench your fists, and he suddenly grabs your hair and forces you to look up at him. Then, he plants a kiss on your lips and smiles.
“I'll leave my shirt for you, Princess. Since you did so fucking well.”
Chapter 2
End notes:
I was watching a true crime documentary on Netflix, and that was the inspiration for this lmao.
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Heyyy, long time no post, huh? I'm dropping another chunk of stasis in darkness for you guys! And I wanted to remind people that these posts are basically rough drafts. The final product will hopefully be more polished but in the meantime please enjoy!
--
After Steve convinced the old man he meant no harm, he’d been allowed into the home. The Lord of Night hadn’t been super specific about the purpose of his quest, only that Steve had to bring him to Wayne Munson. Steve discreetly looked around the home as he entered it. The old man was obviously unwell and had been for a while, given the state of the house. Steve had the creeping suspicion that the time limit the Lord of Night mentioned was linked to the man’s health.
“What are you doing?” Wayne Munson asked suspiciously once he had returned to the kitchen with Steve in tow. He had sat heavily in one of the old worn chairs at the table but Steve, instead of joining him, began to clear the table on impulse. Steve halted awkwardly.
“This ain’t your house, boy,” Wayne said with a scowl. “I can take care of myself.”
Steve did his very best not to look at the scattered mess in the kitchen or living room. It was not the mess of a dirty, careless person. It was the mess of someone tired and overwhelmed. It was the mess of someone in pain who was too proud to ask for help. Steve took in Wayne Munson’s watery eyes, wan skin, and the clothes that were plain things, tattered from use, but mostly stain-free. Steve quickly added all these details and came up with a plan of attack. He set the plate back down.
“Yes, sir,” Steve agreed easily. “I’m aware, but I serve the Lord of Night and he sent me to you specifically. In our god’s name, I must assist you in any way I can.”
Wayne’s expression wavered. Steve pushed again. He lowered his gaze in a slightly embarrassed manner, letting a note of uncertainty color his words.
“I don’t know what else to do until nightfall,” Steve said. He rubbed the back of his neck bashfully. “I don’t want him to think I’ve neglected you.”
“What happens at nightfall?” Wayne asked.
“It’s when the Lord of Night wants to see you,” Steve said. Wayne blinked.
“Me? He wants to see me?”
“Yeah! So, if you could please let me,” Steve said, putting on his most endearing smile, “I’d like to take care of you until then. You know, make sure you’re comfortable and get the place ready for a divine visit. If it’s not too much trouble, sir?”
“Uh, no, that should be fine. Is…is there anything I should do?” Wayne asked dazedly.
“Not really. All I know is he really wants to see you tonight. Oh, maybe you’d like to rest until then? A nap, so you’re not drowsy when he arrives.”
Wayne nods, still in shock at the news. He didn’t protest when Steve helped him out of the chair and let him lean his weight on him as they navigated to the bedroom. Wayne sat on the bed as Steve drew curtains closed over the room’s single window. The curtains were thick enough to dim the sun to a pale yellow glow.
“I didn’t know there was anyone else who followed him,” Wayne said as he lay himself down over the covers.
"He told me you’re the only one left, besides me,” Steve told him. “And I only discovered him a month ago by accident.”
“By accident?” Wayne asked with a wry grin.
“My friends found a holy text when we were researching other gods. It was the only one of his in the city's whole library. Then we had a hell of a time trying to find his last shrine. When I finally found it, it was falling apart. He’s been forgotten,” Steve said. At Wayne’s troubled expression, he hurriedly added, “But now that I’ve pledged myself to him, I’m going to make sure people know him again.”
Wayne did not appear convinced, but he finally settled to rest after Steve promised to wake him before sunset. Steve took the opportunity to clean. He hadn’t been lying to Wayne when he said he wasn’t sure what to do until nightfall. It didn’t help that Steve also liked to keep himself busy. Being idle made him itch.
The house was small. Aside from Wayne's bedroom, there was only a cramped kitchen and a modest living room. From the small window of the backdoor, Steve could see a short, worn path to an outhouse.
Given the size of the house, though there was a mess everywhere, it didn’t take Steve very long to clean it all. When it was done to his satisfaction, there were still a few hours left until sunset so he wandered outside. The porch railing was covered with broad green leaves from intertwining vines but Steve left that alone when he saw the small garden nearby. It was full of ripe vegetables that Steve assumed Wayne had been unable to pick himself given his condition.
By the time Steve had picked the vegetables, pulled the weeds, and watered the garden, the sun hung low in the horizon. He cleaned himself up the best he could in the kitchen sink and took one of the chairs from the table to the bedroom before waking Wayne.
He told Wayne what he accomplished during Wayne’s repose. While Wayne expressed his gratitude politely enough, it was still apparent to Steve that the old man was irritated at having needed the assistance at all. To keep Wayne from dwelling on that, as well as to satisfy his own curiosity, he coaxed Wayne into conversation.
“Can I ask, uh, how you–I mean, how did you know? How did you know the Lord of Night existed?"
Wayne laughed at Steve’s befuddled tone. The laugh turned into a coughing fit. Steve quickly fetched him a glass of water and put it on the bedside table after Wayne had a drink.
“My family’s a bunch of no-good criminals,” Wayne croaked. “Were. It’s only me now. But before, each generation of Munsons took it up. Like a family tradition.”
“Criminals?” asked Steve cautiously.
“Thieves and con men. Some ladies of the night, if you catch my meaning. They knew of our Lord of Night and passed the knowledge down,” Wayne sighed sadly. “The life of a criminal ain’t what you call stable. We lost bits and pieces of him with every generation. Like his name. No one’s known his name for a very long time. Is that why he wants to see me? Did I fail him?”
There was genuine distress in Wayne’s question so Steve hid his disappointment. He had hoped the Lord of Night’s last worshiper would at least have a clue about where to start the search for the lost name. He focused, instead, on reassuring the old man.
“I don’t know why he wants to see you, but he wasn’t angry when he sent me. He sounded excited.”
“I suppose that’s a good thing,” Wayne said uncertainly.
“Definitely,” Steve assured. Before Wayne could sink into his gloom again, Steve said, “I know you said you’ve lost some knowledge, but do you know if the Lord of Night has any prayers? I haven’t…I mean, I’ve tried to worship him but I don’t think I can do it right without a prayer. I’m kind of new at all this.”
“My ma used to say our Lord didn’t have patience for formalities,” Wayne said, brow furrowed. “They bored him so he only had a few official prayers. There was one where we’d thank him for any dreams he gave us. I think there was another one that asked for dreams to bring inspiration or something of that sort. I don’t really remember those–ma would be boxing my ears for that if she was still around. I remember the one for protection, since we used that one a lot. It goes:
Lord of Night,
Guide us through all phases
Of the moon;
May the dark be free of
All dangers,
While your many stars burn.
Wayne’s voice cracked into a coughing fit near the end. Steve hurriedly offered him water again once Wayne had caught it again. Wayne took a few mouthfuls and repeated the prayer again so Steve could learn it. It took a few tries, but Wayne was patient and by the end of it, Steve had it memorized.
“Is that the only one?” Steve asked, hoping to learn more. Wayne grimaced.
“It’s the only one I really remember. The Lord of Night prefers stories. My ma would tell us the best bedtime stories. Said they were for our god as much as for me and my brother. I was never good at coming up with new stories, so I retell my favorites or tell our Lord about my days and give him a little offering.”
Steve wasn't much of a story teller. He supposed he could do as Wayne did until he met up with Robin and Dustin again. They constantly chatted about books they’d read. Steve couldn’t help but notice how, once again, his friends seemed a better fit for his god than he was; all Steve could give his god was his shield and sword. It was discouraging. He had to figure out a way to make up for it somehow.
“What kind of offerings?” Steve asked.
He wanted to give his god more; he wanted to give the Lord of Night something he’d actually like. It wasn’t lost on him that the Lord of Night took him under duress. Who else would’ve been able to complete this quest?
“When I was young, it was horse shoes,” Wayne chuckled at Steve’s confusion. “Thieves are supposed to give him a part of their loot but my ma and pa were horse thieves. They got horseshoes and would leave one for each horse they stole, tied with a braid made of the stolen horse’s mane.”
“You stole horses?” Steve said, unable to fight off a grin as he remembered the conversation he had with the Lord of Night about it.
“Me and my brother, before he passed,” Wayne said with a weak nod.
The sky had darkened by now. Steve pulled the stone out of his satchel. He carefully unwrapped it from the cloth and set it gently on the bedside table next to the glass of water. Wayne eyed it quizzically.
“It’s from his shrine,” Steve explained. Without any further fussing, Steve stood up and went to the door.
“Don’t leave,” the Lord of Night said.
Steve turned to see the god, hooded in his cloak of constellations, sitting in the chair Steve had vacated. The Lord of Night had not even glanced Steve's way when he spoke to him. The god’s attention rested solely on Wayne.
Steve hadn’t seen or spoken to the Lord of Night since he’d been accepted as his holy warrior. The god had needed to conserve his energy, he explained to Steve, so that Steve could complete his quest. The god’s cloak was as mesmerizing as the first time. However, this far from the shrine, the god did not look as solid as he had during the nights he spent with Steve.
“I wanted to give you two some privacy,” Steve said softly.
“I think Wayne would appreciate not being alone,” the Lord of Night said.
The old man stared at the god unblinkingly. Wayne’s expression was one of awe and fear, so Steve did as he was told and stayed in the room though he chose to lean on the wall furthest from the pair. He was still close to them in the tiny bedroom, but it provided the pretense of privacy.
“My Lord?” Wayne’s voice was barely audible.
“Hello. I’ve wanted to meet you for years,” the god said.
#trensu tells stories#steddie#stasis in darkness#stranger things#i'm gonna be honest#i absolutely have no idea how prayers are structured and i've got like zero experience in poetry#i do NOT like how the prayer turned out but#i did my best okay?#steve is so eager to use holy words#i had to give him SOMETHING#also#i'm starting to think i should've been like numbering these posts or something#but it's not like they're actual chapters or have a consistent length yknow?#so idk
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