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thefossilwhale · 3 years

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i will sell the hotel

button x kent. 1.2k words. based on this ask.

happy valentine’s day from sabrina wiseman and kent zarneki! (tagging @lividlyinlove, thank you so much for asking!)

When Sabrina first opens her eyes, the room is still dark. A bluish light bleeds through the curtains, promising sunrise and this twilight hour before it. For now, the darkness swallows blue shadows before they are half-formed, and she barely notices a difference when her eyes fall shut again. Sleep lingers at the edges of her mind, muffling her senses, though she is distantly aware of movement. The dull scratching of paws on a door, the low rumblings of canine discontent about to crest into a yap, the patient tut that stops it short. Footsteps, measured and slow—the mark of someone more alert, who hears everything more sharply in the morning quiet.

There is rustling at her shoulder, and then another doggy whine. Sabrina giggles, still half-asleep, and lifts the blanket just enough for Antigone to burrow under. She’s beneath her arm in seconds, nestling herself against Sabrina’s side and resting her head just below her shoulder. The wide-openness of her adoring eyes is contagious, and Sabrina comes closer to waking as Annie strains against her arm, struggling valiantly towards her face with tongue outstretched. She is intercepted by Kent, who appears beside the bed and leans down to kiss Sabrina’s hair, her temple, the corner of her mouth.

“It will rain soon,” he murmurs against her cheek, while Annie licks his earlobe. “So I’m taking them on our run before it does. Sorry for waking you.”

Her eyes close at his touch, and she’s half dozing again. Still, she grumbles as Kent scoops Annie into his arms— “She wants to stay. She likes me more,” she tries to protest, incoherently—and reaches blindly for their lost warmth. Kent chuckles, leans down for another kiss, and easily extricates himself from the weak grip that tries to hold him there by the back of his head.

“You’ll be asleep again in five minutes. We’ll be back by the time you wake up.”

“Five minutes” proves generous. The next time she’s conscious, the room is filled with the dull grey light of drizzling rain clouds, and Kent is beside her as though he’d never left. She might think she had dreamt his departure, if she couldn’t smell his soap. His hair is still damp from his post-run shower, and he sits up against the pillows, reading a book he keeps on the nightstand. (Some translation of some myth or other that Sabrina is sure she’ll be sufficiently interested and endeared to learn about from him, some other time, when a whole day with no obligations doesn’t stretch out before them and Kent isn’t curled beside her in the haze of morning.)

Sabrina kisses his bare shoulder, then rests her head there. One hand relinquishes the book to trail fingers up and down her arm, absently, but he’s too engrossed in his reading to acknowledge her further. She makes a token effort to read along, but the page offers nothing interesting enough to stop her pressing her lips to Kent’s temple and ghosting them down until she’s kissing his shoulder again.

He’s smiling now, but he still doesn’t look at her until she starts to pull away.

“Fine,” he says, and kisses her once, brief but firm. “Good morning.”

The “fine” is more fond than frustrated, but she still huffs her indignance against his smiling mouth. He laughs at her, then returns to reading.

Hmph. Must be some book.

Sabrina sighs and reaches for her own book on the nightstand—a poetry anthology she’s been working her way through on Glitch’s recommendation. After one poem, she sets it back down. Silences with Kent are always warm and never empty, but this one begs her to fill it. This quiet is a flimsy sheet failing to hide the outline of something beneath it, and nothing punctuates it—not even the sound of turning pages, she realizes.

Without moving her head, she scans Kent’s open book. He’s on the same page as when she awoke. Her eyes strain further sideways, towards his, which are already glancing sideways at her.

“Hey,” she says.

“Hey,” he says, with his barely-there smile, and she wonders how she could think anything might ever be wrong.

Kent still looks distracted, though now clearly not by the book. He stares at its pages without moving his eyes; he contemplates the window; he casts more glances her way. When Sabrina falls back against the pillows, content to close her eyes and wait for his voice, she hears his book snap shut and the sheets rustle, feels the bed shift as he turns towards her.

No voice comes, and she opens her eyes to find him lying on his front, chin on his forearms, gazing up at her. She gazes back at him—his curving mouth, his still-wet hair, his eyes grey like the comforting shroud of the rain outside. Her own smile only occurs to her when his widens faintly in response. One of his arms reaches for her, finding her hand where it rests atop the blankets.

“I want this,” he says finally, eyes never leaving hers. “You and me. Forever.”

“All right.”

Her tone is breezy, incongruous with the sudden weight of the morning. Kent’s thumb is dragging circles along her wrist, and he looks like he wants to laugh.

“Did we just… decide something?” She asks, and then he does start laughing. “That’s a yes? I missed a verbal contract somewhere, then. Are we married now?”

That last part was a joke, but it sobers Kent. “It wasn’t a proposal,” he tells her. “Not… that kind. If you wanted, though, we could.” He shrugs, and Sabrina no longer feels that she is the one acting unsuitably indifferent to what has apparently become an occasion.

“…Get married?” She prompts, filling in the last words of his sentence. He nods. “Okay.” Silence. “Was that a proposal?”

Kent rolls his eyes and scoots closer. “The question is whether you’re interested in marriage at all. No proposals until we clear that up.”

“You don’t sound very interested yourself, you know.”

“I just told you I want this forever,” he says, so casually that her heart sings. “If that means we get married, that’s fine. It doesn’t matter either way.”

“Wow. You’re romantic.” She laughs, like she doesn’t mean that wholeheartedly, like she isn’t giddy off his plain sincerity. “Keep up the sweet talk, and I’ll drag you to the altar today.”

“Yes,” Kent says, abruptly serious, nodding decisively.

“Yes what?”

“Yes, I’ll marry you. Since you asked.” His expression cracks, and he offers a grin that is very nearly a smirk. “That sounded like a proposal.”

“Oh, when I propose, you’ll know,” she tells him, grinning. “There will be roses. Me, in a red satin ball gown. A string quartet.”

When Sabrina lifts her gaze to the ceiling, pretending to imagine the spectacle, she finds that it’s only half an act. She envisions a proposal—lying in bed, on a morning like this; in some private restaurant corner, wearing a dress that matches his tie; out on the water, a ring box in Annie’s mouth, Cass nuzzling into their first affianced kiss. A wedding at a courthouse, in a park, on the beach. She wants them all, wants not one, wants to never leave this bed, with the scent of Kent’s soap and his hand on her arm and the rain that erases everything else. Wants this, forever.

Kent chuckles again, low and familiar and wonderful. He pulls her wrist towards him for a kiss, then stretches to reach her elbow, then joins her up by the pillows and settles against her.

“Drop the quartet,” he suggests, breath warm against her ear. “And then I’ll look forward to it.”

#kzarneki #sab x kent #oc: sabrina wiseman #my writing #/#mind blind #i never write anything this like. meanderingly romantic. but why not try for shameless romance indulgence on valentines day huh?#i got used to writing K and then my next move was really to defamiliarize them in an established relationship fic :///#ok love you guys happy valentines day!!! hope you like it <3 mwah

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superbat-love · 9 months

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I don't understand how Superbat can be considered boring when there's more than 70 years' worth of comic book, animation and live-action material by different writers, artists, directors and actors, each putting their own spin on Superman, Batman, and their dynamic together.

With tons of versions of Superman and Batman, you've got different settings, alternate universes, and future renditions in addition to the canon material to draw inspiration from. You can get creative with your headcanons and fanfics, mixing and matching different elements to suit your tastes.

And there are a lot of genres to explore from cute Superbat fluff to angsty hurt/comfort Superbat. You can also experiment with different character dynamics, like older!Clark x younger!Bruce or younger!Clark x older!Bruce, evil!Superman x good!Batman or evil!Batman x good!Superman, and friends to lovers or enemies to lovers scenarios. The possibilities are endless.

#it’s possibly one of the most dynamic pairings in fiction #there’s a reason why these two are iconic #as individuals and as a pair #sab rants #dc headcanon #dc fanfic #drabble #text post #superbat #dc #superman x batman #batman x superman #batman/superman #superman/batman #superman #batman #clark kent #bruce wayne

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superbat-love · 7 months

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Dan Mora’s Superbat dynamic is Golden Retriever! Clark X Grumpy Cat! Bruce

#sab rants #superbat #drabble #text post #dc #superman x batman #batman x superman #superman/batman #batman/superman #superman #batman #clark kent #bruce wayne

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thefossilwhale · 3 years

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signed the saw

mind blind. button x kent, 1.8k words. inspired by this ask about the ROs helping button manage a panic attack (so, cw for depiction of a panic attack/extreme anxiety). sabrina wiseman is unsurprised to find that undercover work is stressful.

The ceiling is dotted at long intervals by waning light bulbs, whose dim halos have a way of blurring the hall’s few distinctive features. Sabrina’s eyes have trouble focusing, anyway. There is grey, and there is brown, and there is the black shape of Kent’s shoulder half a stride ahead, leading her around the next corner.

This stretch of hallway was the biggest obstacle when planning the mission. Relatively deserted, with little chance of interruption, but it was at least a few minutes’ trek between point A and point B, and they needed every second.

Right now, they happen to be perfectly on schedule, and Sabrina is grateful for the dead air. She just needs a moment to collect herself, to align her breathing with Kent’s brisk pace down the hallway. One breath for every four steps, following his lead, and she’ll be back to herself by the time they round the next corner—which is coming up now, she realizes, as Kent takes an abrupt left. That’s okay. One more breath, and she’ll be fine.

She steps through the doorway, which she hadn’t noticed Kent opening, and forces herself back to alertness. The room is small. It’s as sparse and poorly lit as the hallway, with no visible evidence of the files that Kim had emphasized were mission critical. Swallowing another spike of panic, Sabrina opens her mouth, but Kent is faster.

“This isn’t the room,” he tells her.

“Okay.” She presses into the wall at her back and takes another breath. “So why are we stopping?”

The tremor in her voice is answer enough, and Kent is kind enough not to acknowledge it as he turns to close the door. “We can do our job in five minutes, if we have to. We can’t do it if you’re not at your best.”

If it were anyone else, she’d bristle at the suggestion and stride back into the hallway at double the pace. But Kent weights practicality at least as heavily as his concern. From his mouth, the words are simple fact: neither of them can afford her distraction, but they’re a good enough team to manage a detour.

Kent meets her eyes briefly, a small smile teasing the corner of his mouth that she can see. She barely registers it before his focus snaps back to the doorway.

His diverted attention is appeasement enough for Sabrina’s pride, and she lets herself sink. Not to the floor, just the few inches it takes for her neck to fall back between her shoulders, cradling the crown of her head against the wall. Her hands, clasped behind her crumpled back, feel cold and sickly on its lukewarm surface. Her eyes are pointed at the ceiling, but they scan aimlessly without seeing. She screws them shut and waits.

This place needs a makeover, says Nick, who had for several minutes been indistinguishable from the thousand other nervous hums in the back of her mind. How many ceiling tiles do you think aren’t stained? Twenty bucks says it’s five or less.

If there were any windows, she knows he would ask her about the weather instead. But his impression of the space is only as good as her own hazy, stuttering glances, and though he tries, there is little among the blank walls and shadows to latch onto. Still, she opens her eyes and looks up.

He must feel her unease resurging as she takes in the room once again, because his next words come in a rush of thought faster than he could ever speak them aloud: Wait, no, I can already tell that won’t help. Don’t humor me, okay? If I’m not helping, I’ll be quiet.

Nick is, of course, physically incapable of producing any noise in his current state, so he does technically keep that promise. But in the past week, Sabrina has come to understand what it means when someone calls her mind “loud.” Her own anxiety is familiar to her, slowly building and fuzzing the edges of her perception, but Nick’s mind has never felt so foreign. It is deafening in its wrongness, its intrusion. He is terrified.

It doesn’t matter whether he voices it; Nick is worried someone will find his sister having a panic attack somewhere they’d kill her for trespassing, and she would be lucky to die on the ugly floor of that boring hallway because it would mean she at least made it out of this room, whose shadows are growing thicker and more tangible until they seem to press against her throat. Her body falters under the weight of two consciousnesses as their respective panics converge. The wall at her back is painful with its rigidness, its press against her spine, its wrinkled and uneven paint.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, Sabrina is struck by a sick inevitability. Of course she couldn’t do this, after Nick warned her, after she insisted. Of course her worst mistake would be to play at field agent, and of course she would bring her brother and Kent down with her. If she could think or breathe, she might wonder if Nick felt vindicated by her failure.

“Sabrina?”

Kent’s voice is closer than it should be. She feels him at her right side, between her and the door he’s supposed to be watching.

A hand comes down on her shoulder, gentle as the voice that follows. “Sabrina, look at me.”

She shakes her head, but the scrape of her scalp against the wall is unbearable. She winces and lurches forward. The shaking motion grows tighter, jerking her chin to either side in frantic protest. I can’t open my eyes right now because any visual input will be the straw to break the camel’s brain, and then I’ll really be inconsolable and we’ll either die here, or worse, make it out as failures, is what she wants to tell him, but the words won’t form even in her mind. She screws her eyes shut tighter and finally halts the motion of her chin, holding it angled away from him. Please please please understand.

“Should I not…” He trails off, removing his hand—but it doesn’t go far. When he clears his throat and tries again, she can still feel it just barely hovering above her shoulder. “Is it okay to touch you? Yes or no.”

Sabrina tries to hum her assent, but the flat “hmm” that leaves her nose communicates little. Instead, her left hand escapes from behind her back and reaches for Kent’s wrist. She presses his hand once, firmly, back to her shoulder, where it offers a comforting squeeze, so brief she nearly misses it, before sliding to her forearm. His free hand follows suit, and he pulls her forward off the wall. She only catches herself when her head meets his shoulder.

The darkness as his body shields her eyes is a relief, and the first thought she has in its clarity is to wonder how much of her weight he would bear, if she stopped holding herself upright. Her arms, folded across her stomach, form an awkward barrier between them—one already crossed by the steadying hand he has placed lightly at each elbow, the tilt of her face towards his neck. Leaning against him, with his nose at her ear, she feels the rhythm of his breath, deep and deliberate. It takes a few moments for her own body to match it. After three full breaths shared between them, her mind quiets enough for Nick to resurface.

Okay, Button? His relief is tangible, though she’s not sure how much of it is her own.

She nods—a motion that, in the crook of Kent’s neck, feels embarrassingly like a nuzzle—then answers aloud. “Fine now.”

Mumbled weakly as they were against Kent’s shirt, the words must have been barely audible. Still, his nose dips to her cheek as he nods in acknowledgment, and he takes one step back. Sabrina’s arms slide out of his loose grip to hang at her sides. Studiously avoiding his gaze, she can’t tell what he’s looking at as she turns towards the door.

Kent doesn’t move. She waits, scanning for shadows, before calling softly over her shoulder. “Time to go?”

“If you’re ready,” he says evenly. “We can afford two more minutes, I would guess. It hasn’t been long.”

She hums noncommittally, and Kent steps beside her. Their arms don’t touch, but the space between them is so slight that she would barely have to move if she wanted them to.

Nick?

Don’t you dare, he warns, managing to sound both cheerful and stern. If you try to apologize for what just happened, I’ll start singing the Ghostbusters theme again, and I won’t stop until you’ve thwacked yourself on the head a few times for me.

Apologizing is one thing, Nick, she says. Self-flagellation is a bit harsh.

I agree! So don’t apologize, and I won’t enforce it.

Nick can’t hide a thing from her anymore, and though she knows his lighter mood is genuine, it’s clear how shaken he is. Does he always get that worried, when she has an attack? These circumstances were admittedly exceptional, but how much of that helplessness was her own?

I’m just glad Kent was here, says Nick, nudging those questions into some hidden corner of her mind. He’s all right.

Yes, he is. He’s looking at her, too. She won’t return his gaze, but she feels it on her and thinks he must be gauging whether she’s really recovered. But there is no tension, no intent in the small space between them. Kent is just… looking. Trusting her to watch the door. Thinking something that she’s sure she could never even begin to guess.

“I’m ready,” she tells him, and grabs his hand—knowing that he won’t outwardly react (it’s Kent), but still not looking, just in case. With one tug on his arm, she leads him forward and poises her free hand over the doorknob, waiting on his confirmation.

“Good,” comes his always inscrutable voice in reply. “Let’s go.”

Kent takes the lead again when they return to the hallway, and Sabrina slackens her grip on his hand, slowing her pace just enough that she’ll drop it as he pulls ahead. When his arm stretches uncomfortably behind him, he doesn’t slow down. Instead, he pulls on her hand, with just enough strength that she has to scramble to avoid tripping over her feet. The momentum carries her back to his side.

“Let’s go,” he repeats. His tone is neutral, but he squeezes her hand once as she matches his pace.

A light bulb flickers above them, scattering the shadows. For a moment, the hallway is as indistinct and menacing as when she’d retreated into that room. Kent’s hand is in hers, though, and he doesn’t miss a step. His outline is clear even in the waning light.

They round the next corner.

#oc: sabrina wiseman #sab x kent #my writing #hewwo everyone i hope this is believable as kent and not just some guy!#also i know what you're thinking and YES i made the space as boring as possible so i wouldn't have to describe it #mind blind #i keep writing abt sab having mental breakdowns.... i promise sometimes she is stable #also um! no title bc this is a snippet that turned into a fic on a whim and i just want to post it already <3 #edit: it is several weeks later and i have returned with a title.

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thefossilwhale · 3 years

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29 or 40 for sab and kent pls !!!

29. things you said in the rain

Sabrina is staring forlornly at Aeon’s rain-soaked parking lot, plotting a course around the puddles that will hopefully spare the cuffs of her uniform pants, when the drizzle picks back up into a respectable shower. With a sigh, she resigns herself to braving it before it gets worse, scowling ineffectually at the mist. She hikes her bag over her head, steps outside, and feels the rain hit her face anyway.

Across the parking lot is a figure also clad in Aeon’s black uniform, though they’ve wisely accessorized with a matching umbrella rather than a haphazard backpack. Sabrina, fearing that they might turn around and catch her watching them like an envious wet cat, ducks her head and strides quickly forward. It takes only a few steps for them to call out—

“Sabrina?”

The voice is Kent’s. She turns to find him still some distance away, umbrella raised in greeting and invitation. There are enough wet strands of hair clinging to her cheeks that his offer is more mitigation than salvation, but she jogs gratefully towards him regardless.

The way he leans forward, with one foot off the curb, to catch her beneath the umbrella just a moment before she would have reached it herself shouldn’t make her feel like a romantic lead in a period drama, but it does. When she notices that the umbrella has swapped hands, and he now holds it in his left to accommodate the side she’d approached from, Sabrina feels positively wooed.

Close as the umbrella forces them, she has to tilt her head back to say, “Hey,” and see his nod in response.

“On your way home?” She asks, and beams at him, relieved, when he nods again. “Good. Thanks for the escort.”

Another nod, this one a little slower. He looks both uncertain and amused. “I wouldn’t have offered if I wasn’t planning to walk with you.”

“Sure, but I didn’t know how far the offer extended,” Sabrina says. “Maybe it was only good for the parking lot.”

“Would it have mattered, then?” Kent raises an eyebrow. “You’d still have had to walk home in the rain.”

She laughs. “Not that I’m ungrateful, but it barely matters now.” It’s hard to judge the state of her uniform with its black fabric, so she gestures to her face instead, where a tilt of her head dislodges a stray droplet that slides down her nose, and her hair is already escaping its bun in wet tangles.

Kent’s eyes follow the raindrop’s path to the corner of her mouth. He’s suppressing a grin, she thinks, but it utterly, unnaturally vanishes when he meets her eyes again. “You’re right,” he says blankly. “See you.”

He maneuvers around her to step forward. He’s kind enough to pause, holding the umbrella back so it still shields her, but it does force her to concede the point and catch up with him.

“Fine, okay, I deserved that,” she mutters, and hears him chuckle. Sabrina winds up half in front of him, to conserve umbrella space, and though she knows the way home from Aeon perfectly well, his presence at her back and to her side, just in the corner of eye, feels like he’s steering her. He matches her stride and nudges her around puddles before they reach them. Belatedly, she jokes, “I thought I clarified that I wasn’t being ungrateful.”

“You did. And you’re very welcome,” he teases, and it takes effort not to turn her head to catch a glimpse of the smile she hears so clearly. “It’s my pleasure.”

They fall into silence for the rest of the walk. A few times, Sabrina pretends to drag her feet or step awkwardly over a puddle, just to see if he’ll fall out of step with her. He never does. She’s not sure what the point of these little tests is, but she likes that he passes them, whatever that means. She has given up by the time they reach his house, where her abrupt stop is genuine.

Sabrina sees the invisible boundary of Nick’s resting brainrange like a thick red line across the pavement. If he’s as close to them as possible while still being inside his house, she can only take one more step before he’ll hear her. She doesn’t know if he’s home—but that’s not the point. Today, she wants to linger on this side not for the privacy, but for the company.

She turns to look at Kent, and reminisces on that moment in the Aeon parking lot when she’d felt like an Austen heroine. Right now, smiling at him reluctantly, she feels trapped in a teenage romance, lingering on the porch after her first date, hoping for a kiss goodnight.

God, a date? She thinks. Really, Sabrina, he only walked you home.

Kent is staring at her, brow furrowed, and she sighs.

“Right,” she says. “Well, thanks again. I know I’m already soaked, but that walk would have been miserable without an umbrella.” She takes one step out from under its shelter, bracing herself for a sprint down the block, but pauses when she doesn’t feel the rain.

She blinks. It hasn’t stopped, though it’s diminished back to a tolerable drizzle. The culprit is Kent, still holding the umbrella over her head, having stepped forward to stay beside her under its protection.

“I said I’d walk you home,” he says.

“You said you’d walk with me.” Sabrina’s voice comes slowly. “And you did. And now you can go inside, and my house is just down there.” She gestures vaguely behind her, but doesn’t point out that the rain is hardly strong enough now to warrant an umbrella, for fear that he might agree.

And he does seem to agree, nodding decisively, though only to the last part of her sentence. “Good,” he says. “So I’ll walk you.”

“Okay. Good,” she echoes, grinning in spite of herself, like she hadn’t been arguing against it.

Neither of them takes a step at first. Sabrina looks down, running the toe of her shoe along the telepathic boundary. She watches herself cross it, and waits to feel different.

But there is Kent, right at her back. She feels him step to the side and instinctively follows, glancing back down to see a small puddle where she’d nearly stood. She was so distracted by her imaginary red paint that she hadn’t noticed.

“Thanks,” she calls over her shoulder. For guiding her just now or for walking her in general or for something else entirely, she isn’t sure.

The word feels final, so Kent lets it hang until they’ve reached her doorway. This is where she’d be kissed on the cheek, if this walk had been the romantic outing she’d imagined back by his yard. Instead, he follows behind her until he’s within umbrella-range of the doorway, and she’s close enough to duck beneath it’s shelter. She’s grateful for that, too—Sabrina isn’t sure she feels sturdy enough for a romantic overture just now.

But when Kent tilts the umbrella forward at just the right angle to save her from the thin sheets of water still sliding down the doorway’s frame, she thinks her heart could stop. When she sees him wait until she’s clear to swap the handle back to his right hand, she thinks it would have been kinder if he’d kissed her in the rain.

She stops herself from saying “thank you” again, and Kent leaves with only a nod, his grin as sharp as it is gentle. Sabrina watches him go until the black umbrella fades from view, then lingers in the quiet doorway.

She smothers a giggle against the still damp fabric of her sleeve, not wanting to break the silence he left. It feels like him, and it follows her inside like something familiar and warm at her back, guiding her up the steps.

#hello gamers it is 2:30 AM for me but i had to finish/post this tonight or i would die <3 #this was. supposed to be like 3 paragraphs. but i offer you all this other bullshit instead #oc: sabrina wiseman #sab x kent #it feels Good to post for them again! i didn't think i would get another fic for them up in march but i did :')#as always i hope that kent feels like kent. and also i hope that sab does not feel too... visual novel protag here lol.#even though she Is giddy and she Is foolish <3 #anyway!! maia hi maia i hope you read all the way here bc i forgot to THANK YOOUUU <3 for sending this it was a lot of fun to write #mind blind #my writing

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thefossilwhale · 3 years

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12 + sab/kent if you’d like!

12. things you said when you thought i was asleep (a prompt that i’ve used very loosely here)

“What kind of music do you like?”

Sabrina had turned nearly sideways in the passenger seat to pose the question, cheek lolling against the headrest like it was a pillow, and this was a sleepover, and she’d just dared Kent to tell the room about his crush. Her eyes held the same sense of juvenile challenge, wide and expectant.

“I like quiet,” was his answer. She huffed, dissatisfied, and Kent suppressed a grin because he’d expected her to. Mysterious as his new partner is, she could be strangely predictable.

It was more surprising, however, when she reached into her bag and proudly raised a Bluetooth speaker. “I’ll keep the volume low, then.” Her tone was flat, but a smile just barely curved the edge of her remark. Kent redoubled his focus on the road. “But that was your one chance to choose the playlist, and you blew it.”

A half second of silence passed between her voice and a low, steady synth beat that Kent thought he recognized from a house party he’d left early two years ago.

Sabrina Wiseman proved not to be someone who sings in the car—at least, not around a neighbor she’s known for less than two weeks. She’s too restrained, too deliberate and posed, even in the way she leaned back to stare idly out the opposite window. Her lips moved lazily around unvoiced lyrics, but the set of her shoulders never quite left, and there was a sharpness in her occasional glances toward him.

So Kent was surprised when, a few songs later, his eyes drifted sideways to find her slumped ungracefully in her seat, face angled towards him as if to ask another question. Only this time, her eyes were decidedly closed, and the tilt of her head was not that of a conspiratorial sleepover host, but of someone who was going to wake up with a stiff neck.

Since then, it’s been another five songs, and Kent has reached their neighborhood and circled her block twice. They’re coming up on her house again, so he slows the car to frown at the angle of Sabrina’s neck. If she had fallen asleep more comfortably, he could easily leave her be for a few more circuits. As it is, he wonders whether she’d be more bothered by a crick in her neck from sleeping too long, or embarrassed by him waking her up before it became a problem. It’s the latter, he knows, but Kent is reasoning that it’s probably worth letting her get over it to spare her the pain when he gets his first good look at her sleeping form.

Her arms, folded across her stomach, are the only remnant of her usual posture. She is frowning even in repose, as though some part of her that never quite relaxes into sleep is broadcasting its disapproval of the rest of her. Yet she sleeps soundly, breaths slow and deep, not even fidgeting.

The music shifts again. Some euphoric pop chorus, muffled by the low volume setting Sabrina had promised earlier, snaps him out of whatever had him idling in front of her house. He stifles a laugh at the sight of the speaker, still balanced perfectly in her lap.

He really should wake her up, and he thinks he could tap the volume button a few times without alerting her, to let the music do the job. But Sabrina is observant enough to notice the adjustment after the fact, and suspicious enough to read something into his indirect methods—which Kent would normally not consider his problem, but Sabrina, when suspicious, tends to close herself off in ways that don’t end with her accepting his offer of a ride home with a smile. And this has been nice, he thinks, even with her frowning at some unknown thing in her sleep.

So Kent steps out of his car and lets the door slam shut—with nowhere near enough force to do any damage, but he still winces at the thud—and takes a gamble on Sabrina blinking herself awake by the time he opens her door. She seems like a light sleeper, and even if she isn’t, the plan pays off. It takes her only a moment to pack up her bag, looking remarkably cognizant, and the glance she tosses him over the car door as she steps out is only a little bit skeptical.

“Thanks for the ride,” she mutters, and Kent nods. When she turns towards her house, the silence is filled by more synths playing faintly through her backpack. Not so cognizant after first waking up, then. Just okay at pretending to be.

Sabrina freezes, looks back to meet his eyes, and actually laughs. She’s either still half-asleep, or finally starting to warm up to him.

“Maybe next time I’ll let you choose the playlist,” she says, tugging at a shoulder strap.

Kent smiles, but shakes his head. “Maybe next time I’ll let you touch the radio.”

She laughs again, bright with surprise. “That’s not true. But I didn’t mean the playlist thing either, so we’re even.” Her eyes narrow, and she scans his face in search of something, but her smile is wide and genuine. And something else, too, but he can’t place it before she breaks away.

Sabrina calls a casual goodbye over her shoulder—which is very nearly slouched. He contemplates the novel posture as he returns to his car, which suddenly feels very quiet.

It’s barely a minute’s drive to his house, but he turns on the radio.

#hey guys guess what :D this 'micro fic' isn't 1000 words for once. i mean it's 946 but it's not a THOUSAND <3 #i Keep writing sab/kent fic w all the plot of micro fics and all the prose of the next great american novel <3 #i really peaked w panic attack fic huh. but that's okay i am still Writing and one day i will reach my former glory. for now i am happy to-#-get prompts out bc i'm not feeling inspired lately :// and now i will stop using the tags as my diary #i hope i don't sound too down on this bc i'm not!!! it was fun to write. thank you for the prompt rae <3 #my writing #sab x kent #also i did some last minute editing after that first tag. it's not 946 anymore but i am not retyping all that.#mind blind

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thefossilwhale · 3 years

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mayhaps 12 or 20 + sab/kent? 👀 ofc no pressure tho!

20. things you said that i wasn’t meant to hear (inspired by but ultimately having very little to do with the prompt) 616 words

On bad days, Sabrina will come home to find Nick feigning ignorance on the sofa. He always looks convincingly surprised when she enters, even if his “What’s up, Button?” lacks its usual levity. Too tired to hang up her pride, Sabrina only drags herself upstairs while please please let him follow me I don’t know how to ask drowns out her mumbled hello. She counts the minutes, which Nick also pretends not to hear, until he plays the intruder at her door.

“Can I come in, Button?”

Please yes. Thank you I know it’s ridiculous and I know it makes me miserable but sometimes I don’t know what I’d do if he couldn’t hear me. “If you want.”

On this bad day, Sabrina takes refuge with Kent. He awaits her on the couch, just as Nick would, but he is far too still and engrossed in a book to continue the comparison. His smile when she enters is lovely and warm, and it is a testament to her mood that it barely cheers her. He asks after her day, which was undermined by too little sleep and haunted by Aeon’s looming exams and utterly ruined by the discovery of a stray thread on her favorite shirt.

“I’m just tired,” she says, which is a greater admission than usual. When she promptly sabotages it by lying that she just needs quiet, it is novel and unreasonably disappointing to be taken at her word.

If Kent wonders why she lingers in the room with him, he doesn’t ask. Nor does he react to her blatant sulking on the chair across from him, after her restless pacing starts to worry the dogs. She loves him for it, could kiss him for it, but that would mean admitting that she might want to be kissed after a horrible day, which is something she’s still finding the vocabulary for.

Sabrina is certain he doesn’t believe that she’s fine, but he must believe that her deflection is sincere. That some hours of space would be good, that she knows how to care for herself. Sometimes, she can’t stand his faith in her. Or how much she wants to be worthy of it.

“Annie?” she calls. The dog stares at her curiously from the floor. “Do you think a perfect ASE score counts for anything if you fail every end-of-year exam?” Annie’s only response is to scamper towards her, careening across the tile.

It is far easier to dramatize her anxieties to a quizzical shih tzu than confess them to her boyfriend, but Kent looks up. Sabrina meets his gaze over furry ears as she lifts Annie to her chest.

“Talia said the first-year MIV exams were a breeze.” This time when he grins, small and crooked, she does feel her spirits lift. “Though she says that about most things.”

His book snaps shut, and he shifts on the couch so he’s leaning the way he does when she likes to slot in beside him and cling to his torso. Annie recognizes the invitation and strains until Sabrina sets her down, then runs and leaps to join Cass at his other side.

“There’s a pint of cookie dough ice cream in the freezer,” Kent says when Sabrina rises to join them. “And caramel sauce in the fridge.”

She grins, but doesn’t change her course. “After I’m done studying.”

“Studying?” He arches a significant brow as she settles in beside him. Head tucked beneath his, both arms around his middle, no books in sight.

“Later,” she whines, while Kent chuckles into her hair. For once, here at his home and in his arms, she doesn’t have to feign contentment with the quiet that settles.

#lavampira #oc: sabrina wiseman #sab x kent #wrote this in like an hour and i like it more than the fics i've spent days on lately :pensive: :fist:#ty for the prompt dani!!! i know this is. not really fulfilling the prompt but i am glad it inspired me to write this <3 #my writing #mind blind

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thefossilwhale · 3 years

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some sab lore under the cut that turns into sab/kent lore because all roads lead to sab/kent these days:

sabrina had a relationship in high school that lasted somewhere between 1 and 2 years. i’m not sure which one of them ended it, but either way sab was not that bothered. (in the case where she was dumped, it was because the other person got sick of her casually resisting all their overtures towards genuine intimacy, and she’s more upset that she misunderstood their expectations, and that they even had those expectations of her in the first place, than she is heartbroken.)

after high school, she dated semi-frequently, but never seriously or long-term. she just likes flirting + dressing up + meticulously presenting herself to appeal to another person and seeing it work! bc she’s very normal :) but as she got more serious about aeon, she stopped dating entirely and never thought twice about it. this is when her social circle shrunk down to nick, sally, and gray.

cut to chapter 6. nick, who has spent years overhearing the detached, self-interested way that sab approaches relationships, is forced to jointly experience the complete internal shutdown triggered by kent walking into rosy’s office. and he’s like “wow! this is novel! please let me out of here though!”

(the shutdown, of course, being triggered by the combined force of “why did i doubt my first instinct of him not being a ment” + “i’m intensely jealous that the NPO program is not an option for me” + “wow so not only is kent not a jerk but i have so much respect for him after learning this! i would love to chat with him a-” + “oh my god WAIT that’s right. kent is NOT a jerk and i was incredibly hostile for no reason” + “i’m the jerk. i’m the jerk and the fool for sneering at this dude who just keeps being nice to me” + “oh my god why is he so NICE to me”)

#oc: sabrina wiseman #sab x kent

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thefossilwhale · 3 years

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sab and kent are like "we have such similar backgrounds, values, and ambitions but present to others and interact with the world so differently that our first ~week of acquaintance is going to be a complete disaster, even though we like each other immediately. we’ll laugh about this, but at least one of us (pointed look at sab) will be so insecure about it that the course of our relationship will change forever, when we could have just been cool, gone on a few dates, and dealt with our intimacy issues later"

#the absolute State of sabrina wiseman after chapter 6. not even w nick or vengeance just her stupid little heart #she's not ready for the 73 other twists on K's route #sab x kent #oc: sabrina wiseman #anyway trying to write for these 2 is so funny bc Current sab keeps popping up trying to cause problems #and it's like no babe this is set at a vague point in the future. after you've gotten over yourself in like a chapter or 2

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thefossilwhale · 3 years

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ok those asks tired me out more than they had any right to, and i’m relieved that no one asked her about kent because i <3 would have had no idea where in the timeline to place her response or what she would say <3

but trying to get into sab’s voice helped me articulate one of the many sab/kent (and bonus sab/glitch) thots rattling around my skull so:

sab cares So Much what people think of her, all the time! it’s why she would take those opportunities to taunt people who accused her of being a fraud, whether it was about something minor like not understanding the poetry she reads or something as big as cheating her way into aeon. she wants everyone to think she’s so hypercompetent and unflappable that she barely has to try, which has the side effect of people thinking she doesn’t have to try, because everything gets handed to her.

superficially, i think she’s much more similar to glitch (and ofc i mean superficially in terms of how they present themselves, not that their relationship is more shallow). they both have a Persona and they Inhabit it and they know how to manipulate people to get the reactions they want.

so sab x glitch is more like, two people who hit it off immediately bc they immediately speak each other’s language. and they’re both good enough at playing their respective roles to confuse/intrigue the other, so it’s like... two people who have immediate chemistry slowly getting to know one another, and doing so consciously, and taking each new step together

meanwhile sab x kent. i mean, you (as button and as reader) always have to account for the fact that you’re misreading K entirely. but obviously button and K are in similar positions, and i think in the specific case of sab and kent, they have similar values, thought processes, desires, etc. but they’re both so private, and their external faces are so wildly different, that the same instant “oh! i’m onto you!” moment isn’t there for them. and it’s even further muddled by the ment fakeout fiasco

and sab is now a lot more self-conscious around kent than she would have been, because she hates the way he found out about her mind blindness and she hates how kind he was to her in spite of her (from his view, inexplicable) overt hostility. so that’s <3 a mess right now <3 but once they get past that and are in any way open with each other, it’s going to be less “getting to know you” and more. settling in, bc i think they already know each other very well without realizing

#oc: sabrina wiseman #sab x kent #sab x glitch #guess it's time to start those tags now 😳#is this what they call posting cringe?? it is 3am for me i'm going to sleep 💖 love you mutuals

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