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favoniuscodex · 3 years

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scaramouche + body swap soulmate au

prompt: soulmate au where when the reader turns twenty, she swaps bodies with her soulmate. rather than returning to their original bodies at the end of the day, the two soulmates can only return to their original bodies upon sharing a kiss.

pairing: scaramouche x fem!reader

rating: sfw

warnings: foul language, scaramouche’s existence, no beta reader (oops)

word count: 1.5k

a/n: this was the most requested au for me to write for, but i’m posting this one separately because i a) got carried away writing it and b) altered the prompt a bit. hopefully it still remains good enough that the anon who requested it is happy with the results! i love writing for scaramouche, although my interpretation of him will likely end up being super ooc. this is a part of my 50 follower celebration! i apologize to anyone who expected me to write scaramouche in a respectful way

when scaramouche first awakes, he realizes he had finally swapped bodies with his soulmate.

how utterly inconvenient. he thinks. despite the change in body, scaramouche is filled yet again with the rage that fuels him normally.

god has let him live another day and he plans to make it everyone’s problem.

but, before he can wear his rbf again and plan his holy re-conquest of the inazuman throne while doing whatever it is harbingers do, he needs to figure out where he is and get out of this body.

this means he has to find you. great. another incompentent buffoon i have to rely on. he thinks, followed by a steady stream of internalized expletives as he curses the world for placing him within your body.

he stands up and notices a shift in his typical perception of the world. you’re taller than him. he serves the goddess of love and the world made his soulmate taller than him. for a brief moment, scaramouche considers atheism.

as if this godawful, horrid situation couldn’t get any worse for poor, innocent scaramouche, a glance to his side reveals a shield, a sword, and, worst of all, a knights-of-favonious-insignia emblazoned uniform.

scaramouche then decides to rifle through your belongings. he’s not actively trying to invade your privacy, he’s just trying to find where you hide your vision. the world is cruel for tying him to a “perfidious, repugnant excuse of a government puppet”, but certainly isn’t cruel enough to tie him to a visionless plebeian? right?! right!??!?!?!

after nearly an hour of searching and the near destruction of any storage container that may exist in your house, scaramouche is bent over on his knees on your floor, slamming his fist against the creaking floorboards. no, he’s not crying! harbingers don’t cry! don’t look at him! he just spilt some seawater on his eyes! it doesn’t matter that the ocean isn’t nearby!

a knock on your front door disrupts scaramouche’s pity party and he shoots up, furiously wiping at his face to remove the “definitely-not-tear”stains.

“hold on!” scaramouche calls, surprised at the feminine voice that exits his body. he hadn’t even analyzed what you looked like yet. he had had more important things to do.

no, scaramouche isn’t struggling to put your undergarments on! he doesn’t struggle to do anything! he’s a harbinger!

after an unknown, embarrassingly long amount of time elapses, scaramouche manages to swing open the door, now dressed in your typical uniform, sword in his hand and at the ready.

“woah there, sweetheart. didn’t think our relationship had soured that quickly,” the blue-haired man at the door hums, a mischievous smirk spreading across his face.

SWEETHEART?! scaramouche screeches internally. you might be a visionless, uncultured peasant that is a part of one of the worst governments in teyvat, but you’re his visionless, uncultured peasant. scaramouche will be damned before he lets this flamboyant pirate steal you away from what fate decided belonged to scaramouche and scaramouche alone.

“call me your sweetheart again and i’ll rip that filthy eyepatch off your face and shove it up your-” scaramouche hisses, causing kaeya to interrupt him with a laugh.

a laugh? the man who looks like he just got out of a tea party with a three-year-old girl is laughing at me? ME?! scaramouche briefly considers capital murder. mondstadt is known for freedom after all. they could possibly turn the other cheek at this blue-haired menace getting murdered.

“happy twentieth birthday,” the man speaks, his revealed eye sparkling with mirth. “your name is (y/n) and i’m kaeya.”

“i didn’t ask for your name,” scaramouche responds, causing kaeya to let out another laugh.

normally, scaramouche would plead to anyone that he is simply a commoner from inazuma and needs a horse to go rescue his lover, now trapped within his body, and return her to mondstadt. however, his immediate hatred for kaeya had taken abrupt control of his body and eliminated any conniving strategy he may have had in order to steal mondstadtian resources to return home.

“well, kaeya,” scaramouche begins, mustering the most vitriol he can accrue from your voice into his words. “i need a horse if i plan to rescue my damsel in distress.”

kaeya raises an eyebrow, intrigued by scaramouche’s words. “i wouldn’t call her much of a damsel.”

“compared to me, everyone is a damsel. unfortunately, i am contractually obligated by fate to give a shit about this one,” scaramouche responds blankly, causing kaeya to stifle another laugh. “what poor gentleman do i need to seduce in order to obtain a horse with the minimal funding i found inside of this woman’s house?”

kaeya smiles. “i’m the knights of favonius calvary captain so… me. but don’t worry, babe, you already have my heart.”

scaramouche might not be able to commit capital murder without consequence, but he does receive joy from being able to ram his knee into kaeya’s family jewels and watch him double over in pain.

------

scaramouche’s journey to sneznhaya is a long and arduous one, but he much prefers the company of the horse rather than the company of kaeya and friends, whom scaramouche was introduced to at the knights of favonius headquarters.

(however, if scaramouche is being honest, he enjoyed the company of jean. she was dutiful and strong-willed. scaramouche would die before admitting he was impartial towards the acting grand master.)

his journey to find you comes to a halt before he enters the sneznhayan border, however. from a distance, he spots 2 (two? scaramouche queries) horses galloping in the distance and a familiar silhouette on each horse.

scaramouche recognizes his body upon one of the horses first. he doesn’t spend all that time admiring himself in the mirror for nothing!

however, he only pays attention to the person on the horse next to you until he sees their arm raise up, eagerly waving in scaramouche’s direction. a pit of dread settles in scaramouche’s stomach. of everyone in sneznhaya, you accompanied yourself with- ?

“HEY!” the person accompanying you yells, his russet-colored hair ruffling in the breeze. “SCARAMOUCHE!”

before scaramouche can turn the horse around and go resign to his fate of being stuck in your body in mondstadt in order to avoid interaction with him, the two of your horses approach scaramouche’s, coming to a halt a few feet in front of him.

scaramouche looks you, in his own body, up and down and lets out a noise of discontent as he hops off the horse and approaches you.

“you’re not wearing the hat,” scaramouche complains in an even voice, staring you down. much to his surprise, you stare right back at him, taking on the subtle challenge scaramouche has proposed to you through posture.

“i don’t desire to,” you respond, folding your arms. “if we’re going off appearances, you’re wearing that shirt backwards.”

scaramouche’s provoking staredown with you is disrupted as he glances downwards, off put by your statement.

“i don’t really care about correctly wearing the uniform of an establishment that is ultimately useless to the wellbeing of society,” scaramouche retorts.

“you’re literally a harbinger, don’t give me that sh-” you begin, but the third wheel of the conversation interrupts the two of you.

“what?” both you and scaramouche say in indignation towards the man who had the audacity to interrupt the two of you.

“jeez,” the man says, reaching up to scratch the back of his head. “that’s no way to thank me for helping you find him.”

“i literally told you i could find my own way back,” you say. “but fine, thank you, tartagle.”

the man, tartaglia, opens his mouth to correct you, but freezes upon hearing scaramouche laugh at your statement.

“you’re no longer needed, you can leave,” scaramouche states to childe, causing him to furrow his eyebrows in disbelief. tartaglia glances in your direction for assistance, but you silently shrug in response, gesturing with your head for him to leave as well.

as childe leaves, you turn your head back to scaramouche and smile. for once, scaramouche’s insistent anger is quelled, the roaring waters of the ocean within his heart settling into a calm stream. maybe, despite your overall uselessness to society, you wouldn’t be the worst soulmate ever. scaramouche tells himself, trying to ignore the increased pace of his heartbeat.

“ready to switch back?” you ask, moving closer to him, causing his gaze to flicker down to your lips. oh, right. scaramouche reminds himself. he parts his mouth to respond but, for once in his life, doesn’t know how to form the words. so, he closes his mouth, swallows down his anxiety, and nods before moving closer to you as well.

his hand bumps into yours as the two of you reach up to cup the other’s face as you lean into your first kiss. he barely has time to register the light giggle of amusement that escapes your lips as the two of your consciousnesses begin to return to their respective bodies upon your lips slotting against the other’s.

maybe, just maybe, you were made for me. scaramouche thinks.

once back in his body, he doesn’t dare utter his thoughts aloud. instead, he reserves that thought for when he gets down on one knee.

#genshin impact x reader #genshin impact headcanons #genshin impact scenarios #scaramouche x reader #scaramouche headcanons #scaramouche #scaramouche scenarios #*50 follower celebration #sorry if any poor soul had notifs on when i was trying to post this lmao i failed like 4 times #*scaramouche #*writing #*headcanons

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arthurtristankingsmen · 4 years

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The moment Arthur’s fingers brushed the glass of his heart, he knew.

It was a spasm that jolted his entire body, a bolt of electricity firing every nerve and muscle and felt so-- weird. He had whipped around, discarding Lance to the ground instead of holding him up by his shirt, and stormed into the truck.

Arthur had been sitting there, on his knees holding his locket in his hands. He’d stared at it as if confused. And he’d opened it.

He couldn’t remember if he’d reacted, or what he’d been feeling in that moment exactly. It was a blur of something hot and something so personal being looked at without even asking--

He’d snatched the thing with a sharp swipe of a hand, glaring at Arthur until he’d cowered away. Didn’t he know this was private? The thought Arthur, the man who’d killed him, had seen his deepest want, had seen into his heart....

It burned with something other than anger, and he tenderly cradled the locket in his hands, cheeks warm. It wasn’t meant for anyone to see, least of all him.

He’d floated away, taking a few feet of space-- and then he’d blinked, freezing where he’d landed, going rigid and shoulders drawing up.

That wasn’t his photograph-- that wasn’t it. It--

Every time the heart beat, sparking with a brief light, he could see it again. See it clearer.

He-- remembered this. Vivi wanted a picture of the group. He remembered his arm wrapping around her and Mystery and holding her close while she lifted the camera-- and he remembered Arthur there, sticking his hands up like a dork, grinning wide as he scooted in with them. He remembered them laughing, Vivi teasing him, and another photo where they all made faces, and then going out for pizza and bantering together and sitting then by each other in the dim light of a movie--

His feet were planted on the floor, but he could hardly tell. He felt weightless, drifting between a thousand thoughts at all once, and at the same time somehow crushed, gravity pounding against him with a mallet, relentless strike after strike until he was flattened against the metal of the truck.

His hands trembled. The heart pulsed between his numb fingers, and he stared at Arthur, at all of them together smiling, until he was just a yellow blur. Darkness crept along his vision and at the rims and it slicked his face in black ink, dripping down and trailing along the bony curves of his skull.

He didn’t realizing he was hitting his knees until he felt them bang against the metal floor of the truck. Inky tears still traced the curve of bone and pattered the fabric of his suit. He curved forward himself, hunching over his locket and staring, even as the flow thickened until there was no point in looking.

Tiny hands, smaller than his own, found his shoulders in a hesitant touch.

Lewis flinched, hard, and the hands retreated, hovering close, but not touching. He relaxed again now that he knew they were there, not invading his space. They returned to touch his back, and after a beat, he leaned a fraction into them. That was enough of a response for them to resume.

They hesitated a few times, moving slow like he might knock them away again. When he didn’t, they wrapped completely around his waist, and a weight pressed against his back.

He knew who it had to be. But he couldn’t imagine Arthur hugging him. Not after what he’d done.

“L-Lewis...?” Arthur asked in the softest, wary voice, and it all cracked away, any denial he could hold. The arms tightened around him as he groaned from deep in his chest, hunching forward, doubling from the ache.

It had been so long since he’d been hugged...

Emotions washed over him all at once in a roiling wave, threatening to drown him if the lifeline of those arms didn’t keep him afloat. He heard Arthur move, felt the position shift so Arthur’s hair grazed the back of his skull.

The ache pounded as fast as his anchor did. The tears were streaking so thick it looked like mascara when he looked down. He seized up again.

Lewis snapped the locket shut, before twisting in those arms.

Arthur flinched as he did, coiling like a spring ready to bounce himself away. He looked tired, scared, eyes watery and wide. He looked ready to throw his arms up to protect himself again.

It panged at Lewis’s chest but for the moment he ignored it, and wrapped his own arms around Arthur instead. Arthur made a noise, a wet one, and it ached, but less when he felt those arms squeeze back.

He curled himself over Arthur, enveloping him with his arms and planting his face on his shoulder. Arthur held his shoulder from where his arm hooked under, the other still clutching on to his jacket. “I-- I looked for you-- you-- you’re here...”

He sounded so happy and so pained at the same time. He could feel the silent tears against his jacket, leaving wet spots. This.... this person couldn’t be who he remembered.

He’d forgotten his locket. Did he forget other things? What was real?

Arthur sniffed again and Lewis squeezed him again, burying his face in his hair. This....was. This was. Arthur was here right now, hugging him because he’d been crying. That was real.

He made another sound before burying Arthur further in his embrace, enveloping him in his arms like an amoeba. It was greedy, so greedy, but he’d been alone with just the deadbeats so long. Anything was better than sitting in this feeling by himself. He felt so isolated but so connected and it hurt but it felt better and he wasn’t angry right now and he wasn’t alone and it was so much all at once that he wanted to hide but that would mean not holding on anymore and he couldn’t he needed someone he needed to feel safe and not gone and here and still him--.

Arthur made a soothing noise as he shook with another whimper, still patting at him, though far awkwardly now that he was smothered. It almost made him laugh. Arthur was-- good. Trying so hard to help, even after he’d almost--

The thought made his hair sputter and his chest ache even more, and he buried his face in Arthur’s hair again, eyes closed tight.

“Are-- are you feeling better, big guy...?” Arthur asked in a hollow voice. Lewis answered by nodding his head on top of Arthur’s, sure his voice wouldn’t work well enough to respond, if it worked at all anymore. “Uf-- okay good. Um. Do you... think we could maybe. Talk? About-- maybe about....why you um-- well you--.”

The question cut short (Lewis couldn’t tell if he was relieved or not) by the sound of something whipping through the air above. Arthur paused and tried to look up, but Lewis instinctively curled around Arthur.

He felt the heat of the blast before he heard it, and the both of them bounced with the force. Arthur was tucked inside his hold like a cocoon, and when they stopped pinballing inside the truck, the most he seemed to up with was a few scuffs and scrapes from the tumble, when Lewis took a moment to check.

But Arthur wasn’t on fire, so Lewis figured that was a win by comparison.

Arthur wheezed as he sat up, rolling off Lewis when he unfurled. Lewis stayed on the ground, willing the world to stop spinning. “Fffffuuuoookay maybe never mind that you know what? I think things are happening?? So-- shit Lance-- Is he okay--? Oh-- Thank god he’s out of the blast but he’s not awake okay okay-. Okay I’m just gonna--” Arthur scrambled to his feet, nearly toppling again face first when the ground bounced with a crash and rumble outside the truck. He looked around wildly and fumbled, but he managed to find his feet, and stumbled towards the exit. “We can-- it doesn’t matter I’m gonna get Lance somewhere safe--.”

Lewis didn’t answer, but he sat up too. If something bad was happening-- he didn’t want Arthur to go alone. His head still pounded from the blast, and he clutched at and leaned against the doorway, still holding his skull. Maybe that would make things feel less off-balance.

It did for a whole second, before seeing a giant writhing mass of vines put everything else from his mind.

“What the f---.” Arthur clutched Lance, also looking the same direction with an expression the probably matched his own in level of shocked confusion, when his eyes flicked back to Arthur. He had Lance slung over a shoulder and a grimace on his face. “IIIII think it’s time to move!” He hollered, already following through. “I’m heading to the shop!”

Lewis nodded himself, before quickly following after him. Some of the vines had already diverted their way, and Arthur needed to get his uncle somewhere safe.

And if he was honest he owed Mr. Kingsmen at least that much for.... reacting so poorly, earlier.

And... if he was really, really honest...he didn’t want Arthur to get hurt.

...Tonight was just going to be one of those world-upside-downing, perception-altering kinds of nights, wasn’t it?

Well. At least it probably couldn’t get any weirder than it already had.

#MSA Spoilers #Mystery Skulls Future #Mystery Skulls #Mystery Skulls Animated #my original stuff #my original writing #lewis pepper #arthur kingsmen #and then lewis was immediately wrong #this one also feels meh to me but i wanted to play with the scene differently so i guess get two versions *shrug*#i actually want to draw a companion for this one but it'll not be tonight bc 3am lol #i just want to art them hugging jdjd #mmmm gonna post and then yeet because nerves goodbye for tonight lol #i can't keep looking at it or i will hate it jdjd

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systematicfailure · 3 years

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Counting Days

Paring: Natasha Romanoff x Reader

Summary: You never had a reason to count days when you thought you still had all the time in the world.

Warnings: Angst, mentions of death, grief

Word Count: 1.3k

A/N: Wager a listen to Choke by OneRepublic while reading. Anyways, hope y'all enjoy.

You learn to start counting days once she’s gone.

The first few come and go in shock, the piece of you that refuses to believe the truth of it all, makes a second plate of breakfast in the morning and the several that follow. She was going to come back, you were sure of it. You just have to be patient.

Day thirteen is different from the ones before.

Time is precious and grief is suffocating, you finally realize - you feel foolish for never noticing. A more forgiving part of you rationalizes that there was no way of knowing how little of it you had but then the grief sets in, all encompassing - it latches onto your limbs, pulling you further away from the light she so easily brought you. This wasn’t how it was supposed to end. The heroes won but if that was the case, then why did it feel like you just lost everything?

Your life turns into a series of maybes and what ifs. You recognize that you’re bargaining, trying so desperately to replay that day to find something to change or tweak, another path that leads her back to you. It hurts more than you care to admit but the record keeps spinning, and in between one alteration and another, you fall asleep in a bed that is now only yours.

You dream of her.

There’s a glimmer in her eyes and you hate that even in your dreams, you compare it to the dull, unseeing emeralds in the haunting dying embers of night. The image is fleeting as she turns slightly, rays of sunlight peeking through half open blinds, illuminating her features. A familiar smirk lays across her face, hands moving up to dust the bangs from her forehead.

“Staring is rather rude, you know?” She teases, a light chuckle touching the tip of her tongue.

“I just don’t want to forget.” Natasha quirks an eyebrow at your response. Shaking her head, she follows the movement of your frantic irises, a question rising in the way her mouth crinkles at the corners. You ignore it, standing up from the bed before closing the short distance to her. Nose tucking into her neck, you breathe in the underlying scent of cherry blossoms and tangerines. You know it's just a dream, know deep in your bones it’s not real but as your head cranes back, her eyes of worry tracing each inch of you, you let yourself believe, even for a moment, that when you wake up she’ll still be there.

She isn’t.

When you wake it’s unbearably dark. Your motions are sluggish as you stumble out of the confining sheets and down the elevator to the front entrance of the compound. A scream gains traction in your vocal chords, fighting its way past your lips as you throw your scorching body against the wet pavement outside. How many times were you going to do this? How many times were you going to lose her? How many more days? When was enough, enough? The second the thought surfaces, you feel selfish. The answer would always be the same.

As many times as it took. You freely put the shackles on because there ceases to be a day that exists where she’s not worth every last bit of this agony that swallows you whole.

You carefully right your position, drawing your aching chest into your knees and you remember her.

Dawn is on the horizon when you finally shuffle your weight off the ground. Shivering, you keep your eyes to the floor as you enter the kitchen. What remains of the Avengers linger at your reappearance but do not pose a question when you make two cups of coffee instead of one. They know it’s a habit you’re not quite ready to break yet. Vaguely, your head tilts their way as you exit. You don’t have enough left in you to do anything more.

When you reach your bedroom door, you falter. It’s still partially open from your earlier haste to get away and everything comes crashing down once again. Both ceramic mugs tumble to the concrete when you catch sight of the worn, brown leather jacket. It’s all too much and wholly not enough, rolled into one. You can’t take it anymore. Ghosts are chasing and nipping at your heels; the smell of her lingers in hallways and rooms, random items of clothing hanging in closets and lying atop of chairs, memories bombarding at every turn.

You need to leave, at least for a little while -- not forever but long enough.

A snarky fragment of your consciousness mocks you when you bring a box of her things, lamenting the irony of taking memories you’re trying to leave behind. You huff out loud in response, continuing to put it with the rest of your stuff anyways before shutting the trunk. The rest of the team waits patiently to bid their goodbyes. After over an hour, there’s only Clint left. You eye each other patiently, sizing the other up before identical, miserable grins stretch into place.

“Take care of yourself, yeah?” You say because you really, truthfully mean it. You don’t blame him, not anymore at least but you know a significant portion of himself always will. He gives you a barely perceptible nod, pain licking his eyes in a faint mist. Without hesitation, your arms wrap his shoulders, pulling him close. He seizes at the motion before returning the gesture ten-fold, the strength of it crushing the breath in your diaphragm.

“I’m so sorry.” He whispers brokenly into your hair, fingers gripping your sides. Your body tightens around him in a squeeze as a response before you ease away from him. Tears gather and collect in his eyelashes, falling briefly but he’s quick to swipe them dry. A sigh escapes you then, long and drawn out as the backs of your cornea’s burn at the weight of all you both had lost. “As am I, Clint.”

When the compound fades from your rearview mirror, you finally loosen the captive hold you have on your sobs. They come out silent at first but it’s not long before you’re choking on each exhale, chest rattling with the force it takes to regain a semblance of oxygen in your caving lungs.

You think you might never be okay again and it terrifies you.

At first, roaming the world does help ease the ever persistent ache you feel. The days blur and melt together. You never stay in one place more than a week, the constant need to run as far as your legs can take you keeps the thoughts at bay. You avoid Ohio, taking a ship to Ireland instead. Eventually, you find yourself in Italy, in a small rural town with more hills than people but there’s a familiar voice in the back of your mind, prodding you to realize that you’re doing something wrong and you hate yourself for not figuring it out sooner.

You don’t remember when it happened but somewhere between leaving and now, you stopped counting. It’s a betrayal you had no idea you were capable of, it feels like forgetting and the last thing you want to do is forget her.

You force yourself to stop running and the ache you welcome back resembles coming home.

Finally, you visit Ohio. It's gut wrenching and painful but worth it in the end when you find them, her family. They tell you stories you won’t dare forget. You come to the conclusion that people are liars, grief does not lessen or fade, it just becomes more manageable to bear. Your soul is still hollow, ghosts don’t stop nipping at your heels but when you see her in your dreams, you tell her you’ll find her again, in another life, and you’ll get the happy ending you both deserve.

You don’t go back to New York.

You plant saplings in the fields of Ohio, by a house made for two, that you nurture with aging hands and you watch them flourish into breathtaking creatures of nature. Their limbs and branches stretched towards one another, forever intertwined.

You learn to love counting days, especially when it leads you back to her.

#natasha romanoff x reader #black widow x reader #natasha x reader #natasha romanoff x you #natasha x you #black widow x you #natasha romanoff #black widow #marvel

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pcrkiss · 2 years

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A BRAMBLE ROSE.

name: doris arcine purkiss age: twenty four birthdate: december 8th. (☼ sagittarius) gender & pronouns: cis-female. she & her. blood type: halfblood house: ravenclaw sided with: neutral occupation. experimental spagyric alchemist

aesthetics — plant mom™, mad scientist but make it hippie, gold jewelry, alchemy periodicals stacked high, color coded notebooks, golden hour, dusky rose palleted macaroons, gel pen hearts drawn around portraits of paracelsus, multipage astrology charts, honey & lemons, standing with heart shaped glasses on infront of a 'no loitering sign', flower fields, shelves full of brightly colored glass bottles, midnight sidestreet kisses, sky writing, ex-boyfriend exit surveys, apology letters for “how i behaved during scrabble”

A SUMMARY.

+ Open Minded. Studious. Imaginative. Reliable. Audacious. - Tactless. Overly Romantic. Bad Judge of Character. Extravagant. Biased. Doris is a force of nature. Not like a hurricane — more like the sun: usually warm and relaxing, but under certain concentrated conditions fires start. Passing glances imprints the perception of a girl gentle, fanciful, easygoing — sometimes this impression is right on ( Doris is indeed a girl who loves sugar frosting and pink roses, who takes astrology too seriously, who falls in love often and to typically disastrous results). And other times... it's not.

She is the friend you call when you feel like you have been treated unfairly by higher powers ( Doris is notoriously known among her year-mates for the time a lazy investigation of performance altering potions usage got a friend of hers kicked off the Ravenclaw quidditch team and she retaliated by storming into the Headmaster's office armed with League bylaws and writing the Daily Prophet to report the school's negligent handling of a case related to a handicapped muggleborn seeker ). The one you take with you to buy a car because even if she knew nothing about automobiles the night before, come afternoon at the dealership she's a walking issue of Motor Trend magazine and isn't having any of the car dealer's bullshit about considering the Lexus over the Honda because of "what great transmission it has".

She is not the friend you call to help paint your kitchen, because what would begin as a simple change from dark blue walls to robin's egg will turn into a reorganizing of cabinet space, inclusion of an aesthetic gallery wall, and eight hours buying all new storage containers to match the changed color scheme. In short, Doris is intense, she is dedicated, she is idealistic. She is by no means an activist, too laser focused on her own ecosystem to worry about the world at large, but she has very firm ideals about how her world and the worlds of those she loves ought be and is relentless in ensuring that it be so.

A BACKSTORY.

growing up ...

Her father, long-time hence a smoky wisp of wistfulness and a handful of sense-memories to her mother, managed to be a great and long shadow to live in for the entirety of the Purkiss life-span by virtue of possessing magic. Wealthy debutante Rebecca Purkiss did not - muggle born, muggle bred, magic had stole in silver-quick and taken away any possible happiness in normality with a man in possession of extremely long fingers and distant-dark eyes and a tread silent enough for him to slip out of bed and leave in the night without even waking her from sound, sound sleep. He left behind a daughter, Doris, who was thereafter reared on romantic stories about her father, whose disappearance Rebecca attributed to some grand inescapable responsibility that called out from that secret otherworld.

Only the good remained in her idealized retrospection. Memories of walls washed in starlight with just a wand and a word. Of a bird whose plumage was pure flame before it flared and died and returned a chick inside it's mother of pearl cage. Of drinking a tincture that let her wear another woman's face and running through the night in Monte-Carlo right under the noses of her controlling parents. Those unbearably beautiful moments were best friend and dark lover and horrible influence all three: the woman sought out magic with the greedy, needy hunger of the desperate, for the gates of that glimpsed-at world to swing open once again. Magic frittered the money through her fingers; the mundane muggle kind of magic, rather than the real stuff: crystals and palm readers and spirit healers. The clatter-sway of too-heavy gypsy charmed amulets around her neck was the counterbalance to Doris learning to walk and learning to run and learning to believe and imagine and hold tight to beautiful unrealistic things even in the face of opposition. She learned from mother to give her heart away recklessly, to love what she liked and scowl at what she did not, to romanticize mystery.

Later comes a bigger tragedy than father's leaving: illness takes Rebecca when Doris is nine years old. So close, just two years shy of the day mother had always been dreaming of. Doris is placed into the care of her Uncle and Aunt, slotted in amongst their brood of five, displaced and feeling more like an orbiting satellite than system body to a family that is hers but not really. ‘Orphan’, her cousins' old money aristocratic playmates called her — although somewhere out there there’s a father, one who didn’t even leave a surname shucked behind him like abandoned snakeskin, only a daughter skidding and drifting in his wake. She is not like her prep school relatives, all champagne charm and pressed proper; too head in the clouds, too enthusiasm inventive, too blunt truth opinionated.

“What are we going to do with that girl?” her Uncle wonders after the third time an instructor sends a letter home from boarding school extolling on her sin of being bright but unrealistic and resistant to correction. Doris was her mother's daughter in the straightness of her spine, how her shoulders were thrown back, her chin raised as if daring anyone to try and tell her "no". Her aunt, at least, is more flexible: “Let her be. The world will have enough to say about who she ought to be without us getting involved.” Uncle and Aunt don't know she is well equipped for the world that finally comes knocking when she's eleven years old. The long awaited birthright folded into a letter with no postage pressed to the corner. It is addressed to Doris Purkiss, witch.

She likes Divination and Magical Theory, chocolate frogs and exploding snap, the taste of pumpkin juice as a young girl and a little later the warm bite of fire whiskey. She falls deeply in love with Alchemy and Herbology and often is found napping near the mandrakes on warm afternoons. Despite her blunt and brusque nature and a lack of finesse in Defense Against The Dark Arts, she was dearly loved by the bulk of the Hogwarts faculty. She had, of course, her detractors. Slughorn despised her from the time when she turned down his repeatedly insistent invitations to join the Slug Club by calling him "a flaccid yes-man coated with so much jaded self-worth". Argus Filch considered her, quite frankly, a menace and would have instated corporal punishment for her alone if not for the constraint of the Headmaster. And she became her own Head of House's archnemesis after the Quidditch debacle.

during the war ...

Out of Hogwarts she settled into a townhouse in Little Norton, paid for with her portion of Purkiss inheritance. A French style abode; high ceilings and skylights to let in the light and black iron spiral staircases and cozy greenhouse in the garden. Doris found initial gainful employ with the Wizarding Examinations Authority, drafting test questions for the Magical Theory and Alchemy portions of the N.E.W.T.s. The only ones whose dissatisfaction with her choice of career outpaced the academy 7th years who had to answer her essay queries was the Department of Intoxicating Substances, who in the years immediately following her leaving Hogwarts, had issued her no fewer than eight citations for new alcoholic substances developed as a byproduct of her experimentations with alchemic fermentation. The W.E.A. was an unburdensome job, which left her ample free time to engage in magical research and development, the nature of which was not always mundane enough for the Ministry's peace of mind.

Of course her transgressions became a comparative drop in the bucket as The Dark Lord's stranglehold of terror continued to tighten about the beating heart of Britain's Wizarding World. Fear was everywhere and though Doris wasn’t an exception, she claimed no allegiance anywhere. Vehemently rejected the doctrine espoused by the Dark Lord's followers, but hadn't the discipline and temperament to invite induction into the Order's clandestine ranks. Even the Ministry was a leery lukewarm enemy, courtesy long held tendency to buck against authority and those ever increasing reprimands from regulatory arms of the DMLE.

She channeled her efforts not into cause or country, but into those (good or ill) who claimed corners of her honeyed heart. And if she recognized the tell-tale signs of under eye weariness and old wounds on precious friends like the Potters, she did not waste time asking questions she knew they couldn't answer but continued turning up at door arms full of board games for best friend dinners and kept things-as-normal track of birthdays and anniversaries rather than letting them fall to the wayside behind the prioritization of war waging and perhaps she slipped a few extra herbs to heal and sooth into the home brewed wine she handed out amongst her social circle.

in the present ...

When the war ends and Voldemort falls at Dumbledore's feet and the flames of open war were doused it should be, it seems like, it sounds like victory. But Doris knows there's no such thing as equilibrium and change is constant, inescapable bedfellow. Battles may have no longer been wholescale, all consuming, at yet it seemed like conflict continued to creep. For Doris, this moreso than fires in fields and blood letting pricks her sense of danger, for the tensions that eased into everyday like by inches (small but inexorable) feels like the tide before a tidal wave. She had sneered and bit at institutionalized systems often enough to understand that more than grand cowled evil, it's the attrition of bloodless bureaucracy that can shred the fabric of a society.

#𝖉𝖊𝖛 : info & headcanon

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whatifxwereyou · 3 years

Text

Firestorm Part 6: By the Light of the Dawn

Fandom: Mortal Kombat 2021 Liu Kang x Reader

You wake up to the sweetest sight.

A/N: having a pretty rough week so not much for words other than that I hope you are all doing great and thank you for reading <3 love you!

Start From the Beginning << Previous Chapter Next Chapter >> Chapter Index

It was still raining.

You could feel the cold mist from the window and pulled the blankets up a little higher. It was colder than you remembered and that was because you were alone. Your space heater was gone. Liu Kang had left at some point. You had to remind yourself that he was a busy man but you were also disappointed not to wake up in his arms. They were spectacular arms, after all. And they had left you with the most wonderful of memories.

You rolled onto your side, tugging the blanket securely beneath your arms and pushed your wild hair away from your face. Much to your surprise, you spotted Liu Kang on the floor, meditating next to your bed. He hadn’t left after all. Your stomach was filled with butterflies that were doing acrobatics and you admired him. He sat shirtless, eyes closed, breathing deep and, rather shamelessly, you watched him. Why wouldn’t you? It wasn’t like how you felt about him was exactly a secret anymore. Things had happened in such a blur that you felt you had more than earned the chance to admire him. He was a fine specimen of a man.

Was it wrong of you to love how vascular he was? Why was it such a turn on? You couldn’t explain it. It just did all the right things for you. You adjusted on the bed and watched him. You’d wait patiently for him to finish up. There were thousands of things you had to think about that morning but right now the only thing you wanted to think about was Liu Kang.

The moment was peaceful. You nearly fell back to sleep.

When he finished his posture changed and he peeked one eye open to catch your gaze. You watched as those perfect lips curled into that subtle and familiar smile, how his eyes sparkled with admiration. You shook off the chills. He crawled over to you and, hand engulfing your cheek, pressed his lips to yours in a stolen kiss. You smiled against his lips but returned the sweet sentiment. You weren’t sure you’d ever get used to kissing Liu Kang. It made those butterflies do flips again.

“Mmm…” You pointed at him and then gently poked his shoulder with the same finger. “Morning breath.” Your lips brushed against his as you spoke and you couldn’t take your eyes off of them. He laughed and it was a sweet and soft sound. He looked tired.

“Morning breath.” He repeated but did not pull away from you. His thumb brushed just against your cheek and then, despite your proclamation of morning breath, his lips captured yours again. Your heart was in your throat. Fuck morning breath, these kisses were well worth it. They were so sweet and tender, the perfect thing to wake up to. You shivered as he pulled back. Then he folded his arms on the edge of the bed and rested his chin on his forearm. You scooted back just enough to better catch his gaze.

Your past self never would have believed this. The woman who had woken up in the infirmary with Liu Kang taking care of her and had attacked him with a frail needle out of fear never would have believed it. You’d been attracted to him from that first moment and now here you were, lost in those dark and thoughtful eyes.

“I have to go but I didn’t want to leave without seeing you.” He offered a tired smile. Had he not slept? You figured that he had to go. Honestly, you’d expected him to be gone. He’d been so busy since you’d gotten back from Huangshan. The fact that he’d refused to leave that morning without seeing you was incredibly generous and thoughtful. You were grateful. If you hadn’t gotten to see him, you would have been wondering what it meant all damn day. You were going to be wondering that anyway but at least now you’d know that it hadn’t been a mistake. That sweet morning kiss had been the best reassurance.

“I appreciate that.”

“Are you okay?” His eyes were sparkling with mischief, as if he knew the answer, so you narrowed your eyes at him.

“You know damn well that I’m just fine.” You teased. He looked rather pleased with himself again and you couldn’t blame him, really. You were becoming quite the fan of confident Liu Kang. His cockiness was kind of adorable. It was less like a strutting bird the way Kung Lao could be and more like a puppy after being told they’d been good. “Are you okay? You look tired.” You leaned your chin on your hand, elbow rested on the bed. Liu Kang admired you, like you were just as worthy of admiration as he was. That was still something you struggled to wrap your mind around. You’d never put much effort into your looks. To think that maybe he had admired you the way you admired him when he wasn’t looking was astounding. It was wonderful.

“Yes. I’m working on a sleep deficit.” He pushed your hair away from your face and tucked it again behind your ear. You were an addict for that sweet motion. It gave you the chills again and your heart sped up. These were stolen moments in the morning with Liu Kang. What a way to start the day. You should have probably taken those moments to talk about this. To talk about what you’d done. About the clear and obvious connection you’d shared since the moment you met.

But now didn’t seem to be the time. He had to go. You would find time later. Not that he seemed to be rushing out of the room. No, instead of getting dressed he’d elected to brush his fingers through your hair. You closed your eyes and leaned into his touch.

You had plenty to think about after he left. You hadn’t been careful and you hadn’t been on birth control for about a month now, at least. Time was kind of funny since you’d gotten to Raiden’s Temple. Those days lost in unconsciousness had altered your perception of it. The idea of asking Chen for help with fertility issues made you want to die of embarrassment. But it was either see if the infirmary could help you out or find your way to the nearest city so you could help yourself.

You were happy to do that but you had the distinct feeling that going to a city involved asking Kung Lao, Liu Kang, or Raiden for permission and asking anyone besides Liu Kang would be mortifying. You’d work on getting your story straight first. Since you were such a horrendous liar, you had to come up with a legitimate reason to need to leave the temple, one that you could talk about without stuttering or giving yourself away. That was something you struggled with.

But that was a problem for later. Right now, you were enjoying your stolen morning with Liu Kang because you were sure that wherever he needed to be? He was late. These moments were made that much more precious. He had worlds to say behind his dark eyes but he didn’t say any of them.

There was no time.

But there would be plenty of time later. With any luck, you’d be seeing Liu Kang more consistently than you had been since you’d returned from Huangshan. Even if it was only late at night or in a moment of free time, you would take it. You longed for those days where you sat huddled close together, pouring over passages from a book. Just a few minutes in his arms was all you needed.

“I have to go.” He pulled his hand back with a heavy sigh. Then, regrettably, he began the process of getting dressed. You continued to admire him with a smile, eyes lingering on the dragon mark on his side. He looked to you in surprise and you shrugged. Then he bowed to you politely after he’d been dressed. “I’ll see you later, Y/N.”

“Later, Liu.”

He left, closing the door gingerly behind him. Then you whined and pulled the blankets over your head, curling up. That was a reminder of how naked you were.

You’d slept with Liu Kang.

It hadn’t been a one-night thing where you’d submitted to your attraction to each other, either. Part of you had thought that once you’d gotten that tension and lust out of your system then the attraction would have faded. Maybe your relationship would have shifted. But that hadn’t been the case. Not at all.

If anything it had made the tension that much more intense. You hadn’t discussed it but he had stayed with you. He’d waited patiently for you to wake up just so he could have that moment with you in the morning. There was no more hesitation before kisses either. He’d become quite bold.

Your heart raced just thinking about those gentle kisses in the morning and then the more intimate moments the night before. You pulled the blankets from over your face and fanned yourself. Sitting up, you felt your shoulder ache. Had you overdone it last night? In the heat of the moment you’d felt no pain but now it was back to aching. You should probably check in with Chen about your shoulder. You would consider how to ask about birth control without giving yourself away, too.

There were dozens of reasons besides sex to ask about it. You could use any one of those as an excuse to go to a city when Chen, inevitably, didn’t have any. It was as good an excuse as any and you thought you might be able to pull it off with a straight face. You wanted to take care of your reproductive health, that was all. Also you didn’t want to get knocked-up with any tiny versions of you and Liu. Getting up, you got cleaned up, dressed, and made your way toward the infirmary.

After rounding the corner that led to the stairs, you nearly ran right into Kung Lao. He beamed at the sight of you and you stumbled back and were immediately defensive.

Shit.

Childhood crush and best friend standing right in front of you. You were not ready to deal with that yet.

“Hey!”

You guessed he was likely on Y/N-duty again but he seemed pretty happy about it.

“Hi.” You didn’t mean to sound defensive and jumpy but you were defensive, jumpy and a terrible liar.

“Wow. Is that any way to greet a friend? What’s going on with you?”

“You surprised me and my shoulder kills and…” You managed to take a deep breath and relax enough to sound less perturbed than you were. Kung Lao grasped your wrist and urged you to show him the mark on your shoulder. You did, but with a roll of your eyes.

“Aching today?”

“Sounds silly but I think the rain makes it worse.”

“Not silly. I have this knee thing that’s like that. Old injury. When it rains like this it still hurts.” He shrugged and let go of your wrist then grinned. “I saw Liu on the way here. Did he stop by this morning? He looked happier than usual. Usually has something to do with you.”

“Uh…” You stuttered nervously and knew you either had to lie or spill your guts right there and you were not ready to spill your guts. You hadn’t even talked to Liu about it yet, dammit! “Yeah, I saw him. I’m glad he’s happy.”

“You’re being weirder than usual.”

“Am I?” You were high-pitched again and Kung Lao laughed at you but dismissed your weirdness. Thank goodness you’d been so weird lately that Kung Lao didn’t notice the difference when you were extra uncomfortable.

“The rain is supposed to stop soon so I figured we could go someplace safe to try and get your crazy arcana under control. If you’re up for it, that is.”

“I mean…” You weren’t sure that you were up for it but you also knew that it was important to do just that. You hoped beyond hope that it was possible. It would be nice to sleep without worrying about imprisoning yourself in your room or hurting someone lying in bed next to you.

“What’s your excuse today?” Kung Lao sighed rather dramatically.

“Excuse?”

“You’re full of reasons not to deal with it lately.”

“If the captain of avoidance is calling me out then it must be bad.”

“That’s right, Y/N.”

“I was going to the infirmary to get my shoulder checked out but I suppose it can wait.” You considered your options. It would be nice to feel capable for a few minutes. “It’s been worse than this before, so it’s not urgent.” You needed to get the whole ‘birth control’ thing settled too but waiting a few hours wasn’t going to change what you’d done. In the meantime, maybe you could come up with a reason for you and Kung Lao to go to the nearest city or something. He was easily distracted by shiny things. You could absolutely manage to get what you needed without him noticing.

“I can try to help with some stretches for it, if you want.”

“You’re not a doctor so I’m going to say no.” You headed again to the stairs. Even if you did go to work on your arcana with Kung Lao, you still needed food. You were ravenous.

“Y/N! I happen to be an excellent martial artist. You think I don’t know how to take care of my body?”

“Fine, fine. You can show me some stretches. You’re an excellent whatever. I need food. Are you coming or can I go?”

“Do you want me to come with you?”

“I don’t care, Kung Lao. I need food.”

“Are you avoiding me? Because now it’s starting to sound like you’re avoiding me.” Kung Lao teased and grasped your wrist to keep you from going down the stairs.

“No, I’m not avoiding you. I’m trying to get breakfast.” You laughed though part of you thought avoiding him until you could talk to Liu was a good idea. You’d gotten so swept up in the night before that you hadn’t thought about the lifelong connection and romantic tension that was Kung Lao. It wasn’t like sleeping with Liu Kang made that disappear. Kung Lao had been your dream for so much of your life that now you weren’t sure how to feel. You felt guilty for the connection you had with Liu Kang even if you knew you shouldn’t.

You had to talk to Kung Lao but what exactly would you say? That you were mixed up after doing what you did with Liu Kang? That you weren’t sure what anything meant anymore? That seemed like a dumb way to start a conversation especially since Kung Lao ran from feelings like they were trying to kill him. You had to talk to Liu first but that also felt awkward. For a terrifying moment you considered that maybe Liu Kang wouldn’t want this to be more than a physical thing. It wasn’t like you’d actually discussed feelings even if you had come much closer to it than you and Kung Lao had.

Your tiny brain was suddenly so distracted by terrifying new obstacles that it went into panic mode.

“Are you okay? I was just teasing.” Kung Lao broke you out of your thoughts. He was looking at you as though you had seven heads. That was fair.

“I’m okay.” You calmed down.

“You’re being weird. Are you sure you don’t need to talk about something?”

“I’m sure.” You narrowed your eyes at him suspiciously. There was something you did need to talk about that you hadn’t yet. You knew about the bet that he and Liu had made regarding you and your choice. Liu had come clean but Kung Lao hadn’t said a word even though you were certain that he was the guiltier party. Liu Kang had taken responsibility for it but you knew them both well enough to guess Kung Lao’s involvement. “Is there something that you need to talk to me about?” You batted your eyelashes. Good. Turn it around on him. Then maybe he’d stop prying so much.

“Uh…” There was that guilt radiating from him again. It was brief. His face had dropped and his expression had tightened. But it was only a flicker before he was back to his goofy self. “No. You’re right though. Food first. If your arcana is still draining you then you definitely need to eat. And I could go for some tea.”

“Kung Lao, are you lying to me?” Hands on your hips, you watched him expectantly.

“You’d never be able to tell if I was, Y/N.”

“Oh? Is that so? Then how much of what you’ve said since you found me has been a lie, exactly?” He deserved this, you decided. Besides, you’d promised Liu Kang that you might pretend to be a little mad at Kung Lao until he told you the truth.

“I didn’t mean it like that, Y/N. Don’t be like that.”

“But if you’re such a gifted liar then how could I possibly be sure that anything is the truth?” You were proud to have successfully navigated your way through that conversation. You were no longer the one on edge.

“Wow, okay. I’m going to shut your mouth with food here in a second so we can focus.” He laughed, lazily urging his arm around your shoulder. “You’re thinking too much, Y/N. It’s a problem.”

“Is that a lie? If I can never tell that you’re lying, then everything could be a lie, Kung Lao. I had no idea you were so gifted.”

“I regret saying that.”

“You should.”

“Just please come eat with me. I’m sorry that I said I was such a good liar. I exaggerated for comedic effect, okay?”

“But what if that’s a lie.” You teased and then patted him on the back. “I’m kidding. Let’s find food.” You decided to go to the infirmary when you were done training with Kung Lao. For now you would get food, train, and go from there. You’d try to convince him to go into the city with you too. Why not?

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shitty-marvel-fan732 · 4 years

Note

Hi! I LOVED your peter x Barnes-Rogers post, I was wondering if you could do one where maybe Peter (being the lovable dummy that he is) feels like the only way he can protect her is to break up with her?

Thank you so much for this ask! I loved writing this. So sorry that this has taken so long, life has been STUPID hard lately.

So I wrote like 1100 words for this ask, because I have no self-control lmao. So I broke this into two parts, and I’ll post the second part a lil bit later in the week.

Title: Guilty, Part 1 of 2

Pairing: Peter Parker x Barnes-Rodgers!Reader

Requested: Yes!

Warnings: Peter is a sad boy, slight injuries, and I think that’s it?

Summary: Peter is worried the dangers of being Spiderman’s girlfriend are too much for you.

Link to Part 2

"Mmmm yeah no I'd definitely fuck Spiderman."

Peter nearly choked on his slice of pizza. Face rapidly turning pink at the mention of his alter ego, he whipped his head around in an attempt to locate the source of the somewhat disturbing statement. It seemingly came from a group of sophomore girls sitting a few tables behind his -- the girls were all furiously giggling at their friend who looked utterly unashamed at her bold declaration. Peter couldn't help the small smile that stretched across his lips. He knew that those girls had no idea who Spiderman really was, and even if they did he was more than happy in his current relationship. Still, the sentiment was a little flattering all the same.

Or disturbing. He couldn't quite tell which.

"Pete?"

Peter's attention was pulled back to his own table, the soft call of his name from you all he really needed to refocus completely. You were gazing up at him from your seat next to him, beautiful features gleaming with a look of amused curiosity as you silently asked what had him so distracted. Sending you a reassuring glance and squeezing your hand that was nestled firmly in his, he shook his head.

"I'll tell you later," he mouthed.

You quirked an eyebrow and shot him a look that clearly said 'you'd better' before turning your attention back to the conversation you and Ned had previously been having.

Watching the two of you argue childishly over your opinions on what the better Star Wars adaptation was, Peter couldn't help but grin. A wave of affection washed over him and butterflies danced happily in his stomach at the sight of you interacting so naturally with his best friend. He'd known Ned and MJ for much longer than you had, but over the time you two had been dating you'd effortlessly folded yourself into his small group of friends. Even though it's been months now, the simplest of interactions still warmed his heart and filled him with pride.

Despite the interruption, Peter's ears were still trained on the conversation of the group of girls behind him.

"Say what you want, Bucky Barnes is absolutely the hottest avenger," he heard another girl chime in over the dull hum of the other conversations in the busy cafeteria. He wrinkled his nose a little, an involuntary shudder going through him at the mention of your dad in this context.

"Mm, sure but let's be honest dating a superhero would be fucking awful," the first girl grumbled. Peter frowned.

"Are you nuts? It would be amazing!" her friend replied, disbelief lacing her tone.

"Please," the girl scoffed. "I can't even imagine the kind of scary shit you'd have to deal with on a regular basis."

Peter heard her friend hum thoughtfully.

"I guess, but I mean you'd still get to be with a god. Literally in Thor's case," she giggled.

"Whatever. Just seems downright dangerous if you ask me."

The girls moved on to a different topic, but Peter was still thoroughly distracted by what they'd said. He realized abruptly that he'd never really considered the affect his superhero life could have on you. What if those girls had a point? Was he putting you in harm's way just by pure association? Peter felt his stomach flip and lurch at the mere thought of something happening to you, and the idea that it would be his fault settled like a rock in the bottom of his belly. His mind whirred into overdrive as anxious thoughts filled him with an increasing dread and left him feeling paralyzed.

He was so still, in fact, that you took notice of his motionless form. Even though he was the one with the spidey senses, you seemed to have a knack for knowing when he was upset. Thumb rubbing across his knuckles absentmindedly, your gaze turned towards him once more, a frown marring your soft features.

"Petey? What's wrong?" you muttered quietly, voice just loud enough that you knew he'd hear but low enough that it didn't alert anyone else at the table.

He swallowed thickly and looked over at you. Your eyes were locked in on his face with a sparkle of concern playing in the y/e/c irises. Guilt began to mingle with the anxiety in the pit of his stomach as he noted your slight distress. Shoving all of his feelings down as deep as they would go, he managed a smile and kissed your cheek softly in reassurance.

"Don't worry about it angel, it's nothing," he lied smoothly.

Your eyes narrowed ever so slightly in suspicion, clearly not buying his excuse, but you allowed MJ to pull your attention back to the table's discussion all the same. Peter sighed lightly in relief at the distraction. Though he was turned towards his friends his mind was a million miles away, the girls' words echoing loudly against his skull.

--------------------

A few hours later Peter was feeling only slightly better.

After lunch he'd managed to make it through the rest of the school day without so much as a second alone with you. While that would ordinarily be a bad thing, he knew that the moment you two were alone that you'd expect an explanation for what happened at lunch. You were incredibly perceptive, and Peter was certain he'd wind up telling you everything. Not 100% sure of his own feelings at the moment and completely terrified of your reaction, he decided to avoid you until he'd processed things. He'd practically ran out the door after the last bell, shouting that he'd meet you at the tower after patrol for your usual study-date and leaving you behind, confused and more than a little suspicious.

Patrol did little to quell his nervousness.

The streets were unusually quiet tonight and the monotony allowed him to picture all kinds of horrible things that could happen to you as a result of being associated with him. He tried to push the thoughts away, but he couldn't help but spiral a little further into his pit of self-doubt. Instead of the distraction he was hoping it'd be, Peter's mind ran wild as he watched the city from above.

Eventually, it came time to meet you, and Peter'd be lying if he didn't admit he was a little relieved. Being separated from you was always difficult, and the withdrawal from your presence felt like it was amplified by his anxious state.

Winding his way through the familiar tower halls, Peter decided he needed to tell you exactly what he was feeling. Though he wasn't much more certain about how he felt, he knew that you would make him feel better. He wasn't used to feeling so disconnected from you, and regardless of his thoughts to the contrary he couldn't quell his desire to be near you. He'd been overwhelmed with the urge to feel your soft skin against his, smell your sweet scent wafting into his nose, and hear your quiet words of reassurance in his ears ever since you'd parted ways earlier in the day. He knew it was selfish, but it felt like he was going to reach his breaking point soon if he didn't get what he needed.

And what he needed was you.

"Oh my god! Y/N, what happened?!" he exclaimed as he finally made his way to the common room and caught sight of you. Caught off guard, you jumped slightly at his bold entrance before grinning widely at him.

"Hiya Petey!"

Ignoring the way you completely evaded the question, he was by your side in an instant. His palms lightly grasped your cheeks as he examined your face gently. You had an angry-looking mark blossoming under your right eye, and your upper lip looked as if it'd only just stopped bleeding. His eyes felt like they were going to pop out of their sockets at the sight of your injuries, and he felt anger bubble up in his chest. For all his over-thinking today Peter never once considered finding you like this.

"Seriously, what the hell happened?" he practically growled, a feeling he could only describe as rage filling him at the thought of someone hurting you. You opened your mouth to speak--

"That's exactly what we were wondering," a voice cut you off before you could reply. Peter turned, surprised to find your dads standing near your desk, arms crossed and expressions furious. He turned back to you only to find you rolling your eyes at the three of them.

"So Y/N, care to explain?" Steve demanded firmly. Peter shuddered a little at the tone of his voice. It was the same one he used in the field --the one you jokingly referred to as his 'Captain-voice' -- that clearly left no room for negotiations.

"I already told you, it's no big deal," you drawled, clearly unfazed by your dads' obvious anger. Peter frowned.

"Are you serious?" he gaped. "You're hurt, of course it's a big deal!"

You rolled your eyes once more, but your face softened just the slightest bit at the evident worry lacing his tone.

"Doll, just tell us who did this so we can maim them," Bucky practically barked. His hands were clenching and unclenching uncontrollably, and his eyes were alight with a kind of fury that made Peter shiver a little. You, however, either didn't notice his anger or didn't care.

"Oh please, like you all haven't come home from missions with much worse," you snapped. Bucky's jaw twitched in anger, and he opened his mouth to reply.

"We're not talking about us right now," Steve interrupted smoothly. "We're talking about you."

Expression irritated, you opened your mouth --clearly about to spit out a snarky reply-- but Peter cut you off before you had a chance to speak.

"Y/N, please?" he begged quietly. Your eyes snapped over to his face, the irritation fading from your y/e/c irises at his gentle plea. You chewed your lip a little, brows furrowing slightly in contemplation before sighing.

"S'not a big deal," you mumbled. "I just got into a fight with some asshole girls after school today."

"What girls?" Peter asked evenly, fighting the bubble of anger that was threatening to erupt from his body. You just shrugged nonchalantly, evidently unwilling to elaborate further.

"Y/N," Steve said warningly. You sighed, shoulders dropping.

"Just some girls! They were talking shit--," you started, pausing only when Steve shot you a warning glance. "Sorry Pops. Talking trash about dad and Peter, or rather their alter egos I guess. Anyways, I obviously took offense -- you know cause they're morons -- and things just kinda escalated from there."

The effect of your explanation was instant. Steve's hardened expression eased the slightest bit at your story, his eyes flicking to his husband as he cautiously appraised his reaction. To Bucky's credit, if he felt any type of way about what you'd said it didn't show on his face. Bucky remained stoic and he hardly moved a muscle. If it weren't for the fact you knew he had super-hearing you might've thought he hadn't even heard you. Peter, on the other hand…

It was like someone had knocked all the breath out of his body at once. His heart lurched and remorse burned at his insides. His anger quickly gave way to utter guilt, and he felt his face drop despite his best efforts. All the fear and guilt he'd been wrestling with all day felt like nothing compared to now.

You were hurt. And it was his fault.

"Like I said, it's not a big deal," you supplemented quickly as you noted the mens' various reactions. "Seriously, you should see the other girls' faces. I wouldn't be surprised if we get a call from Tiffany H.'s plastic surgeon thanking me for all the money he's about to make."

Peter felt frozen. Normally he would've chuckled at the adorably smug look that'd taken over your features, but he couldn't manage to muster up any feelings outside of his own self-hatred at the moment. Bucky, however, did not seem to share this sentiment. He loudly chuckled at your quip, a proud sparkle gleaming in his eyes and a wide grin plastered across his face. Steve still stood with his arms crossed, expression stern.

"Y/N, you can't just go around getting into fights just because you don't agree with people," he lectured. Bucky snorted.

"Really Stevie?" he chuckled, shaking his head in amusement. "I'm getting the most distinct flashbacks of a certain sickly teen who picked fights pretty much wherever he went…"

Steve's face flushed with the slightest twinge of pink at his husband's insinuation. You grinned widely at your dad, clearly delighted with the turn the discussion had taken.

"Again, we're not talking about me," he covered quickly, weakly hiding his embarrassment with a cough. "Y/N, you're grounded. One week, starting now."

Your jaw dropped.

"What?! That's not fair at all!" you spluttered indignantly. "Tell him he's crazy dad!"

Bucky chuckled once more at the sight of your complete and utter shock, his grin only dropping once he caught sight of his husband’s unamused expression. He cleared his throat quickly and crossed his arms once more before shrugging at you.

“Pops is right Y/N, you can’t just go around getting into fights. No matter how good you are at ending them…”

“Oh come on,” you groaned, rubbing a hand across your face in exasperation. “It’s not a big deal, right Pete?”

Peter blinked, pulled only back to the conversation at hand once he heard you call his name. Shaking his head slightly to try and remove the lingering feelings of shock and guilt, he looked blinked slowly as his eyes darted between you and your dads. Opening and closing his mouth wordlessly, he felt utterly at a loss as to how to respond.

"It's a big deal if we say it's a big deal," Steve countered firmly. "So I'm sorry Peter, but you'll have to go now."

You scoffed, arms crossing furiously as your face crumpled into a pout. Ordinarily Peter would've giggled at your childish gesture, but at the moment he could only muster enough attention to nod.

"Yeah, o-okay. I'll see you later Y/N," he muttered quietly before leaving in a daze.

If he weren't so consumed by his own thoughts he would've seen the look of concern that passed over your face or the confusion spattered across your dads'. But Peter didn't notice either, too busy trying to sort through the torrent of thoughts and feelings currently raging inside his head. He walked out of the tower on autopilot as his mind was wracked with guilt over what'd happened to you. Left with only one possible conclusion, he returned home feeling utterly devastated with what he knew he had to do.

--------------------

Bucky was confused.

He'd noticed a distinct change in his daughter's behavior lately that only seemed to be getting worse. He internally wondered how long this'd gone on, because let's face it, he knew if it gotten to the point that even he'd noticed, then it must've been a while. Bucky used to pride himself on knowing everything about you, but as you'd grown older he found himself knowing less and less. Despite Steve's constant reassurance that it was simply the way things went when kids became teenagers, he still felt that little twinge of guilt in his belly when his seeming ineptitude as a parent was called into focus.

Like now.

You'd become withdrawn and quiet, a far cry from your normally energetic and talkative self. You were spending more and more hours secluded in your bedroom, and he could've sworn he'd caught you looking as if you'd just been crying on more than one occasion. All the signs were pointing towards something bothering you, but Bucky felt utterly lost as to how to determine just what that even was, much less figure out how to help you with it.

Currently, the team was finishing up with their nightly dinner, and your strange behavior was once again on the forefront of his mind. You sat across from him and Steve, looking more like a zombie than anything else. Your normally bright eyes looked dull, the dark bags under each of them looking practically a mile long. The food on your plate looked untouched, and Bucky felt a stab of panic deep in his chest as he realized he couldn't remember the last time he'd seen you actually eat something.

"You okay doll?" he questioned you softly, voice low. You hardly moved, the brief flash of your eyes towards his the only indication that you'd even heard him.

"I'm fine," you muttered, gaze dropping to your dinner and fork moving more of your food around aimlessly as you fell silent once more. Bucky's brows furrowed deeper at your dull response, the lingering fear and discomfort settling deeper into his stomach. Steve eyed the two of you, expression full of concern. His hand gently rested over Bucky's in a show of solidarity with his husband until Bucky's gaze moved towards him.

"Any idea what that's all about?" he muttered quietly. Steve just shrugged, but his clear blue eyes were brimming with the same look of concern and slight confusion as Bucky's.

"Can I be excused now?" you mumbled without so much as a glance upwards. Steve shared a worried glance with Bucky before he cleared his throat.

"You have to eat something Y/N/N," Steve replied quietly. "Can't you just take a couple of bites?"

"S'cold," you protested, voice still devoid of any emotion. A flash of memory invaded his mind of he and Steve cooing and pleading with you as an infant, trying helplessly to get you to eat your food. He fondly remembered the way your chubby arms would cross as you stubbornly refused to eat your pureed food, a picture perfect miniature of Steve. His heart twisted painfully at the stark contrast of that strong-willed little toddler with the shell of a teen he saw now.

"Go into the kitchen and heat it up then," Bucky tried. You didn't move an inch. "Please?"

Sighing, you brought you picked up your plate and trudged away. Bucky let out a sigh of relief, but ran his fingers through his hair nonetheless as confusion and concern continued to rage fitfully in his mind. Steve didn't appear to be fairing much better -- he sat stoically next to him with both hands folded tensely under his chin.

"Seriously Steve, what the hell is going on with her?" Bucky asked exasperatedly. His husband sighed, his own fingers moving to rub against his eyes tiredly.

"Do you two honestly not get what's bothering her?" Natasha interrupted quietly. The supersoldiers glanced over, and she rolled her eyes at them. "Seriously? It's been like 2 weeks."

Now it was Bucky's turn to roll his eyes at her flippant tone.

"So are you gonna tell us what's bothering her, or are you just gonna judge us some more?" he huffed. Nat smiled coyly, relaxing back in her seat and folding her arms across her chest.

"I feel like I can manage both," she quipped good-naturedly. Steve sighed again.

"Come on Nat, just tell us. Please?" he begged, eyes silently pleading with the redhead. Nat seemed to soften a little at this, her green eyes flicking towards the kitchen quickly before she leaned across the table.

"Since I'm certain you'll never figure it out on your own, I'll tell you. But you have to swear you won't let her know that I'm the one who told," she muttered secretively. Bucky nodded dumbly, too eager to figure out what was eating you to care about her somewhat condescending tone. "Haven't you noticed that there's been one less arachnid-themed hero around the tower lately?"

"No. Wait, you mean Parker?" Bucky answered suspiciously. Nat rolled her eyes again before nodding tersely.

"Mhm. Seems like our resident kid-genius broke up with your girl, and now she's completely devastated."

Bucky felt his face furrow into an even deeper frown. Of course Parker had something to do with this.

"So you're saying she and Peter broke up and that's why she's been like this?" Steve interjected, his face a mirror of his husband's. Nat nodded once more, eyes flicking to the kitchen as she heard the beeping of the microwave.

"Yep. Well, to be more accurate he broke up with her, hence her mood," she whispered. Anger began to churn in Bucky's stomach and he felt his fists clench unintentionally at the accusation.

"That little punk," he seethed. "Who does he think he is leaving her like this?"

"I don't know the exact details, and I don't think she really does either," Nat continued. "She said he mentioned something vague about 'not being able to keep her safe' before just cutting off all contact. Poor kid didn't even get a say in it."

"That doesn't make any sen-"

"Hello my little дорогая," she greeted you warmly, voice raising back to a normal volume as you slumped down into the seat next to hers. You managed a half-hearted smile towards the assassin before you began lightly picking at your food. Steve clamped his mouth shut at the sight of you, the grateful smile he shot your way not reaching his eyes. It seemed that the talk with Natasha hadn't made your situation much clearer for him, and he looked utterly confused and perhaps more concerned than he had before.

But Bucky wasn't.

Something Nat said had triggered something for him -- a tiny piece of information that'd seemed inconsequential at the time that now made sense. Grabbing his husband's hand and squeezing it firmly, he gave Steve one last reassuring glance before he left the table. He knew what he had to do.

#peter parker x reader #peter parker imagine #peter parker one shot #peter parker fluff #peter parker angst #peter parker #spider-man #spiderman #peter parker fanfic #peter parker fan fic #peter parker fanfiction #spiderman fanfic #spiderman x reader #spiderman imagine #spiderman imagine #spiderman oneshot #spiderman x barnes-rodgers!reader #peter parker x barnes-rodgers!reader

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shadowofthelamp · 3 years

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POV

POV- something that’s already happened, retold from another character’s perspective

Chapter 14, the rapidfire part from the memory viewer. Dib’s POV. Spoilers for Temporal Displacement.

“No, I- one more, I need one more.” His palm was pressed against the now-warm headset, not allowing Twix to take it off and pretend this proved that she was right. This was absurd. Ridiculous. Absolutely insane. Zim was smart but he didn’t think things all the way through, there was no way he hadn’t left some gap somewhere. Who knew how good irken tech was at fabricating memories, at making Twix believe things that hadn’t happened because they couldn’t have? She sure seemed to think she was telling the truth.

“That wasn’t the deal, D- gah!” Dib pressed the button with his other hand and she slipped away, going limp again. Good, he could use both of his hands again. He’d sent her back ‘a good memory with Dib’. Easy enough. Onscreen he looked so happy, all stretched out like taffy with a little stubble. The alternate Dib tickled her, and real-Twix squirmed a little in the chair next to him.

So Zim probably had thought of that. He’d want her to like him at least a little before this mission. What about her as a baby? She said she wouldn’t remember that- and on the screen, she was playing with her feet now, Zim was bouncing her and talking about something. He seemed weirdly quiet as he cooed to her about how perfect she was. Hadn’t she said something about having hearing problems?

Training, he’d have to had trained her for this mission. She was looking down at a notebook, writing down numbers, and Zim was lecturing her on... basic arithmetic.

Okay, what about COMBAT training? She’d managed to incapacitate him and knock Zim himself out, she had to have it. Yes, there she was slicing through holograms- he was preparing her for this mission, and probably to help him with conquest afterwards. The sims appeared to have realistic gore splatters. Yeesh. She had chubby little-kid hands in that one. Why would he bother to note tiny little details like that? It’s not like it would change the memory any when shaping her perception of the world.

So maybe that one had really happened and she had accelerated growth, but some of the rest were fake? He just needed to find something she’d absolutely have if she was real but- more domesticity, Zim wouldn’t think of everything. Look at how badly-programmed the roboparents were. Zim was making cupcakes with her. He still looked and acted mostly the same, but his own alternate self came in, smiling a little. Twix gestured for him to come over, and he looked both natural and unnatural, because the base was the same but he didn’t belong in there. He couldn’t. His other taller self was rolling up his sleeves and playfully flicked at Zim’s antennae, and Zim just flicked flour back. Zim could create casual times with himself, but not a version of Dib that looked that good.

Gaz, would Zim think of Gaz? Here, Gaz had grown up too- she was still wearing a purple top, a tank top, and gave a half-nod as Twix coasted past the finish line in some racing game. She’d cropped her hair even shorter and had gained some weight, but he’d recognize her anywhere.

Gaz showed Twix how to tase Dib, and he could hear himself swearing as the girls laughed. Right, of course, this was training her to hate him too. But why use Gaz, why not himself? Why bring Gaz into this at all? Zim kinda seemed afraid of her, to be honest. It’d be easy to have just ‘killed her off’.

What about the Computer? If she’d grown up in the base, she’d know that, right? And... there was its judgy voice muttering about deserving babysitting pay as her body wriggled, staring down at a tank of snapping piranhas. What were they there for- oh, his experiments!

The lights were dim as she was handed a small still-beating ferret’s heart. He was forcing her to engage with animal experiments- training her as a sidekick, this made sense, this was fine. Experiments were something she should know. She’d admitted as much herself.

What about his dad? She didn’t seem to like him much. She’d have to know the Lab, right? There she was sitting on a table, watching Dad do something, and his- his other self was wearing a lab coat. It was open, exposing a blue turtleneck, but he had black gloves on, and she reached out and he scooped her up, setting her on his shoulder. He was smiling, the kind of smile that said everything was okay. That right now he was where he wanted to be.

He really ended up working at the lab? There he was working on something with his tongue sticking out, and she looked down at the wrench she was holding before up at him. She was wearing a labcoat of her own. Copying him, he realized with a start. Him or Zim. Zim hadn’t been wearing a labcoat in the ferret thing but he had been wearing bigger gloves.

Okay, okay, what about normal kid-things? Drawing, all kids drew sometimes but Zim wouldn’t care to add that, right? And- and there she was, drawing a cat, but she was in a cage of some kind? Gir was below her, making annoying robot noises.

Friend. She’d mentioned a friend, most kids had friends. She’d said her name was Daisy or Tutu or- Tulip, that had been it.

The friend was- normal. Two different memories. Both crystal-clear.

Back to the experiments, and those all came across as fine too, there was no way Zim poured this kind of effort into an experiment with memories this non-blurry without Dib at least getting an inkling of it. It would have taken months, and Zim hadn’t altered his routines at all, had still been pumping out scheme after scheme recently.

There was no delaying it anymore. He needed to look at her memories of them together.

They were laughing. They looked happy. Him and Zim and Gir and Twix’s body that she could see were all watching a movie and looked happy, draped over each other like personal space didn’t exist. He wasn’t like this with his other experiments, Dib didn’t think. Check, check- and Zim intertwined his antennae with hers, that seemed too intimate. He didn’t even act like that with Gir, not really.

His other self kissed her cheek, and Zim kissed her forehead, smiling, they were both smiling, Gir kissed her on the mouth and she kicked him and he laughed, this was just- just-

Dib’s hand fell off the console as he stared up at the screen, watching his older self’s lips meet Zim’s, their fingers intertwining.

Zim would never make this up with this level of detail. He couldn’t.

He looked over at Twix, her body tense as she shivered. With the headset on, all he could see were her mutant fingers. He reached over and lifted one clammy hand up, rubbing his thumb over the back before pulling the headset off with his other hand. Her face was soaked in sweat, strands of black hair sticking to the skin.

She was right. But she couldn’t be right. But she was right.

He wasn’t sure how long he stared at her before scooping her up with a grunt, wobbling towards the door and the cages downstairs.

He needed to think.

#td #shadow writes stuff #iz blogging #iz #aip #Anonymous #asks

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bettsfic · 4 years

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Hello! Betty, I read your new fic and I love it and I was wondering if you have any advice when it comes to writing a character with PTSD?

well first i think it’s important to figure out whether your character has PTSD or C-PTSD which may seem similar but have some major symptomatic differences. with PTSD, a character’s trauma can be pinpointed to one (or several) major events. with C-PTSD, the trauma is/was longstanding.

for example (and this is a very reductive example for a very complicated thing), if you survive a shooting and have post-traumatic stress after that, you may become hypervigilant in public spaces, and avoid keeping your back to a room. you might be triggered by the sound of popping. you might avoid places with large crowds, or similar places to wherever the shooting occurred. you might develop trust issues. overall, an individual trespass occurred that reshaped your understanding of reality. that’s PTSD.

but let’s say you were in an abusive relationship for five years. every time you spoke up, you were screamed down. maybe you were hit. maybe you were gaslit. that situation is a long-term, ongoing trespass to your understanding of yourself and reality. it turns the ground beneath your feet into sand.

once, my emdr therapist asked me to focus on my “moment of trauma” as if there were only one and i would be able to recall it. and i had to explain to her that i couldn’t do that, it was just all bad. there was no one thing to point out. that’s what sucks about C-PTSD -- it’s not in the DSM yet (afaik) and the treatment for it is the same as PTSD even though it’s completely different. (the year of your story, btw, is really important, because PTSD was only put in the DSM in the 70s, and as i mentioned, C-PTSD still doesn’t technically exist from a diagnostic standpoint. so if your character seeks treatment, the year is important to consider).

emdr is a super effective therapeutic tool that helped me a lot, but it only helped with one single moment of my life, and didn’t touch on any of the rest. that’s another thing about trauma: it’s not relative. what gives me post-traumatic stress might not affect somebody else at all. it might just roll off them. conversely, what someone else might be hurt by may not bother me in the slightest. for example, my ex-bf pulled a knife on me once. other than thinking about that moment probably more than i should, it didn’t really alter my perception of myself or reality. he was an asshole, i knew he was an asshole, and he was acting in a way that was congruent with the person i knew him to be. moreover, by that point i had way unchecked C-PTSD so my perspective of Good and Bad was totally warped. to me, it made sense that he would hurt me. men hurting me was in line with my beliefs of reality. that’s a situation where earlier PTSD affects the perception of trespasses later on.

but my next boyfriend who never laid a hand on me eventually cheated on me, and that was like a kick in the teeth. it pushed me down and kept me down. i lost all of my confidence, i believed i wasn’t worthy of love, that i was disgusting and worthless. and i think it hurt so much because i had worked so hard to become who he wanted me to be and make him happy (we had a very unhealthy codependent relationship, and i thought it was my duty to conform to his needs in any way i could), and i saw our breakup as a personal failing. more importantly, i never thought he would do something like that. it was a total betrayal of everything i thought he was, and it made me hesitant to trust other people.

that was the memory i chose in one of my emdr sessions, and it helped a lot. it was a single moment i could lock down and attribute to many of my negative self-beliefs. and it was kind of amazing, that i walked into that office still, years later, painfully in love with this dude, and i walked out not caring about him at all.

in another emdr session, i focused on my dad dying. it didn’t help at all, because i certainly didn’t blame myself for his death. what i was struggling with was how much i loved him while feeling guilty for being relieved that he was finally gone. and in a more complicated way, i was also angry at him that he died before he could realize how horrible he treated my mom, sister, and i, and he never managed to apologize. emdr couldn’t begin to touch that knot of confusion. and so, to this day, i’m still trying to work it out.

anyway, back to writing.

the point i’m trying to get at is that to write a character with PTSD, you have to Know them. who they were before the trespass and how it shaped the person they became. if they were abused their entire lives, their development will be completely distorted. they may have trouble understanding right from wrong, especially in regards to themselves (which is why villain origin stories have a lot to do with a major trespass; it can alter your ability to morally reason). they may not know how to love without hurting themselves or someone else. they may believe that love looks like pain. they may have such insidious negative self-beliefs that compliments just slide right off of them. they are probably not self-pitying (although they could be). rather, their incorrect beliefs about the world are simply unshakeable. they might be afraid of everything, afraid of nothing, or afraid of weird things. they might be triggered by something clearly relating to their trauma, or triggered by something so strange and obscure and complicated it’s hard to see it as a trigger. they might fly off the handle when triggered, or they might dissociate for days on end, or both. they might be extremely performative and obsessed with how other people perceive them. they might be constantly attuned to their own body. they might see themselves from outside of themselves, through multiple lenses, in order to craft the image of themselves they want to be seen. they might do this as a safety measure, so as to be agreeable and pleasant and potentially stave off any harm that might come to them. they might be a people-pleaser. they may not have any access to their own emotions and have to find them through alternate means. they may be more prone to hurting themselves and other people, and not realize that doing so is wrong, because to them, pain might be a totally neutral thing. similarly, they may not be sad when people die, because they’ve always seen death as a peaceful escape. they might have drastic mood swings. they might not have moods at all. they might be impulsive and risk-taking. they might be prone to bouts of psychosis, depression, anxiety. they might have had hundreds of hours of therapy and still have not begun to chip through the surface of their trauma. they might not know their own trauma, or they might be acutely aware of it, and regardless, it will affect them the same. they might fixate on their trauma, or they might not be able to remember it. they may have a complicated relationship with memory. they may not have a strong grip on reality, or they may doubt their perception of it. they may easily fall into relationships with narcissists and sociopaths. they might constantly set other people’s needs over their own. conversely, they may be selfish and self-serving when it comes to very specific things. they may not be able to accept good love and affection, and they may sabotage their own health and happiness. they may not see this as a problem.

ultimately, to learn how to write a character with PTSD, you should be watching/reading everything whose characters you admire through the lens of trauma. ask yourself: how have the ways they’ve been hurt shape the person they’ve become? how is their worldview and self-perspective distorted by the negative events that define them? who would they be if those events had not occurred?

hope this helps. thanks for the great question!

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#writing advice #ptsd #character #characterization #Anonymous #abuse tw #death cw

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aislingeu · 4 years

Text

hello!! i’m kq ( aka kelsey quinn! ) i’m twenty five, livin in the est, usin she / her pronouns!! much like the good buddy who turned me on to this rp, i don’t know a ton about percy jackson!! but mythology was one of the few subjects that held my attention in school, so i hoe i have a good handle on it! :D for now, i manage a comic book store from thursdays - sundays, so i’m scarce those times but i’m usually on discord!!

⟨ ABIGAIL COWEN. CIS FEMALE. SHE / HER ⟩ though the mist might prevent some from seeing it, AISLING DUNN is actually a descendant of H Y P N O S. it’s still a question of whether or not the TWENTY-THREE year old PAINTING MAJOR from DUBLIN, IRELAND has taken after their godly parent completely, but the demigod is still known to be quite CLEVER & COARSE.

this got way longer than i intended im so sorry...

𝐁𝐀𝐂𝐊𝐆𝐑𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐃

she was born on march 12th, 1997 to a pair of irish musicians ( conor and dierdre dunn ) and, unwittingly, one greek god ( hypnos ) in dublin, ireland. her parents met and married shortly after her conception and neither of them suspected that conor wasn’t aisling’s father, until she was claimed.

as an only child, her parents didn’t have much to compare her too in terms of overall strangeness. for years, they wrote off her abilities as kids just sayin’ the darndest things. they remained blissfully unaware of the impact of their daughter’s words, rolling their eyes fondly, when she told them about the man in the cave, who came to her in dreams. they smiled and laughed, when she strangers at the supermarket that she thought erwin was a fine name to give a teddy bear, no matter what anyone else said. how were they to know that she was unearthing the fond childhood memories that passersby had almost forgotten?

when she enrolled in primary school, they realized that she was... strange, if not special. she was recognized as a bit of a space case, often staring at nothing in particular, while her teacher droned on. her worksheets were seldom turned in complete. instead, aisling began gifting poorly drawn family portraits on the blank sides of her papers, likenesses plucked from the memories she explored when her mind wandered, in class.

eventually, after her skill had developed and people stopped writing off the stick figures as ‘coincidentally accurate’, people began to truly take notice. they speculated that she was a medium, silently communing with the dead and painting their pictures as she did. how else could she know what her art teacher’s late father looked like? and what color tie he always liked to wear? she had to be a psychic. recipients of her art were always so focused on their perception of the little girl with the gift of sight that they hardly even realized what she had tweaked, brightening up their darkest memories, just so they wouldn’t have to hurt anymore. she hardly even realized, herself.

without a reason to believe otherwise, she told the man in her dreams that she was a psychic, but he knew differently. he told her that that wasn’t so. she was special, yes, but not in the ways that the world thought her to be. hypnos let her in on the secret he’d been keeping for the past twelve years and, just like that, aisling could make sense of herself. once she knew the truth, she chased sleep. she spent as much time as she could, communicating with the one person who understood who she was. he saw her hunger for belonging and pointed her in the direction of the camp nearest to her hometown.

after a summer away, she came home faced with a challenge in morality that she’d never considered, as a child. she came home to a world where she could no longer fit. her party tricks had lost their luster the moment she realized that true value of a memory, however sad, was worth far more than the cheap smiles that her alterations had afforded. with that realization, her art took a darker turn. unable to shift the memories she saw into the light, they haunted her. she now saw their fears and heartbreaks for what they were: unchangeable. and, now, they lived within her, too. putting them to paper was the only way to get them out. but, pieces like those weren’t the kind that could be sent home to mom and dad. pieces like those were the kind that got her meetings with guidance counselors and haunted, fleeting looks from those whose memories she’d never meant to disturb. after a year of that, aisling went back to camp, full time.

once she was a year round resident of the camp, she found herself more comfortable around people who understood; there was nothing she had to hide, among those who were like her. each one of them was fighting an uphill battle of their own. they didn’t have to hide it. even if she never allowed herself to get too close, aisling never felt all that far away, at camp.

at eonia, aisling spends most of her days painting, sleeping, or working. raised by a pair of mortal musicians, finding a job at fireside records felt like a natural progression. where her godly parent thrives in silence, she finds her comfort in noise. it’s easier to block out the things she doesn’t need to see when there’s something immediate for her to focus on. at the other end of that spectrum, aisling finds her mind most open in visual arts club, trying to keep her other creative skills sharp, while she keeps her primary focus on painting. in search of inspiration, her mind reaches out in tendrils, dipping into another’s until she finds something she can work with. she only needs to leave the room before they’ve realized what she’s borrowed.

𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐘

aisling is a naturally empathetic person, always wishing she could do more to help those around her. unfortunately, she knows that she can’t always honor that instinct. her abilities and self-imposed limitations have left her with a hardened exterior that isn’t easy to break through. those who pass through her walls see a softer side: a steadfast friend, always there to put a peaceful end to their sleepless nights or calm their worst nightmares, with a gentle run of her fingers through their hair. but sometimes, she’ll wall herself away from even those she’s closest to after she finds herself in the middle of a particularly harrowing memory. because of this, maintaining close bonds for long is a difficult thing. given her propensity for accidentally rifling through the fondest and most fearsome parts of peoples’ pasts, she’s been known cut them out of her life when she sees something that she has the urge to alter.

𝐀𝐁𝐈𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐈𝐄𝐒

MEMORY RETRIEVAL — for as long as she could remember, aisling knew things that she shouldn’t. at first, her parents just dismissed her gift as imagination and observation combining in a perfect, creepy storm. it wasn’t until she started attending school, picked up her finger paints, and started to draw out moments from the pasts of strangers that people started to truly take notice. sloppy scenes from the librarian’s wedding day graduated into well sketched portraits of her bus driver’s dalmatians. she liked to take those happy moments, immortalize them in art, and hand them off to the owners of the memories. she liked to make people smile. sometimes, she took that a step further. too young to see the value in sadness, aisling would tweak the memories that were harder to bear; even if she couldn’t bring someone happiness in the present, she hoped she could bring them comfort in the future. it wasn’t until she was claimed that aisling saw the flaws in her intervention. it wasn’t until she was taught the consequences that she knew she had to stop. although the memories came to her unbidden, they didn’t belong to her and she had no right to change them. instead of focusing on the alteration of memories, aisling opted to try to learn how to shut them out. like her other powers, though, there’s a direct correlation between her emotional state and her ability to keep a wall up. when she’s feeling something strongly or hasn’t gotten enough sleep, she sees things that she doesn’t mean to.

HYPNOKINESIS — you are getting very sleepy… what proved to be a fun tool at sleepovers had more practical applications than aisling knew possible. the skill of inducing sleep was easy enough to come by and influencing dreams was as simple as altering memories. and while ( without intending to ) she’d been known to cause visions when tensions ran high, refining those visions into ones that took the shapes she wanted them to took practice. even more difficult than that was learning to astral project, but that became a necessity, coming hand-in-hand with building her mental walls. when the uninvited memories start to weigh on her, she’s learned that it’s best to remove herself from the immediate vicinity. even if she’s only technically leaving in her head.

OTHER ABILITIES — ( levitation ) a skill she only possesses in sleep, predominantly when her dreams are eliciting strong emotions. ( seeing the gods in dreams ) this is how she formed and maintained a relationship with her father, despite her parents being unaware of their daughter’s godly lineage. on occasion, she’ll encounter gods that she’s less familiar with and, in most of those cases, she’s been known to force herself awake.

𝐖𝐀𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐃 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐍𝐄𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒

there are so many cool, fun things runnin through my brain right now!! i think it would be lovely for her to have forged a friendship with an insomniac or maybe someone prone to nightmares that she could help! and those fun customer service relationships with record store regulars!! or maybe a former friend or significant other, who aisling left behind? maybe even altering their memory slightly, if the parting of ways was ugly! who knows! the possibilities are endless!! and i’m always up to hearing other peoples’ ideas because the Sweet Lord knows i am not the most imaginative person in any given room!!!

thank u for reading ilu!!!

#euintro #death cw //#i think i covered everything!! if u have any questions lemme know!! i can clarify probably!!

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angmarwitch · 5 years

Text

tonbo (dragonfly)

Jon x Sansa Kimetsu no Yaiba (Demon Slayer) AU

Summary: "In the end, she was a pillar..."

A/N: First of all, happy, happy birthday to my dearest friend @fromtheboundlesssea. I’m truly grateful to have you as a friend. Thank you so much for expanding the What If fics that I really want to write (but I can’t cause honestly, my writing sucks these days and I can’t simply finish a multi-chap fic) and for the times when I can’t check your work on time because I am always busy. Also, thank you for being there. <3 I know you’re unfamiliar with this anime but I hope you’ll still enjoy (even if the ending is a bit angsty).

For the readers, this is probably the first jonsa fic I’ve written in months. I’m still feeling bummed about Season 8 and my disappointment is hindering me from writing. I’m really sorry. I don’t know if any of you are familiar with KNY but I tried to make it as understandable as possible.

For the fans of the series, this is inspired by Giyuu and Shinobu (I love their relationship & dynamics). But be warned, this contains spoilers from the manga.

Enjoy!

Warning: Angst, Character Death, Spoilers from the Manga

There was no rule, spoken or written, that prohibits them from falling in love. Some of the Pillars (basically generals) from the previous generations, even retire to settle down and start a family of their own, shedding off the burden of being in the front lines to protect the innocent people that the demons feasted upon. However, from all the tragedy that had befallen the Lady of the Dragonfly Estate, she had learned to bar her heart from ever feeling such kind of emotion.

Despite the joy and seemingly carefree facade she puts up each day, there was no trace of happiness in her heart. The moment that her sister, the last remnant of her biological family, died, all the joy that she once felt slowly dissipated, leaving her heart void of any emotions except for anger. And the giddy persona that she had put up was her mask, her way of keeping the fury at bay. Of course, she wasn’t entirely incapable of feeling other emotions, she can still sympathize with others and understand what they are going through, it’s just that she can’t simply grasp the idea of being happy and falling in love after all that she went through.

But, in the end, she realized that she was just human.

She was clueless as to how or when it happened. But it did.

Someone had managed to thaw the ice that had frozen Sansa Stark’s heart and weaved away inside.

“Oh, darling,” Margaery had crooned so sweetly when Sansa confessed the burden that had weighed her mind for a while now, “it is not wrong to love.”

Naturally, Margaery would be the only person who would comprehend Sansa’s predicament, she was the Love Pillar after all. But her being so perceptive about love was not why Sansa approached her in the first place. Their comrades will never get it, them being male, and she could not tell them lest the secret comes out. Jeyne, her chosen successor, was still too young to grasp the concept and she does want to bother the Master with such trivial matters. Margaery could keep a secret and she was the only thing close to a sister and a motherly figure to Sansa.

“But we are pillars…” in the end it’s either we survive or die.

Margaery’s gaze softened, her delicate hand reached out to Sansa’s own and squeezed it gently.

“All the more reasons why you should act on what you feel. Our lives are fleeting, and we never know when or where we will die. Do you truly want to accept death without ever knowing how it feels to love and to be loved?”

“I…” Sansa paused, unaware of how to respond. She had spent all her life fighting, finding a way to avenge the family and the sister she lost to the Night King and Littlefinger, and she had never once considered this possibility. Her eyes dropped down and the feeling of sadness assaulted her senses. She hated that she had become emotional because of love. But she can’t deny the fact that she was also craving for what it has to offer, both the bliss and pain.

Nevertheless…

“Tell him, Sansa,” Margaery urged, “ Jon deserves to know that you return his affections.”

The packet looked innocent and harmless to humans but one dose was enough to incapacitate a demon, ten was required to kill one. A year’s supply, however, was what it takes to take down one of the Upper Generals of the White Walker demons.

“You don’t have to do this,” Lady Melisandre implored, “there are other ways in which you can defeat Littlefinger and they won’t cost you your life.”

Sansa eyed the vial warily before swallowing all of its contents. For humans, wisteria does not pose any dangers or risks, and the poisonous compound that she had just ingested was almost similar to eating a powdered sugar. It was sweet. So very sweet…

“I have made up my mind long ago,” Sansa responded indifferently. She knows her biggest foe by heart. Littlefinger had always been so obsessed to get her and being the only Pillar who can’t decapitate a demon, this was the only way she can defeat him. She had altered her own body and changed her physiology to contain a huge amount of wisteria. This was what she had worked all her life and nothing could ever change her mind.

The victory will be hers and the death of her family will finally be avenged.

“I understand,” Melisandre conceded giving her a look of understanding and pity. Sansa does not need it. Yes, all of them may have suffered under the hands of the Night King and his demons but they will never get what she had gone through. All those nightmares, the pain, and the suffering that plagued her for years.

She gave their new ally a bow before standing up to leave. She was about to reach the door when Melisandre spoke up again, this time with a question she was not expecting.

“And what about the Water Pillar? Is his love not a reason for you to live?”

The memory of the event that happened ten months prior to replayed in her mind. Two different scenarios with two different women she had come to admire.

Yet, in the end, the response is the same.

Slowly, Sansa lifted her head and when their eyes met, Margaery could see tears unshed.

From the window of his house, Jon could see the incoming crow and there was something about its approach that bothered the young pillar. He had been recovering from his injuries from the injuries he had sustained from his last mission when he sensed its approach. So despite his body’s protest for him to continue laying down, he went and opened a window to watch the bird enter his vicinity.

Dark wings, dark words, were the words his Master would always say whenever a crow is sent out. Their crow familiars had always been the harbinger of news, both the good and the bad.

Today’s message was either summons from the new head of the Bloodravens, the family that leads their organization, or it may be news from the North about his comrades. He had not heard from them while he was recovering so he braced himself for the worst.

He waited for the crow to announce the news it brought as it flew in the sky, instead, the crow took a plunge towards him. Jon was taken aback with surprise and alarm. It was very unusual for their messengers to do that when delivering the word. When the crow finally reached him, Jon felt dread creep in his heart as he saw the parchment tied on one of its legs. It must be very serious that it needed to be written. With shaking hands, he removed it and slowly unfurled the paper to see its contents.

He immediately recognized Margaery’s flowery script.

She loved you, Jon. I’m sorry, it read. His eyes ran over the text several times, not fully discerning what it meant. His heartbeat increased tenfold the longer he stared at it.

I don’t understand.

“Dead,” the crow cawed suddenly, jolting him from his daze. There was something heart-wrenching about the way it spoke the words. It was then that he noticed the red ribbon with the dragonfly print strapped on its neck. His eyes widened and the parchment fell from his grasp when the realization had sunk in.

“No,” he gasped, fervently shaking his head as he backed away from the window. He covered his ears, refusing to hear any more of what the crow has to say.

No…

“Dead,” it cried again, ascending higher into the night sky, “Sansa Stark is dead.”

#jon x sansa #jonsa #kny au #got fic #jon snow x sansa stark #fromtheboundlesssea #angst #tw: character death #please don't hate me #i'm kinda proud that i was able to write #my first fic in months #jon x sansa fanfiction #jonxsansaff #jonxsansafanfiction #demon slayer au

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sunsethwa · 5 years

Text

Paying Ateez a Surprise Visit

A/N: This is kind of based on a request, but altered a bit: Basically, you’re coming to see Ateez when they’re working or practicing at an unsuspected time :)

Word count: ca. 1,3k (combined)

Genre: super fluffy fam

Seonghwa

“What are you doing here?” Seonghwa asked as you entered the room. He was sat alone, practicing his lines for a new song when you knocked on the door. You had a couple of hours to spare before your last meeting, and thought you’d stop by to visit your boyfriend with coffee and some pastries. He looked shocked for a few seconds, but a sweet smile formed on his face when you did the same and raised the goods for him to see. “I had some extra time and thought I’d come with encouragements.” You told him, and he gestured for you to sit down on the chair next to him. “Thank you.” He said and placed a little kiss on your temple before taking a sip of the coffee.

Hongjoong

You had told Hongjoong that you sadly wouldn’t be able to come to his comeback showcase because your schedule was packed with work that was practically impossible to cancel. You had attempted to keep your spirits up properly in front of your boss, but they noticed how discouraged you seemed nonetheless – so they decided to let you off early, insisting that it was okay. You barely made it to their last two performances, but Hongjoong had no idea you were there. Making your way backstage, you stood at the side as they came off – Hongjoong the last of the bunch. “Look who’s here!” San said, turning to the leader while pointing at you. His face lit up and he practically skipped over to you, holding your face in his hand and placing a big smooch on your lips.

Yunho

Exhausted from travelling throughout the whole night, but high mental energy from what’s about to happen, you wander through the hotel hallway towards your boyfriend’s room. It’s only 7 in the morning, but you know the whole group is about to be woken up for schedules soon anyways, so you use the card you have gotten and carefully unlock the door. The inside is dark, a slight gleaming of sunlight filtering through the curtains. You walk over to Yunho’s bed, crouching down to the level his face is at and stroke your hand over his cheek. His eyes flutter open, and he springs into a seated position when he realises it’s you. For a few seconds, he seems confused, then speaks, voice still groggy: “Oh my god I can’t believe you’re here!” He reaches his hands out for you, and you enter them, snuggling your face into his chest in complete comfort.

Yeosang

“Why are you here? I might mess up now.” Yeosang tells you, his tone either serious or just a non-audiable sarcastic. You knew Ateez were doing their jacket shooting today, and you wanted to spend time in between errands to come and support them – especially Yeosang. “Hey, I’m here because I want to see you in action.” You answered him. He suddenly cupped his own face, and you couldn’t help but giggle at how sweet he looked. “I won’t watch when it’s your turn if you don’t want me to.” You reassured him, hoping he wasn’t uncomfortable with you being there while he was working. “No no, it’s okay, I may just get a little shy, that’s all.” You slowly reached out your finger, booping his nose. “You cutie.”

San

San was lying down flat in the practice room, absolutely beat after spending four hours non-stop perfecting his killing part in the new choreo. He last checked the clock at 10pm, but he had lost all perception of time at this point. When he heard someone arriving, all he managed to do was letting out a “Huh?” and turning his head towards the knock as you entered the door. He gathered all his strength, pulling himself up to sit. It wasn’t easy for him to hide that his body was aching, but he tried as hard as he could. “Babe, isn’t it time to go home now?” You suggested quietly. He nodded, looking you straight in the eyes, yet still not speaking. “It’s 2:20am.” You let him know. His head lowered again, and he let out a sigh. You took his arm and helped him up, intertwining yours in it as you walked out. “You’ve worked hard, Sanie.” You said, and he finally let out some proper words: “I love you.” “I love you too, San.”

Mingi

“You saw the whole concert?” Mingi’s eyes were filled with excitement. The two of you had only been dating seriously for about a month, so you hadn’t really got to see any proper performances from him, especially when all his schedules were just filled with comeback preparations. “Yes, I didn’t think I had time to come, but I cancelled my other plans because this is more important to me.” You didn’t think it was possible for the boy to smile any wider, yet he outdid himself with your every word. He pulled you in for a tight hug, kissing the top of your head several times until you let out a laugh. “What did you think though?” He asked you, still holding onto you firmly. “Mingi, you’re so insanely talented, I hope you know that. I’m really proud of you.” You couldn’t see it, but you know his smile widened yet again. “Thank you so much.” He gave your head another kiss. “Hearing that from you means the world to me.”

Wooyoung

It was Yunho who opened the door for you. He gave you his usual bright smile and an excited hello before calling for Wooyoung to come to the door. Your boyfriend peeked his head out from behind the corner, hair still wet from obviously having just showered. He ran over to you and embraced you instantly, a giant grin plastered on his face. “I’m so happy to see you right now!” He exclaimed, peppering your face with kisses. You chuckled and he stopped, grabbing your hand and pulling you further into the dorm. “Oh, I brought you guys some food.” You said, pointing to the bags on the floor by the entrance. All the boys flocked around the bags, carrying them into the living room. “Can you stay here?” Wooyoung asked you. “I wasn’t planning on just feeding you and leaving.” You answered jokingly. He kissed your cheeks and clarified: “I meant like, can you sleep here? I feel like it’s been ages.” You placed your hand on his cheek, stroking it with your thumb: “Of course.”

Jongho

Instead of entering his practice room, you just stood outside… listening. You listened to Jongho’s singing in awe, wondering how he could be so incredibly gifted this way. Without knowing, you were teared up by the time he finished singing the ballad, not actually realising it was over until he opened the door. He jumped slightly at the sight of you standing right in front of him so suddenly, a puzzled look on his face. “Are you crying?” Was the first thing he said to you, taking his thumb and wiping a single tear that had left your right eye. You didn’t even notice it until he pointed it out. “I’m sorry.” You started. “You’re just- you sing so beautifully.” You told him. He tilted his head to the side, creeping his arm around you and pulling you closer to him. “You’re crying because I sing well?” He asked again. You nodded, afraid you’d cry more if you let out actual words. “Well, isn’t that a nice compliment.” Jongho said jokingly, leaning in and kissing your cheek, right under your eye where the tear had spilled.

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shesdangerace · 5 years

Text

I learned from my pain

Happy belated Valentine’s Day! Tumblr hates us all and might make this super hard to post here SO. I’m going to post as much of it as I can, and if you like it, you can check it out on AO3 (also linked at the end). I now present to you, a very Andrew Minyard Valentine’s Day. -

He remembers the colour of the sky outside the window.

He remembers the tree branch swaying in front of the glass.

He remembers the breeze that day.

He remembers the hands, the quiet, the pleading.

AJ’s first Valentine’s Day.

Andrew’s eyes feel heavy.

Allison gave Renee roses today, a question written out in cursive with a kiss on the end. Matt was talking about his plans in the locker room. Nicky has been beside himself thinking of Erik coming to visit.

Andrew is leaning outside of his open mesh-free window trying not to think. Cigarette burning down in his hand.

Andrew never got asked. Andrew never got elaborate plans. Andrew never got giddy anticipation. At least, not his own.

And now, he doesn’t want those things. Can’t want them. Doesn’t see a point in them.

It always came at a price, is the thing. And it was never enough.

Love meant crying without making a sound so she wouldn’t know. Love meant bleeding so his twin wouldn’t have to. Love meant throwing away the chance of it. Love meant cut brakes.

That was the love he was taught anyway, when his ‘family’ told them they loved him as they crept into his room at night, asking Do you love me? Do you love me?

Andrew was taught that love was cruelty. Pain. Bloodshed. A blind eye. Vengeance. Sacrifice. Loss. Responsibility. More bloodshed. He never knew what love was meant to feel like.

And now all Andrew knows how to feel is nothing.

There’s a knock on the door frame, firm and assured.

“Hey. Time for practice.”

Neil, standing there like a memory of a different life. Auburn and dressed all in grey.

The cigarette falls slowly from Andrews’ hand, swaying back and forth by the light February wind until it touches the ground of the car park below like a distant feather.

The cheerleaders are here. They’re being loud and it’s unnecessary.

Andrew doesn’t know why the cheerleaders are here. Honestly, it doesn’t matter. It matters that they are and that they’re being loud.

She’s here too, of course. She’s also a cheerleader after all. Not quite so loud though.

That may be because while Andrew is not looking at her, he’s looking at Aaron, and Aaron is looking at her. He’s willing to bet she’s looking back.

Aaron looks happy. Wistful. Awed almost. Where did he learn that? How did he manage to learn how to feel like that?

Andrew doesn’t look at him.

He hits balls and waves his heavyweight stick around for hours, while Kevin yells and Neil cusses out the baby Foxes and Nicky laughs like a demented hyena and Aaron feels all over the court floor.

Andrew doesn’t look at him.

And then Katelyn comes wafting over, blonde ponytail bouncing and hands wringing and smile matching the quiet one on Aaron’s face. A smile Andrew has no clue how to replicate on his own. And then she asks him, and he grins at her and says yes, obviously, and then she kisses him on the cheek and giggles and her ponytail bounces away.

Andrew tilts his head away and doesn’t look at him.

He looks at Neil. He doesn’t really have a choice.

He’s standing right in front of Andrews line of sight, close but not close enough to touch Andrew, smirk almost as sharp as his eyes. Batting his eyelashes like an idiot, hands wringing and toe nudging against the floor.

“Be my Valentine sugar plum?”

That cocky smile, that exaggerated posture, that orange bandana, that mess of hair, that shock of bright blue, that stupid, stupid idiot.

“Fuck off.”

Neil just laughs, that huff of gentle sound, and Andrew looks at him and can’t seem to stop. And Neil can’t seem to either, looking right back, smile just strong enough to bring out the subtle dimple on his right cheek.

How did he learn that?

How did he learn to dimple like that from bruises? How did he learn to look at Andrew like that from a lifetime of running? How did he learn to laugh for Andrew after knives and cleavers and flames and irons?

Andrew just looks at him.

Neils’ hands on his Exy stick are strong and unwavering and deliberate. Careful. Reverent.

Andrew just looks at him.

---

It’s two days before Valentine’s Day.

They’re at the coffee stand. The three of them have classes in 15 minutes but no one cares. Neil stands beside him, staring as disinterestedly as Andrew.

It’s pink. It’s stupid. There’s large lettering in altering colours of red, green, and yellow. There’s three black silhouettes like bathroom door signs. A red cross. A green heart. A yellow question mark. A lot of pink. It’s a poster.

It’s a traffic light party.

“Neil please, come on, it’s literally perfect and you’re the only one who can convince him.”

Andrew thinks about the colour red.

“No.”

It’s so vicious and ugly, so glaring, a screaming no that Andrew has had painted on his hands and his lips and his skin for years now.

“Neeeeil come on!”

Andrew has been red for a long time.

“Nicky, you have a long-term partner. Why would you need to go to this?”

Neil sounds tired. Neil is right to be.

“But Neil, that’s the point. Not only do I get to declare myself as taken, I get to show off my hot German husband.”

Red is not as simple as a t-shirt or a badge. It’s sticky and it festers and it stains like dye and you don’t get to change your mind once it’s on you.

“You know you haven’t even asked him to marry you yet right?”

Green is an unrealistic colour. It’s bright where red is dark, joyous like red is angry. A garish neon sign declaring yes. Yes, I’m here and I’m alive and I’m okay and I fucking want this.

Andrew doesn’t think he could ever be green having been red.

“Fuck you, Neil. It’s understood, it’s an inevitability, and the world needs to know!”

Green can start pure and be muddled and abused until it’s ugly and brown enough to be red anyway.

“The world does know. You’ve been talking about him non-stop for days. It’s annoying.”

There’s a coffee cup in his hands. When did that get there? Latte, caramel and vanilla. Neil’s name is written on it.

“Okay, can we please get back to the point? Which is the party? And that we should go?”

The sun is out today, and there’s no breeze. The skies are clear and still. Neil is walking beside Andrew, staring at him under his lashes every now and then as Nicky pleads his case. He’s walking close enough to Andrew that Andrew could touch him if he asked.

He’s wearing yellow. It’s a logo, on his grey hoodie. The drawstrings are yellow. Bright, like the sun. Hopeful.

After a while, after Baltimore and Riko and several screaming panic attacks in department store changing rooms with Allison’s guilty voice over the phone, Neil started to touch colour. Gentle prods, careful explorations.

He has an emerald green shirt now. Long sleeves. He has several Fox-orange articles of clothing that he wears in the dorm, the house, or with Andrew around campus. He has accents of colours on his shirts or his hoodie or his hat in the winter.

He has no blue brighter than navy. He has no red either.

Today, he is quietly yellow. Sipping his black coffee with one sugar and studiously ignoring Nicky in favour of watching Andrew ignore Nicky.

When Andrew asks and Neil says yes, in an alcove five minutes late to class, his fingers wind their way into those sunshine yellow drawstrings. He swears it stains his fingertips just a little.

Nicky is singing. A little bit drunk, a lot off key. It’s pop music and it’s incessantly loud. He got a phone call half an hour before. He did not take it well.

Erik has to stay in Germany for another day. A despondent Nicky had explained to them, and Kevin, that this means he’ll be flying in on Valentine’s Day instead of tomorrow, and this means that he’ll miss most of their first Valentine’s Day together in forever and Kevin would you please pay attention?

“Fuck men, seriously, Ari is so right you know? She just fucking gets it like, she understands and you know what I mean right Neil? Back me up Neil.”

Neil is in no condition to be anyone’s back up. He’s wrapped up in the embrace of the beanbag chair next to Andrew’s and he’s exasperated and exhausted. Nightmares. Not Andrew’s this time. The yellow was a particularly bold a choice today. But Neil is smirking in amusement all the same.

“Thank you, more like no thank you sir- “

In the corner, Matt is trying to film discreetly. On the couch, Kevin is paying absolutely no attention, waiting for his phone to ring.

As Nicky dances to the same song over and over, and Kevin bolts out of the room to answer Thea’s call, and Matt fails at discretion, and Neil radiates sleepy warmth next to Andrew like a furnace, Nicky bleeds.

He’s haemorrhaging love, the good and the bad and the ugly need of it. With the clarity of experience and many Wednesday sessions Andrew can see it. He can see the dark edges of Nicky, the sadness underneath his exuberance, his pain. He sees Nicky’s own sharp memories poking out from beneath his grin.

When he looks back at Neil, he sees the same understanding in those perceptive blue eyes.

It’s not about some pointless day in February. It’s about months without him. It’s about not knowing love without pain before him. It’s about conditions and fear and confusion and self-loathing and conversion. It’s about finally getting to hold someone’s hand knowing that he’s safe.

“I’m just saying I’m a fucking catch and I don’t deserve this, and you know what?”

Nicky stops here, stares at Neil balefully, then at Andrew, then back to Neil, gesturing with his whole body for the peanut gallery to speak.

Neil sighs and gives in.

“What Nicky?”

“I’ll tell you what Neil! I’m so fucking ungrateful for this treatment! That’s what.”

He trips.

And then, from his pile of slumped limbs and tired bones, Neil laughs. A true sound, a warm rich low sound.

Something in Andrew stutters for a moment. And then Nicky is throwing himself at Neil.

Nicky with his explosive love. Neil gifting his affection in laughs and smiles where there used to be none. Kevin breaking his single-minded devotion at the drop of a hat when Thea calls. Matt texting all the videos to Dan no doubt. All of them, loving each other out loud.

Andrew closes his eyes.

Nicky haemorrhages for hours.

---

It’s the day before Valentine’s Day. They’re at the traffic light party.

Nicky is bright red in the face from dancing, bright red in the face from alcohol, bright red in his shirt. He’s smiling almost as wide as he was when Andrew loomed over him in the locker room and said they were going.

Neil is wearing a black and neon-orange hoodie because he lives to be contrary and confusing. Andrew is wearing black because so does he.

The music is loud enough that Andrew almost can’t hear his thoughts. Almost. But of course, Andrew could never be so lucky, nor could Neil be so merciful.

The lights of the club are passing over his face like real traffic lights, sharpening and softening his face and colouring his eyes different shades. They could almost be in the Maserati, driving a touch too fast, Neil looking out of the passenger window, lounging like he belongs, smiling softly at Andrew’s reflection under the cover of night.

But they’re not. Neil is standing there like a living, breathing fuck you, glaring down anyone who gets too close, staring blankly at those who mistake his orange for yellow and then laughing to himself when they scuttle away. He looks gloriously alive, and completely unreal.

They’ve lost Nicky.

Neil looks at Andrew, really looks at him. Face like a storm.

The music gets improbably louder. Bass heavy. Rumbling. Growling.

Neils eyes get impossibly darker, his face impossibly sharper, his presence impossibly brighter.

He raises his eyebrow at Andrew.

Are you red or yellow or green?

Andrew steps closer and hooks his fingers into Neil’s collar.

Neil takes him by the edge of his black denim jacket, turns away, and Andrew follows the glowing shape of him through the thick crowd of sweat and mistakes.

By the time they reach the wall in the corner Andrew’s vision is all traffic lights and neon and storms.

Neil leans his head back against the wall, the bass louder still. He smirks at Andrew, but his eyes betray him and it becomes a smile. Warm and mischievous and foolhardy. He tilts his chin up at Andrew.

“So does black mean you’re taken?”

Andrew doesn’t dignify this with a response, just breathes.

“Should I take that as a yes or a no?”

Aside from the sharp roll of his eyes, Andrew doesn’t respond to this either.

“Andrew. Yes or no?”

Neil isn’t joking anymore. His eyes are softer than they have any right to be in lighting this sharp and dangerous. He’s searching, he’s already accepted Andrew’s answer.

The growling, rumbling bass around them is eclipsed by Andrew’s own growling yes, Neil’s lips brushing his like a promise. Neil kisses him like he’s desperate, not for his own sake but for Andrew’s. Like he’s been waiting. Like he just wants Andrew to know that Neil is there. Like he just wants Andrew. Whatever that means at any given time.

Right now Andrew doesn’t know what it means.

Neil tastes like midnight. And that makes no sense and it’s fucking stupid.

The lights are still flashing but the bass is different when Neil leans his head back against the wall. For some reason Andrew follows, can’t seem not to, rests his forehead against Neil’s. He doesn’t say anything for a minute, and neither does Andrew.

And then.

“Andrew, can I hold your hand?”

It’s a wonder Andrew hears him over the sound of this stupid party. Andrew says yes because honestly, he’s mildly curious to know what happens next.

Neil’s hand is warm. Firm. Scarred and unafraid and gentle and soft and calloused and it holds Andrew’s so tenderly. Like a rose and not a thorn.

Andrew doesn’t understand it and doesn’t understand why he doesn’t understand it because it shouldn’t be complicated. He doesn’t understand how Neil can look at him and feel. Because he so clearly does and Andrew can’t seem to hide from it.

Are you red or yellow or green or –

“Fuck, there you guys are! Come dance with me!”

And Nicky grabs Neil’s hand and pulls and Neil, as sharp and observant and devoted to his Foxes as he is, would never say no.

---

Andrew wakes up slowly and way too late in the day, to see Neil still asleep. His face is half crushed into his pillow, eyebrows relaxed, hair skewed in every direction like hellfire. His mouth is soft in sleep, his cheeks flushed with warmth.

There’s something so different about Neil when he sleeps.

When he’s awake, Neil is all winter stillness, observant and contrary and dramatic. Ferocious and disinterested and loyal. Loose and honest when Andrew kisses him. Defiantly, viscerally alive.

When he sleeps he is just as still, but unguarded and vulnerable. Almost awake almost always. Soft and quiet, warm like a summer morning.

The February sun is streaming in through the dorm room window, and the sky is clear and crystal blue.

Nicky is beside himself with excitement outside the dorm room somewhere. Eriks’ flight lands that afternoon.

Because it’s Valentine’s Day.

It’s also a Saturday and that’s much more meaningful to Andrew. It means he’s not missing anything Kevin can annoy him for.

Eventually, Neil’s eyes open, and he sniffles at Andrew like a kitten.

It’s so rare to see Neil so taken with sleep. Andrew doesn’t often see this, Neil all strung out on the feeling of being only half awake, soft and malleable like taffy.

Andrew sighs and asks quietly:

“No nightmares?”

And Neil smiles, and that dimple is back on his right cheek. Such a rare sight indeed in February. And to have seen it twice already is almost hard to believe.

“No nightmares.”

Andrew nods.

Neil edges closer, just the tiniest bit. He’s almost nose to nose with Andrew, and Andrew is almost there. He’s on the precipice of something.

One of the worst things about being Andrew Minyard is that apathy makes feeling almost painful and hard to ignore. Andrew has no choice; he can’t lie and he can’t hide and he can’t run and for some god forsaken reason he doesn’t particularly feel the need to.

He gives, and lets himself feel the warmth of Neil. He whispers his name in the scarce air between them, and kisses him. Soft. Unyielding. Bee would be so proud if he would ever tell her.

Neil whispers right back. Kisses right back. Runs his fingertips between Andrew’s on the sheets without touching them. Andrew nods his answer and he feels Neil all around him like the winter sun. Sharp and painful and bright and vital.

Neil is awake, and so is Andrew.

---

At sunset, everything in the Maserati is cast in purple and blue and pink. Neil is lounging like he belongs, smiling at Andrew’s reflection in the glass of the passenger seat window. He looks dreamlike, like he’s feeling that feeling Andrew can’t name.

He turns to Andrew and asks. Andrew says yes and then Neil is holding his hand. He grins at Andrew and for fucks sake. How can he look at Andrew with that much feeling? Who was it that taught him how to feel it at all?

The sounds of the road echo in Andrews ears, the sounds of Nicky’s happy crying from a couple hours earlier in Erik’s arms, Neil’s laugh, his cutting remarks, his questions. Neil’s lips brush Andrew’s hands like a prayer and it’s possible somehow.

Somehow, despite all reasoning and logical experience, it’s possible that Andrew is capable of more than nothing.

When he tells Neil this, laying in the grass off the highway in the last rays of purple light, the look in his eyes and the depth of his kiss are evidence enough.

ao3

#andrew minyard #Neil josten #andreil #nicky hemmick #nickyxerik #aftg #all for the game #tfc #the foxhole court #Valentine's Day #fic #my fic #angst #mentions of past abuse #hurt/comfort #club scene #Valentine's fluff

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aquilaofarkham · 6 years

Note

fic prompt: trevorcard but when trevor is an old man and alucard loves him regardless

Alucard notices everything; every change, every shift, every motion that alters its course. His perception has only grown more attuned over the decades. The dhampir sees how age can truly affect a human being as he points out the crow’s feet around Trevor’s blue eyes, still bright after all these years. He watches as the hunter’s walks become slower, weaker, and offers his hand every time.

The dhampir tries distracting himself with optimistic thoughts. Anything that will put his mind off the worst. He’s just tired, he’s always been tired. The same words come out of Trevor’s own mouth, along with the assurance that all he needs is some rest. Alucard agrees and puts him to bed. He joins Trevor, pressing his chest against his back as they spoon together. Just so he can feel him still breathing.

“You’re worrying too much,” says Trevor. “Stop being so dramatic.” A tall order to ask of someone like Alucard. He can’t help it; he knows how much Trevor and Sypha have changed. Then on occasion, he catches his reflection in a mirror and stops. There’s the same long golden hair, the same soft unblemished skin - nothing has changed. Only the look in his eyes.

Immortality has always weighed itself on Alucard’s conscious, though admittedly less so in the past. He recalls the many awkward yet necessary sit-downs a certain young dhampir had with his mother and father. Discussions that revolved around everything from drinking human blood to controlling one’s own transfiguration. Among these questions, immortality has brought up infrequently. A problem to be dealt with in the future - the far, far off future. A bridge to cross when Alucard eventually reaches it. Now that bridge is closer than ever before, a noose tightening itself around his neck. How naive of him to believe that immortality wouldn’t cause any pain, not to himself nor to his loved ones.

Alucard peeks into the study room where Trevor spends most of his days. He sits in a large cushioned chair beside a window overlooking the woods that surround their home. The last few rays of sunlight shine onto his body and across the floorboards. His eyes are closed but not for long as Alucard’s steps sound off a chorus of creaks. Trevor blinks slowly before turning to the dhampir, giving him a weary smile.

“I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“Don’t worry, I wasn’t asleep. Just shutting my eyes for a bit.”

“Anything of interest out there?”

“Not really. Same view as always even if it is a nice sunset… it’d be more interesting with company, though.”

“Good thing I’m here then.” He carefully lowers himself into the same chair but soon notices how much of a tight squeeze it is. “Is this too crowded for you?”

Trevor hushes him by wrapping an arm around his waist, holding him close. “It’s fine. You’re fine.”

Alucard finally relaxes as his arm drapes around Trevor’s shoulders. Resting his head near his neck, the two of them stare out at hues of gold and orange filling the sky. A minute passes and Alucard almost gets lost in this quiet, intimate moment. There was a time when he forgot how it felt to be held in such a tender manner. Now he’s smothered by such affection, yet there are no complaints from him.

It’s not long before Alucard realizes he’s the only one watching the sunset. Trevor in the meantime has shifted his attention to someone else. “It’s rude to stare without saying anything.”

“Sorry, I just… still can’t believe it.”

“What?”

“How you’re still such a pretty bastard.”

Alucard laughs. “As are you, especially with the beard.” He reaches over and runs a hand across Trevor’s chin, his fingernails scratching at the mass of short hairs. It may have been a bittersweet thing to witness over the years, but silver only made him and Sypha look better than they already did.

“You don’t have to lie.”

“I’m not.”

“Sure you aren’t. You know, there’s not a lot you can hide from an old man.”

Alucard nuzzles his cheek against Trevor’s shoulder. “Technically speaking, we’re both old men.”

“You’re right about that.”

They both snicker as though the passage of time means nothing and they’re back where they started; joking and pushing each other’s buttons just for a laugh. Yet Alucard’s jovial attitude doesn’t last. He realizes that what he said isn’t right - he’s not an old man. Perhaps only in the mind. He grew up far too quickly, against his own wishes with nothing he could do to stop it, and now age has left him completely. Another reminder of the harsh yet undeniable truth. He is not human and never has been.

“I’ve been thinking…”

“That’s always a bad sign.”

Wishing he would take this seriously, Alucard’s grip on Trevor’s tunic tightens. “As I was saying, I’ve been thinking about you, Sypha, and myself. How-”

“How much we’ve aged compared to you.”

“… it isn’t fair.” The words taste bitter and miserable. They make Alucard feel like a child again.

“Every human being has to grow old eventually.”

“Then why can’t I? Why do I feel more vampire than human?”

Trevor kisses the top of his head. “I wish I could tell you, but I’m not an expert on dhampirs. I wouldn’t worry, though. It’ll still be a while before I shuffle off this mortal coil.”

“What if you’re wrong?”

“And what if I’m right? What if the world goes up in fire and brimstone tomorrow?” Looking into the dhampir’s sad eyes, Trevor holds his chin between his thumb and index finger. “Just promise me you’ll be strong when the time does come. And at least try to be happy.”

A difficult promise to make and even more difficult to keep, but Alucard will try. He then decides to change the topic before the air between them becomes unbearably melancholic. For Trevor’s sake and for his own.

“What was that nickname you had for me?” He asks, settling back into the hunter’s arms.

“Sorry?”

“Just now you called me a pretty bastard. It reminded me of something else you used to call me, something similar. What was it?”

“Oh, um…” Trevor searches his memories, hoping time and oldness haven’t taken too much of a toll on them. “I think it might have been shayna punim.”

“Right. Which means… pretty face.”

“Yes, exactly that.”

“I was so confused the first time you said it. Then you started calling me shayna punim all the time.”

“I’m surprised you remember that far back.”

“There are a lot of things I remember.”

“It’s also surprising how you still like me after all those years.”

Alucard brushes some strands of hair out of Trevor’s tired eyes, hair he can never seem to tame or keep in place, and kisses him. Long, deep, and gentle. He pulls back before leaving a smaller one on his lips. “I’ll always love you, you stupid bastard.”

Trevor smiles, cocky and assured, which is just like him. “I thought I was the only one allowed to call you that.”

–

Alucard keeps his promise to remain strong and happy when the time eventually comes. But it doesn’t last. He lets the grief wash over him, hating his stagnant existence while being unable to face Sypha, knowing he’ll lose her as well. She manages to carefully break down his walls bit by bit. Alucard lets her, yet as a wolf he buries his head into her lap, whimpering. Only because he doesn’t want her to see him cry.

Stroking his fur with wrinkled yet soft hands, Sypha offers some words of respite. Whether it’s in vain or not, she will have to wait and see. She’s already shed her own tears and knows how deep Alucard’s sadness runs. “There’s an old Speaker tradition…” She begins, feeling his body tremble with every whine. “When one of us dies, we never hold funeral pyres or processions. We allow ourselves to grieve, then we host a celebration of that person’s time in this world as well as their journey into the next. We pray for happiness and peace in their new life while we live out what’s left of our own, knowing that they haven’t left us.’

‘It’s not easy, but there is some comfort in that knowledge.”

Alucard stares up at her, having calmed down but doesn’t want to leave her side. Sypha rubs the top of his head and pats his neck. “You won’t be alone, my friend. You’ll never be alone.”

#castlevania #trevor belmont #alucard #sypha belnades #trevorcard #my writing #*cvfic #ask aquila #dykcula #super rushed and ooc BUT its done!!#otp: blood and honey

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october31st1981 · 6 years

Text

Baby, I’m Trying

Originally written for Jily Secret Santa 2016 for the prompt “modern single parent AU.” I realized I never posted this fic to my own blog, so here it is.

She ought to know by now not to try to surprise James.

When they were twelve, she’d jumped out of a cupboard, intent on frightening James to get him back for unraveling the hem of her friend’s already threadbare uniform. He’d been so startled that he’d slammed the cupboard shut and Lily ended up with a bloody nose.

On his eighteenth birthday, she’d made the mistake of trying to throw him a party without telling him. She had half their year assembled in his house when he called to cancel their afternoon plans because his mother was taking him to Belgium.

Over the years, it’s become clear that James is far better at providing surprises than receiving them.

It’s probably foolish of her to think that this time will be different. But she’s just gotten home after studying in France during her summer and fall terms, and the only person that Lily wants to see is James Potter. They wrote letters, certainly, and talked on the phone, but it doesn’t compare to seeing him gaze at her with a warm smile or a smarmy grin from right in front of her face. He’d joked about her meeting someone while in France, but part of her thinks it was true, because she’s never been so eager to come home in her life.

And she’s missed him, missed all her boys, really. So she stands outside James’s and Sirius’s flat, knocking on their door with a grin on her face.

Sirius pulls open the door, wearing what looks like a bib and holding a plush toy in his hands. “Moony, if that’s you, you better have brought nappies—Evans!” His face breaks out into a broad grin.

Careful to avoid the mess on his bib, Lily steps into Sirius’s arms. “I’m back,” she says. “Dare I ask about the nappies?”

The smile on Sirius’s face dims. “Maybe I should let James explain.”

She releases Sirius, stepping past him into the flat. The room looks messier than usual, with an assortment of items she can’t begin to explain scattered on the floor. “Where is he? I know I should’ve called, but I thought it’d be a nice surprise this way.”

“Is that Lupin? Tell him it’s Code Yellow, false alarm,” James’s voice calls as he enters the room.

Lily’s heart speeds up a bit as he comes into view. His hair is longer, and he’s got a smudge of what looks like carrot on his cheek, but he’s still the same. She is so caught up in staring at his face that it takes her a moment to realize that he’s holding something. Someone, in fact. A baby, no more than six months old, clinging to him firmly.

Lily blinks, looking down at the child. She thinks the baby blinks back. “Are you… babysitting?” she asks. She knows Alice and Frank Longbottom had their baby not all that long ago, but it seems a bit odd that they would choose James to mind their son, considering he’s an only child and has probably never held a baby in his life.

“Er, no,” James says awkwardly, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand. He wears an expression not dissimilar to the one he wore in Year 12 when he told he’d accidentally melted his Head Boy badge. “This is Harry. He’s… Well, he’s mine.”

Surprise, Lily thinks, feeling a little light-headed.

“Yours,” she repeats slowly.

“Mine,” he says, nodding. As if pleased by this announcement, the boy in James’s arms reaches out to him, using an impossibly tiny hand to grab at his glasses. James runs a placating hand over the baby’s hair.

Lily can’t stop staring. “You weren’t pregnant when I left.”

Sirius, who hasn’t spoken since James entered the room, scowls and mutters, “Lucy.”

Suddenly, Lily understands. When they’d been in secondary school, James had dated Lucinda Talkalot, whom he knew from his football league. Lily hadn’t liked her. Mary said it was because she’d fancied James something awful back then, but in truth, Lily had doubts about the girl. She wasn’t good at keeping friends, and to James, loyalty was more important than anything. At least, it had been. By the fond look James is giving the baby, Lily thinks that everything else in James’s life might be suddenly outranked.

“You and Lucy…” Lily trails off, looking at James significantly.

“At that Halloween party last year,” he confirms.

Her eyes drift to the baby again. Harry. He has a shock of black hair on top of his head, and his eyes are like James’s, but brighter. Hazel. Still, she feels compelled to ask. “And you’re sure?”

“Yeah, I am.”

“We talked on the phone,” Lily says weakly. She thinks of all the times where he’d hesitated in a conversation, saying he’d explain later. She supposes now is later. “You couldn’t have mentioned a baby?”

Shifting Harry to his other hip, James offers a one-armed shrug. “It seemed like in-person kind of news.”

There’s not much she can say to that. So instead, she asks, “Can I hold him?”

James looks taken aback, but he nods, approaching her slowly. “Mind his hands,” he says, placing the baby in her arms. “He likes to grab.”

And sure enough, as soon as the baby is in her arms, his tiny fists are wrapped up in her long auburn hair. Harry giggles, and Lily can see why James looks at this kid with such affection in his eyes.

Lily gives him her widest smile. “Hi, Harry.”

Over the next few weeks, the story tumbles out of the boys in pieces. How Lucy hadn’t told James about the pregnancy until Harry was already several weeks old. How she’d decided to give him up in the hopes of giving him a better life, but had hesitated at the thought of James, and shown up with the baby at his doorstep. How that day had been the last they’d seen her.

“Are you mad at Lucy?” she asks James one evening as they sit on the floor of his living room. She presses a stuffed lion against Harry’s nose, who garbles delightedly back at her.

James pauses, and then shakes his head. “Not for giving me Harry,” he says quietly. “For not telling me the first place, maybe, but I’d rather have him than not.”

“I suppose I never imagined you’d be a dad this young.” She’s only two months older than James, and she’s barely creeping up on twenty-one.

James looks at Harry. “I always sort of reckoned that when I did have a kid, I’d be married. Something for the long run, y’know.”

Lily can see it. James, in a cottage bustling with children, committed to one person for the rest of his life. He’d be happy like that. “You will be,” she says decidedly. “Just have to adjust the order.”

He raises an eyebrow suggestively. “Are you offering, Evans?”

She pulls Harry into her lap, resting her chin on the top of his head. “Sorry, Potter. My heart already belongs to someone else.”

James sighs wistfully. “Thrown over for a younger man.” He strokes a hand gently on his son’s face. “My fault for making you so handsome.”

“Thank goodness Harry has a father who’ll teach him modesty,” says Remus from the entryway. Sirius’s return from classes is flagged by the arrival of both Remus Lupin and Peter Pettigrew.

“That’s what you’re for, Moony.” James grins. “When you’re finished that teaching degree, I fully expect you to inform my son about the ways of the world.”

Remus groans. “If I finish this teaching degree,” he mutters. “Vector isn’t pleased about all the class I miss.”

“Cow,” interjects Sirius, pulling a face.

Lily frowns. “You can’t help that you get sick, Remus. She ought to be more understanding.”

Remus shrugs. “She’s big on attendance.”

“Had to drop her last year,” adds Peter, shuddering. “Missed four lectures and she threatened to fail me.”

James nods sympathetically. “After begging to switch to night class so Sirius can watch Harry while I’m at school, last month I had to tell her I was an hour late because Harry threw up on me. Three times.” He glances at Lily. “You sure you want to choose him over me? He’s well-practiced in the art of projectile vomit.”

Lily doubts Harry knows he’s being talked about, but he babbles when his father is looking in his direction. She turns her gaze downward. “Still him. No contest.”

James beams at Harry, or perhaps at the two of them. “Yeah, I’d pick him too.”

When Lily first notices the shift between them, they’re in a park. Harry’s too young to be able to run around, but he loves being outside anyway. Spring has arrived, and he’s growing like the weeds that are starting to make their way out of the ground. He twists and turns in his pram, eagerly trying to take everything in.

James trainers are undone, as always, so Lily is keeping her eyes on Harry as he kneels down to tie them.

An elderly woman passes by and tells Lily, “Your son is adorable.”

Lily blushes. “Oh, he’s—”

“How old is he?” the woman asks.

“Just coming up on eight months,” replies James, standing up.

The lady smiles, eyes crinkling at James’s boy. “That’s a good age. Before you can blink, he’ll be running around and it’ll be all you can do to keep up. Make sure you still make time for each other.”

James seems to realize the woman’s mistake, and he meets Lily’s eye. She thinks he’s going to correct her, but instead he says, “Good advice.”

Good advice rings through Lily’s head for at least two weeks after, and it has her flushing every time she has to look him in the face. She’s not fool enough to pretend what she was feeling when she was in France didn’t mean anything, but things are different now. James has Harry. Harry, the love of his life, who has shaken his world irrevocably. She’s not selfish enough to try to alter the life that he’s only just started to build.

But Sirius sees it. She knows he does. He can be annoyingly perceptive when it comes to things that concern James Potter.

He manages to hold his tongue for two weeks. She is watching Harry with Sirius during James’s maths lecture when he finally says to her, “So, how long’ve you been in love with James?”

Lily wants to say I’m not, but what comes out is, “France.”

Sirius picks Harry up and raises him up in the air. “So, not as long as he’s been in love with you.”

Her heart stutters, and she takes Harry from Sirius and spins him around so she has an excuse to hide her face. “James isn’t… his heart is occupied at the moment.”

Sirius laughs. “You don’t think Prongs has a heart big enough for all of us?”

Lily turns. Harry’s hands are tangled in her hair again, as they usually are these days. “I can’t ask him to make any big changes right now. Harry deserves the whole world.”

“That’s why.” Sirius says, with a smile that’s both sincere and smug. “Harry matters to you, and that matters to him.”

“I’m not going to tell him,” she says firmly. Her heart protests, but it quiets when she looks at Harry, who has burrowed himself in it as deeply as his father. “I’ll do it when he has more time to decide what he wants.”

Sirius won’t tell him either, Lily knows that much. Still, he gives Lily and Harry a lingering glance as they hold onto each other, “He already knows what he wants, Evans. This is it.”

Lily hesitates about what constitutes the right time, but she knows herself enough to be certain she wouldn’t even consider saying something if she weren’t in it for the long haul. Soon, it simply becomes a matter of finding a moment alone.

In the end, Harry is one who changes things once again. When he turns a year old, James decides to throw Harry a spectacular birthday party. There are dozens of balloons, paper stars on every surface of the flat, and a man in star-spangled robes who claims to be a magician (though he never does any tricks). By early evening, Harry is too exhausted to continue, so he is put to bed and the adults decide to open a bottle of wine.

When James is in the kitchen getting a corkscrew, she slips in, hands behind her back.

“I have a surprise for you.”

James grins, turning around. “It’s not another baby, is it?”

“I hope not, or he won’t be very comfortable in this box.” She moves her hands in front of her and hands him a neatly-wrapped gift. “When Petunia and I were little, we used to have a tradition. On our birthdays, we would give our mum a present, since she was the person who gave us life and spent the whole year looking after us. I thought, since Harry’s too young to know how much you do for him, I’d step in for him this year.”

He falters, looking a bit flustered. “Evans…”

Lily looks at James fondly. He still has paper stars in his hair from the party. “You’re a good dad, James. I hope you know that. Harry’s lucky to have you.”

“I’m lucky to have him,” says James, setting down the present. He hesitates for a moment, and then adds, “And you.”

She’s not sure if she steps closer or he does, but there’s less distance between them in the next moment. “I’m lucky that Harry’s in my life too.”

James reaches a hand to cup her cheek. “We’re all very lucky.”

And when he kisses her, Lily can’t help but agree.

#jily #jily*#james potter #lily evans #harry james potter #mine #that submission i received with jss 2016 fanart reminded me i never posted this here #at least not with me as the source lol #i have a follow up piece for this half written

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clarasghosts · 6 years

Text

RULES: List the openings of the last ten stories you published. Look to see if there are any patterns that you notice yourself, and see if anyone else notices any! Then tag some friends.

tagged by @leaiorganas sorry it took so long, i’m so bad at responding to tags!

10 is going to be like nearly half my work on ao3, haha

1. i’ll wander home - whouffaldi

The burn begins to ebb, or maybe that’s what Clara wants to believe. Her vision dims so that water around her appears more like blue static, all the shapes losing their edge. She doesn’t try to free her arm anymore, having long given up on trying to understand how it got stuck in the first place. Her lungs weigh her down, like they’re reaching to the seaweed below. Maybe I should just let them.

2. Rosemary by Your Garden Gate - whouffaldi, platonic clara x amy

Eleana Ravenwood Pond

Beloved Wife and Mother

Born

11th September 1960

Died

5th March 1992

That was all that was left of their mother. Clara and Amelia held hands staring down at the words engraved on cold stone. They could hear the chilly breeze blow through the grass and rustle the leaves above them, but they could not make themselves budge even for the wind. In Clara's left hand she clutched to her chest her mother's childhood book of 101 Places to See; Amelia's right hand was wrapped around the rings hanging from a chain at her neck - their parents' wedding rings. They had lost both parents in less than two months.

3. this year i devour - garashir

The first time Garak saw Julian was a mess of discomfort and endorphins leveling out that discomfort, excitement at seeing such a beautiful, intriguing, Human face among the crowd, and the thrill of thinking that he may be able to use the young doctor in his efforts to return home. There is something important and valuable about that first moment, he knows, but it isn’t really the one that he counts, because the first time Garak saw Julian without the effects of the implant altering his perception was well over a year later. He still remembers what that moment felt like, standing just outside the Replimat, looking for the first time upon a young man who was already a part of his life. Julian had dug his way in, trusted him, accepted him without even knowing the whole truth, and planted himself firmly within Garak’s existence, so that when he woke up with a clear head, Julian was already there. And as Garak watched him in the Replimat, he came to a decision. When he entered and sat across from his friend, it would be a first in its own way, but he would treat it like a continuation nonetheless, like something without a beginning. Something that always just was.

4. eat it whole - vicbourne

There are monsters in this world. She learned this when she was a child. She learned this in the hardest way. And as she stares out at the gathering of important men before her, she knows that monsters don’t always look like monsters. Any one of them could have their secrets, any one of them could be plotting her downfall. Some of them are smiling in that awkward way that betrays how displeased they are with their new monarch, most of them aren’t smiling at all. It makes her falter at first, this knowledge that none of the men in the room have any faith in her, not even her own blood.

But there is one face among them, as she glances at it, that shows only warmth, a small nod of encouragement. So she steels herself, speaks up, and tells them how capable she knows she is. The Prime Minister may not know all that much about her, she is aware, but if he can already believe in her ability, then others may do so as well.

She has no need to fear monsters anymore.

5. i’m not afraid of running away with you - clavioli

The lab in the backroom had been pieced together with whatever resources he had managed to bring with him and pieces scavenged from a high school classroom in the nearest town, which was over thirty miles and an hour’s drive along barely-traveled-roads away. It had to be good enough because there weren’t any other options short of breaking back into the zombie capital which now considered them traitors.

The backroom also doubled as both a laundry room and a pantry. The top shelf on the wall, above their food, were vials and bottles that he had managed to smuggle out with him. The cabin they’d found was small, but it was livable. The main room was split into a living space, a kitchen, and a bedroom. They had a front porch that locked shut, which really only protected them from people who respected locks. Glass windows and screens were easy to break, and the porch door was light enough that it rattled in the wind. Still, the added sense of security did a little to ease his mind; felt safe enough to step out onto the porch at night and look out at the stars.

6. She Sought Death - whouffaldi

The letter is unexpected, to say the least.

Clara and Me don’t typically get any post. Even if their home wasn’t a nomadic American diner, most of the universe has considered them dead for a while now. Me doesn’t notice the letter, lying flat on the ground near the door, until they’re already in flight, and she considers the possibility that it was dropped their by a customer from their last stop – the 23rd century, several lightyears from Earth – though she can’t guess why someone would, or why they would find an impossible room in an otherwise simple diner, and just leave a letter. It’s possible that it’s a plea for help, so she opens it. Inside the envelope she finds only a folded advertisement and nothing else.

The Glover House

A Safe and Quiet Retreat in the Countryside

Space for twelve guests. Rooms available beginning October 1st, 1940.

Please call and make a reservation.

7. Time to Turn it Over - whouffaldi

It was a natural disaster. On Arawn it was natural for the earth to shake and split, not along one fault line, but along nearly all of them.

The Doctor internally berated himself as he flipped switches and turned dials as fast as he could. This was supposed to be a relaxing, sight-seeing kind of trip, nothing too exciting, but somehow he ended up landing them fifty years off and just in time for one of the biggest tragedies in the planet's history. In fact, there wasn't much known about this planet afterward, they just kind of dropped off the map for a few centuries before quietly reconnecting with the rest of the universe. Whatever the exact extent of the damage, the number of casualties that far outweigh the survivors, he and Clara weren't going to stick around to find out

8. Changeling - garashir

He looks up at the sky often, the large never-ending expanse of blue, and traces the nonsensical shapes of the clouds with his finger, his other hand dragging Kukalaka behind him. Turning to look at his mother beside him, he bends his head back so he can see her properly and asks, “How far away is the sky?”

She sighs loudly. “That depends, Jules.”

The answer means nothing to him, so he looks away and back up at the sky. Only a moment passes before he feels the small pressure of a hand on his back, rotating him slightly and leading him up a ramp. The world around him darkens as they enter the ship. “Where are we going?”

“It’s a planet called Adigeon Prime,” his father answers.

9. Life Implies Death - wellenore

The first time it happens, Lenore is 8 years old. A large, black beetle takes up residence just outside her bedroom window. For two days she watches it walk back and forth, but making no move to leave. On the second night she opens her window to greet it, only to find it lying on its back, legs curled in toward its belly.

She leaves the body where it is, sparing it a glance every so often until, finally, it disappears.

10. darling one, just live - vicbourne

“You were happy too?” It is both a question and a statement, a truth that belongs only to them.

So he answers. “You know I was,” and he hates the way past tense tastes in his mouth, the loss of possibility as it passes through his lips. He is sitting so close to her, but the distance he has put between them stretches, expands. He could close it with a word, he knows, but it isn’t the right choice to make, so he doesn’t. And every second that passes where he doesn’t is another inch, another piece of the path between them torn away, and soon he will be an island.

Patterns?

1. I seem to always be either setting the physical scene or setting a mystery. the only exception is “darling one, just live” in which i was jumping off of the show’s dialogue.

2. i’m honestly really wordy in my intros, whoops.

3. at least two of these begin with someone reading something - once a tombstone, and the other time it’s a letter

if you guys see any others, let me know! and i’m inviting anyone to do this!!! i want to see what you’ve written and what you have to say about it!

#i'll be better at tagging in the next one!!!

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