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tomdutch · 3 years

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Oooh s I am FEELING number 9 for flufftober with tom??? And perhaps there was some mutual pining happening... Okay also as I was reading through the prompts I was listening to "clouds" by børns which is just... such a romantic song to me and it made me so giddy while reading the prompts so I thought I'd mention it in case if gives you any inspiration :)

❀ clouds ❀

i love this song too 🥺 this is so self-indulgent (as all my drabbles are tbh) i hope you enjoy <3 this might be the best drabble i’ve ever written lmao i’m rlly proud & in love with this one :’)

prompt: (9) your first passionate kiss with a person. you touch your lips absently, feeling the phantom of your lover’s lips.

↳ actor!tom, friends to lovers, tessa holland supremacy bc i miss her & need her back in my life

word count: 1.8k

flufftober drabbles (requests closed!)

“this one kind of looks like a one-eyed bunny. a one-eyed, one-legged bunny.”

snorting, you tear your gaze away from the sky overhead and onto the man lying beside you. his hand is outstretched, index pointing to an oddly shaped cloud slowly rolling away from you, and you try your best not to stare at his flexed forearm so close to your face. a passing autumn breeze gently ruffles the brown curls smushed on his forehead, his hair unruly after an impromptu nap.

a nap you shared. which is totally normal. it’s so normal for best friends to fall asleep cuddling each other that it borders on mundane. it’s boring, even. yes, you’re so bored of falling asleep in tom’s backyard with tom’s head on your chest and tom’s dog’s head in your lap and tom’s scent lingering on your clothes from the last time you fell asleep with tom a week ago. stupid tom.

“that’s not true.” tom says, turning onto his side so he’s facing you, the movement making you reluctantly open your eyes again. “you don’t remember bobby bugs?”

at the name, a loud laugh erupts from your mouth, and you hasten to slap a hand over it. “oh my god, i can’t believe i forgot him. he was your only friend before me.”

“yeah, and you’re so fucking mean, i might just dump you and buy another bunny to be my real best friend.” you giggle again as tom fake pouts, your neck hurting from being twisted to watch him.

silence falls over both of you again, interrupted only by random whines from tessa and the occasional passing car. most of tom’s neighbours are smart enough to stay inside when it’s only five degrees, whereas you both have just enough brain cells to decide laying down a picnic blanket and then laying under a couple more blankets should warm you up just fine. after all, cold and bad weather never stopped you and tom from indulging in your favourite pass-time as loud children who were often told to just go outside because you were too raucous.

you don’t remember which one of you began this tradition of cloud-watching. all you know is that your childhood memories are almost all riddled with tom’s crooked nose and chaotic curls and the large mole on his chin that is no longer there. many of these memories include spotting weirdly shaped clouds and inventing stories about them together, a habit you’ve continued well into your adolescence and haven’t begun to let go of in your twenties, either, even as one of you has become a bloody celebrity.

“ooh, i think i spot a giant raccoon.” you grin, nodding towards a particularly large cloud further away.

tom squints, sitting up to see better. the hood of his pink sweater flops with the movement, and you bite back the immature urge to shove leaves into it like you did when you were young. well, younger. you’re not proud of the side of yourself that loves stupid pranks. mouth turning into an o, tom’s expression soon breaks into a matching grin when he finds the cloud, too.

“he’s definitely got rabies.” he jokes, flopping down beside you, beam only widening when you giggle, palm clasped against your mouth. it doesn’t last long, though, the smile slowly being wiped off his face. you’re too busy staring at the burst of colours from the sunset to notice. “why do you do that?” he asks, voice suddenly monotone.

eyebrows furrowed, you look over at him. your lap grows colder when tessa gets off of you, almost like she’s sensed the awkwardness settling in and preferred to go sniffing for squirrels than to witness it. “do what?” you respond, shivering from the wind.

“you always hide your face when you laugh. like you’re ashamed of being happy.”

huh. you did not expect that. sitting up on your elbows, you scoff, “okay, i do not need you to go all walmart doctor phil on me right now. that’s the most cliché thing i’ve heard in a while, and i eavesdropped on harrison telling his girlfriend she lights up his world like nobody else this morning.”

“i’m serious, y/n.” tom snaps, sitting up again and giving you no choice but to do the same since, clearly, he’s turning this into a whole conversation. “why do you always put your hand on your face or hide behind your hair whenever you laugh?”

you sputter, not knowing how to answer such a ridiculous question. “i don’t—i don’t know. it’s just something i, and many other people, do. not everything means something. why do you always knock three times on the doorframe before you go to the bathroom at night?”

“to alert any ghosts that i’m entering, obviously.” tom deadpans. “don’t change the subject. we’re talking about your insecurities and bathroom endangerment habits.”

“you’re ridiculous and i don’t like you.” you snap, lying back down and crossing your arms over your chest. “no wonder bobby bugs ran away from you. you’re annoying and you gave him the worst rabbit name ever.”

tom’s neck snaps towards you with full shock and offense, his eyes wide and lips pursed with anger. you’ve gone too far to back down, staring right back at him with steady resolve.

“why do i love you?” he mutters under his breath, disdain coating his words like a fresh coat of paint, before he falls back into his place beside you, shoulders touching.

even though you’ve heard those three little words from tom countless times in all the years—decades, really—that you’ve been practically attached at the hips, they never fail to make a lump form in your throat and to kick your heart into overdrive. especially when he’s so close to you that your pinkies brush against each other. you hate indulging in clichés, like you remind tom all the time, and yet you’re living in the biggest trope of all time. falling in love with your best friend wasn’t a realisation or a sudden crush leading to longing looks and timid touches. no, you don’t think you even fell in love with tom. there was no falling, no tripping, no moment in your friendship before you loved him. being in love with tom was simply a part of you, a facet of your personality with how long you’ve loved him, and you can’t imagine being y/n without loving tom.

quiet settles in again, the strain between you and your best friend lessening but not disappearing. you’re in the midst of convincing yourself that the only way to avoid this becoming a real fight is to just get up and pretend you’re hungry or thirsty or need to pee or anything that lets you stop your hand from inching towards tom’s, when he speaks up.

“i think you’re beautiful when you laugh.” tom says, gaze trained on the gradually darkening sky. it’s no longer a bright pink, but a fuchsia with sparks of orange, awaiting the deep blue of the nighttime.

your heart thuds to a stop in your chest, lungs expanding with air that you can’t seem to exhale.

“and when you smile,” he adds, tugging down the sleeves of his sweatshirt until they cover his fingers. “and when you snort when i say or do something stupid, when you squeal when i tickle you. when you glare at me for eating the last brownie. when you’re drooling on the couch while watching deadly women like it’s not supposed to be a little alarming to me i live with a woman who likes to learn about female serial killers to wind down after work.”

you crack, a breathless laugh escaping your throat, and tom takes that as his sign to lean on his elbow, face hovering over yours. there’s enough space between you not to be completely overwhelming, but you still find yourself drawn into his honeyed eyes and the splattering of freckles beneath them.

“i think you’re beautiful all the fucking time, y/n/n.” tom whispers, the wind tousling the curls on his forehead. “it kills me when you don’t see the beauty in yourself. like you’re trying to convince others not to fall in love with you when you’re at your happiest. but it’s far too late to do that with me.”

your breath hitches loudly in your throat, eyes as wide as saucers when tom leans in just a bit closer. hesitantly, you raise your hand to cup his cool cheek, thumb rubbing over its apple. the corner of his mouth quirks up in a minuscule smile, brown eyes flickering from yours to your lips. when you nod and lick them, he closes the gap between you, and you finally feel like you’re plummeting. all these years you’ve loved tom so much it felt like your heart was constantly bursting, and now, you’ve let yourself stumble off the edge—now, you’ve let yourself go. you know now that he’ll catch you.

tom kisses you softly at first, lightly rubbing your lips together, before your fingers travel to his hair. when you tug a little, he groans into your mouth, tongue flicking out to lick your bottom lip. you kiss for what feels like hours, indulging in each others’ touches and moans, until tessa’s loud barking interrupts you.

breaking apart, tom sits up properly, looking over to see his dog with her head stuck in a hole in the wooden fence separating his backyard from the neighbour’s. the laughter that befalls both of you is loud and disbelieving, bringing with it sparkly eyes and light stomach cramps. breathless from tessa’s comedy act and the kiss that propelled you off a bridge, you run your finger over your lips absent-mindedly as tom gets up to help her out.

he looks over at you, still sprawled under the blankets in a daze, and grins. “you wanna go back inside and get a drink?” he asks, patting tessa’s head once it pops back into the correct yard.

“will you kiss me again?” you blurt out, pinching yourself on the inside for being so utterly tactless.

tom laughs again, the sound like music to your ears. his grin is blinding and you’d let him take your heart and sight all at once if he would just ask. “i’ll kiss you any time you want for the rest of our lives if you’ll have me, love.”

#tom holland smut #tom holland fluff #tom holland x reader #tom holland fanfiction #tom holland x you #tom holland oneshot #peter parker smut #peter parker fluff

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midasinc · 3 years

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modern era eponine hcs:

-eponine uses she/they pronouns

-95% of her clothes are thrifted. her family has had to thrift clothes since forever and it really bothers her when thrifting becomes a trend. they try not to gatekeep, but one of their biggest pet peeves are people who go in and take all of the cute pieces of clothing to resell and leave nothing for the people who actually depend on thrifted clothing. a lot of les amis know that her situation with clothing is difficult, so she ends up getting a lot of hand-me-downs from them and it makes her feel happy. she's got a couple pairs of enjolras's old sweatpants, some of combeferre's old jeans (and oh my god eponine has to roll them up so far) and a bunch of jehan's sweaters

-eponine wants to be an author. they've been creative writing since they were ten and there have been several evolutions of their writing. middle school was a lot of happy endings, high school was angst and only angst, and throughout uni and her adult life, she's begun finding a style that suits her really well and her writing is very dynamic and crafted with love and anyone who reads her work can tell

-they're also really good at screenwriting. grantaire has commissioned them before to help on a project he was doing and eponine was very professional, quick, and had a flawless draft. he was incredibly impressed when he got it back

-she's trying really really hard to be a good big sister to gavroche. eponine regrets having a short temper with him when she was in high school and she's been trying to make it up with letting him stay at their apartment, buying him nice things when she can afford it, and trying to be more responsible in the future. they aren't sure how to prove that they're sorry and saying it out loud seems weird, but she's genuinely trying

-eponine is a dog walker for the dogs in their building. every day, they round up the dogs in the building and take them out on a route to a dog park. it's pretty okay money and they really enjoy the company of dogs. when gavroche is over for the weekend, eponine will take him along for the walk because he loves dogs just as much

-after rebuilding their relationship with cosette, eponine spends a lot of their time with her. cosette is a really good listener and advice giver when things are rough for eponine and eponine goes to all of her ballet company's performances and gets her flowers after every show. they get brunch every wednesday at what they've dubbed as their cafe and they just talk smack about the people they know for an hour and a half over coffee and crepes

-they have a really bad cat allergy. being around cats makes eponine so sneezy and her eyes will water until she leaves the premise. she loves all of her friends who own cats, but they will absolutely not step foot into any of those people's apartments because eponine will just be in misery the entire time

-EPONINE AND JEHAN BFF SUPREMACY. they have sleepovers all the times and eponine is one of the only people who isn't afraid of jehan's pet rats. jehan will do eponine's nails and neaten them up and they can talk about this and that and it's very therapeutic for them both. they also compete in a local baking competition every year (and they never place- BUT THIS YEAR IS A NEW YEAR!)

-they don't mind presenting femininely, but they prefer to use men's colognes and deodorants and body sprays and they always smell really nice

-eponine also wears a ton of jewlery. they don't believe in jewlery segregation. they'll wear gold necklaces and silver earrings and beaded bracelets and rubber bracelets and silver rings and whenever someone points it out, they just say "it's camp"

-eponine and courfeyrac stoner solidarity. she never keeps weed in the house though because she doesn't want azelma and gavroche to think she's "on the wrong path", so eponine only goes over to smoke with courfeyrac. it's normally just a nice way to unwind and watch the clouds in the sky move. they're gonna buy a dab pen off of courfeyrac though because sometimes they'd prefer to get high alone and the smell and everything is a lot less obvious with a pen

-all of eponine's sneakers are scuffed as hell. she wears a lot of skate shoes but she has never stepped foot on a skateboard before. eponine has 100% lied about being able to ollie when someone is like "do you even skate" but she doesn't even know what an ollie is- she just knows the word from courfeyrac

-eponine has a couch that she got bahorel to help pick up off the side of the road. it's an old 60s couch that's bright orange. at the time of finding it, the couch was gross and dirty, but they spent hours cleaning it and reupholstering it and now they have the most beautiful orange couch anyone has ever seen. it's the staple of eponine's apartment. if it ever had to get thrown out, everyone would be upset- that couch is a part of the friend group at this point

#les mis #les miserables #les mis headcanons #modern era #modern au #eponine #my love #anyway #OPs Les Mis HCs #les amis

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livayl · 4 years

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On a hazy autumn morning

This is a sneeze-/sick fic I wrote to introduce my two modern day OCs: Alexej who´s in his early thirties and a concert harpist and his husband Evan a former marine in his forties. :3 So no fantasy this time but a bad cold, sneezes and a bit of domestic fluff/care taking. :) Also a mess warning for the sneeze parts towards the end. (Never know how to actually classify this but nothing worse than in my “things I think of” stuff. It´s there but not very descriptive)

It was still early in the morning and relatively quiet. Peacefully so almost at least if one could ignore the unusual deep, breathless and congested snoring that resounded inside the small flat. Outside the chill autumn air was still hazy with mist and damp with frosted dew that had sprinkled the windows. The newly rising sun fought for supremacy with the seemingly ever present opaque shroud which could only be displaced temporarily these days. Bright rays of bronzed golden light illuminated the thick swirls of mist. They only managed thinning it enough to reveal an alley of old, widely branched maple trees whose leaves flashed auburn and rust red in an entity of white.

Evan watched from inside his cozy and warm apartment as a strong gust of wind made the big yet pliable branches wave and sway. His steel grey eyes followed the instantly loosened clouds of five-pointed leaves tinted in different layers of gleaming reds. They drifted and danced sluggishly through the fog, flashed their splendor until slowly gliding out of view. The sight was eerily pretty yet Evan would have preferred to indulge in it while dreaming instead of blurring it with tears created by a jaw-cracking yawn. Being up this early on a free day and after an almost sleepless night should have been rewarded with a bit more. He stifled another yawn against the rim of his mug and drowned its remains with a last stream of lukewarm coffee. The pleasantly bitter taste and aromatic smell managed to linger for a few moments longer.

Evan rubbed over his rather rugged, angular face, neatly buzzed head and full beard while pondering what would be more alluring: Another round of news reading followed by a nap on the small couch or a hot shower. The shower won the uneven match easily. Could have been a different outcome if it had rivaled with his big, comfortable bed. But Evans younger husband did strictly refuse sharing a sleeping place or other close quarters whenever he happened to fall ill- which was the case much more often than it should have been. Well, Evan unyielding insisted that his ill yet much smaller partner should sleep in the bed and NOT on the couch. So maybe they were even in stubbornness.

His back protested and ached while getting up which made him cringe. He´d only been a civilian for some years after a prolonged time of military service yet sometimes the amount of subjective effeminacy seemed to be hinting on a couple more.

A series of wheezing, crackling coughs made him turn on his heels and wide awake immediately as he hurried to swiftly open the bedroom door. The sight of his husband bent forward and shaking with forcefully suppressed, barking coughs alarmed him instantly as he crouched down next to the bed. “Alex? Do you need your inhalator?” He asked and pried away a slender, slightly trembling hand to place the small device into it´s palm. The gesture made Alexej look up despite the rattling spasms. When Evan had previously thought that he felt tired his husband clearly looked the part:

Alex skin, naturally very pallid, almost translucent with a faint dapple of freckles above his nose, high set cheekbones and lightly concave cheeks, was flushed and sweaty with fever. His deep set yet big bright eyes were dulled and glazed over. Now only resembling a fading cyani flower instead of their usual glowing bouquet of blossoming blue. They were also puffy and even more embedded into shadows created by too much worry, work and an irregular sleep pattern. The latest tour of long concerts had worn the already small and dainty, almost fragile built harpist out and probably paved ways for this recent illness. His beautifully curved yet small lips were devoid of color as well- a stark contrast to his straight, narrow nose which was tinted an angry red and chapped around the edges. Lingering exhaustion had deepened the fine, usually barely visible lines in his face and hopefully only marred it temporarily.

“Ndo….” Alexej managed to choke out after the small yet intense fit- voice almost inaudibly hoarse and slurred with heavy congestion. His fine and wavy, chin length wheat blonde hair was widely ruffled, damp with cold sweat and underlined with premature silver. Yet Evan loved gently combing it back behind a feverishly heated ear while he caressed the others delicate and long fingers with his much bigger and calloused hand. “I´m sorry if I woke you up.” Alex mumbled around a few futile tries to suck in a bit of air through his hopelessly clogged nose. “You didn’t, no worries. Can I bring you something?” Evan asked and had to restrain himself from kissing the others slightly parted mouth. He´d probably refuse which would leave him longing even more. “No tha-hah-nk youhh- hheh-hih-hold on-” Alexejs already unsteady breath had started to quaver mid sentence. Evan watched as his husbands red rimmed nostrils flared irritably while his breath hitched. They revealed tender yet angrily blushed insides and a septum already slightly wetted with shining fluid. Alex light blonde lashes fluttered feathery as he fought to keep his tearing eyes open while his free hand went on a frantic search for his box of tissues. Evans own did find it a bit earlier though and gathered a whole bunch of them right in time to gently cup them around his husbands gasping mouth. A small hand gripped his own with surprising force and pressed the protective barrier closer to his down turned lips and shaking nose as he surrendered: “hhh-heh-hhiih-PTZSSCH-hieh!- hheh-hah-TSSSCHHiuh!-AH´PTZSSCH-iiiew! unngh snfff" The sneezes had been unusually rough and tortuously teasing with their build ups that made Alex face scrunch and contort helplessly in rhythm of his frantically rising chest. They also were richly accompanied by moisture and spray worth of a restless night with congestion. It had not only been audible but also burst steamingly through the thin barrier and had managed to heat Evans skin.

Alex rather frail body had been at complete mercy of their exceptional force as he shook with each one and would have tumbled over if not steadied by his husband. He looked tired and teary eyed as he finally emerged from the sodden cluster of tissues. Still too dazed, feverish and breathless to feel shame or the traces of moisture still lingering around his nose and chin.

"Bless you, angel.” Evan simply replied while plucking a new bouquet of tissues.

“Ndoh- let me-” Alex tried but was shushed effectively by the cloudy fabric and even softer touch that gently cleaned his now deeply blushed face.

“Jesus… How did you get it on your cheek?” Evan could not help but snort a bit with amusement. It accomplished the impossible and made Alexejs fair skin turn into an even deeper shade of red.

“Don´t do that, I´m gross!” the younger man finally managed to say and gathered his remaining strength to pull away a still caressing hand.

Evan could not resist any longer and planted a gentle, soft kiss on Alex forehead. He tasted salt, bitter sweetly radiating warmth and that special, tingling aftertaste so delightfully unique to the other.

Alexej shivered with pleasure at his husbands surprisingly soft lips and coarse yet mellow rub of beard against his overheated skin.

He snuffled and tried rubbing the persistent tickle out of his nose that managed to squish and squelch wetly with the massaging motion.

“Don´t be stubborn. Let me stay and take care of you. I can´t sleep much outside anyways.”

“But you´ll get sick, too.” Alexej mumbled and bit his lower lip to give a contrast to the again rising tickle burning through his swollen sinuses.

Evan slowly, tenderly kissed the arch of his husbands delicately trimmed brows.

“I´ll be extra careful…” He breathed and let the tiny, soft hairs tickle his lips.

“But you-” Alexej really wanted to argue or at least revel in the sweet fondle and stroking breaths for a bit but could hardly concentrate as his own grew erratic again. The tickle had quickly grown big and urgent enough to crumble the last pieces of control while demanding his immediate attention.

“Hhhold on, I hah-ve tosneeze-” he gasped out as his eyes closed against his will once more and nostrils opened widely.

The harpist had barely time to avert his head and hide the snarling grimace behind a hastily raised forearm: “Hhh-hhiieh-IZZSSSCH-iieew! hhah-APTSSCHiieh! huh-heh-YISSSSCH-iuh!” Building faster, more easily this time but no less desperate and urgent the sneezes had left his shirt copiously wet and him slightly dizzy. Alexej could not help but cringe at the damp feeling tickling his skin and big wet spots distinctively visible on his light grey sweater.

“Here sweetheart. Bless you.” Evan said kindly, this time offering the tools for a much needed clean up instead of doing so himself.

“But I?” He then asked once Alex had finished off with an extensive and crackling nose blow.

“…. You made me sneeze at your hand. That´s not being careful.” He replied groggily and slumped back into a pile of propped up pillows. Those last outbursts seemed to have sapped the last bit of his much restricted strength.

“And you just did so all over yourself. Both of us can be washed.” Evan pecked a quick, teasing kiss on his husbands lips.

“Let me start with myself and come back with some tea, meds and breakfast. And then we´ll try to get some sleep.”

While left alone in the room all drowsy and floating with fever Alexej could not help but feel relieved and comforted knowing his love would return and this time also stay.

#my fic #my oc #Alexej #Evan #male #sneezing #snzfic #sickfic #coughing #and a bit of fluff ;)#I´m sorry if the formatting is still bad #had major issues with it for some reason :X #hope it turned out ok now

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nyxiesilverfire · 7 years

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If Everyone Survived

My Happily Ever After head canons where Voldemort basically didn't ever exist

FIRST OF ALL NO ONE FUCKING DIES!!!!!!!!

Harry would be the oldest of four children. In age order it would go Harry James Potter (July 31 1980), Bailee Lily Potter (June 22 1981), Angel Stella Potter (January 9 1983), and Erin Lunas Potter (October 31 1984).

James tries to talk Lily out of making Severus Erin's godfather (suggesting Frank Longbottom as godfather instead) but Lily refuses. She explains that James' friends get to be a godfather to one of their children and she wants her childhood friend to be a godfather to one of their children.

Sirius would be Harry's godfather. Remus would be Bailee's godfather. Peter would be Angel's godfather. Severus would be Erin's godfather.

Bailee would've been in Ginny's year. Angel would've been two years behind her older sister. Erin would've been two years behind Angel.

They first meet the Weasleys on Platform Nine and Three Quarters when taking Harry to the Hogwarts Express. Harry needs a little bit of encouragement from Lily to introduce himself but after that it's pretty much all in his hands.

Severus is Potions Master at Hogwarts and is nicer to his students, though he does still play favorites with Slytherins. He's not as bitter but I like James and Lily as a couple so...he still lost Lily. So he’s still a kinda bitter.

Harry isn't famous. He isn't in mortal danger. There's no prophecy. Harry gets a normal childhood.

Lily and Petunia eventually reconcile, though never to the point of being overly friendly towards each other. Just to the point that they are willing to visit one another occasionally (like once a year on Christmas maybe).

Lily and Hermione get along quite well. Lily also gets along well with Hermione's parents.

Fred and George get to meet and learn from the Marauders. And they get to share the story of how they managed to get the map back from Filch. They even get expressed permission from the Map's creators to keep it for their school years (as long as they promise to pass it on to Harry before they leave Hogwarts). Fred and George still pass it on to Harry in Harry's third year because they have the map memorized.

Lily joins Mrs. Weasley in making sweaters for her family and her family's friends.

They meet Nymphadora through Sirius when Sirius invites Andromeda to bring her family to one of their gatherings with the Weasleys.

Harry, Ron, and Hermione alternate between their three houses throughout their summers. While they're with Hermione's parents Harry and Ron get to experience all the cool muggle stuff. And while they're at Ron's they get to hang out with all the Weasleys. And while they're with Harry they get to hang out with Harry's family.

Harry is an amazing older brother. The perfect combination of shitty teasing and supportive awesomeness.

Umbridge is still appointed as a teacher in fifth year once the Ministry decides that Remus is a “danger to his students and fellow staff.” The Marauders and Lily and everybody are ready to make an absolute stink at the Ministry on his behalf but he talks them out of it. The students (especially Fred and George and the Potter kids and Ron and Hermione) manage to get Umbridge kicked out of the school by the end of the year and then quickly drive out the sixth year replacements until Remus is reinstated as the DADA teacher. Then everyone suddenly calms down. The students also expose Umbridge for being an absolute bitch, especially to muggle-born students. Umbridge gets in trouble. This is mostly just because I am very attached to the Weasley twins crashing the OWLs with their fireworks.

James ships his kids (and his kids' friends and pretty much all the kids he spends extended time with) and it's really fucking cute because the kids don't actually know. It's a popular topic of conversation between the adults though. James and Sirius have been known to fight. They all end up making bets on who is going to end up with who.

The group reconciles with Severus, though for a while he and Sirius especially are still at odds, glaring at each other every time Lily isn't looking. Though in saying that it takes James and Peter a while to adjust to Severus being a part of the group too. Lily however is very firm in her insistence that there is nothing wrong with Severus and there's no reason to be mean to him.

Being the “best godfather” becomes a competition between the group. Especially Sirius and Severus since Sirius believes it's his job to be fun and spoil the kid while Severus believes he is a secondary source of guidance and has to be as good a role model as he can. Remus and Peter land somewhere closer to the middle of the two extreme views.

Sirius and Regulus reconcile as well (partially thanks to Severus oddly enough). Sirius remains quietly protective of his brother and the two don't ever quite interact but they become quite peaceful in each other's presences. And Sirius stops blaming Regulus for believing their parents' pure-blood supremacy shit.

Nymphadora loves entertaining everyone with her ability. Andromeda also has plenty of stories about the trouble Nymphadora's abilities have caused over the years.

Peter helps Lily cook dinner. And Peter is an amazing baker and makes boss ass sweets. He also makes the kids' birthday cakes every year. He can always be counted to have snacks and to be more than happy to share.

Remus is Defense Against the Dark Arts Teacher at Hogwarts and stays there. Severus never leaks his secret and makes wolfsbane for him every month, even if he isn't at Hogwarts. (Severus and Remus become friends the fastest out of the Marauders).

Alice and Frank Longbottom visit pretty much every summer too. Harry and Neville were basically raised as cousins and are already friends when the two of them get to Hogwarts. Neville also has a little brother named Augustus Longbottom.

Bellatrix, Narcissa, and Lucius aren't nearly as extreme (though they still view Andromeda, Sirius, and eventually Regulus as well as blood traitors). That means that Draco isn't nearly as extreme. They all still hold their pure-blood supremacy views though. Draco's views start to change when “Uncle Regulus” is labeled a blood traitor out of next to nowhere (at least in his view). He also witnesses first hand the shit muggle-borns go through, and sees, and is forced to participate in, what amounts to torturing them. And it makes him sick to his stomach (that isn't until he's older though probably 16).

Lily is basically super mom. Four kids, a childish husband, her childish husband's childish friends, and Severus, as well as her kids' friends. SHE IS SUPER MOM. And she gets along really well with Mrs. Weasley and Mr. and Mrs. Granger.

Whenever Fred and George manage to piss off Hermione they run away screaming “Granger Danger! Granger Danger!”

Harry and Dudley are on speaking terms even though they aren't particularly close at all.

Nymphadora and Remus survive. Teddy has his parents and gets to grow up with them around. As well as his dad's friends. And his mom's friends.

Charlie and Nymphadora are inseparable besties and she visits him often to “check up on my nieces and nephews” aka the dragons Charlie looks after.

Charlie brings some of the nicer baby dragons home to the Burrow a couple of times. He tells Mrs. Weasley, “Hey, Ma. I just brought a couple of the kids. I hope that's alright.” Mrs. Weasley is like “Of course. Of course.” Charlie nods and walks away and then Mrs. Weasley is like, “Charlie! You don't have children!” And Charlie runs away, snickering. There are two dragons that he always brings (at least until they're too big to be able to come and then he drags his four siblings out to visit the two dragons) that are very fond of Ron, Fred, George, and Ginny. He also brings other dragons. There are a couple times where Mrs. Weasley is like “You didn't bring the dragons again, did you Charlie?” And he's like, “No of course not, Ma.” And then they hear something that sounds vaguely like an explosion and Charlie goes all pale and is like, “I'm, uh, I'm gonna go check that.” He hurries away before Mrs. Weasley can rant at him. He always gets lectured for bringing dragons home but Mrs. Weasley never makes him take the dragons back before he is leaving to return to Romania.

Ginny, Bailee, and Luna become very close while at school. Bailee is more than aware of Ginny's crush on Harry.

James, Sirius, Lily, and Peter start trying to set Remus up with Nymphadora in both very discreet ways and obnoxiously obvious ways.

Marlene is basically the Potter kids' aunt. She comes over a lot and is always down to have some fun.

Fabian and Gideon Prewett are very involved in the Weasley family. Fabian is closer to the younger kids (Fred, George, Ron and Ginny) while Gideon is closer to the older ones (Bill, Percy, and Charlie). They're not visiting often but they write almost weekly and they do visit when they can.

Charlie manages to find a dragon that likes Percy and that Percy likes. He then lets Percy name the dragon. The dragon is named Lux. When Lux gets too big to bring with him to the Burrow he has Percy come and visit.

Dumbledore probably still dies but much more peacefully, simply from being an old ass fucker.

Lily Luna, James Sirius, and Albus Severus get to know their grandparents.

Lily wins the most from their betting on the kids' futures with Remus coming in second (James and Sirius were pretty fucking wrong and never hear the end of it).

Bailee ends up with Seamus and has two kids named Aliyah Astral Finnigan and Raine Ever Finnigan. Dean is basically their uncle and lives with the family (OT3 here. Bailee, Dean, and Seamus. It's cute).

Angel is pretty fucking gay and lives happily with her classmate/wife Mary Thompson. They have an adopted son named Brandon Sun Potter-Thompson.

Erin ends up with a classmate called Samantha Jordan and has three kids named Matthew Cloud Potter, Sarah Snow Potter, and Erica Thunder Potter.

#harry potter #happily ever after #headcanons #if nobody died #im in a harry potter mood today #i did all of this all at once in like two hours #alternate universe

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crvdence · 7 years

Text

see me (and go through hell) ; theodore nott drabble

summary: during the battle of hogwarts theodore nott waits, until he manages to go outside and face what it seems his worst fear and his biggest release: the death of his father words: 1836 disclaimer: work of fiction, original story and universe belongs to the one and only jk rowling no profit gained out of this comments: i have been wanting to write something like this for months and i got very inspired all of the sudden, i… am not sure if this could be really canon-placed because honestly i have no idea what happened to the slytherin students during the battle so i am just winging it.

constructive criticism and comments are more than appreciated thank you!!! read this in ao3

It’s very easy to go unnoticed when the world doesn’t see you, even if the world is set on flames. It’s very easy to notice things and look around, even more when no one sees you in return. And from a privileged place of silence and invisibility, Theodore Nott looks around and sees.

Stripped away from agency, from choosing, all the body of the Slytherin students are locked away, while the world is burning and crashing outside the thick walls of the dungeons. No one is talking, and the atmosphere is dark and gloom, because while they are locked away there, most of their families are fighting outside.

Some of them are even expected there, between hexes and screams, to redeem and fight for the noble cause of the Dark Lord. Whether they want to or not, expectation is something very common in the house of the silver and the green, but no one really seems to ask about what lies underneath all of that.

And all he can read it’s apprehension, hurt and remorse. Fear and panic and worry. But he doesn’t see much of a fiery and impulsive need of meeting the expectations of what’s supposed to be a proud snake. He sees eyes sparkling with the seeking for survival, for seeing another day, and maybe, just maybe, to get to know if those familiar faces fighting outside are going to face another day with them.

And he knows, that among the loyal servants and fighters of the Dark Lord, his father is there, somewhere, leading the fight; and the turmoil of feelings inside of his chest make his fingers tremble. He has never wanted to do anything with it, and the older he became and the more neutrality he showed to his father, the more he exposed himself to screams that pierced his mind and diffindo spells that pierced his flesh.

Theodore Nott wonders about what he’s more scared about, about the worst case scenario. His father being killed, his father finding him and either kill him, or forcing him outside to face classmates and professors in a fight, a victory and reign of Voldermort, or Harry Potter, The Boy Who Lived, saving the day and becoming the saviour of the wizarding world.

While the world is crushing and burning, Theodore Nott just waits.

And he almost misses it, at first, because silence is something he’s more than used to, welcoming, comforting, like an old sweater he loves to wear. But there’s this gap between his silence, and the world turning quiet and dead around them, and a strong feeling, like a wave of nausea, shakes up Theodore Nott’s slim body.

And a strong urge of leaving, of checking, of making sure. No one notices him when he leaves, even if everyone is ready to run away as well.

It’s very easy to move around when the world doesn’t see you, but even for everlasting invisible Theodore Nott, running away when you’re wearing the skin and the colours of the enemy it’s not really the best of the moves.

But Theodore Nott needs to see, as he runs and runs through half destroyed corridors he has spent the last years of his life in, as he brushes through old classmates and people who look at him like they are not sure he’s someone they should hex and charge against. As Theodore Nott just looks around and sees dead bodies and injuries and pain, his heart beating so forcefully he feels it in his throat, all the noise blurring around him.

It’s not hard to miss, it seems like the casualties of the Death Eaters do not seem to deserve the same kind of organization, and care, as the war heroes does. And Theodore Nott understands, he’s not here to kowtow and mourn and honour anyone, he’s not here to shed tears, he’s not here to weep about the loss of an upcoming bright future of pure blood supremacy.

Theodore Nott just wants to make sure his father is dead. He wants to know he can turn a page too heavy for him to pass on for years.

It’s so easy to find him, like he’s being pulled onto him, and even with the Death Eater mask, he would recognise his father anywhere. Even dead, lifeless, Theo feels the weight his father’s presence has on him, his body big and compact in contrast of his own, and he cannot help to fall on his knees next to him.

He feels like he’s nine years old again, but this time, instead of the deep, inconsolable sadness of staring at the body of his mother, Theodore Nott feels all his being tore into a myriad of pieces.

A part of him thinks he has to stay there and mourn the death of a father, even if Theo can’t remember a time he thought of his father as someone to admire and look up to, another part of him wants to laugh, be happy to see the person who has brought him so much pain and sorrow and fear lying lifeless on the floor, another part of him seeks for revenge and is angry that it wasn’t his wand the one who sent his father to this state, for his mother, for the screams, for the scars adorning his arms and his wrists.

And the panic rushes onto him making his entire body tremble, his throat closing up until taking a breath feels like trying to gasp while being inside water, his eyes are blurring with tears and his nails are digging through the fabric of his trousers. A panic attack is not something foreign to Theodore Nott and possibly, the most normal thing to happen in a situation like the one is fading.

Trying to regain composure, maybe breathing and eventually being able to stand up, Theo imagines, more than hopes, that it’s Blaise the first one who notices his absence, the one who manages to read well the situation and put two and two together, as he always does, and find where he is.

But in a strangely comforting and unsurprisingly turn of events, it’s Pansy the one who finds him first.

“Theo.” She sounds shaky and small, nothing in comparison of how loud, larger than life, she always sounds. It’s like Theo listens to her voice coming from underwater, muffled and distant, unable to break through the panic and the sobs. “Love, come on, please.” She’s trying to shake him, to move him away from the corpse of his father. “We need to move.” She seems anxious, in a hurry, close to panic herself. And he knows this is not safe, and he knows they need to be anywhere else but here.

But Theodore Nott cannot move no matter how hard he tries. He always thought that the death of his father would mean freedom and lightness in unimaginable ways, but instead, the heaviness of his soul it’s pushing him further and further to the ground.

Like an apparition, Blaise’s face materialise in front of him, and it’s like the scattered pieces start to get glued together, just by looking into his eyes. His wand is in his right hand, his left one resting on Theo’s closed and shivering fist. His always smug, confident and handsome expression is clouded with exhaustion, mud, blood and fear, as his lips move, but no sound reaches Theo at first, who calmly blinks.

But when his voice finally reaches him, Theo feels he’s listening to him speak for the first time. His voice, even laced with worry and apprehension, still sounds sultry, inviting and warm, like wax melting off a tree. “Theo.” He says, and his hand tugs his arm, and Theo knows he’s trying to pull him up. “We need to move, we need to move.”

Theo blinks once, twice and thrice, and then nods, trying to look for his voice inside of all his panic and the tightening feeling on his chest, his shaking hands moving to rest on Blaise’s legs, but his body still unable to move. “Blaise…” And his name on his lips feels like casting a healing spell, lifting some of the panic away. “H-He’s dead.” He looks at him, and the tears streak down his cheeks until they poll in his chin, dripping on Blaise’s hands. “He’s dead… F-Father is dead.”

There’s no time no for heartfelt confessions and talks, and if Theo wasn’t so consumed by his sorrow and his pain, he would know. But he still looks for Blaise’s comfort in any way, he needs anything he can cling to right then. “I know.” Blaise says, nodding, tugs him again and again, until the force of his arm manages to pull Theo up, with shaky legs and an entire shivering body, leaning heavily against Blaise’s chest. “But we need to move, do you trust me?” One of his arms is circling around Theo’s waist, as just waits patiently for Theo to say something.

And with the warmth emanating from Blaise’s hand expanding all over his back, Theo looks around, and notices for first time his surroundings, the audacity and stupidity of his moves. He’s always taken deep pride in being calculating and cautious, but he thinks that, in the end, blood seems thicker than water.

He gives a weak nod, looking at Blaise’s dark chocolate eyes, and before he can register what’s going on, Pansy’s holding his free hand, and they are apparating away from the fire, the blood, the school and the war.

Theodore Nott sleeps for two entire days after that, and when he wakes up, it’s in the familiarity and the warmth of Blaise’s bed, gasping and panting as he has woken up from a bad dream, but he’s not dreaming at all, and as always, the reality has surpassed reality.

Blaise is there, sitting next to the bed with a book on his lap, but moves rapidly to sit next to Theo the moment he sees he’s awake. And Theo looks at him like he hasn’t seen him in months, his mouth moving like he’s trying to look for the words he wants to say. “My father is dead.” He finally blurts out, and it feels like last proof, like sealing reality.

And Blaise nods, tentatively, using his index finger to trace it down the smooth skin of his cheek. “Your father is dead, he got killed during the battle.” He hasn’t got any further information more than that, since Blaise only wanted to get his mind further away from Hogwarts and the battle, but mostly he wanted to get his mind away from the fire.

But to listen it coming from Blaise’s mouth it’s not only a confirmation of reality, like a seal, it feels like a promise of something brighter coming his way, and he just nods, leaning against the hand stroking his face so fondly.

And Theodore Nott feels how the weight pulling him to the ground, finally starts to lift away.

#text #writing: drabble #raywritings #lightning era #slytherin gang #theodore nott #blaise zabini #pansy parkinson #thlaise #i have too many feelings #hprarepairnet #ff-sunset-oasis #nacrissablack #userrowle #saladtsar #princessnatalie #hpminorcharnet

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planetcallisto · 7 years

Text

— limerence

pairing: namjoon x reader

genre: fluff, more fluff, even more fluff, oh and did I mention fluff

warnings: just really sappy softness

word count: 3172

A/N: I wrote this a while ago and then remembered that Namjoon said he loved cute things, then rewrote it to fit him

Limerence

/ˈlimərəns/

noun.

the state of being infatuated with another person.

Warm fingers brushed your wrist before entwining with your own. The spaces between his fingers seemed to fit perfectly between yours. The weather was frigid, just enough to see your breath in front of you.

A quiet crack from the lake caught your attention. Looking over, you see a vast body of water completely covered by a thin layer of ice. The horizon was just close enough to see where the lake met the sky. The large clouds covered up the usually vibrant blue empyrean. Birds flew over head making sure to chirp while they passed us. It was beautiful. The way the clouds complimented the ice sent a chill down your spine.

Suddenly his grip on your hand tightens. You gaze over at him to see a smile gracing his lips. It was so contagious. And how wide his smile was made it all more the better. The corner of his eyes crinkled and his dimples peaked out. It made your heart flutter. He managed to make you feel flustered every time his eyes met yours. They were a deep auburn around the outside and paler around the iris. Almost like an ombré effect. And it made you get lost in his them so easily.

He broke the stare as you continued to stroll the port. The next few minutes were spent in silence. The sun slowly began to descend towards the horizon and the sky would get darker and darker. You couldn't help but stop and admire it in awe. Namjoon stood directly beside you as you faced the lake and let go of your hand. The rays of light reflected against the ice almost as if to bring attention to it.

"It's so beautiful." You hum.

He chuckles. "It's captivating isn't it?"

You nod your head slowly.

"The way the sky and the water almost compliment each other."

A laughed escapes your lips and you look over at him, "That's exactly what i thought."

You turn back to the horizon. Snowflakes slowly begin to fall at a calming pace. It was scary how fictitious the scene in front of you looked. Like something you'd see on a postcard. Like a piece of art that belong in the finest of museums.

And that's when you realize something. You love him. The pure beauty of the view gave you the same innervation as when You looked at Namjoon. His eyes were coloured to perfection. His nose was shaped to fit his face superbly. And his lips. They were the utopic shade of pink that it seemed unnatural. How the edges of his mouth curled down while he was thinking profoundly. Or how his smile reached his eyes when he laughed. The way the brown strands of his hair fell against his face flawlessly. And how sharply sculpted his jaw was. His skin was tanned to supremacy.

Remarkably captivating.

In fact, he himself was captivating. His personality was coy. He was very energetic and fun to be with but is still in a way, mysterious. Especially when it came to his emotions.

When you first met he'd never really express his emotions to such an extent to be able to know how he felt. But slowly you’ve gotten to know his habits. And you know that he feels more comfortable around you than before. He laughs much more and blushes a lot as well. And it made him seem so vulnerable. It was utterly adorable.

The snow begun to fall in larger amounts and the wind had gotten significantly more brisk. A shiver slowly crawled through your veins causing your hands to shake but there was no you were leaving.

Without saying a word Namjoon steps in front of you and holds out his arms. "Come here," he murmurs.

A chuckle leaves your lips and a blush creeps onto your cheeks. You stroll forward towards him keeping your eyes trained to the ground. The beat of your heart got louder to the point where he could possibly hear it. You hadn't even nestled up to him and he already had you muddled. The moment you fell into his embrace you immediately felt warmer. No matter how cold the snow was on your skin he would always be warm.

The end of your nose had turned red because of how cold it was. Your cheeks were permanently tinted a tickled pink and your hands were almost frozen. You buried your face into his warm sweater and pressed your hands to his chest. Wrapping around your torso, his arms brought you impossibly close to him. The warmth of his breath tickled against your ear making your skin tingle.

"Why didn't you tell me you were so cold?" He inquires.

The truth was because You didn't want to make a fool of yourself. You knew he'd do exactly this and You didn't want to mess it up.

You lie, "Only my hands and face were cold. I didn't want to-" You stumble over your words mid sentence when you sense the warmness that is his lips brush your ear.

"You didn't want to what?" His voice was low and hypnotizing. "Y/N?"

Your mind fell into a sea of credulousness. You were too confound to create a comprehensible thought. The rasp that his voice held pushed you over the side of the boat. Blood rushed to your cheeks as you tried to recollect yourself but it still wasn't working too well. Subconsciously, your fingers clasped the fabric of his grey sweater in aggravation. The feelings you had towards him always seemed to take control in situations like this. You love him so much it might actually hurt and it killed you on the inside knowing you are too much of a coward to tell him.

A slow and painful death.

"Y/N!" He repeats. His hands haltingly lift off your back.

"No." You grumble. Your eyes shut in embarrassment.

The soft chuckle coming from Namjoon makes you smile. "Fine, fine." He concurs. "Are you still cold?"

Cuddling closer to him you smile, "My hands and face are still cold."

He lifts his head just enough to look at you and one hand from your waist. The tips of his fingers graze the bottom of your jaw before curling his fingers around your chin. "Your nose is red," he points out.

You yank your hand off his chest and attempt to cover your face but he swats it away.

"I think you look cute." You stand here speechless.

Your eyes flicker around his face. The snowflakes sit airily atop of his fluffy hair. You reach up and nimbly rake your hand through the locks.

He’s so beautiful.

Your eyes follow the movement of your hand as you twiddle a lock of his hair between your fingers. His cheeks tint a light shade of pink and he smiles widely.

"You have snowflakes in your hair." You mention.

"I do, don't I?" He laughs shaking out his hair.

The snowflakes completely melt away leaving his hair a tiny bit damp. We stand in silence. His gaze locked with yours. A cold breeze picks up the falling snowflakes as it passes by, gathering some of your hair with it.

The palms of his hands press against your back firmly. "Are your hands still cold?" He asks.

His eyes glance down at his chest where your hands were still placed. You suddenly feel so confused.

Why does everything he say have such a strong effect on you?

A sly smirk ghosts the corner of his lips.

"Well?" He teases. He spoke ever so leisurely and tranquilly that you couldn't help but let his words pass right over your head. All you were focused on was his lips. He doesn't wait for you to answer before lightly parting and grasping your hands in his. A warm wave moved through your body the second he held your hands. They were so warm. So comforting. Blood rushes to your cheeks when he chortles.

"Is that better?" He asks.

You open your lips to speak but nothing comes out. He glances at the ground afore looking back at you and grinning. That. He doesn't realize how often he does that. It gets you every time. You gasp. His thumbs affably rub circles on the backs of your hands.

Your gaze falls to the ground.

"Hey...are you okay?"

"Oh um...yeah." You whisper.

He frees one of your hands and clutches it with the other. His hand easily engulfed both of yours. It wasn't intimidating as most people might think. It was almost ataractic. The tips of his fingers grazed your cheek, angling your head up to see him. His eyes seemed darker than normal, sort of like he was...mad.

Eyebrows furrowed and lips curled into a wispy frown he spoke, "Why are you so speechless today?"

A sigh passes your lips as you glimpse over his shoulder at the frozen lake.

"It's because I'm co-"

"Don't lie to me. Please."

You lock eyes with him almost instantaneously.

How does he know that you’re lying?

You couldn't possibly tell him the truth. That you couldn't form decent sentences every time he looked at you. Or that your heart skipped a beat when he said your name. Why did he care so tremendously? Right at that moment something inside of you clicks.

And as if he read your mind he murmurs, "I love you."

It sends a shiver down your spine. You don't utter a word nor does he. All you could think of was how close you were standing. Easily, you could lean in and kiss him. Right then and there. He releases your hands and rests his separate one on the opposite side of your face. You step closer to him keeping the longing gaze on lock. Everything after that moment appeared to happen in slow motion. You rest your hands against his chest and tug gently at his sweater. Anxiousness gradually took over you. You felt that if you did one thing wrong it would completely waste the moment. A moment you've been waiting for what feels like millennia.

He gingerly rests his forehead to yours, "I care about you a lot, you know."

You don't dare to speak a word, scared that your voice would crack. You gripped tighter at his sweater afraid that your knees would fall out from under you. The minty scent of his breath filled the little space between you. And the touch of his fingers made it feel like your skin was on fire.

The snow fell harder and obstructed your view of the horizon. Not that it was more beautiful then what stood in front of you.

Snow had always confused you. Each individual flake was different than all the rest. No matter where you were in the world you would never find two snowflakes that were alike. It bewildered you. Up close they were so intricate. It made you wonder how they were so detailed yet so small. And standing here now made it all the more intriguing.

The flakes of snow were being caught on your hair and hat. They lay gently on his hair and sweater. His black coat was almost covered with snow. His brown boots were now damp as were yours but his ripped black skinny jeans looked untouched and your black leggings alike.

It suddenly hit you that your outfits were matching. It was oddly cute to you. Like you are young high school students oh so madly in love. You both wore black pants and sweaters if different shades of white. Your black and white stripes and his multiple shades up grey. Even the coats you had on seemed to go hand in hand. Although he wore a necklace. And an interesting one at that. It hung loosely on a light catching silver chain. The pendant had the same beautiful vibrancy as the chain but in the form of an arrow. It was quite charming.

A hasty gust of wind snaps you out of your thoughts.

"Do you feel warmer now?" He asks.

His eyes stay locked to yours. A look of worry skims passed his features.

"My face is still cold," You inform him.

Tenderly, he leans in, his lips brushing yours. You shut your eyes as a jolt of electricity shoots through you like lightning. And ever so delicately he kisses you. All the emotions floating around in your head surge into chaos. He takes no time to put more and more passion into every kiss and it takes you by storm. The touch of his lips set your heart on fire and made your skin prickle. They were auspiciously warm brushing away any of the frigid air that had been between us. We kiss over and over completely barricading the world around us; dismissing that snow was falling, driving away the cold winter breeze and leaving behind all the worries in your minds. And in this moment it was only you and him. All you needed was the pleasure of his soft lips on yours. The touch of his hands on your skin. The beat of his heart hammering under your fingertips. The warmth of his body emitting onto you unto You felt like spring had arrived.

His arms languidly slid down your torso and paused in the middle of your back. He held you tightly almost as if someone would steal you from him. Calmly You lifted your hands off his chest and set them on his cold skin. One hand drifted into the curly locks of his hair while the other pressed nimbly to his jaw. We stood there for god knows how long. Time passed leaving you with not a care in the world. Wind blew, the sun set, birds chirped, people passed you by but nothing could disturb you. Nothing could hinder how passionately he kissed you. It felt like we've been kissing forever right after he pulled away.

Your eyes shifted to his lips which now had the bright red of your lipstick smeared all over them. We both focus at the ground trying to catch your breaths. Gliding your fingers across his jaw you skim your thumb over his bottom lip; the hand between his locks sat lightly against his chest.

His eyes meet yours and he laughs, "Is that lipstick of yours cherry flavoured?"

Blood rushes to your cheeks inducing them to be the same shade of red as your lips.

"Well I enjoyed it." He badgers.

"Shut up," You mutter and nudge him back.

He chuckles, "Hey! She can speak."

You cross your arms in front of your chest, "I hate you."

He stares at you with a sly look on his face. You bite down on the inside of your cheeks to keep from smiling.

He holds his arms out and grins, "Oh you don't hate me."

It takes all of your energy not to run up to him. Casually he walks towards you signalling you to go over to him with his fingers.

"Come on." He flirts.

Eventually he is stood in front of you. He throws his arms your body, drawing you into a tight hug. The ends of his hair brush your skin as he rests his head next to yours. You rest your chin atop of his shoulder so that you could see the dark sky behind him.

"I told you, you don't hate me." He murmurs.

A defeated laugh escapes your mouth, "How do you know I don't?"

His chest rises under your fingers as he breathes in deeply. "Because you let me kiss you and for a long time at that."

A light shade of pink slowly takes over your cheeks, "Well, you got me there."

You feel him press a warm lingering kiss to your temple. Your heart begins to pound. It has finally transitioned into nighttime and everything was so calm. Like nature itself had gone to sleep. The sky was pitch black but the moon was stunningly bright. It shone across the icy lake and though the snow flakes causing everything to sparkle. And it made you realize how amazing the day was. Everything had fallen into place. It was glorious. The fact that this day made your life feel complete made you smile.

Namjoon. He means everything to you. Even though today had been the first time you properly 'went out' he still managed to make you happy regardless. You love him. And You care about him so much. And You don't think he realizes that...yet.

"Namjoon?" You call.

He responds with a simple, "Mhm?"

The butterflies in your stomach double as You open your mouth. You don't speak. It's nerve racking. He told you that he loved you and You believed him. But saying those word to someone is such a hard thing to do. His warm breath skims your ear as he lays a kiss there. He sets kisses against your jaw frailly. The mint from his breath makes you feel peculiarly serene. He lifts his hand from around your torso and hesitantly tucks away a strand of hair that had been blocking your vision.

"You're so beautiful." He breathes. The tips of his fingers gently trace your features. First your eyes and then down the bridge of your nose. They graze over your lips rubbing off any of the remaining lipstick. His eyes follow the movement of his fingers until he stops. Our gazes lock and he returns his hand to your waist.

"You wanted to tell me something?" Raising your hands, You position them on his cheeks and run your thumb over his bottom lip.

"It's just that...I uh..." You stutter.

It isn't long before You slowly lose yourself in his eyes. "I uh...You are...um."

He bites his lip, waiting for you to say something.

"I love you." You confess. A wide smile graces his lips and he chuckles. Your hands fall onto his shoulders watching as he laughs.

"I love you more."

Leaning in, his eyes flutter shut. You close your eyes as well expecting the sensation of his lips on yours. But instead he presses a kiss to your forehead. It sends a chill down your spin. It made you feel so safe, just standing in his embrace and his lips touching your forehead. A sense of trust. As he pulled away he grabbed your hand. His warm fingers entwined with your own, the spaces between his fingers fitting with yours perfectly. And you continued to walk. You know You should've been home a good while ago. But being here with him was definitely worth it. The snow had covered any grass that was visible before. Even a light layer across the iced lake. The night was frigid. The sky was dark. The moon was bright. Your face was now warm. As were your hands. Your lips still tingled and your cheeks were forever tinted red. You look over at him and smile.

Ethereally beautiful.

#namjoon #kim namjoon #rapmon #rap monster #namjoon fluff #rapmon fluff #rap monster fluff #bts #bangtan #bts fluff #bts scenarios #namjoon scenarios #joonie

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firstjustgoin · 7 years

Text

Going Down

3. Start with the shit going down. An event you’ve never witnessed. A moment in history that you wish you could have. A mystery that was never solved.

Her father’s health had been steadily declining for months now –– in and out of hospitals and doctor’s offices where he had been met with the thin-lipped mouths of professionals who saw people like him every day, wide-eyed and vacillating between disbelief and despair –– and so when Candace called her, her voice low and mournful, to get on the next plane and fly home, Tessa did so without needing to ask why.

She usually flew at the holidays when the halls of JFK or Laguardia or Newark, whichever airport had the cheapest flights, roiled with agitated parents dressed in faux cheer, willing even to push their own children out of the way in order to make their 6:00pm to Orlando. She hated airports for this reason and as chubby people in red and green sweaters squeezed by her on the moving walkway, she always imagined their planes falling swiftly from the sky as penance.

But it was early November and she breathed a deep sigh of relief when she arrived at Laguardia and saw that there was room to move without elbowing people like you’re digging yourself out of a trench. She bought a pack of unsalted peanuts and a Diet Coke and settled into a corner chair by her gate trying to block out the frantic sounds from the TV. She had a theory that CNN only really existed within the universe of the airport and it was all just a huge collective hallucination everywhere else, but here it was almost maddening.

The president-elect stood at a podium wearing a red hat that screamed Make America Great Again. She still could not believe it; millions of people had voted for this moron, this misogynist, this bigot. Just two days ago she had met up with some friends at a bar in Brooklyn to watch the election results roll in. They drank whiskey sodas and progressively ate more and more fries as it dawned on them, this always possibility never probability, was real.

“Tell me something that will make me feel better,” Tessa whispered to her friend, clutching at the edge of the table until her knuckles popped white.

“I can’t,” her friend said back, and she knew in that moment that it was over. The unfiltered joy she had felt voting for the first female president just 12 hours earlier, how powerful and in control she exuded as she walked into her office that morning. Gone. The whiskey went straight to her head, now throbbing, and her whole body shivered at the shock.

Tessa trudged around the city the next day, mourning alongside millions of others doing the same. She loved the camaraderie in sadness that existed in New York City in those hours and days afterwards, knowing that everyone was spinning in circles too, their flags at half-mast.

But now she had to go home to Wisconsin. A state she abhorred, filled with overweight, undereducated people who clung to their conservative ideals with as much loyalty as their God. Just imagining the church service she would have to attend this Sunday made her stomach turn in disgust. Thank you oh Lord for blessing us with this man, for helping so many see the light of truth and righteousness. As if God, if he did exist, would go within several hundred miles of the White House once the president-elect moved in.

Tessa thought about calling Candace from the terminal a dozen times to wriggle her way out of coming home, but then she remembered her last visit around Christmas the year prior and how it ended. Her father had just been diagnosed and saw imminent death as a clarion call for an onslaught of his favorite brand of straight talk.

“You know, now that I’m going to die,” He said with a chuckle as he carved the turkey and Candace quietly sobbed and snotted into her napkin, “I think it’s time to finally buy that rifle I’ve been eyeing over at Jack’s. There’s no use in saving up that money for time that’s never going to come.”

Tessa rolled her eyes, always immune to her father’s self pity that had lived like a fourth family member in their house almost her whole life. Candace cornered her in the kitchen later that night as she was washing the dishes. “We’ve got to do something about Dad,” she whispered through gritted teeth. “This is literally the worst thing that’s ever happened and you’re not doing anything.”

“Literally, it’s not the worst thing that’s ever happened, Candy.” Tessa knew that her sister hated when she called her Candy almost as much as when Tessa projected her New York City sensibility on her. “The shit that’s been happening in San Bernardino a few weeks ago, now that’s the worst thing. Fourteen people dead. We’ve got a gun crisis on our hands and we’re all just sitting around pretending that owning assault rifles is some kind of American birthright.”

“Fuck, Tessa, can’t you just stop spewing this New York Times shit at me for one minute and focus on your own fucking family?” This made Tessa pause. Candace never swore. She had talked like a kindergarten teacher for as long as Tessa could remember. Just shy of three years older than Tessa, she always carried herself like the de facto mother neither of them could remember.

“Fine, fine. I’ll try to do something.” But both Candace and Tessa knew that she wouldn’t. She had moved all the way out to New York because she knew it was a place that neither of them would ever visit her. Candace had sent her a letter a few months into living in Brooklyn that just read, Looked your apartment up on Google Maps. God, Tessa, I don’t know how you do it. Don’t get hurt. Love, C. She lived in Fort Greene, for Christ’s sake. But there were some battles that just weren’t worth fighting; it seemed like she was battling on all sides these days.

Tessa had tried calling and checking in on her Dad, she really had. But as the humid spring gave way to a viscous summer and convention season began, she just couldn’t do it. She couldn’t listen to him laugh alongside Trump as he mocked a family of a fallen soldier or echo the stump speeches and one-liners he soaked up from hours of watching Fox News. Even as his words began to slur and memory faded, after Candace would call her in thick, obnoxious tears pleading for her to come home, Tessa found ways to avoid making that flight. “It just isn’t the right time. Things are crazy right now,” she would tell her sister before hanging up the phone and heading out to smoke weed and shoot picklebacks at a rooftop bar.

So she did not call to cancel now, much as she wanted to. Instead, she read Ta-Nehisi Coates on the flight and blasted Lemonade and stuffed dry peanuts in her mouth to prepare herself for the world she was landing into, a world where she knew that most of the people she had grown up with wouldn’t bat an eyelash if suddenly all of the water fountains and bathrooms and schools in town were Whites Only.

***

Early November in northern Wisconsin is a cruel time of year. When she landed in Milwaukee and drove her rental car forty-five minutes up to West Bend, the clouds hung low and gray in the sky like they were holding their breath for winter too. A steely wind slapped against the car as she drove and she found herself having to actively stop herself from turning the car around and flying back to the safety of her bodegas and beer gardens and discerning podcast listeners.

When new friends asked her where she was from she would give away information begrudgingly in small morsels: the midwest, near Chicago, Milwaukee-area, and, if she was unlucky enough to talk to a fellow Wisconsinite, finally West Bend. Sometimes she lied and said Madison so she could joke about it being an island amidst a sea of crazy but she had visited just once and could only wax poetic about the farmer’s market for so long before she was discovered.

On select occasions a look of recognition crept slowly on the listener’s face. “Wait, wait, I’ve heard of West Bend. Why does it sound so familiar.” Tessa would sit there, knowing full well what their brain was searching for, but unwilling to say it aloud. “Oh wait, yeah, I remember! Y’all were the people who sued your own library for having books with gay characters, yeah? With that church that wanted money for it being so ‘disturbing’, right?”

She would nod slightly, averting their eye contact, and pretending she could hear someone call her name from across the bar. “Uh, yeah,” she would say and then run away. She hated being associated even in passing reference to such ardent stupidity and she got a B.A. in Political Science from an expensive private liberal arts school in the Northeast as a defiant push against it.

When she arrived in West Bend, she saw with dismay that the red and blue TRUMP/PENCE signs littering almost every lawn had survived the recent sleet storms. Some were as large as the front doors behind them, waving arrogant and proud in the icy wind. It made her sick to think how many joyous celebrations were still taking place inside these lower middle class split levels; men drinking beers and watching the Packers while the women giggled from the kitchen, living comfortably in their gender roles.

Candace hated when she made these sweeping generalizations. “What good was that pricey college degree if it just taught you to hate everyone you grew up with? Everyone who loves you?” She had asked once when Tessa was home from her first semester. Like Candace contributed a cent to that college fund, she practically strong armed their father into not paying for any of it either.

“It’s not us that hate everyone,” Tessa spat back. “We just don’t tolerate people who perpetuate white supremacy and systemic oppression.”

Candace sighed. “You learn all these big words that teach you to hate your own people. But when you’re in trouble, who’s going to take you in? Your black friends in the Bronx or wherever or your own family?”

That conversation rattled within Tessa for years afterwards, following her like a specter of a past and identity she could not shake. She couldn’t quite pinpoint why she had been able to escape those narrow mindsets her sister and father and classmates had all embraced so easily. But now that she knew everything that she knew, it was impossible to go back –– both intellectually but also physically, to enter the home that she had grown up safe and happy and healthy with anything but a thick layer of disdain.

***

She pulled into the driveway just as the last of the dull light faded in the sky. She could see the yellow lights from the kitchen window and a shadow of her sister, heavy-set and scrambling, and the flickering whites and blues of the television from the other room, likely with her father reclined and mumbling. She turned off the engine and closed her eyes, bracing herself before her entrance, not knowing whether she would be more saddened by the hundreds of pill bottles cluttering every counter and tabletop or the Make America Great Again poster hanging in the dining room. For a second, a flash of shame filled her like an electric shock; could she ever feel real pain for her dying father if she couldn’t let go of her pulsing contempt? At this moment, sitting alone in the driveway where he had taught her to ride a bike and lifted her up off the concrete every time she fell, she did not know.

Her father’s cancer had been slow but ruthless, crawling through and licking every surface it touched like an encroaching wildfire. When Candace first called her over a year ago, Tessa had been in bed with a boy she had met at a bar down the street. Frank, perhaps, or maybe Francisco, she couldn’t remember. He had spent twenty minutes going down on her and she didn’t stop him although his tongue flitted in and out of her aggressively like it was blindly trying to find the exit. She finally had coaxed him out of her vagina when the phone rang and her sister’s straight-toothed smile flashed on her screen. Moment over. She pulled up her panties and answered while Frank/Francisco heaved to the side of her bed.

“Yeah, Candace can I call you back?”

“T-Tess––” Then a cascade of sniffles. “Tessa. You’ve got to come home. Dad, he’s––” Another cascade, this time punctured by heavy sobs.

“God dammit, Candace. What? What’s up with dad?”

“He’s got,” Candace’s voice dropped to a whisper, “he’s got cancer, Tessa. In his bones. He’s got what the doctor’s are calling Osteosarcoma and he’s not going to get better.”

A ring had begun in Tessa’s left ear, a baritone hum that grew and echoed. Soon, it reverberated through the right ear too until Tessa let her head drop to her pillow and eyes pull shut.

“Uh, are you okay?” The boy whose tongue had been inside her just seconds ago pressed his finger to her arm tentatively. “Should I, um, go now?”

Tessa could not remember what she said to him, could not remember how or when he left, but the next time she opened her eyes, she was alone in her room, her mouth dry and eyelids crusted at the edges. She saw six missed calls from Candace and one from her father. She called him.

“Daddy?”

“Hey baby.” Tessa had spent the better part of her late teens and twenties distancing herself emotionally and physically from her father. She dyed her inherited blonde hair a dark umber and ran ten miles a day to outpace her father’s genetically poor metabolism; she policed her Wisconsin accent with its long a’s and o’s and dontcha knows, sliding into the neutral tones of transplants all over New York. But it took just those two words to catapult her back into her childhood home, sitting on the couch squeezed between her father and sister watching old Law & Order reruns.

“Daddy, I’m so –– I don’t know what to say. How are you feeling?”

“Well, I been better, sweetheart. But you know Candace, she’s got me set up with everything I’d need, like we’re going down into a bunker or something. I told her, ‘the doc said I gotta year to live, no need to treat me like infirm already.” He laughed quietly and fell silent. Tessa didn’t know what to say. She stared at the wall across from her bed, Gloria Steinem holding a sign that read “We Shall Overcome” stared back.

“Are you getting chemo? What are you going to do?” She felt like a puppy dog clawing at the toes of their owner, desperate for a resolution to their anguish they did not understand.

“I’m not sure, honey. I spent this whole day at the hospital squirming with Obamacare welfare junkies and whatnot. Not sure there’s much else those doctors can do for me. They got me on a whole cocktail of drugs, don’t worry, I’m going to be as loopy as the kids you hang out with in Brooklyn every day.”

“Okay, dad. I’m going to come home soon okay? I’ll see when I can get some time off of work and then I’ll fly out and we’ll figure it all out. I’ll be there before you know it.”

That was September, just as New York’s air had begun to deflate into a cool, short Fall. She didn’t go home until the end of December and by then, there wasn’t anything much left to figure out. Her father was dying and there wasn’t anything to be done.

Almost a year had passed since that last visit and now she sat in the driveway of her childhood home and practiced breathing exercises she had learned at Vinyasa Yoga classes.

Breathe in with the whole body and out. The tips of her fingers trembled in the cold. She walked up to her door and considered knocking for a second before twisting the handle. The house was cleaner than she had been expecting, teeming with the smell of lysol and simmering garlic tomatoes. She knew that smell well: a staple of her youth. Before it had been uncool, her friends loved coming over to her house for dinner: her father’s thick, creamy pasta sauces –– garlicky and herbaceous. He loved to cook for a crowd, sent her to school with plastic tupperware packed with last night’s feast enough to share with her whole lunch table. She was embarrassed by the assertiveness of the aromas –– how they overtook the room of Lunchables and peanut butter sandwiches –– but she slurped up each noodle anyways, loving how it warmed every inch of her mouth, throat, and stomach as she swallowed.

She turned the corner into the kitchen and saw Candace at the stove, slowly stirring the sauce as it splattered across the counter and up her forearms. She flinched and then saw Tessa.

“You’re here. Thank god. I was beginning to worry the food might get cold waiting on you.” Candace threw a roll of paper towels at her. “Now wash off all that plane grime and we’ll sit down to eat in a sec. Dad’s in the living room.” She jerked her head towards the other room as if Tessa might have forgotten where that was in only the year since she had been home.

“‘Kay. Nice to see you again,” Tessa said, waiting for her sister’s begrudging nod and smile before continuing to the living room.

“Daddy?” Tessa peered through the door into the dark room, the only light throbbing from the television screen. House Hunters played on mute. “Daddy, I’m going to turn on the lights okay?” She flipped on the lights and almost screamed at the sight of the room now illuminated. In the year since she had been home the living room had transformed from a clichéd, frilly, TV den with embroidered bible quotes on throw pillows and clean glass surfaces to a makeshift hospice. She could barely see her father embraced by a deep recliner and swallowed by wires attached to monitors and tubes attached to hanging bags. The floor was littered with old pill bottles, just as she had expected, but also with napkins stained with dried up blood and gray clumps of hair.

When she finally got a full view of her father, she had to do a double take. All of her life, her father had been an intimidating man –– scaring off prom dates and trick-or-treaters with his wide shoulders and thick gut. She had known that it would be bad; Candace had warned her –– “It’s metastatic, that means the cancer’s eaten out his bones and now has started eating other things too. His lungs, his throat…” She had trailed off then, or maybe Tessa had stopped listening. Either way, nothing could have prepared her for seeing her father look like the carved out inside of a man –– wearing the remains of his bones and veins and decaying muscles on the outside of his body.

She kneeled next to him and grabbed his hand. She hadn’t realized before that he was sleeping. “It’s me, Tessa. I’m here.”

He opened his eyes and parted his cracked lips into a half-smile. “Hi honey. You here for Thanksgiving already?”

“No, Daddy, it’s not quite Thanksgiving yet. I’m here just to visit you.”

Her father let out a gruff laugh, somewhere between a wheeze and a chuckle. “Oh dammit, don’t tell me I’m dying already. I was just dreaming I was golfing in Mexico again and I really thought I was going to do it this time.” Tessa rolled her eyes. How could a man that looked like an alternate reality version of her father still be so unmistakably him?

“You hungry? Candace made your special pasta.”

His mouth turned downward as he scrunched up his nose. “Not that filth again.” He lowered his voice to somewhere even below a whisper, “Don’t tell your sister this, honey, but she’s a terrible cook. I haven’t eaten in weeks.”

“Dad!” Tessa tapped his hand lightly. “You’ve gotta eat. No wonder you’re looking like the first guy on the food chain.”

He smiled. “That’s my girl. Good to have you home. Now bring out some noodles, no sauce and I’ll see if I can work some magic.”

She returned to the kitchen. Candace was scrubbing the pans in the sink vigorously, muttering a string of curse words under her breath.

“So, do you usually eat in the living room with him?” Tessa asked.

“Some days. Honestly, Tess, it’s been next level depressing to stay in there all the time with him. He won’t eat and I hate cooking, you know that. Sometimes I’ll just get so tired I’ll just take a plate up to my room and watch TV instead. You haven’t been here so you don’t ––” Tessa sensed Candace winding up for one of her soliloquies, so she walked over to her sister and rubbed her shoulder.

“You’re right. I haven’t been here. But I’m here now. Whatever I can do to help, I will.”

***

It didn’t take more than two days at home for Tessa to begin falling into a deep pit of equal parts fury and despair. It was bad enough that Candace had convinced herself that she must be her father’s nursemaid, attending to his every need with an exacting level of care that drove both Tessa and her father up a wall.

They would be sitting in the living room watching another rerun of Law and Order: True Crime, nearly bordering on a nice moment, when Candace would jump out of her chair with the inertia of an electric shock and run to the kitchen to find whatever pill their father had to take, all the while mumbling, “I can’t believe I almost forgot. I can’t believe it. If I had forgotten, who knows what could have happened. How could I forget?”

The stress Candace placed upon herself rippled out to poison them all. Every time an alarm went off on Candace’s phone, Tessa watched her father twitch and scrunch up his eyes in a kind of pain she had never before witnessed from him. He was a man transformed from the one she had known growing up. He had been a heavy, sharp presence in her life. The kind of man to yell at his children in restaurants for spilling their juice, to push them into playing team sports even if all they wanted to do was chase butterflies through the soccer field, to demand longform birth certificates from their boyfriends.

Tessa had spent enough time unpacking her father’s mind games during overpriced armchair therapy sessions in wide-windowed offices on the Upper West Side to know how this had affected her upbringing. Ladies with round glasses and high-waisted khakis would say cookie-cutter phrases like, “It sounds like you still harbor a lot of resentment about your father,” and Tessa would laugh all the way to the bar.

When she told Candace that she was seeing a therapist, her sister’s voice had dropped to whisper. “Don’t tell dad,” she said, “You know he thinks therapy is a liberal conspiracy.”

She did and she loved telling her therapists about her father’s conspiracy theories, as if the only reason she paid $200 a session was to give them a well-rounded character arc. Sometimes, although she would never give her sister or father the satisfaction of knowing this, she wondered if therapy was indeed some kind of machination on the part of a government that wanted to fill its people with an unending supply of self-doubt. She bought it in bulk from Whole Foods alongside the kale smoothies that would also likely give her father a conniption.

Now that her father’s sharpness had melted along with his beer belly and thick jowl, revealing a softer, calmer man, Tessa thought that maybe she wouldn’t have to have the conversation with him that she dreaded the most. She had been home for nearly three days, with just passing mentions and references made to the recent political shift in the country, before they stumbled upon it head-on and must as she attempted to pivot away, it was too late.

They had just finished up lunch –– tuna fish for her, mashed potatoes for him –– when he looked up at her with his shrunken face and asked, “So how is your snowflake island dealing with the latest reality check?” For a man with nearly no muscle on his body, he sure didn’t pull his punches. This was the father she had slyly avoided for the last nine years; the man who demanded a recount at her elementary school class president elections when the girl who campaigned on building a compost heap won, the man who created a facebook page just to share articles he found on Conservative Daily.

She thought about saying nothing, biting the insides of her cheeks until they burned like she had so many times in her childhood. Unlike when he would say things like this over the phone, she could not just roll her eyes and make up a quick excuse to hang up. She had to say something.

“Well, we’re not doing so great, dad,” she said, her eyes bouncing across every surface in the living room to avoid her father’s eye contact. “I’ve never seen so many people cry in public than on November 9th. On the bus, in the streets, waiting in line at the pharmacy. People think their lives are in danger.”

He sighed and shook his head. If he had been the man he once was, he might have raised his voice, but he couldn’t anymore. He could only mumble. “Danger from what? The only people who are in danger are those who don’t deserve to be here anyways. I honestly don’t understand why you can’t get that. It’s like you’re pretending that the first eighteen years of your life never happened. Like nothing I said mattered at all.”

Tessa knew she shouldn’t be shocked anymore by the things her father said. Nothing should shock her, and yet. “No, I don’t even want to have this conversation with you. How is it up to you to decide who deserves to be here or not? Why do we deserve to be here just because we’re white?”

“White! This fucking liberal arts education I shelled out for really did a number on you, Tessa. Paid $200,000 for you to hate yourself and your own family. This has nothing to do with being white and you know that.”

There was no arguing with a brick wall –– this was the logic she had used to squirm and sidestep her way out of confrontation with her dear, dying father for the last year. He was a brick wall, now cemented even further in righteousness due to the victory of his belief systems personified.“I can’t, anymore,” she said and held her hands up and walked away.

***

Her father didn’t die, at least not right away, like Candace thought he would. He lived from day to day, breath to breath. In the early mornings when frost crept like spidery fingers across the window panes, Tessa would wake up and touch his shoulder lightly, half-expecting him not to open his eyes. But he kept living –– angrier and more hollow every day.

A month into being back at home, Tessa spent most of the interminable hours of the afternoon when Candace was at work and her dad slept scrolling through flights and trains and rental cars she never booked. The longer she stayed, the more her feet sunk in the quicksand of her childhood home. She knew she’d suffocate soon, but she couldn’t get herself to move.

Headlines pierced the vortex of everyday life: CIA concludes with 'high confidence' Russia tried 'to help Trump get elected'; Trump chooses fossil fuel industry ally to head EPA; Trump attends 'heroes and villains' costume party as himself. Outside of the vortex, the world churned.

After he could not keep down his lunch, she wiped the vomit off her dad’s chin. When he fell off his chair trying to get the TV remote, she picked his bones back up, horrified at how easy they were to lift. As she walked by the living room one day, she pretended that she could not hear his brittle, aching sobs. It didn’t take four weeks for her to come to wish that she wanted him to die. And she soothed her own aching sobs by assuring herself that he likely wanted to die too.

Candace, meanwhile, was quickly unraveling in her own way. She had stopped doing the dishes and keeping the rest of the house clean, so soon the maelstrom of the living room infected every other room too. Although she only worked four hour shifts these days at Kohl’s on Main St., she wouldn’t come home until well after dinner –– usually plain noodles, rice, or cereal these days –– and arrive with her hair matted and eyes darting, making up lazy excuses about a broken exhaust pipe or customer service emergency. Tessa thought that perhaps this was Candace’s way of exacting revenge for not being there all those months of spoonfeeding and doctor’s visits and chemotherapy.

One thing was certain: each of them were completely alone. Her father –– empty, dying, boorish eyes in the body of a house of cards, falling but not fast enough to the end. Her sister –– one knot atop another, bloody fingertips, a mind meandering off the ledge. And Tessa –– the one who finally came home and stayed, but still every morning awoke with a jolt to notice that she was back in her childhood bedroom. The world spun on while they spun out.“You know I love you, right?” Her father said one day as they sat, for hours in silence, watching the wind thump against the branches of the bare willow tree in the front yard.

She pondered that for a moment. Maybe she hadn’t known. “Yes, of course, daddy,” she said instead, reaching out to pat his hand, pulsing with thick, purple veins. “And I love you too.”

He smiled and put his hand over hers and they sat there in silence once more for another two hours.

A week later her father was dead.

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