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weirdgenetic-fuckup · 3 months

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Creekside Scandal

First post here, hope it's up to your standards lol. If you like my writing and have any requests send them in and I'll be happy to put my twist on them, in the mean time enjoy this :3

Warnings: Not proof read, smut and fluff, fingering, oral sex(on reader), squirting?(gn!reader so it depends on how you're reading it ig) I literally just finished this but can't remember what I wrote so if you see anything you think I should mention feel free to tell me :3

Word count: 1997

You and Castor have been seeing each other for a while. You met after one of his band's concerts and just hit it off.

Things were going great between you, he was the sweetest thing while also being the biggest tease you’ve ever met.

You two were staying at his dads ranch for the weekend. You do this every so often just as something fun to do, you’d usually spend your time helping out around the house, making meals and such. Just having an all around fun time with your boyfriend, James popping in every now and then and making some stupid joke or teasing the two of you.

This morning was different. When you woke up you were not greeted by Castor’s warm arms around you, instead you were alone and his side of the bed was cold. The bed was actually rather small and you basically slept on top of him. You always assumed that’s why he enjoyed spending so much time here.

Smelling something buttery and good you ventured out into the hallway and to the kitchen, thinking he might’ve decided to make breakfast for a change. Nope, James was at the stove making French toast. He offered you a seat at the table, saying he was almost done. You sat down and he handed you a plate with two slices of French toast, setting maple syrup and butter down on the table as well before getting his own plate and joining you at the table.

“Do you know where Castor is?” You asked, spreading some butter on your breakfast.

James shrugged. “Said he had something special planned.” He winked at you with a cheeky grin, causing you to roll your eyes. Still, you couldn’t hold back a smile.

After breakfast you did what you normally would, helping out around the house and with yard work, whatever James needed help with. You just couldn’t find Castor, not that you ever really went far enough to look. It was strange, usually you couldn’t go five minutes without him crying for a kiss. It was honestly a little worrisome.

It was now around five o’clock and you decided to set yourself up on the porch to read a little outside before the sun set. That’s when you heard the revving of a bike. A quad, to be specific. And there was Castor, finally coming around to the front lawn where you were facing.

He doubled back and looked up at you with a bright smile. “Come down here!” He called, obviously you couldn’t deny him. You marked your page and set it down on a nearby table before heading down to meet him.

“Where have you been all day?” You asked, unable to conceal your smile at seeing him again.

“C’mon and I’ll show you.” He said with a chuckle, patting the seat behind him. You joined him on the quad, wrapping your arms around his waist. “Ready?” He asked, glancing back at you over his shoulder. You couldn’t resist kissing him, you’d been missing his lips all day, it was only fair.

“Ready.” You smiled. He drove you down across the fields, weaving around cattle and other livestock before coming to a small creek where you saw a picnic all set up.

There was a big blanket spread out a little further away from the riverbed to keep it dry, a small basket, a bouquet of your favourite flowers along with a few lit candles spread around. This romantic little shit, you thought.

He stopped the quad a little further away, turning it off before getting off and helping you down as well. “Do you like my surprise?” He asked, stepping behind you and wrapping his arms around your waist, gently guiding you over to the picnic. The sun was starting to set, lighting the place up with a golden glow.

“It’s perfect.” You gleamed, holding his hands against you.

Castor giggled and sat you down. “Alright, alright, hang on, it gets better.” You chuckled at his enthusiasm as he rushed off to a nearby tree where there was a small speaker. He pressed a few buttons on it, fiddling with the settings until “Last Kiss” by Pearl Jam came on. It wasn’t too loud, just soft and in the background, adding to the romantic atmosphere Castor had set up for you.

He came back and sat beside you, his arm snaking around your waist and holding you close as he pressed a soft kiss to your lips. Your hand found its way to his shoulder, moving up his neck.

Soon you were in his lap, both your hands tangled in his long, blonde hair. Soft moans escaping you while his hands explored your body. “It’s been so long.” He mumbled against your lips. He trailed kisses up your jaw and down your neck. He knew from past experience where your sensitive spots were and started sucking and nipping at them, drawing more noises from you.

“Fuck- Cas, need you so bad.” You whined, grinding against him. His big hands went to your hips, holding you down.

Castor gave a soft chuckle. “I know, that’s why I brought you out here.” His fingers dipped into your shorts, undoing the button and pulling them down. You helped him out a bit with getting them along with your underwear off, leaving your bottom half open to him.

You shivered and pressed your lips to his again. “Cas, it’s cold.” It was mid spring, but still a bit chilly.

“Don’t worry, I’ll keep you nice and warm.” Castor smiled and pulled off your shirt. He got you onto your back and kissed over your collarbone, licking and flicking your nipples, pulling more moans out of you. He watched you carefully as he kissed down your torso. “This is what you wanted, right?” He kissed the inside of your thigh. You nodded, biting your lip to muffle the noises you desperately wanted to let out. Castor bit the same spot. “You have to use your words.”

“Yes! Yes, please. Please, just fuck me.” He laughed at your pleas. He licked a strip up you and began to suck, swirling his tongue around you and making you squeal. Your hands went to his hair, tugging on it. He groaned at the feeling, sending vibrations through you. A knot was building in your stomach, familiar and warm. “Fuck- Cas, ‘m gonna-gonna cum.” You managed to get out through your moaning.

Just as the knot was about to burst Castor pulled away. You whined at the abrupt stop. He sat up on his knees. “Didn’t think it would be that easy, did you?” He asked, looking down. It was condescending in a sense but sent shivers up and down your spine.

Castor pulled his shirt over his head, tossing it to the side. You admired his built frame while he fumbled with the fly of his jeans before he finally got them off, tugging his boxers down with them. His cock sprung free, you bit your lip at the sight, hands sliding down your sides before going to touch yourself. Castor swatted your hands away. “That’s my job.” He took your hands in his, holding them above your head in one as the other came to cup your cheek. “Such a sweet thing for me.” He praised before his lips crashed against yours again.

The hand on your face caressed all down your body, stopping to pay some attention to your chest before continuing down and pushing inside you. Your lips parted in a moan and he took it as his chance to get his tongue in your mouth. He had two fingers inside you, pumping them in and out at a fast pace with the heel of his palm hitting you just right to add to the pleasure.

Your eyes rolled back. “Hah- fuck, Cas, I-I can’t-can’t take it, please!” You whined into his mouth. He pulled away a bit to look down at you, his fingers still curling inside you and hitting just the right spots.

“Can’t take what? C’mon, you gotta use your words.” He teased, pulling his fingers out until it was just the tips. “Want me to stop?” He knew the answer, of course.

You shook your head. “No! No, no, no, please! Want you! Want your cock, please!” You cried, squirming beneath your boyfriend. He laughs at your sad attempt to get some more friction.

“Alright, since you’ve been so good, I’ll give you a reward.” He let your hands go and pulled his fingers out of you, lining himself up to your now pulsing hole and slowly thrusting in. Your jaw hangs open as a long, breathy moan leaves you at the familiar stretch. When he’s all the way in he stops, giving you a second to adjust. His hands move up and down your sides in a comforting fashion. “Would you look at that?” He hummed, pressing down lightly on your stomach to reveal a small bump. “I missed that, you know?” He pressed his lips to yours for a moment before he started moving, slowly at first and then his thrusts picked up.

Castor held your knees to your chest, rutting into you with harsh thrusts, his hips slamming against yours. Low grunts and groans left him while you were left a moaning, crying mess, weakly tugging at the blanket and grass around you. “Please! Please, please, please! Cas, Cas, I can’t- Cas, please!”

“Please- fuck, please what, Doll?” He asked, barely containing himself.

“Please, let me cum, please! I-I’ve been good, promise!” The knot was building all over again, twisting and turning and heating up.

Castor’s eyes screwed shut and he bit his bruised bottom lip, his head tilted back at the pleasure jolting through him. “Fuck, cum for me, baby. Cum on my dick.” You let out a squeal, your legs shaking and your back arching off the ground. Your eyes rolled back and your jaw dropped open but nothing came out as you squirted all over yourself and Castor. It didn’t take long for his thrusts to get sloppy, your walls fluttering around him and he just needed to reach his own high. “Fuck- Can I- can I cum inside? Baby, let me cum inside, please.” It was always fun to watch him beg, the way he’d hold himself back until you gave a clear indication of what he wanted. You gave a small nod and he shot his load deep inside of you, letting out loud, guttural groans.

Castor’s hands came beside you as he slowly lowered himself, laying down at your side and pulling you to him so he wouldn’t have to pull out just yet. “Fuck, I love you so much, you know that, right?” You gave a small nod, still reeling from your high. “Tired?” He asked with a soft smile, you nodded again. He held your head to his bare chest and chuckled. His breathing was still heavy, his heart beating fast and hard.

Castor cleaned you up, the basket he brought didn’t actually have any food in it, just a soft cloth to get the both of you cleaned off afterwards. “You had a whole picnic set up just for sex?” You asked.

“Just go to sleep.” He said with a laugh and gave you a kiss on the forehead. “I’ll get you back home.” He rubbed your cheek softly with his thumb and went back to packing everything up.

You managed to fall asleep while he got everything put away. When you eventually woke up again you were already back in bed at the ranch house, head on Castor’s chest while he lazily played with your hair. You looked up at him, not fully awake. “I love you.” You whispered.

“I love you more, Doll.” He whispered back, kissing your forehead. “Now go to sleep, don’t wanna be tired tomorrow.” You smiled and nuzzled back against him, cuddling closer before falling back asleep.

#castor hetfield #castor hetfield smut #castor hetfield x reader #Castor hetfield x gn!reader #Castor hetfield fluff

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glittter-vamp · 8 months

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CHAPTER 11

Joe Burrow x Bisexual OC.

Warnings: Mention of Alcohol. Homophobia. Cyber-bullying. Angsty. Fluffy.

Word Count: 3.0k

Valeria awoke startled by a noise, from her sleep. Looking around the unfamiliar room, she spots Joe picking something from the floor next to his suitcase across the room. The two of them had gotten in late last night to Los Angeles, Val ended up agreeing to this trip with Joe moving some things around in her schedule for him. This trip would mean that their relationship would be public at really any moment. Paparazzi were everywhere in Los Angeles and if not them, then fans would surely let the news out if they spotted them or even hotel employees are known for speaking to media.

"Shit, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to wake you." Joe says. He was in Jeans and socks and no shirt with wet hair. Even still half asleep, Val couldn't help but to admire his sculpted physique.

"What time is it?" She asks groggily, rubbing her tired eyes and then yawning.

"Almost 7, I'm about to head out. Won't be back until this evening...do you need anything?" He asks putting on a pink shirt.

"Nah, I'll be fine. I'll order some room service and hang out by the pool a bit." Val yawns again.

"You sure you're going to be okay alone? You can still come even though you'd be following me around all day and sitting in meetings and behind the scenes in some interviews..." Joe says now putting on his Jordan's.

"I'll be fine, don't you worry about me. You go girl boss." Val smiles at him as she sits up in bed. Joe grabs his wallet and phone and walks over quickly to give Val a peck on the lips.

"Text me if anything, Love you. Don't hesitate to order whatever you want to the room." He says heading towards the door.

"Love you too." Val says holding in a smile hearing those words again from him meant everything to her and she missed it a lot after everything they've been through these past months. After Joe leaves, Val sighs and hops out of bed to start her day. She first orders a delicious breakfast to the room, going just a big overboard and in the meantime she gets ready for the day.

By the time she finished getting dressed and had her hair brushed there was a knock at the door from room service. Val gets her food and enjoys it in the dining area the room had as she looks at her work emails about shipment coming in for the Fall season that was happening really soon. After her delicious breakfast of an omelette and french toast with fresh fruit and orange juice she made her way downstairs to the pool. There were only a few people there so she goes to the Cabana Joe reserved for her and lays down to back into the book she had read on the plane the night prior. She wasn't really planning on swimming too much, if it all but she couldn't pass up the California sun.

" Good Morning Miss.Rios, could I get you something to drink or snack?" A gorgeous petite blonde woman asks coming up to her.

"Good morning! Uh, could I get a strawberry daiquiri and some pistachios...and a water please?" Val smiles at her, she was caught off guard by the cabana attendant knowing her name since the room was under Joe's name only.

"Sure thing!" She smiles back giving Val a wink and playful smirk. Val wondered if she was flirting with her but she remembered that these people live off tips so she was sure that's what was happening. She was guilty of that herself, back when she was a waitress she would flirt here and there when she needed some extra tips that month.

***************************************************

After spending almost the entirety of her day by the Pool, Val was now stepping out of the shower and putting on the soft expensive robe the hotel provided. Joe had texted her that he was on his way back and that she should get ready for dinner at this fancy place in Santa Monica. It was 6PM now and he had made reservations for 8:30PM. Val starts on her make up and hair, keeping it simple with wing eyeliner and a red lip and her hair straight. By the time Joe made it back she just had to get dressed and put her heels on.

"This traffic out here is crazy. Took us 45 minutes to go down the road basically." Joe says coming into the room as Val brushed her hair in the mirror.

"Makes you appreciates Cincy's huh?" Val chuckles turning to look at him. He looked super tired and drained.

"You sure you're up for this? You look pretty exhausted." Val asks as he looks through his Louis Vuitton bag for something to wear.

"It's just dinner, I'll be fine." He shrugs giving her a half smile. She felt bad that after working all day he was going to take her out while she just relaxed by the pool and drank fruity little drinks.

"Cancel, we can get room service and stay in instead." Val walks up to him wrapping her arms around around his waist and hugging him.

"You sure...kind of wanted to see you all dressed up tonight, been while since I've seen you a dress. Plus, I thought you wanted to rip the bandage off with going public? This was out chance." He asks turning around and hugging Val back.

"I can get dressed up anytime you want and I think I can figure out something with the going public thing via social media. You had a really long day and we got in late last night, go take a nice hot shower and I'll order us some food, they have great stuff here." Val kisses Joe running her fingers through his messy hair.

"You're the fucking best. I promise we'll go out somewhere special before we leave, even better than the place we were going tonight." Joe kisses her once more before he lets go of her and makes his way to the bathroom to shower. Val sighs looking at herself in a nearby mirror seeing her makeup and hair go to waste but she knew Joe was super exhausted and she didn't want him to over do it like he's known to always do to himself.

Knowing all of Joe's favorites foods, she places an order with room service and decides to just stay in her comfy warm robe, she did have underwear underneath after all. She turns on the TV and flips through the channel stopping on some random action movie she thinks he might enjoy while they have their meal. Checking her phone she see's that her friends are out having dinner without her by the pictures in the group chat they were sending. She had a bit of fomo but she was enjoying her time away with with despite it being mostly work stuff for Joe.

"So, how was your day? You seem tanner than usual." Joe asks coming back out of the bathroom in his own robe.

"Relaxing, just spent the day by the pool...they bring you lunch out there by the way. Pretty cool to get pampered like that." Val smiles.

"One of the guys recommended this place, so I'm real glad you like it." Joe says going to his bag again.

"I ordered us some food, should be here soon."

"Did you order any wine?" He asks.

"No, did you want some? You're not really the wine type so I didn't really think of it." Val raises an eyebrow at him.

"Wanted to make it somewhat romantic since we're not staying in." he shrugs.

"There's orange juice and vodka in the mini bar." You chuckle knowing those were his two favorites.

"I'll take it!" Joe nods. Val goes over grabbing some glasses on top of the mini fridge and makes them both some drinks.

"Here you go, the most classy drink known to man...a screwdriver." Val hands him a glass.

"Thanks babe." Joe smiles sitting on the bed taking the glass from her.

"So, what's on the agenda tomorrow?" Val asks.

"I have to do that photo shoot in the morning, have a quick meeting with them over the commercial I have to shoot with Joe Montana this week and I guess I'm free for the rest of the day. All that should just take the morning if things go according to plan." Joe shrugs taking a sip of the drink as Val sits next to him.

"That sounds cool, excited to work with the other Joe again?" Val asks taking a sip of her own drink.

"That's pretty much the only thing I'm looking forward to work wise, I hate all this being on the camera shit." He lightly chuckles.

"Shit, that reminds me." Val says reaching over for her phone and making a reminder to contact Mateo & the girls to do a photo shoot for some of the fall collection since Val was bringing in more gender neutral clothing this season.

"What?" Joe asks her.

"You just reminded me that I have to ask my friends if they'd model some of my stuff for the store for fall." Val nods finishing what she typing and setting her phone down.

"I'm down to do that." Joe says which surprised her.

"Well I know how you don't like doing stuff like that unless you really need to, you don't have to— "I want to! I've supported your business here and there on social media and have probably bought anything I could in the store but I want to help out like you always help me out with my stuff." Joe smiles which warms her heart.

"That's very sweet of you, I should be getting my shipment to the store next week. I could book the photographer and studio late next week if that works for you?" Val nods feeling excited that Joe was down to participate in this after just saying he hated doing this.

"Sounds like a plan, I'll leave my schedule open." He smirks leaning in giving her a sweet kiss before they get interrupted by a knock on the door and someone saying room service.

"I'll get it." Val smiles getting up from the bed and setting her drink down at a nearby table. She gets the food and wheels it in after tipping the person who brought the food.

"Here we go, I ordered you some lemon pepper grilled chicken, veggies and some other not so healthy stuff in case you wanted something different or more food." Val says uncovering the plates of food.

"Sounds great, I a, starving!" Joe says ready to dig in. Val had ordered some teriyaki chicken and chicken for herself and some dessert for after. They get comfy and ate their dinner while watching the movie and having casual conversation.

***********************************

"That is not how I throw!" Joe laughs watching you throw a crumpled up piece of paper. You two had finished your dinner and were now feeling the mini bar drinks you two had.

"Yes it is! You stick your little chiclets out this, bottom lip disappears and then your hand goes immediately limp after every throw but all the power comes from the hips" Val mimics him perfectly.

"You take that back! I do not have chiclets!" Joe gasps pretending to be hurt by her words.

"Nope." Val says popping the P.

Joe then suddenly gets up and grabs her, throwing her over his shoulder.

"Put me down! You're going to hurt yourself and I'm not getting blamed if you have to sit out in the beginning of the season!" Val giggles before Joe playfully body slams her on the bed.

"Take it back." Joe says pinning her on the bed, his body practically crushing hers.

"I will not, now get off before I fart." She laughs out of breath.

"Like you do in your sleep?" Joe smirks making Val gasp.

"I do not! That's such a lie." Val tries to move out from under him but he practically had his whole body weight on him.

"You toot...a lot. Especially when you have those awful chilly dogs from the stadium." Joe shrugs getting off Val and laying beside her. SHe playfully hits him with a pillow for his fart comment making him laugh.

"Should we check social media?" Val asks Joe. She had posted a picture on her story of their hotel dinner and tagged Joe in it with a heart as a way to show something of the relationship. They both muted their phones right after and it's been about two hours since then.

"Do we have too?" Mutters Joe not really liking the idea of ruining their night together.

"I know you're nervous but I don't care what people are going to say, I just want to start getting used it." Val says kissing his cheek before reaching over her phone.

"But what is there to look at? You made it that only people you follow can comment on your posts or DM you?" Joe asks as she unlocks her phone.

"Your profile." Val says, Joe then quickly snatching her phone out of her hands.

"We're not doing that!" Joe shakes his head.

"Joe--

"No! We're having a good time with each other right now. We're currently in L.A where paps could be anywhere once we leave this hotel so whatever privacy we once had, we have officially kissed goodbye. I'm not going to let you read any comments on posts about you especially from football fans, those guys have no filter. No. Not right now, I just want to enjoy this time with you" Joe says and Val rolls her eyes at him knowing he was right.

"Fine. I'll just get ready for bed then. It's late and you have to be up early." Valeria says getting up from the bed and going into the bathroom. She was annoyed at Joe but maybe he was right, she shouldn't let other people on social media ruin their time right now. Val slips into her nighty finally ditching the robe and brushes her teeth before heading back out to the room where Joe was on his phone.

"I thought we said we weren't looking at the comments." Val scoffs at him.

"Will you chill, I'm texting my publicist and manager they're just checking in after the post and letting me know that I should lay low as much as I can here since we have no security with us." Joe looks at her. Val eyes him but lets it go getting into bed instead.

"Are you mad?" Joe asks softly.

"No." Val shakes her head, she noticed Joe put her phone on the charger on the nightstand.

"Don't give me the cold shoulder." Joe says spooning her from behind and kisisng her shoulder.

"Would I be talking to you if I was doing that?" Val asks rolling her eyes.

"Guess not, but I just want you to go bed happy." Joe mumbles against her shoulder. Val turns to look at him.

"I always go to bed happy when I'm with you." Val smiles at him before giving him a kiss.

"That was really cheesy." Joe chuckles before he jumps out of bed.

"Ass." Val mutters.

"Heard that!" Joe says heading into the bathroom.

Still feeling uneasy Val decides to text the group chat. She asks how the atmosphere on her social media accounts are doing and they each reply with similar responses, except Mateo.

Karina- I've had to go private because people were asking me about you and Joe.

Genesis- Same, but it's not too bad. People just seem to want confirmation more than anything.

Mateo- I've been locked out of my instagram for like two weeks now because I haven't remembered my password. Will let you know when I get in.

Val snorts reading Mateo's message, he always has something going on with his social media accounts. Joe comes out of the bathroom and he eyes Valeria.

"What are you doing?" He asks sitting next to her in bed on the other side of her.

"Texting my friends, they went to dinner without me tonight." She says setting the phone aside again. Joe looks at her suspiciously but lets it go. Both of them get into bed and Joe inches closer to her.

"You know everything is going to be okay right?" Val says after a moment of silence between the two of them. It sounded more like she was trying to convince herself but it didn't seem like Joe caught on to her tone.

"I know. I just, care for your well being is all. I've been here before and I can't let people who don't matter affect our relationship." Joe kisses her shoulder once again before she turns around. The moonlight shining a bit through the window which illuminates his perfect handsome face.

"I come from a family that has disowned me because I kiss girls...I promise i'm tougher than you think. I'm just glad I get to go to every home game now. " Val smiles grabbing his face and planting a kiss on lips.

"Love you" He smiles.

"Love you too, now get some rest so you have some energy tomorrow to do stuff with me." Val smiles. She turns back around letting Joe spoon her and it really wasn't long before she heard his soft snores. Val couldn't help but to feel anxious about everything so she grabbed her phone, dimming it as low as possible so Joe wouldn't notice. She knew that he was so tired that he wouldn't notice her phone in front of her. Looking at the comments on his most recent post there were plenty about them both regardless of the post itself which was football related. Val felt a pang in her chest reading some of the comments.

'One of the most popular QB's out here and you're dating a lesbo??'

'Should of stayed with the model Joey, too many sacks got you thinking odd man'

'Guys maybe it's a pity thing, I'm sure he's fucking baddies on the side! They all are!'

'wake up brother! you know you can do better'

'not you doing charity work dating @ valeriarios'

Val felt herself tear up at the horrible things people were saying though she had been mentally preparing for this for years. All of a sudden that confidence she once felt in herself and relationship with Joe was slipping through the cracks.

A/N: So sorry for not staying on schedule. My schedule has been super hectic since starting school again and now trying to maintain a relationship on top of that and work and family stuff, it's just all bonkers. Hopefully I can get back on track this next week for you guys! 🖤

#joe burrow fanfiction #joe burrow fic #joe burrow imagine #joe burrow fan fic #joe burrow series #joe burrow fluff #joe burrow angst #joe burrow x oc

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stabs-cake-with-salieris-dagger · 9 months

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Recently I've made some interesting and surprising findings about mor that seem lesser known in the fandom (or maybe I just don't dig deep enough) Also I accidentally hit ctrl z while almost finishing up the post that I spent the past hour or so typing and it deleted most of what I've typed......... with tears I retyped everything again SIGH (resulting in me not proofreading any of this) 1. So I remember seeing somewhere that says mor has both Mozart and Salieri's compositions, which I thought it was false because it's all Mozart as far as I know. Until one day I actually looked at the credit a bit closer and found this:

This is the music that plays before victime de ma victoire. Mozart wrote fortepiano variations at 17 years old of Salieri's aria, so they really just used Mozart's version of Salieri's piece from one of his most popular operas???? It made me kind of mad but also this felt like a meta commentary considering it's associated with victime de ma victoire scene. It's a self aware song where Salieri is regretting, trying to come to terms of what he's done, and 'predicting' his failure. It serves as a commentary of the whole Mozart and Salieri matter beyond the scope of the show and ends in "J'ai perdu pour l'Histoire (I lost for history)." In this case it does feel like Salieri is being pushed aside in one of the worst possible ways, and I really wish some of his music could have made their ways into the musical properly. 2. I found a Playbill article talking about mor being in the middle of being adapted into English for Broadway in 2012...... which honestly I'm really glad it failed because I don't have faith that it'd be good. There's already the example of tdv, and the way they talk about it just doesn't seem... great, such as “bring shape and focus to the musical for American audiences” and "When the French write musicals, a lot of their songs are written like pop singles placed contiguous to each other, while on Broadway, it's necessary to have a storyline and a semblance of relationship.” Pop French musical isn't everyone's cup of tea and that's of course normal but the way it sounds like they're going to really Americanize it and rewrite it majorly and by storyline and relationship I take they mean needing musical motifs, reprises, and such. Just makes me feel they should just write a whole new musical?? And maybe it's just me but the tone sounds a little patronizing too? Though I do wish they could have released the cd and dvd in North America just because I'm Canadain lol Also curious if there was a time staging mor in Quebec would have been viable. 3. I spend too much of my time watching mor clips, but I've somehow never looked at performances pre proshot until recently. There were a few changes in the ~2 month (if my memory serves) between premiere and first proshot made to vivre a en crever that surprised me. First 2 screenshots from this video, and the rest from this one.

First of all, no handshake at on se reverra???? It's giving 2 bros chilling in the hot tub 5 feet apart cuz they're not gay

This is a little hard to see but Salieri is kneeling beside the wall as Mozart departs and it had me screaming ;; I know Laurent did kneel but I didn't know it was a thing in the French tour. This video gives a sliiiightly clearer silhouette of him kneeling but he's also blocked by Cavalieri.

Constanze running up to grab Mozart and refuse to let him go really had me by surprise and it's so heart breaking ;;;; I've been debating whether I like this better or the one that they ended up using where she just reaches out to him from the bed, because it kind of changes the tone of the scene.

Anyway thanks for reading if you've gotten this far. There's so many analysis posts I'd like to do but I simply don't have the energy to.... but if anyone wants to talk about analysis I'm more than happy to ramble lol

#mozart l'opera rock #mlor

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scifrey · 1 year

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Cling Fast: Chapter Seven

By Losyark The Sandman (Netflix with some sprinkling of comics canon, and Gaiman Cinematic-Literary Universe canon) Dreamling (Hob Gadling x Dream of the Endless | Morpheus) Unfinished (tentatively 10 chapters) PG-13 (for now) Unbeta’d

Author's Note: Those of you who have been following along at home will note that Hob's co-owner of The New Inn is now named Patrick instead of Dennis. No reason for the change, except that there were too many 'D' names floating around and I was loosing track of who is who.

Hob wakes up with a splitting headache, but otherwise no other effects from his hangover. Except for the sinking feeling that comes with remembering that he screwed up his 1589 feast again.

Would it be pathetic to try a third time? Especially knowing now that Morpheus rarely eats, and when he can be persuaded to, it's never British fare.

Yeah, it would be pathetic.

Hob rolls onto his back and presses his hands to his face.

He doesn't remember drinking more when he got home, but he was definitely out of it when he hit the Dreaming. It felt more like somebody had slipped something into his water bottle, but he can't imagine that anyone on set would drug him. Besides, the fey food artist had kept an eye on it all day for him, and it wasn't until after they'd parted ways with a handshake that he really started to feel woozy.

When he turns to look at the clock, groaning and sandy-eyed, he finds a light dusting actual dream sand sprinkled on his bedside table, along with a glass of water and a bottle of paracetamol. The clock reads 4:13am, so Hob takes a pill, drinks half the bottle, and sweeps the sand onto his face.

One of these days, I'm going to scold that anthropomorphic personification of a concept for leaving his shit all over the place, Hob thinks. But not today. He sinks back into sleep, grateful for Morpheus' thoughtfulness, and spends the rest of the morning laying on his back in the grass of Fiddler's Green. He and Gilbert make shapes out of clouds, and chew on coriander stalks amid a bed of flowers that Hob calls foxgloves, but Gilbert corrects him and calls gillyflowers.

"Two very opposite things," Gilbert says gently, through the rustle of the wind through the boughs of a nearby copse of French willows. Hob is reminded what the fey food artist said, that flowers scream their secrets.

"Never got into floriography," Hob confesses to Gilbert. "You know, back when it was all the rage and people were sending each other bouquets that said 'meet me in the garden at midnight', or 'my father says I am never to see you again', or 'I want you to do me dirty seven ways from sunday.' Maybe I should."

Gilbert's laughter is in the babble of a brook. The dream doesn't elaborate though, because Hob's alarm rudely interrupts them. All thoughts of tracking down a book on flower language fly from his head as he drags himself through a quick shower, and races down the back stairs of the New Inn while the transpo van idles in the drive and honks obnoxiously.

Hob gets to wear a few different costumes today, which is nice. He was sweating to death in the black velvet. They're filming all the scenes that need to happen in the study today, which will all be woven into the ten different episodes, so Hob's in and out of the wardrobe trailer on the front drive constantly.

That's why he notices that someone's left the outside door to the solar standing open.

This is one of three doors to the solar, the one that leads directly out into the back garden, where his bench and apple tree still blessedly stand. The other two doors are off the kitchen, so the maids could bring El her afternoon indulgences directly, and another that was knocked into the outer wall of the withdrawing room.

While the door is open, the heavy curtains are still drawn to protect the fragile textiles within from sun damage.

Hob has been desperate to catch just a glimpse of the eden he'd built specifically for his wife. He's seen the photos on the postcards in the gift shop of course, but it's not the same thing. Those pictures have it dressed for the Edwardian era, to reflect the last time the house was occupied by a family.

But the set-dec team has re-dressed it according to the descriptions in El's diary, and the merchants receipts for the fabrics, flowers, and furniture. They'd even found notes on what kind of pottery and dishware El had kept in there, a screed in the loveletters between Eliza and Will as the maid raged over the ridiculousness of having special dishware that the mistress will only take her supper on when it's being served in the solar.

Hob sneaks over to the door, and cautiously pokes his face in. Nothing is moving in the cool dark of the room, and he can't hear anything, so he slips inside and closes the door behind him. Not all the way, though, in case someone has just stepped out and left it open on purpose. He doesn't want to be caught where he shouldn't be.

Shouldn't be, he snorts to himself. I built the damn place.

The cameras are all in the study, nobody is here but him, so Hob gives himself permission to react. He feels his face crumple, and bites his lips to keep in the noise trying to crawl out of his throat. The study is right on the other side of the brick wall. He doesn't want the crew to hear him, or they may make him leave, and he's not ready for that yet.

God's Wounds, thank you, Hob sends up the prayer, but he's not sure to whom. He’s not sure it matters. Thank you for letting me have this.

The glass is different. It's newer, clearer, smoother; clearly a later addition. The small diamond-shaped panes have been replaced by long, modern sheets. But the size of the frames are still the same, wide as Hob's full arm span and at least ten feet to the ceiling. The windows are separated by a single row of red brick, the frames black metal, a dark red drape pulled across each of them. And the roof, which in Hob's day was thatched, is presumably now also made of glass, as there are light canvas tarps pulled taught on a winding pulley where the solar meets the rest of the house.

The floors are piled with carpets, to dampen the echoes that the glass had created, so El could hear herself playing. The ones the production has provided are far too modern in design, but the camera isn't going to spend a lot of time pointed at the floor, so it doesn't matter.

What does matter is that the furniture is absolutely correct, and exactly where it used to be. The little cluster of a table and chairs, where El and Robyn used to do his numbers lessons together, where they'd snack on fruit and sweets while Hob was a docks, is in the corner by the door. On Sundays, when the three of them had just returned from church, Hob would sit on the bench under the apple tree with his pipe, and watch Eleanor pull Robyn into her lap at that table, and feed him bread pudding and tell him stories that would make him giggle and clap his hands.

Beside that, under the windows sits the long, skinny sofa. It has miniscule padding and none of the springs and memory foam of the modern version, but Hob fell asleep stretched out on it's welcoming yellow damask, listening to El pluck her way through a new piece she was learning more afternoons than he's ever napped on his current sofa. It's been recovered, but it's the same piece, because, when he runs his hand along the wooden arm rest, he can feel where Robyn scratched in an 'R' with a letter knife.

The brick wall opposite the windows is bare and exposed now, but there used to be a tapestry that, like the ones in the entry hall, have likely been removed for the sake of preservation. If they weren't thrown away or repurposed by the new family. They used to portray the bounties of the first Garden, every plant, and animal, every fruit and flower woven together in intricate, tiny detail. There had been black and red snake in the apple tree, and Hob had liked the little bugger immensely because he reminded Hob of his Stranger.

A furniture chest, what Hob would call a sideboard or a dish hutch today, stands against the bare brick. It's not the same one, that one had portraits of El's parents painted on the upper doors, but the style is similar enough that it's not distracting.

And at the other end of the solar, surrounded by massive potted ferns and an array of flowers that Hob had never paid much attention to, save for appreciating their perfume, is Eleanor's chair.

It's a grand, double-wide thing, with a matching footstool and only one arm, so El could play her lute comfortably without jamming her elbow against the side. He'd commissioned it specifically for this room and this purpose, having it covered in flaxen cloth-of-gold to match El's hair, and carved all over with little cherubs and their own heavenly instruments. It had been his wedding gift to her, and had lived first in the study, beside his desk, so they could spend their evenings together as he worked. But then he'd build this addition when he'd learned she was pregnant with Robyn, a thank you and a celebration, a little private Eden for Eve carrying Hob's new beginning, and new life.

And it's… it's all perfect.

Hob presses his hands against his chest, turning in circles to take everything in, emotion that he can't name pulling on his stomach and limbs like gravity. This place should be filled with laughter, and music, and sunlight. Instead the cool dark is as quiet as a tomb.

Hob gives into the pull of the earth and sinks onto El's foot stool, burying his face in the seat of the chair. She should be here. It should be her lap he rests his head on, like had so many evenings, where he'd perched on this exact same stool, back against her knees as she warbled in her thready, soft voice. Instead it's just fabric, and empty nothingness. Because his child killed her. His love killed her.

"Eleanor," Hob weeps, throat constricted. "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry I couldn't save you… or our son. Either of them… I'm so sorry I didn't protect him…"

"Hot mic?" someone says from the corner, behind the plants.

"No, I turned it off to change," Hob murmurs, and then realizes with a start that he's not alone after all. He jolts upright, wiping at his face. Makeup is going to scold him again. "Christ! I—sorry! I didn't see you there."

"That's fine," the voice says, barely more than a whisper. "I sneak up on most people."

A short, voluptuous woman that Hob charitably would call extremely beige, steps out of the shadows. Her hair is beige, styled in a stringy, unwashed bun. Her skin is beige, the kind of milk-pale White that humans get in northern Europe. She's wearing a set of boring beige overalls. The only color comes from the handful of embroidered throw pillows she's carrying.

Set dec, Hob's mind supplies. She's probably the one who left the door open. They're staging this space to film.

"I'm sorry, I should go," Hob says. "It's just that the door was open and I—"

"You can stay," the woman says, moving to distribute the pillows on the sofa. "They don't need you on set right now."

"I must look ridiculous," Hob says, "Sitting here in a costume, mourning a—" he swallows hard. "A woman I never met. I just… you know, being here, I really feel what Sir Gadlen must have—"

"It's fine," the woman says, and steps up beside him to deposit the last throw pillow onto El's chair. "Grief gets its hooks into you in weird ways. People try to avoid despair, but it can be good for you. Helps you get it all out. So you go ahead and cry."

Hob thinks she's going to pat his shoulder, but she ends up cupping the back on his neck. Her palm is cold, and a bit uncomfortably damp to be honest, the kindness in her touch as she grants him this permission is what undoes Hob.

He tips forward, forehead pressed against the seat of the chair, arms wrapped around his middle, and howls.

He doesn't think he's cried this hard since Eleanor died, since her labors exhausted her, and even that challenging, stubborn spark that she'd always carried in her heart was extinguished. Since taking another breath became to taxing for her poor body, and as Hob petted her sweat-dampened hair back from her face, and kissed her temple, and told him how much he loved her, and begged her to just push, to just hold on, to just stay, please El, please, don't go, don't do this, don't leave me— Since poor wee John strangled in the womb, wrapped in his cord and stuck in his mother's body, dead before his first breath, went with her.

The set dec woman just crouches on the carpet beside him, rubbing his back soothingly, and making soft, encouraging sounds. She smelled revoltingly musky, which was the only thing that kept Hob for accepting the hug she was clearly offering. She'd probably spilled something on her overalls.

Hob sniffles and pulls a prop handkerchief from his sleeve to pat at his face. His head is throbbing, and he feels hollowed out.

But…but not in a bad way.

"Thank you," Hob says at length. "I think I… I really needed that."

"It was beautiful," the woman whispers.

Something in the way she says that is familiar.

“I know you," Hob says, looking up at the woman blearily. "How do I know you?"

"We used to drink together," the woman replies. She smiles sideways, like the expression is uncomfortable on her face and wants to flee immediately. "Years and years ago."

"Oh," Hob says, and thinks, It must have been the early 90s, when I spent most of days fucked up on coke. She looks good for her age. But then again, so do I.

"Thank you—" he says again, but then her walkie crackles to life, and Celia's voice comes through.

"Anyone got eyes on Doc Bob?"

"Got him," the woman replies into the mic. Hob jumps to his feet, patting at his face with a prop handkerchief he hastily pulls from his sleeve. The woman shoos him toward the door. "He's traveling, landing in five."

Bob squeezes her shoulder in thanks and jogs over to the door between the solar and the study, letting himself in.

It's not until after the makeup assistant has fixed his face, and they're part way through filming a scene where Glenn—now playing the part of the steward that robbed him blind—that Hob realizes he didn't get his old drinking buddy's name.

When they wrap for the day, Hob looks around for the beige woman, but she's nowhere to be found.

Tuesday rolls around again, and Hob has to beg off his usual meeting with Morpheus to sleep on camera. Hob's already been filmed tossing and turning on the narrow cot in the printer's shop (a corner of another BBC production's period drama set, while they were off for lunch), and groaning with exhaustion in a fetid boarding house bunk (a hastily slapped together set of plyboard and just-dried paint that still smelled strongly when his nose was next to it).

Now they've retrofitted the actual bed that he used to share with Eleanor with a bunch of modern supports to prevent the ancient frame from cracking under his weight, and a modern mattress disguised to look like a feather tick.

On the floors below him, Harriet is making herself comfortable on a bedroll by the bread oven, which as a kitchen maid she has to keep hot and ready at all hours; Glenn is in the servant's wing, enjoying a bed with a frame at least, but he'll still have to be up at dawn to begin his duties; and the graveyard shift skeleton crew are luxuriating in their campervans on the front drive. Robert Gadlen the Third gets to sleep until he damn well feels like it. Hob, however, has an alarm set for 8:00am so he can pop out to one of the campervans for a shower before reporting to wardrobe and makeup to begin a new day.

At least this shot is easy. All Hob has to do is stand alone in the bedroom, look into the camera mounted in the corner, remove his wrapper and cap, say a few lines, and crawl into bed. They'll then film him sleeping, and speed up the footage in post to provide a timelapse of his comfortable, cozy night's rest to juxtapose it against Harriet's and Glenn's restless one.

Hob gets the go-ahead from the crew manning the monitors outside over the walkie on the mantelpiece out of frame, claps loudly so sound can get a speed count and level on the boom mic that's mounted beside the camera, and then steps into the shot. The camera's red light blinks once, twice, three times, then glows steadily.

"For the master of the Elizabethan Manor, staggering to bed drunk and sleeping late was only for Saturdays and special occasions," he says, doffing his cap and hanging it on a peg driven into one of the posts by the head of the bed. "If he was a good god-fearing protestant, it was early to bed, and early to rise. Sunday mornings saw him, and his family, off to church or face a stiff fine. Work days for the Lord ended around sunset, no matter what time of year it was, unless he literally wanted to burn the midnight oil getting his accounts and correspondence up to date."

They had filmed that bit earlier in the afternoon, so now Hob peels off his wrapper, leaving him in only a tired old knee-length night shirt and his leather house slippers. Wardrobe had offered him a vest or pajama pants to wear under it, but Hob was quite comfortable. He'd worn something like this to bed for hundreds of years.

"But this particular lord," he gestures at himself, "has had a long day hunting, and riding, and I'd like to not waste candles needlessly. So, I'm off to count sheep. Sweet dreams."

Hob sits down on the side of the bed, swings his legs around, and pulls the blanket up to his chin. And then he screws his eyes shut because he's already had one emotional breakdown today, and he's not keen to have another by thinking too hard about how the canopy of his old bed has not changed.

"Clean take, Doc Bob," some AD or other says over the walkie talkie. "It's in the can. We're done."

"Sweet dreams," Hob calls back as a sign off.

"Same to you, Doc," the AD says, and the walkie goes quiet.

Hob peeks at the camera, with it's red eye. It's still recording as agreed, so Hob, exhausted and genuinely sleepy, sinks into the pillows and closes his eyes.

He dozes for a bit, and comes back to awareness in an exact replica of the room his sleeping body is currently in. It takes him a second to figure out what disturbed him, and then realizes it's the sink and shift of the mattress beside him. For a second, he's terrified that he's dreaming about Eleanor. That he's going to roll over and find her laying there, dead and horrid, half-decomposed and skull-grinning on her pillow.

But a gentle voice says, "No nightmare would dare."

Hob lets out a breath of relief, and wriggles onto his side to smile at Morpheus. He is laying down over the covers, head on the pillow, face-to-face with Hob.

Incoguously, there's a single flower laid on the blankets between them, a small white-and-yellow daffodil.

"Hello, stranger."

"Hello, Hob. This is not your bedroom."

"It used to be," he whispers. "I missed you these last few nights. What brings you here?"

"You," Morpheus says plainly. "It is Tuesday."

Hob laughs. "Well, yes, I do suppose it is. But as much fun as it may be, Morpheus, I'm not spooning you in my dead wife's bed."

"Spooning?"

Hob snorts. "You know, for a god of sleep who has probably either seen or crafted every wet dream that every teenaged boy has ever rued, you are a bit of a prude, my friend." It's easier to joke about it in the Dreaming, when he is asleep and the pain is safely tucked away in the Waking world.

"I know what spooning is," Morpheus says drily. "I was simply unaware that you desired it."

"Hey, you're the one who popped up here." He gestures at the Dreamscape of his old bedroom. "You know, We used to share the bed all the time," Hob says. "Even the queen slept with her lady's maid when they were here, did you know that? This sleeping alone lark is a relatively recent phenomenon for us humans."

Morpheus gifts him with one of those ridiculous self-satisfied, haughty smirks. "I'm unsure if you've been paying attention, my friend, but I am the god of sleep—"

"Oh, shut up," Hob sasses. "I'm supposed to be resting. You know what, I've changed my mind about the spooning. Either get out or c'mere and give me a cuddle."

Morpheus looks reluctant to take Hob's invitation as a serious one, which absolutely cannot be borne. The skinny bastard is still touch starved, no matter how much pre-scheduled hand-holding they do on any given Tuesday.

Hob reaches for Morpheus' shoulders, attempting to push him onto his other side and snug up behind him. Morpheus resists, clearly deciding that as a celestial deity, it's his right to be the big spoon. The daffodil ends up above their heads on the pillow as they wrestle playfully.

Hob, who secretly has no problems at all being cradled by his Stranger, eventually lets Morpheus win.

They settle that way, Morpheus' hand played against Hob's heart, and he's suddenly quite glad that his groin isn't pressed up against his friend's arse when a puff of Morpheu's breath against his nape gives Hob some terribly naughty ideas.

And some places that they touch that Hob is pretty sure a body can’t–Morpheus seems relaxed enough to loosen his hold on on his human-shaped corporation. There are extra limbs tangling sweetly with his feet, a dark mist spilling over his shoulder like heavy incense, tangible but foggily opaque, the glow of stars in Morpheus’ eyes reflecting back at Hob from the canopy of the bed. It’s sweet, that he feels safe enough around Hob to be himself.

"Hob Gadling," Morpheus says gently, "Are you well? Only your sleep has been tumultuous."

There's no point lying to Morpheus, especially here. "It's a lot. It's—" Hob starts, before interrupting himself with an unexpected hiccough of a sob. He's cried enough for today, though, so he swallows it back. "It's just so much harder than I thought it would be."

The confession shreds his throat. Shame crawls up his face, flushing his cheeks and making his ears tingle with the heat of the horrible blush. He curls in on himself, a miserable comma. Morpheus presses himself in one long line against Hob, probably trying to comfort but instead making Hob tense and hyperaware of every place that they touch.

"Hob…" Morpheus says again, worry tinging his voice. "I did not mean to push you into an situation that would cause distress."

"And you haven't!" Hob assures him. "At least not on purpose. I just… it's a lot, is all. I had a good cry today, and they’re right, you know. It does help with the–" he does the pulling-heart-out-of-chest-squish motion. “I hate every second of it, but I’m glad of it, you know? It’s good pain. It’s… pain I’ve put off feeling for too long. A goodbye that I’ve let linger for centuries.”

“Like a nightmare whose lesson you ignore, it will only continue to plague you until you listen,” Morpheus murmurs, and Hob can feel his lips movings against the collar of his nightshirt which is absolutely unfair.

“Yeah,” Hob agrees, swallowing hard and pretending that the dryness of his mouth is from the old building, and not his situation. “And I mean, I feel like I’ve been gutted, you know. All my insides scooped out. But that’s okay, because maybe it’s time for something new to take its place.”

You, Hob lets himself think, but doesn’t dare say out loud. I wouldn’t mind if the emptiness was filled with you.

Morpheus raises his free hand, and gestures into the air. Dream sand sparks into existence in an arc, but instead of falling onto them, it hovers there, swirling and pulsing. Like a snowglobe, the sand moves in the open space beside the bed, forming figures and landscapes.

"Shall I tell you a bedtime story to soothe you to a more peaceful slumber then, Hob Gadling?"

"Bedtime story?" Hob says, sitting up. "Wait, aren't I already asleep—"

The door to his chambers pushes open. Hob's sore and swollen heart leaps into his mouth at the noise.

"Bob?" Henrietta calls into the darkness. "Are you still awake? I was doing my video diary and I could hear your voice through the chimneys and I… what," she hisses, freezing a few steps inside with her eyes the size of saucers, "the absolute fuck."

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Text

First Date Sex: Steven

(Untitled Series, Part 4a)

August 6 | |August 6B

Summary: I think the title says it all or does it?

Word count: (I wrote this in tumblr; if someone wants to tell me, I will put it in here).

Warning: SMUT! NSFW. 18+. Unprotected sex. P in v. Oral (m and f receiving). Fingering. Cockwarming. Praise kink. Rough sex. Manhandling. Bondage. Masochism. Daddy kink. Safe word system (stop light colors).

Pairing: Steven Grant x afab!Reader, Marc Spector x afab!Reader, Jake Lockley x Afab!Reader

Author’s Note: Sorry, not sorry it is so long. 😉😏🥴😈Not Beta’d. Mistakes are my own. I’m bad with tenses. Help me catch that, please. Enjoy as many times as you would like. 😏

Feedback is gold!

August 7th:

Steven is asleep in my bed. 😬 🥴

Gawd, the things that man can do. He is like pure muscle. The abdominals on that man, I want to bite and lick each one again and again. The stamina he has is amazing. We had sex three times and they were all so different and delicious. Omg, I feel like a horny teenager. Shit. I wonder if he wakes up with morning wood because I could so go again. 😮 Yup, I’ve become a horny teenager again. Fuck me. Hehe.

Where the fuck do I begin? I mean his lips are so soft and just the perfect shape.

Wait!

August 6th:

Dinner was so fun. I asked why he picked it even though he was vegan which he was surprised I remembered. It was so cute. So, I did the bold thing: I stood up and reached out my hand saying we should go find a place we can both easily eat. I even suggested this great food cart that is near the museum a lot. It’s like Mexican-ish which I was worried he was taken aback at my recommendation but he took my hand and we just walked over there.

He slouches. I never realized it until we were walking and holding hands. Hahaha. 🤷‍♀️ His hands are kind of calloused but the rest of his skin is soft. It was like electricity holding his hands and I was awake. My heart was just pounding whike we walked over to the food cart. It was so delicious but his company was the best thing.

Ok! I just didn’t want him eating salad and bread sticks. That is not a dinner to, at the very least, make out after. The mouths were not gonna be talking the whole time and I knew that. >.>

Anyway, he knows French. He even tutors people sometimes which is so cool. Oooo, I wonder if I can get him to speak French while we fuck. 🤤 Why didn’t he admit to knowing Spanish too?

Is it weird to be highly turned on and extremely embarrassed about all the sex last night? It was a little odd. I wonder if he likes to roleplay. He was speaking Spanish at one point with a really good accent and then the time before that I swear he sounded American. I don’t care. I’m good with it all. Just need to actually talk with him about it. I can do that, right?

I just wish I knew he was into bdsm because when he was speaking Spanish and demanded I call him Papí, and then pinned me against the damned wall. Whew, that was the hottest thing I think I’ve ever done. He knows where to bite too.

It was just odd because it was almost like he was building up to that or maybe he was just trying to test limits without really talking about it, maybe? I don’t know.

I’m getting ahead of myself again, fuck!

So, we sat and ate and thankfully I remembered minty gum. He took some too which was good because I got a slightly hot burrito and not sure if he likes spice that much. Don’t want that anywhere except the mouth anyway. It was fun because afterwards it was all sweet and romantic. We walked the streets in the moonlight and just talked. He told me about his Mom and how he returned to London.

How he just loved to read and used to have a serious sleep problem that eventually turned out to be something else which he seemed nervous about. Poor guy, I told him he doesn’t have to explain everything or give me his life story. It’s the fun of dating, isn’t it? Getting to know each other. He asked me if I wanted to do this again and I instantly said yes then tried to back up because I got embarrassed not wanting to sound like a teenage girl. 🤦

Fine, I’m fangirling over Steven. It ain’t like he is gonna find out? Unless I tell him which would be like a long time down the road, like a year or more or something. Huh. Yeah.

It was sweet and so fun. We ended up walking back to my place which is only like four or five blocks from the museum anyway but it was subconscious. I didn’t plan to bring him back to my loft, ok? I just wanted to make out, get felt up, maybe blow him if I was lucky. That went out the window when I invited him up. I even made him tea and then he saw all the books he’d ever recommended to me to read about Egypt.

I panicked. It was sad because I could feel my face just got fully hot and knew I had to be turning red which made me nervous. So nervous in fact that I spilled my tea on my lap. Yes, nearly boiling earl grey tea on my thighs. Good job, Y/N. You’re a fucking klutz. 🥴

That’s how everything started though. 😉 I tried to stop the spill which you can’t do then I nearly burned my hands too. My dress thankfully is cotton so I didn’t ruin it but it hurt. Steven rushed the freezer and grabbed some frozen veg to help me with the burn. He cleaned up the mess. I think he got embarrassed because I think he was talking to himself at one point. It was sweet. I can get so nervous sometimes that I’m not surprised I can hardly get past first dates with my klutziness. Oy.

He sat me at my table and checked my thighs to make sure it wasn’t a bad burn. The dress tried to stick but it was just the honey and sugar, thankfully.

I don’t know what came over me. It felt like everything was a culmination up to that point: as I watched him push up my dress along my thighs, I could feel myself just getting turned on. He had no idea what he did to me. I remember how I cupped the side of his face in my splayed fingers. The stubble rubbing on my palm and fingertips. It made me shiver and I chewed on my lip a little too hard because when he looked at me, I leaned down and kissed him harder than I meant to. My lip hurt a little. 😆

I think he panicked and froze since it was unexpected but once I licked his lips, he gasped and grabbed the back of my neck, pushing his tongue in my mouth like a starving man; I just moaned into his. He kept his other hand on my exposed thigh as I sat and he kneeled. When we stood up maintaining the kiss, his hand slid up my side and around my back to my bra, actually.

For someone who claims they don’t date much, he has amazing instincts in bed. 🤩

Things got intense rather quickly.

I wrapped my arm over his shoulder and held his neck in my hand. I played with the little, soft hairs on the back of neck and in his hair, gently scratching his scalp. He moaned when I did so I slowed my pace and kept doing it. I even carded my hand through his soft locks and pulled a little here and threw which drew another moan from him. His moans just made me more wet and went straight to my center, like a coil tightening. Each time, it just made me want him more and more.

It was like I couldn’t breathe and he was my air. I could not get enough of his mouth and tongue. His lips are so soft and just the perfect size for mine. That man can kiss. When he pulled back, because he did, I was willing to pass out kissing him. >.>( )

We were both gasping for air. His usually brown eyes were nearly black, his pupils were so dilated with lust. I could feel how swollen my lips were and licked them. God, I needed more of him. Almost like I craved him, I had no idea I could want someone this much.

He was so much better than anything I imagined and I am so glad.

His mouth skipped mine and went to kiss that sensitive spot under my ear. I shift my arms to where they were more around his neck. I almost came from that spot alone. I think my panting and moans were an encouragement to him. When he moved down to neck, he was playing me like an instrument. He lips kissed and sucked then nipped the already sensitive skin and sucked again. He kept this up three or four times down the left side of my neck: kissing spots, sucking and brought the skin into his teeth, nipped with a slight rubbing Of teeth, and then sucked again, leaving bruises all the way down. I came undone. I dug my hands into his shirt and held on for dear life. I remember moaning his name and attempted to tell him I was cumming but couldn’t say anything else. I quickly became weak kneed from the intensity of that pleasure roaring through me.

I’m certain he was caught off guard because I felt him push me into him and readjust his hands to hold me up. I was already flushed but I know I grew more so when he let up and looked at me a bit confused. I was so out of it, I told him all breathy and panting, “Don’t stop.” He just grinned and asked, “You sure, Love?”

I cannot get enough when he calls me that. I just want to ride his cock every time he does.

I remember licking my swollen lips and nodding. Practically begging him to keep going, “Please, Steven.” His eyes looked over my whole face, I could feel it, and then he kissed me with so much passion and such force that he bruised my lips. They ached when he let up. He walked me back to my small table and easily lifted me up on to it. I wrapped my legs around his waist bring him to me entrapping him in between my thighs. I could feel his semi aroused cock in his jeans against my clothes sex. I started unbutton his shirt and he pulled it off tossing it on the floor. When I went for his belt, he stopped me and grinned, “You’re turn, Y/N.”

I forgot I had clothes on. I wish I could be joking but I’m not. He started puking my dress up and that’s when I realized I was sitting on it so I leaned back holding myself up with elbows and lifted my hips up for him. He pulled my soft dress over my head leaving me in matching bra and panties. I toed my flats off and they dropped to the floor.

Steven though when he looked at me was…I don’t know. It was embarrassing and made me feel so beautiful all at once. I sat up and reached for him grabbing his neck and making him kiss me again. I dug. Y hand back into his hair. I needed to hear him moan so I carded my fingers again and grabbed a handful tugging which drew his head back as he groaned. I was surprised by the grin I felt on my face because his moans were like flames rushing through my veins straight to my core bring me that much closer to my next orgasm.

I was so frustrated by our height difference that I pushed him away and hopped off the table. He was surprised and confused until I grabbed his hand pulling him to my king size bed. I turned him around and pushed him on to the comforter — yes, I made that bed just in case. I quickly grabbed his shoes and socks, and threw them behind me. I went for his belt again followed by unzipping his jeans. He lifted his hips so I could slide them down his legs. He wore boxer briefs, gray that matched his shirt. I licked my lips and chewed on lower lip as I approached him. He sat up on the bed and reached for me which I shook my head. “Not yet,” I told him so his hands rested on the bed. He watched me with his brow furrowed and lips slightly pursed. I put my hands on his knees and slowly slid up his thighs and squeezed slightly. He hummed in response. He leaned back as I reached his waistband and I swiftly slid them down, waiting be damned. His hard cock sprang free and it looked delicious. There was pre-cum starting to leak from the tip.

He began to speak, “Y/N, you don’t—“ but I stopped that with a flick of my tongue against that slit and he tasted salty, slightly bitter, and a touch of tangy sweetness. I then slid the width of my tongue flat fla down the underside of his cock. He laid down when I began to go back up and swirled around the tip, gently suckling the head for a few moments. He moaned my name and his hands went straight into my hair almost by instinct. I slid his hard thick cock in my mouth, the weight against my tongue and I moaned around him. Steven felt so good in my mouth and while I couldn’t take all of him, I had a hand around the base that was just long enough for my hand to cover to give him full coverage for that beautiful dick of his.

I slowly slid up his hard cock then back down keeping my hand with my mouth to cover his full length. As I began to speed up, his fingers turned into fists and pulled my hair.

God, I love my hair being pulled too.

When I got into a rhythm, he pulled me off of him. “Love, I’m not gonna last if you keep this up,” he said as he sat up and pulled me up to him. He wrapped an arm around my waist and his other skimmed my face to my neck into my hair. I closed my eyes when he pressed his lips to mine, such a change. He was so gently and left me wanting more that when he pulled away I tried to follow him. He grinned and chuckled which made me feel even hotter as I looked down at his chest. “Sorry,” I said.

“Nothing to be sorry for,” he whispered. “Come here,” he patted next to him and scooted back on the bed. I crawled on my bed and stopped next to him. That’s when I sadly realized I still had clothes on and chuckled. I reached behind me and unclasped my bra letting it slide down my airs before tossing it to the floor without thought.

“Beautiful,” I heard him say as he looked at my breasts. I did a double take on my own breasts. They’re small and kind of perky but never had anyone call them beautiful. It was almost distracting so I shrugged. I sat down and leaned back about to take off my own underwear when Steven stopped me. The look on his face confused me. He has both hands on both of mine and this almost incredulous look on his face as if it were wrong for me to be getting myself undressed. I silently looked at him confused. He took my wrists in his and pinned them above my head watching my face as he did it.

“Is this ok, love ?” Steven asked as laid his naked, muscular body on top of mine and held my wrists for a few seconds. I could feel his cock resting against my thigh and oh, I wanted him buried inside me but he had other ideas.

I nodded, “Very much so.”

“No touching,” he instructed. I could feel the smile I was trying to resist become a grin and he slid back down my body to sit in between my legs. He carefully took off my very wet panties and tossed to the floor with a smirk. I looked away embarrassed. That smirk seemed a look if triumph at the time but I’m not so sure now. He pushed my legs apart and laid down between my legs. My heart instantly sped up as I watched his head approach my dripping center. I clasped my hands together to stop them nervously shaking.

I don’t have a lot of experience with this and the little I do have we’re not very enjoyable. I was unsure what to expect so my nerves were quickly starting to get to me.

So, when he swiped his tongue from bottom of my lips up to my clit and circle my already engorged bundle of nerves then sucked on it as he gave kitten licks, I think I passed out for a few moments. The next thing I knew Steven had two fingers inside me rubbing my g-spot and wide licks across my clit that made me buck my hips involuntary. He held my hips down by pressing on my lower abdomen. He is fucking strong because I was gone.

I think that is the fastest I’ve ever cum in my life and I’m sure everyone on my floor knows what I did last night. He was playing me like an expert and knew where to touch and lick to have me begging for him to stop. He didn’t let up once I started either. I dug my hands under the headboard and my heels into the bed holding on for the ride. He knew how to extend the fucking orgasm. Who knows those things? Seriously!

He thrusted his fingers and made sure to rub my g-spot with him licking my clit in time with every peak that had me screaming for what felt like 20 minutes, hands down.

I am certain I actually did pass out this time. I opened my eyes to find Steven gently kissing me along my jaw and neck. My hands were now by my sides too. I smiled at him and I’m sure he could see how embarrassed I was. I mean I just experience what I’ve only read in romance novels and seen in porn. He planted a gentle kiss on my lips which I licked and kissed him back as gentle.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi,” I said back

“You ok?” He asked, concern on his face.

I grinned and nodded.

He helped me sit up and handed me a glass of water. Yup, I passed out. He had enough time to get up, find a cup, fill it with ice water and then work to wake me back up.

Omg, this man is a sex god. Why would he want to ever be with me? My brain keeps tell me to marry him and I’m freaking out that I passed out from an orgasm. I’ve come close before but I may have been drunk at those times. <.<

Once I’m all good and hydrated, he sat next to me and wanted to cuddle. I look down his body at his weeping cock and quirk an eyebrow incredulously at him with a smirk on my lips. I bite my lower lip and get on my hands and knees crawling next to him, watching him watch me. I straddle him and line him up with my entrance. Before he can say anything, I practically stab myself on his rock hard, thick cock. I burn from the lack of accommodation for his girth and it feels good. I shudder falling forward catching myself against his chest. I remember feeling the definition of his torso and my eyes pop open to look at it. I run my hands over his chest and abdomen then gently run my nails feeling the slight tug of skin. Steven leans back against the headboard with his eyes closed, moaning as I do.

I just sat there on his cock enjoying myself a little too much along his torso. I chew my lower lip and lightly rub both of his nipples making a breath catch in his throat then groaned as I lightly pinched them. I leaned forward and licked his left one, just one swipe and he shudders which I could feel goes all the way to his cock. God damn, it felt good too. I tongued his nipple and he wrapped his arms around me with his head fallen back. I smirked and licked the other one with duplicating responses. I can feel myself become wetter from my core through me hearing his moans and know I caused them is just so sexy and hot. I almost cum again. Shit.

Shifting his hands to hold his shoulders, I lean back and pull him up with me making him open his eyes. I grin seeing his pupil blown and hearing him pant.I slid my hands down his back and slowly move up his cock then back down building a pace. I watch his face as I do. He grabbed my hips and flipped me on to my back with him on his knees holding my hips to keep the angle. He pulled out and plowed into me. I wrap my legs around him and work to meet him. How the fuck does he know to hit my cervix? I can’t. It’s too much.

I remember I looked at him with his eyes closed as he just rutted into me. I called his name, “Steven.” He paused a moment to look at me and I basically crawled up his arms and sat on his lap as he kneeled on the bed. I wrapped my arms around his neck with a hand in his sweaty mop of hair. I just love it. Once I’m repositioned, he shifted his grip to my ass then he started thrusting into me again.

I didn’t realize I put myself at his mercy until it was too late; I didn’t move my legs when I changed position so they were still wrapped around him with only my heels touching the bed.

The strength of this man is astonishing to say the least. He remained on his knees and fucked me. Thrust after thrust hitting my sensitive cervix every time. I remember feeling myself as I was trying to squeeze him out and then a gush of wetness followed by my walls pulsating and quivering around him. I remember feeling so overwhelmed and no idea why or how. I could feel tears form and fall down my face so I buried my face in his neck as I moaned through my release quickly followed by his. Warmth spread through my center as he continued to thrust until he stilled.

We were both still and panting. My face was still buried in his neck and arms wrapped around him for dear life. I don’t understand what I was feeling. I just knew I was so emotionally overwhelmed. I have never felt like this before. I was shuddering which I think worried him since it wasn’t a sexy shudder because I’m pretty sure he would have felt those elsewhere.

Steven started rubbing my back in circles. “Are you ok? Did I hurt you?” I immediately look him and shake my head, “No, no, no. You didn’t do anything wrong, Baby.” I’m sure my eyes are red and I’ve tears flowing down still, and then I fucking sniffle. It was so humiliating. I still don’t know what the fuck that was. I grin out of embarrassment and wiped my face off with the back of my head as I’m trying to avoid his gaze. I can see he wanted more information but I don’t have anymore. Licking my lips as my mouth suddenly feels dry, I try to scoot off of him be he won’t let me.

“Y/N,” Steven began and cupped my cheek as he wiped away my tears with his thumb . It makes me feel warm, safe, and cared for. I closed my eyes and leaned into his hand with a small smile. I finally stopped crying.

I admit I wish I could stay there in that moment forever. I’ve never felt this way after sex let alone really with someone. I opened my eyes as I recall it sounded like he was going to say more but hasn’t. The way he is looking at me is beautiful and strange. He pushed my hair back across my scalp and his hand stayed at my neck. He leaned down and kissed me with so much emotion that I started crying again.

I feel so humiliated. “I’m sorry, Steven. I don’t—I don’t know what’s wrong. I’m not sad. I promise. Everything was amazing.” I instantly regret saying that and kick myself mentally because I’ve never had a good outcome of saying anything that positive to a male sex partner.

Steve smiled and chuckled, “Good to hear, Love.” He pecked me on the lips and I melt as I hear him call me ‘Love’ again. I just smiled and he shifted forward and laid me on the bed, slipping out of me and the mess begins to leak out but I’m too tired to deal with it. I gotta do laundry anyway. He just looked at me and smiled as he got up then headed to the bathroom. The faucet is turned on and I hear a cabinet close.

My brain started to panic. I’m high in cock and sex; I become slightly paranoid, so sad. I didn’t know I was like that but maybe it’s all those overwhelming emotions that are making me worried.

He has memorized my loft? How long was I unconscious earlier? Shit. I remember eyeing my wardrobe and then looked at the floor wondering if he went through my stuff. I mean I am happy to share all my fun toys and such but now I’m slightly worried. Can sex cause brain damage?

I cannot believe I seriously wondered that. No! Sex does not cause brain damage. 🤦

Anyway, Steven came back with a warm, wet washcloth and helped me clean up, and then cleaned up himself as well. Never had a partner do that. Huh? We got settled under my comforter and cuddled. We also fell asleep. Ok, I did. I don’t know if he did. I hope I didn’t snore.

😮

Oh my god! I’m in love with Steven Grant.

85 notes · View notes

prairiesongserial · 9 months

Text

20.24

Passengers streamed into the lounge, all talking loudly over one another. The layers of voices eventually accumulated a main idea: Ghislaine Labelle had been found dead–and one of the valets had been detained as the likely culprit.

Cody’s hunch had been right, then. Val was curious to know how he’d predicted Ghislaine would be the next to die.

Val closed his book. He’d finished the one about the stolen pearls, and this new one was about a wealthy hobbyist detective. It was Old World, and Val could only read five or so pages at a time before his concentration broke. The print was difficult to parse and the minutiae of Lord So-and-so’s life incomprehensible. There had been a war, and the author seemed to think it should be obvious which one–as if there were only one. It was like having an earnest conversation with someone who didn’t realize their French was unintelligible to your Louisiana Creole. That was happening a lot recently.

Val drummed his fingers against the cover of his book. The lounge had filled so that everyone stood nearly shoulder to shoulder, but the mood was less panicked than it had been last night. Wine flowed from the bar. Laughter interrupted the excited chatter.

A few minutes later, Sacha arrived. He worked through the room, friendly and casual, as he attempted several times to call the lounge to order–though Sacha was just as liable to be distracted into a side conversation as the rest of the passengers.

Val considered re-opening his book. He could probably reach the end of the chapter in the time it took for the room to settle. Reading mysteries with a murderer loose on the ship had significantly dampened Val’s ability to react appropriately to the situation, but Val also didn’t care. People died all the time, and the deaths of a handful of socialites didn’t particularly matter. Friday would put everything together sooner or later. The mystery would resolve. The book would end. On to the next one.

Sacha clapped his hands and once again directed the crowd to circle around. Val felt a pang of annoyance. He decided to skip this part. Val cut a winding path through the room, trying not to look like he was bolting for the door. He glanced over his shoulder before he left–but he didn’t catch any curious eyes on him.

Val turned back again to cross the threshold into the hall. He jumped–Friday had stopped short in the doorway to avoid running into him. Her hair was pinned up and she wore another flowy dress. This one was constructed out of folds of red gauze draped and sewn into place. It matched her lipstick.

“Val, perfect, I need you.”

Friday’s hand closed around his wrist and goosebumps bloomed from the spot, traveling up his arm. He instinctively pulled away.

“It’s important,” she insisted. Val dimly realized that she didn’t look good. She was breathing a little quickly, and her eyes were a little too wide.

“Are you okay?” he asked, stepping further into the hallway.

She shook her head and motioned him to follow her. She started down the hall before Val could press for detail. She didn’t look injured, but Val’s imagination was active lately. She led the way toward the passenger cabins, and Val tried to blink away flashes of blood–every shift of the layered gauze turned into a dark red gash.

Friday locked the both of them in their shared cabin and finally seemed to relax.

“I need you to help me figure out some French I overheard this morning.”

Val sat on the edge of the bed while Friday paced in front of him. He kept seeing phantom injuries with every shift of fabric, and he felt vaguely sick.

“I don’t know French,” he said.

“Sure you do, you’re from New Orleans.” Friday stopped in front of him, her hands on her hips. “Never mind; it’s probably pointless. I don’t remember any of it.”

“Will you change?”

“What?”

“Your clothes are distracting.” Val winced as he said it.

“Now is not the time to be a priest.” Friday paused, staring him down. “This isn’t cut that low. And you’ve seen me in my burlesque costumes before–you’ve never had a problem averting your eyes. What’s the verse for that? There’s a verse about averting your eyes if you’re having a personal problem and not asking your female friends to change.”

“Would you accept that I’m not up to my usual standard of behavior?” Val said sharply.

“For fuck’s sake, fine,” Friday said. She started to strip, and Val looked away, aggravated that he didn’t have the fortitude at present to honor an old covenant with his eyes.

“Are you okay?” he asked again.

“If you mean, have I been murdered, no, I haven’t. I’m fine. I just have about a million things to tell you, and instead I’m doing this.” Friday spoke over the slide of hangers in her wardrobe as she chose something new to wear. “What will you find least distracting? This one okay?”

Val didn’t look–she was still in her underwear.

“I’m not changing again,” she said, shaking the hanger. “I would never do this for any other man–and I’m very fucking mad at you.”

Val glanced over. It was white with navy blue piping. Clean lines.

“That one’s fine,” he said, turning his whole body to face the opposite wall. He’d intended to give his neck a break, but found himself confronted by the vanity mirror. It pictured Friday’s back as she stepped into her skirt.

Val raised his hand physically in front of his face and rolled his eyes at God.

“Well, it doesn’t match my make-up,” Friday grouched. She signaled she had finished dressing by the sound of her landing heavily in the armchair. Val turned back around to face her.

“You had a million things to tell me?” he asked.

“Starting with…well, no. I’d better do it backwards,” she said. “Ghislaine is dead. Cody found the body, only he didn’t have any reason to be in her room, so now everyone thinks he killed her. And the rest of them, naturally.” She held up a finger to stop Val from interrupting. “John and Cody are locked in John’s cabin while we sort it out. John pitched a fit–you actually wouldn’t believe it. I don’t know what story he’s been giving people, but he came across like a Hemisphere gangster who retired young to class it up as a millionaire. You know, refined, but dangerous when he wants to be.”

“Friday.”

“I’m getting there,” she said. “Anyway, those two are safe for now. But Cody told me why he was in Ghislaine’s room. He’s been working to solve the murders on his own–I guess he had to, it’s not like he could come up to me for a chat while he’s pretending to be a valet. But anyway–he figured out that the valets are going missing too–probably murdered. So double the murders.”

Val had been following her up until then.

“Why kill the valets?” he said when Friday paused for breath. “Which valets?”

“Okay–it’s the valets employed by the murdered passengers. So If we look at all the disappearances in order, we have Ms. Ecuyer first, then Clovis’s valet, then Clovis, then the Dumonts’s valet–I forget her name–then the Dumonts–and Cody noticed that Živković went missing last night–that’s Ghislaine’s valet–and so that’s why Cody went to check on Ghislaine.” Again, Friday paused to catch her breath, but she once again held up a finger to cut off any interruptions.

Val more or less followed what she was saying. The valets were being killed before their employers, which Cody had figured out. Živković’s absence had clued Cody in that Ghislaine would be next.

“Now, something else Cody told me–there’s this valet who doesn’t go to anybody,” Friday continued. “Apparently they’ve been telling people their employer is holed up in her cabin sick, but Cody went to check it out, and there’s nobody staying in that cabin. So they’re probably the one who’s going around killing people.

“But–” Friday waved the accusation of murder she’d just made away, as if it were besides the point. “back to Ghislaine. I had talked to her this morning–sort of. She only spoke French. She was upset about her missing valet and came storming in on me and d’Orléans–with Sacha chasing after her, trying to calm her down–”

“You and d’Orléans?” Val asked, suddenly.

Friday cut herself off. A guilty look crossed her face.

“I was interviewing them–establishing an alibi for the morning the Dumonts were murdered.”

Val blinked down an uncomfortable image. It helped that Friday was wearing white–his eyes couldn’t play tricks on him.

“You–don’t talk to d’Orléans alone. Or Casimir.”

Friday crinkled her nose. “Well–they couldn’t have killed the Dumonts. The timing doesn’t work out. But–you’re right–they’re slimy.”

Val didn’t really remember the second night on the ship. He’d been as drunk as he could get without getting sick. He remembered being uncomfortably close and warm–Val didn’t usually get close enough to people that the textures of their clothing made an impression, but he remembered rough brocade, then sharp pain. He remembered d’Orléans shrieking in laughter, then in offense.

He’d gone looking for Friday–and the next thing he had any clear memory of was sitting on a step-stool in a staff-only area, starting to sober up with Sacha Fortune pressing a rag against his neck. Sacha had looked annoyed, but he’d pitched his tone artificially, like the blood soaking Val’s shirt collar was the punchline of a joke.

“Those two play rough–it’s an acquired taste,” he’d said with a laugh. “Don’t worry, this is just a scratch. Let me see your wrist.”

Slimy.

Friday huffed, bringing him back to the present.

“Anyway, Ghislaine said her piece–she listed off everyone that has been killed so far–and their valets.” Friday snapped her fingers a few times, getting excited. “That would explain the names I didn’t recognize. Clovis, Jean-Baptiste, the Dumonts, Elizabeth. So at that point she’d put together that if her own valet was missing, she must be next. Of course she was upset.”

“Jean-Baptiste?” Val asked.

“Yes, why?”

“That’s John the Baptist.”

“Well…that’s not right,” Friday said. “I might be remembering wrong. It was probably–”

“No, you’re not,” Val said. “Clovis Girard was beheaded, and so was John the Baptist.”

Friday stopped short–whatever she’d been about to say was forgotten.

“What was his card?” Val continued. “During the guessing game. The card on his forehead.”

“What?”

“I wrote the card ‘John the Baptist’ for the game. That was the one I put in the bowl.” Val said. “Was that Clovis Girard’s card?”

“That…I don’t remember,” Friday said, realization dawning on her. “Hold on.”

Friday jumped up from the bed, too excited to stay still. She paced the room as her mind jumped onto a new track.

“So Ghislaine hadn’t necessarily figured out that people’s valets were going missing–but she had figured out that the murders are being themed after the characters from the game. What were the Dumonts’s cards? Elizabeth something and…”

Val shook his head. He’d left immediately after guessing his own card.

“Shit, I don’t remember.” Friday chewed on her thumbnail as she paced. “I remember not knowing who either of their cards were–it was kind of boring at that point.” She sighed. “Alright. Aravind was shot through a pillow and Ernestine was in a full bath with her clothes on. She had this little stab wound, like a puncture in her neck. That was weird, because it wasn’t very noticeable, but it was definitely how she died. The bathwater was pink.”

Val tried to listen, but he was distracted by his own heartbeat in his ears. He had the urge to lock himself in the bathroom and look under his bandage.

“Casimir is the killer,” he said. “With d’Orléans, probably.”

Friday frowned at him, stopping mid-sentence. “But they can’t have killed the Dumonts. The Dumonts were supposed to meet Conti for breakfast at nine–they would have been killed before then, and Casimir and d’Orléans had breakfast delivered to their cabin. The kitchen staff vouched that the two of them were in their cabin between seven-thirty and nine-thirty.”

That didn’t mean much to Val.

“Casimir did it,” he said firmly. He caught Friday’s eyes flick to his neck, then quickly away.

“Why are you so sure?” she asked.

Val couldn’t remember it now. He didn’t even remember what he’d done to Casimir’s eye in his hurry to get away that night. But he had looked under the bandages, and he’d decided never to find himself drunk or alone on this ship again.

“Never mind,” Friday said. “The party game being important answers a question about Ghislaine’s murder. She was almost definitely poisoned, but it didn’t kill her. The killer strangled her instead. I think that poison was probably the connection to her card. I wish I remembered who it was.” Friday sucked her teeth. “Ghislaine was one of the last to guess hers–before the Dumonts, though. I remember her being sort of agitated that it was taking so long. And when she finally got it, she was annoyed that it was somebody English.” She snapped her fingers. “Harriet. From a book.”

“Harriet Vane?”

Friday furrowed her brow. “That was it. How do you know that?”

Val hadn’t expected to know, so it was a surprise when he did. He’d been reading nothing but mysteries for several days, and Harriet Vane had been a character in one of them. She’d been accused of poisoning someone in a different story that he hadn’t gotten to, but it had come up in the mystery he was reading now.

The coincidence abruptly lost its interest when he realized the more important revelation they’d been talking around.

“The order,” Val said.

Friday seemed to have realized it too. And since she’d actually been present for the end of the game, the look on her face told him he was right.

“Ghislaine guessed her card before the Dumonts, and the Dumonts before Clovis–he was the last,” she said slowly. “Oh my God. Val.”

She was pulling him up from the bed.

“We’re being killed in the order we lost the game.” Friday had him by the wrist–there was a little pain as she gripped the bandage hidden under his sleeve. “John was the last to guess before Ghislaine.”

Val allowed himself to be tugged toward the door.

It wasn’t a surprise that the party game was the key to the murders. It was d’Orléans’s game, after all.

What bothered Val was that several of the other passengers had already known how to play.

20.23 || 20.25

#story

10 notes · View notes

haalfpipe · 14 days

Text

Well-developed, well-nourished white male in no acute distress.

This is what she writes about me. Look, as your sponsor, I need you to write this down. All of it. Word for word. Don’t try to make sense of anything I say, just write. When you’re confused, keep writing. Tired, keep writing. Cravings, for God’s sake just keep writing. Because if it works for you, it might work for somebody else.

Now go back to that note.

She’s my primary care physician, the woman who's seen me since I outgrew a pediatrician. She sits there with her legs folded together in knobs and branches poking through bright blue doctor fabric, and a suspicious thickness around her belly. She's the same as any other anorexic physician who eats only something with oats she poured from a blender.

Write this down—this is how you should be eating.

If she’s your doctor, you don’t feel better after reading her notes. That's if you remember to find them in her office’s digital patient portal, where after every visit they’re posted on the other side of a forgotten login and a compromised password.

Write this down—read about yourself.

It will be midnight, lying in your bed with your phone glowing at your chest. Picture an otter on its back. Swiping through, passing content from one thumb to another like the screen is a stack of cash, except you're counting fifteen second clips of billionaire porn. Supercars. Island waterfalls. French-press coffee on private jets. Squats and deadlifts and protein powders beaming into your eyes from a girl with perfect pores and skin vacuum-sealed against her clavicle.

Every fifth swipe is an ad.

A reminder.

Refrigerated ship-to-home ingredients—remember to pack lunch.

Swipe up.

High-yield online savings—pay your credit card bill.

Swipe up.

Cable-knit sweaters on some Macedonian model—do laundry.

Swipe up.

Machine-surfaced cast iron—run the dishwasher.

Swipe up.

Anymore, this is why you read the portmanteau digitox. Pause your social media for a week, the usual prescription. Put down your phone and try to work on impulse control just to discover you haven’t eaten anything green, and you’re still in the same clothes with an overdue balance on your credit card.

Your grade school teachers tried to teach you the habit of using a spiral-bound calendar. Now all you need is phone streaming a river of social media as you fall asleep.

Swipe up.

Lying here in the dark and your life support is a lithium battery glued to a glowing rectangle.

Swipe up.

Grounding your bare feet in water without sunscreen on a hot day in the mountains—schedule your booster shot.

Swipe.

Wet coffee grounds into cute countertop compost bins—it’s Monday. The trash should be at the curb.

Swipe.

Robot vacuums for pile carpet—clean your floors. And when you see it, remember that your shitty old vacuum has a filter bag with a lifespan.

Swipe up. Swipe right.

Until you’re unconscious.

Wake up and your phone is down on the carpet, smeared with oily fingerprints in the shape of a cross.

Swipe.

This is content that wakes you up.

Swipe.

Content that keeps you alive.

Swipe.

You’ll watch the same shit again tomorrow.

Swipe.

Another night and your thumbs make streaks right and downward until you watch an ad for a metabolism diet that reminds you of poor appetite reminds you of weight loss reminds you of a balance scale and a stainless sink with a floor pedal. The gaunt doctor’s notes and your decade of symptoms are on the other side of a login somewhere behind all these crucifix-shaped smears.

Swipe.

Reading about yourself and why you aren’t going to die gets you through a few days. But you feel like the way she sits there with all her machines and her complete sentences perfectly typed into a keyboard are missing something. The way you might miss your own addiction. Like I did. I didn't know I was an addict until after my first meeting.

Write this down—find a meeting.

In recovery, you wake up to your phone but the real-life support is downstairs on the fridge: a full calendar, a dry erase board with dented corners you can grab when you're in the kitchen section of a savings store. It comes with battle scars just as much as you’d expect from colliding with errant wheels, the magnetic corners trying to grab onto every shopping cart that comes too close. Underpaid employees tire of wedging it back onto a shelf because for shoppers a blank calendar is too much commitment even at a discount, and it's too big and boring and cheap to steal. Not that anyone would care. It’s five rows, seven columns, a sequence of days that never change tattooed in cute cursive across the top.

In recovery, you see a blank calendar and it just means you haven't yet been told what to do. You put it on your fridge. Let it observe every moment of the day, every time you leave the house, or empty the trash, the dishwasher, like somehow it will learn your entire week, until you're awake the next morning and surprise, it's still blank. At midnight when you open the thick, insulated door and the cold light rips out into the dark kitchen, it's there, caught in the beam. It might as well be found in a searchlight, flattened against the side of some dumpster, hiding from its destiny: thirty-five squares of graffiti in vibrant dry-erase marker, instructions squeezed wherever they fit.

Eventually you’re just some kid who can't color inside the lines, smearing it with bright letters, thick from bent tips of markers always dropping and rolling under the refrigerator. When it’s finally numbered, you’ll need a quote-a-day paper pad showing the date in tall digits leaning off the page at you when you open the refrigerator for milk. This way every morning you have to interact with the calendar. Tear off the old sheet of digits for another and find the square it matches.

It says, twenty-two.

A new day.

A new set of instructions.

A new inspiration to forget.

Today’s italicized quotation will stick because this is Monday.

It says, chance favors the prepared mind. The corner of the date pad says Louis Pasteur. The reason you don’t get sick from the milk.

Before it was clung onto our kitchen monolith, my calendar began on my phone as a progress tracker. If you’re burdened with the twelve step curse of recovery, the meetings and your therapy will refer to this as a habit tracker. It’s how you’re supposed to visualize an accumulation of effort. How you’re supposed to feel normal when you look backward. Everyday is another responsibility you were never taught, but on Sunday at least you washed the bedding. You never see how much goes into a normal life until you’re doing none of it. Somebody has to tell you that you’re living in trash and the blanket over your laundry smells so much like air freshener it stinks.

Somebody has to tell you to get out of bed.

Buy a new toothbrush.

Open the windows.

Go to the interview.

Eat.

Put down your phone.

That today is your mother’s birthday.

Somebody has to save you. And then you owe her your life. You get married.

Swipe to thirteen years later, and recovery doesn’t matter. Try telling someone you just met that you've been clean for thirteen years. Nobody cares. Picture showing up to defend a decade-long dissertation of research to have your advisor say thanks, it no longer counts toward your grade. You can dry-clean your academic attire, like everyone else. She tosses it onto a stack of papers sunk into her carpet with its own footprint, a white pillar, the size of a trash can. Still, you want her to least read it. You want anybody to read it.

If you’re like me, what you want is somebody to start a pot of coffee after dinner and stare at you across the kitchen table while it gets hot. You want somebody to talk with all night until the sun comes back.

If you’re like me, you don’t stop talking. Somebody finally sits down and drops a nickel at your booth and they have to let the song play.

This is the jukebox full of fresh vinyl.

I didn't want to have to tell you any of this. Nobody else needs to know anything here.

This is the note accidentally left unlocked.

This is the essay that ends up shredded in the back of a mobile secure destruction truck.

This is the long form note written in couples' therapy to wrinkle up for a waste basket, never to be read.

This is the confession after the crime found scribbled in a notebook when all the neighbors say they never saw it coming. If they did, then there wouldn't be a vacant house ribboned with yellow tape and an overgrown lawn to explain to all the divorced pickleball women when they come over for cocktails.

What I'm trying to say is none of this matters anymore.

I haven’t done anything wrong. There hasn’t been a crime. I don’t have the time. There’s no space for it on my calendar. After work I’m showering and brushing my clothes with horsehair so the hard water doesn’t fade the blacks to grey on waistbands and seams. Then I’m reaching into the fridge and cooking dinner and the dry erase marker says I’m exchanging table decorations for the new season, spring. Outside in the dark I’ll use a flashlight and leaf blower to clear fallen seed pods out of potted plants. The kitchen drawer will be out of dish towels and it’ll be one in the morning before those will be ironed and folded.

Write this down—never landscape with sycamores.

If you’re like me, you’re too tired to do anything wrong.

It’s because I’ve been on step twelve for so long. That's how they pull you in, with their logos and websites and filtered headshots of mentors and their about-us sections, seining through the candidate swamp of deadbeats as wide as freeways across the city. The dozen secrets to success that can be yours if you act now, no signature required.

A fresh start. Anonymous.

You can learn all the reasons addiction is ruining your life and how much better you’ll be in recovery. By step one you’ll sleep better, they tell you. By step six you’ll be giving presentations at work, they tell you. What they don’t tell you is by step twelve you should be growing the pyramid. Sponsor the kid who bags your groceries. In recovery, his bagging will be a little sloppier. Eggs on the bottom, untrimmed carrot tops flowering like pampas grass from sacks of wrinkled paper. For eight hours of bagging, his eyes follow the backs of his hands. He never looks up. Because in recovery he feels like shit.

What they don’t tell you about recovery is a lot.

What they don't tell you is that after step twelve, there's nothing. It’s just more step twelve. More meetings. More relapses. Until you’re dead. After I turn out to be your sponsor, then after years of me and a therapist telling you what to do, one day you find yourself at the curb outside a meeting like they just signed you out of the hospital and stuck you in a wheelchair on the sidewalk.

Hospitals have to get rid of you.

It's for liability.

You're discharged, but until they get you to the curb, they're on the hook for your life. The administrators don’t care about a junkie until they need his bed for the next admission from a crowded emergency lobby. For a few days your entire world is one hundred square feet between four walls with a sealed window and a mechanical bedframe. You have your own bathroom. There’s a whiteboard showing names of physicians you never see. It’s a different sort of dry erase calendar with notes in three sections: Today. Tomorrow. Future.

In recovery, planning ahead feels like predicting the future.

To fix you, people in scrubs who aren’t nurses bring trays with pills in little cups of wax paper, made for ketchup. Every pill is constipating. That, and the immobility of lying in bed until your back aches. This is why there are wall stud-mounted steel handles around the toilet. You get microwaved meals, and hourly visits from exhausted nurses wearing too much concealer smeared over their bad skin.

You like it inside the sterile room, baseboards to ceiling in taupe, and a floor drain in the bathroom. You wish you could stay. But this is what real care feels like—being discarded, thrown back out onto the street.

Anymore, your friends are all stoned, you say this to the nice nurse that you want coming with you. To bring you little stacks of cups at home. She uses your face to unlock your phone and dials an emergency contact. She props you in a wheelchair still wrinkled in the seat from her last castaway. She starts pushing. What you don't know is that after twelve hours of babysitting a floor of invalids and texting her ex in the supply closet, she'll collapse at her apartment with shitty alcohol, neglect her kid, rub one out and fall asleep with the television. Her own pile of laundry stinks of air freshener. And after a week with that botched fantasy you'll want her pushing you out again, faster, you’ll kick your legs straight out when you see the double doors beneath the exit sign. You’re thinking all this and then the wheelchair's at the street, she sets the brakes, puts a hand on your back and bolts you upright. Right beside the trash bins.

Swipe to this blithering milksop balancing on the curb waiting for my emergency contact to show up with a fast food bag of burgers because that’s exactly how this whole thing happened.

Write this down—fast food is what started this.

I'll get to the beginning. What ended up being the beginning.

There's one thing the alcoholics, junkies, and sex addicts in recovery won't tell you in their propaganda. I hate to ruin the surprise: walk into a meeting, and this is the rest of your boring ass life that nobody will ever care about. It says it right there in the branding. Anonymous. There’s no background check. Nobody asks to see track marks, or a collapsed septum. All you have to do is show up and give a name. Every week it isn’t any different. It’s a United Methodist rec room that hosted a day camp of kids with sticky fingers making crafts before organizers got there at sunset to unfold a card table and plug in a coffee percolator, a big trophy passed between support groups. Except instead of a bright Stanley Cup this is a storm-tossed aluminum bombshell that means your quiet gathering of church sponsorship has made it. Men's groups. Yard sales. Slow-read Bible study. Blood drives. Tonight it's with a room full of enablers. Because at some point they all relapse. That's why they keep coming back. Two dozen strangers who all share the same passion means the best networking opportunity junkies can get.

Swipe to a room full of cravings triggered by one of these caffeine dispensers looking like it was pulled from the basement of some parish.

Write this down—you’ll have meetings on Tuesdays. No matter what. This is what they call them.

No matter what, you make time for it.

No matter what, you attend.

No matter what, someone from last week is missing.

For me, recovery is never more than arms' length away. Even now, on my nightstand, where instead of an orange bottle of pills with a label showing the name of a hospice patient I'll never meet, there's a wallet as thick as an Uno deck and right next to it is a small leather journal with a checklist of everything I have to do not to sink. A calendar of instructions to-go. It's the same journal I've used since step four.

At first, the steps feel good. After your first meeting you might as well be twelve years old, and wide awake the night before a vacation. You’re going somewhere new. For a few days you walk upright with great posture. See yourself in the mirror of a department store where you’re trying on new shirts and you realize you have shoulders. It's a proud moment when you can check step one off your list. The first three go pretty fast and then you get stuck on step four. The moral inventory. All the lies, betrayals, and cheating, all the people you've hurt and jobs you've lost. You have to open a note on your phone and start typing. A rap sheet of all your sins, synced with cloud storage. That way every dumbass moment of your life is right there beneath your passcode.

I'm always writing things down. Journaling. Calendaring. Staying clean means keeping busy, having something to look forward to, always wanting to see tomorrow. It's when tomorrow doesn't matter that you give in. Find your local NA schedule and poke your head through the wrong door at the community center for that room full of liars calling itself a No-Matter-What meeting and tell me if it looks like any of them care about tomorrow.

Before relapse, most of them get lost in responsibility piling up at home. Picture Sisyphus. There's no reward for your work. When you stop feeling perfect for zero effort—that's addiction—daily routines are labor. In recovery, suddenly it all matters. Nobody wants another day of it. So you offload it from your brain, suspend your decision-making ability. Turn yourself into an implement. If you don't have to remember what to do next, then while you're at the sink soaking the sweat stains out of your new shirts, you're free to daydream about eventually sleeping in again. Because there's always more.

There's the alarm clock to wake you.

There's a duvet to fold.

There's clothing to launder.

There are dishes to wash.

Carpets to vacuum.

Now go back to your thirty-five squares and start writing—

Blow the leaves.

Put gas in the car.

Pack a lunch box.

Buy groceries.

Pay the utilities.

Today it's all on the calendar and the dry erase bleeds together in a way your brain can't decipher. No square is big enough. Cram all this in between five, eight-hour minimum wage workdays crutched by black coffee and chewing gum and next time you're washing shirts you'll daydream about not waking up.

After enough of step twelve, addicts in recovery suffer an increased chance of relapse, a brief glimpse at being high and productive. The meetings will call this functional addiction, the sustained twilight before once again losing your footing, being fired, and going broke. Keep going to meetings, and therapy, and tell yourself to keep trying but eventually everyone gives up running to the sunset, the sinking reminder that you can do everything right and still fail. You need structure. Somebody has to tell you what to do. There's a blank calendar to fill.

Swipe to when you bring home the dented thing, still wearing its torn shrink-wrap. At first, you won’t unwrap it. Thinking two weeks out might as well be next year. Nobody can see that far ahead. You put these thirty-five blank squares on the fridge and walk away. You’ll start writing tomorrow. Today, grab a sheet of paper and fold a single crease, forming two pages that will tell you what to do. Make a checklist for right now. After a week, replace this with a notebook so you can flip back to yesterday’s completed list, then another one from seven pages ago, or sixty pages ago.

Like everything else, at first a list makes you feel good. You write down everything you have to do and draw a little empty square next to it where you can scratch a check mark. What the meetings and therapy won’t call this is the Dunning-Kruger effect. We won’t tell you to overestimate your own success as you check off all the to-dos for which nobody else needs reminders.

We won’t tell you, but this is what happens. With every box, give yourself a gold star.

Write this down.

Brush your teeth—check.

Make coffee—check.

Turn off the coffee pot—check.

Remember your wallet—check.

Close the garage door—check.

Finally, you're getting somewhere. Every day, it's the same list, telling you what to do. The same set of successes. Because before, you were barely able to find the door out of the house in the morning.

By the end, every box is inked and you get to see just how much filled your day. Everything in your life becomes an item on a list. A direction. Something to achieve. You get to see the set of instructions for your life.

Everything becomes a step. One step closer to the completed pages of your boring life and knowing that tomorrow you have to start at the top of the same stupid blank page with a new list. Then another the next day. Then next week. And the month after that. Until you're dead.

Like normal people.

It's been a long time since you felt normal.

Everyday you're charging upright into a rough surf of surprises heaving themselves against you. Look back at your little piece of paper. It'll tell you where to go next. Plan out every minute from the moment you make coffee in the morning until you’re home and you step into the garage after a shower to grab the electric leaf blower and surprise, it’s dead.

Write this down—plug in leaf blower.

It needs to be cabled to a heavy charger that gets hot and smells like ozone. The one-hour charge is just enough time for the clocks in your house to be suddenly louder. The carpet is more matted than it was yesterday. In the walls, all the plumbing squeaks with hard water and suddenly it’s caked inside the mesh aerators of every faucet.

Write this down—polish the hardwood.

Electric mop the high-traffic carpets.

Soak the stainless faucets in vinegar.

From the size of my list, our house looks like Xanadu.

Find another achievement. Check another box. Until one day in the middle of it all you're on a ladder in your bedroom replacing a smoke alarm with a ten-year battery and you realize you'll be up on this ladder maybe five more times before you're dead.

One day when you’re off work you get back to the calendar and pair it with the date pad of quotes. It feels smooth, the unused dry-erase surface. To make progress, you have to fill it. Thirty-five blank squares.

For monthly maintenance, pick a square.

For laundry, pick five squares.

Bedding, pick two squares.

Clean the oven.

Then the bathrooms.

Vacuum.

After a few months the neat printing is full of abbreviated instructions, and you can't see any outlines between the white blocks. Each day dissolves into the next. In the morning you see it when you get to the fridge for milk and tear open the next quotation.

Louis Pasteur’s quotation.

What I’m prepared for is running out of ink, and dry erase markers.

What I’m trying to say is—let’s hope this works. Recovery is what got me into this whole mess. Recovery, and hamburgers.

#fiction #short story #writing #writeblr #addiction #alcoholism #addiction recovery #drugs

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seaphoam-writes · 6 months

Text

A Father's Duty (21/?)

A Father's Duty on AO3

Summary: An encounter with a quantum fissure leaves Picard with more responsibility than he asked for, but he'll do what he always does—his duty.

Chapter 21

After they climb they clean themselves up, eat lunch, then have a nap.

It feels good to lie on his own bed again, and afterwards Picard feels much less sore and much more awake than he’s felt in days. He finds Louis already up, sitting at the dining table with a book and another plate of apple slices. Picard wonders if he’s accustomed to a certain degree of independence where food’s concerned, or if he’s concluded that if he doesn’t fend for himself, he’ll starve.

Again, Picard feels a stab of guilt—alongside the realization of a glaring fact: he doesn’t take very good care of himself. Or perhaps it’s just that he hasn’t been doing so in recent months. He remembers having healthier habits, once upon a time. Before Gul Madred. Maybe even as long ago as before the Borg.

Sighing internally, Picard replicates himself a bowl of fromage blanc speckled with blackberries and a dollop of bitter orange jam. It’s le goûter he ate during the summers as a child; his grandfather would come in from the fields, gather Picard from wherever he was playing, and they would eat a snack together in the kitchen, which was always the coolest part of the house in the late afternoon, as long as his mother hadn’t started cooking dinner yet.

When Picard was Louis’s age, he wasn’t allowed to prepare his own food, and eating was for meals and le goûter—a small snack between lunch and dinner—only. That’s typical for French culture, but Picard doesn’t think restricting Louis in such a way is necessary, though they should probably discuss some basic ground rules so the boy’s snacks don’t spoil his appetite for meals.

Louis smiles at him when he sits and offers him an apple slice. Picard accepts it, and in trade spoons a hearty amount of fromage blanc and jam onto Louis’s plate.

“Would you like a blackberry?” Picard asks.

Louis shakes his head, not taking his eyes off the fromage blanc he’s scraping onto one apple slice with the aid of a second apple slice, fingers carefully pinching the edges of the fruit, where it’s clean. After a few minutes of eating in companionable silence, Picard jerks his chin in the direction of the book Louis has open on his knee.

“What are you reading?”

“Peter and Wendy.”

“Have you read it before?”

“Non. I found it in the ship’s library. Have you read it?”

“Yes. A long time ago.”

“When you were my age?”

“Yes, when I was your age.”

Picard’s never had occasion to peruse the children’s section of the computer’s catalog of books but the thought of it now—the possibility of reliving some of his childhood favorites with Louis—is thrilling.

“What else did you find in the ship’s library?”

While Louis rambles off titles, Picard makes a mental list of books not included, notably Le Petit Nicolas and Les Aventures de Tintin, which Picard thinks Louis would enjoy immensely given that they’re comics.

They finish eating, recycle their plates, and retreat to their respective pursuits. Louis takes his book to the couch and sprawls on it with the book propped on his chest, and Picard goes to his desk. He returns to duty tomorrow, and he needs to make arrangements for Louis’s supervision.

Time passes easily, and it’s nearing 0500 hours when movement catches his attention and Picard looks up from his PADD to see Louis upright on the couch, gripping the edge of the cushions with trembling hands and a stricken, wide-eyed expression on his pale face.

It startles him into instant motion.

“Louis,” Picard says, perching next to the boy and placing a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Louis, what’s wrong?”

Louis shakes his head and swallows. “I’m fine.”

“You are not fine.”

The wide grey eyes fix on Picard. Is Louis sick? Is he having another panic attack? His breathing seems more rapid than normal. Not bothering to be subtle about it, Picard splays his free hand against Louis’s chest.

The boy’s heart is pounding.

Panic attack, then.

Can Picard avert it? Or is it like an avalanche, unstoppable once it starts, the only option to wait it out?

“Talk to me,” Picard coaxes. “Tell me what’s on your mind.”

Louis swallows again, whispers. “Maman.”

He raises his hand to the one Picard still has pressed to his chest and grips it, as if he needs an anchor. Then he turns his head, gaze on the floor somewhere between where they’re sitting and Picard’s bedroom.

“Uncle Will found me and maman but maman was already dead. You…you were on the Borg ship.” Louis drags in a breath and his whole body shudders with the effort. “I heard uncle Will telling maman you weren’t ever coming back. I wasn’t supposed to be listening but I listened anyway. I didn’t understand. You weren’t dead, so why—” His brows draw together, and his next words hiss through his clenched teeth. “Why couldn’t you come back? Why did you—”

He goes rigid and he doesn’t finish his sentence, but Picard can guess at its conclusion nonetheless.

Why did his father attack the Enterprise? Why did he kill Louis’s mother?

Picard moves his hand from Louis’s shoulder to his back and rubs circles there.

“I’m here now,” he says. “I’m here now, and you’re here with me.”

He rubs Louis’s back until Louis’s shoulders loosen and he’s leaning so hard into the hand Picard has on his chest that Picard’s afraid Louis will fall forward if he removes it. Louis’s heartbeat has finally slowed beneath Picard’s palm when Louis murmurs once more, “Why couldn’t you come back?”

Picard’s hand stills. Perhaps Data never explained. Perhaps Data couldn’t explain. Should Picard explain? This is not the time nor the place he imagined this happening—he had envisioned having Deanna present as both guide and support—but he senses there’s no burying what’s been unearthed.

They’re doing this now, just the two of them.

“When the Borg assimilated me,” Picard says, “I—"

The speed with which Louis’s head whips around and the incredulous look on his face speak volumes: clearly, he hadn’t imagined that Picard had been assimilated like his own father.

“Oh yes,” Picard confirms softly. “I was assimilated by the Borg, just like your father was.”

Likewise, it hadn’t occurred to him that Louis might not be aware of it, but he supposes it makes sense: if Louis’s father was never rescued, he must believe rescue wasn’t possible, and therefor this version of his father—Picard himself—must somehow never have been assimilated. There are other dissimilarities between Louis’s reality and this one, so why not that?

Louis’s brows contract and his eyes flick back and forth between Picard’s, which Picard interprets as a question.

“I was rescued,” he explains.

“How?” Louis croaks.

Why couldn’t you come back? It strikes Picard that Louis wasn’t speaking to him here and now, he was speaking to his father—he was speaking to the past. Why couldn’t you come back?

Picard contemplates that. What’s different about this reality? Is it one decision or event that makes the difference? Or a multitude of them? Picard knows Guinan gave Will quite a lecture, and there was no Guinan in Louis’s reality; additionally, he knows Beverly was rather insistent that Picard could be saved, and there was no Beverly in Louis’s reality either.

Are they the key? Does Locutus exist in every reality where there were no Guinan and no Beverly to influence the course of events?

He doesn’t know, so he focuses on facts alone.

“The Enterprise was not part of the battle at Wolf 359. They arrived too late; all the other ships had been destroyed, and the Borg were gone.”

Picard has to detach from himself, tell the tale as if it was a historical event, some long ago happening he was completely uninvolved in.

“The Enterprise tracked the Borg down,” he continues. “They attacked, and their attack distracted the Borg, so that Data and Worf were able to pilot a shuttlecraft past their defenses and retrieve me from within the Borg cube. Then, Data, Dr. Crusher, and Deanna…brought me back.”

Louis wriggles his shoulders and Picard removes his hands. He’s afraid Louis is going to walk away but instead Louis rotates to face him.

“Do you remember being Borg?” Louis asks quietly.

Will the truth comfort him? Or is the boy so tangled up inside that the truth will only make it worse?

You’re broken, Picard tells himself, but Louis doesn’t have to be.

“I do,” Picard says. “I remember.”

His gaze drifts sideways as his mind performs a sidestep, into a part of himself that he keeps safely locked away, hidden in the shadows. Words pour from his mouth but he’s barely aware of what he’s saying, his voice distant and remote.

“I remember being aware the entire time of what was happening but being unable to stop it. I was no longer in control, and…as time went on, I began to feel less and less aware, as if I was slowly drifting off to sleep. I imagine that—if I had stayed—I would have lost myself entirely. In fact, if I had not been rescued when I was, there may not have been anything left of me to save.”

“So, my papa…”

Louis’s voice snaps Picard back to himself. “Your papa is gone. The being known as Locutus may wear Jean-Luc Picard’s face, but it was not your father that fired upon the Enterprise.”

It’s not your father that destroyed the galaxy. Your father…

Before he can stop himself, before he can think better of it, Picard says, “Your father died a long time ago.”

Louis flinches, and Picard sees some sort of emotion welling rapidly inside of him before it recedes just as swiftly and he slumps against the back of the couch as if drained, his gaze cast downward, face slack save for the crease between his brows.

Picard’s frozen, terrified he just applied the pressure that finally shattered the cracked-beyond-repair pieces of Louis Picard.

A long moment passes, and Louis says, “I’m glad.”

He raises his eyes to Picard’s, and though they’re overbright with unshed tears, they’re also fierce and determined.

“I’m glad he’s gone. He wouldn’t have wanted to hurt maman. He wouldn’t want to hurt anyone. And he wouldn’t want to be trapped.”

Picard feels a knot loosen inside of him. “You’re right,” he agrees in a whisper. “You’re absolutely right.”

How many times has he had that nightmare? How many times has he dreamed that he’s gone but the Borg are still using his body? And nobody knows it’s not him, because how could they know?

Louis bares his teeth. “I hate the Borg.”

“Louis,” Picard says gently, opening his arms. “Come here.”

Confusion flashes in his eyes, but Louis obeys. He burrows against Picard’s chest. Picard holds him tightly, rests his cheek on Louis’s hair.

“It’s okay to hate the Borg for what they’ve done, but you can’t let that anger consume you.”

“Consume me?”

“Yes. If you let it, that anger will grow bigger and stronger until it’s the only thing left inside of you. That’s all you’ll be for the rest of your life: angry. Your maman and papa wouldn’t want that. They would want you to be happy. I want you to be happy.”

“Aren’t you mad at the Borg too?”

“Of course I am,” Picard admits, and then he decides to lie. “But only sometimes.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

The truth is the anger is always there, usually a mere simmer, deep down, but always there.

He thinks of Gul Madred, how much he wants to do unto Gul Madred what was done to him. He knows it’s not right, and yet he’s not able—not willing—to let go of his anger.

“Papa?”

“Oui, Louis?”

“I don’t think I want to be angry all the time either.”

His voice is small, defeated.

Picard strokes his thumb along Louis’s cheekbone. “I’m here, Louis. I’ll help you.”

Even if it means I have to help myself first.

The door chimes, and Picard nearly jumps out of his skin. He and Louis break apart and look at each other.

Will.

Picard forgot, lost track of time.

“If you’re not ready—” he starts.

But Louis sets his jaw. “I’m ready.”

Picard is holding him by the shoulders. His color is back up, he’s no longer trembling, and he’s breathing normally again; Picard doesn’t know if they avoided a panic attack, or if they rode it out together.

“How do you feel?” he asks.

“I’m okay, papa. I don’t feel sick.”

Picard takes a deep breath and nods, then he gives Louis’s shoulders a squeeze before standing. To his surprise, Louis stands with him, slipping his hand into Picard’s. They go to the door together, and Picard opens it to reveal both Will and Deanna. Deanna doesn’t acknowledge Picard but instead peers intently at Louis.

Louis stares back—Picard wonders from how far off Deanna was able to sense his emotions—then offers her a smile. “I’m okay.”

Her expression immediately softens, and she leans forward to cup both of his cheeks and kiss his hair, an action delightfully reminiscent of Beverly’s earlier performance of the same acts.

Louis’s smile is twice the size when Deanna pulls away and neatly steps past him into their quarters.

“Captain, with your permission I’d like to make us some drinks.”

Picard’s a bit caught off guard, but he gives her a mild, “Of course, Counselor.”

And then it’s just Will, and Will’s beaming down at Louis.

“Hello,” he says, with what passes for a quiet voice with him.

“Hello,” Louis returns.

“I probably don’t have to introduce myself to you, do I?”

Louis shakes his head. “Non, I know who you are.”

Will glances over Louis’s head, towards the living area. “Can I come in?”

Someone—probably Deanna—must have informed him that his height is intimidating—or at the very least that it causes neck pain, for he goes straight to one of the armchairs and sits down. Deanna may also have informed him that he should adopt open body language so as to appear nonthreatening, though Picard thinks that’s just how Will naturally sits: knees spread wide, hands resting on his thighs.

Picard closes the door and follows Louis towards the couch—but Louis halts directly in front of Will.

“You…” Louis pauses, gathers himself. “The other you—my…my uncle Will—saved me. I never got to tell him thank you.”

“Well,” Will says slowly, “I’m not your Will Riker, but if it would help, you can thank me instead.”

Surprising Picard once again, Louis steps forward and throws his arms around Will’s neck. Will doesn’t hesitate to return the hug, wearing that expression of shocked bemusement that’s quite unique to him.

The hug lasts long enough for Picard to realize he doesn’t know if Will wants children of his own someday. Will certainly has an ease with them that Picard could never manage, and Louis calls his Will Riker ‘uncle’, implying a close relationship.

Picard’s always…isolated himself, kept his crew at arm’s length. But he doesn’t want Louis to feel alone; he wants the boy to feel he has family here, a network of love and support he can rely on beyond Picard.

It may be time for Picard to end his self-imposed seclusion, for Louis’s sake.

(A daunting proposition.)

Deanna joins them then. She presses a mug of earl grey into Picard’s hands and sets two additional mugs on the coffee table before claiming the remaining armchair.

Louis steps back from Will but keeps his hands on Will’s shoulders.

“Do you play the trombone?” he asks seriously.

Will grins. “I do. Data told us your mother was a musician. Do you play an instrument?”

Grey eyes flick to Picard and then back. “I play piano.”

Play, Picard notes. Present tense, not past. He didn’t mention practicing piano as part of his daily routine, but given his response when Data handed him the rolled up piano, Picard wouldn’t be surprised if Louis purposely left it out.

“Piano!” Will gushes. “That’s wonderful.”

Louis’s cheeks turn a delicate shade of pink.

“Maybe you and I could play together sometime,” Will suggests. “Do you like jazz?”

Louis shrugs. “Sometimes.”

Will quirks an eyebrow, eyes wide. “Only sometimes?”

Unabashedly, Louis nods, though there’s a mischievous twist to his mouth.

“You know, Captain,” Deanna says, in a tone that causes every muscle in Picard’s back to seize instantly. “You could invite Will to play with you sometime. You could perform a duet.”

Will looks at Picard. “You play an instrument, sir?”

“He plays the flute,” Deanna supplies, before Picard can deflect.

There must be a conspiracy to tease him in front of his son, as Beverly, Guinan, and Deanna all seem to delight in doing just that.

Whatever it takes, Picard thinks. Whatever it takes to keep Louis forging connections, becoming more comfortable, becoming himself, growing into the person he was meant to be.

-/-

There’s a medical emergency in sick bay and Beverly can’t join them for dinner. Picard feels her absence like a piece of him is missing and left behind, but focusing on the conversation between Louis and Guinan helps take his mind off of it.

Louis is as inquisitive as ever, with a seemingly inexhaustible supply of questions for Guinan, all of which she answers both good-humoredly and with humor. As Picard expected, Guinan doesn’t treat Louis any differently than before she knew his story.

When they return to their quarters, Louis turns to Picard expectantly, and Picard knows there’s no hope of getting away with not playing the flute.

Not that he doesn’t want to play. He’s just nervous.

Picard retrieves the Ressikan flute from its case and carries it reverently to one of the armchairs. He feels Louis’s attention on him, an excruciating weight. He doesn’t know why performing fills him with such dread. It always has. It’s why he gave up the piano as a child. But he dearly hopes to hear Louis play for him someday, so he knows he must power through it, share his music—share himself—so that Louis might feel comfortable doing the same.

Just as Picard sits, the door chimes. The sound freezes his blood.

No.

Louis was on his way to examine the flute, but he pivots and trots to answer the door.

It’s Beverly. Of course it’s Beverly.

She’s out of uniform, wearing an oversized blue sweater with a wide neck that reveals her collarbones and most of her shoulders.

“I’m sorry I missed dinner,” she says—breathlessly, as if she rushed here. “I thought I could join you for dessert? I brought a clootie dumpling. I hope that’s okay.”

For a moment, he’s so distracted by the glimpse of skin that he forgets to be terrified, he doesn’t see the smirk, the raised brow, or the glint in her eye.

“Am I…interrupting something?”

He meets her gaze. This feels worse than her catching him in the bath. He’d rather that than this. The Ressikan flute, his music…it’s far more revealing of him than his naked body.

Louis, naturally, is completely unaware of his discomfort. He grins and takes Beverly’s hand, pulling her into their quarters.

“Papa is going to play the flute. Come listen.”

This, Picard thinks, may very well be what kills him.

#star trek: tng #star trek: the next generation #tng #star trek fic #tng fic #star trek #the next generation #picard #picard fic

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insideline · 2 years

Text

wrote a drabble of yuki + liam on call discussing fernando's silly little crush. read below cut!

"Liam. I think Fernando is flirting with me."

Liam doesn't respond for a good three seconds. It might just be the Discord ping delay, but the silence sounds judgmental.

"Mate, you're joking right?" Liam's voice pitches up high at the end, slightly muffled like his mic is too close to his mouth.

Yuki is not joking. He's being more serious than a drivetrain failure during the formation lap. Which is to say, he's living through a joke that's only a joke for everyone that isn't involved.

Yuki shakes his head, then remembers Liam can't see him.

"Seriously man! Like have you heard the way he says my name? Like Yooki. And he keeps sending heart reacts to my Instagram stories."

"Zhou's gonna lose it." Liam sounds like he's on the brink of tears laughing.

No way Liam is thinking about Zhou right now.

"Well, like. Do you like it?" Liam asks.

"That's the problem." Yuki rubs his eyes. It's too late to be talking about this. He needs a Red Bull. And to make Q3 on Saturday. "I think I do."

Huh. He's never said that out loud.

"Okay, then go have sex with him," Liam says.

"I'm not just going to have sex with Fernando Alonso!"

"Why not? You can make Pierre jealous on the way."

Liam has some reason there. Pierre's been so clingy with Charles lately. Just because it's the French GP doesn't mean Pierre can ignore Yuki like that.

"Smart." Yuki trails off into silence. He really should head to bed. Noel is going to kill him if he's late again tomorrow.

"Alright, update me yeah? I want details but I also want to sleep," Liam says. "Goodnight Yuki."

Yuki knows Liam's lying about wanting sleep. He always says that to save Yuki from being the one to end the conversation.

"Night."

Yuki pushes his headphones off with more force than necessary. He closes his laptop, takes two steps and collapses in bed. Maybe the tiny motorhomes have some use.

What a mess.

#can you tell i dont know liam lawson at all andi m only absorbing characterization through fic lol #f1 fic #fic stuff #my fic #lawsonoda #tsunando #<- i have no idea if those are the actual ship names but we ball #uhh hint of #yukierre #hmm this is very random and untimely. but we ball

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halothenthehorns · 1 year

Text

Chapter 11: CLARISSE BLOWS UP EVERYTHING

"You guys just sit back and chill-ax," Will told, tugging on Nico's sleeve hopefully. "Magnus has been getting snacks, so we'll just grab some of everything and bring it back too!"

"Is that what those jokes about a buffet were?" Percy asked, he was the least motivated to crawl out of his beanbag as fatigue was already setting in again. Whoever said words don't hurt had never read this book!

The others gave it no passing thought as Thalia lounged back comfortably too, staring up at the shadowed ceiling and twirling her bracelet around with a pensive look. Jason went over to see Hearth, Magnus, and Alex were already having one of their ASL talks.

Nico waited until he was sure Percy was out of earshot in the first room with a fridge before asking, "so did Zeus really go from denying Kronos is coming back to blaming it on Chiron in the span of a year?"

"No, Kronos is his dad," Will admitted with a sad smile, already pulling out a whole pizza with different toppings every other slice. "He doesn't like to talk about it much, but, yeah. That's why they blamed Thalia's tree on Chiron instead. Messed up, huh?" He pulled out a pile of perfectly gooey, melted s'mores next.

"I'll say," he scowled for the friendly enough centaur, even if the head of activities had always given him the same uneasy look as everyone else in that camp about what to do with him, at least Chiron had never been outright rude to him.

In this short time, Will had already pulled out a wide assortment of food, practically covering the bed in as many options as he could think of, watching Nico intently the whole time. He hadn't once reached for anything though, so Will asked just to be sure, "anything specific you're going to want?"

Nico resisted the urge to roll his eyes as he plucked up a singular french-fry. "This'll do." He tried to smile like he was hoping Will would laugh it off. He should have known better at this point.

"You've got to eat down here," his scowl seemed to have more weight than anybody else Nico had met, perhaps because it set so firmly into his face, an effort to keep it there instead of his natural smiles.

"No, I don't," he said back without concern. "Child of Hades thing, I don't need to eat as much as-" the lie was passing easily from his mouth, he could barely remember a time he wasn't lying to somebody after Bianca's death.

"Bullshit," Will called out at once, and Nico stopped dead, the french-fry fell from his fingers. He felt such a shock rock through him he glanced over his shoulder to make sure Thalia hadn't appeared.

He didn't ask how Will knew he was lying. Instead, he threw him a bone, the least he could do after Will had been so friendly to him. "It, it's for practice," he finally relented. Couldn't tell him to much, it was still weird to him why Will was asking at all.

"Practice," he repeated, drawing the word out uncomfortably like a hiss, but it didn't even cross Nico's mind to mock him right now.

"Yeah, I'm going on a trip, and might not get food around every corner. Relax, I'll eat something small later." Tartarus probably didn't have magical refrigerators to quench his every desire, he actually needed to make a pit stop to find those seeds just in case this took to long-

"Nico," Will sounded so angry he startled and looked around for a monster before those piercing blue eyes kept looking right at him. "You're always off on some trip! You need to come back to camp, ask for a quest to do this right, let me, somebody help!"

"I don't need your help!" He instantly snapped back, but there was no force to his words for the touch of concern still resonating in him Will had said that at all. "You, you don't even know what you're asking for."

"Then tell me. I'll help." Will didn't look away, didn't even flinch from meeting his gaze, had just blindly signed up for a trip to Tartarus! Will Solace was officially the most frustrating, stubborn person Nico had ever met, and he laughed. Percy and Chiron might actually kick him out of Camp officially if they heard if he was trying to draw anybody else into this. Reason number two he needed to go alone.

Will raised an unimpressed brow, and Nico once again sidestepped by lightly fibbing, "that's not necessary, Jason has some friends, I'll figure it out with them."

"Oh," Will finally deflated and looked ready to let it go, which somehow made Nico feel worse than if he'd tried to insist anyways. Idiot, he chastised himself. He'd never survive down there.

Nico swiped up a fried chicken leg blindly and walked out before he had to make any more half-promises.

Will watched him go with the strangest feeling he usually only got while watching Katie Gardner flirt with Connor Stoll. Jealous.

He doesn't need you along, he reminded himself as he picked the rest of the food up to follow. You'd just slow him down, barely ever leaving camp and having no real clue what was out there. Jason probably had some healing friend too, at least he was getting help from someone. What little comfort he did take from that thought carried him into putting all the plates out on the table, smiling and waving off the thanks from the others it had literally been no trouble.

Then he saw Jason and Nico whispering quietly, Nico was picking off little bits of the fried skin and chicken and eating normally enough, so he instantly turned away. He really was happy if Nico had made a friend with the weird kid who kept using Roman names, and he wouldn't keep bothering Nico now. He snatched up the book and decided he wasn't very hungry himself as he started reading before even Percy had finished his first plate.

"That wasn't a very long lunch," Magnus said in surprise to see Will shuffling pages around the book. He hadn't even gotten the chance to tell Hearthstone maybe he'd like a nap, but at least Jason hadn't stuck around long.

Alex was already laughing at the new chapter title though as he grabbed up a bowl of real, deep fried, not-kale chips and slathered them in chili while calling to Percy, "careful Perce, or she might take your title away!"

"Didn't she just blow up everything?" Percy seemed to be agreeing, snatching pepperoni floating around him from his destroyed pizza before they could settle on the plate. "What else is left? A whale?"

"Hopefully not the quest itself," Jason sighed as he flopped back into his seat with a bowl of fruit.

"Just keep practicing those first six," Magnus told Alex when he sat back down. "I'll quiz you later."

"Done deal," he winked again and turned to Will, leaving Magnus staring at the side of his head with no urge to do the same.

"You are in so much trouble," Clarisse said.

"Story of my life," Percy nodded without surprise.

"What's Tantalus going to do, drown you in bar-b-q sauce?" But there was a note of unease in Magnus's voice like he wasn't sure if he was kidding or not as he did drag his eyes away from Alex.

"Hopefully I won't have to find out," Percy sighed as he rubbed at his temple. If all went well, the tree should have been healed and Chiron should have gotten his job back! If not, well, he wasn't sure he wanted to hear the other outcomes.

We'd just finished a ship tour we didn't want,

"Was it straight to the poop deck?" Alex asked. "Wait, or the stockade? What's ship prison called?"

"The brigadier," Percy at least knew why this information came naturally to him, "or the brig for short. Haven't you ever seen a pirate movie? The captain always says take him to the brig at least once."

"Must have missed those," Alex shrugged, though he looked plenty interested in changing that.

Nico was looking at Percy again, and being as invisible as usual as he bit his lip against the urge to go to his side and laugh about all the awesome pirate stories he'd made up himself. Percy would just laugh at him, or laugh him off, and gods forbid he ever get that close to him without combusting.

through dark rooms overcrowded with dead sailors. We'd seen the coal bunker, the boilers and engine, which huffed and groaned like it would explode any minute.

Percy winced uneasily and the last of his crust fell to the floor. He'd lost his appetite all of a sudden, and Thalia biting her lip and not looking at him wasn't a promising indication.

We'd seen the pilothouse and the powder magazine and gunnery deck (Clarisse's favorite) with two Dahlgren smoothbore cannons on the port and starboard sides and a Brooke nine-inch rifled gun fore and aft—all specially refitted to fire celestial bronze cannon balls.

Jason's eyes were glazed over by then like he couldn't decide if that was the coolest battleship he'd ever heard of, or the strangest. He knew with absolute confidence he'd never been on a boat before regardless, so probably the first.

Nico couldn't help an amused snort at the expression. He didn't know much about that Roman camp, but he'd already picked up on the uneasy look's Jason had given Percy nearly every time his dad was mentioned; he didn't seem to be a fan of Neptune. He'd probably avoided the sea like Percy did the air. Jason had bounced up the second he'd entered the room and been asking him with great eagerness what he did know about the Sea of Monsters though, so hopefully his curiosity would eventually trump misgivings. It hadn't been much though, so Jason was back to watching Will intently the moment his mind had finished imagining it all.

Will didn't seem to be reading with as much bubbliness as usual though, and everyone was noticing. Nico sat back in his seat with surprising guilt he told himself to ignore, he'd done nothing wrong by making sure everybody stayed out of this until he came back with proof of Gaea, then he'd take all the help he could get.

Everywhere we went, dead Confederate sailors stared at us, their ghostly bearded faces shimmering over their skulls. They approved of Annabeth because she told them she was from Virginia. They were interested in me, too, because my name was Jackson—like the Southern general—but then I ruined it by telling them I was from New York. They all hissed and muttered curses about Yankees.

"Can't say I was really rooting for them to like me, but them disliking me feels more foreboding," Percy muttered.

Will smiled without humor as he remembered the boat being summoned in the harbor and Silena wishing Clarisse good luck. One of the ghosts had asked if she was related to P.G.T Beauregard* as Clarisse was packing to go aboard and she'd run off as if offended.

Tyson was terrified of them. All through the tour, he insisted Annabeth hold his hand, which she didn't look too thrilled about.

"I'm not much of a hand-holder myself," Alex sympathized, "but he did just save her from a Hydra! If that's all he wants in return, it's nice she's helping him."

It was probably the nicest thing Alex he'd said while here.

Finally, we were escorted to dinner. The CSS Birmingham captain's quarters were about the size of a walk-in closet, but still much bigger than any other room on board. The table was set with white linen and china.

"I've never had a walk-in closet, you can fit a table in them?" Magnus seemed to be struggling with this as much as he did some monsters.

"We had to suck it in to sit in the chairs smashed against the wall, not exactly luxury," Percy disagreed what 'fit'.

Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, potato chips, and Dr. Peppers were served by skeletal crewmen. I didn't want to eat anything served by ghosts, but my hunger overruled my fear.

"I don't get it," Nico said, looking around at the others and trying not to especially watch Percy. "If they're summoned back right they're practically normal. Can drive, cook, hold weapons or anything."

"I'm concerned why you know that," Jason admitted.

Nico froze as he realized he was getting a little to comfortable down here, again, and opened his mouth with a quick lie coming to mind when-

"Just part of the pranks that go around camp," Will shrugged, emphasizing the no big deal of it. "Percy hasn't been around them as much, but the Ares campers love to brag about it when they occasionally manage it."

"That was terrifying, thank you," Magnus shivered.

Nico still didn't get it and now felt even more like a freak of nature as clearly he was the only one, but a rush of gratitude swept most of that aside as Will had gone right back to reading like nothing had happened, and even more, Thalia and Percy exchanged a curious look but clearly weren't going to contradict that.

"Tantalus expelled you for eternity," Clarisse told us smugly. "Mr. D said if any of you show your face at camp again, he'll turn you into squirrels and run you over with his SUV."

"Sounds like a waste of gas when he could make a tiger appear to do it," Alex pointed out, and yep that was more on brand.

"I'm sure Grover will agree when we get him back," Percy rolled his eyes.

"Did they give you this ship?" I asked.

"'Course not. My father did."

"Ares?"

Clarisse sneered. "You think your daddy is the only one with sea power? The spirits on the losing side of every war owe a tribute to Ares. That's their curse for being defeated. I prayed to my father for a naval transport and here it is. These guys will do anything I tell them. Won't you, Captain?"

"Woah," Jason said in appreciation, now that sounded like something he could wrap his head around about Mars.

The captain stood behind her looking stiff and angry. His glowing green eyes fixed me with a hungry stare. "If it means an end to this infernal war, ma'am, peace at last, we'll do anything. Destroy anyone."

"None of that made this existing feel any better," Magnus clarified with an 'ugh,' face.

'Remind me later how much you dislike ghosts when I tell you about einherjar,' Hearth told him with an amusing smile that didn't amuse Magnus. He'd finger spelled that last word and then showed him the sign for it which did nothing to encourage him.

Clarisse smiled. "Destroy anyone. I like that."

"Of course she does," Percy sighed, "like everybody on this quest?" Where were the other two companions she was supposed to have, hopefully more sensible kids from camp!

Tyson gulped.

"Clarisse," Annabeth said, "Luke might be after the Fleece, too. We saw him. He's got the coordinates and he's heading south. He has a cruise ship full of monsters—"

"Good! I'll blow him out of the water."

"I will pause to admire her confidence," Will told with an almost natural smile again as he punned his own name, causing the others to groan and Nico to roll his eyes at him.

"You don't understand," Annabeth said. We have to combine forces. Let us help you—"

"No!" Clarisse pounded the table. "This is my quest, smart girl! Finally I get to be the hero, and you two will not steal my chance."

Thalia couldn't imagine how that must feel, to often being forced into the center of attention thanks to her dad whether she wanted to be or not. She was sorry for Clarisse though, and might not be alive right now without her making it back alone, so she couldn't scoff to much at the childish idea to her of wanting to impress.

"Where are your cabin mates?" I asked. "You were allowed to take two friends with you, weren't you?"

"They didn't ... I let them stay behind. To protect the camp."

'Does not play well with others' was one of the first things they'd realized about this girl back when she'd first tried to induct Percy into the toilet royalty, but this was a new extreme. Had her own siblings, everybody at camp refused to go? Was it just faith Percy would come back and save them all before Clarisse had left the state of New York?

"You mean even the people in your own cabin wouldn't help you?"

"Shut up, Prissy! I don't need them! Or you!"

Sounds lonely, Jason kept to himself. A gut feeling told him he'd been on quests, but there was something in that same feeling that made him question if he'd been alone on them too...or at the very least felt this burden Clarisse was shouldering alone.

"Clarisse," I said, "Tantalus is using you. He doesn't care about the camp. He'd love to see it destroyed. He's setting you up to fail."

"No! I don't care what the Oracle—" She stopped her-self.

"Not another one of those things!" Magnus protested.

"I'm curious if Annabeth or Percy did ask for this same quest if they'd have gotten the same prophecy," Alex admitted.

"That's a really good question," Will considered. "The future is a tangled mess, my dad's tried explaining it a few times and it's just a pure headache. Theoretically the outcome is dependent on who partakes in the quest, but prophecies have been in place for centuries before they come true which means some parts of them are set points in time that must happen." Clarisse had never told anyone her prophecy though, so he couldn't be any more certain.

"Well, we all know that thing's got more double meaning than a riddle, homo phone-"

"Homophone," Magnus corrected.

"So we won't know until we finish," Percy finished with an exasperated look at Annabeth's cousin.

"What?" I said. "What did the Oracle tell you?"

"Nothing." Clarisse's ears turned pink. "All you need to know is that I'm finishing this quest and you're not helping. On the other hand, I can't let you go ..."

"So we're prisoners?" Annabeth asked.

"Guests. For now."

Percy twitched uncomfortably at the idea of being an involuntary guest, again. First the hotel, now this, not to mention where he was currently trapped. Could he go just one year of his life without being held prisoner?

Clarisse propped her feet up on the white linen tablecloth and opened another Dr. Pepper.

The snide comment was on the tip of Alex's tongue Clarisse would get along with Luke with that kind of display, but he bit it off and amazingly didn't say it. He remembered Annabeth saying last year how the campers who lived there year around were the ones who went to visit Olympus, and had specifically named Luke and Clarisse. Now she'd been betrayed in a sense by both of them back to back. Annabeth might not be here, but she had a suspicion Will at least was a year-rounder as well as often as he called that camp his home, so that was probably why he was being a little more stiff than usual while reading.

"Captain, take them below. Assign them hammocks on the berth deck. If they don't mind their manners, show them how we deal with enemy spies."

"I have a feeling it'll involve something worse than old plumbing this time too," Thalia said grimly. Clarisse hadn't tried to pull that stunt on her the winter she'd been there, but it wasn't for lack of spirit on creativity the few times she had seen the daughter of Ares making some kind of war plans about being underground.

The dream came as soon as I fell asleep.

Grover was sitting at his loom, desperately unraveling his wedding train, when the boulder door rolled aside and the Cyclops bellowed, "Aha!"

Percy yelped as loud as Grover had. No, not yet! He hadn't enough time-

Will kept reading in that same calm, soothing way he had about himself. Everything was going to be okay, he seemed to be silently assuring even if he had to deliver the worst news.

Grover yelped. "Dear! I didn't—you were so quiet!"

"Unraveling!" Polyphemus roared. "So that's the problem!"

"Oh, no. I—I wasn't—"

"Come!" Polyphemus grabbed Grover around the waist and half carried, half dragged him through the tunnels of the cave. Grover struggled to keep his high heels on his hooves. His veil kept tilting on his head, threatening to come off.

Percy's hands were twitching in frustration as he chanted in his head not to reach for his pen, not to jump in and help. Just because he wasn't dead didn't mean Grover wasn't still trapped, that he'd never made it away from this horrible place!

The Cyclops pulled him into a warehouse-size cavern decorated with sheep junk. There was a wool-covered La-Z-Boy recliner and a wool-covered television set, crude bookshelves loaded with sheep collectibles—coffee mugs shaped like sheep faces, plaster figurines of sheep, sheep board games, and picture books and action figures. The floor was littered with piles of sheep bones, and other bones that didn't look exactly like sheep—the bones of satyrs who'd come to the island looking for Pan.

"I never wanted the answer of what would happen when you cross disturbingly isolated sheep farmer and little old ladies," Alex frowned. He wasn't the only one, they were all feeling a little jittery about that last detail. Thalia had lived on the streets long enough to be grateful the monsters disintegrated when killed for more than one reason, and it wasn't just ease of the mist covering it up. She didn't want to see that either, now here Grover was witnessing the worst.

\Polyphemus set Grover down only long enough to move another huge boulder. Daylight streamed into the cave, and Grover whimpered with longing. Fresh air!

A concept being denied to all of them now they all fought back a whimper for. One of those basic commodities you don't appreciate until you can't step outside your own front door and indulge in whenever you wanted.

The Cyclops dragged him outside to a hilltop overlooking the most beautiful island I'd ever seen.

It was shaped kind of like a saddle cut in half by an ax. There were lush green hills on either side and a wide valley in the middle, split by a deep chasm that was spanned by a rope bridge.

Beautiful streams rolled to the edge of the canyon and dropped off in rainbow-colored waterfalls. Parrots fluttered in the trees. Pink and purple flowers bloomed on the bushes.

Hundreds of sheep grazed in the meadows, their wool glinting strangely like copper and silver coins.

And at the center of the island, right next to the rope bridge, was an enormous twisted oak tree with something glittering in its lowest bough.

The Golden Fleece.

Even in a dream, I could feel its power radiating across the island, making the grass greener, the flowers more beautiful. I could almost smell the nature magic at work. I could only imagine how powerful the scent would be for a satyr.

Grover whimpered.

"This is an epic setting for the monster movie we could get going," Alex fluttered his hands like a movie director prompting his shot. "The clashing settings of the inside of his home and that landscape, expectation subversion and horror. Guy's sitting on a goldmine."

"I'm sure Hollywood would love your pitch," Percy told him in exasperation.

"Yes," Polyphemus said proudly. "See over there? Fleece is the prize of my collection! Stole it from heroes long ago, and ever since—free food! Satyrs come from all over the world, like moths to flame. Satyrs good eating! And now—"

Polyphemus scooped up a wicked set of bronze shears.

Riptide was in his hand without any call on his part, he could not just sit here and let that thing kill Grover while he slept- but then Thalia snatched his elbow and yanked him back into his seat, putting a plate of cheese enchiladas onto his lap.

"Eat, Jackson," she ordered. "Grover won't forgive you if you let those go to waste."

Percy's head was buzzing unpleasantly as he made his blade vanish back into his pocket and stabbed the first bite. She hadn't said he was okay, but he took the feeling implied by her words close to heart.

Grover yelped, but Polyphemus just picked up the nearest sheep like it was a stuffed animal and shaved off its wool. He handed a fluffy mass of it to Grover.

"Put that on the spinning wheel!" he said proudly. "Magic. Cannot be unraveled."

"Worst wedding present ever," Alex wasn't so sure he meant that though, it could be fun to work with.

"Hope he's not expecting some stellar dowry to make up for all this trouble," Nico said drolly.

"Oh ... well ..."

"Poor Honeypie!" Polyphemus grinned. "Bad weaver. Ha-ha! Not to worry. That thread will solve problem. Finish wedding train by tomorrow!"

"Isn't that ... thoughtful of you!"

"Hehe."

"But—but, dear," Grover gulped, "what if someone were to rescue—I mean attack this island?" Grover looked straight at me, and I knew he was asking for my benefit. "What would keep them from marching right up here to your cave?"

"Wifey scared! So cute! Not to worry. Polyphemus has state-of-the-art security system. Have to get through my pets."

"Pets?"

Grover looked across the island, but there was nothing to see except sheep grazing peacefully in the meadows.

"Now if they were llamas, I'd be a little more frightened," Jason looked around carefully to make sure he wasn't missing something, "but sheep?"

"Are there greek stories about killer sheep?" Magnus more clearly asked.

"I'm just going to assume yes," Percy sighed when he realized nobody was going to get an answer as he kept eyes on his plate.

"And then," Polyphemus growled, "they would have to get through me!"

He pounded his fist against the nearest rock, which cracked and split in half.

'I think I'd take him over the sheep though,' Hearth admitted. There was definitely a forbidding look on Thalia, Will, and Nico's face when prompted before that had nothing on that impact.

'I'm reserving judgment,' Magnus would rather not deal with either if he could get away with it.

"Now, come!" he shouted. "Back to the cave."

Grover looked about ready to cry—so close to freedom, but so hopelessly far. Tears welled in his eyes as the boulder door rolled shut, sealing him once again in the stinky torch-lit dankness of the Cyclops's cave.

Percy had had a good night's sleep with no nightmares, as much food at his disposal as he could want, and even friends surrounding him during this ordeal. As miserable, useless, and drained as he already felt again having no way to get back, all he wanted as he watched the half-empty plate be whisked away was to give his best friend a hug when he saw him again.

I woke to alarm bells ringing throughout the ship.

The captain's gravelly voice: "All hands on deck! Find Lady Clarisse! Where is that girl?"

"Probably on her way to destroy that guy for calling her Lady Clarisse," Nico said confidently, making Will snort beside him and grin again.

Then his ghostly face appeared above me. "Get up, Yankee.

"At least he didn't call you Yankee doodle," Alex offered.

Percy tapped his temple in frustration for a moment to the bafflement of all of them as he tried to explain what memory that could have jogged, "I think Annabeth once told me the backstory of that weird song."

"Remind me to ask," Magnus said eagerly.

Your friends are already above. We are approaching the entrance."

"The entrance to what?"

He gave me a skeletal smile. "The Sea of Monsters, of course."

"Is there going to be a moat around the ocean?" Jason was clearly still struggling a bit with this. "An archway in the middle of nowhere uselessly warning people away? A Do Not Enter Sign on a buoy?"

"I like your answers better than what's there," Thalia chuckled.

I stuffed my few belongings that had survived the Hydra into a sailor's canvas knapsack and slung it over my shoulder. I had a sneaking suspicion that one way or another I would not be spending another night aboard the CSS Birmingham.

"I should really have a talk with Clarisse's lack of hospitality scaring you off," Will agreed sardonically.

"I wish I had that feeling now," Percy sighed.

I was on my way upstairs when something made me freeze. A presence nearby—something familiar and unpleasant. For no particular reason, I felt like picking a fight. I wanted to punch a dead Confederate.

"I mean, usually you don't need outside help to have that feeling if you're a decent human being, but..." Magnus trailed off uncomfortably for where they now realized Clarisse might be.

The last time I'd felt like that kind of anger ...

Instead of going up, I crept to the edge of the ventilation grate and peered down into the boiler deck. Clarisse was standing right below me, talking to an image that shimmered in the steam from the boilers—a muscular man in black leather biker clothes, with a military haircut, red-tinted sunglasses, and a knife strapped to his side.

My fists clenched. It was my least favorite Olympian: Ares, the god of war.

"A feeling I can't even disagree with, which is really saying something considering the other contenders we've heard of," Jason muttered with a very put-out look. The Mars/ Ares debate still raged in the back of his mind even if it had quieted some since Ares's defeat. Always worse than any of the other gods shown, and hardest yet to shake when he was on display like right now.

"I don't want excuses, little girl!" he growled.

"Y-yes, father," Clarisse mumbled.

"You don't want to see me mad, do you?"

"No, father."

"No, father," Ares mimicked. "You're pathetic. I should've let one of my sons take this quest."

A shockwave couldn't have reverberated through the room with more power, the insult felt like a slap to each of them whether they'd experienced such horrible words personally or not. None of them had really been able to claim to like Clarisse much, but she'd shown at the very least she wasn't a bad person.

A comment like that even made those not in the know if Clarisse might be Luke's spy in the camp. It was just such a horrible thing to say, she was out here by herself risking her life to save a dying camp the two people in charge of it couldn't be bothered to care about only to have that thrown out? Who wouldn't turn against the gods?

"I'll succeed!" Clarisse promised, her voice trembling. "I'll make you proud."

"You'd better," he warned. "You asked me for this quest, girl. If you let that slimeball Jackson kid steal it from you—"

"But the Oracle said—"

"I DON'T CARE WHAT IT SAID!" Ares bellowed with such force that his image shimmered. "You will succeed. And if you don't ..."

He raised his fist. Even though he was only a figure in the steam, Clarisse flinched.

Percy had nearly destroyed the planet seeing his mom in such a state, the least he could do was contemplate drowning Ares without mercy now as he imagined storming in there to show this god just what he'd planned to do to Gabe in that moment.

"Do we understand each other?" Ares growled.

The alarm bells rang again. I heard voices coming toward me, officers yelling orders to ready the cannons.

I crept back from the ventilation grate and made my way upstairs to join Annabeth and Tyson on the spar deck.

"What's wrong?" Annabeth asked me. "Another dream?"

I nodded, but I didn't say anything. I didn't know what to think about what I'd seen downstairs. It bothered me almost as much as the dream about Grover.

Jason wished he could go back and reread his chapter about Percy stabbing Ares a couple more times now as that moment solidified in his head what nothing yet had. Whatever the gods were to him, it wasn't this. He wanted to go home. He would take Nico up on that offer and find out who Mars, Jupiter, and his gods really were to him.

Clarisse came up the stairs right after me. I tried not to look at her.

She grabbed a pair of binoculars from a zombie officer and peered toward the horizon. "At last. Captain, full steam ahead!"

This, at least, was Clarisse in her natural state. Will could barely imagine her as scared as Grover in the face of that monster, how he now wished he'd volunteered to go on this quest with her and get between her and Ares when somebody had needed to. At least she had come back a conquering hero, but he now feared how her own father would have punished her if she hadn't.

His eyes flickered to Nico and away, but he bit his tongue to stop himself asking if Hades was demanding anything similar. He'd been told to butt out and was getting help from Jason.

I looked in the same direction as she was, but I couldn't see much. The sky was overcast. The air was hazy and humid, like steam from an iron. If I squinted real hard, I could just make out a couple of dark fuzzy splotches in the distance.

My nautical senses told me we were somewhere off the coast of northern Florida, so we'd come a long way overnight, farther than any mortal ship should've been able to travel.

The engine groaned as we increased speed.

Tyson muttered nervously, "Too much strain on the pistons. Not meant for deep water."

Alex cleared his throat uneasily. It didn't feel right to be making trivial comments after hearing that, but he imagined if Clarisse had been here she'd be telling them all to quit gawping already. "How literally were we supposed to take that chapter title?"

"That's never a good thing to be asking," Percy reminded with an uncharacteristic coldness to his voice, his face as drawn and tight as if he were living a nightmare.

I wasn't sure how he knew that, but it made me nervous.

After a few more minutes, the dark splotches ahead of us came into focus. To the north, a huge mass of rock rose out of the sea—an island with cliffs at least a hundred feet tall. About half a mile south of that, the other patch of darkness was a storm brewing. The sky and sea boiled together in a roaring mass.

Percy felt a tingling sensation across the back of his neck and glanced at the ceiling before shaking it off and scolding himself for such thoughts. He wouldn't be able to feel something like that no matter who his dad was, but the thought didn't entirely fade from his mind there was a storm brewing, and it wasn't in Florida.

"Hurricane?" Annabeth asked.

"No," Clarisse said. "Charybdis."

Annabeth paled. "Are you crazy?"

"Jealous Percy?" Thalia grinned. "I thought Annabeth only asked you that."

"If something hasn't blossomed between her and Clarisse yet, I like my chances," Percy scoffed at her.

"Only way into the Sea of Monsters. Straight between Charybdis and her sister Scylla."

Clarisse pointed to the top of the cliffs, and I got the feeling something lived up there that I did not want to meet.

"Or would come back from meeting," Will assured. These were primordial monsters, one of the firsts. Whether a child of Gaea or Oceanus didn't seem clear, but he knew Percy could not kill them. Even if anaklusmos pierced them, they would never vanish long enough to make a difference.

"What do you mean the only way?" I asked. "The sea is wide open! Just sail around them."

Clarisse rolled her eyes. "Don't you know anything? If I tried to sail around them, they would just appear in my path again. If you want to get into the Sea of Monsters, you have to sail through them."

'Talk about your rock and a hard place,' Hearth protested.

"I hate magic," Magnus agreed.

"Thank you!" Percy waved at him in relief someone else had finally said it.

"What about the Clashing Rocks?" Annabeth said. "That's another gateway. Jason used it."

"I can't blow apart rocks with my cannons," Clarisse said. "Monsters, on the other hand ..."

"I swear she makes this difficult on purpose," Nico groaned.

"If she'd said something like her ship wasn't fast enough to beat the Symplegades, I'd understand," Jason agreed without thinking, "but this," he sighed at the idea that girl needed some strategy in her life. He was still waiting for that epic team up she and Annabeth could destroy anything together, this could have been a great moment to show that.

"Well she didn't bring a dove, so it's probably a moot point," Thalia reminded. Clarisse wouldn't listen to anybody else on this regardless of what path she'd picked.

"You are crazy," Annabeth decided.

"She can have that title as long as she doesn't make a bid for my Lordship next," Percy huffed. He had a really, really bad feeling about this.

"Watch and learn, Wise Girl." Clarisse turned to the captain. "Set course for Charybdis!"

"Aye, m'lady."

The engine groaned, the iron plating rattled, and the ship began to pick up speed.

"Clarisse," I said, "Charybdis sucks up the sea. Isn't that the story?"

"And spits it back out again, yeah."

"That doesn't mean you survive the trip!" Alex spluttered she seemed to be overlooking that important detail.

"What about Scylla?"

"She lives in a cave, up on those cliffs. If we get too close, her snaky heads will come down and start plucking sailors off the ship."

"Choose Scylla then," I said. "Everybody goes below deck and we chug right past."

"No!" Clarisse insisted. "If Scylla doesn't get her easy meat, she might pick up the whole ship.

"Then leave the ghosts up there to stall," Nico reminded, "free bait."

"Now see, that's a use I can almost get behind these things existing," Magnus nodded.

Besides, she's too high to make a good target. My cannons can't shoot straight up. Charybdis just sits there at the center of her whirlwind.

It was impossible to imagine what on earth sort of mortal body was going to contain anything being described here. For any of them, as nobody but Percy would have been near this. They just kept picturing one giant mouth sprouting out of the ocean with teeth on all sides vanishing you into a black pit never to be seen again until she exhaled you to the stars above.

We're going to steam straight toward her, train our guns on her, and blow her to Tartarus!"

She said it with such relish I almost wanted to believe her.

"Optimism," Will groaned.

"It, apparently, won't get you everywhere," Thalia blandly agreed. Even if Annabeth hadn't told her otherwise, she couldn't see how this would ever have gone well.

The engine hummed. The boilers were heating up so much I could feel the deck getting warm beneath my feet. The smokestacks billowed. The red Ares flag whipped in the wind.

As we got closer to the monsters, the sound of Charybdis got louder and louder—a horrible wet roar like the galaxy's biggest toilet being flushed. Every time Charybdis inhaled, the ship shuddered and lurched forward. Every time she exhaled, we rose in the water and were buffeted by ten-foot waves.

I tried to time the whirlpool. As near as I could figure, it took Charybdis about three minutes to suck up and destroy everything within a half-mile radius.

"Sounds like the worst wave pool in existence," Jason was starting to look a little gray and wondering if he could swim. He had no memory of it like everything else, so he didn't like his chances!

"I'll take the abandoned water park any day," Nico agreed. Hades probably had a water slide under that place straight to his domain to fast-track how many souls were lost in there.

To avoid her, we would have to skirt right next to Scylla's cliffs. And as bad as Scylla might be, those cliffs were looking awfully good to me.

Undead sailors calmly went about their business on the spar deck. I guess they'd fought a losing cause before, so this didn't bother them. Or maybe they didn't care about getting destroyed because they were already deceased. Neither thought made me feel any better.

"And what would make you feel better?" Will asked looking right at Percy, his gaze so focused on him all of a sudden like he was trying to pry his mind open as if it wasn't on full display in his hands. "All of them running around screaming?"

"Um, no," Percy blinked and looked at Thalia, then Nico for help. Will was acting weird, and he was pretty sure he didn't know him well enough to even be certain if this was normal weird or concerning weird. "Backup plan maybe?"

Annabeth stood next to me, gripping the rail. "You still have your thermos full of wind?"

"Well that's what we have Annabeth for," Magnus reminded with his own grin.

"Right, yeah, glad to help," Will rolled his eyes but at least stopped leering at him.

Nico flushed and looked to the ceiling and nobody needed a mind reader anymore to work out they'd missed some kind of debacle.

I nodded. "But it's too dangerous to use with a whirl-pool like that. More wind might just make things worse."

"What about controlling the water?" she asked. "You're Poseidon's son. You've done it before."

She was right. I closed my eyes and tried to calm the sea, but I couldn't concentrate.

Charybdis was too loud and powerful. The waves wouldn't respond.

"I—I can't," I said miserably.

Nico's ears pricked in confusion, his mind flagged on that sentence as he tried to realize its existence. It was possible that creatures even older than Poseidon could dominate his control, it was even in the realm of possibility Percy himself wasn't strong enough with his own powers yet to be pulling such a stunt.

Regardless of the answer, Thalia smacked her friend on the shoulder and laughed, "don't worry, Annabeth won't hold this over you."

"What a relief," Percy answered honestly though, he was starting to feel pretty useless on this quest in the freaking ocean!

"We need a backup plan," Annabeth said. "This isn't going to work."

"Annabeth is right," Tyson said. "Engine's no good."

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"Pressure. Pistons need fixing."

Before he could explain, the cosmic toilet flushed with a mighty roaaar!

Jason was now squirming so much in place he looked like he might need to use that thing himself. He'd never had occasion to be seasick before, but just the idea of that was making him so!

The ship lurched forward and I was thrown to the deck. We were in the whirlpool.

"Where's her off switch?" Percy asked through numb lips.

"Not as easy as yours," Thalia said in a voice far to doom like.

"Full reverse!" Clarisse screamed above the noise. The sea churned around us, waves crashing over the deck. The iron plating was now so hot it steamed. "Get us within firing range! Make ready starboard cannons!"

Dead Confederates rushed back and forth. The propeller grinded into reverse, trying to slow the ship, but we kept sliding toward the center of the vortex.

A zombie sailor burst out of the hold and ran to Clarisse. His gray uniform was smoking. His beard was on fire. "Boiler room overheating, ma'am! She's going to blow!"

"Well, get down there and fix it!"

"Can't!" the sailor yelled. "We're vaporizing in the heat."

Clarisse pounded the side of the casemate. "All I need is a few more minutes! Just enough to get in range!"

"We're going in too fast," the captain said grimly. "Prepare yourself for death."

"No!" Tyson bellowed. "I can fix it."

Clarisse looked at him incredulously. "You?"

"He's a Cyclops," Annabeth said. "He's immune to fire. And he knows mechanics."

"Go!" yelled Clarisse.

"Tyson, no!" I grabbed his arm. "It's too dangerous!"

He patted my hand. "Only way, brother." His expression was determined—confident, even. I'd never seen him look like this before. "I will fix it. Be right back."

Tyson had faced down worse monsters already than some ship, but physical prowess didn't mean he'd developed enough mechanical know-how to win this fight. Alex was twining up the edge of his shirt like he was imagining it as his garrote, before he seemed to realize he was doing such a thing and quickly dropped his hands.

As I watched him follow the smoldering sailor down the hatch, I had a terrible feeling. I wanted to run after him, but the ship lurched again—

Percy's hand was left floating in the water now stretched towards nothing, his throat clenching tight. Wrong, wrong, wrong. He couldn't let Tyson do this, he was just a kid. There was something he had to tell him, but what-

and then I saw Charybdis.

She appeared only a few hundred yards away, through a swirl of mist and smoke and water.

The first thing I noticed was the reef—a black crag of coral with a fig tree clinging to the top, an oddly peaceful thing in the middle of a maelstrom.

'I wonder if Luke had to fetch one of those if he'd be as salty,' Hearth signed. It seemed a plenty impossible task to him nobody should have lived through just as much as the first one.

Thalia snorted without amusement and silently corrected him another hero had, Odysseus. Hearth threw his hands up in exasperation there was just no winning, and boy was he right about that.

All around it, water curved into a funnel, like light around a black hole. Then I saw the horrible thing anchored to the reef just below the waterline—an enormous mouth with slimy lips and mossy teeth the size of rowboats. And worse, the teeth had braces, bands of corroded scummy metal with pieces of fish and driftwood and floating garbage stuck between them.

Charybdis was an orthodontist's nightmare.

"Once again, Percy and the stellar descriptions for the win," Alex applauded that visual hell.

"Thank you, I'll be here for eternity," Percy groaned as he sunk farther into his seat. Nobody had yet told him if Tyson was going to be okay, and now he felt like he was looking into the mouth of hell. There was no such thing as a lesser of two evils in this case, every option ahead was going to get blown up!

She was nothing but a huge black maw with bad teeth alignment and a serious overbite, and she'd done nothing for centuries but eat without brushing after meals. As I watched, the entire sea around her was sucked into the void— sharks, schools of fish, a giant squid. And I realized that in a few seconds, the CSS Birmingham would be next.

"Lady Clarisse," the captain shouted. "Starboard and forward guns are in range!"

"Fire!" Clarisse ordered.

Three rounds were blasted into the monster's maw. One blew off the edge of an incisor. Another disappeared into her gullet. The third hit one of Charybdis's retaining bands and shot back at us, snapping the Ares flag off its pole.

"Oh, so it was effective then," Jason said, covering his eyes with his hand like he couldn't watch anymore.

"I'm more glad by the second Clarisse isn't in here, because I'm pretty sure she'd find a way to kill us," Thalia nodded.

"Again!" Clarisse ordered. The gunners reloaded, but I knew it was hopeless. We would have to pound the monster a hundred more times to do any real damage, and we didn't have that long. We were being sucked in too fast.

"We're all gonna die," Percy repeated. Even his powers wouldn't be enough to save Tyson and Annabeth when they had to jump away or be eaten alive!

"Magnus might never talk to you again if so," Alex pleasantly reminded him at least he'd survived the blast, but that was of no comfort if he'd been the only one to do so. If that memory of Annabeth leaning in to kiss him had all been a figment of his scrubbed mind...

Then the vibrations in the deck changed. The hum of the engine got stronger and steadier. The ship shuddered and we started pulling away from the mouth.

"Tyson did it!" Annabeth said.

"Wait!" Clarisse said. "We need to stay close!"

"We'll die!" I said. "We have to move away."

I gripped the rail as the ship fought against the suction. The broken Ares flag raced past us and lodged in Charybdis's braces. We weren't making much progress, but at least we were holding our own. Tyson had somehow given us just enough juice to keep the ship from being sucked in.

Tyson's the strongest kid in the world, Percy kept silently assuring himself as he glared daggers at the book in Will's hand as if demanding his thoughts become true. Stronger than Hercules, and even smarter than the hero of legend with his short time under Beckendorf. He was going to get more of that too, his little brother-

Suddenly, the mouth snapped shut. The sea died to absolute calm. Water washed over Charybdis.

Then, just as quickly as it had closed, the mouth exploded open, spitting out a wall of water, ejecting everything inedible, including our cannonballs, one of which slammed into the side of the CSS Birmingham with a ding like the bell on a carnival game.

Percy was dragged back to one disaster at a time, he'd thrown his instinct into stilling the water around him for once instead of stirring it up and the results left Will's mouth almost frozen in place for a moment before Percy released him and was clutching his pen again to fight off the urge to just read this himself already if his head would stop spinning.

We were thrown backward on a wave that must've been forty feet high. I used all of my willpower to keep the ship from capsizing, but we were still spinning out of control, hurtling toward the cliffs on the opposite side of the strait.

Another smoldering sailor burst out of the hold. He stumbled into Clarisse, almost knocking them both over-board. "The engine is about to blow!"

"Where's Tyson?" Percy demanded at the same time Will was still reading it from the book. Nobody cracked a smile.

"Where's Tyson?" I demanded.

"Still down there," the sailor said. "Holding it together somehow, though I don't know for how much longer."

The captain said, "We have to abandon ship."

"No!" Clarisse yelled.

Percy's eyes flashed dangerously, he fought the urge to punch somebody who wasn't here and thankfully Thalia didn't have long stringy brown hair for him to confuse in her silvery camo jacket.

"We have no choice, m'lady. The hull is already cracking apart! She can't—"

He never finished his sentence. Quick as lightning, something brown and green shot from the sky, snatched up the captain, and lifted him away. All that was left were his leather boots.

"Scylla!" a sailor yelled, as another column of reptilian flesh shot from the cliffs and snapped him up. It happened so fast it was like watching a laser beam rather than a monster. I couldn't even make out the thing's face, just a flash of teeth and scales.

I uncapped Riptide and tried to swipe at the monster as it carried off another deckhand, but I was way too slow.

"Everyone get below!" I yelled.

Nico was starting to wonder if they were inside Charybdis as turned around as he was starting to feel. Percy was trying to save the ghosts, Percy couldn't just fight his way out of this. He wasn't leaving without Tyson, of course not, but the rest, well...something was slipping in him that he'd barely ever given proper words to, and it left him feeling to confused for an emotion he'd never acknowledged.

"We can't!" Clarisse drew her own sword. "Below deck is in flames."

"Lifeboats!" Annabeth said. "Quick!"

"They'll never get clear of the cliffs," Clarisse said. "We'll all be eaten."

"We have to try. Percy, the thermos."

"I can't leave Tyson!"

Percy had done it again in sync with the reader, and Will's heart ached for the guy. He knew better than most it oftentimes hurt worse to heal than the original injury had led you to believe it would, he wished he could look Percy in the eye and promise him Tyson was fine no matter how bad it hurt his head now, but the damage could be worse than the band-aide he'd be fixing.

The son of Poseidon was taking, slow, deep breaths, but there was fear in his eyes. Something was fixing to happen, a part of the epic story that hadn't been told around the campfire that night. Clarisse had certainly never bragged much of her own quest, and that alone should have sent him into worrying and wondering just what they had gone through...

"We have to get the boats ready!"

Clarisse took Annabeth's command.

Jason pumped the air with a victorious smile now, convinced things were going to be smooth sailing as those two finally worked together and Percy would douse the water to get Tyson back!

She and a few of her undead sailors uncovered one of the two emergency rowboats while Scylla's heads rained from the sky like a meteor shower with teeth, picking off Confederate sailors one after another.

"A death for them I can't even laugh at," Alex whispered with still trembling hands Magnus's were twitching to grab. Alex didn't like holding hands though, and boy was that a weird thing to do to comfort someone, a boy!, he'd barely known for two days!

"Get the other boat." I threw Annabeth the thermos. "I'll get Tyson."

"You can't!" she said. "The heat will kill you!"

I didn't listen.

This came to no one's surprise.

I ran for the boiler room hatch, when suddenly my feet weren't touching the deck anymore. I was flying straight up, the wind whistling in my ears, the side of the cliff only inches from my face.

Scylla had somehow caught me by the knapsack, and was lifting me up toward her lair.

Without thinking, I swung my sword behind me and managed to jab the thing in her beady yellow eye. She grunted and dropped me.

The fall would've been bad enough, considering I was a hundred feet in the air. But as I fell, the CSS Birmingham exploded below me.

KAROOM!

The word did nothing to define the explosion. Even their imaginations couldn't quite comprehend the heat, the impact, how Percy felt his whole world blackout for the span of that second where the air had been ripped apart. They were dead, they were all gone.

The engine room blew, sending chunks of ironclad flying in either direction like a fiery set of wings.

Icarus himself couldn't have screwed up this bad. Thalia refused to show even a tick of her anger for Clarisse's pigheadedness causing this, nor bow her head in remorse for her sister nearly dying again. She wouldn't give Percy the wrong impression like that, just kept steadily looking ahead at the book and refusing to blink a single tear at what a miracle it was they were all okay.

"Tyson!" I yelled.

"He's immune to fire," Magnus whispered desperately into the eerily silent room. Percy hadn't echoed that one, he'd just remained locked into place. Alex was working his jaw like he was fighting back the urge to rip something to shreds. "He, those Canadian's, and bulls did nothing to him, and being Poseidon's kid too, maybe he-" Hearth put a calming hand on his shoulder, just the tips of his long slender fingers. He fell silent as the absent promises meant nothing to the god's reality.

The lifeboats had managed to get away from the ship, but not very far. Flaming wreckage was raining down. Clarisse and Annabeth would either be smashed or burned or pulled to the bottom by the force of the sinking hull, and that was thinking optimistically, assuming they got away from Scylla.

Then I heard a different kind of explosion—the sound of Hermes's magic thermos being opened a little too far. White sheets of wind blasted in every direction, scattering the lifeboats, lifting me out of my free fall and propelling me across the ocean.

Jason had fallen back into his seat hard like he'd been knocked back into it. The absent thought flickering across his mind how many other explosions could happen, was Zeus going to strike him out of the sky for being up there so long just to add insult to injury at this point?

I couldn't see anything. I spun in the air, got clonked on the head by something hard, and hit the water with a crash that would've broken every bone in my body if I hadn't been the son of the Sea God.

The last thing I remembered was sinking in a burning sea, knowing that Tyson was gone forever, and wishing I were able to drown.

"My-" the word brother lodged in Percy's throat, even as he now knew what he hadn't been able to grasp this whole time, what Tyson meant to him. "He can't be-" but it wouldn't come out. Just like his little brother, it all got lost.

PJOPJOPJOPJO

*P.G.T Beauregard was a general in the New Orleans, Louisiana Confederate army, and eventual traitor to the 'traditional cause.' Do I headcanon ancestry to Silena? Yes, yes I do.

#pjo #Percy Jackson #Nico di Angelo #Will Solace #solangelo #Alex Fierro #Magnus Chase #fierrochase #Jason Grace #Thalia Grace #Hearthstone #reading the books #fanfiction #characters read their own books #SoM

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