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#like i had a whole day planned
wyvernity · 13 days
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sss day my favorite national holiday WOOOOHHHH
bonus
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#pokemon#trainer lyra#rival silver#soulsilvershipping#timeskip tag#bao beis#i had so much more planned. but alas. college.#ANYWAY. sss my everything. ohh. always thinking abt them.#this is very obviously lyra's room! all the pink! massive bed to fit all her pokemon! the champion paycheck gets you that much at least#and plants!!! no. 1 horticulturist in johto#she's living somewhere around the base of mt silver... decently close to the league and her hometown#so i like to imagine her with a huge greenhouse so she can take care of plants even in the harsher climate#meanwhile silver has one of those decrepit malelivingspace flats in viridian. he's making it work.#i can only see sss properly moving in together liiiike in their late 20s#after they get to enjoy young adult independence for a while#but before they permanently settle down they should go on silly adventures again... just once. or twice. or#as much as i like to entertain the thought of them being homebodies i think they'd rather spend their lives travelling haha#since silver never got to fully experience it as a kid on the run#being a wanted man and all#and lyra is itching for the getaway#they deserve to be in nature and responsibility-free and *frothing at the mouth*#BTW i put my whole wyvussy into that wall decor#lisia signed poster... rosa's resemblance as mei(!!!) in the totoro one... bell tower + whirl island pics //#pokemon constellations... and those gen 4 mail templates that no one actually used. probably from dawn. champion penpals :]#i debated doing a lance poster because celebrity idol funny but nah she'd bin that immediately after moving out#oh yeah the drawover was um. inspired by the nonebinary neochamp fit. so happy for my son.#i'm glad i managed to finish the big piece in time otherwise i would've just posted that LOL can you imagine#okey bye happy sss day
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tblsomedoodles · 7 months
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Donnie's Visions (apocalypse Seer Twins comic) Part 5 (complete!)
Start - Previous
I should wait until tomorrow to post this so i can make sure i didn't miss anything. But i don't particularly want to wait. It's the last part and i just really want this to be fully complete (post and all.)
anyways, i hope you enjoyed this comic! I am very glad to get to check one thing off my to-do list.
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magnolia-sunrise · 5 months
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the halloween special, i mean, Medieval AU continues>> the arrival of the grievously wounded Kingsguard disrupts Bastien's very isolated, very drunk rural village life - but in much different way than he expected. somehow, miraculously, Wolfgang slowly recovers, and the two of them spend many evenings sharing wine and stories by the fireside, finding each other to be pleasant company.
but how long will the vampire be able to resist the call of the priest's blood >:3
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angeloferidia · 4 months
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My immediate thought when I saw it
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the-game-spirit · 2 months
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am I the only one who gets squicked out when people call Danielle Danny's daughter??? 🥲
its just.
that is a 14 year old child you're assigning parenthood to???
like I actually do think canon did one thing right: having Danny and Ellie's relationship be functionally "uuuuuuhhhh????? okay you can do your thing and. I will do mine. waaaaaay over there. see'ya cuz!" and then they both awkwardly dip out FAST
not because they don't have affection for each other! because they do! but one of them is a 14 year old kid, neck deep in hiding everything about himself from everyone except all of 3 people (also kids), who was just unwillingly cloned by his creep arch enemy-- and the other is a (???) 12 year old (??ig??) who may have only been around for a few months at best but is still functionally a 12 year old, FIERCELY independent, and just recently tried to murder the person she was cloned from-- then betrayed her dad-- then abruptly had nothing to her name, which also isn't even really hers--
I think they want to be friends-- family, even! but I also think they have ALOT of complicated Feelings about it. none of which touches on a "father-daughter dynamic"
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goldkirk · 1 month
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I DON'T HAVE TO LIE ANYMORE!
#I DON'T HAVE TO LIE ANYMORE ABOUT ANYTHING#IT DOESN'T HAVE TO OVERRIDE ALL OTHER PROGRAMMING EVER AGAIN#HA#MY GOD THAT FEELS LIKE TWO DECADES OF RELIEF#and I found out yesterday. that this year. next winter. it IS two decades. exactly. this is the year. every day i am shown new reminders#that keep me going in my mission to relearn to fully and instinctually trust my self#ever since [redacted therapist] asked me point blank and my IMMEDIATE response was complete disbelief#a firm 'you think there's any universe where i'd feel like i could trust myself? after my nonstop history of failures and being horrible?'#tone “No!” of disbelief#and a horrible way-too-harsh laugh that bolted out before I could strangle it off and stop it.#that woman never coddled my feelings any time I spoke something alarming or bullshit and that was so helpful to me#and the tone she let exist in her voice when she responded to me with a very uncharacteristic “Oh Katie.”#was so. so much more agonizing for me. than her responding with an immediate logical slam-dunk of the truth about healthy behavior and stuf#anyway ramble over i'm so tired. i've done so much trauma work this week i am Drained emotionally#now i see what the past several months but especially especially#the baffling (to me) infuriating out-of-control-speedrun-somatic-processing + every-health-condition-flaring slog that December and January#were for me when I hadn't expected anything to be wrong#...and the extremely specific way this certain zone and particular incident kept coming up over and over and over and over and OVER was not#a bug. it was a feature. thank goodness i trust myself for little things now bc that's the only way i was able to get to this other side#and look back and suddenly realize that my subconscious and body knew what they needed and had a plan in progress the whole time. just like#i rationally say I trust them to have and do.#and that perhaps maybe. for real for real instead of just TELLING myself hard enough a lie that i trust my self and i trust my body and tha#they always know their own needs and timing if really slow down and listen to them f u l l y#anyway. yeah. bye haha i need to stop oversharing on the internet#trauma evolution#shh katie#personal#my god. i wished for this day more than i wished for anything else my whole life. all these many many many many years. what magic.#add to journal#abuse
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miodiodavinci · 1 month
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collapses to the ground like a deflated balloon
#my god#stage one is finally complete . . . . . . . .#if you can recall that poll i reblogged about passing out#that important contact i received was mr. seto of the vocaloid team#who messaged me asking about a collaboration and quite literally nearly caused me to pass out#i read the message preview on my phone#stood up#saw stars#and collapsed onto my bed and had to lay down for like. 10 minutes before my body would stop feeling distant and weak w#i similarly felt ready to pass out today when i sent a message to ask when the announcement tweet would be#and they tweeted it. immediately after w#no joke rice and i were scrambling behind the scenes to get our act together and figure out what we wanted to say KHGJGSJKFHGKJ#all the while screaming because yamaha said they'd be posting it on valentine's day and we thought they meant our timezone w#because the whole point of this collab was to get the zolas more well known in the english-speaking sphere w#EITHER WAY#i am. so so tired and now i need to pass out so i can get enough sleep before more internship tomorrow w#which is heating up because my seminar professor wants a detailed plan of my final project goals This Friday#but my mentor won't know anything about where to fit that in until Thursday at the earliest#and my supervisor just hounded me over email to coordinate with the two other people at my station and choose an activity to lead#but that requires. planning. that our mentors won't have until thursday........#perishing . . . . . .
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statementlou · 3 months
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Hello, do you think is possible that we will get a FITF live album? Louis and the band sound so good on tour.
they doooo! I love Steve's arrangements and additions to the songs so much! Honestly I have no idea; on the one hand it seems like Louis might be more focused on moving towards new stuff, like we are still in FITF mode but by the time it came out he had had it forever and now he's well into LT3 and probably feeling more excited about those new songs and sounds; on the other hand he is very good at working the industry stuff and all the angles and it's basically free money, right? He has said FITF was a further step towards the sound he wants most rather than the finish line, so it's possible that as happened with Walls as he works more on the new one he is getting less enthused about sharing the old stuff; but I think adding Steve's arrangements and just moving away from some of the songs seems to have lessened that this time around, so maybe that isn't a factor. Here's the thing though: the only way it would happen or make sense I think would be if it was recorded pretty recently, like one of the UK shows; the show was still being tweaked and gelled and cooking until then. But if they wanted to make vinyl (and surely they would? fancy double vinyl of live albums is SUCH a thing), that is very very long process of waiting around these days. First you have to get lacquers made (this is the physical thing that the recording is cut into that all the records are duplicates of- if you want quality it has to be more or less handmade by an artisan) but one of the two places left in the world that made those burnt to the ground in 2020 so there's a super long wait time on that. Then it just has to get made; but there are basically ten large scale factories left (again, in the WORLD) that press records so that also has a very long wait time... so it would take forever and the thing is I think we're getting LT3 in the late fall/ early winter (I bet he's using this month to finish it up so it can begin this lengthy process). So I kind of don't think so, like I guess they could do a CD/ cassette/ digital only in late spring and make so much money, and it would be fun, but who knows. Either way, I just hope Louis has Steve do some production work on LT3, I like his sounds and ideas a lot, and that he keeps him around to do his tours forever!
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holocene-sims · 3 months
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a sneak peek for an upcoming (timeline tbd) update 😊
#holocene.txt#hlcn: story extras#consider this a thanks for the kind words on gratitude day :)#i wanna respond to everyone individually when i have time and also wax poetic about how much every comment means to me#it really does mean a lot#it's been a rough year and a very lonely year like i'm genuinely just so :/#i lost both of my grandmothers this year very suddenly and the holidays feel empty now and i'm dealing with scary health issues#i finally had a brain mri after waiting for it to get scheduled since JUNE and now i have to wait on results and undergo some other testing#and i'm losing my mind a little because i planned a nice christmas gift for my mom and it feels ruined because the post office lost it#and my dad ruined the whole surprise of it by calling customer support on speaker phone with her in the room...and she ofc heard everything#i just wanted something nice for my mom :( she deserves it and although i have other gifts for her still it's not all what i planned#i don't mean to rant but i just wanted to add context when i say it means a lot that anyone even remotely likes my pixels#i may not know most of you very well *yet* (trying to fix that!!) but it's nice to feel a little support from somewhere :) beyond nice#and sorry for being absent a lot this year but i swear i have so much appreciation for y'all and i love you and your pixels dearly#i always feel bad like maybe it doesn't seem like i care in return bc i'm offline a lot now but i really do!! i care a lot!! love y'all xox
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liquidstar · 2 days
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a friend who'd wait :)
#im posting this very late because i was sort of weary of how it came out and ended up messing w it until it was like 4am oops.#and i have plans tmrw so... oh well! i did my best and ill put it out while i can!#and i tried to make the scene match barnard's colors lol#finn's ocs#finn's art#i know i said id do more sillay stuff with the simpler screentone only style but i had a couple more of these in me#and this is the first piece im making thats like an actual part of the story too rather than just setting stuff for fun#i wanna write something to go with it too but for now ill just sort of briefly explain the context in the tags here:#barnard has a pretty bad case of OCD and his compulsions have made it difficult to make friends in the past#he was never outright bullied or anything but people just didnt really have the patience to deal with it#he has compulsions that include stuff like walking through doors until it feels right and needing things to be perfectly aligned#which in group settings has lead to people having to wait for him to finish his rituals and join them#they might find it tolerable at first but eventually they grow impatient and hes just... not invited to stuff anymore#but juno is a newer member of the guild who ends up frequenting the same library. hes also kinda a little weird#and they dont become fast friends or anything but just sort of naturally spend time in the same place#though they never plan meetups they eventually fall into a routine. around the same time theyd just both be at the library#and read next to each other. and maybe talk a bit. and eventually they end up walking back to the guildhall together#since theyre going to the same place after all. and juno always waits for barnard outside the door#eventually barnard asks if this bothers him. juno kinda just tells him 'of course it does' without any malice or anything. just a statement#barnard is surprised and apologizes and juno says not to. but the next day juno doesnt show up at the usual time.#barnard assumes hes committed somekinda more by bringing it up. he ends up staying there late reading to get his mind off it & not ruminate#but when he leaves juno is in fact still waiting for him down the hall (see pic) having collected a bunch of books literally abt ocd#he fell asleep bc barnard stayed later than expected. and hes an eepy guy generally. and also one very bad at expressing himself#but now barnard gets that juno's 'of course it [bothers me]' had the implication of 'but its worth it' which no friend has previously done.#and from the interaction juno was also able to understand that this isn't something barnard just does for the hell of it so. he studies.#and checks a bunch of stuff out because he thinks it could help his friend too (theres ocd workbooks and such- i remember working w them)#and thats the point where they became more ''friends'' than ''pleasant library acquaintances''#from there on they also do get into juno's problems. whole other bag of worms. but this specific scene is more about bernard from his pov#sorry about when i said briefly explain. i lied </3#but compared to the whole sequence im picturing its brief so shhh
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caterpillarinacave · 27 days
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y’all I just got the MOTHERLOAD of all pastries
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vulcanette · 3 months
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time to begin my baking frenzy!!!!!!!!!!
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celestialfeathers · 1 year
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Oh look! The guests are arriving. They all have their reasons to be here, and I have my own reasons to let them stay.
We will have five dinners. Make sure every one is worth dying for.
I am sure it is going to be a wonderful week. Let’s make some memories.
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sabraeal · 3 months
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a heart felled by you, held by you; Part 1
[Read on AO3]
Inspired by @onedivinemisfit's Lilias Charity Gala pieces; Annie had a strong idea coming into the challenge, and we had a lot of fun hashing through what we felt would most represent Northern vs Southern fashion, and academic vs noble fashion. We struggle bussed hard over some of the male looks, had some real experimental ideas for Haki's dress that Annie really made into something special...and then I realized I would not have enough time to even get to the gala portions of this fic. So this chapter is a bit of a prequel, with more to come later...
The message arrives via the traditional method: clutched in the woolly mitts of a street urchin, another paw already extended for payment. The university is rife with them, always milling about underfoot, loitering in the exact walkways one would most like to hurry through before students— or worse yet, other academics— could waylay them. It also contains the traditional summons, or rather, the traditional stay put.
A representative will be coming, it threatens in the usual, toothless way the board prefers, as if their approval means anything more than being saddled with more responsibility. Please make sure that you are in-office when we arrive.
It is Lata’s personal tradition to disappoint them. To imagine them arriving at his closed door, scowls furrowing deeper with each unanswered knock. Sometimes he can even hear his name being cursed on the wind as his cart rolls out the city gates, headed to quarries unknown. They might find him when he returns, twice as cross for having been made fools in front of the whole department, but at least they meet on his terms, not some…board of academics so close to titles he can nearly smell it in their stiff collars and even more starched opinions.
That is not, however, how it happens this year. Oh, he meant it too— he’d already been looking at likely quarries when Shidan shuffled into his office, wondering if he might pull the same disappearing act he had the past seven years running. Lata may have spent his nascent years at Wistal dodging the dire undercurrents of Kain’s court, but even without such a thorough education in ignoring the unspoken intentions behind spoken words, he would have heard the man’s insinuations loud and clear: stay, please, our funding might depend on it. Academics weren’t exactly known for their subtlety, and Shidan was among the least of them.
It’s not the sort of appeal that typically moves him. And yet somehow as the day grew closer, he found himself more interested in the edits on Shirayuki’s proposal than in locations of wunderock veins, pausing more often to correct the application of Suzu’s hammer than the supply lists he’d kept on his desk since last semester. For all that he hadn’t meant to stay, somehow he had, and by the time he realized it, it was far too late to do anything but wonder how much more the temperature would drop before the university would finally open the thermal vents. The whole place would smell of sulfur for a season, but at least it would be warm.
It helped, of course, that their representative came early. Two days, in fact; the knock landing on his door with an airy cadence, as if the knuckles did not so much rap on the panels but dance across them. He expected something more thunderous, to be honest; a declaration and a reckoning all in one. He'd almost be offended, if he wasn't hoping for some noodle-limbed pushover as his auditor.
“Come in,” he grunts before he can think better of it. If he’d kept his mouth shut, they might at least assume he was out to lunch, or had been dragged out to Shidan’s lab to clap over whatever little achievement they’d eked out of those plants of theirs, as if it had anything to do with him. But now they know he’s here, trapped behind the mountain of papers on his desk— that’s the problem with being a collaborator, all the paperwork— with no escape but out a second floor window. An attractive option for a much younger, more morally— and physically— flexible knight, but certainly not open to him.
He braces himself. There’s seven years worth of scolding coming, of classes he hasn’t properly bought himself out of and reviews he has yet to provide as ‘part of this academic community’, with only a thin oak door to separate him from it. Just a simple twist of a knob, and they’ll having him so thoroughly pinned he might as well be up on cork. Scholaris Forzenalis, it might say, elusive specimen found on university grounds. Never before caught.
So it confounds him when they knock again.
“Come in,” he says, louder this time, annoyance bleeding into the words. “What? Don’t they teach you how to open doors in this university? Or do you all just sit around, waiting for your assistants to—”
With all the delicacy of shears slicing through silk, his door slips open. Instantly, his teeth clack to a close.
“Forgive me.” Those pretty manners he once protested protect him now, hard-ingrained habit driving him to his feet where intelligence fails him. “My lady. If I had know you would be the one sent on board business, I would have, er…”
Been in another country entirely. But one does not say that to Haki Arleon, daughter to a duke, sister to the commander of the guard, mistress of Lilias in her own right— and most important, Clarines’ queen-to-be. At least, not if one would also like to continue to rely on the crown’s largess. At least two of his grants came backed by Clarines’ treasury, and Lata would like to keep it that way.
“Would you like something to drink?” He glances at the kettle perched on the sideboard, probably as cold as the cup quarantined to the corner of his desk. “I could call for something.”
“That’s quite all right.” The future queen does not sashay into the room the way her brideroom might— the way he did once, the single, unfortunate time Lata fell squarely into His Majesty’s interests— but peruses it, stepping through the stacks of specimens and pausing to read each tag. There is no urgency in how she meanders through the room, no destination; at one moment bending over a table to squint over a fine bit of shale, and the next detouring to the cabinets for a well-tumbled example of aventurine. It reminds him of the girl who used to be carried through these hallowed halls on her lord father’s shoulders, those same wide eyes peering through every case, curiosity so strong it nearly put her hair on end— only to hide the moment a scholar approached, burying herself in the safety of his neck.
But that is not the woman who smiles at him now, settling into the overstuffed chair across from him with all the ease of a bird alighting to a perch. Or at least, it hasn’t been, not for a long time. “Are you quite sure I can’t get you anything?”
“I believe I am supposed to ask you for your books,” she informs him, too sweet to put him at ease. “The ones with your expenditures for the last year, as well as your proposed budget for the next one.”
Lata grimaces. Her father had a grimmer countenance, to be sure, but that pretty smile of hers is twice as implacable. Disobey me at your own peril, it says, radiating the same ruthlessness as a desert sun. I love to see crows feast on the corpses of poor listeners.
“That is what I’m supposed to ask, at least.” He glances up at her, quizzical, hands half-wrapped around his accounts. “But what I wanted to talk to you about is the gala.”
“The—” his mouth barely knows how to wrap around the word— “gala?”
“The charity gala.” A Wisteria might raise one brow— mockingly, the way their kind preferred to communicate— but she raises both, surprise and invitation rolled into one. “The one the board hosts every year to help fund their more promising projects.”
The one he always skips, since if there is one thing he likes less than rubbing elbows with lords and ladies, it’s watching his esteemed colleagues parade themselves like débutantes before them, courting every eligible purse in the room in hopes one might open for them. “Ah,” he manages. “That gala.”
What that has to do with him, he can’t fathom, but—
“We would like this gala’s funds to go towards funding the further research of the Phostyrias.”
There’s nothing in his mouth, but Lata nearly chokes on it anyway. “Excuse me,” he rasps, clearing his throat. Last years contributions topped nearly three million dir before he stopped paying attention. Enough to keep Shidan’s little pet project in the black for the next three years. Five even, if he minds his expenditures. “That’s no mean gift, my lady.”
She hums, hands folding neatly over her lap. “The board has been quite impressed with the progress made in the last year.”
Or rather, the progress one particular scholar has made in impressing its importance on the local lords. If the rumor going around the commissary had even a grain of truth to it, this year’s guest list was nearly half again the length of the last, and every one of them would be wanting to put their name on that girl’s dance card. One can only hope His Majesty has invested a similar interest in her footwork, otherwise there might be quite the crush in the infirmary come morning.
“Although I am always happy to hear of my colleagues’ good fortune,” he lies, the pleasantries falling from his lips with all the ease of oil from butter. “I must admit I do not see why you have chosen to bring me the glad tidings. The phostyrias is, after all, Shidan’s project, not mine.”
“Ah, but you are a collaborator, are you not, professor?” One corner of her mouth hooks too slyly for the sweetness of her face. “As I understand it, your wunderocks are crucial to the formation of those phostyrias bulbs no small amount of Lilias scholars have been sent to plant along the North's roads. And as such, I imagine that a goodly portion of that money will be given to you.”
It’s the same mental arithmetic he’d been spooling through since that announcement dripped from her lips. He hadn’t hitched himself to Shidan’s wagon for the money; there hadn’t been any when that girl cornered him at His Majesty’s little fête, just the sort of pluck that showed promise-- which wouldn’t have interested him in the slightest if the little she-devil hadn’t twisted his arm. Or rather, let her knight do it. But now that there is— well, it’d all been fine and good to give some free pointers here and there, or let Shidan’s students run rampant through his laboratory, pillaging his specimens in the name of science, but now that he could be paid for his time…
Well, there’s some personal projects that could do with a little attention. A lot of attention, if that guest list proves as flush as one might hope. “I suppose that is the case. Still, I am not sure why you would bring the news to—?”
“There is a small problem with the gala.” There’s so much carrot in Lady Haki’s smile it can only hide a stick. “You see, it has always been my privilege to host the event at Wirant. Our staff has always been delighted to put in the sort of work it takes to make the night a great success. But this year, well…I’m afraid the ballroom is being renovated.”
No doubt to be just as resplendent as the one in Wistal. With the marriage between the North’s most darling daughter and Clarines’ king finally set, it would be the duty of the Arleons to throw the engagement celebration— and it wouldn’t do for these southern lords with their soft hands and snobby opinions to come up and find Wirant lacking. Half the collective North would fall on their swords before they’d allow it to be said that the royal palace threw a better wedding than they did an engagement.
“Most years, we might impose upon the university for the use of their function room, however—” her hands splay helplessly between them— “with the recent rash of guests who have replied to our invitation, it will hardly be large enough to hold them. So of course it falls upon us to find another location.”
“A pity. Perhaps one of your noble acquaintance would be willing to hold it, my lady.” They typically were, so long as they felt they would be appropriately compensated. And with the request coming from the Clarines’ next queen— well, there were few who wouldn’t clamor at the chance for her favor. “Preferably one who won’t have an interest in holding it over you once you become ‘Your Majesty.’”
“That is—” those wide eyes bat once, twice— “what I am hoping.”
 Lata blinks. “My lady, once again, I must ask, what does this have to do with…?”
All at once, it comes to him. Dreadfully, finally. “No! No. My lady, that’s hardly—” he coughs, trying to catch his breath and his thoughts—“That’s not my estate.”
“Ah, that’s strange, then,” she says, too innocent. “When I wrote to your lord father, the duke was of the impression it was under your care.”
His teeth grind hard enough he can hear the fissures forming. “My lord father…?”
“He was quite confused why I would inquire about its use of him when his heir was already in residence.” Her head tilts, resting on two of her slender fingers. “I thought it best not to mention that you had taken an apartment closer to the university.”
But she would, if he proved too troublesome. It’s clear in the way that mouth of hers hooks into a smirk, too like another in recent memory. “I haven’t been in that house in years— nearly a decade! The whole thing is little more than a moldering pile. And the ballroom— why, it’s probably in pieces by now.”
“Is that so?” she says in the precise tone that implies, it isn’t. “Your lord father told me that he just had laborers in last summer to repair the place top to bottom. ‘Not an original board in the place,’ I believe he said. Quite proud of it in fact.”
Lata smothers a grimace. There had been work done on the place; father insisted. A bachelor with a skeleton staff can’t be keeping the roof in order, the old man had huffed, just let a place in town and I’ll have the place tidy as the day it was built. He could hardly tell the stubborn old goat he hadn’t been using it in the first place. “I don’t keep staff.”
“I’ll lend you mine.” The answer’s too quick— she’d been expecting that one from the start. “As I said, they’re used to events of this scale. It’s the extra bodies that causes the most logistical problems for these sorts of things,” she admits reluctantly, “and this time of year, Wirant is full of them. They probably would jump at the idea of using a space that’s empty to start.”
His words curdle on his tongue, mouth pursing sourly around it. If Lady Haki is anything like her father, this whole conversation has been planned in advance, every reversal anticipated and its counter prepared. She came in here with him already well and thoroughly routed, he just hasn't seen the how of it yet.
“I wasn’t even planning on attending,” he grits out, more confession than caltrop. “That fool celebration is always on the solstice, and I can’t abide the costumes and the dancing and the kissing games—”
“Then we will have none.”
Lata raises a brow. “You think you can stop that crowd from having their fun? Stop them from causing mischief when they’ve been saving it up all year?”
“We remove the masquerade element,” she says, firm. “And the roka garlands. Without the garlands, kisses have meaning, and without the masks, they have consequences too. Which will be discouragement enough for most.”
That’s true enough; southern lords might revel in their rakishness, but those from northern stock valued tradition, reliability, wisdom. To be caught kissing the wrong woman at midnight would do more than scuttle a courtship or two— it could turn half the north against a man, leaving a house to flounder to make contracts, sending their interests south when their neighbors wouldn’t deal with a liar or an oathbreaker.
“And the dancing,” he grunts, warming to the topic. “I don’t want it. I’ve attended a hundred galas in my time, and never once has anyone truly cared to—“
“I afraid, my lord—” Lady Haki lays a quelling hand over his— “the dancing is a must.”
“But…” He glances down where her palm rests, the point of her nails resting next to the soft flesh of his wrist, the weight of it pinning him to the wood.
“Fine,” he sighs, settling back in his seat, flexing his hand to soothe the burn of it. “Dancing it is.”
*
There was no hour in which the Royal Pharmacy slept; even in the dead of night the back rooms buzzed, pharmacists weaving through every inch of the labyrinthine passages, droning on like bees in their hive. Each one of them would sigh in relief at the end of their shift, shedding their duties along with their coats, eager to slough off the hustle and bustle for a moment of silence. But after so many years of haunting empty halls, catching only shadows of the people he called his parents, Ryuu found the commotion comforting. At least, so long as he wasn't in the middle of it.
When sleep dragged at his edges, tugging at the end of his pen or bobbing the crown of his head, it wasn’t to his dormitory that he wandered. It might have been a kindness to the pharmacists with no place to go, a luxury to the apprentices who grew up sleeping three or more to a bed, but to him it had only been another empty room, a convenient closet to keep yet another body. There was no comfort to be found there, no warmth, just the cold, silent shell of solitude.
But beneath his desk— that had been just the right size. With his back pressed to the wall, he could feel the steady thrum of the palace’s heart, the regular bustle of its pulse beating right behind the plaster. Curtain drawn, it was dark as a womb, and when he closed his eyes, the warmth of his body trapped between wall and blanket, he could believe he was being carried by his mother still. A drowsing child separated from the world by only the thinnest membrane, always feeling, never understanding, but safe all the same.
It wasn’t until he had come here to the university, with its hallowed halls and its neatly kept hours, that he knew it could be different. That a place could be quiet without being lonely. That he could live without the membrane between him and world, and still hear himself think.
A heady discovery, for a boy not yet thirteen. Exhilarating. Terrifying.
He misses it, now.
“Oh my,” Shirayuki gasps, squeezed from the crush lingering outside the laboratory door. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a crowd like that. Not in the university, at least. What is—?”
“The occasion?” Kazaha drawls, glaring up from his bench. “That would be Garrack Gazelt.”
“Garrack?” She follows the jut of his chin, but only so far as Ryuu, eyes rounding into a question. “Did she say she was going to…?”
“For the gala.” The very one he’s been dreading, now that Shidan’s informed him he’s old enough to attend. “The lab is being honored, and she’s come to—”
“Play plus one,” Suzu says, shouldering himself between them on the bench. “Shirayuki, do you think you could take over this distillation? It’s taking ages and I’m tired of—”
“Garrack Gazelt isn’t anyone’s plus one,” Kazaha huffs, nearly thunderous. “She’s the foremost expert on medical pharmaceuticals in the kingdom, if not the continent.”
“And Shidan asked her to go to this shindig, So she’s here.” Suzu shrugs a shoulder. “Plus one behavior, that’s all I’m trying to say.”
“That’s not—!”
“Really?” Shirayuki blinks, taking in the breathless crush. Scholars jostle each other, jockeying for their place in line, bony elbows taking the more determined further front. If they were wearing ball gowns instead of lab coats, Ryuu could have easily mistaken them for eager young ladies at their first soirée, ruthlessly trying to thrust themselves before the most eligible gentleman in the room. “All this for Garrack?”
“What’s that?” A cold breeze is all the warning they have before boots land on the sill, a disheveled uniform perched above them. “Don’t think the chief deserves the popularity?”
“I never said that,” she says primly, the smallest hint of a smile clinging to the corner of her mouth. “I just mean she’s more of a fixture here than she was a few years ago. You’d think the excitement might have banked by now. Just a bit.”
Suzu huffs. “Never underestimate the power of Head Pharmacist Gazelt. I shook her hand this morning, and I still haven’t—!”
“Wash it,” Ryuu tells him, wide eyed. “Now. Please.”
“Aw, but what if all the luck washes off?”
“You know how you always wonder why girls won’t give you the time of day?” Obi says, strained. “This is why.”
“But this many people?” Shirayuki murmurs, as if Suzu hadn’t spoken at all. “Who are all they, even?”
“Faculty.” Kazaha leans a hip against the bench, catching the crowd at a casual angle. “Students. More than a few fellows from neighboring labs. They’ve been coming in and out all morning with the worst excuses.”
“Oh, and your little not-really-a-question-more-a-comment was so clever?” Suzu snorts. “Maybe you should stop living in a snow house if you’re gonna throw ice like that.”
“I didn’t say—” Kazaha lets a breath hiss through his nose. “You’re just jealous that she said I had thought through the problem from every angle, while she only told you that yours was an interesting endeavor, which everyone knows means it’s stupid—”
Suzu’s close enough Ryuu feels him take a breath rather than hears it, rebuttal poised at the tip of his tongue— but the slam of the laboratory door startles it right out of him.
“There,” Shidan says, one hand still pressed to the paneling. “That’s enough of that.”
“Oh, come on now, it’s easier this way.” Garrack doesn’t so much perch on as prowl to his desk, improbably long legs stretching across the floor. “They’re not used to this sort of excitement. You gotta let them get it out.”
“You could get out,” he grumbles, ambling behind his desk. Ryuu doesn’t need to be as perceptive as Obi to know he doesn’t mean a word of it. “Then maybe they might find somewhere else to be.”
“Where’s the fun in that?” The scant few years he spent under her careful eye is more than enough to know the smart comment that smile hides, one that’s sure to slide right under Shidan’s skin and send him skittering for some science to hold before his temper can get the best of him, but—
But it all goes up like smoke when the door nearly bursts off its hinges, a bolus of black wool hurtling through.
“What is the meaning—?” Shidan’s teeth snap shut. “Professor, I didn’t expect you to—?”
“That woman!” Lata doesn’t so much rage as froth, pacing like a pot just before a boil. “Comes into my office, just to trap me in a corner. No! To flush me out of a my den, like a hound does a…a-- a fox would say she speaks out of both side of her face, that’s the sort of woman she is. And she came to me.”
“Ah.” Shidan leans back in his seat, hands folded over his belly. “I see her ladyship spoke to you about the charity gala.”
“Spoke? Strong-armed is more like!” Steam would be rising from him, if it could from a person. “Practically mentioned the thing in one breath, and then had me hosting it the next! As if I don’t have anything better to do than bring the glittering ton into my own home and let them pick over the place like locusts!”
“Host? You? In your poor excuse for a house?” Garrack raises a thick brow. “How are we all going to fit around the rocks?”
“Not my personal abode.” He scowls down at the chief pharmacist, clearly just have noticing her presence. “Her ladyship asked for access to the estate.”
“Your family’s estate?” Both brows hike to her hairline. “I thought you were disowned.”
“Dis—? You thought—?” Lata sputters, words rattling like a pot’s lid. “I went into academia, not— not gotten a girl in the family way!”
She lifts a shoulder at the precise angle meant to annoy. “Wouldn’t be the first noble boy to do both. Maybe you thought a book might shield you from a bad marriage as much as taking the cloth.”
He stares at her for a long moment, simmering, before turning back to Shidan. “In any case, the woman’s taken my whole household firmly in hand. Told me there’s to be dancing too, if you can believe it.”
It’s with practiced patience that Shidan manages a mild, “You don’t say.”
“Dancing?” Garrack drawls, arms folding across the stark white of her coat. “What next? Kissing at midnight?”
“No, none of that,” he huffs. “And none of those silly garlands either. It’s bad enough I have to suffer through the moon eyes children make during a reel, I hardly need them making worse decisions in an empty bedroom.”
“Or unlocked closet.” Her lips twitch, dangerous. “Or just a really nice, shadowed corner…”
Lata frowns, the sort that might be more forbidding if Garrack possessed the ability to be shamed. “If you’re quite done being a degenerate?”
One shoulder lifts, lazy. “Hardly.”
“In any case,” he huffs, putting his back to her— and Shidan square in his sights. “I suppose my one consolation is that I cannot be made to dance—”
“Lata!” The name bubbles out of her, escaping through the hand she claps over it. “You’re the host.”
“Yes?” His mouth pulls thin. “Oh, some will find it rude, I’m sure, but a man can’t be made to dance, not in his own home. Not even by that— that—”
For all that his mouth works, teeth biting around the start of syllables before abandoning them for the next, Ryuu finds he hardly needs words to understand what Lata is trying to convey. Not when his hands clench so eloquently before him, the way His Highness Zen’s does when Obi really has gone and done something unwise.
“No, I mean—” now it’s Garrack waving her hands, thought it seems she’s having a far better time than Lata is doing it— “it’s the host’s job to open the floor. So you’ve got to at least do it the once.”
His shoulders stiffen to an edifice even mountains would shy from. “I must do no such thing. If the host must open the floor, then everyone can spend the night with their heels firmly on the parquet. Why, who would even be my partner? There’s not a single woman in the whole of the continent that could compel me to—”
“'Not a single woman.' You poor bastard!” A guffaw tears out of Garrack, putting tears in her eyes. “Do you really not get it? Not only do you have to open the floor—” her voice burbles up to a pitch that blots out all Lata’s attempts at protest— “but you have to do it with the highest ranked woman in attendance!”
Lata stills. Blinks. Once, then twice. And with no fanfare at all, his whole face rumples up, twisted around a sneer. “Oh—!”
Whatever else the professor says is lost to him-- Shirayuki clamps her hands right over his ears, so hard it leaves them ringing. By the time he’s quite recovered— and Lata’s quite finished— the first thing he hears is Obi murmuring, “Well, Yuzuri’s not going to like this.”
*
“What do you mean there’s not going to be kissing?!” Izuru makes a good attempt to shush her, but Yuzuri refuses to be silenced on this, even if the whole commissary is staring at them. She even drops her utensils for good measure, fork and knife both, letting them clatter to the table in the growing lull. “I finally get invited to the most exclusive Solstice party in Wirant, and there won’t even be garlands?”
“It’s not in Wirant,” Kazaha adds, right at the same time Shirayuki offers, “It’s a charity gala, not a Solstice party.”
The both stop, sparing each other the briefest glance before Kazaha pedantically plows on, “I think the Forzeno estate is somewhere outside the main city. Before the checkpoint, at least, but not within the walls—“
“That’s not important,” she snaps, wishing she could take a pair of scissors and even out that terrible hack job he likes to give himself, as if a lack of skill and a proper mirror could pass for fashion. “It’s a charity gala on the solstice, which means it’s a Solstice party and there should be kissing.”
“We go to the university party every year and you find someone to kiss just fine,” Suzu comments around a mouthful of yams. “I don’t know why it matters so much that you can’t kiss someone there.”
It’s impossible to explain to him that she’s running out of boys to kiss— or at least, boys to kiss that aren’t Suzu. Which she can never do, because wanting to put her mouth on him is a new, debilitating mental illness she’d rather die than indulge. She just needs to go out and— and touch a little snow. Meet people who know that a quadrille is a dance, not some sort of…of duck species. Reintroduce herself into a dating pool where more of the mate selection know how to chew with their mouth shut.
“Because the university party is full of academics,” she settles on instead, as close to a confession as she can bear. “And this place will has a ton of guys— normal guys, who can talk about stuff other than…sediment layers and rhizomes and…and which side of the body your kidneys are supposed to be on.”
“They’re supposed to be on both sides,” Kazaha informs her with a concerned frown, just as Suzu adds around a swallow, “I thought you loved rhizomes.”
She does. That’s sort of the problem. “There’s going to be actual gentlemen at this party, with titles and money and good manners, and I’m not going to be able to kiss any of them! It’s demoralizing.”
“Well,” Obi hums, mouth already hooking into trouble. That what she like about him: he’s always ready to break the rules. Or at least scuff them up a little. “That’s only if you get caught.”
Shirayuki casts him one of her knowing looks, the kind that doesn’t say I know what you’re up to so much as I know you’re better than this. “If Lata isn’t comfortable with kissing, then you shouldn’t be thinking about sneaking around to do it.”
“Aw, Miss,” he sighs, fluttering his eyelashes; a poor way to hide the fondness in his eyes. “But sneaking around is the best part.”
“There’s going to be dancing,” Kazaha interjects, heading their frustrating not-flirting flirting off at the pass. “You can at least do that with your moneyed and mannered gentlemen. Aren’t there a half dozen novels you’ve read where romance blooms over a reel?”
“A waltz, usually.” Sometimes maybe even a schottische or a polka, if the heroine was more plucky than limpid. “And that’s still not the same as kissing.”
“Lata’s even opening the floor.” Suzu mulls the thought over as he picks at a roll. “Do you think he can dance?”
“Well, he is a lord,” Obi reminds him, loading up his fork. “Aren’t they born knowing how to cut a rug?”
“Well, sure.” His hair’s gotten longer in the colder months, the ends lingering down around his shoulders rather than up my his chin. Yuzuri hates how much she wants to run her fingers through it. “But I mean…he’s been holding up in his lab for years. He’s got to be rusty, right? Like if he breaks one of Lady Haki’s foot bones, is that going to come out of our—?”
“He did just fine when we danced,” Shirayuki adds with a pointed look. “That wasn’t so long ago.”
“Miss.” It’s more a laugh than her name, and Obi leans in, far too close for just friends. “Back then, anyone would have seemed like a master next to you. I think I still have bruises from that night.”
Pink chases up the column of her throat, settling right at the tips of her ears. By the way her eyes dart down before skittering away, Yuzuri doubts it’s from the teasing. “W-well, still. He hardly stepped on my feet.”
Obi’s grin goes sharp, wolfish, like she’s just a little frolicking lamb, and he’s hungry for lunch. “How could he when yours are always so quick on the draw?”
This is getting ridiculous. “I think we’re missing the most important part here,” Yuzuri reminds them, startling Obi back to a less ravenous distance. “Which is that there’s going to be no kissing! For anyone!”
“Wait, will I have to dance?” Suzu asks, worry slipping the last few syllables shrill. “I’ve never danced before. Not the real stuff. I don’t even know where to put my hands!”
“Maybe,” Kazaha drawls, angling himself toward her— and away from Suzu’s spiraling. “You could spend all that time you wanted to be swapping spit with rich boys and use it to kiss up to our donors instead.”
Yuzuri groans. “That is not the kind of kissing I want to do.”
His mouth twitches, threatening amusement. “But it is a kind of kissing.”
“Obi.” Suzu grabs his sleeve over the sweet potatoes. “You gotta teach me how to dance.”
Kazaha sighs, shaking his head. “Great. And now the blind are leading the blind.”
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atlasshrugd · 24 days
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Chapter 13 of WHITE NIGHTS is UP! Read Here.
Just for tonight, he resolved to himself, tracing Kinn’s eyelashes with his eyes. The man had fallen asleep somewhere between 4 a.m. and 6. His chest was moving in deep, steady breaths, his nipples peaked. He looked so innocent in sleep, so graceless. He looked just like a boy. Porsche could even imagine him as one, tonight, in this room. Just a boy that Porsche likes, and desperately wants. So Porsche turned on his side and slept close to Kinn, letting the rise and fall of his chest sedate him, the rhythm of his breaths a lullaby. No nightmares visited him that night, no tangled dreams of repression and want, and death. He had slept soundly in the deepest darkness of his mind, where he had met the boy Kinn once was, before he had been divested of all that he had been.
Read on ao3.
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strongermonster · 11 months
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i'm in the middle of painting my bedroom, which is going Eh bc i want a very specific colour, but the lightbulb colour + basement darkness has made this an annoying trial and error in paint matching. however, i discovered only now in my life that plain ol' black + regular old yellow makes green.
i didn't know that??? i feel like... i shoudl've known that. was i not taught this when i was 8 or something?? it's making me feel 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️ that i didn't know? it makes such a good green too
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i hate this bc i feel like it was something that—now that i'm looking at it swatched out—i'm like "duh yeah, that's obvious, you knew that." but i just spent 4 days in a paint-fume-fuelled mania mixing greens, yellows, blues, reds, coppers, whites, blacks, etc to find a Perfect Green, and she was there in 2 colours all along...
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