#oc: sabrina wiseman | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mrs-theirin · 1 year

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ship: nick wiseman x sabrina cadogan ♫ ♡ wc: 4,216 rating: T notes: contains allusions to past (borderline) sexual assault and life after experiencing that. read with caution!

[ao3 link]

Breathe, Sabrina.

Sabrina Cadogan walks down the street, wrapping herself in her sweater. It’s pink, slightly frayed from overuse, and barely wards off the chill of the wind. Her hair whips in her face.

Breathe.

It’s been two years since him, two years since that horrible liar finally left her life. Two years since she’s felt another’s hands on her in that way, since he used her and lied to her and twisted it all back to her. Since she was the whore. Since she was the liar. Since she was the one who used him, who only ever regarded him as a “sex toy”, who played with his emotions and led him on.

Goddamn it, Sabrina, remember how to breathe.

She sucks in a deep, sharp breath. It stings her lungs.

Her skin burns. She remembers what it was like for him to touch her, to have his hands trail up and down her body. That always drove her crazy, the way he could make her beg and whine by just moving his hands across her skin, devouring her with passionate kisses that clouded her thoughts.

She bites her lip as hard as she can, fighting off the first bout of tears threatening to spill out. She will not cry over him. It has been too long, and she has already wasted so many tears. She will not cry.

Almost home.

Betrayal after betrayal, lie after lie. And she’s the villain? She’s the cruel one? When the boy she kissed never even existed in the first place?

“God, this is so stupid,” she mumbles under her breath, noticing the warble in her words.

It’s been two years. She should be over this. The chill that runs down her spine at the thought of him, the way her heart pounds in her chest at the memory of his voice, it should all be gone. It’s been so long.

“It’s been so fucking long, Sabrina,” she whispers to herself. “Grow up.”

You’re almost home. He’s not here. You’re okay.

The buzz of her phone startles her out of her thoughts and she stops walking abruptly. She looks down, the device digging into her skin with how tightly she grips it. nicky boy <3 is calling, it reads.

“Fuck,” she huffs. She was supposed to be heading to Nick’s.

She stares at her phone for a minute, hesitating, calculating the tremble in her voice, Nick’s natural intuition when she’s upset. He’s always been so good at reading her. Can she manage it? Taking a deep breath, she presses answer, forcing herself to keep walking.

“Nick?”

“Hi, sunshine!” Nick’s voice rings like the first note of her favorite song. “Almost here?”

Sabrina pulls the phone away from her mouth to take a shaky breath, then presses it back against her ear, tight against the cold. “I’m sorry, baby, I totally forgot I was supposed to come over. I’ve got a bit of a headache. Is it okay if I come over a different time?”

Even through the phone, Sabrina can hear the pout on Nick’s face. “Oh,” he says. “Was it those troublemakers in the library again? I can get them in trouble if you—”

“No, Nick, they weren’t there today.” Is this convincing enough? Can he hear it? “I might be getting a cold, I’m not sure.”

“Are you wearing that jacket I got you? You know that sweater isn’t thick enough!”

She sighs, letting out a soft laugh. He’s such a mom. “It’s 50 degrees out, Nick. It’s not that cold.”

“So you are wearing the sweater!” Nick chuckles to himself. “Can’t blame you. You look beautiful in pink.”

Sabrina blushes, barely hearing him as he continues on a, “Well, you look beautiful in anything” tangent. She smiles.

God, you look beautiful. You’re perfect.

Her smile fades. Closing her eyes hoping to squeeze out the memory, she sucks in a breath without pulling the phone away, and Nick makes a small noise of acknowledgement. “You are still beautiful when you’re sick, peach,” he says matter-of-factly.

“That’s not what I—” she starts, then catches herself. “I know. I know!”

“What’s wrong?” he finally asks. Fuck.

“Nothing, Nick,” she says a bit too sharply. “I’m just tired. And cold.”

“I thought it wasn’t that cold out.”

She can see him sticking his tongue out. She laughs, rolling her eyes. “It’s cold enough. I’m almost home. I’ll call you later?”

Please, Nick, please just hang up. Please.

“Yeah,” he says, and her whole body relaxes. “I love you! Get right into bed, okay? I better not see you on the Xbox in a few minutes.”

“No Xbox, scout’s honor. I love you too, angel.”

As she wrestles with her keys, Nick continues, starting on his usual quick rant before the ending of a call. “Don’t forget Aria asked to get coffee tomorrow. She always drinks that crazy strong stuff, I don’t know how it doesn’t kill her. Personally, I think she could take a step back from coffee for a while, that might be one of the many reasons she’s so high strung, but God forbid Button listen to me about anything.”

Inside the house. She shuts the door behind her and leans against it, closing her eyes.

“She might drag Kent along, but she promised me she’d try to stop doing that. I swear, your little sister finally gets a boyfriend weird enough to match her energy and she can’t stop bringing him along like a puppy dog everywhere she goes.” After a moment, he laughs. “A puppy dog! Fitting. Kent is Button’s Annie and Cass.”

Sabrina throws her keys on the counter, heading to the fridge. She pulls out the carton of milk, drinking a few swallows before closing the door again, dragging herself to her room.

“I mean it about the Xbox, peach. You have to take care of yourself. Xbox is no good for headaches. And you better not have a new family on the Sims to show me next time I come over either. It is strict bed rest, you hear me, missy?”

“Yes, Mom,” she groans, throwing herself on her bed. Her phone lands beside her head. “Strict bed rest. No Xbox. No Sims.”

“I love you!”

Sabrina slides her hands into her hair and tugs. “I love you too.”

Silence. Usually he says bye, but he must’ve thought he was overstaying his welcome. A bit of guilt tugs at her heart. She wasn’t very present at the end there. She should call him back.

What, do you have a crush on him or something? I just don’t see why this is affecting you so much.

Because it’s Justice! Sure, I have a stupid little Twitter dedicated to stupid little memes about him, but a bomb went off. He’s in the hospital. I’m worried about him. Am I crazy for that? Is it crazy to be worried about someone?

Again with the bomb conspiracy. I just never see you anymore. You seem consumed by this news, and you keep shutting down plans, and you barely want to talk to me. I understand being upset, but you don’t have to shut me out.

God, it’s not about Nick Wiseman. It’s about you, you fucking asshole. You never leave me alone, and when I ask for space, it’s always a whole ordeal. Either you make a fuss about not being able to talk to me or you just don’t respect my need for space at all. What am I supposed to do? Every second you’re there, wanting to do something, wanting to call, even wanting to fall asleep on the phone? We’re not dating! That’s crazy!

And you’re much better? Anytime you talk to me, you want something from me. And then when you get it, you shut me out again! That’s not fair.

That’s not—That’s not what happens! We are both active participants in that, you have never touched me when you didn’t want to. That’s not my fault. I told you from the start what I wanted and didn’t want, and you told me it was okay. You told me it was okay! That’s not on me anymore. If you didn’t mean it, you never should’ve said it in the first place, but don’t blame me for taking you at your word.

Sabrina groans loudly, turning to shove her face into her pillow. Her heart is pounding so hard it’s threatening to break her ribs.

She should be over this. She should be long over this.

That’s all you want from me anyways. You just use me to get what you want and you throw me away until you want it again.

And what about all the times I came over and just wanted to hold you? What about all the times I got into the car and asked you if we could just sit there with your head on my chest? You’re ignoring the other stuff to make yourself look better, and it’s not fair! When I came over last week, all I wanted to do was hang out and watch TV with you. You initiated everything, and when I told you I didn’t want to do anything, you stopped for a minute and tried again five seconds later. How is that me using you? I told you no!

You said “not right now”. Not “no”.

A wail rips itself from Sabrina’s chest, and the tears finally burst out of her. She clutches her pillow tight, her fingers surely turning white, and sobs, the pain wracking her entire body. “God!” she screams. “God, God, God, God!”

She’s ruined. She was ruined before him, and he crumbled her into an even finer dust. She’s ruined. She’ll never make Nick happy. Not like Aoife did. Not like all the other girls did. It’s been a year, a year since they started dating. It’s been two months since she almost let him touch her (No, Nick, I’m so sorry. If you’re not comfortable doing this without reciprocation, I completely understand), two months since (You’re the one who’s not comfortable, peach. I won’t force you to do anything you don’t want to do), two months since (That’s what he said. That’s what he said, Nick), two months since (I will never do what he did to you. Fuck that guy. If we never do that, I’ll still be happy. You’ll still be my wonderful girlfriend).

Two months since (Fuck, Nick, I love you so much. I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry).

Two months since (Never apologize for that. Ever).

And she had wanted to. She still does. Nick drives her crazy, stirs something in her stomach that she hasn’t felt that strongly before. When he stretches in his Unity uniform, when he licks his lips when he’s focused, when he places his hand on her neck and pulls her in for a slow kiss. Even when he goes on his hour long tangents, God, he drives her crazy.

But she can’t. She doesn’t trust it.

She hates that she doesn’t trust it.

She’s ruined.

A knock sounds at the door, and she flies off the bed, legs trembling. Great, just what she needed. Who could that possibly be?

She peeks out of her window, and lo and behold, Nick is standing on her doorstep, flowers in one hand (orange roses—he knows her so well) and a round container in the other. He also has a backpack on.

She grabs her phone, dialing him immediately. A small giggle works its way through her tears as she watches him stumble, trying to answer his phone with the hand holding flowers. “Hello?” he says.

“Angel,” she says, painfully aware her voice is thick with sorrow. “What are you doing?”

“You’re supposed to be sleeping,” he pouts.

“It’s been 25 minutes since we hung up, Nick.”

“Power nap!” he chirps. God, he’s so ridiculous. “Come on, let me in, I’m gonna drop your soup.”

Sabrina pales. “Uh…the door’s open. I forgot to lock it.”

“It’s a good thing I’m here, huh?” he says, dispelling her anxiety with one sentence. “Come open the door though. I want a kiss. Please? Please, please, please?”

“I’m coming,” she says through a laugh, heading towards the door and wiping her nose. “You’re so needy.”

“Yes, I am,” he whines. “I am so, so needy, and I will die if I don’t get a kiss from my—”

Sabrina opens the door, and his eyes light up, his hand dropping from his face. “Oh, thank God, there she is. I was talking to this lady on the phone, demanding she provide my beautiful girlfriend, and it just did not sound like she was going to budge. But here you are!” He leans forward dramatically, closing his eyes and puckering his lips. “I believe I was promised something?”

“I didn’t promise you anything,” she says, sniffing, then gently places her hands on his face and kisses him. His dramatic pucker slips into a soft kiss, his mouth opening slightly. Kissing Nick is like laying in a field of flowers, a cool breeze drifting through, the sun gently shining. Sabrina instantly feels a few pounds lighter.

“Thank you,” he says dreamily when she pulls away. She keeps her hands on his face.

"What is all this?" she asks.

Pink spreads across his freckled face. "I got these for you for tonight. And," he says, wiggling his body to shake his backpack, "this stuff too. Remember that blanket we saw last week? And that hair clip? Also, I brought your movie, you forgot it at my house last time. Figured you wanted that back. I just—"

“Sorry.” She sniffles, overwhelmed. “You did all this and—I’m sorry I lied to you.”

His expression softens. “You didn’t lie. You have a headache. Just not a physical one.”

A sort of half-laugh, half-sob comes out of her mouth as she steps back, letting him in the house. “You’re so—I hate you.”

“Love you too, peach.”

“You awake?”

Sabrina blinks open her eyes, trying to resist the urge to sink back into Nick’s warmth. The couch and his arms are so soft. “Of course I am. I could never fall asleep during—”

“Oh, hush,” he interrupts. “You’ve seen it a million times. You’re allowed to sleep. My soup tends to have that effect on people.”

“But—”

“But—But—’But you were a mouse! You wanted cheese!’”

She smacks his thigh. “Don’t you quote it at me! I’m awake.”

Nick laughs. A moment of silence passes.

Her head stops rising and falling on his chest as he holds his breath. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Mm,” she immediately responds. Dread creeps its way through her insides. “Do we have to?”

“Of course not.” Nick’s voice is impossibly gentle. “I thought it might help.”

Her tongue burns with bitterness. “What is there to talk about? I’m fucked up forever because some guy decided—”

“Hey, hey, hey. None of that.” Nick shifts in his seat, moving her so she’s facing him. His brow is knit in concern. “You are not fucked up.”

He’s so pretty when he cares. She feels bad for thinking it, but in that moment, with his eyes shining with worry, he’s so fucking beautiful. Tears well up in her eyes for the third time that day.

“I want to be normal, Nick,” she cries, gripping his wrist. “I want to experience life the way everybody else does. I want to be able to touch you. I want you to be able to touch me. I want to be able to think of it without feeling sick to my stomach.”

“It’s not fair, I know.” His hand brushes her hair behind her ear, and she holds back a sob. “Someone at some point did something really bad to you, and it scared you. That’s not your fault.”

“Nick—”

“It’s not your fault. He—” Nick takes a deep breath, rage burning in his hazel eyes. Nick's anger is a beast of its own. “He made it seem like it was your fault. He made you doubt yourself to make himself feel better. Because it’s his fault. He did this to you, and you didn’t deserve it, and it isn’t fair, but it’s not your fault.”

“I know, I just—”

“Sabrina.” He cups her face. The pain in her chest is unbearable. “Sabrina Cadogan. You are beautiful. But you are more than that. You are more than what he made you. You are more than who he said you are. He was a liar, and a manipulator, and a general piece of shit. And you are more than who you were with him. Do you hear me?”

She nods. Biting on her lip so hard that it starts to bleed, she leans in to press her forehead against his. He sighs when her skin makes contact. “I love you,” she warbles.

“I love you,” he says.

“Nick, what if I never—” She pulls away, wrapping herself in the blanket he brought her. “What if I can never—”

“Then we’ll deal with that together,” he answers, like it’s just that simple, like it’s the easiest question in the world. “I’m your boyfriend because I love you. All of you. I love your garden, and your baking, and your singing, and the way you treat my sister, and the way you treat everyone, because you are relentlessly kind and understanding and good. I love that you spend hours at the computer with your little Sim family, and I love that you won’t let them die because you love those fictional people so much. I love how excited you get when you beat me in Mario Kart—a lucky happenstance, mind you—and I love seeing you light up when your dads come to visit.

Nick leans back, shaking his head, lost in thought. “God, I loved the first time your papa called me Nick, how proud you were that I wasn’t just Justice to them, that I was Nick, I was your boyfriend. I love everything about you, Sabrina. And that includes the parts that you hate. I will never make you feel lesser than for being the way that you are, for feeling the way that you do. I know why you think the way you do, and I can’t say I blame you. I used to sleep around…a lot. But there’s nothing to be found in that. There are so many things to be found in you, Brina.”

“You’re sure?” she asks, heart swelling with his words. She loves him so much. “Because I’d understand if you aren’t comfortable with the fact that I—that we—It’s hard for me.”

“I know it is,” he says, so soft it’s practically a whisper. “I will be here if you ever change your mind. And I will be here if you never change your mind. Yeah?”

She nods. “Yeah. I love you.”

He kisses her, once, slow and soft and gentle. “I love you too.”

When she finally lets go, it’s easy.

It’s so easy with Nick.

He asks her questions every step of the way, interrupting his kisses with “Is this okay?” and “You’re sure about this?” and “We can stop the moment you get uncomfortable”. When she asks for a break, he sits back, cracking jokes and placing quick kisses on her forehead, her cheek, her hand. He never tries to start anything back up again. He never seems impatient, like he’s rushing her or eager to get back to anything. When she reaches for his pants, he grabs her hand, kissing the knuckles.

“I want you to be sure,” he says.

She has never been more sure of anything in her life. And with Nick, it is so easy.

She touches him, and even through pleasure, even through the release she is sure he has missed, he asks her questions. “This is okay?” and “We can stop anytime you want” and “You feeling okay?” When she starts to line herself up for something she has never done with anyone before, he stops her.

“Not right now,” he says, and she will not be like him. Not right now means no. She stops immediately.

“Are you okay?” she asks. “Is this too much?”

“I’m checking on you, sunshine. This is a lot for…for our first time doing anything.”

If Nick’s love were a weapon, it could destroy the entire universe.

She cries, again, but these are tears of joy.

“I trust you,” she says, and she means it. She trusts him. With everything.

He shakes his head, placing a light kiss on her forehead. “Let’s take a break. You’re feeling very good right now, and your judgment might be clouded by how you’re feeling. Take a break with me. We’ll go to the bathroom, get something to eat. Sit with each other for a bit. After that, you tell me if you’re still ready. But only if you mean it. If not, we’ll go to the arcade or the movies or something. That way, you don’t think I’m ‘missing out’ on anything.”

“Nicholas.”

“Sabrina?”

“You are—” Her voice cracks, tears spilling down her cheeks. She tries to force the words out. “You are too good to me.”

He lets out an embarrassed laugh, and God, he is so fucking beautiful. “I like to think I’m just good enough. Come on, peach. Those muffins we made earlier are calling our names.”

“I love you. So much.”

“I love you too.”

She does end up changing her mind that day. He was right; in the moment, it seemed like a good idea, but the longer she sat with it, the more uneasy she became. They go to the park instead, and it’s just as pleasurable.

It’s on a day neither of them expect, where the two of them are in the kitchen cooking in silence, enjoying each other’s company in comfortable quiet, when Sabrina opens her mouth and says, “I’m ready.”

Nick glances over at her pan. “The sauce isn’t thick enough yet, peach.”

“No, I…” She swirls her wooden spoon in the pan. “The other thing.”

“Oh,” he says. “Oh!”

A moment passes. The only sounds are the bubbling of the sauce and the sizzling of the chicken.

“Are you sure?”

She nods, finally looking up at him. “I think so. If we…if we start, and I’m not, we can—”

“We can always stop,” he agrees. “Always. Never be afraid to ask for that.”

Another pause. “I guess we should finish dinner first,” she says.

There’s a moment of tense silence, then the two of them laugh. Nick walks over and kisses her temple. “Probably, yeah. This stuff’s really good, I promise. We just shouldn’t…fill up. Because. Well.”

Heat rushes across her face. “Yeah.”

“Yeah,” he repeats.

“I trust you,” she says.

“I know, peach. I know.”

When dinner is over and done with and they’ve watched a movie to give themselves time to digest their food, they head to the bedroom. It’s playful. Nick cracks a million jokes on the way there, all of which die in his throat when she takes off her clothes (Is it okay that I keep my bra on? Sometimes having my boobs out makes me feel sick & Of course, sunshine, whatever makes you comfortable).

It’s surprising how easy it is, how easy kissing him while on top of him is, how easy letting him flip her over is. How easy it is to sink into the bed and stare up at the love of her life, knowing she trusts him wholeheartedly. How easy it is to let him fuck her, knowing that this is not what he needs, but what they want. How easy it is to close her eyes and feel good, knowing that Nicholas Hyacinth Wiseman loves her so much that he would never fuck her if she asked that of him, that he would love to fuck her if she asked that of him.

How easy it is to feel safe with him.

And she feels safe, she feels incredibly safe, even when the pace becomes faster, even when Nick can no longer talk and check in on her because he’s groaning and panting, how even moaning her name is a question of “Is this okay?”. The way he holds her hand asks “Are you all right?”. The way he leans down to kiss her asks “You’re still okay with this, right?”. And when all is said and done, and they lay in bed, sweaty and breathing and alive, it’s still not what he needs. He doesn’t need that to love her. He doesn’t need that to be with her.

It’s something they want to share with each other. And never at the other’s expense. And God, is that a wonderful thought. Nick will never use me. Nick will never ask me for anything he knows I won’t give. Nick will never expect anything from me.

“I love you, Sabrina,” he says into her hair, a kiss in his words.

“I love you too, Nicholas,” she murmurs into the crook of his neck, snuggling into place and closing her eyes, preparing to drift off.

Simple as can be. Sabrina Cadogan loves Nicholas Wiseman. So. Much.

#gotta lot of catharsis writing this ngl #was possessed by the catharsis demon #the music note is the song the title is from!#and the heart is their ship tag on my oc blog #mind blind #nick wiseman #nicholas wiseman #button wiseman #sabrina cadogan #nick wiseman x oc #oc x nick wiseman #interactive fiction #writing #fic #fanfiction #quill's writing

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mrs-theirin · 2 months

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Nick Wiseman and Sabrina Cadogan have their first date at a Chicago arcade.

Today’s the day.

Sabrina watches herself in the mirror, smoothing out her sunflower dress. She’d already gotten approval from her Twitter feed–granted, they didn’t know the date she was dressing up for was with Nick Hyacinth Wiseman, but she figures they’ll know by the end of the day. The thought makes her shudder.

She and Nick have managed to avoid being seen together for this long, and it’s been a few months. Every time a picture of them came out, it was some blurry nonsense, and Sabrina isn’t disillusioned; she’s an average looking white girl with brown hair, those pictures could be of anyone. She’s had a few tweets tagging her and playfully asking, “This you?” but she either ignores them or responds with another joke.

But today’s the real day.

When the pictures of Nick Wiseman with a girl in a sunflower dress get out, there will be no denying it. She’s either in for a really good time, or a very, very bad one.

Her phone dings.

awwww WHAT!!! you look gorgeous, sabrina :)

Well, she’s in for a good time either way, if going on a date with someone as ridiculously cute as Nick Wiseman is any indication. She sends a quick response back (you better deliver yourself, mister) and slides her phone into her bag, taking a final moment to move around her bangs a little before heading out the door.

finish reading on ao3!

#quill's writing #mind blind #nick wiseman #sabrina cadogan #nick wiseman x oc #oc x nick wiseman #yeah it's another. there will probably be more #writing #fanfiction #fanfic #fic #interactive fiction

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thefossilwhale · 3 years

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i will sell the hotel

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hmph. Must be some book.

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

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

“Hey,” she says.

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

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

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

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

“All right.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes what?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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thefossilwhale · 3 years

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signed the saw

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

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

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

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

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

“This isn’t the room,” he tells her.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Sabrina?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nick?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They round the next corner.

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

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thefossilwhale · 3 years

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29 or 40 for sab and kent pls !!!

29. things you said in the rain

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

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

“Sabrina?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I said I’d walk you home,” he says.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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thefossilwhale · 3 years

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

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

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

“Can I come in, Button?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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thefossilwhale · 2 years

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sabrina and grayson !!!

i like thinking about this one but it would be sooo bad. these two get along pretty well, but only because they have never tried to venture past their casual connected-by-nick level of friendship. i think if they tried to date or even to be closer friends, it would become quickly apparent that they are not compatible people and they would probably end up not liking each other that much kjhghjkl.

sab is too immature and self-absorbed for him and i think he'd get fed up very quickly. he'd bring out a lot of the worst in her; her pettier moods normally pass pretty quickly but she would double down if gray tried to make be reasonable before she was done wallowing. she would also resent that he's nick's best friend, mostly because she wants to feel like she has a life outside of nick/her family and dating fortitude would be... not that. and that's not even considering the fact that he’s a ment. she could never.

warm but relatively distant back-up big brother is what he should be for her, better for everyone this way.

#that ask about gray being 'gently pushy' about button reconciling with their parents. she would kill.#she would be debating whether she wants to see john and hope for christmas and gray would encourage her to do it and she'd be like oh! ok.-#-so i'm actually blocking their numbers forever now. thanks though.#oc: sabrina wiseman #trvelyans #high school sab was a menace flirting w gray for fun but if you made her follow through she'd kill them both #ty maia xoxo

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thefossilwhale · 3 years

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i filled out this super cool button character profile by @extraordinarymage for sabrina! thank you for making this, it was a lot of fun to fill out <3 the bulk of it is under a cut and oh boy is it long !!!

Short, Quick Reference

Name: Sabrina Wiseman

Pronouns: She/her

Sexuality: Bisexual

Love Interest: Kent

Main personality trait: Confidence

Secondary personality trait: Morbidity

Relationship with Nick: Full of love, haunted by unaddressed guilt and frustration. But mostly full of love.

Nickname for Nick: Saint Nick (used sparingly)

Resentful or accepting?: Slightly resentful

Main strategy (interpersonal, insightful, innovative?): Insightful

Ethical or expedient?: Expedient

GENERAL

Name: Sabrina Larkspur Wiseman

Nickname(s): Sab, used by anyone; Sabby, only Nick and Sally; and, of course, Button for Nick.

Birthday: I think I made her an October Libra for the purpose of a template I did months ago, but I’m not sure! No concrete birthday yet, I’m always very slow to nail down details like this.

Age: 20

Pronouns: She/her

Sexuality: Bisexual

Hair color + style: Blonde. A little past shoulder length, sometimes wavy. Usually a middle part. For Aeon, tied back in a bun.

Eye color: Blue, entirely because of the section of Frank O’Hara’s “Meditations in an Emergency” that goes, “My eyes are vague blue, like the sky...”

Height: 5′5

Piercings: Multiple in each ear, but a couple have started to close.

Tattoos: None yet! Sab likes the idea of a tattoo but is worried about finding the perfect design, whether she’d end up hating it, that the pain might be greater than she expects and she’ll look like a baby in front of her tattoo artist. I’d like to think she eventually consults Sally and/or Glitch to come up with an idea that she falls in love with, but I haven’t come up with what that would be!

Clothing style: Mostly solid colors, not a lot of patterns. Nothing super bright, but a fairly varied mix of pastels, neutrals, dark colors, black. Partial to denim skirts and sweater tops. Ankle boots. Likes a good turtleneck. She’s bolder when it comes to formal wear, and especially loves suits. Big fan of silk and satin.

Since she has a pretty accurate face claim, I’ll link some gifsets I’ve rb’d for appearance ref if you are so inclined.

STATS

I’m always adjusting minor things and swapping scenes around, but these are from my most recent Sab run! Most scores hover somewhere around these values.

Personality:

Confidence: 53%

Humor: 5%

Morbidity: 22%

Resentful: 57% | Accepting: 43%

Strategy:

Interpersonal: 12%

Insightful: 50%

Innovative: 10%

Ethical: 43% | Expedient: 57%

KEY DECISIONS:

What is Nick’s nickname and why?: Saint Nick, used very rarely. It’s a joking reference to the time she thought Santa was an evil Ment out to ruin Christmas, and a point about Nick overdoing it with the cheer. “Saint Nick” is usually code for “I know you mean well, but please mind your own business.” Otherwise, she just calls him Nick.

What is their favorite type of cookie (and its name and why?): Salted caramel chocolate chip! No special name.

What was their initial reaction to Sally hugging them, as kids?: She just froze. That could just be me projecting adult Sabrina onto her childhood self; I don’t imagine that she was as uncomfortable around strangers or quite as cautious back then. But that’s what I’ll stick with.

How did they ace the ASE test?: The in-game option she takes is “My entire life has revolved around strategic avoidance,” but the one about being just plain smart also sounds like her. If Sab has the chance to thoroughly (over)prepare for something, she will do it. Her mind blindness also has her constantly (over)analyzing situations. So, hard work and relentless anxiety!

Did they manage to win their first assignment? How?: Yes, by having Sally block the door. I’ve headcanoned some slight differences in how it plays out, which I wrote about in-depth here. To summarize, Sab thinks of blocking the door as a desperate last resort, not a clever loophole, and she pushes back against Rosy’s praise because she wishes she could have done it the “real” way. Rosy goes from being impressed to being annoyed that she’s willfully missing the point.

What was the primary emotion Button felt during the Aeon bombing (love, gratitude, etc?): Guilt. She feels very guilty about how much Nick has given up for her in general, but I think that in the moment, it’s on a smaller scale. The fact that Nick was on the phone with her when it happened, coming to her rescue like always, becomes emblematic of their whole relationship for her, and she really fixates on that.

Who drove them home from the hospital from and why?: Glitch. Sab responds to her initial text with “Are you sure?”, and is relieved when Glitch takes that as “Yes, please.” She doesn’t relish the idea of being around someone more connected to her family or Nick at that point.

How do they feel about Nick riding around in their mind?: Worried, at first. Just because it’s so unknown and absolutely insane. After seeing Doctor Amari, she’s excited! Sab is thrilled to be a Pollard Five and intends to take full advantage of it. I am not looking forward to seeing how she reacts when that’s taken away from her.

Why did Button agree to do the undercover mission?: To prove she still deserves to be an MIV. Sabrina feels stupid and reckless for putting herself, Nick, and Aeon in this position, but she knows she’s smart, and she hasn’t worked this hard for nothing. She wants to prove what she could do with a normal Pollard Score and make herself too valuable to give up even when she’s back to Zero.

Told Glitch about your mind blindness?: Depends on the playthrough. I’m constantly going back and forth on whether Sab meets Glitch for coffee or wanders the city with Nick in her second chapter 5 slot (after trying to track down Kent). If she does meet Glitch, though, she absolutely tells her; with how touchy Sab is about privacy, she couldn’t stomach not warning Glitch that Nick could hear everything they said.

Figured out K’s secret?: Nope. She finds enough of the clues to be given the “I knew it!” option in-game, but she didn’t actually put it together. Sab is too angry and embarrassed by learning that Kent is an AMO to find any reason to interrogate it. “The random guy I met before school just happens to be a jerk” is a perfectly sound explanation to her.

Found Noh’s clues?: Not at the metro station. Sometimes she sees the Vengeance brooms in chapter 5 (again, depending on the playthrough), but that’s it.

ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIP:

Love Interest: Kent

Why them?: Sab feels an immediate kinship with Kent after learning about the NPO program. It’s kind of funny how quickly he moves from the least sympathetic position in her eyes (Ment who got past me and read my mind without my knowledge) to the most sympathetic (non-powered child of a prominent family aiming a league above where he “belongs”). A lot of new respect for his competence. Her fate is sealed when she realizes that his kindness at the hospital wasn’t him trying to make up for some wrongdoing, but just him being very sweet. (She had scoffed over “You needed help.” But now she’s like, “Oh. He meant that?! Fuck.”)

As they spend more time together, Sab realizes how weirdly similar they are in other ways, too. And she starts to feel safe/secure around him in a way that she’s extremely not used to. Growing up surrounded by Ments, Sab has a lot of issues about being too much, too difficult, needing to “be worthy” of love. So someone like Kent who is not a Ment, who has no “obligation” to care about her, and whose judgement she trusts implicitly? Being around him and being loved by him mean a lot, and I think will go a long way towards helping her reflect on her other relationships!

What are their first impressions of each other?: Okay, there are like 3 first impressions with Kent. First: he’s tall and handsome and secretly adorable, and they have similar career goals, so she’s drafting a five-month plan to woo him and get his number. Second: he’s a lying, self-obsessed loser who owes her many explanations. Third: oh no, the first impression was true! And he’s been continually, selflessly kind to her in spite of her overt hostility. Scratch the five-month plan, because the crush was only fun when it was entirely superficial; now she really, really likes him and that just sucks.

We know that Button makes a good impression on K by stopping for their dogs, but apart from that... I mean, the “we confused each other” from chapter 7 is very apt. Sab has lots of shifting personas, and Kent sees pretty much every one within 24 hours. The prevailing impression before everything gets cleared up is probably just that she cares a lot? About everything? Her stopping for the dogs, how seriously she takes the first assignment, the way she seems so deeply affected by something he said or did that morning. It’s a rare side of her to meet first because she usually pretends to be above everything.

What feature does your Button find most attractive in their RO (ex. appearance, personality, etc.)?: Probably his composure. And his... steadfastness? The way he seems unruffled by anything, his soothing presence. She really admires that about him and finds the calm contagious.

What do they do to spend time together?: Going on drives together! Kent driving while Sab plays songs she thinks he’ll like, talking or not talking. Cuddling on the couch while reading their own separate books. Museum dates. Walking the dogs together.

Do they argue? How do they handle arguments and disagreements? How do they make up?: I imagine that the first month or so of their relationship would be difficult, just because they’re both bad at expressing themselves and not used to relying on other people. Kent kind of negates a lot of Sab’s impulses to get defensive or hostile, so instead of arguments, I think there are more likely to be awkward periods where she’s just stewing in something without addressing it. Most of their fights would be, like, one of them becoming really distant for a concerning number of days until the other tries to awkwardly check in on them.

What does their future look like?: Uhh some random lore: I think eventually they do get married, despite neither of them caring that much about it. Sabrina would be excited to have something to plan, and she knows it would make the people around her happy. They have a long engagement; there’s never really an “official” proposal, just an acknowledgement that yeah, they’ll get married one day, and then eventually they get rings. The engagement is almost Sab’s favorite part, honestly. She likes planning and showing off her ring and calling Kent her fiancé, a lot of fanfare on her part for a wedding that ends up being very modest and chill.

OTHER RELATIONSHIPS (Feel free to go in depth!)

Relationship with Nick: When I first started developing Sab, I thought that with as difficult/prickly as she can be, her relationship with Nick would be worse than it is. Never bad, but certainly strained, with more jealousy/resentment on her side. However, she rejected this. She is resentful, but never towards Nick—she internalizes the negative parts of their relationship so they manifest as guilt instead. And that’s the problem, not resentment. Sab thinks he’s overprotective, but that doesn’t make her angry; it just makes her sad. She wishes things were different and he didn’t feel so responsible for her, but she also doesn’t know how she could manage without him taking on so many of her burdens. So, guilt! So much love, but always looming guilt.

Having Nick in her head has helped. It’s added a new kind of guilt (“I’m a horrible person for being so giddy that people can’t hear my thoughts even though that requires my brother to be in a coma”), but getting inside Nick’s head for once and really feeling his love for her changes things. Makes her feel way more secure, I guess? It’s easier to see her brother as human person, a friend who loves her, rather than a perfect selfless paragon who sacrificed everything to raise her, which is an important shift.

There are also Things happening with self-presentation in the fact that they’re both models, and flirts, and pretend to be shallow. And the ways that they’ve responded to vastly different expectations. And selflessness versus selfishness. But I have no idea how to talk about that yet.

Relationship with Father: Strained and distant. Sabrina doesn’t necessarily blame him for leaving, but she hates how he’s handled it. She’s incredibly frustrated that John insists on keeping them in this miserable limbo of uncomfortable visits, even though moving away was (to her) a tacit acknowledgement that she and her parents are better off without each other. He’s trying to force a relationship that Sab thinks is ultimately harmful for everyone involved. For Nick’s sake, she’s willing to grin and bear the visits, but it never works because John can obviously tell it’s an act. He pushes her, she gets defensive, and so on to infinity.

Relationship with Mother: Like with John, Sab doesn’t resent Hope for the incident itself, or for leaving afterward. It was terrifying, and the idea of being around Hope makes her panic—but she thinks of that as just another irrational anxiety symptom, and she’s trying to work through it. What she does resent Hope for is letting it get to that point at all. Sab is incredibly bitter that Hope will suffer silently to the point of almost killing her (during the incident) and potentially herself (with the BRS), while Sab has no choice but to be completely open. Especially because they’re so similar in that way—she’s almost jealous. “Oh, so your silence is allowed to almost kill me and it’s ‘nobody’s fault’ but I can’t pretend to enjoy a single lunch with Dad without him calling me out for lying?”

And even though she doesn’t hold the incident itself against her, Sab is very hung up on “Why are you never quiet? Why are you always there?” She knows, on some level, that this was not a Personal Judgement against her. But because Hope keeps so much quiet, this is the only honest expression of her mother’s feelings that she can remember! It would take a lot for Sab to believe that Hope was really, genuinely interested in reconnecting with her, rather than just pretending to love her "enough” this time because to do otherwise would reflect poorly on Hope as a mother.

Relationship with Sally: Besties <3 Sally is the only member of the Wiseman inner circle that Sab doesn’t have complicated feelings about. They both have hidden morbid streaks that they bring out in each other, and can laugh about. They both have competitive streaks that work well together because they’re always on the same team. And their wants/needs from the relationship complement each other well, I think. Sally has always felt valued because she’s useful and not because she’s loved, while Sab has always felt smothered by love/care without feeling like she genuinely adds value to other people’s lives. So it means a lot to both of them that they’re able to help each other practically, while also genuinely loving and supporting each other outside of that.

Relationship with Gray: Full of trust and genuine care, but predicated on distance. Sab loves him a lot for being so careful not to cross any boundaries, physical or emotional, with her. She’s grateful that he’s there for Nick in a way that she doesn’t feel she can be. But "I like Gray because he doesn’t push me and is good to Nick” means that any hand he extend makes her defensive, because she’ll either view him as an emissary of Nick or start to panic because their normal routine is being disrupted (she doesn’t tell him about Hope in ch 3, for example).

They get along very well in a friend-of-a-friend sort of way, and bond over being cautious counterparts to Nick. Also, Sab never had a crush on Gray, but she is not immune to tall superhero and thinks it’s fun to fake flirt with him. (You know Isabela’s “You have pretty eyes” routine from DA2? Sab does that to Gray when conversations steer towards things she’d rather not talk about.)

Relationship with Glitch: I’m really excited about these two! They click from the start, and Sabrina feels immediately comfortable around Glitch, which makes her feel distinctly uncomfortable whenever she catches herself. Externally, they have pretty different personalities, but they’re both perceptive and... socially manipulative? aware of their self-presentation?... in ways that they both pick up on right away. So it’s a lot of conversational maneuvering and trying to figure out what the other’s game is, while also genuinely enjoying each other’s company.

Relationship with Kent/Kenna: I could go truly insane here. See the romance section above instead.

Relationship with Kim: Sab wants him to like her sooooo bad. He’s one of the only people to ever really get through to her, re: my headcanon conversation after the first assignment. Authority figures tend to treat her as special, whether that’s negatively because of her mind blindness or positively because she’s such an overachiever. She had no idea how to respond to that not being the case (and didn’t handle it well at first), but chapter 6 solidifies her respect for him.

It also turns Rosy’s opinion of Sab around; he was impressed by her in class but left his office thinking she was self-absorbed and naive. But the bombing is a reality check, and her response is very measured and practical in a way that surprises him.

Relationship with Lev: She doesn’t mind the comparisons to Nick or the “maybe one day they’ll fix you” comments as much as you might think. They aren’t her favorite, but she prefers that sort of thing to the inspirational platitudes belied by coddling that she got from her family growing up. Sab has fond memories of Lev and is grateful that he’s always been kind to her, but doesn’t have any particular feelings apart from that.

Relationship with Clarence: Holds a grudge against him for causing a scene, making her late, and generally being a jerk. But she can’t fault him for being right, after what happened! Mostly she just wants to avoid him, but she’ll be thrilled to lord her success over him if/when she proves herself.

Relationship with Dean Branham: Like Rosy, another authority figure that Sab desperately wants to impress. But without the personal investment she has in Rosy’s validation, more “Oh, this person is in charge, so I should make her like me!” Despite Nick’s and Rosy’s reservations, Sabrina doesn’t really have a problem with being “strongarmed” or manipulated into cooperating; for now, she figures Branham was just doing her job and respects her tactics.

Relationship/attitude towards Ments in general: Mostly just uncomfortable and wary around them. Sab doesn’t want her mind read, and she figures that no Ment wants to be forced to read it either. So she has a pretty strict “no Ments” rule for close personal relationships (excluding Nick, Sally, and Gray, of course. But only Nick really counts because he’s the only one who can hear her thoughts whenever she’s nearby). Not out of hatred or resentment, just because she knows it will be easier for everyone in the long run.

Do they have any other important relationships, past or present? (Relatives, friends, etc.?): Not many, but yes! Sab dated around a lot in the 2 years before Aeon (more like year and a half, because she completely shut it down once she was more focused on preparing for the MIV program), but there are 2 relationships that were formative/important for her. A high school sweetheart, and someone Sab met through modeling. She doesn’t keep up with her high school ex, but the model is her best friend outside of Sally and Nick, and they still keep in touch! I’m still developing them/the relationships, and I’ll probably post more about them someday. They’re fun!

PERSONAL BIO

Describe their personality: Confusing and contradictory. She has two main modes that confuse people who meet both (e.g., Kent). She’s either cold, stuck-up, and sometimes hostile, OR she’s charming, frivolous, and sometimes flirty. Mode 1 is tense but stoic and inexpressive; mode 2 is seemingly relaxed but very posed and insincere. Mode 1 is for when she feels uncertain or has no agenda apart from “get to point B”; mode 2 is for when she’s more comfortable or trying to manipulate someone. Her actual personality is a bit closer to the second, but she doesn’t pretend not take things seriously or hide when she’s annoyed.

Strengths: Analytical, methodical, detail-oriented. Very driven and hardworking. May not always act like it, but does have social skills/charisma; a great liar, if you can’t read her mind. Unfailingly loyal and loving to her favorite people, so so so warm and affectionate and supportive if she really loves you. Very perceptive.

Weaknesses: Way too proud. Can be petty and vindictive. Self-absorbed (she doesn’t mean anything by it, but it’s hard for her to see past herself sometimes). Stubborn, hates being wrong. And... emotional isn’t the word, but strong negative emotions can really cloud her judgement. It ties into her being proud, petty, and stubborn; if she’s really upset about something, she can cling to that emotion instead of re-evaluating it or moving forward.

Phobias: From this ask about the phobias that are planned to show up in-game, there are a few that I could see fitting Sab, but I want to wait to see how they’re implemented before I fully commit. Which is very metagame-y, I know (and I am very metagame-y about IF), but “fear of X” is so broad that it really does depend on when/how it manifests in the text.

That being said, agoraphobia is almost a lock; crowds do make Sab very anxious if she can’t keep track of everyone within a certain distance, and if she can’t leave when she starts feeling antsy. Claustrophobia is a maybe. The choice that triggers it (in chapter 4, about hating MRI machines) suits Sab, but I’m not sure if she hates MRI machines because she hates tight spaces, or if it’s more related to her general anxiety about hospitals, medical tests, etc. Which she definitely has!

What activities/club did they do in school?: She avoided anything group-oriented as far as possible. She took piano (maybe violin?) lessons and did recitals, but wasn’t in orchestra. The one exception was maybe National Honor Society or some equivalent, which she would have joined for her resume’s sake. And I think she would have tutored!

Where do they escape to when they need space?: A little used library corner, where she can people watch without being seen/heard.

How do they feel about/cope with their mind blindness?: Sab hates it but tries not to dwell on it. She knows that it’s no one’s fault, and she mainly just tries to... minimize it? Drown out her thoughts, limit her contact with Ments. And, least healthily, very rigidly managing herself. Because there’s so much of her that exists outside of herself, without her control, she tries to either filter or completely suppress everything else. Part of why she got into modeling, she can perform and be perfect and have total control over the final product of her body in the photographs for whatever campaign. Some Day This Will Be Better. But definitely not where she is in current canon.

How has your Button changed since the Incident with Hope?: Developed many new anxieties and disorders and syndromes :) She also became way more self-conscious, as in literally conscious of and way more tightly monitoring herself, what she’s thinking, what she’s expressing, how she’s sitting, etc. Less emotive face, more rigid posture.

If they weren’t an Aeon student, what would they be doing?: Sab would have beaten herself up forever if she “proved everyone right” by avoiding Unity/Ments entirely, so she’d want to stay in the family business somehow. She probably would have ended up doing scientific research on mental agility. Maybe even working for Mirrortech or some other biotech company, which I imagine would have been an interesting conversation to have with the family.

RANDOM FACTS:

Zodiac sign: Like I said, I assigned her Libra months ago for the sake of a template. But I don’t know enough about astrology to commit. Libra or Leo, probably.

Hobbies: Music, reading poetry, “cooking” (i.e., sitting on the counter and not helping while Nick makes dinner)

Likes: Watching other people (Nick) play video games, dressing up, taking long showers/baths, dark chocolate with caramel, back hugs

Dislikes: Being patronized, hot weather, going to the doctor, driving, doing anything she is not good at

Type of bedsheets: Bamboo.

Drink of choice: Cucumber mint lemonade! For hot drinks, some kind of caramel coffee. For alcohol, she refuses to get drunk because she’s terrified of having even less control of her mental broadcast, but at home/around people she trusts she’ll have a glass or two of wine. Doesn’t know enough to be picky, but doesn’t like it too sweet.

Favorite food: Probably some pasta dish Nick makes with asparagus and tomatoes and a lot of garlic.

Favorite color: Like a light turquoise!

Favorite music: Music to her was another mind-shielding tactic before anything else, so she tends to like upbeat-ish electronic/pop stuff. Catchy and repetitive, and/or with lots of personality to drown out her own thoughts. On the other end of the spectrum, she does have a soft spot for crackly, lo-fi, old or old-sounding slow songs—something about fuzzy recordings simulating a weak telepathic signal.

Favorite season: Hmm, spring and autumn are both good. She likes either side of winter.

Anything else you’d like to share: My heart and a long, fulfilling marriage, with anyone who reads all this 💍

#wow this is so long. insanity luv lit ral insanity #this was super helpful for articulating certain things about sab's character so it's already done its job #pls do not feel pressured to read Thousands of words about sabrina my beloved. but if you read all or even some of this <333 a kiss for you #why am i embarrassed to overshare about my own ocs on my own blog. i live here #oc: sabrina wiseman #also this was very much a stream of consciousness deal but i tried to go back and make it comprehensible. good luck all ye who enter here

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thefossilwhale · 3 years

Text

“nick wiseman has collapsed!”

button & nick, with some button & glitch. 3.9k words. set late chapter 5, on a hypothetical extra day before returning to aeon.

Good morning! For you: a question and a clue.

‘How funny you are today [Chicago]…’

There’s your clue. Guess the question?

Glitch’s texts arrive six minutes after their recipient steps into the shower. Phone silenced and hair lathered, Sabrina lingers obliviously behind the curtain, amid the warm water and warm vanilla scent of her soap. She emerges eighteen minutes later and smiles at her flashing screen, but decides that Glitch’s mystery can wait until she gets dressed.

Thankfully, Nick waits too. But as soon as she is dried and clothed, avoiding full body mirrors until she can at least throw on a robe, the fraternal voice in her head pipes up.

More poetry games? She can’t see his face, obviously, but she can feel his psychic nose wrinkle. How did you get “coffee date” from that?

Nick had done such a good job pretending not to exist for half an hour that she almost forgot they shared every thought now, and she had unwittingly dragged him along on her half-unconscious poetry explication.

“She’s quoting Frank O’Hara,” Sabrina explains, unsure why she says this aloud. She’s alone, though, so she keeps going: “The end of that poem is something like, ‘getting out of bed and having coffee and cigarettes, and loving you so much.’ I don’t know. Point is: coffee.”

Ah, yes. The famous lines from one of O’Hara’s finer works, thinks Nick, faux snootily. Love poetry, though? How do you know she wants to get coffee and isn’t trying to woo you? Or maybe she wants to smoke too many cigarettes with you. You’ll have to let her down easy—about the smoking, I mean. I like Glitch; you’d be cute together! But don’t start smoking.

Sabrina is parting her hair now, with a wide tooth comb and surgical precision, and she rolls her eyes in the mirror. “I just know. Poet’s intuition.”

You’re not a poet.

“Critic’s intuition, then.”

Another flash of her phone screen halts any further defense of her close-reading skills: The question is actually time-sensitive, so I hope you’re not asleep. Then, another repurposed O’Hara quote: ‘Oh [Sabrina Wiseman] we love you get up.’

Sabrina Wiseman, already up, replies: Coffee sounds great! Primping as we speak.

As Glitch texts back with more details, the idle whirl of Nick’s thoughts becomes too vague and unvoiced to follow. Sabrina gets ready as slowly as punctuality will allow, basking in the late morning’s quasi-normalcy. Braiding her hair, picking out her favorite boots, making plans to meet… a friend?

Admittedly, the growing social circle and coffee plans are less familiar prospects than her morning routine, but it all feels normal. An utterly unremarkable day awaits her, it seems, and promises to leave her with that elusive sense of neutral contentment. Her psyche heaves a sigh, half-bemused and half-relieved, before she can suppress it, and it mingles with the soft hum of Nick’s presence in the back of her mind. She feels a guilt she doesn’t recognize, until she realizes that it’s his.

Sharing a mind with her brother is not as difficult as she thinks everyone imagines it is. Nick has always been here, stepping gingerly among her thoughts like a house guest through their host’s messy storage room. Steps light, smiling ruefully at his intrusion, arms braced to catch any fragile trinkets that his passage may send tumbling. The only difference, now, is that she can’t sit in the next room and pretend not to hear the crash behind the wall. Sabrina feels her own guilt, at making Nick listen to how convenient it is for her that he is without a body, and Nick’s guilt, at making her feel guilty for feeling her own emotions inside her own head, and their regrets mingle and multiply like so much shattered ceramic at their feet, making the tiny storage room even more treacherous than before.

Nick hesitates. She feels him like a slight pressure against the wall of her skull, straining to give her room to think.

“It’s fine, Nick.” Sabrina finds a mirror and holds her own gaze. “And I really don’t want to talk about it.”

We just did, Button. Don’t worry about it. Just have fun today.

A million other thoughts lurk behind the ones he voices, and they both ignore every single one.

As she leaves the house, Sabrina mentally recites the few snippets of O’Hara that she remembers verbatim. Nick tries, only once or twice seriously, to guess what the missing words might be. Her expression doesn’t shift as she walks down the street, but in the back of her mind where no one else can see, they share in every silent laugh and hidden smile.

...

The morning with Glitch is not—and Sabrina feels she should have anticipated this—the epitome of lazy normalcy.

She arrives to find that Glitch had already claimed seats and ordered for them both, which is nice. Two identical mugs are still warm on the table, next to the poetry anthology that Sabrina had plucked from the lending library on her last visit. (“Who do you think I should quote in my next selfie caption to start the most fights about pseudo-intellectualism in my comments?” She had asked, pondering O’Hara and Ashbery while taking advantage of the venue’s excellent lighting. Glitch nominated Ginsberg.) The book is open, but at the sound of the door opening, Glitch looks up from its pages, grins, and makes a show of closing it to give Sabrina her full attention.

You know, Button, Nick muses as they approach the table, I’m surprised you agreed to meet her again.

How are you surprised? You’re in my head. You know every decision as soon as I make it.

That’s true! Nick concedes. Another thing about being in your head, though? I can tell when you’re trying to avoid a conversation by pretending to miss the point.

I don’t have time for a conversation, Nick. I’m talking to Glitch instead, because I agreed to meet her a second time, which is perfectly in cha-

“I said, ‘Hi Sabrina!’”

She blinks at Glitch, then looks awkwardly around herself at the table, where she had sat without quite realizing. Glitch laughs at her. It reaches her eyes, which gleam with humor and something else, more like the glint of a knife. She holds Sabrina’s gaze as if she can see behind the curtain of her eyes and recognize the second mind within her skull.

On instinct, Sabrina stares back and thinks of frog guts, then remembers just as Nick tells her: She can’t read your mind, Button. Not even without me here.

I know.

And you told her about me, anyway.

I know.

“Left speechless by my thoughtfulness?” Glitch grins, sweeping a hand towards the mug on Sabrina’s side of the table. “I can’t blame you. Failing words, though, tears of gratitude are an excellent substitute. Maybe a hand over the heart?”

Matching Glitch’s grin, Sabrina comes back to herself. She reaches for her coffee, disguises a steadying breath as an appreciative sniff of its aroma, and takes a sip. Glitch raises an eyebrow when they lock gazes again over the rim of her cup, but neither speaks until Sabrina has replaced the drink and slouched back against her chair, eyes closed and arms dangling.

“I cannot yet speak, struck dumb as I am by your thoughtfulness, and now also the taste of coffee, which is always sweeter when you buy it for me.” She cracks one eyelid to look at Glitch again. “Good enough?”

“Good enough!” Glitch confirms, with a wave of her hand. “I wouldn’t have minded a quote, honestly. And you probably should have said that coffee is sweeter because of my company, not because I pay for it. Actually, maybe you should just leave the poetry to me.”

“With pleasure.” Sabrina mimes the burden of poetry falling from her shoulders as she sits up. “I mean it, though; it’s good coffee, and you’re very nice to me. I’m sorry for being distracted when I sat down.”

She takes another sip. Glitch reclaims the poetry book she’d been reading and, without opening it, drags a thumb along the fore edge. That curious glint returns to her eyes, but this time Sabrina is present enough to suppress her discomfort at being scrutinized.

“Not your fault.” Below Glitch’s voice, there is still the drumming of her thumb along the pages. “‘My quietness has a man in it, he is transparent and carries me quietly, like a gondola, through the streets.’”

Sabrina blinks. “That’s… O’Hara?”

Glitch pretends to roll her eyes hard enough that her head is thrown back with the force of it. “Sabrina, I’m going to start a fight about pseudo-intellectualism in your Instagram comments.”

“There’s no room for intellectualism up here!” Sabrina taps her head—carefully, mindful of the pleats of her braid. “The man in my quietness is not very quiet.”

Hey!

“And it’s more like I’m carrying him.”

Well, it’s no gondola ride up here, Nick thinks wryly.

“Lucky you have me, then! Feel free to outsource all intellectualism right here,” Glitch advises, tapping her own head. “I’ll happily lend my brainpower to a worthy cause. My first act of charity: yes, that was O’Hara. I was reading it when you came in.”

Glitch opens the book—finding her page on the first try, and it hadn’t been bookmarked—then slides it across the table. The words “quietness” and “gondola” are nowhere to be seen upon inspection. Sabrina looks up, confused, but Glitch redirects her attention to the book with a shooing motion before she can question whether it was the right page, after all.

“‘Just Walking Around,’” she reads aloud. “‘John Ashbery.’ This isn’t O’Hara.”

Glitch downs the rest of her coffee and pushes out from the table, braced to stand up. “No, it’s another clue. Do you want to go on a walk with me or not?”

With a snort, Sabrina reaches for her own drink and takes a few gulps. That’s answer enough for Glitch, who smiles wide and turns away to replace the poetry volume on its shelf.

...

The stroll begins both silently and aimlessly. Glitch had explained as they walked out the door that, if Sabrina had bothered to read the Ashbery poem, she would have realized that the last three lines of the second stanza made the invitation especially clever. Something about repurposing “the secret smudge on the back of your soul” as a metaphor for the secret brother inside your brain, and something else about silence and preoccupation and wandering. Regardless, they both seemed content to live briefly in the spirit of those things and simply walk beside each other.

Sabrina amuses herself by trying to subtly attract the attention of passersby. Glances that cross each other, the blink-and-miss-it motion of a braid thrown over the shoulder, the scrape of a boot toe on concrete. Her eyes are normally straight ahead, expression blank, to ward off even fleeting interest. But now, when a stranger meets her eyes, she smiles blandly and looks away as if her attention has been caught by something in her periphery. Do they wonder what she is looking at, even for a moment? She lifts her head towards the late morning sun and openly basks, thinking all the while how much she hates the heat, hoping all the while that someone will see her pretending to love it and believe it. There is a stranger, who loves the sun.

Preoccupied as she is by building her own shroud of mystery, Nick’s presence fades once more to an indistinct hum, after a period of dutiful but conspicuous silence. But Glitch, still beside her, catches onto her game. The next time Sabrina meets someone’s eye, Glitch slings an arm around her shoulder. She leans towards her ear and whispers, “Take a left here, towards the station. I have to catch a train,” then pulls back and laughs. Sabrina laughs, too, pleased to have been placed at the center of some secret joke. But the fantasy ends when she realizes that Glitch has read her with a glance, tearing through her paper-thin secrets.

Sabrina stares straight ahead. She shoves her hands in the pockets of her denim skirt, but doesn’t shrug off Glitch’s arm.

“What are you going to do the next time you want to hang out, but you can’t find a line of poetry to make the invitation for you?” She asks.

The hand resting on Sabrina’s shoulder reaches awkwardly around to her face and swats at her forehead. “If I can’t find it, it doesn’t exist. If it doesn’t exist, I’ll write it! Don’t insult me, Sabrina.”

She laughs. Her shoulders relax as she removes her hands from her pockets, and Glitch lets her arm slide from its perch. Before it rests back at her own side, though, she loops it through Sabrina’s and swings their elbows back and forth.

“It wouldn’t kill you to brush up on your New York School, you know.” She disrupts the rhythm of their elbows to nudge hers lightly into Sabrina’s side. “I’ve been learning O’Hara and friends ever since you said you liked him, and you can’t even recognize the quotes? Thankless work.”

“You can’t convince me you needed to ‘learn’ them.”

“Right you are!” Glitch says, cheerfully squeezing Sabrina’s arm. “Casual quotation is an art, however, and requires not only a perfect memory, but excellent conversational skills and a sense of drama.”

“I don’t see how any of that relies on me being able to-”

“-And an appreciative audience. A poet cannot bloom in barren soil.”

“I’m very appreciative,” Sabrina assures her, grinning. “Just not genuinely intellectual enough for poetry, as you might remember.”

“Oh, I won’t forget,” Glitch laughs. “The comments section of your next selfie, starting fights, 7:00 PM sharp. You can’t miss me!”

They’re coming up on the station now. Glitch takes a step back but hasn’t dropped her hand yet. “Well, I hope you and your brother had a good time.” She walks backwards towards the stairs, not relinquishing Sabrina’s hand until both their arms are extended and they’re being a nuisance to fellow pedestrians. “See you!”

...

I like Glitch, says Nick, a ways down the block from the station. Sabrina nearly jumps, but keeps walking.

Instead of responding, she hopes he can feel her agreement. There is a warm sense of acknowledgement and a general contentment—if she can ignore a foreign, simmering anxiety. He’s working up to saying something, so Sabrina relinquishes as much of her own brain space as she can to give him time. A few more moments of steeling himself, and then-

I’m sorry for earlier.

She is surprised enough that she physically furrows her brow, as if he could see. Sorry for what?

What I said about you meeting Glitch. At the coffeeshop, before you sat down. I think I- He wants to say that he thinks he knows why she was upset, but hesitates, knowing that voicing how well he knows her often just upsets her more. Her treacherous mind confirms it, fear and frustration prickling in some dark corner, but she does her best to dampen it. She thinks, without voicing it, that she’s sorry. Please keep talking.

I didn’t mean to imply that it was weird, or anything, that you were seeing her again. You’re allowed to spend time with friends who aren’t me, Gray, and Salomé.

It’s very generous of him to count Gray as her friend, but—

It’s not. We all care about you. Glitch does, too, and I’m glad you had a good time. I was just… pleasantly surprised. To see you encourage a new friendship. Maybe that’s patronizing. Sorry if it is, but it’s true.

She does feel a little patronized, but it’s a feeling she is so used to that it barely registers. Before she can take offense, she’s thinking of frog guts again, then wincing at the drastic measures against her brother (again), then grasping for half-remembered shreds of poetry to fill her spinning mind.

My quietness has a man in it, and I carry him through the streets like a gondola. What is all this vessel shit anyway. Nobody saw me through the gates. Now I am alone and hate it. I have been to lots of parties and acted perfectly—

I would leave if I could, Button, comes Nick’s voice, both gentle and frustrated.

She knows that. Her mind falls eerily silent, as both of them try not to think anything that would upset the other. She breathes deeply, tries to get three different songs stuck in her head, and wishes she had memorized as much poetry as Glitch. By the time Sabrina has carried them both to the front door of Nick’s home, neither has thought another word. The silence is fraught, but the tension eases as she crosses the threshold.

It’s barely noon, and Sabrina is exhausted. She leaves her boots at the door and sinks into the couch, stretching horizontally across its cushions.

Glitch isn’t my friend. It’s her first coherent thought since they retreated to their own respective corners of her brain.

Button, that’s-

I don’t mean what you think. She hugs a pillow across her stomach. I wouldn’t hang out with her if she was my friend. That’s what I think every time we meet. Not because I don’t like her, I just- You and Gray and Sally know me, you know? Especially you, and I hate it sometimes, and I know you know that, too. And I like Glitch, because she’s smart and fun to be around, and because we just met this week, so she doesn’t know me. Except she’s too smart, because it feels like she already does. Like she can see into my mind, in a way that I can’t even blame my zero for. Just once, I want to make inane small talk with a vague acquaintance who doesn’t really know anything about me.

She places the pillow over her face and contemplates screaming, but doesn’t. I wouldn’t be telling you this if you weren’t trapped in my head, you know. So don’t… I don’t know. I don’t even know what you could do with it. Never mind.

What happens if Glitch knows you? Nick asks. He feels more than he thinks—love and guilt and sadness, a thousand unvoiced thoughts behind the one question he asks.

I don’t know.

You cut off the friendship because she cares about you too much?

Knowing and caring aren’t the same thing, Sabrina tells him, fingers worrying the edges of the pillow. Maybe she does both, but they’re still different.

Okay. He’s not trying as hard to hide his frustration anymore, but it softens in the mingling with his other emotions. So they are. But what then? You just stop?

Why not? She thinks. I always had you, so I never cared who I left.

A warm, deep affection crawls out from beneath his sadness and leaves her so full that she holds back tears. If she cried, would they be hers or Nick’s?

It’s not a choice between me and other people, Button. Glitch and I can both know you and love you a whole lot.

I don’t want to talk about Gliiiiitch. She draws out the single syllable of Glitch’s name as petulantly as she can psychically communicate, then tosses the pillow away. It’s complicated, and I’m trying to tell you you’re a good brother.

I know. I love you, and I hope you’re appreciating the restraint it takes to not start bawling like a baby and leaving tears all over your brain.

“Don’t you dare,” she laughs, finally breaking the silence of the living room. “I will go through the cabinets and cry in your vanilla extract.”

Aww, and then my next batch of cookies will be filled with extra love!

Sabrina rolls her eyes and, eventually, makes her way upstairs to her bedroom. She contemplates another shower, to fully reset from the morning she’s had, but lacks the energy. Instead, she lets her hair down and changes into pajamas, in spite of the early afternoon. Nick’s constant mental presence even feels normal—as if he’s just downstairs, popping into her brain to chat rather than brave the climb to her room.

Nestled comfortably as she is beneath her sheets, she doesn’t have the heart to walk over to her bookshelf. Glitch will have to be content with a review of the first three poems produced by googling Frank O’Hara’s name.

‘Poem?’ Nick reads the first search result. Come on, no title? I hate when they do that.

From what I remember, he does it a lot. Sabrina taps the offending text, trying to guess which untitled poem it might be, and nearly drops her phone.

“God,” she mutters, rolling onto her stomach. “Of course it’s this one.”

Which one? Nick pipes up.

“Just look.” She focuses on the portion of her screen occupied by the capitalized text, ‘LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED!’ “That’s a headline. It’s about… I’m not a poetry professor, okay? But it’s about a celebrity collapsing in some freak emergency and people gossiping about it. Sound familiar?”

You can read it if you want, he is quick to assure her. It won’t bother me.

“That’s not the point. The point is… it’s just stupid! ‘Oh Lana Turner we love you get up?’”

Hey, Glitch quoted that this morning!

“Yeah, to get up out of bed. Not up from the hospital.” She’s too incensed to keep lying down, and she’s pacing around her room, ranting before she can stop herself. “Do you know what that nurse said to me? ‘Chicago won’t lose our Justice.’ Just imagine, ‘oh Justice we love you get up.’ Isn’t that stupid? Who’s ‘we,’ anyway?”

Sabrina. Please, it’s-

“And it’s not even mine to be mad about. I know. And people love you, and that’s great. But I- Lana Turner was fine, you know? And she got up. But they didn’t love her.”

I really don’t care what some random nurse said about me, Nick says. I’m sorry that people are talking to you like they know me; that pisses me off. But the rest is fine.

“Could you let me be selfishly angry for a minute before talking me down, please?”

You’re not being selfish. You’re working yourself into a rage on my behalf, and you should stop. Sabrina flops back onto the bed, phone on her stomach, but kicks the air a few times in protest. Pick up the phone. I want to read the poem.

“I really don’t.”

Okay, is all he says, until moments pass and Sabrina’s anger is replaced by embarrassment. She wants to use her phone again, to find another poem, but she doesn’t want to face the capitalized text that nearly launched her into a grief-induced tantrum.

Well, if Frank O’Hara won’t, Nick says, and she can feel the overwhelming mental energy of his smirk, I need you to tell me how my people love me.

His tone is intensely dramatic, and clearly satirizing all the pomp and ceremony Chicago has devoted to mourning the concept of a comic book superhero. A validation of her bitterness without fueling it, another ploy (like so many others) to make her feel better. She pretends not to notice as unlocks her phone.

I can’t speak for Chicago, she thinks, closing the “Poem” tab. I love you, though. Get up soon.

#mind blind #i Know nick knows some poetry ok i Know!!! but im banking on the fact that someone who learns shakespeare n neruda for seduction purposes #would not be into whatever the new york school was up to #anyway. i havent posted fic on tumblr in years and this is a deeply embarrassing ordeal for me!!! thank you everyone for witnessing #i am pretty happy w this minus the last scene. but i felt the need to include it bc... otherwise why am i talking so damn much abt ohara #goodbye. it's 1 AM here but i wanted to post something for sabby before the patreon update! :D #oc: sabrina wiseman #my writing

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