emma

She/ Her. I use tumblr to stalk my favorite writers ao3

[ezilo]

Bejeweled meets Tolerate it

Me, still obsessed with Midnights? Don't know what you mean.

In my (humble opinion), tolerate it is the saddest of all the track fives. And it's time this woman get her happy-ish ending. What better ending than still being bejeweled?

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

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[ezilo]

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[ezilo]

TUC week, Day 5!

Okay, missed a few days, but here I am. The prompt today was Code/Claw, but I mostly focused on the last book in general.

So here's an AU where Gregor actually dies in battle. You have been warned!

By the time her cell door opens, Luxa is a little less angry at Gregor. Aurora pointed out many a time in the last days that Luxa may have done the same in other circumstances, and Luxa just wants to see Gregor again, even though she may not. Will not.

It is Mareth who opens the door, and after one look at his face, she falls to her knees. She barely has enough strength to raise her arms and reach for Aurora, who wraps her in her golden wings. Her bat chokes out “Ares?” and Mareth shakes his head. Luxa weeps, like she had a year before in Vikus’s arms, losing her best friend. She sobs, shameless, for this boy and this love and a lifetime she will never have. She cries for his sacrifice, his bravery, his delicate smile. The clip-clop of Mareth’s footsteps comes closer, but she shakes her head. This is a time for no one but her and Aurora. They stay entangled for a while longer, until Luxa remembers who she is, a queen, a leader, and gets up. Her grief is dragging her down, as it has for years, but still she takes a few steps toward Mareth, toward the stairs, the light, the rest of her life.

“Wait.” Mareth says, grabbing her wrist. “It is not just Gregor.” Her heart hammers, and she leans against the wall, closes her eyes. “Tell me.”

“Solovet.” Her first sword lesson. Holding her hand at her parents’ funeral. Bright, blinding force passed down to her. She breathes in. “Who else?” “Vikus had a heart failure. He is in the hospital, between life and death.” Luxa buries her face in Aurora’s fur, smells the warm scent of her bond, and hopes it will be enough to bring her back together. “We have reason to believe Ripred is gone as well.” The sharp pain in her, she had not expected. Ripred could not die, could he? Luxa had thought she would build back the Underland hand in paw with him. No, she had not expected this.

“And the Bane?” Mareth gives a tired smile. “Gregor and Ares killed him.” Luxa smiles, too, and climbs out.

*

In the days to come, Luxa is whisked from meeting to meeting, held upright by Aurora and Howard and Mareth. She finds the time to read Gregor’s last letter to her, sitting in the museum one night, and whispers “I love you too”, indulges in the pain for a moment, as during the rest of the day, she has no place for it. She carves out a half-hour here or there to sit with Hazard and the orphaned nibbler pups and wash them, and look at Boots play with them. She doesn’t know, yet. And who is there to tell her? Lizzie is in shatters, Grace is at the Fount, the rest of the family in the Overland somewhere. No, this task is also Luxa’s. But she does not have the time, or the heart, to tell her.

Sometimes, she has dinner with Vikus, leaning on the bed, feeding him bits of mashed food. He holds her hand, and she relaxes a fraction, lets go of the tension in her shoulders. She even falls asleep once, wakes up snuggled up to her Grandpapa like she did as a little girl. It is dark, the hospital has turned off almost all torches. She buries herself further under the blankets and falls back asleep.

In the morning, she gets the first reliable numbers of the victims. She crumples the paper in her hand. A third of her city is gone, most of the nibblers left with no home. She had asked her advisors to find out the numbers of the gnawer victims as well, which had surprised them. She stares at the number at the bottom of the list, and wonders if that is enough paid. Gregor’s bright brown eyes appear in her mind and she thinks nothing will ever be enough.

*

Luxa is crossed-legged in the code room, staring at a map of the human territory, wracking her brain for a solution to the water supply problem, when they enter.

“Luxa?” Lizzie’s small voice echoes in the room. Her parents stand behind her, arms on her shoulders, Grace leaning heavily on her husband. Boots is standing next to them, her little face flooded with tears, her lower lip wobbling. Luxa opens her arms, and the girl stomps all over the map as she rushes to her, messing up her plans. “Gregor is dead, yes?” Her little voice asks in Luxa’s ear. She opens another arm for Lizzie to fall into, and has to say “Yes, Boots.” And then, because it’s what he would have wanted, she adds “You said his name, sweetie. Good job.” Lizzie is sobbing in earnest now, finally looking her own age. And then, something amazing happens. Grace and Jonathan join them, fall to their knees, and suddenly Luxa is the one wrapped in someone’s arms, Luxa is allowed to cry into someone’s chest. She squeezes the girls closer, and leans into Grace. “It will be okay, sweetie. I promise.” And Luxa enjoys  a mother’s hand passing through her hair, and dreams about those words ringing true, one day.

“I keep him here?” Boots asks, pointing at her chest.

“Yes, Boots. I keep him here too.” Luxa folds her fist on her heartbeat. “We all do.” Jonathan adds. Boots still looks scared and confused. Luxa feels a pang of melancholy at how little Boots will remember of Gregor. She thinks about how he had always put her first, pushed her onto Ares as he inhaled poisonous fumes, asked Ares to break his vow and save her first, cried in desperation as he searched for her in the Swag. Gregor sacrificing his food for Boots, reaching for her, turning into a rager just to protect her. A million other moments none of them knew about because they had only happened between them, a brother and a sister. Luxa did not grow up with siblings. But she’d learned everything about it from him, and it had given her the courage to take Hazard in.

They stay, hugging close, a little while longer. And then Luxa has to get up, has to compose herself, and head into a council meeting. Just as she crosses the threshold of the door, Grace catches up with her, wheezing slightly from the effort. She reaches for the crown on Luxa’s head, and rearranges it neatly. “There.”. Luxa’s eyes almost fill up with tears again – it has been so long since a mother’s touch. Instead, she asks, “Will you have dinner with me? All of you?” and Grace smiles.

*

And so the family practically moves into her quarters. Sometimes, when she’s passing through between meetings and obituaries, she sees Jonathan explaining things to Hazard: the functioning of an exoskeleton, the hierarchy visible in anthills, the mating rituals of worms. Hazard hangs on to his every word, Boots dutifully by his side, playing with Temp. She still plays, still sings, still eats and smiles. But sometimes she catches herself turning around and looking for her brother, and then she will burst into hot angry tears. Lizzie mostly sits at Luxa’s old desk and writes, using the tree of transmission, the code of claw, or her own invented ones. She writes out all the prophecies neatly, and asks Luxa for stories about her brother completing them. Luxa tells her all she knows, all she can bear to tell, and then sends for Mareth, Dulcet, Howard or Temp. Some of the anecdotes even make Lizzie smile, however briefly.

Every night, Grace comes pounding at the Council door and says she has come to retrieve Luxa for dinner. No one in the Council dares object, because she is the Mother of Light, and because, frankly, Grace is a little bit scary. Luxa appreciates the protection, more than she thought she would.

She asks them, one night, what they want to do with Gregor’s body, once Lizzie and Boots are asleep, curled up with Hazard in his room. Grace and Jonathan both still, look at each other. It is an entirely different kind of love than Vikus and Solovet had, than even her parents had. Unburdened by royal blood and diverging ideals, there is a sense of friendship to them, of being a team through it all, that Luxa so admires. And a little part of her thinks that perhaps, she and Gregor might have had that, given time. Of course, it is foolish; if Gregor had lived, he would have returned home. But still, her heart is treacherous enough to imagine.

“We would like to take him home, and bury him with our family.” Luxa nods. “Then we shall do that.” But they share a look, and Luxa braces herself. “Luxa… no one has made any plans to take us home. There has been no talk of it. We are starting to get worried.”

Of course, there has been talk of it. Almost every day in the Council, Luxa is battling the same arguments: the usefulness of Boots to rally the Crawlers; Lizzie’s sharp, young mind against codes to come. These extraordinary children, given away to the Underland, Gregor laying down his life for them. Every day, Luxa  has been fighting them off, but there is little she can say, despite a weak it would not be right. “This is not what Gregor died for” she whispers to Vikus over and over, and he agrees. If it comes to it, Luxa will fly them out herself, if she can find a way out of the palace. Surely she could enlist Temp’s help. She so wishes Ripred were here.

“I will get you home. Do not worry. But perhaps after the surrender, if that is alright? The warrior’s family should be here.” Grace looks uncomfortable. “And I shall like to have you by my side. It will be a little like…” She cannot say the words. But Grace covers her hand with her dark one and nods. “Okay, Luxa. We’ll be there.” And it is so like Gregor, the shortening of syllables, the intonation of okay, that Luxa really does feel like a part of him is here with her.

*

The day of the surrender, Luxa carefully fills the deep pockets of her dress. She takes the two photographs of her and Gregor, a drawing Hazard made of her and Hamnet together, the blue fish stone, and Vikus’s ring in her right pocket. In her left, she rests Solovet’s ring, a stone from her father’s coronation crown, and the crown the nibblers had used as their signal to her. The Council tells her to fly out with Aurora, but she walks through the city. She fills her eyes and her heart with her destructed home, promises justice to all who ask.

In the arena, everyone turns to her. She wishes Vikus were here. She wishes a lot of people were here.

But she holds her head high, sidestepping the holes on the ground. Her eyes sweep over the bleachers: Gregor’s family is huddled with the Crawlers, though Lapblood is near them, her tail wrapped protectively around Lizzie; Hazard sits with them, and he gives an encouraging smile, as Aurora lands; Howard, York and Susannah, practically the last of her mother’s side of the family, are also there, looking at her expectantly; and Nerissa, tired and frail, does not look at her, and Luxa wonders what that means.

A part of her wants to run. Wants to say no, I am only twelve, hop on Aurora and run away to Ares’s cave, pretend that Gregor will round the corner in a minute and they can finally have their picnic. Instead, she calls upon the gnawer’s representative, expecting it to be Baereleg, who does open his mouth, but -

Of course, nothing in Luxa’s life has ever quite gone to plan.

She has no time to be happy that he is alive. As she watches Lizzie jump onto him, laughing for the first time in weeks, Luxa squares her shoulders, shares a look with York. The game has changed, with the Peacemaker appearing (she almost snorts – there is no doubt in her mind that this wound is self-inflicted). Luxa is weakened, and so she does what she has been taught to do: attack.

“Good. Then you should have no problem peacefully leading your fellow gnawers to the Uncharted lands.” She says icily.

“Yes, I do have a problem with that, Your Highness. And I am willing to bet I am not the only one. What have you done with my little warrior, huh? What does he think of this?”

Luxa grows cold. Even for Ripred, that is a low blow. To taunt her, to make her say what has been prophesied for so long. What she has known since the first time she laid eyes on Gregor: he would be taken from her.

“What do you think, Ripred? Gregor’s light has faded.” She watches the smallest glimmer of hope faint from Ripred, watches a flicker of genuine sadness be replaced quickly. Right there, in the moment Ripred has waited for his entire life, the moment he has worked and bled and killed for, he crouches next to Lizzie and abandons all negotiations in order to care for her. Luxa is stunned, staring at the huge rat, oozing blood, wrapping his paws around the girl. She can guess where this is going, if she stands her ground and he stands his: such moments will not happen again. Such genuine friendships between human and rat, Killer and Gnawer, will not come around again. She thinks about Gregor crying over Tick, Hazard being the first of his kind to learn another language. She thinks about Boots feeding the stingers, earning the title of Princess because of her kindness, not her blood. She thinks about Gregor sparing the Bane, and is sure, in that moment, that even if he had known the future, that foolish, idealistic, wonderful boy would not have killed it. Suddenly, she is very, very tired.

The gnawer is back to negotiation mode, rambling about justice and guarantees, cutters at the border and treaties, but Luxa interrupts him.

“Ripred.” Her voice is not queenly, or controlled. It is hoarse, and human, and grief-stricken. It is genuine.

He turns to her, snarls, “I will give you a war if it is one you want, your Highness.”.

Luxa thinks about One of us has to live, and steps toward the gnawer with a raised hand.

“This is what I offer. A bond between all humans and gnawers. A vow, to defend one another. To fight side by side, to learn about and from each other. To teach our pups differently. No treaties, no promises – but bonds.” Luxa smiles at the stunned crowd, and then turns back to Ripred. “Do you dare take it?”

Ripred’s smile is genuinely proud. He presses his claw against her palm, and so Luxa gains a new bond.

Aurora, Hazard, and Howard launch themselves at her, showering her in congratulations and expressions of pride. “Grandmama is rolling around in her grave.” She tells Howard. He laughs. “But Gregor would be so proud.” A shadow of sadness falls over Luxa, but she smiles. “You know what, I think you’re right.”

*

Lizzie’s solution is ingenious, and the compromise is sure to be a success, but Luxa is anxiously watching the Council members, their carnivorous smiles at Lizzie. Oh, how useful she and her little mind would be. She wraps an arm around the girl, and shares a look with Ripred.

They feast, and Luxa points out the shrimp in cream sauce to the rat. But he shakes his head. “Nah, I don’t think I can bear it quite yet.” She frowns. Hazard takes a spoonful of it, and says “Oh, this is what Gregor brough to the jungle for you, is it not?” And Ripred nods. “Yes. Yes it is.” But he does not elaborate. Instead, he launches into a conversation with Hazard about echolocation lessons, and Luxa makes herself a sandwich.

They get them out that very night, secretly. Lizzie clings to the rat until the very last minute, and Temp weeps as Boots says “See you soon!”. Aurora flies them all out, even though they’re heavy on her back, but it was the only way. She orders them to lay on their bellies, hidden from guards, and places trusted soldiers at the gates.

She hugs Boots close, and Lizzie too. “Thank you.” The girl says. “For what?” Lizzie smiles, looking beyond her age. “You made him happy. A lot.” And then she’s stepping out, into the mysterious Overland. Luxa pokes her head out, just to see Gregor’s world for a second. The moon curves elegantly in the sky. Jonathan kisses her cheek, Grace hugs her close. “Sweetie, you will make such a wonderful queen.” Luxa buries her face in the woman’s shoulder.

She’s crying by the time they land back at the docks. Ripred, Mareth, Temp, Lapblood and Hazard are still there. She catches the last bit of dialogue, Lapblood saying “Shame, I would have been proud to bond with the warrior.” and smiles. Hazard takes her hand, asks her if she is alright. “I will be.” And she brings him close to her side.

“Now, we have work to do.”

Ripred narrows his eyes. “We do?”

“Oh, have I not told you? You are all part of my new Council. I am getting rid of Solovet’s lieutenants.” There’s silence, and then Lapblood is whooping loudly, Ripred and Mareth already deep in negotiation.

“Me, in the Council, me?” Temp asks, bewildered. Luxa crouches next to the creature that had welcomed Gregor here, that had taught her so much, and smiles.

“You, in the Council, you.”

[ezilo]

TUC Week, Day three!

A very late and very chaotic submission to Day Three: Prophecy/Bane

The prophecy of Bane, and the five senses.

Sight

Ares looks at the two sleeping forms – one his bond, one a pup. One the Warrior, one the Bane. The little rat rolled over in his sleep, into Ares’s outstretched wing. He almost recoiled at that, a lifetime of hating rats behind him. But he was also bonded to Gregor now, he’d protected Boots enough times, to understand why the Bane could not be killed. And so Ares wrapped himself around the pup, to keep it warm.

Against his charcoal wing, its fur looked so much whiter. It was strange, for an all-powerful being to be so vulnerable. White fur in the Underland, Ares could not think of a worse predicament. Had he not used his own dark robe many a time to escape notice? Perhaps it was poetic justice then, that the Bane, who was supposed to have everything – speed, strength, spirit – was easy to spot. Perhaps they would have one advantage, then, if it came down to fighting it. And Ares had little doubt that the Bane would rise to power, eventually. Power, leadership, they were too tempting gifts to refuse (Henry had not). But Ares actually had a little doubt, a small sliver of hope in him, that perhaps this tale would end well. Gregor had given him that.

Ares watches over his bond, his dark skin and hair. They were well-matched, it seemed, after all. For Ares had loved Henry, deeply, but he found himself actually liking Gregor, thinking of him as a good person. In his sleep, the boy looked younger, too young to have lost a sister, only a pup himself. Ares will stand by him, through the trials to come. He settles next to him, his dark fur blending with Gregor’s curls, watches over him.

In dark, in flame, in war, in strife.

Touch

All her life, Twitchip had navigated through scent. Scents were her first memories, her mother’s fur, the warm smell of milk, the familiar scent of her litter. They are her best memories as well: decadent feasts, a lover’s arms, the apples in the Garden. Her worst memories too of course, were driven by smell: the sharp scent of her cave by the serpents, the stench of hate in the air as gnawers encircled her. But now, with her nose smashed, Twitchtip is nothing more than a normal rat, or perhaps even less.

She is stripped of everything here. It has been days since she has eaten anything. They cut off her tongue, and it is so quiet and dark here, it is difficult to rely on echolocation. And even when she can, well, there’s not much to see in the pit.

But she can touch. She can slowly go around it, feeling every crevasse, the sharp edges, the smooth dips in the stone. She explores it’s a great big landscape instead of a few feet of stone. Twitchtip had always seen things others did not, entire worlds wafting in through her nose. And so she curls up in a corner, paw sliding on the wall, breathes in deeply through the pain. She thinks of Queen Luxa fighting back to back with her, of Gregor’s warm leg against her fur, of little Boots trying to tap on her wound to cure her. Ow! I no touch. She thinks of the feeling of Gregor’s life jacket, gripping him for dear life, closes her eyes, and tries to hold on.

Smell

No one asks Temp, but he smells it too.

Something is wrong with the water. They have a word for it in crawler, but in the human tongue he cannot think of one. The water is dancing in strange ways, circling itself, round and round and round again. Temp does not speak up, because no one will listen, besides the Princess of course. The Princess always listens to Temp. And the Warrior might, perhaps, although he is easily distracted, and, as all humans, he trusts his own more.

Temp clings to the princess, ready to defend her, but the fliers are fast, and he distracts her enough so that she does not dive after her brother. When Gregor comes back, coughing up water and holding on to a gnawer, Temp thinks it is not surprising that they are of the same blood.

And so Temp learns his lesson, and speaks up when they reach the island. Twitchtip is right, it is recent. The island still quakes like a young one, eager to grow. But the bugs, oh the bugs. Temp knows their smell. They are… the word is… Yet again, there is no one here to understand the clicking, and so they do not listen. The flier goes down in seconds, like Temp had known she would, because he had seen many a warmblood collapse under thousands of bugs. How they always underestimate the insects.

Flesh-eating. Whirlpool. Temp stores the words away as new vocabulary, and keeps protecting the Princess, waiting for the next danger he will not be able to name.

Hearing

At every pitter-patter of feet in front of their door, Grace jumps up. It’s never them though, never her son and daughter coming home. She sits at the kitchen table for hours in the night, watching the withering shadow of a man who wears her husband’s face. Whenever there’s a little crack or an echo, she’s up, running out, wrenching the door open. But the hallway is empty, and so Grace sits back down, and continues to wait, the faint melody of Christmas songs reaching her from the street. She tries to convince herself that they came back after mere weeks last time, but Jonathan had taken years to come back, long, hollow years.

Sometimes, she sits in the laundry room and stares into the tunnel that has swallowed her children, and listens to the faint hum of the currents. If she scooted a little bit closer, they would swallow her whole. She would join them down there, and defend them, and bring them home. But Grace has Lizzie, and Jonathan, and Grandmother. She has other people sitting on her hunched shoulders. But she does allow herself this moment, to kneel in front of the tunnel and listen to the currents, wait for them to spit her children back.

Taste

Andromeda laid down a few fishes next to him, gave him a sympathetic nudge, and then promptly fell asleep on the raft, wings wrapped around Mareth’s unconscious form. Even if he could not feel it, or her warmth, she still held him close. Because that was what a bond was: devotion, no matter the conditions. That was what Howard should have been, for Pandora. He should have gone after her somehow, he should have helped her, he should have been more careful… Despite the journey, the wounds, the loss of Luxa, nothing feels sharper than the pain of losing his bat.

He carefully scrapes his knife against the scales, cuts through the fish, takes out the innards and rinses the flesh in the clean water. He removes the head, and cuts himself little heaps of it. He leaves a half for Andromeda, and then slowly gulps down the rest, taking bits at a time. He stares out at the Waterway, and weeps. The fish tastes like long afternoons swimming with Pandora, sharing shellfish and squid, afternoons escaping his family always too full of children and crying, Susannah counting her loved ones and always coming up short. Howard was an eldest, and a proud one; he helped people, he loved people, he invented songs. But with Pandora, spending hours eating raw fish and seafood, there he could rest, and think only of himself and his bond for a few hours. He thinks about giving Boots his portion of bread, her indignant yuck! at the taste of raw fish as he chews, the iodine taste spreading on his tongue. Somewhere behind him, Gregor was wandering through a maze, avenging his sister. Howard had not lost a sibling just yet, but he had been old enough when Hamnet had died. He hadn’t been shielded at all, and so he had seen his mother collapse to the ground at the news. Yes, somewhere, Gregor was doing what he could to survive this loss.

The fish is almost done. He pauses for a second, thinking about how he would have good-naturedly bickered with Pandora about getting the last bit. About the fact that she’d died exploring, tasting, the way she would have wanted to.

He knows it’s silly, and wasteful. But he doesn’t take the last bit, drops it into the water, watches it disappear into the deep.

You take it, Pan.

[ezilo]

TUC Week, Day 2! Overland/Gregor

Managed to squeeze in both prompts for today! Title is from a Maya Angelou quote.

Happy TUC week!

The ache for home lives in all of us

"I want to go up to the Overland."

Luxa drops her fork. This is the moment Hazard realizes he's messed up. His sister never loses her composure, ever a queen.

"Up to New York city?" Her regalian pronunciation of the name feels wrong to him. He can still hear how his mother had said it, how Gregor had formed the words, Boots's little voice squealing.

"Yes." They stare at each other. "Luxa, this cannot be a surprise. I am a Halflander, after all."

"Yes, of course." She resumes eating. "But you are also my brother."

He hears it, hears what it means. You are my family, you know how many people have left me already. And you're leaving me, too?

She doesn’t say it, but he hears it anyway.

You know what if I have lost to the Overland.

*

He goes to Nike first.

"Greetings, Hazard." He had never really gotten used to the formality of Regalia, after a childhood of vines and easy laughter.

"Hello, Nike."

She looks glorious, up there, the queen of the fliers. Athena had died a few years ago, and Nike had gracefully lived up to her duty. It had proved essential to the peace, that she and Howard were bonded; the queen of fliers and the head of the Fount had worked tirelessly alongside Luxa.

"You have come for my help?"

"Yes. I know that my father told you my mother’s full name, before the battle of the cutters." That's how it had gone down in history, this fight that had claimed his father. All he remembered was the scent of starshade and waiting, curled up in Aurora's golden fur. All he remembered was that he had never for a second thought Hamnet would not be back.

"He did." The queen purred, studying him.

"I need it. I'm going up. I want the opportunity to find my mother’s family." 

There's silence, and then Nike flutters down to him. He runs a hand through her striped fur.

“He told me and Temp, indeed.” Hazard nods, and Nike waits like she knows he has more to ask.

“Why did he tell you?” She cocks her head a bit. “Your father did not trust Aurora, or Luxa, just yet. And perhaps he was right. Royal blood is fickle.” Hazard stares, wonders what she means, if she wants him to challenge her on that. Luxa is not fickle, has never been, but he understands where his father was coming from.

"Very well, I will tell you. I believe it is the right choice."  It shouldn't matter, but Hazard is still blinking back tears at her blessing.

"Your mother's name was Hannah Golding. Will you be needing a flier for your mission?"

*

Before he leaves, he stops in the museum, grabbing a few flashlights, some Overland money and clothes. On the way back, he bumps into Nerrissa in the room of Prophecies. Her eyes turn to him.

“Hazard. You are just about to leave.” She doesn’t say it like it’s a question, simply says it like she knows. He had hated her at first, because a part of his child brain blamed her for Hamnet’s death. If she hadn’t told him to be the guide, he and his father would have still lived happily in the jungle with Frill, right?

He did not hate her anymore, but he still felt uneasy around her, the seer, the spare.

“I am. Are you alright? Reminiscing?” Her fingers trace the words carved deep in the wall. “Oh no. This prophecy is not past.” She turns to him. “Yet.”

He glances at the title for a second, and then turns away, shaking his head.

The Prophecy of the Halflander is etched into the stone, but Hazard has never read it.

*

Vikus had written a letter, to take to his mother's family. Ripred and Luxa had both left letters on his desk, in case he managed to track down Gregor and his family, and hadn't talked to him about it. They really were a well matched pair. Ripred had been kind enough to do some of the work to track down his family, taking a look at phonebooks instead of just munching on them, and so Hazard felt he owed him.

He hugged his sister tight against him and promised to come back. She didn’t believe him, but that only meant that he would be able to surprise her, and he liked that.

Persephone was a small, almost green bat. She was agile and fast, and as they talked on the way up, he found out that she'd spent quite a bit of time in the jungle, on missions for the kingdom. They excitedly shared stories about plants and rare fruits, and he was almost sorry to be dropped off.

"I will meet you here again in four day's time."

"Very well, prince Hazard." He rolled his eyes. The title was only honorary, he had no claim to the throne, and he hated it.

"Call me Hazard."

"Then you must call me Persia. It is what my friends call me." He smiled.

"Deal."

And she flew away, graceful and fast, with a last call to fly high.

He had harassed Gregor with questions about the city, back then, those long months when the warrior’s mother had been recovering and he and Boots had practically lived in the Underland with them. He’d asked Luxa to write down everything for him, so that he would remember, and he still had the little notebook in his back pocket. Luxa’s neat handwriting spelled out neighborhoods – Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Soho, metro lines, attractions to see – Times Square, Statue of Liberty, Museum of Natural History, Central Park. That’s where he would emerge. The stone let no light out, so he did not know what he would find.

Hazard stands there, scared. He had never really belonged to Regalia, and not just because he was from the jungle. Because of his dark curls, the blood rushing through his veins that was not from under the earth. His mother had given him parts of the Overland, and she would have given him more, if she’d had the time. He’d wondered about it, about this unimaginably huge world above his head, about the idea of light every day, dark skin, brown eyes. As much as Gregor had felt like a normal part of Regalia to him, a fixture of his childhood, the boy had always longed for the Overland, for his home. Somewhere up there, Gregor was no longer a boy, twenty-three years old like Luxa. Soon, she would have to marry, and the potential suitors were making her queasy already, he knows. Hazard had asked her, once, why she wanted to get married. She’d looked at him, with cold violet eyes, pale skin, fair hair, the spitting image of the Underland, and said “I do not have a choice.” And, well. Nerrissa will never have children, and so the duty falls onto Luxa.

This is why Hazard will come back, even if he finds that part of him belongs to the Overland. Luxa needs him, always will, and so Hazard will come back, yes.

He pushes the stone to the side, and light hits him. He smiles through the tears forming in his green eyes.

*

Hazard loves New York. He understands why his mother had felt at home in the jungle, because the buildings envelop him like the vines had. He wanders for a day, and then clumsily manages to get a room at a hotel, although his accent throws the employee off.

The next day – and how strange to be woken up by beaming, all-reaching light – he heads out for an address in the Bronx.

The woman who opens the door of the address the rat gave him looks like his mother. She asks, annoyed, who he is, and Hazard takes a deep breath, clutching the ring he’d gotten from Vikus in his hand.

“I’m Hazard. I’m Hannah’s son.”

Her eyes go wide.

Later, sitting at a table, Hazard cries, watching his mother grow up from photo album to  photo album, as Halley – his aunt, and holy shit as Gregor would say, he had an aunt – shares anecdotes. Everyone who had known his mother has been dead for long, so he is still reeling from this, from being told new things about her. She even gives him a few pictures to take with him, and he thanks her profusely. She looks uneasy at his tears and he cannot blame her, really. She doesn’t ask many questions at all about Hannah, where she has been, how she died. She asks Hazard, about himself, his likes, and sometimes looks at him like he’s a ghost. His father had always said that he looked like Hannah.

“I don’t want to know much about it, her, why she left and never came back.” And that was not exactly the truth and not exactly a lie either, so Hazard doesn’t speak up to correct her. “Just tell me. Was she happy?”

“Yes. She and my father were very happy, and very in love.”

Halley nods, pensive, staring into her cup of coffee. Even after dumping four sugar cubes and milk in the substance, Hazard finds it disgusting. But Halley is on her third cup. He stores it away as an anecdote about her he will tell his children, some day.

“What was your father’s name?”

“Hamnet.” And at that, Halley finally smiles. A big one, that completely changes her face.

“Huh. I suppose it means she cared about us after all. ”

Hazard frowns. “What?”

“We all have names that start with an ‘h’. It’s a family tradition.”

“Oh.”

They smile at each other for a while longer.

*

“Luxa! Luxa, he is home.” Aurora says, flying into the office.

Luxa is on her feet instantly, rushing out, her crown falling to the ground with a clink. Aurora follows her out, and Luxa hops into emptiness, landing onto her back, and in a flash they are at the docks, watching Persephone land.

Hazard mounts down, and Luxa hugs him tight. “You are home.” She has rarely been so relieved, feeling her muscles relax in her brother’s arms.

He pulls away to grin at her. “Yes I am. I told you I would be back.” He whips around for a second and turns to her again. “And I am not the only one.”

The man who descends from the bat has dark skin, brown eyes, a little lopsided grin. He is tall, and strong, despite the scars crisscrossing his arms. For a second, Luxa has her defenses up, almost reaching for her sword. But then – no, it can’t be. He is in the Overland, is he not?

But when he speaks, all her doubts evaporate.

“Hello, Luxa. I am home.”

[ezilo]

TUC Week; Day 1, Past

Hello hello! My first TUC week! So, in honor of the past prompt, here is my little contribution, based around a day in the life a few years before the first book. I don't have the books on me so there may be some timeline issues!

Thanks for the event, @tucweek !

Snippets of a past life

Seventy-two.

Seventy-two days without his father, and sixty-eight days since Gregor had cried about it. He’d let himself in the beginning, hanging from his mother’s hand and letting her dry his cheeks. But then, one day, he’d noticed her for just a moment, standing in the middle of the living-room, hand clutching her swollen belly, Lizzie throwing a tantrum, Grandmother angrily asking where her son was. For just a moment, he’d seen his mother almost give up, collapse right then and there. She hadn’t, but he’d noticed it.

And so he had not cried since. He’d learned how to make a bottle, how much you have to shake it for the powder to dissolve entirely. He’d learned to lie to Grandmother, tell her she was on the farm somewhere, making up stories about chickens and pigs. He’d learned to sit with Lizzie and play with the Barbies.

He made his mother tea, and he did not cry. He watched how the policemen came less and less often, and then stopped altogether. He did his homework, he tucked his sisters in once his mother had taken a night job and couldn’t be home early enough.

He did not cry, but sometimes, late at night, curled up in his bed facing the wall, he allowed himself to wish, to ask, to pray.

Please, dad. Come back.

*

There were not many times that Hamnet wished to be back in Regalia. In fact it had never happened before now. Before he sat here, holding his son as his mother died before them.

“Hamnet. Hamnet, honey.” He choked on a sob. She’d always called him honey, which he’d never heard before her. It had come from the Overland, like her, a gift from above.

“Honey, listen to me.” Hannah said. “Watch over Hazard, alright?” He nodded. Hazard was confused, but he knew enough to cry alongside them. “I will.”

“Hamnet, my love. You know who you are.”

And then she was holding on to Hazard, only her son, and Hamnet was reeling for a second, lost in the memory of finding her, lost in the jungle, of telling her he could bring her to Regalia if she wanted to, find a way home to New York, but she’d shook her head. “I know who I am, Hamnet. I belong here, with you now. Do you know who you are?” And he’d found it out, with her.

Hamnet lays down with his two loves, and a part of him wishes he was in Regalia, where proper medicine might have helped her. But no – that would not have been Hannah.

“I love you, light of my life.”

*

The lessons were boring. They always were. Henry wasn’t even there to pass notes with her, in detention somewhere, and Nerissa was in the midst of another episode. So she listened to the professor go on about the history of their western defenses, until she was dismissed.

Luxa rushed to her chambers, burst in the door. Her parents were in the room, holding hands, talking in low voices. When they saw her, they jumped and then turned to her.

“Any news?” She asked.

“No, the negotiations have failed.”

“Predictable. It would have been unusual if the rats were receptive to us.”

“And what of the Overlander, then?”

Her mother stroked her hair.

“He is lost, I am afraid, dear.”

Luxa ponders that. It had been exciting when an Overlander had fallen in, though she had not seen him. But he had been scared, and attempted to rush out and leave them, going out to meet his family.

Fear makes one foolish her parents had always told her, drilled it into her until she felt it in her very bones and skin.

“Let us hope his death was quick, then.” Luxa says, and her parents look proud at her composure.

Inwardly she wonders who the next Overlander will be to fall into their world.

*

“Henry! What  of this?”

The boy looked up from his table.

“Vikus, I am sure you know of this already. I am being punished for my actions.”

“Your actions were starting a fire in the Prophecy room.”

He smirked, and Vikus almost backed away, feeling burned.

“Wood is highly flammable, Henry.”

“You don’t say. If we are done here, may I be dismissed?”

Vikus nodded shortly, and watched Henry leave, jump onto Ares’s back and disappear. He’d have to have a word with Julius, Henry's father, as perhaps Henry was not quite suited to an education in the palace. Although Julius was unlikely to believe him – he was of a fiery nature, like his son. He’d been trained by Solovet, after all.

*

“Scent Seer, your ruling?”

Twitchtip inhaled deeply. Gorl’s eyes twinkled in the dim light, menacing. “He ate the pups.” Outcry exploded around her, and then the rats gathered to tear off his head, a myriad of teeth buried in his throat.

Twitchtip is celebrated and hailed, Tara coming to thank her for the justice she has served, avenging her poor children. She relishes in the praise and the thanks, feasting all night long. Even Ripred shows up eventually, sits next to her. She shrinks a little next to him – Ripred is a legend, a rager, and a bit of an outsider to top it off.

“Good work today.”

“Thank you.”

He looks out at the crowd, eyes sweeping over, and then smirks up at her.

“How long d’ya reckon it’ll last?”

“Wh.. what? What will last?” She stammers out, unclenching and clenching her claws.

“Oh, you’re smarter than that, Scent Seer.” And with that, he leaps away.

Twitchtip’s wandering eyes finally land on a group of Gorl’s friends curled up in a corner, watching her, and she gulps.

*

“Mother?”

Susannah turned to her son. “Yes, dear?”

“I was just wondering where you were.” She smiled. Howard had always been a good boy, and he was well on his way to becoming a good man. “I am right here.” She taps the spot next to her on the settee, and Howard happily sits with her. “What are you doing?” “Trying to come up with a name for the little one”, she says, running a hand on her swollen belly. Howard smiles widely. “Can I help?” “Of course, dear.”

They bounce ideas off each other for a while, and her cheeks hurt from smiling. Howard’s childhood, so far, has been much calmer than hers, but she is not fooled by the relative status quo of these last few years. Susannah knows that wars brew here, always. It is simply a matter of when it will topple over.

But for now, she will enjoy the feeling of a quiet afternoon with her son.

“Mother, how did Vikus and Solovet come up with your names?”

Susannah smiles, thinking about her father pointing at an old, worn book in the museum.

“Have I ever told you about an overland writer named Shakespeare?”

*

His hands were trembling, from hunger and thirst, maybe, but mostly from fear. Jonathan is scared, yes, every second of his life now boiling down to survival, lying his way out, clumsily building weapons that could only work once.

He figures he’s been gone for roughly three months, but there is no sun or light here, only darkness, fur, and stone.

Somewhere above, Margaret has been born. He thinks about her, his little girl, Lizzie’s giggle, Gregor’s fingers on the saxophone, Grace’s warm smile, and gets back to work.

[ezilo]

Questionnaire: fanfiction as a community

Hello! 

I’m doing a paper on fanfiction writing and reading as a community, and could really use your help! 

I’m trying to explore how fanfiction writing and reading as a practice creates a sense of community, regardless of fandoms. 

If you feel like answering, it would help a lot! 

Here is the link: 

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSctUcWTQOTrelNqnFayBaG2LbjqesgiGSkIyVnh7JRWX5Xp_Q/viewform?usp=sf_link

Feel free to ask if you have any questions! 

[ezilo]

Title: Nous sommes davantage dans le temps

Summary: Dan’s milestones are somehow linked with youtube videos and Phil, and sometimes both.

Rating: T

Read on ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16507325

Author’s note: So. This has been sitting in my laptop for literal months now and I just worked up the courage to post it.  Huge thanks to @auroraphilealis   for betaing (seriously if this is any good it’s thanks to her) and inspiring this and generally being wonderful. This is kind of dedicated to her, and to everything her writing has done for me, and a lot of people I think. This is based on a list of the most popular type of videos on youtube, my philosophy exam and a conversation with elizajane. I also know practically nothing about philosophy so don't  judge me on that. Oh and the title is from something my philosophy teacher said last year: "Nous sommes davantage dans le temps que le temps est en nous" which translates to "We are more in time than time is in us". It was the starting point of this fic, actually.

As always, english isn't my first language so if there are any mistakes, feel free to tell me!

Back to School tutorial

Here’s the thing. Knowing something inside and out, diving into it, knowing every corner of it, apparently doesn’t make you accept it.

 Dan knows time. He knows universe. He knows what Pascal, Leibniz, Einstein, and others have said about it. Descartes is no stranger to him, even in the original language, thanks to the Canadian boy he spent a few weeks with (or was it months?) who used to read him the Discours de la Méthode with so much passion Dan just had to kiss him.

 Dan knows about the universe. He knows how others explain it.

 But that doesn’t mean he’s satisfied with the answers he gets.

 He knows that the present cannot be grasped, not truly, has swallowed quotes about this his entire study life, but he’s still longing for something that will help him anchor himself to the present. He’s had the feeling of belonging, finally, at the banged up kitchen table in Workingham, one hand buried in Collin’s fur, curls freed and smiling wide. He’s had the swelling, wool like grasping at his heart of falling in love with eyes and lips and thoughts and giggles.

 But still.

 Present doesn’t hold him, or he doesn’t hold the present, or he doesn’t understand what present is, or he should stop drinking coffee at eleven pm.

 Dan can’t sleep, but maybe that’s because he keeps asking questions that even philosophy cannot answer when he should just ask to sleep. He’s never been good at asking one thing. It’s easier to think his brain is aching because of the sense of time and the universe than because his first class is tomorrow.

 He ends up losing himself in back to school youtube videos, and trying not to remember that he’s over thirty.

 Funny animals compilation

Dan’s fidgeting with the marker, popping the cap off, pushing it back down nervously, twirling it between his fingers. He’s early, for the first time in his life, which means there’s one less reason he can prove himself to be an absolute fail.

 The timetable on the door says that at eight thirty there’s an “Introduction to the philosophy of space and time” by Professor D. Howell.

 Professor. For a minute he thought there was someone else named D Howell, because surely that couldn’t be him, right?

 He sinks into the chair, head falling between his hands, and he can feel them trembling, where they bury in his hair. He ignores the hollow noise echoing around him that he thinks is most likely his head being annoying, but thus far his head has never said ‘hello?’ in a man’s voice, so he looks up.

 “Yes?” he says to the tall man whose hand is still poised on the door.

 “Hi! I’m so sorry to bother you, but I’m looking for the seminar room 205 but I got lost, and then I was on the right track and then I got lost again. So do you know where that is?”

 Dan’s momentarily baffled by the amount of things the man said so quickly, and the chipper tone of his voice, like all of the words are lifted up in the last syllable.

 “Uhm, yeah,” he clears his throat nervously, fist tightening around the marker in his right hand. “It’s right down the hall, then turn left. Third door on the right.”

 “Oh, I had no idea it was this close. I’m really sorry to bother you again.” And that doesn’t really make any sense, it’s the first time he’s bothered him, but Dan recognizes the nervous rush of words, he’s felt this flustered himself in a lot of situations.

 There’s a pause where Dan is about to say that it’s completely fine if he ever remembers how to use actual words, but the man speaks up again. “And good luck for your class!”

 That makes Dan let out some kind of half chuckle, and some words miraculously tumble out of his mouth. “Thanks, it’s my first day,” he says, which is too much information. The man will probably just nod politely and leave immediately.

 “I’m sure it’ll go great! Are you nervous?”

 “Definitely yeah.” Which is, again, too much information, and too honest.

 “You don’t need to be. You know your stuff, right?”

 Dan nods, gets a smile in response.

 “And the students will love you.”

 “Thanks.”

 If the man’s offended by Dan’s short answer, he doesn’t say, and it doesn’t show. Dan really wishes he could say something more, he really does, but he’s unsure of what; how do you deal with a stranger’s kindness? This is why he doesn’t go outside.

 “I’ll get out of your hair. Think of happy things to relax yourself! Bye!”

 And he’s gone. It’s the kind of encounter that starts a movie about a friendly quirky ghost, not the kind of thing that actually happens to people.

 Dan shakes his head, but he can’t deny it’s taken his mind off of the class. Think of happy things! The words echo, spoken in a deep voice somehow laced with a sparkly lightness. Dan realizes he still has about 15 minutes left before his class when he glances, up at the clock ticking loudly. He opens up youtube, and gets lost in sloth videos for a while.

Dan’s class goes relatively well. It could have gone better, definitely, but Dan hadn’t said anything too strange, or too random in his panic. He’s been able to answer student’s questions, and even got a few smiles that didn’t seem pitiful.

 Once his students are all gone, Dan sits down and feels a smile etch itself onto his face.

 And maybe that’s another way to cling himself to the present.

 When he pulls up his phone, he finds baby sloths bathing immediately open, and that smile widens a bit.

 Dan’s riding high on the adrenaline of having his first class, of it going well, and stands up abruptly. He shoulders his backpack and heads down the hall, turns left, and slows down in front of the third door, lingering outside, as the class is apparently not over yet.

 There are thoughts infiltrating his brain now - of this being insanely creepy, of being inappropriate. Paranoia buzzes under his skin, threatens to eradicate the giddiness. But then the door opens, students pour out, and Dan looks on dazedly, drowned in panic.

 “Oh hi!”

 He looks up instantly and meets crinkly eyes.

 “Hi.”

 There’s an awkward silence where they look at each other, grumpy students passing them, shoulders bumping while they hold eye contact.

 “So how did your class go?” the smile in  the man’s voice is palpable.

 “Good, actually, better than I thought it would. I, uh, took your advice about the happy things. Watched animal videos.”

 “I love animal videos!” The man’s voice booms on love, his eyes snapping to Dan’s, all wide and oh.

 Blue.

 “Me too.”

 How Buffy should have ended

That blue seeps into his life now, through the first exchange of names and numbers in that hallway and then through endless hours at starbucks. The blue is the first thing Dan notices about Phil, but things add up through with every over enthusiastic text, every all caps comment only Phil would think about, every caring smile or giddy giggle. Dan learns things about Phil the way he’s always learned things: obsessively cataloguing facts, and waiting to get sick of Phil like he gets sick of everything after a while.

 He doesn’t want to, though.

 Turns out Phil isn’t a professor, or a student, though. He just came in to listen to one of his friends, to support him, because Phil just does that. Turns out Phil is a youtuber, because yes that’s a job a thirty-five year old is allowed to have. Not that Dan let his surprise show (much). He wanted Phil to like him and think he’s accepting and open-minded and all that shit.

 Three weeks later, when he discovers Phil doesn’t like cheese, he mutters that he hates him, and knows what Phil thinks of him is just right.

 The first time they hang out outside of starbucks, it’s at Phil’s, which is blinding and overwhelming, like eating too many ice creams in the summer, desperate for cold, with sugar lingering on your tongue.

 Dan likes it though.

 They start an anime together, and it’s comforting to know that Phil realizes that that’s a big deal too. They end up in a heated debate over which character’s will end up together, and who shouldn’t, during which they both hint multiple times at their attraction to pretty anime boys.

 They’re not subtle and Dan loves it. Dan would be ashamed of his laugh, of his twisted humor, but, well. Phil’s tongue sticks out when he laughs, his sense of humor is surprisingly just as twisted as Dan’s and his smile is accepting.

 They talk, too. About Phil’s YouTube channel, about Dan’s existential crises, all laced with sarcasm and humor, but that’s enough for now.

 Dan ends up making Phil cave and they watch some of his videos, which makes a delicate pink blush bloom on Phil’s pale skin. They get closer and closer with every video they click on, wandering into parody videos, Phil’s arm secure around Dan’s shoulders, and it doesn’t feel foreign at all.

 Phil gets overly worked up about How Buffy should have ended, promptly ends their friendship upon learning Dan hasn’t watched it, and starts up a “vital binge watch”.

 Just as Buffy’s cheerleading team gets cursed, Phil’s lips end up on his.

 Compilation of saddest love scenes 2

Everything mostly stays the same.

 The changes that do occur, in the gaps of their already crackling friendship, are wonderful. Phil gets to shut Dan up with a kiss when he’s being obnoxious about winning Mario kart, the bed is warm, Dan gets understanding and laughter and also a naked Phil on his couch playing fortnite, which is an at first surprising but not displeasing sight. They fall asleep on each other with the computer still on, and Phil drags Dan to the bedroom when the pain in his neck becomes too much.

 There’s one night though, where everything feels wrong. The world is subdued and grayed out, and Dan wants to stay in bed all day.

 He knows what this is. He’s worked through recognizing his depression in his twenties, but no one warned him that it doesn’t stop with that. Existential crises linger on even if your life is safe and figured out. They don’t stop when you settle down.

 But Phil was going to come over tonight, so Dan pulls at the muscles in his distant body and orders some pizza.

 But he can’t really pretend for Phil.

 He can’t feel bad for not pretending either.

 He just can’t, period, and Phil notices.

 Phil asks, Dan grunts, eyebrows furrowed. He ends up frustrating Phil, a lot.

 Phil’s sighing and cursing under his breath and leaving.

 Of course.

 Dan will feel that in the morning, but for now he just feels even more choked by sadness than before, even though he didn’t think he could..

 He falls into bed, stomach empty, doesn’t feel it. The dark hours of the night are spent watching sad compilations, listening to melancholic songs, and trying to just feel, please.

 He’s a bit better by morning. Or worse, given that he feels the pain of Phil having left now.

 But, well. He comes back.

 At eleven am, the doorbell rings. Dan is wrapped up in his duvet, should be drinking water, but he opens the door anyway.

 There stands Phil, feet shuffling, eyes rimmed in glasses, carrying a plastic bag.

 “Hey.”

 “Uhm, hey.”

 “So I wanted to apologize for being a dick last night. I shouldn’t have snapped at you when you were feeling down. I brought you some pancakes as an apology. And if you don’t want to see me anymore, then, well. Enjoy the pancakes.”

 Dan just stares.

 He wants to say he will explain, he wants to say they’ll figure it out, they’ll communicate, they’ll make up systems, they’ll do this because Phil, well Phil you make me want to talk about the pit I fall into to someone that’s not Dr. Linda, Phil you make me want to be better than this, Phil you make me want to stay up all night just to stare into your eyes instead of staring into the dull London sky wondering why I exist.

 “Thank you, Phil.” He says for now.

 He’ll say the rest later.

 They share a plate of pancakes and pick up where they left off on Buffy, because Dan likes seeing Phil mouth the witty retorts the heroin gives the Mayor.  Phil always loves Buffy. Rain or shine, stress or bliss, or both. Dan wishes he had that, but slowly, he starts feeling the warmth of Phil, starts laughing, starts feeling pained when Angel leaves through the mist.

 Eventually, he says “I hate you” to Phil after he rambled about why Angel isn’t as good as Buffy, and gets a knowing smile in return.

  Let’s play! Sims 34: Our Sim gets abducted by aliens???

They’re tangled up on the couch, laptop on their thighs, after one of Phil’s low days. Their bones are digging against each other and knocking, too warm on the leather, when Dan asks Phil to move in with him.

 Phil’s mesmerized by the new episode of their favorite “Let’s play!”, and just hums distractedly when he hears the question.

 Dan promptly punches him, gets an indignant high pitched Hey! in response.

 He repeats it, “D’ya wanna move in with me?”.

 Phil turns to him then, eyes wide and taking on a slightly neon shade of blue caused by the glow of the laptop screen.

 “Yeah.” he says, simple as that.

 And his head whips back to the sim being transported into an alien shuttle. And, well. There’s not much more to that decision than a domestically tinged obviousness.

 Easy red velvet cupcakes!

Dan is a mess. He’d barely gotten any sleep the night before, drowning in a despair to find meaning to all of it. Why he’s here, why does he teach when he cannot understand.

 Phil tries to help, but they have systems now, and Phil knows he has to leave Dan alone and go back to sleep. The regular snoring is enough to reassure Dan, sometimes.

 Dan’s halfway through an attempt at red velvet cupcakes, and it’s not going great.

 They are not red, first of all, because Dan mistook the green coloring for the red one, and it’s all just a general ongoing mess. Phil is, of course, not here to reassure Dan,or make fun of him, or press him against the counter and make out with him while the cupcakes bake. Phil picking up his mom from the station.

 Which is a thing.

 Dan’s meeting Phil’s mom.

 He’s not really nervous about her. She must be lovely and quirky. But Dan’s scared of not impressing her, of not being enough for her wondrously creative son, stuck in a philosophy position he’s had for a year and a half now. And what kind of functioning adult has only been working for a year and a half? Dan doesn’t want to have to explain losing three years doing law, or not being brave enough to take the leap and study philosophy, instead dabbling in cosmology for a while, eating up existentialism because it fit him, and adding up degrees through years of procrastination and pulling all nighters writing papers he should have written over the past couple of weeks and months.

 He’s a grown man, but he’s still insecure, scared, and a bit ashamed of his past.

 Phil works on that too, untying knots of self-hatred in the night with smooth fingertips, so Dan remembers Phil saying, “She’ll love you, Dan, who wouldn’t?”, and fusses over the decorating of his cupcakes, lamenting their lack of aesthetic.

 “Dan, we’re home!”

 He pauses the cupcake tutorial, cursing the girl with perfectly curled hair and cherry red pastries, places his cupcakes on a porcelain plate, and walks out, greeting Mrs. Lester as she drags him into her arms.

 He and Phil munch on the leftover swamp green cupcakes that night and, well, he’s got a new family member now, who seems to like him, contemplations of death and failed baking and all.

 How to live your truth

Phil doesn’t come out, but Dan peeks through his channel, through his subscribers comments, through the content and the videos and the theories his fans create.

 There’s the sound of cooking during a live show that triggers obsessive all caps and question marks. There’s an unmade double bed in the background of a video that leads to furious googling and careful expressions of happiness for Phil. There’s another hand in a pic of a healthy cherry blossom, zoomed in on and examined. There’s less and less selfies because now Phil has someone to take pictures of him, while he smiles and grins more naturally. And finally, there’s the first joint live shows, with their careful dodging of the actual status of their relationship, and interactions played over and over again in beautifully edited videos reblogged on tumblr.

 All of it is a commitment by Phil’s fans to Dan, like Phil commits to Dan every day, to the place Dan has in Phil’s life, undefined but solid.

 Dan holds the sky in his eyes at night, and wonders what the sense of it is.

 Pascal said that Humans don’t hold the present. And Dan admires Pascal, but his present is rhythmed by Phil’s breathing, their rituals and systems, and the constant disappearance of sugar Phil causes.

 Dan likes transparency and honesty about what he feels, and what he wants right now.

 But he doesn’t know who he is, not really, dipping into his thirties, and maybe that’s okay. His present is ever changing and slips between his fingers, but Phil is the background of it, holds Dan in it.

 And Dan gets up to teach Pascal, and to not believe him every day, because of Phil.

[taikahhwaititee-deactivated2019]

[ezilo]

this is from Dan’s wikipedia page in french. It says he lives “with Phil Lester, boyfriend and youtuber collegue” and god my country is just full of demons

[you-had-me-at-e-flat-major]

things about germany that are actually unironically true

- ancient rivalry between the north and south branch of the same supermarket - raw minced pork sandwiches are a thing (yes they can give you hepatitis C) (no that won’t stop them) - watching an extremely obscure 17-minute comedy short film about a noblewoman and a butler in english every new year’s eve - never cross the road on red even if it’s 4:30am and the closest car is in andorra because there will be an 80-year-old bavarian woman hiding in the bushes ready to lecture you on road safety

[ezilo]

Look. We’ve been having storms for the last week and I’m trying to distract myself from the utter failure that was my German literature exam. So here’s a little tidbit 😊

Tags: phan, au, first meeting, lots of fluff, rain

 He’d heard it on the news in the morning, of course. He remembers the chipper lady announcing storms in the afternoon, but he’d promptly ignored her, eyes focused on his fingers that were fiddling with his laces yet again. He was so concentrated on making sure his shoes were on properly that he forgot to take his umbrella with him. He’d even seen it, from the corner of his eye, hanging cherry red next to his coats. He’d seen it, but Phil’s mind had never been on things his eyes see.

So he ended up soaked as he exited the tube station coming home from work, passing disheveled looking Londoners leaving dark drops of water behind them and splashing everyone with their intimidating glares. It had been electric, the urge to run that the heavy rain set upon him. He felt the cold, the way his jeans stuck to his skin, how his hair was plated on his forehead suddenly. It was nice that that wasn’t a familiar feeling now, that he got brave enough to get rid of the fringe. Everyone in his life thought it was strange that he cared about a hairstyle as much as he did. They were teasing, or trying to be empathetic, a smirk or a pitiful smile playing around their lips. Phil didn’t like it, but he understood it – he had always been a strange boy, he had just gotten taller.

 So he ran. He ran through the drops and the cold and strangers’ umbrellas scratching his head. He ran and his feet fell into puddles and into the little rivers running along the pavements. He grinned at the apocalyptic-like world, the sound of the rain drowning everything else out, the dampness seeming to insert itself everywhere in him, every inch of the world covered in a shuddering cold, and crossed the street, water gathering in his shoes. Once he’s inside, it gets uncomfortable. It had been vivifying, when he’d been under the storm, but now the dampness feels out of place on him, in this stifling dryness. The two don’t combine, don’t match up, and he rushes to his apartment, his jeans clinging to his skin horribly, and he’s so cold. He peels the wet clothes off, and feels at home in his soft pajamas. He takes the time to make himself a hot chocolate, the smooth, brown and enticing surface barely visible behind too many marshmallows, fumes of sugar invading his nose and brain it seems. He sits by the window and lets the sugar melt and revels in the overwhelming feeling of warmth and sugar and home and the three melting together and intertwining, sparking a familiar sense of comfort. In these moments, he thinks maybe being a ‘creature of comfort’ isn’t such a bad thing, listening to the murmur of the rain.

That’s when he sees a dark figure cutting through the rain, barely more than black dots. But he imagines what that must feel like, he knows what it’s like, to be dripping and cold and alone, and the figure isn’t even running. Maybe the magic of rain doesn’t work on everyone. Phil kind of wants to make it work. The person is just standing there and Phil aches for them.

So Phil jumps up, grabs the umbrella this time, and stumbles down the stairs in a hurry. When he opens the door to his building, the wonderful hush of rain fills his hears, and a cold gust flies into him, past him, but Phil doesn’t care. The man is tilting his head towards him now, and Phil squints, the rain making his vision difficult, even through his glasses.

“Hi there.” And oh. That’s an addition the sound of rain he actually likes.

“Hi. Why are you in the rain?”

“Can’t exactly stop the rain can I?” Phil almost rolls his eyes at the answer. Instead he just smiles.

“Well you could also try to find cover.”

“I could.” There’s something somber in that answer, something hoarse and like he hasn’t really spoken in a while, the man’s eyes find the ground, his arms tighten around his sides. The silence should be awkward, Phil thinks, he has experience with awkward silences (and breaking them with something a lot more awkward), but it’s not. Maybe it’s because the rain fills it.

“Then why don’t you?” he feels bold, and rude, but he wants to ask and for once he goes for the things he wants, instead of staying safe. It’s the magic of the rain, he thinks. Or the quiff. The man studies him then, looking up sharply, and seems to doubt he actually asked. Phil shrugs, but his smile stays.

“Maybe I like the rain.”

“You like pneumonia too then?”

He bursts out laughing, and Phil decides he likes that. The man fits in the rain, looking sad and greyed out, but that laugh doesn’t, and maybe that’s a good thing too.

“I won’t get pneumonia from standing in the rain. Also the tube station is closed so I have to walk home in this weather and I don’t want to.”

“So you’d rather stay put in the rain than walk in the rain even though you’ll have to walk at some point. That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Never said it did.” For some reason, they’re both grinning.

“Well…” Phil opens up his umbrella, walks over to him, and settles it over both of their heads, so they’re both at least mostly dry. “You can walk there with an umbrella now.” And he smiles even wider, barely noticing how instinctive it suddenly feels. The man looks surprised, incredulous, but smiles back.

“Thank you.”

“You’re very welcome, eurm sorry what’s your name?”

“Dan. You?”

“Phil.”

“Nice to meet you Phil.” He stretches out a hand, but Phil has to switch the umbrella to his other hand to extend the hand that’ll fit his, tilting it and exposing Dan to the rain a bit.

“Oh sorry sorry! I didn’t mean to!” that same brightly colored laugh cuts through his apology.

“It’s okay. Does that mean it’s not nice to meet me though?” Phil’s cheeks color, he feels the heat spread.

“No no! I’m just a clumsy mess, it’s very nice to meet you.” Dan nods and snickers some more and takes the umbrella from him.

“I better take that then.”

“Sure.” Phil breathes out because Dan just had to cover half his hand in the process of taking the umbrella from him.

“I better go then. You should head home.”

“Oh okay. But won’t you miss your umbrella?” Phil smiles and lets his eyes stay where they are, diving into Dan’s, unashamed, maybe a little bit bold for his standards.

“I’m sure you’ll bring it back, won’t you Dan?” he gets a smile back, maybe a little bit daring, maybe a little bit more.

“I definitely will.” They smile at each other for a second more, under the pitter patter of the rain against the red of the umbrella, sending a warm glow onto Dan’s skin and curly hair. It’s nice. Phil nods then, ducks his head, turns away, and just as he prepares to head back to his building, lets a hand rest on Dan’s forearm, just for a moment, before fleeing, running home. He turns back as he heads inside, waves a goodbye. Dan’s beaming, and he hears a “See you soon!” just before the door shuts.

He’s drenched again. It’s worth it.