Summary: After the end of the Ravening War, Colin and Deli journey briefly together to the Meatlands and do not sleep together.
Pairing: Deli/Colin
Word Count: 1,304
Rating: M
AO3 Link
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
Dawn was beautiful rising from these frozen shores. Colin had forgotten. Or maybe he never looked closely enough when he had the chance. For a second, watching the folds of frail golden light sweep over the tundra, Colin could almost forgive Deli for everything he had done—could almost forgive himself.
“Up ahead,” Deli said beside him. Past the fork in the road, almost obscured by mist, there was a small thatched hut in the crevice between two great mountains.
Colin was a little surprised. There? That was Deli’s safehouse?
“Yes,” Deli replied. Then, correcting himself, he said, “Here was where I spent my boyhood.”
They were a full day’s ride away from the closest village. Years ago, the Chieftess had told Colin how she had raised Deli outside of her clan, forsaken by her kinsmen because of a fatherless pregnancy. Here the Chieftess had nursed Deli. Then, when Deli could walk, she returned to her clan and sought revenge on the men who had usurped her and her son’s birthright.
It had only been a week since the last treaty was signed and the war had ended—the war that they were now calling the Ravening War. To the victors fell the spoils; among the victors were the spoils divided. Men who had never before dreamt of riches were transformed by the sudden flood of titles and lands from Ceresian tributes. These men eyed those in the rungs above, where among others Deli stood.
Deli’s absence in the final battle of the war was noted. His mixed parentage was reexamined among the Meatland troops. Basha was loathed to let go his best advisor, his kingmaker. But Basha’s reign had been brief, despite his military victories, and therefore fragile. Deli told Colin that he did not want to force Basha’s hand, but Colin knew that Deli was tired of fighting.
Colin was not. He could no more forget Raphaniel’s last screams and those teeth, those damn teeth of the Fellowship’s god, than he could sheath his sword. Since leaving Saprophus, Colin had been seized with a restlessness he had never before experienced. At the center of the restlessness was a terrible and intoxicating thing: a direction. All his life he had run away from this or that, drifted away, refused to engage, acted in the negative. For revenge, he now became clear-eyed. His life’s mission would be to hunt down the last of the Fellowship until the end of this land. He held this belief without embarrassment.
A hand on his shoulder. Deli’s. “Can we rest for a bit?”
Of course, Colin told him.
They set up camp by a river that was frozen over violently: the surface roiled with stilled currents, and huge solid white waves soared against the river banks. But the river itself was suffocated into silence.
Colin went through familiar motions: arranging twigs around dry land, gathering frost for water, raising the soup pot, waiting as Deli dashed together two pop rocks against the tinder. They stoked the fire. It grew warm and comfortable. Colin took off his outer coat, and Deli took off the fur draped over his bare shoulders.
They ate. This would be the last meal they would have together for some time. Colin understood this. He was serene in this fact—that was, until Deli spoke.
“We were here once,” Deli said.
Did they? Colin did not recognize the place.
“The river looks different now,” Deli said, gesturing in front of them. “It had been flowing. It was summer. And we weren’t here, exactly. We were somewhere more upstream or downstream. But we had pitched a tent around by a grand white fish-bone fir. It was steady. It saved us from the storm.”
Colin remembered now. Not the river or the fir tree, but the memory that Deli had been guiding him towards. It had been so early after they had left Comida. Deli, much younger, exuberant, had won the approval of his kinsmen and been named emissary on behalf of the clan that morning. It was all that was on Deli’s mind and in the glint of Deli’s eye.
In the evening, they had laid next to each other as usual. There had been no fire in the tent; their only source of heat was each other. The storm had lapped against the tent flap. Icy raindrops had sought to penetrate their thin canvas of a roof. They would have died of the cold if either the canvas or the entrance had given in. But little of this mattered to them. Colin listened to Deli talk about a beautiful future and a beautiful world for his people. There would be happiness, Deli said, and Colin had indeed felt great happiness. Then Deli had stopped, looked over at Colin, and kissed him.
“You were the one who told me that I should save myself for someone I loved,” Deli said now. They had proceeded no further that evening.
“I remember,” Colin told him.
“But I do love you.”
The confession stunned him, but it did not surprise him. It was a plunge into a cold pool—the body adjusted to the shock in a heartbeat. Love, love, love. Colin loved him. Of course Colin loved him. How long had Colin loved him. But they were past the time—the biological age? the historical epoch?—when a passionate confession could remedy all ills. How much time had they had to reexamine themselves and each other? How much time had they to say those words of love? Colin wanted to tell Deli that he loved him. The Colin of all of their travels together threatened to burst from Colin’s throat: I do love you too, I do. But Colin held himself back. It was restraint with the slightest edge of malice. Colin knew that he could hurt Deli then. Was it cruel of Colin to still want that power over Deli? He almost wanted to hurt him. Was there a part of him that thought the act of refusal ensured he would stay that much longer in Deli’s mind? Did he think Deli saw Karna when Deli looked at him? Was this fear that he felt fear for himself or fear for Deli?
Instead, he kissed Deli for the second time in his life. Deli kissed him back. What a lovely sight they now made: two figures intertwined together by a fire, the clansman’s bare back against the light and the cold, the man beneath him willing and pliant. How deeply they kissed each other then, as though they would never let each other go.
It would live forever in Colin: this kiss, this love of his, Deli, the young prince, his youth, Colin’s youth. Colin knew it. But everything became a memory as soon as they begun; Colin anticipated the end as soon as they started. Already he was living in the future, looking back curiously, the present in retrospective. He felt desire, he thought. He felt Deli’s desire too. Deli was trembling, was grasping at him, holding onto him, pulling him in by the collar in one moment, pushing Colin into the frozen ground in the next, clashing teeth, nipping at his lips, digging into his skin, forcing Colin to take shape as a physical entity. But Colin only held Deli in an embrace.
And Deli finally gave up on Colin. Deli’s kisses slowed, grew gentle. Then Deli broke away. Colin did not protest. Deli lifted his face to the sky and let go of Colin.
-
Later, on the path back to the harbor, Colin could not be sure, but he thought he spotted it near the horizon: that great fish-bone fir by the river, whose spine stretched into the heavens, next to which he and Deli had set up shelter together so many years ago.
Summary: After Chuck, the four Winchesters arrive at a log cabin in Northern California.
Pairing: Dean/Castiel
Word Count: 8,546
Rating: M
Link to AO3
Excerpt
Tall redwoods clipped past their periphery as the Impala cut through the Sierra Nevadas on Interstate 80. Dean, infirmed, read in the backseat. Castiel, in shotgun, heard an occasional click of the tongue and, rhythmically, the soft scratch of a turned page. Sam drove on Castiel’s left, brows furrowed.
Every once in a while, voice low, Dean would recite a passage of the anthology to Jack. Castiel saw Jack smile and blink through the rearview mirror, only faintly understanding but eagerly holding onto every word. At one point Dean let out a chortle. When Jack leaned over, he explained, “This guy, Arnold Friend,” his fingers traced a line on the page, “as accurate a Lucifer as I’ve seen.” He had passed by other descriptions of gods and devils with a similar laugh.
They touched past Sacramento and arrived at Santa Rosa by sundown. Sam steered them into a suburban neighborhood washed white with wealth, into a nondescript cul-de-sac with a Spanish street name. A man in a dark blue sweater and neat jeans came out. He clasped Sam’s hand in a wide swing. The man had thinning black hair and a square jaw softening comfortably into middle age. Of course, this must be Sam’s friend, Castiel realized. College buddies, Sam had said. They had matriculated at the same time. But Sam looked older, less worn than lean. He had a sharpness that cut into this dusk-soaked, civilian tableau.
Summary: After Chuck, the four Winchesters arrive at a log cabin in Northern California.
Pairing: Dean/Castiel
Word Count: 8,546
Rating: M
Link to AO3
Excerpt
Tall redwoods clipped past their periphery as the Impala cut through the Sierra Nevadas on Interstate 80. Dean, infirmed, read in the backseat. Castiel, in shotgun, heard an occasional click of the tongue and, rhythmically, the soft scratch of a turned page. Sam drove on Castiel’s left, brows furrowed.
Every once in a while, voice low, Dean would recite a passage of the anthology to Jack. Castiel saw Jack smile and blink through the rearview mirror, only faintly understanding but eagerly holding onto every word. At one point Dean let out a chortle. When Jack leaned over, he explained, “This guy, Arnold Friend,” his fingers traced a line on the page, “as accurate a Lucifer as I’ve seen.” He had passed by other descriptions of gods and devils with a similar laugh.
They touched past Sacramento and arrived at Santa Rosa by sundown. Sam steered them into a suburban neighborhood washed white with wealth, into a nondescript cul-de-sac with a Spanish street name. A man in a dark blue sweater and neat jeans came out. He clasped Sam’s hand in a wide swing. The man had thinning black hair and a square jaw softening comfortably into middle age. Of course, this must be Sam’s friend, Castiel realized. College buddies, Sam had said. They had matriculated at the same time. But Sam looked older, less worn than lean. He had a sharpness that cut into this dusk-soaked, civilian tableau.
When Sam returned to the driver’s seat with a ring of keys, Dean and Sam exchanged a quiet, somber look. Jack was reading Dean’s book now, his eyes wide. Sam gunned the engine. Castiel manned the navigation system and caught Dean’s eyes on his own.
Sam brought them to a heavyset cabin close enough to the sea and the forest that brine mixed with the smell of greenery. The ocean seemed just beyond a few snatches of ferns. Helped by Jack, Dean dragged his broken leg out of the car. There was a chill in the autumn air, and Dean cursed sharply: the string of blasphemies fell like biblical verses from his lips. Castiel regarded this with a usual, quiet astonishment. When their eyes met, Dean shrugged. “We still need something to curse at,” he said, even though they were functionally living in a godless world.
Castiel took his time arranging his duffel. Dean and Jack and Sam went in, and the eyes of the house lit up yellow. Castiel slung his backpack over his shoulder. It was a small house further dwarfed by the surrounding redwoods. The driveway snaked around the back, the outer edge shorn off into a cliff tangled with dark brambles. Where Castiel stood was like the lip of a bowl, and at the bottom were gold and orange houses that piled into a small town. Alone by the car, staring into that miniature world, Castiel rolled the words in his mouth, testing.
“Fuck,” he finally said. “God damn it. God fucking damn it.”
It’s at least 3,000 miles just from the East Coast to the West, depending on where you start.
If I try to drive from here in Maine to New Mexico, it’s 2,400 miles.
From here to Oregon, 800 miles from my current residence to my relatives in NJ, then another 3,000 miles after that.
A brisk 8 day drive that meanders through mountains, forests, corn fields, dry, flat, empty plains, more mountains, and then a temperate rain forest in Oregon.
The land has some seriously creepy stuff, even just right outside our doors.
There is often barking sounds on the other side of our back door.
At 3 am.
When no one would let their dog out.
It’s a consensus not to even look out the fucking windows at night.
Especially during the winter months.
Nothing chills your heart faster than sitting in front of a window and hearing footsteps breaking through the snow behind you, only to look and not see anything.
I live in a tiny town whose distance from larger cities ranges from 30 miles, to 70 miles. What is in between?
Giant stretches of forests, swamps, pockets of civilization, more trees, farms, wildlife, and winding roads. All of which gives the feeling of nature merely tolerating humans, and that we are one frost heave away from our houses being destroyed, one stretch of undergrowth away from our roads being pulled back into the earth.
And almost every night, we have to convince ourselves that the popping, echoing gunshot sounds are really fireworks, because we have no idea what they might be shooting at.
There’s a reason Stephen King sets almost all his stories in Maine.
New Mexico, stuck under Colorado, next to Texas, and uncomfortably close to Arizona. I grew up there. The air is so dry your skin splits and doesn’t bleed. Coyotes sing at night. It starts off in the distance, but the response comes from all around. The sky, my gods, the sky. In the day it is vast and unfeeling. At night the stars show how little you truly are.
This is the gentle stuff. I’m not going to talk about the whispered tales from those that live on, or close, to the reservations. I’m not going to go on about the years of drought, or how the ground gives way once the rain falls. The frost in the winter stays in the shadows, you can see the line where the sun stops. It will stay there until spring. People don’t tell you about the elevation, or how thin the air truly is. The stretches of empty road with only husks of houses to dot the side of the horizon. There’s no one around for miles except those three houses. How do they live out here? The closest town is half an hour away and it’s just a gas station with a laundry attached.
No one wants to be there. They’re just stuck. It has a talent for pulling people back to it. I’ve been across the country for years, but part of me is still there. The few that do get out don’t return. A visit to family turns into an extended stay. Car troubles, a missed flight, and then suddenly there’s a health scare. Can’t leave Aunt/Uncle/Grandparent alone in their time of need. It’s got you.
Roswell is a joke. A failed National Inquirer article slapped with bumperstickers and half-assed tourist junk. The places that really run that chill down the spine are in the spaces between the sprawling mesas and hidden arroyos. Stand at the top of the Carlsbad Caverns trail. Look a mile down into the darkness. Don’t step off the path. just don’t.
dammit jesse now I want to read about the things that live down there
meanwhile in maryland the summer is killing-hot, the air made of wet flannel, white heat-haze glazing the horizon, and the endless cicadas shrilling in every single tree sound like a vast engine revving and falling off, revving and falling off, slow and repeated, and everything is so green, lush poison-green, and you could swear you can hear the things growing, hear the fibrous creak and swell of tendrils flexing
and sometimes in the old places, the oldest places, where the salt-odor of woodsmoke and tobacco never quite go away, there is unexplained music in the night, and you should not try to find out where it’s coming from.
The intense and permanent haunting of a land upon which countess horrors have been visited, and that is too large and wild for us to really comprehend is probably the most intense and universal American feeling.
in chicago, there is noise everywhere. the l rattles overhead, the faint strains of a street performance drift down michigan avenue. the wind howls as it rushes inland, through the city. drunken sports fans spill out of bars after the game, and their singing and whooping can be heard for miles. the tornado sirens go off and you freeze and have to remind yourself it’s a tuesday.
but sometimes, late at night, the city falls silent. you’re walking in the loop past midnight and you realize it’s been minutes since you’ve seen a car pass. the lights are out in all the bars and the theatres and even the walgreens looks deserted as you walk by. the l tracks are empty and silent, and the light on the platform flickers. and then, slowly, you begin to notice the smell of chocolate drifting towards you, getting stronger and stronger as you draw closer to the river and you must never follow it.
Do you design a lot of characters living in not-modern eras and you’re tired of combing through google for the perfect outfit references? Well I got good news for you kiddo, this website has you covered! Originally @modmad made a post about it, but her link stopped working and I managed to fix it, so here’s a new post. Basically, this is a costume rental website for plays and stage shows and what not, they have outfits for several different decades from medieval to the 1980s. LOOK AT THIS SELECTION:
OPEN ANY CATEGORY AND OH LORDY–
There’s a lot of really specific stuff in here, I design a lot of 1930s characters for my ask blog and with more chapters on the way for the game it belongs to I’m gonna be designing more, and this website is going to be an invaluable reference. I hope this can be useful to my other fellow artists as well! :)
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 2/3
Fandom: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Adora/Catra (She-Ra)
Characters: Catra (She-Ra), Adora (She-Ra)
Additional Tags: Canon Compliant, Political Intrigue, Sharing a Bed, Injury Recovery, POV Catra (She-Ra), Catra (She-Ra) Redemption
Summary:
Adora tries to change Catra; Catra tries to change the Horde. Both fail; both succeed.
(The Catra-starts-a-quiet-revolution-inside-the-Horde story.)
—-
Why wait for season 2 when this fic already exists???
Title: The Price of Anarchy (Part II of III)
Summary: Adora tries to change Catra; Catra tries to change the Horde. Both fail; both succeed. (The Catra-starts-a-quiet-revolution-inside-the-Horde redemption story.)
[Read on AO3]
Part II Excerpt
Hordak kept most of his enemies—the ones he did not execute—in the Lightning Tower, erected decades ago at the edge of the Fright Zone. It was easily the tallest manmade structure one could see for miles around and looked, to Catra and Adora when they were young, like a block of cheese tacked onto a sky-scraping needle. A giant, multi-headed snake rumored to be Hordak’s childhood pet guarded the base of the Tower, while the block at the top held the Tower’s prisoners.
A sentence to the Tower normally equated isolation for life, and soldiers stationed near it would often report hearing the screeches of its maddened prisoners when the winds hit the surrounding deserts especially hard. But when Catra had asked for access to the Tower as his second-in-command, Hordak had agreed easily. Perhaps it amused him.
It was two weeks before Scorpia was due to return to the Fright Zone, triumphant, flushed with new towns and new people pledging loyalty to the Horde—through their loyalty to her and Scorpion Hall. It was then that Catra paid the Lightning Tower another visit.
“Shadoweaver,” Catra said now, lazy, from the other side of the cell door. “How have you been doing?”
There was no movement from the shadows in the cell. But Catra could hear the woman’s quiet breathing: thin, ragged, and shorter than the last time. Catra waited.
“What do you want now?” came the reply.
Catra paused, thinking. When she made her other visits she would circle the topics a little. But there was no point now.
“Hordak is going after She-Ra,” she said.
Shadoweaver leaned toward the bars slowly. A part of her gaunt, ashen face came into light. “Why?” she rasped.
“She had cut down seven ships on her own in a battle.”
“But you had burned down eighty.”
“You’ve heard.”
“Of course,” Shadoweaver said. “I am not helpless, no matter what you or Lord Hordak may think of me. I have my resources.”
Catra got over her surprise quickly and said, “You’re not afraid to tell me that?” She grinned. “That I would report back to Hordak, and he would take away those ‘resources’?”
“If Hordak has targeted Adora,” Shadoweaver said, “either he or you will not be standing soon. There is no point.”
Catra’s tail twitched at that. She did not like the implication in Shadoweaver’s words, especially since she had guessed her plan—even though the motives completely wrong, of course. But the surest way of falling into Shadoweaver’s traps was to rise to her bait, so Catra moved on.
“She-Ra’s been a thorn at his back for a long time. This was just the last straw,” Catra said. “And anyway, Hordak has always been more afraid of someone who looks good with a sword than someone who’s good with a knife.”
“Indeed,” Shadoweaver said, her beady eyes unmoving from Catra’s face. “And I suppose you’re interested in exactly where one should stick that knife? For curiosity’s sake.”
Title: The Price of Anarchy (Part I of III)
Summary: Adora tries to change Catra; Catra tries to change the Horde. Both fail; both succeed. (The Catra-starts-a-quiet-revolution-inside-the-Horde story.)
[Read on AO3]
Part I Excerpt
Nimbus, of the skies, known to outsiders as a sovereign kingdom, was more accurately a collection of five hundred rogue airships and its people, sailing as a fleet over the upper atmosphere jet streams under the protection of the Rippling Malachite. Despite many subtle and unsubtle attempts by the Horde to launch an attack, the Kingdom of Nimbus had withstood invasion for months, the Horde lacking airships that could fly as high or as fast as those blessed by the runestone of flight. Eventually it was agreed that the Horde would send two representatives to Nimbus for the first round of fuel negotiations: Scorpia, of course, being the Horde’s nominal princess; and Catra.
For Catra, the Nimbus mission had been a nightmare from the start. First had been the travel. Entrapta had sent Catra and Scorpia upward to neutral air with her latest airship prototype—a dandelion-inspired model, with self-centering technology, lovingly nicknamed “Danny”—that was about as human-focused as the rest of her designs. After Catra finished throwing up off the side of the Nimbian-sent airship, she had the pleasure of meeting the Nimbian princess, who was, again, a teenaged brat, settled this time atop a scrap metal throne.
This princess’s defining feature seemed to be how much she simply was not afraid of the Horde, what weaklings the other princesses and their kingdoms were to ever fear them, et cetera et cetera. Scorpia took all of it in stride, oohing and ahhing whenever the princess pointed to a ship and proclaimed its superiority over all others with detailed explanations of how and why to the great distress of her advisors. Catra, on the other hand, was very ready to kidnap a princess again, plan or not. It was then almost a relief when She-Ra and company stomped into the floating palace with their flying, talking unicorn.
“I’ll take Catra,” Adora called out from a distance. This was followed by glitter-princess’s usual, “Adora, no!” before Catra slunk behind the inner palace doors.
When Adora entered, Catra stuck out a foot, and all seven feet of She-Ra-the-warrior-princess-goddess landed flat on her face, sword sliding across the room. Catra pounced, and they grappled across the glass floor, clouds whipping past beneath them.
“I can’t let you do this, Catra,” Adora was saying.
“Glad to see you too.”
“You have to know, Catra— The Horde—Nimbus—”
Catra rolled backwards, heaving Adora off her. “Okay, look,” she said, on her feet now, as Adora skidded across the room and retrieved her sword. “The Riviere Town mission I get—the Aurorae wedding you caught us red-handed—but this? Can’t the Horde have peaceful diplomatic chats with other princesses now?”
Granted, she had been dropping off Entrapta’s mice bombs since arriving at Nimbus. But still.
“We know you’re after the Malachite,” Adora said, heaving herself up with the sword.
“Obviously, just like we know you’re trying to rebuild the Princess Alliance and destroy the Horde, ya-di-dah, what else have you got?”
“Catra,” Adora said, her voice going low now, almost confiding. “Ever since the Brightmoon invasion, I’ve been thinking—”
“Oh,” Catra said, “you’ve been thinking now—”
“Light Hope was manipulating you in the Beacon,” Adora said. The way her eyes rounded then might have been more convincing, Catra thought, if they weren’t also the most alien features in her in She-Ra form. “She was showing you those things—whatever she showed you—so that you would turn against me. It’s—I know it doesn’t make sense, Catra, but to continue with my training I needed to let go of my attachments, and you, she said—”
Catra, who had become quite tired of everything coming out of Adora’s mouth, back-flipped onto a chandelier and pressed the necessary buttons in Entrapta’s remote controller. When the bombs went off in the distance they made no noise. Instead, a low groan reverberated throughout the metal hull of Nimbus’s flagship. Adora looked up, past her, as the ship began to tilt. Catra dug her claws into the ground; Adora, who knew that doing the same with her sword would very well shatter the glass floor, was knocked all the way to the side.
“What did you do?” Adora shouted, clinging onto the railing with one hand.
“Nothing that the Princess Parade can prove.”
“Don’t—”
“How slow are you?” Catra snapped, because Adora, after all this time, still didn’t get it. “You really think that I didn’t know? I made my decisions in that First Ones ruin, and you have to get that through your head.”
“Catra—”
“And frankly,” Catra added, as the floor shifted another degree down, “it’s rich of you to talk about manipulation when you hadn’t figured out Shadoweaver’s mind games until two year ago—and then went off with the first people to offer you ponies and a golden tiara to crown yourself a hero. But that’s what you do, isn’t it? Point a sword wherever people tell you, never ask questions until you need to.”
Catra probably could have said more, but a ship had at that moment appeared by the railing that now swung below them both. Flying thousands of feet in the air, Scorpia waved cheerily. Before Adora could move an inch, Catra let go of her grip on the floor, sliding straight past Adora, through the window, and into Danny’s rocky embrace.
Summary: Due to the remnants of a poison, Merlin must kiss Arthur at dawn every single day to wake his prince from a cursed sleep.
Comment: I really loved this story, I haven’t read one like it. At the start I thought it would be a funny, fluffy story but when the drama and emotion hit it went from great to brilliant. I loved the magic reveal, Arthur’s trust and their devotion to one another. A perfect story.
As with others, I will be moving some of my stuff in other social media sites. (And hopefully stay there. Tumblr’s always been a little too visual fanwork heavy for me.)
Dreamwidth: lyrithim
AO3: lyrithim
Pillowfort: to be created, but most likely under the “lyrithim” handle as before
Summary: Will looked like a wet dog almost, with his head hanging, his neck bent slightly from a teenager’s slouch he never really outgrew. (Takes place after Chapter 4.08: “Haus 2.0.” Dex apologizes.)
Word Count: 1,627
[read on AO3]
because let’s be honest fandom is going to mass-exodus out of this hellsite soon for real
Two days—two days of blissful silence, with no five a.m. alarms and no Nursey-pick-up-your-shit-that-I-can’t-even-find and no Nursey-please-stop-humming-Drake-in-your-sleep (like he could even control that)—it was two days of Derek Nurse having his own room in the Haus, rightfully his, Bitty’s Solomon’s-dib-flip be damned. And Derek had been living the hell out of the place in those two days: stretching his legs across the room, playing his music on full blast, getting his rhythm back in general—maybe writing a couple pieces of angry poetry, you know, as a change of style. Two days of peace.
Then at midnight of the third day Derek heard the hallway floorboards creak and knew the way you just did sometimes: what was coming, and who.
Two soft knocks—at the second, the door opened gently inward, letting in a slice of the hallway light. Will was on the other side. He looked like a wet dog almost, with his head hanging, his neck bent slightly from a teenager’s slouch he had not outgrown in three years. It was more pronounced now, made him look all the more gangly and awkward for it.
“Nurse?” he asked. “You awake?”
“Yes,” Derek said.
“Are you sleeping soon?”
“Why? Did you want something?”
“Just want to talk. It’d be quick.”
Derek sat up, draped a blanket over his bare shoulders because it was cold, and fuck Will for never letting the temperature go up above fifty-eight. Rubbing his eyes, he said, “Turn the light on. And stop standing at the doorway like a serial killer please.”
Will followed his words. He sat by his side of the desk—what used to be his side of the desk—and faced Derek, head up. There was that stubborn set to Will’s jaw, like he was about to start a fight again, and Derek was so not in the mood it wasn’t even funny. He eyed his pillow, ready to flop over and sleep through the whole thing if necessary.
But Will said, “Chowder came to talk to me after morning drills.”
Derek was surprised. “He broke his vow of silence?”
Chowder had declared a vow of silence after Derek and Will had that huge fight soon after Derek’s sports injury / not sports injury a few weeks before. You guys are roommates now, sort this out between yourselves, Chowder had said when they turned to him for arbitration. He had continued that the vow of silence for weeks—until, it seemed, that morning.
“He told me to get my head out my ass,” Will said. “And be an adult about all of this.”
“Then let me guess,” Derek said. “Your way of being an adult about this is to come up here, blame me for you leaving this room, and then have an argument with me all over again.”
To Derek’s surprise, Will snorted out a laugh.
“I guess you two know me too well,” he said. “No. Chowder was ahead of you on this one. He made me stay behind and practice slap shots with him—wouldn’t let me leave until I got a goal in or came up with an answer he liked.”
Derek let out a low whistle. “How long were you guys there?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Will said. “Point is: no. I thought things through. And I think—I think I owe you an apology.”
Derek stared, stunned. “Huh,” was all he could say. “Really.”
It came out sounding almost sarcastic—which Derek didn’t mean—but before he could correct himself, Will was saying, “Like, look. I’ll never consider what you had a sports injury—and if it is, it’s the dumbest sports injury to ever exist, and definitely not something you can use to flirt with—but I thought through the other things. The clothes weren’t that bad—my last roommate was worse—the music I could hear but you do that during roadies and I was fine—and the pie—”
And here Will trailed off, struggling, at his limits about what he could forgive.
But Derek was gracious, and he said, “The pie thing was my fault, really.”
Will sighed. “No, you meant well—probably—but either way I overreacted.”
“You did.”
“I did,” Will said, but more clipped, and Derek decided not to push it.
“But why?” Derek said. “You know, if you really mean what you said but you still went on to blame me for shit like that, it’s not exactly helpful.”
“That was the part Chowder was beating me into submission to figure out—sort of,” he said, and moved hastily on: “There were some other things but— Anyway. I figured out in the end.”
“And?”
“And I think it’s what you said, last semester, about how I would be out by September—”
“Dude,” Derek groaned.
“I know, I know. But I think, I thought, that—I think part of me always was wondering whether or not you were doing stuff to annoy me on purpose—”
“No, dude, Dex— You know I was joking. Come on.”
“I did. I do. I should’ve known better,” Will said. “Trusted you more. Been less suspicious. We argue all the time and shit but we’ve been—you know, friends—for a while too now. So I’m sorry.”
Derek considered him, looked at the dip of his chin, picked at the guilelessness in his eyes. Finally he was satisfied and let himself savor the apology. And savoring, of course, turned almost immediately to preparing to lord over. Will saw this change and gave him a glare. Derek raised his eyebrows innocently.
“I am sorry too,” Derek said after a bit, a little hesitantly, “for invading your fortress of solitude and all that. Swear to god I didn’t go in since.”
“What?” Will asked. “Oh that, yeah, no, that was kind of just the last straw, but by itself—I almost forgot about it, to be honest.”
“Oh,” Derek said, feeling a lightness in his heart. He slipped from the warmth of his blanket and climbed down the bed. “So we’re good now.”
“Yeah.”
“Good—chill. When are you moving back then?” Derek asked. He was preparing to move a few of his Whitman books—which he might or might not have thrown in front of Will’s side of the closet from spite—out of the way.
“Hm?”
He sounded distracted, and Derek straightened. “I asked when you’re moving back here.”
“Oh,” Will said, standing. “No. I mean, to be honest I think it’s probably still best if I stayed there for a bit.”
“Really? There? ‘In the darkness’? Dex—”
“Yeah,” he said, looking away. “I mean, I installed lightbulbs and everything. And it’s a good space. I got some planks from a shop class and made a sturdier bedframe and everything. And it works out for both of us this way. It’s not that I don’t want to live with you right now—”
“—but you don’t want to live with me right now,” Derek said, sighing. “No—don’t sweat it. I get it.” And he did. Even Ransom and Holster, after all, had the space of the attic to split between themselves.
Will’s shoulders slumped. “Thanks. We can come up with a roommate agreement at some point. Also I think taking some time off would be good—we spend way too much time on ice anyway. And between classes too, now that we share that one core.”
“We’re not Ransom and Holster,” Derek agreed.
“But I’ll probably move back—after Thanksgiving? When it gets really fucking cold.”
Derek grinned. “You’ll migrate back up here like a Canada goose.”
“If you want to call it that,” Will said, smiling.
When Will moved to leave, Derek remembered something. “Wait, hold up,” he said, “since when did I flirt with anyone with my sports—my injury?”
Will turned red, as red as the stripes on his flannel, as red Derek had ever seen him. “I—I mean, there was that once with Chowder, right?”
“With—” Derek almost burst out laughing. “Are you talking about when he signed my cast? Will, you can’t be serious.”
“I just—I just throw out words sometimes, okay? I didn’t mean flirting as in— Just drop it.”
“God, I can’t. You thought I was flirting—with my sports injury—with our best friend Chowder—”
“Drop it,” Will called from the hallway.
“I’ll see you at team breakfast tomorrow!” Derek said. “At least, if you don’t mind me flirting with basically-Caitlyn’s-fiancé Christopher Franklin Chow—”
Will popped a middle finger into the room, then closed the door.
Derek was still chortling to himself when he climbed back up to his bunk. Of course, he thought, his head hitting the pillow, only someone as emotionally repressed as Will could consider chatting about an injury with your best friend flirting—
Sleep was coming, quickly and lightly. But then in the liminal space between wakefulness and slumber, a memory came: he was in the sterile bed of the ice rink clinic after the last game—high as a reindeer on painkillers, probably. Will was there, looking down—but he already knew this, Will would complain about babysitting a high Derek for days afterwards. Will had then, in his memory, such a look of concern on his face—it was there, behind the look of incredulous annoyance—and Derek did just score a goal for Samwell, and perhaps he was high on that too— Then he remembered that Will never gave him a proper celly before he went and hurt himself, heroically, in the sports arena, and couldn’t Will, Derek was asking now, at least give him a kiss—?
The human consciousness could come up with the weirdest shit, Derek thought, squirming to flip himself to the other side, at which point he promptly fell asleep.
u don’t have to be a poet to write from the POV of derek nurse. he is an on fire garbage can who says lol out loud and can’t go five minutes without knocking himself or an expensive object down the stairs. he probably has written a paper about the importance of dick jokes in shakespeare and got points taken off for terrible grammar bc he’s so used to never capitalizing things. he definitely has fallen into the lake at least three (3) times and spent the rest of the day complaining about his hair, and then telling the smh to chill when they chirped him about it. nursey is a mess and u should definitely write him like one
Nursey shrugs and shoves his hands deeper into his pockets.
“Bro, the reason you’re not talking right now is because you don’t want me to hear your teeth chatter. Take the jacket.” Dex is unbuttoning his shirt as he speaks.
Nursey keeps his teeth from clacking by force of will. “Do you–of course you have another flannel on under that.”
“What, layering three hoodies doesn’t count as a winter coat? News to me,” Dex says. He shrugs off the outermost flannel. It’s grey and yellow (ugly) and fleece-lined (warm) and only Nursey’s pride makes him push Dex’s hand away.
“I’m fine,” he says.
Dex stops. “Take the shirt.”
“No,” Nursey says.
Dex folds his arms. Nursey remembers that Dex comes from a family with siblings and cousins. So does Ransom. So does Holster. He’s never seen an only child (he’s thinking mainly of Bitty…but also of himself) out-stubborn a sibling.
“Are you going to wait here until I take the shirt?”
“Yep,” Dex says.
Nursey considers his options. They’re a twenty minute walk from the house. It’s just close enough that getting a Lyft feels silly, plus it’ll probably take ten minutes for the car to arrive. He’s got goosebumps everywhere and he can feel his balls trying to retract. There’s pride, and then there’s stupidity.
“Okay,” he says. Then, gracelessly, “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” Dex waits while Nursey pulls the shirt on and buttons it. And oh, this was a terrible idea. Because the shirt smells like Dex’s laundry detergent and Dex’s deodorant and…Dex. Nursey wants to pull his head in like a turtle. He wants to bury his face in the sleeve. He wonders when ‘Dex’ became a distinct smell, like ‘Faber’ or ‘Bitty’s pie’ or ‘home.’ Recently, he thinks. But it feels like a much longer time.
They walk on in silence.
“Better?” Dex asks.
“Yes.”
“It looks good,” Dex says.
“I don’t look like a ironic hipster wannabe?”
Dex chuffs a laugh. “No, you definitely do. But you look good.”
Nursey bumps his shoulder into Dex’s. Dex bumps him back. He feels warm all over. It’s just the shirt, he thinks to himself, but he knows that isn’t true.
one of my favorite tropes (that I need more of in fic) is “we were friends/dating in high school and that blew up but it’s been years and now we’re reconnecting again oh no we’re in love” because it’s the perfect mix of familiarity with a person, fun awkwardness with a past conflict, and newness as people rediscover who their old friend/ex has turned into
