Reality Drowns (3110 words) by angrytrout
Stranded at sea, Japeth wishes the siren would simply kill him, not be so cruel, not continue to pretend to be his missing love.
Aric wishes Japeth would believe him.
It's MerMay so I hammered out the prologue for the siren!Aric fic I've been tossing around. Enjoy!
oh great angrytrout, will we ever get the giant oneshot aric character study🙏
fun fact i was ACTIVELY working on it as i got this ask lmao
it's been sitting untouched for months, but i've finally got the motivation to get back to it after having such a good time with the requests. i'm aiming to hit 25k words by the end of tomorrow!
a teaser for y'all finally since you've been waiting for so long. here's the beginning:
Love was for Evers.
Aric did not love his mother, and she did not love him. She had made him many false promises– that she would return, that someday he would see the world, that she cared about him, but she spared him that one lie, that false hope. She could not love him, she said, because love was for the weak. It was for moony-eyed princesses and bumbling princes, too blinded by romance to defend against the clever witches and mighty ogres who won in every tale she told him. He could not love her, nor anyone, because it was not in his nature. He was bound to be the greatest villain in his class; all the Everboys would tremble before him and the Evergirls would faint at a glance. His nature was Evil, the darkest kind. His soul was rotten, his heart black. He would strike fear into all who dared to cross him, would never show a weakness, would never have any to speak of, never let someone become one for him, and oh, how proud she was.
When he waited in the cave for a month, trapping lizards for food and etching snakes into the stone with his fingerglow, it was not because he loved her. It was not weakness that kept him in the dark, not daring to venture out in search of her, spending his days curled up with his back against the furthest walls. It was not weakness, because he did not love her, and it was not weakness, because he did not cry, he couldn’t, because that was not who he was. Not what he was. He could not love his mother, but he almost did. He almost let himself die, starving on a cave floor, waiting on his mother to come rescue him like a damsel in distress. How he hated her for leaving him now, how he hated her for not leaving him years ago, for making him think she would stay at all. He could not love her, he did not miss her, he was not weak. He was not looking for her when he stumbled out of the cave, blinded by the sunlight and the rush of wind on his face, he was hunting her. After two, maybe three, years in the Woods, alone, living like a wild beast, he had convinced himself.
Love was for the Mahut family, prissy and pristine, too pure of heart to resist fostering the poor orphan boy they found in the Woods. Father with a bright, crisp suit, brown hair slicked back, off to work for the King every day, home in the evening for a hearty dinner and for church on Sundays. Mother with a flour-covered apron, sweeping the kitchen floor, teaching him how to do his sums and help around the house and be a proper little gentleman. Son, soldier for the King of Foxwood, letting Aric have a turn with his bow when he came home for the holidays, telling him he was a good shot when he shot an apple clean off a tree. Daughter, dressed like a porcelain doll, hair in ringlets and fluffy white cat in her lap, storybook in her hands. The parents loved their children, the children loved their parents, they all loved the world and their neighbors and their little cat and their perfect home and perfect lives.
They made him sick, the way the mother would run to comfort her daughter over a scraped knee, the way they all held hands around the dinner table, the way the father would ruffle his hair and the cat would lie across his feet and the daughter would smile and ask him if he wanted to play. They repulsed him, he hated them, he didn’t dream about son or brother slipping from their lips. It was not in his nature to love, but it was in his nature to hate. He could hold a carving knife to their daughter’s throat, make her cry when she found the cat with its neck broken in the vegetable garden, watch as violet flames devoured their home. The rush that came from someone else’s tears, from someone begging him to stop, from flesh under his fists and blood under his nails, was better than the whisper of hope that came from the word family. He couldn’t love them, wouldn’t let himself try, wouldn’t let them see him bleed or cry or fall. They would not get the chance to abandon him, not like his mother did. They would not love him, they would fear him, he would watch them bleed and sob and beg like she would when he found her.
i currently have over 10k of arbed jaric sitting in a wip so if that's what you're looking for you will get it in time lol
Picture Day / 755 words
Keian? Perhaps?
Usually, the portrait artist didn’t come to create the pictures until the spring, but this year she came in September. This year, it was hoped that not all of the students would make it until graduation, that some would be sent off come November to bring honor to Foxwood through admittance to the School. Rhian would be among them, inevitably.
Kei was afraid of this, of the change of being alone at Arbed, alone through the Ever Guard Trials, alone until Rhian was crowned following his own graduation and sent for him. Two more months of them all– for strangely enough, he thought he might miss Japeth and Aric too, miss having something worth protecting someone from– together, then he would be apart from them for four years, maybe three if Rhian’s Quest allowed.
For now, he could still imagine it was the beginning of a new year like any other. Rhian’s birthday in a few weeks, no tears shed at the realization it would be the last one the two of them would be together to celebrate, for it would not be. Halloween, Aric and Japeth’s same terrorization of the students in the main school, no preoccupation with School preparation granting the reprieve he had longed for before. Winter, four trails of footprints in the snow, up late by the living room fire studying for their Autumn term exams. Spring, hyacinths in the garden, the other boys off to university, or work, or back home, but not them, they would stay here forever.
The portrait artist stood before them, fingerglow at the ready, canvas propped before her. She squinted out at the boys of Arbed House and their Dean, framed them between her fingers, pointed at them. “You, you, switch. Twins together in the back.” He relented, though in the front row, it discomforted him to no longer be able to see his classmates, Aric the only one next to him, his face turned away as he listened to something Japeth had leaned down from behind him to whisper.
Rhian nudged him, and Kei glanced back. “Next time we get our portrait done together, you’ll be captain of my guard.” And that was so far away, a longer time to wait than how long they had even known each other.
Japeth gave Aric a look and they both laughed, Rhian looking momentarily perturbed but his smile and his confidence unshaken, never shaken. Rhian knew he had his future. He could always be sure of that. Aric and Japeth knew they had each other. Kei resented them that, that they had known from as soon as they became friends that the paths of their lives would never diverge. As Nevers, their lives could never end well, but they would share them, and he did not have that guarantee. Two parallel friendships, one eternal, one about to be forced to splinter.
Rhian was beaming down at him; a smirk was still on Aric’s lips as he turned back to the artist; Japeth grinned, leaned forward over his shoulder. For just a while longer, he could be happy with the rest of them. He should be happy for them, for Rhian at least, his best friend soon to get all he had ever wanted.
Which was not him.
He could not tell Rhian he wanted him to stay. He was too Good to be denied his destiny, and he was too Good to leave Kei behind if he knew how the prospect of their separation ate at him, snuck its way into every moment. The last time leaving Arbed for the summer, knowing Rhian would await him when he returned. The last first day back. Maybe that had been the last time they’d sit in the shade of that oak tree, for its leaves had already begun to fall. Maybe that had been the last time they’d eaten Rajashah mangoes together, for they’d gone out of season. Maybe that had been the last time they’d be able to speak so openly to each other, for by the time they reunited they’d have grown apart, grown older, grown uncomfortable with what had once been easy intimacy.
When the time came he would pledge his life to Rhian, and in his mind he already had. He would not stop Rhian from becoming the king he was meant to be, would not hold him back. He would be happy for him.
So he turned around, looked at the artist as she prepared to eternalize this moment, and pretended he was.
Absolution (7120 words) by angrytrout
Kei cannot bear Rhian's death, cannot bear the thought that he will never touch him again.
The temptation to pretend, to forget, is stronger than his guilt.
had a dream where a friend i haven't seen in 4-5 years joined the fandom and we got talking again. and i told her heh i wrote this really weird alien smut you'll probably come across it at some point and she went oh trust me i know about the alien fic.
