I've been wanting to write a scene/moment like this about Jason for a while and this prompt was the perfect opportunity lol.
Jason stared at the strings of colorful lights arranged above his bed, feeling like one giant, man-shaped bruise under his uniform. Sweat-damp hair clung to his face. He smelled. Every inch of him ached, a mix of bruises, fatigue, and one-too-many sleepless nights following lead after lead on a case he’d been working. Even the stitches pulling at his shoulder weren’t enough motivation to move him from the boneless sprawl he’d fallen into on his bed.
And still it wasn’t enough for sleep to claim him.
The lights were a nice distraction, though. They always seemed to be on nights like this one — stuck somewhere between too tired and too wired with the impressions of his nightmares stamped on the backs of his eyelids. The twinkling sets of soft, multicolored lights did nothing to chase away neither the darkness in his room, nor the awful dreams he’d find in the brief hours of stolen sleep he managed every other night, but they were nice to look at regardless.
Not that he’d admit he thought so. He’d die before he so much as uttered a word about them to anyone, even the fact that he’d hung them up in the first place. Doubly so because, while the first string of them — bright, Nightwing-blue that blinked on and off one after another in a simple pattern — had been a jokingly-given gift from the insufferable golden child himself.
The rest?
He huffed, gaze flicking to one of the lumpy pillows next to him and ignored the sudden flush of mortified heat on his face. Some things were better left un-thought. A secret to take to his grave, its contents kept even from himself. If anyone asked after the strings of red, yellow, green, or purple hung up there too, they’d get a nice, neat, tooth-shattering fist to the face. Even the bastard bats themselves.
Especially the bats.
Each of them needed a good kick in the ass anyway, and it’d keep them on their toes. Not that he cared. At all. Ever.
“Fuck, shut up” he groaned into his dark, empty room, fingers twitching with the urge to grab the pillow and smother himself with it.
He settled for staring at the lights again instead, deliberately not thinking about anything other than punching some deserving person’s face in until he finally, blessedly, fell into another night of restless sleep. If his dreams featured an array of annoyingly color-coded characters invading otherwise perfectly good nightmares, there was no one to know. Not even himself.
A/N: a tale featuring the protags of my contemporary WIP! this is just protag no. 2 pining for the other, expect proses that features longing with a sprinkle of angst.^^
Word Count: 750
TW: romance, that’s it
***
In the haze of a secluded part of a park, the sky sparkles with stars. It falls on golden lights lined up on a canopy of trees. A gentle breeze sweeps through leaves, cascading on a clear lake.
When two of them reach to a garden, his eyes dart to flowers in bloom.
He needs a moment to recover because he's surrounded in enchantment of nature. With the arrival of spring, he's curious to what it'll bring for him.
"You didn't go to this spot before?" Cassie asks, dropping her pace.
Nodding, he twists with a thread of his sweater.
"I. . . I didn't see anything like this," he admits, glancing at a rosewood tree. "I didn't notice this specific spot."
"Well, I'm glad I brought you then," she replies, putting strands of her hair back. "This is a favorite place for me to visit. I'm sorry I waited too long for this."
She stands beneath the trees, skimming her fingers on a petal of lavender bellflowers.
It's a free night, where both of them don't have work to do. She suggested to go to a place she considers special. And she's right. The garden-like portion of the park's covered in bright intensity from lights and gifted with spring's gift. Maybe he just discovered this recently, however, he basks in it's pure tranquility.
Krispin fiddles with his fingers.
"Don't be. You're busy with ballet and fashion design, I can't expect you to find a right time."
"Thanks for understanding. Either way, I appreciate I get to find that."
She laughs, her voice filled with bliss. He chuckles when she regards him with interest. He remains in place, uncertainty clouding his thoughts.
Each time she looks at him like that, his mind reels from it. It's difficult to get rid of it. He gets caught up on a swirl of emotions of his feelings for her.
Cassie smiles, her crystal blue eyes twinkling in fairy lights. There isn't any paint that can truly resemble the exact shade. His breath hitches in his throat and his heart stutters in his chest. Like this, she belongs in a fairytale dream.
Krispin can't tear his gaze off her even if he's desperate to. Easily lost in what he finds in her beauty.
He might have grown out of being nervous around her. However, when she's surrounded by beauty. . . he can't help it. It affects him with emotions flooding through his soul. He's a dreamer, who holds onto a dream beyond his reach. Even with a small distance between them, he can't reach for her because he's resigned to a truth.
If anything's certain: he accepted that his feelings won't be reciprocated. No amount of his heartache can change it. It's not important, though. Their friendship and to protect her from sorrow is more important to him than anything else. He's learned it's gotten easier to accept it.
After drawing out a deep breath, he looks at where she is. She's skimming a finger on a tree's leaf.
He strides a little to her. "Are you doing okay there?"
"Yes, I'm feeling more than okay," she answers, resting her affectionate gaze on him. She steps towards him. "I didn't think I'd be spending time with you because of too much training or classes. I don't think I can find words to express. . . how I'm glad you're with me."
Even with bashfulness, he smiles at her before ducking his head. His face grows warm at blood rushing towards his cheeks. She's some inches far from him, close enough for their fingers to brush into proximity.
If he can, he'd ask her if he can hold her hand. To feel the soft warmth of her, entwining with his. If she'll let him. . . he can't do it if she won't accept. If it causes her to be fraught, he can't do that to her.
Like those colorful flowers in bloom, he appreciates any chance to be in her presence. To accept what he's given.
"Me too," he whispers.
When a silence surrounds them, they gaze at each other. He tears himself from it to not linger too much. Maybe if things are different. . . he'd get closer instead of keeping distance.
"Is it okay if we can go to other spots in the park, Krisi?" she asks with a soft smile.
"It's okay," he answers, his heartbeat steady. "If it's what you'd like, I'm interested too."
Glancing at the garden, he follows her. He sighs with his eyes falling close.
For @flashfictionfridayofficial prompt Fairy lights. A bit of Fluffy Fraser Feels
AO3
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
Finally! After many miscarriages, fertility testing, timing cycles, temperature taking, scheduled love making, hormone shots and, multiple other indignities, they decide to adopt. “It is about raising a child. Not just that it is our biological child.” Jamie told her.
So they fill out a million forms, are interviewed, their friends and family interviewed, classes attended and, approved. Then they wait. And wait. But finally, the call.
“A lass, four years old, her name is Lucie.” They laugh, cry, squeal and run around like crazy. Their daughter is on the way home. They get more information when the adoption case worker come by. “Her dad was Scottish, her mam, French, thus the name. She is an orphan. Her parents killed in a auto accident. We have had her for a year while searching for relatives here and in France. She was just released for adoption.” She hands then pictures. A real beauty with dark blonde hair and huge blue eyes. Her hair is wavy like her new mam’s is.
“Oh, she is lovely.”
“Has a lovely personality too. Well named. Lucie means light in French” She replies to Jamie.
“Amazing. Claire means the same in the Gaelic.” He whispers as he continues to study their new daughter.
“Truly? Seems you were fated to be her parents.” They have a room set aside for their child. Over the next week, it is made into a room for Lucie. A twin bed is put in with pink sheets and a princess bed cover. A white dresser is filled with socks, undershirts, knickers. The closet is full of t-shirts, jeans, dresses. Another drawer holds nightgowns and tiny and sweet pajamas. There is toys, books, stuffies. All seems ready.
Claire stands and looks at it the day before she is to arrive. “We need fairy lights.”
“Fairy lights?” She looks at him and smiles. She can’t expect her big braw husband to know of fairy lights.
“They are little strings of lights we can hang above her bed. They will make an excellent night light for our little light.”
“Aye let’s go find some.” They do. Pink ones. Jamie hangs the curtain of them above their daughters bed. “Aye, you were right. Now it is ready.”
Lucie Faith arrives clinging to the hand of the worker. They both bend down to her level. “Hi Lucie.” Claire softly says.
“Hi. Mrs. Graham says you are my new mam and papa.”
“We are.” Jamie replies. “Would you like to see your room?” She nods and allows them to take her hands. She squeals when she sees it.
“So pretty. Oh, the lights.” She touches them with reverence.
“Your mam’s idea. Fairy lights for you, our light.”
“I love them.” She shyly hugs them.
Later, Claire and Jamie read her a story under those lights. As she drifts off, they look at each other. Their child is home. Finally.
(Written for @flashfictionfridayofficial‘s prompt FFF102: Fairy Lights. Set in the Avis Coda, ft. Heron and k3s, not that you need to be familiar to understand the piece. Enjoy!)
“By the way, lady,” the illusionist looked up at her, little bright colours swirling around her eyes. “Nice name. Where’d you get it?”
If the illusionist were fae, she would laugh at their glamours. The fire is too brightly coloured to resemble true fire, the edges too sharp where they should be blended out properly. The blue swirl on the temple is too matte to properly pretend at true pattern lines, and it’s laughably simplistic. There aren’t even any patterns within the green, just a round shape along their cheek.
Heron places her hands in her pockets, lounges against the edge of the shadow as if it were a wall.
Her smile is just this side of human.
“Find out if you dare.”
The illusionist shrugs, turning back to the keyboard beneath his hands.
“No fuss.” He turns to look at Heron. “I did meet Doc but the once.”
“Oh?”
They laugh. “Doc scolded me for trying to create real fire to supplement my illusions. Said someone could get hurt.”
“And did someone?” Behind her sunglasses, her eyes glint a little. Another fae would have called it a smile.
Atticus hated the line as soon as he wrote it. What cliche, generic horror bullshit was this? The only scary thing about this story was him.
Him and his own failure, eating him alive. It turned out lack of success did not mean the second book in the contract ceased to exist, as he would have guessed. But that’s what he got for ghostwriting books that should have been laid to rest with their author.
Did that make him some sort of zombie?
Maybe his current project would be better with zombies, he mused, idling wandering towards social media. An ad for fairy lights popped up when he opened the app, or at least that’s what he thought it was for. It was an artsy photo of an artsy bedroom, and had it not been flagged as advertising content, he may not have realized it was an ad at all.
Three posts down was the exact same photo. Atticus scrolled past it, vaguely annoyed, but that could have been because of Serena’s passive aggressive not-rant above it, the yet-another-happy engagement below it, or the general state of his existence.
The doorbell did little to help matters.
Atticus muttered a string of curses under his breath and dragged himself past the unperturbed cat to the front door.
“What?”
“That’s no way to treat a friend,” Ashley said, breezing in past him with a bottle of vodka and a box of donuts.
“Why are you here?”
Ashley waved the bottle at him. “I’m bored, and you said you didn’t have anything going on.”
“I said I was stuck.”
She shrugged, already rummaging for clean glasses. “Same thing.”
“It is not.”
Atticus rubbed his eyes and kicked an empty cardboard box out of the way. He plucked a couple of glasses off the drying rack, and shoved them at Ashley before going to the freezer for ice, kicking the box back in the other direction.
Ashley was pouring the vodka tonics far too strong again, and while Atticus stared at the box, trying to remember what he’d ordered recently.
“Finally got the damn lights,” Ashley commented, flopping onto the couch and sloshing her drink.
“What? No. What are you talking about?”
“The fairy lights. The ones you’ve been eyeing and pretending to complain about for weeks,” she said.
Atticus raised his eyebrows. “Do I strike you as a fairy lights kind of guy?” He swept a hand across the apartment. Function, not form, was his decorating style. If you could call it that.
Ashley sipped her drink and nodded towards his bedroom. “Well, what’s that then?”
His bedroom, which was softly lit by a neat strand of white fairy lights. Atticus felt the cool glass in his hand, his own heartbeat, and a slice of fear through his chest. The cat clearly didn’t share his unease, having abandoned the couch when Ashley sat down in favor of Atticus’s desk chair.
He hadn’t put those up, had he?
He opened his phone, frantically looking for one of the ads that had been accosting him earlier. Nothing. A mishmash of endless junk that he’d never want in the first place, but no twinkling strands of lights.
Ashley cleared her throat from the couch, waving the remote at him. “Are you coming or what?”
He slid into the seat next to her, feeling like he was looking at his life through a sort of fog.
It made no goddamn sense.
The next morning, thoroughly convinced he had gone and lost his damn mind, he took down the offending lights.
And he did the same thing the next morning.
And the next.
Ashley was throughly enjoying the whole thing and thought “the new book plot is inspired.”
The first day, he’d pulled the lights down, slammed them back in the box, and started through the steps of sending in a return. He’d typed in the order number on the list company website, carefully following the instructions on the packing slip, only for the computer to tell him: item is not returnable.
He’d slung the box into the hallway for the mail pickup anyway.
The next morning, his room was once again graced with the presence of the lights’ soft glow.
By the fourth day, he pulled himself out of bed, brewed a cup of coffee, and glowered at the lights while burning his tongue. His writing had not miraculously improved either, and he was rather inclined to blame the fucking lights and whatever psychosis they were causing. He slammed the mug down on his desk, sending coffee splashing onto his notes, and yanked at the length of lights handing down from the wall towards the outlet. Atticus yelped, snatching his hand back as pain burst through his palm.
He stared at the lights, blood smeared onto one of the glowing bulbs below a naked socket, and then looked at his palm, tiny shards of glass sticking out of his skin from the shattered bulb. Above the twisted filaments of the shattered bulb, the rest of the strand was dark and surprisingly ominous for a string of fairy lights.
A silent streak of rage pulsed through his body, and he came back with both hands and then a fucking potholder, but the only thing he got for his troubles was a pounding headache.
And bleeding hands.
The cat rubbed around his ankles, purring. The lights were not coming down.
Atticus opened his phone slowly, uncertain who one was supposed to call in this sort of situation. Police? Priest? The shipping company?
He found himself opening the social media app out of habit and stared at an ad for a crocheted plant hanger. It repeated itself as the next post, the same artsy photo of a potted plant above a tidy living room.
And again.
And again.
And again.
Every post in his feed was the same white crocheted plant hanger. He stared, unwilling to face the lights that felt like they were watching him now.
Another combination fill for today’s @flashfictionfridayofficial prompt: #FFF 102 Fairy Lights and my @tonystarkbingo May Flash Bingo - Peter Quill square.
MCU/Marvel Fandom -- General Rating -- Tony Stark & Peter Quill - 422 words
NOTE: This may become part of a future chapter of my long-languishing StarkLord WIP Carry On, Wayward Sons, but can stand on its own, more or less.
Tony was sitting out on the party deck of the Tower with Peter, Rocket and Groot. It was a clear night, and the few stars not washed out by the city lights were shining brightly above.
“I don’t suppose there’s ever lightning bugs around here,” Peter commented wistfully.
“There might be fireflies in Central Park,” Tony mused, “but I don’t know if it’s worth the trip.”
“Quill, you never said Earth had bugs that could spark lightning, or flies that could shoot fire.” Rocket’s eyes lit up at the thought.
“Sorry, my fuzzy friend,” Tony replied, “the names are only metaphorical and describe the same basic insect. Their butts light up when they’re looking for a mate. It’s called bioluminescence and it’s pretty cool.”
Rocket snorted. “You wanna see cool? Hey Groot - do the sparkly lights thing.” He gestured encouragingly, waving his paws around as if he were directing an orchestra.
“I am Groot?” the entling replied with what seemed to be a puzzled look.
“You know, like you did when we were...oh.” Rocket swallowed hard, dropping his paws into his lap.
Peter patted his shoulder comfortingly. “It’s easy to forget that he’s not the same guy we used to know, isn’t it?” They sat in silence together for a moment, leaving Tony to wonder what past misadventure they referred to.
“FRIDAY?” he asked in an effort to change the mood, “could you bring up some videos of fireflies?” A moment later, a projection of a meadow , dotted with blinking lights appeared. Groot’s eyes went wide as he scrambled to his feet, reaching out towards the projection.
“It’s just a movie, pal. Not real.” Rocket explained dispiritedly.
Groot frowned, then cocked his head as he stretched out his arms. “I am Groot.” Maybe Tony was starting to get the hang of communicating with the tree-being, as he recognized the curiosity and determination in that single sentence, as if he were saying ‘I think I can do this’.
To Tony’s surprise, Groot started to sprout small, leafy twigs from his arms and shoulders. On the tips of those twigs, small, glowing flower petals slowly unfurled.
“I am Groot.” Tony chuckled at the ‘yeah, yeah’ tone of the entling’s reply. The petals floated up into the air, surrounding them with their gentle light.
“Thank you, Groot.” Peter’s face shone with happiness and wonder, and Tony’s heart skipped a beat. He hoped maybe someday he could make Peter look like that, too.
