Strong-jawed, slumped shoulders. He looks like he’s constantly just come in from the rain on a lightning-struck night, with his dark trenchcoat, mended many times at the hems, and the slightest tremor of cold in his fingers. His office smells of cherry tobacco, resinous and inviting and dark and sweet, ash scattered uncaringly on the floor around his desk. He catalogues their practicals with sharp eyes, like a snake waiting to strike. He never speaks more than is necessary.
And he looks tired.
Perhaps the only animated thing about him is the shock of black hair that spills over his forehead in unruly curls, too wild for a comb or even a gentle touch. Not that she is thinking about touches, gentle or otherwise.
He is, quite possibly, the youngest Defense professor they’ve ever had.
Can you share a Set My Soul on Fire sneak peek please? :)
Sneak Peek - Set My Soul on Fire
Beautiful artwork by the lovely @itsfabianadocarmo
A/N: I’m sorry it took me so long to answer your ask but I didn’t want to give a sneak peek when I was nowhere close to finishing the chapter. At least now I’m about a third of the way there.
Chapter Ten
Even at the tender age of five, Killian remembers the day the eye doctor said he needed reading glasses. Brennan thought his son was just taking a little longer than his classmates to develop reading skills; he also feared the possibility Killian had dyslexia. But after an eye exam, he discovered his son’s illiteracy stemmed from not being able to see the words clearly. Because after Killian began wearing reading glasses, it took him no time at all to read as well and as quickly as his classmates. In fact, he surpassed his grade level. The glasses improved his farsighted vision, made the words in front of him no longer a blur. And soon, he was buried in books. Buried so deep, he didn’t really see anything else.
His main focus never really changed though. Even during his early teen years when he took his head out of his books and no longer cared to be the scrawny, four-eyed nerd all the jocks picked on, even when he switched to contacts, worked out constantly and became toned and more muscular. Though he’s not a huge guy, he has strength and power and can beat any guy in high school at arm wrestling, and yes even his male teachers who have challenged him. Even his dad. In fact, Liam is the only person he knows who can successfully beat him at arm wrestling, but he’s a football player and an incredible athlete, has been most of his life, so it’s not really fair.
Killian’s body may have changed over the years, but he has always wanted to be a pilot like his grandfather was, whether he needed to wear corrective lenses to have twenty, twenty vision or not. His image may have changed but his focus never did.
Until he met Emma.
She crashed into his life like a Vesta—the brightest asteroid in the sky—and lit up his entire world. Her light made him blind to everything else, and all he saw was Emma and her radiant beauty. His only focus was her. And when she became pregnant with his child, his only focus was them.
“So, what, you’re just going to let the girl you love slip through your fingers? You’re going to let your own son or daughter go, never see them grow up?”
Killian’s heart wrenches painfully in his chest. His heart hurts so fucking much, he can barely breathe. It felt like Emma smothered him with a pillow when she told him she didn’t want him anymore.
He had everything. He had an incredible girlfriend who loved him and cared about him. Or so he thought. He had an unborn child; he had an amazing future ahead of him, one full of love and hope and possibilities. She and their little bean were his family, but in a blink of an eye, everything had slipped through his fingers. And he just walked away? What the fuck he was he thinking? He told himself he was doing the honorable thing by walking away. How does the saying go—if you love someone, set them free; if they come back, it was meant to be?
It’s fucking bullshit.
If you love someone, you fight for them. You go to the ends of the world and back for them. You don’t walk away. That is a coward’s deed. But when Emma told him she didn’t want to be with him anymore, those words had sucked the life out of him. Even if she only told him that so he would leave, how could she purposely hurt him like that? How could she say something so cruel and still love him? It’s unfathomable.
“Papa. I made a promise to her, that I would leave if she wanted me to… and I… as much as I…” his voice cracks, and he can’t seem to get the rest of the words out. As much as he loves Emma and their unborn child, as much as he wants a future with them, he only wants what’s best for them. Even after she’d pushed him away and said the things she did, he still loves her and cares for her so much, his entire body physically aches. “She wants to do what’s best for me and the baby.”
A mixture of anger and disappointment clouds his father’s features as he places his hands on Killian’s shoulders. “And what is it you think is best for you and that baby, Killian? You think growing up without a father is best? You think giving up the woman you love is best?”
“I will bring you happy flowers from the mountains, bluebells,
dark hazels, and rustic baskets of kisses.
I want to do with you
what spring does to the cherry trees”
-Every Day You Play by Pablo Neruda
It’s meant as a declaration. A subtle one, nothing flashy or gauche.
The locket is old, ancient really, a remnant of old earth before humanity began streaking away through space chasing dreams made of starlight.
Peter found it perched on a stand beside his target in a museum on Mercury, catering to artifacts and antiquities from all over the galaxy.
A small gleaming thing the deep buttery yellow of proper old-earth gold with a matching chain; it would have been a crime to leave it in that cold sterile building. Not when Peter could already picture it warmed by Juno’s skin, shining softly in dim office lighting while the detective puzzled over yet another case.
He cleans and inspects it back in his hotel room on Typhon, after fencing the last of his ill-gotten gains to a particularly slimy looking fellow from the Andromeda galaxy with a penchant for 22nd century old-earth shoes.
Oval and about the size of the pad of his thumb it is remarkably unadorned. Well crafted to be sure and a particularly rare specimen for its purity of gold, but not flashy in any way. He hides it away in an inner pocket wrapped in a handkerchief, a plan already half-formed in his mind.
It’s not until weeks later when he is back on Mars, emptying his pockets into the various drawers of his workshop desk that the idea finally comes to fruition.
Juno is off chasing down a mobster with an unfortunate habit of absconding with other people’s children, so Peter has the whole apartment to himself.
He sets up a jewellers station at his desk and begins painstakingly picking out words into the soft gold of the locket. A half forgotten verse from one of the books he took from the museum, the words clinging to his mind like burrs.
“I want to do with you
what spring does to the cherry trees”
It’s meant as a declaration.
Of his love, of his devotion, and his commitment to them (to Juno).
“I want to do with you -” He says the words out loud as he carves them deep into the gold; repeats them, rolls them over his tongue and whispers them like a prayer over his work.
“I want to do with you -” ‘what the spring does to the cherry trees’
His mind completes the sentence even before the second word is out and he allows himself to meditate on the meaning of it.
I want to help you bloom into happiness
I want to build a life with you, set roots deep into this inhospitable planet and make place for us here.
Let us turn the pain and desolation that colours our pasts into something beautiful and real. However fleeting it may be.
I want to do this with you
He lays his gift, his offering, on Juno’s pillow the next morning.
He is a daring man, but he is not quite brave enough to face giving it to Juno personally. Not when there is a chance, however small, that his sentiment may not be returned.
He gets a message in the early afternoon hours letting him know that Juno has finally wrapped up his case and is heading home to shower and sleep. Peter deliberately ordered another coffee and forces himself back to the blueprints on his screen.
Three hours later there has been no further contact from Juno and Peter’s heart is about to pound out of his chest.
He takes the most direct route home, chasing the dying rays of sunlight.
Juno is already in bed, snoring as the last rosy fingers of sunset creep across his chest through the open window. Illuminating the locket resting in the natural cup of his throat.
Peter’s heart begins to slow, and a smile curls at the edges of his eyes and mouth. He begins to undress and is pulling the covers back from his side of the bed when he stops.
There is a note on his pillow, Juno’s typical scrawl softened into something deliberate with care
“At night I dream that you and I are two plants
and that you know the earth and the rain like my mouth,
that grew together, roots entwined,
since we are made of earth and rain.”
- Come to bed you idiot.
The morning would come, but tonight there would be dreams of growing things under a burnished golden sky.
take the bit between your teeth;
viii. notes on an embryo
The day after the shameful events in Professor Snape’s private potion store, Hermione barricades herself in her favourite study room in the library with three heavy reference books, a smuggled school owl, and a weeks’ worth of owl treats. She does not explain any further.
Harry and Ron do not hear from her, and it is a mark of how accomplished she is at Silencing Charms that they think the room is empty at first when they skulk around the area to look for her.
After doing much of nothing, Ron gives up and goes to have dinner, whilst Harry elects to stay behind. He has with him a First Edition hardcover of Frederica, commandeered from his mum’s secret shelf (hidden so as to not inspire mockery from his father), and slips pages of it through the thin crack beneath the door, thinking the tales of the irrepressible Felix – complete with personal annotations from Georgette Heyer herself – would eventually coax Hermione out. It is a mark of how optimistic Harry James Potter is that he keeps trying, even as Hermione does nothing to reciprocate.
this was written a long time ago and did not survive the mass exodus of my fic (into my dustbin) because i had a menty b and hated my writing ✌️🤪🤘
upon request from @morningstargirl666 i am reposting this. hope you all enjoy x
--
a rush of blood to the head;
They are, of course, in the other room.
Footsteps come in thundering booms and you might think the thump of a body will follow, a scream, a well-pronounced curse, but Caroline emerges with her bags packed and hat firmly veiled over her curls, and she announces, quite calmly, that she is leaving.
“Where is the screaming?” Rebekah wonders in, quietly appalled, “The orchestra, the pallid strings? The cracked lightning of Nik’s head against a broken mirror? Where are the broken mirrors?”
“Sister dear,” Klaus coos from his spot in the corner of the room, “do shut up.”
“Can you all just be reasonable!” Rebekah stands in the middle of the room, waves her spatula around—she’d been in the middle of making Christmas dessert, for God’s sake—and points a berry-stained finger at Caroline. “You. Throw something.”
All Caroline does is check her lipstick in the still-whole mirror, and all Klaus does is draw, and it’s quite different than the cacophony she usually bears witness to, the hoarse throats and the thirsty crying and the bloodshed, all the blood. Caroline gives herself an appraising nod, Klaus flips a page, and Rebekah, well. Rebekah wants to yell.
“Someone needs to be yelling!” Rebekah yells.
Caroline flicks Klaus a glance. He’s looking back at her rather witheringly. Caroline smiles, “Good bye, you old lard.”
“I hope you remember how the door works. It shuts after you leave.” Klaus’ returning smile is an easy one, and he stands, offering her his hand. “Do you need change for the cab?”
As expected, the jibe is ignored. Caroline ruffles his hair in a show of fondness. “Get yourself a decent haircut for once, alright?”
And then she’s gone and so is her perfume and the oven dings and Klaus goes back to his seat, and the music in the room keeps crooning something chirpy and sweet. There is no crescendo, there is no crash, there is just the sound of the door shutting after Caroline leaves.
—
“You are a bloody fool,” Rebekah says, resetting the table for two. Klaus puts a cut of turkey in his plate, humming under his breath, but his jaw is clenched and the silverware gripped in his hands look a little bent. “You God awful, bloody, bloody fool. What the hell did you do now?”
The silence stretches to fill the room and Rebekah hardly touches her dinner, her perfectly cooked roast, the glistening plum and raspberry jam, the light biscuit jaconde Caroline always loved layering with dark chocolate. She sucks her wine through tightly pursed lips, placing upon her brother a gaze so severe the clouds outside scatter.
Klaus slops wine into his mouth, chews furiously on his dinner, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. He returns her gaze in kind, and the town shivers around them.
At long last, quietly, miserably—
“Must it always be me?”
—
“And must it always be me,” Rebekah sighs, “the most amazing sister you will ever have, to give you lessons on how to court your own wife.”
Klaus, biting through the neck of a brunette, mutters something incorrigible, which Rebekah elects to ignore on account of him being an idiot. She blows a piece of hair out of her face and taps her foot impatiently until Klaus is quite finished. It isn’t long before Rebekah gives him a thorough dressing down, pushes him out the door and threatens eviction, and he exclaims, “It’s my bloody house!”, but pretends he hasn’t already booked his flight tickets.
When Caroline swings open her hotel room she isn’t surprised to find Klaus there, scowl on his face that matched her own.
“Come home,” is the first thing he says. The second: “Did you really charge five different hotels to my account? How much of a head start did you think that would give you?”
“I will not,” is her first response. And her second: “I was just in the middle of packing, actually.”
But she steps aside and he follows her in, her perfume dizzying, and he realizes with a strange despondency that she’s changed it without him realizing. He pauses just inside the room, leaning a shoulder against the wall, and watches her. Her hair is longer, falling down her shoulders when she leans over her suitcase, but it still held the same curls, moonlit and magicked, he used to say, the way they always caught the light. Suddenly he sees that same hair sopping with blood, matted to her cheeks, his hands pushing them away clumsily, his lips searching, his body hungry—
—and he says, voice thick, “You’re beautiful.”
If Caroline is suspicious he doesn’t blame her, because he had forgotten, and he doesn’t know how he can possibly forgive himself, especially when he notices the bracelet she’s wearing. And he can’t stop himself then, surging forward to wrap a hand around her neck, to press his forehead against the soft cushion of her curls. “I’ve fucking missed you.”
Stiff in his arms she does nothing to push him away, and she sounds puzzled when she says, “It’s only been three days, asshole.”
Mouth still buried in so much her, he says, “You know what I mean.”
She still hasn’t moved. Klaus closes his eyes to the hotness building in them and his hand roves from her neck to the notches of her spine, the slope of her back, coming to rest on her hip. His other hand he uses to bring her fingers to his lips, a soft graze of a kiss. And then he sways her.
“What the hell—“ Caroline falls into step with him after the initial clattering of her heels, “—are you doing?”
“Dancing with you,” Klaus replies.
Caroline frowns. “Why?”
Klaus sighs. “I’m trying to romance you.”
There are about a dozen questions in Caroline’s eyes, he can see: she’s angry, she’s confused, she’s resigned, she’s—she’s nodding, and she’s resting her head on his chest. “I do like to be romanced.”
“And I do like to romance you,” Klaus says. He closes his eyes to the press of her body against his, “I just – forgot. How to. When to.”
“Please tell me this isn’t your entire apology,” Caroline mutters, and he chuckles then, though it sounds thick, clogged and wet in the back of his throat. The urge to kiss her is sudden and suffocating.
“Caroline,” he says, and then changes his mind. “Love,” he decides, and nods – it sounded better, and if his senses weren’t deceiving him he feels Caroline melt easier into his touch. “I’m sorry I’ve been—“
“—a total dick,” she interrupts. “An absolute asshole, a nightmare to share a bed with, when you’re even there to share a bed with—“
He tries again. “I got caught up in—”
“Things that totally do not concern our marriage—adding to New Orleans’ already alarming body count, for example—”
“—business cropping up that required attention—“
“—away from me, and I’ve been nothing but supportive—“
“And overbearing,” he reminds, “and bloody difficult to be with as well—“
“Only because you stopped loving me,” she hisses, and there it is – the cracking in his chest, the clenching of his heart.
He asks, suddenly, desperately, “Do you hate me now?”
“Klaus…” Her eyes shutter and she exhales slowly and definitely. It strikes him in the gut the way her shoulders sag, but not from relief, when she says, “I had to do something, do you know how terrifying, how all-encompassing it felt to share a bed with a stranger every night? I’ve had—this isn’t the first time…” she’s having trouble looking at him now, blinking rapidly, “You stopped loving me.”
“Never,” Klaus says harshly, pulling her so close there is no telling where she ended and he began, “Don’t you dare think that.”
“But I did,” Caroline says so sadly, and her eyes are so big and so wet and he feels the same welling inside him as well, and he can’t help it anymore: he kisses her, tastes the salt of her unshed tears, tastes the blood on her tongue and the syrup of her teeth, the sharp of them. He kisses her with the heat of a fever, feeling the same dam breaking inside him. They fall into bed, him on top of her, her suitcase upsetting itself onto the floor, her hands in his hair, his heart entirely not his own anymore. She cries into his shoulder and he holds her, cries with her, a bittersweet relief seeping from him, regret and remembrance and denial and defeat crushing his insides, but when she lifts her head and looks at him through tear-crushed lashes, when she smiles at him, he feels his heart returning, he feels a yearning for home, for her.
“I love you, Caroline,” he says, burying it with a kiss.
“And don’t you forget that,” she says, or she threatens, but it sounds so sweet coming from her.
