When I was a little girl,
My Poppa sliced apples for me
Before I could have ice cream
(He made it himself - peppermint and vanilla)
Today, I slice apples in a grandmother's house
And I hold the knife as he did
And when I step outside -
The air smells like it did then
And the roses bloom.
(The way they used to.)
Everything has changed
Everyone is different
But no, not everything.
I hear a dove croon in the mornings
A train horn call on a long afternoon
And I am a child again.
Or the child I was stirs in her slumber.
The two are the same
Then time slips apart again,
And I am here and now
But I remember
I remember.
And that must be enough.
Summary: Elle never thought that she and Spencer would have a last kiss, but... Based off of Last Kiss by Taylor Swift
Warnings: its pretty angsty, mentions of rape, mentions of being shot
Read on AO3
or
full story below the cut.
Spencer sat on his bedroom floor, back against the wall, legs crossed, hand in hand with her.
Elle sat next to him, one knee was bent into her chest and the other was stretched against the hardwood floor of Spencer’s bedroom, her hand was in his.
It was late, 1:58 according to the clock that sat on Spencer’s nightstand. The two didn’t talk, not right now. But the silence was comfortable. They were comfortable like this together. Spencer laid his head on Elle’s shoulder and he sighed deeply. Elle squeezed his hand, neither needed to say anything. Their most recent case had been a hard one. One that ended messy and bad.
“Elle, thank you for being here with me.” Spencer broke the silence. She closed her eyes, she wished he wouldn’t say it because she knew that if the next words came out of his mouth… Then this became so real, “I love you.” He whispered. Elle thought, if the fan had been on a higher setting or if there had been a siren outside or any noise, then she might not have heard what he said, but she did hear it. She brought his hand up to her lips and kissed it softly,
“Yeah, Spence, I love you too.” She said, and she meant it. She did, she just… Wasn’t sure she was ready for this to become so real. She bit her lip, but maybe… Maybe she could live with it being real.
⚤
It was the beginning of July when Spencer had stayed back at Quantico during one of their cases. It had been only a month since that case. The one where everything went wrong. That’s why Spencer had decided to stay back. He said he could work the case from there, he didn’t have to be there to work a geographical profile.
Elle went, though. She went and even though this case was similar to the one from a month ago, she stayed there and she worked. She didn’t think about the little boy she couldn’t save last time. She thought about the little boy who still had a chance. That’s what she focused on.
And this time… This time was different. They were able to use Spencer’s geographical profile and they saved him. They saved the little boy this time. Of course, it didn’t erase the hurt from the one they couldn’t save… It was still fresh and it still hurt. And there would be more cases where they couldn’t save everyone, but this one was good.
Spencer had arrived at the airport, he didn’t care that it was pouring. He needed to see her. He stood in the pouring rain as the team approached him. As soon as she saw him, she couldn’t help but smile. She dropped her bags and rushed toward him. The two hugged so tight and Elle swore she could feel Spencer’s heart beating.
“We did it.” She said, Spencer’s smile was almost blinding,
“Yeah, we did. Didn’t we?” He said, leaning his forehead against hers. They didn’t even notice the others, who were looking at them and at each other and trying to figure out when this had begun and how they had missed it.
⚤
It was a sunny day in Brooklyn, when Elle took Spencer around her to her favorite spots. The cafe she had eaten at with her dad. The park where her mom had taken her to run around. Spencer loved seeing every little bit of her old life, he loved getting to share all of these things with her.
They had found a new spot, to. It was noon, and there was hardly anyone at this bar. There was an old looking jukebox in the corner and Spencer had pulled some change out of his pocket and played some song that Elle didn’t recognize. She rolled her eyes when Spencer offered his hand.
“I don’t dance.” She insisted, but she let herself be pulled from her seat and pulled into his arms.
“Neither do I, but I think we can both make an exception.” Spencer said, twirling her around and then pulling her back to him. She smiled and held onto him as they swayed together.
“I supposed we can.” She said, laying her head on his shoulder. The two danced until the song ended, they didn’t mind the stares that they received from the other patrons of the bar.
When they left the bar, Spencer began talking about weather patterns in New York, going on and on about different meteorological things that Elle didn’t quite understand. She listened, though, she listened until she decided to kiss him so maybe he would stop talking for a minute. It worked, Spencer pulled her closer as they kissed, holding her tight and she loved it. As soon as they parted, he continued right where he left off as if nothing had happened and Elle decided she liked the sound of his voice.
⚤
Elle hated thinking about the good memories she’d shared with Spencer. She especially hated thinking about the kiss they had shared on the sidewalk outside of that bar in Brooklyn all those months ago. Not because it was a bad kiss, but because it was their last kiss.
When they had returned home from their short trip, they had received a case where women were being sexually assaulted and life just got in the way of their relationship. They’d spent some time in the hotel there, talking, but nothing else and then Elle made her decision.
She hadn’t even said goodbye to him when she left the team, she didn’t say goodbye to any of them, she’d barely even said anything to Hotch, she just didn’t come back.
She only had one of Spencer’s button up shirts that had made it into her go bag instead of his during one of their cases. She wasn’t sure she’d ever let it go. She kept it on while she sat on the floor of her bedroom, one leg bent against her chest and the other spread across the floor, this time her arms wrapped around the leg that was bent up and she laid her head on her knee.
As much as she tried not to think about Spencer, she couldn’t help it. She knew she’d hurt him, but she really couldn’t be bothered to care about it that much. She felt a twinge where she’d been shot by the man who called himself the Fisher King and she felt tears begin to fall.
So I'm putting it here again, the novella I'm writing for Open Novella Contest on Wattpad. It's a dragon fantasy lgbtq novella with two princes as love interests. tbh I've never done an original story with romance so I'm open to feedback. For now, there's over 8k words published (since I needed it for submitting for 2nd round of the contest) but I will try to update regularly and finish it until the end of the month (which means it needs to have at least 20k words and be completed for the contest).
Click to read
Summary:
As a spare heir and hero of the last war, Wystan would like nothing more than to enjoy retirement while teaching recruits and drinking up his inheritance.
After stepping on the wrong toes, he is reinstated early and finds himself on a quest to slay a dragon in the Southern Lands of the Empire.
Unwanted and feared, the merry band of the Empire's mercenaries joins him on the journey, for they have been ordered to die with him in not so many words.
While the rumors consist of a tale of a feral, man-eating dragon, a captured princess, and a dreary, impenetrable fortress of a tower where both dwell, Wystan learns that stories are just that--stories.
The tower is not impenetrable nor dreary. On the contrary, it's quite homey with warm rugs, shiny chandeliers, and the fire roaring in every heart. The dragon ignores humans like a person would an ant. And the princess...
Is in fact a prince.
The runaway prince of the Zmaya Kingdom enjoys making Wystan's days harder. Smooth-tongued and shrewd, Alexei manages to make the mercenaries like him and then offers their party a place to stay after hearing about their grim fate. Wystan has to accept because the dragon is there and if he returns home empty-handed, the Emperor would hang him.
Now forced to cohabit in the same place as the infuriating prince, he searches for ways to kill the seemingly unkillable creature.
Click to read
The story is not marked as mature. I try to put in an author's note warning for the stuff that might be triggering.
If you're interested I would be very grateful if you'd check it out 😁
Here is my second contribution to @csjanuaryjoy! I put together the picset for this wintery au concept a few weeks ago, and planned to share a one shot with it. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to put the time I wanted to into this, resulting in a 600ish word drabble. But I’m hoping this will serve as a sneak peek to a longer story that I’d like to share soon if time and life permit! Until then, I hope you enjoy this glimpse at a little friends to lovers bedsharing story. Thank you to the CSJJ admins for hosting the event again this year, and to @thisonesatellite for inspiring me to write again and overall being wonderful 💙
-/-
Emma wasn’t sure just how she’d gotten into this.
Well, actually, she was. It was because her soon to be sister in law was too good and too pure for this world, which made it impossible for Emma to say no to her regarding most things. This trip was no exception.
Emma didn’t even like to ski, and yet she found herself at a ski resort in Vermont, where she’d be spending the next seventy-two hours with the rest of David and Mary Margaret’s wedding party.
A wedding party that included Killian Jones. Who she was also forced to not only share a hotel room with, but also a bed, because luck was not at all on her side thanks to a mistake in the resort’s booking.
(If Emma hadn’t made the reservations herself, she would have sworn Mary Margaret had deliberately booked the wrong number of rooms to see what would happen.)
Sharing a bed with the man she was just a bit in love with wouldn’t be such a problem...if said man was aware of this fact and felt the same way. But Killian wasn’t and didn’t. Emma was certain of it without having to ask. Or, at the very least, certain enough that asking felt like too big a risk to take if she could lose her best friend as a result.
She knew from the moment they met at David and Mary Margaret’s Christmas party two years earlier that something about him was different. They’d spent most of the night alone together on the couple’s back porch, not caring about the dropping temperatures or the party they were missing as they drank hot chocolate (spiked with rum from the flask tucked away in Killian’s jacket) and talked about everything from the best and worst limited-edition Oreo flavors to their high school graduations.
It didn’t hit Emma until days later when she found herself unable to think of anything besides him. The concept of someone getting under her skin so quickly was terrifying, and a risk she couldn’t afford to take. So the result was skipping invites for plans with David and Mary Margaret, and avoiding all of Killian’s efforts to contact her. And it worked. Until the circumstances bbehind one of her skips hit a bit too close to home, mentally and physically. She’d stumbled into the Jones brothers’ bar with blood and tear tracks on her face, desperate for a drink. Instead, Killian had taken one look at Emma and led her to his office in the back, where he’d used a first aid kit to treat her injuries and sent one of his employees out for chicken noodle soup.
He’d sat on the couch beside her while she ate, not prying with questions about why she’d avoided him, simply asking what he could do for her, and then driving her home later that night. The two of them had been close ever since; movie nights once a week at one of their apartments, texting each other memes with no context at any given moment in the day, and being thrown into wedding plans when David proposed to Mary Margaret. Over time, an unspoken shift had taken place in their relationship. Killian had become her best friend, her closest confidant, and the person she longed to see the most after a hard day. And Emma had no doubts that his feelings mirrored her own.
That is, until she fell in love with him.
So, yes. Sharing a bed was going to be an interesting experience to say the least.
Emma only hoped she would come out of it with her dignity and their friendship till intact.
im sorry, i sent the screenshot below to @meredithraw and asked her to tag and it's too good to not share:
Young Peter climbed up there but didn't know how to go back down, so Tony (middle) went up for him but ended up in the same position as Peter, so Steve had to go for them but then he couldn't go down either so Sam took the picture and sent it to Rhodey with the caption "how do you keep your goats alive?" And Rhodey would answer "let them die"
Yesternight the sun was low
And as the clouds piled in the bay
It seemed that in the growing glow
I passed a mountain on my way
A glimpse, no more, was what I saw
For time was short, I could not halt
A gold-limned height much like a claw
Was all I glimpsed above the salt
A glimmer of a different world
Is something that I sometimes see
Within the clouds and stones that hurled
Form our present true reality
I know the castles are not real
And our green hills do seldom walk
But in my dreams I hear the peal
Of bells, and hear the rivers talk
Yesternight the sun was low
And as the clouds piled in the bay
It seemed that in the growing glow
I passed a mountain on my way…
Dance with the galaxies
Waltz with the moon
The world all set right
The song a new tune
Spin through the stars
Run through the foam
That laces the particles
Of the world that we'll roam
Whirl through the void
And chase the aurora
Map all the paths
Of the fauna and flora
Trace constellations
Walk with the sun
And join the new song
That will have begun.
If I lay here in your roots,
Said the woman to the tree
Will you protect my body
Will you shelter me?
You've stood here for a long time
I think a long time more
Will you let me rest here?
Or I'll trouble you no more.
I wasn't meant for this time
Say the others, say they all
So I'll wait here for a while,
'Till this forest all grows tall
'Till the earth has changed around us
'Till the seas have got new shores
Then I'll wake to find a kinder time
And roam the gentle moors.
Oh sister I do feel your pain
To the woman said the tree
But the rest you seek you cannot find
Not here beneath my leaves
Your lot it has been given
It's to you to make it work
This time you must make gentle
Not tarry in the murk
So make a life worth living
And do it not alone
As a forest is not one tree
You need not do this on your own.
