Wait I need to let out some rent lowering shots here. @ people firewood is not simply kindling but in fact the extremely honored postcardshipping. I don't know what you can say about it but I hope they're toxic and unbearable 💞
Thank you for clarifying to the general public 🙏 stupidest ship name in the whole of fandom I love you <3
Anyway, yes they ARE toxic and unbearable. Also miserable. Both of them are so miserable and full of guilt.
I'm 2k into the fic currently but it's also written in so many broken pieces, so it's a bit all over the place atm. Anyway, there's a far messier and more toxic side to this fic that I have written some of, but for now, here's a snippet of me (once again) attempting to patch up a few parts of canon that annoy me (aka: how did August know about Neal in the first place?)
“I thought you should probably have these,” August said cryptically, waiting for Neal to open the envelope.
Wordlessly, Neal obliged, picking out a handful of polaroids from inside and setting them down on the table.
“What the hell is this?” Neal looked disgusted as he spread out the images across the table and examined each one of them. “What the hell are you—”
“I didn’t take them. Someone gave them to me.”
“And you expect me to believe that crap?”
Neal picked up a close-up of him and Emma smiling at one another, the look of horror never leaving his face. August did his best to fight back against the feeling of guilt chewing away at his insides.
“Someone left these outside my apartment door. It’s…” August placed a finger on one of the polaroids of Neal by himself, pointing at the writing underneath the picture. “It’s how I knew where to find you. How I knew who you were.”
In shockingly neat red pen was simply the word ‘Baelfire’. On another of the photos —a picture of Neal and Emma standing together this time— was more writing that listed both the date and location the photo had been taken in. August could hardly blame Neal for being freaked out by the whole thing. If the roles were reversed, he would have been horrified too.
“Like I told you,” August continued regardless, “I’d been looking for Emma for two years. I had a few leads but they kept taking me to dead ends and…well, someone obviously knew this and felt like they needed to give me a nudge in the right direction.”
“I don’t know,” August admitted. “But they knew who I…They knew about my past. Back in our land.”
August wouldn’t deny that seeing those storybook pages on his doorstep that day had shaken him to his core. They hadn’t been just any old book pages. There were scenes and illustrations of events from August’s childhood that were far too specific to be confused with any of the other countless retellings of ‘Pinocchio’. Those pages had told his story, in all its unbearable, repulsive detail.
