I used the baking prompt! Have you seen that one trend going around where a group of people try coordinating cooking with different senses cut off? I thought it’d be something silly to draw these guys doing! I hope you like it, and have a wonderful holiday!!! ✨🙏
They’re making some kind of cake, but Wash is 100% sure that they’re making chocolate chip cookies lmaooo.
I just wanted North star-gazing and then this monstrosity happened...
With seven of them, there was barely time for any alone time.
That wasn’t to say he didn’t enjoy the other’s company, but sometimes, North just wanted to sit by himself and bask in the silence without having to worry about the others.
Having South as a sister was exhausting enough. But being bound to someone your entire life? North needed his space a bit sometimes.
That was why he was sitting atop the bus, legs hanging over the edge, heels gently bumping the side as he set his arms on the rail. They were in the middle of no where for a change, pulled over for a rest and some fun. If he turned around, North would be able to see the fire that Connie had built, all warmth and light in the night. Even from this far away, he could hear York’s soft strumming and voice.
He smiled to himself, raising his eyes to the starlit sky.
Out of all the places that they stopped, these were his favorite. When they had been really small, their parents had taken him and South camping a lot. His father had lain out with him on those nights, covered with nothing but the twinkling inky blackness above them. He’d point out constellations and tell North the stories behind them.
Those stories were lost to him now, but North still loved the stars. The way they twinkled and flickered, against the black expanse of the sky, always took his breath away.
And here in the middle of nowhere?
Well, that was when the stars just seemed to outnumber the universe.
There was a commotion behind him, almost hidden against York’s yelp and South’s laughter, but North caught it all the same. He didn’t turn around, staring out in the distance as the person behind him climbed the ladder to the top of the bus.
“North?”
Well, now, that was a surprise. North tore his eyes away from the sky to look at the younger man behind him.
Wash was halfway up the ladder, camera dangling around his neck as he stared worriedly at North.
“Hey,” North said quietly.
The blond gave him a small smile, which he returned. “You okay?”
North nodded. “Just catching my breath.”
Wash nodded once, biting his lower lip before half turning to glance behind him at the fire and their family-because that was what they were-before glancing back at the older man.
“You coming down any time soon?” Wash asked. “I mean, it’s just… we’re gonna make s’mores soon and Maine’s got hot dogs and… it won’t be the same if you let South eat all the marshmallows…”
We miss you, North translated.
“I’ll be down in a few minutes,” he chuckled, imagining his sister with chipmunk cheeks full of marshmallows.
“Okay,” Wash replied, frowning slightly.
North watched him hesitate before he began to descend. He was nearly gone from sight save the top of his hair, before he paused on the ladder. And with a pang of amusement, North watched as he ascended once more, half hanging on top of the bus.
“What are you doing up here, anyways?” he asked.
“Watching the sky,” North told him. “Thinking.”
“Oh…” Wash’s expression was confused. North smiled at him before turning around, looking up again.
“I’ll be down in a bit. Just give me a few more minutes.”
There was laughter from the others and York singing loudly and off key before North heard movement behind him. After a moment, Wash’s grey and hoodie was in his peripheral vision as the other man slowly sat down next to him. Their thighs touched as he settled himself.
North waited, but Wash didn’t speak. Instead, he craned his neck to look up at the expanse of sky, grey eyes wide and twinkling like the lights in the black.
The two sat in silence for a while, the only sounds being the voices and laughter at their backs, before Wash began to fidget. With a sigh, North turned to him.
“Alright, we can go now,” he said, moving to get up.
“No!” Wash exclaimed, grabbing onto North’s wrist and halting his progress. He let go as if he had been burned when North raised an eyebrow at him. “I mean… we don’t have too. I… I like it.”
North stared at him for a moment before lowering himself back down. Wash glanced down at the camera in his hands, turning it over.
“It’s peaceful up here,” he said.
North smiled and nodded. “It is,” he agreed.
The two bent their necks, staring above them. With the warmth of his family behind him and the comforting presence of Wash beside him, he let his thoughts wander, as they often did when he star gazed.
They wandered to his family, to South, and how much he loved her. Oh, she got on his nerves so much sometimes that he wanted to strangle her with a pillow, but she was his sister, his twin, his other half. He owed her everything, just as she owed him everything.
Her laughter brought a smile to his face, and he immediately heard Connie join in.
Sweet, sweet Connie, with a bigger bite than her bark and she let you know it too. She may look small, but man, did she pack a punch (and a kick, as North found out after sharing a bed with her-never again). Her warm brown eyes that sparkled with mischief and happiness.
A low throated growl reached his ears and his thoughts turned to Maine. How his bulk was a show and he was truly a giant teddy bear. The large man was their rock, providing a strong, silent presence even when they didn’t want it, but always when they needed it.
York and Carolina began to bicker.
York and Carolina. Carolina and York. They were a pair, one that wouldn’t be separated. They were like North and South, always together, never far apart. North still didn’t know how they were together; Carolina was so determined, so driven, why York went with the flow and didn’t care where he ended up, so long as the woman he loved with more than his heart was beside him. Their love was unrivaled in every way.
But their hearts were large enough to embrace the people that had become their family.
North honestly couldn’t remember what it was like not loving the others.
The sound of a shutter closing drew his attention to the last member of their group.
Wash was frowning at the display on the screen of the digital camera in his hands, before he raised it to his eye again and looked through the focus. He took another photo, glanced at it, and muttered quietly.
North tilted his head, watching silently.
Wash, with his baby face and his quiet words and soft spoken words of encouragement. Wash, with his creativity and his gifted eyes able to see the beauty where others saw nothing. Wash, with his own blanket of stars on a lighter canvas, his hidden talents, his perfect smile and white teeth and laughter and grey eyes that sparkled like the stars.
“What are you doing?”
North blinked, focusing. Wash was looking at him, confused. He must have been staring.
“Just thinking.”
Wash nodded once before frowning, turning back to his camera. He sighed in frustration.
“What?” North asked, amused as the other blonde’s eyebrows scrunched together.
“Nothing,” Wash sighed. He let the camera fall back to his lap. “I just can’t do it.”
“Do what?”
Wash gestured to the sky above them. “Get it. I can’t get it.”
North cocked his head the other way. “I’m… not sure…”
With a groan, Wash flopped backwards, letting his head hit the roof of the bus. He scowled up at the sky. “That. Like, I understand. It’s beautiful. And it’s even more beautiful because you like it. But I just… I can’t get it.”
North glanced above him, watching the lights flicker. “There’s nothing too get,” he told him. “It’s just balls of gas millions of miles away.”
“But they mean more to you…”
North nodded, eyes seeking out the brightest star, the North Star, and wondered out loud.
“They’re a comfort,” he said. “I think about all those stars out there, all those bright lights, and how most of them are probably dead. Some might even be black holes, sucking others away and extinguishing their lights. But we’re seeing them now. You and I, together, at the same time, are seeing something so far in the past that it just doesn’t make sense.
“I could be anywhere in the universe, at any time, with any one. I could be on a spaceship in the future, or back in my family’s car when I was six, or dead. But instead, I’m right here, right now, with you, and we’re looking at the same ball of gas that might not exist tomorrow. We might not exist tomorrow, but that star might.
“We’re together, all of us, at the same time. We’re all existing at the same time, looking at something that, for all we know, died millions of years ago.” He traced patterns in the sky, connecting the stars.
“It’s amazing and beautiful, and it makes me think that, maybe, we can last as long as some of these stars’ memories.” South’s laughter, York and Carolina, Connie, Maine, Wash. All of them. They could do it.
He stared at them for a moment longer before tearing his gaze away. When he turned back to Wash, the younger man was watching him, a small smile on his face.
“What?” It was North’s turn to be confused.
“I think I get it now,” Wash whispered. He turned his head to gaze up again, easier since he was lying down.
North frowned, then lowered himself to lie next to him, shoulders brushing.
They were silent for a moment, before Wash brought up his camera again, trying to take a picture of the sky. He groaned when he glanced at the screen.
“What’s wrong?” North asked softly.
“I still can’t get the picture,” Wash grumbled. “It keeps flaring or it’s too dark. I need a night vision lens…” He fiddled with the camera some more.
“You don’t need a picture,” North told him. He turned his head to face Wash, who was looking up still.
“But I’d still like one. That way you can see the stars in the daytime too.”
North felt his heart stutter, eyes widening as he gazed at the younger man against the backdrop. Where the sky was black velvet with sequins thrown in a particular manner, Wash was milky with a spray of random freckles. It was a contrast, but as North stared at Wash’s face, he saw no difference between the stars against the sky and the stars against pale skin.
Wash turned his head, eyes widening as he caught the intensity of North’s stare. Before he could say anything, North slid a little closer and gently kissed the lips across from him.
“Why would I want a picture when I can see the stars whenever I want?” he whispered against Wash’s lips a few moments later.
The blush that adorned Wash’s face was impressive, and he glanced to the side. North reached out, gently cupping the back of Wash’s head and bringing them close again, kissing deeply.
“Hey, assholes! We’re hungry, you fucks! Get your asses down here so we can eat!” South’s voice carried from below.
North and Wash broke apart and Wash licked his lips. North smiled, running his thumb over the stars on Wash’s cheek.
“We’d better get down there before she comes up here and throws a bitch fit about not being invited,” North whispered.
Wash rolled his eyes, but nodded, sitting up. He stood, reaching a hand down to help North to his feet and the two quickly scaled the ladder down.
“About time!” South groaned when the two came over. “We were wondering if you fell and died.”
“Or got abducted by aliens,” York added from his space between Carolina’s legs. He was already roasting a marshmallow on a stick.
“Nah, they’d take you first. They’d want their leader back,” Wash retorted, making his way to sit besides Maine.
And as North took his place next to his sister, listening to everyone bicker, his eyes flicked to the stars in the sky once more before landing on Wash.
He watched as Wash grinned and joked and laughed and yeah, so long as those freckles littered his face, North didn’t need the stars in the sky. He just needed Wash, and the others, and maybe, just maybe, they could all just be, together, at the same time, in the same places, forever.
