Most of the time, Jason found himself skipping events like this. The noise, the lights, it could all be a bit much. But it was New Year's Eve, and he knew that his family would be there, as well as all of his friends, which meant that he had dressed up and headed out to Evolution, ate the food, had a couple of drinks... and he was finally feeling limber enough to hit up the game room. "Do you play?" he asked the person next to him, not sure if they had met yet, but holding out a dart with a small smile. "I'll let you have first throw."
TIMING: 1982-ish
LOCATION: The University of Oxford, England
PARTIES: Siobhan (@banisheed) & Oliver (known as Atticus at the time) (@oliver--fox)
SUMMARY: Atticus gets accepted into the doctoral program, Siobhan is not happy. She's especially not happy about having been "broken-up" with.
CONTENT WARNING: None!
It all led back to Atticus Branch and his stupid face and his stupid name. His face: horribly symmetrical, horribly pretty, Siobhan hated to admit that it was his eyelashes that she liked best. Long, the flutter of them falling over eyes—the sort of thing you could expect to notice if you spent a lot of time looking into them. Which Siobhan did. In argument, of course. His smug, stupid smile. And the name! Fates, the idiotic name. Atticus Branch: there was no way that was the name he was born with, but whatever stupid tree pun the other fae had come out of the bark with, he wouldn’t tell her. Atticus Branch was the sort of fae that Siobhan despised. One that was not at all like her and yet, had everything she didn’t. While she curled the humans to her charm, he did nothing of the sort. While she bound them to do her tiresome school work, it seemed he did his own. And now, had taken something that should have been hers.
She stormed across campus, the spring sun bright above her as the grass cowered to her charge. She found Atticus with ease, having memorized his routine locations. For arguments, of course. He sat amongst nature, effortless, like a typical fae—not at all like Siobhan, who enjoyed with a hedonistic thrill the entrapings of human life. “Fucking explain this,” she said, shoving the paper into his face. Oxford would like to congratulate Atticus Branch on his continued pursuit for…, it read; a bunch of nonsense to dress the fact. “The doctoral program,” she spat. “You!” She shoved the paper into his face again, as if it might portray the anger burning through her body. “You conniving—” While Atticus owed her nothing, Siobhan was of the traditional belief that she was entitled to everything, and certainly that a fellow fae would never undercut her like this.
—
With the amount of time Atticus spent within the walls of Oxford, he found that blocking out time to be outside, to feel the grass beneath him and the wind on his face, to be important. He was partial to the Wellingtonias that were littered around the area, but any could do in a pinch. There weren’t any Dusk Trees around, unfortunately. The soil wasn’t exactly what he needed, but he also had a feeling Mr.Wilkers, the groundskeeper, would throw a fit if a new random tree started growing. Atticus was leaning against one of the trees, flipping through a draft of one of his final papers, red pen held between his teeth like the cigarette he wanted but refused to smoke anywhere that could lead to accidental fires. His Walkman lay next to him, cycling through a cassette that his roommate, Joey, had given to him. At the pulsation in his chest, Atticus glanced up to spot the only other fae he had found on campus.
It had been a bit of a shock to run into Siobhan in the first few weeks of his graduate program at Oxford. She had been one of the first fae that he had run into since coming back to Europe, and their differences had helped to create a solid academic rivalry between the two. Atticus loved learning and thus couldn’t help but be slightly disappointed in the fact that Siobhan leaned on her abilities to have others do her work for her. “Hello to you too.” Atticus said, taking his headphones off, allowing notes of I Will Survive to play between them before he reached down to hit stop as he moved his focus onto the paper that she was thrusting at him. “Oh! They finally posted the department's congratulations on the bulletin board, hm?” He had found out about his acceptance a few weeks ago, receiving a large envelope through the post with information about his stipend and the like. Atticus had heard that there would be a list of all the doctoral recipients for the department, but as the school year neared the end, he had stopped paying as much attention to the bulletin board.
Atticus blinked at the others' poorly contained rage. “I applied for the program?” He tilted his head to the side slightly, putting his papers down and capping his pen. He had a feeling this wouldn’t be a quick conversation. “Sammy was finally graduating, which meant a new spot was opening under Dr.Parse. I told you I was planning to apply, didn’t I?” Atticus frowned before his eyes widened a fraction. “Did you end up applying for it too?” She had said she was going to, but Atticus hadn’t thought she would have been able to get through the whole application. It was a tedious process, and one thing he had learned over the last two years was that Siobhan didn’t like tedious things. That didn’t stop Atticus from mentally adding a tally to his side of his wins vs losses to the other, making it so he had again pulled ahead. “I wouldn’t say I did anything conniving, just that plain-old hard work” Atticus added with a grin.
—
Hard work, he had tossed out so simply. Plain old. Siobhan could choke his smooth, long neck. She could hear the barb hidden under the gentle curl of his voice: she hadn’t done work. Of course she hadn’t, she never did. And, anyway, even if she had, it wouldn’t have been good enough. Not like his work, his plain-old hard work. Atticus Branch (the name was still stupid) who seemed to love learning, loved to prance (he didn’t really prance) with the humans and roll in their muck. Metaphorically—Fates, she could smell his horrid cologne from here, soft lavender and citrus notes. When she got close to him (for the sake of argument) she could pick out the faint, earthy musk of dirt as if the grains were between her fingers, under her nails, clumping at the back of her throat. She hated everything about him.
Siobhan was of the traditional fae variety: why do anything yourself when you could force a sobbing human to do it for you? Shunned as she was—a temporary predicament, any day now she would be welcomed home and forget every curve of Atticus’s face—she was still a fae. And despite Atticus’s foolish desires to play educational pretend, he was still a fae too. Siobhan wouldn’t be fooled by the tilt of his head, the way the soft strands of his hair fell to one side, or the swell of his pink lips angling into a grin. “Yes, I applied, you imbecilic shrub. I—” Siobhan stopped herself. Yes, she did apply. Yes, she had wanted it—not for any task, but for herself. Dr. Siobhan Dolan…didn’t it have an attractive ring to it? Didn’t it make her sound dignified? Worthy of something? She had wanted it, that was her first mistake.
Siobhan dropped her hand but the fury still burned red on her face, prickling her cheeks. “You’re saying my hard work is lesser than yours then?” she sneered. “What trickery did you employ, hm? A bind? A promise? Bat your long—Fates, why are your eyelashes so lush?” She shook her head. Focus. “You’re a fae, you ought to act like it, Twig.”
—
“Huh, interesting.” Atticus hummed quietly at her admission. Siobhan barely attended class as it was; why on earth would she go for something that would be even harder than the graduate program? Even if she didn’t intend to complete any of the work that would be required, she would still need to find other people to do it for her. The higher you went, the harder it was to find people who could complete the work to the required level. Atticus wondered if this would be a blessing in disguise for her in the end.
He held his hands up in surrender as she continued on her rant, “No, but I know I did the work. Did you?” Atticus asked, sitting up slightly so his back was no longer resting on the tree. He laughed, shaking his head when she demanded to know what kind of trickery he had employed. “None! You know I’ve never been very good at binds and all that jazz.” He said with a shrug. He had never been all that interested in doing it in the first place. He technically knew how to do one, but that was more for an absolute emergency. Atticus wouldn’t even be able to tell her the last time he had even attempted one. He opened his mouth to add something, but raised an eyebrow at the hidden compliment. “All natural.” Atticus grinned slyly at the other while he fluttered his eyes at the other.
Atticus raised an eyebrow at her insult, “Aw, a pet name? I’m touched Si.” He placed a hand over his chest. Atticus’s eyes shifted to the area around them, one that was luckily empty of any passerbys. “And how should I be acting, hm?” He asked, turning his attention back towards her. “What’s so bad about what I’m doing currently?”
—
“Si.” Siobhan repeated, voice rattling up in pitch. “Si?” She was shrill now, red in the face. “Si?” Her fists shook at her sides but her anger kept pinging off of his beauty. Why did his face have to be so symmetrical? Couldn’t find a valley to lay an insult in at all. “You couldn’t think of a proper nickname? You just took the front part of my name! You— You twig! You shrub! You smooth-faced, symmetrical weed!” She huffed. “And at least name name isn’t a half-rate pun. Imagine if I had been named Bone O’Skeleton. You ought to be embarrassed about calling yourself Branch.”
He continued to flutter his long, infuriating eyelashes. She needed to calm down, Atticus appeared to be feasting off of her frustration. "Not very good or not very interested?" she countered. She plopped down beside him on the grass. "You think you're better than me, don't you?" Her lips curled. That was what all this was about, wasn't it? She'd wanted something, and he had told her she wasn't good enough to want it, to get it. Of course, one fae thinking they were better than another fae was standard fae behaviour, but Siobhan was a little sensitive at the moment. Temporarily sensitive; any day now, she'd saunter back home. And wouldn't it be all the better if she could go back to Saol Eile with a new title? Dr. Siobhan Dolan, didn't it sound so nice?
Her fist curled in the grass, pulling a few strands up from the earth. "Pay reverence to your fellow fae," she said through clenched teeth. "Stop acting like human society is anything worth participating in. 'All natural'? Doesn't it disgust you to play in their games? You and your"—Siobhan jerked her finger towards his headphones—"Walkman."
—
Atticus blinked, biting the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling. Was he riling her up for fun? A little. In his defense, she made it too easy. “It’s part of your name, how is that not a nickname?” His eyebrow raised, allowing his lips to turn upwards as she rattled off a list of insults. “Oh, hey, you called me perfectly symmetrical that time! That’s nice of you.” He laughed. “Unfortunately, the rest of those insults don’t really land since they all surround height, and I’m not particularly short.” Atticus added with a shrug. “Would you rather your nickname be Skelly?” He asked, jumping on the name she had given out “Doesn’t roll off the tongue as nicely as Si, though.” He tapped his chin thoughtfully. “If you want to blame someone for my name, blame the officer who asked for my information at immigration. It’s his fault that he had a painting of a bird on a branch on his wall. But why would I be ashamed of it? If anything, I think it’s funny.”
He hummed quietly as she sat down next to him. “A bit of both.” Atticus replied as he ran a hand through his hair before tilting his head to the side. “Do I think I’m better than you? No.” He shifted so his ankles were crossed in front of him. “Do I think I’m smarter than you? Yeah, probably. But intelligence isn’t everything.” Atticus said with a small smile. “Your abilities of trickery far exceed mine afterall.” He couldn’t imagine the concentration it took to build binds throughout the school, to have multiple people under her control at any one time.
Atticus’ smile dropped, replaced by a slight frown. “Why wouldn’t I participate in it?” He asked, confusion apparent in his tone. “Staying isolated sounds pretty dreadful, no? Isn’t that why you’re also here on campus?” Atticus challenged, eyes following hers to his walkman. “We are going to be around for hundreds of years; I don’t really want to spend all that time in silence. Plus, these things-” Atticus picks up the walkman “make it easy to have it while walking around, which can be nice.” He added with a roll of his eyes. Reaching into his jacket pocket, Atticus brought out a seed. His eyes glowed gold for a moment, and the seed transformed into a bright red rose. It was a party trick that Atticus liked to partake in when everyone at a party was at the point of being drunk enough that they’d believe his stories of a magic trick. Atticus held it out to Siobhan. “Take a second to smell the roses, and maybe you’ll remember why this whole thing can be kinda fun.”
—
“Yes,” she said. “I would rather be Skelly.” But that was hardly the point. Still, it was worth saying, lest he think up some other atrocious name. She hated his nonchalance almost as much as she hated how pretty he was.
And then there was the rest of it. Siobhan couldn’t hold it; his words hit her ears and the ringing started in an instant, like her blood had been set to boil. She took the rose, jamming her finger into a thorn, delighting in the sting of pain and the trickle of her blood down her palm. Then she took that bloody palm and laid it over the petals. “Smarter than me,” she repeated, her voice was frosted over; an anger so hot it turned glacial. “Staying isolated… is that what you think I do?” Her fingers closed over the flower. “‘Fun?’ Was I ‘fun’ for you?” She crushed the flower, blood-stained petals floating down between them. “Was it fun when you left me?”
She’d avoided saying it. She’d avoided thinking it. But it was the thorn between them: once upon a time—so long ago it seemed—they’d slept together. And then again. And again. And then, no more. It seemed to her to happen like a coin flip; she was familiar with his body, and then she wasn’t. He was hers, and then he wasn’t. Siobhan didn’t care for Atticus in that sense, but when things were hers she expected them to stay that way. But even then, it wasn’t so much being robbed that bothered her, but that he’d done it at all. Why? Was she so detestable? Would he take a human over her? Was she that lowly? Her back stung and she felt the absence of her wings throb against her nerves. Why was she never good enough?
With a growl, Siobhan threw the rose aside and lunged at him, tackling him to the grass. She clutched the front of his shirt in her fists, looking down at him. “I don’t want to smell the roses. I want what I’m owed! Respect!” She pressed her nose against his. “You wouldn’t understand. You move through life like a fucking leaf; all this way and then that. Like you don’t have a care at all. Don’t you understand the sort of things that you do? The effect that you have? The marks you leave?” She leaned down and her breath coiled over his face, hot and insistent. “Take some fucking responsibility for once, twig.”
—
“Alright, Skelly it is then.” Atticus used two of his fingers to give her a salute of sorts, though his eyes widened when she grabbed the flower with her full hand. His eyes tracked the blood that trickled down her palm. His own hands, previously resting by his side, face down in the grass, curled up into fists; fighting the urge to reach out and pluck the rose from her hand; to lead her to somewhere where the blood could be washed away, and the cuts could be cleaned and covered. “You wouldn’t be here if you were planning to stay isolated.” Atticus states, tone even. He knew of fae who were completely removed from any interaction with mortals; content to live within their aos sí and allow the world to change around them but wary of ever leaving their safe little circle. It always made him feel bad for them. Sure, being around humans had its downsides, but there were so many upsides that he could never imagine hiding away from them.
At Siobhan’s accusing tone, Atticus sighed deeply and shook his head. “We were never together, so I didn’t leave you.” Their tension, something born out of their differences, had fueled a sexual relationship that had left both of them breathless. The flip from loud arguments in the library to secret make-outs in the janitor's closets; how test scores became a form of foreplay, and how they would each try to trip the other up during presentations with deliberate eye-fucking. Being with a fae was always a different experience for Atticus; perhaps rooted in the fact that just being around each other made it so the other knew a deep secret. The hook-ups had been fun, even exciting at times, but Atticus had never seen them as something that would lead to an actual relationship.
Perhaps part of it came from the fact that they were both fae. How, technically, they could have a long-term relationship that wouldn’t be marred by the progression of time. However, Atticus didn’t think he wanted one with Siobhan. She leaned far further into the fae world, while Atticus leaned further into the human one. It had always been a simple hook-up for him, and he had figured she had felt the same until she had practically screamed at him outside a club after he had made out with someone else in front of her. That had been his clue that perhaps he needed to end things sooner than he had expected.
There’s a moment, just before she ends up on top of him, in the second between launching herself and landing, that Atticus has the opportunity to stop her. He could strike her in the stomach, or just roll out of the way, or even send up a trunk of a tree from a seed he can feel hidden under the surface of the grass. However, he allows himself to be taken. Partly because he doesn’t want to start an actual fight with her, and partly because he doesn’t mind being touched by her. He’s not afraid that she’ll actually harm. Atticus knows how to read her movements at this point.
“I respect you, Skelly.” Atticus says softly, bringing his hand up to move a piece of her hair out of her face and behind her ear. At her accusation, he hummed quietly, “That’s part of being a fae, no? To float from one life to the next?” Surely she must have experienced this kind of situation before, right? Atticus doesn’t believe that he could truly be this special to her. “I’m sorry that you had a different idea of what we were doing, and I’m sorry if I hurt you.” Atticus says honestly. A thought entered his mind then, and a faint smile tugs at his lips. “You’re leaving after graduation, right?” He was pretty sure he had heard her loudly talk about that with someone recently, having turned at the sound of her voice only to be met with an icy glare. “If you want…closure, we could have one last night together? A proper goodbye?”
—
Siobhan was not used to tenderness. When Atticus touched her, every scar on her body burned. She was used to anger, to cold precision, to reverence twisted almost to the shape of affection, but not to tenderness. He was a beautiful man, it was the first thing she’d noticed about him, and the observation that possessed her mind every time she looked at him. She could hate him all she wanted—and she was very sure that she hated him—but she couldn’t stop thinking about how pretty he was. How could he blame her for wanting to possess that beauty when her own had been cut out from her? The differences between them were a canyon; Siobhan would have an easier time relating to a human than to this smug arsehole.
But Atticus liked fun, and Siobhan would chew like a trapped rat for any glimpse of the other side—out of her own body. He might float from one life to the next and certainly there was nothing so finely hinged as the fluttering wings of a butterfly—Atticus, then, like both the butterfly and the gale it travels on. To settle and begin his life cycle again: chrysalis and all. Siobhan, then, imprisoned forever in suspended metamorphosis—never to change, never to emerge, never to curl back into the innocent shape of a nymph. Unless she could return home. And she would. Eventually. Everything would be fixed when she returned home to her wings and her family.
Siobhan had just her one life, unable to be reinvented. She was not like Atticus. “Not a different idea,” Siobhan said softly. Then, remembering she needed to be mad at him, she pressed her mouth harshly to his. She raked her teeth against the soft curves of his lips. “Fine,” she said roughly. “Fine. One last night, twig. And then I am forgetting your face, and everything about you.” She grinned. “But I am going to make you pay for robbing the spot from me.” Which of course meant the sex would be as it tended to be between them: like someone tipped over a box of burning dynamite into their chasm of differences. Siobhan was not used to tenderness and she had no plans to be tender to Atticus.
She was absolutely sure that she hated him and his pretty, pretty face.
"The million dollar question at an event like this..." Josh began, looking from the menu board at the drink stand and then over to the person next to him with a grin, "egg nog, or no?" Sure, there were a thousand different food items and drinks that people could fight over in terms of what they did and did not like, but that egg not... that seemed to be what really divided people. "I feel like you either love it, or you gag at the thought of it."
There normally was very little that would motivate Cage to go to Bookends; after all, there was a library in town. But given how long it had taken Colton to work through his summer reading list last year, Cage thought that it might be a smarter course of action to just buy the damn book, save himself from having to pay overdue library fees if they were still muddling through the week before school started. Or worse, after. It was nearing seven, but he still had enough time to step in, grab the few books he needed, and get out before they closed. And maybe that way, he could avoid Oliver, not have to deal with any awkward conversations or barely veiled hostility. Opening the door, he stepped in, relieved at the small burst of cooler air against the mid-July heat and headed for the fiction section, quickly ducking between shelves in hopes of maintaining a low profile. “Okay,” he murmured, eyes moving over the titles. “Treasure Island... where are you?”
Scott liked Oliver’s home. Without Dani, Scott still planned to move ahead in buying a home, and now, he was enticed to look in Oliver’s neighborhood for a change of scenery. Humboldt Hills was affordable enough to manage, even on his own salary. He had savings enough, to his surprise, for a down payment. “I can’t wait to get out of that apartment. A total fresh start. It’s going to be great.” Scott was giving optimism a shot, genuinely excited to have something of his own that wasn’t their little shoebox two-bedroom. Their. Even in his thoughts, he still coupled himself with Dani. “And a five minute walk from your front door. That’s a plus, right?”
Normally, when he heard the stomping across his ceiling, that was the sign that it was over. There would be stomping, and then faintly-heard whispers, and then creaking directly above his bathtub, and then it would be quiet. And then other than damning the thin walls, there would be nothing for Oliver to do. But he didn’t know. Something about this one felt different. Or maybe it didn’t, but that was the problem. It was exactly the same, and it had been for at least ten nights so far since he moved in.
It wasn’t his business. He’d spoken to his sister three times, and she’d always said it wasn’t his business. “Olly,” she told him, constantly. “You have your own problems. Like finding a damn job. Don’t be sticking your nose into other people’s relationships. Some people get off on that.” Which was not helpful advice, but she said it often enough that it sounded real. So, no, it wasn’t his business, but he couldn’t help but have some questions.
Oliver had never been good with questions. He liked for them to go away. And that was how he found himself waiting in his living room for the end of the creaking, and then soft footsteps out the door before taking the tupperware of his mom’s biscuits up to 5L. He rang the bell, waiting for someone to answer, not totally sure what he was expecting, other than that he hoped it wasn’t the one who stormed out who answered the door.
Courtney loved animals, heck she had three at home and if she and Cohen could afford it she was pretty sure they'd have more. So she figured a day at Davis Farms would do the trick. She hadn't been there in a while and wondered if the changing season meant the animals would be acting differently. Nonetheless, she was excited for some animal fun. Seeing Oliver, she waved before walking over to him, "hey you, long time no see. How are things going?"
where: Kinsellas Vineyard
with: Oliver Erickson ( @olivererickson )
Roman was sure he'd been stood up by the Erickson's. He'd come to the vineyard to discuss grapes, interested in what they did with the grapes they didn't want, maybe they would be open to discussing selling them for distilling... Perhaps he had been too naive, coming to them with no business plan. He couldn't speak to Julian but... he felt guilty.
Not that any of it mattered. It was clear he'd turned up on time, and now they were forty minutes late. With a sigh, he picked himself up and headed for the door. He should've made more of an effort to get the wine tour in May. This was probably for the best... the timing wasn't great. Roman just got the idea in his head and wanted to go full steam ahead.
"Oh, shit." Roman stepped back as he turned the corner and nearly ran into someone. "My bad, I was miles away."
