#sweaters?

[funkyliloboist]

So I guess my new aesthetic is “Grandfather’s Closet Chic”.

[ask-beacons-finest]

@taninlw okay but real talk? If someone gave me an entire box of sweaters for Valentine's day I'd marry them. I fricken love sweaters and own so little, it hurts my soul

[devilbunnyking]

a rhythm of sinking soul

Very, very late kastle christmas gift for @shipsabound- thank you for being patient! (Hi from bad santa?) Your prompts were snowfall, sweater weather, dancing, subtle intimacy, and, yeah. :’) I had a lot of fun writing this (still having fun - this is part 1, it’s just taking me an age) and I really hope you like it!

Title from: Apple Spell- My Bubba. Same verse as Perihelion.

Part 1.

Frank picks up on the second ring.

“Hey,” Karen says from her office in the bulletin, looking between the blinds at the dark roofs opposite, the glimpse of skyline.

“Hey,” he says back, voice warm and rasped with sleep. She smiles, curving into the phone. The tightness in her chest abates that little bit.

He waits a moment, the quiet comfortable and heavy, before he asks: “Everything alright?”

He’s had no flowers to warn him, this time. Pete Castiglione had given her a more permanent number two weeks after the hotel, and while they had talked in the intervening weeks, had coffee once or twice, old habits died hard. She still had the roses on a counter in her kitchen. He’d text first, before he’d call, and she’d do the same for him.

She takes a breath, feeling the shadow of pain in her healing ribs. “I need a hand."

“You alright?” he asks again, and it’s more focused, now, more awake, as if he’s pulling himself up in the bed she’s imagining him in, readying - for whatever he thought he might need to be ready for. To take another bullet for her, perhaps.

She wraps her free hand over the one holding the phone, and rephrases: “I need a favour.”

“Sure.” Of course. The sleepy rasp is back. She thinks she hears the rustle of sheets. “What d’you need?”

“There’s this, this light that’s gone out in the hallway,” she starts, and she tightens her grip on the phone against the feeling of her pulse speeding up, the feeling of her heart in her mouth. "I can’t seem to reach it.”

There’s a split-second before he laughs, but he does, as she thought he would.

“Get a chair, ma’am,” comes his answer. “Pretty sure you’re taller than me in those heels of yours.”

She smiles and it’s a little silly and a little helpless. She presses her fingertips against the edges of it, even though there’s no one there to see. “Pipe’s leaking, too,” she says. “Ruined all my shoes.”

“Try YouTube.”

“And my broken heater?”

He hums, the sound deep and warm through the phone and the smile escapes her and becomes a grin, the warmth seeming to seep through her fingers. “Can’t have that,” he rumbles, and she imagines him tilting his head into the phone, eyes cast down, or maybe glancing up under his lashes. “Too close to Christmas to be freezing your ass off. What kind of landlord do you have, if all your shit is broken?”

She shrugs a shrug he can’t see, and her pulse is feather light against her neck, beneath where her fingers have drifted. “Beats me.”

A thoughtful hum, this time. “Suppose I should pay a visit, then.”

“Suppose you should.”

“Alright.”

She imagines his smile - the crooked tilt of it, the flash of teeth. It’s cold in the office, emptied out as it is - everyone’s gone except the cover staff and the die-hards and she’s got the uncomfortable feeling that she counts as both. This corner of Hell’s Kitchen is clearing out, too. She can see people hurrying to their cars, hoods pulled tight against the wind. Snow in the streetlights. The rattle of her window panes.

She imagines him - warm. Imagines him in ribbed sweaters, thick socks; colours like a purple that edges into maroon, or teal, or mossy, sea-green.

She digs a toe into the cheap carpet. “Can you make it tonight?”

“Uh, yeah." His voice lowers when he's plays at being an asshole. "Think I have an opening.”

“Good,” she says, too-quickly, and then she laughs. “Good.”

She runs her hand through her hair. “I’ll get take out?”

A sound between a hum and an agreement. “Sure.” More movement, rustling. Swinging himself out of bed, maybe. “Should I, uh, bring any tools?”

“Think I got what you’ll need,” she says, and he laughs again, low and quiet, more breath than anything.

“Alright, then.”

Another pause. It’s not uncomfortable. It could be, and by some rights it should - they’re something nebulous, somewhere stuck between I care what happens to you and whatever happened at the hotel, but - it's not. It's easy, the way things often are with him, even when they're also heartbreakingly hard.

She lowers her feet to the floor. “Alright.”

"When do you, ah, when do you want me?"

"How's seven sound?" Enough time for her to shove her laundry in the wardrobe and play at dusting. Maybe attempt the dishes in the sink.

She can almost hear him nodding. "Yeah, that works."

"See you later then?"

"See you later."

Another pause, before she laughs and hangs up.

She scoots herself back into her desk, settling her fingers over the keys, tapping the computer back to life and the outline for her latest piece blinks back onto the screen. It’s a piece on the implosion and takeover of a private taxi company, something dredged from the backlog and abandoned by no less than two prior journalists. She tries to drag more out of it. The ideas, the words, won’t come.

She looks out at the city again. There are a few lights left on in the building opposite, blurred by the condensation climbing the glass - she can see movement across the floors; see offices, striped by blinds like hers. The snow swirls in the streetlamps. The last of the daylight purples to a sullen, bruise-black.

  --

  Frank shows up at her flat two hours later in jeans and a black windbreaker, and it's so quintessentially Frank that when she opens the door she almost starts laughing again, stretching her sore ribs. There’s a dusting of snow over his shoulders as he lingers in the hallway, melting steadily in the heat. There's snow in his hair, catching on the curls that escape his beanie. “My heater isn't actually broken,” is the first thing she actually says, and he laughs. “Figured,” he says to the hallway, and looks at her askance. “Somehow.”

He doesn’t move to enter, though, and she doesn’t step back to let him in. He looks at her and she looks back, and he’s - no more or less than the last time she'd seen him. His beard's growing out. The bruises are almost gone. There’s a shadow at the corner of his mouth, something new, an indication of a split lip.

He licks his lips, not quite looking away.

“Gonna let me in?”

[casinthegarden]

DO YOU REMEMBER DANCING IN SEPTEMBER 🍁🍂🍁🍂🍁🍂🍁🍂🍁🍂 GOOD FUCKIN RIDDANCE TO SUMMER

[thehumbledtherapist]

guys!! tragedy!! it's been so hot where I live that now that it's cold I have forgotten how to layer!! aaaahhhhh! 🙈

[sawsbvck]

i want a puppy but like i want a puppy so i can put it in things

[chaofruity]

All I remember from my dream last night,

is that Kylie and Kate where there.

And we were in some hotel or something? In the lobby.

Kylie was wearing a jacket, Kate was wearing a red sweater, and I was wearing this really comfy grey sweater, (which is weird because I don't really wear sweaters).

And Kylie raises her eyebrow at me and goes, "..That's my sweater."

So I was like, "...Okay?" and I took it off and gave it to her and she took of her jacket and gave it to me and we switched.

So apparently that was my jacket you stole, Kylie.

Why we were all at a hotel and Kylie and I were wearing each other's clothing, I will never understand.