I swear to god after like a week people will still be reading but nobody leaves comments anymore and I just want to make it absolutely clear that I would be excited and elated to get a comment on these fics one hundred years after I post them.
A FIC IS NEVER TOO OLD TO LEAVE A NICE COMMENT ON. GO FORTH AND COMMENT!
Warnings: rpf, language, mentions of alcohol, slightly smutty daydreaming, mentions of online dating disasters, slander, pining, mentions of past heartbreak, fluff
Summary: Andrew has been secretly in love for a long time. Will he finally find it in himself to confess his feelings to his beloved?
A/N: It took me quite a while to finish this, but it was important to me that I did. I've been struggling with my writing for some time now and maybe it shows. Still, this one is special to me and one of the most personal stories I have ever written.
Picture by Joshua Newton via Unsplash (edited)
If you like my story, you are very welcome to like, comment or reblog. No permission is given to copy, repost or share my work on other platforms.
Andrew could feel the cold creeping up on him from behind his back. What had been supposed to be the last night of summer had turned out to be the first night of autumn instead. Probably sensing the crisp bite of nightfall approach, someone had lit a fire hours ago, back when the sun had still been powerful enough to deceive the rest of them for a little longer. The oak logs, now turned into embers of glowing red, still gave off enough heat to keep the whole group outside way past midnight. Not that he would have needed the fire to keep him warm though. Her sight was more than sufficient to drive away the chill in an instant and provide him with enough heat to turn his cheeks pink whenever his eyes lingered for too long and his thoughts began to wander.
He could have easily sat through the night without their bonfire if only she was there with him. He had to admit though that the fire suited her well, unveiling her full beauty to him once again in all its splendour, like the day he had finally realised he was in love with her.
Dark shadows and golden lights danced across her face, caressing her soft skin with the tenderness of a lover’s touch. With every flicker of the flames, the glossy sheen of her painted lips twinkled enticingly, as if he would have needed the sight to remind him of the countless times he had yearned to taste them. What drew him in most though were her eyes, they always did. But it was here, in the glow of the fire, that they shone like they did only in the rarest of moments, when she allowed her feelings to breach the surface of her usually so reserved demeanour.
The fact that he hadn’t seen her in quite a while only added to the effect she had on him. It must have been a good year ago, but the memory was still as vivid as if it had only been a few days. Andrew would never forget the darkness he had seen in her eyes that day. And he would never forgive the one who had put it there. The one she had called her lover back when lightning had first pierced Andrew’s defenceless heart. The one that sat right here by the fire among all their friends, like Judas among the apostels. Maybe even worse.
With the heed of each and every single one of Argos’ ninety-nine waking eyes, Andrew had watched them all night, searching for even the slightest signs of discomfort on her side, or worse, of phoenix rising from the ashes, but so far nothing alarming had passed between them.
Andrew had always admired former lovers who were able to turn failed romance into friendship, but seeing these two on friendly terms, watching her laugh about his witless jokes as if he hadn’t almost broken her heart beyond repair, made him seriously reconsider the veracity of that belief.
“Oh come on, not again,” someone broke his train of thought with their whiny complaint about the empty cooling bag. “I’m not going all the way up into the kitchen again to fetch you lazy fuckers more booze.”
Immediately more and more voices joined in, eager not to leave their comfortable spots by the fire and walk through the cold and dark of the garden—all but one, and he knew even before her lips had parted that she would take it upon herself to get the supplies from inside the empty house.
“All right,” she uttered with a soft sigh as she stood, “someone hand me the bag. I’ll go.”
Too quick for his brain to catch up on the movement, Andrew found himself on his feet as well and lunged towards the bag, beating her to it without any effort thanks to his long legs.
“I’ll come with you.”
He had feared she would protest, fastening his grip on the handle just in case she would try to yank it out of his hand while telling him she was plenty able to find the way to the fridge by herself. But she didn’t. Instead she just smiled up at him before her lips formed a silent thank you and Andrew was very grateful that his feet somehow remembered how to move on their own.
All evening a thousand questions he wanted to ask her had spiralled through his head. How was she doing? Had life treated her kindly since he had last seen her? God, he hoped it had. Still a part of him wished that didn’t extend to her love life as well and even though he knew it was childish to hope that her heart was still unclaimed because he wanted to make a home in it himself, he did.
But he probably never would. Especially not since telling her about the feelings he had nursed for so long seemed impossible if he wasn’t even able to start a simple conversation now that they were alone. Maybe it was for the best though, seeing that she obviously wasn’t too keen on starting a conversation either.
It hadn’t always been like this, awkward and unfamiliar, as if they had never talked whole nights through, deeply lost in their own tiny universe where everything orbited around music, poetry, literature, mythology, politics, philosophy and all the other topics the rest of the gang found too profound for a night of drinking and light entertainment. He had lived for those moments, loved to pick her marvellous brain until, if only for a brief point in time, he was able to see the world through her eyes.
And now he was standing here like a bloody fool, holding the bag for her in silence while she loaded bottle after bottle of cold brew into it. She was so close to him, her unique fragrance filling his senses every time she stirred the air between them when she turned. It was almost completely blanketed by the sharp stench of smoke. Almost. But not to him. He had memorised her scent like his favourite song, ready to recall every single note of it from memory even after all this time. Yet he seldomly allowed himself to do so. It made him careless, made his mind wander off to a place in which he imagined how she would feel, skin on skin. He wondered if she would taste just as good, her salty-sweet aroma still fresh on his tongue as their bodies became one in heated passion. He longed to feel her breath crawling up his neck as she moaned his name in pleasure, yearned to be wrapped tightly in the warmth of her—
“Andrew?”
The touch of her fingers gently pulled him from his fantasy, away from her and still back to her, back into the bleak reality of the kitchen with its buzzing fridge and cold neon lights.
“Huh?” he muttered sheepishly, his brain still unable to form a coherent sentence after what it had just dreamed up.
His irritation seemed to amuse her, a soft giggle breaking through her concern for a split second before she became serious again.
“Are you all right?”
“Yeah. Sure.” He tried his best to sound convincing, but he knew she could read him like a book and so he was quick to add, “How about you?”
“Me? I’m not the one who zoned out for a moment.”
“True.” He smiled down at her, warm and soft. “But that’s not what I meant.”
“Oh.” For the blink of an eye the smile she had shot him in return faltered, and when it steadied on her lips again, it wasn’t quite the same anymore. “I’m good. Fine, actually. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Well, I just thought…you know…with him being here and all…”
“Ah, I see.” Her hand found his arm and gave it a gentle squeeze before gliding down the length of it and Andrew thought he could feel her touch in his very bones. “It’s very sweet of you to worry about me, but there’s really no need to. After all it was a mutual split.”
Actually, he remembered their breakup a little differently, but if this was the narrative she had chosen to hold onto, he wouldn’t be the one to crush it for her. But when she pulled her hand away from his, it was her who felt the need to correct that statement.
“Okay, maybe the split itself wasn’t that mutual, but I know now that we had it coming for a long time. And I’ve made my peace with it.”
“That’s good to hear.” Andrew felt the awkward silence lure in the darkness that awaited outside the kitchen and still he needed another moment to gather the courage to ask the one question his heart feared the most and was still desperate to find the answer to. “So…um…are you…is there someone new in your life?”
“God no!” He hadn’t expected that reaction at all and even though he didn’t find his fears confirmed, there was something about her eyes and the tone of her voice that made his heart heavy for her. “I put that hope to rest rather quickly after I started online dating.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” Part of him truly was because no matter how much he had wished for her to be single, he would never have wanted it to come at the cost of more hurt.
“No, don’t be. Some of the shit I’ve been through is actually quite amusing in retrospect. Come on, I’ll tell you a few stories on the way back.”
It had taken them quite a while before they could hear the laughter from the fireplace drift over to them again. They had stopped a few times on the way, mostly because he had temporarily forgotten how to walk in the face of the things she had told him. But no matter how he looked at it, amusing was far from the word he would use to describe most of the things she had endured. Disbelief had alternated with rage up to a point that he himself felt awful for even sharing the same sex with this scum.
After what he had just learned, Andrew couldn’t blame her for losing faith in love, not in the least. If anything, he was surprised how well she seemed to handle everything she had been through. In his eyes it was more than admirable. Of course he had known before that dating was seldomly an easy thing, but until now he had never realised what risks it held for women in a world almost entirely shaped by men.
“Promise me you won’t tell the others, okay? I wouldn’t want them to know. Especially not…”
Despite the darkness he could see her eyes shimmer with embarrassment. What for, he didn’t know. She had nothing to blame herself for.
“Of course. I promise. Cross my heart.”
A slender finger moved across his chest in two strokes to support his words and his childlike gesture made her smile. He had hoped it would. What he hadn’t anticipated however was her next move, and as her palm found the very spot he had just marked with a cross, his heart sank into his feet. There was nothing he could do to prevent it from speeding up, forced to stand and watch her catch on to it any second now while he felt its powerful drum underneath the thin layer of skin that covered his neck.
“So, you still seem to get along with Y/N exceptionally well. Any chances for a reunion then?”
Her hand fell away, his fear of getting caught forgotten immediately, when she turned towards the voices. The little group that sat around the fire was still veiled from view by a few thick bushes, but the teasing tone was enough to imagine the grin on the talker’s face. Andrew and the woman by his side were far from grinning though.
“Not in a million years. We split for a reason, you know.”
“Yeah, I totally understand. She’s kind of…special.”
“You can say that again.”
Even in the dim light that reached their hiding spot from the fire, Andrew could see her face fall. Fascinated and petrified alike by the myriad of emotions that flickered in the treacherous gleam of her eyes, he wished he could do anything but watch disaster unfold right in front of him. He might have thought of something, anything, had he known that they were far from finished with their humiliating ordeal.
“Might be the reason online dating isn’t going too well for her.”
“Honestly, I can’t say that comes as a real surprise.”
The conversation was far from over, but Andrew didn’t care anymore. All he cared about was the pair of wide eyes that seemed to stare right into the darkness of the cosmos as her body stumbled back a few steps.
“Y/N?”
The bag fell into the grass with a thud, the bottles inside clinking dangerously, but all he heard was her trembling voice that mumbled an absentminded excuse.
“I…I’m really tired. I should probably head home.”
And with that she just turned, the hint of an apologetic smile on her face, and let the shadows swallow her. For a second he just stood there, frozen in place by the rising panic inside of him, until the faint noise of a shaky breath carried over to him on the breeze.
“Wait.”
But she didn’t. Of course she didn’t. And why would she? He had done nothing to stop those eejits from their slander and he couldn’t blame her for assuming it was because he secretly agreed with them.
“Y/N, stop.”
His feet had begun to move at last, hurrying after her as fast as the slippery grass allowed until he could make out her silhouette only an arms-length away and reached for her.
“Please stop.”
His voice was soft, but his hold on her wrist wasn’t. He couldn’t let her walk away from him, not like this. Not before he had told her—
But the moment she turned to face him, the words died away in his throat as he took her in in the faint moonlight, two watery lines cascading down her cheeks like streams of stars. Words would not be enough to make them stop. It was foolish, a gesture born from sheer helplessness in the face of his beloved’s despair, but there was no falter in his hands when he pulled her in and sealed her lips with his own.
It wasn’t at all what he had hoped their first kiss to be like. But at least for a second he could feel her return it, her hands coming up to his chest, fisting the thick denim of his jacket, before she pushed him away.
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
His honest bewilderment seemed to be completely lost on her. Instead her chin began to tremble dangerously.
“Don’t be kind to me because I’m sad. Your pity just confirms they are right.”
“Pity? You think this was a gesture of pity?”
Her silence was answer enough and Andrew could see her retreat into her shell again. Soon, she would once more shoot him that apologetic smile and flee the scene, without ever knowing that in this very moment, pity was the last thing he felt for her.
“What about this then?”
This time, he knew exactly what he was doing. Fully prepared to be pushed away again, to be yelled at or be slapped in the face, he leaned down. Gentle fingers cupped her cheek and he took it as a good sign that she didn’t shy away from his touch. He waited, one last moment for her to stop him, but she didn’t, and so he closed the last gap between them.
This was what it should have been like the first time. Soft and tender, full of affection, every fibre of his being filled with her until he didn’t know anymore where he ended and she began. Through the haze of his rapture he faintly noticed the soft press of her body against his, unwavering arms wrapping around his neck, and he pulled her closer, securing her in his arms while she moaned her sweet approval into his mouth.
He could have kissed her like this forever, but he still had a point to prove, a statement to make, and so he pulled away.
“Still think this was a pity kiss?” he panted against her lips and when her answer didn’t come, he pulled away further to look at her. He had hoped to be met with the familiar warmth of her eyes, but he found her gaze fixed on his jacket instead, where she watched her own hands adjust his collar.
“Even if it was—”
“It wasn’t.”
“Still,” she paused for a second, “what they say is true.”
“So? What’s wrong with being special?”
“I think we both know they didn’t mean special in a good way.”
Andrew sighed as his palm found her cheek again. “Maybe they didn’t.” He gently tilted her head and waited patiently until she finally decided to look at him. “But I do. I mean it in the best way possible when I say you’re special to me, Y/N. They may be right, you are complicated. But aren’t we all in our own way? That’s how nature has created us, as absolutely unique individuals, beautifully complicated. None of them may understand this, measuring you by society’s grotesque norms instead, but to me you are easy to love.”
“Andy, I…”
“It’s okay, love. It’s okay if you don’t feel the same about me. I just wanted you to know.”
This was it. He had said what he had wanted to say. Now she would try her best to be gentle in her rejection, thank him for his honesty and leave. He would probably not see her again after tonight.
“Fuck,” he mumbled as his forehead sank against hers, “I should have told you a long time ago.”
“Maybe, yes. Then again, I don’t think you could have chosen a better moment to tell me than this exact one.”
His brain had no time to process what she had just said, distracted by the hands that found his trembling form again, one gliding into the warm space between his shirt and jacket, the other smoothing along his cheek and into his hair to hold him in place. As if he would ever even consider parting from her in a moment like this. And then he could feel it again for a heartbeat, the feathery touch of her lips on his, ethereal and unreal like a fleeting daydream.
His next words came in a whisper against her own, anxious if he lost their touch, he might wake from this dream after all. “Do you still want to get out of here?”
“Desperately.”
“Will you let me walk with you then? Just to make sure my special girl gets home safe and sound.”
“I think,” she said quietly, her breath leaving a honeyed due on his lips, “that’s the best idea you had tonight.” Slowly he moved, still reluctant to part from her, and it was only when he had secured her hand safely in his own that he dared to pull away and began walking. “Your best idea apart from that pity kiss, maybe.”
“I told you, woman, it wasn’t a pity kiss.”
It was too dark to see her now, the moonlight shielded from them by the thick branches of a fir tree that hung above. And so, there was nothing he could do but squeeze her hand to make his protest known.
“Bollocks,” she huffed teasingly as she squeezed back, causing Andrew to stop in his tracks.
“Do I need to show you again?”
“It surely won’t hurt.”
She squealed in surprise as he wrapped his arm around her middle and manoeuvred her backwards. With a soft groan, her spine was pressed into the gnarly bark of the tree while her head landed securely against the back of a large hand that shielded it from impact.
“Kiss me, Andrew,” she breathed into the expectant silence, her fingers finding his lush curls again and guiding him towards the source of her heady whisper. And he did. Until he could feel the world around him starting to spin. He could have blamed it on the lack of oxygen or the darkness around them that heightened his senses, maybe even on the mere fact that this kiss had seemed so utterly unthinkable by the beginning of this evening, but he knew too well that it was the woman in his arms who made this kiss the most special he had ever shared. A kind of special he vowed to always cherish and never take for granted.
If I’ve learned anything from about 25 years of actively being engaged in fandom, it’s this: fuck everybody else.
Your favorite character ain’t the fandom’s favorite character? Fuck ‘em.
Your ship is the rarepair or the one people think is icky? Fuck ‘em.
You like the tropes and meta and character analysis that make other people roll their eyes? Fuck ‘em.
Engage with fandom in the ways that make you happy and comfortable and fulfilled and fuck everybody else. Like the things you like because you like them, because not everybody else is gonna love them the way you do.
Be cringe and be free, hallowed be thy name, goddamn.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/?
Fandom: Supernatural, Andrew Hozier-Byrne (Musician)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Dean Winchester/Original Female Character(s), Sam Winchester/Original Female Character(s), Castiel/Original Female Character(s), Andrew Hozier-Byrne/Original Female Character(s)
Characters: Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester, Castiel, Andrew Hozier-Byrne, Hozier - Character
Additional Tags: Supernatural - Freeform, Title from a Hozier Song, Hozier References
Summary:
When fellow hunters follow a lead that takes them to mystical Ireland, Dean, Sam and Cas must come to their rescue. Will they save Dean’s girlfriend from the clutches of one of the oldest monsters they’ve fought?
Andrew knew she'd had a rough day as soon as she'd walked through the front door. The bone weariness oozed from her as she shrugged out of her jacket.
He knew she didn't want to talk about. She had texted him on her break about the life they'd lost in the hospital that day. It happened. Death was a fact of life for her. Granted most days the surgical team didn't lose anyone, these were rare days and some hit harder than others. This one, this loss, was a patient she had known well.
He went back to the red sauce he'd made from scratch. It was her recipe and the first time she'd made it for him was the night he confessed his love. Not because of the sauce mind you, but because of the extraordinary woman that she was. His woman was an unattended garden, filled with beautiful, blooming love and kindness but protected by briars of strength and tenacity. He knew she would be okay, she just needed time.
Andrew heard her bare feet pad up the stairs. He smiled slightly to himself as the bathwater began to run in the room above the kitchen. A bath was her go to. That and comfort food, which he had covered. He continued cooking and gave her time to decompress. He knew what he'd find eventually. Candles lit, an amazing aroma wafting in the steam from her favorite bath oils. She'd have a cool cloth draped over her eyes, she preferred to cry alone at first. Sometimes, not always, she would allow him to hold her.
He turned off the burners and set their dinner towards the back of the stove to keep warm. He'd given her long enough. On his way upstairs he grabbed the ragged paper back book off the desk in the study.
He didn't make a sound but yet he saw her body react when he crept into the room and sat down on the chair for her vanity.
He began to read:
We have no prairies
To slice a big sun at evening--
Everywhere the eye concedes to
Encrouching horizon,
Is wooed into the cyclops' eye
Of a tarn. Our unfenced country
Is bog that keeps crusting
Between the sights of the sun...
He finished the Heaney poem Bogland and a couple more before she stirred again.
"Your voice is a balm to my soul." Her own was a little rough, another sign of a hard, emotional day.
She turned and slid up towards him. Andrew bent forwarded, his hand moving to caress the side of her face.
"I'm sorry for the day it was." He murmured.
A smile graced her upturned face as he leaned in and brushed his lips against hers.
Tom Hiddleston on his new Victorian-era mystery show The Essex Serpent
Tom Hiddleston was finishing up the first season of Loki when he got the call: would you like to play a vicar? “They sent me the six episode scripts, and a letter from [director] Clio Barnard,” Hiddleston recalls. “I was just immediately engaged by it.” The scripts he read were an adaptation of The Essex Serpent, a bestselling 2016 gothic mystery novel by Sarah Perry, set largely on the rural coastlines of Essex during the late Victorian era. Hiddleston, at the time, was engaged in a battle for the multiverse with a variant of his character that took the form of an alligator. The future job promised quite a different experience.
“New experiences are always full of curiosity and interest to me,” he says. Part of that difference was the character he was playing. Loki is complex, to put it generously, with occasional genocidal tendencies; his character in The Essex Serpent, Reverend Will Ransome, is fundamentally decent, a family man who cares for his flock, and worries about the effect that rumours of a mythical sea creature are having on his parish. “He has very different foundations in his character,” Hiddleston says. “Will is a much more solid and much more responsible person than Loki. I wouldn’t put Loki in charge of managing the anxiety of his parishioners.”
Hiddleston, who speaks to Empire over Zoom, weeks before Loki Season 2 begins filming (he clarifies that the framed Miss Minutes poster on the wall behind him is because he is in a production office, “in case you thought my general interior-design taste was just, like, memorabilia from Loki”), was excited at the chance to work with Barnard, the British filmmaker whose social-realist background is about as far removed from the MCU as it is possible to get. “She’s got a really singular and original voice as a director,” he says. “There’s a specific curiosity she has towards a certain humanity, I think – characters trying to connect and heal and find the light.”
If The Essex Serpent has anything in common with the dark prince of Asgard, it might be in its fascination with myths: like the MCU, the story borrows and repurposes ancient folk tales. “It takes place in this God-fearing community,” Hiddleston explains, “where people believe a winged dragon-like beast has come up from the depths to steal children. It’s a belief in the mythic, and how, when we don’t have all the answers, we fill the void with things in our imagination.” He flashes a very familiar grin. “Our imagination is not always accurate.” Perhaps there is still mischief to be found in this man of God, after all.
the technique for getting the rough texture on the stone was so cool to me, like deliberately fill the chocolate with little chunkies of sugar that won't smooth out nicely
Full and finished short-story of the black cat.
Please have a heart for black pets in general, animals do not deserve this kind of hostility.
Please give credit when reposting, Thank you :)
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