if it's not good

▶ : ELIZABETH'S TOP PLAYED SONGS OF 2014

2015-01-05T06:03:48Z

WOAH THERE. A wild antistar_e has appeared! LJ USER antistar_e USES LIVEJOURNAL. IT'S VERY 2009.

Anyway. I could go on about my 2014 and what I hope for my 2015, but really, the thing that's constant is our dependency on music to get through the times, good and bad, right?

So, like I have done for two years previous, I've rounded up my top 25 most played songs of the year and bundled them up in an easy-to-download package for you so that you, too, can have new music and know that it means something to someone out there. Music with baggage? oh god maybe you don't want music with baggage.

YOU KNOW I'M SERIOUS ABOUT THIS, RIGHT?

YOU CAN TELL BECAUSE I'VE EVEN OPENED PHOTOSHOP FOR IT.

[cover art credit: anya rock by verabee]

SEE?

oh my god now you have to scroll through all of my fancy formatting

well

are you ready?

let's scroll

▶ : ELIZABETH'S TOP PLAYED SONGS OF 2014 : ▶
or, a chronological listing of phat beats coming to a pair of headphones near you

Heartlines : Florence + The Machine : ▶
your heart is the only place
that i call home

So it's probably bad form to start off the new year by blaming somebody else entirely for the problems of the last one, but Kate is a menace and she needs to be stopped. (This is a lie. I want her to never stop.) She made this Book Thief mix and I don't know if you … missed … how important The Book Thief was to me for awhile there? SO YEAH, SHE'S A PROBLEM. I'M JUST GOING TO SIT AT HERE AND PLAY 'HEARTLINES' A LOT AND STARE AT HER ADORINGLY.

Salute : Little Mix : ▶
ladies all across the world
listen up, we're looking for recruits

Last year we had to go pretty far down this list before we ran across my most played song of the year. This time we don't have to. This is it. antistar_e's ANTHEM OF 2014. ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED. Girl Power +1, Self Esteem + 2, ability Smash the Patriarchy acquired. I'M SO PUMPED!

The Gravel Road : James Newton Howard : ▶
instrumental

I'M PRETTY SURE I HEARD THIS SONG A DOZEN TIMES BEFORE I ACTUALLY DOWNLOADED IT? Like, it's on a lot of those instrumental-only study mixes and character study mixes and the like. It got to the point where 8tracks'd be playing me something and I'd catch a strain and look over and be like "that's Gravel Road, isn't it?" And then I promptly fell flat on my face and did that exact same thing. It's REALLY GOOD TO WRITE TO, OKAY?

Happy Hunger Games : Sam Cushion : ▶
instrumental

Did you know that before James Newton Howard came along and the Hunger Games franchise became … well, an ironic caricature of itself, there was this YouTube channel churning out fanmade scores to popular series? After hearing District 11 Execution on an unrelated mix, long before we were set to get anything official (we're talking, like, before 8tracks existed, even, though maybe not long enough ago for LJ fanmix communities,) I tracked down the rest of their stuff.

Shenzou : Steven Price : ▶
instrumental

Fact: I'm one of those people that just … doesn't like listening to music with lyrics when she really needs to buckle down and focus. This was especially true when I was writing school papers; songs with words to listen to were just too distracting. But I haven't had to write a school paper in years, so that need for focus has shifted to when I'm writing fic. I'm definitely a fan of the instrumental-only section of 8tracks. "Shenzou", the intense almost-finale piece from Gravity, I keep for when I need to power through the ~emotionally charged moments~.

The Winter Soldier : Henry Jackman : ▶
instrumental

When I downloaded this suite off tumblr, it automatically entered itself into my iTunes credited to Hugh Jackman. It took me awhile to notice.

My Enemy (Paranoia/Electro Suite) : Hans Zimmer : ▶
instrumental

OH MAN, it was such a good year for Hans Zimmer, you're gonna see him further down on this list. Anyway, this was the year I got brave enough to post Maggie Fitzgerald and the Saltwater Drip to AO3, where it … received an amazing amount of acclaim. Like??? I'm still boggled????? Like, people have made amazing rec posts for it, and there's now a podfic version. LIKE!! For a fic that was literally just me being like "BUT I DON'T WANT EVERYONE TO DIE", the fact that it means something to SO MANY SOMEBODIES is just …. !!!! SO MUCH. And meanwhile, the second TASM movie came out. I guess. I mean, the score was pretty bomb, but 2014 was also the year we got a legit Spider-Gwen franchise, SO.

Closer (Precursor Mix) : Nine Inch Nails : ▶
you get me closer to god

We Want War : These New Puritans : ▶
we hold all the secrets, we hold all the words
but they're scrambled and broken so you'll never know

The Human Emotion : Tragedy Machine : ▶
the human emotion is
a very dangerous thing

It Makes No Difference Who We Are : Celldweller : ▶
if we could wish upon a black star
it makes no difference who we are

What do these four songs have in common? Well, friend, if you have the time, you should put this mix into your ears. Once you have done that and peeled yourself back up off the floor, you should trundle on over to 8hacks and enter that URL and download this mix, because you need it. These four songs have about 200 plays each in my iTunes, because I would binge-read Cap 2 fic with them on repeat. Like, listening to one of them without the others is just … weird?? Which is why they're all bundled together here. They're ALL tied for my second-place Most Listened To Song of 2014. I mean, if we're going to talk about early summer, 2014, then we're going to have to talk about the Winter Soldier and we're going to have to talk about how The Human Emotion is a horrible, terrible, no-good train wreck of a song and I hate it so much, let me listen to it a hundred times more. The human emotion is a very. dangerous. thing.

Baddygirl 2 (FLAWLESS REMIX)(feat BEYONCE) : M.I.A. : ▶
flawless bitches say "HEY what's up M.I.A.?"
it's for the women and, of course, Beyonce

2014 was a pretty quiet year in terms of new material in the M.I.A. tag (which remains the only tag of a thing I love that I track on Tumblr). She dropped a few unreleased tracks, and then in May there was this! Which is … basically a love letter to feminist Beyonce. Which, hey, us too, M.I.A. Us too.

Rocks : Imagine Dragons : ▶
where do we go from here?
where do we go from here?

Now that I'm sitting here actually compiling this list, I'm realizing that, tbqh, I did shit in 2014. Like? I worked. I commuted to work. Most of the songs are on this list because they accumulated a lot of plays while I was driving to and from WORK. And you know what becomes REALLY IMPORTANT when literally all you do is work??? The songs that get you through your minimum wage job without killing anybody!! YEAH!!!! THIS SONG GETS ME SO PUMPED TO BE NICE TO PEOPLE IT'S SO UPBEAT AND BUBBLY AND YOU GOTTA MOVE YOUR SHOULDERS TO IT COME ON GUYS LET'S GO BE CHEERFUL TO CUSTOMERS WHO DON'T DESERVE IT. YEAAAHHHHHH!!

Tongues (ft. Kopps) : Joywave : ▶
tell me all the things i've missed
who's been killed and who's been kissed

THIS SONG IS WAY TOO BUOYANT AND POPPY TO PUT ON A BUCKY BARNES MIX, BUT MAN, I WAS THIS CLOSE.

Turn Down for What : Lil Jon : ▶
turn down for
WHAT

[source]

Ugly Heart : G.R.L. : ▶
okay, you're pretty
your face is a work of art
your smile could light up new york city after dark

OKAY OKAY BUT HAVE WE ACTUALLY TALKED ABOUT CAP 2 YET? I mean, you've probably talked about it in general, but I mean, like, have we talked about how Cap 2 just devoured me there for awhile? (BECAUSE IT DID. YOU MIGHT HAVE PICKED UP ON THIS.) Sometimes I think it's hard to give yourself permission to love something SO MUCH, because there are always going to be people who try to police the way in which you are a fan. But just. THAT EXUBERANCE? That curl your toes, clutch your face, make silly noises every time you see something related to that think you like DELIGHT? That was me and anything Cap 2 related for about four months straight. UGLY HEART ACTUALLY HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH CAP 2, but it's here by virtue of the fact that I was introduced to it in the middle of this DELIRIUM HAZE and it mixed up with it like fizz in a damn pop bottle, I could NOT STOP SMILING FOR WEEKS. Like, 4th of July, my family camped out for fireworks and I laid out on our blanket and listened to this song again and again and AGAIN (the benefit of being from a deaf family is that I wasn't actually being rude by doing this.) Note: The version of Ugly Heart that I have is ripped from the music video, which apparently is faster than the album version? IDK mccarthyism thinks this version makes them sound like chipmunks and I think the slower version sounds like a funeral dirge, SO YOU DECIDE.

Just Desserts : Marina & the Diamonds: ▶
waking everybody in the neighborhood
telling everybody that i'm no good

I had this mix saved on my to-listen list on 8tracks for the longest time, because I knew it was going to be GOLDEN. I took at least half of those songs, and Just Desserts started accumulating plays immediately because it's another LEVEL UP, Girl Power +1, achievement KILLED A DUDE TOOK HIS MONEY unlocked song, and I am 100% here for that. This was in August -- I've got this really powerful memory associated with it, of sitting on my grandmother's couch while she and my mother watched true crime reality shows on Oxygen, reading this fic, and waiting for my next episode of In the Flesh to buffer. I was really, really happy.

Counting Bodies Like Sheep to the Rhythm of the War Drums : A Perfect Circle : ▶
don't fret, precious, i'm here
step away from the window

SPEAKING. OF. IN THE FLESH. YOU KNEW IT WAS COMING, DIDN'T YOU? YOUR FRIEND ELIZABETH IS A SERIAL MONOGAMIST WHEN IT COMES TO HER FANDOMS, and I've only been making baffling, incoherent noises about that indie zombie show with the queer protagonists for MONTHS NOW. Well, we're here. We've arrived. We're going to start talking about the songs that entered my life thanks to this terrible, horrible NO GOOD SHOW that has eaten me up I LOVE IT SO. Okay, I know that a lot of people got familiar with Counting Bodies in the heydey of the Supernatural era, but I'm fifteen minutes late to every party, so I'm just getting here now. And I now have at least eight different versions of this song -- your download will include three! The original, the graveside remix, and a live performance of a remix.

Disgusting : Ke$ha : ▶
it's disgusting, how i love you
god, i hate me. i could kill you

Have you ever just let your life become a sinkhole? Just -- everything you put down in it will inevitably get sucked down towards this one point? Every song someone accidentally places near you, every "imagine your otp …" post, all just steadily … slides … into the vortex and you're not sure you're allowed to hang a sign on the door that says "~*~ FOLLOW FOR MORE SOFT GRAVITATIONAL BLACK ABYSS ~*~" but you definitely should? Like. This is such a Simon/Kieren song. "But, Elizabeth, this is Ke$ha." yeah. yeAH.

Instructions for a Bad Day : Nomorad : ▶
in the unlikely event that you think you have no one
look again

Okay, I might be cheating here a little bit, because this one is technically spoken word poetry, but wow, WOW, I am so in love. You know how 8tracks will automatically start playing some dumbass recommended playlist once you're through with the one you ACTUALLY wanted to listen to? Well, 8tracks did that to me here, except it started playing this mix and this song was the very first track on that list, and I just … ???? I STOPPED IN MY TRACKS. (also, SOFT GRAVITATIONAL BLACK ABYSS: "love and hate are beasts and the one that grows is the one you feed" is my Macy tag, and "the truth is whether we see them or not, the sun and moon are still there and ALWAYS there is light" casually shows you images of Amy & Simon, SUN & MOON, and "in the unlikely event you think you have no one, look again" is my MUCH-USED Walker siblings tag. It'd be silly to do a whole In the Flesh vid to this, but BRO. BRO I WANT TO SO BAD.)

Bring the Noize (J.u.D. Remix) : M.I.A. : ▶
freedom's just another word
for nothing left to lose

You know, I toyed a couple times with the idea of making a Snowpiercer fanmix, mainly just so I could have some version of "Bring the Noize" on it, but I would probably need a much wider knowledge of K-pop than I actually have. Seriously, though, Bring the Noize was my top-played track from last year and I was SO PLEASED to find a fandom for which it worked so well. Er. In a … terrible … kind of way.

Freaks (feat Savage) : Timmy Trumpet : ▶
the bass and the tweeters make the speakers go to
war
timmy play your trumpet let those people go beserk

*looks directly into the camera like she's on the Office*

Coward : Hans Zimmer : ▶
instrumental

I TOLD YOU HANS ZIMMER WOULD BE BACK. Your download at the end of this post will actually include two tracks off the Interstellar score -- this one and Imperfect Lock, because I couldn't decide which one was more important to me. There are two tricks to listening to these songs: 1) wear headphones, and 2) turn your back on it. Like, both Coward and Imperfect Lock's strength comes from the slow build, so just let yourself forget it's playing and BE SURPRISED. I have gotten SO MUCH writing done with these two songs, Hans Zimmer brought his fucking A game.

The Hanging Tree (Movie Version) : James Newton Howard : ▶
are you, are you coming to the tree
they strung up a man they say he murdered three

[suicide tw, family death tw] On November 21st, as I was getting ready to crack into Pokemon Alpha Sapphire with the delight of a twenty-four year old about to return to the most important thing in her twelve-year-old self's world, we got a phone call. My grandmother had received a terminal diagnosis from her doctor, then went home and tried to kill herself. You have to understand, for all that I joke that being a former foster care kid means I've got thirty siblings and more mothers than a Russian fairytale, my immediate family is actually very small. I was very close to my grandmother. For as long as I've had a paycheck, I've been setting bits of it aside so I could fly out to Palo Alto to visit her. I told funny stories about her. Last time something happened to a family member, I dropped my scholarship and moved 4000 miles from Hawaii to Nebraska, and the fact that I couldn't do that this time just. Just?? Let's be real, I fell apart. I'm still falling apart. Grief is a messy business of building yourself up on one side and crumbling down on the other. And anyway, the point of all this is to kind of tell you that I got into this song in a weird way. On days when I couldn't get from my bed to my dresser without crying, I could sing this song. On days when I couldn't get more than four hours at work without feeling like I was going to shatter, I could sing this song. It became a marching song. Is that weird? It sounds weird when I'm typing it up like this. I'm going to stop, you didn't need to hear this.

Take Me to Church (female vocal) : Hozier : ▶
good god
let me give you my life

YOU KNOW, you might as well just call it right now: my last words are going to be some variation of "god DAMMIT, HK did a thing. Somebody hold my beer." And funny story, I didn't … actually … like this song very much at first? That's why you aren't seeing it earlier on this list. (Although lbr, I was possessive of this song from the instant HK introduced it to me, and took it as a GREAT PERSONAL OFFENSE if I saw anyone else using it for anything that wasn't In the Flesh -- ridiculous? Yes. FOLLOW FOR MORE SOFT GRAVITATIONAL BLACK ABYSS.) So I wasn't that fond of Hozier, and while the Neon Jungle cover is great, it's also more acoustic and I'm just not about that. Then in December this post crossed my dash. NOW I'm under the impression that this isn't another cover, but rather OP was editing Hozier's voice in the original version and came out with a surprisingly womanly register? WHICHEVER, SUDDENLY MY INTEREST IN THIS SONG INCREASED 1000%, ALL LISTEN ON REPEAT, ALL THE TIME.

So here we are, it's 2015 and I'm a disaster.

AYO LET'S HAVE A TOAST.

good job on that scrolling i'm really proud of you enjoy
: DOWNLOAD :

Keep the Streets Empty for Me | a Liesel Meminger & Max Vandenburg mixtape

2014-01-24T04:55:06Z

If you have come within a ten-foot radius of me in the last six months, I have probably yelled at you about the Book Thief.

If you have not come within a ten-foot radius of me in the last six months, that distant and unsettling sound that keeps you from sleeping at night because you're not sure where it's coming from is probably me yelling about the Book Thief.

Just so you know.

I would be more embarrassed, but, you know.

Tracklisting, cover art, 8tracks link, download link, AND SPOILERS underneath the cut.

Keep the Streets Empty for Me

SIDE A: LIESEL MEMINGER
also known as:
the book thief, the word shaker, the best standover man
the good girl, the girl with the accordion
the only survivor on himmel street

01 | IF I HAD A HEART | Fever Ray
An introduction to your narrator: Death, the book thief

this will never end because i want more
more, give me more

02 | BRIONY | Dario Marianelli
The shallow basement of 33 Himmel Street

instrumental

03 | ANNE DREAMS OF HER CHILDHOOD | Trevor Morris
Her brother, the train, and the Gravedigger's Handbook

instrumental

04 | DID YOU SEE THE WORDS | Animal Collective
S is for saumensch, or: Papa teaches Liesel how to read

because it's messy, yes
this mess is mine

there's something living in these lines

05 | SOMEONE IS WATCHING | Dario Marianelli
"Papa, they're checking basements."

instrumental

06 | DEVIL'S SPOKE | Laura Marling
The daunting task of keeping Max alive

i'll be your keeper
i'll hold your face away from light
i am yours until they come

all of this can be broken
all of this can be broken

07 | AWAKENINGS | Grayson Matthews
Ilsa Hermann, the giver

instrumental

08 | TO KISS OR NOT TO KISS | Richard Gibbs
Her best friend, Rudy Steiner

instrumental

09 | KEEP THE STREETS EMPTY FOR ME | Fever Ray
"What a beautiful day to die, Liesel."

molching
keep the streets empty for me

10 | RAIN TEARS | Scala & Kolacny Brothers
The bombing of Molching

each passing day and year
taunts me because you're not here

SIDE B: MAX VANDENBURG
also known as:
the jewish fist-fighter, the struggler, the star stealer
the jewish rat, the last jew walking
the great threat hitler could not face alone

Schola Hebraeica & the Jewish Heritage Youth Choir | EL MELEKH YOSHEV (INTRODUCTORY PRAYER TO THE 13 ATTRIBUTES OF MERCY) | 01
Enter the struggler: he is scum, he is starving, he is afraid. Please, try not to look away.

almighty king, sittest on the throne of mercy
show forth thy compassion

Hans Zimmer | LEAVE NO MAN BEHIND | 02
The secret life of Hans Hubermann

instrumental

Yann Tiersen | SOIR DE FETE | 03
"Do you still play the accordion?"

instrumental

Mumford & Sons, Laura Marling & Dharohar Project | MEHENI RACHI | 04
Max paints over the pages of Mein Kampf to make The Standover Man

perhaps i'll be a bird one day if i'm good enough
i'll get up and fly away and give up all this love

i am from a country land where beauty only grows
and though i dream to leave some day
i dare not ever go

Greg Edmonson | RIVER UNDERSTANDS SIMON | 05
The swapping of nightmares

instrumental

Woodkid | IRON (ACOUSTIC) | 06
A short history of the Jewish fist-fighter

from the dawn of time to the end of days
i will have to run away

i want to feel the pain and the bitter taste
of the blood on my lips again

i am frozen to the bone, i am

Rachel Portman | SOME THINGS TOO LATE, OTHERS TOO EARLY | 07
Liesel Meminger builds a snowman

instrumental

The Antlers | KETTERING | 08
Rosa Hubermann's very large heart

i should have quit
but instead i took care of you

and i didn't believe them when they told me
that there was no saving you

Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross | SOFT TREES BREAK THE FALL | 09
The word-shaker's tree

instrumental

Ludovico Einaudi | DIVENIRE | 10
Alex Steiner's shop, 1945

instrumental

The man had such a nice laugh.
"I don't believe it. She's alive!"

LISTEN | DOWNLOAD
alternative download link

♕ : ELIZABETH'S TOP PLAYED SONGS OF 2013 : ♕

2014-01-02T00:40:43Z

It's bitterly cold outside, our Christmas tree is a hodge-podge of whatever light sets we could find that weren't burnt out, and the super intelligent people in casa de Elizabeth totally forgot to purchase champagne to toast in the New Years with, which is fine because all that really matters is the segment they play about the Funniest Commercials of 2013, anyway.

HAPPY NEW YEARS!! :D

So last year I did a thing for you guys. This year I decided I should also do a thing. Thus, a thing for you!

Because nothing's quite as constant year to year as your dependency on music to get through it, right?

It's interactive, even! You can click on a button, and it will put some music on your device!

See what I did there? You know this is a serious post because I opened Photoshop for it.

♕ : ELIZABETH'S TOP PLAYED SONGS OF 2013 : ♕
a chronological listing of phat beats fit for a queen

wow big font. such music. very formatting.

ready?

okay.

Million Dollar Gold Digger : Lana del Rey vs Kanye West : ♕
you're screwed up and brilliant look like a million dollar man
so why is my heart broke?

So you know how those people you always envy who make those photosets that will kindly link you to a youtube video that you never click on because you're too busy reblogging the graphic so fast the Internet spins? Well, the real reason you never click on those little [x]'s is because sometimes you'll find a song and you'll never get your life back. This was the case with a Mark Zuckerberg-centric TSN graphic and I and this mashup. How perfect.

Clowns in the Building : Blaqstarr feat. M.I.A. : ♕
gun's in the building, they told me

I know it's a universal rule that if you love a thing, never look at its tag on Tumblr, but M.I.A. is one of the few exceptions I make, because where else am I going to find unreleased tracks and remixes and mashups? BASICALLY, if M.I.A. features in it, I will want to listen to it. Clowns in the Building is only, like, a minute and a half long -- which, tbh, is probably the reason it has so many plays on my iTunes.

Weighty Ghost : Wintersleep : ♕
you can't kill something that's already dead
so leave my soul alone

This one isn't exactly new to me in 2013, it's been floating around my iTunes for awhile, but that's what we invented Shuffle for, right? Otherwise we'd never find those songs again. I originally got this off a mix full of foot-stomping, hand-clapping songs. It's surprisingly upbeat and rousing for such a wintry song. I got a coffee shop clapping to it once last March. It's that kind of thing.

Waltz with Vampires : Fired Earth Music : ♕
instrumental

In case you feel like remembering why you love people and the things that they make, here's a tribute video to the best moments of the science fiction genre. This song features in the second half.

Endurium : Biosphere : ♕
instrumental

It turns out that ambient sound is my jam. Or lack of jam, as the case may be. There may or may not have been a point in my life where I lived in 8track's dark ambient tag. Endurium's one of the gems I trawled out of that, though.

My Body is a Cage : Peter Gabriel : ♕
my body is a cage
that keeps me from dancing with the one i love

Speaking of 8tracks, though! I was first introduced to this song through this Cesare/Lucrezia mix (which! While we're talking about the Borgias, oh my god, this was such a good year for highly murderous, corrupt siblings in love, let me doodle hearts all over everything.) If you think it's just some slow, sad Peter Gabriel song, you are sorely mistaken -- everything gets epic toward the 2:45 mark. And then during a Skype session, I was asked to talk about The 12 Labors of Sean Parker and I had this song going in the background, so some part of me is always going to connect this song with that fic and that moment.

Run Boy Run : Woodkid : ♕
run boy run
this world is not made for you

I was at the movies with mccarthyism and when this song got used in the previews, I turned to her and wailed WHAT IS THAT??? and she was like IT'S FROM TEEN WOLF HOW DO YOU NOT KNOW THAT? and I don't even remember what we went to see, because all I remember is I NEED TO FIND THAT SONG IMMEDIATELY. So this song comes in as my 3rd most played song of 2013, because it is just, just EVERYTHING I love in a song. It's fast, it's dramatic, it builds up to a full orchestra, it's the kind of song you FEEL in your chest as it pounds, and I'm so glad Tumblr latched onto it as a Nico di Angelo song, because oh my god.

Bad Girls x Callisto : M.I.A. vs Brillz : ♕
live fast die young
bad girls do it well

If you don't think M.I.A.'s Bad Girls was the best thing that happened last year, well, obviously you are allowed to have your own informed opinions and experiences, but let's talk about how much I love this song and how many remixes of it I've managed to accumulate. Of the new ones I've collected this year, this mashup tops the rest in terms of play count.

Bring the Noize : M.I.A. : ♕
truth is like a rotten tooth
you've got to spit it out

AND COMING IN AT MY MOST PLAYED SONG OF 2013, drumroll, please!! If you decide to go ahead and download the whole .zip at the end of this post, you'll find yourself with both the single and the album version, because obviously it's very important that you have both.

Gangnam Eye Joe : Rednex vs Psy : ♕
oh my god, you know how the song goes, don't front

Who said mashups couldn't be pure art.

Blood Sugar : Pendulum : ♕
we come tonight to bring you
the sonic recreation of the end of the world

Friends, lend me your ear, for I have breaking news: soxdamnxcute makes the best mixes. I got this song from this electronica mix she did for the Cthulhu mythos, and you know how sometimes with mixes there's really only one song that grabs you? With Kat, it's all of it. I TRUST HER TASTE. IT'S IMPOSSIBLE TO PICK A FAVORITE.

Blood on My Name : The Brothers Bright : ♕
when you're cursed you're always hoping that a prophet would be grieved
oh, lazarus, how did your debts get paid

If we're going to talk about 2013 in terms of fictional characters, then ngl, it was kind of Nico di Angelo's year. I was scrambling to finish Children of the Moneywort Tree for ohmeguro's Incest Big Bang challenge before House of Hades came out, because new canons always mess with WIPs, and so for that, I slammed a pair of headphones over my ears and put Blood on My Name and Run Boy Run on repeat for about two weeks straight.

Me and the Devil : Soap&Skin : ♕
and i said, "hello satan,
i believe it's time to go"

Southern gothic was a tag that got pretty popular on 8tracks there for awhile, and I was absolutely, 110% there for that. Who doesn't love that Gospel-gone-dark kind of sound? It's a good sound for a swampy summer, hot and stewed. I put Me and the Devil in particular as the opening track on a Sabriel fanmix, so that's my strongest association with this song. (Is it just me, or did mixing become harder after the advent of 8tracks? Like, you really have to pay attention to how each song sounds going into the next when you put it on 8tracks, where before you could get away with throwing a .zip together and letting people pick and choose what they'd like. I've got a couple mixes in progress, and sometimes it feels like surgery, I swear to god. BUT. More importantly! LADY NECROMANCERS.)

The Dark Knight/Inception : Hans Zimmer : ♕
instrumental

Oh, look, it's another mashup! Who's surprised? Anybody? Nah, didn't think so. This song blends together the main themes from The Dark Knight and Inception, and is absolutely fantastic if you're writing, say, an emotionally-charged action scene in a superhero fic. Which, oops, I did 81k of this year.

People (Riton Version) : M.I.A. : ♕
encrypt it, code it
i'll put it on your laptop

So somebody took an unreleased track of M.I.A.'s and sampled it for their own sound. I was sold pretty much instantly.

Devil's Spoke : Laura Marling, Mumford & Sons, & Dharohar Project : ♕
all of this can be broken
all of this can be broken
hold your devil by his spoke and spin him to the ground

You know how sometimes you'll find a song at just the right point in your life that, later, it doesn't matter who you've become or what you're doing, when you listen to it, you're transported back to that time and the person you were? Like somehow a song became part of your identity as much as a change in hair color or a language would be. This is going to be one of those songs for me. Like, it defined me there at the end of summer, lifted me straight up onto my tiptoes every time I listened to it. I'd just come back from a trip to Texas to see altogetherisi that became a straight drive up to Minneapolis for my brother's wedding, I'd just finished The Book Thief and I was obliterated, haunted, and completely charged by that book. And then mccarthyism linked me to this song: Mumford & Sons and Laura Marling collaborating respectfully with a group of Indian artists, and I fell hard.

The only reason why Devil's Spoke doesn't top my list in terms of playcount is because I have three different versions of it. Combined, that's over 1000 plays. Your download at the end of this post will include Laura Marling's original version (sans the wild banjo strumming and the Rajasthani elements,) the live version from the iTunes festival, and the album version.

To Darkness (The Full EP) : Laura Marling, Mumford & Sons, & Dharohar Project : ♕
perhaps i'll be a bird one day if i'm good enough
and i'll get up and fly away and give up all this love

And here's the full EP, all four songs, all twenty minutes, because it by itself accumulated enough plays to warrant a spot all its own on this list :D When I get my hands on high-quality screencaps from The Book Thief, you better watch out, because I am going to be one of those people that makes lyrics-oriented graphics for pretty much every song.

Diamond Thrones : Rihanna vs Ramin Djawadi : ♕
we're beautiful
like diamonds in the sky

Why yes, White Panda took Rihanna's "Diamonds" and mashed it up with the Games of Thrones theme, and now it, too, can be yours. You're welcome. (If I ever do a Hazel Levesque fanmix, this will be on it. Just saying.)

Tell Em [Diplo Remix] : Sleigh Bells : ♕
did you do your best today?
did you do your best today?

My second most played track of this year! If you are a person of good taste, you will drop what you're doing and listen to this bitch anthem mix of soxdamnxcute's. As per Kat's usual, the whole mix is pretty damn affirming and kind of makes you want to go out and kill a dude. This song in particular got me through the month of November, which is easily my least favorite time of the year: I'd jam my earbuds in first thing in the morning and put this song on repeat until I got to work, and by that time, I'd be awake and bouncing on my heels and ready. DID YOU DO YOUR BEST TODAY?

Y.A.L.A. : M.I.A. : ♕
that's why they invented karma

BOMBS GO OFF WHEN I ENTER THE BUILDING. You only live once, right? So why do you keep doing the same shit? Because you know what you need in your club beat: allusions to the Hindu elements of reincarnation.

Awakenings : Grayson Matthews : ♕
instrumental

Watch this. There, that's all you needed to do. You're welcome.

Double Bubble Trouble : M.I.A. : ♕
uh oh, you're in trouble
i step up in the game and burst that bubble

I KNOW, I KNOW, if we're going to talk about the albums of 2013 that blew everything else out of the water, then Beyonce's surprise drop in December tops everything that came before it, everyone else go home, etc, etc, but MATANGI WAS ALSO A THING THAT HAPPENED IN 2013 AND I WAS NOT DISAPPOINTED. You know what I'm really looking forward to in 2014? ALL THE REMIXES THAT ARE GOING TO HAPPEN. I AM SO READY.

Team the Best Team : Doom Tree : ♕
remember that road we take?
swear the devil's backbone would break?

SO. I haven't really talked about fandoms yet so far on this list, because with the exception of The Book Thief and PJO, music was a little more detached from my fandom experience this year than it has been in previous years? And also, I didn't devour much in the way of new material in 2013, but! Welcome to Night Vale is definitely a thing that happened to me. (And, and, and, the amount of people who came out and said, "oh, I knew you and WtNV would be a good match" after I wrote fic for it was kind of the best thing, like, a really great thing to hear, okay, I'll stop talking.) Like most people, it blindsided me out of nowhere, because it was suddenly ALL OVER MY DASH and I was like, "what? what is this? excuse me, what's covered in jellyfish?", only to find myself completely charmed and sold on it the second that song about waiting for the bus came up in the second episode. And that song probably deserves a spot on this list, too, but lbr, when it comes to sheer number of plays, here's the weather from the First Date episode.

Who We Are : Imagine Dragons : ♕
they say we're crazy

I made a friend at work!! The kind of friend where you take your breaks at the same time so you can sit together and take turns sharing earbuds and eating the cookies you stole from Scott the arborist's office and yelling enthusiastically about how Max Vandenburg and Liesel Meminger absolutely do not need to get married later in life but how cool it would be if they did and also how Ben Schnetzer needs to scandalously expose collarbone more often, that shit is fantastic. She gave me this song! It's a December song. I don't know how else to describe it. It's a snowfall, low light, December song.

very scrolling wow well done here you go
♕ : DOWNLOAD : ♕
alternate download link

➲ NANOWRIMO: NOVEMBER 12 & 16

2013-12-02T07:46:10Z

Oh man, I need to learn how to come home from work and do something besides fall into bed and go right to sleep. Manual labor jobs, you guys D: On Small-Business Saturday, I took apart one 15-foot artificial Christmas tree, one 12-footer, two seven-footers, assembled a 12-footer, and stopped another 12-footer from falling on a little girl. I am scratched up and sore everywhere. I want the holiday retail season to be over D: I have to go back tomorrow D: You guys D: guys D: guys no D:

BUT. On the other hand:

OF THAT, 48k of it exists now in posted fic! So I'm going to call this month a victory. At the very least, I'm in a healthier place than I was at this point last year.

➲ NANOWRIMO: NOVEMBER 12 & 16
For laria_gwyn and usernameism and oneoffour111, Teen Wolf w/Harry Potter and PJO, Allison gen, Allison/Scott and one implied Scott/Allison/Isaac, AU, 12,000 words

So I took the prompts for the 12th, the 16th, and a prompt that I got last year and never completed because meep, meep, all aboard the HMS Failboat, and I'm combining them into one fic. Because reasons. The plot is not cohesive. There is no plot. This is not the plot you are looking for. This is Allison Argent kicking ass and taking names in a couple different universes. You never need an excuse for that.

[You can read that here @ veritasrecords, because once again it got too long to post here on this journal.]

As for the NaNos for the 18th through the 30th, I'm still working on them! I have some other stuff that I've been neglecting that really needs to be addressed, but I like everything I've been outlining, so I'll probably keep churning them out into December! \o/

But right now I need to sleep, and then I need to send out a mass text when I get up because I need to see The Book Thief approximately seven more times.

➲ NANOWRIMO: NOVEMBER 14

2013-11-20T06:09:06Z

This is a placeholder post, because I'm going to have to crosspost this over to veritasrecords, where it will actually fit and I won't have to divide it up into two unsightly entries. Well, I probably will, but at least it ... will look better over there? idk bro, I am not at my best right now.

➲ NANOWRIMO: NOVEMBER 14
For rosepetalfall, The Social Network/Pacific Rim, Mark, Dustin, Marilyn, appearances by everybody, gen, AU, 12200 words

JAEGER PILOTS AU FOR rosepetalfall, who, if you don't already know, is the genius behind this genderswapped Hermann Gottlieb fic. I don't know what she needs me for, she pretty much already wrote the thing when she claimed her day, because she is awesome like that :D:D:D I HOPE YOUR MIDTERMS WENT/ARE GOING WELL, MY DEAR.

This isn't quite what she prompted, but I did my best.

[Mark Zuckerberg is not in California when the Trespasser makes landfall.]

➲ NANOWRIMO: NOVEMBER 10

2013-11-14T07:27:00Z

WELP, I'm a couple days off schedule. WE'RE JUST GONNA. THING. AND NOT THINK ABOUT IT.

So, like I imagine it happened with most people, Welcome to Night Vale showed up on my Tumblr out of nowhere one day like a particularly bad rash, like one second everything was fine and the next it was like, "the fuck is this? where is all this coming from? excuse me, what's covered in jellyfish?"

So that's a thing I'm listening to on the commute to and from work.

➲ NANOWRIMO: NOVEMBER 10
For rumpledlinen, Welcome to Night Vale, Cecil/Carlos, 7100 words

rumpledlinen asked me for Cecil/Carlos, anything from Carlos's POV! Keep in mind that I'm not entirely caught up yet -- I'm only on episode 24, which is the one before the anniversary episode, so this is canon compliant only to a certain point and then squiggles off into the void.

Unproofread, as usual. Do the light format thing, trust me.

[read @ AO3]

"Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it."
Hebrews 13:2

Carlos Montenegro only has one thing to say to you.

It's good advice, so listen up.

If you, at a very convenient point in your life, are offered an unpaid internship in your dream field that seems like it's been tailor-made to fulfill your every career-driven desire, and honestly, everyone says you'd be stupid to pass it up, do not take it.

It's going to be a trap.

Fuck, it's probably going to be Night Vale.

-

Because we don't believe in building suspense or wasting time, here is everything you need to know about Carlos Montenegro:

He is twenty-eight years old. He's going grey around the temples, but he insists that it's premature, hereditary on his mother's side of the family, you understand. Sprays of silver existed in his sister's hair before she even entered high school; she parted her hair so that it framed her face, making her look at least six years older than she actually was. She insisted it came in handy when buying alcohol while underage, but Carlos knows for a fact that Isa has considered alcohol to be supremely boring from the first moment she tried it, and she said these things because they were expected of her. The Montenegro siblings always did what was expected of them -- they were sensitive like that.

This was the same sister who learned to read before he did, and while cheerily showing off her new knowledge, insisted that the "e" on the end of the Life cereal they were munching away at was silent.

Carlos, then just four, thought this was abominable -- a letter, silent? A letter that serves no purpose? Letters are amazing, letters are building blocks of an entire language, you can't just shut one up like that! She had to be lying!

(That was the first and only time Carlos successfully beat Isa up. He's always been a little proud of that; usually when he tried, she just sat on him until he gave up.)

His favorite song -- yes, he can pinpoint one favorite song exactly, although like everyone else, he goes through phases where he'll listen to one thing on repeat and not at all the week after, and, also like everybody else, he scrambles to find something to say at the dreaded "what kind of music to you listen to?" question -- is "Smoke on the Water," and once, the day before his semester final in O-Chem, he deleted everything else off his iPod and streamlined that song until he came out the next day on the other side of the Rubicon, shaky and exhausted with a solid passing grade in the class.

His mother jokes that she raised him on Flinstones vitamin tablets and the good side of Credence Clearwater Revival's Cosmo's Factory, and Carlos finds everything with a sound like "I Heard it Through the Grapevine" inherently comforting, nostalgic, although if you're going to talk about CCR, you've got to pay respects to "Bad Moon Rising."

("Ah, yes, the town anthem," Cecil will say later, but we haven't gotten to him yet.)

He graduated from Truman University in central Missouri when he was twenty-two years old, and four years later, graduated from med school in South Dakota simply because that's what he was expected to do. His parents didn't give him many options: it was either doctor or lawyer or President of the United States, and since Carlos thought it strange that people could go their whole lives living in the same body without knowing much about how it worked -- what the pancreas looked like or what went on inside a kidney or what happened along the line of human evolution that made breathing involuntary, giving human ancestors the ability to focus on other things, like eating and complaining about how tedious the primordial soup had been, god, weren't they glad they didn't have to go back to that mess? -- he majored in anatomy and went to med school from there.

Then, around the time that the rest of his classmates were talking about the kinds of residencies they were likely to get, a friend of his invited him to a presentation the brand-new missus was giving at the SCCC.

Kirlia Onwensowu was a bright-teethed, pear-shaped woman that Carlos liked in a really vague, don't-know-her kind of way, having always prioritized schoolwork over getting to know his friends' girlfriends and thus frequently got caught off-guard when those girlfriends became wives. She was one semester away from obtaining her Master's in Geology, and she'd elected to attend this conference and give a presentation on the desertification of the Oklahoma prairie land.

Carlos attended and sat with Qaasim, who gripped his shoulder and thanked him for showing his support, which made Carlos feel gratified and a little guilty, because he didn't really want to be here, but it was important to both the Onwensowus, so.

There were four presentations total that day: Kirlia's, and one on the effects recent breakthroughs in seismology had on volcanology research in Indonesia, and another on ocean-floor cartography, and by the time the fourth one ended (a refutation of the popular belief that California will just someday fall into the sea -- it won't, shut up,) Carlos's tailbone was numb and his heart was sing, sing, singing in his chest, humming with feedback like a guitar amp. His ears were full of bees and he felt like the dust was shivering off his bones.

He graduated from med school, because he was already there, he might as well, and shocked everyone (except Isa) by promptly turning around and enrolling at the SDCC, where Kirlia now taught two introductory Geology courses.

He tells her, eventually, that it had been that conference that hit him the way some people look at John 3:16 and light up from the inside.

"Not once in my life have I sat in one place and thought, 'this. This is what I want to do,'" he tells her, pouring water from the kettle into their cups and watching the mate leaves swell at the surface. "I thought people just made that shit up. And then I felt it. I wanted to know everything there was to know about earth science."

"Yes!" she says delightedly, tucking an afghan around her enormous belly and rubbing it absently, her fingers finding the baby's head and then its heels under the surface of her skin, the way she does. "That's it exactly."

He hands her the yerba mate and the pipe, warning her it'll need a minute more to steep.

"For me," she continues. "It was Terry Pratchett. You know Discworld?"

"Yes!"

"Yes. There was a line, I know it, about time and how time breaks the instant you try to apply it to anything except humans, how stone doesn't think about time. The Earth is so young that the continents are still exuberantly bouncing off of each other just for the joy of crashing together. To me, that was always the most perfect description. To give the tectonic plates such a childlike euphoria like that. It made me want to be a scientist."

They absorb this, sipping thoughtfully at the mate through their pipes.

Carlos's phone buzzes with a text. Got out early, says Qaasim. Is my wife with you? Will I interrupt mad science if I come over?

"Sometimes, I think it's hard to control what you wind up doing," Kirlia continues. "It's nice to think that you can choose the direction you life goes in. Sometimes … sometimes, though, it just happens to you."

-

Two years into his new program, Carlos idly logs into the community college's Career Connect and browses through available internship opportunities. There's never anything listed, of course -- all the internships in Sioux City are for business associates and the CompSci kids, with the occasional posting aimed at suckering in an education student -- until suddenly there is.

-

Carlos's interviewer is a strange, small white man who doesn't show his teeth when he smiles, and instead of introducing himself as "Mr." or "Dr.", he says, "Agent," and Carlos forgets the name of the Bureau he's representing almost as soon as he says it. He just knows it's a government internship. He offers Carlos a two-year position in a city called Night Vale in southern New Mexico -- the Bureau will cover the rent, but he gets no wage and all other expenses are on him. He'll have the equipment and the lab space he needs. They are basically writing Carlos a blank check to study seismology for two years. They are giving him a sandbox and telling him to play.

He says yes, of course.

Wouldn't you?

Of course you wouldn't. You paid attention to Carlos's warning at the beginning of this story, like we told you to. You know better.

-

The first person in Night Vale he talks to is the superintendent of the building where he will have a one-bedroom apartment for the next two years. She has straight dark hair cut severely at her chin and big, pearlescent earrings that remind him of Betty Rubble from The Flinstones, and she waits patiently as he fumbles his earbuds out of his ears and tilts towards her, saying, "Sorry, what?"

In a polite kind of way, she repeats herself, "What's the weather like today?"

Carlos blinks, and backs up so that he can look out through the broad glass door, which shows a very clear view of a very clear sky.

"Er," he goes, because surely the answer should be obvious, even to her? "Sunny?"

She nods, still in that polite way, and continues, "Who's it by?"

-

Night Vale, New Mexico, has a population of 22, 506. It has seven churches, seven McDonalds (by city ordinance passed in 1972, one cannot exist without the other,) two elementary schools, four Army Surplus stores, one place to get pizza, and one Arby's. The average birth rate is six children per three parents. The average life expectancy is 29 years, which explains the family size, as surviving childhood is generally seen as a great accomplishment, worthy of praise and only mild murder attempts from that point on. Murder attempts, by the way, are usually reserved for bank holidays -- it's considered impolite otherwise. The official city color is mauve. The official city motto is "HP Lovecraft is a motherfucking tool," with a more family-friendly version of "motherhugging" inscribed under the crest of the Night Vale High School, which is rather Oedipal and has been confusing generations of Night Valiens since was motto was decided on by the City Council in 1959.

-

None of the radio stations in Night Vale play music.

Some nights, when the skies are clear and there's minimal interference from the surveillance vans parked outside on the street, he can pick up the community radio station from Desert Bluffs, some fifty miles away, but all it really plays is the kind of easy-listening Carlos is used to from dentist's offices, and once he swore he heard some mellow jazz rendition of "When the Saints Come Marching In," so how about not.

The stations in Night Vale just seem to play a lot of old Dr. Laura Shlessinger broadcasts, News Hour twice a day (they used to broadcast it all at once, a full hour of news like the name would suggest, but then decided that was poorly balanced, and so separated it into a morning segment and an evening segment,) This American Life ("2012's most popular podcast! This segment has been sponsored by the Sheriff's Secret Police, who disclaim any responsibility for how you'll feel at the end, because this podcast will sucker-punch you,") and two-hour segments of assorted ambient noise, like the babbling of a clear brook with a nice background chorus of a bone saw steadily slicing through something wet.

A few weeks pass before happenstance (read: two of Carlos's fellow interns get eaten and weren't considerate enough to back up their notes on their USB drives beforehand) leaves him with an extra hour after lunch, and he finds himself at Dark Owl Records in Old Town.

It's this overcast hole of a shop on the ground floor of a red brick three-level kitty-corner to the Italian restaurant, with cheap carpeting and a welcome mat that says Warning: Dog Can't Hold Its Liquer despite absolutely no evidence of there being any dog, although Carlos swears he feels something damp drag up the back of his hand when he checks the back of the ZZ Top compilation CD.

The prominent display just inside the door is a cardboard cut-out of all five members of One Direction, cheerfully holding up a vinyl version of their latest single and labeled No Direction and All Directions and Which Direction and You Were Stupid Not to Ask For Directions (Now You're Dead.) The rest of the store doesn't seem to be organized so much by genres like "country" and "alternative" so much as they are "partly sunny" and "slight chance of precipitation."

He asks Lakeisha when he gets home that night and she stops him to tell him he has mail (the same standard one-per-household Big Rico's coupon that every mailbox in Night Vale gets once a week.)

"No one ever taught you meteorology?" she asks, bemused.

"No?" says Carlos, who is beginning to suspect that there are a lot of words in Night Vale that don't mean what he thinks they mean.

"Well, bring your laptop down and show me your iTunes," she says.

With magnanimous patience, she clucks her tongue and rearranges his music library so that the genres are properly listed: Sunny (alternative rock,) strong wind gusts (R&B,) freezing drizzle (the more bluegrass side of indie,) Category 4 Hurricane (Metallica. Metallica is the only artist worthy of this title.) It takes them quite awhile, and Carlos learns that she has three children -- only one of whom is still living, enrolled at NVHS and playing snare drum in the marching band and a Dreadnought Scout in the Night Vale chapter of the Boy Scouts -- and that she's thinking of going back to school to become a travel agent.

Shortly after Christmas, she's dragged off by mute, hyperstrong, mutant children at the Eternal Scouts induction ceremony.

He raps his knuckles on the window of the surveillance van parked across the street and asks for Lakeisha's family address. He sends them a condolences card. It's paltry. It's awful.

For a moment, Carlos Montenegro forgets about clocks, forgets about impossible seismology, forgets about the vague yet menacing government agency that hired him without pay. He promises himself that people don't need to die this frequently and this horribly. They're used to it, but Carlos certainly isn't.

-

There are a lot of things in Night Vale that Carlos doesn't understand.

Time, for example. How to pay the bill at restaurants. How the grocery store can have Abuelita Swiss Miss but not the kind of Swiss Miss that come with the freeze-dried marshmallows that swell up when you add boiling water, for real, what the hell.

He could ask Cecil Baldwin, he supposes. Cecil does the evening half-hour of the News Hour on the radio, and out of everyone he's met, he seems like the most likely candidate for answering his questions with enough information to satisfy all of Carlos's potential hypotheses, because the man does like to wax poetic.

But Cecil's in love with him.

Everybody knows that -- "oh, you're Cecil's scientist!" and its variations have become Carlos's pet names entirely without his consent, and since he's talked to the guy, like, twice, it feels stupidly unfair that he's been flagged like that, like a possession -- and nothing's more useless than a person who makes everything that's you all about them.

So Cecil's kind of a last resort, and it sucks, because objectively, he's kind of Carlos's type, although honestly, Carlos could never tell you exactly what his type is, since he's never given it much thought -- his friends all got girlfriends who became wives who became geologists, and Carlos just … got degrees and posted annoying messages on his sister's Facebook Wall. It's just, every time Carlos lays eyes on Cecil (those two times so far, it's always just been his voice delivering the day's disasters, otherwise,) everything inside of him just takes notice and says, that.

That, Carlos. Tap that.

No, brain, says Carlos.

Carlos, tap that, his brain insists.

I don't want to tap that, Carlos reminds himself, even though he probably does. You know, it's most likely some kind of freaky Night Vale science, like some kind of perception field or something wacky like that that makes Carlos see exactly what he wants to see. Maybe the real Cecil has no physical form.

At this point, Carlos is prepared to smile and nod and run scientific tests on anything.

-

Two times becomes four becomes eight becomes coffee that one time (Carlos does not listen to that night's show, because it was horrible enough living through it the first time, although Simone makes kissy faces at him on the other side of the lab door at the NVCC until Carlos tapes a type chart of fluvial processes over the little window and goes back to work.)

To be honest, he was kind of expecting Cecil to be more … creepy about it.

He doesn't know why he isn't, and it's not exactly something he can ask, like, "Oh, by the way, Cecil, you talk about me sometimes like the sun shines out of my ass and your crush doesn't seem to be diminishing any, but you also don't, like, stalk me at work or anything, in fact, you're being very respectful and I don't know how to handle that, as far as I know, I can't file a restraining order against you having feelings at a distance. What's up with that?"

In fact, Carlos has almost been in Night Vale for an entire year before he steps out of his apartment building, fumbling to get the stupid knot in his headphones undone, when a jaunty voice chirps out, "Hi!" and he jumps about a foot.

"Jesus Christ, Cecil!" he exclaims.

At the bottom of the steps, Cecil fidgets sheepishly. He's carrying two coffee cups, each lid stamped with a fair trade sticker that Carlos recognizes, and he wordlessly extends one.

"What are you doing here?" seems like a good question to ask.

Cecil opens his mouth, closes it again, and, if anything, looks even more sheepish. Purely by accident, Carlos has gotten a lot better at interpreting Cecil's facial expressions. He thought he wasn't doing too shabby on the "developing a social circle" front (whatever, Isa, he's capable of making friends with things that don't need to be approached with safety goggles on, thank you,) except Carlos's social circle keeps getting devoured by things, and Cecil has become a staple by sheer virtue of the fact that he's survived this long.

"I honestly just happened to be passing by," he goes. "And I remembered your coffee order, and … I …" He shrugs, still holding both cups, and bites his lip. "It made complete sense in my head at the time, but now that I'm standing here, it's probably a little creepy. Is it creepy?"

For a beat, Carlos is torn between reassuring him in a kneejerk way, and being honest, and so he stands there and it's a little astonishing, realizing that if he wanted, he has the luxury of honesty with this man; there are a lot of people to try to pacify in Night Vale so that they don't visit violence upon you, but Cecil Baldwin is not one of them.

"A little," he says, and Cecil cringes.

"Sorry."

Carlos rearranges the strap of his satchel and stuffs the headphone knot into his coat pocket before taking the coffee, appreciating the warmth and the immediate smell of it.

He hops down off the steps, sidestepping the cactus garden. He glances back when Cecil doesn't immediately follow.

"Which way are you headed?"

It's an invitation. Cecil hears it; he lifts all the way through onto his tiptoes, eager, and then gets a hold of himself.

"I didn't want to make you uncomfortable," he says, and quickly trips over himself to add, "I mean, not that I don't want to spend time with you! I just don't want to … you know, cross a line or anything." There's definitely a perception field going on, because he's addressing exactly what Carlos was thinking earlier, who does that? "I don't want to stalk you. I leave that for the Sheriff's Secret Police. Hi guys!" He waves to the tallest saguaro in the lot, and sure enough, when Carlos follows his pointing finger, he spots a pigeonhole camera embedded in the cactus flesh.

"Jesus Christ." He has never paid attention to that before, and he's lived here since September.

"So yeah."

Carlos waits. He lifts an eyebrow. Cecil's shoulders lift like they've been filled with helium, and he steps back onto the sidewalk and falls in beside him.

"I do want to spend time with you, though, even if it's just to the bus stop," he offers, almost shy. This is the same person who talks about blood dripping off the walls like it's an NPR segment.

He rolls his eyes so hard it actually hurts. "I know," he says dryly. "None of the other laws of the universe as I learned them make sense anymore, but that much, at least, is a universal constant I can rely on. One of the laws of physics, even. For every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction. As long as time progresses from one instance of now to another, Cecil Baldwin will want to spend it with me."

Silence greets this remark. Silence and the remark shake hands. They exchange pleasantries. They move on, and the silence stretches.

Turning it over in his head, Carlos suddenly realizes that it might have sounded a little cruel, implying that Cecil's feelings for him could be taken for granted.

But when he glances over his shoulder, he finds Cecil beaming at him, all of his teeth on display.

"What?" he goes warily.

Beaming is never a good sign in Night Vale. That much concentrated happiness usually comes from some kind of government-initiated drug regimen.

"You made me a metaphor!" cascades out of Cecil in a rush, the way someone might say, you remembered my birthday! or is this diamond real? "You likened me to physics. That's like calling me a fairy tale. Did you just call me a fairy tale?"

"Oh, no," Carlos sighs, and resigns himself to hearing this gushed about on tonight's show.

-

Qaasim Onwensowu calls him a little after eight in the morning on a Tuesday that is actually a Sunday in the outside world, while Carlos is still flipping on lights in the lab and pulling the chairs down off the tables, clattering them loudly against the linoleum to alert Simone to his arrival. He's already grinning before he even gets the phone completely to his ear.

"Hey!" he goes.

"Bwazaha!" answers somebody who is definitely not Qaasim. That's a very, very young voice.

"Hello?" Carlos says, feeling fond and a little like his heart's been pulped. "Is this Mercy?"

"Ahaha!" answers the voice delightedly, now much closer.

"Mercy, did you take Dad's phone? Mercy, can you give the phone to Dad? Abouya, Mercy, give the phone to your abouya."

There's no reply, just indistinct noises that Carlos is pretty sure is her chewing on the phone case, but after a minute or two, Qaasim's voice floats into hearing range.

"-- chew on that, do you know what my phone bill runs each month? Of course you don't, silly girl, yes, you. Oh, no, who did you call? Hello?" This last is said directly into Carlos's ear.

"Hey!" he says, for the second time.

"Carlos!" Gratifyingly, it doesn't take any time at all. "Brother, how's it? Did my daughter butt-dial you?"

"Chew-dialed, I think."

"A-ye. How you been, though? I saw your Facebook status the other day and meant to leave a comment, but you know how it is when you think about doing something so much you forget you haven't actually done it."

"Yeah, I do." He frowns a little bit. What was his last Facebook post about? He doesn't think he's updated his Facebook in months. Every time he tries to say something about Night Vale, the statuses delete themselves within moments. Carlos doesn't want to point fingers at government conspiracy, but yeah, no, Carlos is pointing a giant neon sign at government conspiracy.

Then again, maybe it's a Facebook post he hasn't made yet. Time's broken, remember?

"I'm good," he says blandly. "How's Kirlia? How's Mercy?"

Qaasim, reliable, wonderful Qaasim, willingly gushes about both of them for so long that Carlos feels like he hasn't left at all, like he's still in his ground-level South Dakota apartment where the snow piles up against the back door, where the wind packs it down to the point where Carlos can open the door and stick bottles of beer into the ice and come back for them later, like he's still scrambling to get to classes on soil erosion and magma classifications, still receiving afternoon calls to come babysit Mercy so that Qaasim and Kirlia can go out. He sits down, homesickness compacting his gut into a tiny, knotted shape.

"But seriously, how's Area 51?"

He shifts the phone to the other ear, and the cool air rushes across the hot side of his face. "Area 49, actually. It's like Area 51, but a little bit to the left."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. The whole town is a government-created psychological and social experiment to test what kind of immunity the human race could potentially build towards catastrophic horror. Every aspect of city life is controlled, including the outbreaks. So far, it turns out that that threshold is pretty high -- the human brain will try to rationalize a lot of bizarre shit, and the rest of it it just … accepts. It's actually not so bad. There's good pizza, although the pizza doesn't come with dough anymore because everything wheat or wheat-related will eventually turn into a malevolent spirit that consumes its host."

"Seriously?" Qaasim doesn't sound so amused anymore. " … Are you kidding? I can't tell, that's your mad science voice and usually you don't joke with that voice."

"Yes, Qaasim," says Carlos softly. "Of course I'm kidding."

-

That day, he draws the short straw and runs out to the Arby's to grab lunch for himself and the other seismologists (and, of course, Simone,) and, because this is just how his day is going, gets in line behind Cecil, who is dressed for work and has his headphones in his ears like nobody ever told him that was rude.

He touches his fingertips to Cecil's spine, a single knob of bone the faintest pressure against his index finger (he thinks it might be T5, or possibly T6, of the thoracic section on the vertebral column, although he'll have to count every one to be sure,) there on the other side of that vest, before he drops the contact. Cecil startles, glancing back and then immediately spinning around, breaking into that unnerving good night, Night Vale, smile. Carlos has gotten so used to his voice in the evenings that he forgets the rest of him is pretty nice, too. Well, it's all right. If you're into that.

"What are you listening to?" he asks.

"Hmm?" Cecil goes.

"The weather, Cecil," Carlos says patiently. "What's the weather like today?"

"Oh!" Without hesitation, he digs one earbud out and offers it to him. "Here, give it a try."

Carlos steps in close, taking the proffered earbud and nudging it into place inside his ear. This close, he can see the places Cecil missed while shaving this morning. In the background, the fry vat sizzles and machines beep their short orders and something growls loud enough to make the Employee of the Month plaques shiver on the wall. He's pretty sure Cecil's stopped breathing.

"Are you guys going to --" starts the hooded figure in line behind them, but then it just sighs and goes, "never mind," and uses the shaft of its scythe to nudge past them in order to go up to the cash register to ask for a #2 Combo and, "like, all the horsey sauce you can possibly fit into a bag."

"There's a legal limit on that," the boy in the Arby's hat says.

The hooded figure says nothing.

"… yeah, okay," the boys gets out meekly, and then the fade-out of whatever Cecil's playing transitions into the beginning of "Smoke on the Water" and all the air crushes straight out of Carlos's lungs.

-

Outside, on the pavement, Carlos squares his feet like he imagines someone might stand down a five-headed, fire-breathing mayoral candidate and says, "Okay, take me out."

He doesn't think about what he'll do if it doesn't work out, if he can't make himself enjoy himself: Cecil Baldwin once drove a barber out of town to drink cactus juice in the desert because he crossed him. All of his interns die horrible deaths or disappear mysteriously. If he can do that, what will Cecil do to Carlos? He doesn't think about it, he can't -- it's the same feeling he had when he sat in a geology conference at the SCCC and thought, this.

"I beg your pardon?" says Cecil.

"Out, Cecil. I'm asking you out. On a date. Or something."

He swears that for a moment, Cecil actually vibrates.

"When?" he goes, crumpling the neck of his Arby's bag in his fist in his excitement. "What day? Tomorrow?"

"No!" Carlos yelps. "Jesus. How about … I don't know, Thursday?"

"There's no Thursday this week," Cecil reminds him.

"What? Why? You know what, never mind, don't tell me, I don't want to know what's going to happen on Thursday that's so horrible they need to cancel it. Saturday?" Is Saturday too serious a day? Saturday's a traditional date night. There's a lot of pressure on Saturdays.

"Yes!" says Cecil, with all the enthusiasm of a tectonic plate, boundlessly young and crashing into things for the sheer joy of being able to do so.

-

And then, on the Thursday that doesn't actually happen due to a scheduling error, something takes hold of Carlos around the throat before he can dodge and tries to suck his soul out by way of his sinuses.

In the hospital, after, he tries calling his sister, and it rings through and rings through and rings --

-

"I'm sorry," says the man from the vague yet menacing government agency. "I'm afraid you cannot relocate. It would violate the terms of your contract, which, might I remind you, you signed and had notarized by Bethany Stiedman at the UPS Store on March 15, 2012."

He's balding. He reminds Carlos of a political cartoon; there's got to be a punchline here somewhere and he exists solely to deliver it. There isn't, of course -- it's just a bland smile, a faux-friendly expression, and Carlos never should have taken this internship. It was too good to be true. It's always too good to be true.

He sets his jaw. "Are you going to stop me, Mr. … ?"

"That's Agent Coulson to you, please, Mr. Montenegro. And I wouldn't recommend it, no." Somehow, with just the smile that pulls at his fish's mouth, he is the most menacing thing Carlos has seen step foot in Night Vale. "Your unique contributions are important to your government and her interests, and we thank you for them."

"Of course," Carlos says darkly. "I'm sure."

-

He walks home, after.

Six blocks, and he forgets that's where he's going. He gets lost, looks for a bus stop, can't find one, gets lost again, comes out on the other side of a trailer park and suddenly knows exactly where he is, because that's the Arby's, there at the top of the hill. There's only one in Night Vale, after all; the void orbits it. He starts walking again. A pack of feral dogs keep pace with him for awhile, their paws silent and dashing away to mist every time they connect with the concrete; he catches the reflection of the street lights off the surfaces of their eyes in his peripheral, yellowed moons darting in and out of view. Each dog has several sets of them.

He's hungry, he realizes, and once he does, his stomach yawns open inside of him.

He doesn't know what he's hungry for, but he nods to the militia-man parked on a folding chair outside the Desert Flower Bowling Alley, who nods back with the solemnity universal to men who pass each other in the dead of night, silently acknowledging that everyone else is pretending to sleep but they themselves cannot muster the same energy. He's in a pair of overalls and boots ripped along the sole, showing red socks underneath. A semiautomatic lays across his lap. On the radio, Cecil's been talking about the monsters beneath Lane 5 again.

Inside the Moonlite All-Nite Diner, Carlos orders eggs. He doesn't really want eggs. He doesn't know what he wants, just that the longing is there for something and this isn't it -- he wants something that tastes like his mother's chili rellenos, the tamales they spent all Christmas Day making, their fingers wet and pruned, their sleeves covered in flour. He wants something like the popcorn they popped on the stove, shook up in a big aluminum bowl and sprinkled with condensed milk to make it taste perfect. He wants to go home, where Monday progresses into Tuesday without any possibility of a complication, like Tuesday getting sucked into the void or pterodactyls.

He wants toast. He wants to be able to eat a slice of toast without having to worry about mind-control.

He eats his eggs, instead.

Somehow, he isn't surprised when the cowbell attached to the door clangs, footsteps squeak at the linoleum, and Cecil slides onto the bench across from him.

"It isn't our date night yet," he points out. He sections off another portion of his egg, scrapes it away, and puts it in his mouth.

"No," Cecil agrees, and Carlos cannot stand to look at him. Not right now. The picture-frame of his jawline, the knot his fingers make of each other on the table-top -- all of it will break Carlos, fracture right through him like pressure on thin ice. But Carlos has acknowledged Cecil's voice long before he ever set eyes on the man himself, and nothing stops him from hearing how bright Cecil sounds when he says, "Why, am I not allowed to see you before then?"

"That's weddings you're thinking of," he corrects him. "I'm no bride, Cecil."

"No, you're wonderful," Cecil says easily and so damn happily.

There's really nothing to say to that. The waitress comes by, bringing a tall glass of iced tea for Cecil. It smells cool, like shade and summer. Carlos swallows.

"I want to visit my family for a birthday," he says.

"Oh?" says Cecil.

"Yes," says Carlos.

"But?" says Cecil.

"They won't let me," says Carlos.

"People come and go all the time," says Cecil. "Granted, usually not in the same condition, or even in the same pieces, but we never trap visitors, either. Almost never. Okay, not often. I know, I know, not helping, Cecil. Why won't they let you leave?"

His teeth lock against each other. "I am a fixed point in time. Supposedly. I've been locked into place and I can't leave until my internship is over, not even to visit my sister for her birthday."

"You have a sister?"

"Yeah."

"What's she like? Did she try to sacrifice you to appease angry gods when you were little?"

"Yeah," says Carlos again, surprised. They slept in bunk beds until puberty, which is when their parents finally stopped being so stingy about that spare room, and she used to dangle him by the ankles off the side of the top bunk, pretending to slip every time he stopped yelling loud enough to satisfy her. To him, the fall had been fathomless and frightening, and the collection of red scarves and jumbled-up orange and yellow clothes below looked like a pit of fiery horror straight out of Indiana Jones. "Yeah, she did."

"That's so cool," says Cecil. "Did she have any stupid nicknames for you?"

"Stop that," says Carlos.

A pause.

A pause, and then the dreaminess freezes right where it is on Cecil's face. Slowly, it slides off.

"Stop that," Carlos's voice rises. If there was anybody else in the diner, they would have had to work at ignoring him, because he is being very loud. His chest burns, a constriction tightening around his ribs, and it's like a beam of light has been shot straight through him, all of his anger compressing down into one hot, focused point. "Just. Stop."

"I'm stopping!" is said very quickly. "What am I stopping?"

"All of this," Carlos gestures with his fork. "All of this is happening -- you -- you live in a place that's like nowhere else on Earth." He flings his arms out, "And all you're curious about is me?"

Compulsively, Cecil's fingers curl around his glass. They leave tracts in the condensation. His eyes tick left, then right; he clearly wants to give Carlos an answer he wants to hear but he's unsure if what Carlos wants to hear is what Cecil wants to say.

"Yes," he decides on, finally, like he's choosing between two fatal options.

Carlos breathes out through his nose.

"Right," he says, and shoves himself out of the booth with as much dignity as possible. "I'm done."

He doesn't check to see if Cecil pays (or how he pays, since Carlos has never been clear on that one and has mostly been avoiding eating out out of ignorance -- except for Big Rico's, of course, because Carlos has no desire to be arrested or set on fire for not observing the mandatory attendance law, and besides, Big Rico's has the dine-and-bill policy he's used to from the outside world, that's nice of them,) just pushes himself out into the desert night.

He marches across the parking lot, feeling numb all over and unusually sensitive at the same time, aware of how his heels hit the concrete and how different the air feels out here than how it did inside, a sharp dryness at the back of his throat. He tastes eggs around his molars.

At some point while he was inside, the shift changed over at the Desert Flower Bowling Alley, because there's now a high school girl sitting in the chair outside the door, bandolier strapped to her chest and her eyes keen, alert in the dark. Carlos nods to her and receives only a thin squint in response, a tightening of her hand on her school-issued Uzi.

He recognizes Cecil's car and stops. He lays his lab coat across the hood, then folds his arms and waits, chin tilted to the sky.

It's Friday, and the void tonight is beautiful. The stars cluster around it, colored in shades of sugar-white and muted by the city lights; Carlos plays a game with himself, finding one and watching it for as long as he can without blinking, wondering if it is truly a star or just another helicopter. It's usually a helicopter. Okay, they're all helicopters. They form whole constellations of surveillance. There are no true stars in Night Vale.

He doesn't have to wait long.

Footsteps crunch at the pavement behind him, and Cecil says, "You're waiting, is that a good sign --" with the same uncertainty in his voice that he'd once asked ten thousand listeners, Night Vale, does he like me? and Carlos --

Carlos doesn't know what he's going to do until he's doing it.

He turns, already reaching out and grabbing hold of Cecil's forearm because it's the closest part of his anatomy he makes contact with, and uses the hold of it to reel him in. He puts his back up against the side of the car because he knows he'll need it, and Cecil staggers and lands against his mouth with a noise like a man missing a stair in the dark.

Carlos snatches him up by the face to keep him there, kissing him once, twice, and on the third kiss, Cecil opens his mouth and kisses back.

It devours him like void.

-

The week that Carlos Montenegro falls in love, the mortality rate in Night Vale spikes 13%.

-

He could make a map, he thinks, of the inside of Cecil's mouth; he's already doing the math. He could create cartographical art out of the backs of his teeth, that one ticklish spot at the front of his palate that Carlos can just barely reach with his tongue. Cecil's fingers in his hair become a phantom pressure he misses when they're not there.

Carlos has gotten pretty good at predicting Night Vale's next round of fatal bullshit and pinpointing how to minimize casualties when it happens -- he has, after all, had a lot of practice -- and Cecil distracts him for a little while, sure, with the dizzying rush of infatuation, the heartbeat of want, want, need, and the way their hands shake and grasp and hold like they'll never have enough, but Carlos compartmentalizes it all eventually, and Night Vale's death rate evens out again on its steady declining path. Carlos can multitask. He can pull Cecil into the station bathroom before he goes on air and pin him up by the paper towel dispenser while Khosekh watches with the disapproving stare universal to cats everywhere, floating or no ("excellent, I always wanted to have sex at work," says Cecil, after, and Carlos counts L1 to L5 on his lumbar column and says, "you liar, you never thought about it until I walked in here," and Cecil hooks his hands around his neck and admits against his mouth, "okay, true,") and still have time to figure out what's causing the sudden, gruesome deaths of Subway patrons who try to order something with a calorie count over 500, and stop it. Carlos is shaping out to be a pretty valuable government asset, thank you.

"Your heart is pounding," Cecil murmurs to the dark, pressing his ear to the skin over his sternum the way people do when they're trying to break a combination lock. Outside, mysterious lights pass overhead, and out in the desert, a coyote howls. "I like the beat."

And Carlos -- Carlos feels so overwhelmingly fond it's like a burn, a painful awareness coating the inside of his chest.

He touches Cecil's face, drumming his fingers against his jaw in something that might be the riff from "Smoke on the Water", might not, then folding down the tip of his ear just because he can.

"Is that today's weather?" he asks, and Cecil smiles against his skin.

-
fin

Note: The NaNo for the 12th has been cut up, cannibalized, and reabsorbed into NaNos that'll come at a later date. You'll see it again!

➲ NANOWRIMO: NOVEMBER 6

2013-11-11T01:36:27Z

Today was a "cry in your car in the parking lot behind the Microsoft offices" kind of day. I did not win any awards for adulthood today.

On the bright side, has anyone listened to M.I.A.'s new album yet? Correction, has anyone STOPPED listening to it? Because I sure haven't. Also I heard Linkin Park did a thing? Twelve-year-old me is pretty anguished about that.

This entry is also now ~~one~~ ~~two~~ a couple days out of date. We're just gonna go to the fic now, k?

➲ NANOWRIMO: NOVEMBER 6
For callunavulgari, Percy Jackson and the Olympians/Harry Potter, Percy/Nico/Annabeth, appearances by ensemble, companion to this piece, 8500 words

One year ago today, I wrote a PJO/Harry Potter AU for notworthy and callunavulgari, and so for the anniversary of that fic, callunavulgari asked for a sequel, this time with more Percy/Nico/Annabeth content, which is tots fair because the first one didn't have much in it at all :D It had, like, a dream sequence. I am good at this thing, you guys, clearly.

Reading that is highly recommended before you read this.

Unproofread, un-Britpicked. Remember, the light format will probably be easiest on your eyes!

[read @ AO3]

-

♆ | On an early June day, breezy and cloudless and effortlessly bright, a young man at the Gryffindor table finishes eating his breakfast (charmed a very encouraging shade of blue by Hazel Levesque, seated two chairs down between Teddy Lupin and Frank Zhang,) and stands. He slings his bag over his shoulder and wishes the fifth years good luck. Teddy’s hair turns orange and crackles nervously in answer.

His name is Percy Jackson, and his own internal panic has reached a comfortable plateau. His Charms NEWTs start in ten minutes.

He never makes it.

♆ | In the corridor at St. Mungo’s, just outside the Thickey ward, Artemis stoops absent-mindedly to pick up a stray sweets wrapper, Cadbury purple, only to have it immediately snatched from her hands.

“This won’t do,” says the man in front of her. He has enough hair for an entire boyband, floppy and golden and curling just so over his forehead. His hair alone could probably compete on X Factor for him. His robes are on backwards, tied like a dressing gown and gaping open to show his bare rear end. Artemis catches a glimpse in the mirror and averts her eyes, long-suffering. “I can’t autograph this!”

“Gilderoy!” chides the mediwitch who follows him out of the ward. “Dovey, don’t harass the nice witch.”

Gilderoy Lockhart hands her the wrapper back, meeting her eyes. Then his gaze slide past her, spotting the kids in the corridor. He brightens. “I know! They’ll want my autograph!”

“Now, now,” the mediwitch catches his arm, hooking it through hers firmly and giving it a fond pat. “We’ve got to see the Healer now, remember?”

“Do we?” says Lockhart vaguely, but lets himself be towed away. Artemis rolls the wrapper around her little finger, watching him go, then sighs and tosses it in the bin.

She goes back and sits against the wall between Percy and Thalia. There are chairs, of course, but they aren’t particularly safe to sit in, as they keep on trying to levitate without permission. As Artemis tucks her ankles under her thighs, Nico paces by again, close enough to touch, and the chair legs lift off the floor in response. Percy catches the one to his right and holds it down before it can float away like a balloon.

She watches Nico go, reach the end of the corridor, pivot, and come back. His fists make rocks in his pockets, and his shoulders look like they would hurt to touch. He’s no better held together than marshmallows or matchsticks.

“Who was that?” Percy wants to know.

His voice lands strangely at their feet, like he’d thrown it across a Quidditch pitch with dodgy aim, and Thalia glances up. A silver tiara encircles her head, sitting low on her brow. The sides of her head are shaved down to bristles, with the rest styled to swoop over her forehead, a little stiff with gel in places and dyed the same colors of a peacock. She left the gloves from the dye box by the tub; Artemis had gone in there and initially thought she’d slaughtered something that left her hands coated in very dark blood.

“Hmm?” she says.

He nods in the direction Lockhart had gone. Thalia glances down at her mobile. She keeps snapping the cover on and off without seeming to realize she’s doing it. It buzzes in her hand, and she tilts it up in surprise -- a hindbrain instinct, a very Muggle thing to do, checking one’s phone, Artemis thinks, but of course mobiles don’t work here -- but it’s just Nico again, making it glitch.

Most children have a handle on that kind of accidental magic by his age. The proximity to Percy and Thalia probably isn’t helping.

There’s no news on Bianca’s condition yet.

“That bloke. I just thought -- well, it looked like you knew each other …” Percy trails off awkwardly.

Artemis looks down at her hands. She flexes them into a fist, making the skin whiten underneath the stag ring on her middle finger. It’s strange, how she didn’t consider Bianca to be hers until there was a possibility that she wasn’t going to be anymore.

“That was my brother,” she says, shrugging her shoulders, like, what can you do.

Both Percy and Thalia’s heads snap up.

“I didn’t know you had a brother,” Thalia says blankly.

Artemis acknowledges this with a rueful smile. “Twin, actually,” and somebody makes a noise in their throat. Nico stops pacing, drawn into the conversation. “Our mother named him Apollo, but he grew up and named himself something else, the way you do sometimes.”

“What happened? I mean, to make him --”

“A Memory Charm. He tried to cast a Memory Charm on a child, and it backfired.” She folds her arms, leaning her head back against the wall. “Every generation fears the one that comes after it. Remember that. Fear turns into a need to control. My brother tried it. Now he wears his robes backward and doesn’t recognize me, after we’ve loved and hated each other all our lives.”

♆ | Annabeth Chase first performs magic on a Thursday, the year she turns seven.

For magical children, this is considered a little on the late side, as if, even subconsciously, she wanted to be very sure she knew what she was doing before she did it. Her father, for the most part, had stopped looking for the signs -- the existence of the magical world fascinated him as a historian, but, for the most part, had little bearing on his day-to-day life.

The rain comes down hard as they leave the station, passing out into the breathless, humid air, leaving behind the beeping of the ticket counters and the pleasant overhead voice, telling them which trains were departing in how many minutes.

“-- couldn’t we have flown?” Annabeth asks, pressing in close to her father’s side. He has one of those cool umbrellas that makes her think of tree houses, with the canopy for ventilation. It’s very big and very brown and covers them both.

There’s a lady on the corner handing out Evening Standards, and one other person at the crosswalk with them; a girl, though that’s really just a good guess, as Annabeth can’t see much of her. The rain is coming down so hard that the umbrella isn’t helping much at all, and everything’s really hard to see, just past full dark.

“I like trains,” her father answers.

Annabeth considers this. Trains are quite nice, she supposes, as she was just on one, but it’s worth pointing out, “You like planes, too.”

“True,” Dr Chase allows. “I like everything.”

It happens all at once: the girl, looking the wrong way for traffic, gets fed up with waiting and steps out into the street even though there’s a great orange hand telling her no. A lorry comes around the bend, one-eyed in the gloom like a cyclops, and her father closes his eyes so he doesn’t have to see and Annabeth, still thinking of cars and trains and planes, flings out a hand --

She is suddenly a tree, the girl, a great shivering pine growing even as they watch, roots propping their elbows on the kerb and branches dripping needles as fast as raindrops.

The lorry meets her trunk and crunches, the both of them groaning with impact.

Later, after members of the Accidental Magic Reversal Squad repair the damages to the vehicle (including fixing the initially busted headlight, which the driver will scratch his head about for months to come,) and turn the pine tree back into a girl, assuring her there’s no harm done, she might smell a little like a cut Christmas tree for awhile, but there are worse things, honest, an Obliviator comes over to Annabeth.

She’s tall, grey-eyed, and stern in a way that makes Annabeth want to straighten her shoulders or check under her nails to make sure they’re clean or something. She introduces herself as Athena.

“Was that your first magic?” she asks.

Annabeth isn’t sure what that was, but magic seems like an accurate enough way to describe it, so she nods.

“Congratulations,” says Athena, a peculiar little smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. She kneels down, pulling a lolly from the pocket of her brown-speckled robes, the arms of which are patterned like feathers. It gives her the look of a large, perching owl.

After the lolly has been diminished to a stick and a red stain around Annabeth’s mouth, her father shakes the rain out of his umbrella over the mat and says, “I guess you’ll be going to Hogwarts after all.”

“What’s that?” she wants to know. It sounds unpleasant.

Dr Chase opens his mouth, and then catches himself around the empty space where the answer should be. He looks like he does sometimes when he can’t find his glasses, hand groping absently at the place where his brain thinks they should be. He does it when Annabeth asks questions about Mum, too, questions too complicated for him to answer with a simple, she was very nice or she was very smart or she loves you very much. But Annabeth doesn’t ask very often anymore.

♆ | She’s one of the last ones off the train after it pulls into the Hogsmeade station, because she didn’t realize that somebody else was going to take care of the luggage: at eleven, she’d been instilled with a sense of responsibility that told her that if she could take care of it, she should. So she wrestles her trunk down, realizes that nobody else is getting theirs, and faces a dilemma: should she leave it where it is, in the way, or should she put it back with the others to make it easier for whoever’s nice enough to come through?

By the time she’s done getting it back into the overhead rack, she’s sweaty, disheveled; her head smarts from a bump and her hair’s coming out of its ponytail and she wants to cry, because she realizes too late that she could have used magic, she could: spells of weightlessness were right there in Standard Book of Spells: Year 1.

She’s also almost entirely alone on the train.

Well, not quite, she realizes: a pack of older students spill out of a compartment ahead of her, lead by a burly third-year girl with a cruel laugh, who stands in place for a moment to tuck her wand back inside her robes, looking very self-satisfied.

Her name’s Clarisse, though Annabeth doesn’t know that yet, and several years from now, they’ll sit together outside the hospital wing, waiting for Madam Pomfrey to give them news on Silena Beauregard, who’d taken a Bloodletter’s Curse in Clarisse’s defense.

Curious, she peeks into the compartment, and snorts.

Somebody’s left a first-year in here, dead asleep with his head propped at an angle against the window. Clarisse took the liberty of spelling a thin handlebar mustache onto his face, which curls up, life-like, with every slow breath he takes. He’s still dressed in Muggle clothes.

She goes in and shakes him awake.

He startles, eyes popping open and an inhale stretching through him. “Bzz-wah?” he asks, taking in the train compartment, the night sky outside the window, and Annabeth standing over him.

“You drool in your sleep,” she informs him.

And just like that, Annabeth Chase and Percy Jackson are introduced.

♆ | In the end, she is the only one of them whose wand is not ceremoniously broken in front of her.

♆ | The first flat they get together is in a wizarding village in Scotland -- it’s a big deal, somehow, for all that they’ve more or less been sleeping in each other’s bedrooms since the summer after fourth year. But putting their names together on a lease makes it really formal for some reason, and that’s frightening, to have physical proof that Percy Jackson and Annabeth Chase have promised to build their daily routines around each other.

It’s not a proper wizarding village, of course, since the only true wizarding village in Scotland these days is Hogsmeade. But the Muggles in town are an observant bunch, who see a lot of things and then drink to forget.

“You can’t make me live in a proper wizarding village!” Annabeth had cried when Percy brought it up; Reyna’s father works independently as a wardsman, casting spells of protection over the houses of those too old to do it themselves, too invalid, or too strongly Squib, and so has a good idea where there are cheap flats for let. “Percy, Wifi!”

He Apparates home once a week to have dinner with his mother and to check on the corner newsagent where Artemis works; Bianca is relearning the simple spells, Alohamora and Wingardium Leviosa, and she’ll chant them soundlessly to herself, levitating boxes of Crunchies and Maltesers out of the storeroom when there are no Muggles in the shop. She smiles at Percy when he comes in for stamps; she doesn’t upcharge him like she does the tourists. She remembers his name. Her hair is grey and slowly falling out, and there are days when she’ll hex anyone who comes near her who aren’t Thalia or Nico.

He knows the name of the wizard who did this to her. He mouths it to himself, as silently as Bianca practices her spellcasting: Hephaestus.

Percy has never performed the Cruciatus Curse in his life, but for Hephaestus …

Well.

Four months in, they’re still arguing about things like the electric kettle (which will smoke if Annabeth forgets and tries to heat it with magic) and whether or not the flat really smells like wet sheep (it does, but admitting it feels like defeat,) when Percy sails past the post office on his bike one day and almost knocks over a witch with a small, pipsqueak owl on her shoulder.

“Oh!” she says in surprise, when Percy swerves and clips the postbox instead.

Her blonde hair sits like a nest atop her head, all brambles and braids, and when Percy regains his balance and asks if she’s all right, pressing his own elbow against his side as if that’ll stop the pain, she doesn’t seem to register the question.

She says, “That’s quite a spell of protection you have.”

Percy touches the cord at his neck, the beads warm from the proximity of his pulse. “It is.”

Her smile reaches her eyes. Her name’s Luna Scamander, she’s in town with her husband, and when Percy takes them to the pub later, she offers him a job.

“I don’t have any NEWTs, I never got that far,” Percy feels the need to point out, looking between them. “Is that all right?”

“That’s fine,” Luna sing-songs. She is slight as spell-light, and her husband sits as broadly grey and rugged as a mountainside beside her. “Like most amphibians, newts are more afraid of people than people are of them, so really, that’s all for the best.”

He swallows, but she might as well know. Most people figure it out eventually. “… I don’t have a wand. They snapped it.”

She seems to give this its due consideration, her head tilting further, like she’s trying to clear her ears.

“Yet you still do magic.”

It’s not a question. Percy gets the feeling that Luna Scamander is the kind of witch who has a lot of questions, but not about the kinds of things that everybody else has questions about, like, what happened to Luke Castellan? and why did they snap your wand?

He nods.

She breaks into a sunny smile.

So Percy and Annabeth sell their flat in the Mostly-Wizarding Village of Ere-on-the-Heath and spend the summer in the uninhabited highlands with the Scamanders and their assistant, a vigilant and active wizard named Grover, who habitually chews on things that probably shouldn’t be chewed on when lost in thought and has a wand that’s been passed down to him through generations. “The core comes from the horn of a satyr, supposedly,” he tells Percy and Annabeth, giving a twitchy shrug. “You know how most members of the MLE can trace a wand’s spellwork due to the magical residue it leaves?” This is news to Percy, but Annabeth nods, so he nods, too. “This wand leaves no residue. It’s nonpollutant.”

“Most importantly,” Luna chimes in from behind them. “It doesn’t bother the wildlife!”

♆ | The thing that most people manage to forget that is that everyone has a little bit of magic in them, and they’ll go their whole lives performing it unconsciously. Muggles have come up with a number of ingenious words to describe it when it happens: coincidence. Serendipity. Fate. Irony. Good luck.

Even people like Percy’s mum, who is a dead zone for magic and has never had a spell stick to her in her life, probably at least has some magic in her.

And then there’s that minority, those with so much magic in them that they become a danger to themselves and to each other if they don’t learn to control it. With training, these people become witches and wizards. They form their own communities, their own cultures.

In Western Europe, which likes to pretend to be the seat of civilization, they tend to favor the wand as a tool of magical conductivity.

But honestly -- and this should really surprise nobody -- any magical item can be be used to harness and focus magic, so long as the connection to the user is personal, deep, and very strong. The conduit must choose the person as much as the person chooses the conduit.

Thalia has a goblin-made tiara that Artemis found for her.

Her spells come out differently, of course, stranger and more ethereal, like stormlight through fog. No one would deny that she’s a witch, especially not anybody who was there the day Hephaestus tried to remove Bianca from the game.

♆ | “A Memory Charm?” Jason hikes his shoulders upright, putting them back against the foot of a gargoyle statue, which is also groaning and holding its skull like it’s got a ringing headache.

Headmistress McGonagall crouches down beside him, her mouth a thin gash of a frown.

His eyes keep jumping, seemingly out of his control, but he manages to focus on her. One hand goes to his chest, gripping the front of his robes like he’s looking for his Head Boy badge. “Is that what happened?”

“What’s the last thing you remember?” The Headmistress’s voice is strangely gentle, like she’s handling something in fragile pieces and is afraid rough handling will break it further.

It’s not lost on Jason.

“NEWTs,” he goes. “We were going to -- it was the morning of -- Charms, wasn’t it?” His eyes dart past her, finding Piper first, then Percy, then Leo, his eyes widening as he recognizes each of them in turn, cataloguing them even through the changes. Leo’s hair has mostly fallen out; what clings to his skull is grey, wispy, not unlike Bianca’s. “And the fifth years -- they had their OWLs, I remember, I asked Nico at our table at breakfast if he was going to bother studying because I hadn’t seen him with any books yet, and he was really creepy about it, and then --” he trails off, like the nothingness of it speaks for him.

McGonagall’s mouth turns down in the corners, her eyes pinching with sympathy.

Jason’s voice rises. “What do you mean? Where have the last six months of my life gone?”

“You know,” says Leo lightly. “I never understood why they call it a Memory Charm.”

Everybody looks at him.

The silence lengthens, all of them expecting somebody else to say something first.

“Well,” he lifts his shoulders up around his ears self-consciously, a gesture familiar to Ravenclaws everywhere. “It’s the Cruciatus Curse, isn’t it? It’s the Killing Curse. So why it is a Memory Charm? Why tag it with a linguistically soft word like that? What part of a Memory Charm isn’t curse-like?”

“For that, Mr Valdez,” says McGonagall. “You’ll have to ask the people who invented it.”

♆ | “They’re called,” says Nico with great ceremony. “The Olympians.”

♆ | On a day that Percy doesn’t remember (because he lost six months of his memory, too, starting that morning he never made it to his Charms NEWTs,) seven half-bloods stood together in the entrance hall: four Gryffindors, one Ravenclaw, and two Slytherins, each with one Muggle parent and one magical parent that nobody truly remembers and everybody seems to just describe in really vague terms.

“Do we know how we’re going to do this?” Piper asks, holding her wand crosswise across her chest like a shield.

At her elbow, Frank’s skin keeps mottling into a scale pattern like a snake’s, plainly out of his control. Percy’s teeth chatter.

Hazel speaks up. “It’ll be really hard to do by ourselves,” she says. Defense Against the Dark Arts is her best subject -- she knows for a fact she got an Outstanding OWL, and when the Gryffindor Head of House called her in for career counseling earlier that year, Hazel already knew: she wanted to work in the Department of Mysteries.

“Good thing, then, that I brought reinforcements!” a voice calls out, coming from the top of the grand staircase.

It’s Nico, and with him are Bianca and Thalia and Reyna, Rachel and Octavian. For once, Reyna isn’t wearing her Head Girl badge, and Bianca keeps craning her neck, trying to take in all of Hogwarts at once -- it’s changed a lot since the last time she was here, the year the Chamber of Secrets opened the first time.

“How did you --“ Annabeth starts in surprise, straightening up.

She doesn’t get to finish the sentence, because Octavian snorts at her ungraciously.

“We’re Seers,” he says in his usual rude way, and Rachel’s eyebrows tick up in surprise, because he’s forgotten that he doesn’t ever acknowledge that plural pronoun. “We’ve been dreaming this for awhile.”

♆ | Annabeth meets a wandmaker living on the coast of Sweden and decides to stay for a couple weeks, boarding in a hostel that caters primarily to European backpackers and sightseers who don’t know not to try to take hi-res photographs from their iPads. Percy, who has not been out of Annabeth’s arm’s reach since his wand was snapped, takes her face between his hands and kisses her good-bye until Grover makes pointed gagging sounds on the other side of their campfire.

Rolf and Luna tolerate four days of his directionlessness before they send him to Dublin to meet up with a friend of theirs, a harpy named Ella.

“She’s great company, and she’ll remember every little mistake you make to humiliate you with at a later date, have no fear,” Luna says cheerily. “She wants to write a book!”

“About what?” he says blankly. He’s used to gathering information on magical creatures from a great distance -- they’ve never been particularly literary before.

“Oh, the usual stuff, I suppose. I think she’s only going to release it on Kindle, but if you could persuade her to print a hardcover copy for us, we’d really appreciate it.”

Hazel lives in Dublin, too, so Percy Floos ahead in warning and she greets him at the airport, holding up a sign that says, This is Percy, next to a stick figure with dark hair. If found, please return here. Without Annabeth, he had to travel the long way. At least with Apparation, the worst that could happen is you’d Splinch yourself -- flying Ryanair probably makes Splinching seem pleasant.

“What’s it like, living out here?” he asks as they leave the airport, his arm tucked securely through hers and the sign under the other, flopping against his ankles with each step.

“You’re forgetting I grew up here,” she reminds him.

“I'm not! I just meant, how is it, living in the Muggle world again? You seem to be doing well.”

“Are you judging my lifestyle by my clothes?” She feigns indignation, clutching at her heart. He counts seven beads on a cord around her neck, unbroken. “You? Of course I’m doing well, I’m descended from leprechauns on my mum’s side, remember? Making money was never going to be particularly difficult for me. Don’t make that face!” She elbows him.

He checks. “So you’re not going to try for the Department of Mysteries?”

“It’s kind of hard to work for the Department of Mysteries after they’ve snapped your wand, you know.”

Lunch at her flat is amazing, if only because it isn’t campfire food. Percy loves doing grunt work for the Scamanders, don’t get him wrong, but he swears he dreams sometimes about baked pasta and marinara. He eats two plates, and Hazel laughs at him and offers him a bib.

After, scraping at the side of her bowl with the outside tine of her fork, she confesses quietly, “You know, I’m really glad you didn’t become one of them. I know they offered.”

Percy doesn’t need to be told who she’s talking about. He immediately stretches over to pull her into a hug, kissing the top of her head.

“Why would I?” he says around a mouthful of her hair, very stout about it. “We’re Gryffindors. We’re pigheaded and stubborn. We like things the way they are.”

♆ | He’d always kind of assumed that the rivalry between Rachel and Octavian had less to do with the fact that they’ve both been accomplished Seers since childhood in a wizarding Britain that hadn’t seen a particularly competent one in over a hundred years, and upon arriving at Hogwarts, were displeased to find that not only did they have to share that title, they had to share it with someone in their same year -- and more to do with the fact that she was a Gryffindor and a Muggleborn and he was a Slytherin and a pureblood and they felt they should hate each other, because it was just tradition, never mind the fact that Harry Potter had crossed wands with the Dark Lord so that they could live in a world where they didn’t have to.

“-- wait,” Percy realizes. “Are you? A pureblood, I mean. I know you boast about your family and their position all the time, yawn, yawn, so I just assumed --“

“I am,” says Octavian tightly, in a tone that more clearly says I don’t want to talk about it than if he’d hexed it onto Percy’s face.

He’s one of those people who has the luxury of being extremely well-loved by a large, extended family who taught him everything they could and then sent him to Hogwarts to learn even more. Percy, who can count the number of people he knows who have both living parents on one hand and still have fingers left over, doesn’t know what to make of Octavian. It doesn’t make sense. How can so someone so clearly pampered grow up … so unpleasant?

“Well, he’s the only magical child born to his family in, like, three generations,” Rachel tells him. “I mean, yeah, no, he’s a right prick, but. His family’s all Squibs. They kind of desperately need him to not bollocks it up.”

“Is that what happens to pureblood families over time?” he asks.

“I don’t know. Maybe? If you believe the stuff the Free Wizarding Press has been churning out these days, then yeah, magic runs stronger in mixed-blood families. Why do you think the Olympians are so interested in you lot? If they’ve got you in their pockets, then they can control the kind of generation that rises post-Voldemort.”

Percy grimaces.

She makes a face back at him, her freckles folding into constellations briefly. “But no, Octavian’s family got cursed, I think, back in, like, Grindelwald’s era? The magic got blasted straight out of their veins.”

“You can do that?” she nods, and he shudders. “But why would Grindelwald’s soldiers take the magic out of a pureblood family? I thought that went against everything they believed in.”

“They didn’t,” Octavian’s voice says behind them, startling them both. He Levitates a flagon of pumpkin juice down in between them. “My family did it to themselves. But it turns out that things weren’t any safer for them in the Muggle world than it was in our own.”

Then he leaves again before Percy can ask anything else.

He tells Annabeth about it later, wondering, “That sounds horrible and painful. Why would they do that to themselves? Wouldn’t they be safer with magic than without?”

The look she gives him is exasperated and impatient and strangely sympathetic, too.

“You’ve never listened to him, have you?” she says quietly. “He spellcasts in Hebrew, Percy.”

♆ | Their second place together is a pre-fab in a small town an hour south of London with more character than actual functionality and dodgy plumbing, that lets the cockroaches in when it rains. They make a sport out of Transfiguring them into small chunks of pyrite, which they collect in a small basket on a table just inside the entryway. Percy’s always come out slightly tarnished-looking, which never fails to make Annabeth crow at him smugly.

They live there for a year and a half before Festus destroys it by parking his big fat golden arse right down on top of it.

Leo is not invited over that Christmas.

♆ | The third place that Percy and Annabeth find together, no longer even pretending that they’re not going to be stuck with each other for the rest of their lives, is a two-storey terrace on the Muggle side of Heathrow airport. Departing flights come screamingly close, the sound of it enough to drown out arguments and make the mugs rattle on their hooks. Eventually, they learn to sleep through it. It’s bigger than anywhere either of them have lived before; that first week, they spend a ridiculous amount of time running up and down the staircase just because they can, just because it’s theirs.

Annabeth registers herself as an architect with the Council -- it’s not technically a lie, just like listing Percy as a good-will ambassador isn’t really lying, either. They’ll chock it up to cross-cultural miscommunication if asked.

At the height of June, Percy comes back from a four-week expedition to a Mermish collective in Wales, who’ve gone and established a colony in the reservoir by Trawsfynnydd and are not particularly keen to leave, thanks. The Scamanders are worried that living in a Muggle-made reservoir will have a negative effect on the spawning cycle, which will come in September, but the merman that Percy spent most of his time with either doesn’t understand the question (Percy’s Mermish is passable, but not particularly poetic) or isn’t concerned about it. Tyson takes a fancy to him because “he’s not like other wizards” -- which Percy takes to mean, he doesn’t have a wand, because how else is Percy different from other wizards? The merpeople don’t really understand wands anyway; to them, magic is everywhere and isn’t to be controlled -- and watches from the shallows every morning as Percy gathers the day’s gillyweed along the shore. When he leaves, Tyson screeches at him with more fervor than usual and initiates a hug, which is a strangely human thing to do, and calls him "brother," which Percy honestly has no idea what to do with.

When he makes it home, he finds that Nico di Angelo has moved in during his absence.

He discovers this largely by running directly into it: a clean, grimacing badger skull hangs over the entryway, woven through a circlet of rowan in a sigil of protection. It bonks heads with Percy in greeting.

He rears back, looks at it for a long moment, and sighs.

“Really?” he asks Annabeth, who’d materialized as soon as the wards chimed with his arrival.

She smirks. “I have no idea what you could mean. I knew you’d spend too much time with the merfolk and come back with your head full of kelp.”

He ducks under the skull. “My head’s usually full of kelp.”

Her smirk broadens, baring teeth. “You said it, not me.”

He rolls his eyes and meets her at the bottom of the stairs, letting his satchel fall so that he can get his arms all the way around her, all at once, engulfing them both. He kisses her face all over, and she squirms whenever he hits a ticklish spot. He checks with his fingers; all seven beads are intact around her neck.

“How goes the wandlore?” he asks, taking particular care to kiss at her hairline, where the grey stripe begins.

“Confusing and contradictory, as wandlore often is, but I have a few attempts I want you to try. How were the merpeople?”

“Oh, nice! Very fond of screeching and spears and Ice Mice -- you know, the kind that make their teeth chatter and squeak? If the Ministry really wanted to, they could probably make them move out of the reservoir by offering them enough sweets.”

He tries to keep talking, but Annabeth’s mouth presses flush to his, and since there are few things in the world quite as nice as someone who’s willing to put their mouth on yours, he kisses her for a bit instead.

“I clocked that at about a minute and fifteen seconds,” a voice says from the kitchen doorway. Out of the corner of his eye, Percy spots a familiar figure, drawn long and spindly thin like somebody’s cartoonish idea of a dementor, and groans, because right, new housemate. “Before he tried to get his tongue in your mouth. So who wins the bet?”

“Me,” says Annabeth readily, pulling back.

Nico grins back at her. “Yeah, but you cheated.”

“You didn’t specify the rules. Not closing a loophole? That’s not very Slytherin of you.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he goes rudely, and extends his arms. “My turn. Hug. Now.”

“Oh my god, we’re kicking him out,” Percy mutters, and obeys.

Nico is loud and unpleasant and has this unsettling tendency to go to the ends of the earth on their say-so without seeming to think much of it, like he doesn’t see why anybody wouldn’t, it’s Percy, it’s Annabeth, of course they know what they’re talking about, and Percy, who’s only ever experienced that kind of unwavering loyalty from goldfish, doesn’t really know how to handle it and spends a lot of time wishing Nico would just go away. Nico doesn’t.

When he moves in, two major things enter their home with him.

The first is Nico’s entire skeletal collection. He takes over the little room by the loo on the first level that Percy and Annabeth had kind of been thinking of turning into a storeroom for Annabeth’s wand supplies, since it’s cool and dry and surprisingly doesn’t get damp when it rains. Soon, bones are drying on racks and tied up with herbs from the ceiling, and Percy swears once that he wakes up in the middle of the night and finds a skeletal cat sitting on the windowsill, surveying the street outside, but it’s gone when he next thinks to look. Everything smells faintly of rosemary, marrow, and rot, but it’s worth it the first time Annabeth hands him a wand made of snakebone, cored with his own blood -- and Bianca’s and Thalia’s and Percy’s, too, because they’re the same something -- and he takes it with a look on his face that Percy’s never seen before and turns and sets the whole kitchen on fire.

(He does apologize for that. Really.)

The second is a pamphlet, well-folded and bent a little in the corners. The watermark from Weasley’s Wizardly Wheezes still laughs faintly in the bottom-hand corner. Inside, it contains several tips for how to tell if you’ve been hit with a Memory Charm. Ginny Weasley wrote it at the turn of the year, 1998.

It becomes habit, opening it on the counter next to the kettle (electric, sorry, Annabeth,) and running through the list like gospel.

1. Are there chunks of time you don’t remember? Hours, whole daytimes or nighttimes that are just dark?

And:

4. The most skilled Obliviators, like the kind that work for the Accidental Magic Reversal Squad, are also often accomplished Legilimens, and will create pitfalls in your own mind, capable of erasing memories as you think of them. If possible, create an unrelated safe word with someone you trust, for them to use in case they feel you’ve been Charmed. If you recognize it, you’re in trouble. If you don’t recognize it, you’re in even bigger trouble.

And:

8. Protective amulets! Done properly (and by this, we mean, don’t buy them from Mundungus Fletcher,) these one-use charms will break in case of a hit and leave you with memory intact and clear evidence that someone tried to cast a Memory Charm on you. They only work if you are wearing them on your person. Is there a limit to how many you can wear at once? No, but seven is the most powerful magical number, which is why most protective amulets are cast by seven wizards at once.

♆ | When Percy Jackson was seventeen years old, the Wizengamot broke his wand and forbade him from ever doing magic again.

At least, that’s what he was told. That part of his memory is missing.

♆ | Annabeth’s Shield Charm wavers, crackling in the corners like it’s been burned up, and the force of maintaining it makes her wand rattle and shake in her hand, a visible tremor running up to her shoulder. Her teeth grit. After this, her hair will go grey at her temple, but she does it anyway.

And Percy is useless.

“What’s the point of having magic if I can’t --“ he bites off the rest of his sentence, hands scrambling for something, anything to use as a weapon.

A rock? Can he throw a freaking rock?

Instantly, Nico’s at his side, because nothing quite attracts Nico like Percy’s own stupidity.

“You are such a git!” he bellows. At this point in time, he is fifteen years old. “What makes you think you need a wand to do magic? We didn’t as kids!”

Percy’s head snaps up. Annabeth’s voice, then, in his memory: Magic comes from magic and magic will be magic again, a circle without end. Anything magical can channel magic, seaweed brain.

“Are you sure?” he shouts back.

“No!” Nico shakes his head. “Do it anyway!”

So Percy does.

He puts a hand to Nico, there at the place where there is skin bared at his neck, and the feeling that goes through him then is the same he got when he was eleven years old, standing alone in Ollivander’s shop and listening to him chuckle, his fingers on a wand with seawood and dragon heartstring at its core.

He stands and the spell comes roaring out of him.

♆ | He wakes in the middle of the night to the sound of Nico murmuring Lumos to the dark, unable to sleep. Instead of getting up out of the duvet, he Summons a book from the shelf; the heavy weight of it hitting his hand tells Percy it’s one of the history tomes he borrowed from Dr Chase.

Sometimes, when he reads, he forgets to stop, like his mind knows there’s a seventy-year vacuum there he’s desperate to fill.

“Now you’re just showing off,” he says aloud, when the Summoning Charm becomes a Levitation Charm, so that Nico can flip pages without removing his arms from underneath the warmth of the duvet.

“You would too, if you had a wand again,” Nico retorts. He doesn’t mean it meanly, but Percy takes a moment to contemplate getting offended regardless.

Instead, he allows, “True. That’s nice. It’s certainly better than always having to outwit Annabeth and steal hers for a short while.”

“I don’t know, I liked those games,” Nico says faithfully. “Strategic biting was allowed.”

“I knew you two planned it,” Annabeth’s voice rises from between them, muttered into her pillow.

Percy flips over, finding her shoulder with his hand and snuggling into her face, because he can. She promptly kicks him off the side of the bed, and absolutely nobody helps him back up again.

♆ | The August sunshine bakes itself into the hillsides, turning the canola fields cracked into gold and brown. A half-league away, Festus suns himself on his back, crushing canola and poppies into dust beneath him. His great golden hide is hard to look at, a shimmering mirage. His contented rumbling makes the ground shiver under them, like a cat purring.

“If they’d asked you --“ Percy begins, and at the sound of his voice, Calypso cracks an eye open. He softens his voice. “The Olympians, I mean. If they’d asked you to be one of them, would you have done it?”

Leo thumps around to the other side of Calypso’s head, where her good eye is, and it focuses on him instead. Her nostrils twitch, a long-suffering sigh extending all through her lungs before huffing out of her in a gust, igniting the shrubbery directly in front of her. With the hindbrain instinct of hundreds of campfires with the Scamanders, Percy kicks dirt over them until they go out.

“Hell, brother,” Leo says, as soon as Calypso’s eyes lid over again. “I can’t say I wouldn’t have been tempted.”

He sits down in the shade of Calypso’s bulk. Percy tenses up, knee-jerk, but he needn’t be worried: while she would probably have no problem turning him into a snack, she likes Leo. Most creatures (and people) do.

In the sunlight, the warped, pulled scars around her neck and foreclaws are stark and ugly. Her scales are chalky, bone-white, her muzzle grey and beaten, but the spines along her back have new green growth, because even she cannot stop growing, not even after escaping hundreds, if not a thousand years of imprisonment in her vault beneath Gringotts. When Leo traipses up into the highlands to visit her, cane thunking solidly amongst loose rock, he’ll sing to her to let her know he’s coming. Percy swears that she sings back, a low tenor hum in her throat like a hello.

“Sounds nice, doesn’t it?” Leo continues after a beat, and it takes Percy a minute to remember the track of their conversation. Right, the Olympians. “Control Wizarding Britain without having to be held accountable for it, unlike the Ministry? Dispose of anyone who gets in your way, arrange everything to your liking, and Obliviate everyone who might remember you?” He chuckles, a burnt-out sound. “They’ve got it made. Fortunately, they didn’t bother offering me that kind of immortality. They just tried to curse me.”

Afterwards, Percy and Annabeth and Hazel, Frank and Jason and Piper, plus Reyna to make seven, all pooled their abilities and made him a new beaded necklace with seven amulets of protection to replace the one that broke, but, like Bianca, there’s no reversing what that kind of spell damage does to a body.

“Do you ever think about which one of them is your father?”

“Merlin’s beard, Percy, what’s with the questions?”

Percy waits him out. Leo’s a Ravenclaw, he can’t resist trailing every question to its inevitable outcome.

“It’s a little creepy, innit?” he goes eventually, and shrugs. “You know? It’s a really dispassionate thing to do. Seed the future generation with half-blood pawns to move where you will and groom them where necessary to be your replacement? No thanks, mate. I want to live in the post-Voldemort world the same way everybody else does -- taking it as it is.”

♆ | “What does that mean, the Big Three?” Thalia’s brow pulls low underneath her tiara. “What does it have to do with us? And what does it have to do with the way our magic always feels a little strange, like it’s leaking out of us whenever we’re around each other?”

“I think it means we’re supposed to be rivals.”

Percy looks at Bianca. She looks back at him, then to her brother, who immediately reaches for her hand. He looks next to Thalia, who’s still scowling.

“Well,” he says brightly. “Well done on that one, everyone. We’re big disappointments already.”

♆ | Nico di Angelo has loved Percy Jackson since he was a child, eleven years old and out of time and full of a single question: what’s wrong with my magic? Percy was the first answer he ever got, and he continued to be an answer, one Nico never grew out of.

It’s a horrible, itchy burn of a love that feels like he’s taken a potion, like if he puts his wand to his own throat he won’t bleed blood, but some golden ichor like a Felix Felicitas. He wants to keep him like a child does, too, and for that, he’ll cross wands with any Olympian that dares.

When it happens, it happens around Christmas.

Annabeth’s at the window, molding together a wreath out of evergreens that she got from Katie Gardener down at the shops, and the whole house smells like pine.

Behind her, both Percy and Nico are trying to untangle the Christmas lights, Percy by cursing at them and Nico by trying to remember if there’s a spell for it. The lights are charmed, the way most things are in mixed Muggle-wizard homes, but they won’t untangle even if politely asked. They tried that.

Preoccupied, it takes them a moment to realize that Annabeth’s stopped, gone still by the window.

“Annabeth?” Percy sets the ball of knotted wire down. “What is it?”

“I think it’s my mother,” she says softly.

Nico and Percy exchange a glance. Then, simultaneously, they shove the lights aside and join her at the window.

A woman’s walking down the street, briskly sidestepping the bins out for collection. She’s dressed in Muggle clothes in that mismatched way wizards do when they haven’t had a lot of experience with Muggles; tight pencil skirt paired with an anorak and bright purple Wellies.

“What makes you think she’s your mum?” Nico asks.

Annabeth’s hand is at her throat, touching each bead in turn. “I’ve met her before,” she answers after a long pause. “Her name’s Athena. I didn’t know who she was, then. But now I can make an educated guess.”

“What’s the plan?” Percy asks, because Percy always asks Annabeth what the plan is.

She tilts a shoulder. “They’ve left us alone for awhile. Maybe they come in peace. One option is to let her in.”

“No!” Nico blurts out vehemently. “Annabeth, she erased your father’s memory. She lied and manipulated you. She’s an Olympian -- if she didn’t directly erase Jason and Percy’s memories, or curse Bianca and Leo, then she certainly didn’t stop those who did. She deserves to be in Azkaban with the rest of them!”

“They tore that down,” Percy reminds him.

“Still,” Nico stresses.

Annabeth’s mouth forms the faintest paper cut of a smile. “You’re a Slytherin,” she says to him. “I thought family was supposed to be all-important to you.”

“The family I choose,” Nico answers firmly. “Blood of the covenant is thicker than water of the womb, haven’t you heard?”

It takes a moment, but Annabeth places the phrasing first.

“‘Blood is thicker than water’? That’s what that means?”

Nico nods.

They stand in silence for a minute more, watching Athena’s progress up the street. “Maybe she’ll go right by,” Percy offers hopefully, and as soon as the words are out of his mouth, she turns at the gate. She comes up the walk.

Softly in the house, the wards chime.

Athena pauses on the step. She reaches inside her robes for her wand.

“Are we ready?” Annabeth murmurs, drawing her own. Nico’s is already in his hand, delicate ridges of snakebone digging familiarly into the meat of his palm. Percy slides into position between them, his fingers sliding up their shirts to rest on their spines, the touch of it like a summons, magic answering magic. As long as Percy Jackson has Annabeth or Nico, he will never need a wand.

“We’re ready,” he says.

♆ | Sally stops by at half-three on the Saturday before Christmas, bringing them a spare blanket because of something Percy let slip during one of their weekly dinners. Nico’s the only one home, because Percy had gone to the airport to pick up Frank (who is presumably the reason Sally felt the need to bring an extra blanket, because they are lacking somewhat in supplies for guests. Nico had kind of been hoping they could Transfigure Frank into an owl and he could roost up in the eaves overnight, but that’s probably rude,) and Annabeth’s at the chemist’s.

He invites her in, because Percy’s mum is one of his favorite people in the world and among the last he’ll ever chuck out.

(Let’s be honest, the list of adults that Nico trusts is incredibly short and pretty much only includes Headmistress McGonagall, Artemis, and Sally Jackson.)

Her eyes only flick a little judgmentally over the fact Nico’s still in his pants at half-three, and he puts on the kettle for her and asks if she wants to stay for Piper’s show, which comes on at quarter till?

“Oh!” she says, taking her hands out of the pockets of her too-big jeans. “I remember hearing about that! BBC Radio, right?”

Nico nods. Out of all of them, Piper probably adjusted best to having her wand broken -- I’d kind of intended on returning to the Muggle world immediately after my NEWTs anyway, so it really didn’t cause much fuss in my life, she’d said -- and now hosts her own show, frequently gets to guest-star celebrities, and writes for a wizarding zine that’s all online.

“You’d be surprised, the number of younger witches and wizards who find it easier to adjust to a mostly-Muggle life,” Nico tells her during an advert break, because Sally seems genuinely interested. “Magic is changing. The way we interact with magic is changing. Magic never worked properly on electronics because wizards never bothered to figure out how electronics worked. Maybe someday we’ll invent spells that don’t make them go haywire.”

“Imagine that,” she says mildly, and it takes Nico a moment to realize she’s teasing him: magic never works properly on Sally, so she doesn’t know.

It gives him an idea, though, and when she leaves, he gathers up his courage at the last moment and calls after her as she goes down the steps, “If we went to somebody, would you be our witness?”

She stops. She turns and goes, “Witness for what?”

“About the Olympians.”

She blinks. “What makes you think I know anything about it?”

Nico folds his arms and tries to look less like the kind of bloke who’d spent the morning holding her son’s girlfriend’s hips to the bed. He curls his bare toes against the cement. His wand is still in the kitchen, and Percy and Annabeth will be home any moment.

“Spells don’t stick to you,” he points out. Muggles like Sally are what wizards in power will always underestimate. “They never have. If … if Percy’s dad tried to erase your memories when he left you, it wouldn’t have worked, right?”

And Sally --

The Muggle woman named Sally smiles. She smiles and smiles wider, until she laughs and covers her mouth and nods at him, just once. Then she turns around, walking back out into the busy day.

-
fin

➲ NANOWRIMO: NOVEMBER 4

2013-11-05T07:38:55Z

So posting for polybigbang starts this week! I dropped out, because the due date for the rough drafts came and went and I had approximately 0 words written, having just come down from the stress plateau that was my heroinebigbang and the Incest Big Bang. So instead of just scrapping my idea, I decided to trim it and make it one of my NaNos.

By 9pm on the posting day, I still had approximately 0 words. IDK BRO IT'S POLY FIC. IT'S PREGNANCY FIC. IN WHAT ALTERNATE UNIVERSE DO I NOT WANT TO WRITE THESE THINGS.

I just want this fic to exist in the world, you guys, why won't it appear fully-fledged so that I can enjoy it? ;____;

➲ NANOWRIMO: NOVEMBER 4
For polybigbang, RPF, Andrew Garfield/Jesse Eisenberg/Emma Stone, 2000 words

Inspired by this 5-sentence fic that salvadore_hart wrote for me ages ago, because Emma Stone passing her perfect genetics down!!! Emma Stone having a baby that might by Andrew Garfield's!!! Emma Stone having a baby that might be Jesse Eisenberg's!!! IMAGINE HOW CUTE THOSE GENES WOULD BE.

This is not the full fic. This is, like, the tiny portion of the outline I got done in a couple hours. But I am going to post what I have here, because it's either that or ~feel like a failure~ for not getting anything done today.

PLEASE read this in the light format, trust me, it's easier on your eyes :D

[read @ AO3]

So it turns out that the California king is not actually the world's largest bed, and Andrew will not fucking shut up about it.

If you take his word for it (and you really never should, like, for real, if Emma Stone's last words aren't "shit, dude, let's go for it," then they will probably be, "don't listen to Andrew,") then their entire lives so far have been a terrible lie. Is everything else a lie? If the California king is not the biggest king-sized bed, then what other grievous falsehoods have they been told? Is everything not bigger in Texas, either?

"What is it, then?" Emma pushes, because he's not really getting to the point.

At her ear, the phone rings through to voicemail. She thumbs at the End Call button, pushes her hair back, and dips her phone against her mouth, the corner of her iPhone case hard on her bottom lip.

"It's called," and Andrew steps over her, crouching down. He spins his laptop around, balancing it precariously on his forearm. "An Alaska king."

She looks. "Shit," she goes. "There's a bed that's nine feet by nine feet?"

"Yeah, that's," and he frowns. "I've been doing metric for too long, I can't -- how big is that?"

"That's not a bed, that's a room," Emma says. "Who the hell needs a bed that big?"

"Who doesn't need a bed that big?" he answers gleefully, rising out of his crouch with an audible crack in his knees.

She's on her back on the kitchen floor; she doesn't really remember the chain of events that led to her being on her back on the kitchen floor, but here she is, the linoleum a little gritty under her bare shoulders because they haven't Swiffered yet this week, and her springtime skirt has long since ridden entirely up her thighs, her knees bumping into the cabinet with every idle swing. She hits redial, puts the phone back to her ear, and tells Andrew, "What would you do with it?"

"Live on it," he says dreamily. He puts the laptop down on the counter. "I'd never leave."

"You'd get married on that bed," she extrapolates, and the look he gives her as he steps over her again is indescribably fond, because yeah, she'll run with his scenarios. "Raise children on that bed. Wouldn't you?"

"Hey, there are apartments in, like, Hong Kong or places like that that are about as big as that bed. Those people manage it. Say, did we drink up that pot of coffee?"

"Uh," and Emma glances towards the counter automatically, even though there's no way she could see anything from the floor. She doesn't remember if she's had any coffee this morning. She's probably had at least two cups, and forgot about them as soon as they were out of sight. Did she rinse out the pot? She remembers rinsing out the pot, but she doesn't know if that happened this morning or if her sense memory is tricking her into believing she did it this morning. "I think so?"

"Damn, I wasn't done." He chews at his bottom lip for a beat, before abruptly realizing he's an adult with options. "I'm going to make another pot."

"You do that," Emma says tolerantly, and then, just as he finishes shaking the beans into the coffee grinder, Jesse picks up the phone.

-

"I don't get it," he says.

Lunch is a curry from a sachet, one of those ten-minute fry up and mix with vegetable deals. Jesse'd arrived just as Andrew was tipping a row of chopped-up bell peppers into the pan, and the hot hiss of water meeting oil initially drowned out his knocking.

Emma forks a mouthful of chicken between her teeth and immediately hollows her cheeks, because it's still too hot. Like, temperature-hot, not spicy-hot. She refolds her legs under her on the loveseat, almost tipping her fork out of her bowl. They're all eating out of oriental soup bowls that, knowing Andrew, he'd most likely picked up at a flea market somewhere and kept, even though they were probably faux-Chinese replicas cheaply manufactured by an American company in factories on Chinese soil. They were the only clean bowls in the house at the moment, so here they are.

Andrew sits cross-legged on the carpet at their feet, his knees bent up to fit between Jesse's legs. Steam curls from the top of his bowl.

"I mean," Jesse continues quickly, trying not to offend. "Don't get me wrong, that's really awesome, you'll be great parents, but why make me come over just to tell me? Why not text me, or …" he trails off, his eyes darting towards the apartment window like he's watching the rest of his sentence escape out that way without him. "I don't know, tell me on the phone?"

It's April, in case anyone wants to know.

She counts through the rest of the year, ticking fingers down against the side of the bowl. She's going to have a New Year's baby.

Will it be born at the turn of the year, she wonders, and have one of those birthdays that's always competing with the closest holiday? Will it be one of those birthdays that nobody's in school for, when everybody's on vacation? Will people think to get it two different presents, or will its birthday disappear into the dark suck of Christmas?

Or will it be a middle of the month baby, a grey-skied, dead-of-winter baby?

"Because," she says, when Andrew volunteers nothing, leaving it up to her. She doesn't look at Jesse, but she can see all his angles in her peripheral, etch-a-sketched towards her. "We're pretty sure we know exactly when I got pregnant."

A pause.

"Oh," says Jesse, in a swooping fall of a sound like he'd been dropped from a very great height.

-

For days afterwards, Andrew just vibrates at people, chock full of this news and unable to share it because there's no way in hell they're ready to share that. It shifts gravity, changes the way the Earth pulls on them, news like this; or maybe Emma's taking a very long time to freak out, that's entirely possible too.

So Andrew babbles at people a lot about the Alaska king, because that's important and exciting news he can share, and Emma does the busy-work her publicist tells her to and then just finds herself stopping and thinking, I am doing this and my body is growing a little person. Right now, while I'm doing this other thing. Cells are busy dividing on what will eventually be a baby! Who will then become a person, with, like, eyesight and hobbies and a Social Security number!

And then she has to sit down for a little bit.

Jesse sends her a text message a little after noon that Saturday: it simply says, Let me know if you need anything.

At the end of the month, she goes to a free clinic in another part of the city to pick up some pamphlets and also to ask a lot of questions, because oh my god, babies? Like, growing a baby is a little bit more complicated than taking care of a plant: Emma can keep a plant alive with marginal error, but a baby inside her body is another story entirely and she is second-guessing everything.

The physician who patiently hands her a list of restricted foods, medicines, and activities and a prescription for prenatal vitamins also schedules her for an ultrasound appointment for the following week. Nothing in her demeanor alerts Emma that anything's strange about this. She won't know that it's not standard until later.

"Didn't you just go in for a doctor's appointment?" her publicist, Liam, says, scrunching his unibrow at her when she asks him to carve the time out of her day.

She quirks her mouth at him wryly and hedges around it, "Funny, how doctor's appointments sometimes need follow-up appointments."

The technician who pushes a probe into Emma's uncomfortably full bladder ("think of it like deep-sea sonar," she says cheerily, unfazed by Emma's grumbling about how much she's had to drink in the past thirty minutes. "We get clearer images in an aquatic environment,") has hair that's cut into layers, each one dyed a different shade of red; a light strawberry blonde on top, fading into an ashy, blackish red at the tips. Frameless glasses perch on the end of her nose.

Her first words to Emma had been, "Oh, man, I am so sorry that they killed you off in Spider-Man, that was unnecessary."

And Emma never tires of these kinds of encounters, so she'd replied, pretty gliby, "That's okay, Andrew gets to die in the next one," just to see her freak out a little bit.

And then, just as she's contemplating a conversational opener about dumb dad puns, the ultrasound technician says the one thing you never want an ultrasound technician to say:

"That's interesting." Then, "Miss Stone, can you sit up, please? You might want to see this."

Emma struggles up onto her elbows.

Her shirt wrinkles up by her ribs. The surface of her stomach is curved, just slightly, as subtle as a hill, and she doesn't know that's too early. Or it would be.

The tech swivels the screen to face her.

She points. "That bit? That bit that wobbles? That's a heartbeat. And that," she moves her pen up the screen. "Is a second heartbeat."

Emma's eyes jump. "And that?" she goes, white noise rising to a roar in between her ears, shock running hot down her spine and rising cold in her gut. She already knows the answer; on the screen, there's a constellation in her stomach.

"That," agrees the tech. "Is a third."

-

The setting sun touches yellow on every surface in the kitchen, from the dishes drying on the rack to the threads of the little ducklings embroidered into the hem of the dishtowel. The days are lengthening like a sleepy morning stretch. Emma crosses one ankle over the other.

When told, Andrew bursts into tears.

It's so baffling a response that Emma, about two minutes away from complete panic herself, mentally rain-checks in order to stare at him.

He folds to the floor, back banging against the cabinet doors. Jesse steps out of the way.

"Triplets?" he goes, as Andrew buries his face into his hands, sob-laughing simultaneously, and Jesse touches the top of his head in absentminded reassurance.

"Triplets," confirms Emma.

-
fin (for this post, at least.)

-

The rest of the fic is legitimately, like, 95% them Doing Stuff and Andrew's run-on sentences and factoids about carrying multiples because wow oh my god lady bodies are the coolest thing and Andrew and Emma trying to convince Jesse that he's more than their experimental threesome of a one night stand. And at some point, somebody buys that damn bed.

➲ NANOWRIMO: NOVEMBER 2

2013-11-03T10:17:03Z

AANNND WE'RE OFF.

➲ NANOWRIMO: NOVEMBER 2
For ikel89, Percy Jackson and the Olympians, one-sided Nico/Percy, background Percy/Annabeth, Hazel/Frank, Persephone, Jason, 6600 words

To kick off NaNoWriMo this year, ikel89 asked me for Nico crushing horribly on Percy, which is great, because I don't really write any other kind of Nico. Like, seriously, even when I ship him with other people, his emotional and developmental dependency on Percy Jackson is kind of a major staple of his character :D:D

… I guess that was your House of Hades spoiler warning, by the way.

As always, you should definitely read this in the light format. It's a lot easier on the eyes than my regular layout. Sorry about that.

[read @ AO3]

-

Yes, before you ask, "crush" was absolutely the most accurate word Nico could have used at the time, although it's not like he was given much of a chance to prepare. It sounds childish, sure, "I had a crush," but a crush comes on you like a cough -- a sudden, harsh contraction in the ribs, and you're completely helpless to stop it.

-

"Look, man, I get it --"

"No, I really don't think you do," Nico says impatiently, without breaking stride. "And I'm not saying that to sound all like, woe is me, I'm so misunderstood --"

"Dude, 'misunderstood' is tattooed on your ass, I can see it from here," Jason remarks, because Jason is a jerk.

Jason is over six feet tall.

Jason is unfair.

"-- but I mean it in that, like, this is not new information to me. It's not, it's new information to you. For real, that's the only thing that's changed. I mean, for gods' sake, why does it feel like I'm the one coaching you through my feelings?"

Then, "ugh," because he'd been trying to avoid bringing out the "f" word. Whatever, if there's one thing Nico's picked up about the twenty-first century, it's that the bar for acceptable masculine behavior is set way too high, he was never going to make it anyway.

The sidewalk ends and he dodges left. It does not, however, shake Jason's mild-mannered pursuit.

Whose idea was Jason Grace, anyway? Like, who looked at the world and thought putting Jason Grace in it was a good idea? Nico would like to have some very strong words with their skeleton. Mainly of the breaking kind.

"All right, fine, you're right. I don't know what you're going through, because, like, most of the people I've had feelings for have reciprocated them --"

"Wow, not helping."

"-- but I just wanted to say thanks."

Nico pauses, but only for a moment.

"You're welcome," he says, though he has no idea what he's being thanked for. Maybe if he's polite enough, Jason will go away. (It's rude to shadow-travel just to get out of an uncomfortable conversation. Sally Jackson taught him that. Nico listens to her. She's a cool dude. Lady. Lady dude.)

Jason tilts a smile at him, like the sarcasm doesn't scrape at him like sandpaper.

"For being in love with Percy," he continues, and Nico's skin just jumps all at once and crawls like it's trying to peel right off his bones and leave them behind, because let's not put it like that, shall we? Let's say crush. It's childish. It means less. It doesn't open its maw inside Nico's stomach like he's got his heart on a noose and it's about to be sent swinging.

He grumbles, "Yeah, because I totally did it for you."

But Jason isn't finished.

"None of the rest of us could have impressed Cupid the way you did." Nico turns away, but Jason catches him instinctively, a hand against his shoulder the same way people try to catch falling things. "That's why I'm trying to tell you, man. You were the hero that day. Without that scepter, we would have gotten nowhere. You saved us, and by extension, you saved the world. Because you let yourself love Percy Jackson that much."

Nico swallows, throat clicking dryly.

"Hand," he says warningly. "Before I remove it."

And Jason does, not even making a big deal out of it, just being respectful, and Nico kind of wants to stab him anyway.

-

a small list of facts about nico di angelo, before we begin:

1. He is fourteen years old. He cannot name all fifty states. They covered it in the fourth grade, sure, but Nico wasn't there that day.

2. He has twenty-three words to describe the feeling that exists when his physical body does not, squeezed thinner than a blink of light on the dark side of a shadow. None of these words are adequate.

3. The first time he felt someone die, he was five years old and it happened on the other side of Piazza Spasimante, where the shadow from the church steeple fell in the perfect shape of a cross on the dust-colored stones. It was Maruiccia's older brother. They took a brick and they smashed his head in. It took three blows; Nico felt it, the snapping of bones in his skull, the crush of all the pieces scraping together, and clapped his hands to his ears and started screaming until all the dogs on the street were howling just to shut him up. Fer Voglia had a handsome voice like a priest's and he was going to inherit the fishmonger's when his father passed. He kissed boys, too, and would sometimes come to stand beneath Mama's window and call her name until she threw open the shutters with Nico on her hip and shouted down in exasperation, "What, you whore?" And Fer laughed and said, "Nothing, Signorina di Angelo, I just wanted to see your beautiful face, but I see you are in a mood! Has your wealthy man not visited lately? Moved on to the more welcoming? Perhaps he would like my company!" And Mama would reply, "Next time he visits, come and ask us nicely!" just to see his face break open into laughter. Later, Nico watched from Mama's arms as Bianca stood in front of a mirror and obsessively checked the back of her head like she expected to find it dented, and then she turned and asked, "Who would do something like that?" And Mama waited a long time before she answered, "Mussolini would. Hitler, maybe. And there are far, far too many young men who want to please them."

4. At the time that boys like Fer Voglia (and Nico) were being collected and burnt like cigarettes, the approval rating for Adolf Hitler in Germany was 90%.

5. Facts like that are hard to forget. It never leaves him. It's a shadow in his skin, that makes loving Percy feel a lot like a brick at the back of his skull, the promise of crushed bones. A crush, if you will.

-

The first person to talk to him about it was not, contrary to popular belief, Jason Grace.

Jason doesn't get any credit. Jason had to be told. Come on, Cupid had to get involved before Jason figured it out, because Nico is just that good at hiding shit (and also, kinda, nobody cared? Like, if you were going to make a list Nico's most important characteristics, his desire to put his hands on Percy's face and drag his teeth across his mouth wouldn't even make the top ten. The dead people, time-traveling casino thing kind of trumps it.) Nico built himself a very off-putting disguise, and, being fourteen, promptly got offended when nobody saw through it.

Everyone was pretty busy around that time, though, it's fine.

A week or two before Percy showed up at Camp Jupiter with his memory completely wiped and Nico's heart jackrabbited straight out of his chest, landing in a tangle of pulp and spiderwebbed veins at his feet in a way that felt obvious even to him, he was in Indiana, stealing lunch.

Indiana's one of those states that Nico often forgets exists, and even when he's there, he still probably couldn't find it on a map.

He doesn't forget it as often as he forgets those states that, you know, aren't New York over there on the coast, but still sometimes he needs to sit down, because, like, Delaware exists? Like, how does Delaware exist? There are millions of people in Delaware, doing people things. There are probably half-bloods dying in Delaware. Nico only thinks about Delaware like once a month. It's weird.

Anyway, he's in Indiana, at this wrap shop owned by this enormous Somali guy who introduces himself as the patron deity of travelers. He has several safe havens established across the country, wherever there's a significant population of East Africans. Nico isn't East African and has never been to that part of the world, not even accidentally, but the nature sprite behind the counter cheerily tells him that showing hospitality to the victims of other mythological pantheons never hurt, and also to try the lamb sambusas, they're made fresh daily.

It's the end of summer, the sky high and very blue, and Persephone comes into the shop and sits on the other side of the table, thumb flicking across her phone. The blue glow from the screen catches on the beads around her neck.

Nico pushes his plate towards her in offering.

"Thanks," she says, picking up the last sambusa and taking a bite, tilting her wrist over the table as lamb juice trickles down the heel of her hand.

Then she puts her phone down, crosses her leg at the knee, looks right at him and says around her mouthful, "If the relationship is toxic, Nico, then you need to get out."

"Excuse me?" he says in surprise. And then, "How did you know what I was thinking about?"

Her iPhone case is green and has a seedling on it, set in a bed of rhinestones. He thinks it might be real. She's wearing a long blue maxi dress, open at the neckline and draped in big red beads. Hoops swing from her ears. In this light, her eyes are as golden as Hazel's, her skin the same biracial beige. She smells like sawdust and hay, like those corn mazes that pop up everywhere in the autumn.

"You're a mortal," she says patiently. "You know houseflies, right?"

"No, I've never heard of them," Nico deadpans, because he has all the self-preservation skills of one of those moths that flutter straight at a zap light.

Persephone lifts an eyebrow, her expression as pleasant and mild as a spring day. "You know," she says, and casually stretches a hand across the table, touching the tip of her finger to the center of his chest. Immediately, every bit of metal in Nico's clothes turns into a dime-headed blossom; the zipper of his coat a sudden long vine of summer peppermint. "I like you a lot better when the only significant thing you can do is photosynthesize."

Obediently, and only a little grudgingly, Nico bows his head and says, "I'm listening."

"Right." His zipper suddenly has teeth again. "Houseflies. Did you know that when a fly meets another fly, that fly, the immediateness of that fly, becomes their entire existence?" She gestures eagerly with her hands. "Their brains aren't big enough, nor are their lives long enough, for anything else. And after that other fly dies or moves out of view, they have no idea what they were doing or thinking about before. They fall in love so hard it obliterates everything else."

Her phone buzzes on the tabletop. She doesn't look.

"That's what you're like to us," she tells him. "Flies, whose brains are rewired every time they fall in love, and oh, you fall in love so often."

"... Wow," Nico drips sarcasm onto the table. "That's flattering."

Her head tilts. "Listen, kid, what I'm trying to say is, you're not around long enough. You don't live that long, so if they're toxic to you, get rid of them. You don't owe them your time. Cut yourself out of their earth. Get out."

Nonsensically, Nico thinks of a New York City fire escape, of the torchlights at Camp Half-Blood, of Annabeth's hand tucked absent-mindedly in the back pocket of Percy's jeans as they listened to something Clarisse La Rue gesticulated angrily in their direction. Their expressions had been soft, identical in their affection. His hands clench in the sleeves of his jacket, knuckles showing bonily.

Persephone points. "That," she says. "The person who makes you bend like that. Get rid of them, you're worth more."

"How come you haven't done it?" Nico fires back, clenching his jaw and then unclenching it to speak.

She blinks once. She sits back in her chair; he's surprised her.

"I assume," she says. "You're referring to my kidnapping."

He nods.

Persephone jerks her head, a movement that isn't a nod and isn't a shake, just a movement that tosses her hair away from her face; Hazel does the same thing when she's trying to think of what to say. Nico wonders if it runs in families, and to what degree Hazel and Persephone are related. It hasn't occurred to him to introduce them.

"I love how many different versions of that myth exists," she begins. "And yet nobody thinks to ask me for my version of it."

Her phone buzzes on the table. She seems to have forgotten about it. It's odd; Nico is usually the kind of person people will feign checking their phones for when they see him coming, not the other way around.

"Let me ask you something," Persephone unfolds her legs, setting her bare heels down on the ground. "Do gods need to eat? Like, to survive?"

"No?" Nico hazards, wondering if this is a trick question. "Although you do it a lot, but that's mostly just for fun, though, right?"

"Right." She spreads her hands, "So then why did I eat the pomegranates?"

He breathes out. His cross-armed grip on himself loosens.

His brain fires at it, strikes something. "To negotiate?"

"To solve an argument," she agrees. "About me. That's the moral of the 'Hades kidnaps Persephone' story. Whenever my uncles or my mother tried to call the shots, whatever they said, I made the final decision regarding my fate. Me."

"Do you love him?" blurts out of Nico before he can help it. "Dad?"

"Yes," she says instantly. "I suppose I do. After a couple thousand years, they kind of grow on you. He … he listens to me." Her mouth quirks, "He holds my hand sometimes without me needing to prompt him, and sometimes not even when there's anybody there to see us. That's nice."

Nico averts his eyes, picking at the corner of the table and shifting the empty plate an inch to the left for no reason. He feels strange, like he should give her privacy, like he isn't meant to witness this.

Her fingertip touches his chin, soft as a seedling.

She tilts his head up.

"I love your dad," she says. Her eyes are golden as haystacks, her hair falling all around. "But I love being queen more."

-

So Nico gets out.

For the next year and a half following that whole debacle (he's referring to the Ancient Lands thing here, not the prophecy and Kronos thing, because 'debacle' doesn't really narrow Nico's life down any,) his only real contact with Camp Half-Blood is Leo, who migrates frequently between the Greek camp and the Roman camp, tinkering with his navigation instruments, supplementing his supplies from the best of both stores, and investigating possible methods of infiltrating the island of Orgygia.

Nico offers to help.

"For real?" Leo blinks, looking up at him and forgetting that he's got a pair of magnifying lenses propped in front of his goggles. He rears back in surprise, then fumbles the lenses off their hook.

"For real." And Nico isn't even offended when Leo just squints at him suspiciously. "I know a lot of weirdways, okay? If there's a way to sneak onto Calypso's island and stage a jailbreak, I can probably find it."

Leo fidgets. Then he shows teeth all at once and says, "I like your thinking."

Meanwhile, he and Hazel collect the twenty-first century like trading cards, exchanging them back and forth in the hopes of making a full set. The Internet is a fathomless mystery and why isn't there only one type of computer? Wouldn't that be simpler? Why did they change Daylights Saving Time? Was it broken? And holy crap, where in the world do they fit all the people? Sometimes, Nico looks at the population of places like Wyoming and just says, how?

Did you know that the year Hazel died, the world's population was only a little over three billion?

By 2012, it had breached seven billion.

"Wyoming, though!" he cries.

"I know!" she wails back.

"You guys are so flipping weird," Dakota comments from the other side of the Fifth Cohort's table, chewing at the rubbery end of his burrito and watching them progress through their moment of culture shock, bemused.

Nico doesn't really have an official position at Camp Jupiter. He and Reyna are bros, though (she's the one who gave him the twenty-second and the twenty-third word he has to describe the sensation of shadow travel -- it was a really good gift, Nico likes her a lot,) so nobody actively chases him out at swordpoint.

"Ah. Nico di Angelo," Terminus hails him as he goes by. "Son of Pluto. Still with us, I see."

"Hades, actually," Nico corrects automatically.

"Oh, right," says the bust. "I keep on forgetting you're the Greek edition. Well, I don't suppose they've found a cure for that?"

"No."

Terminus is oblivious to the sarcasm. He frowns for a moment, and then visibly decides he might as well comment. "Are you wearing your sister's clothes?"

Nico doesn't remember what he's wearing.

He checks.

"He is," Hazel pipes up from behind him, that horrible traitor. She stops beside him, a bucket of oats wobbling in her arms. "Those are my jeans. I was looking for those."

"How? Why?" Nico startles, incredulous. "I didn't think you'd miss them, you keep stealing Frank's clothes and wearing those instead."

"That's true," Hazel says happily. Her jeans have been turned at the ankle so many times she looks like the victim of a bad ring toss, and the sleeves of her sweatshirt hang past the ends of her fingers. Canadians Do It in Metric is embossed on the front; Nico's pretty sure that was Leo's handiwork. She tilts her head at him, her mouth pulling in the corner. "They fit you, at least."

"They do," he agrees, and gets a better look at her. "Hey, your hair's flat today. And really long!"

Her eyebrows lift, like, really, you're just now noticing? "It's called shrinkage," she says. "Wow, your hair is really flat too. What's your secret?"

"Patience and determination," he tells her solemnly. "Also, judicious application of a … an iron? Something iron?"

"Close. Flat iron. I used a straightener."

"There's more than one thing for flattening hair?"

"There are lots of things."

They exchange a look. It's their oh, gods, the twenty-first century is messed up look. Then she sighs, leaning her head across the distance to rest her forehead against the jut of his shoulder. He wraps an arm around her in a sideways hug, the bucket digging them both in the ribs.

"Seriously, though, you don't look half bad in girl jeans."

"Thank you," Nico says. "Needs more pockets, though."

Hazel looks at Terminus. So does Nico.

"Don't look at me," he goes. "Little dude has a point."

-

So, yeah, Nico's doing fine.

And then, the fall that he turns sixteen, Percy and Annabeth arrive at Camp Jupiter to attend school.

-

a small list of things nico di angelo loves about percy jackson:

1. He did it. The fucker did it. He became the prophecy kid -- even though he could have easily left that shit for Nico to clean up, he had the out -- and he did what Nico could not, and he never once acted like Nico should thank him for it. Nico wants to, somehow, but Nico wants to do a lot of things.

2. The way he throws himself into a hug, full-bodied, like he has no idea that his ribs are softly undefended and anyone's hands could be knives. He shares loud, back-slapping bro hugs with Frank, and longer, quieter ones with Grover. He's not afraid to hug his mother where anyone could see. Sometimes, he'll pull Annabeth into a hug like they're trying to wrap each other into the same skin, the both of them just the right height for Percy's arms to encircle her head, tucking them close together. He hugs Nico without thought, certain of its welcome without ever stopping to think why. And the hold of it is gentle, like some part of him is aware that NIco's bones are made of matchsticks tipped with phosphorus. Nico wants to sink his fingers into him like gravedirt, and his chest feels like collapsing space, his heart strangled with its proximity to Percy's.

3. The way Hazel draws herself up taller when he's near. Frank might be their praetor, hers and Nico's both, but Percy was the first person she truly believed could be a leader, and Nico loves him because his sister makes it easy to.

4. Sally.

5. He can't drown. If there was one person in this world who could withstand the way Nico would love him if given a chance, it would be Percy, who wouldn't gasp airless under the weight of it.

-

It really shouldn't have surprised him, because for all that Annabeth attacks her problems categorically, she's also never been good at school, and Percy flunked out of how many schools in how many years? And the school here has been designed specifically to help half-bloods get their GEDs. There are courses available with texts in ancient Greek, which is so much easier to read than English, and the teachers are all a mix of older Roman and Greek half-bloods; living proof that it's entirely possible for half-bloods to live past the age of eighteen, contrary to popular evidence.

Here's the thing, though, about having a crush on somebody else's boyfriend:

Annabeth chose Percy. She chose him when she was twelve, when she got stuck with him as the prophecy kid in Thalia's place and she decided that she was going to turn this drooling lump into somebody who could live up to the woman Annabeth adored and had given up. She kept on choosing him even when very few other people would.

In turn, Percy chose Annabeth.

He chooses her every single day, and she chooses him every day, too, that's what love is. It's looking at a person and making up your mind.

And Nico -- Nico doesn't feel like he got much of a choice at all, because Nico didn't have anybody else to choose. Percy was literally the only person he knew, the person Bianca told him to trust, the person who held him suspended by the throat in a cell in the Underworld and everything in Nico just stretched, all his bones bending with the force, and he knew that if he survived this, he'd follow Percy like a shovel into a grave.

It wasn't a decision at all.

-

His back hits the hard-packed dirt, hard enough to shock all the air from his lungs, and he lays there for a dazed moment, groaning. He doesn't have to look to know he's over the boundary line.

"Annnd you're out, di Angelo!" Dakota calls, confirming it. "Tamada, take his place! Hurry up!"

"Ow," Nico complains to nobody in particular, and stays there. His face feels tight and sunburned, and when he flexes his knuckles, they start throbbing instantly. Well, that's cool, at least. He still has all his limbs. Bombs hurt, though, he wants this on the record somewhere.

Tennis shoes scuff the dirt by his head, and he looks up at the upside-down face of Annabeth Chase suspended above him. She's got her hands on her hips, and a smile on her face like she's glad to see him.

"Well done," she tells him, and then her eyes brighten, her mouth already widening to show teeth as she continues, "Well done, Nico-co. Four for you, Nico-co."

Nico groans loudly and covers his face.

"You're fired," he informs her. "You're banished from Camp. That was a horrible reference."

"But you understood it," she says smugly. "Welcome to this century, Nico, Mean Girls is something that happened. Isn't it such a time to be alive?" Then, "Come on, let's watch the rest of the game."

"Can I be exempt?" Nico tells the inside of his elbow. "I almost got blown up."

But he winds up in the bleachers anyway, probing curiously at his cheeks and wondering if you really need nose hairs for survival or not, because he probably has a lot fewer now than he did five minutes ago. His eyebrows are a lost cause. Annabeth kicks her feet up on the row in front of them and goes, "Is this … dodgeball?"

"Deathball," Nico corrects. "But same premise, yes, only, you know, more bombs."

A mangled scream echoes out from center court.

"And machetes," Nico elaborates. "Wow, I haven't seen those before."

"Tamada, you're out!" Dakota calls reluctantly.

"Are they going to be able to reattach that?" Annabeth goes, sounding worried.

"Oh, yeah, sure. The legionnaire medics are really good at their jobs. He'll be fine."

Once she has the rules more or less figured out, it turns out that deathball is kind of right up Annabeth's alley. Nico's shocked. He's floored. He's flabbergasted. He never saw that coming. Annabeth Chase, liking a game where you have to be able to outsmart your opponents and throw shit really, really hard? No way.

"Shut up, shut up, shut up," says Annabeth rapidly in a bid to get him to stop talking, leaning all her weight into him and bending him forcefully in the other direction, so that he has to grab onto the railing to keep from tipping over.

He laughs, telling her, "Be careful, or I'm going to fall to my death and you'll feel guilty for the rest of your life. I'll haunt your ass, I will."

"Oh shut up, you big baby," she goes, but she does stop leaning on him so hard. "There's, like, six feet between us and the ground."

"Yes, but I have a delicate constitution." He tries to keep a straight face, but he only gets about half-way through 'delicate' before Annabeth bursts into laughter, her head thrown back and her throat bobbing with the force of it, and then all bets are off.

Then she shoves him off the bleachers, just to make a point.

He lay there on the ground, groaning through the radiating pain of impact for the second time in less than forty minutes. Then he keeps laughing, though he doesn't really have the breath for it.

The sky pinwheels overhead. Nico's heart aches with affection.

Annabeth appears above him, gripping the railing, and she's serious when she says, "No, but really, are you okay?"

"Yeah," he tells the sky, and he smiles at her. "Yeah, Annabeth, I'm fine."

-

Nico's life would be so much easier, he thinks, if he could just hate Annabeth. If he could just stop thinking of her like a person. If he could just think of her like an object to move out of his way, something to get rid of.

But he can't.

It doesn't work like that.

-

Percy at nineteen is different from the Percy at seventeen who tortured a woman in Tartarus just for the pleasure of hearing her scream, from the Percy at fifteen who Nico sent to bathe in the River Styx on the promise of invincibility, from the Percy at thirteen who wouldn't look at him and told him that his sister's last words hadn't been for him.

He's taller, for one thing: not quite as unfairly tall as Jason, but tall enough to make you look up at him like you respect him. He's finally grown into the strange, starved shape of his face.

Then again, so has Nico.

Part of him is tempted to tattle. To find Percy in between his classes and just chill with him, not watching his fingers on his pen (his real pen, not Riptide,) and definitely not watching his throat (that's Nico's favorite part of Percy, his throat. Oh, how Nico's little winged heart loves that throat.) He could just slip it into conversation, like it somehow didn't define Nico's entire housefly existence there for awhile, "Oh, hey, funny story, did you know that I was in love with you when I was fourteen? Yeah, funny, right? So was everyone else. I don't get many points for originality there, do I?"

Did you know? he wants to know. Did you figure it out?

Did you know what I would have done for you?

Man, it's a good thing you kind of forgot about me there for awhile, because imagine what would have happened if you'd just worked a little bit harder at that promise you made to Bianca to look after me. You could have fucking ruined me. Your obliviousness probably saved us both.

Do you know that it doesn't go away? It's a cough, Percy, sudden and harsh like a brick to the head, and do you know that I probably still love you? Because I don't know if I do. How would that feel? I wouldn't know.

I'd probably still go to war for you. I'd probably still die on a battlefield thinking that your side was the only side I wanted to be on, that it had to be right because it was yours.

I'd probably go to my knees for you. Do you know you could have that? I'd be good at it, you know I would.

Have you ever watched me like I watched you?

No.

No, Nico isn't going to tell.

Besides, by this point, he's pretty sure half of the way he loves Percy has to do with the way Percy loves Annabeth, so yeah. There's that.

-

He spends some time in the Underworld. It's been awhile; he hasn't really been around except for a major family get-together here and there, where Hades and Persephone hold hands under the banquet table and catch each other up on the kids they've had with other people like Nico isn't sitting right there. Alecto's usually present, though, and she's fun. She likes to stick voodoo pins in the dolls of gods she doesn't like.

He meets a phobosite on his way to his father's palace, because when you're stupid the way Nico's stupid, you forget that the Underworld is actually kind of a dangerous place, full of, like, you know, monsters and shit.

In the end, he manages to break one of the spines off its dorsal ridge and plunge it between the kink in its armor at the base of its neck, which he feels pretty triumphant about, because dude, training with the Romans is good for something, until the phobosite bursts into Mist with Nico still balanced on its back, easily forty feet off the ground.

It's not a bomb blast, it's not a fall from the bleachers. Nico hits the ground before he has time to visualize a destination and teleport himself out.

He shatters on impact, the bones in his leg splintering into shards like firewood, and the pain is so stunningly absolute that it obliterates everything else inside Nico's head, a white-out mushroom cloud that escapes through his mouth in a scream, tearing his throat on its way out.

Some stupid part of him skitters sideways and asks, almost curiously, if this kind of pain is what Percy felt when he bathed in the River Styx?

And then the rest of him shouts right over it, telling him to get help, you moron!

And Nico must call something, because the next thing he's aware of, there are hands on his face and a voice, commanding, "Wake up, wake up, you stupid fool."

He knows that voice.

"How --" he croaks out.

"You called me," Persephone says, sounding pissed. "Names have power in the Underworld, remember?"

Nico's pretty sure his stepmother would not have been the first person he'd call for help. She studies the mess Nico's body makes on the stones, her brow furrowed, and then she kneels down, angling her arms like she's going to pick him up. "No, I didn't," he's still kind of stuck on this point.

"Well, we're going to pretend you did." She smells like buckwheat and baking bread. "Up you go."

Nico saves himself the embarrassment of screaming again by promptly passing out, but not before he has the time to realize that yeah, no, that makes sense. The start of "Persephone" does sound an awful lot like "Percy."

He wakes up, later, in his room in Hades's palace. She's still there, sitting in a chair in the corner and scrolling through Pinterest on her phone. A skeleton hovers at her elbow with a goblet in its hand; it's a servant Nico recognizes, because the previous owner of those bones had died of bone cancer -- a fuzzy, calcified growth shows all along its skull and joints.

She's just about to shoo it away when it spots Nico, and its jaw immediately unhinges, chattering out an excited autumnal sound.

"Hi to you too," Nico replies in a croak.

"Hey," Persephone sits up. "You're awake, good. Take a look and tell me what you think of the leg."

"The --" He looks.

"I had to remove it," she offers, when he doesn't say anything for a long beat, just turns his hip a little bit to get a better look. "There wasn't anything left to put back together, I'm sorry, I hope you weren't attached to it."

"Oh, no," Nico says faintly. "Legs are completely detachable. Mortals are Mr. Potato Heads, didn't you know?"

"But this one won't take too long to grow. It'll grow faster if we send you topside and you can get some sunshine. See how it's just kind of green all over right now? That means it's still just in a sapling stage, but once the bark comes in and you start getting flowers, then that's a decent sign that your leg's fully grown back. Just come back and I can transfigure it into a real leg for you, okay?"

He doesn't say anything.

"Which means as soon as you're ready, you need to get up. There's no sunlight down here, sorry. You can't hide here." She appears at the bedside, standing over him. "Hey, did you hear me?"

Nico looks up at her and blurts out, "I ate the pomegranates."

Her golden eyes widen with surprise, and then she softens, bending down to press a kiss to his forehead. "I thought you might," she murmurs. "See? You've made a choice. No one can take it from you."

-

a small fact:

There are things Nico could do.

Of course there are things Nico could do, his entire world revolves around the idea that people see only what they want to see; Mist covers everything else. There are creatures out there who serve the needy for a price, there are monsters that shapeshift. There are spells, potions, conjurings -- there are any number of things that could be fashioned into a facsimile of Percy that Nico could use, could kiss, could pretend loved him back.

-

a smaller, even more important fact:

He could have Percy.

He could.

It wouldn't be hard. Percy's relationship with Nico runs on 90% guilt anyway, so it would only be a matter of finding the right way to pressure him. He could ask, he could beg, he could sink the idea into Percy's head like nails into the edge of a cliff: Nico di Angelo will leave you alone if you kiss him enough.

And Percy would. He would do it without hesitating, if he thought Nico wanted it, if he thought he'd sleep better afterwards.

After all, Percy's been trained from a young age to think that his life is forfeit, all for love of other half-bloods. Percy was prepared to die for them, there at the top of Olympus, so it'd be easy to say, I don't want your life, I just want to know what it's like to put you on your back, I want to know if the inside of your mouth is ticklish, I want to leave the mark of a skull in the shape of a bruise on your neck. What's the price of a kiss? Whatever it is, Percy'd be willing to pay it; he's been trying to compensate for that bit there in the middle where he didn't remember people like Bob, people like Nico. He could accommodate him.

If Nico asked nice, maybe he could take a finger and hook it into the belt loop of Percy's jeans to tug him in, because Nico's always wanted to do that, or put his thumb to the jut of Percy's hip, or --

-

He won't do it.

And that's how Nico knows.

-

The revelation comes upon him like a cough, like a crush, that sudden contraction at his ribs, and Nico does the only thing he can: he goes to talk to somebody about it.

(He's not fourteen anymore.)

He finds them in one of the lounges off the main cafeteria, which is one of the few places in Camp where modern technology goes haywire less often than it does everywhere else, and so it's where legionnaires go when they need to unwind and can't be kept in with the greater populace.

He doesn't knock (Nico doesn't like knocking, because he doesn't like the idea of nobody answering,) but instead leans his head against the door and waits a beat for the shadows under the rug to tell him the nature of what he's about to interrupt.

Upon finding it interruptible, he pushes inside.

Good Morning America's on the TV, and Hazel's got her eyes covered, her lips pursed in concentration as she tries to identify the host on the sound of her voice alone, because what's more twenty-first century than its background noise? When she gets it right, Frank switches over to one of the other morning news networks, and she tries again. They're far enough apart on the couch that Nico doesn't feel weird plunking right down in between them.

Hazel lowers her hands when the couch bends at the added weight, and, whatever expression has to be all over his face, she immediately says, "Oh, Nico," and her arms go around his neck.

He was totally fine up until that point, because you're always fine until somebody gives you permission not to be, and Frank's hand comes down on his other shoulder and Nico just shudders.

"It's okay," his sister says, right against his ear.

"Is there anything we can do?" Frank offers. Then, "Ow!" when Hazel leans across and smacks him hard on the arm.

"Frank, don't say that, we've got nowhere we can bury him!"

"No, don't kill him!" comes out of Nico, strangled into a half-laugh. "I'm really fond of him, that's the problem!"

She looks at him for a long while; he doesn't look back at her, he isn't brave enough yet, but he feels the weight of her eyes. He shifts his weight; his regrown leg is especially achy today. She kisses his cheek and speaks.

"Tell you what. Frank, what time is it?"

"Uhh. Ten till seven? In the morning?"

"Perfect. Do you know who goes jogging around the track at seven in the morning?"

"Isn't it … the guys from the Second Cohort?"

"Yes," says Hazel with relish. "And you know them, it isn't anything worth doing if they can't do it with their shirts off. Come on, get up, we're going to go sit in the bleachers and watch."

"But I'm not --" Frank starts. "Ow!"

"Come on!" Hazel's hands pull Nico to his feet, while Frank surreptitiously rubs at the spot where she just kicked him. "Let's go catcall some hot Roman dudes while they work out."

"Yeah, okay, sounds good," says Nico agreeably.

And it is.

-

a small list of things nico di angelo hates about percy jackson:

1. He'll grow out of loving him eventually, of course. He'll grow up, and the crush of his crush won't bend at his bones so much. But it'll be too late, and the connection will have already been made, between the idea of love and the idea of Percy, so that every new person Nico meets and love will fire back to Percy, whether he means it to or not, that small contraction of a cough, that quick crush at his ribs.

2. Percy Jackson will control how Nico di Angelo feels about people for the rest of his life, and he won't ever know it.

-
fin

/quietly dusts off journal and hopes nobody notices

2013-10-17T02:39:43Z

➲ NANOWRIMO PROMPT POST 2013

So the tradition is that, for the month of November, robin_2370_hood and I would trade off writing little ficbits all month; our own personal alternative to trying to churn out 50k for NaNoWriMo.

For the past two years, I've opened up prompting for these days to my flist, because I like writing things for people. I'm hoping to do better this year, since last year I only wound up completing five out of the fifteen prompts that I got @____@ Granted, I was trying to finish up my senior thesis and graduate at the time, and this year I work full-time, but excuses are for squares.

LET'S DO THIS THING.

Leave a comment with a fandom, a character/pairing, and a prompt, and I'll post something 1000 words or longer on the day you requested. Go right ahead and leave as many prompts as you want, but please only pick one day!

Here is a list of fandoms I'm familiar with and pairings that I ship. You can pick anything from that, please do, I could do with a challenge. Alternatively, the things I'm really feeling right now and would like to see prompts for are: The Book Thief (!!!!), any kind of Pacific Rim jaeger pilots AU, daemon fic, and yes, yes, fine, knock yourself out with those House of Hades prompts :D

November 2 - PJO, Nico/Percy, Nico POV for ikel89
November 4 - RPF, Andrew/Jesse/Emma, pregnancy!fic, leftover from polybigbang
November 6 - PJO/Harry Potter, Percy/Nico/Annabeth, companion to this piece for callunavulgari
November 8 - Misfits, Nathan/Marnie, daemon!fic for lc2l
November 10 - WTNV, Cecil/Carlos, Carlos POV for rumpledlinen
November 12 - PJO, OT3, jaeger pilots AU OR Teen Wolf, Scott/Allison/Isaac, demigod or space AU for usernameism
November 14 - The Social Network, Mark & Marilyn & Dustin, jaeger pilots AU for rosepetalfall
November 16 - Teen Wolf, OT3, daemon!fic OR Teen Wolf, werewolf!Allison AU OR Pacific Rim, Mako/Raleigh, spy AU for laria_gwyn
November 18 - PJO, ensemble, daemon!fic for orchida
November 20 - Harry Potter, Harry/Luna, snow for insanepurin
November 22 - Ace Attorney, Apollo/Trucy, Love (2012) AU for ohmeguro
November 24 - Sleepy Hollow, daemon!fic OR Pacific Rim, copilot/partnership for mauvais_pli
November 26 - The Social Network/Supernatural, Mark/Eduardo for incandescent
November 28 - PJO, Percy/Nico/Annabeth, jaeger pilots AU for alice_pike
November 30 - The Book Thief, daemon!fic for notworthy and arrora

All completed fics will be posted here, on this journal, with a link to the light-format version so you don't have to read it on my layout. A masterlist will go up on veritasrecords at the end of the month, which is also when I'll start crossposting to my AO3.

HELLO, EVERYBODY. I hope you have the most fantastic of days! ♥♥

EDIT: House of Hades spoilers in the comments, be warned!!

EDIT 2: I AM NOW FULL.

Thank you for such fantastic prompts! :D

✠ The Ninth Gate | a Sabriel fanmix

2013-07-16T04:18:25Z

So, a long time ago, when I was ... eleven? Possibly twelve, I tried to read Garth Nix's Old Kingdom trilogy: Sabriel, Lirael, and Abhorsen. I stopped partway into Lirael, possibly because the subject matter was a bit beyond me, but I adored Sabriel, and recently decided I wanted a reread, now that I'm, oh, twenty-three.

And OH. MY. GOD. OH MY GOD YOU GUYS, why isn't there a fandom? WAIT HOLD UP WHY ISN'T THERE A MOVIE??? who's in charge who do i talk to about this HOW DO I MAKE THIS HAPPEN.

YOU CAN'T EXPECT ME TO BE CALM ABOUT THIS. Oh my god.

But while we're waiting for this to be a thing, I've made you a mix.

Srs, tho, if you haven't read these books yet, I highly suggest you give them a shot. ZOMBIE-SLAYING SOLDIER-PRIEST LADY NECROMANCERS!!! LADY LIBRARIANS!!! DOGS!!!!!! LADY VILLAINS WHO CHOSE VILLAINY AND ARE GOING TO GET THEIR OWN BOOK ABOUT HOW THEY CHOSE VILLAINRY BECAUSE THERE ARE SO MANY WAYS TO BE A WOMAN. /flips a table

/politely rights it again

Anyway.

Art, music, zip file, and 8tracks link under the cut. Spoilers for the first book only.

cover art credit: [x][x]

The Ninth Gate ✠ a fanmix for Sabriel
the first book of the Old Kingdom trilogy

01 ✠ Me and the Devil - Soap&Skin
Does the path choose the walker?

and i said hello satan
it must be time to go

Wybie - Bruno Calais ✠ 02
Sabriel meets Colonel Horyse at the Perimeter and crosses the Wall.

instrumental

03 ✠ Swing-set Murders - Two Steps From Hell
The Charter Stone at Cloven Crest has been broken.

instrumental

Seven Devils - Florence + the Machine ✠ 04
There are seven bells of necromancy, to bind the Dead and make them walk to the final gate.

seven devils all around me, seven devils in my house
they were there when i woke up this morning, i'll be dead before the day is done

05 ✠ 21 Days - Dave Gahan
Sabriel and Mogget flee the Abhorsen's house.

the sun is disappearing on the horizon
you should really take a look, they're building a tower of fear by the river

The Sense of Six - Richard Gibbs ✠ 06
Sabriel senses the Dead below, and tastes the corrosive tang of Free Magic.

instrumental

07 ✠ Back from the Dead - Anne Dudley
She frees Touchstone from the figurehead in Holehallow.

instrumental

Heeding the Call - Bear McCreary ✠ 08
"Sentiment," replies the thing that had once been Mogget.

instrumental

09 ✠ Hava Nagila (arr. D. F. Smith) - Arsis Handbell Ensemble
Sabriel rings the bells.

instrumental

When the Green Blade Rises - St. Cecilia's Elementary Choir ✠ 10
"Five Great Charters knit the land ..."

in the grave they laid him, love by hatred slain, thinking he would never wake again
love is come again like wheat arising green

11 ✠ Bones (Charli XCX Remix) - MS MR
Rogir slays the Queen and her daughters to break the Great Charters, and becomes the thing called Kerrigor.

dig up the bones, but leave the soul alone
boy with a broken soul, heart with a gaping hole, dark twisted fantasy turned to reality

Zombie Train - Two Steps from Hell ✠ 12
Belisaere, infested.

instrumental

13 ✠ Fight in the Shade - Tyler Bates
Kerrigor traps Touchstone and Sabriel in the reservoir.

instrumental

O Death - Jen Titus ✠ 14
Astarael, the Weeper.

my name is death
and the end is here

15 ✠ I Will Follow You into the Dark - Lainey Darleeng
"I love you. I hope you don't mind."

if there's no one beside you when your soul embarks,
i will follow you into the dark

Dead Hearts - Stars ✠ 16
Soldiers and schoolgirls die at Wyverly College.

they were kids i once knew
they were kids i once knew

17 ✠ Jayne & Zoe / Final Battle - David Newman
"No Dead shall walk in Life, for that is not their path," whispers Sabriel, and looks down the Hall towards Kerrigor.

instrumental

One Mistress - Martin Phipps and the Mediaeval Baebes ✠ 18
"Highness, we bring sorrowful tidings. The Abhorsen is dead."

instrumental

19 ✠ I'm Not Done (R/D Remix) - Fever Ray
Or does the path choose the walker?

some do magic, some do harm
it's not over, i'm not done

"Sabriel! You're alive!"

listen ✠ download

❄ | MERRY CHRISTMAS, EVERY! ONE!

2012-12-26T04:57:32Z

AND NOW FOR MY GIFT TO YOU

Because a lot of people expressed a desire for new music recently, I decided I would share the songs I listened to obsessively this year with you, my friends.

You really ask a lot of me, you know that. Sharing things I love.

Geez.

omg so cool wow look at that photoshopping so srs bsns we climbed this whole mountain.

❄ | ELIZABETH'S TOP PLAYED SONGS OF 2012
a chronological listing of festivities and phat beats for your holiday enjoyment

FIRST OFF. If you haven't already, you should check out Songza. LIFE CHANGER. You can ask their concierge to play you whole playlists specifically designed to fit a particular mood or activity, like watching the rain or coding or driving with the top down. And, unless you specifically ask for a top 40 station or something, your playlists will probably be full of artists you've never heard of before. You don't even have to sign up if you don't want to. IT'S BASICALLY THE BEST THING.

BEST FIND OF 2012?

I THINK YES.

And my favorite playlists, if you want them, are: Rude Girls (badass lady singers being unapologetically badass,) Superheroes and Dinosaurs (collection of superhero theme songs and kid anthems about dinosaurs!), and Electronic Nonvocal Dubstep (which is excellent for grooving and focusing on work at the same time).

Anyway, on to the rest of the music now:

Raintears - Scala & Kolacny Brothers | ❅
don't taunt me
because you're not here

Everyone remembers that shockingly well-done Sherlock fanvid that came out right after Reichenbach Fall, back in January? This song, brought to you by the same choir that brought us Mark Zuckerberg's anthem from the Social Network (the cover of Radiohead's Creep), is the one that plays in the first half. It's definitely a song I play when I need to channel SAD INTROSPECTION when writing.

Under the Midnight Sun - Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross | ❅
instrumental

Arguably my favorite off the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo soundtrack (which is saying something, considering it's a 3-disc soundtrack and also, those Nine Inch Nails guys won an Academy Award, didn't you hear?) I experienced the same feeling with Under the Midnight Sun that I got with Soft Trees Break the Fall off the TSN OST: namely, that it's impossible to listen to this song and not feel like the loneliest person on the planet. Also, seven minutes long, so it's good for focus writing.

Bad Girls - M.I.A. | ❅
live fast, die young
bad girls do it well

If the Bad Girls music video wasn't your favorite music video of 2012, then you are wrong (or you're allowed to have your own informed opinion, whatever.) M.I.A. is my favorite everything and every flawless thing I aspire to be in life, and the top played artist on my Last.fm. I kind of like her a lot?

Your download will include the full version of Bad Girls, along with four of my favorite remixes (I have about fourteen remixes, so whittling them down was hard. I REALLY LIKE THIS SONG, CAN YOU TELL?): the Barbaric Merits Chain-Banging remix, which has a hyped-up bass; the Monolith remix, which I'm going to put on a Lila Zacharov fanmix SOMEDAY; the NARS remix, featuring Missy Elliott and Azelia Banks, for further badassery; and the Urban Noize remix, which would be excellent to kill zombies to.

The First Time I Saw Jupiter - Fall on Your Sword | ❅
instrumental

So for Religious Studies Movie Night at my uni back in February, we watched Another Earth, an indie film by Brit Marling that won Sundance in 2011. And. Well. Everybody knows what happened to me after that. You can stream the whole movie here. The First Time I Saw Jupiter is the song that plays in the opening credits, and it's one of my favorite opening sequences in the history of ever.

The Creator - Santigold | ❅
me, i'm a creator, thrill is to make it up
the rules i break got me a place up on the radar

soxdamnxcute suggested this song to me for a Mark Zuckerberg fanmix. I would say she has a point.

Hindi Dub - Builder | ❅
instrumental

ruins_of_sodom posted this on his Tumblr and I absolutely fell in love with it. Again with the dubstep that's easy to groove to and focus to.

Nicki Minaj vs Skrillex (Killer Bass) - DJ Sneaky | ❅
i want to kill
everybody in the world

MASH-UP ALERT. Skrillex and Nicki Minaj's Super Bass. Good song for plotting murder, and also probably for playing loudly while sawing apart corpses, you know? I play this song a lot. ~~this is a really creepy description, I'm going to stop typing.~~

Go - Santigold feat. Karen O | ❅
people want my power and they want my station
stormed my winter palace, but they couldn't take it

Brought to you by Santigold and the woman who did the cover of Immigrant Song for TGWDT, here's a song for all the ladies! Seriously, this song is the best to march and kick ass to, it's my head canon song for all sorts of awesome ladies: Korra, Lila Zacharov, Alicia Florrick, Moneypenny. /wistful sigh

November - Max Richet | ❅
instrumental

I got this one off a Sherlock/John fanmix and then somehow wound up with it on repeat while I was finishing up Shermer's Theory (and by finishing up, I mean, writing the most difficult, most important scenes, because I'm that intelligent person who saves the hardest bits for last.) It's this long, poetic, string anthem, and it's really excellent at setting a poignant mood. Violins are my favorite, have I mentioned that before?

I Am the Doctor (Dubstep) - Murray Gold | ❅
instrumental

I have nothing to add to this. It's I Am the Doctor, but dubstep. YOU CAN SAVE THE UNIVERSE AND WUB-WUB-WUB AT THE SAME TIME, HOW IS THAT NOT A THING YOU WANT TO LISTEN TO REPEATEDLY?

King - The Romanovs | ❅
long live the king, the king is dead
your prayers won't call him back to your bed
no spells or tricks will bring him home

So I turned in my senior thesis and celebrated by going to the midnight premiere of the Avengers, and immediately thereafter, mccarthyism gave me this song and it racked up a ridiculous number of plays kind of immediately. I always thought it could work for Asgard in a number of different scenarios, because it's the kind of song that tells a story. If I were going to make a fanmix for Snow White and the Huntsman, this would be on it. (Or, hey, you know, the Merlin finale. YOU'RE WELCOME.)

Gone - James Newton Howard | ❅
what brings us together is what pulls us apart
gone our brother, gone our heart

I know when it comes to mournful ballads sung by medieval dwarves in 2012, the Hobbit edges out Snow White and the Huntsman by a terrific margin, but this is still my favorite song off the soundtrack (sorry, Florence and the Machine.) It's a funeral hymn, if that tells you anything about the kind of mood it sets.

Eat Flowers, Breathe Light - Inlakesh | ❅
instrumental

Inlakesh has a booth at our summer arts festival every year, selling their handmade didgeridoos and giving live performances, and this year I walked away with their CD, which is the only thing in their stall I could afford without selling a minor internal organ or something. Didgeridoo might by the only thing I enjoy more than violins (but not more than dubstep. /poker face.) IF YOU WANTED EIGHTEEN MINUTES OF IT, HERE YOU GO. I seriously turn this song on whenever I'm doing anything; cleaning, napping, driving, reading.

Iron - Woodkid | ❅
i want to feel the pain and the bitter taste
of the blood on my lips, again

I got this one off a Thor & Loki fanmix on Tumblr, because I heard the Avengers got pretty popular there for awhile. It is seriously snazzy, in terms of beat. Best listened to with headphones!

Put Your Graffiti on Me - Kat Graham | ❅
denim-jean jacket, pink chucks, and a miniskirt
be your bad habit, throw me up against the wall first

So this commercial happened (warning: video is NSFW, for three minutes of naked male underwear models touching each other inappropriately. you're welcome,) and once I stopped blinking and wondering what the hell just happened, I realized that that was actually a really catchy song. So I found the original, and prompty found myself unable to STOP listening to it.

Bonkers - Dizzee Rascal | ❅
some people pay for thrills, but i get mine for free
man, i'm just living my life, there's nothing crazy about me

So I don't know if you heard, but London hosted this minor little get-together called the Olympics over the summer. One of the study abroad classes I took looked at the sociopolitical and economic effects that the Olympics have on the host city, and what London did to win the bid back in 2005, and so during the opening ceremonies, I kept on yelping "WE LEARNED ABOUT THAT," and generally geeking out far more than an American probably had the right to geek out, but dwimmer and mutecacophony politely refrained from murdering me just for some quiet. I really, really looked forward to getting my hands on a copy of the soundtrack to the opening ceremonies, because a) Underworld composed the instrumental bits and b) the United Kingdom's greatest export since the sun set on the British Empire and they stopped being the world's industrial powerhouse is music.

Gangnam Style - 싸이 | ❅
heeeeeeeey,
sexy lady!

YOU KNEW EVENTUALLY ONE OF 2012'S TOP SONGS HAD TO BE ON HERE, I'M ONLY HUMAN. Negl, I love Gangnam Style in all its shapes and sizes. I even like the Glee version, come at me, bro. I listened to it obsessively after ripping the mp3 from the YouTube video, which Amanda showed to Anthony and I at the lunch table and then video'd our reactions, because she's an excellent person, and to me, it's kind of the anthem of August and the start of school. (also, I wound up reading a lot of Teen Wolf fic with it playing in the background, so I accidentally formed some sense memory there, MY BAD.) Because I figure that if you really wanted it, you'd have the original already, your download includes the orchestral version and a mash-up with Space Jam. Because reasons.

Below My Feet - Mumford & Sons | ❅
well, i was told by jesus all was well
so all must be well

So Babel was also thing that happened this year! I have same the emotional attachment to Mumford & Sons that the majority of the TSN fandom does, so queue up that wild banjo strumming!

Youthless (Acoustic) - Beck | ❅
your mouth is full of wordless hyms
and run-on sentences

astrofisica was one of my artists for TSN Big Bang, and she put together this mixtape to go with Heave Ho, Thieves and Beggars, because she is actualfax one of the best people ♥ In one of her rough draft e-mails, she linked me to this song, and I wound up putting it on repeat and shaping parts of the (then 75% unfinished) fic to fit it. It's acoustic, so it's a good song to have on in the background when you're trying to power through something, but don't want to be distracted.

Little Ghost - the White Stripes | ❅
little ghost, little ghost, one i'm scared of the most
can you scare me up a little bit of love?

Although technically I first heard this song during the ending credits to Paranorman, I later found it on a Halloween mix. It's a foot-stomping, knee-slapping, tamborine-banging song, and I think it's one of the happiest songs on this list, even though it's about death and necrophilia. Whateva, whateva. If I ever do a Nico/Hazel fanmix, I will slap this on there so fast I'll probably get whiplash. Just saying. I fell in love with a little ghost and that was all!

You Shall Not Pass! - Ekojo | ❅
contains various soundbites
including that one about hobbits and isengard

hiza_chan linked this song in one of her LJ entries in the middle of a completely unrelated story, and somehow, it magically wound up downloaded to my laptop about half-a-listen later. Does everything need a dubstep remix? YES, YES IT DOES.

Cannibal - Ke$ha | ❅
i love you,
i warned you

I first heard this song when it queued up on mccarthyism's iPod in a car full of girls and one boy stashed in the trunk on our way to play Cards Against Humanity, which is basically Apples to Apples for people going straight to hell, and then when it showed up on eduardozuckerberg's M.A.D. fanmix, I decided the world just really wanted me to obsessively listen to this song again and again. So I did.

Paperman - Christopher Beck | ❅
instrumental

Tying with Little Ghost for the happiest song on this list, here, have the soundtrack to that short that played right before Wreck-It Ralph. YOU KNOW THE ONE I'M TALKING ABOUT. help, i just have a lot of feelings.

Steppin' on Babylon - M.I.A. | ❅
making money last, hide it in a flask
sound of a bomb blast, throw it in a bag

Another mashup! This time between M.I.A's Steppin' Up and ... um, something else I don't know, oops. Whatever, it is super catchy and is definitely the kind of song you can shake your ass to on a sweaty, strobelit dancefloor, and it's the one I've been listening to on repeat for the last week.

NOW THAT YOU'VE GOTTEN YOUR DAILY ALLOTMENT OF EXERCISE BY SCROLLING PAST ALL THAT, LET'S GET TO THE GOOD PART, YES?

GO AHEAD, OPEN YOUR PRESENT:

❅ - DOWNLOAD - ❅
wow so cool wow

I HOPE YOU ALL HAVE A WONDERFUL HOLIDAY ♥

➲ NANOWRIMO: NOVEMBER 10

2012-11-14T05:47:13Z

I'm not behind on everything, who me?

I keep on saying, "oh, I'll catch up later in the month," but come on, end of the month also means end of the semester, means final exams and final papers and eeep, I need to go in and rent my cap and gown, I keep on forgetting to do that when I'm on campus. SO WE'LL SEE. I'M WORKING ON IT, GUYS, I PROMISE.

... although, if I owe you something, you should probably remind me :/

On today's list of awesome:

• rock climbing was cancelled this morning! My teacher was, like, "please, you're all going to skip to play Black Ops anyway, don't bother coming in."

• as a completely unexpected treat, mauvais_pli sent me fic on a postcard! I got this fabulous little drabblet about how the Moscow State University is so grand that even Mark considered putting on dress shoes. IT IS THE BEST. Also, she made a Natasha fanmix entirely made up of Russian music. HELP IT'S SO GOOD, GO GO GO LOOK AT IT LISTEN TO IT.

And now:

➲ NANOWRIMO: NOVEMBER 10
For ikel89, Harry Potter, Draco/Ginny, Curseworkers AU, 4600 words.

A pairing I have never read or written before! I will take going out of my comfort zone for 500, please, Alex. It was fun! (And I got to write in second person POV, which is my guilty pleasure.)

As always, unless you enjoy squinting at bizarre layouts, you should probably read this in the light format.

✠ | The highest concentration of deathworkers in the United Kingdom has always, historically, resided in a tight-knit cluster in London, and they've been there since the area was called Tuiccanham, ceded to the Bishop of London at the turn of the eighth century in a charter that was signed with twelve crosses: one for each of the bishop's delegates they put in the ground. They've largely been left alone since then: Tuiccanham became Twickenham, an area known for its attractive tree-lined boulevards, its magnificent manors and grottos.

You've never been there, but you heard it's nice, for a deathworker town.

✠ | The laws in your country regarding cursework are incredibly strict. The fines for showing skin below the wrist in a public place are, frankly, frightening, and the way people went very still and quiet when a puppy in a pet shop playfully tugged your glove off with its teeth when you were six made you think somebody had just died; you've never forgotten it.

The stricter the rules, the less likely the infraction, is supposedly how that one goes.

You suppose it's just their way of making up for Australia. It's the only country in the world where cursework is legal, since it was largely colonized by penal workers who decided that, given the high volume of workers in the population, cursework was much better off legislated, legalized, and supported than systematically crushed or swept under the rug. The UK only tightened its control on cursework in response, as if to prove that anything the Australians could do, had to be wrong.

✠ | Your mother is a physical worker. You know this the way you know her hair is red, her cheeks are round, and she develops a dank, chesty cough every time the weather gets cold that never really goes away.

Whenever you were ill as a child, feeling achy and sniffly and like your head weighed more than your neck, your mother would make you a bowl of soup and tuck you into your parents' bed, smoothing your hair back with her bare hands and singing to you until you fell asleep, nestled snug under their heavy quilt, and you always felt right as rain when you woke up again. You'd just assumed she was magic.

Charlie takes after her. He works at the Sea Life Aquarium down on the South Bank in Lambeth, and one time your family had the aquarium director and her husband over for dinner. Your mother got all flushed and pleased when, over pudding, the director told you all that she's never seen the animals get so calm as they do when Charlie gets in a tank with them. It'll do wonders for their longevity, being so low-stressed.

"He's just got that touch," your mother says, beaming.

✠ | Deathworkers tend to marry deathworkers, and their children tend to be deathworkers, too. By all accounts, that makes no sense, because there's nothing about the hyperbathagammic gene that suggests particular types of cursework are hereditary. Yet, cool as you please, the deathworker families that live in Twickenham almost always birth more deathworkers.

(They probably do it out of spite, now that you think about it.)

Your whole family are workers. You can trace the hyperbathagammic gene up your family tree back to when William the Conqueror got it into his head that he wanted a private island and only the British isles would do.

Not all of you do cursework, of course -- Percy makes a point of never taking his gloves off, even inside the house, and your father leads by example and has to periodically remind the twins to be careful, which they always take to mean don't get caught. But you're still workers, the same way you are still red-headed, still freckled, still poor; the potential is still there. People who know what you are always try to pretend they're not uncomfortable when they have to talk to you on the street.

"They outnumber us ten to one," her father tells you quietly, when you come into his study, asking if he could work some good dreams for you, maybe ones with dinosaurs? "And they are afraid of us. Never underestimate what a dangerous combination that is."

✠ | You are eleven the first time you meet a deathworker. Your father promised you to take you to the book market underneath the Waterloo bridge when he's done with work, because you're looking for a copy of the Phantom Tolbooth and books there are only, like, £3, and you've got that in your pocket right now, so you've been tagging along behind him all afternoon. Your legs are very short and his strides are very long, and with every step, the moneybag hanging from his utility belt clinks. Your father checks parking meters and gives tickets for a living, and he always gets in trouble with his supervisors because he'll throw tickets away if people come out and apologize and move their cars immediately. They call him soft.

You sit in the bus shelter and kick your legs and watch as he punches into his ticket device, standing in front of a silver car with strange, blueish LED headlights that's parked right at the kerb in an area that says "KEEP CLEAR - BUS" on it in really big letters. The ticket churns out, and he rips it off.

Just then, a man comes bustling out of the nearest door, yelling. He's got on a dark green peacoat that flaps open, and his hair is very long, silvery and blonde; hair rarely stays that blonde after the age of three, so you wonder if it comes from a bottle.

Your father adopts an expression of polite disinterest, and tucks the ticket under the windshield wiper.

The man yells louder, red in the face now, and then -- you scream -- starts to take his glove off, finger-by-finger. Two strangers in orange construction vests leap down from the nearby scaffolding and tackle him to the ground, but not before you see the three blackened stubs where his fingers used to be.

✠ | That man's name Lucius Malfoy. You learn this because you stick a big wad of chewing gum in his son's hair the next year: you get in so much trouble and they call in your mother to have a Talk, but it's worth it. He'd been making fun of Ron, and, fine, not about anything you haven't made fun of him for hundreds of times before, but it's somehow completely different when it's coming from somebody else. There's being a sister, and then there's just being a right prick.

✠ | The problem is, Draco is on your radar after that, and you are on his. There's always one person who makes that sour first impression that stains every interaction thereafter, and Draco Malfoy is yours: you start grinding your teeth whenever you hear his voice, with that horrible "I should have gone to Eton, but I just couldn't be bothered with the whole thing" accent of his. He comments to his friends, very loudly, how glad he is that his parents are getting him a new phone. He wasn't eligible for an upgrade, originally, but it was just so traumatic, having to shave all his hair off like that, that they're going through with it anyway.

He glances sidelong to make sure you've heard, and you clench your fists inside your pockets, because your mobile used to be Percy's and doesn't even have messaging.

The one time he catches you on your own, it's in a Tesco Express, and you don't spot him until it's too late to leave without being really obvious. All you want is a bag of Walkers, because your usual bus route has been diverted due to all the construction going on in the East End and now takes forty-five minutes longer to get you home, and you get awful peckish before that time's up, but he spots you before you can join the queue.

For a fleeting second, you wish one of your brothers were here.

"Hello, Weasley," Draco goes on a long drawl. His gloves are fitted, black, and his jumper is so soft-looking you can practically smell Regent Street on it. "Fancy this coincidence."

You say nothing, and shuffle along with the queue when it moves. Six brothers taught you long ago that the quickest way to annoy somebody is to pretend they don't exist, so you feign deafness.

Draco's undaunted. He leans against the shelves and says, casual, "You know, I've never asked, seeing as you're so far beneath my notice, but what kind of cursework do you do? Family like yours, you have to do something. Or are you trying to keep quiet about it? Can't be an embarrassment like those brothers of yours. How many times have they been cited for indecent exposure?"

Fred and George do dream work and emotion work, respectively, and they've never confessed to doing the same thing twice, so no one outside of family has ever been certain who does what, exactly. They don't share your father's discretion, but none of those charges have ever stuck.

The woman in front of you in the queue is openly staring, two bargain bottles of wine tucked under one arm. You really wish you'd just gone to the newsagent's instead.

✠ | You don't say anything about that incident, nor the two that follow.

Things work differently for the deathworkers of Twickenham. Nothing ever sticks to them. It's as if that much money congregated in one place changes all of the rules that the rest of you have to live by. You know for a fact that Lucius Malfoy was never charged for indecent exposure after what he did to your father, and that's the kind of privilege they're raising Draco into as well. Twickenham is a deathworker town, and deathworkers work, well, quietly.

✠ | The only memory worker you know is Neville Longbottom, who has asked you to a few school functions and always treated you like a gentleman. Colin, a fairly twee boy in your year who keeps on trying to get you to come to his photo club after you said it looked cool once, tells you that you can do so much better, but you don't see why you would want to. Neville is perfectly lovely, if forgetful.

He never tells you. The only reason you know is you overheard the teachers talking about it by the vending machines once: Neville's memory is abysmal because, when he was just a child, they (you never learn who "they" are) used him to wipe his parents' memory completely, thus preventing them from testifying. His parents are still in hospital, and the blowback left Neville unable to even remember left from right without using his fingers.

When you were younger, you often wished you were a memory worker. How much easier would your life be if you could just make people forget things, or remember things that never happened?

After you meet Neville, you stop thinking that.

✠ | Sometimes, you get this restless feeling under your skin, like nothing you make or do or say has any meaning, so why are you pretending?

It usually gets like this after Fred or George get taken in again or your father faces an inquiry at work because some sore loser got a ticket and had a weird dream that night or Draco Malfoy starts a rumor that you took off your gloves for him after Friday's match. You start wondering why cursework is illegal, why the normal world hates everything that you are, why respect isn't something you can just take?

But then you catch Neville's eyes across the grounds, and he gives you that smile and a wave, like he just wants to say hello and won't be insulted if you don't acknowledge him, and you remember again.

You're used to your family, but the rest of the world never forgets that cursework is often used for evil.

✠ | There are no living transformation workers.

You know, because your country was responsible for the last one, and that's not an experience anybody is eager to repeat anytime soon.

Your mother met him once. "You were all such wee things back then," she peers around at you all, like she's surprised to see herself surrounded by adults instead of the children who clung to her apron strings and cried when they were sick until she worked them. "Ginny hadn't even been born yet. I was coming out of the A&E at Mile End with Charlie and there he was, cool as you please, waiting by admissions. Had on this big, ugly cloak and he'd transformed himself, changed his face so that --"

She gestures vaguely around her nose and eyes, and you don't need her to elaborate. You all know how to work Google: Voldemort wore many disguises over the course of his career, and there are probably several deaths that have never been properly attributed to him, but towards the end, he used to favor the inhuman, the reptilian.

"-- later, as I was thinking about it, that must have been right after he killed the Fawcetts. Turned them into a locket, remember, that broke them into two? Wore it around his neck for a week. Oh, quick, somebody talk about something cheerful, I've got shivers."

You were seven weeks old when he died. He was killed by his own blowback, and Harry Potter remains the only person who's ever survived being transformed into an inanimate object and back.

✠ | Your brother Ron is a luck worker.

This doesn't really mean much, because Bill's one, too, and so's Percy, so it's not like he's a rarity in your family or anything. Something like 65% of all hyperbathagammic are luck workers; some go their whole lives without ever knowing. It's hard to tell, is the thing, what's good luck and what's cursework, what's bad luck and what's a luck worker's ill-wishes.

You're pretty sure Percy's never worked a day in his life. He's never going to stop trying to live his own name down, and probably finds the sight of his own bare hands scandalous. Your father tells you that you should let Percy be his own person, and your mother's torn between pride in your curseworking heritage and hurt because Percy thinks that same heritage is shameful, and the rest of you think he's a git. Being a worker and not using it ... that's like having a lovely operatic voice and then getting a desk job and never singing again.

You don't know if Bill uses his luck work. If he does, he's done a very good job of hiding it. He has a job at a bank in Switzerland, always seems to get concert tickets two days before they officially go on sale, and is engaged to a French race car driver who has a permanent guest spot on BBC's top-ranking period drama of the year, but that might just be because Bill is ten times cooler than everybody else.

Hypothetically, if a luck worker only works good luck, then he'll only ever experience good luck as blowback, but you've lived with Ron your whole life, and the good luck always just seems to happen to other people.

You catch him touching the nape of Harry Potter's neck once with the bare back of a knuckle, saying, mate, you've got a loose thread. You widen your eyes at him, and he shrugs back, discreetly pulling his glove back on.

The next day, Harry asks Cho Chang out.

"Yeah, well," is all Ron says, and he's smiling.

✠ | The Malfoys host extravagant parties; you know, because Draco can reliably be expected to brag about them the next day. All the deathworker families in Twickenham invite each other around for elaborate get-togethers with cocktails and the kind of hors d'oeuvres that are probably illegal in a few countries and shouldn't be allowed anywhere near an open flame, if only for the purpose of mocking each other at length as soon as they leave.

Slughorn's Christmas party is the first time you ever set foot in that town. It's fifty minutes away by Tube, and you have to transfer lines twice. You tell your mother you're going to Hermione's.

You're invited because your team's going to the national championships, and everybody knows you're the best player on the team. It probably isn't fair that Slughorn invited you and not the other girls, but you're the youngest of seven and rarely get any kind of recognition, so you're willing to be selfish about this.

Most of the the young Twickenham crowd is there, even though you're pretty sure the only one who was actually invited was Blaise Zabini. There's no point in telling the rest of them where they should and shouldn't be.

"Doesn't it scare you?" Draco asks you. Christmas lights are strung all along the edge of the terrace, and fake, glittering icicles hang from the awning. You can see the pinprick of light reflected in his eyes from how close he's standing. "Being here?"

"What, on the terrace?" you reply, dry. "Terrified. I'm pretty sure I saw Pansy vomiting in this flowerpot earlier," you point helpfully. "I can see how that might frighten you."

He scowls, and you brighten. "It's okay, I'll protect you!" you reassure him, because after ignoring him didn't work, you learned the quickest way to annoy Draco Malfoy was to remind him that you were, in fact, female, and could still do better than him in everything you try.

He swallows down a retort, and then straightens his shoulders. "You know what I mean," he says darkly. "You're in our court, Weasley. We could do anything to you."

He lifts one hand so close to your face you wonder for one bizarre moment if he's actually going to touch your cheek, but then you see the holes cut into the fingers of his gloves. The flesh underneath is pale, smooth, and grey in the low light, like a worm's.

You burst out laughing.

"Oh, Draco," you say at the outraged look on his face, and your voice goes low and affectionate entirely against your will, because that was adorable. "Don't embarrass yourself. You can't work me. You're not a worker."

Something flashes in his eyes. From inside, you can hear the faint sounds of idle chatter, Slughorn's booming laugh, and a violin overture to Lady Gaga's Telephone.

You take the opportunity to muse, since you have his full attention. "They always tell you that Twickenham is an incredibly closed-lipped, close-knit community. But what they don't tell you is that you've been a close-lipped, close-knit community for almost a thousand years. How inbred do you think the deathworking families can get in a thousand years?" You thin your eyes at him, thoughtful. "The Slug Club, celebrating Britain's brightest, youngest talent. Please, could you be any more obvious. Cormac, Hermione, Harry, Luna, me? We're all workers. Oh, sweetheart, how many of you have had the hyperbathagammic bred out of you?"

"What do you know about it?" he fires, belligerent.

Under his suit jacket, he's wearing a football jersey. You can barely make out the emblem that says "Twickenham Death Eaters."

You smile, and reach up. You shake your hair free of your headband, pulling it all to one side, and from right behind your ear, you tug loose a stunted, sooty streak of black.

✠ | The first person you ever killed was your uncle Bilius.

You were nine years old. You had braces on your teeth and a green scrunchie in your hair, the elastic mostly worn out, so that stray pieces of hair kept falling into your eyes. You were alone: your mother had gone to the toilet to splash water on her face, saying she didn't want to see her brother all soppy with tears; it didn't matter that he was unconscious, he'd still find a way to tease her for it.

Uncle Bilius looked really peculiar, with all those tubes coming out of his face. He'd hit a big, black dog with his car, which you think was a really stupid thing to do, although you suppose he hadn't done it on purpose. The doctors told your parents that the "prognosis was grim," and that maybe it would be kinder just to let him go?

You swung your legs and you looked at your uncle and you thought of the way your mother worked away all your scrapes, bruises, and colds, laughing off concern whenever blowback made injuries bloom under the cover of her blouse, made her cough, dank and chesty, all winter long. It's worth it, she always said, the same firm way she told you to tie your laces and make sure your gloves were snug and to never cross the street without looking. To have the ability to work somebody else's pain away. It's a gift.

Nobody was looking. It was easy to hide your movements beneath the bedrail, easing your glove down off the heel of your hand. You pressed it to your uncle's bare arm, right above the tape that held his IV in.

It was the easiest, most natural thing you've ever done, stopping his heart.

The machines started screaming, making you jump and burst into tears, and you didn't notice a strand of hair come loose from your ponytail, turn black, and fall out.

✠ | The only people who know are your family. Everyone assumes you're a physical worker, like Charlie, like your mother. How else would you be so good on the field, how else would your team be going to championships in Manchester if the most formidable of your opponents hadn't suffered some unfortunate injuries that rendered them unable to compete?

(That one's easy. Your brother's a luck worker, didn't you hear?

"Yeah, well," Ron goes, and only swats at you half-heartedly when you kiss his cheek.)

✠ | You're sitting in the waiting room at the dentist's to get your teeth cleaned, reading the Evening Standard that the lady handed you coming out of the Tube station, when Hermione emerges from behind reception to say hello. You startle, because you'd forgotten this was the Grangers' practice, and she laughs, throwing herself into the seat next to you.

You told Draco she's a worker, but you're not sure if it's true. If she is, she's never mentioned it.

Statistically, if she's never had a history of it in her family, it's unlikely that she is (although not improbable; hyperbathagammic has to start somewhere,) but you're so used to be surrounded by cursework that you automatically assume that the people you like best must be workers as well.

Her laughter fades into a frown as her eyes catch on the headline of the newspaper in your hands. "This again?" she sighs.

You nod grimly.

With a short, sharp huff, she pulls a lock of hair forward, picking at the split end. One of her knee-high socks has ridden lower than the other.

"It's not fair," she bursts out, a tight exhalation between gritted teeth, and she glowers darkly at the headline. "That they'll go and make legislation concerning 'worker welfare'," she makes air quotes. "When no workers are allowed to sit in Parliament! They banned the hyperbathagammic as soon as they found a reliable test to determine it, and even before that, it was really rare. The last worker to have a seat in our government was in 1903, and he was this dodgy old codger in the House of Lords anyway. And they still think it's their right to make a --" she grabs the edge of the paper, pulling it up so she can read "-- 'a bill restricting the unpredictability of hyperbathagammic children in primary schools' when they won't even let workers in government!"

You're fairly used to Hermione's frustrated outbursts, as she's both very bright and very passionate and the combination of the two leaves her frustrated and disillusioned by the state of the world on a daily basis.

"There's got to be something we can do," you say, rhetorically.

She snorts. "Not unless you've got somebody in Parliament in your pocket. And let's face it, if you did, you'd be living in Twickenham."

You grow very still, and start thinking.

✠ | When you're twenty-three, you get snakebite piercings in your lower lip, and your mother about births kittens on the kitchen floor when you drop by for a visit.

"They're just so -- so --" she tries, but you're not a temp. You don't work in a bank, you don't work in an office, and you can pierce what you damn well please. You're not yet old enough that she can start lecturing you on when you're going to act your age, although you suppose it's coming soon. She certainly tries it often enough with Fred and George, and they've got their own gig on some major comedy network in America. They have tours. She switches track. "And I don't like what you've done with your hair. You look -- well," she lowers her voice. "Sweetie, it looks like blowback."

"Mum!" you laugh. "That's the point! It's edgy," and you flash your teeth.

Your mother sighs, and gives it up.

The bottom half of your skull is shaved, the growth ashy and black, and you still have the rest of your ginger, swept into a ponytail. It's a rather fetching look, in your opinion, half-black half-red, and you'll probably be sad when the next round of blowback makes it uneven.

✠ | You've got wing seats at a Wednesday night showing of We Will Rock You at the Dominion Theater, you and Draco, when you kill for the second time.

You don't want to think about how young you were, although you imagine you must have felt very old at the time.

Draco's pretending to humor you when you scalp the tickets off some kid in the year below you and offer to take him, but you've seen his iPod: there's a lot more Queen in there than he'll ever admit to. It's the finale of the show, and the audience is on its feet, stomping to the title song and bellowing at the top of their lungs, when you see someone in a shabby overcoat slip into your largely-empty aisle. The strobing lights catch on the blade of the knife he pulls from inside the coat. He's looking right at Draco, his nose twitching like he can smell the Twickenham on him. Things were very tense that year, you remember, with that bill on worker legislation passing through the House of Commons.

You learn later that the man's name was Greyback. You don't care right then.

You move, stepping around Draco and working your hand free of your glove fast as a silver fish. Greyback doesn't have time to register the threat, the bare hand coming towards him, before your fingers touch his face. You're not in the back row, you're not even discreet, but everybody's shifting and shout-singing and nobody notices you catch Greyback's weight and set him down in a seat as best you can. Nobody notices you grab for Draco's hand and pull him towards the exit.

You burst onto Tottenham Court Road with a scream caught behind your teeth, shedding hair across the sidewalk.

Draco squeezes your hand with every pulse of your pounding heart, and later you'll learn that this is his way of saying, I'm sorry I'm not a worker, I'm sorry I can't take this part away for you.

He's sorry for a lot, but he needs you and you need him, so you're not.

✠ | Your whole family does cursework. It's in your blood. You refuse to be registered, you refuse to be jailed, you refuse to be shamed. If you have the green thumb, you grow. If you have the muse, you write. If you have the voice, you sing. If you have the gene, you work. Your mother takes away pain. Your brothers bring good luck, good dreams, feelings of love and safety.

And you?

You, Ginny Weasley, you are a deathworker.

You protect what's yours.

-
fin

➲ NANOWRIMO: NOVEMBER 6 & 8

2012-11-12T02:59:36Z

romanitas is in town! Her face is the best face, I'm glad she's here! :D:D

Also, in the past two days, I have gotten, like, twenty spam comments on my fic. It's incredibly depressing. You'd think I'd figure it out when some largely all-numbers username leaves me a comment, BUT NOPE. LIVING HOPEFULLY EVER AFTER, THAT'S ME.

ANYWAY.

➲ NANOWRIMO: NOVEMBER 6 & 8
For hiza_chan and notworthy, Percy Jackson & Heroes of Olympus, ensemble (implied Percy/Nico/Annabeth,) Hogwarts AU! 6700 words.

hiza_chan asked for a PJO Hogwarts AU and notworthy asked for Percy/Nico/Annabeth, space AU, then amended it to "any kind of AU, really," so I hope neither of them mind that I combined the prompts! :D They are the best people and deserve all the best things ♥♥

Note: This hasn't been Brit-picked! I apologize from the bottom of my heart if anything leaps out at you and makes you want to wrap yourself up in a Union flag and mutter Stephen Fry quotes to yourself until you feel better: I don't do it on purpose. /EXIT STAGE LEFT

Also, layouts and those new LJ expand/collapse tags are a bitch, so if you value your eyeballs, you're best off reading this fic in the light format!

[also available @ AO3]

} In 1995, a prophecy trembles on the edge of its shelf.

It falls.

} At the end of that summer, a Muggle woman disembarks the 14:15 Greater Anglia two stops before her usual destination, overcome with stomach pains too painful to ignore. She asks a young man checking the time-table for directions to the A&E; she is so pale that he forgets his train ticket is only valid for the next forty minutes and takes her himself.

It's frightfully busy that day, as one of the town's youngest and brightest (and, indeed, their only hope of getting their name signed on with a professional league) had done something horrible to his ACL, and everyone who'd ever once had a conversation with him over the course of his entire life had apparently turned out to see how he was faring.

Outside on the street, children roughhouse in their Sunday best and their parents stand and smoke and discuss the wine one of them had brought to their last party, which had honestly reached its maturity some twenty years before they were born. Quietly, unobtrusively, same as she'd ever done anything in her life, the woman delivers a son to that afternoon light. She gathers him close and sings to him of nonsensical things. The young man brings her water in a paper cup, and the rain comes suddenly, a breathless gasping flash of a downpour that rushes down on them and turns the whole world to rain-flushed color.

} She still gets postcards from that young man sometimes, as he travels the world looking to write a novel. He talks about it as if it had been chopped into pieces and scattered across the globe and he needs to retrieve it to put it back together. She keeps them all; postcards aren't made to be thrown away. On the back, he writes about the weather and the food; she traces his handwriting to the end, where he signs,

Say hi to the baby for me!
-Paul.

} Thirteen years later, and the Muggle woman steps into the kitchen to find the baby standing at the sink, clearwater running from the faucet and the breakfast dishes lined up on a dishtowel with a pattern of apples and pears, returned to a shine by a quick scrub of soap. They live in a flat she cannot strictly afford, but the landowner lets her stay because she's a reliable tenant, quiet and kind and prompt, and that son of hers is something of a handful, sure, but the landowner doesn't see how the lad could possibly turn out bad, mother like that.

He's staring out the window, forehead wrinkled into a slight frown.

Honey, says Sally, and he reaches out without looking, twisting the tap off. He says, My magic feels off.

Sally has no magic; she is a dead zone for magic. Spells cast on her never stick. Two years ago, she had to sit on the Charing Cross monument and wait, watching shoppers go back and forth on the Stand, while her eleven-year-old son went through Diagon Alley alone, because she couldn't step inside the Leaky Cauldron; it wouldn't appear to her. Afterwards, they walked up the street to the National Gallery and they sat in the company of seventeenth-century portraits and he showed her his wand, his spellbooks, green eyes as bright as spell-light, until she felt better.

Off how?

Her baby is long limbs now, coltishly adolescent, with a body that isn't growing all at the same rate and leaves him confused about his relationship with doorways and the showerhead. She hangs her purse on its hook by the strap and crosses the kitchen to him. Her jeans are second-hand, molded to a body shape that isn't hers, and her jumper has holes she can tuck her thumbs through when she's cold.

Like I'm coming down with something, the son decides, and adds quickly, as she approaches with one hand outstretched to his forehead, I don't feel sick! But, like, I feel it there, like my magic is my sinuses and it's starting to block. I don't like it.

Pulling her hands back to her, Sally twists the rings on her fingers, absent-minded. There are no thermometers she can bring out for this.

You go back to school soon, she decides, and goes to put on the kettle. This calls for tea and a piece of chocolate. Maybe that's why you feel peculiar. You haven't done magic all summer. That I've seen, she amends airily, and he quirks a smile at her. They both know that the Ministry of Magic watches for such things, and he's never disobeyed her, not on purpose.

} She preorders their tickets to King's Cross online, grumpily clicking around on the site afterwards, letting Gabriel lean on the buzzer and ignoring it. Her son casts her a curious look, folding his robes over his arm with no care for how the seams line up, but doesn't comment. Gabe's a right nasty bloke, but he's the only wizard in the building, and Sally keeps the bare minimum of cordiality between them so she can ask him things when necessary.

A gull taps on the window, bobbing its head and peering at them with the usual vacancy Sally's used to associating with the American postbirds.

Annabeth? she asks, as Percy drops the robes and goes to the window to open it, because that's the only person she can think of who'd use American post. Annabeth's father lives in California; he's a Muggle scientist with a badge that gets him in to see the particle accelerator on the Stanford University campus. By contract, Annabeth had to spend the summers with him since she was a girl, which she hated, up until she learned that the Americans are a lot more lax about underage wizardry than they are here, and now she spends summers mastering complex spells to show off almost as soon as she's on the train back to Hogwarts.

Sally met Mr Chase once; America had faded his accent like sunshine does to a book cover, but she took him to the Imperial War Museum because he'd mentioned something about liking old planes. He'd read every plaque beside every exhibit.

Percy's eyes dart distractedly across the roll of parchment. The gull flips its tail, disinterested.

Did she write you a novel? she asks, dry.

At the door, Gabe's given up. Percy puts the first page aside, and it springs back into a tight roll.

I told her about my magic. She's telling me about how the neuromagical centers of the brain are the last to develop, so it's not unusual for magic to be unpredictable at our age. That's not quite -- the frown is back, and she doesn't know if it's Annabeth's handwriting or that Percy expects Annabeth to always be right, but then his expression smoothes away into surprise. She says Thalia doesn't feel right either.

} In 1997, Thalia was seven years old: that's easy to remember. Too young for school, but old enough that memories started to stick to her, absorb into her like water into a sponge. Everything was really scary for witches and wizards that year; Thalia's mother could do small magics, meager magics, the way most people can, but there wasn't enough in her for a wand. The year Thalia was seven and Jason was two, she took down everything Quidditch in the house and got rid of the bobutubers growing on the sill and told her children to keep the magic to themselves.

This wasn't a problem for Jason, who was rounded and doughy and hadn't mastered complete sentence yet; the most magical thing he could do then was blow a spit bubble. But Thalia said, why?

Because they'll think you stole it.

So, when, a few years later, the representatives from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry came to the door to tell her she was a witch and it's time she learned how to control her magic, Thalia told them she didn't want to go.

We know it's scary, says the wizard to her right; he's wearing short blue robes over his trousers, patterned at the hem with Golden Snitches. He says his name is Mr-Creevey-please-call-me-Dennis. I didn't know about any of this either when I was your age. It makes no difference where you come from, trust me, you'll feel a lot better surrounded by witches and wizards your own age!

I don't want to, Thalia said again. She remembers the year they spend hiding. Who's to say they couldn't do that again, and tell a whole bunch of children they must be thieves?

It's really not safe -- Mr-Creevey-please-call-me-Dennis tries to say to Thalia's mother, but stops at the look on her face. She tells them, very firmly, that she might be a bit native and a lot Muggle, but she damn well knows enough to teach her daughter spell-casting, and if Thalia doesn't want to go to school, that's her right to decide, please and thank you and would you like a biscuit to take with you?

So Thalia grows up and does her GSCEs and dyes her hair black and gets a job at the corner newsagent, where a witch named Artemis works the night-shift and teaches Thalia the things her mother couldn't as they sort boxes and count inventory. She says that, in Britain, it's the fashion to use a wand when channeling magic for a specific purpose, but in actuality, most magical items can, in one way or another, act as a conduit. When she's seventeen, she finds a goblin-made tiara in her friend Zoe's bedroom, and uses it to make everything in the room levitate two feet off the ground.

} Jason, who is too young to remember Lord Voldemort, accepts and goes to Hogwarts when it's his turn. He does his best work in class when assigned group projects, but that's because he likes to make sure the work's being done properly, so he usually winds up doing it all by himself. He doesn't mind. He trusts himself more than anybody else. Made to be a leader, says the groundskeeper after an incident with escaped, highly intelligent, and carnivorous fly-traps, where Jason had done some incredibly quick thinking. The groundskeeper is a broad-shouldered man named Mr Goyle, with small eyes and a big, bushy mustache. He tries to be mean to the kids, yelling at them when they get underfoot when he's setting up the Christmas trees in the Great Hall, but he never quite manages it, like maybe he'd used up his meanness when he was young and just simply didn't have any left.

The same week his sister starts feeling poorly, like a cut on her magic is starting to scab over, Jason's sitting at the Slytherin table with Piper McLean, the both of them trying to remember if they signed up to take the same classes this year (Divination, yes; Ancient Runes, no, Piper's taking Care of Magical Creatures with Leo instead) and really hoping that they're going to get to eat soon, when Nico di Angelo's name is called at the start of the Sorting ceremony.

} Is that him?

The whisper goes up and down the Gryffindor table, fluttering out of mouths like it has wings. Startled by it, Percy looks up. The first-year crossing to the stool is small, the way first-years usually are, wearing a pinched, belligerent expression on his face, and he's shivering from the boat ride across the lake. He wipes his running nose with the sleeve of his robes before he pulls the Sorting Hat on over his head.

It bellows out SLYTHERIN! without much of a pause, and Nico di Angelo heads for the Slytherin table without a change in that irritable expression, trailing whispers after him like raindrops.

Next to him, because Percy's the only one that doesn't mind sitting too close, Nearly-Headless Nick bobs and sighs, Pity.

What was that all about? Percy asks, craning his neck around.

Clarisse answers, That's the dollhouse kid!

Percy turns, and at the blank look on his face, she snorts ungraciously. She's a burly fifth-year girl who played Beater on the Gryffindor team for approximately six months before she was banned for blatant overaggression. As long as he'd known her, Clarisse's greatest magical talent lay in unexpectedly blowing things up, which she did gleefully and as often as possible, until the end of last year, when Headmistress McGonagall took her aside and told her that explosions were the mark of a very poor witch, and perhaps with the advent of her OWL year, she might try to behave her own age?

What rock have you been living under, Jackson? she sneers.

Percy waves his arms exasperatedly. Diggle, Lacy joins the Hufflepuff table, turning promptly to wave at the Slytherins. Piper McLean waves back, almost sadly; Lacy will learn soon enough that the other Houses aren't supposed to be friendly with the Slytherins. Slytherins operate best on their own.

My mother's a Muggle, Percy reminds Clarisse. I'm a bit out of tune with the wizarding world during the summer, thanks so much. Now, what's so special about a snot-nosed firstie?

Be nice, we were all snot-nosed firsties once, says Silena, who has the misfortune of sitting in between them. Percy isn't surprised to see a prefect badge glinting from the front of her robes. Clarisse opens her mouth like she's going to angrily retort, but Silena nudges her and they all budge down a place so that Levesque, Hazel can join them at the Gryffindor table -- the movement dislodges Nearly-Headless Nick's neck from its collared ruff, and in tilting to catch it, he plunges half into Silena. She sneezes at the sudden shock of cold, and a magnificent tawny mane explodes all around her neck.

It does, at least, distract Clarisse, who grins and says, very Gryffindor, which makes Silena laugh, hands nervously flattening down her ruff.

Annabeth uses the distraction to pin Percy's foot between her own underneath the table, lowering her voice and saying quickly, Back in June, some old Muggle woman died and donated her entire collection of antique dollhouses to her local museum. A couple of them were cursed, so they called the Ministry in, and when they reversed the enchantment on one, they found him --

Nico di Angelo, apparently tired of his sleeves, uses the tablecloth to blow his nose. The second-year on his lefthand side, a sour-faced boy with very fine cheekbones named Octavian, stares at him in obvious disgust.

-- Transfigured into a doll and preserved for seventy years. From what I heard, he's got no living family and he still thinks Grindelwald's the biggest thing out there terrorizing the countryside.

So what's he doing here?

Well, what else are you going to do? You carry on. You educate your kids.

She says it so matter-of-factly that Percy feels it settle inside of him, calm as the structure of his own bones. Annabeth makes sense: Annabeth always makes sense. He nudges her ankle with the toe of his sneaker, and she nods back, scooting to the side one more time when, at the very end of the Sorting, Zhang, Frank comes and sits on the end of Lupin, Ted's robes and immediately goes scarlet.

} Chantilly La Rue and Lucien Beauregard were both born in Nantes on a particularly blustery day at the end of July, trees shaking outside the hôpital in great gusting blows and tapping hard at the windows. Both attended the Academie de Beauxbatons in turn, but they never really exchanged more than a few lines of dialogue about holiday feasts or assignments until they were twenty-eight years old, and Chantilly came into Lucien's office with a racing broom she wanted to patent. A squat, bulky witch with very curly hair, Chantilly snapped her sentences and never cleared the dirt or splinters from under her nails. Lucien came from a line of Metamorphagi, and although he worked in a government office, his real dream was to open a chocolate shop; he liked the idea of being the person people went to when they wanted something sweet.

After Voldemort fell in the fall of '81, they moved to England to take advantage of the climate; if there were ever a people in need of entertainment, it was the English. On Chantilly's brooms, Puddlemere United soared to the top of the leagues.

Clarisse and Silena grew up together and have been best friends their entire lives. The fact that they have grown into two very different people doesn't seem to have occurred to them.

} Metamorphagus? Frank looks curious. I never knew that's what you called it. In our culture, we call shapeshifters -- he says something that's all long vowels, and Silena blinks at him helplessly. Teddy tries it and mangles it. He laughs at them both. Something explodes on the other side of the common room in an almost vindictive manner, and Silena (who's used to Clarisse) doesn't react, but both Frank and Teddy jump, going scaly green all over in surprise.

} There aren't a lot of opportunities for Gryffindor third-years and a Slytherin first-year to talk, and on the day before the first Hogsmeade weekend, Nico di Angelo finds them at the Gryffindor table.

Stirring too much sugar into his drink like he normally does, Percy breaks his enthusiastic speculation about what Hogsmeade'll be like to watch the second-years come up from double Potions, covered in frogspawn and looking faintly miserable about their lives, trailed by Rachel and Octavian, who are screaming at each other at a volume so impressive he's almost convinced one of them put a Sonorus Charm on themselves. Annabeth keeps eating: the novelty wore off long ago, and there was an incident last year involving Rachel, a very cuddly niffler named Yates, and the girls' dormitories that Annabeth still hasn't really forgiven her for.

Then, a voice from right behind him says, Oh, it's you.

Percy blinks and looks up, just as Nico swings a leg over the bench and settles in, pulling the jam towards him. He's not covered in snot today, but he's still got that look on his face, like everything annoys him: Percy's pretty sure his face is just stuck like that.

There aren't any rules against sitting at the other Houses' tables -- they looked it up, after Leo Valdez kept sneaking over during dinner to talk to Jason and Piper or, sometimes, Percy and Annabeth, like he just didn't like the idea of eating alone and would rather be the third wheel to other people's friendships than be by himself at Ravenclaw. But he's the only person Percy knows who does that.

This is the Gryffindor table. Never let it be said that Percy's talent doesn't lie in stating the obvious.

Nico eats the jam straight off his spoon. He doesn't answer.

Annabeth tries a different tract. What did you mean, 'oh, it's you'?

Not you. You're fine. It's him, and Nico's eyes are on him again, squinted up and glinting black. You make my magic itch.

} Thalia's thumbing through her keys to lock the back door after a delivery, when Artemis comes through with a girl right behind her. Artemis's silver hair is wrapped into an elegant bun, pinned with hairsticks in the shape of arrows, and she greets Thalia briskly, taking her clipboard from her and Summoning the tea kettle with a snap of her fingers. It hovers at her elbow, immediately beginning to steam. The girl looks Mediterranean, wearing a too-big Oxfam shirt that goes down to the middle of her thighs and a bulging schoolbag tossed over her shoulder, the strap too long. She looks at Thalia curiously, without comment, and Thalia can see the wand tucked into her back pocket, hidden by her shirt.

Underneath her skin, her magic itches, making her squirm like she needs to scratch at that one place in her back she can never reach. Things feel wrong inside her, everything skewed a little off-center.

Artemis says, This is Bianca. I found her in a charity bin. No, literally. She was a doll at the time.

} Leo's best subject is Charms. He'd mastered Banishing and Freezing Charms by the end of their second year, even though they weren't even supposed to cover that material until the fourth year. He usually surrounds himself in hovering bluebell flames, flicking his wand so that they orbit around his head like frozen-blue planets. It makes the other Ravenclaws nervous, having that much fire so near their books.

He and Annabeth find an unused classroom (Charlie Beckendorf offers to let them use the Hufflepuff common room, as there isn't a password and you'd be hard-pressed to find a more welcoming atmosphere, but even Leo suspects that Hufflepuffs have limits, and Leo has an alarming tendency to set things on fire,) and use it to catch Nico up on the seventy years of magical, historical, and social advancements he's missed.

Technically, somebody from the Ministry is supposed to be responsible for this, but Nico has a healthy disrespect of the Ministry that a lot of war-time kids do.

Just. Wrong war-time, Leo supposes.

Annabeth folds precise, symmetrical pieces of parchment and Leo casts a Locomotor Charm on them, and together they build empires and destroy them: a folded paper dragon stamps its feet and bellows, while a little star-spangled Dumbledore discovers seven uses for its blood; red-eyed werewolves become docile in the face of a fluttering goblet of Wolfsbane potion; a sinister, black-caped Voldemort murders and destroys its way across their table, until Harry Potter defeats him in the shadow of a multi-towered origami replica of Hogwarts castle, illuminated by Leo's bluebell flames.

I remember it, Leo says quietly, dropping the charm. Harry Potter flutters lifeless to the floor. I was almost three when wannabe Death Eaters came to my door. My mother, Aunt Rosa, my cousins and abuelita and great-grandfather Sammy were all there. I was the only magical one, but of course I didn't know that then. I hid in the oven and performed a Flame-Freezing Charm while the house blazed and waited for an adult to find me. It was my first magic.

Muggle-killing for sport, Annabeth comments, disgust thick in her voice. Nico pokes at the paper Hogwarts with the tip of his wand.

} Nico's best friend is a ghost named Myrtle, who lives in the out-of-order girls' bathroom on the second floor where Nico goes when he's tired of the Slytherin common room and the things people ask him. Everybody calls her Moaning Myrtle, which Nico thinks is rather mean. She only cries sometimes, and Nico thinks it's much more entertaining when she ruptures the plumbing in other bathrooms. He kind of wants the sight of Octavian pelting down the corridor with his trousers around his ankles immortalized forever.

Should we be worried? Percy asks him, when Nico elbows his way in between Hazel and Frank at the Gryffindor table.

Percy has a lot of dark hair and eyes that can't decide between blue or green, like seaglass, and Nico wears this entire century wrong, but at least he isn't the only one that itches under the skin. Spellcasting comes easier to Nico when Percy's around; the times when the third-years Gryffindors and the first-year Slytherins have a class in the same vicinity, Nico does better. He doesn't know if Percy's noticed the same thing; Gryffindors are kind of bull-headed.

Worried about what?

The fact your closest friends are dead.

I resent that remark, Mr Jackson, comments Nearly-Headless Nick.

You really shouldn't, Nico responds, and Nick looks affronted for a moment before Hazel turns to quietly reassure him the comment wasn't directed at him. I know her. She was in my sister's House, seventy years ago. Bianca cried when she died.

Bianca di Angelo and Myrtle Wilkes had never exchange a single word to the other, at least not that Bianca ever told Nico about, or that Myrtle remembers, but that doesn't mean she wasn't upset about Myrtle's murder. Nico understands the feeling: it still catches him off-guard, the casual disarming thought that the kindly woman who mended his mittens on the train from Salisbury that one time is probably dead, that the next-door neighbor who stole his father's wand and invited Nico to come with him so they could hex frogs by the creek is probably an old man, if the wars didn't kill him. Nico doesn't sleep a lot at night, worried that if he does, he'll blink and another seventy years will slip by without a care for who Nico will leave behind.

} Bianca's mother had been a tall, formidable witch who wore satiny red pumps under her robes and encased her wand in solid gold. She used to complain bitterly about the English rain; her accent meandered, depending on where she most wanted to travel on any given day. Bianca remembers the business-like set of her profile as she cast the wards up every night, remembers the way she'd charmed a flute of champagne to hover beside her, her arm tucked easily into --

And that's where her memory stops. Just, cut ragged, leaving Bianca with a feeling like she's trying to find a word she knows and it won't come to her. But no matter how she tries, how she waits, her father's face never returns to her.

She wakes in the middle of the night and tiptoes out of her room. The shades are drawn in Thalia's room, blocking out the moonlight; the only light comes from the iPod charging in its dock. Thalia's been using its Wifi-seeker to religiously check X Factor updates at work, draining its battery faster than usual. The room is covered in band posters. Bianca doesn't think she realizes, but Thalia's magic glows hot as coal inside of her soul when music is playing; it affects Bianca's magic, too, which is why she notices.

Thalia, she whispers to the dark.

Thalia comes awake instantly, reaching instinctively for the tiara on the bedside table. Bianca? What ...?

Bianca sits at the foot of her bed and says, I want to find my brother.

} Sometimes -- okay, more often than sometimes -- Piper thinks she was Sorted into the wrong House.

She'd talked to the Sorting Hat for several long minutes in her first year, conscious the whole time that she was an eleven-year-old sitting on a stool in front of hundreds of wizards-in-training, and her feet didn't reach the floor. The Sorting Hat had been very kindly, humming in her ear and assuring her that the fact she'd been raised by her Muggle father and didn't know any magic beyond what they did in the CGI departments at BBC, where they'd let her peek over their shoulders and steal the leftover pastries from somebody's run to the nearest Pret, didn't matter in the slightest. It'd told her more about the Houses when she'd asked, and when it mentioned that Slytherins relied primarily on themselves, Piper felt her heart jump in recognition.

The Hat, of course, noticed instantly. Are you sure?

Which was a stupid question, because of course Piper wasn't sure.

The Hat said, slowly, It's not Slytherin nature to go out and seek control over others, mind. A true Slytherin recognizes that the only person they can control is themselves, and does so. Don't think it means you can't make friends, nor does it mean you can't rely on your friends in times of trouble, Piper McLean. I don't have much of an ego, being a hat, and I will be the first to tell you that your House is not the end-all, be-all of who you are.

So Piper had gone to sit with Grace, Jason, and three minutes later, was joined by Nakamura, Ethan, and wonders if it's unheard of for a witch or wizard to go through seven years of magical education and then go right back to living in the Muggle world. Or does magic change a person so fundamentally that it becomes impossible?

And what kind of relationships will she foster if you're exclusively supposed to keep to your House? Will they be enough?

(This is, of course, a very Slytherin thing to think, but Piper won't realize that for years yet.)

} She wouldn't call herself cunning, exactly, but surely she can't be the only one who's noticed that she, Percy, Annabeth, Jason, and Leo were all raised by Muggle parents, without a clue who their magical parent was, without any memories at all?

That cannot be a coincidence.

} People have a tendency to tell her that they're sorry her mother is dead, which always bemuses Hazel, because what was she supposed to say to that? It's all right? Because it obviously isn't.

No, wait, I'm not sorry that your mother's dead -- well, no, no, no, I am! I'm sorry, that was a horrible thing to say! What I mean is that that's wasn't why I was apologizing, I know it's awful, of course it's awful. I meant, more, I'm sorry that I brought it up -- I think that's what people mean when they tell you they're sorry. They're sorry for your loss, and they're sorry that they've reminded you of it.

Frank delivers this all very fast, leaving Hazel blinking at him the way you do when you step into a very bright room after having been in the Potions dungeon all morning.

Then, because she recognizes what's in herself when she sees it in other people, Yours died too, didn't she?

Frank's hair turns blue, drooping despondently around his ears. I don't remember her at all. I was only a few weeks old. She wasn't a witch the way the British define it here. She was a -- there's that word again, the one seemingly all vowels, and at the look on her face, he quickly switches to -- a Metamorphagus, but she didn't have a wand. You would have called her a Muggle. Or a Squib.

I wasn't raised by wizards, either, Hazel reminds him, but gently.

She and my grandmother shielded our house with old magic, different magic. When the Ministry went after Muggleborns, we offered to shelter them. One was a woman named Alicia Spinnet: I have a picture of her somewhere, she helped birth me when I came along. When the call came that they were fighting Voldemort at Hogwarts, she answered, and my mother went with her. Alicia came home, my mother did not.

So, one weekend in February, when most of the older students are in Hogsmeade and the castle is largely deserted, she and Frank and Teddy go down to the entrance hall, where, in the back, there's a memorial plaque. Lit by sunshine-colored fairy-light, the dedication runs beneath the emblem of two crossed wands, thanking all of those who gave their lives on the Second of May, 1997, in Defence of the Wizarding World and All That it Protects.

Teddy finds the names of his parents with an ease that suggests he's done it before, and there, at the very bottom, is Frank's mum.

} Hazel is ten minutes late for the start of Transfiguration. It doesn't matter that the professor is an easy-going, portly man with a wobbling Eastern European accent and rarely takes himself seriously, or that they're just going over theory today since he doesn't like giving homework over the weekend, being late makes her hurry, and she's running up the staircase by the tapestry of a shrieking medusa when her foot goes right through the trick stair. Her running momentum makes her sink straight to the knee without pause.

With a cry of dismay, she braces her other foot and tries to wiggle herself out, but she's stuck fast. The contents of her bookbag lay scattered across four stairs.

Since everybody is already in class, it's a half-hour before anybody comes by, and by that point, Hazel's almost weeping from the pain in her leg.

Woah there, says a voice, and Hazel looks up to see the Head Boy hurrying down the steps towards her. He grabs her under the armpits and heaves her straight out, and gathers her belongings for her when she can do nothing but sit and wait for feeling to spread back into her numb foot.

He's a Slytherin seventh-year she only knows by sight, so he introduces himself as Luke, and easily starts asking her questions that she has to answer, giving her no time to dwell on what just happened or how bad the pins-and-needles hurt; her name, what her parents are like (mother dead, and no recollection whatsoever as to a father, yes, she supposes that's strange) and how she's liking Gryffindor House (she likes her friends, although she feels a little sorry for Teddy sometimes, because she thinks some people only talk to him because of who his godfather is, but honestly, what are the odds that three orphans and two Metamorphagi wind up in the same House in the same year?) and not to worry about the trick step, that's what Head Boys and Girls and prefects are for: to get you back out again.

He walks with her in the direction of the Transfiguration classroom -- she's now horribly late -- when they hear raised voices up ahead.

Luke lengthens his stride and Hazel jogs to keep up.

They round a bend in the corridor just in time to see Octavian yank his wand from inside his robes and cast a hex at the retreating backs of a clump of Gryffindors, most prominent of whom is Rachel. It misses, hitting the portrait behind her and making its subject, a grumpy-looking woman in a Flemish collar, get up and tap dance.

Before Luke or Hazel could do anything, Percy Jackson and Nico di Angelo (oh, hey, not all Gryffindors, although Hazel forgets sometimes; Nico sits at a table her and Frank and Teddy in Potions) cast a counterspell that makes the whole corridor glow fission-bright.

Hazel's never seen a spell that powerful.

Neither, judging by their expressions, had Percy or Rachel. Nico just looks smug; Octavian's now sporting some very long, fine tentacles from his chin.

What was that? Luke murmurs, eyes thinning and darting between Percy and Nico speculatively.

} And then, on one sunny, hazy day in the April of 2009, Percy falls asleep in Divination.

The last thing he remembers was looking at the curtains, soft white lace lifting with every stray breeze that whipped around the tower, so maybe it's no surprise that he dreams of weddings: his mother's, first, her hair long enough to pin into an artful plait over one shoulder, the smile on her face as she turns to greet a man he doesn't recognize. He catches a glimpse of himself in the background, Annabeth tugging his lapels straight and fixing his carnation, using the motion to tuck his wand firmly out of sight.

Then he sees a long lane, snaking back to a cottage by the seashore; sees a woman pause at the gate and sneeze hard enough to turn her hair auburn. Silena runs the rest of the path to greet the Hufflepuff Quidditch Captain, Charlie, who scoops her up like she's weightless and spins her around. They hang a framed marriage certificate on the wall.

There's a rosiness to the way the scene fades in front of him, like even in the dream, Percy knows it isn't real.

Next, Headmistress McGonagall, talking fast with several teachers, a map of Hogwarts fanned out across her desk. At the end of the table, there's Jason Grace, Head Boy badge on his chest, standing next to a girl whose name Percy thinks might be Reyna.

Next, Luke Castellan, alone in a dungeon with his arms wrapped around himself, staring sightless; his eyes, eerily, flash golden. It fades into darkness and when it rematerializes, all he sees is a shroud, burning, the way they do at wizard funerals, and Annabeth at the back, crying.

Next, Nico and a girl he doesn't recognize, who shares Nico's upturned nose and short-cropped black hair, sitting close together on the bench seat of a train he recognizes vaguely as the Heathrow Express, out of Paddington. She holds something cupped between her palms, and when Nico tugs her wrists down, she opens them to reveal a figurine of Harry Potter, who looks up at them resignedly and walks across her palm. He's wearing scarlet robes. Percy watches her mouth form over the words, Master of Death.

Next, he sees a great golden dragon, lying belly-flat in a field of waving canola. A bald, heavily-scarred, and happy-looking Leo limps over a rise and hails the beast with a shout. The dragon roars back, and Percy hears Leo say as he closes the distance, Supreme Mugwump, Festus, that's what I could have been, if they hadn't snapped my wand. I stand by what I said, and the dragon nudges its great, shining head against Leo's chest, smoke curling from its nostrils. Everybody just needs to be given a chance, even dragons. The seventh wheel is the most powerful, as seven is the most magical of numbers.

Next, he sees himself, handing a bag of groceries to Nico out of the boot of a tawny-colored car.

I can't tell if he's being deliberately slow or if he's just really that stupid, Nico drawls to Annabeth. He's grown taller than both of them, spindle-thin and pale, like sometime during puberty he'd been tossed onto a board and rolled until all his limbs stretched thin as noodles, and his hair's longer than it had been in the scene with his sister.

Annabeth doesn't look very old, but there's a shock of grey in her hair. She hands a keyring to Nico and replies, You think you'd know the answer to that by now.

Gryffindors, Nico sighs, and lets Annabeth trail after him, up the porch to a narrow two-storey with paint that matches the car and a yard the size of a postage stamp. They disappear inside, and Percy looks back at his older self, who's still standing by the boot, looking hesitant and a little wrecked around the edges and a lot confused.

Annabeth pokes her head around the doorjamb, saying, Aren't you coming?

Disbelieving, Percy wavers, muttering something to himself in a language that sounds a lot like Mermish, and a minute later, there's an exasperated, oh for heaven's sake, and Annabeth reappears again, points her wand directly at him, and says, Accio!

} He wakes up to Professor Trelawney's face, upside down and magnified to twice its usual size by proximity. He yells in surprise and recoils, and the room rearranges itself to make sense; the chintz poofs and pillows and cozy tables of the Divination classroom.

My dear! Professor Trelawney exclaims, pushing aside the crystal ball Percy was supposed to have been contemplating before he dozed off and reaching out to take his hands, gazing at him imploringly. Has your Inner Eye been opened? What did you dream about? Quick, tell me, boy, before it fades!

Against his will, Percy's eyes dart sideways.

Jason's too preoccupied to meet his eyes, but Piper looks back at him, curious. Reyna isn't here: she'd elected to take Ancient Runes and Arithmancy this year, not Divination, and Leo isn't either. When he catches Annabeth's gaze next, the annoyance in the press of her mouth fades into something else entirely as she takes in whatever expression has to be all over his face. She mouths something he can't make out, and he wonders why he dreamed about her with grey hair, Summoning him like he's something she wants.

Nothing, he gets out, and Professor Trelawney's face falls comically.

} Besides, Rachel and Octavian are the true Seers at Hogwarts. Everybody knows that. Whatever the rest of them dream, it must just be dreams, right?

Nobody wants to hear about them, in any case, especially if it's just more war. There's been too much of that for everyone. No one's going to listen. No one wants to hear about anything but peace and quiet. They're just dreams. Are you listening?

Just dreams.

} In 1995, a prophecy trembles on the edge of its shelf.

It falls, and breaks.

Pelting past, Ginny Weasley hears only a snatch of the ghostly whisper that comes out of it, the words seven half-bloods, before a Killing Curse passes so close it makes her hair blacken and shrivel away on one side. She fires a curse over her shoulder, terror bounding hard between her ribs, and keeps running.

The rest of the prophecy goes unheard.

-
fin

➲ NANOWRIMO: NOVEMBER 2

2012-11-04T01:46:46Z

GUESS WHO WAS SUPER PUMPED TO START NANOWRIMO AND THEN PROMPTLY GOT HERSELF A FEVER AND A STUFFED-UP HEAD?

This girl. It is Sickness Central in my house. I feel like people need to be fumigated before they step through the door.

(Halloween was fun, though! My favorite costume was one little girl who came to our door dressed like a gumball machine; she'd wrapped clear plastic around her and stuffed it with multicolored balloons until she was vaguely spherical. IT WAS THE CUTEST THING.)

ANWAY. Let's get this show on the road!

NOTE: I like my layout. My layout sucks when it comes to reading fic. Please feel free to read it in the light format, because it is better for your eyes.

➲ NANOWRIMO: NOVEMBER 2
for soxdamnxcute. RPF. Andrew Garfield, Logan Lerman, and Jesse Eisenberg, university AU where Andrew has Spiderman abilities. 6600 words.

Because one does not simply ask Kat why she wants a thing. They just do it for her.

Fact!

[also available @ AO3]

1 | ❦

HORT 221, Methods of Plant Propagation, is, bizarrely, located on the bottom floor of the Communications building, and it doesn't matter that it takes Jesse and Logan twenty minutes to find the correct corridor that gets them there -- shockingly, they've never had to go into the Communications building before, except maybe once during orientation -- because it takes the professor nearly that long to figure out how to hook his computer to the complicated projection system.

His TAs are quick to rescue him, and they've got their heads bent over inputs and outputs, flicking switches to see what they do, when Jesse and Logan slink into the only open pair of seats, smack in the front row.

Methods of Plant Propagation is a cross-sectional lecture-and-lab offered only in the fall and is required by so many different majors that Jesse set a timer for himself on registration day so that he wouldn't miss his window to get in, and casting a quick glance around the lecture hall, he sections people off into fives and counts up to a total of 83, himself and Logan included, which is thirteen more than the registration cap.

He sees Emma W. three rows back and waves before he can stop himself, keeping it tucked close to his body because he isn't sure if she's actually looking at him, but she sits up a little bit and waves back, her teeth a quick wink of white across the distance. He spots Rooney, too, way up in the back, and he only knows it's her because she's asleep, scrunched low in her seat with her uniform jacket thrown over her arms. Next to her, Ryan goes fishing under the jacket for her hand, pulling it out and waving it at Jesse for her.

"Man," mutters Logan in an undertone, turning Jesse's attention front and center, where he's pointing at the outlets located under each seat. "Why aren't we Comm majors? They get all the cool toys."

At that moment, both the TAs yelp in triumph, and Jesse looks up to see the big screen finally projecting the syllabus.

The professor coughs embarrassedly into his microphone and says, "There's a reason my grandkids don't trust me to do anything more complicated on my -- whattyacallit -- iPod? Than make phone calls," he fumbles what's clearly an iPhone and holds it up to show them, and everybody in the classroom under the age of thirty cringes simultaneously at the affront to Apple culture.

"Um," he scratches at his nose, which is so red and bulbous that it sits on his face like a toadstool. Jesse had him last semester for Intro to Landscape Design. "Many thanks to my TAs. Everybody memorize their faces now, so you know who to assassinate if you fail this class --"

One of the TAs, who, like every other Hort major that Jesse knows, is dressed in cargo shorts made up of mostly pockets and a print-screen shirt from Threadless, grabs the other TA by the hand and they both take exaggerated bows. In the low light, their hair glints darkly auburn, and when they straighten up, Jesse finally recognizes Emma Stone, and Logan jabs him hard in the side with his ballpoint pen, making him stifle a yelp and throw a startled what?! look sideways. Logan looks like he swallowed a fish, his eyes huge.

"-- although you shouldn't, because we don't like failing you as much as you don't like failing. Also, I shouldn't have to remind you that this class isn't open to nondegree students: don't think I don't see you back there, Mr. Timberlake." The class swivels around as, standing way far in the back since there aren't any open seats left, the offending party abruptly tries to become one with the wall behind him. "Declare your major or quit wasting our time."

The professor pauses delicately, and after a beat, Timberlake gives up on subtlety and makes a jaunty salute, sidling sideways out the back exit. To Jesse's surprise, at least five other kids saunter out after him.

Who'd want to sneak into a Plant Prop class? he wonders. There isn't even enough room for those who have to take it.

"Right. Now, out of those of you who can actually read the course catalog, how many of you are here for Horticulture?" Jesse's hand goes up, and belatedly, because he's still looking like he's wrestling with that fish, Logan's does too. "Landscape Design?" Solid class majority for that one, including Emma W. "Forestry Management? Agronomy?"

With the class accounted for, the professor drums his fingers along the edge of his podium and smiles.

"Good. Let's not pretend we're here for anything different. This, class, is Plant Sex Ed."

2 | ❦

Personal relationships are the kind of thing that Jesse just lets happen, instead of trying to go out and forge any himself, and it's only when he glances through his phone and realizes that his conversation threads with Logan Lerman are three times longer than they are with anybody else, his mother included (though this might be because Jesse's mother doesn't get how T9 texting works, and if she did, those text-bombs of hers would probably be a lot more frequent, because Jesse's mother doesn't understand character limits,) that he's able to unravel the course of their friendship backwards.

Logan's an LA native who migrated north because he says that everything in SoCal is "so fake, bro, it's painful," but he couldn't actually imagine himself leaving the state, because really, is there anything interesting that could possibly exist outside California?

"Well, besides you," he allows with a generous tilt of his head to Jesse, who smiles bemusedly and watches Logan pin the ripped, faded remainders of concert tickets to his cork board with the loving care he imagines most mothers would put into scrapbooking their children's important firsts.

And, on another occasion, while they're waiting in line for burritos at the caf in the student union because they seriously make them the size of newborn babies, it's the best thing, "Actually, it's probably Dan Rad's fault. You remember, our freshman RA with the swag glasses?" He demonstrates helpfully, mimes slits in front of his eyes.

Jesse thinks about it. "The one we elected to Student Council kind of on accident?"

"Yeah, him. He's friends with Emma, remember?"

"Emma ... ?"

"Watson. Yes, hi," he goes, turning to the employee in the hairnet before Jesse can do anything more than panic internally, because bringing up Emma Watson in a conversation with Logan is entering DANGER WILL ROBINSON territory. He only existed on the peripheral edge of Logan's infatuation his first semester, but the fallout went through their mutual friends with the force of a nuclear detonation. Jesse still doesn't know how to address it with respect; his experience with broken hearts comes largely from late-night runs of Arrested Development on Netflix Instant and might potentially involve a broom. "I want everything. Everything you could possibly fit into a tortilla and still get it to close. Actually, no, I'm not picky."

"Sour cream or cheese?" goes the employee, on whom the concept of "everything" is apparently lost.

The next employee, who's watching Logan's mutant burrito minefield, looks at Jesse in trepidation.

"Vegetarian, please," he tells her kindly.

"But really," Logan continues, mouthing at the end of his straw as they go trekking back across campus to the dorms, lanyard bouncing against his sternum and enormously fat foil burrito tucked haphazardly under his arm. "I knew Emma through Intro to LD --" Air raid sirens sound off in Jesse's head, but Logan's already continuing, "And she's known Dan Rad since they were, like, eleven or something, and you knew him --"

"He was our RA!"

"-- because you," Logan talks over him gleefully. "Are a super-cute little duckling who imprints on the first creature that shows him kindness."

"Shut up, I was in Intro to LD with you too."

This throws Logan. "Wait," he blinks. "You were?"

"Yes," says Jesse patiently. "And Intro to Hort, and Ecology last semester." He'd pretty much just let his freshman advisor do everything for him, so his first two semesters at UC Davis were spent taking sensible introductory courses and some gen eds Jesse couldn't remember the names of five minutes after sitting for the final exams. Logan, on the other hand, had jumped in feet first and signed himself up for all the introductory Horticulture classes on top of some 300-level business classes, and had freaked out about it until Emma Stone had helpfully shown him how to drop and still get a refund.

"... huh," says Logan. And then, "Hey, do you think we'll get Andrew as our lab instructor?"

"Andrew who?"

3 | ❦

"Oh," he says, very faintly, when he and Logan walk into lab on Thursday to find the mystery TA from Plant Prop sitting on the desk in the front of the room, handouts on his lap and a pen tucked into the collar of his shirt, cheerfully swinging his legs as he picks at some kind of white resin on his wrist, and Jesse finally, finally remembers where he knows that face from. "That Andrew."

4 | ❦

"I didn't know!" Jesse gets in defensively, before anyone else can say a word.

Logan goggles a him, incredulous. "How could you not have noticed that our TA for Plant Prop was Spiderman?"

"Because I ... just didn't?"

He casts a quick look around the table. It's lunchtime on a Friday during the first week of school, well before students have really settled on which classes they're going to skip for the rest of the semester, so the student union is crowded and noisy. Between the two of them, Dan Rad and Emma S. have mastered the art of politely getting underclassmen to vacate an area by claiming they need it for Student Council Badassery reasons, because it really is the best table in the student union: it's right next to an outlet, and Joe and Brenda usually bring an extension cord, so they can wire in and play Skyrim and scare off any potential table-poachers by their combined enthusiasm and good-humored disregard for routine hygiene. Ellen's already voted them most likely to get married and train their kids to use lightsabers and put down "Jedi Knight" under Affiliated Religion on their US Census forms. Jesse still isn't entirely sure how he earned himself a place in this circle (Ryan jokes that you have to have dimples.) Like most everything in Jesse's life, it was probably accidental, however it happened.

"Don't worry," says Emma S. cheerily. "He grades super easy."

Logan looks over, curious. "How do you know?"

Jesse almost face-palms, and Emma S. stares at him for a beat over the lid of her Macbook Air, where Jesse can just make out the audio coming from a Newsground video, before she says baldly, "Because I'm the other TA, you moron."

"So can we lay off Jesse for not recognizing Andrew Garfield, thanks?" Jesse wants to know, as Logan tries valiantly to die of embarrassment on the spot. "I recognized you," he adds for Emma S.'s benefit.

She beams at him. "Thank you, Jesse," she says primly. "Just for that, you get the rest of my fries."

She pushes the basket over.

"Oh, hey, thanks," Jesse goes. "Glad to be of service."

"Male undergrads are my dispose-all system," she agrees.

5 | ❦

Jesse's life plan, if anybody should bother asking, is to someday open a nursery in one of the sunny California valleys and sell ornamental plants, whirligigs, fertilizer, and vegetable seeds to amateur gardeners and retirees with too much time on their hands, because he likes the idea of spending his life caring for living things and teaching other people to do the same.

It's a dream that Logan has, apparently, invited himself along with, because he refers to it as "our shop," is minoring in Finance, and insists on taking four semesters of Business Spanish to make them marketable when they graduate.

"Advantages of asexual reproduction?" he prompts Jesse.

The late September sunlight falls in bars across their windowsill, illuminating the veins in the big umbrella leaves of the Ficus benjamina crowded underneath the sill and making the petals of the Gaillardia pulchella and the hanging Plecthantrus australis glow, and the refraction sets the whole room to a rosy green overlay. All of the plants in Jesse and Logan's dorm room are ones they rescued from the greenhouse at the end of last semester's Intro to Hort lab, where they otherwise would have been tossed. Jesse considers it equivalent to rescuing an animal from the shelter before they put it down, because who wouldn't want to take their plant home after a whole semester spent learning how to name it, plant it, and keep it alive?

Granted, Intro to Hort was a largely non-major class, filled with Humanities kids who needed to scratch off their Physical Science requirement and didn't want to take anything difficult, like physics or chemistry, so maybe not everybody had the same feeling about plants that Jesse did.

As long as you don't grow anything illegal, Dan Rad had said, when he caught them lugging the Ficus pots up the stairs. I don't care what you put in your room.

"Less expensive," Jesse responds, and then, more thoughtfully, "And less chance of transferring seed-borne diseases among a cultivation. On the other hand, the advantage of sexual reproduction is that you can combine plant traits for a hardier, more desirable plant. Asexual reproduction is just cloning."

He stands, crossing behind Logan's chair to fetch his mug from beside their shoes (why was it over there?) and pauses on the way back.

"That's not right," he goes, pointing over Logan's shoulder at the cross-section he's drawn on his lab worksheet.

Logan studies it, and then, belligerently, "Why not?"

"Endo, exo. The endocarp is the boundary around the seed -- the innermost layer, see? And then exocarp is the skin -- the outermost. The mesocarp's that fleshy tissue in between, and the pericarp --" he takes Logan's pencil from him and crosses it out where he'd written in place of the mesocarp. "Is the collective term for all of them."

"That's stupid," Logan mutters, without heat. "When I'm eating a simple fleshy, I'm not going to go, 'Oh, this drupe has a fantastic mesocarp, you should try some,' I'm going to say, 'ah, fucker, seed.'"

Jesse laughs. "Andrew's pretty lax with grading, but he's not going to be that lax."

"Oh?" Logan swings his head around, lifting his eyebrows. There's an expression on his face that Jesse can't place. "It's 'Andrew' now, is it?"

Andrew Garfield is the least academic TA Jesse has ever met. He cares a lot more about making sure his lab section keeps their plants happy and healthy than he does about making sure they know exactly which of the five major plant hormones is responsible for apical growth (hint: it's auxins,) which is great in the practical world, but less helpful when they're facing a 120-question Scantron exam and the only helpful thing Jesse can remember is that Andrew can crawl across the ceiling when he needs to get from one end of the room to the other.

He's the Spiderman -- everybody's heard about how he got himself bit by one of those crossbreeds that the grad students in the Bio department were messing around with, since the horticulture labs are actually just the shabby cast-offs from the bio labs, given that UC Davis gives approximately two shits about its Horticulture & Agronomy department.

Joke's on them, of course, because nobody found the spider that bit Andrew and nobody can recreate the scenario that led to him being able to produce sticky web material from the sweat glands on his wrist and a having a predilection for literally climbing walls when uncomfortable, and he refuses to do anything with his new mutation besides continue to work on his graduate degree.

His continued existence is something of a needle under the nail beds of the collective university science circuit, because he makes no sense.

It does, at least, explain why people like Justin Timberlake kept trying to sneak into the Plant Prop lecture. Human mutants are the stuff of comic books.

Abruptly, Jesse realizes what the expression on Logan's face is.

"Oh, no," he goes.

"What?" says Logan.

"No, no, no, and no," Jesse points at him, fierce. "Don't you even think about it!"

"What!"

6 | ❦

Logan Lerman has an exasperating tendency to crush hard on at least one person a semester.

(And then he has the gall to accuse Jesse of imprinting. Honestly.)

Last semester, it was Alex Daddario, the upperclassman from 204 who always wrote where she was going on the whiteboard on her door whenever she went out, signing it with a flourish and a cartoon heart that Logan thought was simply the coolest thing. Jesse remembers going out of their way a lot, coming and going from the dorms, just so they could pass the second floor and she what she wrote this time. She's studying mechanical engineering so that she can build motorcycles.

The semester before that, it was Emma Watson from Intro to Landscape Design, a brown and mousey girl who used to swap clomping construction boots with Rooney Mara and frequently wore A-line dresses with grandfather cardigans pulled over them. She sat at their table a lot for lunch, but eventually she switched her concentration to pomology and mostly hangs out with Emma Stone and the Agriculture kids these days. Jesse's pretty sure both Emmas are angling to go into business together and buy a pretentiously sophisticated vineyard in Napa Valley and be filthy rich. Sniffing wine is absolutely a thing they can pull off without looking ten kinds of fool.

Logan still sees Emma W. at those parties he goes to that Jesse most emphatically does not, because last time Jesse went to a party, it resulted in photographic evidence of him making out with a life-sized cardboard cut-out of Zac Efron (and who brought that with them to uni?) and Jesse still hasn't passed the expiration date of his shame over that whole situation.

So, in all honesty, it doesn't surprise Jesse overmuch when, somewhere around their sixth week of lab, Logan starts going up on his tiptoes whenever he has to talk to Spiderman about the ratio of soil media in the new pots or even just to ask where the tape is.

There's nothing wrong with this, honest, never mind the fact that Andrew is their lab instructor and also their TA, a fact that is continually placed in the forefront of their minds by Emma S.'s cheerful insistence that anything they say can and will be used against them in the determination of their grades.

Logan may crush, but he isn't actually stupid enough to flirt, and Andrew is a sweet person, he remembers everybody's names, and he fumbles a lot when answering questions after lecture, but most people who stay behind to talk to him aren't really looking for the answers, per se, so that's fine. He wears cable-knit sweaters with the wrists worn out, pulled over "Some People Are Gay, Get Over It!" shirts, and he sits behind the professor's podium during lecture and bounces his pen in a way that Jesse can almost keep time with.

You should let Logan make his own mistakes, his mother sends him, and Jesse sits in the back of another class and thumbs his phone every time it tries to go to sleep to read the message again.

That's fine, it's all fine, except Jesse can't actually hold a grudge against anything that makes Logan bounce around in his brand-new white Air Jordans with the thick tongues, pulling his guitar down from on top his wardrobe, warbling happy things into his cornflakes. He can't think it's a mistake, and instead finds himself bizarrely grateful for Andrew Garfield's existence in their lives, if it makes Logan that sunny.

7 | ❦

Layering, Andrew tells them in the next lab, is the horticulturist's most useful propagation tool, because it encourages root formation on the stem itself by cutting through the phloem and keeping the xylem intact, thus creating a whole new plant that is still attached to the mother plant's nutrition.

Of the five types of layering, they did air layering in Intro to Hort, which is how he and Logan wound up with the Ficus benjamina now crowding them for space in their dorm.

"I feel like I should recognize them," he says, as the mother Ficus are brought out of the greenhouse for another round. He pats the plant at his and Logan's station in what he hopes is a sympathetic, commiserating kind of way. At least Jesse isn't regularly cut upon and his regrown limbs severed off in the name of university courses.

Since it requires an upright stem, air layering is the most useful type of layering for woody plants. Logan holds their plant steady for him as Jesse takes a knife and scrapes through the bark on all sides, until it's nothing but whitish xylem. He sponges up great handfuls of damp sphagnum moss and wraps it around the wound. Usually, at this stage, they bind it up with black plastic and tape it down, to trick the plant into rooting, but they've got something easier.

"Why don't you fight crime?" Logan asks out of the blue, as Andrew comes around to coat the moss in a gluey, stretchy white substance that comes from his wrists and sticks surprisingly well to the bark.

Jesse, who remembers how incredibly difficult it had been to get everything taped down the last time he did air layering, wishes wistfully that there was some way he could box Andrew up to use him sparingly whenever he needed to propagate woody plants, because he doesn't look forward to doing it again in the future.

Andrew's mouth makes a curious shape. "What do you mean?"

"You could do anything with that," Logan makes a pointed gesture with his wrist that is probably supposed to mean webslinging, but mostly just leaves Andrew looking incredibly amused and Logan red around the ears. "So why are you slumming around with us state university kids?"

"Because I'm also a state university kid," Andrew answers. "Because I want to finish my graduate studies and I want to open a nursery --" he glances over when Jesse stifles a yelp, startled. Jesse manages a flinch of a smile in response, his eyes watering and his foot throbbing from where Logan trod on it eagerly. "-- and I really want to make enough money that I don't have to worry. That's all."

"Would you ever consider using your powers to fight crime?" Logan presses.

"Me? Do I look like a superhero to you?" he gestures to himself, inviting and up-and-down appraising look, and Jesse doesn't miss the way Logan's throat bobs. "Nah, I wouldn't be very good at it at all. Besides, we're all crimefighters in our own ways, and it's important for everybody to be crimefighters, not just us mutants," he smiles wryly. "I think I'll keep doing that."

8 | ❦

Andrew doesn't live in the dorms. His parents run a buy-it-and-fix-it real estate business in Sacramento, so he and his older brother shuttle themselves between largely unfurnished properties, babysitting them until they're ready to go on the market.

The one Andrew's living in now is on the other side of the interstate from campus, and Alex and Logan volunteer themselves after Andrew's contracted electrician turns out to be laundering money through to Russia and winds up in jail, leaving Andrew's family with a half-finished wiring job in the garage and no money left to pay another contractor. Jesse isn't one hundred percent sure how the series of events go, starting with his perfectly normal plans for a Saturday afternoon being derailed and ending with him sitting on the porch of a two-story house with a fantastic view of the surrounding suburb, holding Andrew's thermos of coffee for him as Andrew yanks his shoelaces into submission, while Alex and Logan bang happily away in the garage.

Although, let's face it, it's probably mostly Alex doing all of the work, because she is violently possessive when it comes to projects.

He wonders when somebody's going to point out the potential pit falls of letting an undergraduate do electrical work without the proper paperwork. Alex, however, doesn't let herself make mistakes. It's not in her nature.

And maybe the Garfields are totally shady, too, what does he know?

"You know, I think I forgot what it's like to be in an actual house," he comments, letting Andrew have his coffee back and stretching out on his back, tugging his sweatshirt down before it can expose skin.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Andrew's face scrunch up as he quickly tallies the math in his head. In order to take Plant Prop, a 200-level class, Jesse would have to have taken one of the introductory classes (Jesse took all four,) which would make him at least a sophomore.

"Did you not go home over the summer?"

Jesse shakes his head. "Ironically, it was less expensive for me to stay here than it was to fly home and back, so I've been in the dorms awhile."

Andrew's teeth flash. "Well, I can't promise my house is very exciting, but at least there aren't any communal bathrooms."

Jesse sits bolt upright.

"Ohmygod," he blurs out, all in a rush. "I forgot real houses have real bathrooms! The toilet isn't a stall?" Andrew shakes his head. "It has a door?" A nod. "That actually looks?" Another nod. Jesse makes grabby hands. "Give me your coffee, I want to pee in it at least once before we leave."

Andrew stares at him for a beat, before he throws his head back and barks laughter, a bright, loud noise that comes out of him like a sunburst.

Jesse's face flames.

"Shut up," he gets out. "That's not what I -- I meant your bathroom. Oh my god. Nope, I'm just going to stop talking."

"No, don't do that!" Andrew protests, surrendering his thermos immediately.

"Nope. Nope, nope, nope," he swings his legs around, putting his back to Andrew and crossing his ankles over his knees, flipping the drinking tab on the thermos. "Wake me up when this humiliation passes, which will be, oh, never."

Fingers touch his spine through the fabric of his shirts, brief, like the touch of a nurse, and for a second, Jesse's afraid that they're going to stick, or barb, or something, like spider's legs, before they're gone again.

"Don't do that," Andrew says again, gentler now. "Hey, tell me. Why did you want to major in Horticulture?"

"Totipotency," Jesse deadpans.

He's awarded with another one of those sunburst laughs.

"That's what Martin told us to tell you if you asked us why we want to major in Horticulture."

Jesse wonders who Martin is, before remembering that it's Professor Sheen's first name. He's never actually talked to the man, for all that he's the senior member of their department and frequently makes a joke out of how many times he has had to say, "no, you can't fanboy Spiderman," to Justin Timberlake.

He turns around, and Andrew is sitting far too close on the porch step. "It's true, though," he goes, stuttering only a little bit over his surprise at the proximity. "Totipotency is the ability --"

"Of a single cell to replicate its entire host organism from scratch," Andrew finishes for him. "It's why we can layer and cut and stem and chip bud a plant and successfully produce an entirely new one. Hypothetically, with just one tree --"

"-- you can eventually grow an entire forest."

Andrew's smile softens at the corners, warm and melted like sunlight, and he's looking at Jesse like he's architecture, like he's landscape, like if Andrew takes something of Jesse's now, he can wrap it in sphagnum moss and grow something hopelessly bright. And Jesse can acknowledge this, acknowledge that it's happening, just like he can acknowledge that he's a grown adult and this isn't worth it, what's happening right here and the mess he'll make of his personal relationships, if he let's this happen now.

He changes the subject, asking why Andrew chose UC Davis of all places, and what's the most interesting thing that's happened to him since he became Spiderman ("I got to shake hands with the Governator, that was pretty boss,") and lets Andrew touch his hair three times in the course of the meandering conversation that follows, crinkle-eyed and laughing with his whole body, before his composure breaks.

"I'm going to --" and he gets up, handing the still-full thermos back.

Logan's in the garage, of course, holding a ladder for Alex, who's straightening out a mess of color-coded wires with the blissful look Jesse imagines some Zen masters would wear while contemplating their rock gardens.

Logan watches her, and the expression on his face makes something detonate inside the pit of Jesse's stomach, sour and betrayed, because it would be nice if Logan would just pick one crush and stick with it. Jesse has enough trouble navigating personal relationships without worrying about treading on somebody else's unspoken territory.

He goes home alone, because it feels like the safest option.

9 | ❦

Andrew apologizes for his inappropriate behavior the next he sees him. As this happens Monday morning, about five minutes before the start of lecture, in front of 80 students who can see them but not hear them, it's probably the most uncomfortable conversation of Jesse's entire life. Andrew's holding the attendance sheet as he talks, and he probably doesn't realize he's doing it, but Jesse is perfectly, painfully cognizant of it. The acknowledgement and apology is nice, and a far more mature response than Jesse was honestly expecting, but really, what answer besides "Oh, no, it's fine!" could he possibly give while Andrew was holding the attendance sheet.

"What was that about?" Logan asks when Jesse finally takes his seat.

He looks worried, and Jesse can't parse out why.

"Nothing." And he tells his stupid squirming stomach to stop feeling guilty, because he did nothing. Absolutely nothing, which is exactly what he was supposed to do.

10 | ❦

He contemplates skipping lab on Thursday, but that would probably be the stupidest decision in an already stupid situation, and if he did, he would probably spend the whole three-hour block feeling the acute disappointment of generations of his ancestors, whom he has obviously never met, but if he had, they would probably tell him it was his responsibility to get the education they never got the chance to and shame on him for thinking about skipping without a legitimate reason.

Afterwards, he texts Rooney back (two days late) and leaves a giddy Logan to go hang out with her in the theater, where she's manning the lighting booth for late-night rehearsal.

The production, as far as Jesse's able to tell from the snatches of dialogue he hears coming up from the stage, is about female sex trafficking and genital mutilation. It involves a lot of angry yelling and flagrant use of the "f" word.

"They tried to make it a musical," Rooney tells him, catching his expression. "But Fincher put his foot down."

"Ah," says Jesse faintly.

Rooney's wearing big combat boots with steel toes, and has enough piercings through the cartilage of her ears to set off every metal detector in a mile radius. She's a Forestry Management major, and works for the Sacramento Fire Department. Last semester, she took all of her exams early and cut the last two weeks of classes, because she volunteered herself to go with the emergency crews called out to Colorado Springs. Jesse turned in her final paper for Perspectives of Meteorology, since it was the only class that required her to turn in a hard copy.

"I haven't seen you in class," he says. "Did you drop Plant Prop?"

Rooney shrugs. "I already took it last fall. Forgot. Dropped it so I could get more of those weird-ass gen eds done with," she waves a hand down at the stage.

Jesse doesn't think she's fooling anyone. Rooney's mostly interested in who in the drama department knows what tattoo artist and where she could potentially get discounts.

"Logan has a crush on the TA and the TA has a crush on me and I don't want to hurt either of their feelings what do I do," comes out of him in one great blurt.

Rooney blinks.

"How are you?" Jesse tries instead.

"I thought Logan had a crush on Emma. My Emma, I mean, not the redheaded one who has everybody's balls in the palm of her hand."

Jesse had forgotten that most conversations with Rooney usually left him with mental images that scarred his brain for days afterwards.

"No."

"Oh. Good, because she's dating Ezra Miller. Or just banging. Or enjoying mutual sexual satisfaction, I don't know the details. And he's ... there," she points down. "In the yellow dress with the pillow pregnancy. That's him."

Ezra has a beaky face and long hair, and Jesse recognizes him vaguely from a picture Logan has pinned to his cork board, in between his collection of concert tickets, both of them with guitars laid across their laps. Emma's in that picture too, he remembers.

"It never ceases to amaze me," he muses. "Just how quickly two people can manage to have sex when you're not paying attention." Rooney's eyebrows leap up her forehead, and Jesse amends, "Or, rather, just, how quickly relationships can change when you've got your back to them. It's like cooking eggs -- you have to constantly watch them or something bad happens."

Jesse Eisenberg's best friend in the world (besides his mother, obviously) is Logan Lerman, when a year he ago he wouldn't even have been able to tell you clearly who that was. Back then, his best friend was Justin Bartha, who's double-majoring in History and Women's Studies, and he doesn't talk to Jesse much these days except to ask him if they've covered how to grow ganja and not get caught, because that's the only interesting thing you can learn in horticulture, come on.

A year ago, Jesse wouldn't have imagined even having someone like Rooney in his phone. Rooney figured out early that she didn't have to truck with that "be ladylike" bullshit, got all sorts of backlash for it, and spends her working hours lugging fifty to a hundred pounds of equipment up and down staircases when she's not actually in the field fighting fires. She could tie him in a knot like a cherry stem.

"We're friends, right?" he asks, just to be sure.

"No," Rooney deadpans, and then ruins it by smiling. "Get out of my nest, Napoleon Dynamite."

"Okay, just checking."

11 | ❦

The week leading up to the practical final, which Andrew cheerily tells them will be not unlike an obstacle course and will involve more examples of plant sex than anyone probably feels comfortable with, Jesse starts desperately wishing he'd majored in Classical Lit or something that didn't require so much hands-on lab time.

Ellen, who actually does major in Classical Lit, looks amused. "I think that came out a lot dirtier than you meant it to."

Jesse flaps his hands at her.

"Objectively," he says. "I know that if we all just ... do nothing, then nothing will happen, and we'll forget this was even a thing in a few years, so I shouldn't let it be a big deal now."

"Hey, guys," Ryan materializes behind them. He's wearing a fur-lined, hot pink bra over his nylon underarmor, and a feather boa is looped around his shoulders. "Do you want to donate a dollar to breast cancer research? All proceeds go to helping a woman in need receive a free mammogram."

Jesse and Ellen go for their wallets. Ellen tucks a bill into Ryan's bra, and he flutters his eyelashes at her coquettishly.

When he's gone, she turns back to Jesse. "Logan and you are bros, babe, and Spiderman can't websling his way through that even if he wanted to."

"I know," says Jesse, who does. "I just don't like the position it puts me in. I shouldn't be expected to have feelings when I don't. I shouldn't be expected to grab at a chance for, like, a relationship or something just because it's being offered, and I shouldn't be expected to back off because of another person who's not doing anything. I don't want ..." he starts, and then settles on. "I don't want."

"Okay," says Ellen agreeably.

"It's ... isn't it weird, just how much potential we have with people, every minute of every day? I don't even think we realize it, just how much we just let happen, or let not happen. Nobody has to get together with anybody."

She's back to looking amused. "I thought you were a plant major."

"Plant majors have feelings!" Jesse protests immediately. "Deep feelings! Whole root systems of feelings, even!"

Between them on the carpet, Jesse's phone lights up and starts buzzing with enough force to scoot it away from them like it's desperate for escape. PLZ DELETE b/c Logan hates group pjcts is calling, and somebody set Logan's picture as one where his mouth's full of food. Jesse never bothers to change anything.

He looks at Ellen. Ellen lifts her eyebrows at him.

Jesse picks up. "If you bring us baby burritos within the next ten minutes, Ellen promises to elope with you to Vegas."

"Ellen Page? I accept!" Logan says stridently, as Ellen squawks and shoves his notes on plant hormones to the side so she can sit on him.

12 | ❦

TRANSCRIPT OF INTERVIEW 12/07/12
SUBJECT: GARFIELD, Andrew (24)

A: No, I have no interest in submitting myself for testing, thank you for offering. No, I don't feel like I owe it to science, and I don't want to pioneer anything, especially not anything that might get other people hurt. Because that's what you want. To test on people, so that there are more people like me and you can put us to use. I don't want to, thank you. I'm Andrew. I now do exceptionally well at rock climbing contests and can shoot webs from my wrists, which is kind of gross, but super handy for hanging up decorations, and all I want to do with my life is finish grading exams for Martin Sheen and visit someplace cool like China and take Emma Stone to a football game and kiss Jesse Eisenberg's face without him panicking about it and if I was brave, I would. That's all I want, is just to be a little bit braver. Mutant powers doesn't give that to people. It doesn't make you brave. Remember that, next time you try to make people do what you want.

(File last accessed 01/03/13, CLEARANCE CODE: 005-SAV-2LB-USA-***-***-***01, US Department for Homeland Security)

SEE CORRESPONDING FILE(S) IN DIRECTORY "/THE SPIDERMAN PROGRAM":
1] EISENBERG, Jesse
2] SHEEN, Dr. Martin
3] STONE, Emily

DELETE FILE? Y/N

-
fin

I miiiiight just post tomorrow's NaNo over at veritasrecords, because it's already 10k+ and it's easier to do long entries on communities. So, MTV, this is my life.

why prepare myself early when i can do it all last minute?

2012-10-28T05:46:52Z

➲ NANOWRIMO PROMPT POST 2012

It's that time of year again! For the last several years, instead of trying to write one 50k piece for the month of November, I try to write numerous little fics, all month long. The goal is to challenge yourself, right?

Last year, I opened up NaNoWriMo prompting to my flist and was not expecting the result.

Since trying to write a fic every single day on top of real life responsibilities exhausted me beyond reason last year, this year I'm cutting it down to even-numbered days in the hope that I can finish every prompt.

Also, I just like doing things for people. SO --

Leave a comment with a fandom, a character/pairing, and a prompt, and I'll post something 1000 words or longer on the day you requested. You can find my list of fandoms here. Feel free to leave more than one prompt, if you like, but please just pick one day!

November 2 - RPF, Andrew Garfield & Jesse Eisenberg & Logan Lerman, university AU with Spiderman fusion, for soxdamnxcute
November 4 - The Social Network, gen, wingfic, for moogle62
November 6 - Percy Jackson, Percy/Nico/Annabeth, Hogwarts AU OR TSN/PJO, Eduardo/Nico/Hazel as children of Hades, for hiza_chan
November 8 - Percy Jackson, Percy/Nico/Annabeth, space AU, for notworthy
November 10 - Harry Potter, Draco/Ginny, Curseworkers AU, for ikel89
November 12 - Avengers, Clint/Natasha, dragons/Dragonriders of Pern AU, for eiirene
November 14 - Avengers, gen or Sif/Loki, daemon AU, for mccarthyism
November 16 - The Social Network, Erica/Dustin, California summers OR Teen Wolf, Stiles/Derek, antagonism as romance, for ceridweyn_lin
November 18 - Teen Wolf, gen, Hogwarts AU OR Teen Wolf/White Collar crossover or fusion, for oneoffour111
November 20 - White Collar, Neal/Peter/Elizabeth, graduation/futurefic, for altogetherisi
November 22 - Heroes of Olympus, Leo & Hazel & Piper, daemon AU OR Teen Wolf, Derek & Laura, roadtrip, for orchida
November 24 - RPF, Jesse Eisenberg/Andrew Garfield, Hogwarts AU, for savetomorrow
November 26 - The Social Network, Erica & Christy, AtLA AU, for ambyr
November 28 - Teen Wolf, Derek/Stiles, sickfic, for elipie
November 30 - Curseworkers, Cassel/Lila, futurefic, for lc2l

Note: I'll post completed fics here, unlocked on this journal. A masterlist will go up on veritasrecords at the end of the month, which is also when I'll start crossposting to my AO3.

Note II: If you don't know what to ask for, I'll help you out: I did just finish marathon rereading the Harry Potter books, so now would be a great time to ask for all those HP AUs you've been craving. Daemons are always a good thing to prompt, and I also haven't gotten my feet wet in Heroes of Olympus fic yet. Just. As a suggestion >)

Note III: I will probably do this again in December for the holidays!

EDIT: I AM NOW FULL.

Thank you to everybody for leaving amazing prompts. I AM SO EXCITE \o/

FICBIT GIVE-AWAY.

2012-08-21T15:20:15Z

Home again! My family and mccarthyism met me at the airport after problems with my flight that resulted in too many hours spent half-asleep in Newark, and then at home there were balloons and this fake 100m finish line I had to break through in order to reach my bed :D I love everything.

olive_jeans! salvadore_hart! smilesonmytoes! I got your postcards! EEEEEE THANK YOU SO MUCH.

ALSO. Speaking of postcards. I've been meaning to do this for awhile, but it turns out sending out international mail is cheaper from the United States, so I waited until I got back here to do this post:

FIC-ON-A-POSTCARD GIVEAWAY

The rules are simple. You give me a fandom and a character or pairing, and I'll write you either a three-sentence snippet or 10 random facts about that character/pairing on a postcard and send it to you.

I can't promise they'll be particularly pretty postcards, because my ability to write in a straight line is questionable on the best of days, but you should request things anyway! :D

Because this meme requires you to leave your address/an address that things can be sent to, all comments are screened. You can also PM me if that makes you more comfortable.

You should leave your address even if you're pretty sure I already have it, just in case.

REQUEST AWAY \o/

➔ elizabeth's top eight favorite tsn fics

2012-04-09T02:51:13Z

SO REMEMBER BACK IN ... LIKE FEBRUARY APPARENTLY WHAT THE HELL, Tumblr did this thing where it had a sudden surge of TSN feels and everybody posted their lists of favorites and classics? For example: like so, so, and so.

EVERYTHING WAS EMOTIONALLY DISTRAUGHT HEARTBREAK AND NOTHING HURT.

So I decided to join the bandwagon, only I take forever with literally everything, so it's now April and I finally opened Photoshop again, tralala.

➔ top eight tsn fics elizabeth would want with her if she were ever stranded on a desert island, in addition to one that tells you how to build a raft

or:

ELIZABETH'S (antistar_e's) TOP EIGHT FAVORITE SOCIAL NETWORK FIC.

In no particular order.

Disclaimer: all art, textures, and brushes belong to their respective creators. antistar_e and affiliates take no responsibility for any emotional damage your heart may incur from any of these fics.

The Fragile | sharpest_rose
The Social Network/Never Let Me Go, Mark/Eduardo, Sean, appearances by ensemble, R

I know I've gushed at length about how sharpest_rose is one of the best people to ever have been blessed with words, because of the amazing things she makes with them. She takes the TSN verse and she takes the Never Let Me Go verse and she reconciles them into something that's a little on this side of hopeful, a little happy, and a ridiculously gorgeous thing to put into your eyeballs.

No, really. The language in this. Here:

Unlike Mark, Eduardo believes in love. He believes in fondness, and caring, and in aching, almost painful wanting.

He wonders if someday, after he completes and his heart is in a different ribcage, if that sweet, perfect almost-pain will still exist inside it.

;______;

the other side (is always greener) | fuzzy_paint
AU, Mark/Eduardo, appearances by ensemble, PG-13, 37000 words

fuzzy_paint is the TSN fandom's proverbial Harper Lee. She came seemingly out of nowhere in order to produce two high-quality works for the thesocialbbang challenge, and then disappeared again, leaving everybody reeling and a little unsure of what to do with themselves. This is one of those Big Bangs. All Our Errors on Repeat is the other. Both will blow your mind.

the other side (is always greener) is, at face value, a mermaid AU. Saying, "asdfghjkl; this mermaid!AU asdfghjl; oh my god," while an accurate representation of FEELINGS, kind of undersells the story, because it takes not only the best parts of mermaid myths, but the best part of selkie and siren and general seafaring myths, too, and blends it into one amazing, twisty story. I know I said "in no particular order" before listing fics, but THIS.

Also, chosenfire28's artwork for it is AMAZING and should be put into your eyeballs immediately. (I'll give you three guesses as to what my desktop background is!)

In Every Line of Code | lc2l
AU, Mark/Eduardo, Dustin, Chris, appearances by ensemble, PG-13, 18900 words

Because life is too short to remove the USB safely, have this, brought to you by the same incredible mind behind Boy Falls From Sky.

This AU, which features Eduardo as a robot with a supercomputer brain with an endless learning capacity and a heart that's even larger, tackles some incredibly difficult subjects, like property law, the definition of murder, and the emotional capability of an artificial personality construct. lc2l is a master at manipulating canon into a new, well-developed story.

Fair warning, though. The ending is ... ah. Bittersweet, I guess is one word for it.

ASDFGHJLA AH GOD MY HEART is another.

Wait a Minute | ohnvm
girl!Mark/Eduardo, appearances by ensemble, PG-13, 22700 words

Lady!Mark is the best of all possible Marks, and this fandom has produced some very, very stellar genderswap stories. In terms of quality, comedy, and an ass-kickingly excellent youngest billionaire in the world, ohnvm's Wait a Minute verse tops them all.

Featuring Marcella Zuckerberg, Eric Albright, and a Marilyn who plays an Important Role that extends above being the Greek Chorus thanks for nothing Sorkin and Fincher, this stays recognizable to the canon and manages to hit every guilty pleasure genderswap spot.

For a Purpose | abriata
AU, Mark/Eduardo, Dustin, Chris, PG-13, 6500 words

Out of the several quality fanworks abriata has produced for this fandom, this spot on my favorites was a toss-up between this and In Webs and Knots. I was this close to flipping a coin.

While In Webs and Knots is an amazing, long, plotty, ~~porny~~ brilliant reconstruction of canon, I decided on For a Purpose because its genius is a lot more understated. In only 6k, abriata constructs, fleshes out, and contextualizes an entire alternate universe, where instead of Harvard, the boys attend art school, and, on top of being a rather prolific artist, Mark is ... a little magic.

imo, this fic is possibly the most unique take on a kink_bingo square I have ever seen.

feels like we could escape | addandsubtract
Mark/Eduardo, NC-17, 12900 words

Intercontinental roadtrip fic meets addandsubtract's flawless, flawless writing. I cannot begin to tell you just how easy it is to lose yourself in this fic, the slow, meandering build of it, no matter how many times you read it.

Or: the psuedo-AU where, when driven to choose between Facebook and Eduardo, Mark chooses Eduardo.

the farther i fall i'm beside you | therealw
Mark/Eduardo, Marilyn, PG, 7000 words

the farther i fall was one of the very first TSN fics ever written, as well as being one of the very first many of us read. This, in part, is what makes it so unforgettable, because idk about you, but I definitely remember going, OH MY GOD YES THIS.

I'm not sure which came first, the idea that the deposition scenes were basically divorce court, or this fic, but I know when I read it, fresh off of seeing the movie, I put my hands down and said, HEAD CANON ACCEPTED.

"You know what we're here for?" Marylin continues before he can interrupt, "I mean, what this really feels like?"

The Greatest Trick | fairy_tale_echo
AU, Mark/Eduardo, Chris, PG-13, 17000 words

Or, the AU where Mark sells his soul to the Devil on the condition that Facebook be everything he wants it to be, and she comes back years later to collect on the thing he values most in the world.

You know how much of a sucker I am for an interesting, intricate, interwoven AU, right? fairy_tale_echo delivers every time.

"Yes way," Chris answers. He stares at Mark, his gaze unwavering. "Mark, you better lawyer up, because we're going to sue the Devil."

HONORABLE MENTION:
goes to the classics, naturally. Here Comes the Sun, Sweet On You, Never Marry for Money (You Can Buy it For Cheaper), In Grander Schemes Than This, Tranquilize, Unexpected Relations, you know the ones I'm talking about. I had to leave them off the bigger list, because otherwise this list probably would have just been a rehashing of other people's favorites :D:D I CAN'T EVEN WITH TSN FANDOM'S TALENT, YOU GUYS, SEND HELP.

Annnnnnd normally I would be airing out the tablecloth and fetching down the china for Easter dinner right about now, but our fridge is broken, so we're going to go eat Chinese instead. Fuck yes, not having to do the dishes! \o/

HAVE A FABULOUS DAY, EVERYONE.

this post is public because I need to appreciate some people.

2012-04-03T02:33:46Z

My life in (not-so-short, come on, self) bullet points:

• school sucks monkey balls. Like, I have no words for the amount that school sucks balls. I haven't written a word that isn't school-related in weeks, that's how much school sucks balls. I do not want to write this thesis paper, I do not want to present this thesis paper, I do not want to defend this thesis paper, I just want to learn. Can I just do that? Can I just go to school and learn for the sake of learning and not have to pointlessly demonstrate that knowledge for a diploma?

• I will probably put up a poll soon, because this thesis paper involves the irreligious views of adolescents, and the majority of you are atheist/agnostic, I think, and even if you aren't adolescents anymore, YOU WERE ONCE, so. I SHALL BE IN NEED OF YOUR OPINIONS ONCE I PHRASE MY QUESTIONS CORRECTLY.

• It is April! With the end of the Black March boycott, I went back to my regularly-scheduled sheep funding of mass media oppression of the citizen via our need for instant gratification by going to see The Hunger Games with mccarthyism and purchasing The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. I meant to gorge on them both, but The Hunger Games left me too emotionally exhausted. ugh feels.

• also when I was purchasing TGWDT, the guy at the register was like, "you sure? this has a lot of nudity in it," and I need to carry around notecards for this shit, because instead of going, "no, it has a lot of Lisbeth Salander being unapologetically badass, that's what you're threatened by. either that, or you're trying to subtly warn me about the explicit rape scene, which I already know about, because TGWDT only garnered an R rating despite the explicit rape scene, because that's how the MPAA treats violence against and degradation of women," because I lose all articulation when I need it most, I just said, "yeah, how about those boobs," and left the store.

• Sometimes I make quality decisions, in case you missed the memo.

• SPEAKING OF BADASS LADIES, check out what the amazing, AMAZING quintenttsy put together: PODFIC OF MY PREGNANT!ERICA FIC. AAHHHH OH MY GOD, coming so soon on the heels of this excellent work of excellence by lunchy_munchy, I CANNOT COPE WITH THESE FEELS. HELP. THESE LADIES AND THEIR VOICES ARE TOO GOOD FOR ME.

/insert any Emma Stone weeping and eating ice cream gif here

Writer's Block: Every Four Years

2012-02-29T15:16:11Z

I'm running a fever of 101 and I have an astronomy exam in ... 20 minutes. Other than that, my extra day of the year is going quite fabulously, thanks! ♥

the left rib ➔ the social network ➔ a marsha zuckerberg fanmix

2012-01-31T03:05:07Z

Because rich white men are boring, let's genderswap this shit up and bring in lady!Mark, who would have been the best Time Magazine Person of the Year, who are we kidding.

Seriously, this fandom's girl!Mark is some of the best genderswap in existence.

Ah, god, you guys, I haven't done a fanmix in so long.

Like, in over a year. I haven't even opened Photoshop in over a year -- all it took was a week on Tumblr and I kind of just hung my head in shame. As a result, I have several fanmixes sitting on my computer, but I think about making cover art for them and I'm just like LOL NOPE.

SO DON'T JUDGE ME ON MY AMATEUR PHOTOSHOPPING SKILLS, PLEASE.

PLEASE?

JUST. TAKE SOME MUSIC. :D?

➔ cover art, 13 tracks, and one badass lady under the cut

➔ the left rib
the social network | a marsha zuckerberg fanmix

➔ featuring Juno Temple as girl!Mark, because of reasons
➔ all links will be redirected via anonym, because I have no desire to be arrested by my very srs bsns government
➔ there is no third point, I just like copy/pasting those little arrows

❝they're suing me because for the first time in their lives, things aren't going how they're supposed to for them.❞

01 | haters
m.i.a. ➔ download

and what you see on myspace, just a little bit
the story's always fucked by the time it hits
cause lies equals power equals politics

your ego and hate are your building bricks
your son can go to Harvard to learn the tricks
like economics
and eats the poor like a Twix

I'm a sinner
never said anything else
I didn't lie to you
you're thinking of somebody else

02 | a/b machines
sleigh bells ➔ download

got my A machines on the table
got my B machines in the drawer

03 | did it on 'em
nicki minaj ➔ download

if I had a dick, I would pull it out and piss on 'em

I just signed a couple deals
I might break you off

all these bitches is my sons
and I ain't talking about the Phoenix

04 | american trash
innerpartysystem ➔ download

I've got this planet in my hands
you know I'll waste it if I can
I'm satisfied with myself
don't care for anyone else
I'm so united when I stand

I'm just American trash
stupid American trash

it's such an ignorant bliss
when the whole fucking world wants to be like me

❝it'll be like a final club, except, Wardo, we're the president.❞

05 | president
iamx ➔ download

for all you lonely boys
I will be president

06 | something bigger something better
amanda blank ➔ download

I got something better for my girls that know they're clever
work it out their own way
fuck what he says
no, I won't be judged that way
I'm working that first class hooker shit
Fuck them if they can't handle it

07 | take a bow
muse ➔ download

you're corrupt
and bring corruption to all that you touch
you behold
and beholden for all that you've done

you will risk all their lives and their souls

take a bow

08 | the muddle (bacardi mojito song)
dj sadegh ➔ download

(instrumental)

❝she crashed the network, and she did it while drunk."
"how do you know she was drunk?"
"she was blogging simultaneously.❞

09 | better than you
rye rye feat. m.i.a. ➔ download

hey, Marsha!
what did you do yesterday?
'cause when I read the blog story
it don't add up to what you told me

facebook? face facts!
girl you know that

want to be the next big thing?
anything you can do, I can do better

10 | love me or hate me
lady sovereign ➔ download

it's officially the biggest midget in the game

I ain't got the biggest breasts, but I write all the best disses
I wear a big baggy t-shirt that hides all that nasty shit

I don't like drinking fancy champagne
I'll stick with Heineken beers
whoops, might burp in your face
a little unladylike, what can I say?

so everybody's entitled to opinions
I open my mouth and shit, I got millions!
yeah, I do have some stories
and it's true I want all the glory

if you love me, then thank you
if you hate me, then fuck you

11 | executive decision
two steps from hell ➔ download

(instrumental)

❝you signed the papers.❞

12 | attitude
hard knox ➔ download

you brought it all on yourself
animals in your brain
broken bottles for your partners
looks like you lost it again

(yeah, I got an attitude)

13 | grandmother song
vienna teng ➔ download

no one's going to take care of you
in that world you got yourself into
all the good boys, baby, they're in grad school

but the one thing they can't take away from you
is your mind and the education you've been through
so you find a man who understands that too
make sure he stays true
gives respect where it's due
make sure he knows what he's got in you

because a woman
isn't just for cooking meals
scrubbing floors, making babies

a woman's got ambitions same as he does
maybe more

❝A million members. Congratulations, we did it.❞

➔ download full zip

➲ NANOWRIMO: NOVEMBER 28

2011-11-30T10:07:50Z

I'm going to give myself the first three days of December as amnesty, because there are at least two more Nanos I would consider a great affront to myself to not finish.

After this weekend, though, I REALLY need to focus on TSN Secret Santa. ~~and school. mostly secret santa.~~

But my official count for NaNoWriMo 2011 is 16 out of 30 fics completed (and I am so, so sorry to everybody whose prompts I didn't write. mccarthyism can testify to how badly I've been beating myself up over this, because you all deserve all the things I can give you,) for a total of 70,602 words between them, give or take a couple thousand for the prompts I didn't entirely finish.

➲ NANOWRIMO: NOVEMBER 28
For aimmyarrowshigh, The Curse Workers, Cassel/Lila, you are somber, we are sorry.

Warnings for: The Curse Workers was the first series I listened to on audiotape, and as I discovered when I sat down to write fic for it, I genuinely have no idea how anybody's name is spelled. So spelling errors might run rampant.

If my layout fucks you up, read this in the light format. Honest, it really does look better.

the sunset and the silver bells [read @ AO3]
The Curse Workers, Chris, Cassel/Lila, PG-13 to R-lite, 4680 words

The first thing you need to know about Christopher Wasserman is that he loves his mother.

Not his birth mother, although he supposes he must have loved her, too, in the unconscious and unconditional way children do. He doesn't really remember her much, just the lightest impression of things, like a leftover crayon rubbing: the dress she wore a lot, dark ocean-blue with white sailboats to match her porter gloves; the way she would gently hold him by the chin when he asked her to put her lipstick on him; and the song she used to sing when she rocked him to sleep. He doesn't remember the words, but he still gets goosebumps whenever he catches a snatch of the tune.

He assumes he loved the mother that gave birth to him, but the mother that raised him is the mother he loves most.

This is the one thing Chris has never been ashamed of.

It is the one thing he will never be ashamed of.

He loves his mother. He loves her with all the room he has left in his heart, once you've carved away the pieces he had to get rid of growing up in the family he worked. It didn't happen immediately, or even very quickly, but he turned around one day and there it was in front of him -- Karen Wasserman is his mother, and he listens to her, and he would do anything for her, because he's a good person and respect's important to him.

The first time he ever won an award from school for academic achievement (it wasn't really much of anything, either, just some ribbon for having perfect attendance his eighth grade year,) he went straight to her before he thought about it. People like Daneca take that for granted, the confidence that they can take their accomplishments to their parents and have it mean something to them, to know that they'll be proud, but it's new to Chris, and heady, and wonderful.

The first time he ever had sex, he crept home afterwards, his shirt feeling strange against his skin and everything tilted just a little bit to the side, like he could suddenly see the world in a whole different way. He found her waiting for him in the front parlor with the light on, wearing sweatpants with her hair pinned up in a careless bun. At the sight of him, the annoyance on her face faded immediately into knowing, the corners of her eyes going reassuringly soft, and Chris broke and went right into her arms, hugging her tight until he felt less overwhelmed.

She was the first person that didn't make Chris feel afraid.

She was the first person Chris willingly and openly discussed cursework with, without feeling like he needed to put his back up like a cat.

And because Chris so loves his mother, he's going to give her the only thing in the world she wants, the thing that makes her sit still at the window that overlooks her garden with a look on her face like someone who's witnessed a shipwreck.

He's going to get Daneca and bring her home.

-

The second thing you need to know about Chris Wasserman is that he grew up big.

Springtime, when it comes, is wet and rainy, colors bleeding down into the pavement and green blurring away on the trees, and Chris is seventeen years old when he kneels down and takes a knife to the neck. The ash stings nauseatingly when they pack it into the open wound, his flesh aching and slick.

He squeezes his eyes shut against the pain, jaw clenched so hard he can't move his tongue and tears streaming and streaming and streaming, leaking from the corners of his eyes unchecked to drip from his chin.

Symbolically, this ritual is supposed to represent the severance from his past life and his entrance into his new one. Chris's first and only companion in his life as a Zacharov is agony: it keeps him up all night and well into the next morning, until he wants to take his fingernails to his infected flesh and peel it all away, create a new skin that doesn't burn with ash like it's still on fire.

-

When Chris was a sophomore at Wallingford, his big sister went missing.

Missing isn't the most accurate word to describe what happened, because Chris and his mother and his father know exactly what happened to her. It's not like she was a phone number or a gadget they tucked into their bags and then couldn't find again. It's not like they put her down somewhere and forgot where they left her.

Lila Zacharov and her spiderweb of laborers took her because she's an emotion worker. She never came home.

She fell in with a bad crowd, is basically what the police tell them, in their diplomatically passive-aggressive way, as if they think the Wassermans are wasting their time and their resources looking for a teenage girl. What did you think was going to happen? they don't say, but the feeling remains, leaving Chris with a stewing helplessness and a rage with no aim.

It isn't until he's seventeen that Chris comes up with the plan: get into the Zacharov family, get his sister, and get out again. It's a long game, but if you think about it, Chris's whole life thusfar has been a long game -- an exercise in blending in with other people until he's so like them that nobody even notices anymore, least of all him -- and if anyone's suited for the life of a laborer, it's him, not Daneca.

Puberty came early and was surprisingly kind to Chris, and left him with all sorts of useful advantages: he matured into biceps as thick across as salami and shoulders that cast long shadows like Atlas, and while his mouth says, "I'm a luck worker, I was driven out of my home when blowback brought us bad luck one time too many," his height and the burly quarterback set of his shoulders make the Zacharov bosses with their keloid scars blink and say mmhmm deep in their throats.

He says his name is Christopher Quinn, because that's his birth name, and they'll find records of him. Not very clear records, granted, but enough to show he was born in a stretch of Connecticut that basically counted as nobody cares anymore and lived there most of his life, until suddenly he didn't anymore.

He hopes it will be Lila Zacharov who cuts the first of his keloids into his neck, but it's one of her henchmen instead, an emotion worker named Triton who touches naked fingertips to the dip under Chris's chin, the way his birth mother did when he wanted to try her make-up and she wanted him to hold still.

The loyalty burns through him, hot like he poured it straight back as if it came in a shot glass, and he swallows it down.

-

Because he's the big, strong, silent type (he didn't used to be; he used to be this heavyset brat of a twelve-year-old who couldn't keep his mouth shut because if he wasn't going to rail against the unfairness of the world, then who was? He'll never be able to shake the feeling that if he'd just learned to keep a secret sooner, then Daneca wouldn't have been forced in with the Zacharovs, and maybe she'd been home right now, smelling like the hair product she used to tame her curly hair and organic chamomile; it's the kind of thought that will stopper anybody's throat and turn their words to ash to pack into their keloid scars,) he becomes Triton's bodyguard.

"Hiring luck workers as bodyguards is not uncommon," Triton tells him, like this is supposed to be news; Karen Wasserman is his mother, he can probably loop circles around this guy with what he knows about cursework.

Luck work is a bountiful resource, and cheaper than hiring a physical worker, because in protection detail, a little bit of luck goes a long way.

Triton's in charge of Zacharov interest in amulet trade, which means Chris follows him all up and down Long Island, into upstate New York and then down into Jersey, and the longer he watches Triton work the sales and production of protective amulets, the more restless he gets, because this is time he could be using to look for Daneca.

He just needs to know what happened to her. He needs to get her home. He owes his mother that much.

So he settles in to play the long game.

-

The first friend he makes is a cat he calls Honey, who follows him out of the rain one day.

He's a black cat with eyes so golden they make Chris think in honeycombs, hence the name, and he'll sit on the back of Chris's sofa and watch him do mundane things like put the kettle on to boil, roll up his socks, or fill in his sodoku book while waiting for Triton to page him, big and unblinking like everything he does is fascinating. In the first few weeks, when the loneliness is crippling and the pain in his neck throbs with the same dull rhythm as his heartbeat, Chris appreciates the feeling that he's at least fascinating to somebody.

The idea behind putting him up with a place to sleep and employment is that Chris is going to work off the rent, room, and board that the Zacharov provide him, which he already knows he isn't going to be able to do.

That's how the worker families trap their minions; that horrible cycle of debt and payment.

So he lives in a refurbished industrial building that has been converted into dozens of shabby one-room apartments with temperamental plumbing; some of them serve as crashpads for the physical workers after they go toe-to-toe with the Brennans or the Goldblooms and need to lie low for awhile, but most everybody who lives here are people like Chris, who just want to live and work somewhere their cursework isn't considered a disability, even if that means they have to turn to petty crime to do it. That kind of honesty just sits better with the soul.

"Do you think if I just went around knocking on every door, I'll find my sister?" is the first thing Chris ever says to Honey, who startles at the sound of his voice and twists his head around.

He doesn't discover Daneca in any of the apartments, but by knocking on all the doors he finds enough people that he kind of becomes friends with the other workers; most of them luck, but there's also Nathan, a physical worker who was relegated to laundry duty after he converted to one of the Hindu denominations committed to nonviolence, and two dream workers, who make specialized charms that protect against certain types of nightmares, strong ones like the kind induced by PTSD or a change in medication. Not all of what the Zacharovs do is malignant or illegal, Chris finds.

"I don't ever see you work," Nathan comments idly one afternoon, coming out to sit next to him on the stoop with a bowl of popcorn, watching the mailman go by with her bag banging against the backs of her knees. "You sure you got the heebie-jeebies, kid?"

"I'm a worker," Chris responds shortly. "I just don't do it unless I have to."

"Got it beaten out of you by your parents, got it," Nathan chuckles, rueful. "I suppose there at advantages to that. Rely too much on cursework and you might wind up like the Sharpe brothers."

-

Every worker who's ever questioned his own abilities knows what happened to the Sharpe brothers. Get too deeply entrenched into a worker family, thinking you can outplay them, and lack the guidance of HEX (according to his mother) or proper discipline (according to the Zacharovs,) and here's your inevitable outcome: three brothers who crashed and burned in the most spectacular fashion. The middle brother is living with his sister-in-law, worked so bad his brain is mushy as oatmeal, and the oldest and the youngest aren't working anything but maggots these days.

The worst part about that is: Chris remembers Cassel.

Not very well, because he only saw him twice when he was twelve, and once more right before old man Zacharov croaked, but it still sends an unpleasant red-hot jolt of recognition right through his gut whenever somebody brings him up. Cassel Sharpe went to school with Daneca and Chris knows him -- it almost feels like knowing a celebrity, in an awful kind of way.

Revisionist history tries to make sense of his memories, but no matter what, all Chris can call to mind is a kid, like him, and he's dead now.

Around that time, Prop 2 launched a renewed, zealous campaign, fueled by the rumor that the government knew the location of a transformation worker in the United States. Somewhere in the fallout, while Daneca poked at her dinner and their parents yelled hotly at the TV on the kitchen counter about things like media censorship and sensationalism, Cassel Sharpe died, was buried, and it was never made clear how or why -- which had crime family written all over it.

(Chris has a very long list of things he wants to ask his sister when he sees her again. One of them is, "Did Cassel die because he was a death worker too?")

-

The government still likes to pretend that there's a transformation worker living somewhere in New Jersey, and they're doing everything to ensure that worker's safety (and, more importantly, the safety of everyone nearby, since nobody really knows anything about the modern application of that branch of cursework.)

Chris doubts it.

The government can't even protect its smallest citizens; kids like Chris with nowhere to turn to and a world that won't suddenly wake up and stop hating them. How can they expect anyone to believe they've got a transformation worker and they're keeping him or her safe?

-

A year and a half passes with the occasional hallmark: holidays and events, political elections and border skirmishes with the other families, layered on top of the usual year-round things, like open admiration of the changing leaves and the commiserating huddle that forms at the bus stop in the dead of February. Chris keeps his head down and does everything he's told to do.

Finally, some five months after they reopen the cut at his neck to pack in more ash like the first ring on a tree, they appoint him with the only job he really wants.

They make him Lila Zacharov's bodyguard.

It's not like he hasn't ever seen her before, of course, because she is the head of the family and she's always been his boss. She's a short-haired woman about Daneca's age, which is only notable for how little it really matters: Chris has seen her throw down men built like an NFL quarterbacks and sneer at politicians twice her age until they go lily-white with rage, and the reputation that preceded her made her seem so terrifying: when he finally meets her, face-to-face, she's wearing sweatpants with a Princeton logo up the right leg and her guns are holstered under her arms, her head bent down with Triton's over a shipment manifesto.

Triton looks ready to cry. She isn't as terrifying as they say.

She's worse.

The other rumors, Chris finds, are true and false in equal measure: Lila's known for liking cats, but she doesn't have canines thin and sharp as candy canes and she doesn't have pupils slitted like a cat's. Everything else -- all the things Chris just chalked up to her mystique -- are true. There's always at least one cat following her around, winking in and out of the corners of rooms like another form of Zacharov muscle, and there's something inherently feline about the way Lila walks, the way she eats and the way she tilts her head and the way she hugs the walls and even blinks. It's not the kind of thing you can make up.

That first time he meets her, Honey follows Chris into the room the same way he initially followed him home; slipping past his legs before he can block his way. He twines himself around Lila's legs in greeting, which she acknowledges with a flick of her fingertips against his tail.

He leaps onto the back of the chair, tilting his head over Triton's shoulder, and for a moment, the tableau holds, the three of them reading the shipment manifesto, serious and somber.

... huh, Chris thinks faintly.

He never quite shakes the feeling that Lila sent Honey to spy on him. It's a ridiculous thing to think, he knows, as supertisious as thinking a gloved hand means a safe hand or that if he says the right combination of flattering things, the toaster will bake his bread just right, and he thinks it anyway.

-

The first time he meets her is the first time she meets him; Lila Zacharov, breathing and shifting and responsible for that horrible emptiness in Daneca's chair at the kitchen table, and the idea that her bare skin is close enough to touch almost overwhelms him. He could, you know. He could pull his glove taut so the threads go bare over his fingertips and he could touch her, right now, and the urge to do it swells inside him, pressing up against everything, like it's grown bigger than his heart or his twisting gut or his skin, like it wants to split. It would be so easy, and over in an instant.

Chris Wasserman is not a luck worker.

That's the third thing you need to know.

-

He is big, strong, silent, and discreet, and after a few months of adjusting to the sudden prestige, he becomes the night watchman at the Zacharov estate. He spends the lightless hours of the morning at the end of the hall from Lila's bedroom, reading 10c novels where the darkest cursework is played up for romantic drama, plainly written by people who have never worked or been worked once in their lives. It's all that keeps him from cornering Lila and demanding to know what happened to Daneca.

Daneca Wasserman, do you remember her: short girl, vegetarian, curly hair and her favorite color was the green that everything turned immediately after a summer rain. What did you do to that girl?

Lila's bedroom is built like a bomb shelter, with thick, muffling walls that block out any sound coming from inside. It's necessary, he knows, and the only measure of privacy Lila really gets, but it makes the guard in him antsy: he could swear, the one time she left the door ajar, he heard a snatch of sound like the crunching of small bird bones, viscerally disgusting, and masked by a low, guttural scream that makes him think she's torturing animals, before her hand snatches the doorknob and yanks it shut.

Everyone has their secrets. Mob princesses maybe most of all.

It's the soft noise that alerts him, like the padding tread of cat's paws on the carpet, and he's on his feet in the next beat, but it's just Lila coming out into the hall. He doesn't know the time, lost it in that long stretch of nothing after midnight and before the sunrise, and Lila's eyes are bright, awake, the skin under them smudged like the bruised flesh of a fruit. She hasn't been to sleep yet.

She stops, and they look at each other.

She holds herself loose at the hips, an almost sway. The only thing she's wearing is a grey zip-up hoodie, a boy's, with the logo for a New England trucking company stenciled across the front. It gapes open, haphazard, like it's not so much clothing as it is an afterthought, revealing bare, skinny, ballerina legs that race up to meet the visible line of her underwear; not the black Victoria's Secret kind he knows she has and knows she wears when she determines it's the best way to intimidate someone, but the simple cotton kind, soft and familiar.

In the beginning, Chris used to help Nathan with the laundry, and he remembers the two of them making fun of Lila's underwear for having the days of the week printed underneath the hem; they seized onto those little things in a bid to pretend that she didn't scare the shit out of them.

Her hands are completely naked.

She shifts her weight, mouth parting, and he sees the faint impression of mouthprints, a ring of them like a posy-mark, bitten into the skin above her breast. He can't see it in this light, but he's willing to bet she's got the indentation of teeth all around her lips, too, what with how swollen they've gotten.

He lifts his eyebrows, because if she got somebody past him and into her bed without him even noticing, then they should really find someone new.

Unless she dreamed up a lover, the kind that can keep her up this late with long kisses and can fuck her until she walks with the hedonist sway of someone who never wants to leave the bed.

He forgets, sometimes, that if she wasn't Lila Zacharov, she would just be another girl in college with ordinary dreams.

Ms. Zacharov, you should clean yourself up, is the first thing he wants to say.

Where's my sister? is the second.

He wants to open his arms (although it's stupid to assume she'd need anything like the comforting embrace his own mother gave him when she stayed up late to find him creeping in) and he wants to wrap his hands around her long neck in equal measure, leave bruises for whoever is in rucked up in her sheets to nuzzle into. He wants to demand to know how it is she dare take a lover when she's already taken Chris's sister.

All he does, in the end, is bow his head in acknowledgement, and step to the side. She disappears into the bathroom, light flicking on underneath the door. He goes back to his book.

-

The next morning, when Lila showers (again) and he goes in to fetch the laundry for Nathan, the only person in the room is Honey, curled up among the throw pillows on the window seat. His eyes lid lazily against the early morning sun, although his ears flick in Chris's direction when the door opens.

Kneejerk, Chris tells the cat, "Good morning," and he knows he's reached the point where he's ready to accept just about any bizarre thing about Lila Zacharov's personal life when he swears Honey twists his head around and smiles.

-

The first time Chris kills someone for Lila is on a cold spring morning in early April, and frost spiderwebs across the car windows as he pulls it around back and finds an assassin with a box-cutter tucked into his sleeve, poised by the delivery entrance to slit the Zacharov princess's thin white throat when she comes out.

It will always be interesting to him later, how he doesn't even think. His head is just a jumble of NO and I need her for Daneca and Lila and someone loves her and his chest goes tight with a feeling so overwhelmingly intense that it takes him a long, long moment to recognize as loyalty -- not the loyalty that Triton emotion-worked into him along with the ash at his throat, but true loyalty, Wasserman loyalty, the kind of loyalty that made Daneca follow Cassel Sharpe into the dark. And by then, he has his bare hands on the assassin's neck and he's right there, right there, watching the way his eyes go eerily unfocused, the light in them going out and the body sagging, limbs becoming gangly as a marionette's.

The blowback sends Chris to his knees, crumpling him into the gravel with the corpse.

Gaping soundlessly like a fish through the flaring pain, he digs at his flesh, nails raising hard lines even through his clothes. He can't see it, but he feels it; the way the skin underneath his left nipple goes black and dead, like bad frostbite.

When it passes, he realizes he's not alone. The black cat watches him, suspended on the very edge of the dumpster, honey-colored eyes peering like lamplight through the shadow and the dawn. His breath mists in front of his nostrils.

Chris pushes himself up onto his hands and knees and finds himself saying, inanely, "Don't you say a word."

Honey blinks in a slow fall, and nods his head.

-

And then.

And then the day comes.

Nathan finds him sitting on the steps of the downtown library, eating french fries out of a greasy bag and watching the pigeons edge warily closer, and tells him the boss lady wants to see him. Chris stands, wipes the oily fingers of his gloves off on his pants, and upends the rest of the fries for the pigeons. When he arrives back at the Zacharov house, the day-shifters (Mikael and someone whose name Chris doesn't know, both luck workers) cut him darkly sympathetic looks as they close the door behind them, like they're imagining he's going to his guillotine.

Lila turns away from the window. Her study is all rich, deep colors and the sharp smell of varnish, and she comes around to sit in the armchair, folding one leg over the other. Her gaze is steady.

"Christopher Wasserman," she says, assessing, and Chris feels the cold go all the way down into very chinks of his spine.

"Ma'am," he returns. He keeps very, very still.

Honey materializes along the back of the armchair, a slim black shape slinking down the upholstery. Lila lifts her hand, her palm skating over his head when he stretches into her touch, eyes lidding and a purr rumbling through his chest. Then they're both looking at him; one green eye, one blue, and two the same honey-gold as if they'd been permanently sunstruck.

"Do you know why I summoned you?" Lila asks, after a pause.

"No, ma'am," Chris answers. What he's really wondering is what they're going to tell his mother. How do you tell someone that both their children are dead?

"Because," says Lila. "You've shared a secret with us. I think it's time we share one with you."

"Ma'am?"

"Cassel," she says, and for one bizarre moment, Chris thinks she's talking to him, but she isn't. Her eyes have dropped. The black cat stretches his paws out in front of him, spine going liquid, and Chris only has time to think in the briefest of flashes, of the mouthprints on Lila's breast and transformation work and the stunning clarity that he knows those eyes, he's seen them at least three times before, before the cat springs from the armchair.

His shape twists midair and begins to transform before he even hits the ground.

-

fin

➲ NANOWRIMO: NOVEMBER 24

2011-11-26T12:24:21Z

I have no brain left with which to make intelligent comments. Oh, look at that, the sun's rising. I'm going to post this and sleep. I'll proofread it whenever I wake, please forgive all grammatical and spelling errors until then x___x

➲ NANOWRIMO: NOVEMBER 24
For elipie, RPF, Andrew Garfield/Emma Stone/Jesse Eisenberg, Thanksgiving.

This was going to be garden-variety fluff with a gooey core of caring and a lot of references to food and American colonization, and then hapakitsune made this post and elbowed me some, and I have a long and dignified history of giving into peer pressure, so. Apparently crossing over all the Bryan Fuller things is a thing that I do now. Or, rather, let's watch Elizabeth try to somehow fit dead people into everything she writes. Happy Thanksgiving?

Warnings for: ... it is still garden-variety fluffy with a gooey ending and a lot of warm, fuzzy, food-coma feelings. Just. More dead people.

Knowledge of Pushing Daisies is not necessary. Light format is, as always, helpful when reading.

a heart that's just stopped beating (and other odes to zombie sweethearts)
RPF/Pushing Daisies, Emma Stone/Andrew Garfield/Jesse Eisenberg, PG-13, 6700 words
[read @ AO3]

This story begins with a cat -- a black cat with three white paws and a patch of white underneath his chin like the cravat of a gentleman, who spends his time up on the awning of the pie shop in the strip mall right off of Harrison Boulevard, sitting in the neon curve of the "3" on the pie shop's sign, where he'll sometimes curl up to sleep in the afternoon sun. His tail flicks in acknowledgement every time the bells on the door jingle, and he keeps watch over the comings and goings of all the customers.

The cat's name is Heimdall, and if at any point he had nine lives, he doesn't really remember them -- he does, however, remember dying in a fairly permanent way, so he supposes he's on his tenth. He's twenty years old, and his only friend in the world is the piemaker, the owner and proprietor of the shop that Heimdall has made his home.

The piemaker is a nervous pigeon-toed thing named Jesse, coming in and out of the delivery entrance with his sleeves rolled up and his arms weighed down with crates that smell like rot. He has curly hair that makes Heimdall think of nesting birds, fingers like spider's legs, and a pathological fear of meaningful contact.

Heimdall owes a lot to Jesse, including nine (if not all ten) of his lives. So they have a foolproof system; Jesse lets Heimdall stand guard over the shop as a matter of course, and when the shop becomes just as famous for its cat as it does its pies, he even designs him into the shop logo on every take-away box. Heimdall, in turn, sleeps on the other pillow in Jesse's bed to keep him company and brings him dead birds as tokens of gratitude and an attempt to be helpful, because he knows how much Jesse likes dead things.

The birds all disappear promptly and without fuss, so Heimdall assumes Jesse really likes them.

Even though he's fairly certain he's killed the same bird more than once.

("Heimdall?" Andrew echoes, tilting his head back and just barely making out the watchful cat's-eye gleam through the glare coming from the buzzing neon sign; the bright green letters curling across the shop's facade to spell out "3.14". "As in, the gatekeeper?"

Jesse brightens, dropping his hands from where he was nervously picking flour out from under his nails and straightening up. "You know Norse mythology?" he asks, delighted.

"I ... um," Andrew scratches at the back of his neck sheepishly. "I saw the movie? You know, Thor?" he elaborates, at Jesse's blank look. "Big blockbuster, just came out -- never mind." He waves it off, and grabs the door to hold it open. "I believe I was promised a tour of your shop, piemaker."

And the piemaker smiles; a single, happy tug at the corners of his mouth, before he follows through with Andrew's gesture and walks inside, careful to keep an arm's length of distance between them.)

-

You see, this piemaker has a gift.

This gift goes beyond his extraordinarily ability to make pies that taste like the freshest fruit, or his ability to remember all starting and ending dates of every 19th century societal revolution.

This gift is that, with the single touch of his bare skin, he can bring a dead thing back to life.

He spent a very lonely, very exhausting adolescence testing the exact parameters of this gift, of what can and cannot be brought back and for how long; his parents are very nice people, but very worried about their son's fairly obvious crippling social phobias, and his sisters already think he's weird, and his friends don't care, mainly because Jesse doesn't have any.

It doesn't work on everything. Jesse can bring back people, he can bring back dead animals, he can revive wilting flowers and rotting fruit, but his gift stops at a certain point: the wooden chairs he touches don't suddenly remember how to root, microbial bacteria doesn't come screaming back to life after he scrubs his hands with hand sanitizer, and Jesse has never had the problem of explaining at family dinners why the whole roasted chicken is trying to escape his plate (although the fear that someday it will is enough to turn Jesse off meat fairly efficiently.)

There's another problem -- touch a dead thing once, and it comes back to life. Touch it again, and it goes back to being dead, and no amount of touching is going to reverse that a second time.

"Jesse, I can't believe that cat is still following you around," his parents bring up, every time they visit the shop. He slides two plates of cranberry pie across the counter for them, topped with mandarin oranges and a light honey glaze. "I don't think we've ever seen you touch it. Not even once."

"We've had a traumatic history together," says Jesse instantly. "In case you forgot. I was standing right there when Kerri crushed him flat with her trunk."

"Almost crushed him," his father says pointedly, gesturing with his fork. "The cat was fine and trying to scale the drapes when we came in, remember?"

Jesse's mouth twists, like he's enjoying a private joke. "Right," he says. "But it was still traumatic. Heimdall and I are very respectful of each other's boundaries, and we have a very healthy relationship otherwise."

"I can't believe he's still alive," his mother comments, pulling one of the pie shop's menus towards her and tapping the cat's whiskers motif on the logo with her finger. "He must be older than Hallie Kate."

"He is older than Hallie Kate," Jesse remarks. "And he always will be. That's a set variable, at no point is they suddenly going to stop being older and younger than each other, time progress in a linear fashion for both of them, unless one of them --"

"Jesse," says his father.

"Sorry," says Jesse, and disappears back into the kitchen, willing the timer on the oven to go off before they can make him more nervous with their questions about cats that were once dead and flat as a pancake until they weren't anymore.

-

The day before Thanksgiving is the single busiest day of the year for Three Point One Four.

It's a nice little place, if you're into the small, homey, locally-owned thing -- between the counter and a couple Parisien-style cafe tables tucked up by the store window, the shop itself can seat about fifteen costumers at the height of rush hour, so 90% of the business comes from pre-order, take-away, and delivery, because why come in for just one slice of pie when you can buy a whole one, take it home, shiftily unwrap it, and serve it to your family and friends on your finest china tea-plates just to soak up their admiration at your so-called home cooking?

Jesse's up at four Wednesday morning, tying on his apron and rolling up his sleeves. He listens to his oven tick as it preheats and the preemptive dawn chorus of the birds outside. Heimdall leaps up onto the top of the spice rack with a soft thud, making the industrial-sized tubs of nutmeg, cinnamon, and vanilla shiver.

"Showtime," Jesse says, and then -- because he knows Andrew would do it if he weren't still asleep, the lucky bastard -- marks his cheeks with flour like war paint.

He sells more pies on the day before Thanksgiving than he does in the entire month of November combined; apple pie and pecan pie, pumpkin pie and mixed-berry pie, simple pies and complex pies, pies with a gingerbread crust and shepherd pies with three kinds of cheese flaked and baked on top. The pies he sells for Thanksgiving even have their own packaging, complete with a vague-looking turkey on the front of the box, wearing glasses and standing in front of a chalkboard with the Three Point One Four logo on it. He prints out a ream of instruction sheets on how to store one's pie before Thanksgiving dinner and staples them to the inside of each lid.

The whole morning is a mess of people streaming in and out, the regulars and the holiday-goers, families with children and elderly old spinsters just looking for something sweet. Jesse juggles his files of pre-order sheets and online orders, pulls pies out of the freezer and steps smartly around Justin, the barista, who chatters away to a customer and then cheerily drowns out the customer's reply with the high wail of the espresso machine.

Emma comes in around eleven, the bell on the door clanging cheerily as she holds it open for a middle-aged woman in a Christmas sweater with a prep list as long as her forearm, who smiles at her in distracted thanks.

She hikes herself up onto a stool at the counter, purse thunking solidly in front of her.

Jesse, when he sees her sitting there, chin on her hand and her red hair coiling in dark ropes against the shoulders of her peacoat, stops dead in his tracks and goes, "Uh oh."

She straightens up, jaw dropping. "Hey!" she goes, offended. "What have I done?"

"Nothing," says Jesse on automatic. "Just, I see your face and I'm instantly overwhelmed with a deep foreboding and the sudden sense that I am, in fact, going to wind up stuffed in a trunk somewhere before dinnertime." That's only happened the once, on account of an angry Irishman with a habit of murdering waitresses and consistently smelled of aloe vera for his chronic sunburns, and Emma sprung him out again before he hyperventilated, but it's the principle of the thing.

"Ha, ha," says Emma, rolling her eyes so hard they're practically cartwheeling. "A slice of plain cherry, please."

"Are you going to pay for it this time?" He counts out change for a customer, apologizing for the traces of powdered sugar he leaves on the bills. "You have quite a tab going, you know."

That affronted look is back. "And here I was, thinking you gave me pie out of the goodness of your heart," she scoffs. "I'm your boss, I shouldn't need to pay for pie!"

Jesse cuts her a slice of cherry, careful not to touch the fruit that oozes across the plate, and sets it in front of her. The plate is still piping hot from the dishwasher. "First of all," he leans on his elbows and lowers his voice so that she leans in conspiratorially. "You're not my boss, you're my partner. This is a partnership of business as much as it is a friendship, which implies equal take and give. Second of all, you're the harbinger of death," he deadpans. "Like one of the four horsemen set to bring the apocalypse of my very normal, average lifestyle with the news of dead people. Why am I awarding that with pie?"

Emma leans in closer, and takes a large, deliberate, sensuous bite of her pie, lips closing over the tines of her fork, as red as the cherries that disappear between them.

"Ow!" yelps Justin, who, distracted by the display, had burned himself on the espresso machine.

Emma swallows and says, "I don't think I'll ever stop pitying you for being unable to eat your own pies. It's like God creating heaven and then locking himself out with the only set of keys."

"I'm a piemaker, not a deity," says Jesse with a smile. And then, "thank you. I guess."

"And we have a case," she adds nonchalantly.

Jesse groans.

-

Police detective Emma Stone met the piemaker and became the sole (living) keeper of his secret at the annual nationwide convention for zombie enthusiasts downtown. It was a highly-anticipated weekend affair, with a zombie walk on Saturday, morbidly themed treats, and an open-mic night dedicated to some truly touching love poetry to the undead, because who says you can't have a heart just because it isn't beating?

Emma was there on a stake-out for an entirely unrelated case, watching people in grey face paint squawk and shamble around and claw at each other's heads for fun, when she saw one Jesse Eisenberg in full apron chasing down a big, muscular blonde guy down a secluded alleyway behind the strip mall that housed Three Point One Four, sprinting fast enough to qualify for the US Olympic team; when he tagged him, the guy face-planted right into the concrete, dead as a doornail.

And stay that way! Jesse had shouted, vehement, and gave a full-body shudder of disgust, before turning around and meeting Emma's gaze dead-on through her car window.

Huh, said Emma, and took another bite of her mushed apple-and-brains ice cream.

Because people who can make other people drop dead with a single touch ("I didn't make him drop dead," Jesse protests, "he was already dead, I just made him ... re-drop dead, like he was supposed to be!") are very interesting people to the police, Emma looks into him. He has no prior arrests, no suspicious activity, no record of being anything but a reasonably good student who makes the occasional trip to see a therapist. Or two, but that's because they're both particularly fond of the dark chocolate and raspberry pie with the hazelnut crust, and Jesse didn't particularly want to break their pie-loving hearts, so he keeps going. He lives in the apartment building on the other side of the bike trail from his work, a distance so short he doesn't even need to bike most days.

Boring.

In fact, arguably the most interesting thing he ever did was: he dropped out of college, bought out an out-of-business stationary shop (you could still see where the sign was, underneath the new one that said "3.14", because math jokes just aren't tolerable unless they're somehow combined with food,) and started a business of making and selling of pies he couldn't touch once they were baked.

"It was kind of a spontaneous decision," Jesse tells her, hands in his pockets and his toes turned in, acutely uncomfortable. "Everyone's got to make one of those sometime. I just figured, people's lives could use just a little bit more sweetness."

"Mmhmm," says Emma. "Go back to the bit where you touched that guy and he skidded, like, ten feet on his face."

"Can't I bring Justin in here and make him take off his shirt? Would that make you forget about the -- the skidding?" Jesse offers weakly.

She pulls her badge out of her inside pocket and flips it open onto the counter in front of her.

Jesse sighs, shoulders slumping, and starts from the beginning, with the bit about Kerri flattening Heimdall on accident, and everything that transpired for the next twenty years of his life. Which is how Emma Stone finds herself with a partner. She splits her paycheck, he splits his pie and lends her his touch.

After all, it's a lot easier to solve a homicide when you can wake the victim up and ask them who killed them.

-

Outside, a cold autumnal rain has started up, heavy enough to drop the leaves from the trees, and so when Andrew Garfield walks into Three Point One Four, he stops to shake the rain off of his collar before he hops up onto the bar stool next to Emma.

"Don't you work today?" he asks her perplexedly, and then steals her pie to take a bite.

"Case," she replies. "Once Jesse stops pretending that I'm not here and will actually come over here and listen to me," she lifts her voice very pointedly, and then steals her plate back. Andrew grins at her around his mouthful of stolen pastry, the creases between his teeth stained with cherry, like his gums are bleeding.

"I am working no other business today," Jesse calls back, voice lilting up like a child who's five seconds away from tattling on other children. "Today is a pie business. Today is the busiest day for pie business, I have no other business for other business besides pie business. Hi, Andrew, pie?"

"Yes, please," Andrew says cheerily. "What are our plans for Thanksgiving?"

Jesse appears in the kitchen doorway, a box of frozen pie in his hands; rhubarb, with crystallized chunks of candied ginger sprinkled on top. "What do you mean?"

"Thanksgiving," Andrew elaborates. "The ... third Thursday in November typically celebrated by consuming large amounts of turkey, then consuming large amounts of pie, then napping during an American football game, waking up, and repeating the whole process from step one?"

Emma shifts back onto her stool in order to side-eye him. "Please tell me a vegetable is included in there somewhere."

"I don't know what you do with your Thanksgivings," says Jesse, eyebrows hiked up. "But I spend it recovering. Preferably deeply asleep, or curled up with my favorite book and nothing more pressing than the occasional call from my bladder. Do you think I want to make any more food after today? Here's your change," he adds to the rhubarb-costumer, handing it over with the receipt. "Have a good day, and thanks for shopping at Three Point One Four!"

"Yeah, but that was before, when you were alone," Andrew points out, perfectly reasonably. His fingers creep towards Emma's plate again, and get viciously slapped with the flat of her fork for their trouble. A slice of triple-berry lands in front of him, and he beams up at Jesse, who promptly goes as pink as the strawberries peeking out from underneath the latticework pie crust. "This is the first American Thanksgiving I've had since I was a child," he adds to Emma.

"You," Emma points her fork at Jesse. "Are being horribly stingy with the holiday cheer."

"I don't want to cook!" Jesse spreads his hands defensively.

"Emma and I can cook!" Andrew supplies.

"I'm sure Emma has other plans for Thanksgiving, don't you, Emma?"

Emma looks unrepentant. "Actually, my parents are in Trinidad, where I sent them on a cruise using our first bonus check for solving Corpse Bride's murder here," she gestures at Andrew with the fork. "I could use the company."

Jesse opens his mouth to say something highly intelligent and possibly scathing, he doesn't really know, and finds the words stoppering up in his throat. "But it takes at least five days to defrost a whole frozen turkey, and we have less than twenty-four hours," is what actually comes out, somewhat petulantly.

Andrew spins around on his stool, arms thrown up like he's announcing a touchdown. "I officially claim the right to carve the turkey!" he goes excitedly.

"Traditionally," says Emma. "The turkey-carving is done by the man of the family, which in this context --" she looks at Jesse, blinks, and then corrects, "-- oh, who am I kidding, it's totally me."

Jesse rolls his eyes, and whisks her plate away even though there's still some crust clinging to the rim, which is about as passive-aggressive as he's capable of getting. Andrew pauses in his daydreaming about gravy long enough to prop his chin up on his hands and give Jesse his best, dewy-eyed smile.

"I would totally give you a hug right now if it didn't mean I'd fall right over like a corpsicle," he says, which makes Jesse look down at the toes of his sneakers, bottom lip dragged between his teeth.

Emma perks up noticeably. "Just a suggestion," she says, purposefully mild. "But I have two hands and two arms that are not averse to the groping of amiable piemakers."

"Deal!" returns Andrew. "Detective Stone, would you be so kind as to give a by-proxy hug to my roommate?"

"Screw by-proxy, I'm copping a feel in the name of holiday cheer," Emma swings off her stool and rounds the counter, flinging her arms around Jesse before Jesse can properly brace himself. His arms cross over her back, face disappearing momentarily into the crook of her neck, and he returns the pressure, until she blinks and pulls back with a peculiar look on her face and starts, "Is that --"

"It is," Jesse says quickly, and pulls the culprit out of the front of his apron. "It's a rolling pin. Sorry," he adds, sheepish.

-

Jesse Eisenberg, the piemaker and the dead-waker, has very specific rules for himself regarding who he brings back and for how long.

Touch a dead thing, and it comes back to life. Touch it again, it goes back to being dead. Touch it back to life and keep it alive for longer than a minute, and something else dies in its place. A long adolescence spent experimenting with the high school lab rats has taught Jesse that the exchange rate is fairly equal; human for human, small mammal for small mammal (and in his defense, the neighbor's pomeranian had been extremely old, and sudden death hadn't changed his disposition much, so Jesse's guilt over keeping Heimdall alive only comes back to haunt him during particularly depressing bank holidays,) plant for plant.

Jesse's on good terms with the local grocers, whom he meets every morning when they're tossing out their rotting, moldy fruit for new shipments. They all think he's a bit off and was maybe dropped on his head as a child, but that's okay. The cost of bringing rotting fruit back to life is a really, really, really dead lawn, which Justin chalks up to the hazards of industrial run-off, and Jesse thinks is an acceptable price to pay for his business.

Then Emma Stone comes along and Jesse Eisenberg suddenly found himself with an unexpectedly exciting life, which he definitely did not sign up for. Piemakers do not lead exciting lives.

To Emma, taking him to the morgue was practically her idea of a date.

"This is my new assistant," she tells the morgue guy, and Jesse gives a twitchy, awkward wave of greeting. "He assists me ... by doing assisting things with the things I need assistance with."

"... mmhmmm," says Fincher, the morgue guy, and he continues to eyeball them as Emma pushes Jesse through the door into cold storage.

"Are you sure he's not dead?" Jesse asks in an anxious whisper, and she pulls a face.

"I've never really asked," she goes. "But I don't think it's appropriate if you and him do any kind of touching, so please don't voodoo him and instead voodoo this girl, so we can figure out who killed her." She finds the appropriate locker, running her fingertip along the name card before she grips the handle. She spares a thoughtful look over her shoulder. "Can you voodoo somebody back to life if they've been hacked apart with a weedwhacker?"

Jesse stares at her for a long, incredulous beat, before reeling his head back on his neck, like she's just asked him something mind-blowing, like is maybe God a cat? "I've never tried," he confesses, and starts rolling up his sleeves.

But as a general rule, Jesse sticks to protocol and his own very black-and-white rules regarding the delicate balance of life and death, which the cop in Emma appreciates deeply.

So when she comes up to Jesse's apartment some six months into their new arrangement and it's Andrew Garfield who answers at her knock, his cheeks flushed rosy red and his scrawny chest covered in one of Jesse's most comfortable shirts as well as the jeans Emma may or may not routinely imagine hooking her fingers into when the piemaker wears them, she does a double-take at the sight of him and then another one for good measure. Last time she laid eyes on him, he was face-down at a crime scene, his gut sliced open and his blood trickling like sprinkler run-off into the gutter.

"It's not what it looks like!" Jesse says immediately, and uses a broom handle to maneuver Andrew out of the way so that Emma could step inside. He bolts the door behind her.

Emma stares at Andrew, and Andrew stares at Emma. Jesse stares at them both, back flat to the door. Heimdall watches them all from the top of the bookshelf, vaguely amused by the whole thing.

"Okay," Jesse confesses. "It's exactly what it looks like."

"What happened to your intestines?" is what Emma really wants to know, and she makes a grab for the hem of Andrew's shirt. "Because last I saw, they were spread from here to -- woah," she goes, and batting away Andrew's attempts to pull his shirt back down, she touches the big, broad black stitches that've sewed him shut. Unlike the fruit, when Jesse brings dead people back, they don't become lusciously ripe with life.

"It was either that or industrial-sized staples," mutters Jesse. "Or some kind of body-wrap. We couldn't just have them hanging out wherever he went; they're intestines, not pets to walk around on a leash. Someone might ask questions."

The job kind of looks like it was done by a five-year-old with his grandmother's crochet hooks. "Jesse kind of had to instruct me from a distance," Andrew explains, correctly interpreting her expression.

She blinks up at him, jaw gone slightly askew. "Oh my god, you have a British accent."

"That's actually a fallacious statement," Jesse points out helpfully. "As 'British' is a term used to refer to the people, not necessarily their qualities, so there's no such thing as a 'British' accent. You can say he has an English accent, or a Welsh accent, or an Irish accent, or --"

"Can you say my name?" Emma interrupts, still looking up at Andrew's face.

His eyes flicker over the top of her head to exchange a look with Jesse before they return to hers. "Um," he manages. "It's Emma, isn't it?"

She smiles. "Oooh, that's lovely. Do you think you could read me the phone book sometime?"

"Um," he says again. "I --"

"Maybe without your shirt?" she offers. "Or your pants? Or anything, really. Clothing is completely optional. In fact, clothing is discouraged. Clothing is very discouraged, and you can speak to me any time you --"

"Emma!" Jesse squawks, like her very vocal libido is an embarrassment to him, and somehow that snaps her right back into a frame of mind that does not include ogling the piemaker's latest zombie creation.

She takes one giant step backwards, and snatches Jesse's arm, dragging him in to hiss between her teeth, "You did not just voodoo somebody back to life and let some other person die for it!" He bites his lip guiltily, and she feels her eyes flare wide. "Jesse! I'm a cop, I can't just go ignoring this kind of behavior. Corpse Bride here is supposed to be in the morgue, and somebody else is supposed to be very alive right now and isn't! What's gotten into you?"

"Will it make you feel better if I promise you that I'll never do it again, but --"

"But what?"

"But I kind of haven't seen him since I was eleven and when I was eleven he was the love of my life in that very singular all-encompassing way you love people when you're eleven," Jesse blurts out all in a rush.

Emma blinks, and blinks again, and looks at Andrew, who's looking wide-eyed at Jesse, who's looking wide-eyed at Emma, and --

"Oh," says Emma.

-

You see, that story begins like this:

When Jesse Eisenberg was a child, he lived in a big, butterscotch-yellow house with his parents, his sisters, and a cat named Heimdall who he couldn't touch unless he wanted Heimdall to go back to being a flattened pancake of a cat. While not necessarily a bad childhood, it was a lonely one for a number of reasons, but Jesse didn't really acknowledge that fact until several years down the line, when he was flat on his back on a very comfortable couch while his therapist enjoyed her dark chocolate and raspberry pie with the hazelnut crust.

Because, you see, Jesse had a boy who lived next door, the same way everybody has a boy who lives next door or across the street or down the block, whose life just seems to be that little bit easier than their own. To Jesse, that boy's name was Andrew Garfield, and to Andrew Garfield, he attached all his inadequacies, his fears, and his burgeoning social phobias, trusting that Andrew could vanquish them in the full light of day.

They were over at each other's houses all the time, the fence gate creaking with their constant back-and-forth; children sneaking each other treats to ruin their dinners with, leaving their phonetics homework and Hebrew worksheets undone on their respective kitchen tables.

Their favorite thing to do together was reenact Disney movies, first with the help of Andrew's impressive VHS collection and then from memory alone, whole swaths of dialogue memorized and regurgitated; Jesse was often relegated to the role of princess, while Andrew galavanted around with a sword made out of a long stick, fighting monsters made out of plush animals and slaying wicked witches that came in the form of Kerri's life-sized Barbie doll, which Kerri routinely dismembered in the name of empowerment, so it wasn't a difficult leap of the imagination. He did all this swashbuckling to earn a kiss from Jesse at the end; the names and plots varied, but the ending never did, Jesse wearing a nightie stolen from Mrs. Garfield's closet and Andrew with armor made out of Dixie paper plates, kissing with tingly, closed-mouth children's kisses in somebody's backyard.

Jesse never minded being the princess. There wasn't anything bad about princesses, he figured, since he thought that movies probably caught them at a very bad point in their lives, during which they were temporarily rendered helpless, and were generally extremely competent the rest of the time. They were princesses.

Besides, he was used to playing princesses: whenever he played with Kerri, she would insist on being the hero and dressing him up in her clothes so that she could come and rescue him. But then Hallie Kate came along, and it turns out that babies are very, very good at lying there and needing to be rescued, so Jesse had to learn how to stop taking such a passive role in his own life.

And then, when they were eleven years old, Andrew's dad died in an unfortunate industrial accident, when the machine his factory used to create the water-absorbant bumps in their signature brand of paper towels crushed him like Quilted Northern.

After the funeral, Jesse and Andrew sat side-by-side in the cemetery, perched on top of a stranger's gravestone. Heels drumming, they watched the sun set over the distant mote of the city, not saying much of anything.

Next to him, Andrew shook like a leaf, trying and failing to hide his fear at the change rushing up on him very fast -- they overheard his mother telling Jesse's that they're going to return to the United Kingdom as soon as Mr. Garfield's things were taken care of (later, his therapist would tell him that under no circumstances should anyone make a major life decision like moving to another continent shortly after the death of a loved one. It was physiologically unsound.) All throughout the funeral, Jesse had thought long and hard about trying to get Andrew a minute alone with his father, so they could say their good-byes, but there were so many things that could go wrong with that that Jesse probably couldn't count them all, not even if he used all his fingers and toes, and Andrew's too.

It left him with the restless urge to do something, though, even if that something couldn't include his fledgling necromantic powers, so Jesse reached out to take his hand and leaned in to kiss his cheek.

Andrew turned inquisitively at the last second, so that their mouths met. It became a kiss when they both pressed closer together, bumbling and trembling with the want of it; chaste, reassuring, like they were just children playing in the garden still.

After that, Jesse never saw Andrew alive again.

Sixteen years later, when he sets foot on American soil for the first time since he left, Andrew throws himself in front of Lily Cole to protect her from a rogue stalker with a very sharp butcher's knife, and winds up with his guts spread half-way down the sidewalk. Very, very deliberately, Jesse makes sure that stalker-turned-killer is in suspiciously close proximity when he strokes his fingertip across Andrew's cheekbone, and just conveniently forgets that one-minute rule.

He gets his childhood knight in Dixie-plated armor back, but.

If at any point Jesse's bare skin comes in contact with Andrew's, then he goes back to being dead, and no amount of kissing will ever wake him up.

-

You don't really realize just how much two people can possibly touch each other until suddenly you're no longer allowed to.

Even Jesse, with his pathological fear of meaningful contact and a twenty-year practice run with Heimdall, isn't immune to the itch of wanting to drum his fingers against Andrew's shoulder blade while they're in line, or wanting to brush his hair up off his forehead for no good reason, or wanting to overlap each other's sandy toes at the beach. But Andrew, who's never been asked to check an affectionate impulse in his life -- it's debilitating, it's crippling, to give him his childhood sweetheart and tell him, "Don't touch."

It takes him approximately two weeks to come up with a gateway drug; early morning, while Jesse is picking at a blueberry stain on his apron, frowning, Andrew pulls the sheet of clear, plastic saran wrap off of the freshly-made pie and pastes it over Jesse's face, so that he can lean in for a kiss.

Jesse's hands twitch like they're going to go for Andrew's hips, but they remember themselves at the last second and hook behind his back, his fingers coiling around his own thin wrists as he cants the rest of his body forward. He tastes Redi-Whip and brown sugar, but he can feel the heat of Andrew's grown-up lips and his tongue, and whimpers nonetheless.

"Saran wrap, really?" says Emma curiously, when they explain it to her, because Emma's a detective and has no boundaries, and no problem telling them just how much she enjoys picturing them naked.

"Like a condom," Andrew elaborates, ever-helpful. "For our mouths."

Emma tilts her head at Jesse, her brightly-painted lips puckered coyly, but Jesse can feel his cheeks flame with her prurient interest, and he pointedly looks anywhere but them.

When he pictures the rest of his life, it goes a little something like this: he bakes pies and wakes the dead, he owns a cozy little pie shop called Three Point One Four, which has a cat mascot named Heimdall and a barista named Justin who is the closest thing Jesse has to a best friend despite his tendency to embark on spontaneous journeys across the United States to look for national treasure. He runs a side business with a police detective named Emma, and he and his zombified childhood sweetheart spend a lot of time skiing, or scuba-diving, or ice fishing; something where their intimacy comes at the cost of a hazmat suit or, at least, many many layers.

It's okay, that life; he made an impulsive decision when he brought Andrew back from the dead, and he's never going to regret it.

Live a little, you know?

-

Emma stands between them in the morgue, the way she always does ("this is my ... other ... assistant," she explains to Fincher, who looks at them all steadily and goes, "mmhmm") because sometimes she's their by-proxy hand-holder and hugger, only today she's talking about which dish absolutely must go on the table last.

"The biscuits," she insists. "They only take ten minutes to cook; you don't even need to turn the turkey off once it's done, you can just slide the biscuits in and cook 'em while you're carving the turkey, and who doesn't like piping hot biscuits."

"The gravy, though," Andrew protests. "Gravy congeals if you turn your back for five seconds, everyone knows that. Besides, there's more showmanship in pouring gravy last. Come on."

"Jesse," says Emma, with a nod to diplomacy. "What do you think?"

"What I think doesn't matter, because while you're deciding on all your presentation, I'm going to be blissfully watching the insides of my eyelids. Now, can we?" he gestures to the freezer door.

"Oh, right," goes Emma, like she's forgotten why they're there. "Deep breath, gentlemen, because this one is going to reek," is all the warning she gives them before she grabs the handle and yanks. The body of their latest slides into view, bits of charred flesh flaking off the bones and scattering across the slab.

Andrew goes green around the gills and takes a smart step backwards, but Jesse, who has the higher threshold for gore for understandable reasons, leans over curiously. One arm has been left completely unburnt right above the elbow; a clear line of delineation marks the blackened bits from the rest. "What happened here?" he wants to know.

"They found him in a tanning bed," says Emma, matter-of-fact. "The cops on the scene told me that it looked like an accident; fell asleep, and by the time they found him, he was already --" she waves a hand.

"Extra orange and crispy?" Andrew offers dryly.

"Right," she says. "But I want to ask him if it's murder. What kind of person falls asleep in a tanning bed with their limbs all akimbo?"

"Looks like something I did to a rat when I was thirteen," Jesse comments absently, still studying the corpse. When they both turn to stare at him, he looks up after a beat, and widens his eyes. "What!" he goes. "You didn't know me at thirteen!"

"I really wish I had," Andrew replies, voice dropping like he's suddenly gone shy.

"Hey, Jesse," Emma snaps her fingers in front of his face, and with her other hand, claps a precautionary hand over Andrew's mouth, because his similar experiences with being resurrected from the dead makes him really wordy, and he has a tendency to waste their minute-long window asking about last regrets and thoughts. "Zap the guy! We've got Thanksgiving dinner to shop for, so we better hope he's just a lazy tanner, and that there's no tanning bed killer out on the loose, because murderers make for sucky holidays."

-

Much, much, much later, when they're standing in the middle of the bike trail, surrounded by a lot of dead grass and looking at the big, gaping hole where the lobby of Jesse's apartment building used to be before the tanning bed killer blew a giant hole in it, rendering Andrew and Jesse temporarily homeless due to unsafe conditions, Emma says succinctly, "Well shit."

Andrew looks up at the smoking building, his brows pulled down to meet in the middle of his forehead, thoughtful. "I wouldn't say that. We can still have Thanksgiving. Jesse," he turns to the shell-shocked piemaker, who blinks up at him in a vague way. "Don't you have some turkey shepherd pie still in the freezer?"

Jesse sees where he's going with that immediately. "Spinach pie, too," he says. "For a vegetable."

"And we know you have about seventeen thousand kinds of desert pie," finishes Emma, her eyes widening with the prospect.

Andrew voices what they're all thinking. "An entire Thanksgiving meal, made out of pie, and waiting for us at Three Point One Four, ready to go!"

Jesse stares at him for a very, very long moment, before he says in a throaty voice, "Emma?"

"Yes, Jesse?" Emma says with a grin. She still smells like the accelerant the tanning bed killer poured all over her with the full intention of blowing her up in the apartment building.

"I really need you to kiss Andrew for me right now."

Emma punches the air in victory, letting loose some kind of undignified squeal and maybe even dancing on the spot, but whatever. "I thought you'd never ask!" she goes, giddily, and flings her arms around Andrew's neck in order to plant one on him. Andrew steadies them, arms going around Emma's waist, and he angles his head to kiss her back and kiss her deeper. The piemaker watches them without shame, his belly aching with the promise of good food and his heart full with the simple happiness of having someone to share it with.

-
fin

➲ NANOWRIMO: NOVEMBER 20 (bonus)

2011-11-24T10:04:16Z

I was going to just tack this onto the end of that last entry, but then LJ was like LOL NOPE BITCH ENTRY TOO LARGE and I made a couple angry faces that completely failed to change its mind.

So.

Simultaneous with her polite request for Mark/Marilyn, rosepetalfall asked for a companion snippet to Place That Don't Know My Name and Place Between Here and the Destination (which, for those of you who don't know, are my The Social Network/Doctor Who crossover fics,) and I happened to have this on my hard drive, so I figured I would post it as an apology for taking so long with Five People Marilyn Delpy Never Expected to See at Her Wedding.

I originally wrote this timestamp for moogle62 on the road -- I sent it to her in bits and pieces, written on the backs of postcards from various locations in the American west :D So it's a little choppy.

Will make absolutely no sense unless you've read the above fics, and even then, it might not! \o/ Yay time travel!

You can has light format!

again/and begin
The Social Network/Doctor Who, the Doctor, Mark, G, >1000 words

The Doctor is the kind of person who believes everybody deserves someone they can kiss the same way a professional diver breathes and falls, so in the end, it's the photo frame that stops him, makes him double-take away from the mechanized desktop setup.

With a flick of his thumb, he silences the sonic screwdriver, leaning down over the desk.

There are three photographs, stacked into a black frame; old-fashioned, unmoving, the Earth kind. The one on top is a professional family portrait; a goofily-smiling red-headed father, mother in a sunflower-colored headscarf, and teenage daughter sitting between them, looking bored and tolerant in turns.

The next is a candid shot of two men he also doesn't recognize; they're sitting at a board table, twisted around in their chairs so their knees are intimately pushed together, and the one on the right has a biscuit sticking out of his mouth -- he's wearing a nametag, but all the Doctor can distinguish is the "Dr." and the "M" that starts his first name.

The one on the bottom, the one that stopped him headlong, is of Amy and Rory.

His Amy and Rory.

It's his stalwart, fabulous, fantastical Ponds, here in an office on a planet that's three galaxies and a hundred-thousand years away from where he said good-bye to them on a border moon, just yesterday. Amy glows, all delight, and Rory's got his Roman face on. The second man from the photo above is in this one, too, with one arm each thrown around the both of them, beaming so wide he looks like he's nothing but teeth and turned-up eyes.

It's a good look on him, and familiar, too, in a time-traveling way, like maybe the Doctor saved the world with someone with that face, but what interests him more are children clustered around them: a boy who can only be Amy's, and younger twin girls who look like they're going to inherit Rory's (unfortunate) nose. One sister is scowling, like maybe she'd just been shoved by the other.

"Can't get rid of you, Ponds," he murmurs, amazed, and thinks about jiggering the frame open and stealing the photo.

There's a noise from the door, footsteps (flapping sandals, so not military, which hopefully means no guns,) and then a voice says, "Oh, good, you're here."

The Doctor wheels around, clapping his hands together and pantomiming innocence. Biscuit-man stands there, more diminutive in the flesh. He's older than his picture; there's still color in his crinkled hair, but it's well receded.

He doesn't seem surprised in the least to see the Doctor trespassing, which makes him nervous. "Are you --" he starts, but is cut off.

"I've been recently commissioned by the Lux to build a library for their daughter," his voice is sharp, his thin eyes unreadable. "So, yes, Doctor, I'm responsible for the hard drive that will preserve River after death. You don't need to meddle, I know what I'm doing." Something of a smile plays around his mouth at that.

"Sorry," goes the Doctor. "I think we've been introduced in the wrong order. You are --?"

"Doctor Mark Zuckerberg, professor of cybersocial sciences. And I hear you've recently come up with a vacancy for a new companion."

-
fin

➲ NANOWRIMO: NOVEMBER 20

2011-11-24T09:10:56Z

I totally meant to post this sooner. I even napped on Tuesday, and made a whole bunch of coffee with the intent of sitting down and writing this all at once. And then, after my third cup of coffee, promptly fell asleep.

Yup. I'm pretty proud of myself, too.

➲ NANOWRIMO: NOVEMBER 20
For rosepetalfall, The Social Network, Mark/Marilyn, basically she said "FINISH THAT DAMN FIVE THINGS FIC YOU PROMISED ME ALREADY," only, you know, about a bajillion times nicer than that.

Warnings for: HET OH GOD NO RUN. Um, contains fictionalized appearances of real people who may or may not have passed away since I started this and I couldn't find a way to edit them out ;____;

The original draft of this was written on a long airplane flight next to a very nosy accountant from New Mexico, and the identity of Marilyn's husband-to-be was supposed to be a ~mystery~, but whatever, I think I've kind of given that one away since then.

100% unproofread. Reading this in the light format will be v. v. helpful.

five people marilyn delpy never expected to see at her wedding
The Social Network, Mark/Marilyn, ensemble, PG-13, 8500 words
[read @ AO3]

1|Christy Lee

When Marilyn is sixteen, young and not really used to thinking about other people yet and determined to become a soccer superstar and maybe do perfume commercials with David Beckham, her mother calls her into her bedroom one dark, overcast afternoon and croakily asks her if she minds getting her old wedding gown out of the closet.

Distracted by the abstract future she's been conjuring for herself, vague dreamy images of screaming crowds in the stands and herself in a number 11 jersey, it takes Marilyn three tries to find the right musty-smelling box, tucked back behind shoeboxes full of old nylons and bags with Christmas gifts she isn't supposed to know about. Her mother had gotten married at the height of the 70s, and the dress matches the time -- Marilyn fetches it out, wrinkling her nose at the sight of puffed sleeves that are probably bigger than her head.

"I always wanted ..." her mother starts in a tremulous whisper, when she drags it over to the bed. "Do you want to try it on?"

Marilyn eyes the sleeves dubiously, but she's her mother's eldest daughter, and not used to telling her no. "Do you think I'll fit?" she asks. "I don't have your hips."

"You'll fit," her mother answers, her voice almost confident.

So Marilyn lays the dress out on the foot of the bed and shucks out of her shirt. Keeping her shorts on, she shimmies into the heavily-embroidered polyester, pulling uncomfortably on the skirt as it scratches at her bare legs. The fabric doesn't fall quite right past her hips -- it's been designed for several tulle pettiskirts to fit underneath, which they don't have. Making a face, she trails her fingers up the bodice; the brilliant menagerie of thread that stretches from the waistline to the sweatheart curve of the neckline has only faded a little bit with time. Her mother did the embroidery by hand; she said it was her way of adding a flair of her own culture to the bizarre white-dress western wedding, and Marilyn's heard the story often enough but has never actually asked to see the gown itself. She feels like she's wearing artwork.

Finally, she drops her hands and lifts her gaze. Her mother just looks at her, her eyes as big as beetles in her tiny skull and glittering bright in the bedside gloom.

She murmurs, "You look exactly like me," and then she starts crying; a defeated tremble going through her shoulders.

Forgetting the laughable enormity of her sleeves, Marilyn clambers up onto the bed, dislodging the nest of blankets in order to wrap her arms around her mother, who shudders into her, the bony ridge of her back going hunched and bird-like.

"W-would you maybe think about wearing it at your w-wedding?" her mother manages, her voice coming out timid, like she thinks she's asking for too much: Marilyn had certainly made no attempt to hide what she thought of those sleeves. She pulls back some, lifting her fingers and running it along the embroidery, right above Marilyn's breast; three canary-yellow birds, stretched out in mid-flight. "I was ... I was so happy when I made this," she whispers, watery. "I would love for some of my happiness to go with you into your own marriage. Would ... would that be okay?"

Marilyn is sixteen, and her thoughts about marriage are nebulous, far-off, like the knowledge that the earth is round and the atom is very, very tiny: she knows about it, but she can't quite wrap her head around the meaning of it.

So it's not a hard promise to make. She nods, says "I can definitely do that," and hugs her mother again.

When Marilyn is twenty-eight, she goes into the back of her closet and pulls down an old, yellowed box from the top shelf. Rings of water damage mark the bottom, but it still smells the same, like someone packaged up the 70s and delivered it in a polyester bundle. She pulls the dress out.

The sleeves are just as atrocious as she remembers, but she ignores those; the thread on the bodice has become a little frayed in places, but the scene is still easy identifiable, cut in broad stretches. Three yellow birds escaping a dark forest -- one bird for her mother, her godmother, and her uncle. Smiling, she goes into the bathroom and slips the gown on over her head, letting the artwork settle against her skin.

Then she tries to zip herself up.

And it won't go.

A dozen years have passed since she made that promise to her mother, and this is something she hadn't envisioned, not even once: that the dress would no longer fit.

She tries, and tries, and tries, until the fabric creaks ominously and her arms shake with the effort of reaching behind her, and she lets it go, all the air going out of her at once. Leaving the zip to gape open like it's her skin that's been flayed apart, she sits on the edge of the tub and pinches the bridge of her nose, hard. It doesn't stop the frustrated tears from leaking down her cheeks, but the pinching is a habit she picked up from her fiance that she hasn't been able to shake.

He's on her mind now, so she grabs her phone and calls him, wanting the comfort. His voice immediately goes alert and protective when it becomes obvious that she's in tears.

"There's no way to fix it?" he asks, after she explains. "Let it out? It can't be that hard, you're not fat. You just stopped being your mother."

She laughs at that in a shaky exhale. "The embroidery," she goes, mournful, and he sucks in a breath, suddenly understanding.

"Oh," he goes.

"Yeah," she says, and they let the silence settle after that.

"Is there anything I can do?" he asks finally, with a bite of frustration in his voice. She purses her lips, even though she knows it's not aimed at her; it's the frustration of anyone who's ever had to listen to a girl cry and be unable to do anything to help, especially if the solution was going to be more complicated than clubbing someone else over the head and grunting pointedly.

"No, but thank you," she manages.

She shimmies out of the dress. Discarding the box, she hangs it up on the bathroom door, running her fingers down the heavy folds of the skirt, which smell as musty as moths. Her chances of finding anything like this in a bridal shop is nonexistent, because this blend of East and West is unique to her mother (and unique to that very, very short period of time when those sleeves were considered fashionable and not just a potential way to smuggle alien offspring into the country.)

Reluctantly, she adds, shop for a wedding dress, to her planner, which proceeds to tell her, quite helpfully, that's there's a bridal salon right off the Oregon Expressway, but if she wants the traditional gold or red, there's a specialty store in Atherton she could check out. Marilyn, who doesn't feel white enough to check out the bridal salon but not Thai enough to merit a trip to the speciality store, closes out of both.

Then, with a flick of her thumb, she calls Christy.

Christy picks up on the third ring. "Darling!" she goes, exaggerated and syrupy. She shouts to be heard over loud background noise; she must be near a construction set. "Have you called to tell me you've seen the error of your ways and you're going to beg me to be your maid of honor?"

"No," says Marilyn.

"Boo, you whore," says Christy cheerfully. "What can I do for you?"

"You could tell me you're going to come to my wedding, for one."

"Pfft. Why would I want to if I'm not going to be the maid of honor?" Marilyn opens her mouth to explain this, rationally (for the third time,) but Christy talks over her. "Yeah, yeah, you keep telling me your sister has priority and you've planned it this way since you were little girls, whatever, I'm not actually mad. You know I can't come. I can't leave the state."

"The wedding is being held in-state, Christy," says Marilyn patiently. "Right here in town."

"I know that," Christy replies. "I just ... I just don't want to risk it, you know? Like, wouldn't it suck if the SFPD busted down the doors in the middle of your ceremony just because I accidentally set foot outside county lines or whatever."

"I don't know, it might be entertaining. Come on, Christina, how many other convicted felons get to say the bride begged them to attend their high-profile wedding?"

"Flattery will get you nowhere," Christy says, lofty. Then something bangs, loudly, on the other end, and she muffles the mouthpiece in order to yell obscenities in somebody's general direction. Whoever it is yells back, and then a chainsaw starts up, drowning them both out.

Marilyn met Christy during one of her earliest legal cases; ironically, also the same case where she met her fiance. Tracking her down hadn't been easy, but they badly needed her character testimony -- it would look suspicious if they left such a key component of the case out -- and Sy told her that she, Marilyn, would probably have a better chance of talking to her. She eventually found her in a low-security prison in San Francisco, doing two years for arson of company property.

Christy's initial flat refusal to testify turned into an actual conversation, which turned into them finding out that they are both second-generation immigrants and the daughters of manicurists, and that they both really, really hate the mayor of San Francisco for his deliberately blase dismissal of the Asian-American concentration camps that had been set up in California during WWII, which had absolutely nothing to do with Marilyn's case, but it didn't matter, because nothing brings two people together faster than a mutual dislike of a third person.

"For the best, I suppose," Sy had told her, when she came back saying Christina Lee refused to give her deposition. "If she's the best we got when it comes to character defamation, the plaintiff's going to tear us to shreds," which made Marilyn frown, because Christy was a Harvard graduate (which couldn't be said for their damn client,) and a very cuttingly intelligent woman, and none of that was invalidated simply because she was wearing orange in a San Francisco jail.

Likability, though.

Marilyn promised to call again, and she had, and here they are.

"Sorry," says Christy abruptly, voice crackling loud in her ear. "We never get around to talking about why you called."

"It can wait," Marilyn offers. "If you're busy --"

"It's nothing, just people who probably never passed Calc III trying to pretend they know a thing about set design and construction. Honestly, calculus isn't even the hard shit, but I digress. You're far more important than the idiots they let bumble around my job."

Interestingly enough, it's Christy's track record with pyrotechnics that got her the job she has. The conditions of her parole means she can't leave the state of California, but she still gets to use her Harvard degree in mathematics to build impressive shit for Mythbusters -- shit that she then gleefully gets to make explode. Marilyn's seen almost every episode she's been in, and if maybe they try too hard to play up the Harvard, the math degree, and Christy's Asianness for laughs, the delight on her face when she gets to set something on fire more than makes up for it.

So she explains about her mother and the wedding dress, and the embroidery problem.

To her surprise, Christy snorts, dismissive. "Oh, please, that's nothing. Leave it to me -- I got aunties who can fix that for you in the time it takes to hard-boil an egg."

"... actual aunties?" Marilyn asks, skeptical.

"Well, girls that my mother went to school with. And my manicurists. So, yeah, basically my extended family."

"I don't --"

"Marilyn. Pack up your sad face and your mother's dress and come up to the city. I can't come to your wedding, so the least I can do is make sure you keep your promise to your mom. I got this."

-

The morning of Marilyn's wedding dawns cuttingly cold, because weather in the Bay Area includes fog nine months out of the year and wildfire warnings the other three, and she sticks her foot out from under her blankets to test the temperature, shivers and decides no, drawing her comforter up to tuck it under her chin. She doesn't need to be up for another forty-five minutes, she tells herself, and then abruptly becomes aware that her godmother is leaning over her.

"Ah!" she yelps, jolting back. And, "who let you in?"

"Abby," her godmother replies, sounding amused. "She's already up and getting ready."

"Of course she is," mutters Marilyn, and throws the covers off. She did a two-year fast track program Foothill College to get her degree and graduated from law school in the 98th percentile just a few years after that, and her little sister still makes her look like an underachiever.

"Ayii," her godmother hisses out between her teeth, bending down in order to cup Marilyn's face between her palms. Marilyn's mother used to make the exact same exasperated noise. "You look more and more like your father every time I see you. What even are these?" she scrubs at Marilyn's freckles with her thumbs.

"They're permanent," says Marilyn dryly.

Her godmother snorts, peering at her closely. "Are you sure it's not too late to anything about that nose? It's so ..." she makes a broad, faintly insulting gesture that she always uses when she means white.

Affection bubbles up in Marilyn's rib cage. "It's good to see you, Auntie, I'm glad you could make it," she says, and her godmother huffs out a bah, but looks pleased. She and Marilyn's mother and uncle came into the country together, indistinguishable from any other refugees who made up the influx of immigrants right before the Vietnam War broke out. When Marilyn's mother died heartbreakingly soon after her father, her godmother and uncle became her entire support network. Since, Marilyn's been unable to look at them without feeling a keen sense of luck.

"Come on," her godmother says now, gentler. "We have a surprise for you."

The "surprise" grabs her around the neck as soon as she steps out of her bedroom, squealing loudly and smelling like chamomile perfume and that burnt hair scent that comes from leaving one's straightener on too-high a setting. "Bride-to-be!" sounds off right in her ear.

"Christy?" goes Marilyn, baffled. She flings her arms around Christy's neck and squeezes her, tight, her voice going high and shrill with her surprise, "I thought you said --"

"I lied!" says Christy gleefully. "Oh, come on, like I was going to let you get married without your best friend there? Think again! Now," she releases Marilyn, grabbing her around the arms and steering her into the front room. "Come look and see what we've brought you."

Abby and Tommy are both waiting for her in front of the television, wearing identical gleeful smiles; Abby's already in her bridesmaid dress, bunny slippers on her feet and her hair in curlers, and her brother looks like he was dragged unapologetically out of bed same as Marilyn was. And between them --

"The dress!" Marilyn gasps, soft.

The monstrous sleeves are gone, completely gone, leaving the sweetheart neckline bare, and the front of the skirt has been rucked up, pinned in place by her hip and revealing the folds of the pettiskirts underneath, so that the profile isn't as intimidatingly big. It leaves nothing to distract from the embroidered bodice and the metaphorical story told there, three little thread-yellow birds escaping into the sky.

"How --" she starts, and without needing to be asked, her siblings flip the dress over. She walks over, touching her fingertips to the zipper, which has been peeled away from the bodice and replaced with a stretchier fabric, something like spandex. It looks like it will slide right over the broader, more hourglass portions of her figure.

"No part of your mother's embroidery was harmed in the re-making of this dress," Christy informs her, solemnly. Her godmother steps around her to help Abby and Tommy get the dress off the hanger.

Christy comes up beside Marilyn, who wraps an arm around her waist and leans into her, too full with emotion to actually say a single thing.

2|Silas West

In the back of the car on her way to the venue, Marilyn spreads her palms down on her lap, studying her nails.

She got simple French tips, the white blending easily into the white of the skirt of her gown, a pattern like the wings of a dove painted onto the broad flat of her thumbnails. Her cuticles are still stinging from the treatment, and it fills Marilyn with a strange, almost painful sense of nostalgia. She hasn't had a manicure since the last time her mother did it, when she was sixteen and thinking she wanted Owen Verchonie from swim team to ask her to prom.

Marilyn's mother worked every day of the week in a hot, cramped nail salon off the back side of Sears, the one in the shopping complex on the corner of El Camino and San Antonio Boulevard. After school, Marilyn, her sister, and her brother all crowded into the tiny backroom where they did the bikini waxes and took turns playing Mario on their handheld Gameboy until their father got off work and came to pick them up.

Her mother always smelled like acetone, her fingerprints rubbed right off and her eyes permanently folded into a squint, and when she met Marilyn's father, she said that was it, she was done, there was nothing more she was looking for. Marilyn's father was a burly redheaded draft dodger who spent the Vietnam War courting the pretty manicurist out of a eucalyptus tree on the Stanford campus, and they were married on a Sunday under a clear, blue, breezy sky; Marilyn's mother wore a dress that nodded to the Western world she was marrying into, and a tribute to the culture that bore her.

Marilyn always envied them their certainty, their love. It was the only thing about their lives that had ever been easy, she imagines.

She's their oldest daughter; she has her father's nose, his freckles, and her mother's smile. Abby came after her -- she looks more Thai than the rest of them put together, a miniature carbon copy of their mother, and hasn't gotten the same opportunities Marilyn did despite being just as smart. They stopped after Tommy, because their father wanted a son to play football with. What he got was Marilyn, who loved soccer with all her burning child heart.

Both their parents got desperately ill when Marilyn was sixteen, anemic and pale and throwing up blood; lead poisoning, the doctors tell her later, from drinking straight from the run-off stream on Stanford while her dad was camping there during the war.

They die within a year of each other, and at eighteen, Marilyn becomes guardian to her two younger siblings. She shelves her dreams of perfume commercials with David Beckham and looks into law schools.

Until today, she hasn't set foot in a nail salon.

Outside the doors, Abby and Christy both kiss her on the cheek. "Last moment of being a bachelorette," her sister whispers excitedly. "Next time I talk to you, you'll be a married woman!"

Christy straightens Marilyn's headband just for the excuse to do something with her hands and wishes her luck. They disappear into the hall, leaving Marilyn alone.

Which is when somebody behind her says her name.

She jumps, because she hadn't heard anyone approach. She turns around, and for a second, she doesn't recognize the man standing there.

"Sy!" she goes, blinking and shifting her weight back in her strappy heels, gown rustling against the lobby's marble floors. "Hi!"

He smiles, wry.

Her hackles rise at the sight of it, making her instantly uncomfortable -- she dropped out of his law firm in a pretty spectacular fashion, chasing after a better prospect that led her to the firm she's with now. She doesn't regret it, of course, because she's successful and she did that on her own, but it does make seeing him awkward.

Uneasily, she glances over her shoulder, hunting for her bridesmaids or her uncle or her godmother. Anyone, really, who might provide a distraction.

As if sensing this, Sy holds up his hands, placating. "I just came to wish the bride some felicitations," he goes, tone purposefully mild.

"Oh," says Marilyn. "Thank you? That's very kind of you. Um, the ceremony is just for friends and family, but you're more than welcome to come to the reception afterwards, it's --"

But Sy just shakes his head. "I'd rather not, if it's all the same to you," he says. "I just wanted to catch you before you went down the aisle. I haven't seen you in a long time."

"Yes," Marilyn agrees, bemused, because is this really the time for a catch-up chat? "I hope business is well. How are your daughters?"

Sy answers her questions without vitriol, or much interest, but he keeps on looking at her like he's trying to puzzle something together, and it's got Marilyn kind of unnerved.

"Why him, though?" he blurts out, finally, and Marilyn realizes this is the crux of the conversation: this is what he really came here to ask. "We were both there. We know the nit and the gritty details of how shitty he treats his partners. How do you think he's going to treat his wife?"

She tilts her head, turning the question over in her mind. She bites the inside of her lip thoughtfully.

Likability.

"I suppose I don't," she says finally. "Know for certain that he's going to treat me any better than them, I mean. But neither am I going to treat him like a ticking time bomb, always waiting for him to disappoint me, either." She and her fiance aren't like her parents, and Marilyn's stopped waiting for it to feel as fairytale as she thought they had been. She doesn't have that same ease, but she does think she has the certainty. She's already seen her husband-to-be at his worst, and she's seen him at his best, and they're both still here.

Besides, if Sy is here to try and convince her not to get married, he probably should have done it sooner.

"It's going to be nothing but hard work, you know that, right?" says Sy, but gently. Now he sounds, more than anything, like the senior lawyer who let her sit in on the deposition phase. "You're going to have to try, and try, and keep trying."

And Marilyn nods, because that'll be the easiest part. That's what they've been, since the very beginning: a try.

The only thing you can do is keep trying, because sometimes, things work.

3|her own damn groom

A long time ago, right after they officially set a date ("we need to pick a day of the year we'll have no trouble remembering as an anniversary and each have a reasonable chance of being free for," he told her matter-of-factly, and scowled at her highbrow expression, "no, really, this is something normal people should think about when they're planning on entering a state of wedded bliss,") she'd jokingly put in a reminder on her phone under oops I accidentally marriage.

The alarm goes off right as her uncle joins her outside the doors. They're almost ready for her to walk down the aisle; she can hear the rustling on the other side, people settling into place and the hush descending.

She snorts and rolls her eyes, because she completely forgot about it, and just as she turns to show her uncle, it lights up for real, ringing in her hand with an incoming call.

She looks at the name on the screen for a beat, then sighs and lifts it to her ear, answering in trepidation, "What happened?"

"You ... ah, you ah ... wouldn't happen to be missing anyone, would you?" Dustin hedges, sounding very, very nervous.

"Dustin," she grits out.

"Sorry!" he blurts out preemptively. "Oh god I'm so sorry! I just really can't shake the feeling you needed your man for something today."

Marilyn is not going to find a way to set them on fire. She's not. Even though she has a reasonable chance of getting away with it, especially if she enlists the help of Christy and all the quirky people on Mythbusters. They can totally make it look like an accident. She rallies herself, pulling up contingency plans in her head. "Where are you?"

"He ... might be a little late," Dustin answers, evasive.

"My surprise overwhelms me," Marilyn says flatly. On the other side of the door, the wedding guests all laugh at something; a quiet rumble of noise. "Dustin ... I kind of want to marry this man, okay. Can you please bring him to me?"

"Ummm," says Dustin one last time, and she's just about to crack when he says, very loudly and very gleefully, "Nah, I'm just kidding! We're totally waiting for you at the end of the aisle, any time you feel like joining us."

And hangs up.

The guests all laugh again, louder this time.

"Why did I think this was a good idea?" she asks her uncle, who smiles at her with gap teeth and takes her hand in his.

He lifts it to his mouth, kissing her fingertips like he did when she was a child, chasing him around the curving snake statue in front of the Stanford Art Museum only to fall and skin herself on the rough stones, and he says, "You'll see."

Then he tucks her arm in his as the doors open. Dozens of little oval faces turn to watch her uncle walk her down the aisle, and she knows they're there, smiling and warm and enjoying the practical joke they just played on her, but each individual one doesn't really register, because there at the end, Mark Zuckerberg's eyes flare open wide at the sight of her.

The dress! he mouths.

I know! she mouths back, and they beam at each other, wide and silly and absolutely delighted at their own luck.

Standing at his right-hand side, Dustin grins at her and salutes her with his cell phone, and next to him, Tommy rolls his eyes, like, can you believe these two? I look well-behaved compared to them.

Marilyn had put off introducing Abby and Tommy to Mark for the longest time, the same way everybody is most reluctant to show their greatest accomplishments, the things they are most proud of, to the people whose opinions matter the most, because nobody else is in a better position to strip that feeling away from you. It's the same way Mark had fidgeted uncomfortably the first time he showed her Facebook at the height of its productivity, folding and unfolding a paperclip and waiting for her to say something.

The first time she had Mark over for dinner, the four of them eating standing up at the kitchen counter because Abby had stacked the bar stools up in her bedroom for a photography project, she watched him interact with them, hawk-like and careful -- Mark and Tommy had gone from a tentative I don't think your sister wants you on your phone at the table to a flat you do know I can program your next fifty status updates to proudly announce how you just wet the bed, right? I gave you Facebook and I can take it away.

The look on Tommy's face had been priceless.

Maybe, in hindsight, that was the moment Marilyn knew that if Mark Zuckerberg asked her to marry him, she would say yes.

The first time he asked her out (like, on a date) could technically have been that day in the deposition room, with all the glass windows overlooking the foggy Junipero Serra hills and the smudged line of the San Francisco Bay, when he awkwardly invited her for steaks right after she told him he was going to have to pay millions of dollars to make Eduardo Saverin and the Winklevoss twins to go away. It caught her off guard, then, and since the only thing she was thinking of was going home, taking off her heels, and finishing Five People You Meet in Heaven, she said no, thank you.

The second time came as less of a surprise, a couple weeks later, when the case was closed, sealed, and filed away. He watched her, a thoughtful expression making the corners of his mouth turn down and his eyes unreadable, but since she still couldn't shake the image of him, alone with his laptop at the table, the tips of his fingers going blue with the overzealous air conditioning, like the boy who elects to stay inside and read during recess simply because he knows no one else will join him on the field, she declined. Politely, but firmly.

The third time, she leveled him with an exasperated, are you kidding me? kind of look before she could stop herself.

He lifted his chin defiantly, eyes shuttering and the grey color in them going dull. "I am capable of taking a hint," he had told her, very pointedly. "Contrary to what you might think. As I've already humiliated myself by asking you, however, you should probably turn me down. One more time."

"Oh my god," Marilyn muttered, and did something she hadn't done since middle school -- she leaned over the arm of her chair and flicked him hard across the ear with her fingernail.

He startled, canting his body out of her reach and shooting her an incredulous, did you really just do that? look -- and then he really looked at her.

She folded her arms. "I appreciate the honesty," she told him, dry as bone. "But I don't think referring to it as 'humiliating yourself' is the right way to chase a girl." She planted a hand on the table, leaning in. "Mark, the first time you ask me out because you genuinely want to spent time with me and not because you think you still owe me because I said something nice to you one time when you really needed it ... that's when I'll probably say yes."

There was a beat where he just looked at her, his mouth as thin as a snake's. Then something cracked around the corners of his eyes, and he said in a much friendlier tone, "How do you do that?"

"Do what?" Marilyn had said, thrown.

"Manage to say exactly the right thing and still sound like a trite fortune cookie."

She blinked, and then burst out laughing, slapping a hand to her mouth to cover it even when her shoulders starting shaking. She's a big sister and she specialized in reading people as part of her job, she's used to saying deep things in completely random contexts, like, you're not an asshole, you're just trying so hard to be. Looking bemused, Mark shifted his chair closer, propping his chin up on his fist, and asked her what she was working on.

He never did wind up asking her out on a date. They became friends instead, slowly and without either of them really noticing it was happening until it was already done.

They hung out, practiced speeches together, took turns being each other's designated drivers and each other's plus-ones to corporate events, until it got to the point where Mark didn't bother asking anyone else to accompany him and Mark's assistant, Hoburn, just automatically RVSP'd Marilyn Delpy as Mark Zuckerberg's plus one, before Mark even asked her. A high percentage of her current clientele, she met at these events. It just worked well for everyone.

But at no point did they officially become boyfriend-girlfriend, so literally the only people who were not surprised when they became engaged were Mark and Marilyn themselves (and possibly Hoburn, because nobody survives long as Mark's PA by being obtuse.)

It happened during a soccer game back in May, with several shirtless programmers and some graduate students sprinting wildly back and forth across the Stanford oval lawn, in front of the main mall. Marilyn, whose dreams of being a soccer superstar weren't that far behind her, was the only one really playing seriously, and conversely Mark was the only one who posed a challenge to her, because he had been mildly competent at sports in high school (before they kicked him off the team for bad sportsmanship.)

And, after a particularly brilliant score on her part, thank you very much, they wound up in the grass together, rolling helplessly, Marilyn still chanting in victory and Mark trying to shush her, it didn't count, Marilyn, come on, you cheated, that wasn't even --

Lying side-by-side and trying to get their breath back, while the rest of their teams set up a penalty shot in appeasement, Mark looked over at her and said, very quietly, "You know, we should probably just get married."

She thought about it, her head tilted back and the sunlight burning the insides of her closed eyes a bright, crisp orange. Then, like he'd asked her nothing more complicated than whether or not she wanted waffles for dinner, she said, "Yeah, okay. We can do that."

They made the announcements the very next day -- their families first, and then Hoburn, who looked at them over the rims of his glasses and went, "hm," and then went about arranging a wedding for them.

When Marilyn passes him on the way up the aisle, she mouths thank you and Hoburn beams so wide his eyes fold into creases.

Before she even has time to be nervous, she's at the front, up by the chuppah, which is when Mark's patience with the whole thing breaks.

Foregoing decorum completely, he comes down the steps to meet her.

Her uncle lets go of her hand and makes a surprised noise as Mark lifts her veil, almost dislodging the band around her head, and catches her up to kiss her mouth, enthusiastically enough that it sends another ripple of laughter through their guests and earns him a wry, "you're being a bit preemptive there, Mr. Zuckerberg," from the rabbi, who straightens his tallit in a long-suffering way.

Marilyn hears all of this from a distance, registers it absently, too busy with cataloging everything on Mark's face when he pulls away from her.

He's got on a look she recognizes -- it's his I have a good idea and I'm going to go through with it face. She makes a face in return, communicating quietly that the good idea had better be marrying her, and not something he left uncompleted at the office. His expression softens perceptibly, going fond. Suddenly and keenly, she remembers the first time he looked at her like he needed her; that tiny, slump-shouldered figure sitting alone at a deposition table, drumming his fingers on his laptop lid.

Her heart swells, too big for the bones and skin that hold it in, and she turns her head, kissing his cheek before she takes his hand and pulls him up the steps, so they can get married.

4|Barack Obama

You know what really wouldn't surprise Marilyn at this point? If more than half of the guests at her reception turned out to be private security for the other half.

It's a presence she's steadily growing used to, of course, although it wasn't one of the first things that popped into her head when she agreed to marry into the top richest 1% of the population. Becoming Mark Zuckerberg's wife may not be on par with the ritz and glam of doing perfume commercials with David Beckham, the way she'd dreamed for herself when she was in high school, but some of the people here make her feel like a superstar.

Steve Jobs twirls her around magnificently to the quick, jazzy number coming from the bass speakers, moving smartly out of the way of her skirts as they flare out. He's so tall that she has to catch herself against his chest when he reels her back in. The fabric of his black turtleneck is soft under her palms. Somewhere off to the side, she catches a glimpse of Mark dancing with his niece, who's spinning herself around on the end of his finger like a top, her curly hair flying and her cochlear implant clinging to the side of her head for dear life.

The song ends, and Steve steps back in order to sweep into a graceful, gentlemanly bow. She kind of wishes he had a top hat to complete the picture.

"Mazel tov!" he goes cheerily, straightening.

"You don't even know what that means!" she accuses him, and he just steps back in, taking her hand and kissing the back of her knuckles. He looks unrepentant, and then he looks startled, and then there's a polite touch to the ball of her shoulder.

"Excuse me, Steve," comes a voice that's instantly familiar. "May I steal the bride for the next dance?"

Steve Jobs releases her hand so fast she almost staggers from the loss, but then she turns around, and the President of the United States offers her a hand to her elbow, steadying.

"Mrs. Zuckerberg," he goes, smiling a very warm, engaging smile. "You look absolutely stunning."

"Oh holy shit," Marilyn manages, very faintly.

The president throws his head back, laughing, and there's a sparkle to his eyes, like he never gets tired of that reaction. The music starts up again, slower this time. "Mark didn't mention to you that I'd be coming, did he?"

"Umm," she says helplessly. She gingerly sets her hand on his shoulder, not entirely sure that the simple gesture isn't going to get her tackled by twelve burly Secret Service members. Gamely, he leads her by the waist, stepping them both into a smart waltz. "Um, no, no, he neglected to mention this particular part. I mean, he did tell me that he had to invite some business bigwigs as a matter of course, but I thought that meant, like ... Don Savage and Bill Gates, not like --" she realizes that she's babbling out of pure fright, and goes, "-- don't you have somewhere more important to be?"

"More important that congratulating you on a beautiful ceremony and well-wishing you many years of wedded bliss?" He pulls a face, feigning deep contemplation. "You know, Marilyn, nothing's coming to mind."

She chokes on her laugh, and winds up making an undignified noise, like the kind the sea lions on Pier 39 make when they think the tourists aren't paying them enough attention. Fortunately, the president smiles at her, like he thinks sea lion noises are hilarious. This cannot be happening to her.

Marilyn Zuckerberg (nee Delpy) is wearing her mother's wedding dress and dancing with Barack Obama, the president of the United States.

The president, Mom. He called your dress stunning!

"Well," she says after a beat. They've cleared the floor, she notices; they're the only ones dancing. Even Mark's standing off to the side, his niece on his hip, her head on his shoulder. Christy's standing next to him, video camera in hand -- when she catches Marilyn's eye, she gives a shit-eating grin and a big thumbs-up. "Good to know my husband just considers you another bigwig and not, like, anybody he should have warned me about."

"Don't worry about it," Obama answers easily. His hand in hers is broad, his grip warm, and where she'd seemed so dark when held by Steve Jobs, she matches here, almost paler. "I consider it a good sign. He honors you far more than he does me."

That does sound like Mark, to be honest; snubbing the president on principle of his position. "How so?" she frowns.

Thusfar, he's kept a polite, respectful distance between their bodies, but now he leans in so he can whisper, right up against her ear, "He never bothered dressing that nice to impress me."

She lifts her head and beams at him. He laughs back, rich and genuinely joyful.

-

The instant she catches a break, she finds one of the programs that's still lying out on the tables, stomps up to her husband where he's tugging fruitlessly at his necktie like he'd really like to get out of it, and whacks him hard across the shoulder with a very satisfying thwap!

"Marilyn!" Mark feigns hurt, gripping his shoulder and grimacing at her. She lifts the program to hit him again, and he quickly snatches it out of her hands.

"Is there any other incredibly famous person you think you should maybe tell me about?" she demands of him, low and through her teeth. Her heart is still pounding inside her chest, like it's about to break through her bodice and her mother's embroidery.

"I asked JK Rowling if she'd like to come, because I know you like her books, but she had a scheduling conflict," Mark deadpans in reply.

Marilyn makes a frustrated noise in the back of her throat.

"Hoburn," she says, catching sight of a familiar long beard in her peripheral vision, and Mark's assistant materializes, leading with his enormous happy-Buddha stomach like he always does. "Could you do me a favor and lead my husband out onto the dance floor before I am overcome with the sudden urge to dunk his head into the fruit punch?"

"It would be my honor, Mrs. Zuckerberg," says Hoburn, somehow managing to be entirely unironic about it, and before Mark really knows what's going on, Hoburn has him by the waist and is waltzing him across the room, his face set serenely.

Mark looks vaguely frightened.

5|Eduardo Saverin

Just when she thinks the buzz of excitement is never going to fade, and nothing's going to top the fact that Barack Obama just traveled all this way to waltz her around the dance floor, somebody stops Marilyn by the fondue as she picks at the last of the sad-looking strawberries.

He's sharply dressed, uncomfortable, his head ducked down shyly and turning a card over in his hands. "Presents for the bride and groom?" he asks, like he isn't sure of his welcome.

"Over there," Marilyn gestures on automatic, and reaches out to curl her fingers around his forearm before he can go. "Mr. Saverin," she says. "It is so good to see you again."

She must not be hiding her surprise very well, because he spares her a wry smile, which pulls at her gut in a lowly familiar way. She's seen it before, whenever Mark looked up from his intense game of cat's cradle to snap something at Gretchen across that horrible deposition table, and Eduardo Saverin would smile without humor, like he hadn't expected anything less.

"I take it you weren't the one who invited me, then," he says sagely.

"No, that must have been Mark," she agrees. This is what she gets for letting Hoburn handle the invitations, she should have known better; she had no way of double-checking if Mark had pulled for some unexpected guests. "I had no idea you were going to be here. To be fair," she gestures over her shoulder. "That was the president of the United States here just now, so I honestly don't know what I'm expecting anymore."

"Right." he nods. "I don't think I can compete with that." He honestly does have a sweet smile, she thinks, once he relaxes. He and Mark have that in common. "That's almost as surprising as Mark marrying his lawyer, to be honest."

"Yes," says Marilyn, because she's heard most of the jokes by now. "Can you excuse me?"

He flushes guiltily. "Of course, I'll just --" he waves the card, and they step around each other.

She spots her husband's curly head and beelines right for him, cutting through the near-empty dance floor unapologetically. Most of the guests are Jewish: there isn't a lot of dancing going on in the first place.

The tightness at the corners of Mark's mouth tells her he's already spotted their very late arrival, but he smiles at her when she approaches him nonetheless, catching her hand and pulling her in for a kiss. He tastes a little like punch and a lot like exhaustion, and it has her thinking longingly of the bed and the pillows she had so unceremoniously been dragged out of this morning.

"I didn't think you had it in you," she says quietly, just between the two of them. "Inviting Eduardo, I mean."

"It's the big question of the night, isn't it?" Mark replies with that characteristic icy bite to his voice, but Marilyn isn't bothered -- it's not directed at her. "Whether or not the olive branch had been extended to my greatest nemesis."

"Yeah, but you don't actually care what it looks like," she points out, and he looks down, running the pad of his thumb over the glossy veneer of her nails. "That wasn't why you invited him."

"I know," he allows, and something goes soft in his eyes as, across the room, Dustin nearly upends his pitcher of punch in his attempt to throw his arms around Eduardo, his loud bro, you missed my best man speech! audible even from all the way over here. Then his eyes harden again. "I did not invite the Winklevosses."

"Not even to antagonize them?" Marilyn lifts her eyebrows, wry. "Color me impressed."

"Ha ha," Mark goes, completely droll.

She swings their hands together. "You should go talk to him," she offers, very quietly.

"I know," he goes, and this time, it sounds more like a confession.

She loses track of things for awhile after that, sending her sister home with Tommy because he has work early tomorrow, and saying good-bye as guests start to drop off, one-by-one, taking their security guards with them. She gets several more compliments on her dress, and Steve Jobs's mother lands a tipsy, sticky kiss near the corner of her mouth before Steve can rein her back, grimacing in embarrassment. Eventually, she looks around and realizes she has no idea where Mark is.

Excusing herself from her conversation, she walks across the hall, and when that fails to yield any results, she steps out onto the patio, and the cold immediately cuts through her. She wishes -- very, very briefly -- that her dress still had those sleeves.

On the other side of the lawn, standing under a dead street light, Mark's with Eduardo.

Marilyn pauses, and looks again. They're talking, the two of them, their hands moving animatedly between them. It's borderline intimate, like she's seeing them after the punch line has already been told; she catches them just as Eduardo leans into Mark's space, and their profiles, for a moment, outline the other's. When they smile, it strips years off their faces.

She toes out of her heels, picking them up by the straps and sauntering off across the grass towards them.

They've finished whatever it is they're saying by the time she reaches them, and in unison, they turn to face her.

"Most everybody is going home for the night," she tells them, keeping her voice very, very soft, as if there are shards of glass to be walked on here.

Eduardo embraces her then, like he can't not, pressing the side of his face into hers for a long beat, their cheeks hot against each other's. She keeps her arms wrapped around him, their weight rocking back and forth. She can feel his heartbeat and the thrum of his pulse underneath his clothes.

"Take care of him," he murmurs finally, like it costs him something small and essentially vital to say it. "Please."

Mutely, she nods, and he lets her go, stepping away.

As he picks his way across the grass, back towards the building, Marilyn shifts the straps of her shoes to the other hand and goes to Mark's side. She gives him a searching, questioning look, ducking her head down to catch his eye. He looks back at her, and the sad, near-nostalgic smile on his face transforms as she watches and holds his gaze. Until eventually, he's smiling at her, full and with the dimples showing.

Without prompting, he wraps an arm around her waist and pulls her close. He leans his weight into her, like he needs the strength or the support. Marilyn, who has both those things and more, holds him up.

The sodium street light above their heads finally flickers to life, catching Mark, Marilyn, and the retreating figure of Eduardo and bathing them in yellow. It casts their shadows far across the lawn, like the silhouettes of three little birds, escaping into the dark and the dawning light.

-
fin

Note: The thing about draft dodgers building treehouses in the eucalyptus trees on Stanford campus during the Vietnam War is legitimately a thing -- that's how my grandmother met my step-grandfather. She was teaching upper-division calculus at Stanford and he was protesting the war. /forever a source of interesting trivia

That was the longest thing I've written thusfar. I am now officially over 50k. w00t, NaNoWriMo goal reached. Feeling of accomplishment, feel free to visit me at any time.