never gamble with strangers

Sunday, July 26

- Song: Like Real People Do by Hozier

- Theme: Firsts/Lasts

- AU: Alternate Canon (different theater of war/roles in war/etc.)

- Color Palette:

Monday, July 27

- Song: Godlight by Noah Kahan

- Theme: Performance

- AU: Alternate History (Regency/Edwardian/Sixties/Nineties/etc.)

- Color Palette:

Tuesday, July 28

- Song: Frozen Pines by Lord Huron

- Theme: Film

- AU: Entertainer/USO AU

- Color Palette:

Wednesday, July 29

- Song: Still by Daughter

- Theme: Fight

- AU: Post-War

- Color Palette:

Thursday, July 30

- Song: Slow Show by The National

- Theme: Music

- AU: Different First Meeting

- Color Palette:

Friday, July 31

- Song: Picture Me Better by Weyes Blood

- Theme: Haunting

- AU: Canon with a Supernatural Twist

- Color Palette:

Saturday, August 1

- Song: Once More to See You by Mitski

- Theme: Poetry

- AU: Soulmates

- Color Palette:

OTHER INFORMATION/REMINDERS:

- The Archive of Our Own collection for fanfiction for the week can be found HERE. It is open and unmoderated, so any authors who wish to add their work to the page are free to do so.

- To learn how to post to an Ao3 collection, find an informational guide HERE. For other questions relating to fanfiction, find the tag for it HERE, and reach out if you have more questions.

- The grace period for this event will run for one week after it, meaning from Sunday, August 2 to Saturday, August 8. During this time, you will still be able to submit prompts for the week, both on Tumblr and on Ao3. After the grace period ends, both the blog and Ao3 will become closed/moderated/

- To go through what was created for other weeks, blog information, or to find any questions that might have already been answered, you can go to the pinned post for the blog in order to find tag navigation and all other details.

TAGLIST:

---

They’d moved in maybe a year and a half ago, and the only reason she knew who either of them were at all was because she’d tripped down the last two steps outside of her own building and the one with two legs had seen her and helped her back up and to her own place.

The rest didn’t really matter, and she found it rather boring. What matters is that she invited the one with two legs up for dinner as a form of gratitude and he’d shown up with the one with one leg that looked a little rougher around the edges and that was that.

---

The one with two legs was Luz, who worked every day, and the other one was Toye, who worked every three days. On Fridays, Toye would come over for her self proclaimed book club with whatever she’d deigned best to read.

“I think it’s a load of crock.” She tells Toye on one of these Fridays, flipping through her pick of the week distastefully. “Overall written alright, but underall it’s garbage. What a worthless read.”

Toye is always generous enough not to mention that she’s always the one to choose the books. “I think there could be a point to it.” He says, always hoarser than she’d think he’d sound, and he talks so very little that she should probably be less tetchy. Still, bad habits are hard to break, and she scoffs.

“Yeah, and what would that be? Fate or God’s plan? Because neither seem to be good and neither are anything close to happening, no matter how much you pray.” She flipped through another few pages disdainfully. Toye’s own copy sat carefully in his lap, and he deigned not to touch it, tapping his fingers instead against the wood of the crutch that stayed across his lap.

“I don’t know.” He said, glanced out of her window. She knew why, and didn’t have to follow his gaze. The only reason that Luz had seen her at all when she had fallen was because they lived directly across from each other, right down to the building's story and window make. “There’s a testament to things falling into place.”

There’s something fragile resting along the lines of his face, and she has to pause for a moment, remind herself how utterly young he is. How young the both of them are.

She has a husband in a cemetery she isn’t able to get to anymore, because the streets are too crowded and her knees are too bad, and a son that’s lost forever in the mud in some godforsaken island in the Pacific, and if praying could have prevented that, they’d still be with her. 

She doesn’t say any of that. She watches Toye’s face carefully before huffing and looking back down to her own book. “I want to read another Shakespeare, next.” She says. “I think he’s an overrated rats’ ass, and you can quote me on that.”

---

On the same Friday’s where she hosts book club, Luz will come by after he’s done at wherever he works with some sort of tupperware of something and they’ll eat dinner with her.

She’d never tell them, but it feels less like an embarrassing sort of pity, when one of them only has one leg. 

“I think that he was a hack, God rest his soul.” She tells them one day, because they’ll listen to her, and she was thinking about it earlier, and there wasn’t even Lulu to tell. “I mean, do all you want and bow to him in whatever, but he was a right fool. I think that it was that wife of his that kept him in line, more than anything.”

Luz is smiling into his own bowl of food, and he’s prone to doing that. He won’t look at her, like he’s worried he’ll burst out laughing if he does, but she doesn’t mind. She came to the conclusion a long time ago that he just likes laughing, and she won’t care much if he does so because of her.

Toye’s always more serious, nods and is able to meet her face and send annoyed looks at the man at his elbow, who usually sits on the floor next to her stuffed armchair. “Eleanor’s a hell of a lady.” He says, and she nods at him, approving.

“She was the real one, if you ask me.” She says, and Luz coughs a bit into his bowl and coughs a bit more lightheartedly when Toye’s hand comes down to shove at his shoulder.

---

On the days that Toye works, and only in the wintertime, Luz sometimes visits by himself.

She has a sneaking suspicion that he’s intimidated by her, in some way, or something about her apartment is off putting. She doesn’t care all that much. He’s a nice enough boy, and he helped her back up the stairs, but she’s always had more of a proclivity for the quiet ones.

In the winter, he tends to be more of one of those himself, paler and usually scruffier than usual.

He looks so on the day that he knocks on her door and when she opens it, he looks like he hasn’t shaved in three days and eaten in six. 

“Dear God.” She says, and steps back from the door to usher him in before he can freeze her apartment. “You look like a transient.”

She never paid much attention to what was going on in the Atlantic, other than the newsreels (which she never went to) and by word of mouth from her friends (which she didn’t have) and newspapers and magazines (which she rarely left the house to get).

Her war, like it was her boy's war, was with the islands, and when he died, her study of it died with him. 

Still, she knew enough to recognize that Europe could get cold and that hollow eyes are often related to that ice. 

Luz doesn’t laugh nearly as much in the wintertime, or smile, and she can’t even get him to crack half of one, even when she deigns to instead criticize Toye, which usually works.

“Oh, for Gods’ sake.” She ends up saying today, hips aching and irritated. “Now I have to waste coffee on you. Perfectly good waste, most of it is going to end up in that… thing, on your face.”

She doesn’t like beards. Never did like it when her boy grew one, said it made him look more grown-up than she’d allow.

Luz still doesn’t smile.

Fifteen minutes later, she sits with him in the overstuffed armchairs and wonders about what boys still find funny when he asks her, quite out of the blue, “What do you do when you miss someone?”

She blinks.

“Well, I’m sad about it.” She says, and when Luz just stares down at the mug she’d pushed onto him, rather desolate looking, she sighs and tries to think of something else to say. “I get angry. Or I knit. Or I look through my photos. Missing someone isn’t a glove. Why?”

Luz huffs, but it isn’t exactly happy. She doesn’t like it when Toye has to leave. He always seems happier, when the other one is around. The creases around his eyes aren’t so frustratingly deep.

“Nothing.” He says, and his voice is hoarse. “Just thinking about people who’re gone.”

She watches him, critical. God, she hopes he shaves before she sees him again. It’s really just improper. 

“They never found my son's body.” She tells him. “Or they did, and they lied to me. Either way, he left and he’s gone and I barely have anything of him but what I remember and what he wore. So you find things that help you do more than obsess over those things.” She thinks of Lulu, of her soft fur and the way that she’d lick at her face. “And that’ll be gone before you know it, too, so you have to appreciate it all. You can’t afford to stop loving things in the world just because someone you love is no longer in it.”

She stares back down at her cup. 

Luz clears his throat, and when she looks up, he cracks half of a smile at her awkwardly. His eyes are dark, there isn’t much light there. “Thank you.” He says, and she wishes she hadn’t told him about her boy. Still, she feels warm.

“Good god, child.” She says, anyways. “Go home and shave. You look like some sort of Hungarian.”

Luz doesn’t laugh, but looks like he might have, if it wasn’t wintertime.

---

Later on in the same night, they’re up later than they usually are, and she only knows it because she’s trying to get through a chapter for book club on Friday and she can see their silhouettes through their lit up window, light and orange and slightly blurry.

She doesn’t watch them for long, doesn’t want to pry.

Luz’s arms are around Toye’s neck, his face dropped down to his shoulder. Toye’s arms are wrapped fully around him, maybe more for balance than anything else. The way they’re turning, it looks like they're dancing. She wonders to what music.

She used to dance like that, with her husband. That was how she taught her boy, as he stood on top of her shoes and she held his little hands. 

She shuffles back over to the armchair and goes back to reading her book. She doesn’t like this one either.

---

One day, she thinks they might be arguing. 

Toye comes over on a Thursday night, instead of a Friday, and looks rather tired. It’s springtime, which is why she’s more hesitant about letting him in, but he’s shaved, so she allows it.

“Could I stay over for the night?” He asks her, voice raspy. “I’d – I hate to ask, but—”

She squints at him. “You’re the one with one leg.” She says. “Shouldn’t he be leaving?” Toye coughs. He shifts on his crutches, glances vaguely over his shoulder in a way that makes him look rather guilty.

“No, it’s—” He starts, and cuts himself off. “I want him to stay in the apartment.” He looks vaguely embarrassed. She squints at him again, but in the end just starts moving back towards her armchair.

“Fine.” She says. “I like you better than I like him, anyways.”

---

She tosses a bunch of moth-eaten blankets from the closet onto the floor and tells Toye good luck with standing back up and gets to bed. Toye looks strangely pleased about her rudeness, so she keeps that in mind and makes note to tell him that he needs a haircut tomorrow.

---

Toye stays over the whole day and helps her with small things and she tells him that he needs a haircut, and needs to shave, and needs to go outside more, and needs to get a better job, and needs better crutches, and should wear his fake leg more often, and a dozen other things before they sit down to read and do so for hours.

Book club lasts much longer than it usually does, but when there’s the usual knock at the door, albeit more tentative, Toye looks up and looks, again, so painfully young that she sort of wants to smack him for it.

She doesn’t. She pushes to her feet and complains the whole way to the door.

Luz doesn’t have food, and he barely says hello, just looks right past her to Toye, says in a soft, hoarse voice that she thinks means that he’s been smoking and that he wants to talk.

She looks from him, to Toye, to him again, and decides to stay out of it. “Get out of here, the both of you.” She says. “And clean up, before I see you again. You both have jobs, you know.”

---

She doesn’t see them for maybe three or four days after that, doesn’t even see them entering or exiting their own building. She wonders if one or both of them are sick, but thinks they might just be locked up in their own apartment for some godforsaken reason. 

They don’t emerge for days and Luz is the first one that she sees, looking more relaxed than he has since the wintertime. He waves at her, but doesn’t spend too much time outside. Just pitches a cigarette over his shoulder and skips back up to the apartment, and that’s the last she sees of either of them for another two days. 

She supposes they’ve made up.

---

She only goes over to their apartment once. 

It’s alright. Rather homely.

There’s only one chair in the sitting room, which is rather ridiculous, though every time she’s seen him, Luz usually insists on sitting on the floor, so she supposes that may be a part of it. The kitchen is small, rather boring. A whiteboard sits on top of the fridge, tracking something by tally marks that she’s not privy to knowing. They don’t let her into either of the bedrooms, and she doesn’t care much to investigate.

“You, uh.” Luz tells her awkwardly, hands in his pockets, mouth quirked up in his forever-grin. “We could start eating here, if you’d like.”

She wrinkles her nose at the cracked open fire escape and the dishes in the sink and the crooked blanket on the chair. “I’m quite alright.” She says, and decides not to come back. 

(There’s one of those song-players on a table off to the side, however. It looks more expensive than anything else in the apartment. Underneath it is a basket, and the only vinyl she’s able to make out is one of Billie Holliday.

Ugh. Figures.)

---

They come over every Friday for two years and she sees them more often than that, and as soon as something changes, she can tell immediately. It annoys her.

She knows right off the bat because Toye’s wearing his prosthetic, which he never does, and Luz is shaved, which doesn’t matter much, because his hair is still much too long. 

“Where’s the house at?” She asks him, after barely another two minutes, because she’s connected the dots and doesn’t want to wait for them to be explained to her. 

Luz is the one, for once, to pause. Toye turns to look at him, face doing the same sort of lined, barely held back guarded emotion that it often throws up around the other man before he looks back at her, hesitates.

“It’s, uh.” He says. She sighs, wants to tell him to knock it off with the pausing. “In Bedford. It’s—”

He keeps talking, and she deigns to ignore him to instead watch Luz, the way he looks at Toye. It’s the same sort of emotion, barely lined, making him heavier.

She wonders if her boy got to care so much about someone, before he was killed.

“Alright.” She says, maybe with a sigh, holds up a hand and decides that’s that. She’ll miss book club, but if she truly gave a rats ass, she’d join a real one. Maybe she will, now. “Make sure you pack enough. And shave. You have jobs.” 

Toye’s smile is a crooked curve, and Luz’s takes over his whole face. She looks at both of them, unimpressed. 

“Write to me, if you want.” She says. “Or visit. God knows I’m not going anywhere.”

She’s not, either. Maybe she’ll get another Lulu.

---

They leave on a Wednesday, which annoys her only because it’s such a random day to leave somewhere, with some sort of boring car packed with trunks in the middle of the summer.

She watches from the steps of her own building, arms crossed, and gives them advice on how to best stack the luggage, which they don’t follow. 

“They’re all going to fall out and you’ll be left with broken and dirty things, and then you’ll see who’s in the right.” She tells Toye, who’s closer, annoyed. His mouth twitches, but he doesn’t say anything.

Luz looks back at them and smiles, but she knows he’s not looking at her.

---

She stands on the steps until it’s time for them to leave, and she hates dilly-dallying, so she rushes through the goodbyes by patting Luz’s cheek and grimacing at the stubble there. He looks like he might laugh at her. 

She lets Toye get a step further and give her half of a hug, which she’s also not a fan of but allows anyways.

He watches her with those careful, dark eyes and says, very punctually, “Thanks, Moira.”

She waves him off. “You should be thanking me for trying to help you with the luggage.” She says, pointed. “Off you go. Get a dog. God knows there’s enough of them running around.”

From a few feet behind Toye, Luz laughs. 

---

She can see their silhouettes, as they get in the car. Can see what looks like Toye kissing Luz on the cheek. She grimaces.