#inkywriting

“Pull up! We’re going to crash directly into the planet's surface nose first if you don’t pull up on the sprocking steering-!”

“Querl, shut the grife up!” He snapped, unable to bring himself to feel bad about the harshness when his stress was reaching an all time peak. “I know what I’m doing, so just let me do it!”

“You know how to fly a ship, clearly not how to crash one! Pull the steering up you sprocking fool!” Querl yelled, white knuckling the armrests as he pressed himself back into his seat. Or maybe the increasing pressure from the rapid descent was what was pressing him into his seat. It was forcing Lyle back, that was for sure, and making it all the harder to control the ship the way that he wanted to.

“For grifes sake-!” Lyle shouted through gritted teeth. He pulled up on the steering just as they broke through the atmosphere of the small planet, fire licking up the sides of the ship from the rapid fall. The ship rocked, trembling with the force of their violent entry. As the ground quickly approached them, Lyle threw out his hand on instinct to hold onto Querl's armrest. His fiancé gripped his hand in return, almost painfully tight. Lyle squeezed his eyes shut and prepared himself for impact.

Before they knew it, they were making contact with the planets surface. The belly of the ship hit first with a resounding boom and a loud, screeching crunch of metal on metal. They bounced up out of their seats, bodies jerking harshly against the straps around their chests and waists. They skidded, spinning in disorientating, nauseating circles before the nose of the ship abruptly caught on something and sent them tail over head, the ship rolling out of control. 

Reinforced glass shattered. A hole was torn into the ship and a loud suction of air ripped through the space of the control room. Debris flew erratically around them. Querl screamed. Something warm splashed on his face. Lyle felt a sharp, bright, brilliant pain erupt in his head and side. Everything went dark.

Querl was down on one knee as per earth traditions, a small, ornate box held in his hands as he smiled up at Lyle.

“Oh grief. I really wasn't expecting this.” Lyle said around the sideways palm covering his mouth, trying and failing to hide the radiant smile that lay underneath. His eyes were glossy, his cheeks and ears flushed a bright red.

“What do you say? Will you do me the honours of becoming my husband?” Querl was asking. His eyes looked so incredibly fond and full of love in that moment that it was overwhelming in the joy that it sparked in Lyle's heart.

“Do you even have to ask? Get up here.” Lyle said, grabbing Querl by the wrist and yanking him to his feet. He stumbled a little but his balance stabilized when Lyle threw his arms around his shoulders and drew him in for a kiss. Querl made a soft noise in the back of his throat and returned it. 

When they parted Lyle snatched the ring box out of Querl's hands and slid the ring onto his own finger, admiring the simple silver band. His heart felt too big for his chest, his emotions too big for his heart itself. He was simply bursting with joy.

“Just for the record, though, I totally beat you to proposing if you think about it.” Lyle said, dragging his smile away from his hand and turning a devious one towards his boyfriend - no, his fiancé.

“What?!” Querl squawked, his face twisted up in shock and offense all at one. “You most certainly did not!”

“Well, I at least got a ring on your finger first.” Lyle said, pointing to his own legion flight ring. Querl's face dropped from outrage to a completely blank look of exasperation.

“That does not count and you know it.” He said completely deadpan. “We didn't even like each other back then.

Lyle burst out laughing, doubling over. Above him, Querl let out a huff of laughter as well and cracked a smile. When Lyle stood again, still giggling and wiping little tears from the corner of his eyes, Querl grabbed him by the waist and pulled him in for another kiss.

“You are so impossible sometimes.” But he said it so fondly that Lyle knew it to be a term of endearment.

“Thanks, I try.” Lyle replied. He tried to go for another kiss but Querl pulled away. Lyle furrowed his brow in confusion. Was this how it went? No, it wasn't. He had lived this before. But how?

“Wake up.” Querl told him, face going neutral, his arms dropping to his sides.

“What?” He asked, taking a step back.

“Lyle, wake up!”

Lyle's eyes snapped open and immediately he was choking on smoke and soot. He was hanging upside down, still strapped into his chair with his arms dangling above his head. He could feel wet blood sliding down his temple and into his hairline, as well as staining his side. He quickly looked beside him and found Querl in a similar position, but he was still out cold.

He groaned as he lowered - or was it lifted since he was upside down? - his arms to the buckle and unclasped it. He was just barely able to twist himself midair to land semi-decently. He still hit his side with a bang that echoed throughout the smoldering ship. He let out a hiss of pain as he pushed himself upright. His head swam and he was sent into a fit of coughing once again. He covered his mouth and nose with his head band once his vision stopped spinning and climbed to his feet, moving to get Querl out of his seat as well.

He flew up, thankful for the flight ring that he wished he remembered to use to stop his own fall, and wrapped his arms around Querl's torso under his armpits, undoing the buckle for his seat with clumsy fingers slickened by blood. Instantly his fiancé's weight dropped onto him and he almost lost his grip as the pain in his side flared anew, something tearing deeper. He grit his teeth tightly as he lowered them both to the ground.

Looking this way and that, he located the hole that had been torn into the hull of the ship and dragged Querl towards it. Lyle was panting, out of breath, and dizzy by the time he stepped over the ragged tear in the wall and out into a desert.

Sprawling brown and orange sand as far as the eye could see. There wasn't a single bit of foliage in sight, nor where there any land masses. It was just them and the endless expanse of sand. Two orange suns glared harshly down upon them from the sky up above, the shifting red clouds doing nothing to protect or shade them from its cruel rays. 

He shielded his eyes with one hand as he squinted against the glaring light. He stumbled, dragging Querl with him as he tried to get as much distance between them and the still burning remains of their ship as he could. The sand was soft under his uncoordinated feet, making the journey harder and longer than it needed to be. He stumbled, his feet sinking into the sand down to the ankle with every step he took.

He would have liked to be further away than they ended up, but his body couldn't take it anymore. He was gasping for breath as he abruptly and clumsily dropped to his knees, wincing as he lost his hold Querl on the way down. He wheezed with exertion as he flipped Querl over and checked him for wounds, hoping beyond all hopes that there wouldn't be anything that he had no way of treating.

His usually beautifully bright, jade skin had an ashy grey tint to it, even in the orange light this planet cast. His blonde locks were stained crimson with blood. A quick prodding of his hairline revealed a shallow but long cut going from his temple back towards the crown of his head. Other than some additional scrapes and bruises, he appeared otherwise unharmed.

Lyle sagged with his relief, but it didn't become any easier to breathe. In fact, it was only getting harder. He took a gasping breath, one hand gripping his chest. Was the air here on this planet thinner than he was capable of breathing on his own? Was his suit damaged? Wasn't it meant to be more durable than this? 

He doubled over, hands sinking into the burning hot sand below as he coughed harshly. With hands that felt numb, he pulled the headband off and threw it to the side as the coughs increased in ferocity. Red splattered onto the ground in front of his hands and the last thought he had before his vision faded to black and he crashed down to the ground face first was; well, that's not good.

“Guys, honestly, is this necessary?” Lyle asked with a sigh.

He stood in the center of his room atop a small step stool, arms extended out on either side of him. Zoe kept forcefully straightening his back with an annoyed huff each time he slouched.

“You're going to ruin the measurements if you keep slouching like that.” She grumbled, palm flat against his back to keep him straight. “Is that what you want? You want ill fitting wedding attire? You want to look like a slob for your wedding?”

“Come on, that's a little dramatic. He could show up covered in nass and Querl would still like it.” Ayla said with scoff. Lyle's face twisted up.

“I could literally just go buy something, you guys don't have to do this.” Lyle continued, ignoring their insults(?)

“Have you buy something? When we're here and willing to make your wedding attire?! Don't be ridiculous.” Zoe said. Lyle could hear her rolling her eyes from where she stood behind him 

“Plus, if we left this up to you, you would be wearing a modified super suit and a headband to your own wedding.” Jacques said humorously, not even looking up from where he sat scrolling through a holo pad for inspiration.

Reep and Salu giggled over by the piles of fabrics - all dark colours with light accents per Lyle's request. There were some gazey, lacy bits thrown in there as well, along with some starry, sparkly fabrics. It looked like a fabric craft store had thrown up on his bedroom floor.

“Hey! I rebuke that.” Lyle said, cheeks red. “Even if that would be practical- it is practical, stop laughing - I wouldn't do that. This day is important to me too, you know, and I'm not a teenager anymore! I have some sense of fashion.”

“What I saw you wearing on your last date says otherwise, friend.” Reep piped up, sorting through the pile of dark blues. He occasionally held one up to Lyle, considered it, looked to Salu for a second opinion, and discarded it when they both shook their heads.

“Okay, okay, we can stop talking about this now!” Lyle shouted. The others laughed.

“Seriously, though, Lyle, we want to be doing this for you.” Ayla said. “It's not every day that your friends get married. It should be a special day, and you should have something special to wear made by people who love you.”

Lyle felt a little choked up and he had to hold back some tears. He knew that Luornu, Gates, and Imra were doing this same thing for Querl, and that they were probably giving him the same spiel about loving him. It was hard to wrap his head around, sometimes, just how much their friends loved them. But it made sense, didn't it? They had all been through hell together, so why shouldn't they share in a little joy as well.

“Can you at least incorporate a headband into it?” He asked, clearing his throat when his words were a little too rough. “My forehead's too big to just go out there like that.”

“Don't worry, we've taken into account your massive forehead, we'll figure something out.” Jacques said.

“Massive? Who said anything about massive?!” Lyle exclaimed in mock outrage.

“I grew up with you, man, I know what that thing looks like.” Jacques said with a faux grimace and a mockingly sympathetic hiss between his teeth.

“Why you-!” He leaped off of the stool and lunged for his brother in all but blood, intent on putting him in a choke hold until he apologized. 

“Uh oh, you provoked him.” Reep laughed as Jacques barley managing to roll out of the way with a shriek.

“Come on guys, I was almost done!” Zoe whined.

Lyle paid her no mind as he and Jacques wrestled on the floor, both fighting for the upper hand. He felt no real anger, he had actually never been more happy in his life aside from the day of his proposal. There was so much joy and love in his heart that it was hard to contain it all, so it leaked out in the form of the wide smile on his aching face

“Lyle, come on!” Ayla shouted at him, but she didn't sound like herself at all. She sounded almost like-

Oh, Lyle suddenly thought as he pinned a laughing Jacques to the ground, this already happened, this isn't real either.

“Lyle. Lyle, come on, wake up!”

Lyle peeled his eyes open,  the simple gesture of it feeling like the hardest task he’s ever undertaken with each eyelid feeling as though it was weighed down by a thousand pounds. His skin felt pulled thin and scorched; even blinking tugged sharply on the sunburn he could feel developing. His throat was painfully dry, his mouth sticky and his lips cracked with dehydration. The tips of his fingers and toes tingled unpleasantly with pins and needles.

His vision came into focus and he found Querl’s terrified face hovering above him. Sunburn was beginning to settle onto his features as well, and there were tears running tracks through the blood and dust coating his face. Lyle could feel one of his hands cupping the side of his neck, his hip pressing into Lyle's own.

“Hi.” He croaked dumbly. Querl's features twisted up unpleasantly.

“He says ‘hi’. On death's doorstep and he says hi.” Querl said quietly. Despite his words his body sagged in relief. One of his hands was pressed down on Lyle's side, and strangely enough he couldn't even feel the pressure. 

“ ‘M not on death's doorstep.” The way that he slurred his words together really proved his point that he was a-okay.

“Right, and I'm president of the United Planets." Querl said sarcastically.

“And you never told me?” Lyle asked, pitifully trying to sound humorous.

“Shut it, would you. Sprocking smartnass.” Querl said, no real heat behind the words, a smile fighting to stay off of his face. He lifted his head and looked to his left. Lyle hazily followed his gaze and found the no longer flaming, but burnt beyond recognition, remains of what used to be their ship. Querl bit his lip, which was as cracked as Lyle's felt. They were both dehydrated.

“I wonder if there's anything of use still in there…” Querl muttered to himself.

“Pro’ly not.” Lyle slurred, blinking with monumental effort.

Querl gazed down at him with increasingly worried eyes. He licked a bit of blood from the dry lips he had split open from the biting and pursed them together tightly. He reached up and tucked a strand of Lyle's hair, stiffened with dried sweat, behind his ear. 

“I'm going to go check anyway, do not close your eyes, do you understand me?” Querl instructed. When Lyle took too long to answer and his hazy eyes drifted away, Querl grabbed his chin and forced their eyes to meet. “Do you understand, Lyle? You can't let yourself fall asleep, alright?”

“Alright…” Lyle muttered with a sigh. Querl was always so demanding, so bossy. He was lucky that Lyle liked it.

“Alright?” Querl emphasized.

“Alright.” Lyle grumbled.

Querl smoothed his hair out of his face and pecked him on the forehead. Lyle watched him go, disappearing into the same hole Lyle had dragged him out of not too long ago. Then, his eyes slipped shut.

“I just feel bad, you know?” Lyle stated, leaning his cheek into his palm. A fork was held between his fingers, the prongs tapping at his lips thoughtfully. A sweet taste lingered on his tongue, indistinguishable at this point after what felt like hours of eating sweet things. More specifically, after hours of taste testing different wedding cakes.

“You shouldn't.” Querl stated firmly around a mouthful of cake. He was enthusiastically eating the rest of the coffee and vanilla bean flavored cake, and Lyle couldn't help but smile warmly at the sight. He knew that was likely the cake they would end up choosing, but he also knew that they would try a dozen more cakes before the evening was through because Querl wanted to be sure that they chose the perfect one for the occasion.

“Well I do. It's supposed to be our wedding, and I feel like I'm hijacking it by having it be entirely Terran customs we're following.” Lyle explained. He stabbed a piece of neon blue cake and took a bite. It wasn't very good but he took another anyway. As much as he liked it, blue raspberry just wasn't a flavour that belonged in a cake. 

“Colu has no customs worth following. All of them are heavily entrenched in bureaucracy, none of it is fun and all of it is overbearingly boring. Now that I think about it, I'm not sure they would even recognize our marriage... In any case, I was hardly raised by them. I'm too far removed to care about any of their customs, let alone any of the ones that have to do with us and our future together. I don't want them to have a say in any of it.” Querl said with a long sigh. He slid the blue cake away from Lyle and towards himself, taking a bigger bite than Lyle had. He frowned at the taste, clearly also displeased, but he ate the rest anyway. 

“Alright,” Lyle said, leaving it at that. If Querl had already made up his mind on the matter, who was he to argue with him?

“Have you decided on a best man?” Querl asked past a mouthful of strawberry cake, which he was eating rather enthusiastically. 

“Jacques and Reep are going to duel for it.” Lyle said very seriously, trying to nab a bite of the strawberry cake as Querl put an arm down on the table to block his reach with a sickening level of greed.

“They’re not seriously, are they?” Querl asked, eyebrows raised.

“No, they are. We’ve got a date set up and everything. Best out of three sparring matches, winner gets to be my best man. Well, that’s what they think anyway. I already told them they can both do it but….” Lyle trailed off and shrugged. Querl laughed, hiding his face in his shoulder, Lyle took that moment to jab the cake and steal a bite while his fiancé wasn’t looking. “What about you?”

“The triplets. Gates was offered a place as well, but he is of the opinion that marriage is pointless and a waste of time. It’ll be a feat to get him to show up at all.” Querl said, shaking his head.

“He’ll show.” Lyle assured him. He licked the taste of strawberry from the inside of his mouth and hummed. He liked that one the best so far. Perhaps a half and half coffee-vanilla and strawberry cake then. “Even if he's not part of the wedding party, he’s your best friend and he knows it would mean a lot to you to have him there.”

“I wouldn’t want him to feel forced into anything he doesn't want to do.” Querl said, moving onto a square of dubiously green cake that even he hesitated before stabbing into. After trying it, though, he quickly cut off a piece and held it out to Lyle to try.

“He won’t feel forced.” Lyle promised, accepting the offered cake. As it turned out, the green cake was kiwi flavoured and quite good. Strawberry and Kiwi didn’t sound too bad of a cake. They might have to drop the coffee part, though. “He’ll grumble about it, but he’s happy for you. I bet he just wishes you had better taste in men.”

“Hey! Watch your mouth. That’s my fiancé you’re talking about.” Querl said, jabbing his fork scoldingly in Lyle’s direction.

Lyle laughed and took another bite of cake, but instead of the sweet kiwi tang from before there was just ash and an indescribable, foul flavour. His tongue felt thick in his dry mouth. He tasted an undertone of copper. 

Right, he thought bitterly as he set down his fork and closed his eyes.

He came to with a slap to the face. He groaned, turning his head away from the sting of the pain as he tried to peel his eyes open. They ached, but at the same time they didn’t. It was less of a pain and more of an exhaustion that he had long since come to associate with the feeling of dying from his years of legion work and the dozens of near death experiences he had under his belt. Not good. Not good at all.

When the cotton cleared from his head just a little and he managed to pull his eyes open enough to see Querl’s enraged face he had just enough energy to feel guilty as Querl’s panicked rambling suddenly filled his ears. 

“I told you to keep your eyes open, you sprocking nass!” He was saying. His hands were covered in blood, a smear of it on his lips and across his cheek joining the blood that was already on his face.

“Wha’ happened?” Lyle asked, reaching to clumsily try and wipe away the blood marring his beautiful face.

Querl grabbed his hand aggressively, but somehow still gently, and forced it back down by his side. “It’s yours, you sprocking moron.” He said, irritated.

“Oh.” He said dumbly, closing his eyes. He whined when Querl slapped his cheek again and forced his eyes open to glare at him.

“Don’t give me that look. You aren’t allowed to die on me, not yet.” Querl snapped. “I found a compression pad, but you lost a lot of blood and I can’t tell if you have any internal wounds. Do you think you can sit up? I found water, I want you to drink some.”

Lyle’s head spun at the deluge of information and then he nodded clumsily. With Querl’s help, he was able to sit up just enough to have some of the warm, stale water. It tasted like pure gold on his parched throat, clearing away the dust and lingering sourness. He wanted to take big, greedy gulps, but he had just enough lucidity to know that wouldn’t be wise. So, he allowed himself a few small sips before he was being laid back down. He felt winded just from that little bit of movement, wheezing with great strain as he gripped his chest weakly.

“Just breathe.” Querl said softly, and Lyle listened to the best of his abilities. “You- we just have to hold on until help comes to find us. You set off the emergency beacon, right?”

“Mhm.” Lyle hummed, struggling to breath through the pain in his chest. Fuzzy dots swam in his vision, black creeping into the edges.

“Great, then just keep holding on until they track us down. You can do that right?” 

Against his will, Lyle drifted off again before he ever got to respond.

“I just can’t believe I’m actually doing this, you know?” Lyle said.  He had his knees pulled up to his chest, his chin on his folded arms,

It was the night of his and Querl’s joint bachelors party, and he and Jacques were sitting together on the roof of the legion’s earth headquarters, where the festivities were taking place inside. Lyle had gone invisible and slipped out quietly, attempting to have a silent crisis where it wouldn’t bother anyone else or ruin the fun. Of course, Jacques, familiar with his habits, followed him out and perfectly predicted where he would go.

“Doing what? Getting married?” Jacques asked. His own legs were extended out in front of him, his arms braced behind him palms down as he gazed up at the stars. “It kinda felt like this was the inevitable ending for you and Querl. I mean, everyone knows how disgustingly in love you two are. It’s almost obnoxious.”

“I meant building a life.” Lyle replied.  “I mean, back when we were kids working with Earthgov, we were basically taught to remove everything about ourselves, to erase anything that could be used against us. We weren't supposed to be people. I never really thought I would have something like this, especially not after you…’died’. I thought I was content to spend the rest of my life alone and invisible, because I thought it would be safer that way. But now I… I have a family. I have you back. I’m getting married in a month. I never pictured something like this for myself.” 

He turned his head up to look at the stars himself. It had been thousands of years since Earth had fixed its light pollution, and he couldn’t imagine what it would be like to look up to the sky and not see the beauty of the sprawling cosmos before him. He felt like those skies, once polluted but now made clean. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like to look at his life and not have his loved ones there, shining brightly and lighting up his world. That thought had scared him more than he thought it would.

He shakily inhaled and turned his face away from the stars. He pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes and released the breath he had been holding. Jacques put a hand on his back, rubbing in slow circles.

“I understand better than you know,” He said, “Before you guys got me out of Earthgov’s hold, I thought I’d never get to live a normal life again. I thought I’d live and die as their puppet. But look at us, we both got out even if it took a few years and a lot of pain. And you’re getting married! So stop being so down. This is a time to be happy.”

Lyle took another deep breath to calm himself and then raised his head to smile at Jacques. 

“Yeah, you’re right.”

Jacques climbed to his feet and held out a hand to Lyle, who readily accepted it and allowed himself to be pulled to his feet.

“I told you already before; a coffee, kiwi, strawberry cake can totally work!” Jenni insisted. 

Lyle blinked and looked around the kitchen, his eyebrows drawn in confusion. In his hands was a whisk, below him a bowl of cream. He shook his head and got back to whisking.

“And I believe you, trust me I do.” Lyle said, “It’s just that we want the food to be coherent on their own. So, a layered strawberry and kiwi cake, and then the coffee cakes will be snacks on the sweets table.”

“I think that plan makes perfect sense.” Imra said. She was piping frosting onto a tray of cupcakes. Some of it had gotten on her face and in her hair, how, Lyle didn’t know. She rubbed at the white frosting with her shoulder, only succeeding in smearing it across her pink skin.

“Yeah, but where's your sense of adventure?” Jenni asked with a wistful  sigh.

Lyle opened his mouth to make a rebuttal and

“Couldn’t you have found a more sensible partner, Lyle? I mean, this one comes with so much, well, baggage." His mother said as she followed him into his bedroom. 

He breathed deeply through his nose to ward off his seething rage. He hadn’t seen his mother in nearly a decade, and here she was trying to dictate who he did and didn’t marry when she hadn't even been invited to the event. After ambushing him in his own apartment unannounced no less! He tried to ignore her as he dug through his closet for something to wear after his shower, but the jab at Querl’s past was too much to brush off.

“I don’t see how that’s any of your business.” He said with the very same faux politeness that she had taught him to use when he was just a child. It was one of the only things she had ever given him.

“It is my business because I am your mother!” She said, affronted.

“Some mother you are, you barely had a hand in raising me at all.” He snapped at her, forcefully closing his closet with a bang. She jumped back, eyes wide with shock and anger.

A shouting match broke out almost instantly, their words overlapping as blood pressures rose to great heights. At some point, she slapped him, but he barely felt the sting of it over the pounding of his heart and the rush of blood through boiling veins.

“You ungrateful little-!”

“What do I even have to be ungrateful for-?!”

“Querl, come to bed.” Lyle called out, voice groggy with sleep. It was the middle of the night, the only light in the room coming from the floating lamp at Querl’s desk.

“I will, just as soon as I finish these notes.” Querl called out softly to him, not looking up from his work.

“That will take all night, just come and get some rest. I’m lonely over here without you.” Lyle said. 

“I think you’ll survive a little bit of solitude.” Querl dismissed. Despite his words, though, he set his pen down, stood, and cracked his back before making his way over to the bed.

“Rude, “ Lyle pouted as he opened up his arms to accept Querl into his embrace. He kissed Querl’s temple as his fiance let out a content sigh. Lyle snuggled into the warmth and let himself fall asleep almost instantly. He still couldn’t believe that

“Do you really want to go on this mission?” Jazmin asked skeptically as she handed Lyle the mission report. “Your wedding is in just a few days, what if you don’t make it back in time?”

“Come on, me and Brainy have been at this for years now. I think we can handle one little mission together to gather some fungal cultures from a nowhere planet that has no dangerous flora or fauna.” Lyle said with a scoff and a roll of his eyes.

“I mean, yeah, you’re capable. I just know how both of you are.” Jazmin said, eyes now alight with amusement. “One interesting bit of science we didn’t account for and you two are there studying until you’ve overstayed and missed your own wedding.”

“Oh, come on, sprock off.” Lyle said, smacking Jazmin in the shoulder with the papers. Jazmin raised her hands in defeat and laughed.

“Hey! I’m just saying!” She defended himself.

“Yeah, well say less.” Lyle retorted.

“In all seriousness, though, you two be careful. I’ve heard rumors of a shifting debris field in the system.

“Seriously, Jazmin, we’ll be fine.” Lyle said seriously. “You worry too much.”

“Someone has to do the worrying around here.” Jazmin said, wagging her finger in Lyle’s face. Lyle furrowed his brow, feeling off.

“We…already had this conversation, didn’t we?” Lyle asked. 

“Yes,” Jazmin said, eyes mournful.

For what felt like the millionth time, Lyle opened his eyes to see that burning, orange sky above them. He looked to his side with great effort.  On his right lay the empty water bottle and some packaging for the compress patch on his side, along with a horrific stain of blood that spread out from under him. On his left lay Querl, curled up into his side with his head resting on Lyle’s chest. Beyond Querl's shoulder, he could see scraps and salvaged tools, clueing him into the fact that he had been trying to make something that could help them survive or send for help. It was obvious that he had given up and lost hope long ago.

How long had they been here? He couldn’t be sure anymore. He didn’t think this planet even had a day-night cycle so there was no way of telling. It could have been days, or weeks. Certainly not longer than that, but it felt like an eternity.

“We’re going to die here, aren’t we?” Querl said. His voice was rough and barely above a whisper. The wind blew past them, dragging on their painfully burnt skin as it went. Lyle blinked some sand out of his eyes.

“They could still find us.” He croaked back, voice equally as rough.

“You know that they won’t.” Querl said. He fisted his hand in the fabric of Lyle’s suit and he felt hot tears soak into his collarbone. He wanted to scold him about wasting water, but he knew that Querl was probably right. It wouldn’t matter how much water he wasted. They were going to die out here. Lyle himself already felt scraped raw and worn out. There wasn’t much they could do now but be there for each other until the very end.

“It’s not fair.” Querl sobbed into his chest. “It just isn’t fair. After all we’ve been through, something as trivial as an asteroid field is what finally does us in? Why aren’t we allowed even the barest hint of happiness? We were supposed to get married. We were supposed to spend the rest of our lives together.”

Lyle fumbled to put his hand on his own chest, struggling to grasp at Querl’s hand. When his fiancé realized what he was doing, he quickly gripped Lyle's hand and squeezed his fingers tightly, as if he was afraid to let go.

“We’re still spending the rest of our lives together, it’s just that…We have less time than we thought we would.” Lyle said past the whistling wheeze in his chest.

“It’s just not fair.” Querl whispered again, and Lyle found that he couldn’t find it in himself to refute that. It wasn’t fair. None of it was. The indignity of it burned in his chest before fizzling out. He just didn’t have the energy to waste on being angry or sad anymore.

“How did you imagine our wedding going?” He asked instead.

“I imagined you tripping on your train when entering the dance hall.” Querl said very seriously. Lyle choked on a laugh that turned into a wheezing cough. 

“What?” He wheezed. “Why?”

“It…helped me not to be so nervous, imagining something silly like that happening. You would trip, then Mr and Mrs. Foccart would help you stand up right, and you would turn to me with your face red from embarrassment, but still so happy to see me on the other end of the dance floor.” Querl explained. Lyle chuckled, blinking the black dots out of his vision. “You would be invisible minus your clothes for the entire first dance because you would get shy. You would say something stupid and I would get angry, but it would make me want to kiss you even more.”

“And then we’d dance to one of my corny earth songs.” Lyle said. “While everyone watched, we would dance, but I wouldn’t be invisible because...because we’d be in our own world and nothing but us would matter. You’d still step on my feet like you’ve done a mi-million times before even though I know you know all the dances, and I’d tease you about it.”

“And I’d stomp on your toes harder out of spite.” Querl said with a scoff of a laugh, which got a giggle out of Lyle.

He could feel his energy dwindling, his body growing cold despite the heat of the burning planet. Breathing was becoming harder by the minute, and his hands and feet were fully numb at this point. His vision was tunneling, his hearing fading in and out like he was putting on and taking off a pair of noise cancelling headphones.

“Both…Both of our social batteries. “ He paused to take a shaky breath. “Would die long before the end of the wedding and….:

“And we would ditch it before it was over.” Querl finished for him. “All of those idiots would have still been celebrating our union and we wouldn’t even be there anymore.”

“Where would we go?” Lyle asked breathlessly. His vision was fully black now, and he was trying not to panic about it. All that was left was his slowing heartbeat thumping in his ears, his own whistling breath, and Querl’s soft voice in the darkness.

“We’d find somewhere outside where there were no other people, and we would dance again. Just you and me. Maybe you would hum one of your songs, and it would be a simple dance, no stepped on toes involved. Then we’d lay in the grass, count the stars, and have a sappy heart to heart about our future together. How does that sound?

.

.

.

“…Lyle?”

“....yeah…i’m here…” He whispered. He was so cold.

“How does it sound?” Querl prompted.

“It sounds…wonderful…” He answered. “Querl?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t go.” He pleaded

“I’ll stay right here until the very end. The rest of our lives, that’s what we said isn’t it? I’ll stay, however long that is and more.” Querl reassured him.

“I love you, Querl.”  He breathed out with the last of his strength. 

“I love you, Lyle.” Querl said, his voice fading out as Lyle faded away.

Through the dark abysm came a rush of frenzied, burning air over his entire body, dust whipping around him. He heard a flurry of screaming voices, a gentle murmur of reassurance. He felt a burst of energy and mind numbing pain. More darkness. A soft feeling surrounding his body, a pleasant warmth weighing him down. Hands in his hair, fingers interlaced in his own. Laughter. Crying. Annoyed exclamations. A voice, one he would be able to pick out of the overlap of noises and sensations without fail every time.

“Lyle?” 

Querl couldn't even remember where the argument began or why it began. One thing led to another, escalated as it always did, and they had been at each other's throats for almost an hour now. It had been inevitable, really. They were both stressed and both beyond tired, having just returned from an away mission and immediately been sent back into the labs to solve yet another problem that seemingly couldn’t fall on anyone else (though they all knew that wasn’t true, Querl and Lyle had both trained replacements that were more than capable enough to do anything they could). 

Because of this, the tensions in the lab were already high. All it took was one snide remark, or one rude comment, one untoward look, or even just one wrong intake of breath and their tempers were flaring and exploding on each other. It didn’t matter what had caused it; they were fighting.

Even as Querl was throwing himself down in his chair at his own workstation on the other end of the lab, he began to regret the harsh words he had spat at his lover. He planted his elbows on the surface and hung his head into his hands with a deep sign that expelled the last bit of anger from his body. He was left with just the slimy feeling of guilt and the heavy, oppressive silence that now hung over the lab. 

He should go and apologize. A glance over his shoulder showed him Lyle in a similar state, his back to Querl and his shoulders drawn up. That pose either meant that he was still fuming mad, or he was crying, but Querl was inclined to believe there were no tears. Lyle hated being seen crying, especially when he was mad. He would usually go invisible and hide himself away to avoid being seen pretty soon after the first tears fell. So, angry it was then.

A twinge of annoyance that he was the one to calm down first passed through him and he turned back around with a huff, crossing his arms and slouching into his chair like a petulant child.

Self doubt swam in his heart. He knew that he wasn't an entirely pleasant person to be around. Nearly a lifetime of being reminded of this fact had made it all too easy to be aware of. He couldn't help but fear that Lyle would one day grow tired of him. It was an especially harrowing thought since Lyle wouldn't have many years left sooner rather than later; they were both in the early years of their seventies, which was nothing for Querl, but was a little over half of Lyle's life span.

Things were different when they were younger, fresh, with more years ahead of them than they knew what to do with. It was easy to think back then that they would have forever; all the time in the galaxy to sort out petty fights, hurt feelings, and misunderstandings. As the years went by Querl couldn't help but realize just how much precious time arguments ate away at.

He remembered now what they had been arguing about in the first place. They had hit a road block when it came to their longevity experiments; they weren't getting anywhere and it was starting to look like they wouldn't be able to do anything to extend Lyle's lifespan past what was biologically already possible, not with the limited amount of time they had left to work with.

Is that really such a bad thing? Lyle had asked. 

Yes, yes it really was such a bad thing. It was something that was almost unfathomable in how bad it was. Querl would rather die himself than have to live for centuries alone without the love of his life by his side. He thought Lyle shared the sentiment, but clearly he had been mistaken. Perhaps he truly had become sick of Querl…

No sooner than the thought crossed his mind did a soft, melodic tune began to play in the lab.

Querl slowly turned his chair around, his arms dropping from where they were crossed. Lyle was standing by the main console of the super computer, tapping away at something. That was where the music was coming from. He had put on one of his ancient Earth love songs that he adored so much. When he turned to face Querl his remorseful eyes were red rimmed, and his cheeks were flushed. He had been crying, he had simply trusted Querl enough to let him see it.

When Lyle pushed himself away from the computer and started in the direction of Querl’s work station, he stood to meet him halfway.

“Dance with me?” Lyle asked when they stopped in front of each other, a foot apart. He held a hand out to Querl, hesitant but expecting.

He didn't have to apologize, and he wasn't expecting one from Querl either. They were long past the need for words, this was enough for both of them.

Querl didn't hesitate before taking the offered hand, their fingers interlacing like they had countless times before. He let himself be pulled into a slow waltz, his hand on Lyle's shoulder while Lyle's found itself on Querl's ribs. With each slow, dizzy step they took he felt his heart beat slow and his doubts melt away.

He stroked Lyle's cheek, feeling the prickly stubble of his shadow before he reached up to thumb away a residual tear from below his eye. Lyle leaned into the touch, pressing a kiss onto the spot where Querl's wrist met his hand.

Eventually they went from waltzing to simply holding each other as they swayed back and forth. Lyle laid his cheek against Querl's collarbone, his arms wrapped around his waist. Querl put his arms around his shoulders and leaned the side of his head against the crown of Lyle's, squeezing his eyes closed to fight off the tears that were sure to fall. He inhaled the scent of his cinnamon shampoo on his hair, which was more white than brown now at his age. His breath stuttered with the weight of his grief and those damned tears escaped against his will.

“I'm tired, Querl.” Lyle said against his collar. “I'm just so sprocking tired all the time.”

And Querl could hear it in his rough, scratchy voice that he well and truly was. It was a bone deep kind of exhaustion that weighed down his body and burdened his mind. Even now, Querl could feel him sagging in his hold. He just wasn't made for long days in the labs anymore.

“I still want to live out the rest of my life with you by my side, don't doubt that for a second, but I'm too old to be doing this any longer. I don't want to be chasing this wild goose right into my grave when I could be spending my last years happy.” Lyle continued on, his grip on Querl tightening while his voice shook.

“What do you want me to do? Tell me and I'll do it.” Querl said, voice equally as rough.

“I want to quit, both of us. I want to spend the rest of my time not working, and I want you to be there with me. We won't stop experimenting and exploring, that's not in our nature, but now it'll just be for us, for fun. We've both made our contributions to science and the universe, we’ve made our difference. We deserve some peace and rest, I think we've earned it.” Lyle said. It was clear he had put some thought into this and that it wasn't just an idea born out of frustration and exhaustion.

“Done.” Querl said firmly and instantly. His heart was breaking right out of his chest at the thought of abandoning their research, at the thought of Lyle dying because of it, but if this was truly what his love wanted then he would do everything in his power to make sure he got it.

“Thank you.” Lyle breathed out a sigh of relief, his breath warm and alive against Querl's chest. 

“Can I ask just one more thing of you?” Lyle asked after a moment.

“Anything. For you, anything.” Querl said resolutely.

In the background the song changed from one to another. Lyle pulled away from him a bit, just enough for their eyes to meet. Lyle had a furrow between his brows as he moved to hold Querl's shoulders, as if he didn't want him to try and escape what was to come next.

“Can you promise to keep living even after I'm gone?” He asked. Querl's eyes widened and his heart skipped a beat. Leave it to Lyle Dox-Norg to ask the impossible of him.

“Lyle -” He tried to protest, shaking his head, but he was cut off by a finger against his lips. He ignored the childish urge to bite it.

“I'm serious here, Querl. More serious than I've ever been. You have to keep living without me. You have so much more ahead of you. Just because I don't doesn't mean you have to throw the rest of the life you have away.” Lyle said firmly.

Overwhelmed by the unfairness of it all, Querl crushed Lyle back against his chest. He took a shuddering, painful breath and sobbed it out. It's not fair it's not fair it's not fair, every track in his mind repeated this line again and again on a loop as if it could change the fact. Maybe because it couldn't change it.

How was he to both abandon his search for more time, and accept a reality in which Lyle would no longer exist? How could he do both? How could he go on living?

Lyle hugged him back, hand rubbing up and down the length of his spine. He let him cry for some time until they ended up in a heap on the floor. They reversed their previous positioning, with Querl being the one who had his ear to Lyle's chest, listening to the sound of his heartbeat thumping strongly.

Not yet, he thought, not yet. He still had Lyle now, they still had a little bit of time left. He had to remind himself of that to stop himself from fully breaking apart.

“I promise.” Querl conceded after his crying quieted down.

“I love you.” Lyle said, pressing a kiss onto his temple.

“And I, you.” Querl whispered in return. “For this lifetime and a thousand more.”

Her eyes scanned over the expensive room and the haughty people gallivanting around in it, eating their expensive food and wearing their expensive clothes with their expensive hair and makeup done to perfection. Who were these people even showing off to with all this extravagance? Pointless, that's what all of this was, it was pointless.

As subtly as she could possibly manage, she shifted in her uncomfortably tight pant suit. It was a mini version of the same mauve suit her own mother was wearing, but in a shade of navy blue, and it was the most dreadful piece of clothing she had ever worn. The stupid thing had given her a wedgy hours ago and it was driving her mad because she couldn't do anything about it. She also barely resisted the urge to scratch the itch on her scalp, lest she ruin the updo mother had spent an absurd amount of money to have done for her.  She didn’t care about it, but she knew that mother did.

She still didn’t understand why she was forced to come to these things when mother knew she hated them. Every time she asked, no, begged, to stay home, it was always the same excuse. Always something about “keeping up images” and “this party is the most important by far” or whatever. How every single party they went to could somehow be more important than the last was beyond Tinya.

She sighed again, louder this time, wishing she could go home. She downed the juice in one go, frowning at the flat taste. Not even the food was worth anything. Maybe she should pretend that it had made her sick-

“Boring, isn’t it?” A lispy voice asked from behind her.

Tinya squeaked in surprise and whipped around to find a human kid that had to be around her age standing behind her chair. Their hands were behind their back and they had a mischievous smile on their face as they leaned closer to her. They were missing one of their front teeth - obviously the source of the lisp - and their messy, brown hair looked like it had been gelled back at one point during the night.  Now, it instead fell in front of their brown eyes in wild tangles. The black tux they were wearing was neat aside from the way the tie was tugged loose and sloppy (Tinya couldn’t blame them, ties were so uncomfortable).

But the one thing that stood out to her was the fact that she had never seen this human before. In fact, she doesn’t think she’s ever seen any human at one of these events before in general. They didn’t typically like to leave their planet for political meetings, far too paranoid of the wider galaxy's intentions. Maybe this human was the reason this party was so important? 

“Did I scare you?” The human kid asked, their eyes crinkling at the corner as their smile deepened. They had a mole at the corner of their left eye, Tinya noted absentmindedly.

“No! You just…surprised me.” She said defensively, crossing her arms and turning away from them to keep watching the party around her to try and distract herself form the slight embarrassment she felt at being startled so easily.

“That’s just a fancy way of saying 'yes'.” The kid said as they pulled out the chair across to her, slouching into it and sloppily sprawling their upper body across the table to steal food off of her plate in a way that would surely give her mother a heart attack if Tinya were to conduct herself with a similar lack of manners. Tinya found herself wishing she possessed the confidence and lack of care that this kid displayed. It was almost impressive. 

“Believe whatever you want to.” Tinya said in an airy tone, planting her cheek back into the palm of her hand. She was so bored she could just about die.

“I’m Lyle, I’m the Norg’s son. What's your name?” The kid, Lyle, asked. She turned her body to look at him. It was only polite to face someone when they were speaking to you after all. He had sat up slightly more straight and he now held a small pouch in his hands, fiddling with the elastic ties. She wondered what was inside. She tore her gaze away from it to meet his eyes as she answered his question.

“I’m Tinya, Tinya Wazzo. That’s my mom,” She said, pointing to her mother on the other side of the room. Her mom caught sight of the action and gave them a small wave before returning to her conversation, champagne glass lazily sloshing in her hands. “She’s the ambassador of Bgztl.”

“Wow, ambassador is such a fancy title. My parents are just earth senators. I don’t even know why we’re here if I am being honest.” Lyle said. His eyes scanned around the gala hall, presumably looking  for his parents. He stole another snack from her plate. "I didn't know we were coming until an hour before the event."

“I think my mom takes me to these things as, like, a lesson I guess. Like, she’s trying to teach me how to do her job. Which is dumb because I don’t want to do it, but she doesn’t listen to me when I tell her. Maybe your parents brought you for a similar reason?” She suggested with a shrug.

“I don’t think so. I rarely ever see them outside of work and they definitely don’t talk about it to me. I don’t want to be a politician anyway, they make my skin crawl. I prefer science way more.” Lyle said, now throwing the tiny bag back and forth in his hands.

“Science?” She asked, intrigued. In class, she had only just begun learning about photo-scientist, or whatever it is plants do in the sun. She hadn’t paid much attention, far more interested by the Bgztlian anatomy section of the textbook. She had gotten in trouble for reading ahead and being unable to answer one of the teachers questions, but it had been worth it. Why should she care about plants when she could learn about which organs allowed her to go intangible and phase through solids.

“Chemistry specifically. I’m an aspiring chemist you know. Some even say that I’m a prodigy” He said, fiddling with the strings of the bag again like he couldn't quite decide if he wanted to open it or not. 

“I don’t even know what that means,” Tinya replied truthfully.

Suddenly an even more devious smile spread across his face and he tossed the bag into the air one more time, catching in one hand.

“Do you want to see one of my experiments in action?” He asked. Tinya got this sinking feeling in her gut that told her saying yes to him would spell only disaster, and it was because of this that she let a grin of her own creep its way onto her face. Maybe whatever he had in store would finally make the party less boring.

“Yes!” She exclaimed, suddenly unable to contain her excitement as she nodded enthusiastically.

He jumped out of his chair and grabbed her hand, pulling her up from her own chair. She tried to stifle her excitement as he led her over to the buffet table that she had gotten her food from earlier. It was loaded to the brim with a colourful array of delicacies from every planet in attendance, some of it edible to her, some of it not. The smell was a nauseating mixture of mouthwateringly good and stomach churningly disgusting. 

They stopped in front of the punch bowl and Lyle held a finger up to his lips, shushing her as he looked around to make sure no one was watching the two of them. When he thought it was safe, he pulled his hand away from hers and pulled that little bag out of his pocket, where she hadn’t even realized it had disappeared into. 

He tugged the strings open, took another glance around the room, and then dumped the entire contents into the bowl of punch. A handful of yellow flakes hit the red liquid and dissolved almost instantly. He grabbed her hand again and then pulled her to hide behind a table a few rows down. 

“What was that?” Tinya asked.

“Soap,” He said simply.

“Soap?” She repeated, confused. What were soap flakes going to do? And for that matter, what in the wide galaxies was he doing carrying around a bag full of them?

“I was bored the other day, so I was trying to invent a soap that would work for every species. Ideally it would be usable for individuals with sensitive skin, and it would also be antibacterial, scentless, and have a nice lather. The market stuff is decent, but it's just not cutting it, you know? Anyway, this particular prototype I had to scrap, because I found that when you use it in too high of a quantity it tends to have a…let's just say, bad reaction to liquids and it-well, see for yourself.” Lyle said gesturing with his chin towards the punch bowl.

She followed his gaze back, feeling a little underwhelmed, but then her eyes widened as the punch began to bubble, slowly at first and then quickly. Bubbles soon began to spill over the rim of the bowl in thick, frothy waves that grew and grew until the whole table and all of the food there was covered in them. She could hear a loud hissing even from 5 tables down. 

By now people's attention were drawn to the scene, as it was growing increasingly hard to ignore. Horror was mixing with confusion the more froth that bubbled out of the punch bowl. One brave man inched closer to the table, trying to figure out why the punch was bubbling so angrily, only to be caught right in the crossfire just as the punch decided to erupt like a volcano. Bubbles exploded violently into the air, splattering directly on the middle of the ceiling before raining down on the party goers in thick clumps.

A cacophony of screams filled the space as those who were closest to the table were doused in the soapy fruit punch. Tinya shrieked as clumps of it even landed in her own hair. People ran to the aid of those who took a direct hit to make sure they weren’t harmed. Their efforts were for nothing, however, as this only led to them slipping and falling on the bubbles, which were still spilling from the bowl, but at a rate that was becoming slower and slower by the minute. At least three people were on their stomachs, flailing about in the thick froth as others tried to help them up, only to fall on top of them on the messy floor. Makeup and hair were ruined, clothes stained and sticky. Egos thoroughly bruised.

What Lyle had inflicted upon the party was a horrible, horrible, hilarious mess.

Beside her Lyle had bits of soap in his hair, the red of the fruit punch staining the white dress shirt he wore under his blazer. His eyes were shinning with maniacal glee at the chaos he had caused. He held booths hands clamped over his mouth, trying in vain to stop his hysterical giggles from escaping. She bit her lips and fisted her hands in her pants to stifle a similar laugh. This had definitely made the night much more fun. She was almost glad that she had been forced to come now.

Her smile slipped, however, as she caught sight of her mother making her way over to them, face angry and steps purposeful. That was never a good look to see on her. Something told Tinya she was undoubtedly grounded after this fiasco.

“Uh oh, here comes my mom.” She muttered to Lyle, whose smile also dropped, a disappointed pout making its way onto his face. They both stood to face the noise, heads hanging. He hid slightly behind her as if to disappear, peaking around Tinya to watch her mom get closer. Tinya didn't have time to feel offended that he was using her as a shield, because before they knew it her mother was on them.

Her mother stopped in front of the two of them, grabbed Tinya by the upper arm, and then did the same to Lyle, pulling him out from behind of her daughter. Tinya could see how hard her mother’s jaw was clenched, her teeth grinding together. There was a hearty red flush on the apples of her cheeks, whether that be from rage or embarrassment, Tinya couldn’t be sure. It was likely that it was both.

“Tinya Wazzo, just what did the two of you do to the punch?” She asked, hissing the question from between her teeth. 

“Uum, would you believe me if I said nothing?” Tinya asked meekly. She swore she saw a vein twitch in her mother’s forehead.

“No.” She answered. Blunt, sharp, and straight to the point.

“It was just soap, jeez…” Lyle muttered under his breath, tugging at his arm in her mother’s grip.

“Speak up when you talk, young man, this is a serious matter!” Her mother snapped. 

Lyle’s pout hardened into a glare, returning the ambassador's nasty look with as much vitriol as his tiny, baby fat softened face could muster. He proceeded to stick his tongue out at her and blow a raspberry as hard as he could. He used her momentary shock to rip his arm away. He ducked away from all of her attempts to grab him again and danced away. He stopped behind one of the tables, gave Tinya a cheeky smile and a wave, and told her “See you later, Tinya!” before running off and disappearing into the still disorientated crowd.

Tinya winced as the full brunt of her mother’s ire was directed at her. They held each others gaze for a moment, Tinya’s heart racing in her chest, before the anger in her mother's eyes fizzled out into a resigned disappointment. She gave a deep sigh and let go of her daughter's arm. She instead took her by the shoulder and began leading her to a group of sudsy people, who all wore expressions fit to kill.

“You are going to apologize to all of these people, and you are going to stay away from that boy in the future, do you understand me?” Her mother whisper-hissed into her ear as they pulled to a stop in front of the fuming party goers. “I said, do you understand me?”

“Yes, mother…” She muttered, though she hardly meant it.

As Tinya bowed down at the waist and profusely apologized, she couldn’t help but peak behind herself in an attempt to catch sight of Lyle one more time. She got the feeling that this would not be the last she saw of the trouble making human, and the thought made a small smile twitch at the corners of her lips.

Read it here as well.

It had been a few months, close to five now, since the extent of Loki's situation had come to light and he made the move to live with them. Harald was once again gone, away on one of his diplomatic missions. He had wanted nothing more than to stay with them and be with his sons, to help fix this mess they had found themselves in, but he still had a country to run, connections to make, a dream to see into fruition. Besides, Ida had assured him she was more than capable of taking care of their boys on her own until he made his return.

And truthfully, things had been going good. Loki was settling in… Ida wouldn't say well, but he was settling in. The road was still rough and bumpy, but as the days went by he grew more and more comfortable in the home he had been invited into, and the tension bled from his shoulders with each passing hour they all spent together. He was lashing out a lot less than he used to. No longer did he feel the need to terrorize the townspeople, instead keeping his distance from them. And them, from him, but that was a problem for another day.

He was also spending less of his time in the Underworld, only going to speak and play with those animal friends of his on occasion. Not to mention, the boys were finally getting used to each other enough to not fight every chance they could - only every other chance. Loki had even began playing with Hajrudin and his friends amicably.

Yes, things were going well.

So why was it that Ida was suddenly wide awake in her bed.

She stared up at the ceiling in the darkness, squinting her eyes uselessly as she worked through why she might be awake, fingers absentmindedly tapping against her own sternum while she ran through her mental list. She wasn't in pain, nor was she feeling poorly in any way. There were no funny smells or noises that she noticed. She didn't sense any haki, and she didn't have a bad feeling, just the feeling that she should be awake right now. Like she needed to get up and do something, but what, she didn't know just yet. 

She pushed her covers aside and stood, bare feet making contact with the cold ground. The autumn air as she moved through her room was cool enough to raise gooseflesh along her arms, but just pleasant enough that she felt no need to grab a covering to keep herself warm. Her nightgown swayed against her ankles, the fabric making a rustling sound in the near total silence of the night. She heard only the sound of the wind whistling past the house and the chirp of a few crickets as she softly pushed her bedroom door open and began searching through the house for what could have possibly woken her. The moonlight shining in through the windows was bright enough to guide her way.

Kitchen and dining room clear, sitting room clear, Hajrudin sleeping safely in bed and not running a fever, Loki-

Loki's bed was empty. The sheets were rumpled and his quilt was half hanging off of the bed, as if he had thrown it off violently. A glass of water was knocked over on the tiny bedside table, still dripping onto the floor with a quiet plip plip plip sound. His wolf plush, which she had gifted him a few months ago, was against the wall, limp on the floor; it had evidently also been tossed. 

She furrowed her brow and bit her lip. A nightmare, if she had to guess. That just left the question of where her boy ran off to if he wasn't in the house. She really hoped it wasn't the Underworld. She would really prefer not running the risk of getting eaten by Loki's monster friends in her efforts to bring him home.

She walked to the front door and pushed it open, peaking her head out into the cold night. It was enough to make her shiver and nearly retreat to grab a robe to wrap herself in, but then she spotted Loki sitting against the tree in their front yard. He was curled up tight, legs pulled to his chest and head buried in his knees, which he had his arms wrapped tightly around. His shoulders were shaking, jostling up and down in a way that could only suggest tears. Not for the first time, and certainly not the last, Ida's heart ached for him.

The idea of seeking warmer clothes left her mind entirely as she stepped onto the wooden porch and closed the door softly behind her before making her way over to Loki. The grass was cold, soft, and damp beneath her feet and her breath misted before her. She rubbed her arms for warmth. 

When she reached him, she let her soft voice whisper into the night, “Loki, sweetheart, what are you doing out here?”

The shaking in his shoulders halted and he sniffled loudly. He wiped a wrist across his unbandaged, but tightly closed, eyes and turned his head to the side so she couldn't see his face. His hair, down from its usual style like her own was, hung around his knees as he did so.

“None of your business, hag.” He muttered with not even half of his usual gusto. He sounded tired, sad.

She sat down beside him, the cold dew seeping into the bottom of her dress uncomfortably. He was getting taller and taller each day, already reaching almost halfway to her shoulders when they stood beside one another. The kid would outgrow her one-day soon. She carefully and gently laid a hand on his cold, pajama clad back, rubbing slow circles into it. 

At first he tensed up, taking a sharp inhale through his nose. A noise escaped his throat as though he was going to tell her off, but then he relaxed into her touch, leaning into it. A whimper escaped him and he began to cry again.

She made a wounded sound herself and said, “why don't we go back inside, baby?”

Sniffling, Loki nodded with a hiccup and let himself be pulled to his feet by her gentle hands. She kept a hand on one of his shoulders as she guided him up the steps and inside of the house. He turned down the offer of something warm to drink once the door closed behind them, tugging the long strands of his pink hair down in front of his eyes with nervous fingers, so she instead led him to his room.

She fixed the sheets and pulled the quilt back, gesturing for him to lay down, and when he did she pulled it up to his armpits and tucked it around him, making sure he was nice and snug in the covers. Then she retrieved his wolf from the ground and tucked it safely under his arm. She sat down on his bed by his hip. He turned his head away from her, eyes closed with a furrow between his brows.

“Do you want to tell me why you were out there?” She asked and then added. “You won't be in trouble no matter what the reason is.”

“... Couldn't sleep.” He muttered. 

“Did you have a nightmare, sweetie?” She asked. He didn't verbally respond, only giving her a tight nod after a moment of silence. She pondered for a moment before asking. “Was it because your dad's not here?"

"Tch, I don't need the old man around. I'm not a baby." Loki snapped, turning his back fully to her and hiking the blanket up to his tensed shoulders. He squeezed the wolf plush so hard she thought it's head might pop right off.

"Babies aren't the only ones who need help sleeping, you know." She pointed out. "There's no shame in needing a little help from time to time, even with something as simple as falling asleep."

"...What does it matter anyway. He's not here." He said after a moment, shoulders drooping.

"I'm here, though. Is there anything you think I could do to help you sleep?" She asked. He shrugged unhelpfully and stayed quiet. "Do you want me to sing for you?”

He turned to her at that. His eyes were still closed, but his brow was scrunched in confusion. He asked, “Sing for me? For what reason?”

She hummed, “Well, a lullaby always puts Hajrudin right to sleep, and I used to love when my momma would sing me to sleep as a girl. It has a knack for chasing away any of the nasty demons that haunt your dreams.”

Loki considered it for a moment, his face softening in thought. He nodded, more enthusiastically this time. She chuckled softly before moving up to sit beside his pillow. He turned his body towards her and curled up tightly around the plush in his arms, his face pressed into it's soft fur while his horns pressed into her hip.

“Can I pet your hair?” She asked, being met with another enthusiastic nod.

Her right hand planted itself atop his head, her fingers working into the strands to lightly scratch his scalp before carding down through the pink length. She repeated the process as the lullaby left her lips. She sang in a low tone, quiet enough to not wake Hajrudin in the other room but loud enough to carry through Loki's. She closed her eyes and let the song take over.

She sang of a boy, a young warrior who was strong and who was loved. She sang of his friends and his triumphs, his sorrows and his hardships. She sang of distant adventures full of laughter and joy and love, and of weathering the storm when things become hard. She sang of a happy ending.

Her soft voice petted off on a long, low note that lingered even after she was finished. The room was once again silent, Loki fast asleep. His face was slank, relaxed as he visited the land of dreams. There were sticky tear tracks down his cheeks, which she wiped away with gentle thumbs, but he now looked to be at peace.

Ida smiled fondly as she brushed a strand of hair behind his ear and leaned down to press the softest of kisses to the center of his forehead.

“Sleep well, my love ” She muttered into the quiet room as she moved to stand. She fussed with his blankets one more time, properly tucked the plush into his arms, and was off, heading back to her own room to sleep as well.

She slipped back into her sheets and was out like a light the instant her head hit her pillow, a satisfied smile on her face. 

TWs: semi-graphic child abuse, very minor references to drugs, violence, depression, implied sexual harassment/noncon, sexism, and implied racism. To skip the parts with graphic abuse it starts at "It started small" and ends at "she had nowhere to go". I put asterisks at the start of both sentences for easy navigation.

As a child Cassie had been a tomboy. At least, that is the label that had been slapped onto her for as long as she could remember. To herself, she was just Cassie, and there was nothing more to it.

She had wore her hair short for as long as she could remember, not only because it was easier to manage, but also because she simply liked the way she looked when it was like that. She refused to wear anything that couldn’t get torn up and dirty with rough play. It wasn't that she didn't like them (though that was a small  part of the reason), but rather because they would inevitably be destroyed in one way or another. She couldn’t count on both hands and feet the amount of pretty clothes her mother bought her that were promptly ruined; dirt soiled and full of holes torn open on concrete and playground gravel. 

She had always been a very loud and opinionated little girl, with an attitude to match. She always stood up for herself and she took shit from no one. She was one of those kids that wasn’t afraid to shove other kids down on the playground if they messed with her. That garnered her a reputation as quite the little bully from a very young age, despite the fact that she was rarely the one to start any of the fights she got into. Her mom was a mixture of supportive and exasperated her whole childhood. She never had a problem with Cassie defending herself. However, in her words, she wished Cassie would "be more mature with the way she went about it". Whatever that meant.

Cassie was confident in who she was right up until the moment she entered  high school, where she was suddenly hit with a sense of self consciousness so strong that she felt like curling up into a tiny, little ball and letting the earth swallow her whole, never to be seen again. The judgmental eyes of her peers felt like a thousand little bugs crawling across the expanse of the skin she didn't exactly feel like she fit into anymore. 

She looked and acted too “boyish” in the eyes of her peers, though she never had understood what they meant by that. All she knew was that it marked her as someone to look down on, someone to target. 

They didn’t like her short hair, or her baggy jeans and the hand-me-down shirts that she wore. They turned their noses up at her high-tops, which were dirty and worn down from years of use and love, her laces more brown and grey compared to the pristine white of their own.

They especially hated her loud voice, her strong opinions. She could feel it in the way their eyes tracked her every move, piercing into her like shards from a broken mirror whenever she so much as opened her mouth. They didn’t like that she was so bold as to stand up for herself, and they did not like that she spat vitriol right back at boys who were looking for nothing more than the opportunity to tear a woman down. They especially didn’t like that she made boys keep their hands to themselves and fought back when they didn’t. She once got suspended for delivering a strong right hook to the jaw of a boy who pinched her on the ass. People stayed away from her after that, but she heard what they said about her. The whispers of her being an overly aggressive, frigid bitch were hard to miss, and even harder to ignore. It only served to further chip away at her self esteem bit by bit.

Over the months it weighed heavily on her, and without even knowing it, she found herself slowly trying to fit into the box that they were so desperate to force her in. 

She grew her hair out and she hid all of her old clothes away in a box in her closet, instead opting to replace them with delicate, soft sweaters, tight fitting T-shirts, and low-rise jeans. She forced herself to learn how to walk in high heels. After some begging, she convinced her mom to teach how to do simple makeup; lip gloss, glittery eyeshadow, and enough foundation and concealer to hopefully hide herself away and never be seen again. 

She stopped talking as much, spoke only when spoken to. Her opinions didn’t go away - far from it - but she kept them to herself just like everyone always wanted, allowing them to fester under her skin like a growing infection. The inside of her cheek would blister and bleed before she would allow herself to break past the mask she wore like it was a lifeline.

She even got herself a boyfriend to sit with during lunch and to kiss before and after classes before parting ways at the doors. Though she didn’t think she really liked him, he was a good man. They were more like best friends who occasionally kissed than anything else and they were both okay with that arrangement. She was a good girl; got good grades, never stayed out later than curfew, stopped arguing with her mom. She thought that all of these changes would be an improvement on her quality of life, but really, they served to do the opposite.

People treated her better, sure, but she had never been so deeply unhappy in her life. She didn’t even feel like a real person half of the time, rather like a shell of one. And not even a shell of herself, but rather the shell of someone she never was, someone she would never be. Like a ghost living inside the body of another.

She stuck to her game of pretend all the way up to graduation, when she just couldn’t take it anymore. She loathed the photos of her holding her diploma and shaking the principal's hand. She hated her picture perfect, lipgloss adorned smile and her long, shiny, blonde hair that reached all the way down to her waist. She hated her baby blue high heels with their delicate ribbon straps and rhinestones. Most of all, she hated the empty look that she saw reflected in her own eyes.

It was those pictures that finally seemed to kick some sense into her. The more she looked at them the more she realized that she didn’t want to be that person, and that being Her was eventually going to kill her if she kept going.

Without really thinking about it, she had locked herself in the bathroom only a few days before she was meant to start college and went at her hair with the kitchen scissors. Silky smooth locks of hair the length of her forearm fell into the sink, soon joined by tears as she cut and cut and cut until all that was left was a choppy, uneven mess.

She looked like a total disaster when she raised her head to look in the mirror - her watery eyes red rimmed as her nose ran - but somehow she felt more like herself than she had in years. A shaky smile cracked onto her face and she let out a sniffling laugh, her fingertips gently grazing her reflection in the mirror. Even covered in tears and snot, with her hair looking like it had gone through a lawn mower, it was her staring back in the reflection. It was Cassie.

Later, she walked down to the drug store that was two blocks from their house and purchased a cheap set of clippers with some of the money she was given as a graduation gift from her aunt. When she buzzed the rest of the messy hair off, she felt like at least some of the shell was cracking away to reveal who she really was on the inside.

Her mother had been working late that night, so she invited Kon over to her place and promptly broke up with him while the two of them sat on her back porch.

“I understand. I’ve got some things to work through too.” He had told her as she wrung her hands nervously in her lap. His smile let her know that he was sincere, and his eyes told her that maybe he understood her more than he could ever put into words. His eyes had trailed up to her shaved head and his smile had both widened and softened as he informed her, “I dig your new look.”

That night, before her mom got home from work, Kon was the one to help her gather up all of her old clothes into a garbage bag and take them out to an empty field in order to burn them. Watching the embers drift up into the sky felt symbolic, like she was cremating the person she had pretended to be and starting over as someone new from the ashes. Cassie felt warm for a reason unrelated to the fire burning before her.

For the first time in years, her and her mother fought like hell the following day.

“I thought you were more responsible than this!” Her mother shouted, voice carrying through the kitchen. She was referring to, of course, the fact that Cassie had dropped out of the college she was meant to attend in less than a week.

“Maybe you don’t know me at all!” Cassie had shouted right back, voice just as loud.

Cassie left that night, packed an old, slightly smelly duffle bag she had left over from her days as an elementary school soccer player with what clothes she had left. She took the old, beat up Mustang junker that her aunt had helped her fix up as a gift for her 16th and just drove. She drove through the night, exhaustion bruising underneath her eyes and leaving a fog in her head. She stopped only to get gas and relieve herself, and only ever during the day.

It had been hard finding an apartment in the new city she found herself in. Seeing as she was young, single, and a woman there weren’t many places willing to sign her onto a lease. Fortunately, after a, frankly scary, month straight of sleeping in her car she managed to find a place willing to rent to someone with no credit for relatively cheap; though, the down payment and the rent for next month had left her basically broke after all was said and done. She had just barely enough for groceries for a week.

Sitting on the floor of her new, and terribly empty, apartment and flipping through the newspaper for job listings in the area, Cassie was hit with another dilemma.

Now that she had broken free, she didn’t know who she was or what to do. She didn't know what she wanted. Well, obviously, at that moment all she wanted was to be able to afford rent and eat, but she was also thinking about the long term. What was Cassie Sandsmark going to do with her life?

College would eventually be on the table once she’s saved up a decent amount or felt stable enough to take out a loan, she knew that much. What did she want to go to college for, though? What would she even major in? She didn't even know if her aunt's offer to pay for half of her tuition even stood after the stunt she pulled running away like this. She was almost too afraid to reach out and ask. That was another challenge for another day, though.

Putting college on the backburner for the time being, she would spend the next year and half bouncing between jobs and appearances, trying to figure herself out. 

She was a cashier and shelf stocker, but they eventually let her go after she got into the habit of mouthing off to rude customers. She was a waiter at a local bar an hour drive from her apartment for a short period of time, but the patrons there had been a little too handsy for her liking and she broke the nose of one particularly insistent drunk man her second week working the job. She was fired pretty much on the spot, but not before getting into a shouting match with her manager after he told her she was lucky she didn’t have the police called on her. She, of course, retorted that he was lucky she hadn’t done more than break a nose and offered to break his as well. Needless to say, she was escorted off of the property by security, and she didn't even get her check.

Her time working at various fast food joints were, for the most part, uneventful. The customers were not easier to deal with. In fact, they were worse than grocery store customers a lot of the time, so there were still times where she would get into arguments. Her managers weren’t paid enough to care if she argued back, though, so she got away with it far more often. The worst part about those jobs were the grease that would cling to her skin, hair, and clothes like a second skin.

She moved on from customer service sometime just before her twentieth birthday after finding an ad in the papers about a gardening business looking for people to hire. She was absolute shit at that job and managed to kill every single plant she came in contact with. She was tasked mostly with moving the heavier stuff like bags of fertilizer and helping lay down Astroturf after killing her fourth bed of flowers.

Somehow, the owner of that small gardening business still gave her a glowing recommendation after her time with that job came to an end, and she even managed to land herself a roofing apprenticeship with said recommendation. The owners of the small business were a middle aged man and his wife, both of whom were born in another country and immigrated to the states sometime in the early 70s. The couple took a liking to her loud mouth and attitude almost instantly, and she found that she liked the both of them the most out of any bosses she had ever had.

She was tasked with hauling bundles of roofing for the most part while she learned the craft, and by that point she was used to lugging heavy things around in the sun so the job was almost a little too boring until they started letting her participate more. There were a few of her coworkers who didn’t exactly want a woman around, but she didn’t let that deter her from learning as much as she could from those who were willing to teach her. The first time she was allowed to help install a real roof she had never felt more proud of herself. She had helped build something that would stay on the planet and help house someone for years to come; it was a good feeling. Plus, She only smashed her thumb with the hammer once during the process, and it wasn't even hard enough to crack the nail, only bruise the flesh, so she considered it a complete win.

That had been her favorite out of all of the jobs she worked, but it still hadn’t felt exactly right for her. She still felt like something was missing from her life, like she could be doing more. 

It was while working that job that she finally managed to save up enough money to upgrade apartments and feel stable enough to take out a student loan. She never had worked up the courage to face her family again outside of the Christmas cards and minor life updates that she had been sending, so she had to rely fully on the loans. She began attending the local community college the following fall as an undeclared student, as all those months had not settled exactly what she wanted to do with her life.

Her appearance was another battle she fought vigorously.

She stuck to shaving her head for a while, content with the feeling of the prickly hairs beneath her palm, but eventually she grew sick of maintaining the short look. She experimented with different lengths before settling on a slightly longer style that she could spike up or slick back. She debated going longer, but ultimately decided against it. She hadn’t enjoyed the feeling of it on the back of her neck and she knew that wouldn’t change, so shorter styles it was.

Clothes were an entirely different story. While hair was relatively easy for her to figure out, clothing wasn’t. At first, she wasn’t making a lot of money, so she stuck to buying men’s clothing from bargain bins and clearance racks since the town she settled in didn’t have any thrift stores in a reasonable driving distance. For a little while she was content with that. After a period of time, however, she found herself growing bored of the flat colours of the T-shirts and slacks. They were leagues better than her old clothes, but still not her.

She started changing up her style by cutting the sleeves off of some of her T-shirts, tearing some of them all the way down to the hip in a way that showed off both her toned arms and the sides of her bra. She really liked the look of that style. 

The torn shirts and muscle t’s became her most worn shirts, only occasionally replaced with a baggy T-shirt layered over a sports bra or a spaghetti strap belly shirt with no bra. The only time she didn’t wear one of those options was when it became too cold and she was forced to wear either a sweatshirt or the nice woolen sweater her boss's wife had given her as a Christmas present.

Often times at work, she would wear a flannel to protect her skin from either the sun or from chilly weather that wasn’t quite cold enough for a jacket. Similarly, she would wear thick sunglasses while working. 

She pierced her ears herself with a sewing needle and a pair of cheap studs she bought at the mall, figuring it was cheaper than having them professionally done. The ensuing infection she inevitably got from the foolish decision went away relatively quickly, so it was worth it in the end. Once her ears healed, she had a lot of fun cycling through earrings; from regular studs, to spikes, to fun shapes, her collection slowly grew.

She tried wearing black jeans in a variety of styles for a while - be it skinny jeans or the flared bottom jeans she found for dirt cheap in the women's clearance section - but she ultimately decided those were not her style. She preferred blue jeans, sometimes the baggy kind that hung low on her hips and sometimes regular rise with a belt. The lowrise pants were the one thing from her high school fashion phase that she didn’t abandon completely. She could not deny the fashionability of them.

She already had to mend her pants when they tore during work or from general wear and tear but she began to get more creative with it. She used colourful patches, oftentimes recycled from old shirt scraps, or tried her hand at embroidering something interesting. She was rather proud of the star she patched over a hole in the knee of one of her more worn pair of pants. 

With her Christmas bonus from her roofing job, she allowed herself to drive out of town to a thrift store she had been wanting to go to for months and splurge on a nice denim jacket that she began to wear pretty much everywhere. It quickly became worn down, sun bleached, and covered in patches like much of her wardrobe. She loved it more than she had ever loved an article of clothing.

After all of that trial and error, she could proudly say that she felt confident in herself when she first strode onto that college campus with those overpriced books stuffed underneath her arm.

After her first day of classes she, her boss reduced her hours but upped her pay. He waved her tearful thanks off and told her that she could repay him by finishing school and making something of herself. She promised she would, but ignored the nagging in the back of her mind that told her she didn’t know what to make of herself.

With her newfound free time between classes and work, she had to try and find ways to occupy herself. 

She started volunteering in any way she could within the community. Saturdays and Sundays after class, as well as Mondays before work were designated for helping keep the parks clean by picking up waste. She dedicated Tuesday through Friday in the afternoons after class to working in a soup kitchen, where she not only learned how to make a killer curry but also made friends with another volunteer, Mia. She wanted to do more, but she eventually ran out of free time, much to her dismay. 

It was during one of her community service excursions that she found the music shop. It was a small thing, crammed in between an equally small dumpling shop and a crappy hair salon. The building itself was painted a stark black that stood out against the neutral colours of the buildings on either side of it, with golden accents painted onto the window frames and the outline of the door. The front window was decorated with bold fonts, lightning bolts, music notes, and a frankly sloppy guitar.

She stood across the street in the park and stared over at the tiny shop with stars in her eyes. She couldn’t explain it, but there was something about the tacky little shop that drew her in like a fish on a hook.

After packing up her equipment into her car and saying goodbye to her fellow volunteers, she immediately cut back through the park to get to the little music shop. Upon further inspection of the front window, it was called ThunderPunch Records. She pulled the door open, a bell ringing above her head as she stepped inside.

Instruments - namely guitars - hung from one end of the left wall all the way to the other, and every other expanse, even parts of the ceiling, were covered in well loved band posters. It was cramped, a row of shelves almost up to the ceiling full of cassette tapes on one side, a row of stands holding records on the other; all categorized by genre and title. 

In the back of the store were a few other stray instruments, as well as a wooden table that held crates containing a few more cassette tapes that wouldn’t fit on the shelves, alongside a handful of magazines. By its side was a bucket containing a bunch of rolled up posters, balanced precariously against the side of the table and looking only seconds away from falling over and spilling onto the fuzzy, yellow speckled, black carpet.

Some rock song she’d never heard before was playing from a speaker near the front counter as she walked further into the store, head swiveling back and forth between the shelves and the stands, unable to decide where to put her focus.

Her fingers skimmed over the labels on the tapes, thumbs flipping through the beautiful vinyls and their artful covers. She didn’t have a record player, but the art on the thin cardboard jackets was almost enough to make her purchase several of them right then and there. The tapes were also cheaper, so she regretfully turned her back on the vinyls in favour of the tapes, of which there were many.

Overwhelmed by the selection of music, she eventually settled on a random tape by a band she didn’t know the name of, made her purchase, and rushed to her car to listen to the contents. This became a pattern after the first time, and soon enough she found herself walking into that little music shop every Saturday after her community service hours were up to spend a portion of her paycheck on music tapes, which slowly began collecting in a leftover multipack snack box she kept in her car. Dio, AC/DC, Twisted Sister, and Bowie were her most frequently listened to.

She became friends with the woman who manned the cash register, an extremely tall woman with striking red hair by the name of Grace. She was a former boxer with a troubled past looking for a simpler life. She found that simpler life when the owner of this store, Anissa, offered her a job running the cash register and stocking shelves. The two of them proudly proclaimed that they were best friends, but Cassie suspected that maybe they were a little bit more than that as well. It was hard to miss the way their eyes lingered on each other, full of some kind of longing, or the way they seemed attached at the hip whenever they were both at the store at the same time. She found herself a little jealous of them sometimes.

The two of them were endlessly kind to her, and they were easy to talk to and batter back and forth with. Not only that, but they had great music recommendations and offered really good prices on tapes; a friend's discount they called it. It was only natural that Cassie kept coming back to the little store over and over again.

On her third, bordering on fourth, month of frequenting the little music shop, she held two tapes in her hands, contemplating on which to buy and wondering if she should just ask Grace’s opinion when the bell on the front door twinkled over the sound of Soundgarden playing quietly on the speakers. 

On instinct, Cassie looked up and met the stunning, grey-blue eyes of the most beautiful woman she had ever seen in her entire life.

She was tall, wearing a strapless, red tube top and a pair of tight jeans that flared at the bottoms. Cassie’s eyes were drawn to her chunky boots, which were adorned with spikes along the toes; she never wanted to steal another woman’s shoes more in her life. 

Her pale blonde hair - longer than even Cassie’s own had been before she cut it all off  -  was pulled over her shoulder to give a perfect view of the red, faded dip dye ends. Her pretty face was nonchalant, almost bored, as she confidently walked towards the check out desk. Her large hoop earring swayed with each step she took.

“Hey, Cee, you’re here a day early.” Grace said with a smile in the woman’s direction.

“Classes are going to be crazy tomorrow, so I’m here to pick them up today instead. I’m not too early am I?” The gorgeous woman - Cee? - asked as she leaned against the counter with her arms crossed, one of her boots tapping on the ground behind her. 

“You’re in luck, our zines were delivered a few days ahead of schedule this month. You’ll have to pull them out of the box yourself cause I haven’t unpacked them yet, but they should be over there” Grace said, pointing at the magazine table just past Cassie, who squeaked and averted her gaze quickly. She mentally punched herself for the overreaction; neither of them had even been looking at her!

Cassie blushed and curled in on herself as the woman passed her by, the smell of her artificial cherry perfume lingering after her. She tried hard to keep her focus on the two tapes in her hands.

Cassie had considered in the past that she might find women attractive, but she had never thought too deeply about it before. She was always far too busy worrying about other aspects of her life and identity to bother. She never thought she would care enough to get into another relationship, but this woman had smashed that notion like a glass bottle thrown against a brick wall. 

She had a brief moment of panic as she tried to think of the best way to ask this stranger if she wanted to hang out with her when the smell of artificial cherry assaulted her nose a second time. She turned frantically to the side to meet those blue-grey eyes once more.

“Hi,” The woman said, only inches away from her face. Cassie was close enough to count the faded freckles dotting her cheeks, to see the way her eyeliner smudged at the corner of one eye. “I’m Cissie.”

“H-hello,” Cassie said, swallowing and clearing her throat when it came out as a pathetic squeak. “Um, hi, hello. I’m Cassie.”

She internally cringed as she stuck her hand out for a handshake. For a moment, she was overly self conscious of the dirt under her chewed down nails, but then let out an airy giggle when she caught sight of the black nail polish that the other woman wore. It was chipped, flaking in several places, and generally messily applied with little care of the cuticles and the sides of her slim fingers. It was cute. Though her palms were soft, her fingers were calloused and her grip was strong

“Cissie and Cassie, huh? Our names are only one letter off. It’s like we were meant to meet.” Cissie mused with a quirk of her eyebrow.

Cassie let out a chuckle at that and rubbed the back of her head before saying, “Well I guess that just means we’re destined to be best friends.”

Cissie left after a few more words exchanged and a music recommendation of The Slits - which Cassie promptly bought - but that was not the last time she saw the other woman. Far from it.

It became a ritual for them to meet at the shop on Saturdays and trade music recommendations, and then it naturally developed to the two of them hanging out outside of the shop as well. Sometimes they would walk through the park, or listen to music inside of Cassie’s car in empty parking lots. They got lunch and coffee a few times, but that quickly ate into Cassie’s paycheck so they eventually started going to Cassie’s place to eat instead. She made sure her flat was immaculately clean the first time Cissie came over.

Somehow along the way the two of them became a little more than just friends.

Cassie didn’t know how or when it happened. Was it the night Cissie stayed over for the first time and slept in the bed with her, their hands tucked under their cheeks as they laid on their sides and held each other's gaze late into the wee hours of the night? Or was it the time they unconsciously held hands and leaned into each other as they made their way through the park? Was it when Cissie jumped into her arms with glee after she got a passing grade on her nursing midterm and Cassie spun her around as the two of them laughed? Maybe it was New Years eve as they sat on Cassie’s crappy second-hand sofa, when Cissie turned to her after the ball dropped on the TV and pulled her into a soft kiss by the back of the neck as fireworks exploded outside.

Not that the specifics mattered in the end. All that mattered was that they were happy.

Over the course of knowing her, Cissie had given her many music recommendations. Some she loved, some she liked just fine, and others she hated. However, there was one genre in particular that Cassie had taken a particular liking to, and that was Riot Grrrl.

The raw vocals and messy instrumentals were what drew her, but as she listened more she found herself relating to the lyrics as well. The themes of conformity, sexism, and sexual violence were things that were all too familiar to her. She loved the dirty, aggressive nature of the music. She felt free when she listened to them. She felt seen in a way she never had before.

As it turned out, Riot Grrrl zines were what Cissie had been picking up the day the two of them met, and at Cassie’s request, she had been more than happy to share her collection with her. She was drawn even more into the world by the jagged fonts and the bold visuals of the little hand made magazines.

Flipping through the lovingly crafted pages of the zines, a thought occurred to her.

“Say, Cissie,” She said, prompting her girlfriend to raise her head from the noodles she had been devouring on the couch, “Why don’t we start a band?”

                                        🎸    🎸    🎸

Greta had always been the picture perfect little girl. She loved all of the things that little girls were supposed to like. Barbies, princesses, plushies, sparkles, the colour pink, all of it. She wore dresses and skirts; a headband sat over her chin length hair, which curled delicately at the ends. She was soft spoken and shy. She never made any unnecessary fuss. Anyone who met her would say she was a total sweetheart.

However, the truth was that Greta had never been perfect. She had never been what they saw in her, or what wanted her to be. In fact, in many ways she was the opposite. It was as if there were pieces of her that were missing before she even knew they were gone, and in their places was nothing but a slimy, grotesque sort of anger that burned away at her from the inside out. She had a rotting, festering, empty expanse of darkness in place of where her heart should be.

She didn't know when it started, when she began burning with rage, feeling it in her lungs and heart like boiling water that was ever present in a way that made her feel like she was constantly drowning. Part of her believed that she had always been this way, that she was simply born a monster. Afterall, it had been with her for as long as she could remember. It was her longest and closest friend.

Another, smaller, part of her couldn’t deny that it began when her parents adopted him.

Greta would have welcomed anyone into her home, would have relished in having a new sibling to play with. A new best friend to accept into the warmth of their home. Someone to love and who would love her in return. However, what she got instead was just the opposite.

William, or as he liked to be called, Billy, was the very epitome of what they would call a “wolf in sheep's clothing”. Even Greta was fooled when he was first adopted by her parents when she was no more than 7 years old. Upon their first meeting, he said only a few words to Greta in which he promised to protect her from the world. At the time, it had been a comforting thought. An older brother that would always look after her, who would always stand up for her and be there for her. His real intentions were not nearly as pure as that.

*It started small. He was rough with her, but in a way that didn’t come off as inherently mean. He would tug on her hand much too hard, popping her little fingers and causing a dull ache to throb in her shoulder. He would move her when she got in his way, forcefully dragging her to and fro with an almost bruising grip on her shoulders. The one time she convinced him to play salon with her after days of pleading, he had ripped the comb through her hair until she cried and she was sure that her scalp would bleed. She never asked him to play salon again after that.

When Greta complained to her parents about his rough treatment after finally growing sick of it, she had been met with dismissal after dismissal. He just didn’t know his own strength, he isn’t hurting you on purpose, that’s just how siblings are, so on and so forth. That was the first time she remembered feeling angry enough to slam her bedroom door, a lingering tightness burning in her chest.

One of her most prominent memories from her childhood was the day of her 8th birthday. Her parents threw her a small party at the park and she invited all of her very best friends from 2nd grade to the event. Everything there, down to the cake, the balloons, the cutlery and even the table cloth were all Rainbow Brite themed. They ordered her favorite pizza from her favorite place, and she was even allowed to drink as much pop as she wanted. Not to mention there was a mountain of presents for her to go through. The day was loud, chaotic, and it was so much fun that she was positively bouncing for joy the whole time.

By all standards, it should have been the perfect birthday party. One to remember fondly for years to come.

All of that had been overshadowed, though, because what she remembered the most about that day was how Billy shoved her off of the platform above the slide, breaking her arm in three places.

After that day it was like a switch was flipped and Billy’s treatment of her changed overnight. He treated her as though she was something delicate, made of glass or fine silk. He held her hand softly in his warm palms. He no longer manhandled her out of the way, instead politely asking her to move and waiting for her to do so. He even went out of his way to learn how to braid, his fingers and her comb running working on her hair in a way that would almost put her to sleep sometimes.

He was, in many ways, the perfect sibling. The kind of perfect that Greta assumed people thought she was.

Everything seemed like it would be alright. That was until she turned 13 years old and the new school year started. The first day of her last year of middle school had been one she was looking forward to. It was one step closer to high school, as well as the age her parents promised to start letting her go out on her own with her friends.

Except that never happened, because only a month into middle school and one trip to the mall later she suddenly didn’t have any friends anymore. They simply stopped inviting her to things, stopped coming over to her house, and eventually stopped hanging out with her at school itself. They would either brush her off, claim to have other plans, or straight up tell her they didn’t want to be her friends anymore.

She didn’t understand why at first, jumping immediately to the conclusion that they had somehow sensed the rot eating away at her from the inside out and decided they had better distance themselves before it was too late. What she discovered instead was that it was simply because they found her older brother scary. At the time, she thought they were being ridiculous, he was a good brother after all. They were just being overly judgy in her eyes, so she said good riddance to them.

She started hanging out with him and his friends more after school instead, but she quickly learned that she did not like that. She didn’t like the way his friends looked at her, the way they spoke to her and about her. They were mean, bad men who called her names or did things to purposefully scare her for a cheap laugh. She expected Billy to make good on his promise of always protecting her, but he only ever laughed along with them. 

She tried to avoid them by locking herself in her room when he brought friends over, and that worked when her parents were home. If they weren’t, however, then Billy and his friends would knock on the door and bang on the walls, laughing and telling her to come out as they jiggled the door knob. Sometimes they would threaten to hurt her if she didn’t come out, sometimes hinting that they wanted to kill her as well. She was never able to tell if they were joking or not, and that was the scariest part of it all.

This trend continued on through the last year of middle school and carried into her first year of high school. Despite being a junior while she was a freshman, Billy was always around, and he made it increasingly difficult for her to make friends of her own or reconnect with the ones she used to have. He walked with her to and from school, sat with her at lunch, and was always waiting outside of the classroom to escort her to her next class. Wherever she looked he was always there.

Everyday it became harder and harder to breathe past the black water in her lungs and heart, and every day Greta slowly felt herself slipping away more and more. As time passed, she felt more monster than girl.

He’s just being a good brother and he’s just looking out for you, these were the things that her parents told her when she expressed to them feeling smothered. You’re taking a joke too seriously and your brother wouldn’t do that were the dismissals she received when she told them about his awful friends. They always insisted that "sibling squabbles" weren't for them to handle, and suggested that they figure it out between themselves. She should have known they wouldn’t take her seriously, they never had and likely never would. 

She thought that she could handle it for just a few more months. Billy was set to graduate soon, after all. With him out of the school, she could start to distance herself from him and make friends again. She could try to live a normal life like her peers.

But, of course, things could never go that easily for Greta, not when she was cursed with a monsters luck. Because as tensions between the two of them grew, Billy once again grew violent with her. This time in a much more obvious and deliberate manner.

Just like when the two of them were little, he would grab her hand - or more often her wrist - and drag her too and from places. He would yank on her arm if she dragged her feet and moved too slowly for his liking, popping her joints and leaving behind nasty bruises that swelled into the shape of fingerprints. He would pull on her hair to get her attention, uncaring of the tears that sprang in her eyes. One time, he had gone so far as to smack her directly across the face when they got into an argument over him walking her to class, causing her cheek to swell and bruise.

“Why are you doing this?” She had asked that day, tears pouring from her eyes and down her stinging cheek despite the fact that her face was twisted into a snarl of rage. He stared at her with bloodshot, neutral eyes that betrayed none of what he was feeling.

“I’m just protecting you, keeping you safe from the world.” He replied. It wasn’t the world that made Greta feel unsafe.

She didn’t bother to tell her parents anything else after that, what would have been the use? They would have given him excuse after excuse like they always had despite the truth glaring in their faces. So, she endured it all as best she could.

But Greta was so lonely, so unbearably lonely and hurt. Somewhere along the way, she felt every emotion other than anger fade until they were infected and eroded away by the rot. She couldn’t remember the last time she had been happy. All of it was lost in the fog of living day to day.

All of it finally reached a tipping point with one big explosive fight that Greta still had nightmares about on her darker days.

To date she still could not remember what even started the initial argument. Maybe she just wanted to go out on her own for some air and insisted Billy stay home, or maybe it was something as trivial and stupid as a disagreement on what to eat for dinner that night while their parents were out.  Whatever it was, somehow it ended with him lunging for her with a crazed look in his eyes. 

Anger, fear, desperation, and hatred flared in her chest all at once, the monster inside of her screaming out for her to act. She barely even remembered grabbing the radio they kept on the counter and smashing it against the side of his head to stop him before he could lay his hands on her. What she did remember vividly was the way his fingers grazed her neck, the way they snagged on the collar of her shirt as he fell to the ground.

She didn’t wait for him to get up, didn’t check to even see if he was still alive, before she ran. She was out the door and down the street in seconds flat. She never looked back, not even once.

She didn’t know if her parents ever looked for her, if anyone ever looked for her, but if they did they never found her. The only news she ever got was from an article in the paper about Billy going to jail for killing one of his friends - the one who used to like scaring her - over a dispute about drugs four months after she ran away. She would never forget the shiver that had run down her spine knowing that it could have been her that was killed if that day in the kitchen had gone even slightly differently.

*She had nowhere to go, no friends or other family to speak of, and absolutely no money, so she had no other options than to sleep on park benches or occasionally in homeless shelters. The sad truth was that those establishments were often jam packed, though, and rarely had openings available. They were also not nearly as safe as they could be for a young girl like her.

Without so much as a high school diploma, let alone any forms of identification, she was also unable to get a job. She was only able to get enough pocket money to eat from odd jobs that didn’t ask questions, or from begging, neither of which paid well. 

She was lucky that people often took pity on her because of her small frame and round face in combination with her wide eyes, all of which gave off the air of innocence that pulled at people's heart strings. She was equally as unlucky that these features just as easily marked her as prey in the eyes of some. If not for her quick reflexes and her ability to run fast and far, she feared what might have happened to her in those months she spent homeless.

During those days on the streets she felt that horrible, disgusting feeling in the pit of her soul growing more and more until it was all she could feel even past the numbness. She became bitter and hateful, and who could blame her? 

It was by chance that she found an advertisement for a women’s domestic abuse shelter located a town over. Somehow, against all odds, she managed to get a room there. Although she was standoffish and oftentimes outright rude with the staff, they were all unbelievably kind to her and they never asked more questions than needed.

She didn’t remember or understand the full process, but they were able to help her get ahold of new documents and get her emancipated from her parents. Her dad tried to contact her during that time, but she couldn’t bring herself to talk to him. She didn’t know if it was for better or worse that he accepted her rejection of a call or a visit so easily.

The center also set her up on the path of getting her GED, as well as a decently paying job to support herself once she was finally able to move on from their program. It was also thanks to them that she was able to find a roommate in the area close enough to her grocery store job that it was only a short walk away. She hated the job and the customers, but it was better than nothing. In her free time, she also volunteered at the same women’s shelter that saved her life, desiring to give back to the people who helped her, and help others in return.

It was through this volunteer position that she met a good friend of hers, a fellow volunteer by the name of Slobo. They were often put on duty together, helping clean rooms, prepare food, help the women settle in, and other simple tasks in that same vein. 

He was a loud and outspoken person, and one of few that she had ever met who was openly queer. He was not shy about sharing his experiences and making his opinions known. Though he only had a few inches on her meager 4’8, he felt much bigger due to his larger than life personality. Well, that and chunky platform boots he was known to wear, anyway.

It did not take long for them to become friends, and even less time for him to loan her his walkman after a lot of insistence. He had to practically beg her to take it, promising that he had other ways to listen to music and stating that he really wanted her to experience his favorites.

“Come on, just take the fraggin’ thing and listen to some music, would ya? It’s healing for the soul, I promise.” Slobo practically begged as he shoved the black walkman, in all its peeling skull sticker encrusted glory, into her chest along with a pair of severely tangled headphones. She had no other choice than to accept.

As it turned out, his taste in music was just what she needed. He was into a lot of heavy metal, rock, and most importantly to her, punk. She quickly grew especially fond of The Slits and 7 Year Bitch, a fact that Slobo got a lot of delight in. He officially gifted her his old walkman after a few weeks of her "borrowing" it and got into the habit of regularly loaning her tapes he thought she would be into.

Soon enough he was dragging her to shows as well, but those were a more rare experience for several reasons; Slobo’s precarious health and both of their distinct lack of funds as two examples. Every time that they did go, though, Greta felt like she was on top of the world. The adrenaline racing through her veins, the vibrations going through her very bones as she screamed along to the lyrics she related to all too much, the sense of community, it was all so freeing.

Sometimes after shutting her lamp off, she would absentmindedly write her own lyrics to the muted glow of the nightlight beside her bed. It helped her get her emotions - long ago hidden away in the depths of her blackened heart - out of her where she could process and understand them better. With each new stroke of her pen upon the lined paper she felt a little lighter.

Sometimes, there was still that lingering, nasty feeling in her heart, but as the days went by she slowly found that it shrank in size until she finally felt more human than monster.

So, that was why she was only a tiny bit pissed off and didn't immediately resort to murder when she woke up to the sound of knocking on her bedroom door on one of her rare days off from work.

She raised her head, hair an absolute mess from all of her tossing and turning during the night, with drool crusting all along her cheek. She looked over at the red, blinking alarm clock she kept on the desk beside her bed. When she found that it was only 10am, she thought to herself someone had better be dying as the knocking continued. 

Groaning, she pulled herself out of bed and trudged to the door, tripping over her long, baggy flannel pants only once on the way there.

She ripped the door open and glared, both due to annoyance at having been woken up and the fact that it was ungodly bright in the communal space of the apartment. Cissie, her roommate, smiled at her almost as brightly as the sun that was burning Greta’s retinas. Over her shoulder, her girlfriend Cassie peered past Greta and into her dirty room with curious eyes. The other woman immediately looked away with a sheepish expression when she caught the admonishing look Greta gave her.

“Did you guys need something?” Greta asked in a sleepy, raspy voice.

“Oh~ I liked that rasp. Think you could do it while singing?” Cassie asked eagerly. 

“What?” Greta questioned, furrowing her brows, a little more awake now. Cissie smacked her girlfriend in the arm lightly and then said to Greta;

“We’ve been thinking about starting a band, how do you feel about joining us?”

Greta blue screened, unable to think of an answer. Instead, she slammed her bedroom door closed in their faces and stared at the handmade Bikini Kill poster hanging on the back of the door for a few seconds before going and flopping back down on her bed. 

Despite writing her own lyrics, she had never dreamed of actually being able to play in a band. But here those two were, suddenly and out of the blue hand delivering her one of her burning desires to her on a silver platter. It was exhilarating, almost scary. Did she want to leap at the chance and take it…?

“Ask me again in a few hours!” She shouted, hugging her pillow to her chest and rolling over onto her side, an excited smile cracking over her face wide enough to make her cheeks ache. She kicked her feet a little and giggled when she heard the other two girls not so silently celebrate on the other side of the door.

Three hours, a shower, and a belly full of leftover pasta later Greta was sat wedged in the corner of the couch with the couple sitting on the other end, looking at her with expectant eyes.

“So, what instruments do you play? Or do you just want to sing? Cause that’s fine, too!” Cassie said, her eyes practically glowing in delight.

“I don’t remember agreeing to join your band.” Greta said, just to be difficult.

“Come on, there's no way you would say no to this.” Cissie said, softly nudging Greta’s ankle with her gaudy, striped sock covered foot.

“Well, since you need me as a member so bad I was thinking that I could…Write the songs?” Greta said, a hint of nervousness creeping into her words.

The couple looked at each other in that creepy way they did when they spoke without saying a single word. Greta hated when they did that. For a second she had the irrational fear that they would laugh at her or something like that, but upon further inspection they looked excited, awestruck. 

“You write lyrics?” Cissie asked, the eagerness in her voice mirrored in Cassie’s shining eyes.

“We were just going to start out with covers of other groups' songs, but if you write lyrics that’s awesome!” Cassie exclaimed.

“Well, only occasionally. They aren’t very good, I just write what I’m feeling and try to arrange that into lyrics.” Greta downplayed herself with a shrug.

“Can we read some of them?” Cassie all but pleaded. Cissie didn’t say anything, but it was clear that she also wanted to read them. Greta was hit with yet another moment of nervousness and almost backed out, but she wanted this. She wanted this more than anything, so she was on her feet and grabbing her spiral notebook from its place on her bedside table before she could second guess herself. She handed the plain grey notebook to the couple and sat back down on the couch, watching them intently for their thoughts.

They spent a few minutes flipping through the notebook before landing on one of the songs and reading it intently.

“I really like this one,” Cissie said, turning the notebook back towards Greta. It was one of the angry songs she had written about her brother, which she had mentally titled Harm’s Way.

You always think that you know what's best?

Well I think you should just give it a rest

You push, you pull, you put me in Harms Way

My patience runs thinner than thin

Who asked your opinion anyway?

I won't give you the time of the day

I’ll flip you the middle finger and I’ll put you out of my mind

Without your useless ass in my life i think I’ll be just fine

“Ah, yeah I like that one too,” She responded, feeling a rush of excitement at the thought of it being performed, that others might hear it and relate it to their own experience like she had with groups before her. “But, what do you guys think? Are they good enough?

“Good enough? Dude, these are, like, perfect!” Cassie said, leaning over her girlfriend to pull Greta into a strong armed side hug. Cissie laughed and nodded her head in agreement. Behind her hair, the tips of Greta’s ears were burning bright red with pride.

She sniffled and said, “Well, they aren’t that great but I’m glad you like them.”

“You didn’t really answer Cassie’s question from before, by the way,” Cissie prompted as she leaned forward to set the song book down on their crappy wooden coffee table, making sure to avoid the dubious brown smudge that could be anything really.

Greta tracked the other woman’s movement with her eyes to make sure her notebook was safe before she replied, “Well I don’t know any instruments.”

“Do you want to learn?” Cissie asked.

“Don’t you want people who can already play? You’ll never get anywhere if you have to go through the trouble of teaching me how to play an instrument.” Greta pointed out.

“We’ve got all the time in the world.” Cassie said, waving her hand and blowing a raspberry. “Besides, this is all just for fun anyway.”

“Well, I don’t even know what instrument I would even want to play.” She said halfheartedly.

“I have plenty for you to go through and pick from.” Cissie said, jumping to her feet and pulling Greta along with her. She led the two other women into her own bedroom on the left and motioned for them to sit on the bed while she opened up her closet.

Greta looked around at the instruments already out. Four separate guitars of varying sizes and colours were leaned against the wall near the door, a keyboard was positioned underneath the window, a drum set was disassembled and stacked beside the closet, and she could see a messy pile of wood and other flute adjacent instruments laying on top of the dresser beside Cissie’s bed. Greta swore she even saw a harmonica somewhere in the mix. 

She knew that Cissie had been a musician at one point in time, but she hadn’t realized exactly what that entailed. She didn’t know that the other woman played so many instruments.

“Wow, You really do have a lot of instruments.” Greta said before she could stop herself.

“Yeah…” Cissie said, trailing off. “After I quit playing the violin, I tried to learn every instrument under the sun to find one that was perfect for me. Unfortunately I ended up hating all of them but the guitar, and now I'm stuck with all these instruments until I find someone willing to buy them off of me.”

Greta nodded, unsure of how to respond.

“Alright, so here's what we’ve got.” Cissie said as she pulled herself out of the closet holding two guitars, one in each hand. One was longer with only four strings, and the other was smaller with six strings. Cissie laid both of them down on the bed near Greta.

“Why’d you grab out more guitars? What's wrong with those ones over there?” She asked, gesturing towards the four by the door. It felt preposterous the amount of guitars this woman owned.

“One of those is my electric, the other is Cassie’s bass, and the other two are just for display.” Cissie replied, pointing to a plain white one, a red one, a white one with golden and silver details, and a sleek black one with golden accents in turn.

What on earth is the point of owning an instrument if you’re only going to use it for display? Greta wondered but didn’t ask.

“I would offer to teach you one of those,” Cissie interrupted her thoughts, gesturing to the mess on the dresser, “But none of them are really what you would typically hear in a Riot Grrrl song. Though, I can’t say I’m opposed to some experimentation…”

“I am definitely down for some experimenting.” Cassie said from her spot lounging against the headboard of Cissie’s bed like she owned it. “I already have dibs on bass, but I can be convinced to let it go if you have your heart set on it.”

Realizing that the last part was directed at her, Greta quickly said. “I’ll give it a try, but I don’t think you should be too worried about me stealing your instrument.”

After Cissie showed her the right way to hold the bass and guided her through some very basic chords it became clear that this was not the instrument for her. It was a little over half her height and therefore sat very awkwardly in her arms. It felt uncomfortable and clunky. 

“I really don’t think these are for me…” She said after awkwardly strumming the strings with the pick a few more times and producing a not so pleasant sound. She side eyed the other guitar next to her on the bed, fearing that trying to play it would go the same way.

“What are you thinking, then?” Cissie asked. Greta glanced longingly at the dismantled drums and then smiled at Cissie. With a sigh, Cissie motioned for Cassie to come help her and the two of them set to work setting up the drums together. 

Twenty long minutes of assembling the drum set later, and Greta was sitting on the stool with the pair of red banded drumsticks in her hands. She giddily beat away on the drums but after only a few minutes of Cissie guiding her through a small sound bit, she found that she really didn’t like it as much as she thought she would. It was way too loud in her sensitive ears, especially the crash of the cymbals. 

She was severely disappointed, and it obviously showed plainly on her face if the amused expressions on Cissie and Cassie’s own faces were anything to go by.

“Not what you were hoping for, I presume?” Cissie asked. Greta sadly shook her head, twirling the drumsticks between her fingers in a dejected manner.

“Well, we have one more instrument for you to try out.” Cissie said, heading over to the keyboard by the window and moving it more towards the center of the room. 

Now that she had a better view of the small thing it was clear that it was very old and very well loved. The black paint had faded a little, leaving it more of an off-grey colour than a true black. It was a little crooked, the bent leg on one side of the stand leaving it slanting a bit to the right. On the keys were faded paper strips with the letter of each note taped right onto the surface. On the stand and the rest of the keyboard were stickers of cartoon characters and general cute things like stars, hearts, and rainbows.

“This was my very first instrument.” Cissie said with an air of nostalgia.

“You’d really trust me with it?” Greta asked, mystified by the thought alone. This keyboard was something old and something very precious, she could tell.

“Of course!” Cissie exclaimed without zero hesitation. “I know she’ll be in very good hands with you.”

Before she even began trying to play it, Greta knew that this one was it, this was the instrument for her. Though her hands were small and it was a bit difficult for her to hit some of the keys the way someone usually would, she quickly adapted by moving her hands a little faster than what was normal. It helped that this keyboard was already on the smaller side, likely intended for children and beginners. The glide of her fingers over the cool, smooth keys felt natural. Her emotions spilled from her fingertips and she found herself getting lost in repeating the simple tune Cissie had taught her as a starting base over and over.

“I think this is the one.” Greta said, finally stilling her hand and meeting the gaze of the other two women, who were already looking at her fondly.

“Somehow, I had the feeling you would pick that one.” Cissie said approvingly.

“Why didn’t we just start with this one? You wouldn’t have had to rebuild an entire drum set.” Greta pointed out with a raise of her eyebrow. 

“It was kinda fun watching you go through and pick one, to be honest.” Cassie said, with her arms crossed, leaning against the wall with a lazy smile. Greta rolled her eyes.

“Besides, the drums were going to have to be set up sooner or later anyway.” Cissie added on.

“How come?” Greta questioned, tilting her head.

“Well, I can handle guitar, Cassie is learning bass right now, and you’re on keyboard. All we need now is a drummer." Cissie responded.

“Where are we going to get a drummer?”

Cissie shrugged, “I guess we better start looking.”

                                        🎸    🎸    🎸

When Anita was young, her parents not only met her needs, but went out of their way to give her just about everything she asked for so long as it made her happy. Be it ice cream for lunch, extra cuddles before bed, riding on her dad’s shoulders through the store when her little legs grew tired, or any toy that she spotted on the shelves or in catalogs; she always got her way. She would probably even go so far as to say she was a very spoiled child.

Things changed a little after her mother passed away, with Anita almost meeting the same fate. 

A fire broke out in their house and spread at a pace so rapid that a large portion of the building was already in flames before either her or her mother knew what was happening. The whole thing burned right to the ground with nothing left to suggest that there had once been a home there. Her mother died getting her out of the building. Anita would never forget the feeling of flames hot on her skin, the smoke in her lungs, the screams she tried her hardest to forget the sound of as she lay awake at night.

Her father had been out of town during the incident. Had he not been, Anita might have lost him as well. The cause was unknown to this day, but her father always had his suspicions. None of which he would share with her, though.

It was just him and her after that, and although he still tried his best to make her happy and gave her everything she needed and more, it was very hard for her to really want anything after losing her mother in such a way. No amount of toys, sweets, or hugs from her dad would ever bring her mommy back. She struggled a lot with coming to terms with that fact as a kid.

He began to cling to her, afraid that something would happen to her if she was out of his sight for longer than a minute. At first, she clung to him just as much. She was just a little girl who had lost her mother in a traumatic way, after all. It was only natural that she would cling tightly to her last remaining parent. As she grew and started to become a little more independent, however, it did not take long for this to become a point of contention for the two of them.

Anita wanted to go out and have fun with her friends, but he didn’t like her going out. Both because he wanted to make sure she was safe at all times and because he preferred her to use her time studying instead. He would argue, “What better way to ensure a safe and steady life than a well paying job, and you’ll only get one of those if you work hard for it.” 

She felt a sick part of her want to lash out and tell him stability did nothing to keep her and her mother safe, but she never dared say it. Even she knew the thought was a cruel one.

As she reached high school age and they began to butt heads more and more with her growing tendency to actively rebel and sneak out at night, her father began to struggle in raising her all on his own. Because of this, her father’s former co-worker and lifelong best friend, her uncle Maad, moved across three separate states to move in with them and help her father look after her.

Things got a little better from that point on after her uncle Maad insisted her father loosen his hold on her at least a little. As a result, she was able to hang out with her friends within the hours of a fairly reasonable curfew so long as she completed all of her homework on time and received consistent good grades. 

Uncle Maad had been a godsend to their little family. It had helped her father a significant amount to have someone there as constant support, and it helped Anita to have someone on her side for once.

After graduation, she thought things would be different. That was when most young adults gained their full independence, and her uncle had done a good job in getting her father to loosen his grip. Things should have been an easy ride from that point on.

She was wrong, of course.

Not only did they disagree on the path she wanted to take in college, but he very strongly disagreed in her choice of college as well. 

It was easy to disappoint him and firmly turn down his insistence that she strive for a degree in something like accounting or nursing. Those career paths offered great money, but at the end of the day there were other ways to make a living, and he understood this. She was able to stand firm and pursued a degree in linguistics and fine arts. He wasn’t happy, but he accepted her decision. 

The college of choice was an entirely different story.

Anita wanted nothing more than to attend a college out of state. This school offered the best linguistics course in the entire country, had cheap on campus living, and it offered programs that let students go straight into the workforce with their new skills. It was the opportunity of a lifetime. She had begged and pleaded to go, but her father firmly turned her down. He claimed that he still wanted to support her, and he would love to send her to her dream college, but he just didn't have the kind of money it would take to move her all the way their and pay her tuition. She knew that wasn't entirely the truth, though. He had been putting money towards her college fund ever since her mom died, maybe even before that. Not to mention they were already well off. He had the money, it would just make him too anxious to have her move out of state on her own and he didn't have the ability to just uproot his whole life to make the move with her. A part of her understood the logic, but it didn't stop it from stinging.

She had been mad, unbelievably mad. They got into a shouting match that not even uncle Maad was able to break up. Tears were shed, things that neither of them meant were said; he threatened to cut off financial support, she threatened to disappear and never see him again. After all the fanfare, she slammed the door to her room right in his face and cried on her bed with the application she never got to send out clutched to her chest. 

Her uncle and father helped her apply to several local universities and colleges, and soon after she graduated she got into a well accredited school only 45 minutes by bus from their house. She didn’t hate it, it was still a fun experience and she was still learning everything she needed to know about her desired field. She just wished she had a little more choice in the decision.

She made plenty of friends at her new college, but she yearned for further connection and freedom that she just couldn’t get living under her fathers roof.

So, in her second year, she finally moved out to live on her own. It was a surprisingly easy endeavor. She expected her dad to put up more of a fight, but he was very open to the idea. Anita suspected that her uncle had been talking to her dad while she was away, but either way it was clear that he understood that this was something she needed. Something they both needed, really.

On a bright and early Sunday morning when she had no classes and both her dad and uncle were free from work, they helped her move into a small flat near her college. They spent all morning and afternoon hauling new furniture up the apartment complex stairs, getting everything unpacked, and setting everything up neatly. They took extra care in installing both a security system and the best smoke alarms the market could offer. After they were finally done, the moon was creeping into the sky and they decided to go out to dinner as a celebration for Anita's growing independence.

When uncle Maad moved in with them all those years ago, he brought with him a plethora of tapes and albums that he let her go through. 

A lot of them were rock, including a few japanese rock bands like Seikima-II and Boøwy. There was also a lot of Led Zeppelin and AC/DC, with some ELO thrown into the mix for the hell of it. If memory served her right, there was at least one Joan Jett & the Blackhearts album in there somewhere, as well. She often put one of these albums on as a teen, turned the stereo as loud as it would go, and layed on the floor of her bedroom, trying to immerse herself in another world.

He Just so happened to have gifted that very collection to her as a housewarming gift when she moved out. So, that same night once she returned home from the restaurant, she played her stereo as loud as she could within building regulations and danced in her pajamas, a smile splitting her face in two. She only felt a little bit guilty when her downstairs neighbour came knocking asking her to keep it down.

A solid month into her newfound freedom, she was strolling through the mall after having her braids freshly done when she spotted it. She saw it completely by chance really, a weird coincidence that she easily could have bypassed entirely, but she just so happened to look to her left at exactly the right time.

She paused in the middle of the busy plaza and pulled her Orange Julius away from her mouth, her eyes drawn to the clearly handmade poster. It was a grainy picture depicting a trio of women all broadly gesturing towards a drum set with sad, pleading looks on their faces. The words “LOOKING FOR DRUMMER; willing to teach” were written across it in bold, red letters. The bottom of the poster had tear away strips with a phone number written along their surface. None of the strips had been taken, the advertisement overlooked by most.

Without thinking twice, Anita tore one of the strips free and shoved it into her back pocket, a giddy grin threatening to break past her carefully schooled expression as she continued through the mall.

When she got home she sat next to the land line, her chin in the palm of her hand while she twirled the grey phone cord between her fingers and pouted, trying to decide if she really wanted to call the number. Ignoring the inevitable headache it would cause with her father, the idea of joining a band made her downright ecstatic. 

Granted, she had only played the drums once or twice with her uncle's guidance - that was the whole reason she thought to try out for the position anyway -  but he wasn’t a very good teacher and she got very bored very quickly. She had no concept of music theory, she knew no songs, and her overall experience on the drums was next to nonexistent. She was worried that they would turn her down for her lack of skill, or that she wouldn’t truly be welcomed once they saw her. 

Anita sucked her lower lip between her teeth, sighed deeply through her nose, and held her breath as she punched in the number and let the phone ring.

It turned out to be the best decision of her life. After a brief interview with the three women from the advert and giving them a quick demonstration of her frankly lackluster drumming skills, she was officially a part of the band, and she had found a group of friends to truly belong to.

She hadn’t realized how lonely she was until she was heading over to Greta and Cissie’s apartment for drum lessons and band practice almost every evening that they were all available. They welcomed her into their friend group very readily and she found that they were incredibly easy to talk to. Some days she would get roped into staying for dinner and end up staying late into the night before venturing home with a tupperware full of leftovers under her arm. Other days she would be convinced to stay the night, borrowing clothes from one of the other women and using one of the spare toothbrushes they kept in the cabinet above the sink for such occasions.

Soon they were hanging out with each other outside of the band as well. Cassie began driving her to work and classes when she found the time. Turns out, her and Cissie attended the same college, though because Cissie was in nursing and never used the cafeteria, the two of them never ran into each other. However, they found out that their schedules actually lined up perfectly, so the two of them ended up meeting up off campus for lunch most days they could; sometimes with Cassie or Greta in tow. Somehow Greta roped her into lyric writing sessions after finding out Anita’s major was in language, and the two of them also found a shared interest in Nintendo and obscure bands. The two of them regularly swapped and traded albums with each other.

The group also began taking her to punk shows. Sometimes it was just the four of them, and sometimes Greta’s buddy Slobo would join them, but no matter who was there, they were having fun.

She wouldn’t claim that the space was perfect. Too often she would come across people who were outright bullies that went against the ideals of the culture, but she always made sure to meet those people with a left hook and a middle finger when it was safe for her to do so. She wore the first black eye she got during an argument with a racist woman at a punk show with pride. She knew all too well that people like that unfortunately existed everywhere, but how they could claim to be part of the scene was beyond her.

Her dad was suspicious of her new friends at first, very strongly warning her against hanging out with them. He tore her a new one for meeting with strangers without telling anyone or vetting them first - which in hindsight was a horrible idea when she thought about it, but she wouldn’t admit that to him. He also almost had a complete meltdown when he saw her with that black eye. She thought she would never hear the end of that one. 

However, these women were a net positive in her life and even he could not deny that they were good for her, so he did eventually calm down and come around to them. There was always that lingering suspicion he had in his eyes, but he did well to not be as vocal about it as he would have when she was a teenager. Things were going well for her.

“So, what are we going to call ourselves?” Anita asked from her spot on the living room floor, a paint brush between her fingers and the snare sitting in her lap. 

Sticker packets and pallets of paint littered the floor around her. Cassie sat pressed against her side, critical eyes judging the magenta highlights she was applying on the black base. The other woman had already finished dolling up her own instrument with bright, yellow stars and golden pegs, so now there was nothing for her to do but hover around the others. Anita thought it was endearing so she said nothing. Besides, she would probably need help with the skull she planned on painting on the front of the bass drum anyway.

Cissie, who was seated on the couch behind them restringing her electric guitar after painting the headstock turquoise, spoke up. “We haven’t really decided on that, but we have a few names in the workshop.”

“Well, we really have to settle on a name.” Greta said as she walked in from the kitchen with an armful of those little barrel shaped drinks that left an acidic taste in the back of your throat. Cissie hated them and Anita was neutral to them, but Greta and Cassie loved them so they were the drink most abundant in the apartment. Greta dropped them carelessly onto the coffee table beside her project and sat down with a huff. “It’s the only thing I’m missing for our zine.”

That was another thing; their zine. They started putting it together almost as soon as Anita officially joined them as part of the band. 

There was a page dedicated to each of them and their stories (some of which had Anita in tears) as well as a few pages about what they hoped to accomplish; a sense of community, speaking up against abuse and assault, open discussion about sexuality and self expression, etc. 

The cover was a professionally taken picture of the four of them with Anita holding her drum sticks, Cassie and Cissie holding their guitars, and Greta rocking a pair of headphones. It had been taken by the boyfriend of a friend of Cissie’s who was an aspiring photographer and filmmaker. He did the work pro bono, which Anita still balked at because of how high quality the pictures were. They were stunning. 

Greta had already traced coloured outlines around their figures and included other design elements here and there to make the cover pop. All she needed to do now was cut and paste letters spelling out the name of their band in a bold font over the top of said picture, but she would, of course, have to wait to do that until they actually had a name.

“We’ll figure it out sooner or later,” Cassie said, snatching one of the drinks and peeling the top off instead of punching one of the tiny straws into it. She took a large, noisy slurp of it before asking. “Are you sure you want to be working on the zine and not personalizing your instrument? We’ll have time for that later.”

Greta shook her head, “I already told you, I’m not touching that keyboard. It would feel like I’m erasing the memories it already holds.”

“And I already told you, I don’t care what you do to it. It’s yours now, I’ve entrusted it to you, and I don’t think there's anything you could do to it that would upset me.” Cissie interjected. She thought for a moment and then let out a small snort. “Actually, I’m begging you to stylize it. My dad would love to see it getting some love after all these years, but my mom’d  be fucking pissed if she knew we were doing this to my instruments.”

Anita paused mid-stroke of her brush and glanced at the other woman with wide eyes. “Should we be doing this then?”

“Oh, hell yeah. Pissing that woman off is my favorite thing to do.” Cissie giggled, genuine glee on her face as she tuned the guitar and eyed the sticker pile contemplatively. Anita didn’t question her further, only smiled and shook her head as she moved to finish her stroke of paint.

“Even still, I don’t want to do anything to it.” Greta argued, drawing a crude pair of scissors snipping a lock of hair in what was presumably Cassie’s section of the zine. “Besides, it feels more symbolic if I leave it like that, doesn’t it?”

“How do you mean?” Cassie asked, already going in for another one of the barrels, an almost neon blue one this time.

“I mean, all of the stickers and stuff on there are cutesie kid things, things Cissie chose when she was just a little girl. Leaving them there and playing it as it is feels like I’m saying ‘don’t underestimate me’ I guess. Plus, it makes me feel connected with her, or something like that.” Greta said, brows furrowing as she tried to explain her reasoning. “I don’t know, it makes sense in my head.”

“I can understand what you mean.” Anita said with a hum. Behind her, Cissie’s eyes were soft, maybe a little watery.

“I would still love it if you added at least a little bit of yourself to it.” She said with a sigh. 

“Maybe.” Greta said with a shrug.

The next time they met up, it was outside of the music store that the other three women frequented. It is bright and early in the morning, when the dew was fresh and a dusky blue hue hung over town as the sun barely began its ascent into the sky. Anita shivered a bit in the morning chill as the four of them waited for the store owner and her partner to arrive to let them in. 

Beside her, Greta pressed her back into the wall of the building with a large cardboard box held in her trembling arms, just barely kept in balance by one of her knees pressing up against the bottom. She strongly denied Cassie’s help with the heavy load despite her obvious struggle to hold it up. She also refused to put it down, knowing that Cassie would swoop in and take it from her the second it left her arms.

Finally, around 20 minutes after they first assembled the owners show up, unlock the doors, and see them inside of the building, where Greta beelines for the back. Anita almost wasn’t able to hold in her laugh when the small woman all but dropped the box onto the foldout table that held the magazines with a resounding bang. It was only saved from crashing to the ground by Cassie and Cissie’s quick reflexes. Laughter filled the small shop as Greta’s ears burned a bright shade of pink.

The box was opened and each of the women reached inside to pull out a stack of their very own zines, freshly printed with the help of Cassie’s boss. Anita gleamed with pride and giddy excitement as she ran her fingers down the expanse of the cover. Cissie’s effortless elegance, Cassie’s playful yet confident smile, Greta’s nonchalant side glance, and her own bold expression all stared back at her. In bold font above them was the name they had finally decided upon; Unstrung .

Not only were they finally getting their zine out there and into the world, where it would hopefully reach someone who it could help and inspire, they also had their first show scheduled. In the back of the zine was a stapled poster with their show date at a small gay bar downtown printed on it. It was so exhilarating to see her own name there with the other girls under the 9pm time stamp.

She smiled, looking at the women who had changed her life in such a short amount of time as she set the stack of zine’s in her hands on the table.

                                        🎸    🎸    🎸

For as long as she can remember, Cissie had always had a difficult and complex relationship with music. A volatile, oftentimes toxic, one. Things didn’t start out so bad, but they managed to quickly spiral into the hell that was Cissie King-Jones' childhood.

Her mom and dad met at college, having both been in the same musical history class. Her mom was a violin genius, while her dad favoured the piano. Both were as skilled as they were passionate, and that combination was what drew them towards each other. They had a whirlwind romance, having started dating a little over a week into knowing each other and marrying pretty much immediately after graduation. 

They were known as a dynamic duo in the world of classical music, as well as both having fairly successful careers outside of each other. Her dad played at the opera house regularly and had a well paying job as a pianist at a fancy restaurant. Her mom was second chair in the local orchestra, and there was a lot of talk about how she was going to be promoted to first. Her violin career was cut short, however, when a car accident and a shoulder injury left her unable to play the way she used to. 

Cissie’s dad took the highest paying job he could outside of music to support her mom’s recovery, and neither of them really ever got back into it outside of a hobby that they indulged in from time to time. They had her in their thirties after fully settling down, and they naturally passed their love of music onto her from a very young age.

Cissie’s earliest memories were of laying on the carpet, kicking her legs in the air with her chubby arms cushioning her head. The summer breeze that was brought in through the open windows ruffled the draped curtains and carried the sound of her parent’s duet through the sun room. She also remembered sitting in her dad’s lap while he played classic songs, and some of his own, on his large grand piano. She would lean against her mom’s hip as she played the violin for however long her old injury would let her. 

Once she was old enough, they both introduced her to their respective instruments. Big hands with warm palms guided her own along the keys labeled by brightly coloured papers, while thin hands that were as cold as ice guided her bow across the strings of the violin.

When she decided she preferred piano over the violin, her dad supported her while her mother was disappointed and angry. She remembered hearing them fight over it through the walls of her bedroom and the small hands she had cupped over her ears. She remembered trying to hum louder than they could shout, tapping her fingers along her temples as she mentally visualized the keys for twinkle twinkle little star - the first song her dad ever taught her to play - in her mind.

In the end, she continued to learn both instruments.

She obviously put more love into the instrument that she favoured, adding a bit of personality to it with stickers and playing it so often that the handmade key guide was peeling off, needing new pieces of tape to hold it on every now and again. 

Because Cissie played piano more often, she was not as good at violin as she could have been. She still took to it like a fish to water, of course. As her mother put it, she was a genius with the instrument. However, it never felt the same as when she played the piano. She was a pro at the motions, the melodies, but no matter how hard she tried she was unable to put her soul into it. There was also the fact that her mother detested the idea of “ruining” the appearance of her violin, so it never really did feel like it belonged to her either.

Thanks to her mother’s connections, she was playing first chair violin in her local children's orchestra on the weekdays after school by the time she was 9 years old. It was stuffy and time consuming and often left her little arms aching with the rigorous practice she was forced to endure in order to play her absolute best. She hated every second of it.

Weekends, on the other hand, were dedicated to piano. She was free to make mistakes and play however she wanted; to play silly, to play horribly. She was allowed to have fun and laugh over the volume of the music. She could play how much or how little she wanted to. 

She was also allowed to experiment with instruments aside from the piano. Her favorite was the guitar, which felt like the opposite of the violin in some ways. Her father helped nurture her love for music and grow her appreciation for the creative process. With his help, she learned to express her emotions, such as her joy and her love, through said process. These were some of her fondest and warmest memories of her childhood.

All good things have to come to an end eventually. 

When she was 10, her father passed away. One mismanaged meal at a restaurant and a deadly allergic reaction later and her father was no longer in her life. She would never hear the sound of him playing piano ever again. He would never again guide her hands 

She barely even had a chance to grieve before her mother required her to focus on nothing but violin. Her well-loved piano was stuffed away into her bedroom closet along with her guitar, and weekends she used to look forward to were now another thing she dreaded. Every waking moment not occupied by school was spent studying sheet music with a violin resting on her collarbone.

She began to hate music more and more with every day that passed, and as time went on the intense practice and long hours began to break down her body. Even after she ended up needing surgery on her elbow to correct an injury caused by the strain of overuse, her mother continued to push her after she was recovered enough to play. Those few weeks she wasn’t able to play the violin were some of the only times she could remember being able to relax even a little bit during her teen years.

She was barely even able to keep friends. Any that she met in middle school dipped out on her once they realised she didn’t have time for them while her mother had a say in her life, and she didn’t have the time to socialize when she reached high school age. 

Not even the other kids in the orchestra were friendly, all of them also being the kids of wealthy, stuck up families who didn’t think she was worth the time of their day. The only person who ever made the effort to keep contact with her was Bart, a kid that she met in physical therapy after her elbow injury. Unfortunately, he moved away during her junior year and his calls grew less frequent.

As a result, most of her time before and after shows, as well as during the parties her mother dragged her to, was spent in the company of adults. Rude, snobbish adults who didn’t value anything or anyone outside of money and power. It was exhausting. At some point she stopped even pretending to smile. They did not deserve her joy, fake as it may be.

There were days that she couldn’t get out of bed for anything. She would lay there staring at her violin case leaned against the wall with contempt until her mother stormed into her room to yell at her to get up. Sometimes she would comply if only to get her mother off of her back; other times she would get into screaming matches with the older woman and end up dragged out of her room with a bruising grip on her wrist. Even more rare, she would simply feign illness so that she could lay in bed until the days melted together and she tried to find something to live for. Those were the hardest days.

It came as a surprise to no one but her mother, that the second she was 18 years old, Cissie moved out on her own and went no contact with her. She performed her final show with the orchestra, resigned from her position, and moved two states over with the life insurance money that her father left her. The only thing she left behind were her violin and a note stating that her mom shouldn’t try to find her.

With the help of Bart, his best friend, and his boyfriend, she moved into a small two bedroom apartment in a good neighborhood, put an ad out for a roommate, and got a job at a diner two blocks out. She started going to college to pursue a degree in nursing and physical therapy, and attempted to put her mother and her past out of her mind. 

But nothing was ever that simple in life.

She tried her hardest to love music again after moving away, but she hadn’t been sure it was something that was even possible. She tried every other instrument under the sun that she could get her hands on; flutes, recorders, clarinets, cellos, drums, triangles, hell she even tried bagpipes at one point. None of them sparked the same joy that she held for music in her youth. She tried playing her old keyboard again, and while it didn’t bring the same dull sense of boredom that the others did, it brought her a deep sense of heart aching melancholy. 

The only instrument she could ever bring herself to play was the guitar, but she lacked enough motivation to put in the effort to properly learn it. Even still, she bought herself several guitars that ended up sitting uselessly in her bedroom for months. Occasionally she would sit on her window sill, guitar in her lap as she idly strummed twinkle twinkle little star and dreamed of simpler times.

She also went through a phase of listening to any music she could get her hands on. Classical was off the table, but that still left a whole world of music for her to explore. Pop, rock, electric, country, you name it, she tried it. None of them stuck no matter how many different albums she tried.

Her collection of tapes and vinyls grew and grew, stacking up in her room along with the instruments she would never play again, and still she found nothing. Her walks to and from her job at the local diner were filled with silence and her own thoughts. For a period she didn’t mind that, but over time it grew suffocating. It felt like the deafening silence was slowly closing in on her more and more as the days went by. She didn’t know how much more she could take.

Things changed when Greta moved into her apartment. The younger girl was standoffish at first, a little rude, but she was ultimately very kind and Cissie enjoyed spending time with her. Slowly, but surely they grew closer and Cissie absentmindedly confided in her one sleepless night, as the two of them shared a pint of mediocre ice cream, that she needed music to listen to before the hum of silence killed her. Greta was all too eager to share with her.

This new genre that her roommate recommended to her was so radically different from the violins and fairytale-esque genres she had grown up with. In fact, it was the very antithesis. It was loud, it was noisy, it was messy, and it was vulgar. Her mother would hate it, but she loved it. 

Bratmobile became a favorite of hers, along with Bikini Kill, which was how she got into zines. She already frequented this music shop, but for the first time since she started going her eyes were drawn to the magazine table by the familiar name emblazoned on one of the covers. She immediately purchased it.

She started playing the guitar more, but this time in a dirty messy way that her neighbors absolutely hated. She started listening to music every chance she got; on her way to work, on her way home, to classes, in classes when she could get away with it, and she would listen to it with Greta in their apartment after the two of them got home every day.

It was like the dead silence of her world was suddenly full of life and sound.

Somehow through it all, she met her beautiful partner and said partner suggested they start a band. She was ecstatic, completely on board with the idea. It wasn’t until after all of the preparations were finished and their first show was set that she began to have her first doubts.

Dressed up for their first official show with the tips of her hair freshly dyed a brighter shade of red, she crouched outside of the small gay bar located downtown with her forehead resting on her knees and her arms folded across her stomach. She wouldn’t admit it, but she was trying very hard to not spew vomit all over the already dubious alley she had found herself in. The chilly air caused her to tremble a little, making her quest of keeping her stomach contents where they belonged all the more difficult.

She thought she was ready to perform on a stage again, but she just wasn’t so sure anymore. She didn’t understand her own anxiety, though. This was different, way different than the massive crowds she used to play for in the orchestra. This crowd was smaller, more intimate. They were nothing like the snobbish, stuck up elites she used to be forced into the company of.

She really couldn’t reason why she was so stressed out over this. She was fine when they were sitting in the staff room waiting for them to get the bar set up for the night so that they could play. As the time grew nearer, however, a pit dug itself deeper into her stomach and she just had to get out for some fresh air.

That was how Cassie found her, green in the face with a hand over her mouth. Cassie’s hands, on the smaller side but wide and rough, pressed gently onto her shoulder blade. It emitted an immediately comforting warmth that she leaned in to. Cissie grasped that hand desperately, tightly interlacing their fingers over her shoulder.

“Hey, now, what’s wrong, babe?” Cassie asked, crouching down beside her and putting her other hand on Cissie’s other shoulder, pulling her against the side of her body in a side hug. She rubbed up and down her biceps, leaving a trail of warmth behind in their wake and somewhat putting Cissie’s mind at ease.

“I think I’m just nervous. This is…the first time I’ve done a live performance since I moved away…” She muttered. Cassie was silent for a moment. She had confided in Cassie about her past with music sometime after they met, so the other woman knew how big of a deal this was to her.

“What are you nervous about?” Cassie questioned carefully after a moment. “You have plenty of experience on stage.”

“I think that’s the problem. It’s just that- ugh,. I don’t know.” Cissie tried and failed to explain herself, ending with a sigh. She resisted the urge to rub her eyes to avoid smearing the glittery red eyeshadow she had put on before they made their way to the bar. “I guess I just…don’t want to hate this.”

“What do you mean?” Cassie wondered, her brows furrowing in that cute way that they did when she was confused.

“I hated performing with the orchestra, I really did. It was one of the worst experiences of my life. But this? All of this is the most important thing in my life. It’s not just a hobby, it's my ideals. It’s who I am as a person. If I hate this, then what’s the point of it all? What’s the point of me?” Cissie rambled without thinking about it. After getting it out, however, it suddenly made sense to her.

Cassie hummed and nodded, thinking again for a moment. “Well, this is going to be way different, isn’t it? I can’t imagine a bar full of queers is going to be the same as a room full of rich pigs. And you are definitely not the same person you were back then. Pretty much nothin' is the same as it was back then.”

Cissie snorted at her girlfriend’s wording. “You’re so eloquent.” She giggled. Cassie smiled and leaned her head against the side of Cissie’s.

“Maybe I should beg Greta and Anita to let me in on one of their writing sessions.” She said with a chuckle. “But, really, I wouldn’t stress too much about it. Think about it this way; maybe this will overwrite those bad experiences from before.”

“I hope so.” She said with a sigh. Just then, Greta burst out of the back door beside them very loudly. Her annoyed expression morphed into relief when she spotted them, her hazel eyes rolling behind her darkly painted lids.

“Thank god you two aren’t making out back here. We’ve got a song to perform!” She said with her hands on her hips. She then took in the sight of them and her face fell. “Hey what’s wrong, Cissie? Are you alright?”

“What’s going on?” Anita’s voice asked as she peered out of the doorway over Greta’s head. 

Cissie sucked in a breath through her mouth and looked at Cassie, who smiled with nothing but warmth in her eyes, then back at Greta and Anita, and the genuine concern creasing their faces. She blew the breath out and smiled slightly herself.

“It’s nothing, I’m fine now.” She said. She stood, dragging Cassie with her by two hands around her wrist. “Come on, we’ve got a song to perform. Let’s go make ourselves heard!”

The bar wasn’t very big, so the bar staff ended up having to remove some of the tables and store them in the back to make room for Anita’s drums and Greta’s keyboard, as well as give the other girls a place to stand.

Cissie slung the strap to her guitar over her body and stood in front of the microphone that had been set up closer to the bar, her heart thundering in her chest. The other women took their positions. The lights were dimmed, the walls black with golden accents that occasionally sparkled. The patrons were chatting and milling about, some of them looking at the band with curious eyes.

She turned to look at her friends, her bandmates, for reassurance. She was met with Greta’s firm, determined nod, Cassie’s bright smile full of love, and the confident glint in Anita’s eyes. As she turned back to face the bar patrons Anita tapped a beat onto the Ride Cymbal and Cissie began to sing.

If her early childhood had taught her how to express her joy through music, this band had taught her to express all of the nasty, dirty emotions that she wasn’t usually allowed to show. She screamed the lyrics into the mic using all of the pent up rage she held back over the years, all of the heart ache and hatred. Her throat felt scraped raw, her temples throbbing in beat with the bang of the drum and the strum of the guitar strings under her cherry red pick.

Adrenaline soared through her veins and sweat began to drip from her temple from a mixture of how hard she was exerting herself and the heat of the stuffy bar. At one point Cassie pressed her own sweaty temple close to Cissie’s as the two of them sang into the mic, mouths so close that their lips were almost touching. At some points they did. She could hear their voices mixing with Greta and Anita’s over the roaring in her ears.

The crowd went from mildly interested to fully immersed. They banged their heads, whooped, cheered, and even tried to sing along to the best of their abilities. The excited screaming from the bar patrons fueled her to finish the song strong with one last vocal frying scream into the mic, which left black dots floating in her vision.

She pushed the microphone away from herself as she panted heavily. A drop of sweat slid down her nose. An almost manic smile split her face. She was utterly exhausted, but she had never felt more alive.

The patrons clapped and Cissie felt a weight crash into her from either side and then into her back, almost knocking her forward. Cassie and Greta burrowed into her sides while Anita wrapped her arms around her from behind.

“One more song! One more song! One more song!” The crowd began to cheer. 

Cissie’s cheeks hurt from smiling as she looked at each other of her bandmates in turn. “What do you girls think?” She asked, still a little breathless.

“Yes!” All three of them shouted in return.

They got back into their places to do another song, which would turn into three, and then four, and then so many more that Cissie lost count. Sometime during the night, they transitioned from originals to covers of other groups. They sang their hearts out until they were red in the face and the bar closed for the night. This was only the beginning, though. They attended many more shows after that, and every single one of them was just as freeing as the last.

Querl knew it was inevitable. 

Really, it would have only been a matter of time before Lyle grew aware of the way Querl had been avoiding him as of late. The fact that Lyle was an incredibly observant person aside, it would not take a genius to take note of how he refused to be alone in a room with the other scientist unless absolutely necessary.

Querl wasn’t exactly subtle, either, in the way he would only give him short answers when they were forced to talk, keeping all small talk out of their conversation entirely.

Truth be told, it wasn’t even something he was doing on a conscious level.

Being around Lyle triggered some sort of strange, illogical response in him. His heart would race, his palms would grow slick with sweat, and breathing became just a little bit more difficult. 

Talking with the earthling would cause an overwhelming swelling feeling to well up in his chest, clogging his throat and stealing his words away, leaving him to respond in only clipped answers lest he make a stuttering fool of himself.

His eyes were inexplicably drawn to the other man whenever they were in close proximity to each other.

He could stare into those warm, enticing brown eyes for hours as the artificial light of the lab made them sparkle just so, flecks of gold noticeable in their depths if you knew where to look. 

The smile lines at the corners of his eyes, the dimples on his cheeks, his crooked front tooth, the way his wavey hair fluttered up into the air as he blew a stray strand away whenever it inevitably fell into his face, the way he would stick his tongue out of the corner of his mouth and tilt his head to the side when he concentrated.

Everything about him was intoxicating.

Being around Lyle made him feel vulnerable in a way he never had before and it was…terrifying, to be frank. It was scarier than any monster or foe he had ever had to face in his time as a legionnaire.

Querl couldn’t quite understand the strange feeling either. Its origin and meaning both eluded him like the answer to an unsolvable formula that he couldn't even begin to wrap his head around.

So, he did what he knew how to do best when something wasn’t working out for him. He abandoned it. Abandoned it so fast he would give Jenni a run for her money. He avoided it like it was a millennium old plague come to haunt him.

That, unfortunately led to where he was now, staring up at Lyle’s angry, pinched expression as the other stood in front of his chair with his arms crossed.

“Remind me again what it is you need in my lab, Norg.” Querl said, trying to keep his voice as monotone as it usually was despite the way his heart stuttered and jumped in his chest.

“This is our lab, we’ve been over this a million times or more. Don’t try to detract from the issue at hand, though. You’ve been ignoring me, Brainy.” Lyle said, tilting his head back to stare at him down the length of his nose.

“I simply have nothing to say to you.” Querl responded. 

Lies, lies, lies. 

He could talk to Lyle for hours if given the opportunity. The man had similar, if not equal, smarts to his own and Querl marveled at the wonderful ways the human’s mind worked. He would love to pick his brain until he knew every single one of his thoughts inside and out.

“And please refrain from referring to me with that horrid nickname.” He tacked on before he can think better of it.

“Refusing to talk to me and running out of the room every time I enter is way different from having nothing to say, and you know it. Even when we have things to discuss, you send someone else to say it or send me a holo. A holo! Even when we’re in the same room! Especially when we’re in the same sproking room!” Lyle exclaimed, throwing his hands around wildly as emphasis.

“I don’t know what you want me to say.” Querl said, mouth as dry as a desert planet. This time he spoke the truth, he really didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know how to explain to the other man the reasoning behind his behavior. He truly didn’t.

“I want you to talk to me! I want you to tell me what I did wrong!” Lyle yelled and Querl startled at the fact that there were tears beginning to well up in his angry eyes, giving them a glossy appearance. “We got so close after you came back from being missing. I thought we were good friends, but I guess I was wrong because you can’t even bring yourself to look in my direction!”

“I-” Querl’s words caught in his throat and he found himself unable to form any. Lyle scoffed after a few painful seconds passed in complete silence, eyes red and glassy from the effort it took to hold in his tears as he turned away to walk out of the lab.

“I don’t know what I expected. I’ll go talk to Jasmine about moving me to a temporary lab while we figure something long term out.” He said bitterly, voice shaking.

Querl watched him go helplessly, throat thick and heart thumping behind his ribs. A sense of panic overcame him as Lyle disappeared through the door.

He should want this, right? If Lyle moved out of the lab he would no longer have to make an effort to avoid him. He could more effectively ignore whatever it was that he felt when he was around him. He could pretend he never existed.

But, for some reason, that single notion was the most dreadful thought in the world to him.

Querl was on his feet and out the door before another thought could even form in his mind. The halls were empty as he stumbled to a stop in the doorway, hand gripping the frame as he looked in both directions desperately. He didn’t know what it was, but something in his gut just told him to go left, and so he did.

“Lyle, wait-!” He exclaimed, reaching a hand out to the empty space in front of him.

To his shock and wonder Lyle materialized right in front of him, his glistening eyes wide and surprised.  Querl’s fingers were mere inches away from Lyle’s chest. 

Despite his fear that this was a horrible, awful idea, he reached down to snatch Lyle’s hand and pressed it to the left side of his chest, right over his rapidly beating heart. Lyle looked down at where Querl’s shaky hands held his own against the thundering heartbeat and then back up at Querl’s eyes, mouth agape and eyebrows furrowed.

“Querl, what are you-” Lyle started, voice still watery

“This is what I feel when I’m with you. And I’m powerless to stop it.” Querl cut him off, voice shaking with his nerves. “I’ve never felt weak, Lyle Norg, not until I met you.”

“What are you trying to say right now?” He asked hesitantly, maybe even hopefully.

“I am saying that you’ve done the unthinkable.” Querl said, and then he took a deep breath, preparing himself for the words that would next leave his mouth. “I think that, perhaps, you have made me fall in love.”

Lyle’s eyes blew open so wide they looked as though they may pop from their sockets. His fingers curled against Querl’s chest, bunching up the fabric in his hold. Querl avoided his eyes, cold sweat rolling down the back of his neck. He took tiny, measured breaths as the anxiety of the situation attempted to strangle him where he stood.

He was, himself, shocked by the admittance. Love? He didn’t know such things, or at least, he didn’t think he did. But when he thought about it, really thought about it, it made sense. This strange, unidentifiable feeling deep down in his heart, it was love, wasn’t it? Love and infatuation, an unmatched adoration for the brilliant man before him.

A light chuckle reached his ears and he looked up, heart sinking with dread at the sound as he prepared to be mocked for his utterly foolish confession. Instead, he was met with a shocking sight.

Lyle was looking at him with tears rolling down his face in earnest now. Despite this, though, he had a wide, bright smile on his face and those watery eyes were full of an emotion that Querl now recognized as love. Love that was directed at Querl. Lyle’s lopsided, tear stained smile was the most radiant and beautiful thing he had ever seen in his life.

“You are such a sproking idiot.” Lyle said, voice cracking at the end. He sniffled and pulled Querl into a hug by the hand holding his front. His next words, muffled partially by the way his face was buried into the crook of Querl’s neck and whispered almost too low for him to hear, made his heart skip a beat. “I think, maybe, I love you too.”

Slowly, he hugged the other scientist back, his ears flushed deeply. He leaned his head against the side of Lyle’s, his heart still fluttering in his chest.

“I-I don’t know what to do with these feelings.” He further admitted.

“Obviously,” Lyle scoffed wetly into his shoulder, chuckling a little.

“What does this make us now?” Querl asked, holding onto the other a little bit tighter in anticipation of his answer. 

He didn’t know what kind of response he wanted. Boyfriends, partners, lovers; all of these words, they all sounded a little too daunting at that moment.

He just barely figured out what that nebulous feeling was, it all felt like it was moving far too fast. Lyle pulled back from his semi-desperate hold, his hand coming up to cup Querl’s cheek as he searched his eyes.

“It doesn’t have to make us anything yet,” Lyle said, “We can figure out what to do with these feelings together, take it one step at a time. Experiment with it, if you will.”

Querl leaned into the gentle touch, his own hand coming up to hold Lyle’s wrist. 

Querl walked down the path, multi-coloured leaves crunching under his boots as he went. The autumn breeze blew through his greying hair, ruffling its clean appearance and forcing a shiver down his spine. He turned his face up towards the fleeting warmth of the sun and took a deep breath of that fresh air. He loved Earth and all of her beautifully unique seasons, but none so much as fall. How could he not when there was so much about it to cherish?

Crisp weather that allowed for comfortable clothes, the distinct spicy-sweet smell that traveled from place to place, the leaves which created a mosaic in the air as the fell and on the ground when they settled, and, of course, the fact that it was the season that his lovers birthday resided in. What was there not to love?

In fact, that was where he was going right now. It was November 19th, Lyle’s birthday. Querl had moved every important plan, meeting, and experiment months in advance so that he would be able to spend the entire day with Lyle free of worry or stress.

In his grasp, down by his side, was a worn, cloth bag that had been used for a million different things a million different times over the years. Today it contained a soft, knitted quilt gifted to him and Lyle by Garth many years ago, along with a box of pink candles, two plates, two forks, two tall glasses, and a bottle of strawberry champagne, Lyle’s favorite. Under his other arm was a container with an angel food cake decorated in sliced strawberries, also Lyle’s favorite.

As he walked, he couldn't help but remembered the very first birthday of Lyle’s that the two of them spent together. A picnic dinner of pumpkin soup and fresh bread, followed by a cake Querl spent hours agonizing over, intent on giving his husband the best of the best.

Much to his dismay, the confection had ended up smashed on their way to the park. Querl had been heartbroken, devastated that his hard work was destroyed so easily, but Lyle loved it all the same, and had made sure to let that be known. Querl would never forget the way his brown eyes had crinkled at the corners, crows feet more prominent as he ate the remnants of the cake, a bit of whipped cream at the corner of his widely smiling mouth.

The night had ended with them stargazing, hands intertwined as they lay on the blanket, leaves crunching and crackling beneath the two of them. Querl barely remembered what the sky had looked like that night, more enamoured by the light in his husband’s sparkling eyes.

He smiled fondly at the memory, heart aching with love almost too grand to contain.

He shrugged his shoulders, attempting to stop the hand knitted scarf around his neck from slipping and allowing the cold breeze to pass his defenses. Admitting defeat when it didn’t work, he briefly set his bag down to make adjustments, wrapping it securely before resuming on his way.

He pushed the metal gate in his way open before entering the small area he was heading. He tipped his head politely in the direction of an elderly woman heading out on his way in, and she gave him a watery smile in return.

He exhaled deeply as he reached his desired location. He set his bag down, the cake next to it, before pulling the quilt out of the mix. He shook it out, laid it upon the grass, and then smoothed the surface down flat as it would go. He crouched down beside the blanket, not yet moving onto it. The golden ring on his finger twinkled in the afternoon light as he unloaded the bag methodically onto the blanket's surface.

He twisted the champagne open, pouring it into each glass and setting them on opposite sides of the blanket. Next was the cake, container opened and slices pulled free to be set onto separate plates. One piece was cut smaller, Lyle never did like too much sugar. His own piece was larger, his sweet tooth much too large to not indulge himself. He added three of the strawberries to Lyle’s plate and took only one for himself.

He pulled one of the candles out of the box. He lit the twisted pink wax and delicately stuck it into Lyle’s piece of cake with steady hands. Only then did he move to settle himself on the blanket. He sat criss-crossed in front of his plate and reached for his champagne, metal clinking against the glass.

“Happy birthday, Mr. Dox,” He said, raising his glass towards the headstone in front of him, “Its been another good year, I only wish you were here to see it, my love.”

He raised his glass to his lips and downed its contents in one swig. He then took a bite of the cake, the taste bittersweet as it melted in his mouth. He still wasn’t the best at baking, but he knew Lyle would have loved it still. He always did.