#it's fluff

“I can just pretend someone would actually step up," Mel admits, the honesty slipping out before she can stop it. "That someone would finally be the one to take care of me.” Frank doesn't hesitate. He leans in until they’re temple-to-temple, blocking out the sun and the noise of the Faire alike. “I could,” he whispers. “And I think I’d be damn good at it, too.”

Where Mel invites Frank to a ren faire, gets roped into working the naughty bartender booth, and he shows her just how much he likes her costume.

Lark talks to Nicky about his smoking habits while Nicky tries not to burn breakfast.

rated e

3.3k

ch. 3/5+1

“You’ve done all that for me and haven’t let me do anything for you yet, so I just thought—oh, what—” The heavy sigh hardly registers before--again--Callum takes her hand…and presses it against his lips. “It’s not that I don’t want you to, Rayla,” he says, sitting up and shaking his head. “It’s that you keep saying things like that.”

Hypothetically, if Metal Sonic were to figure out he can cheat his way into an organic form, and how Shadow might react to that.

He remembers blue light filtering in through the window, and the way it had glinted against black fur. He remembers the way Shadow had lowered his head into his side, grazing his forehead along the slots of his vents, only to fidget and pull back away with dissatisfied, flattened ears and a half-asleep mumble.

He remembers, because it plays like a failure behind his glimmering eyes. As he processes the moment over and over again, he stares down at his hands—they're bigger now, slightly less precise than they are in his base form, but he doesn't need them to be when he can trade obligatory sign language for spoken words. The form Stardust Neo is made up of subtle give-and-takes: taller, more powerful, more malleable, but not in the way that matters.

A different form will not make him softer to the touch, warmer to hold, or more pleasant to sleep beside.

He remembers mimicking his creator's speech pattern, his figure, his clothes. An artificial softness and warmth had been added to its visage to fool anyone who dared come near enough to touch when in disguise. Could he not implement the same trickery now, with a form of his own?

The thought of seeing Shadow smile in his sleep, instead of twisting away with discomfort, is all the convincing he needs to try.

Metal watches as he flexes his hands in and out again and again, watches as they're overtaken with a silverish sheen, then black, then watches as they gradually take on another shape. He feels his height shed away inch by inch until he's left with a body that matches Shadow's unspoken wishes; something gentle, something warm, something more real.

With metal-claw-tipped gloves, he smooths back his new quills experimentally. He doesn't need a mirror to tell him what he looks like now—he chose it himself. Desaturated blue streaked with off-cyan, sickly pale cream in place of greyish metal, an expression he can't quite change behind eyes more piercing than even Shadow's.

Perfectly different, perfectly his own.

-

It's a common scene, Shadow's back turned toward the front door, stood atop a stool as he prepares something at the kitchen counter, when Metal arrives home. His steel-tipped gloves make the same clack against the doorknob, but the pattern of normal boots stepping inside instead of steel stomps earns suspicion from his housemate.

When Shadow turns his head to scold whoever might be bold enough to let themselves in uninvited, he jolts in place and nearly drops the mixing bowl in his paws. A stranger—and yet not at all unknown. Who else could this be but—

"Metal?"

"Hello," comes the unpracticed response. For all the effort that had gone into this new form, there is nothing to do about the simple fact Metal only has one voice when not mimicking another. Though its volume is deliberately lowered, it still booms with a layered, unsettling, droning quality. Even with an organic-looking mouth miming the words, the sound still jumps from a voice box embedded somewhere in his neck.

Shadow, unbothered by its eerie cadence and instead familiar with it to the point of being comforted by it, does not flinch, though his expression is puzzled. He sets aside his mixing bowl and spoon, unties his apron, and pads his way toward the door. Metal never breaks his gaze, never strides to meet him half way, never moves, even when Shadow's bare paws are reaching down to capture one of his own gloved ones.

"What happened?"

"An experiment," Metal states plainly. "It is of my own doing. My choice." Do you like it?

The troubled furrow of Shadow's brow never quite fades as he wordlessly inspects his housemate's similar-but-not gloves, his quills, his fur. With unblinking attention, Metal watches him, nods when asked with a simple glance and gesture if the glove may be removed, watches as both of Shadow's paws take one of his own, simply holds it, carefully matches their paw pads. Metal watches, and watches, and wishes, but he cannot feel it.

"You're warm," Shadow finally says.

He cannot feel it.

The tilt of Shadow's brow looks almost hesitant, then, and something about the gaze he holds on Metal's not-metal paw seems almost lost. Though the hold he has on that hand is delicate and fond, even as he smooths the pad of his thumb over the slightly smaller one under it, he lowers their hands and fails to meet Metal's unbroken stare.

"… Is this permanent?"

Metal inclines his head questioningly.

"Is this form permanent?" Shadow tries again, patient, ever quiet, but with increasing insistence.

His housemate, his friend, his love-but-not-quite, hesitates. "Is this not what you wanted?"

"It doesn't matter what I want," Shadow says, "if the result makes you less… you." With an almost pained expression, he lifts his gaze from their hands to finally meet Metal's. "What made you think this was something I wanted?"

Already Metal can feel he has made an error somewhere, a fault of logic, an utterly organic mistake called assumption.

"You are uncomfortable at night," he states, "against a metallic body. It was a logical conclusion."

Metal tracks the way his beloved charge's expression crumples into something like all the things he still cannot accurately identify—alarm, hurt, guilt—and how the grip around his own hand tightens when their paws are brought back up between them. The first thing out of Shadow's mouth is an apology. The second thing out of his mouth is something Metal does not expect.

"Don't ever change yourself into something you're not for my sake." It's almost a desperate plea, for Metal to understand, to know the regret of making him feel anything less than whole and loved—at whatever capacity. "You're you. That's all that ever matters."

“Try that again, I dare you.” 

John said the words as he snatched Clara’s wrist in his hand, holding her there beside him—trapped, caught in the act. 

Clara wasn’t often this silly…this instigating…this playful, so John hoped she read his exaggerated threat in the way he intended—as a joke, an invitation to keep going. 

Clara shrank back from her brother, twisting away from him and trying to pull her wrist free while John effortlessly held her still, pretending to go back to work with the ledgers though he was intimately focused on her struggle for freedom.

John wasn’t watching Clara’s free hand though and he didn’t notice as the girl’s hand darted up to tickle the spot beneath his chin, all while continuing her endeavors to free herself. 

John let out a yelp of surprise and a small bit of involuntary laughter before pushing back from the desk to pull his sister into his lap, tickling her with an efficiency and vigor that has Clara dissolved into a fit of giggles and flailing limbs in a matter of seconds.

💠 FIVE LINE FRIDAYS 💠

Dance With Me

Word Count: 995 words

Rating: Mature / 18+

Swiss is the gentleman of the pack. He is always suave and does he ever have the best dance moves. 

read here below the cut, or here, on AO3

@forlorn-crows