felicitygs | Recent Entries

There’s very little to prepare one for falling off a cliff.

Oh, theoretically, there’s plenty, all the spun thoughts of the world, the idle back and forth of children sitting bored on a porch stoop in a too hot summer day, chewing straw and drawing with sticks on the dirt.

Actually falling is another thing entirely.

It catches him off-guard.

Not because it is unexpected; oh, no, not that. Common enough on Asgard, after all.

Only… it feels as if it has barely been any time at all. He examines himself in the mirror.

Silver is, he supposes, better than grey (even if the difference between them is oftentimes a matter of semantics).

(And if it feels as if it has been no time, it simultaneously feels as if he’s lived lifetimes, can point at a trail and chain of events that came and went and were lived, and that is equally satisfying, like good wine (which they’ve had much of, or he has, at any rate) and better food (which, yes, they’ve both had, if only because Steve takes so much joy in indulging his whims) on a long summer’s evening (near fifteen, in fact).)

“Loki?” Steve calls from down the hall. “You ready?”

“Yes,” he says absently, smoothing his hair back and leaving the bathroom.

Gold, he thinks, is treated as a birthright by those who have it, flashy and ostentatious.

Silver is earned, marker of a hundred thousands small lifetimes to make up a whole.

He smiles and Steve smiles in return without knowing what he smiles for, a reassuring touch to the small of his back as they walk out the door.

“Move,” she snaps at Liza.

Liza slides down on the bench.

Felicia nearly falls into the newly vacated spot, and Liza hides a wince at the sound. Felicia pulls out a cigarette and lights it in one smooth motion before she scowls out across the football field.

“Don’t even,” Felicia says and Liza nods her head a little, because nothing she says will make Felicia stop smoking where she can get caught.

Sometimes, Liza thinks Felicia pushes to see how far she can go before things break. It’s going to be either Felicia or the world. Liza knows this, and sometimes it makes her love Felicia more and sometimes it makes her nearly hate her, but, well, that’s Felicia.

“Move,” Felicia nearly snarls the next day.

Liza moves. It doesn’t matter that she left the spot Felicia sat in the day before available. Felicia pushes, Liza bends.

Felicia is nearly buzzing today, her gestures all sharp and angry as she talks, her eyes sparking like lightning as she glares at the teacher who glances up at them on in the bleachers. A dare.

Felicia has detention for a week after that, and Liza doesn’t see her the entire time.

“Move,” Felicia says, her voice soft in the grey mist of the rain at night.

Liza looks up, surprised, because she never sees Felicia except at school.

But she moves.

Felicia sits down by her. She doesn’t fling herself onto the booth, doesn’t sink gracefully, doesn’t do any of the expected moves. She just sits.

“Thanks,” Felicia says, and Liza wraps an arm around her shoulders as Felicia rests her head on Liza’s shoulder. Liza doesn’t say anything, and, for once, neither does Felicia.

Later, when Felicia leaves, wiping tears away that Liza pretends not to see, she says, “Thanks.”

Liza smiles.

“Of course,” she says.

“Move,” Felicia says the next day on the bleachers, and Liza moves and pretends there’s nothing different about Felicia’s hand twining in hers where no one can see.

He’s twelve when they first meet.

“Why is her hair like that? Can hair be purple?”

“She dyes it,” he explains.

She frowns and studies Susie.

“Like cloth.”

“Yes,” Mark says. “Like cloth and… indigo, right?”

She smiles wide, pleased he remembered, and he can’t help smiling back.

Some afternoons, he meets her at the old apple tree on the hill, and he brings things with him. He isn’t sure how he feels about girls, but he likes her smile, likes the way it makes him feel, and she loves to see new things.

She especially likes books. He never read books much before they met, but now he reads lots. They sit together, not quite touching, and he’ll read aloud to her. Sometimes, she reads aloud to him as he turns the pages, and they’ll stop to examine pictures when there are pictures.

When he’s thirteen, he dreams of her, and what her arms would feel like wrapped around him. He wakes hot, pajamas sticking to his skin. He avoids going to see her for days after that. When he does go, she doesn’t seem surprised at all.

“Sorry,” he says, but he doesn’t know how to explain what he’s sorry about. It seems wrong to think about her that way, and all it does is make his heart ache. He can’t imagine a time she won’t be there, can’t imagine a time he’ll not want to see her.

She looks up at him from under the shade of the tree, and for the first time he realizes how very sad her eyes are.

“It’s okay,” she says and she smiles the way dark dark chocolate tastes–bitter and sweet.

When he’s fifteen, her laughter sounds like wind in the trees.

“I love you,” Mark tells her, sincere and fierce, and he thinks the sound he hears is his heart breaking.

She doesn’t say anything, his Adella.

“I’m sorry,” she says. Then, “I love you, too, Mark.”

He nods, and then they sit underneath the tree, just like they always have. He pulls out a book from his book bag, and he starts to read first, the words rough at the edges because his throat is a bit tight, that’s all. Nothing else.

Adella sits by him, and if he doesn’t look, he can pretend the sunlight that plays through her is nothing more than the way her skin glows.

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“Match, match, match, hurry, come–”

“I’m trying!”

Her hands fumble across the floorboards, where are they, they were right here, but there’s empty space where they used to be, little box full of matches.

Both of them freeze as they hear susurrant drag and thud scrape of claws over wood.

Then another.

She reaches out and tugs him close to her with one arm, other hand still fumbling in the blind-dark, the too-dark dark, silent over the floor. Fingers knocking the corner of the tiny box, she snatches up the matches, fumbling with fingers to get a match.

“Candle,” she whispers, soft as breathing, heart locked in her throat.

Luke presses the old candle into her open hand without a word.

In the can’t-see dark, there is a hiss, followed by a second, a third, room-pressing.

“Mary,” Luke says, voice weak.

She fumbles with the matches, drops one, gets another, and strikes it once, twice, again.

“Light, damn you,” Mary says with a near sob, boards creaking beneath the weight of those things, hands shaking, tears stinging her eyes, “Light light ligh–yes.” The match flares to life, flickers, wavers in the air and she holds her breath, touches it to the candle and the wick catches, flares bright as hope.

The room fills with screams and squeals, and as she looks up she catches sight of blood-coloured (or is it covered?) scale and milk white eye before the shadow is only shadow again, the dark not too dark.

The candle flame gutters, then holds.

In the dark at the edges, they can hear ragged breath and angry growl, and she shifts her grip. Half a candle.

They need to find more.

It’s dragon weather.

Her mother sometimes will say that all fog is dragon weather, but she knows better. There are some very specific things to dragon weather and leave it to an adult to not understand the nuances.

Dragon weather is this:

Haze and fog so thick you can’t see a yard, grey and misty and shifting constantly, not quite raining but your skin left damp anyway because the fog is so thick you can feel cloud tears bead your skin. Forms half seen and then not seen at all, and the soft breath of the world beneath your feet.

She sits on a hill, sees the sheep moving in the fog–dragon’s breath–and listens.

Sometimes, though she can’t see, she thinks she hears the beat of a dragon’s wings.

Loki has no idea what the feeling in the air actually is. It’s wet and warm despite the fact it is very definitely freezing out, like the air is caught between one thing in another. Whatever the feeling is, it seems to upset Steve, who eyes the cotton grey sky wearily that afternoon.

“It’s going to snow,” Steve says glumly, and Loki knows what it’s tied to something else, something before.

He wants to ask, but he’s already realized that the lack of seasons in Asgard is strange. He thinks of the hard and compact white stuff, that was more ice than anything on Jotunheim briefly, but he doesn’t think it’s the same as whatever is going to happen now. Jotunheim was never this warm.

Mayhap it is something between rain and frozen, but he is not sure and he does not wish to ask.

He spends hours in the dark of his studio that afternoon, and when he walks out with a cup of coffee to see if the strange warm-wet-cold sensation is still in the air he stills, blinking.

It falls from the sky in great flurries, whips in the occasional playful breeze, and it is already beginning to stick and pile up. It looks a little like the odd globes with cities in them that Olek has occasionally passed off to him, shaken up, white dusting everywhere. He gathers a bit up in one hand and it melts against his skin, leaving it frozen and pink, but it is so soft. Powdery even, nothing like what he saw on Jotunheim.

He watches for a long while, until the last of his coffee is done. It is, he thinks, breath-taking.

Snow.

Been a while since I updated the fic rec list apparently. Wooopsie. Here we go, got a whole ton of things here. As usual, no one ship is really represented because I read all over. The masterlist is over here

Darkness, Flooded in Light -- A delightful take on the idea of Loki falling to Midgard instead of through to the Chitauri, with all the things that entails. Lots of ties to mythology and what is and isn't so, lots of Loki feels, some wonderful thoughts to follow through. I quite enjoyed it.

Godchild -- This one is done and that's literally been the only thing holding me back. Thor is turned into a child, evil villain Loki stumbles upon him and takes him. Growth and evolution of a relationship, some wonderful parenting/sibling feels handled in a way I enjoy.

A Failing in Diplomacy -- Jotun-Loki! A happy Jotun-Loki who goes off on a diplomatic mission to Asgard to see about establishing trade relations and is thoroughly unimpressed. Asgard is full of misinformation and really racist jerk views, and I love the handling of this.

The Family Man -- An alternate take on what was driving Loki during the Avengers, full of myth and legend and lots and lots of family feels. Loki is still just as dangerous, but you mix that dangerous with a terribly dependent and grief-stricken mess of a man, and you get something equally dangerous and yes. I love it. Looooove iiiiit. I'm a terrible person.

I sat alone and waited out the night -- This is a Frigga I can get behind. This is a Frigga I can appreciate, who doesn't make me furious with her words about how Odin always has a plan. That's saying something.

Is This a Matter of Worse or of Better? -- Howard and Maria Stark, through Maria's eyes, and Tony growing up. This one aches in the best way.

The Last Love Song of Anthony E. Stark -- Amnesia-fic. Tony starts to lose his memory after getting an Asgardian virus. Muninn is involved, we naturally get some really dark-edged Loki, and this is actually the only Steve x Tony I've ever been able to stand--partly because it's really not in your face about the whole mess. This fic is amazing and where I started puttering the idea for Muninn around.

we may be better strangers -- Loki through the eyes of Freya. Freya's experiences in Asgard as a goddess of fertility. This thing aches and is beautiful and ends at just the right spot, leaving you aching for more and already knowing what's coming.

Love is for Children and Other Lies -- An in-depth look at Natasha's history all the way through to the Avengers and a little past. Long, but well-worth it. Just a pure delight to read.

Learning to Fly -- Loki's punishment after the Avengers on Asgard. Some wonderful characterization on all parts, issues of patient choice, and Sigyn is marvelous despite her oh so brief appearance.

Leaves from the Vine -- Another Loki's punishment after the Avengers fic, this time involving lots of brother feels. Thor's perspective on this is something else, and Loki is his usual tricky self.

Exposure -- A very lengthy and incredibly beautiful look at how Clint sees the world and how that, in turn, leads to he and Steve falling for each other. All the art feels, all the Clint feels, just the whole thing is a stellar work and even if you don't ship it (and I don't) this is well worth a read.

You think that it wouldn’t be so bad, the first time you hear about it, to be happy. To have your emotions lift you up, to keep you happy despite what happens to you. You think that she is over-complaining because you don’t understand.

What you don’t know, what she doesn’t tell you, what she can’t verbalize, could fill volumes.

It’s not happiness, not real happiness; it’s chemicals in the brain saying she should be happy even when she hits her hip on the table, even when she’s told that someone she loves has been hurt. Which is not to say that tragic things don’t make the mood drop, because they do, but it is about as much a drop as the temporary dip of a roller coaster.

It’s not happiness that leaves her relaxed and lax and languid. It’s happiness that boils and froths, agitated joy boiled over and over and over, spilling across the stove top. It’s the sound of her bones humming, the feel of them grinding, the sensation her skin may very well buzz away from her muscles.

It’s not restful, so it must be restless, and she would say yes yes that’s it. Restless. Because even when the night is quiet outside her windows at these times–especially when the night is quiet–she cannot make her mind stop racing, she cannot dam up the thoughts that spill and scatter across the floor of her mind, she cannot do a single thing.

But she can’t verbalize that, so she doesn’t tell you, and you. You think:

that doesn’t sound so bad.

“I didn’t, though! It was Natasha!”

“Luke, just stop. Stop it, please.” Mama puts a hand to her forehead, closing her eyes.

Luke stops, biting his lip, shaking with anger. He didn’t do it. He didn’t, and he doesn’t understand why everyone thinks that he did. He’s never hurt someone with his pranks, and that no one notices that. Not even Mama.

Except, he thinks, she’s tired. He can see it. She works so much, and ever since they left Dad, she works even more. And when he’s tired he misses the obvious sometimes.

He doesn’t like it, not at all, but, he thinks, he can forgive her for believing everyone else who doesn’t know them that well.

“I want you to apologize tomorrow,” she says.

Luke swallows. He doesn’t want to. He didn’t do it, and apologizing will be like telling them he did.

“Okay,” he says.

She smiles, tired at the edges, and runs a hand through his hair then presses a kiss to his forehead.

“That’s my boy. Now try and stay out of trouble, you know I can’t miss work.”

“Yes, Mama.”

x-post from tumblr, 2018-feb-3

The end is the beginning. Cliche, so very cliche, and yet true in this case. Something about the silence and finality of an end echos the quiet and wet warmth of birth, before you know anything. You have to feel as if you know nothing again to start over.

Which is a lot of really romantic and poetic drivel that all boils down to this:

She had nothing left except some noodles in the cupboard and some frozen catfish in the freezer. No money, no friends, a big helping of no hope. A bottle of pills and a few shots of vodka later, she had no sleep, either, struggling to stay awake into the late hours of the evening, killing time one tick at a time.

That’s a beginning as much as it is an end.

Beginnings don’t always start with a scream. Sometimes, there’s not even a sigh.

Oh god here we go, I've got two fics to add to my rec list because I simply can't help myself.

And at the rate I'm going, I may need to think about creating a 00Q section on the fic rec list because guys.

Anyway.

Firstly

Midnight Train -- Steve takes a trip on a train because he would like to try it. Loki shows up. This is absolutely lovely, a beautiful little discussion back and forth, and I think Loki here is very well done. Conniving, scheming, and just the right amount of broken just beneath the surface. Go reeeeaaaad. It's a fantastic Loki x Steve (and I'm not saying that just because I beta'd it either. I wouldn't rec it if I didn't love it.)

elionai -- Series. Read both the stories. They are fantastic. Just fantastic. This blend of the His Dark Materials with the Avengers in the best way possible. I definitely shrieked when I saw the crossover, but then the entire fic just blows the entire concept out of the water. This is FANTASTIC. Why are you still reading this, GO READ THIS RIGHT NOW.

An Ice-Puzzle for Understanding -- Fairy tale feel, despite the modern setting. Steve starts to have these dreams about ice and snow and he isn't sure what's up. All very subtle, and one of the few 'Steve turns coat' stories I've found at all believable.

In the Land of Gods and Monsters -- Ee. Eeeeeeee. I love this. Smut, of course, lovely smut, but that's really not the only thing that gets stuff rec'd, you know? This line right here just sold it entirely for me : “I wasn’t ruined before you.” Just this swirl of chaos against order, and I am a sucker for both curiosity and temptation. Oh, and tiny bits of humour too.

The potential you'll be (that you'll never see) -- Oh, look. This is how FrostIron should be--broken, knowing it won't work, and all dark edges. Mmm. Utterly tragic and no less delicious.

~~As ever,~~ ~~full list over here~~

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felicitygs

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fel dreams

yea the one from tumblr et all

Recent Entries

30 Days - Falling

30 Days - Silver

30 Days - Move

30 Days - Companion

30 Days - Formal (part 2)

30 Days - Formal (part 1)

30 Days - Flame

30 Days - Dragon Weather

30 Days - Snowflake

fic recs - archive

30 Days - Restless

30 Days - Accusation

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