still don't have a good title

this is the seventeenth entry in a 31 day microfic "challenge" (self-imposed) i've been doing for oc-tober. most of the other microfics i'm writing are novel backstory, but i looked at this prompt-- that i wrote myself-- and thought "well, there's only one person this could be."

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On the thirteenth floor of the hotel is a room locked by three different keys. The night manager has one. Concierge has the second. The third has been missing for an indeterminate amount of time, as the hotel itself is somewhen that Time cannot reach.

None of those locks matter a whit to Annabel Lee.

It isn't a secret that she spends most of her time here. No one tries to stop her. No one says she can't go in. She is unbound from the contract that trapped her with the anomaly on the ground floor and her name is held by a second anomaly she found chainsmoking on the roof. There was never a lock that could keep her out of a room when she was alive, and that certainly won't change now that she's dead and bound to the hotel.

From the hall it appears like any other room, the one four doors down from the elevator with a creaky floorboard just outside. Inside, she sits on a field of pale red grass (not pink, not quite) and folded paper flowers, and lays back to stare at the ceiling, where she can see every moment of her death across every world she has ever been in.

The living cannot comprehend something like this. There is a madness that comes from being contracted to the Queen of the Dead.

A phantom breeze ruffles her hair and the flowers that surround her. The moments of her death aren't exactly visions in the clouds, nor are they seen at all. It's the only word I can use to hope to describe the sensation. As I said, the living cannot comprehend something like this.

If you were to conceive of this as a spiderweb, or perhaps more like a window broken by a baseball or medium-sized rock, then her fall from the top of the lighthouse is the point of impact where everything broke. It doesn't prescribe her other deaths, but it does preclude her soul becoming stuck after every time she dies. Within the memory banks of Corvus. In the House, and the hallways of the Hotel. Woven into the summoning name on the back of the professor’s tongue, and burned into the heart of the Ceaseless Howl.

Here, surrounded by every death she's ever had, Annabel finds every missing, shattered piece of her soul to piece back together. It's the only place left in any world where she truly feels whole.

me: hey this opening scene is really great set-up for a soulmate au where you don't see colors until you see your soulmate for the first time
jade: mk i will pay you to write this
me, with a doc open already: i mean

anyway i have a lot of notes for this one and this isn't going to be the end of this by a long shot but: figured i'd give you this for now. love me some davey/theo. sorry did i say davey? i meant andreyes. sidenote: hey mab, we should talk about the fact that andreyes' cousin is definitely a rumrunner and diamond thief.

set in the same universe as arc 59 (1920s prohibition era) just, yknow, for context.

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It happens too quickly, and yet the moment stretches into molasses.

Andreyes is looking out over the crowd of his father’s constituents, fiddling with one of the rings on his fingers. In the early afternoon air, buoyed by Father’s words, the people standing there are swaying like flowers in a field, but that doesn’t mean Andreyes won’t notice any out of place movement. There’s something that catches his eye, and his gaze flicks to it.

A person, lingering at the edge of the crowd, newsboy cap tipped up on their face, one hand caught in their suspenders. There’s something familiar about the look in their eyes… but Andreyes doesn’t have the time to marvel at the softness of their face before a chance moment of eye contact makes him freeze.
( read on )

had a prompt for an indirect kiss on curiouscat which has been sitting around since last november and i just had an idea for it based on thoughts from this morning. firebrands 'verse, reuben/kari, kari/marlowe, probably future reuben/marlowe, and reuben being a disaster twink. too long for curiouscat so y'all get it instead.

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when reuben stumbled down the stairs that morning, following coffee by only their nose, it was to find that no one had done the dishes again.

"shit fuck motherfucker," they muttered, nearly tripping over one of jo's shoes (again) and catching themself on the counter. "goddamnit jo, kari can't be the only competent adult in this relationship." or, you know, whatever. reuben kicked at the kitchen island and hissed as pain lanced up their ankle.

the cabinets yielded no mugs left and one very lonely bowl, which would have to do. not like this day was gonna be worth much anyway, if the pain lancing up reuben's leg was anything to go by; but the coffee would help it not be a wash. and besides, reuben knew kari had a little routine, and they would never admit it aloud, but they hated to interrupt it.

"let him sleep in," reuben muttered, trying to make their coffee machine work without making any noise. "give him a break, i say, and what do i get for it? a janked coffeemaker with no other alternative but to bang the pieces back into place."

"have you tried plugging it in?" asked a pleasant voice, and reuben whirled around.

( keep reading )