my feet are freezing

where the ocean meets the sky

rechive:

idr what I wanted to do with this. but there was plans of Alfred being basically an ex-angel and Arthur being old as balls.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

*

Everything hurts. Matthew tries to breathe, to let his mind latch onto the simple action of filling his lungs with air and letting it back out, finding his attention locking onto the agony it causes instead. He whimpers, breathing going shallow as he stares up at the sky, at the strong colours of the sunset and the fading light.

He thinks he should try to get up, to crawl out of the ditch they dumped him in and onto the road where someone might find him, might help him and make the pain go away.

He manages to roll onto his side and pull himself a couple of feet before darkness begins to fog up his vision, body going limp as he passes out.

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LS - Up, up, and away.

rechive:

For some reason Koosei and Smieska wanted me to livestream writing a fic ???? Being unable to say no to these two buggers I did and since Koo requested birdie Mattie that’s what they got. (◡‿◡✿) 

***

It’s not till the late evening that Arthur hears the flap of wings, amidst the lazy buzzing of bees and birds chirping. He’s sitting outside on the porch like he always does at this hour, smiling at Matthew when the boy folds up his wings behind him and tilts his head in question.

“No cookies today?”

Arthur shakes his head, amused by the predictability of the question and the hopefulness in the boy’s eyes. Matthew does love his cookies, more so than he should (Arthur used to buy the ones with chocolate, until he began worrying about unwittingly poisoning the boy and switched the chocolate chips for raisins instead - strangely enough, Matthew didn’t seem to notice the difference).

“No cookies today,” he replies, indicating to the empty stool he’s put there for Matthew to use. “Will you still join me?”

Matthew jumps off the ledge he’d been crouching on with a nod, flicking a wing in pointed disappointment before sitting down on the stool, leaning his elbows on the table and eyeing the tea in Arthur’s cup. “I thought you didn’t like herbal tea.”

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Full circle, you say?

There are moments in a person’s life that burn themselves into the soul, fusing themselves so seamlessly with the person’s heart that to ever have been without them is unimaginable - they have, for better or worse, always been there, and always will be.

One of those moments in Arthur’s life is the first time Matt sought contact with him. It seems so insignificant now, so many years later, after all the touches and sounds and unspoken things that has been shared between them. But not meaningless, never meaningless, not with the glint on Matt’s face as he’d watched him struggle with Alfred’s cravings for attention; the half-smile, hidden but for the crinkle in the corners of Matt’s eyes.

It had been a simple press of a palm against his ankle. Reserved, he thinks, just like the rest of the mer, hesitant but growing confident the longer his webbed hand had been in contact with the dark fabric of Arthur’s drysuit. It had started and ended with just that touch, so honest in its simplicity and even now Arthur thinks he can feel it tingle at the precise spot Matt had touched him.

Things had sped up from there. Suddenly Matt hadn’t avoided him, had stopped being so unresponsive to Arthur’s attempts of reaching him. Suddenly, Matt was there, next to him in the water, the brilliant scales of his tail catching the light and making Arthur swallow with the beauty of it.

He will always remember the buoyant weight of Matt’s body in his arms as the mer had let himself be held, the feel of his skin - still so unfamiliar back then, all undiscovered marks and scars - and the heaviness of his head resting against Arthur’s shoulder.

(Arthur hadn’t known at the time just how much trust he had shown Matt by letting him get so close to his throat. He does now, always wondering if the misunderstanding between them had been the catalyst of the sheer depth of the relationship that was to be.)

He’d sung to him then, voice low and gentle as he’d gone through the lullabies of his childhood, whichever words lost to time covered up by humming. He ends up repeating the same song, endlessly looping the same verse until it had devolved into a deep rumbling from his chest, thinking it the melody that mattered rather than the words.

Matt had slept, then, in Arthur’s embrace, features relaxed into something peaceful, as if all the evils of the world stopped just outside of the circle of Arthur’s arms.

The memory burns in Arthur’s chest. He tries not to remember, tries to clear his mind of all things Matt; the colour of his tail and the brightness in his eyes whenever he’d looked at him, the salty smell of his hair and the smooth feel of his skin.

He tries to not remember how Matt had pressed against him in the gentle sway of the ocean, unwilling to fall asleep and leave Arthur behind by himself. How raw his throat had felt while singing to him, asking him to settle down and rest while his voice wavered.

Arthur chokes, gasping for air as he fights to breathe, his chest wound so tight it becomes agony to even exist. He remembers how Matt had relaxed in his arms back then, finding the rest he had so sorely needed, still so weak from his injuries; remembers how Matt had gone quiet and still in his arms, tail looking dull in the dirty water of the sea.

The scream dies in his throat, strangled by the weight on his torso as the devil tears his soul out of him, leaving him numb, in infinite pain and struggling to regain himself as the tears begin to flow, endlessly, salty like the ocean Matt returned to.

Love, Love, Love

Some schmoopy stuff for that merman-with-legs engcan AU, as love and motivation for Smi and her struggles.

—————————————-

Kissing is possibly the warmest thing Matthew has ever done. He hadn’t quite understood the point of it at first, not the – the way humansdo it, the way human lovers do it. He had kissed his mother and his friends before, when they had been with him beneath the waves – but their way had been more like nuzzling, tails wrapped comfortably around each other and lips pressed to soft smooth cheeks. This –

This is warm, Matthew thinks, lying atop Arthur on Arthur’s couch, warm and soft and confusing. They have too many clothes and limbs between them and their heartbeats are all mixed; there are fingers mussing up Matthew’s hair and there is leg hooked around his leg – legs? Matthew tries to find where his legs are, where his feet are in the jumble by experimentally wiggling his toes and – and it would be Arthur to remind him of the necessity of toes, wouldn’t it, leg-identifying toes, whilst being the one making Matthew forget whose leg belongs to whom in the first place, all – all everything and wet sliding mouth.

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Won’t You Stay?

theruthela:

Um. Um. Um. I’m sorry everyone, there’s a little ramble before the fic. Just a little one though. This fic is for wewerenotthefirst. Because I first saw her work on fanfiction last year some time and she’s brilliant and she got me into this pairing and I feel a bit like a cat bringing in a dead bird to appease the human overlord (that’s meant to be a compliment, it’s past my bed time) and I’m really nervous but it’s one in the morning and I shall post this in the hope that someday she might read it and know what an inspiration she is.

Contains fairies. The non-Disney kind.

—

Matthew sat at the kitchen table, staring at the soft, wilted petals of the single pink rose his mother had left there before she went away for the week. She had been reluctant to go; leaving coral pink lipstick on both of his cheeks in such quantities that he’d actually had to wash it off. Which didn’t surprise him, really, the way her fingers had clung a little to his shirt, wanting to take him with her to her boring business meeting. To keep an eye on him.

Considering he had almost died two weeks ago, he honestly couldn’t blame her.

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(Source: quintessentila)

Washed Ashore

the-ace-of-ink:

“You’re kind of ugly for a human.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

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(via shachaai)

theruthela:

KWEEEEH!?: koosei said: ooooh. I could get behind that idea. …. so if Arthur’s…

rechive:

theruthela:

rechive:

koosei:

theruthela:

rechive:

koosei said: ooooh. I could get behind that idea. …. so if Arthur’s the boy (whose name I’m suddenly blanking on) who gets to be Captain Shakespeare?

theruthela said: … That sounds magical. Any preferences for who or what or where? (Scuse my…

The amount of awesome that is in that idea is very nearly incomprehensible. You have eat something dear, and I am going to have a long, hard think about this (You are putting ideas in my head like they belong there!)

:D she’s good at that, isn’t she?

Shh, koo.

Theruthela, be careful, or I will sit on your lap and tell you about ALL the ideas that fall into my mind. It’s a veritble breeding ground for AUs.

Koosei, she absolutely is! Half a conversation and I’m doing character sketches! 

Rechive, please, call me Ruth <3 And thought I think at 5’9” I might be a little large to sit on your lap, I would very much like to hear about these ideas of yours. Though I warn you, some of them may get written.

Ruth! You are taller than me, so I guess we now know whose lap is going to get sat on. 

…might get written, you say, I warn you, you say. I have so many ideas I don’t even know where to start. How about that one where Matthew is a merman caught by magician Arthur, kept human by means of a closed circuit spell that draws on his own powers as a magical creature and bound to Arthur by anklets made out of iron distilled from Arthur’s own blood? 

Arthur uses him to pull magick from in order to cast spells, and pretty much every night Matthew takes a very long bath indeed to regain his strength. 

It is generally me that gets sat on, but I don’t mind, it gives me more opportunities to hug people! I did warn you~ I would say that that’s very well thought through blood magic, you’ve seriously read up on your lore and I have always wanted to do something in the realm of mermaids but I never really got around to it because that’s where all the good writers hang out.

—

The best analogy he could come up with was that he was a banana being shoved into an apple skin. And it really was a horrible analogy, not least because it was something terran. There was something about those words that had sand and soil, trees and grass, and fresh air steeped into their very core. The best analogy would be that he was a fish being shoved into a human’s skin, but that didn’t count as an analogy because that’s what was really going on.

Human skin was too tight. It pinched and pulled in all the wrong places. It was soft and it bruised in ways that his scales didn’t because the ocean was a place for survival. It was a place where the fittest survived. But here on dry land with awkward limbs, too-soft skin and no protection at all, it was the cruel humans who survived. By the blood of their peers. And their own. 

Matthew gave the iron around his ankles a disparaging glance. The tendons stuck out on either side of the heavy metal. The skin around the manacles was blue-black and shedding rusty flakes on the slate floor. The iron burned where it sat on the jut of the bone, cutting through paper-thin skin. 

But it was the only way to keep him human and right now he needed to be human. Not for his own sake, of course - Great Oceania why would he actually want to be human? - but for that of the wizard that had decided to keep him here. Arthur, the name ebbed and flowed on Matthew’s mortal tongue like the tides of the sea. Arthur in whose blood the chains had been forged, Arthur who drained his energy and his power daily, Arthur who so cruelly kept him prisoner in this earthly skin when all he wanted to do was be free. 

But Arthur was not unkind, Matthew thought to himself as the wizard finished his spells for the evening and let the dizzying rainbow of lights fade from the cold stone room. The captive merman sagged where he stood, much-disliked legs buckling beneath him as the aura of magic faded around him, leaving him very little more than a little fishie in an ill-fitting skin. Power drained, he could feel fins fighting against restraining flesh, wanting to burst forth. 

The magician stepped forward. He smelt of singed hair and chalk. Horribly terran smells, the likes of which burned at Matthew’s tired nose and he wondered as he was hefted through the blurring chambers like a cumbersome sack of flour, if maybe  he would be allowed to look at the ocean, to feel it’s cool breeze. 

He was half-aware of being set down in water, glorious water, even if it was fresh rather than salt. He craved salt water, the saline prickle of it against his scales. Through half-lidded eyes he watched long, calloused fingers press the cursed chains in just the right way, making them pop free. They clanked and rattled against the side of the bath, flakes of dried blood dissolving into fading wisps as the water washed them clean. Matthew sighed, feeling his human body shrink back on itself, fading away as the magic was lifted and his body elongated, tail unravelling until he not only filled the tub but spilled out over it, scales glinting and glittering in the harshly. 

Arthur’s fingers touch the tender, broken skin around the base of his tail, fingers pushing gently so that the hard indigo meets over the baby pink and white of his exposed flesh, muttering something that bridges the rift and makes him whole and perfect once more. Matthew sighed, watching those cruel hands scoop water over him, admiring the way he glitters. It must be a terran thing, he supposes. Arthur isn’t used to the piscean splendour of having scales. He has never felt the wild joy of diving into a shoal of fish and coming out with a weaker being gasping it’s last between his pointed teeth.  Arthur would be enchanted by the magic of the mers, Matthew supposed. He was only human after all. 

On the other hand, needle teeth dug into the lip of a mouth that opened far too wide, the ocean was all about survival of the fittest. Each creature sought a mate stronger than itself. And Arthur was by no means weak.

—

Was this meant to be shipping? If not, sorry, my fingers slipped. There should be more of this ship on the oceans blue.

(via quintessentila)

mama’s got you baby girl

“None of you boys understand the value of quiet.” Arthur said, off-handedly, taking a long draught of tea. “The hush of the garden, only the breeze as a companion.” He sighed, heavily, admiring the rose bushes afar, laden with the weight of lush pink blossoms. “No respect for silence.”

He set his teacup down with barely a noise, reaching for the sugar. “Forgive me, lad. You take three spoonfuls, correct?” But he only added two. “Too much sugar will rot you from the inside.” He sat back, folding his hands on his lap.

He didn’t say anything, just looked at Matthew thoughtfully. “We haven’t done this is so long, Matthew. I regret that. I hope in the future we can have more moments like these, simply sitting, taking solace in each other, enjoying a warm cuppa. I’ll even bring this new tea I found in India’s cupboards. It’s rather nutty and bitter, but it warms one up so delightfully.”

He smiled warmly at Matthew. 

Matthew glared back at him, cheeks red, and half an unfinished scarf stuffed into his mouth and twisted around his head, frizzy strands of gold peaking out between the loops of green yarn.

“…The knots aren’t too tight, I hope.”

Matthew’s eyes further narrowed and the chair shook when he tried to move.

“Oh, splendid.” Arthur took another sip of tea. “And stop fussing or else you will hurt your wrists and then you will not be able to go back to enjoying my Victorian erotica. Speaking of which, I will be most displeased if you left any sort of mess in my bedroom.”