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Astrid Hakansson ([info]sassy_valkyrie) wrote in [info]heureuxlake,
@ 2024-05-29 16:42:00

Previous Entry  Add to memories!  Tell a Friend!  Next Entry
Entry tags:Δ complete, Δ threads, → astrid hakansson, → michael price, ∞ 2000: 05, ◦ tarrytown downtown

RP: I think you should know...
Who: Astrid and Michael, David Hakansson [NPC] and Freyja [NPC]
What: Time to see about some of that courage Ram said she'd need
When: Wednesday May 29, 2000, early evening
Where: Starting out at Astrid’s childhood home in Phoenicia, NY and then Michael and Julián’s apartment in Tarrytown.
Warnings: TBD
Completion Status: Complete


David let his hand drop to his side, as the little green car turned the corner and disappeared out of his sight. With a sigh, he leaned against the railing on the front porch, his elbows resting against the rough wood. It could do with some paint, he figured, and added that to the list of renovations to the house for this summer. It had been hard having Astrid home for the past days. Hard not knowing exactly what was going on in her mind, though it was clear to see that she was trying to come to terms with something that most likely had to do with that necklace her mother had given her on her birthday. If she hadn’t been curled up on the windowsill staring out at the mountains, she had been running and hiking the trails around town, and if he was lucky, she had been in the garage with him, still not talking, but going about the place’s everyday routine as if she had never left. Yes, it had been hard to have her home and unable to help her with what troubled her. But it had been harder to see her drive away.

“Freyja,” he sighed, “I don’t even know how to do this or even if it’ll work, because Lord knows it hasn’t ever worked in the past.” He stopped for a moment, considering what he had just said. “Now, would that be considered a cuss word for you. Lord, I mean? Nah, doesn’t matter, does it. Like I said, it’s never worked before, but I’m still gonna try, because my little girl is hurting badly so I hope you know what you’re doing. I make no guarantees if you fail, I don’t care if you’re a goddess or not. I hope you know. Her wheels are spinning, and I don’t know how to get her to find that traction to get on the right path again, but I hope you can.” He ran an oil-stained hand over his scruff and stood back up to his considerable height. “Not sure if I’m supposed so say Amen, but here goes; Amen.” Pounding the railing gently a couple times, he was about to turn around and go inside, when a voice he would recognize anywhere reached him.

“She was never a little girl.”

He turned around and right there on the front yard stood Freyja, as beautiful and luminous as ever, looking exactly like that day he had first seen her almost thirty-one years ago. “Oh, she was my little girl,” he said, the contempt and devotion clear in his voice. “What she wasn’t, was a young girl. You all took that away from her when you gave her that cloak.”

“I didn’t give her that cloak.” Freyja moved closer and now she was standing by the three steps that would take her up onto the porch.

“Well, you certainly didn’t take it away, either” David huffed at her, his jaw flexing as he once again leaned on the railing. He wanted to look at her, wanted to take in the beauty he had only been able to see in his dreams, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t bear to have this goddess, this being connected to his anger and frustration right now. “My little girl is hurting, because she never had the chance to be that young girl who does what they do, who mess up and get their hearts broken so they know how to deal with that later. She didn’t get that. Instead, she got death and war, and she doesn’t know how to deal with that either, no matter what she says. Can’t you see that?”

“I see that,” Freyja said, coming to stand next to him, looking out across the front yard and the street, to the mountains further out. “I never wanted her to take that cloak.”

At this David snorted and shook his head. “Then why don’t you take it away. You’re a goddess, aren’t you?”

Freyja’s touch when she placed her hand on top of his was light, though it felt like his entire world was being wrapped in light and love. “I can’t,” she told him gently. “But I showed her how she can take it off.”



The drive back to Tarrytown had been uneventful, but the music had been loud and as she had started to look forward to being home, she had even started singing along. Astrid still didn’t know what she was supposed to do, but for the past days, she had been going in circles and she had missed both Michael and Jude, though as she was driving, it had been Michael who had kept popping up in her thoughts. Maybe it was because it wasn’t unusual for she and Jude to go days or longer without talking to each other, but things with Michael had moved fast, and all of a sudden she was feeling overwhelmed by huge feelings that she wasn’t exactly scared to acknowledge, but worried might make things more complicated.

Pulling into an empty parking spot somewhere between their apartments, Astrid pushed her sunglasses into her hair, and quickly made her way down the street. She drew in a deep breath before she knocked.

She waited for a while, though when there was no reaction, and only the sounds from the piano reached her, she drew in a deep breath. Had she really managed to push him away by leaving the way she did? That hadn’t been her intention at all, and she could kick herself for not having had the courage to just speak to him or call him or just… go to him. She stood there, for long minutes, leaning against the door, just listening. He was improvising, it seemed, as she recognized various bits from different melodies, and then came that one bit, from that first melody he had played for her and it nearly took her breath away.

Not wanting to wait anymore, she eased the door open, and followed the music to where he was sitting by that old piano. How could she have been this stupid? In a few strides she was next to the piano bench, her hand reaching for his cheek, to turn his face to her. She met his eyes for a moment, just long enough to really see him. She wanted to tell him she had missed him, wanted to tell him that she was falling, but all she managed was to lean down for a slow kiss.


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[info]mickeyprice
2024-05-31 10:04 pm UTC (link)
No word since the party, since their kiss. Every one of Julian's attempts to pull him back out of the apartment failed, leaving him noodling on the piano; his roommate had threatened to have it removed.

"Astrid?" He thought he'd willed her there like the Greek poets calling on the muses from inspiration. His fingers stopped moving, the piano resonating from his foot glued to a pedal. He leaned into the kiss and brought a hand up to brush her cheek. How could she do that? Days of wondering and in an instant the anxious thoughts subsided leaving him utterly content that she was back at his piano.

The words he wanted to say entered his mind again and it wasn't magic this time. He wanted to tell her that she was his other half, the only one he could see himself with for the rest of his life.

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[info]sassy_valkyrie
2024-05-31 10:27 pm UTC (link)
The night they had first kissed, Astrid had been certain the air around them had been filled with powerful magic. But as her lips touched Michael’s and his hand touched her cheek, it felt like the magic at the party had been nothing but a romantic song playing in the background compared to this. It felt like everything was clicking into place, but she knew that was far from the truth. Slowly, she eased down onto the bench next to him.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered against his lips. “I’m so, so sorry, Michael. I’m so sorry.” She couldn’t stop touching him, her hand cupped his cheek and her nose brushed against his, she wanted closer, but she knew he needed to know everything that had happened to make her leave like she had. “I shouldn’t have left like that.”

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[info]mickeyprice
2024-05-31 10:45 pm UTC (link)
She was apologizing, why? He brought his hand up over to hers, brushing it with his thumb. Her voice sounded frantic and his mind jumped. "Astrid, whatever you're apologizing about, it's okay." He pulled her in close to him, the distance between them only a foot. "I missed you." The words tumbled out of his mouth, his mind still trying to discern why she sounded frantic.

"I didn't go anywhere and you're back here with me." A smile crossed cautiously over his face.

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[info]sassy_valkyrie
2024-05-31 11:33 pm UTC (link)
Astrid melted into his arms easily. “I shouldn’t have left,” she told him again, looking up at him and meeting his smile with one of her own. Michael had the sweetest smile, she knew that, and tenderly she traced her finger along his soft lower lip. “I should have stayed, and I should have told you everything, even if all of it happened all at once. I shouldn’t just have…” she drew in a deep breath when she realized she was about to start talking in circles like she had done with Ram. “There’s so much you should know, and I don’t even know where to start.” And that was the problem. She didn’t know if she should start with the gift from Freyja or how she had dealt with the overwhelming need to numb the horrible things she had seen and experienced, or if she should start with telling him about Jude or how she now knew he was one of the most important parts of her puzzle and she couldn’t imagine not sharing her life with him. She really should have stayed, because if there was one thing she knew with absolute certainty it was, that she and Michael could talk. Talking was what they had done from the start. Even when they had been sitting right where they were sitting now, they had been talking, even if she had been quite and he had been playing the piano. That had just been a different way of talking.

“Freyja gave me this on my birthday,” she finally said, pulling out the delicate necklace from the neckline of her shirt. “I wanted to tell you about it, but then you kissed me, and I knew. I knew…” she smiled at him. “And talking just didn’t seem important then, did it?”

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[info]mickeyprice
2024-06-01 12:34 am UTC (link)
He waited for her to get the words out. There was more going on behind those eyes than he'd ever known in their time spent together. "You're here now."

The small teardrop radiated a luster than was otherworldly, godly.

"It's beautiful, but what is it?" He felt embarrassed that he didn't know more about her parentage or the gifts they could bestow. His own father was known to give gifts to his children, but they were tools to overcome impossible tasks and trials. The necklace to his eyes looked innocuous, but he knew Astrid better than that and regardless a god's gift was never given without weight.

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[info]sassy_valkyrie
2024-06-01 12:41 pm UTC (link)
“It’s a Tear of Freyja,” Astrid said and drew in a deep breath, knowing that she had to give him more than that. Sitting there on that piano bench, she stayed close to him, savoring the feeling of him, of Michael, and the way she felt for him, she told him the story of Freyja and her husband Óðr. How Óðr would travel the worlds, and Freyja with her intense love and devotion to him, would travel in search of him crying tears of red gold as she did. And then she told him about Ragnhild, the former Valkyrie whose soul she had collected on the evening before her birthday, how Freyja had given her a tear, signifying that The One for Ragnhild was in the world, and how she had spent a lifetime with that one special person.

“I was about to leave, go back home when Freyja called me back and wiped a tear from her eye,” she told him. “She reminded me of the significance it’d had on Ragnhild’s life and told me to wear it always, and I… I…” she sighed. “I don’t know. I didn’t know.” She stopped herself before her confusion turned into completely incoherent rambling. “I thought there’d be time to tell you, but then,” she smiled up at him, “then the party happened and you kissed me.”

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[info]mickeyprice
2024-06-02 12:03 am UTC (link)
Mickey felt the urge to apologize. He didn't have to. Yes the magic had been swirling but with enough space he'd decided that he'd wanted to back when they tried and failed to watch Ghostbusters. "The Fates," he muttered. His own gods could be cruel, especially Hera, but the Fates pulled the strings literally.

"I don't regret kissing you. I'd wanted to since you stopped by that first night." He had no idea if that was going to hurt the rest of their conversation, but she needed to know. He needed her to know that if this was going to be a break up brought on by her mother that he was willing to fight that.

Something worried him about Ragnhild's story, "She gave up immortality? Her duties as a Valkyrie?" He wasn't like her. As a demigod he would have an extended life, but without an invitation of immortality from the gods or a steady diet of golden apples he would die while she lived on.

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[info]sassy_valkyrie
2024-06-02 12:26 am UTC (link)
Looking at Michael, listening as he spoke, Astrid’s smile turned tender. She felt her stomach turn, in that delightfully, breathtaking way it did whenever she had thought of him for the past days. “I don’t regret kissing you either,” she told him. “And I wanted to kiss you too on that first night, but somehow, just sitting with you here, meant so much more.” She stopped and chuckled when she recalled the moment she had known. “I came this close,” she held up to fingers not far apart, “to quoting Ilsa on that night in Paris… Kiss me. Kiss me as if it were the last time, but I didn’t because I didn’t want our first kiss to be because of a dare and because I was scared to break the magic.” Oh, but how she wished she had. She wished she had kissed him, before she had gotten that tear. Maybe then it would have been easier to deal with it all. Maybe then things would have been clearer. “I didn’t, because there are so many things you should know about me, and if you knew them, you might not want to kiss me again.”

That worried look in Michael’s eyes had her take a chance and reach for his hand. “She did, yes,” she said with a nod. “When she gave Odin back her swan cloak, she lost her access to Idunn's apples, and after centuries of being a twenty-year old, she began aging again.”

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[info]mickeyprice
2024-06-02 09:09 pm UTC (link)
Michael flexed his hand at her touch. A way to say I’m still here, and I’m not going anywhere. He’d guessed at Ragnhild’s fate and he had been right. How cruel the gifts of the gods could be that choosing happiness meant an expiration at that same happiness. Since the first time they’d met he’d thought Freyja to be more merciful and less fickle. That she cared more for her own daughters more than that. Her gods were just as fickle as his. He laughed at himself knowing that’s only something the offspring of a god would gripe about.

“Astrid.” His other hand came to her face. “I don’t think there’s anything in your past that you could tell me that would make me not want to kiss you.” He leaned forward his lips meeting hers briefly. She was more of a warrior than he’d ever be, but he’d reassure her that this was something he wanted too regardless of the consequences. “Now, if you tell me I’ll have to fight off a contingent of your sister Valkyries then I might have to call on dad. I’m not my half-brother, you know?” He hoped the attempt at levity would calm the storm he could still see brewing behind her eyes.

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[info]sassy_valkyrie
2024-06-03 11:28 am UTC (link)
Astrid leaned into his touch, savoring the feeling and the assurances she was giving her. Just like his touch, he kiss was soothing, though she knew that under other circumstances, Michael’s kisses wouldn’t soothe, but rather arouse. Right now, though, her mind was whirling, there were so many doubts about how she could possibly give him everything he so deserve- his half-brother? Michael had a half-brother? For a long moment, the confused panic was clearly evident on her face as she tried to figure out how she hadn’t known that he had a half-brother, and how this amazing man deserved so much more than a Valkyrie who obviously couldn’t even be bothered to even remember that he had a half-brother who supposedly was strong enough to take on Valkyries. Somewhere in the back of her mind, though, a line from a song pushed through; Gonna shout it from the mountain top, though as soon as she placed it, she knew who he was talking about. “Hercules?” she chuckled with relief. “I thought I’d forgotten you had a brother,” she admitted and leaned back into his embrace.

“But no, you won’t have to fight any Valkyries,” she said slowly. “I just… I’m… I’m-,” biting her lips to stop talking, take a breath and get her ability to speak in a full sentence back on track, she looked up at him, meeting his eyes. Those blue eyes who looked at her as if she mattered, where she could see that he had meant what he said about what she had done in the past not scaring him off. “There has been times where collections has been hard… heartbreaking, really, where everything about it is so wrong that I don’t even know how things like that can be allowed to happen, especially with the gods watching the way they do. And I’ve not been good at handling those collections. Not afterwards, and I have done some incredibly stupid things, and I don’t want to ever bring something like that back to you. Maybe what’s happened before isn’t important, but there is something… someone you should know about.” She swallowed down, as the memory of Jude brought a small, unbidden smile to her face. “I met Jude a couple of weeks after you and I met at the nightclub, and she is…” she shrugged. “I’m not sure what she is, not like I know I’ve fallen for you, but I’m not sure I’m ready to lose what I have with her, but I don’t want it to hurt you either.”

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[info]mickeyprice
2024-06-03 05:00 pm UTC (link)
Michael laughed, understanding that might have seemed a little odd for an only child to say. The number of half-siblings he had was as immeasurable as the stars thanks to his father's proclivities but at least Hercules was one he could drop in jest without having to unfurl the long and complicated family history.

He relaxed again trying to push thoughts of Wagner's The Ride of the Valkyries from his mind and focus on her as her words stammered again. She had never spoken about her work outside of its erratic schedule. He didn't have a point of reference for this, for her work. Why would anyone want to be that person?

"You're not one of them, a god. Neither of us are." Her response to it had been well, wholly human. He couldn't imagine the hard deaths, the violent ones and he wouldn't ask. She could've brought them back to him, only to share the burden to talk before now. The Keres or Thanatos, death needed to be put into perspective and if she'd merely needed a shoulder he could've been that for her.

"Someone?" The word brought him back from his own mind, away from the images of violent battlefields and hospitals. She'd met someone else after him. He could feel her clinging to what she thought they had, a promise. "Jude." The name hung at the tip of tongue as if he'd eaten something bitter and no amount of liquid could neutralize it. He searched her face for a sign something that he could latch onto and know what she was thinking. Where the conflict was. He held onto her words, 'not like I've fallen for you'. A thought he'd had in the time she had been away.

He tried to suck all the air in the room into his lungs, Breathe, you idiot. "I want to ask you a question, but I want you to know that it isn't me saying this ends here because I know it doesn't." The words didn't make the next part any easier. "Do you want the space to figure out what she is to you?" The bitter taste felt like it had intensified as he raked his teeth against his tongue.

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[info]sassy_valkyrie
2024-06-03 07:16 pm UTC (link)
No, she wasn’t a god, neither of them was, but that didn’t mean that she didn’t feel shame at not being able to fully handle the way she felt after she had been witness to violent and unfair deaths. She had been offered her swan cloak, her title as a Valkyrie, because Odin had seen something in her, and every time she wanted to numb herself from what she had seen, she felt like she was betraying the faith he had in her abilities.

However, her perceived betrayal of Odin felt nothing like the way she felt like she was betraying Michael right now. The way he looked at her made her feel like he was struggling to recognize her, and she could feel her lungs threatening to keep exhaling. She heard his question, even understood the words, but she didn’t understand the meaning. She didn’t know how to answer. Did she want the space to figure out what Jude was to her? If she said yes, did that mean that she would have to leave Michael to do that? And if she said no, would she have to end things with Jude? She didn’t want either of those. She knew she was being greedy, that she in no way deserved these two amazing people.

“I don’t know how to answer that,” she admitted quietly and swallowed down. But that just wasn’t good enough. Michael deserved more; he deserved a clear answer. “Whatever she is or might be to me,” she tried, “doesn’t change what you are to me. I know that with Jude, I can literally have an eternity, while with you, I can have a lifetime.” She shook her head at the thought of how short a lifetime seemed compared to eternity. “I don’t want to lose her, but I can’t give up a lifetime with you either.”

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[info]mickeyprice
2024-06-03 07:52 pm UTC (link)
For the first time since they'd met he'd realized they were more different than they were alike. Why hadn't Zeus just had a child with Hera? A perfectly normal god without the terrible curse of living one lifetime. With Jude she wouldn't have to choose that. Cutting herself off from her mother, from the life she's had.

To him she was more than the sum of her parentage. More than her duty to her gods. If it meant a lifetime without her he couldn't bear it. "I believe you, more than I think you know." He cursed Hera for the life her ire had caused him to led, one that didn't involve connection, friends, love. His dad must've been watching over him in putting his foot down and telling her no more. A small smile crossed his face at the idea that as absent as Zeus had been in his life, that courtesy when Michael thought it was the end had set him on a new path, a new thread that even the Moirai didn't intend to pull.

"Date us both." His voice gained the smallest amount of clarity. The decision wasn't his to tell her to choose. "I can't give you eternity. There are no heroic deeds I can do to reach it myself. But I have a lifetime to give and I will give it to you."

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[info]sassy_valkyrie
2024-06-03 08:59 pm UTC (link)
Astrid blinked in surprise at Michaels sudden clarity. Hearing say that he believed that her feelings for Jude didn’t change the way she felt for him, had given her hope, that maybe, just maybe, this could work out without too many hurt feelings. The fact that he believed her, to her, meant that he trusted her feelings for him. And now, after she had used so many words just to try to work up the nerve to say she couldn’t and wouldn’t choose, he managed to say it in three words. Three short words.

“Thank you,” she told him, though she wanted to tell him so much more. She wanted to tell him, that a lifetime with him was all she needed, but that would be a lie. She wanted to give him an eternity, but that wasn’t true either, because an eternity washed out the intensity of a lifetime, and she refused to dilute or diminish what he was giving her, which was almost literally everything he could give her.

“We’ll find a way,” she promised him. “We’ll make it work. And I don’t know how to say-“ It frustrated her, that she just didn’t have the words to let him know what she would give him. There was a reason eternity was reserved for the gods and their servants. She sighed with frustration, before she reached up to cup his cheek, hoping to find the right words as she looked at him. “I believe in you,” she started softly. “I believe in us, and since a lifetime is all we can have, I will happily take that.

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[info]mickeyprice
2024-06-04 05:33 pm UTC (link)
Michael had never prayed before. The gods were real, he'd met his father, but they placed no active role in his life and if they did it was so miniscule he wasn't able to notice. Hers were alive and active in her life for good or for ill and looking at her now a lifetime felt too short to understand her depths. Maybe Zeus would make an exception. A silent thought and perhaps the closest thing he could utter to a prayer.

"There's still an us." He repeated her words more for his benefit than hers. Closing his eyes he focused on her hand on his cheek forcing himself back to the moment, away from a lifetime and even further from an eternity. He leaned forward into another kiss, deeper than the one he used to reassure her that he was real and what they had was real.

He whispered through the space between their lips, "I believe in us."

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[info]sassy_valkyrie
2024-06-04 06:24 pm UTC (link)
So many thoughts were crowding her mind. Though she had never visited the Norns or even seen the thread they had spun for her, there was no doubt in her mind, that even as new as this was, they really were in for a lifetime together. That was a thought that made her heart pound and her lips pull up into a bright warm smile, it made her shift closer to him, she wanted closer, always closer. But then there were the thoughts of how short a lifetime was, compared to eternity, and how bleak her eternity would be, after a shared lifetime. There were thoughts of how she could convince Idunn to give her extra apples. Maybe she could share her own, and only age slowly along with him? Maybe she didn’t want an eternity… The thought had barely graced her mind, when the sound of Michael’s voice drew her attention, and his kiss quieted the noise in her head.

She sighed softly as her kiss deepened, sitting up straighter to be closer to him. His breath against her lips was warm and she felt a surge of emotion when he repeated her words back to her. “That’s all that matters,” she murmured, not caring one ounce what the Nornes or their Greek counterparts had in store for them. “Can I stay?” she asked, her nose brushing lightly against his cheek as her lips ghosted against his and her fingers carded into the messy dark hair at the nape of his neck.

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[info]mickeyprice
2024-06-05 07:03 pm UTC (link)
"Please.'' The word came out like a prayer. "Stay here with me." A sigh exhaled at the touch of her hand at his neck. "Even if it's for tonight." He wasn't asking for anything more than her physical presence. That proximity to her soothing the thoughts being held at bay by her touch. He didn't want to think of gods, apples, and fates tonight. He wanted to think of her and the life they could have.

"Please stay Astrid, for us."

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[info]sassy_valkyrie
2024-06-05 09:01 pm UTC (link)
Astrid felt her heart swell at Michael’s plea, his voice carrying the weight of sincerity that she cherished, but also a touch of vulnerability that she hadn’t meant to cause. His touch, his words, everything about this moment felt so grounding. She shifted even closer, her forehead resting gently against his, breathing in the shared space between them. “Then I’ll stay,” she whispered, her voice soft but resolute. Her fingers traced soothing patterns on the back of his neck, her touch a silent promise of her presence and commitment to him.

As she leaned in to kiss him again, deeper and filled with all the emotions and feelings she couldn’t fully express in words right now, Astrid felt a sense of peace settle over her. She didn’t want to move, but she knew that at some point, Michael’s roommate would show up, and right now was something she wanted to share with nobody but Michael.

Easing out of the kiss, she took his hand and got to her feet, pulling him gently along. “Come?” she asked him, her eyes holding his in her own plea for them to just be them tonight.

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[info]mickeyprice
2024-06-06 04:47 pm UTC (link)
Michael nodded sure that if she told him to follow her into the mouth of Hades he would. "Where?" They had the apartment to themselves and the moment just for them. The apartment felt detached from the rest of the town and Julian walking in on them hadn't even registered in his own mind.

"I'd follow you anywhere." He squeezed her hand gently.

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[info]sassy_valkyrie
2024-06-06 07:19 pm UTC (link)
His question had Astrid stop in her track and turn to face him. “No,” she told him, her finger pressing to his lips as if wanting to quiet him, wanting to keep him from making promises like that. “Please don’t say that,” she pleaded, her eyes searching his as if needing proof that he was still him. “Don’t follow me anywhere you don’t want to go, because I…” she swallowed down and shook her head. With Michael she felt grounded, but she knew that on her own, she made rash decisions, stupid decisions, such as running off to hide at her dad’s place when she should have just stayed and talked to Michael or get out of her mind drunk and sleep with strangers. She went to the edges of the realms and left her life here and the people who cared about her the moment a rune appeared to her, letting her duty to the gods who more or less kept screwing her over take priority over who truly mattered to her.

“Please don’t say that,” she said again. “I need to trust that you can say no to me, that you can tell me when I’m being stupid and I’m about to do something that might hurt you. You tell me to stop. Don’t follow me there, just say stop. Please, Michael?”

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[info]mickeyprice
2024-06-06 08:30 pm UTC (link)
She was on the verge of crying again. A simple platitude shared between two people who cared for each other. He knew he couldn't follow her anywhere, but she'd stopped, suddenly serious. Hurt him? He didn't want to believe she was capable of it. He wouldn't put her in that situation. "I won't, Astrid. I actively avoid things that cause me harm. There's still a deli on the Upper East Side I avoid. Years of divine harassment meant he needed to be careful down to the last detail, and yet he still didn't know if in the moment he would throw years of caution out of the window.

He brushed a hand through her hair, tucking it behind her ear. His head and his heart were warring. "I can tell you, no. I won't follow you." His heart ached telling him that he didn't know if it was true, but he didn't listen. He knew he could tell her no.

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[info]sassy_valkyrie
2024-06-07 09:22 am UTC (link)
Astrid felt a mixture of relief and affection wash over her at Michael’s words. She leaned into his touch, chasing that gentle, reassuring caress. She might not fully trust herself in all of this, but she knew she needed to trust him when he said he could tell her no – the exact reason she needed him to be able to tell her no. Big feelings had never scared her, and to some extend they still didn’t, but what scared her in this, what made her feel so raw and exposed that she hardly recognized herself, was her fear of hurting Michael. She had already asked more of him than she had any right to, when she had asked for him to accept Jude, and he had given that to her. She just… She needed to get a hold of herself again, needed to find herself and find the Astrid who had approached Michael in the nightclub, because he had looked so lost.

“Thank you,” she whispered, and turned her head to press a kiss to his arm where she could reach before she stepped close to him and wrapped her arms around his waist. “Thank you,” she murmured into his shoulder, tightening her hold on him, seeking his embrace and the solidity of him. “You really still avoid a deli?” she asked, her words muffled against his shirt.

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[info]mickeyprice
2024-06-07 06:40 pm UTC (link)
"Nothing to do with Hera," he assured her. The broken hand was enough. "I was still new to the symphony and they sent me to pick up a large order. Let's just say not everyone's order made it back to the hall." To this day he'd still held that whoever placed the order had mucked it up, but there was no way he could prove it and he'd already had the reputation as being clumsy and neurotic.

He wrapped his arms around her shoulders pulling her in closer to his chest, "I wasn't going to tell a New York deli owner they'd skipped on a few sandwiches." A chuckle bubbled from his chest.

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[info]sassy_valkyrie
2024-06-07 07:39 pm UTC (link)
With his arms around her, she felt safe, she felt whole, like he was holding her together. The sound of his heartbeat and his gentle voice rumbling in his chest had her close her eyes and breathe him in; a warm, clean and comforting scent that she was certain she recognized from that first time she had hugged him. His story amused her, made her smile. “New York deli owners are scary,” she chuckled through the tears she still hadn’t managed to fully push away.

Tilting up her head, she pressed a gentle kiss to the side of his neck, before she buried her face against him again. She wasn’t ready to let go, or for him to let go of her. How long had it been since anyone had held her like this? Aside from her dad, she couldn’t remember if that had ever happened. Not before Michael.

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[info]mickeyprice
2024-06-07 09:37 pm UTC (link)
"And they talk to each other." His laugh bubbling over as he felt her tears wet his shirt front. There has to be something more I could do to calm her, he thought when she kissed his neck before disappearing back into her chest. Her arms seemed to tighten around his midsection and he returned the pressure.

"Is this what you need right now?" He thought back to the outgoing brunette that hugged him that first night and began talking to him as if they were old friends. He missed that Astrid. Uninhibited in his eyes willing to walk up to a complete stranger peeling a label off their beer bottle.

Another squeeze. "Okay, we can stay like this as long as you need." He kissed her forehead, enveloping her into himself. Part of him knew he'd see that Astrid again, but perhaps not tonight. "And I want that too in case you were wondering."

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[info]sassy_valkyrie
2024-06-08 04:09 pm UTC (link)
Michael’s laughter was infectious, so even if Astrid was still trying to find her calm, she couldn’t help but laugh against his shirt. She loved how he had just picked up on the silly joke she had made, and ran with it, like he knew just how much it meant to her to be part of something like that.

His question was gentle, and she nodded against his chest. This was exactly what she needed. Just being close to him and feeling safe with him, being allowed to be vulnerable for a bit rather than having to put on a brave face and pull on the strength she didn’t feel right now. She sighed, a mix of contentment and relief, her fingers slowly beginning to draw nonsense patterns on his back.

“Someday,” she said quietly, “I’ll take you to that deli, and we’ll conquer it together. But not now. I just want to be with you right now.”

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