When Nines pulls away, he lingers a moment in the space between them, searching Gavin’s face like hunting for marks he’s left. The imprint of the seal in wax. I wish I knew what you wanted me to hear. Gavin holds himself still, doesn’t chase after Nines’s mouth.
Nines’s internal monologue at this moment probably just consists of a single long wordless scream, but if you were to put words to it, OH SHIT WELL I’VE DONE IT NOW, FUCK would be more or less where you would land. ~*~Local dog dads in the infancy of their courtship, trying to figure out if physical contact can metaphorically function as a substitute for actual communication~*~
“Nothing,” says Nines, so quickly that he winces at his own indiscretion. “Well, I— this is chosen, isn’t it? You do enjoy what you do?”
“—Yeah,” says Gavin. It’s an answer surprised out of him, and all the more truthful for it. “I do enjoy it, and I make enough to be comfortable. Just don’t love pompous shitheads like you coming by and turning your noses up at me just because a W-2 in the mail gets you harder than I ever could.”
“That’s not true,” says Nines.
“You’re right,” says Gavin. “I could get you pretty hard.”
The fic is finished, so here’s some fanart of @vapewraith’s art for Fata Morgana! I had a lot of fun trying to visually convey what I love so much about the way Vape draws GV500 and RK900; you too can be similarly blessed by heading on over to the AO3 link and gazing upon their glorious illustrations. What’s that? You’ve already done it? WHAT A JOY TO BE ABLE TO DO SO ONCE AGAIN
For my part, I hope that you also enjoy the accompanying filthy saga of crime, romance, Schedule I narcotics, live sex shows, and the enduring truth of how federal careers may come and go, but big dogs are forever.
I love this story so much and had such a great time working with Nat!!! I’ll always be here for these two dog dads and their adventures!
Please give it read it and shower @16ruedelaverrerie with love and comments
The high-pitched noise you are hearing right now is me attempting to choke out “that is indeed true, Fata Morgana is complete” through this Presa Canario-sized lump in my throat. I think that we get a little tangled up in any sizeable story that we spend a lot of time with, especially when you are me and you write at a maximum pace of 100 words per hour, but Fata Morgana is special for having been a chance for me to try to do my best with the incredible world and character concepts that Vape cooked up. I am sincerely, as they say, just happy to be here.
I LOVE THIS STORY WITH ALL MY HEART Y’ALL!! BLESS @16ruedelaverrerie FOR THEIR AMAZING WRITING!! I’m gonna go find a way to physically absorb this fic into my body
In the meantime, here’s an edited version of my art (The full image is very R18 and can’t be posted here)
WHAT ARE YOU DOING, GO LOOK AT THE UNEDITED VERSION OF VAPE’S ART. I mean it’s beautiful in its edited form too, but WHAT. ARE. YOU. DOING.
The chapter is indeed up, there’s only the coda left to go now! The hardest part of all of this was having to physically restrain myself from leaking a sneak peek of Vape’s art for the chapter, as I took 8000 years to actually write the fic portion of it. Gavin and Nines (in any universe!) deserve their happy ending, and this art is your happy ending, let me tell you this in full certitude. GO LOOK AT IT
Summary: So that he could keep on holding her hand for more than a millenium.
Michel Bollinger’s life is a very normal and boring one, except for his recurrent dreams of a maid with dead eyes he tries desperately to run away from.
Content Warning: Much like in Ending 2, there’s a suicide attempt at the end, but it’s only described very vaguely.
[@gischelweek Collections of unrelated one-shots for the Gischel Week prompts:
Notes: My favorite FataMoru bad endings are Ending 3 and Ending 5, so I was thinking about writing something about these at first, but in the end I decided to go with Ending 2 because I actually want to write something more detailed about these with fics on their own rather than as a one-shot prompt week. As a result I wasn’t super inspired by it though, so I hope it still feel satisfying enough lol.
I know in canon post-true ending, Michel’s modern family is completely different from his original one in the Middle Ages, but given in Ending 2 he didn’t get to come to terms with his past or with his brothers I thought it’d be interesting if he were to reincarnate with the same parents and siblings this time around (with maybe the exception of his brothers being a bit more supportive this time, especially Georges because of his former guilt?) Well, at least that’s how I wrote it here.
So anyway, this thus takes place during Ending 2, with spoilers for the entire main game.
She has very long braided black hair, surreal jade eyes, an old-fashion maid outfit — her hand is as cold as marble and she looks like a corpse, but she is always, perpetually smiling, like a picture, a statue stuck in place, forbidden to move with the flow of time.
Her grasp on him feel desperate, holding onto him so hard as if she’s afraid he’s going to slip away from her.
It had terrified him back then, but now, whenever he thinks about it, it only breaks his heart.
He wakes up at the sound of his phone blaring next to his ears.
Every morning, he tells himself he really needs to change this awful alarm, and every time he forget to do it until it twists his eardrums all over again.
With difficulty, he rose from his bed, his hair getting all over his face — here, too, he often thinks about how he should just cut them off, but never end up doing it.
Maybe this is just his life’s philosophy at this point, honestly — thinking about how he should do stuff but then never doing them.
He has two missing calls from Georges on his phone, with whom he’s supposed to meet up with later on, but decides to ignores them and instead leisurely step inside his messy apartment’s bathroom.
He already knows he’s going to be late anyway — no need to hurry.
He was an engineer working for a company, lived in a small apartment in Paris, was single, didn’t really have any close friends but got along well with his coworkers and neighbors. He cut ties and was disinherited by his wealthy family when he was a teenager mostly because of his change in identity, and didn’t have any contact with them anymore with the exception of his brothers from times to times — but besides that, there was nothing much exceptional about him.
Michel Bollinger’s life was fine. Kind of boring, maybe, but it was not a bad life. His parents were shitty, but things have been better for his sanity since he stopped interacting with them — it could be worse.
He was a bit lonely, sometimes, but he just had to focus on his job and then it didn’t bother him that much.
Yes, his life was fine — or it should be, if it wasn’t for the deep emptiness he constantly felt afflicted with, and the absurd, surreal dreams he frequently woke up from.
He’s had those since he was a small child. They didn’t make much sense, and well, they’re dreams, right? It would be silly to try to get any meaning out of them either way.
That’s what he’d tell himself generally, but sometimes they’d just get a bit too vivid for his tastes, plaguing and infesting his mind like a leech, and he simply couldn’t get rid of them.
The most recurring one was when he’d find himself in a mansion. An old, ephemeral, decrepit mansion, in which he would wander around, all alone — until a maid would take him by the hand and they would wander together. When her hand grasped his, his heart instantly started aching — followed by a deep fear taking root in his heart.
But then sometimes he dreamed of a voice as sweet as honey and as sharp as a knife, of a white-haired girl, of a pair of siblings with golden hair, of a beast covered in blood or of a tanned businessman with arrogant eyes.
Sometimes the maid’s appearance would get blurry, and instead she reshaped into a young woman with short hair and a radiant smile.
Every times she appeared, something bloomed in his heart.
“Master,” she would say, and she would smile, and there was so much love in that smile that he wanted to cry.
He wanted to say her name.
But he can’t, and then he woke up, and he was back to his boring, normal, empty life.
Michel sighed as he looked at his phone for the ninth times while sitting at a table in a café. It was almost six in the afternoon and Georges still wasn’t there.
They’d agreed to meet at five, and his idiot brother didn’t even bother to send him a text to apologize for being late. He should be used to it by now, but somehow he’s not. Michel doesn’t even know why he hasn’t left the café yet, or why he even accepted the offer at all. They rarely see each other anymore these days, and they are definitely not as close as when they were kids. Michel couldn’t even remember the last time he saw Didier.
It’s not as if he dislikes his brothers — in fact, he does love and owes them a whole lot. Unlike his parents, they’d come to accept him for who he was, and with the fallout he had with the family he would’ve been on the street with nothing if it had not been for Georges and Didier helping him out and finding him a place to stay at. But their relationship still became… a bit strained after all of this, and even when he could tell they tried to make an effort, there was like an invisible wall erected between them. Maybe some things were just irreparably damaged no matter how much you wanted or tried to fix them.
It was about fifteen minutes later that a man with dark wavy hair and an awkward smile burst inside the place and fell in the chair in front of Michel, grinning like a dumbass. He didn’t even have the decency to look sorry.
“Yo, Michel! You won’t believe what I got caught up into!”
“You’re probably right, and I’m also not interested in—”
“Now lemme tell ya, it was craaazy stuff! So y’see, I was in the street an’ that grandma walkin’ her dog—”
Michel sighed, knowing he had no choice but to have to hear Georges’ rambling until the end now. As usual with him, his story was utterly ridiculous, and only when he finally finished half an hour later did they start actually catching up with each other.
“Honestly, I never understood your career path,” Georges let out after inquiring about how his job was doing. “You should… I dunno, choose somethin’ more fun!”
“I’m not working to have fun, Georges,” Michel deadpanned.
The other man shrugged. “Yeah, ‘cause you’re boring.”
“At least I’m not the one who’s always broke asking Didier for money.”
“I-I don’t always asks him for money! And he’s the one who will inherit the most of Dad’s fortune, so it’s not like he can’t afford it. Anyway, let’s stop talkin’ ‘bout money! Ya just won’t believe the latest bullshit Aimée threw at me!”
Just saying her name managed to make Michel shudder, but he knew the topic was going to come up at some point so he might as well get it over with right now. Aimée was Georges’ ex-wife with whom he’s had two sons with. He’d divorced her a few years back, but the woman was an actual demon from hell who still to this day kept doing him all sorts of crass and had gotten full custody of their kids, which his brother desperately tried to get back in vain. So, she was effectively Georges’ ‘favorite’ topic whenever they saw each other, to Michel’s dismay as he also had far from good memories of the woman.
Still, he listened his brother complains about his demonic ex-wife until he finally sighed and asked a question Michel even less wanted to talk about.
“What ‘bout you then, little bro? Still no girlfriend?”
Michel snorted. “Of course not.”
“Why? You say this like it’s obvious, but c’mon! You’re almost thirty now, you don’t intend to spend the rest of your life all by yourself, yeah?”
Michel almost got the urge to reply ‘Why not?’ but he didn’t want to get into a fight with his brother so he instead simply deflected. His love life so far had been the extent of one girlfriend in high school that lasted a semester, one coworker he dated for a few months and another one whom he’d gone to take a drink with, with no further development. And, to be honest, it just… wasn’t something he was interest in or looking for.
It was odd, but there was… like something that prevented him from truly searching someone. Like a blockage; the idea instinctively rebutted him, and then a crippling feeling of guilt overwhelmed him. It was silly, he knew that, but well, as far as he was concerned he didn’t see any issue with not trying to pursue something that made him so intrinsically uncomfortable.
Even his feeling of loneliness and emptiness wasn’t enough to push him to find a partner. It didn’t feel like a lover would ever be able to truly fulfill what he was lacking, anyway.
Maybe there really was something wrong with him. Maybe he was just born broken.
Georges stared at him with what looked suspiciously like concern for a moment, and then he yet again rambled about some silly anecdote but Michel couldn’t bring himself to pay attention — when suddenly something caught his eyes and his heart stopped beating, freezing in his chest.
Long black hair flew just next to him; a glint of beautiful jade eyes sparkling to his right.
He stood up like by instinct, and ran through the café. Georges shrieked at his abrupt movement and then yelled his name, but Michel didn’t turn back; it was like everything around him had suddenly disappeared.
The only thing that mattered was the silhouette of the young woman who had just passed him by — his heart was beating so fast and his lungs were so tight and he knewher,he knew her, it had to be her, he had to say her name, she was—
“Gi—”
He grabbed her hand — the one he’d let go before, the one he’d failed — and the young woman turned around. Shocked green eyes stared back at him — and indeed, they were of the same emerald color he remembered them as. This was hair as black as ivory cascading behind her shoulders just like the one in his dreams.
But it wasn’t her.
Her features were different, her face more angular, her nose rounder. It wasn’t… wasn’t…
Who did he thought she was again?
“Um…?”
The woman stared at him strangely, cautiously; and suddenly the transient state Michel had found himself into vanished. He recalled he was in the middle of a café, that he’d just randomly grabbed a stranger, and that everyone was looking at him.
“W-Well, wow, real sorry ‘bout that, ma’am!” Georges suddenly popped up behind him, laughing nervously and making him let go of her hand forcefully. “My lil’ bro here’s been super tired lately, y’see, so sometimes he loses it a little. My bad, my bad!”
She look at the two of them weirdly, clearly debating if she should be more concerned about this, then finally decided to just ignore the whole thing and turned around without a word. Georges sighed before dragging Michel back to his seat.
“Hey, dude, what the hell was that? Is your head okay?”
Honestly, he wasn’t sure. Probably not.
Then again, he always felt like he’d never been very okay ever since he was a kid.
This empty spot in its heart seemed even wider than before.
Michel dreamed again, that night; of the same withered mansion, the same honeyed voice, and the same maid with jade eyes.
“I swear, sometimes I feel like you just live in another dimension. I was asking you what you wanted for dinner tonight. You know we still have asparagus from last month, right?”
A sigh. She crossed her arms and pouted, looked at him impatiently.
“You do like asparagus, don’t you? It’s not parsley. Or carrots. …What do you mean, you ‘just don’t feel like eating it’?”
He doesn’t remember what he replied, but he remember the way she rolled her eyes at him exasperatedly, affectionately.
At this point in their relationship, she very rarely got annoyed at him without some hint of fondness in her gaze anymore; and he loved when she looked at him like that.
“Alright. Fine. Let’s do without the asparagus then. But if you don’t want to answer me, then I’ll just take the matter into my hands without letting you decide. You’re fine with this, right?”
She smiled mischievously at him, then stared, and then hesitated. Finally, she glanced right and left, looking a little shy, before tiptoeing on her feet and gently kissing his cheek.
“It’ll be a surprise, then.”
She smiled again, and her hand was still in his.
He knows he smiled back. He knows he didn’t want to let go.
He opens his mouth, and tries to say her name — but no sound comes out.
Then suddenly everything distorts around him, and the mansion take a darker turn.
It is the witch’s house now, and it is the maid in front of him, with the braided long hair and the empty eyes.
And she smiles at him again, but he cannot bear to stare back.
He cannot bear to see her like this.
She is too scary, too empty, too broken — and he doesn’t know who he is— but he knows someone is waiting for him and that’s not where he is meant to be— and this place is nauseous and suffocating and everything around him is so warped—
And so he let go of her hand, and desperately start running away from her.
After fumbling around in the dim corridors, his heart is beating fast with terror as he helplessly tries to open the large door of the mansion. When it finally does open, he barges outside, into the light, and her voice resounds in his mind, like an echo.
“Master! Please wait! You mustn’t go out there! Come back… quickly…!”
Looking behind his shoulder, she’s wavering like a mirage in the open door; reaching her hands out for him as he is already too far away.
Stuck in place inside the mansion, in the darkness. Like a statue.
It wasn’t raining yet, but with how heavy the clouds looked, Michel was certain it would soon enough.
He had just finished work, and had a missed call from Georges, and from Didier — a rare occurrence. But he is not in the mood to deal with either of them right now, so instead of attempting to answer to his family, he looked up at the sky, then stopped.
This was a sad day, and he felt even emptier than usual.
As he was just about to starts walking again, someone passed next to him.
Long white hair flying right next to his ear; a beautiful young girl, walking and gazing straight in front of her. She seemed too lost in her thoughts to pay him any mind, but Michel wasn’t, and he cannot help but stare at her in disbelief.
Because he knew her.
She’s just a teenager, and he has never seen her in his life — in this life — but he knew her. He knew that voice. He knew this pure white hair and ruby eyes that are just like his. He knew those gentle, soft features.
She has a fake red rose decorating her handbag. His heart stopped.
“Giselle.”
That wasn’t the young girl’s name, not her real one; but this was definitely the name he has been looking for all this time — suddenly coming back to him in a flash.
And as soon as the syllables escaped his lips, everything washed over to him.
The cursed mansion. The witch, Morgana. The cheerful, short-haired woman who barged into his life and made him feel alive again. How they met, hurt each other, fell in love. How he died, then came back a thousands years and three tragedies too late.
And then how he ran away from her just when she needed him the most.
His stomach turned, and alone with the overflowing memories and headache, he felt like he was going to throw up.
He abandoned her.
She was here, with him, right next to him, but he left her; he lost her, of his own volition.
Tears rolled down his cheeks, and he suddenly couldn’t breath, the only thing staying in his mind being that last moment he spent with the Maid — with Giselle — as she yelled after him while he ran, begging him to stay by her side, because he left her, left her, left her—
As if he’d just abruptly, finally woken up from a dream, his whole life suddenly made sense, and at the same time, nothing mattered anymore.
The way he lived those twenty-seven years in a nebulous bubble, as if unable to connect with anyone, with crippling unease and guilt that came from nowhere — from his sin — the dots connected very abruptly and hurts in an almost unbearable way.
And in the end he was just standing there in the middle of this street, and couldn’t understand what he was doing here.
He lost Giselle.
What was he doing, then, here all by himself? Without her? His family, his brothers, his work; none of it mattered without her. Not after what he did to her, condemning her to an eternity chained to this mansion.
His emotions were too staggering, and he never felt so much all at once; but one thing he knew for sure was that he couldn’t stay there. That was simply unacceptable.
He needed to find her back — needed to get back to her, save her, somehow; by any means — but as his desperate mind tried to rack his memories for any ways to do this—
His eyes stopped on the road.
He didn’t know if he could find her. He didn’t know if he could fix his worst mistake.
But he needed to try. He couldn’t go on without trying to apologize to her — to save her, make sure she had a chance at being happy again.
So he prayed to a God he never believed in, prayed to a witch who had only ever wished but for his ruin, and turned around.
From the corner of his eyes, he distinguished the white-haired girl staring at him.
He could feel her gaze on him, her red eyes suddenly widening in horror as she realized his intent.
But he ignored her; even when she ran towards him, even when she tried to talk or screamed at him.
Nothing mattered to him anymore but the ghost of a broken woman he had left behind, and as he stepped on the road, he vanished into the void in a vain search of her.
Notes: So I actually tried to not go for the obvious ‘proposal’ prompt with this one, but as a result I kind of struggled to write it and in the end I just… don’t like it lol (partly why it took me such a long time before finally posting it). I went for a ‘trying to adapt to each other while living together for the first time’ kind of theme and then it ended up as me trying to deal with Giselle’s Maid TraumaTM very briefly, oops.
This takes place during the modern era post-main game and post-Happily Ever After but pre-Reincarnation, though it does have some brief references for it. Also, there are a short mention to the short story ‘Joyeux Noël’ from the guidebook (you can read an English fan translation here https://fatamorushortstorieseng.tumblr.com/post/679270096468869120/joyeux-noël).
The two of them weren’t unfamiliar with the reality of living together as a couple.
They had, after all, already lived together for a whole year back in the Middle Ages; and even in the modern era, Giselle had quickly taken the habit of hanging around at Michel’s apartment a lot, even sleeping here quite often — she’d practically spent the entire two weeks of her Christmas vacations with him there.
However, as she would quickly discover, there was in fact a big difference between living together in the Middle Ages, spending a few nights at your boyfriend’s place sometimes and actually living together in the present days.
Their daily life at the mansion was nothing alike to what they had now. For starter, they didn’t have a lot of belongings before — a few clothes, some utensils, and food; that was pretty much it. The books stayed in the library, their own rare and small personal effects in their respective bedchambers; and the mansion was so big anyway it was hard to scatter things around — and thus, there was not much to actually keep in order or to trespass the other’s space. Back then, Giselle had been the one taking care of most of the chores as well. Michel would help with the cleaning from times to times — but with how she’d rapidly noticed he was most definitely on the sloppy, messy execution of housekeeping, and given she had quite literally been hisservantthen, it only felt natural she’d end up being the one handling all of it after all — and that hadn’t really bothered her much, either.
She was not his servant anymore, however — and now that they were just a normal couple of the same status, it meant that the natural thing would be to truly share equitably with him this kind of domestic work. But it hadn’t been the case so far.
Breaking out of her habits as the Maid was sometimes a struggle for Giselle, especially now that her previous life’s memories were back. So, whenever she stayed at his apartment and noticed the inevitable pair of socks or scattered papers Michel would leave left and right laying around, her instinctive reflex was to tidy it up automatically. She never considered herself like a very fastidious person, but it felt important to her to have her clothes properly ironed and folded, the dishes washed and put away right after a meal, or sweeping and vacuuming and wiping the place around regularly. On the other hand, Michel and his lackadaisical nature — while definitely much better than it was in the past — didn’t seem to care about that as he most often did the bare minimum required, which meant that she’d just mechanically reverted back to her servant self from the mansion, taking care of all the chores before he even had to raise a finger.
This quickly started to create an odd tension between them, as that was something Michel was not happy about and where he just barely managed to restrain himself from getting angry at times.
“Ialready told you, you don’t have to do this,” he once said sternly as he tried to get a dirty plate that had been left in the sink out of her hands. “I’m not a child, and I was doing fine on my own when you weren’t there. You can just relax and go watch TV if you don’t have anything else to do.”
“I know that, but you’re too slow! If you can do it, then do it now, instead of pushing it off until next week.”
Michel groaned. “I have more important priorities, and it doesn’t bother me—”
“Well, it bother me, so either you take care of it right away or you let me handle it.”
Her tone was unyielding and let no room for him to argue back. She could see his eyes waver for a moment, before he finally gave in and let her do as she pleased reluctantly, likely not wanting them to quarrel over something so trivial.
She and Michel had gotten only one big fight since their reunion, and it had been during Christmas Eve when they’d spent the night at a hotel at the Champs-Élysées together. This one time asides, all of the fights they had were barely fights at all; just some of their usual banters much like they had back in the days at the mansion, and Giselle wished it stayed that way. She really did.
But for some reason, whenever Michel would get insistent about the topic of her intensive housekeeping activities, it would instantly put her on the defensive — and she could feel how easy it would be to just let herself snap back at him undeservedly then.
She’d done her best to control her emotions in order to avoid that particular argument, and she felt Michel was doing the same — however, things got even more tense when they actually moved in together for real.
Michel talked to her about the building he inherited from his grandparents in late January; his parents had been taking care of it until now, and they’d been thinking about selling it. He thought it’d be a good opportunity to use to move in together — have their own proper place for them rather than his small, impersonal apartment that was starting to feel too cramped for two people, and of course Giselle was delighted at the prospect.
It went without saying that she was extremely happy to be able to live with him — a part of her missed her family, but being able to see Michel every single day, eat with him, going to bed with him and waking up nestled against his body each morning was an incomparable gift she’d trade for nothing else in the world.
But it also made her even more acutely aware of just how much she and Michel’s lifestyles and routines diverged.
It was like having to adapt and adjust to a whole new person — one she should already know by heart, but somehow didn’t anymore.
When the preparations for the café’s opening began, it only made things worse, as she felt that the slightest thing that wasn’t under her control would add stress to her already very anxious streak.
Michel observed her from afar for the most part with uneasiness, as whenever he tried to step in and do anything she’d simply blow him off — and it stayed that way for about a month until finally one evening where he came to seek her as she was ironing their laundry.
“Giselle, it’s late,” he started in a soft, cautious voice. “Come to bed already. You have to get up early to meet up with Maria tomorrow, don’t you?”
“Yes, but I just need to—”
“Come on.” He insisted, and just as he saw that she was going to keep protesting, quickly added: “I’ll take care of it myself in the morning.”
At this, she put down the iron and glared at him with tired green eyes.
“You? Please, the rare times I let you took care of it you only do it sloppily.”
“That’s only because you never let me practice. I can learn, you know — if you just let me try.”
She shook her head exasperatedly. “Look, there’s not much left, and I—”
“Giselle, you need to stop.”
Suddenly, his voice became a bit firmer. A hand grabbed her wrist, and while it was gentle, the gesture made her stop everything she was doing right away — she froze, then slowly raised her head towards her fiancé. She wasn’t able to make sense out of the expression he was staring at her with.
“Come to bed with me. I want to… talk to you. It’s important.”
She stared down at his hand; bit her lip.
Something inside her stomach turned at the idea of leaving her work half-finished, and her first instinct was to keep arguing with Michel — but his gaze poised on her felt so intense she couldn’t bring herself to. So, with a lot of reluctance, she finally nodded and followed him back in their room.
For a moment, neither of them talked as she untied her hair and put on her pajamas, feeling Michel’s nervous eyes glimpsing at her back the whole time. It wasn’t until she sat on the mattress next to him that he finally opened his mouth again.
“Why were you so insistent on finishing this?” He started, his voice soft, careful; and she could tell with his way of speaking that he’d thought quite thoroughly about this conversation before bringing it up.
She shrugged. “I just don’t like leaving things half-done, that’s all.”
“…That’s not all there is, though, is it?”
Her eyes fell on the ground, and a strange feeling of annoyance and shame began to build up in her chest.
She knew what he was really asking her here, and she wasn’t sure she had a concrete answer for him.
Why had she been so adamant on completing something as trivial as ironing clothes? On taking care of all the domestic work by herself? On not tolerating Michel’s negligence?
That was hard to explain. It was like a visceral, instinctive part of her, in which not doing so felt like removing a crucial root of her being. Tearing out a piece of her identity.
Michel sighed. He leaned towards her, then gently took her hand in his. “Look, I’ve been thinking about this for some time now, and… I have a proposal for you.”
Giselle raised her head towards him timidly, a curious look in her eyes. “A proposal?”
“From now on, I’ve decided to make sure to… stop being as messy. I’ll stop letting my clothes lying around, I’ll wash the dishes right after eating, I’ll tidy up things as much as I can… well, I can’t promise it’ll be instantaneous, but I’ll try my best to do better, at least. And, in exchange, you actually let me do half of the chores.”
Giselle blinked at him. “But…”
“I wouldn’t mind if it was just that you really love cleaning like with cooking, but… I don’t really get it, and correct me if I’m wrong, but I… think you simply do this out of habit from your experience as the Maid. Am I wrong?”
She opened her mouth, a bit stunned. No words got out.
He was right, though. She just hadn’t expected Michel to be able to figure out something like that by himself. Most of the time, she preferred to avoid talking about her life as the Maid, which he respected — and for as much as he could be a mindful person, he also tended to be pretty dense and not very attentive towards other people’s feelings.
Had he just gotten so good at reading her that he could decipher even the most hidden part of herself which she made a point of keeping locked inside?
He was staring straight into her eyes, his hand tightly grasping hers, waiting for an answer.
She stared back.
She was not the Maid anymore. She was not his servant anymore.
She was just a normal woman, with a normal lover — so it only was natural she’d confide in him like any normal couple, right?
Her eyes fell down again.
“…I… often had that habit of doing this, since I was a child. Tidying up things, I mean. My sister sometimes called me a clean freak.” She chuckled. “It’s like… I have that profound need of everything being in perfect order… Like a way to have control over things, I guess. Though back then I didn’t know why.”
He nodded, staying perfectly silent.
“It’s funny, you know, because back then… I mean, before… you know, before becoming the Maid, and before… everything, I didn’t really like doing chores. I didn’t really like being a servant either, nor was I particularly good at it. But as the Maid, it became the only thing that gave my life meaning, and… well, I don’t know. Maybe it still does on some level. Letting others doing this kind of things for me just feel… like removing a part of myself.”
It was odd putting all of that into words. Those were things she’d internalized for such a long time, but now that she’d started talking everything just flew out like water.
She didn’t think Michel would really get it. She didn’t expect anyone to really get it, honestly, not even Morgana who had spent an eternity in her company when she was in that spectral state.
It was her own personal burden she’d have to bear, a loneliness no one would ever be able to grasp or share.
And in a way, she was fine with it, too — it was like a sharp jewel that could cut and hurt at the touch, but was too pretty and comforting to throw away and let anyone see it.
Michel certainly couldn’t get it, but he still listened to her attentively, sympathized with her, loved her nonetheless; and that was all she asked of him.
“…But, you are not the Maid anymore,” he finally declared. “You are my partner, and as such, we should be able share those types of things.”
The word ‘partner’ took her off guard, but it soon enough made a smile bloom on her face.
“This must be the first time I hear a man fight his future wife for letting him doing more chores,” she teased, and he narrowed his eyes at her with annoyance.
“I don’t like it, but what I like even less is letting you do all the work by yourself. Especially now that you’re going to be busy with the café. We’re together in this, so please rely on me a little, all right?”
Giselle sighed, shaking her head with fond exasperation. She let herself fall on the bed, dragging Michel down with her under the sheets.
“Giselle—” He tried to protest, but she interrupted him by pulling the blanket over them.
“All right.”
“Huh?”
“I’ll accept your proposal. Or, well… I’ll try to. I don’t promise I’ll be able to do it right away, either.”
She turned her head towards him, then kissed him on the cheek. “And you definitely will have to make more efforts than this. We start tomorrow with letting you iron the clothes, but be sure I will check out afterwards how well you did.”
He smiled awkwardly. “I’ll… do my best.”
“Please do.”
She laughed then snuggled against his chest, burying her head in his neck. The sound of his heartbeat and the warmth of his body put her at ease instantly, soothing the anxiety at the prospect of having to let behind some of her most ingrained bad habits.
But he was right — as partners this was something they should share, and it was all with the purpose to built a good life together.
“Michel?” She murmured, lips against his skin.
“Hmm?”
“Thank you.”
And she couldn’t see it, but she could feel his smile on his face as he put an arm around her while she closed her eyes.
I LOVE THIS STORY WITH ALL MY HEART Y’ALL!! BLESS @16ruedelaverrerie FOR THEIR AMAZING WRITING!! I’m gonna go find a way to physically absorb this fic into my body
In the meantime, here’s an edited version of my art (The full image is very R18 and can’t be posted here)
A Superior Mirage that comes from the Italian term named after the Arthurian sorceress Morgan le Fay, from a belief that these mirages, often seen in the Strait of Messina, were fairy castles in the air or false land created by her witchcraft to lure sailors to their deaths. It’s also believed that this illusion caused the myth of The Flying Dutchman to emerge.
All right, and so this was the last day of Gischel Week!
Of course don’t worry if you still want to submit some late works, I’ll keep reblogging anything that might come up even long afterwards.
Thank you very much to all who participated, and all of those who liked/reblogged as well!
I was pleasantly surprised so many people actually participated, I wasn’t expecting this so it was heartwarming to see! It was a bit more quiet here on Tumblr but the fact there was still works being shared was amazing to see regardless. Still, if anyone here is curious you can come check some more creations over on the Twitter account!
Given how well-received this event was, if people are still interested maybe it’d be nice to try to do another one next year. But that’d be all for now!
Thanks again for supporting this event and making it happen~ ️
As I’ve said before, there are no particular rules for this week — you are pretty much free to do anything you want. However, here’s a few reminders:
Obviously, no bigoted content/hate speech of any sort will be allowed.
FataMoruin itself deal with a lot of mature themes and you’re free to explore that however you want in your works, but just be sure to warn/tag anything before posting it.
NSFW/sexual contents are allowed, but same here, just be sure to appropriately warn/tag it so that others can avoid it if they want.
The prompts for the week are here, but you’re not obligated to follow them if they don’t inspire you.
Be sure to @ this account and/or tag #GischelWeek so that I can reblog it! If I haven’t seen it for some reason feel free to directly tell me as well.
It’s also okay if you’re late for the week! I will reblog any post no matter how late it is.
Everyone is encouraged to join no matter your skill level or medium! So I just hope you all have fun!
As usual, thanks to all of those who participated!
The 7 prompts that were voted are the following:
Day 1 - Wedding Day
Day 2 - Baking/Cooking together
Day 3 - Roleswap (Servant Michel/Master Giselle)
Day 4 - At the beach
Day 5 - Proposal
Day 6 - Bad End
Day 7 - Domestic Family Michel/Giselle/Morgana
I remind you as well that you’re in no way obligated to follow the prompts if you don’t want to! You can come up with some of your own, uses multiple ones for the same day or simply do as you wish, there’s no rule on this. As a bonus, you can also use the ones who weren’t kept here, which were:
Haircut
Seasons
Personality Swap
Adopting a pet
Giselle drawing Michel
Growing old together
Fashion
Flirting
Family
Uglyspeckles/or cats that comes after
Warm Drinks
Finally, please don’t be shy to participate! I’m looking forward to what you come up with and hope you have fun! ☺️
The 7 most popular ones will be kept. I’ll leave it probably for about a week or so!
And as I’ve said before, you don’t actually need to use the prompts for the week if you don’t want to, or you can use prompts that weren’t chosen here in the end.
Thank you yet again to all of you who participated! I actually genuinely wasn’t expecting this many propositions so it was really nice to see!
Thank you to those who sent suggestions for the prompts! ✨
I will close it in about 2-3 days and then I’ll submit the poll to choose the 7 most popular, so if you still want to propose some ideas, now’s the time!
The week will have prompts for each day, although you can choose whether you follow them or not! There’s no obligation and you can just do whatever inspire you.
You can suggest prompts for the week if you want to here on curiouscat: https://curiouscat.live/GischelWeek, or just directly submit them via the blog’s inbox.
After which the 7 most popular will then be chosen by a poll.
Please feel free to send as many suggestions as you would like!
AMichel/Giselle ship weekfromThe House in Fata Morgana will be taking place from April 27 to May 3!
Anyone can participate with any type of media (fanarts, fics, edits, etc.)
You’ll just have to tag your post #GischelWeek or @ this account to make sure I’ll see it and reblog it.
There is no particular rules, except for one thing: NSFW/sexual or related mature content are allowed, but just be sure to warn/tag the post properly and put it under a “read more.”
