9 Works by small_grasshopper_celestial
Listing Works
-
and if achilles had never felt scorn by small_grasshopper_celestial
Fandoms: Heated Rivalry (TV)
04 Jul 2026
Tags
Summary
But it is seven in the morning in the middle of the summer, one of the last summers they will have like this, where it feels like they are running away, and it doesn’t feel like death. It doesn’t feel like stubbornness, laying here with Shane. It doesn’t feel like it has cost him anything.
But God, when Ilya thinks about it, he remembers what it cost.
--
The world is always clamoring for llya’s spoils of war, and his secrets, and Ilya is not angry about it. If Achilles does not feel scorn, Patroclus does not die. It is simple, and also it is not, because as much as Ilya will always be Achilles to everyone else, Shane is the one who deals in victories and concessions. Shane is the one who makes it so that Achilles and Patroclus die together, though whether that is on the battlefield or in old age as esteemed friends in the palaces they have built on blood and bone remains to be seen.
-
Tags
Summary
“Why don’t you just ask them to come here?”
Yuna sighs. “Because I’m a coward, David.”
David just shakes his head and clenches his jaw. “Yeah. Sometimes you are, Yuna.”
He gets up and walks back inside. Yuna stays on the front porch for a long time, drinking her coffee.
--
In which the secret-keeping in the Hollander family is sort-of generational.Series
-
if we are only for ourselves by small_grasshopper_celestial
Fandoms: Heated Rivalry (TV)
17 Jun 2026
Tags
Summary
Svetlana and Ilya do not talk about their mothers, or Sasha, or the first woman Svetlana falls in love with. They fuck, and they watch hockey, and somewhere down the line, Svetlana decides that this has to be enough.
Svetlana does not call her mother, and she will not talk about Ilya’s mother with him. God, she wonders, why did it have to be Irina?—
Svetlana Vetrova is smart enough to know when to keep her mouth shut. Shane Hollander is too stupid to ever let Ilya open his.
Series
-
last man to die by small_grasshopper_celestial
Fandoms: The Old Guard (Movies 2020 2025)
07 Jun 2026
Tags
Summary
Nicky’s brow had been furrowed, and in another life, Joe would have been seated next to him on the sofa, and not nearby in an armchair, and in another life, Joe’s thumb would have brushed Nicky’s soothingly, and in another life, where they were not broken by the loss of Quynh and the reward of Sebastien, Joe would not be bitter and Booker would not kind in his sadness. But this is the only life Joe has ever had, and so Joe is bitter and Booker is kind in his sadness, and it is this that makes Joe want to swim across the Mediterranean until he is dragging himself onto the shores of Palestine again. Maybe if he had been a better man, all those years ago, maybe if he had never killed in the first place, Allah would not have given everyone Joe has ever loved such grand pain.
--
In which Quynh's disappearance ruined all of their lives, in more ways than one. One day, perhaps, they will all find their ways back to one another, but before they can do that, they have to find Booker. -
los de entonces by small_grasshopper_celestial
Fandoms: The Old Guard (Movies 2020 2025)
22 Jan 2026
Tags
Summary
“And so I will love you?”
Quynh considers saying more than she already has and decides it will all come out eventually. Andromache is the one who asked, anyway.
“For the rest of your life. But it will not be an easy thing.”
Andromache tilts her head to the side, waiting for Quynh to go on.
“You will get older, and I will get younger. And then, one day, I will not know you, the same way that you do not know me, now.”
Andromache shakes her head. “You are feeding me tales.”
But Quynh can see that she believes her. “If I was feeding you tales, then you would have killed me before I had even gotten two words out.”--
In which Quynh moves backwards through time, death after death. She and Andy fall in love anyway. It's not an easy thing.
-
Tags
Summary
Andy’s heart stops. All the blood leaves her face and rushes directly to her ears. The only thing she can hear is the sound of it pumping through her veins. Copley and Nile are both studying the photo closely, but Andy hardly notices them, even right beside her. All she can see is the blood, the look on her face, the tremble in her jaw as she died –
**
She is almost four thousand years old – there is quite little that feels older than her in this world, but Discord feels older. She feels ancient compared to Quynh, especially with all of the knowledge she holds that Quynh does not. “You have been withholding it from me, a carrot to keep me here so that you do not have to find a stick. It is hard to punish someone who has lost so much, is it not?”--
For five years, everything goes smoothly. Five years of Booker in exile, five years of Nile on the team, and five years of Andy grappling with her newfound mortality.
But, like every other plan they've ever had, it has to go to shit at some point, and go to shit it does.
AKA the sequel we deserved, rather than the one we got. -
Tags
Summary
She takes another drink. It’s almost sour in its potency. She licks her teeth and stares out the window some more, eyes drifting across the dirty street. There’s a tavern not too far from here. She’s already drunk, doesn’t need the alcohol. But she needs to feel something, anything, and unfortunately, throwing herself out of the window is a good way to get noticed.
Andromache sighs and downs the rest of her cup. She sets it down on the night table and ignores it when it clatters onto its side and rolls just to the edge of the surface and stops. Frozen in time, almost, on the cusp of falling but not yet given all the way over.Or: Two scenes, one hundred and fifty years apart. A study on Andy and Booker, and their monumental failings as partners.
- Language:
- English
- Words:
- 4,636
- Chapters:
- 1/1
- Kudos:
- 17
- Hits:
- 172
-
lay me in my grave (as you have lain in yours) by small_grasshopper_celestial
Fandoms: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
04 Jul 2025
Tags
Summary
Strange, Andy thinks, the way the courses of her life and Nile’s are pulling them in opposite directions, granting them this brief junction for however many more years Andy can eke out, before they are separate again, left to have lived the vast majority of their immense lives without one another. Andy thinks, desperate for the briefest of moments, that she needs more time for this, for Nile, more time to guide her, to prepare her, more time to carry the weight that has been breaking her back for millennia so that Nile can live without the pressure on her spine. She understands, finally, why her mother cried as she went. Andy thinks she might, too.
--
Or: Andy and Nile through the years, together, and apart. A story about mothers and daughters, about scholars and warriors and countless gods. About faith. -
Tags
Summary
The two of them laugh and Nicolò rolls back over. Yusuf is glad. He would take Nicolò into his own body if he could, so that the two of them would never know another moment’s cold, another day without the other in their lungs and their heart and their hands. He thinks that perhaps, they will not have to anyway. Yusuf tangles his fingers in Nicolò’s hair and kisses him until they are both dizzy and brimming with joy. There is no need to worry about the Church, not here. Not now, when they are trying to build something beautiful with each other. Yusuf will raze the earth before he allows Rome to take anything else away from the two of them.
***
Of course, in all the years of their very long life together, Rome has come back to haunt them time after time, and Joe thinks it prudent not to tell Nicky about that unspoken vow, so long broken.Or: Nicky's struggles with his faith over the years, through Joe's eyes.