#local date and time formats

[panaromicinoftechs]

Mastering Mobile App Localization: The Ultimate Guide

[not-a-choice]

We need to abolish dates. No more of those.

[toxicmalysh]

Are you listening Detka?

Wanda X female reader

Word count: 1k+

Summary: established relationship, Wanda is the CEO of her company and has to travel from time to time, whilst calling your attentive girlfriend things take a turn

Warnings: masturbation (R and W), slight degrading, mentions of breeding if you squint, that's pretty much it

✧⋆✦⋆✧

Your girlfriend being the head of her company had its perks, she spoiled you, rotten, anything you even paid more than 5 seconds of attention to she'd buy it for you. Going abroad to sight see, spending time in beautiful villas and beaches. Driving you around in expensive cars with that clean smell. Dates in exclusive restaurants drinking wine you couldn't afford even if you worked for months. It was a lush lifestyle you never imagined until you bumped into the curious woman at your local cafe a few years ago.

However, her job also had its cons, specifically her need to travel from time to time. The job was demanding, having to go to different sites was one of them. It wasn't often but when it was it was for a few weeks at a time leaving you lonely in your shared bed, missing her comfort dearly.

The time difference wasn't much, leaving you a few hours ahead, and she called routinely in her evenings after countless meetings. Usually you'd talk about her day, useless staff not handling her instructions, or your day and how your part time job was going. Tonight however, you were missing one of her features in particular, her ability to make you feel good. You were craving her touch.

"it was an absolute nightmare, I kept telling him he needed to format the spreadsheets before printing them because of the pdf conversion but he just wasn't getting it."

Wanda's voice was smooth through the phone speaker, her subtle accent normally mesmerized you, but there was a slight hoarseness from how tired she was. The usually raspy tone she'd take with you when telling you to spread your legs or lay still.

Your thighs were mindlessly rubbing together, as you found yourself fidgeting to suppress the ache between your legs as your girlfriend spoke. You cleared your throat before attempting to respond.

"haven't you already explained that to him the last time you saw him?"

You listened to the slight groan from the other side, more lewd thoughts filtering into your mind and the idea of how she was usually under you when making that sort of noise.

"I did yeah,"

She took a sharp breath before continuing, you wanted to pay attention, but the throbbing was unbearable and the thought of Wanda next to you stroking your thighs wasn't leaving your head anytime soon.

You shuffled around, humming along to what Wanda was saying, focusing on removing your pyjama bottoms and panties.

"and he tried to argue that he hadn't had this issue before, but he absolutely did because I have told him so many times the graph gets cut off on the right hand side,"

Your focus was faulty, your hand gliding over your right breast slowly, pinching ever so gently over your nipple, all you could process was the cracking of her accent and the wetness spreading across the skin of your thighs.

You rolled your nipple a few times before placing your phone on speaker, onto your nightstand, tracing slow lines down your abdomen before your mound. You needed Wanda so badly, shutting your eyes imagining her hands on your skin.

You pick up specific words coming from Wanda's rant, "dumb" "choke" "so well" "for me" "go on", those few words usually used in a context of punishment or pleasure with you.

Your head was fuzzy, imagining Wanda's fingers gliding up your soaking folds, warm and sensitive from the neediness of the situation. You hummed in response to Wanda's sentences whenever she paused for more than two seconds.

"Are you okay?"

The question snapped you out of your trance for a moment, your fingers freezing, and you began composing yourself to answer,

"Yeah Wands," you were more breathless than you realised, "yeah just keep talking."

"okay darling, well," she paused to remember where she was, your fingers rising to rub tight circles on your clit, "after all of that she finally agreed that,"

Warm, you felt so warm, your chest rising quickly, your fingers moving faster, you weren't even aware of how heavy your breathing had gotten over the phone.

"Are you listening detka?"

Wanda's voice wasn't irritated, but rather low and curious, you began nodding before answering, gulping as you hummed in response not trusting your own words.

There was a few moments of silence before Wanda spoke again,

"let me hear how wet you are."

Your eyes rolled and you let out an audible whine at her words. Usually you'd be humiliated with how she knew what you were doing, embarrassed that you couldn't control yourself around her, but with how close you already were and how badly you needed her, you slid your fingers slowly into your pulsing hole before finding a rougher rhythm.

Wanda could hear your fingers pumping in and out of your cunt, the wet sounds echoing through the phone. She reached for her own pyjamas, pulling them down before placing her phone on speaker matching you.

“Do you miss me that much sweetheart? Need my touch that badly?”

You whined down the line, your fingers moving faster inside yourself, you were nodding quickly, even though Wanda couldn't see, she knew you were, she knew you were answering like the good girl you were. You could feel yourself throbbing around your digits, feeling slightly unsatisfied knowing it wasn't Wanda's slender fingers filling you up.

“Tell me, what would you want if I was there detka?”

You hummed softly, pulling your fingers from your pussy and onto your clit, making faster circles than before, needing a release.

“I.. I would want you to be rough, make sure I knew you still needed to touch my body, feel my pussy around your fingers.”

Wanda's hand found her own clit, groping her breast firmly as she breathed out, imaging you squirming beneath her, crying for anything,

“What about my strap hm? Would you want me to fill that pretty cunt of yours?”

Her voice was broken and your eyes rolled at the idea, suddenly feeling empty with just your hand to pleasure yourself. You cried out as you pushed two fingers back into yourself, curling them the same way Wanda would.

“Please, please I need your cock.”

Your voice was dripping with impatience and neediness, Wanda knew you were close, and the moans that were falling from your lips were pushing her faster to her own climax. She could imagine the way your pussy would throb around her strap, sucking her in deeper as you twitched in pleasure from such strong orgasms.

“I miss you so much.”

Wanda let out an unholy whine at your words, squeezing her eyes as she focused on the sounds of your fingers squelching in your heat. She felt the familiar coil in her abdomen, needing to let go of her pent up stress.

“You have no idea how badly I want to taste what's making all that noise.”

You bit your lip at your girlfriend's voice, breathless and whiney. Her voice was always so commanding and stable, right now it was anything but, shaking and cracking as she moaned through her words. Even the idea of how needy Wanda was to feel and taste you was enough to push you to the orgasm you were ready to beg for,

“Can I cum? Please can I cum? Please please?”

Wanda thought it was adorable how messy you were when begging, repeating words, struggling to finish a sentence, it was utterly adorable. She waited a few seconds, successfully catching up to you before answering,

“Come for me detka be a good girl for me.”

As soon as you heard Wanda's high pitch moan leave her lips, hearing the slight ruffle of the fabric on her end from how hard she was convulsing, your body finally snapped. A white hot rush spread across your body, your limbs locking as they shook erratically, your legs squeezing your hand and arm. Your back arched off the bed and you let out a cracked moan, falling limp immediately as your legs fell back open.

Your breaths synchronised, and you ran your fingers through your hair as you caught your breath, eyes remaining shut as you came down. Just as you were ready to apologise to Wanda for not listening to her rant, her quiet voice climbed through the speaker,

“Can you do another one for me sweetheart?”

[pathologicalreid]

buried alive | S.R.

in which the BAU races against the clock to rescue you from a killer team

who? spencer reid x fem!BAU!reader

category: angsty

content warnings: kidnapping, case stuff (murder yk), suffocation, being buried alive, hospitals, blood, nausea, CPR, funerals, use of pet names, guns, and drugs. i think that's all.

word count: 2.9k

a/n: okay, so i've been reading so much spencer fanfic and i started writing it and yesterday i realized i have 20 fics written and they're doing no one any good just sitting on my computer. i decided to finally try posting one. i wrote fanfic in high school (so like seven years ago) but this is my first time writing for a TV show. i've also never really posted on tumblr so please bear with me while i try to figure out formatting. tysm for checking out my post.

part two part three

You walked into the conference room and dropped the file on the table, allowing it to land on the wood with a satisfying splat. “The unsub’s burying them alive,” you said, letting the rest of the team know the conclusion you had come to with the medical examiner. “The M.E. found metal shavings and satin threads under the nails of our last victim. The most common materials to make up a casket.”

“There’s no way someone could bury someone alive in a casket alone, we’ve got to be dealing with a team, at least three people,” Emily concluded, standing in front of the evidence board.

It was the team’s third day on a case in Nebraska, four women had been discovered dead. Asphyxiation by hypoxia. Carbon dioxide poisoning.

“Approximately 420 people in the United States die from accidental carbon dioxide poisoning every year,” Spencer said, grabbing the file off of the table and flipping through it, taking a few seconds to read through it.

Rossi looked over Reid’s shoulder to look at the file, “but there’s nothing accidental about these deaths. Who would have access to these caskets?”

You shook your head, placing a hand on the back of Spencer’s chair, “A funeral director seems most likely.” You looked around at the Omaha field office, different agents running about in an attempt to solve these very murders. “They’d have the most access, write it off as displays. It could be hard to match the materials since they’re so common.”

Hotch leaned over the table and pressed the conference phone, “What can I do you for?” Garcia’s bright voice rang through the speaker.

“Garcia, I need you to look into funeral homes within the comfort zone. Look for a director who’s ordered more caskets than they’ve had funerals. Find anything, nothing is too small.” He told her.

“Absolutely, I’ll hit you back when I’ve got something,” she said, hanging up the phone.

There ended up being four funeral homes in the unsub’s comfort zone, so the team split up. You went with two locals to a family-owned business, Garcia had sent you all of the files you’d need on the location. “It looks like the Varn family has been in the funeral business since the seventeenth century,” you read aloud to the two agents you were in the car with.

“Does it mean they’re more or less likely to be the killers if they’ve been in business for so long?” One of the agents asked you, a younger man named Harrison.

You pursed your lips as you continued to look over the files, “I’m not seeing any glaringly obvious stressors before the murders started, but over the years I’ve learned that’s no reason to write someone off. Psychopaths can be tipped off by the slightest thing. Things none of us would bat an eye at.”

Harrison nodded in the passenger seat, looking over to his partner Jimmy, “You and your guy sure do make an interesting pair.”

“I’m going to take that as a compliment, so thank you.” You and Spencer never explicitly stated to the field office that you were dating, but you walked into the precinct this morning holding hands. The agents must have drawn their own conclusions.

The younger officer cleared his throat, “It is a compliment, ma’am. The two of you are very impressive, your whole team is.”

You smiled, “Thank you, Harrison.”

The funeral home was run by a mother and her two sons, you held up your credentials for the mother when you knocked on the door. “Are you Sheila Varn?” You asked her, raising your eyebrows.

“Yes, what’s this about?” She inquired. She didn’t really look the part of a serial killer, a middle-aged woman who was running her family business.

Pocketing your credentials, you spoke, “We’re investigating the recent murders in the area and we were wondering if you had samples of the materials your caskets are made out of. Might we be able to come in?” You asked, adding a charming smile for effect.

Something flashed across her face before she returned your smile, opening the door and welcoming the three of you inside. “Hold on, let me get my boys up here. They’re so much more versed in the goings on of the town than I am,” she said, opening the door and calling for her sons. Felix and Joss came up the stairs from the basement, now they definitely had the physique to load dead women into caskets and bury them alive.

“Why don’t you two men come with me? I’ll get you those samples,” Sheila said, motioning for the agents you were with to follow her. To your horror, they followed her around the corner. “Felix, Joss, show this young lady what you know,” she instructed.

You took a deep breath before you looked up at the two men.

They were tall, maybe Spencer’s height, but they were built like wrestlers. There was no way you could physically subdue them on your own.

You passed out before you even had the chance to pull your gun.

Hotch was in full Unit Chief mode, Spencer watched from the corner of the room as he separated people into groups and gave them specific instructions. JJ and Morgan walked into the precinct, “What’s going on?” JJ asked looking around the room.

“The Varn Family is the team; two agents were found drugged on the side of the road and when we went to the funeral home Y/N was missing. Her badge, gun, and phone were all there, covered in blood,” Spencer said morosely, watching as Hotch finished giving orders and called the rest of the team over.

Your picture was up on the evidence board with the word “missing” written in bold letters beneath it. All of your belongings had been put into evidence for the time being. “Reid?” Hotch said his name, causing his head to snap up. “Are you okay to keep working?”

Spencer nodded affirmatively, “Yes.”

“Good, I need you to estimate how much time we have, I want a clock on these screens,” he ordered.

Morgan turned to Reid, “What do you think she has, kid?”

“The tidal volume for the average adult is point five at rest. That ends up being about six liters per minute. The average casket is approximately 886 liters in total volume and the average volume of the human body is 66 liters, leaving 820 liters to be filled with air for her to breathe. If she’s been gone for half an hour already, I’d estimate she has less than five hours of breathable air left.” Spencer explained, doing all of the math in his head while Emily put a timer on the screen next to the evidence board.

After a moment, Hotch continued, “Rossi, JJ, go back to the funeral home. Tear it apart, there has to be something there we haven’t found yet. The rest of us will split the list of cemeteries in the comfort zone and search them.”

“That’s a lot of ground to cover, we don’t have anything else to go on?” Morgan asked, looking at the list of burial sites he had been handed.

Hotch looked at Spencer, but Spencer stayed silent. “That’s all we have right now,” Hotch responded, “hopefully we’ll come across leads as we go.”

It smelled like a garden around you. The memory reminded you of spring with your mother, tending to the vegetable garden.

The only difference was that instead of the sun beaming down on you, it was pitch black. The space surrounding you was so dark that you weren’t totally sure your eyes were open.

Your head was throbbing just above your right temple, and you observed your surroundings. Slowly, you lifted your arm until it hit a ceiling.

Not a ceiling. A lid. You were in a casket. You pressed one hand to your chest and tried to slow your breathing. Chances were that the casket was already buried beneath the surface of the earth, trying to open it could be catastrophic. You patted the pockets of your jeans, only to find your phone missing, so the team wouldn’t be able to trace the location.

Even if you had it, there likely wouldn’t be service six feet under.

Your team would find you. They had to find you.

They found Spencer, they found Emily, and they would find you.

Spencer shifted in the passenger seat of the SUV, “You know, carbon dioxide poisoning is a rather peaceful way to die.”

“Reid,” Morgan said, turning the vehicle onto the main road, they had just finished scouring over another cemetery with still no sign of you.

He sighed and stared at his hands, “No, it’s good. We see so many people killed in so many different ways that it’s good that she won’t be in pain when she runs out of air.” He tried to convince himself.

Morgan cleared his throat, “We aren’t out of time yet, kid. We can still find her. Y/N’s smart, I’m sure she found a way to make more air or something.”

But they were running out of time, less than an hour remained on the timer set on all of their phones.

They pulled into the next cemetery, “There’s some fresh dirt over there, what are the names on the graves of people who were actually recently buried?”

Spencer starts to recite the names, and the two of them start to comb through the cemetery.

You had done enough research on this case to understand what was going on. The light-headed feeling had started not long ago, but now you felt like you were spinning, despite the knowledge that you were stuck in place.

It was a high. Not unlike the good kids high. Except instead of trying to chase a feeling, you were dying.

The timer went off when they were still scouring graves, shovels in hand. Derek stopped in his tracks, but Spencer kept going.

“Wait,” Spencer called out, reading the name on the card next to the fresh grave he was standing at, he moved to start digging. “Essie Dunbar was a thirty-year-old woman who was mistakenly buried alive in 1915,” he said, digging. “This has to be it.”

Derek called Hotch, putting the call on speakerphone so he could help Spencer dig. “Hotch, we got her, but she’s buried.”

“We’re on our way, Omaha police have one of the brothers in custody,” Hotch told Emily to have an ambulance dispatched.

What Reid knew that Derek didn’t was that it could take four hours to dig a grave by hand. The soil had been overturned, so maybe call it three. Your odds were still negligible. He didn’t stop, he didn’t stop when a caretaker came running at them, and he didn’t stop when Derek told him to get his digging equipment out here now.

Derek flashed his FBI badge to get what they needed. He had to physically pull Spencer back from the grave so the backhoe could dig, only going until there was less than a foot between them and the casket.

Spencer crudely attached a chain to the casket and the caretaker's vehicle. Carefully, the caretaker dragged the white container out of the earth and up a slant they had dug. It was locked shut, “Reid, move,” Derek ordered.

He leaned back and Derek fired at the lock, taking it off and opening the casket. Spencer gasped, there was blood on the side of your head, dried and raked through your hair. He was vaguely aware of Hotch and Emily arriving as they pulled you out of your satin prison. You had no pulse, but you were still warm. Immediately, Spencer started CPR.

“Reid let me do it,” Derek insisted.

What he was trying to say is that he shouldn’t have to be the one to try to save your life.

Morgan repeated himself and Spencer pulled away, allowing the other agent to immediately take over. There was a siren in the background, an ambulance. More people showed up, Spencer heard their voices, but he just kept watching you. CPR was effective if it was done shortly after your heart stopped, and even then, permanent brain damage was likely.

It had been eight minutes since they pulled you out of the ground. Clinically, you were dead for eight minutes before you gasped.

Spencer smoothed your hair back, away from your face, while you desperately tried to catch your breath. You weren’t moving, and Spencer started running through symptoms of hypoxia. His biggest fear was brain damage, that they had done more harm to you in bringing you back than they would have had you died.

The EMTs came running over to where everyone had gathered, dispersing the crowd, and placing an oxygen mask over your face. As they were loading you on the stretcher, you started trying to talk, reaching your arm out to your side. “Wait, what’s she saying?” JJ asked.

“Sometimes it’s hard to talk after CPR,” the male EMT said as they moved you closer to the ambulance. He listened to what you were saying, “It’s not coherent.”

Spencer didn’t move, all of the adrenaline that had been coursing through his body all day was leaving.

Aphasia. They were saying the lack of oxygen to your brain was causing aphasia. “No,” Emily said, realization dawning on her features as she strained to listen to you. You were whispering, rasping the same word over and over again. “She’s saying ‘Spence.’”

He stood quickly and looked at you, sure enough, you were reaching out your hand and whispering, “Spence, Spence.” Your voice no more than a whisper.

Grabbing your hand, Spencer squeezed it, “I’m here,” he answered. “It’s okay, it’s over,” he told you, moving your hair out of your face. Spencer secured your oxygen mask over your face as you tried to take it off, “You have to keep this on, angel.”

To his relief, you squeezed his hand back.

You had been instructed to get some rest, but you couldn’t close your eyes. You asked Spencer to go back to the hotel and change his clothes because he smelled like dirt, and it made you nauseous. Your head had been bandaged, you’d been run through an MRI, and you did an EEG, so far, the only brain damage that had been incurred seemed temporary.

According to the doctors, the nausea and fatigue should wear off, but they hadn’t been able to fully assess if any permanent damage was done. At this point, the worst of your injuries had been caused by being given CPR, resulting in cracked ribs.

Despite your headache, you kept most of the lights on in your hospital room, not quite ready to be left in the darkness again. “Hey,” a voice called from your doorway, Spencer stood, waiting to be invited in. He was wearing different clothes, a button-up with a green cardigan thrown over it, and clean pants. “How are you feeling?”

A nasal cannula slightly restricted your movement, but you were sat up in the hospital bed, “Better than I was, but not perfect.”

He shook his head, walking in and taking a seat next to you, “No one expects you to be perfect right now.” Gently, he reached out and took your hand, skimming the pad of his thumb over your knuckles. “They found the mother and the other son, and all three of them are going to go away for a long time,” he told you, speaking in the kind of hushed, reverent tones that are reserved for hospitals.

You sighed and tilted your head back, “Good,” you maundered. “That’s uh, good,” your voice was barely audible.

“So why do you look so worried?” He asked, leaning in closer to you.

In an attempt to dismiss his concern, you joked, “I think I owe Morgan some sort of life debt now.”

Spencer offered you a soft smile, “The two of you tend to trade those off, I’m sure you’ll find some way to make it up to him.” He inclined his head towards you as if to silently say, So what is it really?

You swallowed thickly, “I’m scared to close my eyes, Spence.”

His shoulders dropped, “oh, Angel,” he breathed. “Is there anything I can do for you?” He asked, looping a loose strand of your hair behind your ear. “Wait, what are you doing?” He asked, watching you as you lifted yourself, so you were on one side of the bed.

Shyly, you patted the new empty half of the bed, inviting him to sit next to you.

He had no choice but to comply, he had the hardest time saying no to you. Leaning the bed back slightly, Spencer kicked off his shoes before he laid down next to you, wrapping an arm around you as you set your cheek on his shoulder.

Your body relaxed into his and you sighed, “Spence?” You murmured.

He pressed a gentle kiss to the crown of your head, “Yes, angel?” He whispered back to you.

“Thanks for coming to save me,” you mumbled, slowly relaxing enough to fall asleep.

Spencer exhaled, “I’m always going to come to save you.”

part two

[abbotjack]

️₊˚‧︵‿꒰ The Art of Losing Control ꒱‿︵‧˚₊

♡ NOW PLAYING : LOVE INTERRUPTION BY JACK WHITE

NOTE : Updates every Thursday (unless I get swallowed by an engine rebuild or make an ill timed life choice). If there’s ever a delay, I’ll yell about it here. Chapter summaries may shift as the story takes shape. Want to be added to the tag list? Drop a reply below.

summary: It’s 1999. The dorms smell like mildew and cheap vodka. Everyone’s pretending not to fall apart.

Jack Abbot wakes before sunrise most days. Boots on, uniform pressed, ROTC drills by five. His world is narrow: biochem labs, field exercises, a fraternity that feels more like function than fun. He’s clean cut in a way that’s rigid. He doesn’t smile often, but when he does, it feels like it cost him something.

You meet him at a party he wasn’t supposed to be at. You’re drunk, glitter smudged, wearing your ex's shirt. Your laugh cuts through the room. He doesn’t look at you twice... which, of course, is exactly why you walk straight over.

You’re studying mechanical engineering but mostly show up hungover. You’ve got tattoos you don’t explain and a habit of breaking things just to fix them again. You live on instinct, thrive in havoc, and Jack Abbot, all posture, silence, and self control, looks like the perfect place to start a fire.

What starts as a dare turns into something slower, something that doesn’t make sense out loud. He becomes a constant. Riding shotgun with his knees pressed against the glove compartment of your rusted out car, waiting outside house shows where he doesn’t know anyone, pressing a water bottle into your palm like it means more than he’ll ever say. He steadies your hips when you sway too hard. Holds your waist like it might disappear.

Neither of you call it love.

status : coming soon (first chapter drops 07/31/2025)

₊˚⊹ ୨୧ chapters :

Chapter One — Strike Match [release date : 07/28/2025] : She meets him at a party he didn’t want to attend. Glitter smudged, drunk, bored... she walks over. She calls him “soldier boy.” It begins.

Chapter Two — Wrench Set Blues [release date: 08/02/2025] : His radiator breaks. She shows up with a socket set and a hangover, drops to the floor, and mutters, “You’d think a future Army medic would know basic shit.” He doesn’t argue... just hands her a Gatorade and watches her fix it like he’s never seen anyone work.

Chapter Three — Something Loud [tbd] : She drags him to a dive bar to see her favorite local band. The kind of place with two working mics, three working amps, and no working toilets. He stands stiff in the back. She screams lyrics in his ear, steals a cigarette, and kisses him during the second encore like it’s nothing.

Chapter Four — Night Shift [tbd] : She needs a working outlet and a crash pad. His place has both. She rewires her senior project on his floor while he pretends to study. At 3AM, she falls asleep curled into his side, tangled in wires and his ROTC issued hoodie. He doesn’t move.

Chapter Five — Morning Formation [tbd] : She wakes up at his place the morning of his inspection. He’s pacing. She’s in his bed with mascara under her eyes and nothing to prove. His roommate stares. She flips him off. Jack hands her coffee without speaking. No one says the word girlfriend, but she drinks it anyway.

Chapter Six — Not That Kind of Thing [tbd] : She doesn’t do birthdays. Says it like it’s a boundary. But he finds out anyway... from AOL instant messenger, of all things. Shows up at her place with a six pack and gas station cake. She rolls her eyes, calls him an idiot, kisses him harder than she ever has. That night, he sleeps in her bed for the first time. She doesn’t ask him to stay. He doesn’t ask if he can.

Chapter Seven — Her First Breakdown [tbd] : Her car dies in the lot behind the machine shop. She slams the hood three times, sits on the curb, and lights a cigarette with shaky hands. He shows up twenty minutes later, says nothing, and sits beside her until she’s breathing steady again.

Chapter Eight — Family Weekend [tbd] : His parents are in town. She wasn’t supposed to meet them. She does anyway. Eyeliner sharp, black nail polish chipped, and wearing his hoodie like a middle finger. His mom calls her “something else.” His dad says nothing. She smiles like it doesn’t matter. Jack squeezes her hand under the table.

Chapter Nine — Fault Line [tbd] : It’s stupid. A comment. A missed text. A look. She snaps. He shuts down. They fight; loud, ugly, too honest. She says he doesn’t let her in. He says she never stays long enough to try. She leaves before he can ask her to stay.

Chapter Ten — Final Lap [tbd] : Graduation week. Her project’s late. His uniform’s pressed. She ends up on the roof with a beer and a scraped knee. He finds her there. They don’t talk about what happened. They just sit, pressed close, until morning.

Epilogue — Triage [tbd] : She’s only there to look at a busted compressor in the maintenance wing. Some favor for a friend's cousin, nothing serious. She smells like engine coolant and vending machine coffee, hair pulled back, sleeves shoved up. She rounds the corner too fast, trying to find someone with a keycard... and there he is.

[crackerlover95]

PLEASE READ! Hello!! This is my first post ever on here and my first time doing headcanons. I loved the hanks to much to not do anything for them. So here you go! (I’ll learn how to format later) and totally give me requests if you like my writing I’m DOWNNN for some freaky stuff LMAO. Here’s my TikTok where I posted this on there as-well (crackerlover9666)

-Hank 3 convinced the other Hanks to do thirst traps because “they needed the exposure” when they were with Red Bowl, but since they left, only Hank 3 still does them because he enjoys the compliments.

-They have a voting box that they use to determine who will be the leader of the group for that day. (They submit the same votes in every day so it’s Hank 1 for Monday, Hank 5 for Tuesday, Hank 4 for Wednesday, Hank 3 for Thursday, and Hank 2 for Friday every week. They don’t have a leader on the weekends because they don’t want anyone to feel left out or favored)

- When you first met them they would push you too far with their extreme activities and wouldn’t stop until you genuinely got hurt (they of course felt bad) or would call you a lame-o if you didn’t go with them in fear of getting hurt. (Hank 2 understood your caution)

-Hank 1,2,4, and 5 talked to Hank 3 about his flirting and that he needed to tone it down with you because they couldn’t help but get secondhand embarrassment. They all liked you (romantically or platonically) and didn’t want his advances to push you away.

-Sleepovers. They don’t call it hanging out or staying the night they will and always will call it a sleepover. Pillow fights, movies, they somehow always have some delicious gossip, Hank 5 bakes cookies, board games/video games, and pranks. Do not fall asleep first or you will look like a middle schooler's notebook when they’re bored in class.

-They all tan amazingly except Hank 3 who genuinely gets cooked in the sun. He always uses the most sunscreen and will wear slightly longer T-shirts, shorts(basically jorts), and has a hat he wears if the sun is unusually bright out.

-You and Hank 2 would work on his novel together. Basically what you did with Lyric but a lot longer and way more off task. You would be the one who pushes him to work and pay attention. He appreciates it and when he publishes it he does that thing on the first page where it says stuff like “To y/n my reason for doing this” shit like that.

-Hank 1 goes to, and volunteers at a local shelter so he can work on and get the right information for his dog parachutes. Of course, he does more than just work on his dream and really helps out when he’s there, the other workers love it when he shows up. Has grown close with a golden retriever(obviously) and plans on adopting one day when his income is more stable.

-Hank 3 plays the board game “Operation” and thinks that helps him get smarter for when he actually does brain surgery. (Surprisingly when he does take classes to be a licensed professional he gets all high marks. He thinks the only reason that is, is because he played that stupid game, and not all the effort he does like studying, all-nighters, and paying attention in class.)

-You help Hank 4 find his dream because he doesn’t have an idea of what he wants to do in life. After some experimenting, he understands that his passion is extreme sports. He feels upset at first because it’s just what he’s been doing all along, and the other hanks have different dreams other than that. But you and the other hanks reassure him that it’s okay and he just knows what he likes! One day he comes up with the idea of starting a company like Red Bowl that sponsors other extremists like him. He obviously puts the safety and needs of the people he sponsors before anything else.

-You and Hank 5 just do typical dating things. His dream is to be a father which is not happening for a WHILEEEE. So in his free time, he bakes with you. Cute baking dates soon turn into something way more than that. He genuinely gets good at baking and starts making sweet treats for other objects around the house, like Volt and Eddie for their bar. You convince him to take commissions for small things like birthday parties, gender reveals, housewarming parties, etc. After a while, he starts making good money on it and would take bigger commissions like weddings. He will always bake for you since you’ve been with him since day one. (So male wife coded)

They are this image with you when they “aren’t in harmony” (angry at each other/ having different ideas on how they want to spend the day with you, etc..).

[reddpenn]

I'm back from the rock show! Here are the Cool Rocks I got!

Let's start with the fossils this time.

This year I finally tracked down a Tully Monster, which is my state fossil! He's not a complete fossil, but you can see his eyestalk and the bottom of his proboscis very clearly.

A big chunk of dinosaur bone from Utah! Dino bone is easy to ID due to its distinct pattern, where agate and jasper have filled in the porous structure of the bone.

This is a coprolite, a piece of fossilized dinosaur poop! This one is from Madagascar.

This one is a stromatolite, a rock formation created by a colony of bacteria! Stromatolites are some of the oldest fossils on Earth. In fact, the microbes that make them were likely the very first lifeforms on the planet. And they're still around today, mostly unchanged from their ancient ancestors, and still making rock formations! This little stromatolite came from Madagascar.

A giant chunk of Turritella agate, which I won at the silent auction! Turritella agate is made of a bunch of fossilized snail shells all packed together and filled in with agate. (Despite the name, they're not actually Turritella snails, but rather Elimia tenera.) When cut and polished, it reveals beautiful organic patterns. This stuff comes from Wyoming.

That's all the fossils I brought home! Now on to the minerals!

I was very responsible and didn't come home with a million agates this year, but I couldn't resist this gorgeous rain flower agate! Hailing from Nanijing, China, these agates are naturally polished by the Yangtze River and have a unique, frosted finish.

Another cabochon for my cab collection! This is afghanite, a blue mineral that isn't related to the sodalite family, but likes to grow alongside it.

It fluoresces!

Vesuvianite, a mineral that gets its name because it was first discovered on the slopes of Mt. Vesuvius! The dark crystals growing on its surface are garnets. This piece is showing off a great example of vesuvianite's crystal habit and terminations.

A huge zircon crystal! Zircon is the oldest mineral on planet Earth. There's a deposit in Australia which has been radiometric dated to be about 4.4 billion years old! Not this guy, though. This one is from Pakistan.

It fluoresces!

An AMAZING specimen of anatase! It's extremely rare for anatase crystals to grow this large. In fact, the only other anatase crystals I've seen in person had to be viewed under a microscope!

Here's the most expensive piece I came home with - a South African diamond! Can you believe I didn't have a diamond in my collection yet? That problem has been remedied.

It fluoresces!

And finally, my friends and I broke open a few geodes at the geode-cracking booth. I picked out some Trancas geodes from Mexico.

This locale produces weird, wavy, wormy crystals! These formations occur when quartz (in the form of chalcedony or hyalite) grows atop hair-thin, curly crystals of anhydrite.

They fluoresce!

And that was my haul from the rock show!

[serranodebergerac]

My most ambitious bookbinding project to date, a gift for author Christopher Buehlman for his incredible book Between Two Fires.

More info and process below the cut!

Since the book is set during the 14th century, I really wanted to do a typeset that included semi-contemporary art as accents. Before even printing the book there was a lot of work to do in the typeset process, including researching the artwork for chapter pages and dropcaps, as well as the title page image, all taken from woodcuts from the 15th-16th century (most of them are from Hans Holbein the Younger). It's not quite the same time period as the story, but I liked the more austere look of old woodcuts to illuminated art from the 1300s.

After typesetting and formatting, it was time to print, fold, and sew!

Then trimming the sawtooth edges with a chisel...

...and gilding the edges, weaving faux double-core endbands, and painting a hidden fore-edge image that reveals itself only when the book is flexed. These were all Firsts for me, and while they are far from perfectly executed, I'm obsessed. Every book is getting gilded edges and fore-edge paintings now.

I really wanted this book to have a leather cover, both because I've been eager to try my first true leather case, and because it felt so fitting for the rough, Medieval vibes of the book itself. Unfortunately, I got influenced by my local leather supplier, who convinced me that dying my own leather was the way to go...

...and she was right 🙈 I love how much control over the color and texture of the finished leather I have this way, and I will definitely be using up this veg-tanned hide that I purchased for future projects.

The symbol on the front (matched on the back) is my own design, and meant to evoke a comet. The detail of the protagonist Thomás witnessing a comet in the sky, and thus standing between the fires of the heavens and earth, was one I wanted to emphasize for the title.

I'm so thoroughly proud of the finished project, hiccups and all, and I'm so eager to make more leatherbound books now. Thank you so much to Christopher Buehlman for his blessing in creating this bind, which is now safely within his possession!

[gerardsbest]

Our Lady of Sorrows

Previous | Next

Chapter 1

Relationship: Gerard Way x Reader. Frank Iero x Reader

Tags: love triangles, slow burn, meet-cute, angst, fluff, falling in love, unrequited love, love confessions, hurt/comfort, eventual smut, awkward flirting, love at first sight

Summary: Gerard goes to a venue hosting local artists on a whim one day and sees you. Completely enamoured, he makes it his mission to see you again.

You see him, too. And you wonder what made him stand so close to the stage.

Frank sees the both of you.

(or the formation of mcr but you're there, and you have a special bond with gerard. frank is your long time friend, and the reason you got into music)

2.4k words | ao3

It all started with a gig.

There was an event held for up-and-coming artists held at the local theater. Everyone who had even the tiniest bit of footing in the world of music was to attend. You were no different, and you and your band were giddy with both excitement and nerve since it would be your first ever real gig.

Like, one with an actual crowd. At an actual place that was meant for small concerts instead of the parks and basements you were used to. And more importantly, with people who had actual connections to people in the industry.

A chance to make it.

"Nervous?"

You turned to the side, "What do you think, Frank?"

Frank offered you a sip of his water, which you respectfully declined because even water felt like it would just regurgitate out of you at that moment.

"You have got to relax."

"Easy for you to say..."

"Look, you act like i'm some kind of fuckin'... master at this or something. But I'm not. I've only been at this band thing for two years now."

"And I've been at it for barely seven months now. This is our first real shot, don't you get it, Frankie? Mess up and we might as well be done."

Frank had switched out his clean bottle of water for a cigarette, you had to fan the smoke every now and then as the two of you sat in that cramped dressing room, "So what?" He said after a while.

"What do you mean?"

"So what if you lose your chance here? It's not like the world is gonna run out of shitty studio execs dying to dig their nails into any piece of fresh meat with an inkling of talent - which, trust me, you guys have got way more than an inkling."

"You think so?"

"Take it from the pro."

You scoffed, "I thought you said you're not a master in this."

"I'm a master at some things in this." He prefaced as he blew smoke right into your face.

"Asshole." You laughed, shoving him as you coughed and tried to waft the fumes away.

"Frank? We're on in five."

A bandmate of his, Pencey Prep's other guitarist poked his head in for a moment and Frank got up right away after smushing the cigarette into the tray, which looked like a disgusting hodgepodge of ash and black.

Frank slung his guitar over his shoulder, "Wish me luck?"

"Good luck, Frank."

"Not gonna watch me?"

"You kidding?" You got up as well, making a show of going over to the door and opening it for him all dramatically, like this was the first date and you were the stereotypical "man".

And as the stereotypical "lady", always one to play along with your bits, Frank did a curtsey and whispered a delicate, "Thank you." As he walked out.

You cackled, which made him break character and cackle even harder.

"What songs are you guys gonna play tonight?"

"Well, we only have a twenty minute set, so we had to be real decisive. All of our greats. P.S. Don't Write, Yesterday, Trying to Escape the Inevitable..."

"Oh, please tell me you're gonna perform The Secret Goldfish."

Frank stopped walking and made a full turn towards you, "You actually like that song?"

"Totally! I thought I'd told you before?"

"You didn't..." He trailed off, then began walking again. "Why that song?"

"I dunno. The lyrics are nice. They're personal. Relatable but also poetic, y'know?"

Frank didn't talk for a bit, and you looked over to see that he was making one of those faces he made when he was deep in thought. Usually, Frank made this face when he was in the middle of practicing or writing something. It was a combination of slightly pursed lips and a light narrow of his eyes, he could hold this expression for dozens of minutes at a time which you found fascinating. You wondered for how long he'd keep the face this time.

He broke it quite early, though, and started talking again like nothing happened, "Sorry to disappoint, but we won't be including that in out setlist tonight. The guys thought it was too mellow. And I must agree," Frank shrugged, your shoulders drooped slightly and he took notice of that. "Don't be so sad about it. If you like it so much, I can just play it for you on my own time."

You smiled, "That sounds nice, Frank."

"Tonight, then? I don't think this thing is gonna last too long. Unless you wanted to go to the after party, that is."

"You know parties aren't my scene."

He chuckled, "Right, right."

The two of you were at the edge of the door which led to the stage now. There were people rushing all around you; other bands, some staff members, even fans who'd been given the lucrative chance at going backstage with their favorite micro celebrity. The pure excitement on their faces was a sight to behold, especially as they were dressed in homemade merch to show just how deep their admiration went.

I want that, The thought echoed. Someday, I'll have it.

You turned your attention back to Frank, "Break a leg, Frankie."

"With the way I play? Maybe I will."

You give him an awkward side hug and send him off before immediately rushing back to find the exit and find your way into the crowd. Pencey Prep was small but had a loyal and rowdy fanbase, and you wanted to get at least close enough to be able to both have a good view while also not getting crushed in the moshpit.

Which was a hard rope to balance. 

So, you'd better hurry.

Pencey Prep was amazing. 

And you'd gotten out of the moshpit without any injuries this time! Well, your skin did get caught on the spikes of this one girl's jacket, which caused a scratch, but it was so minimal you wrote it off as nothing. Plus, she apologized profusely so all was well.

"Holy fuck, Frank, that was crazy good." You exclaimed once you made it backstage.

Frank was still sweaty as all hell, and he kind of reeked, "Really?"

"It was one of the best sets I've seen from you guys!"

Frank held a smile, the kind of smile where it was small but reached his cheeks so it was obvious that he was smiling. You loved that smile.

"You guys are gonna be big one day, I know it. I mean, god, your songs are played with such... fervent passion, y'know? And not to sound biased, but your guitar playing is just freakin' brilliant! Like, you play so well, of course, but it's the way you play. All crazy and high energy. Makes me wanna be a guitar player, too! And—"

"Alright, alright, you can stop with the praise fest, I get it," Frank held his hand up to you. "But thanks. Seriously. I mean, I'm Mr. Confident onstage, but I'd be lying if I said that things don't get at me."

You sat down beside him, "Things like what?"

"Like... is this really the right path? I've been at it for two years and I started this damn thing at seventeen for fun. Now, I'm nineteen and attending a pretty good university, but I skip so many classes and barely learn shit to pursue this," He gestured to his guitar. "And sometimes, when I'm here, on my feet and not flying around on some sweat-soaked stage, I ask myself - where do I go with this?"

There was a moment of silence. A long one which lasted at least fifteen seconds as you formed your thoughts on how to respond. 

"Well, like you said, you're nineteen. Still a teen, technically. And someone with his entire life still left to live."

Frank snorted, "That's the corniest thing I've ever heard in my entire life."

"It's corny because it's true," You retorted, and he shrugged at that. "Anyway, you didn't let me finish."

With a firm grip, you held onto Frank's shoulders and made him look at you, "Go at this gig for a bit more. Attend school, too. If it falls out and you decide this ain't the life you wanted, then great, at least you took the leap and tried to do something. Tried to pursue your passion in a way that was meaningful; if not for others, then for yourself. You're brave for that."

Frank didn't answer you. In fact, he cracked a smile and began chuckling to himself, which led to a full on half-hysterical fit of laughter, which made your cheeks all red.

You crossed your arms, "What a way to thank someone who was trying to comfort you. Ungrateful prick." 

"Sorry, sorry..." He wheezed. "Sorry, I... no, I... it was great advice. Awesome, even. And exactly what I needed if I can be, well, frank. It's just that it's so weird to see you this serious, and it's kind of jarring to see this side to you after you were pissing yourself from nerve earlier." Snorts and giggles followed this explanation, but at least he was genuinely smiling now.

"Whatever, then," You said under your breath, allowing a few moments to pass as Frank caught himself. "And, by the way, there was something untrue about what I said just now."

"What is it?"

You bit your lip slightly, then parted them slightly, to signify you wanted to continue, a detail Frank caught. 

Yet, you couldn't say it, so you just stood and paced around instead.

"Hello? What is it?" Frank interjected quickly, standing now, too. "C'mon, tell me! You can't just leave me hanging like this, the hell?"

"Give me a second, would you?" You hissed, blurting all the letters out at once.

Frank leaned against the dresser, playing with the strings of his guitar which laid flat against a wall. No stand or anything, just on the floor because Frank was just that kind of guy. 

Eventually, he let out an exaggerated sigh as he raised his eyebrow, beckoning you to continue.

"Okay, well. What I was trying to say was that, this whole... thing you're doing. You can know, if you decide to stop, that this was something you can look back on in like ten, twenty years from now and know that it was incredibly meaningful to at least one other person than yourself."

Being an emotive guy, Frank immediately raised both eyebrows and came all close, his eyes big and asking "what do you mean?"

You pushed past him and went to the door because the next part was too embarrassing to say when he was close like this, "That person is me," You put your hand on the doorknob. "And I'm about to go onstage in front of an actual crowd and actual scouts for the first time because of you. Keep that in mind, okay?"

🦇

"Wow, those guys were frickin' amazing."

"They really are a stand out amongst everyone we've seen so far. That guitarist is something else, don't you think?"

"Definitely," Gerard sighed, blowing out the cigarette fumes. It was stupid, but he just couldn't stop smiling. This. All of it was so exhilarating, so thrilling. The energy was so palpable and he so dearly needed it. "Hey, who's next?"

Mikey reached into his pocket and pulled out a crumpled up wad which unfolded into a colorful poster. His eyes scanned it for a moment.

"Oh, someone I don't recognize. They must be new."

"What're they called?"

"Mercy."

Gerard pursed his lips, nodding along, "Cool. Simplistic yet says the right message. I like it."

Mikey put the poster back, "Actually, now that I think about it, I think I have heard of them. On campus, maybe...? I swear I heard someone throwing around the word."

"Uh, maybe 'cause mercy's an actual word?"

"You know what I mean."

Did he? Gerard was sure he didn't, but didn't feel like pressing him further. Plus, the show was starting, and with a name like Mercy, he was pretty interested to see what sort of performance they'd come up with.

As Mikey said, they were new, so there weren't many who were too interested in being at the moshpit. People hung back and some even left. There was a visibly fewer number of people compared to the other bands. Gerard hoped it wouldn't discourage them too much.  

The lights dimmed, he saw five figures come onstage. Three with instruments— two guitars and a bass if he had to guess— one going to the back for the drum kit and one coming right to the middle where the mic was. It was too dark to see anything, so facial features were amiss.

They took a bit to set up, then everything came back on and Gerard could finally see the group for who they were.

Two guitarists, as Gerard had predicted, a guy and a girl. The bassist, a dude, was at the back and adjusting his strings while the drummer, who was even further back was rubbing her sticks with the base of her shirt. Finally, the singer, she was right at the front and middle but Gerard's eyes ended up going there last. She was a girl.

Gerard gulped. 

A really pretty girl.

A really, really pretty girl wearing this cute little white slip dress with tiny rhinestone decals, clearly sewn on by hand, slightly falling apart, but resembling a floral design. It was gorgeous and Gerard wondered if it was made by her hand specifically. 

He was so enamoured by this detail that he was nearly blown away when the guitars boomed through the speakers and full blast. The girl guitarist began, riff heavy as hell, nearly deafening. The dude guitarist was quite a ways calmer, but still not "calm". He was also loud as hell.

When the drums came in, Gerard swore he felt the whole place fucking shake. And the bass, which he always considered an underrated instrument came in, steadily placing itself as an obscure but needed backbone to this whole song,

Then, the vocalist began singing and Gerard thought to himself, Oh, that's why they're called Mercy.

Because she was angelic.

Despite the loudness, the near crassness of all the instruments, her voice, and its seraphim hue lay gently on top of it all, like an embrace. 

Gerard found himself inching closer to the stage. Lost in a siren's song.

No, not a siren. An angel.

The spotlight above her looks like a halo.

Gerard was at the edge, the closest he could get to the stage. His eyes were wide and looking up; at the band, at her and her covenant grace.

[drchucktingle]

Where is the best place to preorder Bury Your Gays? What is of most benefit to you?

i know other types of media have given the trot of preorders a bad way, but for publishing books i cannot even begin to tell you buckaroos HOW IMPORTANT PREORDERS ARE WHEN SUPPORTING AUTHORS YOU CARE ABOUT. i mean HECK preorders are so important i even wrote three dang tinglers about it

basically preorders are what publishers use to determine how much financial backing they will give a book for advertising and book tours and all that, but that is only PART of this way. BOOK STORES also use a preorder equation to determine how much shelf space to give a book. your preorder does not just mean YOU get a book for yourself, but basically means you are making room for someone ELSE to get the book in a store by putting another copy on a shelf

that is why it is better to put in a preorder instead of just saying 'oh i will just remember to buy myself a copy on the day it comes out'

LASTLY preorders are how books get onto bestseller lists because all the orders leading up to your book release date COUNT AS FIRST WEEK SALES. something like new york times bestseller list is close to impossible trot without preorders

think of it like a handsome surfing bigfoot trying to ride a wave. it is one thing to actually ride on the wave, but what matters most is that initial moment when you GET UP THERE and actually have the strength to pull yourself up when the wave starts. PREORDERS are the climbing up part

NOW LETS GET DOWN TO YOUR SPECIFIC QUESTION

first of all ANY preorder is great. what matters most as far as bestseller lists is actually FORMAT. the best thing you can order for an author is not ebook or audiobook, it is HARDCOVER. personally i am an audiobook buckaroo myself so please understand you should order whatever format you want, but technically speaking the answer is HARDCOVER

next is WHERE do you order. this answer is pretty dang cool actually. the best place to order for the sake of author is your LOCAL INDIE BOOKSTORE. if you MUST order at a big timer website that is fine, but many bestseller lists are weighted towards indie bookstores

so to sum it up. the technical BEST WAY to support chuck with 'bury your gays' is to PREORDER a HARDCOVER from an INDIE BOOKSTORE.

thank you for your question but before you go trotting along i would like to add one more thing

all art is important. when we create things they serve as stepping stones for us to move along our journey as artists and creators on this timeline. i have so much love for every book i have made, from POUNDED IN THE BUTT BY MY OWN BUTT to CAMP DAMASCUS

but i have to say with deep sincerity in my way, BURY YOUR GAYS is something special. i absolutely believe that if you care about fandom, or creation, or love, or fanfiction, or supernatural, or the future of media, or asexual buckaroos, or gay buckaroos, or bi buckaroos or any queer buckaroos, you will love this book. i promise buckaroo

it is the best thing i have ever written, and i think it is going to bend this timeline in incredible ways. i would like you to trot with me into the future, since we have already trotted this far together. i cannot say this enough: this one is special, and the timelines we create from here are going to make the whole dang world look up in surprise and say 'where the heck did that come from?'

so if you are even CONSIDERING preordering, take a moment a do it.

if you are one of those buckaroos who says 'chuck tingle is my favorite author ive never read' then now is your moment

lets trot buckaroos. thank you for reading and thank you for constantly proving to me that love is real

preorder BURY YOUR GAYS here

[puckinghischier]

Chef’s Kiss

Nico x fem!reader, soft!Nico, domestic!Nico

summary: Nico fluff, basically

notes: i just really love soft nico and couldn’t get him out of my head so here’s this (also ignore the fact i keep using the same pics in my posts, i need to find more 💀)

[2k]

~

Nico was always trying to do little things to bring a smile to your face. Whether it was having the laundry washed, folded, and put away by the time you got home, sending you funny videos and silly selfies throughout the day, or simply having a glass of your favorite wine waiting on you as soon as you walked through the door, he loved providing small moments of happiness for you. He didn’t have time to do things for you often, his schedule getting increasingly busier as the season goes on, but today he had a completely free afternoon and wanted to have your favorite meal plated and waiting for you to enjoy as soon as you got off work. The idea came to him when you called him on what was supposed to be your lunch break.

“Neeks, I’m so sorry but I have to work late again. I’m having to re-do all of my reports for the day because my boss didn’t like the format that I used, even though it’s the exact format he told me to use three days ago! I swear sometimes he just wants to make my life a living hell. I don’t get paid enough for this shit.”

Nico had a fond smile on his face, despite the nature of your call; hearing you rant to him about work was always something he looked forward to. While he didn’t love the fact that you were upset and that your boss was a grade A asshole, he loved being the one you came to when you were frustrated and just needed to blow off steam. It always made him happy to know that he was the one you called when you needed a mid-day pick me up on particularly stressful days. He had tried to tell you multiple times to just quit—that he makes enough for the both of you to live on – but you wouldn’t even entertain the thought. You’d always tell him no and that you needed to pull your weight with the bills and rent, too. You didn’t want to have all of the tears you shed while you were in college go to waste. To quote your exact words ‘I’m going to use this damn degree even if it kills me’. He admired your work ethic and that you didn’t want to have him be your own personal bank, but it was times like this he wishes you would just take his suggestion to heart and actually quit.

“I understand, but don’t work too late, schatz. It’s not good for you. Tuck and I will be here waiting on you when you get here,” Nico looks over at the cat quietly snoozing over on the couch. “I noticed you left your lunch in the fridge; do you need me to bring you something? I don’t have to go back to the rink today for anything, so I could pick up something from that sushi place you like and we could have a little lunch date? Give you a few minutes to reset and recharge?”

“No, it’s okay. I don’t have time to eat today anyways. At this point working through lunch is the only way I’ll be able to come home before midnight. Thanks for the offer, though, Neeks. I have to go, my boss is calling me, probably to tell me something else I did wrong. I’ll text you when I leave, love you,” you hang up the phone, not giving Nico a chance to respond. He knows your boss hates when he catches you taking personal calls on company time, so he just sends you a simple “I love you, too. Please eat something and don’t work too hard” text since you hung up before he had time to tell you himself.

As soon as he pressed send, Nico grabbed his keys and took off to the grocery store. He really only went to pick up the ingredients to make dinner, but he couldn’t help making a quick stop at the local florist, grabbing a small bouquet of daisies he knows you’ll love. As he was driving home, he remembers this bakery you had told him you’ve been wanting to try, so he finds himself in said bakery picking out a few baked goods for you to taste test (and maybe a few for himself, too). By the time he had made it back home it was well past five, when you typically leave your office for the day. Once he brought his haul of groceries, flowers, and pastries in the door, Tuck greeted him by meowing loudly for his food.

“Sorry, Tuck, I’m late for dinner, aren’t I?” Nico asks the cat as he walks over and fills the hangry cat’s food bowl. “Now that you’re fed, I need to get to work on feeding your mom. That is, if I can manage not to burn anything.”

Nico got to work immediately, turning on the cooking playlist you had made and grabbing his ‘Kiss the Swiss’ apron you had jokingly gifted him for Christmas. He pulled out the recipe book that your mom gave you two as a house-warming gift when you first moved in. Just last week you had been talking about how you missed your mom’s famous pasta, so he decided that was his attempted dish of the night. He laid out all of the ingredients and followed the recipe as closely as he could, paying special attention to all of the little notes your mother added in the margins of the typed recipe. About an hour into Nico’s cooking you sent him a text that you were nearly finished and would be home soon, but he was so busy trying to perfect making pasta from scratch that he never even looked at his phone. When he was on his third attempt at the pasta dough, he heard the front door open.

He looked over at the clock to see that it was nearly seven-thirty. He heard your keys hit the bowl sitting on the small table beside the front door and your sigh of relief once you took your shoes off. He could hear the soft thuds your feet made on the hardwood while you walked into the living room. He looked up from the counter to see your tired body drift over to the couch where Tuck laid sound asleep.

“Hey, Tuck. How was your day? Did you catch a lot of Z’s? Dream about catching mice? Poop on your dad’s pillow again?” Nico heard your soft voice say, chuckling at your last question.

The poor kitten had, somehow, got locked in yours and Nico’s bedroom a few weeks ago and neither of you noticed until it was well past feeding time and the little furball hadn’t come running into the kitchen screaming for his dinner. It took the two of you twenty minutes to hear the soft meows coming from your bedroom, the TV in the living room having drowned them out for most of the day. As soon as you opened the door Tuck came sprinting out of the room as fast as he could, acting as if he’d been in there for days. He ran straight to his food bowl and turned around, glaring at Nico and yourself. Later that evening the two of you made your way to the bedroom to settle down for the night only to find that Tuck had left a nice, smelly present on his pillow. Nico was appalled, to say the least. Gagging and holding his pillow out with straight arms as if it was poisonous. You, however, were doubled over with laughter. You fell onto the bed and were laughing hysterically when Nico finally came back into the room, no pillow to be seen.

“I don’t know why you’re laughing; it’s disgusting! The cat shit on my pillow!” Nico expressed, standing in front of the bed with his arm crossed, looking like a toddler throwing a temper tantrum.

“Neeks, it’s hilarious! Out of all the places in the room he could’ve shit, he saw your pillow and thought ‘Ah, yes. Dad’s pillow. I think this will be my new bathroom.” You wipe the tears from your eyes, slightly out of breath from your laughing fit.

“Well, of course it’s funny when it’s not your pillow! If he would’ve shit on your pillow, you would be as upset as I am.” Nico huffed, still in his childish stance.

“Wait, where is your pillow?”

“In the trash.”

“You threw away the whole pillow!?” you exclaimed, starting to laugh all over again.

“Of course, I threw away the whole pillow! I’m not about to sleep on that thing tonight! It’s contaminated!”

“Nico, you could’ve just gotten a new pillow case. You didn’t have to throw your whole pillow away! What are you going to sleep on tonight?” You asked him, amusement clear in your voice.

“Well…I didn’t think that far ahead,” Nico said, his stance deflating a little.

He ended up sleeping on a throw pillow from the couch that night, picking up a new pillow on his way home from practice the next morning. Since then, the two of you have always made sure to keep your bedroom door open anytime Tuck isn’t in his usual spot on the couch.

Nico smiles at the memory, completely forgetting the fact that he was supposed to be kneading the pasta dough in his hands. By the time his thoughts circulate back to the task at hand, he hears you ask the cat “Where’s your dad, huh?” followed by the sound of your clothes rustling as you move to get off of the couch.

“Nico? You in here?” you call as you walk around the corner of the living room into the kitchen. “Neeks- Oh, there you are. What are you doing?” You stopped in the doorway of the kitchen when you took in the scene in front of you. The pots and pans on the stove, the steam coming from a pot of boiling water, the smell of chicken in the oven, and the bouquet of flowers and box of pastries on the counter next to them. Then your eyes move over to Nico, noticing he was absolutely covered in flour. He had flour in his hair, on his face, on his apron, in the floor, and all over the counter.

“Nico, what the hell are you doing? What is all of this?” you asked him once the two of you made eye contact.

“Well, I was trying to have dinner waiting on you when you got home because I know you’ve had a shitty day, but I’ve just now realized that I don’t know how to make pasta from scratch.”

“Why are you trying to make pasta from scratch?” you walk towards him, laughing at how distraught he looks.

“You said you’ve been craving your mom’s pasta recipe, so I thought it would be a good way to cheer you up after the day that you’ve had,” he replied, grabbing a towel to wipe the flour off of his hands.

“Nico, I love you, I do. And I appreciate the effort, but please throw that ball of…whatever that is in the trash and just use dried pasta next time,” you look over at what’s supposed to be pasta dough, reaching him and placing your arms on his shoulders, hands coming together to rest on the back of his neck.

“I try to make you a nice meal and this is the response I get? No ‘nice try’ or ‘wow, it smells great in here!’” he jokes, looking down at you, attempting to look offended, but his eyes only reflect love and amusement.

“You’ll get real praise when you learn how to make pasta from scratch. For now, consider this your compliment,” you stand on your toes, pressing a small kiss to his lips.

“You call that a compliment? Read the apron and try again.”

You laugh before meeting him halfway for a real kiss this time, thinking to yourself just how lucky you were to have Nico in your life.

[gay-dorito-dust]

resending the req :)

can I have a thing of sylus and zayne visiting uni student reader who has been staying at the library for long hours and late into the night? been stuck in library jail as of late n just need a lil smth QwQ

Late night studies at the local library wasn’t uncommon for you, needing to get as much information from text books compacted to a easily rememberable format to put down in your notebooks, just so you could have an opportunity to -hopefully- pass your fucking exams.

However you had seemingly lost track of time as soon enough it was dark outside and your phone was being blown up by text messages from Sylus that dated back hours ago. Your phone had been put on silent and you were too busy studying to even notice the text notifications piling up in the slightest.

You internally winced. You knew that Sylus wasn’t a fan of being ignored and most likely had sent Mephisto to check up on you for the reason of your inactivity. As though struck by the god of prophecy himself, you heard a familiar birds cawing, followed by a metallic tapping against glass that made you perk up towards one of the windows across from you; only to see a pair of glowing red eyes peering back at you with its head tilted to the side almost quizzically.

‘Mephisto?’ You asked silently but before you could figure out how far Sylus must be if Mephisto was already here, a hand clasped on your shoulder and pulled you away from your table and into his strong arms and chest. ‘You’ve overstayed your welcome again kitten.’ A voice purred in your ear and it didn’t need no explanation that it belonged to Sylus himself, who was smirking at you once you pulled away from his embrace.

‘Sylus?’

He smirk widens. ‘Someone was ignoring my texts for textbooks, so I got Mephisto to see what was so important you were actively avoiding me.’ He says as he looked over your pile of books and scattered notes before looking back at you and noticing how worse for wear you looked. ‘Did you eat or drink today?’ He asks honestly but the silence that followed his question hung heavily in the air only gave him the answer he needed as he huffs.

‘Come along sweetie, it’s time you let yourself have a break and allow me to make you something to apprise that hunger you’ve been ignoring all day.’ Sylus gently flicks your forehead, making your wince, before kissing it and whispering, ‘you’ve done enough for today, the world isn’t going to grow legs and leave the moment you shift your gaze elsewhere, and besides you’ll do fine in the exams my smart little cookie.’ He then pulls away to start putting your things back into your bag in an calm and organised manor.

‘How do you know that I’ll be okay?’ You asked, holding your hand out to take your bag off of his hands after he’d finished packing away everything. Sylus swats your hand away and keeps a hold of your bag on his shoulder just as his other hand intertwines your fingers as he pull you out of the library, where a car was waiting outside for you. ‘You’re my smart cookie, there’s no possible way you’d fail.’ He replies confidently.

‘And if I fail?’

Sylus looks to you and boops you on the nose with his own and he leaned in close to your face. ‘Doesn’t change that fact that you are smart in your own right darling, now let’s go home and watch your favourite show and eat dinner then finish off with desert as a treat for all your hard work.’

Zayne knew by the time on his phone and how dark it had become outside that you had forgotten that the passage of time exists as you stayed overtime at the library.

He also was certain that you didn’t allow yourself mandatory breaks either as you often forgot to do so most times without reminders in the form of his texts. He knew how much the exams meant to you but he wasn’t about to allow you to neglect your own health and safety -especially when it got as dark as it did- for them. He wouldn’t allow you to endanger your health nor wellbeing for grades.

After making you a generous amount of food to eat, Zayne grabbed his coat, his keys and left your shared living space and heads to his car before driving off towards the library to pick you up, he’d be damned if he lets you walk home at this time of night.

You were half asleep and were about to use your notebook as a makeshift pillow. You didn’t know what time it was but what you weren’t expecting was to look out a nearby window and be met with seemingly never ending darkness. ‘Was it really nighttime already? That can’t be, let me check my- ow.’ You grimaced as you looked at your phone, it was indeed nighttime and not only that you had gotten several texts from Zayne reminding you to eat, drink and take mandatory breaks; to which you’ve completely ignored and had been running on nothing but the need to get this revision done and over with the entire day.

You didn’t have much time to respond to Zayne’s previous texts before a new one popped up:

Zayne ❄️: I’m coming to pick you up, it’s too dark to be walking home at this time. I’ve been made you some food to eat at home as I know you’ve been occupied by your studies to do so.

You hated how well Zayne knew you but were extremely grateful that he wasn’t annoyed with your habits as of late due to your stress over the exams. You also knew he didn’t condone your lack of eating, sleeping and drinking but you also get on his ass for exactly the same thing when he overworked himself in the hospital, he’s one of the best they had and you’d couldn’t allow him to ignore his own needs and you knew that he wouldn’t let you forgot your either.

And with that you quickly started packing up all your belongings and shoving them back into your bag before playing on your phone for a good while, only for it to be cut short when spotting Zayne stood at the entrance of the library from the corner and immediately perked up. ‘Zayne.’ You said as you ran towards him and gave him a massive hug that he reciprocated with his own as he rubs your back soothingly.

‘You’ve not eaten nor taken any breaks have you at all today?’ He asks and you flinch because of course that’s the first thing he asks.

‘I got a little too deep in studying that by the time I looked up from my notebook it was already nightfall.’ You admitted to him and you heard him sigh before pressing a kiss to your forehead. ‘Well it’s a good thing I’ve made you something at home in preparation for this outcome.’ Zayne said in response as he began to guide you out of the library and towards his car parked out front. ‘You’ve done enough hard work for today, allow your body to rest and put your mind at ease for you’ll do well in the exam.’ He adds.

‘What if I fail.’ You asked, scared of that being the outcome.

Zayne moved in front of you, holding your face between his hands as he smiles softly. ‘Then you’ve tried your best and that is more than enough, no need to beat yourself up about results that are yet to come.’ He then kissed your forehead and drove you both back home where you were well fed and fell asleep almost instantly afterwards.

[drunkenlionwrites]

alright curveball what typical archetype would boothill be in a high school setting and what would he be like with his partner >:) (hc format please)

Boothill HS AU headcanons:

OMG OMG nonnie, that’s such a cool ask. I honestly would’ve not thought about this concept myself, cause school was so so long ago for me, but I’ve got the vision of HS Boothill right away when I read it💖 CW: none, g/n reader

So Boothill as the archetype would be ‘the classmate who looks like a local thug but is actually the kindest soul.’

Imagine your classmate who is not really studious and can disrupt the lesson by loudly laughing and talking in class and does this 5/5 days per week. He’s loud and brush and sometimes vulgar.

Once, he kicked and cussed out the vending machine out in hallway so loudly when you passed by that it made you physically jump. Even though he’s noticed that and tried to apologize to you, calling out your name through the hall, since that time you’ve decided that you don’t like him.

You are slightly annoyed by this and never approach him, but he’s got a big presence in school, so you see and hear things about him from time to time, though you don’t know which rumors are true and which are not. Some of them sound crazy: once he beat 4 to 5 upperclassmen alone. Some say it was 10 of them. Some say he’s got something on the principal; hence he doesn’t get in trouble with anyone. Some say it’s cause he’s the principal’s kid. Or lover. Those all sound crazy and unrealistic, but who knows?

Once you see him really beating up someone behind the school building with your own eyes. You stand there and watch for a bit, thinking about reporting this to someone, but then you notice Boothill coming up to a smaller kid, sitting on the ground not far away, comforting him and picking up his bag, helping the kid to pack the contents inside. You just hear never-ending ‘thank you’s in between small sobs and Boothill’s warm laughter afterwards.

Another day, you hear him quarrelling loudly with a teacher, which sounded again completely disrespectful from his side. Later, from murmurs around school you learn that he stood up for the shyer kid when he thought that they were unjustly reprimanded.

Once you saw him in the street after school on the day when he was missing, presumably staying in sick or something. He shouted out your name from the tree, causing you to flinch again. Turns out, he spent hours trying to get one stubborn kitty to come to him, skipping classes cause of it.

It was a bit awkward when you started dating, cause being in his orbit meant that you too became more known in school and began noticing stares and hearing whispers about you.

Boothill is a total sweetheart with you, even though he can be slightly obnoxious and is not good at reading the mood from time to time. It doesn’t matter since his positive outlook and mostly always good mood is oh so infectious.

He’s also very physical, not minding the pda at school. Walking with you holding your hand, hugging from behind etc.

He doesn’t mind spending the whole day at school attempting to study, especially if you’re a diligent student. Though he is a student who’s always ready to and will bail classes and will try to talk you into skipping school with him cause it’s just too much fun stuff happening outside that seems much more important to him.

I see the dynamic as a he’s a good influence in terms for teaching his s/o to be more assertive and confident in themselves and in return being the one who needs to be stopped and calmed out a bit when he acts on a whim.

[auchrauch]

A (not so) detailed post about the current project I'm working on

Bringing here a slightly more extended version of my post from bluesky.

Please be nice because I might have one more thing to share with TGCF fandom.

I want to make a short visual novel featuring hualian in post-canon. Emphasis on "want to" because with a project of this scale I can't guarantee that it'll end up as a fully finished thing.

The original idea behind me starting this was simply "hualian having a wholesome day", though the mood slightly shifted towards something a bit more melancholic after I picked up a poem after which I named the game. (The poem's "Spring morning" by Meng Haoran). There is no continious heavy plot, just various SFW and NSFW routes which aren't connected between themselves (or are they?)

I tried to include different dynamics, so you can expect to see the classics (Top HC/Bottom XL) as well as versatile hualian (these routes can be hidden if someone doesn't fancy it). I also should mention that my understanding of characters and their dynamic can differ from what's considered the "norm" in the fandom, but I refuse to slap OOC label on my work because that's how I perceived these characters while reading the book and I'll be sticking to it. Oh, and I'm also following the revised version so there could be offhand mentions of events from the new extra or other small details like that.

I'm planning to release the final SFW version of the game for free (if it'll be finished at all), though I'm still not sure if I should hide NSFW version behind a paywall. Maybe I'll make one-time purchase posts for intermediate beta-builds too, so people can have a glimpse of what is in the works. Ideally I'd like to have at least some monetary support while working on this project, but providing consistent updates and materials in the patreon format wouldn't work for me, since, aside from commissions to pay my rent, the other project I'm involved with as an artist already takes a lot of my time.

So I can't give any dates and promises and will be simply working on this at my own pace.

So far, I have a complete (not proofread and not fully edited) script for all the routes as well as a working base for the game in renpy. I'm also almost done with UI and I made a couple of backgrounds, but that's nothing compared to how many more of them I still need. (You'll be subjected to looking at the picture attached to the post over and over again at the every start of the game).

For the next step, I'll probably focus on one route at a time and start filling them with visual assets.

I also can't decide whether I should stick to British or American English because:

1) This stupid gaijin can't differentiate between the two anyway.

2) I already started using "arse" yet I lost all the "u"s from my "ou"s and now I don't know which to change.

I'd like to hear which one people prefer more.

If you want to help in some way—I'm having trouble with sound design part as I'm locked out of purchasing anything from international sites/commissioning someone from overseas, and I don't want to risk commissioning assets for a NSFW lgbt game from anyone local since it' simply not a safe move. If you know any good resources that distribute sfx/sounds/music under a free flexible license please share! I'm using GDC royalty free archives but this obviously doesn't cover all my needs.

Idk what else to say here. Send help? Prayers for my sanity? Donations so I can pay my rent??? God, what am I even doing.

Here's the assortment of some early wips I already shared elsewhere:

[wynterstrawberry]

Baja be thy blast

Having a nap earlier in the day seemed like a good idea. But now it was one am and your stomach was growling. You managed to walk into your local Taco Bell still half asleep. You watched a guy walk in and he seemed to be as awake as you were.

They called your food out and you slightly brushed hands with the mystery guy as he reached for it at the same time. “You don’t look a y/n to me.” You spoke breaking him out of his thoughts.

“Huh oh sorry. But I’ll have you know I would make a pretty cute y/n.”

You both laughed harder than you normally would have at his reply. The tiredness you were both feeling and the disorienting atmosphere of Taco Bell at 1 am brought out the giddiness of both of you.

As you started to eat unwrap your food you heard the guy speak up again. “Eww that’s what you ordered?? I’m glad you stopped me from picking up your order.”

You looked at your order and back at his “you literally ordered the same thing as me in a different format.”

“Well you got me there.” He replied with a giggly smirk.

Your dinner was spent bantering back and forth with the random guy. But he was sweet in his own way and insisted on walking you to your car to take sure no weird creeps bothered you. You thought about the irony to yourself that the weird guy wanted to protect you from any other weird guys.

“See you around Taco Bell thief.” You spoke before he closed your door. You watched him clarify he was not a thief with his arms crossed and a dramatic pout before leaving the parking lot.

It became a routine that you’d run into him at least once a week. It got to a point you didn’t know if you were coming for the food or the chance to see him again.

One day your work ended later than normal thus making your nap longer than normal. You woke up kind of sad figuring mystery guy wouldn’t be at Taco Bell that late.

You sadly went to your booth and were surprised to hear a familiar “hey stranger.” and the sound of another tray hitting your table. “Oh I didn’t think you’d be here this late.” You replied a little more eager than you meant to and hoped he didn’t catch on.

“Yeah my practice ran later than usual and my nap was longer than normal.” A yawn escaped halfway through his sentence. “How about you why are you here later than normal? Did you wait for me to come in?” He asked with a wink.

You rolled your eyes and laughed “no I had a deadline come up at work and had to work longer and my nap lasted longer too.”

“Sounds stressful. What do you do?”

You explained your job to Seth and he listened while eating.

“What about your practice what’s that all about?”

“Ah hockey.” He replied nonchalant and immediately asked another question about you.

The two of you went back and forth actually getting to know each other this time.

“Do you want my number and we can actually make this a date date next time?” Seth’s question made your heart skip a beat and a blush crept onto your face. You handed him your phone with the contact page pulled up while momentarily hiding your face.

“Talk to you soon stranger.” He winked again as he closed your car door and watched you leave the parking lot safely.

You looked at your contacts and laughed at the fact he saved himself in your phone as “Taco Bell thief”

And that day officially started yours and Seth’s relationship.

[harlotsforcinnamon]

If Dreams Were Thunder and Lighting Was Desire

It’s finally here, my 1986 folk band AU!!! Posting it here, but check it out on Ao3 (click the title) for better formatting and all my notes on the music in the fic. I love you!

A girl stepped up to the mic, thoughtfully lowered to accommodate her. “We’re Indigo Blue.” Her voice had a pleasant Virginia shine on it, and Ronan was taken aback at that unexpected glimpse of home, out here in the middle of fucking nowhere, Indiana. The drummer clicked his sticks together, one, two, three, and the guitarist picked out a sweet, moody little melody and the bassist came in softly to round out the sound. The girl hung her head, one hand wrapped around the mic stand, clearly counting. When the time came, she lifted her head and sang in a sweet, moody voice that matched the music.

“Something dark, if you’ve got it.” Ronan accepted the beer with a nod, the glass bottle already beginning to perspire into the tacky bartop.

The bar was noisy, noisier than Ronan had expected for a chilly gray evening in late April, especially in a place like this, all cheap floor-cleaner and folding chairs. The faded pinup calendar tacked up behind the bar was at least two years out of date. Miss August ‘84 smiled vacantly down at him.

Ronan shrugged his shoulders, settling his leather jacket across them. He’d been driving most of the last few days, the gray clouds knit low across the horizon, occasionally spitting but never out-and-out raining. It produced a moody atmosphere and left Ronan itching for release, sweaty and unable to sleep, curled in the backseat of his car with his jacket balled-up under his head, car pulled just off the highway into some field or other.

If there was one thing to be said for this weather, it was that it made the dimly-lit bar seem warm and cozy, all warped pine timbers and fly strips so old that some of those flies still remembered the Nixon administration.

The place was packed wall-to-wall with locals and loud with chatter. From what Ronan could glean from Renee, the bartender, the owner liked to book small-time bands and promote the hell out of them. He’d had a band himself back in the sixties, apparently, back when there was free love and LSD for all.

And indeed there was a little band in the corner making feedback noises and working on a serious fire hazard with their duct-taped extension cords and rickety mic stands. Ronan cast a critical eye over them and just as quickly dismissed them. They had to be about his age. Too young to have really figured themselves out, Ronan thought. Probably local kids. The kid on drums caught Ronan’s eye and twirled a drumstick, grinning a faded sort of grin. He had a smudge or a birthmark across one cheek that made his face appear curiously lopsided.

Ronan made idle small-talk with Renee. Yeah, Ronan’d been on the road a while. No, he didn’t know where he was gonna spend the night. The bartender recommended a motel a couple of miles down the road and Ronan made a mental note to leave him a generous tip.

By then the band had finished tuning up and the bartender had moved off to take someone else’s order. Ronan sipped meditatively at his beer, pulling his rucksack closer with the toe of one boot and half-turning to watch, hooking his heel over one of the rungs of his stool.

A girl stepped up to the mic, thoughtfully lowered to accommodate her. She was tiny, five-foot-nothing in two-inch combat boots. Combat boots threaded through with at least three different colors of shoelace. Per boot. She wore what appeared to be a number of torn-up band shirts artfully stitched together into a kind of smock dress. Her hair stuck up all over, mismatched hairclips clinging on for dear life. The overall effect was punky, bordering on kitschy. It worked for her. Ronan found himself taking an instant liking to her as she surveyed the room coolly.

“We’re Indigo Blue.” Her voice had a pleasant Virginia shine on it, and Ronan was taken aback at that unexpected glimpse of home, out here in the middle of fucking nowhere, Indiana. The drummer clicked his sticks together, one, two, three, and the guitarist picked out a sweet, moody little melody and the bassist came in softly to round out the sound. The girl hung her head, one hand wrapped around the mic stand, clearly counting. When the time came, she lifted her head and sang in a sweet, moody voice that matched the music.

They weren’t half bad, Ronan thought, sipping his drink. The drummer was on rhythm, which was more or less the best that could be said of any drummer. He was in need of a haircut, though. He kept shaking his bangs back out of his eyes.

The guitarist should have looked absolutely at home up there in pressed blue jeans and a crisp white tee. Very Mall of America. But there was something intense about his smooth, handsome face, his even, white teeth. Ronan couldn’t even begin to guess what his deal was.

But Ronan’s attention snagged on the bassist.

With the exception of the frontwoman, he was clearly the best actual musician up there. In a faded tee shirt and flannel, there was something almost delicate about the contours of his face. Ronan found himself mesmerized by those long, elegant fingers outlined against the fretboard, sliding up and down the neck. He leaned into the second mic from time to time and Ronan strained to catch his vocals, beer forgotten in his hand. He could have sworn he caught hints of the same accent as the lady singer.

He was easy on the eyes.

It was a phrase Ronan had never given much thought to before, but it was true. The bassist was beautiful in a way that felt at once alien and familiar, like setting out on the front porch with the Smoky Mountains looming purple-gray and big as life over the treetops. Ronan couldn’t keep his eyes off of him, hungry for the sight of him.

As the band worked their way through a handful of original songs, the bar patrons intermittently tuned in, but in general no one paid the band much mind. The show was merely an excuse to leave their homes and see their friends and drink. The crowd’s inattentiveness didn’t seem to bother the members of Indigo Blue, though. They had a cohesive, folksy sound, better than Ronan would’ve expected from a rag-tag group touring a dive in the middle of nowhere.

Finally, the band finished with a long sustained note and a roll on the high hat. The singer pushed a couple of sweaty tendrils of hair back from her forehead and leaned into the mic.

“We’re gonna take a break, which means one of you better buy me a beer.” This produced a couple of good-natured chuckles from the crowd.

The guitarist was already unlooping his guitar strap from around his neck and shaking out his fingering hand, turning to exchange words with the bassist, who turned his head, the better to hear over the hubbub.

The singer made her way up to the bar, squeezing her way through the crowd, accepting half-hearted praise with a hard smile, and came to stand beside Ronan, trying to attract the bartender’s attention. She came up to Ronan’s shoulder, even with him seated.

Ronan leaned over to her, the better to be heard over the noise, and she stiffened as he passed some internal litmus, regarding him warily out of the corner of her eye.

“Goddamn,” he remarked pleasantly. “With pipes like that, you’re gonna put Linda Ronstadt out of business.” He raised a hand and the bartender nodded to him, holding up a finger. “What’ll you have?” Ronan asked.

Her talking voice was frank and forthright. “You don’t really have to buy me a beer.”

“I won’t make anything of it if you don’t.”

“Well in that case,” She hoisted herself up onto the bar stool beside Ronan and offered him her hand with a brusqueness that matched her voice. “I’m Blue.”

Ronan shook the offered hand, saying as he did so, “So tell me, how'd it feel to have Joni fucking Mitchell dedicate a whole album to you?”

She flipped him off, and in that single gesture, won his heart.

“Blue,” Ronan said. “Pleasure. Ronan. You crazy kids from Virginia?”

“Yeah.”

“Whereabouts?”

“Henrietta?” It was offered with the familiar hesitancy that implied that Ronan wouldn’t have heard of it.

“No shit!”

“You know it?”

Ronan pointed to himself. “Singer’s Falls.”

“No shit!”

“Where’d you go to high school?”

“Mountainview, but my bandmates were all Raven boys, every one of ‘em.”

Ronan made a retching noise, and a pleased smile broke across Blue’s face. Renee had finally worked his way back to them and Ronan ordered himself another beer and one for Blue.

“What’s a Virginia boy doing way out here on his lonesome?” Blue asked, the neck of her bottle dimpling her lower lip.

“Could ask you the same thing.”

“We’re on tour,” she said haughtily. “Funding it ourselves, but we got a handful of stops after this. Been on the road a couple months, working our way back home.”

“Then what? Try and land a record deal?”

“Maybe–” But Blue was interrupted by her guitarist. He came up and slid an arm around her waist. Ronan half-turned away, expecting a kiss, maybe a proprietary gaze leveled at him, but the guitarist merely offered Ronan his knuckles. It seemed such an odd gesture coming from this smoothly put-together boy that Ronan completed it without thinking about it, tapping his own knuckles against the boy’s.

“Making friends?” This was directed at Blue.

Blue leaned her head back against the boy’s shoulder. There was a fondness, a familiarity there that made Ronan think of his own parents. He took a hasty swallow of beer.

“Making friends, yeah. Ronan here’s from Singer’s Falls.”

“Huh! Imagine that!”

Ronan jerked his chin at the guitarist. “I hear you’re an Aglionby boy, yourself.”

The guitarist had the good grace to grimace. “For my sins.”

Ronan took an instant shine to him. “I didn’t catch your name, man.”

The boy held out a hand. He had a firm, practiced handshake. “Gansey.”

“Actually, that’s Richard Gansey the third.” The drummer had approached them. He slung a companionable arm around Gansey’s shoulders as the boy in question groaned. “And I’m Noah,” He said. “The hot one.”

“Ronan.” Ronan indicted Blue and Gansey. “Maybe you can give me the skinny on these two. Highschool sweethearts?”

Blue threw her head back and cackled. Ronan found himself unaccountably terrified by the sound, even as his face moved automatically to mirror her smile. There was a story there for sure. “Actually, Adam and I were going steady first.”

“Adam?”

Noah hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “Adam.”

“The hot one,” Gansey teased, and Noah stuck out his tongue at him.

Because he’d been pointed out to him, Ronan allowed himself to look.

Adam. Ronan wondered what he looked like, his face slack with sleep. What it would feel like to run his thumb across the sweet bow of his lower lip. What those clever fingers would feel like on Ronan’s skin, in his mouth.

Meanwhile Gansey was sizing Ronan up, one bootheel propped up on the rail of Blue’s stool, elbows propped on the bar, back bowed, his face conspiratorially close to Ronan’s. Like that, his careless southern polish looked a little too perfect to be believable, his eyes dark and canny. There was a thrum of barely concealed excitement behind the forced casualness of his voice.

“What do you know about Owain Glendower?”

Inexplicably, Blue and Noah both groaned in unison.

For his part, Ronan was wracking his brains, beer raised halfway to his lips. The name sounded familiar. A character from one of his father’ stories, maybe. “Was he a king?” He guessed tentatively. “Welsh king or something?”

Gansey’s face split into a hundred-watt grin of pure delight, and Ronan found himself dazzled, unable to keep from smiling back under the onslaught.

“Now you’ve done it,” Blue muttered. “He’s gonna follow you home. Friends for life.”

“Fuck Glendower,” Noah said vigorously. “You ever had a near-death experience?”

Blue smacked Noah’s shoulder with the back of her hand. “Noah!” She said, scandalized. “You can’t ask people that.”

Noah rolled his eyes at Ronan, as though Ronan was in on the joke. “She only says that because she’s never had one. But the rest of us have.”

“What?” Ronan said, “All of you?”

“Yep.” Noah popped the ‘p’ at the end of the word. “So, have you?”

“Yeah,” Ronan said, perhaps a little more brusquely than he’d intended. His stomach squirmed.

Noah pumped his fist. “Alright! See? I knew I liked you.” He leaned in as best he could in the close-quarters of the crowded bar and indicated the subtle lopsidedness that cast a smudgy shadow across the left side of his face. “My best friend,” He said, “Tried to bash my face in with a skateboard when I was seventeen.”

Ronan’s stomach plunged sickeningly. “Holy shit.” He flicked his eyes over to Gansey. “And you?”

“He almost had a heart attack when Blue first kissed him,” Noah said, chuckling and honest-to-God slapping his own knee.

“I did not,” Gansey protested.

“Panic attack, then,” Blue said, bottle tipped up to her lips and a mischievous twinkle in her eyes.

As Gansey was gasping at her in betrayal, Ronan prompted him. “Well?”

Gansey drew himself up with dignity. “I stepped on a wasp’s nest when I was ten. I’m allergic. Put me in the hospital for damn near a week and they honestly didn’t know if I’d wake up.”

Ronan whistled. “All that, and you were too chicken-shit to kiss your girl?”

“That,” Gansey said with dignity, “Was different.”

Ronan was unable to resist glancing over at the mysterious bassist from time to time as he chatted with the other members of Indigo Blue. He’d made no move to join them, but simply stood with his bass hanging from his neck, slowly working his way through a bottle of water. No one approached him. Anyone who got near him averted their eyes, muttering apologies as they squeezed past.

Gansey recaptured Ronan’s attention. “Morbid curiosities aside, I was wondering if I could pick your brain.”

“Shoot.”

“The crowd doesn’t seem to care if we live or die. Any suggestions?”

Ronan rolled the question around in his head. He liked Gansey’s forthright way of speaking, his self-awareness, his lack of ego. More than that, though, Ronan liked that he was asking Ronan’s advice, that he seemed to value what he had to say.

“The tough sell is you’re a new act,” Ronan said finally. “Place like this, even if they like your sound, they don’t know you. You gotta get them on your side.”

Gansey cocked his head. “Covers?”

“Yeah. Covers. Get their attention.”

Gansey nodded slowly, digesting Ronan’s words. “Y’know,” he said, “I think that just might work.” He turned to jog back to Adam, weaving his way through little tables, turning his head to smile vaguely but warmly as one or two patrons called out to him as he went.

Blue elbowed Ronan companionably in the side. “Where’ve you been the last two months?”

Ronan shrugged. Here, there, and everywhere.

He watched as Adam beckoned Gansey around to his other side, bending close with the bottle of water uncapped in his hands as his friend spoke. He started nodding and set down his water, carefully lifting his bass and pulling the strap over his head, bending at the waist to place it on its stand before moving swiftly towards the door.

Ronan tried not to watch the door, half-listening to Blue and Noah arguing playfully.

When Adam returned, it was with a beat-up black guitar case in his hands.

Adam pulled a stool up to the mic and laid the guitar reverently across his lap, looping its strap over his shoulder. It was a Yamaha, an old one, its yellowish varnish cracked and worn down in places to show the gray wood beneath, and Adam held it with a tenderness that sent a pang of jealousy through Ronan.

Adam bit the capo, holding it between his teeth as he tried out a couple fingerings. He adjusted the tuning pegs and clipped his capo over the fretboard and then brought the mic down a little. It all felt just so.

Adam cleared his throat and struck up a warm little wandering tune, leaning into the mic to hum. The bar patrons quieted down a little, and his voice came, clear over the music and hubbub for the first time all night, woven into the music like the roots of a tree, over and under.

“I’m walkin’ back to Georgia, and I hope she will take me back. Nothing in my pockets, all I own is upon my back. But she’s the girl who said she loved me, on that hot dusty Macon road, and if she’s still around I’m gonna settle down with that hard lovin’ Georgia girl.”

He had a nice voice. Jim Croce was a smart choice for him, a calculated choice. Ronan found himself losing the thread of whatever it was Blue was saying to him. She followed his eyes thoughtfully.

“Adam’s a damn good bassist,” She said. “But he’s a better guitarist.”

It wasn’t long before the conversation had all but ceased in the bar, all of them thoroughly under Adam’s spell. The end of the song floated on the air, the kind of quiet that had a weight to it. Then one or two people sniffled and a couple more giggled and everyone obligingly broke out in a smattering of clapping.

Adam grinned self-consciously, adjusting his guitar strap.

“The old songs are best, don’t you think?” He joked, and Ronan felt a jolt as Adam’s lips brushed the mic, as he dropped his head to fiddle with the capo while the crowd chuckled.

After that, he had them. He played two more solo covers, just him and his guitar, and then his band mates drifted back to him, picking up their instruments and communicating in half-sentences and eye-rolls and sniggers. They played a handful of covers all together, culminating in a rousing rendition of American Pie that got everyone in the bar singing, and then slid smoothly back into original material.

“That,” Ronan said, as Blue approached, “Was a hell of a set. What was that thing you said about a five-legged dog?”

Blue was glowing with pleasure, flushed and pretty, and Ronan saw the appeal, he did, it was just a shame it didn’t do anything for him.

“‘Wish I had a dog with five legs to go with my three-legged pup, so maybe if they stood together he’d finally measure up.’”

Gansey came up and slapped Ronan on the back. “Thanks for the tip,” he said, fair glowing himself. He flashed a smile at Ronan that made him dizzy. “About the covers.”

“No problem, man. Y’all could make a killing at weddings is all I’m saying.”

Noah bounced up to them, beaming, and draped an arm each around Blue’s and Gansey’s necks. “Where’re we going after this?” He asked brightly.

“Beds,” Blue said feelingly. “Somewhere with real beds. Please.”

“There’s a motel down the road a few miles,” Ronan offered.

“Aces,” Gansey said.

But Ronan had eyes only for Adam, who’d been stopped by a middle-aged man and was listening with a thoughtful expression, bass held loosely by its neck at his side as the man spoke.

Noah followed Ronan’s eyes and snorted. “There’s always one.”

Ronan tore his eyes away to focus on Noah. “Hm?”

Noah jerked his chin toward Adam. “He gets stopped after every show. Some old-timer giving him advice like he couldn’t give up the band life for a solo career and smoke all our asses today. Somehow they always find him. Think he looks the most receptive to critique, or something.”

Gansey, catching the tail-end of what Noah was saying, turned away from Renee, who’d been singing the praises of Indigo Blue. Gansey sighed. “I’ll go rescue him.”

“There he goes,” Noah said admiringly. “My knight in shining armour.”

“Get your own,” Blue said, feelingly, and Noah folded her up in his arms, crooning, “Don’t worry, baby, I still love you too.” Blue elbowed him hard in a diaphragm and Noah released her with a laugh and a wince. Blue’s elbows looked lethal, and Ronan made a mental note not to mess with her too much.

“Ronan,” Gansey was back. “There’s someone I want you to meet.”

Ronan’s breath caught. Adam had looked otherworldly under the dim barlights at a distance. Up-close, there was a flush of exertion creeping up into his cheeks and down his shirt-collar, jaw just kissed with a nearly-invisible dusting of tawny stubble, hair at the nape of his neck damp with sweat. He had the kind of eyes made to catch the light of a burning bank vault. He looked—well.

Beautiful, was the only word Ronan could come up with.

Adam did not offer Ronan a hand, but instead dipped his chin in a nod. “I hear we have you to thank for the set changes.”

Ronan muttered something along the lines of “Think nothing of it.” Where Gansey’s accent was all amber waves of grain, oak barrel-aged, Adam’s was pure country. Like Aurora’s had been, molasses slow and twice as dark.

Adam looked him over, and Ronan found himself tense for the first time that night, desperately hoping he measured up to whatever internal standard was being used to judge him. His hand felt slippery on his bottle.

“That your Beemer outside with the Virginia plates?”

Ronan’s heart was in his mouth. “Yeah.”

“Cool,” Adam said casually. “I’m riding with you to the motel.”

In the passenger seat, Adam hunched into his sheepskin jacket. It was a good jacket, Ronan thought. Light wash denim and too big for Adam, with the kind of holes forming along the seams that spoke to years of wear. Maybe inherited from a father or older brother.

“So,” Adam said. “Ronan.”

“Yeah.”

“Interesting name.” Adam said ‘interesting’ the way a lot of country folk said it. Inner-estin’.

“Yup.”

“And your accent.” Ronan knew Adam was testing him, seeing how far he’d let himself be pushed. “What is that? Gansey and your plates say you’re a hometown boy, but there’s something–”

Ronan’s face fizzed with embarrassment. He gripped the wheel a little tighter, eyes fixed on the road. Confronted with the reality of being alone in an enclosed space with the bassist he’d been eyeing all night, Ronan was suddenly shy, and gruff with his shyness. More than anything he wished he could just be normal, just have that instant, easy rapport with this boy the way he had with all of his friends. Now he saw that the rest of them had been a warm-up act compared to Adam. “My dad was from Belfast.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Adam studying him openly.

“So c’mon, man. You play guitar?”

Ronan shook his head, eyes fixed on the road. “No. I don’t play guitar.”

It took everything in Ronan not to jerk the wheel when Adam reached across him to touch his left hand. Ronan’s heart pounded and for a moment he was lost, his entire world shrinking down to that tiny point of contact. Finally, he managed to slide his right hand up to the top of the wheel and pry his left hand away. Adam took it and turned it over in his hands, running the pad of his thumb across Ronan’s fingertips. Was it possible to feel your heartbeat in your fingertips? “Calluses,” Adam said, triumphantly. “You’re a guitar player or I’m a fucking cactus.”

“You’re a fucking cactus then, because those calluses aren’t from guitar,” Ronan snapped, and Adam released Ronan’s hand as if burned.

He could hear the frown in Adam’s voice. “What, then?”

Ronan took a careful breath and made himself say, “I’ll show you.”

Adam was quiet for a minute, rummaging around under the front seat.

Desperate to fill the silence, Ronan aimed for casual. “Where are you headed after this tour? Back home?”

Adam had located Ronan’s box of tapes and was absorbed in meticulously removing each one and studying it before carefully replacing it.

“Kinda. Back to Henrietta for a couple of months to work, and then college.”

For whatever reason this was not the answer Ronan had expected. “Where?”

“Harvard.”

“Harvard. What’s the matter, Stanford not good enough for you?”

“No, Stanford didn’t offer me a full ride.” Out of the corner of his eye, Ronan could see Adam studying one of the tapes a little longer than the others. “I delayed my acceptance for a year to write music and tour around with the guys. In the fall Gansey’s going to CalTech and Blue’s going with him to apply to state schools out there so she can collect credits while she decides what she wants to do.”

For some reason it gave Ronan a pang, the thought of them all scattered to the winds.

“And Noah?”

Adam shrugged. “He says it’s normal for Russian kids to live with their parents until they get married, but I think there’s a good chance he’ll follow the others out west. He grew up in the Valley before–” Adam waved a hand vaguely, indicating his face.

Ronan shuddered.

He wondered what Adam’s near-death experience had been.

In the gap in their conversation, Adam neatly slid the tape into the tape deck, and the whir of it rewinding filled the car. With a click, Adam hit play.

Aurora Lynch’s sun-baked Virginia drawl filled the car, and for a moment Ronan couldn’t breathe. Silently, without meaning to, he recited along with the recording.

“Sweet boy,” the tape said. “Drive safe and I’ll see you soon. Be good.” The opening notes to the first song began to play, and Ronan reached out without looking and stopped the tape.

He was sure his heartbeat must be audible over the quiet hush, hush of the road under his tires, but Adam was mercifully silent. He didn’t apologize for prying, nor did he pester Ronan with questions.

They sat in silence until a signpost alerted him to the upcoming motel, its No Vacancy sign unlit. He pulled off the highway into the gravel lot, crunching up to the front of the building.

The two of them grabbed their bags from the backseat, and Ronan made a quick stop to retrieve something from the trunk.

Adam raised his eyebrows at the instrument case, but all he said was, “Oh.”

Ronan glanced around the lot, half-full of run-down cars with out-of-town plates.

“Where’re the others?”

Adam shrugged, pulling his guitar from the backseat and shutting the door. “Noah probably made them stop to buy beer.”

Adam checked in, paying with cash which he carefully counted out from a thin leather wallet. Theirs’ was the last room down at the end on the second floor and the two of them took the stairs, Adam holding his guitar case well-clear of the wall so as not to scrape it, and made their way down the narrow railinged walkway to the room.

It was a typical motel room. Wood-panelled walls, two beds smoothed over with stiff, shiny bedspreads, and a flimsy plywood door that lead to a phonebooth-sized bathroom. Ronan dropped his rucksack at the foot of the bed and dropped his instrument case beside it.

Meanwhile, Adam had already taken a seat on the edge of the bed with his guitar, fiddling restlessly with its strings.

Not knowing what else to do, Ronan joined him on the edge of the bed, watching him tinker.

They both jumped as the door was shoved open, only the deep pile of the carpet preventing it from bouncing off the wall.

“Are you two jamming?” Noah had a couple of six-packs hanging from his fingers. He stuck his head back out the door. “Guys! PB and jams!” He tripped into the room and deposited the beer on top of the mini fridge and turned to dash back out the open door, pausing only long enough to point an accusatory finger at Adam and say, “Don’t start without me!” And disappeared out into the night once more.

Ronan blinked rapidly. “Is he always so–” He waved a hand vaguely.

“Pretty much,” Adam said.

Gansey had entered the room. He leaned his guitar case up against the wall as Blue came forward to dump an armload of saran-wrapped sandwiches on the shiny motel bedspread. Adam leaned forward to turn one of them over.

“Chicken salad or tuna salad,” Blue told him. “Take your pick.”

“Chicken,” Adam said promptly, and Ronan followed suit. “Blue?”

“Tuna.”

Gansey rolled his eyes at Ronan, smiling. “Guess that means I’m having tuna too.” When Ronan looked uncomprehending, Gansey explained, “So that–”

“So that I’m not the only one with tuna breath,” Blue butted in. She held out a tuna sandwich to Gansey, who pulled the room’s chair up to the edge of the second bed, on which Blue had settled. “Pay your debt to society, Mister The Third.”

“Yes dear,” Gansey said, sitting and taking the offered sandwich.

By then Noah had returned from the van and dumped his bag against the wall. He worked cans free of the six-pack and shared them out. Ronan caught his one-handed, and Noah crawled into bed with him and Adam, settling up near the headboard with his own sandwich.

They all chatted easily as they ate, until Blue balled up her plastic wrap and threw it in the direction of the wastebasket, missing by about two feet. “Not quite as good as the ones back home.”

“Oh good,” Gansey said fervently. “I was gonna say the same thing, but didn’t want to be accused of being a snob.”

“You are a snob,” Blue said. “But in this case you’re also correct.”

Ronan exchanged looks with Adam and had to fight hard to keep from cracking up.

“You finished?” Blue asked Gansey pointedly. He wrapped up the last two uneaten bites of sandwich and dutifully stowed them in the mini fridge, where Ronan was sure they would be forgotten when everyone checked out in the morning.

Gansey got up to wash his hands. When he returned he laid his guitar case out on the floor and popped the clips, seating himself once more and laying his instrument across his knee.

He picked aimlessly at the strings, eyes on Blue. “Well, Jane?”

Blue’s eyes were bright. “Earlier tonight our guest mentioned Linda Ronstadt, so let’s have some Linda goddamn Ronstadt.” Gansey struck up a little tune, and Adam, his own sandwich devoured and his guitar retrieved, came in softly from behind. Noah kept time against the bedframe with his sticks.

Blue shot Gansey a Look, to which he responded with an innocent expression.

She bent her head, hands planted on her knees.

Ronan had been dead-on. She sounded better than Linda, dark and clear as a little spring of mountaintop ice-melt.

“I feel so bad, I’ve got a worried mind.” Adam gave a tricky little fingering on the guitar, fingers sliding down the frets. Ronan shivered at the weeping steel-string sound. He always loved that. “I’m so lonesome, all the time, since I left my baby behind, on Blue Bayou.”

Blue shook her head back, little wisps of hair curling free of their clips. “Savin’ nickels, savin’ dimes. Work until the sun don’t shine. Lookin’ forward to happier times, on Blue Bayou.”

Gansey struck a chord and Blue went in for the kill. Ronan’s eyebrows went up at the pure volume and power coming out of that little beast. “I’m coming back some day, come what may to Blue Bayou. Where the folks are fine and the world is mine, on Blue Bayou.”

Ronan clapped when they all finished. It seemed only fair. “God damn.”

Gansey’s fingers hadn’t stilled on the strings. He picked out a little scale, a thoughtful expression on his face. For the first time, Ronan caught a glimpse of not merely Gansey the guitarist, but Gansey the musician. It was clear he didn’t have the talent that Adam had, but he had technical chops that spoke to hours and hours of hard practice. It wasn’t his fault that when he stood next to Adam it was clear which of the two of them was better. He seemed content to love music the way he loved music, as a means of spending time with his friends.

He fingered softly, humming. “‘The problem is all inside your head she said to me,’” Gansey murmured, and that made sense, suited Gansey’s range or his fingering or this relaxed, dreamy part of him. “‘The answer is easy if you take it logically. I’d like to help you in your struggle to be free. There must be fifty ways to leave your lover.”

Noah leaned over to elbow Blue and she stuck her tongue out at him, hardly sparing a glance from Gansey.

And after that Blue touched Gansey’s arm and the two of them shared one of those telepathic Looks, and Gansey adjusted his capo and the two of them launched seamlessly into a duet of Angel From Montgomery that would have made Bonnie Raitt and John Prine weep. Their voices sounded good woven together, and much like Bonnie Raitt and John Prine, one hardly cared that John Prine was the weaker vocalist for how obviously in love they were.

Then of course all Blue had to do was lean over and put a single finger on Adam’s arm and look enchantingly up at him and request Jubilee and Ronan was so caught up in it all, in how obsessed they all were with each other, that it wasn’t until then that it occurred to him that they were showing off for him, each bringing out the best in the others specifically to let them shine for him.

He was so caught off-guard by this realization that he went quiet as Adam plucked a heartachey little melody. Adam’s voice matched it perfectly, sweet and sad and lonesome. Without realizing it, Ronan felt a lump forming in his throat.

“I wish I had a needle and thread, fine as I could sew. I’d sew my true love to my side and down the road we’d go. Swing and turn, jubilee, live and learn, jubilee.”

When the song ended, they all sat in silence for a second, and in that silence, Adam looked up and caught Ronan’s expression. For a moment he tilted his head, and Ronan shook his head at him.

If Blue was the heart of their little ragtag group, Adam was clearly the soul. Ronan wasn’t sure where this left Noah and Gansey, but God almighty if only he might be allowed to find out.

And to find out what you are, an unbidden voice whispered in his ear, but he wasn’t ready to think about that. After all, he’d only just met all of them, never mind that he felt like he’d known them all his life.

Then Blue gave an almighty sniff and flounced up from the bed to hug Adam, who hastily moved his guitar to wrap and arm around her in return. She planted a sloppy kiss on his cheek, and Noah mirrored her from the other side, kissing Adam’s other cheek just sloppily. Caught between the two of them, Adam looked fair bursting with happiness and contentment, even as he squirmed and protested.

“Parrish,” Gansey was saying sternly, “What have I said to you about making my girlfriend cry?”

“Aw, I’m hardly even crying a little, Gansey-man, but thanks for lookin’ out for me,” Noah teased, and had to duck as Gansey threw a pick at him.

“Play another,” Blue demanded. “Something upbeat.”

But Adam was blowing on his fingertips and laughingly begging off when suddenly his eyes lighted on Ronan. “Hang on,” he said over the clamouring. “Hang on, hang on, hang on. Why doesn’t Lynch play?”

Ronan groaned and flopped back, just missing landing in Noah’s lap. “Do I have to?”

Gansey was looking back and forth between the two of them. “What’s he talking about, man? You holding out on us?”

Ronan grimaced. “Not really.”

“Unfair,” Adam chided. “I was promised a private performance, and I aim to collect with these fine people as my witness.”

“Okay,” Ronan said, a little too loudly, cutting off any more potential pestering. “But I haven’t practiced in a long-ass time, so no one judge me.”

“You can’t possibly be worse than Noah,” Gansey said soothingly, and had to dodge a thrown drumstick that clattered against the wall.

“Fuck you,” Noah said cheerfully, twirling his remaining drumstick.

Ronan found himself unaccountably nervous as he sat up and slid his instrument case out from under the bed with one foot, bending down to retrieve it. He could feel four alert pairs of eyes on him as he unclasped the case and opened it, pulling from its crushed velvet depths the smooth honeyed curves of his fiddle.

He messed with the pegs a little, plucking strings, tuning it, stalling, aware that his companions had fallen silent again. He set it carefully atop the open case and fished the little lump of rosin from its depth and gave his bow a loving once-over, just to give his hands time to stop shaking.

“Switch places with me.” Gansey transferred himself to the bed, and Ronan took a seat in the chair.

The fiddle butted up against his chin like a friendly cat, and he pulled the bow across its strings lightly, making it purr. He could feel something in him settling, his heartbeat coming, if not harder, then more purposefully.

He glanced up and around. “What do you want me to play?”

Adam cleared his throat. He had a curious expression on his face. A little half-smile hovering around his mouth. It might have been mocking, except for the fire reflected in his eyes. “Dealer’s choice.”

Thoughtfully, Ronan drew his bow across the strings in a screech that caused grimaces to break out all around him. It was a trick he’d perfected, having two brothers. Noah clapped his hands over his ears and opened his mouth to make some smart remark.

But Ronan had reached a decision. He settled his fiddle more firmly under his chin and a familiar tune unspooled under his fingers.

Out of the corner of his eye, Blue’s head went to one side. He knew she recognized the tune by her soft, “Oh!” And he could see her struggling to place it. When she did, she broke out in a grin and Ronan nodded encouragingly at her.

Her voice was really made for strings under it. She sang, quiet at first, carefully fitting the words into the rhythm of the strings like placing her feet between the warp of unfamiliar old floorboards.

“She can kill with her smile, she can wound with her eyes. She can ruin your faith with her casual lies. And she only reveals what she wants you to see.”

Here Ronan piped up, earning him raised eyebrows all around. They sang in two-part harmony, “She hides like a child but she’s always a woman to me.”

The rest of them joined in on the chorus, and it felt so good, for a moment Ronan was eaten alive by it, caught up in it.

When the song ended, Gansey startled Ronan by leaning forward and clasping his shoulder.

“You gotta record with us, man.”

Ronan laughed, buzzy with elation. “Sure.”

“I’m serious. Goddamn.” Gansey slanted a look at Blue. “Does Indigo Blue need a fiddle? Because I’m thinking we need a fiddle.”

Adam strummed lightly at his guitar. “Long-standing folk band tradition, man. Gotta have a fiddle.”

Ronan, suddenly shy, ducked his head. He could feel himself flushing under the attention. “It’s been a while,” he mumbled. “I’m out of practice.”

“Bull shit,” Noah said emphatically.

Ronan lowered his fiddle into its case and busied himself with a beer to hide his pleased expression. Truthfully it’d been at least a year since he’d so much as picked up his fiddle. More since he’d practiced regularly. The truth was that the Irish reels he’d grown up on, all tricky little runs, were far and away more complex than Billy Joel. And with regard to Indigo Blue, folk was folk. His Irish daddy had married a country girl, and it’d always struck Ronan how much their music had in common, right down to the terrifically sad themes.

But Indigo Blue was due to hit the road again in the morning. A handful of shows and then Harvard. CalTech.

Adam had started playing Stuck in the Middle With You, and Ronan let himself be pulled out of his reverie, even joined in singing a little.

After that, Gansey, perhaps taking advantage of his seat directly across from Adam at the edge of the bed, began to pick out a melody. Adam quickly picked it up, and Ronan could see instantly that this was how the two of them composed together, facing each other just like this, and he studied them both in profile, one dark-haired and smooth, one tawny and faded. Viewed like that, they could have been brothers.

Adam took the lead, and something in his voice absolutely broke Ronan’s heart, shook him up like a bead in a rattle. “It’s a lesson too late for the learning, made of sand, made of sand. In the wink of an eye my soul is turning, in your hand, in your hand.”

Gansey’s voice lifted to join his, and their voices blended in that kind of very close harmony that always made Ronan think of the Everly Brothers. “Are you going away with no word of farewell? Will there be not a trace left behind? Well I could’ve loved you better, I didn’t mean to be unkind, you know that was the last thing on my mind.”

Afterwards, Noah bounded up onto his knees and clasped Adam’s shoulders, pulling him half-around to face him. “Do me, do me,” He chanted. “Play the thing!”

Adam, amused, held his guitar out of the way with one hand, reaching up to cup Noah’s smudgy cheek with his other hand. “Use your words, Noah,” He said fondly. “I’m not psychic.”

“Liar,” Blue, Noah, and Gansey all retorted in prompt unison.

Adam threw back his head and laughed, and Ronan’s stomach swooped at the sight. “Alright,” Adam said. “Alright. See? I’m doing the Professor X thing.” He raised a hand to his temple and squinted at Noah, drumming his free hand against the body of his guitar. “I’m seeing more Billy Joel,” He said at length.

“That’s not mind-reading,” Blue scoffed, slinging her socked feet up to rest in Gansey’s lap. “That’s just Noah.”

But Adam was pursing his lips, still squinting, concentrating hard as Noah batted his eyelashes at him. Finally he snapped his fingers and pointed triumphantly. “Only the Good Die Young.”

Noah whooped and fell onto his back, punching the air. “Yes, Parrish! Yes!”

With a triumphant expression Adam bent over his guitar and plucked away. Noah levered himself up into a sitting position and tipped his head back, shaking his hair out of his eyes.

Noah started singing and Gansey joined in, then Blue, with a light of mischief in her eye. Adam and Ronan came in last, and Ronan was drowning in it, the feeling that only seemed to come from singing with other people.

“Give us another one, Ronan.”

Ronan picked up his fiddle and scribbled thoughtfully on the strings. There was one he hadn’t heard since his mother…. He set bow to strings and began before he could talk himself out of it.

He didn’t sing, but it didn’t matter. It was a fair chance they all knew the words anyway.

The tune was simple, see-sawing, drawn out notes that wept into little frills. He took his time with it, drawing it out a little more to really highlight the tiny embroideries. As he played, a lump rose in his throat. It’d been a long, long, time, but he still remembered the words, clear as a bell in his mother’s soft Virginia burr. In his heart the song would always and forever be overlaid over the sight of her singing in the kitchen like a double-exposure, her cornflower eyes and wheat-gold hair like a faded photograph.

He’d always thought the song desperately sad.

When the last note faded out, he slowly lowered the fiddle. He did not look up at any of them. He couldn’t speak, emotion sitting in a painful knot in his throat.

“Oh, Ronan,” Blue breathed, and suddenly Ronan had to get out of there, now. Turning to lay his fiddle carefully in the depths of its case, he stood, still not looking at any of them.

He made his way to the door and opened it, shutting it quietly behind him.

It’d stopped drizzling, and the air hung chilly and damp, a welcome coolness against his hot face. He fumbled a cigarette and a lighter from his jacket pocket and lit it on autopilot, easing his hips back to lean his forearms on the railing, surveying the car lot, the motel’s lights shining dully off of the wet gravel, and listening for ghost cars passing on the distant highway. He counted the seconds between them, like lightning strikes and thunderclaps. One one thousand. Two one thousand.

In the darkness, he let a tear crawl down his cheek and didn’t wipe it away.

The hot smoke in his lungs was a welcome counterpoint to the chill, and he drew his leather jacket around him.

A brief oblong of illumination from behind him threw his shadow long and tarry, stretched out like a fairy-tale giant across the parking lot, and then disappeared as quickly as it’d come as Adam shut the door behind him.

Adam came to lean against the rail beside Ronan. He held out his hand, and Ronan offered him his cig. They stood together, smoking in silence.

“I’m deaf in my left ear,” Adam said at last. “After years of beating the tar outta me, my dad finally damn-near killed me and I had enough.” Ronan glanced over to see Adam raise a hand to rest his fingers lightly against his cheekbone, as though he didn’t quite have the nerve to touch his ear.

Ronan didn’t say anything. He balled his hands into fists on the railing. The cigarette’s tip glowed red as Adam took a draw from it. His exhale was gray silk against the dull shine of night. Somewhere, rainwater dripped from a drainpipe and made a little running patter against the dirt. There was the hum of a distant air conditioner.

“I’ve heard the name Lynch before,” Adam said at length. “I used to read the obituaries. Tell myself I might’ve had it worse. If I remember, there was a Lynch from Singer’s Falls killed a few years back. Left a wife and three boys. Wife’s name was in the paper not three months later.”

Ronan still did not speak. He didn’t think he could have, even if he’d had the words.

Finally, Ronan shrugged off one sleeve of his jacket, and slid down the tangle of leather bands he wore at his wrist, presenting the pale strip of skin to the other boy. Adam did not say anything, but sucked in a breath. The scars weren’t pretty, raised in lumps and gouges, healed a kind of silvery-lavender.

“There’s your near-death experience,” he said. It wasn’t fair, he knew. Noah had been the one to bring it up, not Adam.

He hoped the boy beside him could see the gesture for what it was.

An invitation. Ronan heaving with all of his might to lever open the mausoleum of his heart and shaking with the effort.

Adam reached out, bypassing Ronan’s wrist, and touched the tiny golden cross that’d fallen loose from the collar of Ronan’s shirt. For a moment he turned it over in his fingers, and then he tucked it away, his calloused fingertips sending little seizures of sensation racing across Ronan’s skin.

Ronan felt almost shivery with it, like a fever. He shook the bands back down and shrugged his jacket back on. He lit another cigarette.

“I was the one that found him.” If Adam hadn’t had his hearing ear turned to him, he might not have caught the admission, but Ronan knew he had, because his companion stiffened all over. Ronan knuckled at his eye, feeling the pressure of unshed tears building behind it. “I dropped outta school. Been on the road since I turned eighteen. Never stay in one place more than a few months at a time. Living in shitholes like this place or sleeping in my car. Sometimes I find work or a bed to spend the night in but I can’t settle anywhere.”

“That’s a shame,” Adam said quietly. “‘Cause I was gonna ask if you had a number where I could reach you once I’m settled at Harvard.”

Unbidden, a smile creased Ronan’s face, and it must have cracked something open inside of him because two tears cut twin tracks down his face, hot in contrast with the damp chill of the night.

“Well, hell,” he mumbled. “How many Parrishes you think there are at Harvard?”

“So you’ll call me then.” Adam was smiling a little himself.

“Sure, I’ll call you.”

“Move-in’s September first.”

“I’ll call you September second.”

“September first, I said.”

And Ronan had to laugh. “Fine, Jesus.”

“We’re all planning to meet up for Winter break. Bunk down together, maybe do some writing. The plan is to work on material all year and come together again next summer to work on an album.”

“Cool.”

Adam took the cig from Ronan’s fingers and took a draw from it, eyes daring Ronan to comment. “That means you’d better have some new material for us come December. And more come next May.”

Ronan protested. “But I don’t write–”

“Bull shit you don’t. I found your notebook while I was looking for your tapes. Didn’t more’n peek at it, but you fucking write. And anyway, if you’re feeling stuck you can always come up and distract me from my fucking Ivy League education to jam.”

“PB and jam,” Ronan said automatically.

“Exactly.” Adam took another drag from his cig and stubbed it out on the railing. “Now we’d better get back in there or Gansey’ll come after us and I promise you, you do not want that.”

“White-winged dove?” Gansey was saying pensively as Ronan stepped through the door. “Are you sure? I thought it was one-winged dove.”

“I know you do, I can hear you singing one-winged dove every time it comes on the radio.”

Gansey broke off to smile sunnily up at Adam and Ronan. “Hallo, you two. I was just wondering where you went.”

“Good news,” Adam said casually. “Ronan’s gonna drive with us to our next gig.”

Ronan shot Adam a look, but Adam’s cool, obstinate stare very plainly said, You got anything better to do?

"'Bout time we got groupies," Noah piped up, while Blue said, “I hope you know between now and our next gig I’m gonna try and talk you into playing with us.”

“Not a chance,” Ronan said promptly, “But thanks for the head’s up.”

“Don’t underestimate her,” Adam’s murmured, and Ronan felt the caress of Adam’s hair against the shell of his ear and shivered.

Gansey, meanwhile, was trying to work out the fingering to some song or other. Adam moved around Ronan to sit at the edge of the bed across from Gansey once more, scooting Blue down as he did so. He took his friend’s guitar and plucked out a couple of notes, moved his capo for him, and handed it back.

Gansey nodded in thanks and picked up the tune, his fingers falling confidently into the rhythm Adam had demonstrated. Blue leaned her head against Adam’s, sweet and sleepy. Her voice was husky and unpolished, no longer showing off, all clear simple notes and heartachingly raw.

“I took my love, I took it down. I climbed a mountain and I turned around. And I saw my reflection in the snow covered hills 'til the landslide brought me down.”

Adam joined her, and with the two of them sitting like that, their hair mingling, Ronan could see exactly why the two of them had dated, how they’d never really stopped loving each other, even after their romantic involvement had ended.

“Well, I've been 'fraid of changing 'cause I built my life around you. But time makes you bolder, children get older, and I'm getting older, too.”

Noah was the first to fall asleep, lying sprawled across a corner of the bed with one leg dangling over the edge, a half-full beer resting precariously on his chest. Blue reached over and rescued it, sliding it from his slack grip before it could spill, and rummaged around in one of the bags, retrieving a shirt that must have belonged to one of the boys and stripping unselfconsciously. She wasn’t wearing a bra, and Ronan averted his eyes, although he had a feeling she wouldn’t have cared if he’d seen.

In her underwear and pilfered shirt, Blue crawled into bed beside Noah, snuggling up to him until her nose was mashed up against his ribs, one arm flung across his stomach. As Ronan watched, a faint smile appeared on Noah’s face, and slowly, slowly, he reached out and tucked an arm around Blue’s shoulders.

Gansey, busy stripping down to his boxers, caught the movement and snorted. “I thought you were asleep.”

“Dunno what you’re talking about,” Noah mumbled, eyes closed, still with that goofy smile. “I am asleep.”

“Boys,” Blue said warningly. “Either someone get behind me and cuddle me right now or take it outside.”

That left Adam and Ronan to share the other bed. Ronan briefly considered offering to sleep on the floor or out in his car, but honestly, he didn’t want to.

The two of them stripped down to undershirts and boxers without looking at each other and Adam hit the lights before climbing into bed.

Ronan lay there in the dimness.

As a kid he’d never used to have trouble falling asleep, but for the last two years there were things waiting for him in the dark, lurking behind closed eyes.

Ronan turned onto his side, his eyes very dry as he opened them wide.

There was a slither of sheets, and Ronan froze at the gentle touch at his hip. He felt the tip of Adam’s nose brush across the nape of his neck.

“Go to sleep.”

And Ronan felt a great peace settle over him as for once, for once, he started looking forward to waking up in the same crappy motel bed he’d fallen asleep in.