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ssa-babygirl · 4 years

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Out of My League [Part 1]

Pairing: High school!Spencer Reid x Popular!Reader

Word count: 3.7k (god i don’t shut up do i)

Summary: Spencer begins tutoring you in chemistry, and the two of you bond (I would say no pun intended but fuck it that was GOOD so I’ll say pun intended)

Warning(s): Mentions of bullying, mental illness, some swearing, I made one joke about herpes??? sorry if thats a sore spot with anyone, light angst and pining, Reader POV

Author’s Note: Here it is, folks!! The first official part! I’ so grateful for all the feedback I got on the prologue, I’m glad y’all are liking it, I hope you like this part just as much!! Next part I’m gonna have some baby spencer, and by that I mean whole ass adult spencer that just looks baby

[Previous Part] [Series Masterlist]

You absolutely despised chemistry. It’s boring. It’s simultaneously stupid and ridiculously complicated. You weren’t dumb, you were a decent student in all your other classes, but science was never your strong suit. You preferred literature over litmus paper any day. Unfortunately, your failing grade was bringing down your entire GPA, just below the requirement for you to stay on the cheerleading squad. Your coach recommended you get a tutor, or else you were off the team. So you went to the library to see the peer tutoring program, and all of them were booked. The next best thing would be the kid genius in your class. He was probably a better first choice, honestly, but you figured he’d be booked with other students too.

He wasn’t like other kids in your class, not just because he actually cared and was a good student, he was also twelve years old. The kid was a prodigy. He was bullied a lot because of this because no one really understood him. That’s probably why he looked so terrified when you approached him after class one day.

“Hey, Spencer!”

His eyes grew wide as he stared back at you, saying nothing.

“I was just wondering if you were available for tutoring?”

“Oh, uh, um, y-yeah, in chemistry?”

“Yeah, what are your rates like? Like say we do an hour every other day, how much would that be?”

“Oh! N-no charge.”

“Really?”

“The first couple of sessions can be a trial run, I don’t want your money if you’re not benefiting from it.”

That made you smile, this kid was so nice and you just wished that people actually cared about that instead of the dumb shit they bullied him for. Sure, he was skinny and short and dorky and you know, a literal twelve-year-old boy, but if someone would take time to know him, they’d see he’s a good kid.

“That’s sweet of you, but I don’t wanna waste your time if you have other students.”

“I don’t, so that shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Great! Are you free after school today?”

He nodded and avoided all eye contact before scurrying out of the room to his next class.

~~~

You met up later in the library. You greeted each other politely with simple hi’s and hey’s and nothing more. Then it was time to pour over your books for an hour and try to force the puzzle pieces into place and hope something finally clicked. Balancing molecular equations physically hurt. Just when you thought you got it all right, Spencer reminded you that you still had to balance the oxygen, which was always bonded with something else, which threw off the whole equation. Every time you made a mistake you just let out a groan and set your head on the table.

“It’s a lot of math, a lot of people have a hard time with it, don’t feel bad.”

“I’m so fucking stupid.”

“You’re not! It’s an easy mistake.”

“You don’t make mistakes like that.”

“That’s because I’ve been taking advanced math classes for the past two years, I’m good at this stuff.”

“You’re good at everything, you're a literal genius.”

“There are people who aren’t geniuses who are good at this sort of thing, just look at Johnny Abrams in our class. He answers every question Mrs. Gustin asks and I once saw him put his backpack on his car’s roof and start driving ‘cuz he forgot it was there. He’s just been practicing. That’s why we’re here, right?”

He always reassured you. Always told you that you weren’t stupid. You weren’t dumb. He always smiled when you got questions right and told you you were doing a good job. When your hour was up, you said goodbye and went home.

Spencer’s mini lectures aside, most of your sessions were sparse in the conversation department. The first time he went off on a side about some chemistry facts, you couldn’t keep up. You just sat there, jaw hanging while he went into detail about saponification, which wasn’t even in this lesson.

“Sorry, I’m rambling.”

“Did we learn that in class? Cuz if we did, I’m screwed.”

“No, not yet at least.”

“How do you just… know that?”

Spencer avoided your eyes once again, something he did more than spouting random facts, “I read a lot.”

That’s how it happened the first time. All it took was you asking one question about different types of reactions for him to launch into another spiel. You figured you’d have to know it at some point, so you started writing down whatever you could catch from his fast-paced speech, taking notes in bullet points.

“And that-- Oh. Y-You don’t need to do that, that’s not even on the curriculum.”

“Well, I gotta keep up with you somehow, right?” You glanced up from your page and flashed an almost challenging smirk as you saw him stifle a smile as he avoided all eye contact with you, as per usual. He then cleared his throat and got back to the actually assigned chapter.

The more he went off on tangents, the more he realized you weren’t stopping him. He was actually able to make chemistry sound interesting to you, which is strange, but it was easier to understand through how he explained it all. Something told you that he wasn’t used to having someone listen to what he said, because he just lit up when he talked about this stuff. He was clearly passionate about it, so why would you make him feel bad about it? He always apologized, but you always reassured him it was no big deal.

You didn’t know it at the time, but the kid was falling hard. This pretty, older girl was paying attention to him and didn’t think he was annoying? The bar may have been on the floor for young Spencer, but you were perfect to him. Eventually, he was able to look you in the eyes when you spoke to one another, he even smiled at you when you joked with him. That was another thing: you joked with one another now. You both warmed up to one another as your sessions continued. You said hi to each other in the hallways, you ruffled his hair as a greeting, he accepted your high-five requests every time you got something right.

You still didn’t talk outside of class much, which is why he was caught so far off guard by you calling his name from across the cafeteria as you approached his table.

“Hey, dude! Is it cool if we squeeze in an extra session today? I got a test tomorrow.”

“Y-Yeah, no problem, but, uh, it’s Thursday. Don’t you have practice after school?”

You did. And you had to be there because you had a competition this weekend.

“Yeah, I was wondering if we could meet after?”

“When does it end?”

“Five.”

“Library closes at four.”

“I know, but would it be too much of a hassle if I just… Pick you up tonight and we head back to my house to study?”

You could physically see his brain shut down in his eyes. After he realized he needed to respond, he picked his jaw up off the floor and gulped hard.

“Or you can stay after and hang out at practice and I can just drive you home?”

“Y-Yeah, um, yeah, tha-that works, I can, uh, yeah, we can do that.”

Spencer brought his books and homework and tried his hardest to not make it obvious he was staring at you while you danced. You looked like you were having so much fun and he loved seeing you happy and smiling with your friends like that, it was hard for him to look away and focus long enough to read a sentence, which is saying something, considering it does not take him long to read a sentence.

After practice wrapped up, you told him to go wait by your car while you changed out of your uniform. The girls in the locker room were talking just as loudly as always, only this time, it was about something you actually cared about hearing.

“I mean, really, what was that little creep doing watching us today?” You heard one girl sneer.

“So fucking gross, I don’t wanna know where his prepubescent head was.” Another girl laughed.

You had to step in. You had to say something.

“I’m his ride home. He’s my chemistry tutor and I have a test tomorrow, so back off the kid, he didn’t do shit to you anyway.”

The squad learned to watch their mouths around you after that.

~~~

The neon glow of the golden arches shone through your car’s windows as you pulled into the McDonald’s drive-thru line.

“This isn’t your house,” noted Spencer, sounding confused.

You grinned, “Oh, shit… no way! Wow! I’m so glad my tutor is a genius! I would have never guessed this was not my family home!”

He let himself laugh for a moment, “Okay, okay, fine. Why are we here?”

“Uh… to get food? Duh.”

“But what about your food at home?”

“My mom’s visiting my dad, he works in D.C., and I haven’t gotten a chance to go grocery shopping this week, so I can’t cook for you. What do you want?”

“You don’t have to get me anything.”

“No, I insist, it’s almost dinner time. Lemme get you something. As a thank you for squeezing in an extra cramming sesh?”

“It’s fine! Really.”

“Hey, Reid, come on,” you attempt to stifle a stupid giggle as you gesture to the rather large window displaying the playroom inside, “you are a guest in my home!”

Spencer shakes his head and chuckles, but doesn’t dare let you think he found you funny, “I’ll have chicken nuggets.”

“Happy meal?”

He tried to look offended at your clarification, but he quickly dropped the facade, “Yes. Extra fries, please.”

“Of course, buddy.” You pulled up further to the ordering station, catching a glimpse at the menu and the ads they had displayed on it, “Oh no way! They have Strawberry Shortcake toys! I used to collect those when I was a kid!”

Spencer saw the look on your face and couldn’t help but smile at your childlike excitement, “Do you want my happy meal toy?”

You bit your lip and hesitated before throwing all shame to the wind and saying yes. Because it was Spencer. He got excited over chemistry, he had no right to judge you on your old Strawberry Shortcake doll collection.

After you got your food, you drove back to your house, and you ate together at your kitchen island while Spencer quizzed you on the last chapter. He had asked you eighteen questions so far, and you had answered all of them correctly.

“Okay, this last one is for the Strawberry Shortcake--”

“Her name is Orange Blossom.”

“Whatever, this last one is for the Orange Blossom toy: Which type of reaction is represented by this equation?” He showed you his notebook where he had written a molecular equation.

“Substitution.”

“Correct! Now balance it.”

Your shoulders slouched as the pride drained from your body.

“Please don’t make me.”

“This is going to be on the test, Y/N, you have to know it.”

“What’s one wrong question, really?”

“You and I both know she’s not going to put just one balancing question on the test.”

“Fine.” You grumbled, grabbing a pencil and sliding his notebook closer to you. You worked it out after a few minutes, but everything looked right, and judging by Spencer’s proud grin, everything was.

He reached for the figurine, still in the plastic bag, and handed it to you, “You’re gonna do great tomorrow, Y/N.”

You took Orange Blossom from his hands and danced around the kitchen with it, overwhelmed with the sudden feeling of confidence you gained from nailing this practice session. You heard Spencer’s small laugh from behind you, causing you to turn around and face the boy as he lovingly mocked you.

Studying at your place became a regular thing after that, even when your mom was home. She loved him. She always invited him for dinner if she was home. He rarely took her up on the offer, but it was nice having him around the house with you. Study sessions turned into just plain hanging out. You spent more time bonding over Doctor Who than chemistry some nights, and he wouldn’t have it any other way.

~~~

When Alexa Lisben invited him to meet her at the football field you were skeptical. You had good reason to be. She was never very nice to you or Spencer. You were able to be civil with her for the sake of the cheerleading squad, but something about her just didn’t sit right with you. You tried to warn him, but he wouldn’t listen. He seemed offended at the notion that Alexa would do something horrible to him. How dare you imply that the only reason someone would be interested in him would be to pull a fucked up prank?

“I’m not like you, Y/N, I don’t have a line of people waiting around for a date, no one’s ever had a crush on me before, and-and now that someone other than you is being nice to me, you’re telling me that they have some sort of ulterior motive?”

“Spencer. I know these girls, I’ve seen the guys they go for--”

“And I’m not like them?”

“No! You’re a sweet kid, you’re nothing like those guys and they’re gonna take advantage of that.”

“I really wish everyone would stop saying I’m just a kid!”

“You’re not! That came out wrong--”

“Listen, Y/N, I’m going whether you want me to or not, so if you really want to keep babying me, by all means, stay after and wait with me.”

“I don’t wanna baby you!”

“So stop it!”

You didn’t want to fight with him anymore, you weren’t his mother. “Ok, Spencer, fine. I’m sorry. You should go. How about you meet me in the library after and you can tell me all about it over McDonald’s? My treat.”

He warmed up and agreed.

So you waited in the library until four, and then you started to get worried. You went to grab something from your gym locker before you left to look for him and heard some girls from the squad gossiping about “the little dork.” Your blood started to boil as you heard the way they talked about Spencer. Your jaw only clenched harder as you recognized one of the girls’ voices as Alexa Lisben’s.

You poked your head around the lockers that divided the aisles and tried to manage a calm voice, “Hey Alexa? Spencer actually said he was meeting up with you today, do you know where he is?”

She just laughed and said, “I can’t believe you actually care about that loser.”

“He’s my friend.” All attempts to remain level-headed were tossed aside, “Where the fuck is he, what did you do to him?”

You could feel yourself starting to cry. It’s your fault, you weren’t there, you tried to warn him, but now you don’t know where he is or what he’s thinking or--

“Check the field.”

You sprinted out to the football field and saw him stripped down to his briefs, blindfolded, and tied to a goal post. You could kill Alexa. You actually considered turning right around and unleashing hell on that locker room, but your friend needed help. He was crying so hard he didn’t hear you coming until you called his name. You immediately went to untie him and grab his clothes from the fence beside him.

“You were right.” He sniffled, “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t apologize, I’m not mad, I’m sorry, I should have been there, I could have helped you--”

“No, you couldn’t. There were too many people.”

“How many were there? Who did this?”

“Y/N, please--”

“No, Spencer, tell me what happened.”

“I don’t wanna talk about it!”

You know when to stop, so you just shut your mouth while he got dressed, “Get in the car, I’m taking you home.”

You didn’t say a word to him as he buckled his seatbelt and you could tell he appreciated it. You just drove to McDonald’s and got him his usual. You parked in the parking lot and ate your food in almost silence, save for the radio in the background.

“You don’t have to tell me what exactly happened, you could pretend none of this ever happened, I won’t mind, it’s okay, but I just need you to know, Spencer, say the word and she’s dead. I have so much dirt on her, you have no idea, I can destroy her.”

“Don’t.”

“Okay, I won’t. At least give me names. I will personally make sure none of those boys ever get a date again.”

“Y/N, please.”

“I’m serious, I’ll tell everyone they have herpes.”

“I know you are and that’s what scares me, please don’t, I don’t wanna make things worse.”

You decide to drop it because if he doesn’t wanna talk about it, he needs a distraction.

After you finish your food, you ask him “Your house or mine?”

“Yours. Please.”

You drove back to your house and got yourselves set up on the couch in front of the TV, turning on an episode of Doctor Who that you had recorded. You made him popcorn as he curled up on your couch, clutching a pillow. You were mostly quiet for the rest of the night, but when you did talk, it was to ask him a question about the show or if any of the science was accurate. It was the best you could do to keep him mind off things. Eventually, he fell asleep and you felt too bad to wake him. He got up by himself around midnight, jolting awake as if from a nightmare, and considering how the last few hours had been for him, it probably was one.

“Hey, bud, I’m here, it’s me.” You didn’t touch him, knowing he got overstimulated sometimes when he got really stressed, but he felt around for you on the couch next to him, needing to know you were really there this time. You patted his hand when it reached across the cushion for you.

“What time is it?”

“Way too late for you to be here, let’s get you home.”

He nodded, slowly rising to his feet and looking for his backpack, which you reminded him he had left in the car. Your hand hovered above his head for a moment before he lazily drifted into you as he walked. You took this as an okay to touch him, so you ruffled his hair before loosely slinging an arm around his shoulders as you guided him to your car.

The drive back to Spencer’s wasn’t too long, thankfully, because you were sure his parents would be furious with him and the kid’s been through enough today. You wanted to take all the heat without making them think you kidnapped him. The lights were still on when you pulled into the driveway. They were probably worried sick about him.

When you knocked on the door, a frantic woman with short blonde hair opened it. When she saw Spencer, she grabbed him by the wrist and pulled him into the house, never breaking eye contact with you.

“Who are you? What are you doing with my son?”

“He didn’t do anything wrong, Mrs. Reid. I’m Y/N, he’s been tutoring me.”

“How do you know me? Spencer, what did you tell her?” She looked at him and back at you, “Get off my property and stay away from us!”

“Mom, she’s a fr--”

“Go up to your room, don’t come out.” She didn’t sound like an angry parent reprimanding her son, she sounded almost... scared.

A million alarms were going off in your head, and you needed to try to get through to her, “Ma’am, I’m sorry, he was helping me study and we lost track of time, it’s not his fault.”

“I don’t care, I don’t know you, get off my property!”

You decided it was best not to argue, so you hurried back to your car and drove home as quickly as possible so you could shower and go to bed and pray that Spencer would be okay tonight.

~~~

Your phone rang early the next morning. You rolled out of bed to answer it, sprinting to the hall table to take it off the stand. Checking the caller ID, you realized it was from a number you didn’t recognize. Answering it, you heard Spencer’s voice on the other side.

“Hello, this is Spencer, is Y/N home?”

“Yes, you woke me up on a Saturday morning, where else am I gonna be, kid?” Your voice was scratchy as you struggled to fight off the sleep still clawing at your throat.

“Sorry about that. I was just calling to apologize for last night.”

“No, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to get you in trouble.”

“N-No, I’m not in trouble, I just wanted to explain why my mother was all--”

“She was worried, I get it.”

“N- she… My mother is a paranoid schizophrenic, she doesn’t do well with strangers. She doesn’t even remember what she said to you last night, she was having one of her episodes. She was just confused.”

You didn’t know how to respond. You were so shocked by his sudden revelations, you just stayed silent. You didn’t want him to think he scared you, so you had to say something. And apparently, that something was “Oh.”

“She wanted to apologize, but she’s just a bit embarrassed, so I called for her.”

“N-No, it’s okay, I…” It was suddenly so hard to say you understood because while it made sense to you, you wouldn’t fully understand what he or his mom was going through, you didn’t understand it, but Spencer didn’t seem to mind. He was just glad it didn’t bother you. After the events of yesterday, he couldn’t afford to lose you.

“Tell her I’m sorry I scared her.”

“Will do. She said you could come over so she could apologize personally and meet her if you want.”

“I’d love to. And Spence?”

You felt him take pause. You never called him that before, “Yeah?”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t wanna scare you.”

“You wouldn’t scare me, dude, you can tell me anything.”

“Really?”

“I promise. I’ll see you Monday?”

Spencer nodded, but you couldn’t see him, so he spoke up through the lump in his throat, “See you Monday.”

Taglist ~~~~~~

(Lmk if you wanna be added!!)

@lawnmoa @ellvswriting @reidsmyhusband-emilysmymistress @baby-pogue @rottenearly

#spencer reid #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid imagine #mgg #mgg fanfiction #mgg x reader #mgg smut #matthew gray gubler #matthew gray gubler fanfiction #matthew gray gubler x reader #matthew gray gubler imagine #criminal minds #criminal minds imagine #criminal minds fanfiction #cm #cm fan fiction #cm imagine

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moondustis · 4 years

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songs for you (m)

pairing: nakamoto yuta + reader genre: smut, angst, fluff / friends to lovers, 70s, band!au word count: 10k summary: A story about dreams, music, groupies and falling in love with your best friend. It’s the 70s, baby, live a little. song rec: miss you - the rolling stones / woman - harry styles / grow up - paramore

You don’t remember much of your childhood, just flashes and weird memories that pop in every now and then. That’s what happens as you get older, you guess. But here’s something you remember:

Nakamoto Yuta, three years older than you, walking inside your house with his mother holding his hand. You had seen the woman before, a very good friend of your mom from a long time ago, but the scrawny kid by her side was something new. And in your young age, nothing seemed more intimidating than a boy older and taller than you.

It didn’t go very well, let’s just put it like that.

But still, for some reason, after that day the boy sticked to your side like glue. A friend you could say, even with the age difference and the intimidating stares. It was like Yuta got himself a permanent place on your life, always teasing you, but also always making sure you were okay.

As a teenager, you remember daydreaming of travelling the world. Finally getting away from the too small town you lived in and away from all the stupid closed minded people that wanted to know about everybody's business. You remember Yuta showing you songs that you never heard before, Bowie, Fleetwood Mac, Hendrix, the list would go on and on. It was like music became a little world you had built for yourselves, where you could be who you truly wanted to be.

The both of you had always dreamed of something more, something exciting and that made your blood rush with adrenaline. You wanted to live, experience the things you only heard about in the records Yuta played for you and what you saw on the telly at late night at his house.

That’s something you had been thinking about a lot these days, while you watched roads pass by through the windows of the barely comfortable tour bus. Because, somehow, you had made it, your dreams had come true and at the age of 20 you got to go on tour with your band and finally see the world you had only fantasized about, even if it was only a few cities not that far from yours.

The band, put together by none other than you and your best friend, consisted of four people: you on the guitar, something you had learned by watching Jimi Hendrix too much, Taeyong on the bass, Doyoung singing, Johnny on the keyboard and last but not least, Yuta as the drummer. Oh, and you couldn’t forget about Taeil, your self proclaimed manager that didn’t gain anything with this job but the opportunity to travel with you all.

And with punk and classic rock influences all over your songs, you were not half bad, had gotten the opportunity to tour for a reason and could even make the small crowds that gathered to see you sing along, achieving an even smaller amount of fans that proclaimed their adoration for you.

It was literally the start of a dream come true, but for some reason you had been feeling weird the past days. Like your mind just started wondering out of nowhere, like it is now, and you started to think about things that made a lump form in your throat. Because see, it was great, the music and all the perfoming, the parties and the small magazines, but you didn’t feel happy all the time. You wondered if 16 year old you would be proud.

A loud clash spurs you out of your trance and brings you back to the studio you’re all in, trying to record a new song. Yuta looks at you with an annoyed expression as the plate on the drums still stirs.

“Wake the fuck up, you’re daydreaming again.” He says, without real bite to the words, but still mean enough to make you snap back. “We only have one hour left and the song is not even halfway finished.”

“Sorry.” You murmur, guitar feeling heavy but comfortable as you reposition it. Taeyong starts counting and then the melody of the familiar song you had all finished writing yesterday starts. Your fingers find the guitar strings with ease and you let yourself go with the music.

❀

There were few things better than making music with your best friends. Travelling to different places, standing in front of a crowd no matter how small and performing, the money you managed to split among yourselves, they were all great but nothing came close to being in a studio with the people that became your family while you did the thing you all loved the most.

It’s a small studio this time but the atmosphere is good, with velvet walls, tiled floor and low lights. The smell of weed is intoxicating and you feel high after not even that many hits. Maybe it’s just the joy of being in the moment.

The small sketchbook you take around with you everywhere stays placed on your lap with possible lyrics written all over it in a messy way, because when inspiration hits it’s impossible to keep an organized mind. Your head stays tilted back, eyes closed as the melody Taeyong is playing and your own thoughts fill your head. They come and go with no rush, something that is rare because usually you’re all over the place, overthinking until you get a headache.

Taeyong hums something to go along with the bass and a smile forms in your lips at how good it sounds already, good enough to have your eyes opening as you write down the things your mind provides. These days it’s mostly about the same things, finding yourself and the overwhelming feeling that came with it, even more when you did it while discovering the world and you recent acquainted opportunities. But they are also about something that you like to ignore. You knew very well it was there, would be too obvious if you didn't, but pretending you didn’t was better. Safer.

Johnny plops down next to you on the leather couch, a silly smile on his lips as he tries to take a peek at your writing. “What is it you got there? Another love song?” He asks just the tiniest bit teasingly, making you blush because that’s the exact subject you would like to avoid.

Love, what a weird thing isn’t it? Both in concept and in practice.

You had once thought you would never fall in love, too independent and doing well on your own. But that’s the thing about it, you don’t really get to choose when or if it’s going to happen. Love strips you down of your free will and there’s nothing you can do but succumb to it.

Were you in love, though? That’s a good question, really. You weren’t one to think you knew everything about it and had it all figured out, because in reality the mere thought of it scared you. But there’s this feeling on your chest that you can quite find another word for.

“Maybe.” It’s your answer to Johnny’s question. “But it’s none of your business.”

He laughs when you poke out your tongue at him, nudging your shoulder playfully. “It is when I’ll be also playing it live.”

He’s right but you won’t give out the privilege of letting him know that. Not that you would have time, because Taeyong is calling him to go over the melody together and soon you’re on the couch by yourself again.

You ponder getting up as well to play a little, on hopes to find the right notes to fit the raw lyrics you had, but your body feels lethargic enough from being high and you decide against it.

Closing your eyes again you only open them when the couch tips again, this time Yuta sits down close to you. Closer than Johnny had and you can smell his cologne amidst the strong smell of weed that's in the entire room.

“What you up to?” He asks, arm resting behind you on the couch and the gesture makes you feel small. He smiles, glancing down at your notebook and flipping through the pages gently.

“Just… writing and stuff.” You feel higher now than you did before for some reason.

He hums, looking straight ahead now, but you continue looking at him. “You’ve been really quiet lately.” He points out, no beating around or questioning. It must’ve took a lot of thinking from his part to finally say that to you, because talking about anything that could become too personal was far from his strength.

“Yeah, I think I’m probably just homesick. Or something like that.” It’s not a full lie so he falls for it, nodding as if indicating he feels the same.

“Missing your mom’s cooking, huh? Can’t say I’m not either.” He jokes and it makes you crack a smile. “But I get that. But most times when I start to get homesick I remember I got you.”

He says it still looking at Taeyong and Johnny as they play. His voice is calm, slightly slurred when he adds. “And you’re practically home to me.”

His eyes move to you then, a smile on his lips as his arm pushes you closer in an almost hug. He acts as if he just didn’t say something that makes your heart somersault in your chest.

Like he didn’t just say something that made you think you were in fact, in love.

❀

The adrenaline that came with performing in front of more than twenty people was something unmatched. You jump around the stage, playing like it could be your last time with fingers a little red from the guitar strings but you couldn’t care less, not with the music playing so loud and your heart beating so fast.

Yuta smiles wickedly when you stand in front of him, hands moving as fast as yours as the drum and guitar mix together. You smile back, thrilled and beyond excited that you get to do this with your best friend every night.

The best friend which you had been nurturing feeling you didn’t know how to deal with for. What a messy situation, because for one there was an unsaid rule that you shouldn’t have any sort of romantic relationship with your bandmates. And secondly, Yuta just wasn’t interested in you like that, he had his groupies to keep him busy.

Groupies that don’t take long after the end of the show to gather around him as you walk outside the venue. And you would really like to say that it doesn't bother you, that you couldn't care less, but you can’t. Because you hate it and think it’s a little pathetic how Yuta whispers something to a girl wearing barely anything and how it makes her giggle.

But even more pathetic is the fact that you seem to be bothered by it only because it’s him. All your other bandmates had girls all around them too, Doyoung especially with a different girl under both of his arms. Hell, even you had a small share of men and women that tried their luck approaching you and no one seemed to pay no mind.

When it came to Yuta’s groupies though, it made you almost livid. With how obnoxious they were and how he gave then smiles and flirted like a man with a very defined goal.

You manage to play it cool, though, had mastered the art of pretending by now.

❀

You're sitting on the hotel bed, the only light coming from the outside lamps and the moon shining bright, but it’s enough for you to be able to write the words down on your sketchbook. Inspiration always striked at late nights for some reason, probably because of the loneliness of it all.

You’re playing the guitar mindless, trying to find the perfect melody to fit the lyrics you had just gotten out, when there’s knock in the door. And it would be weird if you weren’t already used to it.

Putting the guitar aside you get up from the bed and tiptoe to the door, peeking on the fish eye to confirm your suspicious. Yuta stands there, hair falling to his face and wearing a shirt that has too many buttons open. He smiles when you open the door, charming and familiar. “Hello there, sweet cheeks.”

Rolling your eyes, you move out of the way to let him get inside your hotel room. “That’s the worst pet name you could ever come up with.”

He makes himself comfortable, plopping down on your bed and taking a lot of space with his spreading. “Don’t lie, I know you like it.” His voice is convinced and you won’t bother trying to change his mind.

“Can’t sleep?” You ask, changing the subject as you move to sit on your previous spot. Now, closer to him, you can smell the faint smell of his cigarettes lingering underneath the cologne he probably applied so you wouldn’t notice. Smoking was the way he found to deal with the annoying thoughts that filled his mind at night, resulting in an awful case of insomnia. Not that he would admit that.

“Sleep is for the weak.” He says nonchalantly and you scoff.

“Yeah, yeah. Real artists live on coke and music, is that it?”

He laughs now, amused while he scratches the exposed tattooed skin of his stomach. “That’s the spirit. We’re already halfway there, might as well, huh?” He jokes and you just roll your eyes, kicking him lightly on the shoulder.

“We can't have that stuff around us. One line and Taeyong will be climbing up walls.”

“Taeyong? Please, we both know the one climbing walls would be you.”

You laugh out loud this time and he follows, shaking his head. Times like these, where it was just the two of you, felt too much like when you would stay in his room to listen to records and talk about things that didn’t really make sense.

When your laughter settles down Yuta moves around until his eyes land on your sketchbook and he takes it to read what you’ve been working on. You don’t protest because there’s no reason to, he knows your thoughts almost as well as you do.

He hums, eyes roaming around the page and lips turning a little. “This is good.” His voice is genuine and it makes you blush, praise was something weird to take.

“I’m still working on it, though.”

“Hmm, let me know when you finish it then, we can work the melody together.”

“Of course, can’t make a song without my favorite drummer.” You say it in a funny voice as if you’re joking but he knows it’s nothing but the truth. The first song you had made with him was at 17 and now every time inspiration struck he was always either by your side or on your mind. He called it a connection, a deep one that many artists could only dream of happening. Musical soulmates he had called it once and you agreed, it was like you were just in tune with each other.

You play a little of what you had so far to him, the clock blinking red when it hits 1AM but neither of you bother.

When you get tired of playing you decide to press on the matter. “What were you thinking about?” You start, voice low as if to not scare him off. “That made you lose sleep.”

He must be feeling calm because he lets the words fall out. “Taeil suggested that we make a song with pop influence.” He says and you grimace. “To reach a wider audience.”

“That’s fucking stupid.” Is all you say because it’s what it is. Pop had nothing to do with your style, never had and never would. Not that you hated it, but it wasn’t what you were passionate about.

Yuta chuckles lightly. “That’s what I told him.”

“That’s good.” You say and a minute of silence follows, someone outside drives away, a wheels on concrete sound filling the room. There’s something unspoken in the air, a promise you had made to each other when this tour started.

Music was the thing the two of you loved the most, and nothing, not even money, would change how you did it. The deal was to always stay loyal to that thought.

“We got each other’s back, right?” He asks sudden, but it’s a rhetorical question because he’s soon adding. “That’s all we got in this world, our music and ourselves.”

You look down at him but his eyes stay glued to the wall. A lump forms in your throat at the heaviness of his words and you have to swallow around it to reply. “It’s always gonna be us.” You say in a broken but sure voice. “No matter what.”

“Fuck yeah.” He says quietly and you both laugh.

❀

One thing that you learned with your recently discovered success was that parties became boring quite fast. Loud music and people getting way more drunk or high than they should near a pool was a dangerous mistake. Still, you always followed down the same road.

Your bandmates liked them, a way to interact more with people and an opportunity to get high for free. Music came from experiences, it’s what Johnny always said and you agreed partly because there was indeed something inspiring about being among people that were having fun, that felt carefree.

You take a sip from your beer with that though on your head, leaning against a wall as you watch last mentioned man swing his hips in a messy way in the middle of the living room as two girls laugh and dance with him. You can’t help but laugh alongside with them, even if you’re standing on the opposite side of the room.

It’s a small house, from someone you never met before, but being in a small city always meant crashing a house party with too many college kids that usually screamed when they recognized mostly Doyoung from the posters spread across town.

The slightly buzz of alcohol made you feel like you were floating, head just slightly spinning and you lean against a wall to keep yourself steady. There’s not much going on inside your brain, just the numbness of being just a bit drunk and you enjoyed it, made you feel content.

You clean your wet palm from the beer’s perspiration on your jeans, eyes roaming around the room until you find him. Yuta stands on a wall opposite from the one you are, the bandana on his head keeping the hair out of his face and making you see his features more clearly. He looks good tonight, as he does always, but the post concert glow really did wonders to him and the way his exposed tattooed arms flexed a little when he moved made your head spin again.

It had become a habit, one that you wanted to desperately get rid off. Watching Yuta, almost as if you were analyzing every little detail about him, left you with a weird feeling in your stomach. There he was, the person you felt the closest to in the entire world, the person whom you already knew everything about, but when it was like this, with you staring without him knowing, you felt like he was still a mysterious person. Someone you would be lucky to dive deep into.

He raises his eyebrows and smirks at something the girl besides him whispers in his ear, probably something raunchy by the way he tries to bring her closer. You look away.

Taeyong finds you like that, beer going warm in your hand and your eyes dazed staring at nothing as you overthink every single thing. He smiles when he sees you, probably a little tipsy himself as he leans against the wall so close to you that your hips touch. “What are you doing here alone?” He asks, bumping against your side playfully and it gets a smile from you.

After Yuta, Taeyong was the closest to you in the band, for the simple fact that he cared. Not that the others didn’t, but Taeyong always made sure everyone was doing ok and that had made you feel safe, helped shape the friendship you have today of sharing your secrets and supporting each other.

“Just don't feel like socializing.” Is your reply, because it’s true. People at these parties were usually terrible at small talk or so pretentious they made you feel stupid for even thinking.

He hums, following your vision line as it goes back to Yuta again. His arm is now wrapped around the girl so you look away immediately.

You don’t see the way Taeyong looks at you emphatically. “Have you ever thought about telling him?” It’s obvious what the question is about because as much as you’d like to think you’re good at hiding it, you wouldn’t be good enough to hide it from him.

Still, you try to lie. “What? There's nothing to tell.” The awkward laugh and roll of your eyes are a dead giveaway, too forced to even come close to being genuine.

He laughs in disbelief of your attempts. “Yeah, alright. Just remember you’ll never know the things you don’t try.”

It makes you scoff. How poetic, probably a great thing to say to a drunk girl who’s already having risky thoughts. “Wow, we should definitely write a song about that.” You joke, trying to shift the subject to something else.

“Ha-ha.” He fake laughs but there’s still amusement on his face. “I’m being serious.”

“Yeah, yeah. I know.” How serious could he be after too many beers, you think to yourself. Maybe you were a fan of being in denial, so you shrug and just do your best to think about something else.

Something pops up on your head, a bad idea most definitely, so you act on lazy impulse. Walking just far enough to throw the still almost full beer bottle and then you come back to stand in front of Taeyong. You must have really be going crazy.

He rolls his eyes even before you talk or put your hands on his shoulders, but still moves to hold your hips. “Yongie…” It’s a sickeningly cute voice, one you use as a joke when you want something. It makes him crack a smile, already knowing what is coming. “I think we should kiss.”

He chuckles, squeezing your hips and smiling. “I’ll have to agree just because you look cute tonight.” You laugh right back at him.

And then you’re kissing, like you had done before in the past for reasons that were the same as the one right now. Boredom, loneliness, horniness or just because. It was a friendly kiss, shared between two people that knew it would never go further than that. And it was good, his tongue sliding against yours in slow motions that are just the tiniest bit sensual because that’s just how Taeyong liked to kiss. It was so good that you forget for a second about other things, such as Yuta.

Yuta who happens to be watching, or better yet glaring, from the other side of the room as you kiss your friend. Yuta who tells the girl he’s with that he’s not in the mood anymore and leaves the party.

In some cases, ignorance truly is bliss.

❀

The dressing room was always a mess before a show, no matter how sketchy, dirty or small it was. Trust a group of musicians that had no basic decency to behave like this to calm their nerves before performing.

Johnny is pressing random notes on the keyboard, making sounds that would be unpleasant to anyone else, but you and Taeyong dance to it in weird moves that get you laughing as Doyoung sings extremely off key. The only one not taking part in your shenanigans is Yuta, who stays on the old couch writing on his notebook, and even if you wanted to call him over, you know better than to bother him.

You don’t even notice when Taeil walks into the room, holding what looks like a folder in his hand and barely helping the excited grin that wants to settle on his face. “Hey!” He tries once to get everyone to pay attention but without success. “HEY!”

His shout has all of you turning to look at him, Johnny’s fingers stopping on the keyboard and the sounds that filled the room before give way to Taeil’s rushed voice.

“I have some really good fucking news.” He announces, shaking the papers around in the air as if any of you could ever guess what’s in those papers.

“What is it?”

“Spit it out, cutie.” Comes Johnny voice and you all laugh. Making Taeil flustrated is easy but he pays it no mind right now, whatever it is he wants to say clearly more important than stupid jokes.

“A Neo Records scout was at the concert last night.” He says with edge on his voice earning confused and shocked reactions from all of you

“What the fuck?” Doyoung groans, dropping his face on his hands. “How did we not know that?”

“How could we even know? These people are sneaky as hell.”

After that the room just becomes a mess of you all talking over each other, putting yourselves down for not having performed better, for not playing better songs.

Taeil has enough of it very fast, yelling over all of you to regain your attention. “None of that matters, because he liked the performance. And,” He breaths out, a pause that has you walking forward to urge him on, “he wants to sign you guys.”

A shriek leaves your lips as someone mutters a curse. It’s unbelievable, not even Taeyong’s hand gripping your arm in excitement manages to spur you out of your trance. “Oh my god. Do they really?” He exclaims and you feel tears forming at your eyes.

“Yes. He said you guys have a lot of potential and after the tour is over they’re going to fly you all out to L.A to record an EP.” Taeil explains in calmness but just enough giddiness to his voice.

There’s no words to describe how much this means. No one in their right mind would ever sign a contract with a band that had a girl playing guitar in it. Women in rock and roll were there to be pretty, you were very much aware of how much hate The Runaways were getting constantly, how much sexist shit you yourself had to hear.

But this, this right here was an opportunity to take your dream to the next level, do something that actually stood a chance of getting recognized.

Your eyes look for Yuta’s, to share the excitement of getting this far but when they meet he holds your gaze in an expression you can't quite pinpoint. His voice raises suddenly, making everyone in the room look at him. “What’s the catch?” He uncrosses his legs, widening them as he looks at Taeil with his pierced eyebrow raised.

“What do you mean?”

He chuckles. “I mean, a big record like them wanting to sign with us, there must be something they want out of this.” You furrow your eyebrows because as much sense he makes, it sounds like he’s looking for conflict.

Taeil gapes, as if looking for the right words and you realize there is in fact a catch. “I — Well, they just… They just think it would be nice to have some songs that are more public friendly, but it can be discuss-“

Yuta’s laugh cuts Taeil short. He’s an intimidating person, even more when he looks pissed off and right now as he gets up from the couch you feel like the air is tense enough to cut. “We’re not making shitty manufactured pop songs, man.”

Usually a comment like that would be taken as a joke between all of you, but he says it in a sharp voice and you know it’s because he has had this same conversation with your manager not that many days ago. But still, you feel like there’s something more, even if Yuta wasn't keen on letting his feelings show, you knew something was going on with how distant he had become the last days.

“Come on,Yuta.” The voice comes from Taeyong, moving away from your side to face Yuta properly. There’s not an ounce of bitterness in his voice, only sympathy because you all share the same passions. “This is a crazy opportunity, we can’t let it pass.”

And then you’re sure there’s something going on that goes way over this, because Yuta is pushing Taeyong and mutetting words that you wish he doesn’t mean.”What do you even fucking know? Y’all will just take any validation you can get like little bitches.” It’s simple but it has venom to it. Venom that makes Taeyong’s face contort because he despises confrontation and at that you come forward, pushing Yuta the same way he did.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” You sound way too emotional and it makes you hate yourself. Yuta just looks at you like he’s annoyed, his shoulders knocking against yours as he walks out of the room.

You look down, shaking your head in disbelief and feeling tired from the quick rise and fall of emotions. Feeling someone hover over you, you look up to find Johnny’s eyes staring down with what looks like sorrow. “Don’t stress over it, he’ll come around to it eventually.”

And you really hope that’s true.

❀

After that, things go back to the same routine of being in a bus for hours, performing in a sketchy bar, getting shitfaced drunk and then doing it all over again. The only difference is that now there’s a tension in the air that comes from both Yuta’s outburst and the prospect of all of this becoming something bigger than it is.

The higher executives at Neo Records or whoever made the decision to sign the band, had given you until your last performance to make a decision. There’s only three shows left until that, but that’s the last thing on your mind as your play a riff that makes the bigger than normal crowd that gathered today scream.

There’s blinding lights on the stage that make you feel like you’re dreaming, the sound of Doyoung half singing half screaming just slightly muted. You turn to where Yuta is, giving his all because he would never do anything but that and when the drumstick hits a plate in a sharp noise he looks right back at you.

Something had changed, you’re not dumb to not know that. But what it was exactly seemed to escape you, because Yuta was just too good at keeping things to himself, too mysterious for your sake. So he keeps giving you this look, a look that wants to be more than that but it’s not that easy to decypher. A look that you ignore to continue playing.

A look that you ignore when you all come out of the stage, sweaty and with adrenaline filling your hearts. That you ignore when everyone gathers around the hotel pool to have a beer and joke around, Johnny jumping on it and splashing everyone on the way.

A look that you can’t ignore any longer as you stand outside of Yuta’s room after everyone has retreated for the night, knocking softly until he opens the door.

This is still the same, he makes way for you to get inside and the scent of him that fills the room make your mind spin. He’s shirtless, probably ready to get to bed, and you can see all of his tattoos and the piercing on his navel on display.

Clearing your throat, you watch as he takes a seat on the bed, legs spread open and looking at you like he’s waiting for you to talk. “Something is going on.” Is what you decided on, not too keen on beating around the bush.

“A lot of things are going on.” He points out and you have to roll your eyes.

“You know what I mean.”

“Maybe I don’t, so why don’t you make it clear for me?” He’s being defensive, you expected this, but it still makes your blood boil.

“See? There’s no reason for you to give me attitude right now but here we are, so there’s clearly something going on.” You cross your arms on your chest, still standing in the middle of the room like a fool as he chuckles.

“You keep saying that but I think you know very well what’s going on.” He sounds annoyed now, staring directly at you. “You just expect me to accept this shit? For money or whatever it is that you all are looking for?”

His words sound empty so you squint your eyes at him in defiance. “You’re being an asshole, this is not your dream exclusively. You’re not our fucking frontman.”

That makes him scoff. “Please, there wouldn’t be a fucking band to be signed if it weren’t for me.”

Now you really get mad, laughing in disbelief. “Are you kidding me right now? We started this shit together.” You want to punch him in the face, get the annoyed look right out of his face and remind him.

He looks down, shaking his head in what you think is disbelief. “So why does it feel like you’re not by my side?” His choice of words make your eyebrows furrow. When had you not been loyal to him? You have been by his side since you were 7, nothing had changed. “Seems to me that you’re always taking your little boyfriend’s side now.”

“What?” There’s nothing but confusion in your features as you let your arms fall to your sides. “What boyfriend? Are you fucking out of your-“

He interrupts you with a groan.“Come on, I saw the two of you kissing.”

You blink slowly and then when you realize what he’s talking about, you’re completely outraged. “Taeyong? I’m not dating Taeyong.” Your voice is going higher by the minute and he seems to be getting just as heated.

“Why were you kissing him then?” He asks, getting up from the bed and moving closer to you.

You can’t help the incredulous high laughter that leaves your lips. “Because I wanted to. Is this why you have been acting like this? Why does it even matter to you?”

His tongue curls on the roof of his mouth, looking at you with angry eyes. “Because it does.”

You squint your eyes again, not believing this is really going on right now. Yuta, who hooked up with a different girl every night, patronizing you for kissing someone. It makes something boil inside of you that you find incredibly awful. “Why does it matter?” You demand, pushing him when he doesn’t answer. “Why?”

His face contorts in something you think is guilty, eyes roaming around your own and lips parting. For a second you think he’s going to say something, then you think he’s going to do something else. But none of that happens.

You push him again, no strength to it but he still falls down on the bed in defeat. A lump forms in your throat as he avoids your eyes.

You leave the room before he can see the tears.

❀

The day it happened is still fresh in your memory.

Your bedroom is the classic teenager one, filled with posters of all kind of things, from movies to bands and just quotes that inspired something within. But the one you like the most, of Joan Jett being a complete badass, stares right back at you from where you’re staring at the ceiling. You still remember dreaming about becoming like her one day.

There’s a song playing, something from the Rolling Stones that Yuta had wanted to show you and had practically stormed inside of your house with a vinyl on his hands to do so.

Said man looks at you from your bedroom floor, his now black hair long enough to tie into a small ponytail. There’s a piercing on various parts of his body and that’s enough reason for every girl in the city to want a piece of him, his aura just helped the whole thing. You remember that at 16 you thought it was amazing too. How he just carried himself with so much confidence, how he was always unapologetic. Yuta was someone you looked up to.

“We could do it, you know?” He says out of nowhere, getting you to finally stare back at him with furrowed eyebrows.

“Do what?”

“Start a band.”

You laugh because he was like that. Talked about things that he wanted to do with ease, not matter how crazy or unordinary they were. “Sure.” Is what you reply with, giving him a smile.

“I’m being serious.” He urges on. “We can do it, me and you. Just make the music we want to and have fun.”

You think about it for a second but there’s not really a reason to. You would do anything with Yuta. “Ok.” That makes him smile. “Yeah, ok. Let’s start a band.”

Back to the present, your tears stain the stark white fabric of the pillow case. You wonder in the back of your head if 16 year old you would be happy right now and that only makes you cry harder.

❀

Pride, isn’t that a stupid thing to have over trivial matters?

You don’t speak to Yuta at all for the following weeks, confusion and anger still filling your mind and tainting your every thought. And he does the same.

It’s comfortable not having to confront him and hear the harsh words you are sure he has stored, but it also makes your skin itch thinking that this stupid fight is going on for too long.

There’s only one show left and then it’s back to reality for a couple of days. The thought of having to go back home and leaving things unsettled with him makes you sick, and it was obvious if someone were to say something it was going to have to be you. Yuta’s pride was too big, even when it didn’t have to be.

So you go after him, because someone had to. Try to get him alone but it’s like there’s always someone around, or he’s too busy composing and it all hurts. It hurts but not enough to make you give up because you know this is merely a pointless fight.

“Where’s Yuta?” You ask Doyoung, who’s sitting by the hotel pool on one of those cheap looking chairs and with a cigarette lit between his lips. The hotel this time was not as nice as the others, the pool looks unkempt like no one had even touched it in at least a month.

Doyoung blows out smoke, looking at you with a tired face that you probably share from all the performances that are just now weighing down on your shoulders. “I think he went out to some party with Johnny.” He says absently and you huff in defeat, slumping down on the chair next to him.

“Asshole.” You mumble out, shutting your eyes for a moment and then it’s silent. The only noises filling your ears are from the ice machine and from the tall lamps.

Then there’s some rustling going around before Doyoung speaks. “Listen, I know that’s not any of my business, and believe me I would much rather stay out of it.” It’s what he starts with and you almost already know what he’s going to say. “But you two need to figure your shit out.”

Trust your lead singer to just lay down the obvious to you because sometimes that's all you need to hear. You scoff. “That’s what I wanted to do.” In the back of your mind you try not to think about what figuring your shit out would entail.

“He can be a dickhead sometimes, but he’s with us.” He says as if that wasn't something you knew already. “And he said he’ll sign the deal, you know? Had a whole theatrical chat with Taeil and all.”

That’s new information, that makes you squeeze your eyes shut in both excitement and frustration at the same time, because if that was already dealt with then the reason why he was acting like this with you was for something else like you had imagined.

You think of something to say, settling on what you felt deep down the moment you got inside that tour bus. “I… I just don’t want things to change.”

That makes Doyong laugh, his voice hoarse when he says. “They already have, love. You just gotta move forward with it.”

❀

You barely remember the last show, exhaustion finally catching up with your body. You remember the trashy alternative bar, remember some people singing along which was absolutely surreal and you remember the groupies crying about how they would miss the band while you took a little break. Anything other than that is a blur and forgotten as you sleep through the entirety of the trip back home, not bothering with the bumps in the roads or how awful the tour bus smelled after weeks.

You don’t notice until later that Yuta hadn’t even gotten on the bus with everyone else. Instead, as Johnny had said, he went on a small trip and would be back in town by the end of the week. You try not to worry about it too much.

Being back home feels weird and you start thinking about what Doyoung had said that day near the pool. Everything has changed, yes, and now your bedroom feels too small. The band posters don’t inspire you anymore as much as they ignite a fire inside that’s too big to extinguish. Your mother’s hug feels comforting but it doesn’t hold you back.

You were still scared, of course, but being back home made you realize that you craved it too much to let fear hold you back. Because how does one go back to reality like when they had a taste of their dreams? How do they live without wanting a bigger taste, to eat it whole?

The only thought in your head as you lay leisurely in your bed for the next days is that you can’t wait to make more music with your friends.

With Yuta. (Thinking of him makes you want to cry.)

The phone rings on saturday, just as your mother is leaving for her job at a diner and she yells for you to pick it up quickly. You get up from the bed with a groan, leisurely walking to the phone and greeting whoever is in the other side of the line with a simple “Hello.” It was probably one of your mother’s friends wanting to gossip or someone trying to sell you items for gymnastics at home.

It takes a while for anything to be said but when it does, the voice even if static is a familiar one. “Hey, it’s me.” Yuta says and the effect it has on the butterflies on your stomach is maddening. It had been too long in your opinion, relief immediately settling in your mind.

“I know.” You breath out and he chuckles. “Thought you were out there on a self discovering trip.”

The comment makes him snort, a smile of your own making its way into your lips as you twirl the phone line with a finger.

“I just got back.” He clarifies and then there’s pause that lasts for seconds before he’s speaking again. “Listen, I — Fuck, I don’t wanna do this over the phone. Can I come over?”

Your lips feel dry. “Oh. Yes. Yes, of course you can.” And then he’s hanging up after a promise of not taking too long.

The anxiety that bubbles in your stomach is unpleasant but the thought of finally seeing him overshadows it. Because see, there’s a few ways this could go and in the back of your head you’re sure, one hundred percent sure, that your friendship with him would never be the same. Because again, how does one go back to normal when everything had changed?

Your breath hitches when there’s a knock on the door, your heart race going worryingly up and when you finally open it, Yuta stands there with a grin on his lips and looking like he always did, with an old band t-shirt tucked inside his bell bottom jeans. There’s just one thing. “You got a haircut.” Is the first thing you say, dumbly.

“Yeah.” He says, running a hand through his now blonde, almost white, hair that has the sides shaved. It’s very bold looking but it suits him.

There’s no chit chatting then, he just steps inside and hugs you like you haven’t seen each other in years. You let yourself drown in it, shoulders slumping as you arms circle his back and he hums pleased. “I miss you.” He mumbles against your hair before breaking the hug and looking at you with eyes that say a lot more than his words. “I’m a fucking asshole, right? I’m sorry.”

You shrug. “Yeah, you are.”

That makes him laugh. A laugh that’s comfortable and familiar as the way he walks inside your house, asking for you mother and pouting when he finds out she’s not there. Familiar as the way he walks into your teen bedroom and looks like he fits there just as much as you do when he plops down on your bed. There’s a feeling of nostalgia to it that he must feel too by the way his eyes roam to the poster covered walls.

You sit down on the bed next to him when he pats the empty spot, his hand disappearing inside his pocket and then he’s getting something out of it. “Got you a gift.” He says jiggling around what you now see is a keychain.

“Wow, how considerate of you.” You tease, getting it with your hands and examining the object. “Thank you, Yuta.”

“No biggie.” He shrugs but the way he watches as you swirl it around your hand tells you that he hopes you like it.

It’s one of those ‘I love NY’ keychains, and in your mind you know very well he didn’t go that far so he must’ve bought it in a random store, the fact alone bringing a grin to your lips. But where there was supposed to be a ‘N’, there’s a very badly done scratch so that it reads ‘I love Y” instead. You can’t help the giggle that forms in your throat. “I love Yuta?”

His smile is as wide as possible. “That’s right.” He doesn’t even try to play it cool. “Make sure you put it somewhere visible so everyone can see it.”

You shake your head laughing, but you still promise “I will.”

There’s a silence that follows, one that is filled with his eyes not leaving yours. This is it, you think to yourself, because you both already know it, would be impossible if you didn’t. Still you ask with a quiet voice. “Do you know why I keep writing all these love songs?”

“Yes.” He breathes out without missing a beat. A simple reply was all you expected.

“How long did you know?”

“For a while.”

And then. “Why did it bother you? That I kissed Taeyong?” You play with the hem of your skirt, pulling at a single line of fabric that was hanging from it.

There’s a small smile forming on his lips as he raises his pierced eyebrow at you.“You really don’t know why?” You do now, you both know that. And you wish you had known sooner, but right now you want to hear what he has to say. “Because I’m selfish and a fucking coward.”

His confessions carries all the meaning you need and there’s a few things you could say. But this is about you and it’s about Yuta, your best friend and the one that had been by your side all this time. The two of you didn’t need big gestures, words that would make someone tear up or any theatricals. It was simply how it was meant to be, just the two of you.

“I’m not.” Is what you say and his lips part.

“What?” He asks just to be sure.

“I’m not a coward.”

And then you kiss him, with a press of your lips to his that could as well just be saying how much you had wanted this, how you think you would go crazy if you never got to taste him like this. Because intimacy with Yuta was something you rarely gave yourself the luxury of thinking about, too scared that you would dig a hole deeper than it already was. But now, as his hands hold your cheeks and he pushes you closer, kissing you with just a hint of desperation, you let yourself drown it it.

He does it with expertise that you can’t possibly match and in the back of your head you feel slightly shy for it. Still, there’s no time to think about that when he deepens the kiss, moving your head a little so he can do as he pleases, sucking on your bottom lip and earning a soft noise that comes from your chest.

You don’t know what’s better, the hand he moves to your neck, the one that holds your thigh, almost dipping inside your skirt or how he looks at you when he breaks the kiss a little breathless. His eyes don’t leave your face as he massages the area where his hand is and you think you could melt completely. “Wanted to do this for so long.” He breathes out and your eyes never leave his now heart shaped pink lips.

Nodding in agreement, you mutter teasingly. “Took you long enough.”

He chuckles, pressing another quick peck. “Then I better not waste any more time.”

He kisses you first this time and it’s with purpose, his tongue licking at your lips until you finally give him what he wants. He draws every little noise you make with the way his tongue slides against yours and how he nips at your lips, kissing you deeper with every second he gets.

You feel overwhelmed, because for one this is new and something you never thought you would be doing, in your teen bedroom of all places. The fact that Yuta starts kissing down your neck only helps, his tongue tickling your sensitive skin before he closes his lips around it, sucking enough that it could leave a bruise. For everyone to see, you think, as he presses a small kiss to it afterwards and then moves to the next spot.

He treats you with as much delicacy as his desperation allow him, manhandling you so that you’re laying more comfortably in your bed and he can hover over you as he kisses you again.

You hate feeling small, but like this, with Yuta on top of you, it makes arousal bubble in your body. And when his hand moves to dip inside of your skirt, gripping at your thigh you let that arousal be known in the form of a surprised moan let out against his lips.

He smirks at you, clearly pleased with himself as your glossy eyes stare up at him. “You’re so cute, baby.” You feel your cheeks warming up and you hate, as much as he seems to love it, that you’re acting like this in front of your best friend. “I could just eat you up.”

His words are followed by your lips forming a small ‘o’ and then by him kissing you again, this time not waiting to let his tongue move against yours in messy motions that make you crave more of anything he has to give you.

You don’t notice at first that he hands start to move again, but when he plays with the hem of your cotton panties you know that he’s not going to settle for that. It’s embarrassing how quickly you react when he presses his fingers to your covered clit, applying pressure to it and then giving a tentative roll. You cry as quietly as you manage and he watches as your eyes squeeze when he moves his fingers again.

You always had wondered how someone else's fingers would feel compared to your own and when Yuta finally, finally, dips his inside your panties, you are sure no fantasies could compare. He drags two of his fingers down to your entrance, feeling the embarrassing wetness that had gathered and bringing it up to your clit so the circling of his fingers is more pleasant.

He continues to watch you, eyes glued to your face as you let out all kind of noises and move your body as the hint of an orgasm makes your entire body tingle. You feel so close already that you wonder if he can tell.

His movements are slow, almost teasing, and when he kisses you again his tongue moves in the exact speed as his fingers, in a way that makes you clench around nothing. As if sensing that he shifts his hand, your body almost arching from the bed when he dips one long finger inside of you. If he didn’t know about the extents of your inexperience, he knows now with how your walls hug tightly just one of his fingers. The groan he lets out at the feeling is one of the prettiest sounds you had ever heard.

He moves his finger slowly, as if testing the waters and when he curls it just right you gasp at the new feeling. “There?” He asks with a grin and you just nod dumbly, biting on your lips enough to bruise.

Somewhere in the back of your mind you wonder if the other girls he had, had came this fast, because when he combines the thrusting of his curled finger to his thumb circling your clit, you feel enough to explode. Doesn’t help that he says his next proposition.

“Let me have a taste, hmm?” His words are muffled from where his lips are pressed on your neck and there’s a very clear mix of feelings that happen inside of your head. You cry out, clearly affected by the proposition and the mere thought of his wet lips against your warmth makes you clench around his fingers. He feels it, of course he does, because he lets out a small moan and grinds down on you a little, his hardness very much there. “Yeah?” He sounds breathless.

“I—I’m.” You gasp when he moves his fingers faster as if to entice you. But this is the extent of your inexperience, the mere thought of him eating you out makes you so overwhelmed that you can’t give in just yet. “I don’t… I-I’m not ready.”

Your voice sounds small but he doesn’t even blink at your denial, instead he kisses you deeply in reassurement. “It’s ok, sweet girl.” He presses down on your clit, giving you exactly the friction you need. “I’ll eat your pretty pussy another day.”

And then his fingers are moving faster, enough that it takes you no time to come with a loud moan that sounds a lot like his name and your hands gripping tightly at the bed sheets. You shake, body trembling as you try to ground yourself but the orgasm is too shattering.

When he removes his fingers from inside you, he licks then clean before moving your shirt upwards so your stomach is exposed. He moves to kneels between your open legs and you’re left confused until he starts unzipping his pants, asking a soft. “Okay?” To which you nod excitedly.

He doesn't ask you to do anything, instead he dips a hand inside his underwear, barely pushing the rest of his pants down as he pulls his cock free. It’s a sight that leaves you breathless, the way he thumbs at the head and smears pre cum around and when that’s not enough, his fingers move inside the mess of your panties, gathering your arousal and bringing it to his hardness in what is the most erotic view you had ever seen.

The first stroke is slow and he bites his lips, looking at you with a fucked out expression. “See what you do to me?” He asks in a groan and you nod in your little haze, eyes not knowing where to look at.

His strokes get quickly faster, with swirls of his wrist and it doesn’t take long for him to let out a strangled moan as he comes with thick spurts in your stomach. You watch it all in awe, the way he twitches in his palm and his eyes fight to stay open. It’s like suddenly you know why there are so many songs about sex.

Afterwards when you’re cleaned and laying on the bed lazily, Yuta plays an unknown melody on your old acoustic guitar with a little inexpertise, humming what you think is the start of a song still in the works.

The sun is about to set and you feel a weird sensation of contentment, a spark blossoming in your chest. You had kissed your best friend, done things with him that reached a level of intimacy you were still learning to navigate, but everything still felt the same.

“Doyoung told me you’re going to sign the contract.” You say, breaking the comfortable silence.

His eyes don’t leave the guitar strings. “Of course, can’t leave my own band.” He deadpans jokingly and you scoff, nudging him with your feet.

“What if they make us do songs we don’t want to?

“I’m sure you’ll scare them off with your attitude.” He laughs when you gasp, lurching at him but stopping because you couldn’t attack him properly with the guitar on his lap.

Noticing that, he smiles, one eyebrow raising at you as he lets the guitar down and opens his arms almost in a challenge for you to hit him. Which you do, playfully before you’re letting yourself fall putty into his chest. “I don’t have an attitude.” You whine.

He huffs. “Yes you do. But it’s very charming.”

Rolling your eyes you hug him closer, basking in the feeling of having him here with you and the comforting knowledge that he feels the same way you do. “Do you think we’ll be able to handle it? Fame and whatever else comes with it?”

“We were born for it, baby.” He says with a cocky grin, always overwhelmingly confident. “I told you, you and me, we can do anything we want together.”

And that’s all you need to hear.

❀

“Back to earth, pretty girl.” Yuta’s voice snaps you out of another daydream, some ideas for a new album and whatever else filed your mind these days. He sounds slightly demanding but you don’t mind at all.

“Sorry.” You mumble and he gives you a grin that you can’t help but match.

There’s the start of a melody playing in the big studio that was rented for the new album. Johnny says something and you adjust the guitar strap, feeling the familiar and comfortable weight of it as your fingers find the strings with ease.

You glance at Yuta another time and he’s still looking at you, mouthing something you can’t quite understand but by the silly smile on his face you know exactly what it is. “Love you too.” You mouth right back at him, shaking your head at his silliness.

And then the song starts.

❀❀❀❀❀

tag list: @jupitersmark @euphoricdreamies @peachybun-01

#yuta smut #yuta scenarios #nct smut #nct scenarios #i reread this last night and realized its not at all how i wanted it to be #it could be so much better :(#but i hope you guys still enjoy it

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emletish-fish · 3 years

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7. what is you favorite sentence/paragraph? read it to us! (asker can choose what fic) (x)

I chose three! One from each of my 'big fics'. No Zombies, Worst Prisoners and Good Boys under the cut:

NO ZOMBIES:

No Zombies was a delight to write. I had pretty much the whole idea from the get-go, (of a returned style AU with Hector coming to spend time with the family in the modern world). I finished it quick - and it's not too long (side-eyeing Good Boy and Worst Prisoner). It was the first fic where I felt like I really "stuck" the landing. I was quite flexible with my original outline, but I still knew where the journey ended. It ended exactly how I wanted it too - happily but with a bitter-sweet note.

The emotional core of this story is how Elena, family matriach, who is so gruff and no-nonsense, who despises Hector in the films, and who has such a warm heart under such a grumpy exterior would slowly soften and come to love Hector, (and how she grows as a person because of this and becomes more comfortable showing love/emotions to her family). It was like a platonic slow-burn as she learns to understand Hector better - which is why this bit is my favourite because it's where she starts to really feel fond of him for the first time:

“Well, I'm just glad I'm a better teacher for him than watching old Ernesto De La Cruz movies.” Héctor had replied with a wry smile. “It's probably because I'm so much more handsome than that butt-chinned, over-the-top ham.”

“Because you're a pointy-chinned, over-the-top ham?” Elena replied, feeling surprising witty. She never made teasing jokes like this normally, but it was so easy with Héctor.

He looked mock-offended. “I'll have you know, my chin is wonderful and I've given it to several of your grandchildren, so there.”

If Elena was a different person, she probably would have pulled Héctor into a warm, laughing hug then. She might have told him seriously that Miguel had always been difficult for her. He felt things so strongly and got so upset and emotional – she'd always struggled with how to help him, how to calm him. Miguel was so happy now. She knew that was because of Héctor.

She might have told Héctor that he was at least six thousand times the musician, eight thousand times the teacher, and ten thousand times the man that Ernesto De La Cruz was.

But Elena was who she was.

Instead she said “Idiot,” and ruffled his stupidly messy hair rather fondly.

She told herself she wasn't warming to the fool musician, but she knew it was a lie.

GOOD BOY:

My current work. It's another platonic slow-burn, but this time set in the Cobra Kai universe with son and father pair - Robby Keene and Johnny Lawrence. In the show, these two characters have such a dysfunctional relationship that is so full of miscommunications and missed chances, and they genuinely want a better relationship (and it would be so healing for both of them! Do not get me started!) I lean much more into the magical realism in this story, as I turned Robby into a dog (Animal transformation - PIXAR's Brave style), so that he could immediately get the cuddles and easy affection he so clearly needs.... because I have never seen a more touch/affection-starved character aside from Zuko in ATLA.

This also gave Robby a chance to really understand, not only his father, but the other people in his cicrcle. He discovered he had a support network. He got to know he was loved by many. he got to witness the actions people would take as they searched for human-him (not knowing that he'd been turned into a dog). And it gave Johnny a chance to learn how to take care of something, feel needed, and express his love for his son without the weight of their complicated history/his own trauma hanging over him. It was hard to pick a favourite, but I will say the Johnny-stream-of-conciousness chapters are definitely the easiest/most fun to write. One of my favourite bits is in the first one, The queen of ice-cream runaway when Johnny tells Robby about when Laura (his grandmother) found out Shannon was pregnant and she was going to be a grandmother.

It's the first inkling Robby gets that while his father wasn't there for him and he was neglected a lot, Johnny did his best to keep the bad shit from his own childhood away from Robby as his own way of showing care. It hints at the deep and damaging abuse Johnny endured. When he finally had a say with his own kid, he would have done anything to protect Robby from feeling the same. I'd say here is where Robby really begins to warm to his Dad;

Then I told her our chosen name and she said I was a dumbass and Swayze was a terrible middle name, and we had to change it to some shit like Alastair or something. She thought he should have a rich sounding middle name. And I say Mom, Alastair sounds like some lame-ass insurance broker who upskirts his secretary and then cries as he jerks off to the pictures, what else you got? She thought Sebastian, and that was worse! What a pussy name. Sebastian is going to be sitting in the little french patisserie cafe drinking the tiny-ass coffee for dolls and eating the éclair with his prissy finger tips. I already want to kick Sebastian's ass. Who wouldn’t? I’m not going to give my kid a name that is going to get his ass kicked.

And she couldn't talk, cause she named me after Johnny Cash, just cause she liked his music. And she couldn't think of a middle name at the time, so I didn't get one. Thank goodness. I could have ended up Johnny Alastair and had to kick my own ass.

So Swayze stayed.

Then she mentions how she and Sid can help out, so I didn't need to do the two jobs, stupidly long hours thing. And we need the money. I know we need the money. But my whole body froze and I just went No. None of that for little Robby Swayze. ...

... She’s going on about spending Sid’s money on Robby and I just...I can’t. I can't allow it. Cause I knew how he would be, and the way he would treat that kid. So I tell her, no thank you. Not a fucking cent mom. Sid’s not getting to feel like he owns a hair on Robby’s head. That motherfucker can go jump. You thought we needed Sid’s money when I was a kid. You decided it was better for me, and that was your choice. I did not get a vote in that. But this is my kid, and this time it is my call, and I am choosing no. I’m not going to have Sid make my kid feel like he has to apologise for existing every day. I'm not going to have Sid treat my kid the way he treated me. I will never need money that badly. I will never put my kid through that. I'll work myself to the bone doing 20 hour days before that. I'll work on the 40th floor without a harness before that. I will sell my fucking organs before it comes to that. Not a cent mom.

WORST PRISONER:

My 'what if Zuko made friends with the Gaang early on?" AU that then turned into a three-book long saga (and I will return to it, Worst Prisoner readers - Thank you for you patience). It does have evenutal Zutara, but the focus is really on the Gaang + Zuko as a whole, and all the interpersonal relationships. I'd say there is more gen-shipping around Zuko as a central character, as Iroh & Zuko, and Sokka & Zuko are both given equal prominence. in fact, all the friendships and familial relationships were equally important to me. (the book 3 Zuko & Azula stuff is so interesting, but it is ...less funny I guess.)

This fic is such a joy to write, and I really try and balance the humour with the bittersweet/sad parts, and one of the main sources of humor was the Sokka-Aang-Zuko -Katara qudrangle of dumbassery. I love the four of them together in book 1, and so many of their interactions were a hoot to write. But if I'd have to pick a favourite moment, it would be the moment in the deserter chapter in book 1, where they all decide to 'officially' be friends:

“Well, you can figure that out and find someone while I'm up in the Northern Water Tribe. Then when we finish up there, we'll come find you,” Aang offered.

“Really?” Zuko’s eyes were shining optimistically. It was a strange expression for him. Aang was so used to seeing him with a grumpy face.

“Really, I promise,” Aang said, feeling so glad that he could help Zuko go home.

“Yeah, I second that. If this means we won’t have to put up with you chasing us, I am in!” Sokka said. “Sheesh, you could have just asked ages ago!”

“You know, this means I was right,” Aang started to say, feeling very vindicated. The others looked at him curiously. “If we had just talked about friendship in the forest, we could have sorted this out weeks ago!”

“Boo, forest friendship!” Sokka said.

“Don't boo him,” Katara admonished, elbowing her brother.

“I agree with Sokka. There's no way I would have appreciated that speech weeks ago, Aang,” Zuko said.

Sokka smiled at Zuko for saying he agreed with him. It actually wasn't that rare of an occurrence, but it still seemed to surprise Sokka every time.

“See, Aang, forest friendship is bullshit,” Sokka said.

“I didn't say that!” Zuko cut in. “I just meant, maybe … I had to be dragged all over the Earth Kingdom by you guys ... and shot ... and taken to nonsense fortune tellers ... and I had to be forced to eat Sokka's truly terrible and disgusting cooking—”

“Oi!”

“—and I had listen to Aang lecture me about friendship and vegetarianism in the forest just so I could come here.” He looked around at the deserters’ camp site. “I dunno, maybe it was meant to be this way.”

“What are you saying? You want to be forest friends with Aang now?” Sokka asked accusingly.

“I mean, sure. If Aang will have me, we can be friends,” Zuko said, and looked uncertain.

“Yay! I knew you'd want to be my friend,” Aang said, feeling delighted.

He was so happy he had a Fire Nation friend again. Kuzon had been an amazing friend, even though he'd gotten Aang into so many sticky situations. He had already thought Zuko was his friend, but it was nice to make it official. Aang always knew the Fire Nation had good people in it too, and now he had been proven right. He jumped up and gave Zuko a huge hug.

#Emletish answers #Emletish writes #Fic: No Zombies #Fic: Good Boy #Fic: Worst Prisoner

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sluttyten · 4 years

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hi hi 🥰 idk how these work but i really love your blog so here goes nothing, I guess??? i was wondering if you could write something about Johnny with numbers 19 and 34 on that list 👀 they both ooze Johnny vibes 🤤

“Did you just look me up and down and then bite your lip? ‘Cause if you did we’re having sex. Right now.” + (there is no 34, so I did 33.) “Isn’t this considered public indecency? We could get arrested!” + johnny

It didn’t matter that you were out at a company dinner, the CEO sitting just a few feet away from you. Johnny Suh, the head of the marketing department, was sitting beside you and being incredibly flirtatious throughout the evening. Not just with you, though. It seemed being flirtatious was just a part of his personality. But mostly, he flirted with you, or he was at least flirting most intensely with you.

He didn’t touch the others when he talked to them, but only a few minutes into the dinner, he would touch your arm lightly as he spoke to you. Each time he withdrew from you, your body longed for the feel of his warm hands on you again, which he fulfilled again and again only to pull them away too quickly.

And when he spoke to you, he held such intense direct eye contact as he smiled in a tender and bright way. Every time he did that you felt like you were burning up from the inside out.

Everything about Johnny was incendiary, and as he looked at you, the world around you both burst into flames and you were quickly reaching your melting point.

This was meant to be a sort of meeting as well as just a dinner for your CEO to express his gratitude for an extraordinarily good quarter. But, to be frank, you’d not heard a single thing that was said after the appetizers were served because that was when Johnny had reached his arm around the back of your chair. The movement was casual as he leaned back in his seat, put his arm behind your shoulders, spread his legs like he was just getting comfortable. But his thumb traced distracting circles on the back of your shoulder until your mind was fuzzy and it took all your focus to just be able to lift the fork to your mouth and chew, although you didn’t taste it one bit.

You felt like a hot mess with him touching you like that, all simple and casual. Yet there was some level of intimacy to it. A hidden touch, small and soft.

Your gaze slid over to him, and Johnny smiled at you, his thumb suddenly moving in a soothing arc now. “Is that good?” Johnny asked.

Admittedly it took you a moment to realize that Johnny meant the food you were supposed to be enjoying, not the way he was touching you. So you nodded your head dumbly for a second, then answered aloud, “It’s wonderful.”

That seemed a good enough answer for Johnny, who then withdrew his arm from the back of your chair to sit forward and finally begin eating his own appetizer.

Your shoulder tingled where he’d been touching you. You took a moment to collect yourself, breathing in through your nose, out through your mouth. You pushed away the lustful thoughts invading your mind, half dreamy fantasies, half reality. Because this wasn’t the first time things had been like this with Johnny.

When you first began working at this company, you and Johnny were both nobodies. Just employees in a company that was quickly growing and rising in the world of business. You’d started at the same time, and although you were in different departments, back then the whole office was just one small floor of a rented building. With limited space, you and Johnny were relegated to a corner by yourselves, and a friendship quickly grew.

He was handsome and kind, smart and generous with helping you solve any issues that came up. He was funny and flirty and creative, always stunning you with the elaborate marketing strategies he care up with. That was probably why he was promoted rather quickly, just a few months in.

The company was expanding, moving to a larger office a few blocks away. There was going to be more room for each department to actually have their own designated area, so no more of you and Johnny hanging out together in your corner. He had his own desk in his own section of the new building, more responsibilities, less time to hang out with you. Even outside of work, when you’d often celebrated Friday nights by drinking together with a few other coworkers, now Johnny had to stay later, so he began arriving late to these after-work celebrations until he slowly began showing up later and later, and then not at all.

Around the one-year mark of you both being with the company, there was a surge and the company’s value grew exponentially and then continued to steadily rise for weeks. A party was planned by your CEO, his smile wide on his face, drunk on happiness and a newfound wealth, so he invited everyone out.

Johnny was always flirty, so when he approached you that night at the club where you were all celebrating, you didn’t let yourself get your hopes up. He usually would smile and say cheeky things to you, but then as soon as the next pretty woman walked by, he would turn his attention on her, leveling it up if she seemed interested. But that night he didn’t do that. All of his attention was solely on you.

All dark eyes, warm smiles, the smell of his cologne going to your head and bringing you in. You hadn’t had much to drink really, and you weren’t sure how deep in Johnny was, but he held a drink in his hand. So you were plenty sober as you leaned into him, letting Johnny slide an arm around your waist.

In the dim lighting of the club, everything illuminated only occasionally by a strobe of bright white, but otherwise only beams of colored lights swooped around the room, and among it all you stood close enough to Johnny that you could make sense of every feature of his face even when the club was at its darkest. But then there would be a stroke of violet light over his cheek, bringing out the shadowy curve of his mouth, and you couldn’t help stroking his cheek in the same path as the light, thumbing along the outline of his bottom lip.

Feeling the confident and flirtatious Johnny Suh relax into your touch, hearing him sharply inhale, that was quite a headspinning thing. To catch him off guard was a feat.

You’d felt his breath on your lips, his hand on your back slipping beneath your shirt to spark flames over your skin, spreading like wildfire, the hunger for him consuming you.

You wanted to hold him there against you, drag him into a dark corner of the club to have him positively ravish you. You wanted also to drag him out to dance, feel him pressed hot and sweaty and hard against you in the press of all the people. You wanted simply to give yourself over to him, because as he caressed your hip, you knew that Johnny would treat you right. You wanted simply to kiss him.

And in the end, you got none of that.

“Johnny!” Someone called as they swung by, their hand smacking his arm.

Just like that, the spell was broken, your wildfire extinguished as the hand on Johnny’s arm tightened and yanked him away, lost into the crowd within a second.

After that, things were back to normal when you bumped into Johnny in the elevator or when you bother happened to be grabbing coffee from the vendor in the building’s lobby. He was all warm smiles and loud laughter, but he didn’t mention what had almost happened at the club, and neither did you.

Things were perfectly normal for ages until you received your promotion to head of your department. Late nights meant that now you weren’t able to make it to those Friday night after-work celebrations, it meant instead that you sat in your new office and looked out the window at the city and at the screen of your computer and you wished that when you finished your work you wouldn’t be going home to an empty apartment with leftovers in the fridge and a short shower, then a brief night in a lonely bed.

It took Johnny three weeks to come congratulate you.

The sky outside was fading from the warm, deep blue that preludes sunset to the soft pink and vibrant orange and marigold of sunset in its fullness when Johnny knocked on the door of your office and peered inside.

“Johnny!” You leaned back in your chair and smiled up at him. “How do I look?”

“Like royalty over here in your private office.” His grin started a flutter in your belly, but you pushed that down. “I guess, uh, congratulations. Now we’re both where we used to dream of. Both department heads with our own offices. Feels like forever since we were just sharing that tiny corner desk.”

Those were simpler days. Happier days when you had his attention for hours at a time.

“You can come inside. You don’t have to stand out there.” You gesture to a second chair you have sitting adjacent to yours. “Unless you’re busy.”

Johnny shakes his head. “I’m not. But, aren’t you? I don’t want to interrupt and force you to stay later than you have to.”

“It was nothing much. You’re much more important,” you say. “Please? I feel like we haven’t talked in forever.”

So Johnny comes in and he sits and talks and flirts and laughs. When you break off mid-sentence to groan and kick off your shoes, complaining that they’ve been pinching your toes for hours, Johnny utterly surprises you by reaching down to take hold of your ankle, drawing your foot up into his lap.

“Is this okay?” He asks, his thumb drawing a line down the sole of your foot that has you twitching in his grasp. “Ticklish?”

“A little,” you admit. “But if you’re offering a foot massage, Suh, I’m not going to turn it down.”

And Johnny just smiles and gets to work massaging your sore foot.

It’s a strange feeling that. Having him sitting in your office, the atmosphere so comfortable and casual despite the long months of you barely seeing or speaking to each other. Having him massaging your foot and watching you as you talk, his gaze intent on your face until finally you drop your foot back to the floor as his hand has started wandering up your ankle to your calf muscle.

“Sorry,” Johnny murmurs. When he drops his head and looks down at his hands in his lap, you think that’s probably the first time you’ve seen him embarrassed.

You reach out, touch his knee lightly and say, “It’s okay. I should probably just finish this so I can get home. I was starting to feel too relaxed, you know?” You laugh and turn back to your computer. It takes all of two seconds of you staring at the screen to realize that you’re as done for the evening as you’re going to be. You were at a stopping point on what you were doing, which doesn’t even have to be done tonight, and also now that you’ve had Johnny so close and touching you, you find you can’t concentrate anyway.

“Actually. I think I’d better just head home.” You tell him as you save your work and push back from your desk.

Johnny looks up from where he was flexing his fingers in his lap. “Do you want me to walk you down? It’s already dark out.” He nods past you at the window where the city lights glow from every window and the moon is just a visible sliver between the clouds.

“Would you?” You slip your shoes back onto your feet, grab your jacket and your bag, and then you’re ready to go.

Johnny holds a respectable distance from you as you walk toward the elevator, almost as if he’s aware of the space between you and must maintain at least a seven inch distance at all times. He lets you step into the elevator first and then he follows and, after pressing the button to take you down to the parking garage, he plants himself on the opposite side of the elevator from you. He folds his arms over his chest and looks down at the floor.

You don’t like this new silence. The way he seems to be thinking too much about something. So you say, “You know, you could be a real masseuse with skills like that. My feet don’t even hurt anymore. Almost put me to sleep though and I could’ve gotten for trouble sleeping on the job. I’d rate you 9 stars out of 10 on Yelp.”

That gets a laugh out of him. “I’m pretty sure that Yelp is a five star system, but I’ll take a 9 out of 10.” He looks at you then from beneath his eyelashes. “I was actually wondering—“

What Johnny was wondering, you don’t get to find out. The elevator comes to a halt, dings, and then the doors open onto the third floor of the building, but there’s no one waiting there, and in the few seconds it takes for the doors to close again, no one reappears, and whatever Johnny wanted to ask you must have exited on that floor because he goes quiet again.

The next time the doors open, you see the parking garage in front of you, all it’s dark corners and drippy walls, the orange fluorescent lights that sometimes flicker in a way that haunts your nightmares. But with Johnny walking beside you, it doesn’t feel as gruesome and creepy as normal. His presence at your side is comforting, making you feel safe.

Somewhere in the parking garage, tires squeal on the floor, and you shudder at the sound.

“Are you cold?” Johnny asks.

In the very next instant you could easily answer him that you don’t know the meaning of cold. His arm goes around your shoulders, tucking you against his side. Your body floods with heat. His familiar scent of cologne surrounds you, his hand moves up and down your arm as if to warm you, and although it definitely is a bit nippy in this damp parking garage on an early winter night, it’s by no means that cold.

But you can’t dream of complaining.

Johnny walks you to your car like that. He doesn’t say a thing when you slip your arm around his waist, hugging yourself against him as if you truly are cold, and not as if you just want to feel him like that. When you look up at his face you see that he is smiling, a half-smile like he’s trying not to let it show.

And when you reach your car and have to sadly detach yourself from him side, you fumble with you keys for a second before finally unlocking your car and swinging the door open. But you don’t get inside just yet. You stand there, turned to face Johnny who rests his arm on the door to hold it open for you.

“I’ve missed you, Johnny,” you admit then. “I miss talking to you like we used to. Hanging out together, getting drinks on Friday nights.”

Johnny clears his throat, and for the first time that you can remember, he breaks eye contact first. He glances around the garage as he says, “I’ve missed that too. The guys in my department aren’t as much fun as you. And the women get offended when I flirt, like they think I’m serious. You know I’m never serious with anyone.” His eyes return to meet yours, and the way he looks at you makes you feel like there’s something else unspoken.

You bite at your bottom lip, tearing at a piece of skin with your teeth.

Johnny sighs and gingerly touches his thumb below your lip, dragging down slightly until you release your lip. “That’s such a bad habit of yours. Biting your lip like that.”

“I know.” You feel magnetized with his eyes still on yours, his skin against yours in even such a tiny way.

Maybe you imagine things in the shakiness of the fluorescent lighting. Maybe Johnny doesn’t start to lean toward you. Maybe he doesn’t lick his lips and hungrily lower his gaze to yours. Maybe Johnny was going to kiss you.

But a distant bang of a door has you both jolting apart.

“Uhh, it’s getting late.” You fall down into the seat of your car. “I should probably head home. I’ll see you tomorrow. Or, well, on Monday.”

Johnny nods. “Right. See you Monday.”

And you did see him on Monday, getting coffee at the same time in the lobby, and you took a few handfuls of minutes to talk over your coffee and then you had to actually get to work. And for several Monday’s after that, that’s how things went. That night in the parking garage went unspoken, but every time you thought about it you felt doused in gasoline, and just one spark of the memory set your whole body alight.

It didn’t help either that even though Johnny had only been in your office once, the space seemed to still smell like his cologne. A month later and it still smelled like him.

Coffee Mondays became your favorite day of the week. The way Johnny looked at you over coffee sometimes had your head spinning until noon, trying to decipher if you were just reading your own emotions reflecting off of him, or if Johnny was genuinely looking at you with affection and desire in his eyes.

Which brings you back to the present, sitting there at the dinner.

The waiter comes to take away your appetizer plate, bringing you your entree instead. Johnny’s deep in conversation with the man on his other side, and you’ve just started to eat when you feel Johnny’s knee bump against yours under the table. At first you think it’s nothing, but then he does it again. And then his ankle and foot press against yours.

He lifts his glass of wine, takes a sip as he’s nodding at the man, and then he turns to you. He raises an eyebrow at you as if you are the one touching him, and he draws his leg away. You must frown slightly because Johnny smiles.

“What?” He asks, and then his knee nudges yours again.

“What are you doing? Do you have restless legs?” You take a bite of your dinner.

Johnny smiles teasingly. “I’m not doing anything.”

At that moment, your CEO calls Johnny’s name. His head whips around so fast, the teasing smile drops, and Johnny is the picture of perfection and serious attention. “Yes, sir?”

A few minutes pass and you finish your meal as the meeting goes on around you. Your department isn’t truly crucial to the topic of the meeting, and you weren’t going to complain about a free meal at a nice restaurant. So you clear your plate, the waiter takes it away, and he refills your wine glass for you.

When dessert arrives with more refills of the wine glasses, people begin leaving their seats at the table, moving around the private room to chat with others, to go out for a smoke or to use the toilet, to kiss the CEO’s ass, etcetera. You��re still sitting in your seat, enjoying your wine while the Head of Sales leans against the table beside you and chats, grinning down at you, bragging on himself in a way that’s not at all attractive.

“Hey.” Johnny drapes his arm around the back of your chair again, staring up at the other man. “How’s your wife? How far along is she now?”

“She’s fine. Four months.” The Head of Sales buries himself in his glass, and a second later, turns and walks away.

Johnny clears his throat and taps his fingers on your shoulder. “That guy is a skeeze. His wife is pregnant and he’s flirting with any woman he sets his eyes on.”

You take a sip from your wine and look at Johnny, raising your eyebrows. “And what about you? You flirt with any woman you set your eyes on.”

“I haven’t gotten anyone pregnant, and I’m not married.” He tells you. “Plus, I usually don’t mean it.”

“Well, how is anyone supposed to know if you mean it or not?” You swirl the wine around your glass, watching the way that the wine moves. “Like, if you’re constantly flirting, how is the person who you’re genuinely flirting with supposed to know that you’re for real?”

Johnny’s arm slides from around your shoulders, and then he touches your knee and says your name. “Don’t you know?”

You sit the glass down as your hand is shaking from sudden nerves, and you look over at him to see him smiling. You groan, “Johnny, don’t mess around with me.”

The smile drops from his face, and his brows run together. “I’m not.”

“Johnny.” Your voice shakes slightly. If he’s being dead fucking serious, if those previous times hadn’t just been your imagination.... You don’t know what to do with yourself. You look away from his eyes, letting your gaze trail down to his perfect lips, stained a little by his wine. You look lower, down to the collar of his shirt which is unbuttoned just one or two buttons too far, and from there your gaze just slides lower. His legs are still spread wide, and you can see a bit of a bulge between his legs. Quickly, you look back up to his eyes.

Johnny’s looking at you too.

For a moment it’s silent, and then, he says, “Did you just look me up and down and then bite your lip?” Suddenly you realize that, yes, you are biting your lip. You release it, though remembering the last time Johnny confronted you about that habit, you consider biting it again to see if things can go like the last time. Johnny squeezes his hand on your knee. “‘Cause if you did we’re having sex. Right now.”

A hot surge flashes through you.

“Johnny.” You whine his name, looking around the table to see if anyone’s listening.

“Yeah?” He squeezes your knee again before pulling away, sitting back to look at you. “Please tell me that I haven’t ruined everything. Tell me I haven’t been reading everything wrong between us.”

“I think I’m not feeling well enough to stay. Maybe too much to drink.” You push back from the table. You sway on your feet, but it’s not from the wine, rather from the way that Johnny’s still looking at you, the things he’s just been saying. He reaches a hand out to steady you, and you clasp it. “Johnny, do you think you could walk me to my car?”

He nods. “Of course.”

He helps you over to the CEO where you both make your apologies for leaving early, using the excuse that you’ve had too much to drink and Johnny’s just going to make sure you get home safe.

Your unsteadiness at least helps along that perception that Johnny’s helping you, and if any of your coworkers notice the pair of you leaving early, you hope they think it’s just that. You don’t want any rumors swirling about you and Johnny, no matter if they are true.

“I don’t think you should drive home.” Johnny says, and as you step outside the restaurant, he drapes your coat over your shoulders, looping his arm around your waist as he leads you across the parking lot. He fumbles with your car keys which he’d fished out of your pocket, and he says, “I didn’t think you drank that much?”

“I didn’t.” You slip your arms around Johnny’s waist. “But nobody inside knows that.”

Johnny swears under his breath. “Are you serious? But what was that whole thing about you not feeling well, needing to leave? I thought you wanted to end that awkward situation?”

“No.” You shake your head. “I wanted out of there and it was because of what you said, but I swear, you didn’t ruin anything.” You look him in the eyes, drop your gaze in that familiar trail to his lips, his gaping collar, down to the front of his pants, then back up to his eyes.

“Fuck.” Johnny groans.

He slides his hand behind your head. You twist your fingers in his coat. You both drag at each other, and when Johnny’s mouth crashes against yours, you moan, clutching him tighter. Johnny leans you back against the side of your car, and he presses up against you, hard against your hip as he deepens the kiss. You try to pull him closer, but there’s no way he can get closer, so you hungrily kiss him, feeling yourself getting hotter and hotter.

Johnny slows the kiss, laughing when you whine and keep trying to kiss him.

You slide your hand down his coat to cup his bulge.

“Isn’t this considered public indecency?” Johnny sighs when you start kissing his throat as well as palming his dick. “We could get arrested!”

“Then we could get in the car.” You suggest. “And wasn’t it your idea for us to have sex right now?”

Johnny steps back, and the tone of his voice when he tells you, “Get in the car then,” you immediately do as he says.

You slide across the back seat, quickly undoing your pants, kicking them off onto the floor as Johnny fills in the rest of the back seat and shuts the door behind him. You climb into his lap, sinking down over him and holding him by the collar.

“Pretty sure this still isn’t wholly legal,” Johnny says.

“That’s okay, we won’t be caught.” You draw his mouth to yours again.

There are so many times that you’d imagined doing this. Nights alone where your fantasies drifted towards Johnny, the broad expanse of his chest, his thighs and hands, his lovely lips. You’d dreamt of having him in every way.

Johnny’s erection grows beneath you, his tongue in your mouth, his hands sliding up and down your thighs, with each pass rising higher until his fingertips brush the edge of your lacy panties, and the next time they dip inside.

You moan and push back against his hands. Your fingers work quickly down the buttons of his shirt, and then you push the fabric away, getting your hands on his hot skin, your thumbs brush over his nipples. Johnny grunts, lifting his hips to grind between your legs.

“Do you like that?” You tease. You run your thumbs over his nipples again. Johnny opens his eyes slowly to look at you, and his gaze is so dark and heavy. You fall back onto his thighs, bite your lip and look at him, waiting.

With his hands still on your ass, Johnny pulls you forward again until your knees hit the seat and you’re settled right on his bulge once more. “I want you here.”

You swallow, reach back to take one of his hands, and you bring it forward between your legs as you rise up a little on your knees, giving just enough space that Johnny’s fingers slide over your panties to where you’ve made your panties damp. “And I want you here.”

“You’re going to be the end of me, I swear it.” Johnny groans. “I’ve wanted you so badly from day one, having you here like this finally, fuck.”

“Exactly. I’m here. Fuck me.” You slide his hand over you again, letting out a soft barely-there whimper. “I’m tired of all this flirting, just fuck me, make this real.”

Johnny kisses you again, moving you backwards until your shoulders have slipped between the front seats, pressing you down so your back lays against the center console. It’s a tight fit, but you do fit, and now you gaze up at Johnny breathlessly. The light spilling through the windshield half-blinds you, but you don’t need to see to feel overwhelmed as Johnny’s fingers skim over your thighs and your hips, over your belly, up under your shirt for a second before coming back out to take hold of your shirt.

“Can I take it off?” He asks, and at your nod, he pulls it up over your head, dropping it into the passenger seat.

You feel cold and exposed stretched out fully visible in the front seat like that, wearing only your bra and panties, all your skin exposed to the parking lot lights and any eyes that might happen to glance through your car window. But with Johnny looking at you as he is, you feel fire racing under your skin, unable to look away from him as he lowers his head to your belly and kisses, trailing those kisses lower and lower, over your panties until you feel his hot breath against your pussy through your panties.

“Johnny,” you gasp his name, drag your fingers against your car seats.

He smirks, kissing your thighs, and then sits up, drags your panties down in one swift move, casting them into the shadow of the back seat. It is a tight squeeze as he bends down again to lick at you, but with his hands under your hips, Johnny lifts you up to his face.

You’re not sure what to do with your hands when Johnny first licks over your bare pussy. You want to bury them in his hair, to hold his hands, to touch yourself too, to do so many things. But instead you just moan for him and clench your hands into fists on the seats.

Johnny’s talented with his tongue, quickly pushing you close to the edge, humming against you as you start rocking your hips against his face.

And then he sits back, sinking into the shadows of the backseat.

“Johnny!” You gasp, groaning as you attempt to pull yourself up from where he’s got you. “I was getting close, why’d you stop?”

“Patience.” Johnny chastises you. And then you realize that he’s unfastening his pants, getting his dick out. “I don’t think I’ll last seeing you cum, and the last thing I want is to cum in my pants the first time I’m with you. Or even when I’m with you. Like, ideally I could cum in you or on you.”

You whine, sinking back down onto your back, spreading your legs as much as you can in the space. “You’re talking too much. Fuck me, please.”

Johnny complies quickly, yanking on your hips a bit roughly, to your pleasure, and then he moves forward. His dick presses against your entrance, his thumb strokes your thigh, and Johnny tells you, “Relax.”

You are relaxed. He’s just got a big cock, you realize as you look down at him, seeing the full length and girth of it, about to enter you. A strange thrill and nervousness pass through you, but you want him. You still want him so much, and you reach for him. Johnny offers you a hand and you pull it up toward your chest.

“Relax,” he tells you again, lifting his hand up to drag just beneath where your teeth have your bottom lip held captive again. You stick your bottom lip out, and Johnny runs his thumb over it, getting the pad of his thumb wet, and he moves his hand back down to your chest, carefully moving your bra down to reveal one of your breasts, and he runs his wet thumb around your nipple until it;s so hard beneath his attention.

Your pussy throbs with need and you shift your hips, hoping to entice him inside now.

It works.

Johnny pushes in slowly.

You gasp, groaning, “Oh, fuck. You-- Johnny!”

He laughs and curls his hand over your mouth. “Your car isn’t soundproof. Shush. Before someone hears and comes to see us.”

But it’s hard to keep quiet when he keeps doing these little shallow thrusts, slowly getting in deeper and deeper, stretching you open around his cock. When at last he bottoms out, you feel tears leaking from the corners of your eyes. You’re so full and it feels so good, all you can do is moan and cling to Johnny’s wrist. Your eyes roll back, tears leaking from them.

Johnny watches you raptly, unable to pull his eyes away from you even when headlights flash through the windshield, full on his face. He just lowers himself over you as best as he can, and when that really doesn’t work well, Johnny takes hold of your hips.

You whimper, thinking he’s about to pull out of you entirely as he starts to move back. But instead he pulls you with him, getting you to sit up between the seats, then drawing you back into the shadow of the backseat again. You thank God that your windows are tinted in the back enough that it’s so dark back there that no one who might walk by can see.

And as Johnny settles into the backseat, he holds you on his lap, his cock still inside you, and then he pulls you back down on him fully.

You bury your face in his shoulder and cry out in pleasure.

“Good, baby?” Johnny holds you like that for a second, his cock as deep inside you as you can take him, and you just make sexy little noises against his shoulder, breathing as you adjust to having him like this. You nod and moan, brushing kisses to his throat. “Should I move again?”

When you make a noise to let him know yes he can start moving, Johnny starts helping you move with his hands on your hips. He lifts you up and lets you fall back down.

“You’re so tight around me. I really don’t think I’m going to be able to last long, I’m sorry, baby.” He kisses your cheek, the side of your head, and then your lips.

“Me neither,” you manage to say. “I’ve never... never felt like this before. Oh my fuck.”

Johnny smiles when he kisses you this time, getting you to open up so he can kiss you deeper.

And that’s when you finally get some feeling back in your legs, enough strength that you can lift yourself up, drop back down, pull up until just his tip is inside you and then fall back to take him fully inside you once again.

Johnny moans, and his cock throbs deep inside you, and you work harder to fuck yourself on him, each thrust getting easier to fit him in, but harder on your thighs, and you swear you can feel the car moving as you’re bouncing on him, but when you start to say something about that to Johnny, he just kisses you.

And as your orgasm rises within you once again, you cling to Johnny’s shoulders, taking him deep and just riding him slowly, your walls hugging his cock.

Johnny’s arms wrap around your waist, holding you tight against his chest, and he moans in your ear, “I can feel your heartbeat. Are you close?”

You nod, feeling your pussy throbbing, your orgasm so close.

Johnny loosens one arm from around you, slips his hand down between your bodies. The touch of his fingers against your clit is an electric jolt, shooting through your body, and just like that you cum around him, collapsing fully onto his cock, burying your face in his chest, and your fingers dive into his hair, tugging lightly.

Just the one tug on his hair as your pussy squeezes around him, and Johnny cums too, filling your belly with a new fire that swallows the old one. He grips your hip with one hand, getting you to move on him just a bit more, milking his cock for all he’s got, and then you sink down once more, both of you just basking in the aftermath of your orgasms.

In the hot silence afterwards, filled only with pounding heartbeats and heaving breaths, you can hear the sounds of the parking lot outside filtering in again. Voices calling, cars passing by on the road, the beep as someone unlocks their car. But you stay just like that, held by Johnny as he goes soft inside you until your heartbeat has steadied and it begins to become uncomfortable to still have him inside you.

But you don’t really want to move, eventually it must happen though, so you do lift up off of him. Johnny’s dick falls against his belly, wet and coated with his own cum and your wetness, and as you settle on his lap, some of his cum drips out of your onto your seat.

Johnny strokes your hip. “Sorry. I’ll clean your car, or pay to get it cleaned, whichever you prefer. I probably shouldn’t have cum inside you, but it just seemed, I don’t know. Romantic.” He smiles softly at you.

“Car sex.” You sigh, raking your fingers through Johnny’s hair. “It’s not very romantic.”

He laughs and kisses your shoulder. “I can make it up to you. Are you good to drive home now? For real?”

You nod. “I’m just fine. Are you suggesting I take you home with me, Johnny Suh?”

Johnny drops a few more kisses on your shoulders. “Yes. I’ll pay my fare with romantic sex, foot rubs, and giving this Uber a very good rating. Great ride.”

You laugh and push at his shoulder, which has him laughing too. You climb off him, fish around in the darkness of the floor for your panties, and then you pull them back on, grab your shirt and pants to tug them back on, then slip into the front seat.

requests are closed, I’m just finishing up the rest of these in my inbox. for the other drabbles, you can find them here

#johnny smut #johnny drabbles #nct smut #nct drabbles #nct127 smut #asks

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jafreitag · 3 years

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Grateful Dead Monthly: Gaelic Park – New York, NY 8/26/71

Fifty years ago today, on Thursday, August 26, 1971, the Grateful Dead played a concert at Gaelic Park in New York City.

Gaelic Park is located at West 240th Street and Broadway, five miles north and east of Yankee Stadium, in the Bronx. In 1926, the Gaelic Athletic Association purchased it to host the Gaelic Games. What are Gaelic Games? I’m a sliver Irish (just learned that a few years ago from a cousin who did some DNA stuff), but I didn’t know about such games until I asked the Google machine. Here you go, from the Wiki:

“Gaelic games (Irish: Cluichí Gaelacha) are sports played in Ireland under the auspices of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA). They include Gaelic football, hurling, Gaelic handball and rounders. Women’s versions of hurling and football are also played: camogie, organised by the Camogie Association of Ireland, and ladies’ Gaelic football, organised by the Ladies’ Gaelic Football Association. While women’s versions are not organised by the GAA (with the exception of handball, where men’s and women’s handball competitions are both organised by the GAA Handball organisation), they are closely associated with it.”

Some to unpack there. What’s Gaelic football? It’s basically rugby. (The rules are probably way different, but this is a music blog, so don’t judge.) And hurling? Rugby with a small ball and sticks that look like sporty pizza paddles. (Again, don’t judge.) Gaelic handball? Racquetball, except you use your hands and you’re outside, not in some bougie health club from the ’80s. Finally, rounders? It’s actually alot like baseball. Pretty cool.

Why were the Dead there? A 9/2/71 piece in the Village Voice by Carman Moore, now archived on the Grateful Dead Sources blog, said that Gotham promoter Howard Stein, a Bill Graham competitor who booked the Dead to play at the Cap Theater in Port Chester, NY and the Academy of Music in NYC, had turned “the drab little Riverdale soccer field … into a summer rock mini-festival.” (Check out the poster above.) Moore’s writing has an early-70s sizzle, and he refers to his colleague, now-legendary rock scribe Robert Christgau. Here’s an excerpt:

“Last week’s Grateful Dead concert up at Gaelic Park was a usual Dead session, meaning that the band-to-fan-to-band electro-chemical process for which rock music is famed was on like high mass at Easter. Although I think I know most of the time what they are doing musically (Christgau will like this notion); I don’t quite understand them electro-chemically. Like the New York Knicks of two seasons ago, they can do excellent things together though they are not a group of deathless superstars. Garcia gets his songs across, but he can’t sing, and Bob Weir’s voice rises to about average…maybe better when he gets to screaming and the music sweeps him along. I still find it difficult to recognize the Dead songs that aren’t “Truckin'” or “St. Stephen” one from the other. I am not one of their fans, but seem to be one of their admirers. Their music speaks in a special language to their live listeners, and that language has the vocabulary of everybody else, but a convoluted syntax all its own. The note sequences are not completely dependent upon musical factors but are also dictated by how involved the band feels and also upon what kind of heat the audience is giving off. I’m trying to get to some essences of this thing.

The drama of a Dead concert revolves around the fact that wherever the band plays they know that a certain number (several tons) of their partisans will be there and that their crowd knows the Dead potential to excite them, but they also know that the Dead may not get into gear until the crowd begins to apply some heat, and so forth. Both parties also know that the concert will be long enough and informal enough for anything to happen on either side of the footlights, and so audiences improvise (smoke, go to the hot dog stand, kiss and snuggle, cheer, dance, listen like star-struck fools) just like their musician friends on stage (who play light and funny for awhile, retire backstage awhile, stand around, or get lost in a piece and turn on the heavy jets). Like good lovers, the Grateful Dead know the secrets of good foreplay, taking your time, surprising the partner for awhile, and then just reacting for a spell.”

The timing of the show seems odd. The band was on the East Coast in July, but began August back in Cali – LA, SD, Berkeley – before a three-night run at Chicago’s historic Auditorium Theater. Then they trekked back to NYC. Our resident Deaditor ECM explains that aspect: “This show was supposed to be played the day before the Yale Bowl concert on July 30, but some issues with the equipment trucks and/or weather prevented it from happening from the scheduled date. There are a few stories on the web about people who didn’t get the message (no twitter back then!) and dropped some acid only to show up to an empty stadium. Haha!”

Moore said that the show reminded him of “a high school stadium I used to know – low stands, unfulfilled infield grass, mud holes here and there, beer sold at one end in some quantity.” He continued:

“The formal shape of the concert was a general crescendo, light at the beginning and heavy-groovy at the end – not a shooting-star, call-the-law finale, just a heightened physical-emotional climate…the goods delivered as promised…sort of like good preaching in a church known to be a happy place. I did not enjoy their country-westernish opening tunes; maybe they didn’t either, because the pieces were awfully short. But by the three-quarter mark they had involved themselves, the crowd, and me too.

First they got the rhythm engaged and finally, courtesy of Jerry Garcia’s lead and interplays with Lesh and Weir, they went into the soloing and jamming which are the real magic music territory of this band. Much is made of the Dead soloists, but it became clear to me by last Thursday that bassist Phil Lesh plus those two drummers create the atmosphere that makes the Dead thing possible. The drummers were exceptionally understated, but Lesh kept bopping and thrumming away, heavily at all times, until his patterns were consistently getting the other players off. In the middle of “St. Stephen” there was a special coming together: Lesh had found a nice ambiguous but compelling set of licks; Garcia eased into a solo; Weir strummed a cross-time lick over all of it; it built; it quieted; Garcia started to play strange classical kind of lines; the drums dropped out; the audience got quiet; nothing at all could be predicted for a minute or so; then Lesh began to grope his way out with two chords and rhythms which began to regularize; audience began to jump and then to clap; guitars began to straighten out; the band came home to the cheers of the fans. Good music-making. The listener goes home without a little tune to whistle, but he hears music. As if they were finishing off some personal solos based over the last riffs heard, the fans went out of Gaelic Park without a thousand encores and without a lot of fuss on the streets outside.

It’s all very interesting, surprising, and I guess mystifying as before. All I know is that the Dead, or their fans, or the combination of both lure you into planning to return when they’re all assembled and back in town again.”

Apparently, there was some grief about bootlegs at this show. The GD Sources blog has a post that archives a 10/6/71 piece by the excellently-handled Basho Katzenjammer (Basho, the 17th Century Japanese haiku master; Katzenjammer, the German word for hangover) that gripes about an army of 200# “muscle freaks” at the direction of tour manager Sam Cutler liberating a handful of tapes from 100# weakling Johnny Lee. It’s a truly fun read. An excerpt:

“The biggest piece of shit spewing from Cutler’s mouth is about the reasons the Dead have for being so pissed off: they don’t like the quality (remember Garcia’s line in “I Got No Chance of Losin”? He says, “I’m only in it for the gold.” Yeah, music has a way of being more honest than the artist intends it to be at times…) The “quality”? Anyone who has bought a bootleg recently will know and agree that the bootleg stereo album called “Grateful Dead” is one of the best underground products yet. The tape was taken from a concert the group did at Winterland, on the coast a few months back. Yeah, Garcia fucks up a bit on “Casey Jones,” and Pigpen’s ego may have been deflated a bit by his voice coming over poorly on “Good Loving” but that was a concert. You do a concert and you stand by your performance, good or bad. That’s show business.

This effete artistic bullshit doesn’t matter anyway … When you’re out to get all the money you can out of your gigs, like the Dead seem to be (like all the groups seem to be) you might be accused of being a bit piggish; when you use strong-arm shit to insure that you get every last penny that you deserve — by making Amerikan standards — you are a Pig. Jerry Garcia, is that you?

Nobody buys that anti-bootleg shit about the artistic integrity of the artist in saying what goes out. One, you stand by your performance; two, even if you don’t want to, Jerry, somewhat, and say “all your private property is fair game for your brothers (especially when they sell records of concerts that don’t compete with coming releases) and your brother (who’s gonna continue to dig you as we live off your comets we’re gonna keep ripping you off because it is possible. As simple as that.” If you and Cutler and Stein continue your shit, though, we’ll just have to sing the song the same old way, you guys being put in the position of being the same old reactionary establishment that we’re all ripping off. It’s all around. You break your back playing gigs for ten years and suddenly success is staring you in the face. Bread: lots and lots of bread. You turn your back on your poor, ripping ’em off roots and start to tighten up. You’re in the biggest rip-off industry around, but no one cares as long as they’re having fun.

Money. That’s the whole story, isn’t it? If these were other times, in another land under a different set of rules maybe you could justifiably complain about the people who want to give your recorded performances out free because you didn’t screen them and pick out the sections you didn’t like and do them over for the cat, ’cause no one charges for their music, and because the means of production belong to the people, and they can turn out all the good sounds they can, and you have a natural right to screen all releases. But we’re here. Now. You guys are making millions — or soon will be. Money is power, especially as the concept of money is crumbling nation-wide and power freaks like Stein are cornering the market on it. The channels that the green-power the Dead bring in travel aren’t the healthiest for the generations of revolution to come. Stein is one of these hopeful images of a freak with a chance to change things positively gone sour, who uses all his power to consolidate his power; who’ll go to any extremes to insure the natural expansion of that power. Fuck him. Fuck you.”

Speak, Basho! Quaint that the beef about bootlegs back then was sound quality, rather than copyright. Stuff got figured out at some point, I think. Like when Bobby shut down the LMA, lmao.

Ed featured part of this show in the 2016 edition of his epcot 31 Days of Dead project. Here are his listening notes, which are typically spot-on (and better than than the not-quite-on-the-bus commentary from Mr. Moore):

“Less than three weeks after Pigpen’s definitive performance of Hard To Handle at the Hollywood Palladium (8/6/71), the Grateful Dead play the final date of their summer tour in 1971 at Gaelic Park in the Bronx. It will be Pig’s last show until December and the last time the band will ever perform in their original quintet configuration of Jerry, Phil, Pig, Billy and Bobby. By September, Keith will be rehearsing with the band to assume a full-time role on the keys. Perhaps anticipating his absence, Pigpen leads the band through 6 of his songs including the rarely-played Empty Pages and the last Hard To Handle. It is also one of the last performances of Saint Stephen, until the band revived it in 1976 with a major facelift, never to be played the same way again. When you consider these historical milestones along with the departure of Mickey Hart and the closings of the legendary Fillmore East and West earlier in the year it makes you realize that this concert carried a little more weight than anyone could have ever foreseen at the time. It truly was the end of a chapter in the life of the Grateful Dead. As you listen to each song you can’t help but feel a certain degree of nostalgia.

For me, the hidden gem of the show is the outstanding version of Uncle Johns Band. Jerry’s first guitar solo is an absolute joy to hear. His notes sing with irresistible melody and happy sunshine which perfectly capture the nostalgia of those carefree early years. If you listen closely you can hear Pigpen playing the wood claves.”

Speaking of Pig, this show features the second and final performance of Empty Pages. The NYS Music blog, which has a nice write-up of this show, describes it as a McKernan original that “pairs his traditional crooning style with a slow blues jam that’s nicely peppered with fiery guitar licks from Garcia. It’s a true rarity and a shame that the band wouldn’t be able to further develop this one.”

youtube

I feel like this was a try-hard post. It might be tl;dr, idk. Here’s the true goodness…

Transport to the Charlie Miller remaster of the soundboard recording HERE.

More soon.

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stevetonygames · 4 years

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Spotlight Post: Canon Soulmate Bonds

Yooo, this is a blog takeover, Mizzy here, ready to champion one of my favourite fictional causes: canonical soulbonds in the Marvel universe.

We all love a good soulbond fic. Words on your body, names on your wrist, red string of fate...so many glorious versions, and all of them *completely awesome*. The problem sometimes with starting a soulbond fic, though, can be all the worldbuilding required to make it work. But what if I was to tell you that no worldbuilding was necessary? That you could technically write a soulbond fic without having to set it in an Alternate Universe? What if you could set your soulbond fic *directly in main canon?*

Marvel 616 delivers you a canonical soulbond mechanic… not once… but at least *twice*. There could be more. There’s a lot of comics to go through and I’m only smol. But here’s the two I know about and I’m here to introduce you to today. :)

The was a ripple of mild confusion around fandom when Kevin Feige announced that the Eternals were getting a title movie in the next phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Created by Jack Kirby in the 1970s, in a wild combination of mythological fascination and spite at DC comics for not letting him finish his New Gods saga, the Eternals were an offshoot of humanity, created by the Celestials for humanity’s protection; this reason for their existence would lead them into their ongoing conflict against the deadly Deviants. There have been a few Eternals runs (notably one run by Neil Gaiman, which did not serve to bring the Eternals the commercial success Marvel was searching for with the title, that nevertheless remains the most fun and accessible Eternals volume), but they’ve not yet really reached wide-reaching traction among even the most die-hard comic fans. The MCU might change that, and here’s hoping, because I love these nearly-immortal idiots, and I’m hoping not to be alone in that for much longer. :D

But even my Eternals-happy soul has to admit, Eternals canon for the most part is dense and can be convoluted, and the spellings—both of their character names and one of the main fun parts of their existence, the Mahd W’yry—are enough to give one a headache. The idea of the Eternals is that they’re long-lived and have interacted with human history over the years in various impactful ways. You might think at first glance that you’ve never heard of the Eternals Sersi, Ikaris, Makkari, but I think you wouldn’t find Circe, Icarus, or Mercury unfamiliar names.

The Mahd W’yry is a symptom of the Eternals being so long-living. In order to stop them going insane, the Eternals have to bond into something known as the Uni-Mind, which basically squishes all their consciousnesses together into one, where they can share memories and blend temporarily into one mind. Regularly bonding into the Uni-Mind allows them to stave off the Mahd W’yry. (Yep, that’s just a headache-inducing spelling of ‘mad worry’, we know.)

Anyway, did you need to know all this? Eh, maybe, a little bit of canned backstory is always handy for you to briefly glance over and promptly forget. Because along with some dense mythological adventures, some glorious angsting across beautiful landscapes, and that ability to turn into a big massive floating brain, the Eternals also gave us a beautiful gift:

The Gann Josin.

In Avengers #361, Ikaris comes down to Earth and decides that Sersi needs to be bonded to Dane Whitman, an Avenger who canonically didn’t have any powers, he was just a *really good guy*, destined for tragedy. Honestly. That’s his bio. Really good guy. Destined for tragedy. The character creation in the 90s was peak talent. Dane, sadly, was in love with another woman, but did this matter to Ikaris? No. Apparently the Eternals don’t know about the dangers of letting himbos like Ikaris have life-changing powers, like the ability to create the Uni-Mind.

Because the power to control the Uni-Mind also gives an Eternal the power to form a Gann Josin bond. And that’s what Ikaris does in Avengers #361—he forces a Gann Josin bond on Eternal Sersi and tragic human Avenger Dane Whitman.

Gann Josin (sometimes Gan-Josin because what is spelling continuity in Marvel comics) is both the name of the bond, and the title given to an Eternal and their chosen life-mate. It has a bunch of cool side effects. Both Gann Josins get glowing full-red eyes. It’s a really intimate tiny form of the Uni-Mind (without the part where you become a big floating brain), and creates a small scale mental union. The Gann Josin bond makes the Eternal and their partner lifelong soulmates. As the bond progresses, it creates a telepathic/empathic bond that strengthens in time. According to the Eternal Sprite, humans are rarely chosen by Eternals for the Gann Josin.

Now, Dane Whitman does manage to break the Gann Josin several issues later. But… it’s not easy. It’s rare. When Dane manages it, it is called an “astounding act.” It’s pretty dang hard, in other words. There’s every chance your chosen Gann Josins won’t have the mental fortitude of Dane Whitman to break it. (Although, we’re talking about Steve and Tony, and are there any bigger stubborn idiots in the universe? Probably not.)

But Mizzy, I hear you saying. I don’t want to write about Ikaris, even if he is a party king and that sounds pretty nifty. I don’t know anything about the Eternals and I don’t want to go down that gnarly rabbit hole.

That’s totes fine, my friend. I am here to save you. Because in very recent canon, during Jason Aaron’s turn at the helm, the Eternals are all dead. Very dead. That whole Mahd W’yry thing got ‘em, it got ‘em good. But before Ikaris died, he granted his Uni-Mind power to someone we all know and love.

Yep. Tony Stark. Tony Stark currently has the power of the Uni-Mind.

Which means that Tony Stark can now Gann Josin people.

In Avengers #361, Ikaris performs the Gann Josin by basically just pointing his hands at Sersi and Dane and some light goes WHEEEEEEE!! in their direction, and bam, this rare and special bond is done. And Tony Stark can do that now. To anyone! Unfortunately Ikaris is dead and didn’t leave Tony with an instruction manual. But the point is, he *can*. You can make up all sorts of fun things with this canonical fact (or write your own version because lbr Canon Is Dead; Long Live Canon.)

There are so many possibilities. Does Tony deliberately learn how to use it so he can bond himself to Steve? Does Tony *need* to be able to hear Steve’s thoughts (to thwart some bad guys) and thus end up soulbonded forever to Steve in result? Is Tony’s power activating at random because he can’t control it, and he ends up soulbonding everyone around him? Does he just subconsciously bond himself to Steve without consciously meaning to? Do Tony or Steve want to try it for science?

Gosh, I love comics.

But WAIT. There’s MORE.

It’s not just 1990s comics going ham on the soulbond idea. No, we got some *this year*. Canonical soulbonding? TWICE? In one universe? Two different kinds??

And this time, it’s not in a D-list Marvel title. We’re up the ranks to the big leagues this time, folx, with a brief trek to the world of the Fantastic Four.

In Fantastic Four (Vol. 6) #15, we’re introduced to a Spyre citizen called Sky, a winged team member of the Unparalleled (more cosmic-powered superheroes), who work under The Overseer. (The Overseer, in a burst of beautiful retcon in the way Marvel comics keeps doing to us, is apparently the entity who is responsible for giving the F4 their powers. Huh. The more you know.)

On the planet Spyre, all children are brought before something called The Great Eye. This measures them against the radiation signature of everyone on the planet, divining who their perfect match is.

Sky looked into The Great Eye, only to find out her match was Johnny Storm, who was 44 light-years away at the time. Long-distance relationships can be tough. Anyway, plot happens, the F4 get stuck on Spyre, get told they can’t leave, and Sky tells Johnny Storm that she is his soulmate. Oh, and she attached a soul binding onto him while he slept. Neat, huh, all the bodily autonomy people get in this universe before being force soulbond to people? So neat, much consent, wow.

Johnny feels a connection to Sky, which is supposed to let us know this lack of choice is a good thing I guess. The Overseer wants Sky to renounce Johnny and crush the F4 which obv doesn’t happen, so of course she leaves The Unparalleled and skips off to Earth to be with Johnny.

Who knows how this relationship is gonna last. I mean, you can look at the rest of Johnny’s relationship history and have a good guess. Who knows. Anyway, Reed and Sue are each other's soulmate, and also share a “Soul Binding”, so there’s some canonical proof right there that maybe this system has some validity going for it.

The soulbond for this form takes the form of a golden bracelet worn on the upper arm, that Sky explains her people call a “Soul Binding”; it represents them as being soul-mates. This bracelet can only be removed by your soulmate. This soulbond doesn’t seem to come with any extra powers, it’s just to show that The Great Eye has measured their radiation signature and declared them a match that is supposed to mean they’re perfectly compatible in every way: spiritually, mentally, and physically.

I don’t know about you, but I have a pretty good feeling that Steve and Tony might just have matching radiation signatures… Or what if Steve and Tony have perfect matching signatures….with other people? (Someone else on Spyre believes Sky is *their* perfect match, after all!) What if Steve has feelings for Iron Man, but he’s a perfect match with Tony Stark? I feel faint already just thinking about it.

So here you go. Two canonical types of soulbonds for your fannish consideration. Feel free to ask me questions! You can find me on tumblr (@mizzy2k) or on discord (addy#0908).

#stevetonygames #mod post #spotlight post #soulmates

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gayenerd · 4 years

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I have literally no source for this interview, but it’s one of my favorites because Billie seems to be really honest about his songwriting here - this is when Nimrod came out

The day I met Billie Joe Armstrong he flashed me his new tattoo, a Chuck-Jones-perfect cartoon character on his right bicep. Above it was some skull or Celtic armband or something, but below was the name "Joseph," exquisitely lettered, for his firstborn child. It's that image of him that I always keep in my head, and what I think of when I hear his band, Green Day: loopy humor and face-punch riffs and sincere sentiment I tight formation, worn as close to the skin as possible, covered in sweat. From the band's first records on the local Berkeley label Lookout, 39/Smooth and Kerplunk!, through the multi-million selling Warner Brothers releases Dookie, Insomniac, and now Nimrod, Armstrong has written dozens of perfect little punk-rock ditties that are probably the most sincere and playful acts of musical aggression since that first punk wave twenty years ago.

But the songs are more than throwbacks. Armstrong writes from a very personal perspective, the perspective of someone born in the Me Decade, raised in the Me-vs.-You Decade, and trying to cope in the Yet-to-be-Stereotyped Decade. His songs are about the current crises of being alive right now, in a society that's used up and marketed all of its counter-cultures, and has little use for its youth except as consumers. The songs are also about how one reconciles anger and rebellion with love and desire to not be so down all the time. It's less political and more personal than its punk rock predecessors, an angry/crying/shouting/fucking definition of self.

It made me wonder how you can take bile directed at you and turn it into a song that gets sold at the local Sam Goody. I figured I'd ask, so I called him up at his home in Berkeley.

Q: Where do you start when writing a song?

A: Most of the time I'll come up with a melody, and I'll do lyrics, but I'll tackle them at different times and not connect the two, you know? So I'll come up with the riffs, and the melody of the song, like a short ditty. I'll put some lyrics to it and bring it to band practice and then we'll just start to pound it out. And then, as things need to be restructured, sometimes Mike [Dirnt, bassist] will have an idea for something, or Tré [Cool, drummer] will have an idea for something, or sometimes we'll just leave it alone and it's sort of already done.

Q: Have there been any particular songs that have stayed the same from the original inspiration to recording, or have they all gone through changes in the process?

A: There's a lot of them that stay the same. "Redundant" really never changed, except we made it a little longer by adding another chorus at the end. And there's this song called "All The Time" that's pretty much exactly the way I had it.

Q: So how much does a song change then, in producing the record? On Nimrod there are a lot of different arrangements: strings on "Good Riddance," horns on "King For A Day." Did you have the ragtime horns in mind when you were writing?

A: No, not at all. I actually demo'd that song and played all the instruments myself and showed it to the band and they're like, "oh, that's pretty cool." We fucked around with it and practiced it a couple of times, but we never expected it to go onto the record. Then when we got to the studio, we said whatever, we'll just put it on there. It ended up being pretty good, but the song was just screaming for horns. We got Gabe [McNair] and Steve [Bradley] and it was so funny. They said, "what do you want us to play?" And I said, 'I'm sure you'll think of something.' And they looked at me like, "aw man!" So they basically wrote all the horn parts to that song.

Q: What's more important, lyrics or the music?

A: I think lyrics are really important, because there are songs that, musically, I don't think are the greatest in the world but lyrically are amazing. I mean, Johnny Rotten never had the greatest voice in the world but he wrote really good lyrics for the first Sex Pistols record, and that goes for a lot of people. But the thing is, a lot of people tend to -- especially in pop songs -- they tend to take the music and put something sappy to it, and it's just a one-dimensional emotion that the rest of the songs has to carry. I was actually thinking about that yesterday. I went to a friend's house, and they were joking around, putting on the Spice Girls records. And it was blatantly catchy, super catchy, but at the same time it really didn't say anything. You could only hold it at face value, there was no depth behind it, you really couldn't tell anything about the people singing it. But I guess there's a need for that. People want to hear songs that don't say anything, they want to go out to a dance club and shake their booty.

Q: That's a good question, then: what makes a good song? Depth, a point of view...?

A: I guess so. I don't know. I know what I like, personally. Like, yesterday I did my top ten favorite songs or something like that.

Q: What's on there?

A: Let's see. "Surrender" by Cheap Trick. "In My Life" by the Beatles. A song called "They'll Never Call It Quits" by a band called One Man Army. Generation X, "Kiss Me Deadly." "Outsider" by the Ramones. Hüsker Dü, "Makes No Sense At All."

Q: How do you deal with writer's block?

A: I write something else, just for fun. I'm just habitual about it. If I can't come up with the song...the great song that you want to write that will leave your mark forever or something cheesy like that, I'll write a polka number if I can't come up with something.

Q: Do you put that kind of pressure on yourself? Do you say "this one's gonna be a statement?"

A: Sometimes I do. Sometimes I'll think way. I just have a really strong work ethic. I have that sort of way about all my songs that, lyrically, every single one of them has to have some subliminal thing going for it. But most people don't really get what you're talking about until 10 years after the fact anyway. That seems to be how people respect songwriters through time.

Q: Do you have a time of day or a place where you write? You say you have a work ethic, how does that manifest itself?

A: Anytime, every time. The other night I was dead tired. All I wanted to do was fall asleep, and me and [my wife] Adrienne get in bed, and we're laying there. I was just dozing off a little bit, and all of the sudden this music was popping in my head, going over and over. And I was like, aw man, I have to go downstairs to put this on my guitar and just write it down. But I don't want to. I was so tired. So finally I got up and I go, 'goddammit! I have to get this done.' Otherwise I would forget it.

Q: When you're writing, do you write with an album in mind or song by song?

A: Song by song. I can't really conceptualize that far in advance. We knew we wanted to change and bring in new elements on the new record. But we really didn't know how to do it. So I wrote, constantly, all kinds of songs. Fifty or something. And you try to find some sort of natural progression within those songs, and try to capture that on the record.

Q: So are the songs you write linked by your state of mind, or thematically?

A: Sometimes if I'll get into a depression, writer's block, where I can't write, I get really bummed out and then I'm not working at all, I'm not doing anything. And then I'll deliberately get myself down to the lowest of the low that I could possibly get down to. And then a song will pop up. And I'll be happy, I'll get ecstatic for like the next month and then all of the sudden another one will pop up.

Q: So you revel in the dark zone and it's useful.

A: Yeah...sort of...I kind of...well...definitely.

Q: But you don't necessarily choose to be there...

A: Sometimes I'll cause problems just so I can get in touch with that emotional side or whatever, you know. Just to see if something will spark up, start a fight or something (laughs).

Q: Can you name a song that has come out of something like that?

A: Umm...a song called "Worry Rock."

Q: Seems like a really personal song.

A: Yeah. I think I got drunk and put my fist through a window. Adrienne called me an asshole or something like that and, I don't know. We just got into some meaningless fight like most couples get into, those fights that don't make any sense. A fight for the sake of fighting, which can be destructive to your relationship. That's how that song came about.

Q: Are you okay with that kind of exposure that comes from investing your personal life and emotions in a song like that? Is your family okay with that?

A: Yeah, I think so. I guess the only problem would be if, say, Adrienne doesn't have an outlet for herself. That's the kind of thing that I worry about. The things that she could say about me could be pretty horrifying.

Q: In what way are you a different songwriter now than you were on 39/Smooth and Kerplunk?

A: It goes in a way of, you know, what kind of person were you at sixteen, and what kind of person are you at twenty? It's almost like two different people in some aspects. I think that most of my stuff is based on infatuations with women. Some are just straight obsession. I mean, nowadays you could call me a stalker (laughs). The quest for that ultimate happiness with another person, which I think started to change, and it changed pretty dramatically with Kerplunk, because I started to talk about other things, like loss of innocence, going out on your own, moving out at the age of seventeen, being a high school dropout, living in west Oakland in a warehouse with fifteen people. Where the first record was more...mushy...the next one you could tell I was going through some pretty dramatic changes.

Q: So Dookie comes out, and where are you there?

A: I think I turned more bitter. I started to realize where my true friendships were, the politics of Berkeley were setting in, drug abuse was starting to fuck with me a little bit. I was trying to figure out what was wrong with me, but I couldn't really do it and that had a lot to do with drugs. I started to get a lot more bitter. Life wasn't how it was supposed to be when you're on your own. There's a couple of different songs on there...I mean, the psychoses that went into that record! Songs like "Basket Case" and "Coming Clean" were blatantly neurotic songs.

Q: That's messed up: amazing success, and it's your bitterness you're being celebrated for.

A: I don't know. It's funny because I feel that once you write a song, and then record it, and then release it, it doesn't necessarily belong to you anymore. I mean, you can hold that piece of work closer to you than anybody else can, and that was one of the big problems for a while. I felt so misunderstood all the time. Which goes with the territory, anyway, of writing songs. Because nobody really understands what the hell you're talking about. Other people have interpretations of whatever, figure out their own plot, make it fit to the soundtrack of their own lives. It messed with me a little bit, 'cause people didn't know where I came from, people didn't know where I came from, people didn't really know what I stood for. People calling us a throwback to 1977, I guess I got affected by that. Because punk rock is a lifestyle for me, and has nothing to do with 1977 or any particular band, but the relationship that you had with and the amount of work that you put into your local scene. And it gets completely misinterpreted as trying to make a buck.

Q: It wasn't a fashion statement, it was a lifestyle.

A: Yeah, a lot of people took it as a fashion statement, even to the point where I think a lot of people thought we were the '90s equivalent of Sha Na Na or something. Some of that's kind of funny, whatever. But now I sort of don't care. No one's gonna understand it anyway. The whole success or fame thing was so new to me at the time, it came so abruptly, and I was like, wow, this is too much. I didn't know all this baggage was connected to all this shit. I thought I'd just have the opportunity to play my songs for people.

Q: Is that why the new album is as different as it is, because you're just doing what you want to do, you don't have to be what people thought you were, or even what you thought you were?

A: I think so. That might have something to do with it. I think when you stop caring and worrying about what people think, even stop caring what you think of yourself to a certain extent, and just sort of do it, it's a release to push your past behind you. I think that's when the best stuff comes out. And, of course, when you're forging ahead really hard. I think this time our songs are much more than just things that you can listen to, but actually visualize at the same time. It's like this guy told me the other day, this friend of mine, he goes, you know I was listening to that song "Platypus," and I can totally imagine this big western stampede of horses and cows. And that, for me, is exactly what I was thinking. Not that I was thinking of a stampede, you know, but that kind of quality.

Q: So you communicated an image and a feeling.

A: Exactly.

Q: Of any of your songs, do you have a favorite?

A: Lately, I like "Walking Alone" and "Uptight" I've been into. My mind changes all the time.

Q: Let's talk about one of those. What are the circumstances around a song like "Walking Alone?"

A: I play in this side project band called Pinhead Gunpowder. This guy Aaron Elliot writes all the lyrics and a lot of the music. And he wrote this song called "I Walk Alone," which is about walking at night, the streets, being a street punk. And so I wrote...I don't know what you'd call it -- an alter ego song? -- called "Walking Alone."

Q: An answer song?

A: Yeah, cause we always work in that sort of way. I wrote a song called "She," so he wrote an article in his fanzine called "She." It's kind of funny, it's really good to bounce things off of each other. So "Walking Alone" and "I Walk Alone" were sort of the same thing. I think Tom Petty could play that song. It's got that harmonica and the big smashing snare sound on it. But it was the first time I ever played harmonica. I can't play harmonica at all. I had to teach myself how to play that.

Q: Hey, you did great.

A: Oh, thanks. We actually tried to get a studio musician to play it, but I think he was a little too hobo for us.

Q: Smelled bad?

A: Actually, he had almost too much soul for it. He was too good at what he did. And I wanted it to come across more loosely. Not as good, I guess. So I played it.

Q: It's not a confident song, or a song about confidence. "Sometimes I need to apologize/sometimes I need to admit that I ain't right."

A: It's sort of like sticking your foot in your mouth sometimes, and thinking out loud, but the lyric changes. It turns into talking about friends and how they change and your friends either become lawyers or the local town drunks.

Q: Any advice for people writing who want to be hit songwriters?

A: Oh God, I don't know. Don't take advice from anybody.

#'The things that she could say about me could be pretty horrifying'#yeah i bet #interview #article #articles #billie joe armstrong

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trash-writes · 4 years

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Hi! Love your writing! Can I please request a Jonathan fic where his childhood friend/crush meets the scarecrow for the first time and angst with a happy ending and or hurt/comfort? Thanks so much!!!!

Sorry that this took so long! I started school again around the time that this was requested. Anyway, I hope you like this!

Word Count: 1,367

TW: Mentions of blood, mugging

Madison never expected to find herself in Gotham City considering the fact that she was from such a small town, then again she wasn’t even expecting to get a response from Wayne Tech when she sent in her job application. Of course, when one works for Wayne Tech they must always be prepared for the worst, but nobody ever told her that.

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It was a rather gloomy day, the kind that would send shivers up your spine and make you expect the worst, but Madison didn’t pay much mind as she closed her umbrella and entered her workplace, completely ignoring the sign that one of her coworkers had put up that stated the number of days since the last attack. He had claimed that it was a joke when she asked about it, but her other coworkers knew that was a lie, instead choosing to go along with what he had said so as to not scare off the new employee. While others around her whispered amongst themselves about the odd feeling in the air, Madison opted instead to quickly get to work at her desk, slightly adjusting the plastic plant that she glued googly eyes to (they don’t allow real plants).

The workday passed quickly with no incident, which caused the uneasy feeling that she had been suppressing to finally work it’s way up to the point where she was nervously peering into every alleyway that she had to walk past on her way home. Of course, this didn’t do much to prevent someone from coming up from behind and pointing what felt like a gun to her back and pushing her into the alley, holding her against the wall.

“Look lil’ lady, I don’t wanna hurt ya, so just gimmie your purse and I’ll let ya on ya way. Understand?” His voice wavered as he spoke, slamming his free hand down on the wall next to her head.

Slowly Madison reached for her bag, pulling it off of her shoulder and turning her head to hand it to him only to be spun around so that she was facing the man attempting to rob her. He didn’t have anything covering his face, which probably meant that this was either his first time doing something like this or he planned to kill her after taking the purse, and she really hoped that it was the first possibility. Panic filled her veins at the sound footsteps coming near the two of them, and while there was the possibility that it could be one of the masked vigilantes such as Batman or Robin, there was still the risk that it could be one of the many villains who prowled the city, or even someone who would just ignore what was currently happening to her. Luck seemed to be somewhat on her side though when the said person stopped right behind the man who was currently holding her at gunpoint.

“Pardon me for the intrusion, but you wouldn’t happen to know the way to Gothcorp, would you?” The stranger’s voice was flat and hoarse, but somehow familiar to Madison, who clamped her eyes shut when the man mugging her turned his head to look at him.

“Are ya kidding me?!?” The robber exclaimed, obviously confused as to what was happening, however, that was cut short by the sound of something being sprayed and a scream that quickly moved away as she was shoved back and hit her head on the wall behind her.

Madison fell to the ground and looked up at the man who had possibly just saved her with fear in her eyes and he in turn looked down at her through glasses that were perched on a slightly crooked nose that had obviously healed somewhat wrong after being broken. While his face was mostly flat and emotionless, save for the slight smirk, his eyes stared down at her in what looked to be a twisted form of amusement. “Shame he got away, don’t you think? I prefer my test subjects be scum from the streets, but I guess I’ll have to make do with you.” It didn’t take long after that statement for Madison to realize that it was Scarecrow who just saved her, and she was going to be his next test subject.

“So you recognise me then?” He asked, a terrifying grin growing on his face as he roughly pulled Madison to her feet and inspected her face, the grin soon falling. “You look familiar….Perhaps Johnny will recognize you while he does something about that cut on your head…” He grumbled before pulling her through the alleyway and into a small building, keeping a hand over her mouth the entire time to keep her silent.

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Before long, Madison found herself handcuffed to a modified exam table with duct tape covering her mouth, waiting nervously for Scarecrow to return, attempting to ignore the feeling of blood slowly dripping down the side of her head. He had claimed that he needed to check on something, and the screams coming from another room informed her that he was doing just that. Suddenly they cut off as he walked into the room she was in, a small medical kit in hand as he stopped in his tracks and stared at her in surprise. “M-Madison? Madison Williams? Is that you?” He rushed forward and examined her closely with wide eyes before shaking his head and stepping back.

Jonathan Crane.

Jonathan Crane from back home was staring at her as she sat waiting to inevitably be used in some sort of twisted experiment. He was Scarecrow.

“No no no no, this wasn’t supposed to happen! When did you move to Gotham?” He asked, voice shaking as he looked down at the handcuffs that prevented her from escaping. “I need you to promise me that if I let you out of those that you won’t run. Alright?” She quickly nodded and stared at him with wide eyes as he quickly removed the handcuffs and duct tape. “Are you alright? Did I-he hurt you at all?”

Sitting up and scrambling to pull her knees to her chest, she looked at Jonathan in surprise before managing to force herself to speak, “y-you’re Scarecrow?” He gave a small nod and frowned when he noticed the blood on her face.

“You’re hurt...Let me help, please. I promise I won’t hurt you, I didn’t even know that it was you who he brought in. I thought that it was just some random mugging victim, but he didn’t tell me it was you!” Jonathan opened the medkit that he brought and slipped on a pair of gloves before glancing up and waiting for permission to get started. Once he got that he began to clean up the blood and cut, frowning when Madison let out a hiss of pain.

“A-Are you still going t-”

“Experiment on you? God no, but you can’t tell anyone that I’m here or that you saw me.” His voice was shaking as he inspected the cut on her temple. “You don’t need any stitches….” he mumbled while bandaging it before stepping back and looking at her. “I really am sorry Madison...I-”

Holding up a hand to stop him, she forced a small smile, “it’s okay Jonathan. I wish we didn’t run into each other like this though. Honestly, I would have preferred one of those cliche movie things where we run into each other at like a coffee shop or something instead of a mugging.” Madison joked, rubbing the back of her neck.

“Y-You’re not upset?”

She shrugged and glanced away, “I mean a little, but you technically helped me.” When she looked back at him he was closing the medkit and putting it away.

Jonathan looked at the table on the other side of the room and sighed, motioning to it after he managed to pull himself together a bit, “let’s move over there and I’ll make us some tea if one of my colleagues hasn’t stolen all of it yet. We can catch up if you’d like. I’d understand if you don’t though considering the circumstances of how we encountered each other.”

“I’d be fine with that.”

@justasimplesinner @river9noble

#DC comics #batman #Batman Rogues #jonathan crane #jonathan crane x oc #jonathan crane x reader #scarecrow #scarecrow x reader #scarecrow x oc

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fuckingthefictional · 5 years

Text

Being Ada’s best friend and falling for Tommy would include.

Becoming friends with her after the boys go off to fight

Some much older lad was trying to flirt with her and Ada looked uncomfortable. So...

“Oi you stupid cunt! Can you fuck off before a bullet gets put into your head by yours truly?”

The man scarpered off after being confronted and publically humiliated

Ada recognises you from the first aid church hall thing

“Thanks for saving me back there”

“no problem us small heath girls have to stick together”

“You’re Y/N right?”

“The one and only, And you’re Ada Shelby”

The old bloke returned with some of his friends I guess not liking the idea of being humiliated by a girl

You just took the pistol from your thigh holster and aimed it at them

“Are you bloody deaf? I told you to leave, so off you fuck!”

They didn’t move so you shot the cap off of one of their heads

“I’m giving you 3 seconds you fucking bastards and not a second more.”

They fled of course

“Christ almighty i need a whiskey.”

“I know just the place.”

After that you became fast friends and became super close.

You both go to the Garrison more than you care to admit.

Ada being surprised at how well you can hold your liquor

The only time you were both pissed out of your minds was on your 18th birthday and you just ended up walking around the streets giggling and singing at the top of your lungs.

You both couldn’t look at a bottle of vodka without gagging slightly

You’re the first person who Ada properly opens up to

She talks to you about her family and boy issues she has because she feels like nobody takes her problems seriously or would be willing to listen to her

“I get so worried about my brothers. I feel like there’s a part of me missing without them here. I’m worried that they might be killed over in France.”

“They won’t.”

“Howd you know”

“Because anyone who shares blood with you, Ada Shelby, would: a) never willingly leave someone they love alone and: b) would never go down without a bloody good fight.”

You always knew what to say to make her feel better again.

You both felt like you were each other’s sisters that they never had growing up.

Like you have sleepovers all the time

“If you expect the unexpected then doesn’t that technically mean that the unexpected is expected?”

“Y/N it’s 4am go to sleep!”

One time you’d woken up a bit earlier than Ada had and you were looking at her thinking

“Damn I’m so lucky to have her as my best friend!¡”

Then she rolled over in her sleep and smacked you in the face

The first time you met Polly you nearly shit yourself

Ada has gone to the bathroom, leaving you alone at the kitchen table

“And just who might you be?”

Polly was stood at the entry way, stern, cold look on her faceface, hand by her hip ready to grab a weapon if necessary.

“I’m- um, I’m”

“Bloody hell aunt pol put the gun down, if you must know this is Y/N she saved my arse from getting raped by an old bloke.”

“Let her speak for herself Ada”

“I’m Y/N, I scared an old guy off after he tried to feel her up in a back alley.”

“ScArEd hiM ofF, you shot the cap off of his head and they bolted.”

“Why did you do that, did you think if you scared a man off then the Shelby’s owed you a favour?”

“Nope my life is just a mess and I instinctively take care of other because I don’t know how to take care of myself.”

Polly was a lot more happy to have you around after she found out about what you risked to help her niece.

It started becoming a regular occurance to have you over for dinner or a cup of tea everyday.

You just sort of walked into the Shelby house now.

“Hey- Jesus, stop screaming for fucks sake. We’ve ran out of whiskey!”

You’re an honourary Shelby girl™️

Like you would willingly help out around the house.

Whether that’s cooking breakfast, tidying Finns room, or doing the laundry.

Always being there for Ada and being her biggest support

“Y/N I’ve done something bad. Really bad.”

“Put the corpse in ice, I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“WhaT nO?! WhY wOulD I HavE a CoRpsE?”

Obviously being close to Ada meant you got close to Finn and he became a younger brother figure.

He comes to you for advice when he’s too embarrassed to go to his aunt and sister.

This family dynamic yoooooo

You began to help the Shelby ladies to run the betting shop.

You did all the numbers and you could read and write.

You also started to teach Finn how to read.

“What does that say Finn?”

“hoo-agh”

“nO”

If you get that reference then ily

You’d get dating advice from Polly too.

“Remember as ladies it’s all about being A-B-C. Always-Be-Classy”

“And a little bit slutty!”

“Ada’s right be a little bit slutty too.”

You’d help Polly look after John’s children on Sundays when she went to church

They seriously love you. They call you Aunt Y/N/N and they look forward to seeing you every weekend.

When the boys come home from France they found the family dynamic had shifted

They obviously weren’t the same after the shit they went through.

But Ada, Polly and Finn we’re happier than they’d ever seen them be

They were having a family meeting around the kitchen table

And you walked into the house as you normally did. carrying groceries

And as you walked into the kitchen

“Who the fuck are you?”

The shelby lads are aiming their guns right at you, ready to blow your head off.

You just looked at Ada, rolling your eyes, “What is it with your family and trying to shoot me on site?”

“They like to shoot first and ask questions later.”

“Aye I can bloody see.”

You just walked around to the kitchen counter and plopped the bags of shopping down.

Polly casually gave you a glass of whiskey which you downed.

“I’m sorry but who the fuck is this random girl standing in the middle of our kitchen drinking our whiskey?”

“Y/N Y/L/N, pleasure to meet you- I assume your Arthur judging by the attitude you’re giving me.”

Polly and Ada full on snorted

“And you must be John, you look just like Katie. The kids have told be a lot about you.”

“All good things I should hope.”

“Shit there were meant to be good things?”

Polly and Ada crying with laughter

“Boys this Y/N, my best friend, the person who did all the numbers for the shop while you were away, John’s kids’ babysitter, Finn’s teacher and honourary Shelby girl.”

Tommy is just in awe even if he hides it

“Welcome to the family Miss Y/L/N”

“You can call me Y/N”

Sexual tension

“GEt a RoOm!”

“Shut it Arthur”

After a few weeks the boys got used to seeing you around the house more.

Whether it was you sat at the table with Finn giving him advice on his spelling.

Or cooking dinner for John’s little ones on a Sunday (which meant you usually had at least one child on your hip)

Or even just lounging on the sofa in a heap with Ada while you gossiped.

Your qualification in nursing often came handy when one of the Shelby men would turn up battered

“That fucking hurt”

“Aye- you should have thought about this before you got into a fistfight.”

Out of all the Shelby’s it was of course Tommy that took the longest to start a full conversation with you

When it happened it wasn’t under the best circumstances

You went to the pictures on a date with a guy you had fancied for ages and the guy in question was snogging someone else- leaving you in the rain for an hour

You banged on the Shelby’s door looking like an absolute mess.

And Tommy opened the door

He didn’t know what he was supposed to do

Ada was not there *cough* at Freddie’s *cough*

And the house was empty apart from Finn, John’s kids and Polly (who was putting the children to bed)

So you just pushed past Tommy who was stood in the doorway dumbfounded

At this point you were shivering from the cold rain and the tears had stopped.

“Now what’s got you knocking on our door this late ‘ey Y/N.”

“Date went wrong, fucker stood me up.”

You were downing whiskey.

Tommy as much as he didn’t want to admit it hated seeing you upset and he knew you deserved better

It took a while for you to notice that Tommy had draped a blanket around your shoulders and had lit the fire to try and get you warmed up

“Forget the fucker. He don’t deserve a gal like you.”

“Thanks Tommy.”

In the morning Polly came down the stairs to find you and Tommy curled up on the sofa together.

She lowkey rooted for yous to get together

Honestly you found yourself constantly covering for Ada saying she was staying at your house when actually she was with Freddie

Because ur a great friend

“has anyone seen our Ada today?”

“Aye she slept at mine last night and we were up most of the night so I let her sleep in.” Definitely not at Freddie’s

“Up all night, that sounds kin-OW”

“If you must know Johnny boy- we were chatting shit about people- mainly you.”

“Uncalled for.”

“Why there’s so much to talk about?”

You were always involved in covering for Ada

Because your cared about her happiness- which was heavily influenced by her love life.

But actually Ada and Polly paid close attention to your love life too with Tommy

When you Polly and Ada were sat in the kitchen having a catchup- they raised the question.

“When are you going to realise that my brother’s in love with you?”

*que tea being spat out* WHAT

Polly just rolled her eyes and smiled, “dear Y/N, its almost obvious that Thomas is falling for you.”

“What the fuck?”

I think you may have been in a constant state of shock after that.

“We broke Y/N.”

Like you couldn’t quite pinpoint when you started to fall for Tommy

But Tommy definitely remembered the time he knew he was in love with you

You were in the kitchen, with John’s youngest child on your hip- making dinner for all the kids.

While Finn was sat at the table trying to read out bits of a book you’d lended him.

Tommy was stood in the entryway watching as Finn struggled to pronounce some of the harder words and you’d just wander over and explain how to do it.

Like to Tommy family is the most important thing in his life.

You’re not blood related but you still gave up your spare time to look after John’s kids, teach Finn to read or even just comfort Ada after a fight with Freddie.

And Tommy admires you for that- you sacrificed a lot in order to care for his family.

So he’s just leant on the doorframe, cigarette between his lips, watching as you got everything ready for dinner.

And he just thought “she’s gonna be my wife and mother to my children someday”

#peaky blinder headcanon #peakyblinders #peaky blinder imagine #peaky blinders #tommy shelby #john shelby #arthur shelby #polly gray #ada shelby #finn shelby #shelby #tommy shelby x reader #tommy shelby x you #ada shelby x bestfriend!reader #cillian murphy #thomas shelby #thomas shelby x reader

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