#North Beach Real Leather Jacket

[luminnara]

People Are Strange | Billy Hargrove x The Lost Boys x reader Part One

Tags: @smenny @oceansrose2002 @elegantplaidpsychicsludge-blog @henhouse-horrors

(This is set in like 1985, so pre-Michael for the boys)

Part Two

Warnings: mentions of abuse, homophobia, f slur

Finally.

Billy Hargrove was back in California. 

It had been a long ass fucking drive, but he had done it, all by himself. He was free now, free of Susan, free of Neil, free of Hawkins, Indiana and every stupid shithead in that poor excuse for a town. 

He had made it. 

He was broke. He needed a bite to eat. But he had made it, all the way to the beach, even, and that was good enough for him. Now, his father wasn’t around to tell him what he could and couldn’t do, or call him a pussy, or beat the shit out of him. Now, there was no stupid shitty mindflayer or whatever they called it to possess him and then rip his guts out. Now, Billy was in charge of himself, and he was about to exercise that freedom to the fullest extent by getting shitfaced every night if he wanted to. 

And he had picked the perfect town for it.

Back when he lived in California, the first time, he had never visited Santa Carla. It was further north than the suburb he grew up in, but he had heard plenty about it and its nasty reputation.

Murder capital of the world.

He figured he could handle that, after everything that had happened back in Hawkins. All Santa Carla had were gangs, and that was nothing compared to the monster that had torn through his mind back in Indiana.

Despite the nickname, it was a cute place. It was a picturesque tourist town situated right on Monterey Bay, with an amusement park out on the pier, a boardwalk full of shops, and a never ending stream of vagrants and runaways always coming and going. Billy didn’t really consider himself among their ranks, but he had a feeling that he would fit right in.

He hadn’t realized exactly how well, though.

The Camaro rumbled as he cruised through town, looking for a spot to get some food and maybe a shitty motel for the night. He wasn’t above sleeping in his car, but he had just done that the entire drive over, and he could really, really go for a real bed.

Food first, though.

He ended up at a diner, the sort of place where he could get a booth to himself and eat a greasy burger in peace. On the drive in, he had seen all sorts of weirdos—burn outs, punks, starving kids digging through the trash—and as fascinating as it all was, he was too exhausted from his journey to want to be surrounded by people just yet.

The diner was slow, the lunch rush having already passed. There were a few people sitting at the counter and a few more in booths, but it was quiet. Billy was enjoying the sound of the radio when someone approached him, and he glanced up to see a waitress standing there with a coffee pot in her hand. She was tired, nearly tripping over herself as she refilled his mug, and as she stood there and zoned out for a moment like a total fucking weirdo, he got the chance to check her out.

To check you out.

“H-Hey, sorry,” you said, sounding dazed.

“Long night?” The handsome guy in front of you asked, flashing you a smile that rivaled even Paul’s most heart-melting grins.

You were so deliriously tired that for a moment, you thought he was one of your boys. In your defense, he totally looked the part, with a curly, dirty blond mullet, a leather jacket, and an earring dangling from one ear. “…what are you doing out at this hour?”

He stared at you. “Excuse me?”

“Oh! Oh god, I’m sorry,” you snapped to attention again, but the bags under your eyes told him that it was just a matter of time before you full on collapsed onto the floor. “I’m not…used to being up during the day…working, I mean! Not used to working, not really…”

“You a night shift kinda person?” The guy asked, taking another bite of his burger.

“Yeah.” You swayed on your feet. “A night person.”

God, you wanted to go lay down. You were so fucking out of it. Being a half vampire was absolute ass, and over the past week, things had only gotten worse. You knew you had gotten yourself into this mess by insisting that you give the diner your full two weeks before you let David take you out to fully turn you, but Jesus Christ this sucked.

Heh.

Sucked.

“Can I, uh…can I get you anything else?” You asked, desperately trying to focus on him. He was cute, you decided, and you really, really wished you weren’t moments away from passing out so that you could appreciate him fully.

He eyed the way your hands were shaking. “…I’m alright, doll.”

“Wow,” you breathed. He sounded just like David with that pet name.

And then you drifted off, and Billy was left staring after you. Santa Carla was a weird place, indeed. A weird place with even weirder waitresses. Hot ones, but weird ones.

He left money on the table and bounced, moving on to the next item on his to do list: finding a place to spend the night. He had…not that much money left, having only stolen what he could out of Neil’s wallet before he ran, but it bought him a week in a semi-decent motel close to the beach, and that was good enough for him.

It wasn’t the Ritz, but it was a testament to his newfound freedom, and to Billy, that was worth way more than a room with a view. He took the opportunity to collapse onto his bed, sleeping the rest of the day away, recharging so that he could go and make Santa Carla his come nightfall.

——————-

“You can’t keep doing this to yourself,” David growled at you.

“I’m f….” Your head lolled as you dozed off mid sentence.

David rolled his eyes and grabbed your chin, jerking your head up.

“Fine!” You finished quickly, eyes wide open. “I’m fine. See? I’m fine.”

“You absolutely are not.”

“Just one more week at work, and then you can take me out hunting. Promise.”

“You’re really testing my patience here, doll.”

Doll…hadn’t somebody else called you that earlier? Yeah, somebody at the diner…somebody super cute. Handsome, even. Shit. You shoulda gotten his number or something. You already had four boyfriends, what’s one more? David would probably try to eat him, but that could be worked around—

“Hey!” David snapped his fingers in front of your face as you zoned out again. “That’s it. Dwayne, take her back home to sleep—“

“No!” You protested. “No. I’m fine. I can hang out tonight.”

Dwayne gave you a skeptical look. “You sure about that?”

“Yes I am.”

He narrowed his eyes, watching you for a moment before shaking his head. “You’re too much for your own good sometimes.”

You managed a tired grin. Now that night had finally fallen, you had more energy, and seeing the boys come to pick you up from work had perked you up a little bit. You were still dead on your feet, but you felt a lot less zombie-like than you had during the day. Seeing all four of your boyfriends there filled you with anticipation for the endless mischief the night could hold, and as your grin widened, you couldn’t wait. No matter how tired you were, you wouldn’t miss hanging out with them for the world.

And it really was sweet of them to come meet you outside the diner, after all.

“See? She’s fine!” Paul said, slinging an arm over your shoulders and nipping at your jaw. He was buzzing with energy, as if he was determined to somehow transfer some of it to keep you awake all night. “‘Sides, you won’t be havin’ this problem soon…”

Marko appeared on your other side, licking his lips in anticipation. “Baby, I cannot wait to watch you dig in for the first time…”

“We know, Marko,” Paul rolled his eyes as he pulled a joint out of his pocket. “It’s all you’ve been thinkin’ about for the past week.”

“I can’t help it!” Marko whined, bumping his head against yours. “It’s gonna be so fuckin’ hot…”

“Gotta pick someone first,” David cut in. “Got anybody in mind yet, sweetheart?”

“Not really…” you sighed.

“You’re supposed to be keeping an eye out.”

“I know…”

“Otherwise I’ll choose for you.”

“I know!” You insisted.

“You really haven’t seen anybody interesting?” Marko asked skeptically.

You knew he was even more eager for you to turn than David was. For Marko, though, you suspected that it was more about watching you tear people apart and less about the power trip of helping his girlfriend become an undead creature of the night.

To each their own, though.

“I mean…there was a guy at work today…” you chewed at your bottom lip.

David immediately stiffened. “A guy?”

“Yeah, but I don’t really wanna…you know.”

“Well…what kinda guy?” Paul asked, taking a hit before passing his joint to Marko.

“A, uh…handsome one…”

David’s nostrils flared angrily. “Handsome?”

“David, you can’t get mad at me for making an observation,” you began, folding your arms over your chest as you glared at him. “You guys always wanna know if I spot anybody interesting, when I work as a waitress in the weirdest town on the west coast. I see interesting people all day, and today, I waited on a guy who looked and talked so much like you I thought he was—“

“You point him out if you see him,” David growled. “So I can rip him in half.”

Marko let out a loud laugh and you just rolled your eyes. “You’re so tough, David.”

“Fine.” He sneered. “You can do it, then.”

“What? Me?” You groaned. “It isn’t time yet! I told you, I wanna wait another week—“

“Then you better hope we don’t spot him tonight, huh?” David pulled the cigarette out from behind his ear and lit it. “For his sake.”

“God, why are you being such a dick tonight?” You grumbled as the five of you set off towards the pier.

“He’s just in a mood now because you said another guy was handsome,” Paul snickered, exhaling a puff of smoke into your face.

“You know it hurts his ego,” Marko said with a pointed sneer towards David.

“Shut your fuckin’ mouth before I shut it for you,” David growled.

“What was he like?” Dwayne finally spoke up.

“Who?” You asked, playing dumb.

“The guy.”

“Oh.” You thought for a moment, trying to recall your afternoon. “He got a burger and coffee. No tomatoes. Extra pickle.”

“That’s fascinating, doll.” David rolled his eyes.

“And he called me doll,” you said haughtily, glaring at him.

You watched him falter as he inhaled on his cigarette. “He what?”

“Mmhm. And it sounded nice.” You stuck your nose in the air and marched away, slipping out from under Paul’s arm to walk on your own.

The boys glanced at each other. David was fuming, nose scrunched in disgust as he imagined another guy calling you his pet name. Whoever he was, he had a fucking death wish.

“Chill out, boss man,” Paul said, clapping a hand on David’s shoulder.

“Paul.” David growled. “If you wanna keep your fingers, I suggest you keep your hands to yourself.”

“Well I suggest you go talk to her,” Marko snapped as he watched you strut away. “We’ll catch a bite on our own. You better go smooth things over, Casanova.”

“What?” David asked incredulously. “I didn’t do anyth—“

“He’s right,” Dwayne nodded.

“The hell are you talkin’ about?” David snarled.

Dwayne was never phased by his outbursts, though, and only looked at him calmly. “Go apologize. We’ll hunt solo tonight.”

“Yeah, and if you’re lucky we’ll bring you some takeout,” Paul cackled, elbowing David as the three of them walked past.

He just glared after them.

“Hey, baby!” Paul greeted when he caught up to you, grabbing your hand and spinning you into his chest. He plopped a messy kiss on your lips and he tasted like blood and weed, like he always did. “We’re all grabbin’ a bite. David wants to talk.”

“Have fun,” Marko smirked as he kissed your cheek.

“Tell him I don’t feel like talking,” you scoffed as Dwayne swooped in to steal a kiss next.

“Too late,” he said, an amused rumble in his chest.

“Ooh, maybe you’ll get lucky and have some bomb makeup sex,” Paul grinned, walking backwards away from you as he puffed on his joint.

“He fuckin’ needs it,” Marko mumbled.

“Fine.” You sighed. “You guys go have fun. Don’t eat anybody too hot.”

“But that’s my favorite flavor!” Paul yelled.

You couldn’t help but smile as you watched the three of them go, Marko immediately lunging for Paul before Dwayne managed to catch him in a head lock midair. They were a handful, but you loved them.

“Hey.” David’s voice had you turning around.

He actually looked a little ashamed, his eyes trained on the ground as he kicked at a pebble.

“Hey.” You said flatly.

He dared to look up at you. You could tell he was still grumpy, and he was only trying to talk to you because the others had probably made him…but this was still a massive improvement for him, and you considered it a success.

He sighed, started to roll his eyes, and then stopped. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” You asked, trying to encourage him. “You should actually talk about your feelings, you know.”

He made a disgusted noise and you couldn’t help but laugh.

“You know I get…territorial.” He said, taking your arm and tugging you along to walk with him. “We all do.”

“I know.”

“It’s just a…a thing we all have to deal with.”

“Very beastly of you,” you laughed, nudging him with your shoulder. “I still don’t want you to kill that guy, though.”

“No promises,” he growled, expression darkening.

“…you can maim him if he really deserves it. Deal?”

“Deal.”

————————

Billy fucking loved Santa Carla.

Back in Hawkins, he was the keg king, and earning his title had been a piece of cake…but here, the beach parties were way wilder and way more fun, and he was having the time of his fucking life.

The town was vibrant during the day, yeah, but come nightfall it sprung to life. The rides on the boardwalk lit up the dark sky, and bonfires surrounded by party goers dotted the beaches. There was no shortage of shitty carnival food, and all the stores on the boardwalk stayed open late. Billy was pretty sure he could find any drugs he could think of within ten minutes if he tried, and he could get his dick wet even faster.

Yeah. It was his kinda place.

He left the Camaro at the motel and walked over to the boardwalk, smoking a fresh cigarette as he navigated the crowds. There really were all sorts of people there—everything from obvious tourists to kids enjoying summer vacation to criminals and runaways flitted around, creating one extremely colorful swarm of pedestrians. He didn’t look out of place at all, not the way he had back in Hawkins where everybody looked like wannabe prom kings and queens and Steve Harrington was the most exciting thing to happen in decades.

Before Billy, of course.

In Santa Carla, though, he had already seen fashions that would have given everyone in Hawkins, Indiana heart attacks. He looked tame compared to some of the punks he spotted lingering around. But still, for some reason…

He noticed he was getting dirty looks.

People stepped out of his way as he passed through the crowd. They watched him carefully, like he might suddenly lunge and bite them. One security guard in particular seemed to be keeping a particularly close eye on him while he wandered around, but rather than feeling perturbed, Billy felt energized. It was feeding his ego, making him feel wild knowing that everybody was looking at him and everybody was wary of him. He didn’t care why.

The sound of metal playing over speakers had him making his way towards the bandstand. When he got closer and squeezed his way through the crowd, the music grew deafening.

Just the way he liked it.

He felt like he had just wandered into heaven.

He had also just wandered right into the hunting ground of one very particular, very high, vampire.

When it came to hunting, Paul liked to be lazy. He’d been around long enough to learn how to let them come to him, and while the others worked hard for their meals, Paul worked smart. He was always so fun and charismatic that he could have humans eating out of the palm of his hand whenever he wanted them to, and when there were rock shows on the beach, the bandstand was always the perfect place for him to find some easy chow. Yeah, the music usually hurt his ears some, but he always got over it and everything healed before he could have an eternity of tinnitus, and he always relied more on his sense of smell than hearing anyways. He thrived in the chaos of the crowd, and tonight was no exception.

The crowd was fun. The band was loud. And even though he was lazy when it came to hunting humans, he still had boundless energy. He was actually glad that David had fucked up with you, because he was having a great time hunting on his own. 

“Hey man, watch it!” Someone snarled as he bumped into them.

Paul was too high to take offense at their tone, turning towards them with a lazy grin on his face instead.

What he saw would’ve taken his breath away, had he actually been breathing.

There was a guy there, wearing a leather jacket, with a glare that rivaled David’s. He had an earring dangling from one earlobe and a curly dirty blond mullet, shorter and darker than Marko’s but still good, and blue eyes that actually had Paul feeling a tiny bit weak.

The dude was gorgeous in a way that most humans weren’t, and Paul was immediately into him.

“Sorry, man,” Paul forced himself to say above the sound of the music, keeping that aloof smile on his face. “Here. Token of my apology?”

He held out his joint and the guy looked at it hungrily, like he hadn’t seen weed in months. And really, Billy hadn’t; Hawkins wasn’t exactly the best place to find it, and if Neil had ever caught him reeking of marijuana, he’d have been in for a world of hurt. In Santa Carla, though, he could have anything he wanted…and he was free to take it.

“C’mon. We can go smoke under the stands.” The blond guy in front of him grinned wildly, his eyes blazing.

Billy shoved his anger down and considered the offer. This guy looked like a total idiot, some Twisted Sister rocker type who was high out of his damn mind. His outfit was weird as hell, but at the same time, he didn’t look that out of place in the eclectic crowd, with his mesh shirt and white pants almost as tight as Billy’s jeans. He looked wild, an untamed mane of hair giving off the impression that he had been born headbanging, and in all honesty, he looked...interesting. Intriguing? 

Something.

Billy was still pissed at him for bumping into him—seriously, when he had turned around, he had expected to see someone twice this guy’s size just based off of the sheer force of it—but he could go for some free weed. And maybe some booze. And even though he didn’t want to admit it, he didn’t know much about Santa Carla or who was who around town, and he could use a guide.

“Fine,” he sneered.

Blondie grinned and grabbed his arm—why the fuck was he so strong?—and dragged him through the crowd. Bodies slammed into Billy as the two squeezed past, but the mystery guy didn’t seem to have any issue navigating the flood of people, as if they didn’t even bother him. 

Weird.

“Haven’t seen you around Santa Carla before,” he commented, turning on his heel to walk backwards and face Billy as he spoke. “You new in town?”

“You could say that.” Billy said as he shoved someone out of his way.

The guy just kept grinning that stupid grin. “Name’s Paul.”

“...Billy.”

They were finally on the edges of the crowd, Paul leading the way around the back of the stands. There was nobody else lingering around, just like he had hoped. It was a quiet spot, hidden from the chaos and noise of the bandstand, and the perfect place for a clandestine meeting or a quick snack...although now, Paul wasn’t really sure which one he was hoping for. 

“Billy, huh?” Paul asked, trying not to grin like a madman. “Where you from?”

“Little further south.” Billy said. He didn’t want to even consider telling anyone that he had just lived in Hawkins fucking Indiana for a year. “LA.”

Paul could tell there was more to his story than that, but he didn’t push.

“So...what, you come to Santa Carla for fun?” he asked as he lit the joint. “Or...are you running from somethin’?”

When Billy gave him an angry look, he knew he was on the right track. 

“It doesn’t matter,” Billy growled, snatching the joint out of Paul’s hand. He inhaled deeply, fighting the cough that was building in his chest. It had been a long fucking time since he had been offered weed, but he wasn’t about to look like a total pussy and hack a lung up. 

Paul could see the way he resisted and forced his body to behave. He could hear his heartbeat change. He appreciated the way that Billy was trying so hard to act so tough in front of him...and, honestly, he appreciated the way that Billy didn’t seem to have that natural fear that humans usually did. 

“Whatcha runnin’ from?” he asked, taking the joint back. 

“The hell do you care?” Billy snapped. 

Paul shrugged. “Just curious. I’m a people person, I guess.”

Billy forced a smile onto his face. It was in his best interests to be nice to this guy, he figured, and he knew how to do the whole smile and nod and be fucking polite routine. 

“You been here a while?” he asked as Paul handed him the joint again. 

The blonde broke into a laughing fit.

 How fucking high was this guy?

Billy took a hit and watched Paul clutching at his sides. He was laughing like a fucking hyena, as if Billy had just made the funniest joke in the world. Well, he was glad for the positive attention, at least...maybe this guy wouldn’t be half bad? 

“Oh yeah, a while,” Paul managed to squeeze out between cackles. “Long ass time. I know everything about Santa Carla.”

“Yeah? So you know who’s who around here?” Billy asked, starting to feel the effects of the (surprisingly, suspiciously, strong) weed. 

Paul’s laughter faded into something a touch more sinister and he leaned in, blue eyes suddenly so dangerous. “Oh, Billy Boy, you wanna know who’s in charge of Santa Carla?”

Billy couldn’t speak. He just held Paul’s gaze, refusing to break it, refusing to move and lose whatever weird ass energy he suddenly felt between them. He didn’t realize it, but he was being fucking brave, and Paul was impressed...because Paul was desperately trying to get into his head, and he couldn’t.

And that fascinated him. It also sealed Billy’s fate--any urges Paul had to take a bite out of him were gone, and he way preferred the thought of turning him and keeping him around instead. 

“I’ll tell ya who owns Santa Carla,” he said, reaching up to twirl a strand of Billy’s hair around his finger. “But can you hang?”

“What the fuck do you mean can I hang?” Billy spat venomously, teeth bared as he bristled. “What the fuck do you think?”

Paul just grinned, moving his hand to brush a rough thumb over Billy’s cheek. He tried one last time to get into that pretty head of his, staring into his eyes as he searched for something, anything, and once again...he came up totally empty. 

Weird.

“Yeah, I think you’ll fit right in,” Paul decided, taking his joint back and stuffing it into his jacket. Then, he slung his arm around Billy’s shoulders, noticing how right it felt to have him there, and led him away from the bandstand. “C’mon. We gotta find Marko.”

-------------

Marko was in the middle of whispering sweet nothings into a girl’s ear when Paul and Billy found him…and he was seriously pissed off by the interruption.

“Hey, what gives?” He growled as Paul grabbed him by the jacket and hauled him away from the bonfire.

“You havin’ fun, Marko?” Paul sneered down at him.

“Paul, I swear to fucking god, I am so hungry right now and if you don’t let me—who the fuck is that?”

Billy was standing there, hands in his jacket pockets, watching the two of them. Observing. Catching every little movement, honing in on every breath and shift of their weight. He was looking on with the coolness and the calculation of a predator, Marko thought, in the same way that he and the boys watched the crowds of humans on the boardwalk.

Marko’s nostrils flared as he tried to catch the scent of vampire, but other than Paul and the rest of Santa Carla’s usual nighttime denizens, all he could smell was human.

He tilted his head slightly. No werewolf. No demon. Just…human. Gorgeous human, but still…just human.

“What the hell is this?” He hissed at Paul, watching Billy from the corner of his eye. “Why’re you parading him around like this?”

“You mighta noticed Billy here is a little special,” Paul put a hand on the back of Marko’s neck and guided him towards Billy. “I think we should introduce him to the rest of the gang.”

Marko glanced up at him like he was crazy.

Then, Paul leaned down, his lips next to Marko’s ear as he whispered, “I can’t get in his head. At all.”

Marko frowned at that. “You were never particularly good at it,” he mumbled as he looked Billy over.

Okay, yeah. He could see why Paul hadn’t just eaten him. The guy was handsome, and he was definitely their type, right down to the jewelry. But looks didn’t mean he could just join them…even though it was weird as shit that Marko couldn’t seem to get in his head, either, and David would probably want to know about that.

“You wanna tell your boyfriend to quit checkin’ me out?” Billy barked.

“Aw, Marko, you didn’t tell me we were dating,” Paul leaned on him, leering down.

Marko gave him an exasperated look. “…my mistake. We gonna go find David and Dwayne or what?”

“Good idea, man!” Paul clapped him on the shoulder and then let him go again, leading the way up towards the boardwalk stairs.

Billy and Marko fell in just behind him, the former looking down at the latter and considering him. His head was fuzzy from Paul’s weed, and maybe if he was totally sober, he would have been able to figure out what it was about Marko that felt so off.

He was good at watching people. It was something he had picked up from years of dealing with his shitty father. As a child, he had learned to watch and anticipate, because that was what gave him the best chance of ducking away from swinging fists. Now, as an adult, he watched and anticipated and always knew what people wanted, and it gave him the ability to charm them into doing whatever he wanted. It also gave him the ability to simply notice things, little things that other people probably ignored—like the way that Marko bit at his thumb when he was looking around, or the oddly threatening little shine in his eyes. He noticed the way that Paul, so wild and seemingly carefree, had little moments of calm in which he looked around and took in his surroundings, watching people the same way that Billy was watching him.

Billy was high, yeah…but he could still tell that something was up with these guys. He felt like he should be wary, but at the same time, he didn’t care; he had survived being flayed not that long ago, something that probably should have left his mind completely broken. Whatever these guys were up to didn’t scare him in the slightest. Gangbangers didn’t scare him. Serial killers didn’t scare him.

Humans didn’t scare him.

“I think you’re gonna love Santa Carla,” Paul said over his shoulder. “We got everything here.”

“You tried the Chinese place yet?” Marko asked, glancing up at Billy with a smirk. “To die for.”

“Just got in this morning,” Billy said coolly as they slipped into the crowd. “Only food I’ve had was some shitty diner.”

“Oh yeah?” Paul asked, immediately thinking about you and your shitty diner. “Which one?”

“Hell if I know.” Billy paused. “Waitress was hot though.”

Marko’s proverbial hackles immediately rose and he sneered, ready to tear him a new one if he really was talking about you. As much as he liked the looks of Billy, that didn’t mean he wanted the guy pawing at you. Before he could say anything, though, Paul cut in.

“You got a thing for waitresses?” He laughed loudly. “Real specific type, man.”

“Nah. This one was real cute, though.” Billy grinned. He could do this. He could handle guy talk. Just like the locker room back at Hawkins High.

Marko caught sight of his smile and his eyes widened slightly.

Okay.

That was damn near perfect.

He couldn’t help but wonder how he’d look with fangs, though.

“Marko, you got any idea where Dwayne is?” Paul asked, glancing back and forth.

“You know where he always goes,” Marko said. “That alley, over by—never mind, found him.”

The metallic scent of blood suddenly wrapped itself around them as Dwayne carved a path through the crowd. Well, at least someone had gotten a nice meal. And he had mostly cleaned up, save for a smear on his jaw, and when Paul saw it, he desperately wanted to lick it off. Would that be rude? Would Billy care? …why did he care if Billy cared? Fuck it, he needed some fresh blood in his system. Billy could deal with it.

“Been lookin’ for you, man!” Paul said as Dwayne joined them. He looked up at him hopefully, asking—begging—for permission, and when Dwayne tilted his chin up a nearly imperceptible amount, he knew he had gotten it.

Billy watched as Paul swiped a long tongue over Dwayne’s jaw…and he was frozen. He had never seen two guys doing shit like that together, and he couldn’t believe they were just…doing it out in public.

Not to mention it was pretty fucking weird to lick blood off of someone’s face after a fight. 

...Weird and a little erotic.

Neil would have a fucking heart attack if he saw. His father had beaten the shit out of him and called him a fag just for doing his hair. But here, these guys were totally unafraid, totally uncaring about the occasional glare thrown their way, and Billy couldn’t even fathom being so open about it. 

He watched as Paul seemed to purr something in Dwayne’s ear, the brunette snorting softly in amusement before nudging at Paul’s head with his nose. It was the simplest sort of affection, but it was something Billy had never even seen before…and he didn’t know if it pissed him off because he thought it was stupid, or because he was jealous.

“—back by the bikes,” he heard Dwayne say as he pulled himself out of his thoughts.

“He hasn’t been out at all?” Marko asked nervously. He didn’t want to think about how pissed off David would be if he was hungry, and he also didn’t want to think about David deciding to take a chunk out of Billy. 

Dwayne just shook his head and then led the way back through the crowds, the others following him. Billy kept his hands in his pockets, fiddling with his cigarette pack and lighter. He was as nervous as Marko sounded, but he couldn’t show it. He couldn’t let these guys know that the tone in Marko’s voice had him wary as hell, and he was bracing himself for whoever he was.

He couldn’t panic.

Not here.

Not in front of these total strangers. He never panicked in front of anyone, never showed any weakness, and he wasn’t about to start now.

The vampires all heard the way his heart rate increased and suddenly their attention was on him, even though they didn’t show it. They were listening intently, Dwayne prodding at Billy’s mind and finding the same walls that Paul and Marko had. He couldn’t figure it out, either; they never had this problem with humans, and as far as he could tell, this guy was just that.

Human.

Billy swallowed his anxiety back down and his pulse eventually slowed again. Paul and Marko shared a glance, but kept their mouths shut. They knew each other well enough to know what the other was thinking. They liked this new guy, and they both had the urge to help him. To make him feel at home in Santa Carla. Because they had the feeling--and their feelings were usually right--that he was a lost boy, just like them.

--------

“David, quit!” you laughed, shoving at him. 

He just grinned against your throat, teeth brushing over your skin. “Why, kitten? Gimme a good reason.”

“Because we’re in public!” You squealed as he pulled you up against him.

You were sitting backwards on his bike, facing him and half straddling his lap. He had his hands around your waist and his lips on your neck, not giving a damn if anybody saw—and they definitely saw, because you were putting on quite the show—and he was perfectly happy to stay right there and make you squirm. He could feel hunger gnawing away at him, but for the moment, you were keeping it at bay…and besides, he would way rather make out with you than go hunting.

“Can’t wait until you’re finally turned,” he mumbled against your skin.

“Why?” You asked breathlessly, your fingers tangled in his hair.

“‘Cause I won’t have to be so gentle.”

He dug his fingers into your sides for good measure and your face flushed when you felt how strong his grip was. Sometimes, you almost forgot that he could tear you in half as easily as you would a piece of paper, and whenever he reminded you, an excited little shiver flew down your spine.

“You like it rough, don’t you, kitten?” He purred, licking a line up your throat. “I can smell you gettin’ wet….”

“David,” you whined, tilting your head away to look at him. “Quit teasing me!”

“Oh, I’m not teasing. I’ll fuck you right here. Right now. C’mon.” He slipped his hands under your thighs and hoisted you the rest of the way onto his lap, laughing when you yelped in surprise.

His teeth found the side of your neck again and he nibbled at your skin, a low growl rumbling in his throat. You couldn’t help but melt against him, sighing happily as you stroked his hair. It was moments like these, where David was so calm and loving, that you loved the most. Nothing else mattered. It was just the two of you, the rest of the world fading away even though the boardwalk was crowded and loud.

“I love you, David,” you murmured.

He hummed, his grip on you tightening. He wasn’t great at saying the words, even though there were only three of them, and you had only ever heard him utter them once. That didn’t matter, though, because you knew that he felt it, and you didn’t need to hear it out loud when he was so good at showing you in so many other ways.

“You’re too good for me, kitten.” He said, kissing the side of your head.

“Not true,” you smiled, nuzzling his cheek.

You heard that growl-purr rising again.

And then, he froze.

David fell completely still, for just a moment, just long enough for you to notice. When you pulled back, you saw his eyes trained on something behind you, and when you twisted around to see, you were greeted with the sight of the rest of your boys…

And one extra.

On the one hand, you were glad to see the hot guy from the diner. He really did fit in with the rest of the boys, walking next to Paul with his hands in his pockets and a very devil may care attitude about him. At night, surrounded by the dark sky and the bright lights of the boardwalk, he was even hotter than he had been earlier that day, and you didn’t mind the idea of adding him to the gang...On the other hand, you really, really didn’t want David to tear him in half.

“Sweetheart,” David drawled as he looked over your head. “That wouldn’t happen to be your boy, would it?”

“Uh…” you floundered as they got closer, “see, when you say it like that…”

“Oh, damn, looks like you two made up!” Marko taunted, that cute little sneer that you loved so much plastered on his face.

“This is Billy,” Paul said, nudging the new guy forward. “He wants to hang with us.”

Billy gave him an annoyed grunt as he was shoved, but he held himself back from slugging him. The platinum blond dude on the bike looked extremely fucking pissed off, and Billy couldn’t really blame him...if he had just gotten interrupted by these goons while he had a hot girl like you on his lap, he would have blown a gasket. 

You looked absolutely delicious perched there, too. 

“Well, you got me disappointed, doll,” Billy said nonchalantly, ignoring the guy behind you and the way his eyes narrowed angrily. “I was kinda hopin’ you didn’t have a boyfriend.”

You stared at him. Okay, yeah, you thought that was pretty hot...you were used to Surf Nazis making passes at you, but they were gross and always just pissed you off. This, though...this had you a little bit breathless. “Oh, wow...”

David glanced down at you and snorted angrily before slipping away to grab Billy by the front of his jacket. “Who the fuck are you?”

Billy just met his gaze. Yeah. This guy was scarier than Paul. By a lot. But he wasn’t scarier than a brain monster from another dimension...and he wasn’t scarier than Neil Hargrove. 

Not by a longshot.

You watched as Billy sneered back at David, something that even the rest of Santa Carla’s vampires rarely did. 

It was...pretty hot.

“Billy Hargrove,” the human said, lip raised slightly. “Who the fuck are you?”

David just stared at him. 

Billy smelled like leather and motor oil and cigarettes and weed, a combination that David loved because that’s what his boys smelled like, and it made his nose twitch. When he had grabbed Billy, he had noticed how solid he was, and David hated, he fucking hated, that he had to look up to meet his gaze. It was like getting up in Dwayne’s face...except Dwayne was chill and this guy was like a powder keg waiting to explode. 

Then again, so was David.

He didn’t understand why the boys hadn’t just eaten him. This guy was dangerous, he could tell, and if he was too aggressive, then there was no fucking way they’d get along well enough for him to join the gang. And the worst part, the most horrible part (besides the lovey dovey eyes everybody was making at him), was that Billy’s mind was totally closed off. 

It didn’t make any sense. He looked like a human. He smelled like a human. Billy Hargrove was a fucking human, just a guy, and for the first time in his nearly 80 years of being an undead fiend, David couldn’t get into a human’s head. He had run into this problem with other species, sure--werewolves were difficult, zombies didn’t have much going on upstairs, witches tended to be able to keep him out if they knew what they were doing...but there was nothing to indicate that Billy wasn’t a normal human.

But clearly, he wasn’t normal, and as much as he hated it, David wanted to keep him around to figure out what the hell was going on.

“David.” he finally growled. “And I wanna know what the hell you’re doin’ on my boardwalk.”

“Wanna let me go before you start askin’ questions?” Billy sneered. 

“Watch your fucking mouth,” David snarled, tightening his grip. 

“Or what?” Billy challenged. 

“Alright, okay,” you suddenly appeared between them, easing David off of Billy with a hand on each of their chests. “That’s enough of that.”

Billy looked down at your hand and then back up at David. He had a shit eating grin on his face that would have totally sealed the deal and had David ripping his head off then and there if you weren’t in the way. 

“Move, doll,” David growled. 

“Absolutely not,” you argued, crossing your arms over your chest and facing him head on. 

“Why?”

“Because...” you turned slightly, looking up at Billy Hargrove with a small smile on your face. “I think I like this one.”

David looked between you and Billy and you could practically see him thinking. You could tell that he was communicating with the others, too, and finally, after what felt like a lifetime, he gave a little nod. 

“Alright. Fine.” he said, taking a small step back. “Come back to our place, Billy. Let’s see if you can hang.”

[5ummit]

Roosmav Fic Recs

Did you watch Top Gun: Maverick and think it would be interesting if Rooster and Maverick’s feelings for each other weren’t so familial after all? New to roosmav and not sure where to start? Please enjoy this sampler platter of tasty fics.

Just a heads up, my interest in this pairing is specifically because of its problematic nature (age gap, pseudo-incest, unhealthy dynamics, etc) and my recs will generally reflect that as those are the kinds of topics I like to explore in fiction. These won’t all be pure trash like my usual fare – I’ve had to broaden my tastes a bit since my options are more limited in this fandom – but I can tell you upfront if you’re looking for cutesy hand holding or feel-good domestic bliss, you should look elsewhere.

As usual, standout kinks/tropes and potentially triggering content will be noted to the best of my ability, but please carefully read all tags and author’s notes.

Don't Think (Just Do) by Exorin Words: 1900 Notes: dubious consent

“Fight back,” Rooster repeats, a barely there whisper tinged with desperation. Maverick doesn’t move and Rooster feels the way the other man’s body goes lax and easy against his grip, “Get it out Bradley,” Maverick says, turning his face to the side to make sure that Rooster can hear him.

The man with the child in his eyes by hazelmotes Words: 3110

The day after he almost rips Hangman’s smug grin off his stupid fucking face, he heads to the beach. He knows he’ll be followed. It makes him want to laugh, how things have changed and how they haven’t changed at all. He used to follow Maverick around everywhere he went, glued to his side. He couldn’t have separated himself from him even if he’d wanted to. The earth was made to love the sun.

Toxic Pony by yellow_crayon Words: 3520 Notes: mistaken identity, dubious consent

The kid staring at him across the bar is young, Hawaiian shirt and blue board shorts, aviators pinned to a thin white undershirt, the V of his crooked collar showing a light smattering of freckles over sun-kissed clavicles. Probably some navy admiral's rebellious kid looking for a good time. Maverick's gone through his fair share of them way back when. This one is at least a decade too young for Maverick's current tastes.

Running toward the fire by Lake Words: 670 Notes: daddy kink

Bradley's mouth tasted like whiskey when he kissed Pete. Liquid courage for someone who rarely reached for it, steadying himself enough to tell Pete what he wanted. Pete is stone-cold sober - he wouldn't do this particular thing any other way, and he wouldn't say no, even when the thought of it made his brain feel too big for his skull and his tongue feel too big for his mouth.

Little Orange Bottle by Exorin Words: 5670 Notes: UNDERAGE, drugged/drunk sex, noncon/dubcon (of Mav)

“Hey Mav, I know it’s late but I was wondering–” he starts, talking at a whisper as he rounds the corner to the living room where Maverick should, in theory, be setting up the pull out couch into a bed for the night - instead he finds the older man already passed out, his leather jacket on the floor, shirt pushed up enough to give a small peak at his toned stomach and pants half-undone; Bradley’s mouth goes dry at the sight and he takes a half step forward. “Mav?” Bradley tries, wincing at the crack in his voice.

Truer than North by thedastardly Words: 8850

Brad, much to his embarrassment, had his first real sexual experience looking at a picture of Maverick and Goose—his father’s lanky arm thrown over the other man’s round shoulders and squinting into he sun. Next to him Maverick was smiling, all dark hair and pretty, light eyes, the hollow of his throat shining with sweat from Fightertown sunshine.

What He Needs Is You by Belladonna_Q Words: 1660 Notes: omegaverse, lactation/nursing

It's been three days since mission prep began. Only three days since he laid eyes on Bradley after over ten years of silent static. And it took only those three days for his body to restart, like a roaring ignition fire, rumbling and lit and ready to go. Three days to undo over ten years of effort.

Seventy minutes by AortaArgent Words: 19330 Notes: self-esteem issues, dubious consent

The dip between Rooster’s collarbones is right in front of him, tan and shining and he could fit his thumb right against that gap, trace the little notch. The thought is enough to make him feel shame scald his skin, sends him ducking out of Rooster’s way and closing his mouth tight until he makes it to the safety of the sofa.

The edge of glory by writelikeitsgoingoutofstyle Words: 2470

Wrenches and loose wiring clatter as they hit the cement, and Maverick doesn't even have a chance to complain before his chest is pressed into the hastily cleared workbench. There's a twinge in his shoulder and he can't help but grunt. Half of him expects Rooster to taunt him, after all, it's another sign of what an 'old man' he is - instead the only thing he hears is the solid thud of Rooster dropping to his knees. It can't have been a graceful move, but only one of them will be feeling this in the morning.

[technojizz]

I just remembered you live in Siberia, sorry for these very lame questions youve probably answered before but I'm sooo curious

what's that like? (Other than very cold.) Have you ever lived anywhere else? How do you stay warm?

also what was your old url? I don't remember following this one lol

oh you probably follow me because of my spn blog i had like 5 or 6 years ago. i really don't remember what url i used to have fhsjaksjfd

i live in a big city, so in terms of infrastructure it's not really that much different from any other city i guess. the thing that i like is that i have a nice forest 5 minute drive away from my house, which is nice. i don't know if that's like a common thing in other countries? and also my uni and place of work are surrounded by forest. and we do have a lot of beautiful lakes and beaches and other landscapes that are easily accessed by a train or a car! and we also have altai mountains and dude this is the most beautiful (and geologically frustrating) place i've ever seen.

we have a subarctic climate (dfc/dwc type) so we have 4-5 months with a temperature above 5°C. the summer is pretty hot which is nice i guess exept that that's the time that i spend field working and boy i hate walking 12 hours a day under a burning sun trying to make my brain function. we basically don't have autumn or spring which is frustrating because i have to switch from my long sleeve to my parka and leave my collection of leather jackets and trench coats crying in the closet. the winter is pretty nice actually! once you get used to wearing 5 layers of clothes. i love having my 6 months no bugs season. we do have a couple on months when it's -25°C and that's the time when you don't want to spend too much time outside but when it's like -15°C and it's snowing and there's no wind that's the best weather that i can think of!

anyway i live in the south of siberia and the climate is really nice here comparing to the north. i once spend a winter in the city called yakutsk and this is a real nightmare. they have that thing called polar night so it's dark 24/7 outside. and it's also like -40°C all the time. but that's the year i had to see polar light so i'm not complaining.

my house is pretty warm! it has thick brick walls and good central heating that is also very cheap comparing to other countries. some of the older building that are crying for renovation are a little bit harder to live in when it's really cold outside but it's not like we have to sit home in our winter jackets or something

so um i hope i answered you question. i mean living here is not much different from anywhere else. i know that some people still think that living in siberia means living in a small cabin in the middle of nowhere and fighting with bears for food but dude i only wish it was like that

[jewels3645]

Check out this listing I just added to my Poshmark closet: Blue Jean two piece outfit with real white and silver leather applique.

[quicklyshadowyface]

Vintage Leather Fashion Store

[kmp78]

I hope Val doesn't look back at this old redneck. - Lol. You have obviously never met a real redneck.

$10 million in personal residential real estate, $4200 leather biker jacket, $2900 North Face down vest, $950 YSL beach wear shirt, $1100 Gucci sunglasses, $450 ERD white t-shirt, $370 Gucci slides, $620 hair barrette, WON no less than 43 Entertainment awards including Academy Award, SAG, Golden Globe, Critics Choice, and People’s Choice Award, NO shotgun or fishing rod, NO dog, NO motorcycle, NO pick-up truck, NO missing teeth, DOES NOT live in a trailer park. HAS completed school at least through the 5th grade, DOES NOT smoke cigarettes, chew tobacco or catch and deep fry alligators (or pickles for that matter). BURNS the fucking popcorn ! Admittedly he DOES wear $24 GlitterLidshats trucker hats, DOES own a FORD camper, DOES LIKE to climb rocks and DOES LOVE HIS MAMA! But he’s a f**kin’ VEGAN for Jesus sakes ! He ain’t no redneck sweet pea. 😂😆

He is white trash no matter how you sugarcoat it.

You can out pearls on a pig but IT'S STILL A PIG. 🐷

[chomelton76]

Yves Saint Laurent Luggage Replica Ysl Replica Purse

Yves Saint Laurent is one other of essentially the most copied purse designers out there. We have all seen the actually awful, fraying, fake, cheaply made knockoffs with the misprinted initials, faux supplies. Only AAA Handbags has captured the true essence of a shocking Yves Saint Laurent replica bag. saint laurent replica Indistinguishable from the attractive designer originals, the AAA Handbags delivers the highest high quality, mirror picture, luxurious Yves Saint Laurent replica bag you have been searching for. Elegant styling, completely stitched from the finest materials, with tailored YSL craftsmanship oozing out of each pore. Genuine baggage will function zippers with a signature bend in them, additionally seen on YSL leather-based jackets. These pulls are not completely flat, and have a crimp close to the base. While many details will range based mostly on bag style, dimension and time of production, there are a few key features to look out for on Saint Laurent baggage. Read on for our professional team’s authentication tips and discover ways to spot a real YSL logo-accented bag for yourself. As we stated previously, we think about the internal tag being one of the most reliable signs of a faux YSL Loulou bag. Read extra about studying how to authenticate numerous items. Explore the Library 1M+ words written for 1000's of things in hundreds of guides. Louis Vuitton is dearer whereas YSL items are more inexpensive for a bigger viewers. Both luxurious manufacturers have their staple items and the price should not be the main part to decide which brand is healthier. The authentic dust-bag is made from nice and soft materials whereas the counterfeit one is polyester, which we will tell even from wanting at the picture. wikipedia handbags Some troops from the American Ghost Army went to Normandy two weeks after D-Day to simulate a Mulberry harbour. The deception was created in such a means that at evening its lights drew German gunfire away from the real Mulberries. Both harbours have been virtually totally useful when on 19 June a big north-east storm at Force 6 to 8 blew into Normandy and devastated the Mulberry harbour at Omaha Beach. The harbours had been designed with summer time weather circumstances in mind however this was the worst storm to hit the Normandy coast in 40 years. Just just like the French brand Saint Laurent’s and Manhattan Satchel types lately, they have abandoned the standard Saint laurent mark, which has become more and more restrained and extra elegant. Women usually get bored with having big bags on their shoulders and came across their bodies. However, the Replica Saint Laurent Bag, which was like a bread, hit the body softly and was very comfortable. Without any further ado, let’s bounce straight into the fake vs actual YSL Loulou legit examine information. Sunset just launched, the looks and High school are very comparable, are with Flap, are often compared to folks. Fashionista has done a measured on the Sunset, the bodily self-importance is way heavier than the High faculty, women like gentle purses could feel a little heavier. Sunset’s chain bag liberation of his palms, shoulder or diagonal can be. In the Duluer collection, males's and ladies's watches with purple audemars replica belts finest replica fake designer websites express the richness and energy of exotic love from the unique origins of Switzerland. As the prince of Saint Laurent “diehard”, carrying the new mid-size Sunset in the airport avenue taking pictures, with Prince-of-the-knee boots and denim shorts, appears informal and stylish. If you might be in search of recommendations as to the place to buy replica luggage you'll find a way to visit this web page which options discussions between myself and other weblog readers as to the place to purchase an excellent copy of this bag. I bought this specific bag from Kitty who could be reached at her e-mail at When shopping for replicas the #1 necessary issue is the popularity of the seller and their trustworthiness. You can use this evaluation to information you in purchasing a good high quality replica of this particular Yves Saint Laurent Sac De Jour Nano bag. Wrecked pontoon causeway of one of many "Mulberry" artificial harbours, following the storm of 19–22 June 1944. The Bombardons had been giant 200 ft by 25 ft (7.6 m) cross-shaped floating breakwaters fabricated in metal that had been anchored outdoors the primary breakwaters that consisted of Gooseberries and Phoenixes . 24 bombardon units, hooked up to one one other with hemp ropes, would create a 1 mi (1.6 km) breakwater. During the storms on the end of June 1944 some Bombardons broke up and sank while others parted their anchors and drifted down onto the harbours, possibly causing extra damage to the harbours than the storm itself.

[linde80langhoff]

Replica Yves Saint Laurent Chyc Journey Case Red Y7141 Smooth Leather, Ysl Uk Website

The Phoenixes, as soon as refloated, were towed across the channel to form the "Mulberry" harbour breakwaters along with the "Gooseberry" block ships. Ellsberg rode one of many concrete caissons to Normandy; as quickly as there he helped unsnarl wrecked landing craft and vehicles on the beach. Between 17 June and 6 August 1942, Hugh Iorys Hughes submitted a design idea for artificial harbours to the War Office. Because of excessive demand and recognition of the YSL Teddy Jacket, many different trend labels revisited it in their own ways. Apart from this, there are a selection of replicas obtainable on the market as well. Mostly, the Teddy Jacket replicas are bought on online shops such as Taobao. An unique Kite anchor is displayed in a personal museum at Vierville-sur-Mer while a full dimension replica forms a half of a memorial to Beckett in Arromanches. In October 2018 5 Kite anchors were recovered from the bed of the Solent off Woodside Beach, which had been an meeting area for Whale tows previous to D Day. The anchors were taken to Mary Rose Archaeological Services in Portsmouth for conservation therapy. Corncobs have been ships that crossed the English Channel and had been then scuttled to act as breakwaters and create sheltered water at the five landing seashores. All sorts of leather-based and canvases are bought from the high-end dealers, preferably, from those who present material to the unique model. This means the minimal chance of difference of fabric is overruled. Best Quality Designer Bags use real metal within the handles, zippers, and other metallic detail. That makes it parallel to the original baggage to the utmost extent. If you like the artistic design by Saint Laurent Replica and don’t have thousands of dollars to spend on a single designer bag, contemplate shopping for a high-end Saint Laurent Replica Bag. A high-quality replica bag is a finest and reasonably priced substitute for these unique designs. Since 1957, GQ has impressed men to look sharper and live smarter with its unparalleled coverage of favor, tradition, and past. From award-winning writing and photography to binge-ready movies to electric reside occasions, GQ meets hundreds of thousands of modern males where they live, creating the moments that create conversations. There are occasions when, because of Holland’s exuberance—or maybe his naiveté—he takes on more than he ought to. While filming the last two Avengers, he would spend three days on set in Atlanta, then get on a airplane to London and do two days on the set of The Current War, solely to fly again to Atlanta again. Replica Bags He checked out over 1,000 shares for each examine, including 2 for 1, three for 1 and 4 for 1 inventory splits.1) VeThor X node is basically profitable. Among the important duties going through North Korean scientists are regarded as increase a bigger rocket that may fly farther and carry a heavier satellite tv for pc or payload. phoenet.tw saint laurent replica Mainland and be loaded with a warhead, which is several times heavier than the satellite tv for pc the nation launched in 2012.. Replica purses online Replica ysl Build Excitement Excitement a couple of project will increase the move of adrenaline in your work team so its members shall be keen and able to performing at a excessive stage. Express your enthusiasm concerning the work in entrance of team members to encourage them. Best Replica Designer Bags is the web vendor that offers within the high-quality, mirror-image replica. There should by no means be any double stitching in the course of a row or in an sudden place. Any signs of unfastened threads, double stitching or related inferior high quality is an instantaneous purple flag. As Saint Laurent bags grew to become trendy classics, nevertheless, counterfeiters inevitably took advantage of their second and began to create copies left and right. All you must do is ship us good-quality photos of your YSL Loulou bag and we'll get back to you with the outcomes inside 24 to forty eight hours. The outcomes may even include a report on why we imagine your bag is pretend or genuine. As you'll find a way to see within the fake vs actual Yves Saint Laurent Loulou bag images above, we've identified the truth that on the fake bag, the material used for the bottom area of the bag is different than the one used on the genuine bag. As for the third step of the guide on tips on how to spot faux Yves Saint Laurent Loulou luggage, we're going to inspect the facet “SAINT LAURENT PARIS” printing, which has similarities to the first step of this information. We have arranged this article in a straightforward method to read and perceive the issues in the pretend YSL Loulou baggage in simply 7 simple spots to confirm. wikipedia handbags The exterior world has a method of forcing itself again in. Portland Harbour, Portland, Dorset – two can be seen from the seashore at Castletown. They were designated as a Grade II listed constructing in 1993. Durability is at all times the power of radar watches, and the event of assorted new materials and new processes can additionally be the goal of the fixed seek for the brand. The titanium case of this watch measuring forty six x 45.5 x thirteen.7 mm the way to identify has not only a robust visible impression, but also and outstanding abrasion resistance, mainly as a result of titanium curing course of developed by radar. Although it looks very clumsy in look, it truly weighs solely 106 grams, which is considerably decrease than Xiaobian's previous assumption. If you need assistance with the authentication of your YSL Loulou bag, we’ve received you lined. That is why we now have compiled this fast 60 seconds solution to authenticating your bag. Below are the top 7 indicators that can assist you to determine when you have a faux or original Yives Saint Laurent manufactured Loulou bag.

[gatesmccartney8]

How To Spot A Real Ysl Bag

There ought to never be any double stitching in the course of a row or in an unexpected place. Any indicators of free threads, double stitching or similar inferior quality is a direct red flag. As Saint Laurent bags grew to become modern classics, nevertheless, counterfeiters inevitably took advantage of their second and started to create copies left and right. All you need to do is ship us good-quality photos of your YSL Loulou bag and we will get back to you with the results within 24 to forty eight hours. The results will also include a report on why we imagine your bag is fake or genuine. Without any further ado, let’s bounce straight into the faux vs real YSL Loulou legit examine guide. Sunset just launched, the appearance and High school are very comparable, are with Flap, are often compared to folks. Fashionista has done a measured on the Sunset, the bodily self-importance is much heavier than the High college, ladies like gentle purses could really feel a little heavier. Sunset’s chain bag liberation of his palms, shoulder or diagonal can be. If the bag exhibits no sign of use, neither should the slots. Any sign of tearing or put on could point out inauthenticity. When inspecting an authentic Saint Laurent bag, its edges will be constantly finished. If the bag options matelassé, a way used to mimic hand-stitched quilts from Marseilles, France, each row must be the identical width, perfectly aligned and have an even number of stitches. It’s particularly difficult to order the Teddy online for the reason that fit has such a unique look. YSL is doubtless certainly one of the luxurious brands which have reimagined itself over the earlier few years. Nowadays, their handbags are trendy and in addition extremely counterfeited. Aliexpress.com is a web-based retailer who sells gadgets from 40 totally different classes. According to them, the sizing of the Teddy Jacket Replica is about the same as the unique one. Although, the fabric used in replica is not as good as the one used within the authentic, it's still worth the worth to many. Saint Laurent is a luxury trend house well-known for its modern, edgier aesthetic. wikipedia handbags Seasonally, Saint Laurent delivers a variety of clothing that the followers of the model adore. For a date, an evening out, or a business meeting; there's nothing fairly like the type and coolness of Saint Laurent. One of the preferred varsity, bomber jacket can be essentially the most difficult to replica. The Aliexpress.com online retailer allows prospects to purchase objects at an affordable worth. https://skel.io/ysl-replica-bags.html The on-line retailer is a simple means to avoid wasting cash in your next buying journey. Find replica handbags on Aliexpress.com utilizing key phrases to help your seek for YSL baggage. You just need to enter a choice of keywords to assist you discover the replica YSL bags on aliexpress.com. The Purse Queen was started in August of of 2010 by me, Angie , as a weblog that evaluations genuine & replica handbags I really have purchased throughout the years, and replica web sites as properly. Some troops from the American Ghost Army went to Normandy two weeks after D-Day to simulate a Mulberry harbour. The deception was created in such a means that at evening its lights drew German gunfire away from the true Mulberries. Both harbours were virtually totally functional when on 19 June a large north-east storm at Force 6 to 8 blew into Normandy and devastated the Mulberry harbour at Omaha Beach. The harbours had been designed with summer weather circumstances in mind but this was the worst storm to hit the Normandy coast in forty years. This is the first thing you should check when receiving a duplicate bag, and will be the greatest pointer as as to whether the bag is a chunk of junk or a top quality replica. If you are unsure the leather in your bag is actual then a simple method to examine is to simply take it into an area leather smith store and ask their opinion. Dolabuy replica Handbags Replica From morning to nighttime we had been texting however I started to notice typically she would take hours to reply so I thought nothing of it however I couldn’t deal with what she did. The grommets incorporating the chain is not going to be marked with the brand, nor will small snap closures on wallets. However, larger snaps on handbags might be marked Saint Laurent / Paris. The inside zipper pulls are additionally a key point of authentication. Sunset brought the small two kinds, the fabric in addition to the basic leather-based, crocodile skin and fluorescent leather-based can choose. The strap can be divided into exercise chain and rough belt two. One of the biggest features of Sunset, which has the characteristics of the organ bag, is that it could be put in without any issues. The basic Sunset bag is also re-released with this new materials. When holding a fake one, it's incredibly stiff and doesn't really feel like genuine leather. The leather-based looks and feels gentle, puffy and a little oily. Once you contact it, you will by no means have a problem recognizing a pretend YSL College handbag. Start from looking at this pic trying to really feel the difference between authentic and replica YSL. These purse replicas are set at a extra inexpensive worth whereas nonetheless having the signature YSL look. Yves Saint Laurent is a well known excessive style brand.

[svenssonfink03]

Yves Saint Laurent Luggage Replica Ysl Replica Purse

I am your typical style obsessed woman in her 30s (think Blair Waldorf or Serena van Der Woodsen post-Gossip Girl) primarily based in New York, but regularly journey around the globe . Juries act as structural checks on the judiciary, and different branches of government. Privacy of your information is one more concern that bothers everybody. March 23 A vehicle was stolen in the block of Southeast Main Street. Genuine luggage will function zippers with a signature bend in them, additionally seen on YSL leather-based jackets. These pulls are not totally flat, and have a crimp close to the base. While many particulars will vary based mostly on bag type, size and time of manufacturing, there are a couple of key features to look out for on Saint Laurent luggage. Read on for our skilled team’s authentication ideas and learn to spot an actual YSL logo-accented bag for yourself. saint laurent replica It’s particularly troublesome to order the Teddy online because the match has such a novel look. YSL is amongst the luxurious manufacturers which have reimagined itself over the earlier few years. Nowadays, their handbags are stylish and in addition extremely counterfeited. Aliexpress.com is an internet retailer who sells objects from 40 completely different categories. Some troops from the American Ghost Army went to Normandy two weeks after D-Day to simulate a Mulberry harbour. The deception was created in such a way that at night its lights drew German gunfire away from the real Mulberries. Both harbours had been virtually absolutely useful when on 19 June a large north-east storm at Force 6 to eight blew into Normandy and devastated the Mulberry harbour at Omaha Beach. The harbours had been designed with summer weather circumstances in mind however this was the worst storm to hit the Normandy coast in forty years. The genuine magnetic closure is clean, reflective, and pretty big whereas the pretend one is matte, much smaller and the screw in the middle of the closure is questionable too. The circle in the middle must be greater and clean just as shown within the left image. The lettering on the fake lock is tiny when the letters are supposed to be bolder, thicker, and greater simply as proven within the left image. PurseValleyfactory.ru has taken direct cost of the operations and has no further connection with pursevalley.cn or another web site in any respect. Without any additional ado, let’s leap straight into the faux vs real YSL Loulou legit examine information. Sunset simply launched, the appearance and High faculty are very comparable, are with Flap, are sometimes in comparability with individuals. Fashionista has done a measured on the Sunset, the physical self-importance is much heavier than the High school, women like gentle handbags might really feel slightly heavier. Sunset’s chain bag liberation of his arms, shoulder or diagonal can be. The Mulberry B harbour at Gold Beach was used for 10 months after D-Day, and over 2.5 million males, 500,000 automobiles, and four million tons of supplies were landed earlier than it was totally decommissioned. The nonetheless only partially-completed Mulberry A harbour at Omaha Beach was broken on 19 June by a violent storm that suddenly arrived from the north-east. wikipedia handbags After three days the storm lastly abated and harm was discovered to be so extreme that the harbour needed to be abandoned. Mulberry harbours were momentary transportable harbours developed by the United Kingdom through the Second World War to facilitate the rapid offloading of cargo onto seashores in the course of the Allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944. La Califfa, a vendor which requires WeChat, is supposedly much like the mid-range version. Once in place the Corncobs created the sheltered waters known as Gooseberries. The committee initially investigated using compressed air breakwaters before ultimately deciding on blockships and caissons. Both places for the momentary harbours required detailed data concerning geology, hydrography and sea conditions.

[jewels3645]

Check out this listing I just added to my Poshmark closet: Blue Jean two piece outfit with real white and silver leather applique.

[martinsenmcdermott52]

Yves Saint Laurent Replicas

Replica Bags Wholesale You don't have to create or have a Psych Central account in order to take one of these tests. wikipedia handbags But Replica Yves Saint Laurent Handbags you want one should you like to save lots of your take a look at outcomes, or to assist track your ysl replica baggage china progress over time.. Saint Laurent Replica Bags - The Lovable Creations When it is about type and magnificence, nothing can beat the creativity of designers at Saint Laurent. They create an artwork piece that's liked and appreciated by the elite class. They are an excellent fusion of basic style and innovative type. This is not an genuine jacket, a custome made 1 to 1. Many YSL logo bags will also embody four mock nail heads on the outlying corners. Though not functional, they should be present on many Hedi Slimane-era baggage. Fluorescent cortical Sunset is really stunning cry, she management of the ladies must begin. For those who like to collect handbags, the model new member of Saint Laurent Sunset should be a good choice. The bag was received, and on the eve of the birthday, I felt that it was a fantastic birthday gift for myself, which eased the pressure of the super work in current days! A good replica bag tote can help you improve your fuel field. Reon is understood to be a bit more expensive than other Saint Laurent reps and this is no different. Overall, it doesn’t replicate the retail version completely. YSL label on the within of the bag is rarely smudged and always evenly aligned. The word “Saint Laurent Paris” is at all times spelled in full. Authentic Saint Laurent bag has an inside slot pocket. Newer types, nevertheless, have three letters, 6 digits, then one other four digits separated by a dot. You can afford a number of of the Yves Saint Laurent replica bags from AAA Handbags at these great prices. PurseValleyFactory has at all times synced with the replica style developments and have deeply invested within the R & D to make sure which fake brands are within the top-most bucket record of the pretend handbags acquirers. When it comes to buy a bundle of proposals it, it is sure to choose a great model and choose the proper shade. Bags of favor is straightforward, relatively easy to match, no garments too fancy and complex, it can play a very good effect. Aaa replica designer purses I’ve been warning for years now about Facebook quizzes that principally mine your personal data and use it to flog you issues. Spaces can permit smaller corporations and start ups to punch above their weight when hiring. In latest years, in style purse Lee, on this just went to the Fashion Week, many style bloggers, celebrities are holding a attendance of major events. The Mulberry B harbour at Gold Beach was used for 10 months after D-Day, and over 2.5 million men, 500,000 autos, and four million tons of supplies have been landed earlier than it was fully decommissioned. The still solely partially-completed Mulberry A harbour at Omaha Beach was broken on 19 June by a violent storm that suddenly arrived from the north-east. After three days the storm lastly abated and injury was discovered to be so severe that the harbour needed to be deserted. Mulberry harbours had been short-term moveable harbours developed by the United Kingdom during the Second World War to facilitate the rapid offloading of cargo onto beaches during the Allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944. La Califfa, a vendor which requires WeChat, is supposedly much like the mid-range model. The David’s Clock model is your most appropriate option in terms of shopping for a faux Teddy in the meanwhile. And then there’s the more apparent choice, buying the real factor. The Teddy is itself has a sq. match to it, while in accordance with many, should at the similar time have a good match. It’s not all too simple to make to pull this off when ordering online. Pocket placement, size of the arms and actual leather-based particulars. The store has a low Taobao score they usually don’t settle for returns unless there's a major high quality issue. phoenet.tw saint laurent replica bag If designers have no idea the spirit of the brand, designed the bundle to no taste. People with the selection of colours or type of clothing associated to people’s emotions, completely different colors lets you have completely different emotions, to express romantic, elegant, mysterious, fashion and so on. The Replica Saint Laurent Handbags loulou sequence has two bag kinds, one is a series envelope bag, which appears similar to the ysl messenger bag. There have been two harbours, Mulberry "A" and Mulberry "B". These harbours had been each of a similar size to Dover harbour. In the planning of Operation Neptune the term Mulberry "B" was defined as, "An artificial harbour to be built in England and towed to the British beaches at Arromanches." The genuine version of the bag comes with oxidized nickel hardware, and the replica model I acquired is on par with this. If you purchase a replica bag and the hardware appears uber light or flimsy chances are you might have a foul replica, nonetheless hardware weigh does vary by brand and model (e.g. some Louis Vuitton bags have lighter hardware than others). The leather-based of the bag is grained calfskin in the shade black. The first is a panel with a digital power reserve indicator that uses template cutting know-how. The editors think about this to be an indicator of a countdown. Another indicator is the stand above the principle energy pipe. On the other hand, the genuine Yves Saint Laurent’s prime and bottom corners of the letter “S” are much less curvy and rounded than the corner of the pretend YSL Loulou’s letter “S” corners.

[designerjackets]

https://thedesignerjackets.com/product/north-beach-real-leather-jacket

[darker-soft-starker]

Starker High School AU Pt. 7 (1...6)

tw: general Howard Stark warning

----

So, here’s the thing.

Peter meant to ask May about the letter the night he got it back from Tony, He really did. But then everyone was in such a good mood, he couldn’t bring himself to shatter that to satisfy his own curiosity.

So then he meant to ask the next day.

And he tries, he really does.

But the letter feels as heavy as an anvil in his desk drawer and Peter is too nervous to ask about it. Something always comes up or he gets too scared to shatter the image of the good, obedient nephew he is, one who doesn’t go rifling through mail not addressed to him, prying into personal business.

So he flusters and stumbles pretty badly for the first couple attempts. He changes topic quickly, pretending like he was going to ask about something else, asking himself where exactly his business ends and where his curiosity begins.

Once during a gymnastics comp he stopped mid routine to check on a rival who had fallen from the rings and injured themselves. His coach asked when he was going to stop being a goddamn martyr.

He shakes the Magic 8-Ball on Monday morning and asks the universe if it’s an appropriate time to approach May.

Reply hazy, try again.

Well, that’s not what his flagging courage had hoped for. He shakes it again.

Ask again later.

One more time, harder.

Better not tell you now.

“What the hell,” he whispers, placing it haphazardly upon where he took it. “That’s bullshit.”

“What’s with the potty mouth,” May asks suddenly from behind him. He turns as she’s affixing some dangling earrings to her ears. “What’s wrong, kiddo?”

“Nothing,” he sighs. “Just - do you have a minute?”

She checks her watch. “I have about forty seconds. Is something wrong - are you okay?”

“No - I mean yes, I’m okay. Are...are you?”

“Top of the world, bubby,” she scoops her keys from the bowl, approaching him with a curious expression. “Why do you ask?”

There’s no easy way to ask without blatantly admitting to going through her things, and the last thing he wants her to think is that she can’t trust him.

“I just mean. If you weren’t. If there was something wrong, you would tell me, right?”

“Of course,” her face falls. “You’re acting strange, Pete.”

“I just worry, that’s all.”

You’re all I have left, is what loops over and over in his mind, but doesn’t say. She seems to hear it anyway, rushing forward and kissing his forehead, her perfume filling his nose.

“Everything is fine, bubs. The second it isn’t, you’ll be the first to know.”

“Okay.”

“I gotta go, but stop worrying okay? That’s my job. You have a good day.”

She hurries to scoop up her handbag and closes the door before he’s broken out of his thoughts long enough to reply. He sighs and shakes the stupid ball again before he leaves as well.

Cannot predict now.

Of course.

Just for once he’d like fate to be firmly on his side.

---

Something smells weird.

It’s sharp, chemical and not entirely unpleasant. Noticeable, however, sharp enough to cut through the usual musty smell of the library. It’s like apple cider, but overpowers the usual library smell of old books and dust and pencil shavings, a scent Peter has long associated with study, solitude, and the easing of his anxious heart from a gallop to a steady stride.

It’s not a bad smell, just misplaced.

And Tony’s been acting strange all study period. Like, weirder than normal - and his resting state of normal is already ineffably frenetic and bewildering, so this was an entirely different carton of eggs.

Peter doesn’t exactly want to bring it up, they’re kind of on a tenuously peaceful truce, a silent lay down of arms, so to speak.

Well, as peaceful as a truce can be while they call each other all sorts of names and rib each other over literally any sign of weakness, but still. They have some sort of an understanding now, and it’s all relatively innocent, good natured banter.

Mostly.

Peter for sure could have done without being called fuck-face-mcgee upon entering the library, but he’s willing to let it pass. He was late, after all.

“Anyway,” Peter says, sitting across the table from Tony, “so I think if we removed the monthly gym membership, we’d have an extra sixty per month that could go towards other stuff.”

“Like what?” Tony’s face pinches.

“I don’t know, like a college fund?”

“Ridiculous idea. I need that membership,” Tony rebukes, shrugging his leather jacket off, hooking it over the back of the chair. “When else am I supposed to get a reprieve from you and the cabbage patch?”

“When do I get a reprieve? I’m the money-maker. When do I get my break from work and childcare?”

“At work. What are you, like an art teacher or something? Your whole day is like a rich, white woman's vacation. Parents don’t get a lunch break.”

“Right. I’m sure watching Dora and burping an infant is as hard as teaching a class of thirty.”

“Wow. So dismissive. I mean, if you were a good spouse, you would give your withered and weary husband a break from screaming babies and shitty diapers.”

“Mhmm. That would mean I’d have to do something nice for you, and that doesn’t sound like me.”

Tony shakes his head. “We’re getting a divorce as soon as Molly is old enough to pick me as the superior parent,” he points to Peter’s papers. “Put that in the notes.”

Peter closes his eyes and sighs, willing himself not to lean over the table and smack the other boy.

“You are not the superior parent. You’re the deadbeat that forgets to pick her up from school and day drinks.”

“And yet, she loves me the most. You’re just the breadwinner who comes home grumpy every evening. I’m the cool dad.”

“Fine, keep your druglord baby. I never wanted kids anyway.”

“Fine. I’m keeping the car.”

“I’m keeping the apartment.”

“Good.”

“Great.”

They snicker quietly in a rare moment of camaraderie before a lightbulb goes off in Peter's head.

“What if we used the membership, but cut costs elsewhere, like, cutting our own hair and stuff. We could save for a yearly holiday, go to the beach or something.”

“Florida! Disney, roadtrip, yes,” Tony clicks his fingers towards Peter, smiling wide. “Look at you getting all savvy. Call the judge, the marriage is back on.”

“You can’t go to Disney for a few hundred dollars, dumbass, that’s barely the price of admission,” Peter scribbles on his pad, making note of their ideas. “You ever been?”

“Nope.”

“Really?”

“Not even once.”

“That’s surprising. Isn’t that where all rich white people take their baby sociopaths to beat up their first mascot?”

“One, I was never a baby, I emerged fully grown, and two, could you imagine Howard Stark within a mile of the happiest place on earth? He’d have a fucking stroke,” his face changes like he’s had an epiphany. “Not a bad idea, actually.”

Peter doesn’t mention that he doesn’t personally know Howard Stark but is willing to take Tony’s assessment at face value. That being said, he can’t imagine Tony, now, voluntarily heading to Disney without coercion or the promise of copious quantities of alcohol. He’d probably smoke and cuss and scare away small children.

He mind lingers on that particular characterisation, and for a moment tries to picture what Tony looked like as a kid, if he was a chubby, toothless little brat, can’t help then imagining him with Mickey Mouse ears, gleefully running through his gigantic home, harried caretakers running after him.

He must have been the worst.

“I’ve never been further than Washington,” Peter offers, “but that was for AcDec, so it wasn’t like we got to see much.”

“You did Academic Decathlon?”

“Yep.”

“Ew, why would you do that to yourself.”

“I still do it. It looks good on college applications and it’s fun,” he shrugs. “I like it. I’m good at it.”

Tony’s hands cover his mouth, but it doesn’t stifle the rising apple of his cheeks or the mirth in his voice.

“I’m feeling so much second-hand embarrassment for you right now.”

“Shut up,” Peter huffs, kicking him under the table, satisfied when the other boy winces. He fails to smother his own wince when he gets a kick in return, right in the kneecap. “Nothing wrong with being an intellectual.”

“You’re a fucking nerd, four-eyes.”

“What about you?” Peter rolls his eyes, keen to change the subject. “Been outside New York?”

Tony shrugs, tapping his pen on the pad, looking anywhere but at him. “When I was younger I’d sometimes go on my dad's business trips to Europe or Japan or whatever. And we have a house in Malibu.”

“That sounds awesome.”

Tony snorts. He shuffles on his seat, sliding their notes over and making further amendments in quick strokes, the cheap pen spurting bright red ink over the paper like arterial spray.

“Oh yeah, it was a real blast.”

Spoiled brat.

“Are you going anywhere for Thanksgiving?”

“With my family?” Tony looks up. “No, I’d rather stick my head up a turkey’s ass. You?”

Without warning, Peter’s hand flies to cover his mouth, unable to  but snort at the imagery, He’s not sure if Tony just doesn’t get along with his family or if he’s still stuck in that churlish, ‘too cool to be around my parents’ stage of adolescence. It’s one the idiosyncrasies that would have annoyed Peter before, his ungratefulness of having a family that’s still alive would be just another thing for Peter to hate him for.

Now, he thinks, he’s beginning to parse out when Tony’s being sincere and when he’s  hyperbolic, finally recognising the latter as a mechanism to throw someone off a topic that makes Tony uncomfortable. He sees it - the warning lights and stop signs in barbed coding, wrapped up in dry wit and sarcasm.

Peter is like that sometimes, too.

And what the hell would Peter know about having a normal family.

“Yeah, actually, for once,” he says softly. “My aunt - not May - and uncle have a holiday home up north, so we’re staying with them over the long weekend.”

“S’cool. May’s family?”

Peter shakes his head. “Sort of - they’re not actually related, but May and Margaret have been best friends since college, so.”

“Is Margaret a babe, too?”

Peter throw a chewed-up pencil at him that he catches easily.

“Don’t be gross.”

“I’m not,” he throws the pencil back, overshooting and hitting the shelves behind them. “What are we talking, on a scale of haggard to hottie.”

“I don’t know, man. You seem to have questionable taste in the people you are attracted to.”

Tony grins crookedly, eyes shining with something Peter can’t decipher. “Ain't that the truth.”

“What’s the supposed to --” he stops himself, suddenly recognising what the strange scent was that he’d been picking up. “Wait - dude, are you wearing cologne?”

Tony’s mouth opens and closes a few times before he responds. “No,” he denies, just as the bell rings. “Oh, look at that, time to get to class.”

Saved by the bell.

“So, this is it,” Tony nods, shutting the lid of his laptop as the bell signals the end of their free period. “We’re done. The assignment. That’s the last of it, right?”

Dazedly, he watches Tony stuffing his laptop and notes into his backpack, brow creasing as his mind catches up.

“Uh, yeah. I guess.”

“Send me your notes tonight, I’ll stitch them together with mine and send them back.”

“Okay,” he sluggishly collects his own notes, picking up the bag by his feet. “That’s - that’s good.”

“Well, Parker,” Tony slings his backpack on his shoulder, shuffling backwards, “we didn’t kill each other. I mean, not for a lack of wanting on my behalf.”

‘’Yeah, from Wednesday we’re free. We can go back to normal.”

“Yeah,” Tony’s grin fades. They stare at each other for a long moment that could have been seconds or hours, he doesn’t know, until the second bell rings.

“Hey, um --”

“I’ll send you the notes later,” Tony interrupts, sotto voce. “I gotta get to class. See you around.”

Something in his stomach deflates, sadly and slowly, like a balloon with a pinprick, emptying itself until it’s an uncomfortably hard to digest crumpled mass at the base of his stomach. He pastes on a smile and looks out the window, hoping the feeling doesn’t show in his eyes.

That’s when he notices the leather jacket Tony has left behind, still slung over the back of the chair.

“You left your…” he trails off, turning back, but Tony is already long gone, probably already halfway to his next class. Like a bat out of hell, Peter thinks wryly, picking up the jacket, the leather smooth like butter under his touch, still warm around the collar where Tony’s had been leaning against it.

No good leaving it here to get stolen or be tossed into lost property. He decides to take it with him, folding it gently over his arm. He’ll give it back when he sees him again, maybe after school.

“Nice jacket, Parker,” Flash says approvingly when Peter bumps into him out in the hall.

At first he thinks he’s referring to Peter’s ratty hoodie, and it confounds him for a moment because it’s decidedly not nice, but then he realizes he’s referring to the leather in his arms.

“It’s not mine,” he replies a little too late, because Flash is already down the hall, out of earshot.

Peter sighs. It’s beginning to become a depressing theme.

---

The weird feeling in his chest doesn’t subside all afternoon, and into the evening Peter is starting to think maybe he just has indigestion, like acid reflux or something. Must be the chilli surprise from lunch. Maybe he’d missed his meds.

He sends his portion of the final notes to Tony’s email, turns off his computer and switches on Colbert.

---

It’s not until hours later, well after midnight and the infomercials are playing, only then does his phone buzz against his thigh with a response.

Figures that Tony would be a night owl like him.

> soz was distracted > youtube spiral

Peter shifts downwards on the bed, holding the phone over his face. < s’ok  < what were you watching  > say yes to the dress  < lmao really > lol no > anyway, looks good. ur notes > will print off for u to sign tomorrow < is that a compliment or an admission u were wrong about me 

> neither. One subject does not a genius make  > unlike me, an actual genius

In your dreams, dipshit, he wants to type, but doesn’t, not really keen to provoke a muddy discussion on who is the smartest (it’s definitely Peter).

< u left ur jacket in the library btw, I have it, he texts instead, his pulse jumping when Tony replies with crying emoji’s.

Tony sends him a snap, unexpectedly, a sad face that makes Peter snort. His face seems distressed, the caption reads, thought i lost it for good.

Shifting down further on the bed, he’s feeling suddenly and inexplicably courageous, fire burning up from his belly button to his fingers.

Peter takes a silly photo of himself and sends it back. > didn’t want it to get stolen < aw u care

“I do not,” he whispers to himself.  > i do not. come collect it after school tomorrow or im throwing it out. < u wouldn’t do that to me > there’s a lot of things i would do 2 u  > ....  > um  > lol 

 Peter’s face flames at the implication. He reads over what he just so carelessly typed, stomach positively knotted with embarrassment. Oh god, that is not what he meant. His fingers fly over the screen at record speed as he types out a response. < NOT LIKE THAT < I MEANT IT IN A THREATENING WAY < I’M LITERALLY GAGGING > yikes > ur dirty talk needs work < no it DOESN’T bc we’re not sexting > sure jan > damn. didn’t kno u had it in u bubs < i don’t have it in me > not yet > ;)

Despite the deep blush still heating his face and his heart galloping in his chest, a laugh breaks out of him. The phone in his hand vibrates again. > jk jk, not ever > need to bleach my brain now 

Slowly gliding back to earth he types out a response. < ikr me too < ugh.

He puts his phone down on the bed, looking up at the water-stained ceiling, amusement slowly fading. His pulse though, that doesn’t return to normal.

How could it when his mind suddenly runs away from him, evoking short-lived, but nonetheless strikingly vivid images of intertwined legs, planes of pale skin, and lush lips. How can the heat in his stomach escape when his thoughts conjure phantom sensations of a soft mouth sucking on his neck, the punishing grip of hands on his hips and the warmth and weight of another body on top of his own.

A forehead leaning against his, brown eyes that knocked his pulse off kilter.

The taste of nicotine.

Stop it.

That is dangerous territory right there. And a line he doesn’t want to cross.

Shaking his head, Peter swings his legs over the side of the bed and sits up, looking anywhere for a distraction; his window, the posters on his wall, his figurines on his shelves, anything to douse the low-burning fire in his gut.

Standing, he heads to the bathroom to get ready for bed, banging their crappy old heater with his fist to get it working again.

He takes a very cold shower.

----

It’s not that Peter doesn’t enjoy sex.

Not that he’s had it.

But he enjoys jerking off, at least. Like a regular amount, whatever that is for a teenage boy. He likes kissing. Likes thinking about one day being in a real relationship and exploring someone's body and he likes exploring what turns him on and what he doesn’t.

It’s just that he doesn’t let himself think of anyone he knows personally that way, no matter how conventionally attractive they are - not Thor, and especially not him.

Typically, his fantasies are people with vague features, sometimes with bodies like those he has seen in porn, all shapes and sizes. And that’s safe for him.

He doesn’t want to have to look anyone he knows in the eye and wonder what their lips would feel like pressed against his own. If they’re any good at kissing. If they’re the type to take control or cede it.

He does wonder, sometimes though. No matter how much he denies what or who he wants.

Because it doesn’t matter if it’s a person or a thing. Want is never superficial in his experience, it doesn’t feel good most of the time. It’s deep and sometimes dark, it sinks itself into him with its hooks and it tugs, and keeps tugging. It yields to craving and yearning.

Back in his bedroom, his eyes land on his wall-mounted mirror. It’s small. Like the Mona Lisa. Small enough that he doesn’t have to see his whole reflection if he doesn’t want to.

He doesn’t want to crave and yearn for anybody, because he knows it will always be one sided. He’s well aware that he isn’t exactly centrefold material.

Who is gonna look at his weird ears or thin lips, and think, shit, that’s the guy of my dreams. Not with his big glasses or the way his hair twists itself into frizzy, unruly curls once the gel wears off and he starts looking like an unkempt labradoodle.

Who would want to wake up next to him? No one.

So it’s better not to risk imagining anyone real. It’s only in his head that anyone could ever want him back.

His eyes go from the mirror to the jacket folded and placed on his desk. It was intended to be plain sight so he remembers to bring it in - out of sight, out of mind, is what Ben would say. He can still smell the cologne Tony denied wearing earlier.

Once he’s in bed, he turns to face the wall.

Out of sight, out of mind.

---

Maybe Tony subscribes to that mantra as well.

Peter forgets to bring the jacket in all week and Tony doesn’t ask.

---

Danvers wants him fit and ready to be harpooned into the mud by next week; that’s why she looks the other way when Thor and Peter take their informal training in the boundaries of the field, stretching out on the grass as the JV team runs their usual morning drills - drills Peter would have been a part of before his stupid injury and his stupid wrist-brace.

This school is stupid too. Now he has to pay to see a doctor so he can get medically cleared for a sport he doesn’t really care that much about.

Like he didn’t have enough medical bills to deal with.

In any case, he’s not really in a position to complain, because he has the opportunity now to run through his warm-up with Thor, who is taking his direction to spread his legs into a butterfly position so beautifully, even as his knees raise from the ground to make a v-shape, whereas Peter’s lie flat on the grass.

If the last few days had been different, he might have blushed and used the situation at hand as an opening to place his hands on Thor’s knees and applied pressure. But now he just smiles encouragingly and reminds himself that he has no chance - no place - and his hands do not belong anywhere but his own body.

And surprisingly enough, he’s okay about it all.

Thor was a good guy. Peter will never say no to having more friends.

It’s a dreadful, bitter morning. Icy cold, wind biting into his shirt, the grass below them is damp. He has to keep rubbing his hands together so he can restore feeling in his fingers.

To make things worse, Tony is back on the bleachers. White v-neck, jeans and dark sunglasses. Sprawled out over a set of steps, legs askew, arms behind his head, unmoving as if he were napping or sunbathing, appearing like a cocky main out of an eighties movie.

Or a king surveying his kingdom.

Rhodes and Potts slouch on either side of him, swapping phones over his idle figure, taking pictures and laughing amongst themselves.

“It burns,” Thor says lightly, hands on his thighs in an attempt to aim his knees to touch the ground.

“Yeah,” Peter agrees, despite the ease in which he can lean in. “It just takes practice, dude. Twenty minutes a day, warm up and don’t over-do it. You’ll be limber in no time.”

“You can do this better than I can,” Thor argues, accent thick as he tries to lie flat like Peter.

“And you can lift a hundred pounds better than I can,” he tries to rebut, even as they switch positions, hip flexors aching with old injuries.

While the stretches are like second nature, he doesn’t miss the pressure of training for competition. The eagerness to get into a flat butterfly or oversplit. There was no argument that he spent nights on crunches back then, and he was somewhat toned - but he was shit at weight training. He hated lifting. Reps were more boring, more tedious and difficult and the diet required to give them any value was frankly not worth giving up a great hotdog or a loaded sub from Delmars. He wouldn’t go back to it now.

None of that old heat is there when he inspects Thor’s form. That quick simmer, the call to be closer. That terrible thing, want. All but gone. awe is still there, as he suspects it always would be with someone as outstanding as Thor, but the butterflies have very much flown away.

As he suspected would be the case. He has someone and they’re happy. With the cat out of the bag Thor had shown Peter pictures of his boyfriend all morning. He’d gotten a puppy, apparently, which just tickled Thor. He was so happy it was almost sickening.

When is it gonna be him that sickens someone with photo’s of his partner?

“Hey, Parker,” Tony yells from the stands, “you suck!”

Looking over, the idiot is raised on his elbows and grinning, like he’s proud of himself for a spectacularly unoriginal insult.

Rolling his eyes, Peter gives him the finger and he gets one in return.

His stomach twists and he has to duck his head to conceal his smile.

“Your husband is somewhat rude,” Thor says, following Peter’s example and switching from a pike to a lunge.

Peter looks back over to the stands. A cigarette now dangles between Tony’s full lips, sunglasses slid to the tip of his nose.

That’s how Peter knows he’s looking at him too.

Even from afar his eyes are round and mirthful, framed with ridiculously long lashes like a cartoon mouse, far too outlandish for any real person to have.

“He’s the absolute worst,” Peter bites his bottom lip, quickly averting his gaze. “It was an arranged marriage, to be fair.”

---

Wednesday comes and goes.

Their assignment gets handed in, Peter signs it off to say he did his fair portion of the work and Miss Ahn beams at the both of them when she is handed the thick binder, looking all too pleased with herself.

They have a presentation of their work next week, after Thanksgiving, each pair expected to give five minutes of their life pretending that they’re passionate about schoolwork in front of their fellow students who don’t care.

After that they are completely unburdened. No study sessions, no car rides, and no fries dipped in milkshakes.

They’re embarrassingly hailed as a prime example of people working through their differences, as if they had come together and were now friends or something.

From the front row Tony sneaks a furtive glance at Peter when she applauds them to the class.

“See, kids,” she says, “it wasn’t so bad working together, was it?”

Their eyes meet briefly.

“Zero out of ten, would not do again,” Tony declares, brash and loud, kicking his combat boots onto his desk in a leisurely display.. “That guy is the human equivalent of watching paint dry. Awful.”

“Oh, come on,” she chides. “Be nice.”

Not one to be outdone, Peter lets his horse out of the gate too.

“Singular worst experience of my life. I once had a root canal without anaesthetic and it was less painful than working with him.”

“Alright, boys, that’s enough out of you,” Miss Ahn sighs deeply, walking to the front of the room. “Mr Lang, how did you find the assignment?”

“Very informative…”

From the front row Tony turns in his seat and winks at him.

----

“Thanksgiving plans?” Natasha asks, leaning beside his locker, smothering a smile as he struggles to get his locker open for the nth time that day with one functional hand.

“Visiting my Aunt and Uncle,” he says, finally prying the damn thing open. “They’ve got a place up at Otisco Lake, so. Probably watching old movies and swimming all weekend.”

“Oof,” his friend winces. “That’s a trip. Think the May-Mobile will make the distance?”

The May-Mobile of course to the ancient, ‘89 Volvo 240 that May has been driving ever since Peter was born. She adores it and refuses to trade in, despite the fact that it rarely gets driven, practically haemorrhages gas, and has cost more in repairs in the last five years than the actual value of the car. But May really loves it. It's sentimental. She says it was the car Ben and her picked out together.

“It better make it,” he dumps his books in, closing the locker. “I don’t want to spend the weekend waiting for AAA in the middle of nowhere. What’s your plans?”

She shrugs, walking with him down the hall.

“Probably go and annoy Yelena. Was supposed to spend it with Bucky and his mom, but that ain't happening.”

He bumps her shoulder sympathetically. “Do you think you two will get back together?”

“Probably. But he’s got a shitload of grovelling to do first.”

“Don’t maim him, please. We need him on the team.”

“No promises.”

“Speak of the devil,” Peter adjusts his glasses, spotting Bucky at the base of the stairs talking to somebody. He gets startled, heart jumping when Natasha grabs him by the waist, pushing him towards the wall and inching them closer to the stairs.

“What are you --”

“ -- Shh, I want to listen. Who is he talking to?”

Craning his head, he finds himself in for another surprise when he sees that the other person he’s talking to is --

“He’s… he’s talking to Stark - what...?”

She shushes him again and Peter listens, curious now too.

“... what do you want, Barnes?” Tony visibly grimaces, taking a cigarette from his pocket and tucking it behind his ear. “Make it quick. I got places to be and your noxious stench gives me headaches.”

An announcement goes off over the loudspeaker over their head, calling for Brendon Bennett, a dick of a senior, to move his car from where he has blocked a teacher from leaving. It would be funny at any other time, but as it goes, he misses a chunk of their conversation.

“...Rogers isn’t the boss of me.”

“Yes, he is, and I’m not getting suspended again because you’re a pussy and he has roid-rage.”

“I just need an ETA. C’mon, pal, I really need this.”

“I’m not your pal and I don’t give a flying fuck what you need.”

Ever the easy going guy, Bucky puts his hands up placatingly as a group of students file down the stairs, causing enough noise that Peter misses whatever is said next. As he strains to hear he tries to draw the line between the dots, but comes up short on exactly how these two are connected.

“That fucker,” Natasha mutters near his ear.

By the time the students clear, Tony’s descended the stairs and begun to walk away

“I have better things to do than to sit around and wait for you,” Bucky calls out, giving him the finger.”

“And yet you will.”

Not in any possible lifetime was Peter going to address that he was weirdly relieved that Tony didn’t flip him off in return, some part of him petulantly thinking that’s our thing, but that’s wrong - Peter and Tony are not friends and they do not have things, even when they do, it’s not like a thing thing.

Nat grips his hand and pulls him along when Bucky leaves as well, swiftly walking away to avoid being caught. His backpack jostles at the speed and he realizes he’s still clutching Tony's jacket from where he had retrieved it from his locker.

“What was that about?” He asks, struggling to keep up with his friend's furious pace as he’s led down the hall. “Tash?”

She drops his hand once they are outside, her disapproval near palpable, voice laden with fire and fury.

“That’s Bucky being a world class idiot, he’s gonna get himself expelled, I swear.”

Peter stops on the spot.

“Expelled?”

Something dark curls unpleasantly in his gut, heavy and not leaving.

“They have a thing,” she explains hotly, mouth turning down. “Bucky and Stark.”

“What?” Peter breathes, uncomfortably thinking back to the party and the way Bucky overtly complimented Tony’s body. “Like a.... like a sex thing? Did he cheat on you?”

“What? No.”

“Then what?”

Red strands whipping in the wind, his friend looks around to see if there is anyone nearby before leaning in to speak low. He leans in too, unabashedly curious.

“Do you remember when Bucky was having issues with his parents when school started?”

He nods, thinking back to the times Bucky slept over in the late days of summer and early weeks of the school year, once or twice a week to get away from the shouting in his own home.

Natasha continues.

“Don’t tell him I told you this, but he got really depressed and fell behind with his work and everything he was handing in was terrible. Danvers pulled him up and said if he didn’t get his grades up, he’d be risking his spot on the team. So Bucky paid Stark to write up a few assignments for him, apparently he was doing it for a few kids, like it was a thing.”

...Okay.

That was not good, and definitely disappointing, but -

“Rogers found out. He gave Bucky a warning, but with Stark he threatened to go to Fury.”

Peter thinks back to the fight between their captain and Stark and their fight not long ago. “That’s why they…”

“I’m told Stark snapped, but I don’t know. I found out about the whole paper thing after that and me and Buck fought about it. I just got so mad - he’s - he’s not stupid, you know?”

“I know.”

She exhales heavily through her nose. “He’s going to get himself kicked out of school and I’m so -- I could kill him. We’re supposed to graduate together and get away from our families and go to college, and then he does this.”

“I’m sorry, Tash, I didn’t know,” he hugs her, her body going stiff before relaxing in his hold. “That’s shitty. For both of you.”

“I’m sorry for thinking you were in on the loop.”

He smiles, self-deprecating.

“Nope, I’m as clueless as ever.”

“No, you’re just too good for that,” she shakes her head. “Look, I gotta go and blow off some steam. Please don’t tell anybody about all this.”

“I won't, I swear - but text me later, alright? Let me know you’re okay.”

She ruffles his hair before stepping back.

“You’re a bleeding heart, PP. Keep an eye on that, will you?”

Hearing a squeal of tyres, he whips his head around to the parking lot, the source of the noise. The Firebird squeals out of the lot and onto the road, the sound as angry, the glimpse Peter gets of Tony’s face, even angrier.

He turns back to Nat, but she’s already walked away. Which means she isn’t there to hear him mutter to himself.

“What are you getting into, Tony?”

----

His thumbs hover over his phone that night, as he writes i saw u with barnes today.

He quickly deletes that, not wanting Tony to think that he was following him or spying on him - or worse, thinking that Peter actually cares about what he does. He doesn’t. They’re not friends.

A dread settles in the spaces between his ribs, like thread trying to squeeze them together too tight, his lungs feeling compressed. Maybe it’s his asthma, or allergies.

It’s not and he knows it. He’s disappointed.

He rubs at his chest on his way home thinking about the scene they just saw and about what Natasha said. How is it that so many people in his orbit had this entire entanglement going on without Peter having any whiff of it? It really makes him wonder if they were they good at hiding it or was he just really fucking stupid. Stupid enough to think Bucky was doing okay, that Rogers wasn’t as sanctimonious as he appeared to be, and that Tony was --

Nevermind.

It’s none of his business and it’s not his place.

He knows better than to ask. It’s not as if he can forget all his own secrets that he clutches tightly to his chest, so tight it feels like he constantly walks through life with his fists clenched.

That and, like May, the real truth is that he can’t claim any entitlement to their trust. He eavesdropped in more ways than one these last two weeks. He tries to brush off that dry, sobering thought; it’s none of his business anyway and he has enough on his plate without getting involved.

When are you going to stop being such a goddamned martyr.

So then he thinks about the sheer fury on Tony’s face, how his - how he used to look at Peter the same way, and how Peter used to think that angry and bitter was Tony's default mood. That was that. The status quo.

Well, that wasn’t entirely fair, was it. It was easier to dislike Tony when he was distant enough that Peter could pigeon-hole him into a stereotype.

Because Tony got into fights, sure, countless and petty, but he was the guy who pet puppies and snuck them food under the table. Not the guy who kicked them.

He looked like the puppy that was kicked, though.

Not angry.

Wounded.

And that’s what confuses Peter. Turns out he doesn’t really know anything about his friends.

Or Tony, it would seem.

----

May closes the drivers-side door and throws a packet of snacks into Peter’s face.

“Pretzels.”

“Yeah, I can see that,” he adjusts his glasses where they'd been knocked askew.

“Sorry, I thought your reflexes were better,” she says, and by way of apology, lobs a packet of sour gummies more gracefully on his lap. “Your favorite.”

“Apology accepted.”

From a plastic bag she fishes out two cokes and places them in the centre console, a bag of red licorice and crackers follow, also making their way onto his lap. She always buys too much food.

Then they’re turning back onto the highway that leads them out of where they paused at Monticello, the radio jacked up loud enough to be heard over the tiny droplets of raindrops sporadically hitting the windshield.

They’ve left early enough that it’s still dark.

Fog still hangs low on the roadside, intangible pale wisps that seem to disintegrate upon crossing, the road dotted with other travellers, but not too crowded, enough so they can easily cruise the speed limit and sometimes over. The Bangles play on a cassette tape and, tapping her fingers on the steering wheel, May looks so carefree, driving her sentimental car with the noisy engine, singing along to the same cassettes she’s had since she was his age.

Peter can’t bring himself to say what he wants to. About the letters. One in particular. He knows something isn't right but who is he to break the peace?

So, he doesn’t and they keep driving.

The fog lifts and the tunes continue, both of them singing familiar tunes from ABBA to George Michael and Peter let’s go of what he can’t control and loses himself in the buoyancy of nostalgia - neither of them can carry a tune for shit and it’s funny, and when he rolls his window down he sticks his hand out to feel the frigid air, it’s the most free he’s felt in a long time.

Football and his after-school duties and everything else just drifts away with the wind, at least for this moment.

It was like when he was a kid. The route itself is mostly dark and dull, and this time without Ben, but their usual car games of ‘dollar every time you spot a windmill’ and ‘how many minutes until the next town’ are fun and easily pass the time. This will be another memory that he will gloss over with fondness, how even the boring roads will seem like rapture.

When the sky starts to turn from black to grey they stop for early breakfast at a diner just slightly off their trail in Windsor, both of them famished despite the hoard of snacks and in dire need of coffee.

The car is beginning to emit pale plumes of smoke from under the hood as they arrive at Davis Grove, Otisco Lake in the early morning. The sun rises low over the horizon, a slow ascent that turns the sky grey and brushes wriggling streaks of color over the lake.

The house is exactly as Peter remembers it.

Panels painted slate blue, brown-tiled roof. Two-storeys with a wrap-around porch and a private dock only a short distance away from the entrance. A swinging chair on the lawn that comfortably fits three and a half people.

It looks exactly as it did when Peter first came here as a kid, plucked straight out of his memories in perfect form, like it was set in a liminal space that time refused to touch. A piece comes back to his being at this moment, something that he didn’t know was missing.

Aunt Margaret is already standing at the door when the pull up. She doesn’t look a day older than when Peter last saw her years ago.

“Oh, look at you,” she coos, wrapping Peter up in a tight hug, curls brushing his cheek, “my darling little Petey-pie.”

“Hey, Aunt Margaret,” he returns the hug.

“You’re so tall now, let me look at you,” she holds him at arm's length, warm eyes roving over his form. “Oh my goodness, haven’t you grown a handsome young man? Last time we met you only came up to my shoulders and had braces.” She turns her attention to May. “Isn’t he handsome?”

His aunt nods, smiling at them, both women gravitating into a tight embrace. “It’s good to see you, Peggy. Thanks for having us.”

“Our pleasure. You look even more beautiful than the last time.”

“Oh, stop,” May releases her, wiping at her eyes. “Look who’s talking.”

She tilts her head to the porch and takes May’s duffle from where she has dropped it to the ground. “Come on you two, inside. We’ve got the fire going and scrambled eggs on the table.”

Inside it smells like the best parts of his childhood. A burning fire and butterscotch and lingering musky-but-floral scent from the bowl of potpourri high on the mantel. Even the sounds are the same, the same coo of early birds in the burgeoning daylight, someone humming by the stove.

Margaret leads them into the living room, where her husband meets them halfway from the kitchen, oven mitts still on his hands when he spreads his arms wide to welcome them.

“My goodness,” he beams, “look what the cat dragged in.”

He wears a cravat at the same time he wears an apron, looking every bit the formal yet whimsical man Peter remembers him to be and a crushing wave of nostalgia comes over him so suddenly he can’t help but rush forward and embrace him.

“Welcome, Peter. It’s so good to have you here.”

“Thanks for having us, Uncle Ed.”

“What have you taught him,” he points his query to May as he releases Peter to hug her. “You know you can call me Jarvis.”

---

Margaret ‘Peggy’ Carter and Edwin Jarvis had been young twenty-somethings when they first met. Both were born in England before moving to the US, but it wasn’t until they met at Margaret’s first college that their paths crossed. They worked in different departments, Peter thinks Ed was an engineer or something and Margaret an analyst, but the universe pulled them together eventually.

Margaret asked Ed out first and then a year later, May was the maid-of-honor at their wedding and Ben was reportedly a teary guest in the squeaky church pews.

And the rest, as they say, was history.

A photo of that day sits framed upon the mantle. May and Margaret have their arms around each other, Uncle Ben and Ed standing awkwardly at the sides of the frame, holding up flutes of champagne.

They look so young. Happy.

Peter observes the photo, smiling. He would have been a baby back then. Before his parents and Ben had -- well.

His mind does these weird calculations sometimes. Like, the May in this photo is only nine or so years older than how old he is now, and this moment, suspended in time, makes them closer than they have ever been, even though in real life they are over twenty years apart.

Looking at this picture, it makes him wonder how many people he knows now will live full lives and die of old age. How many people his age will stay forever young, and who will be in the future looking back at their time now, wistfully staring at pictures of those who only exist suspended in that time.

It’s funny, being a teenager. His peers are too young to die so they assume they won't. Even in their twenties and thirties or forties, death seems like an elusive thing that doesn’t apply to anybody until it does. It’s for the decrepit, the sick.

But in Peter’s case death comes like poorly aimed darts, always landing badly and scoring low. In his pockets, his hands turn in fists. He hopes the three people left alive in this picture get to grow old.

He smells her perfume before he sees her. Margaret approaches, bumping their hips together.

“This was a nice day,” she says softly, wistful. “I wish we’d kept more contact over these last few years.”

“Me too,” he smiles sadly, her expression reflecting his. With a hand on his back she leads him to the couch.

“Come on, munchkin, come sit. Tell me how you have been.”

---

“We weren’t planning on the big dinner,” Uncle Ed says as he finishes peeling a potato, handing it to Peter once he’s done. “But we’re so glad you two joined us. Neither of us have a lot of family here, you know.”

“Us neither,” Peter runs the peeled potato under running water to rid it of dirty residue before chopping it into quarters. “It’s really nice to see you again, it’s been way too long.”

“You really have grown into such a nice young man,” the man smiles. “Ben would be proud. Your parent’s, too.”

“Thank you.”

They haven’t got together like this since Ben died a couple years back. It wasn’t really anyone’s fault. Shit happened and it got harder to try. May got busier with looking after Peter full time and working more - and Uncle Ed quit his job and opened up a garage and Margaret lost a baby - all at the same time.

It was a lot for everyone. Even college best friends moved apart when fate put up walls at every turn.

It seems everyone in his circle is just does their best to survive. Or maybe that’s just what growing up is.

The remainder of their morning is spent eyeing the oven and skedaddling while Margaret prepares her pecan pie, ejecting them out of the kitchen with a forceful shoo.

“May says you’re playing football,” Ed says, leading him out to the lounge, passing him a can of soda. “How’d that happen? Last I checked you were doing splits over a pommel horse.”

Peter shrugs, tapping his can with his fingernails, idly paying attention to the football on the old TV. “Needed an extra-curricular, there was an opening and for some reason they accepted me.”

“You were so good at gymnastics,” Margaret comments from the kitchen, whisking away at her bowl. “I’m sure you’re exemplary in anything you do. They’re lucky to have you.”

“Yeah,” Peter says, sculling back the rest of his drink, bubbles burning down his throat. “Looks good on college applications in any case.”

“This kid,” May points to him with her beer bottle. “He does it all, I don’t even know how. He’s brilliant.”

I could do more, he thinks. He wonders again in that moment what it is that makes him so deficient that May couldn’t rely on him to accept the truth about their situation, that maybe he was just too naive. But he’s not. He’d drop his after-school activities and get a job in a hot second if he thought it would help. And for just a split-second he’s mad about that, about being kept in the dark.

But then he sees the strain around her eyes, how the bottle in her hands trembles ever so slightly, how much she makes the hard world soft around them. And it’s easy for him to let that feeling go.

“You’re still freelancing?” Peter asks Margaret, momentarily distracted when Ed’s phone lights up with a call.

“Excuse me, terribly sorry,” he says suddenly, picking up the phone and answering it, rising to his feet to converse in the adjacent room.

“Yes,” Margaret says, eyes lingering over where her husband has gone, his voice carrying over the walls in worried, muffled tones. “Well, consulting. I can work from home, which makes it easier to take care of all my non-existent children,” she gestures to the empty room around them.

“You could go work with Jarvis,” May retrieves a new bottle, popping the cap. “Look after the books, help him replace tyres.”

“Tempting,” Margaret says dully, rolling her eyes. “Can’t understand why I haven’t done that yet.”

Jarvis re-enters minutes later, hands held out apologetically; whispering to Margaret first before he addresses the room.

“Um, we have another guest coming up for dinner, if that’s alright,” he winces at their blank faces. “He works for me. Has a difficult family arrangement and needs a bit of respite. You know how it gets over the holidays.”

Peter meets May’s eyes and shrugs. Anyone working under the business and is vouched for by his surrogate uncle is good by him.

“The more the merrier,” May raises her bottle.

After that, the kitchen needs his hands again.

---

The afternoon is spent preparing the sides, checking in on the truly gargantuan turkey and indulging their cat with nibbles and head scratches. May and Margaret spend the time drinking beer and cider, reminiscing their college years. It’s nice to hear the house full of laughter, given how somber the mood was when they were last all together.

“When did you get a cat?” Peter directs his question to Jarvis, accepting a peeler from him to attack the carrots.

The cat in question is completely black and delightfully plump, not overly so, but enough to indicate it’s decently fed but probably also a little lazy. Or maybe he just thinks that now that it lies tall on the peak on its scratching post, tail flicking idly while it watches them work tirelessly in the kitchen from above.

“Oh, about a year ago. Gives Peggy some company while I'm in the garage. She’s a sweetheart, this one.”

“What’s her name?”

“Friday the Thirteenth. Friday for short.”

“That’s, um, unique.”

“Was the day we adopted her,” Jarvis reaches up to scratch her. “And she’s a black cat, so, you know; spooky.”

Peter tilts his head to the side, considering it. “I like it.”

“Not bad, huh.”

“Yep. It’s a better name than Molly,” he mutters, shaking a slimy carrot shaving off his fingers.

Jarvis pauses. “As in Ringwald?”

Peter sighs and continues peeling.

----

“Did I ever tell you about the time May came to class in a bathing suit?”

“I don’t think they need to hear that --”

“So we have this exam,” Peggy says, ignoring May, “Super important. Fifty percent of our overall grade. She comes in late, dripping wet, the biggest hickey on her neck I have ever seen --”

“Peggy.”

“-- Only thing saving her modesty was Ben’s shirt over her shoulders. I had to lend her a pen so she could sit the exam.”

“Did you pass though,” Peter asks curiously, shovelling a large lump of mashed potato into his mouth.

“Top grades,” she winks at him.

“She sat there for two hours, dripping water onto the ground and got flying colors. Meanwhile I’m the idiot who studied for weeks and got marked down twenty points for --”

The end of her sentence gets cut off by the sound of a car approaching the property, headlights flashing through the windows.

Then, a knock at the door.

“Ah, that must be…” Ed trails off, wiping his hand on a napkin before standing. “Excuse me.”

He goes to answer the front door, Margaret continues her story albeit much more quietly until the voices of Ed and their guest filter through, becoming progressively louder.

“Sorry to intrude, I know it’s the holidays --”

Wait. That voice is familiar.

“Nonsense,” Ed interrupts, “you know you’re welcome anytime. You’re practically family, kid. Come in, we’re eating now, you’re just in time.”

Peter’s fork clangs loudly on his plate when he sees their visitor, unable to keep his grip on the utensil as his limbs start to tingle. He forgets how to breathe for a second, entire body going hot.

Ed’s arm is around Tony Stark and they’re approaching through the living room, heading right for them. There’s a fresh cut on his lip and an ugly, wreath of bruising around his jaw and neck, deeply purple, speckled spots of burst capillaries visible from even where he’s sitting.

The worst part isn’t the intrusion. It’s how Tony looks unlike himself; he looks small and skittish, gaze flicking nervously around the room, arms curled around his waist. Something in his chest starts to feel the closer he gets, weird, hot and unwieldy, burning, like a hot poker has been drawn across his sternum.

“You’re the best, Jar...vis,” Tony trails off when he spots the Parkers, eyes zeroing in on Peter.

“Um,” Peter says, sharing a surprised look with May, not knowing what else to say.

But then suddenly Tony is shaking his head, shrugging out of Ed’s embrace and backing up, the skittish look gone and replaced with anger.

“You’ve got to be kidding me. No fucking way.”

Then he turns, and leaves.

----

*

*

----

tagging: @bylerboyfriends @ravens-starker-stuff, @starker-rays, @ironspiderstarker, @muse-of-gods, @notfor-temporaryuse, @tabbycat1220, @sugarfreecult, @rebel13lion39, @plueschpop, @spideravocados, @jellybbunny,  @booktrashme, @elfkido, @mycatislickingmybedsheets, @queerghostboyo, @disneyprincessdominatrix, @cherrygoldlove @starkerflowers@starkeristheendgame @thewolffearsher @starkersugar , @starkerforlife6969, @css1992, @parkerrbitch, @fuckmemrstark, @blankblankityblank, @ilovemoreid, @blaquedecember, @killmylonelysoul, @notfor-temporaryuse, @arvaen, @chaos-with-a-pen, @notnormallaura, @portiamarie02, @bloodymisanthropist, @ser-no-tonin, @staticwhispersinthedark

[shannendoherty-fans]

People, September 9th 1991

High School Confidential

By Tom Gliatto and Michael Alexander.

Photos by Mark Sennett.

Beverly Hills, 90210 Gets Its Heat from a Dangerously Cute Cast of TV's Hottest New Stars CONFIDENTIAL MEMO: FROM: The Vice Principal TO: The Faculty, High School U.S.A. I'm sure I don't need to remind you what happened when we didn't prepare for Bart Simpson last fall. The school was flooded with rude, antieducational T-shirts. Some cows were had. Well, as a new school year gets under way, I believe we face another daunting challenge: Brace yourselves for Beverly Hills, 90210. That's the Fox drama about unworldly twin teens Brandon and Brenda Walsh (played by Jason Priestley and Shannen Doherty), recent transferees from Minneapolis to the Hills of Beverly. There they struggle to assimilate into the fast-lane lifestyle of West Beverly Hills High School, where the kids come equipped with BMWs, call waiting and designer surfboards. In the process, the teens examine their emerging identities and the problems that adolescents everywhere face.

The show languished in the Nielsen ratings against Thursday powerhouse Cheers last year. But Fox had no replacement, so it stayed. While we were on summer vacation, new 90210 episodes began airing, and the show landed in the Top 20, becoming the most popular show among teenagers. To some extent, I take responsibility for having ignored 90210. I made the mistake of reading newspaper critics instead of my daughter's diary, and so I believed, as Howard Rosenberg sniffed in the Los Angeles Times, that the show was merely a "ZIP code for stereotypes and stock characters." Little did I know that this show would mesmerize teens by doing emotionally realistic shows that involved adolescent rebellion, alcoholic; parents, a breast-cancer scare and plenty of worrisome teen sex. "Most shows for adolescents," says 90210 creator Darren Star, "seem like they are written by 50-year-olds who think teenagers behave like 7-year-olds."

It also doesn't hurt that the show's male stars, Priestley and Luke Perry (who plays brooding loner Dylan McKay), are "to die for," as my daughter puts it. These two have each been receiving about 1,500 fan letters a week. So be vigilant: Surely some of these will be written by our students...during class! And I'm afraid that 90210 is only going to get bigger with our kids, if producer Aaron Spelling is to be believed. "I thought The Mod Squad and Charlie's Angels got a lot of publicity in their heyday," says Spelling, whose company produced those shows, "but it doesn't compare to this. It's crazy. We have merchandising coming out of our ears"—a complete line of T-shirts, beach towels, notebooks, etc. "And now these actors can't walk down the street!"

Or even streak through malls. You probably saw those alarming news reports about a frenzied mob of 10,000 fans that stampeded Perry when he appeared at a south Florida mall last month. "It's a little scary," says Perry. Scarier is the amount of time students will waste this fall discussing Luke. And Jason. And who is sexier. I provide some information on the two. Jason Priestley, 22, plays Brandon Walsh, a model of thoughtful level-headedness. In real life, however, the brown-haired, blue-eyed star, who started acting in commercials at age 4 and played an orphan on that very nice NBC sitcom Sister Kate, is no Oliver Twist. He likes dirt bikes, bungee jumping and is a chain-smoker (just about the whole cast puffs it up—but not on-camera). Vancouver-born Priestley likes to hang out in Las Vegas. As for his real romantic life, he was reportedly dating actress Robin (Doogie Howser, M.D.) Lively last spring, but it seems likely that now he is too busy for such dalliance;. He must be on the set 14 hours a day, five days a week. To avoid ever-present fans, Priestley says, "I look different from my character when I'm just walking around. I don't shave, I don't dress like Brandon."

On the show, 26-year-old Luke Perry (Brenda Walsh's boyfriend, Dylan) sports a leather jacket, dagger sideburns and a squint that spells t-r-o-u-b-l-e. Although he grew up and graduated from high school in Fredericktown, Ohio, he seems to have attended James Dean wise-guy classes. Perry, who played country-boy Ned Bates on the ABC soap Loving, entertains the 90210 cast by strutting around bare-chested making jokes. Does he have a girlfriend? "No. You know how I can get in touch with Linda Hamilton?" What kind of music does he listen to? "Tom Jones is awesome." Are he and Priestley ever mistaken for each other? "He's mistaken for me on his good days." And 90210, he says, is "the best show on television, except for Jeopardy!" We should act quickly, faculty, when we see any signs that Beverly Hills, 90210 is disrupting normal student activity.

How abnormal might things get? Consider: "It's almost like there are cults," says Brian Austin Green, 18, the North Hollywood High grad who plays the cutely dweeby David Silver. "Girls go to school the day after the show, and they actually become these characters. They say, 'Okay, today I want to be Dylan, you can be Brenda, you can be Brandon.' " Needless to say, students caught pretending to be TV characters should be brought directly to my office for detention. But you know, it might not be a bad thing if our students could show some of the good sense that the 90210ers display in coping with the pressures of fame and fortune. Jennie Garth, 19, who plays the very sexy, very blond, very snotty Kelly Taylor, is particularly admirable. The youngest of seven children, she grew up on a farm near Champaign, Ill., until her schoolteacher parents moved to Phoenix when she was 13. "Living in a small town and coming from a very tight and close family instilled a lot of standards that I need to live up to," says Garth, who just bought a home in Sherman Oaks. She also recently supplied her parents with the down payment for their new home, setting a splendid example for today's youth.

According to a tabloid that someone left in the faculty lounge, Memphis-raised Shannen Doherty, 20, a veteran of such wonderful shows as Little House: A New Beginning, is the only cast member to be accused of behaving like "a spoiled brat" on the set. But she maintains she is no such thing. "I think everybody gets in a bad mood," Shannen says. "You do not work 16-hour days and not start feeling it. But I have never thrown a tantrum. I've gotten upset on the set, but it's never been just to be a bitch. You have to stand up for yourself in this business. That was something I was told when I was 12 years old and working with Michael Landon."

As with about half the cast members, Doherty is in a relationship—in her case, a real-estate developer with whom she's exchanged commitment rings. "You really have to date a while before you decide if this is the person you want to marry," she says with Brenda-like candor. Almost sounds like the relationship could be a future 90210 plot. "The problems of young people have accelerated," says Aaron Spelling, "and so have their feelings and thoughts." The show, he says, has kept pace: Even with their Clearasil-perfect complexions and plump allowances, the students at Beverly Hills have encountered their share of problems. "We had the guts to make Luke Perry be a member of AA," says Spelling. "We had Jason, our star, drinking and driving. That's reality."

And, apparently, the adulatory fan mail often includes a sad dose of that reality. "I got a letter the other day from a girl who mentioned the show we did on parental drug abuse," says Perry in a rare moment of seriousness. "She wrote about catching her father freebasing in the basement. I get letters like that all the time, from people all over the country." Gabrielle Carteris (at age 30, she's 90210's oldest cast-kid), who plays Andrea Zuckerman, the bright student who comes from the wrong side of Rodeo Drive, remembers an encouraging close encounter in a grocery store. "One girl came up to me after we'd done the breast-cancer show," says Carteris. "She said, 'I went home with all my friends and we checked our breasts for lumps.' "

In conclusion: Maybe I didn't need to write this memo. Maybe things won't be that bad, even if every locker in every corridor has a picture of Jason, Luke, Shannen or Jennie in it. Perhaps our dear little school is more like West Beverly Hills High—at least the TV version—than I thought. That's what Ian Ziering, 27, thinks too. "The reality on the show pretty much mirrors the way life is all over, in terms of teenagers," says New Jersey—bred Ziering, who once did Fruit of the Loom underwear ads and now plays 90210's curly-headed jock, Steve Sanders. "There's a mystique about Beverly Hills. But that's not what keeps people tuning in. The show could have been Montana E-I-E-I-O." By the way, should any student pronounce his name "eee-an," correct him or her, please. It's "eye-an."

-- WHEN BEVERLY HILLS, 90210 PREMIERED last October, Highlights, the student newspaper at Beverly Hills High, ran articles mocking the school's TV counterpart, West Beverly Hills High. "They said that the show was a joke," says Jenny Brandt, 14, a sophomore at the 1,900-student school. But as the story lines improved and Jason Priestley and Luke Perry became stars, the jokes stopped, and Brandt found herself, like many of her pals, glued to the set on Thursday nights from 9 to 10 P.M. "No phone calls allowed," says Brandt. "Except during commercials." Hope Levy, a 17-year-old senior, has taken fandom a step further with her friends. "We have little handmade cards," she says, speaking from her mom's car phone. "They say you're a member of Club 90210." While some kids think the show treats them as snobby stereotypes, most agree with sophomore Jordan Rynes when he says, "It's like a soap opera for teens. The shows dealing with drinking and drugs are the most real—adults don't realize how accurate it is."