#They used elvis in songs a lot

[tvs-coach]

"I’m Sure Livin’ Since I Died" from Spitting Image, Series 6 Episode 1.

[britneyshakespeare]

can you imagine being a little twee simon and garfunkel fan in the late 60s and then buying your new vinyl at the record store and hearing mrs. robinson for the first time in your own home. i would’ve fallen over backwards

[get-back-homeward]

Paul’s Trying To Get To You

The thread of this song weaving in and out of Paul’s most formative music experiences

Oct 1956: Elvis’s debut album is released in the UK as Rock ‘n’ Roll and the B-side includes Trying to Get to You

I just had to reach you, baby / In spite of all that I've been through / I kept traveling night and day / I kept running all the way / Baby, trying to get to you.

Well if I had to do it over / That's exactly what I'd do / I would travel night and day / And I'd still run all the way / Baby, trying to get to you

[full lyrics]

Jan-June 1957: Ian James gets the Elvis record and a guitar

“It was in this time frame that Paul formed a closer friendship with Ian James, an Institute boy (in his year) he’d known since 1954. Ian was also into rock and skiffle and he’d recently been bought an acoustic guitar by his grandparents, at whose house he lived in the Dingle. (Every guitar had a maker’s name: his was a Rex.) The two boys became good pals on the strength of it. While they tended not to see each other in the evenings, because they lived some distance apart, Paul often went to Ian’s house for an hour or two after school—they walked there together down the hill from the Institute—and Ian sometimes went to Forthlin Road at weekends, taking his guitar with him. Ian James held a triple attraction for Paul: he was an intelligent, decent and affable lad, he had some rock records, and he had a guitar—an unbeatable combination.

In the front room at home I had a table-top portable record player, three speed. I remember playing “Blueberry Hill” by Fats Domino over and over, just the first line and then I’d pick up the needle and put it back at the start. I also had Elvis Presley’s first album, which we played time after time after time, with “That’s All Right Mama,” “Trying to Get to You,” “Lawdy Miss Clawdy,” “I’m Gonna Sit Right Down and Cry (Over You),” “Mystery Train” … Elvis was the one to copy, he was the hero. He had everything: the charisma, the looks, the voice. Frank Sinatra had only one style but Elvis could do anything—gospel, blues, rock and roll, romantic ballads. There was nobody else like him. Paul and I talked about Elvis all the time.15

The Rex guitar was ever at hand. Ian showed and reinforced to Paul those three chord fundamentals that would get him started, C, F and G or G7, the basis for pretty much every song they loved.”

—Tune In (Ch. 5, Jan-June 1957)

July 1957: Paul is invited to join the Quarrymen and trades his trumpet for his first guitar

At some point in July 1957, Paul finally got his first guitar. It had been a long time coming and he was desperate. As he couldn’t afford to buy one he had the bright idea of swapping his trumpet for it, the one his dad had bought him two years earlier. Jim didn’t mind—it was clear where Paul’s interest was. “I traded in the trumpet for a £15 Zenith guitar from Frank Hessy’s. There was a feller there called Jim Gretty and he showed us (me and George) a great chord. I never knew its name—we called it ‘a jazz chord’…”

Mike McCartney has said of Paul and his first guitar, “He would get lost in another world. It was useless talking to him—I had better conversations with brick walls.” Paul played the guitar everywhere, even on the bus. At home he played it in the bath and sitting on the toilet. “The fine acoustic of the toilet area was always very appealing to me. And it was also very private, about the only private place in the house. I used to sit there for hours—there and the bathroom. Dad would shout, ‘Paul, get off that toilet!’ [And I’d reply] ‘I’m practicing!’ ”4

…Rod Davis has a recollection of Paul dropping in to see a group rehearsal at (of all places) Mimi’s house, and Eric Griffiths says the group all went to Paul’s house one afternoon for a rehearsal together—something Paul has never mentioned. (Like almost everything to do with the Quarry Men, solid information is lacking.)

…Ian James says he and Paul struck up an informal musical duo: “We used to take our guitars around to parties and play a few numbers. Have guitar will travel—wherever we went our guitars went too. We played songs from that first Elvis LP: ‘Trying to Get to You,’ ‘Lawdy Miss Clawdy,’ ‘Mystery Train’…

—Tune In (Ch. 7, July-Aug 1957)

Aug 1957: Paul’s away at summer camp and then on holiday but glued to his guitar

[O]n August 7, the Quarry Men played the Cavern again…This Cavern booking would have been Paul’s Quarry Men debut but for him being away with the Boy Scouts at summer camp—another ten days of wet feet, wind and Woodbines. The 19th City troop’s destination this year was the Peak District—Callow Farm, Hathersage, Derbyshire—and both McCartney brothers went. Paul (inevitably) carted his Zenith along with his sleeping bag and tin mug. Almost as soon as they’d pitched tents, Mike had an altercation with an oak tree, badly breaking his arm; he was taken to the hospital in Sheffield while Paul remained at the camp and entertained around the fire with Elvis’s “Trying to Get to You.”13

Mike was in the hospital four weeks, his plastered arm in a sling, and on the day of his release—the last full week of the school holidays—Jim arrived in Sheffield with Paul and revealed they were all heading straight off to Butlin’s. Bett and Mike Robbins had fixed them seven days at Filey, on Yorkshire’s east coast…

Ever the keen photographer, Mike operated the camera single-handedly to take a fascinating photo of Paul on Filey beach with Bett Robbins and her infant son Ted. Paul is perched on Ted’s pushchair and playing the much-traveled Zenith. The photo could be the closest taken to the date he met John Lennon, showing a 15-year-old who’s come through his chubby period and is looking good.

—Tune In (Ch. 7, July-Dec 1957)

Oct-Nov 1957: Paul plays his first gigs with the band as John’s equal

In images of the Quarry Men before Paul joined they’re all wearing different clothes. In the first photo of the group with Paul they have a uniform look, and a sharp one at that: white shirts with black bootlace ties and black trousers, and John and Paul (only) are also wearing jackets on top, white or cream—it’s Paul’s “white sports coat” and something similar John has managed to acquire. This was undoubtedly Paul’s doing, reaching back to his experience at Butlin’s in 1954 when he saw how a singing group in matching gear claimed everyone’s attention. He’d brought the thinking early to John, and John had bought it. And something else is compelling about this Quarry Men photo: although it’s John’s group, new boy Paul is not at the back with Colin or Len, or to the side like Eric, he’s up front with John. Lennon and McCartney are clearly the front line of the Quarry Men, strumming crummy Gallotone and upside-down Zenith, and they’re the only ones with vocal microphones. The group is the two of them and three others. When one sings lead the other provides harmony; often they sing the lead in unison—and their voices go together.

One can only surmise what they sang into those microphones. Nigel Walley remembers plenty of rock in the repertoire in this period and not so much skiffle, including several Elvis numbers—“All Shook Up,” “Blue Moon of Kentucky,” “Heartbreak Hotel,” “Hound Dog,” “Lawdy Miss Clawdy,” “That’s All Right Mama” and “Trying to Get to You”—as well as “Be-Bop-A-Lula,” “Blue Suede Shoes” (Carl or Elvis), “Come Go with Me” and “Twenty Flight Rock.”

—Tune In (Ch. 7, July-Dec 1957)

Jan-May 1958: Paul writes In Spite of All the Danger and John wants to record it

As George knew several more guitar chords than John or Paul, every time he showed them a new one they tried to write a song around it36—and it was in this period, possibly at Upton Green, that Paul wrote one he called “In Spite of All the Danger,” a chugging and melodic country-flavored number with a couple of extended lead guitar solos created by George. For this reason, the song was a unique deviation from the Lennon-McCartney credit: it went down as McCartney-Harrison.

The tune of “In Spite of All the Danger” was entirely Paul’s, but it leaned heavily on the melody of Elvis’s “Trying to Get to You,” a song that includes the lyric “[in] spite of all that I’ve been through.” Using an existing song as inspiration for the writing of another is standard practice, but the rock and roll era was already littered with outrageous examples of plagiarism seemingly free of legal action—possibly because the song being copied was not entirely original to that composer either.

…John decided the Quarry Men should make a record, and the others needed no persuading—just 3s 6d each. This time the answer to “Where we going, Johnny?” was 38 Kensington, where one Percy F. Phillips ran probably Liverpool’s only recording studio and record press.

Seventeen years later, without the advantage of hearing it in between times, John recalled what he could of the session: “The first thing we ever recorded was ‘That’ll Be the Day,’ the Buddy Holly song, and one of Paul’s called ‘In Spite of All the Danger.’ It cost us fifteen shillings and we made it in the front room of some guy’s house that he called a recording studio.”

…John again sings lead on “In Spite of All the Danger,” Paul provides more fine harmonies throughout, and George adds an “ah” backing. It’s said Colin and Duff hadn’t heard the song before, and so were feeling their way through it, but it’s not solely for this reason that it plods somewhat. Though the debt to “Trying to Get to You” is clear, it’s still an original number and an interesting, attractive one at that, written by a boy of 15—a fantastic achievement.

—Tune In (Ch. 8, Jan-May 1958)

[l3fool]

What if someone actually lived in love street

at heartbreak hotel

on the lonely avenue

[loveinhawkins]

It’s Dustin who saves Eddie.

He doesn’t try and carry him back to the trailer, nothing like that—if he could manage that on determination alone, then he would, but his throbbing leg has other ideas.

So he stays by Eddie’s side. Throws off his hoodie and starts to rip any piece of his clothing that he can, because he’s come a long way from when he once stuck bandaids on Steve’s beaten up face.

“What… what are you doing?” Eddie says in between gasping breaths.

Dustin would laugh if he wasn’t so scared. “Buying more time,” he echoes. Then he looks Eddie right in the eye and adds, voice wavering, “I’m really fucking sorry in advance.”

He takes a deep breath and presses the material to Eddie’s chest with force.

Eddie screams.

Dustin grits his teeth. Keeps going.

He creates makeshift tourniquets for Eddie’s arms, keeps tearing at his shirt, then takes it off entirely to use as a larger bandage, ignoring the shock of cold against his skin; the only thought in his head is that he has to stop the bleeding.

Eddie’s hand finds his bare shoulder. Squeezes weakly. “Tha’s enough,” he slurs. “D-Dustin, stop.”

And Dustin only does what he says because it doesn’t look like any more blood is soaking through the material. He keeps pressure on the worst of the wounds, tries to keep his elbows locked, as if that will stop his relentless shivering.

And when he looks up, he sees a tear fall from Eddie’s eye, down his temple, into his hair—and Dustin somehow knows that it’s not from pain alone, that Eddie’s crying just because he can see how cold he is.

“M’sorry,” Eddie whispers. “Never meant for… for you to—”

“Shut up,” Dustin says, then hastily amends, “Actually, don’t shut up, just—just stay awake. They’ll be back soon, okay, Steve and Robin and Nancy, and they’ll—”

“Steve,” Eddie agrees. His voice goes up and down, like a little song: “Steve, Steve, Steve.”

“Yeah, he’ll—hey, Eddie, eyes open.”

“Mm-hmm,” Eddie says faintly. “Eyes… oh, forgot to… you were right, H-Henderson, he’s… a badass. S’got pretty eyes, too, like wow. Pretty, pretty…”

And…

Well. That’s a development.

“You can tell me all about Steve’s pretty eyes if you keep yours open.”

And Eddie’s eyes do jolt open at that, like he’s received an electric shock. He groans in mortification.

“Jesus Christ. Didn’t mean to—fuck, feel like I’m drunk, man, I can’t… just kill me.”

Dustin thinks he probably would have found that request funny if Eddie wasn’t saying it through teeth flecked with blood.

Still, he does let out a strangled, hysterical giggle when he says, “I know how to keep you awake now.”

Eddie groans again. “Spare me the—”

“He sings in the shower, like, full blown Elvis impression, all that jazz. And he denies having lucky socks, but he wears the same pair whenever Lucas has a basketball game.”

“Huh?” Eddie says eloquently.

“Pay attention, dude, you need to know what you’re getting into! Oh, he said when he went to see The Fox and the Hound, he cried.”

Eddie chuckles. “That’s… oh, that’s sweet.” He smiles, eyes bright, and Dustin suddenly knows that they’re gonna be okay. “Keep going?”

Dustin does. He talks about how Steve always says, “Two for joy,” even when he sees a singular magpie, because he reasons that the second one is always just hiding. How he eats ice-cream too fast, does a comical hop in place when he inevitably gets brain freeze. That whenever he happens to pick up Dustin from school, he almost always has a Simon and Garfunkel tape playing, sings along to At the Zoo as he turns out of the parking lot.

Dustin doesn’t mention the Farrah Fawcett spray; a promise is a promise.

Eddie seems pretty damn well entertained with what he’s been given, anyway. He keeps smiling, lets out breathy chuckles that give Dustin hope: that he still has enough energy to laugh.

“Okay, okay, I’m awake,” he says, “I’m so awake, jus’… you just relax.”

And it’s only when Dustin stops talking that he realises his teeth have been chattering the whole time.

Eddie gives an unhappy sounding hum, and his hand comes up to clumsily rub at Dustin’s forearm.

“Your lips are blue.”

“I’m f-fine.”

A sudden desperate yell splits through the air; Dustin didn’t know that Steve could sound quite like that.

“Here!” Dustin shouts as much as he can.

He hears three people running; Steve gets there first.

Eddie’s eyes go wide. “Steve,” he says, and Dustin’s seen enough movies to think that this could be it, the big moment, or at the very least that Eddie’s about to give another wandering speech on Steve’s eyes.

But instead—

“Steve, Steve,” Eddie repeats, “Dustin’s cold.”

“Jesus Christ,” Steve says; he’s already taking off his jacket, shoving Dustin into it with this frantic mixture of urgency and care.

Dustin’s shivers get even more pronounced as the jacket’s zipped up, as the warmth from Steve’s body heat hits him.

“Think E-Eddie’s—b-bleeding stopped,” he says, accidentally biting on his tongue thanks to his chattering teeth.

Steve looks over Dustin’s handiwork, eyes shining. “Yeah, you did good,” he says, choked, rubs his hands down Dustin’s forearms more effectually than Eddie had. “You did so good.”

“You must’ve been wearing your socks tonight, Harrington,” Eddie says.

Steve stares at him. It’s only when he starts to laugh that Dustin realises he’s crying at the same time. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Shh, s’okay,” Eddie says. “I cried at th’movie, too, don’ tell anyone. S’not fair what… s’posed to be a happy endin’…”

Steve catches Dustin’s eye, says, deadpan, even with a tear-streaked face, “Doc, I think we’re losing him.”

Dustin whacks him on the arm, because it’s so stupid, it’s so Steve, and, God, they're really gonna be okay.

“Dustin’s th’best doctor,” Eddie chants, “best, best, best…”

“Yeah, he’s a goddamn superhero,” Steve says sincerely.

There’s a look Steve has on his face while he lifts Eddie up, a fleeting softness right before he goes back into planning mode, scanning the trailer park in case of any more threats; where Eddie’s fingers curl around Steve’s neck, and Steve smiles down at him, and…

Dustin would put a bet on Steve thinking Eddie has pretty eyes, too.

At least, he would if he could stand up.

When Steve clocks his leg, his jaw works a couple of times before he speaks. “Hey, Robin, Nance?” He raises his voice, looking to some point in the distance. “Could you—help Dustin up, I’ve—uh, kinda got my hands full.”

His tone is light, but his chin trembles just a bit, like he might break down at the thought that he can’t carry Dustin out of here, too.

“Okay, c’mon superhero,” Robin says, suddenly by Dustin’s side; she counts down, and then Dustin’s being carefully lifted up, an arm flung around Nancy, too.

“I’m okay,” Dustin feels the need to say. Robin and Nancy are out of breath, and he can’t help noticing the vivid red marks around their necks.

“Yeah, you will be,” Robin corrects.

“Is—is Eddie—?”

“Look, he’s right in front,” Nancy says. “Steve’s got him.” She lowers her voice and when she says, “You were really brave, you know,” Dustin has to swallow a lump in his throat: for a moment feels thirteen years old, her hand in his at the Snow Ball.

And she’s right; Eddie is right in front. Dustin can see him trailing a hand up and down Steve’s arm, slow and soothing, and he’s talking, just too far away to be heard.

For a few steps, Dustin thinks that Eddie must be spilling more of what he’s learned, regurgitating the anecdotes.

But then Robin and Nancy pull him a little closer. And he can read Eddie’s lips.

He’s okay, Eddie is saying, looking away from Steve’s face to find where Dustin is. He’s right behind us, sweetheart. He’s okay.

[undying-love]

John and Paul on each other: A Compilation

John:

"He [Paul] looked like Elvis. I dug him."

"I'm like everyone else, Harry. I fell for Paul's looks."

"..an old, estranged fiancée of mine called Paul."

"Paul...you're so well-built." (X)

"Groups like this are normally not friends. They’re just four people out there thrown together to make an act. There may be two of them who sort of go off and are friends, you know...Strictly platonic of course."

"Oh, I've had him, he's no good."

"I was riding on a boat called Paul, and now I'm riding on a boat called Yoko."

"I've compared to a marriage a million times and I hope it's… understandable. For people that aren't married. Or any relationship. It was a LONG relationship. It started many, many years before the American public, or the English public for that matter, knew us. Paul and I were together since he was 15, I was 16."

"Nobody ever said anything about Paul's having a spell on me or my having one on Paul! They never thought that was abnormal in those days, two guys together, or four guys together! Why didn't they ever say, "How come those guys don't split up? I mean, what's going on backstage? What is this Paul and John business? How can they be together so long?"

"Well, Paul had met Linda before [the Apple press conference], you see. I mean, there were quite a few women he'd obviously had that I never knew about. God knows when he was doing it, but he must have been doing it."

"I don’t even think about Paul unless somebody brings him up. Or if some song comes out or something happens, they’re in the newspaper. I don’t know why everyone doesn’t just leave him alone—I haven’t really seen him in ten years. I can talk about him forever because I know all about him, but you see, there’s nothing much to say."

[Studio chatter] Paul: I will be overpowering this time. John: Oh good. I like it when you’re brutal. (X)

Paul:

"John was really my only male friend, if only because of proximity."

"[While playing live] John was to the left or to the right of me, so I never got to sort of see him perform so much. Except in the film [Get Back]. And there he is in massive closeup. I can study everything about him.”

“I’ll just sit around and hug him forever, because that’s the depth of my feeling for him."

"And I would often sketch John when we worked together, often without him knowing it. It was so easy doing John because he had glasses, those sideboards...and that long, aquiline nose."

"When I painted him recently, I found myself saying, ‘How did his lips go?"

"I can still see John now: checked shirt, slightly curly hair…I remember thinking, ‘He looks good - I wouldn’t mind being in a group with him."

"James reminds me very much of John in many ways: he's got beautiful hands. John had beautiful hands."

"If I'm going to see a face in a painting, it's highly likely to be his."

"I still remember his beery old breath when I first met him that day. But I soon came to love that beery old breath. And I loved John."

"I’m often thinking of him. I dream of him."

"Delicious boy, delicious broth of a boy."

"John and I used to hitch-hike places together. It was something that we did together quite a lot; cementing our friendship, getting to know our feelings, our dreams, our ambitions together. It was a very wonderful period. I look back on it with great fondness. I particularly remember John and I would be squeezed in our little single bed."

"There's a song I do called Here Today which is specifically written for John. That sometimes catches me out. I realize I'm telling this man that I love him and it's like I'm publicly declaring this in front of all these people I don't know. I sometimes wonder what I'm doing."

"We are individuals— all different. John married Yoko, I married Linda. We didn’t marry the same girl.”

"Please Please Me was a John idea. John liked the double meaning of “please”. Yeah, “please” is, you know, pretty please. “Please have intercourse with me. So, pretty please, have intercourse with me, I beg you to have intercourse with me.” He liked that, and I liked that he liked that."

"[John] was a wild and woolly genius who it was my pleasure to work with, walk with, talk with and occasionally sleep with. "

Q: If John Lennon could come back for a day, how would you spend it with him? Paul: In bed.

"Then also [me and John] were like married, so you got the bitterness. It’s not a woman scorned this time, it’s two men scorned — probably even worse. And I had to make way for Yoko. My relationship with John could not have remained as it was and Yoko feel secure.”

"I think really what it was, really all that happened was that John fell in love. With Yoko. And so, with such a powerful alliance like that, it was difficult for him to still be seeing me. It was as if I was another girlfriend, almost. Our relationship was a strong relationship. And if he was to start a new relationship, he had to put this other one away."

[mermaidgirl30]

✨Dark Shades of Innocence Lost Part 5: Just Stay✨

Club owner! Joel Miller x fem! reader

Series Masterlist

Summary: Joel takes you on a date to his favorite diner.

A/N: This chapter gets angsty real quick, so I’m sorry 😭 But it’s so so important for the plot and the next chapter. We will get through it, besties 🥹 This fic is my baby, and I am just so happy with how it’s turning out. I want to hear all your thoughts! Thank you to @joelmillerisapunk for beta reading for me 💕 Next chapter is almost done so promise I won’t make you wait long! Comments and reblogs always make my day, I hope you enjoy 🩵

Word Count: 7.6k

Rating: Explicit 18+ only MDNI

Chapter tags: Fluff, Joel being cute and flirty, yearning, a lot of angst, feelings, doubts, no use y/n, no outbreak! au, Joel takes reader on a date, a lot of tears, switching POVs (I’m terrible with tags, so let me know if I missed anything!)

Dividers by @saradika-graphics

 It’s Thursday, the night of your dinner with Joel, and you’re currently sitting in his truck, twisting your fingers nervously into the fabric of your dress, your smile a mile wide as you listen to Joel’s Southern accent put you in a hypnotic trance.

   God, he’s so handsome. 

   “Think you’re gonna like this place,” Joel smiles as his thumb taps against the leather steering wheel. His truck hums to a stop in front of a lit up small diner that reads Sal’s in bright blue letters.

   “I’m sure I will.” You smile over at him before he puts the truck in park and unlatches his seat belt, slipping out of the driver’s side while you climb out the passenger’s door, pulling down your white summer dress over your thighs.

   The truck ride to dinner was anything but boring as you listened to Joel talk more about his daughter and some of their adventures they’ve been on before she went off to Greece to study abroad. You wondered what happened to Sarah’s mom, but maybe that was territory for another time. Besides, you still don't know what this thing is between you two, but it’s starting to feel a lot more like something serious and not just something casual. And that absolutely scares you to death. 

   “After you,” he nods as he holds the door open for you and leads you in, one large hand clasped on your lower back as if his touch is steadying your galloping heart.

   When you step in, an old jukebox sits at the entrance, lit up in neon green colors as an Elvis song vibrates through the overhead speakers. Leather booths sit against the brown painted walls as pictures of The Beatles, Marilyn Monroe, and old movie stars hang around the diner. It’s an old timey theme that goes with the bar that sits at the front with a big glass case of pies and desserts on display. It’s very homey and comforting.

   Yeah, you definitely like this place. 

   “Wow. This is really cozy,” you say as you look around all starry eyed at the little diner.

   Joel looks down at you, and a crooked grin tugs at his lips. “That it is.”

   A waitress in a red apron waves the both of you over with two crisp menus. “Hey, Joel! Table for two?” The perky brunette smiles as Joel nods. 

   “Hey, Kat. Yeah, table for two, please,” he replies as he pushes you forward in the direction of the back booth she leads you to.

   “Come here a lot?” you giggle.

   “How’d you guess?” He smirks, brown eyes flicking over you as he pulls his hand away, allowing you to slide in the leather seat across from him. His knees brush lightly against yours, and a jolt of energy bursts through your bloodstream.

   “So, what’s your go-to here? Since you obviously come here a lot,” you laugh as you pick up a plastic menu and scan the various burgers, sandwiches, milk shakes, and old fashioned dinner items that all sound absolutely delicious.

   You hear him chuckle over your menu, slowly lowering it so you can see that glimmer of onyx in his eyes as a smug smile crosses his lips. “Usually jus’ go for the old fashioned cheese burger and a chocolate shake.”

   “Not bad, Miller.” 

   He smiles and nods your way. “And you? What kind of shake girl are you?” He leans on his elbow on the polished table and gazes into your eyes. You have to catch your breath as you stare at him, his slicked back dark hair, grey threads catching under the dim lights, a dark blue flannel with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows, the top buttons undone to expose dark hair peeking out from his muscular chest, his black watch glinting every time he turns his wrist. He’s just so good looking that he makes it really hard to concentrate on anything else. 

   You fold your arms on the table and gaze into honeysuckle eyes. “Usually just a strawberry shake kind of girl, if we’re talking classics.”

   He gives you a small smile, but before he can say anything else, the blonde waitress comes up to the table. “Well, what do we have here? Joel Miller bringing a girl to the diner? My, thought I’d never see the day,” she laughs as she sets two waters down on the table.

   Joel’s face reddens as he rakes a hand slowly down his greying scruff. “Guess I jus’ had to find the right one first,” he smiles, flicking his eyes over you as your breath catches in your throat. 

   He’s never brought a girl to his favorite restaurant before? You were… the first one? Oh.

   “I see,” she says as she takes a minute to trail her eyes over you. You see her mouthing ‘she’s pretty’ to Joel, and now it’s your turn to blush as Joel nods his head and lays his eyes over you again. “Well, what’ll it be? Your usual?” she asks, taking out a little notepad and a black ink pen to write with.

   “The usual for me. What do you want, sweetheart?” he asks, and you swear you see Sienna cup her mouth and giggle into it when he calls you sweetheart. 

   “Can I get the grilled cheese with French fries, and a strawberry shake?” you ask nicely as you hand her back the menu.

   “Sure can. Can I get you anything else?” she asks as she twirls the pen around her freshly manicured fingers.

   “Oh, can I also get a side of ranch?”

   “No problem. I’ll get that order in, and I’ll be right back with your shakes. Let me know if you need anything else.” She flips her blonde ponytail and flashes Joel a bright smile as she walks off toward the back.

   “Ranch dressin’, huh?” he chuckles, shifting his weight in his seat.

   “Only the best dipping sauce in the world,” you confirm with your head held high.

   He laughs and gives you a smile. “Haven’t tried that before. Guess I’ll have to tonight,” he beams.

   “Guess you will,” you say with a raised brow.

   You take a generous sip of water and swish the bendy straw around nervously, looking up from under your dark lashes as you take a deep breath. “So, first girl you’ve brought here?” you ask with your brows raised in question.

   He taps his index finger on the edge of the table and nods. “Besides Sarah, yeah. First girl.” Your eyes lock for a few seconds, and you feel your heart skip a beat at the intention that burns in his dark brown irises.

   The questions slur through your mind. Is this an actual date? Does this incredibly handsome man really like you? Is he wanting… more? Do you want more? 

   The tension gets interrupted as Sienna comes back and hands you your milkshakes. “Here ya go! Food should be out soon, sugar. Be back in a few.” She whisks away and leaves you two alone again. 

   You pull your eyes off Joel and slip a straw into your strawberry shake, mixing it around until your nerves dissolve into the liquid. “So, read anymore Fourth Wing?” you ask after taking a sip of your shake.

   Joel wipes his mouth with a napkin and dips his silver spoon into his chocolate shake. “Actually, quite a bit. Made it to chapter twenty-two.”

   You lift your eyebrows in surprise and smile. “Oh? And?”

   He drops the spoon from his mouth and spins it around his chocolate shake meticulously. “Pretty good. Dain’s kind of an asshole, but Violet’s kinda badass. And the dragons, the fighting? Not bad, angel. Can see why you like it.”

   You giggle and take another sip of the strawberry goodness, letting it slide down your throat as you feel it close up the moment his brown eyes flick back toward yours. “It is really good, just wait till you start the second book.”

   “The second book? Already think I’m gonna read the second book?” He smirks, one eyebrow stretched up as he licks his bottom lip clean of chocolate. The sight makes you weak in the knees. 

   “Figured you’d read it for me,” you whisper just loud enough for his mouth to drag up in a full on grin.

   “Well, when you put it that way, ‘course I will. I’d read anything you put in my hands,” he smiles. His knee brushes against yours, and your heart hammers in your chest as you engulf yourself in the smell of him, in his gorgeous brown eyes. Even from the wafts of burgers and fries, you can still smell that woodsy cologne floating around your senses. And you want to drown in the very essence of him.

   You bat your eyelashes at him and smile. “In that case, I’ll make you a list,” you giggle.

   “I’m holdin’ ya to it, angel,” he chuckles as he takes another generous sip from his chocolate shake.

   The music switches over to an old Beatles song, and after you stir the spoon around your shake, you decide to bring up Sarah again. “So, Sarah. She like this place as much as you?”

   Joel chuckles and shakes his head. “Nah, not as much as I do, but she does like it. Brought her here all the time when she was a kid.”

   You smile at that, thinking of Joel helping her up on one of the barstools, him laughing as he joked with his daughter, his warm smile gleaming in the sunlight as he took her on different adventures and did fatherly things like take her to the park, to the dinosaur museum, maybe even played Barbies with her. You giggle at the image of that. He must’ve been such a good father, you can see it in the way his eyes glisten and crinkle when he talks so fondly about her.

   Suddenly, you get the sudden urge to ask about her mother, wondering where she fit into all this. Surely she’s still around, maybe closer to Joel than you think. You work up the courage to ask as you stir the spoon mindlessly in your strawberry shake. “Hey Joel, can I ask you something?”

   “Anything,” he says automatically as his brown eyes lift up to yours.

   You gulp down your nerves and let them roll off your tongue. “Where’s Sarah’s mom?”

   Joel’s eyes widen at the question, and you automatically feel guilty for even bringing it up. He pushes back some tousled curls and sighs, wetting his bottom lip as his eyebrows crease tightly together. “She left us when Sarah was jus’ a baby. Jus’ up and left with no more than a folded note. Haven’t seen or heard from her since.”    

   Your mouth gapes open in shock, and his eyes gloss over with a hint of sadness as his fingers turn into a tight fist. You definitely struck a very sore topic, and you hate yourself for even asking now. “Oh my god, Joel. I’m so very sorry,” you reply shakily as you let your spoon drop with a plop into the glass cup.

   He shakes his head and sighs. “Don’t gotta apologize, sweetheart. ‘S not your fault. Besides, we made it jus’ fine without her. Didn’t even need her.” Again, you see the prickle of a held back tear, and you wish you could just brush away that part of the past for him.

   “Well, if it’s worth any consolation, I think you did a really good job. I mean, look at her. Studying to be an architect, traveling around the world? I’d say she took after her smart daddy,” you smirk. That sends a warm smile spreading wide over his mouth, and you can’t help but blush as his eyes flick to yours. 

   “Smart daddy, huh? That what I am?” He chuckles as he keeps his eyes locked on yours.

   You shrug and giggle. “I’d say so.” That makes a deep chuckle fall from his lips as he clasps his hands together on the table, rubbing against your outstretched hand.

   You catch your breath and meet his eyes again, nervously brushing your knee against his. “It’s her loss. She missed out on a great guy, didn’t know what she was missing, apparently.” His eyebrows draw together, and his eyes dim with a hint of a glimmer as a small smile curls around his mouth. He looks like he wants to say something with the way he’s looking at you all gentle and prideful, but you’re quickly interrupted as Sienna brings the food to the table.

   “Here you two go! Plates are a little hot, so be careful.” She lays the glass plates in front of the two of you with a curt nod and a playful wink as she turns to leave you alone again.

   You pick up a hot fry and dip it in the creamy ranch, scooting it over in Joel’s direction as you bite into warm goodness. “Go on, try it,” you giggle as he hesitantly dips his own fry into the white sauce, carefully bringing it to his plush lips. He takes a bite, and a surprising look glazes over his face.

   After a few seconds he gives you a small smile and goes back for another one. “Not bad, angel. Not bad at all.” You acknowledge it as a compliment and dig into your grilled cheese, knowing you just metaphorically saved a life by showing the powers of what ranch dressing can do.

   “Told you,” you laugh, taking a large bite out of the extra cheesy grilled cheese.

   “Mmm, sure did. Gotta start listenin’ to your suggestions more often,” he winks. You just push back a piece of loose hair and smile.

   The next half hour is spent delving into your food and flirting back and forth, brushing knees against one another, blushing and smiling probably more than you ever have in your entire life, and it’s all because of this man, this incredibly ridiculous hot, sweet man. How did you ever end up in a diner talking about life with Joel Miller? 

   Minutes go by, maybe hours. You don’t really keep track anymore. “You were in a band?” you laugh incredulously as you look at his gleaming eyes. 

   “Sure was. Played the lead guitar. Didn’t last long, but it was fun while it lasted.” He sits back in the booth and spreads his legs wide, like this is the most casual conversation ever and he’s actually enjoying himself. 

   “Do you still play?” you ask with hope glittering in your eyes.

   “Sure do. You ever tried?” His eyebrow raises with curiosity written all over those dark brown irises.

   You shake your head at that. “No, always wanted to try, just never got around to it.”

   He taps his index finger on the edge of the table, and a small smile curls around that beautiful mouth. “You wanna learn?” He threads his eyebrows together and leans forward, like he’s reaching for a certain answer.

   You bat your eyelashes up at him nervously and ask quietly. “Are you offering to teach me?”

   He shrugs his broad shoulders and nods. “If you wanna learn then absolutely. Not like I haven’t taught you a thing or two before.” He winks and the giant smirk makes you choke on your water because you know exactly what he’s talking about, and it’s not just guitar strings but something else he’s shown you with those thick, calloused fingers. 

   Heat floods your cheeks as you look into those smoldering coffee irises. The more you stare at him, the more you want to reach across the table and melt into his glowing soul. “Okay,” you say dreamily, resting your knuckles casually under your chin as you lean against the table and stare absentmindedly at the man with the pretty brown eyes. 

   “Is that a yes?” He pines, trying to wind his thick fingers around your skull as he searches for an answer that’s right on the tip of your bashful tongue. 

   “Like… at your club?” 

   He chuckles and shakes his head no. “No, sweetheart. At my house.”

   His house. You don’t know why, but the mention of that has something that feels a lot like bile rising in your throat. His house. That’s different than meeting at the club, even different than this. And suddenly, you realize just what this is, how much more it feels than just sleeping together. This is a date, and that makes your stomach clench in a tight knot at the very thought of what comes next. 

   When you don’t answer, he reaches over and lays a big hand on top of yours, his thumb sliding along the inside of your wrist as your vision tunnels. Oh god, what is he about to ask? 

   “I’ve been thinking…” He blinks a couple times and drops those beautiful brown eyes on you, giving you that million dollar smile that makes you weak at the knees. He sighs as he strokes his fingertips over your clammy skin. “What are we doin’ here, angel?”  

   Your heart halts, and for a second you can’t even breathe, nonetheless speak like a normal human being. “What do you mean?” The words are barely a whisper as they ghost through your lips, your hand tightening against the tabletop.

   You know exactly what he means, you’re just too scared to hear those words come out of his mouth.

   He slides a hand through his greying scruff and stifles a deep laugh, and then his eyes are piercing through yours like the morning sunrise on a rainy day. “I mean… us.”

   “Us?” Your voice is full on shaking, and your breathing is anything but normal now. 

   He lets out a sigh that sounds a little like frustration, but he doesn’t let his smile and warm eyes falter. “Yeah, us. Me and you, angel. What are we doin’?” 

   “I… uhhh… we…” Your words are nonexistent, only a form of mumbling and jumbled sounds spilling from your mouth. Joel’s gaze flinches as he waits, his fingertips becoming shaky and dismantled as his jaw ticks. And fuck why can’t you say the words? That you do want him. You want this, you just want everything from this incredible man, but fear stops you. And then the next words that fall from your lips completely ruin you.

   You press your knees together and bite your nails into the flesh of your thigh, grinding the words you don’t want to say out like nails clawing down chalkboards. “I mean… we’re just having fun, right?” His jaw immediately drops.

   Shit. You’ve just ruined everything.

   He pulls back from you, dropping his hand onto his side of the table, and he looks completely wrecked. You see the light in his brown eyes die as he clenches his jaw into a tight fist and runs his hand unruly through his tousled curls. 

   Shit shit shit.

   “Jus’ havin’ fun? Is that all we’re doin’?” His voice sounds garbled like he’s drowning under a faucet, and you start to tremble in place. 

   Say something, anything to take back what you said. For the love of god, reach for him! But you don’t move, your hand doesn’t even twitch, even though all you want to do is reach for that hand, his arms, his heart. Fuck. But you don’t move. You don’t do a damn thing but freeze.

   “I — uhhh… mhm.” You can’t even look at him when you say it because there’s shame written all over your pathetic face, and you really don’t want to look into those disappointed eyes that are reddening with held back tears. 

   “That right? This right here is all jus’… fun.” His voice is smothered in disappointment, and you swear you hear him mention something about how it was all some game, and that fucking breaks you. This isn’t a game to you, but you can’t seem to make your voice work. 

   He stares at you, his eyes darkening as a deep scowl forms on his lips. He’s waiting for an answer, but you just can’t do anything to make this better. So you mutter words you don’t mean out. “I… I don’t know.” The look of instant regret threads his face, and he looks like he just found out his dog got run over with the speckles of tears that push through his tormented eyes. And now, you can’t even look at him.

   You’re such a fucking coward. 

   And just to make it worse, the fucking waitress interrupts. “You two lovebirds want some pie?” she asks sweetly. The question makes you sick.

   “Nah, think we’re done here. Jus’ bring me the check.” The sounds from his heavy words hit you like a car crash, and you feel regret caving hard in your clenched gut for what you’ve just done.

   You dare to take a peek up from under your long lashes, but you regret it the moment you see that weathered stare, that stone-like face that tells you enough. He’s just as devastated as you. Because he thought this was more, and it should be more. But you’re just a girl with a fucked up past who just can’t seem to let go, so you ruin everything you touch. 

   You’re nothing but a disappointment. 

   You flick your gaze down to your curled fingers that almost tear through your soft pink dress. This was a special dress, one you thought Joel would like, one you were so excited to wear because his eyes lit up the moment he saw you in it. And now? Now you just feel like Cinderella when her stepsisters tore her favorite, special dress to shreds. You’re nothing but fire ashes that burnt out long ago.

   Sienna comes back, and Joel leaves her a fifty dollar bill, not bothering to wait for any change. He doesn’t even say your name when he gets up, he just stands at the door silently and waits for you to follow without even one lingering gaze. You feel just like a lost puppy who lost their favorite owner, and you swear you die right on the spot when you brush up against him and feel him pull back, like you’ve just burned him. 

   But you did burn him. You scorched him alive. 

   The truck ride back to your apartment is soundless, the only noise is the faint hum of the engine as the tires drive along the dark road. His music is even muted. Every time you look over he’s either pinching the bridge of his nose, raking a hand heavily through his beard with concern etched painfully in his eyes, or running his fingers roughly through his now disheveled hair. He looks like he’s just been through hell. You did that, you fucking did that. Goddamn it! 

   You lick your bottom lip nervously, feeling your fingers start to rip through the bottom of your dress. You’re clawing your legs so fiercely that you’re about to lose your fucking mind because you can’t say what you really want to say. So you just stay silent; you just don’t have the energy to do anything else at this point.

   When he finally pulls up to your door after that painful ride, he puts the truck in park and keeps one hand clenched tight around the leather steering wheel, only facing forward as his lips form a tight line.

   You slowly unbuckle your seatbelt and look at him with swimming eyes, your vision starting to blur as you compose your shaky breath. “I uhh… I had a nice time tonight, Joel. Thank you for dinner.” 

   His knuckles squeeze the steering wheel tighter, and he barely even looks over at you as he fights to make words tear out of his mouth. “It was no trouble.” No ‘you’re welcome’ or ‘I had a nice time too, angel’. And that makes you want to die.

   You curl your fingers around the door handle and pry it open with a shaky hand, but before you slip out you say one more thing that you think will save this whole messed up situation. “Maybe… maybe you could give me that guitar lesson?”

   He gulps down a breath and ticks his jaw, his face looking straight forward so he doesn’t have to look you in the eyes. “I… I’ll see you around.”

   It’s over. 

   Your face drops like your heart does in your chest, and you mindlessly step out and let the door close behind you. He pulls out instantly and leaves you standing there alone, tears streaming down your face as you watch the headlights disappear like they were never there in the first place.

   You stay frozen in that spot, letting the chill of the night breeze past your bare arms, your eyes bloodshot and wide as you replay the end of the dinner, the part where you fucked it all up.

   Your fault, your fault, your fault. And suddenly, you feel as if you just ruined your entire life. 

   You drag yourself into the apartment, not even bothering to turn on the lights as you slide beneath your cool sheets and shed the tears you held in the past half hour. You let them fall until you can’t breathe, until you can’t think about anything but those sad doe eyes. And that’s the last thing you remember until sleep drags you under. And then there’s just darkness and nothing else but your own stupid mistakes playing through an endless nightmare.

   He moves in a fog the next week, his body lethargic and numb as he pushes past blocks of bodies, the echoing music drowning through his ears as he goes through repeated motions he can barely tolerate. 

   He spends the evenings in the club tucked away in his office where no one can touch him, where he’s not reminded of your beautiful eyes or your dimpled smile. His hand clenches around the whiskey glass as cold droplets collect where his lips meet the edge of the cup, slow sips drinking in the relaxing sting that numbs his buzzing body.

   You were supposed to be his, but instead you’re just a ghost that materializes in his memory every fucking moment of every gut wrenching day.

   He lets the sting soothe him as he taps his thumb mindlessly against the glass, staring at endless paperwork that keeps piling like someone else will do it. But he lets it sit and sit until the words start to blur on the page, until he’s completely numb from the traces of your last words you ever said to him.

   Maybe you could give me that guitar lesson… 

   And he just fucking drove off and left you all alone without so much as one word to soothe you over. He’s a fucking asshole, but what could he say? You don’t want him like he so desperately wants you. But he really thought you did… he was fucking wrong.

   He flips his phone back and forth in his palm, lighting up the screen just long enough to stare at your name and the message button that seems to burn through his eyes. He sighs and lets the phone fall to the desk, turning it face down so he can’t see your name as the pain sets like fire in his chest. 

   He groans, fisting his disheveled curls through his fingers as he leans his elbows against the covered desk, quietly cursing as he fights to grab his phone and hit the call button. But then he remembers that you don’t want him. Not like he wants you.

   He lets out a growl, numbing his mind a little more with the poison he feeds himself, letting lies run rampant through his mind as he fights to see where he went wrong. He thought you wanted him, wanted more. Where the fuck did he go wrong?

   He’s so deep in his racing thoughts that he barely hears the door handle jiggle, almost missing his brother that slips in out of the blaring noise of the club.

   “Uhh, Joel? You alright there, brother? You’re not lookin’ so hot,” Tommy says slowly as he paces cautiously up to the edge of the mahogany desk. 

   “I’m fine,” he bites out, a little too harsh as his clipped tone makes Tommy’s mouth tighten.

   “If you say so.” He threads his fingers through his greasy black hair that’s slicked back with gel and nods at the messy pile. “You a little behind on paperwork?”

   Joel scowls as he clenches his jaw. “I’ll get to it. Jus’ had some other shit come up.” He’s not meaning to come off angry, but that’s what he is. Angry, hurt, shocked, torn apart. Fuck. One girl and his entire world goes to shit.

   “You need some help with it?” He nods to the pile again and crosses his arms over his button-up long sleeved black shirt. 

   “No, I think I can handle it.” But can he really handle it? Not at all.

   “Oh okay…” He presses into the back of his leather cowboy boots and shifts his weight uncomfortably. “Well, the boys are here waitin’.”

   Joel’s eyes fall as he realizes today is Thursday. The day carved out to play pool with his friends. “Shit, I totally forgot,” he groans, pressing the heel of his palms into his eyes as if he can get rid of the pounding headache that’s taking over his body.

   “You never forget. Joel, are you sure you’re okay?” Tommy’s dark eyebrows are furrowed together as his wide brown eyes edge with concern. 

   “I’m… I’m fine, Tommy,” he answers defeatedly as he lies through his teeth. 

   Tommy sees right through him, and it doesn’t take him long to realize just why he’s so fucked up in the head right now. “Hey, I haven’t seen that girl around lately. You know, the really pretty, sweet one? The one whose eyes light up when she’s near you.”

   Joel sighs and closes his eyes for a breath of a second, his stomach dropping to the floor as he sucks in a painful breath. “She… no. Haven’t talked to her lately, Tommy.”

   “Oh.” Joel hears the disappointment clearly in his tone, and he really doesn't want to explain just why he hasn’t talked to you. It’s too… painful. “You wanna talk about it?”

   “No. Jus’ drop it.” His voice comes out clipped, and he has no strength to even apologize for being so short with Tommy. 

   “Alright, alright. I won’t ask.” He raises his hands in defeat and knocks on the edge of the desk. “You wanna come play pool? Maybe have another drink?”

   Joel shakes his head no and sighs deeply. “Not tonight, Tommy. Maybe next week.”

   Tommy decides to leave it at that, promising to tell the boys he’ll try his best to make it next week. Joel doesn’t say a word, just lets Tommy believe he’ll be feeling better by then, but he knows he won’t. He’ll still be this. 

   Before Tommy leaves, he peeks his head over his shoulder and tries to comfort Joel the best he knows how. “Hey, if you ever wanna talk, my door is always open. Whenever, night or day. I’m here for you.” Joel just nods and lets his brother fade through the door, closing it as silence takes over his lonely office again.

   He pulls his phone out again, flipping through his contacts until he sees your name scrawled on the screen, except in your place is the word Angel with a little halo emoji right next to it. He suddenly breaks, fingers clenching the edges of the phone so tight that it falls to the floor, making your name disappear from his line of sight as his phone goes dead.

   Angry, hot tears brim over his eyeline, and then he’s losing all self control as the bitter taste of regret sinks in. He stands up and pushes the overwhelming pile of paperwork to the floor, throwing the whiskey glass at the wall as glass shatters and liquid falls down the black wallpaper. He sends the lamp over the edge next, hearing it crack as his heart breaks just like the pieces of broken glass that litters against the polished floors.

   He screams bloody murder as the feeling of pain overwhelms his insides, but the bumping music outside of the room mutes his cries. He topples in the chair, almost gouging his eyes out as his palms press firmly into his eyes, letting the hot tears roll down his sunken face.

   He can’t do this. Not tonight, not tomorrow, not ever. He didn’t plan on falling for you, but he fell harder than he’s ever fallen. And goddamn it, he never meant to fall in love with you, but he did and look where that left him. 

   Alone and heartbroken.

   But that’s what happens in continuous hookups where lines are blurred and no boundaries get set. People end up hurt or attached or fall hopelessly in love. And he did, all of those. But he never thought it could ever hurt this bad.

   All he wanted since the moment he met you was you. And now, you were just the dark silhouette sitting in the corner of his office. A ghost that never should’ve faded away. But look at you now, just gone, like your deep red lips he never even got to kiss, but god, he wishes he would’ve gotten to taste those sweet lips that probably taste like honey. He’ll regret it until the day he dies.

   He should’ve fucking known better than to let it go this far, but it did. And now? He’s lost you for good.

  Two weeks go by and you hear nothing from Joel. You send a couple of texts, each very short. You talk yourself out of it, but you at least need to try. The only kind of response you get is the texting bubbles that shortly disappear after leaving you on read.

   You walk around in a daze, everything foggy and blurry as you fight to even keep upright most days. You fucked up the best thing that’s ever happened to you all because you were scared to be hurt again. But where did that get you? It just left you devastated and more hurt than you could’ve possibly imagined. 

   You lose sleep, can barely tolerate the blinding sunlight that reminds you of that damn smile that you probably won’t get to ever see again. You should’ve kissed him, should’ve told him how you felt, should’ve told him about your past you really didn’t want to bring up again, but you were so fucking broken that you couldn’t manage to do any one of those things. 

   What would your therapist say to all of this? She’d probably scold you and shove more medications at you that you refuse to take. But what’s worse? Not feeling anything or reliving this insufferable pain day after day all because you couldn’t make your words or actions work.

   Jesus, you’re a real piece of work. Joel was lucky he got out when he did. You’re such a fucking mess, but you’re an even bigger mess without him.

   You stare at the text thread between you and Joel, mindlessly looking for any life behind that screen, reaching for just an ounce of reassurance that he isn’t really gone, but you get none. He’s gone. 

   The unanswered texts start to blur as tears fill your eyes, and then the panic sets in. The inevitable fear of abandonment and loss hits you like a blinding lightning strike, and then the anxious thoughts and debilitating emotional turmoil takes a hit. Joel isn’t coming back for you.

   You click Brianna’s number so fast that you drop your phone and pick it up frantically, fumbling with the flimsy case until you have enough of a hold on it that you start to hyperventilate.

   Pick up, pick up, pick up.

   Just when you think she’ll let it go to voicemail, she answers with a giddy ring to her voice. “Hey, stranger! You’ve been quiet lately. What’s up? You wanna go out tonight?”

   “Bri, I fucked up. I fucked everything up!” Your voice cracks, and the tears start to fall like raindrops down your skin. You can barely hold the phone to your ear because your hand is shaking so badly.

   “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Slow down there. Breathe. What happened?”

   “He… Joel… I…” You can’t even form a coherent sentence because you’re stumbling over your own racing thoughts, and your breathing is almost nonexistent. You’re just a shuddering mess.

   “Hey, calm down. Babe, can you tell me what happened?” Her voice is patient, but you know she’s freaking out on the end of the line because you hear her car keys jingle in her hand. 

   “I… fuck, Bri. I blew it. He left… the questions… I couldn’t…”

   “Listen to me. Do you need me to come over?”

   “No, I’m… fine.” But you’re not fine, you’re far from it.

   “You’re not fucking fine. Did that asshole hurt you?”

   “No, just… no…”

   “Fuck it, I’m coming over. Be over in ten minutes.” The phone line goes dead, and all you hear is silence as you hold the phone to your ear, waiting for nothing as you freeze and collapse.

   You fall into the velvet couch and bring your knees to your chest, covering your eyes as you let the tears soak the material of your yoga pants, clinging to a reality that you just don’t want to deal with now. You don’t want to think about Joel, don’t want to think about how you haven’t heard from him in two weeks, don’t want to think about how fucking badly you want his strong arms around you, and you definitely don’t want to think about how you just ruined the one chance you had to keep the best thing that’s ever happened to you.

   You sink into the crevice of the couch, squeezing your eyes closed as tears ricochet down your eyelashes. You faintly hear the rain drizzle from your kitchen window, tapping against the glass like it hears your swallowed cries filling the empty room. It’s just you, the flickering vanilla candle, and your muted cries that fill the staggering silence of your space.

   And just when you think you’ve felt the worst, the grief consumes you as those sad brown eyes flicker in your spotty mind. A ghost of the past that haunts your every waking thoughts, and it just reminds you how wrong you went.

   Your fault, your fault, your fault.

   You’re so busy replaying the scenes from dinner that you barely hear the door being opened. You don’t even notice anyone’s here until Brianna is kneeling down in front of the couch, carefully pulling your knees down so she can look into your red-rimmed eyes. 

   She places a hand gently on your knee, giving you those sad brown eyes that remind you a whole lot like how Joel looked after you ruined it all. Another tear drips down your cheek, and then she’s soothingly pressing her palm against your thigh. 

   “Hey, I’m here now.” Her voice is dulcet, and her familiar cotton candy perfume calms you down just like her soothing voice always does when you’re having a breakdown. And in these moments you’re just so lucky to have a friend like her that’ll drop everything just to make sure you’re okay.

   “Hi.” Your voice cracks, and you hear a quiet sigh that sounds a lot like genuine sympathy for you. 

   “You wanna talk about it?” She asks in a somber tone, one that’s not pulling for information, just someone that wants to let you decide what you’re comfortable with talking about.

   You slowly nod your head as another tear falls from your tainted face. “When Joel took me out for dinner, he asked what we were, what we were doing. And I… I fucked up. I told him we were just having fun, that none of this was serious. And then… then…” You clench your jaw and fist your fingers into the sunken couch, trying to catch your breath to finish, but Brianna cuts in.

   “Oh, babe. No.” Her blonde curls fall into her gentle face, and her light brown eyes glimmer with sympathy as she realizes why you were so worked up over the phone.

   Your face falls, and you fight to get the rest of the words out through your gritted teeth. “You should’ve seen how wrecked he looked when I answered, Bri. It was… I never thought looking into a man’s eyes would break me, but that did. He looked so sad…” Your fumbled words deceive you as you break into a sob, Brianna quickly brushing a tear away as she meets your deep red eyes.

   “I’m so sorry, babe. Have you… has he talked to you since?” She asks hesitantly.

   You shake your head and let your gaze drop to the carpeted floor. “No. I tried texting him a couple times, but he just left me on read…”

   The room grows silent for a minute as Brianna’s brown eyes gaze up at you, her golden locks shining in the glimmer of the faint light from the dark fluffy clouds outside. She takes a beat to figure out what she wants to say and when she does, it’s like a soft hug that folds across your entire body. “I think… I think he might be hurting just as bad as you right now. And maybe, just maybe he needed a little space to sort out his feelings? Because from the sounds of it, I think he wanted it to be more. I think he likes you a lot.”

   You purse your lips and flick your eyes back to her, trying to shift through her words as they ring bells in your mind. “You really think he wanted more?”

   She nods her head and places a warm palm over your shaky fingers. “I know he did.” 

   Those words just make you shake and start to sob all over as you let messy words spill from your parted lips. “Bri, I wanted to tell him so badly how I felt. How I wanted it to be more, how he’s literally the best thing that’s ever happened to me. That he… makes me feel safe and wanted.”

   “Oh, babe,” she sighs sympathetically. “Look, you’ve been through some of the roughest shit I’ve ever seen, but you know what? You’re the strongest, most empathetic, sweetest friend I’ve ever met in my entire existence. And he’d be so lucky to have you.”

   “But he doesn’t want me anymore!” Your voice tethers through the room like a broken record, and you fight to stay composed.

   “You sure about that?” She cocks her head and gives you that look that says you’re absolutely wrong.

   “He won’t talk to me, Bri. And the way he left… well… it sounded like he was saying goodbye.” You hold your breath and wait for the backlash she’s about to give you, but it never comes. There’s only soft words that numb your heavy brain.

   “Hey. Let me ask you this, do you want to be with him?”

   “Bri…”

   “Just answer me, okay? Do you want him?” She emphasizes the word want, and her doe eyes glaze up at you with pure softness.

   You gulp and let the word fall dry. “Yes.”

   “Then you’re going to get him back,” she smiles, her glittery pink lips curling into warmth.

   “What?” Your eyes blow wide, and your hands fall straight to your sides.

   “Tomorrow you’re going to walk into that club, and you’re going to tell him exactly how you feel,” she said adamantly.

   “No, Bri. I can’t. I…”

   She holds up a palm and nods. “You can, babe. I know how much you like him; I can tell by the glow in your eyes every time you talk about him, and your smile? I haven’t seen you that happy in a few years. You’re positively radiant, just like you should be.”

   You sigh and shake your head distraughtly. “I was happy until I went and fucked it all up,” you mumble under your breath.

   She dips her fingers under your chin and pulls your eyes up to meet hers. “He’d be foolish not to listen to you and take you back, babe. Just trust me on this, okay? He still wants you. I know he does.”

   “How do you know?” You mutter out with pursed lips.

   “I just have this feeling, okay? You can do this, you will do this. I know you can.” Her smooth voice is so confident in you that you almost believe her. Maybe you can do this, but you have a feeling you’ll just fall and get left behind again.

   You curl your lips into a small smile and wipe the last of the tears away with the back of your hand. “Thanks for making me feel a little better, Bri. You’re a really great friend.” You give her hand a tight squeeze and show her just how much she means to you.

   She scoffs and flips her golden hair behind her shoulder. “Oh, don’t you get all sappy on me. Come on. I’m taking you to get ice cream.” She tugs you off the couch and drags you through the front door, not even bothering to let you grab your card. “This one’s on me, babe. Let’s forget about men and go soak in some sugary goodness tonight.”

   “Sounds good to me,” you smile as she leads you down the winding sidewalk. 

   Maybe she’s right, maybe you can do this, after all. But the fear grabs a hold of your throat and holds back any faith you have in yourself. You’re going to fucking choke and ruin it all again. But you have to try because living without him isn’t something you even want to think about.    

You don’t want to be without him because you’re pretty sure you’re in love with him.

[winstonsns]

hello!!! I was wondering if I could request a Dallas Winston x reader story based off of the song "she's a fool" by Lesley Gore. The song reminds me a lot of Sylvia and Dallas and so maybe the story can be based around how reader is a better gf than Sylvia and such. Hopefully this makes sense LOL

she’s a fool (request)

authors note: this was super fun to write so i hope you like it 💗

dally x reader

word count: 2.0k

warnings: cussing, slightly suggestive, joking threats

you and your boyfriend, dally, are in your kitchen, both of you sitting on the barstools made for the island. the two of you are talking when you decide to take some cherries out of the fridge, you wanted a little snack to satisfy your hunger.

as you get up from the stool and walk to the fridge, dally asks, “heard that new elvis movie’s out, you wanna come see it with me? it’d be jus’ the two of us.” giving you a certain look and winking at the end.

you blushed, rolling your eyes and stating, “i want to go but i’m gonna ask my parents first. don’t wanna make them worried when they don’t see me at home.” you open up the fridge and take the cherry bag out, turning around and taking a bowl out of the cupboard.

you then take some cherries out of the bag and head towards the sink, rinsing them. dally gives you a confused look, “what— why are you rinsing them?”

looking back at him, you answer, “i dunno, my mom always told me to rinse fruits and vegetables because you never know what kind of bugs can be on them. just tryin’ to stay safe.” your boyfriend finally understands your answer and shrugs it off.

once you were done rinsing them, you put them in a bowl and put it in front of you and dally. your dad then comes down the stairs and says, “almost late for work, honey. i’ll be back around… probably six.”

you nod, grabbing his lunch out of the fridge while he thanks you, you ask, “hey, dad, do you think i could go to the drive in with dally today? it’d probably be around… um…”

looking to your boyfriend for the answer, he looks back at you then to your dad, finishing, “oh, probably around seven or so. we’d be back around nine, i’m guessing. right, baby?”

you blush and look at him, nodding. you stand next to him while he’s sitting, your dad eyes him suspiciously. you put your arms around dally’s shoulder, your chest to his back as you look over his shoulder.

“please, dad? we’ll be safe, dally can protect me, you know him! so strong, so good at fighting and so amazing…” you look at dally, dropping your arm to his bicep, smiling at him sweetly as he eats a cherry, a wide grin on his face.

your dad sighs, “fine. you better keep her safe, winston. and you better not,” he paused, “and i mean better not do anything bad or inappropriate.” you tried to hold back a laugh, a smile evident on both you and your boyfriends faces. your dad made a serious face at you, crossing his arms.

you walked over to your dad and thanked him, “thank you dad! i think you should be heading to work now though, love you!” while you’re giving him a hug, he glares at dally, causing your boyfriend to put his hands up in a mocking surrendering pose.

when you let go of the hug, your dad replies, “love you, kid.” and walks out of the door, you walk behind him to lock the door. you then go back to dally, wrapping your arms around his shoulders and once again kissing him.

after pulling away, he looks at you with so much love in his eyes, anyone would know you are the only one he loves if someone saw him like this. he knows he loves you although it’s difficult for him to express it, he doesn’t directly voice it to you.

the two of you stay at your house for the next nine hours, consisting of you talking, sleeping or reading while he looks around your room. by the time it’s 6:30, the both of you decide to drive to the drive in.

when you get into the drivers seat and your boyfriend is in the passengers seat, he asks, “why ain’t i drivin’?” you chuckle, looking at him to see if he was serious.

you answer, “i love you, dal, but i am not lettin’ you drive my car.” he rolls his eyes as you begin to drive, “i’m a perfectly good driver, don’t know what you’re talkin’ ‘bout…” he mumbles.

you laugh, the only laugh he loves so much, the one he’d notice even if so many others were laughing at the same time. he grins, looking back at your concentrated face, focusing on the road.

when you both arrive at the drive in, you find a good place to park before getting out and sitting on the hood. dally sits next to you, you then hear a loud scream in your ear, causing you to lean towards your boyfriend and look to him for help as you scream back.

you look behind you to see two-bit laughing his ass off, a bottle of alcohol in his hands as you give him a pissed off look. your boyfriend laughs as your side is pressed into his, wrapping his arm around your shoulder and kissing your forehead.

“i’m gonna get us some snacks. you want anything?” you stated, asking your boyfriend too. he thought for a moment before responding, “just a coke, thanks doll.”

as you walk away, he grabs a cigarette from the box in hispocket, he got into the habit of avoiding smoking near you. he grabs a lighter from his pocket, lighting the cigarette and putting it in his mouth.

your boyfriend and two-bit are both talking when keith interrupts, “looks like you got company, dallas. you’re so fucked, i’ll be back when sylvia’s gone.”

dally groans, hearing sylvia’s voice behind him, “hey, dal, you wanna come back to my place after the movie’s done?” the nickname feels so wrong coming from her. he doesn’t even look at her, doesn’t turn around and focuses on the car, your car.

“get the fuck away, i have a girlfriend.” he responds, clearly agitated as he doesn’t want you to see him angry. he doesn’t look to see where you are, he knows you’ll be back soon.

she responds, “so? she doesn’t have to know…” as she puts her hand on his arm, he loses his temper.

“god, don’t you ever know when to fucking stop, sylvia? we broke up because you fucking cheated on me while i was in the cooler, man. there’s no way i could even be with you after that. you’re a piece of shit, you’re a bad person and you deserve nothing but the worst for the rest of your life. i have a girlfriend, she never treats me how you did. she’s way better than you, better than all the girls i’ve dated, and you can go cry about it to someone else for all i care. she treats me like she actually loves me, she treats me like she knows my fucking worth. she does more than you ever could, and she is the one i want. you can piss off, sylvia, you’re dead to me, you fucking get that?” he pauses, still angry as he sees tears in her eyes, “oh, now you’re crying, huh? maybe you should’ve thought first before cheating on me, before treated me like shit! get fucking lost.”

she runs away at the last sentence, dally rolling his eyes and leaning against the car, going back to smoking. two-bit walks back to him, asking, “damn, you do care about y/n. never heard you talk about her like that, is it true?”

your boyfriend stares at him, nodding slightly and taking the cigarette out of his mouth, “you tell anyone about this, i’ll cut your damn head off.” his friend chuckles at the threat, stating, “your girl’s back, put it out before she sees.” referring to the cigarette.

he drops it and puts it out with his heel, walking over to you and putting his arm around your shoulder, taking his soda out of your hands, thanking you.

the both of you sat down on the hood of your car, you scoot closer to him and give him a kiss on the cheek. he smiles at you, returning the favor except on your forehead.

as the movie plays, the soda cups begin to become less filled, the chip bags only being filled with crumbs. the silence of you and dally are occasionally interrupted with little comments about the movie.

once the movie is done, the two of you look at each other and smile. you grab his trash and walk to a trash can, him following you, for protection, he says. he then follows you back to the car, grabbing your hand and staying close to you.

the both of you get into the car, driving in the direction of your house. the drive there is filled with silence, dally looks at you, not being able to see your face well because of the dark. he places his hand on your thigh, looking out the window once you turn your head to him.

when you arrive at your house, you open the door to see your dad in the living room, sitting on the couch. he reads the newspaper and looks up, asking, “how was the movie, you two?”

you respond, “oh, it was good!” and summarize the whole movie for him, as he wasn’t planning to see it anytime soon.

you then look nervously at the ground, your boyfriend still behind you at the entrance, standing awkwardly. you ask, “hey, um, dad?”

he sighs, putting down his newspaper as you smile, “can dally stay over tonight? he’s already here and it would take him a while to get back to his own place…”

your dad sighs once again as your boyfriend is silent, “yeah. go to bed.” you exclaim and walk to your dad, hugging him and thanking him.

you then walk to your boyfriend, leading him upstairs as he grabs your hand once again. you notice and ask, “dal, you seem awfully close today, did something happen? i’m not complaining, just wondering.”

he looks at you, stating, “sylvia came up to me at the drive in. asked me if i wanted to go back to her place, i said no and told her i gotta girlfriend, that you’re way better than her and i’d never want her again, not even to save my life. told her to piss off.”

as the two of you walk into your bedroom and you close the door, you beam, “aww, that’s so cute, dal! thank you for telling her to piss off and stuff.”

“yeah, no problem, doll.” he replies, letting go of your hand for a brief moment to take his shirt off, changing his pants into more comfortable ones he had left at your house.

you walked into your bathroom, doing your nightly routine before changing into your pajamas. you pull the sheets down, curling up as you look at your boyfriend.

he smiles, scoffing and pulling down the sheets on the other side of the bed, laying down. you cuddle up next to him as he puts his arm around your waist in a protective manner.

“love you, dal… thanks for being the best boyfriend ever…” you mumble into his chest, falling asleep quickly after.

he pauses before kissing your forehead gently, your head on his chest. he realizes he wants to be cherished, to be loved, you make him feel that way. he can’t find a single flaw in you, and realizes he should treat you like he loves you. you are a better girlfriend than sylvia ever was, than all of his girlfriends combined. you make him feel like someone, make him feel like he has someone to live for.

“sweet dreams, baby.” he mumbles into your hair, falling asleep not long after. your dad quietly opens the door, light coming in as he saw you and your boyfriend cuddling.

he chuckles softly, closing the door and walking into his own bedroom, knowing you were truly loved by dallas winston.

[starryschoolgirl]

Responsibilities (of marriage)

Summary -> Even though the two of you may have a little fight here and there, Elvis reminds you that regardless of your feelings, you still have your marital duties to abide by, it's what holds a union together. Your responsibilities as a wife. And to keep him, you're bound to fulfill them because Lord knows he can have them filled anytime anyplace.

Warnings -> Jealousy, the brutally soft/appeasing nature of the reader can be annoying to some people, smut, p in v, possible dacryphilia, unprotected sex, sex in a house full of people(?), kitchen sex, entitlement to a woman's body, innocence/inexperience kink, threats of infidelity, dismissed jealousy, Elvis gets pervy with panties, ass slapping, outdated views on how marriage/being married should be, swearing, talks of 'breaking in' girl's vagina, repeated denial of sex, persuasion for sex, this is quite dubious at certain points

WC -> 5.6k

Edit: This is an installment of the Baby Love au!!

This could only have come to fruition thanks to the wonderful input of @yourfavoritedreamgirlblog, thank you Lovely for the help

As another song came to a wrap Elvis made sure to send a smile to every girl in the room, along with a few of the guys who watched from their places at the fold-out table they used to play cards on, having their respective girls on their laps.

Squeals of excited ecstasy left the mouths of the girls that surrounded Elvis as he sang one last sweet, drawn-out note.

This kind of night wasn't an unusual occurrence, Elvis often held jam sessions with girls there to praise him because for some reason your words and the words of his entourage weren't enough to satisfy his ego. It had started happening a lot more since you and Elvis officially tied the knot, not even a month ago now.

But tonight it wasn't in you to be the cool wife, to be just the wife. The wife who was sweet and unthreatened by the floozies Elvis would let into the house, into your home. A strange swirl of anger and sadness had been giving you a headache for the entirety of the jam session. It either stemmed from your waves of emotions, or it was the fumes of how much perfume these girls were spritzing all over themselves, filling your house with the scent of them.

It also didn't help that Elvis had been paying special attention to the girls tonight, usually he'd take time to look at you and smile at you throughout the session, but tonight he hadn't given you any attention.

Biting down on your wobbly lip, you watched from afar on the plush couch, Elvis sat on a stool a few feet away, his guitar sitting on his lap as a group of girls sat at his feet like concubines. The girls were meant to be there for the other guys, at least that's what Elvis had always said to you. Joe would go down and pull a few pretty girls from the gate of your California home and drag them up to the house so that they could entertain the boys.

As your nails dug little crescents into your palms Elvis' laughter boomed over the shrill giggles of the girls sitting at his feet, he then asked as he stared down at a particular green-eyed blonde,

"Got another request?"

Just then a different girl wearing a skin-tight green dress crawled forward slightly, putting her hand on Elvis' knee as she suggested with those big batting false lashes,

"Could you read to us again?"

Elvis smiled down at her sweetly and put his hand over hers as he purred,

"'Course Doll… And by the way,"

He went on about how pretty her makeup was done and that led to another girl clinging to his leg and asking coyly, "What about my eyelashes Mr. Presley? They're natural.", everyone in the room knew they weren't, even Elvis, but he'd feed into the girl's words because she was just so cute.

As the group continued to converse with Elvis' preferences being the focus, you bit your manicured nails harshly, feeling tears build up in your eyes as you watched this all go down in your home.

Your legs bounced nervously, but only seconds later a woman turned her head back to the sound of your heels clicking against the wood floor. Her stare wasn't nice or sweet, it looked closer to disgust. Your nervous habit came to a halt, not wanting to be bothersome to anybody even in your own house.

As her head turned back to Elvis her hair flicked with it. You pulled your nails from your mouth and let them rest in your lap, the paint on your pointer and middle fingernails was chipped. You'd have to fix the ugly mistake tonight.

Elvis' conversation with the girls came to a stop as he decided to fulfill the blonde's wish, and for the first time tonight he looked over to you with a hand pointed to the cushion next to you where he left one of his religious books,

"Honey, could ya grab my book f'me?"

You looked up at him with wide eyes and immediately stepped into action, grabbing his book gently and stepping around the girls who stared up at you with unreadable gazes. You mumbled quiet apologies as you tried to step around them to get to Elvis, you felt like an inconvenience, and you knew you shouldn't, but you did.

As Elvis grabbed the book from you, instead of smiling and mumbling a 'thank you', his eyes caught the imperfection on your nails. He grabbed your wrist gently and turned it so that he could get a better look at your hand, with a soft laugh he spoke bluntly,

"Your polish is chipped Honey,"

A few girls giggled along with his laugh, but you knew they weren't laughing out of love the way (you hoped) Elvis was. They were laughing because even the smallest glimpse of imperfection from a woman married to a man like Elvis was pathetic. It gave them the idea that they had a chance with Elvis. Little Miss Perfect made a mistake, so they had an opening. You felt a blush of embarrassment fall over your face and softly stuttered,

"I-I know, I'll fix it"

Elvis stared at you with a small smile, his thumb gliding across the smooth skin of your wrist as he mumbled,

"I think it's best ya do"

The attention on you at the moment was making you antsy and irritable. You just wanted to go back to being a decoration in the corner of the house. Something that no one but Elvis would pay any mind to. The uncomfortable feeling of having the eyes of girls you didn't even want in the house on you was weighing on your mind and your words.

You looked down at the tips of your heels and avoided eye contact as you quietly repeated yourself to get yourself out of the situation as fast as possible,

"I said I'll fix it."

His eyebrows lifted ever so slightly at his sweet little girl's tone, his grip on your wrist tightening just enough to leave a mark but not so much that the girls that surrounded you could see it. His smile turned patronizing as he tilted his head a little. He spoke through a breathy laugh,

"Shouldn't have chipped it in the first place Doll…"

The laughs of the other girls sounded like a soft hum as you stared at your feet, nodding in silence as you chewed your lower lip, feeling tears build up in your eyes once again. After he got your nod he let go of your wrist, but instead of turning to head back to the couch, you turned a different way, as you made your way through the girls in a different direction. As you walked you murmured a soft, "Excuse me", a quiet, "Sorry", and a shaky, "P-pardon me"

As you began to quickly make your way to the doorway that led to the kitchen you could hear Elvis ask, "Where ya goin' Hon?" and you continued without looking back or speaking, fearing that if you did he'd see your teary eyes and hear the cracks in your voice.

Thankfully the kitchen was a completely separate room, and though you could still hear everything going on in the living room, it was more subdued despite that the entry to the kitchen was open and free for noise to flow in and out. You sniffled softly and stared down at your nails, finally taking in the ugliness of the chipping at your polish.

You walked over to the medicine cabinet just above the stove, you were tall enough to open it but unfortunately, you weren't tall enough to reach inside so you had to grab one of the stools that were used as seating for the island counter, shakily standing on it as you continued to sniffle.

Your search for the nail polish remover was a hard one, maybe it was due to the tears that filled your eyes and made your vision blur, but for some reason, you were having such a hard time finding it that you hadn't even noted that the strumming of the guitar in the other room had come to a stop, and Elvis' voice which sounded like a soft murmur from here in the kitchen had now disappeared from the air, like the scent of your favorite dinner after everyone had taken their portion.

It was only when you felt the rough callouses on Elvis' hands and the rings that adorned his fingers run along the inside of your thigh that you realized he must've stopped entertaining the girls at some point and entered the kitchen. He looked up at you as you stood on the stool while his hand continued to knead at the flesh of your thigh.

Your lip wobbled as you looked down at him and you quickly used the back of your hand to swipe your tears away as you noticed a frown tug at his lips. He mumbled in plain confusion,

"Why ya cryin'?"

You sighed softly, disguising it as a breathy laugh as you shook your head,

"It's nothing"

Elvis' hand that caressed your inner thigh ran down toward the back of your calf, rubbing upward and downward twice before he spoke pointedly with an unamused look on his face,

"If it's nothin' why'd ya leave? And why didn't you answer me?"

You looked down at him with widened eyes and quickly closed the cabinet so you could put all your focus on him, feeling apologetic as you'd forgotten about that.

"I-I didn't mean to- I was just, I was embarrassed…"

Elvis' laugh was low and dry, complimented perfectly by his rough voice and tightening grip on your calf,

"You were embarrassed? How'd ya think I felt after my wife ignored me in front of a whole fuckin' room of people?"

You kept yourself from wincing at his tone as you looked away from him, realizing how inconsiderate your actions were, and remembering your mother telling you that the wife is a representation of the man, that she is responsible for his image, and that she should always maintain decorum. Hardly married a month and you'd already made so many mistakes, this was just another notch to the bedpost.

Your voice was quiet as you breathed out another apology.

A silence ensued as Elvis' hand ran up your calf to your thigh, slipping up even further to touch the skin under your skirt. You turned abruptly which made him lose his touch on your skin, before stepping off the stool carefully. Your eyes were widened as you looked scandalized by even the prospect of what he was silently proposing.

As he moved the stool out of the way to clear his path toward you, arms reached out and landing around your waist. You put both your hands on his chest, the force you could evoke from yourself was a small pathetic one as you whispered up at him, "No, no, no…"

He smiled down at you and licked his lips, his girl was so smart.

"No what? Hm?"

Each stride of his pushed his body against yours, the contact would lose for a second as you took a step back, but he would follow up with another stride until you were pushed back against the counter, you could feel the hard granite pushing into the back of you.

He knew what he was suggesting, he knew what he was imploring with those fingers that danced too close to the lace lining of your panties under your skirt. He just wanted to hear you say it, to say you knew what he was implying.

You, his sweet little wife, having only recently had her cherry popped by her husband, a girl who while she dated him wasn't all that aware of sexual cues until now. And within the span of a few weeks, Elvis had broken you in all nice and proper, he'd taught you how to take a cock, and he loosened you up enough to where sex could be enjoyable.

And though the wedding was almost a month ago, he still cradles the idea that his darling bride is still new and flimsy, inexperienced and innocent.

He wanted to hear what he was turning you into. From a virgin bride who needed to be gently introduced to her marital duties, to a fucked-out wife who knew her place and knew when she needed to fulfill her responsibilities. Whether those responsibilities take place on the plush of your shared bed, the leather of the couch in Elvis' dressing rooms, or the hardened countertops in the kitchen.

It didn't matter, it was your responsibility.

"E-Elvis, there are people, they'll hear…"

Elvis' grip on your waist had firmed up as he leaned down to press little kisses along the side of your neck. One hand rose to gently get a grip on your hair as he used it to pull your head to the side, giving him more access to the skin. He mumbled softly into the skin,

"Isn't that what you want?"

You breathed out a confused, "What?" as his kisses continued up your chin and then to your cheek. He pulled back and smiled down at you, both his hands cupping your cheeks in the gentlest of ways,

"As subtle as ya think ya are, it's pretty easy f'me to tell when you're jealous"

Oh no. He knew.

Your mother always told you that a good wife doesn't get jealous, she shouldn't anyway.

She's the wife and that's the spot that matters, a man can have girlfriends if he wants to. Because the only way to keep a man happy is to let him have his cake and eat it too. Men were simple that way, they were greedy and lustful. And your mother told you that no matter how hard you work, there comes a point when a man will no longer lust over his wife, his eyes will travel elsewhere and that's a given. But you'll stay around as long as you're pleasant company because men are greedy.

You looked panicked as you tried to deny it with a shake of your head, your voice frantically soft in the way your mother always spoke to your father,

"I'm not-"

His voice was sharp as he easily cut through your denial,

"Think I'm stupid or somethin'? I know ya want those girls to know you're mine. So I'll be a good husband and comply with your wishes."

It was all falling apart, you should've just sat there and dealt with it like a good wife. As you realized the bunch you got yourself into you began to try to explain yourself, only to have your thoughts get all jumbled as Elvis pressed his body against yours entirely, his arms trapping you against him as he wrapped them around your waist. His nose was buried into the crook of your neck as he began tugging the neckline of your shirt down, when it didn't comply he simply began ripping it.

"Elvis don't!"

He mumbled into your skin, sounding a little annoyed as he did so,

"Would ya just shut the fuck up"

You blubbered with your hands attempting to push him away by his shoulders, you needed to explain to him that you were fine with the girls, you didn't care, you could be the placating wife a man like him no doubt needed. You really could. So the two of you didn't need to do it now, didn't need to do it here for anyone to walk in and see. For the people just one room away to hear.

Your voice was panicked as you continued despite his scolding,

"B-but, I'm not, I mean- We can't"

As Elvis continued to attack your neck he spoke roughly into the skin, "Goddammit" and pulled away, pulling you by your wrist over to the island counter, center of the kitchen and as big as a dining table. You tried to explain your viewpoint quickly,

"People will hear, I don't, please no, not here, c-can we go upstairs?"

He kept a bruising grip on your waist with one hand while the other grabbed your chin roughly, making you look him in the eye. Your breathing was ragged, not from means of pleasure, but rather your fear of having a displeased husband, having done something to make him look at you the way he was now. You're sure what's in his eyes is anger, fury, disappointment, and dissatisfaction.

"Look Honey, I don't wanna be an ass of a husband, but if that's what I gotta be to make this marriage work, then that's what I'll be."

You stared up at him with fear of what being an ass of a husband entailed. Was he going to find a girl who'd let him fuck her in this situation instead? Would he do that? No, he wouldn't… Your eyes watered at the idea.

Your tone sounded hurt as you said, "Elvis…"

As your eyes continued to fill with tears Elvis' hands flew down to your hips, quickly spinning your around to face the island and pressing his groin against your ass. The surface was digging painfully into where your hip bones were.

"If I have to fuck you face down over this damn counter so that this marriage can keep on keepin' on, then that's what I'm gonna do."

You gasped at his statement and tried to maneuver out from between him and the counter, but that only led to him grabbing you by the back of your neck with a gentle, but firm grip. He pushed you down by the neck till you were completely bent over the counter. As the cold granite snapped against your temple and cheek you whined softly, "Elvis, can we please do it upstairs? Please"

Even in this situation, you were still acting like a good little girl, still minding your manners, talking sweet and soft.

Elvis gave you an ultimatum from behind as he shifted his crotch slightly, letting you feel what you were doing to him,

"I don't wanna fuck you upstairs, I wanna do it here and now, if you won't I'm sure one of the other girls will."

You stayed bent over the counter pliantly, chewing the bottom of your lip with an internal battle, Elvis' voice interrupting it as he asked,

"Now then, I'm gonna make this marriage work, spent too long breakin' ya in to have ya turn into some naggin' old, jealous prude of a wife."

Before you could say anything in response he was already hiking your skirt up to have it pool around your hips as he kneaded your ass. You let out a strangled yelp as the sharp sound of Elvis slapping your ass filled the room. Followed by another. he leaned over your body and cupped your chin from behind as he littered kisses down your temple and cheek, growling into the skin, "Go on Baby, let them hear you, let them hear what I do to you."

Another slap of your ass filled the room followed by a cry. You hated that you liked it.

Elvis pulled back to stare at your pretty pink panties, his fingers toyed with the edge of the thin fabric. After ample admiring he tugged the sides down, eventually letting them drop and watching as they fell to your ankles. He smirked softly as he watched your small clumsy feet try to step out of them.

"Atta girl, knew my sweet girl would come 'round"

You hummed softly, happy with the tinge of approval in his voice. Your actions showed that you could be the kind of wife Elvis could fuck next to a room full of people, but your body betrayed you as you trembled with anxiety from the thought of someone else coming in and seeing you in this state. Seeing you acting like a whore.

As you heard the click of Elvis' belt buckle you inhaled a sharp breath of nerves. And though at this moment, any spectator might think Elvis was just another self-centered man who thought sex was only about the man's feelings, you knew Elvis was thinking of you, that by having not even fucked you yet he was being considerate. He could have easily pushed you against the counter and had his way with you a few minutes ago.

And he showed his silent consideration of your feelings as he kept one hand on your lower back, rubbing soothing circles into the skin while his fingers on his other hand fumbled with the zipper of his trousers, pulling out his length and quickly spitting onto his palm just to rub himself up.

Had it been any other man the image would've been disgusting, but when it was Elvis it was different. Because your husband wasn't like any other.

His hand that once soothed you drifted down to squeeze the globe of your ass before traveling even further South as he used two fingers to part the lips of your pussy. A soft squelch filled the air between to two of you as he parted you, it was proof that your body wanted him just as much as his wanted yours. The noise left him to hum pleasurably, and you to press your red-hot cheeks into the cold counter.

"What's this? Were ya secretly hopin' I'd fuck you over the counter?"

You whined softly at his insinuation. Squeezing your eyes shut in distaste as he reasoned, "No point in askin' I guess, I mean-" His eyes caught sight of your discarded pink panties on the floor and he quickly reached to grab them, laughing softly to himself as he saw all he needed. He continued, bringing your panties down for you to look them head-on.

Your face flushed at the sight and as you tried to turn it away his other hand gripped your chin roughly, the rings pinching at your skin as he made you stare at your own doing, laughing breathily, "The answer to my question is right here ain't it?"

And it was. You didn't want to admit it, but it was all true. The idea of, after repressing your jealousy night after night for so long, of finally letting everyone know you were his and he was yours… It was such a romantic idea. And for you, raised to only get your rocks off on romance books rather than boys, romance was the most erotic thing of all.

His two fingers that parted your pussy's lips squeezed their way through the folds, entering a much warmer, more enclosed area. Your vagina contracted slightly at the sudden intrusions of Elvis' long fingers, you let out a soft breathy moan, it was quiet for the most part but had a high pitch at the end that could give away that not all was normal in the kitchen.

He spoke breathily at the noise, "Oh Honey," it was a giveaway that he'd enjoyed hearing that sound leave you. You quickly flung your hand over your mouth as Elvis' fingers curled within your heat, the squelching continued with each movement, the larger his movements were, the louder the squelch would be. It amused him.

When he deemed you ready he pulled his fingers out, running the white discharge that stuck to his fingers along his length, using it as a lubricant of sorts, but really, he just loved how lewd the idea was. His special times with you always ended with your skin getting stained with the proof of his satisfaction. So when he could, he loved to lather his cock in your proof of satisfaction as if it were the most purifying of body washes. You getting cum on your face and him watching it begin to slowly slide down your skin was lewd and he knew deep down you loved it, this was his equivalent, this is what he loved.

His head fell back gently as he tugged at his foreskin again, making sure to get your discharge in all the little cracks and crevices before lining himself up behind you. You could feel the tip of him press against your lips, despite all his experience he always fumbled around a little down there, in his defense there were a few things to look out for before he could land himself in the gold mine.

You tried your best to brace yourself, but there wasn't much to grab on the counter, it wasn't like when Elvis fucked you on the bed and you could cry into a pillow and grasp at the sheets, the best you could do on the counter was hold onto the edges, it was worth a try though.

As Elvis pushed into you he groaned lowly, the noise only getting louder the further he pushed in. You did your best to keep quiet, to keep your dignity, but it was only due to you beginning to stand on your tippy toes to stop Elvis from getting his natural leverage due to height into you, it soothed the burn enough to where instead of moaning loudly you got by with a soft cry that you did your best to choke back.

Elvis noticed this and leaned down, careful not to shuffle around in you too much. He kissed your shoulder gently and murmured into the skin, his tone and words sweet for the first time this evening, as he spoke he sounded the way he always did when the two of you were alone, his public behavior now wearing off as he tried to soothe his wife.

"I know it's still hard Babydoll, but this is the only way it gets better, c'mon, come down from the tips of your sooties, ya can do it Baby, I know ya can…"

As Elvis continued to press gentle kisses along your shoulder you slowly eased yourself down from your toes, but the tug at your inner walls and the burn that followed was too much. You fell forward defeatedly onto the island counter, raising yourself back up to your toes as you cried softly into the hard surface,

"It hurts Elvis..! I can't, I can't"

Elvis grimaced and looked up to the ceiling like he was asking the Lord for patience as the throbbing and twitching of his cock was beginning to tingle him painfully, he needed to move, but he needed you to be ok with that.

With a gentle hold, Elvis moved your hair to the side so that he could press a gentle kiss on the back of your neck. You could feel and hear him murmur into the skin, his voice patient yet stern,

"You've done it before Mama, we've been workin' so hard. Don't ya remember it only burns at first, r'member how good it feels after?"

You nodded slowly, he watched from behind and quietly hummed, "There, now let yourself down on me Honey, all the way." His hands settled at your hips as he slowly helped guide you down from your tippy toes, you winced softly as you continued, and he encouraged, "A-almost there Baby, that's right, there…"

His last word had drawn off as his head fell backward from being completely engulfed within your heat.

Pulling out a little was easy, it was the going back in that was hard as it put the both of you right back where you started with you arching back up on your toes and crying out softly from the familiar yet painful intrusion.

Elvis swore quietly, "Fuck's sake…"

Though you felt bad for being so bothersome, you stuck with your actions. You'd never done the act in this position before, all the other times you and Elvis had sex up until now, it was always slow, sweet, and soft. There was never any pressure, and you never had to stand up.

You stuttered out as you felt your poor little toes begin to tremble from supporting your entire body for so long,

"It-It's not getting better, it b-burns"

Elvis grunted and laid his head on your back as he spoke through a sexual frustration from being granted access to your pussy just to have it taken away once again,

"It will get better."

You were being such a tease, well not purposely, but it still wasn't something that would fly with Elvis. He knew how to cut through to you though, he knew his bride was such a sweet girl, such a people pleaser, that she wouldn't be so difficult under different conditions.

Elvis pressed his head against your back, his tone of voice low and breathy as he asked,

"Remember all that breakin' in I did for ya? How good I was? I was good wasn't I, mama?"

You wanted to sob as you were stuck in a predicament, if you stopped Elvis would think you didn't think he was good enough, but if you kept going you were certain he'd tear you open from the inside out, or at least rip the crevice of your womanhood, the idea made you grimace painfully as you thought about it.

As you ducked your head into your shoulder to try and stifle a cry, Elvis was there for you to lean your cheek against instead. It was romantic, the feel of your wet tears that glided down your face as if they were shooting stars, rubbing up against his much dryer cheek, letting him feel the struggle he was putting you through. Letting him feel what he was doing to you for once while you knew all too well with a hardened cock up your pussy what you were doing to him.

He hummed soothingly and clicked his tongue once, twice, before murmuring as he placed a kiss on your damp cheek,

"I jus' need ya to trust me Honey, same way ya did on our wedding night"

His kisses danced along your cheek and lingered on your earlobe, nibbling the edge softly as his hand drifted around your waist, landing expertly at your clit as if he knew your body like a map.

"Don't tell me ya forgot about that already?" He whispered as his middle fingers began to circle that special little bud down there, making your hips twitch ever so slightly with the sensation.

You let out an airy moan as he added his index finger to the circling of your most sensitive bundle of nerves, rubbing slow lazy circles as you felt the hot, wet edge of his tongue land on the skin just below your ear as he pressed gentle little kisses. His words were encouragingly sweet, "I've been neglectin' ya here, haven't I?"

Your hum was weak and broken as you tilted your head back, biting your lower lip,

"Mhm"

Elvis cooed softly and kept with his thumb's movement.

"Oh Baby, why didn't ya tell me?"

As the burn in your aching cunt loosened to a familiar warmth from Elvis' expert strumming of your clit your breaths became ragged and torn, just the small stroking of his fingers was turning you into a panting dog, a bitch in heat. With the warmth overcoming your pussy your body began to chase what it needed, your hips began to grind downward. The feeling of Elvis' length rubbing up and down ever so slightly within your walls as you continued to grind down what you could handle was a pornographic one.

As you could practically feel the shift of his foreskin within your cunt with each rise and fall of your hips, Elvis' hands now rested on them as he helped you broaden your movements, his hands squeezing your sides tightly as a low groan fell from his lips. "That's it, oh fuck…"

As his head fell back he brought a hand up to rest firmly on the center of your throat, pulling you back by it just barely so that your head could fall back on his chest. The breaths you both let out no doubt danced with each other in the air as you continued to grind down as best you could while his fingers strummed a tune on your clit which pulled the notes from your mouth as your breaths turned to airy moans.

Abruptly, Elvis gave a small thrust upward, the strength within the movement was enough to make you bounce slightly and let out an immediate moan of pleasure. You quickly flung your palm over your lips just for him to remove his hand from the center of your throat, now gripping your wrist and pulling your hand down to your chest as he murmured lowly,

"Let it out Honey, let 'em know you're mine, and I'm yours."

He began to grind upward into you slowly, working his way back to a thrust, each movement evoked a noise from you louder than the last, and as time went on the soft grinding of his groin into your ass as his dick plunged further up your heat turned to soft skin-to-skin claps with air between them. He tended to be loud as he chased what he needed.

He groaned into your neck as he pressed open-mouth kisses along it, your skin didn't even make a dent in minimizing the sound of his groans. He was loud and full of want, and as prudent as you were taught to be about sinful, sexual desires, it was the most liberating experience you could ever go through.

The smutty sounds of skin slapping on skin reverberated in the walls of the kitchen, stretching into the room just a thin privacy wall away. All the while Elvis was groaning and growling loudly against your skin, mumbling your name between groans and low moans.

His fingers kept their rhythm, so even in the chaos of Elvis' thrusts speeding and his body pushing yours against the hard granite of the counter to the point of bruising, he kept his fingers going just the way you liked. Your moans went up a pitch as you felt a feeling Elvis had introduced you to a few weeks ago on your wedding night, it was one you'd slowly begun to crave even when the two of you were doing something as simple as sitting in the car together. You could hold back and keep your dignity in those moments.

But now as the feelings lingered in your face and were oh so close, you felt like an addict who needed her high. Your voice cracked in a moan as you begged,

"Yes, just like that"

He growled breathily, his lips still dancing along your neck as his hips rocked into you from behind, his voice was breathy as he asked,

"Like that? Ya like it like that? Yeah?"

Your head hung back on his chest, your mouth open wide as your hips began to chase the sensations, "Yes Elvis, y-yes..!"

By now all the chatter that filled the house like background noise was completely silenced as the sounds of sex that filled the kitchen drifted into the other rooms. The air of the other room was awkward as your high-pitched moans which contrasted beautifully with Elvis' low groans were the only thing keeping the California house from silence. Everyone's assumptions were answered by the sudden increase in the volume of the skin-to-skin slapping along with of course your noises of ecstasy.

Elvis swore loudly into your neck, his voice reverberating against the soft skin,

"Fuck Baby!"

As he bit down roughly onto a rather sensitive spot your moans hit their height as you practically wailed, "Oh Elvis!"

And within the span of a second, that coil that played around ever so coyly in the space between your stomach and pussy had completely broken. Elvis' animalistic speed of rhythmic thrusts lost their rhythm and their speed as you felt a warmth like no other fill your body, his open-mouth kisses simply turned to his lips dragging lazily along your neck with a loud groan accompanying the skin.

His thrusts tampered down to deep grinds of his hips down into yours as you'd let out the heights of what your voice box could manage. Your mouth was still open wide but nothing leaving it as you'd reached nirvana.

Your body gave out as your legs trembled and you had to lean over onto the counter to support yourself. From behind Elvis' arms caged you against the island counter, his hands at either side of you pressed down onto the surface to support himself up. You let out a soft whimper as he slowly pulled out of you and fumbled around you from behind for a few moments, the familiar sound of his buckle could be heard.

Before you knew it his hands were on your hips turning you back around to face him, he was dressed, and in hand were the discarded panties of yours that he quickly shoved into the back pocket of his trousers.

Elvis' hands flew to smooth your hair back into place gently. They lingered on your temples as he leaned forward to press a kiss to your head, you closed your eyes in the process.

"You're so beautiful Honey, did so well for me…"

He quickly hiked your skirt back down to its proper length, and wrapped an arm around your waist, suggesting softly,

"We'll head upstairs for the night"

With the fucked-out look in your eyes he knew you needed rest and a shower. So he kept an arm around your waist and walked slowly with you out of the room. As the two of you passed the group in the living room you kept your eyes trained on the floor, knowing if you looked up, you'd only be met with looks of disgust from the girls that still occupied the floor of your living room, sitting around Elvis' stool as if it were a king's throne.

Elvis didn't spare them a glance as he only looked back toward Jerry and Joe, the two men were holding their cards without qualms at what they (and the rest of the house) were just exposed to listening to, as they'd heard that kind of thing more times than they could count coming from the two of you.

"Could y'all escort the girls out when you're done with 'em? Wife and I gonna be upstairs a while…"

With that simple statement, he helped you walk toward the staircase and kept a supporting hand on your lower back. Asking once, twice, three times, if you needed anything. You replied no.

All you needed was him, and that's exactly what you had.

And all the other girls knew it as a little something had fallen out of Elvis' pocket. It was hardly in his pocket to begin with. The boys wouldn't tell him, "Hey E, ya dropped somethin'" Because the boys knew the message he was sending to every girl in the room.

You were his, and he was yours.

Well, for my first time writing, I quite enjoyed that. Anyways...

[lokisrealpurpous]

dating loki would include

dating loki in a nutshell

hair

loki would be obsessed with you hair and would probably be touching it with any chance he gets. he would always offer to wash it and braid it, style it or to even just run his hands through it. It would also work both ways, loki would love it when you played with his hair.

physical touch

this man is touchstarved. he will never be able to keep his hands off you, no matter where you are. he'd love hugging you from behind and nuzzling into your neck, taking in your sent, holding you as he sleeps, holding hands. He also would always have you in his arms or lap.

consent

Before loki does anything, this being touching or doing things for you, he would always ask, unless he knows 100%, you are okay with it. he's very strong on consent and always listens to your feelings and checks you're comftable even if you say something is fine. If you change your mind or refuse he will immediately stop and make sure everything is okay.

reading

Loki would love reading to you, reccomending you books and would constantly be ranting on about books he's reading. When you can't sleep, he'd often let you lay against his chest as he reads you an old book from his childhood while running his hands through your hair.

sarcasm

Even if you're his lover loki is still the most sarcastic, witty person to exist. He'd constantly be messing around or teasing you, always making sure you know his jokes are jokes and picking a right time but he'd probably be pranking you alot.

cuddles

He secretly loves them. After a long day he will search for you just to wrap himself around you or cling onto you any way he can. he loves hugs from people he trusts, and he would always make sure he falls asleep cuddled up with you.

insomnia

He barely sleeps and is always awake when you wake up. He loves the night but also the sound of birds at the crack of dawn. Although he doesn't sleep himself, he will always make sure you get enough rest.

kisses

Loki loves kissing you, his favourite places probably being your neck, thighs, hands, forehead, cheeks, and his overall favourite your lips. Even a peck is enough as long as he gets his kisses. When he's touchstarved, he won't get his lips away from you.

words of affirmation

he loves praising you, and he loves it when you say nice things to him, especially after his neglection as a kid. He will always make sure you feel loved, and it goes both ways. You'd often have him sneeking behind you, wrapping his arms around your waist and whispering small things in your ear like, 'you look so beautiful, my darling' 'that dress looks gorgeous on you'

gift giving

He would buy you the entire 9 realms if he could. Loki would spoil you every single day. Whatever you wanted, he would buy for you, and you'd always be getting small gifts off of him

princess treatment

loki would unshamefully do everything for you, even in public. If your heels were hurting he'd take them off, carry them, and then carry you to wherever you both need to be, if you had laces, he'd tie them up, if you were unwell he would honestly slave for you, you'd have breakfast in bed, a hot water bottle and literally whatever you ask him for. He'd probably make you some chocolate covered strawberries as well.

music

he loves music and deffinatly has a viynal and cd player in his room. He likes all genres depending on the mood he's in, and he is the type of person to play his music loud enough for the whole of Asgard to hear. You've introduced loki to many 'midgardian' artists such as lana del rey, amy winehouse, artic monkeys, the weeknd, billie eilish, and rihannah and he loves them, especially the older artists such as Bowie, Queen, ABBA, Elvis and Harry James. Loki also has quite a soft singing voice himself, and you'd often catch him singing or humming to songs. After a lot of persuading, he'd sometimes sing you old norse lullabies his mother used to sing to him to help you sleep.

[strniohoeee]

Hidden In The Shadows Pt. 4(Final Chapter)

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

Pairing: Matt Sturniolo X Female Reader

Synopsis: Waking up dazed and confused, Y/N is taken by surprise when certain events seem to take place. Unsure of how to feel Y/N battles with the decisions of staying or leaving for good

Warnings⚠️: SADDDDD NGL😭, but like not really but also IDK??? I wasn’t sure how to end this installment, but I know I didn’t want to make it some fairytale type shit LMAOOO

Songs for imagine: Blue Moon- Elvis Presley, Bang Bang(My Baby Shot Me Down)- Nancy Sinatra

Tags: @lacysturniolo @gamermattsgf @nicksmainbitch @s7urnfilms @sturnssmuts @vickyzloserz @mayhem-72 @sturn3g1rl @mattsturniolowifey

Blue Moon

You knew just what I was there for

You heard me saying a prayer for

Someone I really could care for

If my mother could see the position I was currently in she’d be so ashamed….disappointed even. She’s always taught me stranger danger and leave it to her daughter to sleep with the stranger and the danger….

I can’t remember much, but I can remember the emptiness….the cold darkness of my mind. My physical body slumps somewhere while my conscious fights to wake me up.

Who knows what’s going on in the real world right now. I could be tied to a pole and slow roasting like a pig, or maybe even locked in someone’s dungeon. Or what if this is all some crazy bad dream and I’m actually back home in my comfortable bed….

My thoughts were slowly coming to a halt as my eyes began to open slowly. Squinting at the sensitivity they were facing I groaned and cleared my throat. The throbbing in my head and the burning of my nose leads me to believe Matt used an awful lot of chloroform to knock me out. He’s lucky he didn’t kill because I’d haunt his ass.

Opening my eyes fully I realized I was tied to a chair in a basement? Oh actually my basement? Looking around I realized I was in the same place I was when Matt caught me.

I began to move against the ropes, pulling and yanking as I groaned in anger.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you” I heard from behind me, causing me to stop and jump

“Who’s there” I asked trying to look over my shoulders

“Why’d you have to be so nosy? Making everything so complicated” I heard him say

“You fucking psycho….Matt let me fucking go” I said pulling harder against the ropes

“You see I just can’t do that” he replied to me walking from behind me

“You fucking weirdo….oh god….oh my god I had sex with a fucking psycho… please just kill me that would be less embarrassing” I say shaking my head and tapping my feet on the ground

Coming from behind me Matt stands in front of me. Except he doesn’t look angry…. He looked concerned and scared. Which made me a bit scared and anxious

“What are you doing?” I yelled at him yanking myself around

“sit still” he said in a firm whisper

“Fuck off” I said in annoyance to him

Grabbing my face to have me look at him I attempted to yank away.

“GET OFF OF ME” I yelled at him trying to bite him

“STOP IT AND LOOK AT ME” he says with wide eyes

Letting go of me he steps back. Looking over his shoulder he turns back to me. Placing his pointer finger over his mouth he motions for me to stay quiet and then with the same finger points behind himself and then points to his ear.

“Listen here darling you’re going to do as I say” he says sternly and loudly

Digging in his back pocket he takes out a piece of paper, unraveling it he faces it to me so I can read.

They’ve been on you this whole time and they used me to get to you. At first I was going to do it, but I like you too much. They’ve been in your house multiple times and have found all the information you have on this town. I’m so sorry for who I am and what my family has done; but I don’t want to hurt you. They are having me watch you while they put all your stuff in your car. They’re planning to kill you and make it seem like it was an accident. However I won’t let that happen. I’m going to get you out of here and I have a plan! But they don’t fully trust me and are listening to me and watching my every move. So please just do as I say. I’m sorry.

After reading the note a tear slipped down my face and I looked up at Matt. His eyes softened and his lip trembled, swallowing thickly he nodded his head. Folding the paper back up he put it in his back pocket.

“You will listen to me and me only! Make any stupid moves and I will kill you myself” he says loudly with a sincere look

“Go to hell” I spat at him

Listening above he heard the two men walk away from the basement door. Ushering over to me quickly he got down and began to whisper

“Okay so here’s the plan. There is only one way out and only one chance to get this right so please do as I say. They’re loading up your car and they’re planning on having me drive you to a secluded area a little outside of this town. They want me to set your car on fire” he says shaking his head and looking down

“What?” I say shocked and beginning to panic

“My getaway car was planted in the area and they will be checking tonight to see that your car is completely burnt. However it won’t be there because you’ll be on your way back to Vegas. You’ll be out of their hair which will give you time to leave Vegas” he says grabbing my hand

“But what about you Matt? They’ll kill you….” I say as my voice shakes

“Exactly” he says nodding his head

“No….no you can’t do that! Come with me” I say to him looking at him in the eyes

“I can’t…they’ll catch up before we leave and we’ll both be dead instantly. Suzie and I tried it when we were 14. Thought we could leave and be young lovers together. They shot her dead in front of me… told me I’d be next if I ever stepped out of line again. You remind me so much of her I can’t see that happen again” he replied wiping tears from his eyes

“Matthew no…. I can’t leave you to die” I say sobbing

“Maybe it’s been my destiny all along” he says to me

“Maybe you can escape right before they come looking for my car. You’d get a good head start on them! Meet me in Vegas. We can run away together” I say nodding my head and licking my tear stained lips

He chuckled lightly and shook his head, opting not to answer as he stood up.

“I need you to walk outside with me when it’s time. Pretend to mouth me off, kick, scream holler! I’ll stuff you in the car and we’ll be on our way” He says to me

“Okay yeah yeah” I respond nodding my head

“But for now we wait” he states, backing up and leaning against the pole.

About thirty minutes passed before we heard anything. Barely mumbling a few words to each other. My throat had run dry from the anxiety. The fact that I could die if one thing goes wrong but mainly the fact that the last moments I’ll be sharing with Matt is him helping me escape my death that will then become his death….. my heart couldn’t take letting him die

He was destined for more. The way his eyes would light up anytime he asked me about what Vegas is like or what any other place I’ve ever visited was like. What stuck with me the most was the way his face would change when he’d realized the life he was living and what he’d have to go back to. The twinkle always disappearing. It made my heart heavy.

I wouldn’t let him die. It’s not happening and I don’t care what I have to do to prevent it. He’s had such a painful life and he’s going to honor it by dying….

My thoughts were interrupted by Matt, my eyes slowly shifting from the basement window over to his face.

“They called us up, I’m going to grab you by the back of your head and I need to just start lashing out immediately, got it?” He asked me

“Got it” I said to him

Quickly helping me out of the rope that held me to the chair he grabbed the back of my head as my arms were tied behind my back.

Gripping my hair harder I knew it was time to give it my all. Taking a shaky breath I began to yell

“LET GO OF ME, YOU AND THIS TOWN A BUNCH OF CRAZIES” I yelled as I thrashed against his grip

“Quit it” he yelled back as he pulled me up the stairs with him

“You think you can get rid of me huh? MY WHOLE FAMILY WILL COME HERE LOOKING FOR YOU” I said firmly

“LET GO LET GOOO” I kept yelling as I pulled against him, tears streaming down my face

He walked us towards the front door and that’s where Beaufort stopped us.

“Such a fiery little lady! I knew from the moment you called you’d be a problem. But one thing about me is I make my problems go away” he says sucking his tobacco and grinning at me

“You won’t get away with this you sick son of a bitch” I spat at him

“Watch me” he said smiling and opening the front door for me

“NOOO STOP NO PLEASEEE” I yelled as I kicked and thrashed against Matt. My legs swinging as I tried to “escape” his grip

“Should’ve stood in your home town. So sad you’ll be having a little accident” Beaufort says to me as he steps onto my porch

“I’ll kill you all just you watch” I yelled as Matt shoved me into the back seats as I continued to kick and hit things

Beaufort smiled an evil smile as he waved goodbye. Matt hopped in the front seat as we began to back out of my gravel driveway.

Driving down the road Matt looked in his rear view mirror before looking at me

“Okay we’re in the clear” he says to me

Sitting up I looked at him opening my mouth to talk but stopping once I saw him shaking his head no at me.

“You can’t get me to change my mind” he says

“Matt this is not okay. I basically just signed your death wish” I said to him

“And I told you maybe it’s what’s best for me” he replied shrugging his shoulder

“Okay and maybe it isn’t! Maybe it isn’t” I said sternly to him as I began to lose my patience

“Matt we’ve had such an amazing connection this past month, a connection I’ve never had with anyone else before and you can’t just leave me” I said pleading with him

“Don’t you get it? I can’t have them coming after you. I care for you lot sweetheart and if I had to live with another love of mine being hurt I couldn’t live with myself.” He replied gripping the steering wheel harder

I huffedd out a breath of annoyance and sat back in the seat, letting a few tears fall from my face. This is pure insanity! I couldn’t live with myself if Matt got hurt or even killed. I felt confused, one hand I’d be safe but on the other hand Matt would potentially be….. dead.

I hadn’t even realized how long I was in thought until the car came to a halt and I heard Matt put the car in park.

Hopping out of the car I followed suit

“Take the car and run like hell outta here darlin” he said handing the keys to me

“Please come with” I begged as I chewed my bottom lip

“I can’t little lady” he responded shaking his head and wiping his nose

“Ditch your getaway car and come with me burn your car and let’s go, we can run like hell out of here together” I said gripping onto his arms

“I can’t, I have to go back” he says looking me in my eyes

“Can you at least attempt to leave town? Maybe tonight before they come looking for my car, leave before them” I said basically begging

“I can try, but I can’t make any promises darlin” he states swallowing thickly

“Please Matt…. For me” I say wiping my eyes

“The best I can do is try, this is for you. Whether I make it out alive or not just know I want you to be safe and I will always be with you” he says to me pulling me in for a hug

“I can’t thank you enough for all you’ve done” he says to me as he pulls away

“I’m going to miss you” I say to him

“I’m still here” he says smiling at me

I shook my head and hugged him once again

“I better head on back” he says pulling away

Turning on his heels he walks over to his car as I follow behind. Hopping in his car he rolls down his window as I lean on it.

“Now darlin you have to promise me that you’ll listen and you’ll get out of here. Don’t try and save me” he says smiling as he bats tears from his eyes

“I promise” I responded in a whisper

“And you have to promise to never forget about me” I told him as I smiled

“I could never! I swear I’ll try and contact you if I can pretty girl” he says back as he nods his head

“Thank you Matt for getting me out of here” I say one last time

Looking into his eyes I lean over and plant my lips on his. The kiss was needy and sad. It was a goodbye kiss…. A goodbye that meant forever. There was no see you later with Matt….

We hugged and shared one last final kiss. Parting ways I got in my car and we both drove off. I was numb the whole way home. I mean how does one process all of this? My life felt so unreal?

There were many hours of crying, sitting in silence and contemplations of turning back around. I just felt so confused, I didn’t want to leave Matt and I also didn’t want to die…. I didn’t have many options

Arriving home was the most bittersweet moment. I couldn’t really tell anyone what I really went through. What that town and what those people are truly like

I spent many days in and out of therapy really trying to understand what happened to me and how to process it. What really ate at me was the fear of being found, the fear of dying and especially the fear of never seeing Matt again.

One year later

If I knew that that day I hugged and kissed Matt goodbye would be the last time I’d ever see him, I’d hold on tighter. When I finally realized Matt wasn’t coming back it hurt bad… I mean I’d hid away blaming myself for all of this.

Wondering well maybe I didn’t push hard enough because if I did he would’ve caved and came with me. Not knowing if he was dead or alive really ate at my soul. Many days went by where I wanted to call his landline, but that would be a one way ticket to my grave.

It was hard moving. After experiencing something so intense with someone and needing them by your side to never seeing them again will always sting the most.

I was angry because I felt he didn’t try hard enough. Because if he did then he’d be here right now. And then that was filled with sadness and worry. I wasn’t sure if he was okay and I had to live with the fact that I would never know.

It’s so crazy how you’ll be living your life one way and then it flips upside down so randomly.

As I finished typing my chapter on my computer I let out a sigh. Writing a book about what I went through and losing Matt was the only way I could seem to cope.

It was actually Professor Wayne who convinced me to write this. He was actually helping me a lot through all this and he truly saw how it changed me. But everytime he saw the excitement in my eyes once I finished a chapter he knew it was genuinely helping me mentally.

Pressing save I closed my laptop and looked out my window. The rain is pattering against the glass. Such a bittersweet feeling. A year ago today I was about to sleep with my weird neighbor and friend and now I’m here in my empty apartment staring out the glass and reminiscing.

It’s still an open wound that I’m working on daily to stitch close. No one prepares you for traumatic events, especially ones that chemically alter your brain. I watched the rain trickle down the warm glass as I blink slowly. Racking my brain for answers…. I mean hell I’m just looking for one simple answer

I just want to know is Matt truly dead, or is he just

Hidden in the shadows….

The End

Yallll I hope you enjoyed the finale cause I hated it🤭 this is why I don’t write series because I’m so shit at ending things. But anywho I hope you liked it and I can’t wait to write some more for yall 🥹🖤

-J💅🏽

[mitchellpete]

Dating Maverick (Headcanons)

summary: What dating Mav is like. (In ‘86 and in TG:M)

pairing: pete “maverick” mitchell x gn!reader

genre: fluff, a bit of angst

word count: 1278

A/N: if anybody wants a drabble/one-shot or for me to expand on any one of these (or if you wanna just talk about or exchange hcs), drop me an inbox! 

-

1986 (and a few years after-ish)

Maverick is a very gentle lover. It didn’t seem so at first, with how cocky and flirty he might’ve been to catch your attention, but after the second date? So vulnerable and soft with you.

He can sing! Like actually super well. You noticed one day and now you ask him to sing when you can’t sleep. He was kind of self-conscious at first, used to singing with Goose in a playful, rowdy manner, as opposed to softly to you. He grew more comfortable as time passed, and now he likes to sing you his mother’s favorite songs.

But also gets incredibly obnoxious sometimes and will loudly impersonate Elvis while you’re trying to get something done.

Spontaneous road trips on his motorcycle (when he’s able). Dinner in Oceanside. Lunch in Palm Springs. A pick up in Vegas. A day in Phoenix. When? Now! Now?!

Knows the Southwest like the back of his hand, actually. It’s not as fun as flying, but driving through the wide, open stretch of desert with you clinging behind him is one of his absolute favorite pastimes.

Is from somewhere in the Southwest, therefore he absolutely hates the cold. Will have the heater on in the winter time and is not opposed to getting wrapped up in blankets by you. You tease him on how easily cold he gets, and he’ll playfully go “Whatever.”

You frequently find random candid photos of you. Taped to his wall, to his fridge, suddenly framed on his bedside table. He almost never mentions them until you laugh and point them out, to which he responds, “I thought you looked pretty there.” (With a shit-eating grin.)

Definitely has one in his F-14, by the way.

Is very stubborn about his attire. Very insistent on dressing like a cowboy at all times. You had to buy him his first pair of beach shorts.

Loves seeing you in his clothes; he’s crazy about it, actually.

Very cute lunch dates. He knows the best diners.

He likes taking you out for ice cream. Sometimes you share a cone and watch the sunset and the planes soaring through the sky. 

He’s the best kisser. He prefers soft, sensual kissing and it definitely has its effect on you.

He has a habit of leaving paper planes everywhere. Some with love notes in them, others with funny doodles. Sometimes it’s just both of your names written, a little heart in between. 

He rambles a lot. He’s very, very passionate about flying, and about his plane. Though you might not know what he’s talking about, nodding along with a simple smile and asking him a few questions makes him so happy. “Well, no, you see..” And then he goes on and on again. 

At the same time, Maverick can be difficult sometimes. Especially after Goose. Sometimes he feels he needs to be alone, but don’t take it personally. He appreciates your support, but he’s been conditioned to “suck it up and move on.” It weighs on him to have to try, so expect him to be a bit quieter at times, a bit slower. You can sit around with him as he sulks, your head on his shoulder to let him know you need him, and that he’s loved. That he doesn’t have to isolate.

You get to watch him visibly becoming Bradley’s father figure. 

“Hey, about tomorrow’s date. Can I bring the kid?” 

Melting when he’s got Bradley in his lap in front of you, making airplane noises with a french fry to watch Bradley giggle and clap. Your heart swells at how good he is with him.

“Pete.. You can’t take him to watch that movie; it’s not for kids.” His signature grin. “Carole won’t mind.”

-

TG:M

Still sings to you. Or, in general, really. He likes to hum while making you breakfast.

He writes all your dates on his calendar. 

He’s very playful with you. Likes making you double over in laughter because it usually results in you wrapping your arms around him and kissing him.

But he also enjoys when you tease him. Tell him there’s something he can’t do as well as he used to and boy, he will prove you wrong. He insists he’s getting better with age.

He’s still as flirty as ever. Except, you’re already dating, so he does it to watch how flustered you get. He loves making you blush.

He likes pet names. Sweetheart and honey are the ones he calls you the most.

He still does not like proper beach attire. Will roll up his jeans and call it a day.

He loves beach days with you, though. He likes laying back on the sand and watching you sunbathe, or play in the water.

You’re almost scared of phone calls now, with the way you’ve been called and informed of the accidents he’s been in while testing his planes. Though most are minor, you can’t help but worry that the next one might not be.

You’ve cried to him a couple times, making him promise he’ll be careful.

He’s a bigger cuddler at his older age, with the habit of pulling you from where you stand, from whatever you’re doing, and tugging you into bed with him.

He likes it when you play with his hair. It’ll lull him to sleep sometimes. Especially when you gently massage at his scalp, and bonus if you’re giving him kisses too. The fastest way to get him asleep, truly.

Alternatively, he also likes playing with yours. He’ll randomly twirl a strand when you’re in front of him, will tuck another behind your ear, will softly intertwine his fingers in it while you lay on him. 

When he’s able, sleeping in together. As often as he can. 

He notices you so well. If something is bothering you, he’ll make sure to find out what it is. He’s also a very good problem solver (duh, but with mundane things too). You feel like he deals with a lot, so you don’t always take every single one of your problems to him, but boy, when he figures out something is wrong? Expect him to walk you through the simplest of things if that’s what you need. He has an unbelievable amount of patience with you. And if it’s something he can’t help with, he’ll at least want to be there with you as you deal with it. He can be the best listener if you need him to be.

Is a lot more domestic and able to settle down. Likes the idea of having a “home” with you. (Not that he didn’t when he was younger, but he feels more grounded now. More grown up. Able to breathe a bit better.)

He makes your coffee just the way you like it. If he’s up before you, he always wakes you up with it, and a kiss on the forehead.

The days spent in his hangar. 

Sometimes, in the summer, a late night thunderstorm will pass through, and there’s nothing more thrilling than cuddling up to him in the trailer, the both of you giggling at the sound of the rain pattering and the loud cracks of thunder. 

But also the days! Though he’ll be occupied with something, you’re always a mere 10 feet away, reading or sketching or entertaining yourself in whatever way you can. Other times you just watch him work. Other times you ask him to tell you his infamous stories, or about his dad. He’ll have sort of a sad smile as he talks, but you know that he loves talking about the past. You make sure to always make room for it in the tranquility of the desert.

[incorrectbatfam]

I h3ad cannon athat all the batfam members have had/are still in their emo/goth phases.

Example:

Bruce dressed as a bat and punches criminals at night (I also head cannon that he listens to the rolling stones and MCR)

Anyways thoughts?

Also what were the other batfam members emo/goth phases like?

Dick: He was hella neurotic in his late Robin/early Nightwing days. That plus his mullet and guitar tells me he probably tried to live out of a used van he bought for $700 after a fight with Bruce only to come home a week later when someone knocked on his window.

Jason: He's the theater/classic lit goth. When he was younger he would read by the glow of a candelabra even though the lights work perfectly fine. Post-resurrection, he graduates to the biker anarchist who has no problem launching a molotov at a CEO's mansion.

Tim: He's from the 90s. He's sitting in that Y2K grunge-emo-punk gray area where his playlist is a mix of the Clash, Nirvana, and Green Day. He's coloring his hair with Kool-Aid, playing with makeup, ripping his own clothes, and talking about new songs on AOL.

Damian: He's aiming for dark academia, but that's hard to pull off if you know what American schools look like. He annotates the margins of his books with notes he thinks are insightful but are actually just basic observations. Also he listens to Imagine Dragons.

Duke: This kid isn't emo or goth, he is a punk through and through. Sassing the cops? Jumping off a bridge? Leading a ragtag vigilante team? If he wanted to, I bet he can pull off a leather jacket with some homemade spikes while blasting Bad Brains and Death.

Cullen: Canonically, he watches anime and Supernatural, and I've made a lot of Tumblr references with him. He's definitely your quintessential 2010s emo nerd—Black Parade, fandoms, the whole shabang. He also definitely followed Dan and Phil.

Stephanie: She strikes me as the early 2000s pop-punker—think MySpace and Avril Lavigne. She probably had a Not Like Other Girls phase that she quickly grew out of. I can see her cutting posters out of magazines and sneaking her MP3 under an oversized hoodie.

Cassandra: She canonically listens to Killswitch Engage, so I like to imagine what she was like as a baby metalhead. Maybe she thrifted a Pantera shirt and chopped her hair with safety scissors. And at concerts she's absolutely up front when the wall of death happens.

Barbara: I think she dabbled in a little bit of everything without ever outwardly expressing it. Her playlist is all over the board, from softer rock to screamo. She also experimented with makeup a little, like black lipstick, and is more involved in the activism side of things.

Harper: She's definitely industrial punk with a huge emphasis on the DIY aspect of the subculture. She strings soda tabs into chains, turns old screws into boot spikes, and even learned to give herself tattoos. She also absolutely has a drawer full of patch pants.

Carrie: She's a TikTok e-girl, leaning into the pinks and purples along with black and white. She turns fishnet leggings into gloves and has a bunch of animal ear headbands. She also listens to Melanie Martinez and Tame Impala regardless of if they count as alternative.

Kate: Queer people play a huge role in the punk scene and vice versa. I can absolutely see Kate jamming out to an early Pansy Division track or searching places like Bandcamp to support smaller indie artists. Also she has a jacket that says "Nazi punks fuck off."

Alfred: Before punk and its subgenres, Alfred was canonically a delinquent and in that day, delinquency meant gelled-up hair and moving like Elvis. The hair didn't work out for him, but he was able to catch one of the first shows Buddy Holly played in London.

Selina: Alt cultures are based on not having much and working with what you got. Selina would use the five-finger discount at big-box stores and save her money to support small businesses. She also went around listening to free local rock shows on Fridays.

Bruce: He listened to the Rolling Stones before, but his first real intro to the scene was a handmade zine he found on the floor at school. From there, he explored more underground artists and took up journaling as a way to vent his feelings. And then: Batman.

[gardenschedule]

Quotes about the Lennon-Mccartney rivalry & John's insecurity

A long one!!

Pre-fame

“Paul was very good,” said Eric [Griffiths, of The Quarrymen]. “We could all see that. He was precocious in many ways. Not just in music but in relating to people.” […] His charm also worried John, according to Eric. “We were all walking down Halewood Drive to my house to do some practising. I was walking ahead with John. The others were behind. John suddenly said: ‘Let’s split the group, and you and me will start again.’ “We could hear Paul behind us, chatting to Pete [Shotton] as if he was Pete’s best friend. John knew we were all his pals, but now Paul was trying to get in on us. Not to split us up, just make friends with us all. I’m sure that was all it was, but to John it looked as if Paul was trying to take over, dominate the group. I suppose he was worried it could disrupt the balance, upset the group dynamics, as we might say today. “I said to him: ‘Paul’s so good. He’ll contribute a lot to the group. We need him with us.’ John said nothing. But after that the subject was never mentioned again.”

Eric Griffiths, c/o Hunter Davies, Sunday Times: A Beatle’s boyhood. (March 25th, 2001)

"It was uncanny. He could play and sing in a way that none of us could, including John," Eric Griffiths recalls. "He had such confidence, he gave a performance. It was natural. We couldn't get enough of it. It was a real eye-opener." After listening to Paul play, John recalled, "I had thought to myself, 'He's as good as me.' Now, I thought, if I take him on, what will happen? It went through my head that I'd have to keep him in line if I let him join [the band]. But he was good, so he was worth having. He also looked like Elvis. I dug him."

Bob Spitz, The Beatles: The Biography, 2005

Mimi remained resolutely unimpressed by anything her nephew composed with his ‘little friend’. ‘John would say, “We’ve got this song, Mimi, do you want to hear it?”’ she recalled. ‘And I would say, “Certainly not… front porch, John Lennon, front porch.”’ What she overheard that clearly wasn’t ‘caterwauling’ became another way of discomfiting John. ‘[He] got very upset with me when I mentioned one night that I thought Paul was the better guitar player. That set him off, banging away on his own guitar. There was quite a bit of rivalry going on there.’

Philip Norman, Paul McCartney: The Life. (2016)

Friends looked to Paul to control the damage, but it was beyond even his know-how. When John “went off like that,” Paul usually waited for the storm to pass or humored John to keep him from turning up the heat. And unbeknownst to Paul, some considered his presence in these situations more problem than solution. “It was obvious that John had big reservations about Paul, too,” says Hague, who absorbed his friend’s harangues during their drinking binges. “Even then, there was great jealousy there. He was all too aware of Paul’s talent and wanted to be as good and grand himself. After a while, you could see it, plain as day: the subtle body language or remarks that flew between them. He wasn’t about to let someone like Paul McCartney pull his strings.”

The Beatles – Bob Spitz

Yesterday

Barrow describes an incident from 1965 where McCartney ran through a dress rehearsal of “Yesterday” for a live evening performance on Blackpool Night Out. “Beatles Book editor Johnny Dean sat in the stalls close to comperes Mike and Bernie Winters and the other three Beatles, and watched Paul in solitary rehearsal on the stage, singing the song to his own guitar accompaniment. At the end, everybody heard John’s loud and decidedly sarcastic comment.” The nasty remark from John was said to upset Paul for several hours afterwards.

Beatles publicist Tony Barrow

At the end, everybody heard John’s loud and decidedly sarcastic comment. He made no secret of the fact that he thought ‘Yesterday’ was a slice of sentimental rubbish, and this led to several heated exchanges between John and Paul in the privacy of the group’s dressing room after the rehearsal.

Tony Barrow, c/o The Best of the Beatles Book (ed. Johnny Dean). (2005)

Following Paul's rendition of 'Yesterday', a comedy link was rehearsed for when the others reappeared on stage: John clutched a plastic bouquet of flowers which came away as Paul accepted them, leaving him holding only the bottom stems. As if to further puncture any pompous formality, John announced "Thank you Ringo, that was wonderful." "The Beatles were in a terrific mood..." Sean O'Mahony wrote in his editorial (Beatles Book #26), "laughing and gagging their way through rehearsals as though they were preparing for a private Beatle People Telly Show for the fan club rather than a national networked performance to millions of viewers." However, he now remembers a charged atmosphere at Blackpool that day after Lennon sarcastically roared "Thank you, Paul, that was bloody crap!" following McCartney's debut of the song during the afternoon rehearsal. If there was any tension it was swiftly diffused as Bryce's photographs reveal the two relaxed and joking in each other's company. Paul and John rode back to London together in comfort that night in Lennon's new black Phantom V Rolls-Royce.

Looking Through You: The Beatles Book Monthly Photo Archive

Throughout the Beatles’ 1965 summer concert tour of North America, Paul avoided doing the number on stage, partly in order to avoid further unpleasant conflict with John [and partly because nobody would be able to hear it in open air stadiums full of screaming fans]. it was the danger of giving added strength to the ‘Paul is leaving’ rumour that helped to prevent ‘Yesterday’ from being released there and then as a single in the UK. As Paul knows, it could have been a smash hit at home as well as all over the world but it would have annoyed the rest of the group, and their hostility in such circumstances would have caused him a lot of personal grief which he didn’t need.

Tony Barrow, c/o The Best of the Beatles Book (ed. Johnny Dean). (2005)

"John came to my loft and he was all excited," Smith recalls. "He said, 'I think I finally wrote a song with as good a melody as Yesterday.' Yesterday drove him crazy. People'd say, 'Thank you for writing Yesterday, a beautiful song...' He was always civil, but it drove him nuts."Sat at Smith's piano, Lennon revealed a title - Imagine - but only a smattering of lyrics. For the rest he sang "scrambled eggs" - just as McCartney had when inspired to write Yesterday. "He played it through and asked me what I thought. 'It's beautiful.' 'But is it as good as Yesterday?' 'They're impossible to compare.' So he played it again. And again. And he said, 'You'll see, it's just as good as Yesterday."

Howard Smith (DJ), interview w/ Danny Eccleston for Mojo: The Lennon tapes. (July, 2013)

After a particularly heavy session with the lawyers (he was also fighting deportation) Lennon would flop into his music room, pick up a guitar and tear into a primal-scream version of ‘Yesterday’. Sometimes he tried a little writing of his own. Usually he just sank further into the one Beatles song he never quite got over. Friends would find him sitting in the dark, lost in Paul’s ballad.

Christopher Sandford, McCartney. (2005)

PAUL: [laughs; mock-indignant] No. The worst thing for John was, that he didn’t write ‘Yesterday’, I wrote ‘Yesterday’, and he used to get really quite miffed, because he’d be in New York and he’d go into a restaurant, and the pianist would go du-du-du… [sings tune of ‘Yesterday’] And he’d go, “Oh… [grumbling] It’s Paul’s.”

September 19th, 2019: On BBC Newsnight

“Once we were in a Mexican restaurant, in a back room. We’d just been to see the musical Lenny, about Lenny Bruce. In the main room John spotted this strolling guitar player, which used to be standard in Mexican restaurants. He turned to me and said, “Howard, in five minutes that guitar player is gonna come in, stand next to me and play Yesterday. And sure enough, it wasn’t even three minutes. We had hardly settled down, and the guy came in and played Yesterday, a ridiculous over-the-top version. And I said, ‘John, that really does happen to you everywhere…’ And he said: ‘Everywhere.’ It drove him nuts.”

2013 Mojo article

Well, it’s difficult to choose the favourite. It’s one of my favourites. You look at your songs and kinda look to see which of the ones you think are maybe the best constructed and stuff… I think ‘Yesterday’, if it wasn’t so successful, might be my favourite. But, you know, you get that thing when something is just so successful… people often don’t want to do ‘the big one’ that everyone wants them to do. They kind of shy away from it. So… ‘Here, There and Everywhere’ with ‘Yesterday’ as a close second.

Paul McCartney, interviewed by Scott Muni (16 October 1984).

Here are Paul and John sparring in the dressing room following the remark that John made while they were rehearsing for their Blackpool Night Out TV show in August '65. The sparring between John and Paul continued while they were getting ready for the final recording. John and Paul continue their heated discussion with George as piggy-in-the-middle. The two-handed gesture clearly reveals the mood John was in, but Ringo and Brian still refused to join in the argument. Ringo poured himself a fizzy drink before the final show but John clearly decided he needed something a bit stronger before they went into the television studio.

228 of The Beatles Book Monthly Magazine - John and Paul’s argument after the Blackpool Night Out rehearsal

We never released Yesterday' as a single because we didn't think it fitted our image. In fact it was one of our most successful songs. "Michelle' we didn't want to release as a single. They might have been perceived as Paul McCartney singles and maybe John wasn't too keen on that.

The Beatles Recording Sessions The Official Abbey Road Studio Session Notes, 1962–1970

Productivity

But I was still under the false impression that – still felt, every now and then – Brian would come up and say, “It’s time to record,” or, “It’s time to do this.” And Paul started doing that. “Now we’re gonna make a movie. Now we’re gonna make a record.” And, uh, he assumed that if he didn’t call us, nobody would ever make a record. But it’s since shown that we’ve managed quite well to make records on time. [Now] I don’t have any schedule – I just think, “Now, I’ll make it,” you know. But those days, Paul would say, well, now he felt like it, and suddenly I’d have to whip out twenty songs. He would come in with about twenty good songs and say, “We’ll record next Friday.” And I suddenly had to write a stack of songs, like – [Sgt] Pepper was like that. And Magical Mystery Tour was another one of them.

September 5th, 1971 (St Regis Hotel, New York)

SHEFF: You say you haven’t really listened to Paul’s work and haven’t really talked to him since that night in your apartment— JOHN: Really talked to him, no, that’s the operative word. I haven’t really talked to him in ten years. Because I haven’t spent time with him. I’ve been doing other things and so has he. You know, he’s got twenty-five kids and about twenty million records out—how can he spend time talking? He’s always working.

John Lennon, interview w/ David Sheff for Playboy. (September, 1980)

You’d already have 5 or 6 songs so I’d think fuck it, I cant keep up with that. So I didn’t bother, you know, and I thought I don’t really care whether I was on it or not, I convinced myself it didn’t matter. And so for a period if you didn’t invite me to be on an album personally, if you three didn’t say ‘write some more songs because we like your work’, I wasn’t going to fight. There was no point in turning em out, I didn’t have the energy to turn them out and get them on an album as well.

John Lennon, MMT sessions

“John did not let Yoko’s foot-dragging slow him down. He kept working on the album, refining songs and coming up with new ones. He joked that he was becoming more and more like Paul McCartney, whose prodigious musical output had sometimes been a source of friction in their relationship. John wondered if Yoko might be feeling intimidated by his current period of fertility, just as he had once been intimidated by Paul’s greater musical productivity. Still, John kept up the pressure on Yoko over the phone, playing her his songs and encouraging her to play hers for him.”

The Last Days of John Lennon by Frederic Seaman (1991)

“He next expressed concern that Yoko was not giving the album her undivided attention because of the many ‘distractions’ she faced in New York, and even made a snide reference to her being surrounded by ‘useless sycophants.’ He again likened their situation to his old songwriting partnership with Paul McCartney, who had always been the more prolific writer and had frequently prodded John to come up with new material. ‘Paul never stopped working,’ John said with grudging admiration. ‘We’d finish one album and I’d go off and get stoned and forget about writing new stuff, but he’d start working on new material right away, and as soon as he had enough songs he’d want to begin recording again. I would have to scramble to come up with songs of my own. I wrote some of my best songs under that kind of pressure.’”

The Last Days of John Lennon by Frederic Seaman (1991)

We only spoke briefly about Paul and his comments at the time were, 'Yeah, well, you know, that's just Paul.' I think John was deeply hurt by their differences and the fact that their partnership wasn't a partnership. He felt the competition with Paul who would come in with 15 songs and want to record them all. John told me, 'I don't want to be in, you know, "Paul & the Beatles". I don't want to be a sideman for Paul. It's not what I want to do anymore.'

David Cassidy on John from Could it be forever? -My Story

Fear of abandonment

I was sort of answering him here, asking, ‘Does it need to be this hurtful?’ I think this is a good line: ‘Are you afraid, or is it true?’ – meaning, ‘Why is this argument going on? Is it because you’re afraid of something? Are you afraid of the split-up? Are you afraid of my doing something without you? Are you afraid of the consequences of your actions?’ And the little rhyme, ‘Or is it true?’ Are all these hurtful allegations true? This song came out in that kind of mood. It could have been called ‘What the Fuck, Man?’ but I’m not sure we could have gotten away with that then.

Paul McCartney, on “Dear Friend”. In The Lyrics (2021).

JOHN: [Paul] even recorded that all by himself in the other room, that’s how it was getting in those days. We came in and he’d – he’d made the whole record. Him drumming, him playing the piano, him singing. Just because – it was getting to be where he wanted to do it like that, but he couldn’t – couldn’t – maybe he couldn’t make the break from The Beatles, I don’t know what it was. But you know, I enjoyed the track. But we’re all, I’m sure – I can’t speak for George, but I was always hurt when he’d knock something off without… involving us, you know? But that’s just the way it was then.

August, 1980: interview with Playboy writer David Sheff

He is the least independent Beatle, leaning upon the group’s strength as a source for his own fundamental security.

Profile of John written by Tony Barrow (Beatles Press Officer) and published in March of 1968.

During the spring of 1968, John was as confused, lonely, and unhappy as I'd seen him in years. Though his relationship with the other Beatles was still free of serious strain, he was seeing increasingly less of Paul and George, both of whom were now pursuing independent lives and interests of their own.

In My Life, Pete Shotton

Insecurities

If you notice, in the early days the majority of singles—in the movies and everything—were mine. And then only when I became self-conscious and inhibited, and maybe the astrology wasn’t right, did Paul start dominating the group a little too much for my liking. But in the early period, obviously, I’m dominating the group. I did practically every single with my voice except for “Love Me Do.” Either my song, or my voice, or both.

David Sheff - All We Are Saying, The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono

Do I want him back, Paul? … [D]o I want it back, whatever it is, enough? Then if it is, you know, I’ve had to smother my ego for you, and I’ve had to smother me jealousy for you to carry on, for whatever reasons there is.

Jan. 13: The Lunchroom Tape

I’ll tell you a story about John. He often used to wake up in the middle of the night and ask me, ‘Why do people cover Paul’s songs so much, but never mine?’ I used to tell him, ‘It’s because you are a talented songwriter. You don’t just rhyme June with spoon. And you are a very good singer – lots of people would be too afraid to cover one of your songs.’ Then I would make him a cup of tea, and he would be okay. I just miss that sort of moment that we had.

Yoko Ono, Q Magazine Awards. (October 10th, 2005)

“[John] was much misunderstood but mostly through his own fault. He put up his brick wall of sheer bravado to screen off a chronic fear of inadequacy.”

Beatles publicist Tony Barrow

“Most people in Britain think I’m somebody who won the pools, you know,” he says drily, drawing on a Gauloise. “Won the pools and married a Hawaiian dancer or actress somewhere. Whereas in the States, we’re treated like artists. Which we are! Or anywhere else for that matter,” he added. “But here, it’s like, the lad who knew Paul, got a lucky break, won the pools and married the actress.”

John Lennon, Melody Maker’s Oct 2nd 1971 issue. (no wonder he was so upset by Too Many People if he internalized the concept of 'a lucky break' this much...)

It was Paul who showed John how to play chords properly, instead of banjo chords, which were all John knew. I think John was quite defensive when he realised that through much of his "career" with the Quarrymen, he had been playing two-fingered banjo chords on a guitar. The thought was tempered by the fact that nobody had noticed. John once told me, "Only that fookin' McCartney sussed me out. I love him, but he's such a good musician I could kill him."

Tony Bramwell, Magical Mystery Tours: My Life With The Beatles, 2005

INT: In this song, in the “I Found Out”, “I seen through junkies, I been through it all, I seen religion from Jesus to Paul.” Now a lot of people are wondering which Paul you were talking about? JOHN: (Chuckle) Whichever one you want to mention. I think the Beatles were a kind of religion. And that uh, Paul manifest or, sort of, I can’t think of the word you know — epitomized, the Beatles and the kind of things that–the kind of hero image more than the rest of us in a way. Like he was more popular with the kids, girls and things like that. So it’s in that way it’s Paul. But it’s also the other Paul, who screwed up whatever Jesus said, that one… It’s a double entendre you know, for all the fanatics who like to play things backwards and hear words of wisdom which nobody ever thought of…

WABC-FM New York, Howard Smith interviews John and Yoko (December 12, 1970).

JOHN: I expected… just a little more, you know. I mean, because if Paul and I are sort of disagreeing, and I feel weak, I think he must feel strong, you know. That’s in an argument. Uh, not that we’ve had much physical argument, you know – more a mental, like when we’re talking— But you would expect the opposition. So called. So I was just surprised, you know. And, uh, I was glad too. [laughs; hesitating] I thought, yeah, I – you know. I suddenly re– got it all in perspective, you know.

Rolling Stone December 8th, 1970

SCHOENBERGER: How is it for an 11-year-old boy to have John Lennon as a father? JOHN: It must be hell. SCHOENBERGER: Does he talk about that to you? JOHN: No, because he is a Beatle fan. I mean, what do you expect? I think he likes Paul better than me… I have the funny feeling he wishes Paul was his Dad. But unfortunately he got me…

John Lennon, interview w/ Francis Schoenberger. (Spring, 1975)

SHERIDAN: I guess he realised somewhere along the way, “Well, I’ve got to do something other than just be a rock ‘n’ roll musician if I want to impress the whole world.” He never saw himself as a very good singer, for instance. INTERVIEWER: Really? SHERIDAN: No. He never saw himself as comparable to Paul McCartney, even. Which, you know, he was playing with a guy, writing songs with a guy whom he thought was better than he was in many ways. So he had this immense ego and this immense sort of – it was like a motor in him that had to go to new lengths and reach new heights in order to impress someody or the whole world or whatever. I think the peace movement – maybe he invented it, I don’t know.

2003: Tony Sheridan

We all went through a depression after Maharishi and Brian died; it wasn’t really to do with Maharishi, it was just that period. I was really going through the “What’s it all about?” type thing – this songwriting is nothing, it’s pointless, and I’m no good, I’m not talented, and I’m shitty, and I couldn’t do anything but be a Beatle. What am I going to do about it? It lasted nearly two years and I was still in it during Pepper. I know Paul wasn’t at the time; he was feeling full of confidence, and I was going through murder during those periods. I was just about coming out of it around Maharishi, even though Brian had died – that knocked us back again. Well, it knocked me back.

John Lennon, interview w/ Barry Miles, (partially) unpublished. (September 23rd, 1969)

We’d be cutting a record and he’d say, “Yeah, I remember trying to do this part in ‘Penny Lane’. I couldn’t play it and I got so pissed because Paul could always learn things so fast.”

Andy Newmark (drummer), interview w/ Rick Mattingly for Modern Drummer. (February, 1984)

When John’s first solo album Plastic Ono Band was released I went down to Tittenhurst Park several times. Sometimes, in reaction to the general dismay over the Beatles’ break up, he would ask rhetorical, and I thought slightly absurd, questions such as “Why should I work with Paul McCartney when I can work with Yoko or Frank Zappa?”, or became irritated when I happened to say “Paul has a good voice”. “He has a high voice,” John snapped back. At others, however, he would admit to an admiration for some of Paul’s songs.

Ray Connolly (journalist), Evening Standard: John... ‘performing flea’ or ‘crutch for the world’s social lepers’. (December 10th, 1970) c/o Ray Connolly, The Beatles Archive. (2011)

“His [John] moods were particularly vacillating when he talked about Paul McCartney. While he might be scornful of Paul’s romantic musical streak on one day, on another he would be insisting, ‘Paul and me were the Beatles. We wrote the songs’ – putting down, by inference, the contributions of Ringo and George. He knew how good Paul was, but he couldn’t hide a rivalry and jealous streak that nibbled away at him. ‘Paul has a good voice,’ I once commented as we were discussing singers. ‘He has a high voice,’ came his instant correction.

Ray Connolly, The Sunday Times Magazine: John Lennon, Yoko and Me. (December 9, 2018)

I was wondering whether the relationship had kind of snapped. I believe it was always there. He was very jealous and so was I and it was all stupidity on the surface.”

Paul (Record Mirror, April 1982).

Paul was the one Beatle who posed any challenge to John’s authority and preeminence within the group. Much as John might have found it easier to handle those who—like George and Ringo—seemed to take it for granted that he was the king of the castle, Paul was the only one he considered more or less his equal. John particularly admired and respected—yet at the same time slightly resented—Paul’s independence, his self-discipline, and his all-round musical facility: all qualities in which John felt relatively lacking.

Pete Shotton, John Lennon: In My Life. (1983)

He grew even more paranoid as the acid took effect, and Derek Taylor ended up sitting by him till well after daybreak. In an attempt to rebuild John's shattered ego, he persuaded him to recount his entire life story, from early childhood onwards. Derek even went through every Lennon-McCartney song, line by line, to demonstrate to John the extraordinary scope of his contribution to the Beatles* music. By the time John and I finally left, John's spirits had been lifted considerably.

In My Life, Pete Shotton

“Bit by bit over a two-year period, I had destroyed me ego. I didn’t believe I could do anything. I just was nothing. I was shit… and she (Yoko) made me realize that I was me and that it’s all right. That was it; I started fighting again, being a loudmouth again and saying, “I can do this. Fuck it. This is what I want,” you know. “I want it, and don’t put me down.”

Rolling Stone

"John's complaint to Paul was actually an attempt to get his songs on to albums without the usual democratic vetting by the others, as the conversation between John and Paul recorded by Anthony Fawcett in September 1969 reveals. John tells Paul: If you look back on the Beatles' albums, good or bad or whatever you think of "em, you'll find that most times if anybody has got extra time it's you! For no other reason than you worked it like that. Now when we get into a studio I don't want to go through games with you to get space on the album, you know. I don't want to go through a little manoeuvering or whatever level it's on. I gave up fighting for an Aside or fighting for time. I just thought, well, I'm content to put 'Walrus" on the "B" side when I think it's much better ... I didn't have the energy or the nervous type of thing to push it, you know. So I relaxed a bit nobody else relaxed, you didn't relax in that way. So gradually I was submerging. Paul protested that he had tried to allow space on albums for John's songs, only to find that John hadn't written any. John explained, "There was no point in turning 'em out. I couldn't, didn't have the energy to turn 'em out and get 'em on as well." He then told Paul how he wanted it to be in the future: "When we get in the studio I don't care how we do it but I don't want to think about equal time. I just want it known I'm allowed to put four songs on the album, whatever happens."

Many Years from Now

Everyone settled down in their seats. Paul McCartney tried to make peace with Chris. Chris said, “Paul sat by me and said, ‘Come on, Chris, let’s be friends….’ “I said, ‘Paul, just get away from me, I don’t want nothing to do with you guys. You know, you pissed me off!” As for Lennon, Chris recalled, “John? I guess he was a wise guy. But I got the sense that, I shouldn’t say this, that he was jealous of who I was or what I did. I don’t know what his problem was, but I didn’t like it too much.”

THE TRUTH BEHIND THE BRAWL BETWEEN JOHN LENNON AND CHRIS MONTEZ IN 1963! EXCLUSIVE!

Lifestyle

I introduced Yoko to John through my own interest in the avant-garde. John wasn’t avant-garde till later. Then John became wildly avant-garde because he was so fucking constricted living out in Weybridge. He’d come into London and say, ‘What’ve you been doing, man, what have you been doing?’ and I’d say, ‘What’ve you been doing?’ ‘Well, watching telly, smoking pot.’ ‘I went out last night and saw Luciano Berio at the Italian Embassy, that was quite cool. I’ve got this new Stockhausen record, check this out. We went down Robert [Fraser]’s, got this sculpture, it was great, dig this. Wow, Paolozzi, great …’ I think John actually said, ‘I’m fucking jealous of you, man’ – he just needed to get out of Weybridge. It wasn’t his wife’s fault, she just didn’t understand how free he needed to be.

Paul McCartney, c/o Jonathon Green, Days in the Life. (1988)

Living in the Asher house gave me the base and the freedom and the independence. That, alongside all the other things, because I wasn’t married to Jane. I was pretty free. I remember John very much envying me. He said, ‘Well, if you go out with another girl, what does Jane think?’ and I said, 'Well, I don’t care what she thinks, we’re not married. We’ve got a perfectly sensible relationship.’ He was well jealous of that, because at this time he couldn’t do that, he was married with Cynthia and with a lot of energy bursting to get out. He’d tried to give Cynthia the traditional thing, but you kind of knew he couldn’t. There were cracks appearing but he could only paste them over by staying at home and getting very wrecked.

Paul McCartney, Many Years from Now

In the beginning, art was what we talked about. [John] told me he thought he was like [surrealist painter René] Magritte. Why? Because, you know, you have the image of Magritte with the bowler hat and the suit, looking very square, but really his work was very surreal and far out. John was living in suburbia, and he was very embarrassed about that, because he felt as if he was not very hip. When he invited me to his house the first time, the first thing he said when I got there was, “I think of myself as Magritte.”

Yoko Ono, New York Times: An exhibition of drawings celebrates Lennon at 64. (October 7th, 2004)

“I was never in the London scene in the 60’s whereas George and Paul be going around to everybody’s sessions, playing with everybody. I never played anywhere without the Beatles. I never jammed around with people at all. Q: Loyalty, or just didn’t interest you? A: No, just shyness, insecurity, and ah, I couldn’t go in a session and play like George plays; you know I have limited vocabulary on the guitar and piano, so what could I do going in with Cream, or whatever they were doing in those days.”

John Lennon interview

The musician countered the perception of Lennon as the only artistic Beatle, asserting his own powerful avant-garde influence on Sgt. Pepper. “I’m not trying to say it was all me, but I do think John’s avant-garde period later was really to give himself a go at what he’d seen me having a go at.”

Paul Du Noyer, The Paul McCartney World Tour Booklet: 1989–1990 (New York: EMAP Metro, 1989)

Women

“Have you noticed that it’s always men with moustaches and beards who ask me for my autograph?” I said I hadn’t but that I’d watch out in future and, sure enough, it seemed he was right. Only men with moustaches and beards asked John for his autograph. “It was always the same,” he said. “Me and George got the guys with beards wanting to know the meaning of life, while Paul and Ringo got the women!” Inevitably, perhaps, a short while later a girl came to ask John for his autograph. Much to our amusement, though doubtless to her amazement, John grabbed her around the waist and sat her down on his knee. “Where are you now McCartney?” he shouted. “I’ve got a girl at last.””

Chris Charlesworth (journalist), Rock’s Backpages: Memories of John Lennon. (2001)

“I idolized John. He was the big guy in the chip shop. I was the little guy. As I matured and grew up, I started sharing in things with him. I got up to his level. I wrote songs as he did and sometimes they were as good as his. We grew to be equals. It made him insecure. He always was, really. He was insecure with women. You know, he told me when he first met Yoko not to make a play for her.

Paul and Hunter Davies, 1981

In the mirror I looked dreadfully pale and drawn. I still couldn’t believe it. John would never be there again. I kept getting flashbacks to when he was young and awkward. He liked women, but was always a bit uncomfortable, a bit nervous in their company – always a man’s man. Paul was beautiful – still is – and I know John thought, ‘God, with him around, I don’t stand a chance.’ It’s one of those things young lads have to put up with. They’re all dead worried about whether or not they’re going to get the girls, and John, as a teenager, saw Paul as his rival. That made him moody, but it was his moodiness that gave the songs they wrote together an edge. When he was four, John had been abandoned by his dad, deserted by his mum and brought up by his Auntie Mimi. He’d always felt rejected, but that gave his writing depth, a darkness. Paul was the counterbalance, the light. You could see this in Paul’s eyes and the girls just tumbled in and were washed away. What John never really appreciated was that he, too, had charisma, and that women did think he was sexy.

Cilla Black, What’s It All About. (2003)

SALEWICZ: Oh, he was presumably very paranoid. PAUL: I think so. I mean, he warned me off Yoko once. You know, “Look, this is my chick!” ’Cause he knew my reputation. I mean, we knew each other rather well. And um, I felt… I just said, “Yeah, no problem.” But I did sort of feel he ought to have known I wouldn’t, but. You know, he was going through “I’m just a jealous guy”. He was a paranoid guy. And he was into drugs. Heavy.

Paul, September, 1986 (MPL Communications, London)

That’s typical Paul [wanting me to stay inside the George V Hotel with the band instead of going out by myself to see Paris]. It’s just so silly of me to stay at the hotel. It’s just that he’s so insecure. For instance, he keeps saying he’s not interested in the future, but he must be because he says it so often. The trouble is, he wants the fans’ adulation and mine too. He’s so selfish, it’s his biggest fault. He can’t see that my feelings for him are real and that the fans’ are fantasy. Of course, it’s the trouble with all boys. When I first met [the Beatles], I liked them all. Then, when I found out that I liked Paul more, the others became angry with me.

Jane Asher, c/o Michael Braun, Love Me Do!: The Beatles’ Progress. (1964)

"Q: "Now that Paul is the only bachelor Beatle, do you find that the girls gravitate more to him than they do to the rest of you fellas? How do you feel about that?" JOHN: "They always did!" RINGO: "Yeah." PAUL: "Well, the thing that we found... We found after all this business, of all the buttons that say 'I love Ringo,' "I love John,' John's were outselling everyone's." JOHN: "A rather distinctive Beatle." PAUL: "A distinctive Beatle.""

Press conference, New York, August 22, 1966

JOHN: Well, uh… [distracted] There was a lot of – [inaudible] I suppose, but I was so full of myself then, I didn’t give a shit what he did. HILBURN: Full of what? JOHN: Full of meself. Centered, in other words. So I just— HILBURN: So in a sense, you weren’t comparing as much as you might have— JOHN: [matter-of-fact] There’s no comparison for me. ‘Cause we’re— HILBURN: You mean comparing artistically, or you mean comparing sales-wise and stuff? JOHN: Oh, sales-wise, forget it. He always had more fans than me, in the Cavern… So there’s no comparison on that level. And on the other level, I don’t think it counts. I think it’s like comparing… I don’t know, Magritte and, er – Picasso, if you want to put it on that level. Or whatever. How can you compare it?

October 10th, 1980 (Hit Factory, New York)

The same popularity, meaning Paul was always more popular than the rest of us, was going down in the dance halls in Liverpool so it didn’t cause any big surprise. I mean the kids saw him, the girls would go ooh, you know, right away.

John Lennon on The Tomorrow Show – 04/08/1975

Breakup/post breakup

"There was amazing competition between us and we both thrived on it. In terms of music, you cannot beat a bit of competition. Of course, there's times when it hurts, and it's inevitably going to reach a stage where it's hard to live with. Sooner or later, it's going to burn itself out. I think that's what happened at the end of The Beatles.

Paul - Uncut, July 2004

I felt sad, you know. I also felt that film was set up by Paul, for Paul. That’s one of the main reasons the Beatles ended, you know, cause... I can’t speak for George but I pretty damn well know. We got fed up with being sidemen for Paul, after Brian died that’s what began to happen and the camera work was set up to show Paul and not to show anybody else and that’s how I felt about it. And on top of that, the people who cut it, cut it as Paul is god and we’re just lying around.

John Lennon: The Rolling Stone Interview, Part One

Though thinking of Paul caused John pain, he could never get McCartney out of his head; Paul’s music was everywhere, and it always made him jealous, even the songs he enjoyed. In Bermuda, John was listening to all kinds of things on the radio, not just the Muzak and classical he listened to in New York. Coming Up, Paul’s hit single from McCartney II, was unavoidable. Every time he tuned in the BBC or one of the local stations, there it was. It began to drive John crackers; every word of the song was addressed directly to him. Ultimately, he came to admire it and draw inspiration from it.”

Robert Rosen, Nowhere Man: The Final Days of John Lennon, (2000)

At that moment, John was at his most unpredictable. Suddenly his fears that his money was going to be taken away from him, that he was going to be cheated, that he had to have as much money as possible, had all come into play. This was also John’s way of resisting the reality that the Beatles were officially about to come to end, and that Paul was about to prevail.

Loving John, MAY PANG (1983)

“The funny part is that I let him get away with it for so long. You know, I used to dread it when he was in town, but I never had the sense to go out to the island or just not answer the door. He’d come striding in with a guitar under one arm and Linda under the other, asking me what was new, knowing nothing was new. Then he’d always ask if I’d heard his latest, which I usually hadn’t. The guitar was so we could sing together, but that was never going to happen. I’d just tell him that I was really busy being a father. He must have seen through that because he’s a father many times over and that certainly doesn’t tie him down. It wasn’t till I told him that I was real busy that if he wanted to see me he’d have to call first that he got the message to leave off. I have your tarot advice to thank for that.”

John Green, Dakota Days. (1983)

COSTAS: if somebody didn’t, mixed in with it all, genuinely love somebody, genuinely care about their feelings about them, they wouldn’t go to the lengths, in whatever strange way, that John did to lash back at you! They wouldn’t hold a pig on the cover to parody you holding a sheep in ‘RAM’! They wouldn’t, you know, call your stuff rubbish and write ‘How Do You Sleep’. They wouldn’t do it! PAUL: Oh, I think that’s right. I think that’s right. He was- he was very hurt, there were people turning him against me. It was his way of defending himself. He was- he was quite pissed off about the ‘McCartney bandwagon’ as he once called it, you know? [mimicking John] ‘Oh, bloody- he’s gettin’ on all the telly, he’s sellin’ records!’ Yeah, he was- he was a jealous guy! But I understood that! That was John! You love it or you leave it! And I stuck with it for many, many years!

Paul McCartney, Interviewed by Bob Costa, 1991.

It was a weird time. The people who were managing us were whispering in our ears and trying to turn us against each other and it became like a feuding family. In the end, I think John had some tough breaks. He used to say, ‘Everyone is on the McCartney bandwagon.’ He wrote ‘I’m Just A Jealous Guy’ and he said that the song was about me. So I think it was just some kind of jealousy. I had to try and forgive John because I sort of knew where he was coming from. I knew that he was trying to get rid of the Beatles in order to say to Yoko, ‘Look, I’ve even given that up for you. I’m ready to devote myself to you and to the avant-garde.’ I don’t know if it’s true. One thing I’m really glad about is that I didn’t answer him back. It’s very difficult to do that when someone is attacking you. But I would have felt sick as a dog now if I had.

Paul McCartney, interview w/ Diane de Dubovay for Playgirl. (February, 1985)

PAUL: He was into heroin, and – see, which I hadn’t realised [the extent of] till just now. It’s all [starting to click a bit] in my brain. I was just figuring, oh, there’s John, my buddy, and he’s turning on me, ’cause he perceives that I’m... “McCartney bandwagon,” he once said to me. “Oh, they’re all on the McCartney bandwagon.” And to me, I was just releasing a record, okay. So you can call it the McCartney bandwagon, but it’s no harm. It’s no more than anyone else does when they put out a record. And yet things like that were hurting him, and looking back on it now I just think that it’s a bit sad really.

September, 1986 (MPL Communications, London)

Lennon’s jealousy of McCartney continued throughout the rest of his life. Lennon’s staff at the Dakota, where he spent his final years, attest to frequent tirades about his former partner. In his personal journals, Lennon wrote about Paul “almost every day” according to author Robert Rosen, who read the diaries in 1981 after they were stolen by Dakota employee Fred Seaman. When asked, in 2010, about the most disturbing takeaway of the diaries, Rosen replied “That’s easy. His jealousy of Paul, his love of money and his obsession with the occult.”

Robert Rosen

RR: Obviously I knew about the rivalry with McCartney, and the jealousy, but I think the extent of it...how often he thought about McCartney, and how jealous he was...I found that pretty shocking. I found it shocking that he was so into money. And the emphasis that was put on the occult was pretty shocking. The extent that they got into it.

An Interview with Robert Rosen

On one McCartney photo, Lennon scribbled the words, “I’m always perfect” as coming from McCartney’s mouth. He drew a Hitler-style moustache on another photo of McCartney. In an entry noting McCartney’s marriage to Linda Eastman, Lennon crossed out “wedding” and wrote “funeral”, the Observer said. But in a final tender moment, the Observer said, Lennon wrote under a photo of himself with McCartney: “The minutes are crumbling away.”

Associated Press: Lennon’s resentment of McCartney reflected in book notes. (July 20th, 1986)

So we went through a lot of those problems. But the nice thing was afterwards each one of them in turn very, very quietly and very briefly said, ‘Oh, thanks for that.’ That was about all I ever heard about it. But again, John turned it round. He said, ‘But you’re always right, aren’t you?’ See, there was always this thing. I mean, it seemed crazy for me because I thought the idea was to try and get it right, you know. It was quite surprising to find that if you did get it right, people could then turn that one around and say: ‘But you’re always right aren’t you?’ It’s like moving the goal posts.

Paul McCartney: An Innocent Man? (October, 1986)

So, here we sit, watching the mighty Dylan and the mighty McCartney and the mighty Jagger slide down the mountain, blood and mud in their nails. Well, that’s the way the world is, ha ha ha, that’s the way the world is, oh yes. The difference between now and a couple of years back is that whenever there was a new thing out by any of the aforesaid, I used to feel a sense of panic and competition. And now, I just feel like even the last few months it’s changed. I would send out for their albums or something just to hear it. There doesn’t seem any point now. Let’s take a break. How do we break? Just put it off. Still, even now, talking about them or thinking about them is still really being involved in it, because the ultimate dissociation would be not even to know they had an album out! [laughs] But now at least I get pleasure in it instead of panic. The main pleasure being of course that it’s all a load of shit. So I suppose I’ll always feel competitive with them, because they were from that same generation, but when I hear something like “Pop Muzik” by Robin Scott or the Blondie single, I really enjoy it, you know. I don’t feel competitive about it.

Lennon audio diaries

“They [Lennon & McCartney] saw each other again in 1977. The Lennons and McCartneys ate dinner together at Le Cirque, Paul’s favourite French restaurant in New York. John regretted going; it was a loathsome night. Paul and Linda blathered on and on about how perfect their lives were, how they had everything they’d ever wanted, and how they were as happy as they’d ever been. Something very paranoid suddenly occurred to John. Maybe Lorraine Boyle was spying on him for the McCartneys! He woke up the next morning still feeling disturbed; he consulted the Oracle. Swan assured him that Paul and Linda were frustrated and unsatisfied. Their marriage was in trouble, he said, predicting it would break up within the year. Lately Swan’s visions had been astonishingly accurate. Relieved, John began composing a song—a little ditty, really, that would never be released—in praise of the Oracle’s powers. But he still couldn’t understand why Paul and Linda had been together for as long as they had. There appeared to be a psychic connection between John and Paul. Every time McCartney was in town, John would hear Paul’s music in his head.”

Robert Rosen, Nowhere Man: The Final Days of John Lennon, (2000)

We agreed that if the press got hold of this record we’d pull the plug on it. I’d tell the musicians that John wasn’t sure if he could do it. He was very, very insecure. He didn’t think he had it anymore, you know. He thought he was too old, he just couldn’t write, he couldn’t sing, he couldn’t play, nothing. It took a while.

Jack Douglas on working with John Lennon on Double Fantasy.

“Yoko was an extremist and was even more intense than John taking any idea or comment of his to the limit. If, for example, he complained about any of his fellow Beatles she would hint that that Beatle had always been an enemy implying that John should never deal with that person again. Her extreme positions fascinated John and help him take his mind off himself but when she became self-involved and paranoid herself -her paranoia usually dealt with her career, her fame and the fact that even though she had always been famous everyone conspired to keep her from getting even more famous- he had no place to turn. His insecurity about his solo career, his childhood, his relationships with the other Beatles, the way the public perceived Yoko overwhelmed him and he became more and more involved with drugs.”

May Pang, Loving John (1984)

Klein, on his first meeting with John: “I thought John was losing confidence in himself, and I really didn’t know who had written exactly what, so I couldn’t give John the encouragement he needed. If Paul was really the main factor in the making of records — I mean, if things were really going to fall apart without him — I needed to know that and be able to deal with it. It turned out, of course, that John had written most of the stuff. He’d forgotten a lot of what he’d contributed … John wrote … 60 or 70 percent of Eleanor Rigby. He just didn’t remember till I sat down and had him sort through it all … Everybody thought McCartney was the genius songwriter who did it all by himself and it wasn’t true.”

Allen Klein, Playboy: A candid conversation with the embattled manager of the Beatles. (November, 1971)

Few people disagreed, however, that McCartney always cared deeply about Lennon’s opinion of him. He was still insecure enough on this point to invite Andy Peebles, the Radio 1 DJ who interviewed John the weekend before his death, to join him early on the morning of 10 December. Peebles went to AIR, where he found Paul both ‘deeply shocked [and] obsessed about what John and Yoko had said about him.’ An irony not lost on Peebles, among others, was that Lennon himself had repeatedly tried to find out what Paul had thought of Double Fantasy. “For public consumption,” says another of his final interviewers, “John seemed not to care. The fact that he mentioned McCartney’s name on average ten times an hour suggests otherwise … The strong feeling was that Paul and Yoko were the only two people in the world whose approval he gave a toss for.” Time passed. Paul locked the door of his home studio and played (Just Like) Starting Over, the first single from Double Fantasy. Top volume. For days.

Christopher Sandford, McCartney. (2005)

He became so jealous in the end. You know he wouldn’t let me even touch his baby. He got really crazy with jealousy at times.

Paul McCartney, “off the record” conversation with Hunter Davies. (May 3rd, 1981)

“If you do two LPs there might be a little change!” John laughs. “But until then I don’t mind. When she wants the A side, that’s when we start fighting.

John Lennon, interview w/ Jonathan Cott for Rolling Stone: Yoko Ono and her sixteen-track voice. (March 18th, 1971)

Paul's competitiveness

“My role in [Tug of War] was to goad Paul a bit. I think when he and John Lennon split up, he missed John’s goading enormously. It’s almost like they collaborated by means of competition. John would often say cruel things to Paul and Paul would come back and say, ‘I’ll show him what I can do,’ and Paul could be equally cruel to John and then John would come up with something. Despite the love they had for each other, they would still egg each other on in a funny kind of way. I think Paul missed that spur.”

George Martin, interview w/ Paul Grein for Billboard: Martin/McCartney ‘Tug’ team scores. (February 2nd, 1983)

SMITH: Were you closer to any one of them than the others? GEORGE M.: Not really – certainly not in those days, no. Gradually, as things changed, then they went into their little spheres and they became much more – the rivalry between John and Paul became much more marked. So they were never great cooperators. They were never great – they were never Rodgers and Hart. They never collaborated in the sense of sitting down to write a song together. One would have the idea for a song, and take the other guy and say, “Look, I need your help here on this line, can you give it to me?” And that was the way they collaborated. And generally speaking their songs were pitched against each other, [in the sense of] “Well, you’ve written that, hey, listen to mine,” so it was a competitive collaboration. And it was valuable nonetheless, because – in fact Paul misses it terribly now. He misses that spark of John being rude to him and saying, “You can’t write that, Paul, that’s awful,” you know. He needs that. And only John could say that most effectively.

October 22nd, 1986: George Martin

"Paul McCartney was the most competitive person I've ever met. John [Lennon] wasn't competitive. He just thought everyone else was s-h-*-t."

Ray Davies

TV GUIDE: At the time of Wings, how competitive were you with your former Beatles band mates? PAUL: Really competitive. I don’t think any of us would have ever admitted it. I know we would listen to what each other was doing and [think], “Oh, my God, that’s good.” I know for a fact John did once with [my] song ‘Coming Up’. It was on a documentary, I think, about John, where his recording manager at the time said John listened to it and went, “Oh, I’ll have to go back to work.” I found that a very nice fact that I egged John into doing something.

Paul McCartney, interview w/ Lisa Bernhard and Steven Reddicliffe for TV Guide: Listen to what the man says. (May 1st, 2001)

[chdarling-tle]

The Last Enemy: Dark Marks Soundtrack

Hello my loves! With TLE2 coming to a close, I thought I'd share the full TLE2 soundtrack. You can listen to it here, or I've included the track list below for those who don't use Spotify.

As before, this is a total mishmash of period appropriate and anachronistic music. The genres are all over the place. Some songs directly correlate to the plot, some songs are mentioned in the story, some are pure vibes. It's pretty long...but so is TLE2. 😌

Enjoy!!!

Track list under the cut:

The Times They Are A-Changin’ - Fort Nowhere

She Used To Love Me a Lot - Johnny Cash

Never Had No One Ever - The Smiths

Cherry Bomb - The Runaways

Father and Son - Cat Stevens

Water Under the Bridge - Tow’rs

She’s Not There - The Zombies

Break On Through (To The Other Side) - The Doors

Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea - George Harrison

Raining in My Heart - Buddy Holly

Family Line - Conan Gray

With a Little Help From My Friends - Joe Anderson (Across the Universe)

Love Hurts - Roy Orbison

It’s Alright - Mother Mother

Bad Reputation - Joan Jett & The Blackhearts

Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood - Nina Simone

Play With Fire - The Rolling Stones

Edge of Seventeen - Stevie Nicks

Blue Suede Shoes - Elvis Presley

The Princess Diaries Waltz (Score) - John Debney

Astronomy - Conan Gray

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas - Judy Garland

Dead Mom - Sophia Anne Caruso

Vincent - Don McLean

You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away - The Beatles

Mis-Shapes - Pulp

Golden Years - David Bowie

It’s a Heartache - Bonnie Tyler

Stayin Alive - Bee Gees

Dancing Queen - ABBA

I’d Love to Change the World - Ten Years After

Be More Kind - Frank Turner

One Toke Over the Line - Brewer & Shipley

Flying - The Beatles

Baba O'Riley - The Who

Villain - Maisie Peters

Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn't've?) - Buzzcocks

Will the Circle Be Unbroken - The Carter Family, Johnny Cash

This Woman's Work - Kate Bush

April Come She Will - Simon & Garfunkel

evermore (feat. Bon Iver) - Taylor Swift

For What It's Worth - Buffalo Springfield

You Belong to Somebody Else - PJ Harding, Noah Cyrus

Know Your Rights - The Clash

Broken Crown - Mumford & Sons

Fire - Etta James

Knockin' On Heaven's Door - Bob Dylan

Lily - Benjamin Gibbard

Dancing Queen - stories, Lizzy McAlpine

God Only Knows (Acoustic Slowed + Reverb) - Jae Hall

Homeward Bound - Simon & Garfunkel

Back to the Old House - The Smiths

New World Coming - Cass Elliot

...and one more secret song that I'll add after chapter 71 ;)

[ataraxiaspainting]

It's Cold Outside.

Yan Chrollo x F Reader.

Synopsis: A stranger has weaseled his way into every aspect of your life.

Warnings: Yandere themes, non-con/dub-con (the reader is under the influence of aphrodisiacs but non-consensually), the reader is described as AFAB and uses she/her pronouns respectfully, threats of violence, stalking, manipulation, Chrollo the Creepster, and unhealthy relationships.

Word Count: 2.2k.

Ten Songs Like This Piece:

(You’re The) Devil in Disguise by Elvis Presley

Salvatore by Lana Del Ray

Who Is She? by I Monster

Kiss Of Fire by Georgia Gibbs

Money, Money, Money by ABBA

Sex with a Ghost by Teddy Hyde

4:00A.M. by Taeko Onuki

How I’d Kill by Cowboy Malfoy

Sonne by Rammstein

The Great Gig in the Sky by Pink Floyd

“I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea.” — Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from the Underground

*~*~*~*

i. “Technicolor worlds with white clouds are bound to be destroyed by silver snow.”

When you step into your house, it is like you are instantly transported back to a year ago. Everything in sight, from the walls to the shelves, has decorations of some kind, whether going all out with the kitchen table having an entire feast of delicious holiday treats made by your grandparents, or just a green and red painting of a Christmas tree placed in your older sister’s usually monochromatic room. Perhaps the painting is yet another way she proves that she can somewhat react well to requests to change her room a little bit. Even if the painting is on the farthest wall from the door and is partially hidden from view by the many anime figurines and books larger than your head. Your mother claims that it is a miracle she convinced her to put up any holiday decorations in her room at all and thus doesn’t bother her further. 

Each room also has a different festive scent, your younger sister’s room having a hot chocolate scent mixed with the smell of piled up dishes on her desk, most coming from when she was ‘helping’ your grandparents cook by ‘testing to make sure the food isn't poison’.

How heroic of her to sacrifice herself for the family.

Your room, you think, looks much better than your sisters’ combined, having decked it out to the maximum by taking out all of your Halloween decorations and replacing them with Christmas ones. It took you the whole weekend, sure, and caused you to break the bank, but your love for accessories outweighs your logic and reason by quite a lot. Your beloved record player is back on your table that also simultaneously houses your television and jewelry playing Elvis Presley’s Blue Christmas. A wreath larger than your torso is on your door and your room smells like all the holiday air fresheners you found in your closet. Pine, peppermint, orange, lemon, cranberry… all mix to make a beautiful festive scent unmatched by even your parents’ bedroom. Everything is how it should be, and how it always is every year.

Well, almost. A man named Chrollo, a man who gives you anything but comfort, has been invited to your family-only yearly Christmas party. When your father, who has always been too protective of you and your sisters and never lets you spend time with the opposite gender, told you that Chrollo of all people would be attending, you tried to argue otherwise. You tried telling him that none of you had known Chrollo for so long, but he had rebutted Chrollo’s lie that you had known him for over a year with you two developing a close bond. You realized it was too late then, and Chrollo had charmed your entire family, with even your older sister always having a smile on her face whenever she saw him at her workplace. 

ii. “Like actors, each snowflake has a different role to play. They sing along with every step of a boot as a deceitful way to express their pain.”

The moment the doorbell chimes, its piercing resonance assaults your eardrums and causes an unsettling shiver to course through your spine.

You find yourself in an unsettling situation as your family eagerly awaits, and to your dismay, you are the designated individual tasked with the responsibility of opening the door. You two are such good friends, aren’t you? We wouldn’t want to get in the way of your bonding time.

You want to say he is lying, to tell them everything, every threat he has told you, him meaning them or otherwise. But as soon as they know of what Chrollo really and truly is, they will meet a painful end; that being pushed onto train tracks, their drink being laced with a poison that destroys the body from the inside out, or having nails thrusted into their bloody palms as they hang on their bedroom wall as you look in horror. Elton, Anya, and Robert all being examples of such… You don’t want to think of the bodies just waiting to rot around the Riverbend, your fault or otherwise.

You also don’t want to drown in this river. A river inhospitable to any aquatic life whatsoever, and only harbors a barrier of carnivorous plants that eat those who dare come close. Butterworts, large lilac purple ones that feel like they have been dipped in the most tempting butter mixed with forbidden fruit and honey produced by none other than the queen bee herself. Are you the fly, or are they? You have no idea, and you don’t want to find out.

“Hello.” Your response is concise and devoid of warmth, with a noticeable absence of your usual cheerful demeanor evident in your expression and tone.

Chrollo's smile is so sinister that even the most depraved devil's grin would pale in comparison, with all the large gift bags behind him swinging like a tail.

“Ah, [First]. Happy holidays. No need to be so cold, you know. The snow is already doing that for you. So-”

Despite your strong desire to slam the door in his face, you choose to step aside and allow him entry, in an attempt to silence him.

“Put the gifts by the tree by the kitchen table. The white table and not the black one.”

However, rather than fulfilling your expectations, all he does is elicit a burst of laughter so unique that it resonates within you, while discreetly handing over the most colossal gift bag, compelling you to accept it as if under some intangible force.

“Just a little something. I know it’s customary to wait until later but… I simply can’t help myself. Open it whenever you get the chance, dearest.”

…He means right now, in your room, doesn’t he? Perhaps he installed a camera in your room as you slept, he has certainly threatened to do that before. Or maybe he will just spy on you through the little space between the door and the frame. He has done that before, after all. 

…

You resisted the urge to scream when you saw a picture of your mother sleeping blissfully, the camera focused on her ring finger with the caption Should I take another souvenir? written on it, but the card, as beautiful as it appeared with a lace envelope and your name written in script on the card’s cover above Chrollo’s, proved to be even more of a challenge. When you read the words on it, your heart plunges so deeply that you fear your gastric acid will erode it.

Save your tears. For even if you cry to the whole world, it will never be enough to make me disappear. Meet me outside in five minutes, and make whatever excuse you deem necessary. No exceptions.

As you begin to read further, a wave of fragrant and delicate floral scents envelops your senses, instantly igniting a warm sensation in your head, leaving no time for contemplation.

Trying to ignore your slight dizziness, you read the rest of the card.

Just a little something to make sure you do this. We wouldn’t want your family to see you in… what state you are about to be in, do we?

…Just what did he do to you?

iii. “With the burden of wintertime ending, nature spends time creating beautiful trees and flowers. To accompany them, she makes twisted vines and weeds, for she knows that without them there cannot be balance or purpose in being comfortably numb.”

You were on your back, on his bed, within what felt like one second, not remembering the car ride over to his place, your wrists pinned beneath the strength of one of Chrollo's hands while he looked down at you within another, his other undoing the tie of the bandana on his forehead and showing you, for the very first time, of the cross tattoo underneath it.

All you can do is watch your whole world slow down and be replaced by a dream.

A blissful and sweet dream, as sugary as saccharine and as dissolvable as cotton candy, that is a veil and covers your eyes from what is happening; until it is too late, until you feel some of his fingers go into the band of your skirt and start pulling and pulling, downward, and that is when terror went to combat with your unwanted lust.

“...What… are… you… doing…? Chroooooo…” Your words slur as your mind buzzes with euphoria, and you can feel every sensation in vivid detail, every touch and every breath feeling heightening and intoxicating. As much as you want to, you can’t tell him to stop, not now.

“Shh, it’s what you want, isn’t it?” At least that is what you think he said, because as Chrollo spoke, you struggled to decipher his words amidst the haze that enveloped your mind. Reality fragments, leaving you unable to muster the strength to plead for him to cease. “It will feel oh so very good, I promise. Very, very nice and very, very good.” With that, you come to realize the wetness between your rubbing thighs, amidst the cloudiness and the larger-than-life headache that rips your skull apart. “Do you trust me?” The voice sounds almost heartfelt, not as intimate as it could be, but it was still more than enough for your hands to cling to him and pull him in closer, faster, so he could relieve you of this hell. “I will assume that that is a yes.” His hands move to the two buttons on your blouse, undoing them with ease, softly, gently, like it was a baby bird. 

“Faster… faster…!” You feel like a man who hasn’t seen water on any day of their life, and if you lose the location of the oasis you are sure to never find it again. 

Like a man lost in the desert, you choke on imaginary quicksand, soon to drown if water does not save you.

“Aw, such a precious little thing, aren’t you?” You are gently flipped over in an instant and he unbuckles your bra, quickly. 

“If you love me… really love me… make me feel better… please.”

“Don’t worry, I will.” He flips you over again and his fingers lower to your panties, pulling them down from your trembling legs, just like he did with your skirt. “You trust me after all, don’t you?”

You cry out yes after utterly desperate yes, as he watches, his smile getting wider as he starts undoing his belt. He puts a finger on your lips after he has heard enough, shushing you gently.   

“Then trust me when I say that this, my dear, is for your own good.”

Beneath the surface, whether it be shallow or not, you have no desire to comprehend his intentions.

You don’t want to know. You just want this to go away.

iv. “Through discoveries, there is a hint of madness that enters our minds. Only then can we see our world’s colors change from squid ink and bone to begonias and finches.”

Chrollo undoes his belt, then his pants, and then his boxers. You focus on his face to ignore what is currently nearly touching the side of the mattress by a hair or two, hard and enlarged and slightly pink and-

He takes off his shirt button after button, much, much, much slower than how he took off the rest of his clothing. There exists a deep-seated anger within you, yet it is accompanied by a sense of gratitude, as both you and he are aware of your mutual aversion towards this situation.

Despite both of you being aware that this is not your desired outcome, he still kisses you, gently, full of warmth, and tenderly. What you truly desire is to satisfy the ache within you. But he won’t give it to you yet, will he?

Time seems to drag on as his kisses get faster, and more hungry, with his tongue essentially becoming another of your muscles, wet, and neither wanted nor unwanted. 

Eventually, you get what you want, after enough begging for him to just get it over with. At the beginning, there is a gentle caress resembling a warm and velvety rose petal. However, as time progresses, the touch becomes increasingly forceful until his fingers enter. But it does not hurt. Should you be thankful for that? At least he is being nice.

He starts thrusting, and that also does not hurt. No soreness. You won't feel any discomfort until your eyes meet, causing a sensation that almost makes you want to throw up, were it not for the illicit satisfaction this dreadful encounter brings. It's a peculiar kind of pain, one that lingers like a ghost stealthily gliding through walls, catching you off guard before you can comprehend its presence.

Nothing hurts, and that in of itself gives you the most pain anyone could imagine. 

v. “Heat lightning gives way to summer storms and verdant wind. This makes for a hauntingly beautiful melody of ripples and thunder.”

“…And this maiden, she lived with no other thought than to love and be loved by me.”

vi. “The dead, fallen leaves of autumn come in many shades from bright red to a dull brown. They flow with the wind from one place to the next as invitations from those who passed on to the living.”