#also like i feel for Billy. but i also can recognise that he's a total piece of shit. like these can coexist. like he's abused yes but he's

[thestobingirlie]

How would Robin and the other main females cast react to finding out jonathan taking those pictures and Steve breaking the camera? Whose side would they take?

okay, first, obviously i’m biased lmao. but so are all the characters!!

now, in this scenario they know everything that happened, not a one-sided story.

i think once robin finds out about the photos, it’s just immediate disgust, and we know our girl can hold a grudge. i think she’d be surprised that nancy would go on to date jonathan, and may make a few little comments about it, but she’s not getting into arguments or anything. and robin’s totally on steve’s side. she’s pro-cheating if it benefits steve lmao. there’s nothing he could do that would turn her away.

max and erica probably don’t know jonathan all that well, and are closer to steve; so instinctively i wanna say they’d side with steve. i think they’d find the pictures gross, and demeaning, and they’re take action kinda girls. i think they’d approve of the camera smashing. i can’t see them confronting jonathan or anything, but max could be a little colder, and i can see erica being bitchy, the way she was with murray and eddie when she met them. (edit: i will say, max may have a few thoughts about the camera smashing, if only because we know that’s how billy used to treat her when she’d annoyed him. but i do think she’d get why steve did it)

el’s a little bit more complicated. she knows jonathan better than steve, and she had a fucked up childhood, so i don’t think she’d immediately recognise how bad the photos were. the most lessons she’s had on bodily autonomy is “wear what you want to <3” (thank you max!!). but i think once max explains why it’s such a violation, she would not approve. however, she presumably knows how much jonathan is into photography, so i think she’d feel bad that jonathan lost his camera. although, i do think she and steve are similar in that they will both commit violent deeds if it’ll benefit their friends. so i think she’d understand the camera smashing, but she would feel bad for jonathan. i don’t think she’d exactly side with either one, and i can’t see it affecting how she interacts with them. it was a long time ago, and a tough situation.

joyce is, again, a little more complex. jonathan is her son, so obviously she’s 100% behind him. but, and though joyce would never raise a hand against either of her sons, she’d beat his ass for those photos lmao. she wouldn’t like steve for smashing the camera, especially because of their situation at the time (both financial and just… all the shit they were going through). though i believe a teenage joyce would’ve reacted worse than steve lmao. i also think beyond talking to jonathan about what he did, i don’t think she’d really think much about it. it was a long time ago, and steve has since proved himself to be a good person. she’s not holding a grudge.

[kaizenkhaos]

Road to Valentine’s Day (Demon and Priest AU)

Part 3

Flowers however was something the Demon was more familiar with, and after wrestling with two large bags (which somehow fit the plushies within them) down two escalators, he'd found the shop. A couple of displays were pitched diagonally outside the shop, as if funneling people in or like a massive arrowhead. It was these he looked at first, recognising the popular valentine  flower immediately as it was the centre piece of the right-hand display. He thought it was likely that they would be the ones he'd get, but first he wanted to investigate instead. See if there was in fact something else he could get Billy. A true surprise in the form of flowers which was something he assumed was appreciated by all humans. It hadn't said anything about not being on the page.

It was a little bit of struggle getting into the store with the bags, but he managed it. Being mindful of the stands within as he slowly navigated his way though. Trying to not bump into the stands or brush against the flowers and risk them shedding petals. Hell had its own unique flora; it wasn't all brimstone, fire and sulphur down there, but none of them were like anything he saw now. And they all smelt differently too. As with his homeland, he'd heard the flora here also has different meanings and meanings were something Demons took really seriously. So he'd have to be careful with his selection should he not go with the obvious. The last thing he wanted to do was bring home flowers which screamed I don't like you or something much worse. Or a flower that smelled unpleasant to humans, though why would humans sell them if that was the case? Maybe it was so they could send flowers to someone they hated or something. Humans could be unpleasant after all. Some areas of Hell was full of them but thankfully Steve didn't have to deal with them. And so far he'd not on Earth either, though his nice person streak wasn't guaranteed to last. Assholes lusted as well. 

Moving further through the shop, Steve pondered on some of the lovely smelling flowers he was. It was making him feel like he was in one of those fields that he'd seen in the library books at the church. That he was walking through rows and rows of flowers, smelling their wonder. Being at total peace. But none of them were the valentine flowers so maybe he should just stick to the safe option after all. There was one bouquet in particular that had stood out to him; one of the deepest red with black edges. The page had said twelve was a common number to get and there had been twelve of them. But that seemed like such a small number, especially given their size. So maybe the lady at the counter would have more elsewhere. Or maybe he should get that bouquet and then some of the others too. The lady had been watching him with interest after since he'd come in. She stood behind the counter with a gentle smile and warm eyes and seemed like the kind of human that would be happy to help anyone. So Steve politely waved at her and she came over. Realising it would be much easier for her to get to him than the other way round.

"Hello there, how can I help you?"

"Hi," Steve smiled, feeling a little shy as he noticed her spy the two large bags he was carrying close to him. "Do you have any more....of the flowers outside? The ones on the right?"

If she was confused by the fact he didn't know that they were roses, she didn't show it.

"Just the ones out the front I'm afraid. I'm due another shipment in next week," the lady replied, her smile still present as she guided him back out of the store and over to the small stall to the right.

Looking back over them, Steve started to count how many they were and then stopped. That would be more than enough and the range of colours would look so beautiful in Billy's apartment.

"How much would it be for all of them?"

At first the lady just blinked, as if she'd misunderstood what he'd said. But he looked at her smiling and reached for his wallet to get the card his parents had managed to get him. Finally a link to money in this world. He wanted to reassure her that he wasn't messing around; he was seriously wanting all of the flowers. It should be enough to show Billy how much he cared and he thought that they did smell nice.

"You would like all of them? The entire stall?"

"Yeah," the Demon confirmed, as the lady looked over the stall and then turned to him. Given all of his bags, there was no way Steve would be able to carry then all.

"I can have them delivered for you today. Are you okay to pay for them now?"

A nod and a smile and the lady told him to wait there so she could get the card machine. Yeah it was Valentine's Day but she didn't expect to sell them all to the same person. She'd just need to put an emergency order in so she had more to sell.

After giving the nice lady Billy's address, the Demon had headed to a couple more stores before the final one; the supermarket just outside of the mall. Another intimidating store, the Demon was nervous about going alone. The bags already took up a lot of the trolley and this had been one area of the page that hadn't been that helpful. There didn't seem to be a special Valentine's Day dish that humans did. Not like other days where ham or turkey seemed to be the meat of choice. It gave Steve a lot of options but that wasn't what he wanted. He did however know that Billy liked steak, and chicken and some other animals so off to the meat aisle he went. Licking his lips as he pondered on what to get. Then onto the fruit and vegetables aisle. Rinse and repeat. Same with the drinks. Everything seemed delicious and so in the trolley it went... Soon the trolley piled higher and higher and by the time he got to the counter, it looked like he was shopping for a large family for a week, not for an evening meal for two. His indecision on everything had left him choosing most of what he saw, some of which he didn't know how to cook, but he hoped he'd be able to do enough to begin with and then maybe Billy could help him with the rest. He knew how to use the heat monsters in the kitchen now so that was something and he knew what to do so he didn't burn the apartment down. There was also some picture books Steve could use and Billy's laptop with the moving picture pages, so he would have some guidance if needed. It should be fine. Worst case scenario, maybe they'd have to order in or something. Would seem a huge shame and waste though.

Finally emerging from the store, the bags strained in his hands as he waited for a wheely monster (taxi). A kind store assistant had pointed him in the direction of a phone when he saw how badly Steve was now struggling and realised that he didn't have a monster to take him home. His thanks had been full of gratitude and at least now he could give his hands a rest, putting them at his feet and then being helped by the human with the monster load all the bags into its back. Now it was time to head back home and get things ready for Billy's return.

[cescalr]

Stranger Things! <3

I was waiting for this one!!!! Pal this is my MOST controversial and I don't like Sterek or Drarry or Stony aj;lsakgj;aslg. I'm going to make some people despise me <3 always love to do that (I don't. I'm not actually this pugnacious i just do it for the Joke lets all get along pls it's just fiction!! just fiction!!). I specifically hope you don't hate me though <3

put a fandom in my ask and i’ll answer:

otp - platonic stobin my beloved <3 but if I have to go romantic for this one probably Boyce. Bob :(((((((((( [also this is not to say I don't like jopper. I just. Miss Bob :( and with the introduction of bob and the change in Joyce/Hopper's dynamic from s1-3 I just... ship it less than I did originally.)

favourite canon pairing - Boyceeeeeeeeee

worst pairing ever - ALWAYS AND FOREVER WHAT THE FUCK THEY WERE DOING WITH KAREN AND BILLY. and Stoncy/Harringrove depends on the day. Mostly Harringrove though. Stancy just makes me personally very Sad (for Steve, fyi) and Stonathan,,,, eeeeeeeeeeeeeehhhhh- (I just. Don't see Stonathan working At All; steve felt bad, he was apologising, that was the reason for the camera - he wanted to right a wrong he did (and he did do a wrong - not in breaking the camera - but in being homophobic and crude and verbally cruel and provoking a fight etc) and we know Stancy doesn't work - so where does Stoncy come from? it's an extrapolated distaste.)

guilty pleasure pairing - eeeeeeeeeehhhhhhhhhhhh this one might actually get me mauled so I'm. going to just. link that and move on. I'll explain more in DMs if anyone wants an in-depth discussion about it because I totally understand the reticence behind not being cool with that sort of thing, but I would like to explain myself somewhat more than that post does.

a pairing you want to see more - anything with Steve/some random person from another series because nobody in canon fits him help my boy out pls (I also mean series I know something about bc. literally what even is DBD. other than terrifying)

that pairing everyone likes but you’re like “lol no” - mileven lol

favorite non-romantic pair - stobin!!!! abso-positively-lutely!!! also like. mileven. lol. just the kids have such good friendships with each other. Lumax works well and I can totally see why people ship byler. but I just... they're kids? so... rather just keep it on the downlow and focus on platonic stuff s1-3. won't be as weird in s4 methinks. Just personally speaking I was that kid who found it Super Weird people were dating in primary school and just. did not I refused to date anyone in high school. I just don't think people are ready at those ages for romance... I don't know. It's a big commitment and kids can't do long-term decision making skills. and i get you can have totally casual relationships - lumax reads as a very teenagery relationship which is why i think it works - but mileven is just... too serious. it's too much for their stage. Hopper's like... not entirely wrong lakjsg;lskajdg;laskjdg but you know.

[slashingdisneypasta]

Horror Villains x Reader || Reactions

Reacting to: Reader getting slipped a love potion so whoever they see first, they fall madly in absolute and total love and adoration of. They first see Slasher. Notes: Yep, I've been watching scenes of Strange Magic. This is because of that. I definitely recommend listening to a version of 'I Cant Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch)' while reading XD I'm listening to the Jessica Mauboy cover! ^^

Warnings: Definitely non con elements (Not sexual though) Characters Included: Billy Loomis, Bubba Sawyer, (Mayor) Buckman, Carrie White, Chucky / Charles Lee Ray, Chop Top Sawyer, Drayton Sawyer, Freddy Krueger, Jennifer Check, (Sheriff), Hoyt, Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers, Patrick Bateman, Pennywise (OG), Stu Macher and Thomas Hewitt.

Billy Loomis:

🎶'I can't help myself'🎶

What.

What kinda - bullshit- leave me the fuck alone-

Honestly he's trying to get the hell away from you (As you tail him) while Stu's at the side texting you where they're gonna be and laughing his bloody ass off when you turn up and Billy suddenly sprints to the bathroom.

Bubba Sawyer:

🎶'Sugar pie, honey bunch You know that I love you'🎶

Oh my gosh, the moment you expression changes from one of fear and disgust, to wide eyed adoration and you start fawning over him?? He has no idea what to d o. Oh, the poor baby XDD

Like, he's just hugging his chainsaw to him as you get up close and touch his shoulders and fix his tie and follow him around and he doesn't r e a l l y mind, cuz its not like you're hurting him, but he is just confused. He's searching for Drayton. Like he'll have any answers, pft.

(Mayor) Buckman:

🎶'I can't help myself I love you and nobody else'🎶

-I'm sorry, what now? Beg your pardon, there?

As soon as he recognises that sparkly, attentive look on your eyes he's slightly baffled. I mean, he's used to being loved - his town a d o r e their mayor, - so he isn't quite as lost as Bubba is or even Billy, but- he just had your friends killed? Sweetheart are you in your right mind?

I can see him sorta, awkwardly starting to treat your a little better then your friends. What?? He'd feel just awful being terrible to someone who 'loves', him! I mean you'll still die probably, but you can stand by him until its time. Self absorbed prick

Carrie White:

🎶'In and out my life You come and you go Leaving just your picture behind And I kissed it a thousand times'🎶

(*^^*) I'm sorry (*^^*) What? (*^^*)

Oh my gosh she's a mess. What do you mean by calling her Sugar Pie? Honey bunch? Sweetheart? Cutie!?!?

She's going to run away my guy, she's going to flee. She is not used to this kind of attention (Or any at all, for that matter) and you've flustered her. She doesn't believe you're just making fun of her though (Since you're just so... adoring. She intense. So in love- this cant possibly be an act) though at least, so there's that.

Just calm. down. bitch. You're going to scare her.

Chucky / Charles Lee Ray:

🎶'When you snap your finger or wink your eye I come a-running to you I'm tied to your apron strings And there's nothing that I can do'🎶

Depends- as a human or a Good Guy?

As a human he might be a bit more reserved about the whole thing and a whole lot more confused like... is this a joke? That's a gun in my pocket, not somethin' else if that's what you're thinkin'. You gettin' off on this? What? What's the deal, here?

As a doll though it TOTALLY goes to his head. You just took this bastards ego man and shot it up with some steroids. Like yes- they even want me when I'm plastic. That's fuckin' right.

I would say, 'No way hosay, he's fleeing- he's got a hot ass wife already!! But that has never really stopped our asshole gremlin man so...

Chop Top Sawyer:

🎶'I can't help myself No, I can't help myself'🎶

'DRAYYYTONNNN, C'MERE AND MEET MAH HONEY PIE. I'M GETTIN ME HITCHED!'

*Drayton from somewhere else in the part* 'YOU'RE WHAT?!'

Yep. No getting outta this now. You're getting married to him. Enjoy.

Drayton Sawyer:

🎶''Cause sugar pie, honey bunch I'm weaker than a man should be I can't help myself'🎶

*Cough* me *cough*

I mean... *awkward cough cough's*... what?

Oh boy, Drayton is awkward. And PINK. Why're you looking at him like that? Why are you running your fingers through his hair? Why're

Like Bog in Strange Magic I think Drayton would set you aside from the rest of the victims for a while, until whatever's gotten into you has worn off at least. And begrudgingly take care of you- and try to tell you that your feelings are just whatever poison's jacked you up- and to please calm down- you wont want this old boy when your senses are back-

Gosh, he's too cute. I love him a lot.

Freddy Krueger:

🎶'I'm a fool in love, you see Wanna tell you I don't love you Tell you that we're through And I've tried Every time I see your face I get all choked up inside'🎶

Hmmmmm~ What'd you just call him?~

You're playing fire here babes-

And by that I mean he's going to push you until he finds the limit to this potion- for fun. Will you still 'love' him if he leads you off a cliff?~ If he carves his name into your back? If he forces this disgusting sludge down your throat? Will you do aaaanything for him?~ How about killing your friend over there?

Goodluck.

Jennifer Check:

🎶'When I call your name Girl, it starts a flame'🎶

Yeah, I mean of course, who doesn't, bye-

This is not shocking to her XD She's hot and amazing, she knows, alright? Shoo.

Depends- are you a dude? Cis or trans- a dudes a dude. And if you are a dude, she is going to take this admiration and use it to her advantage.

If you are not a guy, though, you'll probably get off easy, with an eyeroll as she stalks off. Maybe even a smirk.

(Sheriff) Hoyt:

🎶'Burning in my heart, tearing it all apart No matter how I try, my love I cannot hide'🎶

... Is this a trick? You fucker-

Paranoid military man kills you immediately because he thinks this is a ploy to survive and hurt his family.

Jason Voorhees:

🎶'Sugar pie, honey bunch You know that I'm waiting for you (waiting for you)'🎶

Mmmmmm... 😐 this is new territory... he really doesn't know what to do, here...

Uhh... he may lower his weapon, and tilt his head; Silently asking his mother what to do in this situation as he assesses you- you and your own tilted head, corner of your mouth tilted up as you look up (UP UP UP- ) at the 'love of your life'.

Tea? Do you want some (cold lake water and floor leaf) tea?

Michael Myers:

🎶'I can't help myself I love you and nobody else'🎶

Wh... what?

Not gonna lie- you threw him off, for sure when you got down on your knees and just gazed up at him. Even with blood all over him, even holding a shar knife, even with the corpse of your friend a few feet away.

But mostly his feelings are please go away you're freaking me the fuck out.

*The sound of your neck snapping*

Patrick Bateman:

🎶'Sugar pie, honey bunch I'd do anything you ask me to'🎶

How sad for you.

He really doesn't care, man. Just tries to go on with his life, even with you following him around everywhere and trying to get his attention, and being there at his every beck and call- he does enjoy having coffee whenever he wants it, though.

Pennywise (OG):

🎶'I can't help myself I want you and nobody else'🎶

Oh this is HILARIOUS.

Penny figures it out immediately and has a good laugh, as you giggle softly, awkwardly along with him (Which makes him laugh harder-). Ohhhh, you made his century.

You're gonna taste delicious, when he's done with you.

Stu Macher:

🎶'Sugar pie, honey bunch You know that I love you'🎶

Ahhhhh... say what now?

Billy cackles like an evil ferret behind him as you wrap your arms around Stu (The boy himself a slave to his hornier impulses but struggling as Billy's right there and also this is kinda rapey-). Good. he gets a taste of his own medicine now. He looks mortified. GOOD.

Thomas Hewitt:

🎶'I can't help myself No, I can't help myself'🎶

Thomas is a mix of Michael and Bubba- he's thinking but why, but also what do i do what do i do what do i do-

Like one one side, he's annoyed. Because you're geting in his way and he needs to help out his mamma and do what Hoyt tells him to, in order to keep his family safe.

But on the other- he's kind of enjoying this kind of attention.

God, someone just take the decision out of his hands.

[tommyspeakycap]

Uncle Charlie and the Shelby sis?

omg i love this idea !!!!

I actually think that little Shelby would be quite close to Charlie so here’s a sweet blurb! (set in 1920 - so moving towards end of season 1. i also made up charlie’s war history as we don’t know much about it)

“Fucking, shitty, stupid bastard-”

“Oi!”

When you hear the sound of the voice cutting in likely to chastise you for your use of explicit choice language while you were practically beating the shit of the hay you were shovelling for the horses, you turn around to face him. He see’s that you look rather flustered, face a bit red as you blow a sigh past your lips and shove your hair back out of your face. “Sorry, uncle Charlie.”

“Mhm,” he nods his head, “And what’ve your brothers done this time eh?” You sigh again with some sort of disgruntled huff afterwards to display your clear irritation with the behaviour of who Charlie assumed would most likely be Tommy, Arthur at a push but very unlikely to be John. John annoyed you a lot, he knew, but never tended to make you genuinely angry. At least, never angry enough to switch off the sunshine and rainbows girl who sang and hummed while shovelling hay and horse shit.

“Tommy’s being a fucking idiot. Again.” You bite harshly.

“Oi!”

“Sorry, Charlie.”

He shakes his head at you with the very slightest of smiles. “And how’s that? What’s he done?” Your uncle grabs the spair shovel from where it was leaning against the barn door so as to join you in your cleaning of the stables. Charlie can sense the anger that had built in you from Tommy’s seemingly incessant enforcement of all sorts of new and more restrictive rules for the members of the family - especially you and slightly Ada - since he had started to try expand the business into the race tracks. He doubts this time will be any different from the last three times you’ve complained about him in the last week.

“Finn’s 11 and he gets to go with them to the races sometimes, but i’m nearly 17 and i can’t even step out the house without an escort when the boys aren’t in Small Heath. It’s so unfair!” You rant almost desperately. The frustration is clearly heard in your words, and Charlie was no fool to picking up on your feelings by the way you spoke and acted. Charlie very, very much understands your brothers desires to keep you safe; you’re his favourite if he’s totally honest. So he’s incredibly protective himself, he felt quite a sense of fatherly responsibility for you.

Charlie had gone to fight in France for around a year and a half. That definitely did a number on him, but he was transferred home after being shot. It was then that he was appointed a post on the home front as a farmer and some kind of war horse breeder and trainer because he was so good with animals. As a result, it had become his job to look after you during the years of the war that your brothers were away. Polly did your breakfasts and dinner and would make sure you were well looked after, but Charlie took you out to the farm during the day where he would make packed lunches. You would get to pick vegetables, train the sheep dogs, collect wool and the likes of that sort of work. He knew that since you were 12, had you stayed hanging around the factories in Small Heath, you might’ve ended up having to work in one, so brought you to work with him instead. It had brought you extremely close to your uncle.

It’s why now, it was his scrap yard you went to when Tommy and the rest of the family were getting to you. He would often find you there, felt like a sixth sense of some sort that he would just get a feeling you were there - if he hadn’t heard you shouting or singing. Most commonly your troubles were caused by or at least had some distant correlation to Tommy and something he had done. The head of the family does of course think through his decisions and what they’re impact will be, but the one mistake Thomas tends to make when he thinks abouts these impacts is what appears to always affect you.

And that is, that he looks for direct danger. He overthinks and spends nights riddled with fear that his plan will bring harm to those he loves. He fears Billy Kimber will come to try and take from Tommy what he holds most dear in retaliation if he doesn’t act exactly the right way. He fails to look at less direct impacts. He sees your protection escorts as keeping you from being harmed and sees keeping you in the house constantly as ensuring he knows that you’re safe, always. He doesn’t see you missing out on your youth or missing your friends or feeling threatening and anxious at the fact you’re always either in house arrest or practically with a fucking protection detail. He never thinks like that and Charlie knows that is what gets to you so much, because you just see that as he being malicious and not thinking about what’s best for you at all.

“Sometimes i just wish we were normal y’know?” The change in tone of your voice from red hot anger to a timid quite mumble tells Charlie that you’re hurting more than you may ever let on in words. “Just miss my life.” You lament lowly, dropping the shovel and instead opting to drop yourself down on a nearby haybale.

Charlie signs not in annoyance or anger, but in a kind of sympathetic way as he leans himself on his shovel and turns to face your direction. “I know you do, love. Think we all do these days. Missing your brother eh?” Charlie tries to ask you as softly as he can despite having a generally grumpy, grumbling voice. The question marks another change in your demeanour as he immediately notes that your shoulders slump and you begin clenching your jaw to try not to get all upset.

You just nod in response.

“Mhm,” Charlie hums, moving to sit on the hay bale next to you, “Though so.” He pulls you into his side and feels you shaking a little with a few small sniffles to tell him your were crying. It breaks his heart and he know it would shatter Tommy’s if he knew. He had known for weeks that part of your rage and irritation was a smoke screen for the painful fact that you just missed your brother. You missed being little and holding his hand, having him play games with you and look after you, spend time with you and have genuine, actual conversations that weren’t two minutes long, arguments or about business and rules. You were still young and the four years you’d spent without them, plus the trauma you’d gone through in your life, meant that you missed and relied upon them a lot more than most would. Your hurting heart just longed for your big brother to make all things right again, just like he used to.

Things were so much more complicated now than they were before, you knew that. But it didn’t stop the hurt, it only just made it more painful.

“Listen, hey, listen,” Charlie comforts, “It’s alright. I’ll have words with that brother of your eh?” He feels you nod your head. “Yes please.” You whisper, sniffling again.

A silence falls between you as it often does, a bubble created where you could feels your feelings and your uncle would do all that he could in his limited power to move whatever kind of mountains you needed moving so you could feel better again. It was damn near his very top priority that you were provided with a better childhood and better young adult-hood than what he was able to give the Tommy, Arthur and John.

But it just so happened that Charlie Strong made a promise to the woman he loved - your mother. The woman you were so very like. He felt it his duty to protect you like a daughter because that is what your mother would have wanted. He promised to look after you and in doing so he recognised what your brothers often didn’t. Your physical well-being wasn’t everything. Of the same importance he wanted, just as the rest of the family did, for you to be safe, happy and loved in an emotional sense. They did love you, all of them. So much it was painful and so much that it was enough to do you a lifetime; they just had such a bad way of showing it.

Charlie decided it was time now to give your older brothers a wake up call. It was time they learned how to love you in a way you understood. Killing for you and keeping you bubble wrap didn’t tell you they loved you, they had to show you in a true way. They had to tell you and hold you just like he had learned to do to show his care and love for you. He had to change to accommodate how you experienced love, so he did just that; he changed.

Charlie was determined and he held a level of authority with the boys he practically raised. So starting with Tommy, he was going to enforce that same change in order to make sure you knew just how fucking loved you were in that family.

And for Charlie Strong, all of the fighting, the pushing and the moving of seemingly unmovable mountains was worth in to no end when you mumbled, “I love you, uncle Charlie.” Against his shoulder while he hugged you tight.

“Yeah yeah, Shelby,” he sniggers, pressing a kiss on top of your head, “I love you too.”

[bird-in-a-cage]

It wasn’t Steve’s fault. He came across the page by accident. He certainly wasn’t social media stalking some guy he spotted in the library when he should have been working on his accounting course because he was far too shy to just go over and say hi.

What a ridiculous thought.

He didn’t lay awake in his dorm room that night, after seeing those blue eyes and hearing that laugh and certainly wasn’t instantly smitten. Definitely didn’t spend almost half an hour finding out his name through college facebook pages, then use that information to find not one but two instagram accounts. One clearly a more public page, photos of cars and coffee and the bay at sunset. The other just a total thirst trap, post after post of shirtless shots. Chest bare and shiny and tanned and toned and gorgeous. There also, definitely, wasn’t a link to an Onlyfans page right in the bio line, topped and tailed by sparkle emojis.

Steve, categorically and without question, did not pay $12.99 to become a subscriber after less than a minute’s thought.

He then absolutely did not turn the brightness down on his phone, slip in his earbuds and spend the whole night watching seemingly endless videos of this guy going to town on himself. On the most beautiful dick Steve’s midwestern, recently-out-of-the-closet-for-good-and-wrapped-up-in-a-bisexual-pride-flag ass had ever seen. He didn’t immediately commit this guy’s name to memory like maybe this was all a dream and he’d forget it in the morning somehow.

BillyBoy

Just paying for college with what god gave me

Steve really should have stopped. Should have cancelled the subscription in the cold light of day, but he didn’t. Couldn’t. The crush had only been small before, no more than just a passing glance. But now Steve knew what this guy sounded like when he came. The ramp up of moans going deep, the sudden stop before the gasped out sigh. The endless string of fucks that came with thick ropes of cum. It was impossible to go back to not knowing that information.

Most of the videos were taken on campus. Places Steve had to pass everyday going too and from class. Mostly bathrooms. Occasionally just empty hallways in the middle of the day. Not that Steve sought them out to check his theories about this guy. With his perfect chest and perfect dick and perfect cocky grin and clear exhbitionist streak.

Steve wasn’t obsessed. It wasn’t something that could easily become a problem. It wasn’t as if some days he would just walk through places videos had been filmed previously in the hopes of just bumping into this Billy guy, who outside of the internet was apparently incredibly illusive. Not that Steve would even know what to say if he did find him. Probably just stutter something embarrassing before going to find a corner to die in.

The boy can come out of the closet but the cape of shyness apparently comes with him. Accounting and finance wasn’t the course to meet people.

There was one video though, one three minute clip that lived in Steve’s head from the moment it ended. It wasn’t taken in public like the vast majority of the others, but clearly in a dorm room from all the furniture matching Steve’s own. A see through silicone sleeve taped to the corner of a desk, clearly filled with little bumps and ridges. Taken from a chest down angle it was just Billy’s magnificent cock fucking this toy over and over, thrusting and pumping, thighs getting tense as the sounds were just groans and a slick wetness. Gradually getting faster and faster, the thick head of his cock poking through the end of the sleeve with each thrust, shiny and pink and fat and weeping. It gave Steve endless dreams about being fucked like that. Bent over a desk. Feeling all that weight and girth break him apart, just begging for it. Feeling the load spilled over dark wood deep inside him instead.

It wasn’t an obsession. It wasn’t.

Steve didn’t nearly drop his phone in the middle of the silent library when a notification vibrated and sent jolts down his spine and his eyes to go wide.

BillyBoy is live!

Steve acted as natural as possible, finding a place to sit on a table that was mostly empty, set up his things like he might at all try to study and flipped open the video like he was texting. Just to check. Nothing more. He wasn’t obsessed, goddamnit, he wasn’t. But he recognised where BillyBoy was though. All the books in the background were a dead giveaway. Steve tried to keep his face in neutral. He’d thought about this moment, bumping into the guy in the middle of a shoot and offering to lend a hand. A throat. Anything this guy wanted Steve was down for. Carpet burn and bruises be damned. He held his phone close to his lap as he watched. Watched Billy grin at the camera, pan down his ridiculous body with his shirt pulled up under his chin and cup his hard cock through a pair of bright red board shorts. When Steve could pull his eyes away from the main focus, a book in the background caught his eye, a name on a spine.

Mastering Bookkeeping.

That information hit like a punch. Steve knew exactly where he was hiding this time. Knew he was there right now. Suddenly his tongue felt fat, his limbs just deadweight and useless. He could get out of the chair, walk to the back corner and find the man who had been plaguing his every fantasy. Finally put them to rest and witness first hand what he thought about every single time he jerked off. But he couldn’t move. What would he even say? Hi, I’ve been giving you money to see your dick for months now, can I touch it? Steve cringed at even the idea. He wasn’t one of those people. The bolder part of him knew exactly what he wanted to do. Find Billy and have that cock fuck his throat until it was raw and horse. Swallow everything. But Steve had been in college for almost three terms now, had barely even said hello to anyone not in his class. He couldn’t just do that if he couldn’t speak to people. Especially someone he wasn’t obsessed with. Someone he hadn’t wasted hours scrolling through instagram posts figuring out what this guy was like in real life and not half naked spread out on a mattress with his dick in his hand.

But life doesn’t throw you very many chances. And his father did always say to grab each one you come across. Of course he never meant it to be about boys, but still.

Steve turned the video off when he knew it was almost over, it was kind of embarrassing that he knew that from sound alone, slipped his phone into his pocket and decided to just be bold for once in his life. He could always say he just needed a book. It wouldn’t be a total lie. He left his things on the table, all intentions of coming back to actually get some work done and wandered up to the upper level, towards the back corner. He was there, leaning back against a shelf of textbooks, even more perfect in real life. Flushed from clearly just coming, shirt rolled back down and shorts rolled back up. If Steve hadn’t known any better it maybe looked like Billy had been doing something weird like jumping jacks or just running on the spot. But Steve knew a lot better. And seeing that grin in real life made his knees feel weak. Blue eyes sparkling. Blonde hair pulled into a messy bun, one that looked effortless. Like he’d just rolled out of bed and had an early class. Steve felt his palms start to sweat. He shouldn’t have done this. Just grab a book and leave. But he was caught in that gaze. Like a deer in headlights. Like a moth to a flame. Stuck. Billy licked his teeth, looked Steve up and down very noticeably.

“Hey there pretty boy...”

Okay, Steve was obsessed. Very obsessed. And this was everything he’d wanted for months. His heart was hammering in his chest, palms now practically soaked, trying to force the sound of this beautiful man coming over and over again out of his head enough to talk around a nerve swollen tongue, because nothing would happen if he didn’t just try and say something regardless of how stupid or embarrassing it would sound. Nothing would happen if he didn’t try.

“Hi…”

[isitgintimeyet]

Just A Friend

Previous

AO3

Another Sunday, another chapter. Hope it’s a good weekend for you all, despite these uncertain times. I always intended this story to be a bit of fluffy light relief from the real world. Thanks for all the support for it.

There will probably be another 3 chapters after this, depending on how the characters behave. I cant seem to make them do what I want sometimes!

Thanks to @wickedgoodbooks for the beta

Chapter 11: From Marriage to Mackenzie

It’s 1pm and I’m in a hotel room, still in a bathrobe, sipping Buck’s Fizz whilst a hairdresser wrestles with my wayward curls, finally managing to corral them into some sort of recognisable hair style.

Geillis is sitting on the edge of the bed incongruously dressed in tiara and bathrobe, her hair arranged in an elaborate updo. I catch her eye through the dressing table mirror and smile before my vision is obscured by a miasma of hairspray.

A few final tweaks of my curls and it’s done. I am just amazed that my hair can be cajoled into such glossy, bouncy curls, held behind one ear by an ornately decorated comb. With suitable compliments and thanks, Geillis and I bid goodbye to the hairdresser.

The bride stands up and adjusts the belt of her robe. She seems the epitome of calm.

“Are you not nervous, Geillis? You’ll be walking down the aisle in about an hour’s time.”

“Weel, I am a wee bit worried about a couple of things,” she admits. “I dinna ken how ma cousin Janie will behave. She may try tae proposition every man under the age of seventy five. And as fer Dougal’s Uncle Eric—he has been known tae get steamin’ drunk and puke in the rose beds. But about the marrying? Nah, I dinna have any nerves about that. I want tae spend ma life wi’ Dougal and that’s what today is all about. I have nae worries about making that commitment. He’s the one fer me. When ye ken, ye ken. Trust me, Claire.”

The pocket of her bathrobe begins to buzz. She quickly pulls out her phone and reads the message.

“I’d best go. That was Mam, fretting about something or other. Are ye ok getting dressed on yer own?”

“I’ve managed for the past twenty nine years or so. I dare say I can manage another day.” I sigh theatrically.

“I ken. Ye can manage on yer own. Ye always do. But thanks fer being here with me today. It means a lot tae have the people who mean the most tae me around,” she leans over and gives me a kiss on the cheek. “But remember what I said, Claire, when ye ken, ye ken. Dinna ignore it.”

Pausing at the interconnecting doorway, she does a quick body shimmy and grins. “Woo hoo! I’m getting married. Canna believe it’s here now,”

From the adjoining room, I can hear a shouted response. “Geillis Duncan, ye get here now. Yer mam reckons that makeup lassie has done her eyeliner wonky. It looks fine tae me. Can ye come and talk some sense in tae the daft cow?”

“Alright, Da, I’m coming.” Geillis yells back before leaving to deal with her parents.

I sit down and study my bridesmaid’s dress, now hanging on the wardrobe door. I’m getting excited about the day ahead. Probably not as much as Geillis, obviously, but a host of butterflies appears to have taken residence in the pit of my stomach.

I’m truly thrilled for Geillis to be marrying Dougal—they love each other so much. But, also, it’s scary to me. She is willing, eager even, to commit to one person, to base her future life, her future happiness on one man. If they should ever leave…well, I’m not sure I’d be able to cope with that. If you love too hard, you can hurt too much. Trust me on that, I know. People leave you. Don’t give your heart to anyone, keep it hidden away, protected…intact.

The ping from my phone diverts me from this somber train of thought.

I’m downstairs at the hotel. Can you come and say hello?

I quickly type:

Come up to the 2nd floor. I’ll meet you by the lift.

Making sure the keycard is in my pocket, I slip my feet into the hotel’s complimentary slippers and shuffle out to meet Jamie.

I’m already waiting as the lift door opens and he emerges. My first thought is oh wow, as is my second...and third. He has made an effort for this wedding, and it’s certainly paid off. Eschewing the more formal Prince Charlie style, he’s wearing a charcoal grey jacket and waistcoat, perfectly matching the grey in his kilt. A crisp white shirt and burgundy tie complement the secondary colours in the tartan. His sporran is black leather, heavily etched or embossed. I can’t quite make out the detail. Then I feel myself blush as I realise I have been clearly staring at his...er, lower body. I look up quickly.

Fortunately, he doesn’t seem to have noticed. He looks me up and down and smiles. “Nice outfit,” he comments drily. “Is the bride wearing white towelling too? What’s the theme? Salon chic?”And is that part of the design?” He points to an orange stain on the front of my robe. I pull a face and tie the belt tighter, trying to tuck the offending piece of material out of sight.

“Must have spilled a drop of my Buck’s Fizz.”

“Drinking already? Dinna be staggering down the aisle.”

He reaches out towards my hair and pauses for a second before making a random circular motion with his hand. “And this…I like yer hair. It’s verra…verra…” he searches for the word. “... asymmetric.”

“Thank you,” I hold the ‘skirt’ of my robe and bob a little curtsy. “That’s totally what we were going for—asymmetric.”

He laughs. “Nah, seriously. Yer hair and yer makeup look grand. I’m sure ye’ll look lovely in yer dress.”

I gesture to my room. “I’d best finish getting ready.”

“Aye, I’ll see ye downstairs.” He presses the button for the lift.

“By the way, you look grand too.” I try to say it in an understated way. It’s true, but I don’t want him to read anything into the statement.

The lift arrives and he steps inside. As the doors close, he fires a parting shot. “Especially the sporran, eh?”

*********

Now in my bridesmaid’s dress, I practice a couple of pirouettes in front of the mirror before hearing a quick knock on the door to the adjoining room.

“Ye ready, Claire? Mam’s jes’ gone down. Only us three left.”

I walk through to the other room to be met by a riot of open suitcases, bags and boxes. A variety of towels, dressing gowns and footwear seem to be carpeting the floor.

“‘S ok,” Geillis’ voice comes from behind me. “It’s no’ ma problem. I’m no’ sleeping here tonight. I’ll be in the bridal suite. This’ll be Mam and Dad’s room.”

I turn to see my best friend now fully dressed and ready. Her father is hovering next to her, clad in kilt and full formal regalia. I always knew she would win that battle.

As beautiful as she looks, the thing that really strikes me is the way her father is watching her, with such love and pride. She returns his gaze and brings her forehead to rest against his cheek.

I swallow hard, fighting the desire to shed a tear. It’s such a precious image, so intimate, but also, I realise that, since Lamb died, I have nobody, no father figure, to share something like this. I feel a momentary pang of, not jealousy, but a feeling of regret over an emotion that I will never get to experience.

And then, just like that, the moment passes.

It always does.

Geillis passes me a creamy white posy tied with a simple ribbon and gathers up her bouquet of peonies, roses and fragrant eucalyptus.

“OK,” she takes a deep breath and breaks into a huge grin. “I think I’m late enough tae get Dougal jes’ a wee bit nervous. Time tae roll.”

*******

The hotel’s orangery provides a perfect setting for the wedding ceremony. Softly diffused sunlight filters through the white muslin drapes at the large windows. A slight breeze wafts the fabric gently, giving tantalising glimpses of the formal gardens outside.

At the end of the room, Dougal and Angus stand beside a large arch of succulent green foliage, staring straight ahead as Geillis and her father begin the procession down the aisle with me following.

Even before he turns to look, I can spot Jamie — his auburn curls are head and shoulders above those around him. He stays still at first, but as we draw near he turns around and grins before doing his funny blink, screwing up his face and closing both eyes, which I have learnt, is Jamie’s attempt at a wink. I return his smile before focussing on the arch getting ever closer.

Dougal appears rooted to the spot, but Angus turns around and watches for a moment before giving me a perfectly executed wink. I smile politely even as I shudder inwardly. The sheer self confidence of that man is beyond belief. Then he disappears from my thoughts as Geillis reaches the arch and passes me her bouquet to hold. The joy on her and Dougal’s faces as they prepare to make their vows is wonderful and I’m so happy to be a part of it all.

***************

They say the sun shines on the righteous. Well, Geillis and Dougal must be exceptionally good, as it’s a perfect summer afternoon. It’s beautifully warm, but not too hot, as all the guests mingle in the gardens, admiring the beautiful surroundings whilst drinking chilled champagne.

The photographer has finished with the formal photographs, so I’m allowed to relax and enjoy a glass or two. I can still spot him wandering around, ready to take more natural, candid shots of the proceedings but nobody seems to mind.

I was initially worried about inviting Jamie to the wedding for a couple of reasons. The first was my friends. Of course, my friends are great, but Anna and Mary can sometimes have an issue with boundaries and I had visions of the ‘conversations’ they might try to have with Jamie — ‘nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition’ unless Anna and Mary are around.

The second reason was that Jamie would literally know only one person at this wedding —me. And that, when I was off doing official ‘wedding stuff’, he would be on his own, billy-no-mates. But, as I look around, I realise I had absolutely nothing to worry about on that score. He has the knack, it seems, to get on with everyone.

At the moment he’s talking to Geillis’s father, laughing and joking like they’re old friends. He notices me looking at him, lifts his empty glass up and points to me. I hold my glass up and nod. He excuses himself and strolls towards the bar.

There’s a slight touch on my elbow. “Hello, dear.”

I draw my attention to the old lady standing next to me—Geillis’ great aunt Frances. I’ve met her on a couple of occasions before and have always enjoyed her company. She’s a straight talker and makes no bones about it. “When ye get tae my age,” I remember her commenting to me “ye dinna have time tae beat about the bush, ye need tae say what ye think.” I like that in a person.

“Hello, how nice to see you.”

“Ye too,dear. I must say ye’re looking awfa bonnie in that dress. It’s a fine colour on ye.”

“Thank you. And you’re looking lovely yourself.”

Frances makes a self deprecating ‘hmph’ sound, dismissing my compliment with a wave of her hand. “Away wi’ ye. Ye do yer best wi’ what ye’ve still got. Which isna much in ma case.”

I shake my head. “Not at—“

But she decides to change the subject and moves on with her next question. “Is that yer young man over there?” She points at Jamie, heading towards us with two glasses of champagne. “He’s a handsome chap, is he no’? Mind ye, that’s no more than ye deserve. Sae, mebbe ye’ll be next?”

“No, we—“

I have no chance to say anything more, before Jamie is by my side and handing me one of the glasses. I take a sip as he notices that Frances has no drink and, without hesitation, he passes the second glass to her.

“Aren’t ye kind… er?” She accepts gratefully.

“Jamie.”

“Weel, Jamie, let me tell ye. It’s been a long while since a good looking young man has brought me a drink. I should make the most of it. Anyway, I was jes’ saying tae our Claire here, how bonnie she looks today. Does she no’?”

She fixes her gaze on Jamie, demanding an answer.

“Aye, she looks lovely.” His eyes meet mine for a second, before I look away and try to change the subject.

“Don’t you think Geillis looks beautiful, Frances?”

But, it seems that Frances has one line of conversation that she is keen to pursue. “Oh aye, she does. But, Jamie, I was jes’ saying tae Claire that mebbe she’ll be next. What d’ye think?”

Fortunately, I’m spared any response as a gong sounds and the maître d’ announces that dinner is served and that everyone should make their way inside to the dining room.

****************

Having narrowly avoided any embarrassment, I am somewhat apprehensive to see Frances at our table. Fortunately, Geillis’ cousin and baby are enough to divert her attention away from any matrimonial prospects that may or may not be on my horizon.

With Jamie sitting by my side, I catch him up on all the behind the scenes activity of my day and we fall into our pattern of easy conversation and gentle banter. From time to time, I can see Frances, opposite, watching us with a look of approval on her face, but she says nothing.

Once the speeches and toasts are over, there’s a palpable change in the guests. Jackets are draped over chair backs, sleeves rolled up and waistcoat buttons undone. I can spot more than one woman moving awkwardly in her chair, struggling to locate the shoes that were eased off out of sight under the table. Cheeks become flushed with an abundance of rich food and tongues become looser with a surfeit of fine wine.

I sip my whisky, savouring its peaty smokiness. Jamie is in a serious rugby related conversation with his neighbour. A rustle of fabric behind me announces the arrival of the bride, a look of frustration on her face.

She greets the table politely before whispering “Can I borrow ye, Claire?”

I make my excuses and follow her into a quieter room.

“What’s up, Geillis? Is everything alright?” I’m concerned that there’s something genuinely wrong.

“It’s his bloody family,” she hisses. “The Mackenzies, if ye give them an inch, they’ll take a fuckin’ mile.”

She takes a deep breath and continues. “Dougal invited his second cousin Gary and his wife tae our evening do. Jes’ the two of them mind. Sae they turn up an hour and a half early and try tae cadge dessert and brandies from the waiters.”

“Where are they now?”

“Och, they’re sitting outside wi’ a couple of spare bottles of wine.” She gestures angrily to the gardens visible through the window. “And they’ll be first in the queue fer the buffet this evening, nae doubt. And what's more, they took it upon themselves tae bring their three bairns too. Weel, I say bairns, but they’re all in their twenties so it’s no’ as if they dinna have a babysitter.”

She finally sits down and lets her shoulders relax.

I take her hand and try to look serious. If this is the worst thing that happens today, that’s not so bad. Although clearly, in Geillis’ eyes, this is a catastrophe. “It’s not going to spoil anything really is it? They didn’t gatecrash the meal or the speeches,” I speak in a soothing tone. “Are you ok now?”

She nods. “Happen ye’re right. I jes’ wanted tae get it off ma chest. And I kent what I was getting in tae wi’ his family. But tae drag Gregory, Alicia and Laoghaire uninvited wi’ them jes’ pisses me off.”

I stare at her. “Laoghaire? Laoghaire Mackenzie?”

“Aye, that’s right. Unusual name, is it no’? Ye dinna find many of them around—thank god.”

[mampysou]

Day 6 of Harringrove April. And a bit more fluff for you.

Also on AO3

Star gazing.

Steve walks into the mostly deserted lot as the last but one car pulls out of it. All of him wishes they didn’t have to sneak around like they do but living in small town Hawkins and dating a boy who you hated 6 months ago does not make for happy campers. He cringes when he thinks what he called Jonathan in the not so distant past and he knows Billy still answers with fists, if anyone implies he is anything but a total womaniser.

It’s tricky to say the least. He parks two streets over outside the closed stores and walks over to Billy. It’s always in the direction of the shop that’s open late, so if stopped or spotted he’s just heading for cigarettes. Steve would do it every night if they could, but Billy is bound by a strict curfew and an even stricter father.

Nights like this, where they can meet late, are few and far between. Billy’s father, Steve had been corrected one night, ‘He’s not my dad Harrington. Those are nice to their kids’, is away for the weekend. Max’s mom is out till late having drinks with the girls and would be a little worse for wear on her arrival home, therefore not caring if Billy is home or not. And Max is round at Mike’s, for DnD night. Something Steve knows will last till the small hours of the morning. Steve’s own parents are away on business somewhere and wouldn’t really care what he was up to if they were hone anyway. So, they were safe – probably. As long as they are discreet and kept to themselves, no one will bother them.

Steve ambles up to the dark blue Camero and taps on the window. Billy pops the locks and watches him as he climbs in.

Billy is in reverse and moving before Steve even has the door fully closed, the first time it happened he complained, but he gets it now. Billy doesn’t want to waste this time sitting and waiting. He would never say that to Steve but he feels it every time they get to where they are going and Billy hauls him in close. His hand demanding and his mouth claiming.

Steve never knows where they are headed. He sits and waits, watching Billy drive, cigarette hanging from his fingers out of the open window and hair bouncing as his nods his head to the beat of whatever is screaming out of his stereo.

Tonight, he drives them to a abandoned house with a large drive and scary looking woodland behind it. It’s just starting to get dark and he can’t see a light for miles. The sky is clear and a chill is starting to creep over him. He pulls his jacket close to him and climbs out. Billy grabs the tatty blanket and the six pack from his trunk and stalks off leaving Steve to catch up.

Some days Steve always feels like he is one step behind Billy always chasing him. He feels though he has to figure out the truth behind all his words because he can never say what he means, unless it’s cutting them there is no problem. He reads too much into every kiss and every touch, every twitch on his lips away from his usual smirk.

Steve promised himself he wouldn’t do this tonight. He is just going to enjoy Billy’s company, talk, drink and make out, hopefully. He is now even further behind the retreating back of the blond

As he scurries to catch up, he listens to the sounds around him. The woods rustle and the trees creak, the breeze smells like pine and he breathes it in. It calms his nerves as he falls in step with Billy.

“Where are we going Billy?” Steve asks, trying to see any sort of landmark ahead of him.

“Just up the hill Steve.” He says pointing to a small hill rising just ahead of them. Steve just hums in agreement.

The trek up the hill is short and quick and there is a nice plateau at the top. Billy lays out the blanket and flops down on it, popping out two cans and holding one out for Steve. He sits down more gently and plucks his can out of Billy’s waiting fingers. The sun is dipping below the horizon sky awash with oranges and purples and Steve stares at it. It’s so beautiful.

The sky darkens to a deep blue, suddenly filled with stars. It’s like someone flipped a switch and they blinked into life in the sky above him. The moon looks huge and so bright they wouldn’t need a torch to see when they head back to the car. Billy is silent next to him apart from the occasional pull he takes from his beer.

Steve spots some shapes he recognises but can’t remember their names. The three stars in a line with some coming off its side. The one that looks like a saucepan. He also sees the only one that he remembers the name to, the North Star. Brightest in the sky always showing you where you are. A point to make sure you are never lost.

Steve thinks that’s how Billy has become in his life. Always catching his eye, an immovable point that Steve can’t ignore. Always there making sure he doesn’t lose his way. No matter how little time the send together, he always seems to be there when he needs, a fleeting touch her, a reassuring smile just for him there, or a stolen kiss when they can capture a moment alone.

He stares down at Billy to his right, but finds him, not looking up at the sky, at the beauty it holds, but right at him. He felt his cheeks darken with the heat of a blush.

“What you looking at Billy? The stars are beautiful.” He asks gently.

“Why would I look at those balls of fire when I could look at you?” he asks quietly.

Steve’s smiles at him, and falls back to lie next to him, deciding staring back at Billy is just what he wants to do.

-

Hope you like it.

[ultraviolentdread]

Hey there!! If you aren't busy could I get some headcanons for slashera of your choice with a transman s/o who's clumsy as all hell, randomly quotes memes, probably doesn't sleep and has really bad eyesight?

Anon your mind,,,,,,,,,,,,I relate heavily to that description actually aggagsgsgsgssgsgsg

(Also Billy is written as trans here so just skip him along if that isn't your cup of tea)

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

Brahms Heelshire

• He isn't all that informed about being trans so honestly you would likely have to inform him past the basic "it's a thing that exists" knowledge he does possess

• He wouldn't ever hold you it against you, you're a man regardless, and also his nanny and lover which is much more important to him than whatever you identify as or whatever is in your pants

• This man has been sheltered and living inside of the mansion walls for so long, so any and all memes fly over his head

• Quote any meme and he'll just tilt his head at you in utter confusion

• He would be a little shit to you whenever you trip and don't be surprised if he makes you trip on occasion

• Similarly, he will steal and hide your glasses or contacts because seeing you fumble around helplessly brings him endless joy

• Thankfully, these can both easily be remedied by simply ignoring him, however, he craves attention much more than he does mischief

• He also would have you go to sleep with him, pulling you into his bed whenever you tuck him in for bed

• He has a vice grip as well so retreating to your own room to try to go to sleep in your own bed isn't even an option

• Have fun falling asleep with this brat

Leslie Vernon

• Honestly? Probably your best bet when it comes to quoting memes and it being recognised

• Like he would definitely finish vine quotes, change my mind

• Your eyesight actually made him consider making you one of his victims initially, seeing how it makes you an easier target

• But it did remind him slightly of his mentor, so luckily for you, he pushed that thought aside

• This guy doesn't get a lot of sleep either because he's busy planning and setting up everything

• But he would pull you along and force you to go to sleep whenever he seems it time to get some shut eye

• He doesn't have many opinions on you being trans, you're still a man and he still loves you

• Don't be surprised if he makes comparisons between you two and Eugene and his wife, he means well by them because he greatly admires their relationship

• However, your clumsiness concerns him greatly

• He doesn't want you to accidentally set off any of the traps he's laid and fuck up all of his plans

• So don't feel offended if he makes you stay at home, he means no harm, he just can't have you fucking up his life's work that he's been slaving over

Vincent Sinclair

• This man doesn't have the best vision either, having only one functional eye himself

• He definitely would try to assist you if you're having trouble navigating around due to having misplaced your glasses (or contacts)

• He would also fret over your clumsiness, partly because he's worried about you getting hurt but also because you might destroy his works

• It's absolutely a mix of the two

• If you do get hurt however, you're in luck because this boy knows first aid and can patch you up

• He would try to help remind you to take off your binder if it's getting close to being too long, if you bind

• He sees you as a work of art and doesn't want you to damage yourself

• While he doesn't usually keep up with memes (because he didn't really see a point), so any you reference will fly past him, he does have some surreal and often times grim jokes of his own

• Prepare to get caught off guard if you ever get to hear him joke around because he will say things in the most serious voice to increase the effect

• Please teach him some more memes and jokes so he can use them against Bo

• He also doesn't sleep, frequently staying up for hours on end working on his wax creations

• On the rare occasions where he is going to sleep, he will do his best to help you fall asleep because he knows first hand how hard it can be

Bo Sinclair

• Similarly to his twin, you being trans doesn't bother him at all

• He is attracted to you regardless

• Actually your clumsiness would irritate him more because of the gas station

• Honestly, just stay out of the gas station for your own good because you will get hurt if you fall in there because car parts do not feel good to fall on

• He keeps up with memes more than Vincent, but he will get incredibly aggravated if you pull any "updog" jokes on him

• The punchline is obvious to him and falling for them makes him feel extremely foolish

• His anger is just how he expresses any of his negative emotions, it's a reflex and he does feel guilty if/when he lashes out at you for a joke

• Like your clumsiness, he would try to keep you out of the gas station if you misplace your glasses or contacts, instead advising that you just stay back at the house

• You can hang out with Lester if he's there while the twins are off doing their respective things during the day

• Like Brahms, try not going to sleep with this man around because he actually probably sleeps the best out of the three Sinclair brothers

• Bo will drag you along to bed with him and just try to hold you as the two of you fall asleep, but it proves tricker than that then he'll give you a warm drink to help tire you out

Billy Lenz

• You two are truly kindred spirits in a sense honestly

• He doesn't ever sleep and the only sleep he gets is from passing out at random from pure exhaustion

• So he would be there to keep you company when you can't fall asleep, even if his idea of keeping you company is pressing your buttons and making spouting vulgarities

• You would have to be the one to remind him to take his binder off, he is notoriously bad about wearing it for way too long

• Literally it's a miracle this man hasn't totally destroyed his ribs (bind safely folks)

• Also poor vision? Same boat

• He refuses to wear glasses or contacts and would tease you for wearing any sort of visual aid

• He would also constantly be in your personal space, just to try and see you better

• He also would mock you for your clumsiness, burst out into cruel laugh at you when you trip and fall

• Only to do the same thing seconds later

• When it comes to quoting memes, it can be hit or miss with Billy

• Sometimes he'll recognise it and other times he'll be confused and not let you see his confusion

• However, if you pull any sort of "ligma" jokes on him, he will be furious when he falls for it

• On the other hand, he has absolutely no problem pulling them on you and gets a kick out of it when you fall for them

[pluviophile-bookworm]

Thoughts/ reaction to AWAE 3x6

That opening scene of the preparations for the county fair makes me nostalgic for some reason. Also, I need this background music in my life. I love AWAE's cold opens.

And... we're off to a bad start. I have a terrible cold and so does Anne. I know exactly how that feels. And to have something important coming up as well... Poor Anne.

Matthew and his radish are the expected golden content of this episode and I'm all in for it.

If this episode consisted of nothing but the colourful everyday life at the Cuthbert household, I would still love it as much as any other episode. Maybe even more than some.

Gilbert is making me laugh. How is a white shirt key in making a good impression to anyone? If anything, I wouldn't seek the approval of people whose opinion of me depends on a white shirt. And what does he need Winifred's parents' approval for? Is he marrying her now? As far as I can remember, he wanted to marry Anne last week. Seriously, Blythe, make up your mind!

"Not thinking that far ahead", my butt! Last week, as far as I remember, you were thinking that far ahead. With Anne in mind.

And there goes our dashing young hero... Who can't figure out whom he likes. Seriously, I want to like Gilbert because I love Gilbert, but he's not making it very easy for me.

Anne is the classical Smitten Teenage Girl™ in this scene.

"Special occasion? - No, not really." Yeah, right, that's why you tried on every single one of your virtually identical white shirts a scene ago. But we wouldn't want Anne's family to think you're dressing up for another girl, would we now?

What is Anne sneaking out for? Since when does she need to sneak out to visit Diana? She's not Jerry.

Diana knows things about Gilbert's subconscious that he's hidden away so carefully that he doesn't even remember they're there: "Maybe it was an excuse... To see you."

Minnie May makes such a good Diana impression... Am I a bad person for thinking that maybe she could be the kind of daughter her mother wants, while Diana embraces her happiness with Jerry?

Look at Anne almost quoting the source material... and I think the comparison with Elizabeth and Darcy is quite accurate, at least on account of my reactions to both couples. I mean, you have two individuals who are very obviously made for each other but will go out of their way to convince everyone, including and especially themselves, that they’re not. Also, Anne reminds me so much of Elizabeth Bennet, AWAE Anne in particular. And of course, this line means that all the visual parallels were on purpose! Poetic cinema is coming full circle by acknowledging itself.

Ok, but Minnie May is such a typical little sister. I love her so much. But why won’t Diana tell Anne about Jerry?

Gilbert is dressing up for Winifred. Meanwhile, Matthew is dressing up for his radish. Spirit animal material much?

And all of a sudden Anne is the typical Smitten Teenage Girl with all the associated behaviours: awkwardness, embarrassment, noticing weird details about the object of her affections (the chin comment, anyone?), and now “he loves me, he loves me not”. Come on, girl, you’re different. You’re better than that. But, of course, the ways of love are mysterious. 

The baby horse is still the cutest thing in the world. Along with baby Delly, of course.

And now Anne even has her hair done in the very same style as all the other girls. At least that was different before. I mean, I love the look on her, she’s as beautiful as ever, but I’m getting the rather unpleasant idea that she’s losing her uniqueness and it’s all because of Gilbert; and based on what we saw of him in this episode so far, he’s not worth it.

On the other hand, the books had her become more... conventional, or at least conventional-presenting, by the time she turned 16, so that might count as source material accuracy.

The fortune teller cracks me up. Cigarette smoke in an orb? Really? Also, Anne totally said what I was thinking: “I think I learned more from the daisy”...

“Does my hair look more auburn?” That’s Book Anne right there.

The background music... you can tell by it that the Baynards just entered the scene... also, Derry. Derry! Oh my goodness gracious, DERRY!!!

I love the subtlety of their exchange about the book and the handkerchief. They’re doing this secret romance thing very well.

Ok, a second ago everything was so beautiful and hopeful, and then... first, Diana notices Gilbert before Anne does - and in quite an unpleasant position. And then Diana’s mother goes on about “extricating” themselves from the Baynards... poor Derry. Especially poor Diana. I just wish all this classist behaviour would go to... Hartford, Hereford and Hampshire (bonus points to all those of you who get the reference, and to me for referencing a work about classism in relation to classist behaviours).

Miss Stacy is the epitome of feminism in this scene - wearing trousers and giving all the men a run for their money at shooting. Go, Muriel!

As much as I dislike Rachel Lynde’s general behaviour, the relationship she has with her husband just has to be admired. Maybe she just wants Muriel to have what she has, and she’s failing to see that maybe not everybody needs or wants the same things.

And... Billy’s back. I remember saying back when I was watching 3x1 that if i never saw him again, it would still be too soon. I don’t mean to spread hate, but I’m sick and tired of his sexism and racism and homophobia and toxic masculinity. But well. To each their own.

I love that Prissy is back as well. She made the right decision about herself when we last saw her, and she doesn’t seem to have taken a single step back. In fact, she appears to have moved forward since we last saw her. Good on you, Prissy! But now Josie seems to be headed down a similar rather toxic road to the one that Prissy barely escaped - and with Prissy’s own brother, too. I hope it all works out well.

This is the moment I realise how unfortunate it is that Prissy and Josie aren’t very close. If they were Prissy might have warned her against some signs of toxic behaviour that she herself didn’t recognise back then...

Of course, Billy. Of course the game is “rigged”. But not for Jerry, it seems. In your face, Andrews!

I. Am. Dying! I just want to shout “Derry!” from the rooftops. 

The little dog matches her gloves, you guys! Also, every time Diana says “Merci, Jerry!”, I just melt into a big puddle of fangirl. 

The county fair is treating my boy Jerry really well, I must say.

Can we talk about Diana’s boldness, though? She’s really living life to the fullest, if only in secret. I hope my daring girl is free to pursue her happiness one day. And that day better be soon.

This conversation must be so uncomfortable for Gilbert. And he’s putting himself through it for a girl that isn’t even meant for him. He knows it, no matter what he tells himself or everyone else. 

I just pictured Matthew saying to Gilbert “What are your intentions towards my Anne?”, and now my heart is breaking at the thought that he might never get to say it.

I am totally with Anne on this one, but you have to admit that the fortune teller was right about one thing at least - “The universe works in mysterious ways.” As frustrating as this episode is Shirbert-wise, I stand by my ship and I hope they will both come to their senses soon enough. We wanted angst, didn’t we? We wanted pining and obstacles and a realistic development - well, there it is. Why are we frustrated about it? This stage is not final.

“That boy is not your fish.” No, but he is her lobster. Gosh, I’m full of references today. 

“Classmate and family friend.” Oh please. I can’t believe I’m saying it, but I like Winifred better than Gilbert in this scene: “Do you spell it with or without an E?” I really wish Gilbert wasn’t in the picture right now because if it weren’t for his role in each of their lives, Anne and Winifred might just be friends. 

This was awkward. Really awkward. Gilbert didn’t hesitate for a second when he introduced Anne as his classmate, but now he’s stumbling over what label he should put on his relationship with Winifred. If I were to put it for him, it would be “friend”, maybe even “mentor”, but who knows what he or Anne are thinking during that long pause. 

The tension, the suspense... is this MasterChef? Last I checked it was not.

Ok, but Anne in this episode is so much like Book Anne, at least as far as I can remember. It’s been a while since I last read the books. Gilbert is as far removed from his book counterpart as can be, though, and I don’t like it. 

Most unusual? What is that supposed to mean? Also, I agree with Anne about entering herself, but maybe not with the connotations of “unusual” she’s thinking about now. She’s all kinds of wonderfully extraordinary, I mean. I hope she never forgets that.

Oh, look, she came to that realisation. I love that; and Marilla is such a mood on the balloon. But seriously, I'm delighted to  see Anne coming back to her old self. 

Is that Gilbert dancing between Anne and Winifred? Poetic cinema.

Ruby and Moody? I ship it! They are both absolute cinnamon rolls and deserve each other so much!

“Pretty face”? Is that all she is to you? Whoa, things took a turn for the darker pretty quickly. 

“I want your pretty face”... and I want you locked up. At the very least. He had no right to do that to her!

Ok, I know we’re in the middle of one of the darkest moments this series has shown us so far, but we need to talk about Ruby being oh so excited about Moody writing a song for her and the prospect of becoming Ruby Spurgeon. Wow, she moves fast! She deserves all the happiness in the world and I’m so happy she’s finally being noticed by someone... someone who is really right for her and will make her happy. #Rudy #Mooby #Spurgillis ?? Somebody please come up with a good ship name for them.

Now Anne is considering Charlie? “Sloane? Sounds like “moan”, “tone”... I guess Gilbert deserved that with today’s behaviour, though.

Miss Stacy asking Matthew to dance just to “drive Rachel mad”... I love it.

Could that be Diana and Jerry holding hands in plain sight in the dance? Could it be? Am I dreaming? Pinch me. Or better don’t. I never want this to end.

Good thing news travels fast so Anne could hear about Josie. Otherwise no one might have ever found out. Victims rarely ever tell and that’s a big mistake. 

I so wished Anne would punch Billy in the face Hermione-style, though. The vibes she was giving off suggested she might do it, and yet she didn’t. 

The next day at school, Anne is just... completely savage in the best way of saying it. “Need to catch a train to Charlottetown?” She has no time to waste worrying about Gilbert now, she has an important cause. I love it. Too bad nobody is listening to her, though. This is too much like reality. When the activist talks about the real issues and tries to find a solution, people just change the subject and talk about insignificant petty problems instead. And the worst part is that this isn’t just in that time and place - it happens today, it happens everywhere. People still haven’t learned not to cover their eyes when a real problem arises. This has to change.

To sum up today’s episode: the county fair pulls people back into their everyday work while also sparking the fire of youthful courtship among them; Gilbert is not Gilbert; Anne is Book Anne; Shirbert takes a giant step backwards; Jerry takes  a cautious little step forward, Diana leaps into the unknown with open arms; Matthew’s radish and Anne’s person are most unusual in the best way possible; the Andrews family has some achievements and some issues; Miss Stacy is a feminist icon; Ruby and Moody are very much a thing; Anne is now an ignored activist.

[generallynerdy]

Still Himself Part 2 (Alex Summers X Reader)

Part 1

Summary: He was 15 when he went to prison, where he awaited her letters every week. He was 21 when he saw her again, but he couldn’t be sure if he was still the person she knew.

Key: (Y/N) - your name, (Y/N/N) - your nickname, (L/N) - last name

Warnings: nova makes up timelines because the movies are vague :), prison, some angst, some violence, mentions of war

Word Count: Part 1 - 925, Part 2 - 1,489, Part 3 - 1,788

Note: totally forgot to queue this like two days ago

He was 21 when the door opened on a Tuesday-- or maybe a Wednesday-- and it wasn’t a guard with an armful of letters. It was two men with shining badges, ones that made him uneasy.

“What does the government want with a guy like Alex Summers?”

He wondered that, too. He would have rather stayed in his cell, with his letter. But a voice echoed in his head, a strong one he didn’t recognise.

We’re getting you out of here, Alex, the voice said, sending him back to the days of a trembling 15-year-old. Of course, we could use your help with something.

He wanted to say no. He wanted to run out of there and back home, back to her. He wanted to hear her voice again and his own, but something on the way out stopped him. He was steps away from the door, from fresh air. They wanted to take him somewhere so that he could help them, but he didn’t have to. He could say no. He could walk away from them and back to his front door-- back to her front door.

“Found this on the way in.” The taller of the two men gave a devilish smile, one that he didn't trust. He didn't trust it until the man passed him a sealed letter. “Has your name on it.”

He held the letter in his hands with wide eyes, stopping in the hallway before the men took him out. The guards around glanced at each other, but mostly ignored him. They had done that for 6 years, ignoring his requests to write back. As he flipped the letter over to see his name written in her messy handwriting, he looked back up at the two men.

“It’s not open.” He raised an eyebrow suspiciously.

They glanced at each other. The one who handed it to him, the taller one, tilted his head. “Is it usually?”

He didn't have to answer that. They knew the answer. The guards screened every letter, ripping it open and carelessly reading its contents. It left Alex seething.

But this time, the letter was all his. Her voice and her words were for him, only for him. It wasn’t your fault, he told himself mentally. This time, she was speaking only to him, not the guards reading the contents aloud and wondering how such a perfect human being could care about someone like Alex Summers. It wasn’t for the guards who looked at him oddly whenever he asked for his letter like he was excited about it. After a few years, he had just stopped asking. Then, they stopped looking at him like that, like he didn’t deserve those letters.

He was too busy opening his letter to take in his first breath of fresh air in years. Opening the seal for himself was more refreshing than the oxygen constantly moving in and out of his lungs. Breathing was normal, but having her letters to himself like this was not. The two men, who he now knew were Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr, waited for him to open it, watching with curiosity.

Dear Alex,

He felt like his name was his own again. He felt like he was truly himself. He was Alex and these were his letters, nobody else’s.

Dear Alex,

I almost missed the mailman for my last letter. I was terrified you wouldn’t get it until today instead of last week. I think that would’ve been my first late letter ever, in 6 years. It’s been 6 years, Al. You’re still alive, even if it doesn’t feel like it. You’re still alive, okay? And you’re gonna stay alive until I can come get you.

I’m starting my third year of college soon. That Criminal Justice degree is so close, I can taste it. I’m gonna get you out of there, I promise.

I know it must be rough in there. I know you’re probably not the same person you used to be, when you were 15. But I also know some part of you is still there and I hope it’s the part that still cares about these letters.

There was a faded word behind ‘these letters’ that Alex couldn’t make out. She had erased something, but he didn’t dwell on it too much. It was probably just a little mistake.

Your mom didn’t want me to talk to you about this, but I think you deserve to know. She and Dad--

She had always known Mr. Summers as Dad, since, between the two of them, he was the only father figure around. With their moms, it was a little bit more difficult, but she usually just called both of them mom, whichever one was around.

She and Dad are talking about having another kid. I think it’s a great idea, you know. Imagine Alex Summers having a punk little brother or sister. You would be a great brother. I’m trying to get them to hold off trying until I get my degree and a job, so that I’ll get you out just in time to meet the little stinker. I don’t want you to miss that-- and you won’t!

They’re talking about names already. If it’s a girl, they wanna name it after my mom. I think she burst into tears when they told her. They were really cheesy about the whole thing.

It was hard without you there. It didn’t feel right, but I guess it hasn’t for a while now. Annnd now you’re worrying about me.

Shit. She knew him too well.

Don’t, Alex. I’m okay, really. As soon as I get you out of that hellhole, I’ll be even better. As soon as we all get to be together again, I’ll be happy.

I’ve gotta go. Billy from down the street is at the door again. He’s been here nearly every week since they took you and I’m getting real sick of it. It’s like he thinks we’re friends or something. Your mom said she overheard him saying he was gonna ask me out, but ew. No thanks. A) Gross. B) Too busy with college for that, thanks.

I’ll write to you next week, okay? I love you, Alex. Stay safe in there.

~(Y/N).

Alex chuckled to himself before looking up and realising the two men were still watching. He cleared his throat and folded the letter up, shuffling awkwardly.

“Right,” Charles picked up the conversation, “Time to go.”

“Could we, uh, could we stop somewhere first?” Alex interrupted, meeting their gaze firmly.

Charles glanced at Erik for thoughts, but he shrugged. “I don’t see why not.”

He couldn’t breathe, standing outside her door. He stood there for a good five minutes, itching to ring the doorbell and glancing at his own house in terror. He should have gone over there first, but he was worried his parents would scream and bring her there. Even worse, maybe she was already over there.

He knew the men in the car weren’t expecting him to sprint back and ask for a piece of paper. Luckily, they had one and a pen. He scrawled out a letter onto it as best he could and folded it up, writing her name on the back of it. Running out of the car again, it was in her mailbox and he was back in the vehicle before Charles or Erik could ask what he was doing. He was out of breath, so they kindly waited till he was alright again before asking him anything.

“You’re...not going to knock?”

“We’re doing something stupidly dangerous, right?” He asked, raising his eyebrows. When Charles nodded slowly, he shrugged. “Better to deal with that if I live.”

The older man opened his mouth to ask again, but was shushed by Erik, who gestured to her house. The door swung open and Alex sank back into his chair, watching as she crossed the front lawn. When she opened the mailbox, she tilted her head in that adorable, confused way that he recognised. She had grown so much since Alex last saw her. It was almost unbelievable.

Opening the letter, she instantly gasped and brought a hand to her mouth. Tears came to her eyes as she looked around. She looked like she could collapse on herself out of happiness-- at least, that’s what Alex hoped it was. When she didn’t catch a glimpse of Alex anywhere, seeing as he ducked below the windows the second she looked in their direction, she slammed the mailbox shut and started toward his parents’ house at a brisk pace. He smiled to himself. Of course, she would go there first. She knew they needed to hear that he was okay.

He crossed his fingers as she disappeared, hoping silently to himself that he would be back in that place in a few weeks. Next time, she would be holding him instead of a letter.

Masterlist

[palmettoes]

Aaron/Katelyn 61

(hehe this has only been sitting in my inbox for uhh 6 months i am so sorry! anyway !!!! never written aaron/katelyn before !!! also haven’t written m/f fanfiction since i was 13 but i love these kids thanks for giving me a reason to make up katelyn’s whole backstory)

disclaimer: if ur pro inc*st u are legally not allowed to touch anything i write

read it on ao3! | prompts are closed :(

61. “I told you not to fall in love with me.”

Katelyn, eight years old, loses her mother to white lights and hospital beds. It’s preventable, low mortality rate, chance of survival looks hopeful. Katelyn knows this because she looks it up on her dad’s old box computer when he’s working late one night, her older brother playing outdated records too loudly to notice her disappearing into their father’s private study. Katelyn knows this because the doctors tell her so—not in so many words, because she’s eight, but enough that she knows they are optimistic about the results.

Katelyn, eight years old, wonders why doctors can juggle something so fragile as a life playfully among them and lie through their teeth when they catch the corner of an eye.

Katelyn, eighteen years old, is determined not to be like other doctors. Getting into biochemistry at university feels like winning the sprint but losing the marathon. Her professors crack down on the workload immediately, adamant that medicine is not for those who do not want to be there. And Katelyn wants to be there, maybe more than anyone else, but life has already dealt her so much weight and Katelyn is fast running out of strength to lift these stooped shoulders.

She tries out for the Vixens, Palmetto’s cheerleading team, mostly because her roommate, Marissa, waxes poetic about the nights she’ll spend huddled between football players in one of the downtown bars, and Katelyn figures she could do with the extracurricular.

(The exy team does not factor into her decision, but gossip travels far and fast and the idea of standing in close quarters to them puts her on edge for reasons that can only be explained through hollow whispers and stolen glances behind their backs.)

The Vixens are a rough and tumble team, from the figure eight pattern of cigarette burns on Marissa’s forearm, to the handful of Zoloft Anaïs throws up in her dorm toilet during Freshers’ Week, to the way Billie sleeps with their chin tucked over their shoulder so they can watch their own back. Katelyn is just scraping this side of nineteen, knows the weight of Prozac on her tongue better than that of a meal, and cannot remember the last time her father looked at her without looking right through her. Inexorably, Palmetto State University feels like home.

“How about that backliner though? He’s a tall, dark stranger I’d welcome into my crystal ball,” Marissa says, shaking her pom pom in Anaïs’ face as they stumble towards the bus the night after Palmetto’s first exy game of the season. Anaïs bats Marissa’s arm away, switching her duffel to her other shoulder to put an extra distance between them.

“Didn’t notice. It’s their offensive dealer that I was paying attention to.”

“Their captain.” (It sounds like an innuendo but almost everything does coming out of Marissa’s mouth.) “Anyway, I heard from Mick on the football team that Ainsley told Prati that Mia sits with two of the exy players at lunch on Tuesdays and apparently Mr Tall and Dark is hitting it with the captain. Isn’t that a sandwich you’d love to get between?”

“Not particularly.”

“Boo, you whore.”

Marissa shakes her pom pom again and Anaïs’ shove gains force.

“Don’t boo me because I’m gay.”

Billie taps Katelyn’s elbow and rolls their eyes at the other two, sweeping an arm out to offer Katelyn to climb ahead of them onto the bus. Katelyn hitches her duffel a little higher and climbs the steps. Anaïs likes the seat over the wheel so Katelyn chooses the row in front, tucking her bag under her seat so Billie can settle next to her. Anaïs and Marissa scramble in behind them, still bickering over the attraction of various exy players. Katelyn glances out the window and catches sight of an orange and white gaggle making their way to the other PSU bus parked outside Breckenridge stadium. Mr Tall and Dark backliner is holding hands with the captain but chatting to a lanky boy with a frown too many shades short of pleasant. Most of the Foxes move as a unit, a crowd collected behind their coach, but several steps and a whole chasm behind them trails the remainder of the team.

Katelyn recognises assistant coach Kevin Day because, as strong as her distaste for the sport, she grew up this side of the turn of the century. She doesn’t think she could miss Kevin Day if she tried. He is flanked by two identical blond men and an emphatic, dark-skinned man a head or so above the other two. Katelyn had watched one of the twins block the goal all night with a ferocity like he was exercising a personal vendetta against the ball, seen the other punch an opposing striker square in the jaw seemingly unprovoked. She shudders, remembering the rumours she’d heard whispered about the exy team and, for the first time, believing them. She turns away from the window and bumps Billie’s shoulder with her own, pushing blond hair and murderous glares from her mind.

*

The thing is, Katelyn has no reason to engage with the exy team. She cheers at their games and catches glimpses of them between stadium and parking lot, but she doesn’t learn their names or dance with them at college parties the way she does with the football team.

The thing is, Katelyn’s hands are full enough already. She is unofficially deemed in charge of the first year Vixens—some combination of the fact that Marissa listens when Katelyn tells her to shut up, and Anaïs trusts her enough to press a pill bottle into her hand after her second overdose in as many weeks, and Billie talks to her more than anyone because Katelyn is the only one who speaks ASL. Katelyn finds she doesn’t mind it. The constant demand for attention makes a welcome difference to the stony silence of her family home. With homework, cheerleading, and three new best friends keeping her busy, Katelyn barely has time to dwell on the hollow feeling that has been cutting her chest open for the past decade.

The thing is, the short blond boy from the exy team is hard to miss. (Well, one of them is anyway.) Katelyn figures out he’s the backliner, the one she saw punching that striker from Breckenridge, and not the one that sticks to Kevin Day like glue, or a prickly burr. He crops up in her biochem lectures, at her favourite campus café, tucked behind a bookshelf at the library across from her and Billie’s usual study spot. He is always accompanied by at least one of his little posse, usually the noisy one, except during their shared lectures. Katelyn finds herself seeking him out when she enters the room and, more often than not, she catches him blinking back at her.

They’re two thirds through their first quarter by the time she learns his name. He stops by her desk on the way out of the lecture hall, causing her notebook to slip out of her hand in surprise. He kneels to pick it up for her and doesn’t smile, but there’s a friendliness to his eyes that Katelyn has never seen before.

“Katelyn, right?” he asks. Katelyn has no idea how he knows this but she nods instead of questioning it. “Aaron. Did you get notes on Voltolini’s lecture this week? I missed it.”

She’s so caught out by the disruption to their routine, by the brittle edge to his voice that she hadn’t expected, by the abrupt introduction to the quarter-long suspense of wondering his name, that she almost forgets to answer. When she realises she’s been staring at him for coming on ten seconds, she shakes it out of her system and finishes zipping up her backpack.

“Oh. Yeah, did you want to borrow them? Or,” she swings the strap of her backpack over her shoulder and steps towards the door, Aaron falling into pace beside her, “we could go over them together?”

He is quiet for a moment, as if the question requires extensive thought. Katelyn wonders briefly if she should be offended by his lack of immediate interest, but decides she finds it endearing that the authenticity of his response matters so much to him.

“At the library?” he offers. “I have a study period now.”

“Sure,” she says. She’d been headed that way to meet Billie anyway and doesn’t suppose they’ll mind the small intrusion.

“So how come you missed the lecture?” she asks when it becomes apparent their trek to the library will remain otherwise silent.

“Andrew,” Aaron says vaguely, waving his hand as though this is sufficient enough an explanation. When Katelyn doesn’t look convinced, he adds, “My brother. You’ve seen him?”

She nods, not totally understanding but realising it’s personal enough that she doesn’t want to pry.

Billie is already sitting at their table when Katelyn arrives, Aaron in tow. They have printouts of various articles spread across the desk and a focused frown on their face, but they look up when Katelyn and Aaron stop in front of them.

“Aaron, this is Billie. Billie, Aaron. From the exy team.”

Billie waves at Aaron, then pierces Katelyn with their gaze, tilting their head slightly in Aaron’s direction.

“Do you speak ASL?” Katelyn asks him as she pulls out a chair and begins unpacking her bag. Aaron settles into the seat next to her, tapping the tabletop anxiously.

“No. Was that in the lecture?”

“No, no, of course not. Don’t worry about it.” Katelyn laughs lightly and makes eye contact with Billie.

“Since when do we hang out with exy players?” they sign, eyes flicking to Aaron.

“He’s borrowing some notes. What’s wrong with being friendly?” she signs back. Billie shrugs and turns back to their articles. Katelyn flicks open her notebook and grins at Aaron.

“Let’s do this,” she says. His responding smile is small and fleeting but Katelyn catches the hard upturn of his lips and her skin tingles all over.

*

Aaron falls easily into place among Katelyn’s friends. He becomes a regular at their study sessions, reading notes over Katelyn’s shoulder or catching her eye across the table with that same smile like a secret that hurts his throat on the way up. He never brings any of his teammates, but Katelyn can’t complain. Study Aaron and Exy Aaron, she decides, are two sides of the same coin. He’s softer around her and her friends, all secret smiles and nervous tapping. She can’t imagine Study Aaron punching anyone in the face.

He spills into her other routines intrinsically. She stops making excuses to invite him out for coffee or to lunch or on a walk around the campus green when she’s feeling antsy. She struggles to remember a time when the sight of him intimidated her, when she believed the rumours turning the air sour at his heels wherever he walked.

Katie he calls her from across the hall to grab her attention, and Kate when he talks about her to her friends, and K (intimate and familiar and warm in her chest) over text. Katie-Lyn he teases when they’re alone on one of their walks and he relaxes enough that his smile stops looking like barbed wire. She laughs and elbows him and writes Double-A-Ron on the back of folded notes they pass between them during lectures.

Katelyn doesn’t engage with the exy team, but every rule has its exceptions and Aaron is hers. Brilliant, beautiful Aaron, who keeps his smiles a secret and his family a mystery and who holds her gaze across a crowded hallway like it is the most fragile of things.

They never call it dating, though Katelyn suspects that might be what it is. She hardly qualifies as an expert but the shared lunches and secret notes and blushing eye contact feel too reminiscent of her high school girlfriend to be anything else. (She asks Billie, once, if they think Aaron thinks they’re a couple and they roll their eyes and wave her off. She cannot bring herself to put up with Marissa’s crowing long enough to ask for another opinion.) So it’s hard to say where he falls in the categories of her relationships, but when she invites him out for dinner he doesn’t say no and, though she doesn’t call it a date, it doesn’t feel platonic.

They go to an Italian restaurant on campus, partly because Katelyn figures everyone likes pizza and partly because Marissa says the sundae for two is a date-saver. (Not that Katelyn likes to think their sort-of-date will need saving, but it’s always nice to be prepared.) And she’s right, because Aaron does like pizza and the sundae is delicious and the date doesn’t need saving. Until it does.

“I had to beg Nicky to cover for me tonight,” Aaron is saying, no trace of the curl Katelyn has come to search for at the corner of his lips. “He doesn’t like disrupting the balance.”

Katelyn isn’t sure she follows but she doesn’t have to ask to know the only explanation she’ll get is Andrew. His name is the answer to every question, no matter how she phrases it. His name is the flat line of Aaron’s mouth and the fierce swing of his uppercut. His name is the undeniable truth behind the rumours that tail Aaron wherever he goes.

“We can’t do this,” Aaron says and the ice cream turns to dust in Katelyn’s mouth. She thinks bitterly that at least she can prove Marissa wrong; no sundae for two is saving this date.

“Do what?” she asks and her voice is too small for her mouth. She is eight years old and Aaron is the doctor dangling hope too far out of her reach.

“You, me, us,” he says, frustrated and lonely and scared all at once. “You can’t fall in love with me.”

It aches in more ways than she could have known it would. Because how do you predict the outcome when you’re missing the beginning? How do you prepare for the fallout when you aren’t part of the equation? When you’re just collateral damage?

“Says who?” Katelyn asks, and then, “Andrew” in unison with Aaron because, of course. Because, who else?

Aaron’s cheek dimples between his teeth and he lets his spoon clang against the rim of their shared bowl. Katelyn pushes hers through the half-melted ice cream, appetite fast disappearing. She wants to demand answers or argue the absurdity of their situation or maybe just cry. Instead, she folds.

“Okay,” she says.

“Okay?”

“I get it. It’s okay.”

She doesn’t get it, but Aaron looks at her like she’s handing him the moon so she breathes through her nose, counts to five, and offers him a shaky smile. Moulding herself into the shapes other people need her to be is Katelyn’s specialty. She grew up a chameleon in order to survive. This is no different to her father looking at her like he needed a clinically detached housemaid more than he needed a daughter mourning the loss of her mother.

“Ready to call it a night?” she says, because there is something irreparable in the air between them.

“I’ll walk you back,” Aaron agrees.

They say goodnight outside Katelyn’s dorm building, but what they mean is goodbye. What they mean is this is it. What they mean is we had a good thing and neither of us are good enough people to deserve that.

Katelyn, nineteen-and-three-quarter years old, watches hope shatter in all too familiar shards.

*

They never called it dating, so they don’t call it a break up, but that’s what it feels like. It is broken where Katelyn can’t reach to fix it because she does not know what fractured it to begin with. There is a week between Katelyn’s return home for the holidays and her brother’s scheduled time off, during which the silence of her childhood home sits heavy on her shoulders. She passes the time under a mound of blankets, drowning out her father’s refusal to acknowledge her with television static.

When Antoni returns, so does the life slowly trickling out of the air. He wields noise like a blade to the abrasive reticence of their home, and goads Katelyn out of bed to help him make potato fritters.

“Chiquita, college has made you so mopey,” he says, watching her instead of the eggs he’s whisking. Katelyn slices onions and pretends they are the only reason her eyes sting.

“More like being in this house makes me mopey. College keeps me too busy for that.”

Antoni hums, and watches her, and whisks his eggs.

“And how is college? Top of your class yet?”

Katelyn rolls her eyes but tells him about her lectures and her friends and her cheer practice. She finishes with the onions and starts combining the second bowl of mixture while Antoni scoops the first into misshapen ovals. When the fritters are under the grill and Katelyn’s eyes have stopped stinging altogether, Antoni pours them each a glass of iced tea and leans across the kitchen island to smile at her.

“So has the little Vixen caught a Fox yet?” He pauses to consider her a moment. “Or another Vixen perhaps?”

Katelyn sucks in a breath but doesn’t answer the question, and the silence rings deafening in her ears. She tells her brother everything but she cannot tell him this. (They never called it dating. There is nothing to tell anyway.)

“Oh, Kitty-Kat. Come here,” Antoni says. He doesn’t wait for her to move, instead rounding the island to wrap his arms around her from behind. She leans her head against his bicep, turning so her face is mashed into his woolen jumper, and closes her eyes. They stay like that, his chest to her back and his chin against her crown, for as long as it takes her to stop holding air in her chest until she’s gasping and shaky. She doesn’t cry, but her throat feels raw enough that she could have.

“Ant,” Katelyn whispers, her voice shaking on the vowel, “do you think I’m broken?”

“Of course you’re not.” His arms tighten a fraction around her shoulders. “Why would you think that?”

“It feels like everything I touch shatters.”

She thinks of her mother’s life splintering to pieces in Katelyn’s eight year old hands, of her father’s voice splitting in two and washing away whenever he tried to speak to her, of Aaron’s face contorting as their date cracked and caved around them. She feels like a fractured bone, cleft down the middle, never whole as she is.

Antoni lets out a soft breath against her hair and presses a kiss to the curve of her skull.

“No, chiquita,” he says, “you’re not broken. The world is.”

*

Returning to Palmetto is easier than Katelyn expects it to be. Antoni only has three weeks leave, so Katelyn spends the last month of vacation alone with her father. She is almost ready to welcome the noise and clutter of her college dorm.

Returning to the Vixens is more of a homecoming than entering her family house. As sophomores, they’re expected to throw themselves both into their own practice and that of the freshmen, and Katelyn and Marissa’s room becomes something of a communal ground for the first and second years. Katelyn doesn’t mind so much, because it takes her thoughts off the scowl she hasn’t seen leave Aaron’s face since they returned from break.

She watches the exy team walk to and from the stadium on game nights, their divide in half somehow having become thirds, until she realises the centre group is actually a solitary affair: a dark-haired, rabbit-eyed boy curled in on himself, alone in the rift between his teammates. She focuses on him because it stops her gaze from betraying her resolve and straying to where Aaron walks several paces behind.

And it almost lasts; this painstaking stalemate, this mutual ignorance. Katelyn sits with her back to his table in the library and Aaron walks past her without pausing on the way out of their lecture theatre. It almost stops feeling like a bruise underneath her skin.

But somehow he trickles back into her life as easily as he did once before. Katelyn finds she can smile at him when they pass each other on campus and she can make eye contact when she waves his teammates onto the court during games. She remembers the way he cupped her name in the curl of his tongue as if it were reverent and fragile as glass. She remembers how he held her gaze like he was trying to keep her afloat, and how he saved his smiles to share in the privacy of her company. She remembers he did not build the wall between them, only said he wouldn’t climb it, and she can’t blame him for resting his weary hands.

So when she misses her morning lecture because Marissa woke with a bad taste in her mouth and a tremor in her hands, Katelyn catches Aaron on his way to the library, a hand in his path and a question in her eyes.

“I had to skip this morning. Do you mind sharing notes?” It’s a surrender of sorts, an end to their face-off. Aaron made the first move all those months ago, so this time Katelyn dresses in white armour and guides her pawn forward. They have come full circle.

Aaron’s smile is slow, a tentative curl that crawls quietly up his face, and Katelyn realises for the first time how much she has missed seeing it bloom for her.

“I’m headed to the library now if you’ve got time,” he says. The words are marrow filling the cracks of Katelyn’s broken bone and she feels herself coming together as their steps line up with one another.

It’s easier, after their not-breakup, to build their routine around honesty. Andrew is still an answer, but this time one that comes served with an explanation. Katelyn still doesn’t get it, doesn’t understand the chokehold that Aaron calls family, but she respects it. After all, she isn’t in a position to point fingers at dysfunctional.

They confine their dates to the library café and the medicine building, avoiding places that Aaron’s family are likely to haunt. And it isn’t perfect, it isn’t textbook romance, but for the first time it is something whole that Katelyn cradles to her chest and it does not shatter on impact.

When Aaron leaves for a weekend and comes home a broken man—brotherless, breathless, hands a bruised and bloodied mess—Katelyn does what she has always done best and builds him back together with her own chipped pieces. She fights his nightmares with nothing but her fists and takes his hands in her own when he cannot look at them without seeing blood beneath his fingernails. She does what she can but she is still just collateral, she is still on the outside looking in on a rupture that happened long before she became a spectator. There is still a tear that Katelyn does not know how to stitch up.

*

(The dark-haired, rabbit-eyed boy is called Neil and his hair isn’t actually quite so dark and he is fixing the broken parts Katelyn can’t reach and when he says Andrew’s name it sounds like a question, not an answer.)

*

Getting Aaron back is the gift Katelyn doesn’t think she deserves. Cutting him off feels like shattering her own hope. She watches the pieces slide between her fingers, shoves the remnants deep where she can’t cut herself on their serrated edges, and tries not to think of the way Aaron’s face split apart when she told him Andrew was the answer to a question he did not ask.

She tells Billie, late one night as they pass a bottle of Marissa’s claret between them from opposite ends of the couch, that she doesn’t know if she’ll be whole again. It is a vulnerability that no one but Antoni ever sees, but Katelyn is wine-drunk and fractured, too disheartened to care that her misery has an audience.

“Why not?” Billie says, holding the bottle between their knees to free up their hands. “You were whole before him. He didn’t take anything you can’t replace.”

“He was the first thing I had that I thought I could hold on to.” Katelyn’s hands falter as the weight of her honesty hits her. She doesn’t know who she is when she isn’t fixing other people and Aaron is a fissure that is out of her hands. “What’s the point if I can’t keep anything without breaking it?”

“You have us. You have the team. You have a career path you’re good at and a hobby you love. You have a brother who adores you and you have Marissa and Anaïs and me. You are whole on your own but you’re part of bigger things too. He’ll come back to you or he won’t and either way you’ll still be the person you always have been.”

It doesn’t seem appropriate to cry, but Katelyn is wine-drunk and fractured, so she does anyway. Billie hooks their ankle around hers on the couch between them and knocks the claret bottle against her knee. Katelyn alternates between drinking and sobbing, and loses the rest of the night to the breaking of her heart.

*

Aaron comes back to her piece by broken piece. He shows up at her dorm with his pain a palpable weight in his hands and tells her he’s trying, he’s breaking faster than he can put himself together but he’s trying. And Katelyn knows a thing or two about falling apart.

They pour their fragments into one another in Katelyn’s bed because Marissa is out with some of the older Vixens and they both know better than to waste an empty dorm room. Later, with his back to Katelyn’s chest and his legs slid between either of hers, Aaron finds the parts of his voice he has been missing.

“You were the first beautiful thing I ever called mine,” he says and Katelyn remembers midnight with Billie, remembers the saccharine claret slipping down her throat, remembers thinking Aaron was the first thing she could ever keep whole. “I won’t lose you for him.”

Katelyn slides her hand across the bare expanse of his stomach, presses her face into the base of his neck, and breathes and breathes and breathes.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she says, and means it.

They patch themselves up in tandem—Aaron knits one, Katelyn purls two—and they are old hands at this now. Katelyn watches their healing overlap in familiar stitches and she waits and she hopes and she breathes. Because this thing between them is chipped and bruised but it is whole. It is theirs.

When Andrew comes for her, Katelyn wonders if she should be surprised. She has heard his name in response to too many questions to be shocked when he treats his words like an arrow and her the target. He and Aaron are identical twins but when Katelyn looks at him up close for the first time, all she sees are the differences. He carries none of the regret that bleeds through Aaron’s teeth and too much of the horror that feeds behind his eyes.

“You won,” rabbit-eyed Neil says, gaze already chasing after Andrew like he might not be just any answer but the answer. “Aaron’s not in class now, if you want to call him.”

Aaron, Aaron, Aaron, her brain says and her fingers, though numb with fear, respond on reflex. He picks up while Katelyn is halfway through a choked sob and she hears his breath sharpen like a dagger.

“Katelyn?” His voice is a rush of concern, a spear and shield readying itself in her defence. “What happened?”

“Andrew,” is all she can say between broken breaths, and it is the answer to every question. After all this time, she gets it.

In the time it takes Aaron to get from his dorm to the library, Katelyn has found her breath but not her strength. She is still curled in on herself behind the bookshelf in the far corner and she knows her friends will be wondering but she doesn’t yet trust her legs to support her. Aaron sinks down next to her, an anchor holding her steady in the aftermath of Andrew’s storm.

“Did he hurt you?” he asks quietly and Katelyn doesn’t know how to answer. She thinks if she opens her mouth she might not know how to do anything but cry.

It’s enough of an answer though. Aaron vibrates with an anger that he almost never wears around her and Katelyn thinks of the Breckenridge striker who took Aaron’s fist to the face. He looks more like the other side of the coin, more like Exy Aaron, than she has seen him in a while.

“I told you not to fall in love with me,” he says. It is frustrated and lonely and scared, and Katelyn has heard him sound like that once before and she will do anything before she lets him shatter again.

“I didn’t listen.”

He falls into her at that, half straddling her lap, arms around her waist and face pressed hard to her shoulder. Katelyn raises her arms to cradle his body against her, rests her cheek in the nest of his hair, and thinks this is it. Thinks he is the answer. Thinks we won.

“My Katie,” Aaron whispers into her skin and it is the glue drawing her broken shards together.

[got-to-love-a-badboy]

Sinking part 3

Amy rolled over and hit the snooze button on her alarm, "ugh...NOT YET!" She shouted. After 5 minutes she got up out of bed and got in the shower, when she got out she decided to just let her hair dry on its own into beach waves, then she applied her everyday make up just enough to add abit of colour to her face.

She threw on some more of her yoga clothes and headed downstairs, she didn't start work until 11 today so she had an hour to chill, she was sat at the breakfast bar talking to her mom, she was asking how she's finding the job and if they are nice when the telephone rang, "il grab it" Amy said finishing her coffee and heading over to the phone.

“hello"

“hey Amy!"

“Hey Nancy! How are you?"

“I'm good thanks, are you working today? Me and Jonothan are going to the pool, we're gong to ask Jenny too" "Oh! Yeah I'm working, sorry Nance, but on my break I can come sit with you! Il bring a swimsuit "

“Yeah that would be fun! Anyway see you around lunch time!"

“Look forward to it bye!".

Amy hung up the phone and went back to the kitchen, "Nancy is finally making an effort to spend time with us! She's bringing Jonathan but hey will just be nice to see her" she told her mom, "I know how you feel honey but you will understand when you fall in love you won't want to be apart from them, it's like magic, you get butterfly's in your stomach when you see them!", Her mom told her but Amy just rolled her eyes, "gotta find somebody first mom, anyway I have to go grab a swimsuit!".

She headed back up stairs, she picked out an all white bikini and a towel, throwing them in her bag she shouted "see you tonight", as she ran downstairs out of the door and into her car. When she pulled up in the parking lot the first thing she saw was the familiar blue Camaro, she parked up and rolled her eyes, "I got this, I got this" she told herself before taking a deep breath in and out. She was still abit early so she went into the break room to see if anyone was there, but it was empty, she just sat down at the table and looked at the magazines on the table, she was interrupted when she heard "hey girl!" When she looked around she saw Heather walking in, "hey Heather! You ok" she asked, putting the magazine back, Heather came and sat beside her "yeah I'm good just finishing my shift, 10 minutes late, Billy only just got here" she said rolling her eyes, "he's always late, I mean he's cute and all but I have a life you know!" They both laughed, "have you met Billy yet? He probably won't introduced himself, he keeps to himself unless he wants something from you" Heather said before getting up to make a drink, "um yeah, we actually went to high school together, I didn't really speak to him in school but he spoke to me yesterday" Heathers head spinning around when Amy said that, "REALLY! What did he say?" Amy could tell she was one of the girls that threw theirselves at Billy just like in highschool, she wasn't going to send her in to a frenzy, so she lied "nothing much, John asked him to help me empty out the pool house, he was just basically telling me to not get the heavy stuff and asked why I was using the pool house" Heather was shaking her head "wow! Billy making small talk, he totally wants you, I mean look at the yoga costume who wouldn't" she smiled at Amy, "anyway I best be going my moms taking me to lunch" she said as she grabbed her bag from the chair, "see you around".

Amy put her head on the table and let out a deep sigh before getting up and going into the locker room, she put her bag in her locker and walked out to the pool, she glanced around looking for her friends but they weren't there yet, so she went to the pool house to set up. Once she had finished she stepped outside and as she walked by the sun beds she asked people if they wanted to join in with the yoga, not many people did, until she saw a group of moms, she recognise one as Nancy's mom, it would mean she had to walk past the lifeguard tower where Billy was sat, Amy thought about it for a minute and realised she was been dramatic, she started walking over to the women "hey!...Amy right?" She knew the voice so she looked up at Billy who took off he's sunglasses and put then the end of the arm in between he's teeth, "um yep that's me" she said smiling up at him, he began walking down from the tower, when he got in front of her he licked he's bottom lip and said "so I was thinking I could take you out after we finish here?" Amy was completely shocked "Really! ...Me, this is the most we've spoken in the 2 years you have been here" Billy gave Amy a deep chuckle, "I know, you just seem different and I want to get to know you" he said stepping closer to her rubbing he's fingers over the top of her arm, "come on ...I promise you won't regret it, if you don't enjoy yourself I won't bother you again" Amy thought for a second "ok then, but you should know I'm not like the Hawkins whores" Billy let out a hearty laugh "duly noted Princess" Amy couldn't deny the butterflies in her stomach, "ok good, I should go, see you later Billy" she turned to walk off and felt him grab her hand softly, "see you soon Amy" he let go and climbed back up the ladder.

Amy made it over to the group of moms "hello ladies! How do you feel about some yoga this afternoon?", Mrs wheeler was the only to answer answer, "if it gets him to look at us like he does you then were in!" All the ladies hummed in agreement, "I'm sorry?" Amy was confused, one of the other ladies nodded towards Billy, "the lifeguard, Billy, he doesn't look at anyone here, you think he would with all the girls in bikinis but nothing, that is until you started here" Amy didn't know what to say or where to look, "oh um ok then" she stood up and looked back at the ladies "it starts in 10 minutes girls" the women began packing their things up and followed Amy to the pool house. She noticed Billy wink at her on the way past she just smiled and bit her bottom lip. After what felt like the longest afternoon ever people finally began to leave the pool at around 6pm, Amy started waking to the locker rooms to get showered and changed.

She turned around when she heard someone behind her calling her name "Amy .... wait up!" She turned around to see Billy, "oh hey Billy" she said moving the hair from her face, "meet at my car when your ready, we can come back for your car after yeah?"Amy just kept walking and said "yeah sure", when they reached the locker room Billy grabbed her hand and said "hey, don't be so shy, I mean it if you don't enjoy yourself we act like nothing happened ok?" Amy smiled at him and he smiled back "thank you Billy" he nodded and they went in to their own locker rooms.

Billy's POV

I'm stood at the side of my Camaro waiting for Amy to finish showering and getting ready, When she walked out she looked stunning with her little denim skirt on, I can't get over how good she looks!, I smiled at her as she walked across the car park, "you look beautiful" I said when she was in front of me, "oh thank you" she blushed, "it's just the spare clothes I had in my locker, I couldn't go in my yoga clothes" she laughed, "god no, some guy would try steal you from me if you walked around like that" I said walking round to the drivers side, Amy shook her head and smiled as she got in "So where are we going" she said while doing her seatbelt, I began to reverse out of the parking lot, "I thought we could go for food? I know an nice place" She smiled at me again, "why you smiling?" I asked, She looked down then out of the window "it's just nice, I don't do dates" I could tell she was embarrassed, "why not?" I asked expecting her to say all guys are asses or something funny, "iv never been asked" she said looking at me biting the side of her mouth, "WHAT! You got to be kidding me, never?.... maybe it's because you were so quiet in school and didn't throw yourself at guys like the rest of the high school girls" she just nodded and said "maybe" she said.

Amy seems different to the usual Hawkins girls, shes pretty and she's smart, I know she did well in school, unlike me. I took this job because I had no choice but god only knows why she wants to come here every morning. We talk and find out bits about eachother as I drive to the diner. When we get there we walk inside and I put my hand on her lower back to guide her in, she looked back at me smiled as her cheeks began to go red, she sits in a booth and I slide in beside her, we take out the menus and decide what we are having, when the waitress comes over she is chewing her pen and looking at me, "what can I get you handsome?" I tell her that I will have a cheese burger, fries and a large cola, then I look over at Amy for her order "il have the same please" she didn't get a reply so I look at the waitress again who is still staring at me, "excuse me! the lady gave you her order!" I snap at the waitress who looks at Amy "I'm so sorry could you repeat that please?" She asks her, Amy tells her again then looks at the floor as the waitress walked off, I took Amy's hand and she looked into my eyes "typical Hawkins girl huh" I said and we both laughed, I took her hand and said "your really are beautiful Amy, and your work uniform is just an added bonus" biting my bottom lip "thank you Billy" she said as she laughed playing with my fingers, “I know you know don't normal do 'dates' and everything so thank you, Im really enjoying been with you Billy, and like I said before I'm not the like the girls you usually meet, if you don't like it that's fine we can leave now" she said rather nervous but also to the point, "what? No I'm enjoying myself too Amy, I mean I'm not going to lie to you iv had most of the girls in Hawkins but they are all the same, unlike you, your smart, you aren't throwing yourself at me and plus you're sexy as fuck, but you don't flaunt it like the girls around here. I admire that about you".

Amy smiled and covered her eyes with her free hand in embarrassment, she quickly moved it "they really do! They don't think twice about their actions and there's me who's never kissed a guy!" Once she realised what she said she let go of my hand and buried her face in to her hands as she muttered "shit" I have to admit I was shocked, kind of scared, could I Billy Hargrove like someone who was as delicate as this, would I break her?. I used my finger to lift her chin "hey it's ok don't even worry about it, take things at your pace, when your happy maybe I can be your first kiss" I said looking into her eyes. What am I saying this isn't me!, I thought to myself. "Ok! we have two cheese burger fries and colas! Enjoy guys" an older waitress said as she handed our food to us, "looks like your friend bailed on you Billy" Amy said joking, I laughed "oh well good job I have first prize right here huh" she smiled again shaking her head. We ate our meal and laughed and joked all night it was 11pm, we decided to head back to the pool so Amy could collect her car, we talked all the way back to the pool, Amy is so cute and funny, she really doesn't see how nice she is.

When we got to the pool I got out of the car and went round to Amy's side, she got out of the car carefully closing the door "thank you so much for an amazing night Billy I really enjoyed it." She said to me, I move closer to her, "I enjoyed it too, your really cool I feel stupid for not talking to you sooner instead of the other girls" I think she could tell I was getting annoyed with myself because she said "hey I enjoyed it that much I may even let you take me out again" we both smiled and gave each other a long hug, "il see you tomorrow Billy" she said as she turned to walk away, I stood up and held her hand and kissed the top of it, "looking forward to it already" she smiled and walked off causing our hands to separate.

I sat in my car for 5 minutes trying to get my head around what tonight was and how I felt, I'm Billy Hargrove I don't "like" girls! I play girls like a game, I get what I want and leave, always have but something is telling me Amy is different I mean it would be an achievement to get my way with her but it didn't feel right.

[oldfashionedtransguy-blog]

Compared to non transvestites

Compared to non transvestites, the transvestites are more inhibited in their interpersonal relationships, less involved with other individuals and more independent. They seek less sympathy, love and help from others.Here are a few specs on the-book; its 173 pages are loaded with the techniques and tricks of the trade, from makeup to female pheromones. This book shows you products and techniques for creating the soft female skin, silky smooth to touch. It comes packed with all the fashion tips, dressing tips as well as a list of accessories to help you enhance the feminine look even further.If you are able to treat yourself, there are increasingly more make-over services providing a one-stop shop for a head to toe feminization treatment. You will be given advice on hair, make-up, underwear, clothes and shoes to go away and experiment with, giving you greater confidence to explore your feminine self.From what I have seen so far, I have to say that this cross dressing guide happens to be a book that sticks to the topic and does not use the same as a gimmick for advertising porn. This guide comes packed with all the tips, techniques you need to change into the perfect woman, from tip to the soles of your feet. This book is loaded with content that should give you the right pointers in getting rid off that messy body hair, the painless way as well as the rest of what you will require in order to change into a woman. From creating that cleavage to methods to hide that unseemly bulge, you can literally use this guide as a one stop cross dressing junction point to deal with myriad issues.

Fetishism is one of the most puzzling of all forms of sexual behaviour. It is chronic and in some cases the collection of objects is the main activity in the individual's life. Nobody has been able to explain why fetishism occurs but a range of theories varying from unconscious motivations to impaired neural mechanisms have put forward their thoughts, but the true causes still remains a mystery.Crossdressing is becoming ever more popular and accepted within today's more modern and accepting society. However, for the majority of crossdressers and transgender people it is very important to not only dress in women's clothes but to totally pass as a member of the opposite sex without any question. If you're like me, when I first started out, it was hard to be recognised and even laughed at behind my back as a man dressing as a woman. Therefore, I took steps to learn how to cross dress and develop my crossdressing techniques, cross dressing tips, new tricks to pass and feminization methods so that no one could even tell that I wasn't a genetic woman.Men are naturally taught not to show any feminine qualities and to only do "manly" things while women are taught to behave differently from childhood. To pass off as a genetic female, one would need to act like a woman and do exactly as a woman does, which is to be compassionate and caring.I now have what I consider to be less leg hair than a normal woman, the monkey legs of my past are but a distant memory!

If you have blonde to light brown natural hair colour and eyebrows, stick to the lighter colours on the spectrum or possibly ginger colours.Transvestism means cross-dressing. It is known to be common among heterosexual males however; cases where females were involved are also reported. An example is the case of Billy Tipton, a successful jazz musician in the 1930's. Tipton had been married and had adopted three sons. When he died in 1980, the funeral director discovered that he was biologically, a woman.Envision more changes. Feel free to change whatever you have always wanted to change. Here, it will be easy. Here, you are at the source of your being, directly inserting your love and care. Give yourself the time and attention you need. Gaze at the beauty of this light, your light, and send the next thoughts of change into its heart. Watch the dance of beauty it causes in the stream of light. The colors, the glow, the warmth, and the beauty, all swirling and dancing joyfully. Take your time. What else do you desire for yourself? Give yourself beautiful eyes, healthy knees, strong muscles, flowing hair, and soft skin. Bless yourself with the strength of gratefulness and the beauty of independence. Send your energy into the light and watch it transform.Savor this feeling of knowing you have finally become what you have always dreamed of. Trust the big change and acknowledge it with gratefulness and happiness. You feel confident. You are now ready to face a world that is awaiting your new self, a world ready to change according to your transformation. As you feel this confidence, this certainty, gratefully wave goodbye to the fireworks of colors dancing in your body. Feel them brighten, lighten, and gradually dance away, leaving your body and mind in a state of divine serenity and complete relaxation.

[divinedeceptions-blog]

The roof ridge walk

Quick note - I’ve posted this on my AO3 account as well so feel free to check that out. Also Im back from the dead hello. 

Word count: 3978 

Josie Pye had been very smug when she'd successfully walked the fence, glancing around at everybody in an extremely boastful manor. Anne had scoffed loudly, proclaiming that she'd know a girl who could walk the ridge pole of a building.

She'd felt an obligation to one-up Josie, and found great pleasure in watching her face twist and contort into sour expressions which made her look like she was sucking on a very bitter lemon. Anne had previously endured her not so subtle comments during class, biting back her rather insistent tongue and exchanging irritated glances with Diana. They weren’t an uncommon occurrence as it seemed Josie wasn’t the only one who enjoyed belittling Anne whenever the opportunity showed itself. Billy Andrews often had a very enjoyable time announcing that she was the ugliest dog he’d ever seen, and would then proceed to make barking sounds until he either got bored or Anne threatened to push him in the river.

So, naturally, when Josie Pye had told her explicitly that no one could do such a thing as walk a roof, and had very quickly dared her to do just that, Anne had of course jumped at the opportunity to wipe the smug grin off of her face and prove exactly what she was capable of.

A few groans and several gasps had spurred Anne on to confidently stride around the back of the school building and begin to ascend the ladder that was used for maintenance. She was only two rungs up when she heard calls from Ruby, Jane, Tillie and Diana telling her not to listen to Josie and come back down before she fell and hurt herself. Anne determinedly chose to ignore these, although she did tell Diana that if she did indeed fall to her most dramatic and possibly rather romantic death, she could have her green dress. This however didn't seem to comfort Diana at all.

She turned to grin down at Josie, admittedly wanting very much to gloat as much as she could, however Anne regretted it almost immediately and had the sudden realisation of how high up she really was. Her fingers curled harder around the rungs so that she wouldn’t loose her balance. The roof looked far taller from up there than it did on the ground.

For a few short seconds, she considered feigning illness and climbing right back down, hoping that that would be a plausible excuse and no one would mention the incident again. But she was already half way up the ladder and she'd come to the conclusion that she'd rather fall than loose all pride and dignity if she didn't pull through with her plans. With a solemn and heavy heart, she continued to climb up, rung by rung and step by step, a tingly nervous feeling pulsing in her hands and feet at the anticipation.

The ladder was slightly slippery, and Anne had trouble keeping her grip as she climbed higher and higher to the brim of the rooftop, her hands clawing at the tiles to find a grip for her to hold onto. Once she had, she heaved herself onto the roof so that her stomach lay flat on the cold surface. She could still hear the shouts and pleads from the others to come back down, but she blocked them out hastily, steadying her balance and attempting to stand up. Anne nearly slipped in doing so, holding onto the roof ridge to keep herself from falling off.

She took the time to glance around at her surroundings, making sure her eyes didn’t linger on the ground for more than a second. Her gaze had been caught on the edge of the hills, a thin strip of light brushing the silhouetted trees. For a short moment, she forgot exactly what she was doing and watched as the sun poured gold onto horizon. She was sure she could see all of Avonlea, small houses speckled around the land and the church steeple just peeking over the hills. Grinning, she felt a sudden surge of confidence at the sight, feeling as though she were the Queen, the fair and noble ruler of all land as far as the eye could see. The wind almost seemed colder up here then it did on the ground, and as Anne began to stand up again, she felt courageous and brave, as if leading on her mighty army to conquer whoever dared to harm her people.

And then reality kicked back in as she took her first step, although she maintained a steady balance her feet felt as though they could slip at any moment on the thin surface. Why did it look higher up than it did on the ground? Anne tried to focus her attention on the spot at the end, mentally counting down how many steps it would take for her to reach her goal. There was silence below her as each person held their breath. Billy had a rather nasty smile on his face, Josie seemed to be looking rather worried now that she knew the extent of what she had made Anne do, perhaps she would get in trouble if she fell. Gilbert hadn't kept his eyes off of her, trying very hard to fight the urge to shout out encouragement in fear that it would distract her and she'd fall. Diana was very close to tears, screwing up her lace handkerchief in one hand and clinging onto Ruby with the other.

Anne had made it half way across the ridge pole, a smile beginning to itch at her lips as she led her army on through the raging fires and battling winds, a purple storm stirring ominously above. When all of a sudden, her knights and soldiers had fallen away through the cracks, her stormy skies and billowing winds sucked dry from her imagination as her feet left the roof and she came tumbling and spinning down the side of the school building. It felt as though she'd been swept beneath the waves of a roaring sea, being twirled and turned by the relentless currents trying to pull her further and further down into the watery abyss.

Then she hit something. The ground she assumed. It was a very strange feeling because at first, Anne felt totally fine, slightly dazed at the most but other than that, she felt perfectly alright. Then she realised she couldn't hear very well, and there was a queer ringing in her right ear which made her feel very fuzzy. When Anne tried to open her eyes, there were about 10 blurry people who all looked like they had multiple heads sprouting from the necks, crowding around her. Everything seemed to be spinning as though someone had spun the earth like a spinning top and sent it hurtling through infinity.

"Anne!" Someone was shouting her name, and although the ringing had started to grow quieter she still couldn't make out who it was.

"Anne!" Her hands began to stroke the soft grass, it was a bit cold and rather wet but it felt nice. She'd never really fully appreciated its beauty, and she almost felt a bit guilty for leaving it out.

"Anne!" Then a very recognisable head popped in front of her face and she began to focus on what they were saying and who they were. Diana had firmly gripped onto Anne's shoulders, curls of hair falling out of its neat bow and sticking to her face. She still looked very beautiful and Anne almost felt like laughing at such a vain thing to think of whilst she seemed to be in quite the state of despair. Marilla would’ve scolded her at the thought.

“Are you alright Anne?” She seemed to be crying. “I think I’m unconscious Diana”, and Diana then let out a huge breath and allowed a smile to peak through her lips. Anne tried to sit up but another, much deeper voice told her to stay still for a moment. She tilted her head up slightly to see who it was, her eyes laying on a very concentrated Gilbert who was examining her very swollen looking ankle. Anne though it was a bit strange that she couldn’t feel anything wrong with her ankle despite the fact that it was a vivid shade of red and purple, and it appeared to have doubled in size.

“I think you’ve broken it” Gilbert grimaced, shooting a reassuring smile her way.

Anne stared at him. “Broken?!” She said with a bit too much enthusiasm “but that’ll take far too long to heal!”.

Her head seemed to be clearing and her ankle began to throb, a slightly nauseated feeling building in her stomach. Gilbert ignored her, taking her under the arm and slowly helping her stand up. Diana was staring through very red looking eyes as the other children began to disperse and whisper to each other.

“Diana can you please let Miss Stacy know that I’ve gone to help Anne home as she’s broken broken her ankle and needs assistance walking” Gilbert spoke aloud, sounding very professional and business like. Diana protested mildly, saying that she didn’t mind taking Anne herself. But Gilbert shook his head with a smile in response and swung Anne’s arm around his shoulder, holding onto her wrist to support her.

Anne, who was having a hard time trying not to enjoy the physical contact, tried to focus on the pain of her ankle as that seemed like a much better thing to do than admit any type of feelings regarding Gilbert. It wasn’t like she hadn’t tried to supress them. She’d been doing a very good job at it actually, and for a short while, she even concluded that they’d once and for all disappeared. Although when summer came back around and Gibert had turned up to school with eyes suddenly looking extremely green, hair looking extremely dark and curly, and a grin that could make anyone swoon, Anne had realised that she might have to try a bit harder.

Anne inhaled at the thought, drawing Gilbert’s attention who now had that very stupidly attractive grin on his face. His fingers were still clutched around her wrist, not quite daring to go any further down as his other hand hung onto the top of her waist gently, in fear of it seeming invasive. “You feeling alright? You haven’t said a word to me since we left” he joked, limping towards the forest and out of sight of the school.

“Fine” she replied rather quickly, her breathing slightly heavier than normal.

“I can take another look at if you lik-", “No no! Its fine- im fine, dont worry, just keep going” Gilbert frowned inwardly, but consequently decided that it was best not to try and persuade her. He knew as well as anybody that she had a temper to match her hair, and shortly concluded that he did indeed enjoy being liked by Anne, so he didn't push the topic any further.

Then a silence fell between them like the first leaves of autumn, rich and serene in the subtle hues of sunlight streaming through the canopy of branches above. Gilbert thought that he quite enjoyed being with Anne, even when she wasn't talking. He'd occasionally make short glances in her direction to see if she was okay, secretly enjoying the feeling of his skin on hers. Anne also enjoyed being with Gilbert, even without the conversation. If it were up to her, she would be relishing in the bliss of such a beautiful day, with the thick ivy cascading down friendly trees and the smiling faces of yellow and orange flowers greeting her as she moved past. But alas, her brain had other ideas.

On one hand she was thinking about how much her ankle was now beginning to painfully throb, and on the other she was thinking about how she could get out of the predicament that she had found herself in. She knew Ruby would not be happy if she could see Anne now, and Anne much preferred being friends with Ruby than letting her mind wander to people it shouldn't be wandering to. Although she couldn't help but notice the light trace his fingers left, making her tug at her sleeve nervously and subtly shake her head to try and dissolve the tempting feeling it gave her.

It almost felt like when a cold spring breeze passes through the forest trees and whistles gently to you, the soft wind caressing your cheek and leaving you flushed, feeling as though it had breathed new life into you. But then again, she thought, it wasn't cold like those mornings of dew and freshly grown flowers, it was warm like the midsummer nights. When the air was still and stars painted graceful hues of silver in the purple ecstasy of night, the smell of slightly dried wheat soaking through the soil. Skin slightly sticky from the water she'd allowed herself to slip into when she thought no one was watching, just to allow the cool ripples to lap at her neck whilst still maintaining a strong grip onto the river bank beside her.

Anne made a mental note to jot that down as idea for her new story.

She thought of making conversation so as to distract her from this new and unknown feeling, but had reservations as part of her thought that that might just make the whole situation a lot worse. Anne was surprised that Gilbert couldn't hear her thoughts as they seemed to be exerting as much volume as possible, each one trying to be louder than the next to catch her extremely divided attention.

Maybe he had however because he began to slow down and head towards a slightly damp looking tree stump in the middle of a small clearing, setting Anne down with care and allowing his hands to reluctantly fall from around her. He stayed quiet for a moment, breathing in the autumn air slowly, as though prolonging his very persistent question. Anne had already averted her eyes, choosing to stare at a fallen birch leaf which glowed a rather beautiful shade of gold, as though it had been dipped in treasure.

She knew she couldn't avoid his gaze for long but thought it was best to try and drag it out for as long as possible. She'd been doing rather well at it too, as Gilbert had already said her name three times before asking her something which managed to raise her head at a surprising speed.

"Are we friends?", he'd said, smiling as though she had said a joke, although letting it flicker and drop as he watched her blink in response.

Anne didn't answer, trying to see where she'd gone wrong in order for him to think that they weren't. She thought that perhaps she'd said or done something which seemed impertinent, or came across the wrong way.

"Gilbert th-" she stuttered momentarily. She wasn't particularly used to not knowing what to say. "Gilbert of course we are", her teeth began to nip at her lip nervously, wondering how exactly she could answer without slipping up and revealing too much.

He looked up at her slowly, allowing his gaze to travel up from her buckled black boots to the tips of her red braids. In the soft sun rays which filtered onto her face, her hair seemed to glow like fire, her eyes alight with the burning flames and her skin iridescent from the warm orange light. Gilbert thought that he quite liked looking at her like this, he could definitely get used to it.

"Gil I never mean to be rude or to ignore you, I certainly dont want you thinking that I dislike you. Its just difficult for me to be close friends with you because of wh-" and then Anne stopped herself with a sharp intake of breath. She knew Ruby would never forgive her if Gilbert found out about how Ruby 'had dibs'. Not that she wanted 'dibs' of course (although she internally smiled at the prospect); besides she's thought, Gilbert wasn't an object or an animal that she could claim her own.

Gilbert's ears had pricked up, his attention more focused on the words spilling from her lips rather than just her lips.

"Because of what? What do you mean?", he moved closer, rising slightly so that their heads were level.

"Im sorry but I can't say, it would be an injustice and I swore I wouldn't tell" Anne replied stubbornly, beginning to regain confidence at the thought of her friends.

"Oh how honourable of you" he grinned lightly, pulling at his sleeves so he could distract himself from the smile that was playing at the corners of Anne's mouth.

"Well I believe no less would be expected from Princess Cordelia", and now Gilbert was really grinning, and Anne was having trouble controlling her heart rate and the way her stomach would twist and flip at the sight of him.

There was a thread of light lacing itself across his face, weaving from the top of his right temple, down through his eye, across the bridge his nose and barely brushing the edge of his lips, finishing just on the line of his jaw with a golden pigment. She noticed the the way the slice of sunlight illuminated the green of his irises, reminding her of the lush green forests that were flush with dark wood and glistening leaves that she so often read about in books. Freckles lightly speckled and painted across his pink cheeks and nose, something she hadn't quite realised were there before. His lips red and soft looking, quirking upwards and exposing his teeth. His hair lay touched by soft shadows, each strand curling and winding as a few hung limp over his forehead. Anne quite liked his curls. Gilberts smile had began to fade, leaving behind a mellow expression on his face which looked so tender, and so kind that Anne was surprised that she hadn't melted into oblivion right then and there.

"I really am sorry Gil, I never meant to upset you", but he shook his head and blinked up at her, stretching out his fingers to push back a few strands of scarlet hair. As his skin touched hers almost torturously slow, he breathed in how soft it was, how warm she felt, how the contact could make the hairs on his neck stand on end and his heart skip what must've been at least several beats.

Anne thought it was a very peculiar feeling to suddenly have all of the breath sucked dry from her lungs, and to have feel each pound of her pulse as though it was a huge drum. It was such an extreme reaction compared to how lightly his fingers were brushing her cheek and neck, as if he were cautiously trying to touch a growling tiger that was ready to pounce at any given moment. They lingered on her jaw, his gaze flicking so quickly and so subtly to her lips that Anne was barely convinced that she saw it all.

"We should get going I suppose", he said quietly as though he didn't quite mean it, eyes still firmly focused on the redhead in front of him. "I suppose so" she replied with the same reluctance to avert her gaze.

So they watched each other for the few short seconds of hesitation. Taking in the angles of each others cheek bones and the spindles of light which so delicately embroiled itself into their iris's. Still focusing on the feeling of where they had touched, as though it had left a physical mark for them to see. Gilbert stood up slowly with a crunch of dry leaves beneath his feet. He held out his hand for her, pulling her arm around his neck once she had a solid grip, before looping his own arm around her torso and steadily walking as one down the crisp golden path.

"So 'Gil' huh?" he grinned lightly, allowing his fingers (which had gripped her wrist to help support her) to slip down to hers.

"Well I suppose that if you've given me a nickname, you should have one too" Anne replied quickly, her face turning a dark shade of pink. "Not that I particularly like my nickname, you really should come up with a better one"

"What?" he smiled, not noticing the small orange leaf which had just floated onto his shoulder "Carrots isn't good enough for you?".

She glared at him, allowing his fingers to gently lace between hers. "Its not very imaginative Gilbert, you could've at least been much more creative if you were going to mock me".

"Oh but carrots really does suit you, it'd be a shame to change something so good"

"I would've thought someone of your intellect couldn't possibly be so small minded, as to come up with the almost insultingly dim nickname of carrots. Something like... oh I don't know, 'rusty outhouse', would be much more subtitle".

It was many moments before Gilbert could regain his composure after that, he had to lean on a tree so that both himself and Anne wouldn't go toppling to the floor. All the while his fingers were still curled around hers tightly, eyes smiling wider than his lips and looking at her a though he would never stop. She quite liked that idea.

"Anne, you really are something else" he exhaled, only moments after he caught back his breath.

"Well you know I should hope so, how boring it would be to be plain and normal", she faltered slightly, "I mean personality wise, if we were talking about looks than I'm afraid to say I am far from interesting or beautiful, but I suppose you can't have everything in life".

Anne was grinning as though they were still joking around, and hadn't seemed to notice that Gilbert was no longer smiling. He could see green gables coming into view and knew that they had little time left, so very spontaneously, and almost as though his lips were leading him, he spoke the first thing that came to mind.

"If you want my opinion Anne, I think you're incredible. Im sure you can come up with a better word than I can as you have previously pointed out, but I think you look exquisite", and with that, Gilbert Blythe raised his chin confidently and tried to concentrate on anything but Anne incase that would stop her from noticing just how red his face was turning.

He didn't say anything else, only allowing his fingers to break free from hers, and instead gently fold them around her forearm which he deemed was probably more appropriate. She looked right at him, very ready to harshly berate him and potentially whack him over the head with a fallen tree branch - but she couldn't do it. Instead she could feel the heat from his skin and the fire from his eyes which were hooded with shadow. And she could smell the fresh pine needles beneath her feet which played so well with the sunken smoke in his coat and the sweet scent of toffee which seemed to follow him everywhere. And there was that constant lurch in the pit of her stomach which reminded her so vividly of when she fell from the roof ridge, but this time, she wasn't afraid of it.

Green Gables really was very close, the trees began to get thinner and thinner and Anne could see the clearing to the farm within a few metres of them. So, she did something rash.

Quickly, so quickly Gilbert wasn't even sure if it happened, she kissed his cheek.

"No," Anne was watching his eyes closely, her lips curling ever so slightly at the edges, "'exquisite' sounds perfect".

[jimsturgessnews]

Actor Jim Sturgess, recently seen in BBC drama Hard Sun with Agyness Deyn, divides his time between Hollywood movies and songwriting. He talks to The Cork about constantly getting beaten up, the similarities between film and music, and swapping his skateboard T-shirts for a bespoke English Cut suit. As a fixture on the red carpet at Hollywood film premieres, Jim Sturgess has had to get used to being decked out by brands. “I remember the first time I got put in a suit,” the Wandsworth-born actor recalls. “I got on my bike the next day and delivered it back to them. They were like, ‘No, no, it’s yours, you can have it.’ I was like, ‘Are you joking?’” Even now, selecting from English Cut’s vast menu is a novel experience for someone accustomed to choosing from a rail of off-the-peg suits. “It’s like ordering a salad in America,” he says of the bespoke process, speaking like a man who spends extended periods of time in health-conscious Los Angeles for work. “You have a million options: do you want three buttons or two? I got quite into it. You start off thinking, ‘Oh, I don’t mind.’ Then you go, ‘Actually, let me see what pleated trousers look like … ’” After chewing it over, Sturgess settled on a rustic dark green. “I have a load of black and grey suits, so it was a chance to create something a bit different,” he explains. “It’s got a sort of tweed feel, a bit boxier than I’d typically go for … I’m sounding like a pro now, aren’t I?” His self-conscious laugh betrays that tailoring is not his, well, strong suit. “I live in Dickies trousers and a pair of white canvas shoes,” confesses the fresh-faced 39-year-old, who could comfortably pass for a twentysomething and still dresses, by his own admission, like a teenage skateboarder, even if he no longer actually skates in the park like he did when he was a teenager growing up in Surrey. “I sort of still think that I do, but I don’t,” he says. “Last year, I was messing around on my board, and I fell off and really hurt myself. Like, it hurt and hurt for a long time. You start to learn the hard way that your body’s not the same as it once was. Plus I have to go and throw myself around and get beaten up for work. You get injuries, and it makes life pretty difficult.” “You have a million options: do you want three buttons or two? I got quite into it. You start off thinking, ‘Oh, I don’t mind.’ Then you go, ‘Actually, let me see what pleated trousers look like’” Sturgess does seem to have a history of being on the receiving end of on-screen violence, from 2008 thriller Fifty Dead Men Walking, in which he played a British agent infiltrating the IRA, with Sir Ben Kingsley as his handler, to 2016 US TV series Feed the Beast, in which he played a Bronx chef with David Schwimmer as his fellow restaurateur. “I’ve got a punchable face,” Sturgess quips. “I suppose I’m attracted to stories that have an edge. Now I just assume that’s what acting is: getting beaten up.” Most recently, he was punched in the face by model-slash-actress Agyness Deyn – with a brass knuckle – for Hard Sun. (She learnt Israeli special forces fighting system Krav Maga for the role.) Written by Neil Cross, the scribe behind Idris Elba series Luther, the pre-apocalyptic BBC series stars Sturgess and Deyn as police detectives who inadvertently uncover a government-level conspiracy to conceal the inconvenient truth that the sun is going to destroy the Earth in five years. As knowledge of impending doom becomes more widespread, the fabric of society begins to unravel. At the time of writing, Sturgess has been selling Hard Sun to audiences in America. “They get bombarded with a lot of regal stuff, and they have a particular idea of what England looks like and sounds like,” he says. “It’s nice to show another side of London – a bit more contemporary.” Less like, say, 2008’s Tudor period drama The Other Boleyn Girl, where he played the brother of Natalie Portman’s Anne and Scarlett Johansson’s Mary, with Eric Bana as Henry VIII. Besides, Hard Sun is “very international”, even if it’s set in the UK: “If you live on this planet, you’re definitely involved.” Hard Sun also involved Sturgess wearing a suit every day, something he’d usually only do on special occasions. “It killed the joy,” he says. “I remember going to the Baftas, so I got out of one suit that I’d been wearing for months and put on another. Normally I’m pretty scruffy, so to put on a suit is quite a big change. It’s nice to put something on occasionally and feel a bit … You just feel different in a suit, don’t you?” Sturgess feels different whenever he gets into costume for a role. “It’s when the character comes alive, when you put on his clothes and the shoes that he wears,” he says. “It’s your identity. When you put on a different pair of shoes, you feel like a different version of yourself. So it’s really not until you put the costume on, clothes that you’ve specifically chosen to represent the character, that you understand, ‘OK, this is who he is.’” It’s surprising to hear that it all comes together at that late a stage, albeit after much planning and research. “Yeah, for sure,” insists Sturgess. “It’s always a very exciting moment, actually, when you go, ‘All right, there he is. That’s the way he’s going to look.’” One of Sturgess’s most sartorially memorable roles was the one furthest removed from any semblance of fashion: 2010’s The Way Back, inspired by the memoir of a Polish officer who claimed to have escaped from a Siberian gulag during WWII and trekked 4,000 miles across the Himalayas to British India. (A 2006 Radio 4 documentary questioned the veracity of the account, although there is evidence that someone did do the walk – just not the author.) “One of the great things that the survival expert told us was that you would never throw anything away,” remembers Sturgess. “So you wouldn’t get rid of your jacket, even in the desert – you’d cut it up and wear it as a headband.” Sturgess went straight from that to 2011’s One Day, the adaptation of the then-unavoidable David Nicholls novel with the instantly recognisable orange cover. Over the course of two decades of on-off romance with Anne Hathaway’s Emma, his character Dexter graduates from student to successful 90s TV personality. “Suddenly I’m in a tight pair of leather trousers and a giant jacket,” Sturgess laughs. “You couldn’t feel more different. And the clothes definitely navigate those feelings.” Those feelings were more combative in the case of London Fields, the adaptation of the Martin Amis novel also starring Billy Bob Thornton, Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, which has been trapped in legal limbo since 2015 after the director sued the producers for allegedly releasing their own cut (panned by the few critics who saw it). Sturgess played petty criminal and pub darts virtuoso Keith Talent, covered in tattoos and a grimy beard that made him feel “a bit tastier than I probably was”. This nearly proved disastrous when someone almost ran him over in a car: “I got really aggressive with him, and quickly realised that he was double my size.” Still, at least he’s used to being beaten up. Sturgess’ own sartorial identity was influenced by American skateboarding culture. “Certainly, when I was in my teenage years, I was very skateboard-heavy in my fashion,” he says. “And now most people look like skateboarders. It blows my mind that the standard footwear is a pair of Vans. Because when I was younger only someone who was into skateboarding would wear Vans.” He’s similarly bemused that lowly streetwear brands have ascended to the height of fashion, and that kids now queue round the block and overnight for the latest product drop at the Supreme store he used to wander into when it was just a skate shop. At the same time though, he totally gets it. “I remember my mum trying to put me into a pair of shoes that weren’t Converse All Stars,” he says. “They looked exactly the same, and they’d probably be way cooler now, but I was mortified. I was like, ‘No, they have to be Converse.’ My mum was like, ‘But they’re too expensive. These one look exactly the same – they’ve even got a star.’ And I was in tears: ‘Mum, you don’t understand. I can’t wear these to school: I’ll get crucified.’” The other major key to Sturgess’s wardrobe choices was music. He started a band when he was 15, singing and playing bongos in pubs despite being under-age. When school and the band finished, he went to the University of Salford to study media and performance, and be closer to the Manchester music scene. “There were a lot of jackets done up to the top and desert boots,” he says. “I miss that different kinds of music were so influential in the way people dressed. It was almost like a gang mentality: you’d have mods, you’d have rockers, you’d have two-tone … And now everyone looks roughly the same. But maybe that’s because I’m just hanging out with 40-year-old men. I don’t know.” Sturgess was as obsessed with films growing up as he was records. “Even at school, drama and music were the two things I was interested in,” he says. His uni course taught him scriptwriting, editing and theatre production as well as acting; he wrote and performed a one-man show called Buzzin’ that brought him to the attention of an agent, who encouraged him to move to London. Instead of kickstarting his acting career, he got into the Camden music scene and started a band called Saint Faith, taking bit parts in TV and ads to pay the rent. When they broke up, Sturgess was cast in 2007’s Across the Universe, a film musical based on Beatles songs and a perfect fit for his skill set. The common thread between music and acting is creativity and, perhaps not obviously in the latter’s case, self-expression. “It’s interesting because they’re very similar and totally opposite at the same time,” says Sturgess. “When you’re writing and playing music, it’s completely you, naked and bare; when you’re acting, you’re pretending to be somebody else. But you use your own emotions and life experiences to try and relate to the character. At the same time, people behind a microphone are playing some sort of a character. They might tell you that they’re not, but there is a level of performance that isn’t you while you’re just sitting with your mum and dad having a roast dinner.” Sturgess describes his diversion into acting as “circumstantial”; even now that he’s a star, music remains a big part of his life. “I’ve got a little studio at home, and then a lot of my friends are musicians,” he says. Over the years and the various bands, he’s amassed a vast quantity of unreleased material; he’s just now really putting his mind to doing something that might actually get out there. “I just want to finish a cohesive record that kind of has a beginning, a middle and an end,” he says. “Not just a load of scratchy demos that are all just lying around that could potentially grow into something great.” Songwriting inspiration can strike Sturgess in different ways. “Sometimes it’s just a thought,” he says. “Sometimes you’ll be messing around on the guitar and a little melody comes into your head, but you have no idea what the song’s about. Sometimes it’s lyrics: you build a song around the words first. Sometimes you can hear a drum loop, someone starts messing around with some melodies and then you just start singing on top.” Either way, it tends to be followed by a great deal more perspiration: “the grinding bit”. Sometimes Sturgess will know from the first page of a script how he’ll play a character – and sometimes not. “I’ve been offered things and I’m like, ‘I don’t know why you’re asking me to do this,’” he admits. “And that’s always quite exciting because it’s out of your comfort zone. You have to build a character, and change the way you speak and move.” For that, he accesses a database being constantly compiled. “Sometimes you’ve got a character in your head that you’d love to find a story for, and then you read something and go, ‘I could put that into this,’” he says. “Or you’ve noticed somebody on the Tube: ‘That’s interesting, the way he is.’ Then you read something and go, ‘I could use a bit of that.’” Getting noticed on the Tube is not something that Sturgess has to worry about – not even on buses with a picture of his face on the side. “Nobody’s that interested, really, so it’s very grounding,” he says. “In LA, people are very excited about movies, it’s an city built around the movie industry, and actors are kind of the commodity of that industry. So you feel a bit of treatment that you definitely don’t get when you come home.” London brings him back down to earth with a bump: “I’m very quickly getting knocked over on the Underground.” He tells an anecdote about a foreign tourist at King’s Cross who kept saying to him, “You’re a star, you’re a star.” Turned out she was looking for the Eurostar. That probably has more to do with Sturgess’s down-to-earthness than any lack of profile. Certainly, though, his flight path has brought him into the orbit of some massive stars. Like Tom Hanks, his co-star on 2012’s Cloud Atlas, who Sturgess describes as “the nicest guy you could possibly imagine” (exactly how you’d imagine him, then). “He took it on himself to organise a movie night every Sunday at his apartment in Berlin,” Sturgess says. “He’d order loads of food and put out the word to the cast and crew. And we’d all pile round there, hungover from Saturday night, to sit on his couch and watch movies.” Hanks would also talk with Sturgess about music: “He knew quite a lot about hip-hop.” Ed Harris, his co-star on The Way Back, is another. “He was one of the first actors that I worked with who I was so in awe of, and who became a friend, which was amazing,” says Sturgess. “He really took me under his wing, we bonded and we’ve stayed in touch ever since.” A surreal scene ensued in a hotel in New Orleans where the pair were working together for a second time, on 2017’s Geostorm. “We bumped into Billy Bob Thornton, who I’d just done a film with in London, in the foyer of the hotel,” says Sturgess. “We were in an elevator – a lift – and I introduced Ed Harris to Billy Bob Thornton. And I was just standing in the middle of two of the coolest dudes I know.” Sturgess doesn’t know what the future holds, beyond the release of two films that he shot after Hard Sun. The first, JT Leroy, is the strange but true story of a woman, played by Laura Dern, who writes a fictional memoir in the persona of a 15-year-old boy. When it becomes a literary sensation, she convinces the younger sister of her boyfriend, played by Kristen Stewart and Sturgess respectively, to masquerade as the non-existent male author – for six years. The second, Berlin, I Love You, is an anthology of 10 romantic stories set in the German capital and the latest in the series that began with 2006’s Paris Je T’’Aime; Dame Helen Mirren and Keira Knightley grace the ensemble cast. “It always surprises you,” Sturgess says of his fluid profession. “Which I quite like. What’s going to happen next? What sort of story am I going to be involved in telling?” Back in his normal “scruffy” clothes, he blends into the Chiltern Street foot traffic like a chameleon, just another anonymous extra in the movies of everyone else’s lives.  (credit)