#anyways had my experimental dating phase decided I didn’t like it

[yuribalisms]

Girl I’ve kinda been seeing decided to be weird about me being ace time to nix that ig

[fa-by]

Hi Faby I have a question L said that she knew she was queer when she fell in love with her best friend when she was 15 and that her and L started to have a physical connection when she was 15 and I know everyone says that she was talking about C because L met C for the first time when she was still 15 but to me that doesn't make sense because L and C only started to get closer after L turned 16 and her and C basically just met so how could she be talking about C?

Hi to you, dear Anon 👋🏼😄 I know it doesn’t seem to make sense because the narrative’s goal is to confuse you and get you on their side by making you abandon the ship. You have to pay attention to the details and what they say because there are always flaws in the stories that our Camren are forced to tell. But don’t worry, I’m here. I’ve already talked about it many times, but I’ll explain it again to make you understand better and answer your ask at the same time.

So. During Becky G’s ‘En La Sala’ podcast (October 28, 2020), Lauren said she realized she was queer because she fell in love with her best friend when she was 15 and they started having a physical relationship. She forced herself to think that kissing and sleeping with her friend every once in a while was just a funny thing and nothing important; something that she has ‘normalized’ in her head by justifying it as something that ‘straight girls do’, and therefore fueling her internalized homophobia. Personally speaking, I believe in this. Not in the ‘she fell in love’ part because Laur’s still forced to say that the only girl she has ever loved is Lucy, but I believe Lauren and Lucy really did everything L said. Lucy was the first real unlock thanks to which Laur experienced the attraction and the feelings towards the girls she’d always felt and hidden deep inside herself. I firmly believe that Lucy was the first girl among her crushes on girls Laur acted on, and with whom she experimented in secret given the environment in which they both grew up and which still surrounded them at the time.

Now, the time frame in which this experimentation happened. Paul Martinez, the one she believed was her first love and whom she believed she would marry, broke up with her in late July 2011, and she only managed to move on when she wrote a song about how she felt on September 17th of that same year. Lucy moved back to Puerto Rico in February 2012, returning to visit Miami occasionally (that’s why the fetus pictures with Lucy and Camren at Laur’s house). Therefore, the time frame in which that experimentation happened, is from the end of September 2011 to February 2012. It could’ve happened in all those four months, or only in two, or only in one. Who knows. But that’s the time frame. Time frame during which Laur was 15 years old.

Having explained this, let’s move on. Camren first met during the first phase of the audition, the ‘cattle call’, on May 1, 2012, in Greensboro, North Carolina. You know? Where that short and really cute conversation started by Mila happened: “Hi, I like your shirt”, “Thanks. I like your jacket”. But it ended up there because they didn’t become friends from that day. They didn’t exchange phone numbers and they therefore didn’t even spend time together at home in Miami. They were still just two strangers who had auditioned for a TV show to pursue their dreams like so many other people. Oh and, on May 1, 2012, Laur was still 15, and Mila had turned since almost two months; therefore they were both 15 years old. The moment they became friends by no longer detaching one from the hip of the other, was two months later, on July 25 in Miami, when they met for the first time for the first day of boot camp (L went to C: “You’re the Cuban girl!”). On July 25, 2012, Lauren had by then turned 16 for nearly a month, and Camila was still 15.

Now let’s move on to the biggest miscalculated mistake that, either they made her say, or Laur herself said; perhaps even deliberately and not by mistake. On June 26, 2020, and therefore before the podcast with Becky, the PAPER Magazine article was released. In that article, Lauren explained, along with other things, that she’d been in love with her best friend for seven years. But the calculations don’t add up, for two things to be exact.

First thing: The Laucy narrative includes that A) Laur fell in love with her sure, Jan at 15 when they kissed and hooked up during parties.

P.S. Is it just me, or does this smell like what actually started happening to Camren the following year? I mean, the Like Friends Do situation whereby Laur got out of her internalized homophobia and realized she loved her and then got her head out of her ass by finally going to get her girl? No? Just me?

B) The wanting but not being able to be with her and giving her what she wanted made them grew apart not by her choice and not because Lucy returned to live in Puerto Rico and they simply grew apart for the distance and Lauren’s busy schedule with 5H, no, no.

P.S. I don’t know about you, but this still smells like Camren’s story to me.

C) Lucy returned to her life after she had a car accident on May 17, 2015:

“She came back into my life when I was 18. I was on tour and I was in my room in a hotel somewhere and she called me”. From that moment on, Lauren decided they would’ve been together “all in” and “now we’re gonna be in this relationship”. Yeah, sure. No contract that was supposed to help both of them involved here. No, no.

D) They broke up because Laur confirmed that theirs was a very toxic relationship, and the specific reason she gave was because they both weren’t fully healed from the past yet, but that they still loved each other very much. Mmmh-hmm, okay 🥱😴 Yeah, no, yeah, sorry. I fell asleep as a result of hearing bullshit.

Second thing: Ty.

Shall we reveal the miscalculation (again)? In love with her at 15, got together with her at 18 and broke up at 20 (1 year and 8 months, from mid-May 2015 to mid-January 2017), and after less than a month, start of another PR dating Ty. Now, 20 minus 15 (Laur’s two ages from the beginning to the end of the ‘story’), how much is it? 5. Shall we calculate from the moment of Laucy experiment to when they ‘broke up’? From late September 2011 to mid January 2017, how many years are? 5! 5 years and four months to be exact. According to the logic of the narrative, if she was oh so in love with Ty as they made her proclaim every two seconds, it means that she’d stopped loving Lucy that same year, and it’s not 7 years anyway! It’s still 5! Do we want to try with two last calculations? Okay. Also because you may have wondered: “Faby, what if we instead calculated from when ‘they got together’ to the release of that PAPER Magazine article?”. I’d answer that it’s still 5 years. From mid-May 2015 to June 25, 2020, it’s 5 years and 1 month to be exact. “Faby, what if we tried to calculate from the beginning to the publication of the article?” From the end of September 2011 (beginning of the time frame of the Laucy experimentation) to the publication of the article on 25 June 2020, it’s 8 years and 9 months to be precise. Not even in this case it’s 7! So, as you can see… And at this point I wonder: is there an alternate world where math calculations lead to 7 and not 5 here? What was that? Why say 7? Well.. I actually know why.

Shall we play another little math game? Can I reveal the truth in the lie? Let’s try to make sense of this 7 together now.

Lauren explained that she’d been in love with her best friend for 7 years in that interview, right? The interview with PAPER Magazine came out on June 26, 2020, but was done before the date it was released. We all know Laur was born on the 27th, and therefore in both cases, Laur was 23. And tell me, dear, how much is 23 minus 7? Sorry, I can’t hear your answer. A little louder please? Got it, got it. Can I also write it for everyone else who’s reading? Okay, thanks: 16. Wait, 16??? So who was Lauren actually talking about? Ohhh. How foolish of me. That’s why it ‘smelled like what actually started happening to Camren the following year’ to me. Because Laur was talking about Camila all along 🤦🏻‍♀️

🤣😏😎

Sarcasm and jokes aside, do you see how easy it is to manipulate and confuse people's ideas? It's still 7 years if we calculate from mid-January 2013 (after the first real New Year's kiss and the signing of the contracts with Syco/Epic) to the release of that PAPER Magazine article on June 25, 2020. And it's still 7 years even if we calculate from July 25, 2012 (first day of boot camp) to June 25, 2020. Camila is the answer to the 7 years because even if they try to make Laur modify the narrative by making her change the names with the PRs' ones, she's always talking about Mila anyway in reality.

Does it make more sense now, dear? I hope I’ve taken away all your doubts 🥰 Stay safe and have a good day 🤗 You guys too ❤

[hockeylvr59]

Anything You Want || Paul Bissonnette and Tyler Seguin

Requested: [ ] yes [x] no

Authors Note: So I was in a total nsfw mood tonight and asked for some people to send me ideas. One of my group chats said I should definitely go with Bissonnette sex but suggested I add Seguin in there. I twisted their suggested prompt a little but anyway. It’s really dirty...so enjoy. 

Warnings: smut, smut and more smut.Threesome. Oral sex, actual sex, anal sex. Oh and breeding kink/actual breeding (unprotected sex) because evidently I can’t control myself. 

Word Count: 3,804

Dating Paul Bissonnette meant that your sex life was never something that could be described as boring or regular. Paul was older than you and certainly more experienced inside (and technically outside, hello airport sex) the bedroom. Still, he’d never made you feel comfortable, in fact, he was probably the best teacher you could ask for when it came to all things intimate. 

When you’d first gotten together, things had been kept fairly tame, vanilla even, behind closed doors as you learned each other’s likes and dislikes, and what made each of you fall apart. Now that things were more serious as far as the relationship went, things inside the bedroom were shifting as well. One could say that you were very much in the experimental phase of things. Still, even now Paul still had the upper hand in experience and everything that was brought up was something he had tried before and had already decided whether it’s something he likes or not. 

Unsurprisingly, Paul’s hard ‘no’s’ were things that you honestly had no desire to try and most of his ‘yes’s’ were things you were eager for as well. There honestly wasn’t much of a middle ground where there was something you wanted that he wasn’t the biggest fan of....except...shockingly, a threesome. Paul claimed that he had been there and done that before and that it was something that he felt like he’d grown out of. He hadn’t said it was something that would never happen, but it didn’t seem like something that would happen anytime soon, especially not without some prodding on your end. 

That’s probably why Paul’s text tonight had caught you so off guard. You’d come to Toronto with him for a week of summer vacation while he filmed Biz does Ontario. While he filmed, you played tourist, got a massage, and just generally took some time out of your busy life to relax. Tonight he’d gone out to meet up with some buddies and you’d stayed in, curled up with a new book. 

It was almost ten when your phone buzzed and setting your book aside as you finished a chapter, heat flooded your body. 

Put on that black lingerie set and that dress you know I like and come to 70 Yorkville Ave.

His text was suggestive enough to tell you that he had something planned but too vague to tell you exactly what it was. Still, you knew by now that when Paul had something up his sleeve it was best to just play along. So you quickly changed into the requested attire, threw your hair up into a messy and somewhat sexy bun, and applied a smokey makeup look before grabbing your things, slipping into a pair of heels and heading out the door. 

When you arrived at the lounge you looked around but didn’t spot Paul anywhere. Shooting him a text that you were there you made your way over to the bar and ordered yourself a glass of wine, your anticipation rising. Even sipping slowly, you’d finished your first glass of wine and you still hadn’t spotted your boyfriend. Just as you were about to text him again, a warm hand landed on your lower back and a voice called for the bartender to pour you another glass while ordering a beer for himself. 

Your body had tensed at the touch and you quickly spun to tell whoever it was that had decided to get handsy off. 

“Ex…” before you could even finish your first word your eyes met the cocky gaze of a certain Dallas Stars forward and you froze. The fact that Tyler Seguin was standing beside you with his hand on your lower back should have signaled exactly what your boyfriend had planned, however, your brain failed to put the pieces together quickly. 

“I’m sorry...did you not want another?” The tone of his voice was almost patronizing and for a split second, you wanted to slap him. 

“No...I...yes…” You stuttered out. “But I have a boyfriend.” Something about your words made Tyler laugh and after taking a sip of his beer he leaned closer and whispered in your ear. 

“Well, I won’t tell him if you won’t.” When your body instinctively recoiled because the last thing you’d ever do was cheat on Paul, Tyler’s facial expressions cracked for a moment before leaning in close again. “Would you just play along?” Having felt his breath on your skin one moment and then having it be gone the next made you shiver and seeing Tyler looking away from the bar made you follow his gaze. What your eyes met was your boyfriend who had his normal sexy smirk on and who was clearly watching the two of you. 

At that moment, you looked between Paul and Tyler and when you returned your gaze to the former he was clearly mouthing something to you, his body language more relaxed than it should be for someone else hitting on you. It was then that everything hit you at once...this was Paul’s plan. This was him giving in to what you wanted. A flush rose on your cheeks as you smiled at him sending him a short nod before turning your attention back to Tyler who smirked once more realizing that you were now in on the whole plan. 

Grazing your fingers along the muscles of Tyler’s forearm you couldn’t help but imagine those arms pinning you down on the bed while he fucked you. 

“So you like hitting on taken women.” You tease, sipping at your wine before purposely licking a drop of the liquid off of your lips. At your action, Tyler’s adam’s apple bobbed and there was a tick in his jaw as it tightened. 

“I like hitting on attractive women.” He responded voice low, his body stepping half a step closer to your own, boxing you in against the bar. “And what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.” It was then that you realized his hand was still pressed against your back as it dipped lower to rest just above your ass. 

“And if I was supposed to meet him here…?” You whispered, your hand moving from his arm to graze for just a moment over his abs. 

“Well then maybe he should join us.” The words were said in such a matter of fact manner that even though you knew that’s where this was headed, they still stole your breath for a moment. Heat was already pooling in your stomach when Tyler’s teeth grazed over your ear as he spoke. “I bed you’d like to be fucked from both ends.” 

If you hadn’t been sitting you probably would have toppled over. You were about to look back for Paul wondering just how this was going to proceed when you felt a second hand land on your back and the scent of your boyfriend’s cologne filled your nose. Reaching for your class of wine you quickly finished it off, and as you set the empty glass back on the bar, you felt Paul’s breath against your other ear. 

“You gonna be a good girl baby and let Tyler and I fuck you? I told him what a good girl you are but he said he’d have to see it to believe it.” You couldn’t help but nod, conscious thought starting to leave you, as the combination of the alcohol and heat of two huge male bodies surrounded you. 

The next thing you know, the check has been paid and you’re being led out of the bar into an SUV. As you reach the vehicle, Tyler tosses Paul the keys and opens the backdoor for you before sliding inside with you. 

“You know where you’re going man?” Tyler asks and when Paul nods and starts the car, Tyler’s attention turns to you. Out of habit, you buckle yourself up and Tyler and Paul exchange a quick look in the rearview mirror before they both do the same. “Guess it would put a damper on things if we were killed before the fun started,” Tyler muttered. 

As soon as Paul pulled into the Toronto streets, Tyler’s hand falls to your thigh and slowly starts moving upward. The rough callouses of his fingers cause you to shiver and unconsciously you spread your legs wanting his touch higher and closer to your core. “That’s it baby. I know you want me.” Tyler breathes into your ear. For a moment, his hand moves up to cup your face and then he’s kissing you, his tongue quickly probing at your mouth for access. Needing to tease just a bit, you refuse access until Tyler’s hand returns to your body, slipping under your dress and finding your clit. 

Your moan gives him what he wants and you can feel him smirking as you kiss passionately, his hand just resting against your inner thigh. When you finally need to breathe and pull back, Tyler’s eyes are dark and he pinches at the skin of your inner thigh. “So you’re gonna be a brat. Paul didn’t tell me that.” He mumbles, his mouth dropping to your neck to bite a mark deep into your skin. The pain of it sends a jolt through your body and you whine softly. 

Before things can progress any farther, the car stops and you feel your seat belt slacken as Tyler’s fingers unlatch it before tugging you out of the car, causing you to stumble on your heels. Paul is behind you before you can regain your balance and his lips are pressed to the back of your neck. With Tyler’s hand in yours, he tugs you through the parking garage and into an elevator and it’s only once you’re inside that you feel a strong smack across your rear and you glance up to see that Paul’s eyes are dark as well. 

“I thought I told you to be good for him.” He growls softly and you chew softly on your bottom lip, eyes downcast. You know he’s not actually angry and that his actions are just part of all of this so you play along. 

“I’m sorry daddy...just wanted to ease into things.” You whisper. Before either man can respond further, the elevator has come to a stop and you see Paul toss Tyler his keys back so that he can lead you down the hall and into his Toronto apartment. Once the door opens both men kick off their shoes but Tyler glares at you when you move to slip off your own. 

“Leave them.” He growls, taking his chance to smack at your ass firmly but gently. “Bedroom is the second door on the left. Take off your dress but leave everything else on and go kneel on the floor at the foot of the bed.”  His voice is demanding and when you meet Paul’s gaze his eyes tell you to obey. 

By the time they join you in the bedroom you’ve been kneeling on the floor for at least five minutes, nipples pebbled through the lingerie from the chill of Tyler’s air conditioning. You can feel their eyes raking over your body but Paul clears his throat when you attempt to look up at them so you cast your head down again awaiting further instruction. 

When a hand brushes over the top of your head gently twice you take that as a signal to look up. When you do Tyler is standing nude in front of you, his hard cock bobbing between his thighs. Out of the corner of your eye, you can see that Paul is also nude and is laying on the bed, hands behind his head. 

“Need to know if this mouth is as good as Biz claims.” Tyler declares, his fingers tangling in your hair after taking out your bun, to pull your mouth closer to him. Wetting your lips you first lick at the tip of Tyler’s cock, tasting the precum leaking from it before slowly sinking your mouth forward to take as much of him as you can without triggering your gag reflex. Working your mouth over him the same way Paul has taught you he likes, you try and gauge what works for Tyler and what doesn’t. When he groans as you hum around him you grin slightly, feeling his cock twitch. Seconds later he pulls you off of him and to your feet, clearly signaling that he’s not ready to cum yet.

“Paul you’re a fucking lucky bastard if she wears shit like this for you frequently.” Tyler declares, his hands running over the fabric of your lingerie.

“Don’t I know it.” Paul declares and when you look over at him, he’s stroking his cock causing another wave of moisture to flood your core. 

“It’s too pretty to get cum all over so I say it’s time we get you out of it.” Tyler declares and with Paul’s nod of approval, Tyler’s hands tug the fabric off of you and finally takes your heels off along with it. “Much better.” Tyler declares as he kisses you, one hand tangling in your hair. After a moment, a warm sticky substance coats the skin of your stomach and you quickly realize that Tyler’s other hand had been jerking himself off so that he could cover you in his cum. As he cums down from his orgasm, Tyler pulls away from you panting. “Go blow your boyfriend while I eat you out.” 

Nodding you take the few steps over to the bed, climbing onto it to kiss Paul’s stomach before wrapping your mouth around his hard cock. Blowing Tyler hadn’t been bad but there was something about making Paul fall apart that was just so much better. As you work Paul’s cock in the way you know he likes you can’t help but moan feeling Tyler’s mouth blowing at your pussy before sucking your clit between his lips. Receiving oral sex is one of your favorite sexual acts and it gets even better when Paul’s fingers reach down to caress your breasts, pinching and rubbing your nipples until their hard and aching and sending jolts to meet the actions of Tyler’s mouth. 

You can tell that Paul is getting close, even though your mind has started to go fuzzy with the approach of your own orgasm. Still, you didn’t expect Paul’s hand to tug at your hair as his hips jolt up into your mouth pressing his cock deeper down your throat. You gag a bit before trying to relax your mouth around him, taking him as deep as you possibly can. The way he’s grunting and breathing heavily tells you he’s close and you nuzzle your nose against him. The moment Paul starts to spurt down your throat you feel two of Tyler’s fingers slip inside you as he bites gently at your clit and the feeling of all of it at once tears an orgasm from your body much sooner than you expected it. 

Collapsed with your head on Paul’s thigh you try and catch your breath while Tyler’s fingers rub gently at your clit in a way that is almost too much but yet not enough. When he stops you whimper but then Paul is dragging your body further up the bed to kiss you gently, giving you the bit of care that he knows you need in the situation before going any further. 

Breaking the kiss after a moment, you look down to where Tyler is standing at the foot of the bed, his cock already hard again. 

“Do you want him to fuck you babe?” Paul questions softly because he would never force you into anything you didn’t want and oral sex is one thing but this is another. 

“Yes…” You respond wanting to feel both men stretching you out to your max. Anal sex was something that you and Paul had been experimenting with and this seemed like the right time to take it to the next level. 

“Condoms and lube?” Paul asked and when Tyler pointed to a bedside drawer, Paul grabbed both items, tossing the condom down to Tyler. “If you’re gonna fuck her you have to glove up.” He declared. Tyler complied quickly, sliding the condom over his dick before kneeling on the bed. 

“How are we doing this?” He asked and as always you looked to Paul for guidance. 

“She’ll ride you and I’ll fuck her from behind.” With that direction, Paul and Tyler switched spots for a moment, Paul stealing one more proper kiss before smacking at your ass. “Show him how good that pussy feels. Tight like a vice grip.” 

With Tyler spread out on the bed, you moved to straddle him, his hands quickly moving to your hips to steady you.

“You ready?” He asked and when you nodded, he lined himself up with your hole before allowing you to slowly sink down on him. The way your body stretched around him made your toes curl and you paused for a moment needing to adjust. “Fuck…” Tyler grunted, his hips flexing beneath you, clearly desiring movement. Slowly you began to bounce on him, the friction building and curling inside you deliciously.

After a moment, Paul guided you to a stop again so that he could work first one but then two lubed fingers inside your ass. After that, you resumed your slow pace, fucking Tyler while Paul worked his fingers to spread you open, eventually adding a third finger, scissoring them all inside you. 

“Paul please...I need you.” You moaned, wanting nothing more than to be surrounded by these men, filled and stretched so full. Gradually, you rocked your hips faster against Tyler, needing more of everything, but every so often a shudder would course through your body that would cause you to just grind your pelvis against his, curses spilling from his mouth. 

“Seriously dude...just fuck her ass already. She’s killing me.” Tyler declared and after a moment you felt the heat of Paul’s body as he pressed against your back. With one more stretch of his fingers inside you, they slipped out and as Paul murmured for Tyler to help brace you, his fingers were slowly replaced by his cock. 

For a moment you couldn’t breathe, the feeling of being stuffed full from both ends being too much. You knew that Tyler was aching for you to move but Paul held you still, letting you adjust to him and kissing your head while pressing his hand against your stomach. Both men were so large that you were certain they could feel each other pressed inside you and the knowledge of that pushed you even closer to orgasm. Paul must have felt your body relax enough to satisfy him because after a moment he started fucking down into you causing you to shift on Tyler’s cock. Thankfully the two men figured out how to best fuck you between them because things had just started and you were already boneless at the feeling. 

All sense of time and space was lost to you as you let yourself be used by Paul and Tyler. You had no idea how long they had been fucking you for or how many times you’d already come when you felt Tyler tense under you before an obscene moan left his mouth and he was twitching inside of you. The way your body seemed to be fluttering around him signaled that you’d cum too but maybe you’d just been in a constant state of orgasm since they started fucking you. 

Knowing Paul hadn’ cum yet you tried to weakly rock your body back against him but he had paused as Tyler came, just holding your body to him. Feeling his lips kiss down your back, you felt him slip out of you as well before flipping you over onto your back. 

“You’ve been so good for us.” He whispered and Tyler quickly mumbled his affirmance of that statement. “But I think you should show Tyler just how good you are and let me cum inside you.” 

For a split second your eyes went wide and then you were nodding frantically. 

“Yes daddy, please cum inside me.” You’d tried to convince Paul to go bareback but he’d refused since you had stopped taking the pill, declaring that it wasn’t yet time to try for a baby. As Paul settled himself above you he chuckled, brushing a strand of hair from your face. 

“I know baby. You’re so eager for daddy to knock you up. Want you to show Tyler just how good you take my seed, how much you want me to fill you up and make you mine. Because you are mine. Tonight was the only time I’m ever going to share you.” Tears were pooling in your eyes as Paul pressed inside you, your body molding to his like you were made to take his cock. 

As Paul fucked himself inside you, Tyler’s fingers reached to play with your nipples once more. 

“He’s right...you are such a good girl letting him fuck you until you’re nice and pregnant. He’s a lucky son of a bitch.” With Paul fucking so deep inside you, shifting your legs to wrap around him until he was buried to the hilt on each in stroke, and Tyler pinching and rubbing at your nipples, it wasn’t long until you were crying out as the most intense orgasm of your life rushed over you. 

The walls of your pussy clenched down tight around Paul’s dick as he let go, milking him dry. With your body heaving, tears spilled from your eyes at the intensity of it all and you felt the bed shift as Paul leaned over to kiss you while still resting inside of you. 

“Holy fuck Paul.” You eventually breathed, your hands reaching up to brush over his cheeks. 

“Good huh?” He murmured.

“Fantastic. Though I’m not sure where that last part suddenly came from.” You whispered slightly concerned that he had only acted in the heat of the moment and would regret taking that risk. Seeing Tyler return with a wet washcloth, Paul finally slipped out of you, gently wiping you down. 

“Like you didn’t know I planned to spend the rest of my life giving you whatever it is that you want.” 

Paul had always done whatever it took to make you happy and tonight was no exception. Your first threesome had been fun and you definitely needed to thank Tyler but maybe Paul had been right. Now that it was out of your system you know that the only man you needed was the one you planned on spending the rest of your life with. 

And you couldn’t wait to see what else there was to explore with him. 

[neshabeingchildish]

Hensley & Char: Friends or Whatever || Part 6

I have to warn y’all, this chapter has some sadness in it. I tapped into 15 year old me and how I was trying to navigate what I thought back then was me being bi, which IF someone calls me bi, I am not opposed to the able, even being technically ace, but for that time and for my feelings/experience and the language I had access to, that’s what I was considering myself as, but nobody knew that (though I was rumored gay by several people in high school, despite never seeing me in any relationships and me only ever speaking about male crushes to others) LOL, yes, Mama used to have male crushes irl, when I was a kid. But, I tapped into some of myself, but made it more Charlotte-like and leaned on the gay. Idk how well it will or won’t resonate, but I hope that I at least did Charlotte justice in her experience with looking inward, though her results may be disappointing, I hope that they at least come across as realistic, if not relatable or understandable. @just-a-j-reallly @junknstu1f @henryharts I’m not in a rush for feedback, as I know everybody has things going on. Hopefully my tags work out. A lot of people never get notified of them.

Also, as a heads up, the next chapter, whenever that might come, might also be sad too. I’m so sorry. 

The Jasper Juxtaposition

They had been trying to get Jasper into the fold of their outfit for a while. Ray wasn’t having it. Even whenever Charlotte basically throw her pride into a burning bin, seeping with trash juice, to pretend that she was secretly dating Hensley, but that they couldn’t tell anyone because, “Charlotte’s not out of the closet.” At this point, Charlotte was very heavily debating this ruse. 

There was an element of “people shouldn’t lie/joke about being in the closet,” which she strongly and firmly believed in… But… She went along with it anyway, because as she did her backstory for this test on Jasper, she found that she comfortably created the guise. 

“I can say that I’ve been curious about my sexuality for a while, and seeing you out of the closet, living your best gay life inspired me to come to you for advice on how to navigate figuring it out and in the process, we fell for each other and started dating secretly.”

Hensley laughed in her face and said, “It’s Jasper, Char. You don’t have to say all of that. Just be like, “We’re gay together, Dude.” He’s gonna accept it and be super chill about it. I’m not convinced there’s a pile of homo rattling around in him, if we’re being honest. PLUS, he thinks we’re both hot. He’s gonna get a kick out of us kissing and stuff.”

“I’m not kissing you!” Charlotte squealed.

Hensley turned up her nose, “What? Ew. No! Of course not. Ugh. This incites disgust, to think of it.” She shook her head, “Kissing a straight girl… in the mouth? I don’t know where your mouth has been. On boys, probably. I don’t want boy kiss transfer.”

“You kissed Chloe all the time!” Charlotte argued, unsure of why that was her response instead of arguing that she didn’t want to kiss Hensley (and hadn’t been kissing any boys, unless you counted kissing Jack Swagawitz at camp… which… she didn’t), and furthermore…

“Chloe was different, though. I really liked her,” Hensley said.

“You went out with Bianca as soon as you had a window,” Charlotte muttered.

“You told me to go for it! What? Now, I gotta stop listening to my smarter half?”

They bickered up until the moment that Jasper came over for them to feed him the lie. Whoa, were they bad at lying together… Fortunately, it was Jasper. Who, Charlotte was very disturbed by his fascination with the thought of them kissing. “Jasper is fetishing us, and I don’t like it,” she told Hensley.

“He’s not fetishizing you. He’s fetishizing fake lesbian you. It’s different.”

“Yeah, but… He’s… fetishizing lesbians!”

“He’s a dude. Dudes do that,” Hensley said, waving a hand. Charlotte didn’t like that explanation and it was often Hensley’s excuse for a number of sexist and problematic things that happened on her watch. Maybe it was for the best that Jasper didn’t pass the test. Then she’d have a problematic Hensley, and ANOTHER problematic guy at work. Ray was alright. He was nice, enough, but he said stuff sometimes that made her uncomfortable and he didn’t really listen whenever she pointed these things out. (Something that she had no idea would get worse over time, but that’s another subject.

Currently, the subject is Jasper. 

It took a while before Jasper came on board with the team. It took a while before he was ready for this secret. From the time that Hensley and Charlotte “broke up” until then, there were a lot of adventures that Hensley and Char saw together that made them really close in a way that Charlotte and Jasper were not, and even that Jasper and Henry were not. And in a way, for Charlotte, it was a lot like the fabricated story that she had spun - their secret involvement and the connecting together that nobody knew about… Also, since then, she had really been thinking about how easy it was for her to think of that, and how… relatable it felt, how natural it was to even imagine herself, keeping that sort of secret because she couldn’t tell people that she maybe… well… she didn’t really think it was so much a maybe these days… liked girls. 

More specifically, she maybe (and this WAS still a maybe), liked Hensley. Her hopeless heroine who she helped on a daily basis, and loved being so close to, even when she complained and fussed at her about the things that she deserved to be fussed at about. She would probably NEVER let her live down almost getting killed by Jasper’s crazy ex girlfriend, and she was so tired of Hensley always coming to her to get her out of stuff that she warned her about prior to the decision - like when she tried to go to the dance with Chloe as Kid Danger and Bianca as herself… STUPID HENSLEY! Charlotte decided, right around Jasper Dunlop Day that she wasn’t doing this anymore. She was going to explore her options and see what felt right. 

She bought a project board, some cards, and a science journal and she set up, literally in her closet, a little experiment center. She decorated the board, and across the top, had lettered, “Am I Gay?” Her hypothesis?: “I might be gay.” Procedure: Well, she supposed, she had to talk to some people, go on some dates, maybe kiss somebody? She shuddered. The amount of germs in saliva was terrifying to her. In fact, whenever she kissed Jack, she had threatened, “If you slip me any tongue, I’ll slip my fist right into your ribcage!” Needless to say, he slipped her no tongue.

But, her “experimentation phase” generally was not very successful for a number of reasons. 

First and foremost… meeting people? She wasn’t a fan. She joined the Student Council as a means to help her with a bit of self diagnosed social anxiety, but cared a lot about issues, so that she genuinely stayed in it to do community stuff and be a helpful member of the club. She met cool people, too! It was one of her things away from Hensley and away from Jasper, and wasn’t primarily academic, so she held it close to her heart as something for herself and decided against using it, and the fine people she met in it as lab rats for her orientation exploration.

Then, there was the little problem of personal space and unnecessary touching. There were very few people that she allowed into her bubble. Her parents, Uncle Roscoe, Hensley, Jasper, Piper, and Ray, and even with Ray, she tensed up for the longest time whenever he entered her bubble without warning. Even with that select amount of people who could be in her bubble, the only people that could casually touch her were her parents and Hensley. Sometimes Piper, but Piper had the respect to not touch her for no good reason. Unlike Hensley, who she simply had to get used to the fact that the girl was simply GOING TO just stand close, throw her arm around her, hug her, pick her up, play with her hair, tug on her backpack, or whatever she felt like doing at the time, and saying, “You should get permission before touching people,” just became background noise for Hensley, after a while, so Charlotte simply stopped saying it and adjusted. 

Jasper still sometimes got elbowed. It just wasn’t the same thing when a dude just touched you casually, she had initially thought. Maybe that wasn’t it at all and she just didn’t mind girls touching her as much, because she liked them? But… in order to figure that out, she’d have to let people in her bubble and let people casually touch her and see how she felt about it. 

So often, when it looked like somebody was getting too close, she stepped away, creating the distance of comfort for her and also, very clearly letting them see where it was. To the point that everybody who knew her knew not to get too close and everybody in her extracurriculars always did stuff like, “Hey Charlotte, I’m gonna take this lint off of you, okay?” (to which, she’d tell them to show her where it was and get it herself) or “Hi, Charlotte, do you mind if I sit here, or is that too close for you?”(To which she’d tell them to go ahead, but she’d move over more). She’d have to start telling people that being near her was okay, if she wanted to see her reactions to boys and girls and others in her proximity… And nowadays, they didn’t even ask anymore.

Even Mitch Bilsky would take one look at her and say, “UGH. The only space is by the queen of “don’t stand so close to me?” He’d then still do it, and even purposefully make her squirm, but she would resolve to ignore him and he’d get bored and move along.

But, she didn’t have very many times to test this out, and had to eventually rule out trying to get close to people (or let them get close to her) to see if she might feel a little flutter or not. 

Lastly, in addition to not being a people person and not wanting anybody in her personal space, The Man Cave was a whole ass full time job to maintain. She began to wonder what happened to people who previously worked for Ray/Captain Man? Even the ones that were there when she got there, and ones that would pop in and out for little assignments… after a while, she just didn’t see them, and she either was assigned their jobs, or took it upon herself to do them for worry of things going terribly wrong if she didn’t. Things went wrong in general, and she often felt like if she didn’t step in whenever she did, they could be downright disastrous. This job basically became her life. She never signed up for another marathon after dropping out whenever she thought the Super Volcano would kill them. She still had StuCo, but that was school related and when push came to shove, she only forsook the Man Cave for educational purposes, unless it was an extreme emergency.

In fact, she completely gave up on testing it all out and just let it bother her beneath the surface. Her conclusion: I’m more confused than ever, but technically… going to consider myself in the closet.

Imagine if I was as comfortable with myself as Jasper is…

You couldn’t tell that boy nothing. He protested stupid Swellview laws, jumped into hero mode to get his own hero day, wore belly shirts to everyone’s chagrin, was willing to go to tremendous lengths - sometimes extremely embarrassing ones - to get girls, and he overshared weird facts about his body with great excitement that just let you know that he adored these things about himself… 

She couldn’t even with certainty say that she MIGHT like girls, which, she was sure that she absolutely did, but she could hardly admit it to herself, much less out loud. What if it hurt her? What if it affected how she was seen by people on college boards or in the job field, once she left Swellview. Sure… there were YEARS before this happened, but Charlotte had been thinking ahead since she was small, and the moment she felt an inkling that her feelings may be… counterculture, she began to research related laws and statistics. 

Swellview didn’t have a big Black population. In fact, the demographics indicated that there were a lot more lgbt citizens than there were people who weren’t white, period. So, in Swellview, perhaps it wouldn’t be anything to be open about her sexuality… but… what if it was different for her, like a lot of things were. It was often different for her as a girl to be accepted in some spaces, to be listened to, to be respected. And it was frequently double different for her as a Black girl. Even the “good” people made her feel things that she often didn’t want to complain about, because they ALREADY thought she was an angry girl, when she couldn’t think of very many instances in which her anger was not justified. Research told her that was a common issue for Black girls and women. She didn’t have enough around her to touch base with, and was frustrated that she had to consider all of these intersections to even consider whether she would be free enough to have a sexual identity. 

Even with her academic record, immaculate articulation, and non-threatening appearance, Charlotte didn’t have many friends and didn’t have the best reputation. She was a nerd, but also, unfriendly. A Black girl in a male dominant world, in a white dominant city, and to possibly also be gay… she just… she couldn’t just toss that out there and have it attached to her name without knowing, and she felt like a coward for feeling like that. 

What would be the big deal, Charlotte? If that’s who you are… what would be so wrong about that? People be gay all over Swellview… but then again… everyday, she would see people be able to freely do things that she previously thought she WOULD never do, but as she got older realized that she wouldn’t do certain things, because she COULD never do them… not without possibly losing something. Chances? Respect? Heck, in certain areas of the world, her life. But, thinking this hard about it and not coming up with anything to push her to believe that she was indeed a straight girl, despite all of the reasons that it would be SO easy, and she loved easy things, despite her knack for tackling hard things. Why wouldn’t she just accept that she was straight, if that would make all of this anguish and confusion go away? She could just tell herself that she was straight and get it over with and move on… IF she was indeed straight. And if she wasn’t, no matter how much “experimentation” and hypothesizing she did, nothing would make her feel those feelings that she sometimes felt around Hensley, for some boy. 

So… She just sat with it. In her closet. She didn’t experiment and she didn’t hypothesize. But, in her science journal that she had previously been writing all of these things in, she scratched out her conclusion and wrote. 

Conclusion: I’m gay. 

But, she tore the page out and wadded it up. Then, she felt bad, straightened it back out, and slid it back into it's space. She tucked her cards into it and stuffed it into a lock box where she kept keepsakes and stuff, locked it in and got rid of her project board in the Junk n Stuff dumpster. 

She had been handling Kid Danger’s secret for a couple of years now and planned to hold on to it forever. She had time to figure out what to do with her own.

Besides… by the time Jasper got in on the secret… Things changed a lot, anyway.

[spinearlapis]

A Few Hundred Years of Reports

so this is. a little random. but i was bored at work today so during lunch break i wrote. a fanfic? based off of a one off line peridot says in when it rains? Oops?

so uh. for anyone interested in peridot angst and half remembered, half assed, barely canon interpretations of events, the fic is under the cut.

Zip. Zip. Tap. … Zip. Zip. Tap. …

Peridot had been reading reports for approximately 24 hours. She had just been deployed onto Earth to prepare herself for her work on the Cluster Project. Several phases of experimentation had occurred throughout the years, and it was Peridot’s job to learn about all of them so she could know what to do and what not to do when beginning the final phase of prototypes. It was all very fascinating to her, and yet…

Zip. Zip. Tap.

She was a little bored. The machinery in the underground room hummed around her, warming the room considerably, noticeable even to a gem. The reports, displayed on a panel upon a protruding device, were important, but the most interesting thing that she ever got to read was whenever one phase of the project ended and was handed off to another set of gems. Often the change in leadership and technique lead to its fair share of glitches and, much to Peridot’s annoyance, improper filing.

Peridot would have wished for something interesting to happen, if she were not totally convinced that she was fine. This was just standard procedure, she was lucky to be a part of this project, what reason could she have to be bored, so on and so forth. Everytime she felt the grip of tedium, she reminded herself that no, she wasn’t bored, she was just focused. That was what was expected of her. She would not fail those expectations. Her fingers twitched. The next report was pulled up.

Report 136744 Log Date xxxxxx Onyx 7FG The 64th batch of artificial fusion prototypes for the cluster project have been gestating for 37 rotations. The 3rd generational experimental scan bots provided by our supervising Agates were deployed to examine their growth patterns. Subjects X8BLZ and S3FDP have exceeded expectations, and at their current rate they are expected to complete their cycle early. Subject D5HEQ has not yet bonded it's gems with the kindergarten fluid. The Howlite suspects fusing the shards of two wildly different gem types in their unformed state has caused this problem, and I agree. If it does not meet the estimated growth level by xxxxxx then we will proceed to terminate it so as not to waste resources. All other prototypes are growing as expected. Report End.

Peridot flicked her eyes up for a moment. From where she was standing, she could see every cluster prototype projected onto the walls of the room. Her eyes scanned through them and, lo and behold, there was merely a crossed out square where D5HEQ would have been. She fluttered one of her magnetic fingers to tap its spot, and text detailing its history popped up. Peridot squinted, and her visor automatically adjusted her vision to zoom into the faraway text on the wall.

A Pearl and a Topaz. Early exit failure. Cause: Incompatible gem types.

Peridot blinked. A Pearl and a Topaz? That was a bizarre choice for a fusion experiment to begin with, but Peridot's mind wandered farther. Why had a Pearl and a Topaz turn to traitors anyway? She knew pondering that question would waste precious time she could spend reading reports, but her curiosity, very briefly, overcame her. Had the Topaz owned the Pearl, and forced her to rebel with her? But why would the Topaz rebel? And a singular Topaz, too, was unusual. Using her finger to scroll further down, more information came up about the two gems.

Green Pearl, 6GP Abandoned her post by her Emerald and shared vulnerable information about the Emerald’s location to the gem rebels. Status: Captured and shattered. Topaz, 2KD Poofed her assigned fusion Topaz and attempted to use her as a bargaining chip for the gem rebellion. Status: Captured and shattered.

Peridot leaned back in surprise. So the Pearl didn’t even belong to the Topaz. The Pearl had just decided to rebel? And the Topaz had just decided to poof her own fusion partner? How could a Pearl even betray the one she was made for? Or a Topaz betray her own gem type? As those thoughts crossed her mind, Peridot shook her head. In truth, that’s what all these traitor gems did. They betrayed the ones they were made for, the Diamonds. They betrayed all of gemkind.

There was no use trying to understand their logic, they were all off colored defectives, anyway. Peridot's hands clenched in her limb enhancers. They refused to conform, so they were of no use. The magnetic fingers immediately zipped back to her hand in response to her clenched fist, surprising her. There was no point in thinking more on it. She looked back down at the panel and continued reading.

Report 136745 Log Date xxxxxxxx Onyx 7FG Subject D5HEQ has been terminated as I instructed. Howlite carried out the failed prototype and disposed of its remains in our ship so it can be harvested and repurposed. Subject X8BLZ is continuing its steady growth pattern, however S3FDP's growth sped up exponentially and it emerged far too early. When we broke open its geode its form had lost control of itself and was shrinking and expanding rapidly. It’s gem rejected the kindergarten fluid, and the fluid started to leak out of its gemstone. I have bubbled it. We do not have the current tools to examine what caused this, at least not without taking away precious time and resources from our main project. I plan to send it back to homeworld for further examination. No other events of note occurred. Report End.

On instinct, Peridot's finger flicked. The screen for S3FDP began to scroll.

A Maxixe and an Aventurine. Early exit failure. Cause: sabotage.

Peridot had only been half paying attention, not wanting to get invested again. But at the word 'sabotage' she perked up. Had something interfered with the experimentation? She looked back down at the report pulled up on her screen. She had to know. She quickly flipped through the following reports, desperate to know what had happened here.

Report 136746. A few of the prototypes were exceeding expectations. A few more were failing. Most were simply meeting.

Report 136747. Some of the exceeding prototypes emerged early and failed. Progress was halted in order to determine the cause and prevent repeats. 3rd generation scan bots were used on exceeding prototypes to determine the problem. Upon a few hours of examination, it was revealed too much kindergarten fluid was used during the gems insertion. A correspondence has begun with the assembly colony responsible for shipping the fluid here.

Report 146748. A reply from the assembly colony. Their measurements were exact. The slow prototypes were scanned. Little to no kindergarten fluid was used during their insertion. The Howlite was reprimanded for failing to properly measure the fluid. The failing gem fusions were shattered.

Report 136750.

Wait. That’s not right. Peridot went back through the files. Why did it skip a report? She bit her lip. She had already wasted so much time. She had to press on. But the missing report could have crucial information she needed to carry out her job correctly. Not to mention explain the so called sabotage. After a few moments of consideration, Peridot extended her pointer finger. The magnetic counterpoint flipped open its top, revealing a plug. Kicking open the side of the panel to reveal the delicate electronics inside, she interfaced with it. She searched through the systems memory, looking for any errors or old deleted files. She couldn’t find any Report 136749, but she found something else.

To my Onyx: I Love You.

Peridot was taken aback. Quickly scanning the file’s properties revealed that it was made around the time the missing report would have been made. The incorrect title was probably what caused it to be filed out of order. The strange, obscenely intimate title. Peridot shivered. The machinery around her hummed. She read the report.

Dear Onyx. By the time you read this I will be long gone. I know this will be hard to understand, but please try. You are the most brave, intelligent, and beautiful gem I’ve ever met. You always went against the grain, in little ways. Turning down higher priority projects just for this one, all because you wanted to? Because you were passionate? Choosing me as your partner, of all gems, all because you like me? You’re unlike any Onyx I’ve ever met. You’re unlike any gem I’ve ever met on Homeworld. But I’ve met plenty of gems like that in the rebellion.

Peridots fingers clenched. She stood up on her toes, enhancing her height as far as she could. She was reading the words of a traitor. An awful, off color traitor. Had anyone else ever read this report? Would she be punished for doing so? Her fingers clenched. She kept reading.

Please, please understand. I know that, even with how unique you are, that you are loyal beyond measure. But you are wasting your life if you keep that loyalty. The Diamonds hold no such loyalty towards us, when we are the reason their beloved empire thrives in the first place. And can you even really call it thriving when it only serves them?

Peridot felt rage build within her. How could a gem write this in earnest, much less actually believe it? The Diamonds are all powerful, all knowing, all giving beings. They are flawless, and the universe is better off because of their influence. Every gem knows this. But not defective gems such as this Howlite, evidently. Peridot shifted her stance even further.

You have to feel it too. You have to see it too. Look at what we’re doing. I knew some of these gems personally. I know it’s hard to believe, but I once considered joining their side. I only stayed out of fear of what would happen to me. And I was right to fear. Look at what we’re doing to the remains of the shattered. Look at what we’re doing to the planet they fought for! If you felt anything for me, or for any of these gems while we were working together, I know you’ll understand. This is wrong. If you leave now, you can catch up to the escape pod I’m taking from the ship. I’ll be waiting for you, and we can leave together. We can be free, be who we are, and we never have to hurt others or be hurt by others ever again. I love you.

Peridot shook. This was disgusting. This was horrific. This was the act of an insane, dangerous gem, clearly just a worthless, defective, off color-

Peridot pushed herself too far. Her limb enhancers slipped, and she crashed onto the ground in a heap of metal and limbs. For a few moments, she did not move. The hard floor and shock from falling drained the energy and anger from her. Her chin tilted upwards, trying to see the panel from her position. It was too high up now, or rather, she was too low. Immediately her emotions flared up again and she scrambled to her feet. She reached for the panel, only to realize one hand came up...short.

She flexed her fingers. Her real fingers. Her eyes followed the trail of her hand, up her arm, and then past herself, down to the ground. Her metal arm enhancer and fingers lay scattered around her.

Slowly, she turned. Slowly, she reached down and picked up the lost enhancer. Slowly, she attached it to herself. And in a snap, the metal fingers zipped back to their positions. She was fine. There was nothing wrong. She was doing her job well.

Peridot returned to the panel, deleted the file, and kept reading reports.

[omgjasminesimone]

Graduation Dinner

Colt x MC (Ellie)

Author’s Note: Set in the not too distant future. My first Colt X MC piece! I can’t really decide between him and Logan. It’s so hard.

Word Count: 1853

…

..

.

“Here.” Colt hands over the slightly burned popcorn to Ellie as he takes a spot beside her on the couch in his newly leased apartment.

Ellie looks at the popcorn distastefully as Colt slings an arm around her shoulder. “You burnt it.”

He grabs a handful and tosses it into his mouth. “I like It burnt.” He retorts.

“Or you don’t know how to use the microwave.” She hands the bowl back to him and snuggles closer, placing a kiss to his neck.

“Well, it is a new microwave. Unfortunately, the one I was used to burnt down with the Auto Shop that had been in my family for generations.” That came out more bitter than he wanted it to.

She simply squeezes him comfortingly and doesn’t try to force him to talk about it. Her attention returns to the horror movie playing on the flat screen tv in front of them.

“You know, I’ve been meaning to invite you to my graduation dinner.” Ellie replies after they’ve watched in silence for a few moments.

“I’m not invited to your graduation ceremony?”

Ellie scoffs. “You would be bored out of your mind.”

Colt doesn’t try to argue with that. “Who’s going to dinner?”

“It’s small. My Dad. Riya. You, if you want.” Ellie explains.

He chews more popcorn as he thinks on the invitation. “Riya hates me.”

“Hate is a strong word. She was solidly Team Logan, but she just knows him better. You’ll grow on her.” Ellie assures.

“Your Dad probably doesn’t like me much either.” Colt hypothesizes.

“He hasn’t even met you.” Ellie retorts.

He shoots her a look. “I’m sure he’s heard enough about me to have some preconceived feelings.”

Ellie sighs, conceding the truth behind that statement. “Well, I like you.” She places a chaste kiss on his lips, which taste of butter from the popcorn. “I’d really like it if you came.”

“You really think this is a good idea?” Colt asks

“How bad could it go?” Ellie asks rhetorically.

…

..

.

Ellie looks around the tense and awkward table. This was going worse than she expected.

Colt picks at his blue tie uncomfortably, trying to avoid the glares Ellie’s father keeps sending him. Ellie sighs. Maybe she should have lied and said she didn’t meet Colt through the whole Mercy Park Crew fiasco. But it wasn’t like she told her dad about Colt’s current plans to take down the Brotherhood or anything, so he could lay off a little.

She places a comforting hand on Colt’s knee under the table, giving it a reassuring squeeze.

He stops fidgeting for a moment, looking at her gratefully.

Usually Riya could be counted on to fill awkward silences, but her best friend had been uncharacteristically glum all day. Darius had ignored her at graduation and she seemed to be taking it hard.

Fine, then she’ll get everyone talking. “I think I found a research assistantship for when I start at Langston.”

Her father smiles at her from across the table. “That’s great sweetheart. What will you be doing?”

Ellie smiles, tucking her dirty blonde hair behind her ear as she removes her graduation robe and drapes it over her chair. “Hopefully working in a chemistry lab, mixing experimental medical drugs.”

“You could start a very lucrative illegal drug hustle on the side.” Colt jokes. Normally, Ellie would have laughed, but she knows her Dad will not be amused. She kicks Colt’s shin lightly under the table, removing her hand from his knee.

He shoots her an annoyed look, his shin throbbing slightly.

“So, Colt.” Ellie’s father begins. Colt looks away from Ellie and to her father, meeting his challenging gaze. “Ellie tells me you’re minoring in criminology in college.”

Colt smirks. Of course, that’s what she’d tell him. “Maybe. I’ve taken a couple of the classes. Haven’t declared anything yet though.”

“What made you interested in criminology? Interested in becoming a cop?” He asks.

Colt scoffs. “Hardly. I was interested in learning how to be a more effective criminal.”

“He’s joking. Colt’s sense of humor takes some getting used to.” Ellie interrupts, shooting him another ‘please behave’ look.

He shoots her back a look that clearly says, ‘I told you this was a bad idea’.

Her dad frowns, and the table falls into another uncomfortable silence. Ellie picks at her pasta unenthusiastically, debating if she should pretend that she’s sick and put an end to this. She feels her phone vibrate in the pocket of her white dress. It’s a text from Darius. He feels bad about how things went down with Riya and wants to at least part as friends.

She texts back that she’s glad that’s how he feels, mentioning how miserable Riya has been all day.

He quickly replies that he’s outside, can she trick Riya into coming out to talk? And stick around for some moral support?

Ellie worriedly looks at her father and Colt, both picking at their food and refusing to look at the other. But she loves Riya and Darius, and she’s not going to let them end things this way. Mind made up, she pushes back from the table and stands. “Riya, can you come with me for a second? I just remembered I need to put more money in the parking meter.”

Riya looks puzzled at why she’d want her to come along but nods anyway and gets up.

“Ellie,” Colt says. She looks at him. He mouths, ‘You’re not seriously leaving me alone with him?’

She rolls her eyes, ignoring him and leaving with Riya.

…

..

.

“Well, now that we’re alone, we can really talk.” Ellie’s Dad says as soon as she and Riya are out of earshot.

Colt perks up at that. Finally. No more dancing around his true feelings in an attempt to not upset his daughter. “What do you want to talk about?”

Ellie’s dad leans back in his seat. “You. I don’t know much about you. Besides your affiliation with the Mercy Park Crew. Are you planning to continue to be involved in gang activity? Are you going back to college?”

Honestly, Colt isn’t sure. He knows he can’t go back to college until he’s taken down the Brotherhood and avenged his father. But will he go back after that? He never really felt like he was where he was supposed to be in college. He felt like he was just going through the motions. He’s felt more like himself than ever these last few months, planning kidnappings and murders. But that’s obviously not something you tell your girlfriend’s disapproving father. “I can’t predict the future.” He finally settles on.

Ellie’s father’s gaze becomes very stern. “What are your intentions with my daughter? I know you sought her out because of her connection to me and how it could help your crew, but the crew’s gone now. Why haven’t you left her alone.”

“I didn’t seek her out. You have Logan to thank for that.” Colt counters He neglects to mention Logan acted on his late father’s orders.

“I just don’t get it. I know she’s going through some kind of rebellious phase, but what do you two even have in common? Why is she putting her whole future in jeopardy to hang out with some criminal?”

“Honestly? The main thing we have in common is Daddy issues. So, thanks for driving her right into my arms.” Colt retaliates.

Ellie’s dad’s eyes narrow. “What do you want?”

“What do you mean?”

“What is it going to take? To get you to leave her alone so she can move past all this?”

Colt glares. “Are you offering to pay me to go away?”

Ellie’s dad nods.

Colt scoffs. “For your information, I’ve just come into a tidy sum of money from my Dad’s fire insurance policy, so you can’t afford to buy me off.”

“If you really cared about her, you would do what’s best for her. Let her go.”

Colt’s eyes narrow. “If you really cared about her, you would respect her right to make her own decisions.”

Ellie’s dad shakes his head. “You mean I should let her make her own mistakes.”

Colt bristles at being called a mistake. Who did this asshole think he was? “I don’t have to sit here and listen to this.” He stands, throwing a $20 down on the table for his meal. “Let’s not do this again Mr. Wheeler.”

“Finally, something we agree on.” Mr. Wheeler responds as Colt turns on his heel and storms out of the Italian restaurant.  

…

..

.

Colt stalks out of the restaurant, allowing the door to slam behind him. On the curve, he sees Riya and Darius hugging, Ellie looking on with a smile. The smile drops when she catches sight of his expression. He turns away from her and heads for his bike.

“Colt wait!” Ellie jobs to catch up to him, struggling in her heels. She almost trips, but he notices out of the corner of his eye and catches her reflexively. “Thanks” She mutters as he helps her to her feet. His arms stay around her waist. She rests her hands on his pressed white dress shirt. “Where are you going?”

“Home. This was a bad idea Ellie. I’m not the guy you bring home to your father. I can’t pretend to be someone I’m not.”

“Who’s asking you to pretend to be anything?”

“You are. You should have known how this would go.”

Ellie glares and steps out of his embrace. “I thought you two could put aside your differences for me, but I guess not.”

Colt sighs, reaching out for her hand. She allows him to pull her back to him, and he hugs her and rests his chin on her head. “You mean a lot to me Ellie. But I can’t go back in there. Things have already derailed too much.”

She looks up at him. “What did my Dad say to you?”

Colt shakes his head. “You know, the usual. Offered to pay me to stay away from you.”

Ellie’s eyes widen before narrowing in anger. “He what?”

“Don’t be mad at him. That’s the typical cop dad whose daughter is dating a criminal reaction. He’s looking out for you.” He places a soft kiss on her forehead.

Ellie sighs “He needs to let me make my own decisions. You really won’t come back in?”

“Nah, I might be too tempted to take him up on his offer. I could use a new bike.” Colt jokes.

Ellie laughs and swats at his chest. “And here I thought I was priceless.” She pulls away from him. “Well, I guess I’ll go back in there and give him a piece of my mind. Can I stop by your place after I drop Riya off?” Ellie asks.

“You’re always welcome. In fact,” He pulls a key from his pocket. “I got you a key.”

Ellie beams at him and kisses him passionately. Colt smirks against her lips when he thinks about how much her father won’t like this new development in their relationship.

…

..

.

[beautiful-bau-beau]

Hello! I am such a huge fan of your writing and its kept me entertained through the boring summer months lol. Anyways, since you were asking for requests, could you do a Spencer imagine, where he has been telling the team that he has a girlfriend but they don't believe him until he shows up to BAU in clothing/with a haircut that the reader bought him? Possibly set in like season 5 when Spencer's wardrobe was particularly "spencer reid"-y.

((I am unbeliveably flattered and actually love this request though I did change it a little bit. The article I mention is from 2014 when season 9 was actually shot but for the sake of the story we’re ignoring it. Also, not that it matters, as a kid I wanted to be a fashion designer and every Christmas I would get Project Runway sketchpads.))

Style

-

Spencer felt a little insecure walking into the office that morning. The suit he wore didn’t feel uncomfortable or itchy in any way, it just felt…unusual…too ‘stylish’ for his tastes. The only reason he was wearing this was for you. 

A week prior

At the feel of your arms wrapping around his shoulders he immediatly shut the files he had ben working on, not wanting you to see any of the photos or read anything that would upset you. You were too pure. His hands came to rest on top of your palms, rubbing them gently. 

“What would you say if i shopped for you?” You asked, leaning your chin upon his shoulder, turning your head to face him. You saw his brows furrow and his bottom lip stuck out unconsciously. 

“You don’t like the way I dress?” You shushed him, pressing a warm kiss to his cheek. 

“I love the way you dress, Doctor, your sweater-vests and slacks will always flatter you, however; that’s not an answer to my question.” He leaned back in his chair, sighing softly. 

“Y/n I go to work to….work,” to catch psychopathic killers, he wanted to say. “Not to flaunt of my fashion skills.” He turned to face you, your eyes playfully narrowed in mock annoyance. 

“Are you avoiding my question because you don’t trust me to dress you?“ 

"I may miss social cues most of the time but I think I’ll be in trouble if I don’t just say ‘yes, you can dress me.’”

“You are a smart man.” You pressed another kiss to his cheek, and he could feel the excitement bubbling up within you, as you left his embrace and started heading to the bedroom. “I’m going shopping tomorrow, you’re going to look great, don’t worry!”

- 

“Spence?” JJ’s jaw dropped in disbelief once her eyes landed on Spencer entering the B.A.U. floor. She stood next to Morgan who had his signature smirk across his face as he took in the new appearance . Emily wolf-whistled, setting her coffee cup down on her desk to clap excitedly, much to Spencer’s embarrassment. 

“Guys…please…” He mumbled, scratching the back of his neck sheepishly. “It doesn’t look bad does it?” Spencer wore a white button up underneath a merlot tie, a black vest and an admiral blue blazer with matching slacks. On his feet were dark tipped oxfords, the same shade as his satchel. 

“Holy sweet Jesus!” Garcia exclaimed, eyes wide as she pointed to his blazer. “Spencer you look absolutely amazing! Is that from the new Brooks Brothers catalog?” He looked down, biting his bottom lip. 

“I-uh… I don’t know.” He paused.  "My girlfriend got it for me.“ He admitted with a soft smile. He hadn’t figured out a way to inform the team of his newfound romance, wanting to make sure that unlike other dates or girls in the past like Lila, or god yes, even JJ, that you were a sure thing. 

"Girlfriend? Is that what you’re calling the sales associates now?” Derek laughed, opening his mouth to say something else when he was cut off. 

“New case.” Hotch called everyone to the round table, Rossi standing by his side. “You know,” Rossi exclaimed, eyeing Spencer for a moment. “I like the new look, kid. Stick with it.”

- 

“So, what did everyone think of you in your suit?” You asked, excitement lacing your tone. The two of you sat in his apartment, one of the few occasions that you two were able to have dinner together at a reasonable hour.

“They liked it… I got some compliments.” He smiled softly to himself. You let a breathy chuckle escape you. 

“That’s great! I’m glad they liked it.” You took a sip from your glass. “You liked it, didn’t you? If you didn’t, just lie to me.” You laughed again, studying him carefully to deduce his reaction. 

“I’m not entirely sure. I know that the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology proved that enclothed cognition, wearing a garment with a strong cultural association can affect your cognitive processes, is real, but I think I may still be adjusting to the attention I’m getting.” You paused at his explanation, his words sounding familiar. 

“Not too much attention, I hope.” You teased. “Wasn’t that 'enclothed cognition thing from an article in my… Vogue magazine I threw out a few weeks ago?” You recalled, watching as he shook his head. 

“I have no idea what you’re referring to.” He denied quickly. “Even if women were falling left and right to gain my affection, no one’s attention is worth more than yours.”

“Oh I’m flattered.” You pretended to roll your eyes. “So are you going to let me dress you up tomorrow? I could make you even more attractive than you were today!”

“Yo’re not using me for my body are you?” He asked slyly, causing you to reach across the table to playfully shove his arm. 

“No, I just never had a Ken Doll growing up.” You reorted, rolling your eyes. After a moment you declared, “I’m styling you again tomorrow.” The soft smile on Spencer’s face didn’t go unnoticed.

-

 As soon as Spencer opened the doors to the bullpen he was met with the sound of a camera clicking, the device held in the hands of one Penelope Garcia. 

“I just had to make sure I had evidence in case I wake up tomorrow and think I hallucinated this.” She justified, admiring the photo. “I think that shade of red really suits you. Like a mahogany or sangria…can’t tell which one.” Spencer just blinked as the techie rambled, not entirely sure what she was talking about.

Spencer wore a wine-red blazer and slacks along with a white button up. On his feet and waist he wore a black belt with matching black oxford. You had even convinced him to unbuttoned the top button. He had to admit he did secretly like the dark suit, especially how you picked it out for him.

Spencer had been reading a few of your magazines over the span of your relationship, telling himself that he was only trying to find something to read. A few different magazines had informed him how red was associated with love, passion, desire, romance, joy, courage, along with a few other explicit meanings. Other articles mentioned wearing red meant the wearer was assertive, daring, and powerful, and he couldn’t help but feel more confident.

 Throughout the day the team seemed to pick up on Spencer’s slightly changed attitude, as well as some others around the building.

“Seems like you’re catching a few stares, pretty boy.” Morgan mentioned, his eyes flickering over to a coworker who smiled warmly in Spencer’s direction. The two men were walking from the breakroom to their desks, steaming mugs residing in their grasps.The corner of Spencer’s mouth twitched, although not into a smile. “What?” Derek questioned. “Is she not your type?" 

"I told you yesterday, I have a girlfriend. She’s the one buying my new outfits.” Morgan stared suspiciously. “Do you really think I would be able to throw something like this together in a million years?”

“Touche.” Morgan nodded. “So, when are we going to be able to meet her?” Spencer stilled in thought.

 "I’m sure y/n would want for her and I to plan something out together, so I’ll have to get back to you.“ Spencer headed towards his desk. 

"Hey Reid.” Morgan called before they parted. “Does this girl of yours have a sister?” Spencer couldn’t help but chuckle. 

“Not one desperate enough to meet you.” Spencer answered mischievously, spinning on his heel. 

-

“Are you as excited as I am?!” You exclaimed, rushing around the apartment to make sure everything was going to be perfect. The two of you had decided to invite the team over for a nice dinner you prepared, snacks and refreshments in the kitchen as well. Although you seemed cheery, Spencer could tell you were nervous.

“Y/n you can calm down. Everything is going to be fine. What’s the worst you think will happen?” Your boyfriend asked, resting his hands on your waist to still your frantic movements.

“They’ll profile me as the loser I truly am.” You snickered. “Especially because I was behind the butchering of your lovely locks.” Your fingers threaded through Spencer’s new short hair, slightly frowning.

“Nonsense, I’m sure they were getting tired of seeing my unruly hair grow day after day. I’m glad it’s gone. I was starting to wonder if I would have to join into the 'man-bun’ phase.”

“What do you think of your suit?” You asked, gesturing to his outfit. You gave him a currant red button up with a navy jacket, vest and slacks. The buttons of his jacket were a bright tan, pairing well with the dark colors he wore. You had told him that he was a 'Deep Autumn’ and that dark and warm colors would benefit his skin-tone greatly. To top of his whole look, you tucked a crimson carnation into the lapel of his jacket.

“I feel…confident. Thank you for this. I always felt comfortable in my sweater-vests and button-ups but I believe the new work clothes have given me newfound respect from my coworkers and higher-ups at work.” You both shared a soft kiss before the apartment buzzer went off.

-

You opened the door to find friendly faces smiling back at you. “Welcome! Come on in!” Spencer doesn’t like to talk about work often but he speaks of you all fondly. I won’t pretend to guess who’s who.“ The team entered the living space, introducing themselves.

"Hey!” Spencer joined the group, a grin growing on his face when they all cheered encouragingly at his appearance, greeting his coworkers.

“I’d like to sincerly congratulate you for convincing him to branch out a little bit.” Emily patted your arm.

“Oh!” Penelope cried out happily. “You should come with Emily and I to DeMile’s! They’re having this great big blow-out sale! It’s obvious you have great taste so I wouldn’t object to you styling me every once and awhile." 

Conversation seemed to fade for Spencer who watched as you interacted happily with his friends, a warm smile on his face. He had been made fun of before with some clothing items he had chosen to wear but you had just opened his possibilities and helped to expand his comfort zone. He was so lucky to have someone as caring and patient as you in his life. He knew he would spend the rest of his days trying to make sure he was worthy of someone like you.

[ladylynse]

Ectober 2018, Day 19: Mistakes

Helpless: Part 3 (Part 1 | Part 2)

The more Star looks, the more cracks and inconsistencies she sees in Danny’s story—not that that makes it much easier to fill in the blanks.

Now that she was watching for it, Star could see of a lot of things that didn’t add up where Danny Fenton was concerned.

It had been almost a week, and she still bore the telltale scratches and bruises from the ghost fight and her fall through the floor—or, more accurately, her landing and subsequent journey in the dark. But Danny, who had been fighting and dodging and slipping and ramming into desks, looked fine.

He always looked fine.

Even though Dash had shoved him into his locker three times this week.

She didn’t cheer Dash on anymore, but she hadn’t said anything to try to stop it, either. After her detention and with her appearance being what it was, she was on thin ice with the A-listers until she was blemish-free again. She’d seen what had happened to Valerie; she didn’t want to go through that herself if she could avoid it.

And if she stuck out her neck for Fenton now, he’d know something was up.

If preserving the status quo and actually learning the truth meant enduring the scowls of Danny’s loser friends who probably knew more of the story than she did, then so be it.

She kept a closer eye on him in the classes they shared together. Given how often he fell asleep in class, it was easy to believe he was up half the night helping Phantom fight ghosts. It was less easy to believe he managed that without his parents noticing anything, but she didn’t know Mr. and Mrs. Fenton very well, all things considered.

What she noted now, though, was the way Danny would abruptly sit up with a gasp before making up some excuse to leave class. Lancer knew it was only an excuse—he had to—but he usually let Danny go anyway. Eventually, if not immediately. Maybe in case it wasn’t just an excuse. Or because he knew Danny would run off anyway.

Shortly thereafter, there would be some signs of a ghost fight, and Phantom would be there.

Danny never was.

If Phantom was waking Danny up—if the shock of being touched by an invisible ghost was what had him gasping and inventing excuses—then what purpose did Danny play? Surely he wasn’t just the weapons supplier. If he were, he’d just need to keep a stockpile somewhere Phantom could get at it. She was pretty sure even the stuff that ghosts couldn’t phase through could still be phased out a locker.

There were a few times Danny came back with a limp or cradling an arm, but he always tried to brush it off. The one time it had looked more serious to Star’s eye, Sam and Tucker had watched him like hawks, and Danny had managed to avoid Dash that day. He’d favoured his leg in gym, but after that? He hadn’t been skipping home, but he hadn’t been limping, either.

She knew people who didn’t bruise very easily, but she didn’t know anyone else who could shake off an injury that fast. His parents were scientists, but she wasn’t convinced he trusted them enough to take experimental drugs, and she doubted they’d actually experiment on their kids. But how could Phantom help heal him? Ectoplasm helped ghosts regenerate because they were made of the stuff. Besides, as far as she understood, ectoplasm had to be incredibly concentrated or in extremely high levels to have any noticeable effect on humans.

Star closed her locker, and Valerie was there, waiting for her, as she had been every day. This time, Paulina wasn’t around to head her off; she’d slipped into the washroom to reapply her lipstick, making it quite clear that even if Star didn’t come with her, she was expected to wait.

Which made her a sitting duck for Valerie.

“You can’t avoid me forever,” Valerie hissed. “I know associating with me doesn’t do you any social favours, but the least you can do is fill me in. You can’t just change the subject whenever we talk on the phone.”

Valerie knew there had been a ghost fight. The entire school knew it. Valerie also knew Star had been in detention that day, and—coupled with her appearance now and at the Nasty Burger—would’ve put two and two together. Star had seen her trying to talk to Danny before, but Valerie clearly hadn’t been satisfied with his answers, which was why she kept coming back to Star.

“It was a ghost attack. Like always.” Star shifted her bag, wondering how long she could stall before Valerie would have to run to the Nasty Burger to start her shift. Probably not long enough. “It was some new ghost, an ice one. I hadn’t seen him before.”

“What’d it look like?”

“Like he could use a haircut. And a makeover.” Star managed not to smile at Valerie’s frown, but she really would be suspicious if Star didn’t spill some of the obvious details. “He wasn’t human, just humanoid. Kinda like that talking wolf, except he spoke English.”

“How did he fight?”

“Like a ghost.” Star really wasn’t sure what Valerie was asking—or why, for that matter. “Just…ice attacks, flying, phasing, that sort of thing. He was good. Thought he might get us before Phantom showed up to take care of him.”

Valerie couldn’t hide her scowl. “Danny said Phantom phased you guys out of the room.”

“He saved us. Every exit was frozen over. He’s the only reason we aren’t popsicles. I know you don’t like him, Valerie, but cut him some slack. He’s at least trying to make up for all the bad things he’s done, and I’m pretty sure the good outweighs the bad.”

“Not yet it doesn’t,” Valerie muttered.

Star decided not to poke the bear. She knew Valerie’s opinion of Phantom wasn’t going to change easily. “I lost my phone in the fight. Danny found it, but he didn’t stick around, and after everything was over, I didn’t know where he was. That’s why I needed your phone. Happy?”

“Not really. I’m not convinced you’re telling me everything, and I’m definitely not convinced you can take care of yourself if you’re in another fight. You’re still my friend. I don’t want to see a ghost get you. Phantom’s not always going to be pretending to be the good guy.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Star said, “but if that’s the case, wait till he makes a mistake to set your sights on him, okay? He’s helping now.”

“If you took some lessons and learned how to defend yourself—”

“Valerie, these are ghosts. If one of them wanted to, they could fly into me and take over my body right now. No training is going to help that.”

“Actually, mental—”

“I don’t want to have this conversation again,” Star interrupted. “I appreciate your concern, I do, but I’ve got other things to think about right now.”

Valerie rolled her eyes. “What you’re going to wear to Paulina’s party tomorrow doesn’t count.”

Star hadn’t forgotten about that—Paulina was talking about it too much for that to be possible—but it was one of the farthest things from her mind.

Best not to let Valerie realize that, though.

She said nothing, letting Valerie assume she’d caught her out.

“Just…promise me you’ll at least think about learning some self-defence? And maybe picking up one of the FentonWorks weapons? They had this laser lipstick thing at their last show—”

“Valerie, I’m more likely to forget I have something like a laser lipstick and accidentally fry half my face when I go to put it on than to actually use it well in a ghost fight. I mean, come on. I get that you’re interested in this stuff after what happened, but don’t pretend you’re an expert. You barely know more than I do when it comes to actual ghost hunting. It’s not like you’re carrying around a bag full of weapons right now, are you?”

Valerie winced. “Point taken,” she conceded at last, “but at least I’m educated.”

“Consider me warned,” Star said, “and we’ll work on educated and trained later.” She flicked her eyes over Valerie’s shoulder. “Paulina’s done. I’ve gotta go.”

“Okay, Star. Just…be careful. Don’t trust everyone so much, okay? Especially Phantom.”

Especially Phantom? What about especially Danny? If his sleep patterns were anything to go by, he’d been doing this while dating her. And since Val’s hatred of Phantom wasn’t exactly a secret, even if she tried not to let it get the better of her, Star sincerely doubted Danny had told her anything.

No wonder they hadn’t lasted.

“I know what I’m doing,” Star murmured as she walked past, “but thanks anyway.”

She hated being rude to Valerie, but Paulina was waiting for her now, and there was only so much Star could get away with. Valerie would know that, even if she wouldn’t like it. It was…hard, maintaining even this much of a friendship with a former A-lister. They were supposed to cut all ties when someone was dropped from the group, but Star had been that person, and she’d hated it. The balancing act she did now, walking the line and sometimes straddling two rungs of the social ladder—that’s about as adventurous as she got. Protection had never lain in rebellion with Star; she’d found surviving a lot easier when she fit in. When she blended in. When she wasn’t a target—from ghosts or other students.

Now, she was beginning to realize just how much she might have missed because of that.

Valerie didn’t have to hide her determination, her fierceness, her fire. She was a force to be reckoned with and everyone knew it, which had saved her from being a bottom feeder on the social food chain when she’d been dropped from the A-listers.

Danny? He apparently had a double life. He worked with Phantom, something that could win him instant social fame, but he didn’t take advantage of that.

She remembered how hard he and Tucker had tried to claw their way up, both before and after Manson had come to town. She remembered Danny’s horribly obvious crush on Paulina. Even after losing his pants while asking her out and otherwise making a huge fool of himself and becoming the laughing stock of the school, he could have saved everything. He could have used Phantom as leverage.

He hadn’t.

So why not?

He had never struck her as someone who thought long and hard about consequences of things like that. Manson? Sure. That girl was more aware than Foley or Fenton. She had some pull, even if the other two didn’t realize quite how much. But for Fenton to hold off on something that could give him what he wanted? For Foley to keep quiet about it when he had to know what was going on, when his association with Danny would win him favour if the truth about Danny and Phantom came out?

No.

This wasn’t just keeping something from Danny’s parents.

Especially not if they knew how his sister felt about Phantom and everything he was doing for this town.

They might not know how much Danny associated with ghosts, and they wouldn’t like the idea of Danny fighting with a ghost against other ghosts, but they’d be thrilled that he was hunting ghosts at all. They’d be training him, too. He wouldn’t need to sneak around and get training from ghosts in wherever the heck this Far Frozen place was supposed to be. He could get good training from them, use the opportunity to plead Phantom’s case, and maybe use his previous work with Phantom as evidence to bolster his case that Phantom wasn’t the bad guy. It might be rough, but they could find out what he was up to and things would turn out more or less all right.

So what really had him spooked?

Paulina was talking about tomorrow night’s party again, chattering enough for the two of them as they made their way to the Nasty Burger. Star paid only as much attention as necessary; she was too busy planning her reason to leave. Danny was in detention again—he hadn’t turned in his last assignment, so Lancer was making him do it under his watch—and Star planned to catch up with him when he got out.

His friends Sam and Tucker apparently had the same idea and had claimed their usual spot at the Nasty Burger.

This time, she didn’t assume their frequent glances out the window meant they hoped Danny might arrive early.

If he was involved in something, chances were very good that they were, too.

But if Phantom was going to pick allies, why them? Even if he wanted the insider info on all the FentonWorks weapons that Danny could provide, Jazz was likely the better source for that. And she was definitely less clumsy than her brother if Phantom actually needed help in the field. Even if her coordination wasn’t great off the start, it wouldn’t take her long to improve. So why Danny over Jazz? Or why not just go to the Fentons for information and nothing else?

If Phantom just wanted a fighter, why not enlist one of the jocks? Because he didn’t think they could keep a secret? Or because they were an obvious choice? Danny certainly wasn’t. But maybe that was why. He wasn’t the smartest kid in school or a star football player. He still had things to lose, but maybe it wasn’t as steep a trade. To be honest, Star couldn’t remember how good Danny’s grades had been before all this, but they’d slipped. He never used to get into this much trouble. Maybe Phantom hadn’t wanted someone with more to lose to risk it—not just for their sake, but for his.

Because Danny was less visible.

And the reasons for his sliding grades and truant behaviour could be explained in other ways; they already were.

He wasn’t just a convenient choice; he was a strategic one.

Star made her excuses to Paulina ten minutes before Danny was due to get out of detention. She’d missed him two days ago—she still wasn’t sure how—and had had cheerleading practice on the weekend ahead of yesterday’s game. Danny could be surprisingly difficult to find; even with all the information she’d managed to wheedle out of Valerie while trying to avoid giving away too much about the ghost attack, it felt like sometimes he just dropped off the face of the earth.

Not that she’d ever actually gone to his house.

That would instantly kill her chances to stay an A-lister for sure, since word was bound to get around even if there were no visible witnesses. (The ghosts had to be gossips.) And she couldn’t afford that. She just wanted information right now, and tracking Danny down at his house without a good reason wasn’t the way to get that. She wasn’t willing to commit social suicide for this. Not yet.

But try to get evidence of him working with Phantom? Sure. Except she still didn’t have anything concrete. She couldn’t even prove that it was Phantom contacting Danny during class.

Eavesdrop whenever possible? Definitely. She just rarely got the opportunity, since Paulina made a point of avoiding losers whenever possible. When she did overhear something, most of it didn’t make sense, and she typically couldn’t tell when Danny and his friends were talking about some video game and when they weren’t.

That’s why Star had decided to take another risk and straight up talk to Danny again. Not another demand for explanations—that still wouldn’t work—but a plea. She wanted an introduction. A meeting. She wanted to thank Phantom for saving her—and see what he said about the situation. It was an angle she hadn’t had a chance to explore, and she needed whatever she could get.

She was a block from the school when she heard the explosion, and as she rounded the corner, she saw the smoke.

Another ghost attack.

Which meant Danny would have been let out of detention early again, for his own safety.

Star groaned and started to run, not sure if there was even a chance that she could catch up to him now. He was probably long gone. Anyone smart would be. They wouldn’t be running towards a fight like she was!

Except that he said he did this on a regular basis. Just not out in the open where anyone—including his parents—could see him.

As she reached the front lawn of the school, Star’s foot came down on a loose clump of dirt, a remnant from a previous explosion. She twisted, instinct from cheerleading practice not quite enough to prevent pain from stabbing up her leg. She rolled to a stop and hissed out a breath as she touched her ankle. This wasn’t enough to take her out, but it would slow her down.

“Star, watch out!”

She turned at the call and could only stare at the stray missile rocketing towards her. She lurched forward—

--and her entire body went cold.

Weightless.

The missile exploded, and dirt flew through her.

It was just like before, except she wasn’t sinking into the ground beneath her feet. Instead of pushing her or letting her fall, Phantom had a death grip around her middle and was pulling her out of the blast zone. She knew he was flying—she could see the ground moving; they weren’t just hovering in one spot—but she couldn’t feel the wind.

Heaviness and warmth smothered her as Phantom released her. Her legs buckled despite her best efforts. When she looked back at him, he had his hands on his knees and was panting. “Run,” was all he said when he noticed her gaze. As if she could run very easily after what she’d done. “I’ll lead him the other way.”

Him.

Skulker.

Someone he’d taken down hundreds of times by now. What was different this time? Sure, sometimes Skulker’s suit went through various upgrades, but—

“You don’t have a thermos,” she blurted as realization struck. No thermos, no way of catching the ghost.

But wasn’t that what Danny was supposed to provide? Weapons? Support? I help Phantom, he’d said, but where was he now? He couldn’t just be used for information, not with how he’d moved. He’d been in more than the few ghost fights she’d seen; experience had been evident in his every move, every calculation.

Phantom didn’t stop, didn’t even glance back, and she wasn’t sure if he’d heard her. He yelled a taunt at Skulker instead, trying to get the other ghost to chase him. Trying to draw Skulker’s attention away from her, the newcomer who might otherwise be used to bait Phantom into a trap. Just like Danny had done with Icebreaker.

Star was on her feet, favouring one leg but still standing on two, when Skulker’s retort came: “Your pelt will be mine, whelp!”

Nothing she hadn’t heard before. Phantom’s response was equally predictable. She’d be more surprised that he knew her name than at what he said now if she didn’t know he worked with Danny.

But then Skulker growled, “A halfa pelt will be the prize of my collection,” following it all with another volley of missiles as he flew after Phantom, and Star’s breath caught in her throat.

Continued for Day 26

(see more fics)

[theajaheira]

clover.

oliver reconnects with someone from his past, and receives a warning.

Oliver’s been acting weird all day, and this isn’t the kind of weird he was acting when he had a hot date and didn’t want anyone to know. This is the kind of weird where he keeps looking at the door like he’s expecting someone and then snapping at anyone who calls him out on it. It’s the fifth time Jenny’s seen this happen, and it’s getting to be a bit much.

“Oliver,” she says. “You’re creating a hostile work environment.”

“You can’t just toss around buzzwords and expect them to mean anything,” says Miss Charlotte without looking up from her research.

“For your information,” says Jenny with dignity, “I learned that phrase at a corporate training seminar I went to with Natalie. It’s not tossing around a buzzword if I’m using it with the genuine intent to—”

“Oh, hello!” says Tasha at the door, sounding startled. “Um, welcome to Do-Gooders HQ! Do you have an appointment?”

Surprised, Jenny and Miss Charlotte both look up. They don’t generally get a lot of unexpected visitors; most people try and call ahead, and it’s been a pretty slow week anyway. “Goodness,” says Miss Charlotte, sounding surprised. “I suppose those fliers Zeke put up actually did spread some awareness.”

The woman at the door is probably about Oliver’s age, but her round face makes her look a bit younger than that. Her light brown hair rests on her shoulder in a thick braid, and she’s wearing a lightweight blue hoodie, a knitted beanie, and jeans that end at the knee. “Hey,” she says. “Is Oliver Prentiss here?”

To everyone’s surprise, Oliver hops up from his desk, looking like he’s on the verge of completely falling apart. “Clover!” he says in a high-pitched voice. “I-I wasn’t expecting—that is, you said you might drop by, but—”

Clover gives Oliver this amused, exasperated look, then says, “You did give me your card.”

Oliver waves a hand vaguely, then says to the office at large, “This is Clover.” Which really doesn’t clarify anything, but at least he’s trying.

“I’m gonna steal Oliver for lunch,” says Clover matter-of-factly. “That cool?”

“I mean, we don’t really have work hours,” says Jenny. “Charlatan, you think we should start having people clock in and out?”

“You really need to get better at delegating,” says Miss Charlotte, who’s gone back to researching.

Clover seems to take this as an okay, and leans on the doorframe, giving Natalie and Zeke a friendly wave. Oliver grabs his satchel, looking supremely uncomfortable, and hurries to meet Clover at the door. “It really is good to see you,” he begins.

“Yeah, okay,” says Clover, clapping him on the shoulder, and they leave the office.

“Huh,” says Zeke, who looks a little troubled.

“Well, she’s kind of cute,” says Tasha, and starts giggling at Natalie’s mock-hurt expression. “She is! Oh my god, stop, I’m allowed to look at other girls, that’s allowed—”

Jenny crosses the room to sit on Miss Charlotte’s desk. “Stop that,” says Miss Charlotte.

“Oliver didn’t mention a Clover,” says Jenny. “Should we bother him about her when she gets back?”

“Why are you asking me?”

“You were right about Oliver having a hot date that one time,” Jenny says, “I figure maybe you’ve got some genius theory as to who this mystery Clover might be.”

“Lord,” says Miss Charlotte, “this office would fall to pieces if I went on vacation,” and puts down her pen, looking exasperatedly up at Jenny. “Clover,” she says, “is Oliver’s high school ex-girlfriend.”

Natalie and Tasha stop giggling and look over at Miss Charlotte with interest. Zeke has begun to look even more troubled. “Wait,” says Jenny. “Wait, that makes sense. How did you know that?”

“It’s a genius theory,” says Miss Charlotte primly, then smirks a little. “Also, I looked at his planner, and he marked down lunch with high school ex-girlfriend for today.”

“Oh, god, that’s so Oliver,” says Natalie, and goes back to giving Tasha lots of playful kisses. Zeke is sort of staring off into space.

“Cheater,” says Jenny. “You can’t use planners.”

“No one said there were rules,” says Miss Charlotte, who looks very pleased with herself.

“It really is good to see you,” says Oliver again, wishing he hadn’t come off as such an incompetent idiot in his place of work, and with Clover, no less. She was the first person he’d ever fallen in love with; he’d been hoping to come off as suave and successful, not awkward and nervous just like in high school. “You look lovely.”

“Thanks,” says Clover, and looks genuinely pleased by this. “Yeah, um, you look pretty nice yourself. Grew out of that weird lanky phase you were going through senior year, so that’s probably good.” She knocks his shoulder gently so he knows she’s kidding. Oliver’s grateful for this, because sometimes it’s a bit hard to tell with Clover.

“Yes,” says Oliver, and suddenly finds himself unsure of what to say. There isn’t a lot he can tell Clover that isn’t classified and confidential, so he settles for asking, “Are you still interested in athletics?”

Clover lights up. “I am!” she says. “I actually volunteer as a girls’ soccer coach on the weekends, and it’s so awesome. Like, also kinda scary, because I had no idea seven-year-old girls were so bloodthirsty and violent on the field, but it’s incredibly cool to help hone their skills and have fun and stuff.”

“That sounds wonderful,” says Oliver, feeling a soft warmth begin in his chest. He’s known Clover since middle school, and it’s incredibly lovely to know that she’s doing something she’s so very suited for. “I’ll have to come to one of your games, sometime.”

“Dude, you totally should,” says Clover. “I’ll buy you an Icee and we can talk about high school in the bleachers. That seriously sounds so great.”

Oliver finds himself grinning.

“So, hey, what about you?” Clover’s grinning too, now. “You ever become a stuffed-shirt professor at a snobby Ivy League college like you were always talking about in high school?”

“Very nearly,” says Oliver. “I was considering it, and I’ve got the credentials, but—” He thinks about his job as Junior Researcher for the Do-Gooders, and how Miss Charlotte is trying to teach him classical Greek. “I found a place where I can learn more than I can teach,” he says finally, which sounds nice and philosophical. Just the sort of thing one would want to say to an old ex-girlfriend.

“I’m glad,” says Clover, and her smile softens. “Honestly, I was a little worried about you when we met up again. Seemed like you’d turned into the kind of guy who thinks he knows everything.”

“Sometimes I am a bit like that,” says Oliver honestly, “but I’m trying my best to get better.”

They walk in silence for a while, but it isn’t an uncomfortable one. Clover’s looking around at the trees and the lingering frost on sidewalks and cars, and Oliver’s enjoying the feeling of being with her again. It had been a reluctant but ultimately amicable breakup, born mostly of the fact that they were going to different colleges and neither of them wanted to do long-distance. Oliver’s on considerably worse terms with his other exes, and he’s endlessly glad that that isn’t the case with Clover.

“Hey,” says Clover. There’s a strange cadence to her voice. “Oliver? You should watch your back.”

“I’m sorry?” Oliver stops walking to look at Clover.

Clover stops too, and all of a sudden, she’s not looking him in the eye. “This thing you’re doing,” she says, “this Do-Gooder thing, people might notice. And they’re not the kind of people you want noticing you. So—tell Jenny Callahan to be careful, okay?”

Oliver wants to go back to the walking in silence. Usually it’s Jenny and Miss Charlotte who handle the portents of doom, and he wasn’t at all expecting something like this from Clover. “Do you know something?” he asks carefully.

“No,” says Clover simply. “I don’t.”

She says it in such an odd, blasé fashion, one that doesn’t seem like a lie but doesn’t seem quite like the truth either. Oliver takes this in, tries to figure out what might have brought this up, but then Clover’s face relaxes and she says brightly, “Hey, tell me about Sasha and your mom! How are they doing?” and he decides he’ll leave the subject for later.

After lunch, and after Oliver’s headed back to work, Clover gets a text from M.A. about their plans for tonight, one of the long ones with words like research and experimentation.She feels a little sick to her stomach and buys some aspirin at a nearby drugstore, swallowing it down with a sip from the bottle of water she’d bought at lunch.

She hopes she won’t see Oliver again any time soon. For his sake.

[asagi-s-garden]

Labels can be important

So several weeks ago I was talking to someone about labels for fictional charectors and arguing about if they're important or not, I argued that some people found them very important to identify with, she argued that they shouldn't be important, but the thing is, it doesn't matter if they should or shouldn't be: They ARE, and until today I didn't know how to verbalize why or why it was under my skin so badly, the argument really upset me because "~no labels~" should probably be the more "correct" answer but ... like... there isn't really a wrong or right to the way people personally feel and identify... and now I know why it bothers me so much when people try to say that labels are never important: Erasure

Now before I go forward let me say: I am totally supportive of anyone who doesn't want to be labelled, good for you!! You're strong and awesome and confident for that! But what I take issue with is people who say that people who DO want to be labelled are wrong, as long as you aren't policing someone else's identity, we're cool

I've always liked girls, I distinctly remember when I was eight sitting down with my mom and having the "What would you do if I was gay?" conversation and asking her if she thought I WAS gay- "Do you like boys?" "Yes" "Then you aren't gay" (P.S. Dear Mom, you definitely weren't wrong) but the thing is .. that's kinda all there was when I was growing up: Straight and gay and a tiny population of ace (both things that my mom introduced me to by the way) Bisexuality though... wasn't really much of a thing

Bisexuality was a phase, a kink, a scandal, it was "~~~Oooooooh Angelina Jolie admits to being bisexual~~~~" like it was this sexually devious thing, that's all the media ever presented it as and there was never an easily accessible bi charector around that wasn't a scandal themselves (you know, The Promiscuous Bi Who Sleeps With Everyone) atleast not on the TV I watched, and I've always watched alot of TV so I was never exactly sheltered, so I spent most of my life going "Sometimes I feel gay and sometimes I feel straight and I don't know what the fuck that means" and it was really frustrating and lead to alot of confusion and annoyance and feelings of not being normal

It wasn't until I was a teenager and got on Tumblr that I even started understanding what bisexuality was, and it took alot of fanfiction and alot of identify-yourself posts and alot of "Hi, if you have these feelings you might be this and that's great, good for you!" posts before it ... really started making sense to me and I GOT it and I decided "Ok this is what I am", and I am so, so, LUCKY, that my mom is the "I'll march in the parades with you" type because if she wasn't then I maybe would still be questioning myself and saying I'm straight (wich, for the record, I never felt comfortable with, but I never knew what else to really call it either)

But, ya' know, here's the thing, I'm not really a sexual person, I'm not really a romantic person, I'm kinda on the grey/demi territory I guess? I'm 23 but have never been on a date- ever, and I'm not really bothered by that, but that can be difficult to cope with when someone is questioning their sexuality- especially a sexuality that isn't very black and white "I like girls and have never liked boys and I'm a romantic person who has already dated three girls"/"I like boys and have never liked girls and I'm a very romantic person who has already dated three boys" type of thing, it can feel kind of like Imposter's Syndrome, feeling like you haven't "earned" the label you call yourself because you haven't dated enough girls or boys or whatever other gender to identify that way, and in a hypersexualized society, it can even feel like you aren't allowed to call yourself X-Sexuality until you've had SEX with a certain number of  X-Gender

This is where identity and the importance of NOT erasing an identity come into play

Because alot of sexualities easily become stereotypes- and that's only if they aren't erased to begin with, using bisexuality as an example, there were, when I was growing up, two types of bisexuals: The Promiscuous Bisexual and The Kinky Bi-Curious, think Katy Perry's "I Kissed A Girl", one of the most famous- if not THE most famous- songs about bisexuality... isn't about bisexuality at all, it's about a kinky exploitative "bi-curious" exploration wile Katy cheats on her boyfreind ("Hope my boyfreind don't mind it") wich just keeps on going with the same nonsense that all bisexuals are hypersexualized and promiscuous and that's using the term "bisexual" very loosely because she admits in the song that she kissed her "just to try it", it wasn't a sexuality, it was an experiment, and to my knowledge (KP fans feel free to correct me if I'm wrong!) Katy has never returned to any kind of bisexuality: It was a phase, just like bisexuality is SO often called

The big reason why people need to see labels in fiction is to help figure out their OWN identities, we NEED to hear charectors say "bisexual" and the fact that, off the top of my head, I can't think of any fictional charectors (who don't fit the "promiscuous experimentation" type) who flat out label themselves bisexual is... very sad, especially since labelling as straight and gay has slowly become more popular lately

Don't get me wrong, it's always AWESOME to have charectors who are bisexual regardless of saying it or not, and sometimes not saying it can express a relationship that transcends sexuality (Will and Hannibal, Apple White and Darling Charming) wich is ESPECIALLY cool, but ... other times it can be really frustrating to see implications that charectors are a certain sexuality without having concrete proof of it- especially given that some examples are ONLY ever implied and not directly stated (an especially big problem in animated genres, be they anime or western cartoons) and media aimed at younger audiences, and wile I 1000000% get why saying an actual *sexuality* is frowned upon with material for kids and even pre-teens because censorship, it's important at times to blatantly say "I like girls instead of boys" or "I like girls and boys", instead of just having little hints like "I'm not interested in boys" or "Oh she's cute isn't she?" or whatever

There are sooooooooooooooooooo many fanfictions out there that handle the idea of sexuality (ALL sexualities) really beautifully, both in coming out and just in casual conversation, little things like wearing the bi flag colors or going "Excuse you I'm bi" or making an "I'm pan because I like all the cookware in the kitchen ;)" joke can be so helpfull to people who are exploring their sexualities, but fanfiction isn't easily available for tons of people- and most don't even know what it IS, wich is why it's up to mainstream media to take the step and make these things clear THEMSELVES

Anyway I said at the beginning I finally understood how to verbalize this and I'm finally going to tell you what it is that brought this to my attention: My mom

I've been openly bi for a few years now and until recently 100% of the bisexual comments have been from me (and if you're straight and *don't* think I constantly make bi jokes oh boy do you need to get some more queer freinds my dude) and my mom has slowly, over the years, gone from short responses like "Ok then" and "Yeah she's really cute" and "Now see if *I* was gay I'd go for *her*" to actually having real conversations about me having a crush on a girl, wanting to marry a girl, telling my dad and my grandmother "She's bi, she might end up with a girl, you need to understand that", but she still has never been *that* into using the term "bisexual" (and for the record I get that, //I// wasn't that sure about the term when I first started getting used to my sexuality either) and then a few days ago she made this corny bi joke, talking about when I was a toddler and went to see my grandfather drive a plane, she went "You know, that was a bi-plane, and you're a bisexual, it's like it was meant to be even back then!" and yeah it's a corny moderately funny joke but it just.... really, really hit me with this huge WAVE of validation, like yes, thank you, I *am* bi, this is a thing, I can be this, I can own this, I'm recognized, and it isn't a question anymore, it isn't a debate, it's like saying I have red hair, yep, that sure is some red hair I've got, yep, that sure is a nice bisexuality I have

And it's almost disgustingly simple, I'm 10000% sure she has no idea how much that meant to me because it was a passing comment in a conversation about airports, but it's the first time she ever just dropped my bisexualiy into a casual conversation and it felt SO good, SO validating, it made the Imposter's Syndrome I occasionally feel take a very long walk off of a very short peer

But not everyone has my mom

That's like... BLATANTLY clear from so, SO many people I talk to who's parents aren't accepting of them, not everyone is going to get a mom who talks to them about having a wife or points out girls she thinks are hot or makes bi-plane jokes, and because not everyone has a bi-plane mom- not everyone has family or freinds or anyone in their lives who make them feel validated, or who they're even out to- they NEED fictional charectors to be able to grab onto and go "Yes, this is me, yes, I can identify with them"

We need Korras, Harley Quinns, Jackson Whittemores, Annalise Keatings... and we need celebrities to come out and say the big bad B too, we need Halseys and Lauren Jaugeruis and Angelina Jolies

To all of my non-labelling freinds: Good for you! I am legitimately happy for you that you can feel comfortable without labels and that there are things out there that make you feel validated too! .. But there are still so many people who NEED labels to understand themselves and need to SEE people/charectors using labels in order to identify themselves and I really hope that you understand when we scream "Say 'bisexual' you cowards!" and beg for a cut-and-clear "I am bisexual, the end" statement of some kind, it isn't to erase YOU, it's to give US... *something*

Ideally, the world can have enough people and charectors that are LGBTQ+ that there can be tons who *do* use labels and tons who *don't*, ideally the world will stop being so blatantly idiotic with their insistence on erasure and refusal to accept non-straight sexualities, but no matter if that happens or not, I hope that there can be an understanding on BOTH levels, that some people DO need labels and that's ok, and some people DON'T need labels and that's also ok

I hope that everyone can embrace the charectors who don't have labels, AND the charectors who do, and understand WHY certain charectors are important to certain people, and WHY some people are so desperate to get clear, black-and-white identification, not to shun people who don't need labels, but to recognize someone like them, to identify themselves, and to feel validated

[faces-in-unexpected-places]

Do You Have the Time? Episode 020: Experiment One, Trial Two

Synopsis: Leslie and Leopold shoot the shit together, then they really break some new glass ground in their next phase of experimentation.

[April 24th, 2018, 15:22]

           Leopold sat at the lab bench with their half-finished time machine concoction sitting at it. He was currently working on a method of attaching the pipe to a small, DC motor they had purchased. Leslie pulled up a chair behind him as he worked and alternated between taking bites from two separate cups of ice cream. She was holding both of theirs. They wound up with extra time before Jeremy was done teaching, so they decided to take themselves out to a little treat.

           “I’m not sure what we’d do without you, Leo,” Leslie said, “You’re always making all of these contraptions out of bits and pieces of things you find. I’m not sure Jeremy and I would be able to get by without all your little gadgets… Maybe Jeremy could make some. But he has really only made IO who is a much more traditional kind of robot,” she chuckled.

           “Well, you’ve got Marie to thank for that too, actually,” he mumbled in his concentration.

           “Oh really? Was she a scientist too? Or an engineer?”

           “Goodness, no,” he laughed, “Quite the opposite. She was an artist! She did all kinds of pieces. Music, paintings, sculptures, sewing, you name it. She always told me ‘you could make anything, if you really wanted to!’” he chuckled, “I put that thought to good use ever since then,” he sighed yearningly.

           “She inspired you to make these kinds of things?” Leslie asked.

           “You could say that.”

            “She told me that I didn’t remind her of ‘normal scientists’, whatever that meant,” he chuckled, “Said I had something special that they didn’t, but I think she was just in love with me,” he brushed off.

           Leslie snorted.

           “Oh, just that?”

           “She told me I should try inventing things. I made a couple of fun little contraptions for her. I’m pretty sure she just wanted me to make one of those Dr. Seuss machines where something goes in and something comes out, but what happens inside is a total mystery.” he laughed, “It is fun though, I’ll admit. If anyone supported me working on the floor, writing with colored pencils, and making silly machines to make my research easier, it was Marie.”

           “Huh. So that’s why you’re so eccentric,” Leslie said with a mouth full of ice cream.

           Leopold spun around in high alert.

           “Are you eating my ice cream, too?” he accused.

           “No,” Leslie said defensively, holding the ice cream in her mouth.

           “Yes, you are, I can see it on your mouth!” he pointed to her face, “Stop that, you little weasel!”

           Leslie stood up, holding both cups of ice cream, and scurried away.

           “They were melting, I had to do something!” she spoke through a mouth full of his ice cream.

           “Yeah, you’re supposed to tell me, so I can eat it!” he laughed and chased after her.

           “Wait, wait, wait,” she put her hands out cautiously, “Wait… wait…” she swallowed another gulp, “There was a reason, I can explain…”

           He stopped.

           “Okay then, please do Ms. Goodchild.”

           “…It was just so good!” she pleaded.

           Leopold playfully swatted at his ice cream and Leslie squealed. She gave up the cup away from her and devoured what was left of his ice cream, which wasn’t much. They laughed and he took a break from building the machine. Leslie offered her own cup to him when he finished his.

           “You want mine too? I ate a lot of yours; I don’t need to be eating this much ice cream.”

           “Oh, nonsense, live a little! Eat it while you’re still young,” he encouraged, “Your body can still afford it,” he joked.

           “What do you mean, you look great for your age!” Leslie exclaimed.

           “Heh, see, Leslie, it’s already a red flag if you have to say ‘for your age’.”

           “Old or not, you could definitely be worse off. Compared to the other old guys here? You’re doing fine,” she judged.

           “Though, you still just implied that I am in fact, ‘an old guy’,” he chuckled.

“Older, maybe, sure, but you look great, you’re smart, and tall, and you still have some hair!”

           Leopold scoffed.

           “Still have some hair?” he repeated.

           “Yeah, that sounded better in my head,” she uttered to herself, “I didn’t really mean it that way, sorry!”

           Leopold shrugged and waved her apology away.

           “But everything else I did mean! I mean, you can’t tell me you haven’t noticed that you’re turning Martha’s head.”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Oh goodness, you’re such a man,” she joked, “She always asks about you when I talk to her. I bet if you asked her on a date, she’d say yes,” Leslie lovingly nudged.

           Leopold nervously laughed.

           “Even if I was ‘turning heads’ – which I don’t believe I am – I’m sure they’re just passing thoughts, Leslie. She probably has a husband of her own–”

           “Nope. Divorced ten years ago,” she quickly rebutted.

           “Okay, maybe so… but I’m still ten years her senior! Something like us would look out of place, I’m sure.”

           “She’s 55 Leo, not a teenager,” she brushed off and giggled, “Technically the youngest age you can date is 39 because 64 divided by 2, plus 7 is 39.”

           Leopold narrowed his eyes at Leslie who was all too invested. She had an answer for everything. Almost like her answers were pre-thought out. She realized that he was catching on and reeled herself back into her chair. Apparently, she’d leaned more and more forward the longer they talked.

           “How much have you thought about this?” he asked, suspiciously.

           “What life plan?!” she blurted out.

           “You’re putting together a life plan for me?” he cracked up.

           “Uh, I didn’t say ‘life plan’, I said… ‘wife plan’,” she blurted out, “Oh, god, it’s the same thing,” she murmured to herself.

           Leopold laughed, rolled his eyes, and slapped his knee in amusement.

           “Well, that’s very sweet of you, Leslie. But you know, since Marie… I haven’t really been interested in… ‘getting back out there’, or anything. She was the love of my life… I think she was the only one,” he softly resolved.

           “Mmm, I guess, but… if she’s looking down on you right now… I bet she wouldn’t mind if you…”

           “If… what?”

           “You know…” she winked with a wide-open smile.

           “Oh my god! Leslie!”

            “What!?” she laughed.

            “You were so innocent when I took you in! Where did it all go? I surely know that I didn’t do anything with it!” he joked.

           “Oh, I was like this long before I met you,” she dismissed, “I was just thinking it, instead of saying it, so I didn’t want to drive you away.”

           “You mean a strange old man walks up to you wearing a bow-tie and suspenders, says ‘hey I know we’ve just met, but I’m building a time machine, and have no employees, but you look the part, so I’ll pay for your classes if you work for me’ and you thought ‘what a conventional fellow who has not said anything out of the ordinary, I better not be too weird around him in case it drives him away’?”

           “Yup!” Leslie happily answered, without a second thought.

           “Well, I wasn’t going to say anything about it, but since you’re the one who started it…” he grinned and changed the subject.

           “Oh no.”

           “You can’t tell me you haven’t noticed how the boy looks at you.” he used her own words against her with a proud smirk.

           Leslie glued her eyes to the ceiling and shrugged.

           “I know not of who you speak,” she shook her head, her skin turning red.

           “Oh, you know well and good that the only one I call ‘boy’ is Jeremy.”

           “Jeremy Brilliant?” she continued playing dumb, “Oh, yeah, he’s a good guy,” she said, attempting to sound nonchalant.

           “Based on my calculations the youngest age you can date is 21. If I recall correctly, I believe Jeremy is–”

           “–24, yes, I am aware,” Leslie cut him off, bashfully.

           “Oh. So, seems you are.”

           “Eh, oooh, shouldn’t have said that,” Leslie mumbled to herself.

           “I bet if you asked him on a date, he’d say yes,” Leopold smirked.

           “Oh, is this funny to you? This is fun?” Leslie sassed with rosy cheeks.

           “A little bit, yeah,” he snickered.

           She rolled her eyes and laughed wryly. She took a deep breath and composed herself. Her voice was low as a precaution if he suddenly came through the door.

           “While I don’t exactly doubt that… something could happen…”

           “Mhmm.”

           “Emphasis on could…”

           “Of course.”

           “We’re friends…” she said softly yet decisively, “And I like what we have, so I don’t plan on changing it.”

           “Oh, no?”

           “Nope! I’m doubling down with that.”

           “Okay,” he accepted.

           “And besides, he’s doing his research here, dating someone you’re working with can be risky, and we’ve got bigger ideas, anyway! We’re all working really hard for this time project. It would be a distraction.”

           “Fair points, no judgement,” Leo threw his hands in the air, “Sometimes things just happen, though…” he shrugged and trailed off.

           “Maybe so, but it’s a moot point because any feelings that may or may not be there are pushed way deep, deep down and aren’t relevant to our research! Sooo, let’s get to work on it! We have to work fast, anyway, right?”

           Leopold chuckled and pulled his seat back up to the machine on the lab table and motioned for Leslie to follow. And she did.

           “You are right. Let’s get to work, poppet.”

           The industrial DC motor was about the size of Leslie’s torso. She held it still while he fit the pipe around the protruding rotor. It was structurally the same as their cranking method, but instead, the battery-powered rotor would spin the pipe, rather than the crank. Leopold dug around under the lab bench to find the box that the motor came in. He found the product specifications on the box. The DC motor had a resistance of 2.5 Ohms and could be powered with up to 220 volts.

           But no batteries were included.

           Leopold threw his head back with wry chuckle. Leslie asked what the matter was, and he pointed to the print on the box. She frowned.

           “Oh.”

           “We should have read more carefully,” Leopold sighed.

           “Maybe we can find some batteries in the stock room?” she suggested.

           “Hmm…”

            Suddenly Leopold thrusted himself out of the chair and headed to the stockroom, motioning once again for Leslie to follow. They dug through as many cabinets as they could count until they came across a bag of nine-volt batteries and copper wires. The wires were insulated with rubber of various bright colors, but the conductive tips of the wires were exposed. Leopold laughed triumphantly and began scavenging the materials. He brought them back to the lab bench with Leslie’s help.

           “Alright Leslie, it’s time to think all the way back to your first physics class,” he began, “What do you remember about electric circuits?”

           “Oh, mmm, uhh, hold on!” she hummed and hawed and ripped a piece of paper out of her nearby notebook. She wrote ferociously.

           “Okay, so… We use Ohm’s law!”

“That’s right! And what is Ohm’s law?” Leopold quizzed.

“Mmm…” Leslie tapped her pen against the table, “Voltage is equal to current multiplied by resistance!” she called out as soon as she wrote it out.

           “Exactly! Do you remember what each factor is?” he pressed as he began lining up the batteries.

           Leslie spoke almost as if she was regurgitating information that was instilled in her mind long ago.

           “Voltage is the amount of potential a battery has to generate electricity… the current is how much electrical charge passes through something for a defined amount of time; it’s sort of like how quickly or strongly the electricity is flowing. And resistance… is, well, how much the object being powered resists the flow of the electrical current. The more it resists, the hotter it gets… right?” she asked.

           “You hit the nail right on the head,” he gleamed proudly, “Good for you for never forgetting your roots!”

           “So… are we really going to power this giant motor with nine-volt batteries, though? It seems… impractical,” she chuckled.

           “Eh, well, it’s all we’ve got, currently. But if we have enough of them, it should make no difference, right? Because if we just wire all these nine-volts together, their voltages are additive. It starts out as nine, then to eighteen, then twenty-seven, and so forth.”

           “…All the way up to 220?” Leslie asked apprehensively.

           “Yeah,” Leo sighed tiresomely, “…We’re going to need a lot of batteries.”

           “Oh, I remember, because the more volts there are, the stronger the electrical current—”

           “And the faster the pipe will spin to make the cosmic strings, you got it!”

           Leslie joined Leopold in his venture to connect all the batteries together with the wires. One end of a copper wire touched the positive terminal of a battery, then the other end of the wire bridged its way to the negative terminal of the next battery. They continued this pattern, linking about 20 nine-volt batteries total. They had essentially made a 180-volt battery from many smaller batteries. Leopold grinned and subtly bounced up and down in excitement at the circuit. Just as they were about to complete the circuit by connecting the opposite ends to the motor, Jeremy walked in.

           Leopold twirled around, beamed, and waved him over.

           “Oh, you have got the most perfect timing, boy! Come, come, look at this!” Leo gestured widely with his arms at the array of batteries. Jeremy vacantly dropped his backpack on the ground and floated over to their lab bench. Leslie frowned at him, sensing something was wrong.

           “What is it?” he asked with a hollow tone.

           “We’re about to start trial two. Automating the spinning of the cosmic string!”

           “Cool,” Jeremy stated and donned his lab coat. Leslie gathered the aluminum and iron oxide powders and together, they filled up the next ceramic pot in the metal bucket complete with the magnesium ribbon fuse. Jeremy lit the fuse and carelessly drifted away, from the reaction. Leslie grabbed him by the wrist and ushered him to the other side of the room, behind Leopold who was about to complete the circuit. The brilliant red, orange, and yellow sparks of the reaction filled the bucket and illuminated the surrounding area like all the other times before.

           Leopold feverishly connected the last wires to the motor. It emitted a deep humming sound as it powered up, and the rotor began whirling faster and faster. The pipe they had fixed to the rotor shook about in its place. Leopold gave the fiery bucket an elbow in the direction of the whizzing pipe. Just as the pipe began glowing red hot at the tip closest to the reaction bucket, the powerful vibrations caused the pipe to tremble to the very edge of the rotor. The intense rotation flung the pipe off the motor and towards Leopold. Leslie tried to yell “watch out!”, but the anxiety and surprise translated her words into “Waaaahh!”. She hustled herself and Jeremy to the other side of the lab bench, away from the chaos.

           Leopold quickly ducked for cover. The pipe closely grazed the top of his head and crashed through the large window behind him that peered into his office. Shards of glass pattered over his desk like rain drops. The ceramic pot combusted in the metal bucket once again, spitting chunks of ceramic out the top. Shortly after, the motor died out and the swirling rotor slowed to a stop. The remainder of the thermite reaction snapped and crackled in the metal bucket like a dying campfire.

           The room was inert with the wreckage of trial two.

           Leopold’s old body staggered to its feet. He glanced over his shoulder to his office, then to the motionless motor. He sighed. Leslie and Jeremy popped up on the other side of the lab bench. Leopold tightly rubbed his face with an agitated expression.

           “I thought we were breaking ground for a second, but then every single part of that experiment just failed,” he muttered to himself, “Damn it,” he enunciated aloud.

           “Are you okay?” Leslie redirected his attention.

           “Yeah, I’m fine,” he exhaled and felt the top of his head, “I think that pipe may have… skinned the top of my head. A bit of a blessing, considering. What I want to know is why the motor stopped. Did the circuit break?”

           Jeremy and Leslie investigated the circuit. Leslie frowned and shook her head.

           “It looks fine to me.”

           “The batteries are all dead,” Jeremy declared with a flat tone.

           “Alright, how do you figure?” Leo cross-examined and approached the motor, still burning off his frustration.

           Jeremy scoffed.

           “Because you used twenty nine-volts. Look at the capacity on them. Half an amp hour. How many amps are you running through this circuit?” he disputed.

           Leopold glanced up to the ceiling while he did the math in his head. They could hear him mumbling the numbers to himself.

           “A hundred eighty volts over two and a half Ohms is… Eighty? Eighty-eight? I think it’s eighty-eight amps.”

           “So, half an amp hour over eighty-eight amps is how much?” Jeremy asked.

           Leslie started calculating on her phone. The current circuit could only sustain itself on their array of nine-volt batteries for 0.005 hours, which was approximately 20 seconds.

           “Oh…” Leslie muttered and glanced up at them both, “He has a point, Leo. The capacity on these nine-volts is so low that because they’re putting out so much electricity at once, they can’t sustain it for longer than a few seconds. We used up all the juice in these batteries in an instant because spinning the pipe that fast pretty much sucks all the energy out of them right away.”

           “Awww… he is right,” Leopold groaned, “I forgot about the capacity. How did you figure it out so quickly, boy?”

           “IO went through a lot of batteries before I found a decent rechargeable one for him to use,” he explained, “And I also just taught a lab on electric circuits an hour and a half ago.”

           The lab was motionless while they all processed the results of trial two. Leopold exhaled in mild frustration and glimpsed at his disheartened team. He shook the failure off the best he could. He put on a brave face and shrugged.

           “It’s nothing we’re not already used to, right Leslie?” he broke the silence.

           Her concerned expression broke, too. She anxiously chuckled once she felt that Leopold’s frustration wasn’t going to escalate any further.

           “It wouldn’t be us if we didn’t fail at least once in every phase, first,” she added.

           “We’re going to get there,” he responded, calmer and more certain of himself, “We’ve seen the strings. At least part of one. We know we can produce them, somewhat. They’re just not stable enough to last beyond the pipe for more than a few seconds. But we can do better with this,” he gestured to the motor, “We just have to keep at it. We can’t give up that easily. If time travel were easy, everyone would be doing it. Right?”

           He and Leslie chuckled together. Jeremy held a barely noticeable smile.

           “Good work, you two. As always,” Leo perked up, “So what do we know…?” he murmured to himself.

           “We need better batteries,” Jeremy claimed, “Ideally with higher voltage and amp hours so we need less to produce the electric current and so that the motor lasts longer,” he summarized.

           “And we also need to keep that pipe on the rotor,” Leslie mentioned, “We can’t have anyone’s head come that close to being taken off, again!”

           “Yeah…” Leopold muttered and glimpsed back at the pipe covered in broken glass in his office, “So how do we get it to stay on?”

           “…Super glue?” Leslie humorously suggested.

           “Huh. Yeah, maybe,” Leo thought out loud.

           “Oh, pfft, I was mostly joking!”

           “It’s worth a try,” Jeremy supported, seeming slightly more optimistic.

           “One of you Google what the strongest super glue is, and I’ll add it to the shopping list,” Leo said.

           He scribbled away on their chalkboard, jotting down the need for batteries and super glue. He wrote down twelve- or twenty-four-volt batteries with five-hundred amp hours. Leslie announced that Google said the best glue was Loctite Super Glue. Leo marked it down.

           “We should make sure to have acetone on hand, too. Just in case we need to remove the glue from anywhere,” she added.

           Leo nodded and wagged his finger at her quick thinking.

           “Looks like we’ve got another trip to make,” Leo observed, “Why don’t you two head out for a while and find those things; I’ll stay behind and clean up this mess.”

           Leslie stalled to triple-check that Leo was truly okay with staying behind to clean, but he insisted that they move on without him. She and Jeremy took their essentials and Leopold ushered them out the door.

[brickellbabe]

BUMB+TIN Tales // The Chaotic World of App Dating

I recently got out of a relationship a couple of months ago and decided instead of being a host to a pitty party of one, I would get back out into the dating scene to get my mind off of the brutal breakup. Eager to get started I promptly added myself to Bumble and Tinder and let the games begin.

The Bumble app itself is super easy to navigate but the selection of guys couldn’t be worse than a Swap Meet in Burbank - stale, unattractive, and cheap. I consider myself a trifecta in the sense that I have brains, beauty, and benevolence amongst other phenomenal qualities which makes me a “dream girl” or as I have been told. Confidence is key, sweetie, never sell yourself short.

Anyway, after what felt like decades of swiping left I matched with a guy in my area and after speaking via text and phone I decided to give him a shot and meet him at Jone’s, the perfect date spot that’s easy and close. 

He was a bit shorter than expected (shocking) and a little on the feminine side, which raised a tiny Six Flags Magic Mountain red flag. We had drinks, apps and the conversation was flowing like the Niagra Falls so we decided to bar hop which is one of my favorite things to do on a date since it keeps things interesting and also shows me how much a guy can take in one night, financially and physically. 

Now, this is where things get suspicious. I was on the fence with this guy because I could sense something was off, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Long story short, at our third bar stop I suggested going to the Roger Room with my coupled straight friends OR The Abbey with my gay friends who just happen to text me. Before I could even finish my sentence he quickly replayed “Abbey, duh” and that’s when I knew that it was my “gaydar” that went off which made me question his demeanor. So, I went along with it and decided to introduce him to my friends who right away gave me the “gay nod” and then he willingly admitted that he was “SEM” which is a term that I have never heard before. Now, for those of you who aren’t familiar with that word, as I wasn’t either, it means open to different types of relationships with various sexes. As I heard that I knew the date was immediately over since I am not the sexually open type in that sense, even though I may be experimental in many ways, I am straight like an In & Out arrow. 

The night started coming to an end so I sat him down and told him that I think he has some things to work on personally as he is misleading by being on a straight dating app since he, himself, is Curious George, which he then took offensively, got up, and stormed off whilst leaving me a slew of text messages telling me how hurt and how horrible I am, but that my friends are awesome. 

What I take back from this first date is that the universe is telling me that I am not ready to jump into the shark-filled waters of the LA dating ocean so they threw me Zoolander Merman to deter me from trolling so quickly. Clearly, I said challenge accepted. 

After this date, I decided to deactivate my Bumble account, obviously, and solely focus on swiping right on Tinder since I heard the selection of guys was up to par with my standards. They were right, the guys on Tinder are overwhelming better looking than Bumble, but sleazier. These guys have a one-track mind; SEX. I can’t even begin to tell you how many sexting conversations I have had and didn’t even meet the guys before the convo came to a screeching halt. 

It makes me wonder, do men in LA just work and “get off” on the female voice and photos so they don’t have to spend the money on dating? 

One guy that I was completely into would stay up for hours with me on the phone getting to truly know me personally and well, physically. It was a blissful two weeks of flirty chit-chat almost every day and night until we finally met and just like the other disappointments, it was a bust shortly after. I have come to the realization that the problem with these online dating sites is that you can carry on numerous conversations with guys and they phase out like Game Of Thrones if you’re not really into it.

I have come to grasp that I am physically but not mentally ready to date. Catching feelings is a curse and it’s almost impossible for me to have a fling and keep walking down the Ralphs’s meat aisle for fresh options. Also, I think these guys are damaged goods since it seems like the women on here unintentionally have caused them to be guarded and question their intentions due to the deceitful nature of the singles occupying this jaded city.

I think it’s time for a hiatus; this is exhausting and extremely time-consuming. I’m currently over it for the time being and I am definitely not settling or wasting my time with anymore emotionally unavailable men looking to hit it and then tap out like it’s an MMA fight, you fucking losers.

Mariana out.

[jaytury-blog]

10 Signs You Were An Emo Kid

So one thing we’re all guilty of is going through childhood phases that we’re pretty embarrassed to talk about. Whether that being the geeky kid that essentially fantasized over Warhammer figurines to the kid that liked to eat the whiteboard pen in class. We’ve all been there guaranteed, and along the way we’ve picked up and dropped some pretty weird habits and traits. But I’m not here to reminisce about the stickmen animations I used to create on PowerPoint, that’s for another time. This article is aimed more towards those little cliques we found ourselves in during our early school years; cliques which pretty much evolved and shaped our tiny little fragile minds. Our worlds soon opened up and offered things we never even knew existed, whether that being a new weird friend or a music genre that sent shivers down our spines for the first time. It’s true, at some point during our tween years most of us ventured into certain factions, sometimes not by choice, but by fate. Cliques are forever changing and for the life of me I can’t keep track of what they are these days. Something about roadmen and plastics maybe? That rings some sort of bell anyway, who knows? But if you were like me and facing secondary school in the mid-2000’s, then you were most likely left with a choice of two factions, both of which stood at complete opposite ends of the scale. Ladies and gentlemen, may I present, the Chav, and the Emo. Sworn enemies until the dying days of the earth. Perhaps you were one of these and can openly admit it and even laugh about it. Or maybe you’re just too ashamed to confess that this phase was in fact a part of your development as a teen. Maybe you’re in denial. I won’t judge you. The fact is, these factions were a real thing back then, and although the Chav outlived the Emo, we can still learn to laugh and reminisce about those crazy scene days that once ruled our lives each day. So let’s do that. Let’s talk about the old days and what defined ‘The Emo Kid’ May I present to you, 10 Signs You Were An Emo Kid 1. YOU HATED EVERYONE AND EVERYTHING So I’ll start off with the obvious one here, and that is that you most likely hated everyone you knew, minus your other Emo comrades of course. I’ll just come out and say this, but did you hate your teacher? Your parents? Your pets for no particular reason? Did they do something you didn’t like, regardless of how little it was? Was their smiles too wide for your everyday mundane life? If you answered yes, then great – you were on your way to Emo-hood. However this one was strange, because deep down I know you probably didn’t hate everyone, but simply because you had the persona of a gravestone and came off as friendly as a brick wall you just kind of stuck with the hatred of positivity. Ever see the Emo kid that always smiled? No? That’s because they weren’t a real Emo kid. A real Emo kid would have kept their heads down, muttered obscenities at anyone breathing that wasn’t one of your friends. You hated everyone through and through, and regardless of what the world had done, you made sure THEY were the problem, not you. 2. THE FRINGE Oh, the fringe; the trademark of the Emo kid that everyone had. You probably reached this point early on and decided if you were going to make it with the opposite sex then you needed to rock the cringe fringe 24/7. Day in, day out you would style your hair for hours, straightening it and burning the hell out of the ends until it was just long enough to cover one eye. The longer your fringe, the cooler you were. That’s just how it was for some reason. It of course, being like your personality, had to be blacker than the soul and thicker than moose’s blood. Your fringe was your baby, and if you wasn’t spending at least half the day correcting it and keeping on top of obscuring one eye then you weren’t a very good Emo kid. Hair was everything, plain and simple.

3. THE STUDDED BELT AND RED SKINNIES

That, as well as the other insane things you used to ‘rock’ like the fingerless gloves or black and

white chequered hoodies.

Whatever you wore, you made sure it was branded with Blue Banana, because that’s essentially the only retailer that did awesome enough stuff for your Emo requirements.

If you were a guy, you thought you could pull off guyliner better than any chick you knew, and no matter the occasion or how far away from your bed you had to go that day, you made sure your eyes were thicker than a pandas regardless.

Before leaving home you made sure you had AT LEAST two studded belts, both diagonally crossed and fastened through only one hole on your jeans.

As for the girls, a not so sturdy pair of fishnet stockings were on the essentials, oh, and also a spare pair to cover your bloody arms for some reason.

Bracelets and bracelets, so many damn bracelets filled your skin right up to your elbows, and why? Maybe to cover the…*cough cough*

Moving on.

4. YOU CAPTIONED EVERYTHING WITH ‘RAWR!’

To this day I still don’t understand it, but maybe you do.

Back in the day when Bebo was alive and everyone used to obsess over mirror selfies with their Sony Ericsson phones, the dinosaur was an iconic thing to the Emo kids.

Don’t ask me why, I don’t have an answer for it.

You used to hold one hand out like a claw and have a mouth like Clint Eastwood, slightly open and aggressive like you were about to annihilate a herbivore.

Each photo had to be angled perfectly just so you’d see the several lip piercings you gathered over the last year or so, and if you could sneak in a tongue piercing somewhere you were at the peak of your image, truly.

You also made sure to ‘own’ everyone else’s photo’s too, which never actually accounted for anything at all.

Thought someone was hot? Comment ‘I own this’ and some incredible thing happened. Nobody knew what the thing was, but it happened alright.

You owned the hottest pics of the day, and it literally meant zilch. Congratulations, you achieved nothing.

5. EMOTION WAS EVERYTHING

If you weren’t a tween basket case going through a mental breakdown for two years straight then you weren’t an Emo kid.

If you broke a smile more than twice a day you were considered one of the happy kids with a happy life and make-believe fairy parents. But if you were a true Emo then you honestly believed your life was the worst thing ever in existence. The world could collapse beneath our feet and it still wouldn’t even put a dent in your day-to-day life.

If you weren’t fighting off the make-believe depression you tried so hard to land yourself with then you were trying to find it, just so you could fight it all over again.

Every day was an emotional rollercoaster for you, and so long as you walked in your Vans shoes, the black cloud would slowly follow behind.

Everything was just terrible, utterly bloody terrible.

Cat died? Terrible.

Girlfriend left? Terrible.

Bus late? Terrible.

No mayo on your sandwich? Terrible.

Your life was just terrible, wasn’t it?

6. THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY

So nine times out of ten we dated someone in our social circle, because deep down we felt the connection more and the sparks ignited slightly easier knowing they were just as Emo as you were.

Maybe it’s because you saw them every single day and considered them a friend already, and for that reason, a relationship was on the cards.

Chances are you dated a few people in your group, because let’s face it, when you’re fifteen and open to experimentation for the first time, you’re willing to just go out with everyone to get an idea of how everything works.

Like there was always that one quiet kid who was into the dodgiest stuff that caught you off guard, and if you ever found yourself in a relationship with that certain individual then you’ll know exactly what I mean. It’s weird.

But then there’s the one that got away, the other half of the jigsaw that quite literally ‘rocked your world’ and completed your black little heart. We’ve all been there, I know we have.

A decent length for a relationship back then was about five or six months, but to you that was like an eternity. It was so sacred that everyone knew about it. You were the ‘in couple’ of the crowd. Just how you liked it.

But kids being kids things eventually went spiralling out of control and plummeted to the ground, making you realise how screwed up your world was all over again.

Things ended for a crazy reason you could laugh about these days, but back then you felt like your whole world had come crashing to the ground.

Initiating Emo breakdown number eight thousand and twenty-one.

7. YOU HAD FOUR BANDS ON YOUR MP3 PLAYER

I’ll give this one a straight shot in the dark and you tell me how close I am to hitting home, okay?

Ahem, *cracks fingers*

1. My Chemical Romance

2. Panic At The Disco!

3. Fall Out Boy

4. Linkin Park

Yes? No? Spot on?

Well that was me anyway, and I know for a fact you had at least one of those bands on your crappy little MP3 player at school. Those and a few songs you heard from friends but didn’t quite know the band, so just referred to them as ‘songs that speak to me on a personal level’.

You and a million other Emo kids.

The lyrics were identical to the pain you were feeling on a day to day basis, and if you felt the warm throbbing in your heart when the first piano note of Black Parade played, then you were a part of the 95% of Emo kids that felt the passion for the music aspect of the scene. This was your go-to anthem when somebody asked what music genre you were into. Period.

You were the frontman of the Black Parade every day of the week.

8. YOU PROBABLY HUNG OUT UNDER A BRIDGE

Now I’m not saying you were a gremlin that loitered under a bridge, but you probably did have a hangout spot similar to that, didn’t you? Perhaps the town square that consisted of two benches and a pound shop. Maybe a church cemetery to match the dark aura you surrounded yourself in?

For me it was the town square, which funnily enough consisted of two benches and a pound shop. It was cheap and convenient, and I spent more hours sat there loitering than I did in my own home. If I had spare time, I was there. Smoking, drinking, and overall being a general public enemy to the elderly and working generations.

Shock horror it later budged to the nearby cathedral, because we eventually discovered that the more death surrounding us, the more Emo we were.

If it rained you’d find me cupped under the roof of a Debenhams store, sat in line with thirty other kids thinking we were the coolest dropouts in the county.

We later on figured out we weren’t. We were just a nuisance and an inconvenience for those trying to gain access to the doors of Debenhams.

But maybe this rings true for you as well? Did you have one of these hangout spots? Did you have an Emo home away from home?

9. BEBO. MSN. TUMBLR.

Tumblr, Tumblr, Tumblr – this was your life indoors. This was your second-life where you could break out of your shell without actually having to interact with anyone. If someone asked you you’re hobbies, you’d tell them ‘Tumblr’ and nothing else.

It was a place for you to express yourself through various captioned pictures and dark gruesome quotations. It was your way of saying, “I’m edgy, so what?”

If your Tumblr wasn’t plastered with pictures of Pete Wentz or Gerard Way then you weren’t cool, because those guys were heroes in your books. They were the definition of ‘Rawr’ or something along those lines.

Bebo was of course where it all started, before Facebook became the in-thing and dominated the social market. It was a place to share ‘luv’ and post your classic mirror selfies to the world. You probably had some edgy black profile theme with sparkly skulls and chessboard patterns, right? That’s because you were Emo, and you wanted the world to know it.

MSN was basically Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp except it had all those old quirky school features like webcam chats and classic emoji’s. Plus the cool thing with MSN was you could just have some crazy name like ‘Dark Life <3 Girlfriend <3 RAWR!’ and nobody batted an eyelid. That was just the norm, and it was perfect.

If you spent all your time indoors flicking between the three tabs of the above sites, then there’s a strong chance you were a textbook Emo kid.

10. YOU DESPISED THE CHAV KIDS

If like me you cringed at words like ‘Bruv’ and ‘Danz’ then you probably shared the strong hatred towards the Chavvy kids in school. Unfortunately they took up about eighty percent of the playground, and sadly for the Emo kids, they were unavoidable when trying to go about your day in peace.

You know the kids I’m talking about. The ones who usually wore tracksuits and hand-me-down Reebok classics. They’d usually try and boot a football in your direction if they so much as saw your fringe wave in the wind.

They’d be there when you crossed the field, they’d be there waiting outside your classroom, and they’d be there when you left the school gates at the end of the day. They were always around, doing whatever it took to ruin your day and boast to their mates.

To put it short, they were vile creatures that took pleasure in making your day even worse than it already was.

The Chav’s and the Emo’s were two factions always at war with one another. Two complete opposite ends of the scale. Different music, different hobbies, different vocabulary – everything.

You skate, they kick a ball. You bang your head to MCR, they punch the wall to N-Dubz.

Everything about the two factions was messy, and although they often say opposites attract, this was a case that never would come close without starting a fight.

Chav kids were what made school days so gruelling and dark, but you pushed through in whatever way you could. You stuck by your friends and mocked them from behind the filter of a cigarette. You said nothing and kept your head down, but whilst the fire was dimly lit, the coal was most definitely still burning.

In the end, the Chav outlived the Emo, but I’d like to say we had the last laugh. Because whilst we were socially beneath them in school, we managed to climb above them and realise a phase was just a phase and it was time to grow up in the end. We weren’t thirteen anymore. We were getting older and the greying hairs were inevitable.

The masses of Blue Banana clothing died out and became just like everybody else; mostly suits and ties sadly enough.

The Emo within may not hold as strong a presence anymore, but deep down I know some of us sure as hell still rock out to Black Parade on a regular basis. It’s a piece of us that’ll never die.

The Chavvy phase continues to grow, sometimes into people’s late thirties and beyond.

But the Emo kids will always be able to smile knowing full well they aspired to be more.

The Emo kid may have died in reality, but it will never for once be forgotten in our hearts.

…That is something a true Emo would say. *

So, were you an Emo kid?

Share your memories from this beautiful era below and allow the dark child within you to re-emerge for a while.

Emo kids unite!

- J Tury

[darkwyng]

The post-Valentine’s Day/ 457th Anniversary of the Foundation of Guadalajara (Mexico) post: 1st edition

(Or, the one where the Dorkie decides to pour her thoughts on love into a post, instead of just bitching about it.)

Ah, relationships. Some love them, some hate them. Some are totally indifferent to the notion of being in one, while others are still waiting for the day February 14th stops being a day of sorrow/anger/general negative emotions, and starts being a day where they can shove it to the rest of the bachelors worldwide.

And then there’s this asshole yours truly.

Currently in a 4-year-long relationship with that cute man in the photos posted, and still harboring a certain disdain for the holiday that’s supposed to celebrate that fact (and apparently, so does he).

Now, don’t get me wrong. I may not be a romantic person by nature (except maybe for pet names), but I relish every chance I get to shower this guy with the Dorkie-patented brand of affection (it involves food. Lots and lots of food). In theory, Valentine’s Day should be a hell of an opportunity to indulge him, what with the nice restaurant deals, the neverending fountains of chocolate and the rivers of candy, right? And after that, being in Guadalajara has an extra perk: downtown right now is celebrating the city’s birthday with lights. Lots and lots of lights, and events, and general downtown stuff.

There’s just a little problem with that: every other couple expects the same things. Thus, the incredible saturation of the good food venues, and nevermind trying to approach the Degollado. There’s gonna be too many people around, everywhere. Fuck privacy, fuck your personal space they seem to be saying. Damn.

Which is not to say we had a bad time yesterday, despite the fact the bae had work to do. There’s always yogurt ice cream in the afternoon, for when the chocolate runs out. And Korean barbecue is always fucking delicious. We even got a rose, on the house, when we paid the bill. That, in my book, marks a successful day out, Valentine’s or not.

(And then, after that... Well, the sloth has a pretty good idea up there).

But then again, we do that pretty much every chance we get, all year round, with way less people around us, and not-so-harried waiters serving us. So in the end? My opinion of february the 14th hasn’t changed much. It’s, ultimately, a marketing move, designed to strip couples, or bachelors waiting for their crush to reciprocate, of time and money.

“But Dorkie”, you might be saying. “That only goes for the single losers out there, or people in dysfunctional or overall shitty relationships!”

Well, I don’t know. I’m quite happy with the bae, disagreements and all. And it’s not like he’s a very romantic dude either. We just function like that. Food is pretty much our flower language, bantering our sweet nothings, rock/metal music our romantic playlist (and K-pop, but we don’t understand the language, and have no real desire to look up the translations). Plushies, while much appreciated, are kind of expensive, and we have little space to place them on anyway. The bae’s extremely hard to buy for (he’s an heterosexual man; much to my chagrin, I can’t buy him flowers, and he absolutely refuses to accept gifts of gaming gear or technology). And marriage proposals, right now, are a big no-no. Leave that for when the MD in the house gets in and finishes her specialty and finds a stable job, or at the very least, when we have our own home; before that, it simply won’t happen.

“What about before, when you were first dating?” you ask, “wasn’t that Valentine’s different?”

Well, yes and no. We didn’t go out that day, just hung out at his house. Yeah, we were in the lovey-dovey phase, so to speak, and we still didn’t do grand gestures of affection. Maybe more cuddling and pet names than we do now.

And you know what? That’s okay. The surge of endorphins and serotonine doesn’t have to come from buying a huge teddy bear, or filling the car with heart post-its. It doesn’t have to come from taking 200 look-alike selfies at a time and posting them on social media with sappy quotes, or send each other hallmark-like valentine cards. It doesn’t have to come from sharing a small restaurant with 15 other couples and giving each other eskimo kisses in betwen ordering and eating some osam bulgogi (though damn, it helps).

It can come from mock-fighting about who gets to refill the hummingbird feeder that day, or what movie to watch during a boring day. It can come from talking about anything that comes to mind and then arguing about it, from asian culture to how to pronounce a certain foreign word. It can come from making an experimental pasta dish for dinner and then gobbling it up without speaking to each other until it is done. It can come from watching the bae complain that Riot hasn’t uploaded the streams on Twitch or Youtube yet, or bitch about the fucking bureacracy involved in our IRS-equivalent (SAT, or SATan if you prefer). It can come from simply sitting next to each other in silence, just sharing the same space.

For me, love is less the rush you get when getting to know a crush, the adrenaline surges when sharing the first kisses, or the googly-eyes everytime you look at the person, and more the day-to-day of keeping the relationship stable; arguing and fighting, bonding over our mutual interests (and the not-so-mutual ones), laughing at each other, sharing our hopes and fears, caring for our pets, frantically looking for a wildlife rehab center for an injured hummingbird, keeping in touch when my graveyard shifts come, and all.

And above all, knowing that we can display our full range of emotions (even hating each other for a while) in front of the other, and not feel as if we love each other any less.

It’s a good life.

(Photos all taken by me, at different points in time. The bae, of course, owns himself.)