#because he… didn’t realize Joan liked him? Was oblivious? | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

notveryglittery · 4 years

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absolutely smitten

summary: sometimes your coworkers are ridiculously in love but too dumb to make a move so obviously you've got to give them a push in the right direction. wc: 4,700 / ship: roman/patton (royality) content: human au, actor au. patton-centric. some crying, some kissing. mutual, oblivious pining. confessions of ~love~! background talyn, joan, remy, and thomas. background brotherly moxiety, romantic analogical, and frenemies(?) moceit. janus is kind of an asshole (but that’s patton’s opinion dot vine). author’s note: so, sometime in october 2019, i saw this post by @sirasanders for the first time ever which was, frankly, a Crime. because it had been posted in february 2019 and the fact that i had gone that long without seeing/being tagged in a royality post? Illegal. anyway, i was struck with inspiration and began writing and sure it might have taken nine months but... here it is! i'm really proud of it! i hope you enjoy!

many thanks to @rosesisupposes for beta reading!! <3 read on ao3!

— — —

Patton was not a morning person. Sure, he liked the idea of sunrises and consistent schedules and having time to make himself a big breakfast. All of that, however, required waking up. So to put it more accurately, Patton was not a waking up person.

Usually, all it took was a cup of coffee.

Thankfully, that part was never something Patton really had to worry about. The sweet, sweet bean elixir was delivered to him personally each morning sometime after arriving on set. Something he did worry about, though? Constantly? Nearly every hour of every day? Just what exactly he and the bringer-of-drinks were.

Like… yeah! He and Roman were… friends? They were coworkers for sure, without a doubt, and Patton liked that a lot! Working with Roman never failed to brighten even his darkest days. Patton could arrive on set in the lowest of moods and sometimes all it took was one warm smile from Roman to melt the icy feeling in his veins. Sometimes, it was the way Roman would slide up next to him at the catering table, moaning about how hungry he was, asking for Patton’s opinion on what he should treat himself to. Sometimes, Roman would take Patton’s hand and lead him to The Sanders Couch and Roman would sit and then he’d pull Patton down onto his lap and they’d just stay there for a bit, Roman combing his hand through Patton’s hair and singing quietly… If Patton was being honest, that was the easiest and quickest way Roman helped him to feel better.

Just friends, though! Right?

Roman remembering Patton’s usual go-to orders from Starbucks didn’t mean anything. He was just being courteous. Maybe it wasn’t even that; maybe it was just Roman wanting to make sure Patton would be at his peak during their scenes. Actors had such bad reputations after all and the last thing Patton wanted was to be a nightmare to deal with on set. He was grateful, really, of all Roman did to help him!

He just wished he wasn’t so confused.

“Patton! Good morning!”

Okay, time to put all those confusing feelings away.

Talyn’s bright grin and brighter hair never failed to impress Patton. Maybe one day he’d learn their secret to feeling this energetic so early in the morning but until then, he’d just have to keep wishing for the day coffee chains lowered their prices.

“Morning, Tal,” Patton responded, unable to help himself as he reached out and ruffled Talyn’s colorful locks.

They grumbled and swatted his hand away. “I’d be offended that you don’t seem to realize how much time this takes but I don’t think you even know what a hairbrush is.”

Patton pouted and reached up to tug on one of his curls. “I’m hurt.”

Talyn huffed, a sort-of laugh that reminded him of Virgil, and rolled their eyes. “I’ll be extra gentle with your makeup to make up for it, then.”

Before Patton could express appreciation for the play on words, Talyn was swept up and away in a blur of blue plaid and orange. He was pretty sure it’d been Joan, given how they were scarcely seen without their tell-tale flashy beanie.

While interacting with Talyn had helped Patton wake up a little bit, he was already feeling the heaviness of being up early weighing him down again. The reminder of the scene they were supposed to be filming today probably wasn’t doing him any good, either. Not only was it going to be a lot of crying, which was already exhausting on its own, he and Roman were supposed to kiss. Patton was supposed to kiss the possibly-maybe-wouldn’t-it-be-nice love of his life.

His cheeks went hot at the very idea and Patton all but slammed his face into his hands and screamed into his palms.

“Easy, buttercup, wouldn’t want you bruising, hm?”

Patton lowered his hands and glared at Janus over his fingertips.

“Oops,” Janus smirked and stepped back. “Didn’t realize you haven’t had your coffee yet.”

Patton frowned and folded his arms over his chest. “Is it that obvious?”

Somehow, in the time it took him to blink, Janus had moved, loping around Patton with a contemplative hum. One of these days, he’d learn how Janus managed to get around so fast.

“Look,” he said, draping an arm over Patton’s shoulders and pointing, “right there.”

One of these days, Patton would stop falling for Janus’s pranks.

Today was not that day and so when Patton directed his gaze towards where Janus was gesturing, he was provided the very startling sight of Roman coming in from outside. He was practically glowing in the sunlight, his hair was tousled from the wind as if he’d rolled out of bed but left it intentionally disheveled, and they’d just made eye contact and so Patton saw clear as crystal the way Roman’s smile curled up so easily and prettily.

Oh no, he was so pretty.

Patton ducked out of Janus’s hold and bolted away, towards his dressing room.

That… could have gone worse? Yeah, he could’ve tripped while running away and face planted and made work super difficult for Talyn and ruined the whole shoot today and everyone would be mad at him for wasting their time—

“Patton?”

By absolute sheer willpower, Patton didn’t scream.

“I’ve got your caramel macchiato.”

Patton was going to melt.

“Extra extra espresso.”

Scratch that, Patton was already melting.

“Thomas said it looked like you’d need it.”

Wait, what?

Patton opened the door to handsome Roman, considerate Roman, lovely Roman, and spoke before his brain could get any more mushy at the sight of handsome considerate lovely Roman. “Thomas hasn’t even seen me today?”

Roman held the reusable tumbler out for Patton to take. “Extra caramel, too.”

Patton took the offered drink and if it weren’t for the fact that this happened nearly every morning, he’d surely have dropped it the moment his and Roman’s fingertips brushed. Thankfully, he’d gotten used to it by now. Mostly, his heart reminded him when butterflies took flight in his stomach. Right, yeah, mostly. Anyway.

“I’ll see you in a bit, then,” Roman said and Patton was probably imagining the soft earnesty in his tone. He tried to dial down his high hopes.

“In a bit, then…” Patton managed, smiling sweetly, before stepping back and closing the door.

By some miracle, he didn’t sink immediately to the ground despite definitely feeling like a melted marshmallow. Instead, he drained half of his drink and then finally let himself scream.

In a bit turned out to be a couple of hours. It wasn’t anything Patton wasn’t familiar with but that didn’t make it any less agonizing. An indie film meant a smaller crew which meant Talyn could do the makeup on only one actor at a time. Fortunately, the scenes today weren’t very extensive which meant less folks to work on. Unfortunately, the scenes weren’t extensive because they were all plenty aware of how emotionally draining they’d be and had essentially planned for it. Crying came pretty easily to Patton so he wasn’t worried about that part. It was the after: the headache, the puffy red skin, the sore throat.

Talyn muttered as they worked, wondering why they were even bothering with makeup when it was all going to be ruined by the end of filming, anyway. In the reflection of the mirror Patton was sitting in front of, he could just barely see Roman getting his hair fixed. He was gesturing, no doubt telling a story of some sort; Remy had to keep pushing his hands back down anytime they got in the way. Patton was sure the hairdresser was scowling as he worked. If anyone was less a morning person than Patton, it was Remy.

“I love that smile as much as the next, Pat,” Talyn said, sighing, “but I don’t need it just yet. I can’t work when your eyes are all cute and crinkly.”

He murmured a quick apology and schooled his expression into one carefully blank. Talyn got back to applying his eye makeup. It didn’t take much longer before they were finished and Patton was sent on his way to get his hair done next. He and Roman passed by each other and Patton did his best to not swoon quite so obviously when Roman grinned at him. This part went by considerably quicker given that Patton could no longer see Roman in any reflections and that Remy had no patience for anything taking longer than absolutely necessary. He was finished before Talyn was with Roman which meant Patton could head off to see their director for any final adjustments or tips.

Thomas looked like he’d been through the wringer and the day had barely begun. Patton was frowning as he approached, wondering if anyone had told Thomas that his shirt was inside out.

“Morning, kiddo,” Patton greeted, coming to a stop beside him.

Thomas startled, nearly dropping the script he was holding. “Patton!”

“Oops,” Patton said sheepishly, “didn’t mean to spook you.”

Thomas waved the papers dismissively. “Nah, I oughta be better aware of my surroundings. Especially with someone like Janus around.”

Patton scowled. “Yeah, he got me this morning.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Thomas responded and Patton did not like how cheeky he looked all of a sudden. “That one seemed more like a treat than it did a trick.”

Patton really wished he didn’t blush so easily! He couldn’t even try and cover his face because then he’d risk messing up Talyn’s hard work. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Uh huh.”

“Anyway,” Patton interrupted loudly before Thomas could keep teasing him. “Has anything changed with filming today that I should worry about?”

Thomas shook his head. “Nah, we’re still all on the same page.” He hesitated. “Sorry that today’s gonna be so taxing on you guys.”

“I’m just hoping we can get it done in one take.”

“If you don’t, Talyn will have to fix you up again,” a new voice said, effortlessly joining their discussion.

“Speak of the Devil,” Thomas muttered.

“And he shall appear!” Patton finished for him before turning to Janus with a glare. “You know it’s rude to eavesdrop?”

Janus shrugged carelessly. “Joan’s looking for you,” he told Thomas, as if backstage and onstage weren’t small enough for Joan to find Thomas relatively easy on their own.

Still, Thomas shot Patton an apologetic look and went off to find his best friend.

In a near perfect match of their earlier interaction, Patton faced Janus with crossed arms and a frown. “Could you stop messing with me? I really don’t need it on top of everything else going on today.”

“I haven’t a clue what you’re referring to, dear Patton,” Janus said sweetly, all faux innocence.

Patton tried to not let it get to him. The two rarely got along, even on their good days, and Janus knew this, which meant he especially delighted in bothering Patton on his bad days. There really wasn’t any reason for them to be like this except that Janus had been why Patton nearly missed his audition for this film and he’d never apologized and Patton was still holding a grudge.

“Darling, is he bothering you?”

Before Patton could react to the question, an arm slid around his shoulders. The body he was pulled against was warm and firm and smelled of cinnamon and oh no.

Janus was smirking wickedly.

“Roman,” he all but purred. “I would never bother the object of your affections. I wouldn’t even dream of it.”

Patton.exe has stopped functioning.

The conversation continued, if Janus’s moving lips were anything to go by, but none of it processed for Patton. Roman’s what? Surely they weren’t talking about him? No, it was just Janus playing another one of his mean pranks. It had to be! Roman couldn’t like Patton back because if he did… well, if he did, that meant the kiss they were supposed to share on screen today wouldn’t be quite so one-sided and… and that would mean Patton’s feelings weren’t entirely unfounded… Roman did always bring him coffee. He was there for Patton’s low moods. His smile was sometimes so sincere and soft that Patton thought he might melt anytime he was on the receiving end of it.

Patton blinked and tilted his head up just a bit so he could get a better look at his knight in shining armor. Thinking back on it, Roman was often there to help save Patton from Janus’s crueler comments or jokes. He encouraged Patton through each scene, eyes bright and eager when the camera wasn’t pointed at him. He looked a little tense and Patton wondered if he was angry with what Janus had implied or… or if he was embarrassed to be called out on his feelings.

His gaze returned to Janus and he blinked again. Sound started to filter back in. Janus sneered at him.

“Back with us, then?”

“Alright, folks!” Thomas' voice rang out then, commanding attention. “Let’s get started! If we finish early today, I’m treating y’all to ice cream!”

A chorus of cheers followed as everyone moved to get where they needed to be.

Patton slipped out from Roman’s grasp and gave him a grin that he hoped wasn’t as shaky as it felt. In theory, Roman liking him back should have been a good thing. So why was Patton feeling so icky all of a sudden? Was it because, if it were true, Roman hadn’t been the one to confess? It was hardly fair of Janus to go around sharing other people’s secrets.

“Places!”

Patton snapped out of his daze to find Roman standing in front of him. He looked concerned.

“Hey, deep breaths, okay?” He took an exaggerated one to make a point and Patton found himself mirroring it. The slow exhale lightened the weight on his shoulders.

Patton nodded and Roman smiled at him. It was that sincere, soft smile that made Patton melt and, gosh darn it, hadn’t he already done enough of that this morning?

They hurried to their spots. The script was playing through Patton’s head, his lines and then Roman’s following lines, and Patton’s reactions to each line. He focused on the scene and the reason his character was upset and how it’d feel if he were experiencing it personally. One take. They’d get this finished in one take and then Patton could have ice cream and go back to his hotel room and take a nice long nap.

It was easy to forget everything that had happened earlier once he was onstage. Patton had no trouble getting into his roles most of the time; it certainly helped having someone like Roman opposite him. Roman was the best actor he’d ever had the pleasure of working with: self-assured and reliable and knowledgeable. The confidence he exuded was often contagious. The lights came on and out of the corner of his eye, Patton saw the red light flashing on the cameras. Roman winked at him and Patton only resisted giggling like a lovestruck teenager because Thomas had just called “action!”

It went as effortlessly as it usually did. Roman recited his lines with nary a mistake. Patton worked off of him easily, responses slipping from his tongue before the worries or fears of messing up could even try to take hold. The cast and the set around them faded away until it was just Patton and Roman - Patton’s character and Roman’s character - and this moment and this scene and these feelings. He could feel the tears spilling over, his heart felt as if it were being squeezed in his chest, his throat closing up with choked back sobs. Roman’s expression only aided in Patton’s despair; he never wanted to see Roman this miserable ever again.

It felt like a dream, the way Roman’s hand came up and cradled his cheek so gently and carefully. He wiped away a few of Patton’s tears with his thumb. He wasn’t sure which of them leaned in first, just that his eyes slid closed before Roman’s lips met his. Strangely, Patton’s first thought wasn’t incoherent screaming. It was that Roman tasted of peppermint. Then it was who knew kissing distracted so well from crying? Finally, eventually, it was incoherent screaming.

“And cut!”

They didn’t leap away from each other as if electrocuted, though Patton’s surprise at the reminder that they weren’t alone did shock him. Instead, they separated slowly, Roman’s hand drifting from Patton’s face to his shoulder.

“You’re… you’re a really good kisser, Roman.”

It wasn’t until Roman’s face went bright, bright red that Patton realized what he’d said.

“That was great, guys!” Thomas exclaimed, slinging his arms around them both and shattering the fragile space between them. “We’ll look over it real quick for any glaring mistakes but I think it went perfectly! We can fix the little things in post. I think you both deserve a break.”

“Thanks,” Patton squeaked, shooting up from where he sat. “Bye!”

For the second time that day, Patton bolted away and to his dressing room.

The door had barely slammed shut behind him before Patton was diving for the countertop he’d left his phone on. He was calling his second emergency contact and throwing himself into the pile of beanbags, cushions, and pillows in one corner of the room, all in one breath.

“Hey, Pat,” answered the low, rumbling voice of his brother.

Even if Patton had wanted to coherently explain what was going on, he couldn’t have. The words came tumbling out of his mouth without any sense and he kept cycling back to “kiss” and “Roman.” It didn’t help that he was half-sobbing, half-laughing, and all-panicking. At some point, he thought Virgil might have covered up his end of the receiver and spoke to someone else, but Patton was too flustered to be sure.

“Okay, bud, let’s take a minute to breathe.”

And so Virgil counted his younger sibling through several deep breaths, inhaling four and holding four and exhaling four. Once Patton had calmed down, Virgil asked him to repeat what he’d tried to say earlier.

“Oh. Ohh, right, that scene was today.”

“Virgil,” Patton said very seriously, pacing the room back and forth. “I… I think he likes me back.”

“Nooo,” Virgil responded and Patton frowned at his tone. “Really?”

“Why’d you say it like that!”

“Dude… Roman’s crush on you is as obvious as your crush on him.”

“His what?!”

“I’m sorry to say that you got all the gay disaster genes.”

“Tell that to your unsigned Valentine’s Day confession card to Logan.”

“Hey! We agreed to never mention that again!”

There was muffled speaking on Virgil’s end of the call and Virgil snorted. “Oh, that’ll be fun,” Patton heard him say in response. Before he could ask what would be fun, there was a knock at his door.

“Patton?”

By absolute sheer willpower, Patton didn’t scream.

“Answer it before I die of tension,” Virgil deadpanned.

Would it really be so bad if he did? After everything that had happened today, it really did seem like Roman might truly like him back… Sure, Patton wanted to bury himself into a hole and never leave out of embarrassment because of what he’d said after the kiss, but… It wasn’t like they were finished filming. Patton was going to see Roman again, whether he liked it or not.

“I’m hanging up now, okay?”

“Okay,” Patton whimpered. He was frozen a few moments longer, the phone still pressed to his ear.

“I can come back later,” Roman said, voice muffled. “Or not at all, if you’d prefer that. I don’t want to make you uncomf—”

Moving faster than he thought he was physically capable, Patton dropped his cell, and lurched across the room. He yanked the door open to handsome Roman, nervous Roman, sheepish Roman, and acted before his brain could get any more conflicted at the sight of handsome nervous sheepish Roman. “Please don’t leave.”

Roman went from worrying nervously at his lower lip to a small hopeful smile. He looked… strangely vulnerable. Patton wanted to protect him from everything bad, just as Roman had supported and kept him safe in the past.

“Hi.”

“Uhm… hi,” Patton replied. After a moment’s hesitation, he stepped back and gestured for Roman to enter.

For the time they’d been working together, neither had been inside the other’s dressing room. Actually, Patton hadn’t gone by Roman’s at all; maybe his was the one with the star-sticker-decorated door. Roman caught sight of Patton’s Comfort Corner and sent him a curious glance.

“It’s better than a chair?” Patton answered with a half-shrug.

“It’s like The Sanders Couch,” Roman said agreeably.

“Did Thomas ever tell you the story behind it?”

“Which one?” Roman asked, laughing. “There’s so many. He has it sent with him to every filming location, you know. Apparently, it’s magic.”

Patton’s apprehension was falling away slowly but surely and he thought it amazing how even being near Roman had that effect on him.

“May I?”

Patton blinked, confused. Roman gestured to the corner.

“Oh! Yeah! Yes, of course.” Patton hurriedly responded, stumbling a little over his words.

“May…” Roman rubbed the back of his neck and Patton didn’t understand what he could possibly have to be bashful about before remembering oh, right, he likes me back. “May we?”

It felt like Patton’s whole body was submerged in scalding hot water. “O— okay,” he squeaked. Before he could melt on the spot like his jelly-wobbly legs wanted him to, Patton joined Roman in settling cozily amongst the beanbags, cushions, and pillows.

It was like second nature to them. Without even meaning to, Patton gravitated towards Roman, curling against his side as if it was right where he belonged. Roman’s hand was carding through Patton’s hair before they’d even fully got their legs positioned just right. In the time that Patton had made this dressing room his own, he’d added frequently to this pile, and he knew for a fact that there was room enough for two people to lounge on it without having to sit too close. As if he weren’t already in a tizzy, realizing how easy it was for him and Roman to be like this… Well, it was a miracle he hadn’t fainted already.

“So…” Roman began at the same moment Patton exclaimed, “I’m sorry!”

Naturally, Roman looked bewildered.

“I should have told you sooner,” Patton barreled on. He pointedly avoided looking up, instead keeping his gaze trained on his hands folded in his lap. “I was just… scared, I guess? Mostly of rejection… uhm, duh… But also of ruining this movie for you? I didn’t want to make filming difficult for… well, for anyone! And I didn’t want to risk doing that just because of my silly feelings.”

“Silly?” Roman echoed.

“And I know it’s not something I need to apologize for,” Patton continued in a rush, “but I’m still so sorry that Janus said what he said. A… about me being the, uh… your… Well, you know. He didn’t have any right doing that.”

Roman laughed, sounding a little incredulous. Patton wasn’t sure what part Roman had trouble believing. It was true, after all! The very idea of someone spilling Patton’s crush without his say-so was absolutely horrifying.

“If I’m being completely honest?” Roman began, shifting just enough that he could cradle Patton’s cheek in his hand and tilt his face up. “I don’t think I’d have had the courage to do it myself, anyway.”

He… He was being genuine, Patton realized with a start.

“You’re the most courageous person I know!” Patton argued.

“I am also terrified of rejection,” Roman amended.

“Now hold on, if I’m scared of rejection and you’re scared of rejection, then who’s flying the plane?”

Roman laughed so hard, Patton was jostled by it in his embrace. It was a sensation he wouldn’t mind getting used to.

“Regrettably, I think that Janus is our pilot.”

Patton pouted. “Don’t like that.”

“We might owe him a thank you.”

“Don’t like that!” Patton repeated.

“Well, how about something that you do like?” Roman suggested, still holding him so carefully, still looking at him with such a sincere and soft smile. Still, there was just a hint of trepidation in his tone, the tiniest bit of unease in his eyes.

Patton realized awfully late that neither of them had actually, completely declared their feelings yet. He sat up in a hurry, placing a hand on Roman’s chest, and taking a deep breath. He thought it might give him at least a moment to sort his thoughts so that he could give Roman the confession he deserved. He thought wrong.

“You!” he practically shouted. “I like you! So much! It’s ridiculous! It’s exhilarating and scary and wonderful and well, I mean—” He stuttered to a halt, dissolving momentarily into breathless giggles. “You’re so considerate, do you know that? You care so much and you have so many little ways of showing it! And oh my god, you’re the best coworker I’ve ever had. You’re so full of passion and dedication, it’s an absolute joy to act alongside you and, and—” Again, Patton paused, but this time it was thanks to Roman’s slack-jawed awe. Raising both arms, Patton took Roman’s face in his hands and squished his cheeks a little. “And don’t even get me started on how handsome you are.”

In the time he’d known Roman, Patton had never seen him speechless. Patton was worried that he’d broken him. The seconds ticked by until, eventually, Roman made a sound akin to a tea kettle whistling. He slowly leaned in and down until Patton had to let go, instead opting to wrap his arms around Roman’s neck. With his face hidden now in Patton’s shoulder, it became clear how hard Roman was shaking.

“Was that too much?” Patton asked quietly.

Roman mumbled something but Patton couldn’t have understood it if he tried. Maybe he just needed a few minutes to collect himself. After some time, Roman did emerge, looking a bit more calm. Patton hardly had time to worry what this meant for him before Roman pulled Patton’s hands loose from where they’d been curled in the hair at the nape of his neck and held them gently in his own.

“I like you,” he started, oh-so-seriously. “I think I like you more than I like theatre?”

Patton gasped.

“Hush,” Roman teased, stifling a laugh. “I wake up some mornings and make it out of bed just because I know I’ll see you. It’s so easy to exist around you. I’ve never felt judged or hurt by you; you’re exceedingly kind and thoughtful. I cherish all of our moments, whether candid or staged. You’ve brought stability to my life in a way I never expected and I can’t tell you how important that is to me. Your grumpy pre-caffeine face cheers me up more than the sun in the sky does!”

“You hush,” Patton muttered, only able to fake offense for a few seconds.

“When Thomas takes us all out for ice cream, could we share a sundae?” Roman requested and he almost sounded shy about it. It made Patton’s heart flutter.

“There’s no one else I would want to banana split with,” Patton quipped.

Roman dropped Patton’s hands and groaned, planting his face into his palms. The last of the tension in the air vanished and Patton finally felt like he could breathe a little easier. He leaned back a little, trying to keep it together.

“Aw, come on, that was really just the cherry on top!”

Roman’s response might have been muffled but that didn’t hide the sound of his grin.

Patton shimmied and wiggled his way out of the Comfort Corner until he was back on his feet. “I hope you aren’t considering Taking Back Sun-dae,” Patton said, putting on his best pout.

“Oh my god,” Roman managed before he broke and fell into a fit of laughter.

Patton gave in too, though he was slightly distracted by the sight of Roman so carefree and happy. That was another thing he’d have to get used to, he supposed… Not that he minded. In fact, Patton decided as Roman eventually got up and pulled him into a tight, warm hug, he was really looking forward to it.

#sanders sides fan fiction #royality #romantic royality #royality fan fiction #ts deceit #patton sanders #roman sanders #human au #dani writes

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inthedayswhenlandswerefew · 4 years

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But You Can Never Leave [Chapter 15: Midnight Manhattan]

A/N: Hi y’all! Thank you so much for your patience and support. I think it’ll be worth it...this chapter has something you’ve been waiting for. Only three more chapters left after this one! 💜

Chapter summary: A family visit turns awkward, Chrissie loses her cool, Roger and Y/N have a difficult conversation, John tells the truth.

This series is a work of fiction, and is (very) loosely inspired by real people and events. Absolutely no offense is meant to actual Queen or their families.

Song inspiration: Hotel California by The Eagles.

Chapter warnings: Language, babies, miscarriage, cute kids, drama, angst, more drama, more angst.

Chapter list (and all my writing) available HERE

Taglist: @queen-turtle-boiii @loveandbeloved29 @maggieroseevans @imnotvibingveryguccimrstark @im-an-adult-ish @queenlover05 @someforeigntragedy @imtheinvisiblequeen @joemazzmatazz @seven-seas-of-ham-on-rhye @namelesslosers @inthegardensofourminds @deacyblues @youngpastafanmug @sleepretreat @hardyshoe @bramblesforbreakfast @sevenseasofcats @tensecondvacation @queen-crue @jennyggggrrr @madeinheavxn @whatgoeson-itslate @brianssixpence @simonedk @herewegoagainniall @stardust-killer-queen @anotheronewritesthedust1 @pomjompish @writerxinthedark @culturefiendtrashqueen @allauraleigh@deakydeacy

Please yell at me if I forget to tag you! :)

They say losing a child will destroy a marriage, and you’re sure that’s often true; but it didn’t destroy yours.

Roger is the only one who can truly understand—who can feel that same aching and eternal, ravening absence in his bones—because he’s the only one who lost her too. He mourns with you, he stays awake through long nights with you, and when the future seems too oppressively bleak to imagine he drags you back into the light with tired daybreak smiles exchanged over mugs of tea and songs plucked on his acoustic guitar by the roaring fireplace, stories and jokes, walks through the green trellises of Hyde Park and the marble halls of the British Museum filled with ancient treasures stolen from Egypt and India and the Yucatan Peninsula, Italy and Greece, leaving craters of hollow memory littered across the planet like the imprint of the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs.

Together you bury her ashes in the garden behind the Surrey house. John brings you a pot of white calla lilies, and when the weather warms you plant them beside the small black stone carved with two names you never speak: Joan Aurora. Together you watch the blossoms grow up and grow old and wither back into the earth like everything does when the clock runs out, when the universe claims back the debt of life we borrow thinking that we own it. And through it all Roger is so persistently kind and patient and present that you’re willing to try for another pregnancy, despite the odds stacked against you like moving boxes, despite the crushing heartache that another loss would entail; despite your fearful, growing suspicion that in both casinos and the genetic lottery, the house always wins.

It never happens again, and you reach a sort of peace with this; but it’s a peace that makes you feel small and immaterial, like when you think too much about how vast the universe really is, like when you wake up restless before the dawn and wander out onto the cracked cobblestones in the garden as the sun burns the darkness off the world from east to west, watching the stars as they vanish in a sky bloodied with another world’s light.

A year passes, and then another, and then another; and every February 15th John sends you a new pot of white calla lilies to plant in the garden where other people’s children play.

~~~~~~~~~~

“Look, look, look!” Laszlo frenetically waves a crayon illustration in front of your face. On his head is the hat you knitted for him, green and featuring a large white L and with sprigs of fluffy brown hair like John’s peeking out around the edges. “I can draw like Daddy!”

It’s November 24th, 1981, and Queen is in Montreal. The band is playing two sold-out shows, one tonight and one tomorrow, and Brian and John have flown in their families for one last visit to tide their wives and children over until the touring break at Christmas. Laszlo is six years old now, Anna nearly five, Lena three, Antoni—fast asleep and presumably dreaming of such complexities as Hershey’s chocolate bars and Care Bear plushies—two; and there have been no additional Deacon children, a fact which seems to be the source of some disharmony between John and Veronica. What Laszlo has drawn with his rainbow of Crayolas most closely resembles a very chubby banana, but with black spots like a Dalmatian’s.

“Oh my goodness, you’re a young Picasso!” you exclaim. “It’s amazing! It’s a...it’s a...a...” Don’t fuck this up, don’t fuck this up. “It’s a...giraffe...?”

“Yeah!” Laszlo confirms, grinning.

Oh thank god.

“Very impressive,” John tells you. “I would have guessed pineapple with leprosy.”

“It’s not a leopard, Daddy,” Laszlo says seriously.

“Yes of course, I didn’t say leopard, I said leprosy, which is entirely different—”

“It’s not a leopard!” Laszlo insists.

“You heard the kid, Deaks,” Roger says, winking. “No leopards. Come over here, kiddo, let me see the nice giraffe...oh yes, it is so obviously a giraffe, you can tell by the expertly placed spots...”

“You’re so good with them,” Veronica marvels, perhaps not quite approvingly, noting how Antoni is dozing peacefully against your chest, a red hat stitched with a massive A snug over his jumble of auburn hair. “He never sleeps for anyone. Not even me.”

“Being comfortable to nap on is one of my many talents.”

“It’s true,” Roger notes, smiling, combing through the knots in his brittle bleached hair.

“No, no, no, don’t try to be modest, you’ve always been fantastically good at caring for people. I remember Brian was half dead when you brought him home from that hospital in Boston.” Chrissie is sitting on the floor of the dressing room with Anna and Lena, helping to facilitate a glamorous wedding for Barbie and Ken. Teddy and Evelyn, both four years old and with massive mops of dark ringlets, are scribbling on coloring book pages of screeching dinosaurs and plunging prehistoric comets above tangles of jungle treetops.

“Hmm,” Veronica agrees lukewarmly. “You’ll be a wonderful mother to your own one day.”

You wince, bite your lower lip, peer down at Antoni’s pacific little face. His eyes, when they’re open, are a greyish blue like John’s. Chrissie kicks Veronica’s ankle and glares at her. Brian glances over from where he’s tuning his Red Special, one rangy leg propped up on a chair.

“Not so sure that’s in the cards,” you demur.

“Keep praying, dear,” Veronica offers. “The Lord will provide in his own time.”

You blink at her. She stares pityingly back with infuriating, weepy eyes. Everyone is suddenly very quiet, except for Freddie; he starts humming Another One Bites The Dust and taps his white Adidas sneakers in rhythm.

“What uniquely helpful advice,” you reply.

“Well, surely one doesn’t need biological children to be fulfilled in life,” Roger tells Veronica lightly, like it’s a warning.

She looks thunderstruck, like this is such a novel concept, like Roger just shared with her the secret to time travel or immortal life. “Perhaps not, but you know...it’s so terribly important for most women.”

“How feminist,” Chrissie quips, lighting a cigarette, flicking the ashes away irritably.

John leans into Veronica. “Stop it,” you can just barely hear him say.

“It’s interesting you would bring up timing, Veronica,” you observe. “We were all so discrete about yours.”

Freddie snorts, tries to pretend it was a sneeze, smooths his moustache as he studies himself in the mirror.

“I’m just trying to help, love,” Veronica claims innocently. “All this can’t be good for you, this ceaseless globetrotting. Almost never waking up in the same place twice. The stress of it!”

“What do you want her to do?” Roger snaps. “Sit at home nine or ten months out of the year and, what, scrub the windows until I come back? Take up watercolor painting? Knit the world’s largest quilt?”

“I’m just saying that less physical and emotional strain might help with the situation.”

“Because you’re a freaking doctor, right?” Roger flares. Chrissie kicks Veronica again.

“People should spend more time close to home,” she continues, undaunted. “There’s nothing more important than family. Look at me, I should have another on the way by now, but the band’s schedule is simply murderous...”

“Trying for a football team?” you inquire. And in the same moment you realize: This isn’t about me at all. This is about her and John.

Freddie is still humming, modelling his Superman tank top and tight white jeans in the mirror, cinching and re-cinching his belt, sliding a red sweatband unto one wrist. The kids—all except the unconscious Antoni—are giggling and pushing each other around on the slippery linoleum floor, seemingly oblivious. John whispers something to Veronica, his face dark and furious.

“John should be home more,” she bursts out. “For me, for the children—”

Roger scoffs and rolls his eyes. “For christ’s sake, lady, he’s not your bloody lapdog!”

“You don’t really need him,” she protests, almost pleads. “He’s just the bassist, he thought this would be a hobby to fill his time on weekends when he was in school, he didn’t sign up to live this way and Queen could find another bassist and you don’t need him—”

“We do need him! He’s not just some bassist! He’s a genius and he’s irreplaceable and there’s absolutely no Queen without him, we swore to it, I’d leave if he ever did!”

“You did what?!” Brian exclaims. Freddie hums louder, stomping his sneakers to the beat, mock-boxing with his reflection in the mirror. John raises his eyebrows at Roger as if he had assumed Rog wouldn’t remember that, assumed he had never really meant it. Roger, flushed, fumbles with his lighter and finally lights a cigarette on his third attempt.

Antoni stirs, his eyes fluttering open, and Chrissie swoops in to take her turn holding him. She bounces him on her hip as she sashays around the dressing room, casting fierce scowls alternately at Veronica and John and Roger.

“You don’t understand,” Veronica hurls at Roger, lashing out like a cornered animal, her voice raw and splintering. “You’ve never sacrificed anything. Everything you’ve ever dreamed of just falls into your lap. No heartache. No consequences. You don’t know what it’s like to be one of the people who get burned.”

“You don’t know anything about me—!”

“Look, I get it,” you tell Veronica. “You want John to yourself. Anyone would. You want a normal life. But that’s the tradeoff when you love someone brilliant, isn’t it? You have to learn how to share them with the world. Because the world is so much better off with them in it.”

Veronica glowers, venomous and spiteful. She’s wearing makeup tonight, quite heavy makeup; she’s started doing that with increasing frequency. “I have no intention of sharing a husband the way you’ve had to.”

Roger stands, stalks to Veronica, towers over her, blows smoke into her stunned face. “Ma’am,” he says quietly, so the children won’t hear. “Go fuck yourself.”

“Okay, darlings!” Freddie flits over, pulls Roger away, fluffs his hair and straightens his black smock-like shirt as Roger glares around Fred’s shoulder at Veronica. “Fabulous. You look like a ten-year-old about to make a papier-mâché vase for his mum in art class. I adore it. Off you go.” He pushes open the door to the hallway and shoves Roger through it.

Roger nods for you to follow him, and you do.

John frowns as you pass him. I’m so sorry, that expression says.

You shake your head in reply. Not your fault.

Roger slips his arm around your waist as you disappear into the hallway with him.

“That fucking miserable, judgmental, delusional, dogmatic bitch—”

“Shhhhh.” You cup his feverish cheek with your left hand, weighty with the ruby ring he gave you four years ago in New Orleans, and yank the white bandana out of his back pocket with your right. Then you knot it around his neck, smiling. “There. Now you look a little more rock and roll.”

“You’re not mad?” he asks in disbelief. “How are you not mad?”

“She’s clearly very unhappy. I feel sorry for her.” You tug on the bandana gently, fondly. You can hear Chrissie chastising Veronica behind the closed door of the dressing room. “Don’t let it ruin your show.”

“No, I would never.” But his eyes are still distant, unsettled, anxious in a way that is rare for him. “You are a freakishly good person, you know that?”

“I try. Don’t forget to smile so I can get some good pictures.”

“Oh, I’ll smile plenty. Just like this.” A grin splits through his face, and the Roger you know and love is back: bright, triumphant, flashing the daggerish points of his canine teeth. Then he draws you into him and kisses you, his rough hands in your hair, his lips smiling against yours. “Love of my life,” he whispers, rather pensively.

He shakes out his right arm—the one with the jagged scar along the soft vulnerable underside, the one he broke in a stairwell in Yokohama in the spring of 1975—and stretches the hand a few times. And you find yourself wondering, as you always do when he seems distracted like he does now, before he starts staying out late into the night, before he starts coming home drunk or high or not at all: Is he getting bad again? Is he?

I would never have to worry about that if I had married someone like John.

You fling that thought, that inconvenient and perpetual thought, back into the shadows where it came from; like a pebble tossed into the misted tree line of a forest, like a shell pitched into the sea.

“Rog, are you—?”

“I’m fine,” he cuts you off like a blade.

~~~~~~~~~~

There’s someone screaming out in the hallway.

You reel out of bed in the darkness, step into your slippers, yank on your fuzzy white robe. The digital clock on the nightstand reads 4:11 a.m. Roger and Brian had stayed for one more round of drinks at the club when you and Chrissie left to go back to the hotel, Chrissie to relieve her nanny from kid duty, you to quiet a budding headache. You note—with a vague, drowsy sort of dread—that Roger is not in the bed beside you, his hair a disheveled blond mess peeking from beneath the covers, snoring softly, his calloused hands outstretched towards yours. Beyond the door there are earsplitting clashes of broken glass, thumps and pounding footsteps, people shouting. And now you can recognize Chrissie’s voice, shrieking and wrathful: “Now you’ve done it, now you’ve really done it, you’re going to fucking kill her!”

You throw open the door to see Roger crouched against the hallway wall, covering his head with his hands; he is surrounded by shards of glass, tiny hotel shampoo and mouthwash bottles, Bibles ripped from nightstand drawers. He’s dripping with what smells like a combination of every kind of alcohol you’ve ever tasted, and maybe some you haven’t as well.

“I wish she’d never fucking met you!” Chrissie screams, launching a bottle of Grey Goose from the minibar in her room at Roger. It explodes against the wall just above his head, and glass and vodka rain down on him. Brian is unsuccessfully attempting to coax Chrissie back into their room as she ignores him. “I wish she’d never stepped off that fucking plane because the day she agreed to come to London with you was the worst day of her life!”

“Will you stop?!” Roger yells. “Jesus christ, Chris!”

“She saved you,” Chrissie hisses, landing an elbow into Brian’s gut and sending him flying backwards. “She saved your life and this is how you repay her, you disgusting degenerate bastard!”

A bottle of Captain Morgan hits the wall and detonates two inches from Roger’s face.

“What’s going on?!” you shout at Chrissie, your arms crossed over your chest.

A few rooms down the hallway, a door opens and Freddie wanders out in a pink kimono. After a moment, John and Veronica appear from their own room in their pajamas, rubbing bleary eyes.

“I couldn’t sleep so I phoned my mum and guess what’s on the cover of the News Of The World this week.” Chrissie points at Roger. “Go on. Tell her. Tell her what you did.”

He knows; he doesn’t say anything, but he knows. You can see that he does. It’s lurking in the shallow cerulean pools of his glistening eyes like a shadow, like a ghost.

“What did you do?” John asks him, mystified.

Roger doesn’t answer. He’s looking at you, at Chrissie, back to you. It isn’t often that Roger is fearful, acutely and bone-rattlingly afraid; but he is now.

“Fine, you don’t want to own up to it? I’ll do it. I’ll tell her, you coward.” Chrissie spins to you. “Dominique Beyrand is seven months pregnant.”

I’m surrounded by goddamn mothers. “Okay. Good for her.”

Chrissie waits for it to hit you. And then it does.

Oh. Oh.

“Bleeding christ,” you hear Freddie sigh, rubbing his forehead. Veronica covers her gaping mouth with one pale hand, and she doesn’t look smug or vindicated or condemnatory; she looks terrified. John is watching you, you can see him on the periphery of your vision; you are dimly aware of him edging closer as you gaze at Roger, your eyes wide and blurring with tears, your throat burning.

You can’t understand it, can’t imagine it, and then suddenly you can: his fingers threading through her glossy black hair, his lips skating over her neck, promises whispered through nightscape phone calls, haphazard lies whispered to you; reckless, small-boned, doe-eyed children with Dom’s olive skin and Roger’s sharp little canine teeth.

This is the part where I wake up. This is the part where it turns out to be just a hellacious dream.

But you don’t wake up, because this is real.

“Oh,” you exhale, brainlessly, helplessly.

Roger doesn’t sputter some desperate apology, he doesn’t beg you to forgive him. He stares at you with huge, starry blue eyes, booze dripping from his hair, surrender etched into the concave slump of his back and shoulders.

You ask him, already knowing the answer: “It’s not just a fling, is it?”

“No,” he replies miserably. “I thought it was, but it isn’t.”

You nod, those first hot tears spilling down your cheeks. “Okay,” you concede, your words brittle and fracturing. “I’ll file as soon as we get back to London.” File for divorce. File this entire misadventure away in my mind as a horrific and juvenile mistake. Shred the good memories into oblivion so I can’t remember how alive he once made me feel.

That seems to bother Roger, jolts him into urgency. The white bandana is still tied around his neck. “You don’t have to do that—”

“Are you fucking joking?” you pitch at him. “Are you not done humiliating me yet? Am I not ruined enough? Do I somehow still look remotely whole to you?”

John’s hand closes around your wrist. “Don’t,” he tells you gently.

Roger begins: “I never wanted to hurt—”

“But you did,” you seethe, tears slithering down your face. It’s sinking in now, it’s becoming real, it’s materializing from years of gnawing distrust into fact. They were all right about him. They were always right. John’s arms circle you, holding you back as you struggle against him. “You fucking did and I forgave you like an idiot just so you could prove to me over and over and over again how exceptionally little you cared.”

“That’s not true—!”

“You’ve done enough!” Chrissie roars at him. Brian wrestles a bottle of Don Julio out of her grasp. “You deplorable slut, can’t you see that you’ve done enough?!”

Freddie approaches Roger, dusts the glinting flecks of glass out of his hair, wrenches him staggering to his feet.

“Come on,” John murmurs, towing you towards your room. Veronica is tracking him with blazing eyes. “Come on, let’s go.”

“Go ahead, Roger!” you shout as John drags you away, as Roger is corralled into Freddie’s room. “Get clean for her, get clean for her children, tell her she’s the love of your life and marry her and give her a ring but don’t forget to remind her that none of it means a single fucking thing—!”

John stumbles with you into your hotel room. He slams the door behind him, and the world goes deathly quiet. You reel aimlessly, collapse onto the edge of the bed, dazed, staring at the bland landscape paintings on the wall, ticking down the mental list of things you’ll need to get from the Surrey house: photographs, paperwork, John’s sketches, the conch shell from Ostia.

What about the calla lilies? What about her grave?

And there’s another list as well, whether you want there to be or not; a list of things you’ll never feel again.

His teeth grazing my knuckles, his palms cradling my face, his raspy voice as he writes songs on quiet nights, the way he loved our daughter, the way he sets souls alight like wildfire.

John just stands in the middle of the hotel room, heaving in ragged breaths, his hands on his waist. And for a long time, neither of you speak at all.

“Do you want me to stay?” John says finally.

“You can’t,” you reply, thinking of Veronica and the children.

“That’s not what I asked.”

“No. I’m fine. I want to be alone.”

He comes to you, lifts your chin with one careful hand, touches his forehead to yours before he leaves. “You are never going to be alone.”

~~~~~~~~~~

You hear the key clatter in the lock, and your hotel room door creaks open. You’re laying on the floor after Queen’s second show in Montreal, staring blankly up at the ceiling, counting the black dots in the tiles like stars, imagining constellations of monsters and heroes and doomed love.

John appears above you, his brow furrowed. He shuttled all of Roger’s things to Freddie’s room after you packed them up this morning, then he took Roger’s key. “What are you doing?”

“Fantasizing about my own death.”

He checks his watch. “Will you be done in twelve minutes?”

“What happens in twelve minutes?”

“We have to leave for the afterparty on a yacht.”

You groan, sitting upright, rubbing your sore and sleepless eyes with the heels of your hands. “I can’t do it, John. I don’t have it in me tonight. I can’t mingle with all of those obnoxious music industry people. ‘Yes, hi, hello, yes it’s true, I am the sad barren soon-to-be-ex-wife, oh what a charming nineteen-year-old model mistress you have on your arm there, I too was once young and desirable and disastrously stupid.’”

He smiles. “You’re still somewhat desirable.”

“Thanks.” You reach up, take his hands, let him help you to your feet.

“You realize if you don’t go I’m going to have to hide in the corner and compulsively eat miniature quiches all by myself.”

“Your enchanting wife isn’t attending?”

“She wanted to stay with the children. Also, she hates me.”

You chuckle. “She doesn’t hate you. She passionately does not hate you, which is the problem.”

“So you’ll come with me.”

You mull this over. “Can I get so drunk I forget I exist?”

“Sure. If you promise to stay near me and away from the water.”

“Yes, I suppose that you, as a convicted felon, would be high on the list of suspects if I was to go overboard.��

“Losing you would be the worst thing that ever happened to me. Who would I call to post my bail?”

You laugh as you beam up at him, knot your fingertips through his hair, see your silhouette reflected in his greyish eyes that today remind you of storm clouds, of torrential autumn rain, of thunder. “Okay. Fine. I’ll go to your torturous yacht party.”

“Aww, what a tragedy, being forced to enjoy all the trappings of stardom” John teases, and then you can see the regret wrinkle across his face; because people don’t joke about things like tragedies around you anymore.

“It’s a hard life,” you agree. “But it feels a little easier when you’re around.”

You slip into a dark blue dress and heels and your bomber jacket that doesn’t match at all. John meets you in the hallway in a black suit. You share a limo with Brian and Chrissie, who chatter nervously about anything they can think of that doesn’t involve Roger or marriage or children or love. Bri points out constellations through the open moonroof as frigid Canadian air pours in and rattles your dangling diamond earrings, whips through your hair. John smooths the runaway strands, rests his arm across the back of your seat, smiles in a tranquil sort of way and actually appears to pay attention as Brian narrates the stories of the stars and their celestial families: Pegasus, Aquarius, Pisces, tiny Triangulum, the lightning strike zigzag of Lacerta, Perseus.

“You look gorgeous,” Chrissie tells you, and she seems to mean it.

“Thank you,” you reply politely. “If only I was also French and fertile.”

The yacht is docked on the bank of the Saint Lawrence River, an island of roaring laughter and music and twinkling strands of lights in an ocean of night. John leads you onboard, waves at the photographers who douse you in flashbulb luminescence, stands with you by the railing at the stern of the vessel as it pulls out into the river. Periodically some palpably accomplished stranger will appear, shake John’s hand, start asking him about You’re My Best Friend or Another One Bites The Dust or Under Pressure; but mostly the two of you are left alone. You drain flute after flute of pink champagne as John nurses his Manhattans, debating the merits of the various appetizers; you—ever the proud Bostonian—are partial to the bite-sized lobster rolls, while John prefers the Swedish meatballs speared on puzzlingly tropical toothpick umbrellas.

Roger is on the yacht too of course, and every once in a while you catch a glimpse of his blond hair or his blush-colored polka dot suit, hear his voice carried on the cold November wind; and you ignore this as much as you can. Twice he starts migrating towards you, and you and John pretend not to notice, dart through the crowds to the other side of the boat, your hand clasped in John’s as he weaves relatively anonymously through ballgowns and suits and reporters’ microphones. And he peeks back at you, grinning, and says: “I bet you’re thrilled no one knows who I am tonight.”

Chrissie steals you away briefly to keep her company when Brian gets snared into an excruciatingly dull interview about Queen’s next album; and when Brian comes to collect her, John greets you with a fresh glass of champagne in one hand and his fourth Manhattan in the other.

“You better make sure you don’t go overboard, Mr. Deacon,” you say, taking the champagne flute and resting your forearms on the yacht’s railing as waves break against the hull. Freshwater mist peppers your cheeks, your collarbones, the backs of your hands. Through the speakers pluck the opening notes of Hotel California. “Oh god. This song.”

“Fond memories?” John asks with a smirk. “That whole night is a blur to me.”

“It makes me think of sharks for some reason. And the Olympics.”

“It makes me feel...” He considers this. “Overwhelmed with self-loathing.”

“That’s ridiculous. You’re the least loathable person I’ve ever met.” You sip your champagne, gaze out into the moonlit currents that run from the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean, to the shores of every place you’ve ever called your own. “How long did Dante live in exile from Florence?”

“Twenty years.”

You whistle. “That’s a long time to be away from home.” The fingers of your left hand clutch the railing, which is gold and sturdy and stingingly cold. “I feel a little like him sometimes. Except as you get older, home starts to feel less like places and more like people.” You twist off your ruby ring, glance down at it fleetingly, and toss it out into the glistening black waters of the Saint Lawrence River.

John looks over at you. “It’s really over, isn’t it?”

You nod slowly, mournfully. “Yeah. It’s really over.”

“And how are we feeling about that?”

“Relieved. Petrified. Exhausted. Mostly I’m just sad.”

“I’m sorry,” he says sincerely. “For everything.”

“Why? None of it was your fault.” You sigh, shake your head, peer out into the river, into the night sky, into the stars. “Maybe this is a good thing, you know? A blessing in disguise or whatever. I can move on knowing I did everything I could to salvage the marriage. I can be free. No more waiting up at night for someone who isn’t coming home. No more searching through pockets and suitcases for white powder or used needles. No more News Of The World headlines.”

John is still staring at you.

“What?” you ask, smiling warily.

He downs the rest of his Manhattan, twirls the glass as the ice cubes clink against each other. Finally, he says: “I could have given you a very different kind of life.”

Your lips, slick with gloss and tingling with sharp carbonation from the champagne, part to ask John what he means; but then you know. Your voice is a quivering, astonished whisper. “It was about me. You’re My Best Friend.”

“Yeah, it was. And most of the others were too.”

It was about me. All those years ago, that song was about me. And it still is.

“John...”

“I watched you fall in love with Roger, watched him fall in love with you. Watched this agonizing fucking dance that you do...he can’t give you what you want, you can’t be happy with less...and I just kept waiting to wake up one day and not want you anymore. And it never happened.” He laughs, briefly, bitterly. “I mean, for christ’s sake, I refused to propose to the mother of my child until I was sure you’d stay with Roger because I thought...I thought...you know, maybe. Maybe one day you’d change your mind. And I wanted to be there if you did.”

You gaze at him, soaking him in, unambiguously aware that there is no part of you that is afraid, no part of you that is shuddering or surrendering or apprehensive; there is no instinctive chorus begging you not to fall in love with him. There’s no sensation of falling at all. It feels like you’re somewhere you’ve never left.

“I know that next to someone like Roger Taylor I don’t look like much,” John confesses. “That I don’t feel like much. That I don’t light anything up the way he does. And if you can’t imagine a future with someone who isn’t him, someone who isn’t like him...then I completely accept that. But you’re always going to feel like home to me.”

You’re My Best Friend. You And I. Spread Your Wings. In Only Seven Days. Need Your Loving Tonight.

They were all about me. They were always about me.

“John...”

You don’t know what to say. You know exactly what to say.

From the crowd, a man dressed in a blue pinstripe suit and holding a Cuban cigar bellows for John. He whirls, offers a shy wave, trots over to say hello. But as they discuss concerts and albums and tours, John’s eyes meet yours through the sea of strangers and cigarette smoke, through the shifting shadows cast by flickering incandescence and moonshine.

And you watch him as the constellations and all their stars rage above, the same stars that in the time of Dante sailors read to point them home.

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gayenerd · 4 years

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The Band You Love To Hate By Tom Lanham of RIP (There’s no date on this but I would say 1995 or 1996?)

Eyes wide as a barn owl's. Spines stiff with anticipation, like a hungry scorpion. The two teenage girls sit stock-still in their booth at a posh Berkeley diner, practically bursting with excitement, but without the faintest clue how to handles it. Clueless, you might call them. A few feet across the linoleum aisle--with his back to them, oblivious to all the oh-my-gawd facial expressions--sits the object of their adulation, dressed in unassuming black jeans, black T-shirt, shredded black Converse, and a beat-up black baseball jacket. But even with his once-green dreadlocks tamed to a short black business cut, Billie Joe Armstrong--yes, the snaggle-toothed MTV ragamuffin from megaplatinum neo-punkers, Green Day--is as easy to spot as Michael Bolton at a Rogaine convention. Although the kids want to leap up from their seats and race over for an autograph or a jittery hello, they don't dare. Instead, they're forced to deal with their seething emotions as if they were eating post-tonsillectomy ice cream: a lot of numb gulping and a quick pain chaser. This is the blessing of being Billie Joe Armstrong. Alas, it's also his curse. By the time you read this, the irascible little rocker will have turned 24. And exactly two years ago, he and his wacky bandmates--drummer Tré Cool and bassist Mike Dirnt--lolled around the trashy basement flat they shared, getting stoned and sneering at the idea that Dookie--their just-released "sellout" on big-time Reprise--would ever amount to more than a nice drink coaster. Fame? They were more preoccupied with their bong collection, stacks of rock 'n' roll bubblegum cards, and a thriving sea monkey tank displayed prominently on a window-sill. Most of their furniture had springs poking through--they didn't care. Armstrong regularly picked boogers from his gold-ringed nostril and then flick them onto the scary shag carpet--what did he have to worry about? Too bad he couldn't have foreseen the all-too-near future. Green Day happened to be in the right place at the right time. The three-chord slam-a-rama Dookie--a pop-edged return to decade-old punk ethics--became the surprise hit of '94, going on to sell over 11 million copies. Armstrong, accustomed to frenetic club performances, began translating the group's infectious energy to larger and larger venues. Demand continued to grow at a staggering pace; Green Day fought back. They turned a satellite MTV Video Awards performance into a "spit-cam" fest by urging the crowd to gob any camera lens it could ("[The cameramen] tried to make it look like it was cool, but it wasn't"). Last October, Armstrong and company issued their 32-minute follow up, Insomniac, almost as an afterthought, with little promotion, a visually offensive video (for "Geek Stink Breath") and--at least initially--a strict no-interview policy. Simultaneously, they ditched their high-powered Cahn-Man management team and are now virtually managing themselves. Along the way, Armstrong married his long-time sweetheart Adrienne and last March fathered a son, Joey. In typical down-to-earth fashion, the couple spent their honeymoon a few blocks from home at Berkeley's prestigious Claremont Hotel, not on some exotic island. Beginning to see the problem here? How does a street-smart kid from humble beginnings skyrocket to world-class notoriety and yet--with his music in millions of homes and his privacy suddenly a right that needs defending--still adhere to the simple ideals, the simple lifestyle that spawned him? Is "successful punk" an oxymoron? Insomniac provided few clues--it was more of the same slacker-ennui sentiment, more defeated, disenfranchised grousing set to speedy, memorable hooks. Or, as Armstrong barks in the aptly-dubbed "Walking Contradiction," "My wallet's fat and so is my head...I'm a victim of a Catch-22." And that, in essence, was the topic this tortured artist wanted to discuss at the diner. The old "be careful what you wish for" adage. The classic "problem with success is finding someone to enjoy it with you" truism. Armstrong, who takes occasional sips from a vanilla milkshake, but mostly stares morosely at the floor, seems to be dealing with superstardom in a relatively normal way. Don't be fooled by the steady stream of negative vitriol that follows; he's analyzing it, breaking it down, figuring out ways to disconnect his kinetic career. Or at least turn down the volume for awhile.

RIP: We know what's going right. But what's going wrong?

BILLIE JOE ARMSTRONG: Lots of things, really. Actually, when I came here today, I said I didn't wanna talk about anything good, because I don't really have anything good to talk about. Goin' on tour pretty soon--don't really wanna go. Just because I've been kinda torn. I wanna stick around at home. I don't like playing arenas, and I realized I didn't know what I was getting myself into on the last tour, but I went into it being positive and getting excited about it. But I didn't realize that I was the kind of person to whom it's too much of an event and not really a personal thing anymore. And I started to realize how much I liked being the background music to this scene at the club. And now it's.... I dunno. People expect so much. It's cool and stuff, and it can be a lot of fun, a really good experience. But when you play that many arenas.... The first time we ever played those big kinds of shows at the Shoreline (Amphitheater in Mountain View, California), there was weirdness--we were playing for a lot of f?!kin' people. And I hate to say it, but sometimes it just feels like another gig. We played every day, 50 gigs this last leg, and it just wears on ya. There's all these people, and they think "Alright. I paid my $15--you better impress the f?!kin' shit outta me right now!" And I realized that for Joey, the rock and roll touring life is not a good atmosphere for a kid. I tried to make it to where it would be, bringing lots of his toys out. But there are no familiar surroundings for him. And he likes all the attention--people come up and say hello to him every day, people who are on tour with us. But he doesn't have his own room or a home to go to every day. So, no more touring for Joey.

RIP: Turned on Regis and Kathie Lee this morning to find their gossip columnist dishing dirt on Green Day. How Insomniac didn't do nearly as well as predicted, how it was a disappointment to the label. A failure, supposedly.

BJA: Well, it's like, we didn't set up this record. We didn't. We didn't do any promotion beforehand, we completely quit doing interviews, and basically we just wanted to go on into it. We weren't even sure if we wanted to do a video. And then when we did a video, it got yanked from daytime rotation because people were getting grossed-out by it. So I think we did alienate a lot of people. So that was expected, that it wasn't going to sell a lot of records.

RIP: NOFX have taken it one step further. They refuse to talk to press, make videos, pander potential singles to radio. They don't want to get any bigger.

BJA: I dunno, maybe I'm just getting jaded or something. But I just got cable again and I can't stand anything. Six years ago you could hear something that was different and know that it was different. So it'd be "alternative" or whatever. But now it's like you get this Joan...Osborne? With the ring in her nose, waving the alternative rock flag, when she's just...not, ya know? And I'm thinking, I hate all this music that's coming out now--the past year was just hell for music. But people are buying it, so then I'm thinking, Maybe they're the ones that are good and I'm the one who sucks? I just don't know if I really wanna be involved in the rock world anymore at all. Period. I don't necessarily have anything against a big record company or people who what to join up with a big record company. It really is right for some people, but more and more, I don't think that I'm really meant to. And I hate to sound like that, because I don't like taking things for granted. I don't like to talk about my problems when there's some kid struggling in his garage somewhere saying "F?!k him! He's just taking it for granted. Shit, I wish I could do something like that, but I'm just stuck here in Biloxi, Mississippi, and I can't even get a gig." I'm so confused right now.

RIP: It must be odd to know that, with all those millions of albums sold, drunken frat boys are probably staggering around to your music right now. Your audience grew far beyond your control.

BJA: Oh, totally! We became what we hated. Which is, the people I despised in high school--and now--are buying our records. We initially became a trend, so there was no way I expected to sell as many records with Insomniac as with Dookie. That's one of the biggest-selling records of the decade. We get slagged by the punk rockers, and it's like, I don't blame them. If you draw that much attention to yourself, that's what you're gonna get--attention--and it's not personal anymore.

RIP: Ever think about giving it all up?

BJA: There isn't a day goes by in the past year and a half that I haven't thought about quitting. I went to this party on New Year's Eve, and this band Juke, and another band, the Tantrums, played in a friend of mine's backyard. And a lot of my old friends showed up, and everybody was just dancing. And I was dancing, and getting really muddy, and I was having a great time. I can't remember the last time I sat down and listened to a record from beginning to end and felt this incredible spine-chilling music. And it's because I haven't been able to go out and watch bands play at my free will. I'm not gonna live in a closet, I'm not gonna vegetate myself.

RIP: But it has to be difficult, when tons of kids know your face. You're on your way to Michael Jackson-dom, where you have to wear a disguise in public.

BJA: If you think about the Beatles, at that time all people had to go by were the photographs on the records and every now and then a television appearance. So when they'd come to town, people would just flip out--it became this huge public event every single time. Whereas now, everything is so saturated kids don't even have to leave their home to go to a show anymore. They can sit in the comfort of their living room, and your favorite rock star is gonna be entertaining you while you sit down and have your microwave burrito.

RIP: The Milwaukee cops weren't pleased with aspects of Green Day's Milwaukee show last November. Why were you arrested?

BJA: I dropped the pick and--actually, I even forgot about it--I just mooned the crowd, which is pretty harmless compared to what I've done before. And I wasn't even thinking about it--I just went out and started playing again. Then I went backstage and was hanging out with Adrienne, and this guy Jimmy who does security for us goes "Come on--there's a car waiting for you outside right now. You've gotta get out of here!" I said "What's wrong?" and he said he didn't even know. So we get in the car and all of a sudden about ten cops come walking over, fully surrounding the car. So the guy puts the cuffs on me, throws me in the car, and I get tossed in the holding tank for two, three hours. I wasn't in the bullpen--I was in with the other ones, the not-so-bad ones. They made me take all my jewelry out. And my shoestrings, so I wouldn't hang myself or something. I dunno. I just don't know how to fit into rock music anymore. I don't know what I like about it anymore. I don't like anything about it anymore, to tell you the truth. To tell you the real truth, I'm a pretty miserable person right now. I'm totally depressed, and my wife can vouch for that because she's around me. In fact, she's the only person who's really around me. I dunno, the whole thing with the mainstreaming of punk rock. I just feel lost in the whole thing...I don't really know...I don't wanna...I dunno...It's miserable, it really is. It's f?!ked up.

RIP: For every original voice that comes along, there will be countless mad signing dashes for any and all sound-alike artists, with no thought given to the artist's longevity. Just throw the record out quickly and hope it sticks.

BJA: The thing is, a lot of musicians have gotten so comfortable with this big so-called "Revolution in Rock Music" over the past decade. First it was like, "F?!k the corporations! F?!k the corporations!" And then people just sorta got cozy with that, and forgot that these bands are getting lost in the shuffle. And I'm talking about the ones that never get noticed at all and just get kinda bitter. The 15 minutes of fame is getting shorter and shorter. And now music is totally going backwards--the first half of this decade, there were a few things going on that were interesting. It wasn't my favorite kind of music, but it had a sensibility about it. If you think about Nirvana and Pearl Jam and that whole Seattle scene, and even the Offspring--there was this thing going on that was more honest, in a lot of ways. It wasn't like, beer, drugs and pussy, like what went on through the '80s with all the hair bands. But now what we've got is Hootie & the Blowfish....

RIP: Who are probably a lot like you. They seem like nice, regular guys who--through no real fault of their own--are suddenly assimilated into pop culture.

BJA: Yeah, but that's the problem, is that they are nice regular guys. And they're totally comfortable with that, and they sort of put that out, to where they don't really have...I dunno, there's a certain amount of attitude that, say, someone like Cobain or Vedder has that they don't have. But it's becoming way not...real anymore or something. Maybe not real to me. It's just turning back into what it was in the '80s. It's like, "Hey, everyone! We're Huey Lewis and the News!" I dunno. Maybe nobody knows what the f?!k I'm talking about anymore.

BJA: I get so irritated by people. I think I'm more bitter than I've ever been in my whole life, to tell you the honest truth. I think Insomniac is much more of a bitter record than Dookie. And I think the older people get, the more they kinda get angry. I think a lot of people feel like they get cheated by lief somehow--no-one is ever completely satisfied. There's maybe a few. But I mean, I'm in a place where I don't really wanna be. It's like, sometimes I feel like we're losing our passion for playing music. And that's the f?!ked-up thing, when you lose passion for what you love, then it's like, Is this marriage headed for divorce or what?

RIP: Theoretically, you can fight back a couple of ways. Like Cobain, you could make a record almost calculated to offend all the bandwagon-jumpers. Or take as much time off as you'd like. Who says you can't go live on a desert island for two years?

BJA: That'd be nice. I'm just not enjoying life right now. I'm really not. I'm so cluttered, I can't even speak. Yeah, I do feel like I'm getting old, and I'm kinda bitter about that. I'm not excited about being onstage anymore, and I was really trying to convince myself that I was. Really. Before we did this last U.S. tour, every time I did an interview--I don't know if you read the last Rolling Stone piece--I was like "Yeah! I'm excited! I wanna play these arenas!" and stuff. And then just every night, it started sucking, it felt like a routine or something. It felt almost choreographed in a lot of ways. And I was yelling "f?!k you!" to people, but I didn't know who I was yelling "f?!k you" to anymore.

RIP: Last time we spoke, you said you went out of your way to change every single show, make each one different.

BJA: Well, I think it's just the stress of getting up in front of all those people all the time, every day. It's like, "Do I really feel like downing another f?!cking pot of coffee and a bottle of wine before I walk onstage to do this again? Just to get myself ready to go?" You know, for all those people. And every night I always do something different and stupid. But at the same time, it'd be really cool to just say "F?!k you!" to people and like, walk off. And then they'd get it. It's like, "I'm really telling you to f?!k off this time! Time to pack up and go home." It'd just be so nice to start from scratch again.

RIP: In many ways you can. That's the music-making system trying to program your behavior. And obviously you've broken quite a few rules already--you don't even have to be talking to me right now, actually....

BJA: Oh no. I really wanted to do this interview, just because the last interviews that I've done, I've been miserable, and I was pretending not to be. I really was, I was lying. Not to the reader, not to the person I was doing the interview. But I was lying to myself, convincing myself that I was really happy with how everything is going.

RIP: So you always knew what you wanted, and now you've got it, in spades. You're having trouble figuring out what's next?

BJA: I didn't even know what I wanted back then. I really didn't. I didn't know if I wanted to be huge, totally successful. I never knew that. I was struggling so hard even to sign that f?!king contract--when I was sitting there, I was contemplating, "Should I just run outta here right now? Am I making the biggest mistake of my life?" A lot of people say, "You're totally disillusioned with what money can do for people," but money never meant shit to me. There's something very passionate to me, very romantic, about living on the street in a lot of ways. Just because I really like my lifestyle back then. I was totally content, in retrospect. A lot of it has to do with the fame. I dunno, I'm trying to talk right now and just totally stuttering.

RIP: It's not like you chose music--it chose you, and you can't help it.

BJA: Yeah, it's cool when people really get it. But what a lot of people don't understand is that we're a band that's been around a lot longer than people know. And that's the thing. The difference between this and what happened between Kerplunk and Dookie--in a year, I got married, I had a kid, and I sold 11 million records worldwide. That can do something to ya, ya know?

BJA: Sometimes I think it'd be cool to just hang out with my friends, drink beer, smoke cigarettes. The more I think about it, the more I'd be really happy with that. I don't think that we're feeling quite like a band anymore--that's one problem we have. There was this certain rock 'n' roll underdog think that we always had--we always drove for something, always drove from town to town in a small van. And you know, I f?!kin' like touring like that--it's like culture shock, really, driving around in a van, setting up my amp when I get there, and playing. That's rock 'n' roll, that's what it started out as. A bunch of sweaty pigs in some tiny f?!kin' bar having a hootenanny, that's what punk rock was to me, that's what drove me to it. I love rock music in its simples, rawest form. And I think we're the only band, really, that plays rock 'n' roll.

RIP: Has all this put a strain on your old friendships? Do your pals treat you a little differently now?

BJA: When I come up to friends I haven't talked to in a while, there's a weirdness. And the ones who are really close to me don't really bring up anything, but that thing is still there; it's still in the air. And sometimes I'll just not say anything the whole time we're hanging out. I'll be totally quiet, because the only thing I'll have to talk about is my band, and I get so sick of talking about my band and myself. So I'll just be quiet, since that's the only thing there is to me, except for my son and my wife.

RIP: Pretty soon, you'll be boring everyone with slide shows--"There we are at Yosemite!"

BJA: Ha! Adrienne was telling me the other day, "When you were in there dancing with all your friends, while the band was playing, you were so happy because you were so in your element." And I've even gone as far as saying we're not a punk band anymore. But no matter what, that's still gonna stick with me forever, because I love the music, I love the energy of a new band coming out that creates this sense of urgency about 'em. I'll never be able to kick that habit. I love hangin' out with my friends who have small fanzines--kids just writing their guts out about whatever the hell's bothering 'em, and putting it on a Xerox machine and then handing it out for a quarter apiece at shows or at a party. All I wanna do is just try and work it out. I was sitting there the other day, counting all the records that the Replacements put out, stuff like that, Dan thinking how [Paul] Westerberg totally came across to his audience and did everything, everything that the wanted to do in music. He wasn't extremely successful for it, but the guy has influenced people, and a lot of 'em don't even know that they are influenced by him. All I wanna do is just write good songs and stick to it. I wanna develop--not being experimental--but go into different styles, go across my boundaries of the two-and-a-half minute punk song with a three-and-a-half minute jazz song, or maybe get into a little bit of swing or rockabilly.

RIP: With such staggering success, you could walk into Reprise and tell 'em you're doing an album of saxophone solos and they'd allow you that creative luxury.

BJA: Well, I never wanna be that experimental. I don't wanna get into synthesizers and shit like that. The thing that was cool for me with Insomniac was that I think we definitely set a foundation for ourselves, because we put out our hardest record to date, totally in-your-face all the way through, and now we're able to go anywhere we want. We can do that now--we do have that going for us. That is, if people are still interested. Which is kinda weird for me to say....

RIP: Your craft will always remain the most important thing of all, even if you're just writing for your own amusement.

BJA: Yeah. No matter what, I'm gonna be writing songs for the rest of my life. I mean, I already have a shitload of new songs right now. But I just wanna do some other things with it. We've sold a million of Insomniac so far. But I definitely want to be respected as a musician. Well, more as a songwriter than as a musician. I wanna be f?!kin' normal, is what I wanna be. The thing is, I've seen so many freaks and so many weirdos and crazy punk rockers and drunks and junkies. But for a lot of those people being weird is easy. It's so easy to be strange--the hard thing is to try to be normal. There's no such thing as normal, ya know.

RIP: How's your mom feel about all this?

BJA: She's kinda worried about me. She doesn't know what to think of everything. We have a hard time communicating with each other, just because I don't like to talk about it that much. So she feels like she has to walk on eggshells around me all the time.

RIP: You buy her anything cool once the money started rolling in?

BJA: Nah--she doesn't want anything. I've asked her. She's been living in the same house for over 20 years, and she's content living there. But I did give her a trip--she went to Hawaii, her and her boyfriend. And I think travelling is really good--if you paid for someone to travel, so they can go and explore and see some things they've never seen before. But I think that's probably where I get it from. I get so content with not having much. And then you get all this stuff, all this attention, and you don't really know what to do with it. You don't know how to channel it.

RIP: Most outrageous thing you've bought for yourself?

BJA: I got my car primered! And one thing I did do was build a home studio. So I've been recording all my friends' bands for free. I produced this band called Dead and Gone, and Social Unrest, Fetish and the Criminals. And I have this side-project called Pinhead Gunpowder--nothing's up with it right now, but we played at the beginning of '94 a few times. RIP: Sounds like you've got more than enough pressure valves to let off the steam. Still, do you worry about death?

BJA: Yeah, I do. But I have too many reasons to stick around. One is my son and my wife. And I don't feel like I'm finished yet. I'm not done, ya know? And the beauty of it is that death is forever and your problems aren't. And that's why I'm talking about my bad shit, because you vent that, you get it off your chest and you can move on to something else. There's gotta be a positive side to all this--so you just sort of try and dig it out. Get rid of all the bad--out with the bad air, in with the good air.

RIP: You said about Green Day that you think your "bandwagon is coming to a close and all that's gonna be left is just a band. Hopefully." So then will you start writing happy songs?

BJA: I thought about writing a totally sarcastic song called "I'm So Goddamn Happy," just talking about how happy I am. Actually, I'd like to put out a double record--I'd like to put out tons of music. But I never wanna become an egomaniac. I just wanna keep things down to earth, so I think it's really important for us to take a long break after all this stuff. We just put out two records back to back, one year after another, and now we can sit back and work on ourselves as people again. So we don't parody ourselves. And it's so hard to be a father and a musician at the same time. If I get into one thing and I pay close attention to it, like if I'm with Joey and I start neglecting my music, then I feel like I should play more often. So I start playing my music, and then I'm going, "Am I neglecting Joey?" So it becomes hard to do everything at the same time.

BJA: I wanna create a very mellow and sound atmosphere for him, because I don't wanna make any mistakes for him--I want him to be able to make his own mistakes. And even when it comes to swearing--I don't cuss in front of my kid. I'd rather him get it from some dirty-mouthed kid at school. Then at least I'd know, I could go "Thank God--my kid is in a real world and he's learning these things from his surroundings." That'd be a good thing. Because the best things you ever learn are the things you learn in kindergarten.

Finally, after more than an hour worth of gut-spilling, Armstrong suddenly observes four brace-faced girls, each no more than 12 years old, idling over by the cash register. They're there on the pretext of getting change. In reality, they just want to ogle punk icon and pin-up darling Billie Joe, stare at those caterpillar eyebrows and chiselled cheekbones up close. Another oh-my-gawd event. "I gotta go--it's gettin' weird," the reluctant rocker whispers, literally leaping up from the booth. "I can feel eyeballs all over me already...." And as fast as that, he's gone. "Was that...was that...B-B-B-B-Billie Joe?" stammers one swooner. "No," says the waitress, with a subtle smile. "That was just some guy who usually eats here alone, nobody famous at all. You know, just an average guy." A little white lie to herd the young 'uns out. But nevertheless the truth.

#i know it wasn't healthy for him #but i miss when he would use interviews as free therapy #the discussion about how he hates playing bigger shows is interesting #obviously he figured it out because i think he genuinely likes playing arenas/stadiums now #i wonder how he did that #like did he get tips from other rock stars #or did he just work thru his emotional baggage about selling out #article #interview #articles

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deadanddeactivated · 5 years

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Intrusive Concern

Fandom: Sanders Sides Characters: Remus Sanders, Virgil Sanders, Deceit, Orange/Wrath, others mentioned Pairings: Remus & Virgil Warnings: It’s from Remus’ POV so there’s lots of Remus-y thoughts Summary: Remus is a 'Dark Side'. He knows that, he's accepted that, but he never wanted it.

And now Virgil isn't one, and Remus can't let Deceit ruin that.

AO3

Remus is a 'Dark Side'. He knows that, he's accepted that, but he never wanted it.

"I'm not evil." He used to mutter to himself. Back when Thomas was young and the split was fresh.

"Of course not." Roman used to scoff. "You're half of me, and there's no way I can be evil." Back before Thomas had focused on Roman alone. Before Remus was shoved to the back of his mind to be ignored and forgotten and denied.

"Of course you are." Wrath had smirked. "But that's fine, we can still make Thomas see you." Back when he was the first Side Remus had seen in years. Back when Roman had long since stopped seeking him out.

Remus had been desperate then. Desperate to be seen and heard and acknowledged. So he'd taken Wrath's hand and he'd joined the 'Dark Sides' (as Roman would would one day dub them, as Wrath alone would embrace). And he hated it.

He doesn't mutter to himself anymore. Remus has accepted his place on the 'Dark Sides' and he gets it now. 'Being evil' wasn't his call to make - it was Thomas'. Thomas thinks he’s dark and so he is. There's no changing that, not when Thomas doesn't so much as react to thinking about jumping out of a moving car, let alone wonder where the thought came from.

The others like to claim they’re in the same boat as Remus. Or Deceit likes to go on about how this is 'totally his choice and what he wants' while Wrath waxes lyrical about how darkness was something thrust upon him.

It's all a bunch of butthole.

They aren't like him. They aren't half of a whole, easily split into 'good' and 'bad' no matter how inaccurate the terms. No, they aren't like that, they're whole. Whole and complete and not missing a part of himself and-

Remus feels a wave of energy as his thoughts slip into Thomas' and sighs. Usually he tries to be a little more creative with his influence, but it can't be helped now. Maybe later he'll have Thomas think about pushing Joan in front of a car, he does have a reputation to keep. What would Wrath do if he discovered how little Remus cared for the whole 'brooding, evil, edgelord' vibe? Especially after…

Ah, but Remus' thoughts are getting ahead of him. He isn't up to that part yet. No, he's thinking about Deceit and Wrath and how they don't have to be ‘Dark Sides’. They're whole aspects of Thomas, they cover a lot more than what they're named after. If they only played their cards right, Remus is sure they wouldn't be about of the unwanted. Thomas would see them in a whole new light (ha).

Fear was just proof of that.

Sorry, Anxiety. Well actually Virgil. Remus has such trouble keeping track of what that side is going by these days. Maybe he should just mix all the names, cover all his bases at once. What would that even be?

Virgity? Anear? Fexigil?

Ha. The first two sound almost like dirty words. He'll have to start using one of those whenever he sees Virgil.

Not that he ever sees Virgil. Even back when he was Fear, he avoided Remus like the plague.

That had hurt once. Back before he pressed Deceit for why and got a happily spoken answer, "Wrath totally hasn't talked you up as a super negative influence on Thomas. Virg definitely isn't scared of you. Why would he be? He's Fear."

Remus supposes he'll be pulled away from people forever. Roman was first, pulled away by Thomas and the wanted sides, and now Wrath had pulled him away from Virgil. How long until someone pulled him away from Deceit?

He visited once, after Virgil officially shed his identity as Fear but before he'd really become one of them. He just popped up one afternoon as the newly dubbed Anxiety (that's what he was going by then, right?) paced his room, now floating somewhere between the wanted and the unwanted sides. Remus really only wanted to give him his congratulations, to tell Virgil how happy jealous he was. It did not go well. It never does.

"Well, well, well it really worked. Maybe you should be creativity, hm?" He joked. Virgil had hissed as he turned to face Remus who just kept grinning just keep grinning. The vaguely lit side had already been tense but Remus could see it get worse, so scared even as he glared and held his ground. "You managed to recreate yourself after all. Oh, do you think we could really swap? We can clearly change." Remus continued. He never liked silence.

"Leave me alone Duke." Virgil managed through clenched teeth. He knew Remus name, he didn't have to use that title. Why did everyone always use that title? Why was he always lesser? "I'm not like you, I don't want any part of your schemes."

"No, you're not." Remus agreed. You're whole, he wanted to say, not like me. No matter how much I change, I'll always be a half. Always be the Dark to Roman's Light.

Instead, he perked up. "But hey, do you think the others think that?" It was meant to be an innocent question. A conversation starter.

Instead, the bags under Virgil's eyes got darker. The same way more and more of Fear's eyes would start to dart around when Remus was near.

"They don't know." Virgil claimed, voice layered and wrong. Something shifted in Thomas as Virgil's paranoia spiked. "They can't know!"

Remus didn't visit Virgil again.

He sticks to the back of Thomas' mind. Somehow, he finds himself hating it even more now. Which is ridiculous, because things aren't different without Virgil. Not for him, they'd never been friends.

And yet, Remus starts avoiding Wrath as the side simmers away. Which is, admittedly, pathetically easy once Wrath locks himself away in his room. Not that that will last. The second Thomas gives him the chance, he'll boil over and even Remus doesn't want to see that kind of destruction. Well actually it might be interesting… he'll have to think about it.

Watching as Deceit grows bolder without Virgil around to hold him back is harder because suddenly Thomas sees him, knows him, and god Remus wants that so bad it's not fair. But harder still is listening to Deceit becoming more and more desperate to convince himself Virgil isn't really gone.

"He hasn't abandoned us! He's just, building up to some grand scheme. We'll see!" He used to scream. Back when Virgil first left them. Those defenses had quickly morphed into claims of, "They've manipulated him. We just need to snap him out of it and he'll come back!" Sometimes Remus wonders if Deceit knows how much he lies to himself. Sometimes he wonders if Virgil knew.

Remus stays out of it. He listens and he gives Deceit empty words or he redirects the conversation but he stays in the back of Thomas' mind. Oh he thinks plenty about the ways he could step in. Dramatic displays that will lead to Virgil liking him and Thomas seeing him and Roman letting him join in again. But he doesn't act on any of it.

Then he overhears Deceit saying something and that changes.

"If Thomas wants to be more honest with himself," he starts, spitting the word 'honest' like it's poison, how would a snake even poison itself, or would someone else be poisoning it, would someone have to force feed a snake poison to do that, "then all his sides should be honest."

"Qh, plotting in the dark again. That's bad for your eyes. Or at least one of them. Would the human one or the snake one be worse off? We should test this. And also their reactions to acid." Remus decides, grinning when Deceit glares.

"Do keep distracting me Remus." He said. "It's not like I'm coming up with the perfect plan to get Virgil back or anything unimportant like that."

"Oh?" Remus prompts. "Does it involve rope?" He asks, conquering a rope in his hands.

“No!” Deceit snaps, too frustrated to remember to lie. He gets like that when he’s frustrated, or excited, or startled. It never lasts long. “Thomas is not obsessed with being honest, yes?”

“No?” Remus frowns like he’s not used to the way Deceit talks. He does, but Deceit likes to think he’s confusing people and Remus is more than happy to play along. Especially now.

“Exactly!” Deceit says. Idoly, barely away he’s doing it, Remus starts to tie and untie the rope. “Well, how do you think he’ll feel when he hears that Virgil’s been lying to him from the start? He’ll hate it, they all will. And Virgil will remember how horrible they are and finally come back.” For just a moment, Remus freezes in his motions. Deceit’s too excited to notice.

“So you’re going to pop up and reveal him?” Remus asks, humming to himself. “That doesn’t seem very grand of you. I thought you were better than that De.” He tsked.

“Well I hadn’t tried dropping rather obvious hints to get them to ask. That would work! They aren’t all oblivious idiots that ignore my every hint.” Deceit hisses.

“Don’t look at me like that. I’m not Thomas’ intelligence.” Remus claims, raising his hands in a surrender position only to realize he’s gotten them quite tangled in all his fidgeting. With a glare, Deceit waves his hand and the ropes become a snake which easily untangles itself. “Oh kinky.” Remus says. “Snakes would make for a very interesting BDSM night, you know.”

“Oh I most certainly do what to know. I just love talking to you sometimes.” Deceit huffs and then cringes as he thinks of it anyway. “Obviously I won’t be dramatic as ever when I don’t reveal Virgil because at this point my only option is not to just tell them. They’ll most definitely believe me, but that matters because Virgil will stay incredibly calm.” He says, getting back to the matter at snake-tied hand.

“As long as you’re dramatic.” Remus says. “Do let me know if you need any ideas.” He grins.

“Never.” Deceit grins back. With a wave, Remus leaves for his room.

With the door shut firmly and safely behind him, Remus let the frown take over his face. What would Thomas do when Deceit revealed Virgil? What would the other sides do? Even Virgil’s reaction is a worry. Remus can think of several outcomes, none of them good. Not for Thomas and not for them either.

“I can’t let that happen.” Remus decides. Virgil’s gotten out, he’s broken the pattern. There is no changing Remus, Wrath will never want to change, and Deceit’s too dependant on Wrath to try. But Virgil got out. Deceit can’t ruin that. Sure, Virgil left them behind but so did everyone else Remus can’t fault him for it.

So Remus decides to get creative, and he decides to do something.

Subtly isn’t exactly his birthday suit, but Remus thinks he did a pretty good job. It wasn’t particularly fun - acting full on ‘bad guy’, bending the truth like that - but it worked. Better than Remus expected actually. Thomas had actually, truly seen him. And sure he wasn’t about to listen to Remus, but that’s fine. He’s used to that. It’s enough that Thomas saw him, enough that the others don’t fear him anymore. Maybe he should send Logan a fruit basket. Oh a book basket! Of books he can eat! Candy books! Books on candy? Replacement teeth?

Ah, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that it worked! Virgil got the message. If Remus is honest, and he usually is, he hadn’t expected Virgil to just tell Thomas himself. His thoughts were more along the lines of an epic showdown between Virgil and Deceit where Virgil ensured De would keep his secret, and De realized that Virg was really gone forever, that things had changed.

But oh well, no epic show down. Disappointing because Remus always loved seeing Virgil go all out, but probably for the best. He’s not sure De could handle that. There were certainly some almost-sides that hadn’t.

At least Virgil’s methods worked. Sure Thomas knew, but it was on Virgil’s terms. That had to mean something. At the very least Virgil’s room hadn’t reappeared down the hall.

Did Remus mention he’d been seen? And that that was incredible? Because Remus had been seen and it was incredible.

All in all, a wonderful day, Remus hums to himself as he skips back towards the back of Thomas’ mind.

“I see your plan went perfectly.” Deceit spits as Remus passes, glaring. “Not that it came at the cost of mine.” He’s clearly annoyed, but he doesn’t seem to think it was intentional. Otherwise they’d be having an epic show down and Remus isn’t sure he could handle doing that to the only friend he has left.

“Oh it did indeed.” Remus grins. “Thomas finally aknowledged me. In no time at all he’ll realized I’m the better creative half.”

“Of course he will.” Deceit huffs but he doesn’t say anything else as Remus ducks into his room.

As the door shuts safely behind him, he turns and frowns. Someone’s sitting on his bed, someone who really shouldn’t be back here.

“Virgil?” The side in question looks up then quickly looks away again, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Hi.” He greets.

“Should you be back here? Aren’t you worried you’ll catch darkness?” Remus wonders.

“I’m not staying.” Virgil says.

“Well obviously.” Remus agrees, though he’s admittedly a little relieved. Of course it was a bit worrying to find Virgil in the back of Thomas’ mind right after he told Thomas the truth. “Why are you back at all?”

“Well…” Virgil hesitated a moment before sighing. “I want to um, say, thanks. For the warning.” He manages.

“What warning?” Remus grins, winking and tapping his nose rather obviously. Virgil stares for a moment before shaking his head with a smile and a chuckle. Like he’s fond. That’s new. And nice.

“There was uh, there was something else too.” Virgil says. “I’m… I’m sorry I thought you were some big villian like, well you know. You’re easily the best of u-... this.” He apologizes, stumbling a bit over his words. But Remus gets it. He also thinks it’s much more cutesy heart to heart than either of them can really handle.

“I wouldn’t say that.” He claims, intent to change the topic.

“Yeah? What would you say?”

“Giant radioactive octopus, except it’s tentacles are knives and also it’s holding knives!” Remus announces, earning another one of those head shakes. It’s definitely more amused than annoyed.

“Of course you would.” Virgil says, standing. “Well, that’s all I had to say. Bye Remus.” His name, Remus thinks, that’s his name.

“Unless I see you first. Because I’ll hide.” Remus grins, hoping Virgil can’t tell how much all this means to him as the newly wanted side lowers down.

Virgil’s never going back to them, Remus knows that even if Deceit doesn’t. But maybe, just maybe, they could join him.

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ladylillianrose · 4 years

Text

You’ve Got SPRQS a Max Richman/Zoey Clarke Fanfiction

Summary: Zoey has a lot to consider after dancing with Max, and Max makes a decision.

A/N: Alright gang we are almost at the end! One more chapter! Thank you all for reading and your comments! I really do appreciate how much you have enjoyed this fic!

As always special thanks to my lovely beta aubreyrichman

The song is "Haven't Met You Yet" by Michael Buble (Listen to it here https://youtu.be/hVu_hUTOvj0)

Chapter 12

Chapter 11

Chapter 10

Chapter 9

Chapter 8

Chapter 7

Chapter 6

Chapter 5

Chapter 4

Chapter 3

Chapter 2

Chapter 1

Chapter 12

Zoey groaned as she rolled out of the bed the next morning. She had tossed and turned all night, unable to stop thinking about Max, their dance, and what might have been an almost kiss. Between those thoughts and trying to come up with a plan on how to tell Max about Red, she had hardly managed any sleep.

After managing to get dressed and eat some breakfast, Zoey was trying to decide what she should do with the rest of her day when her watch buzzed.

She was surprised to see that this time there was an attachment but no message.

Confused, she hit the play button. Piano music began playing. She looked at the attachment to see if he had included the lyrics as he had before when she heard Max begin singing.

I'm not surprised

Not everything lasts

I've broken my heart so many times

I stopped keepin' track

Talk myself in

I talk myself out

I get all worked up

Then I let myself down

I tried so very hard not to lose it

I came up with a million excuses

I thought, I thought of every possibility

And I know someday that it'll all turn out

You'll make me work so we can work to work it out

And I promise you kid, that I'll give so much more than I get

I just haven't met you yet

Mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm

I might have to wait

I'll never give up

I guess it's half timing

And the other half's luck

Wherever you are

Whenever it's right

You come out of nowhere and into my life

And I know that we can be so amazing

And baby your love is gonna change me

And now I can see every possibility

Mmm

But somehow I know that will all turn out

And you'll make me work so we can work to work it out

And I promise you kid, I'll give so much more than I get

I just haven't met you yet

Zoey wiped the few tears that had fallen on her cheeks. He was really putting it all out there, and he deserved to know the truth.

She typed out her response.

How's Monday at 5 PM sound? Meet me in the park across from Golden Gate Grind. I'll be waiting for you at the large fountain there.

She held her breath as she nervously waited for his reply. There was no backing out this time, she owed it to him.

Yes.

________________________________________________________________

Max had been playing his dance with Zoey over and over again in his head. It had almost seemed as though she wanted him to kiss her, but that doesn't make sense….does it?

And then there was Red, they had gotten much closer throughout the months. He was starting to wonder if they should try to meet again. Would that be a mistake? Would she bail on him again?

But then there were all those odd coincidences and similarities between Zoey and Red….her buying the sunflowers, calling them friendly just like Red had. Her humming "Friday I'm In Love," the day after he had sent Red that song….The fact that Zoey happened to come by when he was supposed to meet Red...those all just happened to be coincidences...right? Or was the universe trying to tell him something?

Max shook his head and walked over to sit at the piano. He hit the record button on his phone and began to play the perfect song to describe his feelings. Instead of including the lyrics, he decided to sing along this time. He wanted to make sure she could hear the sincerity in his voice as he sang for her.

He sent her the attached song without a message. The decision was up to her, he didn't want to scare her off again.

His watch buzzed and he opened her message.

How's Monday at 5 PM sound? Meet me in the park across from Golden Gate Grind. I'll be waiting for you at the large fountain there.

He let out a sigh of relief as he replied.

Yes.

________________________________________________________________

"You were right, I should have told Max a while ago. So I arranged a meeting between him and Red for after work tomorrow. And I'm going to tell him everything," Zoey explained to Mo.

Mo raised his eyebrows in response but chose to say nothing.

"You're not going to tell me that you told me so?" She was surprised at his non-reaction to her news.

"I'll believe it when I see it," Mo replied, sipping his tea.

"You don't think I'll go through with it?"

"I think that you think you'll go through with it until it comes time to send then you won't," he replied.

Zoey couldn't argue with him, she did have a terrible track record when it came to dealing with emotions.

She ran her fingers through her hair and groaned in frustration.

"So, what great divine intervention inspired you to come clean?" Mo asked.

Zoey mumbled something, hiding her face in her hands.

"Sorry, I didn't quite catch that…"

"Max and I almost kissed at the club…"

Mo smirked, waiting for her to continue.

"And I realized that maybe...maybe...you were right and things may not be as one-sided as I thought. So, before we head in that direction I owe it to him to come clean." Zoey sighed, knowing that Max would have every right to be furious.

Mo nodded, "I'm proud of you for finally realizing that. I know you're scared, but I really do think things will work out okay."

Zoey nodded and took her leave, determined to try and get a good night's sleep before the most important day of her life.

As soon as he heard Zoey's door close, Mo pulled out his phone and began texting.

Group message from Mo: Zoey is planning on coming clean to Max tomorrow after work.

Tobin: Think she'll actually do it this time?

Mo: She says she's determined to but she may need a little extra push.

Joan: You think we should?

Mo: It might be just enough.

Tobin: Alright, I'll take care of it.

Joan: I really hope this works, I don't know what else we can do otherwise.

Mo: If this doesn't work then we go to plan E.

Tobin: Plan E?

Mo: Trap them in Max's apartment building's elevator. I know exactly which cords to cut to make it stop.

Joan: How was this not our first idea Tobin?

Tobin: I didn't want to be cliche! But at this point, I'll do whatever it takes to get them together. I can't handle anymore of their obliviousness, wistful sighs and longing looks. It's too much!!

Mo: Agreed. So, make it happen! Mo shook his head, hopefully,

Tobin wouldn't make things any worse….

________________________________________________________________

Monday

"I'm glad you wanted to grab lunch because I have something important to tell you," Max smiled at her. "You know that girl I've been talking to on SPRQS?" At Zoey's nod, he continued, "I'm meeting her later today."

Zoey took a sip of her drink unsure of how to respond. "The one who didn't show up at your last meeting?"

Max frowned slightly, "Yes, but we talked about what happened. And we decided to take things slower, but I think it's finally time for us to meet."

"Even though she stood you up, you're still willing to give her a chance?" Zoey winced at how harsh she sounded.

He glanced at her confused, "Well, yeah. We all make mistakes, and it would be foolish to cut myself off from someone I feel such a connection with."

"And you're sure this girl is worth it?"

He sighed, “I don’t know, I know we have a connection and that I’d like to see where it goes. It may turn into something, or it may be nothing at all.”

“So, you’re willing to take the risk? What if she’s not the person you think she is?” Zoey looked down at her hands.

“She may be, and she may not be. But, what I do know is that letting opportunities pass me by because I’m too worried about the risks is not how I want to live my life. And I do think she’s worth the risk, I’m willing to risk my heart rather than worry about the what-ifs.” Max passionately explained.

Zoey bit her lip as she looked at the man in front of her and nodded. "You deserve to be happy, Max. I hope for your sake that she's the person you think she is."

#clarkeman #clarkeman fanfiction #max x zoey #zoey x max #max x zoey fanfiction #zoey x max fanfiction #max richman #zoey clarke #Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist #zoey's extraordinary playlist fanfiction #zoeysplaylist fanfiction #ZoeysPlaylist #Zoeys playlist fanfiction #zoeys playlist #fanfiction #You've Got SPRQS

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onthevirgeofdestruction · 4 years

Link

Storytime!

Sanders Sides Canon Divergence AU - fluff/angst - hurt/comfort - some intrigue - actually has a plot (side eyes my other fics) - largely Virgil centric - it’s about growth i guess idk

Words: 4,329 Warnings: Big-ass spiders, food. Characters: Virgil, Patton, Roman, Logan, Janus, (Remus Mentioned) Universe: Storytime! Genre: Suspense but only about how much longer they’ll all be oblivious

Chapter 28: In Which Logan Totally Meant to be Shady This Time

chapter 1 for new readers - ffn mirror

Deceit sighed and looked down at Virgil wrapped around him in the morning. He got distracted by that stupid story and didn’t figure out what was happening before Virgil passed out for the final time that evening. Remus was very obedient this morning with Virgil still sleeping again, but he was deeply annoyed at the both of them. They could have blown everything. He held his face in his hands and groaned. This absolute and complete buffoon better wake up soon.

Deceit gently ruffled his hair, trying to pull him out of sleep gently. It had been plenty of time for Virgil to sleep in. He was probably tired from making his needlessly big new pet, still. But his anxiety churned more lazily in him today, shifting against Deceit’s palm on Virgil’s back. It was at least an excellent sign for Virgil. And potentially Deceit if he accidentally woke him too quickly.

“Virgil,” Deceit hummed quietly. Virgil shifted gently in Deceit’s arm and his eyes fluttered open slowly. Virgil yawned and squeezed Deceit tight before letting go and stretching. “Virgil, what in the world were you thinking running off with Remus in the middle of the meeting?” Deceit groaned.

“That I wasn’t in the mood to be stabbed because Ream is too impatient to wait. Pat doesn’t want to see that, and he would have had to go through Roman, it would have been a bloodbath,” Virgil yawned again and leaned back onto the bed with his legs still on the floor. “And I was going to go see him later anyway, to write that story with him.”

“That’s not what I mean, Virgil, Roman and Patton are still afraid of Remus and you ran off with him like you were besst budss!” Deceit growled.

“I don’t know about best buds, D… You know he scares the hell out of me half the time just to hear me scream, and we do kinda hurt each other just being nearby for too long,” Virgil groaned. “I mean we’re friends and all, but bes-”

“I know you just woke up but for god’ss ssake!” Deceit hissed and slapped his hand up to his human half of his face and dragged it down in frustration. Virgil flinched at first, but instead of cowering as usual, he just moved to hug Deceit again.

“How are they supposed to stay afraid of a guy who the literal embodiment of fear just ran off with? Remus even helped Pat last night by not letting them wake me,” Virgil said nonchalantly and stifled a yawn. Deceit froze. Oh, god, was this idiot on to something? Oh, god, he was right. Virgil chuckled and nuzzled his neck. “You can always shut me up if you think I went too far. It’s been ages and every time I bring it up they shoot me down. I’m gonna show instead of tell,” Virgil said determinedly while wrapping himself around Deceit.

“And when were you going to fill me in on your change of tacticss?” Deceit hissed in frustration.

“I wasn’t thinking about it, honestly. I think I just rationalized it or something,” Virgil said with another small yawn and scratched the back of Deceit’s neck affectionately. “Sorry about changing your plans and all,” He mumbled. Deceit sighed deeply.

“We can try it this inane way and repress their memories if it gets out of hand, I ssuppose,” Deceit conceded sourly.

“Cool,” Virgil smiled and kissed Deceit’s scaled cheek. “Can we do tea later? Or maybe make fun of some more TV shows?” Virgil asked hopefully. This idiot. Deceit sighed again and flipped his hand to shoo Virgil.

“Go to breakfast before you miss it again, Virgil,” Deceit rolled his eyes. Virgil flipped off Deceit’s hat and kissed the top of his head before smirking and sinking out. Deceit grumbled as he grabbed his hat off the bed and put it back on. That buffoon would be the death of him, damnit. Why did he keep letting Virgil get away with things?

— * * * —

Virgil saluted them as he popped into his breakfast chair.

“’Sup, nerds. Sorry, I slept in late again,” He said and leaned against Roman. Roman was stiff at First, but reached up to ruffle Virgil’s hair. Virgil sat up and grumbled, fixing his bangs and gently elbowed Roman while he was at it.

“I wasn’t aware you were… chummy with my brother, Virge,” Roman said slowly, sounding kind of off.

“He’s not that bad, he’s actually pretty fun. Don’t you fight him all the time, Ro? He’s always talking about it,” Virgil asked, sneaking his hand up to also muss up Roman’s hair in revenge.

“I’m fighting for honor and valor, not for fun!” Roman shot a glare at Virgil.

“Ream doesn’t see it that way, he looks forward to it. I mean, shoves isn’t loves and all, but it’s his probably his weird love language other than sharing his interests,” Virgil explained and quickly messed with Roman’s hair in return. Roman huffed and summoned a comb.

“But his interests are weird and horrible, kiddo!” Patton objected. “Don’t they scare you?”

“My interests are weird and scary, to you too, Pat,” Virgil rolled his eyes. “Of course he scares me, it’s my job to be scared of the stuff he talks about. It doesn’t mean we don’t get along,” Virgil shrugged slightly. “Sometimes, anyway.” He added.

“Remus really looks forward to fighting with me?” Roman asked, seeming to have just processed what he said a moment ago.

“Uh, yeah? So do I,” Virgil said and playfully jabbed at Roman’s side, who yelped and jabbed him back. “You’re fun to fight,” Virgil grinned evilly.

“Boys, no fighting at the table!” Patton whined. That barely counted as even scuffling, but whatever. Virgil shrugged and backed away from Roman.

“I don’t suppose any of you beautiful angels are interested in feeding me even though you’re all done eating?” Virgil asked sweetly, tapping the table.

“I will make you a balanced breakfast, if that is what you want, Virgil,” Logan offered, putting down his paper.

“I would love a properly balanced breakfast,” Virgil said and laughed gently, leaning back against Roman’s shoulder. Logan summoned a plate with fruit, a piece of Canadian bacon, and a small omelet full of vegetables. He pushed the plate towards Virgil, who accepted it excitedly. “Thanks, Lo-berry, I don’t suppose a slice of toast with some crofter’s on it is out of the question?” Logan looked surprised for a moment.

“Grains are an important part of the diet,” Logan quickly said, summoning a piece of jam toast and placing it on the corner of Virgil’s plate.

“Thanks,” Virgil excitedly reached for the toast to take a bite. “Oh my god, this is why you ate that whole jar,” Virgil moaned in appreciation and finished off the toast in seconds.

“It is wonderful,” Roman said with a chuckle, trailing off a bit.

“So you’re… okay?” Patton asked hesitantly.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Virgil asked before taking a bite of the omelet.

“Well, you left with the duke and all,” Patton’s voice was full of concern.

“We were mostly writing a story,” Virgil said proudly. “I mean, we fought a little. We always do,” He admitted a little sheepishly.

“That’s it? Just a story and some scuffling? No… other stuff?” Patton asked worriedly.

“No? There were no ‘unsavory things’ I wouldn’t mention at the breakfast table,” Virgil answered. At least, not that they were doing. On paper, definitely lots of unsavory things he would not mention at the breakfast table. Boy, did Remus fuck those kids up after Virgil trapped them one by one.

“Well, as long as you’re safe, kiddo,” Patton said, still sounding a little concerned. Virgil scooted his plate and chair around the table a little closer to Patton and gave him a hug.

“I’m safe, pops, you don’t have to worry. That’s my job,” Virgil said with a chuckle.

“You do not seem overwrought today, Virgil,” Logan said evenly.

“I’m plenty troubled about the stupid schedule and all the work. You’re just not the best face reader,” Virgil said cheerily and returned to enjoying his breakfast. He didn’t know why this pork was called Canadian bacon, but it was lean and sweet and he loved it. Oh god, does that mean he would like Hawaiian pizza? Oh no, that was something he needed to avoid trying at all costs.

“You look like something just concerned you. See, I am perfectly capable of reading faces,” Logan objected sourly.

“Pizza discourse is scary, Logan,” Virgil shot at him defensively.

“Where in the wide world of sports did that come from, champ?” Patton asked and placed a hand on his shoulder.

“The internet. Pat, will you show me how to knit a cap while Princey is being a writer extraordinaire with Thomas today? You know, so I don’t freak as much when Joan wants to make changes?” Virgil asked, pulling Patton into a small side hug while he continued breakfast.

“That’s very proactive of you, Virgil,” Logan said plainly, but his eyebrow was raised in curiosity.

“Wild, right?” Virgil chuckled. Maybe he could knit Deceit a beanie to thank him. And then Virgil could have Voltaire hide that stupid bowler hat.

“Sure, kiddo!” Patton beamed. Roman punched Virgil on the shoulder and smiled.

“Looking to be less of a pain in the ass today?” Roman asked playfully. Patton huffed and Roman flipped his hand to dismiss Patton’s objections. Virgil shrugged. It just sounded like something Patton would want. Deceit made it feel much easier to be who they wanted. Virgil frowned for a moment, kind of realizing what that meant. But went back to finishing his breakfast quickly. He’d get to lie on Patton and knit the rest of the morning. That was probably worth it.

—

Virgil was laying in Patton’s lap, still trying to knit the hat, when he got a notification. The cap was a little more involved than the scarf was and it was taking a while. Deceit texted and offered to let Virgil join him for tea. Hopefully that meant he wasn’t that mad at him, which Virgil relished finding out. Unless it was a trap, but Virgil just couldn’t imagine that today. If he was honest with himself, it was weird that he couldn’t. When Deceit didn’t accept or reject him outright, Virgil was pretty scared that Virgil’s impulsive rationalizing pissed Deceit off. And then Virgil couldn’t be himself with D anymore, and he’d be stuck pretending with the others or intermittently fighting Remus. He was glad D wanted to hang out.

“I’ve got to go, Pat,” Virgil said as he pulled off of Patton’s lap and brushed Patton’s hair off his temple for a light peck. “Can we finish this lesson later?”

“Of course, Virge. I think I might need to go talk with Logan more directly about refusing to let Thomas take a break myself. He deserves one! You’ll get all upset again if Thomas goes too long, and it’s been a nice quiet morning,” Patton said with heavy determination. Patton smiled and kissed Virgil’s temple. Virgil smiled and nodded. That was really nice of Patton. And a maybe a little selfish. Thomas might fall behind if he took a break. But Logan probably had that handled, right?

Virgil popped into his bedroom and was greeted by Voltaire in his face as soon as he appeared. Volt bit him, but his own anxieties weren’t exactly a problem for him.

“Volt, I’m not an intruder!” Virgil groaned and plucked Volt carefully off his face. Beeps chastised Voltaire from her silks on the bannister. Volt apologized and Virgil placed him gently on the bannister near Beeps, then removed the bite make from his face. Virgil went to go put down his knitting carefully on the table so it wouldn’t get disturbed and messed up. “Nobody mess with this,” He commanded them. “Anybody need anything before I go?” He checked in with his spiders. He summoned some food for them and left to go hang out with D.

—

Virgil was cuddled on the couch with D, watching TV they were snarking at in Deceit’s room while they enjoyed their tea. Deceit was also cuddling him back instead of just letting Virgil cuddle him, which was amazing. It took Deceit a while to settle into it, but normally it was a relatively one-sided thing. Deceit’s cool scales felt sublime on his cheek, even with his top between them. Deceit lolled his head on Virgil’s shoulder and stroked his hair slowly. Virgil felt very safe wrapped up in his arms, like nothing could get to him.

“What is wrong with this world that the adults are just letting literal children run free with no supervision?” Deceit growled and lifted his head slightly to sip his tea.

“I know, right? How little do they care about their children? It’s like ‘bye billy have fun getting hit by a car or kidnapped while I ignore you for 12 hours’ what kind of parenting is that?” Virgil agreed with a dark laugh. He didn’t want to shift to get his tea, but Deceit must have sensed that, since he reached out and grabbed it for Virgil. “Thank you,” Virgil purred and enjoyed a sip.

“Murphy’s law,” Deceit laughed sinisterly as the kids ran into trouble and took Virgil’s mug to place it back on the side table.

“Isn’t that a constant of the universe,” Virgil drawled sardonically. They continued to incessantly sass the TV together and Virgil was so happy to just relax with Deceit.

After an hour and a half of tea and TV, Deceit kicked Virgil out of his room, much to his disdain. So what if he got more sarcastic and lied flippantly for a while? Nobody would be able to tell. He was always lying to the others, anyway. Virgil flopped grumpily on his couch, sitting on it with his head to the floor, watching his spiders skitter across the bars under his coffee table. He just went through his regular worries in his head as he watched them nest and jump quietly. At least until he heard a very shocked scream. Virgil fell off the couch in surprise and looked up to see Voltaire latched to Logan’s face and poised to strike.

“Volt, holy shit, get off of Logan! I’m here, I can protect the room myself!” Virgil quickly rambled and got over to Logan to help. Virgil gently plucked Voltaire off Logan’s face and placed him on Virgil’s shoulder. Logan cleared his throat, pretending to be poised.

“So you can make spiders larger than Beatrice,” He observed very carefully, completely ignoring the fact that he just screamed like he was about to be murdered.

“Logan, there is nobody else here, we all know that scream was you,” Virgil said with a chuckle.

“I have absolutely no idea what you are referring to,” Logan said casually and coughed again.

“Sorry, Voltaire is very enthusiastic. He got me earlier, too,” Virgil apologized and softly stroked Volt, who angrily objected to not being allowed to attack the intruder. “He’s not an intruder, Volt, come on, he’s not exactly sneaking around,” Virgil chided him.

“You can talk to them?” Logan asked curiously. “They do not have the capacity to speak.”

“Roman can talk to his dogs,” Virgil said dismissively. “Can’t you talk to whatever animal it is you can conjure?”

“I can conjure birds, and certain species of birds are capable of mimicking human speech,” Logan explained. “Spiders do not have such capabilities.”

“Well, I can call all of Volt’s siblings here and we can perhaps see if they can come,” Virgil offered derisively and Logan stiffened.

“No. I do not require further proof. It is likely similar to the mental magic nonsense Roman utilizes,” Logan said firmly, raising his hand to stop Virgil from acting further.

“What do you need, Lo?” Virgil laughed.

“I have your informational packet to collect in the living room if you would… relocate that giant huntsman spider and join me,” Logan said, taking a minute step back.

“Sure. Volt, can you just let me know when someone enters while I’m not here instead of attacking? Unless it’s Remus sneaking in. Absolutely bite him in the face if he’s acting fishy,” Virgil ordered Voltaire and held his arm on the bannister for Volt to climb up.

“This morning you had given us the impression you were somewhat cordial with Remus,” Logan stated curiously as he very carefully watched Volt climb up Virgil’s arm to the bannister, then up the wall. Virgil put a hand on Logan’s shoulder to grab his attention before his eyes landed on the giant nest on the ceiling. Virgil didn’t want Logan to scream in his face, even if it was funny.

“We’re friends, but he knows he’s not allowed in here and he’s been warned. Remus and I don’t deal too well with each other’s aspects. A spider to the face is better than letting him stay in here,” Virgil groaned. It’s not like Remus wasn’t used to a little venom. A lot of venom, really. Virgil wouldn’t be surprised if he had some in him from D’s experiments right now.

“Noted,” Logan said and sank from the room. Virgil joined him out to the living room.

Virgil’s packet was sitting on his regular spot on the couch, near Patton who was already skimming his. Roman rose into the room right as Virgil walked over to pick up his packet. When he read the subject line, he barked a dark laugh.

“Holy crap, Lo, this… this is… you took that thing I taught you last time to heart, huh?” Virgil chuckled. Roman picked up his packet and looked oddly at Virgil, along with Patton. Logan just had his arms crossed, staring intently at Virgil. He thought it was kind of weird he didn’t just deliver it if Logan went through the effort of getting Virgil. Virgil wasn’t capable of dealing with this right now. So he wasn’t going to.

“What are you talking about?” Roman asked and walked over. Virgil laughed and sent it away haphazardly to the coffee table in his room, flipping his hand dismissively.

“Logan’s just spilling the tea all over the place. I’ll deal with it later,” Virgil said causally and held up his hand miming playing a game controller. “You want to go?” He asked hopefully.

“Yes, I have some honor to regain,” Roman said triumphantly and laughed. Virgil stepped over and rubbed Patton’s shoulder affectionately before sinking to Roman’s room. Virgil heard Logan sigh heavily with very uncharacteristic drama as he left.

Virgil laid on the floor and took the second controller and Roman sat cross-legged next to him as soon as they appeared.

“We should probably put a time limit on your warm-up if you actually want to get to a rematch today, Princey,” Virgil smirked.

“So I got a little into the game last time,” Roman rolled his eyes. “I still won in real life,” Roman added proudly and shoved him slightly in response.

“Just set your phone or whatever so I can kick your ass,” Virgil said and leaned into Roman to shove him slightly. Roman shoved him back and loaded up the co-operative mode.

Virgil and Roman played through the levels with a significant increase in teamwork this time. Roman took less power-ups that Virgil needed, and Virgil didn’t kill steal as much when he saw Roman bouncing a little, signifying he was into the fight. Virgil was actually a little disappointed when the alarm went off for them to switch to player versus player. That was, until he kicked Roman’s ass embarrassingly fast.

“I wasn’t fully warmed up yet, Virge!” Roman groaned and Virgil whooped victoriously.

“Fine, it’s a mulligan,” Virgil rolled his eyes.

Princey had quite a few ‘mulligans’ before he got into the fights, but Virgil still won 3 to 1 even after Roman showed marked improvement. After an extremely brutal amount of losses, Roman claimed it was an ‘off day’ with a giant huff. They had switched to watching cartoons instead with a promise of future ass kicking. Virgil thought it was hilarious how much Roman hated to lose, but kept himself from laughing so he wouldn’t hurt Roman’s feelings. Plus, they had also switched to cuddling in a pillow fort on the floor in front of the couch, which perhaps was the best possible outcome of Virgil’s digital beat down of Roman.

Roman leaned up against the couch with Virgil in his lap under the blanket canopy. Roman summoned them hot cocoa and s’mores, possibly to soothe his ego, but Virgil go to enjoy the chocolaty goodness either way. He felt good, sitting in the fort with Roman’s room mollifying him. Virgil snaked around Roman’s neck when Virgil wasn’t leaning away to enjoy a bite of gooey s’more goodness.

“Oh my god, no, just ask him! Miscommunication is such a stupid trope,” Virgil grumbled as he watched the characters parade idiocy across the screen.

“You shut your face, Virgil, it’s a classic form of misdirection that directly reflects the human condition,” Roman snarked at him.

“Oh, like you weren’t just making fun of it for overuse of smash cuts,” Virgil rolled his eyes and curled affectionately around Roman.

“Yes, and my complaint was valid,” Roman said haughtily, so Virgil nipped Roman’s neck and laughed when Roman flinched. “You bitch,” Roman groaned and gave Virgil a noogie. Virgil didn’t bother fixing his bangs since he’d probably just mess them up again nestling with Roman.

“Whatever. This show is just so round-about,” Virgil said dismissively. “Wake me when a plot point happens,” Virgil yawned. Roman tried to punch Virgil in the face, but Virgil blocked him and kissed his knuckles. Which got a bright blush and another punch that Virgil blocked less successfully. Virgil laughed so hard at Roman’s reaction that Roman shoved Virgil off of his lap.

“If you’re going to be like that, you can go back to your own room,” Roman huffed and crossed his arms.

“I’m sorry, Ro,” Virgil apologized. Roman peeked at him, but looked away in frustration nonetheless. “Geez, aren’t you a drama queen,” He grumbled under his breath.

“What was that?” Roman hissed and slowly faced Virgil again.

“Geez, you’re the greatest and I’m a worm,” Virgil offered, trying to dam the sarcasm from breaking out too much, but it was obviously present.

“Fine, I’ll continue to tolerate you,” Roman huffed and pulled Virgil’s arm to bring him back on to his lap. Virgil sighed and wrapped back around Roman. “So, you’re not acting upset about Logan calling you out again,” Roman said trying so hard to sound nonchalant that he sort of looped back around again.

“Subtle, Roman,” Virgil said derisively.

“I’m allowed to be concerned about you, prickhead,” Roman scoffed right back at him. When did that happen?

“It’s fine, it’s partially his fault, anyway. I don’t care if he thinks I’m not handling it right,” Virgil said dismissively and went for another s’more.

“Are you going to give me a sip of this tea?” Roman asked sourly.

“It’s not fully my tea to share, and I’m not a gossip,” Virgil replied and yawned.

“Ugh, you know I hate being kept out of the loop,” Roman groaned. Virgil put down his partial s’more and wrapped his arms in a circle around Roman. Roman paused for a moment while Virgil held his arm-loop in position encircling Roman’s head. “Oh my god, you tremendous dork! I expected this from Patton, but never from you!” Roman rolled his eyes.

“Hey, I don’t pick what Thomas likes, I just deal with it,” Virgil said with a shrug and grabbed his s’more to finish. Roman let out a pretty hearty chuckle for a guy who just acted like Virgil committed some kind of sin against humor. “Don’t worry about it, Princey, I’m fine. I’m doing all of that ‘reaching out’ garbage,” Virgil added when Roman settled down and eyed Virgil suspiciously again. Virgil yawned and pressed into Roman sleepily.

“I guess that’s good to hear, Virge, though I don’t recall you reaching out to me,” Roman said, sounding a little jealous.

“What do you think I’m doing here?” Virgil asked, stifling another yawn.

“Stealing my s’mores,” Roman replied cattily.

“I was lonely and Logan packet did spook me a little so I asked you to hang out,” Virgil explained, nuzzling into Roman’s neck.

“That’s not really reaching out, though, is it?” Roman said dismissively.

“Sometimes it’s all I need,” Virgil yawned and closed his eyes.

“That’s seriously it?” Roman asked in confusion.

“Not every single terror is worth a meltdown. It’s lots of little terrors that seem to pile up easier when you’re stuck. I’m not unafraid of Logan’s reaction but I’m not dealing with it alone right now,” Virgil said quietly and ran his fingers though the back of Roman’s hair for a moment. Roman didn’t seem to have a response to that, so he listened to the cartoon, seeming more distant by the moment.

Virgil wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but he woke back up again to a dark bedroom. Roman’s face was lit by his phone screen while they sat on the floor against the bed. Virgil pulled off Roman’s chest and looked around. Roman had already changed into a soft shirt and loose pajama bottoms under Virgil. Virgil must have accidentally cut it pretty close to sleeping in Roman’s room all night. Roman ran his hand through Virgil’s hair, smoothing out his bangs, and put down his phone.

“Hey, little house of horrors. It’s time for bed,” Roman said softly. Virgil rubbed his eyes briefly and yawned so hard it hurt his face.

“’Kay, I’ll go see my other cuddle buddy,” Virgil yawned again and rolled slowly off of Roman to sink out of his bedroom.

personal taglist: @gdaygdaymatey @elizabutgayer

taglist repository tags (ask to be removed):

canon divergence au: @legendsgates @rainbowbowtie @10moonymhrivertam

virgil-centric: @demoniccheese83 @thatgaydemigodnerd @arya-skywalker

hurt/comfort: @callboxkat @nonasficcollection @supernovainthenightsky

literally everything sanders sides: @katelynn-a-fan @dwbh888 @grouptalekindnesssoul @the-hoely-bleach @anvil527up @fanficloverinthesun @brain-deadx0 @the-grounded-raven @ananonsplace @ollyollyoxinfree

#tsss #sanders sides #tsss fanfiction #sanders sides fanfiction #tsss fanfic #virgil centric #canon divergence au #fanfiction #ts virgil #ts logan #ts janus #ts remus #ts patton #ts roman #food mention #spiders #storytime!#ayri writes

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forever-forgotten-angel · 6 years

Text

Back to the Basics (Part 1)

Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5 (Final Part)

Warning: This is a Thomas Sanders/Virgil Sanders romantic fic so if you don’t like that then please skip over this story and have a wonderful day!

Summary: Basically just some mutual pining between my favorite sunshine boy and emo side with some fluff thrown in for flavor. Featuring Thomas attempting to court a selectively oblivious Virgil and the other sides being ‘helpful’ to said courting process.

Hey Everyone! So this is my first fic in a while so I hope it’s not complete crap. Fun Fact: This was originally supposed to be a oneshot but then I got carried away and whoops this one part is over 2,000 words so I’m splitting it into what I think will end up being 5 parts. Blame the boys for doing this to me. Hope you enjoy!

Virgil was fourteen years old when he recognized that the butterflies he felt in his stomach whenever he thought of his host were not strictly from anxiety anymore.

Of course Thomas has always been the most important and incredible person in the world to him. Even when he was just a kid he thought Thomas was the best host he could possibly have even if he was kind of a clueless, careless moron sometimes.

This realization only causes more anxiousness in Virgil, which during Thomas' freshman year of High School is not a good thing. The pressure is already on and his strenuous relationship with the other sides is becoming even more strained as he freaks out over nearly everything. It's a stressful time for him and, unfortunately, the other sides tend to make it worse not better.

Morality is the only one who will offer him any comfort, though he also makes it clear the he thinks Virgil is overreacting. Virgil knows the moral side is only trying to make him feel better but it honestly just makes him feel like more of a burden and frustrated that they don't attempt to understand.

He knows he needs to push these feelings away. Not only is it unnatural for him to feel this way for his host, but there isn't the slightest chance of them going anywhere. His host doesn't even like him as a trait let alone like him in a romantic way. And he doesn't blame the host for that. He can acknowledge that he isn't bubbly and fun like Morality, or inventive and adventurous like Creativity, or smart and calming like Logic. All he's good for is fear. Both feeling it and causing it.

Besides, Thomas has had several crushes over the years and all of them have faded after a while, surely Virgil's would too.

It's now fifteen years later, at twenty nine years old and Virgil's 'crush' is far from faded. It's slowly developed into him being full on in love with his sunshiny host.

He can’t help it, Thomas is just far too easy to love with his warm eyes, and his gorgeous smile, and his caring, and his kindness, and the way just the sound of his voice could lull Virgil’s tightly wound mind into an immediate sense of peace, and how even the slightest touch from him brought a feeling of security and comfort to the anxious side. It wasn’t fair, he was supposed to be the one making Thomas feel safe, not the other way around.

He now has a far better relationship with the other sides and with Thomas after his ‘Ducking Out’ incident, a decision he was both grateful he made, yet simultaneously terrified by. He’d been told by the others how Thomas had been without him and he had nightmares of his precious host walking into traffic or some similar injury and/or death inducing reckless act because Virgil left at least two or three times per week. He would never mention this to anyone else though. Not only did he not want to burden them with his issues but it was Virgil who had felt worthless and decided to throw a tantrum and quit so he deserved the mental consequences of his actions.

On the bright side, he's now been fully accepted into the group, flaws, fears and all and he couldn't be happier with his life.

Well maybe he could, he thinks, as he watches the YouTuber across the room working side by side with Joan on the couch. However it's only been just over a year since Thomas accepted him and he's been lucky enough to form a fairly close friendship with his beloved host, he isn't willing to tempt fate by pushing for more than that and risk losing what he already had with Thomas and probably the others as well (it's far more than he ever thought he would have anyway).

Still, he catches himself longing far more often than he would like to admit, and with his growing closeness to the other sides, which he loves and is grateful for don't get him wrong, he is having to work extra hard to hide his feelings for Thomas lest one of the three catch on.

He is relaxing in his room listening to some of his lighter music when he feels a soft tap on his shoulder. His eyes shoot open and he immediately shifts into a defensive position. His headphones fall off his head and onto the covers below him.

From in front of him Thomas gives a slightly sheepish look. "Sorry, I called your name a couple times but you were to into your music. Not that that's a bad thing. You looked peaceful, which is really nice to see." Virgil tried to keep his cheeks from flushing at the words.

He glances up at Thomas with a look he hopes is nonchalant. "So what's going on? Is something wrong?" He rakes his eyes over Thomas' form looking for any injury as he asks the second question. "No! No, nothing's wrong." Thomas hastens to assure. "I...I have a gift for you."

A box wrapped in shiny silver paper is held out to the anxious side. He takes it, careful not to drop it and opens it cautiously, wanting to save the beautiful paper and very aware he's being watched. Thomas shifts a little impatiently, eyes wide with anticipation and he can feel his host's nerves. Thomas shouldn't worry. Any gift he receives from the YouTuber will become a new favorite item for the side no matter what it is.

After a couple minutes the paper is set carefully aside and he lifts the lid of the box revealing the three items inside. The first is soft, squishy stress toy in the shape of a cat with a purple galaxy design on it. The other two are picture frames.

The first picture is in a mint green frame that has the words Friendship and Family printed in darker green letters. The picture is one from a recent outing into the imagination. Roman had made a mock Disney World for them all to enjoy for the day. He, the other sides, and Thomas were standing with their arms wrapped around each other in custom Mickey ears. Remy had taken the photo while Emile made funny faces in the background to get all of them (mostly Patton) smiling. Virgil was visibly fighting to keep a grumpy look on his face from in between Thomas and Logan but the corners of his mouth were tilting up against his will.

The second photo is in a frame with dark crimson hearts on it surrounded by black glitter. It was taken on the same day, when a smiling and soaked Virgil and Thomas had just gotten off the replica splash mountain and Virgil was holding on to Thomas to make sure neither of them slipped (that that's was absolutely his only reason, one hundred percent). Neither of them was looking at the camera, having not noticed Patton taking the photo until he showed it to them later that night.

Virgil looked from said picture back up to Thomas with a smile and gleaming eyes. "So what do you think?" The host asked lightly, glancing down to the photo still in Virgil's hand for a brief second with an odd look of nervousness in his eyes. "I like them. It was really nice of you to do this for me. Thank you." Virgil may be imagining things but he thinks he catches a slight look of surprise and frustration in Thomas' eyes before his host gives him a wide smile and a hug. "Anytime Virge. I'll see you later, get some sleep!" The host calls as he makes his way out of Virgil's bedroom. "Yeah, yeah." The anxious trait replies dismissively.

He places the two photos on his nightstand, right next to another photo he has from that day, a favorite of his. He'd snuck it from Patton before the moral trait had a chance to put it in his scrapbook. It was a photo of Thomas and him during Roman's display of the traditional Disney fireworks. Virgil's noise cancelling headphones were on his head despite not being connected to anything and Thomas was holding his hand tightly, allowing him to cope with the loud noises and vibrations from the fireworks. The light from the fireworks glowed over both of their faces, lighting them up in a rainbow of color as they both looked up in awe.

The three photos make a perfect trio, he thinks to himself as he lies back on his bed. He places his new cat on his pillow as he returns his headphones to the rightful place on his head and resumes listening to his music with a large smile.

Thomas sighs to himself as he merges back with his body on his bed. That had not gone quite as planned. Roman was going to be disappointed when he finds out his idea didn’t exactly work.

Thomas had realized he was developing feelings for his Anxiety just a few weeks ago. He’d managed to keep it under wraps for the first couple weeks as he tried to figure it out for himself, but it had quickly seeped into his dreams, making it impossible to keep from the Prince of his hopes and dreams.

Roman had not been disgusted or weirded out by it in the least as Thomas had feared. Instead he was treating this attraction the same way he had any other that Thomas had, with passion and dramatic zeal. If anything, he was even more enthusiastic than usual.

Roman had promised he wasn’t going to say anything, but (unsurprisingly honestly, Roman could not keep his mouth shut when he was excited about something) he’d spilled to Logan several nights later (apparently in the middle of them making out as Logan had informed him seeming equal parts fond, amused, and irritated). And since neither of them was any good at keeping things from Patton (his Dad stare was legendary and triumphed over all), the moral side had soon been informed as well.

All three were wonderfully supportive and encouraging. After a week of them, pestering didn’t seem like quite the right word but it was the only one he had, him he has agreed to try approaching Virgil with his feelings. Though he is too anxious to just come right out and say how he feels so he wanted to come up with a more subtle solution. He figured he might just try some flirting compliments but of course his sides had something to say as well.

“Making food for the object of one’s affection is often considered a romantic gesture, and goodness knows Virgil could stand to eat more.” Logan had offered, the second part muttered under his breath. “Just spend more time with him and be affectionate, kiddo.” Patton had chimed in. “Give him a thoughtful gift from the heart that will make him swoon.” This had been only one of many, many suggestions from Roman, but it had been the least over-the-top and since Roman was the romantic side after all, he’d decided to give his advice a go first much to the prince’s pleasure.

However here he was, and the plan had not seemed to work. Virgil had been appreciative of the gifts, sure, and just seeing his smile was worth the time Thomas had spent in the mindpalace making them, but he’d shown no indication of returning Thomas’ feelings or even picking up on them at all. He’d thought the heart frame on the picture of them would make it obvious enough…..

Thomas mentally scratches Roman’s suggestion off his list, sending a mind message to Logan to make sure to console his boyfriend tonight, something he was sure wouldn’t be too much of a hardship for the logical side.

Thomas wasn’t a Hufflepuff for nothing though so he wasn’t going to give up yet, besides Virgil was worth working hard for.

And if Roman’s suggestion hadn’t worked, maybe he would have better luck with Patton’s.

#sanders sides #thomas sanders #thomas/virgil #thvi #fic

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rosesisupposes · 6 years

Text

The Status Quo

Part 5 of Breakin’ Free, a High School Musical Sanders Sides AU

Chapter Pairings: Prinxiety, Logicality (one-sided)

Chapter Warnings: Cliques, Roman Continues to Be Oblivious, Now Logan Is Too

word count: 3,411

Reader tags: @residentanchor @royally-anxious @bewarethegrammarpolice @jemthebookworm@arandompasserby @sparkly-rainbow-salt @astral-eclipse @thelowlysatsuma

<<4.What I’ve Been Looking For | 6. Lunkheads>>

read on ao3

SCENE: Hallways of East High, the Next Day

“CALLBACKS?”

The entrance hall echoed with Dee Evans’ distressed screech. Cee stood with him, trying to calm him as they both studied the posted list in the entrance hall. The list had the expected handful of names for the singles roles, but for the first time in years, so did the leads.

“Callbacks for Arnold and Minnie, next Thursday, 3:30pm,” Cee read aloud. “Cee & Dee Evans, Virgil Montez & Roman Bolton.” He frowned in confusion.

“Is this some kind of joke? They didn't even audition!” Dee snapped.

“Maybe it’s a prank!” Cee said, eyes lighting up. “Maybe this is part of one of those online prank compilations! You have all those fans, maybe they’re just messing with you!”

“Excuse you, the Dee-Lights would never do this to me,” Dee said grumpily. “Just shut up, Cee!”

Behind them, the basketball team strolled in, led by Remy. Seeing the twins looking frustrated, Remy was ready to mock their distress without a second’s thought.

“What’s wrong, princess,” he drawled, looking over his sunglasses at the board in front of them. Then he read the names there, and his face fell.

“Whomst the fuck?”

He glared at Cee and Dee, as if this was their fault. Dee glared back with equal intensity as Cee nervously avoided eye contact with both of them. Remy turned on a heel and stormed off as his teammates stayed behind to stare, whispering among themselves.

SCENE: Lunchroom

Dee paced back and forth on the raised half of the lunchroom, still fuming. His brother and the rest of the drama club watched in varying degrees of nervousness, Joan’s the highest as they attempted to avoid the man’s notice.

“How dare that… Montez boy sign up! I've already picked out the colors for my dressing room!”

“And he hasn’t even asked our permission to join the drama club,” Cee said sympathetically.

“Someone’s gotta tell him the rules,” Dee muttered darkly.

“Exactly,” Cee said with a smile, then frowned. “Wait, what are the rules?”

Dee rolled his eyes at his twin and scowled down at the lunch room as a whole.

Below him, the basketball team and cheerleaders were chatting and tossing around Remy’s ball as they ate. Energy for the upcoming game was high without bordering on stress - they still had a whole week, after all. Even the current lack of their team captain didn’t bring them down.

Patton Baylor was with the team today, smiling near the center of the group and making sure everyone was heard. At a lull in the conversation, he spoke out to them all.

“You all know how much I love our squad, right?”

“Of course, Pat,” a cheerleader said with an adoring smile.

“And I love basketball too -- when I’m on a roll-”

“It’s nothing but net!” a teammate exclaimed with a whoop.

Patton grinned. “And that’s why I want to confess something to you all.”

The entire group turned to listen excitedly, and not a few students at other tables as well.

“Uh, Pat, are you sure that’s a good idea, don’t forget Valentine’s Day freshman year…” Remy said, sipping from a huge container of iced tea.

“What happened?” an underclassman asked.

“He publicly came out as pansexual and there was a literal stampede as everyone who’d thought they weren’t his type raced to get him a card or candy. The teachers had to step in as traffic control. I was almost killed in the rush, swear to god.”

Pat waved a hand. “No, nothing like that, Rem! It’s just -- well, if Roman is going to be a singer, I want to confess, too.” He took a deep breath, and smiled around the small circle of athletes. “I bake!”

“Excuse me, what?”

“I love to bake! Strudel, scones, cookies - even apple pandowdy!”

Rem snorted. “First of all, no, Ro is not singing, there was clearly a mistake. Secondly, why?”

“I just like it! Someday, I hope to make the perfect crème brûlée…”

Teammates whispered to each other nervously. One freshman finally said, “But Patton - you’re a basketball player. Are you leaving us?”

“What? Of course not! I just also like baking!” Patton said. His bright smile was starting to falter, and he had started to nervously run a hand through his mop of bouncy curls.

“Pat, babes, let me give you some advice, okay?” Remy said, drawing the taller man in close. “Don’t mess around, okay? The championship game is coming up, and we need every player focused. Just stick to the stuff you know, hun. It causes less problems.”

Patton nodded his understanding, but sank into silence as talk resumed, a mask of concern replacing his perpetual smile.

He barely listened to his teammates as lunch continued, which is how he noticed the disturbance happening at the next table over.

The science club members were busily working on assignments and extra reading when they were interrupted by one of the shorter members.

“Guys, I have a secret as well.”

“You do? Well, please share, Terrence!” a student across from him said, leaning in to listen.

“You all know how much I enjoy the natural sciences, particularly ornithology, but to be quite frank, my passion is hip hop, and dancing. And I’m good at it, too. I can pop and lock with the best of them.”

“Is that even legal?” another student asked, looking disgusted.

“It’s just dancing. But it’s just so much fun that sometimes I’ll practice instead of homework!”

“Terrence, that’s ridiculous. You’re on the decathlon team - you know we don’t have any time to spare on non-intellectual pursuits. If you want to be a good team member, you’ll focus on your work, not some ridiculous dancing. We can’t disrupt our current team balance if we want to advance - we need to maintain the status quo.”

Terrence sat, dejectedly. But he looked up and made eye contact with Patton. They shared a half-smile of understanding, then both left their tables. They found an empty table in the middle of the lunchroom, and started to chat about their ‘different’ interests.

Another voice sounded from across the room. A tall student at the skater table was catching his friends’ attention. “Fam, I got this need that I cannot deny, and I wanna come clean.”

“Speak you mind, my man!”

“I play the cello!”

“Awesome! What’s a cello?” asked another skater, staring in confusion.

The tall student mimed the instrument and bow.

“A saw?”

“No, my dude, it’s like a giant violin,” he responded, smiling.

“What? That’s not rad at all. You don’t have to wear a costume, do you?”

“Tux and tie, man!”

Another friend snorted in disgust. “I thought you wanted to be cool, Jamahl. That ain’t it.”

“But, I can still jam on it, it’s fun-”

“It’s a simple rule, dude. Pick your one thing and stick with it. You can’t pop an ollie and play a friggin’ cello.”

Jamahl turned away from the group, and caught Terrence and Patton’s eyes. He looked at the skater table in disappointment, and walked away, joining the smaller group.

Rumbles continued across the lunchroom. In every clique, there were people breaking away, sparked on by hearing others’ confessions. More and more people came to join Patton’s new table. A science club member bumped into a history buff and they recognized each other’s Doctor Who pins. A drama club girl trying to convince her friend to return to the table saw a band geek’s Hamilton t-shirt. The more people left their tables, the more they began to mix, until the groups were beginning to dissolve entirely.

Dee watched from above, fuming. “This is not what I meant by sharing the rules! I don’t understand. Something is...” he pursed his lips, searching for the correct word.

“Something’s not right!” Cee offered.

“Shut up, Cee. Something is wrong.”

The rumbles of mixed conversations below him were raising to a peak when Dee suddenly shouted through the room, “Everybody quiet!”

Virgil Montez had just entered the lunch room, Logan McKessie at his side. Called to attention by Dee’s shout, every student saw them and stared.

Virgil paled, seeing hundreds of faces turned in his direction. “Um, Logan, why is everybody staring at us?”

Logan looked around, adjusting his glasses. “Oh, they are not staring at us.” Virgil started to calm down when Logan continued, “They are just staring at you.”

He blanched with fear, trying to look for an escape route through the crowd. “Because of the callbacks? I can’t have people staring at me, Lo. I really, really can’t.”

Talk suddenly resumed at an even higher volume, parts of groups mixing while others tried to hold their members back, arguing loudly. Virgil edged through the crowd with Logan behind him, looking for a quiet corner where he could disappear. He clutched his lunch tray close to his chest, hoping he’d be able to eat his cheesy fries in peace somehow.

Logan stared at the crowds in confusion. Where was all this… mixing coming from? Were those science club team members talking to basketball players and skateboarders? With a start, he saw his science club protegé Terrence chatting happily with Patton Baylor. He hadn’t realized that the school sweetheart had ever even noticed people on the science team. Or, perhaps he’d been hoping he wouldn’t notice them. Somehow, the prospect of actually talking to the tall, friendly man was rather terrifying.

That is illogical, Logan, he is just a person. He offers no physical danger, he is just tall. The only thing about him that could cause harm is how his smile could probably make someone die from happiness.

Wait, what?

Logan shook his head to clear it of such odd thoughts, and in doing so noticed Dee Evans descending the stairs, staring directly at Virgil.

He attempted to get the shorter man’s attention, but as he tapped his shoulder, Virgil’s foot hit a patched of spilled milk and he slipped. His lunch tray went flying, airborne cheesy fries turning into greasy projectiles, all falling directly on Dee Evan’s perfectly coordinated green outfit.

Every student who saw the collision went silent, and the rest of the room followed suit as Dee began to scream.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to, are you okay?” Virgil sputtered out, blushing a deep red that showed even on his golden-brown skin. Logan pulled him away as Dee began to hyperventilate and the teachers on lunch duty hurried over.

One was Ms. Darbus. “What is going on here?” she demanded, looking from Dee to Virgil.

Dee glanced at Virgil for the split second it took to make a decision. “Look at this!” he cried, his face the picture of dignified affront. “That Montez boy just dumped his lunch on me - on purpose! It's all part of their plan to ruin our musical. And those basketball robots are obviously behind it! Why do you think Roman auditioned?” He sniffed delicately, getting choked up. “After all the hard work you've put into this show. It just doesn't seem right.”

As he spoke, Roman walked into the lunchroom, eyes going wide at the scene in front of him. He sidled over to Remy and gestured to the the pandemonium and the sniffling Dee.

“Hey, Rem, what’s up?”

“What's up? Oh, let's see…ummm...” Remy said sarcastically, gesturing with his tea for effect. “Your new boyfriend or whatever is attacking our resident YouTube Princess, you missed free-period workout yesterday to audition for some heinous musical, and now suddenly people are... confessing.”

Roman turned slightly red. “Boyfriend? I don’t have a- wait, confessing? What?”

Patton was walking by, heading towards the exit, when Remy grabbed him and pushed him in from of Roman.

“Exhibit A. This bitch is baking. Cream boolay or some shit.”

“Oh, what’s that?” Roman asked

“Crème brûlée!” Patton said, practically vibrating with excitement. “Oh, it's a creamy custard-like filling with a caramelized surface. It's really satisfy-”

“Shut UP, Pat!” Remy groaned.

Patton went silent, dejected, and walked away, looking like he was trying to hide in plain sight. For a six-foot-seven basketball player, it was nigh impossible, but Jamahl and the skaters caught him and struck up a conversation.

Remy gestured angrily at the group. “You see what’s happening? Our team is coming apart because of this dumb singing thing. The drama geeks, the brainiacs, they all think they can talk to us. Look, the skater dudes are… mingling.”

Roman stared at his best friend. “Is that… bad?”

“Suddenly people are thinking that they can do other stuff. Stuff that is not their stuff. They've got you thinking about show tunes, when we've got a playoff game next week!” Remy said, exasperated. “The team needs you, Ro. You’re the captain. Without you, we have no leader. You know you’re my bro, but you need to decide where your focus is gonna be, and I hope you decide fast.”

He pushed his sunglasses back over his eyes and left the lunchroom, leaving Roman alone.

In the corner, Virgil was sitting with Logan, trying his best to hide from Dee and the rest of the drama club.

“Is Dee going to hunt me down? I did apologize and it was clearly an accident, right?”

“Virgil, I have not gone out of my way to learn more about the Evans twins, but I have been in their class since we were children. And no one has ever beaten Dee out for a role he had set his mind to, not since kindergarten.”

Virgil gulped. “I’m not trying to beat anyone out! We didn't even audition, we were just... singing.”

“I do not know that you will be able to convince him of that.” Logan responded, adjusting his glasses. “He is an admittedly talented actor, one who can happily and easily play characters of any gender. And he is incredibly ambitious. If he could convince Ms. Darbus to let him play both Romeo and Juliet, even Cee would be pushed out.”

“He’s welcome to it. This audition thing, it just happened. But… I actually liked it, a lot,” Virgil said, a small smile spreading across his face. “Logan, do you ever feel like there's this whole other person inside of you just looking for a way to come out?”

Logan stared back. “No.”

Virgil grimaced and looked down, embarrassed, before Logan continued. “You see, I have already come out, several years ago.”

Virgil looked up again, making eye contact with a straight-faced Logan. “Mr. McKessie, was that a joke?”

“Of course not. Jokes are for non-serious people. I, however, am very serious. See, I wear a necktie.”

Virgil snorted as they both walked out of the lunchroom. He was fairly certain he spotted the hint of an amused smirk on Logan’s face, too.

After their next class, he discovered a note stuck in his locker. A crude map of the school was drawn with a red arrow looping around it. It was signed with a smiley face, and a big red R.

SCENE: Rooftop Garden

Virgil climbed the stairs to the roof, only to find a huge trellis covered in green life. Shelves and pots of cacti and succulents surrounded him. Roman was waiting on a bench, grinning.

“Dang, basketboy. It’s like walking into the wilderness up here.”

“Not as wild as that cafeteria, right?”

“Oh god,” Virgil said, covering his face. “Don’t remind me. Not even a full week at a new school and I’ve already humiliated myself into the next century.”

“Nooo, don’t worry about it. They’ll forget with the next public breakup. It’ll be fine.”

Virgil sighed, trying to relax. “So what is this place? Your secret hideout?”

“Yeah, basically,” Roman said with a grin, admiring the view. “Thanks to a couple key members of the science club, the team has no idea it exists.”

Virgil felt a weight in his stomach again. “You really have the school wired, don’t you? Seems like everyone wants to be your friend, or do you favors, or be with- be around you.”

Luckily, it seemed Roman hadn’t noticed his slip of the tongue, caught his own contemplation. “Oh yeah, I’m everyone’s Prince Charming. Right up until we lose.”

“Is it hard, being the coach’s son?”

“He makes me practice harder, which isn’t always a bad thing. I just don't know what he's gonna say when he finds out about the singing.”

Virgil grimaced. “You worried?”

“It’s just…” Roman started, then stopped and sighed.

“We don’t have to talk about it-” Virgil began, but Roman shook his head.

“No, I want to talk about it. I never really can, not with the team. The thing is, my parents’ friends are always saying ‘Your son is The Basketball Guy. You must be so… proud.’” His lips twisted in a wry smile. “I am proud of the team and how well we work together. They’re my best friends, and they trust me to lead them. But sometimes, I don’t want to be ‘the basketball guy,’ I just want to be a guy, you know?”

Virgil nodded, then realized Roman was staring off into the distance and couldn’t see him. “I do know. But I saw you talking with Joan the other day, the way you treated them. Do your friends even know that version of you?”

“To the team, I’m the captain, and the playmaker,” Roman responded quietly. “That’s what they need me to be.”

“Then they don’t really know you, do they?” Virgil asked. “I mean it when I say I get it. At every school before this one, I’ve been the weird gloomy science boy. At least, until some asshole outed me and I became the weird gloomy bisexual science boy. I’ve actually had a fresh start here - I’ve been just me, whoever that is.”

“Still a little gloomy, or at least emo,” Roman said, pointing to Virgil’s purple hair with a lopsided grin.

“Guilty as charged, princey-boy,” Virgil retorted. “The weirdest thing is that yesterday, in auditions… while singing with you, I just felt like a boy.”

“You even look like one, too,” Roman said, faking shock. Virgil stuck his tongue out at him.

They both sat, surrounded by plants and silence, staring over the desert landscape that surrounded the school. Virgil finally broke the comfortable silence.

“You know, it’s funny, being surrounded by plants, I can’t help thinking about being a little kid again. When I was in kindergarten, I actually got married to my friends.”

“Friends, plural?”

“Oh yeah. A girl and boy, at the same time. The ceremony was under the willow tree and we all had flower crowns. It was very moving. I mean, the flower crowns were actually just handles of clovers we’d pulled out of the grass and dropped on each other’s hair, but still.”

Roman laughed. “Well now I feel lame. The most exciting thing that happened to me in kindergarten was Remy moving across town. He finally moved next door and I got to see him every day instead of just most days. Little did I know I could have been in marital bliss all these years.”

“Unfortunately, that was right before my mom’s ex left, and we moved for the first time. I’ve been in so many schools over the years since then. But you know the one thing I really miss? The first couple of moves, I’d meet a new kid, and they’d know nothing about me, but ten seconds later we’d be playing like we’d been friends for life. Once you get older, everyone’s more cut off, and not as willing to talk to the new kid. That’s how I became this anxious emo mess,” he said, with a gesture to all of himself. “But New Year’s, and yesterday… singing with you feels like being in kindergarten again. It’s just easy.”

Roman looked over. Virgil was smiling, his face more open and lit up than he’d ever seen him. His golden-brown cheeks were practically glowing.

“I never thought about it before you - singing, I mean,” Roman found his eyes slipping down and getting caught on the boy’s full lips and pulled his glance away, hoping his blush would go unnoticed. “But um. I’ve also liked it. The singing.”

Virgil looked over. “Roman, do you want to actually do this? The callbacks?”

Roman thought a moment, then met the other boy’s eyes. A grin spread across his face. “Just call me the weird callback boy, My Chemically-Inclined Romance.”

#breakin’ free #breakin free #high school musical au #high school au #Roses Writes Fanfic #sanders sides fanfiction #sanders sides fanfic #Roman You Are So Very Gay #ts roman #ts virgil #ts patton #ts logan #ts remy #ts deceit #//deceit #everyone loves patton

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wolfjawswriter · 6 years

Text

“The King’s Choice”- Kippwood

“The King’s Choice” - Lockwood x Quill

Lockwood and Co. Series

Warning: Based on “The Cost of the Crown” by Margie Butler

Summary: The choices a king must make are never easy.

AU: King/Knight

Request: Anonymous

——Lockwood——

The moon shone brightly, soaring high in the nighttime, pitch-black sky, bathing the grey walls of the palace and lighting the ample room I was in with its auroral and silvery light, reaching the farthest corners of the room. Everything inside it shone as brightly; all the books with their differently colored cases, on their wooden shelves that extended a whole wall on the east side of the room. The portraits of deceased family members were lightened by it, their eyes lost on some random point of the room to which they had been staring at for years now. The blades of old ceremonial swords reflected the light just as bright as it came, sitting quietly on their usual places under their respective portraits. The mahogany desk and silk-padded chair that stood just a few steps behind me were equally lightened by the sky’s silver orb. The fireplace’s warm and golden light shone against the cold, silvery light of the moon, creating a beautiful, familiar sight for me, one I had grown accustomed to over the long hours I had spent in this room.

But tonight I couldn’t concentrate on it. No, not tonight. My eyes only had place for one, particular and distant, that currently stood outside the door of this study. Dear Gods, how hard it is right now and had been since the beginning of the night that I had to resist the temptation of calling them inside the room and ask them to stay here like we had done so, oh so many times before. But those were other times and circumstances.

I sighed and kept looking out the window of my study. In the distance I could see the many small houses of the people of my kingdom, some of the windows still alight in them, reassuring me I wasn’t the only one that had to stay up to the late hours of the bitter nights. I couldn’t blame them of course, with what the future seemed to hold for us looming on the threshold of my lands.

Who could have ever thought things would come down to this? A country as powerful as mine, who had conquered countless nations in peaceful and violent manners during my reign, as well as my father’s before me, and his father’s before him, suddenly brought to its knees. Who could have ever guessed that a province that had never held any historical value, or means to properly commercialize, or resources that could make them of any interest to anyone, would ever manage to grow as much as Deadstone did? Who would have ever conceived the idea that in such an insignificant, irrelevant place a greedy, mighty and power-hungry leader would be born?

But then again, I had to recognize and accept that, as bitter as it made me to think of it, as much as I wanted to deny the truth, I couldn’t escape the reality of the situation; I had caused this.

The perish of my own people, of the colossal monarchy that my family had so bravely and arduously fought to protect over the years, was a fate brought upon us by me. And for such ridiculous circumstances!

The Lord of Deadstone was a man who never found the potential to grow powerful in anything other than his province’s alcoholic beverages, but never once tried to commercialize any of it to any other country around his. Every other ruler, myself included, thought him and his province were nothing more than mere dust on the doorstep of our domains, and we weren’t wrong. However, when the man fell ill a few years ago, he married off his daughters, being as they were the only offspring he had, and hoped that one of them would catch the attention of one of us bigger rulers.

To say that he had made a party to present his daughters to us would be telling a lie; he made the party to find them all a husband in the act. I, myself, got to meet them all, but none of them had anything that held my interest, and when talking with some of the neighboring kingdom’s rulers I said many things about the Lord and his daughters I now realize I shouldn’t have said.

Now, it wouldn’t have been that bad if it had been the Lord himself who heard me when I said those things, or some other daughter of his. Oblivious to the man’s youngest daughter’s presence just a few steps away from me I spouted out all sorts of irreverences about their family and province.

Now, years later from that night’s events, just a year ago, Deadstone conquered one of its neighboring towns in only three day’s time, apparently in a battle that lasted the whole three days. I had been bewildered to say the least; that province had never had an army of its own, not during my days on the throne, or my father’s, and during none of the other kingdom’s ruler’s time. And if they had had one, it wouldn’t have been one strong enough to conquer anybody!

And only a few weeks after that, their new and now-bigger army advanced against another of the countries surrounding Deadstone, and shortly after another, their soldier’s numbers growing with exceptional speed. A meeting between monarchs was called in; the stress and fear Deadstone’s drive for power caused for the rest of us grew as big and fast as the province’s lands and victories during battle, and something had to be done to stop the advancing of the army that they had so suddenly developed.

To this very day I find it hard to comprehend what we had been presented with during the meeting. The Lord of Deadstone was yet to die even though he was badly sick; somehow he had managed to avoid death all these years, something quite impressive on its own, but not the most surprising thing of the day. The person that commanded the entirety of his army for him, the person that had put together the battalion from the mere nothing, the prodigious mind behind all their unbeatable battle strategies, was none other than the Lord’s youngest daughter; Lucy Joan Carlyle.

Unmarried, uncouth, vicious, brutally honest and highly ambitious, she was a completely different woman from the girl I met her as that night at the party. She spoke with such comprehension of battle forms, of ancient wars, of complex politics that only the best and most experienced commanders could have possessed. To this day it is unknown how she came to custody such compound knowledge, but there are some theories, none of which I believed in.

She declared war against all those that had laughed at their province, promising to bring them to their knees and have them plead mercy of her for their people and them, which she swore from that moment she wouldn’t have any, but most of all, she declared war against me and my people. This was of course no less than fair for the things I had said about her and her family.

I let out a deep, grieving sigh and returned to the chair behind my desk. My thoughts drifted again to the one that stood outside my study in silence, unmoving, only a call away from me and yet farther than he had ever been. I knew he wouldn’t hesitate to come to me if I called him, which was why I couldn’t ask him in now, or else my thoughts would focus on him and solely on him: the Commander of my Royal Guard, Quill Kipps.

God, the lone thought of his name made my cheeks paint red, my whole face feel hot and my suit like it was suffocating me. And for my own demise, he was very well aware of all this and many times took it to his own advantage, but of course, only when we were alone. He wouldn’t dare to do so in public and for that I am very thankful.

He was everything I didn’t look for in a relationship of any kind (whenever I had been looking for one) and for some reason I found that incredibly intriguing. From the moment we met I noticed there was something about him that wasn’t quite the same as with everybody else. He wasn’t scared to treat me like if I was just another guard of the castle; rough and yet never quite rude. Painfully honest and yet never impolite. Undiplomatic and yet not ill-mannered.

And somehow this had all caught my eyes.

Besides of course, how well he looked in that Royal Guard Commander uniform of his and with his armor on…lets just say some of my most pleasant dreams (and nights) have been plagued by it.

While his company provided me with the sweetest of comforts from all troubles and hardships my royal duties brought upon me and were bound to bring in the future, I feared that for this present problem his presence would only torment me and make my thoughts all the more confusing. I needed to stay clear-minded for a decision such as this one, after all.

I hated that it was the actions of my past that had brought this upon me, I despised myself for it, and yet, I knew that I wasn’t entirely guilty.

The Lord of Deadstone, as sick and elderly as he might be, he was still alive and ruling his province, as much as princess Lucy wanted to protest against his authority, his word was still law in their province, so she and the rest of their people still had to do as he said.

Currently his battalion was stationed at the skirts of my kingdom, ready and waiting for the order to take us down. My own soldiers were posted at the edges of the towns, prepared for the moment in which I gave the order. Yet, I fear it may not come anytime soon.

Due to advice his daughter now regretted giving to him, the Lord now wished to possess my lands and by as little violent means as possible. So, he has offered me his daughter’s hand in marriage. It was a…sensible arrangement. My people would be safe from surefire death, unlike the subjects of so many other rulers who’s kingdoms had been devastated in days time.

And yet I couldn’t make up my mind to it.

Many would say it was an obvious decision; marry the princess, save my subjects, become the most powerful king, because it was obvious that’s where things would be headed. But I didn’t want all that. I wanted to stay here in my castle where I could have my weekly royal meetings with my counselors, where I could everyday make audiences and listen to my subject’s petitions and feuds and solve them peacefully with them. Where I could have my quiet work nights in my study and call in the man I loved to make me company like he had been doing every night for the past years.

How could I give all that up?

Then again, I could say no to his proposal and go to war against him. On the other hand, if the other countries hadn’t stood a chance against his army, even if mine was considerably bigger than theirs on people and resources, what was the possibility that I could win to him when his artillery was already bigger than mine?

And if I sent my soldiers to war against his, chances were he wouldn’t make it back…against such an enemy it wouldn’t matter his years of expertise on his job, he was still going to be fighting something that was times more powerful…

So either I gave up to him now before an altar and vow my life to someone I didn’t love now and would probably never love, or I gave myself a few more days by his side only to loose him in battle and condemn myself to a dungeon from which I would never escape alive, sentencing most of my people to a similar fate.

Sometimes it was a blessed thing to be a king, but others it was nothing but a burden to carry to the grave. Our wing’s are cut short by our responsibility to our people and our nation. We couldn’t choose freely like most think, we must put everything else before us in every decision we take.

It is the cost of the crown we bear, to give up our lives for those we serve.

#lockwood and co #Anthony lockwood #quill kipps #lucy carlyle #its a cute song #this is my definition of 'short story'

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writersdreamermind · 7 years

Text

Miss Thursday

And the next chapter is up!

Thank you to anyone who has read and reviewed it so far - it’s great to see, as always.

Pairing(s): Endeavour Morse / Joan Thursday

Word Count: 5739

Chapters: 2 / ?

Read on AO3 / FF.net

CHAPTER ONE LINK: AO3 / FF.net

Read under the cut!!

The following months were the ones where Joan’s self-professed ‘curiosity’ about Morse soon fell apart, when she realized that in reality, she’d fallen for him the moment he’d sent that awkwardly endearing smile her way.

Of course, she’d spent a lot of time trying to ignore it – that was usually what she did, anyway. She’d decided ages ago that it hadn’t been practical.

Falling in love with a policeman just wasn’t on.

Of course, turning up on the doorstep nearly every morning hadn’t helped matters – his bright blue eyes, and shy smile, ever the polite one, often made it difficult to forget him, even when she had become so used to seeing him in tow with her Dad. Apparently the association with her father didn’t mar the attraction as much as she would’ve liked.

Opening the door that Saturday, and she couldn’t help teasing him again.

“Saturday afternoon; someone’s keen,” she’d said appraisingly, arm on the doorframe, able to hear the football on in the next room, her Dad begrudgingly muttering something along the lines of ‘No, Sam, left a bit! Yes! There!’, while Sam grunted in a sound not unlike that of annoyance.

Morse had glanced at her, the slightest smile twitching at the corner of his lips, but holding back, as if wondering aloud whether he ought to risk such a thing.

Lord, she’d never met anyone as shy as him.

“Miss Thursday,” The same greeting as usual, then. It never failed to make her smile, although perhaps that was because it was generally a hard thing not to when he was around.

He had glanced at the ground, only to look past her at the sound of the television, just about audible from the front door.

“I was looking for your father,”

Christ, as if he could have been more formal.

“I thought you were a bit early for a date,”

He had looked at her curiously, eyes widening like an innocent child – perhaps because, in some ways, he was one. Some innocent bystander who, by some miracle (or perhaps nightmare) often found himself the brunt of the joke without ever realizing it.

And to think – he had no idea how she felt about him. It was silly, really – expecting a policeman to be paying attention to her – but Morse was different. He had been since the moment he’d arrived. All quiet charm and endearing awkwardness and formal address and pale features. He’d been nothing like the rest of them – a tenderness not often seen in men, especially young ones. Brash, he was not; cocky, he absolutely wasn’t.

A quiet genius, though?

Well, just about anyone had been able to vouch for that at this point.

Of course, she had let him through the door. And, as always, he had slipped past without a word, bar a nod of thanks that always made him look humbled to be accepted.

Lord, she had to stop fantasizing about him.

~ ~ ~

As time had went on, Morse had become such a frequenter at their house that Joan became an almost nonsensical idiot when he was in the room – no matter the occasion, she seemed to find it necessary that he was always near her somehow, even when she partnered their interactions with a coy smirk and offhand teases that made it seem all too nonchalant and carefree.

And it wasn’t.

Like any infatuation she’d ever had, Morse had become the sun to which she necessitating orbiting – because it suited her that way. Every precious moment that he came into the house – still bleary eyed from waking up too early (or staying up too late) – hair still a little wild despite his no-doubt worldly efforts to tame it, she’d been there. Just shying away from him a little. Doing her lipstick and catching his eye. Swishing past him and finding their shoulders brush. Flashing him a smile as she ran up the stairs for the bag that she knew was on the kitchen table.

For everything in the world, Joan was head over heels for him.

And for everything else, he remained oblivious to it.

She felt she should have known, of course. Whenever it had come to the ones that mattered, they’d never looked twice. She was his boss’ daughter – whatever circumstances could come of that, romance was not one of them. And Joan had known it from the start.

Morse was Morse. He was everything she might have wanted to have, had she paid attention when she’d first seen him. Of course, chastising her past self from two days ago, every time she came in contact with him, had proved relentlessly frustrating, but it served to remind her of how frustratingly oblivious he could be. Of course, he had his moments – where, for some inexplicable reason, he returned her quick smile or pardoned himself when she rushed by.

And he was ever the gentleman.

It had all come to a head, of course, when she’d looked across the pub and saw him in the corner booth, Constable Strange by his side, by way of an interesting barrier he might have if something went amiss. He’d looked positively struck – like he was pondering the aftermath of a well-aimed slap across the face; there was every chance, Joan had thought, that he’d receive one if he wasn’t careful one of these days.

They’d chatted. Albeit stoically.

“How’d you know her?” He’d asked.

“At the bank.” She’d turned to look over her shoulder at him, refusing to acknowledge the errant wave of hair that had swept down out of place over his forehead.

“Nobody there really knows what Dad does,” she’d said, staring out into the pub with a look akin to that of disdain, if Morse had been reading her expression correctly. Although Joan had always held the opinion that pubs never really worked out for her – often too many people crowded round her, and she hated the idea of not being able to move for bodies – she loved the atmosphere. The warm and communal feel to the place always helped put her at ease. But then, of course, she’d had to look over to the window, only to see Morse muttering something to Strange with a worried frown crossing his features.

‘Course, that had turned into an expression of blind shock when he’d seen her across the room, coat not even off of her shoulders.

“I had no idea,” he’d said, and she’d believed him, even when she’d told him to drop the ‘Miss Thursday’’s for a bit.

Watching Strange and his date, Joan had swirled her drink tepidly, having allowed herself to feel only slightly miffed at the idea that this entire thing had been a complete mess from start to finish. Meeting Morse hadn’t really been the intention, and it had been a nice surprise – but he hadn’t wanted to see her. That much she could tell.

She’d seen the whole thing. How the dark-skinned girl – no older than 25 – had walked in, her friends around her like a comfortable entourage, and turned just enough to see Morse sitting right at the back with someone that wasn’t her. The hurt had been evident in her open features, dark eyes more than a little disappointed by the scene in front of her. Joan had stubbornly stared at the grooves in the wooden table as she’d felt Morse’s frame brush up against hers as he stood, watching her leave with a hurried step. She’d glanced up only once, only to feel her chest tighten in bitter remorse at his expression.

He’d looked positively distraught.

All wide eyes and parted lips, the dim, bronzed light of the pub casting him like a figure of the so famed Knights of the Round Table. There was that Galahad figure again – innocence and youth distraught at the cruelty and injustice of the world he was faced with. She could tell he was wearing a particularly pressed shirt and he’d taken great care to brush down his suit. He’d looked like he always did – careful and constructed, but nonetheless intriguing in his own quiet, simple way. And yet, the put together appearance hadn't made up for the wrecked expression.

They’d walked out of the pub about an hour later, Joan having held the conversation about as far away as she could from the subject of the girl that Morse had seemed so upset over. It hadn’t been selfishness, she didn’t think – but perhaps she’d been too generous to herself in that respect. She’d been hanging onto the idea of him for such a long time, that being hit with the reality of his separate situation and the people in it made for a difficult time. She’d known that Morse lead a very different life from her, and had done for nearly all his life; she’d been a brash and fierce child who was too mischievous for her own good; he seemed like the type to sit quietly in the corner and observe, but be the first to put himself in danger if it helped someone else. So, consequently, they were different people, and radically so - and so, perhaps, that also extended to the fact that friendship was about all she could hope to aspire to with him - and quite possibly, only ever aspire to.

She’d heard about the case by that point. The missing girl, and the case that seemed unable to rest in the earth like it should have done; some haunted house nonsense that she'd since stopped believing in about 10 years passed.

As they had walked down the pavement, the streetlamps casting hazy, orange shadows on the road, the air had been crisp but cool, an almost nice compliment to the somewhat chilly feeling Joan had had for weeks now, residing deep in her chest like an infection that refused to budge and go and annoy someone else.

She was outwardly cheerful, but secretly lamenting the idea that a certain Detective Constable had his sights set elsewhere.

She’d known it was silly – unrequited attraction hadn’t been a new concept then, and it certainly wasn’t one before even that.

“So… anything interesting to report your side of the wall?” Joan had asked casually, watching with a feigned interest at the cars passing by as they had strolled side by side. She caught glimpses of his current appearance every time they passed under the glowing light of the lamps, the orange picking out the auburn in his strawberry blond hair and the freckles across his face, his expression, once again, guarded by some uncertain look of regret.

She’d supposed it was that girl from before.

She’d had nothing against her. In fact, she’d felt rather sorry for her, whoever she’d been, and whatever it was she meant to him. She’d been temporarily bitter about the fact that her supposed date with him had all been a total, unforeseen fluke, and that Morse had put off some date with date with the other girl just to back up Strange. She couldn't quite decide whether he'd been chivalric or badly timed, but she supposed it was a mix of both.

He’d done something stupid, but ever the gentleman, he was beating himself up for it to the point that he was black and blue, that same polite smile on his face, like he felt it against the rules to be honest with people about how he felt.

All about the façade, and nothing more.

“Nothing much – work,” he’d muttered, pulling at his earlobe in a habit that she’d kept to herself, watching as his hair curled around his ears with his constant messing about with it.

The whir of a car had passed by, Joan pulling her coat around herself, and they’d continued on in silence. They’d always had the most short-lived conversations.

“God, Morse – if there was ever someone who was more tight-lipped in their life,” she’d laughed into the night, puffing out breath as she’d smiled to herself, glancing down at the pavement, making note of how her toes hit the ground in her shoes.

“I prefer taciturn,” he’d replied amiably, and there had been a glimmer of a smirk on his lips as they’d passed by another streetlamp, the world still falling into darkness and quiet as it let them have this one walk together, without any repercussions.

“Of course you do,” she’d muttered under her breath, almost tempted to kick the pavement in distraction.

It took her a moment to look back up at him again, keeping her teasing smile in place on her face, glad that her eyes had their kohl rimmed look – otherwise, he’d probably realize how tired she looked.

“And you, Miss Thursday?” he’d asked that tentatively, as if he was already aware of how she was feeling. Although about him, she was entirely sure he hadn’t a clue about that.

“Alright. Work,” she’d mimicked his response, and he’d laughed in kind.

The silence continued.

“Are you alright? You don’t seem yourself tonight,”

He’d taken that moment to look round at her, almost in surprise, his coat strangely absent from his shoulders. Perhaps the cool, spring air was what he had needed. She could make out just how slender he was now - almost bony had it not been for his naturally slim features. She supposed she'd been right - maybe he hadn't been eating well lately.

“Sorry. Um, work,”

“You said that,” she’d remarked, and he barely glanced in her direction, seemingly lost in the vast emptiness of the sky above them, stars barely visible if not entirely gone altogether.

“This runaway – from the school?” He’d nodded, raising his eyebrows to the ground in admittance, head bowed from thought. He’d always looked like those contemplative statues of the scholars - that she’d been dragged to see by command of school trips - as they were forever intrigued by the smallest of natures in the world, endlessly enticed by the marble page in their hand. She hadn't loved statues, but looking at Morse, and she was maybe beginning to see why the sculptors had spent so long trying to perfect the look. It was worth it when you could see the reality.

It was a look that fitted him well, she’d thought.

Although, maybe it had been his look all along, completely unintentionally.

“You’ll find her,” she’d said that almost like a promise to him. A promise that was about more than a runaway girl.

A promise about love, and acceptance, and a job well done.

He’d find her, she’d hoped. She really hoped he did – even if, in the end, it wasn’t her. Even if the mystery girl of the future, to whom Morse would spend no doubt the rest of his life adoring, wasn't her. Things like this never had turned out the way she wanted, so she hadn't really expected this to come to anything. That had just been her indulging a fantasy.

“Well, I think this is the part where I say ‘Thanks for a lovely evening’, and you say ‘How about a coffee?’. And I say, ‘I can’t’, so we have a long kiss under the porch light until my Dad taps on the window - and I go in and you go home,”

That entire sentence had felt like a rush, too – maybe it had been the thrill of seeing him right in front of her; her Dad’s young apprentice – his Leonardo – and finally seeing him without the paintbrushes in hand. He was merely a man, and like everything else, a vulnerable one.

He’d smiled thinly, but somehow softly, like he almost believed her for what she said. Like he could actually envision – for just a moment – how that kiss might play out.

She’d glanced at his lips for too long, she knew. He’d looked so guarded at that point, and yet very open, and probably never noticed. She’d discovered as of late that he thought he was better at disguising his emotions than he actually was.

In actuality, this whole scene had been reminiscent of that time that had started the whole affair.

“Thought I’d be alright with a copper,”

“Well, there are coppers, and there are coppers,”

“And what sort are you?”

His smile had been teasing and shy and honest and genuine all at once, Joan thought. Every time, and he still managed to be an absolute gentleman, so unlike all the others before him.

“I’m the sort that sees young ladies safely home. Go on – I’ll wait til you’re in,”

Back then, she’d been such an innocent compared to now. Every time she looked back, Joan always felt she was so stupid in the past. Maybe she’d be constantly stupid for the rest of her life.

“I don’t care for coffee,”

Joan had nearly laughed at that – so obliviously stupid in his own way. Really, if she could have been any more obvious, she would’ve had to tackle him in a kiss until he got the message.

Maybe she had consented herself to the idea – he was still too caught up with that other girl.

She’d just leave him to it.

“At the pub – that girl,”

“I shouldn’t have lied,” His words had been so characteristically blunt that she’d shook her head in disbelief, sighing good-heartedly. Morse, however he was, seemed incapable of being anything but selfless. He had never made light of what happened in the world – if it was his failing, then by heck he would make sure God himself knew.

“Buy her some flowers,” she’d said, smiling as brightly as she could manage amidst the darkness and misfortune that seemed to prevail upon her life no matter what she’d do. Perhaps being a copper’s daughter meant that she’d forever be loomed over by her Dad, no matter how much she loved him and his tough, honest love that never wavered in her. Fred Thursday had a way with him that had always been hard to ignore, and apparently Morse felt the same way.

“It’s not like that.” He’d paused in thought, sighing heavily as his shoulders had slumped and he’d curled his hands in his trouser pockets. He had been the picture of regret that night, Joan thought; perfectly at odds with himself because he’d refused to be upfront one time out of thousand when he’d been exactly that all along.

“And anyway… I don’t think she’s the ‘flowers’ type,”

Joan had nearly had to stop herself from raising an eyebrow sardonically in response.

“For God’s sake, Morse. We’re all the ‘flowers’ type.”

He’d laughed quietly at that statement. She’d said nothing more.

Perhaps the kiss she’d brushed across his cheek - entranced momentarily by the coolness of his skin against her own flushed face – had maybe been a little too much. Maybe it had needed to happen. Whatever the case, she hadn’t regretted it.

What she’d always regretted was that she hadn’t told him then, and she still hadn’t told him now.

#itv endeavour #endeavour morse #joan thursday #fanfiction #chapter two #endeavour series 5 #fred thursday #thanks to all my amazing readers I'd be seriously lost in a pit somewhere without you all

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andieforrester · 7 years

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dead rabbit hopes - self para

maybe my beauty was only meant to be seen by the men a crow beside me, scavenger king, my body: a savaged thing.

She doesn’t check the mirror much– nothing good ever comes to greet her. It just makes the pain worse, more tangible. Dark purple on her neck, her cheek, her jaw reminds her of a closed fist because she talked back. Crusty dried blood on her lips and wrists reminds her of the time in solitude: darkness, cold, a sense of being lost. Chewing on her lips, eyes dripping salt into the new layers of flesh. But the undamaged parts seem the hardest to look at. Her chest is small, bony because when she does have food in front of her, it doesn’t want to go down her throat. But He still finds something there to touch. ( While she stares at the ceiling and begs for some way out. ) Her hips are sharp, too, no Kim Kardashian butt, almost-stick legs. None of that keeps Him away. When she looks at the unbattered places, she wishes they were just as ugly as everything else, in a way. Maybe if He just hit her, all over, everywhere, it’d be enough to keep Him from doing something worse. She doesn’t know why IT’s worse. IT hurts, but not like when his knuckles on her cheek almost send her to the floor and leave the room spinning. But IT’s worse. She drifts up to the ceiling with Marie and Harriet and Joan when IT’s happening. She tries not to watch, listen, know. She just leaves, takes a break from being alive. Maybe that should make IT easier, but it doesn’t. So when she sees all of it, on her body, in the mirror, she frowns. If her body was really hers, there would be no purple. Or red-brown crust. Everything would be soft tan and rosy, glowing, and her teeth would always show because her lips would not be ripped and she would smile. All day. And she would be able to look at the other parts and like them. And maybe touch them ( she’s not that oblivious, she knows people do that. ) Now, they are tainted. His being has somehow attached to them permanently and looking at them reminds her that she lives in a house with fists and a basement and a bed that is unspeakably difficult to sleep in.

maybe my beauty was only meant to be seen on death’s bed a crow beside me, scavenger king, my body: ravishing.

There is a sudden and profound sense of loss when it finally hits her, sitting by the window when a man passes and she tries out an introduction under her breath ( hi, I’m Alexandra, ) –no you’re not: Alexandra is dead. Whoever lives in this body now is not her. Alexandra died when He took too much: December 6, 2013. She’s angry, too. Tired. Tired of hiding, submitting, staying silent and defeated and chronically uncertain. ( Will He come back before she dies? Does she even want to live? Is it over? Is she ready for it to be over? ) She’s not ready. It’s her life, and she wants it back and she wants to try, maybe she can– her voice is raising, cuss words escape, she is fighting!– silenced by the basement door slamming. Quick, easy solution. She isn’t cuffed, but He knows she’ll stay down there, and she knows it, too, and it makes her want to destroy everything in this house, including herself. There are so many memories, sharp edges that cut into her consciousness. Failed escapes, horrific consequences for minor crimes ( like looking at the phone while it was ringing, ) the bed, lying in the basement and walking in and out of a body whose organs were slowly failing, asking for advice from dead people, always taking it. She stares at the spot where the old cuffs wait. — She remembers standing over herself there. Usually, she could only leave when IT was happening, but this was different. There was a sense of urgency, like she’d been allowed to leave in order to accomplish something. She remembers watching fluttering eyelashes, dry lips, nothing else moving but her fingers. They clenched into fists sometimes, like she was trying to hold on, but then relaxed, as if letting go. Marie? – A pink dress appeared. Yes? – I’m dying, right? – Yes. – Joan? – Chain maille. Yes? – Should I just crawl back in and go to sleep? – Are you ready? She knew she wasn’t then, and knelt down. Alexandra, she pleaded. Wake up and make Him help you. Alexandra didn’t move. Alexandra. Alexandra! She screamed at her for an hour, it seemed, then dug her nails into her raw wrists. A half-hearted moan answered. She dug harder, kicked her, shook her, held her eyelids open and begged. Finally, a hoarse cry. And He brought water. And she lived. A few days later, He let her come back upstairs. — She knew then, and she knows now. It’s not time, and she’s not giving up. The next morning, she fights better. Less yelling, more action. No time for fear or caution. A knife slips into her hand and He loses His advantage, and she’s shocked by how quickly the power shifts after twelve years of the same roles, over and over. She puts the knife down and He starts to rebuild– NO! She grabs the cutting board and swings. And when she stops, looks around, sees Him at her feet, she realizes she’s won. When she stands in front of the mirror at the hotel in Dallas, she notices a change. The bruises are barely there, light green. No crusty red. She’s still small, but there’s significantly less hollowness, and not just because she’s eating. She gets closer, looks at what she always kept her eyes away from before. A breast, she can say it, see it, even touch it, maybe, some day. It’s small, but not so ugly now. Round, holds itself up against gravity, somehow. She turns, looks at her butt, too. It’s not bad, either. Not all on its own. She puts on her pajamas and turns off the light.

i’m ready to confess i’m hungry for you.

If every person on Earth has an opposite, Sam is His. Everything He made her feel, Sam seems to turn inside out, upside down, and she destroys the evidence of its existence ( momentarily. ) Still, she isn’t quite expecting everything that starts to happen. First, there’s the feeling of a crush, an innocent early stage of love. One she never got to before He interrupted everything. She blushes a lot and wants to be around her almost constantly, even though sometimes she gets nervous when she talks. Then it’s more, like a date to homecoming or prom. Someone she’s comfortable with, laughs with, but can open up to. Someone she’s starting to trust. Which is hard, and slow. There are a billion checkpoints for things like trust. A billion pauses to ensure she deserves such a high honor. And she wants to kiss her. Even when it doesn’t even fit into the situation, like, even when they’re in the middle of a conversation, some weird mouth magnet starts pulling her close to Sam’s mouth magnet and she has to tell it to stop– this is not the time. It’s weird. And one night she wakes up from a dream and there’s a weird aching feeling, but not a bad ache like in her bed in The House. It’s deep and internal and she tries to remember her dream, but all she sees is a wisp. Of Sam. Then it transforms again. Stronger, deeper. She thinks maybe this is how it feels to be in love. Like her heart pulls a little when she sees her, tries to jump out and join Sam’s and beat there inside her chest, the two of them together. She thinks she’s the most beautiful person the world has ever known, and the smartest and funniest and kindest and best. She’s the best. She wants to hold her hand all day. And everything else gets stronger, too. She starts to remember dreams, kisses that move away from lips, hands and bedsheets and– things. Things she didn’t know she could feel. And when Sam is kissing her, the ground disappears and she floats and they’re suspended in the air, no gravity, and nothing hurts then. Sam’s eyes look at her differently than she ever looked at herself. The opposite of how He looked at her. Like she’s the most exquisite work of art in a gallery, the brightest star in the sky, the goddess Aphrodite, Venus. Like she commands all the love and beauty in the universe. And it melts into her. And when she looks in the mirror, everything is new and reborn. Pure, almost, maybe. No bruises. Old scars, ignored by Sam’s eyes because they don’t change her vision. And she smiles because she’s tan. Rosy. Glowing. Teeth showing. Her body is muscle now, not bone. Her breasts are not vulnerable and timid, they are lovely. Her butt is still not Kim Kardashian’s, but it is made of donuts and pasta and pizza and running through the park at dawn and it is beautiful. And her insides are not all smashed up and destroyed and hurting, they are clean and well-loved and protected. And she even holds a hand up, cups it over a breast, holds it, faintly feels her heartbeat. And it’s okay. It is her own damn boob and she is allowed to touch it, and think it’s pretty, and value it equally with everything else. It is not tainted or dirty or bad, and neither is she. Sam says she’s brave, not a scared, submissive bitch. And she’s smart, not a dumb cunt. And she really thinks this is how love feels. And Sam’s hands, unlike His, heal a wound with every touch.

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teachanarchy · 7 years

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The rise of “black power” led Pete Seeger to realize he had become a towering figure in a movement he didn't fully understand. The way he dealt with criticisms of him and his friends holds lessons for today.

In 1962, after performing at a benefit for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Pete Seeger met a 19-year-old singer African-American singer named Bernice Johnson. Having heard about her reputation as a civil rights singer, Seeger recommended to Johnson that she start an ensemble of SNCC singers to tour the country singing civil rights songs. Whether because of Seeger's advice or other motivations, Johnson ended up moving to Saratoga Springs, New York later that year, where she worked as a waitress at a folk club. There she linked up with folk promoters who secured her a performance at the folk magazine Sing Out!'s 1962 Carnegie Hall “Hootenanny”. She soon teamed up with SNCC members Cordell Reagon, Charles Neblett and Rutha Harris to form the Freedom Singers. The group toured the country, with Seeger's wife Toshi acting as their manager.1 During this time, the friendship between Johnson and the Seegers blossomed, leading to the iconic photo at the 1963 Newport Folk Festival of Johnson holding hands with Bob Dylan as they helped lead the crowd in singing Seeger's arrangement of the song “We Shall Overcome”.2 The next year Johnson named her first child Toshi.

The story of Johnson and the Freedom Singers was just one of many that symbolized the growing cooperation between the mostly northern, urban, white folk revival movement, and mostly southern civil rights organizations such as SNCC. While Seeger and Dylan were raising money for SNCC and the Freedom Riders, left-wing folk organizations mingled with and lent support to the civil rights movement in innumerable ways.

Moved by the images of civil rights demonstrators being attacked by fire hoses and police dogs in Birmingham, Alabama, Seeger began urging white folkies from New York to go south, telling a crowd at Carnegie Hall in 1963, “If you want to get out of a pessimistic mood yourself, I've got one sure remedy. Go help those people in Birmingham or Mississippi.”3 Seeger's call to “go help those people” resonated with many northerners, who soon trekked to the deep south by the thousand. Predictably, the influx of idealistic youths with little understanding of southern culture created some serious issues for groups like SNCC. All of a sudden, national media began to focus on the white people coming into Mississippi from New York and California rather than the black organizers in Mississippi who had been working tirelessly in their communities for years. White people began taking African-American people's positions in the SNCC offices, and incidences of black-white extramarital sex were damaging the reputation of the organization. Issues of another kind began to arise from the arrival of northern blacks into the organization. As Bernice Johnson recalls, “There were a group of people coming out of Howard University: Courtland Cox, Stokely [Carmichael], Lawrence Guyot. Northern blacks were coming into the organization...it changed the timbre, rhythm, and style of the organization. At SNCC meetings, those would be the only people talking. And they were more glib, articulate, flowing, had read more...I remember one meeting Stokely got up and said, 'Well I is sorry that I graduated from college and learned how to talk.'”4

Despite being an outsider, Carmichael became the leader of a growing “black power” movement within SNCC. Disheartened by years of brutality and the seeming hopelessness of non-violence, Carmichael and his supporters began to argue that it was impossible to work alongside whites, and that the the whites coming into the organization should be focusing on confronting racism in their own communities in the north.

Quote:

The question then is, how can white people move to start making the major institutions that they have in this country function the way it is supposed to function? That is the real question. And can white people move inside their own community and start tearing down racism where in fact it does exist? Where it exists. It is you who live in Cicero and stop us from living there. It is white people who stop us from moving into Grenada.

Carmichael had a point, but disconnected from the infighting of SNCC, in 1965 Seeger and his wife accepted a personal invitation from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to join the the march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama in support of voting rights for African-Americans. Exhilarated by the songs he heard and somewhat oblivious to the tensions within SNCC, Seeger returned to New York after the march, staying in touch with Carmichael and others about organizing in New York to help SNCC. However, the respect between Seeger and Carmichael was not mutual. In the summer of 1965, Carmichael went to the office of Seeger's manager Harold Leventhal, demanding that SNCC receive more money in exchange for all the free publicity given to Leventhal's performers, such as Seeger. The conversation soon became heated, and Leventhal claims Carmichael began lobbing “anti-Semitic charges” at him.5

Carmichael's radical approach towards white SNCC supporters soon became the new norm of the organization. Soon whites were purged from SNCC, and Carmichael led the attack on the black civil rights old guard of MLK and John Lewis. The shift in attitudes of African-American civil rights activists towards the folkies is embodied by the story of Julius Lester. A writer who had at one time written for the political folk-music journal Broadside, co-founded by Seeger himself, by the end of the 60s Lester was scathingly attacking the folk movement in his book Search for the New Land:

Quote:

What did they know of these songs we would sing in church and in the field...And who was this Joan Baez talking about all her trials would soon be over. The bitch was white, wasn't she? Plus, she was good-looking and was making money. The only kind of trials she could have had was deciding whether she should fly first-class or tourist...Blacks have always served as a path which whites have used to try and get out of the concentration camps of their souls.6

Lester's harsh attack undeniably rings with much truth. The idea that “black have always served as a path which whites have used to try and get out of the concentration camps of their souls,” seems to tally with Seeger's 1963 call to action at Carnegie Hall. Furthermore, whereas Seeger did spend a full two days marching between Selma and Montgomery, stars (though not folk musicians) Tony Bennett and Anthony Perkins seemingly capitalized on the media attention by flying into Montgomery on the last day to join the march.7

Shocked by the anger he had been oblivious to, Seeger realized he had become a towering figure in a movement he didn't fully understand. Wisely, he chose to largely withdraw himself from the frontlines of the exploding factional infighting that would end up creating decades of still simmering enmity between SNCC members and supporters, both white and black. Instead of feeling offended by the attacks against him and his friends, Seeger listened, and by the end of 1966 he had in fact followed the advice of black power advocates, turning his activist efforts towards local organizing.

Looking back on the saga it's hard to choose sides. The whites who Lester viciously derided made real sacrifices coming south to help SNCC, many were murdered. It would be easy now to sit here and criticize their actions, though few today would make the same sacrifices. At the same time, the criticisms leveled by people like Carmichael and Lester were were based on serious grievances that many African-Americans in SNCC had with white members. Carmichael wondered why white people were coming south, he thought it would do much more good if white people would confront racism in their own communities in the north. Without the aggressive criticisms leveled by Lester and Carmichael, the issues might not have been addressed properly.

Seeger, for his part, realized that the situation was getting ugly, and that no matter which side he supported in the argument he would not only hurt himself, but the movement in general. Thus, rather than get defensive he chose to listen, and to shift his focus to his own backyard where his activism was much better poised to make a positive difference in the world.

All in all, a good lesson that many of us on the left can learn from.

1. Cohen, Ronald. "Rainbow Quest: The Folk Music Revival & American Society 194-1970", 186-187

2. Dunaway, David, "How Can I Keep from singing?: The Ballad of Pete Seeger", 280

3. Dunaway, 282

4. Dunaway, 290

5. Dunaway, 299-300

6. Cohen, 207

7. Dunaway, 297

#pete seeger #civil rights movement #black power #us history #race #racism

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