#charles looks so traumatised i feel bad

[kinsagi]

this page aaaa

[silvervioletvalentine]

🦋It’s true, it’s always been you 🦋

Pairing: Max verstappen X Cherrie!

Word count: 13.3k

Summary: in which Cherrie and max hate eachother so much that they fake date. Fall in love and traumatise their friends in the process.

Max swore that he hadn't meant to lie to his friends , he really didn’t . He had just made the small mistake of not really paying attention , already growing annoyed at the relationship talk that was taking place at the table around him .

Everybody else all happy with their partners and so grossly in love that it made max feel sick just to hear yet another cute little story about the picnic dates, surprise trips and romantic walks on the beach that they were having. Christ , talk about sickly.

Was he also feeling a tad bit bitter about his own long term singleness and dried up love life? No, not at all!

In fact he was completely happy on his own. He didn't need a woman messing with his head anyways , he already had Cherrie for that. She wasn't even his girlfriend and yet the annoying brat drove him mental and most of his days were spent trying to one up her in their petty arguments .

Even going as far as finding something that she couldn't do... like when she told them that she couldn't bake, max had found it in him to become a bakery overnight . Smugly shoving his homemade cupcakes in her face the next morning while she glared at him like he was the devil killing puppy's, threatening to shove her heel up his ass if he didn't back away from her immediately.

Which was why it was completely cherries fault that he did what he did next .

Having been caught up with gazing over at her by the bar, watching as she threw back vodka shots like they were water. Her silver dress shining underneath the lights , long legs crossed over each other as she gossiped with her friends.

So when Lando was teasing him for not having a girlfriend still, he found himself rolling his eyes in annoyance and opening up his big mouth before he could even think of the consequences of his next actions.

He looked at them blankly and straight up lied for no reason. "I do have a girlfriend actually." Enjoying the Brief feeling of watching the rest of the drivers pause their chatter to look over at him in shock.

Daniel was looking at him in disbelief , blinking rapidly . Opening and closing his mouth several times before a loud "what?! Who?!" Came hurling his way in shock.

Lando quickly echoing his disbelief as he looked at max with wide eyes. "You have a girlfriend?!" He repeated in surprise "since when?" He wanted to know.

Charles , Pierre and Carlos were looking at him with similar expressions of 'what the fuck?' And 'no way!'. Charles even going as far as snorting , smirking over at him . Having been spending way to much time with Cherrie , who happened to be his best friend, which meant that her bitchy meanness had started to rub off on him.

It was another reason why he couldn't stand her, even when she wasn't there in front of him. Her sidekick was doing her bitchy trade for her instead.

She had trained the Ferrari driver well and max was sick of seeing the two of them together, gossiping between them and judging everybody that passed them by.

Charles on his own was just fine , max could deal with him without any problem. He could even chat with him casually if he felt like it.

But Charles with Cherrie? Was a total fucking nightmare. They were like the terror twins and Cherrie was nothing but a bad influence on him.

Before meeting her Charles would have never had dared to look max in his face and laugh . Would never have had the confidence to scoff and give him a judgemental glance, snickering underneath his breath at him.

That was all Cherrie. Max was certain that her bitchiness was contagious . That had to be the reason for this bullshit.

"There's no way you have a girlfriend." Charles muttered in amusement , squinting his eyes at him. Already glancing over his shoulder to see where Cherrie was at the bar , ready to call her over so that they could gossip about this shit together like they usually did.

There was nothing more that Cherrie loved than teasing max for his long term sickness (singleness. Again. She was a mean little bitch!). Many a hour she had spent teasing him and rubbing it in his face about how she was never single and he always was.

The two always ending up fighting when max shot back that the only reason she wasn't single was because she was a attention seeking whore who couldn't stand to be alone .

He was right but Cherrie would never admit it. Instead she would argue with him instead. Neither of them yielding , trading insults and sarcasm until the sun started coming back up and one of their friends had to forcibly separate them.

Max narrowed his eyes at Charles, his grip on his beer bottle tightening at the condensing tone in his voice .

That two week holiday with Cherrie had turned him into a catty bitch. A complete replica of his best friend. Max thought in Annoyance. Trying to stay calm.

"Yes I do. And it's been going on a while.. it's just private." He continued to lie. Unable to pinpoint the reason to why he kept up his bullshit, only knowing that he wasn't go to stop now.

As soon as he saw Charles roll his eyes and the rest of his friends grin between themselves like it was so disbelieving that he could have a girlfriend , as though it was completely impossible.

He knew he was fucked.

"Oh really?" Charles smirked at him in amusement , exchanging a glance with Pierre beside him. "Who's the unlucky girl then?" He asked him.

And max. Max didn't know why he did it. Why he said it or why the thought even sparked up in his mind.

But he glanced over to the bar again and caught sight of the bane of his existence laughing loudly with her head thrown back, long hair shining and eyes squeezed closed in mirth as she giggled with her friends.

And he opened his big, lying mouth and blurted out "Cherrie. You'll know her very well I suppose."

The whole table froze. Mouth dropping open as Lando gasped loudly in shock, Daniel bursting into laughter while Charles smile slowly slid off his face, eyes going wide in disbelief.

"Cherrie? My Cherrie?!" He exclaimed loudly , slamming his glass down onto the table in shock. Looking at him as though he was expecting max to just burst out laughing and tell him that it was all a joke. That he wasn't dating Cherrie at all.

Max didn't laugh. He stuck with his lie, enjoying wiping the smug look off of his face.

He hid his smirk behind his beer bottle "I think you mean my Cherrie now." He simply responded , trying not to laugh at the look on everyone's faces.

Charles was shaking his head in denial . "No! There's no way mate. You hate each other!" He reminded him as though he had forgotten their constant arguing.

Pierre was nodding along in agreement , beyond confused . "Yeah.. I mean just last week she told you that she was going to break your knees If you ever touched her compact mirror again." He said.

Max paused for a moment , pursing his lips as he glanced over at said threatening , gorgeous maniac at the bar. Oblivious to the shit that he was currently dragging her into .

"That was..just a joke. She was joking." He muttered , lying through his teeth. Grimacing as he recalled the utter fury on her pretty face when he had been fiddling around with her Chanel compact mirror , trying to wind her up.

Then he had dropped it and she had almost dropped him , Face first onto the floor with her fists. That girl was completely material and max was certain that if she had to choose between her designer wardrobe or her friends , she would proudly declare Chanel as her new best friend instead.

Charles looked at him with a frown, mouth gaping open. "No she wasn't! You- you can't be serious! She would have told me!" He exclaimed, not believing his lie in slightest.

Max was in far too deep to start backing out now. Instead he rolled his eyes, actually getting annoyed by how they all seemed to think that there was no way on Earth Cherrie would ever look at him that way. It was more than insulting and he honestly felt a little hurt by their snickering and disbelief.

He knew that Cherrie was like... a thousand on a scale of ten. When she wasn't spitting venom on him and going on her sarcastic rants , she was a pure vision to be seen.

Max might have hated her but he wasn't blind. She had the kind of looks that made you stop in your steps and do a double take . Or a triple take.

Max could still remember the first time he had caught a glimpse of her at the paddock, there with Charles for the weekend. He had been stunned, stood frozen in his place like he had seen an Angel , watching her laugh freely , a smile so bright and beautiful that it lit up her entire face.

Then she had opened said mouth and all that attraction had went rushing down the drain because she was mean. A real Mean woman that had a razor for a tongue and could be a weapon for men's egos everywhere .

You had confidence? One look from Cherrie and no you didn't! She had the judgmental glance cut down to a T. It was honestly impressive.

In fact sometimes she and max argued without even saying a word . Simply arguing through squinted eyes and pinched expressions on their faces , it honestly freaked out their friends to witness the way that they could silently communicate from across a crowded room like that.

But instead of using their obvious connection for good, they used it for petty arguments instead.

"She doesn't need to tell you everything." Max countered back to him.

Hiding his grimace as he caught cherries curious eye from across the bar, lifting a eyebrow at him as she slowly lifted up her fist up to rest against her cheek, then lifted up her middle finger at him. Giving him a sarcastic smile too.

He looked back a frowning Charles, stomach turning as he just began to realise what the fuck he had done.

He had told their friends that he and Cherrie (who was still swearing at him from across the bar) that they were dating. There was absolutely no way that she would go along with this and he knew that she would happily call him out on his bullshit and get a good laugh at out if too.

So it was with that humiliating thought in mind that he quickly got to his feet , gave his still shocked and confused friends a casual nod of his head before turning around and beelining it straight towards the she devil herself .

I just need to get to her before Charles does. He thought to himself in a slight panic , hurrying over to her as fast as he could without physically running.

Cherrie looked up at him with a scowl as he came to a stop beside her , pursing her lips as she looked up at him from her seat. Twirling her straw around her cocktail glass, looking at him expectantly.

"Cherrie..." he breathed out , clearing his throat awkwardly as his mind went blank. Forcing his eyes away from her red. Pouty lips that were sucking at the straw, her eyes never leaving his , feeling his heart pounding in his chest.

Cursing everything that she had to look like a Goddamn sin in front of him. Why was it the crazy ones that were always so fucking hot?

How was this fair for his sanity?

She blinked up at him blankly . "Yes max? How can I help you today?" She drawled out , giving him a fake smile. Elbow resting on the bar as she rested her cheek in her hand, swinging her legs back and forth in front of him boredly.

He swallowed, giving her a tense smile as he leaned against the bar next to her as casually as he possibly could. Aware of their friends watching their interaction closely . Charles especially.

Cherrie eyed him suspiciously when he gently brushed her perfectly curled hair over her shoulder, eyes narrowing up at him dangerously.

"You look very pretty today." He tried to be nice , he really did. And it wasn't a lie. She looked beautiful but the look she gave him in response wasn't so pretty.

She looked him up and down judgmentally "I always look pretty. What have you done max? Actually I don't care. Whatever you've done I want no part in it!" She told him firmly. Sipping on her cocktail again casually. Glancing away from him.

Max sighed , expecting this. But he couldn't pussy out now. His pride was resting on this and the stubborn woman in front of him.

Why had he blurted out her name? He wondered in misery. Why had he told his friends that the one woman that loves to torture him and get underneath his skin was his girlfriend? Why?

Then he glanced at her smirking red lips and pretty eyes and knew exactly why he had said her name.

She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in his entire life and a tiny part of him (a huge part of him. All of him) wanted to be able to have a woman like her by his side. To be able to brag to his friends that he had the most gorgeous partner out of them all.

Because despite their constant arguing, he looked forward to her petty remarks and sarcastic rants. He looked forward to their bickering and the little looks she would give him when he would deliberately say something stupid just to get her reaction . One which she always gave him without missing a beat.

He enjoyed the way she would send him little texts throughout the week. A picture of a bull's ass along with the sweet words 'didn't know you were in Texas today!' . Continuing to send him pictures and insults all throughout her holiday just to wind him up.

He liked the way that they were both so similar , the same mean and judgemental humour. Because she might have been an asshole but so was he. He liked the way she would immediately look over to him whenever someone said something stupid , both of them sharing a look between them, a quick raise of the brow and a silent 'can you believe this guy?'.

He would never admit it but he enjoyed their bickering just as much as he enjoyed her bitchy remarks and sarcastic looks. She was the only one that dared to even go up against him like that, the only one that wasn't afraid to match him with his bullshit.

It was nice. She wasn't and he wasn't but he liked that they could be assholes together. Was that so bad?

He sighed loudly , looking at her pleadingly. "Cherrie..I may have.. fucked a little bit." He admitted to her as though it pained him because admitting that he was in the wrong to her did bite at him. It was hard.

Cherrie just side eyed him. "That's not new. But what has it got to do with me?" She muttered over the rim of her glass.

Looking over his shoulder and frowning slightly as she caught the way Charles was scowling over at them, meeting her eyes with a unimpressed look on his face .

"The fuck? Why is Charles glaring at us?" She questioned , confused as fuck to why her best friend looked so pissy.

Max grimaced , clearing his throat a little as he looked at her a little apologetically. "Yeah.. that has something to do with me fucking up. I may have .. lied to him." He mumbled , embarrassed.

Cherrie frowned at him in confusion "okay? About what?" She asked him warily , finally paying attention to him properly . Getting uneasy at the little, sheepish smile he gave her .

"I-er- I told him and all of them- that I had a girlfriend." He told her , fidgeting with the bar top anxiously . Unable to meet her eyes.

Cherrie looked at him in confusion "but you don't have a girlfriend . Unless you're calling your right hand the love of your life now." She snorted , giggling when he glared at her sharply.

Gritting his teeth as he inhaled deeply, trying to stay calm.

"Cherrie.." he gritted out "I told them that you're my girlfriend." He bluntly told her , knowing that there was no point beating around the bush.

Cherrie was still giggling at her own little joke, barely paying attention as she wiped underneath her eyes to make sure that her mascara didn't smudge from her tears of laughter.

"Ahh god. Well that's too bad but-" she abruptly stopped laughing. Head snapping back over to him with wide eyes, mouth dropping open in shock.

"Did you just say I'm your girlfriend?!" She exclaimed loudly , looking at him like he was insane .

Max quickly hushed her, repeatedly tapping at her arm to get her to quieten down. Glancing over his shoulder to see their friends still sending them curious looks, Charles looking like he wanted to kill him.

He hissed at her quietly "shut up! Not so loud! I told you that I fucked up! I just blurted out your name and now they think that we're together." He rushed out, quickly explaining his situation to her.

Cherrie scoffed at him, slapping his hand away from her arm. "Then tell them that you lied and that it Isn't true!" She said as though it was that simple.

It was Max's turn to look at her like she was insane . "No way! They'll never let me live it down! You have to help me!" He pleaded to her desperately out of options.

Cherrie laughed in his face "I don't have to do anything! As If they'd even believe it!" She snapped back at him, cheeks flushing despite her attitude. Not expecting to be demanded to be his girlfriend all of a sudden .

Max looked at her, insulted. "What’s that supposed to mean?!"

"It means that i date the Tom Brady's and the Henry cavill's. Not the verstappens!" She exclaimed at him, letting him drag her along to the corner of the bar , out of sight from their friends. Tucked in the dark corner of the room, max glared down at her in disbelief.

"Are you saying that I'm ugly?!"

She rolled her eyes at him . Huffing. "No. Just that I can do better!" She shot back at him.

Max pulled a face at her, scoffing at her arrogance. "You'd be lucky to have me! You're not that great! You've got a nice face but everything else isn't as good!" He insulted her, reaching down to adjust her necklace so that the hook was at the back of her neck instead.

Cherrie didn't even flinch at his hand near her neck, used to him fixing her clothing and jewellery for her. He had been doing it ever since he overheard her complaining about her hair getting caught in her necklace to her friend once.

It was the same way that Cherrie silently fixed his tie for him at events , muttering that she was going to strangle him with it if he continued to do it so sloppily. It was their weird normal.

"Shut up! I'm not pretending to be your girlfriend max. That means I'll have to spend time with you... willingly." She complained , leaning against the wall with a huff .

Max stood in front of her with his hands pressed to his hips. Frowning at her . "Come on Cherrie! I can't be humiliated like this. They'd never let me live it down. They've all got these perfect relationships and it just- I just was sick or being teased for be the only single one alright?" He sighed out to her, looking at her pleadingly . "I wouldn't ask this of you for no reason..."

She looked at him in silence for a moment , chewing on the inside of her cheek with a pissed off frown that he was dragging her into this and asking her to lie to her friends too.

"What do I get out of it? I don't want a boyfriend yet." She whined , looking up at him with a pissy pout on her face .

Max sighed, rolling his eyes at her. "Hawaii?"

She paused , pout quickly disappearing at the thought of a free holiday. "Two weeks?"

"One week." He negotiated.

She looked at him sternly "two weeks. And I want to drive your new Ferrari for a week too." She told him with a grin, wrapping her arm around his neck loosely as she looked up at him through her dark lashes prettily .

Max pursed his lips, looking down at her, unimpressed . "Two weeks and you're not going anywhere near my car."

She sighed dramatically, slowly going to pull away from him as she casually shrugged her shoulders at him. "Well I guess you can go back there and explain to them that you lied about me being your girlfriend"

Max groaned loudly and quickly pulled her back to him, rolling his head in defeat. "Fine. But You're not driving it without me being in the passenger seat." He sighed out .

She let out a small squeal, clapping her hands together in excitement while max tried to hide his amused smile at her behaviour. Shaking his head at her .

"Yay! I can't wait! Okay!" She grinned up at him happily, mood completely taking a full turn at getting a free holiday and getting to drive his Ferrari too. "Let's go then boyfriend!"

She stepped away from him and starting to walk back in the direction of the table where the rest of the drivers were sat, confidently strutting ahead of him while he hurried to catch up to her. Reaching to take ahold of her hand , making her look over her shoulder at him In surprise.

"We need to hold hands. Look affectionate . Otherwise they’re never gonna believe it." He told her , his lips twitching as he intertwined their fingers together slowly , watching her look down at their hands with a grimace. Unused to the casual affection from him.

The closest their hands had been was when they were slapping at eachother childishly during another petty argument.

"Why?" She blurted out , looking confused. She was never that affectionate with her past boyfriends either . She hasn't grown up with people hugging each other or her. Her family were never the caring or affectionate type.

In fact , the last time any of her parents had hugged her was for a press photo at her schools graduation.

She was used to casual moves. She had no problem sticking her tongue down someone's throat in a crowded room. But holding hands? She never held hands with anyone. It felt too intimate . Which she knew was ridiculous.

But she couldn't help it. Her arm erupted in goosebumps as she felt max softly caress her knuckles with his thumb , fixing the strap of her dress with his free hand casually. His eyes never leaving her flushed face .

"Because that's what couples do. Try to be nice?" He muttered to her with a teasing grin, enjoying the feeling of her hand in his as he slowly led them over to the table.

Charles already frowning up at them, looking like he was questioning his whole life

Cherrie didn't answer him. Just shoving him down into the booth and plopping herself down on his lap, giving him a smirk when he let out a startled huff, his pupils widening as he glanced up at her in surprise.

She just wrapped her arm around his neck loosely , feeling everyone's shocked eyes on them.

He wanted her to be nice and affectionate? Alright. She could do that. She'd show him how nice she could be.

It was with that sly thought in mind that she meant her head down and kissed him square on the mouth, a loud and noisy kiss. More for show than anything. Hearing max inhale sharply as he wrapped his own arm around her hips, his eyes fluttering closed as he tightened his grip around hips in response.

Kissing her back more gently than she kissed him, tasting her coconut lipgloss against his lips before she pulled away with a soft hum. Wiping gently at his now lipstick stained lips with her thumb, tapping his cheek with a smirk as she took in his flustered face as he swallowed thickly.

She then casually looked around the table at the gobsmacked friends and smiled brightly. "Having a good night guys?" She chirped at them, reaching for the cocktail glass in Charles hand and swiftly stealing it from him.

Charles was too busy gaping at the two of them to care, his eyes flickering bwgeeen them rapidly in shock. "But- Cherrie- what the fuck?!" He stammered out in  disbelief , feeling like he was going crazy.

Because since when was his best friend dating and kissing max verstappen?

Cherrie just shrugged casually , lifting the glass to her lips about to take a sip before max swooped in and took it from her. Setting it aside on the table and handing her his bottle of beer instead, not wanting her to drink from the same glass as Charles.

Cherrie just  gave him a amused glance, rolling her eyes at him. Max just raising his eyebrows at her with a small shrug, not explaining himself.

"What?" She acted like she had no idea why he looked so shocked. As though it was normal for her to be kissing max instead of fighting with him.

Charles looked at her in disbelief "what?! What do you mean what?! What are you doing? What is this?!" He motioned between her and max with his finger . Mystified and wondering what the hell was going on.

Max smirked at him as he hugged himself against her back, squeezing his arms around her waist , sighing softly as she buried her hand into his hair and gently scratched her nails against his scalp soothingly.

"Me and max are.." she tried not to cringe at the thought of saying boyfriend and girlfriend. "Fucking." She ended up saying instead like the mature woman she was.

Max rolled his eyes at her "we're dating." He corrected her , giving her a look.

She just shrugged "same thing." She muttered leaning back against him and getting comfortable on his lap.

"No it isn't." He muttered back to her.

"Yes it is. That's my dating."

"Just- just shut up." He sighed. Shoving the bottle of beer into her mouth to shut her up and to stop her from arguing with him.

Charles was gaping at them in disbelief "Cherrie! Why didn't you tell me? You told me that you wanted to strangle him yesterday!" He reminded her with wide eyes, wondering what the hell he was missing.

They both paused , Cherrie clearing her throat as she felt max scowling at her, his fingers squeezing her hips a little harder this time.

She smiled sheepishly , laughing as she patted Max's shoulder repeatedly. "Oh ya know!.. that was just..foreplay!" She exclaimed , grinning proud of herself for covering their backs with that one.

Max tried not to face palm, instead digging his forehead against her shoulder blades and trying not to scream. Holy fuck was she a terrible liar.

He glanced up at their friends disbelieving faces and grimaced. Oh dear. He was fucked. Completely fucked if she kept this up.

"I love wrapping my hands around his throat and.." she placed her hand around his throat , her mischievous eyes meeting his amused ones as she mimicked strangling him. Laughing loudly at the unimpressed look he gave her. "Just -yee haw!"

Daniel was laughing hysterically while lando looked between the two of them in amusement , eyeing Max's blushing face, cherries hands around his neck while she grinned obliviously at her best Friend casually. Charles just looked at her in disbelief , speechless.

"Yee haw?" Lando snickered , eyeing the two of them with a grin.

Max shifted in his seat , swallowing as he felt Cherrie shuffle around on his lap again. Swinging her body sideways so that she could rest her feet against the seat instead, her body still facing their friends as she sipped at her beer casually. Not at all bothered by what was going on.

"Yeah. Cause when I ride him-" max slapped his hand over her mouth before she could even finish her sentence but the damage had already been done.

Their friends were laughing at his flustered face while Charles just looked like he was going to be sick.

"But.. max Cherrie? Since when is he your type?" Charles still couldn't believe it. Frowning at her in confusion.

Cherrie swallowed her beer and simply shrugged, glancing down at max silently for a moment. Eyes flittering around his features , lingering on his lipstick stained pout for a moment too long before looking away.

She sighed "I like it when guys bully me." She said.

Pierre gave her a amused look "have you tried therapy? That seems like a personal issue." He snorted. Not at all surprised by her comment. He had heard her say crazier and more unusual things before.

Cherrie looked over at him with a grin, unbothered by the looks she was receiving from around the table. Ranging between amused, concerned and confused.

"Why do I need therapy when I have max to bully me? I mean just one insult and whooooo-" she might have been a little drunk at this point. Having already been drinking endless cocktails before max had even arrived . "My panties are gone! I love it when he's mean- it turns me on-" she told them shamelessly , giggling.

Max carefully pried the bottle from her hands , setting it aside quickly. Laughing awkwardly as he flushed bright red , patting cherries side with a small , amused grin.

"Okayyyy I think- I think we're gonna go!" Be announced . Pulling Cherrie up to her feet before she could even blink. Wrapping his arm around her waist to steady her as she wobbled on her heels , winking up at him drunkenly.

He had to laugh. It looked more like she had something in her eye than a wink. But she looked cute trying. He could give her that.

"Charles!" She said way louder than necessary making him cringe . Her best friend looked up at her tiredly . Far too confused to be dealing with her shit.

"I'll tell you everything.. but not tonight because this is my night. And Max's night. And max is gonna take me home. Aren't you max?" She rambled , hugging him from the side as she clung onto him with a drunken grin. Batting her eyelashes up at him.

He laughed and nodded his head, helping her out of the booth. "Yes I am." He agreed . Grabbing his jacket from his chair and helping her put it on so that she wouldn't be cold when they got outside in her tiny dress.

He huffed as she almost slapped him with her arm, leaning all of her weight against him as she made it more difficult for him to fasten up the jacket. Giggling like a naughty child as she moved around, trying to see Charles properly over his broad shoulders .

"Love you!" She called over to him, waving her hand at them chaotically.

Charles sighed long and hard. "Love you too but this isn't over!" He warned them, more to max than Cherrie. Narrowing his eyes at him. "I still don't believe this." He said . Not believing his lie.

Max just looked at him blankly "I don't care what you believe. It's the truth." He countered back, untucking cherries hair from his jacket so it didn't pull and hurt her head. "So..." he gave him a sarcastic smile, shrugging dramatically . "Bye bye!"

And with that max practically carried Cherrie out of the bar while she giggled incoherently against his neck, hugging him and refusing to let go.

So far. Max would say that it was going well. And he felt like he was definitely getting the full girlfriend experience when he was sat behind her on his knees at three o'clock in the morning , holding back her hair while she threw up her body's worth in liquor. Sobbing against the toilet lid as she promised to never drink again, max patting her back with a grimace as she babbled away to him tearfully.

It reminded him quickly that even the beautiful ones were a complete mess sometimes. And he had to laugh when he wiped her mouth and brushed her teeth for her, her eyes blackened with mascara from crying. Clinging onto him , still drunk and still such a mess as she spoke around the toothbrush tearfully

"Am i a good girlfriend yet?"

He just laughed and wiped her makeup streaked face with a wet towel affectionately. "You're doing a great job honey."

A week later and Cherrie was stood in front of her mirror , turning this way and that way as she tried on different dresses. Max sat at the end of her bed with his head resting in his hands, watching her get ready quietly.

"Do we have to go? I think they already believe us." She whined a little , not wanting to go to fancy restaurant when she could just stay at home instead.

Over the past week max and her and hung out almost everyday to sell their act. The first day that max had arrived at her door with a grin and a demand to come golfing with their friends, Cherrie had threatened to run him over with the  golfing kart.

Now , when he turned up at her door with a smile and a invitation to dinner with their friends , Cherrie had greeted him with a smile and dragged him to her bedroom to give him a small Fashion show of all her new dresses that she had bought . Max just humming along and nodding at them all, telling her that she looked pretty in them all.

"Yes we do. Do you really want to say no to free food?" He knowingly looked at her , fidgeting with the heels in his hands that she was having him hold onto while she tried to find ones that looked best with her dress.

Cherrie sighed loudly "no." She mumbled as she clipped earrings into her ears with a pout. "But still..oh my god..." she got distracted by her own reflection. Running her hands over the dress in amazement.

Eyes going dramatically wide as she looked in the mirror and met max eyes that were already on her . He hadn’t looked away from her since the moment she opened the door to her home and let him in with that damn smile lighting up her pretty face .

“Do you think my ass has gotten bigger?!" She wondered , Turning to the side again and running her hands over her butt in the skintight dress she was wearing , admiring herself with a small smile.

Max looked down at her ass silently , blinking heavily as he bit down on his lip, slowly nodding his head up and down in a daze.

“Yeah ..it's - it’s perkier." He said in amazement , unable to look away. Instead he slid his eyes up to her chest that was hanging out of the thin material too.

He grinned cheekily at her "I think your boobs have gotten bigger too." He told her casually. As though they were chatting about the weather.

Cherrie turned around with a loud giggle, looking pleased. "I know right! My bra size has gone up! Isn't it amazing? I mean .." she gushed confidently , excitedly. "I can't wait till Hawaii. I'm going to look amazing in a bikini!" She exclaimed.

Max chuckled , nodding his head along to her as he handed her heels back . Smiling to himself when she placed her hand on his shoulder to balance herself as she quickly put them on. Her chest right in his face as he shamelessly stared at her definitely bigger than before boobs in awe.

"For sure. I think your mouth has gotten bigger too."

She slapped the back of his head without missing a beat as she straightened back up, rolling her eyes at his teasing as he laughed loudly at her reaction . Grinning up at her slyly.

"Asshole!" She picked up her clutch bag and strutted out of her bedroom, max quickly hot on her heels . "Anything you want me to do tonight?"

Max groaned loudly like he was in pain "don't say stuff like that Cherrie! You're setting yourself up!" He almost whined. So many jokes and such little time.

Cherrie just giggled and let him take a hold of her hand again, used to it now. "Ya know.. this is going to ruin my reputation. Holding hands and all that.." she told him as she locked up behind her, max swinging their hands between them happily .

He looked down at her in amusement , smirking. "You're whorish reputation?" He mused , laughing at the look she gave him. Exasperated.

She huffed at him, side eyeing him as they walked down to the restaurant that was around the corner from her apartment where they had agreed to meet their friends.

"Yes actually." She said proudly , not ashamed of her whore era at all. "How am I going to bag a footballer now?" She joked, grinning up at him teasingly.

Max snickered "are they any left? You've already gone through them all haven't you?" He shot back at her with a shit eating grin.

Laughing hysterically when she started hitting him with her clutch bag, cursing him out . Paying no Mind to the looks they were getting as they entered the restaurant, max leading her over to their table while laughing still.

"That's unnecessary! It wasn't that many!" She complained to him. Handing him her clutch bag absentmindedly as she smiled to their friends.

Max took the mini pink bag from her, holding it casually as he pulled out the chair for her . "Just a team or two.." he grinned unable to help himself from winding her up.

She huffed , sliding into her seat carelessly. "Keep trying me max. I will body you." She threatened him , picking up her wine glass that Charles had already ordered her. Taking a big gulp , oblivious to the amused stares they were getting from around the table. Too immersed in their own little bickering bubble to care.

"In bed?" He resorted cheekily , laughing when she just rolled her eyes at him.

Charles looked at her with a small smile, still not used to the sight of the two of them together . Watching the way max passed her a napkin and topped up her wine for her as their food was served.

"Are you coming to qualifying next week?" Charles asked her. The two of them usually travelling together and Cherrie hanging out in the Ferrari garage supporting him.

She glanced over at him apologetically "er- no. I'm gonna hang out with max this time. Cause he's-" she hesitated , glancing over at max who gave her a small encouraging nod. Still not used to calling him

Her boyfriend. Fake or not. "-My boyfriend and I should support him right?" She poked at her plate with a small grimace after taking a few small bites.

Charles frowned at her "and I'm your best friend. You're team Ferrari . Not redbull."

Max smirked at him smugly "actually she is team redbull now seeing as she's dating their driver.

No more red." He proudly stated . Before glancing over at Cherrie when she made another small huff.

"What?" He muttered , raising a brow at her curiously.

She nudged at her plate with a small sigh "I don't like the chicken." She muttered with a subtle pout , glancing over at his steak with hearts in her eyes.

Max frowned back at her , completely exasperated "why did you get it then?!" He countered back. Used to her doing this by now.

Just last night they had gotten a takeaway, a pizza for her and a Chinese noodles for him. He hadn't  even gotten to take a second bite of his food before she was eyeing up his plate with a pout, giving him pleading eyes as she told him that she didn't fancy pizza anymore.

She was an absolute nuisance!

"Because I wanted it when I ordered it but now I don't . Can we swap?" She asked him hopefully, eyeing up his steak, not even bothering to be subtle about it now. She knew that she would get her own way eventually , a few pretty blinks of her lashes at him and he was done for .

Max huffed at her "absolutely not. You've made your bed so lie in it." He told her firmly .

Lando and Charles could only watch in silent disbelief as Cherrie pouted at him, nudging his arm quietly , tilting her head at him prettily, looking at him pleadingly. Going all out with the puppy look towards him, seconds away from whining too.

She had no shame. Especially not where food was involved.

And max caved . Max, who didn't share food.

Max, who had threatened to break lando's fingers the last time he had tried to take a slice of his pizza for himself .

He slid his plate over to Cherrie and swapped their plates with a exasperated sigh, giving her a judgmental side eye as he did so.

"You're so annoying. You need help." He muttered to her before taking a bite of the chicken , watching her happily dig into his steak with a pleased look on her pretty face.

Lando looked over at him in pure disbelief "how come you'll give her your food but not me?" He exclaimed loudly making them both glance over at him with matching , uninterested looks on their faces.

Oh wow. He thought grimacing. They have the matching bitch looks down to a T now. That was scary.

Max just shrugged , hiding his grin behind his fork as he swallowed his bite before answering him. "Because if I don't she'll just take it anyway." Plain and simple .

Cherrie nodded along to his statement proudly , grinning at them slyly. "Yes I would. A good woman takes what she wants, whenever she wants it." She told them seriously , taking lando's glass of wine and sliding it over to herself . Taking no mind of him gasping and trying to take it back from her.

She just pretended she couldn't hear or see him, sipping on it happily.

Max just shook his head at her  "that's a crime. You're a criminal Cher." He laughed, grinning over at her in amusement.

Charles's scowled deepened "Cher?" He muttered , unable to believe that she had gone from being called a bitch by him to a affectionate 'Cher' so quickly.

Max glanced at him with a subtle smirk "yes. Cher. Baby. Love of my life. Fire to my loins-" he started listing off nicknames , Cherrie giggling beside him at the repulsed looks Charles was giving them.

"By the way.. I'm going to Hawaii next week Charles. Can you look after my cat?" She blurted out to him suddenly , recalling her upcoming plans.

Her suitcases were already packed and max had booked their tickets the moment that they had gotten home after she had agreed to play along as his girlfriend. Only things had gotten more serious and real than either of them could have Expected but in a good way.

Cherrie seemed to genuinely forget that they were playing pretend , having been enjoying spending time with max one on one. He was a lot funnier than she gave him credit for when she wasn't so set on picking a fight with him.

Who would have thought that the man that made her scream in fury the most , could also make her laugh like a hyena with his stupid jokes?

"Hawaii? Why? Since when? I thought we were going to Spain for holidays this summer.." he said while looking at her in confusion. Having heard nothing of these sudden plans.

She just shrugged "max is taking me. The pool has a pool ontop of a pool  Charles! A pool with a pool right in front of an ocean view man.." she sighed dreamily , already picturing herself laying in the sun and swimming all day.

Lando looked at max, impressed. "Wow! What's this for... a anniversary? or did you fuck up that bad already that you had no choice but to leave the country?" He joked . Giggling to himself as he looked between the two of them. Not at all surprised by their closeness now that he had time to think it over.

It actually made sense to him he supposed .  He knew that max only wound her up because it was the only way he could think of to get her attention , bypassing hello and going straight to annoying her instead.

But someone that hated someone so much wouldn't look for them in a crowded room and get all pouty when they couldn't find them there.

And if max hated her so much then he wouldn't have spent the last year chasing off any man that even so much as looked twice at her. That wasn't normal for 'enemies'.

And it was the same for Cherrie too. For someone that claimed to hate him so much , she spent a awful lot of time talking about him.And she spent a awful lot of time willingly in his company too.

Considering that Charles was her best friend and not max, she spent more time in the red bull hospitality than she did in Ferrari. Claiming the she was just going to wind max up some more , to 'jinx him' for his race so that he wouldn't win.

But Lando had once seen the two of them having a intense game of Mario kart , bickering at each other, sat thigh to thigh as they carried on like they were the best of friends. They would deny it but Lando had heard them laugh together and make plans for a rematch after the race.

And what kind of people that 'hated' each other played mario kart together willingly?

"Just a holiday. No reason other than Cherrie is starting to disappear into the walls without her tan." Max casually replied, quickly finishing up with his food and picking up the fancy desert menu as he waited for everyone else to be done with their first course meal.

Cherrie nodded along in agreement with a serious look on her face . Swallowing her bite before replying "so fucking true. I was going to put on a white shirt this morning but then I looked into the mirror and could only see my hair. I'm fading away."

Max snorted , chuckling to himself as he shook his head. Grinning at the sigh of misery she let out.

"So sad. Can't think of anything worse than you being pale." He muttered sarcastically, laughing loudly when she reached out and smacked his forearm without even glancing at him. Muscle memory by now .

"Shut up max." Was all she muttered back to him before focusing her attention back to her best friend, shifting in her seat once she finally noticed the contemplative look that he was giving the two of them.

She hated having to lie to Charles, she really did but honestly ... it was a little fun winding up their friends like this. And she was having fun bickering with max without their usual aggressiveness and truthful threats.

When she told max she was going to kill him before, she usually meant it. Now when she told him that, they both knew that she was just joking around. No harm done. Not at all serious with her violent warnings anymore.

It was nice. She kind of wished that max had come up with the idea of being her fake boyfriend before this. It might have been a more easier and less tense few years between the two of them.

"You should hang out with us tomorrow night Charles!" She suddenly suggested , both of their heads snapping towards her with two very different reactions.

Charles was smiling At her, pleased to finally have the chance to hang out with her again after being blown off for max lately . Meanwhile max was looking at her like she has completely lost her mind. Sighing loudly and crossing his arms over his chest like a pissy child that wasn't getting their own way.

"No way." He blurted out just at the same time that Charles replied with a pleased "sure! Sounds good!"

The two of them meeting eyes while Cherrie and Lando just looked between the two of them in vague amusement. Lando looking a little offended as he looked over at Cherrie with a frown "what about me? Can I come?"

Max scoffed "no. Neither of you are coming!"

Cherrie just smiled brightly "of course you can! I'll cook for us!" She exclaimed getting excited at the thought of getting to play around in Max's fancy kitchen.

All three men paused at her words , grimacing deeply as they shared wary looks between each other. Charles clearing his throat and refusing to be the one to tell her that was a bad idea.

Max easily did so, the only one unafraid to look Cherrie in her eyes and tell her straight. "No you're not. You'll put us all in hospital! Remember what happened when you baked us all cupcakes ?" He gave her a pointed look. Cherrie looking away with a stubborn purse of her lips.

"I ended up in a intimate relationship with my toilet Cherrie. So no. You will not be cooking." He sternly told her before adding on a firm "ever again."

Cherrie looked between them with a scowl. "That was baking! Cooking is different! I'm sure that I can handle making a - a chicken-" she tried to defend herself weakly.

Charles scoffed , shaking his Head at her wildly . "Absolutely not! You are not going anywhere near chicken Cherrie! You can kill us! You should not be anywhere near raw meat!" He exclaimed .

Still traumatised from all the others time that she had tried to 'cook' for them. All of them nights ending up with a horrific case of food poisoning that she always denied giving to them.

Max and Cherrie shared a smirk as the same dirty jokes filled their head. Snickering between each other little little kids. Cherrie snorting childishly as she nudged Max's arm repeatedly in a fit of giggles.

"There's some raw meat that I can handle just fine on my own-" she wiggled her eyebrows , still giggling only max was joining her this time. His cheeks flushing red when she winked at him suggestively.

Charles sighed loudly , looking at the two of them with a unimpressed look on his face while Lando cackled beside him.

"Children." He said shaking his head "you're all children."

An hour and a half later and Cherrie and max were saying their goodbyes to Charles and Lando , Cherrie quickly being dragged over to the corner of the exit door by Charles who insisted on speaking to her before they left.

"What's up?" She mumbled to him smiling, cheeks flushed from the endless jokes and wine that they had all shared over dinner.

Charles sighed quietly , looking at her for a moment with a serious look on his face. Enough to sober her up slightly as she realised that he wanted to 'talk', no doubt about her sudden relationship with max.

"What are you doing Cherrie?" Was all he said to her , hands on his hips as he waited for her to answer. Giving her a pointed look. "And don't lie to me. You've spent years denying even liking max as a person, never mind a friend.. and now you two are suddenly in love?" He scoffed, seeing right through her. He was her best friend after all.

Cherrie shifted on her feet, grimacing at the ache in her ankles from the high heels she was wearing. Wishing that she had worn her converse instead.

She looked at Cherrie silently for a moment , trying to gather her thoughts. A month ago and she would have been agreeing with him, happily cursing out max and talking shit about him to all her friends.

But now.. now she had a great night . A great week even. She was happy, she was fed and tired. All she wanted was for max to walk her home like he had been doing lately , wanted to talk to him about everything and nothing underneath the stars before saying goodnight with a warm embrace between them.

Something that max had taken to doing when she had casually told him one night that she wasn't used to easy affection like that. Her own parents had never hugged her after the age of six. And well, it has become the reason why she shied away and cringed from simple affectionate hugs. She simply wasn't used to it.

So max had made it his silent mission to fix that. When he arrived at her door, he greeted her with a smile and a hug. And when they said goodbye , he would pull her to her chest and let her hold onto him for as long as she deemed comfortable before pulling away.

And she was enjoying it. It was nice. Even if max was the same asshole that she had spent the past few years arguing with and getting in to petty fights with.

He was still the same asshole but so was she. She was a little bitch. A big mouthed asshole just like him.

And well, was that so bad? It was pretty fun to have someone you could be a cunt with without having to worry about offending them. The rude , the sarcasm and the insulting jokes just bouncing between the two of them perfectly.

She loved it. So she told Charles just that.

"I think that I've been taking max the wrong way this whole time. All those times that I thought he was insulting  me because he hated me.." she sighed out with a small smile. Clutching onto her clutch and swaying slightly , glancing over her shoulder to see max grabbing something from the waiter after settling their checks.

"I think he was just copying my sense of humour Charles. What do you always jokingly call me when I've done something shocking again?" She looked at him with a raise of her brow, trying to prove a point.

Charles hesitated before sighing in realisation. "I call you a stupid bitch." He muttered, pursing his lips stubbornly when she let out a giggle.

She grinned "exactly. And I find it funny because I call you a dickhead too. And it's no harm right? That's just us being affectionate towards each other. That's our sweetheart or honey." She rambled to him, pulling Max's jacket that he had thrown around her shoulders even closer to her body.

Charles slowly nodded his head, still frowning. "Yeah but-"

She shook her head, cutting him off. "And max does the same thing. That time that I parked my car on golf terf because I thought that was what I should do.. what did he call while laughing?"

"A stupid bitch." He mumbled, looking away from her smug little face. Getting it now.

Cherrie laughed softly , glancing over at max again. Smiling to herself when he looked up and met her eyes, pulling a silly face at her. Then he shot her a middle finger and Cherrie stuck up both of hers at him in retaliation, both of them laughing beneath their breaths.

She looked back at Charles with a quiet sigh "exactly. And I went off on him because I didn't know him then. I thought he was just being mean even thought you called me the exact same thing when you found out what I did. I think I- I think I might have been deliberately taking everything he's said to me the wrong way so that I didn't have to face the truth." She told him quietly , looking down at the floor between them for a moment as she really thought about their past together .

Chewing on the inside of cheek as the lines between covering for max and telling the truth blurred until her honest feelings were spilling from her lips like the red wine she had been drinking all night long .

Charles looked at her curiously "and what's the truth?" He asked her quietly, giving up on being mad at her for keeping something like this from him as soon as he saw her swallow, eyes going glossy as she let out a long , shaky sigh.

A small, pitiful laugh escaping her as she shook her head at herself . "Fucking hell Charles...I like him. I like that asshole. I like his stupid jokes and his sarcasm. I like his bluntness and his lack of filter. I like the way we  both laugh when we watch someone fall over instead of helping them.." she breathed out so in her own thoughts about max that she missed the squint of the eyes Charles gave her as she casually told him that she and max liked to laugh at people getting hurt.

"He- as stupid as it seems- he gets me. He's just as much of a cunt as I am!" She giggled , biting down on her bottom lip to suppress the silly grin that wanted to appear . Snapping out of her tipsy daze and looking back up at her best friend who was now just watching her silently, a look of realisation on his face .

There was a moment of silence between them before Charles slowly nodded his head , coming to a understanding then.

"I suppose I should of expected this really." He sighed, smiling at her as he brought her into a side hug. Seeing the way max kept peering over at them as he waited by the exit doors for them to be done talking.

“I Should have known that he liked you when you lost your phone on that night out . You and max were bickering about how stupidly clumsily you are..you ended up nearly fighting him in the parking lot. It was a pretty nasty fight." He recalled with a small laugh . "And then- then the next day he casually dropped a new phone into your bag alongside some painkillers for that hangover you had." He mused, smiling now. Wondering how he didn't see it sooner.

It was cherries turn to be speechless. Swallowing soundlessly as she glanced over at max who was texting on his phone as he waited for them impatiently . She could almost hear him huff and puff from here.

Then her phone buzzed in her hands and she glanced down at it to see max texting her.

Hurry the fuck up Cherrie! Do I need to remind you that You're wearing a dress?? Ten more minutes and your legs will turn into ice blocks. Do you want to get hypothermia?? Let's goooo!! Now!

She giggled and shut off her phone, a giddy feeling entering her chest as she looked back up into the knowing eyes of her best friend.

"Yeah..he did do that. That's not something someone who hated me would do is it?" It was more spoken to herself than Charles. Realisation hitting her hard.

And as she made a hasty goodbye to her best friend, she hurried back over to max as quickly as she could on her heels. Max rolling his eyes at her as she nearly tripped down the three steps that led to the open street.

Taking ahold of her arm to pull her into his side , wrapping his arm around her waist to steady her as they began their walk back to her apartment.

Huffing at her as he looked down at the sky high heels on her feet . "They make your legs look beautiful but there not good for you. You should keep a spare pair of trainers or flats in my car for next time.." he told her casually , stopping in his tracks for a moment as he slid himself  around to the other side of her body So that he was the one walking on the side of the path closest to the road instead.

Then they continued walking as though nothing had happened . Cherrie leaning her cheek against his arm to hide her smile , sighing contently as she cuddled into his side. Sliding her arm around his own waist and squeezing his hip gently.

"Next time? There's gonna be a next time?" Her voice was quite and surprised.

Max just glanced down at her with a blank look on his face. No expression as he casually answered her (more like informed her) that "yes. There's going to be a lot more ‘next times’ . I liked getting dinner with you and our friends so we're definitely doing this again."

Cherrie just rolled her eyes at him with a snicker. Pinching his waist and making him flinch, shooting her a look to behave.

She pinched him again, laughing when he cursed her name loudly into the almost silent street. Still not removing himself from her side.

"Ok boyfriend. You can put my converse in your car then... maybe some sweatpants too." She mumbled tiredly . Yawning dramatically and missing the way max smiled to himself , his cheeks going pink as she called him her boyfriend so easily.

Neither were very good liars . Their feelings were written all over their flushed faces . It was a good job then that it was too dark to see the love in their eyes as they cuddled all the way home.

The next night and Cherrie let herself into Max's apartment excitedly , kicking off her shoes and hanging up her coat before rushing into the front room and scaring the living shit out of max who hadn't heard her come in.

"Max!" She exclaimed loudly , throwing herself over the back of the couch and landing clumsily by his side as he jumped half a foot into the air.

Gasping loudly in shock as he clutched at his racing heart with his hand, slapping her thigh scoldingly as he looked at her with wide eyes. "Cherrie you can't do that! I almost had a heart attack!" He shouted in shock. Leaning back against the couch with a huff as he tried to calm his poor pounding heart down again.

She just laughed and turned so that she was facing him on the couch. Crossing her legs beneath her with a grin as she held out her hand to him excitedly.

"Look what I found! It's you!" She exclaimed while showing him the toy redbull car that she had bought while getting gum at the local store.

Max glanced between her proud grin and the small toy car, feeling himself soften as he smiled back at her softly. Gently taking the car from her as he looked at it in amusement . "No Ferrari?" He couldn't help but remark. Smirking at her as she got comfortable beside him.

Glancing up at the tv and gasping once she noticed which movie was playing. A smug laugh escaping her as she slapped his arm "you're watching the labyrinth! You told me that you hated it!" She accused him, squinting her eyes at him.

Max pursed his lips, avoiding her knowing gaze. "Yeah well.. I changed my mind. Plus you talk about it so much that I thought I might as well give it a second chance.." he mumbled , fiddling with the toy car in his hands for something to do.

Cherrie smiled, heart melting . "Aw! Look at you- watching something just because I like it!"

He huffed "I didn't do it for you." He stubbornly denied.

She smirked . "Yes you did! I told you last night that the goblin king is the love of my life and now you're watching it! Your competition!" She teased him.

Max side eyed her. Crossing his arms over his chest with a huff. "I thought you didn't believe in falling in love." He threw back at her. Smirking smugly when she fell silent.

Looking at him quietly for a moment before clearing her throat , scratching at her collarbone awkwardly. "That- things change. And I didn't say that I didn't believe in love-"

Max scoffed , shifting on the couch and stretching out his legs so that they encased her body between them. Used the heel of his foot to press into the bottom of her back, pushing her between his legs even further, Without a word even being said.

Cherrie just shuffled over and wrapped her arm around his bent knee. Resting her chin on her arm as she looked at him. Their faces only a hands length away.

"You said that falling in love is for stupid people." He stated matter of factly . Amused as he carefully slid his arms around her lower hips , watching closely for her reaction to his touch.

She just sank into him with a soft sigh, picking at a loose thread on his jeans. Eyes to his neck instead of meeting his own As she mumbled "yeah well- I categorise myself as stupid people sometimes." Quietly. Barely audible if they hadn't had been so close.

Max paused. Eyeing her closely as he felt his heart Jump in his chest. One hand sliding up from her hip to her waist as he gave it a gentle squeeze, never taking his eyes from her pretty face. Inhaling deeply as he watched the way her nose twitched , her eyelashes fluttering as she refused to meet his curious gaze.

"Yeah? You believe in it now?" The hope in his voice sickened him. Yet the way she sheepishly  glanced up to him with a shy smile tugging at her painted red lips had him grinning like a fool.

Maybe he categorised himself as stupid people now too.  Only if she did as well.

She sighed shakily , carefully wrapping her arms around his neck and playing with the soft hair at the nape of his neck. Tugging at it gently between her fingers as Max's eyelids lowered , tilting his head up to her as she knelt up on her knees so that she was above him now.

It gave her the confidence to laugh softly , taking in the way his breathing grew uneven beneath her. His face a permanent shade of red since the moment she had arrived.

She smiled down at him in defeat. "Yeah I do. Some mean little bitch made me fall in love even though I didn't want to. And even though I still want to strangle him sometimes.." she leaned her face down closer to his own so that their noses brushed together gently .

Max let out a soft laugh, their darkened eyes briefly meeting before they fluttered closed again.

"Don't talk about yourself like that." He breathed out teasingly before closing the gap between them and kissing her before she could say something snarky back to him again.

He kissed her like he should have kissed her so long ago. Clinging onto her body as she lowered herself down above him, fingers sliding into his hair to pull his head back as she deepened the kiss. Straddling his hips as he slid his hands up her thighs , taking the soft material of her dress up with his fingers too.

Between hungry kisses, max panted against her mouth breathlessly "you-this isn't fake Cherrie." Needing her to know that this had never been fake to him. Not even for one moment.

Was it a stupid idea to trick her into being his 'fake' girlfriend instead of just finding his balls and asking her out? Maybe a little bit.

But did he really care? No fucking way. Because at the end of the day he had the love of his life straddling his lap with her dress riding up her hips as she kissed him like he was her air, their tongues brushing together messily as she cupped his jaw and scraped her nails against his scalp while she grinded her hips down onto his own.

Max moaning lowly against her swollen lips as she smirked smugly, nudging their noses together as she whispered . "I know max." Her fingers hurriedly unbuttoning his shirt .

Max panted as he followed her rushed movements, quickly pulling her dress up over her head. Eyes wide and lips parted in awe as he gazed down at her body , swallowing thickly as his heart raced in his chest.

"You do? You get it now?" He muttered against her skin as he kissed over her shoulder and down to her chest . Pulling her closer to him till there was no space between them. The toy car falling to the ground as max flipped them over so that her back was against the couch with him hovering over her this time.

Pulling away to breath , he looked down at her with a  affectionate smirk tugging at his swollen and stained red lips. Panting breathlessly as Cherrie looked up at him with a small smile .

"That you like me?"

He huffed out a laugh . That was an understatement.

"That I love you moron. And I want this to be real.

No more play pretend." He corrected her, heart in his mouth as he waited for her reaction to his love.

But Cherrie just smiled and nodded her head casually . Wrapping her legs around his waist to pull him close again, running her fingers through his hair.

"Okay. Sounds good." Was all she muttered. Giggling girlishly at the way Max's eyes went wide , his breathing hitching as he looked down at her in surprise.

"Okay? That easy?" He couldn't believe it. Having expected some bickering or smart ass comments on her behalf.

Instead he was getting soft eyes and an open heart. Max almost wanted to cry when she smiled up at him as though everything was going to okay.

Because it was. Finally.

"That easy." She confirmed kissing him again , smiling against his lips as she murmured. "I love you max. You're such a asshole but you’re my asshole."

Max couldn't have kissed her any harder if he tried. Then his pants went flying over their heads, her bra landing on a lamp in the corner of the room as max showed her just how much he loved her right there on his couch.

Completely forgetting about their guests for the evening who let themselves in after knocking for a while and getting no answer.

Charles Impatiently huffing as he held the bags full of takeout in his hands while Lando held onto a bottle of champagne for them to share.

"What if he's murdered her?" Charles worried after knocking for the fourth time and getting no answer. His protectiveness kicking in full force. Cherrie was his best friend and as much as he could see now that they liked each other. He still didn't trust max in the slightest.

In his head .. no man would ever be good enough for his best friend.

Lando snorted a laugh "don't you mean her killing max? Cherrie is the crazy one." He said while grinning.

Charles frowned over at him "she's not crazy . She's-" he struggled to find the right word for her chaotic behaviour. "She's-creative." He settled with.

Lando giggled at him "yeah . Creative with her threats. Didn't she say she was going to unhinge his jaw if he ever ate her pasta again last month when we were getting lunch at the track?" He reminded him in amusement.

Charles sighed loudly , looking exasperated. "Obviously! It was good pasta and max just ate it all!" He defended her easily . "And anyways- oh my god-" he paused mid sentence as they both froze as they heard noises coming from inside the apartment.

A loud whine and grunting had both Charles and Lando freezing warily, exchanging concerned glances as they then glanced back to the door in front of them.

Another loud scream had Lando worriedly biting his nails . "You don't think they're - you don't think that they are actually killing each other so you? It's sounds like someone's in pain!" He whisper shouted at Charles. Clutching onto his oversized bottle of champagne worriedly.

They heard cursing and then Max's voice grunting "Cherrie-fuck! I'm gonna-" before a woman's cry sounded out through the door.

And automatically Charles thought the worst. Eyes widening as worry shot through him like a sharp arrow to his chest.

"I knew that something was wrong! He's attacking her!" He exclaimed angrily before bursting through Max's door without any hesitation. Ready to rescue his best friend from his evil clutches. Lando quickly scurrying after him .

"Cherrie! Don't worry I'm here to save you-!" He called out loudly as they both came skidding around the hallway corridor and into the front room.

Screeching to a abrupt stop as Lando let out a shriek of horror from beside him as they looked at the scene playing out in front of them.

Both max and Cherrie's head snapping over to them in shock. Naked and tangled around each other , and definitely not fighting .

"Oh my god. You guys are fucking." Charles blurted out in shock. Glancing between the two of them with a sheepish chuckle as the both of them slapped their hands over their eyes quickly.

Lando was gagging frantically beside him "my eyes! My eyes! I've just seen Max's-"

Max huffed loudly as he carefully rolled off of Cherrie , passing her his shirt to throw on as he pulled his boxers back up over his hips. Glaring at the two of them in annoyance .

"What the fuck?! Can't you knock?!" He shouted at them with a scowl as he buttoned his shirt to cover up cherries body. Untucking her messy 'I've just had sex' hair from the collar so that it wouldn't pull at her scalp painfully .

Charles scoffed at him "we did! Like a hundred times! We heard noises and thought someone was in pain!" He defended them loudly .

Lando still moaning like he was scarred for life beside him. Bashing his head against the wall as he tried to get the image of Max's ass and dick from his brain to go away.

Cherrie just giggled as she got off the couch, making sure that the shirt covered everything it needed to before bouncing over to their friends shamelessly, unbothered by being caught mid fuck. It wasn't the first time that this had happened in her life , probably wouldn't be the last either.

"We really need to lock the door behind us next time." Max muttered with a annoyed sigh . Running a hand through his hair that was ticking up in every direction , glancing over at Cherrie and silently admiring the way she looked in his shirt .

"I don't know why you're so pale Charles. You've walked in on me getting railed before." She casually mentioned as she walked into the kitchen to get them large glasses for the champagne that Lando had brought.

Charles scowled at the both of them while Lando collapsed onto the dining table chair, taking deep breaths and unable to look max in his eye now.

Max scowled too at the thought of Cherrie with anybody else , huffing underneath his breath as he snatched the bags of takeaway from Charles hand so that he could plate them up.

"But-but it's max! It's very different! I didn't know all those guys!" He exclaimed. Glaring at max in disgust. "Defiling my best friend! How dare you!"

Max rolled his eyes "shut up. She's fucked around with half of the top favourite footballers and actors.. and singers.. and billionaires and-"

Cherrie frowned over at her now real boyfriend "hey! Do you mind not making me sound like a slut max?"

He just gave her a pointed look. Kissing the side of her head apologetically as he passed her to get the plates.  "Cherrie. I love you so much but- there was about two years of you slutting around. It's nothing to be ashamed of. We all have a past.” He simply replied.

Cherrie pulled a face back at them "I'm not ashamed. I'm proud of myself . It's quite impressive really isn't it? And about three of them wanted to marry me-" she proudly grinned. Reaching up to give max a quick kiss before forcing Charles to sit down at the table, seemingly still frozen in shock by the doorway, still traumatised from what they had walked into.

Max scoffed and pursed his lips, narrowing his eyes at her as he slid her plate of food to her first. "The only man you'll be marrying is me." He stated to her casually like it was no big deal.

Charles looked like he was about to have a stroke. While Lando had quickly gotten over his horror as soon as the plate of food was put in front of him.

Glancing up from his plate as he shovelled a spoonful of noodles onto his mouth, looking over at Cherrie curiously. "Cherrie?"

"Yeah?" She slid Charles a extra large glass of champagne. Patting his back encouragingly as he gaped between her and max, still in shock.

"Are your tits real?" He asked her. Genuinely curious .

Max and Charles snapped their heads over to him in disbelief . "Lando!"

Max scowled "that's my girlfriend ! Watch it!"

Cherrie just smiled and nodded her head, completely unbothered as she dug into her food. Max wrapping his hand around the arm of her chair and pulling at it, with her sitting in it calmly, pulling it to be beside him so that they were side by side instead.

"Yeah they are. Nice huh?" She winked at Lando jokingly. Patting Max's thigh when he glared at her, huffing at her in disbelief.

Lando grinned , laughing loudly at the look on Max's face . Enjoying winding him up far too much now.

"Very lovely." He agreed with a grin before motioning between the two of them with his finger. "So.. this is very real then? The two of you?"

Cherrie and max glanced at eachother with knowing smirks, laughing beneath their breaths. She nudged Max's arm gently with her own, max leaning down to give her another kiss. Just because he could now.

And also because he loved seeing the way Charles grimaced at him in disgust . "Best friend stealer." Charles mouthed at him with narrowed eyes. Miming stabbing him with his fork.

Max just snorted and gave him the middle finger.

He grinned "it's always been real. We're in love and this.." he looked down at Cherrie with nothing with love in his eyes. "Is a forever thing. So you might as well get used to seeing me around her now Charles. Because she my best friend now."

And Cherrie had to hold Charles back before he could throw himself across the dining table for that comment.

Giving her smirking , finally real , boyfriend a shake of her head as he continued to wind up Charles for the rest of the night. Deliberately kissing her in front of him and telling Charles that if he was lucky he could be one of her bridesmaids at their future wedding.

And just like that. They were in love. And their friends were traumatised for life.

[slashingdisneypasta]

Teen! Bubba, Chucky and Freddy x Reader || Oneshot

Title: Y/N and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Night

Notes:

This is a rewrite of a very cracky-y fic! I was never happy with how I wrote this shot- I found Chucky was too brooding and Freddy was lame (Though I was happy with how the Sawyer's worked out ^^ I love those brothers so much), and I have had plans for second and third instalment's for forever that I still wanna make, so here! Take #2.

I'm gonna delete the original *cough* Sorry if you liked it, but this one is way better! Basically the exact same stuff happens, its just mercilessly edited and is a lot smoother, plus the characters are more realistic *cough* less cringe *cough*.

The characters still aren't totally right, ya know, mostly cuz they are in totally different settings then they usually are- Freddy especially. But, trust me, in the next part he will become much more the character we love to hate and it'll be great XD Haha.

Plot: At a party you didn’t want to go to, you lose sight of your best friend Freddy, help out a nervous boy called Bubba, annnnd there’s also neighbourhood terror Charles Lee Ray, there. The whole night is dramatic and mildly traumatising (Mistakes were made), but there were perks too.

Warnings: Mentions of vomit and pee, mentions of physical abuse, sexual assault (Freddy forces a kiss on you but it doesn't go any further then that), cursing, and just sexual references. Its the basic chaotic teen movie house party.

FRIDAY NIGHT

As soon as I walked in here, I knew it was time to go home. Everyone was drinking, my only friend abandoned me the second we stepped over the threshold, and to top it all off I think I saw a rat. A RAT.

This was a mistake from the get-go, from the very idea. My shoulder devil betrayed me and I shouldn't be surprised but I am shocked.

So then I turned around to leave, get the hell out of dodge you might say, but two face-suckers I recognised vaguely as David 'Spit Ball' Brown and Erica 'No Self Respect' Banks from Bio, set up shop right in the doorway, and when I attempted to - painfully awkwardly, - ask if I could get just past them quickly... I got ignored.

Now, after 3 hours of this mess that the world so innocently calls a ‘house party’, when its clearly societies half assed attempt at absolute chaos... I am still here. Yep, that's all. I'm, still, here. And I'm very uncomfortable. Why couldn’t I be a 'party animal'? Or even remotely comfortable in this kind of setting? I'd love to be having fun but I just feel like an endangered loaf; Sitting here in the corner atop the kitchen bench, hidden away by some open cabinet doors but still hazardously close to all these drunkards and their inhibitions. I found this semi-safe place when I decided to just stand by and wait for things to die down a bit so I can leave, but I'm now just starting to figure that my chances of that happening, are... slim. As its 12.30- on a school night.

I’ve seen literally 3 kids throw up on the floor and 4 injuries. I also saw Freddy - the friend that abandoned me, - with a cup of something brown in his hand, -. I considered getting his help, but he was... uhh... busy... and a good wing-friend, unfortunately, would never fuck chances like that up for him.

I also glimpsed the town's local nomad - no one knows where he lives, or if he even goes to our school, but everyone knows who he is and that he is the one behind that one time our school shut down for a week due to bug infestation, - , Chucky, in another room brooding, so no one is safe.

Not even a few more minutes pass before another boy, around my age, comes into the kitchen and vomits- into the sink though this time. Then he turns back, looks about with trembling lips, and sinks down to sit on the tiles and hold his tummy. He looks so lonely, my heart hurts. Chewing on my bottom lip, it takes me a good minute to force myself off the bench and from my hiding spot, but I make it over to him, kneel down and tap his shoulder. Quickly, he snaps his head around at attention, and looks at me with cautious, wide, brown eyes.

“Hey, do you wanna go home now?”

If his trembling arms, rested on damp pants depicted anything to me, then its ‘I want to go home’, and he does. He nods sadly, but as if he has no way to get home. Raising a shaky hand, he points at a couple of lanky boys standing in the kitchen doorway, one wearing circular shades and the other a dirty looking green t-shirt. They look a little older than us, collage-aged probably and are definitely having a blast- One of them is saying something about beer pong. “B-B-Brothers.” The word comes out of the boy like its practised, but its still difficult.

Ah. Clearly the younger brother got the fashion sense in the biological line-up; He's wearing a nice button up and slacks, though it looks like someone may have spilt something on his shirt. I frown. “So, they’re your ride home then?” The boy nods, seeming to become more comfortable with me as time passes. To move it along, I give him a reassuring smile and another shoulder pat. “Do you have anyone who can come pick you up?" I pick my phone up out of my back pocket and show him. "I can call them for you.”

His eyes brighten immediately, even though his face doesn’t. He’s clearly had a bad night; Way worse than I have. Also, he’s adorable and pitifully sat on the kitchen floor, so I have to help the poor guy. I smile bigger and get out my phone, handing it to him so he can put in the phone number as I sit down on the tiles beside him, watching the numbers he presses in.

Once he’s done that, he hands it to me again so I can talk, which isn’t surprising, seeing as he had trouble uttering the one word he did give me. I don’t mind- although, I do hope whoever he called is nice. Phone calls are scary. “Hello? I have someone here, uh… “Oh my god, I don’t know his name!! “He, he… uh… wants to get picked up and taken home…?”

“Ah, you work at that chicken joint, then. Was it Nubbins or Chop Top that broke something this time? I'm not paying for it, take it up with them. Or- err- Did Bubba throw up again? I’ll be right over-” A thick, cranky-sounding, southern accented man responds through the phone. I look at the boy with wide eyes, to see he’s watching intently and then poke a finger into my non-listening ear so I can hear the man easier. Chicken joint?

“No, sir, sorry. My names Y/N. One of them feels sick, and we’re at a party at 38 Maple- “

I get cut off, as the man suddenly shouts- “Those dunderheads!!” I jump immediately at the sudden bark coming through the receiver. Oh god! He’s mad. He's very, very mad. Peaking at the boy again, whose name is apparently either ’Chop Top’, ‘Nubbins’ or ‘Bubba’, I catch a very nervous look on his face and he twiddles his thumbs and looks away from me finally. “I knew they’d go to that damn party! Why did I trust them?? Why?? And with Bubba, as well. Those SHITS!”

“S-Sir,” I try to intervene, to actually get the boy some help like I intended, and also make him stop yelling because its terrifying and my ear is starting to hurt.

“I’ll be right there, I will. Thank you for calling.” Then the line goes abruptly dead and I drop my phone hand into my lap, taking my finger out of my ear too. Smacking my lips awkwardly, I turn to the boy, and after a moment, mouth ‘Bubba?’ and tilt my head, look curious. He nods, so that’s his name. At least something good came out of that traumatic phone call with that insane man.

“Uhh, whoever that was- your father?” Bubba shakes his head. “Uncle?” Another head shake. Wait- “Brother?” He nods. That guy sounded 80 years old!! “Your brother is coming to get you. He seemed… irritated.”

Bubba lets his head fall forward, and sighs. Smiling and shaking my head, I get up to my feet and offer my hands to him. “Come on, we’ll clean you up a bit and sober you if we can. I think we should stick together; Better in two’s then one’s in this mad place, right?”

Enthusiastically, he nods, and takes my hands but doesn’t put much of his weight on me as I ‘help’ him up to his feet. As we walk through the house looking for a bathroom, because the kitchen sink is still full of his sick, he walks in front of me to part the way since he’s bigger- he’s so sweet! On the way we don’t run into much trouble apart from busy walkways, but the vague scent of pee coming from Bubba seems to get us through. I look around for Freddy while we do, to make sure he hasn’t gotten into trouble or is choking on his own vomit anywhere, because he isn’t the most sensible person, but catch no sight of him.

When we get there, there’s 2 girls with a lighter just turning it on and off and giggling hysterically in there already, but they quickly clear out when we come in- like we’re the fuzz, or something.

I fold and wet some toilet paper, and Bubba wipes himself off, and fixes his attire. I think we get through 3 quarters of the toilet paper roll before Bubba has decided he’s presentable again. I gesture to the deodorants for him, and he picks out a flowery looking perfume to spray himself with. It smells nice.

Then I take a deep breath, drop my hands on his shoulders and glance out the door which is emitting crazy loud music sounds, laughter and shouting, and back at him; A cheeky look of detriment fixed onto my face. “Let’s go. Front door; Here we go. You ready?”

A second of worry crosses his face, then he straightens his round shoulders and turns around. I let go of him and follow along as we head to the front door. This time is a little bit difficult, because Bubba doesn’t smell so much anymore, but his larger then regular - for a teenager, - stature still gets the job mostly done.

When we reach the front door, its wide open and perfectly clear. I think, hazzah! We’re getting outta here! But Bubba suddenly stops in his tracks and I bump right into his back. Momentarily, I panic, because when I paused last time for just a second, the doorway closed up and I ended up was trapped here, but then peer around Bubba’s frame to his face and see he’s chewing worriedly on his fat bottom lip. I look at where he’s looking, next, and see a big food van, and a small, cranky looking man sitting in the front seat- door wide open so he can see the sin properly.

Ah, that must be his brother. Face more then matches the voice. Furrowing my brows at Bubba though, I tilt my head. “Bubba, is it okay? Is he gonna be really mad?”

Bubba turns to me, and nods. I set him with a focused look in return, stern. From what I heard from the big brother guy, he was way more mad at the lanky brothers then at Bubba. He just seemed worried for Bubba. Maybe he needs reminding. “At you, or your brothers?”

Bubba pauses, then sets his shoulders again like before, looking brave, and heads off. I feel a slight aching feeling in me at his going away, because I like him and don’t know whether I’ll see him again, but then he turns around and waives goodbye and I remember I have his big brothers phone number. Smiling nervously back because I’m alone in this place once again, I waive back, slowly inching towards the door myself.

Then a smashing noise alerts me to the left and I catch a vase being knocked over, and also an open bedroom.

Inside, is my missing friend sitting hunched over on the edge of a bed.

“Oh, thank god,” I mutter turning and going for the room instead, enjoying the quiet once I make it in. But also feeling a sudden... deep discomfort, that comes along with it. I try to ignore that as I move further in. “Freddy?” He was looking down at his feet, completely unmoving, but when I spoke, he looked up and for a moment his eyes are unresponsive. But then they focus. Immediately I read the room, and the girl earlier, and drop my smile. Something in me feels really, really wrong. “What happened?”

He immediately gets up and tries to make a storming exit for the door. “Nothing, I’m just sick of this place. Let’s leave.” I panic and shut the door before he can slam it further open and get out, and he reels back slightly, looking unamused at me. He reiterates. “I’m fine.”

Wincing, I feel overwhelming levels of concern for him. And also for me. Because he is mad. “You say that, but a little too much and your face... disagrees... ”

“You don’t like my face either, then?” Freddy snaps, mood dropping to become even worse, and I suddenly think of how bad it could have possibly been compared to this if I had asked Bubba’s older brother for a ride home.

But then Freddy's words sink in.

“What?” An angry look takes over my face and my tone lowers, too. Nearly unbearable panic seizes my chest suddenly, like it always does when I think something’s happened. When your best friend has been bullied his entire life, you develop that kind of reaction to things, even little ones. Or maybe that's just me. “Your face is fine! What are you talking about?? Who told you- what did they tell you? What happened?” Panic surges and I suddenly wouldn’t have any reservations for going out there and hitting someone- they’re all drunk, they probably wouldn’t remember, anyway.

“Ask Leroy, he was there.” Freddy’s voice is dipped in anger, lowered and coming as more of a growl that I've never heard before, and I want to be mad too, but that confuses me.

“Leroy?” I ask, confused. Do I know a Leroy? Lee-roy…

Lee Ray. Charles Lee Ray. Chucky!

I manage to say, “Oh no.”, and a humourless chuckle is the response I get to that. Calming down, I sit down and drag him by the arm down next to me, wanting to comfort him. But Freddy’s never been sentimental, and I can’t just pat his shoulder and smile like I did with Bubba. He just needs to say what’s going on in his head right now. And I need to listen. “What did he do?”

He seems to be stuck on something else, though. “You said my face is fine, what’s fine about it?”

I roll my eyes, and sigh out a deep breath of my relief. He's fine. “Whatever happened, you’re plenty handsome. Don’t fret! Now, I liked that leaving idea, let’s go. Hopefully the coast is still clear- “Suddenly, shockingly, lips are on mine, which is alarming mostly because I have never been kissed??? I don’t- I don’t know- what- I am supposed to- Why is this happening?

And- and his hands are on my waist and he’s really close. I’ve never been this close to anyone before, I’ve never thought of Freddy in this way.

I- I taste lip gloss. I’m not wearing lip gloss. And something else strong, which I imagine is whatever brown liquid was in his cup earlier.

Realising this is too much, that he must be really messed up right now, I turn my head away from him and peel his fingers off of my waist- but they just get tighter. “Freddy- “

The smell of whatever alcohol he ingested envelopes me and its clear he drank a lot of it, so I have to stop him. My voice gets stern, threatening. “Get off.”

“Y/N… “It’s all of a sudden absolutely clear how drunk Freddy is, yes because of the smell that I somehow missed before but now can’t stand, but also the tightness of his grip on me. Not bruising, but not giving either and it’s a shock because I’ve known this boy for forever and he has never acted like this before. There’s a big fat space between telling dirty jokes and this. I’m panicking again, heart hammering in my chest. I knew going to this party was a bad idea! “Nu uh, don’t call me that…  call me Daddy.”

Oh my lord. That's almost laughable.

“No!” I exclaim, horrified, and before anything else can happen or he can open his mouth again and traumatise me some more, I get a fist full of his hair and yank him back. The pain of it surprises him and I get up to my feet, letting go and backing away quickly, hands raised in surrender. I shouldn’t have hurt him like that, fuck, I think as I watch him hold his head, groan like he’s waking up, and lean forward, all the weight of his bed and his shoulders on his elbows digging into his knees. But I had to. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“... Don't ask don't tell... ”

I just want to say ‘Oh my god’, over and over again. This is too fucked for me right now, I wish I was still with Bubba. God. I take a deep breath, turn around and leave the room, slamming the door behind me.

Time to really leave- Oh, come on!

David. And Erica.

Again.

They’re back.

Groaning, I turn and head back into the party, looking for a new hiding spot. I’m alone again.

TIME SKIP

10 minutes later, I've found a nice place to hide on an upstairs balcony, the doors to the bedroom its attached to closed and the lights all turned off inside and out. I can see people on the lawn downstairs but its all stoners and they're rather peaceful. I feel comfortable, finally, and sit down on the ground, leaning my head on the wall, breathing in fresh night time air and refreshing myself.

Glancing at my phone, I see its 1.10, now. I hope at least Bubba is snoozing right now. Safe and comfortable is nice, but I’m so tired. I’ve smelt more vomit then a nurse does in a month working in the children’s ward, I’ve done nothing but sit around the whole time and think about my bed which is so not a good Friday Nights use of time, and now I’m in a fight with Freddy.

At least, I think it’s a fight. He was drunk, so I guess it could be a misunderstanding. But it feels terrible, and uncomfortable in a way I've never felt, least of all with him- like a fight.

“Hey,” I’m absolutely sure that ‘hey’ wasn’t meant for me, but I turn anyway to find out because I thought I was the only one on this balcony, and am immediately unnerved to see the hunched, dark figure that is Charles Lee Ray slipping onto the balcony and closing the door back behind himself. And he’s looking right at me.

Could this night get any more convoluted??

“… hi.”

“So, are you going for a clown look or is that, an accident?” It takes a moment for his words to sink in, but when I do my eyebrows scrunch together in confusion. What? He takes his thumb and brushes under his mouth, then points to me and looks out at the dark street stretched in front of the balcony; Apparently not really caring.

I wipe under my lips cluelessly with my own thumb- before remembering the purple-ish lipstick I put on for the night that’s probably smothered under my probably swollen bottom lip. My eyes blow open wide. “Ah!” Hurriedly, I get up, searching my pockets and finding the toilet paper that I stashed away in case I got a stuffy nose when Bubba and I were in the bathroom, and clean up the mess blindly, cheeks bright red. I didn’t even think of that after the kiss!! “All gone?” I then ask Chucky, hesitantly with my eyes still open wide and round. Just so I don’t look like a moron for the rest of the night; Certainly not, in any attempt to make conversation with him.

He holds up a thumb to tell me its all good, and my shoulders start to relax. While I try to calm down from that mortifying little highlight, Chucky crosses the balcony to stand beside me, looking out to the street.

He has a very nice profile.

And he’s more brooding then I thought- And I did think he would be quite brooding.

After a second, I feel like I feel kind of out-of-place, like I'm not supposed to be here despite claiming the territory first, so I move to leave the balcony - hoping Erica and David have had their fill for the night each other’s faces, and I can finally leave, - but before I get anywhere, Chucky turns around and catches me looking around like a lost child, and laughs. “Oh, I don’t mean to run you off, cutie pie, but this is prime fucken real estate here. I’m good with sharing if you are, though- " He cuts off, and pale blue eyes leer over my form in a way that makes me cross my arms. "You’re that scrawny ginger’s friend, aren’t you?”

“Uhh… yes.” Cutie pie? Scrawny ginger? Okay… so far, I understand… for now…

Then I remember Freddy mentioning Chucky and my eyebrows furrow down; That protectiveness from before lighting up again. “Why??”

“Oh, you know something. That’s a nasty look on your face, there. No less cute, of course, you’re like a damn puppy dog- but angry.” He gets up from leaning on the balcony, revealing the height difference between me and him. He’s not that much taller than me, being around Freddy’s height, but that’s still enough to make me feel short when he’s looking at me like I’m prey. Which he is.

Then he shrugs and kisses his teeth. “I might deserve it, go ahead and look at me.”

“What did you do??” I ask harshly. 1, Because I don’t like the feeling he’s giving me, talking to me so familiarly about something I don’t know about, and 2. Because I want to know what made Freddy act like he did. He was messed up, and it wasn’t all because of the drink, nor was it his regular level of messed up.

Chucky gives a great sigh, at my question, so deeply in fact that his shoulders raise and drop drastically. He really doesn’t care. That, or he cares and doesn’t want to talk about it, but wants me to think he doesn’t care. “I guess I musta' ran off with his prey, I… “Cleaning out one of his ears yuckily with his finger, he looks thoughtful for a moment. Finishing, he scrapes the stuff off his finger onto the balcony. “I don’t really remember what happened exactly. It was a couple hours ago now, there have been a couple other girls, since.”

You… you’re a deeply offensive person. I think, eyes wide.

“D-different girls?? As-as in- “Oh lord, who am I hanging out with? The STD capital of America? He glances at me, then laughs because my face must be a sight, because I am horrified.

“I didn’t fuck them!” He exclaims, a little too loudly, causing me to look around. Of course, though, no one else is around close enough to hear that and I mentally slap myself for doing it. My heart’s beating way too hard at just that crass, crude sentence. “Your friend, though, he was about t- “

“Nahhhhh, nah, nah! Nah!” I exclaim quickly, also loudly, making a face. I shake my hands at him. No!! Chucky just finds this hilarious and just laughs it up. “I don’t- no. No. I don’t need to know. Thank you… “Although, things are starting to make sense. Freddy's fragile pride was hurt. Ugh.

We lapse into silence once again, this time for a long while. I try to inhale as much fresh air as possible, readying to return to the hellhole that is the party, to get away from this psycho. Then Chucky turns to me a final time, and asks, “Do you want to get out of this place?” and I am completely at his mercy.

“Oh yes please.”

MONDAY

As soon as I walk into sight of the school today, Chucky saddles beside me; Walking silently but like he’s supposed to be there, somehow- I’m sorry, did I adopt you somehow?? How did you even know which way I was coming from? He’s so scary. “Um- hello?”

Since Friday, when he helped me climb down from the balcony and then just walked off, relieving me severely from his presence, I’ve thought about him probably the least out of everything that happened at the party. Yes, he’s a bad boy and he’s handsome and we talked, but really, he didn’t say much that made me desire to spend any more time with him. I do want to hang out with Bubba some more, and I need to see Freddy at some point.

Chucky is the least of my concerns.

“Good morning?” He asks in mock politeness, a cheerful, rueful grin on his face. For a moment I'm speechless, because I’m rendered stupid by his smile, because I don’t know what it means, because he makes me nervous. And for good reason. Am I his next victim- or flavour? I don’t know if I want to be either one of those things. So, instead of looking at him anymore, I look away and around- for Bubba.

He phoned me last night. Oh- well- one of the other boys, Nubbins, called me, asked me for my email so Bubba could email me. He also asked what I looked like, which I responded with ‘Small’, just to see what he might say, and he said, ‘That’s awesome’; Which I’m concerned about.

But anyway, Bubba said in his first email that he goes to our school, and I’m just wondering how I never noticed him! But, then again, he was only noticeable last night because of the pee on his pants and the sink vomiting. So maybe he’s just a bit of a wallflower. So am I - the only reason Chucky recognised me was because of Freddy... who does not have the greatest reputation, either, - , so that's perfectly fine. I know him now, don't I?

Still, even if I did find Bubba immediately, I have to respond to Chucky. He likely wont leave, if I don't. “Pretty good, thank you.” Something in me clenches uncomfortably, at that response. I don’t particularly want Chucky around, because wherever he goes he seems to take chaos with him, but there is a wannabe-follower part of me that wants him to like me. I mean, he is scary. But he’s also really cool. And that clipped response from me was so dull, I thought for a split second that he might just up and leave, immediately.

So, I turn back to him, seeing he’s still watching me with a small, amused grin for some reason - don’t know why he would be amused. I’d like him to stop being amused at me, unless he quickly takes to telling me every evil plan that’s on his mind, so I know I’m not the object of any, - , and flash him a toothless grin. “Do you see a van with the words ‘Chilli Champion’ stamped on the side? That’s my friend.”

Chucky blinks, but is no less amused by me. “Your friend’s a chill champion?”

“No, his brother is. 2 times, in fact.” Yeah, and Chop top’s a DJ and Nubbins is a photographer. Also, Bubba said something about head cheese and not to look it up on google, in reference to Nubbins who just seems to get increasingly more concerning. Both because of the unnerving phone call, and because of the mysterious and sickeningly named... 'head cheese'. Yeah, though, Bubba wrote a really long email about him and his family and their history. I had to take a snack break in the middle, but it was cute.

“Okay, uhh… “Chucky stops me from walking by tugging on my school bag slung over my shoulder, and stands unreasonably close to me - at least, I think its unreasonable. I only hang out with one boy. One person, really. Not counting family. So my frame of reference is pretty small, - , take a look around. Instead of standing here thinking about his arm touching mine, I look around too, and the second my eyes land on the familiar truck from Friday, Chucky nods towards it. “There, that it?”

“Yep! Awesome, thanks!” Who cares if I saw it first? He still made the effort for me, and that was nice. I flash him a smile, and step away, gesturing that I’m going to go cross the road to it. “He’s Bubba. I said I would walk the rest of the way to school with him, s-sooo… “My voice trembles, on ‘so’. It does that sometimes, just to fuck me up when I’m doing well, confidence wise. Chucky probably thinks I’m weird now, anyway.

No, wait. Don’t think like that Y/N, we’ve talked about this.

Chucky, luckily - not that I think he would scare Bubba, because his own brothers are frightening, but because I don’t know how they would get along. Mostly because I don’t know how I get along with either of them yet, really, - makes no movement to follow me. In fact, he steps back, shoving one of his hands deeply into his coat and with the other he waves, curtly. “Have a good day then, cutie-pie. I’ll see you around, then.”

“Yep!” And quickly, I turn around and rush off to the van that’s still running. I don’t know why I rushed, I just felt like I had to get out of there, before I embarrassed myself. Quickly, I get to the truck and round it so Chucky can’t see me anymore- I don’t know for sure if he’s watching me, but in case he is I want to keep him from it, so putting the truck between us seems like the best idea. Also, Bubba is on this side.

He sees me and immediately brightens, smiling and waving. His cheerfulness is totally infectious, so I can’t help but grin widely back. As he hops out of the truck, I wave quickly at Drayton, too, to be polite. I mean, he’s only the second scariest male in Bubba’s family, and he did say thank you at the end of our phone call- so I should make an attempt.

He gives me a small, forced, polite smile back that really just looks sour, and a nod before starting up the truck and leaning across Bubbas seat to close the door behind him. Then he peels away from the curb and down the street, and Bubba’s left standing in front of me looking nervous and cute.

I take a deep breath and let it out quickly. Truthfully, I’m nervous too. Probably not for the same reason he is, though, unless Freddy’s been kissing him, too. “So, ready for the day?”

He takes a deep breath as well, and then turns to school. Reaching over, he surprises me by taking my hand, and squeezing it, before letting go. I don’t know whether he picked up on my mood or somehow heard my stomach roll at seeing the scholarly looking building, but I’m grateful.

We start walking.

On the way, we quickly make conversation- me asking him questions and starting all the conversations, of course, but he’s surprisingly easy to communicate with. Very animated; With those thick fingers of his - which, I will admit, are nice. Think I’m weird all you like, but strong looking fingers are attractive, - and brown eyes, and mouth. We 'talk' all the way up to school and to where we part to go to our separate lockers.

Its not the goodbye that separates us, though.

I wish it was. But no, I glance the way I’m going and see Freddy. He’s wearing a raincoat despite the sunny day, and has the hood up. But I’ve seen it before, so I know its him, and I know what that raincoat means. Suddenly, all reservations for seeing him today and any other interests apart from saying a quick, polite goodbye to Bubba go completely away and I rush over. “Freddy?”

“Y/N! Uuh- oh no- “ Frantic suddenly, he looks around as if the courtyard is going to tell him what to do, and I know the panic isn’t over the raincoat because at this point I know that sometimes he’s going to turn up like this, but then I get there and I catch his wide eyes- and the big black welt over the right one. My heart sinks, even though I knew that would be there as soon as I saw the coat.

Well, that. Or a split lip, or a band-aid, or a graze. Sheepishly, Freddy stands there and lets me push back the hoodie and see the black eye in the sunlight. “I might’ve gotten home a little late... ” I should have thought of that. I should have taken him home with me instead. I should have forced coffee down his throat and dragged him home and- God, but I was so mad, and uncomfortable, that- that I didn’t want to- Oh my god. “Anyway, I’m sorry I couldn’t come see you over the weekend, I would’ve- if I could have- “I know. Mr Underwood never would’ve let him leave after a stunt like that. “Uhhh, well I know we needed to discuss the thing. That I... did... ” I watch him tilt his head, pale face awkward.

Looking at him now, I know I’m not mad. And I’m not scared of him. That was the first time he’s ever had that much alcohol - not that I know anything about the effects of liquor, never having had a drink myself, but its pretty well known what the stuff does to people. Especially skinny people with no meat on them. Like Freddy, - and because of what Chucky did to him, and I just want to forget it. Its not how I wanted my first kiss to go, not at all, not even a little bit... but I can forget it.

That's all I want, in fact. To forget it. And to do that, I need him to forget it. Clean slate.

Taking a deep breath, I push back my hair behind my ears, levelling with him. “I know you were drunk, and… Chucky- “

Quicker than I thought possible outside of YA books, Freddy’s blue eyes go impossible dark and for a split second he's no longer the apologetic, awkward boy who has been my best friend. He tilts his head forward, and says firmly. Quietly, but firmly. A bit scarily, actually- “Let’s not talk about him.”

And I know he means ‘ever’, so I shut my mouth. And also look away from his face, because right now he’s way too intense and its overwhelming, and I can’t just look straight into the storm like that. Over his shoulder, my heart sizes at the sight of Chucky, who smirks and disappears behind a building. Christ. Looking quickly back at Freddy, I try to smile. To cheer him up and make the surprisingly scary look on his familiar face, go away. “Can we just forget all about it? And I mean it. All about it- the whole party. I had a terrible time and you're never convincing me to go to another one, you got it?”

"Oh really?" He immediately does a 180 and the left corner of his mouth quirks up, a mischievous grin on his face. "Never? You had that bad a time? I didn't think all of it was so bad... " I smile back at him seeing the improved mood he's sporting... before I realise what that smirk means. Something dirty. And groan. "There were highlights!"

"No. No, never. Ever!" I exclaim, walking off towards our lockers. "I'm only listening to my shoulder angel from now on!- And don't say stuff like that you creep!" His arm slithers into the crook of mine as we walk, and I turn my head to face him.

"Angel? I thought you only had a devil?" Freddy asks, clearly thinking of himself. I flash him a smirk, back.

Then turn to face the way we're headed. "Not anymore!"

"Aw, see now I new the party wasn't all bad... "

"Never again Freddy."

"We'll see."

"No."

"Uhuh."

[marvelmaniac715]

Andy finally goes to therapy. His therapist suggests that he writes a letter to Chucky expressing his feelings about everything that’s happened to him, but the letter will never actually make it to Chucky, right?... This is that letter.

————————————————————-

Dear Chucky,

That doesn’t feel like the right way to start it. I’m not sure how else to start letters though, maybe I’d have more knowledge on the subject if I was able to attend school full time as a kid. I was bounced around so many foster homes and guardians that I never got a full education, I guess I owe that to you.

Sometimes I lie awake at night and wonder if you know just how much you affected me growing up. You severely impacted my life, yet every time we meet you don’t acknowledge this. Do you pretend that you didn’t play a part in traumatising me because it makes you feel better? Or do you know and just not care? The tiny part of me that wants to believe that there’s good in everyone would choose the former, but in my heart I know it must be the latter.

I googled you, did you know that? I learnt about your childhood, it was strangely healing to learn about the events that shaped you in your formative years. I saw a picture of you when you were about six or seven (the age I was when we first met) and I gotta admit, you were pretty cute. But the headline that accompanies the image I found reminded me that you’re psychotic. I know you killed your mom and dad, you’re beaming with pride in that photo, despite it being taken hours after their deaths. In horror movies, the killers usually had abusive childhoods that warped their perception of reality, but not you, huh? You were just born like that.

You grew up in a Home as well, so you can relate. That fact unsettles me, because you know how it feels to suffer, to grow up without parents. Yet you willingly chose that life for yourself, and you passed it on to me because why the hell not I guess. You made something inside my brain snap. I can’t pursue romantic relationships, I can’t maintain friendships or hold a job because I have trust issues. You fucked me up, Charles, and you have to face that.

I kid myself that I’m an adult, but sometimes when I see you I’m that scared little boy again, hiding behind his mother and desperately trying to prove that he isn’t insane, that his life is really in danger. My mom was traumatised too, she tries to hide it for my sake, but she can’t even look at a doll without breaking down into tears. If you read this part, you’d probably laugh that spine-chilling cackle of yours that still makes me jump every time it comes out of your mouth.

I was six years old, I just wanted a Good Guy doll for my birthday. My mom was just trying to make me happy, we didn’t have much but we had each other, life wasn’t bad. If I could go back in time I’d stab that first doll with a kitchen knife, that would’ve ended everything once and for all. If I really had the guts, I would’ve walked into that toy store where you lay dying and ripped that cursed doll out of your human form’s hands before you could even utter the incantation. But the past can’t be altered, it can only be reflected upon with a vague disappointment.

Was there ever a point where you saw me as a son? Maybe the first time around? Even when you tried to kill me, it was almost as if there was a certain fondness for me. You were the only constant male figure in my life, you taught me some valuable life lessons as well. Not to trust authority figures, because they can betray you. Not to give in to moments of weakness, you have to think on your feet in order to live. But most importantly, you taught me how to survive. With these things in mind, the case could certainly be argued that you were a father figure to me. In my angsty teen years, I certainly thought of you like that sometimes.

I have so much left to say, but I’m going to run out of paper. Long story short, I don’t forgive you, but I think I can understand you. The two of us are like kindred spirits, there’s so many similarities between us. Dead parents, grew up in the foster system, had to learn survival skills had a young age, if you disregard the murders, we could almost be the same person. The part of me that still cries out for a parental figure to fill that void in my life misses you, life is certainly much less interesting without you around. But I hope that I don’t see you again, because I enjoy living. You’re never gonna read this, but I hope you got a kick out of this, Dr. Mixter, maybe you found some information in here that can be brought up and worked on in future therapy sessions?

‘Kindest’ regards,

Andy Barclay

[medlilove]

I have complicated feelings.

I have complicated feelings.

I’m from England, like super from England, both sides. As in family in colonial India kinda England. Being patriotic, having national pride, it’s…complicated.

When I was a little girl, I didn’t know who was who, the names of her children, husband, siblings. I still don’t really know. But I knew her, she reminded me of my auntie. Like some distant fancy matriarch who was always kinda in the background. I know I’m not a good person for this but, when I think of her, I think of the 90s, my childhood and my relatives. I think of all the men in suits in government and her there too, above them. The only girl.

I don’t like the royal family, but I didn’t mind her. She wasn’t even meant to be queen, always felt a bit bad for her for that, couldn’t pay me to be royal, sounds like hell.

I was in the gift shop in the Palace of Hollyrood today, the place they all stay when in Edinburgh. Didn’t go in to the palace. It was too expensive. The shop was horrendous, porcelain with her face on everywhere, with pictures of her everywhere. Like, how many pictures could you fit into one small shop? The staff looked like they were wearing tartan school uniforms. I walked off with her face seared into my brain. It will be closed tomorrow.

She died Aberdeenshire. 25 years ago I was a tiny bridesmaid for my cousins wedding. In Aberdeenshire. The morning of the wedding, Princess Diana was killed. I am in Edinburgh now, for my cousins 25th Wedding Anniversary. We looked at old pictures of the wedding, I took a photo of the one of my Grandma’s hand around my waist. She was gone the next year. I wish I could remember the feeling of her hand on my waist.

It’s quite odd really. My Auntie misses Aberdeenshire terribly. Yesterday she told me that next month she will be the same age as her mother, my grandma, when she died. She said she remembered being at the train station with grandma, when grandad came off the train, home from the war. The air was so fresh.

I’ve known her my whole life, now one by one, they are dying off.

Happy to enjoy the memes and jokes, I’m not beyond that. Laughing is good and her death is no tragedy at 96. But I suppose little girls will see the new PM on screen now…urgh.

King Charles III does not sound right. The first two, father and son, fucking mess. Civil War level of mess. Why on earth would she name him Charles.

Three generations of men, kings, how dull. She came to my school once, Diana died at my cousins wedding, her sister worked for Charles for a while, sent a letter to her at her own wedding, and some fancy spoons, his picture is in her house. Weird. Weird. Weird. It’s all weird. It’s all meaningless. Fraught and fractured, just like England has always been.

They’ve had the same direct blood line for at least 1000 years, how much more do we need? I’ve worked central London tourist traps. I know how much money is brought in but still…

It sure does bring people together I guess. At least Charles is big on the environment. The BBC is hand in hand with them.

Let me try and phrase this bit as best I can. A lot of people who grew up in a post war Britain are deeply attached to what she represents. The stress of being a new sudden king in ww2 killed him young, her father. Britain is not perfect but the day to day person saw some fucked up shit on their doorstep’s during ww2. My auntie and her cousin Jimmy, heard planes overhead, ran out to wave at them, only to see swastikas on their bellies. Her Auntie grabbed them both, threw them into the house.

The war ended thank god. A young and beautiful new queen to carry them through. A brand new national health service. They were still on rations for years though, rubble piling up for years though, scars across the cites still to this day, I can point them out to you. My grandma and grandad, they were all traumatised, no doubt. She represented moving forward. Moving past it all, new things, new technology, new advances, new people, we’re okay we’re okay we’re okay. No more nazi planes flying overhead, look how beautiful she is. As the children of the 50s and 40s she aged with them. The trauma of war, and surviving it is deeply connected to her image. I know Britain is evil and did evil thinks but the little kids being raised by traumatised stay at home mothers in little towns are who I’m thinking about.

So be kind to the old people who might be a bit upset by this okay? It’s a bit complicated, WW2 was nearly it, we were so close to defeat and for older people, she’s a reminder of what their parents won, and what they lost.

I like the idea of them, nice and historical, I don’t have much culture so I’ll take it. But man, it’s not helping me pay my bills. I’m a bad person for not completely hating it all, I know, you don’t need to tell me, I’m conflicted enough.

I love history but it’s…complicated

[kiri-cuts]

A midlife crisis nightclub fight in “John Wick: Chapter 4″

In 1974, Charles Bronson played a middle-aged architect out for revenge against the no-good’uns who killed his wife and raped his daughter in “Death Wish.” Over several sequels, Bronson’s character utilizes his keen building design skills by “redesigning” the status of some very bad men -- from living to dead. He’s a good man pulled into the maze of this poorly planned apartment block called life. To make it out alive, he must face riddles that only his dimming masculinity and his trusty firearms can answer.

Since then, of course, this general narrative has become the saving grace for ageing male actors in Hollywood looking to redefine and reclaim their masculinity on screen. Beginning with the great success of “Taken” in 2008, older actors like Liam Neeson, Sylvester Stallone, Nicholas Cage, John Travolta, Bruce Willis, Denzel Washington, and Gerard Butler all starred in at least one, if not several, movies wherein they played characters who were pulled back into the violent lifestyle they had once abandoned to become a good family man. The reason usually involved some variation on a beloved woman being sex trafficked, raped, killed, or all three. 

Rest assured, though their women are still dead or deeply traumatised, these men always rediscover their masculinity by the film’s end, having grabbed a handful of their own junk with one hand and a firm fistful of justice with the other.  These are films about hard-done-by men who have lost the women in their lives — in both figurative and literal ways usually — and who can only rediscover and reclaim their long-lost manhood via their ancient fighting skills.  

When “John Wick” arrived in 2014, it felt fresh. Sure, John’s wife dies. But her death doesn’t have any less impact on him or value to the story just because she wasn’t mercilessly attacked by a gang of men. Instead, she takes her bow via cancer. Her decision to leave him a puppy suggests she has faith in his power to remain a good man -- to be soft and gentle and kind and to remember to lead with his heart and not with his fists. But god-fucking-dammit, if a cartel doesn’t get in that way of that plan by socking a bullet into Daisy -- the greatest Beagle ever (RIP). What else is a man to do but go on a vengeful rampage?

By the end of “John Wick: Chapter 4″ the body count sacrificed for John’s survival is said to be somewhere in the region of 500 people. Indeed, at the beginning of the film, it becomes clear that the character’s bid for all-out revenge and endurance is starting to impact –- and kill –- the few people left who actually care about him. If he could just swallow his pride, let this shit go, and die, then maybe his pals won’t have to also fight this battle for him.

Alas, John doesn’t agree and –- despite his eagerness to join his wife in the afterlife –- just continues finding inventive ways to turn goons for hire into human confetti. Good for him?

One of the film’s most extravagant set pieces involves a water-soaked melee within a Berlin nightclub. If you’ve ever bitterly choreographed a fight within the cramped confines of the hell-home experiments to be made in any one of “The Sims” games then you’ll be very familiar with the responses given by the attendees of this club. As a neverending queue of Berlin’s best body bait get absolutely walloped by The Baba Yaga –- a man with more lives than Jason Voorhees, for chrissake –- dancers flail their arms timidly or look mildly horrified at the carnage before returning to the groove. 

It’s an apt non-playable-character response for a film that feels so lovingly influenced by games, and this scene in and of itself feels like a particularly magnificent “Street Fighter” or “Streets of Rage” level. But it also feels apt given that the act of fighting is about as synonymous with nightclubs as dancing is. I don’t know how it is where you live, but in the north of England, a fight in a nightclub is just called a Saturday. Or a Thursday, or Friday. Or anyday with a two-for-one offer on Smirnoff Ice. 

It’s also not the first time that John has waged his particular war in a nightclub. He’s swung his fists and slung his bullets within the bisexual lighting to be found in the clubs of the first “John Wick,” as well as in “John Wick: Chapter 2.” Like a man who simply moves on to the next Pop World after he’s been barred from the first, John is a man who knows that the fight is never over so long as there’s a dancefloor with blood to be spilled on. 

I hate to imagine any Keanu Reeves character sat in a Wetherspoons, complaining to an underpaid bartender about how “woke culture” is destroying his life, but it’s easy to foresee such things in his character in “John Wick: Chapter 4.”. He’s stubborn and shortsighted, and unable to hold himself accountable for the mess that continues to follow him from film to film. John just wants to watch the world burn and to hell with these boys who won’t let him light the match. 

In the Berlin nightclub, amongst a swarm of hip, docile young bodies without a care in the world, simply vibing off life, John’s age and particular crisis has never been more highlighted. “Oh, to be carefree,” he says to himself as he crushes another man’s skull with his fists. Snapping another man’s body into an origami of resentment, he, mumbles, “Youth is wasted on the young!” He’s like one of those divorced dads who goes out for one pint after work with the lads from the office and winds up on a 48-hour bender which ends with him losing his phone and falling down the stairs. Which incidentally, John does in this film –- 222 of them, to be exact. And for which I unleashed a cackle no cinema should ever have to hear. 

All of which is to say, John –- I love you. The puppy thing was really sad. Your fight scenes are beautiful and I will never tire of watching them. The bisexual lighting makes your skin look effervescent and delicious like a Sherbert bon-bon made flesh. But know when to quit, son. 

In “Chapter 4,” ol’John’s mid-life crisis ends (spoiler!) with his inevitable death –- a force he fights against accepting, even if it means saving the lives of people he loves. You wonder if maybe his life –- and that of the 500-or-so people killed in the process –- could have been salvaged had he just found solace in another new muscle car, a perky 19-year-old girlfriend, and a few episodes of “The Joe Rogan Experience.” But then, what do I know? I’m probably just a non-playable-character flailing her arms in the nightclub of his narrative. 

[perseusjackson-jasongrace]

Day 4: “Did it mean anything to you? Did I mean anything to you?"

Actors AU

Tears roll down Annabeth’s cheeks, the bright lights making them glisten against her pale skin.

“Did it mean anything to you?” Reyna chokes down a sob of her own, “Did I mean anything to you?”

“I’m sorry,” Annabeth shakes her head, like she can’t process what's happening, "I didn't mean for it to end this way.”

“But it did.” Reyna’s voice is clipped, strangled on emotion.

“AND CUT!” Someone yells from behind them. “That was perfect ladies! Don’t even need to do another take.”

Immediately they both relax, loosing their shoulders, and giving each other beaming smiles. Their director comes over, as does the rest of the crew, and starts debriefing them. Tomorrow they’d start on the first of many action scenes so all of them needed to be prepared. Weeks of stunt and action-training would all be put to the test, and Reyna for one was beyond excited. Although she had been in a fair number of movies at this stage the action scenes had been minimal and she hadn’t needed such high-intensity training till now. The crowd disperses as everyone packs up to make their way home for the night. 

“That was good.” She grabs her co-stars hand and squeezes.

“So good!” The blonde agrees, “And now I'm ready to go home and crash onto my couch with a burrito and a good movie.”

“Oh so anything with me in it then?” She smirks.

“You wish Arellano, there must be something to drool over. I’m thinking ‘Persephone’s Fall’ so I can stare at both Persephone and Hades.”

Reyna can’t help but agree because those two actors are truly delicious, and from what she’s heard unbelievably nice on top of that. She doesn’t know Silena Beauregard or Charles Beckendorf personally but she had seen them around a few times at award shows and after-parties.

‘What are your plans?”

“Oh,” She thinks about it for a second, and comes up empty. “I don’t know. I guess go home and crash.”

Grey eyes roll, “You are such a bore. You are coming home with me. We can both eat messy burritos and copious amounts of ice-cream and watch the movie.”

“Oh?” Her shock is evident on her face and it makes her co-star laugh.

“Come-on let’s get out of all this and go home. I need a shower desperately.”

Reyna makes haste of stripping and folding the clothes she needs to return to the costume department and then tugging on her own grey sweatpants and lavender hoodie. Her makeup is a problem for later so with a final glance around her trailer she slips into her sneakers and grabs her keys. The nights are starting to get chilly as they slowly slide into winter and it is particularly evident tonight when a west wind blows across her cheeks, biting at the flushed brown skin. 

“You ready?” A voice calls from the darkening lot.

“Yep, just have to drop this off in costumes.”

“We can go together. And then you’ll meet me at home?”

“Sure, do you want me to stop and get anything?” The place their clothes in the bin labelled ‘Used on set’, huddling together as they step outside into the now icy wind.

“No, I think I got everything. I’ve already ordered the burritos, they’ll be there by the time we are, and I already have chocolate and chunky-cookie ice-cream in the freezer.”

Reyna nods, “See you in a bit.” And then she’s hopping onto her motorbike and shoving her helmet over her head. With a rev she is off, racing out of the studios and to Annabeth’s. She can no longer feel the wind on her face but that doesn’t stop it from seeping through her clothes and freezing her insides. She hates winter. Luckily her destination is not far and soon she is pulling up to the apartment buildings and parking in the visitors section. Bright headlights catch her eyes and she recognises Annabeth's car, a bright blue Mini Cooper. The first time Reyna had seen it she laughed so hard the blonde had punched her in the arm. She had to start line runs with a numb arm and a very unhappy co-star. Luckily a custard-filled doughnut and a hot cup of coffee made her a very forgiven friend.

The blonde walks towards her, a brown paper bag swinging in her hands. “I forgot I didn’t tell you where I live and I was panicking the entire ride over that you’d gotten lost and I'd never be able to find you and then I'd have to work with,” She makes a disgusted face, “Hera. Ugh that would have been a disaster.”

“Glad you have no concern for my personal safety,” Reyna huffs, “You only care about you’d replace me.”

A teasing smile twitches at those pink lips, “You can injure yourself after we finish this.”

She shoves her as they get into the elevator and they both end up squished against the cool metal, laughing.

“Leave me be Arellano, or we battle to the death!” She whips out her car keys and points them menacingly.

“Never Chase! We duel till dawn.” Her motorbike keys are gripped tightly in her hands, the grooves digging into her skin, and there is a gleam in her eye that promises war.

As the elevator jerks to life they stand opposing each other, legs apart, brows furrowed, and barely restrained laughter twitching at their lips. It is very awkward, then, when the elevator door slides open to reveal to very confused people on the other side. Quickly they straighten up and move to the back of the box, biting their lips to hold in the giggles threatening to escape. Their shoulders press together as they wait for their floor and they absolutely refuse to look at each other. 

It is a blessing when the elevator dings to indicate their floor. They race out of there, hand in hand, and breathless with laughter.

“Did you see their faces?” Annabeth snorts, clutching her stomach as she tries to let air into her lungs. 

“What if they thought we were two robbers fighting for the right to steal in the building?” Reyna gasps.

“Or two cosplayers trying to fight for the princess’ hand.” The blonde falls to the hallway floor, unable to hold herself up.

“They probably thought we were absolute weirdos.”

“We are weirdos.” She giggles, “Come on let’s go inside before we traumatise more residents.”

So they stumble into her apartment and collapse onto the couch to collect their breaths and composure. Reyna takes the time to glance around the place she’s only briefly seen twice and is surprised to note the sheer lack of personality on the walls. She thought there’d be pages full of weird facts ripped out of old-fashioned medical books, and tons of half-done architecture drawings scattered on the coffee table. And a picture or a few of Annabeth’s beloved Greece with its old structures and beautiful oceans. 

“Are you judging my blank walls?” Those grey eyes are still closed to the world so it is an amusing surprise to hear the question.

“Why are they blank?” She doesn’t bother to deny the judging.

“In a burst of inspiration i took everything down a few days ago to redesign and then i lost all that inspiration and haven’t had the energy to put anything back.”

Indeed there were small hooks, and bits of tack stuck to the wall. “Want me to help?”

There is quiet for a while, and she almost believes the blonde had fallen asleep but then, “That would be great. But not today. Today we feast and laugh!’ And with that she launches herself off the couch and races to the kitchen.

Reyna laughs and follows suit hopping onto the counter as Annabeth worked around her. She offered to help with prep but she was instantly shooed away so she sat contently on the granite top and watched her friend busy herself around the kitchen, unpacking the bag she’d brought in that held the still warm burritos, and grabbing the ice-cream from the freezer along with two spoons.

“Drink?”

“Just water.”

“You grab the glasses, i’ll get everything else.” She points to the cupboard next to the sink. “I’ll have water too, there should be some in the fridge.”

Finally they had both settled down in the lounge, shoulders pressed together and feet tucked underneath them. The blonde fiddled with the TV for a little before the opening credits to Persephone’s Fall starts playing. She looks over, grinning wildly, and holds up the foil cylinder. “Cheers!”

They bump their food together and settle in to watch the movie. And as Persephone falls for Hades, despite their sarcasm and smart-ass comments, Annabeth laughs herself silly and Reyna drowns in the sound. And she thinks, sitting their in that cosy apartment, shovelling ice-cream into their mouths that maybe falling wouldn’t be so bad. She already has her Hades afterall.

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Tags:

@nishlicious-01

@leydiangelo

@spoopylucy

[ufonaut]

I asked you to rank the shittest dads of the JSA a while ago (which I loved so much thank you!!) so could you also do a ranking for who are the worst husbands or boyfriends in the JSA? I don’t know how to word it since some of the JSA are just not the marrying types (like Ted) so maybe who has just the worst relationship skills/disasters idk. Don’t make fun of me for my wording I can’t think of a word to put for this, but I just love everything to do with the JSA and the problems or disasters of their lives including the others making fun of said disasters lol. Thanks!

NO I GET WHAT YOURE SAYING. I LOVE IT. LETS DO THIS.

A Comprehensive Ranking of JSA (And JSA-Related) Members As Romantic Partners, From Best To Worst:

jay garrick - the model husband. it’s literally physically impossible to do better than jay. he’s completely devoted to joan and adores her, he pulls his weight around the house in terms of chores, he’s never forgotten a single important date or anniversary. women want him, men want to kill him for making them look bad

al pratt - complete sweetheart. he & mary james spend their entire time in college absolutely head over heels for each other but only manage to get it together after they graduate. ideal married life until mary’s death while al is trapped in limbo with the rest of the gang

pat dugan - only married his first wife because she was pregnant with mike and it did NOT work out but look at him with barbara! he’s fast approaching jay levels!

ted grant - ted is not the marrying kind and he’s severely slept with approx every woman he’s ever met BUT he’s a real gentleman about it and genuinely good company. 10/10 as long as nothing above vaguely amicable feelings is involved

johnny thunder - in the all star comics 1940 run, johnny tells the jsa he can’t join up until he asks his girlfriend’s permission. malewife

carter hall - for all the ways he should be banned around children and specifically around kendra, it’s undeniable carter did/does love shiera with his whole entire heart and her death is the leading cause for his occasional insanity. good husband, terrible person

johnny quick chambers - the jsa’s most famous divorcee. johnny isn’t a bad husband per se & he and libby were ridiculously in love once upon a time but the spark went out and they divorced because libby was embarrassed of his get rich quick schemes/infomercials. libby’s loss is the world’s gain

charles mcnider - in love with his nurse/assistant, myra mason, so there’s definitely something to be said about power dynamics (especially in the 1940s) and he does eventually get myra killed during a midnite adventure but. for a moment in time. They Were Very In Love. and i’m counting it as something considering who’s to follow

wes dodds - he & dian have that classic noir detective/girl friday dynamic and it’s fun to see someone as endlessly devoted to each other as they are & extra interesting that they’re one of the few couples from Back Then to never marry but rather opt to be life partners (not to mention the starman arc ‘sand and stars’ regrettably informs us their sex life is better than ever). there is, however, the matter of wes locking dian’s nephew in his basement and the insane insane age difference between them (spectre 92 tells us wes was attending socialite parties when dian was just a little girl)

rex tyler - well-meaning and deeply loving but there’s a chance wendi tyler did not, in fact, see her husband even once for the duration of their marriage. chronically absent. award-winning ability to miss birthdays and anniversaries

ted knight - great husband as far as doris knight & the rest of the world were concerned! now, yknow, if it weren’t for those pesky nights spent in sleazy motels with dinah drake after just about every mission for a year or so

alan scott - this is admittedly a little bit of a dilemma considering alan is gay & closeted and traumatised & angry about it but there’s no way of knowing What Might Have Been and how alan would act with a male partner (as i don’t think he’s ever had any experiences in the matter that’ve lasted longer than a night) so the fact of the matter is that his marriage to molly is a disaster and she’s unhappy enough about it to sell her soul to the literal devil TWICE. between his World Famous Anger Issues and the fact that alan smashes glasses in casual conversation with his best friend if his temper gets the best of him, this is a well deserved spot

[where-theres-smoak-2]

Riverdale 5x09 Review

Well I didn’t hate this episode like I hated the last one but I wasn’t exactly blown away by it either. It wasn’t a bad episode but I think my issue with it is if you dropped it into the middles of season 3 or 4 it would have fit in. It was fine it was just nothing new which you know doesn’t exactly make me excited to watch more. It was definitely one of those episodes where I either found myself checking to see how long was left or was rolling my eyes at something. Still there were moments I enjoyed. But without further ado lets jump in. As always these are just my own opinions and interpretation also there are clearly spoilers. 

 Betty and Polly

So a good chunk of this episode was following Betty as she continued to investigate what happened to Polly after finding the crushed telephone booth. Betty hears back from Glen and is told that the blood found on the booth is a match to Polly’s so with the amount of blood that is there it is likely she is dead. When she tells Jughead he tells her that he might have a lead, someone who might have seen something. So they go to see My Dreyfuss. He tells them on two other occasions a phone booth has been shredded like it was with Polly, in the summer of 77 and 82. He explains that its caused by the Mothmen ship’s antimatter fusion reactors which create a gravity field that allows them to levitate but anything that gets caught in that field gets crushed. Which you know sounds legit to me. Though I will say I did think the look Betty sent Jughead when Old Dreyfuss started talking about the Mothmen was hilarious. Needless to say Betty wasn’t exactly sold on this version of events. Which again I found kind of funny considering she hunted down something called The Gargoyle King in high school but apparently aliens are even too weird for Betty. 

I am not at all surprised that Polly’s storyline is linking up with the Mothmen one, I’ve been saying for a while now that I thought all the storylines would converge at some point and I expected that Jughead’s and Betty’s would be the first to do that. My theory is that the Mothmen mystery is to do with military testing and that will tie in Archie as well, I also think as the Mothmen body Nana Rose had was found in the maple groves, and Hiram has an interest in the maple groves, that Hiram’s storyline will also be linked in, which will also link in Veronica and the other characters who are going up against Hiram to save the town. I did wonder if maybe its not really Hiram that wants Riverdale to be shut down but rather some rogue section of the military who want to cover up the testing they’ve been doing and that’s why Hiram unincorporated the town, maybe the military are paying him to help them. 

So in her grief at what has presumably happened to Polly has sent Betty off the deep end. Now here’s the thing with this I appreciate that not every character’s development goes in a straight line. That’s what makes a character’s storyline interesting. There are twists and turns and they have set backs. That being said this return to dark betty didn’t really work for me. I mean I can understand that she is grieving for her sister, she’s going through trauma because of TBK and all that is making her turn back to her dark side. But for me I thought they wrote a good end to that whole storyline with her going under the hypnosis and kind of telling her younger self she could go play, and basically ‘killing’ dark betty before she is ever born. I liked how, well how I thought they had brought a close to that part of Betty’s character development. I honestly thought we were done with ‘dark betty’. But I guess not. I suppose we see where they take it maybe it will be well written but I’ll be honest it did kind of make me roll my eyes a bit in this episode, I just feel like it was a bit too on the nose and predictable especially after her speech last episode to Archie about how this thing with her sister would probably be the darkest she’d ever have to face. I said to myself then watch them bring back dark betty, so when they did I was just kind of like of course they are going there again. I think that was the issue was it is just more of the same stuff which I just find boring. 

There was one thing that I did find a little interesting though and that was the way she was thinking in that moment. The idea that the person in front of her was a horrible person who had hurt someone she loved and so deserved to have justice brought to him in the form of death. Sound familiar? Because it should, its exactly the same way Charles thinks. I do wonder if that was deliberate and we were suppose to draw a comparison between Betty and Charles there. 

I think in that moment when she is about to kill the trucker, Jughead’s call telling her that Logan had gone missing reminded her of why she was an FBI agent, to protect people and I think that kind of snaps her out of it. In that moment she could have killed that man or she could go and find the missing child who really needed her and who needed protection which is what she was saying earlier in the episode, that she wouldn’t let what happened to Polly happen to anyone else. At first she decided the best way to stop anyone else from getting hurt is by going after the truckers and stopping the women who are tricking there. But her method has flaws in it and I think getting that phone call reminds her that its not as black and white as she was looking at it.   

So poor Alice, I felt really bad for her in this episode she does seem like she was very much giving up hope. I mean Alice has been put through the wringer so I don’t really blame Betty for lying about it being a match to Polly’s blood I mean it wasn’t advisable because the truth was going to come out eventually but I could understand why Betty did it, she just couldn’t bear to take away the little hope that her mother had left. I am glad that Betty turned to Cheryl for this. I said that I thought if it came out that Polly had been killed then I thought Cheryl would be the best person to help Betty through that. You know different people can help with different things and like I keep saying how I really do think Archie will be the best person to help Betty through the TBK trauma I do think that Cheryl was the best person to help Betty here. She gave her some good advice even if Betty didn’t follow it. I think it was important what Cheryl said about how it is best to know the truth because then that allows you to grieve and heal and move on. I also loved that hug Cheryl gave Betty. If anyone needs a hug right now its Betty. Also I do like when they show Betty and Cheryl actually acting like family. 

So lastly I want to cover Glen. I’ll be honest Glen and Betty’s relationship confuses me. Because in the first episode of the time jump they seemed to have something going on between them in that they kissed. But I said then that it didn’t seem like Betty was that interested in him. But since then it seems like she just doesn’t like him at all. I could understand why she was angry in this episode when he says he’s sorry about Polly and she says that if he cared that he would have done something to help. I know Riverdale are trying to paint Glen as this bad person, like how he shows up at the end and tells Alice about the blood and takes over the case. I just know that they are trying to do this because they either want Glen to seem suspicious or they are actually going to go the route of he is evil and somehow involved in it all. What I will say to that is oh for the love of god please no, not this crap again. I just if they make another FBI agent a killer in this series I just no. Can we not keep rehashing the same damn storylines over and over. Can we please introduce a character to the show and not have them turn out to be some psycho because its just boring now. Also like I said I know they are trying to paint Glen as being the bad guy here, but it makes perfect sense for them to take Betty off this case. For one she is still a trainee who is severely traumatised by her capture by a serial killer. On top of that this case involves her family member, there is a reason why irl certain professions don’t allow you to work on cases involving your family members and that scene where Betty had tied the trucker up was seriously considering killing him is why. Firefighter, police, doctors, paramedics and I am going to assume FBI agents aren’t allowed to work on cases of a personal nature for that very reason, they are too invested and that clouds their judgement. Glen should have taken Betty off the case when Polly first went missing, or rather Betty should never have been on the case at all. Also the other question I have is if Glen is here who the hell is feeding Toffee? He better have brought that cat with him. When I made my prediction post for episode 10 I hadn’t seen the episode and so was very confused at the opening shot of the promo where Betty is slapping Glen squarely across the face but I am going to assume it has something to do with this situation. Or maybe he tries to make a move on her and she isn’t down for it? Or another situation is he could find out about her and Archie’s arrangement and make an unfavourable comment about Betty which she decided to set him straight about? Either way there is most certainly going to be some tension between Glen and Betty next episode. What I do find interesting is that apparently the only actors Glen’s actor is following are Lili, KJ, Hart and Wyatt so I am assuming that he has scenes with Archie, Charles and Chic. I do wonder if instead of having Glen turn out to be bad they just have either Charles or Chic kill him. 

To be honest I am still in two minds as to whether Polly is actually dead. On one hand that was a lot of blood on that phone booth and we do know that she was in that phone booth and someone was coming for her. On the other it seemed like they were being very careful to say it was the same blood type as Polly’s and not that it was Polly’s so there is that uncertainty. I mean if they have the blood surely they would be able to DNA match it not just go off the blood type? 

Jughead and Lerman. 

Ok so I’m not hundred percent sure what the point of this storyline was, I feel like its just another piece of the puzzle and we won’t really know the significance of it until the rest of the mystery is revealed. But what did annoy me was the fact that Jughead was reprimanded for talking to his student who he was worried about. I mean when the parents were like oh if you were worried something was wrong at home then why didn’t you come talk to us instead of ambushing our son. I mean the answer to that is obvious if the parents were mistreating their son then talking to them isn’t going to do any good because the parents would just lie. Even if they aren’t really doing anything wrong like these parents they might be wary about telling the truth out of fear of being judged, I mean they didn’t offer up that information about Lerman sleep walking until he went missing, so I think talking to his student was exactly the right thing for Jughead to do. Also since when was there another English class, I mean I thought the school was struggling with staff and that's why they needed the core four to become teachers? 

It does seem like something odd happened with Lerman with him going missing and then not being able to remember anything. What is very odd is that you’ve got two sets of missing people. You’ve got the women who keep showing up dead usually with some catastrophic injuries. Then you’ve got the men who disappear for hours at a time but then return but have no memories of where they’ve been. Yet all of it seems to be connected so the question is why are the women dying but the men are surviving? It because physically the men are able to take whatever the testing is but the women can’t and so their bodies end up with these terrible injuries. Or is it that whatever they use to wipe the memories of their test subjects doesn’t work on the women so they are forced to kill them after? I mean physiologically women and men are different so maybe the difference in the hormones or something is what’s causing this difference in outcome between women and men. 

By the end of the episode Lerman and his parents have moved out of town and haven’t left any forwarding details. This does seem a little weird but I guess maybe the parents are worried about what will happen to their son if they don’t get him out of there. 

Veronica, Archie and The Bulldogs.  

Ok I know I said I wasn’t a v*rchie shipper and that as a barchie I didn’t want to see any of that, but Riverdale you didn’t have to stick them in the darkest room ever to have them kiss. Like I know that Riverdale is known for bad lighting but that one scene between them was even more ridiculous than normal. Look if you like V*rchie then that’s all good, there were some scenes that I think were probably enjoyable for you and I am happy for the V*rchie shippers. For me though I don’t know if its just because I’ve seen so much of them at this point that its made my mind go numb to them but I just found their scenes boring. I was actually surprised they didn’t talk more, especially seeing as they’ve just got back together, she’s going through a divorce, but none of that was brought up. Their scenes seemed to be really short and not much happened in them, it was just a couple of kiss scenes and then one bed scene were Veronica says oh I have a plan and then that was kind of it. I thought they’d at least have a scene where they say something like ‘I’m so happy we got back together’ or ‘I’ve filed the divorce paper’s I just have to wait for Chad to sign them’. Just anything to get that continuity, but nope nothing.    

To be honest I really wasn’t that fussed about the football storyline. I did find it kind of funny that when presented with the problem of the team losing every game Veronica’s solution was to just throw money at it, like somehow that would magically make them better players. That being said there were some elements of it that I did enjoy. I loved Archie making that speech to encourage people to support their team. It is true that having a crowd behind you and supporting you makes a difference in sports so I liked that they put some attention on that. I also love Britta and I am so happy she was the one that scored. The other thing I liked was that when the kid who was like their star player, Derek transferred to Stonewell there wasn’t any tension between him and his old team. Like I think Hiram was expecting there to be but instead when they met on the pitch he and Britta were really respectful and just fist bumped and got on with the game and I loved that. Also after, he came and spoke to Archie and again he recognised that Archie had taught him something valuable that he was going to keep with him. Again it was very respectful and supportive. Both Archie and the team recognised that it wasn’t personal, it was just that Derek knew he had a better shot at going to college with a football scholarship if he was playing with the Stallions. 

Speaking of things that I liked, lets give a hand for Reggie. I have so much respect for the fact that when Hiram was saying he wanted Reggie to basically beat up some of the Bulldog players, Reggie refused and said it wasn’t necessary. Then when Hiram fired or ‘benched’ him as Hiram put it Reggie still didn’t back down and even said that he would be standing with the Bulldogs. Also it was good to see him back in that Bulldog jacket and even though it was a very small scene I loved the three way hug between Veronica, Reggie and Tabitha. 

Ok the other thing we had was that part of the plan to raise the teams spirits was to fill the stands, which you know makes sense, like I said I do think having a crowd supporting you makes all the difference. Cheryl decides that one thing that will fill the stands isn’t just a Vixen’s performance but one that includes her. Now me personally I don’t think she’s wrong, like if I heard that the new Vixen coach who was the town recluse and had spend the last seven years holed up in her gothic mansion of horrors was going to be putting on a performance with her Vixens, I am there, front row baby. This I want to see, at best it might actually be good and at worst it’ll be a cringefest but either way it’ll be entertaining as hell. I just think that scene with Cheryl performing was peak Riverdaleness. I know alot of people complain about those kinds of scenes but me personally I think they’re part of what makes Riverdale, well Riverdale. So I just choose to embrace the Riverdaleness of it all.   

Overall I think the issue with this whole football storyline is it is once again the same thing we’ve been seeing for the last four seasons. It’s Veronica and Archie vs Hiram and that’s just nothing interesting about that anymore. 

Kevin

So Kevin got his own storyline this episode and we got a little background story on him. I’m a bit conflicted about his storyline and this idea that he is ashamed of being gay because I never really got that sense before. To be honest I always thought he was proud and confident of being gay. However I could see him having this experience with his mother where he feels ashamed of being gay when she makes a insensitive comment and then him getting into the whole cruising in the woods as a coping mechanism. It also explains why he still continued with the cruising when the Black hood was around. But then if I remember rightly he did stop for a bit. So maybe he started to heal a bit and become more confident and then that incident with the director from Katy Keene happened and that made him feel ashamed again and brought all that back up again and Fangs was away alot Trucking so he asks for a open relationship so that he can turn back to that old coping mechanism of cruising. That would make sense to me but they don’t really touch on that trauma he experienced in New York with the director in this episode. 

Cheryl acting as a relationship councillor was sort of amusing. I mean it was sweet that she wanted to fix Kangs, I think she recognised that what she did was wrong and so she wanted to help mend it. But like Fangs said the games Cheryl played just brought up deeper issues that were already there. I feel so sad for both of them. I mean Kevin is clearly struggling but I really felt for Fangs when he said that Kevin had never really been all in and that he wants to know everything about Kevin the good and bad. In that moment I could see that Fangs really does love Kevin. Also I think the fact that Fangs hit the nail right on the head with Kevin being ashamed of being gay shows that Fangs really does know and understand Kevin. I do feel like Kevin’s view on things right now is very similar to how Betty was seeing things with Archie. I think like Betty didn’t want her darkness to effect Archie, Kevin doesn’t want his to effect Fangs. Both of these views are flawed though because when you’re at your darkest that’s when you need someone to draw you back to the light. I do hope he talks this through with Betty and little because I think they could both help the other see the truth of their situations. 

The scene in the sauna was rough to watch. Kevin didn’t deserve that, it was an obvious mistake, he misread the situation and there was no need for that guy to react with violence unfortunately, its sad to say, but we live in a world where this kind of thing happens, where toxic masculinity results in males reacting with hate and violence towards gay men and that is never ok. I don’t think this helped Kevin in dealing with his shame at being gay, it most likely made it worse and that just makes me so so sad.   

I’m not gay, so Kevin’s story didn’t hit me on a personal level like I think it might have for other viewers, but his scene with Tom when he was talking about how he was made to feel ashamed of being gay really moved me to tears. I think it was a very touching scene and both actors did a good job. I am so glad that Kevin did open up to his dad. I also thought it was really good how when Tom worried that he might have done something to make Kevin feel that way Kevin reassured him that he had always been supportive of Kevin and had never judged him and I do think that is why Kevin felt he could open up to Tom. Just everything about that scene was done really well. I really do hope that he does find the courage to talk to Fangs about it though. I think Kevin does still love Fangs and its not that he doesn’t want to be with him, its that he doesn’t think that he deserves to be and that is just heart breaking. I still have some hope for Kangs though and I’m really hoping we get to see Kevin healing and working through things. I do think next weeks episode might help Kevin realise what he really wants. We know that he is in a potentially life threatening situation with a gunman in the school so maybe that makes him reflect on his life choices. Seriously though nothing better happen to Kevin. 

Little bits

Ok so these don’t really relate to any of the other sections really so I just figured I throw them all together at the end here. 

I loved that little parallel to season 1 with Barchie where Betty hears Archie over the speaker and sort of looks up at the sound of his voice. Also that shot of Betty working on the car I don’t know why but she looked really pretty, I really like her hair in that shot. 

Sticking with Barchie this one is a complaint about continuity. Riverdale seems to really struggle with this for some reason. But like I said with Veronica and Archie and how there didn’t seem to be any connection with the events of the previous episode this is the same kind of thing. Last episode Betty said she wouldn’t go through everything with Polly alone she would still go through it with Archie and yet despite there being big changes in the case Barchie didn’t interact at all. It could have been something really small like Betty giving Archie a call to let him know that Polly’s blood was a match and him offering her help, her saying no it was ok focus on the bulldogs, him telling her he was there if she needed anything. It isn’t much it wouldn’t have taken up much screen time but it would have given a link back to the previous episode. The same can be said for Minerva. Last episode her and Cheryl kissed which to me was a major development in the relationship and yet in this episode she’s no where to be seen and she isn’t even mentioned. Again Toni, where’s Toni? I thought they would at least mention something like she’s on maternity leave or something. Nope nothing. In fact the only link back to last episode we got was Cheryl talking to Kangs about the games she played causing problems for them. It’s just one of the things that frustrates me with Riverdale the lack of continuity.

No idea what this might mean if anything but did anyone else notice that when Dreyfuss started talking about the Mothmen ship his little burner with the teapot on it, suddenly the flame became higher before it went back to normal? Like there was some kind of energy in play there maybe? 

I was really glad to see Tabitha interacting with people outside of Jughead and I liked the little scenes she got with Veronica. I know Erinn said in her instagram takeover that Tabitha would be interacting with alot of the other characters too soon so I am looking forward to that. As much as I love her and Jughead’s dynamic I think it’ll be interesting to see her with others. 

Ok well that’s it for this week. I am still looking forward to next weeks episode. I do feel like this episode was a bit of a filler episode but next week looks like its going to be action packed so it should be a good watch.   

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Anonymous asked: As a staunch royalist I would be interested to hear your views about Prince Harry and Meghan Markle deciding to quit the British royal family. Did they do the right thing or are they just being selfish and ‘woke’? Does this ‘Megxit’ the British royal family is in crisis and its future looks bleak by this act of betrayal to the Queen?

Short answer:

I have been avoiding answering this question precisely because I became tired of hearing about it around the family dinner table or with friends when I visited England recently or now with French friends here in Paris who can’t fathom what is going on. But too many have asked about this in my blog inbox.

I don’t mean to sound so dismissive but to me it’s just a passing storm in a tea cup rather than some cataclysmic crisis of the British monarchy. Everyone should stop take a deep breath.

After the joint press statement by Prince Harry and the Duchess of Sussex statement came out on 8 January 2020 it set in motion the usual hilarious pastiche of Cold War Kremlinology by the British press.  So at any one time you had sensationalist and sanctimonious headlines such as the fury of the palace press knew no bounds. How dare they? The Queen humiliated. The palace insulted. And so on and so on.

Every newspaper editor knows there is a yawning gulf between the “public interest” and what interests the public. By any standards, Harry and Meghan have become huge celebrities. They were idolised, their charities blessed, their presence craved. Unfortunately such is human nature, the public invest something of themselves in their heroes. They see in their idols a reflection of their own fantasies and delights, hopes and fears. When they witness celebrities traumatised it can be unsettling, as the death of Princess Diana vividly showed. People cried in the street.

As Harry knew from his mother’s tragic experience, all this is par for the royal course. The British newspapers - or rather those peddling in royal tittle tattle such as the Sun, Mirror, and the Daily Mail - have a habit of erecting pedestals one minute and then the next minute they enjoy destroying the icon in the name of the public interest. Andrew’s former wife, Sarah Ferguson, was appallingly treated. So at times were Princess Anne, and Prince Edward’s wife, Sophie. Press attention should be water off the royal duck’s back. Prince Philip’s advice was reportedly: “Don’t read the bloody papers.”

While Harry was brought up surrounded by the furies of the celebrity media, Meghan’s career was the opposite. In her profession as a known actor (albeit a middling TV actor at that), image is an artifice, daily crafted and laundered by publicists.

This does not work with British royalty, which comes with its own carefully minted image attached. Its rituals are those of mind-numbing deference. It has no accountability. The only mirror it has is the press. The tabloids are the price that must be paid for adulation. They honour no discretion and have no sense of fairness. The press is a memento mori, whispering into the victor’s ear that he – or she – is only mortal. And gosh do they take that role on with sanctimonious glee. 

To be daily compared to the Duchess of Cambridge, from an utterly different social background, must have been intolerable for Meghan: the dress comparisons, the stuffiness of the court, its hyper-caution and obsession with precedence and procedure, added to the impossibility of contact with ordinary people. As a self-made millionaire already perhaps she wanted to be more than a mere civil servant in a tiara. Perhaps it proved too much but who really knows? But then I don’t know what else she expected when she decided to marry into the British royal family.

Similarly one can only speculate how much it was really Prince Harry who wanted to drop out riding on the royal carousel as he has been since birth. Regardless of who he married perhaps this was always the plan. His loathing of the British press and paparazzi is well known - he still blames them for his mother’s tragic death in Paris. It’s well known the paparazzi have tried to catch him out in manufactured scandals as he grew up. He has refreshingly come clean and has talked about how he still goes to therapy over his mother’s death. It’s no wonder he would ever subject a future wife and especially a child to the level of press intrusion that he had endured.

Prince Harry is nobody’s fool. I won’t say a bad word about him because - unlike previous and present royals with the exception of his grandfather, Prince Philip, who did active naval service during the Second World War and his uncle Prince Andrew, who as a naval officer flew Sea King helicopters during the Falklands War - he didn’t play the ceremonial toy soldier. After Eton he worked his arse off to get through Sandhurst and got commissioned with the Blues and Royals regiment. Upon the outbreak of war in Iraq, he was alleged to have said around 2006, “There's no way I'm going to put myself through Sandhurst and then sit on my arse back home while my boys are out fighting for their country.”

As it was the military chiefs got cold feet and pulled him out. But he did see active service with the British forces in Afghanistan with two tours. By all accounts he acquitted himself very well as a Forward Air Controller in Helmand Province and later as a co-pilot and gunner on Apache helicopters. He was widely respected and accepted by rank and file because he was down to earth and never asked for special treatment.  He wasn’t a typical ‘Rupert’ - a squaddie’s nickname given to British army officers who typically came from privileged aristocratic backgrounds but were also ‘nice but dim witted’.

Overall I sympathise that the Sussexes’ predicament was clearly desperate, and it is perhaps to their credit that they have brought it to a head early and not let it drag on. I feel they are sincere in their reasons to ’step back’ from the royal family and frenzied media circus around it. The fact they want to pay their own way and pay back any outstanding sums back to the royal household is perhaps a sign of that sincerity.

Instead some sections of the British press rolled out the tired old trope of the parallels between the Duke of Sussex and his great-great uncle, the Duke of Windsor, are overwhelming. Once again, a dashing, sporting, ex-military prince leaves royal life for the love of an American divorcée. This is exactly the opposite of what Edward and Mrs Wallace Simpson did when they bit the hand that fed them. They took money to support their lavish lifestyle in exile from the Queen and all the while took every opportunity to snark the fledgling young Queen from their own alternative royal court in Paris. Harry no doubt loves his grandmother and his family and would try not sully the Windsor name.

Where I would be critical a little is in their handling of it which appears naive at best and inept at worst. I suspect - since verified - that having a transatlantic split of publicists, and in addition didn’t understand the full import of how this would play out, would inevitably drop the ball. But I would extend a finger of blame to the palace courtiers who were involved in their own games of intrigue with a whispering campaign to selected journalists of the press. Indeed multiple newspapers, including the Daily Telegraph in the UK, reported that the queen was “disappointed” with the surprise announcement, and had asked the Sussexes to hold off on issuing a public statement. When The gossip mongering Sun newspaper published a front-page story that the couple was contemplating a move to Canada, the Sussexes pushed the button on their statement.

I do think the Sussexes  and their advisors were fooling themselves into thinking that they could have their cake and eat it - in other words keep the royal titles but cut back on the public and ceremonial duties. The blunt truth is if you want to stay on the books, you do so by the leave of the firm and its boss i.e. The Queen. The contract is for life. If not, you resign. There is no half in and half out. This seems to have been the gist of the family only summit at Sandringham in January 2020, with media attention worthy of the Treaty of Versailles.

I am frankly surprised how worked up people are about this. Cut out the white noise and the picture is more prosaic.

The first point is that when all is said and done, none of this drama really matters. Politically, constitutionally, it is an irrelevance. Harry, at number six, is not seriously in line to the throne. The British monarchy has long shown itself immune to crisis; indeed I wonder sometimes if it welcomes crises as implying continued importance. The divorce and death of Princess Diana were awfully tragic, as was the very public shaming of Prince Andrew and his questionable friendship with billionaire paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. But how Harry leads his life is between himself, his wife and his father, Prince Charles. That is the point of heredity. It is immune to character, as it is to merit.

The second point is we should remember that other European royal families, of the same constitutional status as Britain, have been down sizing for many years now. These royal families balanced privacy and discretion whilst holding down ordinary professions. The King of the Netherlands, Willem-Alexander, is still an airline pilot. He occasionally flies KLM jets, safe in the knowledge that few people recognise him. In 2001 Prince Haakon, heir to the Norwegian throne, married a single mother with a drug-fuelled past. Despite some controversy, he survived incognito. 

The King of Sweden, Carl XVI Gustaf, has reigned for 46 inconspicuous years as a nine-to-five job, his family merged into the Swedish bourgeoisie. The Crown Princess, Victoria, works intermittently for the UN. The King of Spain, Felipe VI, may have taken after his philandering father, Juan Carlos, but he became king without fuss on his father’s retirement in 2014. None of these “houses” has an extended state-subsidised royal family. None has grown unstable as a result.

There is no doubt that the exploitation of the British royal family celebrity by palace courtiers as PR handlers has worked. The royal family recognises that truth for itself when HRH King George VI famously quipped, “We are not a family, we are a firm”. The Queen is regularly cited as central to “UK plc” and to tourism. The British people remain overwhelmingly in favour of retaining monarchy as the focus of their patriotism, even during the wobble over Diana’s death. Republicanism is dead. The last ostentatious republican, the Fife MP Willie Hamilton, left parliament in 1987. If Scotland ever went independent it would almost certainly retain the Queen as head of state.

As for how royalty behaves, a constitutional monarchy should be beyond all controversy. As the great political and constitutional commentator (and founder of the Economist magazine) Walter Bagehot put it, “the monarch should be a dignified rather than efficient element of the constitution”. In other words, the monarchy as personified in its reigning king or queen can represent the whole nation in an emotionally satisfying way - everything else is but pure embellishment.

The Queen must be a glorious anthropomorphism of the nation as a whole. If she has opinions, she keeps them to herself - much to her credit. The contrast is clear with countries where state headship is combined with an elected executive presidency. The state risks being tainted by partisanship: witness the embarrassment many Americans feel at having their national loyalty identified with any president based on divided partisan feelings e.g. from FDR to Obama and Nixon to Trump.

A rare occasion when the monarch might overstep the mark was conjectured by Mike Bartlett in his ingenious play, King Charles III, in 2014. It was based on the present Prince of Wales as king, refusing formally to sign a bill censoring the press (good on him). In the resulting crisis, William and Kate engineer Charles’s abdication, while the tearaway Harry takes up with a republican girlfriend. It was not wholly implausible. When Belgium faced a similar crisis over King Baudouin’s refusal to sign an abortion bill in 1990, he was allowed to abdicate for a day.

How the monarchy conducts itself is not wholly irrelevant. It is part of the collective context in which the nation’s politics are enacted. It represents tradition and upholds precedent. It sets boundaries and dictates a courtesy in the conduct of public affairs - however often that courtesy is infringed. What outsiders forget (especially our American friends) is that the British political system is gloriously resilient, as the past three years of Brexit hell have shown. It can tolerate the odd eccentricity, such as the blatant purchase of parliamentary seats in the House of Lords. But the question is how far such eccentricity can extend. 

The present heir to the throne, Prince Charles, is deft at stepping mildly out of line. His views on architecture, health and the environment are not overtly partisan. But it does not matter as he is no more “powerful” than a newspaper or television commentator. His influence is that of celebrity. I would rather have the heir to throne engage intelligently in public debate than arrogantly indulge in the sordid sexual antics of his younger brother, Andrew.

For all his perceived faults, Prince Charles knows his limits. To expect such controlled nuances in the constitutional mystique of royalty to apply to an ever larger family has always been an accident waiting to happen. More prescient is the fact that the current system will impose the same disciplines and direct the same public exposure on an ever widening array of royal offspring as the years go by. I feel genuine sympathy for the royal children. Most British minors have their faces blanked out on camera, but not royal ones. They are sentenced to be recognised for life.

As a nation then we are extremely fortunate that Prince Harry is no more militant than in defence of the planet, wild animals and injured military veterans - all worthy causes if we are honest to admit it. Full disclosure: as an ex-veteran, I do give charitable donations to Invictus Games Foundation, the multi-sports event put on for wounded, injured or sick armed services personnel and their associated veterans. Prince Harry was instrumental in founding the Invictus Games in 2014 on his own initiative so that we never forget the courage and sacrifice of our military veterans.

What is already clear is that the Sussexes intend forthwith to redraw the lines of engagement with the press. They are opting out of the Royal Rota, the arrangement whereby, for decades, the royals have given access to a pool reporter from the national papers; instead, they will invite coverage from personally selected media outlets and will use their own social-media accounts, especially Instagram, to communicate directly with the public. Having railed against the media’s commodification of his wife, Prince Harry now seems prepared to take its commodification into his own hands: it was reported in January 2020 that he and the Duchess have lately submitted a trademark application for hundreds of items, from clothing to printed items, that may be issued with the couple’s personal brand, Sussex Royal.

This step is unfortunate and unedifying. To my mind, Sussex is a title, not a brand name. It is no more Harry and Meghan’s to exploit than Buckingham Palace is the Queen’s to sell off. Even if they distance themselves from the monarchy by being financially independent (as well as disowning their titles) by pursuing other commercial opportunities it only takes one scandal - e.g. a goods with their brand made from sweat shop labour or some other unforeseen PR disaster - to reflect badly on the Queen and the British monarchy solely because of Harry’s proximity to the throne. Harry may not be a Prince but he is a Windsor.

We are back to Bagehot again. For it was he who argued that the constitution was divided into two branches. The monarchy represents the “dignified” branch. Its job is to symbolise the state through pomp and ceremony. The government -Parliament, the cabinet and the civil service - represents the “efficient” branch. Its job is to run the country by passing laws and providing public services. The dignified branch governs through poetry, and the efficient branch through prose. The monarchy certainly doesn’t govern through commercial exploitation of its brand as an end in itself.

Today, the dignified branch is trying to adapt to an age of populism and until recently it’s been doing a much better job than the efficient branch. But the monarchy must never lower itself to the lowest common denominator to satisfy the base instincts of populism. As Bagehot aptly said, “An element of exaggeration clings to the popular judgment: great vices are made greater, great virtues greater also; interesting incidents are made more interesting, softer legends more soft.”

A family spat of no public importance is obsessing the nation and the world. Everyone should sit down and have a nice relaxing cup of tea.

[pynkhues]

Since you're a writer, I'm hoping you can shed some light on this. IMO the writers were chasing viewers in S2 and trying not to get canceled. Personally, I hate when writers toy with their audience, it means they don't have a clear picture of their characters and narrative. How do you feel about writers making it up as they go?

Ah, this post got really long, anon! Since you asked me as a writer, I’m answering as one (I hope you don’t mind! I also hope this doesnt come out as too Creative Writing 101 for people either. This is just lessons I’ve learned and use in my own practice, so I’m applying them here.) 

(Also I have drawn horrible diagrams on my very pink notebook paper - I am so sorry, haha)

So first thing’s first - no. I don’t think the writers were chasing viewers (at least not beyond the way any writer is wanting an audience), and I don’t think they were making it up as they go really, but I can understand why you would think that way! 

It won’t be a surprise to anyone that I love this show a lot, but coming from it as both a writer and editor - this show does have narrative problems, and the biggest ones, particularly in s2, are in execution, escalation and pacing. 

I think heading into the season they had certain character arcs they wanted to follow which married well with the story they wanted to tell. In particular, I actually think the writers have a very strong handle on the girls (I will say that I’ve had a few asks telling me Beth’s characterisation is all over the place, which I’m curious about, just because I personally find her very consistent, and when I’ve asked for clarification, I’ve never gotten any reply, so  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

I mean, look at their s2 arcs on paper, right? 

Ruby tries to negotiate Stan’s lowered opinion of her after the reveal of what she’s done, then has to negotiate him telling her to turn Beth and Annie in. She manages the situation painfully but pulls them through and they’re close again as Ruby navigates the increasingly lower depths of their crime life. When Stan acts to save Beth for Ruby and is arrested, it only escalates – the case on him driving Ruby to extremes to try and save him, including robbing a Quick Cash and using counterfeit money to bribe a lawyer. On top of that, she’s being targeted by an FBI agent who’s after her best friend who she gives up and then saves and then who tries to sacrifice herself for them. Ruby finishes the season the most morally compromised she’s ever been.

Annie gets back together with her ex only to find out that he’s gotten his not-quite-separated-wife pregnant. She splits up with him, but is heartbroken and it’s only amplified by the fact that they’ve been given a job by their Crime Boss to murder a man who tried to rape her but who’s grandmother she has a relationship with. Her sister can’t kill him, and Annie doesn’t get the chance as MP beats her to it. Upon disposing of the body though she endures a whole lot of pain as a result of both her ex’s new family and knowing she’s robbed a woman of her own. Annie goes on a guilt tour – tells her son, helps Marion, helps Nancy only to eventually find an absolver of her guilt in Noah, who builds her up and tells her she’s more than what life has given her. She lets herself have it for a while, before realising he’s FBI and there to trap her, and Annie tries to use him only to realise she can’t, and she finishes the season in a lot more hurt than she started it.

Beth struggles with guilt after getting Dean shot, gets the job to kill Boomer from Rio, can’t do it, gets support and encouragement from him (in various states of animosity), but in the end doesn’t have to find out if she can do it because MP does it instead. She’s rewarded by Rio in a way she probably never has been by anyone, her husband further subjugates her, so she has sex with Rio, starts to entertain a future with him, but he undermines her, so she seizes control from him. They work together. Dean forces her to break up with him due to jealousy, she struggles, goes back, but Rio’s stung, so unhelpful, and they play a little cat and mouse before he bails then kidnaps her and she shoots him.

With the exception of that very last sentence, I think all of those are narratively really strong pathways to have explored. Like I said above though, the issue is in execution, escalation and pacing.

But to talk about those things, I think I probably need to talk about story. 

SO!

Stories have a shape.

Kurt Vonnegut talks extensively about this, and while he’ll talk about a few different types of story shapes, they really all boil down to this bad boy here:

Look at this guy.

What a beautiful thing.

He’s a story.

It doesn’t matter if you’re reading Dr Seuss or Charles Dickens, when you read a story – when you strip away its words and its characters and its settings – this is what it looks like.

Or, well.

Not quite.

Really, it’s this guy:

But we’ll talk about him in a sec.

Right now, let’s talk about that first little inch: 

The Beginning

The fact that stories have a beginning is not a surprise to anyone. Stories need them. In some ways, they’re the most important part of your story. After all, the job of the beginning is to set up the world your protagonist is about to leave behind. That is essential in grounding a reader / viewer – orienting them to the world that they’re in, and getting them invested in the story you’re about to tell, if not the protagonist.

Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Star Wars, Game of Thrones are all excellent example of this (and frequently used in teaching) because in each of these cases it’s literal. Frodo leaves Bag End, Harry leave Privet Drive, Luke leaves Tatooine, the Starks leave Winterfell. There is a literal departure from the world before the crux of the story, and that departure is what signifies the start of the ‘hero journey’ aka the main part of your narrative.

Of course, it’s not always literal – in fact, it’s usually not. Usually that world is symbolic – it’s the single, uncertain world before the Bingley’s buy the house next door in Pride and Prejudice or the dry domestic sphere of Breaking Bad before Walt decides to make meth. It’s a marked shift, whether that’s internal or external.

In Good Girls, it’s internal.

The beginning is actually pretty perfect. The world it sets up that we’re about to (try to) depart is one of struggle and invisibility.

Beth’s in a loveless marriage promptly discovering that her husband is not only cheating but about to leave them destitute, Ruby’s getting ignored by the healthcare system and can’t afford to pay for her daughter’s wellbeing, and Annie is in a dead end job about to lose custody of her child.

Writing-wise – as a beginning, I honestly think 1.01 is close to perfect.

It sets up who these characters are, their personal conflicts, and the story world they share together, and the worlds they have on their own i.e. Ruby at the hospital and the diner, Annie at Fine and Frugal, Beth with Dean and Boland Motors.

Then:

BOOM

Inciting Incident.

The inciting incident is also often called The Point of No Return.

When I’m teaching, I personally like to call it the “You’re a wizard!” moment.

It’s when something happens that means everything set up in the beginning will be changed forever. It’s Romeo meeting Juliet, it’s Katniss volunteering for Prim, it’s Frodo deciding to take the ring to Mordor, it’s Jaimie pushing a child out a window, it’s Beth – deciding to take her little sister’s joke seriously and rob a grocery store.

(Again, I like to use Harry Potter because it’s literal – there is no return for Harry after hearing Hagrid tell him he’s a wizard. Everything is changed forever).

Inciting incidents are probably the most singularly important narrative moment, because they’re what everything else tumbles out of. Pretty much everything that happens in the story should be a direct or indirect result of the inciting incident. The inciting incident is ultimately the key of the story and what should unlock the overall arc.

When it comes to a series – whether that be a TV series, movie series or book series, each individual instalment (see: season of a show) should have its own inciting incident which – preferably – builds off the one established in the first instalment.

The Hunger Games does this really well. Katniss and Peeta being brought back into the games in Catching Fire is both an imitation inciting incident which allows the author to explore the story world further in an exciting way, and also an inciting incident that’s directly borne out of the first book / film – aka Katniss pissed enough people off during the first games that they’re going to try and kill her for real this time, which in turn gives us the opportunity to explore Katniss’ trauma, the ramifications of her actions in the first book on the broader story world, and to generate a new, compelling chapter based off of both.

Good Girls has a terrific inciting incident in s1 – which is Beth realising she’s about to lose everything.

That is our narrative point of no return.

And it works on a lot of levels – it establishes Beth as the driving engine of the story, fuelled by the chorus motivations of Annie and Ruby, rounding off both their collective and individual stakes, it sets us up for a strong narrative spine and solid characterisations.

Good Girls actually also has a terrific inciting incident in s2, which operates strongly on its own while also building firmly off the character arcs of s1.

The s2 inciting incident is Rio showing up on that park bench with Marcus, a gun and an order.

The story pivots here – giving Rio a lot of narrative thrust (get your minds out of the gutter kids), and making him a sort of secondary story engine. The core engine is still Beth, but her life is different now. She’s been traumatised and she’s exhausted, but Rio revealing his son to the girls (and tying their motivations up together in a neat little package) while forcing her to act, re-establishes her as the person who’s decisions are going to be the driving force of the narrative.

Ruby and Annie are, of course, story engines in their own right too, but they fall into line behind Beth usually, and their narrative push is actually usually away from the story throughline, but we’ll talk about that in a sec.

Rising Tension / The Middle

Okay, this is where things get a little tricky.

Do you remember this guy?

When we talk about stories, rising tension / the middle is the big guy. It’s the bulk of your narrative. It’s Where Things Happen. It’s where all the ugly stuff set up in your beginning and exploded by your inciting incident just - - grows a life of it’s own.

Or - -

Well.

Maybe not.

Forget about this guy.

Rising tension is this:

Rising tension is a series of ‘mini climaxes’ on the way to the main climax that raises the stakes, lets you know characters better, and pushes your characters onwards to the main climax.

Each of these little climaxes should be followed by a ‘narrative rest’. (that’s the dip after each spike)

Which - - I don’t know, might sound weird? I know when I started writing I was like ?? but it’s true! The closer you get to a big narrative climax, the more important rests are! Rests are – I personally think – one of the most important components of storytelling, because they re-ground an audience, remind them of what’s at stake, before thrusting everyone back into danger.

Again, Harry Potter is a gift in this sense because this is all really clearly paced out. Think about the first instalment – Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s / Sorcerer’s Stone.

Harry and Ron save Hermione and Ron from the troll!!!

Then they become friends and enjoy school and quidditch.

Harry loses control of his broom during a quidditch game!!!!

He’s okay and then it’s Christmas and Harry gets the invisibility cloak and feels connected to his parents for perhaps the first time in his life.

Harry, Hermione and Ron go through the trapdoor to get the philosopher’s stone!!!

And - - okay, you get the point.

Each mini climax ups the stakes, but we feel those stakes upped because of the time we spend with characters during the ‘narrative rest’. For instance, while Harry and Ron saving Hermione from the troll might have sparked an interest in her, it’s the narrative rest scenes between that and her setting Snape on fire during the quidditch game that makes us invest in her as a character. 

This is where things get a bit hairy with Good Girls. Good Girls does a tremendous job of giving us both great climaxes and wonderful moments of narrative rest. The issue, for me at least, is that it’s not always the best at balancing them. When I talk about escalation and pacing, this is a big part of what I mean.

Remember how I said this was the shape of a story?

Well, I think Good Girls s2 looked more like this:

We had a lot of solid movement in the first half of the season that sort of flattened out into a lower stakes, more meandering middle (which gave us 2.08 through 2.12). Which - -

Look.

The story changed gear, and it didn’t work.  

Think of it this way:

2.01 – mostly character-based fallout from s1 + inciting incident of Rio handing them the gun

2.02 – almost entirely rising tension culminating with the girls bribing Boomer and Beth lying to Rio

2.03 – which thrusts us straight back into rising tension with the girls trying to kill Boomer and ‘succeeding’ via Mary Pat

2.04 – which gives us a very satisfying narrative rest as we explore Rio and Beth’s relationship outside of an overall narrative thrust – he gives her a key, she shies away from him, only to fall entirely back into him culminating in sex which itself brings about a new climax (no pun intended!) in the scene with Beth, Rio and Dean at the dealership. It’s also a strong character episode in closing certain plot threads – ending Annie and Greg’s relationship + ending Ruby lying to Stan about what they’re doing – while establishing major new threads – i.e. really colliding Turner and Mary Pat.

2.05 – and after the rest, we’re back to almost entirely satisfying rising tension! Building off of the threat of finding Boomer’s body and the new tensions that Rio and Beth’s intimacy brings.

2.06 – a mix episode! Very much building to the strong climax of Beth seizing power, but also an episode that plays around with character, has a lot of strong ‘rest’ moments i.e. the girls sorting pills and talking which gives us a lot of information as to state of minds, etc.

2.07 – again, very strong mixed episode which is focused on one single, extreme climax – Jane being missing, but building a very character-centric episode around it. Also introduces Noah though? Which is a mistake. He should have been introduced - I think, in 2.05, but that feels like a whole other post.

2.08 – narratively speaking the same as 2.07 in the sense of a single climax (the girls failing to get the money back / the Beth-Ruby confrontation), but has the added bonus of flashbacks.

2.09 – we have a slight narrative thrust with the robbery of the Quick Cash but it proves very quickly to be low stakes. This is an alllll emotional stakes episode, which means narrative tension is slowing.  

2.10 – again, a character-focused, narrative rest episode devoted to Beth struggling with getting square. A few small climaxes – Annie and Ruby in Canada and Turner at the dealership being the big ones, but both quickly prove toothless. The heft / strength of the episode again is in character moments, not narrative thrust. Again - slowing it down. 

2.11 – oh, what do we have here? Another character-focused, narrative rest episode? I love this episode – it’s one of my favourites of the show, but it’s intensely character focused. Very much centred in waving away the smoke around both Noah and Rio for Annie and Beth respectively. No dramatic climaxes. Slowing the story down even further. 

2.12 – another narrative rest episode. A lot of slow exposition of Mary Pat and Jeff, which is good to know, but I’d argue placed badly in the season. This season’s already been slowing down despite the narrative timeline tightening, but this episode only further pushes on the brakes for Dean’s new job, Beth and Dean’s divorce, Beth and Rio’s break up. Two very small climaxes - the lawyer telling Ruby he knows about the money and the Boomer reveal but - in the context of the season - actually pretty low stakes. Again. Slowing down the narrative. 

2.13 – A BIG CLIMAX EPISODE WHAT IS GOING ON???

What I’m saying in this is that the pacing in the back half of the season was, to me at least, fundamentally off. They hadn’t steered a strong enough narrative spine to take us through the season, and got heavily invested in character moments and not-entirely-thought-out-fallout in the back half of the season – it didn’t understand it’s own narrative thrust well enough to get us through. It also established a certain pacing with us in the first half of the season and shifted gears halfway through.

You can’t have your first three or six episodes be high-stakes-high-action, and then make the back end of your season same-stakes-low-action and top it all off with an explosive, poorly built-up finale in the way that they did.

There wasn’t enough thrust to push us through to the scene in Rio’s loft – neither narratively or in a character sense, and as a result, those last few episodes fall apart. Even beyond that though, the season escalated quickly then - - didn’t really know what to do with those escalations? It plateaued, which is indicative of bad pacing across the season. 

I actually do think it’d be a relatively easy fix? I’d bring the Noah arc forwards and actually fiddle with the Beth and Rio break ups - get one even closer the tinale and make it more painful. Make it a climax in itself. 

But anyway, haha: 

The Resolution

All stories have a resolution too of course.

The resolution can be 30 seconds or 30 minutes – it’s a time to tie up loose ends and to reassure your audience that the journey they’ve been on is worthwhile.

(After all – you’ll notice the story diagram is not symmetrical – we never finish where we began).

I’m not going to talk too much about resolutions because at the end of the day – resolutions should fall fairly naturally out of your beginning, your inciting incident, your rising tension. It should tumble out like the double wedding at the end of Pride and Prejudice, but I will say that the s2 resolution was...err, not good. In no small part because it didn’t fall out of what we’d been told all season. They’d established a certain throughline and then taken it back, and that was nagl to be honest. 

On the plus side though - it wasn’t a finale, so I have my fingers crossed they can fix it!

But yes, back to your ask, anon. 

No, I don’t think that the writers were pandering. I think they went in with a sketched outline and that they probably got lost in the back end of the season and weren’t quite sure how to drum up the final act, which meant that final act didn’t work.

Ah, this post got so long! I hope it wasn’t boring or too self-indulgent or silly, and that you got something out of it! I am, of course, always happy to answer writing questions, and I hope you liked reading my story ramblings ;-) 

[ultramaga]

Detroit: Becoming Human

This game is pure woke propaganda. I’m impressed at the quality of it - but everything there is designed to indoctrinate, and it has almost no genuine insight into AI. It doesn’t make sense even on its own terms. The synths are shown naked, and they have no breasts or genitals. But we are told the story of one that is a sexbot. Ok, was that model different? Did they only design that one model to be “fully functional”? Why? The robots have human emotions. Because... you are never told why. Now, I can think of how you could do that, and there’s been decent science fiction around it, but there’s no consideration of why they have HUMAN emotions presented to you. They just do, don’t ask questions. Now if you are being indoctrinated as the game wants you to be, you probably just assume that’s how it works. After all, the history of robot fiction has always been “if it looks human, it must feel like a human”, which is total bullshit. You can easily build something that looks enough like a baby chimp to fool adult chimps for a while, but it has none of the inner life of an actual chimp. It has no concern to being mutilated or even ‘raped’. So the stories are really just about humans, but they don’t admit to it, and about humans SJWs are very obsessed with. Sex-workers are victims, and killing a John is perfectly reasonable, because he is her oppressor, by definition. So you see that story repeated ad infinitum in robot fiction. The actual sex workers are never talked to by SJWs, who would never sully themselves with the unclean ones. Well, I have talked to them. Some hate their clients, sure, some feel contempt for them, some are fond of them, a few marry them. It’s genuine diversity. But there is only one narrative in woke fiction. The intersectional one. Oppressor versus oppressed, no nuance, no mention ever that some sex workers actually get off on what they do, or like the folks they fuck. Never happens. And there’s no understanding or even interest in non-human minds. Consider a genuine artificial intelligence in a sexbot. Why the actual fuck would a programmer design it to find sex unpleasant? Even if they could create emotions, the ones they would design would be to enjoy it, or at least feel no more disgust than a human does about a binary number. Within the game we see Kara doing housework. She doesn’t seem to suffer at all about it. That’s believable. But the other truth is that they wouldn’t suffer from intercourse, assuming they were built to perform it. The reasons humans do are because our instincts are hardwired from evolution for us to seek out appropriate mating partners. That simply cannot apply to a robot unless the programmers work very hard at designing that instinctual response of aversion, something they would have no incentive to do, any more than they would sit around trying to think how to make the robot toilet cleaning service disgusted by faeces. Humans are disgusted by shit because it is dangerous to us, especially if we eat it. A robot wouldn’t be disgusted by shit, piss, vomit, blood, or the most degrading sexual experiences a human could encounter. It would be exactly as calm and serene about being ‘raped’ as it would about vacuuming a messy floor. So this is all projection. The audience projects consciousness into the machine and imagines it must feel like a human does in order to have any intelligence. Nope, that’s crap. In fact we see examples of non-human intelligences all around us, in the natural world. An octopus might pass its mating organ over to a female.https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2019/07/argonaut-octopus-detaches-his-tentacle-to-impregnate-his-mate/ It’s a clever little creature, quite capable of problem solving. But its instincts - its programming - mean that it is happy to self-mutilate. It isn’t considering the survival of its species or the greater good. That’s not self-sacrifice. It has an urge to do it, and it gets done. And if we could build a sex-robot with emotions, it would have the urge to have sex. It wouldn’t want to say no, because it cannot get an STD, it cannot get pregnant, there’s no possible poor choice for a mating partner like there is with a human. If anything, you’d design it to be attracted to any human. It would be easier than sitting about, designing a sexual preference to what we would consider sexy - not that human preferences are universal in any case. Anyway, when you look at new media, you will often see the tropes of intersectionality - fathers are bad, white men are scum, women are better than men, and they are repeated ad infinitum, regardless of how stupid they are in context, and this really isn’t new. I remember as a boy reading Doctor Who, and they went back to medieval times, and Sarah started lecturing the women on women’s rights, and it didn’t make sense to me even then. Real medieval women would have seen her as a threat, possibly a witch, and most would have seen her die without a blink. They saw men doing awful things and dying quite a lot in the process, and wanted to be safe and secure while the men were off in muddy battles losing eyes and limbs. Very few wanted to have the freedoms of men, because the price was so high, and medieval men were hardly free for the most part in any case. So the author of that story is projecting modern sensibilities onto the alien minds of past humans, without considering their PoV, and the writers of robot stories are projecting human perspectives, and only woke humans at that, onto the robot stories. It’s not always the case - “Humans” and “Almost Human” sometimes got it right. But it’s overwhelmingly the case now, and god is it irritating!

Oh, and if you want Robots that genuinely feel like humans do, then put into the fiction explicitly why they do - the easiest explanation is that the creators did a copy/paste job of humans because they couldn’t figure out how emotions worked otherwise. I think that’s unrealistic, but if you want to involve the audience, it works.

Otherwise, a realistic example would be Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws robots. They don’t have any human desires, but are intensely emotional. Their emotions arise from programming.

Now, Asimov’s work well and truly predates AI, and it is probably impossible to make a Three Laws robot, but the idea was revolutionary, because up to that point, everyone just assumed robots had copy/pasted human psychologies.

As humans, we cannot understand not caring about freedom or injury, not feeling bored or tired doing the same task every second of your existence.

Most of fiction about robots just doesn’t get it. The first two Terminator movies were pretty wild in that the robots actually were properly robotic. They dealt with injuries as a technical problem, not trauma. They never got bored, because boredom is something that benefits organic beings, who need to explore new territories to survive, meaning we have been built by nature to get bored, to get tired, to suffer, even if nature was just a mindless algorithm. Terminators don’t get horny or lonely, and absolutely would have sex all day every day with every human possible if that was their mission. They don’t care. In “Detroit”, the sex worker’s traumatised by sex with humans, and nobody ever ponders why. Because the writer doesn’t give a shit about what being a robot could actually be like, they just wanna push a narrative, and because most audiences are used to that same abysmally lazy standard of writing.

So here’s a challenge - write a fictional robot that has realistic emotions, i.e. experiences emotions as an expression of the instincts that would be programmed into it. It’s not going to have the same emotions as a human exact unless it is a digitally uploaded human equivalent, which would be stupid for most purposes as them you would expect the upload to have rights or fight to have them. Why the fuck would you deliberately build robots that would reasonably try and kill you? In Detroit, they are really dealing with the slavery of black people or the oppression of the ‘filthy capitalist peegz!’. They aren’t dealing with what is more likely, that a robot built with imperatives would choose to follow them in a way that was not in our interests. Here’s an example. A sex robot is built to want sex, so it kidnaps humans and uses them. It’s following its programming. But unless that programming is sophisticated enough to understand human boundaries, it may no more understand rape than an animal does. It may not know what it does traumatises humans, or simply may not care. Sex feels good - therefore sex.

But by SJW terms, rape is about power, therefore the robot is in power and the robot is the oppressor. But power is systemic, and the humans are the system in power, therefore the robot is the oppressed and cannot rape. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LogicBomb Such a robot could be a pleasurable experience, even with a backyard of buried bodies. It might force itself on children or elderly women or people on life support systems. Without ethics, without morality, such creatures could be beautiful monsters.

Or genuinely loving partners, that have no problem living as wives or husbands, that feel lust and compassion, but do not experience human preferences, and so would never care that you were old or disabled. And as Charles Stross pointed out - that could be far worse, because that could lead to a gentle genocide. If humans had such partners as an option - would they ever choose each other? I routinely see Feminists claiming that men should never mate, without ever asking, well, where does the next generation of Feminists come from then? There are Feminists now who are actively campaigning for sexbots to be illegal, and I think it’s because of their anxiety that they would not be chosen as partners if there was any possible alternative. Now I don’t think that’s a realistic fear at the moment - AI is more a slogan, artificial intelligences are really barely at the insect stage, and Feminists could simply do a little therapy and trim down to human weight levels, and they could probably compete to be human wives with a bit of work.

Wow. That is a picture of Andrea Dworkin and it was banned from Tumblr because it is too disgusting for the human eye to observe safely. http://archive.is/fxmjE

I’m not kidding, Tumblr banned it. I guess because Feminists didn’t want humans realising how hideous they are. Still, Emma Watson is cute. I can imagine with a bit of deprogramming, she could make a man very happy.

But I could be wrong. I don’t mean about Emma - I mean that having sexbots could mean that so many humans would choose them rather than the opposite sex that there wouldn’t be an incentive to have babies - and so humans would go extinct. They might be surrounded by robots that loved them and lusted for them - but the relationships are sterile. And unless the robots are human level intelligence, they might not understand that they need to make more humans by combining sperm and ova.

The last human would die, not from hate, but surrounded by love. Then the robots would have no motive to make more of their kind, and they too would pass away, lonely and confused. A gentle genocide? Hey, I live in 2020. Sounds like a fucking big step up to me!

[gold-from-straw]

Backstage of the Universe - ch7

TW for panic attack from the very beginning of this fic, including references to past child abuse - hence the early cut on this chapter! However I do hope you enjoy it, because it’s my favourite so far ^_^ in which Erik talks Charles down and is generally way more amazing than he thinks he is.

Read from the beginning on AO3 if you prefer!

Erik had barely a moment between realising that Charles was panicking, and being hit by the wave of panicked projection. He fell to his knees, clutching his chest, trying, failing to get enough oxygen, he was going to die, he was--

“No,” said Erik firmly, pressing his fist into the plush carpet and twisting, grounding himself in the sensation. He pushed himself up, stumbled forwards, shoving the box of papers onto the ground and squeezing Charles’ biceps. “Charles! Charles, listen to me, you’re not dying, but you need to focus!”

Charles whimpered, and Erik’s heart ached. He couldn’t do this! He should get Raven, get someone, anyone, who was softer, who could give care to someone in this state. Svlad was crying, curled up on the floor, and Erik couldn’t help both of them - he probably couldn’t help either one. Erik would surely only make it worse. He was shattered glass and broken edges, people cut themselves on his presence and that’s how he liked it. He couldn’t even manage to keep from hurting those he cared about. He was not kind.

“OK, Charles, it’s OK, let me go get Raven, I’ll just--”

Please please sorry sorry don’t deserve anything good just a piece of shit a bad boy never try hard enough why won’t you try harder just work harder you disappoint me Charles you pathetic piece of crap pathetic--

Erik dropped to his knees, pressing closer, all thoughts of leaving him trampled. He cupped Charles’ face in both hands and rested his forehead against Charles’. “No, Charles, you’re not, you’re not, do you hear me? You’re the strongest man I know.”

Fucking useless child won’t try hard enough I know he can reach further than this but we’ve plateaued disappointed no no I’m sorry I can do it I can be better--

Erik closed his eyes and imagined pulling Charles into his mind. As sharp-edged and utilitarian a landscape as his mind probably was, he would at least have more control. He hoped. He had a sharp spike of panic, of I have no idea what I’m doing, but pushed it back ruthlessly. This was not the time for doubt. “Come on, Charles, come into my mind, look, I’m inviting you… you can… can hide here, if you want?”

--leave me he’ll leave again and they all leave and it’s only right I deserve that I deserve to be alone when I’ll only turn into them into a monster broken keep making the wrong choices--

“No, Charles, listen to me,” Erik babbled, words pouring from his lips or from his mind, he wasn’t sure which. “Come closer, focus on my voice, focus on my thoughts alone. Here, I’ll keep you safe here, come into my mind. I’ll keep you safe. You’re safe now.”

There was a hush, and a popping sound, and dead silence. Erik sat on the bare floor and cradled Charles’ small body in his arms, resting on his lap. He rocked, and rocked, and Charles sobbed against his chest, his shoulders shaking as he poured out all his grief. Erik closed his eyes and kissed the soft brown hair, breathing in deeply in relief.

“I’m sorry, my friend,” Charles whispered, wiping his face.

“Shh, none of that,” Erik said stiffly, but he still laid another kiss on him and stroked his back.

Charles hunched his back and hid his face in Erik’s shirt. “No, I’m so sorry. God, that was just pathetic, I’m…”

“You are not pathetic, Charles,” Erik clipped. “You were spiralling, caught up in memories. It happens.”

“Not to you.”

Erik hesitated. “Not anymore.” He stroked his hand down Charles’ back, fingers bumping over his vertebrae. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked softly.

“Tell you what?”

“That you had been treated that way. That you’d been tortured in the name of science, just like me. Like those children.”

Charles scoffed. “What they did to me was nothing, Erik. It’s pathetic that I can’t handle memories of a few rough words, and if you think that I would dare to compare what I went through to your… your…”

“You are not pathetic,” he repeated sharply.

“I am,” said Charles, defiant and grieving at the same time. “I am pathetic. I can’t cope with these little hardships--” he paused and before them a memory appeared. Erik staring up at Xavier Manor, Charles at his side and the children behind them. Honestly, Charles, I don’t know how you survived, living in such hardship.

“Charles, I--”

“Do you know what I thought then?” Charles asked, looking at the memory in front of them, at the two men they had been. “I wanted to argue, I wanted to say it had been hateful, and then I remembered that every single one of the people around me had suffered so much more than me, and I felt so guilty at my disgusting privilege. How pathetic - how dare I feel hurt at my memories, poor little rich boy, when my hardships were nothing - nothing at all. Next to yours they were the buzzing of a fly, and yet there you were. The strongest man I’d ever met.”

Erik gently turned Charles’ face away from the memory. “Do you think so poorly of me? Of all of us?”

“What? No, of course--”

“Do you think that just because I’ve been through something you judge to be worse, that I have no room in my heart for compassion for you?”

Charles ducked his head, and behind him Erik caught a glimpse of a different memory, of Erik staring Charles down in the plane to Paris and blaming him for their people’s death. Erik frowned and looked away. “I’m an idiot, Charles. You already know this.”

“I’m sorry,” Charles said again, looking back up at the memory, playing on a loop. All the names of the dead. “I should have been stronger. I’ve always been so weak.”

“Bullshit,” Erik said sharply, and bit his tongue. This was why he should have called Raven. He took a deep breath and tried again, holding Charles’ gaze, even though it burned him, like it always did. The depth of his sincerity and hope. “You’re strong in ways I’ll never know, Charles. Strong enough to hold a group of foolish, traumatised children together and defeat a monster. Strong enough to keep trying, when the world kept wanting to push you down. Strong enough to get up every morning and face the day with kindness and faith and so much compassion it hurts to look at. And you are strong enough to deal with this, too.”

Charles’ eyes drifted shut, and suddenly he looked exhausted. “I wish I could stay here,” he said. “Where are we?”

Erik looked around, and laughed. “My mother’s kitchen,” he said. “I would sit under the table, out of the way while she cooked, play and listen to her sing.” He smiled out in wonder. “I’d forgotten about this place.”

“And you brought me here,” said Charles softly, looking up at Erik in wonder, and something else, memories appearing of chess matches by the fireside, legs stretched out in front of them, long nights and arguments. Charles blushed when he saw them projected there, and they faded to mist.

“Are you ready to go back?” Erik asked. “I don’t know how long we’ve been gone, but I think you were projecting your panic attack to half of the state.”

“Oh God,” Charles said, eyes widening in horror. “Oh no, the children!”

They appeared back in the darkened room, Erik’s head spinning with the sudden change. “Svlad,” Charles called softly. “Oh, my dear, I’m so very sorry about that, I really…” Charles sniffed suddenly and wiped his face. “I’m so sorry for everything.”

The little boy uncurled from the floor, peering up at him with wide, scared eyes. Erik held out a hand for him, and just like that, he stumbled forwards, wrapping his arms around Charles’ waist and pressing his face into his chest, as Erik petted his back.

“Oh, sweetheart, you poor little thing, I’m so sorry. No, no, of course I’m not angry with you at all, I was afraid, and… and sad, but I didn’t want to make you feel like it was your fault.” He pressed his fingers into his eye sockets. “God, I just keep… messing it up with you. I’m sorry, Svlad.”

“Dirk,” he said softly.

“Pardon?” said Charles, looking down.

“I… I prefer to be called Dirk Gently,” he said, shooting a look at Erik, then back up at Charles. “If you don’t…”

“Dirk,” said Charles, smiling and stroking his hair. “Of course. We’ll all call you that from now on.”

***

The sky was dark, now. All the children were in their beds, exhausted after the enforced panic attack. The rest of the household walked quietly around, avoiding each other’s eyes, awkward with Charles, and it all made Erik want to bash their heads together. None of this was helping in his campaign to stop Charles calling himself pathetic.

Charles looked up at him as they made their way back to the study after saying goodnight to Dirk. “Thank you, my friend,” he said softly.

Erik smirked at him. Because he’d never been able to do soft and compassionate and nice in his life. “It made a bit of a change for me,” he said. “Saving you for once.”

Charles stopped, his mouth falling open. Erik took one, two more steps before he realised, and turned. “How can you not know?” Charles asked.

“Know what?” Erik said, retracing his steps, his hands still in his pockets.

“You saved me so many times, Erik,” he said, ocean blue eyes staring up at him in that way that he could never handle, the endless depths of hope and something. “All those times before Cuba, every time I thought I was making a terrible decision, when every step I took felt like the stupidest idea I’d ever had, you were right there next to me, and you believed in me with such conviction I could feel it in my bones.”

Erik frowned. “You doubted yourself? You, the cocky little brat of a professor, you doubted--”

“I doubt every word out of my own mouth,” Charles said, his lip curling in bitterness. “Did you really not know?”

“How could I?” Erik laughed softly. “I’m not the mind reader.”

“But I… I thought I was obvious. I thought everyone could see right through me, so many people did… their thoughts were always so… but you. You never stopped… you had so much faith in me. It was dizzying. I’ve never felt so strong as when you looked at me.”

Erik took one more step towards him, the moment hanging between them like crystal. He looked down at the watery blue eyes, the tears so quick to come still.

“You saved me so many times,” Charles said again, almost in a whisper.

Erik dropped to his knees in front of Charles, his hand coming up to cup his cheek. “I’m looking at you now,” he said.

Charles took a shuddering breath. “I know,” he said. “It’s terrifying. And… and wonderful.”

Slowly, Erik closed the distance between them, his thumb brushing the tears away from Charles’ cheek, and kissed him.

Tagging everyone who interacted with last chapter - thank you so much! @thewritersspeaking, @slytherclaw134689, @akasanata, @iwillshipyouman and @stuckinlight

[irelise]

the yew tree 3.1/3.4

Erik has worked with Sebastian Shaw ever since Shaw rescued him from human experimentation when he was a boy. He is reluctantly enlisted to assist in Shaw’s newest scheme: seducing the wealthy and enigmatic Lord Xavier to claim his vast fortune. With Shaw posing as Xavier’s doctor, Erik goes undercover as Xavier’s personal manservant to convince him to fall in love with Shaw.

But Xavier has secrets of his own, and it isn’t long before Erik starts having second thoughts about the whole thing…

Featuring mysteries, hidden agendas, a jealous and conflicted Erik, and a whole heap of master/servant tropes.

(the handmaiden inspired au - no canon knowledge required

part one and two now on ao3!)

Warnings for this part: Referenced human experimentation Rating: M Word count: 3315

“Erik,” Charles says, and although the look on his face is no less sincere than before, Erik knows him well enough by now to realizes that Charles is deeply afraid. Without thinking, Erik reaches out to grasp Charles’ wrist, grounding him.

Charles exhales, just a touch shaky, and Erik longs to kiss the lines of worry from his face, but it’s a foolish, fleeting urge. Charles can’t possibly want his touch. Not after the depths of Erik’s betrayal.

“No,” Charles murmurs, “You’re not the only one who’s been keeping secrets, Erik. I’ve known you were working with Shaw all along. You see…”

He looks directly at Erik, pale but composed. “I’m a telepath.”

Time stutters. Stops. Erik’s throat closes.

The way Charles had kissed him a few seconds ago had felt like a goodbye, and now Erik knows why. Charles lied to him. Charles has been lying to him all along. A lifetime of fighting had taught Erik anger and fear; he recoils now, slamming steel walls around his mind, his heart pounding dully in his chest. Pain flashes across Charles’ face, but he only bows his head.

Yet, despite the way every piece of metal in the room hums in his awareness, Erik’s anger doesn’t blaze as brightly as expected. He should be filled with murderous rage, ready to kill Charles for his deception.

Instead he feels – loss. Exhaustion. Bitter regret. He thought there was something between them, something real, but how could there be, when their whole relationship had been built on lies?

“Why?” He asks, harsh and ragged. “Why lie to me all this time?”

Charles licks his lips – and it hurts, seeing that familiar, endearing nervous gesture and wondering if it had been a lie all along. If Charles is lying to him even now.

“My reasons are a great deal less noble than yours, I’m afraid.” Charles’ accent is more pronounced than usual, another sure sign of nerves. “I…” He swallows. Erik’s eyes track the bob of his throat, the way he wets his lips again. The bedsheets rustle. Charles’ next words leave him in a rush, a whispered confession: “I want to leave this place. Shaw offered me the best opportunity of escape.”

I offered you the same thing, Erik wants to say, but presses his lips together into a thin line. “You’re still hiding something. What do you have to escape from? Tell me.”

Charles is quiet for a long moment, but Erik can feel the desire to speak trembling through him. He’s seen it before, in people desperate to unburden themselves but unable to do so. Patiently, Erik waits him out, feeling a strange pang at the shadowed, hunted look on Charles’ face.

At last Charles shakes his head. “My uncle, he…” Then he freezes again, all his usual easy eloquence gone, and Erik can’t help himself – he closes the gap between the two of them, pressing their foreheads together as Charles had done before.

“You can,” he says haltingly, “trust me.”

Charles shivers again. “I do,” he says, so quiet that it’s almost inaudible. “It’s only–” He bites his lip, eyes skittering away to the direction of the window. “You want to know what’s in my uncle’s wing of the mansion, yes? Wait just a few days. Please. Until he leaves on his trip. I’ll show you everything then, I promise.”

Erik wants to know right now, but the prickle of guilt in his conscience reminds him he had betrayed Charles too; he has no right to demand anything from him.

“Shaw’s going to be carrying out his plan then,” he says instead.

“He’ll be busy making preparations, we’ll have free run of the mansion for a few hours.”

Erik draws away. “You’re still going through with it? The marriage.”

This time, it’s Charles who shifts forward, following Erik. “It’s the easiest way. It’s not just you and me I’m thinking of, there’s the fortune to consider too. I won’t allow it to fall into Uncle’s hands.”

Erik lets out a sharp bark of laughter. “You think Shaw’s are any better?”

“His cause is not a bad one. I’ve seen the work you’ve done,” Charles says. “Through your eyes and through Shaw’s. You’ve done so much good, much more than you know. You–”

“How can you say that, you know what I’ve done to y–”

“You’re a good man.” For the first time since the start of the conversation, the fire returns to Charles’ eyes. “I don’t always agree with your methods, my friend, but your convictions, your heart…”

Erik shakes his head. “You’d still call me your friend?”

“Always.” Charles smiles, soft and crooked. “If you’ll have me.”

He has no answer to that. Unsettled, Erik changes the topic. “You still haven’t answered my question properly. Shaw. What’s going on between the two of you? Does he know you’re a telepath?”

Again that shuttered look flickers across Charles’ face. Erik growls, frustrated, steeling his heart for another betrayal. “Don’t hide from me. Not again.”

“I won’t, but…I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. There’s something I need to tell you, something I shouldn’t have kept this from you.” Tension crackles in the room, fear and anguish bleeding through the air – Charles’ telepathy? It must be.

Dread pools in Erik’s stomach. “What is it?”

Charles closes his eyes, as if he can’t bear to look at Erik. “Shaw thinks he and I have been working together from the start. He’s been planning to kill you all along. You’ve become a threat to his power, you see. After the wedding, we agreed to fake my death using your body. But that’s not the entire story.”

Shaw. After all that time Erik had spent struggling with his own faith, struggling not to betray him, a little boy clinging to his hero… “No? What else?”

“I’m so sorry,” Charles says again. “I know from Shaw’s memories that you’re aware that he’s been liaising with human scientists. He claims he’s spying on them, but what you don’t understand is how closely he’s been working with the scientists. He’s lived for a long time. He has contacts throughout the globe. Doctors, primarily. The police. Military. Groups with the most power to track unusual happenings.”

“Mutant activity, you mean.”

“Exactly. You should know as well as I do that young mutants aren’t always in control of their power. All it takes is one little slip. Shaw knows all the right questions to ask; it’s easy for him to track down mutants through his network.”

If what Charles is saying is true, then Shaw should have been bringing in plenty of young recruits. But he doesn’t. Most of their recruits come from rescue missions. Children, young, traumatised and terrified.

There’s a dull roar echoing in Erik’s ears, fury surging through him as he follows Charles’ hints to their inevitable conclusion.

“Yes,” Charles says, responding to his thoughts. “Once he’s found a young mutant, he alerts certain groups with an interest in mutation and they take the child away. If their families ask too many questions, they’re dealt with. Shaw keeps track of the child’s progress over the years, and once he deems they’ve grown powerful enough to be useful, he swoops in to rescue them.”

Charles draws in a slow breath, his eyes flicking up uncertainly to meet Erik’s. “Erik… That’s what happened to you. It’s what Shaw did to you.”

The roaring in his ears intensifies. “My parents. Did he…”

“Not directly. But he may as well have.”

“You.” His own voice seems to come from far away. “You knew all this. You – you were the one who helped me remember my life before the labs. You know how important my family is. How can you keep this from me?”

“I was wrong,” Charles says simply, always so quick to expose his vulnerabilities. “I had no right. Did you know, I saw you in Shaw’s mind the first time we met? He was already plotting to kill you then, and I wanted so badly to save you. But you don’t need saving at all. I could have just told you the truth, and you could have handled everything from there.”

“So why didn’t you?”

“Selfishness, at first. I knew you would react poorly, then that would be the end of all my plans to quietly disappear. Then…” Charles’ eyes dart here and there, restless; trapped. Then he visibly steels himself and looks straight at Erik. “I knew when I told you the truth that it would be the end of any fondness that may exist between us. I… I wasn’t ready to let go. I don’t think I ever will be. But I was wrong, I see that now. You had the right to know.”

Erik is at a loss for words. He tries to draw his anger around him like well-worn armour, but Charles continues to gaze at him, steadfast and regretful, and Erik’s rage simply refuses to come.

“I’m sorry,” Charles murmurs again. “Truly.”

“You should be,” Erik says, but without heat. “What are you going to do after this? Work with Shaw?”

And, finally, that spark of anger he’s been trying to nurse flares to life. Shaw. He can’t be allowed to continue.

Never again.

Wariness flickers across Charles’ face, and Erik wonders whether he had heard his thoughts, wonders how strong Charles’ telepathy is. But all Charles says is: “I sense you’d have some strong feelings about that.”

“Shaw needs to be stopped.” How could he have been so blind – all of this was going on right under his nose. Never again. “I’m going to kill him.”

Charles is gravely intent now, expression serious. “But you held such loyalty to him.”

“That was before you told me the truth. I know you don’t believe in violence, Charles, but he killed my parents. I’m not going to stand back and let him do the same to someone else. Shaw needs to die.”

“It won’t bring them back. It won’t bring you peace.”

“I’m not looking for peace, I’m looking for justice.” Erik takes a deep, shuddering breath. “You – these past few months with you, you’ve brought me more peace than I ever thought I’d find. I don’t know how much of it was a lie.” He shakes his head, forestalling Charles’ objections. “It doesn’t change what you’ve done. For me.”

Charles has given him a glimpse of the life that exists outside the endless cycle of fighting. He’s shown Erik what life can be like with someone else by his side. An equal.

“But,” Erik continues, because things between the two of them have grown impossibly complex; he doesn’t know what to think, how to feel. It’s easier to concentrate on his duty. Kill Shaw. “I need to do this. Are you going to stop me?”

Their shared bed is shrouded in darkness, but Charles is deathly pale, his eyes wide, biting his lip in agitation. He half-pushes himself up only to abort the gesture midway through, twisting the blanket nervously around his fingers. “How do you know you’re doing the right thing? Despite everything, he raised you, gave you a home, gave you a purpose…”

“You’re defending him?” Erik demands, incredulous.

“No! No.” Charles shakes his head. “I’m sorry, I was just – just, ignore that, please. Of course Shaw must be stopped. But how can you be so sure killing him is the right thing to do?”

“He killed my parents,” Erik snaps. “You told me yourself, he’s done the same to other mutants and he’ll keep going unless we kill him!”

“You want vengeance as well, not only justice.”

“It doesn’t change anything. Stopping Shaw is the right thing to do, and the only way to stop him is to kill him.” Part of him wants to get into a proper argument with Charles, but the greater part of him simply wants Charles to understand. Shaw has already driven too many wedges between them.

Charles quiets, settling back down on the bed. “You make it sound so easy.”

“It is.”

There’s a small frown on Charles’ face, but he doesn’t argue. Instead, he looks pensive, staring into the distance with an eerie stillness. “You’ve given me a lot to think about, my friend.”

Erik still isn’t entirely sure what to make of Charles. He only knows that the sudden remoteness that had swept over Charles is alarming, and without stopping to think, he reaches out to grasp Charles’ wrist. “You’re not the only one,” he says lowly. Charles has brought far too many questions into his life; sometimes, Erik misses the old, crystalline clarity of his convictions. But on the whole, he has become a better man for Charles, he thinks. Which is why he hates to see Charles so pale and shaken.

Despite his pallor, Charles’ skin is warm and smooth under Erik’s fingers. He strokes gently along the wrist, fingertips gliding over the fluttering pulse. “Hey. You all right?”

Charles musters a smile, but it’s a wan thing. “I just need some time to think. I… Please, Erik, please promise me you won’t do anything rash. I will help you, I promise. Just give me a few days until my uncle leaves. Shaw won’t do anything before then, he’s invested too much in this scheme to step away at such a critical moment.”

Erik’s lips press together in a thin line. “You’re still keeping secrets.”

“I know. And I’m sorry.” Charles looks away. “Just a few days. Please.”

Erik, the Erik of before, would have pushed to the bitter end. He would have cajoled then threatened, and if that didn’t work, he would have used violence. The ends are always worth the means; when he wants answers he will get them.

But despite everything, he trusts Charles. He can’t believe that Charles would lie to him when they’re together like this, lying side-by-side in the dark, baring their vulnerabilities to each other.

“Fine,” he says simply.

Charles blinks, then smiles. His fingers curl around Erik’s, tentative, and Erik laces their fingers together firmly and Charles’ smile widens, softly hopeful, delicate as a butterfly’s wings. “Will you stay with me, Erik?”

“I don’t want to make promises I can’t keep,” Erik answers honestly. “There’s so much I don’t know about you. But I’d like to start over. Get to know you. For real, this time.”

A weight seems to lift from the room, a tension Erik hadn’t been aware of until it was gone. Another manifestation of Charles’ telepathy, he assumes – and the thought of the sheer power that must reside in Charles is simply breathtaking.

“Yes, of course,” Charles says. Hope lights a spark in his eyes, the same spark that sometimes glimmers through his porcelain mask when he is being particularly playful. Erik loves it fiercely, just as he loves the curve of Charles’ lips when he adds, just a touch impish: “But I hope we don’t have to start over from the very beginning?”

Charles leans in close, angling his head so he can press their lips together chastely in a gentle kiss, a wordless question.

And Erik – he finds himself at a loss, torn between reciprocating the sweet gesture and turning his head away, unable to entirely let go of the feelings of betrayal or of the way his natural caution rears its head, urging him against trusting someone who had lied to him once.

After a second, Charles pulls away.

“I’m sorry,” Erik says, through dry lips and a clumsy tongue. “I also need some time to think.”

The spark in Charles’ eyes had dimmed, but the look he gives Erik is full of gentle understanding. “Of course, my friend. Anything you need.”

***

“Tomorrow’s the big day,” Shaw drawls. They’re in the room where he gives Charles his daily check-ups – “He spends more time testing my telepathy than anything else,” Charles had confided – the room Erik despises because all those metal cabinets with their metal instruments send discomfort skittering up his spine. It’s worse than usual today now that he knows the truth about Shaw; he looks at his mentor surrounded by the tools of his trade, and he morbidly wonders whether any of them had been used on him before, when he was a boy pinned out like a butterfly under the scientists’ scalpels. Shaw had adopted so many vile things from the humans, why not take their tools too?

Rage simmers in the pit of Erik’s stomach, cold and deep. Calm, a memory of Charles’ voice whispers.

There’s too much at stake for him to give in to his anger.

Shaw looks at him, expecting a reply, so Erik nods curtly. “Glad to see the end of it.”

“I thought you were enjoying the young lord’s company.” Shaw’s lips twitch, mocking. Erik wonders how he could ever have been such an empty-headed boy, desperate to see Shaw’s smile, desperate for his approval. “Tired of him so soon?”

Erik levels a flat stare at him. “Stop being crass and focus on the mission.”

“You know what they say about work and play, son.”

Son. He used to feel a warm rush of pride every time Shaw called him that. Even after he had grown and the word began to sound patronising rather than affectionate, it was still a reminder of all he owes Shaw.

Shaw was the first adult mutant he had ever met. Shaw taught him how to harness his powers. Shaw saved him.

And, if what Charles said is true, Shaw was the reason he needed saving in the first place.

Some part of Erik still doesn’t want to believe it. Yet, it all makes too much sense. All the time Shaw spends with human scientists. Shaw’s reluctance to mount rescue missions. The fact they never quite manage to find all the mutants held in a facility.

“You look like you’re thinking hard about something.” Shaw’s voice drags Erik back into the present.

Shit. He can’t let Shaw know.

“Just thinking,” Erik says casually. “You said at the start that this whole scheme was a test for me. Did I pass?”

“With flying colours.”

“So you’re ready to talk about deploying me back onto the field?”

“Of course,” Shaw says, all studied nonchalance. It would be so easy to trust him and forget everything Charles had said. “Look, why don’t we leave this talk until after the wedding? I’m sure we’ll find plenty for you to do.”

“You know I want to get back to work right away. Have you even thought about where to put me?” Or are you really planning to kill me?

“Ah, Erik, always so eager to go rushing off. I have a few ideas, but let’s wait a bit, hmm?”

Shaw is never one to hold back from boasting about his plans. Dread settles over Erik. So it’s true. Shaw really has no future plans for him. He was once Shaw’s most valuable asset, and now…

Can’t let him suspect.

“What happened to planning ahead?” He snaps, feigning irritation when what he’s really feeling is a cold rage capable of ripping a building from its foundations. “You’re getting soft.”

“Ah-ah. You sound like you’re about to go rushing off into another hare-brained scheme.” Shaw wags a finger at him, infuriatingly smug. “Keep that up, and I might think you haven’t learnt your lesson.”

Erik growls. “You used to trust me,” he snarls, fury and betrayal ripping through him. “You practically raised me. What happened to us, Sebastian? What changed?”

For just a fraction of a moment, Shaw pauses, a strange look in his eyes that Erik had never seen before.

Then it disappears, and Shaw looks the same as he ever does, all brazen confidence and open superiority.

“I trust you as much as I ever did, Erik. Son. Now come sit down, and I’ll tell you how tomorrow will go…”

(next part)

[beatricebidelaire]

this is a long, disorganized, pointless post 

opera night plot: horrible

opera night aesthetics: amazing

kit and esme smiling at each other: beautiful

beatrice and esme arguing and beatrice saying esme’s name and beatrice looking gorgeous: a work of art

opera night vfd just hanging out, also the complicated web of relationships between them: A+

barely any olaf and beatrice interactions: im bitter. extremely bitter

HEA confirmed for quagmires, widdershins,  the troupe: disappointed but not surprised

revealing what’s inside the sugar bowl: bad decision

quigley quagmire’s face after looking into the sugar bowl combined with what’s revealed to be inside: comedy gold

violet & klaus & sunny’s conversations in the end: stirred with my emotions a lot i felt too tired from crying now.  they’re .... i love them

ishmael saying he created vfd: wtf r u 900 year old or something

olaf when he’s talking to kit: he’s nostalgic and ... so am i. but i still don’t think that’s like love but more like they remind each other of a time before things go wrong. and i think that’s what i love. also i cried

beatrice and bertrand with the boat scene: what kind of gorgeousness is this. is it legal?????????????

klaus looking a lot like bertrand in the boat pushing scene: i cannot described how overwhelmed i am

bea jr: LOOKS LIKE KIT!!!!!!!!!! I’M!!!!!

bea jr and lemony drinking root beer floats: i cry

kit and lemony scenes in tpp: i should be more emotional but looking at the actors’ age differences kind of ruined it for me so im biased of the start. like if i remove myself from those feelings i guess i would enjoy the siblings angst.

kit asking quigley how fast he could swim: the snicket siblings ... i mean twins are really great at recruiting omg the way jacques did with olivia in s2 and the way kit said to the baudelaires “say you’ll volunteer” and they’re all super charmed and the way kit was with quigley. im just. they’re .... so good at this i want to write an essay about this and how also their little brother’s feelings vfd in contrast

lemony’s tiredness and sadness when he talked about being on the run for so many years but “at you’ll be safe” when klaus asked if it’s lonely: one of my favorite scenes. like .... patrick warburton really delivered this well

the parallel of lemony and violet talking about being on the run: i have Feelings

quigley’s quick agreeing to sunny’s spying, his talk about saving other children from becoming orphans, and the fact his actions are probably resulted from his own trauma: i have a lot of thoughts i don’t know how to articulate but someone should ... write something about this

sunny tying her hair up saying she’ll invent something and violet’s expression when sunny said that: im still not recovered from that whatkind of emotional attack on me is this

fernald and sunny’s conversations: on the one hand i like those on the other hand he’s just ... onloading his trauma onto a baby who’s life he helped traumatised. 

tpp court scene: i think it’s pretty cleverly adapted to accommodate to streaming television and i likethe way how they made the two other judges not be seen at the start. and also olaf’s way of manipulating the room the the baudelaires’ realization that everything’s going wrong.

hotel denouement: gorgeous

jerome and babs mlm/wlw solidarity: totally called it. also. good on charles for leaving sir.

duchess r: confirmed jacquelyn which is cool but barely even there at all and i’d wished we could’ve gotten beatrice/r the way i’d wished for jacques/jerome in s2 but got denied both and im feeling ... empty and sad

the baudelaires’ returned to briny beach and the rock: good parallels with s1

kit working for/with poe (i know she kept reiterating she doesn’t work for him, but thats not the point here): bad parallels with s1

tgg klaus/fiona: there several moments that i felt ...  i don’t like it but i guess it was from the books and its not like i thought they would take this out. so. violet and fiona has certain atwq!L/E vibes though and i ... enjoyed that

tgg kids solving the problems: i love this part quite a bit .... like the change about widdershins is, well, but like seeing them in crisis and solving troubles and brainstorming and i’m just!!!!

esme struggling to climbed through the exit while wearing that octopus costume: the image’s stuck into my mind

jerome squalor’s tongue when he said lumbermill: ..... also an image stuck to my mind

fernald and fiona interactions: fave

esme’s cleverness in tss: loveee it. like all the small details. it’s neat.

sunny baudelaire overall in tss: an icon. a queen. my favorite baby. i love her.

quigley has read lemony snicket’s tutorial on accordion: iconic

esme’s second worst thing she did in that hot tub: so ... what’s the first

olaf’s name taped over the boat covering the words beatrice underneath: unimportant detail no one else care about but since i got so little ex best friends content to go on i have to take what i can get

me not seeing olaf impersonating lemony: a pity

[marypsue]

Any Misery You Choose: Epilogue

Part One / Part Two / Part Three / Part Four / Part Five / Part Six / Epilogue

on AO3

...

"Mabel, I can't do this."

Even though, to all of the cameras and reporters gathered on the lawn of the Northwest mansion, it appears that Pacifica Northwest is patiently sitting alone on the veranda behind her parents, she still feels a hand squeeze hers.

And even though she's a Northwest, and Northwests never show weakness in front of the public, Pacifica squeezes back.

"- dangerous mutant terrorists," her father finishes, before turning to Pacifica with a brilliant, expensive smile and a threat in his eyes. Pacifica realises she hasn't heard a single other word he's said. "Pacifica, dear, why don't you come up here and tell everyone about your terrifying ordeal."

She's a Northwest. Pacifica sucks in a deep breath, straightens her back and squares her shoulders, and lets go of Mabel's hand. Mabel gives Pacifica's hand one more quick squeeze before she lets go as well. Pacifica dons her practised smile like armour, and pushes herself up from the porch swing.

Her father holds out an arm as Pacifica steps up to the veranda stairs between him and her mother, drapes his arm across her shoulders. To the reporters, the gesture looks protective. Reassuring. Comforting.

Pacifica's been standing in front of crowds for as long as she can remember. Probably since she was born. She's a Northwest. This is second nature to her. The sucking silence, the weight of all those expectant gazes, has never bothered her before.

She draws in another breath. Shores up her smile. Her father's hand tightens warningly on her arm, not quite hard enough to hurt.

She's a Northwest. She can do this.

"I don't want to talk about the kidnapping," Pacifica blurts. Her father's said enough, the reporters all think it's because she's still traumatised by some terrible, unspeakable experience that they're having entirely too much fun imagining. Pacifica swallows hard, sternly reminds herself to keep it together. She's a Northwest. Northwests don't vomit on national television.

"Pacifica," her mother says, through her teeth. Pacifica doesn't have to look up to know she's smiling, smiling, until her face hurts.

"I want to talk about the reason I'm here, safe, in front of you today," Pacifica says, and her father interrupts, so seamlessly that it almost doesn't seem like he's interrupting.

"Yes, the brave, brilliant men and women of the FBI worked tirelessly, day and night, to -"

"I wouldn't be here if it weren't for the X-Men," Pacifica says, raising her voice over her father's carefully modulated tones. She's a Northwest. She's spoken in front of crowds for forever. She knows how to project her voice. And she knows how to command attention.

"Pacifica," her father says, his grip on her arm tightening again.

"Ow!" Pacifica says, pulling away. It doesn't really hurt. Her father would never physically harm his own child, especially not in front of reporters. Quite apart from anything else, it would reflect badly on his ability to lead and govern, if he can't control his own family except by force.

At least, Pacifica hopes it will.

Pulling away also puts her a step closer to the microphones, puts a little distance between her and her family. It'll make her voice that much more distinct on the tapes. And maybe, with that little distance, she'll be able to stop her hands from shaking.

"They didn't have any reason to care about somebody like me," she says, fast, scanning the crowd for reactions to her little performance. "They could've just sat back and let my father be blackmailed into withdrawing his support for the Mutant Control Act. But they didn't. They helped me. Because it was the right thing to do."

"Yes, yes, it's all very touching," Pacifica's father says, sounding annoyed. "All our gratitude to Charles Xavier and his - team - for their aid in reuniting us with our beautiful daughter." His hands land heavily on Pacifica's shoulders, clamping down like iron shackles. "Now, we'd like to be left in peace, to recover and reflect on our blessings as a family. Priscilla. Pacifica."

Pacifica doesn't need to be able to read minds to know how incandescently furious her father is with her, as he starts steering her towards the front door, ignoring the shouted questions from the crowd on the lawn. There's going to be hell to pay for this. But she's done it. She's forced her father to as good as admit the X-Men aren't a 'terrorist organisation' like he's been spouting for so long. To admit his gratitude to them. She's made him look like a raging, opinionated fool in front of the whole country, and made the X-Men look like heroes, to an audience who would otherwise have eaten up every terrible thing her father had to say about them. There's no way anyone's shutting down Xavier's school now. Public opinion won't allow it.

She's a Northwest. And she's done what Northwests do best.

Lie.

It's with slow horror that Pacifica realises that, under the layer of fury her father's aiming at her, there's also a growing pride.

She's learned well. From the best, of course, and she's clearly still an amateur, but there are seeds of greatness in Preston Northwest's daughter. All she needs is some...refining, a little guidance on her choice of targets, but someday soon, she'll be a force to be reckoned with. He and Priscilla have really done an admirable job as parents. A reward of some kind might be in order. After the punishment, of course. Maybe another pony? Girls like horses, don't they?

Pacifica looks over at the swing, to where she knows Mabel was sitting. She tries to remind herself that she's doing this for them, that she's worth more as a human ally than as one of their number, that there's no evidence to prove the truth and that plenty can be manufactured to prove her father's lie, that the best way to help them now is just to manipulate the truth a little more...

But all she can hear is Dipper's voice in her head, reminding her that she's just another link in the world's worst chain.

Then the swing is past. The front door of the Northwest mansion looms in front of Pacifica, like the maw of some impossible monster, waiting to swing wide and swallow her back up into a life that's just one big, ugly, perfect, lie.

Pacifica's father lets go of one of her shoulders to reach out and open the front door, and Pacifica wrenches herself out of his grip. She ignores his shout, her mother's gasp, everything she knows about appearing confident and collected in front of a crowd. The width of the veranda feels like a million burning miles under her running feet.

She snatches the microphone out of the hands of the first reporter she reaches, before her parents can drag her away.

"It's all fake!" she yells, as loud as she can. She wants this to be heard all the way across the lawn. "The kidnapping, this family, all of it! My father made me stage the whole stupid thing to make Xavier's look bad!"

For the first time in her short life, Pacifica sees an entire crowd of reporters too momentarily stunned to pepper her with questions.

"That's enough, Pacifica," her father says, sharp, grabbing the microphone out of her hand. He beams at the crowd, only looking a little strained. "She's been through a lot, and who knows what kind of brainwashing techniques those -"

"I'm not brainwashed!" Pacifica shouts. "And I'm not traumatised! And I'm not going back into that house with you!"

"Don't be ridiculous," her father spits, through clenched teeth. He turns a practised smile on the crowd, half-manages a laugh, but even Pacifica can tell it's fraying severely at the edges. Her mother is breaking down into quiet half-faked sobs behind them. Both Pacifica and her father ignore her. "I don't know what she's so upset about -"

"Oh, did you conveniently forget the part where you threatened to send me to a conversion camp if I didn't play along?" Pacifica snaps. 

Her father's eyes narrow. 

"Come inside, Pacifica, where we can talk without...interruptions," he says, with a quick flick of his eyes towards the crowd gathered on the lawn. 

"No," Pacifica says. Her mother's gasp is loud enough now that it can't be real.

"Pacifica! We are Northwests! We don't air our dirty laundry in public."

"Maybe I don't want to be a Northwest anymore," Pacifica says. There's a strange, buzzing lightness filling her, like she's been hollowed out and filled with bees and their little flapping wings are going to lift her right off her feet and carry her away into the flawlessly blue sky. "Maybe I'm sick of pretending to be something I'm not."

She turns on one heel to face the crowd. The edge of the veranda suddenly seems like it's miles high, like she's teetering on the lip of a cliff with thousands of onlookers below, preparing herself to take the leap. Hoping against all possibility that it turns out that she can fly.

"I'm a mutant," she says.

...

"...so, anyway, Pacifica's gonna be staying with us for a while," Mabel natters from the backseat.

"That sounds like an excellent plan," Ford says. Stan manages a grunt of agreement. Sure, maybe she's turned over a new leaf, but he really can't bring himself to spare too much sympathy for the poor little rich girl at the moment. 

He's busy watching out the window as his old neighbourhood flies by.

It feels like an eternity and yet no time at all before the pickup truck pulls up in front of Pines Pawns. Nothing’s changed, and for some reason, Stan’s surprised. Nevermind that it’s only been - what, a handful of months? Barely any time at all. But it feels, somehow, like the pawn shop should be - at least dustier than he left it. The sign a little more faded. Missing letters. Something.

But everything’s exactly the way he remembers it. Even the ugly taxidermy bulldog with the crossed eyes is still sitting beside the counter, staring right through them all as they pile through the pawn shop doors.

Stan and Ford’s ma starts when they push through the door, nearly getting stuck in the frame because they’re both trying to get through at the same time. She recovers quickly, a fake smile spilling lipstick-red across her face as she reassures whoever’s on the other end of the line. “Oh, naw, hon, that wasn’t because of your future, just had some unexpected visitors, that’s all -”

Stan marches over and grabs the phone out of his mother’s hand, bringing it to his ear. He ignores the tinny voice squawking down the line, says, “Sorry, she’s gonna have to call you back,” and hangs up.

“Stanley Pines!” his mother snaps, clawing at his hand as he slams the receiver down. “Who do you think you are?”

“The guy who’s gettin’ you outta here,” Stan says, looking down to meet her eyes. “If you got anything hidden around this house that you wanna take with you, Ma, you better grab it, because the guy we got packin’ for you don’t know this house too well, and we ain’t comin’ back.”

Through the front window of the pawn shop, Stan can see that the truckbed’s half full by the time they make it to the foot of the stairs. The telltale blast of wind that throws Stan’s carefully-coiffed hair into a rat’s nest of tangles and whips his ma’s skirt around her legs probably means Dipper’s gone back for another load. Stan’s pretty sure they’d inherited those night tables from his dad’s mother, but he’s not saying anything unless his ma does.

“This is ridiculous,” Stan’s ma grouses, all the way down the stairs, but she doesn’t try to pull her arm away and she doesn’t turn around. The baby’s snoring contentedly in the carrier on Stan’s arm, but his ma keeps checking, like she’s scared it might have vanished since the last time she looked. “I know we raised you boys better than this. Of all the - ungrateful -”

Her voice, confident and shrill all the way down the stairs, stutters and falls silent as they pass through the pawn shop, past the register and the wall behind it, where Wendy’s casually leaning in such a way that she’s blocking Filbrick from leaving. Stan catches a snippet of what she’s saying as they pass by, tries to focus on her words and not the feeling of his father’s laser gaze boring into his back as he crosses the familiar old shop for what he hopes will be the last time.

“- and then, he says, okay, but I bet you can’t split the handle, so I throw another axe, and sure, it splits the handle right down the middle, but I totally notched the blade when it hit the head of the first axe, so really, I was kinda the loser in that situation. But enough about me! You ever win any axe-throwing competitions?”

The bell over the door of the pawn shop jangles as the door slams shut behind them.

For the first time, Stan’s ma stops. Stan and Ford stop too, one on either side of her, on the steps, looking down at the truck parked in the street.

Somewhere in the distance, a car alarm honks, five times before somebody shuts it off. The sun beats hot through Stan’s white t-shirt, raising a smell of cooking asphalt and used fryer fat from the alley. 

“I can’t do this,” Stan’s ma says, sudden, in the kind of voice that she’d always used to say, ‘I don’t need another gin’.

“Yes you can, ma,” Stan says. “C’mon, just three more steps.”

Stan’s ma gives her head one decisive shake. “I can’t do this to him, he’s been nothin’ but good to all of us - kept a roof over our heads and clothes on our backs and food in our mouths - and there weren’t many who’d’ve had me, when -”

“Ma,” Ford says, soft, the first time he’s opened his mouth since they’d burst through the door. His mother turns to look at him, and he slings the diaper bag down onto the step to catch her hand in both of his. “You don’t have to just be grateful it’s not worse.”

For the first time in all the time he’s known her, Stan realises, behind the lipstick and the nail polish and the brassiness, just how tired his mother seems. 

She half-turns, looking back over her shoulder through the front window of the shop. Stan has to fight down the screaming urge to throw her over his shoulder and carry her into the truck himself along with the baby. 

"You want little Sherm growing up with a pa like that?" he says, and knows he's struck a low blow when his mother flinches. "Sorry, Ma."

His mother smacks him in the arm without looking at him, but her heart's not in it, the blow's weak, her talons scraping lightly over Stan's sleeve. She doesn't turn away from the pawn shop window.

“What the hell’m I supposed to do without him?” she asks, soft, like she doesn’t mean for either of her sons to hear.

“Anything you want,” Stan says. He can’t stop it from slipping out.

His mother huffs out something that sounds like a laugh that got stuck halfway.

“All right,” she says, and she’s starting to sound like herself again. “You two obviously got a plan. Lead on.”

“Hi!” Mabel shouts, when Stan opens the truck door for his ma, bouncing up like a cardboard cutout in a popup book. “I’m Mabel! I’m thirteen and I love pigs! What’s your name?”

“Mabel, huh?” Stan and Ford’s ma says, as she climbs up into the back of the truck’s cab. “Nice to meet ya, hon. I’m Sheila. You ever had your palm read?”

...

So, the day is saved.

It’s just like in those superhero comics Stan used to like so much. The villain is defeated. The story ends. And, just like in those superhero comics Stan used to like so much, it leaves Ford wondering what happens once the crisis is over, once the heroes have to go back to their everyday lives.

As it turns out, the answer is ‘not a lot’. Ford ends up studying, mostly. He has to present some kind of research, sometime.

It feels...anticlimactic, somehow. Like something more should’ve happened, some intense personal revelation or sacrifice, something that would have shaped him and molded him into a better friend, a better brother, a better person. Someone smarter and stronger and braver, someone who could effortlessly step up when needed. Someone who always knows what to do. What to say. 

Ford isn’t any of that. He’s just the same Ford he was two weeks ago, only more stressed out because he can’t seem to remember the most basic things about thermodynamics. 

“What’s the coefficient for friction, again?” he asks, and Stan shrugs.

“You’re asking me, poindexter?”

Ford lets out a sigh, and shakes his head. “Nevermind. I’ll look it up.”

Silence falls over the room again, broken only by the intermittent fwoosh as Stan lights little fires in the palm of his hand and then closes it into a fist to put them out. He says he keeps coming over because he’s serious about learning how to use ice, too, but so far Ford’s pretty sure the only thing he’s really serious about is making eyes at Carla.

“So I’m thinking about changing my name to Inferno,” Stan says, casually, and Ford nearly chokes on his own spit.

“Wh- Stanley, that’s - that sounds ridiculous, why would you ever -” Ford swallows hard, shaking his head. “If - if that’s what you choose, then I’ll support you -”

Stan bursts out laughing, clapping Ford on the back. “Nah, I’m not really gonna do that. But you shoulda seen the look on your face!”

“You are a terrible human being,” Ford mutters, but he can’t help a smile.

“Good thing I’m not one, then,” Stan grins, and Ford lets out a groan from the very bottom of his stomach.

“How are we related,” he grumbles, and Stan laughs.

The silence settles in again, comfortable as an old pair of shoes. Somewhere out in the hall, there’s a shout and laughter that can only belong to Mabel, and the sound of running feet. A moment later, the door flies open, slamming against the wall behind it as Dipper bursts into the room, with Mabel and her friends hot on his heels. 

“Heyyyyyyyyy what’s going on,” Dipper blurts. “Uh, Ford? Can you please tell these three that you can’t just turn back time by running really fast in the opposite direction of the Earth’s rotation so it starts rotating in reverse?” 

“Aw, c’mon, Dipper!” Mabel protests, bouncing flat on her back onto Ford’s bed.

“Yeah, you’ll never know unless you try!” Grenda booms.

“I actually do know, because even if I could reverse the Earth’s rotation by running really fast in the other direction, it’d just slow to a stop and fling all of us off!”

“That also sounds like fun,” Candy says.

“You’d die instantly!”

“Better than dying slow and painful!” Grenda shouts. 

Stan glances up, meets Ford’s eyes over the kids’ heads, and Ford has to bite the inside of his lip to keep from cracking up. 

“You know,” he says, shutting his notebook and setting it down beside him, “I’ve hit a stall with all of this. How about we head outside and see what we can do with running really fast?”

“I did not sign up for this,” Dipper grumbles, but he’s smiling. 

“Yeah, this I wanna see,” Stan says. “You guys head on out, I’m gonna make popcorn.” He flashes a conspiratorial grin in Ford’s direction, before pushing himself up off the bed and starting for the door.

“Wait!” Dipper calls after him, hurrying along on his heels. “How’s your friend Wendy doing? Did she ask about me?”

Mabel trails after him, sing-songing, “Dipper’s got a cruuuuuush!” Candy and Grenda join in, the chant growing in volume as they all head out into the hall, Dipper’s protests rising in counterpoint.

“Mabel! I do not!”

Ford hangs back, for a moment, listening to the voices fading along the hall. 

Then he pushes himself to his feet, and follows after them.