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robinrunsfiction · 3 years

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It’s A Love Story - Part 2

Part 1

When Saturday arrived, (YN) had been so excited for her and Mikey’s birthday party, but the noise had been going on for what felt like ages and she needed a break. It wasn't like many people were talking to her, apparently Gerard's threats were even more intimidating with him in the corner keeping an eye on everything as their mom left him to chaperone while she stayed up in her bedroom, away from the teenagers.

(YN) slipped away to her room, flopping back onto her bed, staring up at the ceiling when she heard a knock on the door frame. She sat up with a start and found Frank looking amused in the doorway.

"Avoiding your own party?" He asked.

"And I'll cry if I want to, or however the song goes. I dunno how Mikey got all of the outgoing genes in like the entire family. It's not really fair."

Frank laughed and nodded. "You and Gee do have that in common."

(YN) nodded. "You can come in ya know."

"I dunno what rules your mom has about boys in your bedroom," he said, padding across the floor to sit next to her.

"Oh you know you only got Gee and Mikey to be scared of," she replied, shaking her head. "What brings you up here anyway?"

"I got you a present," he said.

"Really?" (YN)'s eyes lit up and a grin formed on her face.

"Yea, umm, here," he said, pulling a small box out of his jacket pocket.

(YN) stared at it for a moment before carefully unwrapping it. Inside was a necklace with a blue sapphire charm. "Oh wow," she whispered.

"The lady at the store said it was your birthstone, but I didn't know if you'd like it," he trailed off with a shrug.

"I love it, it's so pretty!" She said, throwing her arms around him in a hug. "Thanks Frank."

"Of course, happy birthday (YN)," he replied, returning the hug.

"I'm gonna guess you didn't get Mikey the same thing?" (YN) laughed as she put the necklace on.

Frank laughed. "Nah, I got him a CD," Frank replied before pausing, seemingly lost in thought. "It's kinda shitty how him and Gee scared off all the guys from you."

(YN) sighed. "I just wish they would have asked me how I felt about it first. But," she paused, drawing up every ounce of courage she could find, "as long as the guy I like keeps talking to me, it's fine."

Frank nodded before his eyes went wide and (YN) couldn’t help but laugh a little at the realization that had clearly just hit him.

"And I seem to be the only guy that's ever talking to you."

"So that would mean," she trailed off, her cheeks burning.

"For real?"

"Yea, sorry," she replied, wrinkling her nose.

"No, no that's not what I meant. I mean, I like you too, (YN)."

She was surprised, but couldn’t help but grin. "It's dangerous to have a crush on me, ya know."

"I like to live dangerously," he smirked, and (YN) had to keep from melting on the spot as the air hung thick between them.

"So what do we do now?" She asked softly.

“Well, I really wanna kiss you," he said, sliding closer to her, his hand on top of hers.

“Gee and Mikey will kill you,” she whispered as they started to lean in together.

“Then I’ll die happy," he whispered back.

“See you at your funeral,” she replied as Frank reached up and touched her cheek gently before closing the distance between them. Their lips met and (YN) had to try not to sigh, it was everything she had hoped it would be.

When they pulled back, Frank was smiling like she'd never seen before. "Was that good?" She asked.

Frank furrowed his brow in confusion. "Yea, it was really good. Wait, was that your first kiss?"

(YN) nodded and bit her lip, her cheeks going pink again. "Yea."

A smile spread across Frank's face. "You wanted me to be your first kiss?"

"Duh," she laughed lightly. "Is that weird?"

"No, it's," Frank looked like he was trying to find the words to describe what he was feeling. "Fucking awesome," he finally replied.

(YN) smiled and shook her head, before looking down at the necklace she was now wearing. "Thanks for making this a really memorable birthday."

"You deserve it," he nodded.

"We should probably go back downstairs before someone comes looking for us, or starts to suspect something."

"Yea," Frank agreed. "We'll talk soon about… us?"

"Sounds like a plan," (YN) nodded.

Frank leaned in, giving her another quick kiss before getting up and leaving her room.

(YN) sighed and flopped back on her bed again before letting out a squeal of utter glee.

The following week of school felt like the longest of (YN)'s life, all she wanted was for it to be Friday night. She and Frank had decided they were going to skip the weekly movie night with her brothers and Ray, and instead have their first date. When Friday evening finally arrived, (YN) couldn't get out of the house quick enough.

"(YN) are you still in for movie night?" She heard Mikey ask behind her. She froze, wincing, hand inches from the doorknob.

"Oh, no sorry," she replied, turning to face her brother. "I'm going to Marie's, she's having some boy problems and wanted someone to talk to."

"Oh," Mikey shrugged.

"What's going on?" Gerard asked, walking into the living room.

"Guess it's just us and Ray tonight," Mikey explained.

"Where are you going?" Gerard asked, eyeing her suspiciously.

"Marie's. No Frank?" She asked, trying to remain inconspicuous.

"He said he's not feeling good, stomach thing," Gerard explained.

(YN) nodded. "That sucks... Well, I'll see ya later," she said before hurrying out the door, afraid they'd somehow see through her lies.

The walk to Frank's house was quick, she'd made it countless times before, but never before in this context, which added an extra spring to her step. By the time she arrived at the door, her heart was pounding.

"Hey," he said, immediately pulling her into a hug when she walked in. "I ordered a pizza a little bit ago, is that cool?"

"Yea, of course," she nodded before kicking off her shoes and dropping her purse by the door. "Umm, so did you tell your mom that we're," she trailed off.

"She's not home yet, but yea, just so she knows not to bring it up around the guys for some reason,” he said, leading the way into the kitchen.

“That’s good,” she nodded, taking the soda that he offered to her.

An awkward silence hung between them as they stood in the kitchen. They normally would have been bantering easily, but there was now so much to talk about that neither seemed to know where to begin.

“So, umm-” Frank started, but before he could get any more words out, the doorbell rang. “Oh, hang on.”

(YN) nodded and made her way to the living room, plopping down on the couch.

"Thanks man, see ya Monday," she heard Frank say before walking into the living room with the pizza.

"Who was that?"

"Tucker. I didn't know he got a job delivering pizzas."

"Me neither, but no one tells me anything anymore," she laughed.

Frank laughed as he sat the pizza down on the coffee table in front of them. “What do you wanna watch?”

“Whatever you want,” (YN) shrugged as she picked up a slice of pizza.

Frank hummed as he perused his movie collection. “Got it,” he nodded, pulling one off the shelf, and putting it on. He settled onto the couch next to (YN) as he started the movie. After they both had their fill of pizza, Frank put his arm over her shoulder. "Is this ok?"

"Yea," she smiled, sliding over so she was resting against his side.

They sat in silence as the movie continued to play, but (YN) was only halfway paying attention. She was too busy thinking about Frank's hand on her shoulder, thumb rubbing small circles into the material of her shirt. She had just turned her attention back to the movie when a jump scare made her yelp and bury her face against Frank’s shoulder.

She heard the sound of the movie stop and Frank wrapped both his arms around her. "Shit, sorry," he murmured, rubbing her back soothingly.

"It's ok," she replied, pulling back from him enough to look up at his face. He was definitely concerned, and it warmed her heart.

"Do you wanna watch something else?"

"No, no, it's ok, we can keep watching this," she insisted. “I was just startled.”

"Ok, he replied, pressing play again, but she stayed curled up against him and he kept both his arms wrapped around her, holding her tighter than before.

"There's another jump scare coming up," Frank said a few minutes later.

(YN) whined a little and turned to hide her face against Frank's shoulder again when he caught her chin and she looked up at him. He leaned in and kissed her while the suspenseful music blared from the TV. (YN) smiled into the kiss as she wrapped her arms over his shoulders and he pulled her closer. Tentatively he deepened the kiss, and she tried not to get too excited that she was finally, truly, getting to make out with Frank.

It wasn't until the end credits were playing that they came up for air.

"I really liked the movie," (YN) laughed.

"Me too," Frank grinned. "And I really like you."

"You'd mentioned something about that before," (YN) smiled coyly, but couldn't help but blush a little. “Umm, so can I ask something?” Frank nodded so she continued. “When did you realize that you liked me?”

Frank scrunched up his face for a moment as he thought. “I think it was kinda gradual. When we started the band and you started doing your own thing with your clothing designs, I thought that was so cool.”

“Really?”

Frank nodded. "I don't always know who or what you're talking about, but it's cool seeing you be so excited about it. But," and then winced a bit. “If I’m gonna be totally honest, umm,” he trailed off.

“What?”

“Please don’t think I’m a scumbag like Adam, but umm, at the pool party, I mean,” he rubbed his hands over his face. “You’re hot!” He finally blurted out and (YN) began to laugh.

“I don’t think you’re a scumbag, because I know you’re not gonna try to take advantage of me or anything,” she replied.

“I never would, you mean too much to me to do anything that would make you feel bad," he replied sincerely.

(YN) smiled. “That’s why I like you, ya know.”

“Hmm?”

“You always make me feel better about myself, even when I'm struggling through math class or whatever. And because when Gee or Mikey are being obnoxious and picking on me, you would always take my side," she smiled. “Plus you’re really cute and I really like watching you play guitar because it’s so cool.”

It was Frank’s turn to grin. "So are you gonna start coming to watch our practices?"

"I dunno, I don't wanna just seem like a groupie,” she laughed. “Or worse, raise my brothers' suspicions. I don't want them to freak out and kick you out of the band or something," she said, starting to pick at her nails.

"Hey," he started, taking her hands as she looked up at him. "I know you do that when you’re nervous, but whenever you're ready to talk to them, I'll be there. Until then, we'll keep things between just you and me."

"The secrecy is kinda fun, forbidden romance and all that," she smiled.

"And when it's not secret, it will be even better, because then I'll be able to do this whenever I want," he said leaning in and kissing her.

(YN) got completely lost in the amazing sensation of kissing Frank until the front door opened. They jumped apart as Frank’s mom walked into the house. She peeked in the doorway to the living room with a smile. “Hi Frank, hi (YN), don’t mind me!”

They both greeted her, and (YN) checked the time. “Ugh, it’s getting late, I should probably get home,” she said, getting up.

“Do you want me to walk you back?" Frank asked, following her to the door.

"Probably shouldn't risk it. You're supposed to be sick, remember?"

"Oh yea," he replied, sounding a bit forlorn.

"I promise I’ll try to figure out how to tell them soon."

Frank nodded. "Like I said before, whenever you're ready, I'll be right there with you. You're my girl."

(YN) felt her heart flip and her knees go a little weak as she threw her arms around Frank and buried her face against his neck. He held her close until she pulled back, and gave him a quick kiss.

"Let me know when you get home safe," he said as she headed out the door.

She waved over her shoulder, feeling like she was practically floating

Part 3

#frank iero x reader #frank iero fan fic #frank iero fan fiction #frank iero imagine #my chemical romance fan fic #my chemical romance fan fiction

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asongofmarvelanddc · 4 years

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Nothing Will Ever Change (This Love of Mine)

PAIRING: Marcel Gerard X Reader

WORD COUNT: 3,335

WARNINGS: None. Just fluffity fluff fluff fluff.

SUMMARY: Marcel returns from war to his estranged family, and his fiancée. When Klaus threatens her, Marcel realises it’s time to come clean about who he is.

A/N: Title taken from the song by Jimmy Jules. Also, I have a headcanon that Marcel is fluent in French, so translations in italics.

JANUARY, 1919

Whoever said money couldn’t buy status had clearly never met the Mikaelsons.

You didn’t know much about them other than what Marcel had told you: that they were farmers who were orphaned but managed to find some way up the social ladder by acquiring property all over the United States. It would be a heart-warming story if they weren’t so...arrogant.

Everyone could see it when they walked into a room - the way they always expected to be approached and never the other way around. Sure, some of them were always polite for the most part, but they all maintained an air of superiority, spoke to you in a way that reminded you that you’d never be them.

You weren’t fond of the Mikaelsons, and it seemed like the feeling was mutual. They’d reluctantly invited you to the party they were throwing in honour of Marcel’s return from the war. Elijah - being one of the few who tried to make you feel like a part of the family - asked on his family’s behalf which made it difficult to say no. Still, the party was for Marcel, and you’d been waiting four years to see him again, so you graciously accepted the invite.

The party was already in full swing by the time you arrived. You looked around, searching for any familiar faces, but found none other than the Mikaelsons. They were surrounded by people - the mayor being one of them - who were tripping over themselves to be gracious to the Mikaelsons and gain favour with them.

Not wanting to join the other guests in fawning all over the family, you stood alone at the bar, nursing a stiff drink. All you could think about was Marcel. Before long, you began to feel eyes burning a hole in the back of your head and turned to find Klaus Mikaelson staring at you. It wasn’t obvious all the time, but you got the feeling that he didn’t like you very much.

Ignoring his glare, you returned to your drink - impatiently waiting for Marcel’s return. But alas, Klaus couldn’t take the hint, and within seconds he was standing by your side.

A charming smile graced his lips as he greeted you, “Y/N. It’s a pleasure to have you here.”

“Is it?” you cocked a brow, “Because I think you only invited me because Elijah asked you to. Not that Marcel would’ve stayed longer than five minutes if he found out I wasn’t here. ”

He chuckled.

“I see you’re not in the mood to exchange pleasantries,” he said.

“What gave it away?”

His smile dropped and he leaned in closer, “Look, whatever I’ve done to upset you-”

“It’s not what you’ve done to me, it’s what you did to him,” you snapped, “Do you realise we wouldn’t even be having this party if it weren’t for you people?”

He avoided your eyes, his confident stance wavering.

“You drove him away.”

Klaus was silent for a moment as your words sunk in. It was clear by the guilty expression on his face that he knew you were right. You expected him to leave you alone after that, but instead, another Mikaelson approached - a smirk on her lips and a champagne glass in her hands.

“My, my, you could cut the tension with a knife.”

You rolled your eyes and turned back to the bar, “I’m not in the mood Rebekah.”

Klaus smiled as he looked at his sister, “Yes, she’s feeling a bit pissy this evening.”

You glared at him.

“Leave the girl alone, Nik,” Rebekah said, “She has enough on her mind.”

He shot a glance at you, a thoughtful look appearing on his face, but then he let out a quiet sigh and walked away.

A breath of relief escaped your lips once he was no longer in your presence. Rebekah stepped closer to you and tilted her head as she looked at you.

“So, what’s got you in such a mood?”

You let out another sigh. “I just need to see him, Rebekah,” you said, your voice sounding desperate, “It’s been so long and I just...I just need him here.”

She nodded and placed a hand on your back. “I understand, dear,” she smiled, “Come find me later, yeah?”

You cracked a smile and let out a sigh of relief when she walked away, thankful to be left alone. When you went to down the rest of your drink, the ring on your finger caught your eye and your thoughts immediately travelled back to Marcel.

Putting the glass down on the table, you twirled the ring on your finger, deep in thought. You never did manage to get it resized, there was never any time. Marcel had given it to you the night before he left. You’d been going out of your mind with worry since he decided to enlist, fearful of what could happen to him while he was gone. He called it a proposal, but it was obvious that it was more of a promise that he would come back to you.

And tonight he finally would.

You were reminiscing about the days before Marcel left when you felt arms circle your waist, and a face nuzzle into your neck. Heart hammering in your chest, you reached up slowly and touched the man’s cheek.

“Marcel?”

He hummed in response and placed a kiss on your shoulder. “It’s me, baby.”

A gasp escaped your lips as you closed your eyes and turned around, pulling his lips against yours in a fervent kiss. He grinned as you kissed him, a laugh even slipping out as you wrapped your arms around his neck, your hand resting at the nape of his neck.

You’d thought as soon as you saw Marcel you’d feel relaxed, but instead, your heart was beating out of your chest. Every inch of your body was lit aflame when he placed his hands on your hips and pulled you closer.

“God, I missed you,” he mumbled against your lips just as you broke apart.

He rose one of his hands to cup your cheek, his thumb wiping away a tear that had rolled down.

“Hey. No tears, okay?”

You wiped them away, unable to stop smiling. “It’s just so surreal,” you said, “I can’t believe you’re here. I feel like I can finally breathe again.”

“You think you missed me?” he scoffed, “I practically drove the guys in my unit crazy talking about you.”

He still had his arm around you, not wanting to let go. You let yours fall from his neck, one hand resting on his chest, “Four years.”

“Four years.”

You shook your head in wonder as you looked at him again. From his perfect, dazzling smile to those loving brown eyes. Even after everything he’d been through, he looked exactly the same.

“You don’t look like you’ve aged a day.”

Without missing a beat, he said, “I could say the same about you, pretty girl.”

You looked away, heat rising to your cheeks, “Sweet-talker.”

He laughed again, surprised that he could still fluster you even after so long together. Glancing down, he noticed the sparkling ring around your finger.

“You’re still wearing it,” he said and raised a brow, “I take it I haven’t been replaced yet?”

“As if anyone could ever replace you, Marcel Gerard.”

He held your loving gaze for a moment before shaking his head in incredulity and leaning down to kiss you again. It was softer and much more tender this time.

He rested his forehead against yours, breathing heavily. “Let’s get outta here,” he whispered, looking down at you with lustful eyes.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” he said, laughing as he pressed quick kisses from your cheek down to your jaw and neck. He took your hand, leading you towards the exit, when Klaus suddenly appeared in front of you.

“Marcel,” he said, his hands clasped together behind his back, “I didn’t see you come in.”

Marcel let out a heavy sigh, but the grin on his lips never faltered. “Klaus. Nice to see you.”

Klaus looked taken aback by the response. “On your way out?” he asked, clearly offended, “Didn’t think to pop over to your family and say hello?”

Marcel rolled his eyes. “I just wanted some private time with my girl, Klaus, it’s really not a big deal.”

You noticed the sudden change in Klaus’ expression. In a second, his polite smile and mischievous eyes morphed into a look you could only describe as evil. You’d heard rumours about the Mikaelsons. About Klaus. Rumours you didn’t believe. But if there were monsters in New Orleans - you had definitely just seen one.

But then like a storm cloud passing, his polite smile was back. “Well, perhaps you and I could have a drink upstairs before you leave, Marcel.”

“Klaus, I really just want to-”

“Or...we could take Y/N out for a drink.”

You felt Marcel’s body stiffen under your touch at those words. His jaw clenched as he gripped your hand tighter, taking a more protective stance in front of you.

Eventually, he sighed deeply and shook his head, turning to you. “Attends ici, ma chérie,” he whispered as he pressed a kiss to your cheek, “I’ll be right back.” (Wait here, sweetheart)

Klaus’s smile widened, clearly satisfied by Marcel’s decision. The two disappeared up the stairs and into the Mikaelson family room.

__________________________

“So, Marcellus,” Klaus began as he poured himself a drink, “We throw you this party to welcome you home, even invite your little girlfriend to make you happy, and yet you can’t even grace us with your presence.”

“You visited me while I was gone, it’s not like you haven’t seen me in years,” Marcel said, “And she’s not my girlfriend, she’s my fiancée. And I haven’t seen her in four years.”

“So, you’d rather spend your first evening back with her than you would your own family?”

Marcel didn’t respond, but his silence spoke volumes.

“I see,” Klaus nodded and downed his drink, “Perhaps if the girl is taken out of the equation you’ll remember exactly where your loyalties should lie.”

Marcel sped in front of the door, blocking it as Klaus stormed towards him.

“You are not touching her, Klaus!” he yelled as he shoved Klaus back, “You’re gonna kill her because I wanna spend time with her? What the hell is wrong with you?”

“I assure you, Marcellus, my reasonings for getting rid of that girl are just.”

“Like they were when you daggered Rebekah for five decades?”

“You haven’t been the same since she entered your life,” Klaus said, “She has been tearing you away from your family.”

“She is my family.”

Klaus’ face hardened. “Is that so?”

“Damn straight.”

He stepped closer to Klaus and began speaking in a scarily low voice. “I let go of Rebekah for you, Klaus, but I am telling you right now,” he said, eyes burning with anger, “I would see this city burn before I do the same with Y/N.”

Klaus was silent for a moment as he mulled over Marcel’s words. It seemed he had lost the fight, until a thought occurred to him.

“And what if she lets you go?” he said, the hint of a smile on his lips and a glint in his eye, “I wonder what she’ll think when she finds out just what kind of monster you are.”

Marcel’s jaw clenched, “You wouldn’t.”

“Oh, I would,” he smirked, “I do believe that lasting relationships must be built on honesty and trust. I’d consider me telling her the truth a favour.”

Marcel balled his fists, looking away from Klaus to control his anger. He knew there was no winning a fight with an Original - even if he was burning with rage.

Klaus chuckled to himself and walked over to the door. “Don’t worry, I’ll allow you this one night with her,” he said as he walked out, “Welcome home, Marcellus.”

__________________________

Marcel was silent as you watched him put his hat down on your coffee table. He hadn’t been himself since you left the party. You twirled the set of keys in your hand, unsure of how to proceed.

“You haven’t said a word since we left the mansion.”

He didn’t respond.

You let out a heavy sigh as you walked towards him slowly. “You know, I talked to a couple other ladies whose men came back from the war too,” you began, “They said that they weren’t the same. The things they saw over there...it changed them.”

You waited with baited breath for a response, almost afraid of what he might say. He hadn’t seemed different when you were at the party, but the quiet was making you think his mind was elsewhere.

“I’ve seen worse than I did when I was over there,” he said, his back to you, “That’s not it.”

“Then tell me what’s on your mind.”

For a second, you thought he wasn’t going to elaborate, and you felt your heart sink. Then he turned around slowly, a thoughtful look on his face as he spoke.

“You and I have been together for six years,” he said, almost like he couldn’t believe it, “And yet, there’s still stuff about me - my past - that you don’t know about.”

A nervous smile emerged on your lips as you moved closer to him. “What are you talking about? You’ve told me about your past.”

“Not about my parents. Not about the way I grew up.”

“You told me all that,” you argued, “You told me you never knew your parents. That Klaus’ family adopted you when you were young and you grew up with them as your siblings.”

He shook his head slowly, wiping his mouth with his hand in frustration and placing a hand on his hip. It was clear that he was wrestling with something in him - it was tearing him apart.

“Marcel,” you said as you took his hand, “Tu peux me dire ñ'importe quoi.” (You can tell me anything.)

He looked down at your hands, his eyes staying on them for a long time before he finally spoke. “I wasn’t honest with you about that,” his voice wavered and he paused to take a breath, “Klaus’ family didn’t adopt me...Klaus did.”

You froze for a minute, trying to understand what he just said because it made no sense.

“That’s impossible,” you said, “He would’ve been a boy himself.”

“I was born in 1810 on a plantation here in Louisiana,” he explained, “My mother was a slave, and my father, the Governor...he was her — our master.”

“What? If you were born in 1810 that would make you like—”

“A hundred and nine.”

Your eyes widened in shock as you snatched your hands away from his and stepped back, “Mon Dieu...” (My God...)

He reached out for you, but you took another step back, turning away from him to compose yourself. The stories you’d heard as a child, the ones every child in New Orleans has heard...they were all true.

“Demon of the night,” you whispered, “You’re one of them.”

“Yes.”

“And the Mikaelsons?”

“They’re all like me.”

You took in a deep breath and turned to look at him, arms folded as you eyed him nervously. He was standing a few feet away from you, clearly giving you space to digest everything. It wasn’t working however, because you had a million burning questions and no clue how to feel.

“The things they say about you, your kind...are they all true?” you asked.

“Some of it, yes. But not all of it.”

“So, the blood drinking and the mind control-”

“That’s all true.”

You sucked in a sharp breath once more and looked to the ground. All of this was difficult to hear. But it hurt more to know that he wasn’t honest with you.

“There’s a lot that I want to know,” you began as you lifted your gaze to meet his, “But I only have three big questions.”

He stepped towards you, surprised when you didn’t move back, and took your hand in his. “Anything you wanna know, just ask and I promise I’ll tell you everything.”

You nodded, mustering up a small smile before looking down again. “Have you killed people?”

“That’s a difficult question.”

“How is that a difficult question?”

“I’ve been a vampire for eighty-four years, Y/N,” he said, “During that time, I’ve fought in two wars. Yes, I’ve killed people, but never innocents. Not even when the hunger was unbearable.”

Again, you nodded slowly. You couldn’t deny the relief you felt after hearing that.

“Does Klaus? Kill innocents?” you asked, deciding on a follow-up question.

“He’s lived a lot longer than I have,” Marcel sighed, “I don’t think you get to be a vampire for almost a thousand years without getting some blood on your hands.”

“Wow,” you whispered. You’d always known there was something about that family, but you never would’ve guessed this. Suddenly you could understand the arrogance — you too would feel superior to everyone if you’d lived a thousand years of strength, speed, and the ability to get whatever your heart desired.

Marcel cocked his head at you, “You’ve been quiet for a minute. You wanna ask the rest of your questions?”

You blinked back into reality. “Yeah, uh...” you looked up at him, hesitant to ask him the next question, “This isn’t easy to say, Marcel, but I have to ask.”

“Go ahead.”

You bit your lower lip nervously, “Have you ever drank from me? Or used your compulsion on me?”

“Wow, um...” Marcel stepped back, your hand falling from his. He was taken aback. “No, I’ve...I’d never do that to you.”

“Marcel, I’m sorry, but I had to ask if-”

“I get it.”

“-we were ever gonna be comfortable with each other again.”

“Yeah, it’s okay. I understand. It’s fine.” He spoke the words quickly, hoping to sound like he didn’t care, but it was clear by the way he dropped his shoulders and avoided your eyes just how much the question had hurt him.

You walked towards him, this time being the one to take his hands, “Je suis désolé.” (I’m sorry)

“C'est pas grave.” He placed a hand against your cheek and smiled softly. You leaned into it, closing your eyes as you sighed deeply. Even after all you’d learned, he still felt like home. (It’s alright)

“Final question,” you said as you stood up straight and looked at him earnestly, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“What?”

“Why didn’t you tell me you were a vampire?” you repeated, “J'aime tout de toi, tu le sais. You’re my family, so why didn’t you trust me?” (I love everything about you, you know that.)

“I trust you, I just—” He paused to collect his thoughts. “At first, I was being selfish. You liked me as I was, and as a bonus, had a wit sharp enough to leave even Klaus speechless,” he chuckled as you rolled your eyes while fighting off a smile, “But soon enough it became about protecting you from all of that death and darkness.”

“Tu aurais du me le dire.” (You should’ve told me)

Marcel frowned and pulled you close, “Je t'aime et je ne voulais pas te perdre.” (I love you, and I didn’t wanna lose you.)

“Mon coeur,” you smiled as you placed a hand against his cheek, “There is nothing about you that could make me love you less.”

The way he looked at you when you said that — perfect and loving as ever — tugged at your heart strings. He didn’t say a word. He simply wrapped his arms around you and leaned down to kiss you. Your heart racing as he did so let him know that the truth hadn’t changed anything between you.

You pulled away and rested your forehead against his, “Dieu, je t'aime tellement.” (God, I love you so much)

“Tu es mon coeur, mon amour, ma vie,” he whispered against your lips, “Je t’aime.”

#marcel gerard #marcel gerard x reader #marcel the originals x reader #klaus mikaelson #klaus mikaelson x reader #klaus x reader #elijah mikaelson #elijah mikaleson x reader #rebekah mikaelson #rebekah mikaelson x reader #the originals #the originals x reader #the originals imagine #the vampire diaries

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bitterbloodrose · 4 years

Text

THREE CHEERS FOR SWEET REVENGE

(concept album, it’s about these lovers called the “demolition lovers” and the girl died and the guy kind of makes a deal with the devil and the devils tells him to bring him the corpses of a thousand evil men”)

Helena: it’s about Gerard and Mikey’s grandma who died and Gerard basically says that its this “angry letter to himself” cos he didn’t do enough for her. My favorite part is the bridge into the final chorus and you should also watch the MV its actually Art.

I’m Not Okay (I promise): its very angry and loud cos the narrator is basically saying yeah I know you got problems but fOr FUCKS SAKE I HAVE PROBLEMS TOO YOURE NOT SPECIAL. My favorite bit is the bridge again. Especially the trust me. Watch the MV its designed like a movie trailer.

Cemetery Drive: this is my favorite song on the album and probably one of my favorites of all time cos the LYRICS DUDE “singing songs that make you slit your wrists” and it’s Literally about how the band had to go on this really long road trip I hate this stupid band

Ghost of you: not the BEST song but the MV IS ACTUALLY ART LIKE ITS ACTUAL ART. its just a sad song

Thank You for the Venom: fuck me this is another one of my favorites. This is straight rock right in the veins. The adrenaline will KILL YOU. Apparently this was a diss at the bands critics. The fucking guitar solo makes me ASCEND. Also tHE LYRICS AGAIN.

You Know What They Do to Guys Like Us in Prison: hehehheehhehehe gay sex song. It’s literally about gay sex.

THE BLACK PARADE.

Okay fuck this is genuinely genuinely one of the greatest albums of all time. And I would say this even if I wasn’t such a slut for them. Literally everything is perfect and once again its a concept album. They wrote this in the paramour mansion too lol. I’m not joking this is an ACTUAL masterpiece musically and lyrically cos it deFINED genres. Its about this “patient” who dies and joins the black parade and his story of how he died and everything. You have to listen in chronological order.

The End: basically the dudes dead. He did fuck all with his life and he’s dead. He gives No fucks about peoples opinions. The FUCKING LYRICS IN THIS DUDE. “If you look in the mirror and don’t like what you see you can find out firsthand what its like to be me” “when I grow up I want to be nothing at all”

Dead!: the transition to this makes me actually ascend. Basically about how the dude wasn’t important in his life and did absolutely nothing. I love it cos it takes this perspective instead of the one thats like “oh you’ll always matter”

This is How I Disappear: bloody hell THIS SONG DUDE THE LITTLE DETAILS. Basically about reaching out to a loved one. The BRIDGE IN THIS HOLY FUCKKKKKKKKKKKKKK.

The Sharpest Lives: probably one of my favorites on the album. Its basically about living the wild life. The fucking lyrics again. “A light to burn all the empires, so bright the sun is ashamed to rise and be” “the sharpest lives are the deadliest to lead” “so you can leave like the sane abandoned me” FUCK THE GUITAR TOO.

Welcome to the Black Parade: idk how to explain this but say its an anthem. Its the Bohemian Rhapsody for the emos. Brian May himself agrees cos he played this live with them. This fucking song has so many layers fuck. Its about the dude dying but the LYRICS AGAIN. My favorite part is the post chorus and that has my favorite lyrics in it.

I Don’t Love You: its a ballad, and a weird one cos its basically saying you’re a bitch and I hate you. Its a very salty angry song and I love it cos its Not the normal thing to do. The bit where he goes “would you have the GUTS to say” is SO SO SO SO SO ANGRY like you can TELL he HATES her

House of Wolves: another one of my favorites. Another adrenaline buster. Its about the dudes arrival in hell and hes thinking about how he sinned and everything. The LYRICS and the FUCKING GUITARTRRRR makes me wanna BUST A NUT. Basically the band said hell looks like a fiery jazz club with demons and sinners lol.

Cancer: the Sad Song. The one that makes me wanna sob. Its about how the dudes dying and he’s saying goodbye to everyone. The LYRICS AGAINNNN.

Mama: good lord this song. Fuck. Its a masterpiece. I have No Words ar ALL. Its told in the perspective of a soldier who’s gonna die. And fuckkkk dude the lyricsssss and the GUITARTRRRRREDNEJSJJSSJJS FUCK THIS SONG IS SO GOOD god I wish I could hear this again for the first time

Sleep: this album just does Not Miss. its basically about how the dudes resigned to the fact that he is a bad person and nothing he does will ever change that. The words at the beginning are a recording of gerard way from the paramour mansion when he got sleep paralysis and night terrors. Its such a sad sad sad song cos he’s ACCEPTED his fate and at the end you can hear him scream “wake up” but you can BARELY hear it but its THERE and the dude is trying to wake up but he CANT-

Teenagers: this is just so MESSY and BEAUTIFUL it’s literally about how gerard saw a bunch of teenagers and thought they were scary lol. Again the LYRICS AND THE GUITAR SOLOOOOO

Famous Last Words: ah yes. The song that very literally saved my fucking life lol. The lyrics are so fucking powerful fuckkkkkk. Also YET ANOTHER GUITAR SOLO.

DANGER DAYS: THE TRUE LIVES OF THE FABULOUS KILLJOYS.

yet another concept album are we surprised. This ones hard to explain but basically its about this comic gerard wrote set in 2019 (this was released in 2011) and the worlds gone to shit an apocalypse happened and the world being ruled by this tyrannical corporation (sound familiar?) the Killjoys are a gang of rebels who go round being anarchists and rebels basically. Its very topical I think.

Na na na na na: makes me want to burn down the government. And commit arson and kill the rich. The lyrics are literally about that. A whole BANGER

Planetary Go: its a party song about life being too short basically

Destroya: hehehhehehe sex song again. DONT play this out loud. But fr this is another rebellion ANTHEM. Its all about fighting. And its amazing.

Kids from yesterday: makes me wanna cry. It’s about how far the boys have come. Again lyrics “ you only hear the music when you’re heart begins to break”

Vampire Money: this is the funniest fucking song in the world. So basically Stephenie Meyer wrote Twilight with Gerard as Edward cos she was a massive fan. And she asked him to play edward too but he refused and finally she begged them to do the soundtrack but they refused again and instead put out a diss track for twilight lmfaooo i fucking love them.

Desolation Row: its a cover but its better than the og and the music video is my sexuality.

Light Behind Your Eyes: saddest fucking song oh my god it was written to a fan who was dying

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lizacstuff · 4 years

Note

Thoughts on the last episode of SCK? I thought it was a vast improvement over the last episodes but still seems like an Edser reunion is super far away.

Hello! I liked this episode, I really loved a lot of the Edser scenes and pretty much enjoyed everything that did not include Selin. (I hate her guts, ya’ll, lmao)

Let’s see, I have a bunch of asks and I have some time today, so I’ll try and answer those in a big post later, but overall I thought it was a solid episode. As far as a reunion being super far away, I don’t know. They are definitely doing what I’ve been saying all along, and that is proving that he would fall in love with her all over again. So that has to be complete before he gets back his memories. And I think they are going to give us a little more of that even after Selin and Deniz are gone. Hopefully we jettison them soon, and then we’ll get to enjoy a few episode of Edser shenanigans as they dance around one another.

(more under the cut)

As for this episode, wow, the spoilers that said there was no Ayfer/Alex in this episode were WRONG, weren’t they? Starting with Ayfer, for the first time she didn’t annoy me with her trying to control Eda’s life. I actually applauded when she gave Eda the time limit for breaking the fake engagement. Good! Girlfriend is allowing Deniz to spin the situation out of control and I’m glad someone is helping her reign it in. Ayfer actually acting in Eda’s best interest for once, let’s hope Ayfer/Aydan plan that dinner with their wayward children soon and without any faux fiancés.

As for the Aydan/Ayfer/Alex of it all, it wasn’t the worst B-plot we’ve ever seen on this show. At least there were some entertaining moments. I liked Aydan/Ayfer getting together to discuss Eda and Serkan, and Alex as a two/three-timer is the least shocking development ever. Aydan is already ruined as a character so she might as well be okay with trying to move in on Alex while Ayfer is still in the picture. As for Alex... is he dead? Surely not... Who knows, but it looks like we may get some more comedy out of the situation in the coming episodes. I did laugh at them moving the body and Ayfer trying to go incognito wearing the sunglasses at night. Neslihan is very good at certain comedic moments.

Even with Alex, Ayfer, Aydan, Selin, Deniz and Ceren running around my nominee for worst character of the week is... Piril. Seriously, fuck her. She’s 100% enabling Selin’s delusions and has totally normalized her buttcrack crazy behavior and apparently cares not at all about Serkan or Eda. Is she high trying to convince Selin that Serkan went off to organize a surprise, can she not read the room at all? She should be staging an intervention with Serkan, not trying to further Selin’s deceitful agenda.

I will say this for the writers, though they have done their best to destroy Aydan and Ceren recently, Piril is staying pretty true to character. She’s the actual emotionless robot of the show and has always been a pretty shrewish, not-great, not-likeable person. It makes me sad that a teddy bear like Engin is shackled to her and honestly I don’t think she has any business having children, she’s not gonna make a great mother.

Melo and Ferit are honestly the only side characters (and Seyfi) that have rights at this point. Thank goodness Eda has Melo! Though I do think that the show purposely has weakened both Eda and Serkan’s support system in order to enable them both in this crazy storyline. If Serkan had real friends, he would have wizened up about Selin by now, and if Ceren hadn’t gone off the deepened, wanting to hurt Eda, she would have provided proof of Selin’s duplicity.

As for Eda and Serkan, so glad their screen time is back on track! I will always, always take more of them, but this felt like a big improvement from the last two weeks. I really loved their scenes together and their dynamic even (especially?) when they’re at odds and arguing, that was always a huge part of their relationship.

Loved their office scenes, the sparing over the client and Eda coming out on top. It was priceless watching her bet with Melo and then counting down until Serkan came to find her in the coffee room. The red hot sexual tension with the “Nobody touches you but me” moments and the “accidental” kiss. I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve worked in offices for many years and shockingly have never had my mouth accidentally come into contact with Gerard from Accounting’s mouth. “Accident” SURE. I guess that’s what happens when you’re drawn to each other like magnets.

I know there’s a lot of vitriol being spit at Serkan for how “cruel” he’s being, and he does need a slap upside the head at times, but mostly I saw this episode how soft he was. Did ya’ll see him sleeping in the office clutching Eda’s wedding invitation? That is SOFT. Or inviting her to sit with him at the coffee shop and saying he felt at peace there? SOFT. Or apologizing after he said harsh words in the office? He said “sorry” he never says that. Or leaving the hotel and heading back to the office because she was having trouble? Picking up coffee at “their” place on the way? Offering to help and calling her boss? Smiling proudly when she closed the deal? Letting her hug him? Soft, soft, soft, soft, soft.

Insisting she go to the hotel? Letting her sleep on him? Smiling about it? Snowball fights? and then finally at the end, taking off to look for her, finding her necklace, finding her, carrying her to shelter, caring for her, being concerned about her injuries, putting her necklace back on her, asking about their past, covering her with a blanket, and falling asleep with her?

IT’S ALL SO SOFT.

This man is already back in love with her, he just doesn’t know how to identify those feelings, process them or what to do with them. They still scare the crap out of him on top of the fact that he thinks she has been able to easily move on from him and their great love, and is sincerely happy and in love with another man. That shit-stain Deniz basically told him he was glad his plane crashed so that Eda could finally be happy! What an awful, heartbreaking thing to hear.

Yes, he said/did some things to hurt Eda, mostly by laying it on thick with Selin at times, but EVERY SINGLE time, it was done in reaction to him having Eda/Deniz thrown in his face and he was absolutely reacting to that. Our Miss Eda is really having to thread the needle when using her fake engagement to push him, and sometimes she went a little too hard and missed the mark. There were times when Serkan needed some hope and she didn’t give it to him. And then we have Deniz the shit-stain interfering. I’ve pretty much given up hope on him playing Selin, he did too much damage this episode, I will never be over his conversation with Serkan. And that conversation is what Serkan was reacting to when he laid it on thick with Selin at the party. It’s not because he actually gave a damn about her, there was nothing sincere about it, it was an act because he had been crushed. Plus the guilt of forgetting her birthday and of knowing the feelings that he was having for Eda.

Selin needs to go. I think the entire audience is feeling the fatigue of her presence in this storyline and she crossed quite a whole new professional line with putting Serkan’s entire company at risk in order to prevent Eda from going to the hotel. This storyline would be so much easier to take without her. I could actually enjoy the slow burn, falling back into love, stops and starts, hurt and angst if she wasn’t always looming, but she casts a pall over everything. I really think the writers miscalculated with this. The amnesia story could have worked fine without her and actually been really enjoyable to watch. At this point I will take her exit however I can get it, even if it means she doesn’t get her comeuppance.

However, how much do we love it on this show when the villains’ machinations backfire!? Sorry Selin, you weren’t banking on Serkan leaving you without a word and running to help Eda, were you? The scene in the office when Serkan arrives to help has catapulted on to my list of favorite scenes of the entire series. I loved every moment of it (and plan to gif pretty much every moment of it). I loved how they finally got to just work together, collaborate, join their talent and get a win for the company. Serkan needed to experience that, needed to see what kind of partners they could be and I’m so glad we got a chance to see it again too. Then the hug. What a relief! The first time since he’s been back where she’s actually gotten to hold him and have a few minutes to just feel his heartbeat and his warmth and take a beat to celebrate the fact that he’s alive. And how cute was he afterwards? All awkward smiles and fidgeting. It felt just as good for him as it did for her.

Another scene that deserves to be called out is the coffee shop. What a delightful surprise, I had no idea that was coming. And to find out Serkan permanently reserved that table for them? Because it was their table on their first real date? MY HEART.

Of course the final scenes in the cabin were beautiful and fraught and made my heart twist. I think this was a moment where Eda should have given up the game and come clean about the fake engagement with Deniz, but then the show couldn’t continue to milk this story. And they’re clearly not done with it yet.

However, I'm hopeful that we’re on the tail end of the engagements and Selin and Deniz will exit soon. So we’ll end with a <prayer circle> for that to happen!

#Sen Çal Kapımı #sen cal kapimi #edser #sck episode discussion #edser discusssion #sck 1x32 #sckask #asklizac #Anonymous

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clansayeed · 4 years

Text

Things Worth Keeping, or the Annual Raines Corp. Fourth of July Charity Gala

PAIRING: Kamilah Sayeed x MC (Nadya Al Jamil)

⥼ Summary ⥽

Kamilah takes great care in preserving some of the more sentimental articles of clothing she's acquired over the years. Nadya realizes she might have a historical costume kink.

word count: 2,775 rating: teen+ content warnings: language, brief political discourse, implied sexual undertones, implied kink

⥼ MASTERLIST ⥽

So it turns out every time there’s an event that requires Kamilah’s attendance (specifically requires, since the Awakening Ball was both some weird vampire-political obligation and her wanting to see Marcel again) the mannequins come out.

Only for costume events though.

Or… she’s decided ‘every’ just because what are the chances she’s lucky enough to behold the sight of Kamilah Sayeed in period wear twice in one year? Apparently very good, very good indeed.

The vampire takes it upon herself to explain while fussing with a few collars and sleeves rumpled in transit. Nadya takes it upon herself to listen intently — takes everything in her willpower not to take notes. “Indeed one comes to terms rather early on that all objects are replaceable and their worth is only what the owner projects upon them,” which is quite a lot judging by the little smile Nadya sees peeking at the corner of Kamilah’s lips as she works, “and because I have had the misfortune of losing things I once coveted, I see no harm in preserving that which has stayed with me.”

Nadya adjusts her seat on the couch; makes sure the lid on her travel mug is secure otherwise she’ll never be allowed to drink in the front room again. “Is that a really fancy way of saying ‘I think it’s really pretty and I want to keep it that way?’”

Kamilah goes still. Not the tense kind of still that makes Nadya want to stuff her words back in her mouth but the kind of still she’s come to understand will reap very wise rewards. If she’s patient enough.

She’s learning to be patient enough.

“I suppose if you wish to bring the sentiment down to the simplest terms… yes.”

And oh man even that little agreement has Nadya buzzing excited.

“I’m so excited — this is gonna be so much fun!”

“What it will be, Nadya, is a gross exaggeration more akin to a serial drama than the real thing.”

“Wow, grumpy pants. Where’s your sense of patriotism?”

“In the same gutter as the ideals on which this nation was founded.”

Okay, fair point. But that brings up a very good series of questions all scrambling to make themselves heard. Which goes about as well as it always does and leaves Nadya tongue-tied and mute.

More than a few times Kamilah throws subtle looks in Nadya’s direction. Totally discreet and casual — done while circling a dress here, adjusting a cravat there. And each time she asks some variation of “Are you sure this is how you wish to spend your evening?” Nadya gives her the same answer.

“There’s nowhere else in the world I’d rather be.”

The final time Kamilah is just close enough to turn crisp on her heel and bring them face to face. Her deep honey eyes roam Nadya’s face and spare no detail; like she’s one of those pretty dresses Kamilah’s kept after all these years.

It makes Nadya feel small and big, whole down to the tips of her toes but also just a sliver in Kamilah’s long long life. Which is a lot to feel for someone of her size. Maybe too much.

Cool, soft lips on her forehead force Nadya to open eyes she didn’t know she was squeezing shut. No longer scrutinizing, now the vampiress allows them both a rare glimpse behind the mask. To the concern she guards close and reserves for those she cares about.

Adrian, Gerard, Marcel… Nadya.

She cares about me that way. Holy cow.

“You truly mean that.” Kamilah says and it isn’t a question. Kamilah isn’t in the business of asking stupid questions to which she knows the answers — that’s Nadya’s ball game.

“Of course I do.”

“Forgive my surprise.”

“Always.”

It’s just a kiss. People kiss all the time, all over the world. But those people aren’t Nadya and they aren’t kissing Kamilah so they couldn’t possibly know how wonderful and important and loved each one makes her feel.

Along with all the other things that make her squeak when they part. It’s impossible to miss that look in Kamilah’s gaze.

“While I enjoy your company immensely Nadya… I may have to ask you to leave,” even though the trace of her finger over Nadya’s lips kind of contradicts that, “as I do have to attend a conference call before the night is through.”

Nadya doesn’t even care that her pout is a little childish. “I thought you took the day off for this.”

“I took a half day for this. You were the one who insisted on losing an entire night’s productivity to help me choose my attire.”

“I’ll be quiet?” There’s no harm in trying, right? Thankfully Kamilah still seems more amused than anything.

“You misunderstand.”

Does she, though, because there are only so many ways to take the sudden closeness. Kamilah’s hands braced atop the back of the couch pinning Nadya between the cushion and her permanence, the contradictory darkness in her bright eyes with their lowered lashes, and oh my god that smirk…

Then Kamilah’s leaning in to whisper in her ear and she’s just—just jello, absolute jello. “I had hoped to be finished by now, yet I keep finding myself distracted.”

Jello or not though Nadya will always be Nadya.

“I—I can leave, if… if that’s what you want.” I know work is important to you. I know schedules are important to you even though your organizational methods are outdated and frankly anxiety-inducing. I know you have a lot to get done and only so many hours of moonlight to do it…

Kamilah doesn’t answer. Instead just taps the underside of Nadya’s chin with her pointer finger and gives a smile in reward when the human lifts her head obediently.

“What do you want, Nadya?”

You know what I want, she would normally say, but if she did then all their… all their training would be for nothing. And don’t memories of that (as recent as, uhm, three in the afternoon today) make her zone out somewhere over Kamilah’s shoulder.

Seven mannequins; still headless, still creepy. Four beautiful ballgowns and a priceless Egyptian kalasiris†, a definitely custom-tailored zoot suit, and…

Holy broad stripes and bright stars.

“I asked you a question.”

Oh yeah, she’s definitely wearing that.

Kamilah doesn’t have to remind her twice. Nadya leans forward what little she can; basks shamelessly in the one thing in the entire world she knows she’s earned—

The way Kamilah looks at her with absolute pride.

“You. I want you.”

Its so fulfilling to see all her hard work come together in one place, on one night, and with the promise of fireworks to come. There’s just something about fireworks. She loves ‘em.

Jax lets out his fifth heavy and long-suffering sigh of the minute. A personal best, but Nadya’s having too much fun to ruin the night by telling him.

Unfortunately her hoop skirt makes it hard to sidle up for a hip-check. Cue sigh number six.

“You know I’m technically the hostess for this thing, right?”

“Are you saying you’re the person I complain to?”

She huffs. “No, I’m saying that your grumpy face is personally offending me.”

She can’t tell if he’s purposefully avoiding her eyes out of spite or shame — then a roaring yelp of laughter from the dance floor draws Nadya’s attention out to where Lily and Maricruz spin fast-paced and free; held together by just their hands and their shared looks of ‘I couldn’t care less where I am so long as it’s with you.’

At least that gets a little smile out of Mr. Grumpy-Pants.

A costumed server stops at the pair of them and offers his tray of goodies up like sin. Nadya spares two quick glances over either shoulder — thankfully Adrian has donors to schmooze and Kamilah hasn’t arrived yet — before she plucks a cheese cube carved in the shape of the Liberty Bell.

But it isn’t enough that Jax has to act so unhappy the entire gala — now he’s stealing her snack and eating it himself?! Where’s my purse, where’s my stake?!

What else can she do but gape? He doesn’t even have the decency to look ashamed, just chews and chews and swallows while trying to ease the itch in his legs caused by the borrowed hose.

“Lily warned me you might make bad choices.”

So what? I’m a grown woman, I can make bad choices if I want to. “Are all of you in on some big conspiracy to keep me from cheese?”

“If it’ll spare you future pain, yeah.” Which — she wasn’t expecting that. Nadya can’t help but feel her face soften. One look down her way though and he rolls his eyes. “Stop it.”

“You hate my party. You steal my cheese. What’s next, burning my crops and delivering a plague onto my house?”

Jax looks appalled — which is a real shame. That would have gone over so well with Lily. “I—what?!”

Nadya just waves it off though. “Forget it. Just…” oh hey look, time for her own sigh, “forget it.”

“It’s not you. It’s these tights.”

“They’re hose.”

“They itch.”

“Imagine wearing them all the time.”

Nadya is totally enjoying her frilly not-period-accurate-in-the-slightest ensemble but of course Adrian is the only one who looks really right in his whole get up. It’s a good thing he has to wear modern suits and styles or else he’d be pegged for a vampire right away.

Her boss pulls her in for a one-armed hug, expertly outmaneuvering the skirt but he probably has experience with that, huh? And his smile only widens as he takes in Jax in all his colonial glory.

“They were good in the winter, obviously. Though I’ll admit once I didn’t feel the weather anymore the discomfort really presented itself as a problem.”

Jax just rolls his eyes. “Why do I feel like you throw this thing just to say shit like that?” Which— she can tell he’s trying to be sarcastic but Adrian definitely goes tense beside her.

“I ‘throw this thing,’ as you say, because my own personal wealth can only go so far, and most of it is immaterial. But every donation is material, and that maximizes the good I can do with it.”

Nadya nods eagerly. “There’s like six different scholarships in STEM research alone, I think a dozen in the business sector, and when we get to our goal tonight —” she knows they will, Raines Corp. history states they always do and Raines Corp. never had her to push them above and beyond, “— the company’ll have enough to match the city’s bid for the abandoned tunnel reconstruction project.”

If he ever read the minutes she sent him after every Council meeting he’d know this, but when Jax said he didn’t do paperwork he meant he really didn’t do paperwork.

But it’s enough to get his attention. “And what happens then?”

Adrian shrugs. “I postpone it. The most I can do without getting politicians involved is five years but I figure… that should be long enough to either relocate the former Clanless and break even, or fortify the Shadow Den enough that any efforts won’t cause structural damage. Unfortunately Vega’s interim replacement hasn’t officially made her views on such things known, but I think with time —”

It’s—as Lily would put it—freakin’ cinematic. How Adrian’s voice fades away to a buzzing in her ears and Jax’s reply sounds like a mouthful of cotton. The music dims and the lights aren’t as bright except where they fall on her when she strides through the open double doors.

Now let it be known that Nadya firmly believes Kamilah looks amazing in anything. Her power suits, a crimson dress from centuries gone, the plum kimono she uses as a nightgown… Honestly she’d probably somehow make a banana costume look sinfully sexy.

No. What? No. Moving on.

And even though Nadya knew the moment she laid eyes on the uniform it was the non-negotiable choice — her brain put some weird filter on itself to keep her from imagining just what that looked like. Probably to try and keep her sane.

Because the real thing… there are literally no words.

Adrian’s laugh comes both from behind her and a million miles away. “Would you look at that. Now that is a sight that brings back memories.”

“Wow, color me surprised.” Jax deadpans.

Adrian is a close personal friend of the New York Historical Reenactment Society (surprisingly not a bunch of vampires… if there was ever a group suspect but no, she’s checked) and most of them are in attendance tonight. They make Nadya look like her dress—a gift from Adrian, rental only—was bought at a cheap pop-up Halloween store.

And Kamilah makes them look like a middle school theatre cast. There’s just something about the fabric, the way it fits her and the way she carries not just the uniform but her own body inside of it that makes her look authentic. No one would believe her; not with the freshly-oiled leather and polished brass buttons, but Nadya’s chaotic-dumb brain really wants to scream “take a look at the real deal, ya posers!”

Kamilah’s hand rests on the glossy hilt of her saber as she approaches. Eyes passing right over Adrian — probably used to the sight — and sparing Jax absolute no dignity in the soft “ha” she gives.

“I didn’t know we could wear uniforms.”

Kamilah raises an eyebrow and tucks a stray strand of hair back behind her ear. “You… have one?”

“No,” sigh number seven, “but I would’ve tried to find one. Anything to get out of these tights.”

“They were useful during winter.”

Adrian laughs and gestures to her eagerly. “That’s what I said!”

Kamilah wasn’t ignoring her, not on purpose. That’s made obvious the second she finally does take in every skirt and frill, every pearl in her necklace and lets her eyes linger where Nadya’s chest heaves against her corset.

“Nadya, you look as beautiful as ever.” Then Kamilah takes her hand and kisses the back of it with a soldier’s courteous bow. Where’d I leave that dumb lace fan…?

She’s about 99.9% sure Kamilah holding her hand is the only thing keeping her standing right now.

Adrian snickers. Nadya couldn’t care less. “Careful there, General Sayeed††. Your lady seems about to swoon.”

Thankfully the woman takes heed and pulls Nadya close, possibly the most public affection they’ve ever had holy crap on a cracker, resting a hand on the curve of her hip. Yet she looks at Adrian with… what is that, mild annoyance?

“You know very well I was not named General until nearly a century later.”

Jax mouths his silent counting — blanches; “You were a General in the Civil War? You know what — of course you were.”

“A discussion for another day, perhaps.” Kamilah dismisses him just shy of pushing him out the door; lucky for Nadya both he and Adrian take the hint and fade into the cinematic background.

It’s just Nadya and Kamilah now.

“Hello.”

“H-Hi.”

Long fingers brush a strand of Nadya’s hair aside feather-light. “You do look… stunning, Nadya. You look stunning. Blue becomes you yet again.”

Blue? She’s wearing blue? Because her face is scarlet. “You — I mean — wow like…” words Nadya — words, “you really wore that and…” And fought in it?

Kamilah’s nod is curt. “In a sense. My skills were best suited to espionage, sabotage and the like.”

“Of course they were.”

“Though I’m gladdened to know the uniform still becomes me.”

As if it ever wouldn’t. “You look perfect in, like, everything.” But Kamilah’s not a fan of those kinds of blanket statements, so she tries again a little bit more from the heart. “You make a uniform look really good, that’s what I mean.”

The hand on her hip presses down then; important and as on purpose as everything else Kamilah does. Through the fabric right underneath her hand a familiar purpling not-at-all-bruise sings sweet on Nadya’s skin. Of course Kamilah knows where the love bite is. She was the one who gifted it.

“I may be the soldier…” Kamilah pulls her close; a hold of stone — she leans down to ghost a kiss at Nadya’s jaw (and knows it will drive her wilder than wild) and whisper in her ear.

“But you’ll be the one taking orders.”

Nadya’s last coherent thought?

She really needs to find more chances to get Kamilah in costume.

NOTE: While this fic technically exists in the Oblivion Bound universe it works standalone as well, I think. The only references are brief and to Maricruz Espinoza, a vampire original character and girlfriend of Lily, and a sort-of reference to the fact that Marcel survived in my fanfiction. Hopefully it still reads well!

#bloodbound #kamilah x mc #kamilah sayeed #adrian raines #playchoices fanfiction #; my fics #mc: nadya al jamil #jax matsuo

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storytimefromthecreed · 5 years

Text

Assassins As Roommates: Meeting the Spartan Siblings

When Maria had popped her head out into the backyard and alerted them the new arrivals had, well, arrived, all those who were not already inside rushed into the living room. “Don’t know why we bothered.” Edward laughed, indicating to the space. Everyone was here. Yusuf, Adewale, Arno, Aya, and Desmond were having drinks with Malik; Elise, Evie, Phillip, Demetri, Gerard, Bayek, and Shay were already lounging on the couches; and Aveline, Claudia, Haytham, and Ezio were peeking out the window.

“They’re here!” Haytham called, and excited rumblings erupted from the group.

“What do you think they’ll be like?” Phillip asked.

“I hear they’re the reason we have the Assassins in the first place.” Ezio looked quickly to his left. “I mean, with respect, Bayek.”

Bayek raised his hand and laughed at Ezio’s fear. “I understand what you mean, please don’t make it worse trying to explain yourself farther.”

Aya rose a brow and gave Ezio her famous cheshire grin, “Oh no, I’d love to hear Ezio explain.”

Demetri chuckled with Aya at her joke, but relief didn’t follow for Ezio. This only made them laugh harder. Instead, Ezio looked to the door. Immediately, a stack of luggage was the first thing they saw, and everyone held their breath at the Assassin covered in it. The luggage lowered to reveal...

The group groaned as Connor, red faced, walked inside. Upon spotting him struggling, everyone stepped in. Haytham grabbed the largest bag on top, Elise took the bags from his hands, and Shay took the other two, leaving Connor with two that he look to the stairs. Behind Connor came Altair escorting two strong, proud people. One woman they’d met before and recognized as Kassandra. The man that followed shared her good looks and nice hair, and waved awkwardly around the room.

Jacob’s heart leapt into his throat as applause rang around the room. Kassandra placed a hand on the man’s shoulder and declared, “We’re so honored to be invited here today, and we extend our many thanks. For those I haven’t the fortune of meeting yet, my name is Kassandra, and this is my brother, Alexios.”

“Hey.” His smile was small and awkward, like he didn’t know what to do when not glaring, but his eyes were warm and kind. Jacob would’ve given this more thought had not Edward clapped him on the back, distracting him.

“Welcome to our humble home, mate!”

Excited, everyone introduced themselves to the Spartan Siblings. Jacob tried his best to keep in the background. Curiousity taking advantage of him, he stayed watching them from a distance. Well, one of them. Kassandra he knew from the birthday party, but her brother gave him a strange feeling.

The party continued, the Spartans were helped to their rooms by the Kenways, and Arno, Bayek, Shay, Altair, and Henry went into the kitchen to attend to the food. Tucking in with his sister, Jacob stood awkwardly until the groups all returned and the party began. Needing some air, Jacob headed to the backyard.

Night had fallen, insects sang under a starry blue sky, and the hum of conversation from inside the house could be heard. The lights from the living room stretched over the backyard, and the shadows of those inside elongated in the grass. There was a moment where the sound became clear, then muffled again. Jacob turned to see, to his horror, Alexios bounding up to him.

His hair was tied half up and half down, and he waved his hand awkwardly. “Mind if I join you?” His voice was brass and melted into the night. Not trusting his words, Jacob nodded and looked over the backyard again. “Party getting clausaphobic for you like it was me?” Alexios chuckled weakly, then massaged the base of his head. “I’m Alexios, by the way. I don’t think I introduced myself to you yet.” He stuck out a hand.

Jacob firmly grasped it. “Jacob Frye, pleased to meet you.”

“Likewise.” He smiled a dazzling smile. “Frye? Any relation to Evie?”

“My sister.” Jacob kept his smile plastered on his face, already thinking of what sister dearest could have said about him.

“She’s very sweet.”

“She is.” Jacob smiled. Alexios’s attempt for conversation was, dare he say, cute? “Kassandra’s pretty badass too, if you don’t mind my saying. Must be fun being her brother.”

“It is, but we’ve only known each other a short time. Long story.” Alexios chuckled, and the pair watched the stars.

Jacob’s heart fluttered like hummingbird’s wings. “Enjoying the party?”

“Truthfully, it’s a little...much.” Alexios confessed with a shrug. “Not that I don’t appreicate everyone coming out to meet us, it’s an honor really, but I’ve never been good in large crowds.”

Jacob grinned, “Haven’t been doing it with the right people, mate. Come, one drink.” Alexios looked Jacob up and down, a smile beginning to form at his lips. Jacob pressed his luck. “Then I’ll pretend to get sick and you can leave without anyone being the wiser. That’s what I’d do with my gang, the Rooks. I’m pretty good with distractions.” Alexios’s smile grew and his eyes crinkled when he laughed.

“Ok, just for you.” That made Jacob’s heart glow. They walked to the door. Jacob opened it. “Just so you know, I’m a little lame.”

“Lame? Nah, I’m sure you have awesome stories.” Jacob lead him to the table and they grabbed a drink.

Alexios took a sip. “I mean, I don’t have a gang but I have a ship.”

Edward had begun to walk to Jacob, excited his friend has rejoined the party. Elise gripped his elbow, and Connor shook his head. Confused, Edward watched the scene.

“A ship? That’s really cool. I’d love to see it sometime.”

“Maybe we could go sailing.” Alexios bit his bottom lip, and Jacob blushed.

“I don’t get it. Never wants to see my ship.” Edward muttered under his breath. Having taken to siding beside Elise, Connor, and Aya, Edward watched the scene unravel.

“Edward.” Elise hissed, but Edward lamented.

“What? I don’t get it. Jacob’s never been intereted in the Jackdaw before. What’s so about Alexios’s ship?” Edward dropped his voice as Elise had, and leaned in.

“Stay, have a drink with me.” Aya raised a glass, but Edward, arms crossed and lips in a pout, couldn’t look away from Jacob. Alexios and he were laughing. A joke unheard to the rest of them. There was a twinkle in Jacob’s eye.

“Jacob finds himself a man, greet, finally, thank the Lord; all I’m saying, is my ship’s better.” Edward took another drink and took a step, nearly spitting it when Connor chuckled.

“Not compared to mine.” They left the pair in privacy, and the party continued.

#Jalexios #Can you imagine how cute they'd be?#I know it's a crackship #but honestly I dont care #let them be happy #and cute #assassins creed #assassins as roommates #my writing #assassins creed odyssey #assassins creed origins #everyone here so tag because this is getting to be too much #Assassin #Templar

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thisdiscontentedwinter · 5 years

Text

Bad Blood - Chapter 19

You can read it on AO3 or find the Tumblr Chapter Index here.

___________

Stiles doesn’t sleep well. He’s sure there was something at his window earlier in the night, so he dozes in the darkness, and it feels like he wakes up every few minutes to check there’s nothing there. He must sleep in the end though, because he doesn’t hear Gerard and Kate get back. Instead, he’s jolted from his sleep by the sound of an argument coming from the kitchen.

He creeps out of bed and down the stairs.

“No, I haven’t forgotten there was a wolf at my house,” Chris bites out. He sounds tense. Well, more tense than usual, and that’s saying something. “I’m just saying there’s no indication he was going to hurt anyone.”

Kate’s laugh is incredulous. “You’re joking, aren’t you? A fucking werewolf was sniffing around your daughter, and you don’t think it was going to hurt her?”

“Look, Kate, just tell me what you’ve got on the Hale pack, okay? Have they killed anyone, or haven’t they?”

“Jesus! What are you even implying?” She pauses. “Oh, wait, I think I know what’s going on here. You’ve been talking to the good sheriff, haven’t you?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Ridiculous? Where’s all this coming from then, Chris?” Kate huffs out a breath. “I tell you what. Dad will be back soon. How about you ask him exactly what we’ve got on the Hale pack?”

There’s silence then, and Stiles’s stomach clenches.

He remembers what it’s like to question Gerard. He remembers why he only did it a few times. He remembers exactly how it feels to have that old man’s smile turn suddenly cold. He remembers bracing himself for a beating that felt like it never ended.

Stiles is a man now, but he’s still afraid of Gerard’s anger.

He creeps silently back up the stairs.

There’s the thing they used to do with elephants, he remembers. They used to put a chain around a baby elephant’s leg, and hammer the chain into the ground with a metal stake. And the baby elephant tried to pull it out and get free, but it couldn’t. And then it stopped trying. The elephant never knew it was strong enough to pull the stake out, even when it was fully grown, because it had stopped trying so long ago.

Chris could easily take Gerard in a fight. Maybe Stiles could too.

But both of them, he thinks, stopped trying way back when they were still small and weak.

Stiles crawls back into bed and falls asleep with his hand over the place on his mattress where the photograph of him and his mother is hidden.

***

Dad’s being super weird again, Allison texts him early the next morning.

Stiles doesn’t know how to respond, so he leaves her message on read.

***

Stiles is eating his oatmeal in the morning when Gerard walks into the kitchen.

“Stiles,” Gerard says, and smiles his rictus grin “Have you been for your run yet?”

Stiles nods, “Yes, sir.”

“Good,” Gerard says. “Don’t overdo it, hmm? We have a hunt coming up.”

Stiles’s skin prickles with anticipation. “When?”

“In a few days,” Gerard says. “It’s time we showed these dogs their place. I want you and Chris to go through the inventory today. Make sure we’re locked and loaded.”

“Yes, sir,” Stiles says, ignoring the clench in his gut.

He’s not going to think of Derek.

He’s not.

What happened at the party was an aberration—in more ways than one—and Stiles isn’t going to second-guess everything he’s been taught just because of one kiss. Because of one kiss, and because Peter stopped from killing him, and because of the look on his father’s face, and—

No.

Stiles isn’t going to second-guess.

Not now.

Not when he’s so close to proving himself worthy of Gerard’s exacting standards.

He can do this.

Gerard puts a hand on his shoulder and squeezes.

He can do this.

***

There’s a routine that Stiles falls into easily when Chris arrives and joins him down in the basement. Routine is comfortable. Gerard tells them there are six other hunters being brought in for this hunt—men Gerard has worked with before in the US—and while it’s not up to the Argents to supply these men with weapons and gear, they’ll do it anyway in case there are backups needed. There’s a reason the Argents have a reputation as the best. They operate with military precision. Every contingency plan has a contingency plan. Every fallback has a fallback of its own.

Stiles checks his own gear first: gloves, boots, kneepads, vest, webbing, pouches and belt. Then his headlamp, his night vision, his comms earpiece. Then he moves on to ammo, and a firearm. His primary weapon will the Kel-Tec PMR-30 he keeps under his bed, but he selects a Glock as his backup weapon. He knows Glocks.

He glances up to find Chris’s gaze on him.

“You good with that?” Chris asks, nodding at the Glock.

“Yes, sir.”

Something flickers in Chris’s gaze. “You spend a lot of time at the range?”

“Not since we’ve been here,” Stiles says, “but I’m a good shot. I know how to handle myself.”

He wouldn’t be allowed on hunts otherwise.

Chris lifts an eyebrow, and reaches for an empty clip to fill. “It’s different on the range than on an actual hunt.”

“I know that,” Stiles says, trying to keep his annoyance out of his tone. “This won’t be my first hunt.”

Chris’s forehead creases. “What do you mean?”

Stiles slides a magazine into the Glock and feels it click into place. “My first hunt was a few weeks ago in the Czech Republic.” He straightens his shoulders. “I made a kill.”

Chris stills. “You did?”

“Yes, sir.” Stiles lifts his chin. “You can ask Kate and Gerard. I’m not just some kid.”

“I never said you were,” Chris says evenly.

Semantics. Stiles knows he’s thinking it.

Stiles doesn’t like Chris. He doesn’t trust him. He barely knows him, and those few times they’ve met he hasn’t liked the way that Chris looks at him. He never quite knows what Chris is thinking, and so he fills in all those gaps with his own insecurities and disapproval.

He does the same with Victoria.

Jesus, it’s amazing how they managed to produce a daughter as open and bright as Allison, when both of them are nothing more than silences and glances and closed off expressions.

Stiles puts his head down and keeps working.

He can feel Chris’s gaze on him the whole time.

***

Allison breezes into the house at lunchtime.

“Don’t you have school?” Chris asks her.

She stares back at him. “Don’t you have work?”

Stiles flinches, but Kate laughs at that, loud and boisterous.

“I have a spare,” Allison says at last. “I bought curly fries, and then decided I wanted to share them with Stiles. Stiles, are you busy?”

They hurry upstairs to his room.

“He’s being such an asshole,” Allison complains minutes later when they’re sharing curly fries on his bed. “And he’s always been cagey, but now he’s being cagey with Mom too, which makes her more of an asshole, which is…” She blinks. “Which is mathematically impossible, probably.”

Stiles snorts.

“I mean, I love my mom,” Allison says, and then doesn’t seem to know where to go with that.

“But she’s a total hard ass,” Stiles finishes for her.

“Right?” She huffs out an exasperated sigh. “Ugh.” She eats another curly fry and wrinkles her nose. “I need a soda.”

“I’ll get some,” Stiles says, pushing himself up off the bed.

On his way to the kitchen he notices that Gerard’s study door is open. He steps inside, drawn to the map of Beacon Hills on the desk. There’s a circle in the warehouse district, and Stiles’s pulse quickens. Is that where the Hales are holed up? Are six mercs enough to contain them in that grid, and then tighten it?

The map shudders where Stiles is touching it. His hands are shaking again. Stiles flexes them, jams them into his pockets, and heads towards the kitchen.

He hears low voices before he gets there, and slows his steps.

“So this is what it comes to,” Gerard is saying. “I shouldn’t even be surprised, should I? I let you have your space. I agreed to let you keep Allison out of things until she finished school. I let you take a step back, Christophe, and how have you repaid me?”

Stiles’s heart clenches, and he freezes a few feet from the kitchen doorway.

“It’s not what you think.” Chris’s voice is low but calm.

Stiles hears the scrape of chair legs on the kitchen floor, and then Kate speaks. “Who’s the text to, Chris?”

Silence.

Gerard grunts. “No answer, hmm? Nothing to say for yourself at all?”

“One thing,” Chris says. “Did the Hales ever hurt anyone, or did Kate burn them alive for nothing?”

“Now who would put an idea in your head like that?” Kate asks.

There’s silence again, and then Chris says, “No.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Gerard says. “I’ll make sure Allison is looked after.”

Stiles feels a cold chill. He thinks of Allison, tied to a chair in the basement for hours. Thinks of her being forced to run when she can hardly breathe. He thinks of her being punched in the face until she falls down and can’t get up.

He hears the pop of a silenced shot, and a grunt of pain.

And then chair legs again, and a shout, and the sound of something smashing. Then another shot, no silence on this one.

Stiles moves.

He runs for the stairs, and meets Allison coming the other way.

“What’s going—”

“Move,” Stiles tells her. “Go back. Back!”

He pushes her back up the stairs, back into his room. He closes the door behind her.

“Stiles, what’s happening?”

Stiles grabs his box out from under the bed, his thumb slipping on the combination lock before he gets it open. He grabs his firearm out.

“Oh my god!” Allison exclaims. “Stiles?”

From downstairs, Stiles hears another shot. Allison jerks like she’s been hit, and covers her mouth with her hand.

Stiles pushes her toward the window. “We have to go! We have to get out of here, now.”

Allison stares at him, at the gun, at him again.

“My… my car keys are downstairs.” She blinks, and tears slide down her cheeks. “What’s happening?”

“We don’t need your keys,” Stiles says. “We’re gonna run, okay?”

“Stiles!”

“Ally,” he says, grasping her wrist with his free hand. “Do you trust me?”

She nods, pale.

“Then we have to go,” he says. “Please.”

He follows her out the window.

#sterek #steter senior #discontentedwinter #bad blood #my fics

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xxwritemeastoryxx · 5 years

Text

Forgotten Alliance Ch. 7

Author: xxwritemeastoryxx

Pairings: Eventual Elijah Mikaelson x OC with other parings mentioned throughout.

Word Count: 3.5K

Warnings: Not too much.

Author’s Note: As a reminder, FA can be found on ffnet up to chapter 42. I am uploading chapters here on tumblr for convenience. I decided against tagging this until new chapters are posted. Of course there are a few that wished to be tagged and I will be tagging them in this. If you would like to be tagged please let me know! Chapters are queued and will be posted randomly. Enjoy

As much as Elizabeth didn't want to get up and open her door, she got up anyways. She opened the door and began to say "This better be impor-" and cut herself off once she seen who was on the other side. Her hand dropped from the door knob and her mouth opened in shock. At first she didn't believe her eyes and she blinked a few times.

"Finn." She said with a grin on her face. She moved forward to hug him and he gladly hugged her back.

"Little Lizzy." He said with a smile as they pulled away from each other.

"How are you-I thought you were-" She shook her head trying to wrap her head around how Finn was alive and back in his original body.

"Lets not discuss details right now." He said with a nod. "I had heard you were staying here and figured I'd stop by and see the little girl that annoyed me so much. And I must say, you look like a mess."

Elizabeth laughed and shook her head. "I haven't really slept." Then something hit Elizabeth. "Does Elijah know you are here?"

"Not yet." Before Finn could say anything else, Elizabeth pulled him into her room and shut the door.

"What are you thinking?" She asked as she smacked him over the head. Elizabeth was well aware of what Finn had attempted to do several times. And while she should loath the man for trying to kill his siblings and what eventually would have been her, she still saw Finn as the older Mikaelson, besides Elijah, that allowed Elizabeth to be as bothersome as she was as a child. The smack she had given and the question she asked was to encompass everything he attempted to do as well as what he was doing here with out talking to his siblings first. "You know they hate you."

"And I was hoping to fix that while I was here. Freya was going to help with that." He said ignoring the fact that she had smacked him.

Elizabeth raised an eyebrow before sighing. She gestured for him to take a seat and he had. Sitting across from him, she smiled at him. "Now, tell Lizzy why you are really here."

Jazz music filled St. James Infirmary. Elizabeth stood at the bar with a smile on her face as she watched the band play with Elijah joining them by playing the piano. For the moment it seemed like this had been entertainment enough from what they had been through the last day. But that wasn't the case. As much as it seemed that the two were having fun and enjoying themselves, they both were watching the new vampires that arrived in town.

While Elijah would have been just fine that Elizabeth was following him around, he wasn't happy with the Strix following him. With the two in the club now, he knew that they were watching his every move and couldnt follow the one vampire that caught Elijah's attention with one eavesdropped phone call. His eyes met Elizabeth's for a moment, a way of trying to tell her to create a distraction. Elizabeth understood a moment later when his eyes flickered to the vampire a few feet away from her.

As a waitress passed, Elizabeth stopped her and compelled her before walking out into the night to wait for the vampire to walk out as well as Elijah. Waiting around the corner, she watched as the vampire walked out. She kept her eyes on the path he was going until Elijah walked out. Walking with him, they followed the vampire until to the two Strix members from the club show up in front of them.

"Well it was worth a shot." Elizabeth said crossing her arms.

Elijah nodded slightly at the Strix members in front of them. "Gentlemen."

"Come on, Elijah! I thought we agreed." Elizabeth knew that voice anywhere.

"Marcel Gerard." She said turning to face him. "It's been some time since I've actually last seen you." She was purposely trying to change the subject.

"Yes it has, Liz. And I must give it to you, the compelled waitress was a nice touch." Marcel said before turning to Elijah. "But you're the one who wanted to keep the Strix around for security."

"Maybe I was enough security for him to walk home." Elizabeth said with a shrug. But her words received a disapproving look from both Marcel and the Strixs members. "What? Just because you guys are apart of some society that I cant be there to watch over my sire?"

"Look, Liz. Its not that we don't trust you. But with there being a legion of Mikaelson enemies in town, we need the Strix to do their job."

Elijah turned to look at Marcel. "Maybe I was just looking for a little me-time."

"With Liz, following you?" Marcel wasn't buying it. "As soon as they know you are safe and sound, they will be more than happy to give you all the 'me-time' you want. But in the meantime... If you stayed PUT, maybe they could devote more of their energy to finding out who has their hands on that missing white oak bullet?"

A groan passed Elizabeth's lips. "And when you say stay put, you actually mean for him to stay locked away in his own home."

Marcel shrugged. "More or less."

Elizabeth looks to Elijah. "When was the last time you played a board game to keep yourself entertained?"

Without wasting anymore time, The Strix members and Marcel walked with Elijah and Elizabeth towards the compound. While Elizabeth wasn't excited about it, she did have some kind of distraction from it. Her phone kept buzzing from the text messages she was receiving from Malakai. And with the new one coming in, she couldnt help but chuckle. It caused Elijah to look over at her.

"Is Malakai enjoying his time with my brother?" He asked.

"From the message I just got stating, in all caps, 'Why did I agree to this trip when all they do is bicker with each other' I'd say he's not enjoying himself like he thought he would be." Elizabeth smiled down at her phone as she typed a quick reply before looking back up at Elijah. "With as much time as I've spent with him since he has been awake, there was a moment I was angry for Niklaus taking him away from me."

Elijah chuckled. "I am surprised he had actually decided to leave with my brother. I half expected him to stay by your side."

Elizabeth shrugged. "He wanted to help Niklaus. Something about the hybrids needing to stick together."

"Home sweet home." Marcel said interrupting their conversation. Both Elijah and Elizabeth walked into the compound. Marcel left, leaving the Strix members at the entry way of the compound.

The next morning, Elizabeth had woken up to several messages on her phone from Malakai.

You should see the hat Hayley bought for Klaus! It literally says Mother Trucker on it.

Ohhh she's driving now. I wonder how long before Klaus demands the keys back.

Liiiizzzzz how are you not up yet?

Woman, I swear if you're lying in bed with a certain vampire and not answering your best friend's text messages, we are going to have a problem.

Elizabeth laughed at the messages. They had all been minutes apart from each other. Quickly sending out a message that she was alright and she had been sleeping in her own bed alone, she got up and got ready for the day. Once she was to her own standards of ready, which was with light makeup and her usual style of clothing: black skinny jean, heels, and a light colored top. She left the room. Elizabeth knew that if Elijah wasn't leaving the compound because of the Strix, then she shouldn't. She wouldn't dare leave him here with them or even alone with Kol for so long. She didn't trust him still.

As she walked out of her room and down the stairs to the courtyard, she heard a voice that caused her to stop in her tracks. Walking to the entrance of the compound, she seen Lucien standing in front of two Strix members. "I wouldn't let him him." She said as she stopped right next to the two guarding the door.

"Elizabeth isn't it?" Lucien said with a small smirk on his face. "The last time I had saw you, you had just left the Strix party." That had caused Elizabeth to stiffen a bit. "Ah, I can see you still haven't gotten that part of you back yet. But think of it as a good thing, darling. If you still had that connection between the two of you, you'd have a target on your back just for others to get to him."

Elizabeth glared at him before looking to the two that were guarding. "Do not let him unless Elijah or Freya say to do so." The two nodded and Elizabeth turned to walk away.

"Oh come now love." Lucien said and that stopped her mid step. She turned around and walked back to him until she was standing on the other side of the members with Lucian. She walked up to him until their faces were inches away from each other.

"You may be older, and you may be stronger than me. But don't think for a second that I don't know what you've been up to." She said watching Lucian. She could see the flicker of shock and amusement in his eyes. "I do not trust you. I never have. It was your witch working that night. You knew before any of us did. But when Aya found out, you were the one that had placed the idea in her head through your witch. I'll gladly watch you suffer when the comes and it will Lucian."

He chuckled. "Is that a threat?"

Elizabeth only smirked before turning and walking away. She wanted to say it was a promise. But leaving it with nothing at all, felt even better to her. She headed back upstairs to find Elijah. Seeing Lucien placed a bit of fear in her. She should tell him about it. Finding him in his study with Kol, she stopped at the door. She felt it rude to interrupt anything between family, even if it had been Kol he was talking to. She listened to the conversation before Freya walked up to her.

"Whats going on in there?" She asked curiously.

"They are talking about Finn." She said with a slight nod. Freya sighed and began walking in. Elizabeth took the opportunity to follow her in.

"You're wrong." Freya said already knowing what was just said moments before. "Those rumors began before either of you returned. Finn is innocent."

"Innocent?" Kol asked looking at Freya a slight glare. "Pardon me, love, but Finn tried to kill the rest of us more than once! He's an enemy of our family."

"He had his reasons." Elizabeth said. It had caused both Elijah and Kol to look at her in shock. "While I do not approve on a majority on what he has done, he is your family."

"Finn's return is an opportunity to mend old wounds and fix what is broken." Freya said with a slight nod.

"He didn't just drop a bloody vase!" Kol said practically yelling at two. "He murdered me."

"Look at you." Elizabeth said with almost the same volume. "Look at who you were before you came back. Believe me Kol, if I had the chance to do it, I would have."

"Liz." Freya said placing her hand on Elizabeth's shoulder. Elizabeth sighed softly.

"Finn isn't here to harm you." Elizabeth said. She wasn't going to mention that he had stopped by to see her, but she knew from their talk, he wasn't going to cause any problems.

Elijah took a few steps towards Elizabeth and Freya. "You both seem so certain."

"Are you honestly siding with both of them?" Kol asked and Elijah raised his hand to silence him.

"Time and time again, Finn has demonstrated nothing but contempt toward his family. So, you tell me-how can you be so certain that he would return to us in peace?" Elijah asked watching both of them.

"Trust me Elijah," Elizabeth said looking straight at him. "He wants peace between all of you." Elizabeth could see that Elijah was willing to trust her.

"Elizabeth and Freya know me well." Finn said walking into the room with his hands in a non-threatening gesture. "Though, perhaps you are right to doubt my intentions. By all means, let's discuss our family quarrels. I believe we are long overdue."

Elizabeth stepped out to let the Mikaelsons speak too each other. It wasn't her place to stay. Just as she walked out the door, her phone buzzed with a message from Malakai.

Does Elijah know that Hayley used to dance on top of bars?

Elizabeth shook her head and replied with: How am I supposed to know?

Free moonshine! I like her. She gets us free stuff.

Elizabeth rolled her eyes and typed in a quick have fun and that she would text him later before she placed her phone back in her pocket. She walked over to the railing and looked down in the courtyard. It seemed that the number of Strix multiplied. Elizabeth rolled her eyes at the sight of it. When she looked up from the courtyard, she seen Elijah looking down at all of them. He had been on the phone with someone and a moment later he had hung up the phone and stuck it in his inner jacket pocket.

Elizabeth was about to open her mouth to say something to him when they both heard Kol yelling. Both of them rush into the room. Once there, Elizabeth could see Kol attempting to get around Freya to get to Finn, and before she knew it, Lucien had Kol up against a book shelf with his hand around Kol's neck.

"Perhaps we should let them fight? After all, they cant kill each other." Lucian said looking to Freya.

"Behave yourselves!" Elijah's voice filled the room. "Particularly considering we will be confined here together for the foreseeable future."

Taking advantage of Lucien's distraction, Kol pushes him off and walk towards Elijah.

"What does that mean?" Kol asked.

"I believe the term is 'staycation.'" Elijah said with a slight nod. "You see, Niklaus isn't the only one who has inspired revenge fantasies. Right now, we are all at risk. So, While Marcel works to retrieve the white oak, I recommend we dispense with the posturing and get down to some good, old-fashioned family bonding."

Everyone else had seemed to react to Elijah's words. But Elizabeth hadn't. The whole time she had been watching Lucien. It seemed that either Elijah or Freya had allowed him into the compound. And as much as she had told the Strix to do so, she wished they hadn't. Her mind was reeling with thoughts and a lot of it weren't good at all. Shaking her head slightly to rid her mind with the thoughts, she looked to Elijah.

"Elijah, may I have a moment to speak with you alone?" Elizabeth asked and he nodded. The others left the room and Elijah closed the door behind them.

"What is troubling you Elizabeth?" He asked taking a few steps towards her.

" I know in the past you already dealt with Lucien, but him being here, I'm getting all the wrong vibes from him." She said watching him.

"Elizabeth, as much I thank you for your concern, I believe Lucian is the least of our worries for the time being."

"I get that we are dealing with other things, but he always has a plan up his sleeves and I honestly believe that him being here will end badly."

"Is there anything to prove that he is actually up to something?" Elijah asked not really concerned by it.

"It's Lucien, Elijah. The only proof I have is past experiences and the gut feeling that I have now that we should not be trusting him."

Elijah sighed. "I can not go off your gut instinct, Elizabeth. He has not shown any resistance in helping us. And I feel that he is not a threat to us."

Elizabeth nodded. "Just think about it though, Elijah. Why is he so suddenly interested in helping us out?"

"I believe that has something to do with Freya." Elijah said shrugging slightly. "But for now Elizabeth, it is best to leave things be and to focus on what is important right now."

"But, Elijah-"

"Enough, Elizabeth. What matters in this moment is finding that last white oak bullet. And while we are stuck in the compound my worries are on if Marcel can retrieve it or not. If he can do so, then I will look into your suspicions of Lucian, but until then, I cannot."

Elizabeth nodded. "Forgive me." She said before walking out of the room, leaving Elijah behind watching her leave.

Elizabeth once again found herself on the balcony looking out into the city. She had her phone placed to her ear and had Malakai talking away to her. She had a smile on her face, but she missed him dearly.

"At least you aren't dealing with Kol and Lucian in the same house." Elizabeth said looking out into the city

Wait, Lucien is there?

"Yes. And I have this bad feeling, Kai. It's not going to end well."

Have you spoken to Elijah about it.

"I have. But his main priority is the last white oak bullet, which I completely understand. " She paused for a minute. "Let's not talk about Lucien."

Okay, Any luck on the spell?

Elizabeth chuckled. "Davina is going to help me with it. She is supposed to be coming by later to actually do the spell. I'm nervous, Kai."

What for? It is one spell to get back what you lost and then you have nothing to worry about. It may be a hell of a lot of pain, but isn't it worth it.

"It is." She said with a sigh. "If Davina can undo it-"

She can undo it. Stop doubting it all. Later on tonight you should be your old self again.

"I should be. And hopefully, I will feel a lot better."

I'm sure you will.

"Now tell me about where you are at and what you are doing without actually telling me where exactly you are at." She said with a smile. While Elizabeth continued her conversation with Malakai, she was unaware of Lucien standing just behind the door listening in on the beginning of the conversation. He walked away quietly with a smirk on his face. Pulling out his phone he began to dial a number. Once the person on the other end answered, all Lucien said was "Be ready to receive two, not one."

Forgotten Alliance Tag: @mschellehitt

#the originals #The vampire diaries #forgotten alliance #series #ffnet to tumblr #Elijah Mikaelson x oc #Eventual Elizabeth x Elijah

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yootaesowlwrites · 5 years

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I Was Feeling Heroic Chapter 11;

Chapter 11 - I Was Feeling Heroic Series.

First Season.

Second Season.

Elijah stood on Vincent's balcony waiting for Alex to retrieve Vincent, Elijah hasn't been invited into Vincent's apartment yet and the only one that could enter was Alex, she stood near a wall and clears her throat to get Vincent's attention.

"I've never heard of an angel breaking and entering," Vincent mutters.

"You seem to forget, I'm not just an angel," Alex says with a slight smirk on her lips. "You have a visitor on your balcony." Vincent lets out an irritated sigh.

"Why am I not surprised that you didn't come alone?" Vincent says as he walks around the table with a bunch of pictures and notes on it, he walks past Alex and stared at Elijah on his balcony. "What do you want?"

"Can we at least pretend to be civilized?" Elijah asks.

"We're supposed to be civil?" Vincent asks. "Does Marcel know? I'd ask him, but I can't find him anywhere."

"He said pretend," Alex says.

"It is outrageous, where is that young man's sense of courtesy?" Elijah says, Vincent appeared to be unamused. "And, please, invite me in." Vincent takes a step closer to the door.

"Tell me where Marcel is," Vincent says.

"Detained until we can be sure that he's free of this things vile influence." Elijah states.

"You Mikaelson's, you always find a way to get right back on the top, don't you?" Vincent says. "And I bet you got a plan all figured out."

"As a matter of fact, I do, a rather festive one," Elijah says.

"Let us tell you about it," Alex says, Vincent glances at Alex before looking back at Elijah.

"Look, if you're gonna help me fight this thing, you're gonna have to know what it is that you're up against," Vincent says. "Come in before I change my mind."

"Wonderful" Elijah says as he steps into the apartment, they walk around the wall blocking the view from the pictures pinned up against Vincent's wall.

"Is this every place it's appeared?" Alex asks as she examines a map.

"Yes, and it always comes up in four," Vincent says, Alex nods her head and begins reading through some notes. "This thing has been haunting the city for a very long time and before today the only thing I knew about it was that it was a spirit." He inhales deeply. "Practiced some very dark magic, and it was trying desperately to get back into this world, and that's why it tried to sacrifice those kids, that's why it tried to do the exact same thing to Marcel and to Klaus."

"Because if it kills them and they die, it absorbs all their power." Alex finishes his sentence.

"Exactly," Vincent says.

"It's already stronger than before, I can't find it anywhere, and the spirits on the other side claim they haven't seen it," Alex says as she looks up at Vincent and Elijah.

"Talk to us about this," Elijah says as he looks at Vincent.

"This is the history of the city, this is the ebb and flow of violence and tragedy," Vincent says, he points to the corkboard. "Look, this is Madame LaLaurie, this is uh, the Axeman, I mean the list goes on and on and on and on ad sometimes it's hidden, but if you know you're looking for, right, there's always a sign it's The Hallow, and when it does bubble up, it always does so in a pattern of four."

"What does it want?" Elijah asks.

"It's a ghost." Vincent states.

"What most ghosts want, to be alive again," Alex says. "And what do most ghost do? They reach out to those that are desperate, giving them empty promises."

"There have to be other's, someone else, someone who could speak to us of its desire, of its weaknesses," Elijah says.

"You think this person might be at your party?" Vincent asks.

"I'm counting on it," Elijah says, Vincent nods his head. "I'm counting on you, help me find them."

"And if you need a little extra power, I'll be right there to help," Alex says.

Alex and Elijah enter the abattoir hand in hand and saw Klaus chiselling an ice sculpture, they walk towards him.

"Mhm, you've outdone yourself," Elijah says, Alex examines the sculpture with a faint smile on her lips.

"I'm inclined to agree," Klaus says. "It's such a shame these lovely linens will soon be red with blood."

"Violence must only be seen as a last resort, it will only weaken our position," Elijah says.

"Yes, well, I am a creature of very specific habits," Klaus says as he points the chisel at Elijah, Elijah takes it from Klaus's as he releases Alex's hand, he walks towards the mini bar that had been set up.

"Brother, please." Elijah begins. "Remember that the point of tonight is to create a false sense of security, a little music, a little champagne, some stealthy reconnaissance, no bloodshed." He turns and points the chisel at Klaus like a sword, waving it as one would wag their finger while scolding a child. "Do we understand each other?" Klaus walks towards Elijah as he placed the chisel down on the bar counter, he grabs a bottle of champagne from a worker at the booth.

"They threatened me, they threatened my child, bloodshed is inevitable." Klaus states.

"And how do we protect Hope from all of this?" Elijah asks, Klaus appears to be at loss for words as he goes to say something but stops. "She worships you, Niklaus, and she must not see the monster." Klaus placed his arms on the table and rests his nose against his hands.

"I do not wish for her to see me as a monster," Klaus says, frustration clear in his voice. "But I cannot sit idly by while threats to our family go unanswered."

"They won't," Elijah says. "Now let me do this." Elijah placed his arm around Klaus's shoulder. "Please, and should any turmoil arise, should anyone dare to disrupt our kingdom, let them answer to me." Klaus looks at Elijah, Alex takes the chisel from the bar causing the brothers to turn and look at her.

"The only monster here will be me, I am after all half-demon, might as well be the devil seeing hell is no longer existing," Alex says. "You will be the perfect father to her, while you and Kol will be the uncles, Hayley will be the mother, Freya and Rebekah will be the aunt, and I will be the monster that takes care of every unwanted thing."

"I cannot ask you to do this," Elijah says as he takes a step towards her.

"I didn't ask for permission," Alex says. "And besides, it's about time the Mikaelson's catch a break and become a proper family, the girl needs her mother and father present." She could see the sympathy in Elijah's eyes.

"If you do this... I will be in your debt forever." Klaus says.

"Just don't treat me like shit, or try to stab me," Alex says. "Now, I have to go find a stupid dress for this forsaken party." She placed the chisel on the table by the sculpture and makes her way towards the stairs.

"What did we do to deserve her, brother?" Klaus mutters to Elijah.

"I have no idea," Elijah says.

"Elijah, are you coming?" Alex says from the top of the stairs.

Alex kept herself hidden from the party as Elijah stood at the top of the stairway with a glass of champagne in his hand, an illusion of Marcel stood behind him to gain everyone's attention.

"My dear friends, tonight, we celebrate an alliance between our family and Marcel Gerard, let us all raise a glass," Elijah says, Alex could see Vincent arriving from where she stood. "And salute the glorious city of New Orleans." Elijah begins raising his glass as Klaus arrives, he quickly stops him by starting a speech of his own.

"But before we do." Klaus begins. "My brother and I wish to acknowledge a painful truth, our relationship with this city, and indeed with most of you, has been long and complicated, we hope you will be put at ease knowing that we intend but a brief and peaceful stay, let this evening be rest bit from past grievances and an opportunity to form new friendships, cheers." Alex concentrated on Marcel's illusion as she made it raise its glass.

"I couldn't have said it better myself." The Illusion of Marcel says, everyone raised their glasses to the toast as the music begins playing again, Alex made the illusion walk towards her into the room she was waiting in before letting it vanish into thin air, she takes in a deep breath feeling her energy drain, nothing ever came without a price.

"Excellent work," Elijah says as he steps into the room, he speeds towards her as tried to catch her breath. "Are you all right?" She nods her head.

"Yes," Alex mumbled. "Making it speak takes a lot of energy, I'll be fine in a moment." Elijah placed a hand on her hips to steady her, he didn't want her to fall, his eyes slowly moved over her body as he examines her, the dark green dress she had on ended above her knee's, exposing just enough cleavage with he v-neck it had, she placed her hands on his shoulders as she looked at the floor.

"Have I told how ravishing you look tonight?" Elijah says, Alex looks up at as a soft smile forms on her lips.

"You don't look too bad yourself," Alex says, she takes in a deep breath as her breathing returned to normal.

"May I have this dance?" Elijah asks as a slow song started playing, Alex softly chuckles.

"I don't dance if you don't remember the last ball in Mystic falls," Alex says. "But please feel free to ask someone else attending the party."

"None of them has my attention," Elijah says, his eyes looked into her hers. "You have my attention, I'd much rather prefer to dance with you."

"No, no, say you'd rather prefer me standing on your feet while you lead," Alex says, a smile forms on Elijah's lips.

"I do not mind," Elijah says. "But I have come to the realization that we have yet to properly discuss our relationship.

"What is there to discuss?" Alex asks. "I like you and I sure do hope that you like me back, otherwise this is going to be awkward." She could feel his hands moving up and down her sides.

"I have much to discuss, much to confess," Elijah says. "Things I should have confessed fiv- no, eight years ago." She slides her hands down from his shoulders, resting them on his biceps.

"And what exactly would that be?" Alex asks.

"You," Elijah says.

"Me? What about me?" Alex asks, if her heart was still beating, it would have sped up.

"Allow me to finish," Elijah says, she softly giggles and looks up at him. "Alexandra Zastrod, you truly are one of a kind, and I can never forgive myself for what I said to you eight years ago, there is not a day that does not go by that I do not wish to take it all back." She smiles up at him. "And five years ago, I thought I had lost you, and it made me realize something, I am utterly in love with you." Alex's eyes widen in shock as her mouth falls open.

"I uh, um, what?" Alex says in shock. "I uh, are um sure?"

"I have never been more sure about something in my entire life," Elijah says. "And it is completely fine with me if you do not feel the same way, but I cannot keep them to myself anymore."

"What do you mean not feel the same way about you?" Alex asks. "I've been in love with you ever since Mystic Falls, even after your heartbreaking words." Elijah's smile falters.

"I am deeply sorry for the pain I've caused you with those words," Elijah says. "But with your confession, I am hoping that you are about to make me the happiest man in the world." He pulls her closer to him. "Would you please give me the honour of calling you... how do the people of today call it? Oh, right yes, girlfriend, will you please give me the honour of calling you, my girlfriend?" A wide smile appears on her lips, showing off her teeth.

"Oh, so it will be an honour?" Alex asks, Elijah softly chuckles as she made him sweat for an answer. "Of course I will be." He leans down, moving one hand from her hip to her cheek.

"Vincent is looking for our guy right now," Klaus says as he enters the room, Klaus sees them practically jump away from each other and realized what he had just interrupted. "It's about bloody time!" Their little moment short-lived.

Vincent enters the upstairs living room with three men following behind them, Alex quickly picked up whom the leader was of the three.

"Our esteemed host, Vincent tells me you requested a private audience," Dominic says, Elijah looks at the two guards by his side.

"Private, yes, yet you brought these two fascinating Neanderthals," Elijah says, Vincent snickers at the comment.

"Well, given your reputation, one can never be too careful," Dominic says, not realizing Elijah could kill them in a matter of seconds and have him by his neck before he could even escape, not mention Alex could assist him as well, she only had to wave her hand for the two by his side to fall dead.

"Not unless you have something to worry about," Vincent says, Dominic looks at Vincent. "Which you do, because you're the high priest of The Hallow." Elijah and Alex turn their full attention to Dominic.

"You seem to have made up your mind about me, not really fair, after all, you're the one who allowed The Hallow into this world, see your ancestors were the only thing holding it back, and when you severed the link, you allowed it to go free, and it has been feeding and growing in power ever since," Dominic says as he moves closer to Vincent. "See, I wonder if it will want to show its appreciation, perhaps by letting you see your dead wife?" Vincent punches Dominic in anger.

"Now you've done it," Alex mutters, she appears behind the two guards as claws replaced her nails, she slams her hands into their chest from behind and wraps her hands around their hearts, she pulls them out and the two guards fall dead to the ground, she drops their hearts next to their bodies as Elijah steps between Vincent and Dominic.

"That'll be all, both of you." Elijah loudly says, Alex appears behind Dominic and placed her hand on his shoulder, blocking his magic, Elijah looks at Vincent. "Leave us." Vincent looks at Dominic before leaving the room, closing the door behind him, Elijah looks back at Dominic and drags a chair closer to him. "Let him sit." Alex forces him to sit down as Elijah takes out his handkerchief, he hands it to Dominic as Alex moves her hand away from him letting his magic return to him. "Now, let's start again, and I do hope you plan on telling me the truth." Alex steps into Dominic's view. "Or my beautiful girlfriend here will have to force it out of you." Dominic looks up at Alex.

"And I love picking around people's brains," Alex says as she lifts her hand into view, her the razor-sharp claws still on display. "I love hearing them scream in pain, begging for me to stop." Dominic looks back up at Elijah.

"Tell me, what does it want," Elijah demands.

"Well, The Hallow has lain dormant for a long time, it needs to feed," Dominic says.

"Oh, the poor dear, you know, I understand it has a penchant for innocent children," Elijah says as he pours a drink for himself and Dominic, Alex stood aside watching, ready to pounce if she had to.

"Only as hors d'oeuvres," Dominic says. "It prefers the power channelled by the death of someone like you, old, ancient, imbued with magic, but it needn't feed on you, your brother or niece or anyone else you care about." Elijah walks towards him with two whiskey glasses in his hands. "Marcel Gerard will do nicely." Elijah holds a glass out for Dominic but pulls it back before he could take it.

"Why would I give you Marcel Gerard?" Elijah asks.

"As patriarch," Dominic says, Elijah gives him the glass. "I'm sure you'll make the right decision on your family's behalf, but in the meantime, I'll take Vincent Griffith as a show of good faith." Dominic stands from the chair he was sitting on. "Marcel was business, but Vincent is personal, he turned his back on The Hallow once, and now it's rather angry."

"Unfortunately, if I betray Vincent, the covens will declare war on my family." Elijah states.

"Well, at least with the covens, it's a fight that you have a chance at winning," Dominic says. "Regardless, my terms are set, Vincent now, Marcel later, and your family will be spared, what do you say, Elijah? Do we have a deal?" Elijah glances at Alex.

"Unfortunately not," Alex says, Dominic looks at her. "If that thing wants to come, I will take care of it."

"A werewolf with magic will not stop her," Dominic says, Alex takes a step closer to him.

"And who said anything about a werewolf with magic?" Alex asks. "All witches think that they can control the world, that you can balance something with nature, but I am actually the one that can control the world, I hold everyone's life in my hands, my touch is murderous, I can create anything with a snap of my fingers, I can bend reality to my liking, and I can bring anyone back from the dead." She was now in front of Dominic, a hard glare fixed on her face. "If I were you, I'd consider switching sides." She could feel her wings twitching to spread, to show her dominance in the situation, Elijah steps towards Alex and placed his hand on her shoulder.

"I must say, it is a compelling offer, murder in exchange for clemency if only I could believe that you would uphold your end of the bargain," Elijah says.

"You're even more perceptive than your reputation suggests," Dominic says as he takes a step away from Alex, he looks up at Elijah.

"I grew up on a Viking farm, I'm familiar with the scent of fertilizer," Elijah says. "I won't ask again, what does it want?"

"Why, freedom, of course, a spirit cannot manifest the true depths of its power, but when it's once again made of flesh..." Dominic says, he looks at Alex. "Perhaps you could bring her back for us? Seeing as you claim that you can revive anyone." A low chuckle escapes Alex's throat as a response.

"And in what fairy tale do you think that I would allow that to happen?" Elijah asks, making it clear where he stood.

"My offer was a courtesy, The Hallow will take what it wants, Vincent and Marcel will be ours regardless, but if you insult us any further, we will take your entire family." Dominic threatens him. "Do you still doubt our power? Well, you shouldn't, as you will soon find out, we came here tonight for one thing only, and we already have it, The Hallow will not be stopped." Elijah only smirked at him as he pushed his hands into the pockets of his trousers.

"Of course I doubt your power because you doubt hers," Elijah says lifting his hand from Alex's shoulder, her eyes turn a dark blue as Dominic looks down at her. "Perhaps I should have warned you about her, she's a little protective." Alex wraps her hands around Dominic's neck, her claws sinking into his skin, he grabs for her wrists, clawing at them as he tried to gasp for air. "I'd like to introduce you to my dear girlfriend, Alexandra Zastrod."

"Aka, one of the last angel demon hybrids on earth," Alex growls out. "So bring your Hallow, I'll end that fucking bitch."

"Would you mind bringing him, darling?" Elijah asks as he opens the doors, Alex follows behind him dragging Dominic along by his neck. "Ladies and gentlemen." The music stops causing everyone to look up to the balcony Elijah stood on, Alex pulls Dominic into everyone's view. "Ladies and gentlemen, we have an errand boy of The Hallow, a disciple of the very darkness that threatens to devour our city, your loved ones and mine." Alex pushes Dominic forward and lifts him into the air with telekinesis. "Now, whether or not you despise us, my family will do everything in its power to remove this scourge From New Orleans, I recommend you do the same." Alex's hand engulfs with holy fire before she placed her hand on Dominic's chest. "Or Else" Dominic screams out in pain as he burns, Alex drops his body to the ground below earning shocked and horrified gasps from the crowd as his body burned in front of them.

"This thing wants to be reborn, this morning Vincent said that whenever it resurfaces it does so in four distinct locations, and I can't tell why," Elijah tells his family, Hayley walks into the abattoir.

"It's looking for something," Hayley says. "Four things by the sound of it, and I'm pretty sure I have one of them." She shows them a jawbone. "My parents were killed protecting this from The Hallow's followers."

"We've seen this time and time again when a witch wishes to be reborn, its remains are required to complete the spell, you've just found a piece of our enemy." Alex extends her hand towards Hayley.

"May I?" Alex asks, Hayley hands the bone to Alex, dark energy quickly surrounded Alex.

"Lucky me, who has the other three?" Hayley asks.

"Dominic, Dominic said that he had found something here," Elijah says, Alex suddenly drops the bone on the table in front of them.

"I uh, sorry, but that is a lot of magic and a lot of dark magic in that bone," Alex mutters, Hayley picks up the jawbone.

"So what? There's just a bag of bones lying around that I didn't know about?" Hayley asks, Klaus glanced up at the sky above them.

"No, but there is one," Klaus says as he turns around making his way to the study, everyone follows behind him, as they enter they saw Klaus opening a safe, he practically rips it open and saw nothing inside, Klaus turns around to face them. "Dominic's death was a distraction."

"They used our own deception against us." Elijah states.

"This thing has followers everywhere, they've infiltrated the entire city if they get the other bones before we do..." Hayley trails off.

"Then they will try to raise this monstrosity," Klaus says. "And it will come for us all."

"No time to waste then," Alex says before leaving the room.

#The Originals Fan Fiction #Elijah Mikaelson Fan Fiction #fanfiction #fan fiction #fanfic #fan fic #elijah mikaelson imagine #klaus mikaelson imagine #elijah mikaelson imagines #imagine #imagines #the originals imagine #the originals imagines

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sauvechouris · 6 years

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Spooky scary podcst episodes 11 to 20

Episode 11: Dreamer

- “regarding his recent dreams about Gertrude Robinson” OSHIT !? NICE??? I didn’t even know I wanted an episode about her but thank you

- ...and she was still the archivist at the time. Awkward.

- “I ask you to read on” ? What, he came in and handed her a written report ?

- One of us ! One of us ! :D *cough* uh, sorry for your break-up.

- *patpats* we’ve all dreamed that our respective Daily Torture Place was a literal hellscape at some point, dude, it’s fine (his version is on a whole other level, tho)

- Something tells me he’s not going to like what he finds out about his manager… Aaaand yup, he’s dead. (Hanged tho D:)

- Eight YEARS, holy shit, how did he manage to improve his mental health in these conditions ? I didn’t want to kinkshame him about the “oh, dream pain, you know, the usual” and how he felt “invigorated” after the first dream, but I have questions.

- “until I saw my father in the dream” oh no, of all the ways to find out… ;;

- wait, his father was still alive ? He sees these BEFORE they happen ? it’s even worse D:

- okay, so people go to the Institute, write their statements, hand them to the staff and leave ? I know at least some of the other statement givers were interviewed...

- holy shit

- hOLY SHIT

- Who was she???? What did she DO????

- “she died in the line of duty”, you say. I don’t trust Elias.

- “I mean, I don’t believe in the predictive power of dreams, obviously” HOW IS THIS OBVIOUS ? YOU WORK AT THE BRITISH CRPS, FFS

- “I had Tim look into it, as I don’t trust the others not to have written it as a practical joke” Why, is Tim for some reason More Trustworthy than the others (Martin I could understand but he’s had no complaint about Sasha so far) ? Or is he just new ?

- “it’s almost certainly a joke” that’s not what your voice says, buddy. But yes, I certainly hope that you will hear about it in time if someone comes in ranting about your death.

Episode 12 : First Aid

- The shade they throw about how stupid people get when they’re partying :D

- That’s too many eyes, tattooed or not, I don’t care if they magically protect you from strange burns that pass through your clothes.

- Either we have another building site trying to roast people alive, either it is something demonic this time. I’ll be right eventually.

- yyyep, demon summoning.

- “I was freaked out, quite frankly” honestly, so am I, more by the sudden emptiness and silence than by the satanists in the room. Where have they all gone ? Why didn’t whatever made them all leave (hopefully that’s all it is, I’m trying to be optimistic since it’s a statement regarding “a nightshift” and not “the tragedy at x hospital”) affect our witness ? They weren’t the only one to treat the two men, and they were the only one noticing the quiet before those patients even arrived, so ??

(“they” because I have never heard that first name before, so I have no idea if it’s gendered, and there are male nurses…)

- The good news : the heatwave that is hot enough to boil drinks from a distance doesn’t seem to affect them either. The bad news : trapped behind burning hot doors. D:

- They’re putting some emphasis on Gerard Keay’s name… I don’t remember hearing it in the previous episodes, but maybe he will return / he is already known for this kind of thing by the staff of the Institute ?

- Knowledge of the occult grants you the power of instantly guessing security codes on doors, apparently. You could get rich like that.

- Stop being mean to Martin when his informations are correct ! I don’t see you speaking Polish or Latin ! I don’t even know him yet but the archivist has been criticizing him so much that I’m starting to feel defensive.

- So they had heard of Gerard Keay before ! He doesn’t specify why, though. Does it mean I should know ?

*ctrl+F the previous transcripts* Oh ! Gerard Keay of the bookshop of cursed books, from episode 4. Okay. Okay. Surely nothing alarming here.

...he did say he had a book on him, and the people who brought him to the hospital didn’t find it.

- The recording of everyone standing up and calmly leaving at the same time sounds creepy- hahaha ooooh my god there is something watching. Welp. I hope Ms. Saraki will be alright. :’)

Episode 13 : Alone

- Dialogue !!!! Are you for real !!!!

- And with another lady trashtalking the Institute. The nerve.

- “- I guess you have to believe me. - Something like that.” Yeah, the archivist isn’t impressed with her attitude either.

- “I’ve always just been happier alone, I just get lonely sometimes” I feel personally attacked

- Is this sudden sociability with her future fiancé meant to look suspicious, or just normal straightness

- “He said “My son is in there. He is dead.” And then he turned and walked away.” Jesus christ that’s cold, you will probably turn out to be some kind of abomination but at least have some fucking manners.

- Some or the people in that family are dead, aren’t they

- Bold of her to assume that getting into the locked chapel in the middle of the creepy cemetery is going to protect her, instead of, idk, letting the fog inside. It was probably locked for a reason. (I’m not seriously criticizing her, what else could she have done?)

- “The grave was open. And it was empty.” (…) “Every grave was open and they were all empty. Even here among the dead, I was alone.” 1) I am very much freaked out 2) are the graves empty because the people who should be in there are, ironically, at the funeral?

- nO DON’T GO IN THE CHAPEL, IF IT OPENED ON ITS OWN IT CAN’T BE FOR GOOD REASONS

- Kind of rude to basically tell her she’s crazy after hearing all this. I know she hasn’t been that nice either, but still.

Episode 14 : Piecemeal

- “If you go to the police with this, I will deny every word, (…) it will count for nothing in court.” (One minute later) “So yeah, I killed that asshole Noriega.” You’re… not really doing a great job of not shooting yourself in the foot here, bro.

...oh, except the original version wasn’t a recording, I suppose? The style makes it sound like he told them the whole thing and someone wrote it down, rather than writing the statement himself like the man in episode 11, but what do I know.

- If he had simply mentioned in passing that there were puzzles on the walls, it could have been nothing, but since they put some emphasis on it… those aren’t jigsaw puzzles, are they.

- “and if they want to throw away their last years putting together a damn picture then I’m sure not going to stop them, but it wasn’t going to kill Noriega, was it?” WELL

- ...the archivist sure is getting in character for this one, uh

- Missing an eye, some fingers, some teeth, probably part of his leg given the limping… yeah, I can see why “they never found the body” of the previous guy Angela took care of.

- Can you really “slice clean” through bone just by falling on your knife? On second thought, I don’t want to know, and it’s magic anyway.

- And the same thing is happening to him now. He’s taking losing a finger pretty well, all things considered.

- aouch

- When he said he needed to “not lose any more bits of me” in the beginning, I sort of just assumed he meant he was losing his mind. I was wrong. (...and I only looked up what the title meant just now. Should have seen it coming.)

- So is this happening to him because he killed Noriega before the curse could fully… “eat” him, I guess, and so it’s still “hungry”, or would it have happened to him regardless, because it’s the price you pay for making this kind of wish?

- “But as I reached for her, I… I don’t know. I don’t know what happened. I know that’s how I lost the hand. I know I chewed it off.” HAHAHA OKAY N O P E

- “I sent Martin to look into this Angela character, not that I want him to get chopped up, of course, but someone had to.” Yeah, real convincing.

- “though he informs me he had some very pleasant chats about jigsaw. Useless ass.” Mais arrête !!

- “All that remained in the house, he said, were hundreds and hundreds of small cardboard boxes.” Hundreds. And. Hundreds. All small. Thank you, I absolutely did want to consider the fact that after taking his fingers, toes, eyes, tongue, etc, it probably kept taking him apart from the inside out, bit by bit.

Episode 15 : Lost John’s Cave

- Cave diving ! =D

- I really like how she talks about caving and being underground. It’s a shame something is going to happen and ruin this (and her sister).

- I forgot that “a foot wide” was a legit unit of measurement and was horrified at the squeezes she described for a second. Even with the more or less correct dimensions, it’s not much better.

- Sibling : “If I got trapped underground, I’d want it to be with you.” Other sibling, internally “fuck no” Props for the realistic writing :p

- Alena you little shit =DD

- ...being intentionally annoying and pretending you never said anything mean is a bit too much, tho. u.u

- Oh, the dive back is where things go wrong. Okay. This is exactly what I’m here for, do your worst.

- I’d find it hard to believe that she could simply close her eyes and “will it all away” and have it actually work, except that since she knew her sister was there and she could hear her, not including Alena in her wish to escape could count as a sacrifice, intentional or not. :’)

- …? Why are there so many parts of her story that don’t match…?

- ...oh. Well. There was nothing implicit or unintentional about that sacrifice, then. Literally a case of “what you are in the dark” :’D

Episode 16 : Arachnophobia

- I almost skipped this one, based on the title, but it’s probably better to just listen to it than to imagine how they could make spiders scarier.

- They’re not waiting to crawl on you, even I know that ! Never happened to me, though, if it did happen to him I can understand why it’s what he fixates on.

- I’d almost be jealous of his ability to be totally fine with spiders in movies, pictures, etc, but having to move because there are spiders in the garden is a bigger problem.

- “And I could not stop thinking of when winter would come, and they would seek to find a way into the warmth of my home.” Me too, buddy, me too ! They love my room ! :’D

- “I had heard that [cats] have a habit of catching spiders and eating them – slowly and torturously.” Boy, if he knew about my brother’s girlfriend’s cat. Apparently that one does catch spiders, and them jumps in your lap to gift them to you, alive. (For what it’s worth, in 27 years of sharing a house w/ garden with five cats total, I’ve only seen one (1) instance of spider-eating, but it was indeed slow and torturous.)

- Uhh, we’d know if the small worms were, like, horror material worms, right ? Like the Squirm kind of worms ?

- what monstrosity did you lock your cat with?? If the cat dies i’m out

- ...well, what did you want the cat to do about it, if it was in the middle of the wall ? It’s not reliable to assume they will move, once one stayed for seven solid hours in the exact same spot on the wall, right next to the end of the bed where I’d put my head. Fun night.

- That’s a waste of a perfectly good mug, can’t you just use a vacuum like everyone but me can apparently do

- ...re-spawning malevolent spider who hates him, but isn’t doing anything except hanging there ? What’s the point of that…?

- DON’T KICK THE TV??? That was… significantly freakier than I expected just a minute ago.

- The cat knows what’s up. I still don’t understand, but it does.

- asdjjkhk I should not have said the thing about the one near my bed, now his ghost spider is in the same spot

- YIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIKES, and it cursed him after that, Holic was right all along

- DO NOT DO THAT!!!??

- oh fuck off with your sarcasm, Jonathan Sims

- “foreign organic material” blocking… his… throat… of course, that would be the next step, oh my god. D:

- “But there is likely a perfectly natural explanation for the fact that his body was completely encased in web” YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME

Episode 17 : The Boneturner’s tale

- It’s been years since I was into DW and here I am, grinning like a loon, because they said “Chiswick” and Donna worked there. And a library!! =D

- “unthreatening” ? It sounds perfect.

- Cursed book ! Again ! Leitner or not Leitner ?

- Oh, hello, E-lie-as

- Miss Herne, that’s the statement-giver from episode 13 ? After checking, yes it’s her. Of course if someone were to complain it would be her, not only because they were both rude in that episode but because she is still alive to do so.

- Her fiancé’s creepy family is connected to the Institute, why am I not surprised (well, I am surprised that Elias bothers to consider she’s “connected” to them, with how they treated her at the funeral.)

- His voice when he says “Fine, fine, I’ll be more lovely”… xD

- Nnnno, I don’t think your bully’s mother has broken her arm. Or at least, that it was her who broke it.

- “She spun back and started to swear violently at me, told me I had no business with her son and that I, and my books, were to stay away from him.” It’s funny, this sounds like a very typical, almost cliché sentence, but for a different genre.

- But he held the book with his bare hands the first time, and nothing happened…?

- why are the books bleeding

- Aaaand it’s a Leitner. Much shock very surprise

- (There was something about bent bones in the first episode with a cursed book, wasn’t there?)

- The “sharp” fingers are the worst part of Jared’s whole… bone restructuration thing, for me, just the idea of sharpened bones pushing underneath the skin…

- “I told him that the library was closed, because at the moment I could think of nothing else to say.” (…) “That was when I did something a little rash, which is to say I punched him.” I like him.

- ...you have recommended this to Perelka, right?

- Does Elias’s “record and study, not interfere or contain” policy apply to the entire Institute, which would be kind of worrying if they know about so much dangerous stuff and don’t make a move to at least contain some of it, or only the Archives ? Either way, suspicious.

- ...oh, it got him. :( That’s, what, three out of the seven cases here ? Please stop dying ?

Episode 18 : The Man Upstairs

- I immediately pictured his neighbour with the hoodie like the reapers who create walls in T WEWY, idk why

- ……..that’s disgusting.

- “when I looked at that heaped pile of meat, It moved. I don’t know quite how to explain it, other than to tell you that it opened its eyes. It opened all its eyes.” HEY WHAT THE FUCK

- …well now it others me too, but no, I really don’t want to know where he was getting the meat.

Episode 19&20 : Confession

- A two-parts episode ! that’s new =D

- They came there ? They do home… statement-collecting, too ? Oh wait, prison. Says a lot about how well that possession went.

- “We’ll get to the cannibalism, of course” OH OKAY I SEE, IT’S THAT KIND OF POSSESSION

- Yes, yes, I’ve heard about the unofficial catholic exorcisms already. ...oh, they actually call them exorcists. Wow.

- It’s stopping him from talking about God but not from saying he has faith, or wants to pray, or any of the things of that sort he’s said so far ? Isn’t that a bit… I don’t know, praising yourself for cutting down one tree and missing the entire forest?

- What on earth is a “Michaelmas” term

- For now, the student falling head first into a mirror bothers me more than her possession.

- ...I retract the previous statement. Still not very impressed by the demon’s objectives (his faith? Really?), but if it can kill you of a brain haemorrhage on top of the standard stuff, who am I to argue if it deserves its place in a horror story.

- Oh hey, Hill Top Road again.

- ...wait, it’s the same case ? It’s the priest who came and did whatever inside the house while the statement-giver of that episode was uprooting the tree? =o Continuity! Neat!

- buuut he mentions “Annie” without specifying a last name, which would imply it’s the same Annie from earlier in this episode, so Anne Willett, except I’m almost certain that wasn’t the name of the Annie from episode 8? Indeed, after checking, Annie-from-episode-8 is Anna Kasuma…

- “Eventually I decided that I had seen enough and that there didn’t seem to be any malicious presence here” Well, considering you said yourself you couldn’t sense evil, I don’t know why you’d come to this conclusion despite the evidence, but I can tell you that you were 100% wrong.

- Offputting yourself >:(

- See, the house is trying to burn you too ! But no malicious presence here, of course, no sir ! ...except the one you brought here, holy shit

- “I will record and add that part when it is found, either by myself or, given the scale of the Archive’s mismanagement, by my successor when I pass away from old age.’ Have I mentioned today that I love his complaints about the Archive (also : if you live that long).

- he did what

- I thought the other priest was rude because he “almost smiled” after hearing about his problem, but no, of course not, it wasn’t him in the first place. :’D

- (So I guess I can’t trust anything he says after this, at least in terms of where he is and who or what is there. “The streets should have been full of drunken students (…) but they were almost deserted” ? No, dude, pretty sure there were students and they thought you were drunk too.)

- People dressed in black, yellowed skin, blank eyes, “and their mouths hung open, wide and smiling, like their jaws had locked in silent rictus” It’s called being dead. You’re doing mass for a church full of skeletons, or soon-to-be skeletons if it’s recent I guess.

- “the rich cloth curtain that covered the ornate metal box seemed stuck, so I pulled and pulled and eventually it came free” oh no. oh no. I remember the end of the first part, that was… not cloth.

- “I will not commit the further sin of ending my life” oh, so noble. For what ? A chance that one of your successors will be too optimistic or prideful for their own good, try to exorcise you, and suffer the same fate ? Because somebody will be that stupid eventually, and you nobly enduring this until then will just have made one more possession victim, and probably more depending of what they end up doing after catching it from you. Really, what good will that do ? If he believed that whatever is possessing him is stuck inside and thus imprisoned with him, I could see the point, but he never mentions that, and after what he’s done, suicide isn’t going to make a difference in whether or not he goes to hell.

- Someone might be reading/messing with the archives ? Also “I find it hard to credit the idea that Gertrude Robinson actually read any of these files” made me laugh but, well, it’s a possibility. I’m sure she was very busy with… whatever she was doing that led to episode 11.

- Okay, but if Bethany died in 2009, and after her death “that was it, for a couple of years”… and he was arrested in 2009 and it was the very day after the incident with the Hill Top Road house… why did they say the statement giver from that episode reported it in 2007…? did I misunderstand something…? I checked episode 19 again, it does say 2007 and 2009, but episode 20 presents it as if only a day has passed ?

- She… didn’t live in that house ? How did she get possessed then ? What was the deal with the house ?

- “He ate most of their skin” changed to “he partially ate one guy’s face”. I don’t know what to think anymore.

- Why deliver an actual yellow robe if the one he thought he wore was actually a butcher’s apron…? IS THAT THE NAME OF THE DELIVERY COMPANY FROM EPISODE 2 *checks* yes it is. What’s next, are you going to tell me his bible was a cursed Leitner bible ?

#i should tag these but the '[person] [verbs] [fandom]' format looks weird with things you listen to so i can't be bothered #t m a #maybe?#but seriously what's with the continuity in that last one!!

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robinrunsfiction · 3 years

Text

It’s A Love Story - Part 1

(YN) was sitting at the kitchen table working on her algebra homework when the music that had been coming from the garage for hours finally stopped. A few minutes later five sweaty teenage boys burst through the door.

"You guys are finally starting to sound good," she complimented, albeit slightly sarcastically.

"Thanks kid," Gerard said, ruffling her hair with his sweaty hand.

"Ew get off me," she whined, swatting at him. "And don't call me that."

"Gerard, don't pick on your sister," their mom said, walking into the kitchen. “Ray, Frankie, Bob, would you boys like to stay for dinner?”

“I told my mom I’d be home for dinner tonight, thanks anyway. I’ll see you guys at school tomorrow,” Ray answered with a wave before heading for the door.

"He's my ride," Bob mumbled, following him out.

“Frankie?”

“I’d love to, Mrs. Way,” Frank replied overly sweetly. Gerard and Mikey rolled their eyes as (YN) tried to stifle a giggle.

Frank had been in the same kindergarten class as (YN) and Mikey, and they quickly became friends. They all grew up together, playing in imaginary worlds with Mikey and (YN)'s older brother Gerard and his friend Ray. Even though she was the only girl in their group, (YN) was never made to feel like the odd one out or forced to play the damsel in distress.

Eventually playing make believe gave way to only slightly more realistic pursuits when the boys started their band. Having absolutely no desire to be on stage, (YN) turned her attention toward her interest in fashion and design. She spent hours sketching haute couture gowns and jewelry she could only dream of one day making and wearing.

"Hey Frank, did you start the algebra homework yet?" (YN) asked as the family, plus Frank, sat down at the dinner table.

"Yea I got it done in study hall, do you need help?"

"Yea, I'm stuck on a few on problems."

"It's only the second week of school, you're not falling behind already are you?" Her mom asked.

"No," (YN) mumbled, turning her attention toward her plate, pushing the food around with her fork.

"Are things alright? You've seemed out of sorts when you got home the last few days.”

(YN) looked toward her brothers, who tried to avoid her eye. "It's nothing," she mumbled.

Luckily the boys started talking about the band, and (YN) was relieved to have the attention pulled off of her. Ironically, that seemed to be the theme of her sophomore year.

The trouble began the week before the new school year began. Her friend Christine lived in a massive house with a beautiful pool and backyard, so she had invited a ton of kids from school over for an end of the summer pool party. The event was such a big deal, there were even upperclassmen besides her older brother attending.

(YN) found a lounge chair to relax in while she waited for more of her friends to arrive. She pulled off her t-shirt and draped it neatly over the back of the chair and when she turned back around she noticed a few guys looking her way, but she didn't pay them much mind. She had just settled in, eyes closed, when a shadow blocked out the sun

"Hey (YN)," she heard someone say.

"Oh, hey Adam, what's up?" She said when she opened her eyes. Adam was in Gerard's grade, and he hadn't really talked to her much before, especially if it meant having to go out of his way to do so.

"Nothin much. You're gonna be a sophomore next year right?"

"Umm, yea."

"That's cool,” he nodded. “Getting your driver's license soon?"

"Yea, me and Mikey both got our tests scheduled on September 12th, right after our birthday," she grinned.

"Nice, so you're gonna be running wild all over town?"

(YN) burst out laughing at the absurdity of the question. "I doubt it, I'm not the wild type."

"Aw, come on, I bet you could be if you tried," he laughed, leaning down so he was looking in her eyes. "I was wondering, have you ever-"

"Lazzara!" Gerard shouted, cutting him off. Both (YN) and Adam looked over at Gerard who had a strange expression on his face. She wasn’t sure what the look was exactly, but (YN) was certain she’d never seen him like that before and it was a little scary

"I'll be right back," Adam said with a sly smile and a wink before walking off.

It took a while, but eventually (YN) was certain that Adam was not coming back. In fact she didn't see him at the party at all after that. However she really didn't mind, because shortly after Adam disappeared Frank arrived and sat down on the lounge chair next to her.

"Sup? Soda?" He said, offering her a can.

"Ooh, yes please," she nodded, taking the beverage from him.

"Hey (YN), did you bring sunscreen?" Mikey asked, seeming to appear out of thin air behind them.

"No, and that reminds me I forgot to put any on too. I hope I don't burn," she grimaced, exchanging looks with Frank and her brother.

"You should cover up then," Mikey said, holding out her shirt that she had left on the back of the chair.

"Oh right," she agreed, a little confused at the level of concern Mikey was taking regarding her skin health as she pulled the shirt over her bikini top. "I bet if you ask Christine, she probably has some sunscreen we could use."

"Yea maybe," Mikey said, draping a towel over her bare legs.

"Stop it," she said, kicking the towel off. "Why are you being so weird?"

"I'm helping," Mikey replied.

"Go away," she snapped, throwing the towel at him. Mikey retaliated by draping the towel over her head and when she pulled it off, he was gone.

"So annoying," she grumbled.

"If we find some sunscreen, I could help you put it on, if you want," Frank offered. "You wouldn't wanna burn."

She couldn't help but blush at the idea of Frank putting his hands all over her back and arms and... "Thanks, umm, maybe," she laughed nervously before quickly changing the subject.

(YN) spent the rest of the afternoon talking to Frank, but she couldn’t help but feel like she was being watched. Whether it was one of her brothers hovering obnoxiously close, or other guys at the party staring at her unabashedly, she had to wonder what the hell was going on.

The school year started as usual, but the same feeling of being watched overwhelmed (YN) as she walked down the halls of Our Lady of Sorrows Academy. At first it felt like she was being sized up like a piece of meat and the guys who were looking her up and down were hungry dogs. But as the week progressed, it was as if they couldn't avert their eyes away from her fast enough. When she tried to strike up a conversation with any guy other than her brothers, Frank, or Ray, they were abrupt and cold toward her.

"Can I tell you guys something that’s probably gonna sound crazy?” (YN) asked as she sat down in study hall with her friends Christine and Marie.

“Of course,” Christine nodded, leaning in.

“I know I’m not like hot or popular to begin with, but I feel like almost every guy in school is avoiding me."

Christine and Marie exchanged glances. "Umm, so you haven't heard?" Marie asked.

"Heard what?"

"Well first of all, I don’t think you’ve looked in the mirror recently because sweetie, the summer was very kind to you. You're totally hot, and that’s the problem,” Christine replied.

“Hot? I'm not even doing anything different,” (YN) mumbled, feeling herself blush as she pulled the cardigan of her uniform around herself more tightly. “And what do you mean, that’s the problem?”

“I heard that Gerard told Adam that if he so much as looks at you, he’ll put a hit out on him. I guess word has gotten around to all the guys in school,” Christine shrugged.

"Are you kidding me?!" (YN) blurted out and the other kids in the quiet study hall looked over at her.

"Miss Way, do you have a problem?" Mrs. Simon, the teacher supervising the study hall, asked from her spot at the front of the room.

"Nope! I, umm, am just surprised at the answer to this equation. I really love chemistry," she lied, trying to cover up for her outburst.

"What are you gonna do?" Marie whispered when everyone in the room turned their attention back to their own work.

"Nothing," (YN) shrugged.

"Wait, really?" Christine asked, totally surprised.

"Yea, because the guy I like is one of the few that won't be intimidated by Mikey or Gee."

"Who?!" Marie asked excitedly.

"I'm not telling anyone, because if it gets out, my brothers will lose it."

"Oooh, star crossed lovers," Marie grinned.

"Hardly," (YN) replied. "I doubt he even likes me like that."

"So you're coming to our birthday party, right?" (YN) asked as she and Frank sat at the kitchen table after dinner that night. The algebra homework was mostly finished, but forgotten for the moment.

"Have I ever missed it?"

"No," she rolled her eyes, but smiled. She knew she could always rely on Frank to show up for their birthday.

“Are you gonna make a super big deal out of it because it’s your sweet sixteen?” His tone was a little teasing.

“Oh yea, if I don't get a brand new BMW, I’m gonna throw a tantrum," she deadpanned.

“So you’re finally gonna start acting like a true OLS Academy girl?”

“Ugh, hell no,” (YN) groaned, rolling her eyes again. "There's a reason why Christine and Marie are my only girl friends."

"And it’s not because you spend all the rest of your time hanging out with us nerds?" He smirked.

"You nerds have always been my favorite people to hang out with. You're more interesting than 99% of that school."

"All of us, or just me?" He trailed off, suddenly becoming very interested in the pencil in hand.

"Yea, you're like in first place, then Christine and Marie, then Ray, Mikey, and Gee, then everyone else in the world."

"Damn, that's a lot of people to be ahead of," he replied with a goofy smile.

"Well you're really cool and always nice to me so yea," (YN) blushed.Silence hung between them, and for a moment she thought he was about to reach over and take her hand.

"Umm... (YN), ya know I’ve always-"

"How's the homework?" Gerard asked, bursting through the door from his basement bedroom.

"It'd be easier if you weren't always barging in," (YN) snapped. She hoped the blush on her cheeks wasn’t too noticeable.

"Don't do your homework in the kitchen then," Gerard shrugged.

"It's where the snacks are," she whined, but then a thought struck her like a bolt of lightning. "But I guess that’s fine, Frank will just have to go up to my room where we can shut the door and work in peace and quiet."

"I'll tell mom," Gerard replied.

"Tell her what? That you're annoying and distracting me, her long suffering youngest child, her poor, only daughter, from her studies?"

“Yea I’m the annoying one,” Gerard muttered before grabbing a soda from the fridge and retreating back downstairs.

“I should probably get going, it’s getting late,” Frank said, stretching his arms overhead. His shirt pulled up to show just a sliver of skin under the hem and (YN) couldn’t help but stare.

“Yea, umm, thanks for staying late and helping me,” (YN) said, getting up to walk him to the door.

“Just say the word and I’ll be here,” he smiled.

(YN) nodded, wanting to ask him what he was gonna say before Gerard interrupted him, but couldn’t find the courage to do so. “I’ll see you tomorrow then,” she smiled, holding out her arms for a hug.

Frank smiled back and wrapped his arms around her. She worried for a moment that she was holding on too long, but he wasn’t in any hurry to pull back either. When they finally did part, he waved before heading out into the cool New Jersey evening. (YN) shut the door behind him, and leaned against it with a dreamy sigh, the lingering feeling of his arms around her would be wonderful to fall asleep to that night.

Part 2

#frank iero x reader #frank iero fan fic #frank iero fan fiction #frank iero imagine #my chemical romance fan fic #my chemical romance fan fiction

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the-end-of-art · 6 years

Text

Still this persistent urge to want to die

Why Should You Be One Too? by Spencer Reece in Granta

I was eighteen when the drinking started. It was 1981, and I was heading off into the Maine woods, under the huge deep green pines, to attend Bowdoin College. Behind me, in the dark living room in Minneapolis, my parents sat with their wine glasses like a queen and king overseeing a fading empire. I was shy and reserved, a reader, a Reece. I was far from the sad Southern town of my father’s family and the tattered, run-down north end of Hartford where my mother’s Lithuanian immigrant family had landed. My parents had invested much in me. They had, in my mother’s words, ‘jumped class’, and they banked now on an even greater success: me.

Pimples grew from my temples. I looked like I was about to rut and grow antlers. I was turning into a man who loved men, or at least a man who loved men and women, but men more. But I did not know how to be that kind of person in the world.

At the time no one really used the word ‘gay’ – not that I remember – only the clinical ‘homosexual’, which carried undertones of a disease that electric shock might undo. Only later in the decade some of the American states would begin to repeal their anti-sodomy laws. Homosexuality would be removed from the American Psychiatric Association’s list of mental disorders. But not yet.

Libidinous impulses surged inside of me. When I arrived in Brunswick Maine, the small town that houses Bowdoin College, I found my way into an old independent drugstore with high ceilings, creaking wood floors and no mirrors. It stocked Playgirl. There I discovered the golden buttocks of naked blonde farm boys who lolled on haystacks in barns in Louisiana. I couldn’t bring myself to buy a copy, because that would be admitting that I was homosexual to another person, the shopkeeper, so instead I shoplifted. I would buy extra tubes of toothpaste to make up for my theft. I wedged the glossy magazine against my midriff and my body throbbed against it with expectation. I would take the magazine like an animal with kill in its teeth back to a bathroom in the Economics building where I masturbated in a cave of shame – my body shaking like a washing machine. Then would come the horror and revulsion that would course through every fiber of my body. I’d throw the magazine away. I would pray to die.

I wanted to be like all the other boys. I wanted to be a part of something. I did not want to be different. And so I drank. I attended fraternity parties and drank Cape Coders, gin and tonics, kegs of beer. I found that with the aid of liquor I could chat with girls like every other boy around me. I could dance with them.

My first drink brought me to life. My soul opened in a way I had only experienced with poems and books up to that point. I doubt I would have used the word ‘soul’ then, but that part of me that was not flesh was alert and looking for clues. Booze, like poems, unlatched that. The next drink went down flawlessly. The ice, the charge, created an alchemical click inside. There was another drink and another. Suddenly everything that had been stuck was greased. I wasn’t bad after all. Liquor flowed through me and I leaned into my new nerve.

I sat hung-over in the back row of a course called ‘Religious Poets’. My brain felt like an aborted fetus pickled in the jar of my skull. The class met in the oldest building on campus, filled with crooked staircases and tiny fireplaces. On the syllabus were just three poets: TS Eliot, Gerard Manley Hopkins and Elizabeth Bishop. Much discussion revolved around the fact that Bishop wasn’t religious like the other two. So why, our provocative professor slyly queried, had she presented her this way to us?

Our professor was a bohemian Jewish intellectual who dressed in tweed skirts and LL Bean boots, her wild hair looking like it hadn’t been combed since Woodstock. I never gave her an answer then. I mainly stared at the floor in class. But I did like the clarity of the poems. I was doing the reading, and it helped that the font of Bishop’s poems had been made larger, which I assumed was done because she had written fewer poems than most. There were religious allusions, but the whole tenor of her work was secular. There were no traces of the homosexuality or the alcoholism that our professor kept gingerly referencing. She told us Bishop had an exotic lover in Brazil named Lota. The class laughed. Homosexuality was always cause for a good laugh. Maybe, the professor coaxed us, Bishop had faith in poetry, in the clarity and accuracy she strove for there, and could that serve as a kind of religion to her, a way of navigating the world?

We studied her poem, ‘Over 2,000 Illustrations and a Complete Concordance,’ which ends:

Everything only connected by ‘and’ and ‘and.’

Open the book. (The gilt rubs off the edges

of the pages and pollinates the fingertips.)

Open the heavy book. Why couldn’t we have seen

this old Nativity while we were at it?

—the dark ajar, the rocks breaking with light,

an undisturbed, unbreathing flame,

colorless, sparkles, freely fed on straw,

and, lulled within, a family of pets,

—and looked and looked our infant sight away.

She seemed to be coming at faith sideways, acknowledging it out of the corner of her eye, the nativity scene reduced to ‘a family of pets’, which I loved. This felt perfectly natural to me.

Through the prism of this poem, I recognized my stalled life: I’d read my way through much turmoil. Reading had always been my escape hatch. Now, in college, much of life – the fraternity parties, the dating, my parents drinking, my drinking – confounded me. So I didn’t need to be prompted more than twice to ‘Open the book’ and ‘pollinate’ my fingertips.

I joined the literary magazine staff, and began trying to write my own poems. I would type them out on a manual typewriter and then cross out the lines. It was like painting more than writing, I suppose, just mixing colors. Something in the action of saying and erasing, saying and erasing, gave me solace, and perhaps a deeper solace even than reading. This private, useless act aided me immensely. I was often drinking, whole bottles of wine now, sometimes a bottle of Vodka, the steel clarity of that clear liquid giving me some semblance of peace as I barricaded myself against my impulses. The call of the drink increased, and it began, quickly, to overtake the poetry, until I gave up writing altogether – my ‘infant sight’ shrinking, becoming jaundiced.

Though my writing dissipated, I kept reading Bishop. The amber and umber leaves fell across the window panes and blew against the Andrew Wyeth houses. Students started dating one another, but I dated no one. I remained alone with Bishop. Her poems had a slow, burning effect on me, unlike the immediacy I was used to from reading Sylvia Plath in high school. I was drawn to Bishop’s sound and rhythm first, before I captured her meanings.

One element of that sound was something you might call ‘Yankee’. I associated that term with the Northeast, where my mother’s people came from and where I was now enrolled in college. The Yankee diction meant: keep a distance from your neighbors, recall Robert Frost’s stone fences, allow people space, keep your guard up. Yankee meant Anglo-Saxon. Yankee meant houses on Cape Cod and Harvard legacies and trust funds. My mother wanted to be part of it. She liked the Yankee mentality even though she was Lithuanian, the child of immigrants. She wanted to assimilate. She wanted to pass. My mother would always say, ‘We are private people, Spencer.’ She repeated this phrase about privacy to me like a chant, and during my weekly calls home I could imagine her shaking her head like Katherine Hepburn all the way back in Minnesota. Privacy manifested itself in her muteness over anything personal: the screaming inside our living room was never to be mentioned outside the home, or even really to her. Certainly I was never to ask her about why she had once slid down a wall in tears. I was taught that people would respect repression more than confession. Because of my mother I associated privacy with dignity. Bishop’s poems supported this private way of living.

Bishop said proudly that she believed in closets and more closets. She said that she wished the confessional poets would keep their revelations to themselves. Her poems built pressure and force through strenuous evasion. Her silences riveted me: she seemed to be all about what she wasn’t saying, which neatly encapsulated what I knew growing up. And the way I was living now.

I read and reread ‘Crusoe in England,’ where Bishop writes of sad, lonely Robinson Crusoe and his famous encounter with Friday:

Just when I thought I couldn’t stand it

another minute longer, Friday came.

(Accounts of that have everything all wrong.)

Friday was nice.

Friday was nice, and we were friends.

If only he had been a woman!

I wanted to propagate my kind,

and so did he, I think, poor boy.

He’d pet the baby goats sometimes,

and race with them, or carry one around.

—Pretty to watch; he had a pretty body.

There it was – the pretty body, pretty to watch. Out in the open. Was describing gay male attraction a way of keeping some distance from her lesbianism? Coyly she kept it all private, and yet she managed to write about it even so. As soon as I had what amounted to a sexuality I started throwing my voice like this, forcing my listener to focus on anything but me. When I saw this poem I knew exactly what Bishop was doing. She loved to track the mind in action. And here with her repetitions of Friday being nice (has nice ever been used better in a poem?) I saw a mind hesitating to say the truth the way my own mind hesitated when I felt attracted to men and said I wasn’t. ‘Pretty to watch; he had a pretty body.’ I saw that line as a mumble, exactly the way I would have mumbled it to myself as I woke from my bed, having had another wet dream about my muscular, hairy roommate. I lived under a tyranny of watching, of being drawn to pretty bodies that the world told me were the wrong gender.

Bishop became a manual for me as I entered college. The poems had friendly, unobtrusive sounds such as:

Time to plant tears, says the almanac.

The grandmother sings to the marvelous stove

and the child draws another inscrutable house.

I appreciated her plain chant. These words didn’t make demands on me. I knew that child drawing inscrutable houses. I was that child. I knew how to plant tears rather than shed them openly.

I went beyond the assigned poems and read more, read what scant biographical information I could. I learned that despite all the prodding from fellow poets May Swenson and Adrienne Rich, Bishop couldn’t bring herself to publish about her lesbian self. What she left was a set of poems that held back and that drew me in. Slowly.

In adapting her life to her gay self, Bishop never had to contend with parental disappointment. By the time she was six her father had died and her mother had gone to a mental asylum. Bishop never saw her mother again. In her sixties, she received a prize from a university in Nova Scotia. She sat on the stage. Over the heads of the audience, across the street, was the mental hospital where her mother had died when she was twenty-three. Over the decade since her mother’s death, Bishop had tried to find out more about her mother, but it proved challenging. No one knows if she managed to find out much. The clinical records state: she threw her clothes out the window, she ate plaster from the walls, she sat unspeaking for days. Whatever Bishop learned she didn’t discuss it. Bishop said that she didn’t dote on the fact she had a classically horrible childhood. She was like my mother that way, not wanting to draw attention to what makes us vulnerable. My mother always said, ‘Everyone has tragedy, you don’t need to go looking for it.’

A few years before her death, Bishop said to a former student, Millie Nash, that maybe she’d been better off without a mother. She hadn’t had to deal with a mother. Her early independence did give her a certain freedom with her sexuality. In the 1950s and 1960s, still such a repressed time for homosexuals, she lived her private life as she pleased, with many lesbian affairs. She tried to regulate her binge drinking as best she could.

Closeted, alienated, drinking – I found myself aligning with all of this in Bishop. But Bishop hadn’t dealt with the disappointment of a mother. I was at a sorry crossroads with mine, the bittersweet separation perhaps all mothers and sons have, where I seemed to disappoint her and she disappointed me, in the way we all sooner or later disappoint each other. That disappointment churned in my head and stomach every phone call home. I was growing unexplainable to her. I gave vague answers to all her questions. There set in a rift and a cliff. She’d ask if I had a girlfriend. Sometimes when she called me her words slurred. I read more.

As the first term closed, we read ‘In The Waiting Room’:

But I felt: you are an I,

you are an Elizabeth,

you are one of them.

Why should you be one, too?

I scarcely dared to look

to see what it was I was.

I gave a sidelong glance

—I couldn’t look any higher—

at shadowy gray knees,

trousers and skirts and boots

and different pairs of hands

lying under the lamps.

I knew that nothing stranger

had ever happened, that nothing

stranger could ever happen.

In the poem, a child Elizabeth shyly tries to take in the pendulous breasts of the naked African women in a National Graphic. As I read this poem, I knew the shame creeping into the poem, the way it felt to be a child a little too fascinated with the same sex. Now, at eighteen years old, I could scarcely look in a mirror, much less a magazine. If I was what I thought I was, what Bishop thought she was, then I needed to murder me. The thought kept coming, with the plodding, simple logic of Bishop’s three beat tri-meter lines. The more I repressed those naked men, the more they appeared. But if I killed the person I could kill the sex.

I looked out through the white-trimmed window in my dorm room. The window had six panes on top and six on the bottom. There was nothing more to say. Pine cones near the window swung like corpses.

The term ended. My suitcases were packed so I could spend Christmas with my family. Up and down the hallways of Moore Hall students planned, exchanged presents, laughed on the phone with their parents, waving plane tickets. It was night. I walked out the front door and went to the graveyard. I took a bottle of Southern Comfort with me, and a bottle of sleeping pills, and I emptied them both into my mouth. I lingered in the snow with the graves. I passed out. As my cure started to take effect some muscle inside of me reacted. Some voice said, ‘Get up!’ I took myself to the infirmary, dizzy, told the nurses I was sick, went into the toilet and vomited all that I had swallowed.

The next day I went home for Christmas break. I’d rarely changed my clothes the whole first term. I had razor cuts on my wrists, which I kept covered with the torn, stained sleeves of the one sweatshirt I wore. The sweatshirt had the name of my prep school, Breck, in faded letters, and had bleach and food stains on it. A widening chasm had grown up between my mother’s emotional world and mine: her attention was divided between a series of real estate interests and the pressing need to buy decorations for the tree. As a small boy we’d been close confidantes – now we struggled. She sensed something was wrong. I’d become monosyllabic. She must have felt helpless. What could she do?

One night I went out with old high-school friends to a movie, and my mother read my diary. She confronted me, sobbing, when I returned, but it wasn’t the suicidal thoughts that had brought her to tears.

‘Are you a homosexual?’ she asked. Her tone was filled with disgust, and hatred. Or was it love cloaked in fear?

‘No,’ I said.

‘They tie each other up in Greenwich Village and have anal sex,’ she screamed. She looked like she was watching a horror film. She didn’t know what to do with me. I didn’t know what to do with me. My father said nothing. I thought he had pity for me but I wasn’t sure. His silence widened the space between us. I wanted to disappear.

In the hopes of fixing me, we as a family agreed I would see a psychologist when I returned to Bowdoin. There was the idea in the air that if I really did think I was homosexual, a psychologist might be able to talk me out of it. I was like a puppy that just needed to be trained. There was hope in my mother’s voice now. Although I still denied the charge of homosexual, I was hopeful too. Maybe I could be changed. Maybe I could be like everyone else. Maybe.

The college psychologist was from Argentina, in his mid-fifties, but still as dashingly handsome as a bullfighter. He had a fairly heavy accent and mispronounced words and forgot others, which, considering our topic of conversation, added a heightened level of comedy to our sessions. I sensed that he wasn’t understanding everything I was saying. We sat in a little room in the infirmary, mostly taken up with his bicycle and various bicycle parts.

My heart sank about one minute into our first meeting when I realized I wasn’t going to say the word ‘gay’ or ‘homosexual’, and neither was he. There was no book in his office resembling anything that might be helpful. We were going to pretend like my homosexuality didn’t exist.

Our conversation was laughably leaden. We were like two very bad actors in a college play.

‘How you?’ he would say.

‘Fine,’ I would respond, my body language hopelessly awkward and robotic.

‘Your mother had spoken to me and said you try to attempt suicide.’

‘Yes.’

‘How are you now?’

‘Fine.’

‘Do you want to commit suicide now?’

‘No.’

‘Good.’

This was the caveman-like level of our communication. The sessions were completely useless.

In a year or two everyone would start dying of AIDS. But we didn’t know that in his office. What we knew was silence, elaborate and subtle and vast. What I knew was an avalanche of shame. He was married to one of the tenured professors on the psychology faculty and I began to suspect this job had been given to her handsome husband as a sort of compensation: something to keep him busy between his bicycle races.

Instead of curing my homosexuality our sessions seemed to provoke it. I found myself drawn to his dark skin, deep black Latin eyes and muscular build – especially the lower half of his body, those thighs and buttocks tightly encased in his pants as if with shrink-wrap. I had to repress the attraction every time I looked at him. This wasn’t how The Bell Jar had gone. There, Esther Green, Sylvia Plath’s stand-in, had returned to Smith after her dramatic suicide attempt triumphantly. In her real life Plath resurrected herself nicely, galvanized to embrace a new life in college with her dyed-blonde pageboy bob. They wrote her up in the newspapers. My suicide attempt had generated no star treatment. I failed my classes first term. To the college I was an embarrassment. I was going backwards. Drinking called me.

The psychologist kept telling me to enjoy my life. His hands were full of grease and chains. He had started working on his bicycle during our sessions, and as he worked he would hardly look at me. Something Bishop once wrote to her physician, Any Baumann, began to haunt me: ‘I feel some sort of cycle settling in.’ So it was going with me, a cycle of drinking to get through the days. After our sessions I would go back to my room and pour myself a glass of wine to blot out what I’d been feeling: the attraction, the unspoken homosexuality.

James Merrill said Bishop was always impersonating an ordinary woman. Her years were spent carrying out those impersonations: Vassar girl, a woman smiling with perfectly manicured nails, then wrapped in furs like a Scarsdale matron, later a woman with blue eye-shadow in a light blue pantsuit. I too was eager to be somebody who could pass. I was now doing my best to curb my theatrical gestures. Intellectually I constructed a genuine interest in girls. Sometimes it worked. When it did not, which happened more often than not, I felt I did not want to linger much longer on the planet.

I told my parents I was better, and they seemed to believe me. I seemed to believe it too. I stopped seeing the psychologist soon after we started our sessions, having decided the answer to my problem lay in drink rather than therapy, but I would still see him zooming around the campus on his bike. I would still have to repress my fantasies about the two of us naked. I began to drink more and more heavily to cope, and it took a toll. I found myself unable to make it into the classroom. I was going down some dark tunnel. I kept lurching into fumbled romances with women, pushing myself towards normalcy, but I was so drunk they became nurses instead of lovers.

In a moment of sobriety in the dining hall at Coles Tower, someone said Wesleyan was the most liberal of the schools in the Northeast. I thought that if I changed schools, I might change too.

My junior and senior year were spent at Wesleyan. I rented a small room in a wooden clapboard house with three other students across from a little liquor store called Sunshine Farms.

Every night I walked through the door of Sunshine Farms and the owner said hello a little too knowingly.

‘I will have four bottles of the white wine,’ I said, and felt the same guilt I used to feel when I shoplifted Playgirl.

These wine bottles were Italian, had a colorful label on them like lovely Florentine stationery: green and rose squiggles with some gold strewn throughout. When my housemate, Laura, moved in at the beginning of the year, her parents had bought her one of these bottles to celebrate. Two or three nights in, I drank everything in the house, including Laura’s bottle. The next morning I left her a note: ‘Dear Laura, I am so sorry for drinking the bottle that your parents gave you. As soon as Sunshine Farms opens I will replace it.’ And I did.

Laura never drank that bottle. I did, every night. About a month later, I decided to stop writing her notes and bought a case of bottles instead. Then I drank the case. I must have replaced Laura’s bottle at least one hundred times.

I had found myself a girlfriend. Maybe I could add to the happy world of heterosexuality after all, and leave my parents pleased, or so I hoped. K and I met at a party in one of the many dark tunnels that connected the dormitories at Wesleyan. She was kind and smart, the two qualities I love most. I thought all my problems would be solved if I drank my way through the sex with her. I bet myself I could do it. And maybe I would enjoy it too. I was not un-attracted to her. And I figured the drinking would kill or subdue the part of my brain packed full of gay desire.

K studied classics and looked almost exactly like Patti Smith. She would translate Catullus until dawn. She was willowy with smudged mascara that gave her a raccoon look. Night after night in her bed we explored, aided by my inebriation. The record needle skipped on a song by the British band The The, singing This is the day your life will surely change. In a dirty crumbling student house with the paint coming off the ceiling – This is the day – I drank enough to kill an ox.

One morning I woke in K’s bed blinded, and she had to take me to the hospital. Somehow in my drinking I had managed to rip my corneas. ‘Have you been drinking?’ the doctor asked. I said, ‘No, not much,’ yet even I could smell the pungent acrid tang of alcohol pushing through my pores.

After a week of healing my eyesight restored, and I managed to make it to the library. I went to the room where they kept the records and played the voice of Robert Lowell, Bishop’s best literary friend. Lowell read ‘Skunk Hour,’ which he had dedicated to her. I grimaced when he got to the part about the fairy decorator:

And now our fairy

decorator brightens his shop for fall;

his fishnet’s filled with orange cork,

orange, his cobbler’s bench and awl;

there is no money in his work,

he’d rather marry.

No money, a pathetic effeminate sales clerk: now that, emphatically, I did not want to become.

My life at that time was a series of evenings in which I was carried out of parties and thrown into bushes. In the early evening I would suddenly fall down on the dance floor to the tune of the Go-Gos singing brightly, or the Smiths at one of their sarcastic dirges.

People started telling me not to call them back. People stopped inviting me to parties. People said: ‘I saw you.’ And I would have to wonder what it was they saw. ‘I have a red light that goes on and tells me to stop,’ my mother told me over the telephone, talking about the drinking. Red light. Where was my red light? Never had such a light. Only green. I did not mention anything about girlfriends or the poems I scribbled. The list of subjects we did not discuss always seemed to be lengthening. What had happened to us?

One night I drank all of Laura’s wine bottles, and suddenly I was in the street in front of Sunshine Farms. My blue terry-cloth bathrobe was half off, mud on my naked body. I’d dyed my hair white like Billy Idol. Mascara dripped from my eyes. I had a cigarette in my hand. My self-hate and repression had gone mad. I exploded out in my drunkenness now with an aggressive flamboyance, more auto-da-fé than drag queen. I dared anyone to stop me. My tongue grew vicious. I was Lear’s fool breaking down the fourth wall. I ran pell-mell into the audience.

‘We are going to have to take you in. This is the tenth time the neighbors have complained about the noise here,’ said the policeman.

Crapulous thing, I said something unintelligible.

‘Listen, the neighbors have called again, we’ve received three calls a week from them.’

A record skipped from the bedroom above –Marianne Faithful singing ‘What Have You Done for Beauty’s Sake.’

The officer gave me a fine and retreated. I’d drunk my way through the dark night and now the dawn began to push its tints into every little thing. The silverware shone; the telephones gleamed; the mirrors glinted; the windows flashed. The sun rose and I belonged nowhere. The little house in front of me looked forlorn. I trudged up the stairs as my roommates woke to their studies, and I recalled the night in pieces: naked, the yellow Sunshine Farms sign, the terrible thought that I would need to apologise to Laura again, replace her bottles, and what on earth was it I’d said? K, who had been keeping pace with my drinking and still managing to keep her classics grades high, had begun to step back into the shadows. I was alone with all this in my bedroom. The lawnmowers would soon start. Paperboys were throwing papers onto doorsteps. Birds rang in the trees. I had a set of crossed out poems next to the typewriter. How would I ever enter this world?

The phone rang. The receiver shook a little in its cradle and the noise jangled me as if I had launched myself into a circus ride. The sky was full of colors already and I was drained of them. It was my aunt from Tennessee. My aunt who never called me. I held the receiver with one hand. In the other was the tattered fine I’d been given for disturbing the peace.

‘Spencer, how are you?’ There was a pause, maybe she was smoking. Her Southern accent expanded the syllables so they dripped like candlewax.

‘What is it?’ I said.

‘John Steven is dead,’ she said, and perhaps she herself was surprised to hear herself say this news so plainly, so flatly. There are certain sets of words that change and rearrange the world. And those four words certainly did that. John Steven, my cousin, my kin, the same age as me, had been having trouble with his drinking too. That much I knew. Someone had wanted to get him into treatment. His storyline tumbled through my mind from pieces of telephone conversations I’d had over the years. We hadn’t seen each other much.

‘What are you saying?’ I asked. My bed was still wet with last night’s urine and vomit. I was sweating. I shook.

‘We don’t know. Grandpa Reece is very upset as you can imagine. Your Aunt Pattie is beside herself, and your Uncle . . . Well –’

‘What happened?’ I asked. ‘What happened to John?’

‘He was in a bar, down there in Florida. His sister Kathy said he saw somethin’ he wasn’t supposed to see. I don’t know what. He – well they – well, some men I guess took him to the river down there in Saint Augustine. He’d started drinking again and his sister has small children and she said he couldn’t stay there if he drank and I guess he drank and then, well. He went to this bar I guess and they drowned him. Aunt Pattie is beside herself. Your Uncle George had trouble identifying the body. They think the police are involved somehow. They don’t know who did it. They don’t know.’

Her Southern accent carried the sadness of the American South as I had always imagined it: the slow way the hours passed, the relatives gone mad with drink, the long ballad of surrender. Slowly my aunt’s words came into that morning and took dominion over time – the seconds, the minutes. In the Connecticut air, the birds flew through car exhaust.

The murder went unsolved. Thirty years later a relative told me in passing that John might have been gay-bashed. This casual off-hand speculation shocked me. I’d never considered that when Mary Sue was on the phone with me in Middletown. I’m fairly certain the word ‘gay-bashed’ was something we never said in 1984. John had been undetectably gay, rough and tough, unlike me.

What happened to him that night? Was the bar dark? How did the men grab John? Had he said something? Had he touched someone? Did he yearn for love that night the way we all yearn for love? Had the men said something? I began to see it and what I saw I can’t unsee.

The men yanked John. They ripped out his beautiful hair in patches. They punched him in the stomach. They held him down. They kicked him in the head. They broke his fingers. They broke his ribs. They broke his legs. They broke his teeth. They grunted. They spit. They laughed. They dragged the body, and the body picked up trash and thorns and burrs. The laughter of the men mixed with the sound of the wind moving the leaves in the sassafras trees. Dirt was on John. He pleaded. Gravel was shoved into his eyelids. He had sand in his throat. Blood came out of his ears. They held his beautiful head under the mucky water until John screamed no more, until the last mercurial orb of oxygen bubbled out from his lips. The men walked away. The corpse floated. The world went on. The men went on.

After John’s death my drinking worsened. I would drink three or four drinks before I went to parties so it could seem like I was only drinking as much as everyone else at the party. I started drinking after the party too, with a sense of release that I wasn’t being watched or monitored. I drank Scotch ‘neat’, now, just ice. I could drink an entire bottle of the stuff. The side effect of this was that my stomach was so full of acid the following morning that I couldn’t keep food down. I grew thin and my face bloated. When I was drunk I was dramatic and gleeful, unlike my shy self. This was fun for others to watch, but at other moments I skittered into disasters: I fell down stairs, I picked a fight with a friend over something I couldn’t remember afterwards, I babbled incoherently into phones to people who would cut the calls short and leave me talking to a dead line. Bishop said to her psychiatrist, Ruth Foster: ‘If only I didn’t feel I were that dreadful thing an alcoholic.’ Her dread matched mine.

Sometimes the drinking did work. On those nights it was like nuclear energy – all the lights went on. I kept drinking, trying to get back to that magically connecting moment, but it happened less and less often. And at the center of my drinking now swirled the bloated body of John. I kept thinking about his drinking, where that had led him. Uncle George said he couldn’t recognize him. The body was purple, swollen up. He could only recognize him through his teeth. Aunt Pattie had started seeing him in grocery stores. She said that he was speaking to her through the birds.

The drinks I took led me into a kind of hell. All the charming phrases and flirty behavior diminished. More often than not I ended up ignored.

One night the beautiful white Congregational Church stared down at me from the top of the green. Strict prim traditional Yankee New England was all around me. I went to a fraternity party at Chi Psi, and I could barely stand. The men in the fraternity were muscular and beautiful in their polo shirts. The place had an animal stench of sweat mixed with sweet colognes, and K was in the library reading Horace. I smoked a cigarette with a gesture more Bette Davis than Gary Merrill, lingering too long in my leering look at one of the men. The young fraternity brother had biceps like a cougar’s haunches, his chest was large, and erect nipples could be seen through the tight shirt like nails sticking out from a hunk of wood. I salivated.

‘God damn faggot,’ he said when he caught my look. He came over and punched me in the face. He and his cohort with all their horse-muscle threw me out onto the lawn, and my body lay splayed out much as John’s must have been. The town spun. I couldn’t speak to anyone about what had happened, not even K. Muteness deepened in me as my cheekbone stung from the bruise I woke up to the next day.

Even if I was at the most bohemian liberal college in the world it still could not undo the level of self-hate that mixed in with each neat Scotch I threw back.

The one creative writing class I took at Wesleyan was taught by Annie Dillard. She was already an acclaimed nature writer, pregnant for the first time, close to forty, hair dyed Marilyn Monroe blonde. She chain-smoked Merits. I was amazed by this woman. We all were. She’d won the Pulitzer for her Thoreau-like book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. She radiated intelligence like an electrical storm. Gave off wisdom like heat. Her wit whipped around that room like a cyclone and we almost had to hold our notebooks down.

Between classes, I slyly went to the Olin Library on campus and found her work in the stacks. I read:

It is a weakening and discoloring idea, that rustic people knew God personally once upon a time – or even knew selflessness or courage or literature – but that it is too late for us. In fact, the absolute is available to everyone in every age. There never was a more holy age than ours, and never a less.

She bowled me over. Her verbs! And how she ended that sentence ‘never a less’. The text sparkled in the stacks. The idea, too, of something ‘holy’ whispered to me, although the idea of religion still felt completely remote to me then. Of all the creative writing teachers on the planet, this one landed in front of me like a space probe.

At the time creative writing wasn’t held up as a major in undergraduate programs. Not knowing where to place us, the university gave our class a room in the chemistry department. Perched between Bunsen burners, Dillard sat in front of us like a Greek goddess. We brought in poems like offerings.

More and more I longed to be a writer. How to get there? In those classes a new determination began to stir within me. Where that came from I wasn’t sure. Some kind of self-awareness had sparked. Dillard seemed to believe in me too, although I wasn’t sure what that was based on. All I knew was that I was sitting before a woman who had accomplished what I wanted to accomplish. That was my absolute.

I desperately wanted to communicate something true on paper, something about the way my life swung between buttoned-up repressions and drunken outbursts. I tried valiantly to stay on top of our assignments despite my drinking. Even though the class met in the afternoons I sometimes had trouble getting there, and when I did I smelled as rank as a sticky bar room floor. My favorite assignment, which we did weekly, was to type out the poems of the poets we liked so we could feel the words go through us and onto the paper. I felt that if I kept typing Bishop’s poems some of her brilliance might rub off on me.

Then I read some more of Dillard’s writing. On Christmas break her memoir, American Childhood, came out. The sentences and paragraphs practically burnished. Like Bishop’s Yankee sensibility, the memoir steered clear of anything shameful. Keep your guard up, the book seemed to say. I followed her example, and kept trying to write.

By a miracle I graduated from Wesleyan in 1985. I felt a perfect failure, and the night of my graduation I drank to black out, and remember now only brief glimpses of things: a set of dark green trees, a person pulling me out of a ditch, making out with a man or a woman, I can’t be sure which, pulling the fire alarm in someone’s dormitory, hitting my head on a rock, waking up with a scab and blood caked on my cheek. No, The Bell Jar this was not. No Mademoiselle scholarship. No Fulbright to Cambridge. No poems in the New Yorker. No typing my thesis on Dostoevsky while on the roof of my dorm to improve my tan.

I didn’t know what to do next. I had applied to a graduate program in England to study the poems of George Herbert, but there was a fear in me. How long could I keep bluffing my way through classes? The way I drank I was fortunate if my academic work was mediocre. What good was it to study? Would they ever take me? And why was there still this persistent urge to want to die?

I applied too to the Breadloaf Writers Conference. Dillard encouraged me, and wrote me a letter of recommendation. I was accepted. Before I left Dillard puffed on her cigarette and said: ‘Spencer, if you want to write, and I hope you will, study something else.’ This last zen koan of hers seeded in me the confidence that would keep me writing, wherever I went.

When I arrived at Breadloaf I was struck by a woman standing in the lobby – blonde, tall, young, smart – a Piero della Francesca angel, attentive, listening, glittering with a golden aura, coming with some bright news. Maybe because most of the people were older, or because of the somewhat mischievous glint in her eye, I found her irresistible. I immediately introduced myself. She said her name was Katherine Buechner: quickly, I learned she was the daughter of Frederick Buechner, a theologian and writer of religious books I’d heard of rather than read. We were fast friends.

She was twenty-seven, and contemplating being a minister. A woman considering being a minister in those days was novel and brave. I admired her for it. I wondered for the first time about ministry, about what that word exactly meant. She told me Howard Nemerov, who was her instructor there, had called her ‘another one of those smart-ass Bennington girls.’ Her head titled back as she said this, in a kind of, well, Yankee way – deprecatory and convivial at once. I tried to mimic the gesture.

Most of Breadloaf I spent with Katherine. We became inseparable, together through the barn dances and evenings in the old rockers rolling in the twilight breeze and the cocktail hours and conversations with casual references to where Robert Frost did this or that, where Carson McCullers had sat, what Anne Sexton had done. Through it all Katherine was not drinking. This struck me. As did the way she never said much about it. She just did not do it.

One night I got separated from her, as drinkers often separate themselves out from sober people. I got so drunk that I woke up at a desk where I seemed to be writing a poem, only to find I was not in my room but a stranger’s. I don’t remember if it was a man or a woman. I don’t remember what they said. I had to be escorted back to my room – or did I stumble there myself? When I got up the next morning I was horrified. In the long breakfast room at a long table, my eyes all puffed up under dark sunglasses, I said to Katherine: ‘Why don’t you drink?’ My headache was intense. My eyes felt like they were being unscrewed from my head. I kept glancing up, worried I would run across someone from the night before.

‘It was a problem for me,’ Katherine said. Her tone was casual.

‘What do you mean?’ I asked. The clock with the painted face and roman numerals clicked behind us. Dust increased on the court cupboard with the inlaid ash and maple wood.

‘Just couldn’t stop once I started,’ she said.

We moved to the lobby. The writers had gone off to workshops and we skipped our appointments to poke and prod poems like lab animals. We sat in two tattered armchairs where hundreds of other writers must have sat, the butterscotch upholstery molted onto the small of our backs. I thought of what Bishop had said about her drinking: it ‘had to stop’ followed by her hopeful statement, ‘It can be done.’ Aspiring writers passed us, talking about workshops and agents.

‘Now I go to meetings,’ Katherine told me. It all seemed so simple. Tall spruce darkened in the distance, hayfields deepened to orange, speckled with little bits of brown. Fresh mountain water sluiced through the dolomite and granite rocks. Fall was coming, things were rolling up, things were being put away, vegetables canned, hay bales picked up.

‘You really don’t drink anymore? And it’s okay?’ I asked. I was thinking of my parents drinking every night in their living room, how the drinks mounted and mounted and I watched, mute. How necessary it all seemed. Then I pushed that thought away.

She smiled at me with mysterious welcome. I wasn’t ready to stop drinking, but her example held me. Some bright news on that Vermont mountaintop had been declared, and I had noted it.

Later that year I was living in a thirty-three-story high-rise in Minneapolis. My parents were nearby, and I was visiting them regularly, despite my sexuality remaining awkwardly off topic. They emptied countless wine glasses and spoke about the Republican party with droning tedium. When I visited their living room, bottles would come and go. I drank with them one night: we sounded like we were underwater. We got maudlin, laughed, held our heads up, but I felt some deep portentous and ominous layer of dread. Would this be how my life would go? My brother disappeared from the room.

He had told me he had begun to measure our parents’ intake by marking the bottles with his pencil, because he didn’t believe what they said they were drinking measured up with what they were actually drinking. My father’s words slurred one or two drinks in. Five or six drinks in my mother was yelling.

‘You’re chicken shit!’ she’d say to my father. Her hair was frosted and she’d put on weight. What had happened to their enthusiasm? What had happened to the woman I knew who laughed like a hyena in her leather pantsuits and turquoise jewelry? I missed her. What happened to their joy in singing along with the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show? Still, they always trundled off to bed together, waking up to work and busy themselves and read and then repeat – the same evening all over again. My mother never laughed in a carefree manner anymore. My father looked defeated. I kept what I saw to myself and tried to unsee it. This erasure of former affability happened fast. I didn’t want to connect it with what was happening to me. Meanwhile, they paid my rent.

Miraculously (and that is the right word), I was accepted for the MA on Herbert at the University of York – Herbert was one of Bishop’s favorites: I love imagining her getting up from her chair and dancing to samba records in Brazil, maybe a little tipsy, while in her purse were her lipsticks, cigarettes, a fifth of Gin, and her marked-up paperback of Herbert. It was a brand new MA, so I figured the professors must have mercifully overlooked my spotty college academic records, the grades that looked like a fever chart. It was another chance.

In the year before I went to England I tried out various jobs. Each one ended a week later: I would call in sick, unable to return, my whole body aching. I’d smell like garbage left out too long in a hot kitchen. I soured with Scotch and beer sweat. I was a telephone answerer, a stage manager, a substitute teacher, a volunteer with the mentally handicapped.

My apartment was on the top floor. The elevator, the carpeted hall, the freshly painted walls, the modern windows – all this was lost on me. I drank alone every night. I woke up to weird, unexplainable bruises. I canceled appointments. I threw bottles down the long garbage shoot before the evening’s drinking began as a way to stop myself from drinking too much. I wandered out to the liquor stores and replaced what I’d thrown out. I staggered through the streets.

In modern Minneapolis, with all its clean sidewalks and cool glass buildings, there was a gay bar called the Saloon on Hennepin Avenue. Neon lassoes decorated the walls and the walls were constructed like stables. I would stumble in late at night, once the drinking had started. The songs of Annie Lennox and Boy George and Bronski Beat played through the darkness, ‘Karma Chameleon’ and ‘Missionary Man’ and ‘Smalltown Boy’. I danced by myself. I hoped to connect with a man. I swerved. The men made space around me. The alcohol altered me, made me presentable, or so I thought. I did incredible dance moves, more seizure than Baryshnikov. I claimed I was alive and available. Cry boy cry. Then I fell down. I wet my pants. I vomited in a sort of burp that became a liquid the consistency of pudding. I wiped it away with my hand. The bouncers would help me up, and out. I lurched. I careened home alone.

My revulsion with myself accelerated. I ignored the mirror in the bathroom of the apartment. When I looked into it Lowell’s quote about the ‘fairy decorator’ haunted me. Shame ate me. If anyone commented on the possibility of my being gay I flipped into a rabid attack, or sunk into a glum stupor that would last for hours. Sometimes the only way I could navigate socially was to stop speaking to people that questioned me.

I called Katherine. I didn’t know what else to do. My soiled clothes were in the washing machine, my head throbbed. I was ready to try anything. I asked her about AA.

‘What do they do at those meetings?’

‘Talk,’ Katherine said.

She made it sound easy. Why then was sobriety so elusive to me? I was frightened of going. Bishop had been exposed to AA, but it never took. What if it didn’t take for me? Then what?

But Katherine encouraged me. I decided, after some time, that I would try. I dressed up, wore a pocket square in my sports jacket – an attempt to pass as affluently cozy and secure. I looked out the apartment window from thirty-three floors up, thinking of all the days blurred with hangovers, sending half-finished bottles whistling down the metallic garbage shoot. Cool, white stone, the Basilica of St Mary’s sat on the Minneapolis cityscape like a sundial. I needed repair.

The meeting was in a skyscraper downtown called the Piper Jaffrey building, sixty or so floors of sparkling blue glass. In a boardroom, at lunch hour, I found a group of alcoholics. A woman named Mary appeared. Who was she? A housewife? A businesswoman? I can’t recall now. She walked into the meeting as I was sitting down with coffee in a Styrofoam cup. She came to my side and said, ‘Glad to have you here.’ Her touch was genuine, soft, unlike what I had grown used to in bars. I raised my hand when they asked if there were any newcomers.

Another man, a stockbroker with red suspenders, turned to me. ‘Here, you might need this.’ He handed me a big blue book, a manual about the size of Bishop’s Complete Poems. On the wall was a large placard made of a shiny material like those maps they rolled down in geography class in high school. The paper crinkled and cracked. Twelve steps were outlined in boldface. God mentioned more than a few times. This did not repel me immediately. My associations with religion were fairly calming: my prep school, although Episcopal, had more Jews in it than Episcopalians, but I had never minded the prayers. My agnostic parents had always encouraged me to investigate. I wondered if this might be a cult. But if the embarrassment would stop, I was willing. My eyes darted. I questioned.

AA was a kind of family, people related through suffering and joy, and I was adopted immediately. People asked for my phone number and took it down. No one had done that in a while. When I could look at people I caught a glint of something close to pure glee mixed with a non-judgmental love. I couldn’t recall the last time I’d seen such a look. They wanted me. When was the last time someone wanted me?

Church before church, a glimpse of heaven, I stood in AA with my cup of coffee – jobless, jittery, handkerchiefed. In that AA huddle, I thought again of my cousin John. His face surfaced in the fluorescence of that first meeting, as I contemplated stopping, actually stopping. I heard his voice. I saw his bloated corpse floating down the river. I heard the plash and retreat of the men after they’d finished killing him.

A Bishop poem came to me. ‘Little Exercise.’

Now the storm goes away again in a series

Of small, badly lit battle-scenes,

Each in ‘another part of the field.’

Think of someone sleeping in the bottom of a rowboat

Tied to a mangrove root or the pile of a bridge;

Think of him as uninjured, barely disturbed.

I wanted to imagine John in that boat, barely disturbed. But it was impossible. He was dead. Now I, inexplicably, was in the boat. Saved, somehow, for the moment.

I was managing to stay sober. I stopped smoking. The air grew clearer. I began waking each morning without headaches, and I could now remember what had happened the night before. Embarrassment left me. There was a hint with my AA members, who were indeed a diverse lot – ex-cons, librarians, cops, secretaries, every color and sexual persuasion – that the awfulness of drinking was going to be replaced by cheerfulness. My world was expanding, moving out from the fixed world of books. My fingers were now ‘pollinated’ with coffee grinds, and often I had medallions for lengths of sobriety in my palms. Maybe my self-loathing would dissipate too. But sober or not, I was indelibly gay. That desire rooted in my groin, heart and cortex. That still shamed me.

I began wondering about Bishop’s apparent ease with the sexuality she kept off stage. She said to Lowell once, ‘I never met a woman I couldn’t make.’ Maybe it was her orphan status that allowed her to so easily live out her desire. Maybe the drink gave her confidence. It hadn’t helped me that way. Bishop always said how shy she was, but apparently she wasn’t when it came to sex. I, too, was shy. And without the booze, at least for the moment, I became shier. Without my drinks, sex, there in Minneapolis, with AIDS coming onto the scene, vexed me. How on earth could I approach it without first blacking out? With me, blackouts did not lead to sex, it led to passing out, to vomit. I’d been a dirty, ignored celibate who pissed on himself, and was attended to only by police.

I felt there, in AA, in land-locked Minneapolis, I was in an incomprehensible sea. The waves of voices, the coffee cups like buoy bells, the strange mystery of it. What would my life be like now that I did not have the ability to immerse myself in drink? I hoped AA might save me. And if I couldn’t make a go of AA, I felt then that I would need to take myself out of life once and for. Why sexuality continued to confound me I did not know. I did not know either why sobriety suddenly started burning in me there in Minneapolis. I still don’t know. I might never know.

Bishop died in 1979 from a cerebral aneurysm. Her young lover, Alice Methfessel, discovered her in her Lewis Wharf apartment in Boston’s North End when she went to pick her up for a dinner party. Alice was 36, Elizabeth 68. The last poem Bishop published in the New Yorker came posthumously. It was entitled ‘Sonnet’:

Caught – the bubble

in the spirit-level,

a creature divided;

and the compass needle

wobbling and wavering,

undecided.

Freed – the broken

thermometer’s mercury

running away;

and the rainbow-bird

from the narrow bevel

of the empty mirror,

flying wherever

it feels like, gay!

I read the poem again there in my apartment in Minneapolis as I gathered my belongings, preparing to leave for England. The poem surprised me, and surprise I’ve come to see is the reaction I treasure most in poetry.

That narrow poem on a broken thermometer extended its hand to me, welcomed me, just as Katherine had at Breadloaf, as the AA members had in the skyscraper. She ended on that word, ‘gay’ with a ‘rainbow-bird’ above it. The prominence of the word ‘gay’ was finally creeping into the margins of the world. As I readied my steamer trunk and the Minneapolis skyscrapers glittered in the afternoon, San Francisco had adopted the rainbow flag for the gay community.

The sonnet had only two sentences, and each began with a past participle rather than a subject, emphasizing two actions, caught and freed, the way a bird can be, and the way any gay person can be, caught by society’s admonishing rules, but freed by the knowledge that they can be loved as they are. To be authentic then, a gay person had to break convention the way Bishop broke the sonnet.

I was beginning to feel my way to freedom. I placed Bishop’s poems gently into the steamer trunk. I tapped the cover the way one might tap the shoulder of an old friend. How on earth had she managed to balance her drinking with writing such lasting poems? What will, what despair, what exertion did she have to keep at bay to do what she did? The AA meetings had given me a way out of my daily embarrassment, of being a drunk, and maybe, just maybe, there would be more to life for me. Bishop’s poetry gave me something that I hadn’t found before. A space to breathe. A stance – the art moving through her, rather than about her – that would give me space to live and figure my way into a sexual life where I could claim to be ‘what it was I was’, the way I was starting to claim my sobriety.

This essay is an extract from a longer work, The Little Entrance: Devotions, an autobiography that contrapuntally is infused with the lives and poems of seven poets.

(https://granta.com/why-should-you-be-one-too/)

Article on Katherine Buechner Arthaud: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2017/11/06/listen-way-god-listens#

Older Spencer Reece interview I was revisiting: https://blackbird.vcu.edu/v4n2/features/reece_s_040506/reece_s_text.htm

#spencer reece #poem #poet #poetry #elizabeth bishop #katherine buechner #katherine buechner arthaud #annie dillard

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fangedhqs-blog · 6 years

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our second event is officially over ! feel free to continue the threads that you feel are important and you didn’t get to finish, but PLEASE tag your thread with something along the lines of “past” in order for others to know when the thread take place. as always, we would like to thank everyone for being active and having so many amazing plots going ! below are all of the plots that people messaged us about to be included in this plot drop, as we asked of our members a few times. if we didn’t receive a message about a plot important to a character or a character’s appearance, then it won’t be listed here.

in the blissfully oblivious eyes of the founding families, the evening was an astounding success with a magnificent turn out. it was all captured through the perfectly aimed camera lens belonging to MARIAM VALE, including the portraits of the mandatory couples for the first dance & photos.

but as the first dance commenced and the mandatory couples parted ways, KOL MIKAELSON and OPHELIA BROOKS were followed by AVERY CHAMPNEY, who proceeded to stake kol in front of ophelia. unbeknownst to them, the whole thing was witnessed by PETER MAKRIS. being an original vampire, kol came back soon after being staked, angrier than ever. after finding avery, he almost killed them, but not before they killed a fellow party-goer for their suit, since his own was ruined upon being staked.

after leaving ophelia to find the hunter, she was kidnapped and tortured by MARCEL GERARD, who had turned off his humanity and snapped RAVYN NIGHTE’S neck earlier in the night. when he was done, VIOLET LEWIS took a stab. eventually ophelia was able to escape, being rescued by TAEYONG KIM in the woods.

at the same time, what seemed like a tag-team feeding session outside of the ball between FOX DUBOIS and long-time friend kol, tensions rose when the fox was threatened & attacked by kol, for predatory comments towards who he claims to be his witches.

LOK LONGWEI wasn’t as lucky as avery, for in the shadows away from wandering eyes, ELIJAH MIKAELSON ripped the klaus ally’s heart out. and speaking of KLAUS MIKAELSON, not many witnessed the altercation that occurred after his seemingly innocent dance with LUCY BENNETT, involving both his aforementioned brother who seemed intent on protecting the bennett witch, and crown rival, tay, coming to her aid.

surprise appearances were made by NARI SHIM, a descendant of tay’s, and JOHN GILBERT, the uncle of jeremy & elena gilbert. along with the vampire and the hunter’s appearance, an unrelated but more significant arrival of the ORIGINAL WEREWOLVES surprised everyone, especially the mikaelson family, who have a long & brutal history with the wolves.

meanwhile, friends & students of beloved history teacher MAYA LHAMO FLEMMING found her absence quite peculiar. she’d been missing for a few days prior to the ball, as well, prompting people to ask around for information. in the middle of the event, there was an announcement made about her disappearance in order for people to keep an eye out for her in the coming days. the entire town is still in a frenzy, hoping she has not fallen victim to yet another supposed animal attack. she is still nowhere to be found.

it is now SEPTEMBER 26TH. everyone is dealing with the aftermath of the ball in their own way. some are completely unaware of the supernatural events that occurred during the ball, while others did not get so lucky. we will be having about a two month gap (in-game) before our next event, but the following are things that can be written about in the meantime at any time before our third event:

SEPTEMBER 29TH. the sexy suds car wash fundraiser will be held by the mystic falls high school cheerleading team.

OCTOBER 4TH. full moon.

additionally, as we have previously announced, during this gap in between our second and third event, we will be bringing in undead characters. we aren’t sure of the specific date yet, but it will be happening before we begin our third event, which will be the annual MYSTIC FALLS HIGH HALLOWEEN PARTY that is open to all residents of the town. it will take place (in-game) on OCTOBER 31ST. we will be deciding on a date for this to take place out of character in the future, as we want to make the two month gap between the ball and the party somewhat realistic. again, thank you all for your participation, we love every single one of you !

#fanged.plot #fanged.admin #tvd rp #to rp #supernatural rp

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barbara-gordons · 7 years

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Queen of the People

Caroline would do anything for her poor excuse of a father. Even becoming the future Queen to Klaus Mikaelson.

word count: 3.3k+

also available on ao3 and fanfic.net

Despite Caroline’s known reputation for being a people person, she was not in fact a people person. Sure, she organized galas and tried on dresses a bit more often than a normal girl, but its not necessarily because she wanted to do them. Having a family like hers meant fighting harder for their name on a list. Or for anything, really. But Caroline wouldn’t complain. Why should she? People like that never win. But sometimes Caroline didn’t know if there was anything to win.

But she had to ignore those thoughts, and stick her feet into those tiny, tiny heels. Like now, as she tried to listen to her friend Katherine’s rant about the lack of humble men at the party they were currently at.

“Look at him, Caroline. Sure, he has a nice suit. But that’s it! And look at his face - mediocre at best. I wouldn’t even allow my maiden workers to date him. What a pig.” Katherine said, the cruel words slipping out of her mouth like nothing.

“Katherine,” Caroline sighed, “I’m sure he’s a nice man. You haven’t even spoken to him. Or to any man at this ball for that matter.”

“I don’t need to speak to him to know how much of a prick he is. It’s all in the posture, Care. They way they walk - how they step into a room like they own the place. Please. My father earns more in a day then they do in a year.” There was a beautiful scowl on Katherine’s face as she said this. There was usually one on her face. Katherine Pierce - beautiful, intelligent, talented, rich - but cruel, mean, and selfish. “I guess I’ll go talk to that one, he looks familiar. I think he’s a Salvatore.” she pointed her finger at a handsome blonde across the room. “I’ll see you later, Caroline.”

And now she was stuck in this overpriced ball alone. It wasn’t odd for Katherine to run off with a man despite talking bad about them, but she had hoped one of these days Katherine would stay with her for the duration of the party. So she wouldn’t be forced to conversate with the rich socialites that hated her purely because she wasn’t born with a silver spoon attached to her.

Caroline picked up her wine glass and moved to talk to Hayley, someone who just shamed her for not being able to afford the finest dresses, and not for having a condemned father. But before she could make a step, she was interrupted.

“Hi, I’m Rebekah.” The accented stranger said, clad with the finest clothing. Unlike what most people would think, Caroline wasn’t that good at recognizing designer clothing. But even her fashion deficient mind could tell what the gorgeous newcomer was wearing was worth of royalty.

“Um, I’m Caroline,” she said, flustered. “I’m sorry but, have we met? I don’t think I’ve seen you around this social crowd.”

“Oh, sorry. I’m here with Marcellus Gerard. I wouldn’t have normally come to this type of gathering, its a bit below my tastes. Anyways, have you heard of him? He’s my fiance.”

Had Caroline heard of him? Oh yes. Marcellus Gerard was one of the most prestigious bachelors of the country. Well, according to this new information, he wasn’t a bachelor anymore. And here she was, talking to his fiance. Clearly a rich one, which could be told from the way she acted like this world class ball was nothing but a mere cheap gathering. She was also quite beautiful. Her eyes pierced in a way that made Caroline think if she was asked to get out of here with her, she wouldn’t say no.

“Yes, I’ve heard of him. He knows my best girl friend, Katherine Pierce.”

Rebekah’s eyebrows rose in amusement. “You’re friends with that monstrosity of a whore? No offense to you Caroline, but she’s screwed more of my friends than I can count.”

This comment left Caroline quite surprised. No woman looking to marry up would speak like that in such a public event. But perhaps she was not marrying up, but marrying down.

“I’d prefer you not talk about her like that. She may be a whore in your terms, but she is still my friend.” Caroline spit out, not even shocked at her own behavior. She was a classy lady at most times, but cross her friends and she’d make you regret it.

Rebekah didn’t take what she said as seriously as Caroline did, the corners of her lips rising as she replied. “I like you. Classy. Snarky. You’d make a great Queen. But back what I came over here to say,” she sat her own wine glass on the nearby table. “You see that cocky little blonde fellow over there?” Rebekah looked over to the right, her eyes urging Caroline to look.

And she was so glad she did. There stood possibly the most gorgeous man she had ever laid her eyes on. Beautiful blonde curled hair, dark eyes that could see into the darkest parts of your soul, and thick seductive lips. The suit he was wearing only added to his allure, fitting him in all the right places.

“What about him?” She said, her voice quiet as if he could hear her as far away as he was.

“That’s my brother, Klaus. He hasn’t stopped talking about you all might. ‘Look at her’ this, ‘What a beauty’ that - it’s exhausting. I was hoping you’d talk to him and get him to shut his mouth. I have to hear it enough already.” this

“He’s interested in me?” Caroline was shocked. It wasn’t because she thought she was ugly, she definitely was not. Caroline Forbes was one of the most beautiful girls in the city, and that’s speaking humbly. But in this world, beauty didn’t attract suitors. Money did. And since Caroline herself was the reason she could afford to get in this party, she didn’t exactly have a lot of men lining up at her door. “Are you sure? He does know I don’t come from old money, correct?”

Rebekah flicked her hair across her shoulder. “Oh, he’s interested. And sweetheart, of course he knows. I could tell from the quality of that dress that you picked it up from some boutique and didn’t have it tailored. Now go talk to him, I don’t have all night. Marcel is waiting for me.”

Rebekah spun around and left without allowing Caroline to say a word, not even looking back to see if she had followed her orders.

Caroline looked back at Klaus, wondering if she should talk to him. He was now sporting a smirk, common among egotistical men she had often met. But as she looked around for other options, she decided it was best to indulge in the part of her that thought about nothing else but men and romance.

A burst of temporary confidence burst through her as she walked up to him and tapped him on the shoulder. “Hi. I’m Caroline.” Her smile said a million words, possibly the brightest thing in that ballroom.

Klaus turned around to look at her, his eyes raking up and down her body. “Well hello there love. I’m Klaus, but I’m guessing you already know that from my wretch of a sister. Let me guess, she told you that I think you’re the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, and that I wish to marry you someday, however long it takes.”

Caroline’s smile faltered. ‘Uh, yeah. Sort of.”

“Well,” his face slowly turned into a rotten grin. “She was correct.”

Damn it. Caroline thought. He’s gorgeous, has the voice of an angel, and is annoyingly charming.

“She also told me that you were annoying, and that you couldn’t shut your mouth.”

“I couldn’t shut my mouth about you, of course.”

Caroline couldn’t hide her genuine grin from appearing. Not the fake one she was too used to showing, but her actual happy smile. She had barely been speaking to him for a minute, yet something about him made her happier than most men could ever dream of.

“Do you want to dance?”

And with that, Caroline dragged Klaus on to the ballroom dance floor, and they danced.

They ended up dancing for hours, something Caroline had never done. Even Katherine showed surprise when they bumped into each other and she was still there. And the truth was, Caroline never wanted to leave. She was having the time of her life and she didn’t want the high to end. But as they say, good things always come to an end.

“I have to go, I need to check on my father.” Caroline whispered to Klaus, slightly love drunk from their torrid evening.

“Are you sure? You can’t stay a little longer?” Klaus whispered as well, the night having the same effect on him.

“I can’t. You don’t understand. My father … I need to check on him.”

“Very Well. I have … business I need to take care of later tonight anyways. Stay safe for me, love.”

Caroline blushed at the term of endearment. It wasn’t a unique or particularly special pet name, but they way he said it when he looked at her made the butterflies in her stomach go wild.

“Will you be at the next party in this district? I heard Bonnie Bennett is hosting a gala for her engagement to Malachi Parker.” Caroline looked at him hopefully, wanting to at least see him again. Maybe next time she’ll wear a prettier dress.

“For you, Caroline, I’ll go to the next thousand parties in the district. No matter how much my sister complains.”

Caroline softly smiled. “I’ll see you, then.”

“I’ll see you.”

The lights were turned on when Caroline arrived home. The lights were never turned on when she got home. Her father, as garbage as he was, always had a strict bedtime schedule for himself. The one good quality about him, her mother used to say before she ditched him and Caroline for a richer suitor and moved across the country.

That fact made it all more worrisome when she saw unfamiliar horses outside the house.

Hurrying inside the house, she rose her voice to a rate where no self righteous man could ignore her.

“What are you people doing inside my home?” She quickly found her father and stood in front of him, like that would make the intruders simply leave them alone.

“We’ve got orders from His Majesty's secretary that we arrest him for not paying his debt.” The man who spoke was clearly the head of the nethanderals, his badges just the tiniest shiner than the rest.

. Caroline flipped her head to her father, rage filling her eyes.

“Debt? Really Father? What for now? Betting on the horse races? Alcohol?”

“You were right by the first guess, m’am.” One of the men said, an impatient tone in his voice.

She turned her anger filled gaze over to the man who interrupted her. “Was I talking to you?”

The clear heat in her voice made him back down, his gaze falling to the floor.

Caroline turned her head back to her father, and spoke to him in a whisper. “How could you do this? Do you know how hard I’ve been working to try to pull your reputation out of the gutter?” “Caroline, darling- you don’t understand how hard it's been for me. I’ve- ”

“How hard its been? For you? You did this! How about how hard its been for me? Suffering at the choices of my failure of a father!” She took a deep breath and tried to organize her thoughts. “You know what? Its okay. I’ll handle this.”

At that, she turned around and flashed her biggest smile at the soldiers. “Boys. I’m sure we can figure something out. It's a lovely evening, after all. Wouldn’t you rather spend your time out at a party instead of arresting a good man for an incident that can be easily solved.”

“I’m afraid not m’am.” A soldier said. :”We got orders from his Majesty himself.”

“You said his Majesty’s secretary. Not his Majesty himself.” This was a stretch, Caroline knew, but she had to try something. She couldn’t let her father be taken.

And why did his Majesty care so much about an old man’s gambling debts?

“That’s pretty much the same thing miss. Now like you said, we do have parties we’d rather be at so if you’d let us take him in we could be there sooner.” He stepped forward, signaling for the rest of the men grab him.

“Take me instead.”

Caroline had no idea why she said that. It would probably be best if he was taken in. Less problems for her, less problems for everyone.

But he is her father, and she couldn’t bear the thought of him rotting in some jail cell. She would do anything for him. Even taking his place.

The soldiers looked at each other, exasperated looks on their faces.

“How about we take both of you, ask whoever's in charge to decide? This could take a while and I have a reception to attend.” The lead one asked, running his hand through his hair.

Satisfied, Caroline nodded her head and allowed the armed men to take both her and her father into custody.

The location they had taken them to was much nicer than Caroline expected. Heck, it was carpeted. And not cheap carpet either. Beautiful imported carpet. It was of royal caliber. And that was saying something, considering Caroline had never expected to find carpet of all things so beautiful that she described it as of royal caliber.

It was also heavily guarded, which was to be expected, considering it held criminals. But the guards were decorated. Heavily decorated, enough to where the shiny medals the soldiers who took her in wore were considered cheap.

When her and her father were led into a room that held the royal crest on its door, that’s when it hit her.

She was in the royal dungeon.

She chastised herself for not realizing it sooner, although the class of the area made it seem like an ordinary office instead of a dark dungeon that held the scariest criminals. And that posed another question - Why was her father in the royal dungeons when he was arrested for illegal horse betting, and not murder?

Her curiosity was soon replaced with fear as they were alone in that room.

Her father had not said a word yet, and she preferred it that way. She cared for him, yes - but he was the one who had gotten them in that situation in the first place. She wasn’t ready to forgive yet, not this soon.

Caroline opened her mouth to reprimand her father when the door started to open. She quickly closed her mouth but it opened again in shock when she saw who opened that door.

Klaus.

He moved swiftly to the other side of the table in front of them, a masked emotion on his face.

It was clear he didn’t expect Caroline.

But the look on his face as he glanced over to her father said the opposite.

Klaus was a beautiful man. Something Caroline definitely learned after spending the evening with him. And look of pure and utter hate that covered his face as he looked at Caroline’s dad wasn’t any different. Even in the ugliest mood, Klaus could look as heavenly as a God.

Which made Caroline’s mood very inappropriate for the situation they were in.

But she spoke anyways, hoping to ignore the dreamy good looks of the man in front of her and save her father.

“Take me instead.”

Klaus’s gaze returned to her, an annoyed look on his face. “Caroline, love - what the bloody hell are you thinking?”

“Don’t call my daughter that. How the hell do you even know her name yet? She hasn’t be registered!” Caroline’s dad had an almost brave look on his face. Caroline would be proud if he actually was brave.

“Father, it’s fine. We’re … acquaintances.” She said to him, unsure of how to tell her father ‘We danced all night at a ball and I’m pretty sure he’s the most beautiful man I’m highly sure I’ll ever see in my life.’ And to Klaus she said, “I’m protecting my father. What the bloody hell are you doing here?”

He smirked. “I forgot. You don’t know who I am.” He crossed his arms together and sat back in the chair. “Long Story short - I’m Prince Mikaelson. And your father owes me quite a lot of money.”

He was Prince Mikaelson.

The soon to be crowned prince.

Caroline didn’t know why she didn’t realize sooner. Sure, he had been kept out of the media his entire life in order to prepare for his future duties as king - but she should’ve seen the signs.

But she was too distracted by the piercing eyes of the man sitting in front of her. Damn him.

“Oh.” Her eyes widened. She was tempted to stop, to let her father be detained in the name of royalty. Then looked her father in the eyes. And she knew she couldn’t live knowing he was rotting in a cage. “Well still - take me instead. I’m sure I’m a fitting payment for the debts.”

“You shouldn’t have to be a payment for his debts.” Klaus looked over at her father, disgust in his eyes “What about you? Are you going to let your daughter do this? Waste the rest of her life to pay your debts?”

Like the useless pile of junk her dad was, he stayed quiet and looked down at the floor.

Klaus scoffed at the silence. “Fine. But since Caroline did nothing wrong, I offer up a different version of .. payment.”

At the silence of Caroline, he continued on.

“In order to become King, I must have a Queen. A Queen that looks good in the media. A woman of the people. It’s something that my father commands. But I’d also like that Queen to likable to me.” He paused, leaning forward on his elbows. “That’s you, Caroline.”

Caroline blinked in shock. “Wait, are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

“If what you’re thinking is that I’m offering you the role as my Queen, than yes.’

She didn’t know what to say. Klaus Mikaelson, future King of her entire country, was asking her to marry him and become his Queen.

“Can I think on it?” She took a deep breath, tucking a piece of her hair behind her ear.

“Of course you can. But until then, your father will have to be in a holding cell until you make your decision.” Klaus stood up, walking towards the door.

Until Caroline’s father yelled out in protest.

“You can’t hold me in here,” he yelled out widely, fear present in his eyes. “Caroline - please. Take his offer. Please.”

The tension in the room was thick. There was Klaus, disgusted that a father could tell out his daughter like that. That he could try to take away Caroline’s decision and consent to do this. Then Caroline, who was internally conflicted. She could leave, walk away to make her decision. But her father might never forgive her. And she could say yes, her father free the role of a future Queen bearing weight on her shoulders. And Caroline’s dad Bill, who cared about nothing but his freedom.

Both the men in the room looked at Caroline, waiting for a decision. But the only thing Caroline could think about is when she was 9.

It was the perfect age for her. Caroline’s mom was alive, and her father hadn’t fallen off the deep end. It was pure bliss for her. Staying up with her mother reading her favorite childhood books, and getting up early with her dad to study and learn. It was a time she hadn’t appreciated enough. A time she wish she had now.

Thinking of those times, of all the knowledge - she decided.

‘Yes, I’ll do it.” She said to Klaus. “I’ll marry you. I’ll be your Queen.”

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