#happy birthday big j | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

hallietblr · 10 months

Text

my favourite birthday girl | j.fisher x reader

request: i would like to request can it be where jere and i are best friends and its my bday belly and conrad throw a surprise bday party for me at the becks beach house and jeremiah & i go upstairs and we go in his bedroom he confesses that he liked me since last summer and i have my first time with jere trying different sex positions like hes on top of me and im on top of him riding him & doing cowgirl style position lots of kissing can it be smut/angst and is it okay if i include my name and if not you can do y/n thanks babe❤️❤️❤️❤️🫶🏻🥰

a/n: i fricking LOVE this!! i had so much fun writing it and i hope you all enjoy!

warnings: SMUT (minors DNI), oral (fem! receiving), swearing, alcohol consumption, and jeremiah being a total sweetheart

—

the sun was shining brightly through the windows of my bedroom, the morning breeze coming through smelling of sea salt. i flutter my eyes open, taking in the warmth of the summer. i reach for my phone that was charging by my bed side. the moment the lockscreen wakes, it’s full of birthday messages.

i feel myself smile as i go through the individual texts from all my friends back home in maine. i respond to them all, thanking each of them for the kind and loving messages.

after doing so, i finally decide that it’s time for me to get out of bed. i stretch out the slumber from my body before crawling out of the warm bed. i grab my phone and my bluetooth speaker and head over to my bathroom to start my birthday right.

cruel summer by taylor swift starts playing loudly as i pull off my pajamas, which was in reality one of jeremiah’s old t-shirts. i decide to text my friends to see what the plans were for the day, assuming they had something in mind.

—

SUMMER GANG☀️🌊🫶

y/n!

goodmorning guys!! what are the plans for today?

stevie:

con and i are going fishing at the pier today

belly <3:

i told my mom that i’ll go to the store with her today!! sorry girl!

y/n!:

that’s fine haha have fun! tell laur i said hi:)

i should be available today i think

connie:

i thought ur coming fishing?

stevie:

yeah!! boys trip!!

belly <3:

wow i’ve nvr seen us all so busy lol

wdym it’s a regular day

connie:

nvm mom says u need to clean ur room jere

stevie:

LOL

belly <3:

so true, it’s gross jeremiah

shut upp

urs isn’t any better bells

belly <3:

y/n!:

stop being mean j

—

i close my phone, a bit disappointed that it appeared that all my friends forgot about my birthday. i try to shake it off and assume that they’re all busy, so remembering a birthday isn’t that big of a deal.

i step into my shower, washing my hair with my coconut shampoo and conditioner, lathering my body with body wash, and shaving every inch of my body. i sing to taylor swift as i shower, feeling my muscles relax in the warm water. i dry myself off with a towel and pull on a cute purple summer dress that i had gotten earlier last week.

after putting on some makeup and doing my hair, i figured that i was ready to go downstairs to see my family. at least they would remember my birthday.

you only turn seventeen once, plus laurel, susannah, and my mom always told me that seventeen is an amazing year.

my mom was preparing my favourite smoothie bowl when i got to the kitchen. her face lit up after seeing me turn the corner and a smile drawn up her face, “happy birthday, my babygirl!” she exclaimed, pulling me into a tight embrace.

i hug her back, “thank you, momma!”

she hands me the beautiful smoothie bowl, “here you go, sugar! let me go get you your presents!”

my mom scurries away to her office before returning with multiple gifts all wrapped up in colourful gift wrap. she places them on the kitchen island before sitting down beside me.

i was already half way done my breakfast when my dad and baby sister came into the kitchen.

“happy seventeenth, babydoll” my dad grins, planting a kiss on my forehead, “i can’t believe how grown up you are already.”

“happy birthday sissy!” my four year old sister yells, hugging my leg. i ruffle her hair, thanking the both of them.

my mom urges me to open up the presents, she had always been a huge gift giver — seeing people’s reactions were her favourite thing. i open the sealed boxes, revealing lululemon clothing, a new ipad, gorgeous jewelry, and some makeup products that i’ve been wanting to get.

“mom!” i exclaim, in shock of the overwhelming amount of gifts, “you didn’t have to!”

“oh, honey,” she coos, brushing my hair, “it’s your seventeenth birthday! of course i had to, do you like them?”

i look at her with my mouth opened agape, “yes, yes! of course i love them all! you know me so well, thank you!”

my arms wrap around my mom, squeezing her tight.

“my first baby,” she whispers into my ear so my sister, lindsay, doesn’t hear her, “i love you with my whole heart.”

i finish up the rest of my breakfast, while also admiring my new items. my dad also takes a few photos of us, most likely to post on his facebook page later. luckily, i look decent right now.

“eat up,” my dad says to me, “your friends are probably waiting for you.”

i shrug, “they’re all busy today.”

my mom turns to me with a raised eyebrow, “seriously? do you want me to call susannah?”

i shake my head quickly, “no! it’s alright, really.”

“i’m sorry, baby” my dad squeezes my shoulder, “you can hang out with us today.”

i give him a small smile, “that sounds good.”

the rest of the day was uneventful, well not exactly. it was moreso just a typical day for us. my sister and i went swimming in our pool, i watched tv with my parents, and scrolled through my phone a ton. i really didn’t want to confront my friends about them forgetting my birthday, it would’ve been immature was what i told myself. it’s not like i’m six anymore.

i was laying on my bed when i received a text message.

—

heyy pretty

wanna come over? we just came back from fishing 🎣

y/n!:

sure :)

awesome! see you soon!!

also wear something nice ;)

y/n!:

why?

not that you don’t always look nice!!!

my mom wants to take photos or smt lol

y/n!:

oooook

—

my brows furrow in slight confusion of the request but i shrug it off. i get up from my laying position and go to my closet to find something ‘nice’. i find a black satin slip dress that i brought from back home, i figured this would be nice enough. i put it on and look at myself in front of my mirror.

i smooth down the material of the dress, checking how it looks from the side and from behind. i silently pray that jeremiah would like it, i’ve overheard him, conrad, and steven talk about how jeremiah is an ass man multiple times — considering how the satin material of the dress perfectly fits my bum, i’m convinced he’ll appreciate it.

i grab my phone, sunglasses, and my favourite lip gloss before heading downstairs. i see my parents cuddled up on the couch, watching a movie together with my sister fast asleep in the space next to them.

i slide on my white converse and head over to them, “i’m going over to the fishers.” i tell them. they smile and remind me to have fun and to be home by two am.

the walk over to the fisher summer home is brief, a quick five minute walk. them living only two houses over from mine always came in handy. i open up the front door before my vision became black.

“do you trust me?” he says, jeremiah’s hands clamped over my eyes.

“if you ruin my mascara, j, i might cry.” i joke, “yes, i do trust you.”

“okay, good.” i can hear his infamous smile in his voice, “come with me.”

he guides me slowly through the house, his hands still over my eyes. jeremiah lifts them off and it takes me a moment before noticing all the decorations put up around the kitchen. there are streamers hanging from the walls and across the ceilings, so many pretty balloons in every corner of the room, a huge ‘happy birthday’ sign hanging on the cupboards.

my hand flyes to clamp over my open mouth, “oh my god!”

steven, belly, laurel, susannah, and conrad all jump up from their hiding spot behind the kitchen island.

“surprise!” they all scream out. i smile widely, taking in everything,

“you guys!” i gush, as im being pulled into a hug from jeremiah, “thank you!”

his muscular arms hold me and he plants two kisses on my hair, “did you really think we forgot your birthday, pretty girl?”

i laugh, “well maybe! you guys are forgetful sometimes… like the time you forgot belly and i at the walmart!”

he rolls his eyes playfully, “oh shush, that was one time!”

“we never forget birthdays here.” susannah giggles before also hugging me, “happy birthday my gorgeous and beaming girl.”

everyone takes their turn in hugging me and wishing me a happy birthday. i thank each of them individually, the smile never leaving my face once.

“who planned this?” i ask laurel, who was carefully pulling out the birthday cake from the fridge.

“it was all belly and connie’s idea” she smiles, “now go sit!”

i take my seat next to jeremiah and steven before laurel brings the cake with seventeen candles on it in front of me. they all sing happy birthday to me and i close my eyes to make a wish.

every year since i was five years old, my birthday wish has been the same. not even just for my birthday, anytime i saw a shooting star, or tossed a penny in a fountain, or honestly any other occasion that required making a wish — it has always been the same.

it was wishing for jeremiah to notice me in the same way that i see him. it’s all i’ve ever wanted, as stupid as it can get.

i blow out all the candles and susannah cuts up the cake into slices before serving it to everyone. belly reminds me of all the birthday presents that they had gotten me, and to open it later.

after cake, susannah and laurel agree to leave the home to go to a cocktail bar so that the kids can have the house to themselves for a few hours. more teenagers from cousins start showing up, all of them wishing me a happy birthday as they come in.

drinks are being served, music is playing loudly off the multiple speakers scatter around the home, beer pong matches are being played by the pool, people dancing.

jeremiah stays next to me for the whole night, we chat with a few of our friends while sipping our seltzers.

“do you wanna go upstairs for a bit?” jeremiah says to me in a hushed tone, “y’know, to get away from this?”

i nod, “yeah, for sure.”

he smiles, taking my hand into his own and guiding me through the crowd and up the stairs. we walk to his bedroom, he closes the door behind me and locks it. jeremiah places his drink on his dresser and offers to put mine next to it, i agree and soon we’re both seated on his bed.

we make small talk, him asking about my birthday so far as he rummages around in his desk drawer. he sits back down beside me, facing me. he places a small velvet box into my hands,

“open it, my favourite birthday girl.” he smirks, looking into my eyes. his hand was on my thigh and i can feel myself blushing.

i think i can get lost in his ocean eyes, they’re so beautiful and full of life. i smile and carefully open it, inside was a gorgeous golden ring with a large (what im assuming was a fake) diamond on it.

“j…” i gasp, lifting the ring out of its box and admiring it, “this must have costed a fortune.”

he shrugs, “anything for you, look on the band.”

i bring the ring closer to my eyes and see that there’s an engraving on the inside of the band.

in love with my best friend <3

my jaw drops, “jeremiah?”

i look up at him, our eyes interlocking. he slowly nods, “i love you, y/n — i’ve always have, i thought it was a childhood crush and i don’t think i really realized until last summer that i truly do love you.”

“can i?” he asks, taking the ring from my hand. i nod and he carefully slips it onto my finger before being it to his lips and kissing it.

i pull him into a kiss, my hands rested on his cheeks and his on my waist. he kissed back almost immediately. my hands move down to his built chest and gently push him down onto his back, our lips never leaving each others. i adjust my legs so im straddled on him,

“i’ve always loved you too.” i whisper against his lips, he smiles into the kiss and kisses me harder.

his fingers fiddle with the edge of my dress, hands sliding up and down the back of my thighs before squeezing my ass slowly, “god, i couldn’t take my eyes off of you in this dress. it makes your body look so fucking good.” jeremiah groans.

i lower my crotch onto the evident tent in his pants, he gasps at the contact while slowly grind my hips on his.

“fuck, you’re gonna make me come in my pants.” he moans into my ear as i flip my hair onto one side. i bring my face to his jawline, kissing it and licking the soft skin. his hands tighten around my ass and i moan at the contact.

his hand slips under my dress and to the lace material of my thong, his finger slide underneath the band of it. he lifts it before letting it go, the snap of my underwear against my skin making me moan louder.

“sit on my face,” he tells me in a low voice, i feel myself getting even more wet and excited at the tone of it, “let me give you another birthday gift.”

he lifts me by the waist and moves me so my core is hovering above his mouth. i grab onto his head board while jeremiah slowly moves the lace material to the side and lowers me onto his face.

i gasp loudly when his tongue licks a long stride between my folds. he moans into me, “fuck, you’re so wet for me, baby.” he mumbles against me, the vibrations causing me to throw my head back in pleasure.

jeremiah dips his tongue into me, licking up all the juices and tracing figure eights against me. i squeeze the headboard tighter, becoming a moaning mess quickly. his tongue is magic. he fucks me with his mouth, my thighs shaking around his head,

“shit, jere.” i cry out, feeling my high coming closer. his hands squeeze my ass yet again before landing a smack on my left ass cheek. i moan loudly in response, my body flowing with immense pleasure, “fuck, i’m gonna come!”

he never slows his tongue as i feel my orgasm come crashing down on me. waves of pure pleasure crashing down. jeremiah licks up every last drop as i slowly come down from the high. i move myself down from his face and back down towards his groin. i lean down to kiss his passionately, tasting myself on his lips,

“holy shit, i can eat you out all day long.” he says to me as his hands fumble with his pants. he kicks off his pants and boxers. his erection slaps his lower abdomen and i drool at the sight of it. it’s huge, red tip begging for attention and veins pulsating on the sides of it.

i move to give him a blowjob but his grip on my waist prevents me from moving, “it’s your birthday.” jeremiah tells me, “you can give me head another time.” he winks

my hips position themselves above his thick and veiny cock and i lower myself onto it. he fills me up perfectly and we both moan loudly at the same time. every inch of him inside on me as i bottom out.

i slowly start rocking my hips against him, both of us becoming a panting mess. his hands never leave my hips, lifting me and slamming me back down onto his dick.

“you feel so good, baby” he praises, “you tight pussy feels amazing around me, fuck”

i continue riding him, my hands tangled up in his hair, pulling it which makes him moan.

“i- i think your cock was made for me.” i whisper in his ear before kissing him harshly.

he smirks, “oh yeah?”

and i nodded feverishly before he flips us around so im on my back and his on top of me, “sorry baby, i want to be in control now”

he pulls out almost entirely before slamming himself back in, the new position making him hit me even deeper than he was before. he thrusts harder and deeper, my back arches and i grab onto the sheets beside me, “fuck i’m close” i cry

“me too, hold on.” he continues fucking me, littering kissing on my face and neck. i can feel my inner muscles squeezing around him which makes jeremiah groan, “i’m fucking gonna come.”

“let it go.” he encourages me, his thumb going down to start abusing the bundle of nerves. almost immediately, i feel myself orgasm. my legs tightening around his waist and i feel him finish inside of me. he releases a series of curse words as he fucks us both through our orgasms.

a few moments after he pulls out and rolls next to me. we’re both breathing heavily, trying to catch our breaths, “holy shit” i pant out, looking over at him.

he grins, “that was amazing.”

“beyond amazing.” i repeat and he laughs,

“fuck, i should’ve asked you this before.” he says, reaching over to cup my face, “will you be my girlfriend, y/n?”

i blush, “yes, a hundred times yes!”

—

taglist! @randomaccountworld123 @bxbyyyjocelyn @20nugs @jeremiahxaesthetic

#jeremiah fisher fanfic #jeremiah fisher imagine #jeremiah fisher x reader #tsitp imagine #jeremiah fisher x y/n #tsitp x reader #jeremiah fisher angst #jeremiah fanfic #jeremiah x reader #jeremiah fisher fanfiction #jeremiah fisher fluff #jeremiah fisher smut #tsitp smut #the summer i turned pretty x reader #the summer i turned pretty imagine #the summer i turned pretty smut #the summer i turned pretty fanfic

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astonmartinii · 8 months

Note

i hope your finger’s ok!! please take all the time you need and remember you health comes first :) imma be selfish and send you a charles request cause ur writing makes me smile at my phone like an idiot and i can’t help it :p ok so!! charles x versteppen reader? shes max’s sister and drives for redbull (cause im delulu like that) and they’ve been fighting w each other since they were kids (no one knows why they started arguing they’re j petty and refuse to give it up even though they dk what they’re arguing abt anymore) and obvs they’re in love w each other - maybe another drivers flirting w her or smth and charles j snaps and hard launches the reader cause surprise they’ve been dating each other 🤭 holy shit this is long sorry for rambling 🙏🙏

angel baby, devil child | charles leclerc social media au

pairing: charles leclerc x verstappen!reader

enemies to lovers blah blah blah

yourusername

liked by maxverstappen1, carlossainz55 and 1,743,200 others

yourusername: crazy, crazy race. sorry not sorry to the tifosi, tell ur girl @charles_leclerc to kiss my ass not my rear tyre xoxo

view all comments

user1: okay they're clearly still in the enemies phase... when can we skip to lovers

user2: i personally love that charles is the mortal enemy of both verstappen siblings that's so slay of him

maxverstappen1: crop me out again and say goodbye to a tow in qualifying

yourusername: sorry maxy, not my fault i got all the photogenic genes xx

maxverstappen1: erm rude @christianhorner tell her to stop bullying me

yourusername: two can play at that game @sebastianvettel tell max to stop being a baby

user3: the way neither christian or seb replied they really don't get paid enough to deal with them

charles_leclerc: what is it with verstappens and their love for pushing me off the track

yourusername: what is it with your front wing and my rear tyre

charles_leclerc: umm i asked you first

yourusername: stop deflecting babe, we all know you love my ass so much you wanted a touch

charles_leclerc: i'd rather deep fry my hands than touch your rear

maxverstappen1: that can be arranged

user4: can't wait for these three to all be in the same press conference next week 🍿

carlossainz55: my favourite person to share the podium with

yourusername: thanks chilli (@tifosi you heard it here sainz is against ferrari 1-2s)

carlossainz55: NO that's not what i meant

landonorris: i see how it is ... god all men are the same AM I NOT PRETTY ENOUGH FOR YOU?

maxverstappen1

liked by charles_leclerc, landonorris and 1,204,809 others

tagged: yourusername

maxverstappen1: happy birthday to my bestest friend, biggest rival and favourite roommate. though maybe now you're 23 you can get your own place so you can sneak out to meet up with your secret boyfriend on your own terms and can keep that massive ballsack away from jimmy and sassy. i love you and verstappen dominance 4 ever.

view all comments

user7: i love y/n but i think she should bring her cat to races as a scare tactic

yourusername: wrinkle doesn't appreciate your tone but it is duly noted

yourusername: awwwwwwwww i love you maxy !! and you're never getting rid of your little sister unless you get married and ur a big fat nerd so that's never happening xx

maxverstappen1: attacking me after i just bought you a whole ass car

yourusername: i JOKE. thank you soooo much and you'll never get rid of me you love me too much to anyway.

maxverstappen1: enough to finally introduce me to the mystery man?

yourusername: blocked.

user8: are we all just ignoring her doing her literal eyeliner with a knife?

user9: or the fact that max likely walked in and was like oh wait this is a sick shot

danielricciardo: oh no that was me, i'm still traumatised but it's probably the best photo i've ever taken

yourusername: easy to do with a model like me

charles_leclerc: wtf is that thing in the last one

yourusername: rude of you to think ur balls look any nicer

charles_leclerc: what?

yourusername: what?

user10: does anyone want to elaborate?

carlossainz55: happy birthday y/n !

yourusername: thanks carlos, thank you for the flowers 👍

user11: this is either their way of flirting or y/n really couldn't give a flying fuck about carlos' obvious crush on her

yourusername

liked by maxverstappen1, danielricciardo and 2,098,560 others

yourusername: another trip around the sun and still following my brother around, difference is now i beat him x

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user16: your honour i am so obsessed with her

maxverstappen1: can't even be angry about it, you deserve the world

yourusername: you softy, i love you

maxverstappen1: also dummy i know who your boyfriend is now did you guys forget that we LITERALLY LIVE TOGETHER

yourusername: i was intoxicated my bad but we bought you breakfast?

maxverstappen1: literally the only reason he hasn't gone over the balcony, he might want to be gone before this hangover wears off

yourusername: noted.

user17: yall want to share with the class?

user18: based on ^^ this reaction i'm going to say it's not carlos

user19: watch out he'll drop a shit pick-up line in a second and be rejected

carlossainz55: hope you enjoyed your birthday beautiful

user20: bro this guy STINKS

user19: i told yall

yourusername: thank you carlos

user21: i'm sorry this is dry as hell it can't be carlos

charles_leclerc: my shoes will never recover, i'll be sending an invoice your way

yourusername: you're a millionaire boo, you can replace those tacky white trainers yourself

charles_leclerc: is having no manners a verstappen trait?

yourusername: come for max all you want, but the birthday girl? low leclerc

charles_leclerc: when you go low i go lower

yourusername: oh believe me i know all about you and going down

user22: DO YALL MIND?

user23: do they think we're dumb?

charles_leclerc

liked by pierregasly, lancestroll and 1,204,674 others

charles_leclerc: a weekend without racing?

view all comments

user24: what is biden doing about the soft launch pandemic?

user25: well this is oddly timed ...

yourusername: you look like you'd have sweaty hands

charles_leclerc: wouldn't you like to know

yourusername: unlike all ur fangirls i've actually smelt you sweaty after a race so you can keep your hands to yourself

maxverstappen1: you heard her 🤨

charles_leclerc: why are you here? is this a 2 for 1 deal on annoying dutch people

yourusername: you can call him annoying all you want, but you love me don't lie

charles_leclerc: my lawyer says i shouldn't comment on that ;)

sebastianvettel: when will you two stop?

yourusername: sorry seb :(

charles_leclerc: sorry seb :(

user26: i know carlos is sick reading this weird flirting when y/n never comments on his pics

user27: she comes here just to flirt cause she didn't even like the photo

user28: she doesn't even follow him 😭

pierregasly: i love a slow burn as much as the next person BUT NOT WHEN I DON'T KNOW WHO IT IS PICK UP THE PHONE

charles_leclerc: you're so dramatic, nobody knows calmar

maxverstappen1: he's lying i do

pierregasly: WHAT

charles_leclerc: by ACCIDENT i didn't tell him by choice

user29: so like, it's definitely y/n LOL

user30: oh no everyone get ready marca is going to run a story tomorrow about how charles leclerc is ruining carlos' career with psychological warfare by flirting with the girl he likes

user31: sainz sr about to wage war lol

charles_leclerc

liked by pierregasly, yourusername and 2,304,889 others

tagged: yourusername

charles_leclerc: i don't share. i love you. please follow me on instagram now (and let me come on max's jet) x

view all comments

user35: HOLY FUCK

user36: they're so fucking sexy my lord

yourusername: you're so weak, one teammate flirts with me and you hard launch, i've had 12 year olds use me as a face claim to pretend they're pregnant with your child

charles_leclerc: they took your face? i happen to quite like it, can they give it back?

yourusername: quite?

charles_leclerc: don't make me look bad you know i positively LOVE YOUR FACE

yourusername: and my ass since it's all you look at on track

charles_leclerc: okay you can drop the act now people know we're in love stop being mean to me :(

yourusername: but it's true, no?

charles_leclerc: rest assured i love your actual ass much more

maxverstappen1: believe me the people she lives with know WAY too much about how much you love it

user37: carlos sainz really thought he had a chance when these fools have been together for TWO years

sebastianvettel: congratulations you two, glad we don't have to watch you two trying to be subtle now

maxverstappen1: so wait when did you find out?

sebastianvettel: about two weeks into the relationship, they were very obvious

yourusername: thank you for keeping our secret dad <3

user38: y/n really said you ARE my grid dad

yourusername: oh no that's my actual dad

charles_leclerc: he's literally going to walk y/n down the aisle

maxverstappen1: please don't tell me you're engaged? i only just got over you actually being together

charles_leclerc: i'm not your brother yet don't worry (i will be soon)

carlossainz55: congrats guys

user39: it's okay bro you can cry

yourusername

liked by maxverstappen1, charles_leclerc and 2,301,541 others

tagged: charles_leclerc

yourusername: two years with the love of my life, still on max's side on val d'argenton x

view all comments

user40: they're disgusting (when will it happen to me)

charles_leclerc: we'll have to agree to disagree

yourusername: just admit it you love to push verstappens off the track

charles_leclerc: sorry babe as much as i love you, i'll never let you win x

yourusername: good thing i always beat you then x

charles_leclerc: either way victory sex still bangs

user41: yes, yes they're cute, but i need a full on play-by-play of how this relationship came to be

user42: i know these menaces were giggling and kicking their feet every time they had an argument in comment sections

yourusername: oh it was very fun

charles_leclerc: but the radio messaged are 100% real lol

maxverstappen1: thanks for having my back, you're welcome for all the gross pictures i've taken for you guys

yourusername: consider your payment like every meal i make us

maxverstappen1: well if i did it f1 would be down three drivers

user43: wait so does charles basically live with them now?

maxverstappen1: unfortunately yes. depressing music, even worse cooking than me and horrendously loud sex with my sister. i should kick him out

charles_leclerc: i literally bought you noise-cancelling headphones?

maxverstappen1: nothing you can say will save me from this trauma

yourusername: just shag daniel and get off of our case x

note: ahhhhh i am so sorry this request took so long, my inbox keeps moving stuff around lol. my finger is good thanks for asking, the human body is a wonder and i peeled off the last of my scab this week lol. i hope this was the kinda thing you were looking for !! xx

#f1 imagine #f1 x reader #f1 instagram au #f1 x you #f1 #charles leclerc x reader #charles leclerc #charles leclerc instagram edit #charles leclerc imagine #charles leclerc instagram au #charles leclerc x you

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raitonsfw · 3 months

Text

birthday sex with geto suguru

let’s be honest, geto would forget his own birthday; too wrapped up in the shitty contents of a curse to even remember to look at the date. and being the girlfriend you were, you’d mark it on every calendar you had.

the vanilla cake you baked for him would be whipped with icing, sweeter than normal– you knew his missions, the curses that he’d swallow, and you wondered if you put enough sugar. knowing his complaints, you’d need the whole bag dumped into the mix and then some.

you’d coo a meaningful ‘happy birthday’ to him as soon as he’d walk in, dazing him from his unethical thoughts and he’d smile at you as he put the pieces together despite his tired mind. it’s not that he meant to forget his own birthday, the day had just caught up with him. and you’d feel bad, but soon the feeling would dissolve as you kiss at buttercream frosted lips.

later that night, he’d be splayed underneath you– completely in awe as you bounced sweetly on his dick. he’d be enraptured by your beauty, his eyes wandering over every surface of your body. Your breasts would bob in his big hands, his entire palm cupping one and you’d moan out as he’d squeeze them lovingly. then, his hands would trail towards your tummy.

he’d press his fingers lightly against your abdomen, gauging if he could feel his cock bulging against it– and he could. next, his hands would end up smoothing over the plush of your hips– of your thighs and he’d almost cream inside you when you switched your position on top of him. to kiss at his chest, his neck, everywhere you could reach.

he’d start thrusting inside you now, his strong arms helping you fuck down on him as you’d lap a hickey near his collarbone, eliciting a small groan out of him. which was extremely rare, especially when he was tired. but he just couldn’t help it, you felt so fucking good around him– and your pussy was sinful as you’d squeeze him just right. his eyes would roll back in his head, quiet pants of your name slid from his tongue and you were practically drunk off his voice.

“you always spoil me, baby…”

“kiss me there, please– right there, need you...”

“j-just like that, keep bouncing for me– o-oh fuck…”

“shit, ‘m getting close… want me to cum inside you?”

and you’d desperately yearn for him to– against his lips that kept you sane and a needy grunt would be swallowed up by your mouth as your own release finds you in sync with his. pulling back, you’d watch with clouded eyes as his head would tilt back into the pillow, his hair curling against his shoulders and his chest rising and falling with his breathy moans. his cock would nestle in you and you’d feel the warmth seeping from him, your precious boy gasping for air as you squeeze around him one last time.

you’d lose yourself a little bit as tiny praises would spill from his mouth as he came down from his high, small ‘thank yous’ and ‘love yous’ making your bottom lip wobble slightly.

you silently made a vow to treat your king right for every birthday he had, no matter what.

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turnstileskyline · 5 months

Text

The Oral History of Take This To Your Grave – transcription under the cut

The pages that are just photographs, I haven't included. This post is already long enough.

Things that happened in 2003: Arnold Schwarzenegger became governor of California. Teen Vogue published its first issue. The world lost Johnny Cash. Johnny Depp appeared as Captain Jack Sparrow for the first time. A third Lord of the Rings movie arrived. Patrick Stump, Pete Wentz, Joe Trohman, and Andy Hurley released Take This To Your Grave.

"About 21 years ago or so, as I was applying to colleges I would ultimately never go to, Fall Out Boy began as a little pop-punk side project of what we assumed was Pete's more serious band, Arma Angelus," Patrick wrote in a May 2023 social media post.

"We were sloppy and couldn't solidify a lineup, but the three of us (Pete, Joe, and I) were having way too much fun to give up on it."

"We were really rough around the edges. As an example of how rough, one of my favorite teachers pulled me aside after hearing the recording that would eventually become Evening Out With Your Girlfriend and tactfully said, 'What do you think your best instrument is, Patrick? Drums. It's drums. Probably not singing, Patrick.'"

"We went into Smart Studios with the Sean O'Keefe... So, there we were, 3/5 of a band with a singer who'd only been singing a year, no drummer, and one out of two guitarists. But we had the opportunity to record with Sean at Butch Vig's legendary studio.

"Eight or so months later, Fueled by Ramen would give us a contract to record the remaining songs. We'd sleep on floors, eat nothing but peanut butter and jelly, live in a van for the next three years, and somehow despite that, eventually play with Elton John and Taylor Swift and Jay-Z and for President Obama and the NFC championship, and all these other wildly unpredictable things. But none of that would ever come close to happening if Andy hadn't made it to the session and Joe hadn't dragged us kicking and screaming into being a band."

Two decades after its release, Take This To Your Grave sits comfortable in the Top 10 of Rolling Stone's 50 Greatest Pop-Punk Albums, edging out landmark records from Buzzcocks, Generation X, Green Day, The Offspring, Blink-182, and The Ramones.

It even ranked higher than Through Being Cool by Saves The Day and Jersey's Best Dancers from Lifetime, two records the guys in Fall Out Boy particularly revere.

Fall Out Boy's proper full-length debut on Fueled by Ramen is a deceptively smart, sugar-sweet, raw, energetic masterpiece owing as much to the bass player's pop culture passions, the singers deep love of R&B and soul, and their shared history in the hardcore scene as any pioneering punk band. Fall Out Boy's creative and commercial heights were still ahead, but Take This To Your Grave kicked it off, a harbinger for the enduring songwriting partnership between Patrick Stump and Pete Wentz, the eclectic contributions from Joe Trohman, and the propulsive powerhouse that is Andy Hurley.

The recordings document a special moment when Fall Out Boy was big in "the scene" but a "secret" from the mainstream. The band (and some of their friends) first sat down for an Oral History (which doubled as an Oral History of their origin story) with their old friend Ryan J. Downey, then Senior Editor for Alternative Press, upon the occasion of the album's 10th anniversary. What follows is an updated, sharper, and expanded version of that story, newly re-edited in 2023. As Patrick eloquently said: "Happy 20th birthday, Take This To Your Grave, you weird brilliant lightning strike accident of a record."

– Ryan J. Downey.

A Weird, Brilliant Lightning Strike Of A Record. The Oral History Of Fall Out Boy's Take This To Your Grave.

As told by:

Patrick Stump

Pete Wentz

Joe Trohman

Andy Hurley

Bob McLynn - Crush Music

Sean O'Keefe - Producer/Mixer

John Janick - Fueled By Ramen

Tim McIlrath - Rise Against

Mani Mostofi - Racetraitor

Chris Gutierrez - Arma Angelus

Mark Rose - Spitalfield

Sean Muttaqi - Uprising Records

Rory Felton - The Militia Group

Richard Reines - Drive-Thru Records

"To Feel No More Bitterness Forever" - From Hardcore to Softcore, 1998-2000

PETE WENTZ: When I got into hardcore, it was about discovering the world beyond yourself. There was a culture of trying to be a better person. That was part of what was so alluring about hardcore and punk for me. But for whatever reason, it shifted. Maybe this was just in Chicago, but it became less about the thought process behind it and more about moshing and breakdowns. There was a close-mindedness that felt very reactive.

TIM MCILRITH: I saw First Born many years ago, which was the first time I saw Pete and met him around then. This was '90s hardcore - p.c., vegan, activist kind of hardcore music. Pete was in many of those bands doing that kind of thing, and I was at many of those shows. The hardcore scene in Chicago was pretty small, so everyone kind of knew each other. I knew Andy Hurley as the drummer in Racetraitor. I was in a band called Baxter, so Pete always called me 'Baxter.' I was just 'Baxter' to a lot of those guys.

JOE TROHMAN: I was a young hardcore kid coming to the shows. The same way we all started doing bands. You're a shitty kid who goes to punk and hardcore shows, and you see the other bands playing, and you want to make friends with those guys because you want to play in bands too. Pete and I had a bit of a connection because we're from the same area. I was the youngest dude at most shows. I would see Extinction, Racetraitor, Burn It Down, and all the bands of that era.

WENTZ: My driver's license was suspended then, so Joe drove me everywhere. We listened to either Metalcore like Shai Hulud or pop-punk stuff like Screeching Weasel.

MCILRITH: I was in a band with Pete called Arma Angelus. I was like their fifth or sixth bass player. I wasn't doing anything musically when they hit me up to play bass, so I said, 'Of course.' I liked everyone in the band. We were rehearsing, playing a few shows here and there, with an ever-revolving cast of characters. We recorded a record together at the time. I even sing on that record, believe it or not, they gave me a vocal part. Around that same time, I began meeting with [bassist] Joe [Principe] about starting what would become Rise Against.

CHRIS GUTIERREZ: Wentz played me the Arma Angelus demo in the car. He said he wanted it to be a mix of Despair, Buried Alive, and Damnation A.D. He told me Tim was leaving to start another band - which ended up being Rise Against - and asked if I wanted to play bass.

TROHMAN: Pete asked me to fill in for a tour when I was 15. Pete had to call my dad to convince him to let me go. He did it, too. It was my first tour, in a shitty cargo van, with those dudes. They hazed the shit out of me. It was the best and worst experience. Best overall, worst at the time.

GUTIERREZ: Enthusiasm was starting to wane in Arma Angelus. Our drummer was really into cock-rock. It wasn't an ironic thing. He loved L.A. Guns, Whitesnake, and Hanoi Rocks. It drove Pete nuts because the scene was about Bleeding Through and Throwdown, not cock rock. He was frustrated that things weren't panning out for the band, and of course, there's a ceiling for how big a metalcore band can get, anyway.

MANI MOSTOFI: Pete had honed this tough guy persona, which I think was a defense mechanism. He had some volatile moments in his childhood. Underneath, he was a pretty sensitive and vulnerable person. After playing in every mosh-metal band in the Midwest and listening exclusively to Earth Crisis, Damnation A.D., Chokehold, and stuff like that for a long time, I think Pete wanted to do something fresh. He had gotten into Lifetime, Saves The Day, The Get Up Kids, and bands like that. Pete was at that moment where the softer side of him needed an outlet, and didn't want to hide behind mosh-machismo. I remember him telling me he wanted to start a band that more girls could listen to.

MCILRATH: Pete was talking about starting a pop-punk band. Bands like New Found Glory and Saves The Day were successful then. The whole pop-punk sound was accessible. Pete was just one of those guys destined for bigger things than screaming for mediocre hardcore bands in Chicago. He's a smart guy, a brilliant guy. All the endeavors he had taken on, even in the microcosm of the 1990s Chicago hardcore world, he put a lot of though into it. You could tell that if he were given a bigger receptacle to put that thought into, it could become something huge. He was always talented: lyrics, imagery, that whole thing. He was ahead of the curve. We were in this hardcore band from Chicago together, but we were both talking about endeavors beyond it.

TROHMAN: The drummer for Arma Angelus was moving. Pete and I talked about doing something different. It was just Pete and me at first. There was this thuggishness happening in the Chicago hardcore scene at that time that wasn't part of our vibe. It was cool, but it wasn't our thing.

MCILRITH: One day at Arma Angelus practice, Pete asked me, 'Are you going to do that thing with Joe?' I was like, 'Yeah, I think so.' He was like, 'You should do that, dude. Don't let this band hold you back. I'll be doing something else, too. We should be doing other things.' He was really ambitious. It was so amazing to me, too, because Pete was a guy who, at the time, was kind of learning how to play the bass. A guy who didn't really play an instrument will do down in history as one of the more brilliant musicians in Chicago. He had everything else in his corner. He knew how to do everything else. He needed to get some guys behind him because he had the rest covered. He had topics, themes, lyrics, artwork, this whole image he wanted to do, and he was uncompromising. He also tapped into something the rest of us were just waking up to: the advent of the internet. I mean, the internet wasn't new, but higher-speed internet was.

MOSTOFI: Joe was excited to be invited by Pete to do a band. Joe was the youngest in our crew by far, and Pete was the 'coolest' in a Fonzie sort of way. Joe deferred to Pete's judgement for years. But eventually, his whole life centered around bossy big-brother Pete. I think doing The Damned Things was for Joe what Fall Out Boy was for Pete, in a way. It was a way to find his own space within the group of friends. Unsurprisingly, Joe now plays a much more significant role in Fall Out Boy's music.

WENTZ: I wanted to do something easy and escapist. When Joe and I started the band, it was the worst band of all time. I feel like people said, 'Oh, yeah, you started Fall Out Boy to get big.' Dude, there was way more of a chance of every other band getting big in my head than Fall Out Boy. It was a side thing that was fun to do. Racetraitor and Extinction were big bands to me. We wanted to do pop-punk because it would be fun and hilarious. It was definitely on a lark. We weren't good. If it was an attempt at selling out, it was a very poor attempt.

MCILRITH: It was such a thing for people to move from hardcore bands to bands called 'emo' or pop-punk, as those bands were starting to get some radio play and signed to major labels. Everyone thought it was easy, but it's not as easy as that. Most guys we knew who tried it never did anything more successful than their hardcore bands. But Pete did it! And if anyone was going to, it was going to be him. He never did anything half-assed. He ended up playing bass in so many bands in Chicago, even though he could barely play the bass then, because simply putting him in your band meant you'd have a better show. He was just more into it. He knew more about dynamics, about getting a crowd to react to what you're doing than most people. Putting Pete in your band put you up a few notches.

"I'm Writing You A Chorus And Here Is Your Verse" - When Pete met Patrick, early 2001.

MARK ROSE: Patrick Stump played drums in this grindcore band called Grinding Process. They had put out a live split cassette tape.

PATRICK STUMP: My ambition always outweighed my ability or actual place in the world. I was a drummer and played in many bands and tried to finagle my way into better ones but never really managed. I was usually outgunned by the same two guys: this guy Rocky Senesce; I'm not sure if he's playing anymore, but he was amazing. And this other guy, De'Mar Hamilton, who is now in Plain White T's. We'd always go out for the same bands. I felt like I was pretty good, but then those guys just mopped the floor with me. I hadn't been playing music for a few months. I think my girlfriend dumped me. I was feeling down. I wasn't really into pop-punk or emo. I think at the time I was into Rhino Records box sets.

TROHMAN: I was at the Borders in Eden's Plaza in Wilmette, Illinois. My friend Arthur was asking me about Neurosis. Patrick just walked up and started talking to me.

STUMP: I was a bit arrogant and cocky, like a lot of young musicians. Joe was talking kind of loudly and I overheard him say something about Neurosis, and I think I came in kind of snotty, kind of correcting whatever they had said.

TROHMAN: We just started talking about music, and my buddy Arthur got shoved out of the conversation. I told him about the band we were starting. Pete was this local hardcore celebrity, which intrigued Patrick.

STUMP: I had similar conversations with any number of kids my age. This conversation didn't feel crazy special. That's one of the things that's real about [Joe and I meeting], and that's honest about it, that's it's not some 'love at first sight' thing where we started talking about music and 'Holy smokes, we're going to have the best band ever!' I had been in a lot of bands up until then. Hardcore was a couple of years away from me at that point. I was over it, but Pete was in real bands; that was interesting. Now I'm curious and I want to do this thing, or at least see what happens. Joe said they needed a drummer, guitar player, or singer, and I kind of bluffed and said I could do any one of those things for a pop-punk band. I'd had a lot of conversations about starting bands where I meet up with somebody and maybe try to figure out some songs and then we'd never see each other again. There were a lot of false starts and I assumed this would be just another one of those, but it would be fun for this one to be with the guy from Racetraitor and Extinction.

TROHMAN: He gave me the link to his MP3.com page. There were a few songs of him just playing acoustic and singing. He was awesome.

WENTZ: Joe told me we were going to this kid's house who would probably be our drummer but could also sing. He sent me a link to Patrick singing some acoustic thing, but the quality was so horrible it was hard to tell what it was. Patrick answered the door in some wild outfit. He looked like an emo kid but from the Endpoint era - dorky and cool. We went into the basement, and he was like, trying to set up his drums.

TROHMAN: Patrick has said many times that he intended to try out on drums. I was pushing for him to sing after hearing his demos. 'Hey! Sing for us!' I asked him to take out his acoustic guitar. He played songs from Saves The Day's Through Being Cool. I think he sang most of the record to us. We were thrilled. We had never been around someone who could sing like that.

WENTZ: I don't think Patrick thought we were cool at all. We were hanging out, and he started playing acoustic guitar. He started singing, and I realized he could sing any Saves The Day song. I was like, 'Wow, that's the way those bands sound! We should just have you sing.' It had to be serendipity because Patrick drumming and Joe singing is not the same band. I never thought about singing. It wasn't the type of thing I could sing. I knew I'd be playing bass. I didn't think it'd even go beyond a few practices. It didn't seem like the thing I was setting myself up to do for the next several years of my life in any way. I was going to college. It was just a fun getaway from the rest of life kind of thing to do.

STUMP: Andy was the first person we asked to play drums. Joe even brought him up in the Borders conversation. But Andy was too busy. He wasn't really interested, either, because we kind of sucked.

WENTZ: I wanted Hurley in the band, I was closest to him at the time, I had known him for a long time. I identified with him in the way that we were the younger dudes in our larger group. I tried to get him, but he was doing another band at the time, or multiple bands. He was Mani's go-to guy to play drums, always. I had asked him a few times. That should clue people into the fact that we weren't that good.

ANDY HURLEY: I knew Joe as 'Number One Fan.' We called him that because he was a huge fan of a band I was in, Kill The Slavemaster. When Fall Out Boy started, I was going to college full-time. I was in the band Project Rocket and I think The Kill Pill then, too.

MOSTOFI: After they got together the first or second time, Pete played me a recording and said, 'This is going to be big.' They had no songs, no name, no drummer. They could barely play their instruments. But Pete knew, and we believed him because we could see his drive and Patrick's potential. Patrick was prodigy. I imagine the first moment Pete heard him sing was probably like when I heard 15-year-old Andy Hurley play drums.

GUTIERREZ: One day at practice, Pete told me he had met some dudes with whom he was starting a pop-punk band. He said it would sound like a cross between New Found Glory and Lifetime. Then the more Fall Out Boy started to practice, the less active Arma Angelus became.

TROHMAN: We got hooked up with a friend named Ben Rose, who became our original drummer. We would practice in his parents' basement. We eventually wrote some pretty bad songs. I don't even have the demo. I have copies of Arma's demo, but I don't have that one.

MOSTOFI: We all knew that hardcore kids write better pop-punk songs than actual pop-punk kids. It had been proven. An experienced hardcore musician could bring a sense of aggression and urgency to the pop hooks in a way that a band like Yellowcard could never achieve. Pete and I had many conversations about this. He jokingly called it 'Softcore,' but that's precisely what it was. It's what he was going for. Take This To Your Grave sounds like Hot Topic, but it feels like CBGBs.

MCILRITH: Many hardcore guys who transitioned into pop-punk bands dumbed it down musically and lyrically. Fall Out Boy found a way to do it that wasn't dumbed down. They wrote music and lyrics that, if you listened closely, you could tell came from people who grew up into hardcore. Pete seemed to approach the song titles and lyrics the same way he attacked hardcore songs. You could see his signature on all of that.

STUMP: We all had very different ideas of what it should sound like. I signed up for Kid Dynamite, Strike Anywhere, or Dillinger Four. Pete was very into Lifetime and Saves The Day. I think both he and Joe were into New Found Glory and Blink-182. I still hadn't heard a lot of stuff. I was arrogant; I was a rock snob. I was over most pop-punk. But then I had this renaissance week where I was like, 'Man, you know what? I really do like The Descendents.' Like, the specific week I met Joe, it just happened to be that I was listening to a lot of Descendents. So, there was a part of me that was tickled by that idea. 'You know what? I'll try a pop-punk band. Why not?'

MOSTOFI: To be clear, they were trying to become a big band. But they did it by elevating radio-friendly pop punk, not debasing themselves for popularity. They were closely studying Drive-Thru Records bands like The Starting Line, who I couldn't stand. But they knew what they were doing. They extracted a few good elements from those bands and combined them with their other influences. Patrick never needed to be auto-tuned. He can sing. Pete never had to contrive this emotional depth. He always had it.

STUMP: The ideas for band names were obnoxious. At some point, Pete and I were arguing over it, and I think our first drummer, Ben Rose, who was in the hardcore band Strength In Numbers, suggested Fall Out Boy. Pete and I were like, 'Well, we don't hate that one. We'll keep it on the list.' But we never voted on a name.

"Fake It Like You Matter" - The Early Shows, 2001

The name Fall Out Boy made their shortlist, but their friends ultimately chose it for them. The line-up at the band's first show was Patrick Stump (sans guitar), Pete Wentz, Joe Trohman, drummer Ben Rose, and guitarist John Flamandan in his only FOB appearance.

STUMP: We didn't have a name at our two or three shows. We were basically booked as 'Pete's new band' as he was the most known of any of us. Pete and I were the artsy two.

TROHMAN: The rest of us had no idea what we were doing onstage.

STUMP: We took ourselves very seriously and completely different ideas on what was 'cool.' Pete at the time was somewhere between maybe Chuck Palahniuk and Charles Bukowski, and kind of New Romantic and Manchester stuff, so he had that in mind. The band names he suggested were long and verbose, somewhat tongue-in-cheek. I was pretty much only into Tom Waits, so I wanted everything to be a reference to Tom Waits. The first show was at DePaul [University] in some cafeteria. The room looked a lot nicer than punk rock shows are supposed to look, like a room where you couldn't jump off the walls. We played with a band called Stillwell. I want to say one of the other bands played Black Sabbath's Black Sabbath in its entirety. We were out of place. We were tossing a few different names around. The singer for Stillwell was in earshot of the conversation so I was like 'Hey, settle this for us,' and told him whatever name it was, which I can't remember. 'What do you think of this name?' He goes, 'It sucks.' And the way he said it, there was this element to it, like, 'You guys probably suck, too, so whatever.' That was our first show. We played first and only had three songs. That was John's only show with us, and I never saw him again. I was just singing without a guitar, and I had never just sung before; that was horrifying. We blazed through those songs.

ROSE: Patrick had this shoulder-length hair. Watching these guys who were known for heavier stuff play pop-punk was strange. Pete was hopping around with the X's on his hands. Spitalfield was similar; we were kids playing another style of music who heard Texas Is The Reason and Get Up Kids and said, 'We have to start a band like this.'

MOSTOFI: The first show was a lot of fun. The musical side wasn't there, but Pete and Patrick's humor and charisma were front and center.

TROHMAN: I remember having a conversation with Mani about stage presence. He was telling me how important it was. Coalesce and The Dillinger Escape Plan would throw mic stands and cabinets. We loved that visual excitement and appeal. Years later, Patrick sang a Fall Out Boy song with Taylor Swift at Giants Stadium. It was such a great show to watch that I was reminded of how wise Mani was to give me that advice back then. Mani was like a mentor for me, honestly. He would always guide me through stuff.

MOSTOFI: Those guys grew up in Chicago, either playing in or seeing Extinction, Racetraitor, Los Crudos, and other bands that liked to talk and talk between songs. Fall Out Boy did that, and it was amazing. Patrick was awkward in a knowing and hilarious way. He'd say something odd, and then Pete would zing him. Or Pete would try to say something too cool, and Patrick would remind him they were nerds. These are very personal memories for me. Millions of people have seen the well-oiled machine, but so few of us saw those guys when they were so carefree.

TROHMAN: We had this goofy, bad first show, but all I can tell you was that I was determined to make this band work, no matter what.

STUMP: I kind of assumed that was the end of that. 'Whatever, on with our lives.' But Joe was very determined. He was going to pick us up for practice and we were going to keep playing shows. He was going to make the band happen whether the rest of us wanted to or not. That's how we got past show number one. John left the band because we only had three songs and he wasn't very interested. In the interim, I filled in on guitar. I didn't consider myself a guitar player. Our second show was a college show in Southern Illinois or something.

MCILRITH: That show was with my other band, The Killing Tree.

STUMP: We showed up late and played before The Killing Tree. There was no one there besides the bands and our friends. I think we had voted on some names. Pete said 'Hey, we're whatever!'; probably something very long. And someone yells out, 'Fuck that, no, you're Fall Out Boy!' Then when The Killing Tree was playing, Tim said, 'I want to thank Fall Out Boy.' Everyone looked up to Tim, so when he forced the name on us, it was fine. I was a diehard Simpsons fan, without question. I go pretty deep on The Simpsons. Joe and I would just rattle off Simpsons quotes. I used to do a lot of Simpsons impressions. Ben was very into Simpsons; he had a whole closet full of Simpsons action figures.

"If Only You Knew I Was Terrified" - The Early Recordings, 2002-2003

Wentz's relationships in the hardcore scene led to Fall Out Boy's first official releases. A convoluted and rarely properly explained chain of events resulted in the Fall Out Boy/Project Rocket split EP and Fall Out Boy's Evening Out with Your Girlfriend. Both were issued by California's Uprising Records, whose discography included Racetraitor's first album and the debut EP by Burn It Down. The band traveled to Wisconsin to record their first proper demo with engineer Jared Logan, drummer for Uprising's 7 Angels 7 Plagues.

TROHMAN: This isn't to be confused with the demo we did in Ben's basement, which was like a tape demo. This was our first real demo.

STUMP: Between booking the demo and recording it, we lost Ben Rose. He was the greatest guy, but it wasn't working out musically. Pete and Joe decided I should play drums on the demo. But Jared is a sick drummer, so he just did it.

TROHMAN: We had gotten this great singer but went through a series of drummers that didn't work out. I had to be the one who kicked Ben out. Not long after, our friend Brett Bunting played with us. I don't think he really wanted to do it, which was a bummer.

STUMP: I showed up to record that demo, feeling pulled into it. I liked hanging out with the guys, but I was a rock snob who didn't really want to be making that type of music. The first few songs were really rough. We were sloppy. We barely practiced. Pete was in Arma Angelus. Joe was the guy determined to make it happen. We couldn't keep a drummer or guitar player, and I could barely play guitar. I didn't really want to be in Fall Out Boy. We had these crappy songs that kind of happened; it didn't feel like anything. Joe did the guitars. I go in to do the vocals, I put on the headphones, and it starts playing and was kind of not bad! It was pretty good, actually. I was shocked. That was the first time I was like, 'Maybe I am supposed to be in this band.' I enjoyed hearing it back.

SEAN MUTTAQI: Wentz and I were pretty tight. He sent me some demos, and while I didn't know it would get as big as it did, I knew it was special. Wentz had a clear vision. Of all the guys from that scene, he was the most singularly focused on taking things to the next level. He was ahead of the game with promotion and the early days of social media.

STUMP: Arma Angelus had been on Eulogy. We talked to them a bit and spoke to Uprising because they had put out Racetraitor. At some point, the demo got to Sean, and he decided to make it half of a split with Andy's band, Project Rocket. We were pretty happy with that.

HURLEY: It was kind of competitive for me at the time. Project Rocket and Fall Out Boy were both doing pop-punk/pop-rock, I met Patrick through the band. I didn't really know him before Fall Out Boy.

TROHMAN: We got this drummer, Mike Pareskuwicz, who had been in a hardcore band from Central Illinois called Subsist.

STUMP: Uprising wanted us to make an album. We thought that was cool, but we only had those three songs that were on the split. We were still figuring ourselves out. One of the times we were recording with Jared in the studio, for the split or the album, this guy T.J. Kunasch was there. He was like, 'Hey, do you guys need a guitarist?' And he joined.

MUTTAQI: I borrowed some money to get them back in the studio. The songwriting was cool on that record, but it was all rushed. The urgency to get something out led to the recording being subpar. Their new drummer looked the part but couldn't really play. They had already tracked the drums before they realized it didn't sound so hot.

STUMP: The recording experience was not fun. We had two days to do an entire album. Mike was an awesome dude, but he lived crazy far away, in Kanakee, Illinois, so the drive to Milwaukee wasn't easy for him. He had to work or something the next day. So, he did everything in one take and left. He played alone, without a click, so it was a ness to figure out. We had to guess where the guitar was supposed to go. None of us liked the songs because we had slapped them together. We thought it all sucked. But I thought, 'Well, at least it'll be cool to have something out.' Then a lot of time went by. Smaller labels were at the mercy of money, and it was crazy expensive to put out a record back then.

MUTTAQI: Our record was being rushed out to help generate some interest, but that interest was building before we could even get the record out. We were beholden to finances while changing distribution partners and dealing with other delays. The buck stops with me, yes, but I didn't have that much control over the scheduling.

WENTZ: It's not what I would consider the first Fall Out Boy record. Hurley isn't on it and he's an integral part of the Fall Out Boy sound. But it is part of the history, the legacy. NASA didn't go right to the moon. They did test flights in the desert. Those are our test flights in the desert. It's not something I'm ashamed of or have weird feelings about.

STUMP: It's kind of embarrassing to me. Evening Out... isn't representative of the band we became. I liked Sean a lot, so it's nothing against him. If anybody wants to check out the band in that era, I think the split EP is a lot cooler. Plus, Andy is on that one.

TROHMAN: T.J. was the guy who showed up to the show without a guitar. He was the guy that could never get it right, but he was in the band for a while because we wanted a second guitar player. He's a nice dude but wasn't great to be in a band with back then. One day he drove unprompted from Racine to Chicago to pick up some gear. I don't know how he got into my parents' house, but the next thing I knew, he was in my bedroom. I didn't like being woken up and kicked him out of the band from bed.

STUMP: Our friend Brian Bennance asked us to do a split 7" with 504 Plan, which was a big band to us. Brian offered to pay for us to record with Sean O'Keefe, which was also a big deal. Mike couldn't get the time off work to record with us. We asked Andy to play on the songs. He agreed to do it, but only if he could make it in time after recording an entire EP with his band, The Kill Pill, in Chicago, on the same day.

MOSTOFI: Andy and I started The Kill Pill shortly after Racetraitor split up, not long after Fall Out Boy had formed. We played a bunch of local shows together. The minute Andy finished tracking drums for our EP in Chicago, he raced to the other studio in Madison.

STUMP: I'm getting ready to record the drums myself, getting levels and checking the drums, pretty much ready to go. And then in walks Andy Hurley. I was a little bummed because I really wanted to play drums that day. But then Andy goes through it all in like two takes and fucking nailed the entire thing. He just knocked it out of the park. All of us were like, 'That's crazy!'

WENTZ: When Andy came in, It just felt different. It was one of those 'a-ha' moments.

STUMP: Sean leaned over to us and said, 'You need to get this guy in the band.'

SEAN O'KEEFE: We had a blast. We pumped It out. We did it fast and to analog tape. People believe it was very Pro Tools oriented, but it really was done to 24-track tape. Patrick sang his ass off.

STUMP: The songs we had were 'Dead On Arrival,' 'Saturday,' and 'Homesick at Space Camp. There are quite a few songs that ended up on Take This To You Grave where I wrote most of the lyrics but Pete titled them.

WENTZ: 'Space Camp' was a reference to the 1986 movie, SpaceCamp, and the idea of space camp. Space camp wasn't something anyone in my area went to. Maybe they did, but it was never an option for me. It seems like the little kid version of meeting Jay-Z. The idea was also: what if you, like Joaquin Phoenix in the movie, took off to outer space and wanted to get home? 'I made it to space and now I'm just homesick and want to hang out with my friends.' In the greater sense, it's about having it all, but it's still not enough. There's a pop culture reference in 'Saturday' that a lot of people miss. 'Pete and I attack the lost Astoria' was a reference to The Goonies, which was filmed in Astoria, Oregon.

HURLEY: I remember hearing those recordings, especially 'Dead on Arrival,' and Patrick's voice and how well written those songs were, especially relative to anything else I had done - I had a feeling that this could do something.

WENTZ: It seemed like it would stall out if we didn't get a solid drummer in the band soon. That was the link that we couldn't nail down. Patrick was always a big musical presence. He thinks and writes rhythmi-cally, and we couldn't get a drummer to do what he wanted or speak his language. Hurley was the first one that could. It's like hearing two drummers talk together when they really get it. It sounds like a foreign language because it's not something I'm keyed into. Patrick needed someone on a similar musical plane. I wasn't there. Joe was younger and was probably headed there.

HURLEY: When Patrick was doing harmonies, it was like Queen. He's such a brilliant dude. I was always in bands that did a record and then broke up. I felt like this was a band that could tour a lot like the hardcore bands we loved, even if we had to have day jobs, too.

"(Four) Tired Boys And A Broken Down Van" - The Early Tours, 2002-2003

STUMP: We booked a tour with Spitalfield, another Chicago band, who had records out, so they were a big deal to us. We replaced T.J. with a guy named Brandon Hamm. He was never officially in the band. He quit when we were practicing 'Saturday.' He goes, 'I don't like that. I don't want to do this anymore.' Pete talked with guitarist Chris Envy from Showoff, who had just broken up. Chris said, 'Yeah, I'll play in your band.' He came to two practices, then quit like two days before the tour. It was only a two-week tour, but Mike couldn't get the time off work from Best Buy, or maybe it was Blockbuster. We had to lose Mike, which was the hardest member change for me. It was unpleasant.

TROHMAN: We had been trying to get Andy to join the band for a while. Even back at that first Borders conversation, we talked about him, but he was too busy at the time.

STUMP: I borrowed one of Joe's guitars and jumped in the fire. We were in this legendarily shitty used van Pete had gotten. It belonged to some flower shop, so it had this ominously worn-out flower decal outside and no windows [except in the front]. Crappy brakes, no A/C, missing the rearview mirror, no seats in the back, only the driver's seat. About 10 minutes into the tour, we hit something. A tire exploded and slingshot into the passenger side mirror, sending glass flying into the van. We pulled over into some weird animal petting zoo. I remember thinking, 'This is a bad omen for this tour.' Spitalfield was awesome, and we became tight with them. Drew Brown, who was later in Weekend Nachos, was out with them, too. But most of the shows were canceled.

WENTZ: We'd end up in a town, and our show was canceled, or we'd have three days off. 'Let's just get on whatever show we can. Whatever, you can pay us in pizza.'

STUMP: We played in a pizza place. We basically blocked the line of people trying to order pizza, maybe a foot away from the shitty tables. Nobody is trying to watch a band. They're just there to eat pizza. And that was perhaps the biggest show we played on that tour. One of the best moments on the Spitalfied tour was in Lincoln, Nebraska. The local opener wasn't even there - they were at the bar across the street and showed up later with two people. Fall Out Boy played for Spitalfield, and Spitalfield played for Fall Out Boy. Even the sound guy had left. It was basically an empty room. It was miserable.

HURLEY: Even though we played a ton of shows in front of just the other bands, it was awesome. I've known Pete forever and always loved being in bands with him. After that tour, it was pretty much agreed that I would be in the band. I wanted to be in the band.

WENTZ: We would play literally any show in those days for free. We played Chain Reaction in Orange County with a bunch of metalcore bands. I want to say Underoath was one of them. I remember a lot of black shirts and crossed arms at those kinds of shows. STUMP: One thing that gets lost in the annals of history is Fall Out Boy, the discarded hardcore band. We played so many hardcore shows! The audiences were cool, but they were just like, 'This is OK, but we'd really rather be moshing right now.' Which was better than many of the receptions we got from pop-punk kids.

MOSTOFI: Pete made sure there was little division between the band and the audience. In hardcore, kids are encouraged to grab the mic. Pete was very conscious about making the crowd feel like friends. I saw them in Austin, Texas, in front of maybe ten kids. But it was very clear all ten of those kids felt like Pete's best friends. And they were, in a way.

MCILRITH: People started to get into social networking. That kind of thing was all new to us, and they were way ahead. They networked with their fans before any of us.

MOSTOFI: Pete shared a lot about his life online and was intimate as hell. It was a new type of scene. Pete extended the band's community as far as fiber optics let him.

ROSE: Pete was extremely driven. Looking back, I wish I had that killer instinct. During that tour; we played a show in Colorado. On the day of the show, we went to Kinko's to make flyers to hand out to college kids. Pete put ‘members of Saves The Day and Screeching Weasel’ on the flyer. He was just like, 'This will get people in.'

WENTZ: We booked a lot of our early shows through hardcore connections, and to some extent, that carries through to what Fall Out Boy shows are like today. If you come to see us play live, we're basically Slayer compared to everyone else when we play these pop radio shows. Some of that carries back to what you must do to avoid being heckled at hardcore shows. You may not like our music, but you will leave here respecting us. Not everyone is going to love you. Not everyone is going to give a shit. But you need to earn a crowd's respect. That was an important way for us to learn that.

MOSTOFI: All those dudes, except Andy, lived in this great apartment with our friend Brett Bunting, who was almost their drummer at one point. The proximity helped them gel.

STUMP: There were a lot of renegade last-minute shows where we'd just call and get added. We somehow ended up on a show with Head Automatica that way.

MCILRITH: At some point early on, they opened for Rise Against in a church basement in Downers Grove. We were doing well then; headlining that place was a big deal. Then Pete's band was coming up right behind us, and you could tell there was a lot of chatter about Fall Out Boy. I remember getting to the show, and there were many people there, many of whom I had never seen in the scene before. A lot of unfamiliar faces. A lot of people that wouldn't have normally found their way to the seedy Fireside Bowl in Chicago. These were young kids, and I was 21 then, so when I say young, I mean really young. Clearly, Fall Out Boy had tapped into something the rest of us had not. People were super excited to see them play and freaked out; there was a lot of enthusiasm at that show. After they finished, their fans bailed. They were dedicated. They wanted to see Fall Out Boy. They didn't necessarily want to see Rise Against play. That was my first clue that, 'Whoa, what Pete told me that day at Arma Angelus rehearsal is coming true. He was right.' Whatever he was doing was working.

"My Insides Are Copper, And I'd Like To Make Them Gold" - The Record Labels Come Calling, 2002

STUMP: The split EP was going to be a three-way split with 504 Plan, August Premier, and us at one point. But then the record just never happened. Brian backed out of putting it out. We asked him if we could do something else with the three songs and he didn't really seem to care. So, we started shopping the three songs as a demo. Pete ended up framing the rejection letters we got from a lot of pop-punk labels. But some were interested.

HURLEY: We wanted to be on Drive-Thru Records so bad. That was the label.

RICHARD REINES: After we started talking to them, I found the demo they had sent us in the office. I played it for my sister. We decided everything together. She liked them but wasn't as crazy about them as I was. We arranged with Pete to see them practice. We had started a new label called Rushmore. Fall Out Boy wasn't the best live band. We weren't thrilled [by the showcase]. But the songs were great. We both had to love a band to sign them, so my sister said, 'If you love them so much, let's sign them to Rushmore, not Drive Thru.'

HURLEY: We did a showcase for Richard and Stephanie Reines. They were just kind of like, 'Yeah, we have this side label thing. We'd be interested in having you on that.' I remember them saying they passed on Saves The Day and wished they would have put out Through Being Cool. But then they [basically] passed on us by offering to put us on Rushmore. We realized we could settle for that, but we knew it wasn't the right thing.

RORY FELTON: Kevin Knight had a website, TheScout, which always featured great new bands. I believe he shared the demo with us. I flew out to Chicago. Joe and Patrick picked me up at the airport. I saw them play at a VFW hall, Patrick drank an entire bottle of hot sauce on a dare at dinner, and then we all went to see the movie The Ring. I slept on the couch in their apartment, the one featured on the cover of Take This To Your Grave. Chad [Pearson], my partner, also flew out to meet with the band.

STUMP: It was a weird time to be a band because it was feast or famine. At first, no one wanted us. Then as soon as one label said, 'Maybe we'll give 'em a shot,' suddenly there's a frenzy of phone calls from record labels. We were getting our shirts printed by Victory Records. One day, we went to pick up shirts, and someone came downstairs and said, 'Um, guys? [Owner] Tony [Brummel] wants to see you.' We were like, 'Did we forget to pay an invoice?' He made us an offer on the spot. We said, 'That's awesome, but we need to think about it.' It was one of those 'now or never' kinds of things. I think we had even left the van running. It was that kind of sudden; we were overwhelmed by it.

HURLEY: They told me Tony said something like, 'You can be with the Nike of the record industry or the Keds of the record industry.'

STUMP: We'd get random calls at the apartment. 'Hey, I'm a manager with so-and-so.' I talked to some boy band manager who said, 'We think you'll be a good fit.'

TROHMAN: The idea of a manager was a ‘big-time' thing. I answered a call one day, and this guy is like, 'I'm the manager for the Butthole Surfers, and I'd really like to work with you guys.' I just said, Yeah, I really like the Butthole Surfers, but I'll have to call you back.' And I do love that band. But I just knew that wasn't the right thing.

STUMP: Not all the archetypes you always read about are true. The label guys aren't all out to get you. Some are total douchebags. But then there are a lot who are sweet and genuine. It's the same thing with managers. I really liked the Militia Group. They told us it was poor form to talk to us without a manager. They recommended Bob McLynn.

FELTON: We knew the guys at Crush from working with Acceptance and The Beautiful Mistake. We thought they'd be great for Fall Out Boy, so we sent the music to their team.

STUMP: They said Crush was their favorite management company and gave us their number. Crush's biggest band at the time was American Hi-Fi. Jonathan Daniels, the guy who started the company, sent a manager to see us. The guy was like, "This band sucks!' But Jonathan liked us and thought someone should do something with us. Bob was his youngest rookie manager. He had never managed anyone, and we had never been managed.

BOB MCLYNN: Someone else from my office who isn't with us anymore had seen them, but I hadn't seen them yet. At the time, we'd tried to manage Brand New; they went elsewhere, and I was bummed. Then we got the Fall Out Boy demo, and I was like, Wow. This sounds even better. This guy can really sing, and these songs are great.' I remember going at it hard after that whole thing. Fall Out Boy was my consolation prize. I don't know if they were talking to other managers or not, but Pete and I clicked.

TROHMAN: In addition to being really creative, Pete is really business savvy. We all have a bullshit detector these days, but Pete already had one back then. We met Bob, and we felt like this dude wouldn't fuck us over.

STUMP: We were the misfit toy that nobody else wanted. Bob really believed in us when nobody else did and when nobody believed in him. What's funny is that all the other managers at Crush were gone within a year. It was just Bob and Jonathan, and now they're partners. Bob was the weird New York Hardcore guy who scared me at the time.

TROHMAN: We felt safe with him. He's a big, hulking dude.

MCLYNN: We tried to make a deal with The Militia Group, but they wouldn't back off on a few things in the agreement. I told them those were deal breakers, opening the door to everyone else. I knew this band needed a shot to do bigger and better things.

TROHMAN: He told us not to sign with the label that recommended him to us. We thought there was something very honest about that.

MCLYNN: They paid all their dues. Those guys worked harder than any band I'd ever seen, and I was all about it. I had been in bands before and had just gotten out. I was getting out of the van just as these guys got into one. They busted their asses.

STUMP: A few labels basically said the same thing: they wanted to hear more. They weren't convinced we could write another song as good as 'Dead On Arrival.' I took that as a challenge. We returned to Sean a few months after those initial three songs, this time at Gravity Studios in Chicago. We recorded ‘Grenade Jumper' and 'Grand Theft Autumn/Where is Your Boy' in a night or two. 'Where is Your Boy' was my, 'Fine, you don't think I can write a fucking song? Here's your hit song, jerks!' But I must have pushed Pete pretty hard [arguing about the songs]. One night, as he and I drove with Joe, Pete said, 'Guys, I don't think I want to do this band anymore.' We talked about it for the rest of the ride home. I didn't want to be in the band in the first place! I was like, 'No! That's not fair! Don't leave me with this band! Don't make me kind of like this band, and then leave it! That's bullshit!' Pete didn't stay at the apartment that night. I called him at his parent's house. I told him I wasn't going to do the band without him. He was like, 'Don't break up your band over it.' I said, 'It's not my band. It's a band that you, Joe, and I started.' He was like, 'OK, I'll stick around.' And he came back with a vengeance.

WENTZ: It was maybe the first time we realized we could do these songs titles that didn't have much do with the song from the outside. Grand Theft Auto was such a big pop culture franchise. If you said the phrase back then, everyone recognized it. The play on words was about someone stealing your time in the fall. It was the earliest experimentation with that so it was a little simplistic compared to the stuff we did later. At the time, we'd tell someone the song title, and they'd say, 'You mean "Auto"'?

JOHN JANICK: I saw their name on fliers and thought it was strange. But I remembered it. Then I saw them on a flyer with one of our bands from Chicago, August Premier. I called them and asked about this band whose name I had seen on a few flyers now. They told me they were good and I should check it out. I heard an early version of a song online and instantly fell in love with it. Drive-Thru, The Militia Group, and a few majors tried to sign them. I was the odd man out. But I knew I wanted them right away.

HURLEY: Fueled By Ramen was co-owned by Vinnie [Fiorello] from Less Than Jake. It wasn't necessarily a band I grew up loving, but I had so much respect for them and what they had done and were doing.

JANICK: I randomly cold-called them at the apartment and spoke to Patrick. He told me I had to talk to Pete. I spoke to Pete later that day. We ended up talking on the phone for an hour. It was crazy. I never flew out there. I just got to know them over the phone.

MCLYNN: There were majors [interested], but I didn't want the band on a major right away. I knew they wouldn't understand the band. Rob Stevenson from Island Records knew all the indie labels were trying to sign Fall Out Boy. We did this first-ever incubator sort of deal. I also didn't want to stay on an indie forever; I felt we needed to develop and have a chance to do bigger and better things, but these indies didn't necessarily have radio staff. It was sort of the perfect scenario. Island gave us money to go on Fueled By Ramen, with whom we did a one-off. No one else would offer a one-off on an indie.

STUMP: They were the smallest of the labels involved, with the least 'gloss.' I said, 'I don't know about this, Pete.' Pete was the one who thought it was the smartest move. He pointed out that we could be a big fish in a small pond. So, we rolled the dice.

HURLEY: It was a one-record deal with Fueled By Ramen. We didn't necessarily get signed to Island, but they had the 'right of first refusal' [for the album following Take This To Your Grave]. It was an awesome deal. It was kind of unheard of, maybe, but there was a bunch of money coming from Island that we didn't have to recoup for promo type of things.

JANICK: The company was so focused on making sure we broke Fall Out Boy; any other label probably wouldn't have had that dedication. Pete and I talked for at least an hour every day. Pete and I became so close, so much so that we started Decaydance. It was his thing, but we ended up signing Panic! At The Disco, Gym Class Heroes, Cobra Starship.

GUTIERREZ: Who could predict Pete would A&R all those bands? There's no Panic! At The Disco or Gym Class Heroes without Wentz. He made them into celebrities.

"Turn This Up And I'll Tune You Out" - The Making of Take This To You Grave, 2003

The versions of "Dead on Arrival," "Saturday," and "Homesick at Space Camp" from the first sessions with Andy on drums are what appear on the album. "Grand Theft Autumn/Where is Your Boy" and "Grenade Jumper" are the demo versions recorded later in Chicago. O'Keefe recorded the music for the rest of the songs at Smart Studios once again. They knocked out the remaining songs in just nine days. Sean and Patrick snuck into Gravity Studios in the middle of the night to track vocals in the dead of winter. Patrick sang those seven songs from two to five in the morning in those sessions.

STUMP: John Janick basically said, ‘I'll buy those five songs and we'll make them part of the album, and here's some money to go record seven more.'

MCLYNN: It was a true indie deal with Fueled by Ramen. I think we got between $15,000 and $18,000 all-in to make the album. The band slept on the studio floor some nights.

STUMP: From a recording standpoint, it was amazing. It was very pro, we had Sean, all this gear, the fun studio accoutrements were there. It was competitive with anything we did afterward. But meanwhile, we're still four broke idiots.

WENTZ: We fibbed to our parents about what we were doing. I was supposed to be in school. I didn't have access to money or a credit card. I don't think any of us did.

STUMP: I don't think we slept anywhere we could shower, which was horrifying. There was a girl that Andy's girlfriend at the time went to school with who let us sleep on her floor, but we'd be there for maybe four hours at a time. It was crazy.

HURLEY: Once, Patrick thought it would be a good idea to spray this citrus bathroom spray under his arms like deodorant. It just destroyed him because it's not made for that. But it was all an awesome adventure.

WENTZ: We were so green we didn't really know how studios worked. Every day there was soda for the band. We asked, 'Could you take that soda money and buy us peanut butter, jelly, and bread?' which they did. I hear that stuff in some ways when I listen to that album.

HURLEY: Sean pushed us. He was such a perfectionist, which was awesome. I felt like, ‘This is what a real professional band does.' It was our first real studio experience.

WENTZ: Seeing the Nirvana Nevermind plaque on the wall was mind-blowing. They showed us the mic that had been used on that album.

HURLEY: The mic that Kurt Cobain used, that was pretty awesome, crazy, legendary, and cool. But we didn't get to use it.

WENTZ: They said only Shirley Manson] from Garbage could use it.

O'KEEFE: Those dudes were all straight edge at the time. It came up in conversation that I had smoked weed once a few months before. That started this joke that I was this huge stoner, which obviously I wasn't. They'd call me 'Scoobie Snacks O'Keefe' and all these things. When they turned in the art for the record, they thanked me with like ten different stoner nicknames - 'Dimebag O'Keefe' and stuff like that. The record company made Pete take like seven of them out because they said it was excessively ridiculous.

WENTZ: Sean was very helpful. He worked within the budget and took us more seriously than anyone else other than Patrick. There were no cameras around. There was no documentation. There was nothing to indicate this would be some ‘legendary' session. There are 12 songs on the album because those were all the songs we had. There was no pomp or circumstance or anything to suggest it would be an 'important’ record.

STUMP: Pete and I were starting to carve out our niches. When Pete [re-committed himself to the band], it felt like he had a list of things in his head he wanted to do right. Lyrics were on that list. He wasn't playing around anymore. I wrote the majority of the lyrics up to that point - ‘Saturday,' 'Dead on Arrival,' ‘Where's Your Boy?,’ ‘Grenade Jumper,' and ‘Homesick at Space Camp.' I was an artsy-fartsy dude who didn't want to be in a pop-punk band, so I was going really easy on the lyrics. I wasn't taking them seriously. When I look back on it, I did write some alright stuff. But I wasn't trying. Pete doesn't fuck around like that, and he does not take that kindly. When we returned to the studio, he started picking apart every word, every syllable. He started giving me [notes]. I got so exasperated at one point I was like, ‘You just write the fucking lyrics, dude. Just give me your lyrics, and I'll write around them.' Kind of angrily. So, he did. We hadn't quite figured out how to do it, though. I would write a song, scrap my lyrics, and try to fit his into where mine had been. It was exhausting. It was a rough process. It made both of us unhappy.

MCLYNN: I came from the post-hardcore scene in New York and wasn't a big fan of the pop-punk stuff happening. What struck me with these guys was the phenomenal lyrics and Patrick's insane voice. Many guys in these kinds of bands can sing alright, but Patrick was like a real singer. This guy had soul. He'd take these great lyrics Pete wrote and combine it with that soul, and that's what made their unique sound. They both put their hearts on their sleeves when they wrote together.

STUMP: We had a massive fight over 'Chicago is So Two Years Ago.' I didn't even want to record that song. I was being precious with things that were mine. Part of me thought the band wouldn't work out, and I'd go to college and do some music alone. I had a skeletal version of 'Chicago...'. I was playing it to myself in the lobby of the studio. I didn't know anyone was listening. Sean was walking by and wanted to [introduce it to the others]. I kind of lost my song. I was very precious about it. Pete didn't like some of the lyrics, so we fought. We argued over each word, one at a time. 'Tell That Mick...' was also a pretty big fight. Pete ended up throwing out all my words on that one. That was the first song where he wrote the entire set of lyrics. My only change was light that smoke' instead of ‘cigarette' because I didn't have enough syllables to say 'cigarette.' Everything else was verbatim what he handed to me. I realized I must really want to be in this band at this point if I'm willing to put up with this much fuss. The sound was always more important to me - the rhythm of the words, alliteration, syncopation - was all very exciting. Pete didn't care about any of that. He was all meaning. He didn't care how good the words sounded if they weren't amazing when you read them. Man, did we fight about that. We fought for nine days straight while not sleeping and smelling like shit. It was one long argument, but I think some of the best moments resulted from that.

WENTZ: In 'Calm Before the Storm,' Patrick wrote the line, 'There's a song on the radio that says, 'Let's Get This Party Started' which is a direct reference to Pink's 2001 song 'Get the Party Started.' 'Tell That Mick He Just Made My List of Things to Do Today' is a line from the movie Rushmore. I thought we'd catch a little more flack for that, but even when we played it in Ireland, there was none of that. It's embraced, more like a shoutout.

STUMP: Pete and I met up on a lot of the same pop culture. He was more into '80s stuff than I was. One of the first things we talked about were Wes Anderson movies.

WENTZ: Another thing driving that song title was the knowledge that our fanbase wouldn't necessarily be familiar with Wes Anderson. It could be something that not only inspired us but something fans could also go check out. People don't ask us about that song so much now, but in that era, we'd answer and tell them to go watch Rushmore. You gotta see this movie. This line is a hilarious part of it.' Hopefully some people did. I encountered Jason Schwartzman at a party once. We didn't get to talk about the movie, but he was the sweetest human, and I was just geeking out. He told me he was writing a film with Wes Anderson about a train trip in India. I wanted to know about the writing process. He was like, 'Well, he's in New York City, I'm in LA. It's crazy because I'm on the phone all the time and my ear gets really hot.' That's the anecdote I got, and I loved it.

O'KEEFE: They're totally different people who approach making music from entirely different angles. It's cool to see them work. Pete would want a certain lyric. Patrick was focused on the phrasing. Pete would say the words were stupid and hand Patrick a revision, and Patrick would say I can't sing those the way I need to sing this. They would go through ten revisions for one song. I thought I would lose my mind with both of them, but then they would find it, and it would be fantastic. When they work together, it lights up. It takes on a life of its own. It's not always happy. There's a lot of push and pull, and each is trying to get their thing. With Take This To Your Grave, we never let anything go until all three of us were happy. Those guys were made to do this together.

WENTZ: A lot of the little things weren't a big deal, but those were things that [felt like] major decisions. I didn't want 'Where Is Your Boy' on Take This To Your Grave.

JANICK: I freaked out. I called Bob and said, 'We must put this song on the album! It's one of the biggest songs.' He agreed. We called Pete and talked about it; he was cool about it and heard us out.

WENTZ: I thought many things were humongous, and they just weren't. They didn't matter one way or another.

"Our Lawyer Made Us Change The (Album Cover)" - That Photo On Take This To Your Grave, 2003

STUMP: The band was rooted in nostalgia from early on. The '80s references were very much Pete's aesthetic. He had an idea for the cover. It ended up being his girlfriend at the time, face down on the bed, exhausted, in his bedroom. That was his bedroom in our apartment. His room was full of toys, '80s cereals. If we ended up with the Abbey Road cover of pop-punk, that original one was Sgt. Pepper's. But we couldn't legally clear any of the stuff in the photo. Darth Vader, Count Chocula…

WENTZ: There's a bunch of junk in there: a Morrissey poster, I think a Cher poster, Edward Scissorhands. We submitted it to Fueled by Ramen, and they were like, 'We can't clear any of this stuff.’ The original album cover did eventually come out on the vinyl version.

STUMP: The photo that ended up being the cover was simply a promo photo for that album cycle. We had to scramble. I was pushing the Blue Note jazz records feel. That's why the CD looks a bit like vinyl and why our names are listed on the front. I wanted a live photo on the cover. Pete liked the Blue Note idea but didn't like the live photo idea. I also made the fateful decision to have my name listed as 'Stump' rather than Stumph.

WENTZ: What we used was initially supposed to be the back cover. I remember someone in the band being pissed about it forever. Not everyone was into having our names on the cover. It was a strange thing to do at the time. But had the original cover been used, it wouldn't have been as iconic as what we ended up with. It wouldn't have been a conversation piece. That stupid futon in our house was busted in the middle. We're sitting close to each other because the futon was broken. The exposed brick wall was because it was the worst apartment ever. It makes me wonder: How many of these are accidental moments? At the time, there was nothing iconic about it. If we had a bigger budget, we probably would have ended up with a goofier cover that no one would have cared about.

STUMP: One of the things I liked about the cover was that it went along with something Pete had always said. I'm sure people will find this ironic, but Pete had always wanted to create a culture with the band where it was about all four guys and not just one guy. He had the foresight to even think about things like that. I didn't think anyone would give a fuck about our band! At the time, it was The Pete Wentz Band to most people. With that album cover, he was trying to reject that and [demonstrate] that all four of us mattered. A lot of people still don't get that, but whatever. I liked that element of the cover. It felt like a team. It felt like Voltron. It wasn't what I like to call 'the flying V photo' where the singer is squarely in the center, the most important, and everyone else is nearest the camera in order of 'importance.' The drummer would be in the very back. Maybe the DJ guy who scratches records was behind the drummer.

"You Need Him. I Could Be Him. Where Is Your Boy Tonight?" - The Dynamics of Punk Pop's Fab 4, 2003

Patrick seemed like something of the anti-frontman, never hogging the spotlight and often shrinking underneath his baseball hat. Wentz was more talkative, more out front on stage and in interviews, in a way that felt unprecedented for a bass player who wasn't also singing. In some ways, Fall Out Boy operated as a two-headed dictatorship. Wentz and Stump are in the car's front seat while Joe and Andy ride in the back.

STUMP: There is a lot of truth to that. Somebody must be in the front seat, no question. But the analogy doesn't really work for us; were more like a Swiss Army knife. You've got all these different attachments, but they are all part of the same thing. When you need one specific tool, the rest go back into the handle. That was how the band functioned and still does in many ways. Pete didn't want anyone to get screwed. Some things we've done might not have been the best business decision but were the right human decision. That was very much Pete's thing. I was 19 and very reactionary. If someone pissed me off, I'd be like, 'Screw them forever!' But Pete was very tactful. He was the business guy. Joe was active on the internet. He wouldn't stop believing in this band. He was the promotions guy. Andy was an honest instrumentalist: ‘I'm a drummer, and I'm going to be the best fucking drummer I can be.' He is very disciplined. None of us were that way aside from him. I was the dictator in the studio. I didn't know what producing was at the time or how it worked, but in retrospect, I've produced a lot of records because I'm an asshole in the studio. I'm a nice guy, but I'm not the nicest guy in the studio. It's a lot easier to know what you don't want. We carved out those roles early. We were very dependent on each other.

MCLYNN: I remember sitting in Japan with those guys. None of them were drinking then, but I was drinking plenty. It was happening there, their first time over, and all the shows were sold out. I remember looking at Pete and Patrick and telling Pete, ‘You're the luckiest guy in the world because you found this guy.' Patrick laughed. Then I turned to Patrick and said the same thing to him. Because really, they're yin and yang. They fit together so perfectly. The fact that Patrick found this guy with this vision, Pete had everything for the band laid out in his mind. Patrick, how he can sing, and what he did with Pete's lyrics - no one else could have done that. We tried it, even with the Black Cards project in 2010. We'd find these vocalists. Pete would write lyrics, and they'd try to form them into songs, but they just couldn't do it the way Patrick could. Pete has notebooks full of stuff that Patrick turns into songs. Not only can he sing like that, but how he turns those into songs is an art unto itself. It's really the combination of those two guys that make Fall Out Boy what it is. They're fortunate they found each other.

"I Could Walk This Fine Line Between Elation And Success. We All Know Which Way I'm Going To Strike The Stake Between My Chest" - Fall Out Boy Hits the Mainstream, 2003

Released on May 6, 2003, Take This To Your Grave massively connected with fans. (Fall Out Boy's Evening Out with Your Girlfriend arrived in stores less than two months earlier.) While Take This To Your Grave didn't crack the Billboard 200 upon its release, it eventually spent 30 weeks on the charts. From Under the Cork Tree debuted in the Top 10 just two years later, largely on Grave's momentum. 2007's Infinity on High bowed at #1.

WENTZ: I remember noticing it was getting insane when we would do in-stores. We'd still play anywhere. That was our deal. We liked being able to sell our stuff in the stores, too. It would turn into a riot. We played a Hollister at the mall in Schaumburg, Illinois. A lot of these stores were pretty corporate with a lot of rules, but Hollister would let us rip. Our merch guy was wearing board shorts, took this surfboard off the wall, and started crowd-surfing with it during the last song. I remember thinking things had gotten insane right at that moment.

HURLEY: When we toured with Less Than Jake, there were these samplers with two of their songs and two of ours. Giving those out was a surreal moment. To have real promotion for a record... It wasn't just an ad in a 'zine or something. It was awesome.

MCLYNN: They toured with The Reunion Show, Knockout, and Punch-line. One of their first big tours as an opening act was with MEST. There would be sold-out shows with 1,000 kids, and they would be singing along to Fall Out Boy much louder than to MEST. It was like, 'What's going on here?' It was the same deal with Less Than Jake. It really started catching fire months into the album being out. You just knew something was happening. As a headliner, they went from 500-capacity clubs to 1500 - 2000 capacity venues.

WENTZ: We always wanted to play The Metro in Chicago. It got awkward when they started asking us to play after this band or that band. There were bands we grew up with that were now smaller than us. Headlining The Metro was just wild. My parents came.

MCLYNN: There was a week on Warped Tour, and there was some beel because these guys were up-and-comers, and some of the bands that were a little more established weren't too happy. They were getting a little shit on Warped Tour that week, sort of their initiation. They were on this little, shitty stage. So many kids showed up to watch them in Detroit, and the kids rushed the stage, and it collapsed. The PA failed after like three songs. They finished with an acapella, 'Where is Your Boy,’ and the whole crowd sang along.

WENTZ: That's when every show started ending in a riot because it couldn't be contained. We ended up getting banned from a lot of venues because the entire crowd would end up onstage. It was pure energy. We'd be billed on tour as the opening band, and the promoter would tell us we had to close the show or else everyone would leave after we played. We were a good band to have that happen to because there wasn't any ego. We were just like, "Oh, that's weird.' It was just bizarre. When my parents saw it was this wid thing, they said, 'OK, yeah, maybe take a year off from college.' That year is still going on.

MCLYNN: That Warped Tour was when the band's first big magazine cover, by far, hit the stands. I give a lot of credit to Norman Wonderly and Mike Shea at Alternative Press. They saw what was happening with Fall Out Boy and were like, 'We know it's early with you guys, but we want to give you a cover.' It was the biggest thing to happen to any of us. It really helped kick it to another level. It helped stoke the fires that were burning. This is back when bands like Green Day, Blink-182, and No Doubt still sold millions of records left and right. It was a leap of faith for AP to step out on Fall Out Boy the way they did.

STUMP: That was our first big cover. It was crazy. My parents flipped out. That wasn't a small zine. It was a magazine my mom could find in a bookstore and tell her friends. It was a shocking time. It's still like that. Once the surrealism starts, it never ends. I was onstage with Taylor Swift ten years later. That statement just sounds insane. It's fucking crazy. But when I was onstage, I just fell into it. I wasn't thinking about how crazy it was until afterward. It was the same thing with the AP cover. We were so busy that it was just another one of those things we were doing that day. When we left, I was like, 'Holy fuck! We're on the cover of a magazine! One that I read! I have a subscription to that!'

HURLEY: Getting an 'In The Studio' blurb was a big deal. I remember seeing bands 'in the studio' and thinking, Man, I would love to be in that and have people care that we're in the studio.' There were more minor things, but that was our first big cover.

STUMP: One thing I remember about the photo shoot is I was asked to take off my hat. I was forced to take it off and had been wearing that hat for a while. I never wanted to be the lead singer. I always hoped to be a second guitarist with a backup singer role. I lobbied to find someone else to be the proper singer. But here I was, being the lead singer, and I fucking hated it. When I was a drummer, I was always behind something. Somehow the hat thing started. Pete gave me a hat instead of throwing it away - I think it's the one I'm wearing on the cover of Take This To Your Grave. It became like my Linus blanket. I had my hat, and I could permanently hide. You couldn't see my eyes or much of me, and I was very comfortable that way. The AP cover shoot was the first time someone asked me to remove it. My mom has a poster of that cover in her house, and every time I see it, I see the fear on my face - just trying to maintain composure while filled with terror and insecurity. ‘Why is there a camera on me?'

JANICK: We pounded the pavement every week for two years. We believed early on that something great was going to happen. As we moved to 100,000 and 200,000 albums, there were points where everything was tipping. When they were on the cover of Alternative Press. When they did Warped for five days, and the stage collapsed. We went into Christmas with the band selling 2000 to 3000 a week and in the listening stations at Hot Topic. Fueled By Ramen had never had anything like that before.

MOSTOFI: Pete and I used to joke that if he weren't straight edge, he would have likely been sent to prison or worse at some point before Fall Out Boy. Pete has a predisposition to addictive behavior and chemical dependency. This is something we talked about a lot back in the day. Straight Edge helped him avoid some of the traps of adolescence.

WENTZ: I was straight edge at the time. I don't think our band would have been so successful without that. The bands we were touring with were partying like crazy. Straight Edge helped solidify the relationship between the four of us. We were playing for the love of music, not for partying or girls or stuff like that. We liked being little maniacs running around. Hurley and I were kind of the younger brothers of the hardcore kids we were in bands with. This was an attempt to get out of that shadow a little bit. Nobody is going to compare this band to Racetraitor. You know when you don't want to do exactly what your dad or older brother does? There was a little bit of that.

"Take This To Your Grave, And I'll Take It To Mine" - The Legacy of Take This To Your Grave, 2003-2023

Take This To Your Grave represents a time before the paparazzi followed Wentz to Starbucks, before marriages and children, Disney soundtracks, and all the highs and lows of an illustrious career. The album altered the course for everyone involved with its creation. Crush Music added Miley Cyrus, Green Day, and Weezer to their roster. Fueled By Ramen signed Twenty One Pilots, Paramore, A Day To Remember, and All Time Low.

STUMP: I'm so proud of Take This To Your Grave. I had no idea how much people were going to react to it. I didn't know Fall Out Boy was that good of a band. We were this shitty post-hardcore band that decided to do a bunch of pop-punk before I went to college, and Pete went back to opening for Hatebreed. That was the plan. Somehow this record happened. To explain to people now how beautiful and accidental that record was is difficult. It seems like it had to have been planned, but no, we were that shitty band that opened for 25 Ta Life.

HURLEY: We wanted to make a record as perfect as Saves The Day's Through Being Cool. A front-to-back perfect collection of songs. That was our obsession with Take This To Your Grave. We were just trying to make a record that could be compared in any way to that record. There's just something special about when the four of us came together.

WENTZ: It blows my mind when I hear people talking about Take This To Your Grave or see people including it on lists because it was just this tiny personal thing. It was very barebones. That was all we had, and we gave everything we had to it. Maybe that's how these big iconic bands feel about those records, too. Perhaps that's how James Hetfield feels when we talk about Kill 'Em All. That album was probably the last moment many people had of having us as their band that their little brother didn't know about. I have those feelings about certain bands, too. 'This band was mine. That was the last time I could talk about them at school without anyone knowing who the fuck I was talking about.' That was the case with Take This To Your Grave.

TROHMAN: Before Save Rock N' Roll, there was a rumor that we would come back with one new song and then do a Take This To Your Grave tenth-anniversary tour. But we weren't going to do what people thought we would do. We weren't going to [wear out] our old material by just returning from the hiatus with a Take This To Your Grave tour.

WENTZ: We've been asked why we haven't done a Take This To Your Grave tour. In some ways, it's more respectful not to do that. It would feel like we were taking advantage of where that record sits, what it means to people and us.

HURLEY: When Metallica released Death Magnetic, I loved the record, but I feel like Load and Reload were better in a way, because you knew that's what they wanted to do.

TROHMAN: Some people want us to make Grave again, but I'm not 17. It would be hard to do something like that without it being contrived. Were proud of those songs. We know that’s where we came from. We know the album is an important part of our history.

STUMP: There's always going to be a Take This To Your Grave purist fan who wants that forever: But no matter what we do, we cannot give you 2003. It'll never happen again. I know the feeling, because I've lived it with my favorite bands, too. But there's a whole other chunk of our fans who have grown with us and followed this journey we're on. We were this happy accident that somehow came together. It’s tempting to plagarize yourself. But it’s way more satisfying and exciting to surprise yourself.

MCILRITH: Fall Out Boy is an important band for so many reasons. I know people don't expect the singer of Rise Against to say that, but they really are. If nothing else, they created so much dialog and conversation within not just a scene but an international scene. They were smart. They got accused of being this kiddie pop punk band, but they did smart things with their success. I say that, especially as a guy who grew up playing in the same Chicago hardcore bands that would go on and confront be-ing a part of mainstream music. Mainstream music and the mainstream world are machines that can chew your band up if you don't have your head on straight when you get into it. It's a fast-moving river, and you need to know what direction you're going in before you get into it. If you don't and you hesitate, it'll take you for a ride. Knowing those guys, they went into it with a really good idea. That's something that the hardcore instilled in all of us. Knowing where you stand on those things, we cut our teeth on the hardcore scene, and it made us ready for anything that the world could throw at us, including the giant music industry.

#long post #lke. VERY long post #fall out boy #fob #take this to your grave #tttyg #patrick stump #pete wentz #joe trohman #andy hurley #if theres any typos lmk and i'll fix em this. hust took fucking forever to transcribe.

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bunkoos-mole-enthusiast · 3 months

Text

Weekly Jungkook Fanfic Recs:

Some fine JK fics for your reading pleasure. Please show your appreciation to all the wonderful authors :)

Cuddling Costs Extra: It was an utterly stupid idea to hire a prostitute to cuddle on movie nights. But perhaps something good can come out of it after all. https://www.wattpad.com/story/116193428-cuddling-costs-extra-j-jk-ff

Man-Eater Hunting: Namjoon is never very aware of what he says when he’s drunk, and this time is no exception to that rule. Unknowingly, Joon creates a chain of events that lead to his youngest member actively chasing his best friend. All under the pretense that you’re an untouchable, unpleasable, man eater. https://httpjungkookcom.tumblr.com/post/692893845087830016/man-eater-hunting-jjk-m

Run: Jungkook doesn't want you to leave him for some stupid karaoke party so he tries his best to make you stay. Although his intentions start out playful, they quickly grow corrupted, especially after your somewhat hurtful words. https://www.tumblr.com/idekhowtodothis/702653565156589568/run-jjk

Tales of Eros: Eros learns love is calculated, deliberate and a tiding storm when no amount of arrows can take him away from you. https://inkedtae.tumblr.com/post/642609445901352960/tales-of-eros-jjk

Golden Gills: Reader taunts Jungkook for being the new Teacher’s Assistant for her history class. She simply can’t stand a teacher’s pet. Jungkook can’t help but make her one. https://inkedtae.tumblr.com/post/615555776590888960/golden-gills-jjk-m

Apodyopsis: Jungkook is a nude model in your art class. https://jeonsjiddies.tumblr.com/post/618504144757620736/apodyopsis-m-jjk

Take Me To Church: You can always tell when something is bothering your boyfriend, despite how hard he tries to hide it - and you have creative ways to get him to talk. https://illneverrecover.tumblr.com/post/614946305251360768/pairing-jeon-jungkook-x-reader-genre-gangau

Youngblood: "I don’t care if he’s got the potential to be the next big thing. I’m done trying to chase a story that doesn’t exist. You’re going to send me to five of his concerts and I can already tell you how each one is going to go. He’s a wannabe bad boy who jizzes his pants when he sees a girl looking at him. Assign me someone else.” https://jinned.tumblr.com/post/188618632439/youngblood-jungkook-m

Glitter & Disquiet: Poised to inherit Korea’s largest gaming company in a few months, the world looks at Jeon Jungkook as a symbol of envy. Why wouldn’t they? He has everything, riches, power, and according to the rumour mill, endless women. Little do they know that his father’s company is on the verge of downfall, he barely has respect of his employees, and regardless of the rumors, he’s just a virgin saving himself for true love. https://joheunsaram.tumblr.com/post/652203565366083584/glitter-and-disquiet-jjk-1

Happy Birthday Loser: After three years of simping over your roommate, you give him one hell of a birthday celebration. https://jungk0oksthighs.tumblr.com/post/694133180600664064/happy-birthday-loser-jjk-x-reader-18

#bts jeon jungkook fanfic #jungkook fic recs #jungkook imagines #jungkook smut #jungkook fanfic #jungkook fic #bts jungkook #jungkook #jungkook x reader #jungkook x oc #jungkook x y/n #jungkook x you #bts fanfic #bts jungkook fanfic #bts fic recs #bts smut #bts imagines

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zegrasdrysdale · 6 months

Note

Jack Hughes - being a dad

[ daddy's girl ] j. hughes

paring : dad!Jack Hughes x fem!reader

summary : (Y/N) surprises Jack on his birthday by bringing their eight month old daughter to her first hockey game, which happens to be during the first round of the 2024 playoffs

warning(s) : mentions of birth,

author’s note : i've had baby fever really bad recently so here y’all go. i'm thinking about expanding this into an au universe so if you think you'd be interested in seeing that, just lmk !

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It's been hard to keep a secret from her fiancé for nearly two weeks so (Y/N) is ecstatic the day Jack's birthday arrives. It's a good thing that their daughter can't speak yet or she would definitely give away the surprise that is planned for that night.

One part of the surprise isn't physically that big, but (Y/N) had to pull some strings and call in some favors to make sure it didn't get to Jack that she is going to the game tonight with their baby girl for the first time. Their daughter will be wearing the other half of the surprise that Jack won't even see until the Devils hit the ice for warm ups.

Needless to say, (Y/N) is very surprised for the day ahead.

Jack's alarm goes off early at seven in the morning the day of his birthday, but (Y/N) is already wide awake with breakfast already made so Jack can have breakfast in bed on his 23rd birthday.

He's been exhausted lately because of how long the first has gone against Carolina. Tonight is game seven so she knows how stressed out and anxious he is. The least she can do is give him a good morning before he goes to the arena for morning practice.

She watches from the doorway as Jack reaches over to the bedside table to turn off his phone alarm. He reaches across the mattress to her side and when he doesn't feel (Y/N) in bed with him, he sits up.

"Happy birthday, my love," (Y/N) softly says as she walks into room. She holds a tray with a plate full of food and a mug with coffee. She sets the tray in front of Jack on the bed after he sits up and crosses his legs. "I thought you deserved breakfast in bed after the past few weeks."

Jack has the biggest smile on his face and watches his fiancée sit beside him. "The world truly does not deserve you baby," he tells her. He leans over and quickly pecks her lips. "Thank you for breakfast."

She smiles and he begins to eat his breakfast. (Y/N) steals a couple pieces of bacon from the plate and Jack looks offended every single time. He tries swatting her hand away but she manages to get some more bacon.

Almost right on time at half past seven, the monitor goes off and their daughter begins to cry. Jack goes to get up and (Y/N) stops him. "I got her," she tells him. "You finish eating. I'll go get her."

Quickly, (Y/N) gets out of bed to go across the hall to their baby's room. She leans down and picks her crying baby up. "Good morning to you too, Reina," she says as she holds her in her arms. "Let's get you changed and get you fed, yeah? Does that sound a good idea?"

Little Reina keeps crying when (Y/N) lays her down on the changing table. She grabs a diaper and wipes to change her daughter's very stinky diaper. She hums to hopefully calm her.

It works and Reina's cries grow quiet. She stares up at her mother with her big blue eyes. She looks so much like Jack and (Y/N) loves it.

As (Y/N) puts Reina back into her pajamas, Jack says behind her, "I love watching you with her. I couldn't resist coming over to watch you with her."

She turns around with Reina in her arms. Her daughter lays her head on her shoulder and coos softly when she sees her father. A smile is on her lips as Jack walks into the room. "You only say that because I changed her smelly diaper," she jokes.

"You said it," Jack laughs. "Not me." He takes Reina from (Y/N). "Good morning, baby girl. You slept really good last night. Was that my birthday present?" Reina giggles and babbles like she's answering her father.

"You keep sweet talking your daughter while I make her a bottle," she tells Jack. "She likes you better anyway."

Jack laughs and begins to sway with Reina against his chest. (Y/N) leaves and goes into the kitchen to make her daughter a bottle.

She tried breastfeeding after her daughter was born, but both she and Reina weren't a fan. It's okay though. Not every baby breastfeeds and it took (Y/N) a while to understand that and to realize that there was nothing wrong with either of them because of it.

As soon as the bottle is warm enough, she makes her way back to Reina's room. She hears Jack talking to her so she stands out of sight so listen for a second.

"I can't wait for the day you come to one of my games," Jack is saying when (Y/N) approaches the door. "You'll get a front row seat to seeing me warm up on the ice with your mom holding you. I won't be able to focus and will probably get yelled at by Nico for paying more attention to you but I won't care. You probably won't even remember coming to the game but I will never forget it. I haven't forget the first game your mom came to after we started dating during my second season. I thought Nico was going to have my head when I stayed right by the glass where she was standing the entire time I was supposed to be warming up. I got an earful from him when I got back to the locker room before the game started but it was so worth it."

She smiles and turns into the room so Reina can get her bottle. "I should've known you never forgot that game," she says. "You guys did win and you scored two goals."

Jack looks over at her and smiles. Reina practically squeals when she sees the bottle in (Y/N)'s hand. "I had to make sure we won," he jokes as he hands Reina over to her mother. "I'm going to get ready to head to the arena for practice. Are we still on for an early lunch when I get done?"

"Reina and I will waiting for you in the parking lot when you get done," she tells him. "Please make sure you shower when you're done so you don't smell like sweat walking into the restaurant."

He shoots her a smile and leaves the room. (Y/N) sits in the rocking chair by the window. She slowly rocks back and forth while feeding Reina. Her eyes are on the rising sun while Reina drinks every drop of the bottle she's being given.

She's thinking about how Jack said he can't wait until Reina comes to one of his games. He has no idea that she's going to be right there for the game tonight.

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As soon as Jack leaves the apartment to go to the Prudential Center for the game, (Y/N) begins to get herself and Reina ready to go.

The plan is to leave around 5:30, and it's only 4 o'clock so there is plenty of time to get herself showered and Reina bathed.

She starts with a shower while Reina is napping in her room. She makes sure to do a full wash. Shampoo, condition, body wash, face wash, exfoliation, and making sure to shave of all necessary body parts. She waits until Reina is awake to bathe her because, like her father, she gets cranky when she gets woken up from a nap.

Once they're both clean and dry, (Y/N) digs into the depths of the closet to pull out the little jersey she had made for Reina tonight.

Reina looks very cute in the little black Jersey jersey. On the back, it says "Daddy" with an 86 under it. She happily coos when she's secure in the jersey. (Y/N) makes sure to get a picture so she can show Jack after the game.

(Y/N) puts on her own matching Jersey jersey that just has Jack's last name and number on it. It's going to be her last name one day too so she doesn't mind wearing it. The jersey is big enough to be a dress on her so she throws on a pair of shorts underneath so she's wearing pants and puts on black knee high heeled boots. She ties her hair up into a messy ponytail and puts on light makeup.

She holds Reina on her hip and takes a picture of them in the mirror as soon as she's dressed. She keeps them to herself until after Jack sees them at the game. Her daughter seems very happy in her new jersey. Her first jersey.

Right on time, (Y/N) is carrying Reina downstairs to the car. A baby bag is thrown over her shoulder that has extra diapers, wipes, formula, baby ear protection since it gets pretty loud in the arena during a playoff game, and their security passes to get into the family suite after warm ups and down into the players' lounge after the game.

She secures Reina in her car seat with her favorite stuffed elephant. Reina is babbling happily while she plays with the elephant so she gets in the front seat to drive the half hour to the Prudential Center.

Soft children's music is played during the ride to keep Reina happy and (Y/N) sane. All the songs are songs that both Jack and (Y/N) picked so they don't lose their minds during long drives. Reina seems to like them so they play the playlist every time they get in the car.

(Y/N) is shaking with excitement as she pulls into the private parking lots where players and their families park for games. It's hard to find a parking spot. There are a lot of cars so she knows that other wives, girlfriends, and families are here for the game.

It's game seven of round one of the playoffs against Carolina. She isn't at all surprised that the parking lot is pretty much full. She's sure that families that are here for Hurricanes players are parked here too.

As she's getting Reina out of her car seat, a voice behind her says, "Please tell me you brought that little angel of yours with you." She turns and sees Erik Haula's wife, Kristen, and her two kids. "All I've heard for the past few months is how happy Jack is to have a little baby and I have yet to meet her."

With a laugh and Reina on her hip, (Y/N) turns around. Kristen smiles at Reina in her jersey. "Here she is," she says. "Little Reina. She's very excited to be here." Her daughter giggles while she plays with her toy.

"She is so cute," Kristen squeals. "Wow, she looks so much like Jack. They could be twins. It's crazy that we do all the work and they come out looking like their father."

"Right?" she laughs. "All Jack did was tell me to push and held my hand while I screamed and pushed his baby out of me." Kristen nods in agreement and smiles. "Walk with me?"

The two of them walk into the Prudential Center with their kids. She holds Reina on her hip as they walk into the building. They show their badges to security to get to the lounge with the players' families.

Almost everyone in the room gushes over Reina. Her grandparents are the first to get to her. Ellen and Jim Hughes immediately take Reina into their arms. Even Uncle Quinn gets involved with holding Reina. (Y/N) sits with Kristen and they talk about their kids while her oldest runs around with one of the other kids.

One of her favorite things is to talk about her daughter and brag about her daughter. She has the best daughter and she wants to make sure everyone knows that. She has the best daughter and her daughter as the best father. (Y/N) wants the entire world to know that.

At 6:30, the wives and girlfriends are told they can head out to the ice for warm ups. (Y/N) grabs Reina's ear protection before following behind the group. She puts them on as she walks to the ring.

Reina is holding her elephant as (Y/N) stands right in front of the glass. She's playing with the elephant’s trunk when the Devils players all skate into the ice.

They take shots at the net for the first minute or so before each player begins their own pregame warm up.

When Jack skates past the first time, he has to take a double take. When he skates by the second time, he actually stops and looks like he’s about to cry. (Y/N) turns a bit so he can see the back of Reina’s jersey. He pouts and knocks on the glass with the top of his stick.

(Y/N) tries to get Reina’s attention on Jack behind the class. “Reina, baby,” she says. “Look. It’s daddy.” Her daughter looks around then sees Jack behind the glass.

She smiles when she sees her dad. The biggest smile forms on Jack’s lips when Reina looks at him. Reina reaches out and puts her hands on the glass. Jack pulls off his glove and puts his hand up to hers.

“Hey, my loves,” Jack yells through the glass. Reina giggles when she hears his voice. “I gotta go. I love you both.”

(Y/N) waves goodbye with Reina’s hand before she blows him a kiss. Jack smiles again before he skates away. Her eyes follow her fiancé as he zooms around the ice to warm up for the game.

As warm ups end, Jack is one of the last guys on the ice. He takes a couple extra shots before he skates over to them one more time.

The lights dim and (Y/N) shows Jack the pictures she took before leaving their apartment. He smiles and taps the glass to get Reina’s attention. She giggles in response.

She holds up one half of a heart with her hand. Jack completes the heart as the horn goes off to signal the end of warm ups. “Say bye to daddy,” (Y/N) tells Reina. Her daughter smiles and bangs on the glass.

Jack skates off and (Y/N) heads up to the family suite to watch the game.

The first period goes by quickly. Brendan Smirh ends up with a major for fighting Sebastian Aho and vice versa. The Devils are the team to capitalize and Dawson scores a goal with a Dougie assist. They end the period up 2 to nothing after Luke scores an even strength goal with two minutes left, assisted by Ondrej and Jesper.

The second period is worse than the first. Aho scores on a breakaway and Teuvo Teräväinen scores a shorty. It’s tied at two going into the second intermission.

(Y/N) has to change Reina and give her a bottle. She wouldn’t stop crying with five minutes left in the period.

Ellen walks up to her while she’s feeding Reina in the back of the box. “I truly don’t understand how you’ve managed to stay sane all these years while you’ve played and watched hockey,” she admits to her future mother-in-law. “It’s only the first round and I’m losing my mind.”

“You’ll get used to it,” Ellen laughs. “If Jack is going to do anything, it’s stress you out during playoffs. The same thing happened last year.”

Yeah, except the Devils lost in 5 in the second round to Carolina. They made it to game seven this year. “I need him to not do that.”

The horn signals the end of intermission. The lights come up and (Y/N) makes her way back to her seat. Reina finishes her bottle.

Halfway through the period, Michael McLeod trips one of the Hurricanes and he’s granted a penalty shot. The puck gets past Vitek and Carolina celebrates on the bench as they take the lead with less than ten minutes left to go in the series.

She will never admit it to anyone but she uses Reina to hide behind. She uses her daughter to distract her from the fact the Devils are still down with three minutes left.

Lindy pulls Vitek and (Y/N) has to bite her lip before she yells at him even though he can’t hear her. The entire building is on edge as six Devils players get set for the faceoff.

Nico wins the faceoff and gets the puck back to Luke in the offensive zone. Luke passes to Dougie, who passes to Jack. (Y/N) watches Jack slap the puck to the net. The lantern lights up and the horn sounds. The building nearly explodes as the Devils tie the game up late in the third. (Y/N) stands with Reina on her hip and celebrates the birthday boy scoring a goal.

The final minute of play is always the worst when tied up. It's even worse when it's game seven in the Stanley Cup playoffs. (Y/N) is biting the skin around her nails as she watches Vitek get pulled from net one more time.

With thirty seconds left, Nico puts the puck in the back of the net and (Y/N) swears she loses her hearing from how loud it gets in the building.

The horn sounds one more time to signal that the Devils won the first round of the playoffs. Everyone in the suite celebrates while the boys celebrate on the ice.

One round down. Four games won. Three rounds left to go. 12 more wins. They got it this year.

༺═──────────────═༻

It's nearly an hour after the game when the players begin to make their way into the lounge. Jack is one of the first players to come into the room.

His eyes immediately find (Y/N) and a now sleeping Reina in her arms. He makes his way over and sits beside them on the couch. Jack leans over and presses a soft kiss to her cheek. She looks over at him and smiles.

"Congratulations," she tells him. "Can't wait to root for you in the second round."

Jack's eyes are on his sleeping daughter. "I can't believe she's here," he says. "I mean, I couldn't wait to have her come to a game and she's actually here. Was she okay?"

"She was perfect," (Y/N) replies. "Your mom really helped out a lot. It was nice to come and watch without worrying about a sitter at home with Reina. She was very happy to see you during warm ups. She kept giggling and laughing whenever you skated by. She's such a daddy's girl sometimes. It was the best thing I think I have ever seen."

He takes Reina, who just yawns as she's picked up out of her mother's arms. "It means so much to me that you were both here for the game," he softly says. "Glad we were able to pull off the win for you guys. The jersey is a nice touch, by the way."

"Had to let everyone know who her daddy is," (Y/N) laughs. "I've gotten a lot of comments today saying that she looks like you so I think the entire world knows who her daddy is."

Jack laughs and (Y/N) rests her head on her fiancé's shoulder. "Thank you for giving me this life," Jack says atter a moment of silence. "Being here and being supportive even though I know it's exhausting most of the time. You're a great mom and an even better fiancée. Just want you to know that."

(Y/N) picks her head up and meets Jack's eyes. "We have a lifetime ahead of us," she replies. "But lets get through the playoffs before we continue worrying about any of that, yeah?"

He nods in agreement and Reina begins to whine in Jack's arms. He picks her up and holds her against his chest. Reina's head is on the shoulder that (Y/N) had her head on. As soon as Reina sees Jack, she smiles and he kisses her cheek. "Hi, my baby," Jack says against her skin. "Hope you had a nice nap. You've had a busy day."

She smiles as Jack sits Reina on his lap and plays with their daughter.

This is her life, and she can't wait to find out where it leads.

༺═──────────────═༻

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