#i actually tend to reach for ballads in Spanish

[diazpoems]

Just speed read a Vampire AU fic that was actually good and ended in the couple getting married but also showed one person, the mortal, growing old and dying while the vampire stayed alive and the vampire partner mourning him after his death and all the years came flooding back to him at once and now I’m listening to El Triste by José José and crying what the fuck lol

[stereksecretsanta]

Merry Christmas, @hannars97!

One of the requests was for "really like stiles discovered kpop and drag derek with him" and, though my Kpop and Krock knowledge is a couple of years out of date (and I always tended towards Jpop and Jrock because of my job at Jrock Revolution... XD;;), it seemed like Hanna was excited for that particular prompt, so I tried my best and gave it a go! I'm crossing my fingers that you enjoy reading this story, Hanna, and I hope that you have a wonderful holiday season. <3

Read on AO3

*****

Words Fail & Music Speaks

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Falling 이대로 falling for you 날 잡아줄 수 없어도 Falling 또 다시 falling for you 날 감싸줄 수 없나요 Falling like this, falling for you Even if you can’t catch me Falling once again, falling for you Can’t you embrace me? “Falling” – John Park

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”Where words fail, music speaks.” - Hans Christian Andersen

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The Stilinski household had once been a home filled with music: rock, pop, classical, Broadway, country—anything and everything was a possibility to be heard. Certain days tended to lean towards a particular style of music—Fridays were the most likely day of the week for Noah to drop by the house and find Claudia singing along to an old school country song, rolling pin clutched in one hand as a makeshift microphone while Sundays typically had Stiles bouncing around the living room and jumping from sofa to armchair to sofa again, headbanging and doing air guitar along to Metallica’s Enter Sandman album. It was a home rich in sounds, in lyrics, and varying vocal qualities and styles.

In various languages, as well:

Claudia introduced Stiles to her favorite Polish singers early on in his life, wanting to share her history, culture, and language with her son as much as possible: because of that, the amber-eyed boy grew up singing along to Marcin Rozynek, Magda Piskorczyk, Stanisław Sojka, Natalia Kukulska, and Irena Jarocka, using his favorite songs from each to slowly teach himself the language that his mother had grown up speaking with the rest of her family when she was his age.

Stiles had only managed a passing ability in Polish before his mother got sick and worsened under the onslaught of the frontotemporal dementia’s symptoms; after the diagnosis came in, the young boy had buckled down and studied for all he was worth, singing old lullabies that he had found on the internet to Claudia on the days her disease struck hardest—hoping, perhaps, that the familiarity of her first language would offer some comfort to his mother as she got worse and worse in the hospital, health slowly but surely spiraling into a decline.

The other side of the coin—the downside—in learning songs to sing and the language to speak to his mother in came as thus:

Noah and Claudia had known from an early age that something was off about their son. His energy tended to be in excess to the children around him and school was a chore for two particular reasons: either Stiles found it impossible to concentrate on the tasks assigned to him, becoming disruptive to the other students around him, or he focused so thoroughly on his assignments that it was difficult to coax him into moving to something new. Doctors were able to diagnose the signs early on and it was a constant and regular occurrence after that to try and find a medication and dosage amount that would work best with Stiles. A solution was eventually settled on—though no medication was one hundred percent perfect—and so Claudia had searched for supplements to include to help her son with his concentration and attention issues.

It wasn’t long after that the Stilinski matriarch discovered that music helped Stiles in unexpected ways; when Claudia ran foreign music in the background, Stiles was able to better concentrate—part of his mind focusing on the music and language, running along with it. But, because the words weren’t in English, they instead became a reassuring background noise to the boy, allowing most of his attention to actually shift to his schoolwork and other assignments given to him.

Claudia’s Polish records, cassettes, and CDs became a default to turn to, if only because her collection for that particular language was the largest, started when she was a little girl. Spanish came soon after: taught at school and the secondary language of California with Stiles the first one to the counter at the local panadería, rattling off their grocery list with a wide smile: pork and chicken tamales for their Wednesday dinner, pan de leche, conchas, and ensaïmada to eat at breakfast and as treats throughout the week (the conchas were always the first to go once Stiles got tall enough to reach the bread box that they were all stored in).

The downside to immersing himself in Polish to offer up a sort of comfort to Claudia as she lay sick and dying came when it became harder and harder to focus on homework with Natalia Kukulska running in the background—after all, now, Stiles was actually able to understand the lyrics that she sang. The same issue arose the further along in Spanish the boy got at school, vocabulary and conjugations gone over week after week, and though Stiles didn’t think that he’d ever be one hundred percent fluent in the language… he now knew enough to understand bits and pieces of the songs played on the radio.

After Claudia passed away, Stiles eventually gave up listening to either option, defaulting to classical music or instrument-focused electronica and club mixes to help him concentrate during extra long homework sessions or research binges. Unfortunately, the music genres were never as helpful as the Polish and Spanish songs were—the lack of vocals giving the boy’s mind an opportunity to drift without that extra safeguard to ensure he stayed on task; it wasn’t completely horrible—not as bad as what it could be—but… well, for quite a while, Stiles’ grades definitely took the brunt of that particular hit.

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It wasn’t until years later that Stiles finally stumbled across a solution.

Literally.

The teen had been running various YouTube users’ playlist mixes in the background of his laptop while on his current supernaturally-prompted research extravaganza. The latest Big Bad wasn’t a creature that Stiles was able to find in the Argents’ beastiary despite several days of finetoothed combing, so turning to the internet was the next step when the usual tools finally ran dry.

He’d pulled up a playlist from a user that the whiskey-eyed teen typically relied on for ambient, background music, and things had been going well for the majority of the night: until the playlist switched to a new song, one that must have been recently added, and Stiles paused for a moment in his reading to shoot the YouTube tab a suspicious, furrowed look.

Korean began playing over the laptop’s speakers, and the teen huffed a quiet breath while switching over to the video platform website so that he could skip the song and move ahead to the next one.

The moment that Stiles clicked on the tab to see a young man perched on a large throne and wearing a black and white pinstriped suit, bright red hair flowing over the chair’s arms and to the floor, the teen’s eyebrows slowly began to creep up his forehead. The visuals didn’t do much to appeal to him—the scenes with the astronauts left him rather unimpressed—but the dirt scene, one that seemed to ooze post-apocalyptic setting? It intrigued Stiles enough to get him to stay and to continue watching despite the music genre not being what he typically enjoyed listening to as the autoplay selection shifted over to the next song… which ended up being another Korean pop song.

This song—called “Lucifer” and performed by a band called SHINee—had elements of electronica and pop that drew him in more thoroughly than the previous music video. It went without saying that the teen’s interest was piqued by a variety of new music styles, a language that he wasn’t too familiar with—Korean had never been one of the languages that Claudia had played for him when Stiles was young—and researching the newest supernatural threat took a pause while the teen got caught up in a new type of binge watching and listening.

Perhaps after forty-five minutes or so into the various videos that Stiles clicked, one after another, he finally came across a music video that made him pause: the song was older, probably recorded back in 2009, but the genre reminded the teen a lot of the old ballads and R&B songs that Claudia used to sing along to before she got sick. The song was called ”One” and was sung by a group called Dong Bang Shin Ki; looking back, Stiles was able to pinpoint that this was the exact moment when his interest shifted and perhaps turned a bit more serious: curiosity took precedent as the amber-eyed teen scooted closer to his desk, fully prepared and ready to dive more completely into this new thing that caught his attention.

From ”Rising Sun” (also from Dong Bang Shin Ki) to ”Passion” from a singer called SE7EN to a video called ”LA Song” from a guy who sometimes went by either Bi or Rain to ”Sorry Sorry” from a boyband with a ton of members that were called Super Junior to ”Eat You Up” from a pretty kickass female singer named BoA… the more Stiles explored, the more intrigued he became—and the more obvious it was that he preferred certain singers and groups over others, as well as certain time periods in what had been produced and released. (And when he eventually stumbled across Seo Taiji, EVE, and The TRAX, too…? The bottomless hole that was his typical research binge became that much deeper.)

The teen ended up staying up until dawn, ignoring the first blush of light that highlighted the horizon and slipped through his window in a fall of gold, and instead continued clicking from music video and performance—one after another—until Stiles’ dad yelled at him to start getting ready for school because otherwise he’d be late.

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It was a pattern that quickly established itself as a regular one, and it didn’t take long before the teen was switching his music from the previously established instrument-based electronica and classical music to Kpop (and Krock, on occasion) playlists from YouTube users. He liked the older groups, the ones from 2008 and on—they typically had more of an R&B feel to their music, especially the ballads, and it made Stiles nostalgic for his mom (when that happened, the whiskey-eyed teen tended to lean more heavily towards listening to a singer called Eru).

Such was how Derek eventually stumbled upon Stiles: with the teen absently bopping his head along to Super Junior’s “MAMACITA” playing on low in the background while Stiles paged through another hunter family’s beastiary—given to him by Peter at the pack’s last meet-up, and the teen had been too intrigued at the chance to dive into another family’s records that he didn’t bother asking too many questions about how Derek’s uncle had managed to get his sneaky, sneaky hands on it.

The dichotomy—the unexpected sight of Stiles happily moving along to a song in another language—and what the Hale Alpha had been expecting was enough to make Derek pause at Stiles’ bedroom’s windowsill, and the older man’s expressive eyebrows slowly lowered in confusion as a pale gaze flickered from the oblivious teen to his laptop and back again.

“Do you even know what they’re saying?” the werewolf asked, pitching his voice loud enough for Stiles to hear over the beat of the music. In all honesty, Derek felt that he should have been surprised by finding the teen listening to what he was—but, then again, the Alpha had also stumbled across the cassette collection that Stiles kept in the Jeep. True enough, many of the tapes were legacies left to him from Claudia Stilinski… but a fair amount of the newer looking tapes had Stiles’ writing on them. And those tapes could be described as ‘eclectic’ at best.

“Nope. Do you?” the teen shot back without missing a beat, already alerted to Derek’s incoming visit by the proximity wards, and instead flipped the next page in the new beastiary. A creature that Stiles had never come across before—neither in the Argents’ records nor on the Redbull-fueled internet research binges—was this section’s Big Bad, and it took only moments before Stiles’ attention shifted from the bemused werewolf still perched on his windowsill to the book spread across his lap.

Stiles’ easy disregard sparked something within Derek’s chest—if the Alpha was truthful with no one but himself, at least he could admit within the shadowed protection of his mind that it was an emotion very close to jealousy that surged to ugly life—and the corner of his mouth twisted downwards.

“I do,” he answered in turn, and the burn softened back down to ambers as Stiles slowly blinked, obviously returning to the immediate here and now as he shifted his attention back to the waiting Alpha. Curiosity lit that amber gaze and, to further prove that he could do as he claimed, Derek tilted his head to the side to listen to the lyrics for a moment or two before translating aloud for Stiles’ benefit: “Why are you shutting your mouth right now? Did you decide to just go with the flow? Just say Shh!, then everything will calm down. Everyone keeps nagging. Were you expecting us to be Superman? This world is good enough to play in, right? If you do as you always did, go as you always went. There’s no way you’ll stick out and be hit by a hammer.”

“…oh,” came Stiles’ reply as the teen blinked once more and glanced towards his computer, a new appreciation at understanding a portion of the song softening the look in his eyes. “That’s… not what I was expecting. I like it, though.”

Drawn into the teen’s orbit as the moon drew the ocean’s to tide, Derek ducked the top of the pane and shifted more completely into the familiar warmth of Stiles’ bedroom. One step after another, and curiosity at this unexpected Stiles Trivia tidbit drew the older man to the other’s laptop. A single touch woke it to life—and it was then that Derek saw just how many Kpop playlists the teen had loaded and waiting to be switched over to. The eyebrows yet again traveled upwards over Derek’s forehead, and he poked around each one to see what it was that Stiles had managed to find and collect since the last time the ‘wolf had stopped by his room.

“Why’re you listening to all of this when you don’t understand it?” Derek eventually asked as he scrolled down a list of BoA’s songs that was… rather long.

Stiles remained silent for a long moment, tap-tap-tapping his pen against the curve of a pale, bared knee—and eventually offered up a one-shouldered shrug, Gallic and enigmatic in its lack of meaning. “It helps me concentrate,” the teen replied after a moment or two of Derek waiting, silent and expectant for any real sort of reply. “It was a trick that my mom used to do with different languages. I figured that I would give it a try with… this. It works, so… does it really matter why?”

The connection to a memory from a dead and gone family member—the tenseness along the line of Stiles’ spine, the slight hitch of his voice when he mentioned his mother: they were things that Derek still did himself when talking about the family that he’d lost; it didn’t matter if the loss was years past: some hurts just… didn’t heal.

Derek fell silent at that even as he continued to click through the teen’s playlists, taking note of various artists—seeing if there was a pattern to Stiles’ preferences (there was) and weighing, considering, an idea that slowly began to form along the edges of his mind. Vague and more of an outline of an idea than anything concrete, but… a possibility, a hint, a chance towards something.

“What’s your favorite song? I can translate it for you—if you’d like.”

Vulnerability softened the normally iron strength that filled Stiles’ caramel gaze, and the smile that the teen offered the ‘wolf was crooked and sulky-sweet with understanding and unspoken affection. “…okay,” he agreed, setting aside the bestiary to return to it once Derek was gone. “I’d like that, yeah.”

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Stiles paused as he flipped open the screen for his laptop, confusion furrowing his brow at stumbling across two tickets—obviously concert tickets, though Stiles hadn’t bothered checking to see if any of his favorite bands and singers were on tour for perhaps two years now (no point, he’d always figured; you never knew when the latest monster flavor of the week would decide to rear its ugly head). So, that being the case, where had these come from…?

The teen flipped them over to see the front of the printed tickets, eyes going wide as he finally caught sight of what the concert was: The Korea Times Music Festival—pool tickets at the Hollywood Bowl with the date showing a little bit more than a month from now.

How…?

What?

…why.

(All pertinent questions that Stiles didn’t have the answer to—but desperately wanted.)

Glancing down to his computer’s keyboard, Stiles picked up the Post-It Note that had been stuck to the back of the topmost ticket, bright yellow slip of paper slipping away as he picked them up. Derek’s sloppy scrawl was immediately recognizable after too many years of notes left behind for Stiles to find in a variety of places (places typically geared towards pissing the teen off during the Cold War portions of their Alpha-Emissary relationship).

Feeling up to heading down to SoCal next month to see some of your bands perform live?

“You grade-A asshole,” Stiles muttered around a bright, happy laugh—corner of his mouth curling upwards into a stupidly sappy grin, dimples on display for anyone to see—and the boy didn’t bother trying to fight against the supernova strength flare of relief and glee and want that exploded to life within the confines of Stiles’ chest as he read the note from Derek.

The answer, when Stiles sent it via text, was simple enough:

I totally am! But only if you’re coming with me, O Alpha Mine. ;)

::fin::

[thisdudewalksintoabar]

The All-Star? Barely remember it.

But such is life, right? And after reading enough of these, boy am I sick of the sound of my own voice! But anyway, here’s another old column! https://www.fwweekly.com/2010/07/21/zen-and-the-all-star/

There are nights when I get drunk, and there are nights when I have a drink. In the case of the latter, I find it best to find a sparsely populated bar with muted lighting and silent TVs. I like these environments because they make it easy to slink onto a stool, order a drink, and fade into the background.

If you pace yourself and order politely, the bartender will pay attention to you the way a person notices the shadows of a face in the random splotches of a stucco wall — you’ll catch her eye, but as soon as she moves, you’re invisible again, at least until the light’s right and you fall into her peripheral vision. Or maybe it just seems like that. I tend to think bartenders almost always know what you’re up to, and the best ones know when you’re content to become one with the furnishings and just contemplate the universe and shit.

While I normally shoot for this sort of introspectiveness at a place like A Great Notion, I managed, rather curiously, to reach a meditative state at All-Star Sports Bar & Grill on Camp Bowie Boulevard by Bryant-Irvin Road recently.

I say curiously because for me sports bars are generally bad spots for any kind of meditative state. By “generally,” I mean “without exception,” and by “bad,” I mean “the worst possible.” But for the umpteenth week in a row, as I drove down Camp Bowie and scanned the Ridglea Theater’s marquee to see which metal band has the stupidest name, my gaze was inexorably drawn to the neon beer signs in the window of what used to be Café Aspen. For weeks I’ve grudgingly conceded that I might as well check it out, but most of the time I have that conversation while on the way to nearby Taco Cabana. “Maybe on the way home,” I always tell myself –– but never follow through. Nobody likes to go out in public after he’s spilled queso on his pants.

In other words, I couldn’t stop into this bar as if it were the last thing to do on a list of late-night errands, even if the only two items listed above it would be 1. Get flautas and queso. 2. Wait until you get home. I had to, you know, make plans. So I left the house last week intent on giving the All-Star Sports Bar the old college try. My transcripts would suggest this is a half-hearted try at best, but you know what I mean.

I honestly didn’t know what to expect. Where dive bars are quiet, dark, and intimate, sports bars are usually the exact opposite. And true to form, when I walked in there were a bunch of pool tables laid bare by glaring overhead lights. I ran into a buddy just as some dude had grabbed the karaoke mic to try his hand at Skynyrd’s “Ballad of Curtis Loew.” My friend pointed toward the back of the room. “The bar’s back there, actually,” he said. “So’s the patio.”

Indeed, the main bar was tucked in between the billiards/karaoke room and the late Café Aspen’s sprawling back patio. The contrast between the billiards/karaoke room and the main bar was staggering. I’ve often wondered what a modern take on a ’70s neighborhood dive would look like. Now I know. It’s the All-Star: warm, wooden décor, tall mirrors, and the kinds of specials that you’d find at an authentic ’70s dive like A Great Notion. Of all the All-Star’s specials –– there are several –– the best has to be $2 domestic bottles all day every day. And since the place is a bar and a grill, there’s food: On Mondays from 7 ’til 11 p.m., appetizers are half-price. Weekends feature live music (mostly Texas Music and cover bands), but if you can’t wait that long to party, there’s a bikini night on Wednesdays. I gathered this info from clumps of text chalked across a large blackboard on a wall. “I should probably go to one of those,” I thought.

As if on cue, a hot blonde entered along with her equally hot brunette friend, and they ordered a round of shots for themselves and these two dudes already seated at the bar. The blonde looked like the star of a telenovela, and I smirked when she raised a toast in Spanish. Then they all went outside, possibly to shoot pool (there’s a table and a bar out there too), possibly to escape the rendition of Foreigner’s “Juke Box Hero” barreling in from the karaoke room. Around 1:30, the bartender started to pull up the rubber shot-mats. She left me alone with my thoughts, but she also ran my tab. No matter how good a person is at camouflage, nobody’s invisible at last call. — Steve Steward

#stevestewardfreelance