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genshinlover101 · 2 years

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May I make a request for how they're like bringing them to meet the reader's parents? With Childe, Ei, Xiao, Ganyu and Albedo if that's alright? Thank you~ <3

Them Meeting Your Parents

Characters: Childe, Raiden Shogun, Xiao, Ganyu, Albedo x gn!reader

Warnings: none

A/n: I'm not used to writing so much for the men recently :,) I hope I still did well for them

• Childe has always been a charming man. He knows his way with words and can manipulate anyone into liking him no matter their personality. That included your dear parents.

• Because they were your parents, he knew he couldn’t make a single mistake. he’d bring your mother flowers, and rehearse answers to common questions fathers might ask their children’s boyfriends. He’d even wear his best clothes for this occasion.

Childe was determined to be the biggest gentlemen of all time. The bouquet of expensive flowers he invested in being squeezed and drenched in his nervous sweat. Childe was rarely ever genuine to strangers but now called for a time where he was required to be. You squeeze his hand, “relax,” you whispered to him.

He took a deep breath, facing your mother and father once more as they looked at him expecting his first words. “It’s a pleasure to meet you two, I’ve heard much about you,” he said with a wide smile. “Ah- and this is for the beautiful mother.” He offered the bouquet to her as she accepted it, the scent of honey resonating from them. Flattery was the way to the heart, he thought to himself.

You stood awaiting your parent’s reactions, trying to decipher if they were positive or not. Your father patted Childe on the back, giving him a hearty laugh. “Ahh, my child has spoken much about you too!” He was as loud as ever, giving Childe a hard time figuring out how to react. “I hear you are quite rich? What do you do for a living” Of course, the common occupation question.

Childe’s mind went to every corner of his brain to concoct a valid answer that wasn’t a Fatui Harbinger. “Ah...” it took him a moment. “I’m a toy salesman. I always found joy in putting a smile on children’s faces,” Your father looked at him suspiciously. How could he make so much money as a mere toy salesman?

However, he brushed it under the rug, giving Childe a big pat on the back. “That’s my boy, you oughta be good at your job to make such a living hehe.” You could breathe a sigh of relief. If your father accepted a lie like that then your day would go a hundred times smoother.

• Being the Shogun of Inazuma was enough to knock your parents off their rocking chair. Ei didn’t need to be technical, charming, or good with words for your parents to accept her into your family.

• In fact, on the day of her visit they might degrade you in order to remain humble for Ei. If she flattered you, they would deny all your good traits and relay an embarrassing childhood story to her.

The moment you walked through the door your parents were there to greet your confused girlfriend. Grabbing her by the wrist as they directed her through their small humble home, the smell of your mother’s cooking wafting through the house. You expected your parents to give an overblown reaction, but this was a little much.

“Your excellency, I asked my child what food you enjoyed and they said sweets, is that true?” your mother asked her with a delightful smile. Ei nodded slowly, your father equally as enthralled in Ei’s presence.

“That is true, I enjoy desserts thoroughly. But I’ve been lectured many times that dinner should come first should it not?” Ei questioned. You had guided her to not reveal her ignorance to humankind so quickly, yet here she is inquiring about nutrients. She must’ve surely felt a little comfortable by your parent’s hasty attitude.

“Ah- indeed. That’s why we prepared more food for you. I know I’m not a five-star chef, but I hope a homecooked meal will do the trick,” your mother and father both reacted swell to Ei. You had stressed about this meeting for a week in advance, but now you notice you had nothing to worry about in the beginning.

• Xiao isn’t a parent’s first choice, maybe in past civilizations when everyone knew his name. But nowadays he just seems like an edgy teen. He would often be a little too silent for their liking, and it was even worse when he talked.

• On the day, the most he said to your parents on his own accord was ‘hello, how are you.’ and ‘thank you for having me’. The only other time he talked was when your parents talked first, being too shy to take initiative.

You made Xiao dress up all fancy for this occasion, adjusting his hair in a way that was welcoming for your parents. He looked at you with a nervous face. Initially, he wasn’t nervous upon meeting your parents, why would he be? But the amount of effort and stress you put into this event made him feel the pressure radiating off of you.

As soon as Xiao entered your childhood home, he was greeted by your loving mother. Taking one of his hands in her own, “I’ve heard much about you, Xiao. You seem to be as dapper as our child had described.” Xiao looked towards you for guidance, nobody had ever described the Conqueror of Demons as... dapper?

When he realized through your toothy smile that you would offer no help, he let out a tch. “Indeed, they call me Xiao, it is nice to meet you,” his hands broke out in a cold sweat. This meant nothing to him, but to you, this encounter meant the world. If he cared about you then he had to remember all his interactions with humans in the past.

“Likewise,” your mother said awkwardly recognizing his apprehension. Your father placed a firm hand on Xiao’s shoulder.

“You seem smaller than I expected young man, I hope you can protect our little one. I won’t give them up to just anybody,” your father playfully threatened.

Now, this was the type of talk Xiao could get down to. “My power is endless, countless of souls have fallen prey to these hands. I am confident I can protect your child.” You almost wanted to throw up in your mouth. Here was the edgy side of your boyfriend that you recognized.

• Your parents were thrilled to have an Adeptus as their child’s girlfriend. Not to mention Ganyu of the Yuehai Pavilion? Your parents probably heard many stories of her and her accomplishments towards Liyue as a child.

• Little did they know Ganyu was a nervous wreck, she was only a girl boss when fighting and working. When it came to social standards she was subpar compared to her peers. Cloud Retainer probably had to give her a quick pep talk beforehand.

You had to drag Ganyu to the door on the day of the encounter. She swore throughout the entire week prior that she was ready, prepping with possible questions and good conversation starters for parents. But on the actual day, she was howling for you to come up with an excuse to get her out of this situation. You stood speechless at your doormat, “pleaseee don’t make me go in there,” Ganyu pleaded.

Only for your parents to be spying through the peephole, opening the door before you could even open it. “Welcome Ganyu!” your father belched to her.

“We’ve been waiting for your arrival,” Your mother added behind the man. Ganyu tried to give her sweet smile that made all in Liyue fall in love with her, but it ended up looking queasy like a child holding back a lie.

“Pleasure to meet you two,” Ganyu bowed to them deeply. “I-I um... I got you flowers ma’am.” Ganyu pushed a bouquet of Qingxin to your mother’s chest. Instead of heeding your advice to act natural, she followed Cloud Retainers who had no real of comprehension how modern-day humans act.

You wanted to jump in, but you knew if you did your parents would never have an actual grasp on how Ganyu acted. They needed to see Ganyu for Ganyu herself, not the Ganyu that relied on you socially. “T-thank you,” your mother grasped the stems of the flowers, feeling the awkward energy radiating from her.

“I hope you’ll accept me into this family,” Ganyu belted out from a script that she vaguely memorized given to her by the equally socially awkward Cloud Retainer. “I-I might be clumsy, but if you need assistance with dinner I can aid you,” she said from the top of her head.

• Albedo? The Chief Alchemist? Your parents were thrilled to hear that you were bringing him home to dine. Of course, they had only heard rumors of his accomplishments via newspaper or rumors.

• They were in for a surprise when they discovered that he wasn’t necessarily shy but stoic... As if he wasn’t human. Nevertheless, his endless kindness towards them and him displaying his alchemist talents was enough to impress them.

Albedo held your hand as you both stood at your front doorstep aimlessly. Albedo was never nervous, but this situation and how much emphasis you put on it made him feel a little overwhelmed. He felt little squeezes on his hand as he looked at you blankly. As if he had forgotten what it meant. “Hehe Albedo... do your thing,” you mentioned with frustration laced in your smile.

Your parents stood at the other end waiting for whatever you had motioned him to do. “Ah-,” he let out as he prepared a picture of a Cecilia beforehand. As if out of nowhere he performed his ‘magic’ and a real Cecilia was crafted out of thin air. Your parents were in awe as they clapped in sync to his show.

Approaching them he gave your mother the single flower, she twirled it by the stem, staring at it fondly. “I’d like to gift you this, as a sign of my gratitude,” Albedo told her. He looked back at you like a lost puppy, you had only instructed him this far, he had no idea what his next plan of action was beyond ‘acting natural’.

He had to dig long and hard within his big brain to remember what he had observed from other humans. Hosts like it when you helped around the house no? In the heat of the moment, he turned to face your parents once more. “If you have not yet finished setting up the dinner table, I can assist you.” You sighed proudly, you taught him well to blend in with human society.

#childe x reader #raiden shogun x reader #xiao x reader #ganyu x reader #albedo x reader #genshin impact #genshin impact x reader #genshin x reader #tartalgia #raiden shogun #xiao #ganyu #genshin albedo

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aliyah-the-creator · 3 years

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This is my very first post, so I hope I do good! Please give me some feedback, I would love to hear it.

The Umbrella Academy Life Swap:

The Hargreaves switch lives instead of powers.

• Ben ran away at the age of 13 and got lost in the dimension inside his stomach, the Handler eventually finds him and recruits him to the Commission. He works as a super powered agent that saves his victims from his sadistic partners, Hazel and Cha-Cha. Ben doesn’t come back in a 13 year old body like Five, he’s the same age as his siblings, and Ben does know about the apocalypse and has the eye. And unlike Five, Ben actually tells his siblings about the apocalypse and how he was a super powered assassin that acted as the kidnapper and lookout. When the Hargreaves were 13, Ben had tried to talk to Five out of time traveling because logically, he may not know where he would end up, but Five wouldn’t listen to him and started arguing with him. The fighting got so loud that Vanya and Klaus eventually got pulled into the argument as well and it turned into a fistfight with all 4 of them. All of them ended up with scratches and bruises on their faces, a few chunks of their hair missing, and cleaning the mansion floors and ceilings from top to bottom and every single room without using their powers as a punishment for fighting by Reginald. At 2 am, Ben woke up after a nightmare and felt bad about getting Vanya and Klaus into trouble when they didn’t even started the fight in the first place and tried to go to their rooms to apologize, but he never did because the Horror became restless and angry that it didn’t get anything to eat and wanted to make Ben feel how trapped they felt when Reginald always had them kill people, so Ben’s tentacles grabbed him and opened the portal to their world, which was the apocalypse, and trapped him there for 10 years until the Handler came and recruited him and was never seen after that day again. Because of Ben’s disappearance, Vanya and Klaus blamed Five and his ambition for time travel since it was him who argued with Ben in the first place and Five had never forgotten it. Ben hopes that Klaus and Vanya would forgive Five in time. Ben read Klaus’s book about what happened to his family when he disappeared, he read about Luther running away to Dallas to forget about the Umbrella Academy, about Diego staying at the Academy to keep fighting crime, about Allison’s death and how she’s now mute, how Klaus is trying to get sober and stabling himself, how Five became a professor at a prestigious university and a vigilante, and how Vanya took a dark path into alcoholism.

• Five became a lowly-paid physics professor at community college after he was fired for punching a colleague at prestigious university and he’s also a vigilante, but his fiancé Delores doesn’t like it though. Five met Delores at a professor’s conference in Canada where she was presenting her findings on the science of gems and geodes since she’s a mineralogy professor (someone who teaches the study of rocks and crystals) and where he was discussing the possibility of time travel. Those two immediately hit it off and are now engaged, Five proposed to her by using different types of gems to spell it out. Five uses his powers of teleportation to be a mysterious assassin and hero.

• Klaus is a dancer at a local theater and he has somewhat control over his powers, but if the ghosts get too loud, he smokes cigarettes instead of weed so he wouldn’t be high at a recital. He became friends with Leonard Peabody aka Harold Jenkins when Klaus was 23 after his family abandoned him for writing an auto-biography about him having a power that traumatizes him and what the Umbrella Academy was really like behind the scenes, it’s called “The Ghosts Inside the Umbrella Academy: the life of Klaus Hargreaves”. Harold makes him more isolated by threatening to kill himself and haunting Klaus for the rest of his life if Klaus tries to leave him. Since Klaus never had someone ,besides Ben, care for him and give him a home and food since he was living at a homeless shelter when he met Leonard, Klaus thinks that this type of friendship is normal and doesn’t think twice about it. In his book, Klaus portrays his remaining siblings as people who knew about his drug abuse, but didn’t do anything about it; he portrayed Luther as a hotheaded daddy’s boy who was treated like the Golden child, Diego as a momma’s boy with daddy issues always trying to compete with Luther for everything, Allison as his favorite sister who was taken too soon, who’s death was the final straw that tore apart their family, and who acts as a silent ghost mother since she’s mute (no one believes him that he can see her though), he portrays Five as the cause of Ben’s disappearance and as a heartless gremlin who doesn’t care about his siblings enough to see that his siblings are hurting and have real problems of their own, he portrays Ben as his kind-hearted and favorite brother who was the glue that hold their family together and who’s disappearance drove a wedge between the family, and he portrays Vanya as his ordinary violin playing sister that desperately wanted to belong with their family in any way she could, but turned to alcohol when she learned that her dream of being in the Umbrella Academy was crushed by Reginald and who had the easy life of not being exploited by their father for her powers like he was. Vanya actually confronted him about her portrayal in the book and they said some things that they shouldn’t have, but they eventually forgave each other and Vanya moved in with him and Leonard a month later. Klaus didn’t mind that Vanya and Leonard were dating, but saw a striking difference between Vanya and Leonard’s relationship and Vanya and Sissy’s relationship when Vanya came back from the 60s. With Leonard, Vanya was walking on eggshells and isolated from her brothers and couldn’t be herself around him, but with Sissy, Klaus saw that Vanya was happier and could be herself around Sissy and loves Harlan like her own son. Klaus was the one to kill Leonard with his powers by having Allison choke him to death when he badly hurt Harlan with a gun and tried to drown Sissy.

• Allison dies at the age of 17 when her throat was slit by a serial killer on a mission and now acts like Klaus’s mother by always keeping him sober enough to conjure her and giving him healthy advice, but ultimately going along with almost every crazy idea Klaus has. Since she has a slit throat she can’t talk, but she does sign language instead and like Ben, she ages like Klaus, but still wears the same outfit she was buried in: a yellow and green striped dress with a blue flora printed jacket with red heels and a pair of black leggings. She HATES Leonard Peabody because he’s manipulating Klaus into isolation from their family and she tries to get Klaus out of their toxic friendship, but Klaus always denies Leonard’s abuse. She misses her siblings so much that she’s deeply hurt that she had ignored their problems for so long.

• Diego stayed at the Umbrella Academy because he didn’t know how to be anything else but a hero, he also didn’t want to Mom behind, so he began reading and writing code to free Grace from her restrictive rules that Reginald put on her, but after his accident that had him have scars all over his body and face to the point where he lost his left eye and his face is almost beyond recognition, Diego left the Academy when he realized that there was no point in staying and became a recluse in his good friend, Eudora’s house. Unlike Luther, Diego doesn’t have the monkey body because I just couldn’t see that type of body build on David Castaneda. Diego met Eudora at a local boxing gym, Eudora was impressed Diego’s fight skilled and was shocked to know that he was Diego “The Kraken” Hargreaves because Reginald told the whole world including their city and Luther, Klaus, Five, and Vanya that Diego died in an explosion a year ago when he had his accident. Diego ,of course, was pissed that his own father told everyone and his siblings that he was dead instead of saying that he survived the mission and was just scarred for the rest of his life, but he wasn’t surprised that Reginald did that to keep up his reputation. Him and Eudora immediately became fast friends and roommates at her house since Diego had nowhere to go when he left the Academy 6 months ago and was living at an run-down and moldy apartment. They actually tried dating at one point, but because of their conflicted personalities, they decided to just stay friends and roommates.

• 3 months after Allison’s funeral, Luther ran away to escape his father’s tight gripped and cold stare and the house that reminded him of his lovely yet dead Allison when he was 18 years old. He ended up in Dallas, Texas where he became a famous boxer named King Kong since he’s so huge and muscular, met and married a successful TV salesman named Elliott Gussman, and they adopted an African American baby girl who they named Claire Allison Gussman. Luther decided to take Elliott’s last name ,even though it was Luther who proposed to him, to cut his ties off from the Umbrella Academy and the man who turned 6 children into soldiers and who blamed the death of an innocent 17 year old girl that happened to be his adopted daughter on his 4 sons and 1 daughter instead of the person who killed her in the first place. Luther and Elliott had a happy marriage for 3 years until Klaus’s book came out that exposed the secrets of Luther’s past and made him into a hotheaded bully with daddy issues who followed Reginald around like a eager puppy trying to get a reward and a coward ran away from his problems instead of facing them. Elliott was furious at Luther because when Luther came to Dallas he lied about being from a mob family that did all types of shady businesses and that he ran away because his “family” couldn’t understand and accept him being bisexual instead of telling him truth about his abusive father who raised them to be child soldiers, how his brother Diego would always tried to be better than him to their father’s approval, how his brother Five was too smart for his own good, how he loved his sister Allison more than he should, how he tried to forget about Ben’s disappearance, how he ignored Klaus’s drug abuse, and how he denied Vanya’s problem with alcohol for so long. When Elliott read Klaus’s book about what Luther did and who he was, Elliott immediately started arguing with him about his true identity. Luther tried to deny it, but couldn’t because he loves Elliott too much to even hurt him in a way. Elliott actually threatened to separate from Luther when their arguments gotten too much, but he didn’t and instead drove Luther and him to see a marriage counselor so that they could actually talk to each other instead of just arguing. Luther and Elliott eventually made up, but because of the book, Luther is the one that’s more pissed about it and at Klaus for almost making Elliott lose his marriage to him. Btw, Claire is 6 years old in 2019 and was adopted as a baby in 2013 by the Gussman family when Luther was 24 and Elliott was 30, a year after Klaus’s book was published.

• Vanya was introduced to alcohol at 13 years old when Five and Klaus were drinking 2 cases of beer that Five stole, Klaus persuaded her to take a sip of his beer and she hasn’t stop drinking since. Besides the violin and her pills, alcohol was the thing that defined Vanya and her personality. Vanya thought that no one would care about what happened to her since she was so ordinary and isolated that she dumped all of her pills in the garbage disposal and drinks her problems away. With her new coping mechanism, Vanya’s personality changed from quiet and meek to sarcastic and drunk. Five and Vanya left the Academy for college together, but ended up separated by the time they were 20 because Vanya kept drinking her tutition away. By the age of 22, Vanya ended up being homeless because she got kicked out of her apartment for not paying her rent with the money she used to buy alcohol. She still plays her violin, but only for cash instead of at The Icarus Theatre. She also read Klaus’s book and was upset about her portrayal as his alcoholic sister who had an easy life of being ordinary and never going on missions because she doesn’t have a power that can’t be turned off willingly or that can kill somebody; she cried and drank her misery away for 3 weeks until she confronted Klaus about the book, they both admittedly said things that they regretted, but ended up apologizing to each other in the end. She also meets and dates Leonard like in the show and instead of Allison finding the truth about Leonard, it’s Five and Delores who both tried to convince Klaus and Vanya that Leonard is a snake, but they both denied it. Vanya ends up living with Klaus and Leonard when her and Klaus made up when she’s 23. In my first draft I made it Five and Delores that Vanya ended up rooming with, but I wanted to make Vanya and Klaus isolated further by Leonard manipulating both of them. When the house is attacked by Hazel and Cha-Cha, Vanya is the one that’s kidnapped and tortured by them for 2 days and is rescued by Eudora who arrives with back up this time, but is injured in the spine by Cha-Cha. Vanya takes the briefcase and time travels to October 12, 1963 where she ends up falling in love with a woman named Sissy Cooper, a widowed housewife who accidentally ran Vanya over with her car, and becoming a nanny/second mother to Sissy’s 5 year old autistic son named Harlan. Vanya stayed with them until 1966 when a neighbor reported their “unholy” relationship to the police, so to keep them safe Vanya used the briefcase to go back to 2019 with Sissy and Harlan.

—When Vanya gets back to 2019 with Sissy and Harlan, no one believes her story except for Klaus, who promises to her relationship with Sissy a secret from Leonard, and Ben, who was the only one that was worried about her whereabouts in the first place besides Klaus. Vanya tries to become sober for the sake of Harlan not being afraid of her when she gets drunk and for Sissy and her’s relationship since her late husband was an abusive alcoholic, instead of conjuring the one she loves’s ghost like Klaus did in the show. When Vanya was dating Leonard, he would constantly have her and Klaus practice their music and dance at 12am-6am to train them more and if one of them mess up, he’ll have them locked up in a dark and tiny closet with only one dimly lit lightbulb and they would have to balance on a stool on one leg for the duration of their training. Leonard would also take his anger out on Klaus and Vanya if he had a bad day at his shop, which would leave Klaus with bruises on his arms and a black eye and Vanya with scratches on her back and bruises on her neck. (Trigger Warning for those who can’t handle stories with domestic violence) When the 3 of them were 27, Leonard gotten pissed at how independent and successful Klaus and Vanya were getting in their lives by Klaus getting paid more from his dance recitals and Vanya going to AA meetings more to the point of being sober for 3 weeks that he took his frustrations about losing his control out on them by punching and slapping Klaus and choking and scratching Vanya, but thankfully a neighbor called the police after hearing their screams and Klaus and Vanya were taken to the hospital and Leonard was arrested, but unfortunately Klaus and Vanya bailed Leonard out due to dropping charges against him as an apologize.

Here are the things that I changed

• Klaus and Vanya both cause the apocalypse by combining their powers at Klaus’s dance recital with Vanya’s violin because Leonard isolated them from everyone, manipulated them to the point of denying the abuse he put them through, and because of him trying to kill Sissy and Harlan for taking Vanya away from him.

• Five and Delores tries to explain to Vanya and Klaus that Leonard only liked them to get revenge on the Umbrella Academy and it was him that kidnapped Sissy and Harlan to get them to come back to him, but Five gets stabbed in the stomach by Klaus’s new found telekinesis and Vanya makes Five and Delores’s apartment collapsed after knocking Delores out. When the apartment collapses, Allison , who’s coperal at the moment, immediately grabs both a bleeding Five and an unconscious Delores and saves them from death and takes them to the Academy to be treated by Grace. Delores unfortunately loses her right arm to a huge piece of shrapnel lodged into it that’s cutting the circulation.

• When Ben goes to the apocalypse for the first time, he finds Luther with the eye clutched in his hand, Diego wrapped in black bandages holding a woman with a long black ponytail (Eudora), Five in an Armani suit with his eyes opened, and a red headed woman in a polka dotted blouse and a black skirt holding one of Five’s hand (Delores). All of them are dead and Ben finds out that they’re his brothers by the faded black umbrella tattoo on Luther’s wrist when Ben was inspecting the bodies. The bodies that Ben couldn’t find were Allison, Vanya, and Klaus’s, but after learning about Allison’s death from Klaus’s book, Ben kept looking for Vanya and Klaus.

• Vanya gets her burst of powers when Harlan almost drown in the summer of ‘64 in the lake 10 miles away from the farm. Harlan was playing with a beach ball when it got away from him and he tried to get it while Vanya and Sissy were cuddling in the sand and a wave pulled him under the water. Sissy started crying and panicking when Vanya couldn’t get Harlan to the surface, but after a minute of silence she was shocked and relieved to see Vanya holding Harlan in her arms while she’s floating in the lake with glowing white eyes. As soon as they get to shore, Vanya gives Harlan cpr which transfers her newly found powers to him like in the canon.

• Diego doesn’t show himself to his siblings until episode 3 when Hazel and Cha-Cha attack the house because everyone thinks he’s dead and he’s a recluse. He finds out about the attack from Grace (mom) when she calls him from her bedroom phone since they talk every day so that he can know what’s going on and because of these calls, Diego knows about Ben being back, how the funeral went, and how much each of his siblings changed over the years.

• In episode 1, since the siblings’ lives are switched around, the way they found out that Reginald died is slightly different from canon. Luther finds out from the press badgering him after he won a fight, Diego finds out from Eudora when she comes home after work and turns on the Tv in a flash, Klaus finds out during rehearsal on the radio that him and his group are listening to to practice the recital while Allison is dancing in the shadows behind him when the news suddenly comes on, Five finds out from his phone on social media when one of his students sent him the news link after Five teleports to his apartment after saving a 12 year old boy from being abducted by a creep and almost killing said creep by beating him senseless, and Vanya finds out from a bar Tv when she and Leonard are on a date. She immediately calls Klaus who was immediately going to call her to tell her the same thing when he was done rehearsals.

• Just to clarify, since Vanya spent 3 years with Sissy and Harlan in Dallas from 1963-1966, she is 33 years old and Harlan is 8 years old because he was 5 when he and his mom met Vanya. Even though Vanya spent 3 years in the ‘60s, she was only gone for 2 days with Klaus, Five, Delores, Ben, and Leonard searching for her.

• When the Hargreeves all come back for the funeral, the introduction of them to each other are very different. Diego doesn’t show up to the funeral to keep up the reputation of him being dead. Vanya and Klaus show up together, but immediately split up when Vanya goes straight to the bar making drinks for her and her brothers (mostly for her though) and Klaus goes to his old room to reminisce about his past. Five checks their father’s room and office for evidence of something other than a heart attack, he is the one that thinks that Reginald was murdered by someone, and he also greets Vanya and Klaus with Delores who went with him to meet his family. Luther is trying to get through the funeral as possible by almost avoiding his siblings, but that backfires when Five calls a family meeting to talk about their father’s death and Luther sees a tipsy Vanya holding a mix of vodka and rum, Klaus talking to Delores who is laughing at a funny story Klaus is telling, and Five lecturing the remaining siblings on how their father might’ve been murdered.

• Eudora is more present in the show since she survives the gunshot wound in her spine by Cha-Cha, but she ends up being paralyzed from the waist down in a wheelchair. She helps Five with discovering how Reginald actually died and Diego with stepping out into the world and seeing his family for the first time in years. Like in canon, she is the first one to find Vanya at the motel after finding the message that Hazel and Cha-Cha left on the van when they burned down the prosthetic factory after they got drunk off of Vanya’s “special lemonade” which is just lemonade mixed with wine and vodka. Unlike in the show, Delores and Ben go with Eudora as back up in case something goes wrong and it does end up going wrong with Cha-Cha and Eudora having a shoot out with each other in the parking lot that ultimately ends up Eudora becoming paralyzed by Cha-Cha’s bullet ricocheting off a lamppost and lodging into Eudora’s spine with her laser gunand Ben wrestling with his former partner Hazel in the motel room while Vanya is escaping through the vent with the briefcase in her arms and Delores in tow.

Ben breaks Hazel’s wrist and almost beats him to a bloody pulp for kidnapping Vanya, but he stops when he hears Eudora’s screams from outside and sees her on the ground behind her car and he immediately drives her to the hospital while Hazel and Cha-Cha get away before the police show up. Delores and Vanya get on a nearby bus to escape the chaos and they talk about what’s going on in their lives and Delores talks about how Leonard treats Klaus when they’re alone, but Vanya denies any abuse and opens the briefcase. The last thing Vanya hears is Delores screaming.

• The episode “The Day that Wasn’t” doesn’t exist in my AU and is instead replaced with an episode called “Welcome to the 60’s” where Five interrogates Sissy and Harlan about the past while working on the beat up briefcase to learn more about how to time travel. Eudora and Diego talk about how their long time friendship has become into a sibling relationship and about how Diego can reconnect with his siblings again. Luther and Delores discuss how they both want a normal and ordinary life with their husband and fiancé respectively, but fail to see that things can never go back to way they were. Ben goes off on his own to find the truth about Leonard Peabody, but finds himself at Griddy’s where he sees Hazel kissing Agnes and talks to them about his problems. Agnes gives Ben advice about how he can reconcile with his family by actually giving them time to process him being a time traveling assassin and him telling Five to not feel guilty about causing a rift between him and Vanya and Klaus because it wasn’t Five’s fault that Ben “ran away”.

I’ll continue the rest of the story when I have the time. Right now I just want to post this.

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coffee-n-bagels-comic-universe · 3 years

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Major Updates to My Weird Idea (that includes my Nightside OCs)

Go check my previous post on this - HERE

This is mainly an update for @schizoauthoress , @the--blackdahlia , @spacelizardtrashboys , @enigmaticandunstable and @piratewithvigor and I personally think @nattinngrst might like this.

I went on a trip to the beach yesterday with my parents and my older brother (who I bored and annoyed with this idea and you'll see some of his influence in this here post)

Anything written in italics is meant to be taken as a joke as you read through this wall of text, sending good vibes as always, hope y'all are doing well.

The show is set in Canadian, Texas (real place: Wikipedia). I'm thinking of this show starting in the mid-to-late 90s (1996/1997).

I've managed to do several things with that weird sitcom idea, so, where to start, how about with the three potential titles:

1 - Neighbourhood Watch

2 - First Call

3 - First Round (Which my brother likes)

Here are some options for bar names, starting with the Cop bar:

1 - The Donut Hole

2 - The Roasted Hog (which my big bro suggested)

3 - The Sherriff's Outpost

And the Biker Bar:

1 - The Handlebar Inn

2 - The Steel Horse Saloon

3 - The Rebel Room

Next on the list of updates: Cast additions, character roles and (Finally after 2 days) Names for Everyone!!

I'll start with the Cop Bar's owner & staff:

Rosalina Asturias 'Rosa' (Played by Billie Martinez) an employee of the local cop bar. Didn't grow up in the town, moved here for work.

Violet Croft (Played by Eli Herne) an employee. Grew up in town, never left, has the hots for one of the guys in the local police.

Sunshine Crawford 'Sunny' (Played by Holly Di Antonio) an employee. Grew up in town, left for college and came back.

Roscoe Power 'Ross' (Played by Jimmy Hart) the loudmouth who owns the bar, grew up in town, used to be a car salesman.

Olesya Pavlovsky 'Olivia' (Played by Penelope Voronin) an employee who grew up in town and has immigrant parents, goes by 'Olivia' because she would rather you don't f*** up her actual name.

Winona Vance (Played by Sam Griffin Silver) an employee who moved here from New York, for unknown reasons, and doesn't really understand the small town, everyone knows everyone lifestyle.

Lavender Whittemore (Played by Victoria Lucifarian) an employee who grew up in England but moved to live in America, settled in Canadian, Texas due to her love of westerns.

Next: The Local Police Squad:

Sergeant Valentine Gautier 'Val' (Played by Bret Hart) recently promoted before the series begins but still on patrol duty, watches over his younger brother.

Corporal Buck Morris 'Buckshot' (Played by Davey Boy Smith) the gun loving corporal of the squad and the only one to have both 'work' and 'home' guns.

Captain Napoleon Cooper 'Crazy Cooper' / 'Captain Crazy' (Played by Jim Neidhart) the police captain, recently reassigned to Canadian, Texas as there were rumours abut him which interfered with his work in his previous location.

Officer Duke Gautier (Played by Owen Hart) the young, recently recruited brother of Sgt Gautier, often put on patrol alone to ensure less arguments, but always checked on by his brother.

Next: The Biker Bar's Staff:

Ozzy Rains (Played by Charles Wright) A biker and member of the staff who grew up just outside of town but loves his fellow staff members like family.

Brock Martel (Played by Henry Godwin) a biker and member of the staff who grew up on a local ranch and loves beer, football and the current Mayor's down-to-Earth style.

Vincent Gore 'Vinnie' (Played by Kane) the owner's son and a known fire loving 'freak' often protected by his surrogate family, the bar staff, Vinnie knows no better than 'ooh, cool looking fire' and must be restrained or have his hands swatted away to stop him burning himself trying to touch campfires.

Raven Knight (Played by Kirby Roussimoff) the only female staff member, but also the girl who does all the tough jobs when needed, has a side business of making and selling artwork, such as portraits to locals, has designed some of the bar staff's tattoos.

Harlow Gore (Played by Paul Bearer) the owner of the bar and a loving father to his son, took Murphy (Undertaker) under his wing when they first met and also treats him, and the rest of staff, like family.

Hunter King (Played by Phineas Godwin) Brock's cousin and a member of staff, taught Raven how to shoot a shotgun and his father owns a local tattoo parlour.

Sequoia Reed (Played by Rikishi) an employee and Frankie's (Yokozuna) cousin, also a surrogate cousin to Raven, having been best friends since childhood. Reed loves his job and his staff family and will defend both at any cost.

Lupe Zapatero (Played by Savio Vega) an employee at the bar and possibly the shortest member of staff, towered over by the tallest staff members but is not any less of a fighter because of his size, a former mechanic who loves nothing more than taking things apart and putting them back together while listening to metal / rock.

Murphy Graves (Played By The Undertaker) Manager of the biker bar and an excellent member of staff, has an outlaw rules vibe, as in he would say to the police "Your jurisdiction ends when you walk in my bar." Very protective of the staff, and the owner.

Frankie Wolf (Played by Yokozuna) the most relaxed and laid-back of the staff, Frankie would prefer to be in the kitchen making potential 'Culinary Masterpieces' as he would call them. Sequoia and Raven's (surrogate) cousin, views his staff mates as family.

Next: The Local Band (Named: Exoskeleton Samurai)/College Students

Quinn Thorn (Played by Jeff Hardy) the bassist to Ros' (Lita) vocals / lead Guitar and older brother Garth's (Matt) Drums, a face paint enthusiast and an English major in college who never seems to find time to study, but always has time to date somehow.

Roz Jerome (Played by Lita) the vocals and lead guitar for the band and an art major who actually studies, dating Garth (Matt) and met Quinn through him. Roz also studies Spanish and French.

Garth Thorn (Played by Matt Hardy) Quinn's older brother and the band's drummer, a major in psychology and a horror movie lover, Roz' boyfriend and almost totally devoted to her, even at the cost of his college work.

Next: The Local Townsfolk of Note:

Mayor Robert Sweet (Played by Jim Duggan) rarely seen, but apparently a good man with good ideas, helps out in volunteer projects and absolutely loves the town. Trying his hardest and people know this, and they love him. (did I meme correctly?)

Rusty Jarvis (Played by Mick Foley) the local hippie who has never left town, somehow managing to know both everything and nothing at the same town. (Very Dude Love with hints of Cactus Jack and Mankind) Does know how to fight when he needs to.

Redd Wayne (Played by 'Sycho' Sid Vicious/Justice) the local baseball/softball star, helps out at the local school/college teaching sports and likes Raven's artwork, he watches her draw when he can, runs the local little league & minor league baseball/softball games.

Earl Black (Played by Steve Austin) the most often seen regular at the biker bar, absolutely loves both the bar and the town, a hardworking guy who has befriended the entire staff (including Harlow and Vinnie) of the biker bar.

Lex Aston (Played by The Rock) a local struggling actor, teaching an acting class to pay the bills and an absolute ladies man, and for that reason he goes to the cop bar, to try and pick up one of the bartenders who works there, often favouring Rosa as she will jokingly flirt back.

Finally (for this section): The Degenerates and Their Benefactors:

Reign Yates (Played by Billy Gunn) Leon's (Road Dogg) best friend, often the getaway driver for the group and a scout for locations, often getting all the info on a place before telling Matty (H.H.H) and Dell (HBK). Often leaves town with Leon to get the heat off them. (and make out in secret)

Zelda Hooper (Played by Chyna) the only female degenerate but possibly the toughest, has a rap sheet as big as her arms, not to be trusted when around the other degenerates as she is usually the actual brains of the operation.

Matty Battle (Played by Hunter Hearst Helmsley) the co-leader of the degenerates, often protected by Zelda or Mark (Kevin Nash). does most of the talking but has the piss taken of him for his looks often by either other degenerates or locals who don't care for the degenerates.

Romeo Colombera (Played by Mike Rotundo/I.R.S) the right hand man of the mysterious benefactor, and often the lawyer for the degenerates as well as a taskmaster for them, telling them what the boss wants done and by what date.

Mark Rake (Played by Kevin Nash/Diesel) the tallest degenerate with a rap sheet as long as his leg, a former bouncer at a now closed nightclub, alongside best friend (and possibly boyfriend) Galo (Scott Hall) and now a bodyguard (when needed) for Matty and Dell (HBK, also boyfriends).

Leon Rose (Played by Road Dogg) best friend of Reign and a scout for the group alongside him. Has found every possible way to piss off other townsfolk and often in the most fights because of it, always on the police's radar for one thing or another and constantly leaving town because of it.

Galo Villalobos (Played by Scott Hall/Razor Ramon) the only (supposedly) Latino degenerate, raised in Canadian, Texas but his parents are from Cuba, Galo is a former nightclub bouncer (alongside Mark) Galo is known (for his ability to give minus fucks) as the most relaxed member of the group.

Dell Pain (Played by Shawn Michaels/HBK) the co-leader alongside Matty, a known flirt with people regardless of gender or sexuality, just to piss them off on some occasions. Dell grew up in town, knowing it like the back of his hand.

Giles Rennell (Played by Ted DiBiase) the mysterious benefactor of the group, bailing them out if needed, he stumbled across the group after seeing a police bulletin and decided to use them to cause enough chaos to guarantee a chance in the next mayoral election.

Zac Noel (Played by X-Pac) the shortest and youngest degenerate, Zac is often treated as the child of the group, being taught how to get away with crimes and trick the police into just letting him go by clerical error and tomfoolery.

Next on my list of updates: Season 1's episode list, episode titles, episode synopses, some spoilers, and the revolving door idea a bit further explained.

Series running order:

Biker bar episode

Cops on Patrol episode

Band/College Students episode

Cop bar episode (yes these are different)

Degenerates episode

(last episode of each season/series only) town meeting/town get-together (E.X: town hall meetings, the town getting together for a sports game or barbeque or restaurant opening)

1x01: Insert Coin to Start: The pilot episode of the series sees the local biker bar of Canadian, Texas installing two, brand new, arcade machines. After leaving for the night, the team finds the bar broken into and both machines missing with no evidence or possible suspects to the robbery. The team finds the machines relatively undamaged in an alleyway nearby. By the end of the episode there's still no suspects. B plot includes an argument between father and son, Harlow and Vincent which ends when Murphy gets involved.

1x02: Hot Pursuit: Newly instated chief of police Chief Cooper [Neidhart] makes changes to the patrol teams before tasking them with looking for any persons involved with (1x01)'s robbery and break-in, leading to a high speed chase later in the episode. B plot includes the squad coming to grips with the new, and much crazier, police chief.

1x03: Making Noise: Local band Exoskeleton Samurai [Team Extreme] are writing new music late at night while Roz [Lita] tries to study for a class the following day but, during a moment of quiet, they hear a break in a couple of doors down and attempt to see who it is. The group get a glimpse of Zac Noel [X-Pac] and Mark Rake [Nash] but not a full glimpse. Now aware of the local degenerates, the band try and forget about it and focus on their own lives until their apartment gets broken into when they're not there.

1x04: Donuts & Beer: The new cop bar opens on the other side of town, serving mainly (both savoury and sweet) bagels and donuts as well as beer (on tap and bottled), the fact it's slightly more risqué gets (both good and bad) attention on the place. Winona Vance [Sam] gets in a fight with Zac Noel [X-Pac] as she's locking up. Winona [Sam] being put in the hospital with a broken arm makes the rest of [Cop Bar]'s staff double down on getting justice for the near break-in.

1x05: Dirty Work: The first episode from the degenerates perspective. The degenerates are just causing general problems for the town without reason because it's fun' but it's quickly losing their interest as the heat on them rises. The end of the episode has Matty Battle [Triple H] receiving a call from 'Mister R' [DiBiase] offering him a deal.

1x06: Blue & Black: A brawl breaks out at [Biker Bar] following whispers that the people who broke in are in the building. The bikers who work at the bar threaten to hurt anyone who works for the rival bar if they try and mess with business while in the biker bar.

1x07: Captain Crazy: A rumour that the current captain was moved location and promoted to smooth over allegations that he may not be fully sane, Officer Duke Gautier [Owen] is determined to find the truth while Sergeant Valentine Gautier [Bret] and Corporal Buck Morris [Davey Boy] are determined to keep the peace and catch the local degenerates.

1x08: Broken Strings: following an argument with an ex girlfriend Quinn Thorn [Jeff] finds his guitar smashed and has to work odd jobs to buy another one (starting a potential series c plot). Garth Thorn [Matt] ends up in a fight with Galo Villalobos [Hall] which ends when Roz Jerome [Lita] smashes a table leg over the back of Galo's [Scott's] head, knocking him out and giving him over to the police.

1x09: Badges & Bottle Tops: Captain Cooper [Neidhart] stops by [cop bar] to talk with owner Roscoe Power [Jimmy Hart]. Meanwhile the Gautier boys [Owen & Bret] interrogate Galo Villalobos [Scott Hall] about what the degenerates are doing and why, getting no information about the mysterious benefactor over than he pays them a lot of money depending on what they do.

1x10: Paid off: The mysterious benefactor 'Mister R' [DiBiase] pays Galo's [Scott's] bail, getting him free for a while but side-lining him too. The benefactor remains hidden in shadow but Matty & Dell [Triple H & HBK] have a meeting with him to discuss money and the next job.

1x11: Written in Ink: the tattooed bikers on the staff encourage regular customer Earl Black [Austin] to get a skull tattoo on his back and even take him with them to the tattoo parlour they frequent, finding it to be burned to the ground with a 'freaks get lost' sign planted in the wreckage. Murphy Graves [Undertaker] dismisses the rumours that the arsonist is the fire fascinated Vincent Gore [Kane] and even gives him an alibi when the cops come looking for answers, putting blame on someone in town who knows about Vinnie's [Kane's] love of fire, which is nearly every person in town.

1x12: Sergeant Heartbreaker: Sergeant Gautier [Bret] is accused of flirting with the staff at [Cop bar] leading to a paid two day leave to get heat off of him while he's ordered to remain at home. Officer Gautier [Owen] and Corporal Morris [Davey Boy] are put on patrol together, leading to a high speed chase of Reign Yates, Leon Rose & Zelda Hooper [Gunn, Road Dogg & Chyna] after witnessing a mugging, assault and graffiti from the trio, the cops eventually lose them down a back road on private Giles Rennell's [DiBiase's] land they would need a warrant for.

1x13: Failing Grade: Quinn's [Jeff's] lack of sleep leads to him getting a fail on an test forcing him to do the semester again. Enraged by this Quinn [Jeff] considers leaving the school but is encouraged to continue following Garth [Matt] ending up in hospital following [1x12]'s assault and mugging on Garth & Roz [Matt & Lita].

1x14: Microphones & Megaphones: [cop bar]'s owner Roscoe Power [Jimmy Hart] installs a stage for local acts in the bar, leading to Violet Croft [Eli] performing later that episode (the closing of the episode into the credits) and the night before the first performance the bar is covered in graffiti, leading to a massive clean up effort from the staff and local volunteers (like Mick Foley & The Rock).

1x15: Trench Warfare: Romeo Colombera [IRS] the benefactor's [DiBiase's] right hand man and go-to lawyer gives the degenerates an list of jobs, run the police chief out of town by the end of the year, run the bikers out of town, and ensure that 'Mister R' [DiBiase] the benefactor wins the next mayoral election.

1x16: Fuelling Up: after closing up [biker bar] Raven Knight [Kirby] narrowly avoids being burned by her motorbike exploding in a ball of fire. Her boss, Harlow Gore [Bearer] tells her to take the week off, leading to her coming into the bar and sitting at the back of the bar, sketching the regular customers and having a long conversation with local sports star Redd Wayne [Sid].

1x17: Brothers in Arms: Together: the Gautier brothers [Bret & Owen] are put on patrol together leading to the arrest of Zelda, Matty & Dell [Chyna, Triple H & HBK] before the trio are bailed out, the brothers interrogate Dell Pain [HBK] (leading to a very 'basic instinct'-esque scene with Shawn in assless chaps and boxer briefs) who gives them no information on their behaviour and why they are doing the things they've done.

1x18: Night Time Fun: the band attends a college party, unknowingly with Zac Noel [X-Pac] also in attendance, leading to the trio being high and drunk and the Thorn brothers [Matt & Jeff] end up in a fight, almost being thrown out of college entirely for their actions the next morning.

1x19: Head or Hart: Violet Croft [Eli] and (officer) Duke Gautier [Owen] meet properly for the first time on a blind date, leading to them walking through the streets of Canadian, Texas at night. The date is quickly ended after Duke [Owen] spots Leon Rose [Road Dogg] spray painting [cop bar] and gives chase after handing Violet [Eli] his number.

1x20: Grunt Work: The degenerates have a group meeting about how to sabotage the town meeting, leading to Rennell [DiBiase] coming out of the shadows to lead the degenerates in a coordinated attack on the town hall. Leading to the degenerates waiting until the town meeting to begin the next day.

1x21: Town Meeting: Mayor Robert Sweet [Duggan] conducts a town meeting, leading to everyone airing their grievances with the degenerates recent spree of activity. At the end of the meeting, paint bombs hidden above the townsfolk go off all at once, covering everyone in bright, almost neon, green paint.

#Kayleigh's weird idea #any thoughts?

9 notes · View notes

mirkwoodshewolf · 3 years

Text

The first sign; Jack Kline x reader

*Author’s note*

Hey guys well it’s been awhile since I updated my Rock angel series and for good reason too because here is where things get DARK!! As you’ll see in the taglist below I’ve started putting trigger warnings cause in this part it involves stalking, dog attacks (some people fear dogs so I wanted to be respectful). Now the next chapter after this will REALLY be insane so I hope you all buckle up cause you’re in for one hell of a ride.

Also face cast for Steve I put the gif for Joe Keery, and for the Rock Angel’s manager just look up actor James Woods (aka Hades from Hercules).

Taglist:

@plethora-of-things

@waddles03

@psychosupernatural

@ixchel-9275

@simonedk

@jd-johndeacon-or-jackdaniels

@queendeakyy

@queen-paladin

@queensdivas

@wormzteef

@geek-and-proud

@starswin

@onebigfangirlworld

@dj-lowkey

@naturalswifty89

@isabella-bby

@bohemiansweede

@5sos-wdw

@labessieisallama

_______________________________________________________

Everyone thinks it won’t happen to me, that I’m immune to such evil. No one thinks they’ll ever experience such a thing but you’d sadly be lying, or in complete denial. At least everyone goes through this type of evil at one point in their lives. And for celebrities, it’s a living hell because the world will only watch with a bucket of popcorn and enjoy your pain and suffering.

The only ones you can depend on are your family. And don’t ever say they wouldn’t understand because they will. Had I not told my family about what was going on—you know what fuck it they were forced into this. But even so if they didn’t know what was going on, this part of my story would’ve ended very, very, very, very differently.

*2 months after the tribute concert*

I hadn’t slept in a week. I was exhausted with trying to put the final touches on my tribute album for Freddie. My manager James Woods was really putting the heat on me with trying to get this album up so that I could ring in the money for him. Wait first let me backup just a tick and explain some things first.

When I first transferred out of EMI and went to Hollywood Records, my manager at the time was a man known as Desmond Roberts. He was a generous, kind man who saw my potential as a female musician and like Miami, pushed me to do my best. He was a family man as well; at the time he had become a grandfather for the first time at the age of 52.

But earlier this year he had to retire because it was by law of the company that all representatives must retire by the age of 65. With that my new manager was his young and vibrant VP James Woods. James is—well let’s just say he’d make a better car salesman than a recording manager.

A man born and bred in the heart of Boston, he’s the kind of man who sees his own vision and wants other people to execute it for him. Hell he’s even been pressuring me to go more into Pop music as that is the rising fame of music now. Artists like Madonna, Gwen Stefani, rising star Christina Aguilera, and Mariah Carey. He wanted to push me to going in their direction.

But I reminded him of my original contract that I signed on between Miami and Desmond. That my image was to never, ever, ever under any circumstances be changed. Yes he even tried to make me change my stage name into the Spicy Angel (yeah that didn’t sit right with me).

To put it frank—my current manager is a stubborn, two-headed, forked-tongue, snake in the grass. Sleezy, and can make some vulgar comments either towards me or some of my roadies.

But the one step he took too far was when he hired his own nephew to be my PA (he claimed that he was trying to help out his sister). At first I was against it but with that pleading and begging persuasionistic tone of his, for some reason I ended up agreeing and his nephew Steve Harrison became my new PA.

Steve Harrison. He was the same age as Jack, had deep brown eyes, a fairly handsome face, but his crown jewel was his hair. He always bragged and fussed about his hair. Brown and fluffed up beyond anything, like cotton candy. Silky and moosed to no end. Wow and I thought I was bad when it came to doing my air before a show.

Now Steve definitely knew his way around the recording station. Made sure that every song I recorded sounded to perfection, always sought to my every need, ensured that for upcoming tours I was given updates on the schedule, and he even took my calls and wrote them down for me. He kept his work profession throughout all of 1991.

But when the summer of 92 came around, things began to change.

As I said before, I hadn’t slept a week. The Freddie Mercury tribute album was taking longer than the company expected. That’s because I wanted to make sure every song, especially the cover ones that Fred had given me legal rights to do, were perfect.

I was at the controls listening to my version of Somebody to love when the door opened behind me.

“I would’ve thought her royal highness would’ve gone home?”

“Perfectionists never stop. I learned that from the best group of men I know.” He took the empty seat next to me and presented me with a cup of coffee. I softly thanked him and went back to listening to my song.

When the last vibrato rang out on the word ‘love’, Steve sighed and said.

“It’s beautiful.”

“It’s shit!” I complained. “God why did he give me such responsibility to do these songs I-I-I—not I’m even worthy to do his songs. At least not without him.”

“This version is the best. Better than I’ve ever heard it been played. In fact……I think you’re better than Freddie Mercury.” I snapped my head towards him.

“Freddie Mercury was and will always be a genius. His voice is unlike any other performer’s and his style of writing will forever go down in music history as the best damn thing the world will ever know! So don’t you ever say that someone is better than him. Especially me!” I shot up from the chair, it rolled back and slammed against the wall and I turned towards the wall with my arms crossed over my chest, and breathed heavily trying to calm down.

“I—I’m sorry. I was just speaking my opinion. I—didn’t know how much you cared about him. He…..must’ve really meant something to you.” He spoke softly.

“More than you’ll ever know.” I muttered as I fingered the bracelet Fred gave me as a birthday gift. “And I’m sorry Steve I—I didn’t mean to shout. I’m……just exhausted and stressed. With your uncle—”

“Hey, I get it. Uncle James can be a real pain in the ass at times.” I turned towards him and saw him standing a few inches away from me. “Hell one time when I was 16, I had asked him if I could take his mustang for a test drive and he told me ‘kid you so much as even leave a fingerprint you’re as dead as a doornail and I don’t care if you’re my nephew’.” The two of us laughed at his uncle’s impersonation.

“And I thought I was the only one with a douche uncle.”

“Oh trust me, you think he’s demanding at work? You should see him round the holidays.” I softly laughed. That’s when I felt his finger slightly graze against the back of my palm.

My heart stopped and that’s when I noticed that he had gotten a little closer to me. Closer and closer his face came but I quickly got out of his way and said.

“Excuse me, I gotta sign off this track and ship it off by tomorrow morning.” I grabbed Steve’s chair and went straight back into my work. As I was fiddling around with the switches and buttons, I could feel that he was standing right there beside me. I tried to ignore him and focus on my work but his lingering presence grew too much.

Like a moth to the flame. Silent but fluttering around too close.

I turned to say something to him, that’s when his lips suddenly crashed with mine. My eyes widened and my body froze for a moment before my brain snapped back into reality.

I pushed him away and slapped him across the face. Standing up and my chest heaving in so many mixed emotions, but the one main emotion going out about me was anger.

“What the fuck Steve!? Why did you do that!? You know I’m happily married and have children!”

“I—I’m sorry I just…..I’ve always been a fan of yours and I just….I’m sorry. Please don’t tell my uncle. You know as well as I do what he’s like. He’ll beat me to a pulp if he finds out. Please Angel I beg of you, don’t tell him.” His eyes going fearful and tears shined at the corner of his eyes.

I wish I could say that I told him that I was going to rat him out, have him fired even but—I didn’t. He’s right I did know what it was like to have an abusive uncle. Now while my uncle never really touched my physical, he did have his temper and would throw things at me just barely missing me (that mostly happened when he was on the bottle).

“Only if you promise me you won’t do shit like that again. And never speak of this to anyone.”

“I promise. Cross my heart and hope to die.” He said as he crossed his heart with his finger. I narrowed my eyes at him and grabbed my purse.

“Take the day off tomorrow. Then come back on Monday to work. Professionally.” I emphasized the last word and he nodded and I walked out without another word.

I wish I could take it all back. That I had fired him right then and there, if I had then what would eventually come, wouldn’t have happened. Or at least not gotten to the scale that it did get to.

*3 weeks after the kiss*

I was on the Late Show with David Letterman doing a television interview about the upcoming album as well as my tour coming later in the year.

“So Rock Angel your upcoming album ‘Fly High Mercury’ is said to be unlike your previous albums is that right? It also was the one that also took you the longest to make correct?”

“Yes it is.”

“Care to explain?”

“Well as you can tell by the title this is a tribute album to Freddie Mercury.” The audience applauded. I nodded and swallowed a lump in my throat. “Some of the songs are what I’ve written but another half of them are Queen songs that Freddie himself gave me legal rights to make a cover to. In fact they were some of my favorites.”

“Now how long did it take you to make this album?” David asked me.

“Well the songs I did, took roughly a couple of months but when—Freddie passed away I took a few months off to grieve and then as you all may have seen I was a part of the tribute concert so in total almost ten months.”

“Wow ten months.” I nodded. “And you said Freddie gave you the rights to some of Queen’s songs to cover?”

“Yes.”

“How did it feel to have that kind of pressure on you?”

“I’ll be honest it was tough. How-how do you compete with someone like Freddie Mercury? His voice and musical talents were unlike anything anyone’s ever seen or will ever see most likely. And when he asked me to do some of Queen’s works, particularly the songs he himself had written, I felt like I was going up against goliath and I was David. But—Fred has his reasons for why he does what he does, and—he must’ve felt like I could help embrace his memory further by introducing a new audience to some of Queen’s work, especially their earliest songs.” The crowd applauded.

“Well said, well said. Freddie will truly be forever missed. When we come back we have Kurt Russel joining us and then after that the Rock Angel will perform one of her hit songs from her recent album Fly High Mercury which is now available in stores. The Rock Angel (Y/n) Kline everybody!” the crowd applauded and David and I shook hands with each other as his theme song played us out on the commercial break.

I went backstage to change out from my black sequin interview dress and into some regular but dressy performance clothes. A black leather jacket, a white blouse, tight jeans, and some high-heeled black boots.

“Oh angel.” I internally groaned. Speak of the devil. James Woods soon came into my dressing room without a single care in the world (he’s lucky I’ve learned to do quick changes otherwise we’d have a problem). “Now darling please remind me again why you’ve declined Donald Trump’s hotel gig? He’s offered plenty of money for your performance especially since it’s his son’s birthday that day.”

“When I went to talk to him he also made me an offer I simply had to refuse.” I shuddered. “He’s a pig and an upright asshole with no respect for anyone but himself and his precious hotel business. God help us if he ever becomes President.”

“Fine. Instead of adding to the profit we would’ve gotten from this, we’ll take it out of your next pay how bout that?” I glared at him.

“You really wanna go toe to toe with me regarding money? Go ahead. Just know I’ve got the best lawyers in all of London on my side and they’ve been good to me for 10 years. So you better pucker your lips and do some serious arse kissing to the judge because they’ve won every. Single. Case I’ve ever had to do. From false stories to paparazzi stalking.” I stared him down even though I only came up to his chest.

Even through those cold, greedy eyes of his, I saw that he was afraid.

“Ahh court cases are a waste of time and a waste of profit. Now go on out there and give them a show baby cakes.”

“Never call me baby cakes.” I trudged out of my dressing room with my red special in hand and headed back towards the stage to sing my song.

After the show ended, I was back in my hotel room in Manhattan. I had just gotten done with my shower and soon coming into the room was Jack with some late night takeout.

“Chinatown special for the Rock Angel.” I smiled and splayed myself across the bed as he came toward me with the food.

“Mmm room service and a cute delivery boy. I am one lucky girl.”

“Well then Mrs. Kline, do I get a special tip for my services?” Jack played along with a grin. I smirked and placed my hand on the back of his head and brought his lips towards mine. His hands soon came to my waist as we separated but I kissed him again. Jack hummed in surprise. “A double tip? Well then, guess I need to be the delivery boy more often.” I giggled and took my food out of the bag.

“But serious babe, thanks for getting the food.”

“Hey no problem, anything for my beautiful rock star. I know that with your schedule firing back up, you don’t have time for a normal meal like we did before.”

“Did you call your mom about the kids?”

“Yep. Kids are safe and healthy. Well Little Jack had a slight fever but he was better within a day thanks to mama’s secret chicken noodle soup. I know that thing saved my life as a kid.”

“Well then she better……” a knock was soon heard at the door. Jack and I looked at each other confused. He stood up from the bed and answered the door. I held my robe tighter around me and soon I heard the door slam shut and Jack soon came in with a bouquet of a dozen roses. “Did you order those?”

“Nope. But I’ve got a feeling who did.” He turned as he glared to the room opposite of our suite.

Well of course I told Jack about the kiss. I know what it’s like to have been cheated on so there was no way in fucking hell I was gonna keep this a secret from Jack. As you can see he has not taken it well, in fact he’s grown very angry and jealous when Steve gets mentioned.

“Let me see the card.” He tossed the bouquet down on the bed. I sent him a glare and went to pick the card out and I opened it up. And low and behold it was from Steve. Even though it didn’t have his name on it, I recognized his handwriting anywhere. He wrote.

Fabulous performance (as always). A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

Your secret admirer and #1 fan

“You should’ve fired him.”

“Oh so you’re saying this is my fault!?” I snapped.

“No that’s not what I’m saying!” Jack snapped back at me. “I just…..” he exhaled deeply trying to release his anger. “I don’t trust him anymore. Not after what he did. In fact ever since he’s kissed you he’s been sending you a lot of stuff. The flowers, your favorite German chocolates, he even gave a teddy bear to our daughter! I’m telling you something about him now is just……” I walked up to him and embraced him.

“I know love, I know. I don’t feel comfortable around him too. But—he is James’ nephew and unfortunately he wants his sister to get off his back with this favor.”

“That shouldn’t matter! If he makes you uncomfortable you should just fire him and not even worry about what that sales talker of a manager tells you.” He is right. It shouldn’t have to go on like this but unfortunately the business world isn’t on my side when it comes to choosing my PA’s, I was thankful enough to keep my touring roadies and not get some rookies or 40 year old perverts who get high or drunk.

“The likes of a woman in a men’s workforce. I wish I could Jack but I can’t. Legally anyways. Look I’m exhausted right now can we please just go to bed?”

“Alright. But we will come back to this. (Y/n) I’m only stressed about this because I don’t want to lose you. What if—”

“Hey!” I put my finger of his lips. “Don’t you dare think like that. I know celebrities are always the first to die when it comes to crazed fans. But I swear to you Jack Kline, I will not be one of those singers to die at the hands of a so called ‘fan’. I’m your lioness.”

“And no one can break you down.” We pressed our forehead together and just stayed like that for a good long moment. I then softly kissed him and went to change out of my robe into my nightdress. Jack stripped down to his boxers and we put our takeout in the mini-fridge by the bed and turned off the lights before cuddling close together.

*September 8th, 1992*

It was Kelly’s first day of 1st grade. Jack and I couldn’t believe that our little girl was on her way to 1st grade. Of course to me it was the first day of primary school but still it was a big day for her. So Jack and I were sure to be there to see her off but sadly both of us had a long day today so we couldn’t go pick her up.

I was busy prepping for my upcoming tour while Jack got backed up with the car dealership. But thankfully Jack’s cousin Jared (who was working a case at the time) volunteered to go pick Kelly up after school. Now this school was at the top with their security, only those who were approved by the Parent or Guardian could pick up the child (which was good with us).

So Jack and I made sure to list the family members down in order so we went from Kelly Kline, Misha Kline, Roger Taylor, Brian May, John Deacon, and Jared and Jensen Walker as the adults to pick Kelly Kline up from school should Jack and I not be available.

It was late in the afternoon, around 3:30ish and I was talking with my tour manager Phillipe about where each performance was gonna take place when the phone suddenly rang. One of the assistants answered it and she said.

“Hollywood Records how may I help you?” there was a pause and suddenly her voice went frantic. “Whoa, whoa, whoa wait a minute slow down. Slow down who are you wanting to talk to?” I turned to her confused. “Okay hold on I’ll get her,” she turned to me and said as she held the phone close to her breast, “Mrs. Kline someone wants to speak to you. Says his name is Jared Walker.” I immediately shot up and took the phone and said frantically.

“Jared what’s happened?”

‘I-I-I-I went to pick Kelly up like I said I would, but when I got there they had said you had already sent approval of someone else to come get her!’

My heart stopped. They say it’s every parent’s worse nightmare come true, but it’s never fully real until it happens to you.

I dropped the phone as Jared’s voice echoed through the speakers calling out my name.

“CALL THE POLICE! CALL JACK! CALL KELLY’S SCHOOL! CALL ANYONE!!” I screamed frantically.

The search for my daughter was—one of the worst things I ever had to go through. Just who in the hell would know where exactly her school was? Not only that but who got my approval to sign off for her release?

I was frantic to the bone. I kept pacing with anxiety as every fiber of my being was buzzing with all kinds of emotions. Jack and Jared tried their best to calm me down but I wasn’t going to be calm till I had my baby in my arms.

After an hour and a half grueling search, the home phone suddenly rang. I went up to the phone and answered it.

“Hello?!” there was silence at the end of it for awhile till finally his voice came up.

‘Lose your little cub?’ my eyes narrowed and now only rage filled my body.

“Where is she Steve?” I sneered.

‘Just meet me by the spot where the first action sequence of Terminator 2 was shot.’ Then the line went dead. I hung up the phone, grabbed my keys and dragged Jared by the arm towards my car and we raced down the highway.

When we arrived at Bull Creek, I told Jared to stay in the car while I handled Steve. I got out of the car and right there at the very track where the first action chase scene of the film took place at.

Just ahead of me was a blue Ferrari leaning against it was Steve Harrison. And through the windows I could see Kelly playing with her favorite doll that she took with her to school, without a care in the world.

“So glad you finally made it Angel. Didn’t think I’d expect to see you to take my advice so quick.”

“Open the door.” I sneered.

“Gee not even a thank you?” he joked.

“I don’t have time for bullocks right now Harrison! Now open your bloody car door and give me back my baby!” he went over and opened the door and once Kelly saw me, her smile on her face grew wider.

“Mummy!” she cheered as she got out and raced towards me. I immediately knelt down and picked her up in my arms.

“Oh my baby girl. Oh thank god you’re safe! Are you okay? Look at me. We were all so worried about you.” I said as I kept kissing all over her face. She groaned and tried to get me to stop.

“I’m fine mum! Mum stop it stop kissing me! Mr. Steve said you changed your mind about uncle Jared coming to pick me up.” I glared over to Steve and said.

“Honey go in mummy’s car and wait there with Uncle Jared.” I kissed her one last time and she did as I asked her to. I walked closer to Steve as he kept talking.

“Lovely reunion. See I knew you’d appreciate what I’d done. After all as your personal—” I sucker punched him hard across the face sending him down to the ground. Blood even dripped down his nose. “Wow. Wow!” he scoffed. “I-I-I-I know that girls could punch but that…..that was—”

“What the fuck is wrong with you!?” I snapped at him.

“You should be grateful. I did you a favor. I picked up your daughter from her first day of school.” He tried to reason with me.

“You had no legal right too! You kidnapped her!”

“Kidnapped?! Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa wait time out!” he stood up and wiped his bloody nose. “Wow head rush. Okay hang on a minute. You were incredibly business with the tour manager so I knew you wouldn’t be able to pick her up. And of course Jack……” he sneered out Jack’s name with anger and jealousy. “He works now right? I mean about damn time too, can’t be the house husband forever right?” My glare deepened, “Anyways, so no one else was there to pick up sweet, little Kelly so I volunteered myself to pick her up. Didn’t want her staying at the school all by herself, now did we?”

“She wasn’t going to be alone we arranged for Jared to pick her up!” at that Steve’s face turned to shock as he said.

“Oh. Well—this is awkward.” Oh he was an incredible actor I’ll give him that.

“What is wrong with you Steve? What were you trying to accomplish here?” that’s when his eyes darkened and grew cold. His voice even changed to a possessive tone as he walked closer to me.

“Jack doesn’t deserve you. A farm boy like that? No you need a real man at your side. Someone who gets the business, someone who is always by your side. I know who you are (Y/n) Kline.”

He tried to grab my chin but I clenched his hand in mine and dug my nails into his skin. My hand shaking with rage as I stared him down.

“Is that what you think? You think by doing all this you actually believe I would leave Jack for you? You’re even more delusional than Jack painted you. Now I see it for myself.” I threw his hand down and backed away from him. “A wise man once said to another slime like yourself, ‘you just see what you want to see’. Next time you even touch or go near any of my kids, I swear to you there won’t be a courthouse that your uncle can bride with what I’ll charge you for.” I turned and walked back to the car and took Kelly home.

Of course I wish I could say that was the last time I ever saw Steve’s face again. But due to lack of evidence in the fact that Steve had given a false document allowing him to take Kelly, he wasn’t charged with kidnapping.

Plus his uncle got involved and swindled with his business talk saying that I was under a lot of pressure with the upcoming tour and that police action at the time of Kelly’s disappearance wasn’t necessary. He also emphasized that Kelly wasn’t harmed in anyway so it’s not like his nephew was an evil person. So the police believed James’ story and no charges were filed and Steve was a free man to do as he pleased.

Jack and I reinforced the school and even gave them Steve’s picture saying that if he ever came into the school again asking for Kelly again, they were to call the police because Steve Harrison does not have access to take Kelly out of school.

Little did I know that things were only going to get worse after that day.

*October 3rd, 1992. Jack’s POV*

It first began with the constant phone calls to the house. The phone was constantly ringing and everytime I picked it up, there was no one there. Just heavy breathing and then they’d hang up. It happened for hours on end, even at some odd hours in the night.

Soon enough I had had enough and decided to unplug all the house phones and I got me my first cellphone. If anyone in the family wanted to reach me, I told them to call by my new cellphone and that’s where I was talking to my Angel at.

‘Have the phone calls kept coming?’

“Unfortunately yes they did. But I unplugged the house phone so hopefully whoever it is gets the point and drops these crank calls and finds someone else to torment.”

‘I don’t know Jack. Maybe I should just come back and forget this tour.’

“No, no. Look, you nearly missed out the Angel-Queen tour back when we first met, I won’t let you cancel this tour either. Besides the world needs their Angel right now.” I assured her.

‘Yeah but—’

“What would he say right now?” I interrupted her. I heard her softly scoff and I knew she was smiling on the other end.

‘He’d tell me ‘Angel darling stop being so dramatic. There’s only room in this partnership for one hysterical Queen. Plus you’ll get early wrinkles’.’ We both laughed. ‘God I miss him so much. I can’t believe it’ll almost be a year come November.’

“I know. Have you talked to the guys at all since the concert?”

‘Not really. Figure I’d give them some space. They know my team’s number if they want to talk to me.’ I nodded and hummed in understandment so that she knew I was still listening.

“So you made it to Phoenix in one piece?”

‘Yeah thankfully. I’ll give you a call right after the show. Give the kids a kiss and cuddle for me.’

“Oh you know I will.” I said with a smile.

‘I love you Jack Kline; you know that right?’

“Of course I do. And I love you to the moon and back. Have a good show baby.”

‘I will. I love you.’

“I love you infinity times infinity there. Now you can’t say you love me more.” I heard her giggle. “Knock ‘em dead Angel.”

‘I will, bye.’

“Bye.” We both hung up and I deeply sighed.

“Daddy?” I looked up and there was Kelly in her nightdress holding her stuffed lion that her godfather gifted her.

“Hey baby girl, why are you awake?” I asked concerned. She walked up to me and sat down in my lap and said.

“I couldn’t sleep. Can you tell me a bedtime story? You know how like uncle Freddie used to tell me?” I stroked down her hair and said.

“Well, I’m not as extravagant or detailed as he used to make it but—I’ll do my best. C’mon I’ll make you some warm milk and tuck you back into bed, sound good?” she nodded. I picked her up, set her on the kitchen counter and prepared her some warm milk.

After that I carried her back to her bed and tucked her back under her covers and she took a sip of her milk.

“Okay so, what shall it be tonight? Do you want a story about—fairies?” she shook her head. “Unicorns?” again she shook her head. “Oh how about the story of a beautiful princess who gets saved by a knight in shining armor?”

“No daddy. Do you know the story of the lioness Queen?”

“The lioness Queen?”

“Uncle Freddie once told me a story about the lioness Queen who was raised by evil wolves but soon came on top as Queen of her own pride. He was gonna finish the story of how she would find herself a king but then—” she trailed off and I could see the tears prickling in her eyes. Oh that Freddie, of course he would tell our story like we were two lions.

“I think I know that story. Now again I may not be as good of a storyteller as Uncle Freddie was but I’ll do my best.” I sat down by her bedside and she cuddled up into her pillow, her stuffed lion in her arms. “Now let’s see……the Lioness Queen had reached the height of her reign. Everyone loved her because of her kindness and loyalty, but she was very much lonely. Sure she had the support of her new family but she still longed for someone she could love more than the family love she had from her new pride. So one day when she was out hunting, she was suddenly ambushed by the no good jackal. Now this jackal had particularly taken an interest in our brave Lioness Queen but she knew to not take any of his bullying. However he had brought his entire pack and they ganged up on the poor lioness.”

“Daddy don’t make it too scary.”

“Right, right, right I’m sorry angel. But the lioness Queen didn’t have to fear anymore. Because leaping from over the tall savannah grass was a dashing, handsome and powerful lion. He beat the jackals away and told the head jackal to leave and never bother the lioness again. Soon the jackal tucked his tail in like a frightened dog and fled the savannah and was never seen again. The lioness Queen was in debt to the young lion that saved her so she asked him if they could go to the watering hole together to talk and get to know each other more.”

I continued on to tell her mine and (Y/n)’s story of the day we met and fell in love with each other. Then about midway through the story I looked down and saw Kelly was finally back asleep. I smiled and kissed her forehead.

“Sleep tight my little lioness cub.” I walked out of her room and shut her door and walked back downstairs.

I walked towards the kitchen and I saw Sammy lying asleep on his doggie bed and Bucky asleep on his. But as soon as I came in, the two of them looked up at me.

“Hey Buck, Sammy.” Buck grunted as he sat up and came up towards me and sat down. I ruffled the top of his head. “Okay so what do you say last quick trip outside then time for you guys to get in your pin?” Sammy’s tail wagged as he immediately went towards the backdoor. I opened it up and he immediately went outside. “Alright Buck come on outside go out and go potty.”

But Bucky seemed tense. He lowly growled before racing towards the front door.

“Bucky? Buck!” Bucky went over to the front door and suddenly began barking aggressively and very loudly. “Buck! Buck shh! Quiet!” but he refused to listen to me. He kept barking and barking and barking. His fangs were out as he raced from the door to the windows. Growls came out of him and I noticed that his fur was on end.

Okay maybe it’s another dog or a raccoon or something, he tends to do that and we’re trying to break him of that habit. I grabbed his leash and when he was finally still I got it hooked to his collar and forced him towards his pin.

“Get in your pin now!” he snapped at him. I got him in his pin and as soon as I shut the door he started whimpering frantically, pacing around his pin letting out bark after bark. “Shhhh! You’re gonna wake the kids Buck now quiet!” I looked towards the front door and sighed heavily. Might as well just see just what’s out there.

I grabbed a flashlight and quickly stepped outside. I shined the light in every corner of darkness but I didn’t see a thing. No stray dog, nor a racoon, a cat not even a squirrel.

“That Buck is crazy sometimes.” It was then I noticed that our trashcan had somehow gone out to the side of the road. “I thought I brought that in when I came in this afternoon? Damn pranksters.” I left the front gate that surrounded our house and walked out to the curb to grab our trashcan and bring it back towards the side of the garage.

That’s when a loud purr of an engine roared through the quiet streets and bright headlights flashed right towards me. I heard the screeching of tires coming right towards me and without even thinking I ducked right up towards my driveway and I heard the sound of our garbage can being hit and tossed across the road.

The car’s lights soon turned off and sped off down the street. I panted heavily, my adrenaline now starting to collapse as I began to realize what could’ve happened just now.

Someone was trying to run me over and kill me. I knew that couldn’t be a mechanical problem cause why would the headlights suddenly come on and then accelerate straight towards me before driving normally down the road?

Only one person came across my mind as to who would go so far as to get rid of me. Steve.

I called up Jared and using his lawyer expertise he asked me various questions but unfortunately since I couldn’t identify the model of the car clear enough and couldn’t read the license plate in time there was no way for me to truly say it was him unless I could physically prove it.

But after that night I didn’t see Steve again, and I hoped that was the end of it. Until Halloween came around.

*Halloween night, 1992. 8:30pm*

I had just brought the kids in from our night of trick or treating. You know I’m glad we decided to allow the kids some time to know the American holidays cause I had to explain this to the guys as well as (Y/n) just what Halloween really was (since they don’t really celebrate it there in jolly old England).

I dressed the boys up as little lions while Kelly went as a witch this year. We all came in carrying our bags of candy.

“Candy!” Georgie exclaimed.

“That’s right buddy. We got candy, lots and lots of candy.” I told him as I got them out of their little red wagon.

“Daddy, daddy can we eat all the candy tonight please?” Kelly begged.

“You know your mother will kill me if she finds out I let you eat sweets before bedtime.” She whined before giving me her mother’s puppy dog face.

“Please daddy. Not even one itty bitty, teeny tiny bite?” I playfully placed my hands over her face which made her exclaim and shoo away my hand.

“You can have just one. Piece. But that’s it okay?” she cheered and quickly went through her bag and got out a blueberry flavored lollipop.

“Hey daddy? How come we can’t do trick or treating back where uncle Brian, uncle Deacy and papa Roger live?”

“Well sweetie, sometimes other countries don’t do the things we do. And sadly Halloween is just another day for them.”

“They should. Maybe next year papa Roger and I can be Star wars characters together.” I chuckled.

“I think your uncle Brian would enjoy that more than papa Roger.”

“But I wanted papa Roger and I to be Han and Princess Leia. Uncle Brian can be Chewie.”

“And uhh—who-who did you have in mind to be Luke?” I said brushing my fingers through my hair.

“Mommy! Cause she’s brave and strong just like Luke is! Georgie and Jackson can be R2.”

“And just who will uncle Deacy and I be?”

“Well uncle Deacy can be Obi-Wan and you’re C3-PO.” Wow she gives me the nagging droid.

“Oh so you think I’m a mindless philosopher ehh!? Come here you!” I quickly grabbed her and began tickling her which made her shriek and squirm. “Have me be Luke Skywalker or the tickling continues your highness!” I mimicked Darth Vader’s voice.

“Ne-nevheherererer!” she said through her laughter. I proceeded with the tickling till I heard the sound of a car engine coming down the street.

My mind suddenly went back to that night when I nearly got ran over. I set Kelly down on the floor and peeked through the curtains and could see someone standing right beside a familiar shape of a car that I knew well.

“Daddy? Is……everything okay?” I looked down at Kelly before quickly looking back towards the window.

“Kelly I need you to listen to me very carefully sweetheart. I want you to take your brothers and go to mommy and daddy’s room and hide in the closet. And no matter what happens do not come out till I come and get you, okay?”

“But why daddy? What’s going on?”

“Just!” I snapped but clenched my hand tightly and said as I knelt down to her height. “Please Kelly, do as your father tells you. Remember not a word or even let me see you till I tell you it’s safe, promise?”

“I promise.” I hugged her tightly and gave her a kiss and told her to go get her brothers and get upstairs. I glared at the door and opened it up before closing it. I walked towards the front gate and that’s when I heard his voice say.

“Well, well, well, Jack Kline I’ll be damned. Still around eh?”

“Yeah, yeah it’s me don’t cream your pants.” I sassed bluntly at him.

“Saw that you and the kiddies were doing a little trick or treating. That’s nice of you but umm…..what are you supposed to be? A new kid on the block?” I scoffed.

“What do you want Harrison?”

“What can’t a PA come up to check on his superstar?”

“I don’t know what world you live in but (Y/n) fired you last week.”

“Yeah, you see that-that-that’s…..that’s another reason why I came here. See, I personally am the best and most qualified PA that the Rock Angel could ever have. But while we were in Pittsburg, I get a notice saying that I’ve been fired. Now she never told me why so I thought who is more jealous of me and brainwashing the Rock Angel, than her own husband? So—care to explain?”

“Guess you were dropped as a child one too many times.” I walked closer to the front gate and said in Steve’s face. “She got tired of your advancements towards her. My wife isn’t like all other rock stars cause she’s been on the end of the cheating stick. And she knows to not put me or our kids through something like that.”

“Really lives up to her angel name huh?” he smart mouthed me. “Let me tell you though buddy boy. We have fucked with each other, and boy is she a freak in the sheets.” Bullshit I know he’s lying. “We’ve even fucked with each other here at your own house when you were away on business. I mean—who can say no to this?” he gestured to himself.

“You are even worse than we thought. Now do yourself a favor and fuck off Steve before I call the cops.”

“One problem with that amigo.”

“And what’s that? Amigo.” Suddenly I was grabbed by my shirt and a punch went straight through my stomach. I collapsed to the ground and the gate opened up. Steve stood over me and he sneered down.

“The cops are working for me.” I was then kicked in the ribs and I watched in horror as Steve kicked the door in and walked right on in the house.

*3rd Person POV*

As Steve entered the Kline residence, a place he had actually been inside a lot with his uncle on the meetings with (Y/n) to discuss further progress with her albums, brandings, etc. He walked up the stairs and went straight for the master bedroom where Jack and (Y/n) slept.

He looked around as he slowly walked around the bedroom before seeing the closet at the corner of his eyes. He turned towards it and walked right up to it before slowly reaching for the door. With a quick flick, the door was opened but no one was there. He then saw some of (Y/n)’s stuff like her hats and scarves.

He took a red scarf and inhaled it before pocketing it into his back pocket. That’s when he suddenly heard a thump from the corner of the room. That’s when his attention went to the wardrobe. A smirk spread across his face and as he opened it there he saw Kelly, Georgie and Jackson all huddled together.

“Hey kids, whatcha doin in here?”

“Go away! Mommy and daddy don’t like you anymore and neither do we!” Steve laughed at Kelly’s empty demand.

“Kids today. Guess I’m gonna have to teach you some manners little missy.” Suddenly he was turned around and a hard punch sent him down to the ground.

“Daddy!” Kelly cheered.

“Daddy! Daddy!” the boys repeated.

*Jack’s POV*

Like hell I was gonna just sit there and allow Steve to take whatever the hell he wants or worse find the kids. Spitting out some blood I staggered towards the house and walked up the stairs. That’s when I heard Kelly’s voice cry out.

“Mommy and daddy don’t like you anymore and neither do we!”

“Kids today. Guess I’m gonna have to teach you some manners little missy.” Like hell you will! I raced as Steve was talking and immediately grabbed him by the shoulder of his jacket, turned him around and sucker punched him across the face. My kids cried out for me while Steve staggered to stand up.

He soon began laughing before letting out a hoot. His nose bleeding from the punch I just gave him as well as his mouth.

“Looks like I underestimated you farm boy! I took you for a pushover but now I see just what that bitch sees in you! Lion King Jack she likes to call you!”

“Get. Out.” I demanded. Steve chuckled icily and said.

“And what if I don’t?” he spat blood in my face. I then let out a whistle and said two commands.

“Sick. Em.” Soon running past my right leg Sammy attacked Steve at his ankles tripping him over. Sammy maybe all sweet and innocent but when he needs to be (especially since Steve’s been around) he knows when someone needs to get bit.

Steve fell right onto his back as Sammy continued to bite and tear at his pants.

“YOU DAMN DOG!! LET GO!”

“You gonna surrender now?”

“FUCK. YOU!” I let out another whistle and soon barking in aggressively was Bucky. And being a German shepherd he was not holding back. Sammy released Steve’s leg for a moment and allowed his brother to take over.

Bucky bit Steve’s shoulder and tackled him to the ground and I knew he was biting down harder cause Steve’s screams got louder and more painful.

“Boys come!” the boys came back and stood guard of the wardrobe growling and protectively standing guard over my kids. “You wanna test me again or shall I give them a second chance at a new chew toy?”

Even with multiple dog bites, Steve managed to somehow stand up and he glared with pure hatred at me.

“I’ll—I’ll see to it……that those mutts are put down for attacking me. My uncle will hear about this! And I’ll be sure that you’re put away for a long, long time. I know you guys have no cameras in or outside of this house, so no cameras, no proof.” His sick twisting smirk widened across his face.

He staggered out of the bedroom but I heard the sound of him collapsing down to the ground. The dogs immediately went towards him but I didn’t hear any snarling or growling, instead I heard happy whimpering.

“Stay here kids.” I told them as I quickly I came out and I was shocked to see standing before Steve with a baseball bat in her hand was my wife, (Y/n). She panted softly as she dropped the bat and then took out one of our large kitchen knives.

Bucky and Sammy stood guard of the stairs to ensure that Steve didn’t even try to escape and that’s when (Y/n) sneered down at Steve.

“From now on you are no never come near me or my family again. I don’t care what kind of connections you have; we’ve got enough evidence with you in this house without consent and a struggle going on in my very bedroom.”

“Screw you…….bitch.” Steve murmured. Then I witnessed with my own eyes as my wife took that large 7in knife and slam it right down to the floor, very close to Steve’s dick. Any further up and she would’ve removed his very identity as a man.

“SAY YOU UNDERSTAND! Say it. SAY IT!!!” She roared down at him.

“I understand.” He muttered quietly.

“You what?!”

“I understand.” He said a bit louder. Her eyes steaming with hatred and fierce mother instincts stared Steve down as she removed the knife and she looked up to me and simply told me. “Call the police.”

Within minutes the police arrived and Steve was finally arrested. The police took our testimonies and a trial date was set for the 1st of December.

Now as I’m sure my wife as explained I wish we could say that was the last time we’d ever see Steve Harrison in our lives but we underestimated just how fucked up the legal system was here in California.

Thanks to his smooth, fast talking Uncle in trying to bride the judges and the jury, Steve didn’t serve any jail time. Only that he would have a restraining order set against him. By law he wasn’t to get anywhere within 50ft of (Y/n) or our family.

Steve Harrison was once again a free man.

By the start of 1993, my wife was once again trying to contact the judge, police, and any other law enforcement about taking Steve’s advances seriously. But all the same they kept turning her down saying there’s nothing else they can do.

That the restraining order will protect her, and if Steve does violate that then and only then could they talk serious jail time for him.

“Well then I want you guys to do one thing for me, the next time you bastards come to this house will be when my body is dead on the ground with a message in blood saying I told you so!” she hung up the phone and sobbed into her hands.

I slowly walked towards her and hesitantly sat down beside her. God I hate seeing her like this, she’s been worrying herself sick over this while still going on with the tour which will resume after this week.

“I—I don’t know what else to do Jack. I……” I refused to allow her to speak again. I embraced her as tightly as I could and she wept hysterically into my arms. Bucky and Sammy whimpering at our feet with Sammy licking her feet and Bucky nuzzling his head into her lap.

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sometimesitrytowritethings · 4 years

Text

Mountain Man: Part 2

Pairing: Arthur Morgan x Reader

Word count: 2.8k

Warnings: Swearing, Mention of death, Mourning

Summary: You never thought you’d love again. Then Arthur Morgan came into town. Fate continuously has you meeting each other in odd ways, and a troubled past is something you are both familiar with. Perhaps that’s what will make this time different.

Notes: A MASSIVE THANK YOU to @morgans-whore for helping me out with this!!! If you haven’t read their work, please do so immediately.

------

Worth’s General store was a large building at the end of the Main Street. Although obviously aging, Jacob Worth did his best to maintain the store as much as possible, and keep it as well stocked as he could for the citizens of Valentine. The store was small and dark, despite the bright day outside, but stocked to the brim with goods both local and exotic.

You stepped over the familiar threshold, and were immediately greeted by the friendly voice of Jacob, “Good morning!” You greeted him with a nod and a smile, moving to the left so that the excited child behind you could dart inside.

Ben immediately dashed to the small candy display near the register, bouncing up and down in excitement. His curls bounced with him while he looked at the selection with a grin that reminded you so much of his father. Small, dirty hands grabbed for a bar of chocolate and a bag of hard candies, holding them up to his face for closer examination.

“Are you looking for anything in particular today? We just got in some more of that coffee from Guarma that I know you’re fond of,” Jacob continued, standing behind the counter and keeping his eyes on your son. He indicated to a shelf behind him, with a sign bosting “Fresh Guarman Coffee! $1 per pound!”.

You smiled at him. “Thank you, Jacob, but we’re only here for picnic supplies today. I’ll come back later in the week to pick up more coffee and dry goods, if you could please hold some for me?” Jacob was a nice man, if a bit lonely of late. He had been very close to your husband, and made sure to take good care of you and Ben in recent years.

He nodded, grabbing one of the heavy bags off the shelf and putting it to the side behind the counter. “Of course, happy to,” he wrote your name on a slip of paper and put it on top of the bag. When he stood up, he brushed his fingers off on his apron, and then rose his hands to comb through his unkempt beard. “You going over to see Andrew today?”

With a bittersweet smile, you nodded in affirmation. “Yes, it’s been a while since we’ve gone over there. And since the weather is nice today, we thought we would have a picnic,” you explained, walking over to your son and ruffling his curly hair. “Isn’t that right, Ben?”

“Yep!” he exclaimed, still mostly focused on the candy in his hands. “And Mama said I could pick out a candy for today, right Mama?” He looked up at you, eyes wide with excitement, reminding you all the more of Andrew.

You couldn’t hold back the loving smile that lit up your face when he looked at you. The five years since Ben had been born had been tough, no doubt, but seeing the boy grow up was worth more than the world. He was becoming more and more like his pa as he got older, earning you a small, bittersweet ache in your heart every time you noticed the similarity.

Raising Ben together with Andrew on the little ranch outside of town had been your plan. The two of you had looked so forward to teaching him to care for animals, to giving him more siblings to play with, to raising him into the brilliant young man that he was indeed becoming. Unfortunately, fate had had other ideas. Only one of those wishes was coming to fruition, and you were forced to watch him grow up alone.

You had grown up in a small town on the eastern edge of New Austin, helping your parents in the saloon and restaurant they had owned, and sadly knew next to nothing about ranching. Andrew, on the other hand, was born on a small ranch just outside of town, and had practically been taking care of animals since he could walk. Sadly, Andrew had passed only a few months after Ben was born, and never got a chance to teach him anything or give him any siblings.

Ben’s determined decision brought you out of your bittersweet reverie. “I think I want chocolate today,” he said, before placing the small bag of hard candies back on the counter. “I like when it gets all melty when it’s hot. Then I can just lick it off the package and I don’t even gotta chew.” His rambling made both you and Jacob chuckle.

You went back to browsing the shelves, picking up a few apples and peaches, and asking Jacob for loaf of bread, dried beef, and some cheese. As a special treat for you and your son later, you picked up some assorted biscuits as well. The last things on your list were a small bottle of wine for yourself and a bottle of milk for Ben… who was now hiding something behind his back.

He had a shameful smile on his face, and was rocking back and forth from his heels to his tippy-toes. Behind him was an obviously empty space on the shelf where peppermint candies usually sat. He could have only been more obvious if he were whistling. The boy really was a horrible thief.

“Ben, sweetheart, put that down please,” you lightly scolded, getting ready to bring out your stern mother voice if need be. “You’ve got a chocolate bar for later, you don’t need more candy.”

Then again, there is no reasoning with a child. “But Papa’s favorite is peppermints. I wanna get some candy for him,” he says, eyes going wide and shining with definitely-fake tears. He brought the red and white striped package out from behind his back and showed it to you, eyes as wide and innocent as a puppy.

“Honey…” you rubbed the bridge of your nose as you spoke, and closed your eyes, torn between holding your ground and giving into the puppy-dog eyes.

“Please mama?” There it was, the lip tremble. This kid had you wrapped around his tiny little finger. “Please? They’re his favorite. I’ll leave the chocolate if I gotta.” And the cincher. He had to have known what he was doing, offering to put back his own treat to get peppermints for someone who couldn’t even enjoy them? He was a literal angel.

An angel you could simply not say no to.

“Oh, alright, you. Those puppy dog eyes are merciless, you know?” you concede, not hearing the door open behind you and the heavy footsteps coming your way.

The boy jumped in excitement, his curly hair bouncing with him, and ran up to the register to show his purchase to Jacob. You follow suit, pulling a few bills out from under the blanket in the basket and handing it to your friend across the counter.

“Peppermints AND chocolate?” came a husky voice from behind you. “You really must be worth more than I could afford.” You recognised the sound almost immediately, and turned to face the man from the night before. He was again standing casually, observing the scene before him with his fingers looped in his belt, and smiling softly at your son.

Seeing him again so soon made you smile. Last night may have been short, and may have amounted to nothing in the end, but flirting with him had certainly been fun. “Well, hello again Mountain Man,” you responded, teasing him with the nickname Anastasia had unintentionally bestowed on him the previous evening and making no pretense of hiding the fact that you were running your gaze up his body. Although he was wearing the same clothes as the evening before, and was significantly dirtier than you remembered him being before you left, he looked even more handsome in the light of day. “That’s certainly true, but maybe we can negotiate the price over a drink sometime?”

His soft smile that had been reserved for your son turned into an impressed smirk as his gaze drifted to you. “‘d be happy to,” he responded.

You glanced down at your son, who was still pre-occupied with the peppermints, and decided to forgo any further suggestive talk while he was with you. Which, unfortunately, meant that you weren’t entirely sure what to say next. “Well,” you managed, clearing your throat and turning to pick up the full picnic basket from the counter. “I certainly didn’t think I’d see you in the general store. Don’t you mountain men hunt all of your own food?”

Arthur barked out a laugh, throwing his head back with it. You were surprised about how attractive it was. “Shoa, if I weren’t such a bad shot, maybe,” he retorted, looking back at you. “‘m headin’ out for a bounty. Just need t’ stock up on some supplies before I leave.”

“Bounty?” That certainly surprised you. Though, now that you’ve had a better look at him, you supposed that he could be a bounty hunter. He did have multiple pistols in holsters at his hips and a couple of repeaters strapped to his back. Not to mention the fact that he could probably wrestle anyone to the ground with his bare hands alone.

“Yeah, some snake-oil salesman been pawning off poison to women with sick husbands,” he explained nonchalantly, pulling his hands from his belt and walking in your direction.

“Ah…” you drew in a sharp breath as he came closer to you, backing you up until you were nearly touching the shelves against the wall. Your heart was pounding in your ears, what was he playing at? He kept his eyes on yours the whole time, the same predatory look in them that you noticed last night, and you would have panicked if it weren’t for the mirth in them as well. Somehow, you could tell he wouldn’t hurt you. This was just a part of the game.

Without a word, and keeping his eyes locked with yours, he reached behind you and pulled a box of shotgun shells off the shelf.

When he had what he wanted, that stupid attractive smirk returned to his face and he stepped back, giving you room to breathe. “S’posed to be camped out by Cumberland Falls. Shouldn’t take long, if ya’d want to join me for that drink afterwards,” he explained, finally breaking his gaze from you and heading to the other side of the room to the display housing basic tonics.

Now that he wasn’t so close, now that he wasn’t looking at you like he wanted to eat you alive, you could finally let out the breath that you had apparently been holding. “I… I’m a bit busy today, I’m afraid,” you managed, holding up the basket full of picnic foods for him to see. Your heart was pounding, and it was certainly not from fear. You only hoped he wasn’t able to tell.

Completely oblivious to the situation before him, Ben strolled over to you from the cash register, where he had been chattering on to Jacob. “Yeah, we are going to see Papa!” he told Arthur excitedly. “We even got him candies!”

Your eyes snapped to your son at the sound of his voice, only to see him standing beside you with an opened bag of peppermints, one already in his mouth. Faking offense, you bent down to your son’s height and took the peppermint bag from him. “You said those were for papa, you little thief,” you teased, slipping the bag into your basket before reaching out to Ben’s sides.

The boy knew what was coming, and was preemptively laughing and trying to escape you. “He doesn’t mind sharing!” he giggled, backing away from you with a grin.

You narrowed your eyes playfully at the child. “Oh, sure he doesn’t,” you taunted before going in for the kill, “you sneak!” With that, you drew Ben toward you and began attacking him with tickles. Ben’s shrieks of laughter filled the room as the two men watched on with smiles on their faces.

“Mama, no!” shrieked Ben through his laughter. “No tickling! No tickling! Let’s go see Papa!” His laughter died down as you stopped tickling him and released him from your hold. He was breathless and grinning from ear to ear, eyes shining with glee. You simply adored him.

“Alright alright, let’s go, my little thief,” you said, giving him a purposefully loud, wet kiss on his cheek, which he proceeded to wipe off dramatically. He then dashed to the door, careful to keep out of arms’ reach, lest you try to catch him again. You followed him with a smile, stopping briefly at the door to say goodbye.

“Anyway, it was nice seeing you again, Mountain Man,” you said, turning to Arthur with a small wave of your left hand, the light glinting off your worn wedding ring.

He cleared his throat and tipped his hat as you turned back around to follow Ben. “Ma’am,” was his simple farewell, and if you had glanced back, you would have seen his eyes, focused on the ring on your finger in disappointment.

The cemetery, much like everything else in the small town, was just down the street from the general store. Ben ran slightly ahead of you, still within eyesight, the bag of peppermints once again held tightly in his tiny hand. You waved and said hello to the few people that you passed as you walked the short street, but all-in-all it took no time to get to where you needed to go.

Andrew was buried next to his parents, and you knew the space like the back of your hand. The grave was starting to age, but was generally well kept by both the town minister and yourself. It was situated toward the back of the cemetery, under a tree and away from the road - an ironically beautiful spot for a picnic. Andrew would have loved it.

Just an hour after leaving the general store, you sat atop your picnic blanket, a worn blue and white quilt sewn by yourself and your late mother-in-law during the early days of your marriage, under the shade of the large tree with a book in hand. The half-eaten loaf of bread, leftover cheese, and beef were packed neatly back into the picnic basket, leaving you and Ben plenty of space to lounge.

Peppermints had been scattered over the blanket and beside the grave itself, as Ben played with a wooden horse on top of the weathered stone. He spoke quietly, voice still full of excitement, to his father’s and grandparents’ graves as he played. The book you were holding, a cheap romance novel that you had borrowed from Margaret a few weeks prior, didn’t manage to hold your interest, and you were lost in thought.

About Andrew. About the past. About what could have been.

Andrew had been beyond excited for your pregnancy, even going as far as building a small nursery onto the small house once he had inherited it from his parents. It had been a hard time for him, torn between the sadness of losing his parents to cholera not a year prior and the excitement of bringing a child into the world with the woman he loved. Thankfully, the entire town had been there to support him: his friends stopped by whenever they could, the Downes next door helped out on the ranch when they got a chance, Ms. Chadwick had even taken to stopping by on a weekly basis to help you during the pregnancy.

It had all gone surprisingly smoothly, and a little over a year after his grandparents’ passing, little Ben was safely brought into the world. The first few months were an exhausted dream, taking care of a child, your child, together. Waking up at dawn to feed Ben and make coffee for Andrew before he went out to take care of the animals. Days spent feeding and playing with your son, working as much as you could, and waiting for Andrew to take a break so you could coo over the little one together. Nights spent cuddled together, looking adoringly at the face of the perfect child that the two of you had brought into this world.

It was so wonderful, and so tragically short-lived, that you sometimes weren’t sure if it hadn’t all been a dream.

But then you remember Ben, so much like his father in so many ways, and the bittersweet memory of that time solidifies in your mind. It was no dream. It was short-lived, exhausting, and too perfect to last. Andrew was gone, but he still lived on in your son, and you wouldn’t trade him for the world.

An excited squeal from the boy brought you back to the present, and you turned to watch him race his wooden horse across the headstones decorated with your family’s names. Not far away, Arthur was also alerted by the sudden shrill noise. Watching the two of you, as he stood by his horse and covered with grime, sweat, and dirt, he smiled.

#Arthur Morgan x reader #arthur morgan #rdr2 #rdr2 fanfic #red dead redemption 2 #f!reader #arthur morgan x f!reader

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skullrock · 3 years

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noel nancy

12 days of Christmas fics, day 4 - noel nancy

pairing: Stancy

summary: Steve and Nancy spend their first Christmas together after the events of S1.

word count: 1.5k

warnings: none <3

a/n: this isn’t really like a STANCY stancy fic it’s more of a character study into Steve and his relationship w Christmas, w Nancy, and with Barb after S1. so even if u hate this ship u can still read <3 xox hope u enjoy!

Steve wasn’t used to second chances. His parents gave up on him the first time he snuck out to try cigarettes with Tommy; his teachers gave up on him at the first signs of difficulty; his other girlfriends gave up on him the first time he let down his cool exterior. Because, really, Steve was a kid. As much as he felt like a grown up, he wasn’t. He was a kid who handled his life poorly, and if it wasn’t for Nancy Wheeler, he never would have handled it well.

So when Nancy gave him a second chance, a month after… Everything, he was quick to jump on it and be on his very best behavior. Jonathan Byers’ fist knocked some sense into him, too, and that’s precisely why Steve went to the store and bought the best camera that the salesman had. He owed them both his life - like, literally, and they probably owed him theirs, but he wouldn’t take it. He just wanted them happy and safe and peaceful for Christmas.

“Steve.” Nancy looked bewildered when Steve showed her the camera, unwrapped, as he didn’t really know how to wrap anything. “He’ll love it.” Her hand touched his and it was warm, and Steve swore he felt the heat creep up his entire arm. He never wanted her to let go. Not again.

“‘s whatever,” he said, a bit bashfully, but his smile was growing. “I owe him at least this much.”

“You’re sweet,” Nancy said, leaning forward and kissing his cheek softly, and Steve melted into her eagerly. He didn’t think he really deserved to be called sweet, not yet, but he still takes her hand and squeezes it.

“Help me wrap it?” he asked.

“You don’t know how?”

“I can’t be good at everything,” he teased, and she hit his chest gently with her free hand before standing.

“I’ll be right back.” Nancy knew she had to promise this. She could see that fear and apprehension and remorse in his eyes every time she went to step away, like she wouldn’t be back.

And she almost wasn’t.

Steve pressed a kiss to her palm before letting her run downstairs to grab the paper. When her frame left the doorway, he let his eyes roam around her room, something he’d done before, but not since Everything. He sees pictures of Nance when she was younger, in a ballerina costume. On a school field trip to the zoo. Pictures of Ted holding her when she was just as big as Holly was then. Her and Mike dressed up like - well, Steve doesn’t know what they’re dressed up as, but they’re having fun.

And then he sees the pictures of Barb and Nance. How happy they were. Their faces smushed together in a photobooth, at each other’s birthday parties - the room was littered with Barb and little reminders of her. Steve checked on Nancy every chance he had, even in that month where they’d only stolen looks at each other. He said he was sorry probably a dozen times, each more tearful than the last, because what Nancy didn’t understand was that Steve couldn’t even look at his pool without feeling like he was going to vomit. He couldn’t lay in his bed at night and sleep. He thought about Barb, about how she cut her hand when they tried to make her do something stupid, about how scared and alone and sad she must have been. How he stole Nancy from her.

Barb Holland probably hated him more in death than she did in life.

It wasn’t supposed to be a competition, Steve promised her. He had a lot of talks with her at night. I just didn’t want to share the glory that is Nancy Wheeler. I’m sure you understand.

“Found some.” Nancy’s voice broke Steve from his melancholy staring, and he quickly blinked some tears out of his eyes. She sat at her desk with the camera and Steve watched her wrap the box, watched her little fingers fold and tape the paper. “He’ll be here to pick up Will later.”

Steve cleared his throat. “Will you give it to him?”

Nancy looked at him with furrowed brows. “Me?”

“I just….” Steve paused. “I don’t want him to think he… like, owes me something. Or that I’m trying to buy his forgiveness.”

“He won’t,” Nancy promised, but Steve shook his head.

“Please? Just say it’s from you.”

Nancy frowned and stood, walking to Steve at the end of her bed. She cupped his face and kissed his lips, softly, before pulling back. Steve smirked, gently grabbing her wrists in his hands. “Guess I should be selfless more often, huh?”

“You are selfless,” Nancy said, staring into his eyes. Steve loved it when Nancy looked at him like that. “And you’re brave.”

But Steve didn’t feel like it.

===

To be honest, Steve never had a great Christmas. Sometimes his cousins and extended family would stop by for Christmas, and that could be fun. But his aunts and uncles didn’t like their kids hanging out with Steve, because he was a “bad influence,” which just meant sometimes Steve would get too carried away during snowball fights and, yeah, he hit Brent in the face with one but it’s not like he lost an eye or anything. Christmas with his mom and dad was impersonal. He would get new things that he didn’t really like - as in, ten new polos and five new khakis, all from expensive retailers - and he would thank them before going up to his room until dinner. Christmas dinner was the worst - it was silent save for forks scraping and mouths chewing, and Steve was pretty sure that when he goes to hell he will be perpetually sitting at the dinner table on December 25th.

But Christmas with Nancy was different.

It wasn’t that Steve didn’t like talking to Ted about sports, or telling Karen about his mom’s new business ventures, or acting like an asshole to Mike just to get a ruse from him, or playing with Holly. He loved it. But that wasn’t the bestpart. The best part was that Nancy, in her pretty yellow sweater, was glued to his side, and was smiling, and was squeezing his hand, and was rolling her eyes and laughing at him. It wasn’t even that much, but it was the closest to an actual Christmas that Steve had ever had. Closest to Christmas that Steve had ever felt. He could even stand Ted’s after-dinner snoring as he held Nancy on the couch, absent-mindedly watching a movie. He was more concerned with her warm body pressed against his.

A month was a long time without Nancy Wheeler.

The front door opened. Karen cried out, “Jonathan!”, and Steve looked to Nancy anxiously. As Jonathan slipped downstairs, Nancy snuck up to her room, leaving Steve alone with a snoring Ted.

Steve was used to being alone, now. Or, well, he should have been. A month without talking to Carol and Tommy was like a well-needed detox without the withdrawals. Still, he missed them - but only sometimes. The thoughts were usually quickly stifled when Steve remembers how Tommy made him pay for a can of coke and some Advil after getting his shit rocked. Some friends. And while Nancy was (thankfully) back in his life, he still felt alone sometimes. Which scared him. He hadn’t felt this alone in a long time, always forcing himself to socialize to avoid being in an empty and cold house. Nancy meant more to him then he knew - not only was he thankful to have her back and be given another chance, but she also got him out of that house.

Nancy, Jonathan, and Will met at the bottom of the steps. Steve couldn’t really see, but he could kind of hear the exchange. His heart hammered in his chest - what if he didn’t like it? What if it was a shitty camera? What if Jonathan finds out he was the one that got it for him? But Nancy came back with an absent-minded grin and Steve smiled wide, relief flowing through him just at the sight of her. She sat beside him and he wrapped an arm around her, pulling her in close. He looked down at her in pure adoration - Nancy Wheeler was the most beautiful, intelligent, thoughtful, and badass person he’d ever met, and she was, somehow, his.

“Did you give it to him?”

Nancy looked up at him and nodded, still smiling a bit. “Yeah.”

Steve rubbed her arm and looked up at the television, suddenly overwhelmed with something. Something good and all consuming and wholesome. He hadn’t felt this good… ever. It was like something was set free in his chest, something that had never quite yet been released before. He looked back down at Nancy, her eyes focused on the television, her body pressed up against his.

He wants to say it. I love you. It’s on the tip of his tongue.

Instead, he presses a kiss to her hair. “Merry Christmas.”

Nancy looked up at him and smiled softly. “Merry Christmas.”

Beside them, Ted snored.

===

tags: @pterawaters @mpmarypoppins

#steve harrington #nancy wheeler #stancy #stranger things fic #I just want them 2 b happy #this was the quickest fic I have ever written literally... I had so many thots..... I will b crying #my fics

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chadsinclair · 3 years

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How millennial Disney star and.

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zenonaa · 4 years

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Chapters: 1/2 Fandom: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Dangan Ronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, Dangan Ronpa 3: The End of 希望ヶ峰学園 | The End of Kibougamine Gakuen | End of Hope's Peak High School Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Fukawa Touko/Togami Byakuya Characters: Togami Byakuya, Fukawa Touko, Hagakure Yasuhiro, Naegi Komaru, Asahina Aoi, Naegi Makoto, Kirigiri Kyouko Additional Tags: togafukaweek2020 Series: Part 6 of TogaFuka Week 2020

Summary: Byakuya and Touko tell their son about the events leading up to their engagement... with help from their friends.

Comments: Day 6: Family and Wedding! It’s a two-part fic, so the second part will be posted tomorrow.

***

For as long as Aloysius Togami had been alive, his parents had been married. His father had always been Byakuya Togami, and his mother had always been Touko Togami. He knew she used to be Touko Fukawa, but she more than happily disowned her family name upon marriage and adopted her husband’s.

On multiple occasions, Aloysius paged through their wedding albums. Saw their smiles, saw their friends, saw the western theme. What he didn’t know much about was what led up to the wedding, and that was something he was especially interested to know about, now that he found himself at a similar phase in life.

“Mother. Father,” said Aloysius, holding his hands behind his back. “There’s something I need to talk to you guys about.”

His parents stared up at him, sitting on their living room couch.

“Y-You’re not dying, are you?” said Touko as a hand flew up to her mouth.

“I... no,” said Aloysius, flinching his head back.

Byakuya inclined his head and said sternly, “Are you doing drugs?”

The bravado that Aloysius brought with him crumbled as their wide eyes digested him.

“No, I’m not,” said Aloysius, growing more flustered.

Touko slung her arms over her husband’s shoulders and borderline wailed, “Did you sign up for a game show where you’re locked into an old school building and forced into a killing game?”

Her bottom lip wobbled as distress rocked her body. Aloysius pouted.

“That’s not it at all,” huffed Aloysius.

Rather than let them keep guessing, Aloysius dipped his hand into his jacket’s inner pocket and pulled out a burgundy velvet box small enough to fit in his palm. Byakuya and Touko leaned in, with the latter squeezing her husband’s shoulder, as Aloysius opened the box. It parted its jaws with a gentle click, and on its cushioned tongue perched a platinum, three stone engagement ring.

“It’s... an engagement ring!” Touko gasped, eyebrows jumping, and she slapped a hand against her cheek. Byakuya studied it closer.

“Round cut, one diamond flanked by two sapphires,” murmured Byakuya. He adjusted his glasses. “Impressive.”

“Yep,” replied Aloysius with a bob of his head, pleased with their reactions, then he glanced away, slightly bashful. “I picked it up from the store this morning.”

Touko and Byakuya fixed their eyes onto him at the same time.

“When are you going to propose?” asked Byakuya.

“How are you going to propose?” Touko chimed in. Aloysius rubbed his wrist sheepishly.

“That’s kind of why I wanted to talk to you about it first,” he explained. “I plan on proposing to Ichika today but when I propose, I want it to be special. How did you propose to Mother, Father?”

Byakuya cupped his chin. Meanwhile, Touko clasped her hands together, beaming.

“I r-remember it so clearly!” she gushed. “We were in a restaurant, and...”

“Hold on,” interrupted Byakuya, flinging up a hand for silence. “You’re getting ahead of yourself. Before I proposed to you, I purchased the ring. I know you have already done that, Aloysius, but I want to tell you my story from the start...”

He folded his arms over his chest.

“I remember it well...”

***

On a warm morning in July where the temperature had yet to reach its peak, I arrived at a jewelry store with Naegi and Hagakure. The storefront was sleek black, with golden cursive written across the top that said the shop’s name. When we approached close enough, the double doors parted, granting us entrance. I headed the group, brimming confidence as I strode inside, and I heard the doors whoosh shut behind us.

Circular lights covered the grey ceiling hanging above a dark, polished flooring. Various photographs adorned the desaturated yellow walls, portraying smiling people I didn’t know. Though my gaze lingered longer on the photographs with closeups of rings, even those didn’t capture my attention for long. Of more interest were the glass cabinets either side of me, filled with mannequin shoulders and hands that boasted different jewelry.

Hagakure let out a low whistle and rested his hands onto his hips, looking around. “This place is mighty fancy.”

“Yeah,” agreed Naegi, his eyes flitting about nervously. I nudged up my glasses and resisted the urge to roll my eyes. A low cluck escaped me.

“You two will be fine, so long as you don’t touch anything,” I assured them. They both shot wary looks at each other.

We didn’t have to dawdle long before a man in a white-blue checkered shirt received us. I can’t remember much about his appearance. Your grandmother had a photographic memory, you know. Anyway...

“Good morning, gentlemen, how can I help you today?” asked the salesman. I stepped forward.

“I’m the one you have business with,” I told him, and when his attention narrowed onto me, I added, “I need an engagement ring.”

The salesman nodded. If he had a hat, he would have tipped it. He gave off that impression. “Can do. Do you have anything particular in mind?”

“Diamond, with an interesting pattern,” I told him. “However, while I don’t want it to be plain, I don’t want it to be over the top or gimmicky... It needs to be original but elegant.”

I could tell that the salesman hadn’t been listening by the glazed look in his eyes, but he nodded anyway.

“I’m sure I can help you with that,” said the salesman. He led us to one of the glass display cabinets and swept his hand across the top. “This brand has a lot of standout designs. Do any of these tickle your fancy?”

We peered in. A lot of engagement rings that I had seen prior to this were similar - silver band with a diamond, whether it be a princess cut, oval cut, cushion cut or another, and indeed, some rings shown to me then didn’t stand out from many others I had seen not just in passing, but during my research online.

To give credit, alongside these standard engagement rings were others that had a hint of originality to them: one had a blue topaz gemstone, another had a band that wasn’t plain smooth or encrusted with smaller gemstones, but more ornate, and a ring near it had a band resembling interlaced vines.

After some deliberation, I soon set my eyes on the ring I wanted to give to Touko. It -

***

“I wouldn’t use the word ‘soon’ here,” came a slightly muffled voice.

Byakuya, Touko and Aloysius turned sharply to where the voice originated from. Yasuhiro Hagakure stood in the doorway of their living room, straddling a toothbrush between his teeth. His dreads, despite being restrained to a ponytail, were still voluminous, framing his head like rays from the Sun. He popped the toothbrush out of his mouth and padded over.

“Hi, Uncle Hiro.” Aloysius lowered his shoulders now he knew who it was. “I didn’t know you were here.”

“Neither did we,” said Byakuya, squinting.

“Family doesn’t need a reason or invitation to visit family, ‘right?” said Yasuhiro, and he quickly continued talking before anyone could answer him, wagging his toothbrush. “Anyway, Togami-chi, I overheard you telling little Aloysius-chi here about the time we went to buy an engagement ring of Touko-chi, and I couldn’t help noticing that some details might have been a bit fuzzy in your memory.”

Aloysius wasn’t little. He was in his twenties. But he said nothing, too curious.

Apparently, so was his father.

“Oh?” went Byakuya, cocking his head.

Yasuhiro hit himself on the chest with the hand holding the toothbrush. “Yep! But don’t worry, I remember the scene as clear as a bell! It went like this...”

***

So, Togami-chi called me and Naegi-chi the night before, asking us to come help him pick out an engagement ring. Being the good friend that I am, after I asked how much he was willing to pay for our services and he said nothing, I conceded and said I’d do it for free because we are such good friends, ‘right? The next day, we met at my place, and Togami-chi was anxiously going, “We need to go now! We need to go now!”

***

“I said that once,” Byakuya grouched. “And I wasn’t anxious. Just annoyed. You were taking too long to put your shoes on.”

“Whatever you say,” Yasuhiro said dismissively. He perched onto the armrest of the couch. “So...”

***

I drove us there in my car - I’ve still got old reliable, by the way - and the place really was as swanky as Togami-chi made it out to be. The sign above the doors was so elegant. You know, I could make a living as a person who writes shop names on signs, my penmanship is that neat, and I even said that. Naegi-chi wondered if there was even a job just for that and Togami-chi just gave us this blank look. I totally rendered him speechless', ‘right?

We walked in, and the entire place was amazing. Aloysius-chi, I can’t overstate how fancy the place was. I felt like a celebrity at a fancy dinner party. I remember whistling and saying how fancy the place was. Everything sparkled. Jewellery twinkled from within their glass cases, and light reflected off polished services. Totally ethereal.

Naegi-chi agreed with me. We couldn’t touch anything without risking millions in damages. Togami-chi was full of concern seeing us fidget, and he said, “You two will be fine, so long as you don’t touch anything.”

As we waited to for someone to come over, his demeanour changed. Nerves got the better of him. He gritted his teeth, looking around for a salesperson. Not long after, this guy came over to greet us and let me tell you, he was... wow!

***

Yasuhiro thumped himself on the chest, his lips stretched out as he beamed widely.

***

So this guy. His hair was, I would say, mahogany brown and slightly wavy, hanging just past his shoulders, and his moustache and goatee were well-trimmed. Not a hair out of place. He gave us the warmest of smiles I’ve ever seen and waved to us with a friendly gleam in his eyes. A guy like that should have been working as a model or something.

Togami-chi wanted to see some jewelry, and the guy - Katsumi Suzuki, by the way - took us to one cabinet. Katsumi-chi listened with utmost patience as Togami-chi described the ring he sought.

“Diamond, with an interesting pattern,” rambled Togami-chi, one hand on his hip and one hand pointing a finger at the ceiling. “However, while I don’t want it to be plain, I don’t want it to be over the top or gimmicky. It needs to be original but elegant.”

Katsumi-chi nodded attentively and showed us some. Togami-chi then tucked his hands behind his back and bent forward, practically pressing his face against the glass as he ogled the rings in there.

***

“I didn't do it like that,” snapped Byakuya. Yasuhiro shrugged and carried on.

***

There was at least condensation splattered onto the glass. Anyway... Togami-chi had Katsumi-chi take out, one by one, basically the complete collection. Each time, Togami-chi adjusted his glasses and went cross-eyed as he examined the latest ring. And every time, he would click his tongue and pick out another one for Katsumi-chi to show him so he could do the same thing again.

We went through the entire collection before Togami-chi twitched his head back and sneered, “Is that all you have?”

When Togami-chi’s nervous, as you know, he gets cranky. He drummed his fingers against his arms and groped his glasses the whole time.

Katsumi-chi was all professional, full of smiles, and he clapped his hands together. In a breezy voice, he said, “I have another collection for you! Please, follow me.”

No joke, we went around the entire store until Togami-chi finally decided on a ring.

***

Byakuya scowled. “I was not nervous. Now, be quiet. I’ll tell the rest.”

***

I was impatient. I didn’t leave this to the last minute, so I had no reason to be nervous. That man kept showing me rings that didn’t fit the image in my head, and I didn’t have all day. I had other things planned. Some of those rings I knew I could get online for far cheaper if I wanted... though, of course, I didn’t want those. He dared show me some alloy zircon rings that I could obtain elsewhere with the same amount of money one might find down the back of their sofa!

When he realised he risked losing a customer, he squeezed his hands together and begged, “I have another collection for you! Please, follow me!”

My refusal to be ripped off or go away with something neither me nor Touko would be satisfied with paid off. In the end, I spotted three rings that I most approved of.

One was a silver band that didn’t connect the whole way. A round cut diamond punctuated one end and affixed on the other end was a diamond shaped into a flat flower.

For the second ring, the golden band looped twice, and on it was a round cut pink diamond gripped in golden claws, and around the claws, silver rose heads were embedded into the band.

Finally, the third ring, gold-banded, was studded with clear diamonds, and it contained a purple diamond surrounded by small golden leaves.

After a lot of thought, I went with the ring with the pink diamond. I even managed to buy it for a cheaper price than usual. Naegi and Hagakure had their faces buried in their hands, in awe of my debating skills the entire time.

***

“It was more like cringing than awe,” said Yasuhiro, wrinkling his nose. His face smoothed when he turned to Aloysius. “So anyway, Aloysius-chi, that’s how Togami-chi bought his engagement ring.”

Touko sighed happily, slumping against her husband’s side. Aloysius rubbed the back of his neck.

“Uh... thanks,” he said with a lopsided smile. “That was an enjoyable story, but I’m more interested in how the actual proposal went down. That’s the part I’m at now.”

Byakuya lifted his chin, puffing out his chest.

“Hagakure, make us some coffee,” instructed Byakuya, pointing at Yasuhiro, who rose and shuffled into the kitchen. Then Byakuya folded his arms over his chest. “Aloysius, part of the reason we explained that part of our engagement story was to illustrate to you how much thought went into every single stage.”

Touko nodded fervently, squeezing her knees. “T-That’s right... but I think it’s my turn to tell the rest of the story.”

She sat back, raised her hands and laced her fingers together.

“I remember it so clearly...!” said Touko. Her gaze unfocused, and a toothy smile spread across her face. “Unbeknownst to me, Byakuya spent a long time planning the perfect time to propose to me...”

***

I bit on my thumbnail as I peered into my opened wardrobe, a purchase from a thrift shop. It didn’t contain enough clothes to fill the entire thing. Half of the contents consisted of work clothes, plain blouses and long skirts of the muted colours with dark purple being the most colourful of the lot. The other half offered more variety, like a canary yellow dress with a low neckline, allowing for me to wear a frilly white blouse underneath.

Still. Nothing flashy. I held my breath as I lifted the hanger off the rail and pulled out the yellow dress. It swayed a bit before stilling.

“That’s way too casual!” groaned Komaru, standing off to my side. Even after so long, I can remember her fists balled beneath her chin, her chibi head too big for her body.

Her sudden vocalisation sent a shock wave ripping through my body that made me twitch. I clenched the hanger tighter with both hands and pressed it against myself.

“I was just checking it,” I replied, and once my heartbeat returned to normal, I put the hanger back on the rail. With my hands free, I curled my fingers into my palms and knocked my knuckles together. “For my date with Byakuya-sama, I have to consider all possibilities.”

For example, though I knew we were going to a restaurant, what if we decided to do something else afterwards? It would be dinnertime, leaving the rest of the night available for us to fill. We could go on a walk, or spend the night together at his apartment. Then I would have to wear something comfortable... and something easy to take off. Heheh... Ah! As I was saying, it could rain, or become cold, or too hot. There were so many factors to account for.

Komaru crossed her arms.

“It’s not like you don’t know how it will play out. You’ve been on loads of dates with Togami-san already,” Komaru pointed out. I whined.

“Yes! B-But that doesn’t mean I can slack!”

Honestly, I could have tugged on my hair with frustration. Komaru grabbed a hanger off the rail and waved it around.

“Fine. What about this one?” she asked.

I snatched it from her, and as I twisted my body from her, I protected it from her with myself as a shield.

“This one is way too flashy! I’d stick out like a sore thumb,” I hissed.

The hanger in my hands held a sleeveless dress gifted to me by not just Komaru, but her brother too for my last birthday. It was knee-length and pale pink with red petals printed around the skirt, more condensed toward the bottom, like the petals were falling from above and joining the pile below. A black, translucent lace shawl attached to the dress hung from the shoulders to where the skirt of the dress began, matching the colour of the collar.

“It’s perfect!” Komaru announced. She propped her hands onto her hips. “You should tots wear it.”

Admittedly, I was hesitant, because the dress wasn’t exactly like what one would expect at a formal do. The pattern on it stood out, was very striking, but at the same time, it wasn’t casual. That was why I had yet to wear it - I didn’t know what sort of situation it was most appropriate for. Not around the house, but if I went somewhere fancy, people might think it was tacky. I stood there, biting my lip as I studied it.

“Come on, Touko-chan,” Komaru pleaded, clasping her hands together and shaking them.

She persisted, and in the end, I relented, putting it on. When I was done, Komaru uncovered her eyes and beamed.

“You look amazing!” Komaru cheered, throwing up her arms. My eyes narrowed. I grumbled, averting my gaze and trying not to smile.

Byakuya met me at the front gates of the school grounds. As soon as I saw him, I ran over. The weather indulged us that day. A clear blue sky stretched overhead, and the warm temperature didn’t oppress or cling too tightly. My heels clacked against the pavement, sounding like the crackling of fireworks. He scooped me into his arms, and I could have stayed against his chest forever. Tempting though that was, I receded, slightly winded. If I remained there, I wouldn’t be able to stare up and admire him, let alone go on our date.

“This dress isn’t tacky, is it?” I asked once I came out of his embrace. I pinched at the skirt.

“No,” he replied, studying it. “It has an interesting pattern.”

I let go of my dress and grinned wider.

As expected, Byakuya opted for a suit, dark green, consisting of a jacket with a waistcoat underneath and a shirt that was ever so slightly tinged pink. He was absolutely dashing, as always, and he took my hand as we slipped into the taxi.

On the ride there, I gently leaned against him, watching the urban scenery flit by through the window. We disembarked in the car park by the restaurant and walked inside together, gave our names and let a waiter lead us to our table. A candle flickered between us, encased in a clear orb. Our surroundings were all cheerful browns, some accented with other colours, like the green leaves of a plant or white tablecloth. Shortly after we were seated, we ordered drinks - red wine, I recall...

***

“It was a blend of grenache and syrah,” Byakuya interjected.

A grin exploded across her face. She grasped her hands tightly together.

***

Yes! That exactly. I remember how Byakuya raised his glass and announced a toast, and I couldn’t quell my smile as he clinked my glass against his. First, the pork gyoza arrived... They were divine. A crispy bottom and tender top encased juicy innards, shaped like crescent moons that could fit easily in one’s palm. Truly an amalgamation of textures. I p-picked up one with my chopsticks and offered it to Byakuya.

To my delight, he opened his mouth. I could see his teeth, and his cute pink tongue... I popped it into his mouth. Then he picked up a gyoza and offered it to me! My face heated up as I opened my mouth with an aah, and he slid his pork between my puckered lips...

***

The tables in the restaurant retreated in puffs of smoke, and when they cleared, the sleek brown furnishing had disappeared, revealing the living room’s white walls and a painting of Byakuya, Touko and a four year old who used to be Aloysius many years ago. In the painting, the streaks of silver that Byakuya’s hair had now weren’t visible, but other than a few less wrinkles, Aloysius’s parents hadn’t changed much. Those shadowy figures at the restaurant tables vanished, and the only people left were gathered around a couch that popped out of the carpet. No longer did they chatter - their voices became the rumble of distance traffic.

A low laugh rumbled from Touko. Her gaze clouded over.

When Touko didn’t continue speaking after a few seconds, Aloysius coughed, and Touko gave a start. Byakuya pursed his lips. Both were used to how Touko’s mind sometimes wandered. The smile on her face dripped off as she recollected herself. She wiggled, sitting up, and Aloysius waited for the rest of the story.

However, the next person to speak wasn’t her. Not either of them.

“Are you telling the story of when you got engaged?” piped up Komaru from behind the couch.

Touko squawked and bent over sharply. Aloysius’s shoulders twitched. Even Byakuya had jolted slightly and needed to adjust his glasses. That was definitely Komaru, olive eyes, brown hair and all. Komaru tilted her head to one side, eyebrows raised in confusion as both her hands rested on the top of the back of the couch.

“D-Don’t sneak up on me!” Touko said, hand over her heart and glaring over her shoulder.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. I thought you saw me come in,” said Komaru, wincing a little. She gave a small wave with one hand and directed a nod across the room. “I waved as I came in, and Hagakure-san waved back, so I thought you knew...”

Everyone looked at Yasuhiro, who stood near the doorway to the kitchen, carrying a tray of drinks. He tensed, then gave a small laugh and cupped the back of his head, keeping hold of the tray in his other hand.

“I didn’t want to interrupt the story!” he explained, showing a lot of teeth in his grin.

“How long have you been here for?” Byakuya asked, and when Aloysius turned to him, he saw that Byakuya had fixed his stare on Komaru.

“Enough to know what point we’re at,” Komaru said. She folded her arms over the top of the couch and leaned her weight into it. When Yasuhiro set down the tray of refreshments in front of them, she faced Aloysius and chirped, “Hey, let me tell you the next part. Otherwise we won’t ever get to the juicy parts. Touko-chan always gets caught up on the little details.”

A crease formed on Touko’s brow, darkening her features, and Touko opened her mouth to object, but before she could, Komaru started speaking anyway.

***

Okay, first off, I did not have a chibi body. Let’s make that clear. Just because I was the cute little sister type, doesn’t mean -

***

“I didn’t mean it literally, you pea brain,” grumbled Touko. Komaru put on a sulky pout, but Aloysius could tell that she wasn’t offended. Byakuya held in a sigh.

When one of Aloysius’s other aunts, Aoi, said those three could put on a comedy act together, she hadn’t been kidding. Yasuhiro smirked at them.

Aloysius raised his hands, facing his palms toward Komaru. “Um... can we get back to the story, please?”

Komaru wiped off her pouty look.

“All right,” she said, still slumped against the couch. She straightened.

***

We spent ages getting Touko-chan ready for her date. Like... hours. Now, though Touko-chan invited me over to help her get ready, I knew something she didn’t. The night before, Togami-san called to tell me about his plan to propose to Touko-chan at their next date.

***

“You then spent the next ten minutes quizzing me about it,” Byakuya remarked with an annoyed frown. Aloysius snorted.

Komaru, who had tapped her nose when she revealed her secret, lowered her hand. She peeled her body off the couch completely and parked her hands onto her hips.

“And what’s wrong with that?” she asked.

***

This way, I knew exactly what to do. I came over to her place after lunch and helped her prepare for what would be, unbeknownst to her, a life-changing experience. Touko-chan stewed over what to wear for almost forever, dithering nonstop at her wardrobe, and when she seemed like she planned to choose this plain yellow dress you might wear on a trip to the seaside, I couldn’t just stand there idly and nod, nod, nod to appease her. See, I knew how big a deal this would be to both of them. I needed to act, and fast.

“That’s way too casual!” I blurted, making Touko-chan jump.

“I was just checking it,” she replied defensively, but she returned the hanger to the rail. She fidgeted her hands, grimacing, and added, “For my date with Byakuya-sama, I have to consider all possibilities.”

Of course, I knew that. In fact, I knew more than her. This date was extra special. I couldn’t let her know that though. While I couldn’t let her be too casual, I couldn’t let her go extreme the other way.

“It’s not like you don’t know how it’s going to play out. You’ve been on loads of dates with Togami-san already,” I said, hoping that would keep her expectations high but not like, crazy high.

“Yes! B-But that doesn’t mean I can slack!” she replied shrilly.

Poor Touko-chan could get herself worked up over an anthill. To be honest, she still can. Don’t give me that look, Touko-chan! You know it’s true.

It was a good thing Togami-kun recruited me to make sure everything went according to his plan. Who knows what would have happened if I hadn’t been there? Touko-chan might even have turned up at the restaurant three days late. Remembering the dress I bought her for her birthday - with help from Makoto’s paycheck, I pulled it out of Touko’s wardrobe and showed it to her.

“What about this one?” I suggested.

Touko-chan already described it so I won’t bore everyone with the details, but it was a really pretty dress, let me emphasise that. The lace at the top was attached to a black collar and collars make almost every outfit seem just a bit smarter at the least, you know? I thought it would add a bit of oomph to her wardrobe. It’s so dreary otherwise... like she got all her outfits at a museum.

She screeched like a cat having its tail trodden on and tore the dress from my hands, shielding it with her body. “This one is way too flashy! I’d stick out like a sore thumb.”

I stuck out my chest. “It’s perfect. You should tots wear it.”

We bickered a bit but with my charm, I triumphed. Touko-chan sulked as I did her hair, tying it into a bun on top of her head. She has so much hair. The whole time, she kept checking her phone for messages or to keep track of the time. Anyway, as soon as she spotted Togami-san at the gates, she perked up and ran over to him. When she reached him, she stumbled over in her high heels, but Togami-san managed to catch her.

***

“You didn’t need to mention that part,” muttered Touko, hunching her shoulders. Komaru waggled her tongue at her.

***

What? It was cute! Thankfully, they avoided a night in a hospital room. I remember wishing I could be in a situation like that with someone. Not the hospital room thing! The thing that actually happened! It was just like from an anime.

They talked then held each other’s hands for a moment before getting into the taxi together, but of course, that’s not the end of the story. Togami-san had told me the name of the restaurant, and I couldn’t not be at my best friend’s engagement, so I roped in three of our friends to make sure it worked out perfectly. So me, Kyouko-chan, Aoi-chan and Kanon-chan got on our bicycles and -

***

“You what?” said Byakuya and Touko at the same time, and then, also in synchronization, they jerked their heads back. Komaru clasped her hands together and oozed a guilty smile.

Then, by herself, Touko said, seething, “I w-wondered how you all showed up so quickly when - ”

“Don’t spoil the story!” Komaru said loudly, flapping her hands.

Touko sank back into the couch moodily, letting Komaru continue. Byakuya draped his arm around Touko and rubbed her shoulder.

***

As I was saying, we got on our bicycles and made chase whilst ensuring neither of them realised we were keeping close tabs on them. Sometimes, we scattered, or took shortcuts through alleyways.

Togami-san told me he planned to propose after dessert, so we didn’t have to follow them into the building right away. In fact, it would have been better to wait until after they settled down, lowering their guards, so until then, the four of us popped into a local ice cream parlor and all had some ice cream in the meantime.

Then, after we finished, we thought we would check out a few stores before sneaking our way into the restaurant. Meals always take forever to come in those sorts of places, so I reckoned we had an hour minimum to spare. Kanon-chan wanted to see if the sports store stocked her baseball bat line - dedicated to her cousin, may Kuwata-san rest in peace - so we went there, and they had some, so we...

***

Touko held her head in her hands and fussed, “You were complaining about how I would never get to the ‘juicy’ parts, and now you’re going off on a tangent about your shopping trip. No one wants to hear about that.”

She shook her head, eyes downcast, baring her teeth.

“My Aloysius wants to hear about the suspense! The drama!” Touko insisted. “Not... Not what ice creams you got, or what you bought in a sports shop!”

Aloysius fixed his eyes on Komaru.

“Drama?” he repeated curiously. Komaru raised her fists with a moody expression.

“Fine! You want an exciting story, I’ll give you one,” she said.

***

So while Togami-san and Touko-chan were being really interesting eating heavily described food or whatever, full of metaphors and similes and junk, the rest of us were walking out of the arcade, Kyouko-chan holding a giant plush penguin in her arms that Aoi won for her, when we heard a huge BANG!

***

Komaru mimed explosions with her hands. Aloysius stared.

***

Out of nowhere. Bang! I nearly jumped out of my skin. The four of us all exchanged eyebrows-up looks, mouths hanging ajar, and then around us, people started yelling and running... At first, we didn’t understand what they were responding to, but then we noticed they were all yelling and running away from the area that contained the restaurant.

Within seconds, smoke started to bleed into the sky, as black as coal.

Okay, I know, I know. Black as coal? Hey, Touko-chan’s the writer here, not me. The smoke was thick and contaminated more and more of the sky as seconds sprinted past.

“What the hell was that?” asked Kanon-chan, shielding her eyes with her hand.

“It sounded like an explosion,” Aoi-chan said, hovering a hand nervously by her mouth.

As always, Kyouko-chan was ready.

“Come on,” she said in that quiet but firm voice of hers, gesturing with the arm not carrying her penguin toy, and the four of us hurried down the street, heading toward the source of the smoke.

Dodging past screaming civilians who either stumbled, cowered or both, my mind swam with possibilities of what could have caused such a scene. Had someone tried setting off a firework in the early evening? Into the velvety violet sky? Did a car veer and crash into a building, blowing out a cloud of dust not unlike something from an episode of Thomas the Tank Engine?

That was an old British children’s television show, Aloysius.

A little voice in the back of my head kept asking, ‘What if something happened at the restaurant?’ The screams and spluttering of footsteps helped drown it out, but my chest tightened like a fist clenched around it. No matter how much I screamed in my head, I couldn’t block that worry out completely.

When the restaurant slid into frame, it confirmed our suspicions. I froze, staring at the partially demolished restaurant. A scream got trapped in my throat. My eyes watered at the acidic stench of destruction.

#togafuka #touko fukawa #byakuya togami #danganronpa #dr3 #makoto naegi #kyouko kirigiri #yasuhiro hagakure #komaru naegi #aoi asahina #fanfiction #togafukaweek #round robin

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tangledcassandra · 5 years

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Cassandra is Saporian: An Analysis

I’ve seen this theory tossed around a bit, but I think we need to take a good and serious look at it from all angles.

First off, what would this add to the plot?

Well, we know Saporia was formerly an enemy of Corona, until the two united when their leaders fell in love. Shortly after, the Separatists of Saporia were formed, a splinter group dedicated to taking back Corona for Saporia.

So, making Cassandra Saporian would give her a good reason to take the Moonstone, using it as the means to take back Corona for her ancestors.

Has that always been her true goal? No, absolutely not, and that’s not the focus of this post. But I will come back around to her motives for taking the stone. Hang on.

The ONLY time Saporia is mentioned in the show is in “Under Wraps”, which, as you may recall, is a Cassandra heavy episode. While that could be a very loose hint at her being Saporian, I think we’re missing the larger piece of foreshadowing that is presented. Something that Andrew tosses out right before his defeat.

"Oh, Cassandra. Saporia will rise again, and we'll have you to thank for it."

And sure, that seems like an empty threat on Andrew’s part. But the writers of the show have known for a long time what was being planned for the end of season 2 and the upcoming season 3. When you consider that, it’d be easy to drop in a forgettable line for a (much) later reveal.

But, there’s more.

The Saporian crest on Andrew’s necklace is used as the catalyst for Xavier to reveal information about the Separatists of Saporia. Two reasons why this is significant.

Why go through all the trouble of elaborating on Saporia and its history for one episode? Why focus so heavily on the backstory of a character that only appears once? Sure, the lore at the beginning of the episode was relevant for explaining the Day of Hearts holiday. But the show took it even further, not only detailing who the Separatists of Saporia are, but ALSO revealing their crest. Why was ALL of that so important for a single episode?

Except...

We see the crest a second time, 27 episodes later.

The potion book Cassandra reads from in “Rapunzel: Day One”. Now, the RTA Crew could have chosen to put anything, or nothing, on the cover of that book. But they specifically chose the Separatists of Saporia emblem. Why?

Well, I guess we can assume this stuff belonged to the Separatists, or some traveling salesman/magician (whoever the cart formerly belonged to) came by it through unknown means.

And yet, it found its way into Cassandra’s hands.

Now, this detail is completely trivial, and easy to miss, just as Andrew’s line could easily be forgotten. But it does ever so subtly add another point connecting Cassandra to Saporia.

But what else do we know about Cassandra?

We know she’s adopted.

Cassandra and Eugene had a brief bonding moment about being orphans in “Cassandra v. Eugene”. Now, that could have just been a throwaway moment, a nice ‘something in common’ between the two of them. But Cassandra could have EASILY been Captain’s biological daughter. I mean, why not? Why did that happen to be the thing they had in common? And why did Cassandra shut down when Eugene asked if she ever wondered what her parents were like?

Maybe she already knows.

But, that’s completely irrelevant.

Cassandra was raised in Corona, she considers herself a citizen of Corona, and she’s been striving her entire life to succeed her father as Captain of the Guard of Corona. She’s loyal to the kingdom and especially to Rapunzel, regardless of whether or not she knows she’s Saporian. And it wouldn’t even matter to Rapunzel, Eugene, or anyone else. On the off chance she knows, she’s been shown to literally not care at all based on the fact that it’s never come up in conversation.

So again, whether or not she knows, it’s irrelevant to this theory.

More importantly, for us, the audience, we don’t know where Cassandra came from. We don’t know her parents or heritage. It’s a small loose end the show has not yet touched on. And maybe it wouldn’t even be important, if we hadn’t just learned about Eugene’s origin and parentage in “Destinies Collide”.

Now, Cassandra is the only one of the main three whose background is still shrouded in so much mystery. She’s guarded, she doesn’t talk about her feelings, and she knows Rapunzel and Eugene BOTH can’t keep secrets. Rapunzel is a “sharer”, and Eugene just has a big mouth in general.

So, getting back on track. We actually have 3 pretty solid pieces of foreshadowing evidence for Cassandra being born into the Separatists of Saporia. She’s an orphan, Andrew’s quote, the crest popping up again in her hands. All very subtle, and yet, all connected. Very interesting.

Okay, the Moonstone. I said we’d come back to that.

Cassandra is Saporian: An Analysis: Part 2

The door.

We all know this is going to be relevant to Season 3 in some way, but just like Cassandra’s past, what she saw in there has been withdrawn from the audience. For now. We can almost certainly say whatever she saw or experienced convinced her to take the Moonstone, or at least, planted a seed to get her thinking about it.

“I believe everybody's got a destiny.“

Now, this is funny, because we really haven’t heard Cassandra talk about destiny a whole lot during the series. She’s been pretty adamant that she is on this journey to help Rapunzel fulfill her destiny. But here, she says, “All in the name of fulfilling destiny,” and then goes on to elaborate with the quote above. This whole journey she’s put a lot of emphasis on this being Rapunzel’s destiny, but here, she kind of leaves that out. Kind of leaves it more open and vague and a little bit ominous.

Let’s roll back to right after the door closes on Cassandra and this imagery of Zhan Tiri is shown. Maybe it’s nothing, or maybe, more likely, it’s something!

Now, we’re really going to stretch into theory territory, but it’s all going to tie together. Let’s talk about what could have been behind that door!

What if Zhan Tiri convinced Cassandra that her destiny was to bring about the rise of Saporia once again? Think about it. Cassandra has consistently been overlooked in Corona. She wants nothing more than to be on the guard, and she’s willing to earn her place the same as anyone else. If you recall, Eugene managed to pass the guard test in a few days. Cassandra, on the other hand, has been training since she was 6 years old, and her father still won’t allow her to join. Captain is not overprotective by any stretch of the imagination; there is literally no good reason Cassandra shouldn’t be on the guard. (Other than the fact that she’s a woman.)

Not only that, but her friends have shown very little appreciation for all the times she’s saved their lives. She is so underappreciated, it wouldn’t be difficult to convince her to turn on them. (Except for Cassandra’s undying loyalty to Rapunzel.) Plus, with Cassandra feeling less like Rapunzel’s best friend and more like a servant to the princess, she’s not doing so great. Rapunzel said in the past (multiple times) that she trusted Cassandra, and yet, as of late, she hasn’t shown that to still be true. Cassandra is in a vulnerable state, ripe for Zhan Tiri to take hold.

The connection to Saporia? A very convenient way to tip the unsteady emotional iceberg of Cassandra’s heart.

Wait, wait, wait. Didn’t I already say any connection Cassandra had to Saporia wasn’t important to her?

Right, that’s absolutely correct. It’s not important to her, at all. But it IS important to the story. It IS important as a plot device.

Zhan Tiri is an extremely powerful force that has been constantly looming over the heads of our heroes throughout most of the series, popping up every now and again to remind us, oh yeah, there’s a big bad coming. The final boss will be in town shortly, even though our heroes have barely been able to hold their own against his minions. Are they ready to face the ultimate evil? Haha, no.

Okay, we’re in the home stretch of this theory.

Cassandra being Saporian gives Zhan Tiri an in. A wedge, to drive between Cassandra and her friends and convince her that taking the Moonstone is her destiny. To get revenge on everyone who has treated her badly. I mean, that’d be great, wouldn’t it?

Not for Cassandra.

Cassandra, who loves Rapunzel. Cassandra, who, MULTIPLE TIMES in not just the series, but in the final episode of season 2, saved Rapunzel’s life. She grabbed Rapunzel when the gondola was falling. She pushed Rapunzel out of the way of a flying ax. She helped defend Rapunzel from the ghosts. Even after everything that happened on their journey, making sure Rapunzel is safe has CONSISTENTLY been Cassandra’s TOP priority.

But you see, Cassandra wants Zhan Tiri to believe she’s on his side. She has all the right motives for taking the Moonstone, so she could easily convince him that her actions are genuine. She wants to destroy him once and for all. But, until he revealed that she could take the Moonstone and use its power, she didn’t have the means. Of course, Cassandra needs Zhan Tiri (and the audience!) to believe that she has betrayed her friends. She needs him to trust her. She needs him to let her get close to him.

So why not tell her friends her plan? Why not let Rapunzel know? First off, nothing would convince Rapunzel to let anyone else take that risk for her. No one else would be allowed to bear her burden. Remember the foreshadowing that touching the Moonstone might obliterate Rapunzel?

“Freebird“, Rapunzel: “These rocks are my destiny, and that's terrifying. What if they lead to somewhere I'm never supposed to come back from?“

“Destinies Collide“, Adira: “While I'm certain bringing the Sundrop to the Moonstone will neutralize its threat, I'm not sure what will happen to you.“

Comforting!

Secondly, I must repeat, Rapunzel and Eugene BOTH can’t keep secrets. Rapunzel is a “sharer”, and Eugene just has a big mouth in general. There’s NO WAY Cassandra could let them in on any kind of plan to take the Moonstone. No way she could let them know she planned to risk her own safety to defeat Zhan Tiri. No way she could convince them to trust her to do this.

Too long, didn’t read: Cassandra being Saporian gives Zhan Tiri an opportunity to divide our heroes by convincing Cassandra to grab the Moonstone so that she has the power to take back Corona in the name of Saporia.

Lastly, keep in mind that Cassandra never actually says what her destiny is.

“I'm fulfilling my destiny!“

Okay, great. And that is?... Is it betraying her friends? Preventing the Sundrop and Moonstone from uniting? Opening the portal for Zhan Tiri? Taking back Corona for Saporia? Grabbing the Moonstone so it doesn't destroy Rapunzel? We literally don't know.

And I think that’s great.

Cassandra’s actions at the end of season 2 left us with a beautiful cliffhanger, hungry for more. It left us with questions, concerns, and a slew of ideas about what could be coming next. It left us with a few final parting words that ultimately have us stunned and bewildered.

But let’s get one thing straight. Cassandra isn’t. Cassandra has not betrayed her friends. Not permanently, anyway. It may seem like that now, but if you’ve been keeping up with the series, you know how much she cares about Rapunzel. You’ve seen that look in her eyes. How soft she gets when Rapunzel smiles at her. You know that she’d give her life in place of Rapunzel’s. Whatever Cassandra is doing, whatever she’s planning, is for the greater good. She’s not evil. Never has been. Never will be.

So have a little faith. Not just in Cassandra. But in the hardworking creatives who put their hearts and souls into telling this story. Who have set up clues throughout the series to keep us guessing and make the show interesting. Cassandra is a main character, a main protagonist, even, who has had more screen time than Rapunzel’s own love interest. Our girl’s not evil. She just has yet-to-be-revealed plans.

#Tangled #Tangled the Series #Cassandra #Rapunzel #Eugene #Zhan Tiri #home brew #Ricky's Quest

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sdpafanblogofsupremefunk · 4 years

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Season 1, Episode 1: A Different Place

Where better to begin talking about a show than the beginning? Like most shows, Sítio do Picapau Amarelo has a pilot episode.

...Okay, in this case, “pilot episode” is just a fancy way of saying “first episode”. Much like Rick & Morty and DT17, SDPA doesn’t really have a pilot episode that isn’t just the first episode (unless you count Doc and Mharti as R&M’s pilot, which I’d rather not), so to begin the series, we kinda have to jump right into the mess of things.

It’s like A Quiet Place, but not stupid.

As the episode begins, we are introduced to a two men on a horse-drawn cart. The man in the red box is a book salesman who’s a little down on his luck in terms of profits.

A little.

This guy isn’t really given a name, and I don’t want to call him “The Salesman” the whole time because that’s stupid. So I’m going to give him a name. Mr. Simmons will do nicely.

Anyways, Mr. Simmons falls out of the cart when it hits a patch in the road, and when he picks himself up, he sees a quaint little house on a farm, with an old woman knitting on the porch.

Here, we are introduced to the first of our main cast, Dona Benta, a kind elderly lady who owns this little patch of heaven known as the Yellow Woodpecker Farm. Yeah, didn’t take us long to get there, huh?

So Mr. Simmons sees this old woman in the middle of (what he believes to be) nowhere, and decides it’s the perfect opportunity to make a quick buck believing that:

Which, I dunno, man, she seems pretty comfortable just sitting in her rocking chair, knitting. Like, even as an outsider who doesn’t know a lick of what goes on in this farm, I’d say she’s content as she is, but anything to make some cold hard cash, I guess.

Also, I would not ever call this place a desert, even for the sake of exaggeration. There’s grass everywhere, bushes, trees, flowers, the works. If this where anything like a desert, I do not think this woman would be here, to put it simply. But, I digress. And I hydraulic press, but we won’t be seeing that.

So, Mrs. Benta goes inside to call for the kids, and here we meet 3 of our other actors:

Here, we see Pedrinho (or Little Pete, the boy in the blue overalls) and Narizinho (or Lúcia “Little Nose”, the girl in the red dress), cousins and Mrs. Benta’s grandchildren. They’re playing tag, I think, but they’re stopped in their tracks with their Grandma in the way, and-

Hang on, I feel like we’re forgetting something.

Oh, right. I almost forgot Emilia. She’s basically the reason I watch this show, no biggie.

Anyway, she’s in a race with the kids, when they’re blocked by Grandma. Emilia makes the smart move and cuts right under Mrs. Benta. It looks like this:

Another reason I like this show so much, it’s rife with smears, which I feel like any good cartoon should have. Like here, where Emilia friggin’ nyooms right under Mrs. Benta like a comet.

Emilia reaches the finish line at the bookshelf, where we see the Viscount of Sabugosa, a puppet made out of an ear of corn who’s very smart and polite. (His name is a pun, “sabugo” means corncob in Portuguese, and it’s a parody of the Count of Sabugosa, of which there were 9, the first being Vasco Fernandes César de Meneses in 1729- but everybody calls him Viscount and so will I because blah)

In this show, the Viscount is the actual size of an ear of corn, which makes sense, he is, after all, a puppet made out of one. I think it’s really funny that the cartoon is slightly more realistic than the live-action show it’s based on in this regard, because in the 2001 series, for whatever reason, the Viscount towers over everyone:

And he has a sick mustache.

Like, I don’t get it, out of all the characters, you made the guy made out of corn the tallest one in the cast? I get that the technology to make him actually small probably wasn’t all there yet, Grandpa in My Pocket was still 8 years off, but you really couldn’t find a guy that wasn’t the same height as Shaq?

Yeesh, only 2 minutes in and I’m getting sidetracked this often. Well, I guess it’s better than having nothing to talk about.

Anyway, Emilia wins the race, but the other two kids run into her, smooshing her against the bookshelf-

-and pwning her so hard she briefly grows fingers on her hand (and turning it into a left hand apparently, because the thumb is on the wrong side)

Mrs. Benta explains that Emilia and the other mystical beings must hide from the impending salesman.

Oh brother, I was wondering when we’d get to this guy. This is Marquis of Rabicó (Portuguese for Short-tail). Literally the first thing you read about him on the show’s Wikipedia is that he’s fat (which you think would be a given cuz he’s a pig), and his part of the Characters section isn’t much better, stating that he’s a “gluttonous, selfish, cowardly and lazy pig” and most of his episodes involve him getting himself and/or others into trouble by being a gluttonous, selfish, cowardly and lazy pig. He’s only ever onscreen to cause problems, either directly or by proxy. If I were to sum him up in one meme, it would be this:

Now, I don’t hate Rabicó, I’m actually quite indifferent towards him, but he does bring down a lot of the episodes that he’s a major part of. Thankfully, there aren’t too many episodes featuring him in the first 2 seasons, but from what I hear, Season 3 goes ham with that shit (pun intended) and it brings down the quality of the season as a whole, so it’s a good thing that’s as far off from now as it is. I want to enjoy the lack-of-pig while it lasts.

But hey, at least he doesn’t look like this:

Don’t do drugs, kids.

Rant over, Mrs. Benta explains that she wants things to look normal because the Yellow Woodpecker Farm is a very peculiar place, where all kinds of weird and wacky stuff goes on, and if word gets out about it, the place will be filled with tourists wanting to get a peek of the action.

Something that Mrs. Benta probably didn’t consider is that there’s a bigger threat to being exposed than just filthy tourism. That’s right, I’m talking about the GOVERNMENT.

I mean, think about it. How many movies have you seen where the government tries to hunt down an unnatural being? E.T., the Sonic Movie, a third one I can’t think of right now, etc. (Lilo & Stitch does not count) Now, I can’t speak for Brazil’s government compared to the U.S., but I know there’s gotta be a division dedicated to dealing with unnatural things that would no doubt arrest Emilia, Rabicó, Viscount, etc. and run experiments on them. Then again, maybe this cartoon takes place in a world where the government doesn’t even exist. I mean, we never really see any urban settings in the show (aside from a brief mention of “the city” in the finale), so for all I know, the world of Sítio do Picapau Amarelo is run by Vermin Supreme.

Real talk, you should all be ashamed of yourselves for not voting for this guy back in 2016.

Initially, Emilia won’t go into her box, but then she gives in and is dragged there by Aunt Nastácia, the housemaid of the farm with a knack for making dolls (so she’s essentially Emilia’s mom). She doesn’t really do much in this episode, but the Fat Bastard does even less, and I still mentioned him.

So Mrs. Benta lets Mr. Simmons into the house and he does this whole spiel about how great the books are, how they can take you to worlds you never imagined, fantasy and action, yadda yadda.

Meanwhile, the kids are off to the side and they’re all like “Well, we met the actual Hercules, get on our level scrub”. And of course, Emilia is watching with them, instead of in her box.

As Simmons keeps on rambling, Emilia is being a little peeping tom, not realizing that one turned head could lead to her being dissected like a high school frog.

Apparently, Emilia thinks she’s a regular Bart Simpson, with shit like spitballs and pulling out the man’s leg hairs. She’s really pushing her luck here, and for little reason. Sure, Simmons called the place boring, but that’s how it’s supposed to be to him.

Of course, Pedrinho and Narizinho are nice enough kids that they bail her out on this one and pretend it was them.

And before Simmons can ask what the hell is going on, Mrs. Benta gives him the money for the books and sends him out the door. And once he’s out...

I’ll give you a hint: it rhymes with go.

Of course, they’re not out of the woods yet, cuz Simmons is getting a little suspicious.

Busted. The truth is revealed, all laid out for Simmons to see. A talking rag-doll? Inconceivable! And yet, there it is.

Come on, Viscount. I would expect you of all people to uphold what Mrs. Benta said and stay hidden. You’re smart enough, you should already know what’s at stake, or at least that something is at stake. I mean, I understand that the cat is already out of the bag, but you’re not helping.

Also, you’re thumb is clipping into your bowtie, you should get that checked out.

Rabicó, I hope you get turned into salami. Not out of spite or anything, but just because I like salami.

Naturally, Simmons believes he’s struck gold and found the ultimate tourist trap. But when Emilia points out that if he tells anyone, he’ll sound like a crazy person-

-he straight up Villager Neutral B’s her,

hails a horse, and books it.

Wow, Viscount. Dick move mangling Mrs. Benta’s glasses like that. And all for an impromptu magnifying glass, which is pointless-

-because we can see the horse tracks perfectly fine without them.

(The Viscount isn’t this much of a jerk in the rest of the series, I swear.)

So, the gang follow the tracks until there are no more, which leads them to a corn store.

Wait, a... corn store? As in, a store that mainly, if not exclusively, sells maize and maize accessories? Compared to vegetables in general, that’s quite a niche market, I can’t possibly imagine finding a success in building an entire business around one type of vegetable. Corn is simply not as versatile as something like chocolate or cheese.

Oh no, wait, it’s just a bar. I guess this cartoon takes place in the middle of Prohibition 2: Return of Jafar, and the whole “corn store” thing is just a set up for a speakeasy. (I mean, you could also argue that it’s a diner, but I’mma go with bar because it’s funnier.)

And I’m guessing Simmons expects the place to put all of the meals on his tab, considering he’s going to get the money later with all the tourism. But then, why doesn’t he just pay with the money he got from selling Mrs. Benta those books? So he pulls Emilia out of his bag to show everyone that he has a talking doll and...

Hm. Probably should have put some air holes in that bag.

Anyway, the gang comes in, and Mrs. Benta asks for the doll back, with Narizinho hamming up her Oscar-worthy performance:

So everybody’s giving Mr. Simmons a mean glare:

Including this gentleman who looks like someone just insulted his favorite MHA character (it’s probably Tsuyu):

So Mr. Simmons desperately tries to convince everyone that the doll indeed does talk, and that she comes from a wacky place, but Aunt Nastácia intervenes and says that it’s just a normal doll.

She just straight up roasts Emilia, who (big surprise) does not take it very well. To the point that she is very visibly angry, which you think the barflies would notice.

I mean, look at that and tell me that you wouldn’t notice anything weird.

But anyways, they get the doll back and we get this cute group hug.

D’awww.

So they leave with Emilia-

as Mr. Simmons is beaten to death offscreen for stealing from a little girl.

As the gang walks home, Viscount bends Ms. Benta’s glasses back to normal. Took you long enough, ya jerk.

Not even close, my dear. This is only the beginning.

Well, that was a very good first episode. It introduces the world and many of the main characters very well. And while there were a few issues I had with it, they’re really just nitpicks that don’t detract from the episode as a whole. Overall, a good effort, 8/10.

So, yeah, that’s the first episode down. Join me next time when we watch episode 2, and meet a very vile villain.

Very vile indeed.

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bluewatsons · 4 years

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Paul Elie, How Racist Was Flannery O’Connor?, New Yorker (June 15, 2020)

She has become an icon of American letters. Now readers are reckoning with another side of her legacy.

A habit of bigotry, most apparent in her juvenilia, persisted throughout her life.

In 1943, eighteen-year-old Mary Flannery O’Connor went north on a summer trip. Growing up in Georgia—she spent her childhood in Savannah, and went to high school in Milledgeville—she saw herself as a writer and artist in the making. She created illustrated books “too old for children and too young for grown-ups” and dryly titled an assemblage of her poems “The Priceless Works of M. F. O’Connor”; she drew cartoons and submitted them to magazines, noting that her hobby was “collecting rejection slips.”

On her travels, she and two cousins visited Manhattan: Chinatown, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and Columbia University. Then they went to Massachusetts, and visited Radcliffe, where one cousin was a student. O’Connor disliked both schools, and said so in letters and postcards to her mother. (Her father had died two years earlier.) Back in Milledgeville, O’Connor studied at the state women’s college (“the institution of higher larning across the road”). In 1945, she made her next trip north, enrolling in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she dropped the Mary (it put her in mind of “an Irish washwoman”) and became Flannery O’Connor.

Less than two decades later, she died, in Milledgeville, of lupus. She was thirty-nine, the author of two novels and a book of stories. A brief obituary in the Times called her “one of the nation’s most promising writers.” Some of her readers dismissed her as a “regional writer”; many didn’t know she was a woman.

We are still learning who Flannery O’Connor was. The materials of her life story have surfaced gradually: essays in 1969, letters in 1979, an annotated Library of America volume in 1988, and a cache of personal items deposited at Emory University in 2012, which yielded the “Prayer Journal,” jottings on faith and fiction from her time at Iowa. Each phase has deepened the portrait of the artist and furthered her reputation. Southerners, women, Catholics, and M.F.A.-program instructors now approach her with devotion. We call her Flannery; we see her as a wise elder, a literary saint, poised for revelation at a typewriter set up on the ground floor of a farmhouse near Milledgeville because treatments for lupus left her unable to climb stairs.

O’Connor is now as canonical as Faulkner and Welty. More than a great writer, she’s a cultural figure: a funny lady in a straw hat, puttering among peacocks, on crutches she likened to “flying buttresses.” The farmhouse is open for tours; her visage is on a stamp. A recent book of previously unpublished correspondence, “Good Things Out of Nazareth” (Convergent), and a documentary, “Flannery: The Storied Life of the Writer from Georgia,” suggest a completed arc, situating her at the literary center where she might have been all along.

The arc is not complete, however. Those letters and postcards she sent home from the North in 1943 were made available to scholars only in 2014, and they show O’Connor as a bigoted young woman. In Massachusetts, she was disturbed by the presence of an African-American student in her cousin’s class; in Manhattan, she sat between her two cousins on the subway lest she have to sit next to people of color. The sight of white students and black students at Columbia sitting side by side and using the same rest rooms repulsed her.

It’s not fair to judge a writer by her juvenilia. But, as she developed into a keenly self-aware writer, the habit of bigotry persisted in her letters—in jokes, asides, and a steady use of the word “nigger.” For half a century, the particulars have been held close by executors, smoothed over by editors, and justified by exegetes, as if to save O’Connor from herself. Unlike, say, the struggle over Philip Larkin, whose coarse, chauvinistic letters are at odds with his lapidary poetry, it’s not about protecting the work from the author; it’s about protecting an author who is now as beloved as her stories.

The work largely deserves the love it gets. O’Connor’s fiction is full of scenarios that now have the feel of mid-century myths: an evangelist preaching the gospel of a Church Without Christ outside a movie house; a grandmother shot by an escaped convict at the roadside; a Bible salesman seducing a female “interleckshul” in a hayloft and taking her wooden leg. The late story “Parker’s Back,” from 1964, in which a tattooed ex-sailor tries to appease his puritanical wife by getting a life-size face of Christ inked onto his back, is a summa of O’Connor’s effects. There’s outlandish naming (Obadiah Elihue Parker), blunt characterization (“The skin on her face was thin and drawn as tight as the skin on an onion and her eyes were gray and sharp like the points of two icepicks”), and pungent speech (“Mr. Parker . . . You’re a walking panner-rammer!”). There’s the way the action hurtles to an end both comic and profound, and the sense, as she put it in an essay, “that something is going on here that counts.” There’s the attractive-repulsive force of religion, as Parker submits to the tattooer’s needle in the hope of making himself a holy image of Christ. And there’s a preoccupation with human skin, and skin coloring, as a locus of conflict.

O’Connor defined herself as a novelist, but many readers now come to her through her essays and letters, and the core truth to emerge from the expansion of her body of work is that the nonfiction is as strong and strange as the fiction. The 1969 book of essays, “Mystery and Manners,” is both an astute manual on the craft of writing and a statement of precepts for the religious artist; the 1979 book of letters, “The Habit of Being,” is bedside reading as wisdom literature, at once companionable and full of barbed, contrarian insights. That they are books was part of O’Connor’s design. She made carbon copies of her letters with publication in mind: fearing that lupus would cut her life short, as it had her father’s, she used the letters and essays to shape the posthumous interpretation of her fiction.

Even much of the material left out of those books is tart and epigrammatic. Here is O’Connor, fresh from Iowa, on what a writing program can do for a writer:

It can put him in the way of experienced writers and literary critics, people who are usually able to tell him after not too long a time whether he should go on writing or enroll immediately in the School of Dentistry.

Here she is on life in Milledgeville, from a 1948 letter to the director of Yaddo, the writers’ colony in upstate New York:

Lately we have been treated to some parades by the Ku Klux Klan. . . . The Grand Dragon and the Grand Cyclops were down from Atlanta and both made big speeches on the Court House square while hundreds of men stamped and hollered inside sheets. It’s too hot to burn a fiery cross, so they bring a portable one made with electric light bulbs.

On her first encounter, in 1956, with the scholar William Sessions:

He arrived promptly at 3:30, talking, talked his way across the grass and up the steps and into a chair and continued talking from that position without pause, break, breath, or gulp until 4:50. At 4:50 he departed to go to Mass (Ascension Thursday) but declared he would like to return after it so I thereupon invited him to supper with us. 5:50 brings him back, still talking, and bearing a sack of ice cream and cake to the meal. He then talked until supper but at that point he met a little head wind in the form of my mother, who is also a talker. Her stories have a non-stop quality, but every now and then she does have to refuel and every time she came down, he went up.

Reviewers of O’Connor’s fiction were vexed by her characters’ lack of interiority. Admirers of the nonfiction have reversed the charge, taking up the idea that the most vivid character in her work is Flannery O’Connor. The new film adroitly introduces the author-as-character. The directors—Mark Bosco, a Jesuit priest who teaches a course on O’Connor at Georgetown, and Elizabeth Coffman, who teaches film at Loyola University Chicago—draw on a full spread of archival material and documentary effects. The actress Mary Steenburgen reads passages from the letters; several stories are animated, with an eye to O’Connor’s adage that “to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures.” There’s a clip from John Huston’s 1979 film of her singular first novel, “Wise Blood,” which she wrote at Yaddo and in Connecticut before the onset of lupus forced her to return home. Erik Langkjaer, a publishing sales rep O’Connor fell in love with, describes their drives in the country. Alice Walker tells of living “across the way” from the farmhouse during her teens, not knowing that a writer lived there: “It was one of my brothers who took milk from her place to the creamery in town. When we drove into Milledgeville, the cows that we saw on the hillside going into town would have been the cows of the O’Connors.”

In May, 1955, O’Connor went to New York to promote her story collection, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” on TV. The rare footage of O’Connor lights up the documentary. She sits, very still, in a velvet-trimmed black dress; her accent is strong, her demeanor assured. “I understand you are living on a farm,” the host prompts. “Yes,” she says. “I only live on one, though. I don’t see much of it. I’m a writer, and I farm from the rocking chair.” He asks her if she is a regional writer, and she replies:

I think that to overcome regionalism, you must have a great deal of self-knowledge. I think that to know yourself is to know your region, and that it’s also to know the world, and in a sense, paradoxically, it’s also to be an exile from that world. So that you have a great deal of detachment.

That is a profound and stringent definition of the writer’s calling. It locates the writer’s art in the refinement of her character: the struggle to overcome an outlook that is an obstacle to a greater good, the letting go of the comforts of home. And it recognizes that detachment can leave the writer alone and apart.

At Iowa and in Connecticut, O’Connor had begun to read European fiction and philosophy, and her work, old-time in its particulars, is shot through with contemporary thought: Gabriel Marcel’s Christian existentialism, Martin Buber’s sense of “the eclipse of God.” She saw herself as “a Catholic peculiarly possessed of the modern consciousness” and saw the South as “Christ-haunted.”

All this can suggest points of similarity with Martin Luther King, Jr., another Georgian who was infused with Continental ideas up north and then returned south to take up a brief, urgent calling. Born four years apart, they grasped the Bible’s pertinence to current events, and saw religion as the tie that bound blacks and whites—as in her second novel, “The Violent Bear It Away,” from 1960, which opens with a black farmer giving a white preacher a Christian burial. O’Connor and King shared a gift for the convention-upending gesture, as in her story “The Enduring Chill,” in which a white man tries to affirm equality with the black workers on his mother’s farm by smoking cigarettes with them in the barn.

O’Connor lectured in a dozen states and often went to Atlanta to visit her doctors; she saw plenty of the changing South. That’s clear from her 1961 story “Everything That Rises Must Converge.” (The title alludes to a thesis advanced by the French Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who saw the world as gradually “divinized” by human activity in a kind of upward spiral.) A white man, living at home after college, takes his mother to “reducing class” on a newly integrated city bus. The sight of an African-American woman wearing the same style of hat that his mother is wearing stirs him to reflect on all that joins them. The sight of a black boy in the woman’s company prompts his mother to give the boy a gift: a penny with Lincoln’s profile on it. Things get grim after that.

The story was published in “Best American Short Stories” and won an O. Henry Prize in 1963. O’Connor declared that it was all she had to say on “That Issue.” It wasn’t. In May, 1964, she wrote to her friend Maryat Lee, a playwright who was born in Tennessee, lived in New York, and was ardent for civil rights:

About the Negroes, the kind I don’t like is the philosophizing prophesying pontificating kind, the James Baldwin kind. Very ignorant but never silent. Baldwin can tell us what it feels like to be a Negro in Harlem but he tries to tell us everything else too. M. L. King I dont think is the ages great saint but he’s at least doing what he can do & has to do. Don’t know anything about Ossie Davis except that you like him but you probably like them all. My question is usually would this person be endurable if white. If Baldwin were white nobody would stand him a minute. I prefer Cassius Clay. “If a tiger move into the room with you,” says Cassius, “and you leave, that dont mean you hate the tiger. Just means you know you and him can’t make out. Too much talk about hate.” Cassius is too good for the Moslems.

That passage, published in “The Habit of Being,” echoed a remark in a 1959 letter, also to Maryat Lee, who had suggested that Baldwin—his “Letter from the South” had just run in Partisan Review—could pay O’Connor a visit while on a subsequent reporting trip. O’Connor demurred:

No I can’t see James Baldwin in Georgia. It would cause the greatest trouble and disturbance and disunion. In New York it would be nice to meet him; here it would not. I observe the traditions of the society I feed on—it’s only fair. Might as well expect a mule to fly as me to see James Baldwin in Georgia. I have read one of his stories and it was a good one.

O’Connor-lovers have been downplaying those remarks ever since. But they are not hot-mike moments or loose talk. They were written at the same desk where O’Connor wrote her fiction and are found in the same lode of correspondence that has brought about the rise in her stature. This has put her champions in a bind—upholding her letters as eloquently expressive of her character, but carving out exceptions for the nasty parts.

Last year, Fordham University hosted a symposium on O’Connor and race, supported with a grant from the author’s estate. The organizer, Angela Alaimo O’Donnell, edits a series of books on Catholic writers funded by the estate, has compiled a book of devotions drawn from O’Connor’s work, and has written a book of poems that “channel the voice” of the author. In a new volume in the series, “Radical Ambivalence: Race in Flannery O’Connor” (Fordham), she takes up Flannery and That Issue. Proposing that O’Connor’s work is “race-haunted,” she applies techniques from whiteness studies and critical race theory, as well as Toni Morrison’s idea of “Africanist ‘othering.’ ” O’Donnell presents a previously unpublished passage on race and engages with scholars who have offered context for the racist remarks. Although she is palpably anguished about O’Connor’s race problem, she winds up reprising those earlier arguments in current literary-critical argot, treating O’Connor as “transgressive in her writing about race” but prone to lapses and excesses that stemmed from social forces beyond her control.

The context arguments go like this. O’Connor was a writer of her place and time, and her limitations were those of “the culture that had produced her.” Forced by illness to return to Georgia, she was made captive to a “Southern code of manners” that maintained whites’ superiority over blacks, but her fiction subjects the code to scrutiny. Although she used racial epithets carelessly in her correspondence, she dealt with race courageously in the fiction, depicting white characters pitilessly and creating upstanding black characters who “retain an inviolable privacy.” And she was admirably leery of cultural appropriation. “I don’t feel capable of entering the mind of a Negro,” she told an interviewer—a reluctance that Alice Walker lauded in a 1975 essay.

All the contextualizing produces a seesaw effect, as it variously cordons off the author from history, deems her a product of racist history, and proposes that she was as oppressed by that history as anybody else was. It backdates O’Connor as a writer of her time when she was a near-contemporary of writers typically seen as writers of our time: Gabriel García Márquez (born 1927), Maya Angelou (1928), Ursula K. Le Guin (1929), Tom Wolfe (1930), and Derek Walcott (1930), among others. It suggests that white racism in Georgia was all-encompassing and brooked no dissent, even though (as O’Donnell points out) Georgia was then changing more dramatically than at any point before or since. Patronizingly, it proposes that O’Connor, a genius who prized detachment, lacked the free will to think for herself.

Another writer of that cohort is Toni Morrison, who was born in Ohio in 1931 and became a Catholic at the age of twelve. Morrison published “Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination” in 1992. “The fabrication of an Africanist persona” by a white writer, she proposed, “is reflexive: an extraordinary meditation on the self; a powerful exploration of the fears and desires that reside in the writerly consciousness.” Invoking Morrison, O’Donnell argues that O’Connor’s fiction is fundamentally a working-through of her own racism, and that the offending remarks in the letters “tell us . . . that O’Connor understood evil in the form of racism from the inside, as one who has practiced it.”

The clinching evidence is “Revelation,” drafted in late 1963. This extraordinary story involves Ruby Turpin—a white Southerner in middle age, the owner of a dairy farm—and her encounter in a doctor’s waiting room with a Wellesley-educated young woman, also white, who is so repulsed by Turpin’s condescension toward people there that she cries out, “Go back to hell where you came from, you old wart hog.” This arouses Turpin to quarrel with God as she surveys a hog pen on her property, and calls forth a magnificent final image of the hereafter in Turpin’s eyes—the people of the rural South heading heavenward. Some say this “vision” redeems the author on That Issue. Brad Gooch, in a 2009 biography, likened it to the dream that Martin Luther King, Jr., spelled out in August, 1963; O’Donnell, drawing on a remark in the letters, depicts it as a “vision O’Connor has been wresting from God every day for much of her life.” Seeing it that way is a stretch. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech envisioned blacks and whites holding hands at the end of time; Turpin’s vision, by contrast, is a segregationist’s vision, in which people process to Heaven by race and class, equal but separate, white landowners such as Turpin preceded (the last shall be first) by “bands of black niggers in white robes, and battalions of freaks and lunatics shouting and clapping and leaping like frogs.”

After revising “Revelation” in early 1964, O’Connor wrote several letters to Maryat Lee. Many scholars maintain that their letters (often signed with nicknames) are a comic performance, with Lee playing the over-the-top liberal and O’Connor the dug-in gradualist, but O’Connor’s most significant remarks on race in her letters to Lee are plainly sincere. On May 3, 1964—as Richard Russell, Democrat of Georgia, led a filibuster in the Senate to block the Civil Rights Act—O’Connor set out her position in a passage now published for the first time: “You know, I’m an integrationist by principle & a segregationist by taste anyway. I don’t like negroes. They all give me a pain and the more of them I see, the less and less I like them. Particularly the new kind.” Two weeks after that, she told Lee of her aversion to the “philosophizing prophesying pontificating kind.” Ravaged by lupus, she wrote Lee a note to say that she was checking in to the hospital, signing it “Mrs. Turpin.” She died at home ten weeks later.

Those remarks show a view clearly maintained and growing more intense as time went on. They were objectionable when O’Connor made them. And yet—the argument goes—they’re just remarks, made in chatty letters by an author in extremis. They’re expressive but not representative. Her “public work” (as the scholar Ralph C. Wood calls it) is more complex, and its significance for us lies in its artfully mixed messages, for on race none of us is without sin and in a position to cast a stone.

That argument, however, runs counter to history and to O’Connor’s place in it. It sets up a false equivalence between the “segregationist by taste” and those brutally oppressed by segregation. And it draws a neat line between O’Connor’s fiction and her other writing where race is involved, even though the long effort to move her from the margins to the center has proceeded as if that line weren’t there. Those remarks don’t belong to the past, or to the South, or to literary ephemera. They belong to the author’s body of work; they help show us who she was.

Posterity, in literature, is a strange god—consecrating Dickinson and Melville as American divines, repositioning T. S. Eliot as a man on the run from a Missouri boyhood and a bad marriage. Posterity has favored Flannery O’Connor: the readers of her work today far outnumber those in her lifetime. After her death, the racist passages were stumbling blocks to the next generation’s encounter with her, and it made a kind of sense to sidestep them. Now the reluctance to face them squarely is itself a stumbling block, one that keeps us from approaching her with the seriousness that a great writer deserves.

There’s a way forward, rooted in the work. For twenty years, the director Karin Coonrod has staged dramatic adaptations of O’Connor’s stories. Following a stipulation of the author’s estate, she uses every word: narration, description, dialogue, imagery, and racial epithets. Members of the multiracial cast circulate the full text fluidly from actor to actor, character to character, so that the author’s words, all of them, ring out in her own voice and in other voices, too. ♦

#literature #flannery o'connor #legacies #racism #bigotry #reconciliation #greats #civil rights movement

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juju-on-that-yeet · 5 years

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It Takes a Village, Chapter 6/12

During a very busy morning at Ego Inc., Yandere ends up in the care of Ed Edgar. He knows better than to try selling him, but Yandere doesn’t have any way of knowing that...

Pls suspend your disbelief and pretend that babies are cognitively developed enough to have self-esteem issues while you read this ^^

Tags: @tired-eldritchhorror @peribloke

Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5

Read on AO3!

Enjoy!

Dr. Iplier didn’t set out to hand Yandere off to Ed Edgar one busy morning. In fact, he’d handed the baby off to Wilford, finding that Dark and Chrome weren’t available. But Wilford soon realized he couldn’t direct his show and watch Yandere at the same time, so he’d handed Yandere off to Bim. But Bim had as much studio work to do as Wilford, so he’d handed Yandere off to the Jims and told them to give Yandere to someone responsible. So the Jims handed Yandere off to Ed Edgar, reasoning that he knew a lot about babies, so he had to be responsible, right?

Now, Ed Edgar is a lot of things. He likes to think he’s a shrewd businessman, a good salesman, and a decent caretaker, even if the others like to think he’s a moronic hick. But whatever he is, Ed is not stupid. He knows by now that he can’t get away with selling Yandere, not after the trouble he got in for even suggesting it before. No, Yandere is not merchandise. Still, Ed doesn’t mind taking care of him. What’s one more baby in his nursery, anyway?

“You’re at a good age, ya know,” he says to Yandere as he takes him to one of the several communal playpens. “Not as helpless a newborn, but not quite as cranky as a toddler yet. This should be a breeze.” He places Yandere in the pen among nearly a dozen other babies the same age as him. “I’ll just make sure you get se–” At that, Ed’s watch starts to buzz.

“Wha?” Yandere asks, tilting his head and looking up at Ed.

“This watch is connected to my cameras,” Ed explains, pressing buttons, “Tells me if somethin’s goin’ on with the babies–” He huffs. “Dang nabbit, Susie Jane’s eatin’ glue again. I’ll be right back, go on an’ introduce yourself.” With that, he leaves.

Yandere is left sitting alone in the playpen, blinking in confusion. Over the past hour he’s been carried and rushed and swapped around to so many people and places, and now that he’s finally been left somewhere, he has no idea where he is. The other babies ignore him, already in pairs or playing alone, and annoyance creeps into Yandere’s mind. After all this mess, he’s stuck in a playpen that isn’t his surrounded by other kids he doesn’t know! At least he has his wooden blocks (which appear beside him nearly as soon as he thinks of them, much to his welcome relief). He tries to stack them, but soon ends up chewing on one as he continues wondering what he’s doing here.

“Hey.”

Yandere startles, looking around himself.

“Behind you, dummy.”

Yandere twists around to awkwardly look backwards, and sees another child, a few years older than himself.

“You dummy!” he yells, scooting himself in a half-circle to face this new child. She’s a girl, around four years old, with hair in two jet black pigtails and wearing a white dress with pattern of cherries all over it. She radiates confidence, hardly reacting to Yandere’s insult.

“Whatever, you’re just a baby,” she says, matter-of-factly. “What’s your name, Baby?”

“Ahn!” Yandere says.

“Anne?”

“No, Ahn!”

“...I’m calling you Baby.”

Yandere pouts and throws a block at the girl. Much to his annoyance, he misses.

“Stop it!” the girl yells, “If you do it again, I’m telling Mr. Edgar and he’s gonna take your blocks away!”

Yandere sets down the next block he was planning to throw with another, deeper pout.

“Meanie,” Yandere mutters.

“No, I’m Marie,” the girl replies, smug.

Yandere blinks, confused all over again.

“Anyway, what are you doing here?” Marie asks, “What happened to your mom and dad?”

That question puzzles Yandere even further.

“Dada helb beeple,” Yandere says, “He dog...do...”

“Doctor?”

“Yeah!”

“What about your mommy?”

Yandere shakes his head.

“No mama.”

“Me too,” Marie says, nodding as if she knew all along what Yandere would say. “Daddy said I’m too much work how and make him think of Mommy too much, so now I’m here.”

“Wha?” Yandere asks, now hopelessly confused. Marie rolls her eyes.

“Daddy gave me up,” Marie explains, still as confident as ever. “So Mr. Edgar took me here and now I live here. Your Dada gave you up, too, so now you’re here.”

“Wha!?” Yandere exclaims, suddenly panicked. “No! Dada lub me!!”

“Maybe he lied.” Marie shrugs. “My Daddy did. All of us got put here to get new parents.”

“No…” Yandere mumbles, but he’s already thinking about earlier, when Dr. Iplier handed him off to Wilford.

“Dark and Chrome aren’t around right now, can you take him? I have a six-car pile-up coming in and I can’t watch Yan and help them at the same time.”

Dr. Iplier is always saying things like that. Always handing him to someone or other. Yandere’s become fond of nighttime, because that’s when Dr. Iplier will read him stories and rock him to sleep, and soothe him if he wakes up before morning. He gets to stay firmly held in Dr. Iplier’s arms then, with no worry that he’ll be given away.

But…maybe Dr. Iplier doesn’t like nighttime as much as Yandere does. With how often he makes someone else take care of Yandere, maybe he doesn’t like it at all. Maybe he’s truly been given away, this time for good. Marie seems so sure of herself, so she must be telling the truth…right?

“Dada…gib way?” Yandere’s eyes are huge, filling with tears. He’s right on the edge of a crying fit, and only needs one more thing to set him off.

“Yeah.” Marie shrugs. “Don’t be sad, Baby. Mr. Edgar is weird but he’s nice. He’ll find you new parents. He’s already looking for mine.”

Well, that’ll do it.

Yandere wails, bawling as loud as he can manage. Other babies in the pen turn to look, a few start crying themselves. Marie covers her ears.

“Stop crying, Baby!!”

Somehow, Yandere cries louder. Tears and snot run down his face, and his cheeks turn red with emotion and exertion. His hands ball up into tiny fists to rub at his eyes, but it doesn’t do much. His whole body shudders from it.

It’s about that time that Ed Edgar comes running back.

“What in the blazes is going on here!?” Ed arrives at a pen full of babies ranging from annoyed to distraught…and Marie. “Marie, what in the world did you do this time??”

“I didn’t do anything!” Marie protests, shouting to be heard over Yandere’s wailing. “I just told him what he’s here for!!”

“Oh, fer cryin’ out loud,” Ed mutters to himself, before addressing Marie, “You cain’t just assume that every kid in here is gettin’ adopted! I’m only babysittin’ this one here!”

“Every other kid in here is getting adopted!” Marie insists, “Baby’s just weird!”

“His name’s Yandere,” Ed tells her, picking Yandere up, “You’ll get a talkin’ to later, missy, but first I gotta fix yer mess.”

Marie sticks out her tongue at Ed and darts away, and Yandere, still sobbing, starts to squirm in Ed’s hold.

“Hey, settle down there,” Ed says, trying to soothe.

“Noooo-o-o!!” Yandere bawls, fighting harder.

“Alright, alright, just–hey, ow! That’s my beard, ow–okay, I’m putting ya down before I drop ya–”

The instant Yandere’s on the ground, he dashes away, mostly crawling.

“Oh, for the love of–” Ed follows him away.

But Yandere is faster, and looking for somewhere to hide. He ends up darting under a cabinet against the wall, far enough back so that he can’t be grabbed and pulled back out. He sits there and curls into a ball, still weeping.

“Hey,” Ed pants, finally arriving. He gets on his hands and knees to peer under the cabinet at Yandere. “Hey, kid, come on out, come–oh man,” He pauses to gasp for breath. “I’m too old to keep chasin’ y’all like this…Come out, Yandere!”

“Noooo,” Yandere whimpers, shrinking back even further.

“Dang nabbit,” Ed sighs.

He already knows what he has to do, and he’s not looking forward to it.

~~~

Dr. Iplier was away from Yandere for one hour.

Dark was out of the building for two.

Yet, here they are, standing outside the nursery of a very embarrassed Ed Edgar, hearing about why Yandere is currently wailing so loud he can be heard from the hall.

“You left him alone??” Dr. Iplier asks Ed in disbelief. Dark turns to Dr. Iplier.

“And you left him with Ed??” he growls.

“Naw, he didn’t,” Ed says, “I got Yandere from the Jims.”

Dark’s form cracks, and Dr. Iplier looks like he’s about to crack, too.

“Woah, now hold on!” he shouts, “I didn’t give Yan to the Jims! I wouldn’t trust those two with a potted plant, let alone a baby! I gave him to–” He stops up short as he realizes. “Wilford.”

Dark’s form splits open for a brief moment, showing a silhouette of himself practically pulling his hair out in rage.

“I will speak to him about this,” he says icily.

“For what it’s worth,” Ed mumbles, “The Jims said they got Yandere from Bim.”

“So what, Wilford just decided to play hot potato with Yan?” Dr. Iplier sighs, rubbing his forehead in exasperation. “I knew I should’ve left him with someone else.”

“Hey!”

Everyone looks towards the door to the nursery, which has slightly opened, then down. It’s Marie, clearly grumpy. And who could blame her; Yandere’s howls are even louder now with the door open.

“Marie, get back inside!” Ed exclaims, “Cain’tcha see I’m busy!?”

“Are you guys gonna make Yandry or whatever stop crying already??” She crosses her arms. “He’s too loud!!”

“Watch how you speak to your elders, little girl,” Dark warns through grit teeth.

Marie’s eyes widen a little at his tone but she doesn’t back down, and Ed starts pushing her back inside.

“I should get in there,” Dr. Iplier says, “Hopefully I can get Yan to come out on his own.”

“I’ll deal with Wilford and Bim,” Dark says, “And if he’s not out by the time I return, I’m getting him out myself.” His aura writhes gently.

“I guess you’d have to…” Dr. Iplier admits, clearly not on board with that option.

Either way, Dark leaves, and Dr. Iplier follows Ed and Marie into the nursery.

He’s been here before to treat the children. Mostly it’s fevers that get too high and enough ear infections for a whole pediatrics department, but occasionally a kid will fall off a play structure and need a cast or stitches. Though Dr. Iplier doesn’t like thinking about Ed’s business, he has to admit that the nursery is big and clean and that the children always seem well enough cared for. Right now, though, most of the kids are clearly unhappy, presumably due to Yandere’s disruptive crying, which gets louder and louder the further into the nursery they go. Finally, they reach an oak cabinet and Ed points beneath it.

“That’s where he is,” he says, wincing and rubbing his ear with one hand, “If you couldn’t tell.”

Marie stands off to the side, clearly curious about Dr. Iplier and what he’s going to do, as Dr. Iplier gets down on all fours to look at Yandere. His hearts twists at the sight of his boy curled up in a trembling, weeping ball.

“Yan? Sweetheart?” Dr. Iplier says, making his voice as gentle as possible. Yandere hears him and immediately looks up, sniffling.

“Dada?”

“Yeah, Yan, Dada’s here.” He gives a soft smile and reaches out a hand. “Come on out, sweetheart, it’s alright.”

“No!” Yandere tightens into a ball again, trying to scoot further back into the wall. “Dada gib way!”

“Give…oh, honey,” Dr. Iplier murmurs, heart breaking all over again. Ed had told him and Dark about what he suspected one of the other kids had told Yandere, but Dr. Iplier hadn’t expected him to take it to heart.

“Dada no lub me,” Yandere whimpers into his arms.

“No, Yan, that’s not true!” Dr. Iplier insists, “Of course I love you, I love you so much. You’re my son and I’ll always love you no matter what.”

Yandere looks up again, eyes huge and teary.

“No wan’ new Dada,” he sniffles, “Wan’ Dada.”

Dr. Iplier can’t hold back a gasp.

“I know, baby,” he murmurs, choked up, “You’re not getting a new Dada. I’m your Dada, I’m right here.”

“I knew his name was Baby,” Marie whispers.

“You hush,” Ed whispers back.

“Dada gib way,” Yandere whimpers.

“Sweetheart…” Dr. Iplier takes a steadying breath. “I know I did. I know I do. I want to be your Dada but I want to be a doctor, too, and I thought…I thought I was doing both. I didn’t know it would upset you so much to keep passing you along, but I should’ve known, and I’m sorry.” A sparkle of hope appears in Yandere’s eyes. “From now on, I…I’ll close the clinic to humans. So I’ll be taking care of the other egos but I’ll be taking care of you, too. I promise I’ll take better care of you.” He reaches out a hand again. “Please come out.”

Yandere looks at Dr. Iplier’s hand, then his face, and his eyes widen with alarm.

“Dada sad?” he asks, starting to uncurl and peer intently at Dr. Iplier’s face.

That’s when Dr. Iplier realizes there’s a few tears streaking down his cheeks.

“Yes, I guess I am,” Dr. Iplier admits, chucking a little as he wipes his face. “I’m sad because you’re sad.”

“No sad!” Yandere exclaims, crawling to Dr. Iplier’s outstretched hand. Though tears are still wet on his face and he’s done completely done crying yet, he grabs Dr. Iplier’s hand with both of his own and squeezes. “No sad, Dada. I lub you.”

Dr. Iplier beams, trying not to cry even harder.

“I love you, too,” he murmurs.

He puts his other arm around Yandere and pulls him out from under the cabinet, holding him to his chest as he stands up again. Yandere doesn’t protest, instead leaning into the embrace and resting his cheek on Dr. Iplier’s shoulder. Dr. Iplier hums softly, stroking Yandere’s hair and swaying back and forth to soothe the last of the tears away–Yandere’s tears, and his own, too.

After several long moments of quiet, a shout pierces the air.

“That’s not fair!!” Marie yells, stomping her foot. Tears poke out from the corners of her eyes. “How come his daddy wants him back and mine doesn’t!?”

Dr. Iplier’s jaw drops. He suddenly realizes that this little girl was the one who told Yandere that he’d been given up, and he suddenly realizes why.

“Oh, no…” he murmurs, ready to start comforting her.

But Ed beats him to it.

“Marie,” he says, kneeling down to her eye-level. She turns away in anger. “Look at me, little miss.”

“It’s not fair!” she yells again, “I want Daddy!!”

“Do you?” Ed asks, voice even and patient. “You remember what he said when he brought ya to me?”

Marie hesitates, then turns to face Ed again. She nods, tears starting to fall.

“He wasn’t very kind, now was he?”

“No…”

“Yer daddy is a lazy, no-good, son of a gun. Plenty’a daddies don’t give their kids away if somethin’ happens to the mommy. Yer daddy’s a coward, and you deserve a better one. That’s why you’re here, ain’t it?” He gently pinches Marie’s tear-stained cheek. “Ain’t no one gonna adopt ya if yer cryin’ and carryin’ on,” he chides, but there’s a note of teasing in his voice and the slightest smile on his lips.

Marie giggles despite herself and playfully pushes Ed’s hand away before wiping her tears.

“I know all that stuff,” Marie sniffles, “I still miss him, though.”

“Course ya do, he’s the only daddy you’ve had,” Ed replies, “But someday you’ll have a new daddy who treats you like the belle of the ball.”

Marie nods and smiles shyly.

“You alright now?”

“Yeah…” Marie looks at her hands, fidgets a little.

“Oh, fine, c’mere,” Ed sighs, faking exasperation as he opens his arms. Marie steps forward and throws her arms around his neck, and Ed wraps his arms around her in turn.

“Thanks, Mr. Edgar,” Marie whispers.

“Don’t mention it, sugar,” Ed replies, giving her forehead a quick peck as he pulls away. “You run along now, little miss.”

Marie grins, kisses Ed on the nose, and runs away laughing before Ed can react. Ed’s cheeks turn red as he pulls his hat down, covering his face.

“She’s quite a character, isn’t she?” Dr. Iplier says, both touched and amused.

“You betcha,” Ed answers as he stands. He lifts his hat as his blush recedes, smiling softly. “I’ve got half a mind to adopt that girl myself.”

“You should,” Dr. Iplier says, sparing a fond glance to Yandere, now asleep in his arms after the morning’s excitement. He pauses, thinking. “I guess I never realized you actually…I mean, with these kids…”

“What, that I care about ‘em?” Ed asks, “That I don’t just use ‘em for money?” He laughs a little. “S’alright, I don’t mind. It used to be like that, at first. S’how I screwed stuff up with my son. But then, well, that happened…”

Dr. Iplier nods, looking down. He hates to think of that time as much as any of the Cyndago egos do, even if he’s not one himself.

“…an’ I said to myself, the hell am I doin’?” Ed continues with a sigh. “I remember what my video was for, how it was meant to make people wanna help kids, and here I am, doin’ all this shady stuff to make money off ‘em.” He grimaces at the memory. “I just decided I didn’t wanna be that man no more. But, to be frank with ya, I’m thinkin’ it’s easier if the others don’t know I’ve changed. King and Silver know already, s’why we’re friends, but they ain’t tellin’ nobody.” His expression turns serious. “There’s too many wackos around here, and the less they want to do with me, the further they stay away from my kids. An’ if the head honcho back there thinks I don’t give a rat’s ass ‘bout ‘em, he ain’t gonna try to use ‘em against me.”

Dr. Iplier remembers how Ed spoke of Marie when he explained the situation to him and Dark earlier. How he’d seemed so annoyed with her yet so flippant about her, how he’d never even mentioned her name. If Dark had known that she was the one who upset Yandere when she opened the door and made a fuss, Dark would’ve done much worse than scold her. What Dr. Iplier had mistaken for embarrassment and anger as Ed pushed Marie back inside was probably fear. But he’d hidden it so well to keep her safe.

“That’s smart of you,” Dr. Iplier admits, “I never would’ve guessed. I’ve underestimated you, Ed.”

“Aw shucks,” Ed chuckles, “No need to lay on the compliments, Doc. Jus’ keep all this between us, ya hear?”

“Of course,” Dr. Iplier promises. He sighs. “What a day already, huh? I’m gonna take Yan back to the clinic with me.”

“You got that right.” Ed tips his hat. “See ya ‘round, Doc.”

“See you, Ed.”

When Dr. Iplier leaves the nursery, closing the door behind him, Dark is already back.

“Oh, hey,” Dr. Iplier says, “How long have you been waiting?”

“Only a few moments,” Dark says. “I assumed Yandere was alright since I could no longer hear his crying.” He looks down at Yandere, still sleeping soundly in Dr. Iplier’s arms. “He is alright, I presume?”

“Yep,” Dr. Iplier answers, looking at Yandere as well and stroking his hair, “I’ve decided I’m going to stop treating humans until he goes back to normal. I hate to turn people away, but…I don’t ever want to hear him cry like that again.”

Dark nods, reaching out a hand to Yandere. He runs a finger down his cheek, making Yandere stir a little and smile in his sleep. Dark can’t help but smile gently in turn.

“So…” Dr. Iplier begins, “…Are Wilford and Bim still alive?”

“Of course,” Dark answers, his smile turning sharp, “They won’t die in my void unless I will it. I imagine they’ll be wishing for it by the time I let them out.”

Dr. Iplier shudders. Yes, Ed definitely has the right idea. Dr. Iplier looks down at Yandere again, watches him sleep with Dark’s finger still gentle on his cheek, and is suddenly very, very grateful that his son is in Dark’s good graces.

#yandereplier #ed edgar #dr. iplier #darkiplier #markiplier #kristin says stuff #my writing #it takes a village #if this chapter made u sad then hold onto your pants cuz next chapter is even worse >:3

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nicole-lynne · 5 years

Text

World’s Colliding - Chapter Ten

Oh it’s been a few weeks? I am a garbage person and that is why.... Hope you enjoy, Like and comment to your hearts content! Let me know if you’d like to be added to the tag list. I’ll try to get my shit together!

Relationships: Dean x OC, Sam, Stiles x OC, Scott

Warnings: Swearing

Description: Stiles finally reveals the Supernatural world to Natalie. Dean has something to say.

Catch up here:

Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine

Stiles was perched on the couch, his body riddled with anxiety, just waiting for Natalie to come out of her room. His ears perked up as he heard the door upstairs creak open. He listened as her socked feet tiptoed down the stairs.

Natalie stopped at the bottom and looked at Stiles then over to where Scott was sprawled out on the love seat, snoring slightly. A soft smile tugged at her lips but fell quickly. His heart ached as he studied her puffy eyes and wild hair. He could tell that she probably hadn’t slept a wink all night, but he could stop from smiling slightly at her pajama shorts with little teddy bears and her big grey t-shirt, more accurately, his Beacon Hills Lacrosse t-shirt. She looked so little and helpless.

Natalie shuffled closer to Stiles and he opened his arms for her. A lone tear fell down her cheek and she fell into him. He dropped into the couch and let her nestle against his chest, grateful for the warmth coming off of her. He wished he could have held her all through the night and brushed all the tears away, keeping the bad dreams at bay.

“I’m so sorry that I skipped out on you last night, Sti. It was all just a little overwhelming.” He brushed her hair off her neck.

“You don’t have to apologize to me, sweetheart. I can’t imagine what’s going through your head, but just know that I’m always here for you.” Natalie nuzzled against Stiles’ cheek in response.

They sat there, holding onto one another for a moment. The quiet was like an old friend coming to visit them, the sun cast a welcoming warmth across the room. Stiles’ mind was racing with a thousand questions, Natalie’s mind was filled with a thousand answers. She knew he wanted to ask but she was intent on keeping her head pressed against his chest, listening to his beating heart.

Breaking through the silence, Scott snorted a loud snore and readjusted, falling back into deep sleep. Natalie and Stiles’ eyes met and they both starting giggling hysterically. Natalie loved that even though she felt so badly, being with Stiles could make her forget about it for just a moment. Through her own laughing, she looked at his goofy smile and felt her heart mend just a little.

Stiles’ eyes gleamed with joy as he watched Natalie laughing. He pushed the hair out of her face and rubbed his nose against hers in a little bunny kiss. Natalie wrapped her arms around his neck and locked her eyes with his. His strong arms engulfed her body and pressed her against himself.

“Thank you for making me smile, my sweet teddy bear.” She pecked a kiss on his lips and then gave him another bunny kiss.

Stiles grinned at the action and pulled her legs into his lap. “Why don’t we wake up the sleepy little guy over there and I’ll treat you to some breakfast?” He gestured to Scott’s snoring figure.

“Can we get waffles?” Natalie raised her eyebrows excitedly.

“Nat, we can get whatever you want.” Stiles pulled her more into his lap and then lifted her up, cradling her body bridal style. This caused her to laugh even more but she laid her head against his shoulder, letting him keep her safe. He rocked her gently and looked down at her with content, never wanting this feeling to go away. He pressed a kiss to her forehead for a few seconds and set her feet down on the ground with a quiet thud. Stiles nudged Natalie up the stairs to go get ready and then turned to Scott’s sleeping body.

Stiles positioned himself right next to Scott’s ear, “Rise and shine, wolf boy.” he said loudly. Scott groaned and shoved his face into a pillow. “Come on, man, I’m buyin’ breakfast.”

Scott’s chocolate brown eyes popped open quickly, “Okay, yeah that’d be great. I’m starving!” He leapt off the couch and tugged his sneakers on.

The boys rustled around the living room, picking up the tossed blankets and pillows. Stiles was glad that he had known where everything was since Natalie had been locked in her room all night.

“So did she ever come out of her room?” Scott asked feebly.

Stiles nodded and chuckled to himself, “Yeah she did. I can’t believe you didn’t hear us talking.” He glanced toward the upstairs. “I think she’ll be fine eventually... If that guy doesn’t show up again. God I hate that guy. And what was with that other super tall dude.”

“That was Sam, Dean’s brother.” The boys whipped around to find Natalie standing in the living room door, awkwardly. He couldn’t stop himself from smiling at her in her leggings and long sleeve shirt that hung over her hands. She was the cutest person he’d ever seen in his life. Stiles walked over and put his arm around her shoulder.

“Let’s just forget about them for right now, okay? We can talk about it later, cutie.” He shook her shoulders slightly and pressed a wet kiss to her cheeks, bringing a smile to her face. She nodded excitedly at the thought of waffles and bacon.

Stiles herded the two out of the house like little kids and got them set up in the jeep. Scott and Natalie were arguing about some Marvel movie and Stiles just shook his head at the sight of them. For the moment, he felt like this would be their forever and he didn’t want it to stop.

---

Scott sighed loudly in content, he leaned back and let the food begin to digest. He had 3 empty plates in front of him and Natalie was staring in disbelief.

“Scott... You ate three full plates of food. How in the hell are you so skinny? I swear, you should weigh like 500lbs if you eat like that all the time.” Scott and Stiles started cracking up.

“Oh, you can’t even imagine what I have to do to work this all off, little one.” Scott howled out another laugh.

Natalie furrowed her brow. The nickname he’d just used scratched at something in her brain, but she shook it off and turned her attention to the goofy boy sitting next to her.

“So...” She trailed off.

“Well...” Stiles and her had started talking about the same time. He gestured towards her as if to say ‘You go ahead.’

“I guess you both have some questions. Everything last night went a little haywire.” Natalie’s shoulders slumped a bit as she rested her forearms on the sticky table.

Stiles rubbed her back soothingly. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.” But Natalie shook her head.

“I want to tell you guys about it. I promise, I don’t just go around slapping people. I’m really so embarrassed that I did that.” She propped her face in her hands and groaned.

“Hey, I’m sure you wouldn’t have done it unless the guy deserved it.” Scott offered. “And that guy looked like he deserved it.”

Natalie let a little giggle escape but it died just as quickly. “When I was 6, my parents dropped me off at my Aunt Laura’s house. They said it was for the weekend. But...they never came back. I was still too little to understand, but Laura told me later that they were, well still are, junkies and they had gone on some bender...” Stiles’ stomach clenched. “Anyways, Sam and Dean lived with their dad, just down the street from my aunt’s house. Sam is a year older than me, and Dean is five years older. But even though, he was older than me, Dean took me under his wing immediately. We pretty much did everything together, and Sam was always there too. Sam is-was like my brother.”

Natalie took a deep, shaky breath, and willed herself not to cry. “Back then, I was pretty positive that Dean and I were destined to be together.” Stiles winced slightly. “But I was just being a stupid kid. Dean and I weren’t meant to be anything but strangers.

“Even though we all used to be inseparable, something changed. It was sometime around when I was sixteen, Sam just shut me out completely. I have no idea what I did wrong, but he would just act like I was invisible... Like I didn’t even exist.”

Stiles interlocked his fingers with hers and rubbed his thumb across the back of your hand. “Nat, it’ll be okay. You don’t hav-”

Natalie cut him off. “I want to tell you about this, Stiles.” She sent him a warm smile and continued. “A few weeks later, Dean was dropping me off at my house. He told me that he never wanted to see me again and that... that he didn’t love me. It felt like part of my soul had been ripped out of my body. He was my best friend... He was the person I thought I could count on the most.” Stiles held back a growl, the urge to punch Dean resurfacing.

“They left after that. Their dad, John, was a traveling salesman so they went to go be with him. I haven’t seen or heard from either of them for five years.” Natalie paused, “Well, I guess except for last month. I did miss a call from Sam. But I never called him back.”

Natalie looked up at Stiles and then to Scott. Both of their faces were clouded with anger and pity and she hated that. She never wanted someone to pity her, especially Stiles.

“Anyways, what’s done is done. I can’t believe that they had the nerve to show up on my doorstep.” Natalie plastered on the most fake, happiest smile she could and shrugged it off as if she couldn’t be bothered to think about the boys anymore. “So you guys were trying to tell me something yesterday?”

Scott and Stiles jumped slightly, the thought they had something planned last night completely escaping them. “Oh... Well we don’t have to talk about it right now.”

“No, no I want to talk about something else. What did you guys want to talk about?” Natalie readjusted in the booth to face both of the boys.

“O-okay here’s the thing. What we’re gonna say might sound so crazy to you, but just know, I would never lie to you. It’s important that you understand what we’re saying. And... a part of it may have something to do with Dean.” Natalie’s face fell at the last part of that sentence.

“Um, alright? What is it?” She asked cautiously, her heart beat increasing.

Stiles took a deep breath and dove right into the story. “When we were in high school, Scott got bitten by a wolf.” Natalie’s head snapped to look at Scott. “That’s when he went through the change. There’s not an easy explanation, so I’ll just say it. Scott is a werewolf.” At that, Natalie burst out laughing, doubling over in her seat.

“Man, you guys really had me. I was so nervous!” Both boys frowned.

“We aren’t lying, Nat. I’m serious, look at Scott’s face.” Scott’s eyes turned a crisp blood red and her smile disappeared.

“Um, what the hell?” Natalie pushed her body back against the seat, trying to distance herself, and glanced around bewildered.

“Supernatural creatures are real, Natalie. I couldn’t even begin to count the amount of things we’ve fought against.” Scott leaned forward and looked into her eyes. “But we’re telling you this, one, because we trust you, and two, because our friend seems to think that you’re some type of supernatural creature.” The words they were saying weren’t even entering her brain. Did she just hear him right? They thought she was some sort of monster or something?

Natalie scoffed, “Are you shitting me right now? Please tell me this is a joke. I am human.” She emphasized harshly. “Why would you even think I’m not? And why in the hell would this have anything to do with De-with him?” Stiles reached for her arm and she started to move away from him.

His heart sank at the action, but moved again, pulling her hand to his body. “Baby, you have to believe me, I didn’t want to bring you into this. But we know that you are because, well because, Dean told us.” Natalie’s hands began trembling.

“Wha-what are you talking about? No, he didn’t say that. You’re making that up.” Stiles moved deeper into the booth, wrapping his arm around Natalie’s body.

“Scott and I were together last night, talking about some stuff, and Dean showed up. He told us that you were supernatural but you didn’t know. He didn’t want us to tell you and said that something bad would happen if he got involved.” Natalie looked into Stiles’ chocolate brown eyes, using the warmth to steady her. She resisted the urge to race out of the restaurant, instead clingy to Stiles with desperation.

“Natalie, we thought you deserved to know. This guy is hiding something from you, and we think you should know what it is.” Scott tried to smile reassuringly at the girl in front of him. Stiles could tell that Natalie was trying not to panic anymore than she already was. This place was much too public to be talking about all of this.

“Why don’t we go home and we can talk about this some more?” Stiles asked her, getting a soft nod in return. He scooted out of the booth and turned to help her out. As Stiles backed up to let Natalie up, he ran into another person. “Oops I’m so sor- oh it’s you.”

Natalie’s head shot up and was faced with Dean’s familiar green eyes. Her heart leapt and she pushed down the vomit that wanted to escape her stomach. Instead, anger surged through her tiny body. “Get the fuck away from us, Dean.” She shoved past him, ignoring Sam completely.

Dean gripped her upper arm softly, “Please wait?” She searched his face, looking for any clue that he had missed her or regretted any moment of those last five years away from her, but all she found was a blank stare.

“For what, Dean?” She spat, malice dripped from her tongue.

“There’s something we need to talk about with you... With all of you.” He looked around at the other two boys, taking notice of their scowls that danced on their faces. “Something is going to happen, Nat, and you won’t be able to survive it without Sam and I.”

@multifandomdisappointment @music-magic-mayhem @ghostaccio @screamxqueenx94 @rissyrapp20 @dark-night-sky-99 @pissoffghost-korg

#stiles x oc #stiles stilinski #dean x OC #dean winchester #Sam Winchester #Scott McCall #supernatural #teen wolf #Superwolf #dean x reader #stiles x reader #Jensen Ackles #dylan o'brien #fanfiction

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