#i hardly drew anything in July

[precious-little-scoundrel]

Like Lightening

Summary: A Snapshot of Elvis and Elaine, newly married, hardly satiated, very in love

Warnings: 18+ entirely made up of fluff and smut and fluffy smut, sorry to the sweet ask -this got a bit off track. We don’t have them going at it like bunnies herein so much as alluding to that having been happening and determined to continue. What we do have is a lotta smutty thoughts, breeding kink, innocence kink, oral sex fem receiving, unkosher usage of baby oil, the very beginning of penetrative sex, some begging and dirty talk…most importantly we’ve got a bit of body consciousness, Elaine is slightly embarrassed by her new stretch marks and her pretty husband sets out to show her they’re incredibly cool

Word count: 5k

Hope you enjoy sweet anon, so sorry your original ask got eaten by tumblr, I hope this notification finds you!

Elaine had taken to water calisthenics classes at the Elders Club in Killeen Texas out of sheer need to move without dying of heatstroke. Swelling each day into a fluffy little matron, Elaine made house for Elvis on base one month after the next as May and then June and then July ticked on by in a sweltering dust cloud. And, whenever she wouldn’t be missed, the new Mrs Presley dashed to the pool and swam with the grandmas.

It drew a bit of a crowd, this swimming of hers, and Elvis, sympathetic and prouder than anything, took it upon himself to order from the catalogs the very best and loveliest and most advantageous swimsuits to accommodate his wife’s growing belly and plush breasts to their best advantage. He also threatened crushed jugulars and broken spines if any of his army buddies so much as drove by the dinky place for a peek at his ripe little woman.

Truth be told the larger she grew, the more evident her condition, the fruit of his loins obvious to the world, the more Elvis’ excitement for her grew. If breaking her innocence had proven more tantalizing in theory than practice and if her submission had been a versatile thing he found himself often teetering under the sway of, this, her ripening form, was one fantasy that matched his dreams.

In the early morning her plush body wrapped beside his was the only thing dragging him out of bed for basic and to watch her clip clop about in heels and a ever stretched apron while serving him breakfast was a sorta dream state of things he hadn’t dared hope would be as perfect as it was in reality. All that sickly pallor and nausea of the early months had vanished in its place he had a freckle-nosed bride shimmying into dresses increasingly too fitted. Zippers groaned and buttons popped in their little house on base and Elvis gloried in it, sat on the edge of his bed and watched her dressing struggles with splayed thighs and appreciative groans. He reveled in putting his hands on her to aid her and glutted at what he’d done to her fresh little self. He liked to tease her to “suck in” when her bust no longer fit in her old dresses.

“You’re carryin’ my whole world” he told her time and again, whispering it into her ear and squeezing her tight. He sang to his babies and they quited, he read to them from the Gospels and they kicked: “just like the John the Baptist” and in the latter months when he’d teasingly mimic a babe's cry when snuggling his wife, her breasts would begin to leak.

And now the swimsuits. Graduating up one size after another in these later months, Laney had packed on a bit of tush along with her belly and tits and the sway of it, atop long stems sat upon pretty footsies in heeled sandals, drove Elvis and half his army mates wild. See, after awhile, the secret was out and the other army wives came to swim, too. And their husbands became over eager to pick them up after class.

Threats be damned. Elaine Presley was sweet and pretty and often made chit chat with their wives and babies, towel slung uselessly over her shoulders and pool droplets running from her clavicle to the never-never-land of her bosoms when she bent to kiss a child or two goodbye. Just lanky enough to require a bend, that lady, and just affectionate enough to not content herself with head pats.

Dodger observed these things and pondered them but kept her mouth shut, sat like a disapproving crow under a umbrella and sipping gin and tonics after Elaine had insisted they wouldn’t kill her. Elaine liked to press the cold glasses to her throat when playing Bingo on the patio chairs. Eileen Macdermot went home, scandalized, one day at the way the girl splayed her legs over the side of the lounger, like a primitive or else - a man.

These things filling her days and bothering neither of the newlyweds much, if at all, Elvis had come home one evening to the smell of pork chops and gravy and no Laney in his kitchen. Their house was tiny with few rooms and after inspecting the empty single bedroom he proceeded into their bathroom and found her there, stripping out of her sodden swimsuit.

It was black, with lemons on it and white polka dots intermingled and it paired so well with her tanned skin and white headband that Elvis groaned aloud at the sight and spooked his wife who didn’t suspect him home.

“Lord, Elvis-“ She clutched her chest and heaved in a breath, smile breaking out as soon as her shock calmed, “-you’re home early.”

He wrapped a hand around the doorframe and practically lounged against it as much a person could lounge while standing, while vertical, stupid, giddy grin in place. She was halfway through stripping and there was something so very domestic, jarringly normal and almost raw about seeing his swim pink wife in a modest chipped tile bathroom of a single bedroom house, swollen and barefoot. Just one more regular American housewife among many in a tidy row of white picket fenced army accommodations.

Playing house, it was moments like these when it hit him just real enough to taste a dream and chew it and swallow it down till it fizzled out his fingers and mouth in a hunger fueled by gratitude. This wasn’t gonna last forever, not the normality of basic training or the ruthless hours of not belonging to himself, this too would pass he told himself when it got awful. But so would these precious days of just the two of them, Laney alone to putter around their house and think only of him and he to come home to her with only her on his mind and in his arms.

“Elvis?” she prodded again when he barely managed more than a soothing, faraway humm of greeting when she calmed.

“Yes Mrs. Presley?” he asked, doorframe digging into his cheek, wondering when she was going to drop the lovely sweetheart neckline she was clutching to those creamy tits that heaved under his stare like she didn’t endure such admirations regularly.

“A-are you going to-“ she was oddly hesitant, his pretty wife tonight, she’d been a bit voracious recently as the health came back to her but maybe it was just the fright.

“Am I gonna what, babydoll?” he asked softly, eyes flicking up to meet hers and he saw a little panic brewing in their warm depths. “Why, what’s this, huh? Caught ya at something?” he teased her, genuinely unsure of what was amiss and why she still clutched the soggy suit to her goose pimpled skin. “You’re gonna get cold, shuggums.” he straightened up and moved towards her, army boots mashing down the pretty green pile of the bathroom rug.

She stepped back reflexively before catching herself and giving a forced little laugh and shrug, a shrug that was very hampered in it’s carefree intentions with the way her arms crisscrossed over her chest. Perhaps he’d been too eager for her lately, he thought with self chastising consternation, perhaps she was flighty from soreness or neglect of more cerebral pursuits or maybe it was bad news from home.

“Is everything alright?” he finally asked, grave and soft spoken.

“Oh yes I was just-“ she mumbled, gesturing to the pink marbled countertop and its bottle of baby oil and pearlescent nail polish “-about to moisturize. The pool, the chlorine it…I’ve become itchy lately after going in. Doctor said it was normal, stretching and such but-“ she raised her eyes to his and they looked so young without the coal lining of cosmetics, sometimes he forgot his Tink wasn’t an ancient love goddess, just a sweet and unsure teenage girl. “I didn’t expect you home so soon.”

It didn’t make sense why her tone would be apologetic about that. He was early and she was industrious, dinner already baking and even if she hadn’t -they’d been making such ravenous love of late that often they ate charred remains of her carefully made meals or else opted for burgers at the joint in town. There’d been no apologies then; why now?

“C’mere babeh, lemme help.” he drawled and before she knew it he’d slinked across to her and laid his warm hand on her chilled shoulders.

Such lovely, large hands, they spanned her shoulders and a clavicle each, thumbs meeting like a little talisman adornment at the hollow of her throat. Seconds before he even did it she could predict the soothing swipe of his thumbs there, and so he did, and like clockwork she found herself taking in a larger breath, one that expanded her chest and made her clutched swimsuit a little obviously absurd. She used the breath he’d given her to let out a sigh of defeat.

“I’ve been growing.” she admitted rather resignedly and at this admittance Elvis had to check himself from nodding in furious, appreciative agreement, there was invisibly some catch here and in his own enjoyment of her ‘state’ he tried his damndest to recall it must be uncomfortable at best, growing and stretching and creating life inside one’s guts. Hell he wanted to die sometimes from too many sandwiches, how much fuller she must feel, about ready to burst with kids.

So he restrained his enthusiasm and nodded encouragingly. “Mhmm.”

“All perfectly normal, doctor says it is and others too, all the others say so. Nothing out of the ordinary and I was expecting it. Yet still, it’s quite-“ Elaine trailed off on this long prelude and Elvis held his breath lest his concern leach into impatience.

“Buuuuut?”

“But it doesn’t lessen that it’s quite ugly.” Once decided upon a course she finished up quite tidily but Elvis found himself further confused.

“What is, baby?” he asked, bewildered. “What’s ugly?”

“This.” she gestured resignedly at her belly and scratched the clinging nylon, her skin irritated from the pool.

“Don’t, stop that.” he chided softly, knowing it would make it worse and caught her waists in his hands, swaying them between them gently. “I don’t know what you’re on about but let’s get oil on there so you ain’t so prickly.” he suggested and let go of her hands, dropping them gently before raising his hands to her shoulders again and sensuously trailing his fingertips over the swell of her breasts till he met lemons and polka dots, and peeled the material down away ever so gently. “How’d you plan on hidin’ from me?” he asked her as the pert darlings came into view with the enlarged areolas and lengthening nipples.

“I wasn’t planning!” Elaine protested, biting her lip as he tugged further “It just- it showed up out of nowhere and it’s-“

He’d managed to peel the thing over half her ponderous belly, uncovering her belly button, when he caught sight of something entirely new. Red with a tinge of silver, a split, a crack, a bolt, scarred across her navel, running up and down -straight as a proper zig zag.

“Well. Goddamn.” he breathed, sitting back on his heels to take it in. His hand shook a little as he laid his palm on the stretch mark, an awed expression on his face as it was nearly the length of his whole hand. “Why, goddamn Tink,” he repeated, marveling, “you’ve got yourself an honest to God lightnin’ bolt on yous.”

Like her belly were heaven and in the paying of her dues for such a miracle as two lives with one body, it had been rent like a sheet. His stomach churned, something a little worshipful filling him. He took his hand away, marveling at the perfect design.

A lightning bolt. That’s not at all what Elaine expected from him, some kindness and maybe even relieving indifference, she anticipated that despite her embarrassment, but awe wasn’t on the cards. “I guess it rather does look like…that.”

“Looks like Shazam done paid you a visit, lil mama.” he nodded enthusiastically and Elaine laughed before she could help herself, thinking it funny her naked state was suddenly a costume in his mind. “Don’t you see it?” he crunched down to his knees and took her still suit clad hips in his hands and turned her towards the mirror.

“I-I suppose it bears some resemblance.” she muttered with distaste at the sight of it only more angry and prominent since the pool. “It’s a horrid color, looks like an scar already-“

“-oh hush up it’s amazing.” Elvis swatted her backside with his hand and she yelped, the jangle of his watch chain familiar as was his grinning face at belly level. “You’re mama’s all down on herself,” he loudly whispered to the babies inside her house, “don’t appreciate the fact she’s lookin’ like an gen-u-ine superhero. I know how to solve that.” he muttered darkly and Elaine felt him gather her hands again and he placed one in the counter for stability before he yanked the rest of her wet costume off, letting it pool round her ankles and helping her disentangle it.

“What are you going to do?” she asked with some trepidation as she stood fully naked before his keeling, uniformed, booted figure.

“Gonna convince ya.” he stated sure of himself before reaching for her nail polish, the pearlescent, silver shimmer of it drawing his eye like a magpie. “Gold would suit better, but between you’n’me doll, we’ll assume it’s platinum.” he murmured conspiratorially before giving her a solemn wink and unscrewing the cap.

Before she could worry for his trousers, he didn’t carry her foot to his knee and paint her toes. No. Instead he brought the tiny brush and its icy paint to her belly and began to swipe it along the design of her recent marring. Elaine gasped at the chill and in shock of his ingenuity, the tongue bitten concentration on his pretty face and the way his free hand splayed on her skin like an artist’s beside its canvas, anchoring his work.

Tink was yet a new little thing, barely broken into the art of the marriage bed and now accommodating his children, her bred little body hadn’t yet widened in all the ways it would eventually come labor. Her hips were beginning to comically expand whereas her waist in the back remained tapered and gave her a nearly illustrated quality to her proportions, that Elvis had begun to obsess over watching in the mirror when he was taking her.

Everything about her was ripe and taut and now this. He found his eyes going glossy and he tried to finish his painting in a tidy manner, his groin pusing distractingly beneath the material of his slacks as he worked lower, catching a whiff of her own interest in those soft curls.

He could almost taste her by memory.

He pulled away and surveyed his work, immensely pleased with the glistening silver lightning bolt stamped across his children's abode.

“It’ll smear with the oil.” was all she said, soft, distant.

“Then we’ll have to let it dry.” he decided, letting his fingers trace up the backs of her shapely thighs, appreciating soft flesh and toned ridges. He gave it some thought before he pursed his lips and blew. His cold breath blasted against the freezing polish and Elaine felt herself start, a gush of arousal puddling between her lips, almost burning at her entrance as she tried to clench it shut, keep some demureness in the face of it all. She thought she’d caught him sniffing, it wouldn’t do to have her legs a running mess with her need.

But the chilled ghosting of his breaths, the tantalizing burn of his fingertips’ trail- they made her throb and Elaine let out a helpless little moan, shifting on the pink rug in restless wanting.

“What’s that, baby honey?” he asked softly, looking up at her equal parts eager and questioning. “Makin’ you feel funny?”

“It’s the oddest sensation.” she shivered.

“What’s it make you want?”

“You.”

“Which’aways?”

“All of the ways.” she giggled bashully and stared at her swollen reflection and his at faucet level in the mirror, kneeling still. She chose to put her foot on the counter top, opposite hand balancing against the wall, “Elvis, won’t you lick me, please?” she asked.

“Since you ask so nicely.” he whispered, “And since you hold the power of a million universes.” he gestured to her belly once more before ducking his head running his nose along the seam of her slit, nudging her nosing like a puppy.

He hadn’t even kissed her mouth in greeting. He regretted that before opening his poofy lips and beginning to caress her pretty pink labia like he was smooching a lover. A gush let out against his chin, she must’ve been keeping that to herself for some time, there was too much of it. As was the pained moan that followed as her cunt clenched around nothing at his expert manipulations and teases. He opened his jaw and gathered as much of her in as he could before closing his mouth and sucking, amused at the sounds of shock she made as he swirled her, guarding her from his teeth, just his tongue and lips and the hot inferno of his mouth turning her to puddy.

He reached into his pants pocket and adjusted himself, and finding the need to touch too strong to ignore, he kept his hand there and jostled his stick and balls like a boy, moaning further into the taste of her as she came down from her high. She tasted different since pregnancy, and of late, was wet at whim. Elaine was as puzzled and shocked by the changes in her own body as he was, and it gave Elvis immense satisfaction to further surprise her with what he could draw from it. It drove him mad, this shock of hers, and he flattened his tongue and gave her a few parting, broad strokes to collect his winnings as she shoved at his shoulders in helpless, sensitive distress, yelping and shuttering and her propped leg kicking the bottle of oil over and off the counter.

He caught it before it hit the ground without even pulling his face from her muff. Elaine giggled again at his skill before whining at his repeated attempts to slurp at her sensitivity.

“You still gots an itch, lil mama?” he asked her, finally pulling away and looking up at her from under the dome of her belly, his hands planted on hips and his face aglow with her pleasure.

“I do.” she whined breathily, slumping against the wall.

He neared her again with his face and she questioned his motive the whole way until he stuck out his tongue and tried the nail polish on her belly. “S’dried.” he informed her as if he hadn’t just done a stupid thing and then with a decisive nod of his head, swiftly rose back to his full height and presented his hand to her.

“You come with me now, and I’ll tend to it.” he said and, meek as a lamb, Elaine put her little hand into his sticky one and he tugged her into the bedroom, oil bottle in hand. “If we’d been bad, mamas, if we’d been real naughty like, if I’d been a lil less good to ya, we’d be a couple of young folks new married and you swellin’ and barely a pan on the stove or a mattress on much else but floor. We wouldn’t be playin’ house in this lil shack, we’d be livin’ it and barely makin’ it.” he explained to her and Elaine was confused by his meaning, his analogy too, and where this was coming from, but pliant and tripping over her own feet from post orgasmic clumsiness, she chose not to question it, assumed it was play acting of sorts as he led her to the foot of their bed and sat himself down on the floor, still holding her hand. “But even then, Laney baby,” he glowed up at her with a bright, crooked grin on his slick face, “even if we was poor as dirt, I’d invest in a mirror so I could watch that tight lil snatch under your pretty belly swallowing me down like it’s got hunger pains.”

Elaine whirled around and stared at the mirror opposite the bed, positioned lovingly in the tiny space of a walkway where she might view the effect of her outfits and he might straighten his uniform, but perhaps more intentionally, it was placed opposite the bed where Elvis managed to configure them most times in some manner and at some point in their lovemaking so that they were near the foot of the bed and he might watch. Recently Elaine had come to enjoy the nearly lewd prospect of her growing body being gripped and kneaded and caressed, the unarguable beauty of it in the reflected image convincing her of prettiness she herself did not always feel.

The act, him, her responses to them both -they were all still new to her and now this, this pregnancy and the surprise of a million unexpected things.

Surveying themselves in the mirror she thought he looked a bit more debauched than herself, fully dressed though he was. He sat on the floor like a drunk, pussy dazed and loose, legs splayed and collar wet, pit stains prominent and swollen outline bulging in his pants. In his dishevelment he looked worse news than her wholesome nakedness and she licked her lips at the thought that it wasn’t at all wrong to indulge in such a dangerous fella. He belonged to her, and she to him.

“Did you ever think about it, Elvis?” she asked eagerly, her face aflame.

“Think of what, darlin?” he murmured, lazily undoing his fly and pulling himself out, pumping his fat pink member with an elegant pump of his wrist, ogling her appreciatively like she was a poster looming above him and not a living woman stepped between his thighs.

It made her drip. Elaine could feel the slick down to her knee, a stray dribble escaping her curls. Since marrying, since rubbing shoulders with other married women and being allowed into the gossipy little circles on base, she had begun to grow an inkling of awareness that her case was rather special. It was true, all couples made love, most couples had children, and plenty of couples were in love. But there were extracurriculars, such as she had been led to believe quite common in her own marriage, that were rarely mentioned by others, and if so, done with scandalized and hurried admittance. Elaine had begun to notice that while plenty of men liked their wives, wanted their wives even, there was a peculiar singleness of focus to her husband‘s interest in her that was not matched by others. Why, she’d even become aware of men’s magazines and the reasons for their existence, and yet never had seen one in her husband‘s possession, although she had awoke plenty of times to the sight of him pleasuring himself over her sleeping form, or as he was now, unabashedly admiring his view. She was in essence, both fantasy and form for him.

It was enough to make any woman proud and wet.

“Think of what?” he repeated with a laugh and an edge to his voice, looking up at her under an arch brow.

Elaine snapped out of her daydream and stepped up to him, enjoying the way his hands cupped the back of her knees, a little tickle, his head leaned back against the mattress. “Did you ever think to -think of…taking me sooner?” she asked, carding her fingers through his hair. “Ruining me early?” she smiled at the thought, at how clueless and helpless she’d have been if one of those nights on the den floor at Graceland during their short engagement, if one of those times he had rolled atop her - her sleeping father be damned - and had his way. It wasn’t his style but she wondered, what with the way Elvis could barely make it to the wedding, now that she knew what she knew, she wondered. In another world, would she have been a plundered little thing and he a dutiful young bachelor with a set of twins in need of a baptism to cover their conception?

“Thought of it every goddamn night.” he admitted earnestly, “Ruined a couple dozen pants over it.”

“No!”

“Mhmm.”

“Heavens. But never- you never-“

“-not while I was with ya. Bad as I wanted it.” he tisked, “I done told ya, you’re special baby. I was savin’ ya, couldn’t have brought myself to it, had plans for ya.”

Those plans of his were kicking and rolling in her belly as her heart rate sped up with the gentle trailing of his fingers over her thighs and the sight of his bobbing cock, jutting out from his uniform pants.

“I see.” Elaine simpered and pressed her palms to his own, swaying over him before he tugged her down, doing a pretty, clumsy little split over his lap. He groaned at the contact and the sight of her bare backside in the mirror.

“I missed ya today, Mrs. Presley.” he informed her as always and Elaine was grinning when he slotted his mouth against hers in a long overdue lover’s greeting.

Elaine blithely allowed him his smooching way across her throat and the swell of her decollage as she set to undoing his tie with loving firmness, and then stripping the pungent material of his worn shirt off his shoulders and at last tugging his trousers further down which broke his kisses contact and caused much protest. She stayed firm however, insisting that painting her belly with polish was one thing, but if he thought she was going to risk baby oil stains on that uniform, he had another thing coming.

“Your supposition bein’ that I’ll be in some position for stainin’!” he protested as if she were the one with all the wiles and meddlesome ideas.

“What plans did you have for it?” She asked dryly, crouched at his feet and yanking his boots off with much eagerness and little finesse.

“I intended to slather it on my wife.”

“Funny how what’s slathered on me always ends up slathered on you.” she pondered with a pretentious finger to her lips before she was tugged back atop his now bare lap, and spun so that she could lean against his chest.

“S’not always slathered.” he rebuts in a low tone, his voice gone intimate at the new position and their bare cuddling. Elvis hooked his chin over her shoulder and petted the lightening bolt gleaming so well in the mirror, the late summer’s sun beaming through the slanted blinds. He should close them before he did what he intended, before they got nekid in the first place, but if they were just any ole new couple there’d be no need with being off the road and the blinds partially drawn.

He squeezed her harder and reached for the oil. “S’not always slathered, sometimes I manage to get it real nice’n’deep, don’t I?”

Elaine sucked in a shaky breath as she felt him shift beneath her in his reach, the hot, eager firmness of him cradled under her cunt lips. She felt their privates begin to pulse in unison.

“Don’t I?” he asked her, one oily hand splayed low on her belly and the other gripping her jaw.

“Yes.” Elaine moaned, her head lolling back against his shoulder so she might keep his gaze.

His hand began to move again.

Slathering.

“Hmm?”

“Yes, daddy.” she whispered, and saw him smirk in satisfaction.

Witchcraft, it was, the way his hand could go through all the same motions as before but like a switch flipped, his own intent could bleed into his touch and suddenly he had gone from tending her stretched skin to driving her mad, oil and warmth spreading all over her, her breasts shining, her shoulders shining, her thighs aglow and golden.

Shining, all of her.

Elvis hooked his hands under her knees and spread her legs, bent and wide, feet settled far apart on either side of his own thighs. She could see little Elvis twitching futilely against his thigh, glossy, shiny, leaking oil himself. She cupped them both and did some slathering herself, wiping his arousal up her slit, rubbing his head and her puffy bud with her fingertips, the both of them moaning and whimpering in unison at the tease.

“Baby, baby let’s…let’s…” he was saying urgently and she pulled her hand away at his direction, allowing him to bring the bottle between their legs.

She felt that patter of drops against her clit and the silky run of it down to his cock. She ached, back arched and hips grinding against him like she could start a fire with the friction if she moved insistently enough.

“I-I-I want it!” she begged, overcome and her neck straining as she tilted her face to the ceiling. Waterstains patterned the white paint and she squeezed her eyes shut in a exstastic grimace as she felt him pull at his cock and tap it, all oily slapping, at her spread petals. “Elvis, please, please put it in.”

“Mm, m’not sure you’re slick enough.” he disagreed slyly, rubbing his glans against her fiery little hole as her legs kicked out in frustration. She knew he was staring in the mirror at his handiwork without even having to glance there herself. She squinted harder and aimed a thrust downwards, catching him. It was bend or enter. She had him, it took great willpower to hide her smirk as his breath gusted against her cheek.

“My baby still got an itch?” he asked softly, his large hand cupping their joining, just the tip of him snug and cozy inside her swollen channel.

“Yeah.”

“Where?” Elvis rumbled in her ear.

She took his shiny hand and spread it low on the lightening bolt, “Here, real deep.” Elaine whispered, “Right hyer.”

Hope y’all enjoyed! Your “bugging” and “screaming” is music to my ears, fuel to my fire and keeps me writing, please never hold back -this is a safe space for feral little Elvis loving rodents…like you and me.

If you’d like to be tagged in this particular series please drop a note below. Xoxo 💋

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[foryouistellify]

It was a bit of a weird year for my art. Some months I hardly drew anything, at least anything I felt was good enough. Then in July I decided to do ArtFight for the first time, and I did 18 portraits! It really boosted my confidence in my abilities, and I’ve been trying to keep that going since.

Here’s to a great 2024!

[mmollymercury]

Ask game! Headcanons: but for Agustín!

Agustín, this is your time bby

He's the most dad a dad could ever be, he loves to coddle his daughters, even now and he still likes to sing for them, or tell them stories if they're upset, and because the blue sisters kinda feel robbed of their childhood in a lot of ways, they always accept when he does this.🥺🥺🥺

Malewife to the end😤😤. Him and Julieta hardly ever argue, I like to think they share a lot of the same opinions and are on the same page a lot of the time. If he accidentally upsets her however, he'll literally try to cook, or get flowers, or do anything romantic to make it up to her, but the thing is, every time he gets hurt and has to present his 'sorry' gift looking like an absolute wreak. This always makes Juli smile and forgive him tho. I actually drew something inspired by this headcanon for encantober lol.

When his girls were younger, he'd read to them every night and always make a dramatic; funny entrance into their room. I wrote abt this too🥺😳

He has his own nicknames for his girls, Mirabel: hermoso milagro (beautiful miracle) Isa: la rosa (rose) and for Luisa: la princesa (princess) that last one always made Luisa happy, since Isabela was usually referred to as that by everyone else. But Agustín knew that Luisa always loved princess stories💞

Him and Julieta had been flirting for a bit before she kissed him, because she made the first move DAMMIT. During the flirting, Agustín's stupid but kind and respectful brain was like: she probably didn't mean that romantically, I bet loads of girls ask for a kiss as a joke, then proceed to hold someone's hand. She most likely just wants to be friends? But I think I love her!!??😭

Agustín: so are we dating now? Julieta: wtf we've been dating for 2 weeks???

Julieta ties his shoelaces😭because malewife

Once him and Julieta were a thing, his family custom made all of the Madrigal outfits 💞💞

He prefers sweet things over savoury.

Even after all these years, he still sees Julieta as his dream girl💖💖🥺

He mainly fed his girls when they were babies; he'd do that thing as he fed them, with the silly faces and the baby noises-

Yall know what I mean😭😭🥺💖

*sighs* conclusion: he's so dreamy😭😭😭💞💞💞💞

[captaindamianos]

Hi! I love your art 🥰 Thank you so much for sharing your wonderful work with us. I wanted to ask you: What is your favorite piece of work you've done so far and why? If that is okay of course xD You don't have to answer anything but I was very curious 🥰

Hi!! 🥰 AHH, thank you so much! 😭I'm so glad to hear that. It's becoming a bit much lately though, you'll probably all be sick off me and my art by the end of the month. 😂

Oh god, I love this question, even though that's a bit like choosing between your unruly children (I'd assume). 😂 So it's absolutely okay that you asked!!! actually, thank you for this question and making me choose narrow it down to two. I hardly ever get asks (which is why I'm always a bit hesitant to check when I see the symbol first instead of the ask in the notes. 😂) so I love every opportunity to ramble.

I usually like the one I last posted the most, because it best reflects my current skill level. But there are two I'm actually particularly fond off.

The first one is this one:

There are things I've learnt by now, that I would do differently. But I still like colors and the vibrancy. I like that the clothes look slightly transluscent and that I just tried some things out with it and got a lot farther when it comes to coloring with this picture. I also think this is probably the Laurent I drew that comes closest to how I imagined him in my head when reading. With different clothes obviously. 😂 But face-wise. It's 7 months old, but I'm still very fond of it, and probably the first one I did I still really like looking back on.

And one more (so this won't get any longer 😂). That's this one:

It didn't end up looking exactly the way I wanted. I wanted a bit more Summer palace-garden vibes, with a lot more details when it comes to the plants/flowers. But I've worked on this for weeks, and felt a bit overwhelmed and I just didn't have the energy anymore. I want to revisit this idea one day. I still like it though, and it's one of the few pictures of mine I actually have hanging up on my wall. 😂 (mainly because I tested my printer with it, and i didn't want to throw it out). It was probably one of the most elaborate drawings I've done so far, even though it probably looks simpler than it was. I've learnt and grown a lot with it.

I love the last finished one from July I posted a lot too. But with these two I've struggled a lot more, learnt a lot and I'm proud of the result. Even though I can see a lot of flaws in them already.

Thank you so much for the ask. 😭 I'm really sorry it got out of hand. I think about this a lot, obviously.

[rockingrobin69]

A Simple Misunderstanding

“Draco, did you take my shirt?”

Some crackle was the only answer he got for a minute. “What shirt?”

“My shirt, Draco. You know, my one good shirt? The one I needed tonight for the meeting with the Swedish Prime Minister for Magic?“

“Doesn’t ring a bell, no.”

Harry pressed two palms into his eyes so hard he was seeing stars. “No, nothing? Come on, you know the shirt. Light color, makes me look pretty toned, kind of gives my eyes a – “

“Oh, so you wanted to impress the Minister, is that it? Do you fancy him or something?”

The groan that came out of him could have been considered a growl. “He’s a she, actually. And yes, I wanted to impress her. Wasn’t that the whole point of the meeting? That’s my job, Draco!”

“Right. Well, I’m sorry, but I have no idea where your precious shirt is.”

Harry drew in three deep breathes. Didn’t help. “Are you seriously still mad at me?”

“Mad? Why should I be mad? I’m never mad at you, darling.”

The word ‘darling’ could not have been more venomous if Voldemort himself had said it. “Look, I’m sorry I couldn’t come all week. It’s just been really busy with preparations for the visit, I – you know how it is, working for the Ministry. But I’ll make it up to you, I swear.”

“Right. You always say that, Potter. You never make good on your word, though.”

Harry was planning to keep it a surprise, but Draco’s tone was really getting dangerous. “Actually, I took next week off. So we could have some time together.”  

“You – what?” He’s never heard Draco literally gasp before. Usually he stuck strictly to scoffs. It was an unexpectedly cute sound.

“Yeah, I just thought… listen, I don’t want to do it like this. You’re at home, yeah?”

“Erm, let me just – “

“In your bedroom?”

“No, it’s – “

Draco shouldn’t have changed his wards if he didn’t want Harry to apparate right in. The look of open shock on his face suggested maybe he really didn’t, but then, Harry could hardly notice his expression. Draco was wearing the shirt – his shirt – and nothing but the shirt. The buttons were open all the way to his very naked hips, and the sleeves were a little too long on his arms. He looked –

“I can explain.” Draco gulped once, twice. “Harry, I can explain.”

It took two whole minutes and immense effort, but Harry managed to unglue his eyes from Draco’s naked body and make them travel up to his adorably flushed cheeks. Damn. Damn that man. Harry’s never felt so smitten in his life, and it really got in the way of how angry he wanted to be right now.

“You don’t know where my shirt is, then?” he asked with a low chuckle, advancing quickly, not unlike a wild animal, to box Draco against the wall. One hand stayed next to his head, but the other lacked the willpower and made its way to touch bare torso, smooth skin, enticing enough to scream. Draco bit his lower lip, which honestly was a dirty move.

“I, er, might know where it is.”

“Well? Explain?”

“It…” Draco closed his eyes and rested his head on the wall, which exposed his ridiculously long neck, another hit below the belt. “It smelled like you.”

Was there really anything Harry could do other than snog him senseless? Yeah. He didn’t think so.

Every day I’ll be posting a single piece of my new one-shot collection, Seven Sins of Drarry (Yep, based on those seven sins - and solely because it seemed like a fun challenge to dabble with!) Today, July 30th, is the first, featuring my humble representation of ‘wrath’. Stay tuned for more! 

Day 2: lust | Day 3: sloth | Day 4: greed | Day 5: gluttony | Day 6: envy |    Day 7: pride

[lubdubsworld]

City Lights . ( Namjoon x OC)

Pairing : OC x Kim Namjoon.

Genre : Angst. Romance.

Rating 18 + 

Word Count : 2900

Warnings :  Mature Themes , Explicit Sexual Content . Slow burn. Like slower than a snail.

Summary :

Widowed and destitute, Son Yang Mi leaves the comfort of her small , secluded  fishing village and travels to the intimidating city of Seoul with her young son. She has a plan, one that involves finding a job, getting her son into a good school and building a life for herself.

Now, three years later she has a job , working as a live in house keeper for the Kim family, specifically for the son,  Kim Namjoon, a famous rapper and producer. 

Its a job that puts a roof over her head and she’ll do anything to keep it. 

But fate has other plans.

Chapter 1 ~

Akogare (ah-koh-ga-reh)Often translated directly as a sort of frustrated “yearning”, “desire”, or “longing” .

Seoul in summer was a sight to behold. I blinked back against the bright sunlight, staring out into the stunning skyline of the city as the sun rose over it , and although it was just a little past seven in the morning, the air was warm and invigorating. The mid July sun shone down with no mercy, and there was no trace of the rain that had lashed city just the previous night.

It had been three whole years but the relief that came from breathing fresh air, untainted by the damp musk of fishing trowels and sweaty men, was still unrivalled.

I shook off the feather duster in my hand, moving to carefully clean the wicker woven chairs on the artificial lawn in the balcony. Dusting the entire condo down was a mind numbing exercise in patience, so i tried to get it out of the way, early in the morning when my son was still asleep.

At six years old, Junsu was a bright , happy child. Summer vacation meant days sleeping in and evenings spent frolicking with the other kids in the building and he was content with being alone in our small shared room, reading or playing with his toys while I went about the day’s work.

I glanced at the clock, grimacing.

It was almost eight . And although Mr. Kim wasn’t due back home for another twelve hours, I felt a little jittery and nervous.

Kim Namjoon , renowned rapper, producer, writer , poet and what not. The apartment was his but he was usually on tour, traveling all over the world to promote his book and to perform in sold out stadiums. For an A list celebrity, he was surprisingly humble.

For the past three years, him and his model fiancée  Lee Mina had spent a total of maybe seven months in the condo. They were a sweet couple, or so I’d always thought , a bit formal with each other but clearly in love . Mr. Kim was a kind, soft spoken young man and I’d never heard him raise his voice unless he was in the company of his very dear friends.

Just a little over a week ago , both of them  had left Korea for the States , the tabloids screaming about a luxurious destination wedding in the Caribbean and I had been asked to take a few weeks off . The newly weds wouldn’t be back for quite a while and they would let me know when I had to come back to the condo.

I’d been toying with the idea of visiting my in laws in Gwangyog, maybe even dropping by to see some old friends there but yesterday , Mr. Kim’s mother had given me a call letting me know her son was coming home. 

[ 

The conversation went something like this :

Yang Mi, I hope you haven’t left yet?

No, Ma'am, I haven’t.

Joon-ah is going to be back tomorrow.

Oh, is Ms Lee arriving as well?

No, Just him He’s going to be alone.

Yes, Ma'am.

Please don’t mention anything about Mina or the wedding.

No ma'am of course not.

I’ll drop by later . Cook him something warm and filling. And make sure the house is cleaned well.

Yes, Ma’ am.

]

And that was that.

~~~~~~

It took the better part of the day to finish cleaning and setting up the house . I washed the window slats, changed the sheets, arranged the books that had been left scattered all over his bedroom. The walk-in closet was littered with a bunch of his clothes and I made sure his gym bag was stocked with fresh towels, spare clothes and his favorite head and wrist bands. 

For someone so careful and calculated, he was really quite a messy man. 

i did his laundry, making sure he had ample clothes at least for another two weeks, creasing the handkerchiefs and carefully removing lint from his jackets. 

I also carefully sorted out the feminine clothing from the laundry and from the cupboard, folding them neatly and placing them in the lowest shelf of the closet, where he wouldn’t find them. It wasn’t hard, hiding traces of his fiancee from the condo, because it had never really been her home. other than a few spare pieces of underwear and a couple of t shirts and skirts, there weren’t many articles of clothing belonging to Ms. Lee. 

But I still got rid of the bobby pins and hair ties, the spare lip gloss and mascara.

Junsu spent the entire day in our room, reading and drawing, only venturing out every few hours to grab a snack. I left him with his drawing tab ( a gift from Mr. Kim for his 5th birthday )  and his favorite book, asking the security guard at the end of the hallway to keep an eye on the door, while i went out to buy groceries.

Lots of meat, no sea food, healthy snacks and high protein fiber bars. I stocked up on sauces and bought a fresh batch of eggs, oranges and grapes . Mrs. Kim had sent a large amount of kimchi a few weeks ago and that was still in the pantry.

i stopped for a second, staring around at the almost deserted store. Most of the other housekeepers shopped at the bigger, more exclusive store on the other side of the residential complex. But Mr. Kim had a very selective palette, which meant that I had to be very particular about the brands i bought.

When i came back home at around six, Junsu was on the floor in the living space and i felt my heart jump in panic.

“Baby!! I’ve told you not to come out here when I’m not home!” I protested bleakly and he pouted.

“I need to show you my gift for Mr. Kim!!” He said softly. I smiled moving to put away the groceries and glancing at the clock. It was a little past six. I had to call Yungyu.

“Did you draw him something ? “ I asked curiously, checking to see if the beer shelf was stocked. probably should have done that before going out for the groceries, I thought regretfully.

“Yeah! Look!!” Junsu held his tab out and my heart dropped.

For a six year old, Junsu drew very well. And there was really no mistaking the very obvious wedding scene on the screen.

Oh, Good God.

“ That looks amazing honey.” I said gently. “ But, I heard that Ms Lee isn’t coming over this time..”

Junsu frowned.

“Why?”

“Well, I’m not sure. But remember how we spoke about saying the right things? When something upsets someone, we do not bring it up.” I reminded him gently. My son hesitated but nodded.

“Okay. I’m sorry. “ He said softly.

“No baby, its not your fault. It’s just that we want Mr. Kim to be happy right? We don’t wanna upset him...”

He smiled at that.

“When he’s happy, his dimples come out.” He said with a giggle. I laughed.

“yes they do... So let’s try and get those dimples out as often as we can alright? Why don’t you show him that picture you drew of yeontan the other day? He’ll really like that....”

“Okay...but i need to go color it!” Junsu yelled, already running back into our room. I watched him go before reaching for the phone and dialing, Yungyu, the chauffeur.

“Are you on the way here? ” i said briskly.

“Just starting from home...” Yungyu muttered, “ I’m supposed to be on vacation now! Why is he coming back so soon?” 

“Just hurry up !! We can’t keep him waiting!!” I said sharply, before hanging up. 

I made a quick check of all the rooms, filling up water bottles for his gym routine in the morning and stashing them in the fridge before moving to get dinner started. 

i set the water on boil for the stew, before moving to peel cucumbers for the salad. I chopped the cucumber , along with some fresh cherry tomatoes . I watched the water boil, thinly slicing an onion and adding it to the bowl as well. The dressing was pretty simple,  soy sauce, rice vinegar, honey and sesame oil . I sprinkled some sesame seeds on the bowl, used the salad tongs to give the whole thing a nice toss and set it aside. 

I braised the chicken first , peeling and chopping potatoes and carrots to add to the stew . In a few minutes, the rich smell of lightly spiced chicken and garlic and perilla  leaves began filling the kitchen and I turned on the rice cooker as well. 

The door bell rang at six forty and i opened the door to reveal Yungyu. 

I grabbed the keys to the Palisade, handing them over to him.

“Did you hear?” He whispered urgently.

I frowned.

“What?”

“They say Mr. Kim called off the wedding!” He whispered, wide eyed. 

I glared at him.

“Who told you that?” i demanded...

“Seojoon from the gate said-”

“Why don’t you ask Seojoon from the gate to mind his own damn business?” I snapped. 

Yungyu looked suitably chastised. i felt a little bad. Yungyu was still young and curiosity was hardly a sin. 

“His flight lands at eight exactly. Hurry okay?” I said with a smile, ruffling his hair.

He brightened, peering over my shoulder into the house.

“Where’s the little one?” He asked curiously.

“ Painting something for Mr. Kim... Go ahead, hurry up.” I shooed him away, locking the door behind him. I fixed a plate of food for Junsu and sent him to eat, before moving to check on the stew. +

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~` 

By the time eight thirty rolled around I had the table set and ready. I washed my face quickly in the small bath attached to our room , making sure I was dressed well. Junsu wasn’t allowed in the main house unless Mr. Kim specifically asked for him and my son usually stayed in. 

Junsu and I stayed in a bedroom , not large by any means but big enough for a queen sized bed, a table and chair for Junsu and small dresser where I kept a comb and a tube of night cream. I stared at my face, licking my lips as I smoothed my hair out. 

I glanced at the bed. 

Junsu was asleep , having dozed off while coloring his picture and I carefully extracted the tab from under his fingers, moving him around to lay on the soft pillows. I tucked him in gently, brushing the hair off his face. 

“In peace , I will lie down to sleep, for You alone will let me rest in safety.” I whispered gently against his forehead, kissing the soft skin. I felt my lips wobble , a debilitating wave of affection flooding me as the sweet scent of my baby, filled my senses.

 I would die for you, I thought fiercely, kissing him again. 

The sound of the front door opening made me jump. 

Swearing, i smoothed the fabric of my skirt, running to the kitchen. 

“Thank you for picking me up Yungyu, I’m sorry you had to cut short on your vacation.” Mr. Kim’s deep voice filled the hallway and I quickly grabbed a glass, filling it with water and placing it on the dinner tray.

“Not a problem, Sir. “ Yungyu’s cheerful voice responded.

“How are you going home?” Mr. Kim asked. 

“I’ll take the bus.”

A pause and then, 

“Here’s some cash. Get a cab.” 

I could hear the relief in Yungyu’s voice as he let out a , “ Thank you sir.” 

I fixed his plate carefully, the bowl of rice, the bowl of chicken stew, and the salad neatly arranged next to the napkin and the chopsticks. I heard him move across the condo, the sound of his suitcases as he wrestled them towards his bedroom and I frowned. Yungyu should’ve have brought those in for him. 

I finished reheating all of the food and carefully carried the dinner tray to the bedroom. 

Mr. Kim’s bedroom was right at the end of the hallway and the door was open. The full length mirror on the opposite wall showed him sitting on the small couch in his room, legs spread and elbows resting on his knees as he ran his fingers through his hair. 

I raised my hand, ready to knock on the wood. 

“Fuck!” He shouted, kicking out at the coffee table with enough force to send the furniture skidding half way across the room. 

I froze in the hallways stunned. 

“You’re such a fucking fool , Namjoon !!” He muttered angrily and I swallowed, turning on my heel and quickly walking back to the kitchen. 

Maybe I ought to wait till he asked for dinner.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He didn’t ask for dinner. 

I stayed sitting on the floor of the kitchen, waiting and lightly dozing as I heard him talk to his parents on the phone. I heard him open the liquor cabinet in his room, the sound of ice sloshing against glass, the sound of whiskey being poured carefully and i sighed. 

I had to get to bed. It was already a little past eleven. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sometime in the night, I woke up sweating.... 

Wondering what woke me up, I blinked groggily, glancing at Junsu. He was still sound asleep. 

Sighing, I climbed out of the bed, carefully making my way to Mr. Kim’s room, peering in carefully. 

He was asleep on the sofa.

I stared at the way his long legs stretched over the armrest, his lean hips twisted to accommodate his broad shoulders on the couch and I winced. He was definitely going to regret that in the morning. 

I stared at the half empty bottle of whiskey on the table and sighed, moving to take off his shoes carefully. He didn’t stir. 

I grabbed a pillow from the bed, carefully lifting his head and slipping it under. I placed a comforter over his shoulders, pulling it down to cover his legs. 

Force of habit almost made me brush his hair off his forehead but I stopped myself. 

The clock on the wall read three fifty am. God, I was going to feel terrible tomorrow. I carefully tip toed out, shutting the door behind me

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I picked the comforter from the floor, carefully folding it and placing it on the bed, before grabbing the empty bottle of whiskey and glass . i could hear the shower running. The curtains were still drawn in and I tugged on the strings to get them to open. Sunlight spilled in through the floor length windows. The bed wasn’t slept in, so I opened the closet to grab a couple of towels, laying them on the bed for him. 

The bathroom door opened and i quickly straightened, wanting to race out of the room but it was too late. Thankfully he was dressed,  a pair of loose sweats and a loose t shirt . He was running a towel through his hair and his face brightened at the sight of me. 

“Yang Mi! You’re here....” He said cheerfully. 

“Good morning sir.” I said softly, offering him a small smile. 

He smiled brightly, hair damp and dimples deep. The white t shirt he had on was almost fully soaked through and he shook his head, sending stray water droplets all over the place, a few landing on my cheeks. 

“I didn’t see you last night...” He said casually, moving to drop the wet towel in the hamper, grabbing one of the fresh ones I’d laid on the bed. 

“I thought you would like your privacy sir, you looked exhausted.” 

He smiled.

“ Thank you for the blanket and the pillow by the way. And the shoes.” 

I bowed quickly.

“I’ll get your breakfast done, sir.” I bowed again before quickly getting out. 

I moved to the kitchen grabbing the oranges I’d got the previous day . Mr. Kim wasn’t fond of traditional korean dishes in the morning. He preferred freshly squeezed juice and toast, sometimes with an omelet perhaps. 

I fixed his breakfast quickly, setting it all in the tray . He was still moving around in the bedroom and I heard him drag his worktable to the windows, which meant he was going to stay in the bedroom. 

Pouring his coffee into a cup, I carefully picked up the breakfast tray , moving to his room slowly. 

I used my foot to knock on the door.

After a pause of a few seconds, 

“Come in Yang Mi!”

I carefully moved to the small table in front of the couch, placing the tray right in front of him. The scent of his body wash, green apple and strawberries, hit me hard. 

“Where’s Junsu?” He asked casually.

“Still asleep sir. It’s Summer so school’s out.” I smiled, grabbing his phone from the table to make space for his tray. 

The phone buzzed just as I was about to place it back down and I blinked.

 Mina calling.......

 I swallowed, not sure what to do, placing the phone down quickly.

“Uh..you have ...” I waved vaguely at the device before bowing again and moving back. 

“close the door on your way out, Yang Mi...” He said gently and I quickly obeyed. 

I moved to the kitchen to grab a cup of coffee for myself. I stayed leaning over the counter and even through the locked door, I could hear him . 

“Just don’t call me Mina...i don’t want to talk about this!!!” 

I swallowed, glancing out of the window again. It was a bright, clear morning. 

A second later, the door to his bedroom slammed open and he stormed out. I watched him from my spot in the kitchen, his fists clenched as he rushed out to the front door.

The door shut behind him and I exhaled. 

Once I as done with my coffee, I moved to his room to clear the breakfast tray. His phone was still on the table.

It began ringing again just as I left the room. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Mrs. Kim.” i said respectfully, bowing . She gave me a short smile.

“Where’s Namjoon? I’ve been calling him for the past hour.” She pushed past me into the house and I bit my lips.

“He went out about an hour ago. He left his phone behind.” I explained.

She stopped, sighing. 

“Fine, I’ll wait for him. “ She moved to sit on the couch, glancing around the room. 

“Should I get you something ma'am?” I asked softly and she smiled.

“Get me a glass of lemonade, Yangmi.” She said brusquely and i nodded, running to the kitchen. 

“Did Mina come over?” She called out as I got the lemons out of the cooler.

“No ma'am.” i replied.

“Did she call?” 

  I remembered the phone ringing, how upset it had made Namjoon, how he had stormed out.

“I don’t know ma'am!” I said softly. 

She nodded.

“Okay. You can leave.” She said quietly. i bowed and went back into the kitchen. 

I peered out of the window as I fixed her a glass , and my eyes fell on a familiar figure, coming back in through the front gate. Even from this distance there was no mistaking the long legs and messy blonde hair. 

I bit my lips, mind racing.

 Mrs Kim and her son had a volatile relationship, to say the least. 

And something told me that Mr. Kim was probably not in the right frame of mind to argue with his mother, now. The man was upset but apparently, neither his mother nor his ex fiancée understood that. instead of giving him space they were hounding him. 

I hesitated for a second  before making a quick decision. 

I grabbed the tray with her lemonade and moved to her quickly.

“Thank you.” She said sharply. “ Turn on the Air Conditioner for me, will you?” 

I fumbled with the remote, grabbing his phone from the table , turning it on before moving to the front door and rushing out. 

I almost ran into him as he came out of the elevator , and i jerked back stumbling a bit to stop myself from crashing into his chest. He let out a , ‘ Whoa, “  his hands reaching out to grip my elbows. 

“Careful. What’s wrong?” He asked gently and I swallowed.

“Your mother’s here.” I said quickly, “ Sir.” 

“Oh, fuck.” He groaned. I swallowed.

“You can leave.” I blurted out. “It’s Tuesday. She has her charity work meeting at ten. Its almost nine. She won’t stay long....” 

His eyes met mine, lips parting in surprise. 

“I really can’t meet her now.” He said apologetically.

I nodded.

“Of course, I understand , sir. Just be back in an hour , she’ll be go-”

The elevator buzzed , the doors nearly closing over my shoulders and I flinched. He swore and stuck his arm out to keep it open. 

I stared at him before holding his phone out.

“Here you go sir. “ 

He chuckled taking it from me and shaking his head.

“i feel like a kid, sneaking away from my mom.” His eyes reached mine, twinkling, “ Who would’ve thought the quiet, timid Yang Mi would be my partner in crime. “ 

I didn’t reply, just smiled. 

And then he hesitated. “ Is Junsu awake?”

I blinked.

“Uh...yes sir,...he’s playing in the park downstairs with the other kids.”

“Great... Would you mind if i take him out for ice cream?”

I stared at him. 

“Oh..uh...of course not. Sure.. I mean.. he’ll love that... Sir. Thank you.. You don’t have to -”

“Consider it thank you for helping me with my mother.” He smiled again and i found myself staring at his dimples again. i swallowed. 

“in that case, he loves butter scotch.” I smiled. 

The dimples appeared and i bit my lips. 

“Thank you Yang Mi.” He said slowly. 

“Yes, Sir.” 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Author’s Note : Finally a hyungline fic !!! ugh... I’ve been wanting to write a Namjoon fic for ages and I really hope you guys will like this one :’( Feedback is much appreciated. 

[aworldinsideaperson]

A Well Kept Secret - George Weasley (Part One)

Word Count: 2.6k

Warnings: Food mentions, talking about food, one night stand (no smut) having a child, getting pregnant, being pregnant,

Summary: A one night stand with George produces a child and a secret.

Trope Series: Secret baby.

A/N: This one is going to be in two parts (possibly three we will have to see) but I just started writing this last night and couldn’t stop so here it is. 

@izzytheninja​ @youto-believein​

It was a chilly evening in the Fall of 1997 when it all started, two lifelong friends meet in a London pub for a drink or two to take the edge off of their worries and fears as war wages around them. A red haired man sat beside a girl He’d known for the last nine years, they were nearly three drinks deep as their fingers brushed. With a soft intake of breath they looked to each other, her eyes wide as she stared up at him; his eyes had trained on hers as his tongue slid over his lips then dropped to her parted lips. That’s when he knew it was over and his life would never be the same. Little did he know how one night of pure bliss with his schoolyard crush would change both their lives in the ways that it did.

It was only one night. It was only supposed to be one night no matter the feeling that had arisen as they kissed on her bed that night and whispered “I love you” in the dark. The world was far too dangerous to start anything more than that one night and so they kept it at that though it was hardly a surprise to anyone when their glances to each other were lingering or their goodbyes just a touch too long. It was eight weeks before Y/N realized something was off.

The missed period. That’s what did it for her. The most obvious of symptoms but now as she looked down at the stick waiting for an answer things fell into place. She was sick to her stomach so often her diet consisted mostly of crackers the last week, she was exhausted though she had chalked it up to the stress of the current situations the suddenness of it started to make sense. Her mind ran through a checklist of symptoms her mother had claimed during her second pregnancy and with each check mark left her mind became more certain and as the timer went off and her eyes focused on the results she wasn’t as shocked as she should have been.

She was having George Weasley’s baby.

With a hand pressed to her stomach her mind raced. The Weasley family were targets, and England wasn’t safe. So with a single letter owled to her parents Y/N was packing her bags and was off to the states.

She settled into a small town in Missouri. Hermann, population now 2,401 with one on the way. With her life’s savings she paid cash from a tiny shack of a house in the center of town and tried to live her muggle life. At only 19 she was receiving dirty and pitying looks alike as he stomach started to grow beneath her waitress uniform.

At 29 weeks pregnant she received the news, a letter from her parents proclaiming the fall of Voldemort and the end of the war, they begged her to come home. As she looked down at her swollen stomach she hesitated and wrote them a single word response. No.

She had planned to return to London, her home for her whole life, but fear continued to stop her. Voldemort was gone, the Weasley family had lived, George had lived, her family was safe, but the thought of showing up so many months later after no words to George frightened her beyond any unforgivable curse. And so she did it alone. She gave birth to their son alone. She held a first birthday alone, and then a second, and a third all alone. Each year as his birthday drew to a close Y/N wondered if she should write to George, if she should tell him of their son, tell him about his big brown eyes and thick red hair; to tell him of all the mischief their three year old caused. And every year she remembered that it was meant to only be one night. The night had been filled with passion and confessions of love but she not only had to worry about rejection for herself but for the small boy that crawled into her bed when the wind was too loud and begged for just one more bedtime story before she turned out the light. He thought his father was gone, that he had loved him and wanted him but that now he was gone. She couldn’t put her son in a position to be rejected. Not by his own father.

And so she stayed. She stayed away from England, away from her family, away from George. Until an owl arrived on her doorstep 2 weeks after Graysen’s third birthday, an envelope at its feet. With a sigh she took the envelope inside and tore into it, inside was an invitation to her sister’s wedding. It read...

Please join us for the wedding of Alexa & Dawson

The First of September, 2001 at six o’clock in the evening

Dawson’s Family Home

Painswick England

Reception to Follow

Also inside the envelope was a letter, a plea from Alexa to come home, to “Bring Graysen and come home. Just a few weeks. Be my maid of honor and let me meet my nephew.” And so, filled with guilt, Y/N booked the plane tickets and a week later the two of them flew to London.

**********

Leaving the safety of the home she had built made Y/N’s blood run cold, on edge every time she left her parents house, every flash of red hair was a Weasley in her mind and every time it wasn’t she’d breathe a sigh of relief. Until the day the air caught in her lungs as a tall red haired man spotted her across the street. Identical to the one that played in her mind all the time.

He raced across the street and threw his arms around her, barely taking notice of the small red haired boy holding tightly to her hand. “Y/N!” He exclaimed. “How long has it been?”

Y/N used her free hand to pat him on the back. “Almost four years, it’s good to see you Freddie.” She pulled away, her eyes darting to her son, standing at her feet looking up at the man with curiosity. It was then that Fred looked down too and in that moment he realized her long kept secret and she knew it.

“And who’s this?” His voice tentative as he looked between her and the boy.

“This is Graysen.” She smiled and crouched down beside him, the two of them now looking up at Fred. “Graysen, this is one of Mummy’s friends from school, can you say hello to Fred?”

With a glint in his eyes a grin spread across his face. “Hello Fred!”

Fred now too crouched down to a closer height. “Well hello to you too Graysen,” Fred held out his hand and Graysen grabbed it. “How old are you?”

Graysen smiled and jumped up and down. “I just turned three in July!”

Fred faked a shocked face. “Three in July? You’re awfully big for three.”

“Mommy said I got it from my Daddy.”

Fred mumbled under his breath. “I bet you did.”

Y/N gave him a smile and picked Graysen up. “Well we best get going, I have to pick up my dress for Alexa’s wedding, it’s in two weeks.”

Fred nodded. “Right, well I’ll let you get back to your errands, but only if you agree to come to dinner at the Burrow tonight. You spent so much time at our house during breaks Mum will be thrilled to see you.”

“Oh Fred I don’t know I wouldn’t want to impose.” She said, shaking her head vigorously.

“You wouldn’t be, you’re invited. Please come, bring Graysen and your partner.” He insisted, looking to the little boy.

Her voice became small, “Actually it’s just Gray and I.”

“All the more reason to come then.” He was certainly persistent on the matter.

Y/N smiled softly at him, “You’re not going to accept no are you?”

He shook his head, “Not this time.”

“I’ll be there, six as usual?”

“Mum does like to keep a tight meal schedule these days.”

“I’ll be there.”

“Perfect.” With that the two parted ways and Y/N regretted coming home.

**********

Fred strolled into the shop, two paper bags in hand, each filled with food from their favorite muggle dinner in London. Walking up to his brother and setting the food on the counter Fred narrowed his eyes at his brother. “George?” He began, “You remember like 4 years ago, there was a night you didn’t come home?”

George turned from his brother as the corners of his lips turned up at the memory.“Yeah, why?”

“Where were you?”

George rolled his eyes and sighed. “I told you before, I’m not telling you, I was safe that’s what matters.”

Fred rolled his eyes too and mumbled under his breath. “I don’t know if you were as safe as you could have been.”

George turned to him in confusion “What do you mean?”

Fred shook his head. “Nothing, just make sure you’re ready to go by six, you know mum doesn’t like us being late.”

**********

At half past five Y/N sat in front of her parents' empty fireplace, Graysen playing on the floor in front of her as a million thoughts raced through her mind, how could she have said yes? How could she have agreed to dinner with the family of her son, a boy they didn’t know existed, that they didn’t know was theirs. She had considered leaving him with her parents but Fred has specifically invited the two of them and so as the clock struck quarter to six she wrapped Graysen up in her arms and the two of them apparated to the Burrow. Placing Graysen on the ground and holding tightly to his hand Y/N knocked on the front door three times.

When the door swung open Molly Weasley stood on the other side, face bright and smiling and she pulled Y/N in for a hug and ushered her into the home.

It was as bright and warm as it had always been, filled with noise and people.

“Who’s this?” Molly asked smiling down at Graysen looking around the magical house in wonder.

“This is Graysen, my son.”

Molly looked at her with wide eyes, “Your son?”

“Yes, he’s why I left the county.”

Molly gave her a smile and placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. “You did the right thing dear, it wasn’t safe.”

“I know, but I should have come back sooner.” Her voice was soft and filled with sadness.

“What’s done is done, now come, we’re all sitting down to dinner.”

Walking into the kitchen felt so normal, she’d taken so many meals here in her youth it felt so natural to take the seat she’d always held, right beside George, though his seat seemed to be empty.

The table filled, Aruther and Molly at the heads, Ginny and Harry, Hermione and Ron, Bill, Fleur, even Percy and his wife had joined the fray tonight but the twin’s seats still remained empty at six oh one when there was a loud crack and the two cackling gingers appeared.

“Sorry we’re late mum, one last customer and all that, you know how it is.” Fred smiled as their laughter died down and they looked to the table.

When their eyes locked the room went silent. Y/N and George just stared at each other, until Graysen pulled on her arm for her attention. That’s when George looked to the small boy beside her and his heart soared then sank. Silently he went to his seat, the one beside Y/N, just as it has always been back when they were younger. Though this time they stayed nearly silent as they filled their plates and ate, Y/N keeping a close eye on the boy next to her as he fed himself small spoonfuls of the concoction he’d made of his plate.

“So Y/N,” Fred spoke. “You introduce Georgie to your son?”

Y/N swallowed and shook her head. “George? This is my son Graysen.”

George leaned around her to get a good look at the boy, the red hair and the big brown eyes, there was no doubt that he was a Weasley. “Hello Graysen, it’s nice to meet you. I’m George.”

With a full spoon still in his mouth Graysen attempted a smile and waved his little hand in George’s direction. The normal conversation resumed and George turned to her and asked. “How old is he?”

“He just turned three.” She stated, her eyes trained closely on her plate.

“He seems like a sweet boy.”

“He is, he’s adorable and an absolute terror at times. His tantrums have been known to shake walls.”

Arthur chuckled, jumping into the conversation. “You know, the twins were like that too when they were young, thought they were going to bring the whole house down once or twice.”

Y/N smiled and stayed silent, the rest of dinner focused entirely on the food in front of her and keeping Gray’s mess contained to his plate. Dinner was cleared and everyone ushered themselves into the living room, Graysen and Victoire sat in the middle of the floor playing, everyone else sat around them on couches and chairs. It was all polite conversation until Fred turned to her with a mischievous smile, the same one his twin got, the same one that Graysen got, the one that indicated a terrible, terrible, idea.

“So Y/N,” Fred began, “Who’s Graysen’s dad?”

Y/N tried to smile but the panic was clear on her face. “Wow, right to the hard hitters.”

“Shouldn’t be a hard question.” His tone flat, no hint of laughter in his voice. And so the interrogation began.

“You don’t know him.”

“Is he a wizard?”

“Yes.”

“Come from a big family?”

“No just him and his one sibling.”

“A twin?”

“No.”

“Parents names?”

“Mark and Anna.”

“What happened to him?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Did he go to hogwarts with us?”

“Yes.”

“Gryffindor?”

“Yes.”

Fred paused his rapid fire and his eyebrows rose. “Really?”

That was when it dawned on her, she’d slipped. There were only four Gryffindor boys their year. Fred knew it wasn’t him, and there was only one other redhead. “Fuck.” Y/N stood up quickly, picking Graysen up in her arms as she walked swiftly toward the door. “I’ve gotta go.”

George stood up after her following the two of them to the door. “Y/N wait!” He shouted but without a second thought a crack filled the air and she was gone.

George stormed back into the room, his eyes full of rage. “I can’t believe you!” He yelled his anger directed at his twin as the rest shuffled from the room.

Fred huffed. “Why are you angry with me? I was just asking questions about his father.” A sly smirk on his face as he leaned back in his chair.

“Because you know it’s me and you pushed her anyway!” George grew more angry by the minute.

“I did that for you! Do you really think she was going to tell you when she’s kept it from you this long already? No!” Fred now stood, face to face with his twin.

George choked on his words, clenching and releasing his fists as he tried not to attack the man before him. After a moment, his breathing calmed and his voice steadied. “That’s not a decision you get to make for her or for me. Now I have to go fix this and I’ll be lucky if she lets me in.” And with that George turned and walked out the door.

[faceless-conspiracy-buff]

As a decorated veteran of at least a dozen schoolyard brawls, Carrie Kelley prided herself on her ability to recognize injuries on sight. She could tell sprains from strains at a glance and was well-versed in all manner of cuts and scrapes. 

But the skill she was most proud of was knowing how old a bruise was by colour alone. Red bruises were minutes old. Purple bruises had been around a couple hours. Yellow bruises were about a week old and brown bruises were on their way toward disappearing.  

The bruise below Ms. Bertinelli’s eye was the same indigo as her blouse. 

Though it had been obscured with a liberal amount of foundation, it was clear to Carrie that something wasn’t right.

Someone had punched her teacher. And recently, too. 

The only question that remained was why.

Carrie leaned back in her seat. “So whaddya think?” she whispered to the boys sitting behind her.

Matt Sprang looked up from his notebook, wearing an expression that was normally reserved for animals caught in oncoming traffic. “About what?” he asked, blinking rapidly.

Typical Matt.

Carrie jerked her head in Ms. Bertinelli’s direction.

Matt let out a little ‘oh’ before glancing at the boy in the next desk over.

Nick Colan studied the teacher’s face. “Definitely a mugging,” he replied after a moment of careful consideration.

Carrie frowned. “How d’ya figure?”

Nick gave her a pointed look. “This is Gotham, Carrie. Name someone who hasn’t been mugged around here.”

“Uh, Julie Schwartz, Frankie Miller, you—”

“Only because we’ve all got eight o’clock curfews!” Nick protested.

“My point is that it’s not as common as you’d think.”

Nick folded his arms. “Alright, Brainiac,” he sneered, “if you’re so smart, then you tell me where she got that shiner.”

“Maybe her boyfriend beats her,” Matt suggested darkly.

Carrie’s fist tightened around her mechanical pencil. “Bull,” she spat. “I’ve met her boyfriend. He’s that Hub City TV guy.”

“Vic Stone, right?”

“Vic Stone’s the football player, you dope. I’m talking about Vic Sage.”

“Isn’t he the one who’s always yelling about the government on the evening news?” asked Nick.

“What’s that got to do with anything?” Carrie retorted.

Nick raised his hands in a gesture that was half-shrug, half-surrender. “I’m just saying, maybe Matt’s onto something. If it wasn’t a mugging—”

“He’s not beating her.”

“Then what do you think’s going on?” 

“Yes, Carrie,” said Ms. Bertinelli. “Tell us what you think is going on, since evidently it’s more important than the works of William Shakespeare.”

Carrie went hot all over. This was hardly the first time she had been called out for talking in class, but it was certainly the first time Ms. Bertinelli had ever done so. And while Ms. Bertinelli wasn’t particularly intimidating in and of herself, something in her eyes told Carrie that if she said anything untoward, she wouldn’t live long enough to regret it.

“Well...” Carrie began, “I saw that you had a... a, uh...” Her hand hovered over her cheek, mirroring Ms. Bertinelli’s disfigurement, as she fumbled for the right word.

“A bruise?” the teacher offered.

Carrie nodded sheepishly.

Ms. Bertinelli pinched the bridge of her nose and drew in a long, tired breath. “If you had been paying attention at the beginning of the lesson, you’d know this is nothing to be concerned about.”

“It’s not?” Carrie squeaked. 

“Not unless you think contact sports are worth worrying about.”

“Contact sports?”

“As I told your classmates, my lacrosse league can get a little... rowdy, but it’s nothing I can’t handle.” She paused to take in Carrie’s incredulous expression before turning to face the whiteboard. “Now, if there are no further questions, let’s return to Julius Caesar, shall we?”

Cheeks still burning, Carrie lowered her head and reached for her book, only to find that a yellow post-it note had been affixed to the cover.

She’s lying, it read, in an untidy scrawl that could only have been Matt’s.

Carrie scoffed.

Obviously, she wrote back, balling the note up and flinging over her shoulder. A quiet ‘thud’ told her it had landed on his desk.

A moment later, the crumpled piece of paper returned, this time bearing a new message: You never told us where YOU thought the bruise came from.

It’s stupid, Carrie replied. You don’t want to hear it.

Try me. 

Carrie stared at this note for the better part of a minute. Eventually, she smoothed the paper out, clicked her mechanical pencil and composed her response:

I think Ms. Bertinelli’s a superhero.

[fanfic-collection]

Loki x Reader: Apocalypse ch 3

As promised, please comment/like/reblog, anything

rebel4fandom

-

You begrudgingly left the warmth of your apartment. Thinking of Tony, and his friends that you had known, you knew you were able to do more than just huddle in the warmth of your living space.

The next several hours passed with you stomping through the halls, pounding on doors and seeing if anyone was still inside your building. To your relief, it was empty.

So, bracing against the bitter winds, you stepped outside and into the street, making your way to the next building over. Thus, you continued the process. Eventually, you found a small family, hunkered down in their family room. You pleaded for them to go to one of the shelters and with much persuasion and assurance that Tony Stark thought it was the right thing to do. The Avengers all supported it, after all, you convinced them to bundle up and follow you to brace the cold.

The trek to the shelter was long and arduous. You helped keep the weaker members of the family upright, blocking them from the buffeting wind that whipped through the city streets among the skyscrapers. Abandoned cars lined the streets, some with doors left open and snow piling up inside.

It seemed the snow had stopped today, but the wind still whipped up the snow into flurries, creating near white out conditions. You had your face bundled and had managed to scavenge ski goggles but the people you led were not nearly as lucky, you knew some of them were following you blindly. Some of them were stumbling over garbage, fire hydrants, city decorations, and objects you prayed were not dead bodies.

When at last you finally reached the shelter, the people running the shelter thanked you with a warm drink. They were grateful for more living people, but you knew it was filled to capacity and more mouths to feed meant less supplies for everyone else.

The number of living residents you found each day was quickly dwindling, it was only a week in.

Today as you sat inside the shelter, warming up from your trek, you saw another rescuer leading victims in. The Black Widow herself.

“I’m used to Russian winters but damn.” She said stamping her feet in the entrance to the area, her teeth rattling. “Alright it’s been years, but still.” She was shouting over the howl of the wind.

They ushered her inside, closer to where you were sitting with your mug of hot water.

“Hey, aren’t you Stark’s, uh?”

“Cousin or something, yea.” You nodded, telling her your name and holding your hand out to introduce yourself.

“I remember seeing you around the tower and the compound occasionally.” Natasha nodded, “Nice to see a familiar face.” She smiled at you, lowering her scarf and raising her goggles. “Feel like I’m going to have to crawl into a dead tauntaun out there or something.”

“Star Wars?” You laughed.

She shrugged with a grin. “Hey, anything to stay warm. I don’t really see much of anyone these days, we’re spread out so much trying to see how many people we can save around the world while we have the big guns figuring out what’s causing this.”

“Dr. Strange?”

“Yea, without his infinity stone, he’s a lot weaker.”

You nodded, “Shame about that.”

“I’m not complaining too much.” Nat chuckled weakly.

“Fair point.”

Natasha stretched her arms, “Even this bitter cold reminds me I’m alive.”

“We’re all glad you are.”

“There’s quite a few people that are alive again after that blip that we thought would stay dead.” Natasha said thoughtfully.

You nodded, “Yea, it’s weird how some of our biggest enemies became our friends too. Like what’s his name, Peter Quill? He was enemies with that Nebula girl, and then she became their closest ally, and Gamora vanished but, actually I’m not sure how that worked.”

Natasha shook her head, “Yea, you’d have to ask them.” She tapped her chin thoughtfully, “Although, when Thor said his brother sacrificed himself to stop the initial invasion of Thanos?”

You smiled, “I remember him being here for a bit, right?”

Natasha paused then slowly drew out the word, “Yes… He was, wasn’t he?”

“He came here to recover, Asgard didn’t want him, but they gave the Avengers the means to heal him.”

“Just the initial healing, once he could stand, he went back to Asgard. Right?”

“Yea, I talked with him a bit. He really wasn’t what people made him out to be.”

Natasha raised her eyebrow. “Tell that to Clint.”

“I’m not saying Clint shouldn’t hate him, I’m just saying, Loki well, he doesn’t have a silver spoon up his ass like I thought he did.”

Nat quirked her head.

“Some master spy, you think you’d interrogate him and get more out of him. Honestly you seemed to only get what you wanted out of him when you interrogated him.”

“Oh he definitely got in your head, what did he do to you?”

“Nothing!” You held up your hands, “I’m all me. I just, it seems kinda convenient that he talked only about the Hulk and the one thing he gets you to think about is the Hulk. Hardly seems like a stretch that you would draw a conclusion that his plan was about the Hulk.”

Natasha frowned and furrowed her brow, “Are you saying we shouldn’t have trusted Loki and not let them take him back to Asgard and should have kept him weak and in chains?”

You scrambled upright from your relaxed position. “No, no, no! I just, I kept thinking about the interrogation tapes and it seemed really bad spy work.”

Natasha huffed.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t…”

“I’m going to go look for others, maybe my shoddy work will help elsewhere.” Natasha set down her warm drink and she stalked off.

One of the nearby workers looked at you and shook their head. “Smooth.”

You scowled at them. Downing the last of your drink that it almost scalded your throat, you slammed it on the table and walked out after Natasha, sure to walk in another direction.

-

When the sun started to get lower in the sky, you hurried back to your apartment. There was no chance of risking being out at night. Any exposure in the dark would be instant hypothermia. Being alone at night was instant death. Thankfully it was still July so the days were longer, and you had more time to get back to your home, but you did not risk any amount of time in the dark.

Getting back to your home you settled back into bed, trying to thaw out and shiver yourself back to life. The heat croaked to life and you looked at the supplies you had collected to sustain yourself. It wasn’t much, but it would keep you going.

Swallowing hard, you turned on the TV and waited to see what news might bring.

A man was being interviewed, some sort of wild animal attack. No. Something else. You recognized Falcon on TV, the new Captain America. He was trying to talk to a survivor in a med unit. The survivor was near catatonic, covered in frost bite and mumbling in horror.

“Get the camera away from him, he’s not gonna talk if you keep shoving that thing in his face.” Sam grumbled.

The camera pulled away but the mic stayed close to Sam.

“Listen, just tell me what happened. Please, this isn’t the first attack, but you’re our first survivor. We need to know what’s happening. You’re ok, I’m Captain America, Falcon, call me Sam, whatever you want, I’m here and I’ll protect you.” Sam bent down and took their bandaged hand in his.

The man stared at Sam blankly, eyes staring into the distance, “They-they,” He stammered, “it… them… those things… they killed my whole family.”

Sam nodded, “I’m so sorry for your loss. Please, anything you remember, what they look like, sound like, anything.”

The man whispered, “Monsters.”

A roar of protests exploded as the press filling the room rushed forward trying to press microphones at Sam and the victim.

You could see the look of exasperation in Sam’s eyes at the press as the victim succumbed to exhaustion, or pain, though you were thankful the heart monitor showed him alive.

Abruptly a gold sparkling circle appeared in the room and the media jumped back in fright. A man you recognized as Dr. Strange stepped out.

“I’m a doctor.” Strange announced. “I’ll be taking over this case.”

Sam rolled his eyes.

“Everyone out.” Strange dragged out the ‘e’ in everyone.

And then the camera was in a hospital lobby. And you realized you were on your knees in bed, leaning towards the TV trying to know what had just happened, completely bewildered and about a hundred times more frightened.

More than just the cold was killing people?

[ollieofthebeholder]

leaves too high to touch (roots too strong to fall): a TMA fic

Read from the beginning on Tumblr | Also on AO3

Chapter 58: Jon Prime

Eleven months. Eleven months since Jon had come back in time, since he’d knocked on Tim’s door, since he’d had Martin in his arms again. Eleven months of regrouping, of planning, of worrying and fearing and hoping in equal measures. Eleven months, almost to the day, to the minute. All of it leading to this.

It was worth it for the look on Elias’s face when he spun around to face him.

In the entire time Jon had worked for the Institute, and especially since taking the Archivist position, he had never once seen Elias anything but calmly, coolly, smugly in control. Occasionally angry, although he’d more heard that than seen it when he listened to the tapes much later, but still, whatever emotions he might have been feeling, his bearing had always suggested that he held the upper hand and knew it. Now, though, there was none of that in his expression. For the first time Jon had ever seen, Elias Bouchard looked as though the situation had got away from him somewhat. His eyes—Jonah’s eyes—were wide with alarm, his jaw was slack, and even if he didn’t look afraid—yet—he was definitely at the very least taken aback. It was a start.

“Jon? What are you doing here?” he demanded. “You should be—” He stopped and inhaled sharply as he scanned Jon’s face, probably noticing the worm scars if not how much more grey was in his hair than his counterpart’s. “You’re not Jon.”

“Oh, but I am,” Jon replied. He was keeping his powers in check, but barely; he could feel the static building in his veins, thrumming and crackling like electricity through a power grid, and while he wanted to unleash it on the man before him, he couldn’t just yet. It was too much of a risk with Martin so close. “Just not the Jon you think I am.”

“What—no.” Jonah—there was no doubt it was Jonah Magnus regarding him now—turned pale. “You’re not—no. How can this be? Tell me!”

Jon tsked. “That was never your gift, Jonah. Compelling people. The Eye gave you the ability to pry, to pluck secrets out of heads and put secrets in…but you don’t get to ask for them, do you? You are no Archivist.”

There was definitely a part of him that was enjoying this more than he should. It wasn’t the power over Jonah he thrilled to—he’d never been the megalomaniac sort—but he definitely relished not being the one at a disadvantage for once. He’d spent years as little more than a pawn in Jonah’s game, and it was refreshing to be, if not a queen, at the very least a knight. It was satisfying more than anything.

But satisfaction wasn’t the goal. Victory was.

Jonah pulled himself together and drew himself up. Jon had to give him some credit—it obviously cost him a good deal of effort, both mental and physical. Martin had thrown him for a loop, probably several times, and then Jon had appeared from behind and totally disorientated him. Beyond that, Jon had seen, when he crept up behind him, the large dark stain surrounding the tear on the back of his usually immaculate charcoal suit. Melanie may have only pretended to actually try and kill him, but she’d certainly done a number on him anyway.

“Jon, I do not have time for these games,” he began.

“On the contrary. We have all the time in the world.” Jon took a half-step back and to the side, away from both the soft part in the wall that led, more or less, to the Institute and the tunnel where Sasha and Melanie had secreted themselves.

As he’d hoped, Jonah took the bait, taking a full step towards him and away from Martin. He had two inches on Jon and obviously intended to use them to the utmost effect in an attempt to intimidate and cow Jon. It was the same thing he’d done after the Apocalypse, when he’d stood over Jon and belittled him,  making him shrink in on himself and bow under the weight of his own folly and shortcomings, highlighted all the places where it had been Jon’s decisions that led to that point.

Things were different now. Jon knew himself, he knew what his capabilities were as well as his limitations. And just as importantly, he had the evidence of his own eyes when he looked at Past Jon. Yes, Jon had made choices that led to the Apocalypse, but they’d been made with the limited information he had—information that had been limited because of Jonah. When he had all the data, he made much better decisions. Knowing, as they said, was half the battle.

In this case, perhaps, Knowing was all the battle.

Jon spared a quick glance for Martin. His smirk was almost a match for Jon’s own, and his eyes sparkled in a way Jon hadn’t seen in a long time. He stood tall and confident, shoulders squared and chin raised, and he still had a tight grip on the knife Melanie had pressed into his hand. He was also still far too close to Jon and Jonah, and not near enough to where he needed to be.

“Martin, get back. I don’t want you getting hurt,” he told him.

“Really, Jon, I don’t know what you think is going to happen,” Jonah said stiffly. “Whatever the issue is, we can settle it like gentlemen.”

“Ha!” Melanie’s disgusted laugh floated from the side. Jon looked over quickly to see her and Sasha crouched right in the entrance of the tunnel they’d found him in, arms linked tightly. Melanie’s other hand had a death grip on the rough stone of the tunnel’s arch. Jon knew exactly why. He’d heard the near-ethereal music, too, followed it down the tunnel, and realized the stone was ringing faintly with the tune from Denikin’s Calliophone, as though it were one of the pipes of the organ. If Sasha and Melanie hadn’t tumbled into him and told him they were ready for him, there was no telling how far he might have gone. Or how lost he might have been.

Something flickered over Martin’s face, but he did as Jon requested, taking three careful steps backwards until his heels hit the edge of the tower at the center of the Panopticon. He reached out with his free hand and steadied himself against it, then nodded once.

Jon stole another half-pace backwards, luring Jonah a little farther away from the others. “Settle this like gentlemen? You must be joking. What exactly do you think is going to happen? That you’re going to convince me to—to walk away from this? To just let it go?”

“You walked away from the Unknowing,” Jonah said tartly. “You left Tim alone to it with two people who, I am sure, could not possibly care less whether he lives or dies. And despite this—” He ran his eye over Jon’s face disdainfully. “—this getup, we both know that you walked away from Jane Prentiss and left Martin alone to her.”

Oh. That was a low blow. Jon stiffened, his rage nearly choking him. Despite knowing that it wasn’t true—that it hadn’t been true in either timeline—just the fact that Jonah would look him in the eye and even imply that he was the sort to abandon his people was enough to leave him momentarily speechless. And the fact that Jonah believed, or pretended to believe, that Jon would abandon Martin of all people…

He was about to explode, to start yelling, to reach out and strangle Jonah Magnus with his bare hands, when Martin started laughing. It was somewhere between the way he’d laughed when Jon had floated the idea of gouging their eyes out and running away together and the way he’d laughed when they’d been playing I Spy in the tombs. He sounded both incredulous and amused.

“You still have no idea, do you?” he said. “You still think you know what’s going on. This must really be embarrassing for you. Having to wait for an explanation.”

It was the last word that did it for Jon, grounding him and enabling him to recenter himself. Even if Martin’s voice hadn’t been enough, the reminder was. Once upon a time that no longer was, Jonah Magnus had forced Jon to monologue for him, forced him to recite his deeds and his plan before using him as a tool to trigger the end of the world. He had manipulated Jon at every turn, and then manipulated him once more at the end. And that was exactly what he was trying to do here. He was trying to goad Jon into doing something rash, into lashing out at him and tipping his hand too far.

He still thought he could win.

Jon didn’t take a deep breath; he wouldn’t give Jonah the satisfaction of knowing he’d rattled him. But he did square his shoulders and let his lips curl into a sneer. “I know you can’t look into my head, Jonah. But can’t you guess? Even if your master won’t give you the answers, can’t you even attempt to figure them out on your own?”

Anger flashed in Jonah’s cold grey eyes, and Jon knew he’d scored another point. There would be no grading of this exam—it was strictly pass/fail—but the more he could build things up on his side, the easier it would be. He hoped. “Don’t prevaricate, Jon. This is hardly the time. Either tell me what you think you are doing, or allow me to get back to watching the people you should be watching.”

“The Jonathan Sims you employ is at the Unknowing,” Jon told him coldly. “Along with the Martin Blackwood you employ. I was that Jonathan Sims, once, but not now. I am from the future, Jonah Magnus. A future that is not and will never be.”

“If you are trying to make a joke—”

Jon ran the backs of two fingers over his cheek, indicating the worm scars. “Jane Prentiss, twenty-sixth July, 2016.” He touched his side. “The Distortion, otherwise known as Michael, second October, 2016.” He held out his right hand, palm outward, and notched another point in his credit when Jonah flinched, almost imperceptibly. “Jude Perry, twenty-fourth April, 2017.”

Jonah’s eyes widened—and then, not entirely to Jon’s surprise, a slow smile crossed his face. “The Corruption, the Spiral, the Desolation. And that scar at your throat—yes, I saw that. The Slaughter?”

“The Hunt. Daisy Tonner, twenty-eighth April, 2017.” Jon pulled aside the collar of Martin’s sweater—not the green one he’d worn since Martin wrapped him in it for comfort after he ended the world or the soft blue one that Martin wore more often than any other because Jon had complimented him on it without thinking long before either of them knew they would end up together, but the slightly lopsided red one that was Jon’s new favorite, because it was the one Martin had patiently worked on while Jon read statements to feed himself, the one that was proof he didn’t really need to be able to see to knit. “This is the Slaughter. Melanie King, twenty-fifth February, 2018.” He let the collar fall back into place and smoothed it out carefully. “The others don’t show.”

“But you have them all.” Jonah’s smile broadened. “It worked. The ritual was a success, and you came back…thinking you could stop me.”

“Well done, Jonah,” Jon said, in the same voice one might otherwise use with a child who had successfully tied his own shoes for the first time. “That’s all absolutely correct.”

“Oh, Jon.” Jonah’s voice took on an almost pitying tone. “And you thought telling me that would mean…what, exactly? You think it won’t work now? That you’ve warned your—counterpart, and now he can escape it? He has three marks already, at least.”

Behind Jonah’s shoulder, Martin silently held up his free hand, displaying all five fingers. Jon swallowed down the bile that rose in his throat as he realized Martin was right. Apart from the two he’d had before they arrived—the Web and the Eye—and being stabbed by and later traveling through the halls of the Distortion, Past Jon had been kidnapped and essentially tortured by the Stranger, and his encounter with Julia and Trevor in America was probably enough to give him a mark from the Hunt.

“And even if he escapes,” Jonah continued, oblivious to what was going on behind him, “there are still the others. Even knowing, it’s unavoidable, Jon. Fear comes for us all, in whatever guise it wishes, and the Institute is a lure many of them cannot resist. They will be marked, and when they are—”

“No,” Jon interrupted, and this time he let the static crackle through his voice. “They may be marked, Jonah Magnus, but it will not be to your advantage. This ends here.”

Jonah sneered, but Jon had already seen the flash of fear in his eyes. “You think you’ve learned enough to stop me? I have two hundred years of experience and Knowledge. What do you bring to the table? A few tricks? This cheap attempt at intimidation? You cannot overpower me, Jon. Not now when I can see my triumph within my grasp. Thwart me, and I will simply find another.”

“Oh, no.” Jon took another diagonal step, turning his shoulders as he did so; as he expected, Jonah followed him. “There will be no one else. Not from you. Never again.”

“How, exactly, do you intend to stop me?” Jonah demanded, drawing himself up.

Jon snorted. “I had considered taking you out the way you took out one of the others. I considered shooting you. Like you did to Gertrude.” He swallowed hard. “And Martin.”

“I never—ah.” Jonah’s unpleasant smile smeared across his face again. “Yes, I suppose that would be quite effective in slowing you down, wouldn’t it? If I were to—take him out, shall we say?” He slipped one hand under his jacket.

“You don’t have it with you,” Jon said with contempt. “I don’t even need the Eye to know that. If you had brought your gun, you wouldn’t have bothered trying to get into Martin’s head. Not once you were down here. After all…” He waved one hand around the room. “Who would be here to witness? Only the Eye.”

“Perhaps I think he’s too useful to kill,” Jonah said.

Jon curled one hand into a fist and fought back the anger and nausea the way Jonah’s voice curled around the word useful brought up. He had to keep it together. Had to keep this going. “I could have beaten you to death, too. Like you did Jurgen Leitner. And framed me for.”

Again he took a half-step back, rotating slightly this time, and again Jonah followed. Jon glanced at Sasha, her eyes glittering with excitement and interest even from that distance, and raised his eyebrows in silent question. She nodded once. Jon blinked his acknowledgment and swiftly returned his gaze to Jonah. He’d managed it right. He now had the tunnel to the Institute at his back and the Panopticon at his front. He was directly between the two access points for the Beholder. He had Jonah exactly where he wanted him.

“Jurgen Leitner?” Jonah repeated. “That pompous ass?”

Martin and Melanie’s snorts were nearly identical. Jon didn’t bother to repress his smirk. “He’s living in those tunnels, you know. Has been for years. He used to help Gertrude out, too. He was going to tell me some of those details you thought my counterpart didn’t know, and I wasn’t knowledgeable enough to shield my thoughts enough that you didn’t know I was talking to someone. You slipped in while I was out of my office, tormented him the same way you did Gertrude, and beat him to death with a length of pipe. Left the body there. Of course Daisy thought I’d done it.”

“It would have been quite difficult for me to use you if you were in prison.”

“Oh, you made it clear that you didn’t actually think I’d done it. But you certainly brought me to Daisy’s attention. Dangled me in front of her. You knew she would come after me eventually, knew it would mark me. You used her as much as you used the rest of us, long before she joined the Institute.” Jon met Jonah’s eyes. It was far easier than it had ever been before. “Never again, Jonah. I will never allow you to use anyone for your evil purpose again. You don’t deserve the power you want to wield.”

“You could join me, you know,” Jonah offered.

Jon almost choked. “What?”

“Join me,” Jonah said again, and if Jon thought for a minute that Elias Bouchard was the type, he’d have expected the next sentence to be something along the lines of Together we can rule the galaxy as father and son. “You’ve seen the world, Jon. The world we created, in your time. You know how very beautiful it can be. Rulers together of a forsaken world. Overseers of all. Imagine it. You could choose who lived and died. Control how much suffering was inflicted on those who suffered. You know what that fear feels like when it flows through you…imagine controlling it, drinking the whole world. I know you wouldn’t be here if you had had that power. You would never have wanted to leave it.” He spread his hands out invitingly towards Jon. “We would live forever. Imagine it, Jon. It would be so easy, and so rewarding. All you need to do…is say the words.”

Martin’s face went white as a sheet. Those freckles that hadn’t been bleached to pale shadows by the Lonely stood out clearer than Jon had seen them in ages, and his lips parted slightly. The naked fear in his sightless eyes was almost physically painful. He was scared, worse than he’d been in a long time.

And something seemed to tighten around Jon’s wrist.

Martin knew Jon better than anybody in the universe, maybe better than Jon even knew himself. He knew how close to the edge Jon had been at times, how close he’d come to succumbing to the Eye and becoming its conduit. How hard Jon had fought to keep from becoming like Jude Perry, like Mike Crew, like Jared Hopworth. And he knew just how hard Jon was tempted at times to give in, how much Jon wanted to know what would happen if he did. How tired he got sometimes of the constant daily struggle. He alone, out of anybody, knew that there was a part of Jon that wanted to say yes.

But not enough of one. Not nearly enough of one. There was no temptation in the world strong enough to lure him away from Martin, nothing in the universe he wanted more than to spend whatever time he was granted with the man he loved. Martin had promised to kill him if he ever came close to agreeing to what Jonah was proposing, and Jon had sworn to himself then and there that he would never force Martin to make that call. He knew that Martin would never be able to live with himself if he did. And Jon loved him too much to hurt him that way if there was any other option.

But Martin couldn’t see his face. For all he knew, Jon was seriously considering the offer. Jon would have to reassure him.

“If you think,” he said, “for one moment that I would agree to that knowing what it would mean, you’re an even bigger idiot than I thought you were. And that, Jonah Magnus, is saying something.”

Martin drew in a sharp breath and closed his eyes for a brief moment, then seemed to relax. Jonah’s smile melted away. He opened his mouth to say something. Jon didn’t give him the chance. “I have seen your ‘forsaken world’, and I have seen what it cost everyone who lived in it. I have felt the pain and suffering of those within it, and I know that there is no one, Watched or Watcher, who escaped that pain and suffering. Even those who thought they wanted it, in the end, found they did not. Even you would have learned that, sooner or later.” He narrowed his eyes at Jonah. “And I would sooner gouge my own eyes out, here and now, than share any kind of power with you.”

Jon again saw the cold, pale fury in Jonah’s eyes that he had last seen when Martin defied him after the Apocalypse, but this time it didn’t go away. “That can be arranged.”

“I don’t think so.” Jon felt the static building up again, and this time, he didn’t try to hold it back. “Your time has come.”

Power thrummed through his veins. It was the way he’d felt when facing down the Not-Them both times, when he’d struck down Jared Hopworth, when he’d caught hold of Helen’s lie, but somehow it was stronger. Again he felt that tightening around his wrist, and he could feel a power flowing through that as well, fueling him, giving him strength and courage.

“For two hundred years, you have sat atop your ivory tower and pretended to rule,” he said. The words came easily, leading Jon to wonder if he was saying them or the Ceaseless Watcher was. “You have set yourself up as a god among men, and you have believed yourself to be untouchable. You have manipulated and pulled and lured, and through it all, you have believed yourself to be endearing yourself to your master. But It Knows You, and it Knows that it is not fear you have feasted on all these years, merely power over others. You have desired only your own ends and served no one but yourself.”

He was aware of an echo to his voice, as though someone else was speaking the words with him. At first he thought it was just that, an echo, or maybe the Beholder resonating through him, but he recognized the second voice for what it was at about the same moment Jonah’s eyes widened, and the fear in them wasn’t fleeting. It was Gertrude Robinson’s voice joining Jon’s, maybe prompting him, maybe lending her power to his. Maybe it was just a manifestation of his power after all, enhancing Jonah’s fear.

Jon could taste that fear. It was exhilarating and intoxicating. Whatever was around his wrist seemed to tighten further, reminding him that it was there, reminding him of what he was trying to do. Keeping him grounded. In that instant, Jon recognized it as a manifestation of his bond to Martin, the one Annabelle Cane had enhanced, and it gave him a renewed sense of conviction.

“Two hundred years of pain and death and misery,” he continued, “and all of it spent running from your own fears. Know now that Fear has come for you, Jonah Magnus. You cannot escape it and you cannot run from it.”

“No—no—no,” Jonah gasped, backing away from Jon, or trying to. “J-Jon, please—”

“For our Tim,” Jon snarled, and Gertrude Robinson’s voice and all their combined power joined in with him. “For our Sasha, and for Gertrude Robinson, and for all the others you have killed and trapped and harmed. For my Martin. For every life you took, every dream you destroyed, every ounce of pain and fear you inflicted on others—let it all be turned back on you tenfold. Feel it all, and for the first time in your life, Jonah Magnus, you will truly Know.”

“Jon—please—I don’t want to die,” Jonah begged.

“Neither did they.” Jon raised his voice and felt his hair stand on end. “Ceaseless Watcher, turn your gaze upon this miserable, pathetic, wretched thing!”

The light in the room flashed as though struck by lightning, but a brilliant, blazing green, coming from both directions and centered directly on Jonah Magnus, who began to scream. Jon felt the fear slam into him, filling him near to bursting, thrumming through his veins and body like he’d simultaneously grabbed hold of a live electrical wire and tried to drink from a fire hose like a straw. Either Elias Bouchard’s body was shrinking or Jon had grown, or perhaps he was merely floating above the floor, but whatever the case, he was now looking down on the man from above.

In the exact same instant, Martin lunged forward and, with a roar of satisfaction and an accuracy that Jon Knew would not have been possible without their bond, drove the knife with both hands into the heart of Jonah Magnus’s body.

Elias’s scream rose to a fever pitch, joined by more voices—six, if Jon was any judge: the screams of the other five men Jonah Magnus murdered to extend his life, and the scream of the original Jonah Magnus himself, a dry, dusty sort of scream, desperate and frightened and pained. The green light flared up and filled the room in a blinding, soundless explosion—

—and then, suddenly, it was gone, leaving a vacuum of silence and the ruins of a prison guard tower.

Jon’s feet hit the ground—so he had been floating after all—and he stumbled slightly. Where Elias Bouchard had been, there was nothing but a scorch mark on the stone, and Martin was half-kneeling in the center of the guard tower, knife still in hand, but nothing remaining of Jonah Magnus’s original body but a scattering of dust.

Martin blinked twice, dropped the knife, and got to his feet, turning unerringly in Jon’s direction. “Jon?” he called.

“Martin,” Jon choked out. He reached out his hands desperately for Martin, wanting to hold him close, to tell him they’d done it, that they were safe, that it was over, that it had worked. That Jonah Magnus was dead and would never harm anyone else again. That they had won.

That he loved him, so very, very much.

He made it no more than a couple of steps before his strength failed him and he pitched forward, gasping. Two strong arms caught him and pulled him close. The last thing Jon heard was Martin desperately, frantically screaming his name.

And then everything went black.

[merihn]

For the first sentence ask, pairing is Rukebox: " You have superpowers?" Julie screeched, Luke standing frozen above her, holding up the remains of the concrete wall with no effort, while Reggie clung tightly to her, the scent of smoke still drifting off his leather jacket.

"You have superpowers?" Julie screeched, Luke standing frozen above her, holding up the remains of the concrete wall with no effort, while Reggie clung tightly to her, the scent of smoke still drifting off his leather jacket.

Luke bared his teeth in a poor facsimile of a smile, his eyes darting away from hers, then seemed to remember he was still holding the wall, and tossed it away and clasped his hands behind his back as if he hadn't done anything.

"Uhhh," Reggie squeaked, pulling away from Julie and staring at Luke with wild eyes, and Julie could hardly believe that just before he grabbed her he was made entirely of flames, though perhaps the red of his cheeks should have given her a clue, "Yes? We were going to tell you, I swear. It just never seemed like the right time!"

And ok, she can understand that, can understand how easy it is to say that you shouldn't keep secrets from people you care about, but the reality is that secrets revealed can break a friendship just as completely as hiding them can.

"Things always change when people find out," Luke said, crouching down next to Reggie and pulling him into a comforting hug, "and we didn't want that with you."

"Things are always changing," Julie murmured, unable to stop her eyes roving over the two of them, wondering how she'd never noticed and of the little hints, wondering if she was so blinded by her attraction that she never really knew anything about them at all.

"That's true." Luke's quiet words drew her eyes from Reggie's pale throat, and suddenly she could see that they weren't hiding anything from her, they were just waiting patiently for her to see; she reached out to take the hands they extended to her, let them fold her into their embrace and found that she didn't want to hide anything from them ever again.

Send me a pairing and a sentence and I'll write 5 more sentences.

[littlemissaddict]

New Years Kiss

Summary: Julie and Luke meet at a ski resort and their relationship grows. (Requested)

Word Count: 3K

Julie shivered as she got out of the car, pulling her coat tighter around her as the snow fell, she walked to meet her dad at the trunk helping him get their luggage out. It was still early but the sky was dark, probably because of the snow clouds she thought as they made their way up to the entrance of the winter resort that they were staying at for the week meaning that they would be here for New Years. Julie didn’t really want to spend it at home because it would because it would be the first year without her mom and Christmas at home was tough enough without her so she hoped the change of scenery would ease the pain slightly.

She stood in the lobby with Carlos while her dad checked them in and got their room keys. Looking at Carlos she realised he was on his phone, she knew she wouldn’t get anything out of him while they waited so she let her eyes wander around the room seeing lots of other families like themselves just arriving and others who were dressed in winter gear heading out, she guessed to the ski slopes that surrounded the resort. One person in particular caught her eye, he was young maybe a year or two older than herself with dark eyes and floppy brown hair but what drew her attention to him was the fact that he was in a sleeveless top looking as if he was dressed for the beach rather than the snow storm that was blowing on outside. Julie pulled her gaze away quickly when he turned his head as if sensing that someone was watching him, although she wasn’t quick enough that she missed the smug smile on his face when he caught her. Luckily for Julie her dad came over with the keys and led them away before she could embarrass herself further.

“So they're having a New Years Eve party it could be fun for you two to go” Ray says as they get to their room, somehow they have managed to get one that has two separated bedrooms which means Julie gets one to herself and Carlos shares with their dad. 

“Maybe” Julie says going to put her bag in her room but Carlos seems excited at the idea.

The next couple of days they spent around the resort, Carlos wanted to try all the activities that were on for those who didn’t want to ski and Julie went with him. Every now and then she would catch sight of the boy without sleeves and wondered how he was dressed like that surely he was cold as everyone else including herself were wearing jumpers, even though it was warm inside you could still feel a chill everytime a door opened, she wanted to ask him but didn’t know how to approach him.

New Years Eve came and they were getting ready for the party the resort were throwing, they were holding two apparently one for kids that was going to be finish earlier on the night and one for adults that was going to go on late until the morning the poster had said, Julie wasn’t sure if she was going to stay awake that long. They had decided that they would go to the kids one and then when that finished they would meet up with their dad and ring in the new year together. When they went down to the party Carlos had found some of the kids he’d made friends with the past couple of days and left Julie to go with them, Julie decided to sit and watch the karaoke they had on. At first she was confused about how they picked who sang but as the song ended the two kids left the stage and two spotlights moved around the room picking out unsuspecting kids who, some she noticed rather reluctantly only got up because their friends encouraged them to, and sang with the stranger that joined them. Every so often they would have to repick because the chosen kid refused to get up but Julie was kind of entranced by it all, this would be interesting she thought.

After the next song the lights floated around the room, one landing on her and she took a deep breath as she had hardly sung since her mom had passed finding that all the passion she’d had for music had disappeared with her. She stood up slowly making her way to the little stage that was set up only realising when she got there who she was singing with, the boy with no sleeves, she noted how confident he looked and felt herself falter which he must have noticed.

“You got this” he smiled encouragingly at her and she couldn’t help but smile as they took their places behind the mics because his smile was infectious. The music started and the boy sang first, he was good Julie thought watching him, he made it seem so natural and effortless like he belonged on the stage. When he’d finished his part Julie pulled her eyes away from him to look at the words on the screen in front of them and taking a deep breath she began to sing, letting the music flow through her. He joined in moments later for the chorus and she let her gaze wander over to him again finding him already watching her, by this point they had drawn a small crowd of kids and glancing down into the crowd Julie found Carlos a proud smile on his face as he watched her and that’s the moment Julie thinks about how much she misses singing and performing. When they finish the song there's clapping and cheering from around them and the boy, whose name she is still yet to find out, clasps her hand and pulls her arm up before leaning forward and bowing while bringing Julie with him. They make their way off the stage and Carlos runs up to them.

“That was amazing” he smiles before looking down at their still clasped hands which Julie notices and pulls her hand away earning her a confused look from her brother “Are we going to find dad now” he asks.

“Yeah you go ahead and I’ll be along in a minute” she smiles watching as Carlos nods and heads off through the crowd then she turns to the boy beside her “You’re a really good singer” she says and he flashes her a smile.

“Yeah but it was nothing compared to your voice though, the power that you have, you’re like a human wrecking ball” he says excitedly. Julie raises her eyebrows at him amused and she notes the way a slight blush creeps up his face. “I’m Luke by the way”

“Julie” she replies as they walk away from the stage and back towards the back of the room where it’s a little bit quieter so they can talk.

“Can I ask you a question?” Julie asks when they sit down and Luke gives her a confused look but nods “Are you not cold? Because every time I’ve seen you for the past two days you’ve had a sleeveless shirt on and it’s bloody snowing outside” she rambles making Luke laugh.

“Nah I’m fine, I’m always warm” he replies when he’s calmed down. They stay there for the rest of the night talking, she finds out that he’s here with his parents and that he’s in a band which his parents aren’t very supportive of which surprises Julie and she tells him of how her parents always encouraged her and Carlos to pursue whatever made them happy. Although she does tear up thinking of her mom, Luke somehow knows what to say just to make her smile and listens to her as she tells him about her.

“She sounds like an amazing woman” He says quietly and Julie agrees. They sit in a comfortable silence until someone announces that it’s five minutes to midnight and Luke perks up again. “Shall we go watch the fireworks?” he asks standing up and holding his hand out to her.

“Only if you’ve got a coat” she teases, taking his hand and letting him pull her up from her seat. He shakes his head at her mumbling something that sounds like ‘of course I have a jacket’ which makes her chuckle. A few minutes later they’re wrapped up and stood outside with a crowd of other resort guests waiting for the countdown to the new year and the firework display. Luke reaches for Julie’s hand and squeezes slightly as the countdown begins, the both join the chorus of cheers as the fireworks go off. 

“Well I should probably go and find my dad and brother” Julie smiles pulling away from him and Luke nods “Happy New Year Luke” she says leaving him with a wave, a giddy smile on her face as she makes her way through the crowd of people.

It’s just before lunch when Julie is woken on New Years day, she finds her dad and Carlos watching tv they’re both dressed and look like they’ve been up for a while. Her dad greets her with a hug and a kiss to the top of her head as she joins them, she knows that she’ll have to get dressed shortly so that they can go and get lunch but she stays with them for a while. When they make their way down to lunch, Julie’s surprised how many people are up considering how many of them went to bed early hours that morning. She spots Luke when they sit down to eat, he flashes her a smile and waves which she returns as her dad speaks.

“So I heard you had a good night last night” he says with a knowing smile and Julie doesn’t know if he means the singing or the fact that she hung out with Luke for most of the night. “Carlos told me you sang again, I’m just sorry I missed it” he said

“Don’t worry dad, I’ll make sure you’re there next time” she reassures him just as their food comes, they talk about their plans for the rest of the afternoon while they eat, deciding just to go back to their room and watch films as they still have couple of days before they go home. As they’re in the lobby heading back to their room, Julie hears her name called and turns to see Luke, telling her dad she will follow them, she goes over to meet Luke.

“Hey”

“So I was thinking as I leave the day after tomorrow, do you maybe want to hang out again tomorrow?” he asks, nervously rubbing the back of his neck and Julie replies with a nod “Cool uh meet you here at 10” he suggests and Julie agrees before going to catch up with her dad. Luckily he doesn’t mention anything about when she gets back to the room but she has a feeling Carlos may have told him about Luke as he gives her a suspectful glance.

Julie makes it to the lobby the next morning about five minutes early but to her surprise Luke’s already there waiting for her. “Morning” he greets when he spots her.

“So what did you have planned?” She asks coming to a stop in front of him, taking in his appearance she guessed that they would be going outside as he had his coat thrown over his arm and orange beanie on his head and she noted the way his hair curled out from the back of it where it was slightly longer, fighting the urge to run her hands thru it she waited for him to answer.

“I was thinking we could go skating” he said with a quirk of his brow as if he was asking her it as a question more than telling her. Julie nodded and waited for Luke to put his coat on before they headed outside. Getting their skates on and getting onto the rink took longer than Julie thought it would but they got their eventually clinging to each other for support and laughing their heads off. Once they were on the ice Julie skated forwards gracefully but when she realised Luke wasn’t there with her, she turned to find him clinging on to the side watching her.

“Have you skated before?” she asks and he shakes her head, “You know I thought when you asked if I wanted to go skating then you’d at least know how to skate yourself” she teases watching as colour flares on his cheek but she can’t tell if it’s from the could or if he’s embarrassed.

“Hey I can ski and snowboard, I didn’t think skating would be this hard” he says in self defense and Julie skates back over to him holding out her hand for him to take which he does, holding her hand tightly as he skates next to her albeit very wobbly. Luke gets better after a while once he finds his balance and he doesn’t need to hold Julie’s hand anymore however he doesn’t let go. Julie doesn’t say anything but she enjoys the feeling of her hand in his and she can feel the warmth of his hand through their gloves. Later on when they’re handing their skates back they decide to walk around outside for a bit before heading back inside.

“We should hang out more, you know when we get back home” Luke suggests but Julie raises her eyebrows at him.

“Do we even live anywhere near each other?” she asks with a chuckle when he laughs when he realises that he doesn’t know where she lives, he just assumed they lived near each other. As it turns out they live about a two hour drive from each other which is not ridiculously far but not close enough that they can hang out with each other after school. 

“Okay but we should at least swap numbers so that we can keep in touch and then maybe plan something so that we can meet up on a weekend or something” he says a hopeful smile on his face and Julie can’t help but smile at him as she reaches into her pocket to pull her phone out to hand to him. They part ways shortly after that as Luke still has to pack ready for him going home and Julie was meeting her dad and Carlos for lunch but he makes sure to give her a hug before he goes which leaves Julie feeling giddy, she only realises when she gets back to her room that she may have a small crush on the him.

---

The first day back at school Flynn can already tell that something is different with Julie and she doesn’t hesitate to ask her what changed. She listens intently as Julie tells her about the trip, singing karaoke and when she tells her about Luke she can feel her cheeks flush as Flynn watches her with a knowing stare.

“Awe my girls back,” she says excitedly pulling Julie in for a hug, she’s glad to see that her friend is back to feeling more like herself again “and you’ve got a crush and his names Luke” she teases as she pulls away laughing as Julies cheeks flame again but she doesn’t try to deny it as she knows it’s true.

Julie finds herself constantly texting with Luke when she’s not in lessons and when she’s at home she’s mainly on facetime with him, they usually talk for hours even though they’ve been texting all day. Although they don’t manage to meet up really until they’re both done with school for the summer and they have two weeks together as Luke’s staying with family that live about ten minutes away from Julie. In those two weeks Julie finally introduces him to her dad and Carlos and they’re both excited to meet Luke but Ray just really wants to thank him for helping Julie get back into music. As the year goes on Julie finds that friendly comments between the two of them slowly morph into flirty comments and she can’t help but wonder if Luke has feelings for just like she does for him but she doesn’t say anything. Towards the end of October Ray surprises Julie and Carlos telling them that he’s booked for them to go back to the resort for New Years again and Julie is straight on the phone to Luke excitedly telling him they’re going and the excitement only increases when Luke confirms that he's going back as well.

As they pull up to the resort, Julie messages Luke to let him know that they’re there as she knows he arrived earlier that morning. She tries to keep her steps a normal speed as she follows her dad into the lobby, her eyes searching for Luke. When her gaze finds him she sees that he’s already making his way over to her and she throws her arms around him as soon as he’s in reach and buries her face in his neck as he tells her that he’s missed her. When they pull apart he greets her dad and Carlos and invites them for dinner with his parents later which they accept.

On New Years Eve, Julie finds herself singing karaoke again with Luke, the same spark between them as the first time they sang and when they head out for the countdown to the New Year Julie finds her hand clasped tightly in Luke’s as it had been most of the time they had spent together. As the first firework goes off Julie finds herself being pulled into a hug by Luke, his face close to hers, their lips almost touching until she reaches up to pull him closer finally letting him know how she feels and joy spreads through her as he kisses her back.

“Happy New Year Julie” he smiles as they pull away from the kiss but their bodies stay pressed against one another.

“Happy New Year Luke” she replies with a wide smile on her face as she looks ahead to the future, whatever they were now they would make it work, long distance and all.

[bywordofaphrodite]

Book Reviews 3&4: Nancy Drew and the Lilac Inn by Carolyn Keene & Trixie Belden and the Secret of the Mansion by Julie Campbell Tatham

This review’s theme is girl detective books ! Audience age range: roughly 12 and up !

Just as Enid Blyton’s books made me fall in love with magical creatures and faraway lands, detective novels became an obsession during late primary school, with classic lead female characters Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden being my absolute favourites. My school had an extremely small and limited library, and the Nancy Drew books were one of the only decent series there- even with a great chunk of the collection missing. My mother introduced me to Trixie Belden, which she insisted was better than Nancy Drew, though I refused to listen to such a declaration at the time.

Now, though? My opinions have definitely changed.

Nostalgic review

Rating: ★★★★★

From memory, Nancy Drew is a clever, beautiful and well-off girl in her late teens, living with her lawyer father Carson Drew and her housekeeper Hannah Gruen, who has looked after Nancy since her mother’s passing when she was only three. I always enjoyed the dynamic between Nancy and her father, as it was similar to mine with my father, also a lawyer- Carson doesn’t step in unless Nancy needs his help, but he does assist in legal advice when necessary. I also loved Nancy’s friendship with the cousins Bess and George, and liked that her relationship with her ‘special friend’ Ned never got in the way of solving mysteries or hanging out with her friends (‘hanging out’ was practically code for sleuthing in these novels anyway). Overall, my memories of this series amount mostly to exciting searches for missing heiresses, finding beautiful jewels and battling crocodiles in Florida.

On the opposite side of the spectrum is Trixie Belden- rough-around-the-edges thirteen year-old from a poor family living with both her parents and three brothers. Where Nancy has a housekeeper, lives in an affluent suburban neighbourhood and never wants for money, Trixie lives on the outskirts of a small town, both her parents work, and she is constantly reminded of how important it is to work for money as they do not have much of it to spare on mindless things. Nancy is a fairly solitary character, often working alone unless her friends show up, and even then she does most of the legwork; Trixie is also the main sleuth in her series, but her best friend Honey is almost always at her side. While the mysteries were great, the warm friendships in Trixie Belden novels are what I remember best.

Regardless of whatever my thoughts may be after rereading books from these two series, I’ve never ceased referencing either of them and my love of the mystery genre still holds fast even now.

Nancy Drew and the Lilac Inn Review

Post-read: ★★

Synopsis: girl detective Nancy Drew is called to solve a series of odd goings on at her newly engaged friend Emily’s inn, in what seems to be an attempt to prevent Emily and her fiancé from opening. Disaster strikes when her aunt retrieves Emily’s inheritance of diamonds- Emily’s last hope to cover the costs of fixing up the inn- and they are swiftly stolen within the hour. Nancy vows to catch the thief and the intruder and save Emily’s inn from failure.

I struggled in choosing which Nancy Drew book to reread for this review, and after reading through multiple rankings lists I decided on the Lilac Inn because it ranked highly on every list. I now wish I had just gone with Crocodile Island anyway… at least there was something snappy about it. In between the bomb, the theft, the doppelganger, the underwater fake-shark, the kidnapping, the spear-gun attack- I think I’ve made my point. There’s far too much going on, and if it was well-written I would be okay with it, really I would, but it’s all so blandly articulated that half the time I had to reread just to make sure I’d read correctly what nonsense was occurring at any given time.

Straight out the gate, I just want to say how shocking the writing was- that’s shockingly bad, by the way. If I thought Enid Blyton’s work was stunted, well, this was far, far worse. Especially since it lacks the excuse of being written for young children. It was incredibly difficult to push through in the slower parts, and I must admit I basically skim-read the lead up parts to the action sequences (which were incredibly minimal compared to the gnashing crocodile teeth I longed for, but alas). Sadly for me, Bess (my old fave), George and Ned were not present at all, and I cannot remember if they had actually been introduced that early in the series because they are not mentioned once.

I did really like the concept of the story, and the element of Nancy having a creepy doppelganger posing as Nancy to cause mischief (she has several over the series) was fun, even more so that said doppelganger was an actual actress and quite ruthless in her attempts to steal Emily’s diamonds- I love a morally-corrupt pretty female villain as much as the next person, after all. There is a romance teased between Nancy and a young man staying at the inn, a young man who continuously seems to be in the same room as the diamond thief messing with Emily’s inn, but ultimately both never amount to anything. This hardly surprised me given the book is written in the thirties, and Ned and Nancy never do anything but attend dances together the entire series, but still, come on. He could’ve at least stolen the diamonds to add some spice to his useless appearances.

It’s possible that were a very talented scriptwriter to take this book and make it into a movie it could work out a lot better than it does on paper- provided the casting was done well. The sets would be interesting, and I think the creepiness of the ‘ghost’ in the orchard and the diving scenes would translate a lot better on camera. Normally I’m not one to nominate live actions of novels for no reason, but this thought kept recurring as I struggled to get through the writing.

Characters who aged well: Nancy is smart and weirdly good at everything (they don’t explain why she knows how to do all the things she does, but diving and freeing herself from bonds seems to be easy enough for her. Given male characters are always allowed to be perfect without training, I’ll allow it). For a female character written in the 30s she has plenty of agency and does not once rely on a man’s help to do anything, which is why I always enjoyed her books. Carson Drew also aged well- not present that often, but useful without being interfering, and his trust in his daughter is refreshing. As for the other main characters in the series… they didn’t even show up in this book so I can’t really comment on this.

Characters who aged badly: plot twist- I’m adding Nancy here too. She is a little too perfect, too polished, a common criticism by modern readers, though at the time of publication was her main selling point. Additionally, earlier editions of the series featured racist comments made by Nancy, although those have since been taken out. However, the publisher and creator of the first books was not a very pleasant person, so I find myself able to separate that from Nancy’s character.

Favourite scene/quote: ‘The article went on to tell that Nancy had just completed a course in advanced skin diving in the Muskoka River, and that she had finished first in total points in the twenty student group’.

I find this quote amusing because there is really no need for Nancy to be good at every single thing, and this is a good example of the many times throughout the series that Nancy is the ‘best’ at a very random activity that is often never mentioned again.

As for my favourite scene, though nothing interesting actually ends up happening in the orchard, I did like the eerie setting of Nancy dressing up as a ghost and chilling behind a tree for a while (okay it was partially eerie, mostly just oddly comedic). The actress/impostor posing as Nancy provided a few good scenes, too, but for the main villain of the story she was hardly in as many scenes as she should’ve been in.

After doing some research, I discovered something most interesting: Nancy was written with significantly more character by the original ghost-writer of the series, a woman named Mildred Wirt Benson, who wrote Nancy ‘embodying qualities that she wished she had’- but the publisher Edward Stratemeyer did not want a bold female character, and she was rewritten with similar dialogue but now accompanied with ‘dainty’ verbs to sweeten her words. Stratemeyer was also known for his beliefs that women belonged in the kitchen, and the only reason he created Nancy in the first place was to capitalise on young female readers who wanted their own equivalent of the Hardy Boys.

With all of this in mind, it’s very possible that the Nancy from my memories is a mix of the older and new editions, which allowed Nancy more personality as the series went on, no longer needing to confirm to the sexist expectations of the 1930s. And despite these origins, Nancy Drew aged quite well as an unintended feminist icon: she solves her mysteries alone and rarely needs Ned’s help at all; in fact, most of the time, Nancy is the one doing the saving. It’s nice to think that, almost one hundred years later, Mildred Wirt Benson’s version of Nancy is the one being kept alive, both on paper and onscreen.

Trixie Belden and the Secret of the Mansion Review

Post-read: ★★★★★

Synopsis: energetic teen Trixie Belden’s boring town of Sleepyside is turned upside down when a rich new family moves onto the property opposite her own, an old miser winds up in hospital and his empty mansion is suddenly inhabited by a runaway boy, and a missing fortune is waiting to be uncovered.

Whewww.

This was a massive breath of fresh air after the Lilac Inn! After being so unimpressed by both Blyton and Keene’s writing, Tatham’s writing restored my faith in my childhood judgement. Her words flowed well and the conversation between the characters was very natural. The blank slate characters in the Lilac Inn were showed up by the animated and multiple-dimensional characters in the Secret of the Mansion, and I never once felt the need to rush myself through the chapters.

Unlike my method of choosing a Nancy Drew book, I simply decided on reading the first Trixie book for this review. While I almost went for a later book where all the main characters had been introduced, I couldn’t remember how Trixie first met Honey and Jim, which I felt was pretty important to her character. I’m very glad I did. Even in the first book, Trixie endures so much character development (contrasting very strongly with Nancy’s flawless existence). Longing for a friend, Trixie takes herself up the hill to the newly habited mansion to introduce herself and her little brother Bobby, who she is babysitting to earn money to buy herself a horse. There she meets rich girl Honey Wheeler, a sickly and sheltered but sweet girl of the same age, whose parents pay little attention to her. Things fall into place with all the expected luck of a teen heroine- Honey’s governess is a lovely woman who wants Honey to befriend Trixie and offers to look after Bobby, and of course Honey’s stables are now filled with horses and a stable hand who can teach her to ride.

But for every easy thing comes an opportunity for Trixie to grow: she comes to admire Honey’s bravery after previously being irritated by her fear of trying outdoor activities; she ignores the stable hand’s orders not to ride the stallion and falls as a result, leading to her having to work to regain his trust and also being taught the valuable lesson to recognise her own limits; finally, as much as Trixie hates looking after little Bobby, when he is bitten by a snake Trixie is resourceful and quick on her feet in helping him, keeping him well enough until a doctor and other adults arrive.

Rather like the Lilac Inn, the mystery of the story centres on the hidden will to a supposed fortune of the elderly man who lived in the old mansion not far from Honey’s new home. On a whim, Trixie nags Honey into accompanying her to snoop around the building, leading to their discovery of the old man’s nephew Jim hiding there. By the end of the book, the girls have helped Jim to find the will and safely escape his abusive step-father. Later in the series, Jim is adopted by the Wheeler family, and also becomes Trixie’s primary love interest (I love that this relationship is not at all rushed either).

The reading level for the Trixie Belden series is listed as grade 3 and above, but I had no problems being completely involved and intrigued by the storyline and characters as a twenty-three year old. I think I’ll continue to read the series on my own time, as I always enjoyed the full character line-up developed after a few books in.

Characters who aged well: Trixie! If my praise during this review didn’t make clear enough, she’s a wonderful character with great development. Honey and Jim are also solid characters, and Bobby and Trixie’s parents are well-written too- supportive and kind, but realistic concerning raising Trixie to be a responsible kid. Also going to add that Trixie’s group of best friends- self-named the Bob-Whites of the Glen and consisting of her two older brothers Brian and Mart, Honey, Jim and the later additions of Dan and Di- have a strong presence and very distinct personalities when they show up in the later novels.

Characters who aged badly: nobody! All the side characters were well done, including the villain. He wasn’t over-the-top by any means, his abuse of Jim was both emotion and physical in a realistic manner that concerned the adults around him enough to comment on it without actually taking proper action to help him, as it often goes. I appreciated the author’s ability to write a male character the vulnerable one, to recognise what was wrong about the situation, and to gladly accept help from two girls younger than him.

Favourite scene/quote: “‘serves him right,’ Trixie said, wiping her grimy hands on her rolled-up blue jeans. ‘The mean old miser. You should have left him lying in the driveway, Dad.’”

An earlier quote in the book, this sets the tone for Trixie’s character: she’s messy, no-nonsense and cheeky. For a female character written in 1948 I found this quite amusing. There’s none of the internalised misogyny that often popped up in ‘tomboy’ characters of the time: Trixie just is what she is, and she’s great.

A standout scene would be Trixie sucking the venom from her brother’s snakebite to save him, and the chapters focused on the developing friendship with Honey and Jim while the two teach Trixie how to handle horses is also enjoyable.

Overall verdict:

My mother was right, Trixie Belden is far better than Nancy Drew in every category I can think of. I wish that the series had gained the popularity that Nancy Drew did, because it would make for a fun movie or television show. There is an eighteen year gap between the publication of the first novel from both series, and both heroines saw many more books written after that. Nancy Drew is so persistent, however, that multiple movies and even a recent CW show have been made, though it is not very accurate to the books at all. Even now, modern-day setting Nancy Drew mysteries are still being released under the Carolyn Keene pseudonym, showing her unending mythical status.

I still love Nancy, bad writing and all, but in all fairness, Miss Trixie deserves a cut of the nostalgic hype surrounding the girl-detective genre. I’d also like to bask in the poetic justice of Nancy not only remaining a more iconic character than the Hardy Boys, but also becoming more feminist as time goes on. I’m sure the publisher is rolling in his grave!

[stronghours]

SUNSHINE IN THE SKY REPRISE

And it came to pass, a few weeks after she and Jules made a bad decision on his thrifted futon, that they met again during 4th of July merrymaking. 

Lux toddled in grey lake water among Ava, Claire, and Archie (Celeste down and out with summer flu). Lux couldn’t swim, a fact disclosed in private to Ava, which Ava hadn’t kept to herself, and the group formed a stooped, anxious ring around her doggy-paddling. She was forced, among the smell of hot dogs in the safe green grass hundreds of yards beyond and the ominous cloud cover above, to make sure only her ass whomped her protectors’ knees when the waves tried to boil her body up and away. She’d made a mistake, and her only wardrobe protection beyond her suit itself and her spandex underthing was a hastily added solid color sarong, which while dry didn’t match, and while wet, just looked lousy and modest. But she couldn’t be parted with it and had made up a past bout of minor skin cancer, a pin-mole insidiously located on her protected inner thigh, the paranoia of which haunted her still. Even Ava dropped her chin for the C-word.

Now she suggested Lux float on her back and allow her perception of the water to form fingers in the magic slot located on her lower back, and soon she’d be floating like crazy among the wacky kids and her hot workmates and her boss and all their invisible pubes. A wave slapped dirty fingers up Lux’s nose.

“It’s kind of like learning a language,” Archie contributed. “Got to learn it when you’re young. Looks like your parents fucking doomed you.”

“My pap pap slam-dunked me in our above-ground when I was five,” said Claire, who floated tummy-down in frog position by exerting no effort Lux could observe. “I bobbed right back up, but like, what if I hadn’t?”

Lux, six feet tall, decided to use it to her advantage and planted her knees in the sandbar. She could just about do it and keep her eyes and forehead in periscope position.

“Reuben and I are thinking of installing an above-ground,” said Ava, and seeing Lux shrink, rose to her feet and splashed water across her dewy collarbone. Lux pushed every single one of them out of her mind and stared between the chops out into the open sea to make-believe Michigan somewhere on the other side. A rhythmic slap approached from the left and the white bow of a lifeguard’s canoe sailed past their collected heads.

“Hey now,” scolded the familiar voice behind the sunglasses, “only three hot bitches are allowed in the water at a time. Think of the community.”

Ava sloshed around at the familiarity, but everybody else had already noticed it was, absurdly, Jules, and sent up a bunch of soggy greetings, all except Lux who rose into a semi-crouch in the drifting seabed out of surprise, and Ava, who let them all perform verbal recognition on her behalf and only spared a nod.

Jules looked very high school, very lanky on the bobbing bench, with the oars braced under his tanned arms and his cute red tank top cinched under his fanny pack. He rode the up-down of the surf the same way he did most things, with enough bored grace to suggest he’d learned quite enough and had more interesting things to do. Lux had recently learned this conceit of his could be bypassed, and she was glad he kept the sunglasses on when he looked her over.

“What’s up Cathy,” he said, with the same Sophomore carelessness, and she plunged her head under an oncoming wave, the pressure preferable to the dawning knowledge that now, he had information he could disclose, and he’d had it for weeks.

She rose again, squinting. She couldn’t tell if he had caught on.

“What?” he asked. “What did I do?”

“You got another job, Jules?” Ava surged forward, displaced Lux. “Roscoe doesn’t give you enough to do, on top of commissions?”

“Give me another commission and you’ll find out.” He drew the left oar’s pole hard under his titty to keep the nose of the canoe from slicing into their crescent. The mechanism bucked like a horse and the wind snatched the ugly white hat off his head and toward an oblivion of preteens due north. Claire yelped and threw herself into the water, rippled away to go fetch it. “You ever been in the cellar underneath Rawhide, Ava? That’s like, thrice-darkness. I was gonna kill myself.”

“I’ve never been in a situation that required me to be in the cellar underneath Rawhide.” Prim Ava glanced pityingly at Lux, who allowed wave after wave to pummel her head in her effort to stay low. “Poor baby. She can’t swim.”

“Throw her off the pier,” Jules suggested.

“It worked for Claire’s pap pap,” Archie said, and braced an annoying hand on the back of Lux’s neck. “Sorry babe, looks like you’re going down.”

Lux threw herself underwater before Archie could push her into the drink. Beneath the top swell she had enough time to touch her palms to the sand and try to dig her hands where she’d braced her knees, but she was blind, and the divots were washed away and the grains were swept off and replaced swept off and replaced, and she panicked when the water tugged the sarong’s knot. She resurfaced from the green and grey, coughing and yanking the weedy fabric around her legs. Ava, shining and petite against the sky, so securely tucked to smoothness, had finished with Jules herself and was high stepping back to shore.

“…I’m just saying, you should definitely try it out –” Archie had spoken in the interim. Jules was nodding. He’d shoved the sunglasses up and over his curly head and while his gaze was trained forward to take in the gamboling bathers, Lux could feel him keeping her in the corner of his eye.

 -

She remembered being in good if overenergetic spirits. She recalled a hot yellow sun. She wore her lavender halter with the powder-blue culottes, her hair freshly hennaed from the night before and trustily bunned. She traveled from a three-hour duo with Ava regarding some mind-numbing bouts of predicament ropework that left her guiltily bored of the client and his ballerina snobbishness, but pleased with her improving knots, and with the fact she could at least trick Ava into thinking she was a viable rope top. She’d exited the bus prematurely and entered the sidewalk throng to burn through her constipated spirits, past a raucous patio partition of a dippy sport’s bar and collided with Jules himself, exiting.

It was like striking a human-size grasshopper. He recoiled, elbows up, and almost upset a busboy’s tray. She reared at his excess, ready to dive into the full indulgence of her insult. In the past year after the Annelise Petro incident she’d only seen him at a distance. Their last words, exchanged in close quarters within Jules’s car more than twelve months ago, had not been civil. He was much tanner than she remembered of him in previous summers. He’d filled out in the chest and shoulders. For a second, she could glimpse he’d gained some weird physical vitality – but as she observed, the color drained from his face. His shoulders slumped. He looked sick as a dog. She’d thought he was drunk.

She grabbed him by the shoulders and steered his head away from her. “Do not,” she ordered, “Do not fucking puke on me.”

He pulled himself straight but didn’t dislodge from her grip. “Don’t say anything,” he hissed, dirt-sober, and before she could make him clarify, a middle-aged couple loomed over his shoulders. The woman, a full six inches shorter than both Lux and Jules (it was just then Lux realized she and Jules were precisely the same height) sparkled nervously, trussed in Cubs blues.

“Oh Jules,” she said, “Who’s this?”

She was blond and ferrety, but in the man, Lux could see a sour and fleshy shadow of Jules’s own face and bearing. He looked at her with the same stern contemplation Jules had leveled on her in the past, and Jules presently, dead in the eyes, curled in on himself like a shrimp.

She’d inexplicably exited her rancorous ditch and stumbled over Jules in the no-man’s land of Blood Relatives. She wanted to, against all rational thought, shove him behind her back and put her arms out.

Instead, she reached a hand to the man (dad? Oh boy, what fun) and chirped, “Hi, I’m Catherine!”

And to the woman (mother? God in heaven), “don’t we just all love Jules!”

The woman shriveled with feeling that hardly looked like relief. The man gravely shook Lux’s hand, and she was pleased with his grip’s condescending pressure. Her body moved far ahead of her brain. She could see herself at distance, popping one toe behind her planted heel, one hip cocked, tits pushed out, but no further than her glowing smile. “And how do you two know each other,” the man said, said, explicitly did not ask. Neither man nor woman introduced themselves.

Jules, white-lipped, opened his mouth but Lux flowed over him. “2007,” she answered, “Leidermeister Playhouse, down in, uh, are you from around here? No? Well, Tinley-ish. Way down there. Spring musical. I was on playbill. And Jules was doing costumes for Pippin.”

For the first time, Jules treated her to the sweet sight of his smug, sick face struck totally dumb.

“Theater!” The woman bubbled. She put her hand on her companion’s meaty forearm, placating.

But the man was not letting her go without a fight. “Theater,” he said. “And what part did you play.”

She treated him to her glowing smile first (cracking, a little). If Jules had learned his own abysmal manners from these creeps, then he’d somehow made improvements on his own time.

“The Mother,” she improvised. “Of course.”

“Stepmother,” Jules piped up, at last.

It was all yadda-yadda to Lux, but the man finally checked the neon dial of his watch, gripped the woman by the elbow, said they would have to start taking pains for a cab if they wanted to catch the game in time. “Sure,” Jules said, though his permission hadn’t been asked, his advice unsought. “You’re not far away.”

“You call her and say you saw us, sir,” the man said. “She’ll expect it.”

Jules was too busy accepting limp patty-pats from the woman, who shot Lux a tragic grin before she scampered up the sidewalk, followed by the broad back of her presumed husband. No proper hug, no I-Love-You, no masculine head smacks or back whacks or take-care-of-yourself-you-hear pronouncements. They just walked away. Her own parents would be appalled.

The life was coming back to Jules’s face, but he was still doubled over, as if from a cramp. “Jiminy Christmas,” he uttered, and she wanted, in a surge, nothing more than to pinch his cheeks and trap his head in her armpit and noogie him to death and bust his fluff. Instead, she assisted him away from the crowd, and before long they strolled down a quiet residential street, arm in arm. She decided to give him five whole minutes to recover from the encounter, but he did it in two.

“Ledermeister,” he said to her, appalled.

“Leider,” she corrected.

“You nutty bitch,” he dared, but there was no gas behind it.

“It’s like you think I’m some kind of pervert or something,” she said, and before she could help it, she started to nag. “What did you think I was going to say? Jules makes rubber sex suits with built-in condoms? I saw him in street clothes in a high-etiquette dungeon fingering my boss’s twenty-one-year-old latex bottom?” She felt him up a little in her haste, accidentally, and he squeaked. “Who actually has something to lose here?” She asked. “Who’s the fucking dominatrix here?”

“You don’t like me,” Jules said, coolly. “I had no idea what you would say.”

He sounded terribly calm. The sidewalk was dappled in shadows of maple leaves and, boxed in by reasonable townhouses on both sides, she was inclined to stay calm as well, and in her calm, she found a strange truth.

“I like you just fine,” she said.

“Oh.”  

She liked him just fine. She liked him more than she liked Ava.

They walked.

“God, it’s fucking hot,” she said. It would be more comfortable not to have their arms around the other, but she didn’t unlatch.

“I moved to this neighborhood a couple weeks ago,” he said. “We’re not too far. I’ve got a window unit.”

A window unit meant he’d accumulated an actual window; a net gain from what she remembered of the dismal basement unit she’d ducked inside three times over their three year acquaintance, along with a damp cement strip notating the kitchen and two hoary pipes jutting six inches from the ceiling where tawny water dripped into provided buckets and Jules himself, barefoot, crisscross applesauce on a carpet square stringing the hundredth of ten-thousand waiting bugle beads with one or two local drag queens, staring open mouthed at a small, shit television propped up on a pile of clean laundry encased in a garbage bag, and onscreen a shoulder-padded daytime soap actress made lines like “there’s nothing to worry about Blake – do you really think I’d expose the Nazi treasure to outsiders?”

“Yeah, let’s,” she said.

He’d found a squat, orangey building with collapsed flower beds out front and only the faintest smell of weed in the halls. She noted, vain, that he opened the doors for her and motioned her up the stairs first and it wasn’t until she’d reached the top landing of the third floor, and he was sorting out keys that she felt the pluck of that old sexy situation, which was Going Inside a Boy’s Apartment, something she hadn’t done since college, and even at that time, something that usually happened under the close watch of protective friends. She couldn’t eye him either, to see which way his intentions were shifting – he was already eying her – but then he let her inside and the feeling was wiped out by absurd, maternal relief.

“Oh, thank God,” she blurted out. “This is so much better.”

The place still smelled like paint and floor wax, and she walked about at her leisure, touching the walls, and flapping her arms, knowing she wasn’t going to crash into a spiderweb or trod on mummified centipedes. The only furniture yet was a pulled-out futon (he was a bedmaker, who knew) and the walls had been built out to delineate a kitchen. She lifted the back of her shirt to the air conditioner.

“I thought you were an idiot for accepting that place, before,” she told him, regarding the old basement. “Or you’d picked it to antagonize people on purpose.”

“Give me a break! I was broke. I was nineteen.”

He shed one flip-flop on his way to the kitchen. She watched it prone on the floor while she calculated.

“No, no,” she reminded him. “When we first met, Ava said you were twenty. We were in a bar. She made you duck under the table when the bouncer made rounds. You were illegal.”

“Nuh-uh,” he said, unevenly thwap-thwapping back to her. He handed her a beer. “I was here a whole year before you showed up. I came before you.”

He sat on the edge of the futon, and she considered that perspective as he scratched the back of his shin with his bare foot. He had long, narrow feet, and when he was looking at things that weren’t people looking back at him, his eyes tended to glaze over. He was looking at the blank wall.

“Hold up,” she said. “How old are you now?”

“Old enough for you to sit next to me,” he replied.

It didn’t mean anything, coming from him. She left her beer on the windowsill and sat next to him. He’d have to get a nicer bed at some point, she thought, bouncing up and down a little, and wondered if, all along, his manners and his living situation pissed her off so much not because, as she initially believed, they were representations of his obnoxious personality, but because she had been frightened that he was going to get hurt and clearly no one else around was going to warn him otherwise.

“You must have left your parents pretty quick,” she said.

“That was my aunt and uncle, just now.”

“Were they more fun when you were growing up?”

“My grandma raised me,” he said. “For eight years. Then we swapped.”

She unfastened her sandal straps and tried to dream up a guess about him that could possibly be correct, but she had the feeling if she said raised in a house? He’d go no, in Mr. Toad’s canary-colored caravan, and the woodland squirrels taught me how to sew, and I lost my virginity to Morlocks. She wondered if she was the first girl he’d ever brought up here. She wondered if his aunt and uncle already knew he was gay. She wondered if he was gay. And in her wonderings, she missed, at first, his growing impatience beside her. He touched her hand; she accidentally flipped her right sandal underneath the futon.

“Crap,” she said.

He rolled his eyes and slid to the floor, slipped between her legs, and with one cheek pressed to her thigh he rooted one armed underneath the springs and came out with the sandal, which he deliberately tossed several feet away. He came up on his knees, face lifted to hers, and she had to spread her own knees to accommodate him. His stern little expression was very cute, and she was warm with pleasant condescension, something sorely missing from her and Ava’s ropework that afternoon. She was tired of art, she decided, ignoring Jules’ cold hands creeping up the back her shirt, and she was tired of fantasy and she was sick of endurance feats physical and mental, and she was tired of her own cowardly communication, so much so the tiny bubble of unearned pride she felt for Jules’s ability to maneuver himself into the positions he required ballooned, out of control, into an old familiar cocoon where she couldn’t hurt him and he couldn’t hurt her.

“Nobody knows,” he told her, perhaps feeling it too. “But I can be a good boy.”

Jiminy Christmas, indeed. But he couldn’t have her for cheap, and he clawed her spine too confidently. She put her palm to his left cheek, let her thumbnail scrape over a pale divot where it looked like the nap of a paint scraper had teased out a pill of his flesh, years ago.

“Listen,” she asked, and squeezed his ribs with her knees. “If you had met me while I was with relatives, and I looked scared about it, what would you have done?”

His fixed gaze skittered to the side, over the wall, across the floor, and while he didn’t retreat, he only spoke up when his face reached a zenith of clumsy guilt. “I would have fucked around with you first,” he admitted. “Only a little.”

“I thought so,” she said, and smacked him a nasty one across the face.

With no furniture around, the crack resonated. Jules took it open-eyed. He didn’t whine or argue and only clenched his jaw a couple seconds after, when the real pain hit. He faced her again, glowing and pink, his left eye watering. She couldn’t help it. She grabbed his head and squeezed and clawed and palpated, yanked his lamby hair, perfect for yanking, and beat his butt with her heels. His head thrashed and his hands flapped around behind her back. She seized one and forced it down on the blanket and let the other undo her halter knot while she bridled him with her free thumb. His back molars rose on the edges in sharp ridges, and she whirled her wrist under his chin until she could see him swallow from the inside. The whites of his eyes showed.

“Good boy my ass,” she said, to herself, but he heard and appeared wounded. “Okay, okay,” she conceded. She wiped her thumb on his face, forgave him silently, and even her playful meanness disintegrated. He crawled over her lap and rubbed his red-hot face in her shoulder, gnawed painlessly on her clavicle. His shorts stuck out in front.

She knew a hundred ways of positioning and a hundred more roleplay scenarios he’d probably accept without suspecting she used them not to her pleasure, but to protect her modesty. She was sick of it all, hadn’t fucked or been fucked properly since she’d been his age, and was horny enough to maim. She took him again by the shorthairs along the nape of his toasted neck, and when he sighed down her back, she pressed his hand to her groin.

“Feel,” she ordered.

He felt dopily, paused, and resumed. Squeezed. Offered no comment.

“Tell me what that is,” she said.

He had delicate ways when he had enough patience to reveal them. Without asking permission he slipped a hand down her waistband, far between her legs, far too quickly for her to chase him off, and by the time she felt him properly, he held her so the head nestled in the heel of his hand, wedged against the meat of his thumb. He felt her up against the underside vein of his silky wrist.

“That’s the cock that’s gonna fuck me,” he answered, correctly.

 -

She had condoms in her purse. He had Vaseline in a bric-a-brac moving tub besides the futon. He rolled onto his narrow tummy, and she flipped him onto his back again so fast he nearly rolled off the mattress. She wished, as she watched him raise a knee and finger himself, that she’d brought her toolkit with her from the club where she kept her nitrile gloves and her fancy salves and her more mobile toys. Jules laid himself out on the futon like somebody else would on a beach, languid and comfortable and she pressed one of his nipples with impatience. She suspected he’d be chatty, but he didn’t speak at all during the preliminaries. He had more body hair than she would have expected, but not enough to grab, and a severe bathing suit tan line that reminded her of Ava’s jabs about the minor gossip between him and Roscoe. She wondered if some queen paid him to lay out on a patio somewhere, if that kind of arrangement still happened, and she wondered if he could let go of the sniping and the attitude long enough to show that hypothetical crowd what he was showing her now – that he was, actually, a very good boy.

When he was ready for her, the very good boy reached out with his arms (and made gimme-gimme clutches with his hands). She obligingly sank on top of him, then, quicker than she intended, into him, guided by his hooked shin and a decisive hand on her ass. She clawed his scalp and arched, involuntarily driving herself forward. A telltale sensation like he’d dumped a bucket of his own blood over her head soaked her from head to toe, and for a hot second she thought it was too late – then he jerked one her nipples until she shrieked and came back to him, stunned. 

You’ve got more than that in you, she heard him say, through the haze in her brain, and in between two blinks he swapped out the sadist faunlet for, once again, being her very good boy, and he undid her bun with one hand and guided her head so he could kiss her mouth and calm her down. She saw from above his legs lock around the small of her back. She was shocked she could get hard enough to effectively penetrate, a shock that blissfully vaporized as she rocked inside him.

His own cock, which they mutually ignored, was restrained by her soft stomach. Her breasts ached, pressed against his chest, and she had to break free from his clasp to prop herself on her forearms. He followed her, licked her lips until she gave up and sank back down. The tip of his nose was cold against her cheek. She could feel his lashes and the curve of his eyeball roam around in the socket. He was a ferocious and intent kisser, not nearly so languid now, and every goosebump outside his skin and strand of muscle beneath rose to her, encased her in his prickles. His focus made her quite aware of a separation between her hips (melted, as far as she was concerned) and her brain, electric-bright now, entertaining Jules by turns as a barbed, poisonous plant, as a nuzzling, brainless creature, as a mean bottom slut who clawed her bottom and held her hair in a knot in his fist, who maybe needed to be exercised as a handler would a spirited pony, in order to nurture his kindness, improve his manners, and keep his juices fresh – and she giggled involuntarily, a tight muscle in her back relaxed, and she came inside a boy for the first time.

She either made an unacceptable noise, or a had been making noises all along. A downstairs neighbor ratta-tat-tatted their ceiling, Jules’s floor. Practical as a fillet knife, Jules pushed her out of his ass, swung one leg wide, slammed his heel rudely against the floorboards, uttered “fuck off, asshole” then rolled back to her again and rubbed his face between her breasts. She cuddled him a couple tender seconds, which he tolerated, before scuttling backward and regarding her from a lucid distance as she disposed the condom.

“Come back here, she said. He looked like a praying mantis.

First, he stuck his legs off the thin mattress and with one judicious sweep of his torso, seemed to crack every bone in his body. Then he crawled over and allowed himself to be held.

“Oh,” she noticed. “You didn’t come.” His dick was still hard, and when he laid his back flat against her hip, it bobbed due west of his belly button.

“Relax, it doesn’t always happen for me.”

She ignored him and let her ego propel her forward. He reclined on her like she was a chaise and breathed through his nose.

“You know what Ava calls you?” She asked, jerking him onward and upward, hopefully.

“I’m a community opportunist,” he answered smugly. “Plus, Roscoe’s houseboy.”

Two out of two, verbatim. She drew her nails up and down his stomach and he twitched, fought against curling up. “Houseboy,” he repeated, hissed. “The last houseboy passed away in the fucking nineties. They peeled him down with the wallpaper.” She felt, through his spine, how he tried and failed to work up a temper. “Then they tatted his chalk outline above some burlesque artist’s John Willie tramp stamp. Mistress Avalon sure is concerned with faggot business.”

“Your boys don’t make you come?” She asked, a hill over him now, and above arguing. He sparred solely with himself.

“What boys? These guys – big guys –”

She went back for more Vaseline, not great for this kind of thing, but she was getting the idea Jules had a sensible nursery spirit and rarely abused himself. He didn’t appear to know much about his body and froze like a striker frame when she rolled the tip of him in her palm for more than fifteen seconds.

“– They think your asshole is your only sex organ,” he continued. “They hate themselves for loving twinks. And then they give you the reach around and if you aren’t wet like pussy then oh-h-h-h my god, it’s like the fucking sky is falling –”

She sat up, and his feet paddled the blanket to stay in contact. He reached behind her and grabbed her hair again but didn’t pull. He turned his face into her neck, and he shook all over.

“Being a slut is really hard,” he said, woefully, failing to hide, for a millisecond, the ghost of what might have been a sweet kid. Or it was her imagination. Either way, she made him come all over himself. It didn’t seem to register to him until the drops hit his chest. He looked down at his sad, wet dick and then back up at her, so testily she laughed in his face. He was smudged pink all over from her lipstick, and she pinched his springy cheeks.

“I’m a cradle-robber,” she declared.

“Okay, Methuselah,” he said, unimpressed, and darted away into the dirty ivory bathroom before she could slap his ass.

He recovered rapidly. In the sunny room things took a slumber party turn. He fetched her abandoned beer, dug out makeup wipes he inexplicably possessed, and repaired the damage to her makeup. He berated her when she couldn’t stop giggling.

“I was kind of wondering…” he began.

He paused. Sex had made him tactful.

“Go on,” she allowed.

“I was wondering if I’d ever figure out why you bothered being a dominatrix.” He used the point of his little finger to clear wet black scuzz from the corner of her eye. She hardly felt it. “Ava’s got her thing about being top dog. Claire’s a sadist. And somebody needs to get around to neutering Archie before he starts spraying the furniture. You, a mystery.”

“You think about me!” She preened and wiggled.

“You go on.”

“I like,” she confided, “to strap muscle hunks to the pommel horse and tickle them until they scream.”

“Gee whiz.”

“I like straitjackets, but I don’t like rope,” she continued. “And I like floggers, but not single-tail whips. And I like human furniture, but not human ashtrays.”

“The Marquis de Lux over here.”

He’d reached around and started French-braiding her hair. She put her ear to his chest and found his mousey heart.

“My mom and dad were angels,” she continued. “And my sisters were angels and my aunts and uncles and my grandparents. They were angels from the start. So was I. I liked it. Doctors like it too. When a kid is angelic, and very, very, very, very good, and says the right things, and rolls over. They give you what you need.” She thought that over. “They decide to give you what you need,” she clarified. “I was rolling over constantly. I didn’t know how to stop. It freaked me out.”

Jules’s heart answered wug-wug-wug. He sat in her lap and tried to get her braid to stay fixed in a twist. “See, I’m the opposite,” he said. “I’m a huge cunt, but I’m always looking for an excuse to be nice.”

Her hair unwound down her back. He clamped her bobby pins between his teeth, to deliberately make the job harder, then, looking down in their laps, spit them on the floor. And as quickly as she decided she needed to find her clothes and depart, having revealed too much, she stayed the entire night.

 -

On the lifeguard pavilions, the green flags were lowered, and yellow flags were handed up.

“Archie,” said Jules, from the safety of the canoe, “Head on back to dry land. No! no,” he called when Archie took Lux’s elbow. “Cathy and I need to talk really quick.”

“It’s not safe,” Archie said.

“I’m Red Cross certified,” Jules said, arms outspread up the oars as far as they could go. “I’m a beautiful heroine, waiting to happen. Also, I’m in fucking charge.”

“Go away, Archie,” Lux agreed, and Archie slopped to the shore, his broad back damp red in the sun’s undergrowth. Dark clouds approached from the west.

“Actually, that’s my boss.” Jules pointed to the sand straight ahead, where a bronzed ingenue, her thigh muscles sticking out like bread loaves, appeared to be watching the duo intently.

“You’ll get in trouble,” Lux cautioned.

“She wants to ride me hard and put me away wet, I think I can get away with it. I feel like you must have,” he added, pointedly. “She’s nineteen.”

It was hard to glare when wet, and it was hard to talk with Jules high and dry. Lux was clammy and clingy, and she couldn’t understand why he sniped at her. Then he crouched down, chest to knees, under pretext of scraping the oars straight down his gunwales and snapped, with pure, guileless annoyance: “Why are you pissed off? I’m the one who should be mad.”

That was too much to bear. “Jules –”

“I showed you my hole and said call me.” He straightened, the little snot, sincerity evaporated. “And you didn’t call me. Now I feel cheap.”

“Jules,” she said, sticking to her own path. “They don’t know.”

“Of course, they don’t know!” He said, clueless, if technically correct. “I didn’t think you’d spread it around to that crowd.”

“Shut up, Jules,” she tried again, and when his mouth opened automatically, she really blew. “Shut the fuck up!”

He shut the fuck up.

“They don’t know. They don’t know.”

She refused to say anymore. She wasn’t in the mood to roll over. Funny, how fucking a guy in the ass could spackle over a few of the gaping holes in her dignity. Patiently, she watched Jules rock to-and-fro, his face oscillating between his premature certainty and the vanishing tail of what she was trying to explain. Then he exclaimed, “huh!” and raised his face to the heavens.

Whistles sounded north and south, and one of his canoe companions raced twenty yards past, churning the creaming waves to reach the point to disembark. Jules ignored it all.

“Oh.” He started, blank-faced. “There’s bossola.”

He waved to the girl on the beach, who was really putting her back into her whistle. “Jesus, baby,” he said just as abruptly to Lux, who had been forced to retreat a few feet to find higher ground. “Now I’m really starting to worry.”

It was either of their guesses, as to what situation he was talking about. Lux wasn’t sure herself, and doubted he knew. His confusion reminded her less of him now, more of him the morning after, when she’d woken up, found him sitting bolt upright, staring at the walls of his clean, sunny studio. He’d turned to her bleary face, and with no confidence whatsoever, asked, Is it really so much better? 

“You want to climb up?” He asked now. “I’ll tell boss you have a cramp.”

“No, I can make it by myself.” She strolled backwards, ass out of the water, and twisted the sarong in front.

“I told Roscoe I fucked a girl for the first time,” he called to her, his eyes cast demurely downward. “You should have seen the sweat roll down his back.”

“I’ll call you,” she promised.

“Yeah, you better,” he advised, and shielded his face against the bursting spray. “Before someone else does. Ladies love the canoe.”

One perky heave-ho, and he displaced bow and stern, fixed his little craft perpendicular to the beach, and cast off toward the pier.

On the beach, Archie and Claire scuttled in the sand, packing their bags, and shaking out their towels. Claire held Jules’s rogue, soaked hat. “I was going to swim back over, but she yanked me out,” she explained, and pointed out Jules’s bossola, who had, watching Lux emerge from the dirty waters, eyed her face, eyed her cleavage, and continued stalking down the shore. She had an ass that needed to be seen to be believed. Lux hoped Jules wouldn’t tease her too much. She might call him sooner, to demand that exclusively. Possibilities, vistas, scenarios, she thought of all these and wrapped her towel around her waist, and she faced the dreary city skyline and she dreamed, and the full force of her imagination asserted itself.

“I’ll give it to him when I see him next.” 

Domme Lux took property of the hat.

Ava, ever watchful, caressed their folded umbrella. “I thought you and Jules didn’t get along,” she said. Deliberately did not ask. Lux, in that moment, didn’t care. It wasn’t her job to teach Ava manners.

“I like him just fine,” she said.

[staticscreenwriting]

Right now could last forever - Billy Hargrove

Synopsis: Inspired by “A daydream a way” by All Time Low and the following request: Okay so I wrote this prompt and i’d love to see it with best friend!Billy. “Are you jealous or something?” “Have i not made that obvious? Of course i’m jealous!” 

Please help a girl out by reblogging. Thank you

[additional note: I am German. Sometimes I get the tense wrong or make mistakes. I am useless when it comes to punctuation. Go easy on me, please.]

For the longest time, I was convinced of two things.

One, I was convinced that in every friendship there comes a moment when the line between friendship and more becomes extremely visible. You can see it quite clearly. And in that moment you get to decide whether to cross it or not. Once the moment has passed, that’s it. That one little choice defines that relationship from that point on.

And two, I would never get myself tangled up in a relationship where that line was not clearly defined.

For the longest time in my life, I was a fucking dumbass.

Billy Hargrove came into my life in the fall of 1984. He swept over me like a thunderstorm in summer. Loud and unforgiving and filled with rage. Someone, and I can’t remember who that was, once said that misery loves company. I never believed in those words until I met Billy.

There was something about him that was so intoxicating. I wanted to know him, genuinely know him. He had a perpetual scowl on his face but that wasn’t what I cared about, I didn’t entirely buy that. His eyes, they were so sad, so deeply sad. I knew that sadness because it was the same feeling that looked back at me every time I looked into a mirror. 

For a while, we were orbiting around each other like two planets always close but never destined to meet. And then, somehow, somewhen, the universe shifted and we collided and life as I knew it was never the same again.

He asked me to tutor him in English, said he didn’t really understand the shit he had to read, said those big words didn’t make sense to him. I said yes because if someone like Billy asks you for a favour, you don’t say no. Billy who was always so effortlessly cool and unbothered. 

I looked at him then and I knew then, that we would never have that moment where lines had to be defined. Because a guy like Billy didn’t even know lines existed when it came to girls like me. I did though. I knew there wasn’t gonna be a moment because I took it away from us. I drew the line myself. Nothing was ever gonna come of this that was ay more than a friendship. I thought I knew it then and so I took it upon myself to define things that never needed to be defined. And I drew the line and I thought that was it.

Back then I was so sure that we could never be anything but friends. I was a rainy day in spring. I was muted colours and damp grass and hayfever. Billy was the middle of summer. He was warm august evenings, BBQs with friends, 4th of July fireworks.

I tutored him about 2 or 3 times and it felt like it was always supposed to be this way, Billy and me. Like two puzzle pieces fitting so well. We bonded over our love for the same bands and our hatred for the same stupid things. But what really brought us together was the realization, that the same sadness lived in both our hearts. 

From then on, Billy was a permanent fixture in my life. Like once he was there he wasn’t gonna leave again, ever. Like my life was a vinyl record and he was a scratch and no matter how much you polished or scrubbed it wasn’t gonna go away. No, that metaphor doesn’t hold up because Billy wasn’t a bad thing. He was maybe the one good thing in my life. He was permanent, like a tattoo. Something, someone, I chose to have around. Someone to make me remember what it felt like, being alive. 

Tuesdays were my favourite days because we had his whole house to ourselves. My parents didn’t give a shit where I was and his dad and Susan had to work all day. Max was hardly around either way and so it was just us. 

We sat on the ugly gray linoleum floor of his kitchen passing a joint back and forth, goofy smiles on our faces. That’s how we spent most Tuesdays, getting high and just — being. Just being around each other. What else was there to do for a teenager in Hawkins Indiana in 1984 though? What do you do in a town where kids and teens go missing on a regular basis and yet everyone goes about their day as if it was nothing special? I mean, yeah they built us a huge ass mall but what good did that do? All they did was add capitalism to this mess. 

So we sat there, giggling and dreaming dreams too big for us and using words we didn’t really understand. Or maybe we did but we surely weren’t aware of the gravity they held then. Words like forever.

“ What’s your favourite colour? “ Billy asked me one Tuesday afternoon. He didn’t give me time to finish though. “ And don’t say shit like seafoam green or something. I don’t got a fucking clue what seafoam green is. Just — just gimme a straight answer. “ 

I didn’t tell him that my favourite colour was the exact shade of blue of his eyes. Or maybe the red of his lifeguard shorts that made him almost glow in the summer sun. I thought it then but I didn’t say it. You don’t say stuff like that and expect the line not to be crossed.

The line. That fucking line I draw myself. I had to remind myself of it every once in a while when my thoughts went drifting and the line felt like it was going to smudge a little. I had to draw it again. In the sand. In the clouds. Anywhere. Everywhere. I couldn’t let myself forget about it. Because forgetting would only end in heartbreak.

“ I like red. “

“ Yeah? I like red too. “ And that made perfect sense to me then because he was red. Anger and wrath and chaos. Warmth. Comfort. Love. 

“ What are you grinning about, huh? Looking like a fool over there. “ I wondered, nudging his thigh with my foot. He just kept grinning, tiny wrinkles forming around his smile, his eyes. He always smiled with his eyes, at least when the smiles were genuine. I adored that. 

“ Nothing.” 

“ Wish you could see your face right now. It’s not nothing, clearly” 

“ I don’t know, “ Billy replied and shrugged “ I’m just — I like our Tuesdays. I like not having to get back to anything. Right now, right now could last forever and I wouldn’t mind. Wouldn’t give a single fuck.” 

That made my heart beat so fast, I could feel it in my chest, drumming in my ears, tingling in my fingers. But that’s what friends do, right? Spend all their time together. Share a place that feels safe. Even if that place isn’t a specific place at all. Maybe that place could be a person. A heart.

It was clear to me then, that Billy Hargrove was my soulmate. Maybe not in a romantic way but in a way that meant much more. My heart was his, my soul was his, my mind was his. And in return, I had all of him. No longer were we orbiting around each other, we were the same then. One lone planet floating around in the universe. Terribly alone but never lonesome.

The thing about the line is that something I wished I hadn’t drawn it. Sometimes I wanted to smudge it like lead on paper. I knew I couldn’t do that, it would ruin what we had. I could’ve just as well have ripped my own heart out, the pain would’ve matched.

So when things got all quiet and I felt like life wasn’t gonna judge me too harshly, and when I felt really really down or really really brave, I let myself get lost in daydreams. Ones where I stepped over the line, into something else. Something more. I let myself relish in those daydreams, soak them up like a goddamn sponge. They overwhelmed me sometimes, leaving me with nothing to say, because I just didn’t know where to start and where to stop. But those daydreams felt safe. I could watch from this place of security and if I kept my mouth shut and keep my feelings in those daydreams, it meant I never had to lose what we had.

Weekends meant going out. They meant getting away from everything but each other. Never from each other.  Sometimes we would go to Carmel, sometimes Lafayette, sometimes Terre Haute. Most of the time though, we ended up in some dive bar at the side of the road in some tiny village. No one knew us there and maybe that was the charm of it all. We could be anyone. We could be anything. Even to each other. If only I would’ve let myself feel those things.

Billy drove the Camaro to wherever it was we were going and the we’d decide on who would drive us back. Usually, we took turns. One weekend I would stay sober, the next he would.  I didn’t realize then, but Billy letting me drive his car, his baby, that meant a whole lot. To the both of us. It’s just that neither of us was terribly aware of it then.

It was the summer of 1985, a warm June night. The fireflies were back, the cold of the winter and spring finally gone, making way for summer heat and longer nights. We drove aimlessly around, trying to find a place to waste away our youth, get drunk of things they shouldn’t have sold us, to feel alive. It was an escape for us. From our lives, our fears, everything that made life feel so wrong. Those nights driving along the roads, music blasting from the car radio, those were the little moments that my life felt right.

Like nothing mattered but us and the vastness of the world waiting before us. A world that didn’t know us yet. One the let us be whoever we decided to be. Sometimes I wondered if in that world I could be a girl that Billy liked. But then I remembered the line. And I shut those thoughts out.

O'Charley's was an Irish pub a few towns over from Hawkins. It was, I assume, founded by someone that had never been to Ireland in their life nor did they know anyone Irish. It was very little authentic Irish pub and quite a lot party city with all the paper shamrocks and tiny flags everywhere. It was charming though, in all it’s mess there was something about it that made us come back time and time again. 

That June night, I was wearing a red dress I had snagged from my mom’s closet. For all her faults, she really was a looker in the 70s and her clothes had no business hanging untouched and unloved in her closet because she had decided the 80s were her time to shine in boring velour pants and blouses that made her look 10 years older. 

So I wore that red wrap-around dress that flowed around my knees with every step I took and I thought that if I can veil myself in red, in Billy’s colour, maybe I can trap a little of him, of his energy, of his confidence, of his warmth, in me.

All the people here knew about us, was our faces and the fake names on our fake IDs. We could be anyone we wanted to be in here. And for a pair of 17-year-olds that is the biggest power one can only possess. To be whoever you want to be in a world that tries so hard to put you down over and over again and squish you in a mould of picket fences and loveless marriages. Time stood still for the nights I was with Billy in a bar where no one knew the real us. Or maybe they did. Maybe we were the real us when we were there.

I can not tell you what Billy wore that night, this boy had 4 different outfits that he kept rotating. In the end, it didn’t really matter though, he looked hot in all of them. I know that it was hot though and his shirt was unbuttoned more than usual, letting me see more of his chest. Sometimes I wondered if he knew what it was doing to me despite the fact that he was my best friend. My person. 

We sat at the bar, I ordered a beer, Billy ordered a cherry coke. That was tonight's driver decided. I gave him a grateful smile and he just smiled back with his casual coolness. So we sat there, Whitesnake playing from the stereo, smiles on our faces. And life was right how it should be all the time. For a short while, the demons we both carried on our shoulders were mute. We could breathe.

“ Look at that douchebag. “ Billy laughed and nodded his head towards the corner of the room. A guy that looked about our parents' age, hair slicked back, shirt stuffed into his jeans, tie hanging loosely from his neck, was leaning against the wall. His lips were almost glued to the ear of a beautiful woman. She must’ve been around the same age he was though beauty wasn’t lost on her in those years. It was hard to watch though, as her eyes were so desperately vacant. There was nothing there. No joy, no excitement. He was wearing a ring, she was wearing one too. We could only assume that those two had seen a few years together. Maybe this was their night out. Kids dropped off at the sitter those two felt like hitting the town, reliving their youth.

Only when you’re stuck in a gray, loveless, sad mess for too long, it takes over your entire being. It turns you into a gray mess yourself. I knew that because I could see it every day in my own parents. Billy knew because his mother had to break his heart in order to escape her own heartbreak and the mess. 

“ He’s trying too hard, the idiot. “ Billy chuckled. This was something we did a lot, sit and watch people and pretend our lives would never end like theirs. And god, did we hope and pray we wouldn’t end up like this.

“ She’s so desperate to just get back home,” I pointed out, taking another sip from my beer.

“ Their names, “ Billy started “ are Jeff and Hillary. They’ve been married for 20 years now. Jeff is an accountant at Hillary’s dad’s firm. Good ol’ Hilly dreamed of becoming a model for Sports Illustrated. Then she got knocked up and settled for a life in the suburbs with Jeff who’s as exciting as a piece of untoasted toast.” 

“ They have three kids, and she loves them, “ I continued, “ but god sometimes she really resents them for being the reasons she had to give up on all her dreams. Give up on the person she used to be. “ 

“ Two more drinks, then they’ll go home and have boring, unsatisfying sex. He’ll hump away and break a sweat and two minutes later he’ll fall asleep and she’s gonna stare up at the ceiling and consider finishing the job herself, cause Jeff clearly doesn’t care. And she’ll just stare and wish that this wasn’t her life. Because she hates it.” 

Where things had started out fun, they turned quite sad quite quickly. 

“ Promise me we will never end up like this, “ Billy said, now facing me. My favourite shade of blue, so vibrant, so soft. I nodded, because I was lost for all words. That’s the effect Billy had on me and everyone else.

The line! You drew it! Remember it!

I ordered a tequila then. “ We’d never stand a chance,” I thought “ at love, not Billy and I.” 

So I tried to forget about my thoughts, with a little salt and a little lime and a shot that burned all the way down. Tried to forget about those intrusive little words and images that I knew could never be. 

I don’t know how much later it was but at some point, Billy’s warm big handheld onto my arm to steady my swaying frame. I could tell you what it felt like when he looked at me then, if I had the vocabulary to properly put it into words. I knew then, that if no one else, Billy was there to take care of me. That with crossing the line I would give up on this. This love that was certainly there even if it was in a completely different way. Maybe this was all the love I would ever need in my life. 

“ Let me take you home. “ 

But did he not know? Home was wherever he was. Home was him.

We arrived back at my house which was deserted, as always. Weekends were when my own parents tried to rekindle a flame that had never been there in the first place. I was invisible. Maybe that’s what drew me to Billy, he saw me. All of me. And he understood in ways I had never been understood before.

“ Are you okay getting up by yourself ? “ he asked, his eyes looking towards the window of my room. Was I okay? Sure I could’ve managed by did I want to? Did I want to be all by myself in a house that felt so cold even in those warm summer nights? No, I really didn’t.

“ I thought you’d stay over again ?” 

“ You’re not sick of me yet ? “ the way he said it sounded so nonchalant, like he was completely joking. He wasn’t I knew him better than that. When everyone always makes you feel like a burden, it’s hard to accept that some people actually want your around. It’s hard to accept love when life’s always made you believe you didn’t deserve it.

“ I’ll never get sick of you, Billy” and I had never been more serious about anything else in my life.

Okay, maybe the line was getting a little smudged.

“ I’ll lend you one of my sleepshirts.” 

“ Lucky me.” 

And he held my hand as we got up like it was nothing. And maybe it wasn’t to him at that point, but it was everything to me. Maybe to him it was just holding a friend’s hand who has drank a little too much. But that’s all it had to be to send my heart beating faster.

There had been countless times before that Billy had spent the night but the more I let myself get lost in those comforting daydreams, the more my stomach started fluttering when he was near. We wouldn’t cuddle, not really, not when we got to sleep. We’d just lay next to each other, two pillows one blanket. We’d just exist around each other and try to not let the weight settle back in just yet. He was so close I could feel the warmth 

his body was exuding, could hear him breathing. He was so close and yet the most we’d touch was my legs accidentally brushing his or the other way around.

“ I never wanna live in a house like this ever again, “ I told him then, sheltered by the dark of the night. “ It’s so empty and sad and big and I just — I hate it here.” 

He was real quiet for a moment but I knew he would answer soon enough. When he was with me, Billy had a habit of really considering his words. Maybe because I knew I listened to what he had to say, I cared.

“ Yeah me neither. No offence to your parent’s decorating skills or anything. But god, this house sucks. It’s so — “ 

“ Sad. It’s a sad big house. “

“ Yeah. “ 

“ What kind of house would you want? “ I asked and I swear in that moment I felt his hand brush mine. Only for a second. But it was there. It was there.

“ One by the beach. Where I can just open the door and walk onto the sand and down to the shore. I’d like a fire pit on my property, those are cool. “ 

“ They really are. I can see us sitting by the fire pit, eating smores, watching the waves. That sounds nice. “ 

Shit, did I say that? I did. And I wanted the ground to swallow me whole. Right there and then. Lines, (Y/N) !!! Remember the god damn lines you drew yours—

“ I’d like that. “

That moment, the moment he said those words, I wondered for the first time if maybe Billy didn’t see the line between friendship and relationship because to him there was none. Not because he didn’t see me as suitable but because he just didn’t think in those convoluted and ridiculous ways I did. There were no lines because Billy didn’t need them to define anything, he chose to define things himself. 

“ I want a house that’s a home. Something that’s more than 4 walls and a roof. “ he said and smiles at me. Billy Hargrove smiles were rare but when he would grant them to you, they were magnificent.

I fell asleep with lines smudged and everything I knew shaken up. I also fell asleep with my hand in his.

The next morning, I woke up cuddled into his chest. I closed my eyes again to hold onto the moment just a little longer.

Things didn't drastically change after that, my world didn’t suddenly shift. Billy and I were still best friends and if I am being completely honest, they seemed rather stagnant after that night. Like either of us was afraid of making a wrong move.

Like I’ve mentioned before, I was a fucking dumbass back then because instead of trying to have a grown-up conversation with him about it, I decided to look for romance elsewhere.

Kyle Davis was a nice guy. He was part of the school newspaper, drove a red BMW and worked part-time at Sam Goody inside Starcourt mall. Kyle Davis was also the son of one of Hawkins most respectable lawyers and was sure to follow in his father’s footsteps one of these days.

And Kyle Davis, for some reason I don’t understand to this day, was interested in me. Followed me around like a lovesick puppy. I had no real interest in him but as I said, he was nice and I wanted to see what it felt like, having someone who wants you too and who isn’t afraid to tell you that.

So when he asked me to the summer formal, I said yes. Something that Billy did not like. Not one bit.

“ Kyle Davis ? “ he all but yelled as he slumped down on the bleachers next to me. The sun was shining down on us with warm, golden rays. I was trying to focus on some stupid math problem, papers and books spread on the bench next to me.

“ What about him ? “ 

“ You’re going to the dance with him ? “ 

“ Yup. Is that a problem ? “ 

“ I mean — “ he said then huffed “ I mean yeah. It’s Kyle Davis. Kyle. “ 

“ He’s nice. “ 

“ Sure he is. A nice guy with a stable future. Someone’s already warming his chair at dad’s cosy office where he gets everything handed to him. Let’s see how this is gonna play out, huh ? “ 

“ Billy don’t.”

“ Nah, let me have this one. So Kyle takes you to the dance, you smooch a little, maybe he gets to cop a feel. Obviously he wants to keep you around because you’re pretty great. So you date and at some point you gotta talk about the future because graduation isn’t all that far off. And Kyle is the kind of guy that expects you to stay with him, follow him wherever he goes. Let’s pretend you would. Soon enough he’d get you knocked up with little Kyle Junior. He’d be out at work all day letting you turn bitter and resentful and hate the life you have, all alone in a big empty house with a kid you can’t love properly because you don’t love their dad or the life he made you live. And soon enough you’d end up in a shitty pub trying to chase something that wasn’t there in the first place. I don’t wanna watch you end up like Hillary at the pub. “ 

“ God, Billy. Don’t be so dramatic, I’m just going to the dance with him. What’s wrong with you, are you jealous or something ? “ 

I was expecting him to deny it, to blow me off with some stupid yet charming one-liner. He didn’t though, he stayed quiet. And that made my eyes shoot up to look at him.

There was a sincerity in his eyes that I wasn’t used to. An indescribable confidence and yet he looked more nervous that I had ever seen him before.

“ Have I not made that obvious? Of course I’m jealous! ”

“ I — what ? “ 

Everything I ever thought I knew, was pure and utter bullshit.

“ Jesus, (Y/N). I have been in love with you since the first time we hung out. I asked you to tutor me because I wanted to be around you, I was really fucking good at English class if I’m being honest here. I didn’t need your help but I needed to know you. I wanted to know you. You just don’t fucking realize how — incredible you are. In everything you do. Your grilled cheese sandwiches are so good, you manage to remember the lines to every song instantly, you don’t know how to pronounce melancholy and I think that’s so adorable. I feel incredibly lost and angry and disillusioned with life. I hate so much about myself but you, you understand it and you feel it with me and —  you're everything I love about the things I hate in me. So please, if there’s even a teeny tiny chance for me, don’t go out with him.” 

I didn’t answer, because I didn’t know what to say at all. And then a second passed and I knew this was the moment.

This was that moment where I got to decide how my life was gonna go. Where I got to chose the person I wanted to walk alongside. And it was Billy. It always had been.

I’m not sure who kissed who first then but one moment he was pouring his heart out to me and the next our lips were touching. That’s when my summer truly began. His red-hot took over my dull gray and turned it into something bright and wonderful and exciting. 

“ Do you actually wanna go to the dance ? “ he asked as we pulled away, “ cause if you do I’ll take you. I just — don’t own a suit., so … “

“ How about we ditch that stupid dance and take and just get away from it all. I just wanna be with you, Billy. You are my home. “ 

It was the summer of 1985 when I learned what love really was. It doesn’t come with rules or regulations. There’s no rhyme or reason to it sometimes. That’s a scary fact to realize and even scarier to accept. You can’t trick it, manipulate it. It’s no game to be won or lost. It’s — I believe it’s bigger than any human can fully comprehend. 

So all that we can do, it let it move us, allow ourselves to feel it and accept the love when it comes our way. No lines needed. 

[keroujack]

Hi, can you do #46? Your writing is amazing, I’m a little jealous 😭❤️

bruh dfjkasla;d you’re unbelievably sweet thank you so much ❤️ i really hope you like it!!

46. “What happens if I do this?” 

Steve was 15 and the neighbors were moving out.

He’d watched them pack from his spot on the roof. The little spot right outside his bedroom window. Allowed him to see down into the living room of the next house over. It was already piled high with boxes when his mom let the statement slip at dinner one night.

“The Upton’s are moving to the Hamptons,” she’d said.

Steve couldn’t remember a single time either of his parents had ever spoken to Mr. or Mrs. Upton other than the occasional hello while crossing paths to get the mail. Couldn’t quite understand why the news was important enough for her to waste her breath over.

His father didn’t. He just hummed.

Two weeks later, the house was empty.

Steve was 16 and they still didn’t have a neighbor off to the right hand side.

He’d watched his fair share of Open Houses from his spot on the roof. Thought about taking a look himself on more than one occasion. Considered what it would be like to jump over onto the little patch of roof that matched his own, how easy it would be to open the window and climb inside. The thought was tempting, but the small gap between houses made his palms sweat. Was enough to keep him on his side of the line.

So he just watched. Watched couple after couple after couple, one upturned nose after the next, walk through and leave. Never saw the same face twice.

Maybe that was the beer’s fault, the weed’s, made his memory all hazy and weird. Mostly, out there on the roof, staring at the stars, he thought maybe it was the house’s fault.

Big empty houses could be intimidating. He should know. He lived in one.

Steve was 17 and there was a moving truck outside.

A moving truck, a beat-up Cadillac, and a shiny blue Camaro.

He watched them unpack from his spot on the roof. Sipped a beer, slow, careful, kept his eyes on the living room below.

From what he could see, they were a small family, normal enough. A quiet father with stern eyes. A young mother with bright orange hair. A small daughter with a head of her own to match.

If he hadn’t been watching closely, he might have thought that was it. Father, mother, daughter. Small family of three. Quaint and picturesque to fit the small-town Indiana mold.

Except, that wasn’t it.

There was a fourth person walking around the house. Somewhere. What had to be a son. Broad shoulders, blond hair. Hands curled around cardboard boxes so tight they creased beneath his fingers, lined with rings.

The other three, the picture-perfect three, spent their time in the living room, hanging curtains, arranging vases on shelves, but the son, he only came into the room to pick up another box, to drag it somewhere else. Spent his time somewhere else. Out of the frame.

Time passed. Steve had another beer. Watched the lights go out one by one by one until the house was as dark as it had been these last two years. Dark and desolate.

Steve was 17 and they finally had neighbors again.

“The Hargrove-Mayfield’s,” he learned, as per his mother’s explanation a few nights later. “From California.”

“That’s cool,” Steve said. Hardly even a hum of a noise as he pushed at the broccoli on his plate. Had to punch at the silence somehow when his father didn’t.

The explanation ended there, dinner went back to cold silence.

Later that night, he climbed out onto the roof, the late-June air outside his bedroom window warm, perfect. His parents would be gone again in the morning and he’d bought a brand new bottle of whiskey off Tommy, could hardly even wait to drink it beneath a blanket of stars. There was no breeze to rattle the trees, the slow burn of alcohol cut at the back of his throat, and if he squinted hard enough, he could see the Big Dipper.

Life was lighter. Summer was here.

The world outside was dark, calm, but the light from the living room next door drew his attention like a moth to a flame. The dull hum of noise. The cadence an argument, volume that matched.

There wasn’t much he could see. Mostly just hands. Young hands. Lined with rings and waving like mad. On the opposite side of the room, the hands were stronger, rougher. A father’s hands. Balled into fists. Unmoving.

Until suddenly they were. Moving. Grabbing a vase off the shelf to throw against the wall. Cracked it, shattered it clean. Sent shards and flowers to the floor with a violent crash.

The crash gave way to silence, silence to flat air. To empty space. Disappeared and faded into the light. Into the house.

For two years, the house next door had been empty. Dead. Lifeless. Now it was full of fire, with hands that dripped kerosene and a dark rosewater stain that licked at the wall like flames.

When Steve closed his eyes, he could hear sirens.

When he opened them again, he could hear the telltale flick of the locks on the window across from his. Watched a hand lined with rings pull it up, open.

Steve watched him, lazy, hazy from whiskey as he-the son-climbed out the window, shut it behind him. Faced the yard with a heavy breath that Steve might have seen if the air’d had any kind of chill to it.

It wasn’t like it was weird. He knew the kid had seen him, they’d caught each other’s eyes as he sat down on the little patch of roof that mirrored Steve’s, pulled a cigarette out of his pocket before he completed the full motion.

The kid had even spoken to him after he’d placed the cigarette between his lips. After he’d felt at his pockets with ring lined hands and grabbed at his thighs with well-practiced intent. Voice low in pitch, in volume.

“Got a light?” he asked.

“No,” Steve said, shook his head, doubted the kid could see it against the night sky, the black tiles that pillowed his head.

The kid’s laugh was sharp, humorless. A little mean.

“Jesus.” He took the cigarette out from between his lips and stuck it behind his ear. “’Course you don’t,” he mumbled, rubbed a hand that glinted gold against the moonlight over his face. “Fuckin’ hick town. Of course you don’t.”

Steve sat up, slow when he felt his cheeks heat, felt something irritated, annoyed flood up his chest. He took another long sip of the whiskey, winced around it, made sure to feel it burn all the way down before he screwed the cap back on.

“Here.”

Thoughtless. He threw the bottle over the gap before the kid had his head fully turned in his direction, caught it with an ease, an effortlessness Steve could admire. 

For all this kid knew, Steve was a stranger, an idiot that laid on the roof of his house in the middle of the night, but he didn’t hesitate to unscrew the cap. To wrap his lips around the bottle and tip his head back, to close his eyes and take a smooth drink.

Silent. Steve just watched.

The kid threw it back over after another even swig, but he kept his mouth shut. Made it clear he didn’t have anything more to say.

That might have been the first time, but it was far from the last.

Steve was 17 and the new neighbors had a habit of getting loud.

The situations were always similar. Steve would watch from the roof, hear the phantom hum of an argument, prepare for the locks to undo, for the window to open once the argument gave way to silence. To him.

“Billy,” he’d said after the fourth time, after Steve had thrown him the beer he’d convinced himself was just an extra when he’d grabbed it on the way out.

“Steve,” he replied, didn’t flinch when the can cracked a few feet away. Billy’s eyes were on him-blue, he had blue eyes, Steve realized-as he took a sip.

And so it went.

Steve was 17, Billy would be 17 next month, and apparently, he wasn’t the only one that preferred stars to the interior of a big house.

“Know anything about stars?” Billy asked him one clear night in July, when the moon was bright and Steve’s watch told him it was nearing 3 AM.

“No,” he said, honest. “Do you?”

“Not a clue.”

Steve laughed. It was easy to laugh with Billy. He’d cried out on the roof more times than he’d ever admit out loud, but he never laughed.

Billy was funny when he wasn’t an asshole, when he wasn’t filled to the brim with angry red, when his temper had calmed and argument-born adrenaline had all but disappeared.

“My dad’s a dickhead,” was the only explanation he’d ever offered. Let it slip after five weeks and half a bottle of cheap vodka that they’d been tossing back and forth. Was quick enough to cover it with a quip that Steve didn’t have to answer, didn’t have to know how.

He could just laugh. So he did.

Steve was 17 and he wasn’t sure he’d ever laughed so much in his life.

He didn’t laugh that night in August, though. The one that changed things.

He’d been in his room, had the window open to allow the air to circulate. The shouts that came when the sun went down didn’t surprise him, nor did the strong, angry sets of hands he saw arguing when he climbed out and sat on the roof. To wait. 

It was the absence of a bare hand, raised, the flash of an elbow, pulled back, a fist that hooked right to left that made his breath catch.

The hands lined with rings, covered in blood when they came back into the frame.

Steve felt his heart hit the ground.

Billy’s lip was split when he climbed through the window not five minutes later, blood a fat line down his chin.

He didn’t sit once the window was closed behind him. Not even a hey.

Didn’t need one when he was already at the edge of the roof.

“What happens if I do this?” he asked, gestured across the gap between houses, to the space where Steve was sitting. “If I jump over. Is your roof gonna cave in under my ass or what?”

“No,” Steve said, confused, hated how much red there was covering Billy’s face, his hands.

“Okay.” Billy nodded, eyed Steve, the space around him. Took a hard breath in and then out. “Back up.”

Steve didn’t need to be told twice. 

Billy jumped the gap without another word, without hesitation. Landed on his feet with a dull thud, a hint of a wince that pulled at the corners of his lips.

The weight of his body knocked into Steve’s when he sat down next to him, heavy, careless.

The blood down his chin was so much worse up close. Deep, dark, dripped a thick shade of red down his tanned skin. Steve had to ball his hand in the hem of his shirt to keep from reaching out to wipe at it.

“Billy?”

His eyes were closed. His chest was almost heaving, up and down and up and down harsh, rapid.

“Yeah?” He sounded breathless. Different.

Steve didn’t bother asking him if he was okay. Decided to take a leap instead.

“Do you wanna come inside?” he asked, watched when the question made Billy open his eyes, revealed a cool shade of blue that seemed to steam against the red, the blood on his face. “You’re bleeding like crazy, man. I mean, I could-I have stuff for that. That could help you clean up.”

Billy swallowed hard, considering. Was slow to shake his head. “Don’t wanna bug you.”

“You’re not bugging me,” he insisted, knocked his shoulder into Billy’s when he didn’t move. “I mean it. Come on.”

Steve stood up, held his hand out. An offer. Billy eyed it. Eyed him.

Took it without a word, let Steve pull him up. Let Steve help him in through the window and lock it behind them.

Steve was 17 and he’d do anything to protect him-Billy- from the house next door. The monster that lived in the house next door.

Anything.