#i like to think Bianca also has a winter birthday and this is just a recurring theme for their family

[aroaceleovaldez]

Hazel and Nico being born almost exactly one month apart is so funny to me, especially since they both have winter birthdays, cause it implies Hades just had one very rough spring of missing Persephone really bad

[aina-otsuki]

Nico Di Angelo Headcanons!

Some of these are probably really weird. But just like go with the flow if it doesn’t make sense.

Headcanon #1 - Nico can draw really well. Just one look at it can make anyone feel as if they're actually there. He uses it as a coping mechanism since Tartarus. Will saw one of them once and was absolutely terrified. He wondered what it must have felt like actually being there like Nico had alone.

Headcanon #2 - Has nice and fancy handwriting. I mean Nico literally had an Ambassador for a grandfather. Nico is also really polite and cannot call any adult by their first name out of habit. But this is only because he respects them and if he feels really REALLY comfortable around them then he’ll call them by their first name. 

Headcanon #3 - When Nico was remodeling the Hades Cabin he probably asked for one of the Hecate campers to cast a spell on the cabin so it’s bigger on the inside. So there are a lot of rooms in the Hades Cabin. One of the rooms is a giant library with tons of books that Annabeth asks to read some of them. Nico also has some of Sally’s books in the library. Her books are some of his personal favorites.

Headcanon #4 - The Hades cabin (a.k.a. Nico) always has something special planned for Halloween. Nico plans out all the festivities he thinks would be cool or something he did as a kid. Camp Jupiter comes over for that week too. Whenever it’s Hallow's eve every camper comes out to the campfire. Nico then comes in with some spooky entrance and starts giving warnings to add effect to the story. Also for campers who might not be able to handle it. Mr. D and Chiron are always there to  supervise and Mr. D loves seeing some of the campers get scared. Like Nico uses his powers whenever he’s storytelling and chooses an unsuspecting camper for a certain scare. No one in both camps can deny that Nico is the best story teller for the occasion. Even the toughest Mars/Ares kids are scared.

Headcanon #5 - Nico probably has one of Bianca’s scarves from when they were kids and it was too big for them. Now it’s the perfect fit, the scarf is also jade green since Bianca loved the color. He mainly wears it when he’s in need of some comfort. Or when it’s really cold in the winter.

Headcanon #6 - Nico has a typewriter in his cabin. He also may write little short stories based on how he’s feeling. Since Italy is like the country of music. He also has a room that has a closet of cases filled with an instrument. He uses music to calm himself down like his mom used to do when he was a kid. Nico may have a diary but it looks like a normal book so, no one suspects a thing. He might have a pride flag (Will or Jason probably gave him) in his room.

Headcanon #7 - The Hades cabin has a huge Ball Room. Nico likes to go there when he feels like dancing. Hazel had come into the Hades cabin and was surprised by the amount of remodeling he did. Their cabin is a literal small castle because of the amount of rooms. He may have modeled Hazel’s side of the cabin or room now and when he showed her she started to tear up because it reminded her of the good things she had at home in New Orleans. 

Headcanon #8 - Nico has a record player or some speakers in his room. I don’t think anything else has to be said…

Headcanon #9- Nico thought it would be cool to have a recording studio so he makes covers of songs both old and modern. Of course he sometimes translates it to Italian at times and Hazel recorded him once on YouTube (or something else Idk point is she puts it on the internet) and it got tons of views so now he’s just a famous cover artist. One time he decided to write a song for Will and sang it for him on his birthday. Nico’s voice also has some vocals (If you know what I mean) when he sings. Like he can change his voice to sound like a girl or very deep and sound older. He can hit high notes and very low notes. Also because Nico’s slowly getting his memories I think he would remember lullabies his mom sang to him and sing them to new young campers who are like 7 or 10 years old when they have a nightmare or demigod dream. 

Headcanon #10 - He’s probably going to be the one filling in for Percy as the role model. So, newcomers are going to be scared of him at first but after a while they're confident enough to talk to him and they realize Nico’s actually a really fun or great person to be around. So now young campers are just going up to him telling him about their day. Or telling him about how they improved because of the advice he gave them. The campers might even be coming up to him just to compliment him on something he did a few days ago or in the past. Then Will’s just like “When did this happen?”. At first when campers started doing this Nico was freaking out but he got used to it after a few weeks or months. 

Headcanon #11 - Nico can cook and bake tons of stuff. So when he tried cooking for Hazel she just started smiling so much because of how much she loved it. Nico probably made a birthday cake for her at some point and everyone there to celebrate just ran up to him and started asking for his recipe. He probably remembers his mom’s cooking and just starts doing what he remembers her doing. (You know, like memorizing her actions and trying to do the same. Or um muscle memory. That’s how some people learned to cook. Looking at someone else cooking and then getting the ingredients and cooking.)

Headcanon #12 - When Nico is old enough to drink, he buys some wine. Once he tries it he realizes that it’s absolutely sh*t. So he just tells Will who’s with him that it sucks and starts ranting about what could have been done to make it better. 

Headcanon #13 - Nico has fairy lights in his room and he never turns on the normal lights because it ruins the effect the lights give his room. He refuses no matter how many times someone asks him too. He also has a hidden secret entrance into his room and he puts an underground system into every cabin. He put one in Hazel’s too just in case of emergencies. The underground system leads all over camp and outside into New York City. No one but He and Hazel know about this. He probably told Will about it and Will maybe asked him to put one in his cabin too. Then Hazel probably put the underground system in the Pluto cabin too.

Headcanon #14 - There’s a club for all the queer campers at Camp and I think Nico would be in the club. There isn’t much room in the cabins for all the members so, when Nico joins he offers to host it and everyone in the club is just in awe of how big and amazing the Hades Cabin is on the inside. He also lets any camper part of the club into the Hades cabin just in case they want some space or are outed during the school year. Nico probably tells the club about Cupid (Euros or whatever the mfs name is spelled) outing him and tells any of the younger campers in the club he understands how it feels. 

Headcanon #15 - I think he’s autistic. I also think he probably inherited this trait from Maria. This could be used in so many fanfics. I’ll write one if I have to…

Headcanon #16 - Nico learned how to sew because Hazel had ripped one of her favorite hoodies. So he put a little design when he sewed the hoodie back together. One day Hazel put it one when she was meeting Percabeth, Caleo, Jason and Piper (I forgot how to spell Jason and Piper’s ship name 🥲) with Frank. They all asked who did the design and when she said Nico did it. All of them were shocked they stood still for like a few seconds. Word spread around quickly about Nico’s sewing skills in Camp. Now whenever someone has ripped clothing they just go to Nico Di Angelo.

[kitspindles]

Some Nico Facts (Canon)

this is going to be long i’m sorry

His birthday is January 28th, making him an Aquarius (This is the only one where I can’t find an “official” source, but literally everywhere online is in agreement that his birthday is 1/28, so take that as you will).

According to his shirt in The Hidden Oracle, he listens to The Ramones

Also the subject of shirts: introduced in the Trials of Apollo, Nico has his own Camp Half-Blood T-shirt but in black, with a skeletal pegasus on front and Cabin 13

His signature aviator’s jacket-- it’s gone. After the fight with Lycaon in The Blood of Olympus Nico had to discard of the jacket because it was shredded. In the following book, The Hidden Oracle, Apollo’s narration places him in a black leather bomber jacket.

According to Apollo, Nico’s hair smells nice? (”His hair smelled like rain against stone... a pleasant scent” (The Tower of Nero, p. 261).

Nico’s smile is described by Apollo as “a bit of winter sun breaking between snow flurries” (The Tower of Nero, p. 102).

He’s able to travel through dreams and leave messages for people that way. Although it’s not fully explained in the books, I can only assume it’s due to the nature of mythology and abstracts/metaphors/whatever: Death and Sleep are very close— basically only separated by a beating heart really— given that Thanatos and Hypnos are twins.

Coach Hedge is his favorite/preferred satyr ( “I’d settle for Coach Hedge.” Nico pushed Will’s arm off. “Besides, don’t talk about Grover too loudly. Juniper’s right over there” (The Hidden Oracle, p. 157).

Despite being 10 years old, untrained, and completely unarmed at the time, he told off a full-grown manticore for being rude to Bianca (The Titan’s Curse, p. 18).

Although he burnt up most, if not all, of his physical Mythomagic cards, he still plays the game online

Examples:

“He was throwing pieces of paper into the fire-- Mythomagic trading cards, part of the game he’d been obsessed with last winter” (Battle of the Labyrinth, p. 40).

“Hades: Every time I try to speak to this boy, he has his face buried in his phone, “text messaging” that glowy boyfriend of his. And not to mention all that time he spends playing that internet card game...” (via the interview “Navigating Family Reunions With Nico and Hades” on the ReadRiordan website).

Aside from his sisters, Jason and Reyna were the first people that he was able to find a friend in and trust wholeheartedly as allies. Not even Percy achieved that honor until the very end of the series

Examples:

“She gave Nico a big hug and the crowd roared with approval. For once, Nico didn’t feel like pulling away. He buried his face in Reyna’s shoulder and blinked the tears out of his eyes” (The Blood of Olympus, p. 477).

“’That’s-- that’s fantastic! Dude!’ Jason opened his arms for a hug, then froze. ‘Right. No touching. Sorry.’/Nico grunted. ‘I suppose we can make an exception.’/Jason squeezed him so hard Nico thought his ribs would crack” (The Blood of Olympus, p. 485). Jason also told Leo off when he compared Clytius the shadow giant to Nico (“‘Any kind of light just gets sucked into his cloud of darkness.’/‘Sounds like Nico,’ Leo said. ‘You think they’re related?’/Jason scowled. ‘Hey, man, cut Nico some slack’” (The House of Hades, p.322).

Nico traveled through Tartarus alone and survived. And he’s willing to go back a second time to rescue Bob/Iaptus the Titan.

He’s a friendly and caring individual despite his appearance and initial attitude toward others (which is decidedly a defensive tactic since other campers and even Percy, by his own admittance, were generally creeped out by him).

Examples:

One of the first demigods in many years to pay any notice of the goddess Hestia

Visited Bob the Titan in the Underworld when no one else did

Assured Reyna that she didn’t kill her father and was a good person, didn’t want her to feel worthless

Respectful of the Trogs and their general weirdness

“‘Meg,’ Nico said. ‘Take my chair. Your leg looks bad’“ (The Tower of Nero, p. 81).

“I don’t like it when people are overlooked” (The Tower of Nero, p. 377)

Indirectly responsible for helping Percy and Annabeth make it through Tartarus. If he hadn’t been the one to visit Bob and tell him how kind Percy was, would Bob have leapt into literal Super Hell and assisted them?

In the Trials of Apollo series, Apollo/Lester is one of the first people who looked at Nico and decided that, hey, he’s a little weird but he’s alright. Up until this point readers have only ever been told, or alluded to, the fact that everyone else saw Nico as something to be afraid of (keep in mind he’s like 14/15 years old).

Just as integral in saving the world in the Heroes of Olympus series as the Seven were. Same deal as in Percy Jackson and the Olympians-- he was able to convince Hades to bring his forces to the aid of the gods, which was able to turn the tide in the gods favor

He’s fully capable of being a normal teenager; he’s not some eternally brooding figure that hates everything. He has interests and a sense of humor. He doesn’t dislike fun, and he doesn’t completely dislike the company of others, either. It’s just that with all the trauma of being a child of Hades and prophecies and war… it wasn’t really the time or place. It’s hard to thrive and be yourself in an environment that constantly beats you down and makes you feel less than worthless, even more so when you don’t have a friend to fall back on. He didn’t feel comfortable anywhere, especially not during his time on the Argo 2. And remember, we didn’t get his PoV until The Blood of Olympus-- up until that point he was really just a side character. Whenever another character (aside from, like, Hazel) spoke about him from their PoV it was always in a bad light: how he was frightening, how they were scared to go anywhere alone with him, etc., etc.) Take away the pressure of two back-to-back wars and his discomfort with his sexuality (or even, gods forbid, finally give the guy is own chapter perspective) and he’s actually a certified goofball just like the rest of the demigods.

Examples:

“‘Getting some redecorating ideas?’ Nico asked. ‘Maybe you could do your dining room in medieval monk skulls’” (The Blood of Olympus, p. 146).

“‘No need for threats,’ Nico said. ‘Frank’s a good guy. Or bear. Or bulldog. Or--’“ (The Blood of Olympus, p. 479).

“‘I hope I’ll see you again?’/’Oh, you will,’ Nico promised. ‘I’m going to be the flower boy at your wedding, right?’” (The Blood of Olympus, p. 480).

The whole “you’re not my type” thing

“Significant annoyance” quip

Nico “I have a doctor’s note” di Angelo (”’Will, Kayla, Austin,’ I said. ‘Come with me’/’And Nico,’ said Nico. ‘I have a doctor’s note’” (The Hidden Oracle, p. 322).

“Nico commandeered a dispenser from the snack bar and carried it around, yelling, ‘The line starts to the left! Orderly queue, guys!’“ (The Hidden Oracle, p. 351).

Basically the whole scene with the Trogs in The Tower of Nero

“William Andrew Solace” full-naming

“Debbie Downer”

“Nico laughed, which I didn’t know he was capable of” (The Tower of Nero, p. 130).

That part in Camp Half-Blood Confidential where he did a warbly rendition of Apollo’s song from the terrible orientation film. To the tune of “The Hokey Pokey.” Hand-claps included. With a small audience present.

That whole FAQs section on page 140 of Camp Half-Blood Confidential with Annabeth, Percy, and Nico. Trust me.

He found Hazel in Asphodel because he went to find Bianca and bring her back while Death was missing (Son of Neptune).

He cares for Hazel deeply. During his talk with Hades in The Blood of Olympus, his first concern was that she was the one of the Seven that was destined to die. At the end of the book he kisses her cheek (other times too) and tucks her into bed after she falls asleep (“‘Yeah, go.’ Nico kissed her cheek, which Piper found surprising. He hardly ever made gestures of affection, even to his sister. He seemed to hate physical contact” (The House of Hades, p. 318).

Arguably one of the strongest demigods of their/our(???) time. He shadow traveled himself, two other people, and a huge statue across the world in about a week’s time. He turned Bryce Lawrence into a ghost and banished him to the Underworld in like five seconds. He turned a guy into a skeleton and then turned right around and was able to control it. Same with that cow thing in The Tower of Nero

Hades is proud of Nico (“Send in a real hero, like the di Angelo kid” from the back cover of The Tower of Nero. Also, he literally says it in The Blood of Olympus on page 149). He wants him to be happy.

He knew about both camps and traveled between them for nearly a year without telling either side.

This kid knows stuff. Obscure stuff. Annabeth isn’t around? Don’t worry, Nico probably knows. Those shaggy cow things in Venice? Katoblepones. From Mythomagic, ofc. “Troglodytes don’t exist, they’re a made up myth!” Nico says otherwise. He knows them personally. They’re having brunch on Tuesday. Next question. The location of the Doors of Death? Covered. Take a left at your nearest hell void (or maybe don’t).

There’s probably way more but this is already like half an essay (I somehow didn’t mention Will at all in here oops) The bulleted list formatting never made it out of the post editor I’m sorry

Edited: added some more small ones that I forgor

[aiyaar]

Nico di Angelo was ten years old when his life went to hell. He never felt so devastated, so ruined. The only person who cared about him, his family, his everything was gone.

Nico hated all of them. He hated sister for leaving him behind, as if he was nothing, just to die afterwards and leave him completely alone. He hated those stupid huntresses of Artemis for taking his sister away from him. He hated Annabeth Chase, whoever it was, for falling off the cliff and making them go on this quest. But most of all he hated him. Percy Jackson. The ultimate hero, so strong and cool. He hated everything about him. He let him down. Percy Jackson let his sister die.

It was already a month since Bianca left this world. A lonely, cold month. Grieve still strangled him. This month has passed in a blur.

Nico passed an empty street, not even bothering to lift up his head. Snow was falling from the white sky and Nico shivered slightly from the cold. He needs to find some warmer clothes.

The city clock struck twelve, sound cutting through the silence. Another day has come. As if Nico cared. Suddenly he stopped, absentmindedly looking at the date on the billboard. 28th January.

Nico titled his head. He didn’t even know his birthday was coming. He always loved his birthday, so excited to modestly celebrate it with Bianca. Bianca…

A lonely tear rolled down his cheek, followed by another. Nico didn’t bother to wipe them, letting them fall.

“Happy Birthday to me.” He said in a shaky voice, sitting in the snow right in the middle of the street. Nico buried his face in his palms, trying to quiet down choked sobs.

Nico di Angelo was eleven years old when he lost himself.

*

Nico di Angelo was eleven when he started to chase the dream of making his sister come back to life. He was obsessed with the idea, almost going mad in the company of hurt and angry ghosts.

Minos had promised him that he’ll see Bianca again. And Nico believed. What else he could do. He was alone. He was hurt.

Why can’t she talk to him? Why she doesn’t want to show up? She doesn’t want to see him. She despises him. She doesn’t want him.

Nico heard rustling sound under his boots. He picked up the newspaper, catching the date with his eyes. 1st February.

Well, another year passed. Nico didn’t care that he missed his birthday. But a little ache didn’t want to leave his heart as he remembered how Bianca smiled at him the day he turned ten.

And then, months later, she showed up, just to say him that he has to let go. Just to make Nico know that this plan wouldn’t work. Minos was a liar. He used Nico. His only hope was trampled.

Misery was what Nico felt. The weird, nasty feeling crawled up to his throat.

Aside from that, one image didn’t want to leave his mind. His face lived in his head, not wanting to leave. His stupid smile, green eyes, tousled hair. Why Nico keeps thinking of him?

Why did she want to talk to him, not Nico? This stupid guy, with his annoying grin made Nico want to- What?

Nico freezed, trying to finish this though. Did Nico want to kill him? Hurt him? No, it was something else. He felt weird every time he heard his name. Percy Jackson.

Nico di Angelo was twelve when he started to realize something about himself.

*

Nico di Angelo was twelve when he wanted to rip out his own heart. Abnormal, disgusting. He was sick of himself. He felt nauseous at the very thought of it.

It can’t be true, no. He’s mistaken.

He was lying on his bed at his father’s castle, staring at the ceiling. He couldn’t sleep. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw his face. Those gorgeous green eyes, goofy smile, tousled black hair. His mind was ranting: Percy Jackson, Percy Jackson, Percy Jackson.

Nico felt like he was about to cry. Why is he like this? Is he broken?

He looked to the side, at his night table. A bouquet of red roses stood there. An hour ago Persephone strode to his room with these flowers and a weird expression on her face. She silently put them in a vase and went back to the door. She stopped there, turning her head a little to look at him.

“Happy Birthday.” Was what she said. Then she left.

So it was his birthday. He’s thirteen now.

Nico stared at the flowers, a little bit shocked. She remembered about his birthday. His father didn’t even bother to check up on him.

Hades only cared about their deal. Nico was very hesitant about that. But after all, he agreed.

He just thought that if he does that then maybe Percy would… Like him? But he didn’t.

Percy Jackson hated him. He screwed everything up. It was horrible. He had to fix it.

So he did the best thing he could. He had to prove to Percy, to his father, to everyone that he is worth something. He was just a kid and the battle was scary. He was scared. But he was a hero.

Everyone respected him, some people wanted to be his friends. He even wanted to stay at camp. Nico was happy but only for a moment.

Days after the battle the whole camp started talking about how Percy and Annabeth finally kissed and got together.

Nico left without a warning. Not like he had anyone to warn. Not like anyone cared.

Nico di Angelo was thirteen when his heart was broken.

*

Nico di Angelo was thirteen when Percy Jackson had gone missing. Annabeth Chase went feral. And Nico promised to help. Of course he did.

He was actually worried. What could happen to him? Nico only knew that Percy was alive. It was somewhat reassuring.

Something bad was about to happen. Nico knew it. New demigods at Camp Half-Blood. One of them is a son of Zeus. That was a bad sign.

And now that Nico knows about romans…

Today was 28th January. His birthday. He already got used to ignore this day. Nico just marked the fact that he was fourteen now.

The door of his room swung open. Nico sat up on his bed, seeing his father in his usual black robes.

He stood there in silence for a minute or so, awkwardly staring at his son.

“Um, did you want something?” Nico said, nervously fumbling with the ring on his finger.

“Yes.” Hades came closer to his bed. “Well, not really. It’s just…” Lord of the Underworld sat on the corner of Nico’s bed. “It’s your birthday.”

Nico blinked, processing what his father was trying to say.

“Yeah, I know. Thank you for reminding me.” He finally said, scowling at his father. Like he ever cared about Nico anyway. “If that’s all you wanted to say-“

“No.” Hades looked strangely awkward. “You made me proud this year, you know?”

Nico’s eyes widened. Was his father trying to praise him?

“I wanted to say that I’m… Grateful. You made me make right choice. And what I said about you before… I’m sorry.”

Nico was more than shocked at this point. He felt awkward and Hades didn’t look better.

“Anyway, I vaguely know that mortals usually make gifts for the day one came from mother’s womb. And I thought that maybe you should spend time with your… peers?”

“What are you trying to say, dad?”

Hades took a deep breath, as if he was nervous.

“I want to give you a present. So that you will be able to go wherever you want, in those places where teenagers usually spend time.”

“You want to give me a car?” Nico asked, puzzled.

“No, you’re too young for that. I’ll give you a chauffeur, he’ll be helping you go to the mall or something. Because, well… I’m not able to do it for you.”

Nico blinked again, titling his head to the side.

“A chauffeur?”

Hades looked embarrassed for a moment. Then he put on a stern expression, standing up.

“Objections are not accepted. You should be grateful.” He strode off to the door. Then he stopped. “Happy Birthday, son.” He closed the door, leaving Nico alone in the dark room.

Nico di Angelo was fourteen when he received his first birthday present.

*

Nico di Angelo was fourteen when he met him. Will Solace.

It felt like a dawn after long, cold night. Will was his blessing, his salvation. And Nico didn't know what did he do to deserve someone like Will.

They've been dating for a couple of months, wonderful, amazing months. And Nico was genuinely thankful for everything Will had done to him.

Nico woke up at the knock on his door, blinking through the gloom of Hades cabin. He didn't know if it was morning already, because black curtains prevented any gleam of sunshine from crawling into his cabin.

Still, Nico knew exactly that it was early and he knew exactly who was outside, because there was only one person in this world who dared to wake him up.

Nico got out of bed and staggering came to open up the door.

Will Solace stood on the threshold. He was wearing his usual winter jacket and a scarf, a blinding smile on his face. He seemed to be particularly happy today and, judging by the flush on his face, he was running.

"Hey, Neeks." He ruffled his hair and came in, closing the door behind him as Nico shivered from the cold winter air.

"Good morning." Nico mumbled, still half asleep. "What time is it?"

"7 a.m."

"Why did you need to wake me up so early?"

Will looked him in the eyes, taking Nico’s cold hand with his warm one, which is weird, considering Will was the one who had a walk on winter air.

"Do you know what day it is?" He looked excited.

"Um, no, to be honest. I don't pay attention to the calendar." Nico sat down on his bed, wrapping himself in a blanket.

Will looked shocked.

"Are you serious?! I mean... It's 28th January!"

Nico's brain needed a moment to process what exactly Will wanted from him.

"Yeah. So?"

"So?! It's your birthday!"

Nico sighed.

"Guess I'm fifteen now. That also explains this." He pointed to his bedside table, where black envelope was perched on the top of black box. "Probably from my father."

Will looked at him, then at the envelope.

"So, like... Happy Birthday."

"Thank you." Nico got up again, reaching for the box. "Now go so I can change."

"Ok." Will strode off to the door, a strange expression on his face. Though Nico didn't pay much attention to it.

Nico opened the envelope. There was a thick wad of money and an invitation for a dinner. Nico will come, of course, but not today. In the box lay watches and a book in Italian.

The day went by as usual. Nico had a walk in the woods with Will before breakfast, then they were busy with their camp activities.

In the evening, right before they were about to go to the campfire, Will took his arm and told him.

"How about we won't go to the campfire today?"

"But you like-"

"I don't need to go there everyday. Especially today. Come to your cabin in twenty minutes." And he hastily strode off in the direction of the cabin thirteen.

Nico came in after twenty minutes to be met with dozens of candles around his room. Will was standing in front of him, holding a cake with fifteen lighted candles perched on it.

"Make a wish." He whispered as Nico came closer.

Nico looked him in the eyes and didn't know what to say. So he just did what he was told. Will smiled brighter.

"I baked it myself." He said proudly. "Well, Cecil helped me."

He put the cake on the table, now fumbling in his pockets.

"I have something for you, actually." He said, pulling out a small box from his pocket. "I don't know if you're going to like it but..."

Nico didn't hear what Will was saying as he opened the box with trembling hands. He pulled out a sun pendant on a thin gold chain. The sun looked just like the tattoo on Will's shoulder.

Nico couldn't hold back a tear that rolled down his cheek. Will watched him attentively, stopping his ranting when he saw it.

"Nico, what's wrong-"

The next thing Will knew, pale arms was wrapped tightly around him, Nico's face buried in Will's chest.

"Thank you." Nico said in a small, shaky voice before pulling back. He placed the sun pendant on his palm, watching it glisten in the candle light. Tears still rolled down his cheeks.

Will looked at him, his eyes filled with warmth and understanding. He always understood. His sunshine was so alone, for so long. All Will wanted was to make him happy.

Will moved to embrace Nico in a tight hug, kissing the top of his head and then lifted his head with long, gentle fingers on his chin.

"I love you so much." He said. "You're such an amazing person. You're brave, gorgeous, smart, brilliant. Beautiful." He wiped the tear from Nico's cheek. "I will love you with all my might. I promise."

And with that he gently kissed Nico, making him smile while the tears of joy kept rolling down his cheeks.

"I love you, Will."

Nico di Angelo was fifteen when he found his happiness.

[adellovesrowan]

RSA- I forgot about Adel’s phobia. If it’s any consolation, I’m afraid of most bugs (literally every bug except bees). JT has nosophobia (the fear of disease) so flu season is an absolute nightmare for her. When you mentioned Cherry and Adel’s similarities you said at the end “ they both have a thing for the teachers pet good girl nerds”? 👀 Wait is Cherry wlw as well? Who exactly does she have a thing for? She shares a favorite color (purple) w JT. Also I’d love to hear indo hcs for Dian 🥺

HSHSJS UR SO VALID bugs are scary lmao. and ohhhh poor jt😭 KFHAKJDKSJ i cant say, its a “trust me on this” situation😌 but yes cherrys a wlw !! ohhhh yes purple gang !! KDJKAJF ok ok well some dian hcs thats been in my mind for some time. if dian were a hogwarts student, he would be a gryffindor. shes a fighter and hardly ever gives up. also he curses like a sailor and a lot of times various indo curses make their way in and its rly unnerving when u dont know what they mean JDJKAJD. also dian calling her friends indo terms of endearment🥺 like abang / bang / bung ( brother ), mbak / neng ( sister ), kawan / kawanku ( friend / my friend ), etc. also him wearing batik would be chefs kiss🥺 hdhdhdhhd i love dian thank u

RSA- sometimes Thea gets mistaken for a lobosca-kim since she’s got white hair and pale skin like Chiara plus black eyes. I like to think Chiara is tall so Thea looks like her in that regard as well but no she’s not related to any of them. She also follows the wolf trend of obvious names. Her full name influenced her design since Galatea means “milk white” and in the myth, Galatea was originally a statue. Wait Thea as an art model for Badeea’s classes 🥺 oh my god she’d be so pretty <3

HDHDHSHDH OH I LOVE THAT ! pleaseeee thea is sooo pretty🥺🥺

RSA- the kids tried burying Dian in the sand once. It did not work for obvious reasons. Also what if Mina added violets or cherry blossoms to Cherry’s hair? Idk what Mina’s favorite flower is but her favorite fruit is mangoes bc they’re the first thing she knew how to grow. She grew other stuff before that but it was out of her control and wouldn’t last too long. JT’s favorite flowers are sunflowers so Mina grows them on her mom’s birthday and Mother’s Day. Mina growing plants when she’s bored.

LMAOOOABDJFBA OHMYGOD dumbass children. AAAAAHH HELLO THATS SO CUTE🥺🥺 MANGO BEING MINAS FAV IS SOO CUTE WTF. ohhhh minas so cute she loves jt so much🥺

RSA- I mentioned the former existence of Skyler and the angel au reminded me of her bc she had blue wings. So what if after the lines between demons and angels have been blurred there are kids with more colorful wings. It does make it more dangerous since people would be able to tell that they’re half demon half angel instead of just a fallen angel or demon. Bianca being homeschooled was cut out since her mom already teaches at a school in this au plus there’s not the ch 18 trauma

OHHHHH half demon half angel skyler !! 🥺 and YA so glad ch 18 wasnt actually real🙄😩

RSA- Rowan passing her scarf down to Cherry 🥺. Cherry wearing it every year during the winter and showing it to her friends. Finn absolutely loves it. When did cherry get interested in baking? Baby cherry with her parents 🥺. When Mina was a baby, JT refused to let anyone besides herself and thistle hold Mina for the first few months. Penny, Tonks, and Chiara convinced JT to let them watch Mina so that Mina’s parents could take a break. It was the least they could do for their old roommate.

OOOOO THATS SO CUTE i need to draw that sometime. id say she tried baking when she was around five years old ! with help ofc. HEYDHSHDHHD jt is very protective of baby mina omgg🥺🥺 god bless the hufflepuffs watching over the baby

RSA- I’m glad you like the idea of brown eyed haywoods. I remember I sent in an ask to a different person about picturing Penny with brown eyes and someone reblogged that with an edit of brown eyed Penny. I was going to include a link to that in this ask but that didn’t work. (The edit was by theatricalasshole. He did a great job on it). Also I saw the tags in the last post and I’m so sorry about sending so many asks!! I would say it won’t happen again but I never shut up so that’d be a lie.

YESSSS brown eyed haywoods are beautiful !! and NOOOO DONT WORRY DHDHDHD i dont mind getting lots of asks but its just taking me so long to answer bc i get distracted so easily and i didnt want to keep u waiting😭

RSA- the school in the early years with Rowan as the only teacher and twenty students like those schoolhouses in the olden days. We both know the school gets bigger as more people teach/study there but the small, cozy nature of the early years. Students growing up and some of them teaching at the school when they’re adults. Students and teachers having positive memories of the school after they graduate or retire. Wait Rowan in dark academia aesthetic/ fashion 👀

SCREAMS the early years sounds so good ohh its so cozy. its what they deserve😩 some good safe education. and YEEEEESS WE LOVE TJAT A LOT

RSA- I’m looking through my old asks and I’ve sent over twenty ( it’s more than that the ones that were bunched together were counted as one each) so thanks for listening to all this, it’s totally understandable if you don’t remember something. Hell I have a bad memory too. I do like reading your responses to the different asks they’re v thoughtful. Do you have a favorite character or idea or whatever from this au bc if so I could come up with more hcs about them?

HDHDHHDHSHD thank u for understanding and YAAA SAME. DHSHHS im glad u like my responses lmao i try to engage with everything u said bc theyre all good takes !! well we all KNOW who my fav character is ( its rowan in case it wasnt obvious LMAO ) but i rly like hearing ab whoever u want to talk about !!

RSA- so this is gonna be the last of this specific bunch of asks bc I don’t have that many ideas rn. Mara w bat wings. Chiara has taken in at least two Wolf cubs (borf and Finn) so I feel like she’s the type to take in strays. Dian gets seniority amongst her roommates since she’s older than their parents (he lived between 1956-1970, so he died when he was fourteen). This is a joke but Ebony from my immortal as one of the music teachers. She bonds with Mara bc they’re vampires (half for Mara)

mara w bat wings yes !!! HEUDUEHHS i love that somuch for chiara. OHHH POOR BABY😭 now i have the hc that dian used to be friends with adels mom, cordelia ( shes indonesian ! ofc i had to make adel half indo LMAO ). or maybe dian and delia are related who knows😩 i think itd be funny if they were related bc then adel, an adult now, would see dian, a fourteen year old ghost, and realize hes related to delia and be like bloody hell youre my auncle. SJBDNDHDHJS i just think its rly funny LMAO.

NOOOOOOOOOO WHY IS EBONY HEREE DJFKAKFNND ohmyGODD😭😭 HEHDUDHSHDHJSHRJEJ ohmygdo but anyway. good for mara😌

[espercr---archived]

✶ - 𝒉𝒐𝒑𝒆'𝒔 𝒎𝒂𝒓𝒗𝒆𝒍 𝒗𝒆𝒓𝒔𝒆 𝒕𝒊𝒎𝒆𝒍𝒊𝒏𝒆 

     gentle disclaimer that i’m going off of her age as opposed to actual years . this is to keep the focus on her & plot points in her life , rather than events in the universe(s) she inhabits - although i do have ideas about when these events occur adjacent to the mcu , so i will add in little notes about that as i go . also this is going to be incredibly long - so it’s going under a read more . things may also change with plotting / the addition of mains - so this will be a living document , & i will add things accordingly . 

𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐋𝐘 𝐋𝐈𝐅𝐄 - hope is born in london , england to newlyweds ardella & damien baxter , a biochemist & engineer respectively . she spends her first 2 years growing up in the city , but with little faith on the way her parents decide to take advantage of the farmhouse ardella recently inherited in the states . 

when hope is the age of 3 , faith is born , & her family is living happily on the outskirts of a little farming town - brightside , tennessee . growing up in the country is paradise - she spends her time exploring the woods , caring for animals , & helping her mama in the kitchen . it’s not until later that she realizes she’s just a bit lonely - especially once faith starts to pull away from her .

at the age of 11 she meets winfield , the boy who will be her best friend for life . he is a bully , initially - but with some convincing ( & her mama’s famous triple chocolate muffins . ) he gives her a chance . . . & from then on they’re thick as thieves . before their friendship , hope was rather shy & reserved - but with his encouragement she quickly blossoms into much more of a socialite .

her life is looking up until the age of 14 . she discovers her parents have been killed in a lab ‘accident’ at their place of work , a company she knows next to nothing about . it only occurs to her later that maybe there was a reason for her parent’s secrecy . not knowing better , the sisters wrongly assume that the ‘social worker’ that comes to collect them means well - really , she is connected to the deaths of their parents , & they are taken to an illegal testing facility to be experimented upon . once it’s clear that these people mean them harm , hope does her best to fight back & protect her sister - but . . . really , at this point she doesn’t stand a chance . 

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐅𝐀𝐂𝐈𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐘 - she learns that the woman who kidnapped them is dr . bianca white . she doesn’t know it at the time , but this woman used to work with her parents . what she does know pretty immediately , is that she is bad news . hope is convinced to make a deal with her : allow herself to become their willing little lab rat , or allow her sister to receive the same treatment . it’s a no brainer , hope chooses to comply . 

by the age of 15 there’s been little to no progress & her captors are becoming impatient . their experiments become more & more ruthless . faith has started to detach herself from both hope & the world in general . she’s angry with her sister , for making no attempt to escape or fight back at all - unaware of the deal she has made . it’s at this point they are seperated entirely - & experimentation on faith begins , however hope is oblivious to this . she needs to believe these people are keeping their promise . faith becomes even more resentful of hope every day .

just after her 16th birthday she’s told faith has died . the scientists have a hunch - their energy readings show a correlation with hope’s emotions , negative ones in particular . so they provide the most negative stimulus they can think up , even if it is a total lie . faith is alive & well , however she’s been manipulated into aligning herself with her captors . what her torturers hadn’t planned on , is just how volatile hope’s reaction would be . the energy behaves like a sizable bomb - freeing hope & injuring everyone within the blast radius . finally , she is able to fully access the abilities she’s been developing for the past two years . she’s on a warpath to escape the facility & free the other victims , putting an end to the experimentation for good . in the meantime , dr . white escapes with faith - cutting her losses . 

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐀𝐅𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐌𝐀𝐓𝐇 - wealthy journalist , kit armington , is tasked with reporting on the facility’s illicit activity & takes pity on hope - taking her in as a foster child . during this time hope endures questioning by the police , the press , & eventually several hearings as a witness . dr . white is presumed dead - hope believes she murdered her , & despite how much hatred she holds in her heart for that woman . . . this really tanks her mental health & self image . she feels like a disappointment to everything her mother stood for , & vows to never use her abilities again . . . she doesn’t even try , for fear of hurting anyone . 

at 18 hope has completed her education through home schooling  , testing out of high school & with kit’s financial aid - she enrolls in college . it’s there she meets christina , & . . . these two have a rocky start . as roommates they clash - christina is a bit of a shut in & a neat freak . . . hope is disorganized & has fallen in with the partying crowd - which is atypical for her , but trying to drink away the pain seems a lot better than having to feel it all the time . it’s not until a late night heart to heart that they finally see eye to eye . hope convinces christina to come out with her & live a little - christina keeps hope from overdoing it . they balance each other perfectly , & make a great team - this never changes . it’s at this point christina begins to develop an unrequited crush on her best friend .

𝐁𝐄𝐅𝐎𝐑𝐄 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐁𝐀𝐊𝐄𝐑𝐘 ( domestic abuse tw ) - the pair graduate at the age of 22 & begin their journey of opening a bakery together . they receive the condition that if they can raise half of the funds necessary , kit & christina’s family will match the sum in equal parts . the pair head to new york , christina working as an accountant & hope working two waitressing gigs . it’s at this point she starts dating a guy that’s no good for her - as christina would remind her frequently . she’s not proud of her time spent with him , but she’s also infatuated with the illusion of love - especially considering all she’s been through . it’s at this point she’s reunited with winfield , who is down on his luck trying to make it as an actor in the big city . she takes him in , after some convincing - but is understandably vague about the circumstances of her disappearance . one day she returns to the apartment with a blackened eye - & though she tells him not to , he goes after her abusive boyfriend . hope follows , walking in on the violent confrontation . seeing her best friend being beaten to a pulp triggers her powers for the first time since her escape from the facility - effectively putting a stop to the brawl , & exposing her powers to winfield . he convinces her to use them for good - & once again becomes her trusted confidant . at this point she can barely lift a feather without her emotions being supercharged - but this changes with time & practice . 

𝐎𝐏𝐄𝐍 𝐅𝐎𝐑 𝐁𝐔𝐒𝐈𝐍𝐄𝐒𝐒 - at the age of 25 Hope’s Bakery is open for business . winfield has his own place , just across the street & she is practicing vigilante justice when the sun goes down . it’s this chunk of time i use as a default for most of her interactions . ( in comparison to the mcu , i place this before the winter soldier . ) this is her situation until the beginning of her first arc - effectively , her status quo . virtually untrained , all alone - but determined to do some good . 

𝑎𝑟𝑐 𝟣 . 𝐌𝐘 𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐍𝐄𝐄𝐃𝐄𝐃 𝐌𝐎𝐑𝐄 𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐍 𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄 - mercenaries start turning up to kill hope . not her vigilate alter ego , stellar jay , hope b . baxter . at first she thinks her identity has been compromised , but that’s not it . following the clues , she learns it’s dr . white - back from the dead . she’s become aware of her vigilante routine , & wants to cash in on her lab project . the mercenaries were a test , to see what she could do - & gauge whether it’s worth trying to recruit her . hope , of course , isn’t happy about this . especially when dr . white decides to use christina as leverage . this would be a great time for any close friends / potential romantic partners to discover her secret - since this is where she’s at her sloppiest . there’s a lot of stuff left loose here for mains / additions to canon - but eventually , hope has a final showdown with bianca white & discovers that her sister is alive & well & pretty evil . she’s asked to choose her own freedom for chris’s life , however with winfield’s help she is already safe . dr . white shifts bargaining chips - threatening faith’s life , who is now thoroughly betrayed . the sisters do the impossible , working together to take down bianca - who is remorselessly dispatched by faith . . . who disappears as quickly as she reappeared in hope’s life . 

needless to say chris , hope , & win all go to therapy after all of this . 

𝑎𝑟𝑐 𝟤 . 𝐖𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐈𝐅 𝐖𝐄 𝐀𝐋𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐃𝐘 𝐀𝐑𝐄 𝐖𝐇𝐎 𝐖𝐄'𝐕𝐄 𝐁𝐄𝐄𝐍 𝐃𝐘𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐓𝐎 𝐁𝐄𝐂𝐎𝐌𝐄 ? - now 26 , hope spends this arc trying to find faith & convince her to come with her  & stop killing people ,  please . her sister has taken to freelance mercenary work - so hope isn’t too pleased . it becomes very clear that faith always felt outcasted & unwanted in their family , especially from ardella - who only seemed to praise hope . this resentment isn’t easily cracked , but hope does her best . it doesn’t quite work , but seeds are inevitably planted in faith’s mind - maybe her sister isn’t the pretentious perfect princess she built up in her mind . hope is a guilty hero after all , constantly in battle with her desire to do good & reluctance to use the full extent of her powers . she’s convinced her mother would be disappointed by her violent approach . so faith enlightens hope . . . their mother wasn’t who they thought she was . 

she caused the explosion that killed her , their father , & a whole department of scientists . she sacrificed herself & others to prevent a dangerous substance from being utilized by the wrong group of people . their parents worked for the same facility that kidnapped their children - dr . bianca white was their boss , & had been blackmailing them for years . ardella finally had enough , & decided to end it . 

hope had always held her mother up on a pedestal , idealizing her , & holding herself to impossible standards . . . now she’s the bigger person , with no body count & the knowledge that her pacifist mother was capable of so much destruction . 

𝐄𝐍𝐃𝐆𝐀𝐌𝐄 𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐋𝐔𝐃𝐄 - adding this little bit in here , because the only thing that could make hope’s mental health tank even further at this point is christina & her cat pumpkin turning to ash at her feet . she does all she can to cope , helping her community , reuniting what’s left of families , & providing food through the bakery for people in need . but when things quiet down ? she flees the city to spend some alone time in her hometown . this would be a great time for any potential friends / romantic partners to check up on her . . . or even stay for good . not much to do for 5 years , after all . she gardens , picks up a stray dog & names her honey , bakes a lot , just sort of . . . lets the scars heal over . by the end hope is 31 .

𝑎𝑟𝑐 𝟥 . 𝐎𝐔𝐑 𝐅𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐒 𝐖𝐈𝐋𝐋 𝐀𝐋𝐋 𝐂𝐎𝐌𝐁𝐈𝐍𝐄 𝐓𝐎 𝐖𝐇𝐈𝐒𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐒 𝐈𝐍 𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄 - now that the world’s back on track . . . hope quickly learns that faith is back in action , now a fully formed villain . hope is taking it upon herself to take her down , but it’s not going to be easy . this arc is a bit of a question mark , but it will inevitably end with faith finally admitting that she wants her sister back after all these years . 

& that’s the full timeline for now . that’s what hope is dealing with while she’s chatting with your muses . . . so be kind to her , she’s going through a lot . help her out , teach her how to fight - hold her when she cries ! & most importantly - come plot with me so your muse can be factored into these arcs ! 

[doctorsorders-deathboy]

Of All the Nights

lmfao i guess i’m back from the dead bitches. (this wip has existed for so long. i could not tell you why i decided to finally finish it tonight but AAA im so excited to be posting a fic again omg) amusingly, my last fic also involved late night baking. i hope you enjoy!!

Word Count: 1941

Read on ao3

It was 3:07am on the third of January and Nico di Angelo was dressed in nothing but a too-small fuchsia bathrobe, soaking wet, and about ready to commit bloody murder.

It was very possible, he thought, that the bathrobe contributed to his fury.

This was the kind of disaster that he’d recount to Jason later, with countless creative swears thrown in, though as he stood shivering and fuming outside a stranger’s apartment, it occurred to him that this might be one of those stories that would get more laughs from Jason than shared anger. Asshole.

Speaking of assholes, the door finally opened, revealing a very flustered looking blond man around Nico’s age. For a moment, Nico almost backed off on his prepared rant upon seeing how miserable the blond looked, but when another draft of winter air hit Nico’s still dripping legs, his scowl only deepened.

“What the hell were you doing baking at fucking three in the morning?”

The blond blinked once, twice, three times. He opened his mouth, closed it, and Nico was about ready to break his damn nose when he finally said, “Sorry… Do I know you?”

Nico had never had height to his advantage but hell if he didn’t know how to make himself intimidating. The blond shrunk back as Nico reared himself up to hiss, “Luckily, I was able to make it through 21 years of my life without meeting you before you had to go and nearly set the damn building on fire because of your insomniac cooking. Do you have any idea what kind of night you’ve caused for me? Did it ever occur to you that maybe you should save your incompetence for the waking hours when most people will be out at work anyways? Honestly, what kind of bullshit did you pull to make the fucking fire alarms go off? Did you pull this shit on purpose? Is this some kind of a joke to you?”

The man took much too long to answer again and Nico was collecting every bit of self control he had to keep himself from wringing this jackass’s neck when the response finally came. “Why are you wet?”

Nico must have reared up spectacularly that time because the man quickly amended, “I mean―! I’m sorry, that’s not the point here, um…” He peeked out of his apartment and looked around the deserted hallway. “If you want to yell at me, can you do it in here? I don’t want to wake anyone else up.”

“Like hell, you care,” Nico grumbled but willingly stepped into the man’s apartment. In hindsight, this really wasn’t Nico’s wisest move considering this guy was a stranger and Nico was nearly naked, but the blond seemed about as threatening as a frightened mouse. A tall, blue-eyed, frightened mouse who somehow had a tan in the dead of winter.

“Sorry, who are you again?” the blond asked, closing the door behind a fuming Nico.

“Your pissed off neighbor from two floors up,” Nico snapped. Unfortunately, the blond visibly cringed, looking like a kicked puppy, so Nico muttered, “Nico. Di Angelo,” as a reconcilement.

“Will Solace,” the blond introduced himself in return. He held his hand out to shake but quickly drew it back when it was clear that Nico’s arms were not moving from where they were crossed against his chest.

They stood in uncomfortable silence until Nico repeated, “How the hell did you set off the fucking alarm?” in as dangerous a voice as he could manage.

“I, well…”

Nico shot another fierce glare and Will didn’t waste anymore time in getting to the point.

“I was making pizzelles for my sister’s birthday and the iron must’ve broken because it was making a lot of smoke. It set off the fire alarm which went off throughout the whole building and… yeah. It was a mess. I’m really sorry. I feel awful.”

Nico didn’t doubt Will’s sincerity. The poor man was hunched in on himself with bags under his hands and his hands firmly stuck in his pockets. That didn’t make his story any less ridiculous, though.

“I’m sorry,” Nico said without a hint of remorse, “I think I missed something. Why the hell were you baking at three in the fucking morning?”

Will frowned at him. “You curse a lot,” he muttered.

“Why the fuck were you―”

“I was working until 1am!” Will exclaimed, which was the first indignant comment he’d made. “And I have classes at ten in the morning, but I promised to meet my friend for coffee at eight so I figured I’d just power through and bake when I got home but―” His voice broke off.

Nico’s cheeks tinted with embarrassment upon seeing Will’s face crumple a bit. God, please don’t cry. Nico hadn’t ever been very good at comforting crying people.

“Sorry,” Will said, his voice hoarse. “I should probably… I’m just going to clean up and go to bed. No more smoke. I promise.” He attempted a laugh to lighten the mood but it came out strangled and pitiful.

Nico was about ready to leave Will to mope when he spotted a picture hanging on the wall across the room. Will stood in the center, looking much happier than he did standing in front of Nico. The Will in the picture had a smile that made you want to smile back and had each arm thrown around a friend, pulling them close. He looked jubilant; the kind of person who you felt certain you could approach without fear. It was a painful contrast to the melancholy man Nico had met.

It felt very wrong to Nico that someone so happy could look so broken.

“What about your sister’s pizzelles?” Nico asked quietly.

Will shrugged. “I’ll have to buy her something on my way over tomorrow. Hopefully she won’t mind. I just feel bad, I promised I’d bake for her. Those pizzelles are her favorite.”

Nico considered this for a moment before internally rolling his eyes at himself. “Then we’d better make some pizzelles, shouldn’t we?”

~*~

“You still never explained to me why you showed up at my apartment soaked and nearly naked,” Will said conversationally, as he stood washing the dishes while Nico carefully arranged pizzelles in a tin.

Nico cleared his throat. “That’s a conversation starter I haven’t heard before.”

“Seriously,” Will said, grinning. “Were you swimming?”

“Why would I be swimming in the dead of night?”

Will shrugged. “I dunno, that’s why I was asking.”

“I wasn’t swimming.” Nico put the lid on the tin and turned around, pulling his fuchsia bathrobe tighter around himself.

Will turned towards him, too, eyebrows still raised.

Nico exhaled very slowly before admitting, “I was taking a shower.”

Will blinked. “At… three in the morning?” When Nico’s expression darkened, he added quickly, “Not that I’m judging! Obviously. I’ve taken many middle-of-the-night showers. I just… So, are you a med student, too, or what?”

Nico scuffed his shoe across the floor and grumbled, “No.”

“Okay.”

Silence.

“So…”

“I had a dream,” Nico blurted, probably due to a combination of his lack of sleep and the way Will’s eyes had this kind, dreamy quality to them that made you feel like you could tell him anything.

Will’s eyebrows furrowed. “You showered because you had a dream?” His eyebrows shot upward. “Oh.”

“Not like that!” Nico said quickly, heat rushing to his face. “No, oh my god, no, that’s not…” And then he was laughing harder than he had in a long time and Will was laughing with him and he hardly felt embarrassed anymore. “No, it was a nightmare, not…” Nico tried to catch his breath. “Not that.”

Will tsked. “That’s a shame.”

“Yes, very disappointing.”

“So the shower was, what, to calm you down?”

Nico shifted, his mind flashing back to the dark, blurred images of a few hours ago. Bianca’s smile melting off her face, his mother screaming for him, a packed, dark room where people were crying and disappearing one by one, and he was next, he was next―

“Yeah,” he said, clearing his throat. “Basically.”

When he’d woken up, he’d had to spend what felt like eternity reminding himself how to breathe again. He’d been having more nightmares recently, ones so bad that he almost considered Jason’s advice to start seeing a therapist. I mean, shit, he knew college wasn’t doing much for him in the mental health department but things hadn’t been this bad since he was thirteen.

He tried different things each night to get himself back to sleep―whatever it took. One night he didn’t manage to properly get back to sleep afterwards; he just lay in his bed with the lights on and music playing, counting the beats of his heart as he dozed on and off. That night, after waking up, he couldn’t stand his own skin, couldn’t stand being trapped in his body any longer, couldn’t stand the way he could still feel cold, dead hands from the dream clutching him―

So he’d gotten in the fucking shower and made the water as hot as he could stand and then the goddamn fire alarm went off. Jesus Christ, of all the fucking nights.

“Must have been a pretty bad dream,” Will murmured.

Nico shrugged. “Yeah, I mean… Yeah. I was… Sorry for being so harsh on you earlier. I was still kind of shaken up, I guess. I probably wouldn’t have marched to your apartment for a stupid mistake on a normal night.”

Will grinned. “Probably?”

“Maybe.”

Will laughed. “Oh, here!” He handed a small tin to Nico. “You helped make em, you should get some for yourself.”

Nico opened it to see that it was crammed full of pizzelles. “Thank you.”

“Yeah, of course. I love the bathrobe, by the way―I never said.”

“Oh god.” Nico groaned. “It’s not mine.”

“Your girlfriend’s?”

And then Nico was laughing again. Christ, that was twice in one night. Something must be wrong with him. “Yeah, no. It’s my sister’s.”

“Ah. Well, for the record, my next guess was that it was your boyfriend’s. I don’t mean to assume anything.”

Nico sucked his teeth. “I don’t have one of those, I’m afraid.”

“That’s a shame.”

“Yes, very disappointing.”

Will smiled softly to himself and Nico noticed that he had a dimple on one side of his face. God. Nico really wished he smiled more.

“Well, thanks so much for the baking help. You really didn’t have to,” Will said as they walked towards the door.

Nico waved him off. “I’m the one who came to your apartment in an angry rage. I needed to make it up to you somehow.”

“Do you frequently get in angry rages?”

“Yes, but mostly just for the aesthetic. Usually I’m too tired to be properly angry.”

Will laughed.

“I’ll return the tin to you, by the way,” Nico added.

“Will you be showing up at my apartment nearly naked again?”

Nico flushed and laughed nervously. “No, I promise I will be fully clothed.”

Will hummed disappointedly. “Well, I suppose I can’t have everything,” he murmured. He smiled then, full and warm, and his eyes crinkled at the corners, and yes, Nico definitely wanted to see that smile more. “Goodnight, Nico,” he said cheerfully.

The door shut before Nico could figure out a way to respond. He stood there staring at it for a solid thirty seconds before turning and heading back to his apartment. When he got back, he decided, he’d put the pizzelles in a different container. He wanted to return the tin to Will Solace as soon as he could get away with.

[romanoaudrey]

heat of the moment | audreo

Parties: @romanoaudrey and @mateo-rossi

Date: December 31st/January 1st

Location: NYE Gala and then Mateo’s cottage.

Summary: after sharing a new year’s eve kiss, audrey goes to mateo’s place to celebrate his birthday. he’s hurting after bianca left and audrey’s dealing with her own heartaches at being forever alone and the mess that is her life and they find solace (and distraction) in each other. {basically one big nsfw read with marathon sex and dashes of feels.}

Audrey was never a big fan of these huge, fancy parties, but she had to admit, this one wasn't all that bad. And she also had to admit that it was kinda fun getting all dressed up and seeing everyone else just as fancy. The dress she'd decided on while shopping with Neha was pink and sparkly and actually made her feel pretty beautiful, especially once her cousin had her hair and makeup done too. And soon enough she was off and at the gala, feeling like every single person in Verona was there--and for how acclaimed the party had been, they probably were. She managed to snag a spot at the bar though, ordering herself one of the fancy specialty cocktails on the menu and looking around, feeling a bit overwhelmed and trying to find at least one familiar face in the crowd.

Mateo simply wasn't in the mood for this. He was still hungover from the night before (...and the night before, and the night before...) but couldn't do a damn thing about it while he was on duty. Tylenol and a prayer was all that he was allowed. Every time he caught a glimpse of a blue dress, his head would practically snap trying to get a glimpse of the woman wearing it, hoping that it was Bianca. He was nothing more than a lovesick puppy and he absolutely /hated/ it.

There was no missing Audrey when she walked into the Gala - her dress easily caught everyone's attention as she walked past. Once she was settled at the bar, Mateo walked over, determined to get his mind off the domme. "Hey," he said softly as he sidled up to the bar beside her. "Think we can make a early escape from here?"

Audrey felt the eyes on her but she paid them little mind as she sipped her drink. When someone came up beside her she was ready to roll her eyes and put on a fake smile, but as she turned her body relaxed and her expression went much more genuine as she smiled. “I was hoping so.” She told him softly. She reached over to rest her hand on his arm, squeezing gently. “you okay?” She asked softly, shuffling a bit closer to keep her voice low.

Mateo: Mateo leaned down, briefly touching his head to hers as he gave her a reassuring smile. "I'm okay," he said softly, though he didn't doubt that Audrey would see through that farce. He wasn't exactly the best liar. "Soon as I can, I'm sneaking out with a bottle of whatever I can get my hands on. You're welcome to join if you can - I don't know what Celeste's got you doing tonight."

Audrey felt her smile soften even more and she closed her eyes at the touch, squeezing his arm again before pulling back, "I'll pretend to believe you for your benefit." She told him lightly before finally pulling back and letting out a laugh, "Sounds good to me." she assured, shaking her head, "Nothing. Other than...the last job I told you, she hasn't given me anything. So I'm here for as long as socially acceptable. You're not the only guard here for the family though, right? So it shouldn't be too hard for you to get out?"

Mateo: "I figure once Georgie and Sophia leave safe, no one will notice if I'm gone," Mateo shrugged. The rest of the Romanos were important, but none so important as Celeste's girls. "I figure they'll probably leave after midnight and we'll be free right after." He gently nudged Audrey's arm and glanced down at her, taking her in fully for the first time. "I like your dress - all sparkly."

Audrey nodded, humming softly, "Fair enough. And yeah. Georgie's here with Thomas, so....she'll probably leave soon after with him." She tried her best to keep the bitterness out of her voice, but she figured he could see right through it as well as she could see through him. "i'll happily spend the rest of the night with you. Especially considering tomorrow." she looked down at herself then, a bashful little smile tugging on her lips. "Yeah? It's not too much? Cause if it is, you can totally blame Neha."

Mateo: "Mm, yeah, New Years Day is a very important holiday," Mateo quipped, preferring to ignore his birthday versus acknowledging it. It would just be another cold, winter day. He took Audrey's hand, gently tugging her around so he could get a full view of the dress. "Well, much as I would never pass up a reason to blame Neha, she did good this time. Really knows how to frame your, uh, face." He smirked.

Audrey rolled her eyes, shaking her head, "Yeah, definitely." She quipped, giving him a look. She was surprised when he took her hand, letting him tug her up despite her confusion but then he was looking her dress over and she huffed out a laugh, feeling a bit of pink color her cheeks as she rolled her eyes again, "I'll take your word for it."

Mateo: "I'm sure I ain't the only one who's noticed," Mateo assured her, giving her another little smile. "You know, you ain't got to worry about me if you do find someone to hang out with. You ought to have some fun tonight. Ain't every day we're at a fancy party like this one."

Audrey shrugged, giving his hand a squeeze where he was still holding it, "There's really no one here I want to hang out with except my present company." She told him, raising a brow. She leaned over then to kiss his cheek before pulling her hand back, "It's almost eleven now so...I'll meet you in an hour? We can ring in the new year together?"

Mateo: Mateo nodded, glancing down at his watch to see exactly how much time he had left. "Yeah - meet me by the door? Pretty sure everyone else is gonna be watching the fireworks. Soon as they're over, I should be free. I can drive you home - ain't allowed to to drink on the job."

Audrey looked to his watch too before nodding “Okay. Meet here just before midnight.” She told him with a nod. She smiled, humming a bit “I’ll make sure to make up with you not being able to drink by letting you drink more than me once we leave. Consider a gift for the elderly.” She teased, grinning at him before nodding her head behind him “But for now, go.”

Mateo "Ha ha," Mateo quipped, not amused with her little retort. "Ain't there something about respecting your elders?" His lips edged into another little smirk as he winked at her.

At that, he walked away and faded back into the crowd, keeping a watchful eye on the Romano subs he was supposed to be guarding. When only a few minutes remained until midnight, he moved to the large, main door of the ballroom to meet Audrey. Everyone's eyes were too focused on the fireworks display about to start outside to worry about where the two of them had snuck off too. "Here's to another year..." he murmured, shaking his head as he approached. "Our luck's gotta change sometime, right?"

Audrey laughed again, grinning at him as she just shrugged before heading off into the mass of people. She hung around with Neha for a bit, having just one more martini, and as the clock got towards the end of midnight, she managed to snag two glasses of champagne and wove her way through the crowd, spotting Mateo off to the side. No one would even see him if they weren't looking for him. She smiled as she got close and offered up one of the glasses, "Maybe this'll be the year things change." she murmured before nodding for him to move back a little more, practically out of the main room and away from everyone else while still being able to see the fireworks through the floor-to-ceiling windows.

Mateo: Mateo took the glass - it was hardly the whiskey he wanted, but it was something alcoholic, and he was grateful to have at least that. "Thanks." He gently clanked his glass to hers before easing back a little more. "Sometimes I wonder if it ain't such a awful idea to just run away from here, you know?" If he knew he could provide for his mother in some other way, he would've been gone already. "I'd go crazy if you wasn't here, Auds..."

Audrey smiled softly as the glasses clinked, just nodding. Her smile fell just a bit, expression going more somber as he spoke and she reached for his hand, "if it was as easy as just leaving we would've already been gone. You and me. ..But we both know things are complicated." She had Freddie, and everything Celeste held over her. And he had his mother. There were things, ties, keeping them stuck here. They just had to make the best of it. This time it was her turn to lean closer, pressing her forehead to his as he finished speaking and she hummed softly, "Well, you'll never have to worry about that. Because I'm not going anywhere. You have me Matty, always. ..And I know I have you. So I'm okay."

Mateo: Audrey was one of the very few people who'd never walked away from him. He believed her when she said that she had his back - she'd never done anything to betray his trust. But he still felt a hitch of uncertainty, if only because of past experiences. Mateo still managed a small little smile for her. "I know you ain't going nowhere. And I ain't either, so..." he trailed off, vaguely hearing the rumblings of the New Year countdown in the background. "Maybe one day though. Maybe."

Audrey hummed, giving him a light little nudge, "I'm holding you to it I hope you know." She teased as she pulled her head back a bit. "Here's to one day, then." She agreed, lifting her glass up a bit and toasting the sentiment before she heard people starting to countdown and she glanced back behind them to the countless amounts of people before back to him with a little smile. "Here's to hoping to have new years kisses next year too."

Mateo: Mateo took a swig of his champagne as they lifted their glasses in toast. New Year kisses - one more thing to make him think of /her/. "Yeah, here's to hoping," he said softly, his voice barely audible over the countdown. He sighed and lowered his head, preferring to look at Audrey over the hoards of people having their New Year moment.

Audrey knew he was hurting, and in turn it hurt her to see him like this. Someone like him shouldn’t have to feel like this. Someone as wonderful as him deserved to be happy and loved and not stuck in the situation that was his life here in Verona. She thought again to all their conversations about wishing one of them was a dominant, something panging inside her. If she were one or him...they wouldn’t be in this, they could take care of each other so much more than they already did... But sometimes the universe just wasn’t fair like that. She let out a sigh, glancing out again for a second as the countdown got to the end, and just before it did she stepped in closer to him and leaned up, kissing him softly as cheers vaguely rang out behind them.

Mateo It might've been a defining moment in someone else's romantic comedy moment - the setting couldn't have been better, the story about too wayward friends was almost too perfect. But their lives weren't romantic comedies and Mateo knew little moments like this would only cause more hurt later. They were two submissives. They were Romanos (even if not by name in his case). It couldn't work.

But he still kissed her back anyway because, in that moment, he was selfish and hurting. Audrey's lips were warm and sweet, serving as a balm for the ache in his chest. The only thing that made him pull back was knowing neither of them could afford to get caught. "Happy New Year," he said softly before pressing another kiss to the top of her head.

Audrey felt both a relief and an ache at the kiss. She knew these messy feelings she had could never come to fruition. She knew how easily she could fall in love with him, and how good they'd be together....but it'd never work, not in the long run. Not unless they did something crazy like get the same Dom to want them both or if they just lived off of brothel visits..but that wasn't fair for either of them, and she doubted any dominant would be insane enough as to want them both. It was a nice little daydream, but it wasn't reality.

Still, Mat's lips were warm..and starting to feel a little familiar and just being around him relaxed her, calmed down the chaos inside herself. So she'd allow herself to indulge for just a little bit. Soon enough though he was pulling back, whispering softly and kissing her head and she exhaled shakily, just nodding and moving to wrap her free arm around his middle and resting her chin on his shoulder as she closed her eyes, "Happy New Year, Matty.."

Mateo: It was nice just to hold her for a little while, pretend that everything really had changed just because the clock struck midnight. New Year, New Them, or something like that. "Think it'll really be any different?" he asked, hopeful, even if he already knew the answer. Audrey still had to complete her dangerous mission for Celeste, Mateo would still relegated to babysitting duty, and the of them would still be scorned by dominants. "Just say yes, even if you don't think so..."

Audrey squeezed her arm gently around him, turning her head to press her face into his neck for a moment. It was another one of the moments that was easy to just...pretend when they were like this. She let out a long, slow breath before nodding “I want it to be. I really..really do. So yes. I believe it. I have to..../We/ have to. All this bad shit...we deserve some good eventually.”

Mateo: "Yes, we really, really do..." Mateo sighed and slowly rubbed her back, keeping her close. "You still gonna come and hang out with me later? I'll have to do a little work in the morning, but after, we can welcome the new year by getting shitfaced, if you want." He wasn't sure how much more his liver could take, but he figured one or two more days couldn't hurt. "Maybe go to the main house, steal some of whatever they're having."

Audrey let out another little sigh, pressing a kiss to his neck before pulling her head up and looking up to his eyes. She nodded, giving him a little smile “Yeah, of course I’ll be there. We can definitely do that. Besides, I have presents to give you.” She teased, giving him a grin and leaning up to press a kiss to his cheek, “Happy birthday, Mateo.”

Mateo: Mateo shook his head. "You really shouldn't have, Auds..." Though he knew he might as well have been talking to a wall. "Thank you. Really. Even if I am a ass about my birthday." Part of him was glad that it blended into a major holiday - his birth had always been a thorn in his family's side and the easier it was to ignore, the better off he was. "I, uh, should probably make sure Georgie and Sophia are getting out okay. You heading out now?"

Audrey rolled her eyes, giving him a nudge “Maybe one day you’ll stop being surprised I /like/ getting you things. You’re one of the few I’m close enough to to give things too, so...” she squeezed his hand and nodded then “Okay. Yeah I’ll go track down Freddie and see what he’s up to. Text me to let me know when you’re leaving?”

Mateo: "Maybe. Maybe I'll just keep telling you to save your money." Mateo chuckled. "I will. You can come over tonight if you want - figure I might have a couple drinks, find something on TV, fall asleep. After party of the century really."

Audrey smiled and nodded “I’ll head over for a bit yeah. I might have plans in the morning maybe? Depending on what Freddie wants to do. Or Cressida since she’s moving in with us, but all afternoon I’m yours and I’ll bring a bottle too to add to your collection.” She teased, kissing his cheek again before moving to pull away so they could get back to the party.

Mateo "Alright, sounds like a plan..." Mateo let her go and slipped back into the crowd, appearing as if he'd never left it at all. As soon as he'd gotten visual confirmation that Georgie and Sophia had left the party safely, Mateo headed back to the Estate to his small cottage.

It didn't take long for him to get comfortable again. After a quick shower, he slipped into a pair of sweats and a wifebeater before breaking the seal on a new bottle of whiskey. He was only about one glass into it before he heard the knock on his door, signaling Audrey's return. "Hey... already got a glass waiting for you."

Audrey stayed at the party for a while longer before finally deciding to head home. She hung the gown back up carefully and changed into a simple pair of jeans and a t-shirt, leaving the makeup on and just undoing all the clips and pins from her hair and leaving it in waves down her back, figuring she'd leave it as is for now. Gathering up the bags she had for Mateo and leaving a note for Freddie before she headed back out and soon enough she was at his door and smiling, "This is why you're my best friend." She teased as she walked in.

Mateo: "Among other things, I hope," Mateo chuckled, reaching for his own glass. "Honestly, don't know why we're using glasses. Could just start drinking from the bottle. Ring in 2019 the right way."

Audrey snorted at that, giving him a nudge as she walked by him. She put the bags down on his couch before tugging her coat off, easily getting comfortable in his space. "Because we're adults. You especially, old man." she teased as she walked over to him and grabbed his hand, tugging him over, "Now c'mon, present time!"

Mateo: "Hey, hey - remember that whole respect your elders thing?" Mateo smirked, rolling his eyes as he followed her toward the couch. "Auds - you really, really didn't have to do all this... I do appreciate it, but you ain't got to, you know... just coming and drinking is enough." Still, he obliged her, picking up one of the bags to open. He pulled out the shoes first, grinning. "Christ, Auds, these are nice - thank you."

Audrey shrugged, "I'm a rebel." she told him with a grin before nudging him again, "Will you stop. I know I don't have to. But I want to. Don't act like you won't get me something when my birthday rolls around." She added, her grin just widening as he opened up one of the first bags and as he did so she took the glass he'd poured for her, smiling at his reaction, "I figured you could use some new ones with all the work Silvius has you doing."

Mateo "Yeah, little easier to work in then my old boots." Mateo set the shoes aside, finding the gloves and whiskey next. It was too much - far more than anyone had done for his birthday before. Perhaps the cherry on top was the sketch she'd done of the small little house he'd grown up in, a place filled with bittersweet memories of his childhood. Delicately, his fingers traced over angles of the roof. "T-thank you, Auds," he said softly, his voice slightly choking up as he looked at it. He was missing his mother far more than he'd let on during the holidays, and his fling with Bianca falling to pieces had only made him a little more homesick.

Mateo leaned over to give her a hug, the genuine appreciation evident on his face. Whether it was her warmth, the smell of her shampoo, or his own raw emotions, his lips suddenly found hers as well, giving her the New Year's kiss that hadn't been allowed to have a couple hours earlier.

Audrey "I'm glad you like them. And apparently the winters are colder here, so I figured the gloves would work too." she explained as she sipped her drink, watching him open the rest. The cupcakes just made her laugh as she took a little box of birthday candles out and shook them playfully at him, "Hope you didn't think you'd be getting out of this either." She teased.

The he was unwrapping the sketch she'd spent time on, only really having his descriptions to go off of so she hoped she'd done his home some kind of justice. "You're welcome." she replied softly, putting the glass down so she could give his hand a squeeze before he was leaning over and hugging her. She hugged him back easily, practically melting into it, but then suddenly his lips were on hers and she sucked a breath, pausing for just a quick second. This was bad, they shouldn't, it'd just make things more complicated..... and yet that didn't stop her from closing her eyes and returning the kiss, her free hand reaching up to cup his cheek.

Mateo didn't know what he was doing. He didn't even have the excuse that he was drunk - besides a glass of champagne at midnight and a glass of whiskey, he hadn't been drinking. All he knew was that he was desperate to fill the hole left behind in his chest. He would hate himself for using Audrey, but she was a beautiful distraction in the meantime.

He leaned into her hand, breaking their kiss only so he could he press one to her palm. "Thank you, Audrey," he murmured. "For everything. For being here..." His brows knitted together and he could feel himself close to breaking - but he refused in front of her. Instead, he kissed her again, preferring to lose himself in his best friend for a little while longer.

Audrey felt her heart beating quicker, her breaths coming out a bit shallow as they broke apart. They'd kissed a few times at this point, but nothing like that...nothing that quite literally took her breath away. She swallowed as he kissed her palm and she nodded, stroking her thumb over his scruffy cheek, "You're welcome. I'd do anything for you...you know that, right?" She asked him softly. She could hear it in his voice that he was about to break though, heard the slight stammer in his voice and she was about to shush him, to try and soothe the demons she knew were roaring through him--but then instead he was kissing her again and instead of hesitating she just went with it, giving him what she knew he needed-- and really what she wanted too, even if she'd never say it aloud.

Mateo I know, he thought, and that's what scared him. They were a long way from Ragusa where that could mean a simple run to the grocery store. Here in Verona, however, the stakes were so much higher.

Mateo's hand slid into Audrey's hair, pulling her closer to him. Usually, he'd never be quite so forward, but this was far easier than dealing with all the shit swirling in his head. "I think I owe you on a bet we made last time," he murmured, pressing his lips to her jaw next. "Y'know, back from this summer, when we..." he trailed off and could feel his face flushing. "If you want to, I mean..."

Audrey felt a little shiver roll down her spine as his fingers moved through her hair, something that had always so easily sent heat sparking through her, especially as he pulled her in closer, and she kissed him back a bit more insistently in kind. Her own love life being in shambles maybe spurred her on as well. She just wanted to feel wanted, wanted someone to actually care about her, and really, Mateo was high up on the very small list of people who made her feel that way.

Her heart stuttered as his lips moved down to her jaw, her head tilting easily to give him more access and as he spoke those little sparks of heat inside herself flared up even more. She knew exactly what he was talking about, had admittedly thought about it a few times, and for him now to be offering it... "God yes.," She breathed out, using the hand on his face to tug him back up and kissing him again, harder this time.

Mateo Audrey's emphatic yes was enough for him. Mateo managed a little grin as she pulled him back in for another kiss, fully planning to make good on his promise from the summer. He could feel heat pooling in belly, eager to please Audrey, to give her back a sliver of what she'd given him. He broke apart from their kiss only so he could ease off her shirt and then slide off of the couch, kneeling on the floor in front of her.

Mateo tugged off his own shirt next - Bianca's lasting impression was carved under his left pec, the healed wound was scarring and would forever serve as a reminder of her. Hoping to distract Audrey from it, his hands immediately went to her pants to get them unbuttoned. "You got to tell me if you get too sensitive..." he said idly as he started pulling them off. "Did I say my record was ten or eleven? Hard to remember." He smirked.

Audrey felt him grinning against her lips as she kissed him and it made her relax even more, glad that she was making him smile, making him feel better- because how he was right now? Heartbroken? She wasn't okay with it, and she wanted to do whatever she could to get him happy again.

She felt his fingers slide down to the hem of her t-shirt and she moved her hand from his face so he could pull it up and off, and when he slid down onto his knees her eyes widened slightly. She didn't expect him to just drop down here in the middle of his living room.. The sight of him pulling his own shirt off right after though made her thoughts shift. Desire pooled through her but it mixed with worry when she saw the gash on his chest, a scar that wasn't there before. She wanted to reach out and touch it, run her fingers over it, her lips, but his hands hadn't stopped and were moving to the button of her jeans and all she could do instead was sit back a bit and lift her hips, trying to help him while his words made her thoughts stutter to a halt. "U-Um...ten? Ten I think..." she mumbled, knowing she'd never even gone past five or six herself and she felt herself getting wetter already at the thought of it.

Mateo saw the flash of worry on her face but quickly played it off, choosing instead to finish getting her undressed. The more distracted they both were, the better.

For the moment, he left her panties on and leaned down, grazing his lips along her naval. His thumb teased her through the thin material, fully intending on getting her as worked up as possible to make his job a /little/ easier. His lips traveled up across the flat plane of her stomach, up her chest, and then finally to her lips again. Reaching behind her, Mateo skillfully unclasped her bra, leaving her almost completely bare to him. His fingers pushed her panties to the side and slowly circled her clit as he kissed her. "You're beautiful, Auds," he said softly, murmuring against her lips. "You really are."

Audrey felt the muscles in her stomach jump as he kissed up her body, the teasing turning her on more while coupled with his thumb rubbing her over her panties before he was kissing her again. She felt the fingers of his other hand against her back for barely a second before her bra was being undone and she shrugged the straps off, letting the material fall onto the couch in a heap. He was moving her panties aside then and she easily let it happen, almost eager in the way she spread her legs more for him. "Matty.." She breathed out softly, the word trailing off into a breathy little moan against his lips as he teased her clit, making her hips rock up for more.

Mateo: Mateo couldn't help but chuckle as she breathed out his name. "Feel good?" he asked, even though the question was wholly unnecessary - the look on her face said it all. But he'd never really been in the business of teasing... at least, not unless someone was teasing /him/. He paused his ministrations to pull her panties all the way off before leaning down. His lips brushed against Audrey's inner thighs first before his tongue parted her slit. His arms wrapped around her thighs, holding her steady while his tongue lapped and teased at her cunt before swirling across her clit.

Audrey let out a little noise in response, rocking her hips up again against him. Before she could even really think about it though he was moving again then, catching her off guard with how quick his movements were. He tugged her panties off and dropped them down with the rest of her clothes then, leaving her completely naked in front of him. She shivered again as he teased his lips over her thigh and at the first touch of his tongue she gasped, her hips rocking up on their own accord before being pinned down more by his arms and she moaned his name again, long and low in the back of her throat as she shifted down lower onto the couch, trying to get closer to his tongue.

Mateo: obliged her, shifting her hips carefully so his tongue was able to press harder against her clit. He hummed his approval at her squirming, knowing it'd give her a little extra bit of sensation as well. His hand squeezed her thigh, letting her know it was okay to move against him and direct him wherever she wanted him. This was for her, after all - it was just a bonus that he preferred being on his knees.

Audrey visibly shuddered as he pulled her closer and hummed against her, the little vibrations feeling like they'd sent shockwaves through her. At the squeeze to her leg she swallowed and moved, spreading her legs a bit more for him as much as she could before she rocked down, slowly creating a rhythm of grinding down against him, moving one of her hands to his hair to slide through the strands, both to push it out of his face and to give her something to hold onto.

Mateo: shivered as Audrey's hand tugged in his hair. He moaned against her, hand gripping her thigh tighter as she grinded against him. His free hand slipped between her thighs next, fingers pushing inside of her in tandem with his tongue, wanting to bring her over the edge. If anyone deserved to let go and enjoy herself, it was Audrey. His eyes flicked up to look at her briefly, making him moan again at the look on her face.

Audrey usually had better self-control, could usually hold off for more than just the short few minutes that'd passed, but in what felt like no time at all she felt that tension inside herself building. Breathy little swears and whines slipped out of her as he slid his fingers into her, the muscles of her pussy eagerly clenching down around them and as he moaned against her again, the added vibrations was all she needed to fall over the edge, her back arching up off the couch and her head tipping back as waves of pleasure washed over her, making her body shudder as she came on his fingers and tongue.

Mateo: Mateo felt the usual smugness and self-satisfaction when he made someone cum that hard. He slowly eased her down, careful not to overstimulate her sensitive clit as his tongue lazily lapped at her cunt. He was smirking when he finally looked up and ran his hands along her inner thighs. "Feel good?" he asked, leaning down to press his lips to her stomach again. "Ready for me to do it again?"

Audrey squirmed as he worked her through it, breathing shakily and loosening her fingers in his hair even as he continued to lick over her pussy, sending little shockwaves through her every few seconds. She licked over her lips and lifted her head, glancing down at him and huffing as se saw the smirk on his lips, "You really wanna try and match your record?" She breathed out, moving her hand down to the nape of his neck and scratching her fingers lightly through the little strands there.

Mateo: "Yeah, if that's what you want," Mateo said softly, gently nosing Audrey's thigh. "It's good for me too, y'know - I've always had a thing about, well, y'know." His cheeks suddenly flushed. "I like it, in other words. If you ever wanted to find out what it'd be like to be a domme for a night, now's your chance."

Audrey couldn't help but let out a laugh, smiling fondly down at him, "You should know how cute it is that you just made me come in like three minutes and then can't even say the words aloud." She teased, sitting up so she could bend down and she cupped his face, kissing him softly and trying to moan at the fact that she could taste herself on his lips. She lingered for a moment before pressing her forehead to his. "We're Mateo and Audrey. That's all I want to be. Us." she murmured, pecking his lips again before nudging at him and giving him a nod that she was ready for more.

Mateo: Mateo let out a little huff of a laugh, kissing her back as he melted into her touch. "Then we'll just be us," he murmured, chasing her lips as she pulled away before he slid back down between her thighs. He wasted no time getting back into his rhythm from before, knowing she'd still be sensitive. There was no point in teasing - he had a goal to meet.

Audrey nodded in agreement, stroking her thumb over his cheek for a moment. "Just us." She echoed, giving him a little smile before pulling back so she could lay back against the couch. She gasped as he literally wasted no time in getting his mouth back on her though, her hips jerking up as his tongue passed over her clit and she bit down on her bottom lip, closing her eyes to try and keep some semblance of control over herself.

Mateo: Mateo wasn't sure exactly how much time had passed when he finally looked up, smug and self-satisfied after managing to tie his record. He pressed his lips to her stomach again, closing his eyes for a moment as he caught his breath. "Been a while since I've done that much, but I'm glad I managed to keep my magic touch." He smirked and slowly leaned up to kiss her.

Audrey kind of lost her head a little by the fourth orgasm. She stopped holding back completely, all but sprawled over his couch with her legs spread wide, her thighs wet and chest heaving. And yet he still continued. Her own personal record was six, so by the time he'd passed that she was left shaking and after eight she'd lost count, lost all track of time and even of herself, barely aware of the noises and words spilling out of her. She was boneless against the couch when he pulled away, barely with it enough just yet to kiss him back, let alone to hum in response as he spoke.

Mateo: Mateo couldn't wipe the grin off his face, highly amused by how boneless she'd become. "Want to lay down for a little while?" he asked, hand sliding up and down her thigh. "Maybe some water?" Slowly, he eased off of the floor and slid beside Audrey on the couch, grimacing a bit at the stiffness that'd set up in his knee. Leaning over, he pressed a soft kiss to her neck.

Audrey hummed a bit again, nodding. Laying down sounded like a good idea. But as she blinked and opened her eyes a bit more to focus she caught the downturn of his lips as he settled beside her and she reached a hand up, cupping his cheek again and leaning into him as he kissed her neck, "You're okay?" She mumbled quietly, needing to focus on him and make sure he hadn't hurt himself first- that was more important to her than any after glow.

Mateo: "I'm alright. Just a tweak in my knee, that's all," Mateo assured her, nuzzling her cheek. "C'mon, let me carry you to bed. More comfortable there and you can get some rest." His fingers reached up and slowly brushed through her hair, relishing the moment until he forced himself up off the couch again. There was a noticeable bulge in his sweatpants, but nothing he knew he couldn't take care of. He reached for Audrey's hands to help her up.

Audrey leaned her head against him for a moment longer, nodding, "Kay...but you gotta take care of yourself, old man.." she murmured, a little smile on her lips. She practically purred in contentment as he ran his fingers through her hair and tried not to whine at the loss, instead taking his hand ad accepting the help up. Her knees were still kind of like jell-o though and she leaned heavily into him, shifting close enough to press her thigh against the obvious bulge.

Mateo: "Careful who you're callin' old - you ain't that far behind me." Mateo smirked and wrapped his arm around her, letting her lean in close as they made their way to his bedroom. He didn't miss the way she pressed her thigh into his crotch, making him groan. "And if you keep doing /that/, you'll have to deal with it before I let you sleep..."

Audrey let him keep her upright, wrapping an arm around his bare shoulders as they slowly walked the short distance to his room. "Yeah but you'll hit all the milestones first." She quipped back. The little smirk on her lips became more pronounced as he groaned and she hummed, leaning up to press a kiss to the corner of his jaw, "Maybe that's my plan." She murmured, pressing a kiss under his jaw and then another nearer the side of his neck, all the while letting the fingers of her free hand slide down his stomach and teasingly drift over the length of his cock.

Mateo: Mateo shivered as Audrey's hand ghosted along his cock, teasing him in the worst way. "Ain't very nice of you to tease, you know..." Normally he wouldn't mind, but it'd been a while since he came and his cock was throbbing. "It's been a minute since I was allowed anything."

Audrey moved the backs of her knuckles over his cock again, giving him a playful little grin, "Pretty sure after you ate me out for like a hour I'm allowed to tease just a little." She told him softly and once they got to his room and close to his bed she stopped them, her hand moving to the waistband of his sweats and fingers curling in a bit as she leaned up, closer to his ear, "What do you want then?" She asked softly, running her fingers back and forth, "Want my mouth on you? To fuck me?" She tugged a bit on the pants, "Both?"

Mateo: "Pretty sure me eating you out for a hour is why you /shouldn't/ tease me," Mateo groaned, shivering as her hand brushed against him again. He let Audrey take the reins as they made it to his room, tilting his head back as her lips brushed against his ear. "Fuck, Auds, I don't know." He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to figure out which one sounded better. Mateo wasn't used to having /choices/ like this. "Fuck, both. Please fucking both."

Audrey let out a little hum, the grin wide on her face and she pressed her kiss just under his ear, letting them brush against his earlobe. It was nice, being able to tease and be relaxed like this. No expectations. Just be. Just Mateo and Audrey. So when he gave his answer she didn't miss a beat a dropped to her knees in front of him. It felt even better once she was knelt down in front of him, like a whole new wave of energy washed over her and she reached up, once again curling her fingers into the waistband and this time she tugged them all the way down, her mouth practically watering at the sight of his hard cock in front of her, "I've been wanting to do this for a while." She admitted, remembering the last time they were together, she never got to reciprocate. She'd have to make up for it this time. She shuffled a bit closer and leaned in, running her tongue alone the length and then back, swirling over the head of his cock. She kept her eyes up on him as she teased her tongue over him before finally parting her lips, giving a teasing little suck to the head before sinking down more around him.

Mateo: It was a strange sensation to have someone kneel in front of him. "Yeah?" Mateo flushed a deeper shade of crimson as Audrey pulled down his sweats all in one tug, showing exactly how hard he'd gotten for her. He didn't have to think on it too long - her mouth enveloped his cock soon enough, drawing a deep moan from him as her tongue teased his cock. "Fuck, Auds, that feels good," he murmured, reaching down to slide his fingers through her hair. It had been a very, /very/ long time since he'd been that spoiled.

Audrey hummed in reply, nodding to him. The noises he let out let her know she was doing something right so she kept at it, laving her tongue along the underside of his cock while starting up an easy rhythm of bobbing her head around him, keeping the suction of her lips tight. She hummed again as his fingers moved to her hair and she nudged up into it, pulling off with a wet noise. "Use my mouth, Matty. Take whatever you want. I'll let you know if it's too much." She assured him, leaning into the hand in her hair again before sinking back down around him, moving until he hit the back of her throat and further still, taking him all the way in.

Mateo: Mateo was a little unsure at first. No domme had ever allowed him to /use/ their mouth - he had to remind himself he wasn't with a domme. He was with Audrey. And clearly she was enjoying herself as much as he had before. "O-Ok," he stammered, slowly rolling his hips into her. It felt incredible. "Oh, fuck, Auds," he moaned, careful not to hurt her as he fucked her mouth. "Fuck you feel so fucking good..."

Audrey honestly loved it, being used like this. Probably as much as Mateo clearly loved being buried between someone's legs. She let out a moan as he began thrusting into her, a soft little gagging noise slipping out but she was so okay with it and she reached up to his thigh, fingers gripping and digging in slightly as she tugged him closer still, nonverbally giving him the okay to do more, to use her mouth as he wanted.

Mateo: Mateo relaxed as Audrey's fingers dug into his thighs, coaxing him to keep going. His grip in her hair tightened as his hips rolled into her mouth, relishing everything she gave him. He could feel his pleasure building in the pit of his belly and his long-neglected cock was overdue for release. "I'm gonna cum," he warned, not quite ready even though his body didn't want to cooperate. "Fuck," he groaned, denying himself as he finally pulled back from her mouth. "I want to fuck you first - f-from behind." A treat he was rarely given.

Audrey moaned again, louder this time, longer, shuddering as he gripped her hair and really fucked her mouth the way she wanted him to. She was going to leave little fingernail indents in the skin of his thigh by the end and she knew neither of them would really care. She let out a noise in response, whining as he pulled back and she let out a ragged noise as she tried to catch her breath, her lips swollen and spit-slicked as she licked over them and looked up at him, nodding. She leaned up to press her lips along his navel, pressing a kiss to the vee of his hips and pressing her forehead there for a moment to catch her breath before looking to him again. "Definitely okay with that." She replied, her voice a bit hoarse.

Mateo: Mateo's fingers grazed along Audrey's jaw, swallowing hard as he looked down at her. She looked as he often did after a long time spent on his knees. "You look real fucking hot." He smirked, reaching his hands down to take hers and help her up. "C'mon - I ain't done with you yet."

Audrey licked over her lips, keeping her eyes up on him, wide and dark and eager for more. This time it was her turn for her smile to turn a bit bashful as he spoke and she just hummed in response, taking his hand to accept his help up. "I was hoping not." She murmured, leaning up to kiss him again- just because she could. As she pulled back she lightly bit on his lower lip, tugging on it as she pulled back before nudging for him to come with her to the bed.

Mateo: Mateo grinned, meeting her lips again in a quick kiss as she led him to the bed. He knelt behind her, sliding his hand up her thigh and down her side as she moved into position. "You know i can count on one hand how many times i've done it like this," he commented, fingers tracing back across her side. It was a strange feeling to be in a position of power; he wondered if this might be how dominants felt. Mateo took his time lining up his cock before his hips thrust home hard, moaning from the soft, wet heat that now enveloped his cock. "Fuck, Auds, you feelsofuckinggood," he breathed, his voice starting to sound a bit hoarse

Audrey took his hand as she led him to the bed before wasting no time in climbing up onto it, her whole body feeling flushed and antsy as she crawled to the middle to get into position for him. She felt his hand moving along her body as she settled, a shiver rolling through her and she couldn't help the way she rocked her hips up a bit towards him, eager for more. She felt the head of his cock against her entrance and she nudged back more, letting out a little noise before he thrust into her in one fluid motion and she gasped, the noise tapering off to a breathy moan as her fingers twisted a bit into the sheets below her. It'd been a while since she'd been with anyone, so the fullness left her head spinning a bit and she took a moment to adjust before rocking back against him, biting her lip as she whined. "Please, Matty.."

Mateo: Mateo didn't leave her wanting - he was anything but a tease. His hips rolled into hers, hard and steady. "Fuck, Auds," he moaned, squeezing her hips tight as he fucked her. "You feel so fucking good - I ain't gonna last long. You got me too worked up." His words came out stuttered, breathless.

Audrey cried out as he gripped her hips and started fucking her hard. She just nodded as he spoke, dropping her head down and shuffling her knees more apart so he could sink into her deeper. “God../Mat/...” she groaned, starting to rock her hips back so she could fuck herself back against him.

Mateo: "Fuck, that's it, Auds," he breathed, squeezing her hips again. He was half sure he'd leave little bruises behind for her later. Mateo sneaked one of his hands around her waist, letting his fingers brush against her sensitive clit as he fucked her. "Come for me again. I want to feel you."

Audrey hissed at the sting of his fingers digging in, shuddering at the pleasure/pain of it all. She hoped there’d be bruises at the end of all this, little reminders of what they’d done. She felt sweat dotting her forehead, along her neck, making her hair stick to her skin a bit but she /really/ didn’t care as she fucked herself back on his cock. She moaned as his fingers found her clit, practically making her whole body shake. “Mat, fuck..please. Please fuck me harder...” She panted, her voice high and breathy.

Mateo: Mateo obliged her, rolling his hips into hers at a more punishing pace. He was /so/ close, and hearing her call out for him wasn't helping. "So... fucking... good..." he stuttered before his orgasm finally took him. He came hard, calling out Audrey's name as he tumbled over the edge. "Fuck, fuck, fuck," he cursed, shivering as he leaned forward to press a kiss between her shoulder blades.

Audrey couldn't even really speak at that point, just gasping for breath in between moans and noises spilling out of her, especially as she lowered onto her elbows, changing the angle enough for him to hit that spot inside of her that felt like electricity through her whole body. She was shaking as he rubbed her clit, her whole body feeling oversensitive, too much, and as he came inside her it finally pushed her over the edge as well, making her cry out breathlessly as he managed to make her come one more time.

Mateo: Mateo panted as they relaxed together, dragging his lips along her shoulder blade. He was slow to move away, but as his cock started to soften, he finally pulled out and collapsed on the bed next to her. "You alright...?" he asked, voice soft as he turned his head to look at Audrey, cheeks reddening as the full weight of everything finally crashed on him. "I didn't go too hard did I?"

Audrey 's body trembled with the aftershocks, breathing shakily as she let herself sink onto the bed. Her head was spinning from it all and she just focused on trying to catch her breath, and then to focus on the little kisses and brushes of his lips against her skin. She's be sore tomorrow, but damn will it've been worth it. She felt the bed dip beside her as he settled down next to her and she swallowed, letting out a long breath before blinking her eyes open and looking up at him, "Mmm..no. I'm good. Really good." It wasn't the same high as dipping into sub space, but that didn't make it any less intense or amazing feeling.

Mateo: "Yeah?" Mateo leaned over, stealing a kiss from her. "Me too." His heart was, for the moment, a little less broken. But he could feel the cold gnawing of guilt starting in his spine at using Audrey so carelessly. He'd been the main one to tell her over and over that they couldn't be together, and yet he'd pushed for this just to feel a little better for a little while. No - he refused to think too hard about it. He kissed Audrey again, resolving to deal with his mixed emotions in the morning. "Stay? I got to get up early and work on the cottage a bit, but you ain't got to go."

Audrey tipped her head up enough to kiss him back, a little smile ghosting over her lips. "Good." She responded softly, too blissed out to really realize the bit of a crisis going on inside him. When he kissed her again she leaned up into it, lingering for a few seconds before letting him pull back and nodding, "Kay, yeah. Besides, it's your birthday." She reminded him, shuffling a bit closer to him. "I'll make pancakes."

Mateo "You ain't got to. I got poptarts in there." Mateo smirked a bit and settled into the bed beside her. "Not as good as your pancakes, but then you ain't got to do the work." He was quiet for a minute and let out a contented sigh, wrapping his arm back around her as he fought off the guilt that threatened to overtake him. "Thank you, Auds. For everything."

Audrey snorted, rolling her eyes, "You're not eating poptarts for your birthday breakfast. Nope. We're having pancakes. Deal with it." She smiled as she said it, even reaching up to poke his chest playfully. She settled soon enough though, nudging more into him as his arm wrapped around her and she let out a contented little sigh, "i feel like I should be thanking you after all that." She told him, a little bit of pink coloring her cheeks as she looked up at him and gave him a little smile. "After everything the last few weeks...it was nice to not think about it all for a while. To just...be. With you." she kissed him lightly once more twisting enough to grab his comforter to throw it over both of them, "For now though, let's get some rest. You for one definitely deserve it."

Mateo "Mm, fine, fine." Mateo knew that arguing with Audrey was pointless. For a submissive, she was awfully stubborn when she wanted something. "It was nice... really fucking nice." He let his lips brush back against hers before they finally settled in bed. But sleep never did come for him. Instead, the chilly gnaw of guilt finally overtook him. He'd used Audrey - Audrey, his best friend; Audrey, the one person who would never hurt him. They couldn't be together - how many times had he told her that? And still, he'd used her like she was nothing just to forget about Bianca for a little while. Mateo's gut twisted. He lay still for Audrey's benefit so she could sleep. But as soon as the first rays of dawn peeked through the windows, he slid out of bed and got dressed, making a beeline for the old cottage Silvius had him fixing up. He needed a drink and a long day of manual labor.

[artificialqueens]

How to Adore the Seasons 2/4 (Adore-centric) - Mac

AN: Hi there friends! This is the second part in a four part series I’m doing where I pair up Adore with someone else and a season to describe how that particular person loves Adore. Idk if that makes sense. Oh well.

Summary: It’s Adore’s birthday, and Alaska has planned some surprises.

Summer (Alaska/Adore):

“She turned to the sunlight

   And shook her yellow head,

And whispered to her neighbor:

   “Winter is dead.” ― A.A. Milne, When We Were Very Young

Adore woke up to the sound of screaming.

Then she let herself slump back into the cool sheets when she figured out where, or more specifically, who the sound was coming from.

She groaned and pulled the blankets over her head, as Alaska poked at her with her nail-less fingers.

“Rise and shine bitch. Let’s go.”

“Mhhhhhmph.��� Came from under the blankets.

“What? I can’t hear you.” Adore could feel the smile in Alaska’s voice, and it made her want to strangle the blonde even more than normal.

Adore removed the covers and pointedly looked, well tried to look, her eyes were practically glued shut, at Alaska. “I said fuck you.”

Alaska mocked offense, “Is that any way to treat your elders.”

“When they wake you up at 4 in the morning it is.”

“We gotta get going if we want to catch it.”

Adore wasn’t going to ask what they were supposed to catch. She wasn’t. She was going to go back to sleep. She wasn’t goin-“Catch what?” SHIT

“You’ll see.” Alaska said with a smirk that wasn’t altogether menacing, but definitely not reassuring. “But you have to GET UP first.”

They played tug-of-war with the blankets for a few minutes before Adore’s fatigued muscles gave out. “Fine. But fuck you still.”

Alaska gave a little victory dance that Adore attempted, and failed, not to laugh at. She then began traipsing about Adore’s room, throwing open curtains and humming some ridiculous song that Adore couldn’t be bothered to figure out. Adore took her sweet time getting up and dressed, pointedly ignoring Alaska’s huffs when she took too long. Just as the shirt went over her head, Adore’s world went dark.

“The FUCK?” Adore pulled at the blindfold.

Alaska batted her hands away. “It is a surprise! Keep it on.“

“If you make me fall, I swear.”

“I won’t. Just trust me.”

Adore bites her tongue on a smart reply and allows herself to be lead to a car and driven away. “If it were anyone else,” she mumbles to herself.

Adore hears Alaska fumble with something for a minute, then the unmistakable sound of a disk tray retracting, and suddenly the car is full of music.  And curse Alaska for knowing all of Adore’s favorite music. She was really trying to be angry at the older queen, but the unconscious smile on her lips gave her away.

Alaska saw it, but wouldn’t mention it. She would however, file it away in her mind to be brought out at a later date. And that feeling that accompanied Adore’s smile would also need to be analyzed later. But now, now wasn’t about her.

Alaska kept checking her watch nervously, and gave an audible sigh of relief when they finally arrived. She hopped out and pulled Adore with her. The two walked only a few steps before they stopped.

“Just one more minute now.” Alaska said, mainly to herself. They stood side by side for what felt like ages, before Adore felt Alaska’s hands beside her face.

Adore’s world went from pitch black to full of color in .2 seconds. The sunrise filled the entire horizon line and Adore’s lungs to the brim.

“Wow.” Adore breathed.

“Yeah.” Alaska smiled.

The orange sun was just barely peeking its head up around the curve of the earth, but the color had spread already. Pinks and light purples mixed with blues and yellows around the edges of the horizon. The whole thing blended together to paint the most beautiful art piece either queen had ever seen.

The two stood there for what felt like ages but also only seconds. The sun was no longer eye level when Alaska slipped the blindfold back on Adore’s face.

“HEY!” Adore shouted in indignation.

“We aren’t done yet.”

Adore smiled. A full-unbridled one this time. If this next surprise was anything like the first she knew waking up at the ass-crack of dawn would be worth it.

They drove for a much shorter distance this time. Adore noticed, because she had only just started to get comfortable when Alaska came to a stop. They both hopped out, and Adore smiled again. Her favorite breakfast place. She could tell by the smell alone. It was only open one day of the week, and at the most awful times. As a creature of the night, Adore never could find herself awake before 11:00am, and thus, she missed her opportunity for the most delicious omelet every week.

Adore was ecstatic, and then she was confused. It was a Tuesday. This place was only open on Thursdays. Alaska, sensing the question at the tip of her tongue, tried to move them along by pulling off the blindfold and shaking her hands as if to say ‘ta da.’ Adore let it go for now, the rumbling in her stomach taking priority.

They entered the empty restaurant, picked the best seat in the house, and had their food within minutes of sitting down. Adore didn’t hesitate before digging in. Alaska, ever the patient one, was content to wait a few moments between each bite and just smile at the younger girl.

When Adore finally came up for air, Alaska spoke softly, “Happy Birthday Danny.” Adore beamed at her, and the older queen immediately burst into giggles. Adore looked at her confusedly until Alaska motioned with her hand at her own face. “You’ve got something right…” Adore struggled for a few moments before Alaska took pity, and wiped the stray cheese residue from her cheek. Adore and Alaska sat in relative silence afterwards. There was no rush, there was only time.

Adore isn’t sure how long they sat, only that when they finally got up, the newborn sun now hung high up above them.

Alaska re-did the blindfold and proceeded to take Adore to every activity Adore enjoyed doing, and even some things she had never done before. They went to a trampoline park, and got so incredibly sweaty that Alaska would definitely need to get her car deep cleaned. They had a picnic in the arboretum. They went zip-lining and swimming and talked for hours about the complexities of life, drag, and the pursuit of marijuana. Adore couldn’t remember a time she felt more understood by another person.

Till the last stop.

Adore let herself once again be blindfolded and whisked away to an undisclosed location. This time, when they came to a halt, Adore couldn’t even begin to figure out where they were. She listened for any identifying sounds, but her brain kept coming up empty. All she could tell was that they were outside. Alaska led her by the hand up a few wooden stairs, and then allowed her to stand by herself a few moments.

“You can take it off now.”

Adore did as instructed, and the resulting chant of “Happy Birthday” rung out. Adore spun around wildly, trying to get a glimpse of everything and everyone. All around her were the people she loved most in her life, a beautifully decorated park, and mountains of food. Before she could take it all in, her mother enveloped her in a huge hug. Bianca and Courtney followed next and squeezed the life out of her, whispering how proud they were, and getting a few jabs in here and there.

The party was magnificent. There was a pool and a gazebo and a food truck. Anything Adore could have ever needed was right with her. The party had Alaska written all over it.

Adore searched high and low for any trace of the blonde, but kept missing her. Finally she spotted the lanky queen, and Adore grabbed her friend before she could dart away.

“Hey Lasky. Uh. I just wanted to say thanks for everything today. You did so much, and I really have no idea why, cause its just little old me, but…but thank you. Really. For everything. “Alaska looked down at her, and for the first time that day, Adore could see some trepidation in her eyes. “Whats wrong Lasky?”

“I just…I didn’t want to tell you here. This is your party and you should be being happy with everyone.” Alaska looked this way and that, rather guiltily.

“What’s going on? You can tell me. Anything. You know that.”

Alaska looked unsure, but pulled Adore closer to her so she could whisper, “I’mmovingnextweektonewyorkforajobandiwantedtotellyoubuticouldntandimgoingtomissyousofuckingmuch”

“Wait, hold on, slow down. You’re moving?”

“Yeah.” Alaska was quick to clarify, “I wanted to tell you. All this time I wanted to, but I didn’t know how, and I knew as soon as I did it would be real.” The older queen looked devastated. “I’m just going to miss you, and I was scared I would lose you. So I put it off, and I think all those feelings bubbled up and then…this.” Alaska gestured to the party around them.

Adore looked at her long and hard. She wasn’t sure if she was angry or sad or happy. So she resorted to doing the thing she always did when she felt overwhelmed, she hugged Alaska.

It was a fierce, strong hug that left the two feeling equal parts better, and like they bruised some ribs.

“Ok.” Adore finally said.

“Ok?”

“Yeah. Ok. That doesn’t change anything. You are still my best friend. I still would do anything for you. I still think you are the most amazing person in this world. Nothing will have to change, except I guess that whole time change thing. But other than that, nothing has to change. You don’t have to lose me.”

Alaska’s face broke out into the biggest grin Adore had seen on her in a while. Alaska launched herself at Adore, and the two stood holding each other for ages, until Bianca yelled across the park at them to get a room.

They finally broke away from the embrace, but kept their fingers interlocked as they made their way back over to the others and they stayed that way till they reached the security line at the airport. And while they may physically have untangled their fingers at the gate, they would forever be intertwined.

[theartificialdane]

Galactica, chapter 249

Deck the hall with boughs of holly, fa la la la la, la la, la la. The Puerto Ricon sun is shining, and christmas is celebrated in the land of Galactica!

Thank you to everyone who has been patient in the wait for this chapter, and thank you to @samrull @toriibelledarling and @veronicasanders for their help, creative minds and their writing skills <3!

“I don’t think I can do this.”

Fame held onto Patrick’s arm. The comfort of Jinkx’s family jet, that would normally calm her right down, was offset by her fear of flying in such a small aircraft, and with all the people in here? What exactly kept them from falling out of the sky. Patrick squeezed her hand, and Fame took a deep breath, trying to center herself like she had learned in her hypnosis class. She had to admit though, it was nice to be sitting in such a big, plush seat. Hopefully the sedative would kick in soon.

“Of course you can.” Patrick gently titled Fame’s head, giving her a kiss. “Everything will be fine.”

***

Courtney chattered excitedly with Adore, getting all the latest gossip about her band and the stunning goddess they’d found to play bass, when Bianca tried to catch her attention from the other side of the plane. “Hey, baby! We’re about to take off… You wanna come sit over here?” Bianca flashed her dimples, gesturing to the spot beside her.

“Uhh, thanks, I’m good,” Courtney said, kissing the top of Kylie’s head and turning back to Adore, who raised an eyebrow.

“Damn, B, what’d you do now?” Adore teased.

“Fuck off, Adore.”

“Now now, be nice, sis.” Adore flashed a cheeky grin.

***

“Baaaaaaaaabe, come ooon.” Pearl smiled as she leaned over the table. “Let me taste!”

“No! Katya is helping me make these for your mom.” Laila laughed, fighting Pearl off as she tried to get her hands on the small fruity cakes.

“Just a bite! I’ll do whatever you want.” Laila suddenly got a flash of Pearl in bed, her girlfriend panting above her as she rode the dildo that had become their favorite, the thick black silicone so familiar to Laila.

“Okay okay, you can have some.” Laila smiled and held out a small piece of vzvar, Pearl taking a bite and moaning in pleasure.

“Mmh.. Thanks babe.”

“You’re welcome, now get out.” Laila pushed Pearl. “I have to work.”

“Thank fuck. You guys are nauseatingly sweet.” They both turned to see Trixie standing at the kitchen counter, chopping potatoes for Ivan’s dinner. Laila blushed, her entire face going red as she realized Trixie had been there the whole time.

***

“So...Alaska…” Fame attempted to change the subject, turning to the slender blonde. “I’m so glad we get to spend this time together outside of the office.”

“Yeah,” Alaska agreed. “It’s gonna be...awesome.”

Fame cleared her throat, trying to think of something to say to her. “How...um...how are the spring palettes coming along?”

“Hey Alaska, I bet this is exactly what you were hoping for your vacation, eh?” Bianca taunted, pinching Fame’s thigh. “Just chatting about work with your boss?”

Alaska giggled, nervously sipping her champagne.

“Oh, stop it! I was just saying that she’s doing a great job! You’re such a beast!” Fame swatted Bianca’s hand away, getting into a play fight with her, Bianca happy that she could distract her friend from the horror of flying, Patrick giving Bianca a gentle smile as Alaska slipped away.

***

“These vegan spring rolls are delicious!” Courtney smiled at the flight attendant as she finished her lunch, before she turned to Jinkx, bouncing in her seat excitedly. “Omigod Jinky, guess what?! You know that theatre agent you set me up with? Well, he got me a meeting with that producer friend of yours, Sharon-”

Adore’s eyes got huge and she squeezed Courtney’s arm, whispering, “/Abort, abort!/”

Courtney gave her a confused look, asking, “Huh?” and then turning back to Jinkx, who had a terrified smile plastered across her face. “You know, the one producing Cabaret? Anyway, I met with her last week to talk about playing Sally and she’s so funny, and I think we totally hit it off. She’s a little worried about my accent, which is hilarious because most Americans can’t even tell the difference, and--WHAT?!” She glared at Adore, who was giving her frantic eyes and shaking her head violently, interrupting her amazing news for some reason.

“Alaska,” Fame said, tilting her head, looking at the blonde who was finishing her lunch. “Didn’t you and Sharon used to date? I’m sure I’ve heard about it somewhere.” Fame smiled, happy to have a topic she could discuss with Alaska that wasn’t about work.

Adore’s grip on Courtney’s arm tightened like a vice. “OW! Stop it!”

“Uh, yes, we did.” Alaska cleared her throat and polished off the rest of her champagne.

There was a long moment of silence.

“So…” Bianca began, attempting to break the tension, “Patrick...fuck any cute assistants lately?”

***

“Are you sure the gift for your mother is good enough?”

“I’m absolutely sure.” Sutan smiled as Violet looked at the silk scarf she had wrapped up for Christmas one last time, before finally putting it in the car. Sutan had come to get her at her apartment, her boyfriend driving the batman car Raja gifted to him for his birthday. “She loves scarves, and as you know, Muslim christmas is all about the gifts.”

Violet laughed. It was kind of weird to her that Sutan’s family celebrated christmas, but she wasn’t saying no to a few days on Long Island in Sutan’s mom’s cosy little yellow house.

Frida yipped, and Sutan picked her up, the chubby little dog that could no longer be described as a puppy wagging her tail as she was zipped into her doggy seat in the back.

***

Jane sipped on an iced coffee, watching some footage in the cramped Post Production offices, when her field producer, Jeremy, walked up behind her, holding a flash drive, a sly grin on his face. “Check out this sequence I just cut together,” he said.

Jane took the drive and popped it into her system, playing out the reel. It was a sequence over the course of three holiday parties, focused on Bianca Del Rio and her famous predilection for pretty blondes. She was flirting with models, business associates, laughing and flashing her killer dimples. Intercut was Courtney glaring on, looking more and more murderous in each shot, ending with a shot of her literally dragging Bianca away from a pretty young thing and throwing her against a wall. Jane burst out laughing. “This is amazing, remember when we thought she’d be the boring one this season?”

Jeremy nodded. “Yeah, and it gets better. So we found this girl…” he threw some tabloid pictures down of Bianca and a cute blonde making out in a club. “They seem to have had a thing during London fashion week, last year. She’s a singer, got a record deal remarkably soon after this little affair. Sound familiar? She’s also younger than Courtney, so that’s gotta hurt.”

“You’re /so/ evil,” Jane said. “So, what, you’re sending her to Puerto Rico?”

“Exactly. We’re there anyway to film Courtney’s concert. Might as well add some drama!”

Jane winked. “Good job, man. We may have to give you a raise.”

***

“Oh /man/,” Adore collapsed onto the bed, exhausted. “That was a long fucking day, trapped in a steel tube with those motherfuckers, and one of my presents got squashed! It sucks.”

“Tell me about it…” Alaska grumbled, rolling her eyes. “And I told you not to bring anything soft.”

“It’s not soft. It’s delicate.”

“That’s literally the same word.”

Jinkx sighed, halfway through removing her shoes, one heel in her hand, both Alaska and Adore looking at her. “I’m sorry about everything on the plane-”“

“I know,” Alaska replied tersely.

“I thought inviting that agent to Courtney’s concert was a nice thing, you know? I didn’t realize it was gonna mean Sharon—“

“I get it, Jinkx.”

“Well, I’m sorry. That’s all.”

“Fine.”

Adore groaned loudly, one arm covering her eyes. Both Jinkx and Alaska looked at her. “Can you guys, like, please just…not do this anymore? At least for the time we’re here? Because it’s really starting to take its toll on my fragile emotional state.”

Jinkx looked up at Alaska, whose face was suddenly filled with guilt. In the next instant, both of them were on the bed, tackling Adore and covering her with kisses.

She shrieked and giggled, lapping up the attention. “See, this is more like it…” she purred happily.

***

Courtney sank down into the warm water of the hot tub, the day’s tension melting away as the jets pounded against her sore muscles. She took a deep breath, inhaling the fresh air, admiring the beauty of the Caribbean sunset.

“Room for me?” Bianca asked, standing above her with two cocktails in her hands.

Courtney nodded, and Bianca slipped in beside her, handing her one of the drinks, kissing her lightly on the cheek.

“So...what do you think?”

Courtney leaned against her shoulder. “It’s even more beautiful than you described.”

Bianca smiled, wrapping an arm around her waist.

“Bianca, seriously! Did you have to put me next to Adore and her...whatever you wanna call that situation?” Eddy, Bianca’s brother, opened the sliding glass doors, holding his fiancée’s hand, making Courtney jump slightly.

Bianca looked up at her brother quizzically. “What exactly is your problem?” she asked. “Hi, Rose. How was your flight?”

“Great!” Rose exclaimed. She settled down at the edge of the hot tub, lifting up her skirt and dangling her feet in the water. “And I have no idea what he’s complaining about.”

“I’m complaining because I really don’t want to have to listen to my baby sister engaging in sexual deviancy on Jesus’s birthday.”

Eddy stood at the bar, pouring drinks for them, complaining loudly, when Fame and Patrick wandered outside as well. Courtney groaned, already annoyed with the lack of privacy, but it seemed like that was a big part of an American Christmas.

“If it helps, Eddy, most historians think that Jesus was actually born in the Spring. We just celebrate in December because of the Winter Solstice,” Courtney said.

“Are we really talking about Jesus?” Patrick wondered, settling into a lounge chair with a beer.

Rose giggled. “Eddy hasn’t been to church in 20 years. He’s just being a pain in the ass.”

“Sorry if I don’t think listening to Adore get double-teamed sounds like a relaxing vacation,” Eddy said.

“Gross, dude,” Bianca laughed, nuzzling into Courtney’s shoulder.

“Exactly!”

“Miss Bianca? Dinner will be ready in 5 minutes,” said Maria, the villa’s chef.

“Thanks!” Bianca called, rising from the water and wrapping a long flowing cover-up around her bathing suit. Fame snickered softly. “What, bitch?”

“No, nothing! It’s cute.”

“You got something to say, blondie?” Bianca walked over to Fame and poked her playfully with her foot.

“No! I just...I can never get used to seeing you in resort wear. It’s so...casual.”

“Oh, go fuck yourself!” Bianca bent down and began tickling her and she shrieked happily, slapping Bianca’s hands away.

Courtney clenched her fists under the water and closed her eyes, leaning her head back against the cool tile.

***

“You see this one next.”

Violet gasped in delight as Sutan’s mom handed him a photo. “Oh my god!” Violet grabbed it, holding it into the light so she could see it properly. “Is that pink hair?”

Mani nodded, a smile on her face as well. Violet and Mani were sitting in the livingroom, Violet surrounded by photos of the twins, their mom having kept every tiny magazine mention they had ever gotten, and printed every photo they ever sent her. Frida was on the floor napping, snow falling outside the window. Violet and Sutan had gone up early, opting to spend the night at Mani’s so they could help her prepare for the christmas feast, and help her get everything she needed in order, though Sutan would never tell his mom directly that he was worried about her in her elderly years.

“Anada sometime silly boy, he think he was cool.”

Violet laughed, Sutan looked perfect in all of his awkward glory, his hair practically in a buzzcut and bright pink, Raja in the background of the party photo drinking beer.

“Can I take a picture of this?” Violet was already looking for her phone.

“You think that is best photo? Wait until you see high school times.” Violet’s eyes widened as Mani took yet another box.

“There’s more?”

“Anada look very cute in leopad pint.”

In that moment the door to the kitchen opened, Sutan walking in with a tray of tea and sweets that they had picked up on the way.

“... What are you guys doing? Is that my fucking high school yearbook? Mom!”

Mani and Violet both burst into laughter, Violet nearly doubling over as Sutan desperately tried to gather the pictures and speaking in rapid Indonesian.

***

“What the fuckin’ FUCK are you doing here?!” asked a delighted voice with a British accent.

Bianca spun around, and was suddenly greeted by an adorable young blonde, with perfect winged eyeliner and an angelic pixie-like face. Her mouth was open in surprise. She threw her arms around Bianca’s neck in drunken glee while the others looked on.

“Oh my GOD, it’s been ages! What a fuckin’ crazy-ass coincidence, eh?!” She pressed a kiss against the corner of Bianca’s mouth, giggling, then looked at Courtney, who was standing there as if she was trying to decide whether to throw up or stab her in the throat. “So this is the one who’s making an honest woman of you, huh Bianca?! Hi, I’m Zee. I had a sordid fling with your girlfriend back in her ‘I don’t do long term relationships’ days.” Zee threw back her head and laughed.

Courtney cleared her throat, wondering why Bianca wasn’t detangling herself from this pretty young thing, but determined to stay composed, especially in front of the Housewives cameras. “Hi, I’m Courtney…”

“It wasn’t that sordid...” Bianca said weakly, trying to keep things light.

“Whatever you say,” Zee winked, then exclaimed, “Omigod, Bianca! Remember that DJ at Egg? The crazy motherfucker with the gages?” She hugged her tighter around the waist, resting a chin on her shoulder.

“Uh, yeah, sure.” Bianca flashed Courtney an apologetic look. The thing about Zee was, she was totally harmless, and tipsy, and having a good time. Sure, she might be crossing a line, but Bianca wasn’t about to be a dickhead to the girl. They’d ended on good terms.

Adore and Alaska stepped closer, clearly worried that something was about to go down. Alaska’s eyes drifted to Courtney’s hands, which were clenched into tight fists.

“I did what you said and slipped her my demos and she’s totally playing them all the time now! You’re a fuckin’ genius.” Zee stood on her tiptoes to kiss her again, and Bianca turned her face, making sure that the kiss landed on her cheek and not her mouth. Zee fluttered her lashes. “You’re such a tease…”

Adore finally couldn’t take it anymore. With an approving nod from Alaska, she stepped forward. “Zee, right? Hi, I’m Bianca’s sister. I /love/ your eye makeup.”

“Omigod, thanks!”

“You’re welcome! Can I buy you a drink?”

“Suuuuure!” Zee released the grip on Bianca’s waist and took Adore’s outstretched hand, following her to the bar. “Bianca, why didn’t you tell me you had such a hot sister?!” she called over her shoulder.

Bianca looked at Courtney, reaching for her hand. “Wanna dance, baby?” she asked softly.

“Not really, no.”

Fame and Jinkx wandered back over to the group with Rose, laughing.

Alaska grabbed Courtney’s arm and pulled her over to Jinkx, hoping to avoid any more tension. “Hey Court! Come tell us about your show! Maybe Jinkxy can help you rehearse tomorrow!”

***

“Are you sure this is a good idea?”

“It’s not a good idea. It’s a great idea!” Pearl smiled and wrapped her scarf around Laila, pulling the other woman in for a kiss. Laila wanted to be annoyed and maybe even upset, but she couldn’t when Pearl was kissing her, the other's lips so soft. Pearl pulled away and took another sweater which she carelessly threw into her bag, even though Laila knew it had most likely cost more than Turbo’s last vet visit.

“Don’t worry cutie. My mom is going to love you.”

“If you say so.”

“I don’t say so. I know so, also you’re bringing her the most bitchin Christmas present!”

“I am?”

“Yup.” Pearl laughed and held up a small black box. “A Cartier nouvelle vintage bracelet that’s a complete replica of the one she wore to her college graduation.” Pearl opened the box, and Laila recognised diamonds immediately.

“Pearl, I- I can’t afford that. Why would you get that from me? What about you?”

“I’m giving her a hand painted worlds best mum mug, from that pottery class I did with Max.” Laila couldn’t help but smile. Pearl had always been horrible with gifts, her girlfriend generous to the extreme in her daily life, but she sucked horribly at presents. Pearl shut the box, a smile on her face. “You’re my favorite ladies. I want you to get along, and as they say. Diamonds are a girl's best friend.”

***

Courtney threw open the doors of the balcony and stepped outside, tilting her face to watch the first rays of sunlight peak over the horizon. She breathed in, feeling her nerves settle as the warmth of the sun crept into the purple sky. She lifted her dress up over her head and tossed it down on the lounge chair, letting the fresh air caress her body.

Arms slid around her waist, and she jumped slightly, then relaxed as Bianca’s lips found the back of her neck.

“Baby, please don’t be mad at me…” Bianca murmured into her skin, pressing against her from behind. “I can’t bear it.”

“B…” It wasn’t exactly that she was angry. She didn’t think that Bianca had done anything wrong, really. It was more that this was, again, a reminder of the constant doubt that plagued her. That girl had been vibrant and funny and beautiful, and the chemistry between them was real, and so...Courtney closed her eyes, turning around in Bianca’s arms, knowing that this same discussion would only exhaust her, only make her irritated. “I’m not mad.”

Bianca smiled, dimples deep in her cheeks. “Good. You know, it’s officially Christmas Eve now. How about I show my angel how thrilled I am to have her here?”

Courtney swallowed, could feel herself breaking apart. When would she stop feeling this way? Would she ever stop feeling this way? Like she was only here by luck, some ordinary girl who Bianca had chosen for an inexplicable reason and everything in her life was on borrowed time while she waited for the other shoe to drop. Because if one thing was clear to Courtney after tonight, it was how utterly, utterly replaceable she was.

Cupping her chin, Bianca brushed their lips together softly, whispering, “I love you, so fucking much…” She took both of her hands and pulled her into the room, leaving the doors open so that the gauzy curtains blew in the breeze, laying her gently down on the bed.

Bianca quickly shed the rest of her clothes, tossing them to the floor, sitting down on the bed and leaning back on her elbows, turning her head to look at Courtney with that seductive grin that never failed to make Courtney’s pulse quicken, especially when her eyes swept up and down the blonde’s body. Courtney took Bianca’s face in her hands, pushing her backwards, straddling her on all fours.

Bianca slid her hands up Courtney’s thighs, gently cupping her ass. Her mouth found a stiff nipple and she swirled her tongue around and around. Courtney shivered with desire as Bianca’s tongue continued to lick and toy with her nipple. A hand slid up to play with her other breast and Courtney arched into it, soft sighs and little whimpers escaping her mouth.

Bianca rubbed her knuckles gently around her entrance, already so wet, and then withdrew her hand, causing a pitiful moan. Courtney pressed their bodies together, grinding against her desperately.

Chucking gently, Bianca pushed her hips away, holding them apart. She moved her mouth to her second breast and sucked hard on her nipple. Courtney let out a whine as sparks raced through her body and caused her to thrust into the air, the swollen feeling in her abdomen growing.

“Oh god, Bianca, PLEASE!” She moaned as Bianca tossed her onto her back and used her knees to hold her thighs down. She bent down and kissed her, long and soft and deep, letting her hands wander over her body with a feather-light touch, her skin hot and flushed. She grinned as Courtney moaned again in tearful frustration.

“I love you…” Bianca whispered, kissing a trail down her jaw, rubbing her clit harder. “I love you,” Bianca repeated, mouth moving down her collarbone, hands sliding over her trembling skin. “I love you…” she added, lips pressed against Courtney’s belly, tight with tension so intense she felt it might burst open.

Courtney nodded, panting, as Bianca’s mouth finally found her swollen clit, tongue swirling around and around. Courtney gripped her hair like a vice, crying out in relief as she started to come. “Oh /GOD/…”

Bianca sucked on her, stroking her quivering thighs until her fingers loosened and her body went slack. Then she gathered her up into an embrace, kissing her temples, holding her close, murmuring, “Do you know how much I love you, angel?”

Curling tightly against her warm body, Courtney sighed contently. “Mmmhmm…”

Bianca held her tighter. “You’re the best Christmas present I’ve ever had, baby.”

***

“What a good boy Ivan, you’re such a good boy!” Trixie smiled brightly as he fed his son, little Ivan’s hair sticking up in all directions as he munched on a christmas morning feast of a bowl of fruit, his brand new Baymax shirt already filled with stains, but Ivan was giggly and happy. He and Katya had woken up at the crack of dawn, properly more excited than Ivan himself when they led him into the living room, the lights on the tree bright as they unpacked their presents, Ivan loving every single thing Katya had gotten him from the grocery store. Trixie picked Ivan up and took him to the sink, quickly rinsing off the little boy, as he was already falling asleep in his arms.

“Trixie?”

Trixie didn’t look up, too focused on making sure at least some of the food came out of the shirt.

“Trixie. Trix! I’m talking to you.”

Trixie looked up, and he almost dropped his jaw at the sight of his wife. Katya was wearing the exact outfit from the final scene of Grease, even her hair done in the perfect style. Katya had introduced him to the movie, and in a drunken state a few months ago, Trixie had confessed that he never seen anything sexier than that very outfit.

“Katya.. What are you?”

“Why don’t you tell me about it in the bedroom, stud?”

***

“Good moooorning, my loves, Merry Christmas!” Adore sang softly, climbing on top of her girlfriends, wearing a Santa hat and nothing else.

Alaska opened her eyes, a lazy grin on her face. “Morning…”

Jinkx whimpered a little. “I’m Jewish, can I sleep five more minutes?”

Giggling, Adore snuggled against her and kissed her cheek. “What if I tempt you with cocoa and marzipan coconut pastries?”

Jinkx sat up, red curls spilling down her back. “I’m up.”

Adore giggled and picked up a pastry from the tray, shoving it into her mouth. Alaska reached over and trailed a hand down Adore’s bare torso. “Cute outfit, li’l bear. Very festive.”

“Thank you,” Adore said, batting her lashes.

Alaska stretched, arching her back and continuing to dance her fingers teasingly over Adore’s soft skin. Adore leaned down and kissed her, hands tangling in her hair, pressing their bodies together. Jinkx pushed Adore’s hair off of her shoulder and bit down gently, wrapping an arm around her waist, the other one snaking down her belly.

Alaska’s hands were on Adore’s breasts, toying with her nipples as the younger girl began to pump her hips, rubbing against her vigorously, lips parted, whimpering. Alaska smirked at Jinkx conspiratorially, the redhead grinning back at her and scooting closer.

Jinkx slung a leg over both of them, continuing to wriggle her fingers between their thrusting hips, two fingers sliding easily inside Adore’s hot, wet pussy as a thumb rubbed her clit in circles.

Alaska buried her face in Adore’s neck, clutching her ass and grinding hard against the back of Jinkx’s hand. Jinkx sucked a bruise into Alaska’s pulse point, fingers moving subtly, patiently, her free hand trailing down the back of Adore’s milky thighs, then back up to her hair.

Adore whimpered, hips picking up speed. Alaska’s fingers moved back to her breasts, pinching her nipples. Adore’s eyes rolled back and she moaned, digging her fingers into Alaska’s shoulders. She turned her head to the side, capturing Jinkx’s mouth in a deep kiss, tongues struggling for dominance as she began to come, moaning into the redhead’s mouth, thighs squeezing Alaska’s hips tightly.

Jinkx withdrew her hand, pushing Adore onto her back, crawling down her body to lick her clean, sucking on her clit, holding down her thighs as she writhed and moaned. Alaska giggled, turning to her side and nibbling on her collarbone, fingers drifting over her slick, sweaty skin while she kissed her over and over. “Our pretty baby…” she murmured.

Adore moaned again, arching up against Jinkx’s mouth. “/Fuck!/”

The three girls suddenly jumped at several loud /BANGS/ on the wall. “HEY! CAN YOU PLEASE KNOCK IT OFF IN THERE!” yelled an irritated voice. “Some of us are trying to think about the baby Jesus!”

Adore raised herself up on her elbows, chest heaving, eyes narrowed. “SUCK MY DICK, EDDY!” she yelled back, then looked at the other girls and collapsed back on the bed in a fit of giggles, arms outstretched languidly. “Merry Christmas, babies…”

They grinned, snuggling in beside her and covering her face and neck with sweet kisses.

***

“Raj, move you legs!”

“Yes mom.”

Raja rolled her eyes, and Raven laughed as she snuggled into the side of her soon to be wife. They were all in the livingroom, gift wrapping all around them as they ate breakfast, little Frida napping on the floor, Violet completely absorbed in the books Sutan had given her, while Sutan was trying to teach Mani how to use the new food processor the twins had given her for christmas.

Raven couldn’t believe the wedding was only a few days away. In just a few days she would be Raven Amrull, and she couldn’t imagine a better Christmas presents... Except the new diamonds Raja gave her, and the fur coat, and the trip to Hawaii and also the most adorable Jimmy Choo’s, but Raven didn’t care about the material stuff in life. Not really, not when she had her Raja,

“What are you thinking about my angel?”

“That I’m the luckiest girl on earth.”

Raven smiled and turned her head, looking up at Raja and fluttering her lashes for good measure. Raja laughed and leaned down, their lips meeting in a tender kiss, and Raven sighed, happiness washing over her.

***

The gang piled into the limo, sighing. They’d just attended Courtney’s concert on their last full day in Puerto Rico, followed by an afterparty, and were all exhausted, none more than the pop princess herself, who stretched out with her feet in Adore’s lap and her head in Bianca’s, looking like she might pass out.

“Did I do good?” she asked sleepily, as Bianca kissed her fingers.

“So good,” Bianca answered.

“Incredible!” Adore agreed.

“That venue was HUGE!” Rose said. “I’d have died.”

“I sort of died a little when I saw it,” Courtney laughed.

“I’m dating myself here, but I was so jealous that you got to do a duet with Ricky Martin,” said Jinkx. “It was amazing.”

“I know, right?! I’m so lucky he was available. I think we might do a collab on my next album.”

“Really?” Bianca asked.

“Yeah. Latrice is working on it. Fingers crossed. We talked about doing a video where we’re both in drag. How cool would that be?” she giggled.

“That is so hot,” said Adore.

Bianca cleared her throat slightly, realizing that this might be an easy way for her to bring up a collaboration with Farrah. She’d been trying to put that obnoxious meeting with the girl and her mother out of her mind, but the truth was, they did have some pretty disturbing leverage on her. “Have you ever considered doing other collaborations?”

“Yeah, definitely. Latrice is talking to Ciara’s people too, and so we’ll see.”

“What about like, someone more in your wheelhouse? I mean, that kid I was talking to at the Galactica party, Farrah? She’s apparently obsessed with you. Her momager called me and practically begged me to set a meeting. I told them to call Latrice--”

“Yeah, why would they be calling you?”

Bianca shrugged. “I have no idea.”

“And she’s not even a singer. She’s a sitcom actress.”

“Emmy winning sitcom actress.”

Courtney paused, grinding her teeth slightly. “How about we play a game called ‘Let’s not talk about the teenagers who flirt with you at parties’? Hmmm? Rules are really simple!” Her eyes flashed darkly.

“Uhh...yeah, sure. You look really hot in red, by the way.” Bianca tugged at her top. “So let’s talk about that.”

Courtney’s lips twisted into a smirk. “See, you’re already winning,” she said, pulling Bianca down for a kiss.

***

“It was a hate crime.”

“It’s a perfectly acceptable gift.”

“Don’t defend her!”

“She’s my mom Betty.”

“And that just makes it so much worse!” Betty kicked her shoes off and threw her handbag on the kitchen counter as they were finally finally finally back from christmas with Shane’s family. “She knew exactly what she was doing, and even worse, she made me wear it!” Betty pointed to herself, the bright green fuzzy sweater with a big orange B making her look like an escaped muppet.

“I think mine is cool.”

“Of course you do.” Betty rolled her eyes as Shane pulled at his purple sweater, a yellow S on it nearly burning her eyes. Betty sighed. “Can’t we just drink leftover wine and dessert and celebrate that we survived another year?”

Shane smiled brightly, pulling Betty into a kiss. “A true Christmas miracle.”

***

Flipping on the kitchen light, Courtney jumped slightly at the sight of Patrick at the table, sipping a whiskey, partially obscured by a pile of Christmas presents. “Jesus!”

“Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you,” Patrick said.

“No, it’s okay. I just didn’t expect anyone else to be up at 4 am. Plus you’re sitting in the dark.”

“Yeah, well…” he shrugged. “Sometimes you just need a minute, you know?”

“I’m sorry to bother you.” She bit her lip and turned around.

“Wait-”

“Yeah?”

“You don’t have to go. Grab a drink. Take a load off.” Patrick gestured to the empty chair.

Courtney nodded, taking a coconut water from the fridge and walking over to the table. “Uh, sorry I’m not wearing bottoms,” she apologized awkwardly.

“Could be worse,” he said. “At least I am.”

She chuckled and then sat down with a deep sigh.

“So. Trouble sleeping?” Patrick asked.

“Something like that,” she said softly.

“You know…” he began, then paused.

“Yes?”

“I...don’t want to overstep.”

“Go ahead. It’ll be refreshing to hear a new opinion for a change,” Courtney said.

“Bianca is really happy with you.”

Courtney looked at him, fingers nervously peeling the label off the coconut water.

“Look, maybe I have the wrong idea, but it seems like there’s...like you don’t totally feel secure with her. And so I just want to tell you...it’s not an accident. She chose you on purpose. You’re giving her something that no one else ever has. Including my wife.”

Courtney bit her lip, looking slightly ashamed.

Patrick raised his eyebrows. “I’ve seen the way you watch them. I don’t blame you. It’s unsettling, especially if you don’t know the history. If you weren’t there when it happened.”

“What history?”

“Well...let’s just say that Fame didn’t have the perspective that she has now. I was across the country, but even I could see that she was starting to have feelings for Bianca, that this alleged ‘friends with benefits’ thing was turning into more for her. And so Bianca ended it. Which is the only reason they’re still friends. Otherwise it would have ended in disaster.”

“Oh.”

“But you know, I can’t tell you how to feel. I can only tell you what I know, and what I see. And that’s that you make my friend really fucking happy. So...cheers.” He held up his nearly empty glass, toasting Courtney’s bottle of coconut water.

“Thanks, Patrick. You know, I don’t care what Bianca and Raja said during your fight with Fame. You’re not a robotic number-crunching cheater.”

Patrick threw back his head and laughed. “Thanks. And you’re not an empty-headed gold digging sex doll.”

Courtney giggled. “Cheers. To a safe flight back for the wedding of the century.”

“Oh god, yes. Get ready for The Raven Show.” Patrick laughed, toasting her.

“I’m actually super excited. Is that weird? I mean say what you will about Raven, but she knows how to throw a party. I think it should be a lot of fun.”

Patrick raised an eyebrow. “I admire your optimism.”

[sentrava]

Books a Million, Part XXI: Memoirs, Chick Lit & Growing Up Different

Winter tends to be my favorite time to catch up on my reading. From the week of Thanksgiving until midway through January, everyone in the tourism industry seems to disappear—it’s as if conference season is over, their budgets have been planned for the following year, and they’re taking a very lengthy hiatus. I took the opportunity over the holidays and my birthday trip to Puerto Rico to whittle down my 2019 book list, just a smidge.

Here’s everything I’ve read in the past couple months in case you’re heading on a Spring Break or summer trip of your own soon and looking for a good vacation read of your own.

Man in the (Rearview) Mirror by LaRue Cook

I’m at that point in my career where so many peers and friends are publishing books, and I can barely keep up with reading them all. But when a friend sent me a link to LaRue’s book, I bumped it up the chain and immediately ordered the paperback instead of waiting for the Kindle version to drop. LaRue and I started as writers at the UT paper, The Daily Beacon, on the same day; I was 20, he was 18, halfway through his freshman year. We immediately became journalist friends, and I was soon promoted to features editor, he one of my most reliable writers. He later went on to be the editor of the paper after I graduated.

Our lives ran parallel for years; I worked a stint at Entertainment Weekly, and he took over the same job a year or two later. He and his girlfriend at the time, another of my close college pals, moved to NYC in my final months there before moving to California, so I got to spend some time with them as my neighbors while he was getting his feet wet in sports writing for ESPN. But then, he dropped off my radar. He was never on social media back then, despite being younger than me, and I often lose touch with people I can’t track via Facebook and Instagram. I now know that’s partially because he was going through his version of an existential crisis, and after a decade with ESPN, he quit, moved back to Knoxville and became an Uber driver. While doing this (and driving more than 5,000 passengers around town), he wrote a book—a memoir told through the parallel lives of his passengers. A read that covers so many topics in the span of 234 pages: racial inequality, sexual orientation, faith and religion, his own infidelities. It’s always weird reading a memoir by someone you know, as it feels a bit like your peeling back the layers of their soul. I’d love to write something similar someday, but am not sure I’d ever be able to approach it with such honesty as LaRue did. This is a great book for anyone looking for a non-fiction read that examines how losing your pillar at a young age—in this case, LaRue’s dad at 15—can go on to shape a person’s identity as a young adult.

Hum If You Don’t Know the Words by Bianca Marais

I’m still shook by this book. You know that it’s a powerful read if you’re still thinking about it two months later. I started and finished this book at the beach in less than 24 hours, and man, it was some heavy stuff.

Taking place in an 18-month span during the height of apartheid, Hum chronicles the lives of two very different heroines—a nine-year-old white girl whose parents are slain and a 50-year-old black woman who came to the big city to track down her rebel daughter caught up in the Soweto Uprising—and at the heart of the story, impresses upon the reader how no matter the color of our skin, our sexual orientation, our religion or where we were born, no one is any greater or worse than the next human (and that good people do bad things and bad people do good things). Particularly poignant during the racial inequality happening still today, this book really tugged at my heartstrings and should be on everyone’s must-read list.

All The Missing Girls by Megan Miranda

I love me a good mystery, and All the Missing Girls is in a similar vein to Gone Girl and every Mary Kubica book I’ve ever devoured. It starts off with Nicolette, a 28-year-old teacher who had fled her small Appalachian town after high school to move to the big city, returning home to care for her ailing father—and confronting the ghosts of her past, specifically the disappearance of her best friend. Not long after she arrives, another young girl goes missing, and Nicolette makes it her mission to figure out what happened to her—and if it is indeed linked to the same missing girl from a decade prior.

Contrary to what other reviewers have written, I found the pace of this book quick and engaging, and those who like suspense will likely find it entertaining. The only thing I didn’t really care for was the erratic storytelling style in which the author kept jumping a day back in time to set the stage. It made it a bit confusing to piece together the timeline on the reader’s end. Overall, though, I’d read this book again and give it four out of five starts if I were still rating my reads.

Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

We’re never really told what exactly is wrong with Eleanor Oliphant; we just know from the opening lines of the book that she’s different. And that difference takes us through her life in a deadbeat job with no friends or family to call her own, a curious character who becomes overly infatuated with a rockstar she’s never met, to the point where she begins to stalk him, both at gigs and at his own home, and even thinks he’s her boyfriend.

Socially awkward Eleanor is always saying the exact wrong thing, and she’s never even aware she’s the butt of everybody’s jokes in the office. A chance encounter, however, brings her close to a coworker who she previously had written off as uninteresting: She falls into an unexpected friendship with Raymond when they come to the rescue of an older man who has fallen in the street and needs to be taken to the hospital. This book isn’t so much plot-driven, as it is about character development, and Honeyman is a master of that particular trope. Peculiar and uplifting despite its somber undertones—alcoholism, mental illness, child abuse—Eleanor Oliphant was one of the most unexpectedly endearing books I read in the past year. The cadence of Eleanor’s narrating takes a bit of getting used to, but once you insert yourself into her mind, reading in her voice becomes second nature.

The High Season by Judy Blundell

The premise of this book—an artist and gallery curator, Ruthie, dealing with a separation who longs to keep her life in a sleepy Long Island coastal town in one piece when everything around her seems to be falling apart—made me think this was going to be a beach read (or maybe the fact that it was actually set on an island did that). But it was a bit, well, sleepier than that. It took nearly halfway through the book until I even knew what it was really about: Ruthie’s failed marriage, her career crumbling at the hands of her board and coming to grips with everything changing around her, including the loss of her home and her daughter, who is midway through high school. There was a socialite aspect to this book I kind of liked when the Hampton set arrived in the North Fork for the summer; it brought a little Sex and the City edge and scandal to what was dragging on as a mundane novel to that point.

In the end, this book was fine; not great, not terrible. I liked the art gallery aspect of it; the fact that SVV and I are part of so many groups and on various art boards these days made the book a bit more relatable. If I still gave ratings, this one would get two-and-a-half stars: very slow in parts, but enough of a story to hold my interest till the end.

The Wedding Date by Jasmine Guillroy

The Wedding Date is, hands down, one of the worst books I have read ever. I am still shocked it got such positive ratings on Good Reads and Amazon—does no one read for content anymore?! I stuck with it kept waiting for the plot to develop and … nothing. In the opening pages of the book, Alexa meets Drew in an elevator, then soon after agrees to be his fake wedding date to his ex-girlfriend’s wedding. The two fall into an on-again, off-again romance, and there’s just no storyline AT ALL.

I never read any of the 50 Shades of Grey trilogy, but I imagine it was a lot like this: heavy on the sex scenes, light on the content. No thanks, not my jam. It’s a shame, too, as this could have been a powerful tale about interracial relationships and the trials faced by both side, but instead it was just plain garbage.

When Life Gives You Lululemons by Lauren Weisberger

If you loved The Devil Wears Prada, you’ll be happy to see that Lauren Weisberger is back many years later with another follow-up tale that chronicles Miranda Priestley’s assistant Emily Charlton as she navigates life’s changes after her time at Runway. (Side note: Somehow I must have missed the second in the series, Revenge Wears Prada? Anyone read it?) Emily is a fixer, an image consultant of sorts for the Hollywood set, and when her career starts to falter, she takes a job in Greenwich, Conn., trying to help a former supermodel navigate a scandal involving her senator husband while also suffering life in the suburbs.

I’ve read every other book of Weisberger’s, and while none can compare to Devil, this one is satisfying for anyone who loved the original.

Crazy, Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan

I’ll admit that I had no desire to read this book until I saw the movie trailer. Then, I immediately signed up for it at my local library, but was approximately 368th on the list, no exaggeration, so it took ages to land in my inbox. And when it finally did, it was worth the wait—nothing at all like I expected.

Rachel Chu is a professor at NYU whose boyfriends Nicky invites her back to Singapore with him for his best friend’s wedding; little does she know, his family is basically Singapore royalty. Despite the fact that she’s Asian-American—she never knew her father, but her mother was a Chinese immigrant—many members of Nick’s snobby family doesn’t give her the time of day, particularly his mom who is out to destroy their relationship. What follows is a fascinating look into how the upper crust, the social-climbers for whom dropping a cool million on a pair of earrings is an everyday occurrence, live—private planes! private clubs! private islands!—in one of the world’s most extravagant, over-the-top cities. One of my dear friends is a Singapore native, and I fact-checked much the book with her—she says it’s very accurate to the 1% there and even knows the families upon whom the book is based.

I then watched the movie on a recent flight and was equally pleased by it. I suppose next up I’ll be reading the second and third installments of this trilogy—please tell me they’re as entertaining as the first?

The Last Mrs. Parrish by Liv Constantine

You know the kind of book you think is going to end one way, then midway through, you’re hit with a whammy and completely left off-guard? That’s The Last Mrs. Parrish to a tee. Amber Patterson is a con-artist who weasels her way into heiress Daphne Parrish’s world of excess by becoming her friend in Single White Female fashion—later going as far as trying to become her, attempting to take over her husband and her home. The book ping-pongs between narrators, both Amber and Daphne, and there’s really no way to tell you anymore of the plot of Amber’s metamorphosis into Daphne without spoiling any of the zingers, of which there are many. Go. Read. This. Book!

I’m really, really hoping The Last Mrs. Parrish gets made into a movie starring (or produced by) Reese Witherspoon.

This Is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel

Oh my, I LOVED This Is How It Always Is. I didn’t know what it was about in the slightest, but so many people recommended it, that I immediately requested it from the library. Based on Frankel’s own experiences with having a boy who early on began identifying as a girl, this book chronicles a set of five brothers, the youngest of whom always felt different. When this feeling becomes evolves into exploration—wearing dresses, putting on makeup, playing with dolls—his parents begin to realize it’s more than just a phase. So they take steps to letting their son become their daughter by moving across the country and completely resetting their lives.

At the root of this story is the message that all families have issues, all families keep secrets—it’s how they choose to deal with them that sets them apart.

**********

Currently I’m reading The Paris Secret and A Gentleman in Moscow, neither of which have really grabbed my attention, but I’ve also got Bad Blood, Becoming, Pete Buttigieg’s Shortest Way Home and Far Away and Further Back, a memoir by my friend Holly’s dad. I guess it’s a non-fiction kind of reading month over here!

What have you read and loved so far this year?

Books a Million, Part XXI: Memoirs, Chick Lit & Growing Up Different published first on https://medium.com/@OCEANDREAMCHARTERS

[waynebomberger]

Books a Million, Part XXI: Memoirs, Chick Lit & Growing Up Different

Winter tends to be my favorite time to catch up on my reading. From the week of Thanksgiving until midway through January, everyone in the tourism industry seems to disappear—it’s as if conference season is over, their budgets have been planned for the following year, and they’re taking a very lengthy hiatus. I took the opportunity over the holidays and my birthday trip to Puerto Rico to whittle down my 2019 book list, just a smidge.

Here’s everything I’ve read in the past couple months in case you’re heading on a Spring Break or summer trip of your own soon and looking for a good vacation read of your own.

Man in the (Rearview) Mirror by LaRue Cook

I’m at that point in my career where so many peers and friends are publishing books, and I can barely keep up with reading them all. But when a friend sent me a link to LaRue’s book, I bumped it up the chain and immediately ordered the paperback instead of waiting for the Kindle version to drop. LaRue and I started as writers at the UT paper, The Daily Beacon, on the same day; I was 20, he was 18, halfway through his freshman year. We immediately became journalist friends, and I was soon promoted to features editor, he one of my most reliable writers. He later went on to be the editor of the paper after I graduated.

Our lives ran parallel for years; I worked a stint at Entertainment Weekly, and he took over the same job a year or two later. He and his girlfriend at the time, another of my close college pals, moved to NYC in my final months there before moving to California, so I got to spend some time with them as my neighbors while he was getting his feet wet in sports writing for ESPN. But then, he dropped off my radar. He was never on social media back then, despite being younger than me, and I often lose touch with people I can’t track via Facebook and Instagram. I now know that’s partially because he was going through his version of an existential crisis, and after a decade with ESPN, he quit, moved back to Knoxville and became an Uber driver. While doing this (and driving more than 5,000 passengers around town), he wrote a book—a memoir told through the parallel lives of his passengers. A read that covers so many topics in the span of 234 pages: racial inequality, sexual orientation, faith and religion, his own infidelities. It’s always weird reading a memoir by someone you know, as it feels a bit like your peeling back the layers of their soul. I’d love to write something similar someday, but am not sure I’d ever be able to approach it with such honesty as LaRue did. This is a great book for anyone looking for a non-fiction read that examines how losing your pillar at a young age—in this case, LaRue’s dad at 15—can go on to shape a person’s identity as a young adult.

Hum If You Don’t Know the Words by Bianca Marais

I’m still shook by this book. You know that it’s a powerful read if you’re still thinking about it two months later. I started and finished this book at the beach in less than 24 hours, and man, it was some heavy stuff.

Taking place in an 18-month span during the height of apartheid, Hum chronicles the lives of two very different heroines—a nine-year-old white girl whose parents are slain and a 50-year-old black woman who came to the big city to track down her rebel daughter caught up in the Soweto Uprising—and at the heart of the story, impresses upon the reader how no matter the color of our skin, our sexual orientation, our religion or where we were born, no one is any greater or worse than the next human (and that good people do bad things and bad people do good things). Particularly poignant during the racial inequality happening still today, this book really tugged at my heartstrings and should be on everyone’s must-read list.

All The Missing Girls by Megan Miranda

I love me a good mystery, and All the Missing Girls is in a similar vein to Gone Girl and every Mary Kubica book I’ve ever devoured. It starts off with Nicolette, a 28-year-old teacher who had fled her small Appalachian town after high school to move to the big city, returning home to care for her ailing father—and confronting the ghosts of her past, specifically the disappearance of her best friend. Not long after she arrives, another young girl goes missing, and Nicolette makes it her mission to figure out what happened to her—and if it is indeed linked to the same missing girl from a decade prior.

Contrary to what other reviewers have written, I found the pace of this book quick and engaging, and those who like suspense will likely find it entertaining. The only thing I didn’t really care for was the erratic storytelling style in which the author kept jumping a day back in time to set the stage. It made it a bit confusing to piece together the timeline on the reader’s end. Overall, though, I’d read this book again and give it four out of five starts if I were still rating my reads.

Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

We’re never really told what exactly is wrong with Eleanor Oliphant; we just know from the opening lines of the book that she’s different. And that difference takes us through her life in a deadbeat job with no friends or family to call her own, a curious character who becomes overly infatuated with a rockstar she’s never met, to the point where she begins to stalk him, both at gigs and at his own home, and even thinks he’s her boyfriend.

Socially awkward Eleanor is always saying the exact wrong thing, and she’s never even aware she’s the butt of everybody’s jokes in the office. A chance encounter, however, brings her close to a coworker who she previously had written off as uninteresting: She falls into an unexpected friendship with Raymond when they come to the rescue of an older man who has fallen in the street and needs to be taken to the hospital. This book isn’t so much plot-driven, as it is about character development, and Honeyman is a master of that particular trope. Peculiar and uplifting despite its somber undertones—alcoholism, mental illness, child abuse—Eleanor Oliphant was one of the most unexpectedly endearing books I read in the past year. The cadence of Eleanor’s narrating takes a bit of getting used to, but once you insert yourself into her mind, reading in her voice becomes second nature.

The High Season by Judy Blundell

The premise of this book—an artist and gallery curator, Ruthie, dealing with a separation who longs to keep her life in a sleepy Long Island coastal town in one piece when everything around her seems to be falling apart—made me think this was going to be a beach read (or maybe the fact that it was actually set on an island did that). But it was a bit, well, sleepier than that. It took nearly halfway through the book until I even knew what it was really about: Ruthie’s failed marriage, her career crumbling at the hands of her board and coming to grips with everything changing around her, including the loss of her home and her daughter, who is midway through high school. There was a socialite aspect to this book I kind of liked when the Hampton set arrived in the North Fork for the summer; it brought a little Sex and the City edge and scandal to what was dragging on as a mundane novel to that point.

In the end, this book was fine; not great, not terrible. I liked the art gallery aspect of it; the fact that SVV and I are part of so many groups and on various art boards these days made the book a bit more relatable. If I still gave ratings, this one would get two-and-a-half stars: very slow in parts, but enough of a story to hold my interest till the end.

The Wedding Date by Jasmine Guillroy

The Wedding Date is, hands down, one of the worst books I have read ever. I am still shocked it got such positive ratings on Good Reads and Amazon—does no one read for content anymore?! I stuck with it kept waiting for the plot to develop and … nothing. In the opening pages of the book, Alexa meets Drew in an elevator, then soon after agrees to be his fake wedding date to his ex-girlfriend’s wedding. The two fall into an on-again, off-again romance, and there’s just no storyline AT ALL.

I never read any of the 50 Shades of Grey trilogy, but I imagine it was a lot like this: heavy on the sex scenes, light on the content. No thanks, not my jam. It’s a shame, too, as this could have been a powerful tale about interracial relationships and the trials faced by both side, but instead it was just plain garbage.

When Life Gives You Lululemons by Lauren Weisberger

If you loved The Devil Wears Prada, you’ll be happy to see that Lauren Weisberger is back many years later with another follow-up tale that chronicles Miranda Priestley’s assistant Emily Charlton as she navigates life’s changes after her time at Runway. (Side note: Somehow I must have missed the second in the series, Revenge Wears Prada? Anyone read it?) Emily is a fixer, an image consultant of sorts for the Hollywood set, and when her career starts to falter, she takes a job in Greenwich, Conn., trying to help a former supermodel navigate a scandal involving her senator husband while also suffering life in the suburbs.

I’ve read every other book of Weisberger’s, and while none can compare to Devil, this one is satisfying for anyone who loved the original.

Crazy, Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan

I’ll admit that I had no desire to read this book until I saw the movie trailer. Then, I immediately signed up for it at my local library, but was approximately 368th on the list, no exaggeration, so it took ages to land in my inbox. And when it finally did, it was worth the wait—nothing at all like I expected.

Rachel Chu is a professor at NYU whose boyfriends Nicky invites her back to Singapore with him for his best friend’s wedding; little does she know, his family is basically Singapore royalty. Despite the fact that she’s Asian-American—she never knew her father, but her mother was a Chinese immigrant—many members of Nick’s snobby family doesn’t give her the time of day, particularly his mom who is out to destroy their relationship. What follows is a fascinating look into how the upper crust, the social-climbers for whom dropping a cool million on a pair of earrings is an everyday occurrence, live—private planes! private clubs! private islands!—in one of the world’s most extravagant, over-the-top cities. One of my dear friends is a Singapore native, and I fact-checked much the book with her—she says it’s very accurate to the 1% there and even knows the families upon whom the book is based.

I then watched the movie on a recent flight and was equally pleased by it. I suppose next up I’ll be reading the second and third installments of this trilogy—please tell me they’re as entertaining as the first?

The Last Mrs. Parrish by Liv Constantine

You know the kind of book you think is going to end one way, then midway through, you’re hit with a whammy and completely left off-guard? That’s The Last Mrs. Parrish to a tee. Amber Patterson is a con-artist who weasels her way into heiress Daphne Parrish’s world of excess by becoming her friend in Single White Female fashion—later going as far as trying to become her, attempting to take over her husband and her home. The book ping-pongs between narrators, both Amber and Daphne, and there’s really no way to tell you anymore of the plot of Amber’s metamorphosis into Daphne without spoiling any of the zingers, of which there are many. Go. Read. This. Book!

I’m really, really hoping The Last Mrs. Parrish gets made into a movie starring (or produced by) Reese Witherspoon.

This Is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel

Oh my, I LOVED This Is How It Always Is. I didn’t know what it was about in the slightest, but so many people recommended it, that I immediately requested it from the library. Based on Frankel’s own experiences with having a boy who early on began identifying as a girl, this book chronicles a set of five brothers, the youngest of whom always felt different. When this feeling becomes evolves into exploration—wearing dresses, putting on makeup, playing with dolls—his parents begin to realize it’s more than just a phase. So they take steps to letting their son become their daughter by moving across the country and completely resetting their lives.

At the root of this story is the message that all families have issues, all families keep secrets—it’s how they choose to deal with them that sets them apart.

**********

Currently I’m reading The Paris Secret and A Gentleman in Moscow, neither of which have really grabbed my attention, but I’ve also got Bad Blood, Becoming, Pete Buttigieg’s Shortest Way Home and Far Away and Further Back, a memoir by my friend Holly’s dad. I guess it’s a non-fiction kind of reading month over here!

What have you read and loved so far this year?

from Camels & Chocolate: Travel & Lifestyles Blog http://bit.ly/2Ghl547

[jessicakehoe]

From the FASHION Archives: Karl, Before Chanel

Since its launch in 1977, FASHION magazine has been giving Canadian readers in-depth reports on the industry’s most influential figures and expert takes on the worlds of fashion, beauty and style. In this series, we explore the depths of our archive to bring you some of the best fashion features we’ve ever published. This story, originally titled “The Eccentric Luxe of Karl Lagerfeld” by Marci McDonald was originally published in FASHION’s Winter 1978 issue.

It was Karl Lagerfeld’s idea to throw the party at his house. “I thought it would be more personal,” he says. Six hundred of his most intimate friends were greeted at the doorway by liveried footmen in white wigs and blue-satin breeches brandishing gigantic silver candelabra. By the light of more than a thousand flickering tapers, they were led into his ivory-and-gilt 18th-century salons, large enough to hold a small gymkhana, only to confront buffer tables recreated to match Marie Antoinette’s finest. Three-tiered pièces montées, threatening to graze the ceiling frescoes, spilled over with foie-gras-trimmed dolphins and peacock-shaped saddles of lamb. The sweet table featured a 50-foot meringue fountain cascading petits fours and crowned by four life-sized jeweled sugar swans spouting green syrup water. Jean Seberg, his next door neighbour, came and declared it marvelous. Paloma Picasso, whose marriage to a penniless Argentinian playwright in Lagerfeld’s heart-shaped red-taffeta wedding dress had rivaled Princess Caroline’s as the social event of the season, remarked that it was “very Karl.” Only the host, looking a slightly dressier version of his usual cross between Count Dracula and Louis XVI, seemed to have any reservations, confiding later that he wished it all hadn’t been at the expense of promoting his new men’s perfume, instead of the simple little gathering of near and dear as he preferred to think of it. “Little do people know I lead such studious, down-to-earth life,” he sighs. “To be a celebrity – it’s very demanding. But I am my image, I’m afraid.”

The image perches on a folding plexiglass chair in the fading afternoon light that invades the two-floor Chloé empire just off Paris’ fashionable rue de la Boétie and peers out at the world through rose-colored glasses. He used to favor smoky lenses, but finds things vastly improved since the change. “Everybody looks 10 years younger,” he says. Not that everything Karl Lagerfeld lays eyes on now meets his approval. “Ugly, ugly, ugly,” he dismisses the better part of the universe – a condemnation second only to “borrowing.” Offices are boring, as are desks and “fixed points” – which leaves the Chloé staff swirling around him among racks of tweed and sequins in apparent casual mayhem. Most of the clothes in which the hoi poloi parade outside his windows are boring, and frequently ugly as well. Neither sin, however, can be attributed to his image, which on this particular day consists of the usual: black smock emblazoned with a six-inch monogram, one of the hundred handmade shirts he orders annually from Hilditch and Key, shirtmakers to the Shah of Iran, which requires him to have custom-built luggage in order to preserve their starched stand-up collars, and, at his throat, a flowing black-silk bow. His greying shoulder-length tresses are pulled back into a ribbon, his complexion so pale that in certain lights it appears freshly powdered.

It is not an image that the casual bystander might associate with the semi-annual outbursts of witty sophistication and romantic chic that have come to characterize Karl Lagerfeld’s contributions to those feverish April and October follies known as Paris’ prêt-à-porter collections. But on reflection, it is nothing if not appropriate. While not everyone might be prepared to go around done up as he does, it is also true that not everybody can wear a Chloé.

In the 10 years since he has emerged as one of France’s trend-setting fashion triumvirate along with close friends Kenzo Takada and Yves Saint Laurent, his name has become synonymous with a look of rarefied elegance and eccentric luxe that makes him closer to the grand style of haute couture than any other ready-to-wear designer. Wherever two or more of the relentlessly à la mode are gathered, there is bound to be a slither of cleverly constructed silk by Karl Lagerfeld. The press has hailed him as one of today’s most influential stylists but, in fact, the sphere of his influence is limited. While Saint Laurent has set the silhouette for two decades of dressing and Kenzo has cut the pattern for almost every trend that has filtered down to the streets, Karl Lagerfeld has fashioned a unique niche for himself – not copied by the masses, but not ignored either; a label more applauded than pirated; a name that has come to mean class by itself. Buyers tend to swoon over his showings, which have twice inspired the shrewd Martha Phillips of Martha, Palm Beach and New York, to exit rhapsodizing that they were “like a beautiful song.”

But the music to her ears may have been the cash register bearing witness to the fact that, beneath Lagerfeld’s outlandish exterior, there lurks the canny commercial intelligence that has managed to create not only what the ads unabashedly call “the world’s most beautiful clothes,” but also some of the most wearable. Bianca Jagger, the Baroness Olympia de Rothschild and Margaret Trudeau all number Chloés in their closets, as – much to Karl Lagerfeld’s astonishment – did did his ailing mother’s private nurse. “She kept turning up in all these dresses of mine,” he says, tinted shades only half-betraying the intimation that there are, after all, limits to the democratization of prêt-à-porter. Discreet inquiries, however, finally assured him that the Chloés hovering at the bedside came of impeccable lineage – castoffs from a former patient’s wife named Jacqueline Onassis.

The tiny ready-to-wear house that he signed on with 14 years ago now boasts 11 boutiques and 95 outlets in the world’s toniest fashion emporiums under his signature, chalking up $9 million in wholesale clothing sales last year alone – triple the business of three years ago. If the growth rate is just short of phenomenal, it is no accident. Today, ethnic and organic are stunningly out and the fashion tyrannies of the crunchy granola set are going down to the yawns. In a year when the blue jean has resurfaced in gloriously co-opted little $300 leather versions and glitz has become de rigueur, it may not be entirely coincidental that the designer of the hour is an exotic of rare plumage whose idea of getting back to basics was once to show tennis shoes with chiffon ball-gowns and T-shirts of crepe de Chine. “Today, fashion is not made in the streets as much as it was in the early ‘70s,” he says, the relief clearly evident in his voice. “Now there’s a new sophistication that has nothing to do with the streets – in fact, it may not even reach them.”

Certainly, the pavement was not what he seemed to have in mind when creating his fall collection. An androgynous stray from a Cabaret set, in black chesterfield coat and top hat, waltzed down the runway and opened prison gates to release his latest inspirations: hip-hugging petal-hem skirts blossoming over stiletto heels, lamé tunic dresses afloat over skin-tight black-satin pants and tiny bellboy hats perched on the forehead, all topped off by mammoth fake jewels that dripped from tweed lapels like relics from a chandelier disaster. They were droll, they were outrageous, and the fashion press promptly went into delirium, demanding to know their meaning. “Why, they don’t mean anything – they’re just fun,” said Karl Lagerfeld, only surprised that anyone would ask. Relevance, significance – he waves them off as only slightly more boring than inquiries into the origins of his image. “Who knows where it came from,” he shrugs. “It was just there.”

For those inclined to favor the environmental theory of character formation, it was not perhaps a childhood designed to produce the average citizen. Born in 1938 in the heart of Hitler’s Germany, Karl Lagerfeld cannot recall ever growing up aware that there was some international unpleasantness going on. Life continued as usual at the château in the countryside outside Hamburg, where he found himself the last child of the last marriages of two not entirely typical members of Third Reich gentry. His father, a canned-milk tycoon with an inclination for marrying, was 60 at his birth. His mother, who had worn a Paul Poiret gown for her first wedding and a Vionnet for her second, favored Lanvin for the war. Their offspring passed his time reading her back issues of La Gazette du Bon Ton, sketching her wardrobe and changing clothes three times daily. “Already, I hated open shirts,” he said. “I had collars up to here, bows and ties, even hats. I was a fashion freak. Even as a child, I was overdressed.”

He does remember a parade of rather curious people showing up at the château who later turned out to be war refugees, but the memory concerns him only insomuch as one of them tortured him in French – a language he could speak with devoted fluency from his sixth birthday. When he was 12, his mother took his drawings to the director of a Hamburg art school who refused him admittance, declaring, “This boy is not interested in art. He’s interested in costume.” At 14, he begged to be allowed to finish high school in France, pointing out that he had, after all, immigrated in spirit. His arrival by train at the Gare du Nord did not disappoint him – it was dirty, it was decadent, and it was gloriously Paris, the city where he has lived ever since. Boarding school, however, was another matter – crowded and cloying. “In those days, if you were the slightest bit out of the ordinary, you were considered and eccentric,” he says. “I wanted to be alone.”

He won permission to rent an apartment on his own to prepare for his bacclauréat exams, provided that his father’s minions could keep an eye on him. When the other eye was closed, he secretly entered the International Wool Competition fashion contest for amateurs. He was just past his 16th birthday when his sketch of a little wool coat captured first prize and he was catapulted into a career that over the next 23 years was in many ways to mirror the progress of fashion itself.

The year was 1955 – mid-point in the heavy heyday of haute couture’s resuscitation by a one-time designer’s assistant named Christian Dior, who had opened his salons during the liberation sweep-up in 1947 with what he called the New Look, and was promptly hailed as the man who had saved Paris. Each July and January the world hung on his prophecies for hem lengths and hair lengths, while names like Jacques Fath, Pierre Balmain, Cristobel Balenciaga and Hubert de Givenchy were lesser stars who revolved around his headlines’ pivotal glare. In 1955, the press was in its usual uproar over Dior’s newest look, the A-line, and did not pay particular attention to the International Wool Competition fashion contest which two teenagers had just won: Karl Lagerfeld in the coat category and, in the dress category, a gangling blond 19-year-old who was to become one of Lagerfeld’s closest friends and two years later, Dior’s heir – Yves Saint Laurent.

While Dior plucked Saint Laurent out of the contest to become his dauphin, Balmain, one of the judges, sometimes known as the “couturier of queens,” offered Lagerfeld a stylist’s job. He worked with Balmain for three months before he had the courage to break the news to his parents, and stayed three years. He failed to meet any queens, but did help dress Anita Ekberg, Vivien Leigh, Sophia Loren, Gina Lollobrigida and even Bardot, although in retrospect he cherishes no fond memories. “Pierre Balmain was very teacherlike,” he says. “But the whole atmosphere with models and all was very borellolike. I just thought it was not chic at all.” Bored, he toyed with the thought of going back to school, when a job offer as art director at the venerable couture house of Jean Patou saved him – but in the end, only for more boredom. “Twice a year, I turned out 50 dresses,” he says. “It wasn’t enough for me. I spent the rest of my life at nightclubs, on beaches, at parties. It was empty, completely empty. When I think about it today, it was really the most boring and stupid time of my life.” After five years, he dropped out of couture altogether, the bloom rubbed thin on the boyhood dream. “I didn’t like the atmosphere. You waited there for your private clients, then you flattered them so they’d keep coming back. But they were just boring. Uglies – all uglies. Today there are 50 girls in the street who look better than the women who wear haute couture. I didn’t like what Balenciaga was doing. I didn’t like what Chanel was doing – all those little suits – maybe because I saw so many ugly copies on so many ugly women.”

At 25, he decided to devote himself to a life of the mind, but found that finishing his high school diploma did not always provide sufficient inspiration to get up in the morning, nor even in the afternoon. A year of more parties. And more boredom. “Then suddenly I realized work was the most important thing in my life, more important than all the rest of that stuff. I knew couture was finished. But something was changing.”

It was 1964, two years before Saint Laurent descended from his haute-couture shrine on the right bank to set up a Left bank boutique for the vast unwashed, making mass retailing respectable. The Paris ready-to-wear industry was still a slightly disreputable collection of pirates devoted to churning out bargain-rate couturier rip-offs, thanks to the advances in mass production and manmade fabrics with such odd names as Orlon, rayon and Terylene. The idea of men’s fashion had become fashionable, and teenagers with fat disposable dispentions from daddy had created a new market that British upstarts like Mary Quant were blithely capitalizing on with the miniskirt.

But in Paris the only rustlings of a change in the wind were cries of indignation going up from the couturier salons. “Paris has lost its leadership,” fussed Pierre Cardin, while Courrèges fumed that, “I, for one, won’t stand for it,” though what he intended to do nobody had the slightest idea. Among the mass-market outlets, however, there was one tiny house called Chloé, owned by a former financier named Jacques Lenoir, which had delusions of grander things under a young designer named Gérard Pipart. When Pipart was hired away by the couture house of Nina Ricci, Lenoir regarding it as such a disaster that he replaced him with four newcomers – names like Graziella Fontana, Tan Guidicelli, Christine Baille and Karl Lagerfeld – and decided to let them fight it out.

“It was very inspirational,” Lenoir says. “They were like phagocytes in the blood, where the one eats the other. Karl learned a lot from the others, but when it came to competition, he always came out on top. He was stronger, he had more force of personality.”

Indeed, the strength is almost physically tangible when you meet Lagerfeld in person, the image only half concealing a surprisingly solid man with large fleshy hands who looks as if, should the need arise, he could arm-wrestle the ugly or boring to the ground. The sensuous mouth has a capacity for the brutal as it echoes its staccato bulletins in four languages, mingling high camp, high bitchery and exquisite manners with penetrating analyses of the most pragmatic sort. He is briskly efficient, sardonically high-charged – transformed from the languorous wunderkind who once could barely struggle into Patou by 3 p.m. and devoted whole evenings to pondering the meaning of life. But then, he had finally found it, at least for himself. The discovery released so much energy that he designed not only for Chloé, but whipped off freelance work for Charles Jourdan shoes and Fendi furs, along with a band of such other young free spirits as Kenzo and Sonia Rykiel, who were invading the transformed landscape of ready-to-wear.

“I did everything,” he says. “It was very tiring, but very amusing, too – getting up early to take trains to go to the factories, taking planes here and there. It was the best way to learn, because I had never gone to fashion school. And nobody had done it before. We were a little community of pioneers.”

Within 10 years, the little community of pioneers had left haute couture languishing in charming oblivion. Their rambunctious April and October showing stole the thunder – and the crowds – from the ancient rituals in mirrored salons where the faithful perched on little gold chairs. Prêt-à-porter began to hand down the prophecies for the world’s closets, and just as promptly to fill them up, inspiring its own cut-rate copiers, while its brash young stars eclipsed the old names in an entirely new firmament of fashion. No longer did a woman dress under one label. The new rule was that there were no rules and there were as many styles as there were brash young upstarts with chutzpah and scissors.

By 1974, the process of Darwinian selection had left only Karl Lagerfeld at Chloé, where he was offered an exclusive contract and, in tribute to his stardom, his own perfume. He chose a sweet, heavy, old-worldly scent in keeping with his image. “At the time, everything was light, green, duty-free as I call it,” he sniffs. “It set a new trend.” Elizabeth Arden, who holds the franchise, now sells $11 million worth of liquid Chloé a year. Having just launched a men’s cologne, Lagerfeld is already at work on a second feminine fragrance scheduled for 1980 unbottling – “something quite eccentric, I think.” Discussions are also underway for makeup and a men’s line, although he refuses to design for children and linen closets. “One day your name cannot be used any more – only for toilet paper.”

His place in posterity assured, he now looks down from the heights of chic to observe his former conferes of haute couture – like Marc Bohan of Dior – with charity. “Boring – they’re only allowed to do boring things. Of course, they’re only employees. Sleeping beauties, I call them.” He does not resent the phenomenal success of Saint Laurent who has outstripped him even in the prêt-à-porter arena, and they continue to be the closest of friends. “Yves was always more ambitious than I was. He likes high fashion. He never found it humiliating. And he made lots of efforts that I’d never have made.” For example? “Well, for example, I’d never have consented to live with Pierre Bergé (Saint Laurent’s business partner and companion) for 20 years. I mean, there are prices I wouldn’t pay.”

A tiny bronze buzzer swings open the massive iron door on rue de l’Université and a security guard points the way across a courtyard roughly the size of a skating rink. A greying housekeeper in a worn sweater leads the way up marble stairs to the lofty salons where Karl Lagerfeld has consented to be photographed in a little at-home portrait. He sweeps in 20 minutes late, brisk and understated, a shrunken monogram on his dun-colored smock, only a thin western string tie which was the gift of the people at Neiman Marcus in place of the usual flounce – a sobered image due perhaps to the fact that he had just celebrated his 40th birthday two days earlier at his 18th-century château in Brittany where his mother now presides.

“I always live in 18th-century houses,” he says. “For me, it’s the perfection of human culture – the top.” In fact, he once did not live in an 18th-century house when he was making his name as a freelancer, but in a Left Bank apartment surrounded by one of the most lavish Art Deco collections then in existence. He had a backdrop made for it, and immediately had to auction the whole thing off. “It was too much – too fragile, too beautiful. I couldn’t live in it. It was like waking up every morning in an opera set.” Besides, so many people were getting into Art Deco. Now he collects state beds – Madame du Barry’s, the Duke of Richelieu’s, the Princess of Conti’s. Most are in the country château, but there is one of the indeterminate ownership plumped here in the midst of a receiving room, its white-silk coverlet and headboard sumptuously embroidered with a motif of the four seasons. It turns out to be one of the few pieces of furniture in the entire place. He keeps the rooms empty on purpose. “I don’t want to look nouveau riche,” he says.

It is virtually the eve of his next collection, and there is not much time for the setting. A gentle-faced young man serves apple juice on a silver tray and Karl Lagerfeld keeps examining his watch. His fabrics are late in arriving from the factories, his fittings are delayed and he has not yet seen the drift of his next seasonal direction, which makes him tense, although never given to the bouts of hysteria Saint Laurent is said to glory in. “What’s the point?” he says. “A dress doesn’t last forever. In the business, you start all over again every six months.” Still, he shuns holidays and works so obsessively that colleagues confide that Karl Lagerfeld’s problem is not that he may one day dry up on ideas, but that he has to be stopped. His study, a crammed anteroom to one of the salons, erupts with costume histories and ancient fashion circulars that spill over from his drawing board and onto the floor, but he shies from specific discussions of the Muse. “Designers shouldn’t talk too much; they should design. I believe only in instinct, intuition. I believe in imagining things from a window.”

He does not like all of this boring talk of the nuts and bolts, the whys and wherefores. He prefers to deal in images. The night he threw a little candlelight dinner for 40 here in honor of Paloma Picasso’s wedding – “the whole table filled with flowers, orchids the same red as her dress. I must say it was magic.” The little costume ball that Saint Laurent’s associate LouLou de la Falaise held at a disco palace where he turned up in a crystal-beaded jumpsuit and feathers once worn by Josephine Baker. The evenings he insists he spends dining in these rooms alone, according to the counsel of his fortune teller, scarlet drapes drawn, the table splendidly laid for one, while scented candles cast a spell upon the air. He quick-sketches the scenes as one might imagine looking in upon a life through a window. With a stylist’s finely honed eye, he settles upon each detail he chooses to reveal.

It is, after all, no easy task to tread the uneasy line between mass design and mystique, between turning out dresses that everywoman can buy off the rack while leaving the impression that only the truly privileged could attain such a luxury. Karl Lagerfeld, who prefers to work his magic in crepe de Chine rather than cheesecloth, who introduced satin knickers and tried to bring back the fan, has a showman’s unwavering sense of his audience. Strangers are not invited to his workrooms. Colleagues are discouraged from answering questions about him. Upstairs and downstairs in this townhouse, which he writes off for promotion purposes on his taxes, there are other rooms – private apartments that are never seen, never photographed.

The camera clicks. The image is preserved in the splendor of an empty salon. Karl Lagerfeld is in a hurry for his next appointment and rushes off with the gentle-eyed young photographer, shaking hands all around. It is a demanding, tightly scheduled life where even the star of the hour cannot be sure he will not be upstaged a half-year away. It is sometimes not a glamorous life at all, although one only has his word for it.

“I don’t believe in glamour,” he says. “Glamour is very artificial.”

Our footsteps echo on the marble staircase as the housekeeper lets us out with two plastic garbage bags in her hand, which she deposits behind a closed 18th-century door.

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From the FASHION Archives: Karl, Before Chanel

Since its launch in 1977, FASHION magazine has been giving Canadian readers in-depth reports on the industry’s most influential figures and expert takes on the worlds of fashion, beauty and style. In this series, we explore the depths of our archive to bring you some of the best fashion features we’ve ever published. This story, originally titled “The Eccentric Luxe of Karl Lagerfeld” by Marci McDonald was originally published in FASHION’s Winter 1978 issue.

It was Karl Lagerfeld’s idea to throw the party at his house. “I thought it would be more personal,” he says. Six hundred of his most intimate friends were greeted at the doorway by liveried footmen in white wigs and blue-satin breeches brandishing gigantic silver candelabra. By the light of more than a thousand flickering tapers, they were led into his ivory-and-gilt 18th-century salons, large enough to hold a small gymkhana, only to confront buffer tables recreated to match Marie Antoinette’s finest. Three-tiered pièces montées, threatening to graze the ceiling frescoes, spilled over with foie-gras-trimmed dolphins and peacock-shaped saddles of lamb. The sweet table featured a 50-foot meringue fountain cascading petits fours and crowned by four life-sized jeweled sugar swans spouting green syrup water. Jean Seberg, his next door neighbour, came and declared it marvelous. Paloma Picasso, whose marriage to a penniless Argentinian playwright in Lagerfeld’s heart-shaped red-taffeta wedding dress had rivaled Princess Caroline’s as the social event of the season, remarked that it was “very Karl.” Only the host, looking a slightly dressier version of his usual cross between Count Dracula and Louis XVI, seemed to have any reservations, confiding later that he wished it all hadn’t been at the expense of promoting his new men’s perfume, instead of the simple little gathering of near and dear as he preferred to think of it. “Little do people know I lead such studious, down-to-earth life,” he sighs. “To be a celebrity – it’s very demanding. But I am my image, I’m afraid.”

The image perches on a folding plexiglass chair in the fading afternoon light that invades the two-floor Chloé empire just off Paris’ fashionable rue de la Boétie and peers out at the world through rose-colored glasses. He used to favor smoky lenses, but finds things vastly improved since the change. “Everybody looks 10 years younger,” he says. Not that everything Karl Lagerfeld lays eyes on now meets his approval. “Ugly, ugly, ugly,” he dismisses the better part of the universe – a condemnation second only to “borrowing.” Offices are boring, as are desks and “fixed points” – which leaves the Chloé staff swirling around him among racks of tweed and sequins in apparent casual mayhem. Most of the clothes in which the hoi poloi parade outside his windows are boring, and frequently ugly as well. Neither sin, however, can be attributed to his image, which on this particular day consists of the usual: black smock emblazoned with a six-inch monogram, one of the hundred handmade shirts he orders annually from Hilditch and Key, shirtmakers to the Shah of Iran, which requires him to have custom-built luggage in order to preserve their starched stand-up collars, and, at his throat, a flowing black-silk bow. His greying shoulder-length tresses are pulled back into a ribbon, his complexion so pale that in certain lights it appears freshly powdered.

It is not an image that the casual bystander might associate with the semi-annual outbursts of witty sophistication and romantic chic that have come to characterize Karl Lagerfeld’s contributions to those feverish April and October follies known as Paris’ prêt-à-porter collections. But on reflection, it is nothing if not appropriate. While not everyone might be prepared to go around done up as he does, it is also true that not everybody can wear a Chloé.

In the 10 years since he has emerged as one of France’s trend-setting fashion triumvirate along with close friends Kenzo Takada and Yves Saint Laurent, his name has become synonymous with a look of rarefied elegance and eccentric luxe that makes him closer to the grand style of haute couture than any other ready-to-wear designer. Wherever two or more of the relentlessly à la mode are gathered, there is bound to be a slither of cleverly constructed silk by Karl Lagerfeld. The press has hailed him as one of today’s most influential stylists but, in fact, the sphere of his influence is limited. While Saint Laurent has set the silhouette for two decades of dressing and Kenzo has cut the pattern for almost every trend that has filtered down to the streets, Karl Lagerfeld has fashioned a unique niche for himself – not copied by the masses, but not ignored either; a label more applauded than pirated; a name that has come to mean class by itself. Buyers tend to swoon over his showings, which have twice inspired the shrewd Martha Phillips of Martha, Palm Beach and New York, to exit rhapsodizing that they were “like a beautiful song.”

But the music to her ears may have been the cash register bearing witness to the fact that, beneath Lagerfeld’s outlandish exterior, there lurks the canny commercial intelligence that has managed to create not only what the ads unabashedly call “the world’s most beautiful clothes,” but also some of the most wearable. Bianca Jagger, the Baroness Olympia de Rothschild and Margaret Trudeau all number Chloés in their closets, as – much to Karl Lagerfeld’s astonishment – did did his ailing mother’s private nurse. “She kept turning up in all these dresses of mine,” he says, tinted shades only half-betraying the intimation that there are, after all, limits to the democratization of prêt-à-porter. Discreet inquiries, however, finally assured him that the Chloés hovering at the bedside came of impeccable lineage – castoffs from a former patient’s wife named Jacqueline Onassis.

The tiny ready-to-wear house that he signed on with 14 years ago now boasts 11 boutiques and 95 outlets in the world’s toniest fashion emporiums under his signature, chalking up $9 million in wholesale clothing sales last year alone – triple the business of three years ago. If the growth rate is just short of phenomenal, it is no accident. Today, ethnic and organic are stunningly out and the fashion tyrannies of the crunchy granola set are going down to the yawns. In a year when the blue jean has resurfaced in gloriously co-opted little $300 leather versions and glitz has become de rigueur, it may not be entirely coincidental that the designer of the hour is an exotic of rare plumage whose idea of getting back to basics was once to show tennis shoes with chiffon ball-gowns and T-shirts of crepe de Chine. “Today, fashion is not made in the streets as much as it was in the early ‘70s,” he says, the relief clearly evident in his voice. “Now there’s a new sophistication that has nothing to do with the streets – in fact, it may not even reach them.”

Certainly, the pavement was not what he seemed to have in mind when creating his fall collection. An androgynous stray from a Cabaret set, in black chesterfield coat and top hat, waltzed down the runway and opened prison gates to release his latest inspirations: hip-hugging petal-hem skirts blossoming over stiletto heels, lamé tunic dresses afloat over skin-tight black-satin pants and tiny bellboy hats perched on the forehead, all topped off by mammoth fake jewels that dripped from tweed lapels like relics from a chandelier disaster. They were droll, they were outrageous, and the fashion press promptly went into delirium, demanding to know their meaning. “Why, they don’t mean anything – they’re just fun,” said Karl Lagerfeld, only surprised that anyone would ask. Relevance, significance – he waves them off as only slightly more boring than inquiries into the origins of his image. “Who knows where it came from,” he shrugs. “It was just there.”

For those inclined to favor the environmental theory of character formation, it was not perhaps a childhood designed to produce the average citizen. Born in 1938 in the heart of Hitler’s Germany, Karl Lagerfeld cannot recall ever growing up aware that there was some international unpleasantness going on. Life continued as usual at the château in the countryside outside Hamburg, where he found himself the last child of the last marriages of two not entirely typical members of Third Reich gentry. His father, a canned-milk tycoon with an inclination for marrying, was 60 at his birth. His mother, who had worn a Paul Poiret gown for her first wedding and a Vionnet for her second, favored Lanvin for the war. Their offspring passed his time reading her back issues of La Gazette du Bon Ton, sketching her wardrobe and changing clothes three times daily. “Already, I hated open shirts,” he said. “I had collars up to here, bows and ties, even hats. I was a fashion freak. Even as a child, I was overdressed.”

He does remember a parade of rather curious people showing up at the château who later turned out to be war refugees, but the memory concerns him only insomuch as one of them tortured him in French – a language he could speak with devoted fluency from his sixth birthday. When he was 12, his mother took his drawings to the director of a Hamburg art school who refused him admittance, declaring, “This boy is not interested in art. He’s interested in costume.” At 14, he begged to be allowed to finish high school in France, pointing out that he had, after all, immigrated in spirit. His arrival by train at the Gare du Nord did not disappoint him – it was dirty, it was decadent, and it was gloriously Paris, the city where he has lived ever since. Boarding school, however, was another matter – crowded and cloying. “In those days, if you were the slightest bit out of the ordinary, you were considered and eccentric,” he says. “I wanted to be alone.”

He won permission to rent an apartment on his own to prepare for his bacclauréat exams, provided that his father’s minions could keep an eye on him. When the other eye was closed, he secretly entered the International Wool Competition fashion contest for amateurs. He was just past his 16th birthday when his sketch of a little wool coat captured first prize and he was catapulted into a career that over the next 23 years was in many ways to mirror the progress of fashion itself.

The year was 1955 – mid-point in the heavy heyday of haute couture’s resuscitation by a one-time designer’s assistant named Christian Dior, who had opened his salons during the liberation sweep-up in 1947 with what he called the New Look, and was promptly hailed as the man who had saved Paris. Each July and January the world hung on his prophecies for hem lengths and hair lengths, while names like Jacques Fath, Pierre Balmain, Cristobel Balenciaga and Hubert de Givenchy were lesser stars who revolved around his headlines’ pivotal glare. In 1955, the press was in its usual uproar over Dior’s newest look, the A-line, and did not pay particular attention to the International Wool Competition fashion contest which two teenagers had just won: Karl Lagerfeld in the coat category and, in the dress category, a gangling blond 19-year-old who was to become one of Lagerfeld’s closest friends and two years later, Dior’s heir – Yves Saint Laurent.

While Dior plucked Saint Laurent out of the contest to become his dauphin, Balmain, one of the judges, sometimes known as the “couturier of queens,” offered Lagerfeld a stylist’s job. He worked with Balmain for three months before he had the courage to break the news to his parents, and stayed three years. He failed to meet any queens, but did help dress Anita Ekberg, Vivien Leigh, Sophia Loren, Gina Lollobrigida and even Bardot, although in retrospect he cherishes no fond memories. “Pierre Balmain was very teacherlike,” he says. “But the whole atmosphere with models and all was very borellolike. I just thought it was not chic at all.” Bored, he toyed with the thought of going back to school, when a job offer as art director at the venerable couture house of Jean Patou saved him – but in the end, only for more boredom. “Twice a year, I turned out 50 dresses,” he says. “It wasn’t enough for me. I spent the rest of my life at nightclubs, on beaches, at parties. It was empty, completely empty. When I think about it today, it was really the most boring and stupid time of my life.” After five years, he dropped out of couture altogether, the bloom rubbed thin on the boyhood dream. “I didn’t like the atmosphere. You waited there for your private clients, then you flattered them so they’d keep coming back. But they were just boring. Uglies – all uglies. Today there are 50 girls in the street who look better than the women who wear haute couture. I didn’t like what Balenciaga was doing. I didn’t like what Chanel was doing – all those little suits – maybe because I saw so many ugly copies on so many ugly women.”

At 25, he decided to devote himself to a life of the mind, but found that finishing his high school diploma did not always provide sufficient inspiration to get up in the morning, nor even in the afternoon. A year of more parties. And more boredom. “Then suddenly I realized work was the most important thing in my life, more important than all the rest of that stuff. I knew couture was finished. But something was changing.”

It was 1964, two years before Saint Laurent descended from his haute-couture shrine on the right bank to set up a Left bank boutique for the vast unwashed, making mass retailing respectable. The Paris ready-to-wear industry was still a slightly disreputable collection of pirates devoted to churning out bargain-rate couturier rip-offs, thanks to the advances in mass production and manmade fabrics with such odd names as Orlon, rayon and Terylene. The idea of men’s fashion had become fashionable, and teenagers with fat disposable dispentions from daddy had created a new market that British upstarts like Mary Quant were blithely capitalizing on with the miniskirt.

But in Paris the only rustlings of a change in the wind were cries of indignation going up from the couturier salons. “Paris has lost its leadership,” fussed Pierre Cardin, while Courrèges fumed that, “I, for one, won’t stand for it,” though what he intended to do nobody had the slightest idea. Among the mass-market outlets, however, there was one tiny house called Chloé, owned by a former financier named Jacques Lenoir, which had delusions of grander things under a young designer named Gérard Pipart. When Pipart was hired away by the couture house of Nina Ricci, Lenoir regarding it as such a disaster that he replaced him with four newcomers – names like Graziella Fontana, Tan Guidicelli, Christine Baille and Karl Lagerfeld – and decided to let them fight it out.

“It was very inspirational,” Lenoir says. “They were like phagocytes in the blood, where the one eats the other. Karl learned a lot from the others, but when it came to competition, he always came out on top. He was stronger, he had more force of personality.”

Indeed, the strength is almost physically tangible when you meet Lagerfeld in person, the image only half concealing a surprisingly solid man with large fleshy hands who looks as if, should the need arise, he could arm-wrestle the ugly or boring to the ground. The sensuous mouth has a capacity for the brutal as it echoes its staccato bulletins in four languages, mingling high camp, high bitchery and exquisite manners with penetrating analyses of the most pragmatic sort. He is briskly efficient, sardonically high-charged – transformed from the languorous wunderkind who once could barely struggle into Patou by 3 p.m. and devoted whole evenings to pondering the meaning of life. But then, he had finally found it, at least for himself. The discovery released so much energy that he designed not only for Chloé, but whipped off freelance work for Charles Jourdan shoes and Fendi furs, along with a band of such other young free spirits as Kenzo and Sonia Rykiel, who were invading the transformed landscape of ready-to-wear.

“I did everything,” he says. “It was very tiring, but very amusing, too – getting up early to take trains to go to the factories, taking planes here and there. It was the best way to learn, because I had never gone to fashion school. And nobody had done it before. We were a little community of pioneers.”

Within 10 years, the little community of pioneers had left haute couture languishing in charming oblivion. Their rambunctious April and October showing stole the thunder – and the crowds – from the ancient rituals in mirrored salons where the faithful perched on little gold chairs. Prêt-à-porter began to hand down the prophecies for the world’s closets, and just as promptly to fill them up, inspiring its own cut-rate copiers, while its brash young stars eclipsed the old names in an entirely new firmament of fashion. No longer did a woman dress under one label. The new rule was that there were no rules and there were as many styles as there were brash young upstarts with chutzpah and scissors.

By 1974, the process of Darwinian selection had left only Karl Lagerfeld at Chloé, where he was offered an exclusive contract and, in tribute to his stardom, his own perfume. He chose a sweet, heavy, old-worldly scent in keeping with his image. “At the time, everything was light, green, duty-free as I call it,” he sniffs. “It set a new trend.” Elizabeth Arden, who holds the franchise, now sells $11 million worth of liquid Chloé a year. Having just launched a men’s cologne, Lagerfeld is already at work on a second feminine fragrance scheduled for 1980 unbottling – “something quite eccentric, I think.” Discussions are also underway for makeup and a men’s line, although he refuses to design for children and linen closets. “One day your name cannot be used any more – only for toilet paper.”

His place in posterity assured, he now looks down from the heights of chic to observe his former conferes of haute couture – like Marc Bohan of Dior – with charity. “Boring – they’re only allowed to do boring things. Of course, they’re only employees. Sleeping beauties, I call them.” He does not resent the phenomenal success of Saint Laurent who has outstripped him even in the prêt-à-porter arena, and they continue to be the closest of friends. “Yves was always more ambitious than I was. He likes high fashion. He never found it humiliating. And he made lots of efforts that I’d never have made.” For example? “Well, for example, I’d never have consented to live with Pierre Bergé (Saint Laurent’s business partner and companion) for 20 years. I mean, there are prices I wouldn’t pay.”

A tiny bronze buzzer swings open the massive iron door on rue de l’Université and a security guard points the way across a courtyard roughly the size of a skating rink. A greying housekeeper in a worn sweater leads the way up marble stairs to the lofty salons where Karl Lagerfeld has consented to be photographed in a little at-home portrait. He sweeps in 20 minutes late, brisk and understated, a shrunken monogram on his dun-colored smock, only a thin western string tie which was the gift of the people at Neiman Marcus in place of the usual flounce – a sobered image due perhaps to the fact that he had just celebrated his 40th birthday two days earlier at his 18th-century château in Brittany where his mother now presides.

“I always live in 18th-century houses,” he says. “For me, it’s the perfection of human culture – the top.” In fact, he once did not live in an 18th-century house when he was making his name as a freelancer, but in a Left Bank apartment surrounded by one of the most lavish Art Deco collections then in existence. He had a backdrop made for it, and immediately had to auction the whole thing off. “It was too much – too fragile, too beautiful. I couldn’t live in it. It was like waking up every morning in an opera set.” Besides, so many people were getting into Art Deco. Now he collects state beds – Madame du Barry’s, the Duke of Richelieu’s, the Princess of Conti’s. Most are in the country château, but there is one of the indeterminate ownership plumped here in the midst of a receiving room, its white-silk coverlet and headboard sumptuously embroidered with a motif of the four seasons. It turns out to be one of the few pieces of furniture in the entire place. He keeps the rooms empty on purpose. “I don’t want to look nouveau riche,” he says.

It is virtually the eve of his next collection, and there is not much time for the setting. A gentle-faced young man serves apple juice on a silver tray and Karl Lagerfeld keeps examining his watch. His fabrics are late in arriving from the factories, his fittings are delayed and he has not yet seen the drift of his next seasonal direction, which makes him tense, although never given to the bouts of hysteria Saint Laurent is said to glory in. “What’s the point?” he says. “A dress doesn’t last forever. In the business, you start all over again every six months.” Still, he shuns holidays and works so obsessively that colleagues confide that Karl Lagerfeld’s problem is not that he may one day dry up on ideas, but that he has to be stopped. His study, a crammed anteroom to one of the salons, erupts with costume histories and ancient fashion circulars that spill over from his drawing board and onto the floor, but he shies from specific discussions of the Muse. “Designers shouldn’t talk too much; they should design. I believe only in instinct, intuition. I believe in imagining things from a window.”

He does not like all of this boring talk of the nuts and bolts, the whys and wherefores. He prefers to deal in images. The night he threw a little candlelight dinner for 40 here in honor of Paloma Picasso’s wedding – “the whole table filled with flowers, orchids the same red as her dress. I must say it was magic.” The little costume ball that Saint Laurent’s associate LouLou de la Falaise held at a disco palace where he turned up in a crystal-beaded jumpsuit and feathers once worn by Josephine Baker. The evenings he insists he spends dining in these rooms alone, according to the counsel of his fortune teller, scarlet drapes drawn, the table splendidly laid for one, while scented candles cast a spell upon the air. He quick-sketches the scenes as one might imagine looking in upon a life through a window. With a stylist’s finely honed eye, he settles upon each detail he chooses to reveal.

It is, after all, no easy task to tread the uneasy line between mass design and mystique, between turning out dresses that everywoman can buy off the rack while leaving the impression that only the truly privileged could attain such a luxury. Karl Lagerfeld, who prefers to work his magic in crepe de Chine rather than cheesecloth, who introduced satin knickers and tried to bring back the fan, has a showman’s unwavering sense of his audience. Strangers are not invited to his workrooms. Colleagues are discouraged from answering questions about him. Upstairs and downstairs in this townhouse, which he writes off for promotion purposes on his taxes, there are other rooms – private apartments that are never seen, never photographed.

The camera clicks. The image is preserved in the splendor of an empty salon. Karl Lagerfeld is in a hurry for his next appointment and rushes off with the gentle-eyed young photographer, shaking hands all around. It is a demanding, tightly scheduled life where even the star of the hour cannot be sure he will not be upstaged a half-year away. It is sometimes not a glamorous life at all, although one only has his word for it.

“I don’t believe in glamour,” he says. “Glamour is very artificial.”

Our footsteps echo on the marble staircase as the housekeeper lets us out with two plastic garbage bags in her hand, which she deposits behind a closed 18th-century door.

[tiffstasiaarchivejr-blog]

a year without two | alyssa nova 

a total plagiarism but it's gross o'clock in the morning and i woke up from a dream that I don't recall so don't bother asking and i'm still bitter so here have corresponding diary entries to go with the excerpts from the worst year of andrew nova’s life: a saga

fall

I thought he couldn't sink any lower but then the sun is coming up and his frown is going further down. Annie was a lying ass bitch, the sun ain't coming out tomorrow. Or the next day. Or any day until Bianca's home. 

I remember what he was like when he lost her--Adriana. When he lost Adriana. We hadn't been extremely close at that point but we'd been close enough to where I could see that the needle in his compass had been snapped off and buried with the love of his life. He was devastated and for awhile, I wasn't even sure if Bianca would be enough to save him from his grief, his anger. He still has little reminders of her around, I don't know if he knows I know but I've seen the painting she never got to finish in storage. She definitely had talent. And she definitely knew where her life was supposed to be going judging by the signature on a corner in the back. Adriana Nova. Sometimes I wonder if there's days where he might love the memory of her more than he loves the reality of me but, that's probably just Aly de Luca talking, right? Anyway, I’m getting sidetracked. I've got to get dinner on the table. 

Scarlett can't sit still for the life of her. It took me two hours to get her hair into the Leia buns. TWO HOURS. if I'd known she would be so bouncy in every aspect of her life I would have never signed her up for those gymnastic classes. She was headed to yet another Star Wars marathon at Mason's and said she loved whenever her big sister would wear her hair like that, did I have time to do hers? It's funny, isn't it? Scarlett asking someone if they have time for something. I didn't actually but I made the time. When it's her doing the asking, you find yourself creating all the time in the world for that beautiful soul. I cried once she was gone on her way. I remember the first time I had to fix Bianca's Leia buns when she was a kid, Drew couldn't do it to save his life, bless his heart. 

He was young but I was younger. He was a father at sixteen years old, stumbling his way through it all like a blind man in a maze. He had no clue how to be a father and I only knew how to be a friend but just like him, I learned too. I learned how to swaddle Bianca just the way she liked to stop her fussing. I learned the best place to test a bottles temperature and I learned all about the horrors of changing a diaper when Drew just couldn't shoulder every waking moment on his own anymore. I spent some nights there, looking back I'm shocked my parents let me but I guess they trusted Drew or at least remembered what being younger parents was like? Or maybe they knew there was no stopping me. I fell asleep in school a few times, cried in my car before leaving where he was living at the time because I was just so damn tired but also so inexplicably sad for him. He couldn't do it on his own yet he had no choice. I was just a kid landing a hand, being there when he needed to vent out the anger that was lashing in everyone's direction, when he needed to yell, when he needed to be silent. When he needed to cry and the very almost non-existent rare times when I could pull a smile or a laugh from the broken boy. I was just a kid, shouldering grief far beyond my years in order to help him cope with his. I was falling in love with a guy who loved a ghost. Some days I wanted to remember my age, remember the youth I could be celebrating and dropping away from him, protecting myself from the hurt that was surely going to come from crushing on someone so broken. Someone who would vow that he was ever going to love again, that it was just going to be him and Bianca. But I didn't. Because I was going to be the person who reminded him that it didn't need to be that way as long as he had friends, had help. When he lost Adriana, he lost whatever sliver of innocence he had left but maybe when I gave him mine, he was able to reclaim enough of his own to battle back. I'd do it again, even if it didn't lead to us one day becoming more than we were those nights Bianca wouldn't sleep. I'd do it because the world couldn't bare to lose a man like he would become when he learned how to be a father.

Rhys was out, Scarlett was out, it was just us here tonight. It was supposed to be a date night but once Good Will Hunting played, his attention seemed elsewhere for the rest of the night. Now, I'm in bed and his study door is closed. I'm living with a man haunted by a ghost again. 

He's never going to stop beating himself up. 

winter

It's Christmas and all I want to do is cry. I miss my daughter.

I wish he would just go talk to her. Tell her that he knows what she's going through. That he's felt the same bitter bite of betrayal that she has. I wish she would talk to him. Hear him out. I wish I could go back and know what was going on. Know she was falling in love and know Andrew had that kid marked for death. Retribution never seemed so ugly before. 

 Mason and Wyatt's heads are actually officially empty. It's confirmed. 

Some days I'm so angry at him I want to scream. Some days I'm so upset with her for leaving and staying gone this long I want to give up hope. Can anyone blame me? But he's still my husband, love of my life. And she's still my daughter.

Part of me wants to remind him how old she is, where we were each at her age. But that's not going to do me any favors or him any good. Sure, I also want her home with us again, I miss having her around. She's one of my best friends. And sure, this storm has me worried about her and Marisol but...god, is a little baby it's cold outside loving really so out of the question???????

He talked about Seb today. About how he's become just like him and how he hopes it's not going to stay so bad between them forever like it was with him and his father. His anger with Seb would probably have been marked on his headstone had Seb not taken care of his own arrangements years and years prior. I hope so too. I hope they can work this out. I want my family back. I want his good days to stick around longer. 

 spring

I'm such a fucking idiot. My entire body aches. Who tries to tackle the tending of an entire garden all in one go? This dumbass. God, I never had to pee so bad before and I ended up failing as a mother and a wife when Rhys ordered takeout because I hadn't come in and it didn't look like I ever would. But I bet I'm going to have a boss garden this year so, they'll live the one day I didn't supermom it.

 I have no idea what came over him or where his mind had been today but good god that was some great sex. 

 What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right?.....

Happy Birthday. I hope someone remembered your favorite cake. 

summer 

It's like Drew knows something. Nothing is off per-say but it seems like something is heavy on his mind, a burden he's not letting me share and it’s not everything going on with Bianca. He’s been okay lately, everything’s been smooth but now, I don’t know. I know there's stuff he sometimes doesn't want to talk about and he tries to shield me from aspects of his job but I just hate seeing his shoulders and mind heavy.

Rhys made a face today that made him look exactly like Ted. It gets hard sometimes without Bee around because it's harder to remember how despite their birth parents, im her mother and Ted Roman has nothing to do with Andrew and my son. No Roman ever will, not while I'm alive.

I wanted to call Bianca a few times today, see if she wants to at least meet up somewhere. Maybe do lunch, get out together and just catch up. I see her at times but..it almost feels wrong, seeing her without Drew. It’s not fair to him and I hate feeling like I’m doing something horrid behind his back when all I’m doing is seeing my daughter. I can’t take much more of this. Something needs to give. I didn’t call. I just texted her a few funny photos of Scarlett. I know she loves having ammo again her little big sister.

Rhys is pulling away. I think it’s just his age, he doesn’t want to live under mom and dad anymore but I also feel like it might have something to do with his charade of a relationship with Liv. I think it’s starting to become more real than fake to him, when did that start? How did I miss the twinkling in his eye as he’s realizing he’s crushing on someone important? And Scarlett, she’s been seeing Elijah and I didn’t even know. We used to joke about boys together, me and my two girls. Cries of mom stop when I’d talk about their father, giggles in one of their bedrooms late into the night as we talked like girlfriends do. Me and my two best friends. God, I’ve been so focused on Andrew lately that my kids have reached that final stage in life where Mom is just...well, their mother. I think they don’t need me anymore, I checked out on them a little too much to be their friend. I wish Bianca was here. She would drag all of us out to mini-golf, make us watch some lame movies from their childhoods when we got back in. Fight with Scarlett over the last slice of pizza and nearly get a concussion in the process. I need my girl. My first girl, my baby girl who raised me as much as I helped Drew figure out how to raise her until Mason took over and I drifted out for a bit. I just need my daughter back. My happy little family. Back to the days where it was just Scarlett that was hard to find around the house. Please, someone give me back my family.

When you’re bitter over your youngest child’s incredible success because the anniversary of it just reminds you that your family has been shattered for nearly a year now. I’m sorry Scar. I wish I could have been more enthused as you roped us into rewatching the games. I just...I can’t face another year without Bianca around the house, getting into everything and ragging on her siblings. I just can’t. And I don’t think Drew can either. It’ll kill him.

Andrew and Rhys are going to London and he’s barred me from this trip. We haven’t been on a vacation in what feels like forever but I’m not going to push it. He’s so on edge lately, stressed out. I’ll let him go work and then maybe I can coax him into a holiday together. Just the two of us. I’ll promise to bring that swimsuit of mine he likes the best. And just give him that knowing wink when he says he doesn’t have a favorite swimsuit of mine. Just me and him. Like when we’d sneak kisses in the kitchen while Bianca and Rhys slept and Mason was banished over to Gia’s. At least throughout all this, even on the bad days, my husband still had a little love somewhere for me. Even when I’d turn my back on him in anger, he’d still lay there in bed next to me, an arm ready to hold me in close when I finally forgave him and rolled towards him. He’s going to London and maybe it’s better I don’t go there, I’ve always been hesitant in the past about it anyways. I’ll be waiting for him when he gets home. Because I’m Alyssa Nova, Andrew Nova’s wife. Mother to three kids, no matter how many live under the roof right now, I’ll always be that. 

Bianca’s coming over while he’s gone. I think I need to finally do something about this all. I know what has to be done. I know what I need to do. I have to risk Andrew being upset with me but I just...this needs to end.

[asundizzay]

DRAFT BOX: FOTO FAIL FRIDAY: FROMANCE.

I wanted to take the non-traditional route in approaching this belated Valentine’s Day post by ignoring the standard conglomeration of hearts & love, and photographing nouns that relate to some of my favorite rom-coms/rom-drams/rom-com-drams, because i’m a low-key sucker for sappy things (cheesy). I was out all day hoping to photo some movie thangs and nerds fighting the storm with their umbrellas, but nope, just got wind-slapped all around (stray branches included )–the rain didn’t start pouring until I got home because of course. 

* UPDATE (02/21): THIS IS NOW  A TBT OF A FOTOFAIL OF A COMMERCIAL HOLIDAY THAT HAPPENED ONE WEEK AGO LOL HOW. *

**UPDATE (02/22): LOL it’s Wednesday. But this is finally complete. #WhyNotWednesday **

500 Days of Summer ( 2009 )

Rachel Hansen: Just because she likes the same bizzaro crap you do doesn’t mean she’s your soul mate.

Tom and Summer were two separately flawed characters whose bittersweet union was doomed from the start. For the longest time, I saw Summer as the b-word who carelessly wrecked Tom’s heart, when in reality, Tom’s insufferable sense of entitlement and manipulative nice guy complex subtly revealed that he’s actually kind of a jerk. Except for that whole dance number to Hall & Oates You Make My Dreams and showing Summer his favorite spot and drawing painstakingly detailed buildings on her arm. That was cute. Another thing that saved this film for me was presenting the nonlinear “boy meets girl” narrative in the dude’s perspective, forewarning the audience that this is not a love story, and allowing these two imperfect humans to individually see a happy ending: Summer marries someone she truly wants, with whom she shares a genuine connection,  and Tom is refreshingly presented another “season” to start anew, with someone potentially better suited for him. Additionally, a mind-blowing color theory visually demonstrates how these two were simply not made for each other, which can be found here.

cute score: 6 ( eh cute, JGL A 10 tho )

photo: Water Court at California Plaza on the upper level of  Tom’s favorite spot in Angels Knoll, Los Angeles, 2009. 

13 Going On 30 ( 2004 )

Matt: You can’t just turn back time.

Jenna: Why not?

In this essentially female version of Big, Jenna Rink’s 13 year-old self wishes to be thirty, flirty and thriving after some dudes and mean girls (which premiered the same year!) ruined her birthday party. On cue, magic dust spins her into an It’s A Wonderful Life-type alternate reality where she is living the dream as a rich, successful editor for her favorite fashion magazine. She reconnects with her childhood BFF, Matt, and they ultimately catch feelings faster than a winter cold. But aw dip, chocolate chip, Matt is hella engaged and about to be married, and now conflicted because Jenna has finally reciprocated his feels, but you know, commitment and whatever. A string of miscommunication and conflict occurs, then Jenna shows up to Matt’s wedding where he’s like, LOL, look  I’ve always loved you but the past can’t come back yo. Upon hearing this, she cries with intense regret, wishing she could just be 13 again for a do-over. The same magic dust gradually falls (for effect), and the scene reverts to her birthday party where she enthusiastically chooses Matt ( who grows up looking like Mark Ruffalo ) over the 80s cool kids, and their story ends all sweetly with the pair eating their favorite childhood candy on the lawn of a pink house, interestingly designed like her dream house, figuratively implying that her deepest wish has come true (or not). 

cute score: 8 ( hecka cute  the Thriller moment is still awkward for me tho and omg look Mark Ruffalo didn’t even want to do it lol click here )

photo: New York Public Library, setting for magazine’s ‘Class of 2004′ photoshoot, NYC, 2012

10 Things I Hate About You ( 1999 )

Patrick: Yeah, and is she worth all this trouble?

Cameron: Well, I thought she was, but you know, I…

Patrick: Well, she is or she isn’t. See first of all, Joey is not half the man you are. Secondly, don’t let anyone ever make you feel like you don’t deserve what you want. Go for it.

A modern take on Shakespeare’s  The Taming of the Shrew ( the numerous Shakespeare references / allusions make sense now )  introduces us to the Stratford sisters, their strict father with the winning punchlines, awkward Cameron with the sidekick BFF,  the “obligatory cool kid slash model” Joey, and resident bad ( bad bad bad ) boy, Patrick Verona doing bad boy things with a bunsen burner. So here’s the thing: Bianca really wants to date Joey but she can’t date anyone until her shrewd AF sister dates, which prompts her to set up the whole “this bet gets outta hand” premise that heavily spawned in 1999. Obvious villain Joey pays Patrick to win Kat’s heart and sing “Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You”  on the bleachers to win my heart, then he inevitably falls for her. In a callback to She’s All That, Kat eventually finds out about everything leading to the tearful read  of the eponymous (these are clearly over 10 things ) poem in class, as Patrick looks on like man I done fcuked up yo. But wait, he gets Kat the guitar she’s been wanting, insists that his feels for her are hella real and all is forgiven. Also, Cameron finally gets Bianca, and she punches Joey (whose nose spray ad is now ruined) thrice for herself, her sister and Yung Cameron. Oh yeah, and Cameron’s BFF ends up finding a Shakespeare lover just like him, lol, nerds. 

cute score: 9 ( super cute, everyone gets who they want and the real bad boy gets what he deserves! They had a band on the freakin’ roof dude )

photo: Fremont Troll, where Cameron and Bianca talk and stuff, Seattle, 2009

A Case of You / Comet ( 2013 / 2014 )

Birdie: Success is a myth. Love’s the only true currency. After all this is done, all that really matters is how and who you loved.

———–

Dell: Why does it feel so impossible to let you go?

Dell: It’s an addiction, you know. That’s all it is.

Dell: It’s a biochemical addiction. It’s so stupid.

Dell: If you think about it relationships are all totally narcissistic.

Dell: Basically, you’re just looking for someone who’ll love you as much as you love yourself. That’s all it is.

———–

Two Justin Long movies for the price of fun. 

I’ve probably checked off so much of this dude’s filmography that I can easily tell you that one of his many underrated roles would be a cameo as George Harrison in the equally underappreciated Walk Hard: A Dewey Cox Story. I know… comedy is understandably the toughest genre to press onto humans, so to each his own. These two films fall in that hit or miss category–on one end, you have Sam, an author who meets a barista and quickly becomes infatuated with her, even more so after creeping reading her Facebook profile and mimicking those interests in order to attract her attention, eventually using her as a muse for his story ( A Case Of You ),  and on the other, you have Dell and Kim caught in a classic case of star-crossed lovers whose rocky relationship is dreamily depicted through a non-linear narrative of parallel universes, reminiscent of Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind  ( Comet ). Despite his ridiculous Facebook faux pas, Birdie admits that she was adding  random items to her profile to see if Sam would change, and to no one’s surprise, she still liked him anyway because if a connection is real then it’s real, and it’s extremely important, to like, just be yourself because there’s more to a person than what they choose to display on the Interwebz. And Dell and Kim continue to sail through different universes, with Dell wishing to live in a permanent world where they end up together 💔. 

cute score: 3  ( So much fighting–whether with oneself, another person, or the world, das not dat cute. ). 

photo: Light trails, space, and time to represent chaotic nature of the parallel universes in Comet, NYC, 2015 

Begin Again  ( 2013 )

Dan: You can tell a lot about a person by what’s on their playlist.

Greta: I know you can. That’s what’s worrying me.

I’ll throw in Before We Go, Friends With Benefits, or even Lost In Translation into this mix of getting to know a person as you explore a new city together–whether platonically or romantically, it’s still awesome. This particular love story focuses on the protagonists’ mutual love for music rather than feelings towards each other–though their respectable relationships with his estranged wife and her ex-boyfriend still romanticize the plot. Dan Mulligan, a formerly successful record executive drunkenly discovers Gretta James, a newly independent songwriter reluctantly singing in a low-key bar thanks to pre-late late show James Corden. He sees great potential, she doesn’t believe in herself, I mean how could she, her ex-boyfriend slash songwriting partner is none other than recent singing sensation, AdamN Levine Dave Kohl. After Dan’s business partner Yasiin Bae/Yasiin Bey/Mos Def   Saul initially rejects Gretta from their record label, the pair take matters into their own hands and decide to produce their own album together, using local talented musicians backed by the sights and sounds of New York City and the result is pure magic like fireworks in your ears, the visual “wow that’s so glorious” part not the actual “boom boom” noise part, because you would totally go deaf. This is a story about how music can bring people together (production, collaboration, Dan reconciling with his wife ) or tear them apart ( Dave cheating on Greta ), seek forgiveness ( Dave singing Lost Stars, Don Henley singing The Heart of The Matter [not in this movie, that song just popped up in my head as I wrote that lol] ), or drive passion ( Violet dreams of becoming a guitarist/ Gretta’s career kicking off ). Music is love, music is life, and Gretta’s album sells hella copies from its online release, and things are looking up for Dan and his life. Dan in real life. After encountering a series of failures/contemplating suicide, discovering Gretta, producing this album, and making amends with Saul, his wife and daughter, I guess you can say that Dan (as well as Gretta? ) was given another chance to fairly begin…again. 

cute score: 7 (  Dan drunkenly composing a song in his head, The headphone splitter scene tho, das kinda cute )

photo: Times Square, the scene stealer of the headphone splitter scene tho, NYC, 2012

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind ( 2004 )

Clementine: Meet me in Montauk. 

It’s 3:41 AM and my body hates me. Especially my eyes.  Okay, so two contrasting personalities, Joel and Clementine, meet on a train and immediately connect like 4, only to learn that they are former lovers and Clementine had erased her memories of Joel after some petty argument, and Joel’s like ‘wtf bro’ and decides to erase his memories of her. The familiar surrealistic non-linear narrative that I heart so hard navigates through Joel’s head space, intercut between scenes of sadness and anger,  to happier times until the final memory where everything crumbles to the ground like dust in the wind, as he tries to hold onto his last moment with Clementine, after realizing that he still loves her. Other story lines, connect, Kirsten Dunst finds out she had her memory of the doctor erased and she gets mad upset, like ‘i’m gonna show everyone (who has undergone this procedure) their memory erasure records’ upset.  Elijah Wood is just super devious. COTDAMN MARK RUFFALO IS ALSO IN THIS MOVIE LOL WTF YO. The scene restarts and Joel and Clementine, meet on a train and immediately connect like 4, only to learn that they are former lovers and they’re like “oh whaa” and think that maybe starting over would be a good idea or it might be the same but they go for it anyway and who knows what those two are up to now probably making sure that they don’t forget about each other amirite lol omg it’s already 4. 

cute score: 2 ( Comet before comet was comet, not dat cute, but like Comet, beautiful cinematography is a 10)

photo: Imagine this human’s hair is orange, you know, like Clementine, ArtWalk, San Diego, 2014

——–

honorable mentions: Garden State. Ryan Gosling & Ryan Reynolds’ things. Scott Pilgrim Vs The World. High Fidelity. Say Anything. John Hughes’ things.