#my messages are open if anyone's feeling down about our continued oppression and wants to talk.

[sorrowsofsilence]

Burning Out • X

Pairing: Noah Sebastian x Fem!Reader

I was lost, but now I'm found Under the lights and in the sounds So let us sing and sing it loudThat we're not perfect, but we're proud of who we are.

Noah Sebastian is lost. His crime-filled lifestyle is anything but perfect; but everything changes once he meets you.

Words: 4.7k

General Fanfic Warnings: 18+, explicit language, smut, alcohol, drugs, violence, mentions murder/suicide, panic attacks/anxiety, nightmares

Authors note: Chapter ten - RedwIne (EDITED: 09-03-24, not new new to the story!)

new? read from chapter one here

THIS IS A FANFICTION USING REAL PEOPLE IN A FICTIONAL SITUATION! I AM NOT IMPLYING THESE PEOPLE WOULD DO THE THINGS IN THE STORY OR ACT THE WAY THEY DO IN THE STORY, IN REAL LIFE! IT IS SIMPLY FICTION, AND JUST FOR FUN! THINK OF THEM AS ACTORS LOL.

+

As the evening went on, the boys continued to cover a variety of songs, building up to their final performance of the night.

"Thanks for rocking out with us, guys!" Noah exclaimed, taking a swig from his water bottle. "We're about to kick it up a notch, so I want to see you all headbanging!"

The crowd roared in response as Noah introduced their next song, Glass Houses. I couldn't help but bang my head along with the music as the boys rocked out on stage, their hair flying wildly in every direction. Pulling out my phone, I started recording their performance.

Just as I opened my phone, I noticed I had received a text message from an unknown number. My stomach sank and fear engulfed my body as I clicked on the message.

Los Angeles, hey? It’s about time we booked a vacation anyway. See you soon, my volto x

+++++

U̧̢̼̹͓͇̮͈͕̰͑͗ͭ̂̐̓̾̇̑̀̑̌̅̈͟͢͞Ń̷̙͎͍̘͈̰̫̫̭̼͇̻̱͈̝̇͐̌ͧͥ̅͑̏̈̐̉ͫ͝͡͠K̷̴̷̸͇̤̝̥͓̤̖̣̇̏ͭ̇̇̍ͨ͞_̸̸̨̡͎̭̄NͨO̅͆WͨŅ̷̢̮̣̰͚̝̮ͫ̑̾ͤ͌̉̀ͧͪͅͅ

The square room was a grim and oppressive space, the cracked cement floor littered with rubble and dirt, while the walls were peeling and splintered. The musty smell of dampness permeated the air, making it feel like a forgotten tomb. This place was rarely used, only necessary in times of great need. It had been almost a year since anyone had set foot inside, but the solitary chair chained to the ground in the center of the room remained untouched, waiting for its next occupant.

I nodded at the men trailing behind me, their heavy footsteps muffled by the thick layer of dust covering the ground. With a loud thud, I dropped my duffle bag of items to the ground, breaking the eerie silence that hung over us. The stale air felt suffocating, but I couldn't help but smile as I took in my surroundings. The distant sound of waves crashing against the shore echoed down the dark corridor, adding an eerie ambiance to this desolate place.

A perfect spot to dispose of a body, hidden away from prying eyes and curious minds.

+++++

NOAH

As soon as our performance was over, the five of us packed up our equipment and squeezed into the van. Jolly, Ruffilo, and Folio were practically bouncing with excitement, their energy contagious. I couldn't help but feel giddy myself; the rush of adrenaline from our successful show and the positive response from the audience had me on cloud nine. We even had fans asking to take photos with us, which was a pleasant surprise.

But my elation quickly faded when I noticed Y/N's behaviour. She seemed anxious and distant, barely making eye contact with any of us after the show. She sat in silence in the car, her eyes fixated on her phone. I waited until we were on the road heading home before quietly asking what was wrong. Y/N was seated between me and Ruffilo in the middle row of the van, and even Nicholas could sense her off-mood, glancing back at me and nodding towards her as if to say "ask her".

I narrowed my eyes and shook my head, gesturing towards him to ask her. They had grown close, so he might as well take the chance. Nicholas sighed and raised his shoulders in a shrug, nodding at me again in agreement.

“What are you two doing?” Y/N sighed quietly, looking up from her phone and turning her head between the two of us.

“Uh,” I laughed awkwardly, scratching the back of my head, “well we are both a little worried about you,” I admitted.

Y/N's piercing gaze was fixed on me, her lips pressed together in deep thought. She sighed for a moment before hanging me her phone. The light from the screen contrasted with the darkness outside as we sat in the car, and my heart raced as I read the message displayed on the screen

“Do you know who sent this?” I asked as my eyes widened in worry.

“Sent what?” Nicholas leaned over Y/N, attempting to read the screen. I don’t know if Y/N told the boys what she told me; so I closed the phone, handing it back to her.

She opened the phone again before passing it to Nicholas, and his face contorted before staring at Y/N, “Volto?”

Y/N sighed again, knowing she would have to repeat everything she told me earlier, “I have a lot to explain to you guys… but for now, I’m not sure who sent the message.”

“Well it has to be someone who knows about the mask,” I suggested before turning my attention to Jolly who groaned in annoyance, staring out the rearview mirror while he clutched the steering wheel.

“That damn asshole, tailgating me.”

Folio glanced at the car behind them through the side mirror, matching Jolly's frustration. "What a jerk."

I paid no attention to their conversation, instead focusing on Y/N. "Do you think it's one of the Fidelio guys?"

"Probably one of the twins," she said, her gaze now fixed on the car behind us as she grew quiet. Her eyes went distant, and I could tell she was worried. "And if it is, I'm screwed."

Shaking my head, I reached down and gently held onto her thigh. "I won't let anything happen to you." I squeezed her thigh reassuringly. "I'll keep you safe."

Her face lit up with a grateful smile, but her arm trembled from anxiety.

Jolly let out a low growl, frustration evident in his voice as he gritted his teeth. He tapped the brakes firmly, causing our bodies to jolt forward from the sudden stop.

"Don't brake-check them," Nick warned from the passenger seat, bracing himself against the dashboard. "They'll hit our gear in the trunk if they crash into us."

Y/N and Nicholas both turned to look out the back window, glaring at the car that was dangerously close to our bumper. I peered at it through the side mirror, squinting against the blinding reflection of its headlights.

Jolly revved the engine and accelerated, trying to get away from the aggressive driver behind us. But no matter how fast we went, they stayed right on our tail.

I leaned forward to check the speedometer. "Are you going the speed limit?"

"Of course I am, idiot," Jolly snapped, his grip tightening on the wheel as he kept glancing back at our pursuer.

Nicholas suggested, "Just make a right turn and let them pass us. We don't want anyone getting hurt. We can turn back afterwards."

With a frustrated groan, Jolly signalled and turned at the next light. To our confusion, the other car followed suit and continued to trail us.

“Uh hello?” Jolly yelled, shaking his head. He took another right, and the car followed us down the street once again.

“Are they…following us?” I squinted at the mirror again intensely, eying the lights.

“Jolly,” Y/N said, her breath hitching, “Take another right…”

He agreed, and the car still followed.

“One more,” Her voice was quiet now, her hand slipping into mine. Y/N entwined our fingers nervously, her palms clammy. My heart twitched in awe that she wanted to hold my hand.

"If the car turns with us," she muttered nervously, "then they're following us. We'll end up on the same road as before."

I couldn't stop fidgeting as I watched the events unfold, exchanging uneasy looks with Nicholas as we made a right turn. My heart raced with anticipation when there was no sign of the other car behind us for a brief moment, but then it appeared again and quickly caught up to our speed.

"Shit," Jolly swore under her breath, pushing down harder on the gas pedal. Y/N turned to me with concern in her eyes, and I couldn't help but mirror her expression. I squeezed her hand tightly, my other hand gripping onto the handle above the window for support.

“Do you think-” Y/N’s voice wavered as she clung to me, “It’s them?”

Nicholas watched, confused, “Who? What is going on?”

“Jolly, step on it,” Nick yelled.

“Actually I was thinking of pulling over and chatting- Of course I’m fucking stepping on it!” Jolly mumbled in miffed anger, turning again.

The streetlight ahead flickered to yellow and Jolly hit the gas, determined to make it through before it turned red. As we raced through the chaotic city, Y/N gripped my hand tightly and leaned into me for support. Nicholas glanced back and forth between us and the road, urging us to get out of town before anything else could happen. "I'm not stopping for any lights," Jolly declared, swerving the van through traffic with our bodies bouncing along. We sped by buildings at an alarming rate, everything blurring together until we finally reached the outskirts of the city. It was a mad dash to escape as we left the urban landscape behind us.

I leaned closer to Folio's seat, my voice hushed and urgent. "Do we still have extra masks and guns in the glovebox?" As Nick opened it, Y/N's pills spilled out onto the floor. I scowled momentarily before Nick handed each of us a mask, except for Y/N. He then passed me a gun from inside the fabric lining of the glovebox.

I checked the clip, making sure I had enough rounds, before slipping on the black mask. Nicholas and Nick followed suit. Through the holes in my mask, I could see Y/N's eyes widen with fear.

"What's our plan?" Nick asked from the driver's seat, searching underneath for another weapon. He eventually pulled out a gun and gave it to Nicholas, who stashed it in his waistband.

As our car swerved and turned with us, mimicking our movements like a dance partner, I watched its erratic behaviour.

"Time for a little game," I muttered, unbuckling my seatbelt.

"Noah-" Y/N grabbed my wrist, trying to stop me. "What are you doing?"

I freed myself from her grip. "Just some warning shots. Maybe disable a tire or two."

I repositioned my body so I was facing the rear of the car, and then pulled my head back inside. The wind rushed past me aggressively as the car sped down the road, causing my arm to shake from the instability of the speed. With one hand gripping onto the interior handle for stability, I raised the gun and aimed it at the taunting car behind us.

In a split-second decision, I pulled the trigger, feeling the recoil in my wrist as the bullet flew out and ricocheted off the pavement. I quickly fired another shot, this time hitting the hood of the car with a loud twang and sparks flying. The vehicle swerved in an attempt to avoid my shots, but I kept firing. The driver slowed down briefly before speeding up again, seemingly ignoring my threat.

Frustrated, I snarled as I aimed another shot at them, this one hitting their left headlight and frying it out. But they still didn't back down; instead, they picked up speed and came closer until their bumper was right up against ours.

They were going to try and hit us off the road.

“Fuck,” I muttered angrily, slipping back inside the car. I clicked my seatbelt into place, checking Y/N’s and making sure it was secure.

“So clearly they’re not backing off!” Nick screamed through the sound of the engine, and Jolly yelled at him. “No shit!”

With a surge of determination, Jolly clutched the steering wheel tightly and pressed down on the accelerator one last time, determined to outrun the chaos unfolding behind us. My heart raced as I watched Jolly push our van to its limits, feeling Y/N's uneasiness beside me.

“I can’t go fast enough in this piece of junk, they're going to hit us,” Jolly yelled, his knuckles turning white with tension. "Hold on!"

Jolly slowed down, preparing for impact as the car behind us smashed into our rear bumper. The screeching of tires filled the air as our van swerved to the side. Time seemed to slow down as our bodies were thrown around, our vehicle colliding with the other car. I reached out for Y/N but our fingers barely managed to intertwine before my breath escaped me in shock and my chest constricted.

The air was thick with the smell of burnt rubber and gasoline, my mind in a haze. Our van spun into the cement barricade that bordered the highway and the impact sent debris flying in all directions, the shockwave of the collision reverberating within my body. Glass from the windows shattered around us, spraying like glitter in the moonlight as the impact jolted the five of us forward. Time was still as the turmoil unfolded in a split second, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake.

As my head throbbed and ears rang, the faint taste of blood lingered on my tongue. Dust and debris filled the air as whiplash consumed me, and I peered at Y/N whose body hung folded over the middle seat.

“Y/N-” I coughed, choking on the lack of oxygen that fought to fill my lungs. I reached for her, my knuckles torn from the glass. The world began to fade away as I pushed myself toward her, gripping her body.

“Y/N,” I yelled, and she groaned, her head flopping towards me. A trail of crimson trickled from her forehead, dirt coating her features. She coughed and sucked in a shaky breath.

Y/N's eyes fluttered open, disoriented and unfocused. "Noah?" she whispered, her voice weak and trembling. I cupped her face gently, relief flooding through me despite the chaos surrounding us.

"I'm here," I reassured her, wiping away the blood trickling down her forehead with my thumb. "Are you okay? Can you move?"

She nodded slowly, wincing as she tried to sit up straighter. I helped her, my hands shaking as I assessed her for any major injuries. The others were stirring now too, groans of pain filling the wrecked van.

"Everyone alright?" Nicholas called out, his voice strained. There were murmurs of confirmation from Jolly and Folio.

Adrenaline coursed through my veins, and the shock of the situation hit like a ton of bricks as I remembered the situation seconds prior. Whoever hit us was surely going to get to us any second.

I pulled away from Y/N’s grip slowly, leaning down as my head spun, searching for the gun.

“Ruffles-” Y/N turned to him with worry, moving slowly as she placed a hand on both sides of his face, checking the cuts that dug into his skin.

“What the fuck,” Nick murmured in pain as he pushed away the deflating airbag, Jolly following.

The van was in complete shambles, and I struggled to free myself from the twisted metal and broken glass that surrounded us. I kicked open the backseat door and crawled out of the car, my hands landing on the cool asphalt. The dimly lit surroundings cast eerie shadows, adding to the disorientation and vulnerability as I stood up, scoping out the scene.

The car that followed us was barely smashed on the other side of the road; both front doors opened once I was in view. A gunshot flew past my ear, ricocheting off the cement.

“Shit, shit, shit,” I muttered under my breath, ducking behind the wreckage of the van. I peered into the vehicle as Y/N rubbed her eyes, “They’re firing at us!”

Nick pushed the door open, his body rolling onto the ground, groaning, “The gun,” He swayed, pulling himself up, searching the car with a hand, “Ruffilo! Give me the gun!”

More shots were fired from behind and I covered my head, looking back at Y/N who hid in Nicholas’ chest, completely afraid. He gripped her tightly, protecting her head as he threw the gun to Folio, who cocked it, placing his back against the torn metal.

Jolly yelled at Nick to move as he crawled from the driver’s seat to the passengers, sliding out, and hiding behind the debris, “We need to form a plan!”

“There’s no time,” I growled, closing my eyes as my breath heaved from my chest, anticipating the worst as the shots got closer and closer, bouncing between the road and the metal of the car.

I got down on the ground, my knees rubbing against the rock as I peeked around what was left of the bumper. Amongst the dust from the collision two figures appeared from the smoke, their black suits slick and barely untouched- comical.

My eyes squinted in recognition as I looked at their heads, the slick silver sheen glinting from the moonlight. The muzzle was long, and the ears appeared sharp and pointy, followed by a set of painted black features.

Fox masks covered their identity, the two walking in sync towards us.

The article. The Twins.

“Noah-” Jolly hunched over, his breathing erratic as his tattered long hair peeked from beneath the mask he now slid over his face, “Who is it?”

My mind skimmed to a conclusion as I scooted back, “They’re here for Y/N. We need to get her away from here, or at least distract them till she can run.”

“N0,” Y/N pulled herself from Nicholas, tears streaming down her face. She peered out the broken window, a hand climbing to her mouth as she held it there in fear once she saw them, “You guys need to run. They want me, I don’t need you getting hurt.”

I shook my head, cocking the gun, “I told you I would protect you. I will not go back on my word.”

“No, you don’t understand,” She almost screamed in dread, “That has to be Kiean and Kade. They used to tell me if shit hit the fan, they’d turn to the fox masks.”

“What does that mean?” I shook my head in confusion, looking at them once again before turning my attention to Y/N.

“They twisted an old Indigenous legend of the fox twins,” She said, watching them as she spoke, “instead of the twins growing as heroes from their demise, they strive for revenge.”

I pulled at the fabric that covered my face, readjusting it before standing up. I dropped the loaded gun next to my foot, before revealing myself from behind the car.

“Noah!” She yelled, but I continued walking out, holding my hands up.

The one on the right pointed the gun at me, my throat aching from the adrenaline as I heaved nervously.

“Where is she,” His voice was muffled from the mask, deep and antagonizing as he held the threat menacingly.

I shook my head, hands held up high in surrender, “Who the hell are you talking about?”

“You think I’m stupid?” The man scoffed, turning his head to look at his companion before back at me.

My demeanour remained cool and collected, even in the face of danger. "You were following us," I stated calmly, though my anger simmered just beneath the surface. A muffled voice laughed behind a mask as the gun pointed toward me. "I'll shoot you if I have to," he warned. But I stood my ground, refusing to be intimidated. "We don't have what you're looking for," I said, lowering my hands. The sound of the gun clicking echoed through the tense air, causing a shiver to run down my spine. Just then, the man uttered her name--a name that sounded foreign and vile on his tongue.

I dared not to look at the car behind me, but I noticed a figure move from my peripheral. No Y/N, don’t.

“Again,” I laughed, mocking them with stupidity, “There’s only four of us- and this Y/N person isn’t one-”

The man then took quick steps forward with the gun, and before I knew it Y/N shouted, exposing herself as she stood in front of me, guarding my chest.

“NO!”

Fuck.

The fox tilted his head as the gun was now placed in front of Y/N’s forehead, her shoulders heaving with her erratic breaths. Her arms were out protectively toward the men as she placed herself between death and remorse; the other gun from the car within her grasp. My stomach swirled with unease and liability.

Seconds felt like minutes as we stood there; but finally, his weapon lowered, arm slowly resting against his side. His free hand reached underneath the bottom of the plastic that covered his head, peeling off the layer of false anonymity.

Dull green eyes met mine, the repulsion behind them dissolving me from the inside out. His gaze was almost feral as his lip turned into a snarl at my presence; he didn’t dare look away as he spoke.

“This?” he scoffed, appalled, “You moved on to this piece of shit?”

The wavy head of dirty blonde hair that sat on his head was paired with a straight upturned nose, slight facial hair, and a nose ring. He was the definition of a pretty-white boy surfer, and my eyes narrowed.

“Fucking whore.” He spit as he then stared at Y/N, his jaw clenching. The muscles in his neck tightened as he watched her viciously.

“Kade,” The next voice warned, and I peered at the twin who stood behind him. As he took his mask off I swore I heard Y/N gasp ever so lightly, the gun in her grasp lowering slightly.

This man looked almost identical to the one looming over us; except his hair was to his shoulders, the top tied back into a small bun. His eyes seemed softer- gentler. The emerald gaze was more vibrant as he stared at her; until he met mine.

“Please,” Y/N’s voice wavered, “Let him go. Take me, but let him go.”

“Why?” Kade laughed, tapping the gun against his thigh, “you care about him?”

Kade stepped forward, and Y/N stepped back, pushing into my torso.

“Hmm?” He taunted.

“I- you don’t need to do anything irrational,” She held up her hands. She was afraid.

“This your new toy?” The blonde’s words began digging into her, but his eyes remained on me.

She hiccuped, holding her hands up in front of her face in defence as he got closer to us.

“You’re fucking him now?” He roared.

“K-Kiean,” She stuttered, almost in a plea toward the other twin.

Kiean.

As I went to move in front of her, the back of Kade’s hand swung into Y/N’s head, the handle of the gun cutting the skin above her lip. She clutched her face as she stumbled backward, falling onto the asphalt. The gun slid across the road.

Anger rose from my chest instantly, “Don’t you fucking touch her,” My voice dripped with venom, and without thinking I held my arm up, sending a forceful blow into the side of Kade’s neck.

As if a bomb went off, he lunged for me, my back sliding onto the cement as he fell on top of me, “I want to see your pathetic face,” He screamed, his anger ripping from his throat as he began punching my chest, clawing at the fabric that covered me.

The air I had left was dispersing from my lungs as I began rolling with him, punching him back.

“Noah!” Y/N screamed as she scrambled to her feet, running toward me; but the other twin grabbed her, caging her in his arms. She thrashed aggressively, attempting to free herself.

I heard the shuffling of footsteps from the side and Jolly appeared, throwing himself into Kade’s body. Nick was right behind, picking me up as Nicholas ran toward Y/N and Kiean.

A gunshot ripped through the air and everybody froze, my ears ringing with anticipation.

Time slowed once again as I looked up at Y/N.

Kiean tightened his grip on Y/N, the gun positioned threateningly against her head. Tears welled up in her eyes as she desperately clutched at the fabric of his suit. Watching her, I let out a quick breath and felt a surge of fear wash over me. She was so afraid, and there was nothing I could do to help her. I shook my head in disbelief, my lips trembling with panic; I needed her by my side. It took all of my willpower not to rush towards her as Kiean pressed the gun harder against her skull. "Don't move," he warned, slowly backing towards their car. Kade scrambled to his feet, scurrying after Jolly and following Kiean's lead. Y/N had dropped the gun when she was taken, but Kade retrieved it and aimed it at the four of us. "Noah-" Y/N sobbed, her body shaking as Kiean dragged her closer to the car.

Her lips trembled as she screamed her last word before Kiean put her in the car, “Run.”

Kade began to fire at us and we ducked, running back to the smashed van for shelter as bullets flew past us. My heartbeat pounded in my ears as adrenaline washed through me once again. I wanted to yell, I wanted to cry. I wanted to run to Y/N, and I wanted to tell her it would all be okay.

But I couldn’t- she was gone.

And I was a coward.

A useless fucking coward.

The gunshots ceased as the engine revved, doors slamming as the sound of wheels spinning out filled the midnight scene. The car began racing down the road, taking Y/N with them.

My saving grace.

Our heavy breathing was all I could hear as I squeezed my eyes shut, an angry scream crawling from my lungs.

+++++

2 Days Later

I slowly walked through the fallen leaves, trying to hold back the tears that were brimming in my eyes.

The scent of damp earth and decaying leaves hung in the air, adding to the heaviness in my heart. I placed the delicate white flower on top of the gray headstone, a tribute to the one whose life had been cut short too soon.

I sat down on the damp ground, not caring that the dying grass was wet beneath my legs. The weight of grief settled upon me as I whispered to my deaf listeners, the only ones who could truly understand my pain.

A gentle breeze swept through the graveyard, causing my long brunette locks to sway and dance with each gust. I zipped up my black jacket and slid my hands into its warm pockets, seeking comfort from the coldness around me.

"It's been a while," I murmured, my head lowered towards the headstone. Memories flooded my mind - memories of laughter and love that now felt bittersweet in her absence.

"I met a nice girl," I chuckled softly, but even this small moment of joy was tinged with sadness. Closing my eyes, I let myself relive the memory of nights ago when her smile had filled me with happiness and hope. But now, it only blurred together with the pain.

“And I already fucked up,” I wiped my nose as my throat tightened, “I tainted her.”

The wind whistled through the cemetery as if acknowledging my words. I nervously plucked at the blades of grass, feeling lost and unsure of what to do next. "She's gone," I confessed, my voice trembling. "I have no idea where to even begin looking for her."

My vision blurred as silent tears fell, and my head bowed again.

“I miss you, mom.” I used my sleeve to dry my cheeks, “and you, dad.”

The three of us sat in silence, the trees above the courtyard singing with the autumn air. I spoke to them for a few more minutes. I tried to make it quick, knowing that if I stayed longer I wouldn't be able to leave.

“I hope you get to meet her someday,” I murmured as I stood, dusting off my pants.

“I’d like to hear about this girl.”

My stomach dropped as I whipped around in alarm, my heart thumping rapidly once I met his silver completion.

+++++

U̧̢̼̹͓͇̮͈͕̰͑͗ͭ̂̐̓̾̇̑̀̑̌̅̈͟͢͞Ń̷̙͎͍̘͈̰̫̫̭̼͇̻̱͈̝̇͐̌ͧͥ̅͑̏̈̐̉ͫ͝͡͠K̷̴̷̸͇̤̝̥͓̤̖̣̇̏ͭ̇̇̍ͨ͞_̸̸̨̡͎̭̄NͨO̅͆WͨŅ̷̢̮̣̰͚̝̮ͫ̑̾ͤ͌̉̀ͧͪͅͅ

Soon, I’ll kill my final piece of evidence… and soon, I’ll have control of Fidelio.

+ We couldn’t save our lives but we’re here Drunk and fucked up so in love what we once had Now it’s over, one last time here On the streets but they lead nowhere

Time and time again we were not thankful for our gifts Things we took for granted like a sweet kiss on your lips We could have been at the start of our days but it ends Stories have been told

You’re so pretty when you’re drunk In a world like that

Chapter 11

Tags:@crimson-calligraphyx @lma1986 @spicywhenspeaking @sammyjoeee @shilohrosechicken

@princessmarshmallowx @laurpartyprogram @cookiesupplier @nojoyontheburn @lacktoesandtoddlerant

@veronicaphoenix @er3nslovergirl @cncohshit @scrumptiousfestivalpost @melcchs

@flowery-mess @mentallynot-here @judging-from-afar @darkmxgician @badomensls

@hoe-for-daddywise @philomenie @xxkittenkissesxx @venturethroughtheveil @thefallennightmare

@blend-in-with-the-madness @reyadawn @deathblacksmoke @anameunmusical @sitkowski

@anything-more-than-human @into-the-grey @amelia-acero @rumoured-whispers @artificialbreezy

[septembersghost]

resident queer gal from past messages here, got called a "hetlor" (*nervously* what the fuck) and a homophobe today for saying literally anyone and everyone is allowed to use lavender in any symbolic way they want. there's not a straight hair on my head, bitches! NOBODY OWNS COLORS! I feel like it's insane to gatekeep who can or cannot reference a color! colors have so many meanings and symbols throughout history, as do flowers? no one can "own" that, especially in art, or is Taylor a Communist for using red? lmfao touching grass is not enough for people, it's beyond earth, they need to spend time on the ISS.

sincerely wish i didn't understand any words in this message, but you continue to be the funniest and most iconic message sender. 👑💜

anyway, i saw someone tell someone else that it would, in fact, be oppressive to the community or send a weird signal if she (the commenter) chose to carry lavender roses/have lavender bridesmaids dresses at her wedding (this woman led with, lavender is my favorite color, are you saying it would be homophobic to use it at my wedding to a man...and the answer she got was yes?! no one offline would ever think this, i do not believe most of the queer community would ever say this), and i'm just. i can't believe that we've come to fighting over inane stuff like this or reading nefarious meaning into harmless things. these are the loud outliers though - every queer person i saw responding was disagreeing with those outlandish takes.

lavender (the flower) has symbolized love and devotion for centuries (it's literally in song of songs in the bible). the color has so many meanings. one doesn't erase another, they're all distinct and special within their own context. in the case of this song, taylor told us exactly what it means already. and she isn't merely using lavender, she's using the entire phrase, "lavender haze," as a poetic description of romance and commitment in her life. there should be no debate about this and i'm gobsmacked that it's turned into one. it makes me quite sad actually. it's the opening track of the album and there are already comments slamming it/saying it will be awful? i expect it to be beautiful and i'm so excited to hear it.

thinking about my anon who responded to me about the wonderstruck/enchanted connection with that color scheme, and what's captivating me is the fact that enchanted is one fleeting, magical moment in time, but a temporary one, just this briefly shimmering thing, and the description she gave for lavender haze is the true version of that - finding something that's lasting and doing your best to stay in the beauty of it.

moreover - and this may be the most important point - i feel this arguing is missing, if not erasing, the value of art, particularly music, and how we make it a part of our own selves. taylor's songs are her experiences, her self expression, her life, so of course her intent should be considered and respected, but that's not where our connection to music ends. we can say, taylor wrote this song about her six year relationship, and this is how she explained it to us, while ALSO saying, and it makes me think of [a personal romantic relationship, a friend, a favorite fictional character, there are endless possibilities!], and both things are true!!! our interpretations can coexist with her original meaning. people dictating/projecting what they want onto her and getting mad at her when they're wrong is not at all the same as saying, "this makes me feel ___, this reminds me of ___ in my life." we personalize the music uniquely and that's wonderful! that's a transformative thing that we can enjoy and hold close ourselves while still seeing the merit of her intent and what she shared with us.

tl;dr i'm sorry that happened to you, it's frustrating to have people who don't even know you or your identity cutting it down, but you have the right to speak your mind when you want to!

eta: btw anon, "touching grass is not enough, spend some time on the international space station" is my new go-to for any and all internet drama

[a-heart-of-flame]

Hi Safi, I am m 🏵️. I want to know about my first relationship? I just transitioned in my life right now and I think I am ready for a relationship so I wanted to know about anything about it. Maybe the person or where I meet them or how they see me. I don't know any insights you will have for me. I am a virgo rising

Hello M🏵️, Thank you for requesting a reading from me! Below the cut is your reading, and if you have any feedback for me once you've gone through it I would love to hear it ♥

I don't view Tarot as a way of predicting the future, but rather as a way of seeking insight into ourselves and our lives. With this in mind I phrased 2 questions for your request; 1. How does M seem to others? 2. What should M look for to find a happy and fulfilling relationship? Cards on the left are for 1. Cards on the right are for 2.

My Interpretation: 1. You come across to others as an enterprising and successful person. Someone who has gone through things and gained from them in a meaningful way. You seem grounded in yourself whilst seeking new experiences, not losing yourself in the search. However, you can also come across as a bit too quick to move on, in the sense of that through whatever experiences has gained you this great knowing of who you are, you've begun to hold on to that sense of self very tightly, perhaps to the point of not daring or allowing anything outside of this new worldview of yours to get close. [more on this in the second question] The 2 of Wands reversed in connection to Death gave me a feeling of perhaps needing to be "enchanted" or "enticed" by something or someone all the time in order for you to continue with the connection to it? Perhaps you are easily bored and move on from things fast because of this. Keep in mind this is how the cards spoke about how you appear to others, not necessarily who you are on the inside, but there might be something to consider there. 2. The cards suggest you look for things and people that give you a sense of Adventure! I immediately got an image of Bilbo Baggins in "The Hobbit" dashing through the green lane, contract and walking staff in hand yelling "I'm going on an Adventure!" when the Page of Wands jumped out. In theme with the 2 and 3 of Wands in the previous question Exploration and Adventure seems to be important for you. Exploring a new sense of self, a new lifestyle, a new hobby or a new partner does take curiosity and no small amount of bravery. Quite the same qualities expressed by Bilbo as he dashed after the company of Thorin Oakenshield. People and places that make you feel curious and bring out an earnest desire to know more, are good places for you to find connection. However, and this is where this reading got very deep and I will apologize in advance for any potentially triggering content regarding trauma; You would do well to find a way to express any anger, fear or shame you are harboring regarding difficult events in the past that may have been oppressive. Whatever it is that you are carrying with you, it needs to come out. You and your truth need to come out. This is not to say you should shout your darkest secrets from the rooftops, as that might be further endangering yourself! But the cards gave me a deep feeling of a need to express, to vent, to talk of whatever it is that you are a survivor of. Openness with yourself, and perhaps someone/s you trust is encouraged. Perhaps this is something you are trying to ignore even from yourself, perhaps it is something you have never told anyone else. It does not matter if you tell someone else, write it down in a private journal or acknowledge something quietly within yourself, but hiding it and suppressing it will only harm yourself and any future connection ♥ Because of this last message I felt urged to pull an Oracle Card for you to yield some further gentle advice regarding that tough situation;

The affirmation "I am stronger when I am supported and nurtured" might be beneficial to you. Perhaps there are people you could lean on for support, you do not have to go through everything alone! Most of all I felt a sense of "be kind to yourself" from this card. Give yourself time. Allow yourself to heal slowly, do not rush! Much Love, Safi

[definitearticle]

Dear Baby Boomers...

"When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression."

Older friends, come in! Sit down! I'm so glad you came.

Can I get you a water?

So listen. As your friendly neighborhood geriatric millennial, I need you to understand something. It's important, and it's going to hurt. But pain can be a sign of growth, and I want you to hear this from a friend. So know that this comes from a place of love.

So nu. I'm gonna ease into this by making sure we're on the same page with some ideas.

You know Bob Dylan's song, "The Times They Are A-Changin'," yeah? It might not have been THE anthem of your youth, but it's certainly one that's held up over time. It speaks to the ever-continuing cycle of change and the need for members of the previous generation (and those in power generally) to "get out of the [way] if you can't lend a hand."

Thing is, younger generations have been asking older generations to listen, to understand, and to help the culture progress since time immemorial. And older generations have traditionally pushed back. So your generation's experience of pushing your parents' generation into begrudging acceptance of civil rights, feminism, et al, isn't new.

But y'all came up with some great turns of phrase to express it. One of my favorites, technically coined by Jack Weinberg (5 years too old to be a Baby Boomer) was "Don't trust anyone over 30." It was an offhand phrase said in anger when Weinberg felt that the reporter interviewing him wasn't actually listening, but was instead looking for ulterior motives so that he could dismiss the message of his protest.

But the phrase stuck, and it was used not only as a rallying cry, but also as a talking point by older folks who wanted to dismiss the New Left as a bunch of whiny brats, rather than people we now know were on the right side of history regarding the war, police brutality, and so on.

So with that in mind, in the words of The Who, let's talk about MY generation, and the even younger generation just starting to come into their own.

You know how a few years ago, there were a whole lot of women in the #MeToo movement who were talking about their experiences with men and how they constantly feared sexual assault? And then you had a whole bunch of idiots coming on saying "Not all men!" because they weren't used to their demographic being the target of negative criticism? Yeah, they were idiots, and you knew it. Of course "not all men." But the MeToo movement wasn't about hating men. It was about hearing women and understanding their fears.

And by and large, you understood that. You were pretty solid on it. Good for you! No, seriously, I'm really proud of you for continuing the fight for feminism that you were on the front lines of back in your more enthusiastic years.

And you know how #BlackLivesMatter has been a thing for several years now, and how it's really a continuation of the Civil Rights movement that you grew up in? But of course, idiots tried to reframe the narrative by saying "All lives matter!" And you knew that that was just a smokescreen. Of course all lives matter, but once again black lives were being treated as if they don't matter. And the reason you recognized this was because was all familiar to you. It was the same scene you remember playing out on your 12" black-and-white screens decades ago, where protests erupted against an injustice (frequently assault or murder of an unarmed black man) and the resulting police violence shook the conscience of the country.

So you stood with BLM, or at the very least listened and acknowledged when it was explained to you. We appreciate it, truly. We do.

But here's the thing. You're not the only ones we were talking to. And a whole lot of the "all lives matter!" and "not all men!" crowd? They were from your generation. Now, not all of them, certainly. We definitely have our regressive stooges in Gen X and Millenial age groups. But let's be honest, a strong majority of the people raising a ruckus against "these kids today, with their PC woke brigade cancel culture" are members of the Baby Boom generation. And those who aren't? Well...they have the same kind of regressive attitude that comes from being the third generation out.

You know...like your parents and grandparents were when Dylan wrote his song. When your social circle embraced "Don't trust anyone over 30."

There's a frustration that comes from trying to explain something important to people who appear to not wish to listen to you, but are instead spending their time looking for reasons to discredit you, or make you feel inferior, or find any excuse to belittle you and the incredibly important message you're trying to express. When you get to that breaking point, you need a way to ripcord out of the conversation in a way that expresses not only that you're through pretending to maintain civil discourse, but also that you recognize that there was no intent for honest dialogue in the first place. You need a shorthand phrase for "You're a dishonest, condescending jerk who couldn't care less about doing the right thing or about the lives of anyone other than yourself. I am through wasting my time casting pearls before swine. Good day, sir! I SAID GOOD DAY!"

Weinberg felt it in his interview.

You've undoubtedly felt it yourself, countless times.

My generation feels it constantly. And we've come up with a pretty good phrase that encapsulates our frustration with those in power who've apparently forgotten the lessons of the past and are happy to sit in apathy in the middle of the road and never lend a hand.

And that phrase is "Okay, Boomer."

Oof. Yeah.

I know.

It stings. A lot.

And I can hear you screaming at me right now. "How dare you judge us based on our age! This is ageism, pure and simple! It's hate! Not all old people! All ages matter!"

Shhh, shhh, it's okay. You're in a safe space. We're friends. No one is judging you.

See, just like MeToo wasn't denigrating all men, and BLM wasn't saying that non-black lives didn't matter, the use of "Boomer" here is not about age. It's about the same progressive vs regressive divide you experienced when you were young, that was largely drawn along generational lines.

Not all Baby Boomers are "Okay, Boomers," and not all "Okay, Boomers" are Baby Boomers.

If you're with us on the issues, if you're supportive of people's self-identity and fight for equality, then it doesn't matter what age you are. You're gold.

But if you get told "Okay, Boomer," it's not about your age either. You've just been told that your approach to the conversation indicates to the speaker that you don't want to engage on the issues in an open and honest manner.

It means that you've probably hit a blind spot in your experience which is incredibly common and nothing to be ashamed of, but is also something that needs to be addressed.

It means you've upset the person talking to you, and they've given up trying to be reasonable with you.

It's not hate speech. It's not ageism.

It's a wake-up call. For the times, they are a-changin'.

Weinberg aged out of the demographic he framed in his statement 5 years after he made it. But from what I can find online, he continues to this day to fight the good fight. He was an anti-war activist and a union organizer before becoming a champion of environmental issues. He turned 81 earlier this year. A statistical tally in the Silent Generation, he was nonetheless clearly a member of a young Baby Boomer movement in their prime.

You can stick with us. Join your voice to ours like Weinberg joined his voice to your generation's. Like Martin Luther King (born 1929) did. Like Abbie Hoffman (1936), John Lewis (1940), Gloria Steinem (1934), Bertrand Russel (1872)...

There's plenty of room on the right side of history to be an older person that the young'uns can trust, a mentor we can talk to, someone who will actually *listen* to us and help us move the culture forward.

Or you can be someone who embodies the cause of the admonishment "Never trust anyone over 30."

But if you decide to do that, if you choose to close your ears to the pleas of the younger generation because they don't show you deference and respect? Then you're not a Baby Boomer, a phrase once used to dismiss your generation as youthful, idealistic, and unreasonable.

Then you're just an "Okay, Boomer."

[choco-mark]

A Marriage of Inconvenience (2)

overall pairing: mafia!jeno x mafia!oc

overall genre: angst | smut | fluff

warnings: language, mentions of violence + death, y/n wanting to kill jeno, jeno being an asshole, oppression of women, murder/homicide, jeno wanting to kill y/n

summary: when two mafia gangs decide to end their family feud after decades, your mother decides to give your hand away to marriage of their son, lee jeno. he seemed to hate you from the moment he laid his eyes on you, but could the resolution lead to something much more than a bride and groom?

words: 4.8k

masterlist

requested by 🤡 anon

18 April

It had been a few days since you blew up on Jeno, and thankfully he found you scary enough to stay away from you for a while. Mark had been visiting your room every now and then to send you messages from your fiancee (one of which had been ‘don’t go to the training room tomorrow,’ which gave you an extra reason to stay there longer than usual).

Today was the day of the mission, or at least, that was what Mark had told you this morning after handing you a box of battle clothing. You took one look at the color of the uniform, repelling it immediately before you realized the expense of the actual fabric and how protective it would really be.

Even the thin overcoat armor was bulletproof, as it was marked on the inner side of the jacket. The boots were heeled, making you a bit annoyed as you would’ve rather stuck with your own classic ones, but you couldn’t pass by the chance to step on someone’s very nice face for being an asshole.

As you were slipping on the last of your clothing, Mark came bursting in, nearly causing you to throw the nearest object at him. His eyes were blown wide open, darting around the room until he focused on you. “Is there anyone else in here?”

“No?” You placed down the glass vase back on the bedside table, walking towards him. “It’s just me. Are we leaving soon?”

Gulping, he nodded. “Yeah—we’re just missing a few people. They’re probably in the training room, or still getting ready. Um, you can come with me, though—Jeno wants to talk to you.”

You scowled at the sound of his name, wanting to do literally anything other than listen to the blond guy boss you around like he needed you to convince himself that he had power. You weren’t sure if he would ever get it; there was no way you were going to listen to anything he said, ever.

You walked down with Mark anyway, making sure to pocket your phone alongside you. Jisung had called you earlier, telling you quietly how he missed you and wanted to see you as soon as he could, and you had just chuckled, saying it would happen soon. It had hurt your heart, hearing your younger brother sound so broken over the call, but there was nothing you could give other than the empty promise of ‘maybe.’

Once you had reached the lobby, you noticed there was a line of Lee fighters, that were all (so surprisingly) male. Almost each and every one of them watched as you walked down the steps beside Mark, looking you up and down like you were some kind of specimen. It made you feel unknowingly self-conscious, having so many men stare at you without an ounce of remorse in their blood.

Jeno was in the corner, sitting next to an elderly but sharp looking man, talking intently with him until the man’s eyes fell on you. You wished you could have spat in his face from the way his eyes skimmed your body, a man who looked old enough to be your father. As you came closer, he stood up, giving you a slight bow, which you returned.

“Thank you for joining us, Y/N,” his voice was raspy, looking from Jeno to you, and then to Mark. “We’re glad to have one of the best soldiers in NCT Park for this mission, who is, I’ve heard, you? It’s an honor.”

Jeno gave an incredulous look to his father, looking at you with huge eyes that you thought they’d better burst from his sockets any moment soon. “Would you take a seat next to my son, miss?”

You cocked your head at the sound of formality, nodding slightly before sitting down stiffly beside Jeno, not feeling the man in front you had good intentions at all. Glancing over at your fiancee, you said, “I appreciate the deal you have fixed with my family; that is why I am here.”

The man nodded, looking up at Mark. “Your brothers are already on their way to the hideout, Mark, there’s no reason to go looking for them any longer. Get the cars ready, and make sure the system is set up before we arrive there. Okay, son?”

You had already found out from Mark that he himself was not a fighter, but a hacker instead. It explained why he always had an electronic device in his hands and why he had a notepad on deck every time he came to visit you; he was always ready, and dedicated to the cause. It reminded you of yourself.

He nodded, scurrying out of the room being followed by a few of the men. Jeno’s father leaned over, completely disregarding his son as he spoke to you. “We’re having you join Jeno’s team for this mission, so please effectively cooperate with him. Proper equipment is supplied in the van you’ll be taking alongside with the team, and if you need any assistance with weapons, my son will help you.” Jeno grumbled softly at the mention of himself, leaning back against the sofa.

“We are infiltrating the hideout for today, so we’ll only be providing blades for this mission. There shouldn’t be many people other than guards outside, and it will be an easy in and out mission for the treasure. Understood?”

You nodded. “And what of the mission? Is there anything I’m required to collect?” Jeno’s dad clicked his tongue at the sound of your voice, almost as if he disapproved of you talking. “Excuse me?”

“I understand you are a Park,” he continued, disregarding your question completely as he looked over to Jeno, who was sitting beside you. “And I am aware that your people raise their women as fighters, and I have nothing against it; any family shall wish to raise their children in any way they please. But in the Lee household, we do not condone any of the sort. You may have already realized that women are of a scarcity to the public eye, we like to keep it that way.”

Explains why your guys look at me like they want to eat me. You raised your eyebrow, scoffing internally at where this was going. What year are we in? Or rather, what century?

“Of course, I am sure my son has already informed you of your duties as his future wife, I believe?” The man pursed his lips, focusing steadily on Jeno. “And how to properly address all men with—well-deserved respect, of course?”

There was a flash behind your eyes, telling you that if you killed this man right now, everything coming out of his disgusting mouth would cease, but you had seen it coming anyway. The misogynistic nature of the palace, the way men looked at you like you were some kind of prey that should kept away like gold, it was very obvious.

But you plastered a smile onto your face, stopping Jeno as he began to speak. “Of course, sir. I am a Park after all, as you mentioned, so I believe it will take me some time before I can become accustomed to their new—expectations. My intention here is—well—to serve as you expect.”

Jeno’s father laid out a bright smile, showing that he believed your obedient antics as he stood up with a clap of acceptance. “I expected a bit of retaliation, as you are a Park, but you seem to have understood your position. I am glad, Miss Park, that you are able to fit our high standards.”

High standards my ass. You stood up shortly after, giving a small bow as he left, walking out of the room, presumably back to his office. With a roll of your eyes, you looked back at Jeno, who was standing next to you. “You assholes really are living in the 19th century, aren’t you?”

He ran a hand through his blond hair, glancing over at you in shock of how you had just spoken to his father versus himself. “You—what the fuck? You literally just said you’d listen!”

“Ignorant Lees,” you scolded, letting out a sound of pure disgust, thinking of the way his father had just spoken to you about women as if they were an object. “No wonder we hate you. Oppression of women like this is something you all should die for.”

But I can’t kill him yet. Jeno sighed at the sight of your defient figure, knowing that you weren’t about to give into the Lee ways. “You’re in our house now, might as well just act like a Lee too. Might make your life a lot easier.”

I need to know what they want from me first. I have to find out what their obsession with me is. “Life isn’t simple, Lee, and especially not mine. I will not ‘act’ like a Lee, and I will not hesitate to slice your ears off for being ignorant.”

“Can’t you just,” he rubbed at his temples, wondering how he was even going to control you during the mission, “act like a lady? Like a girl? Be nice and shit, you know?”

With a soft growl, you jabbed sharply at the man’s stomach, making him fall back into the couch with a loud thud, gaining the attention of the other fighters. You gave them all a little smile, waving them away as you turned back to the man you were supposed to call your fiancee. “You’re fucking crazy—”

You slapped both of his thighs, making all of the others look back at you as you straddled his lap, grabbing his neck between your hands. “Lee,” you said in a hushed tone, pressing a finger to his windpipe as he attempted to speak. “You’re young, you’re handsome, and you’re an absolute idiot. Use that brain of yours to think for a bit, just a little. Think of all the time women treated you so good, listened to you like you were their master.”

Jeno’s breath hitched as your grip on his neck tightened, his surprise turning to anger and then...arousal? “They were all on their knees for you, weren’t they? Giving you exactly what you wanted, when you wanted, making you feel like you were so in control. You liked that, didn’t you?”

“Women are not any less than men,” your tone was so soft now, but harsh in his mind as your hands grew hotter and hotter in his skin. “We never were. You are the same age as me, I am not any less important that you are and most certainly not because I am a woman.”

He didn’t know if he was supposed to be finding all of this so very hot, but he couldn’t help but want the grip around his neck to tighten. Jeno watched you with as steady eyes as possible, but you could see him faltering with your movements, letting you know silently that you had won this time.

“Watch your mouth, Lee,” you spat, a little louder as you got off of him, turning away to where Mark reentered the room, calling everyone out. “It could cause you some trouble in the real world.”

“I don’t really get it either,” Mark said, gaining your attention. “I mean—I heard you talking to Jeno. I don’t really get why my father’s always so—stupid about the whole gender thing.”

You were sitting in the back of the van, beside Mark as he attempted to show you his interesting gadgets that he had set up very intricately. It wasn’t that you were necessarily interested in whatever he was showing you, but rather that there was a less likely chance of you wanting to kill him over the other Lees or Jeno.

You nodded slowly, glad that at least one person had a bit of common sense. “I haven’t—seen any women around other than my servant. Where even—are they?” The question was more to yourself than to him, the curiosity of where they were hidden in the palace intriguing you.

“There are women in the house,” he continued, typing into a laptop that was showing some corrupt-looking software. “I—have sisters. They’re in the east wing, though, away from everyone else. They aren’t allowed out of their rooms unless they want to talk with the others, and there’s an old drawing room where they all gather.”

“Men aren’t really allowed in the east wing,” Mark glanced over at you, shining remorse in his eyes. “Not unless they’re married to them. Or if—it’s their mother. I visit my mom sometimes, but I haven’t seen my sisters since—well, a long time.”

“I mean, I used to sneak up there when I was younger to talk to my sisters—and Jeno actually used to come with me, but our father found us one day and—he wasn’t happy. He gave us a long lecture about how men and women weren’t equals and whatnot, it was basically just bullshit.”

“I still go though,” he let out a short cough, avoiding your gaze. “I see my sisters in my mom’s room all the time, but other than that—I really can’t.”

Your eyes widened at his words. They don’t allow siblings to see each other? What kind of—oppression is this? Isn’t it too much? You thought back to your home, where you had grown up alongside your baby brother your entire life, caring for him so deeply.

It hurt to even think about not having a relationship with Jisung; he was probably the only other person that you truly loved other than your mother. “Are you—serious?”

“Yeah,” his voice was smaller, the clash of the keyboard masking the pain as he gulped. “Um, we’re almost there. There’s—blades in the front, and like—other weapons and stuff. I don’t think you’ll need that many, anyway, we aren’t expecting much resistance anyway.”

“I will slice your arm off,” you hissed at one of Jeno’s teammates, scowling as they eyed you as if you were candy, but then widened their eyes at your harshness. “Which one do you want? I take requests everyday, you know.”

Jeno watched the scene from behind, stepping in to grab your arm and pull you away from them, sheathing the knife you had out back into the safety of your boot. You yanked yourself back, cursing at him for having such a tight grip, wanting to punch this man as well.

You looked so—confident, in Jeno’s point of view. Maybe a little too confident from the way you always stood straight and held yourself up as if you were more powerful than any other one of the Lees in the crowd currently, and he wanted to test it. He wanted to test to see if you, a woman, were just as confident as you portrayed yourself to the people.

“Why doesn’t Park go in first?” Jeno suggested out of nowhere, the sound rattling through everyone’s ears as they looked at him. “Unless, anyone else would like to volunteer themselves? You’re free to go.”

Silence rang through the air, making you look back at the men with an eyebrow raised, surprised that no one offered themselves. Mark scurried over to where Jeno was, whispering a short few words into his ear before his brother pushed him away, scowling. “I don’t really care.”

“—Is your friendly chatter over, Lee?” You asked with an amused expression, titling your head sideways at him as he glanced back over to you. “Shouldn’t you take the lead, as well, the leader of your unit? Or would you rather pass it down to a measly little Park?”

The last word was mockery, allowing a small smirk to break from your face as he stepped closer to you. “No, I’d rather test you. As the leader, I think I’d like to see what kind of skills my future wife supposedly has.”

Future wife. The title burned a fire inside your bones, urging you to move a step forward and stab him. Future wife my ass, fucker.

“If you insist,” you continued, turning around to avoid his stance. “I’ll move in first then, if it’s such a game for you Lees. The rest can follow.”

“Don’t order my men around.”

You clenched your teeth, shooting a sharp gaze to the blond man. “The rest can follow.” Disregarding his want to start another argument, you left him behind, moving past from behind the van to where the hideout was, guarded nicely by large guards.

You wished you had been given another weapon, because the knife inside your boot was not going to kill the two of them without adding suspicion to the other. Fuck Lees and their stupidass policies. They’re gonna get themselves killed.

Well lucky for them, they had you. The blade went soaring straight into the back of the first guard, a pierce to the heart as he fell a silent thud, making the other unaware as he was turned around. You made your move them, whipping your head back once before creeping towards the man, pulling the knife out as quietly as you could.

It didn’t seem to be completely quiet, however, since the other guard had whirled back to see you crouched over the now-dead man. He raised his glock, moving to shoot at you and missing as you sent the blade into the flesh of his shin, making him fall down.

Crawling over to the other man, you wrestled the gun out of his hands slipping it into your belt as you slit his throat with a quick motion, making sure to look away as you did so. As much as you had fought and killed all your life, the one thing you could never get over was the sight of a person loosing their life, no matter how horrible their deed was.

You stood up, looking back to where you had been hiding to see no one, your eyes rolling annoyingly. Jeno has most likely ordered the rest of his fighters to the back of the hideout, giving you absolutely no backup. Eithier he had full confidence in you, or he wanted you to die, and you knew it was the latter.

Moving past the gate, you scanned the area with a quick eye, realizing that there were no other guards to be seen. It was weird, even though Mark had told you before that many weren’t going to be there, but it was odd for a hideout to have less than ten guards. Perhaps, there were more in the back?

As you moved closer to the building, you hid on the side, pressing yourself against the wall as you eased closer to the door. Just as you did so, you felt a hand pulling the glock out of your belt, making your heart jump for moment before you put a hand over the gun and swiped with your other hand, hoping to get the person in the neck.

But a tight grip was met with your wrist instead, your eyes focusing on Jeno’s as he smirked in pride. The motion made you growl, twisting your hand out of his and raising your leg up quickly, giving him a hard blow to the abdomen.

“Fucking asshole,” you watched him collapse, groaning slightly as you stepped closer, and then took a step back. “Trying to play with me? Dangerous game, Lee. Stick to your gun play, maybe, I have better physical skills.”

Just as you turned your head, a hand was on your ankle, yanking you down harshly on top of the man. It was a slight miss, the knife skimming the end of his ear as you took account to what he just did. “Physical skills? Bullshit, Park. You’re weak.”

This wasn’t the place to do any of this, but you sat up hastily anyway, wrapping one hand around his throat as you did so. Judging from the way he liked it so much earlier, you expected that he would go limp when you did that, and the assumption was correct. Your knife pulled up from beside him, coming close to his face instead.

“I’m weak? You’re the one trying to kill me when we’re here for other purposes.” You were tempted to nick his gorgeous face, let just a drop of blood trickle down those sharp features. “All you have is strength, Lee. No brain, no logic, not even a bit of skill.”

Climbing off him, you watched as he shook himself back to his senses, the huge eyes being replaced by his rough ones. “Are you admitting to not having strength then, Park? Because I’ll have to agree with you on that.”

“You’re such a child,” you said for the second time, the words hitting him with a roll of his eyes. “No wonder all you Lees are so competitive, it must be a hereditary disease. The need to be the best, what a joke.”

Jeno’s eyes flashed with your mockery towards his family, his eyes moving quickly to a new guard standing behind you, aiming with a glock towards your head. He wasn’t sure if the guard even noticed him, but he definitely thought he didn’t when a bullet went through his head, marking his death immediately.

“You talk to much but do so little,” he looked over at you, grabbing you by the arm and shoving you forward. “You haven’t proved shit to me yet, then, and I don’t care if you think my family is competitive. We fucking are, and we like to win.”

“Start boasting about skill when you’re the highest family of NCT,” he nudged you towards the entrance. “I haven’t even seen the Parks on the chain, and you know why? Because you cannot win.”

The two of you were now inside the building, pressed against the wall as you tried not to screech back. “Not everything is a game, Lee.”

“Wrong,” the both you were now at the end of the hallway, his breath hot in your ear. “The entire world is a game, Park. We’re all just a bunch of players.”

The last syllable of his word ended with a loud clink to the front of the two of you, a grenade being thrown to end of the hallway. It burst almost immediately, and surprisingly, smoke covered the area instead, the disgusting scent filling up your lungs fully.

Jeno gave out a violent cough, covering his mouth as he attempted to see through the dark colors, his eyes straining as smoke filled his vision. There wasn’t supposed to be anyone inside, it was just the drugs that they were here for, stocked high in the hideout which was barely guarded.

But he knew something was wrong, when he reached forward with his hand to feel nothing but the air, your presence completely gone. “Park? PARK?!” Jeno stretched out both his arms, feeling around him as his heart sped up, his skin only meeting the cool brick of the wall.

Fuck, he had messed up. He had one job, and that one job was to make sure you were safe. It was supposed to be easy, a way to mock you through this whole mini mission, and he had promised his father that he would look after you. You, of course, were the prize after all.

Even Mark’s warning with bright in his head from earlier, the ‘she can’t get hurt, or else you know what’ll happen’ that he had ignored with a thought of ‘nothing will happen.’ “Park?! Fuck, Park! Where the fuck are you?!”

His voice was loud, almost an imitation of himself as he heard it echo through the hallway, not a person in sight or feeling distance. “Jeno!”

Jeno whipped his head back at the sound of his name, the sound being all too familiar as he saw a light at the end of the hallway, the door being wide open as he moved closer, his vision covering him from seeing anything. As he got closer, his knees bucked, almost making him fall before the owner of the voice yanked him out, pulling him back outside.

“Did you see who set it off?” Mark pulled his brother up, his eyes scanning the other’s as he coughed out the rest of the smoke. His mind was going haywire right now, and he wasn’t sure if it was from the smoke or from the fact that he had completely lost you— “Jeno!”

He pushed off Mark from his body, making the other man stumbled back as he took a seat against the wall, leaning back as he rubbed at his eyes. “I fucking—”

Jeno closed his eyes again, thinking back only seconds ago to where he had just murmured into your ear, the bomb going off right as he finished. There was no way you had gotten out, he would’ve been able to at least see you make your way back.

Your presence had gone almost as quickly as it was there, like you had vanished in a single moment, as if you had never existed in the first place. He grabbed his hair in his hands, letting out a low snarl. “She was fucking—right there! Right there, Mark! She was right, fucking—in front of me. I w-was talking to her, and the bomb went off and she literally vanished.”

“You lost her?”

If only he had been more aware of what they were actually doing there, and the mission they had to finish quickly, maybe he wouldn’t have taken his time to mock you. But it wasn’t true, he would’ve done anything in his power to prove that you were less than what you seemed, and it was exactly what he tried to do, while loosing you in the process.

The smoke had dissipated after a few minutes, and a few of Jeno’s team came out the door, hands full of suitcases and bags. Even when inquired by him, they swore that it wasn’t them that set off the bomb, and that it must’ve been a trap that the owners of the hideout set up. But it didn’t make sense, when they told him that they searched the whole building and found no one; there was no fucking way that you could’ve gone away that easily.

“Maybe she ran away?” One of the men whispered to the other, making Jeno perk up to them. “That’s all girls can do anyway, fucking run away from problems like the filthy sluts they are. She should’ve stayed inside like a good girl.” The sound of degradation going to your name set something off inside of him, making him step closer to the batch of men as they chuckled heartily.

“Watch your mouth, soldier,” he grabbed the first one by the collar, pulling him up to his face. “I’ll make you bleach your tongue clean if I hear words like that coming out of you again, hear? You’re talking about Park Y/N, one of the highest ranked soldiers of NCT, and I expect some respect would go to her. Hear?”

Jeno shook of the guy, pushing him back as he turned to Mark, who was watching the scene with wide eyes. There was no way he had just defended your name, no fucking way he had just told his men to respect a Park. But that was what he did, and it had to be done; there was no denial that you were a better fighter than any of them there, even though he wouldn’t have admitted that only a few minutes ago.

And there was no way that you had run away, and he knew it. A Park never ran away from a fight, and regardless you, you were beyond any of the other Parks that he had met in the past. You sounded like you were of a higher breed, so much pride in your body that you wouldn’t have fled like a lower clan member. It was just all in the matter of where you had gone, or rather, who had taken you.

“Jeno, we have to go back,” Mark finally spoke up, his eyes trailing his brother’s as he looked up at him. “I know, I know, but we have to. Father will get—suspicious.” But he would get more suspicious when the team came back, the prized woman he was supposed to watch, gone from their hands in an instant.

He was right, the entire world was a game play, just filled with every human as tiny pawns that were unknown to the common world. But you weren’t a tiny pawn to the Lees, especially not to Jeno’s father, you were the queen on the large chess board, protecting yourself and everyone you. Yet he was wrong, wrong about your weakness, but his heart was bursting inside of him as he looked towards the ground.

“Let’s go, then.”

previous | next

well, part two!! so jeno’s not a COMPLETE asshole this time, but i think he still fits the POV. this took a while as well, so i hope y’all enjoyed and be rrrready for the next (and maybe final?) part!!

[mayihavethisdanse]

Stress Response

Waypoint Echo, 2288

We are left alone, without excuse. That is what I mean when I say that man is condemned to be free. Condemned, because he did not create himself, yet is nevertheless at liberty, and from the moment that he is thrown into this world he is responsible for everything he does.

Jean-Paul Sartre, “Existentialism is a Humanism” (1946) 

"Ready, Paladin?" 

“Just about.” 

Danse shielded his eyes and squinted through the half-light. These clouds would probably send a radstorm somewhere else in the Commonwealth, but this close to the Glowing Sea, the drizzle had the opposite effect. The terrain was irradiated to hell, of course, but the rain actually seemed to keep the rads at bay. Slightly.

It wouldn't last, but that was one reason they wore Power Armor.

"Equipment's good to go. We should be at the site by noon," he tossed off in the sergeant's direction. "If you don't hear from us by nightfall, assume something's wrong. Air support might be—what is it, Haylen?"

"Orders for you, Paladin."

"What? From the Prydwen?"

"Yes, sir. Here."

Haylen tapped at the terminal and then stood back, letting Danse take her place to bend his neck down at the dim screen. It was a pain to use these things in armor, but at least the message was brief. A terse order to remain on site and see the munitions safely back to headquarters. Which meant…

Maxson knows.

It was the only thing Danse could think. The orders would have been unremarkable except for the explicit and unambiguous instruction that he return alone. Something was wrong. A reassignment? A reprimand?

He tried to keep his face neutral despite the hot flush of humiliation. Knight Williams stood across the outpost and it seemed there was still some mercy left in the wasteland, because her headlamp illuminated the woods in the opposite direction. Her armor glinted dully, a sheen of radioactive rain still clinging to the steel, but for once Danse's thoughts weren't on the possibility of rust.

Yes. It had to be about Cecily Williams. Maxson must have suspected Danse was getting too attached to his knight. Or he'd determined that Danse's priorities were out of order, just as he'd warned him against at the outset of this experimental partnership. Either way, Danse wasn't looking forward to explaining himself.

It would still be better than letting Williams take the blame for his own folly. The Elder had always been suspicious of her motives. But Maxson didn't know her the way Danse did. And he couldn't know that nothing else had happened between the two of them.

Honestly, Danse was a little offended that anyone would think it might have. He might have been quietly enamored of one of his soldiers, yes, but he was first and foremost a Brotherhood paladin. He'd die before he jeopardized the mission. And—it stung to think, but he suspected it was true—it might be for the best if he and Williams went to separate teams. He thought he was in control of his feelings, but he was hardly objective. If there was a risk of favoritism impairing his decisions in the field...

Damn. He'd have to face the music.

But there was no time for distractions. Their objective was of the utmost importance and he'd chosen their time of departure carefully. There was another hour before sunrise, and Danse wanted to be well into the Glowing Sea by then.

He stepped away from the terminal and snapped on his helmet.

"Ready now?" called Williams a second time from her spot at the perimeter, her voice filtered through the respirator.

"Ready," he asserted as he strode to her side. It might be the last time they set out on a mission together, but he'd be damned if he gave her any hint of that. She didn't need any more distractions.

"Good luck out there, you two," said Haylen. "Don't come back as ghouls, okay?"

"We've got it, Haylen. See you."

A final chorus of Ad Victoriam all around, and they were off.

(Continued under the cut. Also on AO3.)

The trek through the Glowing Sea was less miserable than their first had been. It wasn't scorchingly hot, for one thing, and they'd left the bulk of their gear at the outpost. A lighter burden let them move faster. If the maps were accurate, they were a few hours' hike from their destination.

"Less miserable" was still pretty damn miserable, however. Williams led the way and Danse turned frequently to check their backs. The rain impeded visibility and soaked through the gaps in their armor. He kept his headlamp on.

The edge of the Glowing Sea reminded him more of the Capital Wasteland than anywhere else in the Commonwealth. In a way, the outskirts were worse than the crater itself. That might as well have been an alien landscape or the site of some natural disaster. It held few reminders of anything to do with mankind, but here… as they passed a church, then a battered Red Rocket and an isolated bit of highway, there was no escaping the thought that humanity had brought this hell down on itself. His furiously clicking Geiger was a constant reminder of the rads they were subjecting themselves to. The Power Armor offered decent shielding, but this terrain really wasn't fit for human travelers.

Even if certain other things seemed to thrive. Danse caught a glimpse of a familiar and ominous shadow on the horizon—or what passed for the horizon when visibility was so poor. It was probably only a few dozen yards away.

"I don't think we're alone," he told his partner over his helmet radio, reaching for his rifle and searching the cliffs for movement even as he switched off his headlamp. "Reduce illumination levels."

"What is it?”

"Deathclaw. Seven o'clock. Might be stalking us."

She dropped into a crouch and swore. "We should detour."

"No. I don't want to get too far off course." Forget the wildlife, the terrain and the radiation would do them in. "If we get into trouble out here, that'll be it."

The knight let out a puff of laughter. "A deathclaw doesn't count as 'trouble'?"

"Just advance cautiously. Don’t engage if we can avoid it.” He checked the terrain again, assessing the threat, before turning back to Williams. "Let's move out."

In the dim light, she was just a silhouette in Power Armor. "All right, Paladin. Watch my back."

"Roger that."

The sun was rising around them, but the only real sign of it was the brighter glow of the fog. The two of them kept down and moved at a slower pace than before. Danse's nerves hummed with uncomfortable and competing desires to either flee or face the threat outright. He hated creeping along like a radroach.

As they advanced, an old radio tower emerged slowly from the fog ahead. He tracked their progress against its position, still monitoring their surroundings, until Williams dropped into a low crouch four paces ahead. Then she held up her arm in a signal he knew.

Danse reached for his rifle.

Fire and maneuver. Williams stayed in place, Danse looped around, and luck was on their side today because it was only a few minutes later that they stood over the body of a Deathclaw. The thing was glowing with radiation; it sent his Geiger into a new frenzy.

"We can't stay here," Williams said.

"No."

They moved away from the corpse and continued on south. Really, they couldn't reach the site soon enough for peace of mind. Danse's heart rate was still faster than it ought to have been, and it wasn't just the excitement of combat. This place set him on edge. It was... haunting. It was impossible to ignore the grimness of it as he scanned their surroundings.

Hard to imagine that Williams had seen the bomb drop. Hell, half the time he forgot where she'd come from. She was so sure of herself, so steady in the face of the world's horrors, that it put him to shame.

Danse glanced back at his partner. He couldn't see her face behind the helmet, but he could hear her when she said, "We're getting close."

"It's right there." He pointed ahead to a series of shadowy shapes through the fog. Broken towers, radioactive pools—and a large, blank pyramid behind them. That was their destination.

They skirted the radioactive pools and paused, staring in unison at a pair of abandoned bomb crates lying out in the open.

After a long moment, Williams started and checked her six. "Excuse my lapse in attention, Paladin."

"It's all right." It was his fault as much as hers, anyway. "Let me try to reach Haylen."

But as he'd expected, there was too much interference on the main Brotherhood frequency. Only an occasional gurgle broke the static.

Danse shook his head. "No go."

"Oh, well. It was worth a shot."

He looked back one last time when they reached the door.

The weather conditions had worsened significantly. A distant bolt of lightning lit up half the sky and whether it was his imagination or his laser rifle, he could have sworn he smelled the ozone even through his respirator.

"Let's swap positions," he said. "I'll take point."

She laughed a little wryly. "After you, Danse."

This facility had definitely been more than a disposal site. He said as much to Williams.

“Launch silo,” she repeated dully, leaning over the edge of the railing and peering down into the darkness. “Fantastic.”

"All right. Let's see what's down there."

The light was dim inside the silo, and the air was stale and almost immobile. Even through the filters of his helmet it was oppressive. That he was not imagining. But even the stale air was preferable to the stench that filled his lungs whenever they caught an updraft: standing water and dry rot, ferals and whatever rancid prey they'd dragged in from the Sea.

"Ugh," said Williams over her suit's radio as they passed a picked-over carcass of the latter. "This is disgusting."

"I'm in full agreement with you there, soldier."

He couldn't see her face, but he could hear the smile in her voice as she said, "We never go anywhere that isn't."

"There's always the Prydwen."

"The Prydwen is disgusting, too. We don't all have our own private quarters like some people. Have you forgotten how rank it gets in the barracks?"

"No," he said dryly. The distinct odor caused by too many feet in close quarters with insufficient ventilation was a common observation of new recruits. And old ones. "It's almost as bad as the mess hall."

"Was that... a joke? Paladin, I'm ashamed of you."

Before Danse could respond, a pale shadow flickered in the corner of his eye—

"We got ferals!" he shouted.

The site was full of ferals, in fact. They mowed through them diligently as they descended further into the structure. It was unpleasant work, but not difficult from their position, and the two of them worked well as a team. Battlefield cohesion had never been a problem with her.

With the premises cleared, they removed their helmets. Her face was averted, but she seemed to be holding up all right. Cecily Williams really did make a natural soldier. And she'd learned in the field: she searched the bodies of the ghouls with a professional detachment that she hadn't quite had when she joined the Brotherhood.

"Anything of interest?" he called as she crouched to inspect a corpse.

She looked back up at him, and for all his good intentions it was a struggle not to stare; it wasn't normally his way, but he was only human. She really was beautiful, despite—maybe because of—the scars that streaked down her face and twisted her lip, or the faint bruises that lingered nearly a year after her injuries. She just looked like… home.

Which was a preposterous thought. They were on a mission and home was where he'd be sending her shortly. It wasn’t for Danse to question Maxson’s decisions.

"Nothing," she said with remarkable good cheer. "Unless you're interested in a toothbrush or an extremely outdated newspaper."

"I think we can pass."

"Seems like these people were settled in here for the long haul, doesn’t it?"

Whatever preparations they'd made hadn't helped them survive the apogee of human arrogance. Danse shrugged off the observation as he and Williams made their way further back through the tunnels. The underground complex was a maze, but he thought they were heading back the way they’d come, away from the pyramid and toward the silent towers. At one point Knight Williams clambered through a hacked-out hole in the wall. He followed a moment later.

"Something like a control room down the hall," she said in a low voice. "And I see a blast door. I think we found the place."

"Outstanding."

Danse paced a few feet away. It was unexpectedly difficult to look directly at her.

"You should return to the airport immediately, Williams. I'll remain on watch until the vertibirds arrive."

He forced his eyes back to find her staring at him in apparent disbelief.

"You want me to go back on my own?"

"Without that deathclaw, the route we took should be clear. I know you can handle yourself out there. Here."

Williams stared at the assortment of supplies—extra stimpaks, RadAway, water—he held out to her. "That's ridiculous. Why don't I wait with you?"

He couldn't think about the dangers. Orders were orders. "I don't have a choice."

"But—"

"Dismissed, Knight."

She stared at him for another half a second. Then she nodded, collected his supplies, and turned to go. The heavy steps of her Power Armor echoed through the empty silo, followed by the distant bell of an elevator.

And then there was nothing but the clicking of his Geiger counter to keep Danse company.

That and a stockpile of nukes.

He swallowed the faint pang of distaste and directed his thoughts to the greater good. Overwhelming force was the most efficient way to secure the Commonwealth and ensure the long-term survival of its people. Liberty Prime would give the Brotherhood the upper hand against the Institute—and then some. That was all that mattered.

It would take a while for the message to be relayed. He kept his rifle at the ready, just in case; they'd dealt with the ferals, but there was still that cultist and his robot in the control room. Cecily had pacified the lunatic for now, but God only knew if he'd stay calm. And it was critically important to keep those bombs in Brotherhood hands.

He kept his safety off, too. Just in case.

An hour passed without incident, then another. Danse paced in growing disquiet, keeping half an eye on the control room above, but there was no sign of activity. His head was starting to ache. Williams should have reached the edge of the Sea by now, and Haylen should have relayed their position to the Prydwen. All he had to do was wait and try not to lose his mind.

As the minutes ticked by and turned into yet another hour, Danse began to find that task harder than he should have. He should have let Williams wait with him. Orders were orders, but he could have used his discretion as a field officer to make a different call than sending her back alone.

What if she had run into trouble outside? The Glowing Sea was a damn nightmare. Had he sent her out alone just to prove to Maxson—or to himself—that he could? That he wouldn’t let personal attachment get in the way of sending yet another person under his command to their death? He'd had so many close calls with Williams already. He should never have allowed himself to form such an attachment in the first place.

The throbbing in his head grew stronger. It had been too long. The vertibirds should be here by now. Danse shifted his weight uneasily and turned into the shadows to watch the door.

And then the chatter of static came on the radio in his helmet.

"Check—come in, Danse—"

Adrenaline flooded his body. The signal was so distorted he didn't recognize the voice. How was a signal even reaching him down here? Had Williams come back after all? He snatched for the switch of his transceiver.

"This is Paladin Danse. Go ahead."

"You need to get out of there. There’s an alert out for you. Over."

"What the hell are you—is that Haylen?"

But the voice on the radio didn't answer. From this location, it was impressive he'd picked up that much: the pulser beacon relayed his position, but that was all.

"What do you mean, an alert?" he said to the empty room.

But there was a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. He'd known something was wrong—but this didn't seem like…

He tried the secondary Brotherhood frequency, then another. This time his radio picked up a clearer signal. Local.

The constriction in his throat eased, replaced by annoyance at the sloppy security protocol. He'd have to have a word with these soldiers' commanding officer.

And then the words they were speaking came through.

"I still can't believe it. How did Quinlan find out?"

"Some intel Danse's new pal brought up from the Institute. Bet he regrets bringing her on board now."

“Double-crossing traitor."

Danse paused on the verge of pressing the push-to-talk button on his transceiver.

"A synth. Who'd have fucking thought it."

"I don't know. I always thought there was something a little off about Danse.”

Down at the loading bay, Danse stood at a loss for words. What kind of sick joke—what were they—

The voices continued. "Pulser's going nuts. Definitely the place. Tracker on his suit says we’re close. Where the hell is he?"

"Must be further down. Look at all these—argh! Disgusting ferals."

“All clear?”

“Looks like. Try the tunnel.”

Danse switched off his radio with haste. And he listened. It was only a moment before the heavy clanking of Power Armor on metal walkways echoed through the silo. It was still distant, but they wouldn’t be long now. Not with that trail of feral corpses to follow. And the blast door was open.

It didn't matter. If it was a mistake... it had to be a mistake... they could sort it out later. But he wouldn't be able to do that if he was killed before he could speak to Maxson. To someone who could explain what was going on.

The Geiger counter clicked as furiously as his racing thoughts. They'd find him in a matter of minutes. He wasn't going to fight his brothers, and he couldn't…

What the hell could he do?

It was probably less than a minute before he decided, but it felt like longer. Even the Geiger seemed to slow as his thoughts converged. His mind focused like a scope on a target. One target, one thought: he had to get out of the godforsaken Glowing Sea.

There was nothing else worth taking from this site. Ferals with their rags. Some ancient debris, the crazed cultist upstairs…

He suddenly regretted giving Williams his extra supplies.

Survival was a long shot, but it was a calculated risk. He'd have better odds facing a Deathclaw naked than a vertibird full of Brotherhood soldiers set on capturing or killing an enemy combatant.

And there was no doubt they'd been given one order or the other. Any synth in the Brotherhood would be bad enough, but Danse was a paladin. If they thought he was an infiltrator... hell, he knew the order he'd have given.

There was nothing for it. His hazmat suit was back with the rest of their gear at the outpost with Haylen. His flight suit and hood provided a limited amount of radiation shielding. If he was lucky, they’d keep him alive. He could only avoid any obvious hotspots and hope not to encounter any hostiles.

It wasn’t impossible, even here in the most dangerous part of the Commonwealth. Danse could be stealthy if he had to. As a Brotherhood soldier, he rarely had to. It was one of the things he liked most about his job.

Had liked. One way or another, this would be the end of his career.

Danse pressed the hydraulic release valve and stepped out of his Power Armor.

Sentinel Site Prescott, 2288

When a man commits himself to anything, fully realising that he is not only choosing what he will be, but is thereby… deciding for the whole of mankind–in such a moment a man cannot escape from the sense of complete and profound responsibility.

Jean-Paul Sartre, “Existentialism is a Humanism” (1946)

The clicking of the Geiger counter stopped. It left an unsettling stillness in its wake and for an agonized moment, Danse wished Williams were still here.

No. It was better she was gone. Better she didn't know anything. If Danse had to go down, the last thing he wanted was to drag her with him. And right now, with Brotherhood soldiers approaching, he needed to keep his head more than ever.

He stepped away from the empty suit of Power Armor, leaving it to stand silently in the shadows between walls of munitions crates, and secured his weapons and pack. Then he crouched low and crept to the door of the loading bay, trying to stay out of the light. His uniform suit allowed for better stealth than Power Armor did, but the damn thing was still bright orange.

He waited, still keeping low, and hardly jolted at the first blast of laser fire overhead. So much for pacifying the cultist.

The momentary distraction of the soldiers gave him the break he needed to make a run for it. But which way? The freight elevator would take him the way Williams had gone, out of the silo and into the Sea, but it was exposed. Bright light, the creak of the lift mechanism—there was no way they'd fail to notice his escape.

His body insisted run, but he forced himself to think it through. The blasts of laser fire from the control room would cover the noise from the lift mechanism.

Danse hit the call button just before the firing stopped.

He froze. And then he moved, staying low, away from the creaking elevator and back the way he'd come in. It was still a maze of shadowy tunnels, but perhaps this time that would work to his advantage. It was good for him that they'd killed the cultist, actually. No one else could say they'd seen Danse flee. Not even Williams. He rounded a corner to—

More Brotherhood soldiers, racing in as backup. Of course there were more. If they weren't looking for him yet, they would be in a moment. Danse ducked behind a drainage pipe in the nick of time and found himself knee-deep in a pool of rancid standing water.

If he'd thought the stench of bloated mole rat corpses was bad before, without his helmet it was all but unbearable. But he stayed there, letting the tepid water soak into his boots and trying not to breathe too deeply, until the main tunnel was clear.

It looked like he'd have to take the elevator after all.

Danse had one stroke of luck, which was that no one had reacted to the clattering arrival of the elevator. It was still there, waiting for him, so he crept aboard and hit the button. And took a deep breath.

When he turned around, he found himself face to face with the grinning corpse of a Glowing One, splayed over a pile of crates in a macabre sort of invitation. Danse cursed, hoped there was still a remnant of Rad-X in his system, and nudged the grotesque thing away with the butt of his rifle.

Probably just as well he didn't have the Geiger. All it could do was tell him exactly how quickly he was killing himself.

At the top, he left the platform as quickly as he could and braced himself before the last door to the outside world. If he'd gauged his position correctly, he was in one of the towers northeast of the pyramid. Depending where exactly the vertibirds had landed, he might still have a chance to escape.

Slowly, he pushed open the door.

He wasn't in the vertibirds' direct line of sight. Good. Their propellers were visible over the crest of the hill, but that was fifty yards away at least. Danse breathed slightly easier. He'd still need to move carefully, though. It was highly probable they'd set a sentry.

A loud creak spurred him into action. Someone below had just called the elevator back. It seemed his streak of luck was over.

Danse stepped out onto the landing and felt the hot air hit his body like a wall. A flash of lightning revealed, just for a second, the shape of the Prydwen hovering over the horizon. A cruel irony. Well, at least he could orient by it.

He moved cautiously out further on the ancient grille, but the metal didn't even creak under his weight. That was abnormally jarring. Danse wasn't a small man, but he was accustomed to moving in Power Armor in the field. His proprioception was all off.

Dropping from a height wasn’t as easy as he was used to, either. But the ground was soft under his boots. He hoped it was from the rain and not from the radioactive sludge that circled the base of the concrete tower like a moat. Since there was nothing to be done about it either way, he didn't take the time to examine things more closely.

He just ran.

When he looked back, he regretted it. One, then two knights in Power Armor stood on the metal platform, scanning the terrain.

So he ran faster.

He didn't keep up the pace for long. Just far enough that he was out of firing range. It was enough to start. They didn't seem to have identified his direction.

He wasn't sure of the time, only that it was past sunset. The Glowing Sea never fully darkened, and the rain had stopped while they were inside, but the clouds lingered and visibility was still poor. Under the circumstances, that might work to Danse's advantage. Speed and stealth were the only way he'd get out of here. He only had a few things on him besides his guns. Food, less than he'd like. Ammo, less than he'd like. Two cans of water and that was it. He didn't even have his damn radio.

He stumbled over more signs of Williams: bloatfly corpses, half dissolved in plasma, and the familiar footprints of T-60 that disappeared into the dunes. He'd been right: his knight could take care of herself. It didn't keep the cold sweat from his skin, knowing he’d left her to face this hellscape on her own. Knowing why, exactly, he'd been ordered to wait alone.

He could hear the familiar rumble of a vertibird circling overhead. It had been a very long time since he found that sound menacing. Now, taking cover behind a boulder, he squinted up at the sky. What the hell were they doing? They needed to get those nukes back to the…

They were searching for Danse. Not just searching: hunting. If he’d had any lingering doubts as to their objective, the fact that it was a gunship rather than a transport would have eliminated them.

But his cover held. The lancers flew low and then they moved on.

Danse moved on, too. He counted his breaths. Paced himself. He knew how to survive in the wasteland. When he scrambled over rubble and crept past mutant-infested ruins, it was with thirty-something years of experience in doing just that.

...wasn't it?

No wonder they were hunting him. He'd gone AWOL. Deserted, even. He'd left his power armor—he'd even left the fusion core, goddamn it—and he'd abandoned the bombs in express defiance of his orders. Never mind that the Brotherhood soldiers had arrived before he left. He'd made a snap judgment to flee and now he had to live with the consequences. If there hadn't been a price on his head before, there would be now, even if it proved that Danse was exactly who and what he thought he was.

It didn't matter. All that mattered was getting out of here before he turned into a damn ghoul instead. He could assess the situation fully once he was in a secure location. He couldn't spend the night here in nothing but a flight suit. He’d have to power through.

He even had a destination in mind. A fortified bunker near Malden–a fallback point for his recon team. They'd never used it. Haylen knew about it, but Haylen knew all the same fallback points he did. And if that had been her on the radio earlier… well. It would make as good a safehouse as any, and better than most.

The route was another decision point. Danse had two options: the brackish marshes and fens south of Boston, which would require traveling through the city itself and skirting uncomfortably close to the airport, or following the highway north past the Brotherhood waypoint and God knew what else.

He went north.

He still didn’t have enough water. He eyeballed a pond but passed it without stopping. If the radiation didn't get him, he'd be lucky if stomach cramps were the best of it.

Fortunately, he did scavenge one single can of water at the relay tower. The relay tower that was… operational? They’d passed it on the way in. He didn’t remember seeing any lights before…

Knight Williams. Of course. She'd brought the relay online. That was how he'd been able to pick up Haylen’s signal: Williams. Was there anything she couldn't do?

He'd asked her that question once and been startled by her response. It was one of the only occasions he could recall her snapping at him. She usually brushed off the things that bothered her with a light quip.

Not that time.

"What can’t I do? Take your pick. Save my husband. Find my son. Turn back time so none of this ever happened."

He didn't know what to tell her.

She looked away.  "Do you have a family, Paladin Danse?"

Danse shrugged. "I have the Brotherhood," he said.

He didn’t make it as far as he would have liked before the storm showed signs of returning. He had to find cover before the rain started up again. Fleeing unarmored and unequipped was one thing; doing it soaking wet was another. Every crack of thunder reminded him of the damage his body was taking. Even machines could only stand up to so many rads before the damage was irreversible...

Drawing on every bit of training and every year of practice controlling his emotions—fighting every natural inclination he had—Danse shoved the thought from his mind. The question of his identity could be dealt with later. Right now, he needed shelter to survive.

He found a semblance of it, eventually, in an ancient church half-sunk into the ground. He climbed in through a hole in the roof. He was probably still taking more rads than he ought to, but this was better than being out in the open.

Unfortunately, he wasn't alone. Stirrings of movement caught his eye just in time before he dropped to the lower level. He didn't have his headlamp, but he didn't need it: those scrabbling sounds meant more damn ferals. If he'd had the ammo to spare, he could have fired on them from above. If he'd had his armor, he could have gone down there and gone hand-to-hand with the mob. But he had neither.

Which meant he couldn't stay here long. If one of the disgusting things figured out how to climb to the upper level where Danse stood, the others would follow.

Maybe he could just… sit for a moment. The weather might be clearing: peering up through the broken rafters, Danse could even see a few stars through the luminous, omnipresent clouds. He must be almost to the edge of the Sea. He could afford a moment’s rest.

But his mind was blurring. He drank his last can of water in a few gulps but it didn't quench his thirst. He was hot, but he found he was shivering. Dehydration? Bad sign. Running a fever? That wasn’t a good sign, either.

Neither was vomiting over the railing into the nave of the church. It had been some time since Danse had last felt the symptoms of radiation sickness, but they were unmistakable. He'd never make it out of here if he didn't keep moving and get some help. It couldn't be far to the Brotherhood waypoint…

For a moment, confused by fatigue and radiation, he forgot who he was fleeing and why. And then memory struck like the lightning that illuminated the sky through the rafters.

He crawled up the stairs, as far away from the wakeful ferals as he could get, and his fumbling hands hit something in the darkness with a familiar metallic ting. A first-aid box. There had to be something inside. Maybe more water, maybe some stims—Rad-Away if he was lucky—

Frantically, he peeled off his gloves and pried it open, scraping his knuckles on the raw-edged steel to find...

Nothing. Not a damn thing.

The Capital Wasteland, 2286

The hum of the Prydwen's engines was quieter in the sick bay than in his own quarters. After a sleepless night, Danse resented the relative silence. His head was still throbbing and the lights were all too bright.

"I don't see a date of birth here," remarked Cade finally. "You're how old?"

"About thirty-four. Give or take."

"Wastelander, right?"

"Yeah."

"Recent radiation exposure?"

"No more than usual."

"Hmm. Any intimate contact with the civilian population lately? Non-humans?"

Danse almost laughed. "No."

Cade lifted a brow at him. "You know I have to ask, Paladin. You drink?"

"Sometimes."

"How often?"

The questions went on and on. Danse responded with as much patience as he could muster. The tapping of keys and the Knight-Captain's low, off-pitch hum wore on his nerves.

"Hm." Cade examined the terminal yet again. "You say you've been experiencing these symptoms for some time, but I don't see any previous mentions in your notes, Paladin."

"I didn't consider it worth bringing up until recently."

"Next time, let me be the judge of that," said Cade, looking up from the screen. "I'd rather do an exam than an autopsy. All right. Let's draw some blood."

Danse was starting to regret his decision to stop by the sick bay. When Cade came at him with a phlebotomy tray, his stomach churned and he barely resisted the urge to flinch away. "Is that really necessary?"

"Yes," Cade said wearily. "If it wasn't, I wouldn't have asked."

It hadn't been a request, but Danse rolled up his sleeve anyway and braced himself against the pressure of the tourniquet.

"We'll do a full workup," continued the doctor. "Results will take a few days."

"I don't have a few days. I'm back on the ground tomorrow."

Cade shook his head, fitting a needle into his syringe. "Where are they sending you this time? If you can tell me, of course."

"Up to the Commonwealth with a recon team. Could be in the field a while." Danse glanced away as the needle pierced his skin.

"All the more reason you should have come sooner. I'm tempted to deny your medical clearance."

"You don't have the authority to—”

"But I won't," Cade continued severely, "provided I have your word you'll follow your medic's advice out there."

Danse took a deep breath and shut his eyes against the lights. His head was still spinning. "I'll do so if... at all possible," he said, choosing his words with care.

"That's as good as I'm going to get, isn't it?" Cade withdrew the syringe somewhat less gently than he might have and dropped Danse's arm back onto the cold metal. "At least get some damn rest before you go, Danse."

"I'll try." He rose gratefully to his feet. "Knight-Captain."

Cade sighed and waved him out.

Danse doubted the tests would turn up anything useful. He'd get by, regardless. He always did.

Later, he wasn't quite sure how he'd made it to the edge of the Sea. Parts of the last leg were crystal clear, others hazy; he'd fought off a radscorpion, he thought. Or two. Maybe he’d only killed the one and the other had given him up as a worthless catch.

He certainly felt like a worthless catch. He'd rid himself of everything in his stomach and then some, but the waves of cramps kept coming. His head spun and he wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. His face felt hot, like he'd been in the sun too long, even though the sun was just now rising. He'd been in the Glowing Sea a full twenty-four hours.

The Brotherhood waypoint wasn't far. With his head spinning the way it was, he could almost have given himself up just for some reprieve. But he didn't. He steered clear of the waypoint and kept to cover as much as he could and finally, just when he started to fear he'd lost his way, the Sea began to yield to scrubland and he emerged just south of Lake Cochituate.

Still, when he saw a Brotherhood checkpoint ahead, it was a struggle not to run forward and hold up his arms. Explain what had happened—explain there had been a mistake.

But the checkpoint wasn’t manned by people in the uniforms he knew. That was unanticipated. Their manner of dress was vaguely familiar, however, and Danse squinted at them until his mind made the connection: Minutemen.

"Hey," one of them said. "Hey, buddy. You all right?"

Danse nodded, but his mouth felt thick and slow as he said, "Too many rads. Got… meds? Water?"

"Oh, yeah,” said a man, nodding at the woman next to him. “Ramos does."

The woman rustled around in her pack and produced a pouch of Rad-Away. Danse saw the moment she recognized his uniform: the extended hand paused in midair.

"You get lost or something?"

"I…" Danse’s mind went blank. He hated lying, not least because he wasn’t very good at it. “Yes. On patrol.”

Fortunately, he must look as terrible as he felt, because the Minutemen seemed to take his confusion as symptoms of the radiation sickness. Ramos shook her head. "I think maybe they left you behind, pal. They all pulled up stakes from that checkpoint last night and flew out in a vertibird.”

It was more difficult than usual to find his tongue. “I… see. Thank you.”

"How long have you been out here? All night?”

Danse nodded again. Even he could tell it was a jerky and erratic motion.

“Shit. You got real lucky. Human body’s not meant to take that kind of beating.”

A statement he really didn't need to hear just then. “They’re all gone?”

“'Fraid so. Anything else we can do for you?”

They helped him inject himself with the medication. They gave him the supplies he needed. They even showed him to an abandoned suit of Power Armor, and Danse felt his first flicker of hope since leaving the Sentinel site. It was X-01, not T-60, and devoid of markings. The Brotherhood wouldn't know he had it—it would suit his purposes perfectly—but there was no fusion core. Damn. No help at all.

But there was a Brotherhood terminal tucked under a makeshift shelter. At least Danse could see the details of the order against him.

He paused in front of the terminal. If he used his official credentials, the scribes would be able to track his location. But Haylen had set up a private communication channel when they'd first arrived in the Commonwealth. If he remembered correctly, besides himself, only Haylen and Knight-Sergeant Dawes had been given the access code. And Dawes was dead, whatever he'd known lost in a wet smear of brain and hair.

Danse didn't really expect to find a message, but he entered the password anyway. The connection went through. The inbox was empty, as he'd expected. But just as his finger hovered over the escape key—there it was. A new message.

I might be putting my own neck on the chopping block by sending this, but the situation is unbelievable. Danse, they're saying you're an Institute synth. Neriah ran some tests and they must have been pretty damn conclusive because there's already an alert out for your head.

l don't know what to believe. I hope to hell you're not a traitor. I don't know why else a synth would join the Brotherhood, but I know you. You must have had your reasons.

You know they won't care. If you see this, you need to run... and fast.

H

Danse's mind raced. The message could be a trap, but that seemed unlikely. He trusted Haylen. Moreover, the message didn't appear to anticipate a response. There was also no mention of a rendezvous point or anything else that would lead a searcher to him.

A second message followed the first. Reflexively, he checked to make sure no one was looking over his shoulder.

Got into the files Quinlan decrypted. Here's the evidence. DNA matched yours.

Danse stared at the attached report. His own face stared back at him—maybe younger, unscarred, but unmistakably himself. M7-97. Unit at large. Location unknown.

He couldn't have composed a response if he'd tried. But the confirmation filled him with a strange sort of calm, too. He'd been right to flee.

He left the Minutemen behind with only a brief word of farewell. He had to get away. Keep moving. Run. Maybe there was still some mistake.

That thought got him past a Mass Fusion disposal site, past a super mutant camp, into the dry wasteland at last. It was another mile before he let himself think about it again.

What if it wasn't a mistake?

His steps slowed and his knees went weak. He didn't feel like a synth. He felt human. But what did synths feel like? He could feel his heart beating. He could taste the blood in his mouth.

Sure, he'd always been a little removed from the others, but who the hell wasn’t? Danse was acquainted with plenty of senior officers in the Brotherhood. None of them were known for their healthy and enriching personal lives. The Brotherhood came first because that was how it should be. And Danse had fit right in.

He had no way to check. But…

It seemed absurd. It felt absurd. But looking at it objectively, it made a horrible kind of sense.

Danse didn't know his last name. He didn't know how old he was. He'd grown up alone… and all in all, if you were going to implant false memories in someone's head, his made for a damned convenient set. Was there even anyone he'd known before Cutler who could vouch for him?

But I remember, part of his mind cried out. I remember. I'm real.

Damn it.

This mission, the Commonwealth, it had changed him even before this. He’d been lurching from one crisis to another for so long. He’d spent ten months watching his team die one by one. Williams had pulled them out of what would have been their final stand but until the Prydwen had shown up, he hadn’t been certain he’d see the rest of the Brotherhood again.

Even when the Prydwen arrived, his relief was laced with a thread of anxiety. It was good to see them, but they’d come prepared for an occupation. For conquest. The culmination of their years of preparation. He was glad of it, but he hadn’t felt quite ready. It had passed him by, literally and figuratively; his mind struggled to keep up even as they watched and cheered from the police station. He slapped Rhys on the shoulder and got a hint of a grin out of him, but Haylen’s smile mirrored his own anxiety.

He hadn't taken the time to indulge their nerves. They’d gone to the Prydwen, Maxson had rallied the forces, and Danse had been inspired in the cause all over again. Whatever infrequent, private doubts he might have harbored about their young leader's decisions were dwarfed by the enormity of their mission, and with Maxson at the lead, a Brotherhood victory seemed… if not inevitable, at least within their grasp. There was hope for humanity after all.

Except Danse wasn’t human.

When it truly struck, he felt winded. He was shaking harder than he had with the radiation sickness; he reached out to an ancient petrified tree for support, clutching the branch like a lifeline until the brittle wood snapped under the pressure of his hands. He couldn’t fill his lungs.

He wasn’t human.

Listening Post Bravo, 2288

Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself.

We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world—and defines himself afterwards. …to begin with he is nothing. He will not be anything until later, and then he will be what he makes of himself.

Life is nothing until it is lived; but it is yours to make sense of, and the value of it is nothing else but the sense that you choose.

Jean-Paul Sartre, “Existentialism is a Humanism” (1946)

Danse snuck past a raider encampment. It made him sick to just move on, to leave them to prey on innocent civilians, but alone—without his armor, without his team—he was nothing. The helpless, worthless feeling he'd spent his whole life trying to escape had finally caught up with him.

He'd been on high alert since the Sentinel site and that was catching up with him, too. He made sloppy errors. He almost lost a leg to a pack of snarling mongrels through his own damn carelessness. A disgrace to the Brotherhood of Steel in more ways than one.

It wasn't politic to say in civilian company, but Danse normally enjoyed combat. Not the death or the horror or the stench, but the excitement of the struggle and the satisfaction when it was over. The security of knowing you lived another day while your enemy didn’t. The pride of doing something you were good at for a cause you believed in.

Not this. This was just survival. He felt like a damn radroach all over again—except that even a radroach was a natural creature, not something... manufactured. Artificial. A hunted animal had more right to its freedom than Danse did.

But he wasn't helpless. Not really. Survival was what he knew: it was all he'd known, before the Brotherhood.

He just couldn't help anyone else.

There was no way out of this. The words on that display were incontrovertible. If Quinlan was convinced…

He passed Lexington. The Corvega assembly plant was another reminder of his failures. Malden. At this point he barely cared if he ever made it to his destination. His head throbbed. How long had it been since he slept?

The sky was darkening again by the time Danse stumbled over the hillside to the old listening post.

He cut the power to the elevator. It wouldn't stop anyone. But he'd have enough warning to decide what to do. They'd probably find him eventually.

It was so damn unfair. He'd given the Brotherhood everything he had only to wind up here, a hole in the ground with U.S. government paraphernalia everywhere. Reminders of another lost cause. The fact that coming here felt like coming home… well, the irony wasn’t lost on Danse.

Why had this happened to him? All he'd ever wanted to be was exactly what he'd thought he was. God. He was a living lie. He was a damn fool and he didn’t know what to do. How the hell could anyone escape their own self?

Slowly... inevitably... the reality of his situation began to sink in. And the room grew colder.

He'd made it this far on pure instinct. Now that his rational mind was engaged, he could turn and face the truth he dreaded: that there was no way out. That the enemy was inside him—that he was his own worst enemy, whether he liked it or not.

The Commonwealth was at risk. Humanity itself was at risk. Nobody could look at the wasteland and think otherwise. Nobody who'd seen the Institute's work firsthand. Certainly no Brotherhood soldier worth his salt.

Most recruits found the restrictions of military life uncomfortable. Danse had never complained. A bed in the Citadel—or later, a berth on the Prydwen–beat the doorways he'd slept in as a child or a sorry bunk in the Rivet City common room. But all that had been secondary to what else the Brotherhood gave him: a place to belong, people to call his brothers and sisters. And more than that, more than anything else, it had given him a purpose in life.

Danse had done things he regretted as a soldier, but the things he'd done to survive as a civilian filled him with a different kind of shame. The humiliation of knowing you weren’t worth shit.

He'd been on good terms with Arthur Maxson, but their backgrounds kept them on opposite sides of an invisible line. He hadn't been all but a prince, carefully sheltered because of the blood that ran through his veins, aware at every moment of his privilege and his responsibility. Danse had come from nothing, been nothing, and the Brotherhood had welcomed him anyway. Made him into someone he could be proud of.

He'd wanted to do something of value, and he had. He'd wanted to be part of something and he'd done that too. If his life was the cost, so be it. He wouldn't betray the Brotherhood. Not when it had given him everything that mattered. What else was he going to do—flee the Commonwealth? No. When they came after him, he wouldn’t resist.

He just hoped it would be quick.

He could speed things along. This site was set up for communication. He could radio the Prydwen right now—turn himself in to Haylen or Maxson or the entire ground force—but all he did was stare at the knob.

Maybe he should just do it himself.

It felt like the walls were closing in. Like all the air was leaving the room. He'd lived this long on stolen time, lived a life that was never meant for him, taken up space in a world he had no right to.

Even surrendering himself would be too much of a risk. Who knew what the Institute had programmed him to do? He could have sabotaged the Brotherhood from within, all the while serving his order with pride and thinking all his decisions were his own. Maybe he’d turn on whoever showed up first. Too much of a risk.

Trapped.

He's trapped.

He's been trapped before.

Another one. God damn it, another one.

There's no way out. How many waves of the things can they hold off without Keane? The ferals just keep coming. Rhys is already out of commission. Haylen's doing her best, but she's not a knight. It's up to Danse... and he's going to let them down. All of them, this time.

But it isn't just up to him, after all. There's someone else here. A stranger, suppressing fire—

“Civilian in the perimeter,” he calls.

Williams isn't coming to save his ass this time. There’s a pang of regret that he won't be able to say farewell. He thinks, vaguely, he might love her—not that it matters now. Not that it could ever matter.

Still... he wants to remember the look on her face the last time he saw her. But he can’t. His mind can only scrabble from one fragmented memory to another: Haylen’s devastation after euthanizing a brother on his orders. Krieg reprimanding him in front of the entire squad for slovenliness. Laughing over drinks with Cutler the day they signed on as Initiates. The flicker of surprise in Cutler’s eyes the moment Danse put a hole between them.

He looks down.

He’s standing in front of an ancient terminal. There’s an old holotape still in the slot. He tugs it out and runs his fingers over the smooth plastic casing, mind circling in the same endless loop. Over and over.

He's wondered how it will happen, of course. They all do. This isn't the glorious battle he once imagined; it isn't the honor of laying down his life for his brothers and sisters. But it's as close as he can get.

All he wonders now is if anyone will find his body. Probably not. What's one more set of bones in the wasteland?

No matter what he does, the Institute is one step ahead. He’s never been able to get away from their scheming and now he knows why: the same people who set the goddamn mutants loose on humanity are the same people who made him. He's an abomination. A mistake. A case study in man's hubris, not a man in his own right.

He refuses to be a part of their schemes any longer.

He records his final words, if that's what they are, and walks slowly into the back room. He sets the holotape on the filing cabinet. Tidies the desk. Checks the safety on his rifle.

The Brotherhood will take down the Institute. He has every faith in that. No more mutants, no more synths, no more sick experiments on the innocent people of the Commonwealth. His friend Williams will have her closure. Danse's own closure is simply arriving earlier than expected.

He lays out his weapons and stares at them. It isn’t an important decision. Any of them will perform the job adequately. He can't die a hero, but at least he can die like a human.

There's no way out.

So he'll add one more synth to the dozens he's already taken down. One small success to the record of Paladin Danse's failures.

He'll shut his eyes. He'll reach for the pistol.

He'll do it. He's doing it now.

When the Protectron blared an alert, Danse's first reaction was irritation. Couldn't the intruders have waited ten damn minutes? He was so close to finishing the job. It wasn't easy, fighting your own instincts that screamed survive, even if you knew better. Even if you knew those instincts weren't real.

Danse didn’t reach for his weapons when the firing started. He should never have been given the honor of carrying arms for the Brotherhood in the first place. His entire life was either a conspiracy or a mistake, and he wasn't sure which was worse. The only thing he knew was that it didn't matter.

He rose to his feet and moved to the middle of the room, empty-handed, and waited. He was calm. It was almost a relief. She'd finally come to finish what he couldn’t—and it was her. Of course it was her.

The shots didn't last long. His half-hearted defenses were no match for Williams. Danse was proud he'd brought such a worthy soldier to the Brotherhood. He was glad he could leave her behind in his place.

And there she was. Nothing felt right, but she was here. That was good. He didn't feel so alone anymore.

In an abstract, distant sort of way, he knew he should regret that she'd be the one to do it. It wouldn't be easy for her. But he was glad. She’d been his friend and he'd get to say a proper farewell.

Yes, this was better. It felt like an ending.

She got straight to the point.

"I wish you'd told me the truth, Danse." Her voice was so weary. So sad.

"I might have, if I'd known what I was." He might be a soulless machine, but he'd never have lied to her. "Does Maxson even want me alive?"

The bitterness in his own words was foreign. He didn't feel bitter. He didn't feel much of anything, actually.

"No," she whispered. "But I don't know what to do."

If he were capable of it, he might have been astonished. Didn't she have her orders? Dragging her heels would just make this harder for her.

"The right thing," he said. "Isn't it obvious?"

She wasn't in Power Armor, but she was carrying the rifle he'd given her. Strange how things had come full circle. Strange, but fitting: Danse had used that same weapon to destroy his closest friend. Now that it was his turn to be put down, he could hardly object.

"No," she gasped. "My God, Danse."

Maybe that was why he'd faltered before. Williams was the missing piece. He'd felt that the night they met and that feeling had never gone away. Now she was struggling, and yes, he was sorry. But it was time.

Danse swallowed. And then he dropped to his knees and put his hands behind his back.

Williams only stared down at him. Her eyes were bright and unblinking. Once again he noticed, in a detached way, how he felt when he looked at her. It was irrelevant. It wasn't for him. But his mind diligently recorded it anyway.

Maybe when he was dead, they'd look at his memories the way they had Kellogg's. Maybe they'd learn everything he’d ever felt about her, every inappropriate thought and—

“Can we just talk?” she said softly. “Just for a few minutes. Please.”

More than anything else, they'd find his shame. Not just about Williams. For all the things he’d thought and done, for everything he hadn't done but wished he had. He didn’t want to undermine Maxson. He couldn't.

"What are you waiting for?" he snapped.

"No," she said. "I won't do it, Danse."

Her voice cracked on his name and her eyes gleamed with unshed tears and it was like coming to the surface of a murky pond. He was suddenly aware of their surroundings when a moment before he'd only been conscious of her eyes. The stale air of the bunker overlaid the acrid smell of recently fired laser weapons. The miniscule tremble of Cecily Williams's beautiful mouth as she reminded him of everything she'd lost.

She didn't want to lose him.

They did talk. Not just for a few minutes but for hours, until the clock on her Pip-Boy said it was nearly sunrise. They debated and they strategized. He handed over his holotags and slowly the shards of his life took on a new form. She was right. Whatever sick plot the Institute might have intended, he'd done nothing but serve humanity. And there was nothing he could do to hurt the Brotherhood now. He wouldn't let it happen. Neither would she.

It wasn’t perfect—it was a hell of a long way from perfect—but there was a way out. He might have his own path to follow, but he didn’t need to find his footing alone.

And he was worth something. He’d worked for something. He could start over somewhere else and she could continue the fight here. They both deserved that much.

To his surprise, he found he was smiling at her.

"Let's get the hell out of here."

[yekistraight]

Hey, could you explain what being a feminist means? I’ve heard all these terms before, and there’s this huge stigma around it. So do you think there’s a way you could clarify at least what your beliefs are, and what you believe it to be? I’m simply trying to study stuff and see what it’s become or is. Thank you.

Sorry I wrote so much i just wanted to make it comprehensive:

General definition of feminist is someone who believes in the socio-economic equality of the sexes. In the beginning this was a straightforward ideology to follow. Women needed to be equal to men. It’s only fair, there’s no reason not to be. But sharing power is not something the ruling majority particularly enjoys so there’s been some bumps in the road. Decades and decades of bumps.

The feminists of the past started this push a long time ago with one message: “we want to be taken seriously, we are humans too and we need rights that benefit us and protect us from you[men]” and they were right. Sex based crimes against women were happening at an alarming rate. So much so that it had become part of some cultures and traditions, meaning it would be defended and men would be protected while women basically died, physically and socially. Women lived in fear and helplessness, being sold a dream of subservience promoted by religion and ego in exchange for protection from men. What about the women that still, despite the odds, wanted to choose a different path? Well, they were brave enough to step out of line and others followed. They exist throughout history, inspiring other women will their bravery and confidence, proving that it was possible to have the power and authority that men had. Now imagine giving every woman that access to power? They’d have everything right? Well feminism didn’t start like that (it was racially exclusive actually) but fortunately the ideologies spread out through cities, across oceans and into continents where women wanted, no, NEEDED such power; the power to change their destinies that had been set upon them by another mere human being.

So feminism is like a sisterhood, where we’re only related by a common goal to protect each other while trying to defeat our common enemy. Here’s where the simplistic ideology begins to mutate based on strategy and cultural progression.

Feminism is a sisterhood, but not a monolith. There’s been different waves (eras) of feminism where each sisterhood used different tactics to achieve their goals for equality. Its like making a new checklist after the old one gets checked off. However there’s been one item that still needs a lot of work before ticking off and that’s dismantling gender roles. Gender roles are the root cause of every.single.thing. Toxic masculinity, performative femininity. Gender roles were created to control humans and keep them in their place. For a feminist to push her way into male dominated spaces, she must first acknowledge that gender roles have been constructed to work against her and break through it. So take note, everything is the way it is because of gender roles.

In this era, the sisterhood has been split into two major groups, two warring tribes if you will: libfems and radfems.

Liberal Feminists accept everyone. They use the tactic of assimilation, where they water down feminist ideologies to make it inclusive for everyone. They follow the lead of oppressed minorities who reclaimed slurs and instead reclaim methods tused to oppress women that past waves of feminists fought to dismantle. Remember what I said about gender roles? These women are bringing it back and think they’re reclaiming it. How do you reclaim something that hasn’t been dismantled yet?The only power they’re concerned with is the feeling of superiority that comes from thinking bowing down to the patriarchy is their idea. Their feminism tackles issues like rape, victim blaming and misogyny, things that affect them personally, while taking on the burden of other marginalised groups as their own, pushing their own goals to the backseat while feeling a self-righteous high. Basically, they’re activists who have lost the plot but would keep pushing blindly than admit it. The second group was born from libfems that wanted more than a feel good pat on the back from the patriarchy for not being too interfering.

Radical feminists are still following the original objective of their predecessors. They still have their eyes open to sex-based oppression and are aware there’s still a lot of work to be done. They don’t put the opposite sex’s needs above their own or let other group’s ideologies influence theirs and because of this, other groups as well as libfems have dubbed them as enemies to progress. Ironic isn’t it? The group that still fights for sexual equality has been silenced by none other than their own. Of course hatred for this group of feminists didn’t come out of nowhere. Radfems and their female-only values are presumed to hurt trans women, as trans women are biologically male and don’t have the same sex based experiences as biological women. Trans activists took these as transphobic fighting words and ostracised radfems, silencing them and their ideologies, claiming that everything they fought for was an attack against the trans community. Conservative americans also share some radfem values, basically the one on keeping the movement focused on female only issues, and because the right is notoriously bigoted (ironic because conservatives are the ones who uphold the gender roles feminists fight against so a conservative feminist is paradoxical) this is enough to tell people that radfems can’t be trusted. That they’re all racist, transphobic white supremacists. Because all groups that share similar ideologies are bad. The public, not wanting to be on the Unpopular Opinion side of history, shifted away and further pushed radfems into the background while libfems and their blind acceptance values were hailed as the patron saints of feminism.

So what feminism was and what it is now are vastly different. It started as a movement in different countries with different goals, then it graduated and took on more serious topics. It was like a game where every level gets tougher to prepare you for that last boss, the one who holds all the power you need to physically change your reality.

Today in the year 2021, young girls are being told that it’s feminist to enjoy selling their bodies for money. That it’s the same as working in a mine (a common comparative statement). That it’s feminist to look as womanly as the gender roles men created dictate. That it’s feminist to watch porn and be happy your romantic partner watches it to; this means you’re sexually liberated. Grown women go to Tiktok full of minors in the style of pimps to show off stacks of money they’ve made from pleasing men. They say “i did it because i wanted to and so should you”. Minors are all over twitter trying to lure men with financial dominatrix tags. They can’t wait till they become legal to start selling their nude bodies to men. They were told it would make them feel powerful. People who are skeptical are shamed into silence, because the popular crowd is always in control and no one wants to be the odd one out.

Now compare that to women who spend time researching horrifying news of sexual violence still happening today. Women still having to sell themselves to survive in 2021 is a clear indicator that we’re still not taken seriously. Sex buying, pimping and displaying women as commodities is the reason little girls are being stolen off the streets and shipped off to a disgusting dreg who think he’s owed sexual satisfaction.

Radfems want to end child sex trafficking, sex slavery, wedding night virginity checks, honour killings, femicide, sewing up little girls vaginas to avoid them exploring their sexuality before their wedding night and bring attention to way more hardcore shit being run by top dogs who are cooperating with the old powers that influence the governments.

Whose side do you think the media will be on? Whose side is worth not risking ruffling feathers?

Feminism has become many things now. You can choose the one that reminds you of the cruelty of man or the one that creates a comfortable fantasy of false empowerment while women’s violence continues. Both get stigmatised anyway.

If it wasn’t obvious already, I’m a radical feminist.

I’m an autistic radfem living in a backwards country where the lgbt community can’t thrive so there’s no pride parades, no trans movement, nothing that can be publicised anyway. I can’t create a fantasy where everything works because nothing works. Women are dying around me everyday for being female, my best friend is trapped with an abusive father who hates her for being a female firstborn (something babies get killed for), I’m not worthy of basic respect without a husband, a poor woman from a muslim state gets death threats from her fellow muslims for wearing a backless top while a rich married one gets praised and women can’t apply for anything important without a man’s permission.

Now why on earth would i want to pamper the gender that made and uphold those laws? The battle here is still greatly a battle of the sexes. Despite this stale level of progress, our movement, like many others have allies. Male allies are great, allies are great, we need them to push buttons yes but also remember they can never fully understand what we feel. All they can do is try their best to help and in return we give them acknowledgement and support; so no we’re not supposed to be misandrists or transphobes. We just hate anyone who uplifts what we and our ancestors have been fighting to destroy.

That’s all

[one-leaf-grimoire]

Black Clover Week 2020, Day 4: Role Reversal

So I thought long and hard about what I wanted this to be and I finally decided what the obvious answer is. Behold: "Sexy Evil Julius Novachrono"

Warning: oops kind of angsty lol, ended up kind of long, also slight spoilers for the Spade Arc

"I didn't want it to be like this..."

Julius knew he was backed into a corner. He did his best for six months to hide his condition from the King, but the truth eventually slipped out. Was it one of the Captains? Or more likely Damnatio... but it didn't matter. Julius was dragged out into the light, where Augustus and the entire Kira family laughed at him.

"Look at you! Once, you claimed that your power rivaled mine, but now you're nothing but a weak child!" Augustus taunted as his infuriatingly slow light magic pushed Julius around. "Obviously, you can't be Wizard King any more, can you? And for lying to me for so long..."

Julius was stripped of everything he had worked so hard to achieve. He had hoped that everything would settle down after the defeat of the Spade Dark Triad, but now here he was, banished from the noble realm, with nothing but the body of a child, a single page of his grimoire, his former advisor, Marx.

And last he heard, Augustus was planning to appoint a new Wizard King, to add to Julius's humiliation. He didn't know who it would be, but he knew one thing:

It should still be me. I'm not ready to give it up yet. I'm not done.

There were parts of his dream yet to fall into place, and Julius wouldn't let anyone take hold of the future he fought for.

So, this desperation lead him all over the continent, Marx at his side, searching for ways to bring him back to his full power. It lead them into some pretty dangerous places, but eventually they ended up near a being who might just be able to help him. You see, after the last fight with the Dark Triad, the fabric between this world and the underworld of Devils had been thinned drastically, which was the only reason why Julius found himself face to a Devil with the same powers as him. A rare and interesting opportunity... Julius couldn’t help but think about Asta. How did Asta even manage to get a Devil in his Grimoire? I guess it doesn’t matter now... I’m about to walk down that same path. The Devil was eager for a chance to enter the living world, and willing to let Julius use his powers to do whatever he wanted. Maybe the Devil could sense the malice to come.

But, this was potent, forbidden magic, the kind that required the sacrifice of someone’s life to complete. Luckily, there was a volunteer there, ready to do what it took to help his King.

“I wish I could see this to the end,” Marx told Julius, a smile on his face despite the fear that trembled through his hands. “Promise me you’ll make it back, and fulfill your dream... and try not to get so distracted so much! Seriously, without me there, it’s going to be much worse, isn’t it?”

Julius couldn’t help but laugh at those long-passed memories. “I promise, Marx... I’ll never take my eyes off my goal again.”

And so, Marx’s life ended, and Julius’s began once again.

“J-JULIUS?! What is the meaning of this?!”

To say that Augustus was surprised was an understatement. He stared in shock as the man he banished walked right towards him, in all his former glory. His Swallowtail mark was back, but it was red instead of blue. The bright look that always used to be in Julius’s eyes was gone, replaced with a dark purpose that scared Augustus. The King frantically waved his staff as Julius continued to approach without a word. “Guards! Stop him!”

Four guards ran at Julius, who didn’t even slow down. He just raised his hands, letting off two beams of blinding red light. Screams filled the room as the smoke cleared and there was absolutely no sign of the attackers.

Panic started to fill Augustus as Julius climbed up the stairs to his throne. Maybe it was his imagination, but he swore he could see a little smile on the man’s face. “Julius!!! I’ll kill you myself!” A giant, golden monarch of light rose up behind Augustus, brandishing it’s staff. Julius recognized it as the same spell that held him down when Augustus humiliated and banished him. He felt more angry now than even when Yami and William were kidnapped, but none of it showed on his face.

Augustus... this is the only time I’ve ever been happy to see you. The day I kill you.

He wanted to see the same fear that once plagued him on Augustus’s face, so Julius let his Devil out. From his Swallowtail mark, pitch-black magic pervaded his body, staining his hair and his skin down to his hands. Just as he intended, a look of pure fear covered Augustus’s face as Julius’s own Weg appeared, a sharp, dangerous onyx antler.

Goodbye, your majesty.

More screams filled the room, and Augustus’s Golden Monarch melted away. Julius let himself smile genuinely before turning back to the others. “You’re all from the Kira family, yes?” he asked, remembering how they all laughed at him. Maybe I can get a little more revenge today... but first... “Tell me... who’s the new Wizard King?”

“I am.”

Julius and everyone else turned to the side entrance to see none other than Fuegoleon Vermillion walk in. Hmm, I should have expected that. This might be tricky. “It’s good to see you again, Fuegoleon,” Julius told him with a little wave, not moving from his place up by the throne. “As you can see, I’m back, so would you be okay with waiting your turn a little while longer?”

Fuegoleon’s eyes darted down to the ground, where several scorch marks already stained the marble. “I can’t do that, sir... you just killed our King.”

“I know it must be shocking to see, but don’t pretend you wouldn’t do the same thing. Or,” Julius narrowed his eyes. “Maybe you wouldn’t... maybe you still think of him as family.”

“Family or not, as the Wizard King, I have the Kingdom’s best interest in mind. And right now...” Fuegoleon opened his Grimoire, flames already roaring to life around him. “I don’t think you’re included in those interests.”

“Ah, that’s a shame.” Julius’s smile faded. It was starting to look like he’ll have to kill another friend today. “Well, if you’re so quick to defend a man who deserved to die... I guess we have no choice. Thank you, Fuegoleon. I admire your virtue.”

...

...

“Julius! Julius-”

Yami and William ran to the Castle as soon as they heard the rumors. It can’t be true... Master William would never do such a thing, William thought to himself in a panic. 

That old man... so the moment he comes back, he takes everything out on the Kira family? But if the rumors are true, then also... 

Yami skidded to a stop, William running into him. They peered into the great hall to see the horrible sight. Smoke drifted through the air, the last remaining dregs of flame mana. Mixed in was a horrible, unnatural magic, but unfortunately magic that they recognized all too well. Members of the Kira family were scattered everywhere, but among all of them.

“No... Fuegoleon...” 

William ran to the body and fell to his knees. Yami felt numb as he followed. William felt for a pulse, but couldn’t find it. “So... it’s true. Master Julius is here, somewhere...” His eyes darkened. “We have to stop him.”

They caught up to Julius just as he was about to step out of the castle and reclaim his title. “Ah, you two... I’m glad you’re here-” Julius cut himself off when he saw that Yami and William were ready to attack, grimoires and sword at the ready. “I see... well, before you blindly attack me, why don’t you listen to my speech?”

“What are you going to tell them?” Yami growled, hiding his fear and confusion. “Make promises you can’t keep?”

“What do you mean? I’ve always kept my promises.” Julius’s smile faded a little. “And I made one recently... I promised to never take my eyes off my goal again.” He clenched his fist. “I won’t step down... not until I’ve brought peace and equality back into this kingdom. While there’s still discrimination, I can’t stop.”

“Listen to you...” Yami let his sword lower. “A regular people’s man... you, who’s never faced discrimination in your life. Don’t you think it’s time to hand your job to someone else? We weren’t going to let you get killed, we were trying to find you when you came back here. You did so much for this kingdom already. You should have just gone and found a peaceful life somewhere, instead of crawling back up here, committing murder, and whatever the other shit is you have planned.”

Julius’s smile was completely gone now, just a look of disappointment on his face. “Well... why don’t we see what they think?”

Julius knew that he was beloved by the kingdom. And he knew that love was very much still alive as he walked out to greet the crowd, cheers and cries of his name filling the air. Yami and William could do nothing but watch as he proclaimed himself King and, once again, Wizard King. The crowd ate it all up, this was what they wanted for so long, for Julius to just take the power for himself. They didn’t understand the cost at the time. “Together... we’ll dismantle the system that’s oppressed you for so long. The nobility must go... and that future is in your hands.”

Julius turned back to look at Yami and William as the crowd cheered once again. One read of his Ki, and Yami could tell. Julius had no intention of fighting them, or even defending himself. The message was clear: Yami... are you really going to strike down a beloved monarch in front of the people who love him? 

No... I can’t. Yami grit his teeth. Dammit, Julius...

Julius was filled with nothing but confidence. The confidence of a man with nothing to lose and the entire world to gain.

William stared at the ground, clenching his fists, as Julius came back to join them. “Well, I’m glad you two came around. Now-” Both of the younger men looked up as their friend, mentor, and now King took their hands with his usual smile on his face. But today, that gentleness was a lie. Maybe Julius truly believed in what he was doing, but Yami had a bad feeling that a storm was just around the corner. “Will you help me rebuild this kingdom in our image?”

OUR image? You mean... your image.

“...yes, sir.”

Yami followed him, unable to look into the eyes of anyone as one thought plagued his mind.

I didn’t want it to be like this...

[emilyplaysotome]

One Year

I don’t know who is still active on here or who follows me, but I felt like I wanted to write something and this is what I wrote. Semi-autobiographical.

Hope you like it.

I open the door to the bar where we said we’d meet. Beyond just running late, I’m not dressed for a first date and instead wear jeans and sneakers and a t-shirt I bought for myself on a trip that has bold letters with the name of the city I was in.

To be honest, I didn’t want to go on this first date. 

It’s not because of you but because there’s too much going on. I’m about to leave again for work and I know how these things go. Even if we like each other I will quickly be forgotten. We will say things like, “This was fun, we should do this when you get back” but in the end the days will pass and we will live our lives exactly as we did without so much as a thought of this night.

Despite knowing this, I tell myself to go because I have nothing to lose and I have said I want to meet someone new. 

I argue with myself that I’ve met plenty of new people the past couple of years, and that it’s unlikely that this one is the one that will be so different but in the end I go out of obligation.

I said yes and I don’t want to go back on my word.

I open the door to the bar where we said we’d meet and I see you. 

To be honest, you take my breath away. 

You are much, much, much hotter than your pictures gave you credit for and you smile at me. I think I must be mistaken because there is no way that my jeans and sneakers and t-shirt and makeup-less face is good enough for you. I turn to see if perhaps there is someone behind me - someone taller and thinner and more objectively beautiful.

But there is not. 

You are smiling at me, and so I smile back and push down the little voice that tells me you are out of my league and join you at the bar.

I am intimidated by your looks and then I find out you are smart, kind, and empathetic.

The conversation flows easily and you reveal yourself to me rather quickly. I feel in control in this regard, as I am quite good at getting people to show themselves. The problem I have with you is that everything I pull out of you is better than the last and I continue to wonder who or what you’re looking for that can possibly meet you at your level.

I worry I am not good enough.

I drink my first drink with my climbing shoes in my tote thinking about the promise I made to my friends. I order another drink with you because you asked and I know that they will understand it if I show up late. I wonder if you’re asking me to have another drink to be polite or if you feel a fraction of what I feel for you.

You seem interested but I have a hard time believing it.

Behind the counter there is a barkeep who keeps interrupting our conversation. We are both friendly to him and in the moments when it’s just us, laugh together, wondering if he knows this is a first date and if he’s playing with us both a bit. You find a way to dazzle me with your intellect, and I feel self-conscious as I take big gulps of my beer wondering if you’ll realize how simple I am.

You speak about the intricacies of how the world works having studied the science that holds it together. I don’t know what to say as I am an artist who grapples with ability to move people with my work. 

You seem to know exactly what to say while I am left wondering if my voice is worth anything these days.

You open the door to the bar where we met and hold it for me as we exit. 

We say goodbye in the subway and I feel disappointed you don’t kiss me but I figure that I will never see you again and make peace with the suspicion I have that you were just being nice to me.

I meet up with my friends who forgive my tardiness and I climb trying not to think anything of our meeting.

That night I think about the day that my old relationship died.

I think about how I was sitting on the couch and how I closed my laptop when he came in. I think about how stunned I was by his ramblings and how I had to ask, “Are you breaking up with me?” before I fully understood what was happening.

I thought about the days that passed, where I couldn’t eat and could barely work and how quickly I lost weight as a result.

I thought about how frightened I was to go on a date on an app and how much fun I ended up having with a man I should have never met. Born on the other side of the world who crashed into my life for three passionate months before disappearing as quickly as he arrived, occasionally letting me know he missed me.

He doesn’t write me anymore.

I thought about the one that followed, who I wanted so badly and who gave me so little. I thought about how he seemed to know when it was I was finally over him and how happy I was to finally be rid of those feelings.

He doesn’t write to me either.

I thought about the man I fell for without his knowledge a few months ago, and who reminded me too much of the others. I thought about how brave I was to break things off, recognizing that he would not be able to give me what I wanted.

I never gave him the chance to write me again.

You send me a text message the next day and I find myself both skeptical and elated.

Looking back I realize how hard it was for you to carve out time for me, but back then I was just happy that you wanted to see me before I left.

I calm myself down before we meet by googling your name. I see a picture of you from a linked in and I tell myself that my memory made you hotter than you are and that you are not some untouchable human that is out of my league.

I remind myself of how far I’ve come and how I will not allow the little voice that questions my worth to ruin our date.

I ask myself what will make me feel strong and powerful and worthy and I don’t wear a t-shirt with letters on it. I put makeup on and do my hair and wear a top that shows my stomach if I raise my arms.

I like the way my stomach looks these days.

I open the door to the bar where we said we’d meet.

You’re not there, so I take a seat at the counter and I make small talk with the bartender. It’s hot and I feel sweaty and annoyed at NYC summer for making it impossible to stay cute.

When you arrive, you are sweatier than I am but you are also much hotter than the picture I found that helped me pretend you were in my league.

“Fuck.” 

I say it to myself when you go to the bathroom and I am alone at the counter with an empty beer, having ordered a second round. I like you so much and I want you to like me and I’m starting to believe that I might have a chance. The conversation this time is lighter and quicker and I can tell I’m still somewhat in control of it. We bounce around and I think, “See. I can keep up with you.” and I hope you like that I can.

At some point I discover your feet are comically wide, and I tease you as if I am a fifth grade boy.

At some point you kiss me and I realize that I actually have a chance with you.

I leave the city for ten days and you write me every single day.

What starts as short, simple texts becomes long letters back and forth. I write them after working for 10 hours each day and they take me about an hour to write, but writing them is my favorite part of the day.

In time, I will find out that they took you just as long to write and that you were talking to another girl at the same time you were talking to me. You had the chance to go out with her but decided you didn’t want to, and I will wonder how it is possible that I found someone who is as wonderful as you.

I will think about all the men I dated who spoke with and slept with and saw other women as they told me how much they liked me and think about how much better you are in every way to them.

When I return you will invite me over and I will go to your place, surprisingly unafraid despite having only seen you twice. I will wonder if we will sleep together and I am surprised when you tell me about your past.

You were married once.

I don’t care.

I was in an eight year relationship once, I tell you.

You don’t care.

We don’t sleep together, and I wonder if it’s because you like me or because you don’t like me enough.

I freak out before our fourth date.

The long messages that bring us closer together suddenly feel oppressive and I find myself scared to reply. I don’t know what to say and I change the subject entirely, trying to restart the thread, removing some of the seriousness of what’s happening.

We’re not “officially” together and yet you’re starting to feel like someone I need around.

I’ve been hurt before.

When I meet you in front of the restaurant, you are a little stiff. It takes a moment or two before we start talking like normal. You tell me that you told your friend about me, and I learn that you don’t like many people but you like me.

I want to be with you.

I invite you back to my place and we drink more. I want to hook up. We do, but nerves get in the way. 

I worry it’s not nerves, but it’s me.

I worry I’m not good enough.

A month has gone by since I met you.

I’ve returned from another job away and you spent the night. I like waking up with you, but I hide my bashfulness by teasing you about your morning routine. I roll out of bed and throw on some clothes whereas you do your hair and put on cologne, etc. etc.

I don’t want you to date anyone else.

I don’t want to date anyone else.

I think this as we walk together in the park with our coffee and I think about how I want to say this. I think about how I want to make space for you to say no because I don’t want to be with someone who doesn’t want to be with me.

In the end the words “relationship”, “boyfriend, and “girlfriend” are completely unsaid and somehow the catalyst for us becoming official is my awkward muttering of, “I’m down if you’re down.”

“I’m down,” you say, taking my hand and laughing at how I’ve managed to make everything clear in the least romantic way possible.

I tease you back but it will take weeks for me to say that you are my boyfriend.

It is not because I am embarrassed.

It is because I am in disbelief that someone like you could actually like me.

Time marches on.

I discover how competitive you are when you play board games.

Your face is a little red, and you are a little drunk when you look at me and ask, “Is it too much?”

“No,” I say, realizing that I love you but not saying it. “It’s not.”

I learn that you prefer the cold and never turn the heat on in your apartment. You are always ordering new gadgets and shirts and things whereas I can’t remember the last thing I purchased.

For a month I bite my tongue, because I know that I love you but I also know that you have not loved anyone and I do not want you to feel pressure if I say it.

You say it one day before you leave to go home for the holiday.

I am so happy you did, because I know that you mean what you say.

I know that love is a big deal to you, and that you are not just being nice.

You mean it.

It has been one year since I opened that door to the bar where we said we’d meet.

I have walked to your place countless times and you to mine as we survived a pandemic together. I have seen you at your best and at your worst, and I love you more now than I did that night when I said it back the first time.

There are still moments when I’m dazzled by your intellect, and moments when I wonder if I’m enough for you.

In those moments I think about the fact that you love me.

Because I know you do.

I believe you do.

The thought makes me I hold my head up high because if you believe I am enough for you, I should be better at loving who I am too.

And as much as I love you, I think I love myself more these days and I love you for that.

[nevergiveupneverrun]

Bodyguard - Chapter Sixty “What I want...”

Hello , how are you? Here is chapter Sixty of my Story Bodyguard, yay!! I hope you will like this chapter. Sorry for not posting last week…

I’m sorry in advance for the mistakes… English isn’t my first language and I do my best. Here is the link to the previous chapter: Click Here.

I hope you will enjoy this chapter :) 💛

            –––––––––––––––––––––––

- Are you never afraid? She whispers weakly.

——

I let her question resonate inside me.

I take the time to take it seriously, observing the young woman sitting by my side.

A weak voice tries to pierce the void that dominates my mind… to contradict what I want to assert… to reveal my weakness right now… the anguish that has eaten away at me since we’ve been here in Los Angeles.

I look down, unable to answer her question… without exposing myself… completely vulnerable… weak and at her mercy…

I notice that one of her hands draws small circles in the sand, as an automatic gesture to release the tension of the moment.

- I would almost want to tell you to leave… to go to work for Jo, she continues before my silence. To avoid you an endless and dangerous day tomorrow… and yet… I have this blind and so strong confidence in you, which makes me think that you will be able to stop this guy… and that you will be able to do it without putting your life in danger… I’m wrong to listen to this little voice, do you think?

I find Amelia’s gaze, touched by the fragility expressed through her words and her voice, and this interior dilemma which seemed to gnaw at her.

- Never doubt that little voice, I whispered, stopping her gestures in the sand, my hand finding hers. And don’t worry about me, I continue, placing her hand against her knee and loosening my fingers from hers.

A silence of a few seconds breaks between us, pierced only by the melody of the waves before a teasing mine gradually covers Amelia’s face.

- I’m a little special then, for the great Owen Hunt… I have the record for the client you have supported the longest…

- Obviously, yes…

- Just for that, I already deserve an award, right? She asks, sparkling eyes.

I smile at her question, while fully realizing that this woman has been shaping my life for 6 months… without me realizing it…

- But you also deserve an award for supporting me… me and my crazy ideas sometimes… like now… she whispers in a mysterious tone.

She nods towards the sea while keeping my gaze.

- You’re kidding, I hope, I whisper, smile on my lips.

- Come on, there is nobody, she continues while sliding her right-hand against my arm, her face lit up by a magnificent smile.

I can’t contain myself and I laugh at her capricious little girl face.

Her face radiates life and mischief.

- Go ahead, I’m looking at you from here, someone has to keep things, right? I propose, entering in her game.

- Really? Owen Hunt, the most famous bodyguard… a former member of the special forces… is intimidated by a small breaststroke in the Pacific? Amelia bids, her hand tightening slightly my biceps and her head leaning against me.

I just smile, distinguishing reflections dancing within her pupils.

She waits by my side, the smile still widely present on her face, while her second hand comes to find the first by crossing against my arm.

- Don’t challenge me, Amelia, you know what I’m capable of…

- What are you capable of? I don’t know, no, she maintains, laughing eyes.

Her spread is the signal I was waiting for and in a few seconds I get up, carrying her with me and carrying her on a shoulder, like a prisoner that I would have kidnapped.

The flowing fabric of her twirling dress around us.

My right-hand keeps her legs in front of me, against the softness of the bluish silk, to prevent her from falling and the other holds her shoes.

- Owen! I hear behind my back, in a shocked tone.

I keep moving forward, the sound of the waves getting louder and almost threatening, before stopping a few centimeters from the edge of the sea.

- Put me back… I was kidding… she exclaims, hitting my back, amused by my reaction.

- Are you sure? I think that this dear Pacific lacks a few mermaids this evening… 

- I changed my mind, my hotel room tempts me a lot more right away, she yields, the perceptible smile in her voice.

I laugh at her confession.

I shift to the side and move along the sea.

After a few steps, I slide Amelia’s left slightly to place my hands under her thighs and now carry her firmly and properly in my arms, her shoes still held in my left hand.

The singer’s hands naturally find my neck and I discern from the corner of my eye, her knowing smile.

- Very interesting… I never thought you could serve me as a porter… 

- The option is available only after midnight and on the edge of the beach, I said, finding in a few steps the sidewalks of the avenue that we had abandoned earlier.

I place Amelia on a nearby bench, handing her sandals. 

- Thank you, she whispers, taking her shoes back, our hands brushing against each other for a few moments in this action.

She watches me intensely, without putting her shoes, a thoughtful and serious air suddenly dressing her features.

- I’m very lucky, she ends up saying weakly. I am very lucky to have you by my side to protect me… and to have met you…

My heart suddenly racing following her words and a disturbing and oppressive impression is associated with these more lively and faster pulsations.

Growing pressure, tense tension.

A feeling that appeals to me more than any other…

Fear…

Fear of disappointing her…

Fear of not being up to it, of not having the right reaction, of not being there at the right time…

Fear that she will regret her words… If I fail tomorrow…

——

I turn the key in the lock and open the door with a brief movement of the hand.

My eyes quickly review the different corners of the room and after not finding any suspicious activity, I flip the switch to illuminate the room.

- Ok, you can go in, I said to Amelia, who stayed behind me.

She advances in the suite and takes off her shoes quickly, leaving her sandals at the foot of the large dining table in the room.

I close the door behind me and immediately reach the alcove.

I sit for a few moments on the sofa and take off my shoes imitating Amelia. I also take off my socks, prefer to walk barefoot. I get up and walk again towards the center of the room.

I take off my jacket, then my holster, taking care to put my gun on the table in front of me.

I feel intense attention focused on me and looking up, I discover Amelia sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at me, and the least of my gestures.

I am about to question her about her observation when a vibration rises in the room.

It takes me a few seconds to realize that it comes from my cell phone, hidden in the inside pocket of my jacket.

My fingers slide in the piece of fabric: they come into contact with a cardboard object first.

I thus place on the table, the card that Jo had put me, a little with force in the pocket, before taking my phone.

A notification informs me that I have received a message, which I open immediately.

From: Nathan Riggs.

Message:

Owen, we were able to make the thing you needed. It will reach you tomorrow morning, by courier directly to your hotel. I hope everything is okay. Be careful. N.R.

I smile slightly, reassured, and satisfied to read this good news. And as always amazed by the efficiency and support of my former mission team members.

I quickly see a silhouette by my side: Amelia stood up and touched Jo’s business card with her fingertips.

- Good news? She asks, her gaze fixed on the cardboard rectangle. 

- Yes, I was waiting for this information… 

She nods like absent, then swipes the card over me.

I put my phone on the table and look in turns at this business card and Amelia…

- Has she already returned? You can go… I will lock the door and not open it to anyone under any circumstances.

I look at her more intensely, destabilized by this remark that I do not quite understand.

- Don’t be surprised… I’ll be pretty selfish tomorrow, knowing that you risk putting your life on the line for me… so tonight, I want to let you free…

She approaches slowly, placing herself right in front of me.

Her hands grab my tie and pull on the fabric, gently undoing the knot.

The two sides finally come off and she collects them in her hand, before placing them on the table next to us while continuing to look at me.

Her proximity, this innocent gesture but carried out with her usual grace have an involuntary effect on my breathing which begins to accelerate…

- Here, now… listen to her advice… for a few hours… forget the bodyguard…

She moves away from me, after this remark, advancing towards the bay window which embraces the whole coast.

- What are you waiting for? She asks with a touch of impatience, turning to me.

- Amelia… if you could be clearer that would help me…

She sighs weakly, before speaking again, her body now completely turned in my direction.

- I heard Jo’s remark earlier… and she’s right… if something happens to you tomorrow… better that you enjoy your evening as a “free“ man… I can stay alone in the room here, I am safe… you should do that than to babysit one more night… especially tonight…

- I don’t babysit, I watch over your safety…

- Forger me a few hours… think of you… she repeats, almost begging.

She redirects her attention to the landscape in front of her, bathed in the light of the stars, offering me her back as the only visual point of reference.

I remain silent, stunned by what she is expressing, and unable to imagine an appropriate response or reaction.

- Didn’t she remind you of it in her text?

- What are you talking about? I ask, lost in front of her questions and allusions.

- Luckily for you, I have the memory of the numbers… room 325… one floor above…

Room 325, Four Seasons hotel… Jo’s room… the one that Amelia so strongly advises me to join… to forger the bodyguard and the unpredictable eventualities of the next day.

- I have no desire to change floors… I announced firmly.

She immediately turns around with a sneering smile on her lips.

- Really? Spend a night with a beautiful woman like Jo, don’t you tempt you? What man would say no?

- You have to believe that I too can be a little special, I replied, taking up her words spoken earlier in the evening.

- You don’t have to play saint with me tonight. You have nothing to prove to me, she confirms weakly.

- No actually… but it is not conceivable for you, that this proposition of your friend does not interest me in the least?

She pauses to stare at me intensely as if to detect the slightest sign of hesitation or lying in my face.

- I have great difficulty in conceiving it, indeed…

- Stop assuming things… know that if these are my last hours I’m exactly where I need to be…

- In a hotel room in Los Angeles, is that on your “I’d like to do before I die“? She continues laughing slightly.

- I was not talking about the place…

A silence of several seconds settles, during which we observe each other with our eyes… like a visual struggle that neither of us wants to give up.

- You know… it could give you another perspective to forget me for a few hours… it might make you see things differently… and their importance differently…

- Like what?

- Like… maybe… that you will realize that this job is insane… that risking your life for a little singer, harassed by a crazy, it’s…

- What I’m going to get up for tomorrow, I finish for her by cutting her off. You can stop standing up to me on this… it’s not my first mission, Amelia… not the first time I’m going to face dangerous situations.

- Maybe, but it’s the first time I realize that…. She starts without ending. I… I don’t want you to be hurt because of me… that you die because of me.

- Well, I’ll try to avoid the balls and banana peels tomorrow, I answer with a smile, casually.

- Seriously, Owen… you can’t forget your savior reflexes and think about yourself… forget the bodyguard…

- Sorry, it’s second nature to me, I say with a hint of a smile in my voice.

I was trying to use humor to fight her almost irrational angst.

She was disturbed since our arrival on the outcome of our stay and in particular on my fate. I was touched by her concern but it shouldn’t have worked her so much… it was useless… it would avoid nothing…

The priority was her safety. Her life. And not mine.

- Don’t worry about me… you know, it’s not usual for the people I work for to worry about my fate…

- I have a bad feeling… it’s stronger than me…

Her confession touches me and anguishes me at the same time.

- Don’t be afraid… there is no reason…

Amelia watches me for a long time as if destabilized by my conviction and my tenacity.

Also surprised by my reaction to this freedom proposition that she wanted to offer me.

I notice that she is biting her lower lip, her fingers tightening mechanically along with her dress… like a tension expressing itself from deep inside her…

- But… if ever… if ever it didn’t go well tomorrow…

- No negative thoughts, I answer quickly.

- You cannot consider that this is not a possibility… there is surely a 99% chance that everything will end well and maybe even that I will have these awards, she continues ironically. But there is still this 1% probability… that it will be your last night… and maybe mine…

- You…

- Let me finish… Amelia whispers firmly, slowly approaching me. If we were to die tomorrow… you must follow Jo’s advice… forgot the bodyguard… forget the singer… just be the man… for a few hours…

She is not two steps from me, her eyes darker and more vibrant than a few seconds ago… with always on the lips, this famous invitation from Jo… and her stubbornness makes me loose my patience.

- Stop with this story… I already told you what I thought… you shouldn’t make assumptions about what I want, without knowing…

- Because spending a few hours with her, hasn’t it crossed your mind? Well, tell me… she resumes more strongly.

- Tell what? I repeat, exasperation rising in my voice.

- Tell me what you want, Amelia specifies. What do you want Owen?

She remains in front of me, without moving, without touching me, but keeping my gaze.

Her blue pupils have taken on a darker and more mysterious shade… a shade that I have observed in the past… a specific memory comes to my mind and destabilizes me a little more.

My gaze leaves her eyes and focuses on her lips that blow me weakly this question.

A simple question and yet so complex for me.

It resounds in my mind like a litany… long seconds…

To the rhythm of my heart racing.

To the rhythm of my breathing, slightly jerky.

To the rhythm of this familiar tension that takes hold of my being.

No words to answer her.

I don’t have any.

I don’t find them.

What I find, on the other hand, it’s her hand a few centimeters from mine… fingers that I grab and suddenly pull towards me, her body running aground against mine.

Our eyes stared at each other for a few seconds.

A few seconds to hesitate.

A few seconds to contemplate.

A few seconds to decide, make what I want.

And an electrical contact from my mouth which slowly and shyly fits closely hers to seal my answer.

               –––––––––––––––––––––––

Thank you for reading. Stay safe and have a great week 💛

[sunsmitten]

     This is something that’s been bothering me lately and i feel the need to give my two cents. im starting to see homophobic comments abt gay ships on my dash and while the people saying them may not think it’s homophobic, it is. no one has to really read this, it’s just something i want to put out there. it’s my personal experience with a group of people that were very Straight Ship centered, heteronormative, and would frequently make the very same comments others are starting to make here: “gay ships are being shoved down my throat so now i hate gay shipping and want nothing to do with it” or you know, stuff along those lines. if two people rping two girls kissing or two boys kissing bothers you in any way, literally, in any way at all, it is homophobia. and here’s a good chunk of how shit like that grows and can become something very harmful;

when i very first started rping on tumblr i had made an oc ( both the oc and blog are looooong gone by now ) that wasn’t very attracted to women romantically or sexually. he didn’t define his sexuality, but throughout that blog i made it clear he wasn’t really into women.

i eventually made friends with this group of people who also rped on tumblr. in the beginning everything was fine, great and fun! but after some time they would make me feel bad for only putting my oc in a relationship with a man. in order for me to be included and not repeatedly discarded by them, i would actively have to put my oc in a ‘straight ship.’ and unfortunately, that’s what i did. i immediately noticed a difference with how they treated me when i finally shipped my guy oc with one of their girls oc’s, and i would have to repeatedly sit through them saying transphobic and homophobic comments abt other people’s ships and muses ( it was the transphobia in this community that made me leave in the first place ). they would constantly express their bitterness towards m/m and f/f shipping on the internet bc it was “more popular” than their m/f ships, and when i would try to explain how that wasn’t a good viewpoint to have, I would be ostracized, guilt tripped, and forced to apologize and ‘admit’ that i was wrong.

as i got older and more comfortable with my sexuality, i really only ever viewed/read content centered around m/m and f/f because like. im gay. and i wanna see gay shit, ya know? but that didn’t really fly with them. they’d would continuously make me feel guilty for this, call me misogynistic for liking m/m and f/f over m/f because to them being gay and wanting to see gay content makes me hate women, and i was called the big word itself. Heterophobic. 

one of the girls in particular, we’ll call her S, was very keen on telling me how awful of a person i was bc of my preference, how ‘straight shipping is oppressed’ on the internet and im only ‘feeding into the oppression.’ for 4 years she would manipulate me and make me feel guilty not only for the type of media i consumed, but for my sexuality in general. it got so bad to the point that i would have frequent panic attacks and i still got the throw up stain on my carpet to prove it ( i got one so bad bc of her i puked all over my bedroom floor and then fainted ). when i would try to reach out to the others abt what was happening behind the scenes, i’d either be ignored or my feelings were invalidated. to me, she was toxic, to everyone else, she was a wonderful friend. but that doesn’t excuse or make her treatment of me ok and it took along time for me to realize that. 

again, please keep in mind this went on for 4 years. this started when i was finally comfortable with myself and then to be thrown in and stuck in this situation bc i was too much of a coward to leave really fucks with a person. her distaste, hatefulness, and bitter attitude for gay people/characters/shipping was all taken out on me every week for 4 years. i’m doing my very best not over-dramatize this but yeah, it was every week for 4 years she would send me paragraphs of how terrible i was for just being me. how shitty i was as a person, how im a terrible friend, how the content i liked wasn’t fair to her, a straight person, that i was predatory for being a masculine identifying person looking at other guys, and how lucky i was to have a friend like her that tells me when i’m ‘in the wrong.’ 

near the end of last year she sent me another one of these multi-paragraph messages. at this point, i had finally become very aware how fucked up of a person she is and how i was never in the wrong through any of this like she originally made me believe. instead of agreeing with her and apologizing, a ended up snapping back. i told her how i felt, how she wasn’t being fair to me, and that i felt she was being very homophobic. admittedly, her response wasn’t at all like i had expected. She apologized, told me i had opened her eyes to some things and she’ll work on getting better. this made me happy! i thought that maybe we could continue our friendship without anymore of the BS. 

after that i took a good break from being online. i needed some time for myself and i needed to think some things over about my life. during this time, i realized how lax i was with S, how i let her and that whole friend group get away with so many things and i began to wonder if i should even go back. even after that talk i had with her, she was still very defensive against homosexual relationships and would get angry if someone expressed more interest in gay media than straight media. 

i was away for a good couple months, i was healing and rising above that bad mentality she forced on me. i logged out of all social media and messenger apps so there was no way her or anyone from that group could contact me. i hadn’t heard from her in months, until i received a letter in the mail. She wrote me a letter. A two paged letter. A LETTER. A REAL, WHOLE ASS LETTER. just so she can continue to try and tear me down. she started by telling me how much she missed me, a little starter paragraph kissing my ass until it, very abruptly, turned into the usual “youre shit, terrible, bad, you have no respect for me or anything i create, you hate me bc im a straight woman-” you get it. but this time i didn’t care! nothing she said in that letter got to me like it used to. the only thing that bothered me was her persistence to make me feel bad. she genuinely wanted to continue to hurt me. but with that time away and probably because i was so used to it by then, it didn’t faze me. 

i eventually went back to social media and kept my distance from that friend group. i still considered them my friends, bc when things were good, i had a lot of fun! and wanted to keep that in my life. But, I blocked S. I blocked her on everything so there’d be no way for her to contact me and if she wrote me another letter, i would simply rip it up. i made it clear i wanted to go our separate ways with no hard feelings, i didn’t talk to anyone abt what she had done. no mention whatsoever. i carried on my merry way bc i was moving past it. She did not. 

When she figured out i had blocked her, she threw a tantrum. she twisted my words and painted me as the villain by showing out of context screenshots of what i had sent in response to her second to last message ( the one before the letter ). she told the people i was still friends with that i abused her for years bc she was straight and put me on full blast on the internet. she did this because i blocked her.

it all happened in the time span of a second; i lost all my friends, i was blocked by everyone and not only called a piece of shit by her, but by everyone i still cared deeply about. i was forced to delete all my social media accounts so i wouldn’t continue to be put on blast. for a week i was upset bc really, who wouldn’t be? but after that week i realized that if these people i called my friends just took S’s word for it and were all so eager to tear me apart bc she said so, they were never my friends. they never cared about me so why should i care if im not with them anymore? it was a real eye opening moment and my dudes, im doing fucking great. im so much happier without them all in my life and i can finally do the shit i want. be gay and indulge on harmless gay content. 

so! to make the moral of the story clear. The people that are so butt hurt over gay shipping being more popular than straight shipping are people not to be trusted. it may seem unfair to lump them all into a category, and im not saying they’re all as toxic as S, but their mentality is homophobic. disliking anything gay bc it’s not straight, is homophobic. straight people are constantly represented in every source of media and if someone is bothered by the fact that gay people are indulging in gay shipping in the rpc, they are homophobic. there’s no way around it.

im still getting over S and all that she did. i know without her i wouldn't be as tough as i am now and unapologetic with what i like, but there’s a good part of me that wishes i never met her or that friend group. bc of her i struggle with my self esteem and my own internalized homophobia that only formed after i met her. i’ve come along way in the months after i officially cut myself off from them, but i know this is something that’s going to take some time. 

[thosequeenboys]

Slippery When Wet (Roger Taylor x Brian May)

Summary: Approaching the end of their American tour, Roger and Brian find some welcome – and rare -- intimate time alone. Roger urges Brian to demonstrate his Instagram shower safety tips.

A/N: This story was inspired by Brian’s August Instagram post about shower safety.   Though focused on current Maylor, there is a flashback to their earlier years. It is being published for the “Maylor Week 2019 Making Love” prompt.  Bolded text is referenced at the end.

Warnings:  SMUT (18+ only). Shower sex, anyone? 

Roger and Brian mingle with staff and visitors backstage after the show, feeling the end of the tour nearing, with only two more shows to go on their American tour.   They nurse increasingly warm drinks, as they tell jokes and express gratitude. Suddenly, they their eyes lock in a knowing glance acknowledging to each other their eagerness to leave.  The high from the show had started to fade, and suddenly, they are done.  They no longer have the need to down countless drinks, make witty conversation and stay up all night.

“Adam, we’re going to head out, mate.” Roger says.

Oh, sure, I’ll see you tomorrow,”  Adam says as he hugs Roger and then Brian. The men yell a thank you and give a wave, receiving a round of applause as they leave.  The adulation still feels good even after all these years.

“Want to come in for a nightcap.” Brian asks once they settle into their waiting car.

“So long as it’s a cold one-absolutely!” Roger says, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket and wiping his brow of the oppressive American humidity.  They enter Brian’s suite and Brian goes to the frig.  “Beer?”  

“Sure,” Roger says, throwing his green velvet blazer on the club chair.  They both sit heavily on the couch, and each lean into the soft pillows positioned against the arm rests at the opposite ends of the couch.

Brian looks up at Roger.  It has been months since they sat together  -  alone. Sarina was on the tour for a bit and left a week before for London; Anita is starring in a show on the West End.

“It feels good to sit and relax.”  Brian says. “With you,” he adds with a warm smile.

“Yeah, we haven’t been together--er, hung out in a while.” Roger corrects himself quickly in his raspy voice as he sips his beer.  He lets himself bask in the special solace of being alone with Brian May: the warmth, comfort, familiarity.  Then, of course, there is the backdrop of desire.

It has been awhile, hasn’t it?”  Brian says, glancing at Roger as he sinks back into the couch. Suddenly, Brian takes his phone from his jacket pocket.  “Oh, my, look at this.  My Instagram post from earlier today has over 10,000 likes-in just a few hours!!”

“Ooh, impressive!” Roger’s voice rises, feigning excitement.  “And what topic is Dr. May expounding on today-the cosmos? hedgeho…?”

Brian cuts him off.  “No actually, it was a post about shower safety in hotels.  There have been many instances of people getting injured slipping in hotel showers. Laying down a towel is the perfect solution.”  He interrupts himself.  “Listen to this!  Brian-Mayday wrote “I’m so glad you posted this, Brian!  I travel for work and will follow your wise advice-and avoid injury. Smile emoji.”  

“Keeping everyone safe, while entertaining and educating the world.  That’s our Brian.”  Roger states, while thinking to himself, shower safety, WTF?.  

Roger eyes Brian whose head is bent over as he scrolls through his phone reading comments, some aloud, clearly tickled.   He takes in Brian’s grey locks cascading down his shoulders and his open shirt, revealing his smooth, still-firm chest.  Roger blinks and a sly smirk spreads on his face as an image pops into his view -- it was another time, another Brian: dark curls also drape into his open shirt. He was folded into himself on the couch, hunched over a paper he was writing due at week’s end, grasping a pencil.  They were positioned as they were this evening-leaning into the opposite arm rests of the couch, their legs tangled in the middle of the cushions.  

“This isn’t right!” Brian said, agitatedly pulling his legs up under him and resting his notebook on them. He stared at it.  

“Read it aloud,” Roger urged and Brian read the essay slowly.

“I think you need to switch up the sentences in the first two paragraphs to better support your thesis sentence.” Roger suggested. “Here-let me see.” Brian passed him the notebook and Roger and Brian talked through the paragraphs, batting around ideas, as they leaned toward each other to look at the notebook.

“Ah, I think this will work.” Brian said nodding, his mouth forming a slight smile, relieved by the clarity.

“Yup.  Just needed some reorganizing.  Your supporting evidence is solid.” Roger said confidently handing the notebook back to Brian, who took it. Leaning back into his end of the couch, he scribbled some notes based on their discussion.

“I have a question for you,” Roger asked pensively from the other end of the couch, cocking his head.  Brian looked up and leaned forward, his brow furrowed, eager to hear the question to further spark his thinking on his paper.  

“What do I have to do to get laid around here?” Roger asked, trying and failing to hide a grin.

Brian raised an eyebrow and his mouth curled into an O, expressing surprise. “Here I was thinking you were going to come up with a brilliant idea about my paper….”

“Did that.  Now I’m ready to put other parts of myself to use.  I have a head for science AND a bod for sin.” (1) Roger said in a husky voice, turning on the charm, flashing his lovely smile, his baby blues sparkling underneath long, batting eyelashes.

“Do you, now?” Brian asked, grinning at Roger, turned on by his boldness. “Well, in answer to your question--That depends if you’re a good boy…” Brian purred, trying to be flirtatious.  

“I’ve been very good…I just helped you…”  Roger said softly.

“That you did,” Brian said.  Suddenly overcome with lust, he threw the notebook and pencil on the floor and launched his body forward, crawling on all fours across the couch. He settled between Roger’s legs that were opened to receive him.  

Looking into Roger’s beautiful eyes, he ran his fingers through his soft hair. He started to kiss Roger’s lips hungrily.  Roger returned the kisses firmly, staring deeply into Brian’s eyes, signaling he was ready for more.  Brian’s tongue licked Roger’s lips and he parted them, allowing Brian’s tongue to probe him. Roger gasped as his tongue explored Brian.  After a few moments, Brian pulled away and started his descent, kissing and sucking down Roger’s neck, unbuttoning his shirt as he moved down his bare, smooth chest.  He stopped to take off the shirt and then ran his hand up and down Roger’s chest sternum to belly button.  He bent and sucked a nipple and licked his calloused fingers, gently tugging at the other.  “Oh, God,” Roger said, thrusting up, as Brian continued to focus on his chest, his long graceful fingers grazing over his fair torso.  

“You’re so sensitive.  I could stay here just at your chest, watching you writhe and listening to you moan under me. You’re so beautiful.” Brian uttered. After generating more moans from Roger and feeling his heartbeat quicken, Brian kissed down his taut abs, speaking in between each kiss.  “Roger. Taylor. I love you.  Your talent.  Your passion for music.  Your cheekiness. Your smarts. Your warmth. Your caring. Your bod!”  He giggled.  “Did I mention your intelligence? You are the real deal….”

“I bet you say that to all the boys,” (2) Roger said with a laugh, deflecting Brian’s serious sentiments.

Brian pulled off his chest and looked at Roger intensely, concerned.  “No, Roger. I don’t.  You’re the only one I love.  And, I want to show you how much I love you.”

Brian sat up slightly and unbuttoned and unzipped Roger’s pants and slid his fingers under the waistband, caressing his hipbones, ever so gently.  

Roger panted. “I…I love you too, but God, bloody take them off…”

****

“Ohmygoodness!”  Brian’s giddy enthusiasm brings Roger back to the present as the image of their youthful student life and lovemaking vanishes.  

“These comments are incredible!  People really appreciate my message and photos! Look at this shot,” Brian turns his phone and shows Roger a photo of his bare leg stepping into the shower placing his foot on the towel.  

“Oh, I must respond to this to this comment.”  

“Seriously?? You’re going to respond to comments all night?”  Roger is SO over freaking Instagram and is clearly losing his patience.  They finally have time together, and…

“So, I have a question, Brian…” Roger says earnestly.

“Hmmmm?” Brian asks half listening, clearly distracted as he types a comment. 

“What do I have to do to get laid around here?”  Roger’s eyes bored into him as he smirks.

Brian looks up.  “You want to…??”  They each have an agreement with their wives-and always had.  They have an occasional thing.  It goes way back and is the reflection of their emotional, intellectual, musical and physical connection-and their history.   It doesn’t detract from the strong love they have for their wives. It is a different connection and bond. Their wives accept the arrangement.   It’s been almost a year since they had been together.

“Actually, BrianMayForReal,” Roger snickers, using Brian’s Instagram name, “I was thinking I’d like you to show me your shower safety tips.  First-hand, so to speak.  Up close and personal.”

“Is that what you’re thinking?” Brian’s mouth opens slightly, as Roger climbs on all fours toward Brian and eases the phone from Brian’s hand, reaching over him to place it on the end table.  “Christ, I gotta take some clothes off,” Roger pants, sitting up to urgently unbutton and throw off his shirt and then lifting his hips to dislodge his pants.  

In just his underwear, Roger lays on top of Brian glad that he successfully turned Brian’s attention away from Instagram.  They lock eyes and then lips.  Roger starts kissing Brian hungrily as he pins Brian’s arms by his side.  Brian’s eyes fly open as he tries to move his arms.  

“Easy, my good boy,” Roger coos.  “I got you.”  He starts to unbutton Brian’s shirt as his mouth trails behind making its way down his smooth chest, aching to heat things up.  

“Roger, wait. Come up here.” Brian says suddenly, sitting up, shifting Roger and releasing his hands from the blonde’s grasp in the process.  He finishes the buttons on his shirt and tosses it.  Roger looks at him, confused by the directive to halt.  But he eases himself up over Brian’s long, now bare, torso to align his face with Brian’s.  

“Let me hold you,” Brian says.  He embraces Roger, hugging him into his chest, and stroking his back.  Roger lets his weight sink into Brian, resting his head in the crook of Brian’s neck, sheltered by the taller man’s flowing hair. Though their bodies have changed over the years, the way they piece together so easily has not. Between them lay over 50 years of friendship, music, brotherhood. Fifty years of love beat in their two hearts, now beating in unison.

“Roger,” says Brian, very present.  “Let’s appreciate this moment together - and what we’re about to do.  And why.”

Roger laughs. “You don’t think this is a wham, bam, thank you, Ma’am situation-do you? Like I’m gonna sneak out in the middle of the night and not call you again?  Brian, I get your having an emotional moment, but I need to get off, and given that it takes some time these days…”

Brian chuckles. “I know,  I want to also. It’s just...during the show, the memories started flooding in…..and you’re the constant in them.  We’re the constant.”

‘Yes, that is true.” Roger says, considering Brian’s sentiments.

Brian continues, “Through most of my life-good, bad-all of it. I could – I can - count on you…” I love you. And, I want to make love to you….” Brian says, his eyes tearing a bit.  

“I love you too. AND, I‘m glad you can tear yourself away from Instagram to focus on me…and us.” Roger smiles.  “So, how about we get those pants off?”

And with that, Roger eases Brian out of his pants and positions himself over him, thrusting into him.  They move together, feeling each other getting hard, delighted that even after all these years they still turn each other on so easily, so quickly.  

Roger looks at him, panting heavily.  “So…how about those shower tips.”

“Ah yes,” Brian said.

They help each other up and, holding hands, walk to the large bathroom with a walk – in shower that easily accommodates two.  

“Here, let me demonstrate.”  Brian says, assuming a professorial tone and grabbing a bunch of rolled hand towels from the generous supply neatly organized in a wicker basket on the floor.   “See, you lay them out – around the drain-not over it-before you step in.  And, let me put one near the wall, since no doubt that’s where you’ll be spending some time.”  He winks, as he positions the towel.  He grabs two large towels and spreads them on the towel warmer next to the shower and turns it on.  Then, he removes his boxers and steps onto a towel, reaching his arm out to Roger who grasps it and enters the shower, stepping on a towel opposite him.  Brian turns on the water which warms instantly and he embraces Roger. They kiss passionately, lathering each other up with musk shower gel and smoothing it over each other’s bodies. Brian starts to caress Roger’s cock and the drummer moans. “God I love hearing you …” Brian says as Roger grasps the guitarist’s firm arms to steady himself as he starts to rock in time to Brian’s movements on his member.

“Turn around, let me help you.” Brian helps Roger spin around and step on the towel closest to the wall and then grabs the bath oil from the shelf.  He prepares Roger, who steps his legs wider. When he’s ready, Brian enters him slowly, running his hand up Roger’s back, as Roger moans, bending toward the wall.

“Oh, babe, that’s good…” Roger says.

Brian wraps his other hand around Roger’s cock, and they both moan softly, continuing their movements. The warm water flows over them, as they move together reflecting their love, which changed and grew through the years - a love that celebrated their triumphs; cushioned their disappointments and frustrations; contained and sheltered them when their lives unraveled in unexpected ways.

‘M close,” Roger grunts, finally, and Brian picks up his pace.  Roger climaxes, Brian follows.  They continue to move together and finally Brian separates.  Roger turns around, his back against the shower wall and Brian plants gentle kisses on his face and his neck.  

“That was great.  Amazing, actually.” Roger says. Brian winks at him and turns to shut off the water.  

“Yes, it was. As usual. Stay there.”  Brian gives him a kiss on the mouth and steps on a towel close to the door to grab the warmed towels.  He gives one to Roger and starts to dry himself off.  

They exit the shower and grab the plush white robes hanging on the hooks.  

“So, what do you think of my shower safety tips?”  Brian asks intensely as they tie their robes and walk toward the bedroom.  

“Very effective!”  Roger compliments.  “Glad you won’t be posting that demo on your Instagram account though.”  

They both burst into laughter as they climb into bed, wrapping their limbs around each other and embrace.  

 @iamnotbrianmay​ @warriorteam1924​ @hey-holtzy​

Notes

1.      This is based on a quote was spoken by Tess McGill, a smart secretary, played by Melanie Griffith to an executive, Jack Trainer, played by Harrison Ford, in the 1988 film Working Girl, a movie about working your way up in the corporate world. I substituted ‘head for business’ to ‘head for science’ to reflect our science-y Roger.

2.      This line is from the song “You took the Words Right out of my Mouth (Hot Summer Night)” by Meat Loaf.

[imagesofthegreatgull]

Hybrid Rainbow

Joy has always been a rare and precious commodity. I would argue, though, that in the developed world (Wherever, exactly, that is), it has become somewhat less rare in recent times, as standards of living and education continue to go up. That’s an absurdly privileged thing to say, I realize, but I’m trying to start this thing as evenhandedly as I can. I understand about suffering and poverty; I’m reading A Tree Grows In Brooklyn right now, even! Okay, saying we’re closer now than ever to utopia is going to smack of ignorance no matter how you phrase it, but it also strikes me as undeniably true, in the grand scheme of things. I think most people--aside from the fascists--would refuse a one-way trip in a time machine to any previous era, or at the very least, would recognize that it wouldn’t improve much of anything for them. As unruly as our age is, it’s still probably the best one we’ve gotten thus far, and as the boot-heel of oppression starts to ever so slowly ease up its pressure on the necks of the long-suffering masses, the question has begun to enter into the collective consciousness: what is to be done with joy when it begins to fall, unbidden, into your life with something like abundance? What is to be done if moments of joy no longer must be pried with great effort and sacrifice from the rockface of life, but lie strewn liberally throughout our days, needing only the will and lack of embarrassment to seize them?

Thus far, the latter-day generations have faced up to this problem with decidedly mixed success. The idea that expecting anything other than the very worst leaves one vulnerable to the universe’s cruel whims has been stamped upon the human brain for centuries, and has left many sadly unable to recognize their own privilege (Which, by the way, is a big part of why a whole lotta white folks refuse to admit they have it better than anyone else and continue to dig their heels in against progress because to them it looks like cutting in line). It is still widely accepted that constantly finding joy and peace and purpose in one’s own life is the purview of children and children alone, that it is a naivete to be grown out of. We have the impulse always within us to be hard, to be warlike, to show the world that we’re not weak and frivolous but monsters to be feared, without emotions to be appealed to or ideals to be fallen short of.

Remedying this problem has turned out to be one of the primary functions of counterculture. If it is often unhelpful to simply look at the entire value system of one’s parents and say “Fuck that”, as it tends to foster a rather negative self-definition, still, if part of that value system is a deeply entrenched distrust of happiness, “Fuck that” may be exactly the response called for. The beauty of “Fuck that” is that it leaps past the slow loss of faith in something and arrives immediately at a flat rejection of it, and since much of the history of civilization has been bound up with blind faith in arbitrary and harmful things, the ability and the courage to flatly reject something, to give it no credit for however widely accepted it is but to dismiss it as bullshit from the ground up, is a step forward in human consciousness tantamount to the reinvention of the wheel.

The great irony of the end of the sixties is that all the hippies were miserable for no reason: they won. Rock n’ roll did change the world, it just didn’t immediately transform it on every level into an unrecognizable nirvana. For all the apparent emptiness of its utopian dreams, the basic thrust of the thing worked out just fine: that particular cat will never be put back into its bag, and those ideas are now out in the ether forever, always waiting for someone to find them and be inspired to change their own life and the lives of those around them for the better. The same goes for the punk rock revolution a few years later: they may not have brought the bastards down, but they did successfully bring personal liberation to a lot of people, and poured exactly as much gas on the fires of populism as they intended to. Culture, and in particular art and in particular music, cannot, unassisted, change the world, but it can change your world, and has been changing small worlds all over the frigging place at least since those mop-topped Brits set foot on American shores and probably since Johnny B. Goode learned to play guitar just like a-ringin’ a bell. 

The thread can get lost, however. Culture is always a reflection of the people, and the people still spend a lot of their time bored, frustrated, and terrified of letting on that they have feelings about stuff. Young people especially, formerly the eternal pirate crew waving high the flags of “Liberty” and “Up Yours”, in recent times have often capitulated and resigned themselves to no more than a few stray moments of fun pilfered from the fortresses of the almighty Money Man-Kings, usually in the form of drugs, sex, and reckless self-endangerment. The cost of the hippies and the punks giving up their battles is that the counterculture lost its intellectual leadership, at least until the resurgence in political literacy in the 2010s. In the wasteland following the 70s, there were no John Lennons or Joe Strummers to look to for guidance; even the people who were elected to speak for their generation seemed adamant that there was fuck-all they could really say. Yeah, it’s nice to know that someone else feels stupid and contagious, but that’s not really a direction, is it? The generation-defining message Kurt Cobain and his peers sent out was “We’re all way too fucked up to do anything about anything”, and that introspective moodiness pervaded American underground rock music from the invention of hardcore at least all the way up to the moment Craig Finn watched The Last Waltz with Tad Kubler and said “Why aren’t there bands like this anymore?” and set out with rest of the Steadies in tow to remind everyone that music can save your immortal soul and that hey, that Springsteen guy was really onto something, headband and all, and together they all successfully ushered in the New Uncool and now we’ve got Patrick Stickles wailing that “If the weather’s as bad as the weatherman says, we’re in for a real mean storm!” and Brian Fallon admitting “I always kinda sorta wished I looked like Elvis” and everything’s great, except it’s not, everything’s fucked, but rock n’ roll is here to stay, come inside now it’s okay, and I’ll shake you, ooo-ooo-ooo.

The point of all this is my belief that even with the responsibility rock music has to provide cathartic outlets for dissatisfaction, is has an equal or greater responsibility to provide heroes. I think it’s time we all got over pretending that we’re better than the need for heroes, because we all insist on having them anyway, imperfect roses by any other name, and we’d do a hell of a lot better selecting them if we just admitted what we were after. We don’t just want particularly talented comrades, we want King Arthur, Robin Hood, Superman, Malcolm Reynolds. Damn it all, they don’t need to be perfect, they don’t even need to be all that great really, and yeah, Arthur dies, and Robin never gets Prince John, and Superman can’t save everyone, and the war’s over, we’re all just folk now, and John Lennon beat women and Van Morrison is a grumpy old fart and John Lydon’s a disgrace, but it’s the faith that counts. The faith that there’s something greater than ourselves that some people are more keyed into than others, and that whatever they can relay from that other side is what’ll see us through. All the best prophets are madmen, and madmen aren’t always romantic fools; sometimes they hurt people, or fail at crucial moments due to a compulsion they can’t control. Let he who is without sin etcetera, right? Why not cast aside realism and sincerely believe in something or someone, huh? 

I believe in the Pillows. I don’t know hardly anything about them; my expertise of Japanese culture and history extends to the anime I’ve seen and that “History of Japan” YouTube video that made the rounds a while back. I can’t locate them within the Japanese music scene; all their western influences seem obvious to me, and the rest I know nothing about. They’re the only rock band from their country I’ve listened to any great amount of, I don’t speak the language they mostly sing in, I don’t even know their career very well. The particulars of any experiences they might have had that motivated them to make the art they make are not ones I could possibly share in, so, saying that I “Relate” to their work sounds a little preposterous. They ought to be a novelty to me, a band that clearly likes a lot of the same bands I do despite hailing from a foreign shore, marrying that shared music taste with a cultural identity I have nothing to do with, a small, nice upswing of globalism pleasing to my sense of universalism but not having any kind of quantifiable impact on me.

Yet I, like a good many other westerners, believe in the Pillows. I’m a little buster, and my eyes just watered as I wrote that. In fact, it’s likely because of the barriers of language and culture that exist between us that my belief in the Pillows is so strong. Pete Townshend, someone else I believe in, once opened a show by saying “You are very far away...but we will fucking reach you”, and though the Pillows are both geographically (At the moment) and culturally miles away from me, Lord strike me down if they don’t fucking reach me. They reach me in a way many of their American college rock peers, many of their biggest influences in fact, never have. Dinosaur Jr, Bob Mould, Sonic Youth, the Pixies, Nirvana--all these artists speak directly to the American adolescent experience, but though they have all moved me to one degree or another, none of them have produced a body of work I can so readily see myself in as that of the Pillows. Maybe it is the novelty of it, maybe I’m fooling myself and it is just my sense of universalism carrying me away, but there’s something I hear in the Pillows that I don’t hear in those bands, and though the obvious candidate for that thing would be the foreign tongue the majority of the lyrics are written in, when it comes down to it, I think that thing is joy.

Joy, to me, is the possibility glimpsed by rock n’ roll. Not hedonistic pleasure, not a sadistic glee over the outrage of authority figures, but real, true, open-hearted, “Freude, schöner Götterfunken/Tochter aus Elysium”--type joy. Buddy Holly had joy. The Beatles, The Who, the pre-fall Rod Stewart, they had joy. Springsteen’s got joy to spare. Those people have such profound love for their art and their audience that just the continual recognition of the fact that they have a guitar in their hands and they’re being allowed to play it is enough to make them ecstatic, and whenever they want to actually express something serious they have to get themselves under control to do it. Yet, whether it’s the unfashionability of those utopian dreams, or the simple fact that rock music has become accepted by mainstream culture and is now a commonplace, unremarkable thing, but half the people who have picked up an electric guitar for the past few decades don’t seem all that excited about it. From Kim Gordon snarling about how people go down to the store to buy some more and more and more and more, to Thom Yorke moaning about how he’s let down and hanging around, crushed like a bug in the ground, even up to Courtney Barnett asking how’s that for first impressions, this place seems depressing, it’s not really a given anymore, if it ever was, that people who make rock music are very joyful in what they do. 

Of course, I’m not demanding that our artists be empty-headed fluff-factories; far from it. The Pillows write sad songs and angry songs same as everybody else. But the important thing is this: every song the Pillows play is played with an exuberance and abandon that is immediately striking, regardless of the emotional content of each song. Channelling that kind of revelry into rock music is both to my mind the initial purpose of the genre in the first place and something which has become so rare as to be remarkable. A veneer of detached cool, a howling ferocity, a whimpering woundedness--these have become the hallmarks of American rock music, and they are nowhere to be found in the Pillows.

At the same time, the Pillows are the very antithesis of artlessness. Joy of the caliber they deal in is more commonly found in folky rave-ups, a lack of musicianship giving way to trancelike festivity. But the Pillows are skilled song craftsmen like few others; their sound has evolved throughout the years, but they tend to settle in the neighborhood of power-pop, abounding in glorious hooks and surprising structures. A hundred unnecessary, perfect touches seem to exist in every song; a pause, a solo, a bassline, all deftly elevating the song into a perfect expression of something sublime, something that always--always--takes ahold of the musicians themselves and imbues their performances with power and purpose the likes of which most little busters can only dream of feeling. It should be testament enough to their brilliance that upon first listen to a song I never know what most of the lyrics mean, but whenever I look up a translation, they always turn out to be exactly what I felt they must be; their songs are so musically communicative that they all but lack the need for lyrics. 

This dual nature is why I believe in the Pillows: by so utterly failing to neglect both the highest possibilities of musical composition as an unparalleled tool for capturing emotional nuance and the unrestrained id-like rush that is the province of rock n’ roll, they successfully attain the lofty realm that is--or ought to be--the goal of music in the first place. Never once is there a hint of straying into the realm of primitivism nor into overthought seriousness, and instead they locate themselves somehow exactly center on the scale between punk and prog, lacking the weaknesses and gaining the strengths of both. They make rock whole again by finally disproving the tenet initially laid out by their heroes, your heroes, and mine, The Beatles: the notion that growing up means having less fun. The viscerally exciting early work of The Beatles lacks any of the depth and vision displayed by their later records, but those records are so carefully and expertly crafted that they tend to lose spontaneity, and constantly second-guess themselves where the juvenilia they followed forged unselfconsciously ahead. That legendary career path has laid out a false dichotomy that every proceeding generation of kids with guitars has chosen between, save for the few who could see past it, the ones who heard the wildness in “Revolution” and the wisdom in “Twist and Shout” and realized that they were of a piece, were one and the same, not to be chosen between but embraced fully. Pete Townshend. Bruce Springsteen. Joe Strummer. David Byrne. Paul Westerberg. The Pillows. The real heroes are not those who champion one side or another but fight all their lives for peace between them, knowing that we have not yet begun to imagine what could be accomplished if that were made possible.

Just as they bypass the divide between what Patrick Stickles termed the Apollonian and Dionysian tendencies of rock (I prefer to think of the usual battle as being between the Dionysians and the Athenians, with the true devotees of Apollo being most of those heroes I keep referring to, except Dylan, who might be a Hermesian), so too do the Pillows bypass the Pacific frigging ocean. And the Atlantic, to boot. Their music quotes the Pixies and The Beatles directly, and obviously owes much to Nirvana and all their college rock predecessors who spent the entire 80s desperately stacking themselves until the doomed power trio could finally vault over the wall. Their first record is practically a tribute to XTC. They do speak a lot of English, too. I’m informed that much of western culture is seen as the epitome of coolness in Japan, which might explain their obsession with Baseball, and apparently sprinkling a bit of the Saxon tongue into the mix is far from uncommon in the music scene(s). Regardless, there is something ineffably touching to a distant fan in a foreign land about hearing Sawao Yamanaka spit “No surrender!” or exclaim “Just runner’s high!” It looks from here like a show of mutual effort to understand me as much as I’m trying to understand them. They’re generous enough to have already walked to the middle where they’re asking me to meet them, a middle where it doesn’t matter that I don’t have a suffix attached to my name or that they don’t wear shoes in houses. The invisible continent that all forward-thinking and sensitive people come to long for is where the Pillows are broadcasting from, because they’ve realized that its golden shores and spiraling cities are attainable. They’re attainable with joy, with the fundamentally rebellious act of refusing to let the fascists bring down even your globdamn day, because who the hell gave them that power other than us? I know enough about Japan and America to know that either one accusing the other of being imperialist and socially conservative to a fault is a fucking joke, and to know that we’ve done a lot more wrong to them than they’ll ever do to us and the presence of the Pillows amounts to a “We forgive you”, not an “I’m sorry”. Having watched a decent amount of anime, which is basically the result of Japan’s mind being blown by western media and then proceeding to show their love by often almost inadvertently surpassing their inspirations, I know that the only way to save our respective national souls and everybody else’s too is to put our knuckles down, have Jesus and Buddha shake hands like Kerouac tried to explain that they would anyway, and embrace each other’s dreams and passions and adopt them into our own. 

It takes better people to inhabit that better world, and in case that sounds like fascist talk, I mean we’ve got to do better, not be better. It’s no physical imperfection that holds us back, nor a mental imperfection exactly, as we all have our own neuroses and if we expunge those then we’ll be kissing art and lot of other vital stuff goodbye. No, it’s our discomfort with ourselves, our world, our neighbors, our aliens, that keep us from seeing that crazy sunshine. If we can’t even acknowledge the greatness around us, that surplus of joy I mentioned a while back that we just seem to have no idea what to do with, then we have no hope of ever achieving further greatness, of ever quelling man’s inhumanity to man down to an inevitable fringe rather than the basic order of the world. 

There was always more to do 

Than just eat and work and screw

But now that there’s time at last to do those things, we’re still afraid to, afraid that we’ll come up empty, that the search for fulfillment leads only to disappointment, better to hang back and play it safe, better not to risk becoming one of those people I shake my head at and pity and will secretly envy until I die. It’s a new world, and we must learn to be new people. I believe in the Pillows because I believe they make excellent models for that new kind of person. The way they behave in the studio and on the stage is the way people behave when they’re truly free, and we’ve all been set free already or will be soon, so if we’re going to try and learn what the fuck is next from anyone, I think we might as well learn from the Pillows. At least, that’s one of the places we could get that insight. There’s a lot of art and a lot of philosophy and political theory to sift through to in order to put together a workable 21st century identity, and the Pillows are hardly the only people to have begun making the leap. But because of a silly thing like the size of the earth, the infinitesimal size of the earth even compared to the distance between us and the next rock we’re gonna try and get to, not everybody is getting their particular brand of free thought and action, and I happen to think that’s regrettable, and it’s my will as a free individual to rectify it as much as I can.

Writing about music really is worthless, isn’t it? I haven’t said jackshit about what the Pillows actually do other than to vaguely qualify their genre and temperament, and the only more useless thing I could do than not describing their songs would be to describe their songs. If you don’t hear the bracing weightlessness in “Blues Drive Monster”, or the aching nostalgia in “Patricia”, or the soul-bearing cry in “Hybrid Rainbow” then nothing I could write about those would be more effective than “Little Busters is a really good album.” The better primer might be Happy Bivouac, from a few years later; it has the melancholic rush of “Last Dinosaur”, the ascended teenybopper “Whoa, whoa, yeah” chorus in “Backseat Dog”, and the intro that should make it obvious immediately that you’re listening to one of the best songs ever recorded which opens “Funny Bunny”. Those two, Runners High, and Please, Mr. Lostman are the classic era, selections from the former three immortalized in their biggest claim to western fame, the FLCL soundtrack, a brilliant use of their music that could warrant an equally long piece. Before and after those four are periods of experimentation and discovery equally worth your time, not all of which I’m familiar with yet. See, now I’m just an incomplete Wikipedia article; it’d be equally worthless to expound upon the individual bandmates, on the pure yawp of Yamanaka’s vocals, on the passionate drumming of Yoshiaki Manabe and the supernaturally faultless lead guitar of Shinichiro Sato, or the contribution of founding bassist Kenji Ueda, which was so valued by the others that when he left he was never officially replaced (They’re so sweet). I’m not here to write an advertisement or a press-release, I don’t really even know why I’m here writing this, but I know that I believe in the Pillows, that they’re important, and that people should write about them. I’m being the change I want to see in the world, get it? That’s all we can be asked to do.

It occurs to me that people believed in Harvey Dent too, and that didn’t turn out so well. Hell, let’s leave the comic book pages behind, people believe in Donald Trump, they think he’s a hero, and that’s all going down in flames as I write this. Having heroes can be dangerous, but I still believe it’s not as dangerous as not having heroes. “Lesser of two evils” sounds an awful lot like one of those false dichotomies between fun and intelligence or between misery and foolishness I mentioned earlier, so, let’s call it a qualified good. I’m not much of a responsible world-citizen if my only effort towards bringing the planet together is spinning some sweet Japanese alt-rock tunes and bragging about how open-minded I am, but if I do ever end up doing anyone any good, then I’d consider it paying forward the good done to me by the Pillows, among others. They helped me form my identity as an artist (Read: functional human being) and they made my adolescence a lot easier. Actually, that’s a lie: my adolescence was (And continues to be) pretty easy already, and the Pillows reassured me that I wasn’t avoiding reality by feeling that. While American bands sang about the downsides of being a mallrat or a non-mallrat, the Pillows offered a vision of teenagedome much like my own, one that was grandly romantic, in which suffering wasn’t a cosmic stupidity but a trial with pathos and merit, and joy was not an occasional indulgence but a constant presence, whether it was lived in or lost and needing recovery. 

That’s the old idea of youth, the youth of John Keats, the youth that makes the old miss it, makes it required that we explain to them that it’s still there, it never left, it’s a dream, a momentary affirmation, an attitude, a muttered curse word. So many of my peers, now no longer engaged in a constant race to stay out of the grave as their ancestors were, seemed intent on beating each other into their tombs, as if reaching walking death before their parents was the only way to outgrow them. There’s so much life just lying around and it’s just plain wasteful to let it lie in the sun and rust in the rain. There’s space enough to stretch, to not keep who you are awkwardly curled up inside yourself, to breathe the air and taste the wine and dig the brains of your fellow travelers in this loosely-defined circus. I found that space in the Pillows, having often suspected it was there, and while everyone is going to find that space in their own way--or not, still, tragically not--I have to think that experience was due in part  to some innate and unique quality of the music itself, not just a complimentary sensibility contained within myself. The Pillows are free, and that makes them freeing, it’s easy as that. Their liberation is plain as day; it rings in every chord, every snare-hit, every harmony; it’s up to us ascertain what we can do in our own limited capacity to hoist ourselves up to their level and give some other folks a boost along the way and a hand to grab afterwards. It’s the gift that art gives us, and the Pillows just give it more freely than most is all, which is why I think the suggestion to listen to them is more than just a solid recommendation. Like the insistence on listening to The Beatles, or The Clash, or any of the others, it’s a plea to save your soul, to learn the language of tomorrow and drink the lifeblood of peace and love and piss and vinegar, or else you’ll be lost, lost, lost. 

Can you feel? Can you feel that hybrid rainbow?

[heterowomanist]

2020 Election in the Midst of a Pandemic By Rev. Stephanie A. Duzant, MSW October 2, 2020

I was in my living room watching television, contemplating if I would go to bed early.  My brother came to my door and asked me if I had heard the news.  What news was my reply.  “Trump tested positive.”  I was in shock…at first.  I quickly turned from watching Lovecraft Country to put on the CNN.  There was Don Lemon, with a panel of journalist, Analyst and medical experts talking about what this meant for the election and our country.  I immediately turned my mind to heaven and asked God what did this mean?  God’s response would be profound to me, especially since the news was acting like we were in a state of emergency.

“Nothing has changed.  People still need to vote. People still need to stay focused on the goals that they need the election to bring.”  

On November 3, 2020 the United States of America will hold an election that will determine who will be the president and vice president of the united states, as well as who will represent us in Congress. We will also be electing local officials who will represent in our individual states, as well as judges who will preside over judicial proceedings in our districts and counties. And we will be doing this in the midst of a Pandemic that has brought the international world to its Public Health knees, and has shown us that it is no respecter of person, be it people we know and love, or leaders of nations.  We are also conducting elections during a time of social unrest and economic crisis that have invoked protest and riots (There is a difference) throughout our nation.  Yet the word from the Lord is that we are to stay the course and complete the plan that we started with.  Vote.  

I seek out the Odes of Solomon when I am in search of a sacred text that will give voice to what my spirit is not only feeling, but in need of hearing. Ode 8 would be the one that my spirit rested upon when I sought comfort and confirmation.  Verses three through seven would solidify God’s message.  

Ode 8:3-7 (A New New Testament Translation)

Stand and be restored,

All of you who were once flattened.

Speak, you who were silent,

Because your mouth has been opened.

From now on be lifted up, you who were destroyed

Since your justice has been raised.

For the Right Hand of the Lord is with you all,

And she will be a helper for you.

Peace was prepared for you,

Before what may be your war.

 Donald Trump and his wife having tested positive for Coronavirus/Covid-19 does not change anything. We still need to vote for those who will stand against White Supremacy and systemic oppression.  We still need to vote for those who believe in science and Women’s rights.  We still need to vote for those who understand that the United States is a part of an International forum and the good for the world means the good of the country. We still need to vote for humanity, and not just self-centered humans.  Keep that before you.

You will see Trump's illness on the news for the next few days. You will read all the well wishes from politicians who just hours before the story broke,  were denouncing him for being racist, xenophobic, sexist and unintelligent.  You will hear things like, “there is no way he will win now”, or that nothing is going to change.  You may even hear folks saying that Trump is not sick and that it is just a way to take focus off of the debate where he refused to denounce White Supremacist, telling them to “Stand back and stand by”.  And of course, there will be folks who are saying that he is trying to stall or steal the election.  No matter what you hear keep the words of Odes 8 with you as you complete the task at hand.  VOTE!  

Donald Trump is still the same man that lost the popular vote by 3 million, yet won the electoral college in 2016 (turn to your virtual neighbor and say, we need to get rid of the electoral college).  He is the same man that called racist rioters in Charlottesville Virginia, “Good People”.  He is the same man that called nations in Africa and the Caribbean shithole countries. The same man who authorized children being separated from their parents and being caged at the borders.  This is the same man that wants to undo the Affordable care act because it is named after President Obama.  The same man that demanded that President Obama show proof of being born in the United States pushing the racist lie that Obama was not a US Citizen.  

Yes, Donald Trump is the same man who was a racist landlord in NY. An unscrupulous business man who refused to pay contractors after completion of work, and who did not pay his fare share of taxes.  $750 over 10 years is appalling and an insult to all the hard-working middle-class folks who pay much more than that in a month of taxes.  

And we shall never forget that Donald Trump is the same man that took out a full page add calling for the death penalty for the Central Park 5. When they were exonerated of all charges, and Mayor DeBlasio agreed to pay the $41 Million settlement, Trump wrote an op-ed calling the payment ridiculous and a disgrace.  

Some may not want to wish death on him, but that does not mean that they are ok with him being re-elected.  And before you judge those who are ok with him succumbing to death by the hands of Covid-19, ask yourselves, has anyone they knew and loved been on the 200,000 plus list of names of those that have died in our country?  A list that did not have to be so long.  A list that could have drastically been prevented if Trump did not “downplay” the seriousness of the virus for the sake of the economy.

“Nothing has changed.  People still need to vote. People still need to stay focused on the goals that they need the election to bring.”  

The right hand of the Lord will be with you, whether you mail in your ballot, go to early voting sites, or vote in person on election day.  Stand, all of you who are formerly incarcerated…who have had your voting rights restored.  All of you who have turned 18 this year, or who have become naturalized citizens, or who have registered to vote for the first time, to use your voting voice that is no longer silent.  Now is our time to use our hands to raise up justice, when we vote for the candidates who will work to bring justice for all of us.  For God, our helper…is with us, and She is a very present help.

And because we are clear that the adversary will not go down without a fight, we prepare for the systemic war for justice. Our spirits continue to fight, giving thanks for the moments of peace we are able to rest in for now.

“Nothing has changed.  People still need to vote.” A word from the Lord, for the people of God.  Thanks be to God.

[daisy-rivers]

Kettling

MSNBC anchor Craig Melvin just explained kettling to his viewers, referring to it as a “controversial police tactic,” and once again, I got the eerie feeling that I had predicted the future.

Chapter 26 of I Like You a Lot is “Shouting in the Square,” about a protest march in Times Square that turns violent. I wrote it in the late summer or early fall of 2017, and now it feels like I’m watching it on the news. I’m posting the whole chapter here today. For those of you who haven’t read my fanfics on AO3, it’s a Hamilton fic, modern AU, set mostly at Columbia University in New York City. George King has become President; his police force is referred to as the “Greaters.” Alexander Hamilton is one of several student leaders of the resistance group called the Movement (there are mentions of TJ, Ethan, Ben, Nat, Frank, and Tony; maybe you can figure out who they are) at various colleges who are protesting against King’s unfair and oppressive tactics. Everyone in this chapter (except the very minor characters Alice, Vincenzo, and Monica) was actually a participant in the American Revolution, although not all of them appear in the musical. The Marquis de Lafayette goes by Gil in my stories, and he’s a pre-med student.

This excerpt begins a couple of paragraphs into the chapter. If you want to read the rest of the story, it’s here:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/11194281/chapters/24997485

By noon the next day, they had a plan in place. The protest was starting in forty-eight hours. Alex had applied for a protest permit, but they were going to march whether they got a permit or not. Angelica and Eliza were staying in the city to participate. Tony had returned to Philadelphia and Ben and Nat to New Haven to organize protests there, and they got confirmation that TJ, Frank, Ethan, and the others were doing the same. John designed flyers, and he and Herc gave them out on and off campus. There seemed to be more interest that there had been in the first protest, but also a new wariness about the increased and militarized police presence.

The day before the protest was to take place, Alex got word that the permit had been denied. He wasn’t surprised.

“Oh, well,” he shrugged. “This is where civil disobedience kicks in.”

He made sure that everyone was aware that they’d been refused permission, so that they could make their choice about whether to participate. It didn’t look like many planned to back out.

“One protest won’t change a law, no matter how well it goes,” he reminded the others over coffee, “but if they see that a majority of citizens oppose King’s actions, some members of Congress may grow a spine and stand up to him.”

“Especially if there are protests in a dozen or more cities,” John added optimistically.

“Just remember,” Alex continued, “that the protest isn’t permitted. We could be arrested for disturbing the peace. If we get separated and you do get arrested, call me. We’ve got some guys at Legal Aid who can help, and we’ve got some money if we need it – not a lot, though, so don’t all of you get arrested at once.”

It was a feeble attempt at a joke, but they smiled anyway.

“Dad’s not going to like it if we get arrested,” Angelica said to her sister.

Eliza nodded. “Maybe he won’t find out.”

“Let’s hope.”

*          *          *          *          *

The protest march was to start at the campus and go south on Amsterdam Avenue to Broadway and then on to Times Square, where they would meet up with more protestors from other organizations. At the same time, in other cities, there would be marches in the largest public spaces. They were planned for maximum visibility and maximum publicity. All Movement leaders were emphasizing the concept of peaceful protest. 

“If anything gets out of hand,” Alex reminded them all early in the morning, “it won’t be because we started it.”

Unlike last time, they weren’t all gathering at Alex and John’s apartment because there were just too many of them. They were going to assemble on Amsterdam Avenue, and once there was a crowd there, start walking.

It was no surprise that there were dozens of police officers – Greaters – in evidence.

“Let’s see your permit,” one of them demanded as the protestors began to gather. Alex had prepped everybody for this.

“Joanna has it,” he told the officer politely. “She’ll be here in a minute.”

The Greater was irritated, but apparently wasn’t aware that no permit had been issued. He began asking random women if they were Joanna, and people were responding with helpful information like, “She’s just up the block there,” or “She’s wearing a bright red sweater. You can’t miss her.” That all generated some confusion, and then someone else, as planned, told the Greater that it wasn’t Joanna who had the permit, it was Orlando, giving a description of Orlando to make it even more complicated. Greaters continued to search for Joanna and Orlando while the rest of the crowd began to move south.

“You think they’ll find Joanna?” John asked Alex, trying not to laugh.

“Nah, I think she and Orlando were on their way to JFK to catch a plane.”

“You sure there’s no Joanna or Orlando in this crowd?” Herc asked, looking around. There were a lot of participants he didn’t recognize.

“As sure as I can be,” Alex said. “I asked everybody I could think of, and nobody knew anyone with those names. Worst case scenario, the Greaters find some poor guy named Orlando and question him, but he won’t have any connection to us.”

“That’s pretty heartless,” Deb told him, disapproval in her voice. “It sounds like you don’t care if some guy gets hassled, as long as we don’t know him.”

“Not quite,” Alex told her. “I care a little less, though, if it doesn’t put our group at risk. Besides, anybody protesting today knows there’s a chance of getting harassed.”

As if on cue, a police car turned sideways across Amsterdam Avenue to block their way.

“Keep walking,” Alex called out, and the word was passed along. There were two Greaters in the car, but dozens, maybe hundreds, of marchers, and they kept walking. The police officers glared, but didn’t take any action.

“It doesn’t look to me like they have any real plan to deal with us,” John said to Alex. “Are we supposed to be intimidated by their presence?”

“Probably. Remember that most of these Greaters are new hires, and I doubt if they’ve had a lot of training yet. We’ll just keep walking.”

The marchers carried signs with a variety of messages. Many said, “Repeal the Smith Act;” others called for re-opening the national parks. Quite a few had the words Have, Hope, Deplo inside a red circle with a bar across it. Holding the signs and banners high, they continued marching south, and more people joined in. It was beginning to look as if King’s most recent actions were finally getting the attention it would take to bring real change. Alex turned around, walking backwards for a few steps. Herc and Johan were behind him, and he caught a glimpse of Eliza’s bright blue scarf farther back, but he couldn’t see Gil or Patty or any of the others. He felt a small twinge of anxiety, but reminded himself that they were all adults and knew what was expected of them. He turned back to John, “Don’t get too far from me, okay?”

John smiled. “I’ll hold your hand if you want.”

Alex took him up on it. “We might as well piss the Greaters off for that too.”

A few blocks later, a group of protestors from a local church joined them. They were singing a song Alex didn’t recognize. He quickened his pace to catch up with them and approached a guy with an Afro, glasses and a clerical collar. “What are you singing?” he asked.

The guy grinned at him. “Old civil rights protest song I learned from my granddad,” he said. “Seems like everything old is new again, you know what I mean?”

“Yeah, I do. I’m Alex, by the way. We’re with Students for a Progressive Government.”

The clergyman held out his hand. “Tim Dwight – the Reverend Timothy Dwight, if you want the whole thing, but most people call me Tim, and the kids call me Rev.”

“Your grandfather marched in the civil rights movement?”

“Yeah, but he was a kid himself at the time. My great-grandfather, now, he was the one fighting that fight. He died before I was born, but according to Granddad, he marched with some of the greatest.”

“So you come by this naturally?”

Tim shook his head. “I don’t think any sane person comes by fighting the powers that be naturally. It’s always a struggle, but we have to stand up for the truth and for our rights.”

“Yeah, that’s why we’re doing this,” Alex agreed. “Glad to make your acquaintance. Can I get your number? Maybe we can coordinate some activities?”

“Sure.” Tim took Alex’s proffered phone and tapped in his information. “Let’s hope we can get some attention, get some changes made.” He turned to some members of his congregation who were close by. “This guy’s Alex,” he said. “We’re going to teach him a song.”

It wasn’t long before dozens more of the marchers had joined in the old protest song that Tim was leading in a call-and-response. By the time they reached Broadway, they were singing “Ain’t gonna let George King turn me around, turn me around, turn me around,” and there were police cars on the street, forcing the marchers up onto the sidewalks and slowing them down. Alex was still holding John’s hand, but he had no idea where Herc and Johan had gotten to. He kept looking over his shoulder.

John yanked on his hand. “They’re fine,” he said.

“Yeah.” Alex was a little embarrassed. “It’s just … damn, there must be hundreds of people here.”

“Probably thousands. That’s good, right?”

“Yeah, yeah, sure.” He looked back again. “Why aren’t they giving us more trouble?”

“Like you said, most of them are new, don’t know much …”

“Yeah, I …” Alex, barely five foot nine, couldn’t see more than a few feet in any direction. “It doesn’t feel right. I wish I’d told everybody to stay together.” I should have set up checkpoints so we’d know where everybody was. I should have arranged a meeting place after the march. I should at least have told everybody to text me every hour or so. He pulled John with him into an alcove by a shoe store. “I’m going to call Angelica.”

Angelica didn’t answer.

“She’s probably got her phone in her purse and didn’t hear it,” John said sensibly. “It’s noisy.” He was right. Dozens, maybe hundreds of people were singing and chanting, and practically everybody was talking.

Alex texted Angelica: Where are you? Is Eliza w you?

“She’ll get back to you,” John told him.

Alex shoved his phone back in his pocket. They were almost at Times Square, and it seemed like the noise level was increasing. He could feel the excitement running through the crowd as they got closer to their destination. There would be media coverage there, reporters looking for statements. He was ready if anyone wanted to hear from him. He’d rehearsed some words in his head, just in case they were needed. He smiled at John and held his hand tighter, and John gave him a grin, his eyes sparkling. “Let’s give ’em hell, mi amor.”

At first the high-pitched noise seemed like more shouting, but within seconds, they realized that they were hearing screams.

“What the fuck?” Alex muttered, starting to run. The crowd was so dense that it was hard to make any headway, and it didn’t take long for him to grasp that there were people running toward him, away from Times Square. Some of them were coughing and choking or holding their shirts over their faces.

“Tear gas,” John said angrily.

They kept going, weaving their way between those going in the opposite direction. There was more than screaming coming from up ahead now. As they came to the northern end of Times Square they heard the crashing of breaking glass and saw some of the marchers picking up anything they could to throw through windows.

“Shit!” Alex yelled. “What are they doing?” He ran forward, John with him, trying to get to a small group that seemed to have brought their own rocks and broken bricks to throw. “What’s the matter with you? This is supposed to be a peaceful protest. Leave the stores alone.”

“Fuck you!” a dirty guy with a straggly beard told him. “I’m not leaving till I use up all my bricks.”

“What are you talking about?” Alex grabbed the guy by the arm. “Why the hell did you bring bricks anyway?”

The bearded guy squinted at him, as if trying to focus. “I didn’t bring them. Cop gave them to me. I’m getting ten bucks a brick.”

“A cop gave them to you?”

“Yeah.” He let fly another one through the glass door of a candy store. “Over there.” He gestured vaguely in the direction of 48th Street. “You can get some too.”

Alex did a quick assessment of the rock-throwers and concluded that many of them were probably homeless, desperate to make a little money. Before he had time to say anything, John leaned in and spoke to him. “The tear gas is coming from the south end of the square.  Looks like they’re moving in.”

“Fucking Greaters were giving out rocks for people to throw, making us look bad.”

John nodded. “We should move back or we’re going to get hit with the tear gas.”

“Where the fuck is everybody? I haven’t seen a single person I know in an hour.”

John shrugged, trying to pull Alex away from what was evidently a coordinated line of Greaters moving from south to north. Alex’s eyes were starting to burn. He looked over his shoulder to see that the bearded guy and his buddies were gone. He thought fast, then pulled John with him. “Come on.” He kicked out the rest of the broken glass in the candy store door, then climbed through.

John followed, muttering, “You’re fucking nuts.”

“I want to see what’s going on,” Alex said. He found a vantage point several feet inside the store. One of the windows was still intact, so they had at least partial protection from the tear gas but could see most of what was happening in the square.

Tear gas canisters were flying through the air, and people were running in all directions to try to get away. For a minute Alex couldn’t understand why they didn’t turn around and go back north as they had been doing when he and John first got to the square, but then he saw that another line of Greaters had formed at the northern end of the square, so the marchers were trapped. He felt suddenly cold.

“It’s kettling,” he whispered to John. “They trap people, and then yell at them to disperse and they can’t. Then they can arrest them for not following orders.”

There were three or four Greaters in front of the store, their backs to it so they could face the crowd. They weren’t planning to arrest people. It was worse than that.

“They look pretty dangerous to me,” one of them yelled to another, his tone mocking. “What do you think?”

“Yeah, you’re right,” his friend called back. “I definitely fear for my life. I bet some of them have guns.”

Without warning, the Greaters started firing into the trapped crowd of people already disabled by the tear gas. The sounds of the shots and the screams of the wounded echoed off the tall buildings surrounding the square so that it seemed the shots were coming from all directions at once. Alex lunged forward to run out, but John tackled him and held him down.

“They’ll kill you,” John whispered, his hand over Alex’s mouth.

Alex’s eyes met John’s, as horrified as he was. He gave a quick nod of acquiescence, and John let him up. They inched closer to the window.

“Not too many,” someone who seemed to be a senior officer was shouting.

The first Greater who had spoken looked at his commander and grinned. “Just a couple more?”

The commander shrugged, and then let out a scream as a shot shattered his kneecap.

“Gun! Gun!” the first Greater yelled, this time with real fear in his voice. The next shot took him down in exactly the same way, and the two Greaters lay on the sidewalk screaming in agony. The others fired randomly a few times because the echoes made it impossible to know where the shots were coming from, and then they heard another officer shouting, “Cease fire! Fall back!”

The remaining Greaters ran, leaving their wounded colleagues sobbing and writhing on the ground. Within minutes all of them except the two wounded ones were gone. The tear gas had mostly dissipated, so people in the square were trying to help one another. Alex and John joined them, putting pressure on bullet wounds, helping hand out water bottles that people were grabbing from stores with broken windows. A few yards away, Alex saw Tim Dwight, his shirt covered with blood, doing the same thing.

“Yo, Rev!” he called. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” the pastor responded. “How bad is it?”

“Don’t know yet.” Alex handed a bottle of water to a young woman who was shaking and sobbing but appeared to be uninjured, then jogged over to Tim. “Have you seen any dead?” he asked quietly.

Tim shook his head. “They mostly fired over the crowd. Not all, mind you. They wanted to hit some, but they could have slaughtered all of us. They want us terrified more than they want us dead.”

“It’s working,” Alex said, surveying the crowd. “Did you see where the other shots came from? The ones that hit the Greaters over there?”

“No idea,” Tim said. “Are they badly injured?”

“They’re not going to die,” Alex said, “but any hope they had of playing football is gone. Whoever it was got them both right in the kneecap.”

Tim’s eyebrows went up. “Really? A sniper?”

Alex gasped.

“What?” Tim asked, narrowing his eyes.

“Nothing,” Alex said, looking around slowly. “I didn’t say anything.”

The first ambulance arrived a few minutes later, and they did what they could to help. Tim estimated about fifteen protestors shot, two or three fairly seriously, but it looked like they would all survive. John was translating for a young man whose girlfriend had been shot. “Vine a estar con Mónica. Dónde la llevan? No soy americano. No hablo ingles.” The kid was in tears, and deeply grateful to find someone he could communicate with. John got the hospital information for him and told him how to get there.

He had just turned around to see if there was something else he could do when he heard his name, and saw Eliza racing across the square, sobbing. She threw herself at him, grabbing his shoulders. “Where’s Alex? Is Alex here?”

“He’s okay,” John told her, holding her tight. “He’s around here somewhere.” He looked over her head and saw Angelica, then Herc and Johan.

“What the fuck happened here?” Herc asked, his face grim. “We got cut off just north of the square.”

“Thank God you did,” Alex said, stepping up to join them. He held out his arms to Eliza, and she fell into them, sobbing on his shoulder.

Angelica, a few feet behind her sister, looked from Eliza and Alex to John.

“C’mere,” John said to her softly, holding out his hand. Angelica let John pull her in. “It’s okay,” he whispered. “We’re all okay.” He felt her nod, then felt the warm tears on his neck. He kissed her hair. “We’re all okay, you understand me?”

She nodded again, then pulled back, wiping her eyes with her hand like a little kid.

Alex kept his arm around Eliza and asked, “Do you know where Gil and Deb are? Or Patty?”

Nobody did, but the good news was that they weren’t among the wounded in the square. Alex called Tim Dwight over and introduced him. He was gathering together the remainder of his congregation. One of them, a kid of about fifteen, had been grazed by a bullet to his upper arm, but had refused to go to a hospital.

“If you think I’m getting in a car, even an ambulance, with any of them, think again,” declared the kid, whose name was Danny. “My mom can take care of this.”

Tim didn’t argue. Another one of his people, Alice, had twisted her ankle badly and needed help to walk. John went back into the candy store and got ice out of their freezer, wrapped it in Eliza’s scarf and tied it to Alice’s ankle. “Do you need a ride home?” he asked.

“I was going to get the bus,” she said uncertainly, looking from John to Tim.

“Are the streets open?” Tim asked.

Herc and Johan took off to check and came back to report that while Times Square itself remained closed off by police barricades, the surrounding streets were open to traffic.

“Let’s get you a cab,” John said to Alice.

She shook her head. “I don’t … I can’t …”

“I got it,” he told her, smiling. He and Herc half carried her out of the square and flagged down a cab, and John handed the driver a wad of cash that included a tip large enough to take his entire family out to dinner. The driver promised in return to be sure that Alice got safely into her apartment. She was still thanking them when the cab pulled away.

“She’s a third-grade teacher,” Tim was saying to Alex. “She says she wants to set an example for her students.”

“Good people,” Alex nodded. “Everybody here today was good people, marching for justice.” He told Tim about the group who had evidently been paid to throw rocks and break windows and about what he had heard the Greaters say before the shooting started.

“They planned to shoot all along, then,” Tim said.

“That’s what it sounded like.” Alex looked over to where the wounded Greaters had lain until they were picked up by an ambulance, and then his gaze circled the area, looking for places where a sniper might have been concealed. They were literally countless, the square surrounded by multiple-story buildings. It couldn’t have been on the same side as the Greaters, though, because they were shot from the front. On the opposite side, there was a hotel as well as four or five office buildings.

“Where do you think?” Tim asked, understanding what Alex was looking for.

“Impossible to figure out. I just wonder who would have guessed that there would be shooting.”

“I’m sure whoever it was thinks they were helping. Thinks they’re on our side, I mean.”

“I have no doubt of it,” Alex agreed.

“We don’t want to encourage violence, though,” Tim continued.

Alex was silent for a minute, then he looked Tim in the eye. “We’re on the same side, Rev,” he said, “but I don’t know that we’re going to be taking the same road. I promise you that I don’t encourage needless violence, but I won’t lie and say we won’t shoot back. This is the beginning of a war, and we’re going to be fighting.”

Tim nodded and held out his hand. “Like you say, different roads. I’ll be praying for you all, no matter what. Call me any time.”

Alex gripped his hand. “I will. You’ll hear from me.”

Tim gathered up the remaining stragglers from his congregation and they headed out of the square.

There weren’t many people left in the blocked-off area. The ones still there were those who had been badly overcome by the tear gas or who were still shaky and tearful. Alex and his friends made phone calls for some whose phones had died or been dropped and crushed in the melee, made sure everyone had water, and then Herc said, “We ought to go home. We don’t want to be the last people here when the Greaters come to re-open the square.”

“Good point,” Alex agreed. “Let’s go.”

It was a long walk back to campus, and they spent most of it trying to contact Gil, Deb, Patty, and the others. John got through to Mark, who told him Patty and Deb were safe at Betsy’s. Nate Pendleton and Joe Allicocke had actually been in the square when the shooting started, but had been able to duck into an alleyway, where they were lucky enough to find a restaurant worker who opened a back door to them. They went through the kitchen of Zaide’s Deli and out the front door onto 8th Avenue, and from there back to campus. Angelica finally got a text back from Gil who said he had been separated from Deb in the crowd and had still been well north of the square when he heard gunshots. Alex made sure that everyone got the message to meet at his and John’s apartment at six. They had a lot to talk about.

*          *          *          *          *

“Someday,” John said, “we’re going to get tired of pizza, and Vincenzo’s will go out of business.”

“I think we’re good for a few years yet,” Herc told him, helping himself to another slice. “How old is Vincenzo, anyway?”

John shrugged. “I think he’s got to be in his sixties. Talks about immigrating as a kid with his parents back in the day.”

“We ought to be able to get him to retirement age then,” Herc said. “After that we can worry about ordering something besides pizza.”

Alex boosted himself up onto the counter and tapped it with a spoon to get everybody’s attention. John and Herc sat back down on the floor with their pizza and prepared to listen.

“You all know the basic facts of what happened today, so I’m not going to recap that, and most of you watched the evening news a few minutes ago. What did you think?”

“It was bullshit,” Johan said through a mouthful of pizza. He took a gulp of soda and continued. “We know there was nobody in the crowd who drew weapons on the Greaters. They fired first.”

“Do any of you know anybody who talked to a reporter?” Angelica asked. “I expected to find Times Square full of journalists and satellite trucks, but there were none there. How did they keep them from getting access? That big a demonstration is news, so where was the press?”

Alex tapped a note into his phone. “Okay, that’s something we need to find out. I’ve heard from Ben and Frank, and they say the same thing was true in Connecticut and Charleston – no press on the scene at all.”

“What does Tony say?” Eliza inquired.

“I haven’t heard from him yet, and neither has Ben. I’m getting a little concerned.”

Gil was on the far side of the living room, sitting on the floor in front of Deb’s chair, his head leaning on her knees. He sat up straight now. “Was there shooting at every protest?”

Alex nodded. “Some places worse, some not as bad. There was one dead in Boston, and two in critical condition. Only half a dozen or so injuries in Charleston. Every other place was somewhere in between.”

“And were any Greaters shot or otherwise injured in any of these other cities?” Gil pursued.

Alex gave a little snort of laughter and shook his head slowly from side to side. “Not that I’ve heard, unless it was in Philly. Tony’s the only one nobody’s talked to yet.”

“So here there was at least some actual résistance,” Gil said, his accent so pronounced that the final word was in French.

“Yeah, you might put it that way,” Alex responded.

“Any ideas about who the sniper was?” Joe Allicocke asked.

“Not a clue,” Alex said blandly.

“Whoever it was, they were damned good,” Johan put in. “Kneecapped both of those bastards from God only knows what distance.”

“Yep, definitely a good shot,” Alex agreed. “Okay, the next thing …” he broke off impatiently as his phone rang, pulling it out of his pocket and checking the screen. “Alex Hamilton,” he said, and then, “Yeah … yeah … shit, is he okay? How many others hurt? Listen, let me ask you something, was there any press coverage? Okay … yeah, keep me posted.” He put his phone down and looked up. “That was a guy named Will Hays. He’s part of Tony’s group. Tony was shot today.” He waved his hands as everybody exclaimed at once. “He’s okay. He was hit in the thigh; they had to dig the bullet out, but it missed the bone, so it could have been a lot worse. He’s home now, and the biggest problem according to Will is that he’s pissed as hell. They’re trying to make him get some rest, so Will’s handling the calls.” He turned to Patty. “Can you text Nat with an update of what I just said? I told Will I’d let the Yale guys know.”

Patty pulled out her phone and started texting, and Alex tried to remember what he’d been about to say. “Okay, I want to be sure we get some connections in the press, because the narrative we saw on tonight’s news was not at all what really happened. Second, we need to talk to as many people as we can, both those who marched with us and those who didn’t. How many of them would do it again? Obviously, the Greaters meant to intimidate us. I want to know how far they succeeded.”

They finished up with an agreement to meet in Betsy’s conference room in a week and share information. As everybody was leaving, Alex approached Gil. “Tu peux rester cinq minutes?” he asked. “Je veux te parler.”

Gil nodded. Eliza and Angelica were still staying at Deb’s so he gave his girlfriend a quick kiss and stepped back into the apartment. John and Herc were still there, curious.

“You want us to leave?” John asked.

Alex sighed. “I hate to say it, but yeah. It’s for your own good.”

“Fine,” John said, waving him off. “Herc and I are going to Scoopy’s to get ice cream. I’m not bringing any back for you.”

“Fuck you,” Alex told him calmly.

John leaned back into the doorway and batted his eyelashes. “Any time, mi amor.”  Alex heard them laughing as they went down the stairs.

Alex looked up at Gil. “Was it you?”

“Was what me?” Gil asked, his face blank.

“Don’t get cute.”

Gil smiled but stayed silent.

Alex tried another tack. “If I check the guns at Betsy’s, will they all be there?”

“I’m very sure they will.”

“Will any of them show evidence of being recently fired?”

“No.”

“No? None of them was recently fired?”

“That’s not what I said.”

Alex ran his hand over his face. “Fuck, Gil, did you take a gun out today?”

Gil stared over Alex’s head at the picture of the angel on the wall. “If I had, I would not tell you,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Because then you would know, and you would have to act on the knowledge. You would have to consult with Ben and Tony and all those other people and make rules and policies about gun use. It would be time-consuming and unnecessary.”

“So you think any of us should be able to get one of the guns and use it whenever we want?”

Gil considered for a minute, then nodded. “Yes, I think that is the simplest policy. Either we are trustworthy or we are not.”

Alex chewed on his lip. He could see Gil’s point, but he knew the rest of the Movement wouldn’t agree with him. After a few minutes, he threw up his hands. “Okay. I know nothing – nothing except that I’m sure to regret this.”

“I don’t think so,” Gil said.

Alex smiled. “You’re damned good. Hell of a shot, twice no less.”

Gil allowed himself to look a little cocky. “Yes. I understand that snipers have very good hand-eye coordination, like surgeons.”

“So a good sniper might, under other circumstances, make a good surgeon?”

Gil shrugged. “A time to kill and a time to heal.”

Alex’s eyes widened. “You quoting the Bible? I thought you were an atheist.”

“I am, but they made me study the Bible when I was a child.” His eyes went back to the angel picture. “Sometimes there is good advice in the Bible, even for an atheist.”

[itslilliansnow]

The Five Steps to a Perfect Marriage

Hello folks! I hope you enjoyed the first part (you can find it here) and will like this second one! This is for my beloved Mars @iwillgiveyoumyhappiness, I hope I did you justice and write something that you can read and say “I’m happy”. I love you dude, you know it!  To anyone else, if you wanna request something, my inbox is open! Love ya!  Pairing: Yuchan x Reader Genre: FLUFF. A LOT OF FLUFF.  Words count: 4.3k+

“The five steps to a perfect marriage.“

Staring at the magazine into your hands, you tried to memorize as many words as possible, the delicate hands of the hairdresser who worked wonders on your hair. Always too many that every time you visited the salon, you left enough for a wig.

Yet, in your heart, you felt that those five steps wouldn’t help in your case. The conventional had never been to your liking or to your future husband.

Biting your lip and trying to hold a smile, you started to list your five steps for a perfect wedding in your mind. A wedding that you didn’t know when would happen, but that promise made more than 3 years earlier by the sea was worth as much as the first day.

Step One: Let Yuchan participate.

The problem was only one: Your tastes were diametrically opposed. If you liked vanilla, he was a lover of chocolate. If you wanted to go to the mountains to ski, he wanted to enjoy a few days basking in the sun. Then you’ll think: how is it possible that you were friends for years and then start a relationship?

By paying the bill for your treatment, you left the store, thanking that it was a sunny day without the constant humidity that you hated so much. The hairdresser allowed you to take the wedding magazine, noting the dreamy look with which you had read it from top to bottom in less than an hour. -Marshmallow, Marshmallow- Xiumin’s voice made you smile, and you immediately picked up the phone from your jeans pocket, a message from your boyfriend. - Beautiful, how about we lock ourselves in your apartment tonight, eat some junk food and watch Letters to Juliet? -

This was how it was possible to be together, talking about friendship slowly turned into the love that flew in your veins. You knew each other’s tastes, and compromises were the base of your relationship. Yet neither of you complained about it, perhaps because the result was to live fully every moment together. By quickly pressing your fingertips on the screen, you sent your answer - how could you say no to your favorite movie? - which was immediately greeted with a selfie where he sent you a kiss.

"You’re unbelievable Yuchan,” you murmured in a whisper, finally arriving home and about to get rid of your shoes and clothes, welcoming the cuddles of a nice relaxing bath. On entering the apartment, you noticed a bunch of flowers - your favorites - on the table with a card resting next to it.

-To the most important woman of my life - after mom, you know - there is a relaxing bath waiting for you, see you later. I love you. Y.-  

“Never fight moms.. they’re invincible,” giggling you started to slip off the various layers of clothes and let them fall on the floor, you would have tidied up later, smelling the scent of lavender and marigold coming out of the crack under the bathroom door.

Yes, by now, you were convinced that Yuchan would pout his whole life if you excluded him from the preparations for your wedding.

Step Two: Convince Yuchan’s parents that your marriage would be something intimate.

“WHY CAN’T YOU SAY TO THEM THAT WE WON’T DO ANYTHING EXTREME, BUT SOMETHING INTIMATE? IT’S ABOUT US, THE TWO OF US, YUCHAN!” 

It’s been an hour, your screams kept booming between the walls in the dorm, while Yuchan was sitting on the couch exhausted by that quarrel that seemed not to want to end. He was aware that his parents could be oppressive, but they were the main reason he was the man he was, how could he say no to something they always wanted for their son? You, on the other hand, were as tired as he was, but you wouldn’t have accepted anything but “you’re right, I’ll talk to them.”

Two months had passed since the day he asked you to officially become his wife, a day you would never forget because of the sweetness that accompanied every single moment. You were busy and had already made many compromises, including opting for a restaurant for the after party because your house wasn’t big enough to host such an event but just the ceremony.

“Don’t you have anything to say?” You asked coldly, standing across the room as you could hear the whispers of Donghun and Sehyoon coming from the too-thin walls of the dorm. “Yuch–”

“What do you want me to say? They’re my parents!” He interrupted you by getting up from the couch, and with long strikes, he was in front of you, making you go back until the wall was your only support. “What can I do? I can’t choose between you, no–”

“I’m not asking you to choose,” the tears, held back until then, began to run silently on your cheeks and at that sight, Yuchan felt his heart sunk into the pit of his stomach, almost pierced by a thousand blades. “I just wish that… I want our marriage to be about us, not the ceremony.”

Yuchan remained silent, looking into your eyes and with his thumb caressed your cheek collecting the tears that continued to run on your soft skin. 

He knew that you didn’t usually cry in front of others, you often closed yourself in silence without answering, so your heart was aching pretty bad to get to that point. He sighed and went to rest his forehead against your shoulder, knowing - in his heart - that you were right and that day was YOURS, not of others. 

Your arms, instinctively, went to surround his waist tightening firmly in the hope of clinging to him because at that moment you felt - despite your natural strength - that something inside you was crashing. 

“You know what I thought when I asked you to marry me?” His question was soft, muffled by the fabric of your shirt, his hands caressing your back while your silence was his answer. “I thought I would never upset you enough to shed tears. You are such an independent and strong person, knowing that… I hurt you at this point makes me think I’m a bad boyfriend.”

“Yu–”

He sighed again and lifted his head and leaned his forehead against yours, losing himself in the beauty of your eyes even though they were red and slightly swollen.  His tapered fingers began to caress that face he loved so much, trying to let go of what he thought. Sometimes during the most stressful moments, his mind closed completely. Anything inside it couldn’t get out, resulting in a passive and dull Yuchan. He wanted it to be different with you, he had always worked on it. His words choked on his throat, his lips moved, but not a single sound came out. You knew what was going on, and no matter how much you hated the reason why you were arguing, you hated seeing him in those conditions more. 

Your hands clasped his face tightly, gently squeezing it until you felt his soft lips on yours. At first, you caressed them slowly, almost fearfully, letting the salty taste be swept away by the chocolate that still lingered on his bottom lip. It was he, feeling something snap and the desperate need for you, who deepened that chaste and innocent kiss.  His body clung to yours, with strength, as he rested a hand on your neck and the other on your hip. Fingers pressed into the flesh as your lips began to bite, the desire for each other too strong. A little moan, his teeth were slowly biting on your upper lip, left from your mouth and forced him to stop having to catch his breath. “If I continue… We won’t solve the problem.”

“No…” you agreed, having to clear your voice and calm your accelerated breathing, “not at all…”

“I’m going to my parents to talk to them, but later I swear…” he grunted, touching your lips with the tip of his tongue, languidly drawing the outline, “we lock ourselves in the bedroom for the whole weekend.”

“Not bad as an idea, not bad.”

Third step: Don’t worry too much about the details (aka let the boys help you choose the cake, give them the honor of being the first to inaugurate the karaoke, don’t expect them not to make some disaster.)

“KIM BYEONGKWAN AND KIM SEHYOON, I SWEAR I’M GOING TO KILL YOU.”

You yelled from the living room discovering how they had ruined the sketch on which you had assigned to each guest (not many, but still enough not to remember by heart every single one) a place in the tables. The boys’ laughter was heard from the leader’s room but suddenly stopped, almost as if someone had shut them up with a piece of duct tape. Which you would have liked at that moment since you hadn’t slept for three nights - it wasn’t unusual, but the stress was so much - in a row.

After a few moments of silence, Junhee went out with dumb and dumber, pulling them both by the left ear and letting them fall at your feet. Commonly, the leader used to join the gang, but he was aware of how much you and Yuchan were engaging in, between work and preparation, so a little help wouldn’t be denied. 

“They’re all yours, kill them as well. We can easily replace these two.” He winked at you, followed by his signature smile that managed to completely dissipate the black shadow that hovered over your mood. 

“No, if they promise me that now as good children they’ll get here and do again what they destroyed.”

“Yes, yes, of course!” They screamed in a chorus, almost falling from their kneeling position when they moved in unison to retrieve sheets and pens. You and Junhee held back the laughter by watching them run away, arms full of material, including the guest list, in Gkwan’s room. Those were the little moments when you really breathed since the pressure didn’t crush you. You weren’t nervous in itself, you just had a little doubt that your dress wouldn’t have been ready in time for the wedding.

“Hey.” Junhee sat down next to you, taking from your hands everything that wasn’t necessary at the time, “I think you need a break.”

“Please, yes,” you smiled as you leaned your head against his shoulder, slightly edgy than Yuchan’s but still comfortable. Junhee let you do it, he’d known you for years now, and he loved to be occasionally cuddled by someone other than his members. “I thought of something.”

“What, leader?”

“We tasted the cake samples you had sent us, the problem is one……”

“You like them all.” You finished the sentence for him, feeling his body vibrate because of the laughter that immediately filled the air and snatched a little amused smile to you. “Unfortunately yes… so why don’t you make a normal cake of every type instead of just a big one, and on each one of them, there’s a decoration that remembers something of you two? Your sister also agrees with me.”

“Did you call my sister for this?”

“Of course! She and I are in charge of a lot of things that you don’t know.” His words were full of pride and raising your head, you could see that his smile, as well as that sweet and charismatic look that distinguished him from others, were full of happiness. Yuchan was his brother, you were his sister, how could he not be happy seeing your dream come true? 

“You are incredible. I find this idea amazing. What will Yuchan say??”

“Oh, he’ll settle for it! The important thing is that the bride likes it!” he winked and lift from the couch, letting you fall with your face down, running to his room - perhaps just to warn your sister of the news. Breathing in the clean scent of the sofa cushions, you lay down and crossed your arms under your face, closing your eyes to relax for a few moments.

“Can I sing something for you two at the wedding?” Moving your gaze to the side, Donghun was kneeling next to the sofa, his smile was so dazzling that how could you say no to him? Then at such a sweet gesture, so much so that you felt your heart be filled with joy, you could only thank him. “Obviously, you dumb. You can sing anything at my wedding.” He kissed your forehead, when the maknae wasn’t around the boys were more touchy than usual, but it didn’t bother you at all because they always respected the limits imposed by Yuchan, then running out of the living room in a direction unknown to you.

Smiling, you turned around, looking at the ceiling that you had the chance to paint again, trying not to let yourself be overwhelmed by emotion.

Who would have thought that becoming friends with Yuchan would have brought you in the future to have four brothers to whom you had given a piece of your heart? 

Step Four: Take a break from time to time with your future husband.

“What?”

Yuchan was deciding whether to tell the truth and die or to lie and die anyway because you could find his lies by looking him in the eye. Yet you were funny, with a mask to cover your face, the towel perfectly wrapped around your head and a cocktail - he didn’t know who had prepared it - in your hand. Lying on the couch watching one of your favorite anime, slightly annoyed that Yuchan had interrupted you on the best moment. “You look beautiful today.”

“I’m always beautiful, and I know you’re laughing mentally, but there’s a face mask waiting for you in our room along with your cocktail.”

“What are we celebrating?” He asked, starting to undress as he reached the room, relieved not to see you too tired again after the endless hours of work and practice hours spent for your next competition. On your shared king-sized bed he found the box with a card next to it that said: -to the future best husband in the world, you have some pimples to fight on that pretty face so wear the mask and join me in this “free stress day.” I love you.-

“PIMPLES? WHERE? DONGHUN HYUNG DIDN’T TELL ME ANYTHING BEFORE!” He screamed, looking in the mirror, your amused laughter bursting out of the living room, and he immediately sensed that you had only chosen to make fun of him.

To tell the truth, he wasn’t even so offended, it was a common thing between the two of you to make little pranks from time to time. It cheered up the moments, made them unique, marked them as “yours.” It was also one of the many reasons why he loved you with all his heart. You could lift his spirit at the right times, giving him the peace he could only find in your presence. 

He took the mask and following the steps to perfection found himself with a strange drawing of a panda on his face, which made him smile and come back to you after a few minutes.

“You didn’t answer me, love. What are we celebrating?” He asked again, jumping on the couch at your side and slipping his arm behind your neck. The tiredness of the day began to slide away from his body, at that moment covered only by the shorts of a suit, leaving him more with the desire to do something crazy with you than sleep - as he had planned before returning home.

“Nothing.” You sipped your fantastic cocktail - the recipe found on the internet that fortunately turned out well - making a little “pop” when you popped your lips and let the straw slip away. “We’re so busy and stressed out that if we keep going down this path, we risk not getting to the wedding.”

“Sometimes I’m surprised by your intelligence,” joked your boyfriend, while you pinched him on his side as a “little” revenge without being able - however - to hide the enormous smile that hovered over your face. “Seriously, we’re only a month away. Are you still sure you want to get married to me?”

Bringing two fingers to your chin, you pretended to take the time to think by muttering a few incomprehensible words. He waited in silence, acting -in the same way you did- to be more and more on the verge of a life crisis. 

You forcefully shook his hand, bringing it to your chest. “Yuchan… I waited so long to tell you that maybe I had totally fucked up,” the drama in your tone was so fake that it made you almost laugh than being sorry, “I think I understood a long time ago–” you forcefully turned your head sideways, bending it backward and carrying the other hand - the one with the cocktail in your hand - to your forehead in a desperate manner. “THAT I CAN’T – AH– MARRY YOU. I’M IN LOVE WITH ANOTHER – AH – PERSON.” you finished your sentence by choking the words, holding back the laughter that was ready to fill the room for the umpteenth time.

The blond-haired guy - you preferred his natural color, but you knew he would do some crazy thing before the wedding - jumped off the couch, spilling a few drops of his cocktail before putting it on the table. 

“HOW COULD YOU? I PROMISED BYEONGKWAN HE’D ORGANIZE MY BACHELOR PARTY. AND NOW… TELL ME– OH MY GOD, I’M DEVASTED!!” he jumped to his knees, holding his head in his hands and screaming his “regret” in the most falsely way. “YOU… YOU BROKE MY HEART!!!!!!” He screamed again, raising his head and on his knees he approached you, clutching your legs in a secure but not excessive grip.

“You broke my heart,” he whispered, looking at you, letting the mask slip from his face the moment you took yours off.  He put his head on your thighs, wrapped in the soft bathrobe that he loved so much to see you wear, staring at you with the bright eyes of those who know. 

Of those who know that they have found their soul mate. 

Of those who know that despite the difficulties of the past and those that still have to face, has the right person at his side. 

“You broke it and stitched it up, adding those pieces that were missing. Those pieces that have your essence.” He whispered, his lips touching the hands that had taken his face between them, trying not to let the emotion overwhelm him. It was difficult at that time, despite having learned over the years to keep them under control. You watched him, your heart impatiently beating at an abnormal rate as if it wanted to jump from your chest, caressing his cheeks and melting, feeling the softness of his lips against your fingers. “Yuchan, keep your beautiful words for our promises.”

“You still haven’t understood, have you?”

With your head, you made a small nod of denial, curious about what he meant by that answer. 

“You haven’t understood it,” his voice a whisper and a delicate kiss on the finger where the engagement ring shone with its own light, “that I could spend a lifetime talking about how special you are and not having finished yet when I take my last breath.”

Step Five: Accept that there may be problems but that Yuchan is there, everything else doesn’t matter.

Sehyoon was by your side, in your old bedroom. His hand caressed your shoulder, trying to calm your tense nerves. It was the big day, and everything seemed to be going wrong. “Just deep breath, okay?” he said gently, looking at your figure in the mirror.

Your dress was ready, the back part more extended than the front but short enough to touch your ankles. The red ornaments intertwined on the waist, which climbed slightly up to the chest, stood out and made the whole something explosive but delicate at the same time. The collar of the top wrapped around your neck, on which red lace had been used to create a pendant similar to the details on your waist. You felt perfect, a feeling that was strange, exciting, and frightening at the same time.

The day had started badly, but what was the problem? 

You were going to marry the love of your life, everything else was as necessary? No.

The weather prediction that foretold rain? It didn’t matter.

Your beautiful dog - aka best friend - Xander who had almost lost the wedding rings? It didn’t matter.

Your dress arrived late? It didn’t matter, you were wearing it.

Donghun who accidentally dropped some of the photos of you and Yuchan and then had to fix it? It didn’t matter.

Your future husband was waiting for you, and you were about to say yes. You were about to become his wife, even though you already were in your heart.

A gentle knock made you snap back and his voice, that voice so sweet that every morning was used to wake you up singing something, resounded from behind the wooden door making you smile. The agitation totally vanished your only desire to be able to hide in his arms.  

“Hyung, are you there?”

“Yes, is something wrong?”

“I just wanted to know if my beautiful bride is okay.”

Sehyoon looked at you and went to the door, just opening it and going out so he could give you some privacy without the groom seeing the dress. You also approached the door, resting your hand against it, almost sensing that he was doing the same.

“How did your promises come out?” The emotion evident in your voice, a detail that made the smile on Yuchan’s face even wider. He could feel his cheeks starting to hurt, but it was an endurable pain compared to the happiness he was feeling. “Do you want to hear them?”

“Doesn’t it bring bad luck?”

“Love, that’s the dress. But if you want, I’ll just tell you the beginning, so we can make things a little spicy and challenge fate.”

“You’re mean, you know that now my curiosity is eating me…”

He cleared his voice, stroking his lower lip with the tip of his tongue. 

“Today I am here, in front of my best friend, to make promises to her. First of all, I promise to continue to allow her to be herself at all times. You see, this woman is the strongest, independent but at the same time fragile person you will ever know. She hardly trusts people - don’t blame her - but when she does, she gives you the world.” He stopped as your hands began to tremble, feeling the love he was instilling in those words. Love you had felt on your skin for almost four years, and that was as intense as the first day. “When she then trusts you, you will see that she never stops showing you her true essence. Behold, I promise to protect that precious and special essence that makes you the woman you are. Because your scars, your falls, your victories, every single moment carved into your heart have made you who you are. The woman I desire by my side in this long, exhausting but beautiful journey called life.”

“Yuchan…”

“Tell me, love.”

“I know I don’t tell you this often,” you bowed your head backward, fanning your hand on your face trying to push back the tears and don’t ruin the makeup, “but I will never stop thanking you for exchanging our phones that day.”

“And why would you do that, love of my life?”

“Because it led me here. It led me to you.”

Step Six: There was no sixth step, but you are unique so screw that magazine article.

“To all the guests at our wedding. I want to thank you for making that day extraordinary for my husband and me. I’m sorry for the sudden storm, but I’m sure some of you had fun dancing in the rain with me!

I just want to say a few words. Never stop dreaming.

I’m not just talking about love. Never stop trying to achieve what you dream of. It can be a person who loves you, your personal accomplishment, an adoptive child, anything.

It’s because of my strength and that I never stopped dreaming that I have a beautiful life - albeit with ups and downs -, an incredible husband and a very extended family, including four idiots who are reading this thanksgiving.

Thanks to you all, our day has been unforgettable. I wish all of you to have one of your own. You deserve it.”

“Do you like it?” You asked your sleepy husband as the taxi continued to travel the nightly streets of Verona, Yuchan’s wedding present. He had spent days recreating a honeymoon in perfect Letters to Juliet style just to make you happy. He grunted, trying to open his eyes but giving up shortly after and hiding his face against your shoulder, clutching at you like a little koala. 

“I’ll take that as a yes, husband.”

“I like you, wife. I like you so much that I decided to spend my life with you,” he whispered against the light fabric of your blouse, knowing that he had made you smile.

A smile that told a story.

Of two switched mobile phones.

Of a friendship born out of nothing.

Of two people who had decided to give themselves to each other.

Of a love full of happiness.

Now and forever.