#she likely would have graduated alongside them if she had been less shitty to them all as its uncommon for a group to graduate seperated | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

taechaos · 3 years

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i got a fluff drabble idea for you!!

Jungkook and the oc were sleeping together, and jk had a nightmare of oc leaving him. When he wakes up(at around 3 a.m.), he doesnt see the oc beside him, he starts thinking that she actually left him because of his toxic behavior. While the oc was actually in a different room/kitchen/balcony for a reason. And when she comes back, she sees jjk panicked/shocked/crying. The oc comforting and babying jk, and jk too being a baby and complaining how she shouldnt have left him alone.

-from 🍠anon

angst and fluff 😎 tw: panic attack

Jungkook weaves his fingers through your hair that falls over his chest where you head lays, your breath hot on his exposed skin while you try to sleep to the comfort of his scent. There's an issue, one that makes him uncomfortable to discuss with his girlfriend, but discussing it is mandatory.

"Have you been busy?" he whispers into the darkness of his dorm room where another mattress sits empty without the presence of his roommate. Seokjin's night-out gave him the opportunity to dress you in one of his shirts as a pajama top, and your leg is bare over his thighs. If he didn't have something on his mind, he wouldn't bother striking up this conversation.

"Hm? No, why?" you murmur and start drawing patterns on his ribs.

He swallows hard, almost reserved in his approach. "Then why are my grades so shitty lately?" That came out harsher than intended, and he grimaces when you freeze along with your fingers. He knows he can't treat you the way he used to due to change in circumstances, but his ass is on the line.

"They are? What are your grades?"

"B-," he grumbles.

"That's shitty?" you sit up with a deep frown. "Jungkook, I've been preparing for my finals while making the time to do all your formative assignments. They barely take up your final grade, B- isn't shitty in the least."

"I appreciate it," he forces out through a tiny snarl, "but if you're going to do something, do it well."

You scoff, offended by his lack of gratitude and hurt by his demeaning attitude.

"I'm only telling you this because if you can't do it, I'll ask someone else. It's not that hard." His tone indirectly implies you're overreacting to such a minor topic.

"Might I remind you that I don't even major in law," you purse your lips into a thin line to swallow the lump in your throat, "nor do I attend your lectures, and I still get you semi-good grades. You can't find someone else who'll do better than me, let alone without your money."

He licks his lips and applies pressure on the back of your head to lay you back down on him. You're hesitant, but stay put anyway with a prominent pout on your face. He gently pets you as he softly says, "Don't be so sensitive. I needed to tell you so you can improve. I need to be successful for the better of our future, baby. I'm telling you because I love you."

You mumble incoherently, and he assumes you said it back. A few minutes later, he hears your soft snores and eventually drifts off with the worry of his career in the back of his mind.

And it feels like he only slept for a minute when he wakes up. Waking up is an understatement, for he shot up in his bed with a silent gasp while the sun is still down. He's almost breathless with the way he pants before sighing, realizing this is reality, not what he saw through closed lids.

It wasn't a prank this time. You really broke up with him after graduation, telling him that he'd find someone else to kiss in his workplace for them to write his reports because you wouldn't be there. He promised loyalty, but he didn't show it because you thought he dated you for selfish reasons without the inclusion of love. That's stupid because he remembers telling you he loved you before falling asleep. He knows he meant it, so why didn't you believe it?

He wants to show and not tell, make you feel loved by the hug of his arms, but there is no you to love.

You aren't there.

He touches the spot you previously occupied, and the warmth of your body is slowly fading. Maybe it's an extra early morning lecture, he thinks before checking the time. There is no lecture he knows of that starts at 3 AM. His heart starts to race.

No need to panic. You'll be here any minute now. He waits and waits, and the seconds feel like minutes, the minutes feel like hours, and it's not long before his heart hurts from the rapid pace of his pulse. You're not here.

Trying to control his breathing proves to be difficult, almost like being aware of your blinking and you forget how natural it is for you to do it every three seconds. He shoves the blanket on his lap to the side and stands up to pace his room. He can't take his eyes off the ceiling, otherwise he can't hold the tears at bay. No reason to panic, no reason to cry, no reason to feel so suffocated.

But they well up to the point that they start streaming down his face regardless of what he does, and now there's nothing that isn't out of his control, similar to your midnight disappearance. His breaths are shallow, and his guts twist uncomfortably, just like the discomfort in his lungs. Everything hurts.

"I was too harsh on her," he says in a broken whimper and tugs on his hair. "Shitty grades? You can't even stay awake in class."

He sounds so pathetic in his ears, practically gasping his words out, but his thoughts are so scrambled that he can only voice them to get some sort of relief. It doesn't help, not when he's not in a position to do anything. He can't even smoke due to the fire alarm.

He falls on the floor to crawl to the bed so he can lay his back on the footboard, hands relentless with their pulling on his hair. He leans his forehead on his bent knees and convinces himself that he's been the one overreacting all along, like he is now; not the other way around.

"You could've said something before leaving, you bitch," he hiccups in utter misery. There's no other way he can comfort himself other than to blame you. "A-And I'm the harsh one? You're worse."

"Jungkook?"

He doesn't look up at you, shaking his head with his eyes shut tightly. You rush to his side and he flinches at the contact before aggressively snuggling into you. A patch forms on the center of your shirt from the result of his tear stains.

You're shaken and in shock. You left to the communal bathroom, and since it's strictly for males, you had to wait inside until a dialogue down the hall died down so you don't get reported. Not to add your attire isn't exactly public friendly.

You rub his back soothingly with another hand scratching his scalp. You're aware that Jungkook is more prone to panic attacks than you are, which was a strange discovery considering his tough exterior, and you feel bad for being the cause more than once. Leaving him alone at night after an argument is apparently enough for him to break down, and you feel guilty for taking his attachment lightly.

When his cries start to cease little by little, he hoarsely scolds you as expected. "You shouldn't have left," he rasps and sniffles, "was a punishment really necessary? W-We can talk things out like adults, you know."

"I was in the bathroom," you quietly reassure with a peck on his nose. He scrunches it in response. "You're so paranoid."

"E-Excuse me for misunderstanding why you left while you were still angry at me. I had a dream where you more or less did the same fucking thing."

You coo at him when he shyly looks to the side with knitted brows. You gaze at his tinted nose and flushed cheeks that are still wet from his crying before tucking a hair strand behind his ear. "I would never up and leave like that–"

"But you did!"

"–because of a minor disagreement. I went to pee and had to wait out some bystanders. And I wasn't angry at you," you giggle.

He puckers his lips, still tense and upset. "But you were hurt."

"Just a tad bit," you hold an invisible pencil between your fingertips just to show how much.

He blows out a deep breath and wipes his face. Taking the hand you held up, he kisses your knuckles. "I'm sorry. I can't even get those grades on my own and you still manage to do better than I ever could with so many other courses you take."

You ruffle his disheveled hair and he wears a distasteful expression. "I know. You're cunning and clever, but you're extremely lazy."

"Rude," he huffs. His red eyes droop lazily and his gaze turns downcast. "I was being paranoid about you and my academics. Stupid, rather," he sighs. Before you can deny it, he stands up and pulls you along to get back in bed.

He forces you to lie down on him completely, overtaking your whole body as he wraps his arms around you. You get comfortable on his firm torso and tangle your legs with his.

"What do you have to say to me?" he grunts.

"What do you mean?"

"Three magical words, but preferably more explicit."

You laugh breathlessly and peck his collarbone. "I love you so much, I would kill and die for you," you play along to his innocent request, "I want to be with you until the world caves in. What else..."

"Don't stop until I fall asleep. Keep going."

You confess your undying love for him until his snores fill the air, prompting you to drift off alongside.

#wtf js this #💀💀💀#textbook love #jk scenarios

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bakugohoex · 4 years

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chapter one ➺ auld rivals

pairing: pro hero katsuki bakugo x pro hero female reader

cw: language and angry boi

word count: 2000+

a/n: omfg sorry for positing this at midnight but hope you guys like chapter one i think it’s starting off good so far and this is defo a slow burn so don’t expect action until later on

summary: in which you and bakugo are rivals always competing against one another, you get called into the commission late at night, unbeknownst that bakugo is there you arrive expecting nothing important but instead are met face to face with the president herself

masterlist | chapter two

↞ back to my hero academia masterlist

Blood dripped from the side of his face, his breathing heavy and resting on his lips was a smirk. The god damn cocky smile that you wanted to punch out of him. “Fucking hell Y/n only 10 people saved, someone’s doing shit.” You scowled how could he talk about saving people when you were the one who was making sure buildings stopped falling on him and the civilians.

All his quirk was bang bang explosions, nothing special. Yours on the other hand telepathy and psychokinesis one hundred times better than shitty Bakugo’s quirk. He would always prance around acting like a penguin with his ass on fire as if he had been the one saving people. All he did was carry them away, you on the other hand, stopping buildings and rubble fall off them with your mind.

It was a lot harder than Bakugo thought, one wrong thought and everything would come crashing down. But what did you care? His opinion meant nothing and as long as the people were saved that’s all that really mattered. The stars guided the darkness like a picture-perfect scene, the only torments being the blond beside you explosions in hand and the A rank villain in front of you.

“Let me handle this.” You were going to have your glory if it was the last thing you’d do, you didn’t want the glory of praise and admiration. You wanted Katsuki Bakugo on his knees admitting that you were better than him.

You activated your telepathy going into his head, “don’t you fucking dare.” He was unable to move and that’s all you wanted him to do, his silence and lack of movement confirmed he was obeying you before you turned to the villain, their quirk seemed to melt away things it touched.

You ran up to it, the sweat falling down from your body. You had made a hero costume which suited you and had easy mobility allowing you to not only use your psychokinesis to trap the rubble around the villains arms but to easily run and jump onto objects to kick the villains down. Their arms became trapped as it had already begun to melt away the concrete that you latched onto it and before you could use your quirk you felt the melted away rubble hit your body.

“Fuck.” A low whisper came as you could hear Bakugo’s thoughts, the hatred he had pent up to you but his inability to move suppressing him. Maybe it was selfish to let your own aspirations get in the way of a quick defeat, but where’s the fun in that.

You used your quirk effectively getting inside the villain as you prevented it touching anything before grabbing the discarded metal from the destruction that had been caused prior. Metal surrounded your arms as you made it move along with your walking. Both your quirks in action before you pushed everything you had onto the villain. Their movement limited as they were trapped underneath, you heard nor saw no movement and the smirk you felt on your face rise made Bakugo’s blood boil.

You stopped manipulating Bakugo as he ran towards you quirk raised, you could almost feel the explosions and burning sensation his pace quickening. “Bakugo don’t you dare, or I’ll get inside your head again and we both don’t want that.”

Telepathy took a toll on you the majority of the times, hearing thoughts and emotions wasn’t something you were too fond of doing. The villain in question had transformed back into a human having previously been a sluggish type of creature, he was knocked unconsciousness, you both saw the police force come and arrest him.

“Don’t you ever fucking do that shit again Y/n.” Bakugo raised his voice catching the attention of the police force and commission representatives.

You crossed your arms raising an eyebrow, “I’m the one who defeated the villain.” He was furious, the rage that filled inside of him was more than he could ever imagine, and it was going towards a pipsqueak like you.

“You got into my head and prevented me from doing my job you dumbass.” His knuckles had turned white at the clenched fist he was making. You had pissed him off and all you could give him was a shrug.

“Shitty woman.” He could say all he wanted about you, but you didn’t care.

You didn’t expect him to get on your knees for you, but you were doing your job, and logically you knew that if he used his quirk it would have no effect on this type of villain. You were able to suppress and defeat him and with both you and Bakugo fighting together the chances of risk increased. It wasn’t that you assumed the level of risk would be high, you knew you had worked it out whilst preventing rubble from falling from civilians. And one of the likely outcomes that had the highest percentage was Bakugo melting away.

You would never tell him you suppressed him to save him, you’d rather he be pissed with you then even consider that you two were more than rivals. He had left to go back to the agency, whilst you explained what happened to the police force knowing you’d be the one to have to do the paperwork.

You signed walking back as well, it had reached pitch darkness by the time you arrived back, stripping the costume off, the long-sleeved black leotard covering most of your body, with exposed legs which were covered by thigh highs that went right up to your mid-thigh.

Your quirk didn’t mean you necessarily needed any fancy costume but the one you wore made it easier to move especially the gloves on your hands which allowed for more materials to be controlled around your fingers. It was a benefit of some sorts; a black necklace went around your neck which allowed for a lack of nausea to occur. It was common for you to vomit up after controlling too many people back in your UA days but now it was less common, only a mild headache occurring.

Wearing normal clothes, you grabbed your bags knowing your patrol was over and you could have a weekend of relaxation. Mina and Momo having invited the girls for a catchup, it had been months since you last saw them and to have a catchup on life events was a must. You all had been busy and as you all grew older the busier everybody got, even the boys seemed to have their own lives. You didn’t mind but working alongside Bakugo in the same agency was a pain, you never expected it once graduating together but now you and Bakugo were like auld rivals.

You saw Bakugo at the front entrance he was on the phone as he paced back and forth. Probably one of his hook ups telling him he’s the father, you didn’t dare look into his thoughts, it was his private life and in honesty it made you uncomfortable.

He saw you walking out, you easily passed him he was still pissed by how his voice raised even more. Someone had made him even angrier than before clearly; you didn’t bother to ask mainly due to not caring.

A couple signs and vulgar swears came out of his mouth, you didn’t know if it was a friend, mother or even some from above but you stopped caring once you heard something from your bag.

Your phone ringing loudly, you hated phone calls even from your own parents, the idea of talking to people wherever you were was disgusting. That didn’t mean you hated people you just liked your own space and liked hanging out with people on your own accord. You answered the unknown number you were met with someone you never expected.

“This is Y/n Y/l/n.” They were almost unsure themselves, why call if you don’t know if you’re talking to the right person.

“Ugh yeah.” You were hesitant not liking the weakness of not being able to hear or know the other person’s thoughts on the other side.

You heard a sign of relief as they spoke again, “thank God, we thought you had been sent to the hospital, it’s the Hero Public Safety commission, I work under the president and we want to see you.”

“You didn’t have to make it so dramatic” You mutter barely audible, “I’ll be there.”

She says no more hanging up, you hated being called to the commission, they had no need to directly go to you when they could just go to someone who truly cared about the formalities, all you wanted to do was save people and piss Bakugo off, but no something always seemed to happen.

You turned around walking back the way you came from, passing the agency, Bakugo had probably already gone home himself. Why the fuck did you have to go to the commission why couldn’t that shitty man get called in as well?

You didn’t hate Bakugo you were just tired and hated how he could go home probably to a nice warm bed whilst you had to take detours for hells know what reasons.

Finally arriving after your unrelieved feelings had become dull to bare, you walked inside a man already waiting for you. You followed trying to get some sort of vibe from the man, you couldn’t bare to read his thoughts knowing it’d be emotional with anxieties over work so tried to look at him seeing if he had anything to him that showed hope.

He didn’t! He led you to the presidents office after a silent ride u the elevator, you didn’t mean to stare at the man, but you wanted to know if he had any clue of what was going on. And when you did finally get into his brain it was more worries about if his wife would let him in the house for being late.

A bore as you had thought, the double doors enticed you to come forward, someone was already waiting in the chair as you walked in, what you hadn’t realised was a woman had been walking back out. You both crashed into each other and her papers fell everywhere, using your quirk you gathered the papers quickly preventing them for falling on the ground and getting muddled up, the papers rested back in her arms as you helped her up.

“Sorry I wasn’t looking where I was going.” You hummed an its okay before seeing the president. It was a shock to see her the one leading this meeting but you didnt ask just wanting to get it over and done with.

“Agh Y/n so glad you could join us, take a seat.” At the sight of your name being spoken the man quickly turned his head, and it was someone you hadn’t expected.

Bakugo sat on the chair, angry as always. You sat beside him, his glare on your body, he watched intentively as you tried to make him stop by glaring back.

“What’s the stupid psychic doing here?” You continued to glare but at the word psychic you got pissed, you weren’t a stupid fake psychic and it irritated you when he said it.

The president watched you both glaring it was a sight to say the least, you were on the verge of pushing his chair over and you could already sense explosions about to appear before she finally cleared her throat before speaking.

“We didn’t call you both here to fight we have a proposition for you two.” You both gave blank looks before Bakugo spoke.

“If you want us to do some shitty work in other fields than I’m already out.” Bakugo was ready to leave. You nodded in agreement not wanting to be involved as some promoter for a shitty energy drink to be sold to the youth. Both ready to leave on your own accords, the president finally turned away looking out through the glass windows admiring the stars and the moon which shone throughout the blues and blacks of the sky. It was a river of opportunity that you had often admired whilst on patrols.

She spoke again but this time the next words that came out of her mouth had stopped you both in your thoughts. “What do you two know about the Paranormal Liberation Front?”

i’d really appreciate if you guys could leave a like, reblog or comment, thanks x

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@samusimp @alaina-rose13 @crispychannie @underratedmage @jennammaee @cathy8taffy @sugacious @moonlightaangel

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sareyen · 4 years

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X-Pressions of the Heart: A Boyband AU (Part 2/3)

Read on ao3

Chapter 2

When Charles and Erik entered the café, it was relatively quiet. Still, Charles kept his head down, not wanting to be recognised, because then he’d have to do the ‘yes, I can sign whatever you want’, ‘yes, I’ll take a selfie with you’, ‘oh, you’re too sweet, darling’ schtick. He didn’t mind it most of the time, since it was flattering when fans recognised him, but frankly he wanted to just spend time getting to know Erik. Erik, who had been noticeably less prickly since their brief conversation in the Hellfire foyer.

Charles caught the eye of the barista, a bubbly girl named Kitty that always served Charles with a friendly smile like he was any other patron. Kitty silently pointed to one of the back tables that was partially hidden by a partition, the most secluded table in the café. Charles beamed back at her, mouthing ‘thanks’, before nudging Erik’s arm to the table.

The two men sat down, Charles taking off his cap and sunglasses, Kitty soon walking over to them with menus.

“Hey, Charles,” Kitty said happily.

“Hello, Kitty. Busy day?” Charles replied gently, the girl nodding, letting out a huff.

“Yeah, the lunch rush was pretty bad today,” Kitty said, scrunching up her nose.

“Your boss still hasn’t hired someone else? Jubilee’s mum made her quit because her grades have slipped, right?”

“Yeah, you remembered,” Kitty said, smiling a little. “But to answer your question, no, we’re still understaffed. It’s a nightmare.”

“I can imagine,” Charles said, sounding like he really understood. Kitty just shrugged, mentioning that it was part of the job, before turning to Erik. “Oh! Right. Kitty, this is Erik Lehnsherr. He’s a music journalist doing a piece on X-Boys. Erik, this is Kitty, the best barista in the city.”

“Introducing me like that isn’t going to make me slip you a free piece of cake, Charles,” Kitty said, Charles humming like he didn’t believe her, making the girl and Erik laugh. Erik shook Kitty’s hand, the girl nodding chirpily, quickly running through the specials of the day, before ducking off to wait on another table that called her over.

“You must come here a lot,” Erik said conversationally, Charles nodding as he barely skimmed the menu, already knowing what he was going to get.

“I actually used to come here often before joining X-Boys,” Charles said, tapping on Erik’s menu where it said ‘black forest cake’. “Best cake in the city, alongside the best coffee.”

“I’m not surprised that you have a sweet tooth,” Erik said, Charles grinning.

“Isn’t this where you’re supposed to say something cheesy like ‘you don’t need cake, you’re sweet enough already’?” Charles asked, putting on the voice of a sappy, melodramatic soapie star. Erik snorted, putting down his menu after deciding to trust Charles’s earlier recommendation about the steak sandwich.

“Has that line ever worked for you before, Charles?” Erik teased, the singer wiggling a brow.

“You’d be surprised, Erik. I have ways of getting what I want.”

Erik let out a ‘hmph’, but it was by no means bitter. In fact, Erik had a slight smile on his face, small but present nonetheless. On someone who seemed like they were born with a frown, even a slight quirk of a lip was big thing.

“I’m sure you do,” Erik then said quietly, staring at Charles. Charles was drawn in to Erik’s eyes, and he found himself falling forwards into the journalist’s orbit without knowing. Charles’s tongue flickered out to wet his lips, and Erik’s gaze dropped there, before he smirked and sat back in his chair, away from Charles.

It was Charles’s turn to let out a short ‘hmph’, making Erik chuckle at the pout now present on the singer’s lips. Oh, Erik was flirting, alright. Teasingly, maybe, but Charles could read the signs.

Charles was just about to bite the bullet and ask Erik if he wanted to go out for a drink later, or maybe dinner, or maybe just skip both and head back to Charles’s opulent high-rise apartment and eat him out in bed instead, but Kitty had wandered back to them asking if they were ready to order. Charles had to restrain from banging his head on the table in frustration, but that would have probably scared Kitty and he genuinely liked the younger girl, and she didn’t know that she had her A+ service had inadvertently cock-blocked Charles.

Erik maybe knew, though, considering he now had a wide and smug grin etched onto his face, showing all too many teeth but making Charles’s heart stutter. He looked intimidating, but in a way that only turned Charles on more.

Charles ignored the heat pooling in his gut as he ordered the mushroom risotto and a vanilla and caramel macchiato (which Erik snorted at), the journalist ordering the steak sandwich and a coffee, black, no sugar. Of course.

Their drinks came quickly, and Charles made sure to remind Erik and Kitty that they had been made by the best barista in the city when she served them, the girl rolling her eyes but whispering ‘do you want red velvet, black forest or lemon vanilla today?’. Erik had laughed when Charles’s eyes lit up like lights at Christmas, immediately saying ‘black forest’. Kitty laughed, nodding, before heading back to the display case of cakes and saving them a piece.

“You really have everyone wrapped around your finger, don’t you?” Erik said, Charles raising a brow, adding a sugar into his already sickly-sweet coffee, making Erik grimace a little.

“Has the interview started?” Charles asked, Erik shrugging.

“I’m not recording it right now, so it’s up to you,” the journalist said, Charles smiling. “Depends how honest you want to be.”

“Hm. Then, how about just a conversation between friends, to start with. As long as you promise not to treat me like Worthington,” Charles tacked on at the end, Erik letting out a loud laugh.

“No promises, Charles. If you start comparing yourself to Elton John or Queen, then…”

“I was thinking more along the lines of Prince,” Charles said, Erik feigning an appalled expression, only tempered by the way he was struggling to control his smile.

“You’re worse than Worthington. Interview over, I don’t even care if you sue me, I have to expose the real you to the world, Charles,” Erik said, Charles letting out a faux gasp.

“No! But my career, Erik! You can’t taint my career like that, what would I do? I don’t want to have to go back to bartending at a shitty bar down town, flirting with men for tips,” Charles whined, Erik raising a brow. Charles laughed at Erik’s curious expression, winking. “But yes, I was tipped generously, if you were wondering. Very generously.”

“Like I said, you have everyone wrapped around your finger,” Erik said, Charles taking a sip of his whipped-cream-laden drink. A little cream lingered on his lips, and he swiped it with his tongue slowly, locking onto Erik’s eyes as he did so. Erik swallowed thickly, licking his own lips in response, a reflex.

“Everyone, you say. Does that include you, Mr Lehnsherr?” Charles asked impishly. Charles smirked, but his expression was broken when he felt Erik’s foot nudge at his ankle. Charles jumped in surprise, Erik smirking at the reaction.

“No, I’m not interested in Charles Xavier of X-Boys,” Erik said slowly, foot slipping under the cuff of Charles’s jeans, nudging at his bare ankle. Charles’s breath hitched as Erik leaned forward, elegant fingers sliding around the rim of his coffee cup. “But the real Charles Xavier?”

“What about him?” Charles asked, corners of his red lips curving upwards.

“Yeah,” Erik said, just as Kitty came with their meals. “Yeah, I’m interested.”

***

Erik had scrapped the interview questions he had prepared for Charles. Reading them off like a shopping list when the conversation between them just flowed so naturally seemed wrong. Sitting in the obscured corner table was not a boy-band member and a journalist, but a flirty 24-year-old that was also an incredibly intelligent Oxford graduate, and a slightly misanthropic music snob with a surprising passion for cooking.

Charles and Erik talked about lots of things, moving back and forth between one topic to another smoothly, never stuck in a bout of awkward silence. Erik found out that Charles held a degree in genetics, which surprised him immensely, especially when Charles talked about the topic with such vigour and excitement. Charles told Erik that he would have liked to pursue a PhD in the topic if he hadn’t dived into a career in music, and Erik had teasingly quipped that with his cardigans, he was already half way there to being a professor.

Erik also learnt that it hadn’t been Charles’s intention to join X Factor, but that his sister had secretly signed him up, partially as a joke but also because she was sick of hearing his solo shower concerts through the door. In return, Erik talked about how he was born and raised in Germany, but had come to the US because of the music. He also talked about how he liked cooking and baking, and Charles was less-than-subtle about wanting to try it sometime. Erik had, surprisingly, said ‘yeah, some time’, making Charles beam that bright, megawatt smile that lit up his eyes.

Talking to Charles properly made Erik truly realise that the slightly younger man was shockingly intelligent. He went to Oxford and graduate top of his genetics class, and despite the terrible lyrics in X-Boys’s songs, he could recite poems by John Donne and passages from Jane Eyre even more easily than the lyrics from his last album.

If Erik had been attracted to Charles’s appearance before, knowing that his mind was equally as attractive – or even more so – just sealed the deal for Erik.

It had only been a matter of hours, but Erik liked Charles Xavier, at least on a primal, basic level. If Charles Xavier had been in a bar, Erik would have definitely bought him a drink, and in less than a matter of hours, he would have him writhing beneath him in bed.

But, even though they talked, flirted and teased each other over food and coffee like they had known the other for years, Charles was still a celebrity, and Erik was still a journalist supposed to be interviewing him. It wasn’t professional, or prudent, but it was tantalising.

Charles was tantalising.

Erik didn’t give a fuck about X-Boys – his stance on them hadn’t changed (because Sweet Love was a disgrace to all music). But Charles. Charles was so much more, and G’tt, Erik wanted him. It was obvious that Charles felt the same way about him, too.

It was when they were sharing the single slice of black forest cake Kitty had slipped them under the table that Charles asked Erik if he wanted to meet up at his apartment later. Erik said yes immediately, and earned him another endearingly honest, joyous smile from the singer.

“Fantastic, my friend,” Charles said, unlocking his phone and sliding it across the table to Erik, letting him insert his number. Erik slid the phone back, fingers brushing Charles’s as he took it from the other man, before calling Erik. Erik’s ringtone, his mother’s favourite Elton John song, buzzed from his pocket before Charles hung up.

“Good song,” Charles said, though he gave Erik a joking look. “Sweet Love would be a much better ringtone, though.”

“Is it yours?” Erik asked, Charles jerking his head to where Erik’s phone now sat on the table.

“See for yourself.”

Erik, curious, rang Charles, and was surprised when, out of all the songs it could be, Starship’s Nothing Gonna Stop Us Now started playing.

“Are you serious?” Erik asked, just before he fell into hysterics as Charles began singing to the 80s classic, looking far too engrossed in the song, even as he adopted a more feminine tone for Grace Slick’s female parts. He continued singing for a few bars after the call had cut off, and Erik noted that his voice was quite lovely, even if he was only playing around.

“It’s a great song,” Charles defended, Erik unable to hold back the cheek-splitting grin he had on his face, his cheeks hurting with how much he had smiled in the span of the past hour. “It’s my go-to karaoke jam.”

“I thought you said that was Celine Dion,” Erik said, Charles shaking his head.

“No, she’s my shower jam,” Charles clarified, Erik humming, as if everything Charles said made complete sense. The two men looked at each other, before dissolving into amused snickers, Kitty coming over with a confused look on her face to hand them the check.

“… You two okay?” Kitty asked, a little apprehensive when Charles wheezed, Erik snorting loudly at the inelegant but adorable noise.

“Peachy,” Charles said through a hiccup, laughing again when he caught Erik’s grin. “Thanks for the meal, Kitty. Tell the chefs that it was great, once again.”

“Will do,” Kitty said, still giving Erik and Charles an odd look and sorting out the bill. Charles tipped generously, as always, and before they left he slid is sunglasses and cap back on.

“I have to get back to Hellfire,” Charles lamented as he and Erik stepped out of the café. “Moira’s making us sign some of the merch Shaw wants to sell on tour. It’s a ridiculous price mark-up, if you ask me – I could be signing something silly like “Xtreme Cockerspaniel” and they’d just think it was me being pretentious and signing things “Xavier Charles” like I was Bone, James Bond or something.”

“What a tough life you live, Charles,” Erik said, the singer huffing. “I’ve got to get back to the office anyway to transcribe some of my recordings.”

“Remember to only write flattering things about me,” Charles said, leaning in a little, like he was whispering a secret. And in a way, Erik supposed he was. “I’ll see you at mine later? For a drink and… well.”

“Mm. Later,” Erik echoed, Charles smiling.

“Later.”

***

When Erik got back to the office, he did not transcribe his recordings. No, instead he locked himself in his room, got out his headphones, and began searching up everything he could on Charles Xavier.

Yes, it was mildly creepy, but Charles was technically a public figure, even if he didn’t feel like one to Erik, not any more. And, since Erik knew the man personally, he wasn’t like all of those 14-year-old fan girls erecting shrines with Charles’s face cut out and stuck onto voodoo dolls and professing their love for him on Tumblr.

That was not Erik, even if he was currently searching up Charles Xavier on YouTube and opening each video result in a new tab, testing the limits of Google Chrome’s processing abilities.

Most of the videos were poorly cut and edited fan-videos that were really just a conglomeration of clips taken from various official X-Boys videos. Still, Erik watched them, in awe at how Charles’s face was so fucking cute, and yet could look at Erik in public with nothing but sex in his eyes. How other people never noticed that Charles was dirty as hell was beyond Erik.

Erik scrolled through the comments, cringing at the excessive use of “OMG” and “MY HUSBANDDDD”, but agreeing with the comments that yes, Charles was ridiculously adorable yet hot at the same time, and yes, his eyes are ridiculously blue (and even bluer in person, if that was even possible). And yes, Charles did have an amazing voice, especially for someone whose vocals were drowned out by 4 other voices in a sea of electronic beeping and thinly disguised autotune.

Erik had only heard Charles sing a little when he had begun jamming to his own ringtone. Charles hadn’t been serious at all, but Erik recognised that he could actually sing, and that he had range, climbing up to high notes with ease. Why Shaw forced him to stay within a single octave range almost enraged Erik, who stewed with the thought ‘why isn’t Charles given a chance to really shine?’

G’tt, Erik was starting to sound like a 14-year-old k-pop fangirl complaining that her bias (or her ‘Oppa’, whatever that meant) didn’t get enough lines to show off his talent.

Erik was curious to see what Charles’s voice sounded like, stripped back and singing songs that weren’t just ‘your sweet love sustains me, girl’. Erik eventually, after replaying a video titled “Charles Xavier being ridiculously cute for 8 minutes straight” (which made Erik snort because Charles was the furthest thing from straight he could possibly get), Erik found himself on a simple black-and-white casted video of Charles sitting by an upright piano. He wore a crisp white shirt and black slacks, looking much more mature in the simply ensemble than the colourful costumes he wore in other videos.

[Charles Xavier Original Song – Paralysed – Live Version]

“Original song?” Erik read aloud, wondering if Charles wrote the song himself, or if by ‘original song’ they just meant ‘not a cover, just a song written by someone else, like all of X-Boys’s discography’. Consulting the comments, Erik found out through Charles’s die-hard (and stalkerish) fans that this was a live recording of Charles’s X Factor audition song, which he said he wrote himself, lyrics and everything.

When the song started, Erik watched in anticipation, Charles’s fingers gliding across the piano keys like they were a part of him, a gentle yet melancholy melody sifting through Erik’s headphones. It was pretty, and nothing like X-Boys’ boisterous music. Soft and gentle, but simmering with light and unexpected power.

Much like Charles, with his soft cardigans which hid the flame of passion and mischief deep down in his soul.

Erik was already enraptured the moment that Charles’s started playing the piano, but the moment he began to sing, Erik’s mouth dropped open.

Erik suddenly felt like he was breathing too loudly, so he stopped altogether, wanting nothing more than to hear Charles and only Charles. His voice was… transcendent, soft but unyielding, the hint of a tremor underlying his rich timbre. This was no ‘Sweet Love’, ‘Love Me, Hate Me’ or ‘Strawberry Crush’. No, this was a song that was written from the heart, and Charles laid it all bare in his melody and his lyrics.

‘I can’t run away from you, even if I tried My legs of lead, wading through tar while you push me down Down so far I can’t get up, can’t see the surface You control me, fear encages me Begging, but no one hears me Crying, but no one cares And God, I want to push you away The you who hurt me But I’m paralysed Oh, I’m paralysed’

The video finished playing, the light spinning around the ‘replay’ icon, but Erik was frozen. Paralysed.

Erik didn’t even realise he had tears in his eyes until Emma walked into his office, breaking her usual Ice Queen demeanour when she gasped out “Good God, sugar. What the fuck happened to you? Who died?”

Erik couldn’t answer, and Emma quickly sashayed her way around Erik’s desk, placing a hand on the back of his chair and leaning down to squint at his screen. Her painted mouth moved silently as she read the video title, as well as the million and one open tabs of Charles Xavier videos on his webpage, turning to Erik with a sharp snap of her blonde hair.

“Jesus, you come back from interviewing the group once and you’re a vapid fanboy now? You, Erik Lehnsherr, who made Warren Worthington cry with your review of his single ‘Angels Never Cry’ and then cackled in his lawyer’s face when he threatened to sue us?” Emma looked at Erik like he had been possessed by the spirit of a 14-year-old fan girl, waving her manicured hand in front of his face.

“Emma,” Erik said, voice thick as he turned to her, taking off his headphones. “Have you heard Charles Xavier sing? Have you heard this song that he wrote himself when he was apparently 14 and going through a really hard time? So hard that he felt paralysed, like his legs were lead, wading through tar? Emma.”

“Oh my God, there is something wrong with you,” Emma said, snatching the headphones away from Erik and pressing one side to her right ear. Erik frowned at her, grabbing them and forcing them on her head properly, because it was rude to Charles to listen to him with just one ear. No, you needed to listen to Charles – to love Charles – with your entire soul, and that still wouldn’t be enough.

“Listen,” Erik ordered his boss before pressing the replay button, who just rolled her eyes, not expecting much at all – just like Erik had, before he met Charles Xavier.

Had that been just this morning?

Yes, but you could fall in love with a song and an artist in the span of a song, in the length of a chorus, in the breath of a note.

One morning was plenty of time to fall in love with Charles Xavier.

Erik didn’t know whether he wanted to stare at Charles’s tormented face on the screen or at Emma to gauge her reaction, just switching between the two. He saw Emma’s eyes twitch a little in surprise as the song started, her mouth then dropping open as Charles hit the chorus for the first time, her head tilting in curiosity when he reached the final verse, voice tapering off into a weighty silence.

When the song ended, Emma slowly peeled the headphones off, turning to Erik with a serious expression.

“What the fuck is he doing in X-Boys with talent like that?” Emma asked seriously, Erik nodding vigorously.

“I know. Emma, I want to write a piece on him. Just on him,” Erik said, Emma’s eyebrows rising up to her hairline.

“You want to write a piece about Charles Xavier of X-Boys?”

“Just Charles Xavier,” Erik said, dropping X-Boys completely. “You heard him, Emma. He’s… mein G’tt.” I love him. “His music.” Him.

Erik left it there, hoping that was enough for Emma to understand.

“I mean, yeah, his music is amazing, and his voice as well, but Erik – I’m not going to let you drop the X-Boys article. We need that, and if you’re going to drop them to write a solo piece on an artist who isn’t even a soloist, you’re going to anger a lot of fans,” Emma said, Erik rolling his eyes.

“I don’t give a flying fuck about those fans, not when they’ve been sleeping on Charles’s talent,” Erik said, vehement. “Anyone who… cages Charles in a group like X-Boys deserves death. Right now, it’s not fear that encages Charles. It’s your ex Shaw and his stupid company, as well as the stupid little fangirls who keep saying that they… what, ship Charles and that Summers kid together. Anyone who genuinely thinks that they belong together can’t be trusted.”

Emma stared at Erik, frowning now and looking terribly tempted to call for an ambulance, because Erik was either high on drugs, drunk out of his mind, or suffering some kind of stroke. Then, it dawned on Emma that Erik…

“Do you have a crush on Charles Xavier?” Emma asked, almost appalled that she even said the question out loud. When Erik didn’t answer and just glared at her, Emma clapped her hands together, doubling over in peals of chime-like laughter. “Oh, sugar. This is… Oh, oh, this is priceless! I have to tell Angel, I have to tell everyone. Erik, if that’s the case, go right ahead and write a piece on your boy crush. But, I’m still expecting one on X-Boys as a whole too. You’re capable of working two large projects at once, no?”

“Charles isn’t a project – he’s an artist and a visionary, and someone that’s really cute in cardigans and-”

“Oh, gosh. Hold that thought, sugar, I can’t take any more laughter for today. I’m going to develop laugh lines,” Emma said, sucking in a breath as she tried to gather her wits again, morphing back into the Ice Queen the office was so fearful of. “Charles Xavier, he’s really a force to be reckoned with.”

“He invited me to his apartment tonight,” Erik said quickly, Emma blinking.

“Oh my God.”

“Yeah,” Erik said, nodding. “I know.”

“Why you?” Emma said, Erik flipping her off. “I mean, I adore you, sugar, I really do, but how? You’re…” Emma just gestured up and down at Erik, like that was all that needed to be said. Grumpy. Taciturn. Rude. Judgemental. An A-grade asshole. Sounded about right.

“Yeah, well, he did, so can you let me off early today?” Erik said, Emma nodding, sitting on the edge of Erik’s desk as he stood, grabbing his leather jacket from the back of his chair.

“Charles Xavier’s music is one thing, but Charles Xavier himself is… interesting,” Emma said as she watched Erik grin widely.

“Emma, you have no idea.”

***

“You met a guy?!” Raven screeched through the phone, Charles wincing. Plucking his mobile from where he had it wedged between his ear and cardigan-clad shoulder, Charles switched it to the same position on other side before returning to where he was tidying up his apartment.

Charles had never been the neatest person in the world, putting it down to being an artist that needed to work in organised disarray, as he put it. Controlled chaos, restrained passion, what have you. At some point, between gruelling dance practises and X-Pression promotions, that organised disarray had turned into a nuclear warzone, and Charles had spent the rest of his afternoon after finishing work at Hellfire Records to clean his apartment in preparation for Erik’s arrival.

Charles was busy putting books back into his over-stacked bookshelf as he chatted to his sister.

“Yes, Raven. I don’t know why you’re so surprised that I met someone, you know I’m not exactly picky. You visited me at Oxford for a week and met, I don’t know, more than 7 guys I’d hooked up with,” Charles said, Raven groaning at the memory.

“Yes, but that was before you became a prominent fixture in every hormone-driven teen’s wank bank,” Raven said, Charles rolling his eyes. “How? When? Where? Who?”

“Journalist covering the X-Boys tour, this morning, at the dance studio, and Erik Lehnsherr,” Charles replied quickly, and Charles heard Raven’s rapid typing even through the phone.

“How do you spell ‘Lehnsherr’? I’m not getting anything that screams ‘Charles’s type’,” Raven said.

“Raven. He’s the guy that made your childhood crush cry,” Charles said, the younger girl silent on the other line.

“Azazel? The guy you’re talking about is the guy that called Azazel a… man in a red gimp suit who thinks his accent is actually a character trait? That guy?”

“One and the same,” Charles said, chuckling fondly.

“Charles! No! You can’t! Can’t you see that he’s trying to get into your pants to draw out all of your dirty little secrets before he writes a damning article about you and ruin your career?” Raven yelled, Charles wincing again and just putting his sister on speakerphone.

“Raven, Erik isn’t like that,” Charles said, his sister snorting.

“Suuuure. Have you heard from Azazel since that interview? NO. You haven’t. And that’s because Erik Lehnsherr single-handedly ended his music career. Charles, he’s going to finish you!”

‘I hope he does finish me. In bed,’ Charles mused to himself, snickering silently.

Audibly, Charles just sighed at his sister.

“Raven, I know that you’re worried and that is very sweet of you, but you never had a hand in my dating life before you made me join X Factor, and frankly, that hasn’t changed now. So, thank you for worrying, but really, there is nothing to worry about. Erik is…”

Perfect? Amazing? Everything I wanted wrapped up in a not-so-little German hunk?

Mhmm.

“Don’t come crying to me when your face is plastered all over TV after Lehnsherr writes an article calling you a ‘posh and pompous British twink who takes it up the butt’,” Raven warned, Charles laughing.

“Would he be lying, though?”

“True, but that’s the problem – it’s true, so you can’t even deny, deny, deny.”

“Raven, it’ll be fine.”

“You and relationships are never fine, Charles. But fine. Tell me everything after. Well, not everything – just the PG stuff. Gotta go – Irene is calling me,” Raven said, sending Charles a kiss through the phone, which he returned before tucking his phone into his cardigan pocket.

As Charles cleaned, he thought a bit more about Raven’s words, wondering if it would really be so bad to just… rip off the façade given to him by Shaw and show the world who he truly was. Someone who was a little damaged by his traumatic childhood but was saved by the love of his sister. Someone who was bisexual with a slight leaning towards men, who was known around Oxford as charming but a bit of a slut. Someone, who had never really been in love, so he could only sing love songs about girls ‘sweeter than melted chocolate and lemon drop candy’ because he didn’t have to believe it to sing it. Someone who could only write songs about hurt, ramen and genetics, and was really an average dancer, but stayed up late just so he could nail the complex footwork in the second verse of Love Me, Hate Me.

Someone who wasn’t Charles Xavier of X-Boys, but just Charles.

The Charles he was with Erik.

As he waited for Erik to come, Charles began thinking that revealing himself may not be bad, because if Erik Lehnsherr accepted him, surely others would too.

***

Erik was a successful journalist, and even though Brotherhood of Music had slumped in terms of income recently, he hadn’t been in want of money. He was comfortable, and had a nice apartment and a good, reliable car.

Still, he had been momentarily stunned when Charles had opened the door to his penthouse apartment, ushering Erik in with a wide smile and a joking “Welcome to my home, AD.”

“Nice place,” Erik said as he glanced around, pulling off his light jacket for Charles to hang on a coat rack by the door.

“Honestly, it wasn’t that nice a few hours ago,” Charles admitted, giving Erik a wry grin. “Don’t, uh, look in that closet over there. I may or may not have just thrown my mess in there to deal with later. It’s my proverbial ‘rug to sweep everything under’.”

Erik chuckled a little at Charles’s admission that he was normally a bit of a slob, the singer leading Erik further into his home with a lingering nudge on his elbow.

Though Charles didn’t live in a sprawling mansion (though Erik believed that he probably owned one somewhere in the city, or maybe another apartment in New York or the like), his penthouse was spacious, with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the LA night. The furnishings were all understated but with an air of elegance, and Erik could tell that everything in his home was quite pricy.

Still, none of it seemed out of place; other homes could sometimes feel like a showroom, beautiful to look at by so impersonal. Charles’s apartment, though well-designed, looked lived in, things neat but not perfect. The blankets on his large L-shaped couch were rumpled, like he had been snuggled up under them just a moment ago, and there was an empty mug with a lone tea bag sitting on the coffee table next to a worn hard cover of ‘The Once and Future King’ – surprisingly, Erik’s favourite book.

The journalist’s eyes followed the title to a wall of books, all of which looked to have been read sometime before. They were crammed in there and almost over-flowing, with no order to them; they weren’t stacked alphabetically by author or title, and the coloured spines clashed with each other in a mish-mash of hues. The lower shelves had books that looked more worn than the others – Charles’s favourites, he supposed. Everything was in slight disarray but kept safe and clearly loved – that seemed so like Charles.

Erik turned back to the man then. He was still wearing the jeans from earlier, but instead of the T-shirt and cardigan combo, he donned an oversized and fuzzy knitted jumper which swallowed his shorter frame up. He was painfully adorable, and yet, he was looking at Erik like he had been in the dance studio – full of want, desire and heat. Erik swallowed, suddenly very aware of how warm the apartment was – or was it just him that was warm?

‘G’tt, I’m wearing too many clothes right now. Is Charles feeling warm, too? He must be boiling under that jumper, he should just take it off, along with everything else he’s wearing.’

Clearing his suddenly parched throat, the journalist quickly handed Charles the bottle of wine he had brought. Erik’s mother had taught him to never come to someone’s house empty-handed, but Erik had no idea what to get Charles who was someone who probably already had everything. So, Erik just went for the simple option and bought wine.

Charles let out a joyous laugh when he saw the wine Erik had gotten him.

“You remembered my favourite wine,” Charles said, and Erik shrugged, a little embarrassed.

“You only mentioned it earlier this afternoon, it’s not like it’s been a long time. Nothing to be so worked up about,” Erik said, Charles shaking his head and placing the wine down on top of a bench in the spacious living room.

“No, it shows that you cared enough to listen. Not everyone does that, you know,” Charles said, Erik frowning.

“You must have only talked to shitty listeners then,” Erik replied, Charles chuckling.

“Seems that way. Although, they all turned out to be shitty people, too. Different from you, I’d wager,” Charles murmured, stepping towards Erik, until they were almost toe-to-toe. Their eyes locked, the attraction that had been simmering almost to boiling point still there. It had been a constant thrum under Erik’s skin since they parted at the café earlier, and from the look in Charles’s eyes, he knew the younger man felt the same way.

Charles tentatively pressed his hands against Erik’s chest, leaning into him. Erik could smell Charles’s shampoo like he had freshly showered, and his hands were hot even through the fabric of Erik’s shirt. Charles let out a breathy laugh, tilting his head up to look at Erik’s, lips just one little twitch away from Erik’s own.

“I know I invited you over for drinks first, but…” Charles whispered, eyes dropping to Erik’s mouth, eyes dark.

“Yeah, I know, but I couldn’t care less about drinks right now,” Erik breathed out in a rush, reaching up to cup Charles’s face, leaning forward to kiss him, hard. Charles immediately surged into Erik’s touch, hands scrabbling at the taller man’s chest, then moving to slide around his neck to pull him closer. Erik groaned at the way Charles nipped at his lower lip, teasing his lips apart. Charles’s mouth knew what it wanted, and Erik gave it to him willingly.

Charles kissed deeply and frantically, moaning as their tongues tangled wetly and Erik met his enthusiasm blow for blow, hands sliding down Charles’s neck and torso to rest on his hips, digging in there. The squeeze of his fingers made Charles gasp into his mouth, the sound stirring Erik up. Erik began stepping forwards, Charles moving backwards with him until he was crowded against a wall, groaning with desperation.

“You’re wearing too many bloody clothes,” Charles muttered when Erik detached their lip with a slick noise to mouth at Charles’s jaw and neck. Erik huffed out a strained breath.

“That was exactly what I was thinking, you’re reading my mind,” Erik murmured against Charles’s skin, feeling the column of Charles’s neck move as the younger man laughed, hands sliding under the hem of Erik’s shirt.

“Darling, I think we want the same thing right now,” Charles smirked, pulling Erik’s shirt over his head and dropping it without ceremony to the ground. “Bedroom?”

Erik grinned, nodding and pulling at Charles’s own shirt, the man laughing.

“Yeah. Bedroom.”

***

Erik woke up first, feeling tired but sated, and maybe even a little sore. He and Charles had fucked well into the night, not having to hold back since they both knew they had the next day off.

After coming twice each, they had managed to pull themselves out of bed to soak in Charles’s grand jacuzzi bathtub, the two of them lazily wrapped up in each other’s arms surrounded by rose-scented hot bathwater, smelling like the same shampoo and sharing warm kisses that weren’t like the earlier, more frantic ones.

The kisses they shared in the bath weren’t done to get somewhere, as a means to an end. They just kissed because they wanted to, and because they could, revelling in the feel of each other.

So, they kissed and drank wine as they lounged in the bath, Charles sitting between Erik’s legs and leaning against his chest, head dropped back on the slope of Erik’s shoulder. They had stayed in the bath until the hot water cooled and their fingers pruned, drying each other off with fluffy towels before falling back into bed, limbs tangling before drifting off into a peaceful sleep.

Even though they had gone to bed later than Erik usually would, he was a natural early riser and found himself groggily opening his eyes at a time that felt premature. Sunlight drifted through a gap in the curtains, casting a line of gold across Charles’s bare chest.

Erik blinked, rubbed his eyes blearily, before smiling. Erik took the opportunity to brazenly stare at the man beside him; smooth, freckled chest rising and falling with soft puffs of breath. He had one hand resting on his belly, just above where the blanket covered his bare lower body, and his other arm had been stretched out beneath Erik’s neck. His face was serene, red lips slightly parted as he breathed lightly. He didn’t snore, but every now and then he let out small sighing noises, nose twitching and dark lashes fluttering against his soft cheeks. His hair was sex-mussed and tousled with sleep, and Erik was sure he was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen in his 30 years on earth.

Erik was surprised Charles didn’t wake up from the feeling of someone staring at him, or when Erik couldn’t hold himself back from running his fingers through Charles’s messy hair and pressing a kiss to his forehead. Charles’s nose just crinkled adorably, the man mumbling something incoherent, naturally shifting towards Erik’s warmth.

Charles rolled over towards Erik, and the older man chuckled, letting him nestle himself in Erik’s arms and enjoying how he felt tucked beneath his chin. Charles settled further into his embrace when the man began to draw slow lines up and down the bumps of Charles’s spine, tracing the curves of each of his vertebrae with the rough pad of his finger.

Erik had counted to 19 when Charles woke up with a throaty moan, tightening the grip he had around Erik’s waist.

“Nnngh, s’ too early,” Charles mumbled, nuzzling his face into Erik’s chest.

“I don’t think it’s early any more, it’s already-”

Suddenly, ‘Sweet Love’ started playing from Charles’s bedside table, Erik jumping while Charles just buried his face further into Erik’s chest, groaning.

“Erik, turn it offff,” Charles whined, patting Erik’s back pleadingly. “I forgot to turn off the alarm last night. I got… distracted.”

“Charles… your alarm tone is ‘Sweet Love’?” Erik asked, astonished. “Seriously?”

“Sweet like melted chocolate, ngh, lemon drop blah blah,” Charles mumble-sang through a yawn, and Erik could feel his hands moving behind his back in what he figured was a half-asleep version of the choreography. Erik let out an amused grunt, Charles shifting as the other man moved to reach over him to slam his hand down on the alarm, shutting off the bloody song.

“Well, I’m wide awake now,” Erik grumbled, Charles chuckling, pulling back and rubbing at his eyes before looking at Erik.

“It’s a great wake-up song,” Charles said, Erik rolling his eyes and leaning down to capture Charles’s mouth with his, the younger man sighing happily into the touch. “Mm. Good morning to you too.”

“Good morning,” Erik murmured in return, flopping over onto his back. Charles followed him and curled up to his side, kissing his shoulder.

“Sleep well?” Charles asked, rubbing a hand up and down Erik’s toned arm, resting his chin on the journalist’s shoulder. Erik smiled and turned his head to kiss the crown of Charles’s hair, humming with contentment.

“Yeah. Sleep was good,” Erik said, Charles purring happily.

“But waking up was even better.”

Especially when I get to wake up to this.

Next chapter (3/3) →

#cherik #charles xavier #erik lehnsherr #xmen #xmen fic #x-men #boy band au #james mcavoy #michael fassbender #ao3 fanfic #ao3

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artificialqueens · 5 years

Text

The Land Of The Midnight Sun - Shalaska - pureCAMP

A/N - Not particularly festive, but sometimes it’s cathartic to write a sad, but ultimately happy “we’re going to be okay” moment, and so I did. Shorter than I would normally like, but it’s the holiday season so you have to be nice. Here’s my little gift to you xx

Sharon had more regrets than she had adult teeth. The balls of her feet ached, throbbing with blisters from her ceaseless walking. Nettles had been stinging her exposed ankles for the past few miles, and the pain had graduated from irritating to numbing to agonising over time. She smelt bad, looked worse, and was beginning to wonder if she had turned invisible.

Cars passed without so much as a glance towards her outstretched hand. If anything, they probably saw her haggard appearance and sped up, trying to get away from her as quickly as they could. It wasn’t like she could do anything to them, anyway. She walked empty-handed, her stomach growling, a packet of smokes and a lighter in her pocket as her only belongings. No wonder they assumed she was some kind of runaway junkie murderer, hoping to be picked up and driven off into a nightmare.

They weren’t far from the truth, but Sharon had no intentions of killing anyone.

It was a weird time of night, and Sharon didn’t feel sure that she was still alive. As she walked, endlessly walking on a road to nowhere, she studied her hands with a scholarly focus. They were veiny, pale, grimy. Dirt beneath her fingernails. Scratched up. The sky was mauve and the world looked like a bleak 70s horror movie, unusually coloured, unusually silent. Never serene, just unsettling.

Against the unchanging background of the countryside, the gas station lights seemed too jarring, too bright. Sharon headed towards them, light-headed and thoughtless. Gas stations meant food, water and smokes. Given her lack of money, they could also mean police. In that case, gas stations meant a car, somewhere to spend the night, and civilisation again. It was a win-win.

Sharon had been walking for so long. It might have been 7pm or 2am. She had no idea what day it was, or the month. She wasn’t even entirely sure of her own name.

There was an old hunk of junk car hastily parked up beside a pump as Sharon approached. It was dented, a foul peachy-vomit colour, with huge silver scrapes along the rear doors. The thing looked like it had been pulled from the 60s and driven straight into a wall. But it was a car. The driver was busily filling it up.

The less witnesses, the better, Sharon knew. To her surprise, the door above the small shop didn’t have a telltale bell on it, and given that her location was in the middle of nowhere, the cashier likely didn’t expect customers. Good, because they wouldn’t be getting any. Sharon was a thief.

She didn’t need much; a few granola bars and an extra packet of smokes slipped into her pocket and then she was done. Funny how when it came to the middle of nowhere, the laws seemed to slip away and melt. Cigarettes should’ve been behind the counter, not lined up in shiny silver rows for Sharon to take as she pleased. She would call herself lucky if it wasn’t such an exaggeration. Being a runaway was fun.

As she stepped outside, the driver of the shitty old car had stopped pumping gas. She was stood on the other side of her car, kicking the side of it as hard as she could and screaming obscenities.

“A golf club would do more damage. Or a baseball bat.” Sharon told her, slowly coming closer.

The driver stopped kicking and looked up, surprised that she’d been caught. Her eyes were warm green, like grass in midsummer. It was a refreshing change from the maudlin sepia tones of the fields Sharon had been trudging alongside.

“I don’t have either of those.” She responded. Her eyelashes were long, and she smiled prettily as she spoke. Nobody had smiled at Sharon for a long time.

“Me neither.”

Sharon wasn’t sure what it was, but it seemed as though a flicker of trust appeared in the driver’s eyes. She was clean and seemed outwardly normal, but Sharon knew she was damaged too. Not a soul who was so far into the land of the midnight sun wasn’t a dented can, damaged goods, a runaway or a no-hoper or a useless junkie. This woman had seen battles, like Sharon. She appeared to think the same thing.

“I put the wrong gas into this stupid thing.” She kicked the car again for good measure. “I can’t call anyone for help because I stole it from my step-dad, and it’s a missing vehicle. But now it won’t drive.”

Sharon nodded. “No license plate. You’re smart. Not that there’s anyone around here except us.”

“You’re right.” The driver agreed. “Help me siphon this out and I’ll refuel and give you a ride. Deal?”

“Deal.”

Weirder things had happened. Sharon, on her knees, in a gas station, accompanied by a pretty blonde; in times not too far in the past, yet a million miles away, she had earned herself a modest few dollars in such situations. Only this wouldn’t earn Sharon a penny - just oily, grimier hands and a sense of surreal camaraderie with this stranger. The world around them just stood still, as Sharon and a stranger somehow emptied the tank together as though they had been a team for their entire lives.

In a way, they had. Sharon saw the hard glint in the driver’s eyes, the firm line of her jaw, her outward strength and resolution. The small patch on her jacket, clearly ripped and frayed from someone’s fit of anger, showing half of what she was sure had once been two interlocking Venus symbols. Whoever she was, she was running away for the same reasons as Sharon. To free herself.

They were strangers, and had no reason to trust one another. For all Sharon knew, once they were done, the driver would fuel her shitty car correctly and speed off into the horizon, disappear at the point of no return and fall off the edge of the earth, leaving Sharon in her dust. She would fade away into nothing, in the middle of nowhere, leaving Sharon to question her sanity as well as herself.

But she didn’t.

With a wry smile, the blonde finished refuelling her car and offered Sharon a filthy rag to help clean her hands. Then, after a moment, she opened the passenger door.

“Get in. I don’t think I’m gonna pay for this one.”

The luxury of sitting was a pleasure Sharon had almost forgotten. Her feet still throbbed, her shoes sticky with what she was sure was her own blood, but she could finally rest, nestled in amongst magazines and empty cups and discarded wrappers. Around them, the mauve of the sky had faded into a darker, duller purplish-grey, devoid of stars, as bleak and lifeless as the dead cornfields that rolled past the windows on an endless loop. Their soundtrack was radio static, occasionally interspersed with a soothing guitar twang.

“Who are you?”

Sharon tried to remember who she was. It was a loaded question, really. Who was she? An innocent young girl - no, not for a long time. A dented can, yes. Damaged goods. A jaded, scarred, exhausted girl, separate from the world, freakish and unwanted and strange. She was a lesbian, a punk, someone’s lost sister, someone’s estranged daughter. She was so many things, and she had no idea who she was anymore. She was a zombie, who had walked miles into the land of the midnight sun and now found herself gazing up at the harvest moon.

“My name is Sharon.”

The driver’s voice was unique, and Sharon liked it. “I’m Alaska. Where are you going?”

The land where the sun doesn’t set. The land where phones won’t take calls. The land of the midnight sun. The land of nothing.

“Somewhere that no one can ever reach me again.”

Alaska smiled a second time, pretty still in the diminishing light. “Me too. We can find it together.”

Her face was so beautiful, smooth white skin and long dark eyelashes and an elegant curvature to every single one of her bones. It was marred only by a bruise on her cheek, which Sharon gazed at unabashedly. Even her bruises were perfect, vividly purple, the only bit of colour in Sharon’s world.

“Who did that to you?” She asked, too exhausted to bother with propriety and tact. “Walked into a door? A lamppost?”

She chuckled without mirth, but she seemed unoffended. “Stepdad. Caught me with a girl in my room, starting beating the living shit out of us both. You know what they say.” She paused, her voice taking on a tone of bittersweet sarcasm. “You should’ve seen the other guy.”

Sharon didn’t offer sympathy. She knew her flowery words would bounce off of Alaska’s armour and thickened skin at this point. There was no sense in offering meaningless comfort to this harrowed stranger. Alaska had been hurt. Sharon knew exactly what she meant.

“Yeah.” Sharon pushed her sleeve up, her fingers tracing the cross-shaped red scar that stretched from her wrist to the middle of her forearm. “I understand. Made the mistake of coming out in a religious town that already thought I had a demon inside me. Got sick of the exorcisms and white-hot crucifixes, so I left a note and got out of there. I’m hoping they assume I’ve committed suicide and don’t come looking for my body. I left without a trace.”

“Amen to that, sister.” Alaska bit her lip. The words hung heavy in the dead night air. “Or not.”

Things seemed dark, morose, grim. Yet - and Sharon was sure Alaska could feel it too - there was a pull, a light switch, a sudden shift in the universe, a change in the wind. Everything had been so bad. But things were going to improve. Running away had felt like cowardice, and giving up, and losing the fight. Running away had been an end, and ever since then the world had felt weird, off-kilter, faded. But this was a beginning, and starting with Alaska’s mesmerising green eyes, the colour was going to return.

Life wouldn’t be bleak forever.

“We can stop and camp tonight, if you want.” Alaska suggested. “I have an old tent bundled up in the trunk, and I’m tired of creepy lay-bys at the side of the road. Might be nice to pitch up and light a fire for the night.”

Sharon smiled. It felt so good to smile, after everything. Despite the dark, Alaska carried an infectious lightness within her that seemed to be spreading. “Well, it’s not like we’ll struggle to find somewhere flat enough to sleep. There’s nothing out here.”

“Right.” Alaska giggled. “We got an abundance of nothing out here. How spoiled are we?”

“Practically royal,” Sharon laughed, her voice rasping slightly as she slipped into quiet, jokey song. ��I’ve got plenty of nothing, and nothing is plenty for me…”

It was almost completely black when Alaska came to a stop and started to pull out the tent, deciding they had travelled far enough. It could’ve been twenty miles or two hundred miles later, Sharon wasn’t quite sure. All she knew was that Alaska was enchanting and even though every single fibre of her aching body was screaming for sleep, she would happily defy her own needs if it meant she could look at Alaska for a little longer.

With only the help of Alaska’s headlights, they managed to assemble a somewhat pitiful tent. Nonetheless, it was a shelter, and Alaska’s assortment of random jackets, blankets and shirts made a pretty decent mattress in the grand scheme of things.

“Wait here,” Alaska grinned, her mood heightened by their small success. “You’re gonna love this.”

She stepped away from their camp and reached into her trunk, pulling out two bags and then slamming it shut. As she came closer, Sharon grew confused.

“Wood?”

“For the fire.” She shook her head. “That’s not the exciting part. This is the exciting part.”

She held up the smaller bag, turning slightly so that the headlights of her car could illuminate the packaging inside. Through the thin plastic, Sharon could make out a bottle of red wine and a bag of marshmallows.

“We get to wine and dine?” Sharon asked, only half kidding. “God… I wish I’d found you sooner.”

She was so beautiful. Her smile alone could battle the warmth of a thousand roadside fires.

“You have a lighter, right?” She asked, then laughed as Sharon rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah, I know. Go light the fire, I’m gonna open these up. This is our late-night dinner, like it or not.”

As she flicked her lighter again and again on the wood, soothed by the hypnotic dance of the flames, Sharon sighed dramatically. “Not. Marshmallows are gross, they’re all sugar. It’s like eating a diabetic cloud.”

Alaska laughed appreciatively. “I can’t deny that…” She let the words linger, her accented drawl becoming more and more charming. “But hey. This is just… one of those serendipitous moments in life where two strangers who share a common denominator can sit together and roast marshmallows over an open flame and talk about their lives. I think there’s beauty in that, somewhere.”

It was so difficult not to tell Alaska that she was the reason Sharon could see beauty again. She held her tongue and reached for a marshmallow, skewering it on a stick and settling herself down. The two of them nestled in the entrance of the tent, their knees hugged to their chests, reaching towards the fire to warm them and melt their marshmallows at the same time. With the headlights off, there was nothing but the firelight to wash over them.

“I wanna know happier things. Things we can both relate to. Something that can connect two girls who love girls who are lost in the land of the midnight sun with no intention of ever going back.” Alaska’s voice was dreamy, slow. Sharon was sure she wasn’t real. She was too perfect to be real, more like a hallucination than a person, and yet she was living and breathing and soft to the touch.

They were holding hands, toasting marshmallows with the other.

“How about… girls?” Sharon suggested, with a quiet laugh. “You have a type?”

Their voices were low, like it was a secret. Alaska spoke louder, breaking the secrecy of it all. They didn’t need to be secretive anymore. They were safe.

“Any girl who looks at me twice, really,” She giggled. “I’m kidding. I don’t think I have a type, I wouldn’t know. Just… pretty girls, I guess.”

Sharon pretended to pout as she brought the roasted marshmallow to her lips, but it was hard. “Oh, shame. I haven’t stopped looking at you, so it only counts as looking once, right?”

“Look away,” Alaska instructed her, the smile evident in the tone of her voice. “Then look back.”

“And then what?” Sharon teased, studying Alaska in the firelight. It softened her features, made her look gentler and sweeter and less damaged. Her sweet soul could shine right through her pain, and Sharon knew it. They were healing. “You’ll kiss me?”

There was no answer.

Sharon could smell burning marshmallows and fresh night air. She could hear the flame crackling, and feel the warmth of the fire. She could see stars, and skin, and constellations of freckles. She could taste Alaska’s lips on hers, breathing new life into her body, awakening sparks from embers she thought had long died out. She was reborn, renewed, rejuvenated. Alaska tasted sugary sweet, like marshmallows, her lips soft and welcoming and full of promise.

They were okay.

#rpdr fanfiction #purecamp #sharon needles #alaska thunderfuck #shalaska #tw homophobia #the land of the midnight sun #submission

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cupidmarwani-archive · 5 years

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The Rehabilitation of Ava Bekker (6/12)

The bread Robin made yesterday looks beautiful when she pulls it out of the fridge to make breakfast. It’s a warm orange-red, laced with dark green herbs, sliced thick and hearty with soft crust. Ava moves alongside her. She hasn’t had breakfast before, but she thinks she’s smart enough to figure out the basics. There are four eggs in the fridge, the exact number Robin said to set aside when they collected them yesterday, and she pulls out each one to set beside the stovetop, already heating the underside of a skillet.

“How do you like your eggs?” Ava asks.

“Scrambled.”

Ava dives back into the fridge for milk, and hunts down a bowl to crack the eggs and dash milk into before whisking them to uniform pale yellow like the nurse station’s countertops. They sizzle in the pan, cook quickly while she fumbles for a spatula. She’s made scrambled eggs a lot of times, but not recently. Connor liked them over easy. But this is Robin, she reminds herself, and keeps stirring as Robin toasts the bread and cuts up a few strawberries fresh from the patch outside. Everything is fragrant and Ava’s mouth waters, even though she’s never really been one for breakfast, perhaps as a result of how hard she pushed herself yesterday. It’s easy to want, and she’s allowed to have it as she serves eggs onto two plates populated by fruit and bread and love.

“I’ll try and finish the trees today,” Ava says, bringing her own plate to the small table, the strawberries running a path of juice toward her toast like it’s a race. “Then I’ll get to harvesting the peach trees, I know you said you wanted to make jam.”

“I’d rather you milk Nina first,” Robin says. “She’s fussy if you wait all day, and I want her to get used to you while I check the roost.”

Nina is the name of one of three cows currently under the care of Robin’s farm. Nina’s mother, Angie, spends most days lying in the shade and drinking water, while Nina’s calf Isaac is always happy to bounce around the pasture. In a couple more months, he’ll be off to another farm as a bull for breeding, and Robin had said that she worries how Nina will react, same as she worries that it’ll be painful the day Angie passes or needs to be put down. Put down like a racing dog on its last leg, like Connor on the OR floor. She doesn’t want to hear the sound. She doesn’t want to think about him. But her memory abuses its power to surround her in it. Ava just barely resists the urge to clap her hands over her ears and scream until it goes away.

“No problem.”

The toast is sweet and savory, warm and hearty in her mouth like more of a meal than just a piece of bread baked the night before. Paired with the eggs, it fills her up more than she’s used to this early in the morning. In a good way, though. By the time she clears her plate, strawberries included, she’s pleasantly full and ready to milk Nina. Robin gave her a basic demonstration yesterday, so she has an idea, but she’s never done this on her own before. It should be fine. She’s pretty sure it should be fine.

“Oh, and you ought to drive into town today,” Robin adds. “Get yourself a big water bottle to carry with you while you work. Passing out from dehydration or heat stroke isn’t all that fun.”

“Yeah, I’ll do that after I take care of Nina.”

Robin gives her a thumbs up and takes both their plates to the sink, leaving Ava to pull on her boots and get the clean buckets off the drying rack. Full, they’re about ten pounds each. That’ll mean Ava builds up some muscle while she’s here, which isn’t the worst thing that could possibly happen to her. She’d look good with muscle, she thinks. Be strong enough to protect herself.

She carries the buckets off to the pasture, where true to form, the cows are up and alive. Nina swishes her tail lazily against flies like buzzards, protecting both herself and Isaac. Angie is just fine on her own in the shade. Her eyes are soft and warm, welcoming, and Ava’s drawn to the idea of sitting under the tree with her and stroking her rough fur while the world carries on past them. But she’s here for Nina.

“Hey,” she says softly on her approach, the two buckets dangling beside her legs. “Morning, Nina.”

Nina eyes her warily. She shifts on her hooves. Yet, when Ava kneels in the damp grass, wetness seeping through to her knees, she stays still. Ava lays a flat palm against her flank. She can feel each breath. Nina is here, and unafraid, and doesn’t finch or move when Ava positions the first bucket and starts milking her. The sensation of milking a cow is… strange, she’ll be honest. It’s warm and squishy and the sound of the milk on the metal pail is weird. But she’s doing something with herself, and Nina trusts her to do this without believing Ava will hurt her. Ava doesn’t want to hurt people. She doesn’t try to hurt people. She just wants to be loved, and Nina loves her in less than a day. At least, she has to, if she’s so calm at being milked.

“Good girl,” she praises as the first pail fills, and she moves onto the second. Isaac doesn’t live off it anymore, but Robin’s been strict about milking her every morning and most nights in order to keep her producing. Fresh farm milk is better, she had told Ava. Ava hasn’t sampled Nina’s milk and isn’t sure she’d like to, although come to think of it, this must be the milk she put in their eggs this morning. “Good girl.”

The second pail fills just as quickly, and they’re painfully heavy as Ava carries them back to the house to be properly bottled and chilled. She’s sweating more carrying them than she did actually milking Nina, and feels like she needs a shower already. She won’t take one. There’s too much else to be done, not including needing to drive into town and buy herself a water bottle so she doesn’t get dehydrated or something. It’s an obvious purchase she should have thought of before she even got here.

It’s another simple, easy task she can accomplish without too much thought. Drive into town. Buy a water bottle. Come back. And then she’ll likely be back to planting trees, filling in the beginnings of an orchard. An orchard would be nice to have around. She sees the appeal. They can sell it along with the eggs and corn that Robin already makes a decent living off of in the city once a week. There’s town, where basics can be acquired, and the city, where business happens and there’s enough people and cameras that Ava’s nervous about going to help Robin with the stand. It may be a duty of hers, she realizes. She won’t know until the weekend comes.

But town, town she can handle, and she brings Connor’s photo with her as well as her wallet. She doesn’t know why, but it feels like abandonment to just leave her last memory of him at home. Crackling radio, shitty AC, they keep her company on the forty-five minute drive to the store, even though she speeds for most of the time. It makes her feel alive.

Everyone in town knows each other, she realizes almost immediately. The grocer and the customers chat, call each other by name with ease. People greet each other on the street. The bike by the liquor store doesn’t have a lock on it. They’re trusting and close, so everything about her will scream outsider, that she knows the second she gets out of her truck into the hot, dry air.

She leaves Connor’s photo tucked into the center console as she walks into the general store. It’s pathetically small, with little variety, compared to the splendor she had gotten used to in Chicago. Her choices for water bottles are disposable, thermos-like, or patterned with childish characters. Connor would laugh at the third option with her. She grabs a thick metal one and goes up to the front. Ten dollars, not too bad. But as she stands in line, listening to inane banter, her eyes land on what’s behind the counter. Cigarettes, in their neat rows and bright packages. She used to smoke in med school, but gave up the habit when she graduated because the cravings made her hands shake, and a surgeon needs steady hands.

Ava isn’t a surgeon anymore. She tilts her head up bravely and finds the package of her old go-to. They’re cheaper than in Chicago, and she appreciates that. And lighters are only a dollar, so she mentally adds that to the tab.

Does Robin smoke, she wonders? She doesn’t have a smoker’s voice, and Ava didn’t see her light up at all. Possibly because she’s never felt stress like Ava has. Lucky her. But now Ava has something familiar to bring with her, something to take the sting out of the bite, and she couldn’t be more relieved.

She sets her water bottle and a black lighter on the counter. “Marlboro Red, please,” she asks, and pulls bills out of her wallet.

@sapphiccsharks @bipeteypie @bookreader525 @lovxies

#rab!fic #fic #mine

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cozcat · 6 years

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a rant about mamma mia 2, because @starlene asked...

the farther i get away from having seem mm2, the less i like it. like yes, yay, it's a fun happy movie musical with beautiful scenery and abba bops, but i don't love it nearly as much as i feel like i should, and with the general relentless love for it i feel like i need to justify it. i enjoyed watching it the first time, i saw it twice, but i'm not sure i'll be rushing to get it on dvd or to watch it again. it feels like one or two of these on their own wouldn't have even been something to note, but they obviously have added up. and i'd hope this much was obvious, but this is all a bunch of my opinions.

first off, the plot on the whole. apparently the decision to kill off donna was because meryl was busy (on the post, i think) - but they could have done anything else. donna trusts sophie to look after the villa while she reconciles with her mother, maybe, so she doesn't appear for 90% of the movie. instead we get a plot that really sours the first movie in hindsight. i'm glad that the stage show is so so different from the movie - it meant that i could sit and enjoy the brilliant australian dynamos jumping on a bed during dancing queen without it being shadowed by that grief. whereas it's harder to watch the first movie now, knowing what's to come.

they didn't even handle the decision to kill her off well. she's the heart and soul of the first movie, and we don't even know how she died. sure, they didn't want to dwell on that, but it's not something that can be ignored. was it sudden, an aneurysm or a heart attack? was it an accident, a car crash or a boat sinking? was it an illness, was it short or long? we don't even know that much, and it feels like them brushing her off. and losing someone to a sudden cause is going to be different to watching them die slowly. make this movie about her life, yes, but don't gloss over her death.

the way they shoehorned in ruby wasn't great, either. she didn't show for donna's graduation, it sounds like she didn't show at any point during sophie's childhood. it doesn't even sound like she turned up for her only daughter's funeral. but she shows up for a party. this could have been handled so much better. you've only got cher for three days? have it be ruby turning up to see donna, before or after sophie is born, as a final goodbye, a final disowning. she's supposed to be dead anyway. instead she's just really shitty. she could have had her grand dame entrance be amazing and lowkey villainous but bleh. plus, that deals with the weirdness of cher and meryl being three years apart - which isn't even an issue i'd otherwise bring up here, but it could have been avoided. not like we got a scene with them onscreen together anyway, a wasted opportunity.

i hate that they changed ruby from being a probably uptight catholic woman who disowned her daughter for getting pregnant out of wedlock to a claire zachanassian-looking vegas performer who did the exact same thing. and then they imply fernando is donna's father. which is just. weird.

it brushed off tanya and rosie too. like, a lot. there's no moment when they really get to shine, which is a shame. i wish the actors playing their younger versions had more to work with - they were brilliantly cast and brilliantly performed, but really, the parallels between their younger and older selves were reduced to cake, wine, and their libidos. they could have come to the island after sam left, had a lovely chiquitita-esque moment - as good as new, as a trio song about friendship, i don't know what. just let them be caring loving friends a bit more please.

they did kind of reduce tanya and rosie to a few personality traits, but at least you could see the connection. meanwhile young donna never gelled as donna for me. she did fine, i wasn't sold on her voice, but god, she was never donna. nothing about the way young donna was written translated to donna.

(and on her voice - she's the one singing lead, when you've got an actual broadway performer literally right there, who can definitely outsing her. at least meryl has guts to her voice, rather than sounding airy and really unenergetic. when i kissed the teacher sounds so flat.)

rosie's crush on bill was just weird and uncomfortable. again with the discontinuity, she and tanya didn't even know about harry and bill in the first movie. and now i'm supposed to believe she's harboured a crush on this guy for twenty years.

bill's twin being bill-in-a-fat-suit was also really uncomfortable. if they wanted a hilarious contrast to fake us out, give him a mullet and a really ugly suit. instead, it's 2018, let's keep making fat people are funny jokes, that's not old and offensive at all!

and another uncomfortable thing. the locals at the villa went from being a fairly mixed group in terms of age and appearance to skewing so young and generic. and we went from them sassing donna, opening a trapdoor in the ceiling and throwing her in, laughing at her - to the staff of the villa fawning over sophie. it was really weird. like, sophie grew up there, she probably knew some of them from a young age, and they look like a kalokairi version of a period drama that uses interchangable extras for the uptight and extremely well behaved staff.

on the fawning locals, going from donna inheriting money and buying the building to donna getting handed it also sucks. like, bill realises he could be sophie's father because donna inherited money from a sophia - this pretty solidly negates that. a sophia on the mainland, at that. but it also kind of cheapens donna's strength - she gets pregnant in her early twenties, but she makes it, through sheer grit, and part of that is caring for an elderly woman, and apparently doing a good enough job of that to be left money in this woman's will, and then using that to start a business. instead, she's just handed a free (admittedly crappy) building? and let's be real, no way you could start up a hotel from a rundown building when you're a broke single mother with a newborn.

wasn't sold on the design either. you can tell that it's a new location, a new director, a new costume designer. i'm sure there was a reason for the new location but it still looked odd. i don't know what it was about the costumes that didn't gel either - but they just didn't. which is weird, because michele clapton is brilliant. i think it just moved too far from the aesthetic of the movie and the stage show. too clean-cut.

they made the young dads too bland, too. sure, we probably won't going to get the full version of donna's flashbacks, but long hair on sam, make harry a bit rockier. (at least bill's hair was kind of long.) her memory would have exaggerated them, but there has to have been something to exaggerate.

and now that i think about it, i think they might have forgotten bill's knee tattoos. despite multiple instances in the first movie where the entire frame is bill's knees.

on being an abba fan - i've been a fan of abba since i was about six, so i came into this knowing the songs. i jolted in my seat at i let the music speak as an instrumental, and i wish they'd done more of that. like, that was a good move. it has brought out some gorgeous songs that a lot of people didn't know - i love i've been waiting for you, and despite the mammoth lyric rewrites, i'm glad people know it.

but they did kisses of fire dirty. it's a great song, they could have even had the supposed-to-be-awful version turn into the relatively good version on the soundtrack, rather than having donna get up and sing andante andante. it's a pretty song, it's also an incredibly slow song, so somehow it doesn't strike me as that band's genre. if they wanted to maul a bizarre song, it's not like abba is short of extremely niche specific songs they could have used. they could have used king kong song, and really they should have.

i did have the thought of dance (while the music still goes on) as a duet between donna and either harry or bill. this gets lumped into the i-could-have-done-it-better category of ideas alongside and the entire previous paragraph. alongside why did it have to be me getting some lyrics from happy hawaii thrown in the mix. they'd have fit so so well and it would be such a niche joke.

i'm also annoyed that one of the best vocal performances in the entire movie is helen sjöholm in the background singing hasta mañana. you don't see her, you have to be looking specifically to see her in the credits - like i was, having gone "oh holy shit i know this voice but it isn't agnetha or anni-frid who the fuck is it" and then losing my everloving mind. we don't have that as a recording. but we have a full length version of kisses of fire. which, to be fair, gives young rosie and tanya a bit more singing time because they got screwed in the movie. but i'm still annoyed.

also, they never told us whether or not sophie and sky got married despite it being the plot of the first one (though this may have been intentional).

also, donnie is not a great name and not a great tribute to donna, and it just makes me think of the adopted brother in the wild thornberrys, which isn't a good connection.

to conclude, it's 3am and i need to sleep and i've undoubtedly forgotten something else that massively annoyed me. there were things in it that i liked, but they aren't relevant, so they're not mentioned. but i'm going to leave it at that. apologies for any weird phrasings or repetitiveness, i'm not proofreading this, i barely even structured it.

#mamma mia 2 #personal #this got a lot longer than i thought it would and i'm not sure i'm done

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arthurrweasley · 6 years

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MAEVE MADAM ROSMERTA is AN ORDER MEMBER in the war, even though HER official job is as THE OWNER OF THE THREE BROOMSTICKS. the THIRTY FOUR year old PUREBLOOD is known to be WILD and CHARMING but also HARSH and VOLATILE. some might label them as THE SEA WITCH. fc: katheryn winnick

The sea waves are my evening gown And the sun on my head is my crown You’ll always have a home in my kingdom

ANTHEMS.

QUEENDOM - AURORA // SEASIDE - THE KOOKS // BRIEF AND MOMENTARY - ALEXANDER DUBOVOY // HIGH BY THE BEACH - LANA DEL REY // FALLIN ALL IN YOU - SHAWN MENDES // SHE LOOKS LIKE FUN - ARCTIC MONKEYS // WHITE FLAG (STEVE REECE REMIX) - BISHOP BRIGGS // THE LESS I KNOW THE BETTER - TAME IMPALA.

pinterest board ( x ) full playlist ( x )

AESTHETICS / VIBES.

hair sticky with sea salt, sunkissed skin, the scent of honey and wine, good intentions, soft laughter, leaving people on read, dog eared pages in well read books, spontaneous road trips, broken promises, messy hair, the feeling of sand between your toes, lipstick stains on coffee mugs, a thirst for knowledge, always knowing what to say, classical music, vodka shots at the crack of dawn, seaweed tangled in soft braids, welcoming people with open arms, humming while cooking, rain against bare skin, falling asleep under the stars, taking no fucking bullshit, never completely settling down and always getting even.

BACK TO BASICS.

name: maeve alannah rosmerta. occupation: owner of the three broomsticks / barmaid. nicknames: honestly, most people don’t even know her first name? she’s known as madam rosmerta, or simply rose. the few people that do know her first name might call her mae.

some people are also bound to think that her first name is rosmerta. personally, mae prefers to go by just her last name. it’s enough. she’s practical.

age: 34. date of birth: february 12, 1946. zodiac: aquarius. hometown: kinsale, ireland. current location: her boat or hogsmeade. has a small apartment above the three broomsticks. gender: cis female. pronouns: she/her. orientation: bisexual. spoken languages: english and gaelic fluently. has also picked up some other languages, but is not fluent in those ( spanish, french, danish, welsh ). gets by. moral alignment: neutral good / lawful good. element: water. house: ravenclaw.

BACKGROUND / FAMILY.

Mae was born in Kinsale, Ireland to two pureblood wizards. Her mother ( Cara Boyle ) was the owner of a small bookshop in the coastal town of Kinsale, and her father ( Dahey Rosmerta ) was a sailor. They had a romance that only lasted while Dahey was in town over the summers, and they never married. Yet, their relationship resulted in a daughter, born out of wedlock. Kind of a surprise for the both of them.

Grew up mostly with her father, and only spent the summers with her mum. When with her dad, she lived alongside him and his crew on his boat. During the summers, when stuck in Kinsale, she spent most of her time just being bored out of her damn mind. Kinda longed for the ocean, wanted to get back. Felt like a fish out of water.

Her mother later married a muggle man, and had two more children. Her father never settled down.

HOGWARTS YEARS.

Kind of a hat stall between Gryffindor and Ravenclaw? Ultimately landed in Ravenclaw though.

Was DEFINITIVELY that™ girl who would jump headfirst into the great lake, having absolutely no fear of the repercussions. Probably made friends with whatever lurks down there too.

It’s cold or frozen? Doesn’t care, will still swim. Gained a bit of a reputation as someone with nerves of steel because of it.

Missed life on her father’s boat, but was also really excited to learn stuff? She’s naturally curious, and can’t resist a challenge. Worked incredibly hard while at the school, made some friends... Spent most of her time by the water, studying or reading a book.

At some point, she broke into the Slytherin common rooms, because someone dared her that she couldn’t do it. Also she wanted to see the lake. Doesn’t take a lot to get her to do something.

Was a lot more mellow than her Ravenclaw peers. Didn’t care about what anyone else was doing, and never resorted to backstabbing. Kinda just went with the flow, did her best work, didn’t pay too much attention to what others were doing.

Did however get into trouble a lot, but never for hurting anyone else. Were usually instances of her ACCIDENTALLY finding herself in the forbidden forest at night, or taking a midnight swim, or maybe accidentally breaking into empty classrooms to practice magic when no one was around. Or maybe breaking into the restricted section at the library. Mae tried everything.

Could however sporadically flame up when she felt that it was necessary, which was mostly when someone younger needed to be defended. Mae has pretty strong maternal instincts and can be highly protective. Will fight u.

She played on the Quidditch Team as keeper, but quit after three years on the team because it was taking up too much time, and she would rather focus on her studies ( and swimming ).

Started her own Great Lake Club at the school, which consisted of students that were ‘fans’ of the lake, basically. Club meetings were basically just them either researching the lake, swimming in the lake if the weather permitted ( everyone’s not into winter swimming, apparently :/ ) or just hanging out by the water. Wasn’t the most serious of clubs, but they had fun. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

AFTER HOGWARTS.

Mae graduated Hogwarts with top marks, and could probably have gone into any field she may have wanted, but she mostly just wanted to see the world. Wanderlust ingrained in her bones. Craving the sea.

So at the age of eighteen, she bought a shitty boat, and set off to see the world on her terms.

She ended up doing some work in different taverns across Europe, picking up odd jobs as a barmaid whenever she was in a town. Always chatting up customers, laughing with patrons, cracking jokes and making sure that the night never ended.

After a few years at sea, she eventually started to settle down, but never quite committing to anything. Could never bring herself to completely rooting herself to land. If she’s stuck on dry land for too long, she feels like she’s gonna go mad.

Still, at the age of twenty four (1970), Mae used the inheritance from her parents to buy the Three Broomsticks, a decision which she mostly made on a whim. She had been working in odd bars for a few years now, and kinda wanted something to call her own? Start her own legacy. Have some place that she could call home. Somewhere to return to.

Boat was kept ( at this point, she had a nicer one ), and she still spends her off days there, and some nights as well. Sort of like an escape. Definitively shows up to the bar with seaweed stuck in her hair ( so has to shower in her apartment first tbh ).

One of the reasons why she loves having a place that she is now tied to ( aka Hogsmeade ) is that she has been able to acquire and actually keep more personal items. She has quite the impressive library in the inn’s attic, for one. Books were one of the things she could only keep a few of, when she was living out of her boat.

Disappears from the Inn for a few weeks every now and then, but makes sure that someone else is in charge while she is away.

When the war first started, she tried to stay neutral. Had just bought a bar, and didn’t wanna alienate customers. But as time went on and the horrors became worse, morals kicked in, and she joined the Order. Today, she’s a member on the down low, and her affiliation with them is not public knowledge. Most of her tasks within the Order is pure intell gathering ( or spying ), but she also spreads information and acts as a messenger when needed. She just... wants to feel like she’s doing SOMETHING.

Keeps most of what she hears under wraps, but will share anything of interest with the Order. Other than that, her lips are sealed.

Everyone is welcome at the pub, as long as they leave their bullshit at the door. She considers the pub a zone where sides shouldn’t matter ( yet she does... sometimes close the bar down so that the order can meet there if needed ). And is definitively brave enough to throw any death eater out on their ass if they fuck around. In her bar, she’s in charge. Can 100% confirm that Bellatrix has been kicked out a time or two. #nervesofsteel

AS A PERSON.

Loves telling stories and is very good at it too !!! Someone’s bored? Rosmerta will serve them a story of her travels.

KIDS LOVE HER !!! For varying reasons, depending on their age ( smh @ Ron ). But she’s great with kids.

Has a big, soft heart and is kinda known for taking in strays. A kid has been kicked out by their parents? Aight, you can stay at the inn for a while until we find you something more permanent / things calm down.

More of a cool aunt than a mom though?

LOVES COOKING AND BREWING MEAD. Is really good at it too. The menu of the inn has been designed by her, and though she doesn’t spend a lot of time in its kitchen, she does oversee everything that happens in there. The menu itself is pretty simple, Mae believes in quality over quantity. And good fucking mead.

Has a reputation of taking zero bullshit? People don’t get away with SHIT when she’s around. Will personally drag your ass onto the street if you stir up trouble in her bar. Or anywhere else tbh.

Her mannerisms are kinda harsh? She’s generally just little bit rough around the edges. Doesn’t shy away from telling people what she thinks either, but does it in a way so that she almost always gets away with it? The mead might be a contributor, but you know.

TEMPERAMENTAL AS FUCK. Has a good heart, but she’s not... the nicest person out there. Can be petty, overemotional, brooding, melodramatic and short tempered. Her moods are known to change with the weather, and depending on how long she has been away from the sea. Though she loves the pub, she gets a bit stir crazy when she’s there for too long. Usually she’s pretty warm though.

So easily bored? Needs constant change to feel like herself, and to maintain some sort of happiness. That’s one of the things she likes with the bar, there’s always something new going on.

Aaaaand she’s definitively wild. Was way worse when she was younger ( don’t ask me about Mae in her 20s, she was a mess ), but she can’t be tamed. Will always follow her next whim, so eager to see where it takes her next.

Has remained an optimist over the years, which has been hard to do? She really believes that everything will be okay, but she keeps this kind of on the down low.... for some reason....

Never stayed in one place long enough (when younger) to develop an accent, so it’s a bit all over the place. She has a noticeable Irish accent ( from her father ).

Is around alcohol all day, but doesn’t drink at work. Can drink anyone under the table though, and has a scary high tolerance for alcohol ( which she usually jokes stems from her upbringing as a sailor ).

Has a kind of odd sense of humor? Can be a bit dark at times. Usually laughs at her own dumb jokes.

Wants everyone to have a good time when at her pub, and is REALLY trying to be a good hostess at all times?

SO CURIOUS, but also very good at minding her own damn business. Mostly curious about people’s motivations and how things work so like. Doesn’t put her nose where it doesn’t belong. Usually. Also good at keeping secrets.

Always stands her ground and trying to sway her is basically like trying to move a mountain. Good luck with that.

She’s also a highly practical person? Doesn’t complicate things too much, doesn’t try to make anyone jump through hoops. Things just are the way that they are with her and she will usually give it to you straight ( aka no mind games, thank god ). Has zero patience or time for bullshit.

Working in a bar really fits her because she genuinely loves talking to people?

STYLE ( FASHION / APPEARANCE ).

Mae has ocean blue eyes and blonde hair that she usually wears down, or pulled back into a soft braid. Since she still spends a considerable amount of time on her boat, she always smells faintly of the ocean, and her hair is wavy from sea salt. Skin is freckled and sunkissed, and she usually looks a bit glowy.

Wears minimal makeup. Some smudged eyeliner and lipstick, but that’s it. Prefer softer colors when she does.

While at work, she dresses in low cut shirts and loose fitting pants.

Gravitates towards lighter colors and earthy tones. Wears a lot of white, grey, light blue, light brown....

Keeps her nails short.

CHARACTER INFLUENCES.

WILL TURNER - drawn to the ocean, so brave, will dumbly sacrifice themselves for someone they love, similar banter.

ELIAN (TKAK)- will never settle down, feels the most at home on a boat, the same crooked smile. can be harsh, when need be.

SARA LANCE - leadership abilities, witty quips, protective, stands up for the weak, good at putting people in their place. not afraid to throw people out.

CLARA OSWALD - wanderlust in their bones, good with children, a little bossy, very brave, always warm and welcoming, an unquenchable thirst for adventure. just the right amount of flirty.

ALEX PARRISH - good at reading people, bit of an idealist, heart of a hero, a gray world view ( sees the middle ground ).

SHELBY WYATT - the ambition, the curiosity, the charm. those big doe eyes.

BELLE (BATB) - so curious, so inventive, the wanderlust, the kindness.

MEREDITH GREY - the moodiness!!!!!! but also the compassion and the dedication. takes no mcfucking bullshit.

ANGEL (BTVS) - the broodiness smh. both can be so... incredibly broody. also the enigma? doesn’t tell people her first name unless she absolutely has to / accidentally does so.

PHOEBE BUFFAY - bit eccentric, kinda free spirited, so kind, warm, very temperamental.

IZZIE STEVENS - sees the good in people. so protective, will fuck u up.

AUNT MAY - basically just everyone’s cool aunt.

#maraudrshq:intros #me? writing someone whos not a villain and not james potter? who am i #this got long and messy my b!

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andrewdburton · 3 years

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Three Months of Slacking

Unsuccessfully but Refreshingly trying to climb the local waterfall

“MMM, are you still alive?” – somebody on Twitter

Holy Shit! I just realized that the last time I wrote a blog post for you was on April 18th, and now it’s late July. That’s an entire quarter of a year that I have let this wonderful, golden field of interesting opportunities and people sit untended.

How could Mr. Money Mustache, a reliable stalwart of bossy financial advice since 2011 and usually good for at least one post per month, have drifted so far from his original dedication? It’s a question that earnest fans have been asking, and that I have even started asking myself.

When you break out of any habit, it can be hard to get back into it: the psychological barriers start to stack up and the pressure rises and you find yourself waiting for more and more unattainably perfect conditions that, surprise surprise, never really come.

If it’s a workout habit that you have broken, you might tell yourself,

“Oh, I just need to get over this injury or this cold.. And then my Mom is visiting next week but after that I’ll be ready to get back to the gym.“

With my blog-writing hobby I make excuses like,

“Oh, now that it has been so long, I have to wait until I have something really interesting or worthwhile to say. And yeah okay, maybe I have a few articles like that in the drafts folder, but those ones take a lot of thinking and focus to write, so I’d better wait until I am feeling really smart and focused to crack into that subject.”

But in both cases, the correct solution is just to say,

“Fuck it. I am going to just do something towards my goal, no matter how tiny.”

To get back in shape, you just need to start with at least a few pushups, which you can do right now on the floor of your office or kitchen. To resurrect the MMM Blog, Mustache just has to type some shit into the computer, and heck, why not just an easy breezy article telling you about some of the interesting things I’ve been doing in lieu of blogging?

Some stories from a real life of early retirement, which may be more relevant than plain old financial analysis and reader case studies anyway. And once we’re all caught up in life, maybe it’ll be easier to keep in touch on a more regular basis henceforth.

So in fairly rapidfire format, here’s what I’ve been up to this spring and summer:

1) Renovating The Shit Out of Our New Two-House Compound

We found the previous shower had been leaking for years and creating the most interesting scene of decay. We tore out and rebuilt the whole area, and cut in a nice window for good measure.

You may recall that back in January, I teamed up with a friend to buy the house next door, with cash, at a below-market price. Once she moved in, we realized that it needed even more renovations than we originally planned. So I’ve had a joyful time tearing down walls, framing in new windows and doors, reworking the floorplan and changing the wall surfaces, as well as fixing the shoddy plumbing and electrical work that was found along the way.

On my own house right next door, I’ve been going just a bit wild with metalworking, making all sorts of fences and decks and even a “Juliet Balcony” which features a fireman pole allowing me to slide quickly down from my master bedroom to the ground where we have a shared hot tub between our properties – in case of Hot Tub Emergencies, of course.

Cutting a giant hole in the back of my house (in February!), adding a sliding door where there was previously only a silly little shitty window, then many fun, casual days of metalworking. The last pic is my side deck, which I built mostly out of wood but also features lots of metal and a fun little outdoor kitchen including coffee machine and induction cooktop!

2) Working on a Pretty Big Documentary Project

Hmmm.. something seems different about the HQ kitchen.

I have said for years that I would never do it, but somehow a very persuasive filmmaker who has made some documentaries that I really respect, roped me into helping out with a probably-pretty-big documentary.

I did a casting call in March and found a couple that I am now coaching and working with throughout 2021. The film company doesn’t want me to talk about it much until they are ready to announce it, but suffice it to say that it is taking a lot of my time and energy, which comes out of what would otherwise be my blog-writing time budget.

However, this is the good kind of hardship – forcing me to experience things I wouldn’t otherwise get to do, and the end result will be reaching a lot more people than I could by just writing on this website alone. My fingers are crossed that it will come out the way I hope!

3) Switching 120,000 Underserved MMM Email Subscribers over for Better Newsletters

Easier signups, and better eventual emails.

Since the beginning, I’ve mostly ignored the fact that I sorta have a list of email subscribers, with predictable lackluster results. People were able to subscribe and unsubscribe themselves automatically, and the only thing it got them was an automated mailing of any new blog articles on the day that I posted them. The emails were poorly formatted, people who had non-gmail addresses often had trouble subscribing, and many probably wondered why I couldn’t make it work better.

Thankfully, a mini-crisis happened that has forced me to do the work to solve this problem, at last: Google announced that they were shutting down the aging Feedburner email service, so all of the old-school bloggers like me who were still using it were forced to migrate to a more modern platform.

I did some research, and in the end I decided to go with a higher-end option called ConvertKit, which is one of the most popular email services. It can do a lot more cool stuff, and I have taken advantage of this to create an automated (and free of course) “MMM Boot Camp” email series that people can sign up for.

It’s just a curated feed of some of my most useful articles (about 35 out of the 500), which automatically go out to people once per week until they have graduated, so you’d think it would be pretty easy for me to create this.

But as I read through my old stuff, of course I realized that much of it was crappy and outdated so I ended up partially rewriting every one of those 35 posts as I went through, which took some time. The good news is, the updated versions are here on the website as well, so the work should benefit anyone who happens to read them in the future.

4) Having lots of Fun Times (and Hard Times) In Real Life

Just another cool sunset/storm in my back yard, taken during the traditional Evening Walk.

I’ve had a series of wonderful visitors who came and stayed at my house, sometimes for a week or more. Friends and I have hosted some big events at the HQ Coworking space, which left me both energized and drained at the same time. Then I got Strep Throat in mid-July, which knocked me out for the count for a full week or more – even well after the antibiotics worked their magic, I have still been having some ups and downs with energy.

And then of course there’s the heat – I am always more energetic in cool weather (The typical 50 degree sunny days of a Colorado winter are some of my favorite for outdoor work in t-shirt and jeans). So the summer season here is always a challenge for me, with an endless procession of cloudless 95 degree desert days making me resent the very Sun I normally worship so much. I’ve been taking refuge indoor more than I should, hiding in my air conditioned house and making excuses and accomplishing less because of it. At least this has led me to the keyboard today, to write this blog post.

5) “Cutting the Pipe” at HQ and Installing a Giant Fancy Heat Pump system.

I had fun working alongside my co-owner Mr. 1500 for this work. Everything was easy about this install … except rebuilding some of the filthy century-old ductwork we found once we took out the old furnace.

Since I first bought the building in 2017, the MMM-HQ coworking space has been limping along with a clunky decades-old gas furnace, a gas water heater that was about 20 years overdue to spring a leak, no central air conditioning at all, and very high utility bills due to the way our local gas company charges commercial customers.

When you combine these irritants and contrast them with the fact that we happen to have a glorious solar electric array on the rooftop that makes a surplus of power, you can see why I would be itching to tear out all the gas appliances, cancel the service account permanently, and install all-electric replacements that are more efficient and will also save an estimated shit-ton of money each year.

I’ll save the full details of this for my very next blog article, but as a spoiler: we found and successfully installed a unit that should be able to cool and heat our building year-round, is very DIY-friendly, and cost only about $4000 to buy. It should prove to be a great annual return on investment, and I am excited to start installing these things on all of my properties and those of any friends who are doing upgrades.

And with that, I’d say we are all caught up.

In the comments: what have YOU been up to these past 3 months? And what subjects do you think we should be covering here on MMM in the next three?

from Finance https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2021/07/25/three-months-of-slacking/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

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johnnyvincent · 6 years

Text

Millstone - luminescence

contains: more drug use

lu·mi·nes·cence

lo͞oməˈnesəns

Light produced by chemical, electrical, or physiological means

Noun

---

19 days before

December 13, 2007

Thursday

---

Even though the intervention had pretty much seemed to be a success, and he said he’d get clean—promised, actually, when Russell stuck out his pinky and then all the other guys decided that was a good idea—we didn’t really see him any more often. Well, at least I didn’t. The other guys said they saw him a lot more often, around the dorm, in class, stuff like that. I only saw him during lunch and in the dorm; same as before. He never said much to me during either of these times, but I shrugged it off, figurin’ it was just part of his withdrawal. If he needed me to stay away for a little, I’d do it for him.

Thursday of the same week that I’d made him go through that intervention, we were all sitting in the cafeteria on account of it raining outside. Mostly we just ate apples and bananas; Thursdays are when Edna serves her “famous” haggis, which is basically just boiled guts, stuffed with other shit that no man should ever be forced to eat. Bullworth ain’t too good if you’re a vegetarian, or if you like not starving.

All of us were there—save for Russell since he graduated and all—talkin’ about nothing important. Girls, who was a dick and who wasn’t, homework we needed to copy off each other or steal from nerds. Honest, it felt like old times. Normal, even.

“I may not get the best grades, but like, I can intimidate anyone for homework and stuff,” Wade commented, gettin’ this look in his eyes that anyone but me would’ve brushed off. I could tell it bugged him, all the grade stuff. He didn’t like being “stupid”.

“I don’t know why we even have to learn this junk,” I answered him, propping up an elbow and lookin’ straight at my best bud, “we’re never gonna need to know fractions again.”

It came as a real surprise when Wade only gave me this look that I can’t exactly explain. Like he was… well, not mad, I guess, but not happy with me either. It only lasted a second anyway, so I wasn’t really able to give it a full analyzation, since he looked away from me to look at his phone. It had vibrated on the table, scooting a couple inches left and makin’ everybody’s serving of haggis jiggle a little bit.

Ethan was saying something to him but Wade didn’t even notice. He was that absorbed by his dumb phone. I thought for a split second that he was gonna tell us all it was Lainey, finally giving him some sort of contact since Halloween, but instead he just stood up. “Gotta go, guys,” he mumbled, looking at everybody minus me. “See ya later.”

He strode off, typing something in his phone and then shoving it back into his back pocket as if it didn’t even really matter to him. Guess it wasn’t Lainey—he probably would’ve called in that case, or at least had started crying or some other inappropriate emotional response like that. He was just like that. His hand trembled as he put the phone away.

That caught my attention, but only mine. None of the other guys had even noticed it, they just waved to him and kept on talking about how much nerds and homework sucked. But I kept staring after him, even after I couldn’t see him no more. His hand had been shaking.

Wade had a real steady hand. He’d kill me for saying this, but it was why he was so damn good at sewing, or pretty much anything that needed precision. I remember Mr. Tyler, the Home Ec teacher, thought Wade shold make somethin’ to enter in a contest. But Wade said no; he was to embarrassed about it. Said sewing and knitting were girl hobbies. He wasn’t no girl.

I got up too, mumblin’ some lame excuse about having to go see a teacher. It was half-assed and the guys didn’t believe me for one damn second, but none of them argued with me about it and that was what really mattered. I headed off after Wade, following where I figured he’d gone—out the front door—and looked around, shivering in the cool December rain.

It was real lucky for me that he had bright red hair, ‘cause that was the only thing that gave me any sort of real indication as to where he was and where he was going. He was headed towards the library, somethin’ weird for him. Feeling like one of those ninjas Ethan was constantly obsessing over, I followed after him.

I was maybe twenty yards behind him, not that it mattered. I coulda been walking right alongside him, talking his ear off about anything, and chances are he wouldn’t have even noticed. He was too focused on his phone.

He took a left into the library area, getting more than enough odd, judging looks from the nerds, but they backed off once he shot them angry glares, instead taking a lot more interest than normal in the concrete and their umbrellas. Wade kept on, heading to the wall off to the side, hopping over it, and strolling through an old door that had a keypad that had stopped working about a year ago.

I had to wait a little before hopping over the wall myself, knowing that if I did it too soon after him he’d hear me and then the whole thing would’ve been blown.

I fell when I jumped over, landing harshly on my ass and getting it all muddied as if I’d just crapped myself, smacking my knee on the wall real hard. I kept in the cuss, even though it hurt like a bitch, and kept going after him.

The whole situation was getting real creepy. Just the entire fact that he was taking a stroll through the forgotten grasslands of the school in the middle of a storm. In the distance I heard the bell ring, meaning I was late for afternoon classes. I figured this was more important, though.

We walked all the way to the old observatory. Supposedly they were fixing it up after the “potatoing of ‘07” as Wade called it, but they had paused the reconstruction a little before school started. All the machines and junk were still there.

It felt like slow motion, as I watched Wade walk up to the same kid with the mohawk and piercings I’d seen before. Wade handed him a wad of cash bigger than I’d ever seen him with, and in return Mohawk kid gave him a plastic bag. From the distance I was at, plus my shitty eyesight my asshole dad gave me, it looked like blue candy. I knew it wasn’t.

Mohawk boy strolled off, clearly pleased with the cash he’d scored, and Wade hung back. I watched as he shoved his hand in the bag, yanked out a pill, and started to put it in his mouth, getting ready to dry swallow it.

“You gotta be fuckin’ joking, man.”

I’d stepped out from behind my rock on autopilot, staring at him dead on. There was a huge distance between the two of us.

He pulled his hand away from his mouth, holding it shut real tight. He just stared back at me, trying to look tough. I could tell he just didn’t know what to say to me.

“You promised,” I snarled, not stepping any closer to him. “You promised Russell. You promised all of us.”

Still, Wade just kept his fucking mouth shut like some little kid. It was becoming way too often of a thing, me confronting and him clamming up like a baby. Just crossed his arms. He looked at the football field for a second, opened his mouth, and then shut it again.

“So nothing worked?” I asked, my voice sounding weird, even foreign to me. “Not me begging? Not your sister crying? Not the guys begging? Would you have stopped if Lainey asked you to stop?” I said her name with venom. She caused all of this.

It pissed him off, but it didn’t get the reaction that it used to get from him. He’d gone numb, even to her name. I should’ve… I should’ve realized what that meant.

“All this,” I hissed, my breaths getting shorter and shorter as less oxygen reached my lungs, “all of this, over a fucking girl, Wade. Over a goddamn girl you dated for two fucking months, man.”

My voice raised a bit at the end when I said that, and I could feel myself getting lightheaded. Dark spots appeared in my vision. My teeth clenched so tight it hurt. I was beyond pissed.

But Wade still stayed calm, and our roles were reversed. I was the one seconds from tearing something apart, he was the one keeping his head. It was as if nothing was affecting him. He just shrugged, shoving the ziplock bag into his back pocket.

“You never could save me,” he said simply, turning and walking in the direction of the football field.

I saw red when he said that, I swear. I ain’t one to lose my shit, but when he said that, I almost tackled him into the ground right then and there. I wanted to, I really did. Years of friendship were the only thing that kept my feet stamped where I was standing. Imagine, a guy ready to maim his best friend. It ain’t right. I won’t ever say it’s right.

“And I don’t even wanna fuckin’ try, you fucking asshole!” I screamed after him, turning ‘round and storming off in the direction I’d come from, mud splashing underneath my shoes.

I was the fucking asshole.

#millstone #fanfic #mine

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thetwilightroadtonightfall · 7 years

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my personal good things of 2017 list

ok so almost half of this year has been shit but hey, I’m a glass half full kind of person. and a lot of good things did happen, after all.

2.8!! I really enjoyed Back Cover in particular. Partially because I went into it not expecting many answers, and so I was never disappointed. It was also fun being in that small percentage that decided to watch the JP version without subs and trying to figure everything out

Voltron got 2 seasons this year I think? I enjoyed that too

then I met @dogsanddigimon!!! and since then, we’ve literally never stopped talking :D

I also met a lot of other wonderful people too!! Every year, it feels like my tiny circle of friends gets a little bigger :^)

I got accepted into the unis I applied for way earlier than I expected

I absolutely nailed a presentation talking about a made-up theatre company for my drama class

after the semester was over, I visited my art teacher to pick up some work I left behind in the studio, and as she was gathering them for me, she told me really sweet things, like how great I was, and how I have a lot in store for the future. I would learn several months later that she chose me out of the rest of the class to give an award to at graduation

at some point in February I think, I started the ~~gender journey~~ in which I questioned myself harder than I’ve ever questioned myself before. Still on that journey, actually, but there’s been a lot of progress

oh also btw I’m pan. This year, I became comfortable enough to say that online!! yay!!!!

I took a philosophy class with a really cool and intelligent teacher. I could listen to him ramble on about any subject for hours

all my classes in my last sem of high school were really great actually. I even had a writing class that helped me get back into writing

in May, I went to my first con with a friend

I reconnected a lot with that friend in particular by just hanging out at the mall and at a board game café. We’re elementary school friends that ended up going to different high schools so it was really nice to discover that we were still on the wavelength

I went to prom wearing a really nice dress. I didn’t care about prom (and much less about the dress) until I realized that I actually, genuinely wanted to be with a lot of the people there.

and then I graduated

well no it wasn’t as simple as that

since I was a senior member in the school’s band (yes, I was a theatre, arts AND band kid. triple threat lmao) I was picked alongside two other friends in the band to sing the national anthem at grad. yeah, we panicked a bit. but WE DID IT!!

man the more I think about it, the more I remember how great that day was, despite my losing feeling in my feet thanks to wearing heels all day. I got awards. Lots of hugs. And a burger. Yeah...definitely one of the better days of this year

I made an instagram and finally started using my twitter acc lol

celebrated my bday with family

then came the JAPAN TRIP!! aka the greatest bday gift I ever received in my life and the trip of my dreams. It was wonderful and unforgettable. I could talk about it for eons.

Blaine and Strelitzia were introduced this year! I love them a whole lot :)

I wrote and finished 2 fics for the first time in several years

back cover abridged deserves its own bullet

my inbox got visited by a lot of super sweet people this year; anons in particular that made me smile a lot with just a few kind words

at some point I got into Owl City and his songs have practically carried me through the latter shitty half of the year

September was a month where I felt like I actually had my life together. I had all this independence, I was on top of my school work, I was interacting with a lot of people, and I was just in a really good mood overall. It didn’t last of course, but I didn’t expect it to anyway. That was when I realized just how far I’ve come on the road to recovery mental health-wise, at least in comparison to last year

I got Ultra Moon, which I’m still working on. It’s almost as fun as the first time around!!!

I did enjoy the first few weeks of uni, before I started dying

I survived though!! now here we are

*kazoo version of FF victory theme*

I hope I didn’t forget anything big ^^”

#roadie rambles #2017 #don't reblog #good things of

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renaroo · 7 years

Text

Sweet Home (1/4)

Disclaimer: Red vs Blue and related characters are the property of Rooster Teeth. Warnings: Language, Canon-typical violence, PTSD and past trauma, Mentions of wartime Rating: T Synopsis: [Modern AU] In the aftermath of war, Wash is left with little direction in his own life. On his own, he takes up an ad for a roommate and suddenly finds himself wrapped up in the perplexing life of Doctor Emily Grey.

A/N: So this is a fic idea I’ve been throwing around now for a while and finally decided to publish. It’s just a short, tiny little thing but I hope it’s going to be enjoyable for everyone who gives it a chance. I should note that it takes place in the same “universe” as my other work, New Jazz Age, but you don’t need to read one for the other. It’s just the same backdrop, so to speak.

So, without further ado, here we go.

Who Are We Trying to Fool?

He arrives in the town by train with only his carry on luggage. The bullet trains race across the countryside in very precise patterns and it takes him three checks of his GPS on his phone before David Washington is confident enough to exit. It would be a long and expensive trip to get back to this out of the way station in this out of the way town if he made the mistake of getting off at the wrong one.

Though, why it would matter where he got off was something even he couldn’t answer.

There isn’t anyone waiting for him at the station, and he’s not entirely confident how to pronounce the long and complicated name over the arched doors.

Everyone else around him hurriedly meets with company or knows exactly where they’re going as they zip off and around him.

In that way, in his military issue clothes, Washington stands out more like a sore thumb than he ever had in the platoon.

After uselessly checking his phone again, Washington feels his stomach coil uncomfortably as he realizes that service in the small town is scarce, and he needs to not only clear the loading dock soon for the next train, but that he needs to also determine what direction he’s going to be walking in outside of the station.

When he asks the woman at the information counter if there are places to stay in town, she gives him a very curious look. It’s not a common question to get in a town with a population of less than five thousand, but at the same time Washington isn’t sure what else he could expect after randomly plugging in GPS coordinates on Google Earth while having enough beers to get a buzz.

Surely he had known what he was in for when he bought his ticket.

There’s an honestly pretty pathetic motel on the outskirts of town, and he’s honked at by passing cars at least five times as he walks alongside the road to get to it from the train station. It’s easy to ignore when he has his attention fully focused on the task at hand. He’s gotten very good at forcing himself to focus.

The front desk for the motel is about the size of the room they are using as its office.

“Here’s your keys,” the woman at the desk offers, giving him two chipped cards. “Is there anything else I can get for you?”

Washington takes the keys and immediately pockets them before adjusting his bag. “Do you have a local newspaper? With… apartment ads? Roommate ads? I don’t know… a Penny Saver or something?” he asks, feeling more awkward with every word.

The woman blinks at him lazily before pointing to the sign behind her. “You can load free wifi up in your room—“

“I appreciate that, but I mean… do they make… physical papers anymore?” he tries again. He’s not sure if they do. It seems like an odd question to him now that it’s out loud.

“I don’t have any copies of our local paper, Sir, your best chance to find anything you’re looking for is on the internet,” she says flatly. “Like a normal person.”

Despite his tightly controlled demeanor, Washington can’t help but flicker up a dangerous glare toward the woman. It’s the sort of look he’s tried to restrain in public since his return but the unnecessary comment forces it out of him. There’s no satisfaction, however, because she’s back to looking at her computer screen.

“Normal people are pleasant with customers,” he mutters under his breath.

“What?” she asks, looking back up.

Wash actually considers repeating himself but he exhales through his nose and cracks his neck muscles. “That’s fine. I’ll… look it up in my room.”

She doesn’t look like she believes him but she goes back to work all the same, seemingly more annoyed by the conversation than anything else. “We don’t allow long-term or indefinite tenants,” she informs him.

“Why?” he asks.

“Too many people selling drugs,” she replies before looking back at him Her eyes glance over his military dress. “What’re you on?”

“Nothing,” he says too quickly and he knows it.

“Mmkay,” she replies back. “I don’t know anyone who’s come back and isn’t on something,” she tries to argue before Wash heads out the door. “It’s the only reason you people come to Chorus!”

Washington knows it’s going to be useless to make a complaint, but he’s going to write one out, on paper, to give to management when he finally leaves the shitty motel anyway. Because it’ll make him feel a little better about the whole ordeal even if it won’t really. His anger’s so out of check as he reaches his outside facing room door that Wash can barely slide his card properly through the card reader as a result. He’s sliding too quickly or too harshly or something he just can’t fathom why chewing the inside of his cheek bare isn’t enough to break the flare up on its own—

He gets in the room and immediately becomes awash with relief. He breathes deeply and steps inside, closing the door behind him.

There isn’t much to the room. A bed, a mini fridge. No microwave. The iron is laying on the floor where the holder is broken. There’s exactly one nightstand with a piece of paper, the password for the wifi written out.

Washington lets his bag slide off his shoulder and stands in place, looking around at the room like it’s the culmination of all his life choices at once and then leans his head back.

“What’re we doing next, Wash?” he asks.

He doesn’t even know what he means by it. What’s his next move? What’s his next week? His next day? His next hour? His next minute.

Before the thoughts become too depressive, he opens up his phone and glances at the wifi bar.

“Someone has to be looking for a roommate in this town who isn’t a complete jerk, right?” he asks out loud before beginning his search for the night. “Right…”

There are lots of ways that Wash isn’t fully ready for real life and what’s expected of him next because of it.

He doesn’t sleep much and he hasn’t even thought of what prospects having a job could give him. Really, the moment he was reassured his automatic payments from the military were coming to his bank account, he bought a few boxes of cereal and has stayed mostly in his motel room since then.

And despite the rudeness of his first encounter with the front desk, the gas station across the street does in fact have printed newspapers and he has been looking through them with each new edition as he eats cereal and tries not to become too overwhelmed with his circumstances.

There are a few ads looking for roommates, but the one which catches his attention the most is the one which at first he thought was a store advertisement, like some local ice cream or candy shop at the strip mall.

Sweet Home it says in large, loopy letters that almost didn’t make it all to print, the last e hanging off the edge of the advertisement.

Looking for one roommate, does not mind odd hours of coming and going, two-bedroom house with one bathroom. Current tenant is a graduate student hence the odd hours.

Washington reads over the ad a few more times, swallows down his cereal, and can’t help but think that this is a rare opportunity.

He only hopes it’s not too good to be true.

When Washington arrives at the address listed as Sweet Home in the advertisements, he almost has to do a double take and assume he’s in the wrong neighborhood or that there has been some sort of misprint in the rent listed.

This part of town is too nice, the house is a house and not a cottage or condo-sized residence. There’s a small, picket fenced yard around it, and the mailbox is encased in brick with a decorative sign saying Sweet Home in ornate print.

Which goes against his assumption that the address is wrong but still.

The discomfort that Washington is already certain to experience in an interview has nearly tripled just by looking at the house he was going to try to rent from.

Instantly annoyed at the fact that his expectations are so aggressively incorrect or that his instincts are so clearly out of whack, Wash is ready to turn back and head to the motel for another night of interrogating for his end of stay and whether or not he’s some kind of baby killer like the anti-war propaganda seems to say he and others are, when there is a loud knocking from the house.

It’s enough to make Washington pause and wonder who it could be for. Certainly not for him.

At least, he thinks so until he glances toward the house and sees the excitable face in the window, tapping enthusiastically before waving. Then she disappears from the window for a moment.

When the door bursts open, the same frizzle haired woman from the window is standing there, arms out and gripping to the doorframe as if it’s the only thing keeping her from lunging down the patio and onto Wash and the sidewalk. Her smile is as brilliant as her clothes are distractingly unique. Bright flawless white with purple spirals dancing across the fabric. They match her earrings.

Wash looks down the street and back for the Magic School Bus.

“You must be David!” the woman cries out emphatically. “So sorry! Hope the directions weren’t confusing! Come in, come in! I can’t tell you how excited I am to have you! I can, and probably will tell you. But positively can’t wait to tell you in person. You’re much taller than I expected. Also not nearly as tall as I had hoped. Your voice has a certain… baritone quality.”

She pauses and turns back around to face Washington.

He hasn’t moved from his spot, still looking at the woman warily and with more apprehension than any body should possess.

After an awkward silence the woman takes her smile down a few watts and squints a bit, making a pinching motion with her fingers. “A bit much on the enthusiasm levels, wasn’t it? Needs to be taken down a bit for a first greeting, yes?”

Washington blinked a few times before shaking his head. The polite thing is to probably say no and yet Wash is pretty sure he didn’t learn polite in basic.

“It’s a bit much for me,” he replies. “But it’s probably… okay for normal people?”

“Oh how dreadful,” the purple woman hums in reply. “Normal people at Sweet Home. Alright then. Adjustments, Emily. Adjustments. You’ve been preparing for this.” In enormous, long strides she walks from the door to the fence where she reaches her hand over, out for Washington to take. He can’t help but stare at her lack of shoes instead. “Greetings! You must be David Washington. We spoke on the phone about an interview for you being my roommate? I’m Emily Grey.”

Blinking again, Wash still isn’t sure what to make of the situation so he accepts the hand offered to him. “Hello, Miss Grey—“

“Oops! Sorry. It’s Doctor Grey,” she corrects kindly.

“Hello… Doctor Grey,” Wash continues. “You can just call me Washington. Most people do. Well, military people do. But sorry about my height.” And because he cannot stop himself, he continues, “You know, when I read the advertisement and it said you’re a grad student I imagined someone…” Finally catching himself, Wash freezes up, eyes widening. They still awkwardly have hold of each other’s hands and he realizes that he cannot finish the sentence he started with anything that is not an insult. But he definitely can’t say what he was thinking which is that he expected someone… well, younger.

Doctor Grey stares back at him, smile still firm, grip still like a constrictor.

“So… tall?” he finally comes up with rather lamely.

“We both set far too much expectation for heights, I’m afraid,” she says with a gentle sigh.

“Obviously,” Wash expresses awkwardly.

They’re still holding hands on opposite sides of the stupid white picket fence and Wash is pretty sure hives have just broken out around his neck where his sweatshirt collar is rubbing. Things are looking… worse? He’s not certain how things could be worse and yet…

“Well, that’s enough eye contact for one day,” Emily announces abruptly, releasing Wash’s throbbing hand. “Time to show you around the house, yes?”

“If I haven’t already blown the interview then yes, I guess that’s as good of a place to start as any,” Wash replies.

He doesn’t necessarily mean it as a joke, but Emily Grey bursts out in laughter — a high pitched, unmistakably genuine cackle like the sister of the Wicked Witch — and opens the gate to the fence. “Ah, you are a gem, Mister Washington. I can already tell. Can I call you David yet?”

Wash gives her a strange look as he enters the fence and scratches at his neck. “I… no. I don’t… Washington’s fine. Most people call me Washington,” he repeats himself from before.

“Huh, alright then,” Emily says, her eyes sharp and attentive before she turns and waves to the front of the house. “This is Sweet Home. I’m afraid the front side is the best side of it. The rest is rather normal looking. But this is the part you can see from the road so that will have to do. There’s a bus stop at the end of the corner. Public transit takes you into downtown, to the university, and to four of the six neighborhoods that the mayor seems to think matters.”

“It goes by the motel, too,” Wash offers. “That’s how I got here.”

“Does that building still hold up to code? I thought someone lit the place on fire with a forgotten joint last year,” Doctor Grey says mostly to herself, finger thoughtfully held to her chin. “Well then, you already know more about town than I do, Mister Washington!”

“I seriously doubt that,” Wash tries to assure her. But before the words are even done coming from his mouth, she’s moving on to the inside of the building. He has to shake his head slightly and jog in order to keep up with the ongoing tour.

Inside the house it’s aa fairly standard two floor home. There’s a stair case in the foyer, a living room immediately to the left, and a kitchen viewable from the hall of the foyer itself. A den to the right.

Wash knows that these are exactly what each of these rooms are not only from the atmosphere inspired by each of them but by the signs hanging above each door frame, written in that same eloquent font as Sweet Home’s sign outside. It is a confusing choice in decor to say the least. But more confusing is that there’s not a single bookshelf in sight yet every room, every corner, every piece of furniture has books stacked. Text books, mostly subjects ending in -ologies that Wash can’t recognize for the life of him, but also various other kinds of books, some paperback mystery novels, and one book that catches his eye due to the oil painting on the cover which features a naked woman held by a centaur.

So porn apparently is just an open subject. Interesting.

“I can’t wait to show you the full house — well, half full. That’s just the kind of woman I am. I love seeing the house as half full rather than remembering that I have a space for a roommate and it’s really something you could say is half empty,” Grey blathers.

Washington is still trying to take everything in but is distracted by a strong smell coming from the kitchen. “Are those…”

“Oh, yes! I made you muffins. Do you have any allergies? I was worried you did so rather than make just one type of muffin and possibly hear that you’re allergic to nuts, bananas, strawberries, blackberries, blueberries, corn, or gluten, I made all of them individually. Now they’re roughly the size of souffles and it only just occurred to me that you might be vegan,” she gasped at her own negligence and turned toward Washington, hand on her heart. “Are you vegan?”

“Not… yet…?” Washington answers only to realize it makes no sense once it leaves his brain. “Wait what. No I mean. I’m not. Vegan. Or allergic. And… muffins sound wonderful.”

“Oh, good,” she laughs, guiding him toward the kitchen. “Then I should let you know, the only real question I have for you right now is whether or not you have any uncontrollable impulses.”

Caught off guard by Grey once again, Wash has to do a double take at her. “Impulses?”

“Yes, no judgment. I just need to know of any phobias or compulsive instincts you may have. Such as, are you a kleptomaniac?” she asks as if she’s talking about the weather.

He stares at her, mortified. “No,” he answers definitively.

“Oh, good, you have the room, move in as soon as you like. Today if you wish!” she replies cheerfully, pulling out a chair from the kitchen island where the array of giant muffins are set up. “Now, you just plop on down here, and I’ll run to the store and have a copy made of my key to give to you and we can talk about when you want to make your monthly payments or if you like six months rent up front and what your plans are for your life and whether or not you’re escaping any responsibilities including but not exclusive to child support payments.”

There is so much being said and so much at once that Washington shakes his head and looks at her in confusion. “Wait, what? Also… do you need me to go back to the hotel or… follow you to the store?”

“No, silly, just eat any muffins you want,” she assures him, grabbing a coat and keys from the coat rack nearby.

“You don’t even know me,” Wash replies, bewildered.

“I know you’re not a kleptomaniac and that I need to start trusting you sometime if you’re going to be a roommate of mine,” she laughs, pulling on her coat and heading toward the front door. “I’ll finish showing you the house when I get back with your key! Shouldn’t take more than a few minutes! Or you can wander around the house at your own pace while I’m out. I won’t mind.”

“You really should mind,” Wash says, feeling his heart is about to beat out of his chest. What the hell is happening right now.

“You’re not a kleptomaniac!” she reminds him, like it’s significant. “Welcome to Sweet Home!”

Grey walks straight out the door without shoes and Washington all but collapses into sitting at the island in bewilderment. He is overtly aware of his strange surroundings and how none of this seems particularly normal. He doesn’t know how he even got to this point. But at the same time, a strange anxiety and protectiveness is eating at him already.

There’s the question of what is possibly wrong with who is now apparently his roommate, but there’s also the foreign feeling of being put unexpectedly into a spot of responsibility for a house he is about to live in.

There’s so many questions swimming in his confused mind, but as he reaches out and grabs one of the homemade giant muffins and takes a bite, at least one of the questions gets its answer.

“That’s why it’s called Sweet Home,” he decides, nose curled.

#writing #rvb fic #RvB: Sweet Home #Agent Washington #Emily Grey

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plenoptic07 · 7 years

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The first rough little chunk of a modern AU Volpelli to tide @kitmarlowes through a shitty day~ ft. cute Jewish bookstore owner Gil

((please no reblogs))

Nic missed his bus.

Not by much, he figured, not that it mattered—whether he missed it by five minutes or five seconds, he missed it all the same. He’d been up all night going over polling numbers, reading news coverage, trying to find an angle that would salvage this nightmare of a campaign, and fallen asleep at his desk. He’d woken up and looked at his watch to find that he had about forty-five seconds to catch the bus.

But it was gone by the time he’d hurried into the street, wearing the same clothes he’d fallen asleep in. He knew it wasn’t just running late because the usual crowd of commuters was no longer at the stop. Which meant that it had showed up exactly on time for the first time since its new regular driver, a punk-ass eighteen year old everyone called Salai, had been hired. Salai was a vain idiot—he was brilliant, actually, having gone to university for art three years ahead of his classmates and graduating in record time, but he acted like an idiot—and should have been fired within his first week of work, but he spoke Italian, and Little Italy had been flooded with immigrants the last few months, mostly older folks finally coming to join their families. There weren’t many Italian-speaking people prepared to spend their entire day driving the city bus back and forth through crowded streets, and there had been an unfortunate rash of helpless non-English speakers being dumped off at odd points across New York when Salai took a few days off, so the kid stayed.

And he chose today, of all days, to actually make it to the stop on time.

Nic stood at the stop, clothes rumpled, messenger bag over his shoulder. He needed a coat; a light drizzle fell from the grey clouds overhead, soaking his head and shoulders, leaving puddles around his shoes. He thought about calling Biagio and dismissed the idea as soon as it came. Biagio was as dirt-poor as he was; the fool biked six miles to and from work every day. He’d be pedaling through the morning traffic right now, earbuds jammed in tight, his dark curls growing heavy in the rain, but he wouldn’t mind. Biagio looked good a little disheveled. At least, girls thought he did, and opinions that didn’t come out of a woman’s mouth just didn’t mean that much to Biagio.

Any other day, he might have called Agostino, who drove an ancient Mustang he’d purchased for about two grand four years ago; every year he sunk all of his spare cash into maintaining the thing. But Auggie was in Jersey for a conference. No dice.

Marietta had a car, but the thought of calling his ex-wife and asking for a ride—of meeting her on the curb and opening the door of her sleek black sportscar and seeing her nose wrinkle when he defiled her perfect leather seats with his wet ass—made him unironically want to die. Definitely not.

Damn, he hated being broke.

The next bus was due to show in the next forty-five minutes. Slowly, shuffling through the puddles, Nic turned and went back into his apartment. It was a one-room studio, nothing he was particularly proud to call home, but it was home nonetheless. There wasn’t enough wall space for bookshelves; he’d crammed in five and then had to settle for stacking up his books on the floor, somewhat haphazardly arranged by fiction/non-fiction, then genre, then author. He weaved around them on his way to the closet. His closet, he realized, absolutely stank of thirty-something-divorcee couture. If single guy couture was sports coats and Oxfords and married guy couture was sweater vests, he was right in the middle. He opted for slacks and a sweater and found dry shoes in the back of the closet. They didn’t have gel insoles, which sucked, because he had brutally high arches and his dogs would be barking by the end of the day.

His dogs would be barking? Christ, he was becoming his dad.

With nothing to do but kill time, he put on a pot of coffee, brushed out his hair (alarmed, as always, by its slow but steady retreat away from his temples, and by the greys that occasionally made an appearance on his jawline), scrubbed the taste of morning from his teeth. He shot an appropriately apologetic text to Farha. Though kind, having her schedule disrupted brought out a beast in her, and having the man in charge of her campaign show up to work over an hour late was sure to set her off. Nic said a silent apology for the aides who would be caught up in her hurricane.

He brought the mail in, braving the rain with a coat this time. Bills, bills, bills, unsurprisingly. He tossed them onto the already substantial stack on the counter. He kept telling himself he would get to them and then, well, not getting to them, like every other functioning adult in America. Postcard from his father, who lived upstate a little ways and for some reason felt compelled to send postcards despite not travelling much further than two miles from his house to visit the barber and go to church on Sundays. He’d become very quiet since Mama died, not like himself. Nic and his sister Margherita were still trying to convince himself to move down to Little Italy, where they could keep an eye on him, keep him company.

“Bah,” Bernardo would say, waving a hand. “If I wanted to live with Italians, I’d have stayed in Florence.”

They compromised by taking turns driving up to see the old man every other weekend. Totto was up for this Friday, but soon he’d be out of the rotation. He was in school for a PhD in theology and didn’t really have the time to spare. Nic wasn’t looking forward to taking increased bus rides upstate. Maybe he’d bribe Margherita into going more often—or maybe Marietta would be willing to take the kiddo up every once and a while.

Speaking of. He had an envelope from his ex-wife, containing an alimony check that he dropped directly into the garbage, and no less than seven illustrations done in crayon, which he put up on the fridge alongside about fifty others. As per usual, he couldn’t make out what they were illustrations of, but Primerana’s color theory was developing, at least. She was beginning to pair warm and cool colors for contrast. Nic thought that must be pretty sophisticated for a four-year-old. He stood and stared at her colorings for a few minutes, missing the absolute hell out of her. He was always counting down the days until he’d see her again. He was presently six away; she’d just been with him this weekend.

At five to nine, he stood outside in the rain once more, holding his travel mug full of black coffee, and caught the bus.

/ page break

Because it was already a Monday and he missed his kid and God apparently hated him, the bus broke down four miles from the office. Every other city bus was immersed in New York traffic.

“Take the subway,” the not-quite apologetic bus driver suggested to his marooned passengers.

Nic wanted to throttle him. What madman would be taking the bus if they were in any way able to take the subway? He did consider it, particularly given that the rain was still beating its determined drum upon his skull, but the thought of descending the concrete stairs into that cool subterranean labyrinth made his hair stand on end. Damn poverty and damn claustrophobia, they were making his life absolute hell.

He shot off another text to Farha, well-aware that his explanations were starting to sound like excuses. He sent her a picture of the bus’s steaming hood, as proof. She responded with a series of emojis that he couldn’t for the life of him decipher. The next senator of the state of New York, he thought, and smiled to himself. Provided, of course, that her campaign manager ever made it into work.

With no other options—no money for a cab, and not a Lyft in sight, not that he could afford that either—Nic started walking. His shoes soaked through in a matter of minutes; he was immensely grateful for his coat, which slicked off most of the rain. He’d lost the hood in a tussle with a mugger three months ago, and cold water dripped down the back of his neck. He hunched his shoulders and weaved through the foot traffic, zoning out to the endless drone of rough New Yorker voices, cell phones jingling, cars whizzing past and spraying water across his legs.

He got an amused but sympathetic text from Biagio, who had also been sending out incessant Snapchat updates of his own bedraggled but handsomely grinning face for the last five minutes. He was recording Farha’s Morning Meltdown, as he called it. For posterity, of course. There would come a day when America would be curious to see the visual history of its future president, Farha Fareed, who needed six times as many clips as any other woman to keep her hijab in place once she really got going. Nic and Biagio really did love the hell out of her, but she was driving them both into an early grave.

Loud swearing jarred him from his digital escape. A truck was parked haphazardly on the side of the road ahead of him, one of its back wheels on the sidewalk. A man was struggling to hoist a box out of the back; the downpour had soaked it, and it bulged visibly on one side, threatening to spill its contents. As Nic approached, it gave, and hardback novels poured onto the sidewalk. The man began swearing again with a fervor.

Nic quickened his pace, bending down to grab up an armload of books while the man struggled to juggle the weight of the box onto his hip. “I got it,” he said quickly, rounding his shoulders to keep the books covered from the rain.

“Thanks,” the man panted—Nic couldn’t see him around the massive box. “Right in here—”

With the truck driver watching them sullenly through the rearview mirror, Nic followed the man into a shop; it took both of them to jimmy the door open with their arms full. Nic shuffled inside and lowered the books onto the first clean patch of floor he found, straightening up and rubbing his lower back with a wince. He looked around. He was standing in a small bookshop; each wall was lined floor to ceiling with books, new and old alike. A plastic table nearby bowed under the weight of its DISCOUNT!! mystery thrillers. A corkboard was prominently mounted on the wall by the door, bearing at least two dozen brightly colored flyers advertising reading groups, yard sales, local concerts, and bikes for sale. Nic took a number off one of those before turning to look at the man he’d helped.

“Are there more?”

“Nope—last one,” the man—the shop’s manager or owner, Nic presumed—said from behind the front counter. The truck driver shouted something at them from the curb before starting his truck and trundling away. The bookstore owner raised a middle finger at the window without looking up from the binder he was scribbling in.

Nic approached the counter cautiously. The owner was dark, almost gloriously so. Skin like burnished bronze, curls of hair so black they were nearly brown. Great hands—large hands, Nic noted, with a sort of swooping heat in the pit of his stomach. The guy was around his height, maybe an inch or so shorter, but with muscle packed in ways that Nic—who didn’t even know where he might locate a gym in his neighborhood, let alone attend one—genuinely envied. He wore a knit cap at the crown of his head, which flattened some of his curls. Nic cast his mind around for the word for it—a religious thing, he was pretty sure. As he floundered, the guy looked up. Oh, Christ, of course his eyes would be brown too, rich and dark, like fresh soil after a heavy rain.

“Any of them wrecked?”

“What?” Nic said dumbly, stupefied by the fierce angles of this stranger’s jaw, the furrow of his dark brows. He wasn’t precisely an Adonis—he probably hadn’t been too good-looking until he got older, much as Nic had.

“The books—the ones that fell onto the sidewalk. Are they okay?”

“Oh. Oh. Yeah. Um. Wait.” Nic turned and headed back to the books he’d abandoned on the floor. He lifted them onto a mostly-empty table, pushing aside several treatises on Plato’s Republic, and checked them over one by one. “Two—three with water damage on the covers. Pages seem okay.”

“Good.” The guy walked over, stepping around Nic to collect the injured survivors. “I’m Gil,” he said, tucking the books under one arm and sticking out the other hand. Nic shook.

“Nic. I presume you own this place?”

“You presume correctly,” Gil said, and smiled. God dammit. He would have a great smile, slightly lopsided, open and easy. “Owner, manager, and employee.”

Nic looked at the front window. It took him a moment to puzzle it out, because he was looking at the letters backwards, but he read La Volpe’s in painted script. The subheading beneath it read Bo ks nd Cur os.

“Books and Curios,” Gil said, a little abashedly. “Couple of shit-head kids vandalized it a few weeks back. Haven’t quite gotten around to repainting.”

“La Volpe,” Nic mused. “The fox. Are you Italian?”

“Half. Dad was from Florence. Ma was a Sephardic Jew.”

“Oh, it’s Jewish,” Nic blurted, and immediately felt his cheeks turn scarlet. Gil arched an eyebrow. “Sorry. I was trying to remember about your—uh—my brain is saying ‘skullcap,’ but that seems wrong.”

Gil’s face relaxed, and he laughed, a warm, lifting sound. Nic’s stomach fluttered. He was having what Biagio might call a ‘distinctly bisexual’ moment. “Skullcap will do in a pinch. I call it a kippah. I believe Adam Sandler has popularized yarmulke vis-a-vis a rather charming SNL skit.”

“Is there a difference?”

“Nope. Depends on whether you prefer Hebrew or Yiddish. I opt for Hebrew in my ongoing effort to resist a culture of increasing Ashkencentricism.”

“Uh,” Nic responded. Gil grinned.

“Don’t worry about it. Thanks for your help back there.”

“Oh. Of course. I could hardly stand by and watch innocent books suffer.”

Gil chuckled. “Man after my own heart. You’re Italian too, I take it?”

“Florentine. My folks came over here after the war.”

Gil hummed, a low, sympathetic sound. “The war” hung like a cloud in Little Italy. Nic glanced at Gil’s kippah and felt a bizarre, curdling sense of shame, of downright guilt, burning the lining of his stomach. He was overcome with the need to make excuses, to apologize. He looked down at his feet instead.

“Can I buy you a cup of coffee?” Gil asked suddenly.

“You don’t have to stay with the shop?”

“I mean, as busy as I am,” Gil chuckled, gesturing around the entirely empty store, “I think I can take a few minutes to thank you for giving me a hand back there.”

“I would, I just—I’m heinously late for work today.”

“Fair enough.” Gil gave him a quick up-and-down, probably just surveying the state of his clothes, but Nic caught himself hoping it was also a little something more. “Then, any chance you’re in need of a ride?”

“I couldn’t ask you to—”

“No need. I’m offering.” Gil pulled a set of keys out of his pocket and smiled. “Come on. Coffee on the way?”

Nic hesitated, something between pride and courtesy telling him to reject the offer, but—damn, he did not want to keep walking in that rain. “Okay,” he said, a little reluctantly. “If it’s really alright for you to be gone.”

“If you’re that worried about my business, maybe you can swing by after work and grab a book or two,” Gil said, and winked.

Nic was sure it was entirely benign—probably not even real flirting—and it was cheesy as all hell to boot—but his stomach did a flip, nonetheless.

/ page breaks

Nic had approximately two regrets in life. The first was not spending enough time with his mother when she was still alive. The second was getting into the car with hands-down the worst driver he had ever had the deep misfortune of sharing vehicular space with.

“You alright?” Gil asked for perhaps the fortieth time.

Nic, jaw clenched shut, nodded. He sat ramrod-straight in the passenger seat of Gil’s truly-a-piece-of-shit Honda, one fist balled on top of his thigh, the other hand wrapped tight around the oh-shit handle above his door. Gil took a hair-rising right turn on a red light, cutting off someone oncoming, and apparently didn’t hear them leaning on their horn. Nic swayed in his seat and the handle abruptly popped off the ceiling. He sat holding it in his hand, dumbfounded.

“Oh, yeah, that’s been broken for months. Keep trying to glue it back on,” Gil said cheerfully. He leaned alarmingly across the center console and plucked it from Nic’s hand, tossing it into the back seat. “So you’re in politics, huh? Must be exciting.”

“I suppose,” Nic said through gritted teeth. Gil slammed on his brakes, and his car screeched to a halt mere inches from the next driver’s bumper. Nic saw her watching them nervously through her rear-view mirror. “We’re in the middle of a campaign for the Senate.”

“No shit! Who’s the candidate?”

“Farha Fareed.”

“No shit. I think she’s a boss. She was great serving on city council a few years back. What’s she been up to since?”

“Serving senate advisory boards, mostly. Filled an ambassadorship in the Middle East for—” Nic paused to stamp the non-existent brake on his side of the car. Gil braked several horrifying seconds later. “For a few months.”

“I hope you win. We need more people like her in government, you know? Not just minority people, but like…” Gil tapped a fingertip to his temple and executed a lane change with his knee on the steering wheel while he reached for his coffee. Nic desperately fought the urge to reach across and grab the wheel. “You know? She’s sharp, but honest. That’s all a politician needs, in my opinion.”

Nic could have debated that for literally hours, but he settled for an agreeable hum. They could debate the nuances of good politics next time, when he wasn’t quite so afraid for his life. His smugly observant inner self noted his use of next time. He ignored it.

“Have you always worked in the local bookstore business?”

“Nah. Took it up after leaving my sordid life of crime,” Gil said, mock-serious. Nic rolled his eyes. “Had the store for about five years now. You a book guy? You seem like a book guy.”

“I am.”

“Whatcha reading these days?”

“Political autobiographies, mostly. For work. I don’t have a great deal of time for leisure reading lately.”

“You should make time,” Gil said, with a note of sternness. He let go of the wheel to rabbit-punch Nic’s upper arm with both fists, then seized it again and took a sharp turn. “Seriously. It’s not good for bookworms to go too long without reading for pleasure. Bad for the soul.”

“I don’t believe in souls,” Nic replied, and wanted to take it back at once. Stupid thing to say. Too existential for a first—not a date, he wouldn’t in a million years describe this as a date, but a first companionable hellish car ride.

“Yeah?” Gil said, without missing a beat. “I do.”

“Well, you’re Jewish.”

Gil cackled at that, nothing short of gleeful. “Right! I always forget about that part of the Torah. ‘And lo, if thou believest not in souls, know that thou art straight-up a bad Jew, lai lai lai, Amen.’”

“Okay, okay, sorry, I was talking out my ass,” Nic amended. “So do you believe in souls Jewishly? Is that possible?”

“It is Jewishly possible to believe in anything,” Gil said, with such cheerful conviction that Nic didn’t want to press him any further—he just wanted to sit for a moment with that clear, warm confidence.

As desperate as he had been to get out of the car not even minutes before, Nic was a little disappointed when they rolled up to the campaign office (Gil bumped the curb heartily and only barely managed to avoid the parking meter).

“Last stop,” he said. “Hey, I meant it earlier. It’d be nice if you stopped by the shop.”

“Oh? And why is that?”

“Because I like you,” Gil said, tone still light, and Nic blanched. “In, like, a gay way, you know.”

“What are you, sixteen?” Nic demanded, his cheeks burning, and swung his bag onto his shoulder. “Thank you for the ride. And the coffee.”

“Which you didn’t finish.”

“Because my stomach was roiling because your driving is abhorrent.”

Gil laughed, long and loud. “That’s fair. I hope you come by the shop later.”

“We’ll see,” Nic grumped, and shut the door. His stomach was roiling, but it wasn’t all down to Gil’s driving—he was already re-planning his route home, mapping a meandering path in his head that would take him past the bookstore.

#don't mind me #don't reblog

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evangelene · 8 years

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Delete Voicemail?

Summary: Ok or Cancel?

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY. GO FIND SOME FLUFF SOMEWHERE ELSE AFTER THIS–COOL? COOL.

Two days after your high school graduation, Jungkook proposed to you.

Granted, it was with a plastic ring sprayed with a flaking silver paint and tucked inside–an equally as cheaply made–plastic egg with a bright yellow bottom. He’d put three coins into one of those horrible, half broken, children’s toy machines and presented you his new treasure by getting down on one knee. At first, you’d laughed; Jungkook was always joking, so it had to be a prank. Who would propose to their high school sweetheart right there, in the middle of a busy street, when both knew their plans were about as solid as the sand at the beach they were heading to.

But, when he jerked his chin towards your hand and continued to stare at you as if waiting, you could only feel all of the blood rush to your face, ears and brain as he spoke those three words you would never forget.

“Marry me, YN.” It wasn’t a question because he already knew the answer–he always found the answers to life so quickly; it was one of his many talents. Sometimes his greatness infuriated you when you wanted to be right too, but that moment was not one of them. You couldn’t even get the words out properly before he was sliding the shitty ring onto your finger.

Honestly, it was really ugly–complete with a fake jewel that had part of its coloring scratched off to reveal even more plastic. It felt incredibly rough and scratchy and was just a terrible thing to call jewelry; but it made you laugh and you couldn’t help but love it. Then your mind took over.

“Jungkook…you’re…you’re going to travel the world, go places, see things, meet new people–We can’t.” You tried to take it off but his hand was over yours, keeping it on your finger. “We can’t.”

He only stood up and chuckled, curling you into his arms. He knew you were panicking, that your mind was spinning too fast for him to catch so, instead, he smothered it into thinking about him and only him. He was good with you that way; he helped quiet the parts of yourself that needed to calm and follow your heart from time to time. “Yes, we can.” He murmured into your hair, starting to sway side to side with you still wrapped tightly against his chest.

“Don’t you love music?” His sweater swallowed up your words–you didn’t know if he heard you or not. “Aren’t you going to leave this place? Leave me?”

His swaying turned to rocking, calmly as if he had all the time in the world to soothe you even though he should have been packing for his first (of many) trips to his new apartment in Seoul. “I do love music, but you are my entire universe–not just my world. Come with me, Y/N, come with me to Seoul–we’ll get married, I’ll become famous and we can get whatever apartment/house/mansion we want, we’ll have kids, a dog or seven, whatever you want we’ll have it all. But I can’t live without you in my life, so if you choose to stay then…then…”

Your fists curled into his sweater. “I don’t know what I want to do with my life, but I’m not going to be the reason you don’t reach for your dreams.” You tilted your head up so your chin rest on his chest and your eyes met his. “Who do I want to be, Jungkook?”

He was still rocking you, lulling you into a rhythm that had both your breathing and the beat of your heart in check. “I can’t decide your life for you, Y/N. I would love it if you came with me, but your whole life is here. All I can tell you is that there are so many opportunities in Seoul, and, if you don’t like it, I will follow you wherever you decide to go. I will never leave you, even if you hate me–you’re my one and only, Y/N.”

You hid your face in his collar to hide your blush, but your ears gave you away–you could almost feel his bunny grin on the side of your face. “How could a girl ever say no to you?”

Your father adjusted your veil one last time before linking his arm through yours. He gave you that sad, old man smile of his and quickly wiped a fleck of something off your cheek. “I’m so proud of you.” He stared at you like you were going to suddenly become a different person by sliding a ring on your finger. “That man–I hope that man knows he’s getting a true treasure.”

You bit your lip, nodding as you swallowed down everything inside of you that was screaming–howling, shaking, hurting, trying to make your legs feel less like rubber and more like legs with bones and flesh. The music muffled behind the large doors of the church kept you sane. “I’m still me.” You whispered. “I’ll always be me.”

His eyes said he didn’t believe it, that you haven’t been you for a long time. But he only gave you that same sad smile of his and opened the doors.

The carpet leading up to the place where your future husband and the pastor stood was absolutely littered with flowers. Taehyung’s tiny cousin really was hard to control sometimes–she tended to get overexcited, which explained how there were a shit ton of petals draping the first half of the carpet, only to leave a couple lone petals barely trailing you to your fiancé.

Your father stepped first, slightly jerking you forward before you finally followed to match his steps. As you tucked a stray strand of hair behind your ear, you caught a good look at Jungkook. In his awestruck gaze you were reminded of all the times he said he loved you–even from this distance, you could feel him telling you how beautiful you were, how sorry he was, how he loved you and needed you more than plants needed sun. There was so much emotion in those eyes of his that, for a moment, you forgot that he was sitting in the first row of empty pews, directly in front of your husband-to-be.

Taehyung grinned at you as you strode towards him, reaching out to take your arm that your father offered up. With the best smile-turned-grimace that you could manage, you stepped up alongside him.

“Y/N?” Taehyung approached slowly; your best friend for so long was so fucking afraid of you or himself–it was impossible to tell. You always knew that he harbored feelings for you, unlike those shitty romance novels that Jungkook liked to buy just so he could read them out loud and annoy you, you were not oblivious. Taehyung had loved you from the moment that Jungkook introduced you to all of his friends in Seoul–but it was a quiet kind of love. Taehyung was perfectly content with just being able to see you smile and be the second in command when it came to the hierarchy of your love and attention. But now, now he sounded like he was going to implode from either anger or sorrow–the strong Taehyung that held you on nights when you fought with Jungkook, the Taehyung who always brought you back into the direction that your heart pointed in, the Taehyung that never once tried to steal you from the person you claimed to love forever, that Taehyung was just as lost as the girl who said yes to Jungkook and his 75 cent ring.

You couldn’t take your eyes off the grass, the park bench chilling the back of your thighs.

“Hey.” He murmured, moving like you might either bite him or break out into wailing sobs–either would have satisfied you for a moment before reality kicked in.

“What do you want, Taehyung? Why are you doing this?” Your voice broke as it rose in volume, but you were past the point of being able to stop it. “Why are you here? Why do you keep following me? How do you even begin to think that you can fix me?”

“You’re hurting.” His voice was just as broken as yours, just as shattered into pieces that melted the anger in your heart and allowed you to scoot over so he could sit next to you. “I won’t leave you alone when you’re hurting like this.”

“You’re hurting too.” You murmured. “Jungkook hurt you too.”

But Taehyung wasn’t like you, nor was he like Jungkook. He didn’t get angry or defensive; he didn’t try to shove you into his arms so he could make everything better instantly, even if it was only for that moment. No, Taehyung was better at longevity; he let you come to him instead of holding onto you until the pieces were glued back together. He didn’t try to take your hand or give you a hug that would last a century; you knew he wanted to, you could feel it in his aura, but he stayed in his lane. You remembered when Taehyung used to be such a hugger–he used to pick you up the moment you entered the boys’ dorm in a bear hug that had your feet lifting off the floor.

You hadn’t had one of those in weeks.

“You know, I’ve always loved you, Y/N. Even now, even as I am and as you are. I still love you.”

You imagined a ledge before you, Taehyung desperately clinging to your arm in the hopes that you wouldn’t keep getting closer to it. “What do you think I’m going to do?” Your voice was a whisper. “I don’t plan on jumping off any tall buildings. Jungkook–Jungkook would hate himself if I did that.”

“He’s gone, Y/N. He left you all alone here in a place that you have only lived in for about a year–a place that you still don’t entirely know all the ins and outs to. Seoul is huge, and Jungkook abandoned you in it. Let me…let me just be here with you right now, okay? You don’t have to love me now–or ever–but just, just lean on me. I–I will lean back when you’re strong enough to hold my weight.”

You lifted your chin, the tears breaking past your waterline and spilling down your cheeks. “How do you make this pain go away? How–how could he do this to me?”

Taehyung, upon seeing you crumble in front of his eyes, brushed his sleeve across his face so you wouldn’t have to see him cry with you. “I don’t know, Y/N. I don’t know. Jungkook is the one with the answers, not me.”

Taehyung gripped your hands in his–a compassionate gesture for him and a show of ownership to Jungkook. Your eyes met his over Tae’s shoulder you could see his lips twitch in their smile. Taehyung was warm in your grip, and you loved that about him; he had always been your personal heater–he had always made you warm even when you felt that it was impossible to be anything but cold.

But he wasn’t and would never be Jungkook.

You didn’t want to meet his gaze again, but not five seconds later you found yourself matching his stare. He was shaking his head, jerking his chin to Taehyung, but all you could focus on was the regret in his eyes, the way he couldn’t look away from you even when he tried to.

You had to bite down on your tongue to stop the tears.

The second Jungkook stepped into your apartment (still completely trashed with half empty boxes and belongings strewn practically everywhere) he swept you off your feet, making sure to spin you so fast you saw stars–but not fast enough to hurt you. He was good with that; every movement of his was carefully measured when it came to you. His lips were on your forehead, kissing down to your eyelids, your cheeks, whatever he could reach in the amount of time it took him to get dizzy.

“You did it.” You grinned at him on a laugh, clinging to him for fear that either you or he would go crashing to the ground with his sudden stop. “You really did it–I always knew that you would make it big. Jungkook, you’re amazing; it’s about time that everyone else finally saw it too.”

He bent down to press his forehead against yours, staring at you so close you could feel his breath on your face and the intensity of his gaze in your skull. “It’s because you’re here–I couldn’t do any of this without you, Y/N.”

Breathlessly, you let out a puff of embarrassed giggles. “Always. I’ll only ever love you, Jungkook.”

Taehyung pulled his vows from his pocket, one hand still clinging to yours as if to say that he wasn’t going anywhere–ever. He was there; he was going to be there. Taehyung was never going to hurt you–that was what his fingers told you and that was what you believed lie in the warmth of his skin. That was what you had to believe, even as you peered over his shoulder at Jungkook.

Jungkook balled his fists on his thighs, the longing in his gaze breaking through the warmth of Taehyung’s hand and chilling your skin. He’d had his chance–you, you’d had your chance with him; you blew it big time, and now this emptiness was the price to pay.

“In a week.” Your fingers traced his skin as you mumbled into his chest; sleep half taking you while the excitement of next week kept you conscious. “We’re getting married in a week.”

His arm rose up from the depths of the sheets on the bed to wrap around you, holding you tighter against his chest just so you could hear his heartbeat, rooting you in the safety of all that was Jungkook. His humming vibrated your chest as he used his free hand to toy with your hair while his other rubbed circles into your shoulder. “You know, I never thought that I would get married–not even when we first started dating. You know? Like, I thought you were a great catch and absolutely wonderful, but the more I got to know you–the more I fell in love–the more I discovered that there would never be anyone else after you. I discovered that I wanted to make a legally permanent bond with someone; I wanted someone–you–to know that I was only ever going to spend eternity with you and no one else.”

Your lips found his collarbone, leaving a mark of your tinted chapstick on his skin. “I knew from the moment I met you that there was only you–from that first kiss after we chased down your runaway dog, I knew that I wanted to marry you.”

He shifted his head to get a better glance at the plastic dress keeper in the walk-in closet. “It’s beautiful. The dress–and you too. I can’t wait to see you in it.”

You wondered what he was thinking as he saw you in that dress now, if he thought you were beautiful even as Taehyung slid the gold band on your finger. You wondered if he still loved you even as the ceremony was sealed with a kiss that lasted a while; it was a warm, slow burn that heated you to your core. It wasn’t like kisses with Jungkook which were fire and passion and quick moments that burst your heart at the seams. It was healing instead of a quick patch to make things better.

As you pulled away and Taehyung wrapped his arms around your waist and grinned to the crowd, Jungkook was gone.

“I’ll be back either late tonight or early tomorrow morning, alright?” Jungkook slid his jacket up his arms and onto his shoulders, peering over his collar at you. “You know you’re still welcome to come, right? It’s a party for Bangtan–and you are every much a part of us as I am.”

You pouted into the pillow held tight against your chest, peering up at him with large, puppy dog eyes that you knew he understood to be a cover up for your jealousy. “Are there going to be female idols there? We’re getting married in two days, you know? What if you decide to call it off because you fall in love with one of them? What if I went and just caused a crazy amount of problems again–your fans hate me.”

Even though there was the hints of a smile in the back of your irises, Jungkook strode across the room towards you, piercing your personal space bubble so he could stare you directly in the eye. “My fans love you–my sasaeng fans hate you, but they hate everyone equal because they are fucking nuts.” His hand curled around your jaw, tilting your head up from behind the pillow to bombard you with kisses–all rough and fast, all passion and energy that had your head spinning and your jaw working in time with his. When he pulled away, you both were out of breath. “No female idol can make me see fireworks, no female idol will ever be able to get close–Y/N, you’re all that matters to me. If you really want me to stay home and help you, I can. Or…you could just come with me and forget the decorations tonight.”

You shoved your pillow in his face, forcing him back to a respectable distance. “You idiot! This is a party for Bangtan and it’s also your Bachelor party–go enjoy yourself!!”

He chuckled, tossing the pillow next to you on the couch. “Are you sure you don’t want to go?”

“I have to finish the decorations and make sure my father gets into town alright. So you go and have fun and I’ll party it up here.” You smiled at him so brightly that he felt compelled to lean in and press a chaste kiss to the tip of your nose. “Besides, tomorrow, you’re all mine.”

“I love you.” His breath fanned across your face.

“And only me?”

“Always.”

“I’m…I’m going to go clean up my dressing room.” You said to Taehyung, still holding his hand after the hall had emptied to head to the location of the reception. He was holding onto you as if he knew that once he let you go you would feel that you were dealing with this all alone once more. “I’ll…I’ll meet you at the reception?”

Taehyung was an understanding man, where Jungkook would have just left, Taehyung always saw right through everything you threw up to lead him away; he shook his head. “I’ll go clean up my own dressing room and wait for you out here.”

“There…there are people for that.” You murmured.

He only raised an eyebrow at you before kissing your cheek and, slowly–as if telling you that he would still be there when you came back–he released your hand and strode towards the back of the church.

You took a deep breath, standing in the empty chapel before heading towards your own pre-wedding chambers. It wasn’t a mess, in fact, it seemed to bare of any indication that you were in there other than the slight disturbance and commotion of products strewn across the vanity. When you were with Jungkook, you’d had this whole setup envisioned in your head–with Taehyung, it was suddenly no longer needed. The important things were there, and so were you and him–that was enough.

Your eyes zeroed in on the plastic ring that sat on your dresser by a tipped over bottle of lotion. It had seen far better days, muddied by the years, and grime accumulated from you carrying it around so much. There was barely any paint left save for a small section of silver turned a coppery plastic color. You picked it up gingerly, placing it on your palm before closing it in both your hands. With your thumbs pressed to your lips, it almost seemed like a talisman for prayer–to what god, you didn’t know.

You had long since given up on religion.

“You still have that?”

With a fresh face and brushed teeth, you headed towards your bed only to notice your phone lighting up with a missed call and a voicemail. Jungkook. You couldn’t help but smile to yourself.

Your eyes flew open, though you didn’t remember closing them. In a wild panic you spun around, your throat constricting as you faced the first love of your life. “Jungkook.” It was a breath, barely an intelligible name. He was wearing that tuxedo–the one that he was supposed to marry you in–it suited him well. “Of course I kept it.” Your voice was a whisper, and you wanted to help him–you wanted to smile, to make it better, but there was no way that you could manage that with the glaze forming over your eyes. You couldn’t pretend to be happy, not with him there–not like that.

He stepped towards you and for a moment you were hit with the scent of his cologne, the smell of the man that you had known for so long before he was cut out of your life. Jungkook’s hand slid along the side of your face in feather light touches, brushing up to toy with a styled bit of your hair. Finally, his touch lingered down to your chin where he hooked his thumb to lift your gaze up to his face instead of the middle of his chest. His fingers felt cold.

“You look beautiful in that dress, as I always knew you would. Anything looks beautiful on you.” His eyes shifted with some fleeting emotion before he dropped your face. “Taehyung is lucky to have you–I’m…I’m happy that you have him now.”

Your lip quivered, all it took was that one twitch of your face and suddenly the tears were falling, dribbling onto your dress–you were thankful your friend talked you into the waterproof makeup. You wanted to smile at him, you wanted him to be satisfied that you were fine so he could go, so he would be okay, so he would wait for you, so he could do what people were supposed to do after…after…

You woke up to your phone ringing like crazy, vibrating across your nightstand and blaring BTS’ Fire at max volume. But, it was you, so instead of flipping out you groggily snatched it before it fell, hit the answer button, and pressed it to your who-the-fuck-woke-me-up-at-3-am ear. “Mmmm….mhello?”

“Y/N?” Seokjin. He sounded panicked, sirens and screaming creating a cacophonous background that made his tone of voice seem all that more urgent. “Y/N…where are you?”

“Home?” You mumbled as you tried to push your lazy butt up into a sitting position.

“We’re on our way.” He shouted to someone else, a muffled static reverberating through your skull–he was covering the phone so you couldn’t hear what he was saying, an act that you knew was purposeful. Anxiety settled just underneath your skin, ready to burst. “You’re not going to–” His voice shook as he took in a deep breath to calm himself. “You won’t have to deal with this–or even hear this–alone.”

As you finally sat up, the blankets pooled around your waist, you turned to look over your shoulder at the empty spot of the bed where Jungkook should have been, but wasn’t. You patted the sheets, his pillows, anything and everything you could to silence the worst of your fears that settled in your gut and were exacerbated by Seokjin’s words. Everything was cold, the entire bed, your skin, your heart, your stomach–everything. “Seokjin…what…what are you talking about? What happened?” Your voice broke, your hands digging into the phone to the point that you thought you would crack the plastic cover.

“They…they thought that you had come to the party with him. They didn’t know it was his car, that he was leaving–they thought it was you. They thought that he’d gone to the bathroom–they…”

“Seokjin, where’s Jungkook?”

“The fans.” He murmured, his voice rattling. “The crazy ones that want their ‘oppa’ or whatever all to themselves or no one at all–they followed his car.”

You screwed your eyes shut, your entire body trembling. “Seokjin.” Even though you tried to make your voice firm and assertive, it cracked and sounded like a lost child approaching a stranger. “Where is Jungkook?”

“His car got chased and crashed off the highway.” He swallowed and you heard it echo through your skull for eternity. “There were no survivors.”

Jungkook’s brows furrowed as the facade that you had haphazardly threw up fell down in shards that left gashes in your heart and tears streaming down your face. He was there, holding onto you so tightly you could almost believe that he was a real, living being. But you were the only one that could see or touch him; you were the only one that could feel the stillness to his chest–the lack of a heartbeat. "I ’m sorry.“ He whispered into your hair. "I’m so sorry, Y/N–I wanted…I wanted to be the one celebrating you as my wife. I wanted to be here to go on some wonderful honeymoon, I wanted to celebrate anniversaries with you, I wanted to have children, I wanted–I wanted to spend my life with you.”

Your sobs broke into his shoulder as you snorted and were forced to cover up your nose in case the snot ran loose. “You did celebrate your life with me–it was just short.” He chuckled, and when you closed your eyes you could almost imagine the ghost of his breath on your neck. “It should have been me in that car, I should have gone with you–or told you to stay with me.”

He pulled away from you just enough for you to see his expression–and you ducked your head to avoid it. “Never.” He hissed. “It was never meant to be you; it was never going to be you. I wouldn’t wish your pain on anyone in the world but you, Y/N, the fact that you are alive is the greatest treasure that I could ever ask for. I got to see you be married to my best friend, and while I wanted to be the one to do it first, I will always love you and you will always be my wife.” He snatched the ring from you, grabbing your left hand so abruptly that your head shot up to stare at him in confusion. Jungkook’s gaze never left your face as he spoke.

“With this ring, I thee wed.” It wasn’t metal; it was shit compared to the gold band already on your finger–but that one, stupid, faded, plastic ring was heavier than anything else that had ever adorned your body. And it was beautiful in a way that gold would never match.

For that moment, your tears stopped just enough for you to finally see the man you had lost. He curled his arm around your waist, the other clasping with your hand. “I didn’t practice ballroom dancing for nothing.” He chuckled, his bunny grin lighting up his face when the joke brought a smile to your own.

And then he was sweeping you off your feet with dance, pulling you along in that one tiny dressing room like it was a huge expanse of marbled floors, like there were chandeliers above your head and wine served on silver platters. Jungkook danced with you like the two of you had always been rich; he danced with you with that passion he used to accomplish everything. As you closed your eyes to let your body succumb to his movements, you could almost hear the music, almost sway to the beat of the song that wasn’t playing. His face bent towards yours, his lips pressing against your cheek. For a second, his breath was warm.

“I will always love you, Y/N.”

“Please.” You whispered. “Just a little bit longer–please don’t go yet, don’t–”

There was a knock at the door, and though you didn’t want to open your eyes, you did.

Taehyung slowly creaked open the door, finding you standing in the middle of the room with your arm still raised in the air as if you had been dancing all alone with an invisible partner. Your eyes met his, and there was no more being strong–there was no more pretending. Your face broke once more and, this time, Taehyung was the one to comfort you. He was the one to hold you and gently lead you to the ground before you collapsed. His hands weren’t rough and pleading in your hair, they were gentle and calming. His voice was lower, it vibrated your chest and it created a steady hum that Jungkook’s could never do because he was always a thousand different places at once.

“He’s gone, isn’t he?” Taehyung whispered, pausing a second before speaking again. “Did he…did he look happy?”

You sniffled into Taehyung’s tuxedo jacket. “It was the happiest I’d ever seen him.” And, as Taehyung buried his head in your hair to dampen it with his own tears, you felt something heavy leave through your heart and out your back–up; a part of you, that would only ever belong to Jungkook.

“Hey, Y/N. Ah, I got to the party just fine. You know, there’s all these women around me but the only person I can even think of is you.” His last voicemail rang out through the apartment, you kept replaying it, the phone buzzing against your chest as you tried to clean, as you tried to sort your things versus his. “They don’t even compare–you. Y/N, I love you so much that I want you all to myself. Sometimes, you know, I think about what would have happened if I didn’t pursue you–would you be marrying another man in two days?” He chuckled softly and fresh tears bloomed in your eyes; every damn time. "I get jealous thinking like that, you know. I think that I might die if you married someone else, but I also think that I’d want you to be happy.“ He snorted and then let out a burp/hiccup that made you laugh more than cry for just a second. "Okay, so I may have had a bit to drink, I have a driver–don’t worry, I will come back to you tonight and you won’t ever wake up alone again. I love you, Y/N. Always.”

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