#so between that and him unwisely jumping for the first job offered instead of taking something part time or waiting until may

[six-of-ravens]

tomorrow's the day mom has to take a cab to the hospital for her appointment, and everyone's kinda nervous about it since she hasn't gone to an appointment alone since before the pandemic, but also we kinda decided her taking a cab will be a good test as to whether she can actually use the city's handibus/handi-taxi service again. It's basically the same as getting a cab -- in fact the city often sends a cab instead of a bus. You pay for both with transit tickets, the mode of transport you get just depends on where you live and where you're going I think.

anyway I'm less worried about the actual cab aspect and more worried that a) she won't remember where to go for her appointment/be able to navigate the hospital, or b) she won't go at all and will try to lie about it. but, well, there's only one way to find out.

[kaunis-sielu]

A Favor

“Auntie!” Anya says the second you answer your phone, “I need your help!”

“What’s wrong?” You’d learned quickly that her version of an emergency and yours were very different.

“My principal wants to talk to my parents!”

“Why?”

“Because I’m sick of Ted Cramer being a bully so I punched him.”

“Okay, so why are you calling me?”

“My parents are out on a mission!”

“Oh.” Keeping who Anya’s parents are a secret is the only thing keeping her in normal school, which was something both agents had wanted for their daughter. “I’ll grab one of your uncles and come in.”

“Not uncle Bucky okay?”

“Why not?”

“Um, last time he was here the principal called him a terror or something and uncle Bucky got really sad.”

“Okay, not Bucky. Are you in the office now honey?”

“Yeah.”

“Tell the principal we’ll be there soon.”

“Um, could you just say you’re my parents? They haven’t met them and you don’t travel as much as my parents do, and you look a lot like me. Since you work behind the scenes people won’t know.”

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

“Please!” She begs, “otherwise they’re just gonna demand my parents come in and then they’re gonna be recognized and I’ll have to leave all my friends!” She sounds so upset that you cave,

“Okay fine.”

“Thank you! Okay I gotta go, I’ll see you soon.”

“See you soon honey.” You hang up then and grab your purse to head out and find one of the boys. You know that Bucky, Steve, Scott and Bruce are all home. Bucky is already out and you don’t think Scott is around enough to be a good Clint substitute. You round one of the corners and nearly crash into Steve, “ah!” You cry startled at the sudden appearance of the Captain.

“Sorry, you okay?” He asks and you nod.

“Hey, I need a favor. Well, actually Anya needs a favor.”

“Is she okay?”

“Yea, just in trouble and needs two people to come to the school.”

“Let me get changed.” You haven’t told him all the information yet but he’s already ready to jump in and help Anya. It’s one of the reasons you adore the man, always ready to help his family.

“Oh, okay I’ll meet you downstairs?” He nods then disappears into his room, you make your way down to one of the cars and as you’re walking up he appears out of the stairwell. He’s in a black shirt, jeans and a grey jacket that either belongs to him, Sam or Bucky, you’ve seen all three men wear it so you’re not sure who it belongs to.

“You want me to drive or do you wanna?” He asks and you pull open the passenger side door in response. “Alright.” He chuckles then gets into the car and heads for Anya’s school.

“So just a heads up she’s asked me to pretend to be Natasha, well actually Natalie Rushman.”

“Why?”

“Nat and Clint are gone so often and since I don’t go out on missions to fight I’m home more than anyone. If Anya needs someone to come in again I’m the best option, I’m not a familiar Avenger. You might be more of a problem, having to explain how I know Captain America.”

“I wear a mask and I’ve got my undercover hat in the back.” He tells you with a grin and you laugh softly.

“Alright, if asked I’ll just say I work for Stark.” You say as he pulls into the parking lot. You climb out of the car and make your way into the school, Steve’s hat is low and somehow it does make him look less like Captain America and more like suburban dad.

“Hi, how can I help you?” The woman sitting at the front desk asks, it was too easy to get into the school, you glance up at Steve and see a small frown on his face. He must be thinking the same thing.

“Hi-“

“Mom! Dad!” Anya cries rushing you and Steve who you share a surprised look with Steve as Anya wraps her arms around your waist and buried her face in your stomach.

“You must be Anya’s parents, I’ll let Principal Decker know you’re here.”

“Thank you.” You tell her and the second she turns away you conjure rings for your and Steve’s fingers.

“Good thinkin’ Sweetheart.” He mutters into your hair.

“Anya, can you tell us a little more about why we were called in here?”

“Ted Cramer wouldn’t leave me alone, he keeps pulling my hair and poking my side and taking my stuff. When I told Mr. Sanders he just told me to ignore it so when Ted grabbed me at recess I punched him.” She looks up at you and that’s when you see the forming bruise around her eye.

“Anya who hit you?” Steve asks, his voice low.

“Nick Sanders. He’s best friends with Ted.”

“So why are you the only one in the office?” You ask, irritation building.

“Because the boys are in with the nurse.” A male voice says and you look up to see a man in a suit standing in front of you. “You must be Mr. and Mrs. Rushman. Principal Decker.” He reaches a hand out for Steve’s and he shakes it coldly.

“Bradley actually, Clark Bradley. My wife kept her last name and since she did all the work we decided to give Anya her last name.”

“My apologies, let’s move this to my office?” He offers and when he goes to touch you to guide you into his office you shy away, Steve wraps a protective arm around your shoulder and when Principal Decker gestures for you to sit Steve stands behind your chair arms folded tightly.

“So you’ve called the other children’s parents?” You ask hoping that he isn’t going to disappoint you but considering he’s already pretty much ignored you you don’t have a whole lot of hope.

“Considering Anya is the one who started the fight we’re a little more concerned with dealing with her behavior first.”

“That’s not the story we heard.” You tell him, glancing over at Anya who looks furious.

“Well, you can’t always believe everything children say.”

“I’m sorry,” Steve says through gritted teeth, “did you just call our daughter a liar?”

“No, no, I just think it’s unwise to just assume you’re getting the whole story.”

“I told them the whole story!”

“Anya if you can’t be respectful then I’m going to ask you to sit in the office.” Principal Decker warns and she folds her arms tightly over her chest, that’s when you notice the rip in her shirt.

“Anya, turn around please.” You tell her and there’s a large tear in the back of her shirt. “Did this happen when you were defending yourself?”

“Yes.”

“Fighting Mrs. Rushman.” Principal Decker interrupts.

“Maybe Anya should go out into the hallway.” Steve growls and you reach behind you to take his hand.

“No,” you counter, “Anya needs to be here to hear this just as much as Principal Decker does.” Your voice is steady, calm, “we have taught Anya to defend herself if someone has touched her when she has asked them not to. Ted Cramer has been an issues all school year, I know because I’ve already emailed Mr. Sanders about it.” Not a lie, as her godmother Natasha has you in their parent email so that you can step in if needed. He opens his mouth to speak but you hold up a hand, “I am not finished.” His mouth closes again, “We won’t be pressing charges against the school for allowing sexual harassment to continue,”

“Sexual harassment? Hold on a minute, they’re 10!”

“He has been pulling her hair, touching her and taking her things all year.”

“Little boys do that when they like little girls! He just has a crush.”

“I see you’re married Principal Decker,” You say gesturing at his ring, “do you poke your wife? Do you pick on her? Take her things? Touch her when she asks you to stop? Because if you do you’re an abuser.” His mouth drops open. “Am I pleased that Anya felt her only course of action was to hit someone to get them to leave her alone? No, I’m furious that her teacher and principal did not listen to her and made her feel like she had to defend herself. Now, how long will she be out of school? My husband and I have jobs to do and frankly you’re an ass.”

“Mrs. Rushman!” He sputters but you stand and hold out a hand for Anya’s.

“How long Principal Decker?”

“Three days.”

“Very well. Anya go get your things.” You turn then and make your way out of the principal’s office Steve behind you.

“Damn Sweetheart.” He mutters and you give his hand a little squeeze. Then he disappears with Anya to gather her things. You head out for the car, leaning against the sleek black thing in the sunshine. Hopefully Clint and Nat won’t be too upset with how you and Steve handled this.

“You! Are you that little Rushman bitch’s mom?”

“Excuse me?” You ask standing up straight as a woman comes storming toward you.

“You heard me. I’m gonna kick your ass.” She takes a swing at you that you see coming a mile away. You duck under her arm, step behind her and throw and elbow into her shoulder blade throwing her off balance. She stumbles forward and you turn to face her again as she whips around.

“My daughter took on three boys and only had a black eye and a ripped shirt. Where do you think she learned to fight?” You ask calmly as the woman rushes you again, you wait and shove her away as you sidestep her again she goes stumbling. Technically it was Natasha but the woman doesn’t need to know that. This time when she rushes you you don’t move, instead you catch her arm and spin her into the car pinning her against the hood.

“Mom?”

“Hi Anya. Clark.”

“Everything alright here Sweetheart?”

“Yea, this is one of the boys mom. She doesn’t seem pleased with how we decided to raise our daughter to not be a passive little thing who lets boys do whatever they want.”

“Fuck you!” The woman screams and you twist her arm painfully.

“Language. You’re at an elementary school.” You say coolly, “Anya honey get in the car please.”

“Anything you need from me Sweetheart?”

“Mm, her husband doesn’t seem too pleased.”

“Let go of my wife you fucking bitch!” He roars his truck squealing to a stop behind your car. He comes bolting out of the car and Steve sighs.

“Honestly. Who do they think taught our kid to kick ass?” Steve grumbles placing himself between you and the large tatted man.

“He’s gonna kill you!” His wife says from where you still have her pinned to your car.

“Friday, are police on their way?” You ask your watch.

“Yes.”

“Thank you.” You say before a loud crash happens behind you.

“I told you to calm down.” Steve says and when you glance behind you you see the other man groaning against his car, a body shaped dent in the hood.

“Mick! Mick! Do something!” The woman yells struggling against you as the police roll up.

“I don’t think Mick is gonna be getting up anytime soon.” Steve says with a sigh. The two police officers come up and she starts screaming about how you’d attacked her. The police take her from you and when they attempt to cuff you too Steve speaks up.

“You probably shouldn’t do that.”

“Are you threatening us sir?”

“No, but she does work for Stark and the whole thing was caught on that camera so maybe check the security camera before you go slapping cuffs on people.”

The two officers call for an ambulance to check on Mick then one goes inside to see what was caught on the camera. When he comes out with a flash drive you’re free to go.

“Thanks Auntie. Thanks uncle Steve.” Anya says from the backseat as Steve pulls out of the school parking lot.

“Don’t thank us quite yet. You still have to tell your parents that you were suspended.” Anya groans loudly before pulling her phone from her pocket. “On speaker please.” You instruct, she’s a tricky thing.

“What? Don’t you trust me?”

“Considering I just played your mom and Steve your dad, no I do not.” She groans but does as you ask and calls her mom on speakerphone.

It’s not the worst conversation and you’re glad that Nat and Clint found that you and Steve played them entertaining. You make sure to tell them that you’ll make sure she gets her schoolwork done before she goes back next week.

“So, I was thinking we deserve ice cream.” Steve says once Anya hangs up with her parents.

“I think that sounds like a great idea. What do you think Anya?”

“I love ice cream. Uncle Steve you should ask Auntie out.”

“Oh, um.” Steve stutters and you glance over your shoulder at Anya.

“Anya you don’t just get to decide things like that for people.”

“But he likes you, and you like him Auntie.” Before you can say anything else Steve chuckles,

“Well she’s not wrong.” Steve says and your gaze whips over to him.

“What?”

“I do like you. So, what do you say? First date at an ice cream parlor with our niece?”

“That sounds perfect.”

[galahadwilder]

buggachat laptop fic: Ladybug keeps setting patrol schedules to pair up Multimouse and Aspik, having told Chat Noir it's because she ships Multimouse/Aspik. Chat Noir does not know what to think of this. Adrien isn't supposed to know Multimouse is Marinette; Marinette isn't supposed to know Aspik is Adrien. But there's still the nagging similarities between Marinette (when she doesn't think Adrien's listening) and Ladybug, and he only gave Multimouse his ring bc he KNEW she was Ladybug lying...

(2/3) Further to my Aspikmouse request for the buggachat laptop fund: substituting Adrien wielding any Miraculous but Cat, Snake, or Ladybug works too, as long as Ladybug knows it’s Adrien. As does substituting Marinette wielding any Miraculous but Ladybug, Rat, or Cat, as long as Chat Noir knows it’s Marinette. (Come to think of it, Snake!Marinette/Rat!Adrien could be all kinds of amusing…)

(3/3, two sentence prompts) (sometime after Desperada) “Why would I offer him a different Miraculous, Chat? Did I not put him through enough hell the first time?”

Unwise

Chapter 1: In Which Chat is Slightly Less Helpful Than He Thinks He Is

Fic written to help fund @buggachat‘s laptop repairs. Original idea from @sweetmeatdale.

*

Ever since Max got Akumatized again, patrol has been a quiet hell. Chat is fairly certain he knows why: based on comments she made during the Gamer fight, it seems like being Ladybug and training to be the new Guardian (and whatever else she has going on in her civilian life—she may not be Marinette, but given how similar they are he’s willing to bet she’s just as busy as a civilian) has left her with no time to do any of the things that calm her. Apparently Fu outright told her that her training was complete way earlier than she expected, meaning she has a mantle of responsibility she isn’t ready for but none of the choice that goes with it. His Lady is quietly collapsing, and try as she might to hide it, he can tell. The bags under her eyes are extending past the bottom of her mask, and her shoulders are almost constantly up by her ears.

It’s only been a week, and Chat realizes that if this keeps going on, Ladybug is going to burn out. Which means he has to do something. Her responsibility is Paris; his responsibility is her.

She misses a step, on a rooftop halfway through patrol, stumbles into his arms—he can’t help noticing how familiar it feels. “Okay,” he says, quietly. “We’re stopping here for tonight.”

Ladybug shakes her head. “I can keep going,” she mumbles, her eyes closed.

Chat cradles her cheek in his palm, and it’s a testament to how exhausted she is that she melts into it without even a token protest. “You keep telling me that ‘can’ doesn’t mean ‘have to,’” he says, trying to control his voice as she snuggles into him. “You need rest, Bug.”

“Hypocrite,” she mumbles, lazily smacking his side.

“Expendable hypocrite,” he retorts.

She opens her mouth to protest, but he sits down, yanking her into his lap before she has time to speak. She squeaks instead.

“Kitty purrs time,” he says, pressing her against his chest as he begins to rumble.

She gasps, quietly, snuggling in closer, and his purr interrupts for a moment as he swallows, trying to control his breathing, his blush.

They sit like that for a few minutes, Ladybug sinking into his arms, before Chat decides she’s calm enough to talk things through. “I think,” he says, “that we need to start bringing on some teammates. Full-time.”

Ladybug stiffens. “Chaton,” she whispers, “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

He closes his eyes and sighs. “Bugaboo, we can’t keep doing this by ourselves,” he says. “How long has it been since you’ve slept a full night?”

She looks away instead of answering.

He begins to press his palms into the small of her back, working out the kinks in her muscles. “We need help,” he says, carefully avoiding the word ‘you’—if she thinks she’s the only one hurting, he knows she’ll accept that and keep shouldering the burden until it breaks her. The only way he can convince her is if she thinks he needs it too. “I know Rena would jump at the chance, and Carapace seems like he would do anything if she asked.”

“I don’t want to put this on them,” she grumbles. “This is our job. They have lives outside of—”

Chat snorts. “Your job is to protect Paris,” he says. “My job is to look after a hyperactive genius who thinks she can’t go to bed until she’s personally solved every problem in the city.” He squeezes her protectively, not missing the way she whimpers in his arms. “If that means I have to meow annoyingly at you until you agree to start sharing the burden…”

“Chaton, I’m fi—“

“MEOOOOOOOWWWWWW!” he screeches into her ear.

She shrieks, trying to pull away, but he’s holding her too firmly. “Dammit, Chat!” she cries. “We can’t just have the other Miraculi out!” She shudders. “What if Hawkmoth ambushes one of them as a civilian?”

“What if you’re so sleep-deprived you can’t figure out how to use your Lucky Charm?” Chat rebuts. “Or I’m too slow and you get hit by something I can’t block?”

“Chaton—”

“Meeeeoooowwwww!” he interrupts, then takes a deep breath. He didn’t want to do this, but… he has to go for her weak spot. He knows how painful this is to her—he knows about the night terrors she keeps having, the reason she was so wrecked once Gamer got taken down, but if it keeps her alive and sane he will do whatever it takes. “My Lady,” he says, “if we don’t start bringing on a team I am going to die again.”

She stiffens in his arms. “Don’t you dare,” she hisses.

“It’s not like I have a choice!” he snaps. “You can’t—”

She scrambles out of his arms, shingles cracking beneath the force of her footfalls, and jabs him in the chest with her finger. “Don’t act like you can’t do this without me too, Mister Bug!”

He snatches her wrist. “Not as well as you can, and I think Reflekdoll proved that!” he growls. Then he sighs. “Please, My Lady,” he says. “If you won’t do it for yourself… at least do it for me.”

She blinks up at him. “Chaton?” she whispers.

“I haven’t slept right in months,” he says. Not since Desperada, but she doesn’t want to know that part. “I keep seeing us… losing. You dead and broken and… and I’m by myself, and there’s nothing I can do to save you…” He’s shared more than he intended to, and his voice breaks as his chest squeezes tight. “Please,” he whispers. “At least Carapace. I can’t keep protecting you on my own.”

That got… uncomfortably truthful. He hadn’t meant to share that—hell, he hadn’t even known he was feeling like that. But it’s obvious now, after his mouth ran away with him, that he’s as overwhelmed as she is. He’s been putting on a good show for his Instagram, but… when’s the last time he’s slept a full night?

Ladybug stares at him, her lip quivering, and for a moment he’s sure she’s going to snap at him again. But then she sets her jaw. “I’m not bringing Queen Bee back,” she says. “I don’t trust her.”

The levee in Chat’s heart breaks, and his whole body is flooded with emotion at once. Instantly, his head is in her lap, pressed up against her stomach. “Thank you,” he gasps. “Thank you thank you thank you.” He’s sobbing into her lap, and she strokes his head, scratching just behind his ears in the way he loves so much; bliss shoots down from his scalp through his spine as he purrs urgently against her.

“Rena and Carapace, obviously,” she says.

He squirms, snuggling deeper into her arms. “Viperion seems competent,” he mumbles. “Thoughts on Monkey?”

“Hmm…” Ladybug says, and he can hear the mirth returning to her voice for the first time since he backed off the platform. “Childish and irresponsible. Keep him temp, I think.”

“Okay.” Chat nods. “I like Pegase, though.”

Ladybug nods. “Yeah, he’s pretty good,” she says. “I’ve been thinking about bringing Ryuko back too—she did pretty well against Gozen.”

“Agreed,” Chat says. Then the side of his mouth quirks down. This is probably not the best time to bring this up, not when she’s actually agreeing with him and this might cause her to reconsider, but… it’s kind of important. The rules are set for a reason. “Wait,” he says, “I know who Pegase and Ryuko are.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Yeah, so?”

It’s a bit petulant of him to ask, but… well, Marinette is so impressive that she’s the only person he’s ever seriously considered might be Ladybug, and if he hadn’t seen them both together on two separate occasions he’d still be pretty suspicious. “I thought you weren’t supposed to bring back wielders whose names I know?”

Ladybug launches to her feet, sending him sprawling out of her lap—then she leans down and locks eyes with him, and crushes his bell in her fingers. “No,” she spits, yanking him forward into a suspiciously exact replica of Marinette’s famous Penance Stare. “I am not putting her back in the field.”

He’s not sure what to say. He knows she doesn’t want Multimouse back but he doesn’t know why—he has suspicions, but there’s no way, right? He’s been so careful with this whole conversation, and now Adrien Brain, which is so obsessed with rules and consistency, has just launched his foot through the ground into an occupied fire ant nest. His lungs shudder at the fire in her eyes, unable to even speak.

(He’s disappointed in his Chat Noir Brain as well, for being so excited at the incongruity of her reaction. Even after everything, she’s still oddly vehement about not using Multimouse.)

He wants to tell her that’s not what he meant, that he’s worried about bringing Ryuko and Pegase back but—something about her refusal to bring Marinette back rubs him the wrong way.

“Why?” he croaks, finally. His bell clonks a little bit in her hand instead of jingling. “You know she’s the best temp we’ve ever had—she did both of our jobs!”

Ladybug’s eyelid twitches, and he realizes he’s crossed a line he didn’t know about. There’s something between her and Marinette; something he’s not aware of. The two girls have had some kind of relationship since before Evillustrator…

Ladybug trusts Marinette so much and has never specified the gender of the person she likes. And nobody seems to know who Marinette has a crush on. Is she… trying to protect her girlfriend?

She stares for a second, then collapses next to him and sighs. “Maybe I should bring her back,” she grumbles.

“What? No!” Chat says, gripping at her wrist. “If you don’t want her back—”

“It’s not a want thing,” Ladybug says. “I’m just… not sure she can.”

Chat bristles. “What?” he cries. Maybe… not girlfriend? Does she… not like Marinette? Is that it? “My Lady, I love you, but I will not allow you to besmirch the abilities of my precious mouse.”

Ladybug opens her mouth, but all that comes out is a weird gagging noise as her face turns bright red. “You have… that much faith in her?” she croaks.

Chat raises an eyebrow. “My Lady,” he says, “I only gave her my ring because I thought she was you.”

Ladybug chokes.

Chat can’t tell if she’s flattered or angry. “I remember you were friends,” he says. “Did something… happen between you two?”

Ladybug closes her eyes, licks her lips. “Have you ever worn two Miraculi at once?” she murmurs. “It… does things to your body.” She leans back against the shingles. “I think I asked more of her than I ever should have.”

“Oh,” Chat says. “No, I—no, I haven’t.” He has, actually; he’s wondered why he felt so tired as Aspik. He thought it was just being awake for three months, but Viperion never seemed to falter. “Is she okay?” He doesn’t think Marinette’s been any worse, physically—but then, she’s been running so ragged lately, how can he tell?

Ladybug shrugs. “She’s fine,” she says. “Just needed a good night’s sleep.” She sighs, pressing her chin into her fist. “Wish I could bring Adrien back on,” she mumbles.

Chat’s heart inflates painfully in his chest like a balloon hooked up to an oxygen tank. Even after he failed her so many times, she still wants to bring him back on? “That guy you chose for the snake before Viperion?” he squeaks.

Her head snaps toward him. “You—you knew about that?” she hisses.

Chat snorts. “I saw Agreste with the egg-hood,” he says. “That is not what Viperion looked like.”

Ladybug frowns. “Right,” she says. “Also?” She reaches up, flicks his nose. “Not happy with you for stealing his joke.”

Chat rolls his eyes, jabbing her in the tummy. “He stole mine, My Lady,” he says. “Anyway. Bringing him back on sounds like a great idea!”

She smiles, her cheeks dusting pink, then her face falls. “No,” she says. “No way.”

Chat’s chest squeezes. Oh, good, she hates him. “Why?” he says. “I mean, he may not have been the right snake, but that doesn’t mean he couldn’t be good for another—”

“Why would I offer him a different Miraculous, Chat?” she snaps. “Did I not put him through enough hell the first time?”

What?

Chat looks at her with confusion. She… doesn’t hate him? She’s been concerned about him?

“He spent three months trying to save me without sleep,” she says. “I’m… pretty sure it broke him.” She clutches at her shoulders. “I trust him, Chaton, but… I can’t put him through that. Not again.”

Oh. Oh god.

“My Lady,” he says. He can see the guilt is killing her—he doesn’t want her to keep beating herself up over something that was his choice. “You… he talked to me about that, actually.”

A look of horror flashes across her face. “What?” she says. “When?”

“Party Crasher,” he says. That’s plausible—Viperion was there, it was Adrien’s house, and there was a period Ladybug was unaccounted for. “He was actually hoping he’d get another shot to help you out.”

Her eyes widen, her cheeks dusting red. “What?” she squeaks.

“I—”

“Okay!” she yelps, shooting to her feet. “Okay okay.” She starts pacing, pressing her palms to her forehead. “I—Okay. So, I—I can bring him back?” She does an excited little bunny hop, and his head leaps. “I can bring him back!”

“You’re—pretty excited,” he says. “You know him?”

She freezes, her foot skittering on the roof. “That’s… complicated?” she says. “Anyway, we should decide who pairs up with who.” She sits back down, folding her knees into her chest. “Multimouse might be more comfortable with a more… experienced wielder?”

His eyebrows shoot up, and his stomach begins to flip. “Aspik has more experience than anyone except us,” he says. “You said three months, right?”

“Yep.” Ladybug starts shaking a little. “And… oh, this is—I’m not sure this is a great idea.”

“Why not?”

“Well, uh…” Ladybug bites her lip. “She’s, uh, she’s in love with him.”

Chat’s ears—both his human ones and his cat ones—are suddenly crushed under a burning vise, and his lungs are full of cotton candy. “She’s what?” he croaks.

She looks askance at him. “Wait,” she says. “You didn’t know?”

“No?” he says.

Ladybug snorts. “Come on, Chat,” she says. “You’ve been watching that class, right?” She reaches out and squeezes his shoulder. “I think the only person who doesn’t know about her crush is him.”

“Who did you hear this from?” he asks. “The—the Ladyblogger? She’s not exactly objective when it comes to them—”

Ladybug shakes her head. “Marinette told me herself,” she says. “She just hasn’t been…” She closes her eyes. “Able to say it.”

*

Marinette loves him. She said she loved Chat Noir, and Ladybug said she loved Adrien.

He arrives at the meeting place for his and Multimouse’s first patrol, unspooling the trompo into his hands, and sees Multimouse’s familiar space buns. That’s Marinette right there—Marinette, his best civilian friend aside from Nino. A girl who he would—and has—dropped everything to help. A girl he hasn’t been able to get out of his head for the last week, since Ladybug dropped her bomb on him. A girl who, if it hadn’t been for Ladybug, he would absolutely be in love with.

She looks up at him, her eyes widening, and she squeaks. “H-hi!” she yelps. “Are you, um, Queen Bee’s replacement?”

“Yep,” he says, pressing his fists to his hips with an exaggerated gaze off into the distance. “Sapis, at your service.”

“Sapis?” she says. “Wisdom?”

He grins. “Old Latin pun,” he says. “Si sapis, sis apis.” He holds out a hand to shake hers. “If you’re wise? Be a bee.”

She stares at him, and for a moment he’s worried that he’s ruined his third first impression with her—but then she lights up, and starts to laugh.

It’s bright and sunny and it shoots right through his heart, and he realizes: I am completely and utterly screwed.

[sabineelectricheart]

The Long Road

Summary: Hawke asks Sebastian to accompany her to the Wounded Coast to help matchmake Aveline and Donnic. The Brother is not amused.

Rating: K+ - Suitable for more mature childen, 9 years and older, with minor action violence without serious injury. May contain mild coarse language. Should not contain any adult themes.

Words: 1909

Notes: So, I’ve been playing DA these days, and I thought to cross-post here some fanfictions I wrote way back when. Enjoy!

Sitting on the floor by the door of the City Guard Captain is certainly not the best use of my time.

Hawke was twirling her hair distractedly, to my great surprise, also looking extremely bored and rather uncomfortable. I did not think she had that tick, as I felt that fighting highwaymen and explorations down the Deep Roads did not seemed befitting to hair care and the affairs of the heart.

Well, this whole day has been about surprising circumstances.

*_*_*_*_*

“Please, Sebastian!” She begged. “The whole thing feels so ungainly!”

She came looking for me at the Chantry, early that morning, while I tended to the candles to the dead. I had not the chance to finish my prayers before she grumbled her request.

I was used to Hawke’s weird invites, and usually I am more than glad to attend to them. She is a good friend and a fierce fighter, I never feared for my life with her by my side, not to mention my standing debt with her.

This, however, was a little too weird. To help matchmake the Guard Captain with a guardsman. By doing the rounds ahead of them.

“I can see that.” I agreed. “That is why I don’t think I should get involved. How would Guard Captain Aveline say if she knew you are being so open about her private life?”

“She asked me for help, and now I’m asking you…” She mumbled.

“She asked you, not me. You should do what you can, not bite more you can chew, and certainly not go spreading the tale around town.”

“I know that!” She defended. “That’s why I came to you, really. Varric and Isabela would tell all the patronage at the Hanged Man, Merrill has good intents, but she has an awful lack of tact, and Fenris and Anders are pants at romance.”

“And you thought a Brother of the Chantry would be a better option?”

“Yes?” She said, weakly. “Look, you had a, er, prolific romantic life when you were younger. Besides, mother tells me all the noble girls ask for you to hear their confessions.”

I felt my cheeks redden. “That’s beside the point!”

“What I mean by that is that you know how it works.” She countered, matter-of-factly, then, whispering, she said, “That’s more I can say for myself.”

The declaration made me halt for a moment, as I was quite sure that she would have had involved herself with Fenris at some point in time, or at least Anders in the three months they were away at the Deep Roads.

Nevertheless, while I heard her quite well, in respect for her right to privacy over her affairs of the heart, I did not press, despite my deep-seeded curiosity in the matter.

“I do not know what you would call experience, but I insist that I have no special skill over those matters. Even if I did, my, ahem, interests have been firmly and historically towards the fairer sex, and I come to understand that this is an entirely different métier.” I argued, trying to put an end to the discussion.

She groaned unseemly, and looked me dead in the eyes. “I didn’t want to tell you that, but I have no choice. Yesternight, Aveline wanted me to take Donnic for a drink at the Hanged Man and distract him for a while before she arrived, and now he’s under the impression I’m interested in him. He rejected me, of course, and thank the Maker for it, but I’m horribly embarrassed by that.

“If you were to come with me, perhaps… Well, perhaps he would understand I don’t want nothing with him and refrain from doing this sort of comment. At least, I think he wouldn’t jump to that conclusion anymore. Just… Please?”

Guardsman Donnic thought Hawke was interested on him, out of all people? And then came to the conclusion she was not worth his affections? He had quite a sense of self, huh?

Marian Hawke was not only a blue-blood, hailing from one of the most important families of the Free Marches, and with an enviable martial skill, which serves to memory that he made use of when she saved him. She was remarkably beautiful as well, yes, but that is not all, either. She had a noble character that was very hard to come by, always in service of the downcast of Kirkwall, even if she made questionable decisions on occasion.

The thought that Donnic is somehow above her made me want to laugh.

“Fine. Let’s go.” I conceded, sighing.

She beamed and led me to the city gates by the hand. I did not mind.

*_*_*_*_*

Her plan at the Wounded Coast did not go well.

Aveline was right in asking for all the help she could get, as she was hopeless when it came to romantic relationships, and it was painfully distressing to watch it unfold.

After clearing the entire path of highwaymen and traffickers, Donnic and Aveline had a completely uneventful patrol, where she could not form a single sentence that did not feel like nails on a chalkboard, not to mention the pitiful romantic caliber of it.

Hawke was downright frustrated, whispering expletives to herself she thought I could not hear, and I usually would chastise the language, but there was a time and a place to swear, and I ought to say this was it.

Finally, when they reached our outpost at the end of the trail, she forsook their anonymity and jumped in front of the pair of guardspeople, a wagging finger in front of her face.

“We don’t have all night, you know?!” She shouted at them.

Donnic, confused, looked between me, emerging from the bushes, Hawk and Aveline.

“Would someone please tell me what is going on?” He asked.

I sighed. “Guardsman Donnic, excuse my bluntness, but for the Maker’s sake, me and Hawke have been trying to help Captain Aveline to communicate her feelings for you all day. Please cooperate, because she is helpless.”

“Captain?” He turns to her to confirm, and she could only laugh noncommittally. Faced with such riveting response, he responded, uncomfortable, “I… Should get to the barracks.”

“Most unwise.” I commented, but made no further attempt of dissuading the man.

As he left, Aveline turned to Hawke in absolute rage. “I thought we were friends.”

“Friends sometimes push.” Was her response.

“I have to fix this. He could ask for a transfer, file a complaint.” She said, concernedly, and then turned to me. “You! You will come to the barracks and explain why you put him on the spot, or so help me!”

“Aveline, love is patient, love is kind, but love does not read thoughts.” I pointed out. “I hear you wanted to know whether you were a good match for each other, and I am sorry to say, there is no other way. The Maker will not tell you the right answer, you will have to find out yourself.”

Her eyes narrow and her hold on her sword tightens. “I will see you at the Keep.”

*_*_*_*_*

Once at the City Guard headquarters, Aveline had yet to calm herself down.

She paced back and forth through the main lounge, the other guards looking curiously at us.

“Maker, where is Donnic?” She begruntled. “I have to stop this before it arrives at the viscount. Maybe a formal apology. Something that show the guards they still can trust me.”

“Perhaps a few awkward gifts should help.” Hawke pointed out, and I snickered.

The redhead glared at her friend.

“You are their captain, Aveline.” I said, trying to defuse the situation. “You are not a golem; you are a human being. They expect you to have feelings, and are bound to respect you more if you show them on occasion.”

“Not if they are getting on the way of the job!” She countered.

“You don’t know that yet.” Hawke piped.

“It doesn’t matter! It’s a liability!” The other woman responded, deeply frustrated and afraid. “I will not be that stupid again.”

Guardsman Donnic chose that moment to appear down the stairs at the headquarters.

“Excuse me, Serah Hawke, Messere Vael, I need to speak with Aveline in private.”

“Guardsman Donnic.” Aveline acknowledges him, looks for confirmation from Hawke and motions for them to converse at her office.

*_*_*_*_*

Now, we wait.

A loud giggle coming from the room surprises Hawke, who uncrosses her arms and straightens her back.

“It seems to be going well.” She commented.

“It would appear so.” I agreed.

Her mouth twitched slightly over her thoughts, and then she sits next to me. “Hey, Sebastian?”

“Yes?”

“Before you made your vows, have you ever been in love?”

“No.” I said, categorically. “When I first left the Chantry, which was when I started dragging the family name through the mud, my mother offered me a choice: either to return to the order or to get married.

“I abhorred the idea of being what I thought to be equivalent to shackled to a woman the rest of my life, so I thought I could just pretend to have a righteous life with the sisters for a year or two, and then resume my prior interests once my parents forgot about it. Funny how things turned out.

“Had I been in love, truly in love, my choice would certainly be other. In fact, perhaps I would never get to the point of having to chose at all, I would have never strayed.”

“I see.” She tutted. “Do you regret it? Making your vows? Being unable to marry?”

I chuckled. “I could never regret a promise made to the Maker. However, I do wish things have never gone this way.”

“You mean, the Harimanns?”

“Yes, that too. I was more than happy to continue my life as a third son, keeping my vows, but I think I would be happy as a minor noble in an estate in the Marches, and that would include having a family, too.”

She smiled sadly at me. “For what is worth, I am sorry for what happened with your family. I am sorry you are being forced into a role you do not really want. Maker knows it’s something I have experienced.”

I thought about what I could say about that matter, but I was still trying to wrap my head around what had happened. Instead, I asked of her, “What about you? Do you desire to get married?”

“Yeah.” She responded shily. “I am a mage. I think I should marry, I feel like I should, for my people at Circles that cannot. Besides, you tend to develop a desire for stability when you become a refugee.”

I sighed. “I see. Who would you want to marry, then?”

Her cheeks redden. “I don’t know. The best I can tell you is I want a good man.”

“Preferably a direct one?” I asked in jest.

“Andraste, yes!” She breathed out.

As she spoke, Donnic emerged from the office, bowed his head slightly, and Aveline asked to talk to her.

“Sebastian?” She asked from the doorstep. “Would you care for waiting for me? We could stop by the baker’s before walking to the Chantry.”

I smiled. “I would love to.”

“Great.” She, too, beamed. “I’ll be right out.”

So, I began to think, what does make a good, direct man? Perhaps Varric knows the answer. I ought to ask him one of these days.

*_*_*_*_*

Dragon Age II Masterlist

[chipmunkfanno1love]

Theories and things I'd Like to see in Season 3 of the "Tangled" TV series

I have few theories of what I think will happen in Season 3, and I'll also share what I hope will happen too. I've categorised it depending on the character I am referring too.

Eugene Fitzherbert:

I'd love to see flashbacks of when Eugene was a orphan boy. I'd really like to see him on his adventures and mischief with Lance Strongbow (obviously it will be cute to see "Little Lance" return). Maybe we might even see his courtship days with Stalyan and perhaps what caused him to jilt her in the first place, though considering his previous selfishness and her previous vindictiveness, it's not hard to guess what caused him to jilt her.

I would also love to see him and his long-lost father, King Edmund making up for old times and eventually reconciling. Maybe Edmund can even share more information about Eugene's mother with him.

Cassandra:

I would actually like to see some flashbacks to Cass's childhood (I'd like to see more of her genuine child self). I'd like to see how see her interactions with her dad as a child and see how they have impacted her as an adult. Considering how aggressive and distrustful she is as an adult, I have no doubt it has a lot to do with how she was raised. That's not to say that the Captain of the Guard was a bad father, in fact without his guidance and training, I'm sure Cassandra wouldn't have become the strong and resourceful young woman she is now. In saying that though, while the Captain probably did teach Cassandra how to take care of herself, maybe he was neglectful to her regarding emotional and physical affection. He probably didn't have time for her due to his job, plus with his stern, no-nonsense personality, he probably found it hard to be affectionate with his adoptive daughter, despite obviously caring about her.

I'm sure the emotional neglect from her father weighed a lot on Cassandra's heart. Even more so was the sting of her real parents abandoning her. She probably wondered if she had ever been "good enough" for her biological parents, or if she was even good enough for her adoptive parent. Therefore Cassandra put up emotional walls to stop herself getting hurt, and also trained harder and harder in order to prove to her father and to others in the kingdom that she was good enough. She was so focused on being "good enough" that she didn't let herself trust others or just let people love her.

Rapunzel was probably the first person that Cassandra ever truly considered a friend, and perhaps the only person she ever truly let herself love as family besides her dad. Unfortunately, that all changed after going into Zhan Tiri's tree, and Cassandra was hurt both emotionally and literally by Rapunzel (though she never intended it to be that way). To me, the armour was a metaphor that Cassandra was not only protecting herself physically from Rapunzel's hair, but also she was shutting herself off emotionally from Rapunzel too. Her response to Rapunzel's comment about her being hurt that she "Won't let it happen again." strongly made feel that was the case.

I don't know what she saw behind that door, but obviously it's her reason for betraying Rapunzel and her friends. I don't if she's be brain-washed or simply had her insecurities manipulated by Zhan Tiri and/or his followers, but obviously she believes she has a "destiny" to fulfil. I don't believe it's good that's for sure. Some people have the theory she might be Mother Gothel's daughter. I'm honestly open to the theory, but I'm not going to jump 100% on board either. I'm just open-minded to it. I do believe Gothel was the one who betrayed Lord Demanitus and joined Zhan Tiri though.

I am hoping that somehow Cassandra will somehow be redeemed. So far it doesn't look good for her, but I hope that her true loyalties and morals will step in eventually. Hopefully she'll realise her friendship with Rapunzel is the most important thing, and that will soften her literally hardened heart. Somehow I don't know if she'll make it out alive though.

Varian:

Obviously this is a character a lot of fans of the show (including myself) are very anxious to see. I have a lot of mixed feelings about what to expect from this character, especially after to seeing how downhill he went in Season 1 with no real evidence of repentance and redemption. Still, after watching Season 2, I have come to few conclusions about what could happen with Varian in Season 3, and for those of us who want to see this adorkable boy turned vengeful villain be redeemed, I have to admit it's not out of the question.

Personally I really like to see what happened to Varian during Season 2. I'd like to find out if King Fredric kept his word about getting help for Varian. Also I'm wondering if it helped in anyway. I imagine Arianna making the most effort to reach out to Varian, because despite his kidnapping of her and threatening her life, deep down she knows that he did it all out of pain and grief (as she knows Fredric went through a similar thing) and also believes that Varian isn't a heartless criminal but instead is just a scared, angry boy who has lost his way and let his pain get to him. I imagine she would get the cold shoulder and harsh word from him, but perhaps her slowly her kindness towards Varian will have a good affect on him, even if he doesn't return the kindness openly.

I imagine King Fredric still being wary of Varian, especially knowing how dangerous the boy can be, but perhaps knowing the pain Varian has gone through will soften Fredric a bit and cause him to empathise with the boy, knowing he made unwise and unjust decisions himself due to his own pain. I imagine Varian would be cold towards Fredric and deny that the two have anything in common (due to his rage against the king) but maybe it would touch his heart slightly and make him think about his actions later on.

Perhaps as part of his therapy and as kind of a community service to make up for his crimes, King Fredric gives him work under Xavier's care, feeling that the wise blacksmith and potion-maker could be the one person who could win over the vengeful young alchemist. I imagine Xavier being reluctant at first due to knowing what Varian did with his personality reversing potion and fearing the dangerous consequences of letting the boy get so close to the potions when they know what he is capable of. Even Fredric has doubts about whether this is a good idea, but feels he has no choice because Varian has shunned any other form of help, and he promised Rapunzel that he would help Varian get better, despite having doubts he'll ever get better.

Eventually though, Xavier becomes something of a mentor to Varian, and even Xavier himself becomes fond of the boy. He's impressed with Varian's talents and smarts, but feels that the boy is too short-sighted, reckless and unwilling to admit his mistakes, and feels that Varian will never become the person he knows he can become unless he learns to take responsibility for his actions and stop blaming others for the consequences. Perhaps this may create some tension between the two characters, but it will hopefully be a small step into bringing Varian closer to redemption. I also think Xavier will share the legends of Lord Demantis and Zhan Tiri with Varian, despite Varian scoffing at them being merely legends.

I believe that Varian's goal to free his father and hopefully make him proud of him will either be the thing that redeems him or will lead to his ultimate downfall. I do believe that something will happen though to make Varian torn between taking the easy path of revenge and quick solutions to his problems, or between doing the right thing and helping Rapunzel defeat Zhan Tiri and fulfilling her destiny and perhaps his own.

I do believe that Cassandra will be part of tempting Varian for the path of revenge and working with Zhan Tiri to destroy Corona. Maybe Cassandra and maybe Zhan Tiri himself will make him believe that the evil warlock can be the answer to freeing Quirin. I could see Varian being tempted by the offer and perhaps even siding with Zhan Tiri and Cassandra temporarily in order to get revenge on Rapunzel and Corona, and freeing his father from the amber. I assume that his feelings for Cassandra will play a part in siding with her as well. Personally I reckon Zhan Tiri will and probably already is manipulating them both due their similar insecurities, feelings of anger, and unappreciated talents. 

I could see Varian having interactions Lord Demanitus, who I believe will also play the role as mentor for him. I imagine that they can relate to each other due their similar scientific minds and dark pasts. I reckon Varian's interactions with Demanitus and maybe even meeting the Brotherhood members, King Edmund and Adira, will help him learn of his father, Quirin's past history with them, and also learn more of the scroll and the Sundrop and Moonstone (perhaps a little from Xavier and more from Demanitus). Maybe he could even learn about the past from Quirin himself if he ever gets free of the amber. Learning the truth about his father's past and also his desire to make his father proud could be the driving force that gets him to side with Rapunzel and her allies, even if he possibly betrays Cassandra and ultimately Zhan Tiri.

I imagine his interactions with Rapunzel and her group will not be the warmest, because I imagine Varian will take awhile to re-gain their trust, and even let go of his grudge against Rapunzel. Still, with time and encouragement from Rapunzel, I reckon he'll win the trust of her, Eugene and the rest of the group, and will play his part to stop Zhan Tiri's evil scheme. I hope he'll also eventually free his father and make him proud.

I also wonder if he and Rapunzel's mutual care and admiration for Cassandra will be the thing that stops her from following this dark destiny she feels compelled is her's. With his own story of redemption and pain, and Rapunzel's loving care, I reckon they could possibly help Cassandra to turn from this dark path.

If they do a redemption story for Varian, I reckon doing it in a similar fashion to Zuko's from Avatar: The Last Airbender series would be good. I can already see similarities between the characters. I can also see a similar rage and drive in Cassandra to Zuko's. So this might also be a redemption example for her too.

Zuko's Redemption: the best story arc in ATLA by Final Rantasy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0HLKBPOTjk

Interactions I'd like to see:

I personally would like to see Varian interacting with both Eugene and Lance in Season 3. I imagine Eugene would not trust Varian and would be suspicious and angry at him for trying to harm Rapunzel in the past. Over time though and with proof of Varian's trustworthiness, eventually Eugene becomes something of a big brother to Varian, and maybe King Edmund compares the two of them to himself and Quirin (unless the relationship between them was nothing more than a king and servant relationship. Though I believe they were friends too). I reckon Lance gets jealous of their new friendship, but I reckon over time both he and Varian start to bond as well. I doubt this will happen as neither Varian or Lance are present in Tangled: Ever After (unless they do the wedding in the finale and alter it slightly to make in sync with the show), but maybe as Eugene gets used to being a prince (which I am sure he will) he'll make Lance part of his royal guard, and possibly Varian too if earns his trust enough.

I'd wonder what Varian's interactions with Adira and King Edmund will be like? I reckon Varian and King Edmund might have combination of respect (because of their relationships with Quirin) and distrust (mostly from Edmund due knowing the harm that Varian has been to his son's girlfriend in the past). I wouldn't be surprised if threatened to harm Varian if he betrayed his son's trust again.

Maybe if Quirin ever gets free, I'd like some interactions between King Edmund and maybe even King Fredric could possibly be involved too. I too see them sharing their experiences as father's and showing their desires to make up for their mistakes. I'm sure all three have got a lot of making up to with their children (though so far Fredric is doing well). Maybe even the Captain of the Guard could be involved too.

I'd like to see Calliope from Keeper of the Spire again in the show. I wonder if she and Varian will get along, and maybe she'll possibly take him on as assistant, even temprorarily or at the end of the series.

I'm pretty confident Hubert/Andrew from Under Raps might make an appearance again as the Separatists of Saporia emblem made an appearance in Rapunzel Day One. I reckon he and Varian wouldn't get along with him due Hubert's past dating life with Cassandra (even if it was for his own vengeful motives). Maybe Hubert mocks Varian for his crush on Cassandra during Varian's time in jail, saying "Dating the Captain of the Guard's daughter leads to no good. Trust me, I know." or perhaps the now corrupt Cassandra takes him up to work with her as she does with Varian. Perhaps the two eagerly try their best to please her (despite her using both of them) and the two develop a rivalry with each other. Hubert possibly mocks Varian about not having a chance with Cassandra due him being currently being too young and because she hasn't totally forgiven him for trying to kill her (and also for harming her adoptive father if she still cares for him).

I personally would like see Vex and Varian meeting and interacting. I kind of see Vex as a younger version of Cassandra, with a bit of Mattie Ross from True Grit and maybe Wednesday Addams from The Addams Family films thrown in. I'd personally would like to see how the two of them interact with someone close to their own age (though Vex might be slightly older than Varian, or perhaps just taller). They might not get along at first due to Vex's stern and cynical attitude, and because she knows of Varian's betrayal of Rapunzel and her friends (I think she likes Rapunzel despite finding her too optimistic, though she'll probably never admit to it). If Varian proves himself though, he may eventually win Vex's trust (kind of like he did with Cassandra in Great Expotations). I could probably see them having a love-hate relationship of some sort, either a brotherly-sisterly one like Eugene and Cassandra once had, or perhaps maybe something more than that, such as puppy love and eventually true love (even if it's only hinted at and happens off-screen when they are older). I know not many people are keen on the latter idea, but I don't see it as impossible. As cute as Cassandra and Varian's interactions were in Great Expotations, I'm not sure if romance is possible at this stage, not until Cassandra forgives him and Varian becomes a young adult (which I doubt will happen during the shows run).

I definitely think Hector will make another appearance in the show. He may even side with Cassandra perhaps, unless his fanatical commitment to King Edmund stops him (though he has very questionable motives already). I have questions about Hector and his character. Did something happen for him to become this way?  Maybe if Varian meets him, the young boy possibly sees a bit of himself in the psychotic warrior due their similar sceptical and vengeful personalities. Maybe it's a warning to Varian about what he is becoming, and it's a push towards choosing the right path.

I hope you liked my theories and ideas. Feel free to comment on what you think, or even share your own opinions.

[back-and-totheleft]

Stone, cold sober

Re-telling the story of September 11 with a measured hand and lightness of touch hithertoo unhinted at, director Oliver Stone proves a more serious thinker than his paranoia-soaked canon would suggest. Here, he explains how his experiences as a soldier in Vietnam framed his outlook on life and art.

The introductory handshake comes with an additional squeeze of the wrist and a roguish smile.

“You’re Irish. I can tell.”

No. Your correspondent hasn’t been transported back to a disco in the 1970s. Instead, she’s in New York’s Regency Hotel meeting Oliver Stone. That twinkling opening gambit has brought about a Proustian rush of wayward tabloid headlines. I remember that idiotic book on the making of Natural Born Killers, with its scurrilous tales of loose ladies, psilocybin mushrooms and cocaine abuse. I recall that story about the director commandeering the Warners corporate jet to do peyote in the Mexican desert while making The Doors. I remember too how the set of Alexander reputedly became an extravagant saturnalia. Sure enough, I can effortlessly picture this man partying down with Colin Farrell, a duel study in swaggering Dionysian charm.

Though Stone insists his appetite for debauchery has been greatly exaggerated, he’s always owned up to unruly habits. Yes, he does have a fondness for marijuana dating back to time spent on the frontline in Vietnam. He has also ‘expanded his consciousness’ with the occasional psychedelic. But driving offences from last year and 1999 have, he claims, more to do with pre-diabetic medication unwisely knocked back with alcohol than exotic marching powders.

Still, it’s an impressively scandalous record for a man of his years. Stone is 60 now, though you’d say he were a decade younger if you suddenly spied him on the street. In person he’s imperturbably casual, far more relaxed than the ‘madman’ headlines might lead one to suppose. His glowing tan is offset by a bright yellow polo shirt and he sits way, way back in his chair holding your gaze all the while.

Accommodating and easy in his manner, you’d be hard-pressed to identify this individual as Oliver Stone – Controversial Filmmaker. That is, nevertheless, to whom we speak. Stone boasts a fearsomely uncompromising reputation as a screenwriter and director. Throughout the ‘80s when the post-classical frisson of counter-cultural Hollywood had fizzled and poachers died off or turned gamekeeper, only Stone kept the faith, authoring politically conscious cinema at a time when the Academy was honouring Driving Miss Daisy.

His screenplay for rapper’s favourite Scarface set the frenzied pace and ultra-violent tone that would later characterise his visual style. But Stone was too engaged with the world to become the new Brian De Palma. Salvador, his first major film as director, probed the gulf between the ideals of American foreign policy and realpolitik. Platoon, Wall Street, JFK and Nixon would further confirm his interest in micro and macro conspiracies and establish him as an outlaw auteur.

Though he’s now rueful about being stereotyped or “pinned like a butterfly”, he was a good sport about it, appearing as a conspiracy nut in Dave and Wild Palms.

“You know, I’ve never really regarded myself as a political filmmaker”, he tells me. “I consider myself a dramatist. I always get involved with people more than the politics. With the movie JFK, for example, the book by Jim Garrison had a lot of theory. I was more interested in making him part of that story. And Oswald fascinated me. If you watch that film it is really a trail of people played by great actors. Nixon, despite the whiff of conspiracy, is truly a psychological portrait of a man. Many people in the right wing thought it would be a hatchet job but I really made him apathetic. I refuse to be pigeon holed. I am not a political guy. I don’t go to rallies. I am not an activist. I don’t have the time because I’m busy being a writer.”

He may deny the role of agitator, but his opinions, both off and onscreen suggest otherwise. His most recent work in the documentary sector includes Persona Non Grata, an examination of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and two features about Cuban president Fidel Castro, Comandante and Looking for Fidel. (Stone has described himself as a friend and an admirer.)

He has, before now, referred to the events of September 11th as a ‘revolt’ and expressed an interest in the work of Richard Clarke, the former White House counter-terrorism advisor whose book Against All Enemies accuses the Bush administration of ignoring the al-Qaeda threat, then linking the group to Iraq, contrary to all evidence.

“We Vietnam vets, in particular, found it very difficult”, says Stone. “We had the backing of the world in Afghanistan. We were rounding up the main suspects. Then we go into Iraq with no support. Militarily, it was stupid. It was overreaching. And any American who travels can tell you how the rest of the world is resentful. What the hell are we doing in Iraq when the enemy was 4000 al-Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan?”

When it was announced last summer that Stone would direct World Trade Centre, a film focusing on ‘first response’ police officers trapped by the Twin Towers collapse, many eyebrows were raised. “To allow this poisoned and deranged mind… (to recreate 9/11) in the likeness of his vile fantasies is beyond obscene,” raged one conservative commentator. But World Trade Center, it transpires, is Stone’s least obvious work even by his own consistently innovative standards. The towers do not fall back and to the left. There is no grand plot or secret ruling elite. “This is not a political film in any sense”, insists Stone. “It harks back to Platoon in that respect. In Vietnam, we didn’t sit around talking about LBJ. And the truth is, I don’t think we can say for sure what happened during 9/11. We spent more investigating Bill Clinton’s blowjobs than the destruction of the World Trade Centre. Whatever was going on in the background, if you look at the forest through the trees, it seems to me that what has happened since is far worse than what happened that day. So the politics and conspiracies behind that day, whatever they may be, are not as relevant as where we are now.” Completely eschewing polemic, the movie instead offers a heartfelt portrait of ordinary fellows on the front line. Stone’s traditional constituency are, needless to say, horrified, and assorted doublespeak statements have been issued attacking World Trade Center as “non-conspiratorial lies.”

John Conner, a leading voice in the Christian branch of the 9/11 Truth Movement, went so far as to ask the following– “Was Stone used by the Illuminati as an unknowing pawn to whitewash the 9/11 conspiracy theories to the masses? Was he approached with the project and coerced into a commitment to occupy his time in attempts to thwart any other 9/11 angle from being used? Is Stone a pawn in the game? Perhaps Stone didn’t know at the time, and found out too late.”

Oddly, however, like Paul Greengrass’ United 93, Stone’s film has found champions from either end of America’s bipolar political spectrum, often the same folks who had previously dismissed him as a pinko malcontent. L. Brent Bozell III, the president of the conservative Media Research Center and founder of the Parents Television Council — a latter day Mary Whitehouse in trousers — called it “a masterpiece” and sent an e-mail message to 400,000 people saying, “Go see this film.” Cal Thomas, the right-wing syndicated columnist and contributor to The Last Word, wrote that it was “one of the greatest pro-American, pro-family, pro-faith, pro-male, flag-waving, God Bless America films you will ever see.”

“I just felt this was a great story dying to be told,” explains Stone. “It may not be like anything I have done before, but Heaven And Earth wasn’t like anything I had done before. Nor was U Turn or Natural Born Killers. I do jump around and each film is a different style. This isn’t like United 93 which was a brilliant piece of vérité. This is more like a classic John Ford, William Wyler or even Frank Capra film. Against tremendous odds this rescue takes place. This has the traditional Hollywood tropes of emotional connection to four main characters from the working class.

"I would love to bring Hollywood back to that, making films where people actually work for a living, not sit around making things happen with a remote control like that Adam Sandler film. Born On The Fourth Of July was blue-collar. So was Any Given Sunday. Although it’s about elite athletes, it was about work. They had to punish their bodies for their lifestyle.”

A marriage of disaster movie and combat zone drama, World Trade Centre follows Port Authority officers Sergeant John Mc Loughlin (Nicolas Cage) and Will Jimeno (Michael Pena) on a doomed rescue mission into the Twin Towers. On September 12th, they were among the last survivors to be pulled from the rubble. Though the original script by newcomer Andrea Berloff read like a relocation of Beckett’s Endgame, Stone has widened the remit to include the rescuers and the anxious wives at home. As a director noted for working within a decidedly masculine milieu, was it a challenge to represent domesticity, I wonder.

“Oh yes,” he admits. “That was a big challenge. On the surface this is a very simple story of catastrophe and rescue and heroism. But if you go beyond the cliché it is very fresh. Everything the rescuers did was dangerous. We assume rescues just happen, but it is hard work. These men really crawled into places where they thought they would die. It took hours to get them out. I tried to show some of that digging. But an even bigger cliché in these circumstances is the waiting housewife. Actually, it goes further than that. Each of these women died that day. They sit there as the hours pass and the only news is no survivors. You knew no one would come out of there. The buildings were so pancaked. So it was like death for them. I wanted to portray that. I wanted them smelling the sheets from the previous night where they had slept. Again it’s a cliché but the idea was to take the cliché and make it fresh.”

Another subplot concentrates on Staff Sergeant Dave Karnes (Michael Shannon) a Christian marine in Wilton, Connecticut, who watches events on TV and tells his colleagues that America is now at war. Once he decides that God wants him to go to New York he heads to Ground Zero with a flashlight and eventually hears the two cops in the debris. A postscript before the final credits informs us that Kearns has since served two tours of duty in Iraq.

“It’s a remarkable and weird story,” Stone admits. “But that’s how it happened. I also think Kearns represents a significant sector of the American population when he says, ‘We’re going to need some good men to avenge this’. For many people, revenge was their first thought.”

And there you have it. For all the pigeonholing as a conspiracy theorist, facts are of paramount importance to Stone. He spent two-and-a-half years researching JFK. He spent three years immersed in Persian history for the much-maligned Alexander. It was a labour of love and the ill-tempered critical reception seems to have cut to the quick.

“I’m a historical dramatist,” he explains. “I wasn’t a Kennedy assassination junkie at the time, nor was I a 9/11 junkie. But I love the past. It hurts when I read someone claiming that I’ve fabricated something. But then you make a film like Alexander and scholars say you have it right, but critics say it’s all wrong.”

Similarly, while Stone has been at pains to represent those involved in the World Trade Centre disaster as faithfully as possible, he has not been able to quell dissent completely. The widow of Dominick Pezzulo – a cop portrayed in the film - has accused Jimeno and McLoughlin of cashing in on the tragedy by selling their story to Paramount. There have also been mutterings about the film being too soon.

“I know,” nods Stone. “But I honestly think it is the right time. The Killing Fields was made five years after those events in Cambodia. During World War II, Hollywood made propaganda films. Casablanca, made in 1941, takes a very anti Nazi position even before we declared war. The Vietnam movies took longer to make, but life goes faster now. I would say to you the consequences of 9/11 are so bad that we better look back now and understand what happened on that day. When you leave it too long, events become mythologized. Watching Pearl Harbor, you’d think we won that battle. This is the epicentre of 9/11, but there are many stories that still need to be told.”

Though personal and more modest in scope than the $63 million budget might suggest, the director does hope that his intense focus on McLoughlin and Jimeno has a wider relevance.

“They did not have a clue as to what was happening,” he says. “They knew it was a terrorist attack but there was no discussion of politics. They’re cops. They are far more likely to talk about pop culture, whether it is Starsky And Hutch or GI Jane. It wasn’t Bergman down in that hole.

So I am not claiming this movie will answer all the questions. But let’s say you go to a psychiatrist and all your life you have been repressed because you were raped when you where 14. Perhaps the psychiatrist says, ‘Let’s go back to that day’. They make you remember that day and it changes all the defences you had built up. So perhaps by undoing the screw, the secret at the beginning, you can take some of the armour off.”

The events of 9/11 may be difficult to disentangle, but no more so than the filmmaker himself. Born in New York City to a Jewish father and Catholic mother, William Oliver Stone was raised Episcopalian by way of compromise. His parents divorced after his father, a conservative Republican, conducted various extra-marital affairs with family friends. Young Oliver spent much of his subsequent childhood in splendid isolation between private schools and five star hotels - ‘a cartoonish Little Lord Fauntleroy’ by his own account.

Still, Stone needs neither bullfighting nor marlin fishing to confirm his Hemingwayesque credentials as an artist. He attended Yale and dropped out twice before enlisting to fight as an Infantryman in Vietnam. Mixing with the lower orders and smoking pot soon transformed the spoiled youngster into a military hero. He was wounded twice in action and received the Bronze Star with ”V” device signifying valor for “extraordinary acts of courage under fire,” and the Purple Heart with one Oak Leaf Cluster.

Soon after the war, he was arrested at the US-Mexico border for possession of marijuana. His father bailed him out but the experience served to radicalise him. Later, meeting understandably embittered veterans such as Ron Kovic pushed Stone further to the left.

He has, however, wooed Hollywood despite the often overtly political nature of his films. He won his first Academy Award as the screenwriter of Midnight Express and has been further honoured for directing Platoon and Born On The Fourth Of July.

Now, after World Trade Centre, has attention and lavish praise from the likes of Bill O’Reilly turned his head? Not bloody likely.

“People are people,” he tells me. “I think people have to take care of themselves and their families first. But there are bigger questions now. The ecological movement want us to clean up, but how can that work when there is always the issue of jobs? It’s a very selfish world and avarice triumphs over the green imperative. After Katrina, there was a tremendous outpouring of help. That was also true when the tsunami hit Indonesia. People are very generous in America and there are some very fine Americans. Unfortunately, a lot of them don’t have passports. Most of them don’t know where Iraq is. And a lot think al Qaeda and Iraq are the same thing. There’s a problem with the education levels. American television keeps people trapped. The news is very superficial and mostly filled with advertisements and rapes and murders. If you travel in the country and you stay in the smaller places you find very limited resources. If America spent the same amount of money as we spend on embassies and CIA stations around the world on our major cities with the goal of helping bring those cities to a way of life that was democratic and economically viable, we would have a tremendous success in this country. Instead, we have an international presence and I don’t know if it is worth it. All we are doing is promoting a system which is now suspect all over the world. We have broken our constitution repeatedly since 2001.”

He smiles cynically.

“I don’t think pictures of soldiers pointing their naked dicks in Abu Ghraib has helped us at a local level either.”

He’s still got it.

-Tara Brady, “Stone cold sober,” HotPress, Sept 19 2006 [x]

[kuriquinn]

You Are Cordially Invited [4/?]

Cover & Disclaimer 

 Chapter Summary:  Sasuke has a general understanding or, perhaps, expectation of what it means to be in a relationship—more, she suspects, than either Naruto or Sai had starting out. But that small amount of knowledge likely has to compete with an inborn tendency to depend solely on himself. He’s not used to explaining his methods to anyone. While it’s a habit she intends to break him of—at least when it comes to her—she acknowledges that it isn’t easy to change a lifelong habit.

Chapter Beta: Sakura’s Unicorn

Author’s Note: So when writing the end of this chapter, I sort of stole a quote from Grey’s Anatomy, but it was so apt I couldn’t ignore it. It completely sums up how I feel about Sakura’s development from annoying genin to Sannin-Mamakura, and her relationship with Sasuke.

“There!” Sakura declares, exhaling in effort as if she spent the last hour lifting boulders instead of setting the dinner table. “Well, it’s still kind of plain, but it looks a lot better than I thought it would.”

She beams at Sasuke, who placidly studies Kakashi’s small flat. Besides dinner, she’s brought a cheerful-looking table cloth, decorative candles, and several flower arrangements. Although it’s not really to his taste, he has to admit the place looks a lot more lived-in than he’s kept it during his stay.

“And we didn’t even have to move any furniture,” she continues in satisfaction. Sasuke wonders if interior decoration is a skill he was supposed to learn at the Academy, but slept through. He doesn’t say so, though, suspecting he’ll get shoved for his trouble.

He’s not sure why she’s making such a big deal about the whole thing, since it’s only Naruto and Hinata who are coming. Kakashi couldn’t make it—being ‘up to his eyeballs in paperwork’—and Manako declined. She said it felt weird showing up without him seeing as he’s the only reason they invited her.

Blunt as her words are, they’re true, and Sasuke not only appreciates her candour, but he’s actually grateful she won’t be there.

With Sai and Ino also unable to attend, their only guests tonight will be the Uzumakis.

“It’s like a double-date,” Sakura remarks as she adjusts the table cloth, and then looks up at him, sheepish. In a tone like she’s confessing a long-buried secret, she admits, “I’ve never been on one before.”

He’s oddly relieved to hear that. It must show on his face because she’s grinning at him now, her face morphing into something resembling the girlish glee of their genin days.

“We’re getting married!” she squeals. Then—perhaps because they’re alone—in an utter rejection of any decorum or maturity she might’ve developed, she dances up and down on the spot.

Before he can control himself, his mouth pulls into a tiny, amused smile.

She notices, pauses in surprise, and then her expression shifts. Her eyes soften and her cheeks turn pink—not in embarrassment, he thinks, but isn’t sure what else it could be—and offers him her own smile. The effect suggests utter joy to him, a transformation of her usual attractiveness into something breathtaking.

Sasuke is struck by the sudden urge to reach out and slide his fingers into her hair, to pull her close. To press his lips against hers until neither of them can breathe. It’s a wild impulse, compared to the more tentative embraces they’ve shared up until now, but no less insistent.

Before he can give in to it, however, there’s a knock at the door and the spell is broken.

Sakura’s gaze slides away reluctantly, followed by the rest of her as she answers the door. Technically, that should be Sasuke’s job, this being his temporary accommodations, but she seems keen to play the hostess. Far be it from him to stop her, even if his mind wasn’t still on the moment they almost shared. He’s not used to such basic urges driving him and is wary of the sudden loss of control he almost surrendered to.

Unwillingly, he thinks of what Mebuki said to him…

As expected, Naruto and Hinata are framed in the doorway, respectively bearing a bottle of sake and a bouquet of irises. Sakura exclaims over these and hugs Hinata then Naruto in turn.

“I’m so glad you guys could make it!” she gushes. “I know how busy you both are!”

“Puh-lease! Any excuse to get away from the billions of scrolls they’re making me memorise,” Naruto groans. “Between Iruka and Shizune—and even Kakashi-sensei now! It’s such a pain in the ass. I seriously thought I’d be done learning by now, but it’s not jutsu anymore. It’s politics and diplomacy and stuff. And that’s not even the worst of it! I have to learn all this new computer crap, too.” Sasuke shudders in silent agreement; he’s not a fan of the new technologies that’ve been developing in the past few years, either. “Kakashi-sensei says it’ll make the paperwork go faster, but I don’t believe him because he’s always swamped by it. I mean, it’s sort of pointless—I can always just use clones to do it.”

Sasuke privately thinks his friend is in for a rude awakening, but doesn’t say so; it’ll be much more entertaining to watch him flounder a bit.  

“Are you well, Sasuke?” Hinata asks, drawing him from his thoughts, and he nods in response. He reaches for the flowers she’s brought and puts them in a container in the kitchen while Sakura invites everyone to sit at the table.

Obligatory small-talk is exchanged, mostly by Sakura and Naruto, who are the loudest voices in the room; Sasuke only half-listens. Dinner passes with the usual conversation, catching up on what everyone’s been doing. Naruto complains about not getting Ichiraku for supper, even as he stuffs his face with tonkatsu, and Sakura berates him for criticising food he didn’t have to cook.

“Well, you didn’t have to cook it, either,” Naruto points out, nodding at the takeout boxes in the kitchen.

Sakura cracks her knuckles and Sasuke automatically inches away from her, not wanting to get clipped by her elbow if she takes a swing at their friend. Hinata interjects, asking how Sakura’s work at the hospital is going, and peace is restored.

Sasuke is surprised to hear her speak up—she’s more talkative with Sakura here than she is when Naruto invites him for dinner. He wonders how much of that is Sakura’s engaging nature, or the fact that Hinata is still a little uneasy around him. They’ve never had much interaction without Naruto, Sakura, or someone else to act as a buffer, after all. He wonders now if it would be unwise to engage her in conversation when Naruto isn’t around; she might be too shy to answer his questions about finances.

Sasuke’s thoughts preoccupy him until after dessert when Sakura suddenly stands and gestures for the other couple to be quiet. He blinks, having not expected an announcement, but a more general statement through the course of conversation. But when he meets her gaze, she offers him a comforting smile, and he relaxes.

“Sasuke and I have something to tell you,” she declares, a blush on her face.

There’s a beat where her words sink in, and Hinata’s eyes go wide in anticipation, hands clasped in front of her. Naruto, on the other hand, isn’t so polite. His jaw drops, and he goes red in the face, jumping to his feet and pointing his bandaged finger at Sasuke in accusation. “You bastard! Did you get her pregnant?!”

Silence rings.

Sasuke’s eye twitches, and he grits his teeth to keep from punching his friend. Sakura has no such compunction, and hammers a fist down on his head.

“What the hell, Naruto! How dare you think that! What kind of girl do you take me for?! Geez!”

“Ow!”

“Moron,” Sasuke adds for good measure while Hinata sighs, embarrassed.

“And you’ve got a big head if you think you’d be the first one we told that to!” Sakura goes on, furious.

“Whaa?! You mean you wouldn’t tell me right away?” Naruto demands, teary-eyed and clutching the growing bump on his head. “Why are you so mean, Sakura?”

“I’m not mean! Why are you so rude?! It’s like you still haven’t learned not to say the first thing that pops into your stupid head!”

“That doesn’t mean you have to keep something like that a secret—you wouldn’t actually keep that a secret, right?”

“I don’t know! Maybe if you don’t smarten up, I might! I’ll have a hundred babies and I won’t tell you about any of them!”

“Try it! I’m gonna be Hokage! I’ll make you tell me about all of them!”

“Then I’ll defect!

Sasuke clears his throat. “If you’re both finished being melodramatic.”

Sakura and Naruto shoot him identical injured looks.

“Naruto,” Hinata scolds quietly, and her husband’s shoulder slump. He sits back down, arms crossed.

“Fine,” he mutters.

Sasuke raises an eyebrow at Sakura, who turns pink, but shakes her hair back, unapologetic. “As if you two haven’t had even more ridiculous arguments…” she mutters in a rebellious tone.

Which might be true, but that’s neither here nor there.

“What was it you wanted to tell us, Sakura?” Hinata asks, diplomatically cutting off any more potential arguing. Sasuke covertly nods in thanks; the woman has more patience than anyone he’s ever met which is one of things that makes her perfect for Naruto.

Sakura’s agitation fades and, once again, she smiles, albeit a little nervously. “Sasuke and I are getting married,” she announces with pride.

Again, there is a beat of silence, and Sasuke’s eyes fly to Naruto, wanting to gauge his reaction. At the same time, he wonders if this will yield another round of inappropriate accusations. Instead, his best friend jumps to his feet again with a cheer while Hinata gasps in delight, her hands flying to her mouth.

“YOSH!” Naruto yells and bounds across the room to hug Sakura. His eyes are suspiciously teary. “It took you both long enough!”

Sakura laughs in response as he abandons her, and then, before Sasuke can stop him, Naruto catches him up in a clumsy embrace. Sasuke tenses, allows it for about two and a half seconds, and then shoves him away.

“Knock it off,” he grumbles.

“Yeah, yeah. Can’t ruin your image, right?” Naruto rolls his eyes. “You’d think you’d make an exception, considering it’s a special occasion.”

“I didn’t electrocute you,” Sasuke points out reasonably.

Hinata clasps Sakura’s hands. “Oh, congratulations—I’m so glad for you. I know you’ll both be so happy.”

They dissolve into rapid female chatter that neither Sasuke nor Naruto can quite follow.

“I never thought I’d see the day,” Naruto continues, still beaming at him with something that looks disconcertingly like pride.

“Would you, for one second, pretend you’re an adult and not a snot-nosed kid?”

“Hey, asshole, I’m trying to congratulate you!” Naruto snaps. “Come on. Let’s have a drink to celebrate!”

Though he rolls his eyes, he allows Naruto to pour him a cup of sake—he doesn’t like to drink, but he dutifully sips it for etiquette’s sake. And to shut his friend up.

“I am happy for you, Sasuke,” the other man says at last, quieter and in a more serious tone than he’s used to. “You and Sakura deserve each other.”

“No,” Sasuke replies, earning a surprised frown in response. “She deserves better. But I’ve stopped trying to tell her that.”

The defensive set of his shoulders fades, and Naruto snorts. “I guess that means you’re finally living up to that genius reputation.”

Sasuke takes a sip of sake instead of answering that comment.

“So, who made the first move?”

Sasuke narrows his eyes at the implication in Naruto’s tone. “I did.”

More or less.

The other man groans. “Damn it! I owe Sai five hundred ryō.”

Sasuke is unexpectedly offended by this. “You bet against me.”

“Not against you… I just figured Sakura got tired of waiting and jumped your bones when you were least expecting it.”

“Tch. I dare you to say that to her face.”

“Do you want me to die?!” Naruto looks comically terrified; Sasuke knows only part of that is in jest. “And before you get married? No way! I’ve waited too damn long for this! Hey, speaking of, when are you guys going to tie the knot?”

“Within the next two weeks. As soon as it’s convenient.”

“What?! WHY?!” Naruto demands in a shrill voice, earning curious glances from Sakura and Hinata. He lowers his voice and hisses under his breath at Sasuke, “You’ve resisted girls and dating and anything resembling normal your entire life. Now you’re just going to up and get married? With no plan?!”

“Not everyone needs a big production like you,” Sasuke counters. “Besides, I’m leaving on a mission. Sakura’s coming along. It makes more sense to get married beforehand.”

Naruto blinks at this, considering, and then breaks out into a familiar lecherous grin. “Either her parents are making you get married beforehand, or you really want to have sex on this trip.”

Sasuke punches him.

The women look up—Hinata appears anxious, but Sakura is unimpressed; she’s far too used to this sort of interaction between them to be bothered, even after many years and long absences.

“I’m sure he deserved that, but now you can’t pretend I’m the only melodramatic one,” she informs Sasuke while Naruto swears on the floor. Sasuke glowers at his intended in response, trying to fight down the warmth in his cheeks. All the while, he silently thanks whatever gods exist that she didn’t hear what Naruto just said—otherwise, one or both of them would be dead right now.

Stupid, mouthy idiot…

“Kakashi-sensei’s going to kick your ass for ruining his apartment,” Naruto mutters as he picks himself up and rubs at his bruised cheekbone.

“He won’t care as long as nothing stains,” Sasuke retorts.

“Heh. That’s what she sa—Oi! I’m kidding!” Naruto yelps as Sasuke’s Sharingan blazes. “Geez, you’re touchy.”

“And you’re a half-wit.”

They exchange glares, but as usual, a moment later, Naruto is grinning again. He makes a dismissive gesture—no big deal—and reaches for the bottle of sake again.

“Kidding aside…it’s kind of shocking, you getting married,” Naruto tells him. “I mean, have you and Sakura even been on a date?”

Sasuke feels an unfamiliar note of defensiveness well up. “We both agree that we’re past that point by now.”

“Hey, Hinata and I saved the planet together, and I still took her on a first date,” Naruto shoots back. “It’s like…a rule, man.”

“Really. And where did you come by this information?”

Naruto glances furtively at his wife to make sure she isn’t paying attention and then reaches into his back pocket for something. He produces a battered paper-back with a familiar orange cover.

“Tell me you’re joking,” Sasuke commands.

“Nope! The story’s boring and stupid, of course, but there’s a lot of good advice in it,” Naruto says, flipping the pages at him. “Like, how the guy has to plan a date in advance, and pay for it, and say nice stuff to the girl. And there’s a bunch of rules for what you’re allowed to do on a first date, and a second date, and—heh—the third date…”

“I’ll pass.”

“No, seriously, Sasuke! Pervy Sage knew what he was talking about when he wasn’t spying on naked women. And, I mean, you can’t just marry someone you haven’t spent any time with! Even arranged marriages have people spending time together!”

“Sakura and I already know each other.”

“That’s not the same,” Naruto looks impatient. “You have to know each other really well—like your faults and your strengths and…and it’s like, you share even your darkest, most secret things with her.”

Sasuke dismisses this. “She already knows all of mine.”

“Okay, I’ll give you that…but do you know hers?”

This gives him pause. It’s one of the rare instances where Naruto might actually understand something better than Sasuke does. As always, it’s irritating, but unlike during their childhood, Sasuke is more open to listening; all the more if it concerns Sakura.

Maybe there’s some truth to it…

Naruto seems to take his silence for avoidance of the topic, though, because he sighs, affecting the air of someone dealing with the most troublesome of burdens. “Well, fine. If that’s how you want to be about it. You’re not giving me much to go on, but I’ve handled worse.”

“‘Handled’?” Sasuke echoes.

“We’ve got to make sure you’ve got better clothes to wear than that ugly-ass hobo cloak of yours, plan the bachelor party—”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“As your best man, I’ve got work to do.”

“Who said you were my best man?” Sasuke wants to know. “Who said I was having a best man?”

“Don’t be stupid. Of course, I’m your best man. And, yes, you’re having one.”

“Tch.” He knows the other man won’t budge on this point, and life’s too short to argue with stupidity. “Fine. But no bachelor party.”

Naruto sniggers. “Oh, we’re having a bachelor party…”

うちは

Sakura sits at her desk, balancing a pencil on her upper lip while staring distractedly down at the notepad in front of her. There are two hastily drawn columns there; one is a list of all the tasks she needs to complete for the wedding—invitations, venue, decorations—while the other is a to-do list for her upcoming mission—supplies she needs to order, decent apothecaries along the way that sell her preferred herbs and tonics, and the names of a few medically under-served villages they might stop in during their travels. She knows they’ll be on a time limit to get to the Land of Earth, but if she plans the route properly, they might still be able to offer people aid along the way.

Sakura has been organising and running a hospital on her own for so long that, these days, she requires maximum efficiency in every aspect of her life. She doubts Sasuke will mind, but she’ll still go over it with him when she sees him at the end of the day.

Or tomorrow.

Actually, she’s not sure when she’ll next see him. He was a little cagey when they said goodnight after their dinner with Naruto and Hinata. She suspects it had something to do with whatever he and Naruto were talking—or fighting—about after she announced their engagement. When she asked him about it, he shrugged it off, and when she wanted to learn his plans for today, he said something about practical matters and would not elaborate.

It’s annoying, sometimes, that he’s so private and noncommittal about the strangest things, but Sakura makes a conscious effort to let that go.

Sasuke has a general understanding or, perhaps, expectation of what it means to be in a relationship—more, she suspects, than either Naruto or Sai had starting out. But that small amount of knowledge likely has to compete with an inborn tendency to depend solely on himself. He’s not used to explaining his methods to anyone. While it’s a habit she intends to break him of—at least when it comes to her—she acknowledges that it isn’t easy to change a lifelong habit.

His faults aside, Sasuke has been making a great effort to include her in decisions. Whatever has him so preoccupied right now, it might be something he considers being his own affair. Or perhaps it’s something he doesn’t believe she needs to invest her time on. She’ll ask him again in a few days, or after the wedding.

The wedding, she groans.

In theory, it should be easy—make a list of things that need doing, and then do them. But she can’t figure out what she should prioritise first and keeps getting distracted. As if to punctuate that thought, there’s a knock on her office door.

Sakura fumbles with the pen and scrambles to cover up her lists with paperwork, shouting out, “Ando, I already told you! Don’t disturb me this morning!”

But the door is already opening, and it’s not Ando who strides in, but Tsunade Senju.

“Ungrateful,” the Sannin harrumphs. “Is that any way to treat your master?”

“Lady Tsunade!” Sakura gasps, jumping to her feet. “You’re back from your travels!”

“It would seem so,” she says with a smirk. “Though the reception’s been kind of lacklustre. Kakashi barely looked up from his desk. And Shizune is having far too much fun running the village. I can see she’s found her true calling.”

“So, you came to check up on me and mine?”

“Well, that, too. But I figured we could hash out the details of this conference of yours early and then go for supper.”

Sakura stares at her blankly for a moment. “Conference?”

“Yes, the conference,” Tsunade repeats slowly, raising an eyebrow at her. “The one you badgered me about for four months straight? The one you swore wouldn’t be successful without my participation?”

Sakura’s eyes widen and her mouth drops a little in dismay as she remembers. “Fuck.” She’s completely forgotten about it in the wake of her engagement.

Months earlier, she had the idea to hold a conference, a series of seminars featuring medic-nin and healers from all around the continent. Nothing of its kind has ever been attempted before, but Sakura’s considered it since she and Ino got the Konoha clinic up and running. The idea continued to persist even more so since Gaara and the other Kage instituted similar programs.

The aim would be to meet, discuss, and share techniques on matters from children’s mental health to emergency life-saving procedures in the field. Even civilian doctors would be invited, an important bridge between the two schools of medicine. Civilians and shinobi have lived very separate lives up until recent times; if there’s a way to combine shinobi chakra abilities with the scientific breakthroughs among the civilian medical elite, Sakura knows that they could develop countless vital procedures. Such a massive gathering might even garner interest from investors which could mean more medical funding across the board.

Rather than seeming annoyed, Tsunade is smirking at Sakura’s panic. “Hm… I wonder what could possibly make you forget all about your little project?” She taps her chin. “If I had to guess, I’d say a certain Uchiha finally got his head out of his ass.”

This time Sakura’s jaw really drops.

I knew Naruto couldn’t keep a secret to save his life, but I figured I’d have more than a day before he spread the news!

But Tsunade only snorts and takes one of the extra seats in the office. “Relax, Sakura. I found out from Kakashi.”

“Kakashi-sensei knows?!”

“Oh, I don’t think so. Not yet. But just after Uchiha went to speak to him about you accompanying him on his mission, he sent me a message. He seemed surprised, considering how often you mentioned the conference, and all of a sudden, you intend to leave?” Tsunade smirks. “I figured there are few things out there that could knock you off-balance enough to forget your previous commitments, so this one would have to be huge. It didn’t take much to figure it out from there, considering who else is involved.”

“I…”

“I suppose congratulations are in order, even if I still don’t understand what you see in him,” her master goes on.

“Thank you, shishou.”

“So, I guess this means you’ll postpone the conference until you get back?”

Sakura opens her mouth to reply, and then pauses, torn.

She can’t in good conscience postpone the conference, considering the overall benefits she spent months convincing people it could bring about. Her wedding can be postponed, but the mission… Sasuke will go with or without her. Since he asked her to come with him, she doesn’t want to refuse him now—especially considering how long she waited for him to ask. All the same, Tsunade’s words make her feel guilty.

I could always catch up to him…

She knows where he’ll be. But with the beginning of flood-season in Earth Country, that could be months—and by that time he might already be back.

So, I might as well just stay here after all, she realises in dejection.

She’s put off her own happiness for so long that she’s hesitant to do it again, but this conference is also the legacy of her hard work. She doesn’t want to give up on either one, and yet, if she has learned anything the last few years, it’s how to make sacrifices.

And so, she nods to herself and offers Tsunade a weary smile. “No, we won’t postpone. I’ll speak to Sasuke. My presence on the mission isn’t a necessity—and this conference is important.”

“Heh.” Tsunade crosses her arms and nods, looking proud. “As gratifying as it is to see you still put your patients before yourself, I didn’t come here to scold you about having a life. Don’t worry about your project.” She waves a dismissive hand. “I can put it together in your absence. It’s why I came in here today, to ensure we went over the details while you’re here. I don’t have the patience to do all this via carrier pigeon or summons.”

“Lady Tsunade… I…” She can’t quite get the words out.

“No need to thank me. Consider it an early wedding gift. After all, there’s no one more capable of pulling this thing off than you—except me.”

She fights off the impulse to roll her eyes. “You’re still as sure of yourself as ever.”

“Sakura…” She glances up at her teacher. “Everyone’s entitled to a slip,” Tsunade tells her seriously, “but don’t let this become a return to old habits for you.”

Sakura frowns at this. “Lady Tsunade?”

“You are the most talented medic ninja that I have ever known, and your mental capabilities far surpass my own. In a few years’ time, you’ll have surpassed levels that I can’t even dream of. That being said, don’t let old dreams or the goals he has eclipse what you’ve built for yourself.” She smiles grimly. “Sasuke Uchiha may be the love of your life, but he is not the sun. You are.”

Tears threaten, blurring Sakura’s vision a little, and she smiles at her teacher. “I know,” she insists. “It won’t happen again. You’ll see—before I leave this place, I’ll have it so organised that you could run it without me for three years!”

“That’s the kind of talk I want to hear from my apprentice,” Tsunade says approvingly then looks around. “Now call that intern of yours in here—I think this calls for a celebratory drink.”

“Lady Tsunade, you know you can’t drink in the hospital.”

“It’s my hospital. I’ll do what I want.”

“Technically it’s my hospital since you left me in charge of it.”

“Sakura, don’t make me regret my good will.”

Sakura sighs. “Just this once, my lady.”

“And you’d better damn well be inviting me to this wedding of yours. Do you realise how long I’ve been waiting to live vicariously through you?” she goes on. “You’re still miles out of his league, but you’re stubborn, so I’ll accept it.”

Sakura winces, and hopes that Tsunade and her mother stay far, far away from each other.

That’s all I need—the two of them ganging up on Sasuke.

つづく

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Thanks for your interest in my work!

クリ

Next Chapter

[etherockj]

Enjoli

I’m newly sober and dog-paddling through the booze all around me. It’s summer, and Whole Foods has planted rosé throughout the store. Rosé is great with fish! And strawberries! And vegan protein powder! (Okay, I made that last one up.) At the office, every desk near mine has a bottle of wine or liquor on it in case people are too lazy to walk the 50 feet to one of the well-stocked communal bars we’ve built on our floor. Driving home from work, I pass billboard ads for Fluffed Marshmallow Smirnoff and Iced Cake Smirnoff and not just Cinnamon, but Cinnamon Churros Smirnoff. A local pharmacy, the same one that fucks up my prescription three months in a row, installs self-service beer taps and young guys line up with their empty growlers all the way back to Eye & Ear Care.

Traveling for work, I steel myself for the company-sponsored wine tasting. Skipping it is not an option. My plan is to work the room with my soda and lime, make sure I’m seen by the five people who care about these things, and leave before things get sloppy (which they always do). Six wines and four beers are on display at the catering stand. I ask for club soda and get a blank look. Just water, then? The bartender grimaces apologetically. “I think there’s a water fountain in the lobby?” she says.

There is. But it’s broken. I mingle empty-handed for 15 minutes, fending off well-meaning offers to get me something from the bar. After the fifth, I realize I’m going to cry if one more person offers me alcohol. I leave and cry anyway. Later I order vanilla ice cream from room service to cheer myself up.

“People love this with a shot of bourbon poured over it,” the person taking my order says. “Any interest in treating yourself?”

***

That’s the summer I realize that everyone around me is tanked. But it also dawns on me that a lot of the women are super double tanked — that to be a modern, urbane woman means to be a serious drinker. This isn’t a new idea — just ask the Sex and the City girls (or the flappers). A woman with a single malt scotch is bold and discerning and might fire you from her life if you fuck with her. A woman with a PBR is a Cool Girl who will not be shamed for belching. A woman drinking MommyJuice wine is saying she’s more than the unpaid labor she gave birth to. The things women drink are signifiers for free time and self-care and conversation — you know, luxuries we can’t afford. How did you not see this before? I ask myself. You were too hammered, I answer back. That summer I see, though. I see that booze is the oil in our motors, the thing that keeps us purring when we could be making other kinds of noise.

***

One day that summer I’m wearing unwise (but cute, so cute) shoes and trip at the farmer’s market, cracking my phone, blood-staining the knees of my favorite jeans, and scraping both my palms. Naturally, I post about it on Facebook as soon as I’ve dusted myself off. Three women who don’t know I’m sober comment quickly:

“Wine. Immediately.”

“Do they sell wine there?”

“Definitely wine. And maybe new shoes.”

Have I mentioned that it’s morning when this happens? On a weekday? This isn’t one of those nightclub farmer’s markets. And the women aren’t the kind of beleaguered, downtrodden creatures you imagine drinking to get through the day. They’re pretty cool chicks, the kind people ridicule for having First World Problems. Why do they need to drink?

Well, maybe because even cool chicks are still women. And there’s no easy way to be a woman, because, as you may have noticed, there’s no acceptable way to be a woman. And if there’s no acceptable way to be the thing you are, then maybe some women drink a little. Or a lot.

***

The year before I get sober, I’m asked to be The Woman on a panel at the company where I work. (That was literally the pitch: “We need one woman.”) Three guys and me, talking to summer interns about company culture. There are two female interns in the audience, and when it’s time for questions, one says:

“I’ve heard this can be a tough place for women to succeed. Can you talk about what it’s been like for you?”

As The Woman, I assume for some reason that the question is directed at me. “If you’re tough and persistent and thick-skinned, you’ll find your way,” I say. “I have.”

I don’t say she’ll have to work around interruptions and invisibility and micro-aggressions and a scarcity of role models and a lifetime of her own conditioning. My job on this panel is to make this place sound good, so I leave some stuff out. Particularly the fact that I’m drinking at least one bottle of wine a night to dissolve the day off of me.

But she’s a woman. She probably learned to read between the lines before she could read the lines themselves. She thanks me and sits down.

“I disagree,” says the guy sitting next to me. “I think this is a great company for women.”

My jaw gently opens on its own.

The guy next to him nods. “Absolutely,” he said. “I have two women on my team and they get along great with everyone.”

Of course they do, I think but don’t say. It’s called camouflage.

Guy #1 continues. “There’s a woman on my team who had a baby last year. She went on maternity leave and came back, and she’s doing fine. We’re very supportive of moms.”

Guy #3 jumps in just to make sure we have 100% male coverage on the topic. “The thing about this place,” he says, “is it’s a meritocracy. And merit is gender-blind.” He smiles at me and I stare back. Short of hijacking this panel for my own agenda, silent balefulness is all I have to offer. But his smile wavers so I know I’ve pierced some level of smug.

The panel organizer and I fume afterward. “Those fucking fucks,” she says. “Ratfucks.”

What’s a girl to do when a bunch of dudes have just told her, in front of an audience, that she’s wrong about what it’s like to be herself? I could invite them out for coffee, one by one, and tell them how it felt, and they might really listen. I could tell the panel organizers this is why you should never have just one of us up there. I could buy myself a superhero costume and devote the rest of my life to vengeance on mansplainers everywhere.

Instead, I round up some girlfriends and we spend too much money at a hipster bar, drinking rye Manhattans and eating tapas and talking about the latest crappy, non-gender-blind things that have happened to us in meetings and on business trips and at performance review time. They toast me for taking one for the team. And when we are good and numb we Uber home, thinking Look at all we’ve earned! That bar with the twinkly lights. That miniature food. This chauffeured black car. We are tough enough to put up with being ignored and interrupted and underestimated every day and laugh it off together. We’ve made it. This is the good life. Nothing needs to change.

***

Do you remember the Enjoli perfume commercial from the 1970s? The chick who could bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan, and never let you forget you’re a man?

I blame that bitch for a lot. For spreading the notion that women should have a career, keep house, and fuck their husbands, when the only sane thing to do is pick two and outsource the third. For making it seem glamorous. For suggesting it was going to be fun. And for the tagline she dragged around: “The 8-Hour Perfume for the 24-Hour Woman.” Just in case you thought you could get one fucking hour off the clock.

More tales of my first sober summer: I go to an afternoon showing of Magic Mike at one of those fancy theaters that serves cocktails to blunt the terrible stress of watching a movie in air-conditioned comfort. A few rows ahead of me, a group of women are drinking champagne through straws. They whoop and holler at the screen as though at an actual Chippendale’s. In the parking lot afterward, one of them says to the others: “Girl time! We have to claim our girl time.” “We’ve earned this,” another replies. And then they drive off in separate directions.

A baby shower is in progress at the nail parlor. Except for the guest of honor, everyone is drinking wine, lots of it. I wonder if the mom-to-be minds, if it feels like they’re rubbing it in. “Thank God there are places like this where we can have lady time,” a woman in a yellow dress says. She tells the mom-to-be she’s far enough along to have some wine. It seems important to her that the mom-to-be drink with them. I catch myself nodding. You, I think. Yeah, I know you. There’s always one person who can’t deal if someone isn’t drinking. At times, I was that person.

“I’m going to feel hungover by dinner,” a different woman says. “But it’s so worth it. How often do you get a chance to get away from your kids for an afternoon?”

I personally think this is an insensitive thing to say at a baby shower.

Is it really that hard, being a First World woman? Is it really so tough to have the career and the spouse and the pets and the herb garden and the core strengthening and the oh-I-just-woke-up-like-this makeup and the face injections and the Uber driver who might possibly be a rapist? Is it so hard to work ten hours for your rightful 77% of a salary, walk home past a drunk who invites you to suck his cock, and turn on the TV to hear the men who run this country talk about protecting you from abortion regret by forcing you to grow children inside your body?

I mean, what’s the big deal? Why would anyone want to soften the edges of this glorious reality?

***

I run a women’s half-marathon on a day in August when temperatures are fifteen degrees above normal. It’s a — what do you call it — a horror show. But I finish and someone puts a finisher’s medal on me. I’m soaked, chafed, limping, and still triumphant. Until they say: “The margarita tent is right over there!”

A yoga studio where I sometimes practice starts a monthly “Vinyasa & Vino” event: an hour of fast-paced yoga in a hundred-degree room, followed by a glass of an addictive, dehydrating substance (made locally!). Oh, but it’s about mindful savoring, I’m told. Well, then. Apologies for thinking it was about mindful reciprocal advertising to an overwhelmingly female audience, and om shanti.

A local kitchen shop offers a combination knife-skills and wine-tasting class — yes, wine for people who have already self-identified as being so clumsy with sharp objects that they need professional instruction.

At the waxing salon, a cut-glass decanter of tequila is at the ready for first-time Brazilian customers, which — okay, you know what, that tequila was actually pretty helpful back in the day, and far be it from me to deprive other first-timers.

But knives and booze, yoga and booze, 13 mile runs and booze? What’s next to be liquored up: CPR training? Puppy ballet class? (Not really a thing, but someone should get on it.) Is there nothing so inherently absorbing or high-stakes or pleasurable that we won’t try to alter our natural response to it? Maybe women are so busy faking it — to be more like a man at work, more like a porn star in bed, more like 30 at 50 — that we don’t trust our natural responses anymore. Maybe all that wine is an Instagram filter for our own lives, so we don’t see how sallow and cracked they’ve become.

Toward the end of summer I take a trip to Sedona and post a photo to Facebook that captures the red rocks, a stack of books, a giant cocoa smoothie, and my glossy azure toenails in one frame. It is scientifically the most vacation-y photo ever taken.

“Uh, where’s the wine?” someone wants to know.

“Yeah, this vacation seems to be missing wine,” someone else chimes in.

I go to a stationery store to buy a card for a girlfriend. I couldn’t keep it together enough to track greeting card occasions when I was drinking, so it’s been a while since I’ve visited a card shop. There are three themes in female-to-female cards: 1) being old as fuck, 2) men are from Mars, and 3) wine.

“Wine is to women as duct tape is to men…it fixes everything!”

“I make wine disappear. What’s your superpower?”

“Lord, give me coffee to change the things I can…and wine to accept the things I cannot.”

Newly sober women have a lot of wonderful qualities, but lack of judginess not one of them. I don’t just stand there mentally tsk-tsking at the cards. I actually physically shake my head at them like Mrs. Grundy. Are you sure you can’t change those things? I think. And have you stopped to think that if you need ethanol — yes, at this point in my sobriety I called wine ethanol, wasn’t I charming? — to accept them, maybe it’s because they’re unacceptable?

***

The longer I am sober, the less patience I have with being a 24-hour woman. The stranger who tells me to smile. The janitor who stares at my legs. The men on TV who want to annex my uterus. Even the other TV men, who say that abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare.” What business is it of yours whether it’s rare or not? I think.

The magazines telling me strong is the new sexy and smart is the new beautiful, as though strong and smart are just paths to hot. The Facebook memes: muscles are beautiful. No, wait: fat is beautiful. No, wait: thin is beautiful, too, as long as you don’t work for it. No, wait: All women are beautiful! As though we are toddlers who must be given exactly equal shares of princess dust, or we’ll throw a tantrum.

And then I start to get angry at women, too. Not for being born wrong, or for failing to dismantle a thousand years of patriarchy on my personal timetable. And not for enjoying a glass of wine, alone or with their girlfriends — cheers to that, if you can stop at one or two. (I could, until I couldn’t.) But for being so easily mollified by overdrinking. For thinking that the right to get as trashed as a man means anything but the right to be as useless.

“What,” says a woman I enjoy arguing with, “so they can get fucked up and we have to look after them?”

No, I tell her. We have to look after ourselves.

“That still doesn’t seem fair,” she says, not unreasonably.

But who said anything about fairness? This isn’t about what’s fair. It’s about what we can afford. And we can’t afford this. We can’t afford to pretend it’s fine that everything we do or think or wear or say yes or no to is somehow wrong. We can’t afford to act like it’s okay that “Girls can do anything!” got translated somewhere along the line into “Women must do everything.” We can’t afford to live lives we have to fool our own central nervous systems into tolerating.

We can’t afford to be 24-hour women.

I couldn’t afford to be a 24-hour woman. But it didn’t stop me from trying till it shattered me.

I am very angry with women that summer and then I’m very, very angry with myself. And I stay that way for months, trudging through my first sober Christmas and job change and flu and birthday and using that anger at every turn as a reminder to pay attention and go slow and choose things I actually want to happen. By the time summer comes back around I realize I no longer smell like 8-hour perfume.

***

That second summer, I meet my friend Mindy outside San Diego, where her adopted son is days from being born. Mindy’s dark alleys were different from mine, but she walked them all the same and walked herself out of them, too. Sometimes, talking about the recent past, we blink at each other like people struggling to readjust to sunlight after a long, bad movie. More and more it’s the new that gets our attention: my new job, her newish and happy marriage, the book I’m writing and the classes she’s taking. The things we are making happen, step by step.

We spend the weekend moving slowly and sleeping late and — hypocritically — wishing the lazy baby would hurry up already. On Sunday morning we’re reading by the deep end of the hotel pool when the shallow end starts to fill with women, a bridal party to judge by what we overhear. And we overhear a lot, because they arrive already tipsy and the pomegranate mimosas — pomegranate is a superfood! one woman keeps telling the others — just keep coming until that side of the pool seems like a Greek chorus of women who have major grievances with their bodies, faces, children, homes, jobs, and husbands but aren’t going to do anything about any of it but get loaded and sunburned in the desert heat.

I give Mindy the look that women use to say do you believe this shit? with only a slight tightening of the eyeballs. The woman on the other side of her catches the look and gives it back to me over her laptop, and then woman next to her joins in too. We engage in a brief, silent four-way exchange of dismay, irritation, and bitchiness.

Then Mindy slides her Tom Ford sunglasses back over her eyes and says, “All I can say is it’s really nice on this side of the pool.” I laugh and my heart swells against my swimsuit and I pull my shades down too, to keep my suddenly watery eyes to myself. Because it is. It is so nice on this side of the pool, where the book I’m reading is a letdown and my legs look too white and the ice has long since melted in my glass and work is hard and there’s still no good way to be a girl and I don’t know what to do with my life and I have to actually deal with all of that. I never expected to make it to this side of the pool. I can’t believe I get to be here

Written by: Kristi Coulter