#so i will tentatively add this tag as a courtesy

[greyias]

When a stupid image won't leave your head until you make it come into reality

[scarletaire]

flowerfall

A/N: Not my usual Jurdan fare, I know, but after reading A Sky Beyond the Storm, this fic poured out of me and I was helpless to stop it. Canon-divergent for Chapter LX, but mostly follows canon for everything after.

WARNING: Spoilers for A Sky Beyond The Storm!

Fandom: An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir

Ship: Helene Aquilla x Avitas Harper

Genre/s: Fluff

Rating: T

Links: Masterlist | Read on AO3 

[Summary and tags under the cut because spoilers!] 

Description: 

When Avitas Harper falls, the Blood Shrike makes a deal with Death.  Snapshots of their life together after the war.

Tags: Harper Lives, Fix-It, Happy Ending, Helvitas Living Their Best Lives, We Stan One (1) Power Couple

_______

When Avitas Harper falls, the Blood Shrike makes a deal with Death.

It happens as Mirra of Serra takes her knife to Keris Veturia’s neck. The blood and the life leave her body, but the Shrike cannot revel in it, for her love is dead and cold in her arms.

How is it possible that she still had anything left to lose?

But of course, to love someone is both to gain and to lose a thousand pieces of the world all at once.

She roars in the face of it.

In the face of Death.

And this time, with the bridge between worlds on the brink of evisceration, Death answers.

I need power, says Mauth to anyone who will listen, weakened, and scrambling for any strength to beat back the storm. Power to fight.

The Blood Shrike has never heard the voice of Mauth before, but what he asks for is familiar. She knows all too well the pursuit of power, the search for anything to keep fighting. It is what she searches desperately for now.

Give him back, she orders Death with the voice of a girl who has still too much to lose, give him back, and I will give you the strength you need.

The power of the Star. The power of song and healing. The power of Rehmat, reborn again through the centuries and a thousand times in her blood.

Whatever it is, it will be enough.

It has to be.

The maw opens its jaws. The Nightbringer succumbs to the maelstrom. The Sea of Suffering overtakes the sky.

And Helene Aquilla sings her last song.

____

For a moment, there is only the storm. It surges through the escarpment, it rages across the cliffs, it consumes everything in its path.

For a moment, all is lost.

For a moment, she thinks that at least she didn’t have to wait long before following him.

And then, between one breath and the next, the maelstrom disappears.

Beneath her hand, Avitas Harper stirs.

____

In the end, her deal hadn’t mattered. It wasn’t Mauth that saved them all. It was Laia of Serra, because of course, of course, who else could have done it but her. Helene is full of a strange mix of pride and awe when she pulls Laia into a hug. The girl she once tried to kill, the girl who pieced together the broken world.

The once Beloved, the once Forsaken now rests in chains of mercy, and so the world continues on.

Mauth never speaks to her again.

Maybe because there is nothing she could possibly offer anymore. Maybe because the next time Mauth speaks to her, it will be at the end, when his words will be the last thing she will ever hear.

Briefly, she wonders what Death will do with the power she gave him. Then she thinks that it doesn’t really matter much to her, anymore.

____

She stands with Elias as they take in the bodies of their dead. They are spread out in lines across the forest floor. There are too many of them, Martial, Scholar, Tribal – it isn’t important anymore. They were divided in life. Today, they are united in the loss of it.

Above her, around her, the forest blooms alive, like a panacea for the death and destruction spilt upon the soil, blossoms of apricot and cherry and Tala filling the air with their sweetness, falling to the ground like colored snow.

It is a good thing, then, that Harper is alive. If she had lost him, truly lost him, then she would not have been able to bear the sight of flowers ever again.

____

It turns out dying and being brought back to life takes a toll on a human body.

“When will he wake?” she whispers into the quiet of the healer’s tent. “It’s been days.”

She knows the body lying still before her is merely asleep, but she remembers the way he had looked with all the life drained out of him, and it is a sight she will never forget.

“Give him some time,” Elias says. “Being resurrected by Death itself is no easy thing.”

She raises her eyebrow at him askance.

“I know a thing or two about being resurrected by Mauth.” He shrugs, and the movement is so familiar, so genuinely Elias that she feels the corner of her lips tilt. “Guess it runs in the family now.”

Avitas Harper wakes two days after.

She doesn’t give him a chance to get his bearings. The words are out of her lips before he can even try to sit up, like a song she can’t keep silent any longer. “I love you.”

He raises his fingers to her face, tracing the scars there like a benediction. “I got my wish.”

Emifal Firdaant.

She presses her palm against his hand, trapping it against her cheek. “With all due respect, Captain Harper, it was a bleeding stupid wish. So I did you the courtesy of vetoing it.”

When she kisses him, she feels like she can breathe again after a millennium of holding her breath.

____

When Mirra of Serra takes up the mantle of Soul Catcher, Helene watches the life return to Elias’s eyes, and the hope return to Laia’s.

The Bani al-Mauth turns to Harper. “I suppose I should thank you. For offering me shelter and safety in the bowels of Antium.”

“It was an honor, Lioness. You repaid me in kind when you helped the Blood Shrike through the tunnels.”

“And when you aided in the battle with Keris,” Helene adds.

Mirra scoffs, white hair dancing in the wind. “I worried that the Shrike wouldn’t be able to keep the secret to herself. Not like you. A mind like a steel trap, you have.” She slaps Harper once across the chest. He does a fine job of hiding his grimace as she knocks his healing wounds. “Think you’ll be a fine brother-in-law for my daughter.”

Elias splutters, Laia flushes, and Helene feels a laugh bubbling up in her chest for the first time in ages.

____

As their troops begin to file out of the Forest of Dusk, she sees the figures of two men talking under the shade of a tree. Elias is taller, but Avitas is older. And so it is he who holds out his hand for his brother to shake.

And it is Elias who takes it, but uses it to pull him into a hug instead. She sees Avitas’s back stiffen in surprise, but he doesn’t push him away.

“It shouldn’t have taken so long for this to happen,” Elias says. “I’m glad you’re alive, brother. I’m glad I wasn’t the one to have to pass you on.”

____

When Quin Veturius proclaims her Empress in front of the conclave of their people, her eyes immediately seek Harper.

Help me, she tries to convey. Knock the old man out before he actually convinces them.

“Stand strong,” he says aloud, instead, love and pride sparkling in his green eyes, “Empress.”

____

Later that night, when she sings Zacharias to sleep with a soft lullaby, her blood doesn’t sing with her. It’s silent, dormant. The air is empty with the ghost of her magic.

Leaning against the door a few feet away, Avitas has closed his eyes to listen, his lips curled up at the edges.

And it should feel like something has been stolen from her, but really, it feels more like a blessing than anything else.

____

She dances with Avitas at the Moon Festival in Nur, and the night is warm and they’re both still in armor, and neither of them really know how to dance properly anyway, but it is enough.

It is more than enough.

Skies, it’s more than she could have ever asked for.

He lifts his arm and she twirls under it, catching the twinkle in his eye, and suddenly, she wishes they weren’t in such a crowded place full of other people. Suddenly, she wishes they were alone, in a room, flushed and pressed up against each other just like this. Dancing a dance they both know the steps of far too well.

On her next twirl, she catches Musa’s eye, where he leans against a table, flirting with a pretty Scholar girl. He winks at her, as if he knows exactly where her thoughts have strayed.

She’s far too happy to be annoyed in any way, and so she almost sends him a wink of her own before Harper pulls her close against him again and the thought is forgotten.

____

It occurs to her later in the night, as the festivities draw to a close and she glimpses Musa walking back to his tent alone, that she had come far, far too close to understanding his loneliness in a way she hates to imagine.

____

At night, the Empress walks her city.

Avitas Harper walks with her.

The blue irises native to Antium are in full bloom, littering the ground.

One year, she thinks, as she cups her hand around a petal that floats down to her through the air. It’s been one year since the last flowerfall.

The one in which the world was broken. The one in which the world was remade.

____

Sometimes, she wakes thinking of her family. Of Livia, bleeding out in front of her son. Of her mother, father, Hannah. All of them, their throats cut, their lives lost, gone.

Sometimes, she wonders if they will hate her for bringing back her lover instead of one of them, any of them.

Sometimes, she wonders if she will ever forgive herself for any of it.

____

Avitas Harper, as it turns out, is a shockingly good babysitter.

The first time he gets Zacharias to sleep in under ten minutes, she chalks it up to dumb luck and good timing.

The second time it happens she almost kisses him despite the baby in his arms, too grateful for the peace and quiet after a long hour of listening to her nephew scream.

The third time it happens, she stares at him in disbelief.

“Did you bring back anything from the afterlife, maybe? Does Mauth have supernatural baby-charming magic that we don’t know about?”

He flashes her that half-smile that she feels underneath her skin.

Her next decree, she decides, will be outlawing all attractive men in armor from holding adorable, sleeping babies. It should be absolutely illegal by now, the sheer power of the sight before her.

____

She may be the Empress, but she is a soldier first and foremost.

When the Karkauans hold hostage the Martial ambassador she had sent over to confer the peace treaty, she is first in line for the mission to take him back.

“It’s not over yet,” she tells her men, when all efforts at neutral negotiation fall through. “I’m most dangerous when I’m cornered.”

Harper stands strong at her side. Her Blood Shrike, always watching. “That makes two of us.”

They march together into the fray.

____

The next Moon Festival, Mamie Rila finally succeeds in shoving her into a dress.

She puts up a good fight, doesn’t go down easy. In the end, it takes the combined forces of Laia, Afya, and an exasperated Mamie Rila to wrangle the Empress into the thin, strappy excuse for a gown.

“What is this supposed to be, a slip? Where’s the rest of it?”

Laia furrows her brows. “What are you talking about? That is the rest of it.”

Helene gapes. “I can’t wear this. I’m the Empress. I can’t walk around looking like I’m one stiff breeze away from a public scandal!”

“If you ask me,” says Afya, “a public scandal might do you some good. Just the thing you need to convince some of those troublesome, barbaric Karkauans to ally with you like you’ve been planning.”

“Burning, bleeding hells.” Elias’s eyes go wide when he walks in. “Who are you and what have you done with the real –”

He chokes off as Laia elbows him in the gut. “Don’t listen to him. Or Afya. You look great. Harper will love it. Shall we get on with your hair?”

Helene rears back, because her hair is the last bastion of normalcy she has.

Harper looks like he's been stabbed in the heart a second time when he catches sight of her, and Helene vows to never wear a dress again.

But when his fingers find the hem of her skirt under the table, tugging first, testing the stretch of the fabric against the skin of her thigh, and then slowly inching under, and then up and up and up — well. Maybe dresses aren’t so bad after all.

____

Sometimes, when she walks, Laia is there beside her. There are some nights when the ghosts of the past seem to walk with them, too. This night, in Serra, is one of those nights. Spring has come, and the flowers here are different, cushioning the road on which they walk with bright yellow petals.

“I can’t forget their faces.”

Laia has never been a killer. But she has dealt her fair share of death during their war, and that leaves a mark on the soul that can never be burned away. The difference now lies in how one goes about dealing with those marks. No, Laia has never been a killer, even when she had to be.

Helene, on the other hand, has spent too much of her life wearing the skin of one, and so she speaks as much to herself as she does to her friend when she replies.

“And you won’t. Just don’t forget the ones you saved.”

____

The first time Zacharias speaks a full word, it’s in the middle of supply negotiations with Tribe Nasur. She has just been reunited with her nephew after months in the capital and so is making up for it by carrying and snuggling him everywhere she goes, even if it is to a highly political trade meeting.

Fortunately, Tribe Saif is in close relations with Tribe Nasur, and so no one throws dirty looks when the baby babbles nonsense right when someone tries to speak. The Fakira even smiles encouragingly when Helene begins to bounce him on her knee.

That’s when Harper enters behind her with a missive from Blackcliff.

“Empress.” His voice is warm, and she realizes that it’s because Zacharias has noticed him, and is dimpling up at him with his head tilted back in that way that only babies can do. “We have positive turnout for the new recruits at –”

“Hapa!”

The whole room stills, as if everyone understands the gravity of this moment. Helene feels a grin break across her face, and she realizes that this is a first for her, too. Her first real grin in so, so long, after so much pain. Harper’s large, brown hand comes over her shoulder to pat Zacharias’s downy head in gentle praise, and she forces herself to get it together in front of all these important Tribespeople.

The meeting goes on. But then, one little detail niggles at her, like a tiny pebble in her boot.

Later, when she’s pushing him against the side of an empty caravan, her lips maybe a little too punishing against the skin behind his ear, he has the gall to chuckle at her.

“Are you jealous? Because his first word was my name and not yours?”

And so Helene sinks to her knees and shuts him up the best way she knows how.

____

Once, and only once, Mirra of Serra, Bani al-Mauth, visits her on a balmy night. The snow is almost over, and the Empress stands at her balcony overlooking the grounds, singing a lullaby to a sleeping Zacharias. He is getting too big now, and so she relishes any moment with him while she can still carry him in her arms.

It is on a dying winter wind that the Soul Catcher comes to her, the white locks of her hair stark against the night. “So it was you. I should have known.”

Helene glances at her out of the corner of her eye. “Known what?”

Mirra casts her gaze out into the city, and beyond, seeing something that only the Chosen of Death can see.

“There is a song across the river,” she says. “In the Waiting Place. All the ghosts ready to pass on hear it. It gives them peace.”

Ah, Helene thinks to Mauth, even though she knows he isn’t listening, so you used my voice after all.

____

When flowerfall comes again, and she has lost count at this point, how many it’s been, Helene Aquilla does not need to walk outside to know.

The blue petals of her beloved city, so familiar now, drift across her window like rain. The air is sweet with the smell of it, and with all that the two of them had done during the night, tangled together in the sheets of her bed.

She lifts a hand to trace the outlines of the silver Mask on his face. He pulls himself out of his doze just enough to smile at her.

“I know I said I would never marry and have children and all,” she begins, and the words are slow like honey in her mouth, “and I stand by my vow as Empress. But the adjoining room to my chambers is empty and I was wondering if –”

“Yes.”

She blinks at the swiftness of his answer. “Are you sure?”

“Of course. How else will I keep you out of trouble, my love?”

And so their lives go on.

_____

End Notes: 

Thank you for reading!

I did not foresee ever writing for this fandom, but after that ending, writing this was the catharsis I needed. Now back to regularly scheduled programming! 😂

* Didn’t tag anyone for fear of spoilers, and also because I wasn’t sure if they’d be interested in non-Jurdan fic 🙈But if you’d like to be tagged in any future stuff, I’d be honored to do so! ❤️

[whipituprecipes]

Creamy Parmesan Pork Chops -  made in ONE PAN, making it an  easy recipe with little clean up!  This pork chops recipe is the ultimate comfort food! If your looking for another way to make pork chops, you have to try this!  If you’re like me, you get sick of the same old, same old.  I am always looking for more ways to make pork chops!  I don’t like pepper so, I made mine without.   Ingredients 4-5 pork chops (3-4 ounces each) salt and pepper to taste  1 1/2 tbsp. salted butter 3 cloves  garlic, minced or 2 tbsp minced 1 1/2 cups heavy cream 2 tbsp all purpose flour 3/4 cup grated parmesan 1 tbsp  fresh, minced parsley or 1 tsp dried Instructions Heat a large skillet over medium heat.  Add butter, melt, coat pan Sprinkle each pork chop with salt and pepper on both sides Add pork to skillet, cook on each side 4-5 minutes or until golden brown on both sides.  Turn off heat, cover with lid.  Let sit 8-10 minutes or until cooked through.  Set aside on foil tented plate to keep warm. Scrape the pan to deglaze Heat pan to medium high heat.  Toss garlic in pan and allow to caramelize; 1-2 minutes or until fragrant Add flour and cream stirring quickly to combine.  Bring to a boil, reduce to simmer.  Simmer for 2 minutes. Stir in parmesan and parsley, stirring until fully combined and heated through Return pork to the sauce and serve.  Photo courtesy of @lewinphotography Enjoying my recipes? REMEMBER, LIKE, COMMENT, TWEET, PIN AND SHARE!!! (¯`v´¯) `*.¸.*´ ¸.•´¸.•*¨) ¸.•*¨) (¸.•´ (¸.•´ .•´ ¸¸.•¨¯`•.•:*¨¨*:•..•:*¨¨*:•..•:*¨¨*:•..•... ┊　　┊　　☆ ┊　　★ ☆☆✔ Like ✔ “Share” ✔ Comment ✔ Repost ✔Tag ✔Join Whip it Up Recipes  BLOG - https://www.tumblr.com/blog/whipituprecipes  FACEBOOK GROUP - https://www.facebook.com/groups/whipitup/ FACEBOOK PAGE - https://www.facebook.com/whipituprecipes/ PINTEREST  - https://www.pinterest.com/whipituprecipes/ TWITTER - https://twitter.com/whipituprecipes INSTAGRAM - https://www.instagram.com/whipituprecipes1  

[littlejeanniebean]

Ep. 1 | The Marauders: Chase Her

A/N: I’m back, witches! ;) With the long-teased BAND AU!! Also @inakindofdaydream​ here’s your tag as promised, hope you enjoy :)) More Marauders in my masterlist! Read on AO3! - J xx

“Oh, Lily, darling, isn’t it a bit…” Narcissa Black appraised the outfit with a derisive sniff, “childish?”

It was a floor-length gown, trimmed to flow with the model’s figure exactly, thanks to Dorcas’ design skills. The highlight was the hot pink lava-lamp-like mixture oozing between the solid pale pink inner layer and the clear exterior material; Lily, a chemistry undergraduate who’d founded the Evans brand on Etsy as a hobby, had made it from scratch. Underneath it all was a complicated circulation system of refrigerant to keep the wearer cool, courtesy of Marlene, who was studying to be a mechanical engineer. Lily had tested it on herself and had the light burns on her legs to prove it, but it was worth it for the 60s-themed Met Gala. That is, if she could convince her client to wear it.

“Hardly,” she responded, “The design says you're playful, but the slinky cut and deep-V neckline say you’re a woman ready to conquer the carpet.”

Narcissa rolled her eyes, “Serves me right for selecting a designer last minute. All the professionals are booked.” 

Lily tried to think of a popsicle or winter, anything to cool the angry flush she could feel burning in her cheeks.

The tall blonde was unbothered as she strutted around the mannequin, inspecting the low back and the spaghetti straps, before extending her arms out to Dorcas and Marlene, who were standing by, “Fine, fit me.”

“I got it,” Lily said quickly when she saw Dorcas’ jaw drop in indignance at being treated like a maid. 

Marlene successfully occupied the deeply offended designer until Mary, the brand's publicist, announced that it was time. 

Lily and their client left the hotel for the iconic New York museum in a chartered limousine among an entire fleet of them. Although dressed plainly in a black sweater and pencil skirt, Lily’s bright red hair made her stand out among the Black family’s monochrome entourage. 

“Sirius, who’s that?” James pushed his thick-rimmed glasses up his nose and tiptoed to get a better look through the sea of celebrities and their teams spilling onto the carpet. 

“I don’t know, but she must be nice because I’m not related to her,” said the dark-haired man, who’d been essentially coerced into attending this event with the rest of his crazy reality television family. 

“Starting to not regret letting you drag me along,” while his friend walked the carpet, James followed the lady with the designer access credentials who looked at everything around her in unabashed wonder.

“James Potter!” someone called out.

He turned around and noticed too late that it was a reporter.

“How does it feel to win a record deal after your performance in the Highland Music Festival?” 

“Will you be performing on The House of Black?” 

“When is your debut album coming out?”

James held up a finger for silence the way he’d seen his mum do plenty-a-time, “I’m so grateful - especially to my music teacher, Minerva McGonagall. I don’t think my best friend will even be on that show anymore and we do everything together. We’re in writing sessions now, just having fun and seeing what we can do, but we’re very excited to share our music with everyone soon, especially our amazing fans.”

“Who are you wearing?”

“Who are you most excited to meet tonight?”

“Are you excited for The Weird Sisters’ performance?”

It went on this way until James could politely extricate himself with the boyish excuse of needing to use the bathroom. He practically sprinted to the tents at the end of the carpet. 

“My armpits are sweating, Lily!”

There she was. A picture of calm amidst the commotion. And her name was Lily.

“Cissy, calm down -”

“Don’t tell me what to do, Siri!”

“See, this is why I can’t work with you lot anymore! You’re bat-shit crazy! Of course, your pits sweat, you’re a human being - not a fucking Barbie doll!”

“You haven’t the faintest idea of the impossible standards I hold myself to because I actually strive to be my best self unlike you, you lazy dog!”

“Are you getting this?” Bella Black, whispered with a toothy smile to the camera that was filming the entire exchange.

"How's it going, Molly?" James addressed the short videographer with auburn space buns. 

She made a funny face at him and he laughed. Molly smiled just a bit in spite of the tensions she worked around daily. 

"Narcissa," a clear voice pulled his attention back towards the girl named Lily, "I believe you've just nicked the wire that runs the cooling system with your heel," she crouched down and hooked it back up, "There you are."

James took this as his cue to pull Sirius away before another argument began. Also, he may or may not have wanted to get even closer to the red-head, "C'mon, mate, let it go, yeah? It's not worth it."

Narcissa huffed and strutted away. Lily had no choice but to follow at her heels, but to her admirer, she made it look like a power move. 

"Ugh, remind me never to do that again!" Sirius collapsed onto the couch in the recording studio they rented next door to their label, Castle Records. 

"James?" Remus asked his less distraught friend.

"Narcissa."

"Ah. At least it wasn't Bella."

The bespectacled boy sat at his drum kit and began to play a couple of mid-tempo rounds on the snare, cymbals, and base, creating the mood of a pursuit. 

"Ooh, I like that," Peter switched the settings on his electronic keyboard to an eighties synth and joined in the jam.

Remus added the bass while Sirius plugged in his electric guitar. 

It was three the next afternoon when Remus finished mixing the track and Sirius had no more unorthodox but cool ideas like, "Record the tires squealing while I  do donuts in the parking lot on my motorbike and add it to the chorus!"

However, James, being ever the perfectionist when it came to music, kept wanting to re-record the drums and the others couldn't even talk him out of it because truthfully, it sounded better every time he did it. 

When they reached the one-week mark, though, Sirius had to take action. "I called Molly. She's going to record our music video today and you know she's quick in post-production so whatever you've got is what we're running."

"Ugh, I hate you!" said James. He didn't. 

Molly arrived at nine sharp and set up the lighting, did their hair and makeup, helped them pick coordinating but not matching outfits, and at ten exactly, called, "Action!"

Don't let her doe eyes fool you

She's been winning since the day she was born

Darlin' don't wanna lose you 

Je ne parle pas français, mais j'adore

So I'm done playing hard to get

(You gotta chase her, chase her, gotta gotta chase her)

 You're running circles in my head

(You gotta chase her, chase her, gotta gotta chase her)

And every word you ever said

(You gotta chase her, chase her, gotta gotta chase her)

Is calling my soul outta my body, must be in heav'n

Whoo!

"LilyLilyLily!" Mary squealed, barging into her friend's hotel room and clambering onto the bed, "We made it!"

Narcissa's lava dress had been trending all week and the Evans brand online store had finally crashed with the volume of orders they were trying to process at once for clothes, accessories, make up, and fragrances.

Her name is bloomin' in my heart

And every beat I beat is hers alone

Darlin' think of what we could start 

Jamais seul ou triste, jamais pas en mode

"Jimbo! Jumbo! Jambo!" Sirius woke up his roommate with their first single blasting from his phone, "We made it!"

Their Chase Her music video had over a million views and the song was number one on Spotify. 

And if our paths cross just this once

Could you be mine and I'll be yours

Tonight, darlin', we dance, we dance

Nous pourrions vivre pour toujours

Sirius guffawed at the comment section, "James: I don't speak French; Also James: Nous pourrions vivre pour toujours."

"Co-written by Google Translate," the singer quipped, putting on his glasses so he could see it all for himself, his smile coming close to breaking his pretty face.

Done being someone you'll forget

(You gotta chase her, chase her, gotta gotta chase her)

 Cuz you're all I got gon' through my head

(You gotta chase her, chase her, gotta gotta chase her)

Yeah every word you ever said

(You gotta chase her, chase her, gotta gotta chase her)

Is calling my soul outta my body, must be in heav'n

Whoo!

[traitorwhoyoulove]

beautiful creatures (beautiful liars)

For the post-6x02 prompt courtesy of @lilhemmo: ‘For the prompt:  WHAT IF CLARKE IS THE ONE TO PATCH UP BELLAMYS THIGH STAB WOUND AND EVERYTHING UNRAVELS AND THEY FINALLY HASH THINGS OUT but someone will interrupt of course but hey’

Thank you for letting me write this!

Every moment we spend turning from friends to enemies and fighting to hold on to each other, every second we fall to the fire below, it’s so beautiful.

The chaos that follows the arrival of the Alpha planet children is a blur to Bellamy. Abby and Raven rake their eyes over the veins that cover Murphy’s chest like wolves. Octavia eyes him warily from a distance while Clarke tries to get some information out of the kids. There are so many people, and he can feel the last of the eclipse draining from his veins, and why is Diyoza awake, and where the hell are all of the adults on this planet, and Jesus fuck his leg hurts.

“We have to get him to medical,” Abby growls from her perch next to Murphy. She turns to the kids. “Do any of you kids know where the doctors are?”

A blonde girl with frizzy curls ringed in sunlight shakes her head. “They won’t be back for another couple of hours probably.”

Raven huffs and places a hand on Murphy’s chest.

“Do you know where the doctors take people that are sick?” Abby asks, and the little girl nods. “Okay, good. Do you think you can take me there so we can help our friend?”

The girl looks at the kids around her, hesitating, and then she nods.

It takes three of them, Abby, Jordan, and Octavia, to get Murphy to his feet, though his weight rests solely on their shoulders. They cart him off hastily, following a few of the children. Bellamy stands and tries to follow, but the shift of his weight onto his injured leg makes him grunt with exertion.

“No, no, no,” Clarke says, stopping him with a hand on his chest. “Someone needs to take a look at your leg.”

“I’m fine, Clarke. Murphy—”

“Murphy isn’t going anywhere, and you can’t help him if you’re dead from blood loss.”

She glares at him, her brow quirked as if daring him to argue. He knows that look. Arguing is pointless.

“Fine,” he bites out. “Where’s Jackson?”

She stoops to grab her pack and swing it over her shoulder, then meets his gaze and gives him a soft smile, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes.

“Still out of commission,” she says. “You’re stuck with me.” She loops his arm around her shoulder before he can respond, taking the brunt of his weight as he hobbles to a patio of a house nearby. “You um—”

He sees the flush creep up her neck. She gestures at the torn fabric of the leg of his pants that seeps with blood and swallows hard.

“Oh,” he says, and the break in his voice makes him want to beat his head against the wall next to him. “Shit, yeah okay.”

He works at the buckle of his belt with shaky fingers, and he doesn’t allow himself to wonder why a lump has appeared in his throat. 

Clarke’s a medic for god’s sake, this is nothing she hasn’t seen before. A tense silence fills the air between them as he drops his pants to the ground. Clarke clears her throat and extends a hand to steady him as he gently sits on the bench. Bellamy’s struck by the warmth of her palms as she gingerly lifts his bare leg to extend to his side. She doesn’t meet his eyes, just kneels next to him and begins to prod at the open wound. He hisses when she touches a particularly painful spot.

“Sorry,” she says. He brushes it off.

She rummages through her pack until she pulls out her med kit, rifling through its contents and pulling out a suture kit. The silence that hangs between them as she preps the tools is awkward, if he’s being honest, and he finds himself desperate to fill it.

“What the hell was that?” he asks. “The veins on Murphy’s chest.”

Clarke shakes her head. “I don’t know, honestly. It looked like some sort of weird blood poisoning.” He can feel the fear that lingers between them and chills his skin. Clarke squares her shoulders and clears her throat. “I’m sure my mom will figure it out. Especially once the doctors from Alpha get back.”

He tries to pretend he doesn’t hear the doubt in her voice.

“You were right,” he tells her. “We have no idea how to survive down here.”

Her grip on his thigh tightens, and he clenches his jaw against the sting of the needle in his skin. It’s not the first time he’s been stitched up without anesthetic, and god knows it probably won’t be the last.

She clears her throat again, and as she pushes a curl behind her ear, he sees the angry purple bruises that have started to bloom beneath the skin of her neck. His stomach flips.

“Christ,” he hisses. “Clarke, I am so sorry.”

She shakes her head, but she doesn’t look at him.

“It’s okay,” she says. “The eclipse—”

“God, I can’t believe I could ever do that to you. How—”

She cuts him off with a nod to the wound in his thigh.

“I think we’re even,” she says.

It shuts him up, but it doesn’t remove the guilt from his chest. He watches as she works, the way her fingers move across his skin with practiced ease. The idea that any part of him could ever want Clarke dead is—it’s unfathomable. What kind of place was this, that could turn him into a monster who could kill someone he loves?

It’s a moment before she says, “Do you ever wonder why they chose us?” She must see the confusion on his face. “Monty and Harper, I mean. Why did they wake us up first? Not Kane, not my mom, not the others. Why us?”

If he’s honest, he had thought about it, and he wanted to keep pretending he didn’t know the answer. Of course, they’d woken Bellamy and Clarke up first. The ones who managed to keep a hundred kids alive when they had no idea what the fuck they were doing. Who convinced Kane and Abby that they could survive down here. Who sacrificed their youth and their souls for their people, for each other.

Bellamy swallows hard.

“I guess at the end of the day, it’s always been you and me, huh?”

She finally meets his eye then, and the corner of her mouth tips upward. Her face turns sad for a moment before she looks back at his leg.

“I am sorry, Bellamy,” she says softly. “About leaving you in Polis, about leaving after Mount Weather.” She takes a deep breath, and he can see her shoulders shake with it. “I’m sorry for every time I’ve ever hurt you. I’ve never wanted that. Ever.”

“I know,” he says without, and honestly it surprises him when he realizes it’s the truth.

“But you were right, even back then. People do die when I’m in charge.”

Despite himself, Bellamy scoffs.

“Yeah, you’re right, Clarke. People die when you’re in charge,” he says. “But a hell of a lot more people live.” She snaps her eyes to his, soft with hope and something else he can’t bring himself to read too much into. “You’ve always been the one to make the calls others weren’t brave enough to make, but that had to be made, nonetheless. And you took that burden on willingly so that no one else had to.”

He watches her lashes flutter as she looks down at his leg, her hands working diligently and with more focus than he thinks the task probably requires.

“I’ve done so many terrible things, Bellamy.”

“Haven’t we all?” He reaches a hand out and squeezes her shoulder. “You’re not the bad guy, Clarke. You never have been. You’re just the one who makes the call others can’t bear to make, and when things go to shit and people need to point fingers at someone, for some reason that always seems to be you. But it’s never fair.” He grabs her forearm and waits for her to look at him before he continues. “You’ve saved our asses over and over again. No one would be alive without you. And that debt is so heavy on everyone’s shoulders that they don’t know what to do with it. But they know, Clarke. We all know.”

She rests a hand on his knee, and the gentle squeeze she gives it is enough to tell him he’s said the right thing. He looks at the relief in her frame, at the lines at the corners of her eyes that have finally started to soften, and for the millionth time he wishes he could take some of that burden from her. Wishes she would let him.

“I gave you my key for a reason, Clarke.” He says it so softly he can’t decide if he even meant to say it out loud. “Even after everything, we still trust each other.” She heaves a sigh. “So please, trust me enough to let me share this with you again. I know it’s been a long time, and I know things are different, but you and me…we need each other.”

When she looks at him, he can see the tears that brim below her lashes.

“I have always needed you, Clarke.”

It’s enough to make them fall to her cheeks, a quiet trail of everything he knows she’s been holding back for six years. They sit in a comfortable silence, and for once he doesn’t feel the weight of so many things unspoken between them. He lets himself revel in it.

It won’t last for long, of course. He knows any minute someone will be here with a new crisis to be solved. There will be other arguments, more politics, an entirely new fucking planet to survive on. But for right now, this tentative peace between them and the rediscovery of an understanding he thought they’d lost a long time ago—for now, it’s enough.

@hostagetakerandhistraitor @starboybellamy @clarkgriffon @weavemeamyrtlecrown @historyandships @junebugninja @charmainediyoza @octannibal-blake @cheesemfcake @lopeforrestlope @em-ori @deadshotbellamy @beachfckerblake 

If you’re not in my tag list and would like to be, please send me a message so I can add you!

[ambitionsource]

AMBITION Season 2 ♫ “Trapped” [ 2.06 ]

CREATED BY Esther (rapunzles) & Maggie (quincywillows) || S2 Tag || Official Page

NOWHERE TO HIDE – Forced together for a group assignment, a surprising collection of students find themselves locked in the school as a snowstorm hits Manhattan. Emotions bubble to the surface when there’s nowhere to run. Farkle makes an overdue apology. Lucas finally lets go.

55 Minutes (12.5K words) || CONTENT WARNING: discussions of death, mild suicidal ideation. Take care of yourselves and read with discretion.

[ ← How the Twinks Saved Christmas ] [ S2 Synopsis ] [ Contingency Plan → ]

( Follow along with the music on Spotify here! )

INT. AAA - AUDITORIUM - DAY

Song Cue ♫ ♪ “Revolting Children” as performed by Matilda Original Broadway Cast || Performed by Maya Hart, Riley Matthews, Zay Babineaux, Farkle Minkus, Isadora De La Cruz, and Lucas James Friar

A spotlight beams into the camera, obscuring our vision until a shadowed, angled shot of MAYA HART belting out the opening note of this Broadway tune fills the screen. She carries us through until the rest of the ensemble joins in, each of the other performers spinning to face the front of the stage as the camera pans past them.

ZAY BABINEAUX, in a crop top and rehearsal sweats and looking somewhere between determined and irritated. RILEY MATTHEWS, sporting a new look with her hair cut just above her shoulders and doing her best to keep up with the divas -- mostly just not to add anymore hiccups to an already stressful performance.

FARKLE MINKUS, wearing the world’s frumpiest cardigan and looking worse for wear. His hair is an absolute flyaway mess, his clothes are wrinkled. He does the steps listlessly, going through the motions rather than putting any energy into it. ISADORA DE LA CRUZ, finally keeping up with her performing peers but aggravated from the general bad mojo of the group and hair pulled back out of her face with a dark scrunchie.

Then, yes, LUCAS FRIAR. Snapback on, brow furrowed, looking overwhelmed and confused as he attempts to sing and dance along with his classmates. Sticking out like a sore thumb, but in attendance and participating even though it goes against every fiber of his being.

It’s a wild sight to behold. The six of them don’t give a horrible rendition of the number, but it’s rough and unrehearsed. Everyone aside from Maya and Zay fumbles with the choreography -- or in the case of Lucas, drops the ball entirely. This lack of precision is what prompts the “Come on!” from Zay about 2 minutes in, an outburst of exasperation rather than a rallying cry.

When Isadora “takes out her hockey stick and uses it as a sword,” she grabs a prop and literally takes a swing at Lucas. He ducks just in time, giving her an incredulous scowl and holding out his arms in indignation as the song continues. Maya almost trips over Farkle when he takes too long to get to his next mark, glaring at him and performing more aggressively in compensation.

They’re not the only ones playing bumper cars. Riley and Lucas ram into one another, the latter stabilizing the former before immediately brushing past her and getting as far away as the choreography will allow. Riley is stunned frozen for a few moments, literally having to shake off the daze and frustration.

The whole thing comes to spectacularly disastrous finish, Lucas tripping over his own feet and ramming into Riley. He manages to catch her as they both go sprawling to the ground, causing Isadora to trip as well and accidentally push Farkle. Maya just barely manages to avoid the destruction, scrambling out of reach as Farkle face plants into the stage.

Close on Zay’s frustrated expression, at his wits end.

Zay: You’ve got to be fu -- !

Cue title sequence.

INT. AAA - AUDITORIUM - DAY

We come back on a bloody tissue, pulling back to reveal Farkle dabbing at his lip. He doesn’t seem all that perturbed by the injury. Isadora is in the process of helping patch up Riley from their tumble, Lucas pacing a few steps away and not even bothering to fix his own scrapes.

Zay and Maya are doing most of the talking, arguing about the choreography and whether or not they’ll be able to pull it off. Zay claims that these are incredibly simple steps that any mediocre performer with a shred of coordination could pull off, but as Maya points to the rest of them recovering from their inability to do just that, clearly they need something different.

Maya: Sorry, but I’m not going to fail this assignment just because y’all over there can’t get your shit together.

Lucas: Bold of you to assume we’ll ever get anything right considering this is the absolute worst possible combination of people to be in a group together.

Farkle and Isadora both make faces at that -- he might have a point. Zay tells Lucas to speak for himself, before stating that they’ll obviously just have to stay after school and rehearse more. No one seems thrilled about this, not to mention there might be logistical issues.

Riley: Is the school even going to be open? It’s supposed to start snowing after lunch.

Farkle: And? It’s New York. What’s your point?

Hard to argue with that. The matter is settled, and they’ll be regrouping after school to give it another go. As the group of them begrudgingly head out, Riley tries to catch Lucas and offer some help since he’s definitely the weak link in this chain.

Riley: I can try and help you with the --

Lucas: [ without looking at her ] No.

He brushes past her, Riley taking a deep breath. Keeping her cool, not letting it get to her. It’s a stressful situation, one that none of them want to be in at that moment.

Still, the show must go on…

INT. AAA - HALLWAY - DAY

The bell rings, signaling freedom for the end of the school day. Farkle is alone at his locker, Isadora hanging down the hallway a few feet and observing. She finally works up the nerve to approach, tentatively kicking up a conversation with him. Bonkers, how this project is going, huh? Been a while since they worked together. How was Hannukah?

Farkle stares at her, blinking as she continues to throw polite questions at him. He doesn’t seem interested in having a conversation.

Farkle: [ interrupting her ] Smackle. Isadora.

Isadora: Yeah, yes. Yeah?

Farkle: What are you doing?

Isadora: … just… striking up conversation. Project partner to project partner. It’s a shame you weren’t at Riley’s holiday party there was… lots to discuss. We missed you there.

A lie, and Farkle knows it. He points out that he wasn’t invited, which seems odd to Isadora. But he questions her presence there before she can question his absence, following up with a query of his own.

Farkle: What about that little illegal techie party that happens every year that you think is a big secret but everyone knows about?

Isadora: [ ignoring his sarcasm ] Oh, yeah. Well… didn’t end up panning out this year. Scheduling conflicts, you know?

Farkle, flatly: Tragic.

He closes his locker, curtly thanking her for the pity friendship. She tries to refute this take but Farkle is already walking away, snapping at her not to be late to rehearsal because he just wants to go home and go back to bed.

Farkle: Maybe then I’ll wake up from this nightmare.

INT. AAA - HALLWAY - DAY

Riley is with Maya, the latter opening her locker and glancing at her reflection in the mirror. She’s obsessively touching herself up, fixating on her appearance given that it’s one of the few things she can control.

Maya: This is a living nightmare.

Riley is distracted, finishing typing a text on her phone. She cheerfully confirms that she let her father know they would be late at school for rehearsal.

Maya: I didn’t realize we needed to give him a play-by-play? Does he want to know what I ate for lunch, too?

Riley: … it’s just common courtesy?

Maya rolls her eyes, obviously not in the mood for courtesy. The exchange makes one thing very clear, however, which is that Riley and Maya had very different upbringings. Whether this will make for them being good roommates, well, only time will tell…

As they begin walking to the auditorium, Riley gently suggests that Maya take it easy on Lucas. Like yeah, he’s not good, but he’s also not a performer. She could afford to cool it on how critical she’s being, and then maybe he’d be able to come around.

Maya: I don’t see him ever coming around. You need talent to do that.

Riley: Okay, but I’m just saying --

Maya: I’m not going easy on anyone, least of all Jackass Friar. And you know, Riley, I hate to say it, but it’s a little pathetic that you’re still out here defending him when he’s made it quite clear that he doesn’t care about anybody but himself.

Ouchie, Miss Maya. Riley absorbs the blow, letting Maya walk ahead of her and blinking off the daze of the hit. It’s obvious that Riley doesn’t believe that, but the more people continue to say it to her like she’s being an idiot…

She lets out a huff, jogging to catch up to Maya.

Asher, pre-lapping: So how goes rehearsal?

INT. AAA - HALLWAY - DAY

Lucas is at his locker, stuffing his bag into it unceremoniously. ASHER GARCIA watches with pity for the poor backpack receiving all his aggression, DYLAN ORLANDO standing behind him and leaning over his shoulder.

Lucas: God awful. You’re more than welcome to shoot me on sight, I would consider it a mercy kill.

Dylan claims that he’s totally jealous, because he wants to see Lucas pull off some sick moves. He shoots him a glare, obviously not in the mood to be complimented. Asher encourages him to keep his chin up, reminding him that it’s just another week and by the time they hit Friday it’ll be onto the next thing.

Lucas: And the next week, and the week after that… thanks Asher. That’s exactly what I needed, to remember that my torture in this circle of hell is continuous and cyclical.

Asher: [ rolling his eyes ] You know that’s not what I meant. Look, you’re doing exactly what Burgess told you to do, keeping your head low and falling into line --

Dylan, forlornly: God, this must be killing you.

[ Lucas makes a face at Dylan, accenting the point. Asher plows onward regardless, upholding his optimistic outlook. ]

Asher: And right now, that’s all you can do. But this too shall pass. You know, one day, we’re going to look back on how stressed we were about all of this stuff, and it’s gonna be hilarious because we’ll realize that none of it really mattered. What mattered was that we got through it, and we got through it together.

Even if Lucas isn’t convinced, Dylan is charmed by his boyfriend’s positive outlook. He smiles as he talks, leaning over to kiss him on the cheek when he finishes his thought. Then he follows up on the idea, pointing out that they thought the techie party was dead too and they managed to get through that. And it ended up being great in spite of the darker moments. So Asher is right.

A nice sentiment, but a confusing tidbit for Farkle to overhear as he passes through the hall. It seems like news to him considering what Isadora literally just said about the party being cancelled, but not like it’s any of his business. He keeps walking without comment.

Lucas is placated enough for now, nodding in acquiescence. He closes his locker, turning his focus to them and questioning how their rehearsal group is going.

INT. AAA - HALLWAY - DAY

CHARLIE GARDNER responds to the same question in lieu of Dylan and Asher. They’re by his locker, Zay leaning against the rows and listening attentively as Charlie laments his own group.

Charlie: Exhausting. I mean, don’t get me wrong, Nigel and Yindra are mega talented. And Yogi is… well, he brings a certain special something to the table.

Zay: Sure.

Charlie: But it’s just a lot, working in such a big group and trying to cooperate when there’s no clear leader. Not to mention how weird it is that they mixed up the performers and techies like this -- not that I’m like, a separatist or anything [ Zay snorts ] but it just seems like a complicated aspect to the assignment. And Asher and Dylan keep looking at me, like they’re expecting something out of me, and then when I catch them looking they immediately look in the complete opposite direction which is not subtle and just makes me way more freaked out.

Zay gives him a sympathetic smile, Charlie closing his locker pointedly.

Charlie: Suffice to say, I am grateful that we’re not bothering to rehearse any more today. I would rather do anything else.

Zay: Wish that were me. I’m gonna be stuck here for hours teaching Friar how to dance with two left boots.

Charlie: Yeah, good luck with that. You’re good, but you’re no miracle worker.

Zay scoffs in faux offense, causing Charlie to laugh. This earns an immediate smile from Zay, who then questions what his evening plans are. Charlie shrugs, admitting that he doesn’t have many before clearing his throat and growing a little more bashful.

Charlie: Although… some all-you-can-eat fries at my favorite diner might be a good way to destress…

Zay: [ raising his eyebrows playfully ] Yeah?

Charlie: Well, this guy I know gave me a coupon, so…

It’s a lowkey flirtatious conversation to be having in the middle of the hallway, and the way they’re looking at one another is not subtle. Nice growth, boys. Proud of you.

Zay states that he could probably make that work, given that they can’t possibly hang around and rehearse their pointless number forever. He’ll be sure to text him and let him know when he’s heading out, and he’ll come pick him up.

It’s a date, then. In theory. As the conversation wraps up and they promise to see each other later, Zay leans forward and almost gives Charlie a kiss on the cheek on instinct. It’s so natural between them that he almost doesn’t pull back… until he remembers they’re in public and he suddenly flinches away.

An awkward moment passes between them as they lock eyes, the realization sinking in again that this is what their relationship is. Wonderful in so many important ways, and then… that. Charlie recovers first, managing a smile and patting his shoulder. He reiterates that he’ll see him tonight, accenting the point with a nod.

The message is clear. It’s okay, we’re in love, just… not here. Zay struggles to return the smile, obviously stung by that unexpected reminder.

INT. AAA - AUDITORIUM - DAY

Maya and Riley arrive back in the auditorium first, not talking much given that the former is in queen bitch mode and Riley is still sort of stinging from her earlier commentary. Zay enters next, glued to his phone and not bothering to look up as he drifts over to join them by the portable speaker.

Farkle saunters his way in, glancing in their direction and making fleeting eye contact with Riley. He opts to sit alone, plopping down on one of the acting blocks. Lucas follows soon after, eyeing all of them without comment before heading to the opposite end of the stage and settling on the lip of the stage.

Isadora is the last to straggle through the wings, surveying the scene and contemplating where to go. Maya waves her over before getting lost in the sound system again, but Isadora can’t stop looking at Lucas sitting on his own and isolating himself from the rest of them. So she opts to head in his direction, sitting down next to him instead.

She makes a playful comment about how she’s impressed he actually showed up, and while it was innocent Lucas sort of takes it personally given how off their communication has been as of late and how he’s still bruised from Harper’s takedown of him earlier in the year. So he bites back, defending himself and commenting on the stupid assignment and how he’s just trying not to derail all of them although there’s no place he’d rather be less.

Isadora nods along, but she’s clearly not in the mood for his negativity. She apologizes, stating she should’ve just not said anything. Lucas recognizes she didn’t mean it, starting to say something to try and salvage the exchange when Zay claps his hands loudly.

Up and at em, then. Time to get this trainwreck back on the tracks. Five, six, seven, eight --

Song Cue ♫ ♪ “Revolting Children” as performed by Matilda Original Broadway Cast || Instrumental

If it’s possible, things are even worse than before as the hours pass and they run the routine over and over again. It all starts to run together, the motion blurring and overlapping. The soundtrack almost sounds like it’s skipping, repeating itself as they hypnotically repeat and screw up the choreography again and again.

Zay is clapping along aggressively with the track, counting out the beats and drenched in sweat by the time they’re on their dozenth or so run through. He’s less forgiving than usual after the weird moment with Charlie. But the fact of the matter is, Lucas isn’t going to get this choreography. It’s just not happening.

The point is made as much when he stumbles into Zay during another run, the latter growing aggravated and lightly pushing him away. This develops into a half-serious shoving match between the two of them, Isadora having to jump in between them.

Isadora: HONESTLY. COULD WE NOT?

Riley jogs to pause the music, the group of them instantly erupting into arguments. After a few opening shots are fired Farkle grows fed up, making his complaints for the first time all rehearsal. And boy, does he have a lot to say.

Farkle, bluntly: Here’s the read. [ to Maya ] You’re hogging the spotlight. [ to Lucas ] You’re in the way. [ to Zay ] You're so focused on the dancing, you’re off key. [ to Riley ] You're a pushover, now quite literally. [ to Isa ] And you picked this song, which I’m surmising has something to do with whatever internal baggage you’ve got going on right now, but it’s whiny and abrasive and yet still too difficult for Lucas. [ clapping his hands together ] So we're gonna fail! Buh-bye.

Farkle starts to walk away, but Maya grabs his attention again. Riley reaches out and takes his arm, tugging him back into the circle as he rolls his eyes.

Maya: If the song is too hard for you, we can pick another one that you might be able to manage. Maybe… the alphabet song? Twinkle, twinkle, little star?

Lucas, weary: Can we do a song where we just… stand still?

Farkle: Are you sure that’s what you want, Lucas James Friar? Are you sure you want your voice on display like that with nothing to distract the audience from the inhumane growling coming from your end of the stage?

Isadora: We’re doing “Revolting Children” and that’s the end of that. Last thing we need is to change our entire routine now.

Maya: That’s right. And you wanna know why she picked it, Farkle?

Farkle: Why’s that?

Maya: It reminds us of you.

Isadora: Don’t drag me into this shit, I just want us to work this out so we can get it over with.

As the group of them are bickering, Zay marches back to his duffle and begins packing up his things. Riley notices he’s parted from the group first, calling out for him and causing the rest of them to turn on him as he slings his back over his shoulder.

Maya: And where do you think you’re going?

Zay: Oh, me? I’m getting out of here. This is useless, I hate this... [ gesturing amongst them ] energy, and I have places and people I would much rather be with right now. So peace out, drop outs. I’m gone.

He starts his march out the doors through the house. Lucas gets in on the uptake, eagerly pointing to him and claiming that if he’s leaving, he’s so out too. The girls exchange looks before basically chasing the two of them out of the auditorium, shouting all the reasons why they can’t leave yet. Not when everything is such a mess!

INT. AAA - ATRIUM - NIGHT

Lucas has caught up to Zay, the two of them marching right for the doors while the girls jog after them and tell them to stop. The atrium is dimly lit, none of the natural light filtering in due to how it’s darkened to night outside.

Riley finally gets them to halt when they’re steps from the doors, pleading with them to just give it one more chance. It’s quite a comedically dramatic little scene. She says to think of their performance; Isadora begs them to think of their grades. Maya goes for the most blunt approach.

Maya: Think about not being a pain in the ass to the rest of us!

But Zay has had enough, and Lucas is more than ready to follow his exit. Zay gives them one last salute, backing into the doors and expecting to be able to push out into the night… only the door doesn’t budge. He hesitates, turning and trying again. Nothing. He pushes with all his might, but still it won’t open.

Lucas approaches and asks what he’s waiting for, and Zay defensively claims he’s doing everything he can. As they attempt to figure out what’s wrong with it, Riley saunters her way up to another door and looks through the glass windows to the scenery beyond them.

EXT. AAA - NIGHT

Easing out from Riley’s face in the window, we’re looking out towards New York in a winter wonderland. Snow is still falling, having coated the steps and iced around the doors. It’s sealed them in tight.

For all intents and purposes, the six of them are snowed in.

INT. AAA - ATRIUM - NIGHT

Isadora blankly states the realization just as it seems to hit Riley, the two of them locking eyes. As this bleak reality settles in, some are less receptive to the possibility than others.

Lucas: Oh, hell no. I’m not going to be stuck in here with you all.

A little ironic, given how much time Lucas voluntarily spends in the school overnight -- but understandable given the circumstances. He claims he’s going to push his way out anyway, gearing up to ram at the door with a lot more raw force than Zay…

Farkle: It’ll be your death by frostbite.

The rest of them turn as Farkle finally catches up, slinking casually into the space. He claims Lucas can try all he wants, but even if he manages to get the door open he’ll die of hypothermia walking home alone with nothing but his denim jacket for coverage. Especially in the dead of night. He goes on to plaintively list all the ways this terrain is guaranteed to kill him, the others listening and watching the two of them like a tennis match.

Farkle: But by all means, go ahead and try it. I certainly won’t stop you.

Lucas grits his teeth, glaring at Farkle. He glances back through the windows at escape so close but so out of reach… then definitively steps away from the doors.

Officially stuck. Trapped, if you will. A-wink.

INT. AAA - AUDITORIUM - NIGHT

The six of them are sprawled across the stage, laying on the ground and accepting their fates. It’s quite a fun cinematic shot. Farkle stares up at the lights and the catwalk above them -- they seem to stare back, unmoved. The whole auditorium is strange with a stillness we’ve never experienced before, usually so alive and bustling in the day time.

They’re very much moping, and there doesn’t seem to be anything to be done about it. Their conversation confirms that service is too spotty due to the notoriously bad reception in the auditorium combined with the storm. They can’t exactly call anyone to come help.

Zay: Well. We’re gonna die in here.

Isadora: Can’t think of another place I’d like to die least.

Maya: At least we’ll be missed.

Lucas: Maybe some of you.

Riley frowns, not a fan of the doom and gloom. Getting stuck on being stuck isn’t going to solve anything, and she’s always been a gal of action. She pushes herself to her feet, declaring that they’re going to be fine. They just have to think creatively.

This prompts the rest of them to slowly sit up, Riley leading the charge in brainstorming. First things first, the things they might need most immediately. Food. Hydration. Sustenance.

Farkle tilts his head back and forth, thinking. He half-heartedly suggests the teacher’s lounge, claiming they might be able find some salvageable food in there. Isadora seconds the idea, stating that they definitely have a microwave and refrigerator. There has to be stuff in there to work with -- not stuff that belongs to them, but better than nothing.

Zay: Sure, genius move. Only the teacher’s lounge is 100% locked. How the hell do you suggest we get inside?

A fair point… but perhaps not insurmountable. The group of them think on it… and slowly, all eyes turn to Lucas.

He lifts his head to see them all staring at him. After a moment, he rolls his eyes.

Lucas: Whatever.

INT. AAA - HALLWAY - DAY

Clunk! A canned beverage falls into the output port of a humming vending machine. Farkle reaches down and picks it up, tucking it under his arm.

He and Maya are on drink duty, painstakingly depositing spare change into the machine to procure beverages for their sad dinner party. It’s a… slow business, feeling even slower considering neither of them know what to say to one another. They haven’t spoken since Maya declared their chapter closed over a month ago, although both of them have evidently thought about it.

Maya is handling the money, at least giving her something to do. But Farkle is being unwittingly distracting, tapping his feet and exhaling through his lips. It clearly irritates the already moody Maya, causing her to snap.

Maya: Stop.

[ Farkle pauses. Silence prevails save for the clinking of coins and the operations of the machine… until he inevitably starts fidgeting again. ]

Maya: Could you stop?

[ He raises a hand in surrender, leaning down to pick up the next drink. More silence… but then once again… ]

Maya: How are you so annoying? Jesus…

Farkle doesn’t hold the same level of irritation towards her as she seems to him, and after another long moment of silence and another drink collected, he decides to try and explore the problem. He questions why she still seems so mad at him, given that most people have simmered down to general distaste or indifference at this point. Even more than that, she herself said she was done with him, so why is she still so upset?

Maya: … don’t flatter yourself.

Farkle: I’m just saying, you’re the only one still actively firing shots at me all the time. In spite of your own declaration that the chapter was closed.

Maya: Yeah, and?

Farkle shifts to leaning against the side of the machine, cradling his growing collection of drinks in his arms. He examines Maya as she continues to ignore him. Then, an attempt at vulnerability:

Farkle: I guess I understand it, actually. With everyone else, you know, it was… everyone else. What I did to you… revealing things that you trusted me with…

[ Maya closes her eyes, trying to keep her emotions in check. ]

Farkle, softly: That’s different. We were different --

Maya: God, Farkle, just stop!

Maya snaps, whipping to face him. She’s clearly operating on emotion when she lashes out again, stating that he can’t just do this. He can’t go all pathetic and vulnerable and expect her to feel bad and like him again. It’s not fair for him to play with her feelings like this. It’s not fair for him to have this kind of effect.

Farkle obviously doesn’t know what she’s talking about, operating with no ill intent. And for what it’s worth, it seems as though Maya is far more torn about what she should be feeling towards him than he is. She’s angry, sure, and she’s hurt, but there’s something else there that keeps the chapter from being closed… something that doesn’t want to let go…

Maya: You can’t keep doing this to me. I can’t keep doing this. Because it’s clear you only care about people when they’re operating in your favor --

Farkle: Maya --

Maya: And you know what, Farkle? You’re not God. You don’t control people, and you sure as hell can’t control me.

Maya drops the rest of the change onto the floor, scrambling to get away from him. She can’t be near him right now, when her emotions are so high and threatening to spill over.

Farkle watches her march off, before crouching down and robotically staring to pick up the change. As the angry guitar licks lead us in…

INT. AAA - HALLWAY - DAY

Song Cue ♫ ♪ “Playing God” as performed by Paramore || Performed by Maya Hart

Maya launches into this pop rock vent as she marches through the halls, running her hands through her hair and obviously struggling to deal with her emotions. The number progresses in a very Troy-Bolton-Scream capacity, Maya falling back against lockers and the room feeling as though it’s tilting as she fights to stay on her own two feet.

It’s a change of pace for the usually Broadway / pop classic diva, but in some ways it almost feels more authentic than anything we’ve heard from her yet. It’s raw and erratic, and the shift in genre reflects how conflicted she truly is over whatever her dynamic with Farkle is supposed to be. She keeps saying it’s closed, that she doesn’t want anything to do with him… and yet…

She stomps all through the familiar halls of AAA, until she drifts back towards home base…

INT. AAA - DRESSING ROOM HALL - NIGHT

Maya thrashes her way through the dressing room hall, blasting into the dressing room.

INT. AAA - GIRLS DRESSING ROOM - NIGHT

This is where Maya rounds out the emotional performance, chewing up the scenery of her safe space at AAA as she rails through the last chorus. When she hits the last notes and “points you to the mirror,” she looks at her own reflection. Overcome with emotion, flushed, but maybe not completely absent of blame in how this relationship has fallen apart.

Difficult to stomach, as the look on her face clearly indicates.

INT. AAA - CATWALK - NIGHT

Unprecedented ground for a performer to be trekking, Zay is climbing around in the rafters up on the catwalk as he desperately searches for service. His messages are open with Charlie, where we can see he has tried to send a couple of texts with no luck. He’s attempting to give him a heads up of what’s going on, rather than just standing him up.

His endeavor isn’t going well, despite how he stretches as far as he can and practically begs the universe to have mercy on him. For a moment, it seems as though he might get a bar… maybe just enough time to send this quick text --

Isadora: What are you doing?

Zay jumps, surprised at being addressed. He nearly drops his phone, scrambling back and cradling it against his chest. He glances down over the rail of the catwalk, Isadora peering up at him with a critical eyebrow quirked in his direction.

He manages to cover smoothly, stating that he’s merely attempting to find cell service so he can get them some help. Someone has to try and get them the hell out of here. Isadora points out that even if he could reach someone, no one is going to come to their rescue in this weather.

Zay: You’re just a cock-eyed optimist, aren’t you, Izzy?

Isadora shrugs. He’s welcome to waste his time if he wants to, she doesn’t care enough to argue the point. Once she’s left him alone and drifted off elsewhere, Zay leans against the railing and checks his phone.

Still no dice. He sighs, cursing to himself and heading back to the other end of the catwalk.

INT. AAA - HALLWAY - NIGHT

A quick series of shots show the process of breaking into the lounge -- practiced moves with a paperclip, jimmying the door handle, and a swift ID card through the crack in the door.

INT. AAA - TEACHER’S LOUNGE - NIGHT

The door slowly creaks open, Riley and Lucas poking their heads into the darkened teacher’s lounge. They exchange a brief look, Lucas pushing the door open more and leading the charge inside while Riley flicks on the lights.

The act of scavenging begins, Riley wisely starting with the cabinets and fridge while Lucas takes his time sorting through the rest of the faculty belongings. He digs through the drawers on the cabinets, finding a lighter, an assortment of utensils, and a lot of spare change. He pockets all of it casually, basically a certified kleptomaniac at this point.

Riley opens the fridge and begins sorting through unclaimed items, gathering them onto the counter or into her arms. Lucas approaches to take a look, Riley explaining her thought process about which ones they can swipe as he leans over her shoulder to observe.

It’s the closest they’ve been in months, that fact seeming to strike both of them in the midst of Riley’s reasoning. They glance at one another when the other isn’t looking, each subtle shift in their expressions worth a thousand words.

As Riley trails off and silence settles over them, Lucas hangs in the close proximity for a second longer before swallowing and nodding. He takes some of the frozen food from the counter and focuses on heating it up, crossing the room to the microwave and putting more distance between them again.

Riley takes a deep breath, collecting herself from the tension of the moment. Although it would be easy to go through the motions and continue on as they have been, when she glances over her shoulder to look at him she can’t keep quiet. She can’t pass up the opportunity to speak to him when she has no idea when she might get one again.

Riley: I’m just going to talk for a second, okay?

Lucas doesn’t respond, keeping his back to her. But he doesn’t tell her off either, which is better than an outright rejection. She can’t see his reactions as she speaks, but she works up the courage to say what she needs to say anyway.

Riley: You don’t have to listen, and I know you won’t believe me. But I never… I never meant to hurt you. [ a beat ] It wasn’t about pity for me.

Although she can’t see it, Lucas is in fact listening. He’s listening, and her words do hit him in a way he wasn’t expecting. Whether or not he believes it, just hearing her say it sands down some of his defensive sharp edges.

Riley starts to ramble, explaining that the whole video was projecting from Farkle’s perspective. She definitely didn’t sign off on anything he said, but that’s not what she cares about really anyway. She just really wanted him to know that when she chose to hang out with him, it was her choice. Just as she’s stammering over why she chose to do just that, Lucas interrupts her.

Lucas, timidly: We weren’t bad, were we?

Riley stops cold, honestly not even sure he actually spoke. He’s still not looking at her, so it’s a bit difficult to tell for certain. He clears his throat, searching for the words. His hands are shaking on the countertop, his voice delicate with uncertainty.

Lucas: I know we weren’t… [ shaking his head ] it wasn’t perfect, but…

She knows what he means. Riley can’t help but smile, but there’s an ache to it, too. Everything about it aches.

Riley, softly: We were good.

The sentiment hangs in the air between them. Comforting, even if everything else remains uncertain. Lucas lets it sink in, nodding and swallowing hard. Clearly grappling with a lot of emotion, even if Riley can’t see it.

Then he clears his throat again, grabbing the finished food and giving Riley rushed instructions on how they should handle the rest. He makes his escape, brushing past her and disappearing out into the hallway without another word.

Riley watches him go, inhaling another shaky breath. She makes her way over to the microwave, trying to follow through on his directions and shake off the tension that consumed the room.

But she can’t escape it. She drops the food container back on the counter, closing her eyes and composing herself again. When she looks over her shoulder at where he left, her eyes are shining with unspoken emotion.

Song Cue ♫ ♪ “Close To You” as performed by Rihanna || Performed by Riley Matthews

Riley’s rendition of this soft, gentle song is hauntingly beautiful, and the lyrics truly do say it all. It’s obviously growing increasingly more difficult to straddle this line that’s been drawn between them, even though she knows he’s more than capable of being fine without her.

She wanders over to the door to the teacher’s lounge, almost leaving but then leaning back against it instead. Panning just a little bit through the wall, we see that Lucas hasn’t gone all that far -- he’s just outside the doors, trying to catch his breath and mirroring her emotion. Just a wall separating them, as there seems to be emotionally as well.

INT. AAA - HALLWAY - NIGHT

As the song progresses, Riley meanders her way through the halls with all the space and freedom to take her time given that there’s no one else around. As we make our way back to the auditorium…

INT. AAA - AUDITORIUM - NIGHT

Similar visuals of Riley and Lucas pepper the remainder of the sequence, instances where they’re just out of reach of one another -- separated by curtains, on opposite sides of a set piece, etc.

As the piano carries through to the end, Riley mindlessly wanders her way through the house seats… until she finds herself standing outside the technician’s booth door. Because of course that’s where she’d end up.

Riley slides down in front of it, sitting outside the door and tilting her head back against the wood. Locked out, in more ways than one.

She closes her eyes as the gentle notes on the piano take us home…

INT. AAA - AUDITORIUM - NIGHT

Supper time! The six are assembled on the floor behind the center section, cramped there with the back section to the booth looming behind them. It’s not the most comfortable set-up, Farkle opting to slouch in one of the auditorium seats in the back center section instead of the ground.

Isadora looks at her microwave meal with distaste, but opts to complain about something else. Namely, the fact that they’re cramped there to eat when they could easily eat on the stage and spread out a little bit. Riley coughs at Zay and Maya, but the latter defends their stance.

Maya: Sorry, but the stage is not meant to be eaten on like a common kitchen table.

Lucas, deadpan: Not meant to be defiled either, but y’all do that every week when you basically pee on it to claim your territory.

This earns a reaction or two, Riley choking on her food and covering her mouth -- and potentially a giggle. Isadora chuckles, chewing her food with a smirk. Zay rolls his eyes, Maya even more disgusted.

Maya: Oh, please.

Lucas: No, really. Now that Farkle has stopped giving a shit for attention, you’re the new one stomping all over people in your psychopathic climb to the top.

Maya, sarcastically: Whew, ouchie! That really hurt! I’ll remember that twenty years from now when I’m touring Madison Square Garden and you’re in prison.

This devolves into another argument, this time zeroing in on everyone’s attitudes. There’s a jab from Zay about Farkle’s pathetic woe-is-me routine, and Lucas ends up slighting Isadora when he responds to another criticism by highlighting her near split personality at this point considering she’s torn between two different realities.

Riley steps in to try and defend Isadora, and even give Lucas back some credit, but that only sets her up to be the next target. Maya hits her with “and there she goes again,” and even Zay incidentally jumps on the bandwagon when he agrees it’s pretty stupid to try and defend Lucas…

In front of Lucas. He glances at Riley, who looks like she wants to die of embarrassment.

All of this leads up to Maya finally taking a direct shot at Lucas, saying what apparently everyone has been thinking -- that he very clearly doesn’t care about anything or anyone but himself. This seems to light a fuse, and suddenly Lucas unexpectedly snaps.

Lucas: I don’t care? [ viciously ] I wish I didn’t care!

Song Cue ♫ ♪ “Untitled Free Verse” || Performed by Lucas James Friar

Less of a song and more of an experience, all of the oxygen seems to get sucked out of the room as Lucas finally, finally cracks. The rest of them freeze as focus directs solely to Lucas, who launches into a frenzied, unfiltered rant. It’s reminiscent of Alexander Hamilton’s free verse in “The World Was Wide Enough,” moments before the bullet hits him that ends his life.

For Lucas, it’s not going to be a bullet wound that takes him out but the sheer weight of everything he’s feeling. It’s practically slam poetry as he attempts to sort through all these emotions that he can’t grapple with, coming out as a blistering display of blunt vulnerability.

Because it’s not just Farkle’s stupid rant video, it’s not the senseless drama of AAA. It’s everything. It’s the booth being taken from him, it’s the fact that he has to rely on the booth in the first place. It’s his parents being shit parents, it’s him being a shit son. It’s Dylan and Asher and how they love him, even though he kind of wishes they would hate him instead so he could leave them alone. It’s being an inevitable disappointment to Jack, it’s the detestable desire for Riley. It’s Isadora and her talent taking her over; it’s having no fucking talent at all.

It’s all of that that is spilling out of him like an open wound, stammered and out of breath and glossy-eyed. All these things he wishes he didn’t, tries desperately not to care about, but yet still does. He cares, he cares too much, and it’s gonna suffocate him. It’s all he can do not to burn everything down with him, so it’s easier to pretend none of it matters. Because he doesn’t matter -- God knows he doesn’t matter -- so why should anything else? It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter! It doesn’t matter --

Just as the scene becomes so claustrophobic and feels like it’s going to implode -- there’s a click and suddenly it flattens out again. Lucas isn’t standing in the center of the circle but is back where he was sitting earlier, having not made any moves at all. His expression is blank, Maya snapping him out of it when she grabs his attention.

Maya: Well? Aren’t you going to say anything, Jackass?

Whatever we all just heard, they certainly didn’t. It was all in his imagination, still threatening to suffocate him. But despite everything he obviously needs to say, Lucas merely grits his teeth and forces a sardonic smile.

Lucas: Nothing that matters.

Despite what remains unsaid, that pressure is leaking off of him like lighter fluid. Riley can’t take the tension, searching for a change of subject and perhaps a way to get away from them for a bit considering how Zay and Maya effectively embarrassed her. She declares that they need to shift gears and focus on something else. Something fun to lighten the mood.

Isadora, flatly: Oh, this isn’t fun for you? I’m having the time of my life.

Sarcasm aside, Zay agrees with an encouraging nod. Doing something a little less stressful might keep them all from killing each other before morning.

Farkle: We were just eating…

Riley gets to her feet and paces, lighting up with an idea. Considering her uncle is basically the ambassador of non-stressful activities at this school, perhaps he’ll have something in his office that will offer a little reprieve. She jogs to her backpack, unzipping the front pocket and retrieving a spare key to his office.

Isadora: You’ve had that the entire time?

Riley tilts her head, handing the key to Isadora and placing it definitively in her palm. She assigns the task to her and Farkle, sending them on their way to go searching while they all scour in here.

They disband, off on another mission. At least it’s something to do. Farkle and Isadora exchange a look, wearing somewhat matching expressions of resignation.

INT. AAA - COSTUME LOFT - NIGHT

Zay is back to searching for a signal, up in the costume loft for some height as he wanders the space. He carefully climbs onto one of the costume racks, actually managing to get a couple of bars. He reacts in excitement, going to Charlie’s contact and hitting call.

INT. GARDNER HOME - CHARLIE’S BEDROOM - NIGHT

Charlie is doing homework on his bed, seemingly not in that great of a mood. Considering he thinks he just got stood up by his boyfriend, the gloom makes sense.

He jumps when his phone rings, crawling forward to grab it from the end of the bed. He obviously seems relieved to see it’s Zay, but he pulls back on the emotion and tries to exude something more aloof as he answers the call.

Charlie: You know, being late isn’t a heavenly sin, but not showing up at all…

INT. AAA - COSTUME LOFT - NIGHT

The ensuing conversation is split between the two locations, Zay exhaling in relief and attempting to maintain his balance and keep the signal. He starts to explain what happened and assuage Charlie’s concerns and indignation, but the connection isn’t great and he keeps breaking up. Charlie tries to tell him as much, growing more confused than frustrated, but Zay isn’t even really getting his replies.

Then, the real kicker -- Zay’s phone dies midcall. When he checks to confirm this grim reality, he loses his balance and falls off the rack, collapsing into a pile of costumes. Charlie says his name a couple of times in concern, pulling back from his phone to confirm that he did actually hang up out of nowhere. What the hell?

So close, only to be thwarted. Zay growls in frustration and then grabs a costume piece, using it to stifle his scream of frustration. Then he sits up, taking a deep breath and pulling himself back together as he heads back down the step ladder.

INT. AAA - AUDITORIUM - NIGHT

Maya is glued to her own phone, mindlessly flipping back and forth on the home screens since there’s nothing else to do. Riley marches over to where she’s seated in the back section and demands her attention. She musters up her nerve before stating that she doesn’t care for the way Maya has been constantly dismissing her. Regardless of her intentions by doing it, Riley is more than capable of making her own choices and doesn’t need her approval.

Maya claims she’s just looking out for her. She simply isn’t impressed by her decision to stand by Lucas for any reason -- the man himself currently in the background, climbing around on the leftover set pieces from Into the Woods and looking for a place to perch and be left alone. But as Riley points out, that’s none of Maya’s business. Whether or not it’s stupid, the choice belongs to Riley and all Maya needs to do is respect it.

Riley: If you and I are going to share a living space, we are going to have to start respecting one another as more than just performers.

Definite food for thought. Maya absorbs this, the challenge lingering between them when Zay approaches to disrupt the confrontation. He asks if either of them has a charger he can borrow.

Riley nods and digs through her bag to grab hers. Maya questions why Zay has been so desperate to find a signal all evening, seeing as the rest of them have given up. Who could he possibly be trying to reach so badly? He once again claims he’s just trying to get help, but she retorts that it’s far too late for that and they’re stuck until morning at this point no matter what.

Maya then starts brainstorming out loud, puzzling over who else Zayby could possibly be trying to contact. Someone… special, perhaps? This excites Riley as she returns with the charger, immediately jumping on the notion with delight. Romance, now there’s something to lighten the mood!

Riley: I can’t believe it. I can’t believe you could have a significant other and not tell me about them.

Zay: [ with an incredulous scoff ] Who said I did?

Despite his lack of confirmation, Riley and Maya latch onto this theory and start eagerly trying to guess who it could possibly be. Not Yindra, Maya would have definitely heard about that. Nigel? No, he’s too deep in his serious artiste phase right now… Zay keeps shooting them down but they’re practically giddy with interest. Come on, Zay, tell us! Tell!

Obviously, Zay isn’t going to say a word about Charlie. But he can tell they aren’t letting up any time soon, so he’s got to give them something. Defending his boyfriend’s privacy and non-present honor, he decides to give them something to tide them over -- which is to say, absolutely nothing real at all.

Song Cue ♫ ♪ “Particular Taste” as performed by Shawn Mendes || Performed by Zay Babineaux

Zay launches into this boppy pop tune, basically building a fake significant other for Maya and Riley to daydream about as a distraction. The three of them get into the groove of it, dancing around the auditorium while Zay sings about the eccentricities of his mystery lover.

When they make their way onto the stage around the second verse, he makes a point of poking at Lucas sitting up in one of the leftover trees a la Troy Bolton in High School Musical. He swats irritably at him, Zay grinning and ducking around to the other side of the set.

Although most of the details in the lyrics are made up, not all of it is entirely fictional. Zay’s expression is what acts as a giveaway, becoming more thoughtful or smitten on phrases that could most certainly apply to Charlie. It’s glimmers of truth hidden within the facade, ones that Maya and Riley don’t notice as they jam on the stage with him.

The best example of a lapse in the charade comes at the bridge. Zay seems more than a little lost in a memory as he soulfully sings about fingers in hair and knowing exactly what you want, before snapping himself out of it and launching into the last verse.

It’s the most energized fun they’ll have while trapped against their will, so might as well enjoy it. Riley, Zay, and Maya descend into laughter as they wrap the number, Zay taking a bow and waving them off with a “thank you, thank you.”

INT. AAA - ERIC’S OFFICE - NIGHT

The door creaks open, Isadora stepping inside before opening it wider for Farkle to enter. She turns on the lights and gets to searching, but Farkle hangs back in the doorway. He seems tentative to enter, reluctant to cross the threshold.

Isadora starts digging through shelves, looking for where Eric might hide fun activities.

Isadora: Feels weird, being in here without him.

Farkle: Feels weird being in here regardless.

Isadora tosses him a look, message clear from her expression. Okay, edgelord.

Isadora: Are you gonna help, or are you just going to stand there?

That seems to startle him out of his fugue. He steps inside, cracking the door closed behind him and settling into searching as well.

As they start gathering things to take -- not many offerings, unfortunately -- Isadora contemplates another topic of conversation. It doesn’t have the smoothest of starts, considering both of them are terrible at communication.

Isadora: I’m not trying to pity converse with you --

Farkle: Oh, sure. Totally. The queen of the techies wants to befriend the freefalling Icarus of the performers, someone she so strongly dislikes she once referred to him as “the spoiled produce of people.” Or, alternatively, described interacting with him like “stepping on a LEGO brick without shoes.”

Isadora: … well, you deserved those things. At the time. [ off his eye roll ] But, well, things change.

Farkle, blankly: Sure do.

Isadora eyes him curiously. Something about his plain response is so… off. So unlike Farkle X. Minkus, the Icarus of the performers. She settles on the floor across from him, slouching back against the desk.

Isadora: Honestly, I’m not even sure “queen of the techies” is an applicable title for me anymore. So I guess we’ve both fallen from grace.

Somehow, in spite of the conversation being painfully awkward, it hits on everything that is up in the air in their lives. Isadora’s struggle to join a new side of the school, Farkle’s increasing isolation, his odd behavior as of late…

He asks why she even bothered to try and make the change, wondering what she could possibly gain from joining the performer side of things. Isadora wonders why he would even ask considering performing is like his whole world -- something he’s seemed to have forgotten.

Farkle: I don’t know why you would even bother. Being a performer is hell.

Isadora: Isn’t that like… your entire reason for existing?

Farkle: [ a beat, blankly ] Well, yeah. Sure. But seems like you’d be having a lot more fun sticking with the techies.

When she gets him to elaborate, Farkle reluctantly admits -- without the exact words, of course -- that he’s always been jealous of the techie crew. Sure, they’re annoying and rude and constantly make their lives more difficult (Isadora: The feeling is mutual.), but they’re such a united front. They’re a team, and they tackle things collaboratively rather than having to knock one another down to succeed.

Not only that, they’re friends, which may as well be a miracle at this school. They support one another, they actually know one another, they have parties for God’s sake --

Isadora: Well, like I said, sometimes those things don’t last. We’re not nearly as perfect as we seem.

Farkle: … really? Are you sure?

Isadora asks him what he means, and Farkle innocently explains what he overheard between Lucas, Asher, and Dylan. He doesn’t mean to stir up trouble -- really, this time -- but as far as he could tell, there was definitely a celebration of some kind.

Isadora is obviously shocked to learn this. She curses under her breath, hitting her head back against the desk in lieu of actually dealing with her emotions in front of Farkle. Still, this is a big whammy to absorb, and she doesn’t do a great job of keeping it all sealed away.

Isadora: This fucking sucks! [ with a huff ] It’s like I’m back in freshman year, stuck in this mass of people who don’t know who I am. And I don’t have Lucas there to clear the way for me, because he doesn’t know who I am either. I’m on the outside looking in all over again. Like… fucking isolated.

Farkle: Tell me about it.

Oh. Huh. The two of them exchange a strange look, having a moment they didn’t expect to have. Farkle and Isadora have always considered themselves opposite ends of a spectrum, only suddenly they’re experiencing the same things. Perhaps, potentially, there is more in common between the two of them than they realized. And perhaps, there is a whole other side of their adversary to explore and understand that they have never even contemplated before.

There’s a weird heaviness to the realization, both of them looking away from one another and clearing their throats. Both suddenly very aware that there’s depth to the other person, and maybe they don’t really… hate one another. Not the actual person underneath the facade.

Isadora escapes by shifting her focus, climbing to her feet. She claims she has to go deal with this betrayal, grabbing the cushion off the chair across from Eric’s desk and pummeling it in her hands. She tucks the one from the other chair under her arm, marching towards the door.

Before she exits she pauses, doubling back and locking eyes with Farkle.

Isadora: Maybe Icarus and the Dethroned Queen could afford to hang out sometime. Just. Not when they’re locked in a pressure cooker doing the worst assignment on Earth.

Farkle: … yeah. Maybe.

Isadora: Now if you’ll excuse me. [ lifting the pillow ] I have to go kill my best friend.

Isadora storms out, leaving Farkle alone.

INT. AAA - AUDITORIUM - NIGHT

Maya and Zay are back on the stage again, arguing in low voices about the assignment and whether or not they’ll have to change everything. Lucas saunters past them, hovering uncertainly near the wings and trying to work up the courage to approach Riley.

Finally he does, subconsciously wringing his hands as he does so. She’s standing at the stage manager’s podium, idly flipping through a discarded copy of the Into the Woods libretto.

Lucas: … hey.

Riley lifts her head, staring at him. Not sure why he’s deemed to talk to her, maybe hoping it’s for a good reason, dreading it’s for worse. Mostly, she’s waiting for him to say something, which it seems as though he’s lost the ability to do.

He finds it again eventually. He clears his throat, torn between forcing himself to look at her and averting his eyes to the floor.

Lucas: I just wanted to, um -- what they were saying during dinner. About… [ quickly ] you know you don’t have to do that. You don’t have to keep defending me.

Riley: [ not moved ] I know I don’t have to. I don’t have to do anything.

Riley goes back to looking at the script. Lucas blinks, even more confused than before. He crosses his arms, considering just walking away but not able to let it go.

Lucas: I don’t get it. I don’t get why… why would you waste the effort? Especially when everyone is telling you not to.

Riley: Because I don’t let other people’s opinions form my own? [ a beat ] And because friends don’t need a reason. And just because… just because you decided we weren’t friends anymore because of something someone else said doesn’t mean I did. So.

The sentiment seems mindblowing to Lucas. He can’t wrap his head around it, having only ever understood the relationships in his life to be conditional. While he’s struggling to grasp it, Riley is clearly having an internal debate of her own. She looks up at the wall before turning to him, deciding to say her final piece.

Riley: I feel like I know who you are. I know who I wanted to be my friend and… [ changing direction ] I feel pretty confident that I know who he is. And if that person is who you really are, then it’s not effort to defend you. I will always believe in you.

[ Lucas is speechless. Riley powers through, sincerity shining through her gaze. ]

Riley: That’s not something I have to do, but… I don’t think I could do any differently.

They can’t look away from one another. It’s as if the whole world has frozen around them, and whether or not it’ll keep spinning depends on what Lucas says next. He’s clearly searching for what to say… if there’s anything to say at all…

But, of course, the world is not only the two of them.

Isadora: LUCAS JAMES FRIAR!

Lucas whips around just in time to see the cushion flying at him. He pushes Riley protectively behind him on instinct, covering his face as the pillow hits him in the torso. Isadora is marching across the stage, another cushion ready to fire.

Lucas: What the hell, Dora?

Maya and Zay jog over to Riley, pulling her away from the fray.

Riley: What’s happening?

Maya: Don’t know, but I’m not surprised.

Riley: Should we do something?

Zay: [ already pulling her away ] Go, run, go --

The three of them bolt, leaving Lucas and Isadora to have their great showdown. Lucas provokes her to tell him what the hell she’s going off about, to which she throws the revelation of the techie party.

Lucas, incredulous: That’s what you’re pissed about? Don’t throw shit at me, then, go after Asher and Dylan. You know I don’t do things for myself.

Isadora: And yet, nobody told me! So I guess you all just had a super great time without me, like you always do.

Lucas: Don’t turn this on us. Like you even fucking care, you’ve got a whole new crew to hang out with. That’s what you did, isn’t it?

Isadora: … don’t make this about what it isn’t --

Lucas: You were the one who brought it up. You don’t want to get real?

Isadora: Oh. Oh? You want to get real? Fine. You wanna tell me when you got the money to get those new boots? [ off his guilty expression ] No, seriously, I’d love to know. I know Grace and Kenneth didn’t get them for you --

Lucas, fiercely: Hey, shut up.

Their argument quickly escalates, but the fact of the matter is, they don’t get real. They keep jabbing at one another for the petty, annoying things they’ve done to each other in the last couple of months, rather than actually addressing the tension and distance forming in their relationship. Lucas takes a pointed dig and claims she’s becoming just like Valerie, and this offends Isadora. She fires back that she doesn’t want to abandon anyone, he’s the one who hasn’t been there for her at all this year. Friendship is a two-way street!

It’s more than clear -- something in their dynamic is in serious disrepair. Neither of them can articulate it, but boy, are the emotions from it loud and clear.

Song Cue ♫ ♪ “Defying Gravity” as performed by Wicked Original Broadway Cast || Performed by Isadora De La Cruz (feat. Lucas James Friar)

This argument segues perfectly into the opening fight of the Broadway showstopper, Isadora claiming that she hopes Lucas is happy that he’s ruined his life forever with his behavior. He fires back that he hopes she’s happy too, now that she’s submissive and a suck up and just like the rest of the performers “to feed her own ambition.”

Once the song settles into quiet before the actual number, Lucas tries to appeal to her one last time. He points out that she could still come back to the techies, and things could go back to normal. Things don’t have to change.

Isadora: I know… but I don’t want it. I can’t want it anymore.

This is what truly kicks off the number, Isadora taking the Elphaba role while Lucas jumps in on the Galinda beats -- trying to convince her she’s being delusional, to make her realize what she’s giving up, whereas Isadora instead feels like he wants an unfair compromise from her. She’s spreading her wings and trying to be something that feels closer to who she actually is -- can’t that be a good thing? Can’t he be happy for her?

As the number unfolds, Isadora drifts closer and closer to the lights on center stage, whereas Lucas symbolically stays tied to the shadows of the wings. Even as she gets close to moments of pulling him into the light, he shies away or turns the tables.

At the bridge, as they’re exchanging genuine “I hope you’re happy” sentiments, it’s clear that the two of them are not going to be able to bridge this divide they see built between them. As they sing the last harmony in the performance, they clasp hands, and it’s the most emotive the two of them have ever intentionally been with one another. When they wish each other happiness “in the end,” it’s clear that they really mean it.

Then, as the music swells, Isadora backs towards the lights again… and Lucas lets her go. Their hands slip apart, and Isadora stumbles right into the stage lights to deliver a commanding rendition of the remainder of the song.

The other four take the chorus parts, scattered within the house of the auditorium. In the last escalating chorus, Lucas watches from the shadows of the wings before turning away and disappearing into the shadows. Isadora belts out the final note with gusto, proving exactly why she needs to see this performing thing through to the end.

One just has to wonder, as Lucas walks away, if everything will be worth it in the end.

INT. AAA - PROP LOFT - NIGHT

Quiet has settled over the space as the group attempts to get some sleep. As we pan across the auditorium, we get glimpses of Maya, Zay, Isadora, and Lucas all trying to get as comfortable as possible in their chosen nooks so they can rest. Notably, they’re all a good distance away from one another.

Riley isn’t giving it much effort, knowing she’s not going to get restful sleep. She’s wandering around instead, just climbing her way up into the prop loft.

She doesn’t spend much time up there, but now she’s wondering if maybe she should. It’s neat, cozy, and has a calm air for being somewhat “above it all.” She gently handles props as she passes along the shelves, smiling at the peach-colored paper slips taped all over the place that detail Asher’s intensive procedure for keeping the place organized.

Riley stops at the back wall, sliding down into a seat against it amidst the shelves and tables of props. She tilts her head back, looking at the shelves to her left until her brow crinkles. She leans forward and pulls another piece of paper from the shelf, tucked inside one of the cubbies and only visible from where she’s sitting.

It’s plain white notebook paper, different than all of Asher’s reminders and notes. She unfolds it, finding Dylan’s big, messy scrawl instead.

Hi, Ash!

Remember to unclench your jaw, relax your shoulders, and breeeeathe. Also, you’re the best and I love you!

Love, Dyl

Although the message was not intended for her, Riley finds herself following the directives anyway. She can’t help but smile, relaxing her muscles before folding the note back up neatly and putting it back right where she found it. She isn’t sure whether it’s new, or if it’s been there for ages and Asher keeps it there simply to revisit it when he’s feeling exactly how she’s feeling right now. She could honestly believe either possibility.

It’s a nice reminder, that people can treat one another with warmth and kindness even in the face of so much uncertainty.

Farkle emerges from the step ladder, hesitating at the top. He looks to Riley and waits for permission of some kind to enter.

Farkle: Sorry we couldn’t find anything to do.

Riley: [ with a shrug ] We’re all gonna die in here anyway, so. I can’t pretend a board game would’ve fixed everything.

The actual conversation is as good an invitation as any. Farkle treads cautiously and joins her in the space, settling down into a seat against the shelves and propping his elbows on his knees.

Riley awkwardly fills the silence, lamenting the fact that students could even get stuck in the school. What procedures failed that led to them getting stuck in here anyway? And if they decide to close schools tomorrow, what then? She knows it’s unlikely given that New York hardly closes unless Hell is freezing over, but --

Farkle: I’m sorry you had to pay for it.

Farkle’s statement is abrupt, like it’s spilling out of him. Riley stops talking and looks at him, waiting to see if he’s going to clarify his outburst. He digs his nails into his knees, frowning at the ground as he tries to articulate it.

Farkle, shakily: For the video. The things I said. [ a beat ] I know what I did was stupid. Pure idiocy. And I don’t have an excuse. Even if I did, I hardly think it would matter. But I never meant for it get so out of control. I didn’t think everything would get so… I never thought everyone else would --

He swallows, clearing his throat. Riley waits patiently. Finally, he lifts his gaze to meet hers.

Farkle, timid: I didn’t mean to mess everything up for you. [ voice cracking ] I’m really sorry.

Riley can tell he’s being genuine. His nervous demeanor and glassy eyes make it hard to believe he could be flubbing his way through the apology. After a moment, she extends the only reassurance she thinks she has the power to give.

Riley: I forgive you.

It’s barely a dent in everything that’s gone wrong. It’s far from fixed. But it’s something, and that’s better than nothing. Farkle gives her a weak smile, dipping his head down again.

The two of them settle into the quiet.

INT. AAA - AUDITORIUM - DAY

Much like when they first learned they were trapped, the six are sprawled across the stage again. Backpacks are being used as pillows -- aside from Riley, who has her head on Zay’s torso. Lucas and Isadora are on opposite ends of the space. Their eyes are closed, but it’s evident none of them have gotten any actual rest.

Although there’s still plenty of tension, sleep deprivation and loss of fucks to give leads to Isadora asking some silly sleepover-esque question that causes everyone to shush her or groan. But they get into the discussion anyway, the conversation veering in a couple of comedic random directions before petering out again.

In the silence, Zay grows solemn. He pats Riley’s head affectionately, releasing a sigh.

Zay: Does any of this matter?

Maya: What do you mean?

Zay: Like… everything we’re doing. The things we’re stressing about right now. Assignments, rivalries --

Isadora: Party lines --

Farkle: Big mistakes --

Zay: The secrets… is any of it going to be worth it? In ten years, is any of this going to mean anything?

Riley: Are we even going to remember it?

Zay: Does it even matter?

The group ruminates on the big question, hanging over them like the winter storm. Lucas chimes in first, although he stays turned on his side away from the rest of them. His expression is melancholic, starting to crack his aloof facade due to lack of sleep and time alone.

Lucas: No. It doesn’t matter.

Zay: Big surprise from Mister Truancy.

Lucas: You asked. I’m telling you. We’re going to graduate -- or not -- and go our separate ways. Get jobs we don’t care about, lose touch with people we swore we never would, start relationships and get married because we’re supposed to. Then we’ll die, like everybody else.

Maya: You’re so fucking charming, you know that?

Riley jumps in, aiming to divert the discussion from becoming a scrap between Maya and Lucas. She asks what all of them think about that -- what happens after they die?

Riley: I mean, my parents always said… we were never really religious. But there has to be some sort of purpose to it all, right? If all of that is what we’re destined to do, then there has to be something later. It has to be leading to something.

Isadora: Heaven, you think. But that presumes there’s a God up there to impress.

Maya: [ with a snort ] Okay. Thanks, Charlie Gardner.

Zay: Hey, come on.

Lucas: There is no God.

Maya: Oh, wah, wah, wah --

Lucas: There isn’t. If there was, would he seriously let all this just happen? All this shitty stuff in the world, and he just lets it happen? [ a beat ] Some higher power.

Riley: I guess that depends on whether or not we deserve it.

Isadora: God has nothing to do with what happens. Humans have free will. We make those choices. Whatever happens, that’s on us.

For being surprisingly quiet through a majority of the conversation, Farkle wraps it up. His statement is genuine, catching all of them off-guard.

Farkle: Well, I hope you all would. Get into heaven.

This sinks in slowly, obviously impacting each of them differently. Lucas looks unconvinced. Riley and Zay are thoughtful. Isadora seems to be contemplating Farkle’s odd change of heart.

Maya is the most affected, obviously torn on how to take the sentiment -- wanting to believe it’s sincere, clearly wanting to absorb it, but also wanting to stick to her guns of being done with Farkle Minkus.

Zay breaks the meditative silence, letting out another declarative sigh and stating the obvious.

Zay: Afterlife aside, we can all agree this assignment is fucked, yeah?

Riley laughs, launching into uncontrollable, sleep-deprived giggles. The kind that are contagious, so then Isadora is breaking into chuckles. Hearing them laugh makes Lucas smile in spite of himself -- Zay starts laughing too. Then Maya, even Farkle. All of them are in delirious fits of laughter, but it’s the most any of them have laughed in ages. Least of all together.

For a moment, things feel better.

The prison sentence is interrupted when HARLEY KEINER enters with JACK HUNTER, the two of them coming in to check out how the auditorium is holding up before school officially opens for the morning. Jack is tired and holding his morning coffee, stunned when they walk out of the wings to find the six of them lazing around.

Jack: What on Earth are you all doing in here?

Sunlight! A savior from the outside! Maya is the first to jump to her feet, the rest of them getting up and scrambling up to escape. Jack tries to get them to explain what’s going on, and why it seems as though they’ve been here overnight. But they’re making bee lines for the exit, happy to get the hell away from one another. They breeze past him, Maya even yoinking his coffee with a quick thanks and flip of her hair.

Farkle is the last to leave, just sitting up at center stage while Jack tries to get his bearings on the situation. He blinks, spinning around.

Jack: What the hell happened in here?

Farkle: Don’t worry about it, Principal Hunter.

Farkle slowly gets to his feet, sauntering over to Jack. He gives him an exhausted smile, but it doesn’t reach his eyes.

Farkle, matter-of-factly: Everything is the same as it always is. Nothing is ever going to change.

Farkle heads out the dressing room hall, leaving Jack to ponder what terrible things must have unfolded in that auditorium overnight. He places his hands on his hips, looking around at the vast space. As the robotic, spacey tones of “Agnes” float in…

Song Cue ♫ ♪ “Agnes” as performed by Glass Animals || Performed by Farkle Minkus

Farkle meanders into the detached and dreamy conclusion to the episode, floating through the empty halls and singing at a rather monotone pitch. It’s a groovy track with some subtly dark undertones, the echoing refrain of “You’re gone but you’re on my mind / I’m lost but I don’t know why” feeling particularly heavy. On the lines “this time you overdid the liquor, this time you pulled the fucking trigger,” Farkle glances at his reflection in one of the classroom windows before pithily pretending to shoot himself with a finger gun.

INT. AAA - AUDITORIUM - DAY

Intercut with the performance, Farkle dances loosely at center stage in the dark, nothing but the ghost light illuminating a small circle of the stage. It’s the most free-wheeling Farkle has ever seemed dance wise, but there’s an uneasy quality to it too.

As the number comes to an end, Farkle ceases his dancing. He almost seems like a completely different person -- frumpy cardigan, hair a tangled mess, expression blank and devoid of any of his usual eccentricities as he stares out at the empty auditorium.

Then he walks off stage, only the ghost light breaking the swath of darkness until it flicks out.

END OF EPISODE.

[bbaba-yagaa]

It”s What You Deserve

Author's note 1 : This fic was written using the Valentine's day prompt "Let me love you" posted by @endlessly-searching-for-you and as requested by @queerchoicesblog

Author's note 2 : The idea for this little blurb is actually the love child of several different conversations that @brightpinkpeppercorn , @mind-reader1 , @roonarific and I had so they deserve equal credit here. They were very generous to let me run with this idea.

Summary : Our little braintrust feels that Michelle was always short changed or cheated in cannon so this is a brief AU blib/blurb centered around the NYE party at the Elysian (however it's spelled) Lodge in book 2 chapter 10 of ES.

Characters/Pairings : Many of the ES cast are briefly mentioned but this short story belongs to Quinn and Michelle 100%

Rating : PG? PG13? (Maybe? Idk, there's some brief suggestive stuff.)

Word count : 1,211 

Author's note 3 : I know it's not Valentine's day yet, but I'm feeling antsy and I wanted to post this early. Also, I do not own these characters, i am simply borrowing them.

Tagging : @sceptilemasterr (if you don't want to be tagged or would like to be tagged in future fics, feel free to let me know and I will happily add/remove you!)

One last thing : @brightpinkpeppercorn made an edit for me and I'm adding it to this because it's amazing just like her and I love it!

***********

Michelle Nguyen watches in wide eyed wonder as Quinn Kelly descends the staircase of the Elysian lodge with an otherworldly grace. Several mouths hang slightly agape at the radiance that seems to cascade down the steps along with her. Jake, Estela and Sean reach the landing of the stairs and they disperse to mingle with the rest of the group. When the redheaded goddess reaches the landing herself, Michelle is fully enraptured; unable to take her eyes off the elegant blue dress and pale skinned, slender framed beauty wearing it.

Quinn's sparkling blue eyes meet Michelle's adoring gaze amidst the commotion and the two young women quietly gravitate towards each other. The two of them exchange timid smiles as their cheeks redden ever so slightly in one another's company.

“Hi, Meech. What do you think?” Quinn's voice comes out as a breathy whisper that sends a wave of desire running through Michelle's body.

The pre-med finds herself lost for words while tentatively brushing a loose tendril of her companions hair aside with a tentative hand. “I don't even know where to start, Quinn. You look angelic; divine even.”

The beautiful redhead beams brightly at Michelle who doesn't seem to realize her mouth is slightly agape. “Thank you. But I think you're forgetting something.”

“Oh, and what's that?” Michelle cocks a playful, curious eyebrow at Quinn who takes her hand and gently squeezes it.

“You're forgetting about yourself! I found something upstairs I think you'll like. I can help you try it on if you want. Maybe we could even do your hair?” Quinn interlaces her fingers with Michelle's and nods toward the staircase: her luscious red hair bouncing elegantly in it's gorgeous updo.

For a brief moment, Michelle hesitates and debates internally with herself whether or not she deserves such kindness. But her amber eyes shimmer with appreciation when she relents, nods in acceptance and allows Quinn to guide her up the red carpeted stairs.

When the two young women reach the entrance to the aforementioned suite, Quinn positions herself behind Michelle and places gentle hands on her companion’ shoulders.

“Promise not to peek?” The redhead's soft words send yet another set of chills throughout Michelle's body as she nods, enthusiastically answering Quinn's question.

With her eyes tightly shut, the pre-med allows herself to be led until Quinn brings her to a gentle halt.

“Are you ready?” The redheaded beauty squeezes Michelle's shoulders excitedly in anticipation of her companion’s reaction.

The young pre-med feels as though she is about to burst from the amount of hype Quinn has built up. She takes a slow, deep breath in an attempt to retain control. “Yes, I'm ready! Can I open my eyes now?”

“Yes you may.” An ear to ear grin forms on Quinn's face as Michelle opens her eyes and all but melts onto the bed which the surprise is laid.

The pre-med runs her fingers tenderly along the silky smooth material of a rosy pink colored, high low halter top dress. Crochet roses line the upper segment and the lower half of the dress is completely smooth. The knee height hem appears to levitate, like a halo around the bottom of the dress; separated by a thin, transparent mesh. Tears of joy begin to cloud Michelle's vision as she wraps Quinn in a grateful embrace.

“It's beautiful Quinn. Thank you, really. I can't remember anyone ever doing something so nice for me.” Michelle pulls back to meet the scarlet haired beauty's gaze as she passionately brushes her lips against Quinn's.

“Of course! It's what you deserve Meech.” The two share a heated moment of desire as their lips meet again and again. “Now are we going to sit here and admire it all night, or will you let me love you?”

Quinn's question echoes in Michelle's mind and the young pre-med raises a curious eyebrow at her. “Let you love me?”

“Yes. I'll give you everything you deserve and more. Over there on the nightstand, I laid out some gold jewelry we found. There are some dainty, layered hoop earrings, a few bracelets and necklaces and I have a really cute idea for your hair. Also…” Quinn pauses and runs her hands along the contours of Michelle's arms before continuing. “I'd like to be your date to the festivities if you'll have me.”

Michelle all but dives into Quinn's arms; capturing the beautiful redhead in an emotional embrace. “Yes. Of course yes. I can't think of a single thing that would make me happier, Quinn.”

The young pre-med releases her companion and scoops up the rosy pink dress and walks over to the nightstand. She carefully selects a few trinkets and heads for the suite's restroom. Pausing just before she enters, Michelle looks back over her shoulder and gives Quinn a coy look. “Help me get dressed?”

The scarlet haired beauty places both hands on her own hips and returns Michelle's challenge. “Are you asking me to undress you?”

An enthusiastic nod from the young pre-med before she enters the restroom entices Quinn to follow her companion. Once inside, the two close and lock the door for privacy while they prepare for the party.

*******

A little while later, Michelle and Quinn reappear at the top of the staircase and are met with thunderous applause. Together, the two of them are an absolutely dazzling sight. The rosy pink dress selected for Michelle compliments everything about her perfectly. Several dainty gold bracelets, a necklace and the layered hoop earrings she chose, add to the magnificence. Her voluminous, dirty blonde hair is now swept into a high arc above her forehead and pulled into a loose bun at the nape of her neck. The two gorgeous young women share a triumphant and loving look before they descend the stairs hand in hand with their fingers interlaced.

After being showered with compliments and soaking in all the bedazzled looks, Michelle leads Quinn over to the parlor and takes a seat on the piano bench while holding her companion’s hands. While the two of them discuss who is more beautiful than the other, Aleister quietly saunters over and stands nearby. He clears his throat politely to gain their audience.

“Firstly, the two of you look absolutely astonishing tonight and I don't mean to impose. I just thought I might play the piano if you don't mind.”

Quinn and Michelle smile at the pale young man's unusual courtesy, thank him for the compliment and happily move aside to grant him access to the piano. After nodding thankfully, he takes a seat and begins to strum a tune. Michelle's amber eyes light up in amazement at Aleister's beautiful playing and an idea presents itself to her. She gives Quinn’s hand a gentle squeeze before turning to whisper something in the pianist's ear. While continuing to play his piece, Aleister's face lights up with excitement and he nods enthusiastically at Michelle. The notes coming from the piano change swiftly and the beautiful young pre-med turns to her scarlet haired companion.

“This one's for you Quinn.” Michelle clears her throat and begins to sing to the beautiful tune Aleister creates. Quinn leans against the piano and rests her chin on folded hands while soaking in the performance of the duet.

[eclisseacontextforfilm]

why should we be here talking, arguing? Believe me Anna, words are becoming less and less necessary; they create misunderstandings

eclisse inspirations, vol. IV Michelangelo Antonioni’s Trilogy of incommunicability  part. 1 - L’avventura, 1960

When Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’avventura arrived in 1960 – amidst a tumultuous reception in Cannes that saw some disturbed audience members wanting to throw something at the screen – cinema was already changing in fundamental ways. The makers of individual, handmade films that had been institutionally kept out on the fringes (Stan Brakhage, Shirley Clarke, Norman McLaren, to name but three) were starting to draw more viewers and critical attention. The narrative feature film underwent a revision, from inside the nouvelle vague (Godard’s Breathless) and out (Agnès Varda’s first films, Alain Resnais’s Last Year in Marienbad). Meanwhile the Italian film world had already seen the old codes of neorealism swept away – much of it Antonioni’s own doing – and had moved towards a post-neorealist cinema liberated from melodrama and political ideologies, perhaps best exemplified in 1959 by Ermanno Olmi’s first feature Time Stood Still.

A new, maturing modernity became widespread in cinema. The years 1959 to 1960 can be identified as a world-historical moment for film. In line with the development of lenses, film stocks and new and smaller cameras (including a more ubiquitous use of 16mm), the modernism that took hold showed yet again the time lag after which cinema typically comes to embrace changes that have occurred first in other artforms: for instance, the radical overhaul of jazz by bebop; the transformation of the sound world of music by such figures as Edgard Varèse and Harry Partch; the abstract-expressionist movement in painting from Pollock to Rothko; the ‘new novel’ invading literature (on which Marienbaddrew, courtesy of a script by novelist Alain Robbe-Grillet).

In this exceptional moment, some of cinema’s old props were being kicked away, including Hollywood’s genre formulae, the three-act narrative structure, the privileging of psychology, the insistence on happy and ‘closed’ endings. But what did it mean to free oneself of the securing laws and traditions of genre, its capacity for creating worlds and codes? What did it mean to reject a storytelling architecture that had served dramatists well since Aeschylus? What kind of moving-image experience with actors could exist beyond psychology – which, after all, was still on the 20th century’s new frontier of science and society? What if endings were less conclusive, or less ‘satisfying’? These are the questions Antonioni confronted and responded to with L’avventura, the film that – more than any other at that moment – redefined the landscape of the artform, and mapped a new path that still influences today’s most venturesome and radical young filmmakers.

For some that film would instead be Breathless. Godard’s accidental discovery of the jump cut (courtesy of his editor) helped him rejig a more conventional yet sly imagining of the crime movie into a piece of radical art, a way of fracturing time as important as Picasso’s and Braque’s Cubist fracturing of space and perception. It’s also arguable that Godard had the more immediate impact, especially through the 1960s, since his taste for pop-culture iconography, graphic wordplay and politics positioned him a bit closer to the centre of the period’s cultural zeitgeist than Antonioni (despite the Italian’s subsequent ability to capture swinging London and The Yardbirds in 1966’s Blowup, and Los Angeles counterculture in 1970’s Zabriskie Point). Even a movie with huge pop figures and crossover attraction like Richard Lester’s A Hard Day’s Night (1964) would have been unthinkable without the example of Godard.

Yet I’d argue that L’avventura and Antonioni’s subsequent films – perhaps most importantly L’eclisse (The Eclipse, 1962) – have exerted a greater long-term impact (his effect on the generations after the 1960s is something I’ll consider later). One of L’avventura’s many remarkable qualities to note now is its staying power – its ability to astonish anew after repeated viewings. Many great films are of their moment, yet lessen over time. Here, the entrance of Monica Vitti, with her classically hip black dress and sexily tousled blonde mane, amounts to an announcement that the 60s have arrived; a lesser work with her in it would be no more than a key identifier of that moment.

It’s the film’s subtle straddling of an older world and a new one still in the process of defining itself – reflected immediately and perfectly in composer Giovanni Fusco’s opening title theme, alternating between nostalgic Sicilian strummings and nervous, creeping percussive beats – that establishes its rich, unending landscapes of physical reality and the mind. This is part of the film’s timelessness, within an absolutely contemporary / modern setting. The early images of L’avventura trace a parting of the generations, as Anna (Lea Massari) – seemingly the film’s central character – tells her wealthy Roman father that she’s going away on a holiday to Sicily with girlfriend Claudia (Vitti), then seen very much on the periphery of the action, tagging along. But after Anna inexplicably disappears during a boat trip to an uninhabited island, it is Claudia who moves to the centre of the narrative – and into the affections of Anna’s architect boyfriend Sandro (Gabriele Ferzetti) – as attempts to find Anna gradually peter out.

What makes L’avventura the greatest of all films, however, is its assertion, exploration and expansion of the concept of the ‘open film’. This had been Antonioni’s great project ever since he started out as a filmmaker after an extremely interesting career as a critic (like Godard). His early documentaries, such as The People of the Po (Gente del Po, 1947), and his earliest narrative films, such as the astonishing Story of a Love Affair (Cronaca di un amore, 1950), suggest an artist pulling against what he perceived as the constraints of neorealism towards an openness based on a heightened perception of constant change – a dynamic that was for him the fundamental quality of the post-war world.

A NEW QUESTION

For Antonioni, the issues of neorealism were essential, in that they gave him an aesthetic base from which to launch. The People of the Po is an early neorealist work, both in its submersion in unvarnished realism and its interest in the lives of working people, but it also works against the predominant tendency in neorealism to project sympathy and sentimentality. By the time of Story of a Love Affair, teeming with characters from the upper and middle classes, his was not a class-based cinema; it offered instead a broader perspective – observant, distanced, occasionally unsympathetic. It reached into a more modern realm than neo-realism, a realm that had no name for it – and in fact still doesn’t.

Antonioni was never a leader – nor even part – of a movement. That’s partly because with each successive film he constantly redefined his approach. Roland Barthes, in his profoundly perceptive and concise 1980 speech honouring Antonioni, identified the process this way: “It is because you are an artist that your work is open to the Modern. Many people take the Modern to be a standard to be raised in battle against the old world and its compromised values; but for you the Modern is not the static term of a facile opposition; the Modern is on the contrary an active difficulty in following the changes of Time, not just at the level of grand History but at that of the little History of which each of us is individually the measure. Beginning in the aftermath of the last war, your work has thus proceeded, from moment to moment, in a movement of double vigilance, towards the contemporary world and towards yourself. Each of your films has been, at your personal level, a historical experience, that is to say the abandonment of an old problem and the formulation of a new question; this means that you have lived through and treated the history of the last 30 years with subtlety, not as the matter of an artistic reflection or an ideological mission, but as a substance whose magnetism it was your task to capture from work to work.”

L’avventura builds on the work and experiences of Antonioni’s previous decade, which saw him working through his doubts about genre (film noir in Story of a Love Affair, backstage drama in La signora senza camelie, 1953); about narrative form (the counter-intuitive three-part structure of I vinti, 1952); his love of writer Cesare Pavese (author of the source novel for 1955’s Le amiche) – as important a literary voice to Antonioni as Cesare Zavattini was to the hardcore neorealists. And add to this his growing interest in temporality, the emptied-out frame, the composition that maintains both precision and an expansive gaze that treats bodies, buildings and landscapes with equal importance.

With only a few filmmakers (Mizoguchi, Renoir, Dreyer, von Sternberg, Resnais, Olmi, Kubrick, and more recently Costa, Alonso and Apichatpong) is there such a visible, constant seeking of artistic purpose through the process of each successive film – a striving, a refinement. Antonioni’s 1950s work represents one of the most fruitful directorial decades to watch of any filmmaker. Already in some ways a master in 1950, he proceeded to question his own positions with each film, as if the doubts he had about the state of the post-war world resided, originally, in himself, and then fanned out to the making of the work itself, so that the expression of mortality (most explicitly conveyed in a Pavese adaptation such as Le amiche) inside the film was part and parcel of the director’s own tentative stance. (Tentato suicido/Tentative Suicide is the title of Antonioni’s segment in the 1953 omnibus film L’amore in città.)

These were not only cerebral matters – though the intellectual currents running underneath these films and under the neorealist movement preceding them were crucial to their fecundity – but real concerns rooted in the hard factors that faced any Italian filmmaker trying to get a project off the ground. Antonioni’s tentativeness – a constant fascination to his supporters in the French critical community, and an irritation to many of his Italian contemporaries – was partly based on the tentativeness of Italian film production itself. In almost no case during the 1950s did he encounter a smooth pre-production, firm financial backing or drama-free production periods. The typically poor performance of his films at the box office did little to enamour him to distributors and producers, though in the then nascent world of the auteur film business, it helped enormously that his films did well – even smashingly well – in Paris.

After the commercial failure of Il grido (1957) and an initially limp critical response, Antonioni seriously considered abandoning the cinema altogether, and returned to the theatre, where he had worked in the early years of his career. Even when he did come back to film, to shoot L’avventura, all of his worst concerns came back to haunt him. Already shaky producers bailed out mid-shoot as their company, Imeria, went bankrupt, leaving the crew literally high and dry on the desert island of Lisca Bianca, without sufficient food and water, in a hair-raising episode that makes Coppola’s misadventures filming Apocalypse Now in the Filipino jungle sound like a stroll on the beach.

SURPASSING MYSTERIES

This context, in all its intellectual and practical dimensions, is crucial to comprehending the massive achievement that L’avventura represents. How a film of such constant perfection could even be made under such dreadful conditions is, for me, one of the surpassing mysteries of film history. Viewed in isolation (and aren’t almost all films, even more now in our isolated viewing environments?), L’avventura can superficially be seen as magnificently beautiful in its constant chain of stunning black-and-white images from cinematographer Aldo Scavarda (with whom Antonioni had never previously worked, and never would again).

L’avventura is populated by good-looking actors oozing sex appeal. Monica Vitti, for one, had never had a starring film role before, but with her smouldering presence it was she – as much as Sophia Loren or Ingmar Bergman’s ensemble of intelligent and worldly actresses – who set the standard and the look for the new, sexualised European movie star that was key to the successful foreign-film invasion that hit English-language shores (and was perceived as such a threat by LBJ and his White House crony Jack Valenti that they set up the American Film Institute as a nationalist bulwark against the foreigners supposedly taking over US cinemas). For New York downtown hipsters, London cosmopolitans and Paris cinephiles alike, the combination of serious cinema and sexual beauty was simply too much to pass up.

All that may be why L’avventura had its immediate impact. (A special jury prize from Cannes, after all that booing and hissing, also didn’t hurt.) But the endurance of the film, residing crucially in its conceptual openness, describes a pathway that cinema has been exploring and testing ever since. Much as Flaubert’s novels and Beethoven’s symphonies, concertos and string quartets are continually regenerated by way of the new directions they paved, and the new generations of work following such directions, so Antonioni’s work – and L’avventura in particular – is regenerated by the subsequent cinema that came in its wake.

As Geoffrey Nowell-Smith observes in his essential study of the film, the periphery in Antonioni is of absolute importance, for this is where the sense of drift in his mise-en-scène and narratives resides – a de-centred centrality. No filmmaker before Antonioni, not even the most radical visionaries like Vigo, had established this before as a part of their aesthetic project. In the early scenes when Anna visits Sandro, or when they join their holiday boating group, Vitti’s Claudia remains for a long time on the outside looking in, marginalised, seemingly unimportant. And yet there is something in her nervous gaze, her subtle physical gestures, that makes her impossible not to notice, especially in contrast to Anna’s inner tension and outward unhappiness – an unhappiness she can’t identify, even in private to Claudia.

These are most certainly not Bergman women, forever examining themselves, forever able to articulate the exact words in whole spoken paragraphs about their state of mind, their relationship with God. For one thing, in Antonioni, God doesn’t exist. The state of the world is one of humans searching for some kind of connection amidst a disinterested nature; the island on which the floating party lands is both exotically remote and barren, like a volcano frozen during eruption. The landscapes in L’avventura have been interpreted in a number of different ways that testify to the film’s Joycean levels of readings: from Seymour Chatman’s insistence on metonyms for his reading of what he calls Antonioni’s “surface of the world”, to Gilberto Perez’s more valuable view of the work in his extraordinary film study The Material Ghost, across a whole range of possible interpretations, from the literary to the visual. For me, however, it’s always tempting to see these people – on this island, at that moment – as the last humans on earth.

In L’avventura, more than any film before it had ever dared, the centre will not hold. The open film is a fluid thing, pulsating, forever changing, shifting from one centre to another, not quite beginning and not quite ending (or at least beginning something new in its ‘ending’). Anna, the centre, vanishes, with no visual or verbal clues to trace her by, except rumours of sightings. She was in effect the glue that held the party together, having helped bring Claudia in closer to her circle of friends – and to Sandro. But with Anna’s disappearance, the film alters shape in front of us; a sudden absence actually expands the film’s eye. Individual shots become more extended and prolonged, the sky and land grow larger, the elements become more tangible (clouds, rain, harsher sun).

HERE AND NOW

What’s even more disturbing is that nothing happens – no discovery, no evidence, no detective work and, finally, no memory. L’avventura is, in part, the story of how a woman is forgotten, to the extent that long before the film is done, Anna is less than a trace on a page, a ghost or a photo in an album. A more sentimental filmmaker or a Hollywood studio would have ensured that Anna lived on through Claudia and Sandro’s love affair and possible union. But here, after a while, they don’t speak of Anna anymore. She gradually fades, which is what happens to the dead as regarded by the living (not that Anna is necessarily dead; the film neither encourages nor discourages the suggestion). Although their joint actions ostensibly trace an effort to collect any information on Anna’s whereabouts, Antonioni suggests that the activity of Claudia and Sandro isn’t nearly as important as their time together in this moment, in this or that place.

About those places. The greatness of L’avventura is multivalent, situated in many realms at once: cinematic, aural, existential, literary, architectural, sexual, philosophical – all of them of equal importance. The open film, beyond its fluidity, is amoral in the best sense, or at least unconcerned with a hierarchy of values. Almost all films of any kind privilege certain artistic values above others, and the great ones do it for several: Singin’ in the Rainhonours the body, the sounds of showbiz, the fresh memories of Hollywood at its height; Vampyr celebrates the psychological effect that optical dislocations have on the viewer’s psyche, the spiritual possibilities of the horror film, the blurry line between genres and those alive and dead.

But L’avventura marks a new kind of film, not made before, in which the story that launched the film dissolves and gives way to something else – a journey? a wandering? – that points to a host of possible readings beyond what mere narrative allows, and yet at the same time is too specifically rooted in a form of acting – in situations, episodes and events – to ever become purely abstract. (Though this was an area Antonioni did address in various ways, including the semi-apocalyptic ending of L’eclisse, the visualisations of madness in 1964’s Red Desert and the slow-motion explosion near the end of Zabriskie Point.)

For Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, “L’avventura is a film about consciousness and its objects, the consciousness that people have of other people and of the environment that surrounds them.” It is a film that’s also about a change of consciousness – what that looks and feels like: for instance Claudia’s move from the edges to the centre and, in the final passages, back to the edges. This change of consciousness is realised in terms that encompass Antonioni’s grasp of a vast range of materials: Sandro’s relationship with architecture is framed with the couple’s bodies, both above buildings and nearly swallowed up by them, their shared sexuality first shared in open space and then further and further contained within smaller rooms; the sense of new possibilities (new towns, new relationships) seen in the curve of a highway, a train hurtling down the tracks and through tunnels; the insistence on the Old World in the hulking presence of churches, formal dinner parties, rigid bodies against Claudia’s free and easy one, always in motion; the sounds of creaky nostalgic ‘Italian’ music against Fusco’s disturbing atonalities and unnerving syncopations (in one of the greatest film scores ever written).

Antonioni, as Perez often notes, infuses his cinema with doubt – a doubt that extends to his questioning of psychology as a basis for cinematic drama (let alone his doubt in the value of cinematic drama). But doubt is not an end point in this or his other films; instead it represents the beginning of new possibilities. Thus the open film’s mapping of changes of consciousness – through the tools of mise-en-scène, temporality, elliptical editing, a matching of sound to image combined with a de-emphasis on actors’ faces presiding over scenes (close-ups are fewer by far in L’avventura than any of his previous films) – is a picture of a post-psychological topography of the human condition, a radical effort to find a cinema grammar to express inner thought with photographic means.

This is a map that did (as Perez has noted) go out of style for a time, perhaps during the period of postmodernism, and definitely during the period when Fassbinder ruled the arthouse. But the map has been opened again by a new generation. Its influence can now be seen in films from every continent – to such an extent that the Antonioni open film can be said to be in its golden age. Here are some examples: the work of Apichatpong Weerasethakul, from Blissfully Yours to Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives; Lisandro Alonso’s La libertad through to Liverpool; Uruphong Raksasad’s Agrarian Utopia; C.W. Winter and Anders Edström’s The Anchorage; Ulrich Köhler’s Sleeping Sickness; the entire so-called Berlin School, of which Köhler is a part; Albert Serra’s Honour of the Knights and Birdsong; James Benning; Kelly Reichardt; Kore-eda Hirokazu; Ho Yuhang’s Rain Dogs; Jia Zhangke’s Platform and Still Life; Li Hongqi’s Winter Vacation. The list goes on…

Some of these filmmakers may disavow any Antonioni influence – but we know that what directors (including Antonioni) say about their films can’t always be trusted. Besides, the ways in which L’avventura works on the viewer’s consciousness are furtive and often below a conscious level. In Apichatpong’s fascination with characters being transformed by the landscape around them; in Raksasad’s interest in dissolving the borders between ‘documentary’ and ‘fiction’, or the recorded and the staged; in Alonso’s precision and absolute commitment to purely cinematic resources and disgust with the sentimental; in Köhler’s continual refinement of his visualisation of his characters’ uncertain existences; in Reichardt’s concern for what happens to human beings in nature – especially when they get lost: in all these and more, the open film is stretched, remoulded, reconsidered, questioned, embraced. A kind of film that was first named L’avventura.

[by Robert Koehler, from BFI. November 2016]

[oneletterwrites]

Company Mix Up

Summary: Thomas adores cartoons and his dream to work with a company that produces such magic is a reality. Sadly, one branch of the studio is failing and no one can figure out why. He volunteers himself to check on the building and get to the bottom of the problem.

Pairing: Eventual Prinxiety, Logicality, lots of platonic love between them all.

Part 1 | Part 6 |

“Let’s get this party started!” Roman announces when he walks into the conference room. Logan already has the story board prepped up on a pin board and Patton has the computer open. Patton is the one that stops him.

“Where is Virgil?” He asks looking around him but not finding their designer anywhere. Roman lets out a soft huff ready to continue without the gloomy-gus. They have been working for a week or so now, left to their own devices since Thomas had to return to his job. While Virgil has made some fantastic ideas and designs, his attitude leaves something to be desired.

“We can’t do this without him,” Logan points out and Roman groans dramatically.

“I’ll go get him,” He volunteers as tribute and exists the conference room to travel to the depths of the HR department to find the one who admittedly, designed his ideas better than he thought could be done. He’s grumbling to himself when he gets to the right floor, tempted to shout for Virgil carelessly but a sobbing noise stops any and all of his motions.

He hears the noise again and never wanting to leave someone in distress, follows the noise as silently as he feet will allow him. He’s peeking into cubicles, finding no one at any desk. Except for one. The sobbing leads him right to the person he had been tasked to find.

He stares dumbly at Virgil hunched at his desk with his hands to his face. His sketch book is open in front of him and looks like it’s been marred to death by his pencil and the eraser. His body shakes and another gasp escapes him. It makes Roman’s heart squeeze.

“Virgil?” He calls softly but the reaction he gets is no where near soft. Virgil flips and almost falls out of his seat. He rubs at his eyes harshly and practically throws his sketch book away from prying eyes.

“What?” He bites out, trying to be intimidating but all Roman feels is heartache seeing such a picture in front of him. He steps closer and before Virgil can tell him no, flips open the sketch book to a crude drawing of one of the more powerful characters in Roman’s idea.

“What is going on?” He asks, putting down the book and dropping to one knee to make himself seem less threatening to Virgil. He doesn’t get an answer right away. Virgil is refusing to look at him, refusing to do much of anything. So Roman scoots a little closer and takes one of Virgil’s hands in his to provide comfort.

Virgil attempts to take his hand away but there’s no real effort in his tugs. Roman holds it tighter.

“Tell me what is the matter,” It’s a semi-order. Roman isn’t too sure Virgil will answer such a thing, seeming more like the kind of person who would never answer out of spite. Virgil curls in on himself and his hand turns to a death grip on Roman’s.

“I can’t get it right,” He mumbles. Roman rubs gentle circles around his wrist to try and ease his nerves.

“I’ve tried so damn hard to get it right and I can’t,” Virgil’s voice breaks as another soft sob rips through it.

“I can’t do anything,” Is what Virgil says next in the smallest whisper. It sends Roman’s blood boiling without reason.

“How dare you!” Roman accuses without connecting his brain to mouth filter. Virgil peeks at him and Roman glares at him.

“How dare you speak to yourself like that with all that you have done!” He goes on. Virgil slowly lifts his head, wondering if he heard Roman correctly.

“Your designs are spectacular and you think you can’t do anything? What kind of injustice is this!” Roman raises his voice as well as himself to a standing position. He yanks Virgil out of his chair and into his arms for a tight hug. It lasts only a quick second. Roman grabs the sketch book and never lets go of Virgil’s hand to drag him up to the conference room.

“You need to know that we love your designs and will help you in anything,” Roman stops on the stairs to point a finger in Virgil’s face making him blink and smack it away with a bit of the spark Roman had enjoyed. Sure maybe finding the negative sides to their ideas, but Virgil’s snark back at him held nothing of the animosity Logan usually brought against him.

“I know that it’s just-” Virgil cuts himself off and Roman doesn’t say anything, doesn’t let go, until he has his answers.

“What if I fuck it up?” Virgil asks and Roman gasps scandalized.

“What if you- Are you serious?” Virgil winces away from his shout but Roman is too far flabbergasted to think clearly.

“Stars above know you would never be able to mess up like that!” He waves the hand holding the sketch book about. He’s frustrated almost. Virgil, the one who managed to come up with the perfect design without even knowing what he would be designing, would never be able to mess up like that in his mind.

“I swear I will tell you every day for as long as I know you that you could never mess up that badly if I have to,” Roman is dragging him along again, acutely aware of the silence that follows him. He gets a glimpse of Virgil smiling to himself and feels prouder because of it. 

“Found him!” He makes another announcement as he enter the conference room, making sure Virgil is inside before closing the door.

“Good, now we can start, we need your work in order to go on,” Logan says and Patton nods along, pushing a muffin to Virgil from across the table. His little smile tells Virgil he knows he’s upset but won’t mention it. Roman stands proud.

“Now that we have everyone, lets get started,” He says and they set to work. 

–

“What if we have songs?” Patton gasps and claps his hands at Virgil’s suggestion. Roman smiles approvingly and more gently wraps an arm over Virgil’s shoulder.

“It would be beneficial to have a theme song as most cartoons do, as well as maybe a few in the show as you mentioned Steven is musically inclined.” Logan adds and writes a few things down on his papers. Patton smiles to them all.

“Maybe tomorrow? We’ve all been here an hour after were supposed to,” He points out. They scramble to at least somewhat organize their things but end up leaving most of it in the conference room, locked courtesy of Logan.

The productivity makes Roman buzz. He’s been aching to get something like this, to let his mind flow and wander and create idea after idea that can be all mixed together. It makes him feel alive. He enters his office, sits for a minute, just to get up and go down the stairs. 

As much as he would like to say Virgil’s break didn’t affect him, it had, it had dug deep inside him and he now needs to make sure their artist is okay. So he walks down the stairs quietly, listening and hoping not to hear the heartaching noises he heard before. He’s pleasantly surprised.

There’s music, splendidly soft coming from the corner where he knows Virgil’s desk is. When he manages to look from around the corner he can see an automated music generator on screen playing the light piano music. It’s accompanied by Virgil, playing the small song over and over again, and whispering words long with it.

“If I could, begin to be, half of what, you think of me, I could do about anything, I could even learn-” Here Virgil’s voice stops and he scratches at his head hazardously. Then he drops to his desk with his head buried in his arms. Roman knocks on his cubicle to get his attention. Virgil once again jumps.

“What are you working on?” There’s a smile on his face Roman couldn’t stop it if he tried. He had heard something magical. Virgil’s face is flushed and he twiddles with his fingers.

“Just something, maybe that we could, use. It’s dumb don’t worry about it.” Roman steps forward anyway to press play on the music Virgil created. It’s sweet and low. His eyes scan the tentative lyrics and hums them out with the tune.

“We have to use this, I hope you know that,” He says off handedly. Virgil tenses up.

“Really?”

“Of course! We can’t bear to let the world be ignorant of this magic!” He says with a flourish. Virgil melts a little to the compliment, letting Roman stick around as they work on some lyrics together. It causes Roman’s chest to pound but he chalks it up to happiness at seeing his ideas so inspiring. Maybe a little of it is the way Virgil whispers lyrics but he’ll ignore it for now.

Tag list: @funsizedgremlin

[neen-writes]

Silver for Monsters -- Ch. 4

Series: Witcher/Fairy Tail

Pairing: Gajevy

Summary: In a world ravaged by monsters where magic is becoming outlawed and nonhumans are hunted, the Witcher known as Black Steel Gajeel takes up a contract. He expects to find a simple old herbalist, terrorized by a beast in the woods. But in his many years he has learned to never trust what he expects.

Note: big thanks to @spikerr and @bluuesparrow for being my sounding boards and reading through this for me!! :D (yes I consistently forget to tag)

Ch. 1 Ch. 2 Ch. 3

“What on earth are you doing here?” Lucy asked urgently, ushering them both into the common room.  She cast more than one questioning glance at the large Witcher, who looked profoundly out of place in the quaint home.  He remained quiet, looking to the area around them before studying the blonde in her blue dress.  An expensive, ornate gold necklace sat over her collarbone, glimmering in the ambient light, and a ring of braided hair laid across the top of her head, from which a cascade of long golden hair rained.  She looked like a sorceress, with her tight enough and low enough gown.  And clearly one with gifts in polymorphy.  It explained why she managed to live in a place like this.

“I’m so sorry to drop in on you like this, I know how dangerous it is,” Levy began, but Lucy waved it off.  “I needed to see if you were alright, and I had no other way to reach you.”

Lucy’s expression darkened just a fraction in anticipation of the real reason she was here as she settled on a chaise across from where her friend sat on the small cushioned sofa.  The Witcher took up post at the edge of the room, arms crossed.  “Things have gotten worse, the pyres burn daily now.  But I’m no worse off, no one suspects me yet,” she tilted her head, lifting a slender brow at her friend, and the large man, “Certainly nothing bad enough to warrant worry or a visit… with a bodyguard.  I don’t hate seeing you again, Levy but… really, why have you come?”  The worry in her voice was evident, knowing something must have happened to bring her friend to her, with a Witcher.

“I was found,” Levy said, staring at her hands.  Lucy straightened immediately, “I was captured rather, in a refugee camp, and they kept me in Dimeritum, feeding me something to keep me down until a Redanian company arrived,” she paused, lifting a weighted gaze at her friend, “in Velen.  Unimpeded.  If they know I’m still alive, we are all in danger.  I needed to reach you, and be sure you were still safe.  And I need to try and use my megascope to reach the others.  Radovid is planning something, and somehow he’s involved the Emperor in it.  If they are cooperating then…”

“Our days of hiding are limited,” Lucy finished, finally settling her gaze on the quiet observer.  “And him?  Is he how you escaped?”

“Partially,” Levy answered.

“Name’s Gajeel,” he finally spoke up, waving a single finger.

Lucy looked surprised as her eyes went immediately to the twin swords on his back, recognizing the name, “So not just any Witcher.  One with a reputation.”

“I needed to get here and I couldn’t teleport more than the one time to get us out,” Levy clarified, “so an escort was needed.”

Lucy looked thoughtful for a second, before getting up to head for a large shelf, full of bottles and vials of varying size.  “Some of the witch hunters have figured out how to process Dimeritium further, grind it into a powder fine enough it can be added into food in small amounts.  Add more than a small pinch, and you’ll taste it.  But a pinch that small isn’t enough to do much.  So they must have given it over… many days,” she glanced back at Levy, her words slowing down when she started to realize the conditions she may have been in.  “It’s not permanent but it will systemically dampen your magic.  I have something I can give you to counteract it, but you won’t be one hundred percent until it fully leaves your system,” the blonde explained returning to her friend with a bottle. “Drink the whole thing.”

Levy nodded, pulling out the cork and downing the contents without a second thought.  She winced at the bitterness.  “Have you been able to reach anyone?  Is there anyone I can try to communicate with?” she asked after the taste had subsided.

Lucy looked to her feet, taking a seat again.  “You haven’t heard anything?” the blonde asked, tentatively.  Her friend’s face was her answer.  “Oh, okay. Well ah… Mira has done the best of us really, she took your route.  She’s the only one I’ve been able to reach reliably, she’s in White Orchard as a healer.  They like her there.”

“Sounds about right,” Levy mused with a small smile.

“Last I heard Juvia was with the druids in Skellige, but she refuses to talk to me.  I was able to contact her once, months ago, I think she only did it as a courtesy to me.  To let me know she was okay.  But after everything, after the summit, she never wants to see us again.”

Levy stirred uncomfortably at the mention of the summit-turned-massacre.  She couldn’t blame her for it, not after all the horrors of that day; a day that was supposed to end with treaties.  They all barely escaped with their lives, and she had needed to think fast to ensure she could maintain her escape.  It took some quick creativity and several inches of her hair, but she had managed to be among the reported dead that day, a convenient advantage.  But at some point someone had figured out the truth, and drove her out.  So much for that.  “And Erza?”

The blonde’s shoulders slumped, and it took a moment for her to answer.  “I don’t know.  The last word I got of her was nearly a year ago.  She was trying to work with the Nilfgaardians, advise them on enchanted weaponry to give an upper hand in the war.  They had offered her protection and immunity in exchange.  Her last contact with me,” Lucy paused, looking deeply troubled, “She reached me through her megascope, she was urgent.  She’d found out they had no intention of giving what they promised, and after they got enough information from her they were going to use her in negotiations with the Redanians.  She said she would tell me more when she reached me, or reached another megascope, that the Redanians had some plans for ‘us.’  Last anyone saw her, she was fleeing Vizima; now both sides want her.”

“I suspect she never made it here. And no one has seen her since?” Levy asked, already knowing the answer.

“We don’t know if she’s dead or alive, and I’ve tried divination.  Nothing works.  She’s completely blocked.”

“She knew how to disrupt divinations to stay out of sight,” Levy commented, “It’s possible it may be intentional?”  Hope was evident in her voice.

Lucy nodded slowly, “I’d thought of that.  It’s the only thing that brings me comfort while I search for more information.  I have one, ah, contact in the city, who gets me whisperings now and then.  But I can’t see him often.”

The shorter mage was quiet for several moments, looking to her lap.  Erza’s disappearance disturbed her greatly, and the fact that the two sides of the war had cooperated already on another occasion, with the purpose of obtaining another Lodge sorceress, was a problem.  Levy’s was not an isolated incident and Erza Scarlet was arguably the strongest among them, barring when someone poked Mirajane’s wild temper.  It could be possible that someone had their hands on Erza, or had already disposed of her.  But Levy couldn’t shake the nagging thought that she and Erza had very deliberately been left alive.  Previously the prices on their heads had been dead or alive: why not kill Erza when she was in the palace?  Why not kill her as soon as she was discovered alive rather than waiting for the Redanians?

Levy looked up, ready to reply to her, when the Witcher cleared his throat.

“Sorry to interrupt your little reunion but I got ya here.  Now unless there’s some fine print, that’s the end of my contract.”  He wasn’t in a particular rush to get away from her, but he’d done what he was employed to and he had no more reason to stay.  And the longer he stayed, the longer he risked getting tangled in something he shouldn’t.  Clearly something intricate was afoot with the two of them and the rest of them, and it wasn’t something he was sure he wanted to be a part of.

Levy rose, looking slightly abashed.  She had all but forgotten he was there, and he was right.  It was time she pay him, even if she didn’t know what she was going to do now.  “Yes, of course,” she said, glancing to Lucy, “Are all my things still upstairs?”

The blonde nodded quickly, “It’s all where you left it, in the guest room.”

The blue-haired mage nodded to her friend, and beckoned the Witcher to follow her up the narrow stairway.  Gajeel kept his head lowered slightly, grumbling internally at the low ceilings.  She pushed open a door with a loud creak, entering a large room that was filled, floor to ceiling on all four walls, with books.  Two large chests were nestled amongst them to the left, and in the center of the room were the three posts of her megascope.  

Gajeel stopped in the doorway, not even remotely surprised by what he saw within.  She wasn’t joking when she said she had more belongings here.  

The mage went straight to the chests, pushing one open with another creak and he leaned forward to try and peek inside.  He could see piles of clothing, but not much else until she dug in and pulled out a few coin-purses.  Gajeel lifted his brows, watching her peek into each one and weigh them out in her hands, until she picked one of the larger ones and buried the rest within.

She stood to face him resolutely, presenting the Witcher with the pouch.  “Your pay.” She didn’t look at him, and her tone was detached.

Gajeel tilted his head slightly, taking the coin from her.  She’s distracted.  “What will you do now?” he asked carefully.

Levy slumped her shoulders, unsure how to answer.  “Frankly, I don’t know.  I have work to do here.  I need to… look into some things.”  She glanced around the room, at the familiarity of her books and equipment, before looking to him.  “And you, Witcher?  Will you seek out your friend?  Your horse?” she smiled, tilting her head a little.

Gajeel nodded, “Eventually.  I have a mount for now, I ain’t in a hurry.  Follow the Path; I’ll meet up with him sooner or later.”

“You sure you want to leave so soon?  We came a long way.  I’m sure Lucy would not mind if you stayed for a meal or a night of rest,” Levy offered, sounding more hopeful than she intended.

Reluctantly, the Witcher shook his head, “I appreciate it but I got a hell of a cravin’ for some beer, and I know some folk in town I hope to see at the Rosemary.” See, brawl with, get into some kind of competition.  The Rosemary and Thyme was one of the few taverns he had not been banned from… yet anyway.

Levy nodded, understanding, tilting her head to the side.  She wanted to ask him to stop by before he left the city, that she wanted to see him again.  But she didn’t know him, and as much as it seemed nice, she had something much bigger to worry about now.  Still, “Thank you, Gajeel.  I appreciate your help.”

The Witcher huffed in acknowledgment, not one too skilled with goodbyes.  “Just business, Shorty,” he smirked toothily, watching her prickle with annoyance as just a hint of static tickled his skin. She stomped towards him, and he moved aside to presumably let her out of the room. But instead, she stopped in front of him and stood there a moment, glaring up at the man for several moments with fire in her eyes. But after a few seconds of silently staring at one another, she softened just slightly.

Levy rose as far up on tiptoe as she could, and kissed him on his scruffy cheek.  The Witcher’s eyes went wide, and he felt a literal shock fly through him as he jolted back against the doorframe.  He stared, slack-jawed at her as she dropped back down and smiled at him with great satisfaction. “It’s been a pleasure to have met you, Black Steel,” she said, turning from him with a flick of her hair before the color reached her cheeks, and descended down the stairs.  

Gajeel stalled for a moment, blinking wordlessly in her wake.  He flexed his hands over and over for what felt like forever after she disappeared at the bottom of the stairs, and the voices of the two women floated up to him.  He shook his head, rubbed his still tingling cheek, and headed down the stairs to see himself out.

The Witcher pushed open the door to the loud tavern and inhaled deeply.  The smell of smoke, alcohol, and sweat.  It was always busy, day or night, and had changed completely from the last time he was here.  The Rosemary and Thyme had been a fairly young business the last few times he had been, and the very last time was not… his best.  Now the establishment was in full swing.

He smirked to himself, heading up to the bar and taking at seat at one of the stools.  The tavern-owner had her back to him, organizing the bottles on the shelf behind the bar, completely unaware that he had shown up.  

“Oi, Alberona,” he called out to her, and she nearly dropped the bottle of vodka in her hands.  Nearly.  The woman would never waste good liquor.  

The brunette whirled to face him, eyes wide.  “Gods above!  If it isn’t Black Steel himself!” she exclaimed, her surprise very quickly turning sour.  “I hope you have my damned money this time, I’m still trying to pay for the repairs!” she hissed, glancing to the wall to their left, shoddily boarded up.

“Good to see ya too, Cana.”  Gajeel followed her gaze and grinned, puffing up with a touch of pride.  “That fucker deserved it, and you know it,” the Witcher retorted, before leaning to the side to dig into the pouch at his side.  He produced the coin purse the sorceress had given him and opened it slightly before sliding it towards her.  “Take whatever’ll cover the repairs and a night’s worth of Kaedweni.  In my favorite stein if ya still got it.”

“You mean if the pyro hasn’t melted it down?” Cana replied, still staring at the coin purse in front of her before she snatched it to keep it from the eyes of anyone else Gajeel might have to toss through a wall.  “Been busy have you?  What sorta contract landed you this?” she commented, before handing the rest of it back to him.

“Nothing special,” he shrugged.  “Simple escort.”

“Mhm, right,” she replied, reaching under the bar to produce the pewter stein with the iron handle.  She had only just started to pour when a familiar voice boomed through the tavern.

“Metalhead!”

A look of ‘oh no’ flashed across Cana’s face as a wicked grin spread on Gajeel’s.  

Aside from the loud voice, the hum of his wolf amulet also announced the presence of the newcomer.  “Salamander!”  The Witcher spun around on his stool and leaned back against the bar to acknowledge the rosy-haired man that had just arrived.  Soot dusted his face and coated his arms, and Gajeel couldn’t figure out if he was wearing a black tunic or if it used to be another color.  The black was an even layer over his pulled-back hair, only allowing flashes of the rosy pink to show through.  The only thing missing was his blacksmith’s apron.  “Fresh from the forges, eh?”

“You got a lot of nerve showin’ back up here after last time,” the man growled, taking a seat two stools down from the Witcher.  He glanced, pointedly, to the damaged wall.  “And don’t call me Salamander,” he warned, and Gajeel could have sworn a thread of smoke rose from the corner of his mouth.

“Don’t give me a reason or I’ll toss ya again, flame-brain,” Gajeel retorted, thinking quite fondly of his last visit.  When he had sent a very drunk blacksmith through the wall with an equally drunk casting of Aard.  He didn’t even remember what the man had said to piss him off, but Gajeel knew he deserved it.

“The fuck you will, cat-eyes,” Cana interjected, sliding the beer towards Gajeel, who twisted around to grab the handle.  She was already pouring one for the blacksmith in an attempt to placate him.  

Grumbling, Natsu took the offered drink and glared at the Witcher a moment longer before he broke out in a large smile and held up his own pint to clink against Gajeel’s.  Tension visibly left Cana’s body as she rolled her eyes at the two men before she went back to work.  “The hell you doin’ back in Novigrad?  City hasn’t exactly been the nicest place to be lately.  Looking for me to make you another masterpiece?”  He looked, pointedly, to the hilt of the steel sword on Gajeel’s back.

Gajeel took a large swing of the dark stout, sighing with heavy satisfaction.  “Contract,” he replied, “Caught in some Lodge business,” he added with a hushed tone.

Natsu nearly choked on his beer and held up a tattooed arm to his frothy mouth, trying to keep from spitting the cherry beer on his old friend.  “You what?” he asked, looking around them.  “That’s risky.”

The Witcher lifted a brow at his reaction.  “Had your own run-ins, eh?” he asked, looking at the right arm covered in black tangles of ink that trailed up farther than what his tunic covered.  “Still trying t’ figure that out?” he gestured with his beer before taking another swig.

Natsu grimaced, returning to his drink as well.  “Sorta.  I know someone in Farcorners.  We uh, help each other, she keeps an ear out for anything for this,” he looked to his arm, “and I have pretty good ears myself.”

Gajeel blinked, before laughing to himself at the coincidence, “Well shit.”

Natsu looked at him for a second, and without having to say it out loud they realized they were speaking about the same blonde sorceress.  “So you found your own.  Like I said, bad place to come.”

The Witcher looked into his beer, thinking of the blue-haired mage he’d left at the edge of witch hunter territory.  The one he was trying to purge from his thoughts with beer.  Maybe now that he had seen her again and helped her she would leave his dreams.  He couldn’t even say why he had dreamt about her in the first place, but with any luck alcohol would fix it.  “Don’t I know it.  But you seem to be doin’ fine for yerself.”

“Thank the damn sage who wrote such a convincing curse,” the blacksmith replied bitterly, swigging his Rivian beer.

“Eh, coulda done a better meat-suit,” Gajeel taunted with a smirk, tensing in case the fiery man decided to lash out.  Thankfully, it seemed the beer had already started to work to placate his friend’s combustible demeanor.  “So what have ya heard?  I been sloughing through Velen for a few months, a little outta the loop.”

Natsu took a deep breath and looked upwards, arranging his thoughts before he looked around him again.  Yes, the Rosemary was a generally safe place; Cana worked very hard to only allow a certain kind of clientele, but it never hurt to be safe.  “The witch hunts are in full swing, Radovid keeps handing over coin and power to them and the temple guard.  The city’s a worse and worse place for people like us to be, and you brought your contract here at a bad time,” he warned, “A Nilfgaardian envoy was here a week ago, met with and left alive from a council with Radovid’s advisers themselves.”

Gajeel raised his pierced brow in surprise, intrigued about the timing. “Ya know what about?”

The blacksmith shook his head, “Not at all.  Just happened to be at the docks when they showed up.”

“They?”

“It was strange.  The Nilfgaardian I coulda spotted a mile away.  But someone else arrived too, separate.  Dressed in common-clothes.  He wore no crest,” he explained.

Gajeel shifted, taking a few more gulps of his stout and savoring the warmth in his gut.  The pieces all lined up too coincidentally, except for the mystery visitor.  That was the one wild card.  He didn’t know exactly how long Levy had been in that camp, but he did know when the Redanians had showed up for her.  “His Highness still in port?”

“He is.”

“Any activity over the last couple days?”

Natsu glanced at him, wondering what exactly his friend knew, and where he was going with it.  “Yeah; some of his generals leaving in a hurry about four days ago.”

That was it.  There was the connection.  Gajeel narrowed his eyes before downing the rest of his beer.  He stared into the bottom of the pewter stein, and wondered how invested he cared to be in this information.  In the fact that the pieces lined up, and somehow it boiled down to the sorceress he had just delivered to King Radovid’s genocidal doorstep.  “I need another drink.”

“Wolves asleep amidst the trees… bats all a-swaying in the breeze…”

A singing voice, rough, edged with a higher pitch, rose above the bubbling river.  The moist soil sloshed beneath his worn boots, threatening to slow his pace.  But not quite as much as the struggling soldier, clawing at the black, nebulous layer over his face that kept him from making a sound beyond the strangled hums in his chest.  The tall merchant held the soldier by the back collar of his armor in a grip that dented the metal.

“But one soul lies anxious wide awake,” he flourished up a hand, dancing his fingers to the melody, “fearing all manner of ghouls, hags, and wraiths…”

The soldier kicked, trying to tear from the iron grip, and the singing stopped.

“Now now, don’t interrupt,” the merchant’s rough, gravelly voice cooed, “It will be less comfortable if you keep struggling.”  He turned his head, focusing reddish brown eyes on the defiant prisoner.  He kicked and struggled, but he had far less life in him than before.  The soldier’s feet found no purchase, and he had been dragged far enough from any camp that none saw him.  Even along the banks of the Pontar, few people wandered this far and this close to water unless they sought a run-in with a Water Hag.

But the merchant attracted no such attention, in fact all life seemed to keep out of a very distinct radius from the thin man.  They traveled, uninterrupted, until the shoreline became rocky, rising up into a large outcropping over the bank.  He dragged the Redanian into a cave, ignoring the sudden fervor, the last bit of fight from his prisoner.  It wasn’t the fact they had arrived at such a secluded location that reawakened his panic.

It was the fact that when the Redanian looked up to the merchant to curse him wordlessly, he did not see the man from before.  He saw the leathery grey skin.  He saw the inhumanly wide grin that now bore fangs instead of teeth.  He saw the ram-like horns that curled from the sides of his skull and the long canine ears behind them.  And he saw the orange-red eyes glow in the shadows, turn upon him with mischievous malice.  He had the shape of a man, and yet was so very much not.

“‘Why am I here? What does it want with me?’” the creature spoke in a mocking tone, waving a free hand and brandishing black claws on each of his four fingers.  “‘Will I die here, oh no~,’” he continued, letting out a laugh that sounded like smacking two rocks together.  “The answer is yes, sorry,” he stated matter-of-factly, dropping the Redanian into the soil as they reached the back of the cave.  Small holes in the roof let in rays of light, revealing very little beyond a large stone reservoir, like the bottom of a fountain.  It was empty, but the carvings along its base were intricate and appeared very, very old.

The soldier, free of the demon’s grip, scrambled to get back to his feet, despite the black veil over his nose and mouth.  He barely made onto his elbows when a crushing force crashed down onto his back, forcing him face-first into the mud.  “Ah-ah, we can’t have that,” the male cautioned, pressing a large canine foot down onto the center of his back and poising a large black claw over the back of his neck.  Its tip brushed against the rise of a vertebra.  “I need you, mouse.  Or, rather, your life.  Cogs to turn, pots to stir,” he bobbed his head back and forth,  “Divinations and hydromancy are such fun tricks, but their style is so very bland.  So limited.  One can be… what’s the word,” he ran clawed fingers through his crest of black hair in thought, “so much more creative with blood magic…”  

Understanding his life was about to end, his victim tried, to no avail, to get out from under the demon’s foot or to get away.  Ah, I’m missing the best part of these things, he thought, suddenly snapping his fingers.  The black veil dissolved from the man’s face, and as soon as he realized his ability to speak, he turned his frantic words to his attacker.  “Who are you?!  You will regret attacking the Redanian army, freak!” he screamed, and the demon applied sudden, heavier pressure to his back as he coughed in pain.  

“Oh, don’t be so dramatic.  I merely stole you, and none of your ‘army’ even noticed.  You are becoming part of something much bigger.  I might say this is the most important thing you’ve ever done, mouse,” he smiled, “But because you asked, you can take my name to the grave.”  He leaned forward towards the man, shadows befalling his face, “They call me Zink.”  With his final courtesy of words to the man, before he plunged his claws into the back of his neck.  The man struggled, screaming loud enough to echo through the cave, but the demon merely pressed down harder.  The backplate of his armor caved in with a crunch, and his claws sliced deeper into the man’s flesh, one slipping in between vertebrae.  The man went still, and the screaming died with guttural coughs.

As quickly as he had inflicted the damage, he eased off, only to grab him by the hair and lift him with relative ease.  He hauled the twitching corpse over to the stained stone bowl, holding the gushing wound over it such that a small pool of blood collected.  When he felt he had enough, he tossed the body aside like trash.  I’ll feed it to the Drowners later.

The man muttered several words to himself as the blood rippled and moved, subtly at first, then more violently.  Zink gripped the edges of the vessel and leaned over it, some strands of black hair dangling over his brow.  It danced as though alive, and in it he slowly started to see the image of a small mage, accompanied by a blonde woman.  “Ah, two out of five,” he muttered, a devilish grin spreading across his angular face.  “And they all fall in line, one… by… one.”  Glowing orange eyes looked to the mouth of the cave, and that cracking laugh filled the space.

[bigyack-com]

Travel tails: Camping with your pup can be fun, just look out for leopards - travel

Imagine winding down – after a long day of hiking and swimming – with a cold beer, by the campfire, and dinner under the stars. For many this would be enough. For some, the only thing that could complete this picture is the image of their fur baby resting happily at their feet, exhausted from the day’s activities too. As pet parents across India tailor their trips around their dogs, many glamping sites — like Wag-a-Bond in Karjat and Phoebe’s Farm in Khopoli, both in Maharashtra, and Backyard Camp in Sathanur, Tamil Nadu — are being set up as “human-friendly pet resorts”. These include obstacle courses, canine swimming pools, a bed for the little one next to yours, and programmes that factor in your pet when planning hikes, boating excursions, etc.

While camping out with his human, Adrak the ginger cat had loads of fun exploring every nook and corner of the grounds, but always returned to his human. “I guess the chicken bones helped,” says his human Sukhsharan Sidhu. ( Courtesy: Sukhsharan Sidhu ) Adrak the cat goes camping Adrak is an unusual ginger cat. He rides with his human on a motorcycle, inured to the traffic and chaos; sits on said human’s lap when he’s driving; and they often go camping together.They say animals draw from their human’s personality and Adrak’s human, Sukhsharan Sidhu, 36, a techie from Bengaluru, is quite the adventurer.“After I adopted Adrak last year, I started to miss out on camping, biking and off roading trips with friends,” he says. Wanderlust is hard to contain, so Sidhu decided it would be worth a shot to see if Adrak wanted to ride along.Last October, they drove to Mudfest, a camping ground near Bengaluru, with cat food, water and litter box (which helps cats adjust because they’re highly territorial) in tow.“I was scared he would run off into the wilderness and never return to me,” says Sidhu. But he put on a brave face, let the little guy go, and what do you know, Adrak went off, ran around, probably had some adventures, and came back.“He had loads of fun exploring the camp grounds and kept showing up by my side every couple of hours,” says Sidhu. “I guess the chicken bones helped.”Sidhu and Adrak have returned to Mudfest a few times since. “At night, he sleeps with me, but because he’s not used to being inside a zipped-up tent, he wakes me up really early, begging to be let out.”If all goes as planned, they’ll be making an epic journey from Bengaluru to Spiti by road this summer. We wish them a paw of luck. Private camping sites are usually located on farms and estates situated at the edges of forested areas. Pets from the metros are so unused to wilderness, organisers say, that they often have to be acclimatised to various outdoor noises and other animals. TRIP ESSENTIALS It‘s a good idea to take comfort objects for the pet with you — favourite snacks, bowl, leash. “I take my own first-aid kit and Cleo’s bed,” says Danielle D’silva, 30, a corporate communications executive who travels with her eight-year-old Great Dane-Indian mix. Vanaja Kale, 31, a homemaker from Pune, says she also makes sure her Doberman, Coco, has a nametag with the family’s contact details and address on it. Weather is important, she adds. “We totally avoid summers. Monsoons and winters are much easier; the dogs don’t get as dehydrated.” Coco doesn’t just vacation; she also runs marathons for charity, and goes camping with the family — Vanaja, her husband Prasanna and their newborn, Pravara. “We’ve gone on one trip since the baby, and it was quite a breeze,” says Vanaja. “We’re so used to prepping Coco for camping, packing up all her stuff and making sure she’s safe, it’s almost like she prepared us for this.”

Many glamping sites, like Wag-a-Bond in Karjat, Maharashtra, are being set up as “human-friendly pet resorts”. They come with obstacle courses, canine swimming pools, a bed for the little one, and programmes that factor in your pet when planning hikes, boating excursions, etc. ( Zcyphher ) LESSON PLAN It’s not all fun and games. Discipline is important. Fighting is frowned upon; sharing is encouraged. “They should also know not to scavenge, lest they eat something that’ll make them sick,” says Akshay Rajagopalan, 37, a realty executive from Bengaluru, who goes camping with his Labradors, Fonzi and Leia. “Most importantly, since the outdoors is a feast of sights, sounds and smell, your pooch must be trained in recall. If your dog gets into chase mode behind a hare, when you call for them, they have to stop and come to you.” In Pune, Mihir Sahasrabuddhe, a dog trainer, conducts overnight glamp camps called Bork Nights, to teach first time-time pet parents and first-time campers the ropes, and to help their animals learn to socialise with other animals.

At Mihir Sahasrabuddhe’s Bork Nights, many dogs meet each other for the first time. “You can tell if a dog is going to like camping by how social they are,” he says. ( Sagar Shejwalkar ) “You can always tell if a dog is going to like it by how social they are,” he says. “Many of the dogs at Bork Nights are meeting each other for the first time. But it’s great especially for dogs from cities like Mumbai, where time and space are constrained, and dogs live pretty isolated lives.” There are rules for the pet parents too. Know your pet and don’t push them too hard. On a group trek once, Rajagopalan says a fellow traveller egged Fonzi on, and it led to the dog falling into a gap between two rocks. “Fortunately I just had to climb down and lift him back up, but it could have been much worse, and I learnt my lesson — handle your dog yourself and don’t push him beyond what he wants to do.”

Going camping with Coco, the brown Doberman, has prepared Prasanna and Vanaja Kale for parenthood. Now, their newborn human baby Pravara also tags along on their camping trips. ( Shardul Nandedkar ) Cleo’s family plans her holidays during Diwali, so she can escape the city’s fireworks. “But there are downsides with remote sites too,” Danielle says. “We have to keep her on a leash at night because of leopards and to make sure she doesn’t get lost or injured. Still, the best moments are just sunning with Cleo on the rocks by a stream or the way she falls asleep while we laze in a hammock. When we see her peaceful and secure, we know we’ve picked the right place.” Read the full article

[ontheperiphery]

a penny for your thoughts, tipsy or not

kim namjoon x reader, college!au introspection?? word count: 2.2k

The party was lit. And you were not.

It’s safe, you think, to admit that events largely aimed at socializing weren’t your thing. Not that you were unwilling to attend, but showing up and enjoying yourself were two different issues entirely.

You probably should’ve taken the hint when attending a boba after-social in which you sat with your peach flavored black iced tea and listened to people at your table animatedly conversing while nodding and humming occasionally to indicate your involvement. It was a small group of people and you made an effort to say something every few minutes, but you were a polite listener and never really interrupted when you could’ve. And so conversation flowed smoothly without you.

You probably should’ve taken the hint when you arrived at a dance kick-off performance and let your friend drag you out of your seats to socialize with people since you were so early that there was plenty of time before the event properly began. You smiled at friendly faces and engaged in the shortest of conversations until you ran out of people you knew and things to talk about. And in your periphery was your friend who hopped here and there talking with event staff and friends and you don’t know. More people than you knew, that’s for sure.

You really should’ve taken the hint when you didn’t know what to do other than find an unoccupied couch when you tagged along to house party full of friends of friends of the only friend you knew in the entire building. You tried to pet the dog that night, and while she was extremely friendly and full of energy, she also wasn’t so attention hungry that she stayed in one place for long and you decided you didn’t want to drink with only one familiar face to reach out to, wherever they were in the goddamn house.

So.

Current you sat in the very corner of the living room, obstructed by the couch and huddled with your phone and newest mobile game obsession to tap away your nonchalant boredom with mild success. And though you wanted nothing more than to retire for the night and leave the groups of people playing board games or drinking games or socializing because everyone knew multiple someones, you could not. Not truly.

It was rarely the case but tonight’s party was actually at your apartment living room, a casual one hosted by your roommate. A kick-back may be more accurate to describe it. The people present weren’t….not-nice, not unfriendly, not bad people. Like. People you could hit up and befriend in your lectures if you so happened to share classes. But even in your own home, too much was unfamiliar and the air buzzed with so much conversation and laughter and noise it didn’t feel like your place to be.

Although you did have the option of retreating to your room, the walls were essentially paper-thin and you’d be taunted by half-clear conversations and loud bursts of laughter and yelling regardless so why not stay and listen in properly. Maybe you’d even have a laugh of your own if conversation was entertaining enough. It wasn’t eavesdropping when everyone was gathered in the same room and laughing over each other like noise complaints weren’t a threat.

You were fine where you were at least. Not being visible from most angles of the room helped.

A faint shadow passed over you in the dim lighting and you looked up from your phone, confused that anyone had come over to your little corner when all the drinks and snacks and games were in the center of the room.

“Oh! I didn’t even see you there, uhh hey,” a boy greets you.

Tilting your head back in an attempt to make eye contact, you look up from your phone to return his greeting, “it’s okay. I’m kind of hiding anyway.” You’d try to hold conversation longer but, boy, was he tall and you weren’t too keen on straining your neck even as a courtesy.

He looks around your small corner for a bit and bites his lip as if contemplating something, so you tentatively give him a small smile and a reassuring glance in case he felt like he’d somehow offended you in the ten seconds he’d been standing there. The thought makes you chuckle inwardly because in this moment, at this party, you didn’t really care all that much about anything enough to get offended. “Are you looking for something?” you finally decide to ask.

“Yeah, actually,” he smiles sheepishly, “are there any spare chargers here?”

“Mhmm.” A pretty reasonable question, you muse, since you happen to sit next to a power strip and open outlets. Your phone is at a decent enough level you could last the rest of the party on power saving mode. Probably. So you unplug it to offer your own charger. “I got you.”

He grins back, “thanks. I'm Namjoon, can I join you here?” He gestures at your little space and you nod to acquiesce, introducing yourself briefly.

“Y/n. Nice to meet you.”

Since you don’t offer much in the way of conversation, Namjoon slides down the wall to sit beside you, occasionally checking his phone. Probably messaging someone or waiting for something, you think, if he isn’t leaving his charging phone to rejoin the party.

He hums a bit before initiating conversation, “so what brings you here?”

You figure that he'll sit by his charging phone for a while so, crosslegged and turning to face him, you shrug, “I live here.”

Rather than hear any possible judgement in Namjoon's response over, you don't know, your reluctance to participate in socializing or hiding in your room like most people, you explain yourself all at once. “I'm in the master bedroom and if I stayed in my room it’s kind of uncomfortable to have people walk in and out to use the bathroom and I don't want to be the ass who closes the door to one of the only two bathrooms here. And hardly anyone even sees me here in the corner so it's whatever. It's my roommate's party and I'll just chill until it's over.”

Namjoon just sort of nods with a thoughtful look on his face although you aren't sure how much of your rambling he really paid attention to, you guess you appreciate that he looks like he's listening. Company and all that jazz.

You think about unlocking your phone to avoid your surroundings again but then Namjoon replies, “sounds unfortunate,” bringing a scoff from you.

“You don't say.”

Namjoon looks at you with an amused expression like he knows there's more to it and you press your mouth in a frown. “And it’s been a rough couple of days.” You bring your knees up and curl your arms around them.

You wonder then, if Namjoon's expression is actually more sympathetic than amused but it's late and you're tired, in no mood to properly decipher social cues. It matters little to you in the moment, even if Namjoon is a soft enough presence to have you talking as if you were old friends.

“At least it's the weekend then,” Namjoon offers, “I'm going to grab a drink. D’you want one?”

Shaking your head no, “thanks but no. Unless there's an unopened Calpico?”

Namjoon catches the hopeful lilt at the end of your question and easily smiles at your request, returning with a peach flavored bottle and a cup of the same, mixed with a bit of soju. This time, slumping down next to you, shoulders almost touching if either of you chose to lean a bit closer.

You uncurl yourself a bit and happily uncap your bottle, shaking your head at Namjoon as he tilts his cup towards you to offer a sip. “It's okay,” you say with thanks, “but I'm not big on drinking my sorrows away.”

“Hm,” Namjoon replies curiously, turning his head towards you “why not?”

Even as you keep your eyes looking straight ahead, you feel Namjoon's intent gaze on you. Smothering the impulse to fidget, you bring your legs back up to hug them. “Well,” you begin, figuring out how to put words to thoughts, “why do you drink?”

Namjoon thinks for a moment. “Hm. Most of the time it's just a social thing. It's enjoyable with the right people and mixed drink are fun.” He holds up his glass once more which you tap with your bottle to toast with a small smile. “I guess I don't quite believe in drinking feelings away either.”

You're nodding along to Namjoon’s words, pausing at his last statement, because for once, you think, for once, maybe someone finally gets it. But you're not yet sure, so you softly add, “yeah. There's value in feeling you know? All the happy and sad,” while fiddling with the bottle cap of your drink.

You want to add on personal thoughts, that you're never upset at the times you are sad or crying, that you don't ever resent the circumstances that cause such emotions in you and that you don't mind the time you need alone or with friends to get over yourself. That yeah, you often get overwhelmed and sometimes you just feel too damn much but sadness isn't necessarily negative. It just is.

Sitting in your little corner thoughtfully, amongst the loud buzz of laughter and conversation of everyone else in your little apartment you've come to ignore, Namjoon murmurs his agreement and nudges his shoulder to yours, “you sound like you have more to say.”

You're overcome with a mix of quiet appreciation, nervousness, and surprise at his offer, at his interest in what you had to say. Wondering if a person could be drunk on exhaustion because you think a tear or two may be threatening to fall from your eyes.

But you collect yourself just enough to express your thoughts to an attentive Namjoon. Not so much about your troubles because you don’t think they’re any more or less special than the similar academic or life stresses everyone else faces, but moreso about your resulting feelings and how you deal with them. How empty you feel after days of mundane lectures and routine and not feeling enough. How, if you feel too much too intensely, you prefer to spend time alone to process your feelings and thoughts. How confused you get when all your close friends are too busy to have heart-to-heart conversations with.

You’re a little lost, and feel a mournful sense of quiet over it.

As you lay your head awkwardly on your arms you sigh, “sorry for my rambling. I stew in my own thoughts too much.” You turn your head slightly to eye Namjoon. “You probably didn’t come here to talk about existentialism and introspection.”

“No but you’re good,” Namjoon chuckles. “It’s actually kind of refreshing to find someone who’d rather talk about their feelings than play drinking games.”

“Pffft.” You give him a light shove at the small teasing.

“Besides, don’t you enjoy life more when you think more deeply about your experiences? It’s like-”

Namjoon’s phone then lights up with messages and he apologizes for breaking off conversation and being called away by his only ride home for the night, but you only wave off his apologies. You’re grateful that he sat by and listened to you for so long to fault him for anything.

Waving goodbye and mustering up the sincerest thanks you can before he leaves, you only wish that he’d stay a little longer if only to hear the rest of his thoughts like he did yours.

-

A week later you’re sitting at a coffee shop near campus to study between classes and out of the corner of your eye you see someone familiar pass by. Your eyes widen in surprise and before you even register your actions or have the chance to overthink whether you should or not, you’re waving over Namjoon and inviting him to join you.

Luckily, you learn Namjoon just walked out of class and doesn’t seem to find your invitation out of place, even if you’re not sure if it was too much to call yourselves friends. The thoughts make you think back on your first meeting a week prior and wonder what prompted him to talk with quiet little you when there was so much more to do at the party. You then turn quietly flustered, realizing your traitorous mouth asked that aloud.

He mutters something about an analogy, how beautiful stars shine at night when there’s no lights from nearby cities reaching the sky and a little more you just can’t quite catch. But then he’s putting his hands to his face in embarrassment with more jumbled mumbling as you shyly smile back.

“You just looked like you wanted someone to talk to,” Namjoon settles on with dimpled smile, “and I think I kind of did too.”

[topfygad]

11 Best Rain Jackets (Rated & Reviewed)

Rain, rain, go away! We all wish the dark clouds away so they don’t spoil our outdoor adventures. But I’m sorry to tell you that crossing your fingers is probably not enough to drive those drops away. What you need, then, is a good rain jacket to keep you snug and dry.

But outdoor adventure gear like raincoats seem to be a dime a dozen. High-quality rain jackets usually come at a high cost. But I’ve done a lot of research and testing, and I’ve waded through all the different materials.

This list of the best rain jackets of the 2019 season will protect you from the elements. And the detailed guide on materials, features and jacket types to follow will prep you with all the information you need to pick out the absolute best rain jacket for your needs.

Best Rain Jacket Overall 

1. REI Drypoint GTX 

The Drypoint certainly lives up to its namesake by staying bone-dry. Add to this the extremely comfortable fit and highly mobile construction, and you have a coat that is ready to stand fast in the face of any rainstorm the world over. 

The Drypoint owes its badge of best rain jacket in part to its three-layer Gore-Tex design. This is certainly one of the most waterproof jackets I’ve ever come across. The hood compliments this by cinching down perfectly, regardless of headwear, and it offers excellent periphery sight-lines.

Amongst my jacket pet-peeves is turning my head only to see the lovely inside of my hood. The Drypoint hood, however, completely eliminates this by traversing with my head even during intense activities or wind. That’s absolute gold in my book! 

For the fit, you’ll find the Drypoint to be comfortable and stretchy. This makes the jacket optimal for just about any aerobic activity.

The shape, however, is a little boxy/roomy for most tastes. While this is perfect for layering in cold conditions, it can be a bit of a hindrance or eyesore if you’re trying to maintain a sleek profile. The material itself, while light, seems a little thin for the more intense activities that this jacket is marketed for, so try to take care. 

The Drypoint is by far the best rain jacket for overall use in my book for all uses. Keep dry, keep moving and keep stylish throughout the worst the weather can throw at you. (It’s also available in women’s).

Pros  Cons

Extremely breathable yet waterproof 

Very customizable and comfortable hood 

Excellent Gore-Tex waterproofing 

Lightweight for hiking 

Thin material may compromise durability 

‘Tent’ cut—good for layering but very roomy otherwise

REI Drypoint GTX Specs:

Features Details Waterproofing

3-layer GORE-TEX

Insulation  No Weight 10.5 oz Material 20D Nylon  Price $$$

SHOP MEN’S ON REI SHOP WOMEN’S ON REI

Best Lightweight Rain Jacket 

2. Patagonia Storm Racer

Extreme outdoor adventurers – I’m talking to you ultralight runners and hikers out there – know what it’s like to count ounces. Every single piece of gear must earn its place and be worth the weight. It’s for exactly those situations that Patagonia created the Storm Racer. A mere six ounces of awesome water repellency that can pack down to just about nothing definitely makes this the best rain jacket for you gram counters! 

The Storm Racer achieves its lightweight status with a very thin 12D Nylon ripstop material and H2No water repellency shell. While I love how packable and light it is, I am worried about its overall durability as 12D as close to paper thin as we’ll see on this list. There’s one for women too! 

The nice trim fit offered by the Storm Racer is also a win as it maintains a very low profile for trail running or hiking. The hood continues this trend with a very low profile that is comfortable and offers a great field of view. Be aware, however, that with this snug design you won’t be able to get the hood over most helmets.

For the diehard runners and hikers out there, you can’t go wrong with the Patagonia Storm Racer. Lightweight, trim fit and entirely waterproof in the face of any rainstorm; this is certainly the best rain jacket for you. But if you tend to dabble in rock climbing, mountaineering or mountain biking, I’d recommend getting a tougher jacket. 

Pros  Cons

Very lightweight for extreme runners and hikers

Packs down very small

Great breathability

Poor durability, very thin material

Patagonia Storm Racer Specs:

Features Details Waterproofing

3-layer H2No

Insulation  No Weight 6 oz Material 12D Nylon  Price $$$

SHOP MEN’S ON PATAGONIA SHOP WOMEN’S ON PATAGONIA

Best Budget Rain Jacket 

3. Marmot PreCip

Budget world travelers and frugal spenders unite. Marmot has an impenetrable reputation when it comes to quality outdoor adventure gear, their PreCip jacket is no exception. Excellent waterproofing along with comfortable mobility, and all for a price that won’t result in tear-swollen eyes. 

Marmot puts their NanoPro to use along with a Durable Water Repellent (DWR) finish that both work in tandem to definitively slam the door in rain’s face. You’ll stay nice and dry in everything from a morning mist to a full-on deluge, and the jacket is very comfortable and easy to use to boot. 

The PreCip moves very well for just about any activity, while the hood gives an excellent account of itself with excellent comfort and sealing. These two features combine to make a very cozy fit jacket that will be at home for any activity.

But what really makes the PreCip stand out, however, is its very reasonable price tag. At around only $100 retail, this jacket is absolutely perfect for folks who want all the benefits of the best rain jacket, but without a premier price tag. It’s available in women’s too.

The only drawback that I’ve come across worth mentioning for your consideration is the overall breathability of this item. While it doesn’t become a humid jungle in there, you’ll almost certainly notice a decrease in airflow compared to other models. However, Marmot has thoughtfully included pit zips that help greatly in this department! 

Pros  Cons

Excellent waterproofing at reasonable price

Fold-away hood 

Armpit zips for improved ventilation 

Not as breathable as similar jackets 

Marmot PreCip Specs:

Features Details Waterproofing

Marmot NanoPro

Insulation  No Weight 13 oz Material Nylon Ripstop Price $

SHOP MEN’S ON AMAZONSHOP WOMEN’S ON AMAZON

Best 4-Season Rain Jacket 

4. Arc’teryx Beta AR (All-Round)

When it comes to quality craftsmanship, Arc’teryx often comes to mind. Firmly entrenched in the intense outdoor adventure niche, you can always expect top-tier quality and their Beta AR jacket perfectly follows this trend. Nearly indestructible construction and impenetrable waterproofing both come together to make the best rain jacket for year-round adventurers. 

The tough construction is courtesy of 40-80D Gore-tex layering that will hold up to just about everything short of a full-on rock slide, and will help keep you nice in warm in every frigid condition. I absolutely love Arc’teryx’s foresight where the tougher 80D material is reserved for high impact areas such as shoulders and forearms. The 40D material conversely covers the rest of the coat to provide excellent durability and waterproofing where you most need it without driving the weight of the whole jacket through the roof. 

Atop this is a very handy drop-hood-collar combination. The hood is large enough to shield any helmet but adjustable enough to stay in place, while the collar protects your chin and neck. And yes, there’s a style for women!

The one primary drawback I found is the waist. The rest of the coat is perfectly designed to allow for layering during cold conditions, but the waist seems just a little short to me. When wearing a hip-belt and bending over, the bottom of the coat can scoot up into the hip-belt which is always uncomfortable and makes for an awkward shimmy as you work it back into place. 

Nevertheless, the Beta AR is a powerhouse of durability and protection that clearly earns its title of best rain jacket for all seasons.  

Pros  Cons

Incredibly durable construction

Armpit zips for improved ventilation 

Helmet-friendly hood 

Waist seems a little short

Very expensive 

Arc’tery Beta AR Specs:

Features Details Waterproofing

Gore-Tex 

Insulation  No Weight 16 oz Material 40-80D Gore-Tex Price $$$$

SHOP MEN’S ON ARC’TERYX SHOP WOMEN’S ON ARC’TERYXSHOP MEN’S ON REI SHOP WOMEN’S ON REI

Best Men’s Rain Jacket 

5. Outdoor Research Foray

Gentlemen, from walking the dog on a rainy day to pushing your way through a rainforest with a pack on your back, you’ll need a reliable and comfortable barrier between you and shivering, damp misery. The versatile Foray by Outdoor Research is my best recommendation to achieve that barrier and the best rain jacket for any occasion.

The Foray’s versatility is derived from an exceptionally hefty and durable build that at the same time boasts a surprising amount of ventilation to keep it comfortable in all conditions. You have a thick, 50D, Gore-tex material to thank for this durability that will see you safely from cities to mountains. And massive, ventilated pit zips that zip all the way down for “poncho mode.”

What the 50D material buys you in durability, however, it’ll cost you in weight. Coming in at 16.3 ounces, this is definitely one of the heaviest rain jackets I’ve seen and will make its bulky presence felt. If you don’t mind the bulkiness, or simply need the tough construction, then definitely rock on.

For men anywhere in the world who are caught out in wet conditions, the Foray is the tough bulldog of a jacket. A beefy build, comfy fit and reliable performance all come together to make this coat the best rain jacket for men currently on the market. 

Pros  Cons

Excellent Gore-Tex Waterproofing 

Good durability 

Large Armpit Zips for ventilation 

Outdoor Research Foray Specs:

Features Details Waterproofing

Gore-Tex Paclite

Insulation  No Weight 16.3 oz Material 50D Polyester Price $$

SHOP OUTDOOR RESEARCH SHOP REI

Best Women’s Rain Jacket 

6. Outdoor Research Aspire

Outdoor Research once again makes my list for the best rain jacket, but this time for the women adventurers. Like its male counterpart, the Foray, the Aspire jacket does an excellent job of blending comfort, breathability and, of course, waterproofing for an all-around solid performance in nearly every damp circumstance out there. 

The 50D polyester Gore-Tex blend works wonders to make this article both entirely waterproof and very durable. Whether you’re pushing your way through bushes and trees on a hike, scrabbling over rock or simply climbing in your own window after forgetting the key, you’ll find the Aspire up to any challenge. 

Unfortunately, these thick materials and intense waterproofing usually puts a damper on breathability. Outdoor Research’s Gore-Tex with Paclite, however, maintains excellent airflow to keep you comfortable while facing down a storm. The jacket also artfully includes full-length arm-pit zippers to turn this jacket into a poncho for a quick heat dump, if needed. 

While this jacket is certainly heavier than your average rain shell, rest assured that you’re bringing a tough and dependable heavyweight into the ring that will stand up to all the rain beatings the weather dishes out.

Pros  Cons

Excellent Gore-Tex Waterproofing 

Good durability 

Large Armpit Zips for ventilation 

Outdoor Research Aspire Specs:

Features Details Waterproofing

Gore-Tex Paclite

Insulation  No Weight 13.7 oz Material 50D Polyester Price $$

SHOP OUTDOOR RESEARCH SHOP AMAZON

Best Rain Jacket for Hiking 

7. Arc’teryx Zeta SL (Superlight)

Here we have the lighter cousin to the Beta AR that is specifically designed for the trail. Get all the benefits Gore-tex and wind-proofing, but in a wonderfully light shell that packs down to almost nothing to make it the best rain jacket for hiking. 

The lightweight is thanks to an effective two-layer Gore-tex Paclite blend that provides an excellent shield against the elements, yet cuts down ounces at the same time. But what we gain in portability and packability, however, we oftentimes lose in durability. The Zeta eliminates the thicker reinforcing material often found in high abrasion areas – shoulders and forearms – and I, therefore, worry about the durability in the long run with backpack shoulder straps rubbing constantly. 

It’s just for that reason that Arc’teryx markets this as an emergency shell. It’s not meant for the everyday grind of the trail. But if those clouds do happen to burst, this is by far your best option for impenetrable waterproofing and ease of packing. The women’s version works the same way.

When you’re therefore hitting the trail for anything from a single-day hike to multiple days out in the elements, the Zeta SL is a must have in case of rain! Lightweight, great waterproofing, and specially designed with the trail in mind; this is definitely the best rain jacket.   

Pros  Cons

Excellent Gore-Tex Waterproofing 

Very packable

Lower weight than other gore-tex options 

Emergency shell only  

Little bit pricy

Arc’teryx Zeta SL Specs:

Features Details Waterproofing

Gore-Tex

Insulation  No Weight 10.6 oz Material 40D Gore-Tex + Paclite 2 Layer Price $$$

SHOP MEN’S ON ARC’TERYX SHOP WOMEN’S ON ARC’TERYXSHOP MEN’S ON REI SHOP WOMEN’S ON REI

Best Backpacking Rain Jacket

8. Columbia Outdry Ex Featherweight Shell

Columbia uniquely cuts out the standard outer layer of a rain jacket, instead, relying solely on the waterproof membrane. And they’ve certainly created the best rain jacket for backpacking in the process. 

The Outdry waterproof membrane does a fantastic job of shedding water during prolonged rain exposure and allowing for air transfer at the same time to keep you comfortable. This is due to the fact that eliminating the typical outer layer also eliminates an extra layer that air has to pass through. Therefore, it’s much easier for air exchange, and thus you’re much more comfortable!

So long-lasting waterproofing and breathability? Sounds like a backpacking winner to me for multiple days on the trail! 

The danger in putting the waterproof membrane on the outside, however, is durability. If that membrane is scraped, scratched or otherwise damaged, then your waterproofing is immediately compromised. After extensive testing, I have to admit that I haven’t damaged it yet, but it’s something I’m definitely aware of. 

This Outdry system also results in a uniquely shiny appearance. I’ve met folks that have either loved or hated it, so take a good long look before you go ahead with your purchase! 

Appearances aside, this coat is undoubtedly a solid and refreshingly lightweight option that is sure to keep the wet out and cool air in. While not boasting as many bells and whistles as other highly technical oriented coats, this is still the best rain jacket for backpacking that you can find. It’s available in women’s, too. 

Pros  Cons

Excellent breathability for such good waterproofing 

Very lightweight 

Shiny look is a bit of an acquired taste  

Less durable than other options

Columbia Outdry Ex Featherweight Shell Specs:

Features Details Waterproofing

Outdry

Insulation  No Weight 8.8 oz Material Nylon Ripstop Price $$

SHOP MEN’S ON COLUMBIA SHOP WOMEN’S ON COLUMBIA

Best Travel Rain Jacket 

9. North Face Venture 2

The North Face is a trusted brand for mountaineers and adventurers in every corner of the planet, and I’m constantly impressed by their consistent quality and craftsmanship. This all holds true for the Venture 2 to make it the best rain jacket for travel with solid performances in almost every criteria. 

In the weatherproofing criteria, North Face’s DryVent tech—utilizing layered polyurethane—works very well to keep the damp out in most conditions. The DWR finish at the same time reliably repels rain for the long run to keep the coat performing admirably for city or trail use. 

I’m also impressed by the very durable construction that you get for such a low price tag. The 70D thick material definitely holds up to hiking. As you might expect, however, having such a thick coat does come with a couple of drawbacks. 

For one: the bulky fit. Great for layering, but it can feel a little baggy and unwieldy. The hood is, surprisingly, the exact opposite of this description and won’t fit over helmets. So look out traveling climbers! Nevertheless, the overall hood design is very straightforward plus comfortable, and it works nicely to protect your dome from the elements. 

The different color options will spice up your entire trip too, to easily make the Venture 2 the best rain jacket for you travelers out there (including women travelers).

Pros  Cons

Huge number of color options 

Budget friendly 

Good venting options – Armpit zips 

Packable 

Smaller hood – doesn’t fit over most helmets 

Could be more breathable 

North Face Venture 2 Specs:

Features Details Waterproofing

DryVent 

Insulation  No Weight 11.6 oz Material Nylon Ripstop Price $

SHOP MEN’S ON NORTH FACE SHOP WOMEN’S ON NORTH FACE

SHOP MEN’S ON REI SHOP WOMEN’S ON REI

Best Breathable Rain Jacket 

10. Mammut Wenaha

We all like breathing, and so does your skin. To keep that clammy, progressing-towards-jungle-conditions-air away from the inside of your coat, we have the Wenaha by Mammut. Soft inner lining, armpit zips and excellent air flow all come together to form what is definitely the best rain jacket for breathability and keeping cool in all conditions! 

Mammut expertly puts their Gore-Tex Paclite material to use by completely locking out all moisture for entering, and yet allowing enough airflow to prevent you from turning into a mobile sweat machine. However, heavy hiking or running can inevitably result in some heat buildup. In that case, the armpit zips are perfect for a quick and seamless heat dump without having to fully unzip, or remove the jacket. 

I’m also a huge fan of the very smooth and comfortable inner material that not only makes this jacket a pleasure to wear, but it also keeps it from sticking to your skin in those hotter circumstances. Exteriorly speaking, the Wenaha cuts a very trim and sleek profile that looks natural in just about every situation. The same goes for the women’s version. Nobody said your adventure raincoat couldn’t be classy too! 

The exceptional airflow, heat-dumping capacity and comfortable fit easily make the Wenaha the best rain jacket for a cool and comfortable experience. To be fair, the tough design has resulted in a fairly hefty coat at 1lb, but to have all that durability and still maintain great breathability is a unique success right there!  

Pros  Cons

Excellent breathability 

Great trim fit 

Very durable construction 

Mammut Wenaha Specs:

Features Details Waterproofing

Gore-Tex Paclite

Insulation  No Weight 16 oz Material Polyester Price $$

SHOP MEN’S ON REI SHOP WOMEN’S ON REI

Best Packable Rain Jacket 

11. Montbell Versalite

For stuffing a rain jacket into your pack, car, or pocket, the Versalite by Montbell is definitely the best rain jacket. Extremely light with its own dedicated stuff-sack and impressive waterproofing, just fold and forget! 

Weighing in at a mere 6.4 ounces, this jacket is a trifle to stuff in an unused nook or cranny. While not quite as light as my favorite lightweight rain jacket—Patagonia Storm Racer—what sets the Versalite apart is the included stuff sack.

Almost nothing makes me shiver and curse more when whipping out a rain coat than to find it’s already wet! Horrible, right? Well, the included stuff sack is also water resistant, which is absolutely glorious for storing on the outside of a hiking pack for easy access! The women’s jacket works the exact same way.

Now the downside, at a mere 10D thickness, this rain coat is incredibly thin. Again, great for packing, cramming, stashing, or whatever you do; but poor for longterm durability. Therefore, I suggest treating it gently for optimal lifespan. 

The Montbell Versalite is without a doubt the best rain jacket for you space constrained individuals! This jackets will fit just about anywhere, be protected by its stuff sack, and be bone-dry when the time comes to throw it on in a hurry! 

Pros  Cons

Very lightweight 

Dedicated water resistant stuff-sack

Excellent waterproofing for a two-layer coat   

Very thin which may compromise durability 

Montbell Versalite Specs:

Features Details Waterproofing

Gore Windstopper

Insulation  No Weight 6.4 oz Material 10D Ripstop Nylon Price $$

SHOP MEN’S ON MONTBELL SHOP WOMEN’S ON MONTBELL

What Are the Best Rain Jacket Buying Considerations? 

Not all rain jackets are the same! Some are heavy-duty constructions that are meant to hold up to absolutely everything you can throw at them, while others are very lightweight shells for the weight counters out there. There are also differences in quality, material and function to consider that all add up to a daunting quagmire of options, so how do you decide?

That’s why I’m here! I’ve itemized the critical coat criteria from start to finish so you know exactly what you’re looking at along with its strengths and weaknesses. So let’s jump straight in. 

1. Weight

In general, heavy duty thick jackets will weigh more than the ultralight shells out there. Now for standard day-to-day use, this is can become a non-issue where a few ounces won’t keep you from getting to work on time. But there are circumstances where weight is everything! 

Think ultralight distance hikes or extreme trail running and marathons. In those situations, every single ounce counts and must earn its place. A featherlight shell that still keeps the rain at bay and packs down to almost nothing is very valuable. 

Therefore, depending on your intended activity, keep an eye on jacket weight!

2. Waterproofing

All rain jackets are completely waterproof, right? Well, not exactly. Nearly every brand has its own method to achieve their waterproofing—and all with varying degrees of success. 

The basic system seen on the market is a bare two-layer system that features a waterproof coating plus a mesh layer to protect it. These tend to be on the bulky side and often lack breathability. They’re therefore very basic and I’d only recommend them for occasional and casual use, except with a couple notable exceptions above.

Not having the proper waterproof gear can really ruin your trip!

The tried-and-true method is the standard three-layer system in which the waterproofing is sandwiched between two protective and durable layers. These tend to be the most effective and, therefore, the most expensive options on the market, with excellent moisture protection and breathability to keep you comfortable at the same time. 

The actual method of waterproofing, however, also varies greatly. Many companies have their own proprietary method, such as Columbia’s OutDry or Marmot’s NanoPro or Patagonia’s H2No, and most work extremely well. But remember that water is incredibly persistent and can sometimes seep through with prolonged exposure, and not all jackets are immune. So reference the reviews above and remember that established adventure brands are the best bet.

But there’s yet another avenue for water to find its way under your coat, and that’s due to poor feature design. 

3. Features

Why do you want the best rain jacket on the market? Is it for running or traveling or rainy commutes? Whatever the reason is, it drastically influences what features you want to be on the lookout for. 

Hoods, for one, vary drastically from coat to coat. Basic models will feature an equally basic hood with maybe one, or none, cinch cords to help tighten it around your head. Other models will go into much more details with two or more levels or securing the hood to ensure that it moves with you from side to side, gives you a wide field of view and, of course, keeps out the rain the whole time. Finally, if you’re planning on helmet wearing activities, make sure your hood is big enough to cover it, or comfortable enough to wear under! 

Cinching wrists are another feature that are incredibly useful as nobody enjoys the sensation of dampness creeping up their arm from a leaky wrist. Similarly, a sealable or adjustable waist is also very useful for the exact same reason! 

A final feature that I’d like to cover is armpit zips. When the heat starts to build up inside a coat from hard activity, it’s like a breath of fresh air to be able to unzip and dump some warmth without having to take off the whole coat. I’m particularly fond of coats with full-length zips so you can transition into poncho mode when needed. But also remember, another culprit of heat buildup can be poor jacket breathability.  

4. Breathability

Almost nothing is worse than slipping into a raincoat and later finding that you’re just as wet anyway from your own humidity and sweat, might just as well rinse off in the rain! The trick for coat manufacturers is, therefore, to develop a material that keeps rain and dampness from getting in, yet allows moisture and vapor to escape. 

The general leader of the pack in this department is Gore-Tex. It’s been applied far and wide for both raincoats and boots, and it’s generally a fairly safe option. Other companies have recently been developing alternatives—recall Columbia’s OutDry or Marmot’s NanoPro or Patagonia’s H2No?—that all also work to combine waterproofing and breathability. 

One important note to consider is that high-quality, and equally high pricing, ultralight (UL) raincoats typically do not include extraordinary breathability. They are focusing on trimming weight wherever they can, cutting out all non-essentials, and breathability often does not make the cut. 

UL options aside, the better the coat you opt for from an established brand, the better breathability you’re paying for. But you don’t only benefit from just a cool ride by choosing high-quality items. I truly cannot overstate that the more you focus on superior products from reputable brands, the more likely you are to buy your best rain jacket ever in every criterion. 

5. Cost and Quality

I know it hurts, but if you want the best rain jacket on the market, you’re probably going to have to pay for it. The jackets with top-tier durability, waterproofing, breathability and features will undoubtedly set you back a pretty penny. But I find it always helps to consider this point: Would you rather be stuck out in the woods, on a mountain or even on your way to work in the driving rain with a mediocre coat that essentially just filters the water for you? I think not! So take the time, consider your options and intended activities, and pick out the best rain jacket that fits your lifestyle and will benefit you the most! 

The next time you’re hiking, biking, running, just commuting to work or doing just about anything caught in the rain, you’re going to be glad you’ve been prepped on the best rain jackets on the market.

You know the materials, you have your required features in mind and you understand the importance of breathability. And, finally, you have a complete list of the best rain jackets for nearly every occasion. So take a look, pick out the jacket that will work best for you and let the adventuring begin rain or shine! 

Have fun and stay safe, eh?

READ MORE:

The 13 Best Travel Shirts for Both Men and Women

What to Wear Hiking: How to Choose the Best Hiking Clothes

Our Favorite Travel Clothes of the Season

Want to travel more?

We can help you manifest your dreams of traveling the world. Sign up for FREE to get started.

from Cheapr Travels https://ift.tt/2JLrBDf via https://ift.tt/2NIqXKN

[fitnesshealthyoga-blog]

New Post has been published on https://fitnesshealthyoga.com/8-minimalist-vacation-packing-tips-i-absolutely-swear-by/

8 Minimalist Vacation Packing Tips I Absolutely Swear By

I’m an under-packer by nature. I try to travel with one carry-on only (usually a backpack)—even when I’m leaving the country for a while and even when I’m traveling with my 3-year-old son. Sounds crazy, I know. And while it’s true this method has occasionally led me to seriously questionable hiking footwear (and definitely led me to 10 days in Scandinavia with only one pair of pants), for the most part, it is a truly liberating way to travel. Doing a one-backpack trip forces me to sit down and think about what I—and my son—truly need and what we can live with out. It almost turns last-minute packing an hour before the airport drive into a moving meditation on materialism and our existence as a human society… almost.

But even with the most minimalist of packing, I usually end up on a vacation with a decidedly un-minimalist schedule—and an overburdened frame of mind. There are hotels to book and tours to take and sights to see and reservations to make, not to mention inevitable souvenir shopping that completely undoes the whole one-backpack logic in the first place.

And after a week or so of that plus who knows how many flights/hours on the road? Well, I end up back home needing a vacation from my vacation. Sound familiar?

That’s why I decided it was time for me, the minimalist packer, to become and actual minimalist traveler—to plan a vacation that involved bringing, using, planning and doing as little as possible. Enter the plastic tiny house, a 170-square-foot energy-efficient home chilling (or rather, heating up) in the desert outside Phoenix, Arizona. (It was designed by Tiny House Nation host Zack Giffin, NBD). Just by the nature of choosing this as my temporary home, I was already hopping on the minimalist bandwagon. This particular 170-square-foot and super-energy-efficient tiny house made of plastic is a testimony to how little we can use if we just think creatively (and a sink that feeds gray water directly into the toilet system doesn’t hurt).

Image: Courtesy of Tony Marinella.

That’s right. I headed to the Arizona desert in August to spend my vacation in 170 square feet with the bare necessities, no other humans and certainly no restaurant reservations. And just to make my minimalist vacation extra-official, I brought: one pair of shoes, six items of clothing (including underwear) and a toothbrush/toothpaste. And that’s it. And it was the best vacation I’ve taken in a long time.

Image: apedelman/Instagram.

So if you’re the type who thinks travel has to involve endless planning, scheduling, packing multiple suitcases, booking hotels, tours and dining options, think again. This is how deciding to take that minimalist vacation to a tiny house in the desert, packing essentially nothing, changed the game for this traveling mom.

Image: Courtesy of Jennifer Verrier.

Why you should take a minimalist vacation

It’s cheaper

That part’s a given. If you’re doing less, you’re spending less. Aim to spend on the bare-bones.

Lodging: No hotels! Aim for an affordable Airbnb, or better yet, arrange a free home exchange through a site like Kid & Coe.

Transportation: Bonus if you drive or take public transport to your destination rather than flying.

Food: Groceries, not restaurant bills.

Leave the entertainment part of the budget at $0—and see where it takes you.

It requires less planning beforehand

With an entertainment budget and schedule set at zero, you can save your at-home hours before the trip and those frantic last-minute Google searches for places to stay/eat/see. Instead, let your vacation “plans” involve walking out your door in the morning and seeing where your stroll takes you.

The getting-there part is way easier

Embarking on a six-hour (or 16-hour) flight is exhausting enough already. Do you really need to add multiple pieces of luggage and a trip to baggage claim to your already (literally) burdened shoulders? No. Pack only the essentials—and then remove five things from your bag before you go. You’ll be surprised what you can do without.

It forces you to be resourceful

I stand by the statement, “You’ll be surprised what you can do without.” That said, for my tiny house trip, I wildly under-packed—on purpose, of course—and in my minimization discovered two things I hadn’t packed it turned out I sorely missed, especially in the dry Arizona summer: a hair tie and lip balm. But you’d better believe I scavenged through that house to find an old elastic tag that I used to tie my hair up for the whole trip. Oh, and I absolutely put kitchen olive oil on my lips every night. #NoRegrets

It forces you to focus on yourself (for better or worse)

Guess what. When you’re alone in a tiny house in the desert (or a cabin in the woods or a yurt on the mountain or whatever your preferred solo-minimalist vacation locale may be), you cannot just keep busy and la-la-la your way through life and ignore whatever it is you really need/need to work on/need to give up. Your shit will rise up to the surface, and you will have to confront it. But hey, the only way out is through, baby.

I do want to note here that I don’t equate a minimalist vacation to “roughing it.” Any sort of camping/backpacking/what-have-you trip that involves trekking through the woods, setting up a tent, conjuring up a fire and all your meals and hauling ass to some dark bug-infested corner of the forest in order to “go to the bathroom” is all very admirable—but it’s not quite what I mean by minimalist. Because that shit involves work. Camping/backpacking, strangely like taking a fancy multi-hotel tour of Europe, does involve a lot of planning and preparing (isn’t that literally the Boy Scout motto?) and pretty much constant effort to keep that whole staying-alive-in-the-wilderness thing afloat.

For me, in this moment, I wanted a trip that still landed solidly in the vacation category of travel: somewhere warm and habitable with pre-appointed (indoor) lodgings and an actual toilet. You know, the basics that roughing it doesn’t quite provide. And I lucked out in that my tiny house was pre-stocked with some basic food as well: milk, coffee, eggs, butter. All of this is to say that this precise midpoint between roughing it and your typical vacation got me exactly where I wanted to get: the middle of the desert with absolutely nothing to do.

Image: Courtesy of Jennifer Verrier.

So, how do you take a minimalist vacation?

Book early

This is key both for planning-stress levels as well as pricing.

Pack light (duh)

See above re: items of clothing, toothbrush, sunscreen. I promise you can do it.

Don’t pack shoes—I mean it

This is my No. 1 packing tip for all forms of travel, but especially if you’re aiming for minimalism. You’re not going to a wedding here, nor are you climbing Everest. Whatever isolated locale you choose, plan to wear—not pack—one pair of sturdy, oh-so-comfortable footwear that will actually last you the whole week or however long you’re gone. If you’re heading to the hills, hiking boots. If you’re beaching it, Birkenstocks. As long as they’re comfy, who cares what they look like? Nobody will be looking at your feet anyway.

Get outside your comfort zone with food

Yes, sure, you have favorite meals and favorite recipes and favorite restaurants. But what’s something super-simple you can cook just for yourself literally every day for a week? Make yourself one big epic pot of soup and see how long it lasts or dive into the wondrous world of kitchari. It won’t be fancy, but you will be full. And just see how much brain space you end up with when you’re not thinking about meal planning every single day.

Move your body in new ways

This whole thing goes out the window if you sit in your tiny house like a rock for a week. You will not feel good if your minimalist vacation involves being horizontal the entire time. But no, you will not have access to SoulCycle or a hotel gym. So get creative. Take a walk, a hike, a run, a jump-around-the-lake-five-times. Try your hand at a solo at-home yoga practice even if you’ve only ever taken two classes before. Get in your body and see what feels good. Bonus points if you really see what feels good. You are on a solo vacation, after all.

Expect to go without

So, you’ve never gone a week without makeup? Or shampoo? What about deodorant? I see you cringing. But remember, this is your minimalist vacation. You are likely all alone—or as is so often my case, “alone” with a child in tow—and nobody cares about how your hair looks. Of course, this is not to say you should go a week without key prescription medication or brushing your teeth. But that hairdryer/concealer/five-step facial-moisturizing system? Leave it behind. And while you’re at it, see if you can leave your social media accounts behind too. I dare you.

Do pack one (tech-free) thing to “do”

Whether it’s that poetry book you’re reading (or writing!), a journal, a sketchbook or even your knitting, there will be times your mind needs a break from all that quiet time with itself. Give it one that will also fuel it.

For me, in my borrowed tiny house, the sheer lack of stuff to do—no tent-setting, fire-building, bear-repelling, or shit hole-scouting, but also no sightseeing, navigating, appointment-setting or museum-hopping—left me no choice but to face what I had come to face: myself. I wrote. I meditated. I walked. I cooked some eggs. I took the longest shower possible because, as opposed to my showers at home that are hastily sandwiched between dishes, laundry, lunch-packing, school drop-off and the workday (it’s a wonder working single moms shower at all, honestly), I had no schedule to rush off to, nothing to be inevitably late to and no reason to feel guilty or ashamed for happily standing under hot water for half an hour. Other than, you know, water waste and the environment. Damn it.

On my minimalist vacation, I had zero plans. I had to—I got to—face many small, strange situations and feelings that are entirely alien in my regular life: silence, solitude, boredom, ease, freedom, peace.

And guess what (this is the sixth and possibly most important reason to take a minimalist vacation)…

The effects extend way beyond the trip itself

All that solo soul-searching? You will definitely carry the aftereffects home with you. There’s nothing quite like a trip that’s based on packing/planning/paying/doing/using less to inspire you to take stock in your life and think about what you actually need going forward—you know, out of the tiny house and back into real life.

One thing’s for certain: You’ll never again forget to appreciate the value of a hair tie.

  Originally posted on SheKnows.

!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s)if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function()n.callMethod? n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments);if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n; n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0';n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0; t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)(window, document,'script','//connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js'); // Insert Your Facebook Pixel ID below. fbq('init', '1130306277008218'); fbq('track', 'PageView'); (function(d)var id="facebook-jssdk";if(!d.getElementById(id))var js=d.createElement("script"),ref=d.getElementsByTagName("script")[0];js.id=id,js.async=true,js.src="https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js",ref.parentNode.insertBefore(js,ref))(document)

Source link

[mialipsky-blog]

The Bride Wore Oscar de la Renta and Took Everyone’s Breath Away!

This wedding is proof that when you hire the right people, really pretty things happen. Especially when you’ve got people like Trent Bailey Studio, Michelle Elaine Weddings, Face Time Beauty Concierge, Katydid Signature Floral & Event Design and Around Town Entertainment on your vendor list. Scroll on for the entire lovefest, including a beaming bride in Oscar de la Renta who completely stole the show.

Please upgrade your browser

Share this gorgeous gallery on

  Colors

Seasons

Fall

Settings

ChurchCountry ClubReligious Institution

Styles

Classic

From the planner, Michelle Elaine… I absolutely loved working with Lauren! We planned together for about 14 months so time was on our side to get every last detail perfectly nailed down. Her natural style carried over into her wedding design displaying that same class and elegance. The vision created was timeless, with antique silver candelabras, lush white florals, gorgeous table garlands and slight touches of deep navy, courtesy of our talented calligrapher, Tara Jones. Lauren’s wedding dress, a stunning Oscar de la Renta, completely took everyone’s breath away as she walked down the aisle; I couldn’t even keep it together as I prepared her to walk!

Following the ceremony, the couple had portraits done as my team ensured no detail was missed at the venue. Lauren wanted to create the reception in a way that guests would enjoy a very formal, seated dinner and then be entertained on the pool deck by an incredible band to dance the night away, which they did!

From the bride, Lauren… Dan and I both went to the University of Southern California and were introduced by mutual friends. The first 2 years of our relationship were long-distance, trading weekends up and down the coast between LA and San Francisco, before ending up in Venice Beach. But while our life together is very much rooted in California, I knew immediately after we got engaged that I wanted our wedding to take place in my home state.

My parents both have homes near the Jersey Shore, so when we visit during the summer that has become our home base. It was important for us to have a Catholic ceremony, and as soon as we saw Saint Catharine’s, a stunning historic church, in Spring Lake, the most charming Victorian beach town, we knew it was meant to be.

After choosing the location, we set out to find the right vendors. I actually discovered both Michelle Elaine Weddings and Trent Bailey in the same Style Me Pretty post, and after exhaustive research, I’m so glad I went with my gut and hired them both! Trent’s editorial style was exactly what we were looking for in a photographer; and Michelle not only kept track of every detail leading up to the wedding, making long-distance planning a breeze but also perfectly executed our vision on the day.

We wanted everything to feel very elegant, classic and timeless. Dan and I both tend to favor neutral colors, so we chose that palette for the wedding as well. Almost everything was white or ivory, with accents of gray and antique silver, and a very dark navy for the calligraphy. I’m obsessed with all things paper and calligraphy and immediately fell in love with Tara Jones’ work, which really set the tone for the rest of the details.

The day of the wedding was a dream. My bridesmaids, who all wore different gray dresses of their choosing, came over to my dad’s house, and my mom brought over “Father of the Bride” and “My Best Friend’s Wedding” to play while we got ready. Dan and I gave each other gifts (pearl earrings for me, vintage cufflinks for him), and notes that we had written earlier. It rained that morning, and I think I was the only one who actually wasn’t worried about it… My trusty weather app told me the sun would come out at 2, just in time for the wedding, and sure enough, as we pulled up to the church in the trolley, singing “Going to the Chapel,” the clouds parted and the sun started shining.

I didn’t want anything to distract from my dress, so I carried a simple bouquet of white tulips and lily of the valley… and a huge smile, which I could not keep off my face! My father walked me down the aisle and we had a full mass, with readings by my godmother and Dan’s sister, and a solo of “Amazing Grace” performed by one of my bridesmaids. 

Before the reception, the bridal party took the trolley back to my dad’s house, which is one of my favorite places in the world, for portraits. The photographs Trent captured there are so special to us. When we got to the reception, Dan and I snuck into the ballroom before heading out to cocktail hour to see the set-up and have a moment (and some food) to ourselves. It was so thrilling to see every detail we’d spent so much time planning brought to life and to spend a few moments alone as a married couple reflecting on everything before heading out to take it all in together.

While I had always dreamed of a traditional black-tie wedding, it was really important to us that our guests (many of whom flew across the country to be there) could still feel comfortable and have fun. The Spring Lake Bath & Tennis Club was the perfect venue to accommodate that, with its old-school East Coast charm and oceanfront setting being just the right amount of formal, without feeling stuffy. After the cocktail hour on the oceanfront pavilion (with signature Dirty Martini and Old Fashioned cocktails), we moved inside to the ballroom for a candlelit seated dinner. After 3 brilliant toasts and a delicious meal, the party moved back outside under the stars (actually, a tent filled with twinkly lights). I changed into a custom-made strapless ivory column dress and white Adidas, and we cut the cake with a champagne saber my mom’s boyfriend gave us as an engagement gift. The Around Town Band did not disappoint, and the dance floor was packed the whole night. Actually, I think the only time we were sad the whole day is when they played their last song!

The best piece of advice I received (and, thankfully, actually listened to!) is to be present – enjoy yourself, and be yourself. It really does go by so fast, so don’t miss a moment by worrying about something silly. Spend the whole day having fun with your new husband, your families, and all the people who are there to celebrate you! Thanks to Michelle and her team, we were able to feel like guests at our own wedding, which is how everyone should experience it.

Photography: Trent Bailey Studio | Cinematography: Kiss The Bride Films | Event Planning: Michelle Elaine Weddings | Floral Design: Katydid Signature Floral & Event Design | Wedding Dress: Oscar De La Renta | Cakes: Chocolate Carousel | Ceremony Venue: St. Catharine's Church | Reception Venue: Spring Lake Bath & Tennis Club | Bride's Shoes: J.Crew | Rings: Custom by Structure Manufacturing of Fine Jewelry | Bridesmaid Dresses: Various | Hair & Makeup: Face Time Beauty Concierge | Calligraphy: Tara Jones Calligraphy | Band: Around Town Entertainment | Groomsmen's Bow Ties: The Tie Bar | Tent: Ocean Tents | Bridal Party Monogrammed Shirts: Life a Stitch | Bridal Salon: Erin Cole | Bride's Earrings: Christian Dior | Ceremony Programs: Design by Bride, Printing by the Father of the Groom | Flower Crowns: Bluebird Twine | Groom's Shoes: Salvatore Ferragamo | Groom's Tuxedo: Ralph Lauren | Paper Goods: Color Box Design & Letterpress | Rentals: Party Rental LTD | Uplighting: Finer Touch Entertainment | Veil: Janice Haddan | Wax Seals: Nostalgic Impressions

© Style Me Pretty, 2017. | Permalink | Comments | Add to del.icio.us Post tags: Real Wedding, real weddings Post categories: Real Weddings, Romantic, The Blog

The Bride Wore Oscar de la Renta and Took Everyone’s Breath Away! published first on their blog to my feed

[janerchambers88]

The Bride Wore Oscar de la Renta and Took Everyone’s Breath Away!

This wedding is proof that when you hire the right people, really pretty things happen. Especially when you’ve got people like Trent Bailey Studio, Michelle Elaine Weddings, Face Time Beauty Concierge, Katydid Signature Floral & Event Design and Around Town Entertainment on your vendor list. Scroll on for the entire lovefest, including a beaming bride in Oscar de la Renta who completely stole the show.

Share this gorgeous gallery on

  Colors

Seasons

Fall

Settings

ChurchCountry ClubReligious Institution

Styles

Classic

From the planner, Michelle Elaine… I absolutely loved working with Lauren! We planned together for about 14 months so time was on our side to get every last detail perfectly nailed down. Her natural style carried over into her wedding design displaying that same class and elegance. The vision created was timeless, with antique silver candelabras, lush white florals, gorgeous table garlands and slight touches of deep navy, courtesy of our talented calligrapher, Tara Jones. Lauren’s wedding dress, a stunning Oscar de la Renta, completely took everyone’s breath away as she walked down the aisle; I couldn’t even keep it together as I prepared her to walk!

Following the ceremony, the couple had portraits done as my team ensured no detail was missed at the venue. Lauren wanted to create the reception in a way that guests would enjoy a very formal, seated dinner and then be entertained on the pool deck by an incredible band to dance the night away, which they did!

From the bride, Lauren… Dan and I both went to the University of Southern California and were introduced by mutual friends. The first 2 years of our relationship were long-distance, trading weekends up and down the coast between LA and San Francisco, before ending up in Venice Beach. But while our life together is very much rooted in California, I knew immediately after we got engaged that I wanted our wedding to take place in my home state.

My parents both have homes near the Jersey Shore, so when we visit during the summer that has become our home base. It was important for us to have a Catholic ceremony, and as soon as we saw Saint Catharine’s, a stunning historic church, in Spring Lake, the most charming Victorian beach town, we knew it was meant to be.

After choosing the location, we set out to find the right vendors. I actually discovered both Michelle Elaine Weddings and Trent Bailey in the same Style Me Pretty post, and after exhaustive research, I’m so glad I went with my gut and hired them both! Trent’s editorial style was exactly what we were looking for in a photographer; and Michelle not only kept track of every detail leading up to the wedding, making long-distance planning a breeze but also perfectly executed our vision on the day.

We wanted everything to feel very elegant, classic and timeless. Dan and I both tend to favor neutral colors, so we chose that palette for the wedding as well. Almost everything was white or ivory, with accents of gray and antique silver, and a very dark navy for the calligraphy. I’m obsessed with all things paper and calligraphy and immediately fell in love with Tara Jones’ work, which really set the tone for the rest of the details.

The day of the wedding was a dream. My bridesmaids, who all wore different gray dresses of their choosing, came over to my dad’s house, and my mom brought over “Father of the Bride” and “My Best Friend’s Wedding” to play while we got ready. Dan and I gave each other gifts (pearl earrings for me, vintage cufflinks for him), and notes that we had written earlier. It rained that morning, and I think I was the only one who actually wasn’t worried about it… My trusty weather app told me the sun would come out at 2, just in time for the wedding, and sure enough, as we pulled up to the church in the trolley, singing “Going to the Chapel,” the clouds parted and the sun started shining.

I didn’t want anything to distract from my dress, so I carried a simple bouquet of white tulips and lily of the valley… and a huge smile, which I could not keep off my face! My father walked me down the aisle and we had a full mass, with readings by my godmother and Dan’s sister, and a solo of “Amazing Grace” performed by one of my bridesmaids. 

Before the reception, the bridal party took the trolley back to my dad’s house, which is one of my favorite places in the world, for portraits. The photographs Trent captured there are so special to us. When we got to the reception, Dan and I snuck into the ballroom before heading out to cocktail hour to see the set-up and have a moment (and some food) to ourselves. It was so thrilling to see every detail we’d spent so much time planning brought to life and to spend a few moments alone as a married couple reflecting on everything before heading out to take it all in together.

While I had always dreamed of a traditional black-tie wedding, it was really important to us that our guests (many of whom flew across the country to be there) could still feel comfortable and have fun. The Spring Lake Bath & Tennis Club was the perfect venue to accommodate that, with its old-school East Coast charm and oceanfront setting being just the right amount of formal, without feeling stuffy. After the cocktail hour on the oceanfront pavilion (with signature Dirty Martini and Old Fashioned cocktails), we moved inside to the ballroom for a candlelit seated dinner. After 3 brilliant toasts and a delicious meal, the party moved back outside under the stars (actually, a tent filled with twinkly lights). I changed into a custom-made strapless ivory column dress and white Adidas, and we cut the cake with a champagne saber my mom’s boyfriend gave us as an engagement gift. The Around Town Band did not disappoint, and the dance floor was packed the whole night. Actually, I think the only time we were sad the whole day is when they played their last song!

The best piece of advice I received (and, thankfully, actually listened to!) is to be present – enjoy yourself, and be yourself. It really does go by so fast, so don’t miss a moment by worrying about something silly. Spend the whole day having fun with your new husband, your families, and all the people who are there to celebrate you! Thanks to Michelle and her team, we were able to feel like guests at our own wedding, which is how everyone should experience it.

Photography: Trent Bailey Studio | Cinematography: Kiss The Bride Films | Event Planning: Michelle Elaine Weddings | Floral Design: Katydid Signature Floral & Event Design | Wedding Dress: Oscar De La Renta | Cakes: Chocolate Carousel | Ceremony Venue: St. Catharine’s Church | Reception Venue: Spring Lake Bath & Tennis Club | Bride’s Shoes: J.Crew | Rings: Custom by Structure Manufacturing of Fine Jewelry | Bridesmaid Dresses: Various | Hair & Makeup: Face Time Beauty Concierge | Calligraphy: Tara Jones Calligraphy | Band: Around Town Entertainment | Groomsmen’s Bow Ties: The Tie Bar | Tent: Ocean Tents | Bridal Party Monogrammed Shirts: Life a Stitch | Bridal Salon: Erin Cole | Bride’s Earrings: Christian Dior | Ceremony Programs: Design by Bride, Printing by the Father of the Groom | Flower Crowns: Bluebird Twine | Groom’s Shoes: Salvatore Ferragamo | Groom’s Tuxedo: Ralph Lauren | Paper Goods: Color Box Design & Letterpress | Rentals: Party Rental LTD | Uplighting: Finer Touch Entertainment | Veil: Janice Haddan | Wax Seals: Nostalgic Impressions

© Style Me Pretty, 2017. | Permalink | Comments | Add to del.icio.us Post tags: Real Wedding, real weddings Post categories: Real Weddings, Romantic, The Blog