#the title just sounds a thousand times better in Spanish

[rosellacwrites]

if you want to call me baby (just go ahead now)

summary: As it turns out, the language of love is — all of them.

pairings: Steven Grant x GN!Reader

rating: general audiences

warnings: weapons grade fluff, established relationship, pet names (so many)

word count: 577

author’s note: Written for the Moon Knight Spring Bingo @moonknight-events — this is entry #4 for “Ritual.” Happy reading! ❤️

dividers by @firefly-graphics

It had started, as do so many things between you, in bed.

“G’night, my dear,” Steven had murmured to you, pulling your back snug against his chest and burrowing his face into your neck, but you’d started to giggle.

“‘My dear?’ What are you, eighty?” you’d laughed.

“What’s wrong with that? You’re very dear to me,” he’d protested.

“And you are to me, too. You know that.” You’d twisted around, craning your neck for a kiss. “It just struck me as funny — you have to admit it has pensioner vibes.”

He’d huffed and kissed you back, and as you’d drifted into sleep you’d heard him say something along the lines of just going to have to find something tomorrow you like better, then.

You’d forgotten about it until the next evening, when he’d dropped a kiss on top of your head on the way to the kitchen and said “Do you want some popcorn, habibi?” When you’d looked up at him quizzically, he was grinning. “‘My love,’” he’d translated. “Arabic. No ‘pensioner vibes’ there, yeah?”

You’d grinned at him and said you supposed not, and the next morning you’d handed him a cup of tea and called him petit chou, and belatedly remembered that he spoke French well enough to know you’d just called him a little cabbage.

And from that point, it was on. You racked your brains for long-forgotten vocabulary words and pored over language dictionaries online, the authorized and unauthorized alike. After that first one, he refused to translate for you anymore: “go on, I want to see if you can find out for yourself,” he’d said. Most of them weren’t so hard, but he’d stumped you with nedjem, which turned out to be Ancient Egyptian (because of course it did) for sweetie.

In revenge, you’d resorted to something he couldn’t possibly spell just from hearing it. “Oh, that’s not playing fair!” he’d protested, and you were weak enough to give him a hint. Knowing where to start, and using his best attempts at phonetic spelling, he got there in the end, all the way to a chuisle mo chroí, Irish for pulse of my heart.

It became your ritual, each new name another star in your shared sky. Persian kharâbetam, I’m ruined for you, taking its place next to Brazilian Portuguese chuchuzinho, little squash, and Ojibwemowin niinimoshenh, sweetheart. You start secretly keeping a list so you don’t repeat yourself, filled with German and Russian and Igbo, liebling, solnyshko, obi’m, but your favorite so far is the Spanish media naranja, because it makes you think of you and Steven curled up together in bed, fitting into each other seamlessly like two halves of the same orange.

Some silly, some sweet, some passionate: you find yourself humbled before the infinite possibilities, marveling at just how many ways there are in the universe to tell someone that you love them.

One evening he comes up behind you while you’re making dinner, and wraps an arm around your waist, kissing you just behind your ear. He whispers your name, and something else, besides.

“Veux-tu m’épouser?”

It doesn’t sound like a pet name, with the soft, nearly tentative way he says it; it sounds like a question. Like an important question — the kind of question you’ll see written in tremulous hope all over his face and cupped gently in his other hand when you turn around to tell him in plain English yes, absolutely, a thousand times yes.

@juneknight @spacecowboyhotch (mod tags)

(pssst today’s my birthday so I wanted to post a little supremely self-indulgent fluff)

Title from here, of course. I’m gonna make y’all listen to my old lady music if it kills me.

[wordsbyrian]

A Polyglot Short: Kelley Finds Out

Summary: What the title says.

A/N: Remember like a month ago when I made a poll asking whether I should be nice and let Kelley find out who R's girlfriend is? This is that fic.

It’s been roughly 2 days since your late-night phone call with Kelley.

Currently, you’re puttering around your kitchen trying to put together something to eat for breakfast when your phone rings with a Facetime call.

Not bothering to check the caller ID, you answer and begin speaking, having already put the phone down and turned back to the stove.

“Escucha, si vas a venir a desayunar tienes que dejar de llamar para que pueda terminar de cocinar.”

There’s a pause that’s longer than it usually is when you snap at your Barça teammates and you don’t hear anyone laughing in the background, so you turn back around to the phone only to see Kelley staring at you shocked.

“Okay, so you’re not coming over for breakfast,” you say after a moment, “How are you doing Kells?”

“Uh, good.”

“Cool, are you calling for any particular reason? I’m kind of in the middle of something here.”

“Do I need a reason to call you,” she asks back.

“Yes,” you say, moving back to the stove, bringing the phone with you.

You hear nothing as Kelley presumably continues staring at you while you cook.

“So who are you making breakfast for? Your girlfriend?”

And there’s the reason.

Deciding to finally give in, you answer her.

“If she wakes up in time then yea,” you respond, pulling the pan off the stove, “If not then just me, Patri, and Pina.” “So you live with your girlfriend then? She’s one of your teammates?”

“No, and no. She’s just visiting and she leaves tomorrow.”

“You have barely a full day to be alone with her and instead you’re having breakfast with your friends,” Kelley says questioningly, “You’re an idiot.”

“Your opinion is unasked for but noted anyway,” you tell her, “Also there’s no way I could stop Patri and Pina from coming over. I moved in 3 and a half years ago and they’ve been harassing me daily ever since.”

Your sentence is punctuated by the sound of pounding at your door.

“Speak of the devil, I’ll be right back,” you say, already walking away.

Walking the short distance to the door, you’re unsurprised when the pounding only gets louder and more aggressive.

Yanking it open, you’re even more unsurprised to see your two neighbors and teammates on the other side, mid-knock with mischievous looks on their faces.

“Bon dia,” Patri and Pina say in unison, dropping their hands.

“You’re the worst,” you tell them in Spanish, only getting big grins in return.

Both of them look like they’re attempting to hold back laughter.

“Whatever,” you say, stepping aside to let them in, “Just be quiet, I think Ona is still..”

You’re cut off by a loud but distorted scream coming from the kitchen.

Rolling your eyes, you shut the door and motion for your two friends to follow you.

Upon reaching the kitchen, you’re only slightly surprised to see Ona holding your phone, talking to Kelley.

Well, talking is one way to put it.

Kelley is speaking at a million miles a minute and asking a thousand questions while Ona attempts to stutter out answers.

Rolling your eyes as you cross the room, you take the phone from your girlfriend, pausing only to press a kiss to the side of her head.

“You guys can go ahead and eat,” you tell Ona in Spanish before focusing on Kelley as you walk out of the room. “Are you done now,” you ask your American teammate.

She takes a moment before responding.

“Yeah, I’m good.”

“Are you happy with the information you now have?”

“I thought it might have been either Sophia or Sanchez or both at one point so this is better than I expected.”

“Thanks?”

“No problem, Y/N/N,” she says, “Talk to you later kid.”

“Later.”

Hanging up, you return to the kitchen where everyone is doing their best to look like they weren’t attempting to eavesdrop on the call.

Halfway across the world, Kelley is stuck staring blankly at her phone for a few moments.

Snapping out of it, she immediately dials Christen’s number.

Her college teammate answers quickly and Kelley doesn’t bother wasting time with greetings.

“Did you know Baby Genius was dating #2 from Spain,” she asks.

“Hello to you too Kelley,” Christen says.

“Hi Pressy. Did you know that Y/N/N is dating #2 from Spain?”

Kelley can hear laughter in the background, presumably from Tobin, before Christen answers.

“Yes, Kell, I knew,” she says. “They’ve been together for a while. I think they started dating before Ona moved to play for United.”

“Wait, you know her?!”

A deep sigh from Christen.

“Tobin and I played with her at United. They’re good for each other, I promise.”

“Okay,” Kelley agrees, if somewhat reluctantly.

“Good and promise me you’ll leave them alone.”

“What?”

“Promise me, Kelley.”

“Fine, fine, I won’t bother the happy couple.” The reluctance in her voice is even more obvious now.

“Thank you, I’ll talk to you later, Kell.”

“Later.”

This time after hanging up the phone, Kelley wastes no time before texting Sonnett already plotting ways to mess with Y/N at the next camp.

[skuag]

Lyrids

Hi! Look at me writing in English! And a special thanks to @lightchildofthespring for her help and support.

Fandom: Digimon

Characters: Takenouchi Sora and Ishida Yamato

Genre: Romance

Lenght: One-shot, 1500ish words. 

Summary: Sora receives an unexpected visitor during the quarantine.

Lyrids - FF.Net / AO3

(More under the cut)

Sora and Yamato rented their first apartment together while they were still at university. It was a very small apartment, on the 10th floor, one floor by the stairs. Right next to the machine that powered the elevator, which made it particularly noisy and cheap. It also had a private terrace, almost bigger than the apartment, where Yamato placed his telescope and taught Sora everything she knew about the sky, and where she prepared herself a corner with a chair, a small table and a lot of colors, where she could draw, think and enjoy sunny days.

She thought about leaving the apartment when Yamato left to Chitose to start his training at the Air Defense Missile Training Group, and then again when the first two years went by and his training continued, and then again… but there were a number of things that prevented her from leaving, and even if she explained out loud that rent was low and it was close to her mother’s, the truth was that she just couldn’t bear to part with all the memories that she had created there, and all the firsts, and all the happiness that the small apartment had meant to her. Yes, she had grown tired of going up one floor through the stairs, every day, many times. Yes, she was able to pay for something bigger, yes… and yet there she was, all those years later, still enjoying the small space where she had created her first home with Yamato.

It got particularly difficult in 2020, because suddenly she wasn’t able to go out as often as she wanted to, and she wasn’t able to receive as many friends as she was used to, and she started to spend her little time off from work cleaning and disinfecting, all the time, the same small space… but finally she received the unexpected news that Yamato was going to be allowed to leave Chitose for a few weeks, in fact, until further news, and her small apartment suddenly felt huge without him, but only for a little longer… and she cleaned and disinfected and brought flowers and watered her plants and made sure to try to teach her cat, Piximon, to sleep on the couch… (at least for a while).

Yamato arrived on April 21st, 2020, and for the first time in years he didn’t have a return ticket. Sora had prepared everything, she had bought his favorite foods and enough supplies to last them for over a week, but she hadn’t prepared herself for the surge of emotions that she felt when he entered the apartment with his own key and left his suitcase next to the door. When he absentmindedly pat Piximon on the head while he smelled his baggage, and when he smiled at her, happy, but didn’t run to her.

“I need to disinfect myself,” he explained, and she knew, of course…

So she sat and watched him. She watched him as he removed his shoes and sprayed them before storing them in the genkan. She watched him disinfect the suitcase, the wheels, and she watched him remove his coat and hang it separately from hers. It was incommensurable how slow time moved while she waited for his hug. But finally, he cleaned his hands and was ready for her, and she was ready for him, and they could have hugged and kissed for a lifetime.

“Do you have my old telescope?” he asked, and for a minute she felt annoyed that he wanted to start studying right away.

But she did have it, and she had cleaned and disinfected it too…

“I have plans for today and we will need it,” was all he explained. And Sora wanted to know more, but the plans included her, and for the moment it was enough.

Yamato felt impatient for the rest of the afternoon. She knew for the way in which he checked the time every few minutes, for how he scratched his head every time he realized that he was doing it, and for how early he decided to start cooking dinner. Sora, on the other hand, only wanted to look at him, and follow him around, and mess with his hair, and just to stay close to him, as close to him as possible, no matter how against the sanitary recommendations it was.

But she knew something was odd when he insisted that she took a shower, that he didn’t need help in the kitchen, and basically just escorted her to the bathroom and closed the door in her face. She shrugged, what could she do? Yamato obviously had been planning something for a while now, and she was in his way.

So she took her shower, and chose his favorite perfume, the one that she barely ever used, and took a very long time to decide which pajamas to wear – because she was not going to get dressed only to sit inside, even if with him. She chose a light pair of pajamas, designed as a huge panda. She knew he found it very funny, and maybe even cute.

But she had definitely not been expecting him to prepare a night picnic on the terrace, right next to the telescope, and yes, her pajamas were way too light for that chilly night. She didn’t complain, though, nor did she change her clothes, even if it looked odd to be sitting in her pajamas next to his fully dressed boyfriend. She took a knitted blanket with her and sat under it with Yamato, and with Piximon, of course, who couldn’t be anywhere else, obviously.

“Do you know what’s happening today?”

Was that a trick question? Because according to Sora, a lot was happening that day – even if the only thing she cared about was her boyfriend being there.

But it wasn’t a trick question, and he immediately started to explain, and she cared more than she expected to. She had always enjoyed hearing Yamato explain the space, to her, to Takeru, even to Ken and Miyako’s daughter, just to anyone who wanted to listen. His eyes lighted as they did when he played the harmonica in their childhood or when he performed with his band… That Yamato whose voice used to carry her away, and who she watched over fondly when he performed… she knew, probably, that he thought she wasn’t as interested in the explanations as he expected her to be... She was, however, but she just cared more about watching him explain things that drove him crazy, and she could have watched him monologue about brands of toilet paper if it lit his eyes, colored his cheeks and raised the tone of his voice as speaking about the Space did.

“… and the Lyrid’s meteor shower starts every year around April 16th, but what’s different is that this year it coincides with the new moon, so the viewing conditions are magnificent. I know it’s a little cloudy, but since it’s peaking today, I’m sure we’ll be able to see a few. I’m so happy I was able to arrive today.”

Sora left her unfinished plate on the blanket to move closer to him.

“So that’s why you wanted to come? To watch the sky?” she asked, her face dangerously close to his. She watched him blush.

“Just to watch it with you…”

She kissed him.

“There are basically no meteor showers between January and April, so I always look forward to watching the Lyrids… but I’m not usually around, I mean with you, this time of the year… and it’s so silly because you don’t even need a telescope, you could just turn off the lights and watched them here, every year…”

“So let’s turn off the lights.” She moved closer, once again. Her movement annoyed Piximon, who left.

And they were left alone, on the top of a building, on an April night.

“Sora…” he whispered, right to her ear.

“Are you done with your food?” she asked, but she removed his plate without even waiting for a response. “I’ll turn off the lights, so we can watch the stars…”

He smiled, because he knew her just too well. She turned off the lights and suddenly they were only illuminated by the buildings that surrounded them.

“I’m still eating…”

“But I want to watch the stars…”

“It’s still early… the best time to watch the Lyrid’s meteor shower is between midnight and dawn…”

“… works for me.”

She couldn’t undress him fast enough, and he laughed watching her struggling with his food plate, that he was still trying to eat while she stubbornly tried to sit on top of him and play with his hair, and remove his shirt and just do the hundred things that she needed to do before midnight.

Sora heard him speak until very late that night.

“Lyrid meteors radiate from near the bright star Vega in the constellation Lyra the Harp… but they will appear unexpectedly, in any and all parts of the sky… it is amongst the oldest known meteor showers… Records of the Lyrids go back for almost three-thousand years…”

Comet Thatcher, orbital paths, earth’s atmosphere… Sora could remember many words from that night, even if scattered and unrelated, like the dozen meteors that they saw, watching during many hours, and with a lot of patience.

Piximon eventually returned and took his rightful place on her legs, and purred. Sora purred too, on her own, particular way, and hugged Yamato like it was their last night, even if it was just the first.

[musedblues]

Call It Fate Call It Karma

summary: In which your band gets signed to the same label as Queen, and Brian May takes a whole bunch of fun out of your new musical journey.

a/n: Here’s what to know… There’s an age gap! This takes place sometime in the 1980s and reader is in her twenty’s. There are also mentions of sex / sexual situations. (Not 18+ just be aware!) Here’s what’s been dubbed as The Bitchy Bri Fic! Title from this song!

w/c: 10k

∘₊✧──────✧₊∘

Everything changed as you’d started to lose hope. And you owed it all to Jim Beach.

It was the afternoon you and your bandmates managed to sneak past the receptionist desk at EMI and present the reel of tape you called you an EP to a bored producer called Watts; Jim Beach was already occupying his office. By then, you’d been to every other record label in the city and were prepared to be kicked out of this one all the same.

But then the producer agreed to listen to your tape. Watts sat with his feet on his desk and a glazed over look in his eye as two of your only three songs played. Jim spoke up from the back of the room when your third and final song started to crackle to life.

“Well, aren’t you going to give them a shot?” He asked, in a warm, gentle tone.

“What are you three called?” Watts asked.

“Loba.” Wilda piped up, picking her nails in place of her guitar.

“It means ‘she wolf’ in Spanish.” Joane pointed out, twisting strands of her pale fringe as she perched on the edge of the bench at your side.

“Can you lot throw together the couple hundred bucks it takes to record, by the end of next week?” The producer asked.

“Yes.” You spoke up, though you weren’t sure how you’d get the money, this was the opportunity of a lifetime.

“Beach! Manage these lady wolves, will you?” Watts dragged his feet back to the floor with a thud.

“Me? I-I well,”

“You’ve got Queen, and who else? No one.” Watts exasperated. “McCartney has half our staff on lockdown this month and Iron Maiden has already gotten our three best workers to quit. You liked this mediocre garage rock well enough to say something…” The producer gathered your tape and tossed it to the manager with kind eyes and a smile under his furrowed brow. “Now everyone leave my office.”

You’d barely processed the life changing news as Jim turned toward you and your band with a grin that just kept growing.

“What do ya say, girls? Wanna make a record?”

///

You worked overtime and Joane got a second odd job to come up with the money to make a real-life record. And in a matter of a couple of months, you had an all new stage show, a new shiny Fender bass, and your very own album.

Well, almost. The record was in the final processes of being pressed. Watts helped put it together with his feet propped on the soundboard he manned. Past his usual cigar, he mumbled suggestions and even some encouragement; as you Wilda and Joane perfected the songs from your EP and threw together a couple more. Joane was praised for tightening her drum kit and bringing back up sticks. Wilda’s method of retuning her prized guitar worked without a hitch. You sang all your worries away with your bass playing in time. It was as easy as ever to work together, and one thousand times more terrifying all the same.

Jim lingered by on days like those, and on nights you’d booked gigs at local pubs and places of the like. On tea breaks, and in storage closets turned green rooms, Jim helped you and the girls make plans for the future. He carried around a pad of paper to jot down every time one of you thought up a new goal or two.

You went on and on about the sounds you heard in your head, and how you dreamed of bringing them to life. Of the words you longed to share with the world, and your favourite old tunes that never failed to inspire and excite.

Wilda dreamed of parties and people and places, the things she’d say on guest appearances and press tours. She dreamed of stages much more grandiose than the rickety old ones you were so familiar with now.

“We’d quite like to be as big as that other band of yours, one day.” Joane quipped, to a smiley Jim Beach. She was always going on about Queen. Bet she never dreamed of being graced with the assistance of her favourite band’s very own manager.

“No worries there.” Jim chuckled. “You ladies are a well-oiled machine compared to those four old bats. You’ll see for yourself tomorrow at the party.” He seemed to raise a brow like an omen but you couldn’t help but grin from ear to ear.

///

Your first ever album had been slowly climbing the charts since it’s release at the start of the week. When your single aired for the first time, Joane parked her old beaten down truck outside of your flat and turned her car’s radio up all the way. You dismissed your neighbour’s pleas for peace and quiet by hopping in your drummers ride and speeding away to EMI, squealing along to your very own song the whole way there.

You met your guitarist outside of the company’s biggest office. Inside, the three of you hurried through a few pages of papers, and scribbled your signatures along odd dotted lines. Just like that, you were signed.

Even though Loba was gifted a bottle of champagne and a couple of snapshots to prove it, the label decided a proper party was in order to welcome you. Apparently, EMI liked to use every excuse they could to make use of their loft and it’s impressive bar top that wrapped around nearly every wall.

So no sooner than you’d shuffled into the head office, you were escorted out and up to the very top floor. The party, Jim said, was already in full swing.

And that’s when you met his other band. Though he never said so outright, you could tell Jim was most excited to introduce you to the only other group he’d had the pleasure of working with till now. Behind poorly placed streamers and the backs of people too busy carrying on conversations to notice you, there was Queen. All lazily huddled together against a spot at the long and winding bar.

When Jim made his presences known, you and the girls stopped in your tracks and traded a few nervous glances.

Freddie Mercury was all of a sudden shifting his weight before the lot of you, casting a sweeping gaze across each of your faces.

“Miami, are these the children you’ve adopted now that we’re all grown up?” Freddie asked, greeting the manager and turning his oxen eyes to your band. His champagne sloshed in the glass he held near his chest as he threw one arm around Jim’s shoulders.

“Awe, you talk about us?” You jabbed an elbow toward the manager though you couldn’t quite reach where he stood. As his grin only grew, the rest of the band shifted closer.

“Boys, meet the girls.” Jim smiled, introducing you each by name.

But you couldn’t be sure if Roger even heard the manager’s introduction. The blonde floated up to your guitarist like he’d been supernaturally dragged across the room to meet her. Wilda stood before him, trying desperately not to pick at her nails, and smiled. You wanted to laugh, but you wanted to hurl. It was just too much, the way Roger seemed to drool at the simple sight of her, like Pepe Le Pew.

“What are you lovely ladies called, again?” He asked in a voice just as rasped as you’d come to recognize over the radio. Wilda blanched and seemed to go shy all of a sudden, but you weren’t.

“Loba.” You shrugged speaking in the drummer’s direction.

“What?” John asked, stepping closer to the other side of you, standing taller than you expected him to be.

“It means she-wolf.” Joane piped up, reciting her favourite and well-practised line. It always saved her from going too quiet, that fact.

“Uh-huh.” Roger seemed to agree, shifting to stand at Wilda’s side instead of ogling her head on- holding her gaze all the same.

“Better than their almost name. Guess what it was, lads.” Jim raised a brow to Freddie. Oh no. With Joane likely having shut down at the mention of her old idea, and Wilda entirely preoccupied with whispering to Roger, everyone turned to glance at you- Left with no choice but to bury your embarrassment and answer.

“Doin’ Alright.” You admitted through a smile, because if you didn’t laugh, who would? It was your drummer, resident Queen fanatic’s idea, one you talked her out of shortly after joining.

“How bloody un-o-fucking-riginal,” Brain huffed and crossed his long arms over his chest.

You had barely officially met the guy. He loomed near the back of the gathering and stood in silence, till then. And you might have thought he’d only been joking if it wasn’t for the way his stoic expression remained unchanged when your eyes met his for the first ever time.

“Hate to break it to ya, but your name was already sort of taken, too.” You pointed out, giving a weak mocking curtsy at the vague mention of her majesty. Queen’s guitarist’s glare remained.

“Oh, I like this one. Good ear, Miami.” Freddie sauntered over and nudged you away from Brian’s burning gaze. Roger was pointing Wilda out to the balcony, where a rowdy group grew larger every time you glanced out beyond the open glass doors.

“Don’t mind him.” John cocked his head toward the sulking guitarist, and handed you a bubbly drink. “He’s in the middle of a divorce and a midlife crisis, it’s really quite the combination.”

“Poor thing.” You stuck your lip out on your turn in Brian’s direction, as Freddie yanked you toward the balcony, laughing all the while. The wild-haired guitarist watched you leave with an expression you couldn’t quite understand, though you wanted too.

But before the lot of you could spin your separate ways and dance until sunrise, one of the men from the head office stopped in front of everyone with a smile.

“Nice to see you’re all already so well acquainted.” He said, in a sickeningly posh tone. Roger draped an arm across Wilda’s slim shoulders as the rest of you hummed in agreeance.

“So how would you like to tour together, then?” The man grinned. Freddie flourished, making a grand gesture and saying something about how that was the best idea he’d ever heard in his life. Joane turned to you, not even attempting to hide her squeal of excitement. Jim shared a look with John, like a proud father.

“Good. Because that’s what the label wants.” The man nodded and turned to Jim with instructions to phone him to start planning. Freddie swept you away to kick off a night of fun, and when you turned to see if Brian cared at all, he was gone.

///

Your single topped the charts in the US. Jim came into your work, feigned an emergency and gathered the rest of your band to share the good news over a celebratory brunch. You might have won over the yanks, but Queen had stolen the hearts of billions long before you’d written your first tune. So it was naturally decided your band would open for the much more renowned group.

You turned your two weeks notice into your job, and blew your last paycheck on an all-new wardrobe. If you were going to prance around America with the likes of Queen, you had to look the part. Some platforms and a few dazzling dresses found their way into your suitcase a week before it was time to go.

By the time you met up with the other band at the airport, you knew Roger well enough to stick out your tongue as a greeting. He’d come around your flat once, trailing behind Wilda to crash a night out you’d been planning all week. And again to steal her away from your last band meeting. When you, Joane and Wilda sleepily trudged through the waiting gates, he stole your guitarist away for the third time, and you wondered what might become of them.

You were still dazzled by Freddie, charmed by his laugh and stunned when he insisted on sitting next to you on the plane ride over, to share gossip. All of his friends seemed just as taken with the ethereal singer, too. John sprung up from his catnap to go help Freddie find the best snacks the airport had to offer. And while Jim sat going over the schedule with Joane, Brian sat across from you with his arms crossed and his legs a mile apart.

“Are you excited?” You wondered because you really wanted to know if someone who’d done this a time or two was still thrilled by it. But mostly, you wanted to get the lanky guitarist to open up a little. If you were going to spend a whole month and a half near each other, wouldn’t it be nice to get to know the guy a little?

“I’m tired.” Brian nodded, his hazel eyes fluttering toward the windows.

“Lighten up Mr. May. You could have my job. Was just sent to phone Fred’s cats and we haven’t even left home.” A man as gangly as Brian shuffled to sit at your side, adjusting the sunglasses on his head that did little to hide his thinning hair.

“I’m Crystal, that’s Ratty.” The guy pointed across the lounge to another slim, long-haired fellow bent over an open acoustic guitar case.

“We’re everyone’s personal lackeys and will be glad to lend you ladies a hand all the same.”

You thanked the guy with a chuckle and felt charmed enough by his sudden kindness to admit your growing nerves. But then Freddie and John were back, and the plane was ready, and it was time to go on tour.

///

The first week flew by in a flash. You were jarred by the size of every new arena and crowd that filled the seats. You lost yourself entirely to the music that blared from the speakers at your band’s command; but never got used to hearing the songs you once plucked away at in your bedroom, fill stadiums.

Going from entertaining grotty pubs to seas full of people wasn’t something you ever expected to happen. The sound of their collective cheers directed to your band didn’t seem real. All you could do was play on, and sing with your friends until the time came to rush to another green room, catch your breath, and a glimpse of the headlining act.

You usually only saw Queen in passing- in revolving hotel doors or shuffling about the same backstage halls. If you weren’t on stage, your band was hauled off to radio stations for interviews while Queen partied on. And if your band had an afternoon to do as you pleased, Queen was off signing records and privately touring art museums.

But there were the rare occasions your paths crossed for longer than a minute or two. John would always make a point to ask after you, from time to time. He said you and the girls seemed to be handling the road like old champs.

“I’m too busy to be bothered with stage fright.” You laughed, when John asked how you looked so at home in front of the crowds that had started to sing along to the songs you played.

Where most of Queen felt like friends your parents warned against staying out past curfew with, John felt like your older brother; who waited up to sneak you back home with a kind word.

Freddie always invited you to the after parties and nights out, even when he knew Loba was meant to do a photoshoot one city away. And when you failed to show up, the singer would always say he’d missed you. And you believed him, because of the nights he’d sneak in your hotel room to share the last of the liquor that had knocked the rest of his bandmates cold. Freddie went out of his way to include you and the girls more often than not.

But Roger seemed to include himself in your groups circle any chance he could get. He trailed behind Wilda, sure, but he seemed genuinely fond of chatting away with you and Joane all the same. And when your guitarist and Queen’s drummer partook in their weekly game of playing hard to get, you were awarded tiny moments with just Roger.

Like the time everyone crashed before midnight, and the two of you stayed up by the quiet hotel poolside, with an acoustic. It wasn’t long before your goofing around turned into some kind of jam session, and you were writing a song together. Roger insisted you keep it to use, and left the cocktail napkin full of scribbled lyrics tucked between the strings of Wilda’s guitar that you’d been left in charge of.

Then, there was Brian.

He strolled ahead of you off of the riverboat where both of your groups had been invited to enjoy a day off, cruising around somewhere in America’s deep south. You couldn’t help but watch Brian’s figure move as it seemed to tower just over all the people at his side. It was time to head back to the hotel, or at least, time for your freshwater adventure to end. Everyone was glad for the easy-going ride, still tired from the night before.

Maybe that’s why he was so quiet all afternoon. Brian usually was, but there was something more to his silence today. And you didn’t know the guy well enough to figure, or dare ask why. The weather was nice, and Queen was received with reverence every place they went. Brian had no reason to sulk- none you could possibly understand.

A slew of people with cameras and questions flocked to the boat docks as the one and only Freddie led the way, pretending to introduce Crystal as some kind of rockstar in his own right. The roadie ate up the attention as Brian’s pace set your own. You couldn’t move until he did. And while he stalled, cameras flashed and a desperate middle-aged man held a skinny microphone toward the band.

“Brian, how are you finding America?” They asked in a mousy pitch.

“Oh, it’s lovely here, as always.” Brian politely grinned, curling his fists in his jacket pockets, from what you could see.

“How’s touring with another group? Queen usually don’t need the support of an opening act.”

“Right.” Brian seemed to agree in a curiously cynical tone.

“They’re called Loba, and we quite like having them around.” Roger was suddenly shaking your shoulders like an overzealous coach. You chuckled at his antics as Brian dared to glimpse at the commotion.

He turned his gaze over his shoulder to look at you for a moment. It might have been the most exciting part of your whole day, considering how Brian hardly ever looked your way till now. But why did it have to be like that? What did you ever do to the guy?

The best you’d ever gotten from Brian was an empty hum when asked if he cared if you sat in the only open seat at his side, during some dinner. And over that meal, he chattered away with the likes of his band, and even yours. And maybe it was because you became utterly paranoid by his silence to break it with all of the questions you had for the guy. But he never spoke to you. The seat at Brian side seemed a void in his peripheral. And you were growing a bit anxious by the thought of actually being invisible to Brian. So you started speaking up.

When Freddie asked you with help on matching one of his many jackets with a pair of trousers, you’d already made up your mind, but twisted around to ask what Brian thought. His brows upturned in a painfully confused expression as he hesitantly gave his answer to Freddie’s clothing debacle. You got your own answer too, that at least Brian heard a voice coming from the space you existed in.

When both tour buses stopped for gas one random midnight; Roger raced you into the convenience store and distracted you from buying anything in place of dancing to The Cars tune crackling from the overhead speakers. Your spontaneous party was broken up when Brian breezed by with his freshly purchased candy bar in hand.

“We are on a schedule you know?” He glared your way on his turn to leave.

“I’m sorry you weren’t invited to the dance party Bri.” You mused, stopping the guy in his tracks, who turned to look at you in the way he did. “We’ll let you sulk in the corner of our next one, since it would obviously kill you to actually join in the fun.”

But all that got you was a roll of Brian’s hazel eyes and a cackle from Roger. That was the norm. Brian either seemed to pretend you weren’t there, or traded you bone chilling glares like you’d wronged him in a past life. But you’d never known less of a person than you’d known of Brian May, and you were beginning to wonder if going about finding out more was worth it.

///

By the time your next soundcheck came, Queen had nothing better to do than bop about the stadium to wait their turn. You and the girls rushed through your usual set up but decided to change things around for your second to the last song. And while you started to unplug it was decided Joane would have to turn a certain drum fill into a solo while Wilda rushed off stage to retune her only electric guitar to properly close out the show.

Brian overheard, from the place he stood arguing over an amp with Ratty, who’d kindly agreed to stick close by your band during times like now. The roadie shuffled over to take your bass away, while Brian issued a complaint.

“You’re going to retune? Just use a bloody capo and don’t waste everyone’s time.” Brian shifted his weight, furrowing his brow your way. Though you weren’t the guitarist in question, you seemed to be the one and only person Brian felt most comfortable yapping at.

“There’s more than one way to do things, you know?” You pointed.

“Yeah,” Brian shrugged, agreeing with you in a breathtaking turn of events. But then again, not really… “The right way and the wrong way.”

“Christ no wonder you’re divorced.” You shook your head in the guy’s direction. His eyes might have been pretty if they weren’t burning into yours with such disdain. Then you both made a show of storming past each other. You were getting really sick of his attitude, and what it did to yours.

///

“Oh no. Oh no, no, no!” You cried, cradling your bass that had fallen from the stand to the concrete floor below. The neck was ever so slightly cracked and a tuning peg was bent and your heart was near stopping. When you looked up from the ground, you saw Ratty cursing out one of the stadiums impish young stagehands. The kid had blown an amp and sent it smoking, and your guitar flying off the stage in his rush to run from the trouble he’d stirred.

You clutched your one and only instrument to your chest and hurried away for help. Ratty was wrestling the broken amp, Crystal was nowhere to be seen, and John was off phoning home. You recalled the sights of the city from yesterday’s afternoon off. There was a guitar shop across from the Chinese place where you stopped for lunch.

So you raced past Joane and shouted that you’d be back in an hour. The exact amount of time you had until it was time to go on stage.

You ran down the city streets with your bass in your arms like a wounded child. The guitar shop appeared like a beacon.

Inside was blaring a song by Led Zeppelin you might have wanted to sing along too if your heart wasn’t in your throat. There was a mass of teenaged boys crowded the counter. You waited, held your breath and checked the clock as it ticked away at a frightening speed. By the time the boys buying strings and straps shuffled away, you threw your broken baby to the older man behind the counter. He assured you the fix would be a breeze and tried to sell you an overpriced Gibson while you waited. You stood drumming beats on the sales counter and tried not to scream when the clock showed you’d only had ten minutes left to waste. A couple more later, your bass was in your grasp. You threw an extra bit of cash to the guy and ran off in a flurry, praying to make it on time.

You’d never ran so fast, certainly. You didn’t even have time to apologize to a kid on a bike who had to swerve out of your way. You burst through the back doors of the stadium, much to the shock of the doorman. When he shouted at you to take it easy, you ceased running to walk as fast as you could toward the green room.

Brian was the first familiar face to greet you after the nerve-wracking scene.

“So nice of you to finally show up.” He let out a mocking cheer from the place he kicked back on a torn leather sofa. So relaxed in his gloom. Your heart used to ache at the thought of his troubles. At the sight of his far off gaze as his friends joked on around him. When Freddie would drunkenly whisper to you details of Brian’s trying year. But the guitarist’s sneers your way were getting old, and the ache in your heart for him was slowly growing cold.

Freddie spun to greet you, let out a sigh of relief like an anxious mother, reaching out to adjust your shirt collar skewed under the strap of your instrument.

“Well, my guitar had to get fixed one way or the other. And unlike you, your highness, we haven’t got a gaggle of roadies to call upon.” You swatted Freddie away and snapped toward Brian.

“No, but what’s ours is yours. Next time ask for help.” John spoke like a stern father, tossing you a bottle of water and pointing toward the clock on the wall. You had about a minute to run out on stage.

“Let her learn the hard way, Deacy. She seems to like it that way.” Brian rang. You dashed away before you had time to curse him.

“Brian, stop being such a bitch, I mean, my God.” Freddie whined as you stormed off, glad for once that someone else seemed fed up with the guitarist’s sharp tongue, too.

///

When the show was over, John insisted you hop along his band’s tour bus back to the hotel. The other two-thirds of your band were still enjoying the amenities of the afterparty, and you were in the middle of trading bass themed horror stories with Deacy. So he kept on talking as you walked to follow him, settling near the front of the ride as it travelled to your latest hotel.

As Queen shuffled to cross the bleak lot to get to the grandiose lodge, Brian was the last to leave. He shouldered past you with that same old sullen pout. His eyes caught yours for a moment before he took another step, but something about the usual interaction was the final straw for you.

“What the hell did I ever do to you?” You demanded to know, as Brian’s bandmates disappeared inside the hotel. Brian stalled reluctantly and turned to face you with pursed lips and the smallest shake of his head.

“Look,” He began, as you stood ready to get to the bottom of whatever this was. “I’ve really never meant to be so cross with you. And I’m sorry my temper’s been so easily getting the better of me. I am sorry.” Brian nodded. He looked exhausted, like this was the millionth time he’d had to give a similar speech, but he did so in such a genuine manner- that you could only stand and trade a perplexed gaze to the lanky guitarist.

“It’s… it’s best if we just keep to ourselves, yeah?” Brian concluded, turning away with one final nod. You didn’t get the chance to agree, or disagree, or understand what just happened before Brian was on his way, and you were on your own.

///

After the tour was said and done, a new year was just kicking off. And the label was pushing for another album right out the gate. You and the girls had two months to throw together a collection of new songs, and were struggling for most of the time to do just that.

The song Roger helped you write was the best one you had to offer, and Joane was nearly crippled under the stress of being creatively confined to a certain amount of time. You’d never had such a hard time working together before, and the pressure was building up between each of your bandmates in a way you were afraid of.

When Watts strolled in to take control of the soundboard you’d been fiddling with all morning, you couldn’t help but to warn him against changing any of your settings. You and the girls were finally making some kind of progress, albeit bickering along the way. Poor Jim could only sorrily sigh each time one of you turned and ask for his help. This bit of work was a little outside of the managers league.

And Watts only seemed to egg you on, pressing the few buttons you asked him not to.

“You want to control this soundboard so bad, have at it.” He stood in a huff, “I only strongly suggest you don’t fuck this up.” The producer hissed before slipping out of the door. He smiled a smile that made you queasy, and you nodded knowing full well you were on thin ice.

Jim left you and the girls to fight over tempos and key changes and came back from the studio’s kitchenette with an unexpected announcement.

“Brian is coming.” He said, matter of factly.

“What’d you call him for?” Joane groaned from the floor, where she laid fiddling with her kit.

“Because Queen is the best help I know. But Freddies in Barcelona, John’s with his family, Roger is MIA and Brian is right down the road. You lot have a day left, and I’m running out of helpful ideas. And quite frankly, you girls are in need of a lot of it.”

“Yeah, maybe, but now nothing will get done.” Joane countered. “Not with the way he and y/n square off like old alley cats.”

“He’ll be here in five. Come on lady wolves… Claws up, plugs in.” Jim pointed as he sat back down on the studio sofa, pinching the bridge of his nose.

Wilda shot into a speech, begging you over and over to keep it cool. The sooner you started, the better. She was right, and you wanted nothing more than to get this record finished. So with a nod, you accepted your fate.

Brian strolled in the studio right on time. His eyes looked desperate for sleep, and his already wild mane seemed even more unkempt. His small smile Jim’s way made you want to reach past the wall Brian put up, and shake his shoulders, and tell him it was okay to be actually happy once in a while.

Maybe it was the time that had passed since the tour. Maybe Brian forgot that he’d cared so little for you, and that’s why his faint grin lingered when his eyes met yours, past the glass of the recording booth. You willed your own weak smile his way, weary of this new civility, but just as tempted to take it in stride.

“Hello, ladies. Let’s see what you’re working with so far, shall we?” Brian leaned in and spoke just to you, it seemed. Maybe it was because you were closest, front and centre before the guy in a little glass box.

You’d felt more vulnerable than ever, under his forest coloured gaze. There was no place to run off and hide. You were right in Brian’s line of sight, right under his thumb, as he pressed a button stopped your band from playing to suggest a few dozen changes.

You knew he was here to help. And Jim looked so hopeful, tapping his foot to the beat in the corner of the room. So even though your throat was going dry as Brian settled his eyes on your bass- you played on. When he stopped you again, your blood began to boil.

“Please tell me you plan on adding a keyboard? A harmonica, something else?” Brian grimaced.

“We only play on the record what we can play on stage as a three-piece.” Joane raised a drumstick to make a point.

“Yeah well, it’s sure sounding that way.” The older and wiser musicians voice crackled through the speaker.

“Fuck you, that sounded good!” You hissed into the mic, wielding your bass like a weapon. That might'a been the best take you’d done all day.

“Yeah, but it didn’t sound great. If I turned my car radio on to that I’d fall asleep at the wheel. Joane, try using your snare on the bridge, instead of the cymbals. Y/n… from the top.” Brian sighed, sitting back in his chair like an exhausted parent.

You sighed too, adjusting your headphones and tossing Wilda a glare, a sign that you couldn’t keep your cool much longer.

You tried harder. But Brian kept stopping you. And every time he did, you couldn’t be stopped from cursing him just a little. If he’d only give you just one chance to find your rhythm, you might’ve made a whole record by now. When you told him as much, he let you play on for almost half a song before he’d stopped you again. When he did, you nearly exploded. But Joane snapped first. She got up from her kit, chucked her headphones, and stormed away. You slung your bass away to follow after her, but Wilda was quicker and raced out of the back to chase Joane down.

That left you with time enough to break out of the glass box and give Brian a few choice words.

“Way to fucking go, drill sergeant.” You gestured toward the guy who was slow to rise from his place before the soundboard.

“It’s not my fault she decided to-”

“Yeah, it is. Thanks for showing up and doing fuck all.”

“I came here to help you, and I could do if you’d stop acting like a damn child.” He pointed a finger your way, and the fire in his gaze sent a chill down your spine for the first time ever. You weren’t afraid of him. You were only stunned by the way he spoke to you. The way he always had. Why did Brian bother showing up here tonight?

“We might be able to take some of your suggestions if you stopped stopping us! Why don’t you just stick to pissing your own band off? You do it so well.”

You’d heard him trade sharper words with Queen. Roger told you that Brian was just working through some things. John said he’d always been like this. You just couldn’t understand why you got the worst of it.

“Well, it’s clear you’ve got more than enough hell to give your own group. You might sound less like the second place winners of your primary school’s talent show if you learned to stop making so many executive decisions.”

“I have a suggestion for you.” You decided, “Why don’t you take all your bleeding suggestions and fu-”

“Yeah, alright, let’s all take a break.” Jim intervened as you let out an exhausted sigh that doubled as a frustrated cry. The manager waved Brian over and the two men started to share a word as you stormed out of the back from fresh air and a clearer mind.

“He’s right you know. We sound like a washed-up wedding band.” Wilda shouted your way as she stayed leaning back against the hood of her car with a cigarette in hand.

“Where is Joane?” You asked, already knowing the answer. Wilda glanced at the empty parking spot where your drummer’s new mustang was earlier today. Great. Just what you needed.

“Right. Let’s forget everything, and finish. We’ll just… get it done.”

And so that’s what you did. Brian was gone when you ventured back in, and his absence left a familiar little ache in your heart. You didn’t like shouting at each other like cross siblings. You’d wanted to be his friend more than anything, at the start of all of this. The stars that might have aligned for that chance were all askew by now.

Jim left you and Wilda to go fetch some takeaway. Then he sat around the small table in the studio and shared dinner and some words of wisdom with the two of you. You thanked your manager for being so kind, and forgiving of your antics thus far. He chuckled and said something about having witnessed and dealt with much worse. Jim stayed a while longer, while you and Wilda worked together, and it was you who had to encourage the guy to go home and get some rest.

He entrusted the key to the place to you and your bandmate and left you to finish up for the evening. And you did, eventually. You and the eager guitarist listened back to the tapes and added in riffs and fills, and even a few of Brian’s suggestions; until well past midnight. But right on time for the label.

You could sleep soundly knowing you’d finished when you were meant to. But your dreams were full of worry that the record still wasn’t good enough.

///

“You did what?” Joane shrieked in the hall of your flat.

“We had to finish, Joane. You never came back, what else were supposed to do?” You yelled back, worry saturating your tone. It was far too early to be having this fight.

“You were supposed to wait for me!” Joane shouted, looking to you with big sad eyes. You rushed to remind her that you were out of time, and she could have shown back up and helped you finish, but she didn’t. And in her typical fashion, the drummer spun on her heels and stormed away, fringe flying far behind her shoulders as she shouted something about never coming back.

The girl had been known to fly off the handle on occasion. There was the time she drove your van away from a sketchy Welsh pub you travelled miles to play in, because Wilda called the drummers shoes ugly. Or the time she nearly chucked her cymbals from your third story flat window. You prayed that this episode was like the others you’d endured as you shut your door and rushed to get ready. It was time to take your record to the head office.

No one was particularly happy to find your three-piece only consisted of two when you showed up with Wilda to present your latest creation. Jim flashed a couple of smiles as the tracks played on, but all you noticed were Wilda’s shrugs. The record was done. But under unexpectedly trying circumstances and lacking a lot of help from your drummer. It wasn’t what you’d envisioned. The label still decided it was good enough, and sent you to fill a couple of talk show slots before the week was up.

You went with your guitarist to a couple of press junkets, and watched as your dazzling friend gave away answers she’d been practising since before you’d played your first gig. The only thing that made her umber eyes glow brighter was the sight of Roger Taylor waiting up after a certain interview. He invited her back to wherever it was he’d run off to, and Wilda had the decency to look toward you with a furrowed brow.

With a sigh, you agreed to handle the rest of the press on your own. Because she deserved to have the fun she’d been wishing for with the capricious drummer.

Four talk shows, three guest appearances, and one very hectic game show later, it was time for your record release. Roger phoned to assure he’d bring Wilda back in the nick of time. But Joane wasn’t answering her phone. You’d hoped after a bit of space that your drummer would come back around. But she wasn’t any place you’d gone to look. You spent until the witching hour driving to the places you knew she might have been and came up short.

When the time came to get ready for the party, half of your time getting ready was spent trying to hide the dark circles under your eyes. Before you left home, you took a couple of shots and prayed tonight wouldn’t crash and burn around you.

///

The mansion belonged to the head of the company, a place he’d invite people to when celebrations were too grandiose to fit in EMI’s loft. You wondered if you were the last to arrive when you opened the massive carved doors to find the stunning home littered with faces most of whom you didn’t recognize. One you did finally emerged from the crowd.

“Thank God you made it, I feared I’d have to put on a show instead.” Freddie chuckled, greeting you with glee. You ruffled the boa around his neck, thanked him for showing up, and wondered where you could find the drinks.

“I’ll take you round back dear, but you’d better hurry. The old important men are tired of waiting.” You could have explained how you’d waited up in hopes that Jonae would phone. And how when the phone did ring, it was Wilda worrying that she’d missed the only flight back home. But you only gave Freddie a sorry smile and spun into the garden. There was a bar in the veranda, where a handsome man made a show of mixing you a drink, making little passes along the way.

The time you thought you were stalling by answering all of the dude’s dumb questions was very soon interrupted. All of a sudden a towering guitarist was casting a shadow over you, and swiftly excusing the man behind the minibar.

“It’s about bloody time you showed up.” Brian rang in a mockingly sweet timbre. And as your stomach fluttered with nerves, you knew time was up. But how could you release a record without the rest of your band?

When you started to argue as much, Brian clamped his fingers around your arm like a vice and yanked you away from the bar and the drink you didn’t even get to try.

“Saving the day again, are you?” You rang dryly, as he towed you away. Brian’s face was set in its usual frown, one you’d become so familiar with that his smile on magazine covers made you look twice. He said nothing as he marched you out of the yard and into the mansion. You figured he’d part ways from you once you passed through the doors, but his grip didn’t loosen on the way down the empty marble hallway.

“Let me go.” You struggled, huffing out the words as you fought his grip and won. Before you had time to storm away, Brian spun to face you.

“Would you grow the fuck up? There is a room full of people depending on you and you’re acting like a fucking child, like always.”

“I’m not a child.” You hissed, curled your fists and glared up at Brian as he loomed over you. His shirt was unbuttoned halfway down his chest. His feet and fiery eye’s pointed to back you into the corner. But you wouldn’t let him get to you. “I’m trying my best it’s just not fucking good enough.”

A bit of a waver passed through your tone, as you targeted the words through your teeth. You watched Brian bend at the knee to look right in your eye, and pretended not to hold your breath.

“No, you aren’t.” Brian pointed a finger right at you and spoke in a low, unnerving rumble. “I’ve seen you at your best and I can guarantee you’re far from it, tonight.” He snarled, glaring you up and down with those dangerous hazel eyes. They raked over the span of your figure before landing on yours once more. “You look a bloody mess.”

“Because I’ve been running around till two in the damn morning, trying to find Joane! And when I couldn’t, I had to finish everything all on my own again. Because Roger took Wilda away and bought her nice pretty shoes and put her in good graces with all the higher-ups, and unlike her, I have to earn that shit myself.” You yelled, the dam holding back your bottled up emotion had crumbled in the overflow. You could feel the threat of tears stinging the backs of your eyes as Brian stood gaping at you in your outburst.

“So now I’ve lost my voice from all the interviews and the lack of sleep and I probably won’t be able to sing on tour to promote this shite album with a single you’ll switch off when it comes on the radio, anyway!”

And before you’d even stopped shouting, it seemed, Brian had his hands on either side of your face, and his lips pressed to yours. Your back was pushed to the wall and it took great effort not to melt down it with the way you were consumed by an all new kind of fire; mixed among the usual. But above it all, you were too shocked to kiss him back. Then you parted from each other, and past his unbuttoned top you watched the rise and fall of Brian’s chest while he caught his breath and stared at you.

“What the bloody hell was that?” You asked in a stunned hush. Brian blinked and shook his curls.

“I’m, I- I don’t- I didn’t mean-”

“You think you can just kiss me and, I don’t know, that everything is just magically going to be okay?” You wondered in a fluster, knowing there was nothing that could be done about the blush burning your cheeks. After months of frowning every time the two of you passed each other he kisses you?

“No. No I- I’ve always wanted to kiss you and I just thought I knew better than to do it.”  Brian held up a hand like he was swearing not to come closer. Talk about some seriously mixed messages.

“What?” You asked in an embarrassingly high squeak.

“I wanted to kiss you before I even knew your name. And it just seemed like the entirely wrong thing to do. So I shut you out, and my ire kept getting the better of me, and that’s not an excuse, just the truth,” Brian sighed, at what seemed like a sudden loss for words as his eyes searched yours.

“Well, you’ve gone and done it now.” You pointed out with the faintest laugh despite everything. Brian shook his head, asking, in a way, to understand what you were on about.

So you shook your head too, and latched onto his loose collar. You yanked Brian closer because you weren’t angry. You were actually feeling fine all of a sudden about everything. Only sure that you had to kiss him again good and proper. It was your first kiss with him, really, as your mouths moved together. Brian’s fingers were wrapped around your arm again, less claw-like than moments ago. And he didn’t seem too keen to break away from pushing you a little closer to the wall, a second time around.

But just as you lost yourself to the feeling of Brian’s frame moulded against your own, your name was hollered from somewhere down the hall. Music grew louder over the speakers that reached out to the sparsely decorated hall. Brian let you go, and you released your latch on his shirt to wipe your lips in a hurry.

But before you could scurry away, you watched Brian watch you prepare to bolt, and couldn’t help the small smile blooming across your face. He smiled, too.

You looked a mess. You were a mess. And you might’ve been one step away from fucking this whole thing up. But for the first time all year, you accepted it.

///

Your second record, somehow, was praised by the label and adored by the steadily growing following you’d gained. The old burnt out hippie man who ran your home town record store stood from his torn leather stool and applauded you, the day you came in to buy the Talking Heads new record.

“You’re really finding your sound, man.” The old hippie grinned. You told him to sit back down and thanked him despite your embarrassment. He asked you to autograph the cash box and gave you a discount on the album you bought.

After your single reached the top five in the charts, you talked Joane back around. It wasn’t easy. You had to promise you’d keep a cooler head, and she did too. She started stopping over every Sunday with a book of songs for you to think up a tune to, and turned the radio up every time one of your hits came on air. You laughed when she danced around your coffee table like it was the first time she was hearing your band name on the lips of a local dj.

Wilda cut all her hair off and wore the shoes Roger bought her everywhere. She talked about him after every breath, but you knew she hadn’t talked to him in months. Queen were busy planning a tour of Europe and trying to save the families that hadn’t already slipped through the cracks at the homes they bought but hardly visited.

You knew because you called Freddie to ask after Brian.

“Why are you asking about Brian?” You could hear the smile in Freddie’s voice, after he’d finished gabbing about the others.

“I want to know how all you boys are, naturally.” You panicked, realizing how lame your excuse was as you spoke it into the receiver. Freddie only hummed after a beat, and let another silence linger before speaking up again.

“I know you both secretly care for each other. Just give him time love, he’ll come around.” Freddie chirped before giving you a sweet farewell and hanging up.

Throughout your ever-changing year, Freddie had been more than kind to you. He’d become your friend. He gave away secrets like a kid at a slumber party. And when Brian came up in his conversation, Freddie always got serious. When the singer told you about the rough year Brian had been through, and the state of his well being, Freddie seemed to look at you with all of the seriousness in the world. Like he was desperate for you to understand. Did he know you were desperate to understand? Did he know Brian kissed you?

You could have phoned Brian. But you were too busy secretly hoping he’d ring you.

///

Your only notable call came from Jim, who gently nudged you to agree to being Queen’s opening act, once again.

“It’s what the fans want, according to the label. It’s what the label wants.” Jim explained, in the soft, kind, way that protected the guy from ever receiving a glare or harsh word from you, or Brian, you realized.

“We’ll do it, if the royal court isn’t up in arms.”

“Freddie said, and I quote, 'Beg her on my behalf and tell her I’ll fly home from Barcelona to do it myself if she even thinks of saying no.’”

So you called your band, packed a bag and showed up to the airport at five in the bloody morning with a smile on your face.

And then you were off. For the first week, a local band had been chosen from each new city, to open for Loba. By the time you, Wilda, and Joane took the stage, each audience of what seemed like billions were more electric than the last. You’d never had more fun, jumping around to the music you’d worked your ass off to create with the girls. You each ran off stage, changed in a flurry and ran back to the sidelines to watch Queen light up the black ink night. And like the last time, that was about the only time you’d see much of them- till one show got delayed when a wicked storm showed no signs of passing.

Roger took Wilda to dinner, and she followed his burning trail after about a minute of pretending she wasn’t at all interested. Joane made a speech about everyone catching up one sleep, before she crashed in your bed with her shoes still on. After unlacing her heavy boots and tossing them aside, you went to find your favourite band of boys gathering in the lobby with plans to go out.

“Now the party can really start.” Crystal grinned, reaching to wrap a strong arm around your neck as he pulled you to follow the gang to the limo in waiting. You broke loose of the roadies hold and shoved him into the back of the car before crouching in yourself.

A couple of girls you’d never met sat on either side of Freddie, and cast their doe eyes to John who scooted over to make room for you. And holding the bassist’s attention was Brian, who had yet to look your way all week. Ah, just like old times. You both had been busy. But you couldn’t stop from wondering if there was something more to it…

Had you upset Brian beyond your wildest dreams, when you kissed? Did he smile at you after it happened in the way people who were so angry did, that their furry appeared in a mask of calm?

Or… did you finally get him to shut up for good? Did he realize how unremarkable you were? That you weren’t even good enough to bicker with any longer? Pushing his buttons was one thing. But you always hated the times you and Brian paired harsh words with those deadly glares. Now that you were getting the silent treatment though, you’d take his arguing with you with a relieved smile.

Freddie pulled you along into a club adorned in sickening green uplighting. The purple-tinted insides held a crowded bar and a dance floor where patrons overflowed toward the restrooms. Some tune by The Velvet Underground was pulsing through the speakers as Freddie spun you around, dancing you both closer to the mass of people doing the same.

You noticed members of your group beginning to lose themselves in the crowd when you decided a drink was in order. The bar was packed, so much so that you nearly couldn’t turn to see who you’d wedged yourself against until you felt him tense up.

Brian kept his eyes on the wall decorated with drink options and dared not move as you shifted to notice him. His hip jabbed into your side, his white knuckles rested on the ledge of the bar brushed against your arm as he drew his hands together.

“Aren’t we going to talk about it?” You asked all of a sudden. If it were up to you, you would have cornered Brian like he’d cornered you, that night. But the tour had been so busy, and this was the closest you’d been since the night he pushed you against the wall… And you couldn’t take it anymore.

Still, Brian kept his eyes pointed front and said nothing.

“You kissed me first, ya know?” You spoke plainly, desperate for a response.

The barman shoved a tall drink toward Brian’s chest just then, at the same time Freddie reached past a few strangers to yank his guitarist toward the dance floor. As he was pulled away, Brian’s eyes swept over yours, and they were prettier than ever.

///

You’d nearly forgotten all your troubles that weekend, as everyone rushed to make up the cancelled show with two in a row, and one another city away with no time to sleep, not really.

After a montage of screaming crowds, ringing guitars, and squirming in and out of too-tight clothes, a three day break awaited the lot of you at long last. You trekked behind familiar faces down a lime green hotel hall, and dreamed of sleeping until you were good and ready to wake up.

Freddie waved as he twirled into his room, and Roger followed Wilda all the way down the hall. And while you watched your feet move toward your room number a few dozen doors away, you were stopped in your tracks.

You grinned when you recognized the feeling of the fingers around your arm, and the way Brian dragged you in his tow. You didn’t have far to go, just behind the door he was already closing in one swift move…

And in a flash, the door was shut and he was kissing you like how he did before, without a word, all of a sudden. Like he was trying to suck the life out of you. You kissed him right back, like you’d been dreaming of doing since you knew how nice it was.

And then you shoved him away. Because you wanted this, but not like last time.

“You’re not going to leave me in the quiet after tonight are you? I might at least be able to stand the radio silence if I knew what it was all about.” You searched Brian’s face in the dark. All the while, you kept ahold of his shirt sleeves and slowly found your way to his haphazardly made hotel bed.

“I was afraid.”

“Afraid?” You couldn’t help but chuckle. He’d treated you with all the interest of a passive-aggressive house cat since the day you met. Brian went quiet as you guided him to sit on the mattress, leary to close the space between you until he spoke up again. Though his long fingers fell feather-light against your hips, you only kept yours on his shoulders and held his gaze, silently hoping he’d speak up again.

“Of how desperately I’ve always wanted you.” He whispered while his fingers curled to grip you the slightest bit closer. “There were about one thousand reasons I was afraid of ever kissing you, and they all seemed even scarier after I did.”

Brian let his eyes rake up your figure before meeting your own. His lips were close enough to brush yours now. It made such sense, now. All those looks weren’t really glares. All those bitter words weren’t so malice. The tension that lied between you and Brian was all to do with how badly you’d wanted to be this close all along.

Maybe he was afraid to cross that line, because of all the love he’d so recently lost. Or maybe it was because of how young and dumb you really were. And maybe it was because of something you wouldn’t come to find out for a while, yet. You decided there wasn’t time to worry over why, tonight. That could come later.

“I hope you realise now, there’s nothing to fear.” You wrapped a hand around Brian’s neck and watched his eyes search yours in the dark. Then he nodded, softly bumping his head against yours. He pulled you closer between his legs and kissed you. You pushed him to lay down and started on your mission to show Brian just how fond of him you really were.

“I’m still pissed that we could have been doing this ages ago.” You breathed a laugh as Brian’s teeth grazed your neck.

“Never could handle not getting your way, could you?” He hummed against the skin you’d started to expose.

“I mean it.” You chuckled, tugging at a few of Brian’s highlighted curls. His head lulled until he was looking at you again. Brian stayed perfectly fitted against you while his eyes peered into yours. You recognized the uncertain look on his face, but it was different than before. Softer. Sadder, maybe. 

“You really want this?” He asked in a soft timbre.

“Yes.” You nodded, tracing the length of his nose just because. A bit of quiet lingered after your assurance.

“But do you want me?” Brian asked in a hush. His sweet voice saturated in a worry you didn’t realize he had.

“Yeah,” You nodded again, searching his pretty hazel eyes as you placed both of your hands on the sides of his lovely face. “I want you Bri.”

The kiss you shared then was one that meant more than you knew a kiss could. There was something about Brian, a part of him you’d always longed to know. You felt closer than ever to that side of the guitarist now, when he deepened the kiss, and you felt him smile.

///

You woke up with a song in your head.  A melody left over from a dream. But instead of rushing to find a pen and paper, you rolled over to covet the warmth of your unexpected company.

Brian draped an arm across your middle and hummed in delight when you nuzzled closer. You stayed like that, perfectly content in the tangled up sheets, watching the patterns of the sun through the window on their slow shift across the room.

“We’re going to have to leave this bed at some point you know?” You sat up a little after dozing off for the third time in a row. Brian stayed happily tucked close to your side. “And someone is more than likely going to figure this out.”

“That’s fine by me.” Brian shrugged, peering up to you from the pillows you leaned against.

“We’re supposed to hate each other.” You reminded through a sleepy chuckle. Brian only grinned and blinked, conjuring up a thought.

“I never hated you. I might always be sorry for picking such fights. I did always want the best for you, I just had a nasty way saying so.” Brian murmured thoughtfully.

He caught your eye once more and the corners of his mouth turned up when he looked to find you were already staring at him, trying to memorize the perfect outline of his profile against the bright sunlight. You inched lower to meet his gaze, and said,

“I think we might’ve finally figured out what’s best for both of us.”

And the way Brian looked at you then sent a chill down your spine that raced back up and shot through your heart in one go.

“S'Just, sometimes you’re a real bitch.” You joked to fight the way your heart was beginning to beat like a drum. Because you weren’t quite brave enough to fall all the way in love yet. But you decided just as quickly that Brian was probably worth falling for.

“I know. And sometimes you’re fucking unbearable.” He countered with a smirk.

“Yeah, I guess so.” You noted with a laugh. You had it real bad for this guy. And that kind of scared the shit out of you. How could this have happened so quickly? How had you failed to see it coming? What if it was over no sooner than it began?

“But…” The only thing that broke through your hesitancy was Brian’s long fingers slowly trailing across your jaw.  "Do you want me?“ You echoed his statement from the night before, in a hush. You’d only just realized the depth in asking so.

"Yeah.” Brian said, wrapping a lean arm snug around your middle without a moment’s hesitation. “I want you.”

And he said so like he was trying to encapsulate all the things that made you whole and wonderful and unbearable all at once. And even then, you giggled before leaning in for a kiss.

You spent the rest of what was left of that morning doing all the things you’d done the night before. And when you decided to finally get dressed, you and Brian hopped into your clothes while squabbling over what and when to tell your friends.

You hoped you’d get to hear his maddening whinging on for the rest of forever. Because if it ever became too much, at least you’d finally discovered some pretty effective ways to shut each other up.

∘₊✧──────✧₊∘

[queenbirbs]

the way home | Ch. 1 | Edward x MC

Pairing: Edward Mortemer x MC

Word count: 2,048

Summary: In which traveling to the past is only half the battle; or: Elena finds her way back.

Warnings: language

Notes: This series is complete. I’ll be posting chapters on here and over on AO3. Title taken from Tony Anderson’s The Way Home.  Continue on to chapter two.

Inspired by @choicesmonthlychallenge day 16 prompt “tick tock / time.” 

------

“You heard what my colleague said.” Robert’s voice sounds from the backseat, pulling her from her study of the countryside. “If this doesn’t work, then we may get stuck somewhere else with no--”

“Fuck that,” Elena cuts him off. “It’s going to work.”

He rolls his eyes at her in the rearview mirror, but says nothing more. They’ve spent enough time together over the last two years that he’s learned when to stop bothering with trying to change her mind. 

“Damn straight it better work,” her sister Gabby says around a mouthful of sour gummy worms. “I didn’t put two-thousand miles on my car for you all to get skunked.” 

Robert makes a face at the unusual term. “Are you forgetting that if we get caught then you’re an accessory before the fact?” he points out. 

“Yeah, but that won’t really affect my trade-in value, now, will it?”

Up ahead along the highway, a yellow sign reads: Welcome to New Mexico; Land of Enchantment. With Colorado in the rearview now, Elena pushes out a breath, trying to calm her racing heart as the pockmarked landscape passes in a blur. 

She’s tired of having her fate sealed, printed onto expensive cardstock, and ogled by museum-goers. What a life she led! How tragic, though, about Captain Mortemer spending all that time searching for her! the people at the museum tut and shake their heads before moving on to the next room. Elena’s tired of coming back home, of staring at that portrait of him and wondering if it’s the last she would ever see of him. 

During their four trips to the past, she’d managed to find Edward only twice. Though she was glad to be leaving it behind, there was something to be said about the ease of communication in the twenty-first century. After their last return, Elena and Robert didn’t bother with the faulty compass or time anomalies. Every deadend, every long night of research, and every weekend trip to scope out a lead was for the assurance that this would be their final voyage to the past. There would be no more time-hopping, no more disappearing for months at a time. With each stone they overturned, there was hope that it would bring them here. Here, she bemuses, to the long stretch of empty highway between southern Colorado and northern New Mexico. 

The trip to South Dakota had been a last-ditch effort. Robert’s old colleague from Oxford let him know about a warehouse hidden away in the Badlands, rumored to house hundreds of artifacts -- including the one they were after. Convincing Gabby to be their getaway driver was the hardest part; putting on a show of being a damsel in distress with a broken-down car and incapacitating the guards was much easier, in Elena’s opinion. 

Under her touch, the artifact in her hand glows the same eerie shade of blue as the compass. The whistle is a tarnished gold, engraved with the initials of a sailor who escaped H.M.S. Fletcher after its sinking off Cape Horn in 1890. News articles about the event were vague. The sailor’s diary, however, detailed his two days trapped in an air pocket, blowing his whistle desperately for help, and suddenly appearing on the shore eight years in the past. The only corroboration was the event log of a fisherman who watched the man “step out of thin air.” By all accounts, the tale was nothing more than a fantastical story. 

They reach Urraca Mesa with plenty of light left -- surprising, given that they were forced to hike around the scout ranch that owns the property. The mesa glows crimson in the afternoon sun, towering above them as they make their way up the trail. Elena’s duffel bag smacks against her thigh with every step. Along the next rise, Robert stops and consults his map with a scowl. 

“The lodestone minerals makes navigating this place a pain in the arse,” he grumbles as his compass refuses to cooperate. The needle jerks back and forth, never settling on a clear direction. 

“Does it have to be exactly on the ley line?” Elena asks, fidgeting with her bag’s strap to move it to a less sweat-drenched part of her back. 

“Of course it does. That’s why we drove all the way down here in the first place. The electromagnetic energy is at its peak along--”

“Okay, okay!” Gabby interrupts. “How about we try something else: do you have the exact coordinates?”

“Yes, but a compass doesn’t work like that.”

“Yeah, but a phone does,” she snaps back, tugging her phone from her backpack. “Lemme have ‘em.”

“We’re too far out of range for cell service.”

“Maybe, but it’s worth a shot.”

Robert sighs, then flips his map over for the coordinates scribbled on the back. Gabby’s fingers fly across her screen. Within a minute, the automated voice is telling them to continue south for 256 feet.

“Verizon,” she offers at his look of surprise. 

You have arrived at your destination! the phone announces as they come to a copse of trees underneath the mesa’s shadow. Elena isn’t sure she really believes in all of Robert’s theories about magnetic fields, but there’s something different here. An odd sensation tingles down her spine and through her fingers, as if she’s touching a live wire. The smell of ozone is heavy, as if a tremendous rain fell moments ago, though the desert is bone-dry. 

“Well?” Robert motions to the whistle in her hand. 

She lifts the whistle to her lips and blows. Its shrill cry pierces the air, the mesa’s steep walls echoing the noise. At first, nothing. Then, as if ripping a seam through the fabric of reality, a portal cleaves the open air before them. That blinding blue-and-white color shimmers before them. 

“Holy fuck.” Gabby grabs her arm and squeezes. “You-- you weren’t making this shit up.” 

At that, Robert turns and lifts an eyebrow at her, a smirk stretching across his face. 

“You think we’d make you drive two-thousand miles for a practical joke?”

“I mean, we used to play them on each other growing up,” she says. “But this would be one hell of a trick.” 

“No trick,” Elena tells her, turning her attention away from the portal and back to her sister. “But it does mean…” she trails off, her throat too tight to finish the sentence. 

With tears welling in her eyes, Gabby throws her arms around her and hauls her in for a tight hug. The portal sparkles against Elena’s closed eyes; tears drip steadily down her face. 

“You’re really sweaty,” Gabby complains against her hair, prompting a laugh from her sister. “I hope you didn’t forget to bring anything, because there’s no CVS on the other side.”

“I’ll be okay. I have everything I need. And there’s always the local market.”

“Yeah, I’m sure they’re stock-full of tampons and condoms.” 

Robert clears his throat, gesturing to the portal when both sisters glance over at him. 

“I’m sorry, but we really need to go, sooner rather than later. I’m not sure how long the portal will stay open. If it closes, we may not get another chance.” 

Elena nods, crushing her sister against her one last time before letting go.

“I know you’ll have a badass sword or whatever, but make sure you use those moves I taught you,” Gabby tells her. “I didn’t close up shop at the gym for a whole day just for you to rely on weapons only.”

“Okay,” Elena nods. “I will.”  

“And try to get a message to me. I’ll keep an eye out for any new pirate documents and artifacts. There’s a subreddit I follow that keeps me up-to-date.”

“Okay, I will.”

“And tell that little boy of yours, whenever he comes along, that he has a really cool aunt.”

“Okay,” Elena promises, her voice breaking around the words, “I will.”

Nodding at Robert, she walks with him to the portal’s edge. This close, she can smell the salty wind and feel the humidity of the Caribbean. Glancing back at her sister, she gives her a watery smile. 

“Love you,” they say in tandem, prompting the other to chuckle. 

After a final wave, Elena turns and links her arm through Robert’s. 

“Ready?”

“Ready.” 

Together, they step into the portal, and the world closes up behind them. For the briefest moment, she glimpses that swirling mass of colors that surrounded the Intrepid during the chase with the Admiral. Then: white sand; a blazing, blue sky; palm trees swaying along the curve of a coastline. The salty wind that she caught the scent of earlier rushes past, a cool balm against her sweaty skin. Across the blue stretch in front of them, ships cruise toward the shore, their sails trimmed for an easy docking. Through the trees to the west, a bustling town sits above a busy port. 

“Where are we?” Elena asks, squinting at the buildings to see if she can recognize where they’ve landed. 

“Santo Domingo -- though you’d know it as the Dominican Republic,” Robert explains. “That white flag with the odd-looking red ex is a symbol of the Spanish empire. The ships out there are flying the same colors.”

“Okay. Now, more importantly, when are we?” she asks.

“The Spanish ruled this half of Hispaniola between 1697 and 1795.”

“Oh, yeah, you know,” she scoffs, “just a hundred-year span of time.” 

“Quiet, I’m not finished. Do you notice something off about the buildings? Extensive damage like that isn’t caused by a tropical storm. That would be hurricane-force winds.” As he lectures, he swings the bag on his shoulder round and starts to dig through it. “In 1754, Santo Domingo was hit with what would’ve been a category three hurricane. Twelve ships were lost.”

“That history degree of yours is coming in clutch,” she says, grinning when he scowls at the slang term.

“Our only real way of knowing, of course, is to go into town and find out.” 

Pulling a tube from his bag, Robert bends to set it down in front of the portal. She forgot it was there at all, too excited at the prospect of returning home. “I’d advise you to retreat,” he tells her as he backs away, a pistol in his other hand. 

Elena heeds his warning and follows him several paces away. She claps her hands over her ears just as Robert pulls the trigger. The gunpowder explodes into a ball of fire, eating away at the portal until it collapses in on itself, blinking from existence. 

“So.” Her words sound muffled to her, still ringing from the blast. “That’s why you didn’t want to fly to South Dakota.”

“Not really. I just hate flying.”

“Convenient that you picked a century when airplanes haven’t been invented yet.” 

Robert grins at her and shrugs, though the jovial expression drops from his face as he gestures to the whistle, still clutched in her hand. 

“For the next item on the agenda, you need to get rid of that.”

“What? No!” Elena takes a step back and holds it against her chest. 

“Elena--”

“Not until I find Edward. If we went too far in time, then this was all for nothing.”

He settles his hands on his hips and shakes his head at her. 

“If you hold onto that, you’ll be drawing unwanted attention to yourself. There are those that can… sense power in objects. You’d be wise to toss that thing into the sea.”

“Later,” she snaps, then hesitates, trying to reign in the irritation at his lack of understanding. “Look, I know that for you, your goal is complete: you’re back. But mine isn’t.” 

Robert grimaces, glancing away and towards the ocean beyond. Finally, the set of his shoulders loosens and his breath escapes him in a sigh. He digs through the bag at his side for a moment, before pulling out a long, gold chain. 

“Here.” He takes the whistle from her and loops it through the chain. “So you don’t lose it in the meantime.” 

Elena settles the necklace across her chest; the whistle disappears into the top of her shirt, hidden from view. 

“Thanks.”

“Now,” Robert gestures towards the town, “let’s bury these bags and go see about this pirate of yours.”

------

References:

The warehouse full of artifacts in the Badlands is a reference to Warehouse 13, a show about a warehouse full of artifacts in the Badlands.

[bellatrixobsessed1]

Azula’s New Groove (Part 1)

Summary: Literally The Emperor's New Groove except it's Azula and her serving girl. 

As any good story does, this one begins with a koala-sheep, a talking koala-sheep crying in the rain. A vividly silver-blue flash of lightning brightens the jungle, reminding the koala-sheep of what she has lost. Because this particular koala-sheep can not only talk, but also bend lightning. The koala-sheep knows this but has forgotten such in her overwhelming mental distress. Such turmoil is the product of a rather massive ego taking a blow twice its size.

Thunder rumbles, echoing through the trees as rain soaks the wool of the koala-sheep. The camera pans in on the pathetic creature and then it quickly pans out because, have you seen a wet koala!? Those things are horrifying. What is more horrifying is a koala that is also a sheep.

For the sake of a good story, the camera pans back in. The koala-sheep continues to weep to herself as the downpour intensifies. Beneath the jungle’s canopy and with such a heavy curtain of rain, the koala-sheep resides in the semi-dark upon a miniature island--a small hill surrounded by floodwater.

She looks up at the camera, but does not see it. She is alone. Completely and totally isolated beneath a fluttering curtain of spanish moss and dangling ivies.

But this is not where our story beings, dear readers. The story begins in a much more opulent setting. There is a montage here, but our main character isn’t much of a dancer and, despite her graceful firebending, she had tripped during its filming so the montage was cut.  

And so we begin with two old women. Lo looks up at Azula. Azula who is a human being and not a very emotionally tormented koala-sheep. “Fire Lord Azula, it is time to choose your husband.”

“Every Fire Lord needs a harem.” Li adds.

Azula glowers down from her seat. As nice as a harem sounds, her options are limited to Kei Lo, Jet, Chan, Sokka, and Zuko. Azula narrows her eyes at Zuko. “Is this the line for the bathroom?” he asks.

“No.” Lo answers.

“It is the line…” Li adds.

“To be your sister’s husband.” They finish together.

Zuko’s face scrunches in disgust. “These poor men.” He shows himself out.

Azula climbs down from her perch to inspect the miscreants more closely. “I don’t like your face.” She says of Kei Lo. “You are a fuckboi, too much testosterone, and let me guess, you’ve got a good sense of humor.” She points at Jet, Chan, and Sokka in turn. She turns back to Lo and Li, “is this really all you have for me?” She doesn’t see TyLee in this group of suitors.

“Well, we could have done better.” Lo admits.

“But there was a doilie convention in the capital.” Li continues.

“We just had to attend.” Lo confesses and holds up a small, oblong  doilie made of red lace.

“It will be perfect for our sacrificial alter.” Li adds.

“Your what?” Azula quirks a brow, suddenly rather intrigued.

“Our coffee table.” They say in unison.

“Red lace goes nice with polished cherrywood.” Li points out.

“And it will go wonderfully with our ritual dagg--our ruby encrusted teacups.” Lo flashes a toothless smile.

While they ramble on and on, trying to keep their occult practices a secret, it is best to show you readers our other main character. One of the several people involved in dismantling the Fire Lord’s life as she had known it.

Her name is Yoiko, some time ago she had been the servant specifically designated to hold up a bowl of cherries for the Fire Lord. That is still her job but she has been furloughed because the Fire Lord has found out that cherries aren’t supposed to make your mouth burn and your throat close up. She has yet to decide on another fruit to replace the cherries that she is allergic too. Mangos are too large and grapes are cliche.

Newly unemployed, Yoiko finds her way back to the Fire Nation palace. She clears her throat, “Excuse me. I'm here to see Fire Lord Azula. You see, this morning I received an order to…”

The guard cuts him off. “She’s waiting in her throne room. Up six flights of stairs, make three lefts, and then take another flight of stairs down one floor, grab a knife from the kitchen, hand it to Lo and Li, and…”

“I’m not here for the ritual. And I know how to get to the throne room.”

“Right, yes.” The guard replies with an awkward cough.

As Yokio passes she nearly trips over a cabbage.

“My cabbages!” He declares.

Yoiko, deciding to earn herself some virtue points so that she may look holier than thou, picks up the cabbage and hands it to the man with a kind, “here you go.” Though it might just be that she is actually a genuinely nice person.

“Thank you.” The cabbage merchant says.

“You're welcome.” Yoiko smiles. She has to smile before she speaks with Azula and finds herself unable to smile for the next week or so. “Are you okay?” She asks the merchant. “What happened?” Yoiko expects to hear a story about how the merchant had thrown off Azula’s groove. Heaven knows, she has run into quite some trouble for accidentally interrupting Azula’s very rigid daily routines.  

Instead the man says, “I ran into the Avatar.” He shudders. “Evil, evil little arrow headed, ‘pacifist’, monk. And that lemur…” he shudders with a deeper chill coursing through him. “It’s beady little eyes, they stare into your soul. And have you heard its chitters, they’re like the screams of a thousand cabbages.”

Yoiko blinks, she has never heard a cabbage scream. “Well I’m going to see the Fire Lord, not the Avatar.”

“Don’t look into its eyes!”

“I’ve looked into her eyes before.” Yoiko shrugs. “Several times. Most of the time they’re all judgemental and…”

“No! Not the Fire Lord’s! The lemur’s!”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Do you need help collecting the rest of your cabbages? I have a few minutes before I need to speak with the Fire Lord.” Yoiko offers.

Azula finds her never ending supply of kindness rather appalling. She does not see this small act of kindness, but she senses it. She senses it and it chills her to the core. But nothing is more chilling than our next character.

“And what brings you to the palace?” Zhao asks.

“Well, your highness, I mean...wait, what is your title?” Asks the peasant.

Zhao scowls. A scowl that Azula has long since grown to resent. She looks upon it as she enters the throne room, her throne room. It is a hideous scowl that nearly draw attention away from his obnoxiously groomed sideburns and his collection of wrinkles. Admiral Zhao potantly reminds Azula that man is descended from monkeys. What is more is that the man looks like a corpse. He has the pallor and droopy eyes of one. Next to him stands former Fire Lord Ozai. He had lost to Aang during Sozin’s comet while Azula had won her Agni Kai. Fully anticipating to beat a twelve year old marshmallow of a boy, Ozai had handed his daughter his former title. Decidedly, if he couldn’t manage to beat a twelve year old, he is not fit to run the Fire Nation. So Azula had kept the title for herself and her father could do nothing about it save for snarl at her and remind her that the Avatar will come to dethrone her shortly and put Zuko on the throne. What Ozai is unaware of is that Zuzu does not want the throne, he has a musical career to think about  and she has already made a deal with the Avatar to keep him from being a pest.

Azula has noticed that her father, brimming with resentment, has suddenly grown  rather fond of Zhao. Zhao who goes through right hand men like Zuko goes through hyperfixations. Azula imagines that Ozai will be tossed aside by the time Zuko finishes his mumble rap obsession.

Azula looks from Zhao to the peasant that he is currently quarreling with.  

“But I need food and shelter, I have six children!”

This is the kind of dispute that is usually brought to Azula so that she may dismiss the needy man. Instead, Zhao steals what should have been her line, “you should have thought of that before you became peasants!” He adds a devilish chuckle for good measure before dismissing the man.

“Peasants are tiresome.” Azula remarks, “it’s a shame you don’t have someone else to deal with them, right?”

“Absolutely correct!” Zhao agrees.

Azula clears her throat. “That would be me, Zhao. Your Fire Lord. The one who gets to call people peasants.”

Zhao cuts her a nervous glance. “Right, yes, your majesty.” But Azula has heard more than enough. “You see, it isn’t such a big deal, I was just trying to, ah, free up your busy schedule, so you can go out and have fun with your friends.”

Azula’s eyes narrow. “I like my busy schedule and this is fun for me. There is nothing funner than telling peasants that their needs mean nothing and that their gods can’t protect them from me.” She leaves out that she no longer has friends.

One of Azula’s servants emerges, “Yoiko is here to speak with you.”

“Lovely.” She smiles. This is the very peasant she has been hoping to terrorize. “And you can show yourself out, you are fired!” She holds her chin up and folds her arms over her chest. She has banished far too many people, so this time she will settle for only firing Zhao. Her eyes narrow further as she recalls that she had banished Lo. And further still when she recalls that Zhao is supposed to be dead. She squints at the man; yes he is supposed to be dead. That might explain why he looks like something ten years deceased.

Yes, she has made the right decision in firing him.

“But, princes--Fire Lord Azula, I have been more than loyal to the Fire Nation for decades…”

She thinks that it might have been a few centuries. She looks upon that appalling face, yes definitely centuries.

“I even destroyed the moon…”

“In other words, you have had your moment of glory, it is time to show yourself out.” She looks upon her throne. “You’re even sitting on my throne!”

“I was just keeping it warm for you!”

Azula scowls for nothing is worse than sitting upon a chair that radiates the warmth of someone else’s buttocks. She thinks that this warrants banishment but she is in a merciful mood. “Go on, get out, I’ve got peasant matters to deal with.”

Perhaps she would have banished him if she had known what was to come.

[lovemesomesurveys]

“how the hell does a broken heart learn to mend itself?”

Would you ever like to own your own gym? No.

Do you listen to Christina Perri? If so, do you like her music? Jar of Hearts and A Thousand Years are a few of my favorites of hers. Oh, and Human. <<< Yeah, I liked those as well. I think those are the only ones I’m familiar with of hers. I haven’t listened to her music in a long time.

When was the last time you went to Wal-Mart? Back in March before the quarantine/lockdown and shit really hit the fan.

Which is worse: Runny nose or stuffy nose? Both are very annoying, but feeling like you can’t breathe is definitely the worst. 

Do you hate how people are quick to judge? i think we all have that tendency, some more than others. It can be an issue when you let that judgment form your whole opinion about a person without even knowing them. Except in extreme cases of course when it a quick judgment could be useful, like if you’re feeling uncomfortable or someone appears to be sketchy. 

Has anyone ever made you feel small? Yes.

Would you rather give your food to a homeless shelter or money to charity? Food to a homeless shelter would be more direct and immediate. When you donate money to a charity you don’t really know when or how it gets used, exactly. And it can take time to be sorted out and distributed. That being said, of course donating to charities is good and important and will help in the long run. I’m just saying, donating food to a homeless shelter would be something they could use immediately and benefit them directly. Does any of this make sense?

Can you tell when your best friend is lying? I think I’m typically pretty good at that.

Would you pay extra money for make up just to make you look prettier? Ha, all the makeup in the world didn’t make a difference for me. Still ugly. I stopped even bothering with it.

Do you like to look at license plates to see where people are from? I don’t pay much attention to that.

Are you more hungry or tired right now? I’m both. My sleep schedule continues to be weird. I fell asleep around 230AM until about 4AM and then fell asleep again shortly after that until like 7:45AM. Now it’s 8:46AM and here I am. Like wtf? And lately I’ve been having a bit more of an appetite, so I’ve been feeling hungrier earlier than usual and actually eating more than just dinner and my late bowl of ramen. My body is such a mess.

Do you follow your head or heart more? It’s a battle.

On a scale 1-10 how much do you like my surveys? I’m assuming the same person has made the last few I’ve done with this same kind of format, in which case they’ve been fine. 

Do you think you deserve more than what you have? I don’t think I deserve anything. 

Would you ever spend $2,000 on a dress? I can’t imagine ever spending that much on a dress. I don’t plan on getting married, but even if I did I’d find something a lot less expensive. 

“Reach out to you, touch my hand”

Have you ever made fresh dough? No.

When you were little, did you used to make cookies with your mom? Yeah.

Has anyone ever said "Say it, don't spray it" to you? lol yeah, when I was a kid.

What is your least favorite type of person? Arrogant, cocky, close minded people.

True or False : Superman is your favorite super hero. False.

Have you ever drank Silk milk? Yeah. Well, I don’t drink it directly (or any kind of milk for that matter, ew), but I use soy in coffee drinks, cereal, or to dunk cookies or brownies or something. I tend to use vanilla almond milk more often, though.

What color is your camera? I use the camera on my phone, which is a coral iPhone XR.

When you create a survey, do you usually make the title lyrics? I don’t create surveys.

Do you play Cityville, Farmville or Frontierville on Facebook? Nope. Never got into any of those.

Do you tend to complain when its to hot out? Ugh, yes. I’m miserable when it’s hot and everyone knows it lol.

Flip flops or tennis shoes? Tennis shoes. I never wear flip flops or any kind of sandal or open toed shoe.

Do you like your fingernails long or short? They’re always barely there cause I’ve had this horrible habit all my life. Well, with the exception of the very few times I managed to stop and let them grow a decent length. Never lasted long, though.

Have you made anyone laugh today? I haven’t interacted with anyone yet today.

Would you like to go to South America? Sure.

Have you ever read Time magazine? I think so.

“Tonight we’re going to dance on the edge of the Hollywood sign”

Do you use the gel, spray or powdered deodorant? I think it’s called a solid.

Do you own a pearl necklace? No. I used to, but it broke. 

Do you know anyone named Julie? No.

What's your favorite candle scent? I love the autumn scented ones.

Does anyone you know own a motorcycle? Yes.

How many different languages can you say “hello” in? Just a few. I don’t feel like thinking about how many different ones right now.

Do you like Train’s music? Yeah. 

Have you ever accidentally clicked on an ad on the side of your screen? Yeah, back in the day when ads were annoying and popped up all the time. I haven’t had that issue in years.

Do you like dark or light pop/soda better? My favorite sodas are Coke and Dr. Pepper, which happen to be dark.

Have you ever been told you were a good dance? No.

Do you own one of those small, battery powered fans? I do.

When you sleep, do you like it complete silence or do you like sound? I need some sound and light, hence why I sleep with the TV on. I have it completely quiet or dark.

Was it cloudy today or clear sky? It’s supposed to be clear skies. Do you like the show Seinfiled or Friends? I never got into either one.

Would you rather have bad breath or body odor? Ew.

“I’m gonna sleep in my Snuggie tonight.”

Have you ever ridden in a hot air balloon? Noooo. I never would.

Do you hate it when people get obsessed with their boyfriend/girlfriend? I had friends who obsessively talked about their significant others and it did get quite annoying, not gonna lie.

Have you ever been to Nevada? Yes.

Are you dating the boy/girl of your dreams? I’m single.

Do you watch Glee? No, I never got into it.

Do you like coffee? I love coffee. Duh.

Do you like applesauce? Yeah. Wow, I don’t recall the last time I had any, though.

When was the last time you had a nightmare? It’s been awhile, thankfully.

Have you ever had a manicure? Once. It was for my 8th grade promotion.

Do you like graphic tees? Ha, my whole wardrobe is graphic tees. And leggings.

Are you the type of person who is always yelling? Not at all.

Do you like Willow or Jaden Smith better? I don’t have any feelings about either one.

Is anything making you mad right now? No.

Name one thing you've NEVER done but want to: Go to Hawaii.

Ever seen the movie Shark Tale? I know of it, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it.

“No matter what, I’ll never stop loving you”

Do you like Italian food? I love it.

Which would you rather have: drama or no friends? I have no friends now and I’m honestly okay with it.

Do you own a black necklace? No.

Would you rather have white & crooked teeth or straight teeth that are yellow? How ‘bout straight and white teeth.

How many notifications do you have on Facebook right now? Zero.

Do you smile or laugh more? Uhh I don’t know.

Have you ever tried Nutella? Yes, and I don’t like it. <<< Saaame. I don’t get the hype.

What age did you stop watching Spongebob? I was never really into it, I just caught some episodes because my younger brother loved it as a kid.

Have you ever seen the show Boy Meets World? Yeah, I’ve seen the entire series numerous times. It’ll always be a favorite.

Have you received bad news within the past week? No. 

What's your favorite color of highlighter? Yellow or orange is fine.

Do you celebrate the 4th of July? I mean, we go outside to my front yard and watch fireworks lol that’s about it.

Are you better at Math or Social Studies? Social studies. Math and I were always enemies.

Do you like the name Lindsey? Sure.

Do you have a teacher that your close to? Not anymore, but yeah I had a couple.

“We’ll go down just like Titanic”

When you eat, do you always use a napkin? Yes.

On a scale 1-10 how much do you like hot dogs? It’s one of those weird things that I have to be in the mood for, which is very, very rare. It’s not something I ever crave. I haven’t even had one in years. Although, a Costco hotdog is pretty delicious.

Have you ever been on a cruise ship? Nope.

Is your phone a flip, sliding or touch? It’s a touch-screen - most phones are nowadays. <<<

Are you okay right now? I don’t feel well.

Do you own a blue dress? No.

When you look at the person you like, does it seem like its only you two? I don’t currently like anyone in that way.

Do you like pizza crust with cheese in it? It’s good, but it’s not something I tend to get.

Do you like copy paper or lined paper better? Lined paper. 

Are you listening to music? Nope.

Have you ever gone swimming in the moonlight? Nope.

Is it AM or PM right now? It’s AM.

Who is your cell phone carrier? Verizon.

Do you hate public speaking? Haaaaaate. So glad I don’t have to do speeches or presentations for school anymore. It never got any easier, it was always super anxiety inducing and dreadful for me.

Have you ever been in a band? No.

“We can go to the alligator sky”

Are you more of a follower or leader? I definitely don’t see myself as a leader.

Would you rather: write a 10 page short story or do public speaking? The 10 page paper. 

Did you eat any type of fruit today? No. It’s been awhile since I’ve had any fruit. :X

Do you enjoy bowling? Nah.

Do you like the smell of rain? Yesss.

Have you ever seen or been in quicksand? No.

Do you want to get married in a church or somewhere else? I don’t want to get married.

Have you ever played hard to get? No. I’m just hard to want.

Do you go to the fair during the summer? No.

Are more mean or nice? I’m not a mean person.

Do you go tanning? I don’t ever “go” tanning, but it happens when I go to the beach. 

Can you speak Spanish? Not fluently, but yes.

Is it hard for your to compliment people? Only because I’m just shy and awkward.

Are you a goodie goodie or a bad person? I was always the goodie-goodie.

Would you rather visit Chicago or New York City? New York City.

[littlestarofthewest]

could you possibly write male reader drunkly confessing his love to an equally drunk javier? i just need him to know that i love him

Hell yeah, I can. Let’s all confess our love for Javier. This was fun, but I apologize for any mistakes. I don’t speak a lick of Spanish xD

Title: In Whiskey Veritas | Word Count: 1117 | Rating: General

Pairing: Javier Escuella x male reader | Tags: love confessions, first kiss, fluff

In hindsight, you're almost certain that you fell in love with Javier Escuella the second you heard him play the guitar for the first time.

You've been part of the gang for a week and the usual evening entertainment consisted of banjo or harmonica music. You like that well enough, but the soft sounds of the guitar that waft through the air now lull you in and you follow them all the way to the source.

The man who's playing the guitar is sitting by the fire and you can't help but sit down opposite of him, staring as his fingers glide along the guitar, eliciting a wonderful melody that warms your soul. 

He stops, looking up at you. "You're the new guy, hu? I'm Javier."

"Yeah, the new guy," you say, wondering for how long you'll be just that. "I'm Y/N."

"You like music, Y/N?"

Out of Javier's mouth, even your name sounds like an enticing melody, sending shivers down your spine. "Sure I do. Don't wanna say nothing bad about Uncle, but that-?" You nod at Javier's guitar. "That's music."

Javier smiles. "I think I'm going to like you, amigo."

You feel like melting with Javier's eyes on you, and it won't be the last time.

-------

Months go by and you begin to feel at home with the Van der Linde gang, the main reason for that being Javier. He's the first one to take you with him on a job, and whenever the gang is after something bigger, you often end up together, having each other's back. 

Somehow, you're in tune, able to make quick decisions without a lot of talk. You dance with each other through a hail of bullets and when evening rolls around, you sit by the fire, enjoying that you're still alive. 

Today it gets even better. You've been sleeping next to Javier for the better part of two months and the second you crawl out of your bedroll, he asks you to go fishing with him. It's just the two of you then, deep in the woods by a lovely little lake, with your heart pumping like a drum. 

It's one thing to bring in cash together, but this is something Javier could easily do on his own. He asked you along because he wanted you to be there and when you're not exactly successful at catching anything, he spends a lot of time explaining the lures and how to best throw your line. 

You do your best not to catch fire when he's standing close, touching your hands to get them in the right position. Somehow, Javier always gets you to forget about everything else and you're just in the moment, enjoying yourself. The day flies by with talking about your pasts and joking around. Javier laughing is something you can't get enough of.

In the evening, you're not that alone, though. Arthur and Sean brought in a nice score nobody expected and after a bit of a dry spell, the gang is up for a bit of celebration. You find yourself sitting with them, the whiskey flowing freely, and everybody sings along when Javier plays. 

You drink and dance late into the night and your fellow gang members either turn in for the night or just fall drunkenly asleep wherever they are. Javier and you are the only one's left by the fire, and Javier claps his guitar with purpose. "You got a wish, amigo?"

"A wish?"

"Si. Let me play for you."

You stare into Javier's eyes without saying a word. The idea of having Javier serenate you makes your heart race. Your mind goes completely blank, the amount of alcohol you drank not helping you. "Surprise me," you finally say, "you know better."

Javier nods and starts playing. Telling by the slow movements of his hands, you're guessing that the whiskey isn't doing him any favors either, and his words are a little slurred, his voice louder than usual.

All you can understand is "angel de amor," but you're perfectly fine with just sitting there and listening to Javier's voice, no matter the words. In the light of the fire, you take in the scars on his face, wondering where they come from and wishing you could strike the strands of hair out his face that always hide him a little bit. 

By the time Javier stops playing, your heart is overflowing with emotions and deep down you know you should walk away, but alcohol is a bitch and Javier's just too darn pretty. 

"And?" he asks, waiting for your judgement on his performance.

You could clap or compliment the song, instead, you come as close as possible to stare into Javier's eyes. "I love you."

Despite the alcohol, the words come out just perfect. After all, you really mean them. Javier smiles so softly that your heart breaks into a thousand pieces. He leans forward, kissing you. It's just a barely there brush of his lips against your own, but it mends your heart and makes it smile when Javier whispers against your lips, "Love you, too, mi amor."

-------

You wake up when somebody nudges your side. It seems you managed to get to your bedroll, even in your drunken state.

"Rise and shine," Javier teases you, holding out a cup of coffee to you.

You sit up and take the cup, eagerly taking a few hot sips. "Thank you, you're an angel."

Javier nods and takes a sip from his own cup. "Somebody can't hold their liquor."

"Hey, I was totally fine until you brought that second bottle. Or third? I'm not sure."

"You remember anything from last night?" Javier asks.

There's something weary in his voice you're not used to. Usually, Javier is sure about everything he says. Even his drunk singing is meaningful and to the point. The thought brings you back to last night. Javier singing just for you, and then-

You almost drop your coffee cup, your heart racing. "Uh, yeah. I guess I was so drunk, I kept saying nonsense. Didn't mean what I said."

Javier studies you for a moment and you don't like the expression in his eyes. Then he lifts up his chin. "I meant what I said."

In that moment, you fall in love with Javier all over again. You put your cup down to have your hands free and hold his face while you draw him in for a kiss. If he hasn't been so brave, you might have fucked this up for the both of you.

"Thank you," you say, keeping his face in your hands while you touch your forehead to his. 

Javier smiles. "Anything for you, mi amor."

[lady-divine-writes]

Kama Sutra for the Married Man

Summary: Aziraphale thinks that he should take his and Crowley’s relationship to another level.

From the book his angel is reading, Crowley isn’t sure exactly what level that is.

Neither does Aziraphale. (1744 words)

Notes: Inspired in part by this wonderful piece of fanart by @millerizo. Rated PG13. Fluff and a lot of second hand embarrassment.

(AO3)

“Whotcha got there, angel?”

“Crowley! Oh!” Aziraphale twists in his seat, jumping nearly six feet straight in the air when his husband walks through the door. “I didn’t hear you come in!”

“Obviously. Is that a new book?” Crowley grabs it out of Aziraphale’s hands before the angel can think to hide it. “Must be good. You look like I caught you with your hand in the cookie jar.”

“What!? What are you talking about? That? Th-that’s nothing! It’s just a boring old book. Just got it in. Taking a browse before I put it on the shelf.” He tries to swipe it back, but his husband is too quick, perching on the back of the sofa across the way and opening it, picking up where Aziraphale left off.

“Whoa!” Crowley barks a laugh at the first picture he sees. “Well that was a little white lie, wasn’t it, angel?” He leans in close, squinting at the diagrams crowding the page, then flips to the cover to check the title for more context. “Kama Sutra for the Married Man?” He chuckles once, high pitched and giddy, and on Aziraphale’s small cushion, the world skids on its axis and stops cold. “Now where do you expect this fits in with all the children’s books Adam stocked in this place?”

“Well, I …”

“Wait, wait, wait! Don’t tell me!” Crowley interrupts, choking on his own joke. “Between The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew, right?”

Aziraphale pinches his knees together, praying that, at some point, he’ll dissolve into the ground beneath his feet. “A-actually …”

“Seriously, though - why in the world are you reading this?”

Crowley stares at Aziraphale, waiting for an answer.

Aziraphale stares at the floor, hoping to spontaneously discorporate.

He sighs, shifts in his seat and rolls his eyes. It’s just a book, he tells himself. A book full of explicit and vulgar pictures. Crowley is his husband. It shouldn’t be hard to talk about this. He clears his throat, attempting to shoo a metric ton of discomfort and embarrassment from his brain.  

“Because we’re married now, Crowley. Married people …” Aziraphale continues, but using only vague hand gestures to express his meaning. The half-smirk growing on Crowley’s face as he watches him suffer through this explanation spears him to the bone. “Isn’t that something you want to … do?”

“I’ve never asked for this, have I?” Crowley spins the book 180 degrees, trying to make sense of the next picture on the page.

“No, but I thought it was because you were being …”

Crowley’s head snaps up, his slotted, reptilian eyes fixed on his husband’s face. “Don’t say it!”

“… nice.”

Crowley groans, flailing dramatically, nearly falling head over heels backwards. “I told you not to say it!”

“Or you don’t want me,” Aziraphale murmurs under his breath. It’s soft, downright imperceptible, but Crowley hears, and it makes him take notice. He takes a good long look at his husband for the first time tonight. Aziraphale has already showered, his hair combed down neatly and he’s dressed for bed, but in his best dressing gown. A sublte sniff tells Crowley he’s splashed on his best cologne.

Those clues and this book?

Crowley slowly begins to understand.

Whatever this is about (and Crowley has a good idea …) it’s not spontaneous. He’s been planning this.

But they haven’t spoken about it. Aziraphale came up with this on his own, based off an assumption.

And now he’s making another one.

Crowley shakes his head, amused grin on his face trying its hardest to be sympathetic, but he can’t help himself. Aziraphale is the most clever being he’s ever known. Why is it then he can also be so incredibly dense?

“Does anything you’ve seen in this book make you comfortable, angel?”

Aziraphale recalls the few diagrams he’d seen before Crowley snatched the book away. They make him shudder, and not in a good way. He knows about physical affection, intimacy, and sex, but the stuff in that book looked medieval … and that coming from someone who lived during the Spanish Inquisition. Frankly, the thought of it all – the sweet and the severe - makes Aziraphale anxious, sweating like a condemned man minutes from a beheading (yet another situation he has first-hand knowledge of) and angels don’t even sweat! But Crowley’s a demon. They’re more like humans in that regard, Aziraphale finds. Demon needs are different than that of angels, right?

Aziraphale doesn’t know for certain. He couldn’t find the time – or the courage – to ask.

He pulls himself up straight and squares his shoulders, hands gripping his knees till his knuckles turn white, but he can’t look his husband in the eyes. “No, but …” He swallows hard enough to make his throat and chest ache “… I’d be willing to do it … for you? If that’s what you wanted?”

Crowley nods at the response of his adorable but oblivious husband. “A-ha. Well, let me have a look-see, alright?” He flips through the pages of the book, not really focusing on the pictures, more stalling to give himself time to think. They’ve only talked about sex once that he can remember. It wasn’t even in the context of their relationship (since, at the time, they hadn’t owned up to having one) but Aziraphale turned into a stuttering mess. Crowley would be willing to revisit that discussion if Aziraphale wishes. But there’s a tremendous difference between making love and the carnal gymnastics outlined in this book. Why Aziraphale thought this was the direction Crowley would want to go is beyond him. “There’s a pretty picture, if I do say so!” he growls, delighting in the shade of ruby red his angel becomes. “Though I think there’s about four people wrapped up in that ball of coital agony. I’m having a little trouble pinpointing all the limbs … And this one? No. I’d have to be in serpent form to pull that one off. And this …” He throws his head back and honestly laughs out loud “… well, we could get into this one, but we’d have to miracle our way out, and I can just imagine the angry letters you’d get over that!” Crowley flips through more pages, muttering commentary for the sake of torturing his husband, who’s become as petrified as an ancient tree stump. In the dead middle of the book, Crowley finally comes up with a plan. He bites his lower lip, suppressing a smile. “Ah, I think this one’s more our speed.” He climbs down from the back of the couch to settle on the cushions where he can look his angel in the eye. “Number 117.”

“A-and, pray tell, wh-what is that?” Aziraphale asks, trying to peek over the top of the book to see. But like any good poker player, Crowley keeps it close to his chest, out of his angel’s view.

“It’s where I carry you to bed,” Crowley says smoothly, “tuck you under the covers, and bring you a tray of tea and biscuits. We read a book, you fall asleep in my arms, and we call it a day.”

Aziraphale’s eyebrows snap together so quickly, Crowley swears they make a sound. “Is that really in there?”

Crowley closes the book, index finger wedged between the pages to save the spot, challenging his angel to call his bluff. “If you’re determined to go through with this, we’ll do what’s underneath my finger. Do you honestly want to check and risk proving me wrong?”

Aziraphale’s eyes fall on the book and stay there. No, he doesn’t. He doesn’t want to prove Crowley wrong. He knows Crowley is lying. Demons lie – that’s what they do. Even the better ones. But not all lies are necessarily bad. Some lies spare people from hurt feelings, keep them from doing things they’re not prepared to do. But now, he feels more than a bit foolish. He hadn’t exactly been gung ho about the plan he’d come up with for tonight, but this is a bit of a letdown.

But that has to do with his own self-doubt and feelings of inadequacy.

In the six thousand years they’ve known one another, Crowley has never done a single thing, said a single word to make Aziraphale feel inadequate. There’ve been the odd jokes, of course, the way friends will, but none of them ever hit at the heart of Aziraphale. He pictured that same energy carrying them through this small change in their relationship.

But as it turned out, that change wasn’t so small. Transitioning from friends to husbands flipped a handful of otherwise dormant switches in Aziraphale’s mind, made him start to question whether or not who he was was enough.

Crowley is just so much, and Aziraphale?

He’s so soft.

Crowley obviously fell in love with the angel he is, and has never asked him to change, but Aziraphale began to think that his demon needed something more.

At the time, he felt his logic was sound.

He should have realized that love is all that matters, and his husband loves him enough to give him an out.

Shouldn’t he take it?

“Number 117 it is!” he says, patting his poor strangled knees. “I’ll start the kettle!”

“And I’ll get the biscuits.” Crowley tosses the book aside, miracling it with a snap of his fingers into a signed first edition of The Adventures of Beekle – The Unimaginary Friend, which he feels better fits both his angel and his shop.

Both stand, meeting in the middle on their way to the kitchen. Aziraphale stops Crowley with a hand to his bicep, looks into his husband’s eyes, and smiles. “Thank you, Crowley.”

He starts on his way but Crowley winds an arm around his waist and holds him still against him.

“Make no mistake, angel,” he whispers, lips dancing kissing-distance from his ear. “I want you, but my reasons have nothing to do with sex. Nothing at all. If it’s not important to you, it’s not important to me. Understand?”

Aziraphale blushes for the nineteenth time during this conversation, but in a softer, less scandalized shade of pink. With the touch of Crowley’s arm doing weird things to his head, Aziraphale utters the only two words that pop to mind.

Incidentally, they’re the only two words he could come up with at their wedding, when Crowley’s fond eyes on Aziraphale’s face affected him this same exact way.

“I do.”

[bronte-deserves-better]

Hey...guys...so....you know how I like to occasionally dump really painful snippets on you? Well, I might be about to do it again. Time to inflict some serious pain. ha ha because Bronte’s an inflictor...haha...I’m funny...

ANYWAYS I wrote this snippet in about 20 minutes at midnight last night, so it’s probably shit, but here you go.

Taglist: @skimmilk11 @raven-the-over-excited-bookworm @sleepdeprivedgarlicbread

Title: Planting

Wordcount: 682

Brief Summary: After the light healing that ended in disaster, the world mourns a Councillor, and Bronte mourns his brother.

Trigger Warnings: Death, but only mentioned.

Actual Snippet: 

They did not hold a planting for Fintan. They did not put a seed in the ground for Kenric’s murderer. There was no event, no mourners, no crowd to watch a little sapling sprout.

They did not hold a planting for Fintan, but there was a planting held for him. They did not put a seed in the ground for Kenric’s murderer, but there was a seed put in the ground for him. There was no event and no crowd, but there was a mourner.

Bronte approached the entrance to the woods, reading the all-too-familiar inscription. Not all those who wander are lost. His brother certainly had been.

Bronte’s feet carried him further into the woods. The morning was dark, the sun still far from peeking over the horizon. It was even more silent and still in the Wanderling Woods than usual. Even some of the gnomes who tended to the trees were taking their rest now, in the early hours of morning. One of the few who was not met him near the gate, and led him towards the little plot they had helped him find. Here, Fintan’s tree could grow safely-and secretly. 

“Please, let me know if we can help with anything else,” The gnome told him.

Bronte nodded. “Thank you.”

The gnome nodded and retreated.

Alone in the darkness of the woods, Bronte silently retrieved the seed from his pocket, a strand of his brother’s long, blond hair curled around it. He dropped to his knees, digging in the dirt with his bare hands. After a minute of digging, the hole was deep enough to lay the seed softly into. 

“Fintan…” My brother, my enemy, my friend, my first supporter, my friend’s murderer…

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry I couldn’t have been a better brother, kept you from turning towards the darkness. I’m sorry I chose to have your mind broken. I’m sorry I voted against the healing. I’m sorry chose to have the healing in a room with a glass ceiling.” 

He could hear how choked his voice sounded.

“I hope, wherever you are now, you’re finally at peace. I hope you’re happy. I hope you can see all the things you did, the good and the bad, and make peace with them. I hope you know that I loved you, even when you worked against the Lost Cities, even when you turned the tower to flames and killed my friend, even when you died.”

Bronte places his hands in the pile of dirt he had unearthed. It was a long moment of hesitation before he silently brushed it over the seed, burying it at just the right depth. Instantly, a sapling sprouted, and it was so distinctly Fintan that it took his breath away.

The little tree was thin and small, with leaves that looked more like Spanish moss than proper leaves, blond and just as soft and messy as Fintan’s hair used to be. The trunk was still thin, and the tree almost sickly, but at the top sprouted a single ice-blue flower. It seemed almost hopeful, despite the darkness surrounding him. As he watched it sprout higher, a faint bit of pink illuminated the sky.

Pink was Oralie’s color. Pink was hope and joy and love and a thousand things Bronte had no time for now. Pink was fluffy and silly. But, watching that faint bit of pink, Bronte couldn’t help but think that it signaled a new day, a new light, a fresh hope for their world.

Bronte had learned long ago not to let himself fall into dreaming. And certainly, the darkness in this world took much to face. But how could a world where there were sunsets and sunrises and beautiful splashes of color be entirely cruel?

He climbed to his feet, knowing he had a planting to attend and a thousand things to do, and that the rest of the Council would ask questions if he didn’t show up on time, but resolving to stand strong. I will survive. I will face the world. I will go on. I always do.

[jewish-privilege]

I never thought about the etymology of the verb "gypped" until the end of college, when my friend, lamenting his stolen iPod, said the word and immediately retracted it. "Isn't that offensive?" he wondered. Until that moment, I had never thought about it either. What sparked our unease was the sudden realization that "gypped" was somehow tied to "gypsy."

"Gypsy" is commonly used to describe the Romani people. But the term carries many negative connotations, and its derivative carries even more: when somebody is "gypped," they are, according to Merriam-Webster, "defrauded, swindled, cheated."

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first known recorded definition of the term "gypped" dates back to the 1899 Century Dictionary, which says that it is "probably an abbreviation of gypsy, gipsy, as applied to a sly unscrupulous fellow."

It also appears in 1914, in Louis Jackson & C. R. Hellyer's Vocabulary of Criminal Slang. The noun "gyp" was described at the time as "current in polite circles," and "derived from the popular experience with thieving Gypsies." As a verb, the term is defined as "to flim-flam" and to "cheat by means of guile and manual dexterity." Proper usage? "Gyp this boob with a deuce." I'm not exactly sure what gyp this boob with a deuce means, but it sounds like something stuck between ribald and ridiculous.

F. Scott Fitzgerald used the word in his iconic novel The Great Gatsby: "We had over twelve hundred dollars when we started, but we got gyped out of it all in two days." Simone de Beauvoir used the word in her 1965 book Force of Circumstance: "Turning an incredulous gaze toward that young and credulous girl, I realize with stupor how much I was gypped."

Many people have limited knowledge of the term's origins, and so the word "gypped" isn't quickly going out of fashion. On April 30, 2013, a publisher released a book in a New York Times bestselling series by Carol Higgins Clark titled Gypped: A Regan Reilly Mystery. The book — the 15th installment of the long-running thriller series — had nothing to do with the Roma people, but instead is a murder mystery full of financial scams and intrigue set in sunny California.

After multiple allegations of racist intent with her choice of title, Clark issued a statement that read: "I am truly sorry for any offense caused by using the word 'Gypped' as the title of my book. It was a familiar word since childhood which no one I knew associated with its origin. Since this issue arose, I've asked many people who also had no idea of any negative connotation."

Clark's experience rings true: many people just don't know what the word means, or where it comes from.

"I encounter a lot of people who tell me that they never knew the word 'gypped' had anything to do with gypsies, or that it's offensive — especially when the word is heard not read," says University of Texas at Austin professor Ian Hancock, who was born in Britain to Romani parents. "My response to them is, That's okay. You didn't know but now you do. So stop using it. It may mean nothing to you, but when we hear it, it still hurts."

Hancock tells me the word "gypsy" itself is an "exonym" — a term imposed upon an ethnic group by outsiders. When the Roma people moved westward from India towards the European continent, they were mistaken to be Egyptian because of their features and dark skin. We see the same phenomenon across several languages, not only English. Victor Hugo, in his epic Hunchback of Notre Dame, noted that the Medieval French term for the Roma was egyptiens. In Spanish, the word for gypsy is "gitano," which comes from the word egipcio, meaning Egyptian — in Romanian: tigan, in Bulgarian: tsiganin, in Turkish: cingene — all of which are variations of slang words for "Egyptian" in those languages.

The Roma people originated thousands of years ago not in Egypt, but in Northern India. They were displaced during a series of 11th-century Muslim invasions during the Ghaznavid Empire. Many were taken as prisoners of war back to what is now modern-day Turkey, during the Ottoman plunder of the Byzantine Empire. A majority of already-displaced Romani people later migrated to Eastern and Southern Europe. The Roma language is derived from ancient Sanskrit and still phonetically, grammatically and linguistically resembles tongues with Sanskrit roots like Hindi or Rajasthani. Romani music is still strikingly similar to Indian folk music, and their spiritual practices — despite conversion to local religions over time — still resemble aspects of Hindu cosmology.

The effort to substitute the word "Roma" for the far better-known term "Gypsy" may strike some as futile, but few other groups carry the burden of such heavy stereotypes with so little reprieve.

Earlier this year, Romani faced several high-profile accusations of child kidnapping. In October, Code Switch colleague Gene Demby wrote:

"In one case, the police received a tip that a blond, blue-eyed girl was living with a Roma family in a Dublin suburb. The tipster believed that the 7-year-old didn't look like the Roma family with whom she lived. The police came and removed the child from the home, despite protests from the Roma family that the child was part of their family."...

[sippin-on-red-wine]

No. 6 Collaborations Project: A review!

It’s been a week since this fabulous album has dropped into our hands. Click “Keep reading to hear my thoughts on each track!

Track 1. Beautiful People Khalid ★★★★ Favorite Lyric: You look stunning dear/So don’t ask that question here

Thoughts/Reflection: Ed keeps referring to this song as ‘cozy’ and I completely agree. The vibe is cool. I love the tone of his voice here and I think it meshes really nicely with Khalid’s. The content isn’t super relatable, but I think we can all take something away from this one. It’s a good note on self-awareness and being able to see the reality in things that may look glamorous on the surface. 

-

Track 2. South of the Border feat. Camila Cabello, Cardi B ★★★★★ Favorite Lyric: So join me in this bed that I’m in/Push up on me and sweat darlin’/So I’m gonna put my time in/Won’t stop until the angels sing

Thoughts/Reflection: This track is literally freaking scorching hot fire. TBH I’m surprised that they led the album with IDC and not this one. It feels like big radio potential to me. Regardless, this song is an absolute BOP - so catchy and so fucking sexy. 

I know Ed’s Spanish leaves something to be desired ☺ But I feel like we can cut him some slack after singing (yet another) song dedicated to going down on a woman. The ginger is forgiven! Five stars for him! And I’m going to have SOTB on repeat all summer (or for the rest of my life).

Oh, I also really like Cardi on this song. IDK if she’s problematic or w/e, I don’t really follow her in the media at all. But her verse is fun. (I think Ed got a lil jungle fever AY) bahahahah

-

Track 3. Cross Me feat. Chance the Rapper, PnB Rock ★★★★★ Favorite Lyric: Know she gonna slide anytime you bitches talk shit/Keep a lil blade in her fuckin’ lip gloss kit 

Thoughts/Reflection: Love love love LOVE this one. It just makes you want to get up and DANCE the damn thing! I have to laugh a little at the thought of Ed being hard & tough, lol, but it’s a cool concept nonetheless. Like he said in his Charlemagne interview, it’s kind of a love song…. but a different tempo. It’s catchy as all hell and Chance’s verse is fucking cool. 

Full points. 

-

Track 4. Take Me Back to London feat. Stormzy ★★★★★ Favorite Lyric: Coz you can win BRITS (it don’t stop)/And you can do Glasto (headline slot)

Thoughts/Reflection: Fuck. This song, though. IIt’s the first one that jumped out at me when I did my first full album listen. And I haven’t stopped listening since. The chorus is so syncopated. Stormzy is sick on this track, I love his voice so much. And it just feels like the two of them really play off each other nicely and probably had a blast making this song. 

Also, Ed flexing “Grossed half a billi on the Divide tour/No I’m not kidding what would I lie for” is BDE and I’m personally really here for it.

This song is a banger and you should dance in your kitchen to it while baking pastries. FIve stars for you, Big Mike and Teddy.

(Dear God please let Stormzy guest live in Ipswich)

-

Track 5. Best Part of Me feat. YEBBA ★★★★ Favorite Lyric: it’s not a lyric but that part when Ed & YEBBA are harmonizing perfectly in the whoooaaAAaaaA 

Thoughts/Reflection: I love the sound on this song! His voice is so raw and tender here. It reminds me of Plus era, but grown up. I think it may be how delicately he approaches the syllables in his verse and the chorus. YEBBA’s tone is super rich and lovely, and they sound great together.

I’m taking a “star” off here because I don’t love the lyrics. I get that he’s being vulnerable and showing insecurities in verse 1, but then YEBBA follows that up with lamenting about misplacing things and being late for the train? It doesn’t seem to match up with admitting physical/bodily insecurities. Also, it could just be that I hate that Ed thinks of himself this way.

DUDE IS HOT AF

-

Track 6. I Don’t Care feat. Justin Bieber ★★★★ Favorite Lyric: I don’t like nobody but you/I hate everyone here

Thoughts/Reflection: Oh god. When did this song come out? I’m trying to think back to my first impressions of it, LOL. It’s bright and poppy and of course it went and stayed #1 all summer (thus far). I remember thinking it was so cool that the melody is super mainstream and upbeat, but the underlying theme is around social anxiety. “Crippled with anxiety/But I’m told I’m where I’m sposed to be” 

I mostly skip this one now that the full album is out, but I think I listened to it for a full 48 hours on repeat when it first dropped. Bieber is problematic and shit, and honestly I don’t think he adds much to the song. I really like Ed’s acoustic version where he does the whole thing solo.

The bridge slaps. Literally. I love that clapping bit behind it. I wish that Ed hadn’t fucked up the lyrics to the bridge in the acoustic version lolololol

Four stars, will bop along for many moons to come

-

Track 7. Antisocial feat. Travis Scott ★★★★★ Favorite Lyric: So antisocial but I don’t care/Don’t give a damn I’m gonna smoke here/Got a bottle in my hand bring more tho

Thoughts/Reflection: DID YOU SEE HIM GUEST AT TRAVIS’ SHOW LAST NIGHT? This song was already one of my faves but holy shit. In interviews, Ed talks a lot about feeling awkward on stage without a guitar - but it didn’t look like that last night. He was bouncy as all hell, sounded great, looked great. Looked like he was loving the crowd’s energy too.

And the music video? That deserves a post all on it’s own.

This track is pretty short but it’s packed with good stuff. Ed’s intro is really strong here, the chorus is interesting despite the repetition. I physically can’t help but groove along to this tune. I’m sorry. I have no say in the matter

-

Track 8. Remember the Name feat. Eminem, 50 Cent ★★★★★ Favorite Lyric: 20 years old is when I came in the game/And now it's eight years on and you remember the name/And if you thought I was good, well, then I'm better today

Thoughts/Reflection: YES. YES. YES.  The song intros with a reference to Ipswich, bitch. I love how Ed makes those connections back to his upbringing.

It’s a little unreal that these three iconic voices/styles can flow so well on a song and still sound so balanced. 

I’ve got this one on repeat too. I’m determined to learn all of the words damnit!!

Five stars for a tune that I would love to see performed live someday.

-

Track 9. Feels feat. Young Thug, J Hus ★★★

Favorite Lyric: See you wigglin’, jigglin/If I have a bite will it taste like cinnamon?

Thoughts/Reflection: This song is fine. I like the feature verses. The song just doesn’t stick out that much for me.

-

Track 10. Put It All on Me feat. Ella Mai ★★★

Favorite Lyric: I try to be strong but I got demons/So can I lean on you?/I need a strong heart and a soft touch

Thoughts/Reflection: Falsetto. Falsetto everywhere. I love that! Ella Mai’s voice is so rich. Unfortunately, I don’t have a lot more to say on this one. It’s not a song I’m playing on repeat, but I don’t skip it either.

-

Track 11. Nothing On You feat. Paulo Londra, Dave ★★★★ Favorite Lyric: You and I/Whisky on ice/Maybe later we can turn down all the lights

Thoughts/Reflection: This song is SEXY and cool…. ‘smoke clouds and the scent of perfume’.... the imagery. Man. More falsetto here. Also, please go look up the translation of Paulo Londra’s verse. Thanks. I’m sweating. Is it hot in here? This album is *sexual* 

ALSO THE ‘BRRRP’ AFTER “they keep ringing my phone”  bahahahahah 

-

Track 12. I Don’t Want Your Money feat. H.E.R. ★★★★★

Favorite Lyric: I need you here for the good times and the bad times/Yeah the pullin’ out my hair gettin’ mad times/Not just the when I’m in your bed on my back times

Thoughts/Reflection: THIS IS SUCH A GODDAMN TUUUUNEEEEEE!!!!!!! I love this song so much. 10/10 jamming out to this in the car at every opportunity. Finger snappin’ cool r&b vibe. I love the super quick tempo (but not quite rap?) in Ed’s verses. And I always appreciate the little double-meaning-references in Ed’s songs - like ‘diamonds, silver or gold’ means $$$ of course, but also just success in terms of album sales performance.

TBH when I saw the title on Ed’s tracklist reveal, I totally thought this would be a slow mushy love song about how Ed’s lucky to have found someone who wasn’t into him for his money. This was a pleasant surprise!! I love that it’s a little angsty.

Five STARS bitch I love this song and y’all are sleeping on it

-

Track 13. 1000 Nights feat. Meek Mill, A Boogie Wit da Hoodie ★★★★

Favorite Lyric: Birds eye view/Pay my dues/For a two-mile queue

Thoughts/Reflection: i been ON for a thousAND NIGHTSSSSS NEW YORK TO LONDONNN DIFFERENT CITY EVERY DAYAYYY

1000 Nights: a flexy bop and I love it

This song is about the Divide tour which has been going for approximately 572 years. Not that I’m complaining.

But it’s cool (how many times have I said ‘cool’ in this post? don’t answer that). Ed loves touring and that comes out in this song. And Meek’s verse is so fun to rap along to!

Four stars.

-

Track 14. Way To Break My Heart feat. Skrillex ★★★★★

Favorite Lyric: I can’t stop thinkin’ bout her/And her lips on mine, so soft/Feelings I don’t know the name of

Thoughts/Reflection: biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitch.

This song is NOSTALGIC and I simply adore it. It has that same… “cozy” feel that Beautiful People does. Which is strange, considering it’s a song about heartbreak. But it’s just so. Soft. And warm. 

We’re back to super soft placement of words and such pure tone. 

It’s hauntingly beautiful. And yet uptempo! Bless, Skrillex. I especially love the drums that come in during the chorus, after “you’re still gone, and i’ll say”

PS, the soft sound of mouth smacking at :13. Use headphones.

Some of my favorite Ed songs are ones about heartbreak, and I appreciate that he included one here. About an imaginary heartbreak 👀

Take another five stars from me, bud

- Track 15. BLOW feat. Chris Stapleton, Bruno Mars ★★★★★

Favorite Lyric: Hot damn/Pop it like a pistol mama/You got me down on my knees/Baby please?

Thoughts/Reflection: *laughing nervously*

Again, definitely not what I expected out of this track when the titles were all revealed. I LOVED release day on this one. The world collectively lost their shit. I need nothing more in this world than to see this song performed live, especially with a full band and Ed on an electric guitar. 

I’m still not over this loud, full, energetic song full of men bellowing about wanting to, well, fuck.

Bye

(five stars from me and also my 62 year old coworker Jan)

:::OVERALL:::

This album is SO GOOD MATE and I already cannot wait until the next collabs project! Ed blessed us with 15 amazing tracks to tide us over until Subtract comes out. They’re so different from his normal album stuff and I really love to see him try new sounds and get to create/collaborate with artists he admires so much.

it also has me real hot and bothered lmao

Thanks for coming to my tEd talk.

[vernonfielding]

Strip us of our crowns

Story No. 16 of my Season 7 Countdown Project. Thank you to @exploding-snapple for the prompt!

Summary: “Look, prison is awful. I hate it here. I'm lonely, I'm scared. I just want to be back home.”

We know how prison treated Jake, but what about Rosa? Takes place during The Big House (1&2). (Read on AO3.)

Rosa starts a riot her first day.

They’ve put her in gen-pop even though everyone hates cops, and thank God she hasn’t personally put away anyone here. She’s not the only cop at Edwards, but she’s the newest, and the rest of them are in for stuff like violent assaults and murders and police brutality that make bank robbery look like child’s play. The only way she can stay safe is to earn their respect, and the only way to do that is to lose her shit a little.

So at lunch, Rosa smashes her tray, turkey sandwich and all, into the face of one of the dirty cops, then throat punches her and puts her in a chokehold. Four guards have to drag her off, kicking and screaming.

Five hours after getting to prison, Rosa is in solitary.

+++

Rosa studied meditation for a while in college. She never reached the deep inner silence and spiritual awakening of transcendental meditation, but she found it pretty damn useful for clearing her head anyway.

Her cell in solitary is so small that she can touch both walls at the same time if she stretches her arms. There’s a dented shelf at the far end with a single bar of soap stuck to it, and beneath it a stained sink and beside that a toilet. The bed is a cot, the mattress thinner than her yoga pad. Rosa gives herself about an hour to freak out in there, to tear the mattress and the threadbare blanket off the bedframe and beat them against the dingy walls, to alternate between screaming and cackling, a sound that makes her scared of and for herself.

She exhausts herself, and then she just stands there in the center of the cell, breathing hard, sweat cooling on her face and neck. She swipes her hair up into a messy bun, pulls it into a knot, and then sits in lotus pose in the middle of the floor and takes a deep breath through her nose. The space smells old and stale, of blood and sweat and piss and, horribly, mashed potatoes.

Rosa closes her eyes and breathes.

+++

She spends more time in solitary than not over the first couple of weeks. Usually it’s in 48-hour stints – two days in, one day out. But by the time Holt and Terry visit she’s been out for a few days straight. The other inmates still hate her, they still stare when she walks by, she can feel their dark gazes burning into the back of her neck and between her shoulder blades. But they keep their distance.

Lonely is alive, at least.

Her cellmate is in for aggravated assault. She says she beat up her own pimp, that the guy had it coming, and Rosa believes her but also figures there’s more to the story. She talks in her sleep, in Spanish, calling for a girl named Esme. Rosa curls up on her side, knees pulled up toward her belly, back to the wall.

The stress of this place is like a poison. She can taste it, can feel it in her blood, thinks about it settling into the marrow of her bones and becoming part of her. She thinks about Jake and how when she sees him again, they’ll both be so different. She knows that he’s harder than he looks. Stronger. But he’s being poisoned too, after all. Even if they get out tomorrow, or the day after or next week – already something’s changed. She’s already lost something but she doesn’t know what.

+++

Rosa love-hates that Terry and Holt visit. She can’t help it: She’s so ashamed, sitting on the other side of the greasy glass barrier, in her faded gray uniform and her lace-less shoes and her recycled underwear. But everything about them exudes comfort and safety and she’s so fucking glad they came. Even Hitchcock is a welcome presence. 

They insist on doing her favors. And she gets it and she’s even grateful, but it’s annoying. She hates coddling under any circumstances, hates the pity and hates giving up even an ounce of independence. In here, she already feels so vulnerable, everything in her life out of her own control.

Still, she comes up with a list of chores for them. It keeps her occupied an entire afternoon, which isn’t so bad.

She sits in the reading room with a pad of yellow legal-sized paper and a pencil and bullet points her requests, each more absurd than the previous. She likes the feel of the pencil scratching across the paper, likes watching the letters form in her own familiar print. For the first time she understands, a little, why Amy likes nice pens and pretty stationery – she would kill (not literally – but maybe she’d stab) for a rollerball pen in blue ink, for crisp white paper.

Writing letters to Adrian is hard, at first. She’s never been to Argentina, never even seen pictures of his ranch, has trouble imagining him in this space she doesn’t know. She never even found out for sure what he did with the scorpions.

She starts by telling him that prison sucks and she misses him. It’s blunt and too personal and she hates it, hates herself, so then she tells him how she wants to gnaw on the tendons in his neck and lick his teeth and the roof of his mouth. From there things get deliciously nasty and she writes until her hand is cramping and she has to stop after every half-page to shake it out.

Around halfway through the legal pad she goes horribly, shamefully confessional again and she can’t help it, doesn’t even try to fight it. She tells him she misses him she needs him she can’t do this she can’t she can’t-

+++

“Diaz,” Holt says. He’s with Amy this time. It’s the first time Amy’s visited, and her face is so kind and pretty and familiar that an ache settles in Rosa’s stomach.

“You have a plan.” Rosa can read it all over them. Amy is practically vibrating, and Holt’s eyebrows are slightly raised.

Rosa hates the plan. And she respects the plan. And even though she’d told Amy that imagining herself strangling the life out of Hawkins wouldn’t be good enough, Rosa does it anyway, all that afternoon and that night after making her request for a visit.

Anger, at least, feels a lot better than fear or despair or shame or a thousand other dumb emotions. Anger is familiar. Anger makes her feel a little like her old self. 

She picks a fight with one of the dirty cops after Hawkins leaves. The ex-cop is in for a string of beatings and bribes and threatening witnesses. Rosa bumps her shoulder and the woman tells her to go to hell and Rosa takes her out at the knees and punches her in the kidney and presses her face into the cracked pavement. It feels great, even when the guards lift her up and carry-drag her away.

When she leaves solitary two days later, she doesn’t even stop at her cell to gather her things. She’s going back to her old life. She’s going home. She already has everything she needs.

End Notes:

Title is from Focus on the Game (Bash Brothers).

This was a tough one to write – not so much in that it was hard to find the words, it just felt very dark (I mean, obviously).I hadn’t really thought much about how Rosa handled prison, and now I think it was probably both easier and harder for her than for Jake. Easier in that I’m guessing there was somewhat less threat of immediate violence/death. Plus, I think Rosa’s just generally got her emotional shit together better than Jake. But harder in that I think she’d feel more anger/shame/frustration? Also, I think Jake was helped a lot by knowing he had Amy waiting for him on the other side. Rosa was with Pimento at the time, but that relationship wouldn’t have provided nearly the same level of comfort and support. Man. Poor Rosa.

[tripstations]

The best Spanish courses on offer in Barcelona

The information here is ideal for anyone wanting to learn Spanish in Barcelona (referred to as Castellano by locals), whether you are travelling, staying here for a prolonged period or living here permanently. There is no better time than the present to learn this beautiful language and put your skills into practice! Therefore, here is some information on a few of the most highly-rated courses on offer in the city to help you study Spanish in Barcelona.

Olé

With the opportunity to learn a language in Barcelona with Olé, you can be confident in knowing that you will receive a full experience as well as just classes. Beginning in 2005, Olé were revolutionary in creating Spanish teachers that wanted to teach in a small and more personal environment than what they found in schools or other institutions. As they offer accommodation whilst you learn to speak Spanish in Barcelona, you have one less thing to be worried about before moving. In the case that you already live in Barcelona, their classrooms are based in Eixample.

In addition to this, they are recognised by the Instituto Cervantes. This is an initiative backed by the Spanish government in order to boost the number of Spanish speakers around the world. With this title, Olé put themselves at good stead as an option to you for when you study abroad.

Speak Easy Barcelona

Founded in 2001, Speak Easy Barcelona is a well-established company that teaches Spanish to around 800 people every year. As well as being recognised by the Insituto Cervantes, they have highly trained Spanish-speaking staff that are certain to ensure you enjoy your time here in the city whilst you study Spanish in Spain. Futhermore, Speak Easy is located in Eixample, by the Universitat Metro stop, a central location that is easy to access from anywhere in the city. This could not be better suited to help you improve your Spanish as you live in Barcelona.

Camino Barcelona

Thirdly, Camino Barcelona is a reputable school for you to attend and make sure you get a good grasp of Spanish in Barcelona, leaving Spain with a high language level. The company guarantee that their language classes never exceed 10 people, Camino Barcelona is perfect for someone wanting authentic and personalised Spanish classroom environments. As well as this, the company can help you get onsite student accommodation in Barcelona. This is not only good because it means you will get to your Spanish class on time, but also that you will be living in Eixample. Meaning that the whole city is on your doorstep. Giving you plenty of opportunities to try out your new language!

Camino Barcelona give you the chance to go on excursions with your class and even attend weekend trips to other parts of Catalonia. Sounds perfect to us! Lastly, as was the case for the two prior, Instituto Cervantes accredit Camino Barcelona as well.

Lingua Schools

Lastly, Lingua Schools is another central school that is respected and used by many people who wish to attend Spanish classes in Barcelona. Not only are they recognised by Instituto Cervantes, they also have all native teachers to make sure you improve quickly and receive honest feedback. Away from studies, the company can accommodate you either through a shared apartment or through a homestay with a local family. The latter option would give you a great opportunity to enjoy home comforts in a Spanish environment, so as to best optimise your growth as you undertake a Spanish class in Spain.

Furthermore, they also arrange day trips and other excursions, such as Saturday hikes up to Tibidabo or a weekend in Girona. This adds to the whole experience and would undoubtedly give you memories for a lifetime.

After researching this topic, it is clear that there are not many things to separate these four institutions with each one being successful in its own right. The only thing you have to do now is research, have a think and choose where to study and start your journey to learn Spanish in Barcelona.

Sandra Roig is Marketing Director at AB Apartment Barcelona. AB Apartment Barcelona is an apartment rental agency offering over one thousand short and long term apartments across Barcelona.

If you would like to be a guest blogger on A Luxury Travel Blogin order to raise your profile, please contact us.

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[keepingupwithlinmanuel]

The Mixed Reception of the Hamilton Premiere in Puerto Rico

When Miranda went to the island in 2010 as the star of his Caribbean diaspora hip-hop musical, In the Heights, he received a joyous welcome. One festive number included a Spanish-language call to raise the Puerto Rican flag; the audience members pulled 500 banderas from their pockets, the producer Jeffrey Seller told me over lunch at the Condado Vanderbilt Hotel, in San Juan. Although Miranda was born in New York, he spent childhood summers in Puerto Rico in his family’s hometown of Vega Alta, where his grandfather ran the local credit union. Lacking fluent Spanish, Miranda passed many days alone making home movies. To be cheered by a Puerto Rican audience, he told Oprah last spring, “closed something in me I didn’t even know was open.”

Hamilton—another hip-hop story of a man born in the Caribbean who comes to New York to reinvent himself and his nation—opened on Broadway to rave reviews in 2015. Miranda then called Seller and said he wanted to take his second show to Puerto Rico. (Broadway tours seldom visit San Juan because of the time and cost of shipping sets from the mainland, the producer explained.) Then, in 2017, Hurricane Maria devastated the island. “The hurricane changed our mission,” Seller recalled. Instead of a simple homecoming, Hamilton in Puerto Rico would become a fundraising venture, a tourism lure, and a declaration of support for the island’s recovery. Miranda had already helped to raise $43 million through his father’s Hispanic Federation for immediate relief. Revenue from Hamilton in Puerto Rico, which runs until January 27, with Miranda returning to the title role, is expected to bring in $15 million to benefit arts organizations on the island.

At the center of the discord over the show was the fact that UPR, like much of the island’s education and economic system, is in crisis. Puerto Rico owes a reported $72 billion in municipal bonds, accumulated over the past two decades to pay for social services as businesses and residents left for the mainland. promesa, a financial oversight board appointed in 2016 by President Barack Obama, had imposed unpopular austerity measures: hundreds of school closures, along with tuition hikes and budget cuts at UPR.

Miranda initially supported promesa, invoking Hamilton’s plea for governmental relief after a hurricane hit the Caribbean in 1772, and implored Congress to pass a debt-restructuring bill. (“I write about Puerto Rico today just as Hamilton wrote about St. Croix in his time,” he said in a New York Times op-ed.) As the star and creator of a musical that champions America’s first Treasury secretary, and that was famously hatched and hallowed in Obama’s White House, Miranda appeared closely linked to the federal authority that had taken away Puerto Rico’s control over its own economy. When Miranda gave a talk at UPR in 2017 to announce a Hamilton production on the island, a group of students marched onstage with a sign that read, in Spanish, “Lin-Manuel, our lives are not your theater.” (According to Carmen Haydée Rivera, a UPR English professor who interviewed Miranda during the talk, he listened thoughtfully to the protest and explained afterward that his views on promesa had changed.)

More obstacles arose as hurricane restoration work continued at the UPR theater and Hamilton began rehearsing there in December 2018. A university-employee association, facing slashed benefits, sent Miranda a letter last November stating that demonstrations might occur if Hamilton were performed on campus. Seller worried about security; police routinely patrolled Hamilton events in New York, but they are restricted on the UPR campus (and recently clashed violently with university protesters). Another option emerged: Ricardo Rosselló, the governor of Puerto Rico, offered Hamilton the Centro de Bellas Artes Luis A. Ferré, a government theater with more seating and no obstacles to police protection. Only a few weeks before opening night, the producers decided to cancel the UPR engagement and move to Bellas Artes, the same theater where In the Heights had played in 2010.

Instead of quelling controversy, the change of venue fueled it. Now Hamilton was officially associated with a pro-statehood governor whose administration had drawn ire for suppressing Puerto Rican cultural celebrations in the school curriculum. In a post on 80grados, a left-leaning journal, the activist Amárilis Pagán Jiménez asked in Spanish why San Juan should welcome a show that chronicles “the history of the same damn country that has us under an unworthy colonial state and that ended us with PROMESA.” The musical that had been celebrated for the revolutionary diversity of its cast was now being aligned with the American political establishment that Hamilton had tried to reimagine.

These criticisms were compounded by disputes over whether a Nuyorican like Miranda had the authority to speak for Puerto Rico, and whether the arts were a luxury amid crippling austerity. Rivera, the UPR professor, wrote to me that “while many people in Puerto Rico appreciate Lin-Manuel’s efforts and support, these are, at times, eclipsed by the climate of uncertainty brought about by the current fiscal crisis and politically tense relationships between the island and the U.S.,” especially after the hurricane.

...

The performance itself brought three indelible moments. The first came when Miranda entered as Hamilton. There’s often applause for his entrance, but arguably nothing like this time at Bellas Artes, where the entire audience rose, as one, for an ovation that lasted more than a minute and seemed like an epoch. It was as though all the tension of the preceding months was being released in a collective exhalation; the people in the theater, at least, wanted Miranda to know they wanted him there. (“It was the first time I felt a cheer,” Miranda recalled at a press conference after the show. “I felt my hair move.”)

The second moment came when Hamilton, enmeshed in a political scandal, thought back to the hurricane that destroyed his childhood island. “In the eye of a hurricane, there is quiet,” Miranda sang, with an emotional depth that belied his customary ebullience. The hall was hushed. (“I feel like I’m going back to Maria when I sing it,” he later explained.) The show had become about the island’s trauma after the disaster. “Hurricane” sounded like an echo of the West Side Story lyric from “Maria” that Miranda had remixed for a benefit single: “Say it soft, and it’s almost like praying.”

The final moment came at the curtain call, after Miranda had thanked his co-creators and invited his father onstage. “Lin-Manuel always said, and I take that to heart, that it was not only to experience Hamilton in its artistic value, but also to leave Puerto Rico a little better than we found it,” Luis said, speaking of their fundraising efforts. Then his son reached into the breast of his Hamilton costume and whipped out a giant Puerto Rican flag. The crowd erupted. Miranda appeared to be in tears. Where 500 flags had greeted In the Heights, what looked like thousands of cellphones came out to capture Miranda waving la bandera puertorriqueña. I showed my cellphone video to my Airbnb host the next day, and she started crying. “We’re a colony,” she said. “We’re treated as American, but we speak Spanish. When Lin-Manuel takes out the flag, it’s like, Yes, we exist.” Did it matter that Hamilton was a show about America’s Founders? “Not at all. It’s a great story!”

This is a great article for providing full context. You can read the rest here.

(Re Lin and the debt restructure, you can read about what he was actually fighting for at the time here.)

[jeremiahdowney]

I'm trapped in an elevator with four people. It's been descending for an hour. Please get this out to my family.

I titled this post beforehand in case something happens and I have to post it quickly.

As I write this, the elevator begins to descend with greater velocity.

It began as a joke, but I should have known better. I should have known by the looks of the building and the atmosphere that surrounded it. But instead of turning back - to my parents, my brother, my sisters - I walked inside, like a naive teenager does.

My ears are ringing. They’re beginning to hurt, almost bleed even. The others in here with me won’t stop screaming. All together there are five of us. We’re hoping - some of us praying, having been made believers out of this - that the lack of oxygen kills us before we reach wherever this thing is going. It’s been slowly descending for almost an hour now, gradually picking up speed. I don’t know how that’s possible unless it’s descending somewhere very, very deep. I’m surprised I have service, God bless Beelzebub-Mobile I guess.

Who knows where it’s taking us. The crying stopped and everyone seems to have accepted their fate. The only woman in here is pregnant. She’s holding her boyfriend’s hand, saying some prayer in what sounds like Spanish. One man is quietly sitting in a corner with his head down. The other is still banging against the walls of the elevator in a futile attempt to save us all. And I’m on my phone. Typing this. I hope it reaches someone.

I don’t know what brought the others here but I’m assuming their reasons aren’t too different from mine. Curiosity. Or maybe, like me, someone dared them to. I don’t know, I didn’t ask. It all happened so quickly that we didn’t even have time to react, let alone talk. We thought it was just some Halloween prank, but we’re beginning to think the legend is true.

We must be on floor negative seven-hundred or something. The elevator stopped showing us which floor we were on a long time ago. The numbered lights above the doors just flickered then stopped working all together, along with the rest of the elevator’s buttons. All we’re left with is some dim lighting and stuffiness. A lot of stuffiness. The air is quite literally choking us. I can barely breathe as I write this. I’m taking deep, heavy breaths. My phone’s screen is covered with sweat and I’m constantly wiping it with my shirt so I can type this.

God. There’s some sort of screaming. No, not from us. No one in the elevator is making a sound. The screams are coming from outside the elevator. Hideous, hideous howls. Loud, deafening screeches and wails. I think I even hear laughter. What the fuck is going on? And oh my God this heat! Someone just touched the elevator door and his hand is fucking burnt! It’s all red and callus-looking. The elevator is dropping faster.

Okay, okay, it stopped. We just hit the bottom. It slowed down first, and then it just gently stopped. It’s quiet right now. Very, very quiet. But my God is it hot. Everyone’s forehead is dripping and the floor is covered with sweat.

Something just hit the elevator. It was very loud. Wait, wait, it just happened again. By the sound of it, it must be something very large because the elevator just slightly shook. The screams are back again. God they’re awful! It sounds like an army of them, like ten-thousand voices joined together.

Okay there’s a heavy, heavy, very loud vibration, and the screaming is still going on. The elevator is shaking at what feels and sounds like hands banging against it. A mob of them. No one is calm right now, they’re all panicking. But I’m trying to write this, and as difficult as it will be, I can’t panic. I must absolutely write this.

To my family, I hope this reaches you. I’m sorry I wasn’t the best son. I really am. Even now I’m doing something I’m not supposed to. I should’ve never done this in the first place. My friends dared me to go inside this building and take this elevator down to the last floor, whose button had no number on it. It was just blank. And I listened. Sorry for not being with you long enough to see the disappointment in your faces at my decision to major in English and write stories for a living. I’m sorry for everything, mom and dad. You deserve better than a son who would bring you the pain that’s in this letter. You deserve much better than a son who would do that to you. I’m so sorry.

We’re hearing the loud bending of metal and the doors are slowly opening. Something seems to be prying them open with large... black claws. I never thought I’d make the sign of the cross so genuinely.

A stroke of heat just entered the elevator at the crack of the doors. It’s getting hotter and hotter. We all know what’s coming, I can see it on everyone’s face. This is the end. God it’s loud in here. i dont think i can write more idk what else to say. trying to describe much as i can. that woman was just dragged out, her bf too. theres fire everywhere nd there all dead nd im by self, w/e u do dnt take this elvator, sumthing just grab my leg i have to post this n