#this is part one of three or four of the comps i finished

[sharkshenanigans]

Dweam, Gogy and Foosh 🐶🐈‍⬛🦈

Some random clips of them I found on my phone, have fun!

Dream: You said you have problems with the D?

Foolish: I have problems with the D, I don't know how else to put it.

-

Dream: George fucked me.

Foolish: Alright, no one asked.

-

George: Why is it so small?

Foolish: I don't know, it's pretty average sized.

Dream: No. It actually is pretty big.

Foolish: That's just crazy expectations.

[wordsbyrian]

Surgeries and Surprises - Alex Morgan x Reader

Summary: "Skater!R gets injured", "Skater!R skates in XGames", "IDK but more Skater!R"

A/n: Look, I finally wrote a thing you guys! From multiple request for more Skater!R

Despite popular belief, skateboarding is an incredibly multifaceted activity.

There are so many different disciplines: street, vert, park, freestyle, downhill (and its variation street luge), and cruising.

For the first four, there are different competitions that skaters can compete in if they are so inclined. And in all honesty, you are usually not inclined to compete, preferring the unpredictable nature of actual street skating to the polished finish of comps like Street League, XGames, and Dew Tour.

But the chance to be one of the first skateboarders to compete in the Olympics.

Well, that’s not really something you can pass up on.

Which is why you’re skating in your 5th comp of the summer.

Not the worst schedule but you’re an idiot and made the choice to also try and get clips for your next video parts in your very limited free time.

Free time, that was only made more limited by the way you were constantly flying back and forth to France to support your wife in the World Cup.

All of this is to say that your body is currently going through it.

And, unluckily, it’ll keep going through it because XGames comps are not set up in a way that plays to your strengths, with only three 45 seconds runs to string together a line and show the judges what you can do.

Luckily, on the other hand, your flight out of Minneapolis is booked for immediately after the contest ends.

Your first two timed runs went pretty well but you know you can do better which is why you saved your best stuff for your final run.

And for the most part, your final run goes pretty well until you get to your last trick with 10 seconds remaining.

You had planned it out perfectly so that you had enough time to take a breath before giving it a go. A necessary precaution for a trick you're familiar with but not a master at, a frontside flip noseslide to fakie, especially since you’re trying it down the biggest obstacle, the 4-block rail.

A little homage to Reynolds, something you’ve been doing throughout the contest season.

Except there are a couple of problems.

The first is that, unlike Reynolds, you are not a master of the frontside flip.

The other is that after a long day of being skated by just about everyone, the rail had picked up the wax from everyone’s boards, making it slicker than you need it to be for your noseslide.

Which is why you aren’t very surprised when you hit the ground. The only surprising thing is how much it hurts.

You immediately roll over and begin to stand up and take a few steps, only to drop to one knee after barely making it anywhere.

As you try to gather the strength to stand again, you’re stopped by someone placing a hand on your shoulder.

“Stay down, Y/N/N.” It’s Reynolds. “You just used your head as a basketball and your arm is fucked. They’re bringing out a stretcher.”

“I’m fine,” you say, trying to get up again. “I don’t need a stretcher.”

His hand gets firmer and you feel him pushing you to sit down properly.

“I’m serious, Y/N, I’m serious,” he says. “I’m telling you this as your friend, not as your boss. You need to go to the hospital, your shit is fucked.”

It’s at this moment that you realize how quiet the arena is.

It’s almost as if you can hear the individualized breaths of everyone in the building and honestly, it's making your head pound in a way that you wish you weren’t familiar with.

Then you see the EmTs rolling the stretcher towards you.

“Fuck dude,” you groan, resigning yourself to your fate. “Just don’t call Alex, man, she’s gonna freak out.”

“It’s too late, she already texted me she’s trying to get on the next flight out.”

“Shit.”

The entire process of letting the EMTs do their jobs is a hassle because it’s painfully obvious that they don’t deal with skateboarders often. And it takes a lot of convincing for you to even let them strap you to the backboard.

Your memory blurs out a bit after that.

The only thing you really remember besides waking up in the hospital is telling Reynolds to make sure that they don’t give you anything stronger than a Tylenol (that didn’t happen).

When you regain consciousness it’s to the sound of voices, two you recognize and one you don’t.

“She should be coming out of the anesthesia soon,” the recognizable voice says, a doctor maybe. “In addition to her mild concussion, there were some moderate tears to her deltoid that were repaired in surgery. Unfortunately, there’s not much we can do about the fractures to the humeral head as we can’t cast the area.”

“She’s not going to like the sound of that,” you hear Alex say, “Not going to like that at all.”

“Unfortunately, whether she likes it or not doesn’t really matter. She needs to be in the sling for a few weeks at least,” the doctor says.

“Alright, thanks doc,” Reynolds' loud voice makes the headache you forgot you had worse. “Don’t worry Alex, she’s been through worse. Besides, the medal will make her feel better.”

“Not now Andrew.”

The door to your room opens a tiny bit and through squinted eyes, you watch as both your wife and mentor slip through the crack, closing the door behind them.

When they get close enough that you can make out the details on their faces, you stick your hand out to Alex and attempt to pull her into the hospital bed with you.

She doesn’t let you though and instead releases your hand to pull the only chair closer to the bed.

“Not so fast, hotshot,” she says, keeping her voice low.

“I told Andrew to tell you that you didn’t need to come all the way out here. You should be at home resting,” you tell her.

“And I told him that I was already on my way to the airport.”

“And I told you,” Reynolds says, frowning at you, “that I wasn’t going to risk having your wife mad at me.”

You roll your eyes at him.

“Now here’s your medal, silver’s not too bad considering you knocked yourself out,” he says, placing the item on the edge of the bed. “I’ll see you around bro.”

Both you and Alex watch as he quickly exits the room, moving sort of like his ass is on fire, and leaving the two of you alone.

The second the door fully shuts behind him you turn back to Alex and see more than her sigh deeply.

“How do you feel…”

“Why weren’t you…”

You both try to speak at the same time.

“No, you go ahead,” you tell her.

“Well, first of all, were you just about to ask how I’m feeling while you are literally laying in a hospital bed,” she asks.

You shrug somewhat sheepishly and say, “I mean you just flew halfway across the country and I know you haven’t been feeling the best lately.”

“Y/N/N, you’re ridiculous.”

“Anyway,” she says, rolling her eyes at you, “Why weren’t you wearing a helmet? You can only smash your head so many times before the damage is irreversible and I don’t like constantly being called to hospitals wondering if this time is the one.”

You take a second to let her words sink in.

She’s right.

Ever since the two of you reconnected and subsequently got together roughly 4 years ago, you’ve been injured quite a bit.

This is your 3rd concussion and 4th broken. You’ve also ruptured your achilles, cracked a few ribs, had one of your lungs collapse, and gotten over 50 stitches from various gashes gained from getting cut open skating some sketchy spots.

That’s not even counting the smaller ones that you haven’t told her about, like when you sprained your ankle visiting her during the Rio Olympics.

But admitting that Alex is right has never been something you’re great at.

So instead you just scoot over in the bed and ask her to lay down with you again.

It takes a bit of pleading but you do get her to join you and when she does, you’re quick to wiggle around into a position that's comfortable but still allows you to hold her.

With the knowledge that your current position makes it impossible for her to see your face, you can’t help but crack a joke.

“C'mon, babe, you know that helmets are for hills and hills only,” you say, finally answering her question, only to immediately recoil as she pinches you. “Okay, I’m sorry. I know I really freaked you out today and I hate that I keep forcing you to come see me in hospitals. And I…” she cuts you off.

“You’re not forcing me to do anything,” she protests, keeping her voice light. “I love you even though you seem dead set on destroying your body.”

“It’s not really on purpose,” you say, pulling her impossibly closer. “I don’t know how to explain it but sometimes when I skate it’s like an out-of-body experience. Nothing matters except how good it’s gonna feel when I roll away. I can barely even think straight when I’m on my board but that obviously means I don’t think about how my choices affect others and that’s not fair to you.”

When you finish speaking, the first thing you hear from your wife is a sigh that can only be described as annoyed.

“What,” you ask.

“You’re an idiot,” she says.”

“Babe,” your voice is indignant, and too loud even to your own ears.

“I’m sorry but you’re so dumb,” she says. “I’m not concerned because of how it affects me, I care about how it affects you. You’ve been acting strangely all summer and I don’t really want to see where this path takes you.”

Once again Alex is right.

And her pointing out your recent odd behavior, something you hadn’t noticed yourself, is like a bucket of ice water over your head.

Taking a deep breath, you nod even though she can’t see you and say, “I think I need to call my sponsor.”

“That sounds like a good idea.”

Unfortunately, between your concussion and having to travel back to Orlando, the call to your sponsor had to wait a few days.

And in those few days, you begin to really notice the behaviors Alex had mentioned.

Even before your injury, you were stressed and anxious but you had ignored it, believing it was tied to the comps and upcoming deadlines.

But now with those things mostly out of the way, the intensity of these feelings is familiar and you aren’t very fond of the places you ended up the last few times you felt like this.

And the isolation of being trapped at home, unable to do much more than stare at the walls and wait for Alex to get back from training, only made those feelings stronger.

When you’re finally able to make that call and the first words finally come out of your mouth, it’s as though the weight of the world comes off your shoulders.

Recovery isn’t an instant process but you do instantly feel a little better as you explain your recent behaviors that you now recognize as somewhat erratic.

And when the call ends, you have a list of dates, times, and locations so you can go to a meeting whenever you need to.

The only thing that's really left for you to do is talk to your wife when she gets home but that might be the hardest part.

So you wait, completing as many boring household tasks as you can to make the time pass more quickly.

It doesn’t really work that well because you only have one arm to work with. And you're just unlucky enough that it's your dominant hand out of commission.

You’re in the middle of unloading the dishwasher when you hear the front door open and shut.

It doesn’t take long for Alex to find you and in the back of your mind, you know that the only reason she didn’t shout your name across the house like she normally does is because of your lingering headache.

“Hey babe,” you hear her greet as you bend over to place a pot in its designated cabinet.

“Hi,” you respond, standing back up and turning to face her, only to see that she’s already taken a seat at the island. “Oh, that’s the serious conversation chair,” you note, going to lean on the counter opposite her.

“I mean it is serious but it’s nothing bad.”

“If it’s nothing bad, do you mind if I go first,” you ask, “Mine isn’t bad either but I finally got around to giving Noah a call.”

When you say that it's almost as though you can feel the energy in the room shift.

“How did that go?”

“It definitely went.”

“Are you going to elaborate or…”

Sighing deeply, you shuffle your feet, focusing on the way your socks slip over the tile.

“Apparently, when you’re really stressed and overly tired your brain chemistry changes,” you tell her, now looking up at the ceiling. “Which makes people look for things to relieve the stress, which can be a bad thing for addicts. And between the video parts, qualifiers, and flying all over the place, I haven’t actually had a chance to sit down and think, much less attend a meeting. But now, when I would’ve had a chance to, I can barely be in a room with lights on for more than 15 minutes.”

There’s a moment of silence before Alex responds and as it passes, you can feel your heart sink further and further into your stomach. This is the moment that she finally decides that being with you is far more work than it's worth.

Your downward spiral is broken by the sound of her voice.

“I guess that means that we have to come up with ways for you to handle stress when you're busy,” Alex says, “because you’re only about to get busier.”

“What? No, I’m not, the next two competitions are at the end of the month and I literally can’t skate for the next month and a half.”

“3 months,” she shoots back, “and yes you will.”

“You’re not making any sense Alex.”

Alex gets up from her seat and makes her way toward you. Before you know it, she’s reaching out for your good hand, which to this point has had a death grip on the counter behind you, not that you’ve noticed.

With a confused look on your face, you watch as she pulls your hand to rest against her stomach before covering it with both of her own.

Still confused, it takes you longer than you’d like to admit to figure out why she would do that.

It’s only when you remember the seemingly never-ending nausea Alex has been dealing with that you connect the dots.

“Oh shit.”

[taylor-on-your-dash]

Writing of Speak Now Timeline

Disclaimer: Hello! Just a quick note before you dive in. As I said in the Writing of Red Timeline, not every album has enough information to pinpoint the exact date on which its songs were written. Sadly, Speak Now is one of those albums, so I based this timeline more on the experiences that I think inspired the songs on the album. Of course, I'm not Taylor, I'm not in her head and I don't know people in the music industry that can corroborate this research. Therefore, there's always the chance that some of the conclusions might be wrong. You are more than welcome to take the sources listed here and come up with your own theories on the condition that you'll credit me. This is 100% my research, originally posted on Reddit on March 3rd, 2023.

Trigger Warning: John Mayer.

Introduction: The making of Speak Now was very different from Fearless which was recorded live, and closer to Debut. After Taylor wrote a song, the first step was to record a stripped-down demo at Nathan Chapman's studio Pain In The Art, where Nathan would play all of the instruments and Taylor would record the vocals. To understand better what "stripped-down" means in this context, listen to Let's Go. All of Speak Now started like Let's Go. Some of the demo instruments survived, and others were re-recorded by other musicians or overdubbed at a later date, between January 2010 and July 2010. Taylor's demo vocals ALL survived. They were not re-recorded.

[Nathan Chapman Interview] “With Speak Now, we deliberately went back to our initial way of working together. We had an unlimited budget, and could have gone and recorded the whole album in the Bahamas, used any studio we liked and whatever musicians we wanted. But we decided to bring it back to the basics on purpose, because we wanted to keep it about the music and our chemistry. [We were trying not] to over-compensate for the pressure we were feeling for a follow-up to Fearless. That's why we stripped it down and made the demos first. Taylor came to my studio and I played all the instruments on the demos, and because I have a good vocal booth, her demo vocals ended up being the vocals you hear on the record. After finishing the demos, we went out to different studios, and tried different combinations of engineers and musicians to replace some of the elements of my demos, mostly the programmed drums, and to do additional overdubs. So Taylor comes in, and plays me a song, and I chart it while listening to her. I then tap out a tempo, she hands me her guitar, I go into a recording booth, put on headphones, start the click‑track and hit record. She's hearing what I'm doing and singing along while she's in the control room, so I know where I am in the song. After that, I program the drums, usually using Superior Drummer in Logic. I play the drum parts on my Roland Fantom G6 keyboard, and then quantise. I then play the fills that I want to complete the drum part. After this I'll put down a bass part, and at this point we make sure we're really OK with the tempo and that we love the arrangement. I may add an electric guitar to make the track bigger, and then she'll go into the vocal booth and she'll sing the song three or four times. We may do a little bit of comping, but she executes these songs really well, and I don't want to mess with her takes too much. The audience wants to hear someone sing with real emotion. From there we'll listen to what we have and we'll maybe add some vocal harmonies and guitars, and I do a quick mix and she's out of the door.”

WRITING OF SPEAK NOW TIMELINE

November 2, 2006: Taylor writes Sparks Fly, after opening for Jake Owen in Portland, OR, on Halloween night. The secret message in the album booklet is Portland, Oregon. She will perform the song for the first time on April 6, 2007, in her native Reading PA.

[From MySpace] Happy Halloween! I'm sitting at the airport in Portland, Oregon... About to get on a red-eye flight (Oh yes, I just said red-eye. Meaning, all night. This should be interesting...)  to Toronto, Canada for another weekend of Rascal Flatts shows. Tonight was awesome. It was a show in Portland at a bar called Duke's, I opened up for Jake Owen. And a little back-story, I've had his album on repeat for the past couple of months... It's an amazing album and I literally cannot stop listening to it. I've got every line memorized, and if you see me on a plane.. Chances are, I'm listening to some song off that album, at a volume level that's probably going to cause long-term hearing damage someday. ANYWAY. I got to walk in on his sound check and meet him. Turns out he's extremely cool, and had bought my album on iTunes. :-) And since I had to leave after one song of his set, he played my favorite song "8 Second Ride" first. Which is another reason why he's awesome.

The writing date was leaked by Steve Hall from the IC on July 21, 2010. Since we didn't have the secret message yet, we didn't have any reason to believe it was written after the Jake Owen show. (thanks @backup-baby-backup!)

Original handwritten lyric sheet:

May 30, 2007: First performance of Sparks Fly in Oroville, CA. Steve Hall from the Inner Circle/Dark Blue Tennessee.com films it and posts it online.

Differences between the draft and the 2007 live version:

“You stand there in front of me” -> “you stood there in front of me”

“Get me with those brown eyes, baby” -> “get me with those green eyes, baby”

“Take your open hand and take me out” -> “reach out open-handed and lead me out”

“Dim the paper lanterns” -> “don’t need more paper lanterns”

“This night is the 31st” -> “my heart is beating fast”

“So let’s make it count now, baby” -> “I could wait patiently”

“I’ll run my fingers” -> “I run my fingers”

“And make no borderlines” -> “gonna strike this match tonight”

“Forgive me when I can’t take in everything you are” -> “and lead me up the staircase”

“You kissed me like you meant it, I swear I saw sparks” -> “I’d love to hate it, but you make it like a firework show”

There was also an additional section: We stood at the gate (and you kiss me) / With the moon on your face / And you’ll kiss me

September 2008: Taylor and Martin Johnson team up to write a diss track about Camilla Belle, called Drama Queen. This is one of the first steps in the Taylor-Joe-Camilla saga, which started with Forever & Always and Drama Queen and continued on Speak Now. There is no evidence that Drama Queen was considered for Speak Now, but for being an unreleased song, it made it as far as being mastered for the OG Fearless so it has to mean something. In my opinion, it would've taken Better Than Revenge's place, if BTR hadn't existed. Taylor talked about the Fearless mastering process on September 30th on MySpace: this song literally CANNOT be younger, since the mastering of a song is considered a legal document, necessary for copyright protection and the collection of royalties.

March 8, 2009: John Mayer tweets: "Waking up to this song idea that won't leave my head. 3 days straight now. That means it's good enough to finish. It's called Half of My Heart and I want to sing it with Taylor Swift. She would make a killer Stevie Nicks in contrast to my Tom Petty of a song."

Taylor's answer: "I freaked out when I heard [it], because I’ve been such a big fan of John for such a long time. I’m really excited about just the idea that he would even mention me in his Twitter!”

March 13, 2009: [From her Twitter] [second source] "A day off in Sydney. Drove two hours out of the city and spent the day on the beach. Wrote a chorus you'll hear on the next record. :)"

March 19, 2009: [From MySpace] ““I’m wiped out. I've been in the studio all day (I know, I know.. We JUST put out a new album. I think I have a problem, I cannot stop writing songs.) It’s so much fun knowing that you can take your time, because you have like a year and a half to make something you’re really proud of. I love recording a few songs, waiting a few months, recording a few more.. Instead of devoting a few weeks to “record the album” and then it’s just done. I like dragging it out, that way you can be meticulous about every detail. Daydream about different ways to put the songs together, and then take them apart. I’m pretty obsessed with the whole process. So needless to say, it was good to be back in the studio with my redheaded producer who I missed terribly.”

Speculation: One of the songs is possibly Mr. Perfectly Fine, since, as we know from Fearless TV, it was considered for Fearless Platinum. Maybe Haunted was also part of the same recording session. Haunted is the first Speak Now song to be copyrighted, so it has to be one of the first songs.

‘Haunted’ is about the moment that you realize the person you’re in love with is drifting and fading fast. And you don’t know what to do, but in that period of time, in that phase of love, where it’s fading out, time moves so slowly. Everything hinges on what that last text message said, and you’re realizing that he’s kind of falling out of love. That’s a really heartbreaking and tragic thing to go through, because the whole time you’re trying to tell yourself it’s not happening. I went through this, and I ended up waking up in the middle of the night writing this song about it.

The secret message is: "Still to this day".

Early April 2009: Taylor and Martin Johnson from Boys Like Girls write If This Was A Movie.

Speculation: I think it was written in April just because of the lyric "six months gone and I'm still reaching" and Taylor and Joe Jonas had broken up six months before, in October.

Literally nothing else is known about this song.

April 23, 2009: The Fearless Tour starts in Evansville, Indiana. Taylor will write most of Speak Now while on tour.

May 22, 2009: Taylor and John Mayer perform White Horse and Your Body Is A Wonderland at the LA Staples Center.

May 23, 2009: Taylor and John Mayer record Half Of My Heart.

May 29, 2009: [From MySpace] “Tomorrow, after the performance on the Today show, I’ll fly back to Nashville and record a lot of new songs I’ve written in the last few weeks.

June 8, 2009: [From Twitter] "In the studio. I don't know whose computer I'm using. Pssh.. Such a rebel right now.."

June 9, 2009: [From Twitter] "If I said I was in the studio with T-Pain, would you believe me?"

June 12, 2009: American publishes an interview with Taylor where she talks about her third album. The interview was probably done in April.

“There are definitely breakup songs on this record, but not too many. I like to balance out the amount of happy songs, breakup songs, sentimental songs, I-miss-you songs, angry songs. I don’t want to try and harp on the same emotion too much because I feel like if you make the ‘angry’ album, that’s going to lose people.”

June 16, 2009: the Jonas Brothers release their new album Lines, Vines and Trying Times, which includes a song called Much Better, that references Taylor:

I get a rep for breaking hearts / Now, I'm done with superstars / And all the tears on her guitar

This is likely the song that inspires Taylor to write Better Than Revenge, since the phrase "much better" is used multiple times in the song.

“The song "Better Than Revenge" is about a girl, who a few years ago, stole my boyfriend. I think she probably thought I forgot about it, but I didn't.”

Fun Fact: Joe Jonas changed the lyrics from "I'm done with superstars" to "I'm cool with superstars".

July 1, 2009: [From MySpace] “What else is new... Recording a bunch of new songs.”

One of them is possibly Better Than Revenge, maybe even Let's Go. Taylor seems still bitter about Joe leaving her.

July 11, 2009: Taylor writes on her diary about going to an antique shop. This is probably the inspiration for Timeless.

[Lover Journal] I just got back from a trip to Canada that was absolutely refreshing and good for the soul. I never really knew what a good thing having no cell or internet could be. But it was a great thing. I did things a little differently up there, and I actually liked it. I started reading self-help books. It’s really uplifting knowing that you can change your life today, tomorrow … just by doing a few things you never thought of. Or doing things differently than you’ve done them before. New things I adopted from a self help book: Get up early. Keep your cool. Don’t tee off on people you love. Laugh more. You can control your moods. Create a love account and make deposits, in other words, show people that you love them. Another new hobby of mine is ….. antique stores. And not just neat, organized antique stores. I really like the ones where there’s so much crap to dig through, you can find absolute treasures for nothing. I went to 2 antique stores in Saskatchewan, and one today in Winnipeg. I bought all these old glass mason jars. I’m gonna use them for candle holders. I bought old scales and watch faces and chairs and old trunks and a bird cage and 2 lamps.

July 21, 2009: [From Twitter] Hanging with my producer Nathan, discussing the next adventure. Album #3.

July 2009: Based on a Lover Journal, I think that Taylor wrote Never Grow Up in July 2009.

Handwritten Lyrics From a Lover Journal:

‘Never Grow Up’ is a song about the fact that I don’t quite know how I feel about growing up. It’s tricky. Growing up happens without you knowing it. Growing up is such a crazy concept because a lot of times when you were younger you wish you were older. I look out into a crowd every night and I see a lot of girls that are my age and going through exactly the same things as I’m going through. Every once in a while I look down and I see a little girl who is seven or eight, and I wish I could tell her all of this. There she is becoming who she is going to be and forming her thoughts and dreams and opinions. I wrote this song for those little girls.

[Nathan Chapman Interview] “The song 'Never Grow Up' is just she singing and I on acoustic guitar. We recorded ourselves live. That song probably happened in two hours.”

September 6, 2009: Taylor announces Fearless Platinum Edition on MySpace, out on October 26, 2009. It includes Jump Then Fall, which was originally written in the summer of 2008, while Taylor was dating Joe Jonas. The secret message of the song is "Last Summer Was Magical". It seems like Taylor doesn't harbor bitter feelings toward Joe anymore.

“We just put out Fearless last year? I know! We’re not putting out a whole new album. We’re re-releasing Fearless with SIX new songs added. I’m so excited for you to hear this new music, see the new pictures, and watch the 50 million hours of bonus content. I love you a lot and I’ll see you on the road!”

September 13, 2009: New York. Night of the VMA incident, where Kanye West interrupts Taylor while she's accepting the Best Music Video Award for You Belong With Me. Taylor starts writing Innocent shortly after.

Based on the themes of the song and on the fact that, according to the booklet, it was written in 2009, I think that Castles Crumbling was also inspired by the VMA incident.

[GQ] “When the crowd started booing, I thought they were booing because they also believed I didn’t deserve the award. That’s where the hurt came from. I went backstage and cried, and then I had to stop crying and perform five minutes later. I just told myself I had to perform, and I tried to convince myself that maybe this wasn’t that big of a deal. But that was the most happenstance thing to ever happen in my career.”

September 15, 2009 (morning): Taylor is still in New York doing interviews, like The View with Whoopy Goldberg. Taylor says that she bought her own condo in Nashville. Unsurprisingly, the main topic is the VMA incident.

September 15, 2009 (night): Taylor attends Owl City's show in New York. She and Adam Young (aka Owl City) had exchanged emails in the previous months. She writes Enchanted after their meeting.

[MTV Interview] “I started writing that in the hotel room when I got back, because it was just this positive, wistful feeling of ‘I hope you understand just how much I loved meeting you.’ Using the word ‘wonderstruck’ [in the lyrics] was done on purpose, because that’s a word which that person used one time in an e-mail... so I purposely wrote it in the song, so he would know.”

[Adam Young Interview] When Young met the 21-year-old music superstar backstage at one of his shows in New York, he was starstruck. "She was on her way up to meet me and that was the most nerve-racking few minutes of my life just waiting to meet Taylor Swift," he says. "When I met her she was glowing and I was too. It's hard to put into words, but I was definitely wonderstruck to meet her." Unfortunately for Young, nothing ever progressed beyond emails and one fateful meeting. "I think I'm not the most romantic and eloquent guy in the world," he admits. "She's just this endearing, wonderful girl and maybe I said something wrong. Who knows. It went on for three or four months, something like that."

Speculation: I think that the first verse of Enchanted is a reference to the View interview that Taylor did that morning.

September 26, 2009: While touring in Little Rock, Arkansas, with Kellie Pickler and Gloriana, Taylor writes a song, possibly Last Kiss.

“The song ‘Last Kiss’ is sort of like a letter to somebody. You say all of these desperate, hopeless feelings that you have after a break-up. Going through a break-up you feel all of these different things. You feel anger, and you feel confusion, and frustration. Then there is the absolute sadness. The sadness of losing this person, losing all the memories, and the hopes you had for the future. There are times when you have this moment of truth where you just admit to yourself that you miss all these things. When I was in one of those moments I wrote this song.”

[Drummer Nick Buda on the recording of Last Kiss, recorded in mid 2010 circa] On "Last Kiss," South African-born Nick Buda said there was an air of real excitement when they were recording the album. “She is awesome to work with and super-appreciative of her players. There was a real chemistry involved in this record.” Their desire to get exactly the sound they wanted extended to changing Buda’s modern drum kit to a vintage one on some choruses in order to get a different tone from some of the bombastic “teenage rock band” sound. “The songs were so well written that very rarely did they go past a third take,” he said.

The secret message is "Forever And Always".

October 17, 2009: [From Twitter] Travis: you look so out of it. Me: I'm writing a song in my head. Travis: oh, I apologize. I didn't realize you were working."

November 7, 2009: Taylor sings "Monologue Song (La La La) at the SNL, where she mentions her breakup with Joe and dating Taylor Lautner.

November 30, 2009: Taylor tweets: “If I had a dime for every time my producer and I blurt out the same thing at the same time, followed by an awkward, uncoordinated high five...”

Late November/Early December 2009: Taylor writes Ours and possibly Superman. Maybe they're the songs Taylor was talking about in the tweet.

[People Country] “I wrote [Ours] when I was about to turn 20. I was in a relationship I knew people wouldn't approve of and it was just a matter of time before everyone found out. When you're first getting to know someone, it's a fragile time, and then you add newspapers and magazine covers and it can get kind of rough. I wanted to have this song to play for him when it got difficult. Singing it for him was one of the sweetest moments I can remember. [I won't say who inspired it], to me, the song says something bigger, which is "I love you, and I don't care what anyone else thinks."”

(About Ours) “I’m excited about telling the beginnings of stories, like the story of this song called ‘Ours,’ where I wrote it about this guy nobody thought I should be with. So I wrote this song specifically just to play it for him, just to show him, ‘I don’t care what anyone says. I don’t care that you have tattoos. I don’t care that you have a gap between your teeth. I love you for who you are.’ And that song ended up actually making it on [Speak Now] and becoming a #1 song.”

That's how Taylor broke down the lyrics for People in April 2012:

“Seems like there’s always someone who disapproves” -> "I felt like I was on a tightrope. I knew that falling in love with the wrong person could freak people out."

“So don’t you worry your pretty little mind” -> "A lot of people have pretty little heads, but it's difficult to find a pretty little mind."

“People throw rocks at things that shine” -> "I kind of made up the phrase. It has a nursery rhyme feel, which I like."

“The stakes are high, the water's rough” -> "Those are the first lines that came to me."

“Lurking in the shadows with their lip gloss smiles” -> "It stereotypes girls who that pretend they're happy for your and are not."

“I'll fight their doubt and give you faith with this song for you” -> "My realization of what we were up against came out in that line. I was desperate to make it work."

“Cause I love the gap between your teeth” -> "My favorite part of the song. It's symbolic of "I love your idiosyncrasies."

“And any snide remarks from my father about your tattoos” -> "My dad thinks that this line is hilarious. He loves to tease me."

[About Superman] “This is about, well, a guy, as usual. This was a guy that I was sort of enamored with. This song got its title by something that I just said randomly in conversation. When he walked out of the room, I turned to one of my friends and said, ‘It’s like watching Superman fly away.’”

Dear John's secret message is "I Loved You From The Very First Day", which is a line from Superman.

The song also includes the line "Wishing the flowers were from you", which may or may not be the same flowers mentioned in Back To December ("You gave me roses and I left them there to die").

Gossip Speculation: This makes me think that Taylor was never deeply in love with Taylor L (-> "And I realised I loved you in the fall") and she left Taylor L for John Mayer (-> "And if you'd never saved me from boredom, I would've gone on as I was")

December 6, 2009: [From MySpace] “I just got back to Nashville this morning after being in LA all week. Today I was out and about and in the studio all day...”

December 11, 2009: Taylor and John Mayer perform Half Of My Heart at the Z100 Jingle Bell Ball concert in New York. After this concert, rumors of them dating surface.

December 13, 2009: Taylor turns 20.

December 22, 2009: [From Twitter] "I was writing a song and my pen fell into the piano. Still trying to figure out if I should do anything about this."

January 11, 2010: [From Twitter] "Studio-ness with all the same boys who played on Fearless. Home-made cupcakes were brought. Awkward fist-pumps happened. Onward!"

January 13, 2010: [From MySpace] Thank you January. I have had this month off. [...] I've written songs on napkins and sat at a giant table with my whole family on my mother's birthday, all of us in one place for the first time in too long. I've gotten to take what has happened to me and process it to my full capability, and celebrate it the way it deserved to be celebrated. I've made new music. I've gone over the memories and jumped up and down with my producer and floated around with nothing on my schedule other than just appreciating what my life has somehow turned into. So thank you for giving me so much to be thankful for this January. Thank you beyond what I know how to say.

[From Twitter] "More recording. So excited. So excited. So excited. See, I said that three times. Once for every album we've made in this studio."

[Music News.com Interview] “The weirdest place I have ever written a song is probably in an airport, and I got an idea so fast that I had to run to the bathroom at the airport, grab a paper towel and write lyrics on the paper towel. I still have it. I still have it in a box in my room.”

“Getting back in the studio with the same guys I trust and know and love.. (right, the pointing one: my producer Nathan Chapman) (Left, the waving one: Bass extraorinaire, Tim Marks. Clearly marked on his road case.) Nick Buddha is in charge of the drums.”

January 2010: It's possible that one of the songs recorded during the January session was Speak Now.

[MTV Interview] "One of my friends... the guy she had been in love with since childhood was marrying this other girl," she said. "And my first inclination was to say, 'Well, are you gonna speak now?' And then I started thinking about what I would do if I was still in love with someone who was marrying someone who they shouldn't be marrying. And so I wrote this song about exactly what my game plan would be."

“This song was inspired by one of my friends who was telling me about her childhood sweetheart, crush guy. They were kind of together in high school and went their separate ways, and it was kind of understood that they were gonna get back together. Then, she one day comes in and tells me he’s getting married. He had met this girl who was just this mean person who made him completely stop talking to all of his friends, cut off his family, had him like so completely isolated. And I just, kind of randomly, was like, ‘So, you gonna speak now?’ She was like, ‘What do you mean?’ And I was like ‘Oh, you know, like storm the church, speak now or forever hold your peace? I’ll go with you. I’ll play guitar. It would be great.’ She was just kind of laughing, and later on I just was wrapping my mind around that idea of how tragic it would be if someone you loved was marrying somebody else. Later I had a dream about one of my ex-boyfriends getting married, and it just all came together that I needed to write this song about interrupting a wedding.”

The secret message for Speak Now is “You always regret what you don’t say.”

In January 2010, things are starting to get serious. Taylor, Nathan and the rest of the group, are at the Starstruck Recording Studio to finish up some songs.

Mid January 2010: In a Rolling Stone interview, Taylor confirms she has already recorded some songs.

“‘I’ll be moving out, living on my own, experiencing relationships,’ she says. ‘All of that will be documented in sort of a photo-album-slash-diary, which will be this next record.’ I’ve written so much for this next record and recorded a bunch of songs already, but I don’t want to give away any of the titles – it’s still too early in the process. I don’t really write for albums as much as I just write for my life and process what I feel, whether that feeling is resentment or hope or happiness or a crush — writing songs helps me get through those moments.”

January 31, 2010: Taylor wins her first AOTY for Fearless at the 52nd Grammy Awards.

February 1, 2010: Bob Lefsetz posts his particularly negative review of her performance with Stevie Nicks at the Grammy's. Mean was likely written shortly after.

“When you do what I do, which is you put yourself out there for a lot of people to say whatever they want about it, there are a million different opinions from a million different people. I get it that not everyone is going to like everything that you do, and I get that no matter what, you’re going to be criticized for something. But I also get that there are different kinds of ways to criticize someone. There is constructive criticism. There’s professional criticism. And then, there’s just being mean. There’s a line that you cross when you just start to attack everything about a person, and there’s one guy who just crossed the line over and over again. Just being mean, and saying things that would ruin my day. […] There’s always going to be someone who’s just mean to you. Dealing with that is all you can control about that situation, how you handle it. ‘Mean’ is about how I handle it, and sort of my mindset about this whole situation.”

"There's a song called 'Mean,' that I guess you could categorize it into feelings and or relationships but it's actually about a critic."

In a later interview with 60 Minutes, Swift revealed that the critic was someone who attacked her performance with Stevie Nicks at the 52nd Grammy Awards, where she sang off-key.

February 3, 2010: Taylor writes Mean.

[InDemand] "There's a song on the record called Mean. I remember I started writing it sitting on my kitchen counter, just playing it. Then I took a plane and flew to the venue where we were gonna play that night, and finishing it in the dressing room.

I'm inferring the date but Taylor went to Australia on February 4th, so that's the closest date to the Bob Lefsetz's post. Alternatively, the other closest date is February 17th.

February 4, 2010: John Mayer is interviewed for Rolling Stone, and a friend of his says: "Nothing is what it seems. He operates in layers of meaning, where a poop joke is so much more than a poop joke. And he’d be a phenomenal chess player, because he knows all the moves so many steps ahead. That’s just how he operates.” (-> "And I lived in your chess game, but you changed the rules every day.")

February 5, 2010: Josh Farro from Paramore announces his engagement. Since he specifies that some people already knew about it, it is safe to assume that Hailey Williams, his ex-girlfriend and bandmate, knew before this date about it. Taylor's interviews imply that they were talking about the engagement, not the wedding.

I've got some news to share with you guys so here it goes... As some of you already know, I am engaged! So, as weird as it is to stay behind, I need to take some time off to plan the wedding and everything.

February 11, 2010: Taylor Lautner's birthday. Taylor doesn't call him, as she confessed in Back To December.

February 13, 2010: Based on a Lover Journal entry from this day, it seems like Taylor and John were no longer dating. Dear John must've been written around this period.

[Lover Journal, Flight from Adelaide to Nashville]: “My horoscope said today someone new is going to come into the picture and change my life in an exciting way. PLUS, its the 13th so it has to be true. Right? Right Well, I don't see it happening in the form of meeting someone. Maybe I'll get an email or a call. From someone fantastic and life changing. Or maybe I won't. That's more likely. I've been obsessing over the new album. I always do that until it's just right. I don't know if I have the formula just right for this one yet. I know there are great songs. I just need to figure out the strands that bond them together into a great album. And I will obsess until it's there. This album, any album, is the next 2 years of my life. It has to be more than amazing. It has to be great enough to keep MY attention for 2 years.”

“The song ‘Dear John’ is sort of like the last email you would ever send to someone that you used to be in a relationship with. Usually people write this venting last email to someone and they say everything that they want to say to that person, and then they usually don’t send it. I guess by putting this song on the album I am pushing send.”

February 22, 2010: [From MySpace] “I’ve been writing lots of songs.”

March 10, 2010: Taylor writes Mine.

[InDemand] "I wrote Mine somewhere on the road, I think in Texas, actually."

According to three different Reddit sources, Taylor was dating a non famous guy from Belmont University. The coffee shop referenced in Mine is a coffee shop in Austin, TX, by the water called Mozart's.

“This is a situation where a guy that I just barely knew put his arm around me by the water, and I saw the entire relationship flash before my eyes, almost like a weird science-fiction movie. After I wrote the song, things sort of fell apart, as things so often do. And I hadn’t talked to him in a couple months. And the song came out, and that day, I got an e-mail from him. And I was like, ‘Yes!’ Because that one was sort of half-confession and half-prediction or projection of what I saw.”

“Lately I’ve had this bad habit of running away from love. Kind of getting to the place where it’s about to commit, and then you just, like, run in the opposite direction. ‘Mine’ is about the idea that I could find someone who would be the exception to that, someone who would be so sturdy and so much of a sure thing that I wouldn’t run from it. Sometimes I look back on a lot of examples that I’ve seen of love, long term, and a lot of times it doesn’t work out. There are goodbyes and people get really hurt, so I tend to be a little ‘run-awayish.’ But I’m never past hoping that at some point that could change. This song is the first single because it has this… There was this moment between Nathan [Chapman] and I, my producer, when I brought this song in and when we made this demo in one day in his basement and we just kinda looked at each other and we were like, ‘This is it. This is the one.’”

[Nathan Chapman interview] “The demo for 'Mine' took less than five hours to record, and sounded almost identical to the record. After that we worked on the track for another four months, off and on [until July], and spent $30,000 to make sure it sounded perfect in the real world.”

[Scott Borchetta Billboard Interview] "Mine" was a turning point in the album’s development. Swift and Chapman had begun recording new songs almost as soon as "Fearless" was released. The two cut demos in his basement studio and would only take those songs to larger facilities once they felt they had an emotional foundation in the basic tracks. Still, it wasn’t until early 2010 when the album truly began to coalesce. Swift presented "Mine" to Borchetta in his office, just a few doors down the hall from the leather couch in the lobby.

"We probably played that song four or five times," Borchetta recalls. "I’m jumping around playing air guitar, she’s singing the song back to me, and it was just one of those crazy, fun, Taylor teen-age moments." And then it got serious. "I said, ‘Keep going,’ " Borchetta says. "She kind of looked at me like, ‘You’re challenging me.’ And I said, ‘Yeah. You’ve found true north here. Keep going.’"

Taylor will talk about being challenged by Borchetta to write more for Speak Now during the Red Era:

“During Speak Now, when I went to (label head) Scott Borchetta and said, 'The album's finished,' he said, 'No, it's not -- you need to keep writing.'”

Early March 2010: According to Scott Borchetta, shortly after he challenged Taylor to write more, she finishes writing Innocent, which she had started 6 months prior.

"Innocent," written after the VMA incident with Kanye West, for example, didn't come to Swift quickly. "Some songs take 30 minutes to write, and some take six months, which was the case with 'Innocent.'

“It took a while to write that song," Swift says. "That was a huge, intense thing in my life that resonated for a long time. It was brought up to me in grocery stores and everywhere I went, and in a lot of times in my life, when I don’t know how I feel about something, I say nothing. And that’s what I did until I could come to the conclusion that I came to in order to write ‘Innocent,’ " she says. "Even then, I didn’t talk about it, and I still don’t really talk about it. I just thought it was very important for me to sing about it.”

March 24, 2010: Taylor has lunch with Taylor Lautner. This meeting is likely what inspires Back To December. (thanks to @backup-baby-backup for locating the article)

[Interview Clip] Transcript: “‘Back To December’ is a song that addresses a first for me, in that I’ve never apologized to someone in a song before. This is about a person who was incredible to me- just perfect in a relationship, and I was really careless with him. So, this is a song full of words that I would say to him that he deserves to hear.”

[CBS Interview] She explained in the interview that she based the song on a conversation she had with the guy about whom she's singing. "It's not loosely based," she revealed. "It's almost word-for-word. It is a song and a conversation that needed to happen, because I don't want to hurt people. If you unintentionally do so, you've got to make that better."

April 3, 2010: Paramore's member Josh Farro marries Jenna Rice. Taylor attends the ceremony. She also goes to the studio in the morning.

[From Twitter] "Nathan you smell really good! Is that a new cologne?" "Thanks! Actually it's a two in one shampoo and soap. From Dial." My producer rules."

April 13, 2010: Taylor comes up with the title "Speak Now" after Scott Borchetta rejects "Enchanted". She also writes in her journal about getting tired of songs.

[From a Lover Journal] “So I've been obsessing over the new records to the point where it's all I can focus on. I'm majorly stressed and borderline losing it, with all these lists and chronic dissatisfaction. Perfectionist-ness. I keep growing tired of songs because I know I've raised the bar and I can beat half of the songs. Scott and I had lunch the other day. We were talking about the record and I had this epiphany. I didn't talk about it in interviews about how I felt about much of what has happened in the last 2 years. I've been silent about so much that I'm saying on this album. It's time to Speak Now. Scott freaked out. He loved it. We have a title, ladies and gentlemen!”

[Scott Borchetta Interview] “At one point, the record was not called ‘Speak Now.’ It was called ‘Enchanted,'” Big Machine president/CEO Scott Borchetta said. “We were at lunch, and she had played me a bunch of the new songs. I looked at her and I‘m like, ‘Taylor, this record isn’t about fairy tales and high school anymore. That’s not where you’re at. I don’t think the record should be called ‘Enchanted.'” Swift excused herself from the table at that point. By the time she came back, she had the “Speak Now” title, which comes closer to representing the evolution that the album represents in her career and in her still-young understanding of the world.

June 5, 2010: End of the Fearless Tour. Around this week, Taylor writes Long Live, scrabbling the chorus in her journal.

“This song is about my band, and my producer, and all the people who have helped us build this brick by brick. The fans, the people who I feel that we are all in this together, this song talks about the triumphant moments that we’ve had in the last two years. We’ve had times where we just jump up and down, and dance like we don’t care how we’re dancing, and just scream at the top of our lungs, “How is this happening?” And, I feel very lucky to even have had one of those moments, nonetheless all the ones that I got to have. ‘Long Live’ is about how I feel reflecting on it. This song for me is like looking at a photo album of all the award shows, and all the stadium shows, and all the hands in the air in the crowd. It’s sort of the first love song that I’ve written to my team.”

“"Long Live," (in parentheses "We Will Be Remembered"), is the first song where I've ever had parentheses in the title. Besides that, though, this song is about my band, and my producer, and all the people who have helped us build this brick by brick. The fans, the people who I feel that we are all in this together, this song talks about the triumphant moments that we've had in the last two years. We've had times where we just jump up and down, and dance like we don't care how we're dancing, and just scream at the top of our lungs, "How is this happening?" And, I feel very lucky to even have had one of those moments, nonetheless all the ones that I got to have. "Long Live" is about how I feel reflecting on it. This song for me is like looking at a photo album of all the award shows, and all the stadium shows, and all the hands in the air in the crowd. It's sort of the first love song that I've written to my team.”

June 9, 2010: Night of the CMT Music Awards, held in Nashville. 'CMT Music Awards' is the secret message of The Story Of Us.

“‘The Story of Us’ is about running into someone I had been in a relationship with at an awards show, and we were seated a few seats away from each other. I just wanted to say to him, ‘Is this killing you? Because it’s killing me.’ But I didn’t. But I couldn’t. Because we both had these silent shields up. I went home and I sat there at the kitchen table and I said to my mom, ‘I felt like I was standing alone in a crowded room.’ Then I got up and ran into my bedroom, as she’s seen me do many times. And she probably assumed I had come up with a line in the song.”

“'The Story of Us' is a song that I wrote about an awkward situation where, well… Let me just preface by saying that I have happened to run into exes in strange places lately. This is about one of those situations where the strange place that I ran into him was an awards show. I was seated a couple of seats away from him and there was so much that needed to be said, and neither one of us was willing to say it. We were both acting like we were engaged in conversations with people that we don't even know. It was just miserable. I was telling my Mom about it later, and I said I felt like I was standing alone in a crowded room. And then I was like, "Gotta go. Bye!" And my Mom is used to that at this point so, that's what this song is about.”

June 13, 2010: Taylor premiers Mine during the 13-hour Meet & Greet at the CMA Music Festival. Fans ask a lot of questions about Sparks Fly.

“'Sparks Fly' is a song I wrote a few years ago and played in concert. You guys have learned it and I think like it, which makes me really happy. When we did the 13-hour Meet and Greet at the CMA Fest, there was a comment I got over and over again. You guys were saying, 'So what about 'Sparks Fly?' Is it going to be on the next record? [...] I played that song at maybe one or two shows, and you guys just jumped on it and really made it something that I had to put on the album because you really showed interest in it.”

Comparison between the 2007 live version and the final one:

First verse: You say my name for the first time, baby, and I fall in love in an empty bar -> You’re the kind of reckless that should send me runnin’, but I kinda know that I won’t get far.

Second verse: So reach out open-handed and lead me out to that floor / I don’t need more paper lanterns / Take me down, baby / Bring on the movie score / ‘Cause my heart is beating fast and you are beautiful / And I could wait patiently, but I really wish you would... -> My mind forgets to remind me you’re a bad idea / You touch me once and it’s really somethin’ / You find I’m even better than you imagined I would be / I’m on my guard for the rest of the world / But with you, I know it’s no good / And I could wait patiently, but I really wish you would…

Bridge: Just keep your beautiful eyes on me / Gonna strike this match tonight / And lead me up the staircase / Won't you whisper soft and slow / I’d love to hate it, but you make it like a firework show -> Just keep on keepin’ your eyes on me, it’s just wrong enough to make it feel right / And lead me up the staircase / Won't you whisper soft and slow / I'm captivated by you, baby I’m captivated by you baby, like a fireworks show.

Speculation: I think that the line "I'm on my guard from the rest of the world" from Sparks Fly being written after "And you figure out why I'm guarded" from Mine is very telling of what Taylor was going through.

June 16, 2010: [From a Lover Journal] After the CMT Music Awards, Taylor works on The Story Of Us for a few days, before finishing it on June 16th, on her way to Nathan Chapman's studio.

[MTV Interview] “I was at an awards show, and there was a guy there, obviously — it all starts there, doesn’t it? It was a guy I had been in a relationship with, falling out, then we end up at the same awards show, both trying to act like we don’t care, both like, you know, chatting up the people next to us. Afterward, I just felt so empty, like we were both fighting this silent war of pretending we didn’t care that the other was there. And I went home, and I wrote this song about it. And at that point, I had this gut feeling, and I knew the album was finished.”

[Lover Journal Page Transcript] “So I've been a little studio rat since the tour ended [...] I wake up to my cell phone alarm around 9:30 each morning, throw on a sundress, skip makeup, tie my hair in a messy side-braid, and head out the door with no shoes on. Because the only walking outside I'll be doing is from my house to my car, then from my car three steps to Nathan's basement studio. I worked on a song for a few days, then basically finished it in the car on the way to Nathan's this morning. It. Is. So. Good. And I can safely say I am DONE writing this record!! This song is up-tempo, and hooky and sort a torn sounding... like this horrible stressed confusion that comes on when you know the person you're pining away for is in the room. There are these invisible walls keeping things from being okay. So you're not fine. And they're not fine. And I'm happy I wrote that song!! :)”

Video: Making of The Story Of Us Demo

It will be the last song she writes before having a writer's block that will end 6 months later with All Too Well.

[USA Today Interview] [All Too Well] came after a six-month writing drought that followed a particularly toxic relationship. "There's a kind of bad that gets so overpowering you can't even write about it," she says of that time. "When you feel pain that is so far past dysfunctional, that leaves you with so many emotions that you can't filter them down to simple emotions to write about, that's when you know you really need to get out."

June 18, 2010: John Mayer presents Taylor with the Hal David Starlight Award, at the 41st Songwriters Hall of Fame Awards.

John's speech: “You could put her in a time machine in any era and she would have a hit record. Don't confuse everybody loving one thing as hype. Sometimes that's everyone agreeing that it's fabulous.”

From now on, Taylor will only focus on the production of Speak Now, tweaking the songs and overdubbing the instruments.

June 30, 2010: Taylor tweets about Amos Heller recording the bass on Mine at the Blackbird Studio. Clips from this day are also released.

July 8, 2010: Taylor is spotted in Maine, while filming the music video of Mine. The final mix of the song is not ready yet.

[Source] Taylor Swift was in Kennebunk today, July 8, shooting part of a new music video at Christ Church on Dane Street. The Rev. Janet Leighninger, pastor of Christ Church said they had been contacted a while ago by a company that scouts film locations and happened to check the church out one Sunday. “Then they called about a week ago and said could they possibly film here,” she said. Leighninger said she was told it would be a country artist shooting a music video, but not who the artist was. “We wanted to make sure it was appropriate,” she said. On the morning of the shoot, Leighninger discovered the artist was Swift.

[People who were there] "It was a blast to watch! Both Taylor and the guy in her video seemed to be having tons of fun and at one point where he proposes and they kissed he looked up at the camera crew and said 'She said no by the way.' The scene lasted about 30 minutes and then they started filming in the house again."

[Mixer Justin Niebank Interview] "Interestingly enough, I'd done some kind of pre‑mix of 'Mine' for a video thing, with the original drums and bass, and Nathan and Taylor were like: 'This is cool, but we want to go a little bit more for a power approach.' So by the time it got to the final mix they had rerecorded the bass and the drums and it sounded great.

The rough version of the final mix is called "Mine JN Master Mix", where JN stands for Justin Niebank. You can also see "SF" which stands for Shannon Forest, the drummer. The old stems played by Nathan are also visible.

To sum up all of the known Mine demos:

First demo: Recorded in March 2010; all instruments played by Nathan Chapman; Mixed by Nathan.

Second demo: Mixed in June 2010, made for the Music Video; all instruments still played by Nathan Chapman; Mixed by Justin Niebank.

Third demo: Called "JN Master Mix": Mixed on July 21, 2010, bass played by Amos Heller, drums played by Shannon Forest, mixed by Justin Niebank, mix ready or almost ready to be mastered.

July 15, 2010: Taylor and Toby Hemingway are spotted shopping in West Hollywood. This is also the day when the orchestra strings for Back To December and Haunted are recorded, arranged by Paul Buckmaster. Taylor's interview in the studio here.

“I wanted the music and the orchestration [for Haunted] to reflect the intensity of the emotion the song is about, so we recorded strings with Paul Buckmaster at Capitol Studios in Los Angeles. It was an amazing experience – recording this entire big, live string section that I think in the end really captured the intense, chaotic feeling of confusion I was looking for.”

Late July 2010: In the meantime, Justin Niebank completes the definitive mixes. Mine is completed on July 21st specifically.

[Nathan Chapman] For Speak Now we had to mix 17 songs in three weeks, and I knew that I would want to go back to tweak some of the songs we had mixed earlier, and I did not want to have to recall the mixing board every time. There just wasn't time for that.

July 2010: Taylor moves out to her own condo in Nashville.

“This summer I've been 99 percent focused on my new record and one percent focused on the fact that I actually just moved into my first place. I'm officially moved in! I'm so excited! As you know, I've been constantly talking about how I've been antique shopping and non-stop planning and construction on this place. It's been really awesome to figure out what it's like to be on your own, just cooking and stuff. I'm having such a blast with it.”

The Never Grow Up secret message is: "I moved out in July".

July 2010: Shooting of the Speak Now Photoshoot with her band, The Agency.

August 4, 2010: Mine is released. It was supposed to be released on August 15th, but since it had leaked its release was anticipated.

August 31, 2010: The Mine Music Video is released. Taylor has a get-together at her home in Nashville with the kids in the video and their families.

Taylor broke down the music video in 2012 in this very funny interview for Vevo Certified;

Behind The Scenes Footage: PART 1, PART 2, PART 3 from the Speak Now Deluxe Edition/Target. This is very unhinged.

[Director Roman White comment] Creating this piece was beyond fun, and I’ve honestly never had a better time on a shoot. Was it crazy hot? Yes. Were there tons of bugs? Yes. Was all of this offset by the insanely gorgeous scenery? 100% YES! We shot the entire piece near Portland, Maine and much lobster was eaten! My AMAZING producer, Tameron Hedge, actually got accosted by a HUGE seagull who took off with her lobster roll (that’s how good they were). Other than that one little incident, Maine was absolute perfection. On the first day, we shot on a private estate with more than 2,000 acres and a private beach, rounding out the second day in a small harbor town. There was a lot going on, and I had a BLAST with the entire gang!

September 12, 2010: Taylor premiers Innocent at the VMAs, a year after the Kanye incident.

“You have to try really hard to regulate what you feel, what you let in, and what you don’t… but then when it comes to making an album, if you make everything general and kind of gloss over your actual, raw feelings, that doesn’t benefit anyone. As far as what to feel and what level to feel it, I can’t really control any of that. It’s just how things hit you, and what you let in is definitely something you’ve got to find a balance for.”

“I think a lot of people expected me to write a song about him. But for me it was important to write a song to him.”

October 25, 2010: Speak Now is finally released.

“There is also the fact that the album is called 'Speak Now,' and that pertains to the album as a concept and as an entire theme of the record, more than I can even tell you," she says. "I've been working on it for two years. Ever since we put out 'Fearless,' I've been writing for this record and conceptualizing it and putting it together in my head, what I wanted it to be. I like to take a lot of time between albums to work up the next one and see what it is. We did the same thing with 'Fearless.' We put two years in between it [and her self-titled debut album] and that gives enough time for me [to] write everything that I live. You have got to give yourself time to live a lot of things, so you can write a lot of things.”

“I wrote all the songs myself for this record. It didn't really happen on purpose. It just sort of happened that way. I'd get my best ideas at 3:00 AM in Arkansas, and didn't have a co-writer around and I'd just finish it. And that would happen again in New York; that would happen again in Boston; that would happen again in Nashville. The songs that made the cut for the albums are the ones that I wrote by myself so – wish me luck!”

“In life you have a lot of situations that pop up and people that come into your life, and sometimes you don’t get to tell them what you wish you would have told them,” Swift said. “This album is my opportunity to do that track-by-track. Each song is a different confession to a different person.”

“Some of the things I wrote about are things everyone saw me go through,” she added. “Some of the things I wrote about are things nobody ever knew about. I’m beyond excited for you to hear these stories and confessions.”

Bonus: The Vault

“My favorite thing to do is make a list of what the album can be, even when I'm in the beginning stages of writing the album and I've got three songs on the list. I still make a list of what the track listing would be like. Which [song] is track one, two or three. And then you keep writing more songs and writing more songs and all of a sudden you've got a list of 25 songs. What I would do is keep bumping off songs that I felt I had overwritten. As you keep writing more songs, your list gets better and better and better. And I did that so many times I can't even count!”

The Vault Titles:

Castles Crumbling

Someone Just Told Me

His Lies

Wonderful Things

I Can See You

Let's Go

Foolish One

Timeless

Bother Me

Electric Touch

When Emma Falls In Love

All of them are self-written.

This post will be edited once we will have additional info on the songs, especially the Vault Songs. Thank you for reading!

[musiconanironingboard]

27 March 2023: Yellow Submarine, The Beatles. (1988 Capitol reissue of 1969 Apple release)

This is a story I’ve told in other posts, a few years back: in 1987, the Beatles got a full-blown reissue program that included the first compact-disc releases of the Beatles catalog; happening in the shadows, the catalog also got vinyl reissues—in the States, at least. This revival represented the first time the UK versions of the band’s albums became the standard editions. (US Beatles album up until Sgt. Pepper were bastardizations of UK releases, intended to carve out more product by cutting a couple tracks from the band’s intended visions until their US label Capitol had enough songs to create extra albums. There is one arcane exception to this; as part of the 1987 program, the US edition of 1968′s Magical Mystery Tour became the global standard—the UK original was a six-song EP, and the US’s expansion to 11 tracks, including songs that never appeared on any UK album, proved to be a rare US value-add.) Unlike the CDs, which came out all at once, the vinyl editions came out in stages, carrying on into 1988.

I didn’t have a CD player in 1987, and nor did I own every Beatles album (and certainly no UK editions). Beginning in January of that year, shortly after my 14th birthday, I decided to buy one Beatles vinyl album per month in chronological order until I had them all. This didn’t last long; the reissues were a couple of bucks more expensive than most albums, and at 14 my expendable income was low. I got to the third album, A Hard Day’s Night, and gave up the ghost. I played those first three a lot; I don’t know what made me give it up, but it was obviated by a fantastic gift on my 16th birthday two Decembers later, a copy of the UK box The Beatles Collection, which included all of the band’s studio albums and the UK edition of their Rarities comp. I like to finish what I’ve started, if even it seems mind-numbingly redundant, but decades went by and I never attempted to chase the remaining 1987-88 US Beatles vinyl releases.  

Flash forward to spring of 2019, when I found still-sealed used copies of four or five of those 1987 vinyl Beatles reissues—ones I didn’t have, no less. I bought them all, and thereafter decided I would get sealed copies of the rest of them and properly finish what I began at age 14. This copy of Yellow Submarine is the final link in that puzzle. It is one of the hardest vinyl reissues to find, let alone sealed; it took me a couple of years to snag one. If you told me at 14 I’d still be looking for these at 50, I would have wondered what insane fates befell my life.

There’s no way of slipping off that 35-year-old shrinkwrap for a good photo, so above you see the front and back covers at angle in an effort to minimize reflections.

Below is the label. Both sides feature the same design.

[saucylittlesmile]

Well this year the two senior dance teams Canada is sending to Worlds are half-imported pairings, for example. It imported L/LG why, exactly? They would've been the top French team now, free ride to everything, basically, but now they're stuck in ~5th and keep falling at competitions, leaving no room for younger teams to get assignments and rise. Not to mention that multiple junior and novice pair teams have quit mostly because of the Vanessa and Eric fiasco. It's extremely short-sighted.

Thanks for answering- my inquiry was genuine. I suppose that I wasn’t thinking so much about pairs/ice dance because I’m used to the country-shuffle that is so common in those disciplines; I was thinking more about singles.

But as an alternate point of view - did Skate Canada actively import any of them? F-B/S switched because she couldn’t get citizenship, but she is Canadian and they train year-round in Canada (which was part if the reason she couldn’t get citizenship), and they started the process shortly after PyeongChang (by which I mean that they weren’t taking someone’s spot at the last minute; they’ve been skating for Canada for several seasons now). Piper has been a Canadian citizen since 2013 (or early 2014), so no matter how much I’ve complained about G/P I can’t say that they haven’t put in their time as Canadians, and in an era in which there were too many good teams and not enough spots even when they had three.

I was surprised when L/LG switched to Canada, though again she is Canadian, and as a team have trained in Canada for their partnership. While I agree that the field was stronger in Canada, there may have been other difficulties in their situation with the French Federation - I’m not sure if they ever said why they switched? They changed in 2020, which was just about the worst possible timing, lol - or maybe that had something to do with it as well - teams training out of their home countries had a very difficult time. But with all due respect to other teams competing for spots, as a sport, they would need to step up - I was very sorry to see S/W drop to sixth in 2022, for example, as they had one of my favourite FDs; but they finished behind L/LG there, and at 4CC, so it is on S/W to bring that next step up, and same with S/ and now also Fabbri/Ayer, as they all challenge for that middle ground. Even if I am perhaps not faithful in the judging these days, neither can teams just ‘expect’ to have a a higher finish just because they have been around longer.

As much as I hate to even sound like I am defending J/R, pairs has not ever been a super-stable discipline for almost any country - it is always the smallest field and, IMO, pretty much the most difficult discipline. Canada was very lucky to have a three/four team deep group for a while. Again, with the pandemic, it’s hard to say which skaters might have stayed if there hadn’t been one, as the disrupted training and lack of competition opportunities (also a failing of SC in providing even some more video comps alternatives) made for very difficult circumstances. I was hard on the J/R pairing for several reasons, including the brevity of the pairing and the excessive support of SC, but I never assumed that SC had orchestrated the partnership.

Which I guess is somewhat my point - while SC obviously accepts skaters who want to skate for them, I have yet to hear of them… recruiting, I guess is the word I’ll use. They don’t seek them out, or import them to fill out their ranks, but don’t deny them the chance to prove themselves (or in the case of JR, once available, prop them up into position). SC absolutely neglected their younger/lower ranked skaters in the lead up to PyeongChang and then failed them in the pandemic, but I think that they’re still mostly sticking with homegrown skaters (and finally finding some extra oomph for those younger skaters).

*** The other interesting facet is seeing the fallout from the retirement and the lack of Russians, in the GP assignments - Canada is represented in pairs at every competition, and in ice dance, teams that woukd have been lucky to have the host pick are travelling to another competition instead. In that way, while teams like G/P that are sticking around and are benefiting from a wide open field, there are still opportunities abound for teams which may have otherwise been left out.

[pjisskullourful]

( ƝЄҲƬ ƓƖƦԼƑƦƖЄƝƊ )

💙Victoria X reader

NSFW!🔥 sapphic smutty dirty swearing sexytimes

° Victoria de Angelis & female reader insert ✨ cameos by: Damiano, Thomas & Ethan

° 🎶 baby I got an idea... I should be your next girlfriend ||| your longterm friend & on&off crush, Victoria dares you to take part in a drag competition & you decide to give her a performance she'll never forget

wordcount:: 7,533

° wonderful anonrequest x2 - we have all read smut about the band being in the zone and reader getting turned in by it but I really want to see the opposite, so like maybe reader is a dancer and she is in the zone being a badass and one of the members (or more) just gets super hot and bothered, + We need some vic smut ASAP (with a female reader please). [ask & it shall be given- requests are open!]

° fuelled by queer queen gia woods' masterpiece NEXT GIRLFRIEND all the lyrics included belong to her  ° tricks & stunnalina stage presentation heavily inspired by queen of everything KYLIE SONIQUE LOVE & her serve of actual sex on legs in this lipsync ° inspired by weekly sydney drag comp night- also called DRAG FOR DOLLARS which has the same setup of loudest cheer wins- which does welcome performers of all different schools of drag: including magical bioqueens✨ &before any of yall ask- yes, i have painted my body blue & goneout to a dragshow in only a bodysuit

"You should perform." Victoria leant in close, her words carrying clearly over the pumping music.

You almost choked on your drink, spitting the straw out of your mouth. You turned to where she had scooted over to the edge of the couch. For a moment, the rest of the nightclub faded away and you were trapped in her gaze, a lump in your throat.

People had been staring at you ever since you had left the apartment with your four friends - but that was to be expected when you had painted the majority of your body blue. But this was instantly different, it was so much more intense than the gawks coming from strangers.

It wasn't easy to settle under her fierce stare, it made your heart beat faster and your mind race.

Three years of friendship - three years of wondering, marked by the occasional dream. Three years of one or the other not being single. Three years of jokingly calling one another wifey and sharing a bed a few times per year. Three years of holding hands and people regularly mistaking you for a couple.

Three years of no action because you were waiting for the perfect moment, always half-considering that maybe she didn't feel the same way.

Now she was giving you that look, like you were the only woman in the world. She looked directly into your eyes, not getting distracted by the extreme makeup, or the black netting that covered your features, save for your eyes and mouth. She was looking at you like she expected something great, her interest secured.

"What, are you nuts?"

The group had come to your favourite gay club in Rome, hanging out simply because there was time in your schedules - an availability with the four members of Måneskin was getting rarer as time went on. But tonight there had been an opportunity, coinciding with the venue's weekly open stage night for drag queens. Drag for Dollars - it was a free for all, sometimes it was great and other times it was full of amateurs who had over-estimated their stage presence, running out of steam before the Lady Gaga song was finished.

It wasn't for you to participate in. You had never felt the urge - it was enough to just watch and cheer.

"This is a drag show." You said.

She nodded. "Right and what you are in tonight- that isn't drag, because…?"

You paused, this entire look had been thrown together, following an idea that had made complete sense in your head. You had simply kept adding ideas until you had something that was interesting, something that could add excitement into your Instagram feed. You wanted to impress your friends, to see how many a's Damiano would add to yaaas, to see what kind of flirty comments Victoria would leave on all the pictures that you posted.

"I don't quite meet the necessary criteria."

"Oh, come on…" She inched forward and put a hand on your knee. "You're the best dressed person here and I know you can dance, I've seen you vogue."

"That's just goofing around." You said.

She shrugged. "Okay, so why don't you just goof around on stage? What's the harm? Nobody here tonight cares, this is hardly Drag Race. And you'll probably win and then you get some money out of it. Why not?"

"Why not…" You repeated slowly, eyes going over to the empty stage. You felt the urge to do as she requested, to show off for her, to be the centre of her attention.

"Did you tell her our idea?" Damiano had sprung onto the couch next to Victoria.

"Your idea?" They had been talking about it, not just her fantasising about you on the stage. There was something equal parts relieving and disappointing in realising that.

"Yeah, Thomas is talking to the host right now to see if they've still got an available slot for you."

You looked across to where Thomas was standing by the bar, talking to a drag queen in a long, peach-coloured sequin gown. They were looking over a clipboard, heads bowed.

You were nodding as you turned back to Victoria and Damiano. "I'm gonna do it." You quickly sucked up the rest of your drink, locking eyes with her.

"Hell yeah!" Damiano jumped up and offered his hands to you. "Let's go pick a song."

You placed your empty glass down and tore your eyes off of her face. In the same instant that you took his hand, you were pulled up onto your feet. She waved to you before you were yanked into his momentum, scampering along after him. 

"Is this a terrible idea?" You asked, tugging on his arm to get his attention. You realised he was the wrong person to ask - in all the time that you had known him, he had never ruled anything a bad idea.

"What, are you kidding? This is the best idea ever, this is going to be so iconic."

"Hey." Thomas greeted you with a smile. "They have room for you."

"Yeah." A deep voice came from the well-painted woman. "We'll start in about thirty minutes, just head backstage…" She indicated an inconspicuous door tucked away opposite the stairwell. "What song are you gonna do?"

"Uh…"

"We'll be alright, I know what songs are already picked." Thomas said.

The queen dismissed this with a flap of her wrist. "Nah, don't worry about that- the crowd loves when there's a double-up. Just pick something that's on Spotify and it'll be fine. When you've figured it out, talk to the stage manager- you'll be able to pick him out, he's wearing the trucker hat unironically." She tipped you a wink before leaving.

"What song are you thinking?" Damiano asked, both of them turning to you.

"I don't… I don't even- should I do Billie Jean and moonwalk, that'll get a pretty big cheer, right?"

His mouth dropped open. "You know how to moonwalk?" 

"Oh I know what song." Thomas said, stepping forward. "The song that has the sick bass that comes in like…" He started to mime playing a bass guitar, making the sounds of the notes. "And then it goes, da-da dadadada da du-da-da…"

"Are you literally singing what's playing right now?" You asked.

"No, no, it's a new song. You played it when we were in the car the other day and Vic has literally not shut up about it since, 'cause it's the gay song, you know?" He said. "And there's that awesome guitar solo that closes it out."

"Um, do you mean the one that goes…" Damiano started mumble singing. "Um babida and there's a girlfriend, 'cause somethin' or anything and a girlfriend… ladida, somethin' about being sticky- sticky."

You hadn't been expecting for this to make sense, but somehow their ramblings sparked an insight in you. "Next Girlfriend by Gia Woods- I think that's what you're thinking of."

Thomas' face lit up and he clicked before showing you a thumbs up. "Yes! Do that song, don't you think?"

"That song is hot, you have to do that one."

You nodded to yourself, taking a moment to think it over as you readjusted the temporary long ponytail attached to the crown of your head. "Yep, I'll do that."

"Hell yeah!"

"We gotta get the euros ready." Thomas said. "We'll tip you lots. Wait, you don't have a drag name. Shit, we'll think one up… shit…"

"No, she doesn't need one. Look at her, showstopper without needing to say a word." Damiano said, picking up one of your hands and giving it a squeeze. "I feel like such a stage mum, God, this is the shit I was born for. But the question is- when you win, how much of the prize money are you gonna share with us?" You stared at him, slack-jawed. "What? I'm just sayin', it was our idea."

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves, I probably won't even win." 

"You're gonna win, honey."

"You will." Thomas said.

"The winner is picked by whoever gets the loudest cheer, and guess who has the loudest friends?" Damiano completed his statement by tucking his head down as his arms extended into a dab.

"And he doesn't just mean in this club tonight, he means in the whole of Rome."

"Right. I'm gonna go backstage and talk to the guy and touch up my lipstick and, I dunno, do stretches or something."

"You're gonna be amazing." Damiano said, releasing your hand after kissing the back of it.

"Do you want us to keep the song a surprise for the others?" Thomas asked.

"Yes, definitely."

You found your way backstage and quickly identified the stocky stage manager amongst the gaggle of drag queens already gathered here. You faced no issues in getting added to the running order and no one else had picked your song..

There was a wall-length mirror that was out of the way, you placed yourself in front of it, despite the lacklustre lighting it provided. You made adjustments to your costume, ensuring the foam padding was sitting where it should be against your skin. 

You became aware of the tremble in your hands as you raked your fingers gently through the black ponytail of fake hair. It had been awhile since you had performed on a stage, even longer since you had performed solo. But it wasn't the feeling of being out of practice that was making you so nervous.

You were raising the stakes on yourself, already picturing how Victoria would look from the audience. You wanted to do something that would impress her - but it was more than teaching Ethan to perfect a tongue pop. You had to earn her attention and make her never want to look away.

You wanted to entrance her and mesmerise her - just as she did to you when she got down onto her knees on stage and writhed around without missing a single note. You would stare at her for an embarrassingly long time, sometimes missing the transition of one song to the next.

You wanted to make it impossible for her to not be amazed. Your true goal was to seduce her, to leave her so dazzled that she couldn't resist.

You planned to give her something that she couldn't not react to. Then, once you saw her response, you would have the answer you had been waiting on for years. You would know if she was attracted to you or if it was all a fantasy that you needed to snap out of.

"You're up next, after Barbies Bush- just wait there and you'll hear them say your name." The stage manager took you over to the curtain that covered the entrance of the stage. You nodded and smiled, to show you understood before going back to thinking over what you remembered of the stage layout.

You were running through the song, thinking about the pole that was mounted on the stage, off to the left. You were thinking about how to build the narrative. You had a few combinations of moves in mind when you heard your name said over the speakers.

You felt your throat clench, but you followed the music as you heard it. Sell the fantasy, you told yourself repeatedly, making the decision to recall that you had never let stage fright stop you before. You pushed your shoulders back and began onto the stage, doing your best impression of a runway model. You kept your chin raised, determined to create something Victoria would feel like she couldn't live without.

"I don't want no drama, but I know you're lookin' at me." You matched the movements of your mouth to the song you knew as well as you knew your own name.

You stopped before the ledge of the scuffed-up stage, running your hands down either side of your body. "Got the body of Madonna, like a virgin…"

"Wee-oww." You heard a voice scream out over the song.

Your friends were easy to pick out of the audience, even before Damiano yelled out. They were standing at the front of the stage and now you allowed yourself to look at their four smiling faces. You didn't let them break your concentration, it was enough to know that Victoria was staring up at you.

"Know you like what you see…" You spun around to put your back to the audience, swinging your arms up. You stuck your ass out to the left, planting a hand on this hip. You sent your ponytail flying through the air as you looked over one shoulder, letting the stage lights hit your face again. "You look so damn good on me, like you're good enough to eat, uuh…"

You turned to the crowd a little more, flipping your head down by your knee then throwing it back. "Now you're stuck in my teeth. Got me pickin' out a ring."

You walked towards the floor-to-roof pole, reaching for it with one arm while leaning the rest of your body back. "Baby, I got an idea, ohh…"

You timed your jump onto the pole to coincide with the shift in beat that indicated the beginning of the chorus. You grabbed it with both hands, holding your legs out straight as you completed a slow spin.

You heard more cheers, it sounded like more than just your friends and you could feel your confidence growing.

You curled your legs up, until you could link one knee around the smooth metal. You crossed your ankles over one another, continuing to spin. "And she should be your ex-girlfriend." You reached one arm out to the general direction of the audience. "Hey, you should be my next girlfriend.

“La-la-la, ooh!” You released your legs from the pole and loosened the grip of both hands, letting yourself slowly slide back down towards the ground, teasing out this last past of the chorus. “Mmm, la-la-la…”

You landed onto your knees, keeping both hands on the pole and completing a few body rolls, gyrating up from your crotch.

You were back on your feet in time for the second verse, bracing yourself with your feet shoulder-width apart. “California summer, like a popsicle, it’s drippin’...” You bent your knees before springing off your feet, throwing your weight backwards. You planted your hands onto the ground, completing the backflip without issue.

You slowed yourself down, gaining some grace for a landing with your legs spread straight out on either side. Once you were into the fully extended split, you looked back up to the audience. Your eyes immediately landed onto Victoria. There were paper bank notes fluttering around her head, your friends trying to give you tips.

“Spicy like a rumour…” You spun around, crawling towards the edge of the stage on all fours. “You’re my hallelujah, sticky.”

You remained on your knees, reaching out to collect the money from the eager hands of your friends. There were more than four sets of hands offering you money and you accepted it all, smiling as you continued to mouth every word.

You held the money in one hand, raising your arms above your head. You let your eyes settle on Victoria, feeling an electricity coming from her intense stare. “Baby, I got an idea, uuuhh…” She wasn’t singing along, just watching you with her mouth open.

You planted your hands onto her shoulders, shimmying forward to shake your tits directly in front of her face. “Hey, I should be your next girlfriend. And she should be your ex-girlfriend. Hey, you should be my next girlfriend.”

You tossed your head from side-to-side, letting your ponytail flick through the air to more boisterous cheers. “La-la-la, ooh, mm!”

A poke from Ethan got her attention, looking to her right, where he was pointing his phone directly at the two of you. She stuck her tongue out, playing it up for the camera as you couldn’t keep yourself from rubbing against her. “Hey, I should be your next girlfriend.”

You arched your back, planning to perform some more flips and tricks across the stage to close out the song. But there was a tug at the front of your bodysuit before you could get away. 

You looked down and found the netting had hooked over the numerous studs pierced through her right ear. You grimaced, trying to work her free as your flow was broken.

Ethan moved in, taking over for you. You did what you could to salvage this last bit of the performance, even as you felt embarrassment rising. You placed your wrists together, pulling on the vogue moves you had practised almost endlessly in your mirror. You twirled your hands around, creating a figure eight with how your hands spiralled. 

You kept the control in your arms, trying to ignore what was happening at your chest. You completed as many of the fluid arm dance moves as you could remember, maintaining your poker face. The guitar solo stretched on as you mimed checking your reflection in an invisible hand mirror, applying the imaginary powder puff to your cheeks one after the other.

"Da-da dadadada da…" You closed out the song by framing your face with quick gestures around your head.

The crowd was cheering and Ethan finally worked Victoria free from your bodysuit. You got to your feet, waving and getting ready to retreat.

"The audience participation was next level for that one, eh?" The host drag queen said into her microphone. "Look out fellas, she's got a spiderweb that's ready to trap ya… alright, who's next?"

You scurried off of the stage, back through the curtain and out of the way of the queen following you. You felt like an idiot - everything had been going fine until you had gotten too close to Victoria, determined to seduce her. You had probably come on way too strong, bordering on desperate.

But you had a whole wad of euros in your hand now. You collected your handbag and started to smooth out the bank notes, putting them into your purse.

You left the backstage area, only to be instantly grabbed and pulled into the embrace of Ethan. "That was amazing, girl. Best performance of the night, swear it."

"Really?" You looked up to find the rest of your friends had been waiting to see you. "That turned into a total train-wreck."

"No, no, no- everything before Vic's ear ruined it was spectacular." Thomas said.

"Really amazing." Ethan said, kissing you on the forehead.

"I've seen you do flips into the pool before, but I had no idea you could do that." Damiano said.

Victoria drove her elbow into his ribs. "She's a gymnast, dumbass. Why do you think I stopped doing yoga with her?"

"So, you knew that she could do all of that?” Damiano asked.

"Not to that extent, no." She said, looking down.

"Recovering with the voguing…" He said, finishing his compliment by raising his fingers to his mouth to perform a chef's kiss. "Pure genius."

--- --- ---

You had finished in second place - losing to a queen who had brought a big finish, in the form of a gun that spat out fake money. She was the only one to receive a cash prize. But, looking at the tips you had amassed, you had already earned that amount - along with the free drink tickets provided to the top three.

Other club-goers had continued to come up to you, grabbing your arm to tell you how great they thought you were. They wanted to compliment your skills on the pole, they wanted to praise your costume, they marvelled at your splits. Not a single person brought up the wardrobe malfunction at the end.

But you were still thinking about it. And you assumed Victoria was as well, she hadn't been able to meet your eye since you had gotten down from the stage. This was the exact opposite of what you had been trying to achieve.

You shared the drink tickets with your friends, as well as helping yourself to some more Midori sours. Victoria and Thomas kept disappearing, bouncing off across the dancefloor. You shared cigarettes with Damiano and Ethan, both of them wanting tips on how to vogue. Ethan could copy along quicker - the hand-eye coordination that allowed him to juggle, transferring to this skill as well.

You stayed out much later than you had originally planned, the crowd mostly gone by the time the five of you decided to call it a night. In the decision-making of who would buddy up to share an Uber home - you were paired with Victoria, thanks to the three guys living on the opposite side of the city to you and her.

The two of you talked in the backseat and it was almost normal. Almost. But you could feel the anticipation hanging in the air between the two of you.

You found a way to break the unexpected ice by making a joke, asking how many pizzas you could afford now that you were 'rolling in cash'. "I promise I'm not gonna let the money change me, just because I'm rich, that doesn't mean I'm gonna stop going thrifting with you. But I'd probably rather go to the upscale places, you know, less holes in the carpet, 'cause I'm movin' on up in the world…"

She laughed, shaking her head. "I think the money is changing you."

"Huh? Sorry, I couldn't hear you over the sound of cash registers in my mind, you know, preparing myself for how it's gonna be when I buy enough Birkin bags for every day of the year."

"Did you know that it wasn't just us tipping you? Like, it wasn't just us being supportive friends- randoms were sticking their arms over my head to try to get the cash to you." She said. "Everyone was loving it, they were loving you. And why wouldn't they? You really slayed it."

You grimaced. "Really? It wasn't the most awkward thing in the world, at the end there?"

"No, did you not hear them cheering from beginning to end?" She asked and when you looked up, you found she was looking directly at you. "I was hoping that performing would help you get back some of that confidence that you lost when you… when Bella screwed you over.” 

Her eyes dropped at the mention of your ex-girlfriend, a topic that both of you had been avoiding at all costs in the two months since the end of your longest relationship. You had kicked Bella out of your life immediately after discovering that she was cheating.

Victoria had offered to beat Bella up, to go to the bar where she worked and yank the extensions right out of her head. You had advised Victoria against this, telling her it was in no way necessary and that you were ready to put Bella behind you entirely. Since then, Victoria had done her best to build you back up, without tearing your ex down. She had helped you move on.

“You really looked incredible up there, babe. Can I put these videos in my story or did you wanna approve them first?” She asked.

“You took videos?”

“No, these are from Ethan. I wasn’t recording, I was too busy just watching you.”

You smiled, grateful for the dark lighting in the back of the car and the blue face-paint hiding the blush you felt rising in your cheeks. “Yeah, I kinda noticed that you were pretty- um, focused.”

“How could I not? You were magical up there, like poetry, but, uh, dirty poetry.”

You giggled before being jarred out of this moment, noticing that the car had reached a halt. You looked out the window and saw the driver had stopped beside your apartment building. “Oh, thank you, this is perfect.” You unbuckled yourself and got out of the car, with Victoria quickly sliding out after you. “Did you want me to grab your sunglasses for you?” She swung the door shut and the car pulled away. “Once I take my shoes off, I can be up-and-down in, like, three seconds.”

“No, no, no, don’t be silly, I’ll come up with you and get them.” She said of the item she had left behind during her last visit to your home.

When you were in the elevator, she turned to you, even in the awful and cheap overhead lighting, she was still breath-taking. Her cheeks were shimmering with perfectly applied highlighter, a subtle dusting across her cupid's bow drawing your eye to her lips all the more.

"So, forgive me for being so forward, but-..." She began and you felt your throat clenching. "With the cost of the entire look, maybe sans makeup, 'cause you already had all those supplies- was there a profit made from your little swimsuit and blue paint?"

"Oh, yeah, a huge profit. This was so cheap to throw together. It's literally scraps."

"Well, you make scraps look incredible and sexy and expensive." She said, her sentence punctuated by the ding of the elevator as you arrived at your level. "And ultimately, like a winner."

You smiled, liberating your keys from the rest of the mess in your handbag. "Yeah, well, we'll see who's feeling like a winner while I'm struggling to get all of this off my skin, to de-Smurf myself."

"It's gonna be difficult, huh?"

You opened your front door and instantly flicked the nearest light-switch on, illuminating your empty apartment. "Oh yeah, I'm probably not gonna get out of the shower before sunrise, and even then, I'll still be going to bed with blue caked behind my ears."

You were looking around, trying to remember where you had placed her sunglasses, when you felt her hand sliding into one of yours.

"What if I helped you?"

You turned to her, eyes wide as you waited for her to laugh, waited for her to declare this a joke. "What- in the shower?"

She giggled quietly, putting a hand over her face. "That didn't sound as creepy in my head. Look, forget that I said it."

"No, Vic…" You held her hand tighter as soon as you felt her begin to pull away. You put your other hand on her forearm, counteracting her attempt to move back. "I don't wanna forget it."

She was studying your expression carefully, hands going to your waist while you put your hands on her face. You brushed her hair away from her cheeks, stroking your fingers across her soft skin. You had to bend at the neck to eliminate the height difference caused by your platform boots.

You secured both of your lips around her bottom lip, leaning into her. Her hands moved to the small of your back, firmly pressing against your skin.

You felt her tongue pushing against your top lip and you tilted to your right, parting your lips to allow her access into your mouth. You could taste the beers she had consumed at the bar, but you didn't mind. You were so instantly drawn in by the way she moved her tongue, massaging it against your own.

You couldn't stifle a moan, so many endorphins rushed through your body - greater than the high you had received while your performance had been going according to plan. You didn't need the cheer from a crowd, or even money offered freely to you by the entertained strangers - the only thing that you needed to validate your existence was her and her touch.

"Well…" You said, shakily gasping for breath. "It's about time."

"What do you-?"

You burst out laughing, interrupting her train of thought. "Now there's blue all over your face, I'm sorry, babe."

She smiled, biting her bottom lip. "My offer to help you shower still stands."

You nodded and started to pull down the netted face covering. "Yeah, just gimme a sec' to take all of this foolishness off."

"Okay." She said, pushing her leather biker vest off. This revealed the leopard print bralette that you had spent most of the night trying to ignore.

You removed your constricting boots and began the process of shedding your padded body.

She was out of her high-waisted jeans and down to just her underwear while you were still picking at the clips that had been holding your wig secure all night long.

"I probably look like a crazy person right now." You said, peeling off the layers of false eyelashes.

"No, never."

She was grabbing you as soon as your corset and the last pair of pantyhose were removed. She brought your body close to hers, hands tracing across what had been concealed to the point of pain. She drew you in for another kiss, making you forget how sore your legs were and how sticky the body-paint had become.

She took your hand in hers, walking towards the bathroom as comfortably as if she lived here with you. There had been so many times when you had stood in this exact room, showering while a fresh set of clothes was set on the vanity. With the door locked, you would quickly dress yourself, unwilling to have her see you naked. It was different when you were hanging out at the pool with a group of friends and bikini tops seemed unnecessary. There was a different intensity, a different charge of electricity in the air, just at the thought of walking around naked in your apartment during one of her visits. It had always felt like something you should avoid, an impossible fantasy that would never work out.

But there was something about how things were unfolding right now that felt entirely natural. It was almost as if you had been priming one another to end up like this all along. Now that you were here, it felt like everything was falling into place.

She started to turn the shower on, working at getting the perfect temperature while you looked at your reflection. You were instantly laughing at the sight of yourself transformed into some kind of sea monster. Your blue makeup was patchy and the netting had left some lines on your face, similar in appearance to how the scales of a fish looked. You were struggling to think of a time when you had looked worse.

"You gonna come in here, or what?" She asked.

You moved over to where she was waiting, naked under the stream of the shower. You licked your lips, stepping into the shower with her, your skin raised into goosebumps.

She placed her hands on your cheeks, stroking softly while your eyes hungrily took in the sights of her body. You saw freckles where you had never noticed them before.

"I've thought about this, with you, so many times." She said as you watched drops of water catch on her lashes. "But then when I saw you on that stage- you were so sexy, so beautiful, so powerful. Watching you twirling around on that pole- it got me so wet and I just knew that I had to have you.”

She kissed you, drawing you in deep and you let your hands freely roam over her body, touching the parts you had only ever dreamt of or accidentally brushed against in the past. She linked both arms around your neck and you were amazed at how perfectly your bodies could fit together. There wasn’t any awkwardness or sense of being shy or not knowing what to do.

She moved a hand down, exploring over your shoulder before running it down the front of your chest. Her hand grabbed your breast, toying the nipple between her fingers. This produced a moan from you, heat lapping at your skin, beyond where the stream of the shower could reach.

"We're supposed to be getting all this crap off of me, not making you dirty."

She shrugged, tossing her damp hair off of her shoulder. "I don't care. I'm used to being dirty." She reached across to collect the bar of soap from its caddy. "But I'll do what I said, I'll help get you clean."

She moved back half a step, giving herself some space to work and watch as she did. She cradled the soap in her palm, running it across your skin. She massaged it along your chest and you felt your heart pounding.

She moved the soap up to your neck, slow and tender rubbing to work the paint free from your skin. She paid attention to each area as she cleaned it, every move purposeful - she was making you feel taken care of, as she always did.

You reached out to grab the jar of coconut oil, unscrewing the lid and scooping out some of the semi-solid oil. As she lathered your throat, you returned the favour, rubbing at what had transferred from your face onto hers.

You caught yourself in disbelief over this scenario, coming down from the lust enough to see reality and count yourself as so lucky that this was actually happening. Whenever her eyes met yours, you would blush and smile - as giddy as a schoolgirl on a first date with her dreamy crush.

"I wouldn't have thought that our first time showering together would be with me looking like a baby dragon just hatched- the aftermath of drag is seriously unsexy." You said, taking the oil to your face to dissolve the makeup still stuck on your skin. "Um, not that I ever- uh, that came out wrong. I haven't, like, pictured us showering together before."

"You haven't? God, I have…" She said. "Like coming home from the beach and both of us scratchy from the sand, but I'd be like, no, it's fine, you can have the first shower, I'll just smoke a cigarette and wait." You stared at her for a moment, at a loss for words over how well she had been able to hide this. "Turn around."

You did as instructed, putting your back to her. You continued to wipe the oil across your face, while she relocated the soap to clean the nape of your neck. She moved one hand along your shoulders before placing the other hand to the front of your body.

Your breathing halted at the first touch of her skilled fingers to your cunt. All of your focus swung to that area and you lost track of any other sensations - you couldn't hear the water hitting the shower tiles, nor could you feel it beating down against your skin. You felt yourself wanting to melt for her as she took her time in exploring across your labia majora.

"Sometimes I just really can't help myself, like when I'm staying here and you're taking a shower and I just can't seem to think about literally anything else. And I turn the music off and I just listen to the water and I let myself picture what you look like in here, on your own, washing your gorgeous body. And then, you'd come back into the room and I'd have to act like I wasn't wet.

"I'd have to act like I hadn't been imagining all the things you and me could be doing in that shower. Like I hadn't been thinking of all the ways I'd wanna touch you and make you feel so fuckin' incredible."

"Like what?" You asked.

She had gotten distracted from the bar of soap and, instead of feeling that on your skin, you were soon feeling her lips as she kissed along your shoulders. Her touch on your cunt became more noticeable, her fingers seeking out more of you to play with.

"I'll do whatever you want, baby." She whispered.

Her unoccupied hand went to your hip, caressing and gliding across your skin. You put your hand over her wrist, gently pulling her hand away from your pussy before she could touch upon your clitoris. 

You knew that once she got to your pulsing hood, you would hardly be able to hold it together. You wanted her to know that she was allowed to explore more of your body. You wanted her to discover the parts that she liked best. You wanted all of the stimulation she could give you, you were greedy to have her awaken pleasure from all of your erogenous zones so that she could fuck you to an amazing height.

She allowed her hand to be dragged up from your crotch, over your stomach. You put your hand on top of hers, continuing to guide her up even further. You turned your face to hers as you placed her palm over your breast. She squeezed it into her hand at once, drawing a whimper from you. Her eyes were fixed on your face, watching how you responded as she tested the nipples' sensitivities with her fingers.

Your lips met, lining up perfectly so that you could taste her again. She soon had both hands on your tits, making you feel so secure and appreciated. You tilted your head, unable to wait to get her tongue into your mouth. This slow build-up was so easy, the two of you finding the rhythm you needed without issues.

Her deft fingers worked at your hardened nipples, finding the unique reactions they could produce. She rolled them and favoured them with gentle twists - tweaking them, and you, into a higher state of pleasure as you felt these sensations down to your core. She was so attentive to all of your needs, getting ready to light your soul on fire.

You slid your own hand down her tummy, seeking her perfectly maintained pubic hairs. She sucked harder on your lip as you cupped her cunt and you felt emboldened to keep going.

She sent her hands exploring in opposite directions - one returning to your cunt, while the other tenderly stroked your throat. You turned your body towards hers a bit more as you sought to deepen the kiss, to taste more of her.

Her fingers slid between your folds, seeking out your most intimate heat. Your teeth grazed across her lip as you started to feel her fingers on your clit. She let her fingers dance across the pulsing nub, waiting to set a rhythm - for now, she was just playing with you. You felt the tingles radiating up, hot sparks of electricity pricking at your core.

You started to work your fingers between her labia, feeling every sensitive twitch that acknowledged your hand in this tight area. You heard her draw in a sharp inhale when you slid your middle finger down and over her clit. Then you pulled it back up, allowing her to feel the pressure as you wanted. You took your time, lazily working to arouse her.

She was drawing circles around your clit, tight circles that were only getting faster with each rotation. The building pleasure stole your breath and your mouth fell back from hers, losing your energy for kissing, instead gasping as you sped up your hand.

"Oh, God…" You moaned through the first powerful shaking in your knees. You were getting so sensitive, every nerve in your body pulsing to the excitement she was setting. "Yes, touch me Vic, touch me, fuck me, oh."

She held your throat a little tighter, her hot mouth moving over the side of your neck. She was pressing her fingers down harder and you could feel the throbbing of your cunt growing so much stronger.

You spun around, pushing your chest to hers. Before she could slip, she was being pressed to the wall. She took her fingers away from your pussy. It was easy to look past the smeared makeup on her face, instead fixating on how dark and intense her eyes currently were - so differently to how she usually looked at you. She raised her fingers to her mouth, sliding them between her lips.

She moaned as if she was tasting the most decadent gelato known to man. You were able to bring this sound to an even higher level when you stuffed a finger into her slicked cunt. She slumped against the wall, her jaw hanging open as she started to pant.

"Uh, fuck…" You watched her eyelids fluttering as you inserted a second finger into her cunt. You had never seen her looking so weak, all of her usual bravado had gone into hiding.

Your heart pounded desperately and you wanted to know how much closer to the edge you could drive her. You ducked your head down and secured your lips around her nipple. You sucked the pebbled skin into your mouth, causing her to wrap her arms around you tightly. Her hand went to the back of your head, trimmed nails lightly scratching over your scalp.

You could hear her whimpering over every breath as her hand returned to your pussy. Her fingers sought your clit out again while you added a third finger between her quivering walls.

"Fucking, uh- you're gonna make me come…" She rasped, her fingers fumbling across your clitoris without much precision at first.

You released her nipple from your mouth, looking up at her as you licked your lips. "Good, I wanna make you come so fucking bad." You had begun to curl your fingers, stroking up higher and seeking her g-spot. "I've waited so long for this- I've gotta do it right…"

"You are- unhh, you are, baby, you are, I- fuck!" Her hips jolted into you when you put your finger to her clit.

Her fingers found a rhythm against your clitoral hood and you were soon rocking your hips forward, pushing more of your body weight into her. She followed the movements you made, setting into the pace your body wanted. She danced fast circles around your clit, full of energy despite how short on breath she was.

She manipulated full body tremors through you as she ran her fingerpad over the aching nub. The pearl was pulsing against her digits, your pussy weeping for her. You saw stars bursting in front of your eyes as every stroke hit to your core.

You pushed her closer to overstimulation, keeping your hands steady as if your life depended on it. Her clitoral hood felt swollen as your fingers slipped all over it.

You bit into your bottom lip as you felt your body transcending - all that you could feel was the fire she stoked higher with each confident swipe. With two fingers on either side of your clitoris, she petted you through to the climax.

The strength required for you to pump your fingers into her was lessened, thanks to how eagerly she was fucking herself against you - she just needed you to be there, to catch her excited bucks.

"Oh yes, yes, baby." She cried out, louder than you, louder than any other sound in the world right now and it was enough for you to drown in her pleasure. "Yes, yes, unf- oh, God, yes!"

Her walls clenched upon your fingers and you felt your sensitivities taking you over. Your eyes rolled back and every muscle in your body tightened - before you flew into such a glorious release. You dissolved, immediately wrecked by your climax. Your body shuddered, random flinches taking over your limbs as the electricity pulsed for a few more moments.

She cupped her hand over your labia majora - guiding you through the process of coming down, a comforting sign that she understood what you were feeling. Her arm was tight around your middle and she gasped as you removed your hand - the fingers feeling numb.

You put one hand to the wall above her head and shut your eyes, waiting for your brain to return to functionality after that overload.

A complete shock came to your system with what felt like a knife made of pure ice jabbing against your spine. You hissed, this rude awakening ripping you out of the afterglow far too soon. But you shouldn't have been surprised - it was a miracle that the hot water had lasted for as long as it had. You shuffled closer to her, attempting to get out of the way of the harsh stream.

"Fuck…" You groaned as you reached out for the taps.

She was laughing breathlessly, pushing her dripping hair away from her face. "C'mon baby, I'll warm you up again." She moved out of the shower first, offering a white towel to you once the water was halted.

Your eyes moved eagerly over her body as she wrapped the fuzzy towel around your shoulders. She was just as enticing now as she had been before your explorations. Her body was a work of art and now you could enjoy it without shame.

She linked her arms around you, her warm mouth meeting yours - slowly, sensually sucking upon your bottom lip until you felt ready to melt for her again. You were warmed from your head, down to the tips of your toes. You could have gone on kissing her like that for hours, discovering your favourite ways to experience her.

"Can I tell you a secret?" She whispered, a mischievous grin on her face.

"Uh-huh…"

"You look like you should be my next girlfriend…"

--- --- --- 

If you like my writing, feel free to tip me. I am open to both commissions & requests, commissions get priority & the most input

[luminescencefics]

in the crowd

Here’s my submission for the HS Fic Slam created by the lovely @oh-honey-styles! Big thanks to Anne for putting this all together, I can’t wait to read everybody else’s submissions. Here’s a blurb about the gif above with the prompt “I saw that, you checked me out.” (Essentially my fever dream of going to one of Harry’s live shows written in like 25 minutes haha). Enjoy! x

900ish word count

My masterlist // moodboard // read below:

***

You didn’t necessarily want to be here, per se. But your best friend, Callie, scored comped tickets from the radio station she worked at earlier that day, and she had begged you to come with her, declaring it was the perfect excuse for a girls night out. 

The free tickets were in the coveted friends and family overflow section, which granted you prime viewing access to the stage only a few rows back. The personal upside was that your section was only a few feet away from the bar just towards the exit of the pit, which would come in handy for the remainder of the night.

You were using the concert as your pregame for the rest of the evening. It’s not that you weren’t a Harry Styles fan, because Watermelon Sugar definitely came up on your beach playlist far too many times for you to not remember the words, but you were just looking forward to the next part of the night. The part where you got to dance with your three best girlfriends, drinking all your stresses from the work week away at a club in downtown LA. You didn’t get to see your friends often, but whenever you did, you made sure that girls night out was a memorable outing for all of you.

The four of you began the night at Katsuya, so you were all dressed for the part. As you settled into your seats near the pit, a strong tequila on the rocks in one hand, you observed your outfits compared to the other girls around you, and instantly felt a little awkward. You were sporting black leather pants, the kind that left little to the imagination, showcasing all your best assets. A white bustier bodice top that left a sliver of your skin showing from the waistline of your pants was overtop, with a matching All Saints leather jacket to cover up your cleavage. You felt tall and sexy in your strappy heels, towering over the rest of your friends beside you.

Honestly, you didn’t really care about the Harry Styles concert if you were being truthful. But Callie really wanted to go after watching him leave the radio station that afternoon, and the promise of free drinks and good music was really all you needed to agree to come.

The opening song began and the screams were so loud you felt your feet shaking in your heels. Suddenly, he appeared center stage, beginning his set and singing effortlessly. You were bobbing your head to the first two songs, not knowing the lyrics but appreciating the music. You were also appreciating the way he looked, all tanned skin and fluffy curls, long body with a structured torso, impeccable taste in clothing and sinewy hips. He definitely ticked off all your boxes, and the thought of watching him for another hour and a half really didn’t sound so unbearable anymore.

You were the perfect amount of drunk once the fourth song came, the earlier buzz you had from drinks at Katsuya fading into a delicate layer of inebriation. Harry had waltzed over to your side of the stage at this point, eyeing the crowd and waving at adoring fans. When his eyes fell over to your group, you were almost certain that he was looking straight at you, head tilting in a curious way as if he were trying to remember every line on your face. 

He left just as quickly as he came, and suddenly you needed another drink. After sneaking away and returning as the next song started, one you surprisingly knew quite well, you took a long sip and watched him. He commanded the stage in a way that made you wonder if he was an alpha by fault—taking ownership of every space he ended up filling. It definitely made your head spin with other inappropriate thoughts, but you couldn’t help it. He was handsome and staring at you and you truly had nothing to lose at this point. 

Your early inklings of him checking you out were almost confirmed as you watched him whisper over to his guitar player during a break in the set, feeling two eyes watch you from above. It was only when a dark-haired man sporting a black lanyard peeked over in your direction from the pit, his eyes shifting from Harry towards yours with a bright smile on his face, you knew that he had definitely noticed you.

So you made the next move.

When the song changed from a slow, easy tune into something slightly more upbeat, you handed your almost-emptied tequila drink to Callie, gripping your leather jacket and ripping it off, making sure your chest was perked, showcasing the cleavage in your tight top to the singer whose eyes conveniently shifted towards yours. He backed away from the microphone stand, eyes completely locked on yours, and looked at you from the tips of your painted toes to the tops of your hair. He had a slanted smirk on his face, white teeth beaming in a way that made you know that look was solely for you.

You knew he was quite skilled in reading lips, with the way he’s done it effortlessly to other fans throughout the night. So with one last look you mouthed, “I saw that, you checked me out,” up to him, your rogue-painted lips forming every word with ease.

He simply nodded in your direction, shrugging as if he were completely innocent, before moving to the other side of the stage so that attention wouldn’t be drawn to you. Callie though, caught every word, and you just laughed with her as the show took a quick intermission and Harry returned moments later in a white button-up t-shirt and a Gucci suit overtop.

A few songs later, and a new refill for you, he began singing a popular song from his first album that had your hips swiveling. He was showboating during the instrumental section, prancing around the stage for his screaming fans below. You were close enough to notice the sweat brimming at the top of his hairline, sliding down his sharp cheekbones before pooling at the hollows of his collarbones. The exertion from performing caused a few of the buttons on his dress shirt to pop open, the material turning a bit translucent from the sweat, allowing your eyes to trace the etchings of dark ink swirling around his skin. Just as you were noticing the laurels above his hips, he was suddenly in front of you, eyebrows lifted mischievously with a daring grin on his face.

He copies your words from earlier. “I saw that, you checked me out.”

You simply shrug like he did, biting your lower lip to try and keep your smile from breaking through your face. But he notices it just like he’s noticed practically every move you’ve made that night, and you swear that you can see him groan when his head tilts back, showing the bob of his Adam’s apple.

Your drink was finished by the time Harry began singing his encore. Callie leans over in your direction, letting you know that her boyfriend was waiting for them at Hyde Sunset. You could still feel Harry’s eyes on yours, and a small sliver of you had hope and a pinch of excitement for what could possibly happen next, so you decide to stay, informing your girlfriends that you’ll just call an Uber home from the venue.

They nod and leave, and just as the crowd was screaming as the song ended, a burly man with a black collared-shirt, the words SECURITY printed on the front, appears from the pit, a small piece of paper being thrust in your direction. 

“From the boss,” he utters, head shifting to the stage that was just occupied by Harry.

You nod and unfurl the paper, grinning when you read the uppercase scrawl that was hastily written in the dim lighting from the stage. 

Please tell me you want to see me as badly as I want to see you. -H x

When your eyes fall over the number scribbled on the bottom of the paper, you immediately compose a message on your phone, grinning at the fact that your gut instinct was right, and tonight was definitely going to be full of excitement. 

***

A/N: If you’re curious what happens after....

[no-droids]

A Show of Good Faith

Part Six of the Rough Day Series

Rating: Explicit

Word Count: 7.1k what i fuckin tell yall

Warnings: SMUT, rough sex, dirty talk, creampie, canon-typical violence, slight description of blood/injury

***

Isn’t it weird that nobody really ever talks about what happens immediately after you have a dead body in front of you?

It’s the part leading up to it that’s usually the most crucial, obviously.  The adrenaline of the actual moment is overwhelming—you react without thinking, danger pumping through your veins alongside your blood and sharpening your survival instincts until they’re deadly.  You do what you have to do to stay alive, nothing more.  So it’s not really until you have a still moment with the evidence of your actions right there in front of you, glassy-eyed and staring lifelessly up at the ceiling, that you suddenly don’t know what to do.

Shocking is a word.

Debilitating is another.

Things… things come in flashes.  You have blood on your hands; it’s thick and cold and electric blue in color, not dark or warm or crimson.  One of them is vibrating violently, clutched around something heavy and clunky and unfamiliar, something with a handle made to fit a six-fingered grip.  The kid is passed out in your other arm after expelling all his energy helping you take down the brutal assailant, choking him with… with some unknown baby shaman toad powers and holding him in place so you could grab this knife and you could… and you could…

The body of the man you just stabbed lays in a bloody pile on the floor in front of you.  It was self-defense, but the reasoning behind it doesn’t take anything away from the gore, the blank state of shock rendering you motionless for Maker knows how long.

Corellia is a fucking shithole, you knew that coming in.  If it was a sewer even with the Empire’s shipbuilding industry boosting the economy, it’s even worse after its collapse.  To circumvent any unnecessary danger or attention, you chose to land the ship in one of the dense forest areas on the outskirts of the tracking fob’s radius.  But unluckily for you, rats like forests just as much as they like sewers, and one of them apparently crawled his way onto the vessel a few minutes ago.

You drop the vibroblade to the floor with a clatter and slide down the hull wall, clutching the baby to your chest and trying to calm your breathing.  There could be more of his friends close by.  What you should do is climb into the cockpit and find somewhere else to lay low, send Mando a coded message with word of your new location.

But there’s a dead body in front of you.

And it’s… it’s dead.

Strangely, you default to something you’ve never actually done before.  Something you probably shouldn’t ever do, in case your companion is in stealth mode or trying to hide from something, because it’ll immediately give away his position.  You could theoretically get him killed, but you’re not thinking straight.

Your wrist trembles as you hold it in front of your lips.  “Uh… M-Man-Mando?”

The sound of blaster fire and grunting crackles through your emergency comm link, before you hear a quick, breathless, “What’s wrong?” come through the speaker.

“It, uh—” you stare down at the oddly-colored blood on your fingers, wondering how you voice is able to come out so calmly, “it s-sounds like you’re busy, I’ll—I’ll just—”

More grunting.  A thud.  “Tell me what’s wrong.”

You’re at a loss for words.  You take a second to look down at the dead body, before lifting your wrist back up to your mouth.  “I’m o-okay now, but I… but someone followed me into the Crest and he tried to… I-I mean he’s—he’s dead now, but—”

“Are you hurt?”  He suddenly sounds urgent.  It’s ridiculous that he didn’t actually sound urgent until now.  “Is the kid hurt?”

“We’re—we’re both fine, but…”  You look down at the child in your arms.  “But the baby did something I—I c-can’t explain—and now he’s… I-I think he's asleep…”

“Good,” he replies shortly.  You can hear him running now, pounding footsteps and heavy, quick breaths.  Another blaster shot.  “We need to get out of here.  Rendezvous Sector-15, soon as you can.  You’ll see me.”

“Do I…”  Maker, you sound like an absolute idiot.  “Do I just… just leave the body here, or…?”

“I’ll take care of it when you get here.”  He doesn’t sound frustrated with you, but for some reason you feel incredibly frustrated with yourself.  You should be able to pull yourself together, but your hands are all tingly and you can’t actually feel your fingers unless you really work for it.  Stars, when’s the last time you actually blinked?  “Can you fly?”  

You don’t respond.  You don’t even feel like you can stand up right now.  The blaster shots scream through the crackling comm link for a second, and then you jump when he barks your name even louder than the gunfire.

“—Listen to me,” he urges, and you blink rapidly, the seriousness of his low growl hitting you right in the chest.  “You can fly.  Understand?  Get the kid, get in the cockpit, put your seatbelt on.  Fly out to me, right now.  We’re leaving.”

His voice doesn’t call for argument.  It’s abrasive and rough and unquestionable enough to get through to you.  Of course you can fly, you can fly with your fucking eyes closed.  Coming that firmly and doubtlessly from him, it’s a universal truth.

“Copy.  Sec-Sector-15.”  You say, adrenaline beginning to pump blood through your veins again.  Just.  Just don’t look at the body, okay?  Don’t look at the body, you can do this if you don’t look at the body.  “I’ll see you?”

“You’ll see me,” he repeats.  And then the noise cuts off with a click.

You struggle up to your feet, heart pounding.  You can do this.  You can totally do this.  You can walk, because you can fly.  Duh.  Mando said so.

You admittedly almost fall a couple steps down the latter while trying to climb up it one-handed, the baby held tightly to your chest, but you’re eventually able to get the both of you into the cockpit.  The kid is carefully buckled into his little booster seat before you’re collapsing shakily into the pilot’s chair and swiveling forward.

Okay.  Flight check.  Now.  To your left, flip down these few switches here—one two three four five—okay, good.  To your right, press those two buttons sitting just above the nav console.  Yep, got it.  Up top now, those two red ones overhead.  Good.  Good, you can do this.  Type coordinates into the nav comp.  Sector-15, locked.  Easy.  This is easy.  That big, knobless lever to your right—yes, the one with the exposed threading at the end, push that long metal stick forward and set thrusters to full.  Okay.  Left thruster, looks good.  Right looks good, too.  Okay.  Seatbelt… seatbelt is… Seatbelt: on.  Hatch: sealed.  Shields: engaged.  Flight check complete.  Now all you have to do is take off.

Now all you have to do is take off.

All you have to do… is…

You stare down at the joystick in front of you blankly.

And then you shake your head back and forth frantically, hoping the rapid movement will jar some sense into you.  Maker, get it the fuck together.  What did Mando hire you for?  You told him you were useful, didn’t you?  This is what you do.  You fly.  So fucking fly, yeah?

You lift the ship off the ground and immediately take her around southeast, taking deep breaths and feeling the powerful rumble beneath your chair.  Yeah, you can do this.  Don’t think about the blood on your hands, the dark streaks of sickly purple now smudged all over the controls.  Don’t think about the dead body in the hull.  Don’t think about how you’re the reason it’s dead.  Just fly the ship.  This is something you can do.

You coast over the thick treetops and into the industrial sector, carefully scanning the gritty streets below.  You don’t know what he meant when he said you’ll see him—until you suddenly see him.  Smack in the middle of the airspace, rising phoenix strapped to his back and hovering a few hundred feet above absolute chaos wreaking havoc in the slums below.  Blaster flares light up the night sky, though the sparks and flash grenades illuminating the dirty Corellian streets have nothing on the beauty of seeing those small twin jets in the darkness, the ones beginning to fly towards the ship.

“Got eyes,” his voice says through the comm link.  Relief pounds through you.  Stars, relief shouldn’t feel like this much of a struggle for your cardiovascular system, should it?

“Beginning deceleration,” you confirm breathlessly, slowing down and pressing a few buttons to open the hatch with your free hand.  You bring both of them back down to swing her around until he’s got a clear path, feeling the ship dip just slightly with the sudden weight of him dropping in.

“Landed,” he grunts.  “Set course for Nevarro.”

You floor it and elevate the Crest up through Corellia’s smoggy atmosphere, punching in coordinates in the meantime.  The ship dips just a touch once more while the computer takes a few seconds to calculate a hyperspace path, and your eyebrows narrow before it quickly pulls back up again.  It’s not until you see the manual hatch override indicator light blink next to the nav console that you realize he must’ve dumped the body before closing the door himself.

Well, that’s one way to handle that, you suppose.

The computer beeps quietly when it’s finished.  “Standby for jump,” you tell your wrist.

“Copy.”

You triple-check the positive seal integrity readings before your hand is reaching for the double-reinforced hyperjump control, still trembling slightly.  You lean all your weight forward into it, trying to keep your arm from buckling as the stars slowly shift across the observation shield for a split second, before you’re being hurled into the interdimensional wormhole.

Quiet.  Hyperspace is fucking quiet.  You forget, sometimes.  Not how quiet it is—but how loud everything else is, not until you’re hurtling through the closest thing to purgatory you’ll ever experience in life.  It looks… indescribable, even after the thousandth time.  Empty space collapsing in front of you and expanding behind you simultaneously.  Starlight streaking across the windows, space-time curving around the ship faster than the ship itself is moving through it.  You take a moment to consider it as you unbuckle yourself shakily, before standing up and checking the seat behind you.

The kid is still knocked out cold, but you press the button to close the shield to his crib just in case, setting an alarm protocol to Mando’s remote arm brace should it open.  

And then you slowly make your way around bulky cockpit chairs and down into the hull, shakily climbing down the ladder one step at a time.  As soon as you turn around, there’s a caped wall of beskar rummaging through something with his back to you.

“Did you…”  You announce yourself while looking around, trying not to sound as small as you feel.  This is a such stupid question, you already know what he did with the body.  But you… you should make sure, right?  “You already took care of… of the…”

“Yeah.”  Mando spins around and pulls out the cot from the wall at the same time, and you jump when the bed rattles loudly on its track and ricochets a few inches backwards after reaching its full extension.  He quickly makes his way around it and over to you.  “It’s gone.  Come here, you’re hurt.”

“I’m f-fine,” you insist, feeling your hands shake when he abruptly grabs the left one and turns it over, pulling your wrist out towards him and up to the light so you both can see.  “What about the qua—oh.”

There’s a long, ragged slice decorating the inside of your forearm, dried blood staining the ripped fabric along your sleeve.  You blink down at it, not able to recognize its pain even with the evidence of the injury in front of you.  It doesn’t look deep, but its edges are a little nasty and it’s still bleeding.  Why can’t you feel it?  Shouldn’t you be able to feel that?

He makes a noise through his helmet—something you can’t quite figure it out.  Something between a short growl and a low huff of breath, before he’s grabbing your hips and steering you over towards the bed, lifting you up and setting you on its suspended platform when you’re close enough.

“Didn’t find the quarry,” the Mandalorian says quietly, turning around and looking through the first aid kit once more.

“You didn’t find the…”  You blink down at your injury.  He didn’t even find the quarry?  But then what was all that ruckus about?  And why are you going back to Nevarro to collect payment?  Shouldn’t you be turning around and… and…?

He’s suddenly in front of you again, and this time he’s got a… a syringe in his hands?  An E-bacta shot, you realize with an uncomfortable jolt.  He pulls the cap off and sets it down on the bed next to you before holding out his gloved hand for you, waiting patiently but expectantly.

“No,” you immediately tell him, heart beginning to pump faster as you bring your arm up and hug it to your chest.  You didn’t even know those things were street legal—they heal incredibly quickly but people have been known to abuse them because… well, because they’re supposed to give you a wicked fucking high.  Bacta isn’t addictive and there’s no possibility of overdose, but this shit is concentrated.  You can’t imagine how expensive it was.  “Don’t b-be ridiculous, Mando—you—you almost bled out from a knife wound and we didn’t use one of those.”

“What do you think that is?”  He looks down at your arm.

“It’s a scratch!”  You exclaim, starting to feel a bit hysterical now from the adrenaline comedown.  Maker, that needle is big.  You knew bacta injections were thick but holy fucking stars.  “It doesn’t even h-hurt!  I could’ve… I could’ve done this to myself on accident for all I—”

“This has boosted antibiotics, too,” he cuts you off, quickly losing his patience and grabbing your wrist when you still don’t hand it over to him.  He levers your forearm down, holding it parallel to the floor on your lap.  “We don’t have any bacta kits left, I looked.  This’ll work fast and it won’t scar.  Hold still.”

“No—” you try to pull your hand away, hating the way your voice jumps when you’re aiming for calm and reasonable.  “—I’ll be fine, w-we shouldn’t waste th—”

He tightens his grip.  “Listen.  This isn’t a scratch.  It’s a torn laceration from a dirty Corellian vibroblade.  Now I’m giving you at least a quarter dose, so hold,” he tugs your wrist forward, “still.”

You see the large needle heading towards your arm with determination and you’re instantly going rigid with panic, whipping your head away from him and squeezing your eyes shut as you suck in a terrified breath.

You wait like a statue for the pain, frozen in anticipation and fright, but it never comes.  Slowly peeking one eye open, you look back to find a chrome visor staring intently at you, unmoving.

“I’m—I’m sorry,” you eventually gasp when he doesn’t say anything, and Maker, are your eyes actually starting to water?  “I-I’m sorry, I’m just—that’s a b-big needle and—and I actually just k-k-killed someone and it’s just—” oh stars, here come the sniffles, “—I’m s-so sorry, I’m trying t-to keep it—keep it togeth—”

He carefully places the syringe down on the bed next to you as you turn your head away from him and try to stifle your short, panicked breaths with the back of your hand.  But then you’re being caught and pulled forward, hauled into an iron chest without a single word.

It should be uncomfortable, you think.  You should want to take the armor off and feel the muscles of his arms wrap themselves tight around you instead of cold metal, but for some reason, you don’t.  He feels… right like this.  Like the beskar is a natural extension of his body, like it holds just as much comfort as his bare chest does.

The Mandalorian stands there between your knees and silently embraces you, holding stoic and steady for you, tilting his head so you can calm your breathing into the crook of his neck.  It’s covered in fabric but it smells like him, warm and soft and damp with sweat.  You breathe him in, clutching him tight with your uninjured arm and feeling your heartbeat gradually begin to slow as it’s pressed against cool metal.

“E-bacta has calming properties,” he says quietly after a moment.  “It’ll help more than this.”

“Shut up.”  You mutter against his throat, doing everything you can to drown yourself in him.  Maker, he smells good.  He just got finished bringing down an entire Corellian sector, why the fuck does he smell so good?  “I'm not—not letting you stick that thing in me.”

“Yeah?”  He returns softly, dragging a hand up your back.  “Bet I can make you want it.”

“Not happening,” you grunt, tightening your hold on him.  “You’ll put regular bandages on my arm until we can resupply on Nevarro and save that torture device for another poor soul who needs it.”

“This isn’t over,” he eventually warns you, gently pulling away.  He turns around and starts picking out gauze and tape from the first aid kit regardless.  “I was just blindsided.  Tears don’t work on me, but.  Don’t ever do that to me again.”

You relax, smiley and dopey-eyed and happily sticking your arm out for him for whenever he comes back, so fucking glad he gave in.  You’ll get bacta on Nevarro, that sounds perfect.  “So… so all that fuss and you didn’t actually find the quarry?”

“Someone tried to take off my helmet,” Mando replies shortly, starting to rip open a few packets of sterile gauze strips without looking at you.  And then he doesn’t say anything more, like that should be explanation enough.

“Ah.”  You remark after a second, thinking about how many blaster fires you saw.  Maker.  “I see.”

What a pair you two make.  Someone who went into shock from hurting another person in defense of your life, and someone who brought an entire block down because another person tried to take his helmet off.  

Something he’s done with you twice now.  Without ever being prompted.

Stars, you’re both so different, aren’t you?  Such massively different problems, different ways of life.  You’re suddenly struck with how much you could learn from him, if he was ever willing to share.  How much the both of you could probably learn from each other.  His assertiveness; your humanity.  His decisiveness; your consideration.  His secrets; your honesty.  None of them are true opposites, not in the way people normally think.  They’re not polarizing, they’re… complimentary.  Filling in the gaps neither one of you can fill in yourself.

“Does that scare you?”  He finally asks, when you’ve been quiet for too long.

“No,” you tell him blankly, watching his hands work.  “Just… no.  Not really.  I mean.  It makes sense.  Was just thinking about how different life must be for you.”  You tilt your head thoughtfully.  “Showing my face, telling people my name.  Things I take for granted, I think.”

Maker, maybe you’re getting a little too honest here.

“Is that why you never ask about those things?”  He’s quiet.  You both stare purposefully down at your arm as he begins laying down the strips of white cotton over your cut.  “Because you recognize what it means to give them up?”

“What—like your name?”

“Anything,” he says, and though he keeps working, his hands start to slow down.  “You never ask me about anything.  My name, my past… why I don’t take the helmet off.  Everyone always asks, but.  You never have.”

You shrug a shoulder.  “Figured you get tired of telling people no, don’t you?”

His fingers still, hovering over your injury.  He doesn’t move, so you elaborate.

“I mean… yeah, I’ve thought about those things, but…” you speak slowly, choosing your words very carefully.  Your eyes narrow with the effort, trying to pinpoint and voice your exact opinion without making assumptions.  “But I respect you.  And your creed.  I call you Mando because that’s what you told me to call you.  And if you don’t take the helmet off, then you don’t take it off.”  You shrug once more.  “Some things don’t need explanations.  They just are, and I’m okay with that.”

It’s a while before he goes back to dressing your wound, and even longer before he speaks again.  When he does, he’s almost completely finished securing the bandages and it’s barely above a murmur.  “Nobody usually thinks that simply about it.”

“Well.  Fuck ‘em.”  You blurt.  “I think it’s the simplest thing in the galaxy.  You should be the one who gets to decide who you are and what’s important to you, right?  No one else.”

He stops again, this time tilting his visor up to look you in your eyes.  You blink up at your own warped reflection.

“I think that shit is yours.  Fundamentally.  Doesn’t matter if you want to share it, change it, hide it, or burn it away forever.  It’s your decision, and you’ll tell people what you want them to know.  So fuck ‘em if they don’t respect that,” you tell him bluntly.  “They obviously don’t know anything about you at all.  Else they wouldn’t be asking.”

He doesn’t move.  He just stares silently at you for a few seconds, and Maker, for some reason you wish now more than ever you could see his face.  Even though it contradicts everything you just said, you wish you could see his face.  What color are his eyes?  You bet they’re brown.  You bet they’re a warm, deep brown—expressive and soft and lovely behind such hard, unforgiving steel.  His features are probably just as warm as the rest of him.  Dark hair, wavy hair.  Plush, gentle lips.

His hand comes up slowly.  Gives you ample time to pull away before he’s softly cupping your cheek, tilting his helmet to the side as he studies you.

“Would you.”  He’s quiet for a moment.  And then he clears his throat through the modulator, before he tries again.  “Would you like to know my name?”

You go shock-still, blinking at him and barely breathing.  Why?  Why is he asking this?  He wants to give you his name?  Immediately after you just told him why you don’t need it?

Your throat is a desert.  “Only… only if you want to give it to me.”

He tilts his head the other way and takes a moment to consider you, gently trailing the leather of his thumb along your bottom lip.  Your eyes dip down the length of his body, heat suddenly filling you when you realize how close and well he’s positioned right now, how his hips are at the perfect height standing right between your legs like this.

Mando slowly lowers his helmet to look down at your parted thighs, too.  And then he’s shifting the visor to the side just a bit, eyes catching on something on the bed next to you.  “Want to give you a few things,” he says lowly.

You probably would’ve melted into a puddle if he didn’t immediately hold up the E-bacta shot in front of you in both hands.

Your heart starts pounding though, all the same.  “No—”

“Listen to me,” he tells you calmly, as if you could do much of anything else right now with how much space he’s taking up in front of you.  His size and proximity gave you a thrill just a second ago, but now he’s nothing more than a giant fucking metal wall armed with a needle and blocking your escape.  “I want to give you a few things, but only if you say yes to all of them.  Are you going to listen?”

Maker, your heart is racing, rapid calculations going off in your head as your eyes flick between the syringe and his visor.  Where the fuck is he going with this?  “Y-yes.  I’ll—I’ll listen.”

He holds the shot up between the two of you, as if you didn’t see it the first fifty fucking times.  “First.  I’ll give you a quarter dose of this.  I’ll be gentle and I’ll give it to you somewhere where it won’t hurt, where you won’t even be able to see it, and it’ll make you feel better.  Even good.  Okay?”

You narrow your eyebrows at him.  “You’re not doing a great job at selling me h—”

“Second.  I’ll give you my name.”

Your breath catches.  He continues on casually with the terms of the deal, as if he didn’t just set your whole world on fire with five words.

“You can’t ever use it around other people,” he tells you.  “Only here.  With me, on this ship.  In front of the kid is fine.  But if anyone else ever asks, you don’t know it.  Okay?”

“Okay…” you whisper after a second, your chest filling with flames.

“Third.”  He slowly catches your uninjured wrist in a gentle grip and begins to guide it forward.  “If you… if you want, I’ll… I’ll give you this,” he murmurs, bringing it down to cup his cock.  “I… won’t be gentle.  But I will make you feel good.”

Maker, he’s already rock hard under your palm, throbbing and swollen for you.  Almost as quickly as the urge first came on, you suddenly don’t want to escape anymore.  Instead, maybe you can just… appeal.

“What if we…”  You carefully reach down into his pants, holding his hips still between your knees and beginning to caress his cock.  His skin is like silk under your hand, as hard as the beskar he straps to his body but so warm, and pulsing with life.  “What if we reverse the order, maybe?”

“No,” he grunts immediately.  “You’ll take the shot first, it’ll be a—” his breath catches when you give him a good, rough squeeze.  “—a-a show of—of good faith.”

“That’s literally the only thing I don’t want from this all-or-nothing deal,” you reason, wrapping your legs around him to bring him closer.  He acquiesces cautiously, slowly moving forward.  “I’d be an idiot to give it up first.  Ideally it should go second if there are three terms.”

“I know what you’re d-doing,” he tells you flat out, though he makes no attempt to stop it at all.  He just growls low in his throat when he’s close enough for you to lean up and bite down onto his neck, one of his hands landing on your thigh and locking down onto it tight.  “It won’t… won’t work.  You’re—you’re t-taking the shot first, that’s the deal.”

“I could try crying again,” you proposition breathlessly, squeezing his cock once more and feeling him shudder.

“Ngh—meant it when I—” he gasps when you brush your thumb over his head, dampening the fabric covering his neck with your hot breaths.  “When I-I said that you—you need to w-work on your… your negoti—tiating—”

“What if I just ask you really, really nicely?”  You whisper, slowly starting to jerk him off.  Your grip is tight and strong, and he practically sags and grabs the metal bedframe on either side of you.  “Will it work if I ask you to please fuck me?  Please?  And then I’ll take your shot?”  But then you’re struck by a sudden thought, and maneuver your head away just enough to look up at where his eyes should be.  “But we don’t… we don’t actually have to… y’know, do the other thing, though, if you don’t want to.  It’s okay.”

Mando abruptly pulls back, pinning you with a blank chrome stare.  “W-what?”

“If you…”  You want to find some way to word this to get the correct sentiment across, but it’s difficult with him looking at you so hard.  The last thing you want to do is sound ungrateful.  Your hands stop moving, carefully letting him go and resting on his hips instead, so he knows this isn’t you just trying to find some way out of this.  “You don’t have to tell me your name, y’know.  It’s okay, I’ll—I’ll take the shot, it’s fine.  We don’t need to… to turn something like that into a.  A deal, or anything.  You can still tell me if you want, of course, I just… I don’t want it to be part of like, some sort of… agreement between us, or something.”  You tap a thumb over his hipbone, tilting your head.  “So I’m taking it off the table.  Even if you were the one who put it on there.  No pressure.  I’ll take the shot.  And then you can tell me whatever it is you want to tell me after that.  Apart from that.  A… a show of good faith.”

Mando holds still as a fucking statue in front of you.  If you couldn’t feel the warmth of his skin under your hands, you’d say he looks like a droid in sleep mode almost.  He stays like that for so long, you actually start to worry a little bit.  Was that a thankless, bitchy thing to say to him after he offered to reveal such a big secret about himself?  Should you have just kept your mouth shut?

You suppose he was right, your negotiation skills could use a bit more work.  You did technically just… willingly give up something incredibly valuable in exchange for absolutely nothing in return, didn’t you?  Actually not absolutely nothing, you just agreed to have an actual fucking needle shoved into your body just so he wouldn’t feel any sort of obligation to reveal himself to you whatsoever.  That’s like… rule number one of what not to do when negotiating, isn’t it?  Fuck, what have you done?  Is it too late to take half of that shit back?  Can you start this whole thing over real quick?  How much pressure do you think that glass syringe can handle?  You know you can’t outrun or overpower him, but do you think you’d be able to smash it with your foot before he can stop you?  No.  No fucking way, you would.  Don’t be stupid, don’t be fucking stupid.

And Maker, he’s… he’s still not moving.  You actually start to squirm a little bit under his unreadable gaze, before he eventually brings both hands up to your face and gently cradles your jaw in his gloved palms, bringing you to a still.

“Unbelievable,” the Mandalorian says softly, tilting his helmet at you and carefully brushing his thumbs along your cheekbones.  He doesn’t sound upset.  He sounds truly mystified by you.  Stumped.  Reverent.

You blink at him.  “What?”

“Nobody w-would… but you’re…”  He seems like he’s trying to find the words to describe what he’s thinking, but he can’t.  “You can’t—you… t—?  Not just.  But be—because of.  On—on… pr-prin…”

“I… I do still want you to fuck me, though,” you eventually whisper when he never finishes his sentence.  He’s not the best with words, but that’s okay.  You’re perfectly willing to entertain other mediums.  “First.  Even if it is part of a deal, I don’t give a shit.”

You bring your hand back to wrap tight around him, beginning to pull up and down in strong, steady strokes once more.  The tips of his fingers tighten just slightly on your jaw.

“Please,” you whisper, turning your head to kiss one of his palms.  “Just show me, it’s okay.”

He stays like that for just a split second more.

And then he’s suddenly whipping one of his hands down to grab your wrist.  The other wraps itself more fully around your jaw in its absence and firmly holds your head in place in front of him.

“I won’t be gentle,” he tells you once more, voice coming out hoarse and shaky.  “I—I c-can’t—”

You nod in affirmation as much as you can with his iron grip wrapped tight over your chin like this.  “Th—”

You can’t even get a single word out before Mando shoots both hands down to grab your hips, abruptly yanking your ass off the bed.  Your legs have just enough time to buckle once they hit the ground, but then he’s spinning you around and practically shoving you right back on top of the metal platform, facedown with half your upper-body and both arms hanging over the edge.

Your pants are being snatched over your ass and down your legs as you still work to adjust yourself to the chaotic shift in position.  Holy fuck, he wasn’t ki—

Something blunt presses up against the apex of your thighs, pushes forward, and oh, holy fu—

—oh—holy fuck—

You’re surprised you have enough breath to shout as loud as you do when he slams full-force into you, rattling the bed as he sheathes himself in your slick warmth to the hilt, fully armored behind you and pressing cold beskar tight up against your ass and thighs.  You claw your fingers over the smooth metal surface under the cot and try to brace yourself on something, but there’s nothing to hold onto.  Fuck, he’s so fucking thick.  Forcing you to yield to his hardness, tightening his grip on your hips and keeping you locked in position.

And then he pulls out and then slams back in—starts pounding into you, using your body as a counterweight to thrust himself into and Maker, you would probably be screaming if you could even breathe right.  The inability to inhale just means you can hear him groan through the modulator, shuffle up closer to you and start to drill into you harder.

“Sweet, sweet girl,” he murmurs, and fuck, you would think he was suffocating you if it weren’t for both of his hands being anchored to your hips.  It blazes through you like wildfire, burning your lungs and setting your body alight with flames.  He leans over you and clamps a hand down over your shoulder, and your eyes roll back when he moves up and adjusts his angle just the slightest bit, pounding down into you instead of just into you, and—

“Maker, h-how did I deserve this?”  He whispers quietly to himself, delirious and tight as stars explode behind your vision.  His helmet rests on your shoulder blade, the beskar as heavy and unyielding as his thrusts are as he pummels into that one blinding, heavenly spot, over and over and over again.  “What did I d—where were you when I was—when I was—?”

You finally gasp a ragged, desperate breath in like you’ve been underwater for the last minute instead of under him, taking his cock the way he needs to give it to you.  And then you’re writhing, grinding your body back against his as much as you can, choking on the burning air and trying to put your needs together into a coherent sentence.

“T-take your helmet off,” you finally manage to lift your head up and beg, “please—please, I-I won’t—I won’t look, I sw-swea—” and then your cunt clamps down hard when he shoots up from you and practically rips the thing off his shoulders without another word, the sound of steel clanging loudly on the floor by your feet.

His hand comes around your throat and yanks you to the side before his teeth are sinking into your neck, not a single break in his hard, pounding rhythm.

He probably gets about ten good thrusts in like that before you’re going rigid under him and cumming—hard.

Everything below your waist locks down tighter around him than a fucking vice, and then you explode wet and hot around his cock with a hoarse shout, squeezing him and spasming through each rough, steady thrust as it launches you higher, and higher—

“Fuck—” he snarls into your neck, and then he suddenly kicks up from the rapid slapslapslapslap that got you over the edge to a surging, brutal bam—bam—bam that wrings a sharp, ragged cries from your throat.  Your face screws up and you try not to scream at the sensation, wondering how it was possible that he could make the bliss even more debilitating.  “Fuck, th—your cunt gets… s-so fucking tight when you cum—”

You just whimper for him helplessly, listening to the vulgar sounds of him fucking into you, the loud squelching as he keeps rocking mercilessly deep.

“You hear that?”  He murmurs next to your ear, and the slick sound of it echoes obscenely through the silent hull.  His voice is soft, contrasting blindingly with the way he’s holding you down and fucking you so strong and steady through the aftershocks.  “Fuck—you get fucking wet after you cum, too, don’t you?”

You try to move, try to adjust yourself just slightly, but he locks down around you and holds fast to his rhythm.  Fuck, it feels like he’s fucking the air out of you faster than you can breathe it in, grip like iron and tightening the more you struggle.

“‘M never leaving this,” he slurs, dropping his head to rest between your shoulder blades.  “Never.  Fuck, I’m—you’re—you’re never getting rid of me, sweet girl, I’m—I’m never—never f-fucking leaving—”

“Fuck, I’m—” you gasp, closing your eyes and trying to focus on the spark of a feeling deep inside you.  “Stars, I think I-I might—”

And then Mando licks a slow, warm line up the curve of your spine and a second orgasm is suddenly burning a fucking hole through you, tearing another broken wail from your throat.  You spasm and arch under him, bearing down on his thick cock and trying not to sob.

“Fuck, there we g-go—” he grits against your skin, picking up his speed and fucking hammering into you, completely deaf to your hoarse squeal at the change in tempo.  “Good.  Ngh, fuck—you—y-you want me to cum now?”

“Please,” you beg.  “Please cum, p-please—”

“Where?”  His voice is tight, breathless and shaky.  “Tell me where—quick—”

“Fuck—inside,” you moan, eyes rolling back at the thought of taking his load deep inside you.

Mando’s hips stutter.  For the first time in what feels like an eternity, they jerk back in before they could fully extend all the way out, and your abused lower muscles start to squeeze him in anticipation.

“I can’t—” he rasps, “—I’ve—I-I’ve never—and y-you’ll—”

“Safe,” you wheeze, because you don’t have enough air in your lungs or composure in your thoughts to tell him you have an implant contraceptive.  All you can manage is a shameless, breathless, “Cum deep,” half-tossed over your shoulder.

Your hair is gathered and locked in a tight fist behind your head and if you thought he was fucking you full force, you soon realize he was only at about an eight.  He flattens you against the bed and yanks your head up, arm coming around to brace across your chest and starting to just fucking wreck you from behind.

The change in angle forces his cock to spear up against something that blinds you, something so raw and impairing that you can’t speak anymore, even if you could find the air to.

“Fuck—m’gonna cum,” the Mandalorian grits, the bed rattling on its tracks as his head drops to your shoulder, “f-fuck, s’too fucking good, sweet girl—m’gonna f-fucking cum, I—”

He plows his hips into you just like that once, twice, three—

You lock down and everything goes blurs and goes out of focus, white hot pleasure ripping you apart from the inside as you do scream this time, clamping down and straightening your spine and convulsing in ecstasy.

He snarls and bites down on your neck, grrriiinndding his cock as deep inside you as it’ll go and shuddering above you.  You can feel him pulsing, throbbing as he growls his way through it, breathing heavy and giving you his load just how you asked.

Mando pulls out of you much quicker than you want him to and stumbles backwards, suddenly dropping to his knees on the floor behind you with a metallic clang.  He doesn’t do anything more than that, though; he just stares at your fluttering hole as you slowly start to leak his cum, one of his hands coming up to brace itself on the back of your thigh as he catches his breath and watches.

Fuck, you’re spent.  Panting and exhausted in the same position he left you.  You try to move, but you can’t.  You just sprawl there on your tummy and slowly wait for the feeling to return to your body.

But then he says something.  It’s too quiet—a soft, one syllable word you can’t quite make out.

“Wh—?”  Your muscles feel like lead.  “I couldn’t hear y—”

Gloved hands trail gently over your ass.  And then you feel a small, sharp little prick on the swell of one of your cheeks, but it’s gone after a split second.

And then… fucking bliss.

You sag into the metal bed, feeling the room begin to spin.  Fuck.  He gave you the shot.  The fucker just gave you the shot.  How dare he?  Before you could even work yourself up to the point of tears again?  While you’re still… still fucking dripping with cum right in front of his face?

Until—

“Din,” he says softly.  “It’s Din.”

Din.

How perfectly appropriate, you think.

Short, simple, and to the point.  No flourishes.  A quick, one-syllable punch of air.  One singular, closed I vowel sitting quietly between two consonants, guarded on all sides.  Hard at first, but then tapering off to a soft sound if you let it.  Din.

“Din,” you whisper, fighting the overwhelming high with every last fiber of your gradually depleting consciousness, wanting so desperately to hear the word out loud with your own voice before you’re pulled under, trying to make sure it’s real.  It comes out sounding that way, too; weak and quiet and straining for these last few precious moments with him.

Both of his hands wrap around the back of your knees and you feel his plush lips press gently against your upper-thigh, just below the curve of your ass.  He opens his mouth and licks hot and warm along your damp skin, pulls both your knees apart just slightly and then starts to drag his tongue to the side a bit, and then—

And then everything goes dark.

[hoeforhops]

Us Fragile Things ― September, part two.

in which Valerie Martin and Billy Hargrove find each other for the first time in four years in a dive bar and realize the difference those four years can make.

an explicit Billy Hargrove x OFC fic. rating: explicit, 18+ word count: 9.9k cross posted to AO3. warnings: alcohol/tobacco use, strong language, dirty talk, unprotected sex, oral sex (female rec), fingering, vaginal sex.

SEPTEMBER 12th, 1989

The note Billy had left spent nearly two weeks in the drawer of Valerie’s nightstand, other than the few times she’d pulled it out to stare at it in the effort of working up the nerve to actually call him. She had his number memorized by the second time she pulled it out, and the brevity of the note itself was burned into her mind.

It was good to see you. Call me. 923-0427. It was good to see you. Call me. 923-0427. It was good to see you. Call me. 923-0427. It was good to see you. Call me. 923-0427. It was good to see you. Call me. 923-0427. It was good to see you. Call me. 923-0427.

She found herself repeating the note at random, hearing it in his voice like it was damn near haunting her.

Valerie told herself she was trying to focus on getting back into the routine of classes. On top of her usual coursework, she’d started her classroom observations, sitting in on classes at the local high school twice a week. She’d also taken up working a few shifts a week at the reception desk in the education department, trying to stash away whatever money she could. There was little time in her schedule for boys, she had decided.

That had never been her rule before, but Billy Hargrove had never been part of the equation. But that didn’t stop her from thinking about him.

He kept creeping into her thoughts, far more than usual. And not just her thoughts, but her fantasies. Valerie had realized a couple of days after seeing him that it had become impossible to get herself off without recalling the memory of his fingers pumping into her, the way he’d praised her, and the weight of his body hovering over hers. He had made sure she couldn’t forget about him for the first several days, considering he’d left a slew of hickeys and marks along her chest.

It was a Tuesday evening and she’d just finished doing 60 pages worth of reading for one course, feeling like her brain was about to melt out of her ears. Charlotte was out with Amy, and when Valerie’s eyes landed on the phone across the room, Billy’s number started repeating itself in her mind.

923-0427. 923-0427. 923-0427. 923-0427. 923-0427.

Chewing on the inside of her cheek, she got to her feet and approached the phone. She picked it up and dialed his number quickly, proud of herself for even doing that much. With a white knuckle grip, she lifted the phone to her ear as it rang.

And it rang, and rang, and rang.

She hung up after letting it ring plenty of times, realizing he must not have an answering machine.

At least she’d tried.

SEPTEMBER 13th, 1989

Valerie had hoped that calling him once, even if she didn’t get an answer, would get it all out of her system, but it seemed to only make it worse.

Charlotte had been bugging her to call him since the minute she’d heard they slept together, adn Valerie had made the mistake of letting it slip that she finally had, which only lead to Charlotte telling her to try it again.

So she did.

It only rang a few times before Valerie heard a soft click, her heart jumping in that beat of silence.

“Hello?” A female voice. Max?

“Hi, uh, is Billy around?” she asked, clearing her throat and trying her best to relax.

“No, he’s at work.”

“Oh, okay.” A pause. “I’ll just call back.” Would she though?

“Is this Valerie?” she asked, and Valerie froze.

“Yeah,” Valerie responded with a slight laugh, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. “Max, right?”

“Mhm. Billy said he ran into you,” Max told her. “I’ll probably take you up on the offer for some help with English comp.”

Valerie smiled to herself, glad that he’d mentioned that to Max. “Yeah, I’d be happy to help, just let me know.”

“Do you want me to let Billy know you called?”

“No, uh, don’t worry about it. I’ll just call back and try to catch him.”

“I think he’s off tomorrow night, maybe try then,” Max suggested, and Valerie nodded even though the girl on the phone couldn’t see her.

They said their goodbyes and she all but slammed the phone down, looking up to realize Charlotte was watching her with a wide grin.

“No luck this time either?” she asked, eyebrows raised.

Valerie rolled her eyes, moving across the living room to drop onto the sofa. “I’m glad you think this is funny, at least,” she said, giving her roommate a pointed look.

Charlotte shrugged. “I guess I’m just not used to seeing you act like this over a boy,” she teased, still grinning either way.

Groaning, she sank further into the sofa and looked up at the ceiling. “I know, I’m not either, and I don’t like it,” she grumbled, pulling one of the throw pillows into her lap. “I feel like I’m back in high school, vying for the attention of ‘King Billy.’” She made a face as she spoke, scrunching up her nose.

“Yeah, but you’re not. You’re a cool, hot grown up who can buy your own alcohol,” Charlotte assured her, joining her on the sofa. “And from what you told me, he doesn’t sound like he’s the same person he was in high school either, so if you like him, or at least like his dick, it’s probably worth trying to call again.”

Valerie nodded, sucking on her teeth as she picked a piece of fuzz off the pillow in her lap. Charlotte was usually right about these kinds of things, something Valerie had learned in the last several years of living together.

SEPTEMBER 15th, 1989

Valerie didn’t call the next day, Thursday, like Max had suggested. She certainly hadn’t forgotten, but buried herself under a mountain of homework and reading to distract herself. His number had repeated itself in her mind for most of the evening, leaving her to steal glances at the phone from her spot at the table where her books and papers were spread out in front of her.

It was Friday though. Two weeks since the night at the bar whose name Valerie had never figured out. Charlotte was at Amy’s for the night, leaving Valerie to entertain herself. The thought of going back to that bar had crossed her mind, but she told herself she was content to get a chunk her weekend assignments out of the way.

By the time it was dark, she’d given up on reading for the night. With a glass of wine in her hand and the TV on, her eyes had started to drift toward the phone.

He probably wasn’t even home. It was a Friday night, after all. He was probably out drinking like he had been two weeks ago. Those thoughts were what actually made it easier for her to get off the couch and cross the room to the phone. Even if he wasn’t home, she could tell Charlotte that she had tried. She dialed quickly before she could stop herself.

923-0427.

The phone rang three times before the soft click of the line being picked up made Valerie jump, having felt so sure that no one would answer.

“Hello?” There was no mistaking that voice.

“H-hey. It’s Valerie,” she said, already chewing on the inside of her cheek. She couldn’t believe all it took was a single word from him to make her palms sweat and her heart race.

“Well, Val, it’s about damn time,” he told her, scoffing softly.

“Yeah, sorry, I’ve been busy trying to get into the routine of classes and stuff,” she told him, hoping to laugh it off.

“Uh huh,” he hummed, tone laced with disbelief. Valerie blinked, pausing for a moment. “You know, until Max told me you called the other day, I thought you’d forgotten all about me.” She could practically hear him smirking, knowing from the sound of his voice that he was already toying with her. Valerie suddenly wished she’d had more wine before calling him.

“Maybe I had,” she said, trying her best to sound cool.

Billy actually laughed. “I’m surprised you’re calling on a Friday night. Figured you’d be out prowling for another idiot you went to high school with to take home and rock their world before forgetting about them.”

Snorting softly, Valerie twirled the cord of the phone around her index finger. “It’s early, I’ve still got time,” she said, grinning to herself.

“C’mon now, don’t break my heart like that,” he told her with that charming inflection of his that made her willing to do cartwheels.

She paused, pressing her lips together. “Did I really ‘rock your world’? The sex was that good?” she questioned, curiosity getting the better of her. It had only been a few minutes of conversation, and he already had her wondering if it was all a game. God, she hated feeling like a giddy teenager, but at least he wasn’t there to watch her squirm over it.

“What, you didn’t think it was?” Billy responded, sounding mildly surprised by her question.

Valerie exhaled a breath of laughter, picking up the phone and bringing it with her to sit in the nearby arm chair. “I never said that. King Billy’s the one with the long list of five star reviews, just wasn’t sure where I’d rank amongst them,” she said, kicking her feet up on the coffee table to settle in more.

“Baby girl, you’ve got no fuckin’ clue how crazy you made me,” he said, tone low and dark to the point that Valerie held her breath.

She was silent for a moment, his words echoing in her mind before she cleared her throat. “What about you, huh? Why are you home on a Friday night to answer the phone?” she asked, toying with the phone cord again.

“I worked early this morning. I planned on having a quiet night at home until you called.” He sighed softly, teasingly like she’d ruined his whole evening.

“And I changed that?” Valerie was grinning to herself by then.

“Maybe.” His voice was warm and she could picture his smile, that genuine one that felt like a reward to see. “When can I see you again?”

The question surprised her for some reason and she blinked. “You busy tomorrow?” she asked, practically holding her breath as she waited for him to answer.

“Yeah, I’ve got an late shift tomorrow. I’m free Sunday night though.”

“Uhh, yeah, Sunday’s good for me,” she responded, clearing her throat as a fresh wave of nervousness swept over her.

“You wanna come to my place? Max will be out, we can watch a movie or something.” For a short second, he sounded unsure of the proposed plan. The thought of being alone with him made her mind flash back to the desperate sound of their breathing, the intoxicating feeling of his body pressing against hers, and her palms were sweating again.

“That sounds good,” Valerie said, licking her lips as she sunk into her chair a little more. “What time?”

“My shift goes until 5:30, so 7:00 maybe? I’ll make dinner for us.” Now that surprised her, making her eyebrows raise.

“I never really pictured Billy Hargrove as the culinary type,” she admitted, toying with the ends of her hair idly as she grinned.

“You can add that to the list of what’s ‘different’ about me now, I guess,” he said, and Valerie could hear his lighter click a second later.

“Yeah, I guess so.” Valerie licked her lips, picturing him in his apartment. She wondered what his place looked like, where he was right now, what he was doing. It all seemed like such a mystery. “Can I ask you something?”

“You just did.” Valerie rolled her eyes, letting out a quiet huff of breath that he must’ve heard. “Shoot.” The word was laced with a smirk again, she could just tell. She could hear him inhale, taking a drag from his cigarette.

“Did you mean what you said when I was going down on you, about how you used to watch me in chem?” Her mind had drifted back to that statement of his so many times over the last couple of weeks.

Billy was silent for a moment before exhaling a soft laugh. “Yeah,” he told her, and she wished she could see him for that reaction. “That damn oral fixation of yours was so fucking distracting.”

Valerie’s eyebrows knit together, about to argue that she didn’t have an oral fixation until she realized that she had started chewing on her thumbnail after asking her last question. “Didn’t stop you from passing the class though,” she said, again trying to put on that cool tone that matched his despite the fact that her cheeks were flushing.

“That’s true, but let me tell you, I took some community college courses when I was living in California, including chemistry, and just hearing the word ‘stoichiometry’ was enough to get me hard. Fucking Pavlovian, or some shit,” he said, and Valerie grinned even as she felt the flush make it’s way down her neck.

“You should’ve said something, y’know,” she said after a pause, despite knowing full and well that she never would’ve believed him back then if he’d expressed interest in her. She likely would have laughed in his face in all honesty, the thought of it too absurd to even entertain.

“I would’ve ruined your fuckin’ life, V.” Billy chuckled, and she laughed with him because she knew he was absolutely right. She imagined him grinning, the one he used right as he trapped his prey, knowing when he had her caught. “Be grateful that you’re getting this version of me.”

“Who says I’m not?” she countered, leaning forward in her seat. Valerie was glad she’d thought ahead enough to bring the whole bottle of wine into the living room with her earlier, pouring another glass. A pause followed, and because the silence made her nervous, her mind circled back to another thought curiously. “Why’d you stop?”

“Stop what?”

“Stop taking classes.”

“Oh,” he said softly, like he hadn’t expected such a question out of her. “D’you really wanna know?”

“I don’t ask questions I don’t want to know the answers to,” she told him, bringing the glass up to her mouth to take a drink.

Billy sighed softly. Hesitation seemed to hang between them, and Valerie honestly wasn’t sure what he’d say next. “It’s a long story, angel, I’ll tell you sometime, okay? Promise.” He sounded sincere in the avoidance, and Valerie bit her lip as she pocketed her curiosity.

“Okay,” she responded, nodding once to herself before swallowing the last bit of her wine. He was quiet for a beat and again, she was picturing him, wondering what his expression said.

“You wanna know something?” he asked, in that tone that left her hanging on his every word as he changed the subject.

“Shoot,” she responded, just as he head earlier.

“I regret not going down on you when I had the chance.” Billy said it all so casually, fitting it into the conversation with ease and Valerie couldn’t help the burst of laughter at the bluntness of his statement. Her cheeks felt hot and she told herself that it was from the wine.

“Is that at the top of your to do list for Sunday?” she asked, holding the phone with her shoulder as she leaned forward to put her empty glass on the coffee table.

“Oh, absolutely,” he hummed in response, making her suck in a breath through her teeth. “Might not even be able to wait until after dinner. I’ve barely been able to keep my mind off it. I didn’t pay nearly enough attention to your tits either.”

The thought made her feel warm all over, her blush returning with vengeance as she licked her lips. “Have you been thinking about me a lot?” she asked, settling back in her seat again as she put her feet up on the edge of the coffee table.

“Way too much, honestly. I haven’t been able to get those sweet sounds of yours out of my head, it’s been driving me fucking insane,” he admitted with a slight groan to the words as Valerie grinned to herself. “I didn’t expect you to be so bratty.”

“Want me to turn it down a notch next time?” Her voice carried a teasing tone to it, and she realized that she was pressing her thighs together as she anticipated his response.

The chuckle Billy let out rattled through her, renewing the heat that had flooded through her earlier. “Don’t you fuckin’ dare, Val,” he said with a hint of that deep chuckle and Valerie could’ve actually screamed. “You been thinking about me, huh? Slipping your hand into your panties late at night, playing with yourself while you think about how good I made you feel?”

“Christ, Billy,” Valerie muttered as if it wasn’t truth, feigning innocence. His scoff said he saw right through it. “Maybe I have been, so what?” There was no point in denying it, she decided.

A silence hung between them for a moment.

“Do we really need to wait until Sunday? I can be at your place in 10 minutes,” Billy said.

Now that was tempting. Valerie thought about it, biting her lip. It would be so easy to let him come over and rock her world again, to let him leave her absolutely desperate for more of him, but her nerves got the better of her. She let out a sigh and shook her head.

“Not tonight,” she told him, as if she wasn’t already ridiculously turned on.

“I had to at least try,” he said, tsking softly. “I’ve waited two weeks, I can wait another two days.” Valerie grinned, unable to stop herself considering he was just as fucking charming as he’d always been.

“It was a good effort,” she assured him, and they laughed together. She already regretted turning down the offer.

They chatted for a while longer, until Max got home and Billy said he needed to go. She got directions to his place before they said their goodbyes, and after hanging up the receiver, Valerie pushed a hand through her hair. Leaning back in her seat again, she scoffed to herself in disbelief that that conversation had happened. She was still flushed and slick between her thighs as she started to chew on her thumbnail.

Billy Hargrove still might ruin her life.

SEPTEMBER 17th, 1989

Valerie somehow made it to Sunday evening, though it hadn’t been easy. She’d spent a good chunk of her Saturday at the library on campus, but hadn’t been at all productive considering the fact that Billy was plaguing her thoughts. She could barely focus, her shoulders tense with anticipation as the minutes passed slowly.

She slept in on Sunday and finished up her readings before getting ready to go to Billy’s. The shower she took was long and relaxing, and she used the fancy body wash her aunt had sent for her birthday several months ago. Waiting for her hair to dry, Valerie put on some make up, then pulled on pretty underwear under the knee length skirt and v-neck sweater that she’d laid out.

It was a little after 7:00 when Valerie parked on the street outside what she hoped was Billy’s place. The street number matched at least, and she headed up the walkway toward the grey duplex with a bottle of wine in hand. Nervousness twisted in her stomach as she stepped onto the porch and knocked on the door to the left like he’d told her.

She didn’t have to wait long for him to open the door with that signature grin that made her knees weak. He invited her in, his eyes dropping quickly to glance her over before motioning for her to follow him.

Valerie hadn’t been sure to expect out of Billy’s place, and she looked around curiously as she followed him to the kitchen. She caught a glimpse of floral wall paper in the living room and smiled, before her attention focused more on him.

“Dinner should be ready in a few,” he told her, taking the bottle of wine from her. He was in a tight shirt and tighter jeans, nothing out of the usual, really, but it still astounded her that he always managed to look that good.

“What are we having?” she asked, leaning back against the edge of the counter as he sifted through a drawer before pulling out a corkscrew.

“Chicken with zucchini and risotto,” he said as Valerie enjoyed the way his shoulders moved when he opened the bottle of wine. She was impressed, both with the menu and how easily he pulled the cork out. “I don’t have wine glasses yet, so we’re stuck with regular cups.”

“That’s fine,” she assured him with a soft laugh, watching as he pulled a pair of cups from the cabinet. She thanked him softly when he handed her one of them a second later, her eyes meeting his as he poured wine for her.

“It’s good to see you,” Billy said, taking a sip from his own glass. His eyes were on her and Valerie could feel her cheeks flush as a smile tugged at the corners of her mouth.

“It’s good to see you too,” she responded, batting her lashes before tilting her glass back for a drink.

It was odd to see this sincere part of Billy, both in tone and action, and pair it with the way he was looking at her, even having the audacity to lick his lips. Her free hand came back to grip the edge of the counter as silence hung around them. A timer went off, the abrupt sound cutting through the building tension, and Valerie was almost grateful for it, considering it curbed her urge to absolutely pounce on him.

Dinner was great, leaving her absolutely stunned by how good the food was. They chatted as they ate, easily finishing off the bottle of wine between the two of them. Talking to him was easy, Valerie realized, and they stayed seated at the small table with empty plates in front of them for a while before they rose to clean up.

Valerie was a little tipsy as she dried the dishes as he washed, and he kept glancing at her. She nudged him with her elbow eventually, passing it off as an accident as she reached to put the last of the plates in the cabinet. The dish towel she’d been using had barely left her hand before he had one hand on her waist, the other on her jaw to guide her mouth to his.

The kiss surprised her, leaving her to gasp softly into his mouth before relaxing against him. She was on fire immediately, kissing him back as he pressed her back into the edge of the counter. Billy was taking his time and his hand dropped to her hip as he hummed.

She looped an arm around his neck and let her teeth tug at his bottom lip, practically daring him to take things further. The way he’d watched her through dinner as he listened to her speak had been enough to turn her on somehow, and she was ready for her patience to be rewarded. His tongue flicked against hers teasingly, making her arch toward him just as his mouth left hers.

“D’you still wanna watch a movie?” he asked, a little breathless as his forehead rested on hers.

“Are you serious?” Valerie responded, laughing when she saw his smirk.

“Just wasn’t sure how attached you were to the idea.” Billy’s words were punctuated with a brief kiss, his hand moving to squeeze her ass. She moaned into his mouth and gripped the fabric of his shirt in her hand as she tried to press herself closer against him.

“I’m far more attached to the idea of you eating me out,” she admitted, the frankness of her words making his eyebrows raise slightly. She wasn’t sure if she’d surprised or impressed him, but she liked the reaction either way. His smirk returned almost immediately, nodding once before kissing her again.

The kiss was hungry, and it felt like his hands were everywhere, squeezing her hips and her ass as she pressed toward him. She used the hand twisted in the fabric of his shirt as a way to keep him close as he sucked at her bottom lip.

“Where’s your room?” she asked, her mouth barely leaving his. He hummed in response, both of his hands cupping her face briefly before finally pulling back. Valerie had expected him to step away from her and pull her through the apartment, but instead, he sank to his knees in front of her. “Jesus, Billy!” Her words were laced with laughter as his hands slid up the outside of her thighs, then higher still until they were under her skirt.

“What?” he questioned with a filthy smirk and a raised eyebrow as he nudged her thighs open further. “Just be grateful I made it through dinner without slipping under the table to do this.” His eyes were still on her face as he dragged his thumb over her folds through the damp fabric of her panties, watching the way her body reacted to the contact.

That was all it took to have Valerie tugging the material of her skirt higher until it was bunched up around her hips, and his eyes dropped to her newly exposed skin and panties. She heard him groan softly and then he was leaning forward more, his mouth already settling on the inside of her thigh.

“I like these,” Billy murmured, his voice rough as he glanced up at her again. His thumb repeated it’s previous action, pressing just right against her clit to make her squirm as she leaned back into the edge of the cabinet. He was close enough that she could feel the heat of his breath on her thighs, and Valerie’s hands were already shaking.

Impatiently, he pressed an open mouthed kiss to her folds through her panties with a soft moan. His palms slid over the swell of her ass, then higher to start tugging her underwear down easily. As soon she was exposed to him, his mouth was on her, letting his tongue slide through her folds to collect the wetness that was already pooling there.

“Oh my god,” she breathed out, her thighs parting further for him instinctively after kicking her panties away. Her hand came down to the back of his head and her fingers threaded through his curls as his tongue teased at her entrance.

“So fuckin’ good,” he groaned, squeezing her ass and pulling her hips even closer to him. Billy licked a firm stripe from her entrance to her clit before sucking the bundle of nerves into his mouth. She was practically panting by the time he pulled off with a soft pop , then he was exploring her folds with his tongue again, eyes lifting to look at her face.

He really could get used to this view, loving the flush that colored Valerie’s cheeks and the way her hair fell over her shoulder as her head tilted back. She tasted better than he ever could’ve imagined in the times that he’d gotten himself off in the last few weeks, thinking about having her just like this. His hand slid down her thigh slowly, guiding her to settle her leg on his shoulder as her hand tightened in his hair.

Valerie wouldn’t have been able to hold back the wanton moan that left her if she’d even bothered to try, breathing out a curse as he lapped at her folds hungrily. Her eyes were squeezed shut and she rocked toward him lazily, seeking out whatever extra friction she could find. She was so slick, a mix of her own wetness and his saliva, and if it didn’t all feel so good, she might be embarrassed by the constant slew of whines and moans that were leaving her. The sounds of his mouth working against her, sucking at her folds, were absolutely filthy, and when she felt his two fingers tease at her entrance, Valerie nodded with a soft plea, eager for whatever he would give her.

“Yeah?” he hummed into her, letting them sink into her just barely. “You want my fingers in your pussy while I suck your clit?” He barely pulled away to speak, his lips brushing over her before he licked around his fingers teasingly.

“Billy, please,” she breathed, finally tilting her head to glance down at him.

“You gotta say it, sweetheart,” he mused, glancing up at her with a quick smirk before he was opening his mouth against her. As always, heat rose up her neck in response to his dirty talk and she let out an impatient sound when he didn’t immediately give her what she wanted.

“I want you fingers inside me, please, I need more,” she managed to plead, her hips already pressing toward his hand desperately. Valerie’s fingers tightened in his hair enough that he hissed softly, and she saw darkness flash in his eyes when he looked up at her. He must’ve decided that was good enough considering his digits sank deep into her. Her head fell back as she cursed, her body already clenching around him.

Billy fingers fucked into her expertly, just as they had last time, curling against the spot inside her that made her gasp. He was watching her, looking up her body as he sucked her clit into his mouth, enjoying the way she rocked toward him. Her eyes were closed, her lips parted as she moaned for him again, and he scissored his fingers inside her to see what other sounds he could get from her. The motion didn’t disappoint, and when he slid his other hand up the outside of her thigh lightly, he could feel that her legs were shaking.

She was slick around him, that fact highlighted by the sound of his fingers pumping into her, her face flushing darker as her head fell back. Valerie couldn’t help but tug at his hair, still wanting him closer, and when he chuckled in response, the sound vibrated through her. She felt hot all over, her sweater clinging to her as her other hand gripped the edge of the countertop for support. Practically chanting his name, her hips rolled against his hand, already feeling the pressure building low in her stomach.

Just when she was towing that line of falling into her orgasm, Billy pulled back, and a frustrated sound left her at the loss of his mouth. When she looked down at him, he was smirking, his thumb already moving to rub firm circles against her clit. His mouth was slick with her wetness, the sight alone making her whine as his fingers continued to fuck into her.

“You gonna cum for me, angel?” he murmured, turning his head to press a kiss to the inside of her thigh.

“Yeah,” she sighed out, nodding as she continued to rock into his hand. “Wanna cum for you, Billy.” Her voice was weak as she teetered on the edge and he hummed in approval, his mouth settling on her folds again.

Valerie’s nails sank into his scalp as she cried out, her head falling back when the pressure inside her exploded. She rocked desperately against Billy’s hand and his mouth, a slew of curses leaving her as she rested the majority of her weight on the cabinet behind her. Pleasure coursed through her as her body tensed, whining his name as he worked her through it. He watched her the whole time, loving the way her features twisted as she came for him.

When she finally came down, her shoulders sagged and she felt like she could barely keep her head up as her fingers carded through his hair. Still breathing heavily, she managed to open her eyes and glance down at him, her cheeks flushed. If his mouth wasn’t still on her, lapping lazily at her sensitive folds, he would’ve been smirking at her, and another shudder ran through her.

“Mmph, too much,” Valerie whined, feeling over-sensitive after another moment of enjoying the slow motion of his fingers still working into her. He pulled back when she pushed at his head gently, already licking his lips as he pulled his fingers from her.

Billy guided her leg off his shoulder, keeping his hand behind her knee for a moment to make sure she was steady. She watched as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then sucked his fingers clean before getting to his feet again. As soon as he was at her level, her arm looped around his neck to pull him toward her.

Kissing him hungrily, Valerie hummed into his mouth, enjoying the taste of herself on his warm, plush lips. The hem of her skirt dropped to cover her, but her hips were already pressing toward his. She could feel the hard line of his cock straining against the fly of his jeans and she licked into his mouth, enjoying the sound he let out.

“Want me to take you to bed?” he asked, mouth barely leaving hers as his hands slipped under her sweater impatiently. Valerie’s mind was still buzzing as she nodded, glad to feel his hands moving over her skin finally. “D’you think you can walk?” The teasing tone to his voice was obvious as he pulled away, and Valerie rolled her eyes with a grin.

“I’m surprised you don’t want to fuck me right here,” she teased, already tilting her mouth up to kiss him again.

“Trust me, I do,” he responded with a chuckle, his hands sliding down to squeeze her ass through the fabric of her skirt. “Max and I agreed not to have sex in the common areas.”

“Oh, but going down on me here was fine?” she countered, letting out a contented sound as Billy’s mouth moved over her jaw.

“Shh,” he hummed, holding his index finger up to his mouth to earn a laugh out of her as he pulled away. His hand slipped into hers and he nodded toward the hall.

Valerie glanced around curiously as they moved through his place, noticing the stack of textbooks on the coffee table, and the framed photo on an end table of Max with people she thought she recognized from Hawkins. The walk was short thankfully, and when Billy let go of her hand to turn on the lamp next to his bed, she took the chance to look around.

She’d always expected his room to be dark, maybe a little cluttered, with posters of half naked women on the walls, heavy curtains, and an unmade bed. Instead, the room was a pale yellow that glowed warm from the low light of the lamp. There wasn’t much furniture, just a dresser next to the open closet door, the end table that housed the lamp, and his bed, that was in fact made. It was tidier than her own room, Valerie realized as her eyes drifted back to Billy.

He had already sat on the edge of the bed, leaning back with his weight on his hands as he watched her. His legs were spread, and he lifted a hand, motioning for her to come toward him. Valerie grinned as she moved closer to him, acutely aware of how wet she still was as she realized her underwear were still on the kitchen floor. His eyes were glued to her, even as he pulled his shirt off and tossed it in the direction of the hamper across the room.

Valerie did the same, tugging her sweater off as she stood between his parted thighs. His head was tilted back to look up at her, and her hand moved to push his hair back gently, feeling him lean into the touch. She pushed at his shoulder and Billy took the hint, leaning back onto the mattress as she reached around her back to unfasten her bra.

He cursed under his breath, hands already moving to unbutton his jeans so he could push them down his hips as Valerie kicked her skirt away as well. Billy sat up enough to reach for her, all but pulling her down to him as she straddled his hips. She leaned over him with a hand on either side of his head, biting her lip as she rocked herself along the obvious bulge of his cock, his black underwear the only fabric between them. His hand slid up her bare back with a pleased sound, leaning up to kiss her hungrily.

A frantic energy seemed to fall over them then, with Valerie moaning into his mouth when his hand came up to cup her breast. His thumb dragged over the hardened peak of her nipple to make her whine, her back arching into his touch. He moved his other hand from her hip to between her thighs, letting his fingers slide through her folds like he couldn’t help himself. The touch made Valerie keen softly, and just as quickly as he’d touched her, he was lifting his hips to slip his underwear down and free his cock.

He was still leaning up to her slightly when his mouth moved to her throat, settling on her pulse point as she felt his dick throb against her thigh. Valerie felt like she was burning, unable to get enough air in her lungs as she rocked toward him with a heady sound. He was still teasing at her nipple, twisting and tugging at it lightly between his thumb and forefinger to make a visible shiver run through her.

“C’mon, V,” he murmured as she forced herself to sit up more, her hands pressing against his chest. “Ride my cock, angel, wanna feel you around me again.” And how on earth was she supposed to say no to a request like that?

She shifted over him again slightly, one hand slipping between them to guide him to her entrance, and she noticed the way his eyes dropped as well to watch as she sank down onto his length. They groaned in unison as Billy’s head dropped back onto the mattress, his hands settling on her hips where he couldn’t resist squeezing her supple flesh. Valerie was trembling slightly by the time he was fully sheathed inside her, her hips flush against his as she took a few deep breaths. His hands didn’t stay where they were for long, with one of them sliding back up to her breast when she slowly let her hips grind down toward his.

The sight of Billy Hargove sprawled out beneath her like that was something she knew she wouldn’t forget any time soon. His curles were already a mess from how rough she’d been with it when he was on his knees earlier, and his pupils were blown as he stared up at her. Valerie could practically see the restraint buzzing through him as her hips rose from his slightly before rocking down again. The motion earned a moan out of him, and the hand that had been on her hip moved to squeeze her ass.

Still sensitive from her earlier orgasm, each movement of her hips had Valerie sucking in short breaths and gasps as she settled into an easy rhythm of riding him. He felt bigger at his angle, and her nails scratched along his chest lightly as her jaw clenched.

“Fuck, that’s good,” Billy breathed appreciatively, his eyes dropping again to watch his dick sink into her. He was toying with her nipple still, palming at her breast with sounds of appreciation as he rocked up just slightly to meet the rock of her hips. “You look so fucking sexy like this, Val, holy shit.”

Panting, Valerie grinned and tried to focus more on keeping a steady rhythm versus speaking, unsure if she could ever string a sentence together by then. Eager to hear more praise from him, she started rocking down harder against his lap, enough that he groaned loudly for her. The slide was easy, given how soaked she was, and with each motion, his cock slid over her g-spot in a way that had her whimpering.

In need of more contact, Valerie leaned over him again, and Billy’s hand was quick to move from her breast to her jaw so he could guide her mouth to his. He licked into her mouth hungrily, still holding her jaw to keep her where he wanted her. The inside of her thighs were burning already, and her pussy tightened around him as she continued to ride him. She could feel Billy rolling his hips up into hers, and the way her clit pressed against his pelvis had her whimpering.

He swore loudly, and Valerie felt his arm wrap around around her waist tightly before he turned her onto her back. She was grateful for the change of position honestly, knowing that her rhythm had already grown sloppy as she got closer. His cock slipped out of her, and she made an annoyed whine. Billy chuckled softly with his knees planted between her thighs as he leaned over her. He was supporting himself with one hand on the mattress, the other between their bodies to just barely guide the head of his cock into her.

When he didn’t sink into her again, instead pulling back to slide through her folds, Valerie sucked in a breath through her teeth. Billy met her eye and he was smirking, loving the way her hips rocked in an attempt to guide him back inside her.

“You want it so bad, don’t you, sweetheart?” he mused, making her huff out a heavy breath.

The way she said his name was somewhere between a threat and a plea, her arm looping around his neck to pull him down to her. He was smirking when his mouth found his and didn’t bother teasing her further considering he was just as desperate for her as she seemed to be for him.

Billy pushed into her in one easy motion, dragging a high sound from her. His hand found the crook of her knee, guiding her leg over his hip as his hips snapped forward into hers. The firm thrust took her by surprise, making her groan as he built a rough pace.

Valerie’s hand slid along his back, her nails scratching over his skin as she tried to arch up toward him more. They were both breathing heavily and moaning as their mouths brushed together, lacking much finesse as they chased their highs. Billy’s mouth moved down her throat, nipping and sucking as he went, and the feeling of his teeth in her pulse point had Valerie moaning desperately beneath him.

“More, Billy,” she breathed, her nails sinking into his shoulder as his tongue traced her collarbone. He hummed in acknowledgement, his hips pounding into hers at just enough of a different angle that it made her body jolt up towards him. The head of his cock was hitting her g-spot with each thrust, making short gasps leave her as her eyes squeezed shut.

He was murmuring to her, filthy things that she could barely hear over the sounds of her breathing and her heartbeat racing in her ears. It spurred her on either way, digging her heel into his ass for leverage to try and get him deeper still. She could feel herself tightening around him as pressure built up inside her again, leaving her practically clinging to him.

“Think you can cum for me again, V?” he said, his tone gravelly and suggesting he already knew the answer. As she nodded frantically, trying to push her hips toward him for whatever friction she could find, he sucked her nipple into his mouth with a groan.

His hand had slipped between their bodies to find her clit with ease, rubbing firm circles against the swollen bundle of nerves as his thrusts got a little sloppy. She was absolutely drenched, and hot against his hand, and he cursed, leaning up to kiss her hungrily.

Valerie welcomed the kiss, though it was all teeth and moans as her arm tightened around his neck more to keep him there. With the way he was pounding into her, still toying with her clit, it was easy for her to fall over the edge, and she did so with a loud groan of his name.

Her head fell back against the mattress as her hips rocked without much direction, just needing whatever she could get from him as her orgasm tore through her. Billy’s mouth had settled on her throat again, his breath hot on her already flush skin as she came around his dick, She didn’t doubt that he’d have raised scratches along his back and shoulder from her nails, but she couldn’t bring herself to care about that right now.

Over the roaring of her ears, Valerie heard him curse loudly, and she made a sound of protest when he pulled out of her. Billy fucked into the space between their bodies, spilling hot onto her stomach with a deep grunt. Starting to come down from her high, Valerie’s eyes opened to see his brows knit together, face creased with pleasure as his head fell forward slightly let his nose nudge against hers.

They were both panting, and Valerie felt like she could absolutely sink into the mattress. When Billy started to untangle himself from her, she made a pouty sound that made him grin as he dropped onto the bed next to her. Settling on his side, he was still breathing heavily, pressing his face against her shoulder. Valerie draped an arm over her forehead when she remembered how to move again and she could feel that her body was slick with sweat, as was Billy’s next to her.

Her body was still buzzing when his hand slid along her jaw to turn her face towards him. She opened her eyes to see him already looking at her, his blue gaze soft and adding to the fact that the blood in her veins felt like lava. His thumb brushed over her lips, a soft smile tugging at the corners of his mouth as they stayed like that for awhile.

Billy was the first to move, exhaling a sigh as he pulled back and pushed himself into a sitting position. She noticed the way his eyes swept over her naked frame, lingering on the cum that he’d coated her stomach with, and she licked her lips as she rose her arms above her head to stretch out on the mattress.

“Stay put, okay?” he said, letting his knuckles brush over her knee lightly as he got to his feet. “Gonna grab a towel to clean you up.” Valerie nodded, not sure she would’ve been able to move much if she’d wanted to.

She watched him walk naked to his closet, turning her head to keep her eyes on him as he returned with a towel. It was dark outside already, the room still filled with the warm glow of the lamp on his end table.

“What time is it?” she asked, her eyes on his face as he wiped up the mess he’d left on her stomach.

“A little after 9,” he responded after glancing at his alarm clock. He tossed the towel aside and leaned over her again to press a short kiss to her mouth, which took her by surprise.

Valerie didn’t doubt that her cheeks were still flushed, and her head still felt a little hazy by the time he pulled back. She finally sat up, smoothing her hair down as she glanced at the pile of her clothes on the floor, deciding that getting dressed was too much effort for the time being.

Billy had pulled on a pair of briefs and grabbed a pack of cigarette and a lighter off his dresser. When he moved back to the bed again, he had a black t-shirt in hand that her offered to her. She thanked him softly as he sat on the edge of the mattress next to her, pulling the shirt on over her head. It was impossible to ignore the smell of his cologne and smoke that clung to the fabric that made warmth settle in her chest. He was close enough that his thigh was touching hers, his eyes lingering on her as he fished a cigarette out of the pack.

“You want one, or are you just going to steal hits from mine again?” he asked, his voice a gentle grumble as he brought it up to his mouth to light. Valerie grinned, licking her lips quickly as she watched the end of the cigarette burn red.

“If you gave me one, most of it would go to waste,” she responded, tucking her hair behind her ear. “So really, it’s better that I just take a few drags from yours.” There was a matter of fact tone to her voice that made Billy scoff softly as he shook his head.

“Yeah, yeah,” he murmured, taking a long hit from the cigarette before offering it to her. He sucked a breath in through his teeth as she took it from him, his eyes on her as she lifted it between her lips. “You gonna leave your number for me so I don’t have to wait another two weeks for you to call me again?” Smoke billowed from his mouth as he spoke, making him look like every bit of the sex god he was.

Valerie rolled her eyes, laughing softly before taking a drag from the cigarette. She was grateful that the smoke in her lungs gave her a moment to mull over a response. “I’ll think about it,” she told him finally, and it was his turn to roll his eyes, shaking his head as she grinned. She exhaled, then took another hit before passing it back to him.

They were sitting close enough that she could feel the warmth radiating off of him, and her eyes moved over the lines of his chest and shoulders. Part of her wanted to lean into him, because she had decided that she liked the feeling of his body against hers, regardless of if his dick was involved or not.

Silence had settled over them, and Valerie’s eyes kept drifting back to his face. She had slept with him twice now, and was still struggling to believe that it wasn’t all some sort fever dream. Despite being unsure of what his game was, what he was after, right then didn’t seem like the best time to ask.

“You busy Thursday night?” Billy asked, leaning to tap the cigarette on the edge of the ashtray on his nightstand before offering it to her. Her fingers brushed over his as she took it from him, raising an eyebrow as she ran through her schedule in her mind.

“I don’t think so. Just got class until 2,” she responded, holding his gaze as she took a drag. “What’d you have in mind?”

He shrugged with one shoulder, running his tongue along his teeth. “Thought we could see a movie or something.”

Both of her eyebrows raised then as she took a final hit from the cigarette before passing it back to him to finish off. “D’you actually want to watch the movie, or is seeing a movie an excuse for you to finger me in public?” she questioned, the teasing tone obvious in her voice.

The question made him laugh loudly as he shook his head. “What kind of Don Juan do you think I am?” he asked, still grinning as Valerie mirrored the expression.

“Oh, was that rumor about you getting Lisa Kramer off during a football game completely false?”

Billy’s eyebrows knit together as he thought about it. “Probably not, but remember, Val, I’m a changed man,” he assured her in an exaggerated tone as if he hadn’t just eaten her out in his kitchen before fucking her into the mattress, and they laughed together again. “Okay, but really, which one was Lisa Kramer again?”

Valerie snorted, closing her eyes briefly as she tried to picture what the girl looked like. “Uhh, curly blonde hair, drove that car that was a really ugly shade of green,” she said, enjoying this relaxed, funny side of him.

Billy tsked softly. “Yeah, that rumor was entirely true,” he admitted, getting a burst of laughter out of Valerie. He was wearing that warm, genuine smile when she met his eye again, and it was one of those moments where it felt like time had frozen around them.

She had forgotten over the last several weeks that even talking to him felt good and natural, even if it was just them sitting there, still half naked and sharing a cigarette. The realization of how calm he seemed struck her, considering how anger had always seemed to vibrate from him before. Valerie still worried that she was wading into dangerous waters with him, but when he looked at her like that, the prospect of drowning didn’t sound so bad.

Valerie watched as Billy shifted to lean back against his headboard, and he watched her right back before he tilted his head toward the empty space next to him. She knew if she got more comfortable than she already was, she wouldn’t want to leave.

“You gonna sleep over?” he asked, seeming to sense her hesitation. Grinning apologetically, she shook her head.

“Not tonight,” she said, wishing she was giving him a different answer. “I’m observing at the local high school tomorrow, so I’ve got to be up by 6.”

“I’ve got an alarm clock,” he countered, head tilted to the side slightly. He had to at least try, and it actually made Valerie feel good to know that he wanted her to stay over enough that he was trying to convince her. The grin she gave him made it clear that he wouldn’t be able to talk her into it. “Do you have to be up that early every Monday?”

“Yeah. On Wednesdays, too,” Valerie told him, and his nose scrunched up at the thought of having to do that twice a week. His expression made her grin, and she finally got to her feet to gather her clothes from the floor.

“You takin’ off now?”

“I probably should.” Disappointment laced her tone as she stepped into her skirt, and Billy sucked his teeth with a nod. His eyes were on her as she removed the shirt he’d given her and tossed it onto the bed.

“I’ll walk you out,” he said as he watched her fasten her bra before she pulling her sweater on.

Valerie nodded as he got to his feet and stepped around her to approach his dresser. He grabbed a pair of sweats and stepped into them, and somehow the sight of the sweats sitting low on his hips had her contemplating sleeping over.

“You decided if you’re gonna leave me your number yet?” Billy asked, licking his lips as he moved closer to her. He picked up the shirt she’d left on the bed and pulled it on, and it was her turn for her eyes to linger.

Laughing, Valerie nodded. “Yeah, I guess I can do that,” she said with a wide smile, her hands coming up to his shoulders before wrapping her arms around his neck.

“There’s a pen and paper by the phone. You jot your number down, and I’ll grab your panties from the kitchen,” he told her, smiling as he leaned to just barely brush his lips over hers. She exhaled a breath, hating that that light kiss was all it took for her to want to start pulling her clothes off again already. Billy obviously knew what he was doing, considering the smirk on his face when he stepped away from her again and nodded toward the door.

She found the pen and paper where he’d said it wold be, and she wrote her number down with a V next to it. He was back from the kitchen by the time she was finished, dropping he previously discarded underwear into her hand with another knowing smirk. Valerie put a hand on his shoulder for support as she stepped into them and he chuckled softly.

“You’re lucky I didn’t try to keep them,” he teased as she righted herself, his body still close enough to hers that he could easily have wrapped himself around her if he had less restraint. She scoffed in response to his word, rolling her eyes before she stepped away from him.

He watched her walk to the front door to step into her shoes, and he followed a few steps behind her to do the same. Reaching around her, he opened the front door for her and let her step onto the porch first.

“So, Thursday?” Valerie said as they crossed the street to where she’d parked her car.

“Yeah, Thursday,” he responded with a nod, licking his lips as she turned around to face him. “I’ll call in the next couple days to hammer out the details.”

“Okay, sounds good.” She smiled warmly at him as she nodded back, her keys in hand as she hesitated, content to linger there with him for a few more moments.

“It’s not too late for you to come back inside and get back in bed,” Billy reminded her with an earnest grin, enjoying the laugh he got out of her.

“Next time,” she assured him, her hand coming up to tuck her hair behind her ear.

“Next time,” he repeated with a brief nod as she watched his eyes dropped to her mouth.

Valerie wasn’t sure which of them had moved first, just that his lips crashed into hers as his arm looped around her waist. His other hand was on her jaw, holding her in place there as he hummed into her mouth. She felt dizzy from it quickly, both of them hanging on to the last thread of their evening together. Pulling back, she rested her forehead against his as she took a breath, then pressed a soft, short kiss to his lips.

“I’ve gotta go,” she said quietly, laughing as she untangled herself from him. Billy pressed a kiss to her temple before he released her, taking a step back to give her room to open her car door.

“See you in a few days,” he told her, licking his lips again. She nodded with a smile, closing the door once she was in her seat. He exhaled a big breath as he started back toward the house, shoving his hands in the pockets of his sweats.

Valerie pulled away from the curb and exhaled a breath of her own, a contented, pleased smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.

****** post notes: And, we're back! Obviously, I don't know much how you all are feeling about the story so far, but I really like this chapter, and I really enjoy exploring the softer, more mature side of Billy. The next chapter is going to be more about his perspective and the things that have changed in his life between the end of season three (sans him dying, obvs) and when he found Valerie at the bar!

[jenniferrpovey]

ABC Test Explained

Okay, so apparently there are a lot of people who love the PRO Act.

For the most part, I love the PRO Act too. Unions are good. I’m not in a union (I’m in a guild, which is a different thing), but I could join two if I wanted to. In my specific situation, unions don’t benefit me.

But I want other people who DO need them to join them.

Unfortunately, something has been slipped into the PRO Act that is terrible in the same way SESTA/FOSTA was, except it’s not just for sex workers this time (not to diminish the impact on sex workers).

It’s called the ABC Test and there’s a move to make it the national standard for who is considered an independent contractor, across all industries.

It’s very simple. To pass the test, you have to meet all THREE of these criteria:

A. The worker is free from the employer’s control or direction in performing the work.

B. The work takes place outside the usual course of business of the company.

C. The worker is customarily engaged in an independent trade, occupation, profession, or business.

A. is pretty easy.

C. is mostly easy, but causes issues for publishing that I’ll explain later.

B. outlaws 90% of freelance work with NO workaround that I know of. (I have yet to consult a lawyer on this. Lawyers are expensive).

C primarily causes a problem for sensitivity readers. My last one was a college student who needed the extra money. Under this, I wouldn’t have been able to hire her. If you are looking for a very specific sensitivity reader, that will become illegal if this test is codified, because they will HAVE to be doing it regularly. That’s hard for if you want, say, an African-American asexual person. Multiple sensitivity readers probably won’t help. Also, if somebody has to be an employee, they also have to be a U.S. citizen or legal resident. So much for hiring a sensitivity reader in Finland to make sure your Finnish character acts like a Finn.

B. causes a problem for *everyone*. As an author-publisher, I would no longer be able to hire an editor or a cover artist. Which means I would no longer be able to produce quality books.

I would have to onboard my editor as an employee every time I needed her, pay her by the hour not by the word, then fire her when she was done.

I could get around cover art by purchasing pre-made art, which is buying IP.

It’s also possible that a court could rule that authors are employees of the publisher, which would be absolutely terrible because then the publisher owns the book. Publishers might have to get around this by not providing editing/feedback, and the author can’t hire an editor, and...

 Basically, this would absolutely destroy publishing. I can think of workarounds such as author’s cooperatives.

The point is that if you need somebody to run your business they must be an employee. Which makes absolute sense if that person is working for you 40 hours a week...or even 5 hours a week.

It’s an undue burden if they are working for you 30 hours a year. Or once ever for 5 hours.

The point is to make us hire people, but we can’t. Instead, the only option for me and other self publishers will be to let down our readers either by ceasing publication or by producing inferior work.

If you enjoy self published books, if you enjoy books by diverse authors, if you enjoy weird shit that the big publishers won’t take a risk on, then please contact your Representative and Senator.

Do not tell them to vote against the PRO Act unless there’s no other choice. Tell them to push for an amendment to either carve out exemptions to the ABC Test or replace it for a more sensible test.

Biden has already promised to sign this. (Consider contacting the White House too).

If you are an artist who ever does work for a publisher, if you are an author yourself, talk about how it will affect your business.

If you are a reader, talk about how it will affect publishing as a whole.

I realize this all sounds like a capitalist argument, but wouldn’t you rather have your favorite independent authors writing and not doing a ton of paperwork every time they release a new book...and wouldn’t you rather read books that had been edited by a person not the author?

To explain, if I have to onboard an editor as an employee, I have to:

1. Have them fill out a W-4 form.

2. Verify their immigration status.

3. Register them with the state. Brakes on! My editor is in a different state. I just got nexus in that state...which will last for years. Now I can’t sell books directly to people in that state without collecting sales tax. And I don’t even know HOW you do it when your employee is in a different state. This involves four different sets of paperwork.

4. Pay worker’s compensation, so if they get carpal tunnel working for me they’re covered. Given I can’t actually control their working conditions but am now liable for them.

5. Send them half a dozen OSHA and safety notices.

Then I have to have them track their time and bill me by the hour. Again, you can no longer charge by the word. I have to pay payroll taxes (which they normally do themselves for all of their projects at once).

Then when the project is DONE, I have to fire them, so I’m not paying worker’s comp until the next book is finished. Then do all of this AGAIN even if it’s the same editor.

This compares to one single tax form and a contract.

Then I have to do this all again for my cover artist.

Either my costs go up significantly, or I have to take workers’ comp out of the amount I’m paying them. So ONE of us loses a ton of money and BOTH of us waste a ton of time.

(My editor that I use will probably stop editing if this happens).

If I don’t do this, I could be fined $30,000...per violation...which would not just put me out of business but wipe out my savings.

If you value independent publishing, then please, again, tell your representative and senator how you feel about the ABC test.

Oh, and it also:

1. Destroys the owner-operator model of trucking. Prices on everything will go up and large companies that can employ their own drivers will benefit. I.e., straight into Bezos’ pocket.

2. May impact the ability of construction companies to hire subcontractors. It’s really murky at this point.

I’m going to have to consult a lawyer if this goes through and I may pay a few hundred dollars to find out I have to polish up my resume.

And how ridiculous this is has already been shown with AB5 in California. I want them to come up with a test which nails Uber, Door Dash, etc, but not entire industries.

[pl-panda]

The vines that bind us - Chapter 2

Chapter 1 || Next

-----

Until a trip to Gotham came knocking on the front doors

“I can’t believe Lie-la of all people managed to somehow get us the trip to Gotham!” Mari moaned with a mixed expression on her face.

Adrien, who was walking next to them, showed absolute disgust. “Technically, It was my father and I that did the heavy lifting. She really wanted to go to the Wayne Gala and…”

“What Lie-la wants, Lie-la gets.” The three finished in unison before laughing a bit. 

“Don’t worry Mari-bear. I can promise you that this no good liar won’t get to ruin your return home.” Chloe pulled her best friend closer. Best friend. Much better than a servant. Who would’ve thought? “And we can even try to find your mom on free Saturday.”

“Yeah…” The girl with black-blue hair didn’t seem particularly cheerful at that. 

“Now I refuse to have you making sad faces throughout the whole flight. You cheer up right this moment and that’s an order!” The blonde commanded. 

“Yes, Maman-bear.” Mari giggled.

The three of them finally arrived at the rest of the class, who were already gathered around madame Bustier. Of course, Lila was bragging about a million different things, but the three paid her no mind. Adrien did his best to hide behind the girls, cherishing the last moments of freedom. Finally, Mari and Chloe had to step forward for their tickets. The blonde got hers without any problem, but for Mari there turned out to be none.

“I’m so so sorry Marinette!” Lila said with fake regret. “I must have accidentally miscounted the number of students… It must’ve been when I was helping those poor orphans. You know, at…”

“Sure…” Mari didn’t even try to act as if she believed her for a moment. When Lila scowled, realizing that it didn’t affect the girl, she smiled. “I guess Chlo, Adrien and I will have to go with the contingency plan number 1.” 

“What?!” The sausage-hair shouted.

“Of course my Daddy would not send us to travel like peasants. We have tickets for the first class.” Chloe supplied, looking smugly. “We did plan to maybe sit with the rest of the class. What a shame…”

“Yeah, My dad also didn’t want me to travel anything less, but I convinced him to let me stay with my friends. Guess he will get what he wanted in the end.” For his part, Adrien at least tried to look apologetic. He didn’t try hard at all, but it’s the thought that counts, right?

“But… But…” Lila tried to come up with something, likely a lie, to counter it. She didn’t have time as the trio handed their teacher the filled forms from their parents/guardians/Nathalie and proceeded to the plane. The tickets were personal, so she couldn’t do anything. The Italian girl came up with a lie to tell to the class, but it would do no good until they landed. 

--------

“Did you see her face?” Plagg was rolling in the air while holding a giant roll of camembert. 

“You were amazing my queen.” Pollen complimented. 

“I still can’t believe your dad just… bought out the whole first class!” Marinette sighed. 

“Phi! Daddy always gives me only the best. You should know it by now, Mari-bear.”

“Okay. Mari. You are the Gotham expert here. Any advice?” Adrien asked a bit more seriously. 

“Gotham survival guide is probably unlike any other city.” She started. “The first rule is, believe it or not, run away if a person laughs too much or smiles too widely. The downside of living in the same city as the Joker is that most people don’t laugh in public. Secondly, never show that you are lost. Wherever you are, it’s exactly where you wanted to be. Finally, the third is to never flaunt your wealth.” She looked critically at Chloe before taking away her purse and lipstick in a golden case. “This,” She then pulled a mobile phone in a ridiculously sparkly case and popped it out of the cover, “this,” finally, she detached the golden chain on which the purse was supposed to be suspended and replaced it with a pre-prepared white one with copper clips, “and this must all go away.” 

“Ridiculous! Utterly Ridiculous! Now it will totally clash with my comb!” Chloe complained.

“Oh no! How will you ever survive that?” Mari deadpanned. All three of them had another burst of laughter. After they calmed, Adrien started.

“Do you think it’s wrong that I want to bet which rule will Lila break first?”

“Ten macaroons she will say out-loud about money.” Mari threw. 

“I raise, four tea parties she will start by asking for direction.” Chloe had a grin on her face

“Are you sure?” Adrien asked. When the blonde nodded, he shrugged. “Movie night and double popcorn bowl refill that she will do both in one conversation.”

“Hi, could you be so kind to point me to my exclusive hotel? You know, I’m staying at the penthouse of this luxurious new one.” Mari gave a quite good parody of Lilia. 

“So to sum up, the pool is now ten Macaroons, Four Tea parties, and movie night with triple popcorn?” Chloe asked. When they nodded, she quickly noted it on her phone. 

“Now, who wants a movie? I think they have the newest Thomas Astruck one.” Adrien pulled a disc from the container next to his seat.

“Good for me!/Go!” The girls said. Chloe, who was in the middle loaded it and the other two leaned onto her to watch together. The three were happy. Faintly in the background, there was knocking on the doors to their part, but nobody paid attention to very angry Liela and some classmates. For some reason, the doors were stuck and the blinder rolled down. Later if someone asked, Pollen would deny everything. 

------------

When the plane landed, the class was practically kicked out. The team walked calmly down the stairs, all of them having smug expressions. Lila wanted to comment, but a glare from Mme. Bustier shut her up quickly. Mari and co. would later try to guess, what got the crew so pissed at their classmates.

Once everyone was accounted for, the class made its way to the customs to retrieve their luggage. There was a small problem with Mari’s travel bag as it was apparently misplaced to the flight to Timbuktu, but luckily her true suitcase, which had her things inside, arrived safely. She giggled at the thought of custom office in Timbuktu receiving a bag full of Adrien’s old socks that smelled camembert. 

Overall, the airport went mostly unproblematic. At least until they found themselves cleared and gathered in one place while Mme Bustier left to check on their bus. One of the men, wearing a dark blue suit started to laugh almost maniacally. Everybody immediately cleared away from him, out of sheer self-preservation. Lila must’ve decided that a show of kindness was a good way to regain class’ good grace. She was confidently approaching the man before suddenly Mari grabbed her and pulled her away. The designer might’ve despised the liar, but Joker… you don’t mess with Joker. 

Of course, Lila used the chance. She faked falling on the ground and started crying crocodile tears. “Marinette?! How can you be so heartless? I wanted *sniff* to check on the man and you trip me?” Lila sniffled, eyes watering with crocodile tears.

“I might have saved your life genius!” Mari snapped. Joker was a really touchy subject with her. “Does the world Killer Clown mean something?”

“Don’t invent things, you bully!” Alya shouted. That seemed to break the dam and at once the class started to say awful things to Mari. A year ago, it would hurt her. Half a year ago, she would be sad. Now? Now she pitied them. Chloe didn’t, and she was ready to jump to protect her best friend. 

“Ridiculous! Do you like… share a single brain cell? What if that man was…” she didn’t get to finish because Mme. Bustier returned. The commotion immediately calmed. By now the man stopped laughing and returned to talking with his friends.

“The bus is waiting. Come on children. Follow me.”

----------------

Arriving at the hotel, the class was split into different rooms. Of course, Lila tried to lie her way into some privilege, but Mari was too dead inside to care. The Jet Lag was killing her. At least she got some sleep on the plane. From the rumors she heard from the class, they didn’t because of Lila’s drama with the staff. 

“Now I want you all to be ready here at eight a.m. sharp. A Wayne Enterprises representative will come here to explain the details of internships.” Mme. Bustier instructed them. This, for some reason, caused outrage in students.

“What do you mean internships?!”

“Wayne Enterprises?”

“Shouldn’t we be preparing to go to Gotham Academy or something?”

The terrible trio in the back had trouble holding back laugher. Adrien warned the girls about what his father planned, so they could all prepare. Gabriel Agreste, devious as he is, decided to punish Lila and teach Adrien something about running a company at the same time and using his connections to put the class up for an internship at WE. He did send the liar all the details, but she must have skimmed over the corporate jargon because the class was fed overexaggerated stories about what they would and wouldn’t do during two months trip. 

Most parents were more than happy to send their children away from Paris for two months, especially since the Internship was free and the employment rate after it was quite high. WE kept quite a lot of the interns, if only out of habit. But perhaps it was mostly because the class has become a go-to place for the Akuma. Only Mr. Pidgeon and perhaps Gigantitan were akumatized more often. Mari actually picked up to cleansing their class weekly through a ritual she learned, otherwise there would be enough residual dark energy to power a demon portal. Not something one would want in the middle of a classroom.

“I was told you’ve all read the brochure provided and Lila summarised it for you.”

“I did!” The sausage hair defended. “Marinette must have told them some imaginary story about the trip!”

Immediately, several other people started to nod and confirm this. Chloe actually started to walk toward the liar almost red, but Mari grabbed the back of her blazer and held her in place. All the while she had a completely deadpan expression like it was normal for her (it was).

Mme. Bustier sighed. “Well, In that case, I will…”

“Excuse me, but shouldn’t we be going to sleep today already? We don’t want to be late tomorrow.” Adrien asked with an innocent expression, but there was some satisfaction hidden there too.

“Well… um… I…”

“We will be going then.” Chloe grabbed the key and led Mari to their room. Calline didn’t even question it. She wanted a pay raise after this. 

-----------

The next morning, Mari was woken by a frantic Chloe

“Mari-bear! It’s already late! You don’t want to be late for your first day of Internship girl! It would be utterly Ridiculous!” 

At first, the girl mumbled something, but once she finally processed everything she leaped out of her bed and started getting ready in record time. She was brushing her teeth, packing her purse, and tossing clothes at her best friend all at once. Once she had everything, she turned to see Chloe on the ground tied with a gray blazer. Mari just burst out laughing.

“How…”

“Ridiculous!” Chloe shook her head. “I demand you untie me this instant! We don’t have time for this!”

Once they dressed and did their hair, both girls were ready. Chloe now had a black button-down shirt, deep red blazer, and a matching pencil skirt. Mari also made her wear smart black stilettos (instead of her usual that were slightly more extravagant). The look was completed by a tablet in leather flip-over cover. Mari had a similar outfit, except her shirt was white and the suit was in dark blue. She opted for flat shoes to spare the embarrassment that was Marigold on heels.

“Ready to rock Gotham City?”

“Like you have to ask.” Mari smiled. There was something about the city of crime that made her feel safe and open up more. Maybe being on home turf gave her the much-needed confidence boost. 

When Chloe tried to open the doors, she found them stuck. She was about to go on a rant about poor quality when Mari casually grabbed the doorknob and twisted it. There was a faint creaking sound as the mechanism gave.

“Um…”

“It must’ve been old,” Chloe said with a devious grin. “Nothing happened. Don’t you worry! I will deal with it.”

---------------

When the doors to the elevator opened and two girls strode into the lobby, their class was already pushing toward the exit. Adrien looked very much uncomfortable with Lila hanging off his arm, literally sinking her claws into him. He mouthed them a muted ‘later’. Alya stared at the girls with loathing. 

“Ah, you are here.” Mme. Bustier spoke. “Lila said…”

“Whatever.” Chloe dismissed their teacher. “Aren’t we in rush?” The blonde practically seethed the last word. 

“Yes, good to see that someone is responsible.” The teacher gave Mari a pointed look. Apparently, she still didn’t get over the fact that she resigned from the class rep position. 

“But…”

“Drop it. She is not worth it.” Chloe whispered. “Daddy will take care of that once we are done.”

Mari just nodded. She knew Chloe was preparing a lawsuit against the school, but their hands were tied until they graduated or Damocles could try and undermine it. Both girls knew that no adult would help them with the lawsuit beyond Chloe’s father signing whatever dotted line she asked him to. That man was more whipped than a fresh can of whipped cream. 

The ride to the WE was short and uneventful. Girls took up to gossiping in English, effectively limiting any eavesdropping. Mari spent most of the time tearing down the outfits of all the villains. She started with Riddler, more as a joke than actual rant, but then she somehow got onto this new guy Anarky. From there, she just kept on, smoothly sailing from one to the next. Even her mom got some shots. Mari still couldn’t stand how skimpy it was. Her rant carried over when they exited the bus and entered the WE. Security led them to a conference room, where they were told to take seats. 

Mari guessed that it wouldn’t be Lila if she didn’t immediately start sputtering lies about how well she knew the building already because of her Damiboo giving her private tours (All while clutching Adrien like a leech). She didn’t have enough ducks left to give to try to expose Lila about several facts. Such as that Damian Wayne definitely wasn’t living with Bruce when he was five. Any Gothamite could tell her that. Bored, she returned to her rant. 

She was nearing the end of the list and was very much engaged in complimenting Harley Queen for her recent change in wardrobe. She still considered it a disaster, but at least it was somehow human. 

“Ekhm…” A voice broke her out of the rant. “Good morning. My name is Richard Grayson. You are the french class chosen for the internship program, correct?” When people nodded, he continued. Idly, Mari noted that Alya and Lila stiffened and suddenly stopped talking at all. “We reviewed the individual profiles and appointed each of you a mentor that will help you settle into your roles. As I read the names, please come forward so I can update your badges. Do carry them on your person all the time or we will have to take you to our human cloning facility.”

People stared at him. 

“Okaaay… That’s that about jokes…” He sighed. “The rules will be explained by individual departments. Now, who’s up for a tour?” 

People started to cheer at that and Dick smiled. Maybe it wouldn’t be that bad?

-----------------

It was that bad. Even worse. He knew from the background check that the class was both insanely talented… and borderline criminal. It was like someone de-aged the Rogues and put them in one class. The report called them Akuma class, which (if google is to be believed) meant demons. He questioned how they got accepted into the internship. 

They only toured two floors when Dick wanted to tear half of them to shreds. He noted immediately that they were bullying the girl with black (slightly blue? Maybe it was dyed?) hair. What surprised him was that the teacher didn’t react. If he was to be honest, the girl and her friend slightly irritated him too. They kept talking and seemed to ignore him. It was not because they kept tearing down each and every bats’ fashion choices. Definitely not that. When they brought up Discowing he had enough. 

“Ekhm. Excuse me, girls,” he stared at them. Both immediately stopped talking and looked at him. “Could you pay attention? I wouldn’t want any of you to waste your internship lost on our maze-testing floor.”

“There is no maze-testing floor in this building.” The blonde pointed out.

“And besides, we memorized all you’ve said.”

“Care to recall?” He heard several people groan at his pun.

“The first floor is most representative, where guests are welcome and low-level meetings happen. There is a separate kitchen for employers there that is always fresh on fruits. Don’t use the coffee machine there as it was only patched up and there is a high chance it will set itself on fire again. The…”

“Fine. You’re good. Still, I don’t appreciate the chatter.”

“They are always trouble!” A girl in bright pink colors shouted. 

“Yeah! Why do you have to ruin this trip for Lila!?”

“You’re just jealous of her boyfriend!”

More voices like this came from the crowd of kids. Dick started to feel bad that he singled the girls out. It definitely gave the class a reason to gang up on them. And the teacher still did nothing! He sighed. What did HR think when they accepted them. He would have to look into it later.

--------------

Mari decided that she didn’t like Dick. Everyone in their class kept talking, but for some reason, he singled them out. For the rest of the trip, she made sure to pay as much attention as she could. There was this silent determination on her face. Chloe wisely also kept silent. 

After the trip class was led back to the conference room where another employer handed out the identificators and folders containing their assignments. 

“Keep the IDs on you at all times. As opposed to the ones you received, this won’t expire and are synched with your jobs, so you will have access to anything you might need. They are also mandatory to receive lunch in our canteen. When you get acquainted with your tasks, you can go to the level specified at the end of sheet one. Your mentor will meet you there.” With that, he left. Dick really needed to do some in-depth research on this class. Something kept icking his detective sense.

“Well, I’m going to the law department. Apparently whoever made the assignments knew my well.” Chloe bragged to her friend after opening the folder. 

Timidly, Mari also opened her folder. She skimmed over what was inside and groaned. “Apparently, I’m interning as personal assistant to one Tim Drake.”

“They actually assigned you to the sleep-deprived coffee addict?” Chloe asked in disbelief.

“You know him?” She asked in surprise

“He and his brother ruined my daddy’s parties two years ago. They got into an argument that ended up with them wrestling over a cake. It took me weeks to get the cake out of my hair! Weeks!” The blonde summarized.

“oh…” Mari tried to hold back the giggles.

“Don’t laugh! It’s a serious matter! Do you have any idea how much work it takes to have such a perfect hair?!”

“Of course… cakehead.” The girl couldn’t stop herself.

“Ugh, you… you… plant leg.” Chloe said.

“Really?” Mari raised an eyebrow. “That’s the best you can come with?”

“Well, I usually have better things to do than thinking about good insults.” Still, Chloe hugged her best friend. “Be careful. I wouldn’t put it past The Liar to try and sabotage you somehow.”

“I’ll be careful. Wish me luck.”

-----

The elevator took Mari all the way to the highest floor. When the doors opened, she stepped int a large room with one desk. As soon as the doors closed, the woman who was standing there rushed toward her. The girl tensed for a moment but she reminded herself that there is no real threat.

“Oh finally! I was asking them to hire someone else for months!” She had a messed bun of red hair on her head and looked like she didn’t sleep in a week.

“But… I’m just an intern madame!” Mari tried to explain.

“An intern?” The woman paused her packing and stared at the girl with wide eyes.

“Um… Madame Sarah Jackson?” 

“Yes. An intern…” She said in a disappointed voice to herself. “Ah! That’s no problem at all!” She started to tap on her Waynetech Tablet and after a moment she smiled. “There! You’re hired!”

“Wha…?!” Mari shouted, but was interrupted when Sarah pushed the tablet into her hand, followed by a large box full of documents and a small mug with a coffee bean pointing a gun at the reader and words ‘Your Coffee or your life!’.

“They are your problem now! Everything you need is in the box. I left detail about ongoing stuff and whatever you might need. Don’t call. I’m outta here!” She shouted before grabbing her personal belonging and leaping into the elevator.

“But…! But…!?” Mari shouted after the closing doors. She could hear a cheerful shout as the elevator left the level. 

--------------------------------------

Next

[crystalelemental]

Okay, I’ve done it.  I’ve broken past the barrier in Bravely Default 2, and discovered my own strategy that actually works.  We’ve cleared three more trials and all the rare monsters.

Here’s the rundown:

SETH Shieldbearer/White Mage

Counter-Savvy - Dodge counter-attacks. (Ranger)

Indomitable Will - prevents status that prevents turn actions (Berserker)

Fast Hands - Turns shield speed penalties to bonuses (Shieldbearer)

Sub-Class Specialty 1

Sub-Class Specialty 2 (may drop)

GLORIA Spiritmaster/Bard

Noble Sacrifice - When KO'd, revives all allies (Oracle)

Sub-Job Specialty 2 - Can double up on Song buffs (Bravebearer)

Magic Crit - Magic can crit (Red Mage)

Critical Amp - 30% more crit damage (Phantom)

Counter-Savvy - Dodge counterattacks

ELVIS Ranger/Phantom

Critical Amp - 30% more damage on crit (Phantom)

Sub-Job Specialty 1 - Activates first sub-job's passive (Spiritmaster)

Counter-Savvy - Dodge counter skills (Ranger)

Brute Force - 50% bonus damage if you use four actions (Beastmaster)

Surpassing Power - Exceeds damage limit (Hellblade)

ADELLE Red Mage/Black Mage

Magic Critical - Magic can crit (Red Mage)

Critical Amp - Boosts crit damage 30% (Phantom)

Counter-Savvy - Dodge counterattacks. (Ranger)

Indomitable Will - Prevents status that prevents turn moves (Berserker)

Subclass Specialty 2

To be honest, it’s the Elvis show now.  Ranger is stupid good.  Turns out, Humanoid Slayer with all these offense boosting skills is great damage.  Further turns out, Ranger makes it so you get 1BP back every time you crit with those skills.  Turns out again, Phantom gives a 50% chance to crit whenever you hit a vulnerability.  Which is always with the Slayer skills.  With four actions, if you hit two of those coin flips, you’ve regained 2BP.  Once you can unlock Spiritmaster bonus levels, you can get the last two spirit skills, one of which gives 1BP periodically.  That means you cap right back out, and can just...do it again.  And with sub-Bard, you can apply buffs, then let him take a turn immediately afterward to quickly finish a threatening opponent.  The only consideration is MP.  This is really the hard part.  Seth exists to block hits, but most of his BP goes to healing items, which are great and all, but does mean White Mage is pretty much worthless.  I’m legitimately considering switching him to Bastion, just for added defensive measure, and having Adelle swap to Salvemaker/Phantom.  If I’m understanding it right, Phantom’s second skill should activate Salvemaker’s first, guaranteeing that you get the items you use back and the crafting is free.  Find a good MP and HP recovery combo and boom, free infinite energy.  My only hesitation is...man, I like magic classes, and this would literally just be all physical.  I mean, it’s working, but I’m sad about it.  I wish there were a better combination with magic.  I may have to take a look eventually, but for now, this seems like the best comp I can build.  Elvis is absolutely tearing shit apart.

First we beat Dragoon/Spiritmaster/Oracle.  Honestly, it was obnoxious and took a few tries, but we did eventually get it.  Mostly, Dragoon was the threat.  Super Jump is ridiculous.  I have no idea how to handle it.  It was ultimately just luck that she stayed on the ground and Elvis started getting shots in.  But once that was unlocked, it was over.

White Mage/Red Mage/Vanguard/Ranger were easy.  I expected a much scarier fight, but we actually cleared it first try.  Elvis was just dealing that much damage to the mages.  And the added 1BP periodically meant it was super easy to keep up with everything.

Hellblade/Phantom/Monk also went down.  They were a bit tougher just because their damage was so high, but Phantom couldn’t heal, so that’s easy, and Hellblade just spams healing moves when he caps BP, which is a great cycle because Elvis out-damages him.

We’re still working on Arcanist/Berserker/Pictomancer (the cool kid’s club) and Bravebearer/Black Mage/Bastion (bastard central).  But I think I can get them with a few more levels under my belt.  We’re 67 now, I’ll try again at 70.  And thankfully, I realized that we have equipment that can completely shut down EXP gain, so I don’t over-level for fights.  Small favors.

[joon-ipersgirl]

“inked heart” - jjk oneshot

genre: friends to lovers!au, fluff, a teensy dash of angst

pairing: tattoo artist!guk x tattoo artist!reader (f)

summary: jeon jungkook, a rising star in the tattoing world, is looking to take home best large black and white piece at the 25th annual milano tattoo convention. already one to watch from his previous wins as a young artist, pressures rise when his model for the competition cancels half an hour before the show. 

always there when he needs you, you offer to be his model but jungkook is reluctant, especially when the piece is in a more... intimate place. and the fact that he’s been in love with you for the better part of two years. jungkook isn’t too sure how he’s going to survive the next three hours, not when you ask him if he thinks you’re attractive. 

caught between a rock and a hard place, does he lie to you and himself when the prize is on the line? it’s go big or go home...

word count: 5.9k

warnings: some guk pining, cursing, mentions of heartbreaker jimin, the smallest dash of angst about not winning, tattoo artist yoongi

a/n: my first guk piece! thank you guys so much for the love on the preview, especially your comments. they honestly make my day. i hope this lives up to your expectations and you enjoy it just as much. this was a random idea i had and i love tattooed guk so here we are. i tried my best to make sure all the tattoo things were accurate so if they aren’t sorry in advance 😭 this was a lot of fun to write and i’m actually debating on writing some other things for this couple (especially for guk’s birthday), but i’m not sure yet. let me know if y’all are interested though and i’ll see what i can come up with. as always, thank you vi for supporting my shenanigans and reading this like four times lmao. feedback is always welcomed and highly appreciated. enjoy everyone! 

full masterlist // drabbles

Jungkook’s body buzzed with excitement as he squeezed past the bustling bodies at the 25th annual Milano Tattoo Convention. His fourth year at the world’s largest tattooing competition with a chance to take home the prize for “Best Large Black & White” piece against four hundred incredible artists had Jungkook amped up and ready to go. Some of his inspirations - legends in the game - were mere feet away from him as he browsed the almost endless stations filled with merchandise, displays of new tattoo designs, and occupied benches with models. There was almost nothing he enjoyed more than being around the sound of buzzing guns and filling sheets of half-filled paper with sketches his brain had no issues conjuring up but sometimes struggled to complete. Well, except food. And video games. And you. Not really the point though.

He’d been tattooing for almost six years now, from the moment he’d been able to convince Yoongi to let him be his apprentice. Jungkook had wasted no time in starting his own personal tattoo collection, quickly filling in a full sleeve on his right arm going across his right pectoral and another upper half sleeve on his left. Now, he was making his own name in the art world, commissioning pieces solely off his ability to execute various styles well with very little practice. Jungkook was a jack of all trades and very nearly a master of all. He was a risk-taker and it had paid off for him during his time at Milano, taking home “Best Small Black & White” his second year at the ripe age of twenty, and then “Best Medium Black & White” the following year. Yoongi could barely believe it when the judges called his name and announced him the winner but Jungkook knew his mentor’s chest was swollen with pride. This time, though, there were bigger fish to fry - “Best Large Black & White” in a style Jungkook had just begun feeling comfortable with: fine line tattoos.

He paused at the Killer Ink booth where Hori Kashi was working on a beautiful traditional koi fish upper half sleeve design as his phone buzzed. An Instagram notification.

_petuniablooms: hey jungkook! im so sorry this is last minute but i won’t be able to make the convention to be your model. I got a bad case of food poisoning from dinner last night. i hope this doesn’t cost you the comp. but when you’re back in the country, maybe i can schedule an appt? sorry again!

Jungkook blinked slowly. She couldn’t make it? This was not part of his plan. She was supposed to be here in the next half an hour so he would have enough time to complete his piece for judging in four hours. As one of the younger artists at the convention and with immense amounts of talent, people wondered how long Jungkook would be able to sustain his efforts, especially after taking home prizes in one of the major categories two years in a row. Most of them thought he would burn out after his second year or third year, but here he was. Competitive by nature, Jungkook wanted to prove them wrong - that he really did have what it took to be one of the best in the game. A legend in his own right. He shoved his phone back into his black cargo pants pocket and tugged on his curling brown locks. What was he going to do now?

“Guk! Hey, Guk!” He could barely make out your petite frame as you shoved and elbowed your way through the throngs of folk gathered around booths. You were set on getting to him though, your smaller form not holding you back from covering the distance, your brow set in determination whenever he did get glimpses of your face in the crowd.

That was something Jungkook admired about you: your no-nonsense-get-it-done attitude. Friends for almost three years now, he’d seen the way you’d taken charge of almost every opportunity that came your way. You didn’t take no as the final answer and if you couldn’t find a way to make it happen, you created your own. Either way, you got it done. As the first lead female tattoo artist at your shop, Sin City, you’d also made a name for yourself in the tattooing world as a specialist in black and white shading. Your signature though was the three-color-combination color style you developed for your color tattoos. That’s how the two of you had met - the year he’d won “Best Small Black & White”, you’d taken home “Best Medium Color” - and the two of you hadn’t looked back since.

“Gosh, there’s so many people here. It was so hard to find you. I knew I should have checked the Kashi booth first,” you said after finding a pocket of space next to him and hugging his torso.

“Y/N, it’s a convention. Of course there’s going to be a lot of people here,” he replied, wrapping his arms around you, subconsciously looking for comfort in your touch.

Though the two of you mostly had conflicting schedules due to the demand for your work, you did your best to make time for one another. Jungkook had grown accustomed to seeing you every few weeks for lunch or on Friday nights with beer and chicken for Marvel movie marathon weekends. He didn’t dwell on it too much - how ridiculously domestic a lot of your traditions were - not wanting to shake the table and send the precariously perched house of cards pyramid the two of you had created crashing to the ground, upsetting the balance of your friendship. No, Jungkook would leave those thoughts right where they were.

He more felt than saw you roll your eyes as you said, “Yes, Guk. Conventions have lots of people. This just seems like a health and safety hazard though.” Jungkook squeezed you as you pressed closer to him, slightly uncomfortable as more people gathered in the area.

“Alright, let’s go,” he replied, reminding himself to search for the finished koi design afterward as the two of you walked away. “How’d your piece go?”

“So fucking good!” you beamed and turned your face towards him. He couldn’t help but smile back. “Though I don’t know if it’ll win this year, the guy seemed to be really pleased and that’s all that matters. Plus, t-shirt sales have gone up. Like way up! Speaking of which, you should buy one. My t-shirt design on your body?” you did the chef’s kiss, “Impeccable!” you exclaimed and grinned.

Your smile was another thing Jungkook admired about you. The faintest dimples appeared when you did and there was almost never a moment when he couldn’t not smile with you. It was a smile that reached your twinkling eyes and illuminated your face with a glow. Like right now, as you’re striking poses and modeling your black and white cityscape background covered with your shop’s name in a candy red color, a tattoo gun positioned to finish the last line of the last letter on the white tee in the middle of the crowded aisle in some of the shortest shorts he’s ever seen you wear in public. When did you get those?

“You know what would look good on my body?” you asked as the pair of you carried on walking. Me, he thought, but knew where this conversation was really going. “One of your tattoo designs!”

Jungkook sighed. “Y/N, we’ve already talked about this -”

“I know, Guk, but you literally have no reason to not tattoo me,” you whined. “You’ve tattooed every single one of your other friends! Hell, even Yoongi has a tattoo by you.”

“Yoongi has what?” the older man asked as he bumped into you two as you passed the registration booth.

“A tattoo by Jungkook,” you pouted, arms crossed.

It wasn’t that Jungkook didn’t want to tattoo you. He just didn’t want to fuck up a design that would be permanently etched into your skin for the rest of your life. He wanted to create something that was beautiful for you, something that really conveyed the importance of your presence in his life, but every time he sat down to do so, nothing seemed good enough. You’d been seriously begging him for the better part of a year to do something - anything - but he’d refused saying that he didn’t have the time. Secretly, he just didn’t want to fail and let you down.

“Ah, that age-old debate. It’ll happen one day, kid,” Yoongi said as he patted your shoulder gently. “What time are you setting up, Jeon? Your model’s supposed to be here soon, right?” Yoongi asked.

“Fuck!” Jungkook shouted, tugging on his hair and startling a few people around him. “Fuck, fuck, fuck! I don’t have one. She can’t make it. I have to find someone else,” he yelled as he took off, no destination really in mind.

“Wait! Guk -” you called after him but he didn’t stop.

Sometimes, being around you was dangerous as Jungkook could quite literally forget what it was he needed to be doing. There was just something about you that made him lose focus, just a little bit. He couldn’t have that right now. Jungkook needed to be on his A-game, scouting a model that would give him consent in - he checked his phone - twelve minutes.

The one time Jungkook needed someone to be interested in his work, there wasn’t a single soul around. Where had all the people who were begging him to schedule them in for a quick session disappeared to? None of the people passing by were interested in getting a random, floral design done by Jeon Jungkook today, unfortunately. It was as though the devil of the tattoo underworld had cursed him the one time he could have used some luck for the sole purpose of being entertained. Circling back to the D-Town Tattoos booth, Jungkook was running out of options. Shit.

“There you are!” you wheezed as you came to a halt and rested your hands on the table in front of you. “Fuck, I forgot how fast you are.”

“Y/N, I don’t have time. I have to find a model -”

“Why don’t you just use Y/N?” Yoongi asked as he calmly took a seat next to his bench, a tall young man following behind him.

“I couldn’t -” Jungkook spluttered, eyes wide.

“Like you said, Jeon, you don’t have time,” Yoongi reminded him, setting up his work station for his client.

Jungkook looked over at you, still slightly hunched over and trying to catch your breath. This was not how he’d wanted to do this. “Are you sure, Y/N? I don’t know if -”

“Fuck yeah, dude!” you said interrupting him. “100%. Let’s do this!”

Jungkook watched as you made yourself comfortable on his workbench, waiting for him to get started. The fact that you weren’t nervous only added to his apprehension, the fear of potentially disappointing you resurfacing and rising in his gut. It felt like he was taking a risk with stakes much higher than he was willing to bet on, but the trust you had in him had him saying, “Okay. Fill out the consent forms and I’ll pull up the design.”

“What are we working with?” you asked curiously, handing the clipboard back over to him, not really reading it and only signing your name in the designated spots.

“Thigh piece,” he murmured, concentrating on finding the correct sketch on his iPad.

“Sounds fun. I know it’s going to be amazing, Guk. Don’t worry,” you reassured him. He smiled warily as you gave his shoulder a tender squeeze.

Nodding more to himself than you, he showed you the design. @_petuninablooms, like her name suggested, loved flowers. So much so, she’d wanted a full piece dedicated to that specific flower as well as whatever other floral arrangements she thought Jungkook could make look pretty against her skin. She’d won his Instagram contest to be his model for free at the convention because of her sentimental design and background as a botanist, something that piqued Jungkook’s interest. Though he was proud of the design, it didn’t seem to fit you.

“I don’t know, Y/N. I don’t know if it’ll fit your style,” he said, gesturing to your upper half sleeve. The three faces of Frida Khalo, Nefertiti, and Tomoe Gozen were beautifully designed and organized by you as a symbol of feminine unity - embodying passion, leadership, and grace. A much edgier piece than what currently sat on the screen of his iPad designed for his winner, he wasn’t sure how you’d feel about the softer image.

“I told you, Guk. You could tattoo anything on me and I’d be happy. Maybe even more happy than if you’d let me tattoo you. I just want to have something of yours on me - support your craft, you know? Besides,” you said zooming in on the flowers, your gold rings shining in the light, “I like petunias.” Jungkook wasn’t sure if you were only saying this to make him feel better, but he was grateful for your encouragement anyway.

“Uh, I’m going to need you to take your shorts off,” he said hesitantly. “Yoongi, this isn’t against the rules, right? Like having another artist sit for you?” Jungkook asked, turning to give you some privacy though anyone walking past would be able to see you shimmy out of them as there was no curtain or door to shield you.

“Nope. Not that I’ve read,” Yoongi replied, concentrating on his design. Jungkook nodded, steeling himself to focus and get the job done. What he wasn’t expecting was to see you adjusting the band of some very high-waisted, very skimpy, black panties. He nearly choked.

“Does this need to be further up? If not, I can take them off for you. I don’t -”

“No!” Jungkook cried out as he tore his eyes away from the curve of your ass. “I can just move the stencil. It’ll be fine,” he continued after clearing his throat.

“Okay,” you said awkwardly. Jungkook apologized for his outburst as he wheeled himself over to sit in front of you on his little stool. He was making a much bigger deal of this entire situation that it needed to be. He’d seen you in a bikini before, but something about seeing you in your underwear sitting before him was different.

“Relax, Jeon. It’s only a thigh!” Yoongi teased, his head down but his shit-eating grin very much present as he worked on the shading on his client’s forearm. Though Yoongi would never say anything to you out of respect for Jungkook, Jungkook knew Yoongi enjoyed putting him through the wringer whenever you were around.

“Not just a thigh! It belongs to me. My thigh is prime real estate, Min Yoongi. There’s a lot of artists that have been wanting to get in on this,” you joked. Jungkook laughed as he prepped your skin for placing the stencil with rubbing alcohol, hating the fact that he couldn’t feel your skin through the latex gloves but also grateful for the sensory blocker. He knew you were right though - lots of artists did want to work on you and have you walk around with their work as free endorsement of their skill. Honestly, this was a prime opportunity and he should make the most of it.

“Would you be okay with me changing this larger petunia into a mandala? I know you like those,” Jungkook suggested.

“Guk, this is your piece. I told you, I’m good with whatever,” you said cheerfully.

“Keep talking like that I’ll tattoo my name on your ass,” he quipped as he adjusted the design before placing it.

“Make it your face and we just may have a deal,” you shot back and Yoongi gagged from his corner. Jungkook did not want to think about the potential implication of those words.

He wasn’t sure if he’d be able to survive the next three and a half hours with you making suggestive comments while standing in your barely-there underwear, but he was going to have to. Of course, as friends, you’d always had the occasional flirty banter but the “Best Large Black & White” prize was calling his name and God did he want to win. He double-checked the placement of the design as it stretched from just above your hip bone to finish in the middle of your thigh. His adjustments were so precise, it covered the expanse of your thigh damn near perfectly. Jungkook grinned.

“Ready?” he asked, holding up a mirror as you checked out the placement, twisting from side to side.

“Yeah, looks great. How do you want me?”

Jungkook paused as he set up his rolling tray filled with his ink caps and laid out his sterilized needles. There were more than a few ways he could answer that but he settled on, “However you’re most comfortable. You’re going to be here for a while.”

You laughed and climbed onto the bench, giving Jungkook a perfect view of your ass, before you settled against the leather on your left side. Jungkook adjusted the height of his seat so he could position on your thigh with your bent knee resting against the bench and angled towards him. Confirming you were indeed comfortable, Jungkook gently rubbed the A&D ointment across the first section of the design, taking slightly longer than necessary, and got to work. There was a little over three hours to get it done.

He worked diligently as he traced the fine lines of the flower petals, slipping into his professional mode. A small crowd had gathered around the booth, intrigued to see him work on you. Most of the folks there knew about your friendship from social media and mutual community-work settings, how the two of you had bonded over your shared love of tattoos, but seeing the two of you together like this was a real treat. He didn’t feel any pressure as the cameras fought to get a glimpse of him working though. Jungkook did well under pressure but there was a lot riding on this one piece. For him and for you. He wouldn’t disappoint you though. He couldn’t. Not when you looked so peaceful as he worked on the tattoo. Jungkook would win and make you proud.

“Guk, I have a question.”

“What’s up?”

“Would you fuck me?” Jungkook was thankful he’d removed the needle from your skin to wipe off the extra ointment as there was no doubt in his mind he would have fucked up had it been there.

“What?” he asked, slightly breathless.

“Okay, maybe that was a bit vulgar. I guess what I mean is do you think I’m attractive? Like -” you tucked a loose strand of your hair behind your ear, “- a woman you’d spend the night with. Date long-term. That sort of thing,” you finished. Jungkook swallowed before he spoke.

“Uh, yeah. You’re an attractive person.” Jungkook replied, avoiding eye contact with you as he went back to tracing the lines and tried not to think of you under him, around him, on top of - “Why do you ask?”

“I don’t know. It’s been a while since I’ve been in a relationship - since anyone has even asked me on a date. Seokjin never called me back after we went for drinks that one time and Jimin - nevermind actually,” you sighed and Jungkook re-lived the memory of Park Jimin with you - the second man to break your heart in a matter of months. His face soured as he remembered how inconsolable you were the first few months after the breakup and how badly he’d wanted to take a baseball bat to Jimin’s very nice, very expensive car. “Maybe I’m unapproachable. Yoongi, am I unapproachable?” you called over to him.

“Yes,” he said dryly, not bothering to look at you. You scoffed in response.

“You’re never the best person to ask, you old man! People barely talk to you,” you murmured.

“Y/N, you’re great,” Jungkook said in response. “You’re more than great actually, but maybe now isn’t the time to get into a relationship?”

“Why not? I have a stable job, I’m cool -”

“Barely!” Yoongi called over. Jungkook watched you shoot Yoongi the finger before you began speaking again.

“- and I’m charming. It would be nice if someone could appreciate that too, someone that wasn’t only me.”

“Hey! I appreciate you!” Jungkook blurted out, slightly offended.

“Yeah, like a friend. Guk, you know you don’t -”

“Don’t say it. Don’t tell me I don’t count, Y/N.”

“But Jungkook -”

Jungkook paused and set his gun down. “No. No ‘but Guk’, Y/N. I appreciate you, more than you know or understand. I get that we’re friends and I know you value our friendship, but you don’t get to tell me I don’t count because you think you know how I feel about you. Please don’t let your perception of my words and actions let you label them “friendly” when they’re something else.” Jungkook picked his gun back up, avoiding your gaze again, slightly alarmed by his unplanned confession.

“What? What do you mean ‘something different’?” you asked, confused. “Was I supposed to read this any differently after you said -”

“You weren’t supposed to know. You weren’t supposed to find out - not like this at least,” he muttered. Taking a deep breath, he said, “Just don’t count me out okay, Y/N? Not this time. Can we talk about this later though? I just -”

Before he could finish, Jungkook’s alarm went off, signaling only an hour and a half left before he needed to be taking you for judgement. “Okay, Guk. I won’t count you out. Finish,” you said softly as you nodded to your tattoo and chewed your lip in thought.

With time against him, you and Jungkook no longer conversed, though the conversation rattled in his brain like loose change in a tin can. He would need much more than a penny for his thoughts if he wanted to get out of this situation. The hasty confession had Jungkook wondering if he’s said too much too soon. Had he finally sent the house of cards tumbling down? It’s not that he hadn’t wanted to say anything, but the fear of you not meaning what you’d said frightened him. Memories of the two of you curled up on his aging leather sofa flickered across his mind’s eye and he wondered if this fuck up was worse than the time he’d quickly denied having any romantic feelings for you the morning after a drunk confession and you’d reciprocated the feelings. It had taken a few months for things to return back to any type of normal, an uneasy tension having over you both whenever you’d met up. Every few seconds his eyes flitted to your face, hoping to catch a glimpse of whatever you were thinking sprawled across your forehead in your big, looping handwriting but your eyes were closed and your face fairly serene as you let him work in silence.

And work he did, shoving the thoughts to the back of his mind, finishing the last lines of the final petunia and filling in the mandala with various degrees of shading. He admired the delicacy of his work against your smooth skin, deciding it did suit you, much more than he could have hoped. Jungkook was actually slightly disappointed he was close to finishing, already missing the intimacy of working on you, but also eager to get you on stage so people could see his work. He’d gotten lost in the act like he usually did, concentration never breaking as the rest of the Milano Convention continued in full effect around him. Why had he waited so long to do this? You were a dream to work on, never flinching even as he finished up the minute shading of your tattoo, the worst part for many people. A true tattoo veteran with a hell of a pain tolerance. Roughly ten minutes left in the session, Jungkook wrapped up the piece.

“All done,” he said softly, wiping away the excess ointment and admiring his work briefly.

He heard you gasp as you propped yourself up to get a better view of it. “Holy fuck, Jungkook! It’s perfect. I love it!” you whispered in amazement and Jungkook smiled, relieved to not have disappointed you.

“Let me get some pictures, yeah?” You nodded and Jungkook snapped a few shots, promising to send them to you after the convention ended.

“Looks good, Jeon. And you got it done in time. You learned well,” Yoongi chuckled as Jungkook weakly punched his shoulder. “Are you happy, Y/N?” Yoongi asked as he packed up his spare equipment while his client waited patiently to be escorted to judging.

“Happy?” you scoffed, checking the tattoo out again in the mirror. “How about fucking ecstatic? I’m absolutely in love. Seriously Guk, thank you,” you beamed and launched yourself at him for a hug. Jungkook made eye contact with Yoongi as he held you tight in his arms, the older man relaying a silent message to his younger apprentice through raised eyebrows and crossed arms.

“Alright, alright. You can stare at it more later. We have to get to the judges and make it through all these people so,” Jungkook trailed off, letting you go while simultaneously ushering you out of their designated little space. Agreeing, you grabbed your teeny shorts and shoved your feet back into your sneakers. Jungkook stayed close behind you in an effort to cover your very visible, very exposed ass from peering eyes as you moved through the crowd. As much as he hated to admit it, he was really protective of you.

The trek to the judging station wasn’t as official as the name made it sound. It was really just a small stage raised a few inches above the ground with a table and enough chairs to seat the three judges as artists and their models were scored based on design, complexity, and overall execution. This year’s judges were Jung Hoseok of J’s Tailored Tattoos, Kim Namjoon of Mono & Moon, and Kim Taehyung of Vintage Vante. The three of them were rightfully deemed the gods of the tattoo world and Jungkook looked up to them immensely, each of them having numerous titles on the world stage in countries like Brasil, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Nerves rolled in Jungkook’s belly as he waited in the crowd with you for the host to call his name. A win with these guys as the judges would really put some of those naysayers in their place and Jungkook shuffled in place behind you, antsy.

“What’s wrong, Guk?’ you whispered to him as another artist and model headed on stage.

“What if they don’t like it?” he murmured anxiously.

“Do you like it?” Jungkook nodded. “Then that’s all that really matters. You’re insanely talented and I know they’re some of your role models, but they’re fucked if they don’t see how incredible you are. You’ve got this, Guk,” you said in a hushed tone as Yoongi took the stage with his model from earlier. Jungkook smiled into the back of your head as you stood in front of him and gave his hand a squeeze. Jungkook could always count on you.

It was now his turn. Standing with one hand tucked into his pocket and the other firmly gripping your shorts, Jungkook watched as the judges made their notes on their scoring sheets. You turned graciously to give all three of them the best view of the tattoo. And while he knows that there are probably a few people who’d be overjoyed at the challenges he faced to get to this moment, Jungkook didn’t care. Not when your uplifting words still wrapped around him, affirming his skill and talents. He was proud of what he’d accomplished today and while winning was the ultimate goal, he was also at ease because he’d succeeded in fulfilling one of your wishes and you were happy. Jungkook could only smile as you showered him with praise and tried to convince him to tattoo you again as the judging continued.

The two of you stood with Yoongi, chatting as the judges tallied up the scores. He tried to stay still as he watched the host organize the names of the winning artists, losing interest in the conversation as the judges confirmed the final results. One by one, the host read the categories and its corresponding champion. “For Best Medium Color,” the host paused for dramatic effect, “Min Yoongi!” Jungkook cheered loudly with you as his mentor took the stage with his model showing off the antique pocket watch and a royal flush poker hand on top of a wispy background.

Jungkook’s heart hammered in his chest, the sensation almost worse than his first year at the convention as Best Large Black & White was read out. Though he wanted to look calm and collected on the outside, Jungkook was sure he looked anything but. The audience created their own drumroll as the anticipation built - “Jeon Jungkook!”

Your squeal kickstarted Jungkook’s brain as he processed his win. He’d really done it? A few people around him clapped him on the shoulders in congratulations as he was pushed towards the stage to collect his prize and take his place beside the host. “Congratulations, Jungkook! One of the few artists to take home all three wins in one category,” the host announced. If only they knew what it took to get there. Jungkook felt like he was on cloud nine as he shook hands with the judges and took his picture with you and them, prize in hand. He knew he was positively glowing with pride.

“Guk, you did it! I told you that you could!” you cheered as you bounced up and down in happiness and excitement as they moved onto Best Large Color. He smiled down at you and unable to help himself any longer, he scooped you up into his arms, burying his face in your neck.

“Thank you, Y/N!” He repeated the phrase earnestly as if saying it over and over again would finally let you understand just how grateful he was but all it really did was make you giggle as his breath tickled your skin. “Seriously, I really couldn’t have done this without you.”

“I know,” you joked and flipped your hair. You both laughed and you pulled him in for another hug as you said, “Of course, Guk. I’m always here for you. Always,” you punctuated with a squeeze and a smile.

“Yeah, yeah,” he agreed. “You are always here for me,” he said vaguely as he stared down at you in his arms.

“Guk?” you queried as he stared off into the distance.

“This isn’t happening because I won. I don’t want you to think that I only do things like this when I’m any sort of intoxicated, okay?” Jungkook clarified as his confidence grew.

“Things like what?”

“Like confess and kiss you,” he stated.

“Kiss me? You’ve never-”

“Yes, I know I’ve never kissed you. But I want to. Is that okay?” Jungkook asked seriously.

“Yes. More than okay,” you whispered.

It was all Jungkook needed to hear. He was finally kissing you. A soft kiss that grew the longer you stood pressed together in the middle of the convention floor. Jungkook had had his fair share of first kisses, but yours was the one he’d remember for the rest of his life. Maybe because it was you. Maybe that’s why it would always be his favorite. He’d always refrained from putting himself in any situation where he’d be even the slightest bit tempted but now, after having you, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to let you go. The overwhelming sensation that it was actually happening was quickly quelled by the insurmountable joy he felt as you kissed because it was actually happening.

Jungkook may have ascended into another plane as your fingers curled into the hair at the base of his neck and you pulled him further into you. Though he really didn’t want you to think he was only doing this because he’d won, the courage it gave him really did help. The feeling of winning nearly paled in comparison from the brief, sweet taste that was you. Even if he’d never won tonight, he would have considered himself a winner regardless from the kiss alone. Jungkook sighed into you as he savored the moment. Through the pounding of blood in his ears, he could vaguely make out the hoots and hollers of passerbyers as he held you close. Lost in you once again, Jungkook forced himself to remember your earlier conversation.

“Did you really mean it though?” he asked, one arm still wrapped tightly around your waist and the other holding onto his golden plaque.

“Mean what?”

“Not counting me out.”

“Did you mean what you said?” you countered. “Even if I wasn’t supposed to find out this way.”

“Yes, and all the times before then,” he answered truthfully. “So, does this mean you’ll have me?”

“Absolutely. Totally. With my entire hea-” He pressed repeated kisses against your mouth, your teeth clashing as you both smiled, neither of you willing to break apart until a familiar voice cleared its throat.

“I leave for five minutes and this is how I find you. Took you long enough though. Be that as it may, are you done?” Yoongi asked, expression wry and his own prize peeking out of his duffle bag. “I could use some food before we head back to the hotel and Y/N is going to need that tattoo bandaged.”

“Right, right,” Jungkook answered and let you go albeit reluctantly. “We’ll meet you at the car?” Yoongi nodded.

“Don’t take forever. I will leave you. Both of you,” Yoongi warned as he headed off to the exit without any further questions.

Back at the booth, Jungkook applied a generous amount of ointment to the piece before securing it with a bandage and double-checking the tape. Helping you step into your shorts, he smiled at the tattoo. Not only would it be a great reminder of a great win, it would also signify the milestone in your friendship - relationship? - was taking. “Told you that you should’ve tattooed me sooner,” you quipped as you gingerly pulled up your shorts.

“Oh yeah? Why’s that?” he asked, playing along as he quickly packed up his things.

“You would have won much sooner,” you murmured, standing before him.

“Really? What would have been my prize instead? Because that plaque is pretty great.” Jungkook sat his bag on the ground and rested his hands on your hips.

“Better than me?” you grinned and he pressed his lips to yours again.

“Looks like I’ll have to come up with another design then,” he hummed.

“Or you can let me and I can tattoo you,” you suggested with a devilish grin.

“And what do you propose?”

“My name. Right here,” you pointed to the empty space on the left side of his chest.

“Only if you let me tattoo my face on your ass,” he joked and gave it a gentle squeeze.

“Deal,” you laughed.

Jungkook said nothing further, only smiled as he laced his fingers between yours and tugged you in the direction of the exit. “Great. I’ll have everything arranged,” he replied. Laughing with you in these moments meant so much to him and while he wasn’t sure what would happen between you after you left the convention and headed home, he would take pleasure in these moments for as long as you’d let him. As the two of you exited the building and hustled across the busy street to the parking garage so Yoongi wouldn’t have an excuse to leave you, Jungkook wondered if you’d known that your name had been inked over his heart a long, long time ago.

full masterlist // drabbles

ⓒ joon-ipersgirl, 2020

[rohad93]

Werewolf in the hospital

As far as Halloween’s go, this one could have been better for her. It wasn’t often she ended an evening sitting in the ER, dressed as a werewolf, with a broken nose, but she couldn’t say now that it didn’t ever not happen!

The night had started fun enough. She’d been out with Gus and Willow at a party being thrown at one of their college’s many fraternity houses. One that was affectionately referred to as the ‘Illusion coven’ around campus because of its many resident students that were known for their penchant for pranks and being able to disappear without a trace when the heat was turned up in response, as well as a large handful of their students that were also members of the school’s ‘magic appreciation club’.

They of course, always threw the best parties, especially at Halloween.

This one had been no different. The music and lights could be seen from about two blocks away. There was a long line of students waiting to get in the front door, but luckily for her and Willow, Gus was a member, which got them through the door instantly.

The place was jammed packed when they finally arrived and Luz could barely hear herself think over the music that was trying to vibrate her teeth right out of her skull, but that didn’t stop her from making a beeline straight for the dancefloor with her friends in tow for the first hour. Excessive amounts of energy made dancing the perfect activity for her, even if she generally lacked any grace or coordination.

It was weird to finally be at one of these raging school parties after all the ones she had been purposely excluded from in high school.

After four years of being an outcast in high school and spending most Saturday night’s alone, watching anime or writing fanfiction to fill her spare time, she hadn’t expected her social life to really take off in college, though ‘take-off’ might have been a strong word for it. She still only had a handful of friends, but it was still a far cry from how she’d been a loner in high school.

Leaving to go to college out of state had given her an opportunity to start new, though she was still the same old Luz she had been her senior year, there were so many more people at her college with varying interests and backgrounds than her small-town high school where everyone had known each other since grade school and pretty much stuck together from the first grade on.

You release one nest of spiders at nap time and suddenly you’re branded for life as ‘that weird kid’. She didn’t like to admit how much that had really bothered her when she was a kid, but it just became the norm as she got older. It didn’t stop her enjoying life as much as she could, even if she had gotten thrown out of prom her senior year for wearing an otter onesie.

It was still nice to actually have friends now, one’s she could study with in the library or just have lunch with and not blink an eye when she said something totally bizarre, or at least bizarre by most people’s standards.

Meeting Willow, her dorm mate, and then Gus through her, had been a lifesaver and through them, she had met other student’s, some of which she shared classes with, like Viney, who despite being an upperclassman was only now taking her English comp basics so they worked together on group assignments, she was funny and easy to get along with. It didn’t take long for Luz to count her, along with Gus and Willow as her closest friends.

Viney was also dating Emira Blight, one of the infamous Blight twins, who were also members of the ‘Illusion Coven’, so she knew Viney was probably somewhere here among the many bodies packed into the large house, though the chances of running into her were slim.

She wasn’t at all surprised to see the copious amounts of alcohol that was everywhere either, that was one thing about college that TV had gotten right. College students drank; a lot.”

She watched three students doing a keg stand till beer squirted out of the guy on the kegs’ nose.

She snorted, grinning to herself and showing off the mouthful of sharp canines she had spent a good hour in the bathroom getting molded to fit too her teeth. She was, of course, the definition of a broke college student, attending entirely on a full scholarship, cause when you don’t have anyone to hang out with, you might as well study, and it was finally paying off, but she still had little in the way of personal spending money given her measly paycheck from working part-time at ‘The Owl House’ An owl themed diner just off campus owned by the most eccentric woman Luz had ever met, did not make for the most extravagant costume. But she made do with an old red flannel, ripped jeans, and some dollar store pointed ears and face paint. She had splurged a little on the fake teeth, she’d reuse them next year, werewolf was a classic after all.

Despite her less than ideal paycheck, Edalyn Clawthorne, or Eda ‘The Owl Lady’ as she was known around town, was good to her, letting her eat and drink for free or study there when she wasn’t working, and honestly, Luz kind of wanted to be Eda when she grew up. She was self-assured and didn’t care what anyone thought about her, not to mention surprisingly foxy for her age.

“You guys want something to drink?” Gus yelled at her and Willow to be heard over the pounding music and voices.

“Is there anything without an octane rating?” Willow questioned, as she watched an upperclassman drinking something straight out of the bottle at maximum speed.

After all, she and Willow were only nineteen, and Gus seventeen, he was crazy smart and had skipped a couple of grades. Luz had never had much interest in drinking, despite Eda sometimes offering her a drink from her flask with the Owl etched into the side.

She didn’t even know what was in it, only that Eda referred to it as “Mama’s magic Elixir’. She always said no and Eda would shrug and tip it back till it was empty.

“There’s punch, but I’d still be careful. Chances are good it’s already been spiked.” He shrugged.

“No thanks,” Willow shook her head and turned to look at something, the glitter on the wings of her fairy costume catching the bright colored lights overhead. She still hadn’t figured out what Gus was supposed to be. He was wearing a long red tube with a smiley face on it and long sleeves that went down to the ground that he flung about in excitement.  

“I might take my chances on those snacks!” Luz shouted, eyeing the array of treats laid out on the table for the taking. She was willing to bet no one had spiked the cake and it looked really good from here. Gus grinned and Willow rolled her eyes, smiling. Anyone who knew Luz for any amount of time knew she had a voracious appetite and an even bigger sweet tooth.

“Yeah, okay, just don’t eat everything.” Gus laughed at her.

“No promises!” She grinned back before moving across the room, trying to slide between the bodies that packed every square inch of the place and get to the refreshment table. People were moving in every direction around her as the music blared and the lights flashed, it was a little disorienting actually, but she had her eyes on the prize.

She had just made it to the table when the crowd surged and sent her careening into someone else standing there, slamming into their back and making them spill their drink.

“Watch it, nitwit! A voice growled at her before stopping. “Oh, hi, Luz.”

Luz blinked, realizing who exactly she had just slammed into, and swallowed thickly.

Amity Blight, who she did not exactly start off on the best foot with when classes had started a few months ago but now had a much more friendly relationship with.

Amity Blight, the smart and talented girl she shared creative writing and literature appreciation with. Amity Blight, who Luz had a teeny, tiny, minuscule... huge, crush on.

Amity Blight, who was dressed prettily as a witch, complete with black and green striped leggings and a pointed black hat and, who she had just slammed into and spilled her drink on.

“Ah, I’m sorry, Amity!” Luz grimaced at the wet spot now in the middle of Amity’s black blouse.

“Oh, it’s okay, really, no big deal!” Amity waved a hand, snatching a napkin off the table and dabbing at the spot.

“You sure? I could go...get you something or…,” she started, unsure.

“NO, no it’s fine, really…,” she insisted and Luz frowned. She must have embarrassed the other girl, her face was tinged red as she wiped at the spot, and was trying not to look Luz in the eyes.

‘Mierda’ Luz cursed under her breath.

Clearly, Amity did not want to talk about the spill anymore, so Luz cleared her throat, drawing the young woman’s gaze.

“What are you doing here? You don’t strike me as the… party type,” she asked and Amity rolled her eyes and Luz’s chest seized up, wondering if she’d insulted her until Amity spoke again.

“I’m not, but my brother and sister are members here and all but forced me to come tonight,” she huffed. “I’d much rather be back in my dorm, studying for our quiz in lit appreciation Monday and not getting a headache from this music.” she frowned and Luz blinked.

“Oh, Mierda! I forgot about the quiz!” Luz slapped her hands to her cheeks and Amity blinked at her before laughing.

“It was written on the board yesterday and the professor sent out an email reminder this morning.”

“Ugh, I didn’t check my email today,” she groaned, squishing her cheeks.

“Well, you still have tomorrow to study,” Amity offered.

“There was so much material to cover though…” Luz groaned. “I’m not gonna sleep all weekend, I’m going to have to cram till I push out every memory of the third grade just to make room for it all.” She frowned, already thinking about all the coffee she was going to have to drink before Monday morning, and on Monday morning.

Amity was biting her lip, thinking, but decided to take the chance.

“You can come study with me. Only if you want that is!” she quickly finished, pushing a stray strand of dyed, half mint, green, half auburn hair behind one of her ears.

“Really?” Luz asked.

“Yeah, I was just about to get out of here anyway, I’ve had enough of the party…” she said, looking around at all the people crowded into the room.

“Yeah, I’d love to!” Luz jumps on the opportunity, cause why wouldn’t she. “Oh, I came with Gus and Willow…” she remembers her friends somewhere in the house.

“Oh…” Amity seems to deflate a little at that. “Maybe another time?”

“No, it’s all good! I’m just gonna go tell them I’m headed out. You, uh, wanna meet outside?” she asks and Amity is smiling at her again and Luz just wants to melt into a puddle on the floor as those amber eyes stare back at her

“Yeah, I’ll wait for you.”    

“Great! I’ll be quick,” she promises as she runs back out into the crowd, looking for her friends. It takes her about ten minutes to find them in the living room.

“Hye guys, is it cool with you if I head out?”

“Where are you going?” Willow questions her.

“I ran into Amity, who reminded me we have a quiz in lit appreciation Monday and I really need to study and she offered to study with me, so…” she trails off, seeing the look Willow is giving her. The horticulture student is very aware of Luz’s crush, despite her never really saying anything about it. She does not count gushing to the shorter girl about how smart and pretty Amity is as ‘saying anything about it’.

“Why would you wanna leave a party to study?” Gus makes a face and Willow smirks.

“I think it’s more about who she’s studying with…” she says knowingly and Luz blushes as Gus blinks at her, confused.

“It’s cool, Luz. Go study with Amity.”

Luz does not care for the knowing way Willow says the other woman’s names, with a teasing lilt, but she’s not concerning herself with that for now.

“Thanks, guys, I’ll see you later,” She calls, already running toward the front door.  

She doesn’t immediately see Amity, in fact, the yard in front of the house is empty, everyone inside.

Luz frowns, looking around. Did she get tired of waiting?

Her chest aches a little at the thought, shoulders slumping, and is just about to turn around and go back in the house when she hears something that does not match the thumping bass of the music inside, voices. She walks quietly around to the side of the house and peeks around the wall curiously, if college has taught her anything it’s that there are students making out anywhere at any given time and not to look too closely into dark corners where sounds are coming from.  

Her eyes widen as she spots Amity right away, her back is pressed against the wall and a guy dressed in a toga is standing in front of her, leaning down over her. He’s not particularly big, but he’s standing uncomfortably close with his hands wrapped around both of her wrists, hands fisted, Amity is scowling angrily up at him. Luz’s brows furrow between her eyes and she frowns, walking over quickly.

“I said let go!” Amity snaps, trying to rip her hands free from his grip and he’s so close she can smell the alcohol on his breath.

“Come on, just a little kiss, it’s Halloween…” He leans forward and Amity turns her head away,  sneering.

“I don’t care if it’s fucking Christmas!” she snarled. “I said no!”

“Hey!” Luz shouts standing just a few feet away now. “She said no!” she growled, lips pulled back over her fangs.

“Luz!” Amity stares at her wide-eyed.

“This is none of your business bitch, go howl at the moon,” he slurred before turning back to Amity and yanking on one of her hands. She yelps in pain as he jerks her and Luz is moving forward before she even knows it and her fist is connecting with the side of his face.

He goes fumbling backward, releasing Amity as he stumbles to his butt in the grass.

“Santa mierda, eso duele!” she hissed, shaking out her screaming hand.

“Come on!” Amity grabs her other hand and starts to pull her away but then the guy is scrambling to his feet and coming at her with a strangled yell and Luz does the first thing she can think of, she uses their joined hands to yank Amity behind her and then the guy’s fist connects with her face and her world an explosion of pain and crunching noises.

She’s only vaguely aware of Amity screaming her name as her back hits the grass and everything goes black for a second but then she’s quickly pulled back to consciousness by his hand fisted into the front of her shirt and her fight or flight instincts kick in and she’s swinging wildly at his ugly mug as quickly as she can.

Her hands protest every hit that connects with his stone-hard face but she doesn’t stop and he’s swinging back, but she can hardly feel it over the constant pain radiating from her nose through her whole body.

She just clenches her eyes shut and keeps swinging, punching him as hard as she can, but then there are more voices and two large burly guys have him in a stranglehold, pulling him off her.

Amity had dashed back inside to grab the houses ‘bouncers’ standing just inside the door.

“Oh my god, Luz!” Amity holds her hands over her mouth as she kneels onto the ground next to her, looking over her face in horror.

“Ugh…” is all she can manage and then Amity is grabbing her hand and helping to her feet and dragging her across the yard, fumbling, panicked through her purse before finally pulling out her keys. She unlocks the passenger side door of a small black sedan and carefully pushes Luz into the passenger seat.

“Keep your head tilted back,” she says before closing the door and hurrying around to the other side, and jumping in the driver’s seat.

It’s only now that Luz realizes she can taste blood and reaches up to touch her top lip and pulls her hand back to see her fingers covered in the crimson liquid.

‘Well, that’s not good,’ she thinks, but it definitely explains why her face hurts so bad.

She tilts her head back but can feel it dribbling down her chin and neck as Amity pulls away from the curb, much faster than the speed limit, Luz is sure as the tires squeal.

She runs her tongue across her teeth and feels a distinct lack of a point and groans, making Amity glance at her.

“I think I swallowed one of my teeth…,” she mumbles more to herself but Amity’s pained expression turns into a grimace as they speed down the road.

Which was how she found herself sitting next to her crush in the ER with her head tilted back and the front of her once white shirt stained crimson as her nose continues to bleed.

Halloween is apparently a very popular time for injury because it’s crowded and takes two hours for someone to see her, while they wait Amity fills out her paperwork for her.

“Birthday?” she asks glumly, and Luz tells her. She hasn’t said much since they left the party, she looks miserable, and that’s coming from someone who is doing their best impression of a fountain with her nose. She can’t stand that face Amity is making. “Allergies?”

“Lactose intolerant, so no milk IV’s,” she jokes, despite the incredible pain in her face. Amity starts to write but then stops, blinking, before turning to look at her grin.

“How can you joke? You just got beat up… because of me.” she frowns.

“No, I got my block busted because some guy was being a pendejo.” Luz frowns. “It wasn’t your fault, and I wasn’t just going to stand there and let him….do whatever he wanted!” she scowled, throwing up a hand.

Amity is looking at her with an unreadable expression, but before she can say anything they are calling her back.

“Oh goody, my turn.”

It takes forty-five minutes for them to tell her that her nose is broken, which she could have told them when she caught sight of herself in a mirror, a bloody mess and her nose pushed to the side at an odd angle. No wonder Amity had been so panicked and run all those red lights.

Putting it back in place is… not fun, and then the doctor stuffs gauze in her nose and splints the outside, telling her she needs to keep the gauze in for a week and then sends her on her way with a prescription for antibiotics and some mild painkillers.

Amity is waiting for her when she comes out.

“What did he say?” she stands as Luz walks back out into the waiting room and frowns at the splint on her face.

“It’s broke.” she shrugs and Amity grimaces as they walk out back to the parking lot.

“I am so sorry, Luz.” Amity frowned. “If I’d just…”

“Hey,” Luz cut her off, she wasn’t having any of that. “I told you, it’s not your fault, technically, I started that fight… didn’t win it, but I started it,” she laughed to herself.

“You are surprisingly chipper for someone who just got their nose broken…” Amity can’t help but smile a little at the other woman’s cheery disposition.

“It’s not the first time I’ve broken something you know. The first time someone helped me along, but hey! Besides, I helped you, and that’s good enough for me.” She smiled as they stopped next to Amity’s car. Amity has a small smile on her face as she unlocks the car. “I hope this is healed up by thanksgiving or my mom is going to have a cow…,” she mumbled as an afterthought. Amity giggled to herself.

“Come on, I’ll take you home.”

The drive is mostly quiet until they pull up into the parking lot in front of Luz’s dorm building. Willow is probably already back in their room.

“Do you think this will get me out of the quiz Monday?” Luz wonders aloud as she unbuckles and Amity laughs.

“Doubtful... but…, if you’re up for it, I feel like I should at least treat you to breakfast or something for what you did… we could study after?” she offers.

Luz blinks at her, finally realizing what exactly is going on. She was certain before when Amity had asked her to study that she was just being nice, but the way she looks now, fingers tapping anxiously on the steering wheel and glancing at Luz out of the corner of her eye, she finally catches on and curses how oblivious she is at times.

“Like… a date?” she asks uncertainly and Amity flinches.

‘Y-Yeah.” she jerks her head in a nod and Luz is silent for a few seconds too long it seems. “If you don’t want to…!”

“No! No I do, want to go on a date with you, yes!” Luz nods, too fast, it makes her nose throb.  

“Really?” now Amity is turned to look at her, eyes wide, with a hopeful glint.

“Yes, absolutely.” Does she sound too eager? Probably, but she does not care, especially when Amity’s face lights up with that adorable little smile she’s seen on her face once or twice before in class when they talked and now she feels even dumber for not catching on quicker.

They plan for Amity to pick her up here at nine tomorrow morning and then Luz opens the door, but Amity stops her.

“Thank you, Luz… I don’t know what might have happened if you hadn’t shown up...” Amity says finally.

“Amity Blight, I will be your fearless champion anytime you need me too!” she declares, a fist on her chest. The bandages and bloodstains, as well as her nasally stuffed up voice, diminishes the gesture some, but Amity smiles adoringly at her none the less.

She hesitates a second before reaching across the console to lay a hand gently on Luz’s cheek before leaning forward to quickly kiss the other. Luz’s face erupts in red as her heart hammers in her chest.

“My fearless champion,” she agrees, cheeks a bright pink.

Luz’s face erupts in a grin.

Maybe the evening started poorly, but she can’t find it in herself to mind one bit.

[dessarious]

Misconceptions, Miscommunication, and Misinformation Pt81

Inspired by @ozmav Maribat AU

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As soon as the portal closed behind them Chloe and Luka dropped their transformations. Marinette was once again piggybacking Chloe as they turned to look at Tikki and the other Kwami. She hadn't wanted to transform again because she wasn’t certain what Tikki had done and was worried the other four would disappear along with her. She couldn’t afford to have the League members find out if they were just temporary, and she had no way to ask Tikki with them all there.

“You couldn’t have given me some type of heads up or warning?” It was so strange talking to Tikki while she was in human form. It also hadn’t escaped her that all five of the Kwami were in her designs and she wasn’t sure whether she should be flattered or if Tikki had just picked the first things that had come to mind.

“I’m sorry Marinette. I’m tired of watching them treat you like that and I had to do something. I was going to discuss this with you to see if you were okay with it but I really do think you could use the extra help and they volunteered.” So not temporary then, that would require some serious thought. “As I said Plagg can destroy their bodies so if you don’t want to keep them here it’s an easy fix.”

“It’s not that.” Marinette just sighed. This was just one more complication that she really didn’t know how to deal with at this point. “They’ll need identities, papers, and I have no idea how to go about getting those. I’ll need to look for a much bigger place than I was thinking and I’m not sure I can afford that yet and be able to renovate it for wheelchair access as well. Not to mention-” She cut off as Damian shoved his phone in her face. She’d noticed him on it but assumed he was trying to calm down his family. On the screen was a huge house not too far from her current school.

“What do you think of this?” She could only blink at the screen for a moment before she grabbed the phone to get it at a better distance so she could read it properly. It wasn’t a house either, it was a freaking mansion. Twelve bedrooms, fourteen bathrooms, two kitchens for crying out loud, and that wasn’t counting the guest house, or groundskeepers house or whatever it was. It was three stories plus a basement but it did have an elevator. Then she looked at the price.

“Damian there’s no way I can afford that right now, and honestly it’s probably too big.” He was shaking his head before she’d even finished.

“You don’t need to afford it. Since I’m staying here for the foreseeable future I need a more permanent residence that lives up to the Wayne name and can house whatever family members happen to show up. If it happens that when I end up leaving Paris you like it and can afford it you can buy it from my father, but until then since you’re such a ‘good influence’ on me he thinks us staying in the same residence will be beneficial to the both of us. And don’t worry about documentation for your new friends, Alfred is already preparing everything.”

She could only stare at him. He’d said everything in such a matter of fact tone, as though her answer were a foregone conclusion. She wanted to be annoyed with him but she knew it was his way of showing support and caring. She looked back at the phone and really looked at the pictures. The front entrance didn’t have steps and there were at least two bedrooms on the first floor. Even with the elevator she’d rather not have to be dependent on it in case of repairs or power outages. It could work.

“Fine, but I’m paying for any renovations that need to be made for me. And I’m paying rent since there will be five of us living there and I have a feeling Chloe will be there more often than not.” Damian just raised an eyebrow at her.

“I can tell my father that but he won’t listen. This won’t be a drain on our resources at all and he’ll want you to save for your future. I will try to talk to him though.” That sounded about right. When you have money to just throw at a problem you don’t necessarily consider how other people will see it. Damian was tapping away on his phone again and frowning in annoyance.

“He says if it will make you feel better about it you can be the family designer and instead of rent comp the materials. Sadly enough that probably will work out about right given how many of us there are.” She blinked at that. Sure, the materials wouldn’t be cheap but the exposure she’d get from the Waynes wearing her designs exclusively would far outweigh the cost. Damian was now scowling at his phone. “He also wants to see if you’d be willing to work with our R&D department to make materials for protection that can be put into all sorts of clothing. We actually commissioned you for suits with Kevlar once and he was very impressed with both the utility and design.”

“I remember those. It was a fun challenge if a rather odd request. Granted I didn’t think it was too strange given the amount of people in the public eye that get attacked.” But could she really just let Bruce Wayne pay for her housing like this? Wouldn’t people talk? It could hurt his reputation to be housing a teenager. At best they would think he was keeping his son happy by keeping his girlfriend close, at worst… she didn’t even want to think about it.

“He also wants to circulate a story that you were attacked after you revealed yourself as the designer behind Functional Fashion and that’s how you were paralyzed. Between that and having you actually work with Wayne Enterprises it would make sense that we would be concerned about your safety enough to house you in a secure location.” But would it?

“What if my parents technically lived there as well? Maybe even in the guest house or whatever. They wouldn’t be there much because of the bakery but I think it would help with the public image if they were part of it as well.” She didn’t realize until she said it that it meant she was agreeing to this plan. Given the satisfied look on Damian’s face he realized it too.

“And we can have the Kwami make appearances as your staff. Digg would obviously be a bodyguard. Primm looks more like a customer service type or receptionist, and Jett perhaps something with design or tailoring? They don’t have to actually do anything but if the press thinks they’re living at the house because that’s your base of operations it would help. Lyccen…” He seemed at a loss for the Kwami of Anarchy. Granted they could change her look if they had to but she had a feeling Tikki had chosen their attire for a reason.

“Personal assistant. The way people view the disabled everyone will assume my having someone with me all the time to help with things is completely normal.” As much as she hated to say it, it was true. If she could afford to pay someone to help her with normal day to day tasks that were ‘harder’ in a wheelchair no one would question it. Especially since she’d only just lost the use of her legs. As much as she wanted to be independent she could see the use of having a ruse in place to make it seem like she wasn’t. “But how do you plan to get around the fact that there was no police report? Or hospital stay for that matter?” It was a problem she’d been trying to figure out herself. How was she just supposed to show back up paralyzed when she had absolutely no explanation or proof for what happened.

“My father invited you to Gotham to talk about this collaboration and you were attacked there. We are very private and prefer to deal with things in house so it won’t be hard for him to convince the Commissioner to make a report after the fact. We can falsify medical and travel records easily enough.” It was amazing how much morally gray area there was when all you’re doing is trying to save the world.

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Ko-Fi

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[writtingfiction]

Golden deer Christmas party its a fun one my dudes (most competitive house they are having compeative Christmas parties)

it’s not two months late, it’s not two months late and filled with grammar errors.

pairing: None

words: 2k

Now, like usual, another event was coming up in the monastery that Byleth never truly experience. She doesn’t quite remember how the festivals were as a small child but over the past few years, she had been hired as extra security with her dad and company. Nevertheless, this year was different. She was a professor, with students that she taught. So, she wasn’t too surprised when the class approached her and asked about her experience with the Yule festivities.

“I’ve never truly participated in the festivities unless you count being on guard.” Byleth said. There were some gasps, and some students shaking their heads.

“No, no this won’t do.” Hilda said, and the rest of the golden deer nod their heads.

“Why don’t we throw you our own Golden Deer Party?” Claude said and there was unanimous agreement among the class, however, Byleth disagrees.

“No, you guys won’t be throwing anything, even if it is for my sake. The only celebration that I’ll be participating in is the ball. Am I understood?” Byleth said, giving her students her usual blank stare. There are some sighs but they nod their heads but this information doesn’t stop them.

—

It’s about a week and a half before the ball and she sees Claude and Hilda chatting, well, whispering like a pair of nobles. The hot gossip that’s being shared between them obviously important to catch their attention. For a moment she thinks to leave them be but Byleth remembers the reputation the house leader has and turns back around and walks back towards them. She could only get so close before they notice her.

“Professor!” Claude greets her happily, Hilda smiling right beside him. She gives the two of them a wary look.

“What are you planning?” Byleth asked, arms crossing. Claude feigns hurt, hand placed on his chest.

“Oh Teach, you would think your favourite student is doing something bad? Oh how you wound me.” Claude puts on the theatrics quite thick and it only makes it more obvious that he’s planning something.

“Yes, the theatrics aren’t for you.” Byleth’s narrowing gaze lands on Hilda. She looks cool and collected, however, she could press her and get something. “What about you Hilda, surely Claude can’t convince you to do anything physical.” The batting of eyelashes on confirms that the two of them are planning something.

“You’re right, Professor. Tried to get me to help him carry some oddly heavy boxes to his room.” Hilda said, shaking her head. “You should know better than to have a lady carry heavy things. Raphael would be a better option.” The look on Claude’s face though, tells Byleth that Hilda is telling some truth.

“Hilda, you said… ugh.” Claude straightens for a moment, sighing.

“So I was right, what are you planning?” Byleth pressured once more. Claude had a small frown on his face.

“Just some supplies for some concoctions I want to brew. I’m not going to create anything that will harm anyone, just some light experimentation.” Claude said. Byleth looks behind the two of them to see two large boxes. She gives Claude an unimpressed look. “I’m prone to not get it right the first time and occasionally break the tools. Come on, Teach, give me a break here.”

“I’ll let you go free this one time. If I see you trying to do this again I’m checking inside those boxes and confiscating what’s in them.” Byleth lets Claude off with a warning before she leaves them. The pair watches their teacher walk off towards the church, waiting till she’s out of sight before letting out a breath. A swift glare sent towards Claude and Hilda is ready to hit him.          

“We almost got caught!!” Hilda hissed.

“But we didn’t get caught! If it was anyone else, we would have been caught.” Claude said. “Now, are you going to help me carry these or not? Raphael is getting the rest.” There’s a heavy sigh that comes from Hilda’s lips.

“You owe me for this, and for saving your butt from the professor!” Hilda said.

— —

A couple of days pass, a week till the ball starts. The church has started to put up decorations for the ball. The morale was a mix among the students but for the most part, they were in high spirits. Especially the Golden Deer students, chatting with each other as if they’ve already celebrated. Marianne seemed to be more in the company of others as of late. Byleth was sure to notice, curiosity creeping in the more she noticed her students crowding together more and more.

She happens to catch Lysithea and Marianne together. Muttering to themselves as they muse over some magic books. However, she’s sure that isn’t the book they’re supposed to be learning from. It’s an odd white and red book compared to the rest of the pile of books that surround them. Byleth approaches them, however before she has the chance to get too close, Lysithea and Marianne turn around.

“Professor!” The two girls say in unison.

“Girls. What are you doing?” Byleth’s voice doesn’t portray anything firm, if not soft. Lysithea is the first to speak.

“We are looking into different spell books to help Marianne understand the concept for a spell.” Lysithea speaks with confidence, it’s nearly enough to convince the young professor.

“What spell?” Byleth said. Lysithea seems at a loss for words.

“Fimbultr.” Marianne’s quiet voice breaks the silence and Byleth nods.

“I’ll leave you to your studies. Take care to not overwork yourself.” Byleth said, leaving the girls to themselves in the library. When Byleth is gone, Lysithea deflates into her chair. Marianne turns back to the book and continues to silently read over the page.

“Thank you, Marianne, I think you saved us there.” Lysithea speaks up. Though she doesn’t see it, there’s a small smile that appears on Marianne’s lips, whispering a soft ‘you’re welcome’.

—— —— ——

Four days till the ball starts and only three days before the Golden Deer Yule mini party for their professor. Spirits higher than usual but not that the professor would notice. She thought that their excitement was for the ball. So when she came across Leonie and Ignatz arguing over something it caught her off guard.

“No no no, Ignatz. Why would you use those colours? It’s not— it doesn’t go with the theme.” Leonie said. The noise that came from Ignatz was something Byleth had never heard before.

“It—it does not go with the theme?” Ignatz said in disbelief. Byleth peered into the classroom. The two students were facing a table looking at ribbons of different colours. Their backs facing the entryway. “I’m sorry but you’re wrong Leonie. The way the colours compliment each other is much nicer if we go with this arrangement instead of this awful, eye-poking colour.”

“Just because you know the arts, doesn’t mean my arrangement isn’t totally an option!!” Leonie argued. Ignatz doesn’t usually get so fired up about things. Byleth decided to step in, she didn’t want Leonie tearing off Ignatz's arms off.

“Leonie, Ignatz, what seems to be the problem?” Byleth approaches tentatively, although her students don’t seem to notice. There’s a huff that comes from Leonie’s lungs and a relieved look on Ignatz’s face.

“Professor, I’m glad you’re here. We were discussing what arrangement of ribbons to put up for the…” Ignatz trails off, hesitant to say his next words. Before any suspicion can doubt Byleth’s thoughts, Leonie speaks up saving Ignatz.

“For the ball. This will be decorations we were told to set up in the classroom.” Leonie explains. Byleth nods and approaches the table to see a beautiful arrangement of red, green and white. There’s a second arrangement with a bold colour choice. Blue, green and orange, the ribbons were tangled together, not exactly a good combo.

“We would appreciate your opinion professor, settle this argument for us.” Ignatz said, regaining his voice. Byleth nods. She doesn’t let them sit in silence for long before she points to the ribbons Ignatz weaved together.

“This one would be better for the celebrations.” Leonie frowns deeper at her teachers' words while Ignatz’s pride grows. He does not show it but it shows in his eyes.

The three of them talk for a short while afterwards before Byleth leaves them. She misses the way her students scramble to grab more of the appropriate ribbon and hurry to have someone watch the door this time. Too close again for the Golden Deer, caught almost again for the third time. They hoped they wouldn’t have any more incidents and luckily they didn’t.

— — — —

The day of the celebration of the Golden Deer Yule party for their professor was going to go off without a hitch. Claude had the perfect plan to lure the professor. Saying he needed her help with a recent subject, he made a point to fudge his scores a little on the last quiz so that way this would seem more believable. However, when classes were finished and everyone parted ways to get ready for tomorrow for the ball and to finish the last details on the classroom since the professor was gone; He had trouble finding his teacher.

He went to the training grounds to see if his professor was there, but she wasn’t there. Next was the mess hall, wasn’t there either. He checked the main hall, followed by the main gate and then the pond. Claude scratched his head, wondering where his professor was. His eyes landed on the greenhouse, realizing he hasn’t checked there. His feet take him there.

He pushes one of the large doors open to the greenhouse. At first, he doesn’t see anyone, but venturing further he manages to spot someone. A smile appears on his lips, it’s his teacher. Her hands are packing down dirt, she just finished planting some new seeds. He tries not to sneak up on her.

“Teach!” He calls out, making sure not too loudly. Byleth pauses, turning around and seeing Claude. She nods before standing, brushing the dirt from her hands.

“Claude, to what do I owe the pleasure?” Byleth said.

“You know how I got that low score about tactics on the last quiz? I was hoping to get your help.” Claude said, He receives nothing but a nod. “Perfect, I have my notes back in class.”

“I’ll follow.” Byleth said.

The two of them left the greenhouse. Claude talking about the examples from the book Byleth gave him last week. Byleth gives some pointers although she doesn’t feel like she has to. She knows Claude doesn’t need these pointers, he’s making an amateur mistake. What did he have up his sleeve? But then again, he could truly need help. Byleth takes the latter and decides to take his ask for help seriously. She’s about to ask what specifically he needs help with when they walk into the classroom.

The classroom is brightly lit, the golden deer students and some others from the other classes throw confetti and yell ‘Surprise!’. She can see the ribbons she chose strung all across the room. There are some snacks and a large bowl of juice. It’s a warm feeling and the scent of herbs brought Byleth back to when she was a young girl seeing all the folks in the tavern, laughing and dancing the night away in celebration. The clearest part of the memory when she tried to join the festivities but ended knocking over her father’s drink onto him. The momentary pause before the largest of grins and hearty laughter was a memory she cherished.

“Thank you.” It was a whisper from Byleth but Claude heard it. He turned his head from his peers to her, the softest look he’s seen from her. A small warm smile on her face as she looked at her students. A small blush appeared on his face at how warm and happy she looked to be with them.    

“For you, teach, any day.”