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[norrisreads]

you belong with me

plot : having oscar piastri as a neighbour and best friend was great, supporting him from the sidelines, everything was fine even when the feelings was just one sided…. or so was it?

pairing : oscar piastri x reader! lando norris x reader! platonic

warnings: slight angst, fluff! mainly inspired by you belong with me by taylor swift

growing up with oscar piastri as your neighbour had been a core memory, you would remember communicating with him through windows, yes windows.

the first time you moved in to his neighbourhood, you were just a girl who had moved from singapore to australia and had zero friends, you had to restart your whole life in another country

of course, your parents had opted to let you settle down for a few weeks before starting school, which led most of your days spying on your neighbour’s family and just casual people watching

the piastri family, just a normal family who had 3 little sisters and him, oscar piastri being the eldest in the family. you would notice him arriving home with his mum by his side in his karting suit, enraged sometimes, happy too.

it was a sight to see, your dad had allocated your study table right in front of your window and what a coincidence it was that just in-front of you was his room.

It was a shock of course to him when he noticed you flipping through your books (or so he thought), and the moment you had your head up to do some stretchings , the both of you had a few seconds eye contact and smiled.

you didn’t pay much attention because as much as your heart was jumping around, it was a tad bit awkward, but you notice a motion that he was scribbling on something, and a few minutes later a sketchbook was seen holding up by him

“just moved in?”

you nodded your head, you looked around and grab some empty pieces of paper and a black marker

he then wrote a few more sentences, “i’m oscar, what about you?”

“y/n, just moved here from singapore!” with that information he absorbed , he made an ‘o’- shaped mouth, and went back to scribbling a few more sentences

“any plans right now?” of course, you shook your head

“do you wanna grab dinner?” was written on oscar’s sketchbook, he then held up an ‘OK’ hand motion along with a thumbs up and thumbs down which then u gave him a thumbs up

and from that day on, you made your first friend who then became your best friend who then became your first love.

“let’s just go to at least one race, y/n! you’ve been there for me since formula 3, won’t seeing me race in formula 1 in real life make you happy?” his voice speak through your phone that was placed on your bed

you were currently cleaning up your room while being on-call with oscar, even-though the both of you were neighbours and he could technically come over and talk to you physically in your room, he was sadly grounded.

so there he was, sitting on the ledge of his window, being on call with you at the same time just watching you moving around your room.

“osc you’ll be traveling across the world, my dad’s gonna kill me if i’m skipping school, lily’s gonna be with you”

Lily zheimer is Oscar’s girlfriend, you had found out when Oscar had asked for your guidance to assist him in his prom-posals which you did so (stupidly), you had been there for Oscar when the both of them had fights, of course you were the one consoling him even-though you could hear bit by bit pieces of your heart breaking apart.

“it’ll be great if you will be there too, you’re my best friend after all” and yet again, just a best friend

dreaming about the day when you wake up and find that

you’re looking for has been here the whole time

“lily’s gonna be fuming if i’m there, you know the both of us don’t get along, let’s not do that Osc”

as much as you were kind to lily, she had been against of Oscar’s friendship with you since day one, oscar would missed out on the days where the both of you had planned to hang out and every-time you smiled to lily it wasn’t reciprocated back instead she would give you an eye roll.

you never understood why lily hated you, or disliked? you gave space to oscar whenever he’s out with lily and you’re not that type of girl best-friend who’s all up in Oscar’s business. Oscar had assured you multiple times that lily would get over it (which she didn’t and it’s been years).

lily zheimer was the stereotypical popular girl in your school, meanwhile you were just an average student who had few friends because to be fair you’d rather have an average life rather than being popular.

except she wasn’t the typical popular girl who’s a cheerleader, she was the smartest in your school, you did admire her, she’s a beauty with brain. were you ever jealous of her beauty? of course, but what you were jealous the most was the way oscar looked at her.

The way Oscar looked at her was as if he could see his whole future planned out with her, and THAT was the way you looked at Oscar, and this is of course a typical best-friend unrequited love.

“my parents will be following y/n, you can tag along with them, just one race please” you stopped in your tracks and looked up at him, he was literally pleading with his hands together begging you

“fine, i’ll go to one race osc”

you could hear oscar shouted “YES” and a moment later you heard your phone notification went off and it was Oscar’s mum

“so glad that you’re coming along, y/n! girl’s day for us 🥰” to which you laughed and let oscar know

“your mum just texted me osc, that was fast”

“yeah she loves you y/n, i have enough sisters already but she already is claiming you to be her daughter. At this point even my sisters prefers your existence more than me” to which he flipped you off and rolled his eyes jokingly

“fuck you osc, i’ll take back whatever i said about attending” and there it was the beeping of an ending call

and the next moment you heard him shout across the window, “don’t even think about it, I’m grounded right now, I’ll literally stormed to your front door in 2 days if you decides to back out” and closed his windows

it’s the day of the australian grand prix, you were granted the 3 days paddock pass by mclaren as oscar’s guests.

osc and lily had of course arrived the paddock together, meanwhile you arrived with oscar parents.

few fans had recognised you as oscar’s best friend, and you being nice had small talks with them, it was the first time you could see the amount of fans oscar had and you felt so proud of him, of the journey you had seen him grew up with.

you were just walking around the paddock, this wasn’t the first time you were in the paddock but it was the first time you were in a formula one grand prix.

you spotted oscar’s team mate lando norris scooting around the paddock and remembered the first time oscar told you about him. He was exactly how oscar described him.

curls, a smiley person, and of course sarcastic.

you noticed lando was heading towards your direction and stopped exactly infront of you, “you must be oscar’s girlfriend right?”

you had a confused face on and laughed, “no that’s lily, i’m his best friend”

“oh, my bad. I’m sure you know about me from oscar?” he held his hands out, and you shook his hands

“yeah, lando right? i’m y/n”

“are you searching for him?” Lando asked you noticing you were walking around the paddock without him

you shook your head “i’m just familiarising myself, was a-bit bored. Oscar’s a-bit busy right now”

“well then i’ll be your guide for the day, y/n” this time lando walked the same pace as you, completely abandoning his scooter by the side of the hospitality.

By the end of the day, you were well contented with Lando’s presence with you, he had introduced you to a few of his friends and some of the grid drivers. Oscar had warned you about lando’s past, stereotypically his flirty personality.

You had seen his flirty traits but you couldn’t care less, instead lando seems like a long-lost friend you’ve never met.

“thanks lando for giving me a great tour of the paddock, i shall do the same to you whenever you’re in singapore! i know some great places that you’d take pictures with your leica!” the both of you were sat in the hospitality with an ice cream in both of your hands.

“well that’s a promise then, oscar’s probably done right now, i guess it’s my turn, i’ll see you around?”

you smiled and nodded your head, “i’ll be around, can’t get rid of me that easily”

landonorris started following you

lafilledhiver_ just posted

liked by landonorris oscarpiastri maxfewtrell and others

lafilledhiver_ my week in pictures + aus gp 🧡

oscarpiastri shouldn’t it be my garage instead

↳ lafilledhiver_ you’ve been replaced 🫱🏻‍🫲🏼

↳ landonorris she’s my best friend now piastri

oscpi81 why did i not know y/n went to aus grand prix 😭

↳ lnaurris if udm answering who is she?

↳ oscpi81 she’s oscar’s best-friend! she used to attend f2 races q frequently!

papayaboys does she not follow lily?

↳ russell44 maybe there’s beef 😐

↳ pastry81 she’s not required to follow her bestie’s gf ig 😂

mclaren our favourite guest is back

liked by lafilledhiver_

“you’re getting cozy with lando, y/n” lily’s voice caught your attention

“he’s a great friend, plus he takes great care of osc” answering to her remarks and getting back your attention to your phone

“i wouldn’t do that if i were you, would not want to tame osc reputation or image” lily shrugged her shoulder

you sighed, you knew when oscar left you with lily, this conversation is bound to happen

“lily, i don’t have an idea on why you’re so against of osc and i’s friendship, you’re the one who has osc head over heels for you. if I were you, I would have just choose to mind my own business, but clearly you can’t seem to do that?”

packing your things up, within the timespan u were packing oscar came to the both of you

“hey i was about to ask, let’s grab dinner together” until he saw you packing ur items in a rushed state

“sorry oscar, another day, i’m not really feeling well” giving him a soft smile and hugging him, bidding him a goodbye

it’s true, you’ve been coughing the whole day and your body has been feeling rather heaty

oscar sighed and faced lily, “what did you say to her this time?”

while walking your way to the hotel, your phone ringed multiple times, and with the distinguished ringtone you knew it was oscar

“finally you’ve answered, lily told me what happened! Look i am sorry alright, i’ve already told lily to be mindful of her words, now can you please follow us to dinner? mom wants you there”

stopping in your tracks, you can’t help but to feel that oscar had never once considered about how you felt about the situation between him and lily

“osc, i’m tired. Have you ever considered talking to me about how i felt about this too? Let me have a break tonight, I’m unwell”

Oscar could been heard walking himself out of the noisy room he was in, and sighed , “i’m coming in few minutes, we’ll talk this out”

“oscar that’s not what i meant” with that he ended the call

you’re pacing around your room, mind clouding with all the possible outcome and the fallout between you and oscar.

the both of you were inseparable since young and to think that a situation like this would actually be a reason of a fallout, aches you.

then you heard a knock, specifically four knocks. Four knocks was oscar way of telling you he’s here whenever he’s over at your house.

you walked towards the door half expecting lily and him at the door, amazed that it was just him this time.

he welcomed himself in and sat on the hotel sofa that was provided in your room, “we’re gonna solve this today, no one is leaving”

this is gonna be a long day.

sighing, you made your way to the empty spot next to him

“there’s nothing to talk about oscar, i was just feeling unwell to attend the dinner. nothing serious, see?” shoving him your proof of the thermometer that you’d just used a few minutes ago

“i’m sorry about lily, i know she doesn’t like you but i’m fixing this okay y/n. I really do want the both of you to get along well!”

sometimes, fixing is never a solution, especially when it comes to these scenarios

“Oscar, don’t waste your time fixing this. she’ll never like me, you’ll have to understand that”

oscar seems confuse with the sentence that had came out of your mouth, “ what do you mean, never.. y/n?”

“oscar, i like you. I’ve been liking you ever-since I’ve gotten to know you. You’re not required to like me back, so don’t bother, but i know lily knows this, that’s probably why she’s protective of you oscar”

the information that was said out by you made oscar shocked and still. This was how he had always reacted to news, be it great or bad news.

“i was probably crazy when i agreed on helping you with your promposal to lily, but you were happy osc. The other times you were so happy was when you won during your races, and i would do anything to just see you, my best friend be happy. I was dumb, i probably thought it was going to get away, i mean that’s what y/bff/n says. Just a small crush, but it’s been years and it’s still the same.”

this time you had to pause whatever you’re saying because you felt tears brimming in the corner of your eyes.

can’t you see that i’m the one who understands you

been here all along, so why can’t you see?

“you made me happy oscar, and i’m happy we’ve met. Things will be awkward afterwards but i’m always here, osc. Lily’s great, she makes you feel happy, and i like that for her. She makes you feel like there is something to actually look forward to every single day, and i wish i had that in me.”

Oscar shifted his sit towards you, and glanced at you, “ i have no idea, y/n..”

well yeah, no shit. he was crazy for lily, of course he had no idea.

“that’s fine osc-“ before completing your sentence, oscar had cut you off

“ i liked you, i did, but when lily came it made me feel different. I never knew you liked me, y/n. This could be us, y/n. I don’t know what to say, i treasure this friendship, you were there for me for all of my races, i liked what we had, y/n.”

and there it was the sentence that you knew you’ll hear someday, being friend zoned.

you stood up, “oscar, let’s just forget this ever happened okay? you can just leave, we’ll see each other per normal, like we had before this conversation”

dragging oscar by you, you led him out of your hotel room, and before oscar could have a say, you slammed the door right by his face.

—

sitting by the side of your bed, looking out to the sky with y/bff/n on the phone, has never been better, especially when you’re finally homed alone.

“it’s crazy how he ignored whatever you said, and declared his love for lily just like that. After all, you’ve been there from the start”

sobbing silently, you couldn’t help but reminiscing the moments when you’ll wake up early in the morning to help out with oscar’s moment to prepare breakfast to bring along to his karting races.

“to be fair, lily’s gorgeous. He always had a huge crush on her. Maybe one day, i too will have someone that’s willing to have that love for me”

your best friend scoffed, “who are you kidding, you’re fucking beautiful. If anyone’s blind, it’s oscar. Who was the one who had a filled to the brim locker of valentines chocolate, surely not lily but you! he’ll regret his choices, y/n”

just remembering the times when you and your best friend had to literally give away chocolate to a bunch of kids made you giggled

—

the following weeks after the incident, things had been silent between the both of you.

it had became a controversial topic for your siblings and your parents to even bring up oscar’s name, and this goes the same to oscar too from what you’ve gotten an update from his sister, who you were still very much close too.

apparently word of mouth has gotten to the public too, especially after you’ve removed oscar and a few other followers from your Instagram in an order to stay more lowkey.

—

i’ll do a part 2 soon, promise! i am finally back from the dead :)! hope yall like this! next part will be an inspired story from ariana’s new song! (we can’t be friends)!!

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

Comet Donati [Chapter 6: No Control]

Series Summary: Sex, drugs, boy bands. You are a kinda-therapist recruited (via nepotism) to help Comet Donati through a recent crisis. Things are casual with Aegon, very not-casual with Aemond. Loosely inspired by One Direction.

Chapter Warnings: Language, sexual content (18+), drugs, alcohol, smoking, mental health struggles, all-you-can-eat sushi, bodily injury, violence, hungry deer, Selena Gomez, angst!!!

Selected Chapter Quote: “He can’t see on that side, you fucking snake!”

Word count: 9k.

Link to chapter list (and all my writing): HERE.

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Let me know if you’d like to be added to the taglist! 💜

Your last day waking up in Singapore: lying in bed and watching the shadows of birds shoot across the ceiling like falling stars. Your wrist aches in its splint. The door to the balcony is wide open. The wind blows in hot and damp off the South China Sea. You hear him before you see him: the swipe of a keycard, the swinging of the door, the clop clop clop of undoubtedly neon Crocs against the hardwood floor.

You look over at him, not moving from the bed. “Hey.”

“Hey.” Then Aegon notices something in the tiny trashcan beside your nightstand that’s cluttered with souvenirs. Nestled between empty soda cans and Starburst wrappers is a mostly full pack of birth control pills. He stares at it for a while before he says, tentatively: “Trying for a little bundle of joy? With anyone I know?”

“Definitely not.” You sigh, turning back to the ceiling, morose. “Baela and I did 23AndMe like a month ago, and we just got our results back. She’s distantly related to royalty. I have a defective gene that makes me extra susceptible to blood clots. So if I take hormonal birth control I could have a stroke or something.”

“Damn, that sucks,” Aegon says.

“Yeah.”

“But it’s good you found out, you know? I wouldn’t want you dropping over dead.”

“Yeah,” you say again, flatly, ungenerously.

“Hey, no big deal, Stargirl. You know I’d use condoms anyway.”

“Well I might at some point in my life want to have sex with someone who’s not you, so.”

Aegon steps closer; he appears upside down as he studies you from above, sunburned forehead knit into thoughtful grooves, smelling like Tiger Beer and Axe body spray and…you think…chicken wings. His hair is in disarray, his aviator sunglasses tangled in blond knots. He’s wearing a lavender tank top, like dusk, like a bruise. “Ohhhh, I get it. This is an Aemond and Shelby thing.”

You hate that you’re so transparent, like a window wiped clean of fog and fingerprints. You hate that he’s right. “Why are they even together? What the hell do they have in common?”

“Now or before?”

“Both, I guess.”

“Well, before…” Aegon scratches at his cheek. There is a bug bite there, a tiny pink welt left by the venom of a mosquito or a spider. “It was a mutually beneficial arrangement. Aemond got the satisfaction of boning the kind of girl who would have screamed if he touched her back in high school. Shelby got a massive career boost. She had 900,000 Instagram followers when they met. Now she has over 20 million.”

That recurring, futile refrain: I hate her, I hate her, I hate her.

“And I won’t lie. They had some good times.” Aegon grins down at you. “Just like we did.”

“What about now?”

“Now…” Aegon ponders this. “Now I think they’re both lost. Neither of them knows what comes next. Aemond leaving Comet. Shelby hitting that age when people like her start checking off the husband and kids boxes. When you’re thrown off a ship, you cling to the life raft, even if it’s small or ripped up or half-deflated or whatever, right? You try to hold on to what you have left. You return to what’s familiar. And that doesn’t make it right, but it’s what people do.”

“It is,” you agree mournfully. “So Aemond was the one who broke it off.”

“Yeah.”

“And then he took her back.” She called and called and called, he finally answered.

“He had a moment of weakness. Now we all have to live with it.”

“I didn’t know that.” Then you sit up on the bed and look at Aegon. “When the label wanted to get rid of Aemond, why didn’t you fight for him?”

“That’s just the way of the world, Stargirl.” He shrugs, an inevitability, good weather, bad weather, sun and clouds and storms. “He couldn’t stay in the band the way he is now. And the problem isn’t what he looks like. The problem is in his soul. But I have no idea how to fix it.” Aegon smiles, warm like summer. “I thought maybe you would. That’s why I called you.”

“You didn’t even know me,” you tell him. “I was just some girl from a bar.”

“No,” Aegon says softly, and he does not elaborate. And then, bright and cheerful again: “You’re really going to earn your paycheck at our next stop.”

“Where are we going?” You recall the names you’ve heard bouncing around since Comet arrived in East Asia, the cities you’ve seen on banners and t-shirts and Instagram posts. “Bangkok? Kuala Lumpur? Manila? Jakarta? Seoul?”

“Tokyo.” Aegon is still smiling, though in an off-kilter way now, uneasily, his murky ocean-blue eyes somber. The scene of the crime. Where the accident happened. Where Aemond believes his life ended. “We’re performing at the Budokan.”

~~~~~~~~~~

White clouds turn to sapphire waves, then emerald green fields and forests, then buildings in a million different shades of grey that stretch on forever, steel and concrete and asphalt and glass. Tokyo is the largest city you’ve ever seen, the largest city imaginable. It is a labyrinth that makes you think of the hay mazes that farms back home set up each autumn; it beckons you in and then dares you to leave.

As the band hurries through Haneda Airport, you are pursued by paparazzi and hyperventilating fans. The usual suspects—Aegon, Daeron, and Jace—can be relied upon to high five, smile, flash peace signs and hand hearts, blow kisses, pass out crochet astronomical objects, and shout such endearments as (woefully mispronounced) “Konnichiwa!” and “We love you, Japan!” Shelby waves like she’s goddamn Princess Diana. Aemond bows his head, his eyes enigmatic behind his sunglasses, his steps swift. Luke holds Rhaena’s hand; Baela walks with them. You hide behind Cregan. He casts quite a large shadow.

“I look real rock and roll now,” you joke, gesturing with your splinted arm.

Cregan replies in his rumbly subterranean voice: “I think I have you beat.” He pulls up one of his sleeves—floral print, silk, Valentino—and shows you the underside of his right forearm. Bisecting the flesh from his wrist to the crook of his elbow is a long, faint, moon-white scar that you’ve never noticed before, never even heard anyone mention.

“Oh, ouch! You broke it?”

“Compound fracture.” He covers his forearm again with his sleeve.

“When? How?”

Cregan hesitates. Suddenly, he no longer wants to be having this conversation. “Years ago.”

Just outside the airport waits that trusty fleet of black, tinted-window Escalades; but Aemond has requested that his 1960 Gold Star be there too. He takes his keys, helmet, and jacket from one of Comet’s hulking security guards. Shelby’s detail is notably more subdued since that night in Singapore; the man who dislocated your wrist has been exiled from the tour. Aemond climbs onto his motorcycle and starts the engine. The sound takes you back to Rome: when your hopes and spirits were high, when you and Aemond were still living on the light side of the moon.

“You in the mood for a ride, Shelby?” Aegon asks, smirking unkindly, taunting, chomping loudly on cotton candy flavored Bubble Yum. “Don’t forget your helmet. We’d all be lost without you.”

Shelby combs out her beachy blond waves with her artful fingers, tan, reedy, nails turquoise and adorned with golden koi fish. “You’re psychotic if you think I’m getting on that bike.”

“Jesus,” Jace mutters. He is as shocked as anyone by his abrupt demotion to only the second most villainous person in Comet’s retinue.

Aemond doesn’t react, doesn’t say anything to Shelby, doesn’t even look at her. But he does glance over at you. And the words rise in your throat like a burning sun at dawn: I’ll go, I’d love to go, I trust you, I want you. But before you can say anything, Aemond has knocked the kickstand out of the way and is weaving through thick afternoon traffic towards the Mandarin Oriental Hotel. And as the Escalades roll and the band chats around you—indistinctly, abstractedly—you keep staring out the window and searching for glimpses of Aemond like the rare flash of a meteor in a city sky; but you can’t find him.

Criston knows he’s brought Comet to dangerous ground, peppered with quagmires and landmines. So he has planned a ruthlessly hectic itinerary. As soon as you’ve received your room key and unpacked, it’s time for dinner at an all-you-can-eat sushi restaurant down the street. Criston herds the band there like the rugged Australian cattle dogs that your parents have back in Kansas City nip at the heels of snorting, intractable Black Angus bulls. You sit between Baela and Aegon, who is wearing his neon green tank top, matching Crocs (per usual), and khaki cargo shorts. He’s also gulping sake bombs until they dribble down his sunburned face. Countless varieties of sushi and side dishes rotate by on a conveyer belt, colorful little plates waiting to be snatched up: salmon, tuna, eel, octopus, shrimp, miniature omelets, fried tofu, Wagyu beef, squid, yellowtail, veggie rolls, chicken and pork dumplings, seaweed salad.

“You okay over there?” Aegon asks, grinning as he watches you stab at your eel sushi, topped with some kind of mayo-like sauce and delicious but tragically challenging to eat.

“I didn’t know how to use chopsticks before my dominant hand was put out of commission.” You glare down the row at Shelby. She glowers back. Since that night in Singapore, you circle each other like snarling undomesticated animals, wolves or coyotes. Now you’re on her radar. Now she knows there is something—that mysterious, ever-shifting, worrying something—between you and Aemond. She just doesn’t know what it is. Neither do you, neither does he, neither does anyone.

“Want me to feed you?” Aegon slurs flirtatiously. He plucks up a piece of your eel sushi with his chopsticks and promptly drops it in your lap. “Oh. Fuck.”

Baela presses the button on the counter to summon the server. “I’ll get you a fork.”

“You are a saint,” you tell her. “Patron saint of initiative. Or drive, whichever you prefer the sound of.” Aegon is mayhem, Aemond is lost causes. What am I?

“And you are an uncultured hick from Kansas.”

You smile at her. “Missouri.”

Your fork soon arrives. A few seats down the row, you hear Shelby ask innocently, like it doesn’t mean anything: “How old is Louis Tomlinson’s son now?”

Aemond shrugs. He’s watching the conveyor belt for vegan options; he keeps missing them when they pass by. “I don’t know, five?”

“No, Freddie?!” Luke says. “He’s gotta be like seven now. We saw him last summer at Niall’s pool party.”

“He was so cute,” Shelby says. She’s sitting on Aemond’s good side, as always. She rubs his back and you fight the urge to break her fingers one by one, snapping them in half like dry autumn twigs, lifeless and hollow. “Wasn’t he cute, honeybunch?”

“Sure,” Aemond replies distractedly. And of course Shelby is the type of person who believes that becoming a father will heal a man, rather than just dooming his children to be collateral damage.

Aegon peeks over the conveyer belt at the chefs who are preparing plates in the middle. He lurches and wobbles. Criston covers his own face with his hands, mortified. “Hey, hey, can I get a Crab Rangoon please?”

A chef says something in Japanese, soft and polite but clearly imploring him to sit back down.

Aegon repeats slowly: “Crab! Rangooooooon!”

“Hey dumbass,” Jace says. “That’s Chinese. We’re in Japan.”

“Oh. Right.” Aegon sighs, retreats, and orders himself another sake bomb.

You grab a plate of veggie rolls and another of fried tofu sushi off the conveyer belt and pass them down the row to Aemond. Shelby sends you the most venomous of glares, but Aemond mouths when she’s not paying attention: Thank you.

~~~~~~~~~~

Two shows in Tokyo, two performances on the stage where Aemond was mutilated. Of course, you don’t see mutilation when you look at him. You never have. You see the way the light hits the angles of his jaw and nose and cheekbones and think of marble faces in museums, generals, kings, saints, angels. You see the crystalline blue of his right eye and think of rivers, cool and rushing and clean. You see the ethereal haze of his left eye and think of other planets. You don’t know why everyone else reads his scar and blindness as a tale of unspeakable ruin. You can’t imagine seeing Aemond that way. It would be easier, less painful, simpler for you if you could. Maybe you could stop wanting him. Maybe you could stop dreaming about him, wisps of longing and memory that escape you as soon as you wake.

Aemond does not attend Comet’s concerts at the Budokan. They’re the only ones you’ve ever known him to miss. He rides out on his Gold Star instead, and then reappears to join the band for their post-show ritual in Jace’s suite, grim and quiet and scribbling in his black-paged notebook, smoking his cigarettes, sipping his Brambles. You cannot blame Aemond. You weren’t here last December when a piece of rigging collapsed during soundcheck and nearly killed him, and yet you can’t stop thinking about it; you can’t stop yourself from glancing up at the rafters during shows, wondering exactly how it happened, picturing Aemond bloody and unconscious on the stage, half-blinded and robbed without knowing it yet.

Tomorrow night is Comet Donati’s final performance in Tokyo, but today Criston has a day trip planned. He has filled every spare second of this tour stop with distractions. The band travels by bullet train (or shinkansen) and then local railways to Nara, the city that served as Japan’s capital in the 700s. Criston hires a tour guide—an 80-year old man called Toru-san, who possesses an incalculable amount of knowledge and also a very, very thick accent—to lead you all around Nara Park to see Isuien Garden, the Kasuga Taisha Shrine, the Nara National Museum, and finally the Great Buddha. Nara Park is full of food and souvenir vendors, as well as 1,200 sika deer that you can pet and feed, albeit at risk of being trampled by overenthusiastic herbivores. There are signs posted with warnings to exercise caution, complete with cartoon illustrations of deer gone rogue.

It’s 95 degrees outside with 80% humidity. You are drenched with sweat and guzzling boba tea. The handle of your bag from a gift shop is slung over your splint. Toru-san, despite his long pants and cardigan sweater, is looking spry as ever and is deep in conversation with Luke and Rhaena; he is regaling them with a bottomless well of Nara trivia. Cregan and Daeron are still browsing through gift shops, mostly for the opportunity to escape the heat and hover, sighing with relief, in front of every electric fan they come across. Aegon, lobster-level red—you aren’t sure if he’s more sunburned or flushed—is snoring under a tree as deer nibble at his cyan tank top and white cargo shorts. Aemond purchased probably $200 worth of deer crackers and has attracted a sizeable crowd of furry new friends. He’s like he always is around animals: beaming, immersed, at peace. Shelby is capturing pictures and video clips of him from a distance.

Nearby where you stand under the shade of a black pine tree, Baela is dressed in a crop top and yoga pants and stretching in the middle of a patch of grass. She keeps having to stop to shove deer away from her as they tiptoe close, searching for snacks. Jace is using Google Translate to flirt with a crowd of Japanese fangirls who have recognized him. They are giggling so loudly you can hear them from across a field. Baela is trying to ignore this. She falls out of a pose and sighs irritably, then walks over to you. Together, you watch Jace for a while, you slurping on your boba tea, Baela frowning with her hands on her willowy waist.

At last, she says: “Sometimes we love people who we know don’t deserve it. But that doesn’t make us love them any less. We just hate ourselves for not being stronger.”

“I think you’re incredibly strong, Baela.”

“Do you?”

“Yes. Strong enough to leave him. Strong enough to begin living your own life again.”

Her expression is suddenly uncharacteristically vulnerable, fearful. “I don’t know if I can do it. I’ve never been an adult without him.”

“You’d figure it out. And you wouldn’t be alone. You’d have Rhaena, and Luke, and ballet, and all your friends and family—”

“And you too, right?” she asks. “You’ll still be my friend? Even after you go back home?”

You are stunned into a silence that Baela first mistakes for rejection. Her face falls. “No no no, I’m not hesitating, you just caught me by surprise. Of course I’ll still be your friend after the tour is over. I’ll be your friend forever.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“And you’ll visit me in prison if I snap one day and throw Jace into a meatgrinder?”

You laugh and hug her, your sweat dampening each other’s clothes: her orange crop top, your Backstreet Boys t-shirt. “Absolutely. For sure.”

“Okay. I gotta go practice some more.” She spends long hours down in the hotel gym while everyone else is sleeping or partying or preparing for shows, running and stretching and yoga and repeating the same dance routines over and over again. You applaud and whistle as she leaves. “Stop,” Baela complains, but she’s grinning.

You procure another boba tea. You find a nice shady spot on a bench. You check your phone; there’s maybe fifteen more minutes until the band is scheduled to leave for the train station to begin the journey back to Tokyo. Naturally, Criston has dinner already planned: kaiseki ryori, a traditional multi-course meal. You wonder if there will be vegan options for Aemond. Your eyes drift back to him. They always seem to. He’s dragging his palm down the face of a ten-point buck as he feeds him a crumbling brown cracker. There’s a fawn curled up in Aemond’s lap. His blond hair is slicked back off his forehead, his black shirt mostly unbuttoned. Sweat gleams on his chest. Your fingertips ache to draw sloping lines and lazy circles in it.

“I never worried about him,” Criston says. He’s appeared beside you, arms crossed guardedly. You move over so there’s room for Criston on the bench. He sits, distant and troubled. “I always worried about the others. Aegon and Jace especially. But not Aemond.”

“Because he never needed you,” you say quietly.

“He didn’t,” Criston agrees. “And so I wasn’t there to protect him that day.”

The day of the accident. “From what I understand, it wasn’t something you could have prevented.”

“No, I couldn’t have stopped that piece of rigging from falling. But I could have made it so he wasn’t standing under it.”

You wait for Criston to explain. That’s an element that people often underestimate: the power of waiting for someone to be ready.

“It was soundcheck,” Criston says. His voice is strained, hushed. He repeatedly touches the stubble of his beard, a nervous habit. “Aemond was on time, as always. Aemond was exactly where he was supposed to be. But no one else was. Aegon and Jace had gone off to a strip club or a burlesque show or something, I don’t remember. They came back to the hotel and were absolutely hammered, they were crawling around on the hallway floor and puking in corners, laughing hysterically, completely out of their minds. Cregan and Luke were there trying to get them cleaned up. I was on the phone with Cregan, he was pissed, probably the most angry I’ve ever heard him, he kept pausing to yell at Aegon. He’d dragged him into a cold shower, but Aegon was fighting, trying to bite and kick him and whatever the hell else. So eventually I decided to go to the hotel and deal with it. Aemond offered to go with me. I told him no, you stay here, I’ll bring the other four even if I have to get the security guys to toss Aegon and Jace over their shoulders and carry them. Then I left.”

“And that’s when it happened,” you realize. “While you were gone.”

“Yes,” Criston says. And he gazes across Nara Park, here in body but his mind trapped in the maze of the past.

“You had no way of knowing what would happen, Criston. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I should have told him to come with me back to the hotel. Or I should have stopped Aegon and Jace from getting wasted. If they’d been on time, if soundcheck had happened as scheduled, no one would have been standing where that piece of rigging fell. Aemond would still be the leader of Comet. He would still have his face, his sight, his life.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” you say again.

“Alicent blames me,” he confesses. And you only know who she is because you’ve asked Aegon: the wife of Viserys Targaryen, the mother of his three sons. “She’ll never forgive me.”

Is that really why she avoids you, Criston? Or is there another reason? “If that’s true, it’s only because she’s feeling a lot of horrible things—grief, pain, regret, guilt—and she’s directing them at you. You haven’t earned them. You’re just the person standing in the line of fire. They’re a reflection of Alicent’s inner turmoil, not of your own worth. I think you’ve done a phenomenal job trying to keep this band safe and happy. And I know it’s not easy. I know it’s damn near impossible.”

“I’m glad you’re here,” he says, looking at you with large, dark, truthful eyes like a dog’s.

And you imagine a world in which you’d never seen Aegon after that night in Kansas City, never met Aemond, Baela, Rhaena, Luke, Cregan, Daeron, Criston. “I’m glad I’m here too.”

Criston reaches over and—for a moment, so briefly you could have imagined it—rests his hand on your shoulder like he sometimes does to Aemond and Luke. Then he leaves to collect Cregan and Daeron from a shaved ice vendor. Shelby has strolled over to consult with Toru-san, presumably so she can add his trivia to her Instagram posts and TikTok videos. You go to Aemond.

“I have a confession to make,” he says solemnly as you approach.

The oxygen vanishes from your lungs; you try to hide this. “What is it?”

Aemond smiles up at you. “When the tour guide was leading us here, I thought he kept saying that the park was full of bears. And I didn’t want to kill the mood or anything, but I was definitely concerned about going on a field trip to feed over 1,000 uncaged bears. I am very, very relieved that he was in fact saying deer.”

You chuckle and sit next to Aemond on the grass, petting the fawn in his lap. It blinks sleepily at you, its fur soft and spotted, its ears pricked up and curious.

“What’s your souvenir for this stop of the tour?” Aemond asks.

You pull it out of your bag to show him: a small stuffed sika deer complete with floppy felt antlers. “Isn’t it adorable?”

“It is,” he says. “Are you going to have room for all these keepsakes in your apartment back home?”

“Already fantasizing about me leaving, huh?”

“No,” Aemond says, seriously now. Deadly serious. “No, I’m not.” And then Criston is shouting through cupped hands for everybody to huddle up so you can all head to the train station.

It’s not until the band is trekking out of Nara Park towards the blissful promise of air conditioning that you realize someone is missing. When you look around, you see Criston, Aemond, Shelby, Aegon (rubbing his eyes and yawning), Baela, Jace, Rhaena, Luke, Cregan, and a smattering of security guards dressed in black.

“Wait,” you say. “Where’s Daeron?”

A chorus of confusion: “What?” Huh?” “He’s not here?” At last, Criston spies him sitting alone on a wooden park bench, glumly eating through his mountain of shaved ice.

“What the hell is he doing?!” Jace says impatiently, swiping perspiration from his forehead.

Aegon massages your shoulders. “I think this might call for your particular area of expertise, Stargirl.” And when Aemond’s eye flicks to Aegon fleetingly, resentfully, you think for the first time: And where were you, Aegon, when Aemond was waiting all those months ago? Whoring, drinking, self-destructing in ways that take other people down with you? Then you leave him.

Through the heat that lays thick over the city like a tangle of vines, you trudge to the bench where the youngest Targaryen brother is lingering. “Daeron? What’s wrong?”

He stares gloomily down into his shaved ice: blood-colored, strawberry, ichigo. “Everyone thinks I’m always joking and optimistic, but I’m not.”

You ask gently: “What are you really, Daeron?”

“I don’t know what to be. That’s the problem. I worry about it all the time. I can’t win. If I’m sad, then I’m ungrateful for this tremendous opportunity. But if I’m happy, it’s like I’m dancing on Aemond’s grave.”

“He’s not dead, Daeron,” you say.

“Well, yeah, obviously.”

“But a lot of the time people talk about him like he is. You speak around him, over him, through him. Do you think he doesn’t notice?” Do you think he can’t feel the weight of that dark gravity that roots him to the earth? Do you think he can disentangle who he is from the wreckage that has buried its shrapnel in his bones?

Daeron isn’t insulted by what you’ve said. Instead, he seems fascinated. He seems grateful, like you’ve sat down to help him with an especially baffling puzzle. “What would he want from us, do you think?”

“I think he wants to know that his time in Comet wasn’t wasted. That even if he leaves, he will still be a part of this family. I think he wants to be acknowledged. He doesn’t want pity or awkward silences, he doesn’t want to pretend that the accident never happened. He wants to know that his life will go on in spite of it.”

Daeron ruminates on this, taking a bite of his towering mound of shaved ice. “If I said something about him at the last Tokyo show tomorrow, do you think he’d mind? I’ve had this idea for a while, but I didn’t know how he’d take it.”

“That depends on what you say.”

Daeron asks, peering up at you with large pale eyes: more translucent than Aegon’s, more harmless than Aemond’s. He has been shown more kindness than either of them; he is perhaps less deep, less singularly brilliant, but also less burdened. It is a trade many would happily agree to. It is a trade they would pay for in blood. “What should I say?”

You smile at Daeron. “The truth.”

~~~~~~~~~~

“I’d like to take a moment to share something with all of you,” Daeron says into his microphone as soon as Comet finishes The Worst Way To Be. The audience lowers their cheers to a reverent, intensely attentive murmur.

“Wait, what?” Baela whispers to you and Rhaena as you stand in the front row. Shelby, who had been looking rather bored, whips out her phone and begins a live stream. Aegon, Jace, Luke, and Cregan are upbeat and beaming—as is expected of them, as is required—but they pass each other nervous glances like folded paper notes in a high school classroom. This is not in the script.

“I just want to say thank you,” Daeron continues. His voice reverberates off the walls of the Budokan. “Thank you to all of you guys, of course. Our amazing, incredible fans. Thank you for letting us live this dream of a life.” There are claps and whistles, shrieked declarations of undying adoration. Daeron takes a deep breath. His hands are shaking; you can see the microphone tremble. “And thank you to my big brother Aemond.” Instantaneously, the crowd goes as close to silent as it is possible for a stadium at max capacity to be. The others are gawking at him openly now, unable to paper over it with masklike smiles. “I had been following Comet around for years before I got the offer to officially join. So I know how much work and talent Aemond poured into this band. I’m beyond honored to be up on this stage tonight performing for all of you, but I wish it could have happened a different way. I wish Aemond could be here too. And no matter where he goes in the world or what he does next, he will always be the person who made Comet Donati possible. And he will always be my greatest inspiration. I love you, man. We all love you.”

And the audience erupts into deafening cheers and applause, all for a soul who could not bring himself to attend the show. There are chants of We love you, Aemond! that go on for more than five minutes. Aegon is shouting as loudly as anyone; Jace, Luke, and Cregan are running around the stage and encouraging the crowd. They are a little shellshocked, but they are genuine.

Even Jace, you think, you marvel. Even Jace is honoring him. He doesn’t hate Aemond after all. He provokes and he taunts, sure, and he crosses lines on occasion, but Jace doesn’t hate Aemond. He might even miss him.

For their last night in Tokyo, Criston has grander aspirations for the band than the usual wind down in Jace’s suite. He gets everyone—Aemond included, fetched from the bar of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, already several Brambles deep—into the Escalades to drive to Club Camelot, where Criston has reserved one of the three floors for Comet. It swiftly fills like a flute of champagne: women in sparkling gowns, men with baiting smiles, security guards and label executives and friends and acquaintances and models. The tiles on the floor are black and white, but bathed in sapphire luminescence that covers everyone like rain. Empty hands are filled with frosty bottles and glasses clinking with ice. The song that thunders out of the speakers is a throwback: Butterfly by Crazy Town.

Cregan has acquired a harem of sorts; you look once and he’s flocked by three gazelle-like companions, you look again and there are five of them. Jace is mingling freely. Aemond is talking to Daeron—thanking him, it appears, offering heartfelt gratitude—while Shelby greets a pack of influencer-types as they arrive. They squeal and jump up and down with her in their clicking stilettos, then take turns snapping each other’s pictures. Criston actually appears to be somewhat relaxed. He sips on a Sapporo Premium and chats with one of the guys from the label, gesturing casually with his expressive hands. Aegon is curled up in a booth with Selena Gomez. Yes, Selena freaking Gomez. He keeps playing with her glossy dark tresses and making her giggle, propping his sunburned face up on his knuckles, glowing in that way that he does. It’s not just for you. It’s never been just for you. And sometimes he’s close to you and sometimes he’s not, and right now he’s on the other side of the solar system, he’s out in the Oort cloud, he’ll be back to visit earth in a few hundred years. Aegon disappears into the bathroom every few minutes. You see smudges of white powder on his hands, under his nose. If he tried to talk to you right now, you wouldn’t know what to say to him. He would feel like a stranger.

You’re watching Aemond. You wish you weren’t, but you are. He’s in all black, the top three buttons of his shirt undone. You nurse a Bramble and follow Baela, Rhaena, and Luke around the dancefloor, barely able to hear them over the music. Luke is lightheartedly making fun of Baela for something. Her earrings? Her shoes?

“I’ll have you know that I’m very important around here!” Baela cries over the music. “I’m the patron saint of drive!”

“Patron saint of driving herself to the Gucci store, maybe,” Luke says.

They’re all laughing. You feel like you’re observing them through a transparent wall, like you’re at the aquarium and they’re a dazzling rare species and you’re some grubby kid with your palms pressed to the glass. What am I still doing here? Why did I ever think I belonged here?

You break away from Baela, Rhaena, and Luke and drift by Shelby and her fellow influencers, not intending to eavesdrop but catching a few fragments of their conversation like Jupiter and Saturn capture moons. As Aemond talks to Daeron across the room, Shelby is lamenting her love life. She thinks she’s being discrete, but she’s had more than a few gin and tonics.

“No, he still…he probably doesn’t want me looking at him…he’ll let me blow him, but he won’t actually…you know…?”

And you remember what you told him on that balcony in Reykjavik: I think you haven’t fucked anyone since the accident, and you’re terrified to.

You were right. You’re still right. And here you are, like mirrors: Aemond not fucking Shelby, you not fucking Aegon, and there’s no especially good reason for either except that it just doesn’t feel right. After a while, Shelby and her entourage leave to check out another nightclub down the block. More photo opportunities, you suspect. A change of scenery.

“How’s your wrist?” Jace inquires. He’s found you loitering on the outskirts of the dancefloor. He’s wearing a black sequined blazer with nothing underneath except skin and ink. He’s unsteady on his feet, a Vesper sloshing in his glass. Now the song that’s playing is Ed Sheeran’s I Don’t Care, featuring Justin Bieber. In the booth she’s sharing with Aegon, Selena Gomez audibly groans.

“Great. It actually feels better when no one talks to me.”

Jace cackles, far too loudly. “You are hilarious. Hey, hey, listen.” His free hand skates around your waist. Instinctively, you jolt away from him.

“Nope.”

“Listen.” He grips you more adamantly. “Let’s do this.”

“No, no, that’s a very kind offer but I’d rather chew off my own limbs, thank you.”

“Look, I don’t care if you’ve hooked up with Aegon,” Jace purrs into your ear, sweating out vodka and gin, his curls brushing against your cheek. “Hell, I don’t care if you’re still hooking up with Aegon. I’m better than him. I have to be, right? That fat drunk. I’ll show you.”

You try to pull away from him again. You’re wearing the short sparkly dress you bought in Reykjavik, black velvet and silver stars. “Jace, don’t touch me.”

“Come on, Stargirl, give me a shot—”

“Jace,” you say harshly, your eyes blazing. “Do not touch me.”

“Okay,” he sighs; and, to his credit, he releases you. He holds up his palm in surrender. “Okay, fine, but when you change your mind—”

Aemond soars in out of nowhere, a comet, a meteor, the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs. His fist connects with Jace’s jaw. Jace’s Vesper goes flying; blood spurts from his mouth, split lips and lost teeth. “Don’t you fucking touch her!” Aemond is roaring. He has Jace pinned to the floor, black and white and sapphire and red. “When she says not to touch her, you don’t, you hear me?!”

People are screaming and descending upon them, trying to pull them apart. Your Bramble shatters against the tile floor. Criston is here, and security guards, and Baela and Rhaena and Luke and Aegon. Everyone is talking at the same time, so it’s almost like no one is. Jace is striking at Aemond from the ground. Aemond hits him again, and again, knuckles into defenseless flesh and bone, blood vessels bursting, nerves on fire. The music stops, the lights come on.

“Aemond, stop!” you shout. “Aemond, Aemond, you’re going to kill him!”

“Let him go, Aemond, please!” Baela is yelling, and there’s raw terror in her voice.

Then Jace lands a solid punch at last, a hook that comes in from Aemond’s left. Blood pours from Aemond’s nose, it’s on his face and his throat, it’s running down his chest. Cregan arrives, locks his arms around Aemond’s waist, and heaves him away. Before Jace has a second to recover, Aegon wrenches him up by the collar of his blazer and slaps him open-handed across the face.

“He can’t see on that side, you fucking snake!”

Criston bellows: “Aegon, back up, back up, back the fuck up!” He finally gets a good look at Jace: bleeding, bruised, teeth missing, blinking dazedly at the spectators, too stunned to feel the pain yet. “Oh my God!” Criston whirls to Aemond, who is struggling against Cregan’s grasp. “How’s he going to perform in five days, huh?! Jesus Christ, he looks like he’s been butchered! How am I going to cover that up?! How is he going to sing?!” Criston pulls Jace to his feet; he practically has to carry him. Baela follows after them, more distressed than you’ve ever seen her, flowing tears and strangled sobs. Rhaena and Luke go too.

You, Aegon, and Daeron rush to Aemond. He’s bent over and spitting blood onto the floor so he doesn’t choke on it. “Not broken,” Cregan pronounces after examining his nose. “Just gonna bleed real bad. Needs pressure on it.”

“Are you okay?” Aegon asks you, a hand careful and tender on your face. He’s back again, for a minute, an hour, a day.

Your voice quakes. “Yeah.”

“What did Jace do…?”

“Nothing, nothing that bad, I mean he grabbed my waist but—”

“Aegon?” Selena Gomez says tentatively, waiting nearby and hugging her arms around herself.

“Yeah, one second, love. Give me a second.” He appraises Aemond and whistles. “Man, you are wrecked.” And not just physically. He’s incensed, he’s in shock. You reach for Aemond’s hand and he lets you take it.

“You got him?” Cregan asks you.

“I’ll clean him up. I’ll take care of him.” And as blood continues to run down his face, you draw Aemond towards the bathrooms. You lead him inside the women’s room and lock the door, blue walls and white florescent light. Somewhat ungainly—relying mostly upon your non-dominant hand—you press a pile of paper towels against his nose and tell him to hold it there. Then you wet more paper towels and wipe down his knuckles, his face, his throat. The blood on his chest has run beneath his glossy black shirt. We match, you think randomly. “Can I…?”

He yanks the shirt over his head, then returns the mass of crimson-stained paper towels to his nose. Fortunately, the bleeding appears to be slowing. You erase the smudged trail of scarlet that runs all the way to the waistline of his dark jeans. When you reach the end of it, Aemond flinches away from you; not a pained flinch, but a fearful one. He turns his back on you and walks to the other end of the small and shadowless room. He braces one palm against the wall and sighs deeply. He throws the wad of paper towels in the trashcan and then covers his face with his hand, shaking his head.

“Aemond,” you say. And you wait for him to look you in the eye. It takes a long time. “What do you want?” Why were you watching me and Jace? Why did you lose control?

“Nothing,” he replies immediately.

“That’s a lie.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It does,” you insist, your voice fracturing. “It does matter. Just tell me what you want.”

“Why, so you can let me down easy? Or worse, pretend to be into it to make me feel better, to help piece me and my fragile little ego back together? I don’t beg for anything. You really think I’m going to beg you to want me?”

“No, you’re too fucking proud, you’d never even ask for it. You’ll beat people half to death for things you’re too much of a coward to say out loud, and I’m supposed to feel sorry for you?!”

“Then why are you even in here with me?! Just go back to Aegon, I know that’s what you want. I guess you’ll have to wait in line behind Selena Gomez, but he’ll work his way back around to you eventually.”

“Jace stole something from you, right?” you say. “You feel like he stole the band from you after you were kicked out, and then tonight you felt like he was stealing something else, and that’s why you freaked out and almost murdered him—”

“No. No, because you’re not mine.”

“What do you want, Aemond?” you ask him again, tears of exhaustion and desperation in your eyes.

“I don’t want anything from you,” he says, coming in closer. “So you’re absolved, you’re free to go, I don’t need your goddamn charity—”

Your good hand juts out, and what you plan to do is plant it against his bare chest and push him away. What you do instead—as if by muscle memory, a reflex, an instinct—is reach up to plunge your fingers into his hair. And then his palm is cradling the small of your back and his lips are on yours, moving seamlessly like how currents thread through the ocean. He helps lift you up onto the counter; there is just enough room between two of the sinks. Your legs link around Aemond as he presses himself to you, lips still tinged with coppery blood, bare chest, his waist, his hips. Your back hits the mirror—cool and unyielding, the ink of his lyrics flat against the glass—with enough force to make a thump.

“Are you okay—?”

“I’m more okay than I’ve been in years.”

He tilts up your chin and kisses you deeply, dizzyingly, his tongue darting between your lips. He tastes like his Brambles, sweetness cut with the bite of gin, and smoke, and something else too, something that’s just purely him, something you could drown in like the river of his clear right eye. Gently, you bring your fingertips to his face, to his scar. “Don’t,” he pleads softly, pained.

“There’s nothing wrong with you.”

“Don’t—”

“Aemond, look at me.” And you hold his face still so you know he hears you. “There’s nothing wrong with you. There has never been anything wrong with you.”

You watch it hit him like a stone into water, ripples that wash away everything he’s felt before. He knows you mean it, he can feel it, the same way you can feel the care with which he caresses you, not just lust but engulfing warmth, wordless veneration. He whispers between kisses: “Tell me what to do. Tell me what you want.”

Your lock your gaze with his, then reach down to unbutton his jeans. It’s difficult with the splint, but you manage. You think he might stop you, you prepare yourself for it, but he doesn’t. Instead, Aemond’s hands vanish beneath your dress and slip off your panties, black lace you hadn’t planned on anyone seeing tonight. As you kiss his face—jagged scar, flushed cheek, the slope of his jaw—his fingers slide into a pool of staggering heat and wetness.

He moans. “Oh fuck, that’s for me?”

“I’ve wanted this from the start.”

“Show me…show me how you like it…”

You guide his hand to exactly the right spot and give him a rhythm, a pressure, a pace that rolls a euphoric shudder down your spine. He’s barely touched you, and already you’re shaking all over; you’re throbbing, you’re dazed with that delicious needful aching, you’re gasping into the sweltering, salt-strewn dampness of his neck. His fingertips stroke you in commanding circles—only a few times—until you’re on the precipice, until you stop him. You’re ready, even though he’s huge: long and thick, revealed as he tugs down his jeans and boxers. He pins your uninjured hand against the mirror and kisses and bites at your throat as he eases himself inside you: a stretching that is intense but not unpleasant, hunger being satisfied. And when he thrusts—carefully at first, waiting for you to tell him he can be rougher—there are so many layers of pleasure that it stuns you, it leaves you speechless. Has it ever been like this before? Never, never, never, not once, not for a moment, not with anybody. His future was stolen from him, but he’s taken your past from you; he’s carved it out like a gemstone from the earth and locked it away in a vault no one remembers the passcode to.

“I’m so close,” you whisper, you beg. “Aemond, please, please, I want to come for you…” And you gasp as his fingers skim down your belly again, stroking you forcefully as his thrusts become deeper, quicker, impossibly powerful.

His voice is low and murmuring. His scent is everywhere; it’s all you know how to breathe. “You okay, baby? You alright?”

“Yes, yes, oh God, Aemond, don’t stop, please don’t stop…”

“I won’t stop, baby. You’re doing so well, you’re almost there.”

“Aemond…yes…I love this…”

“I love you.”

He what…? He WHAT…??

And it doesn’t just drag you over the edge; it pushes you, it propels you, you go plummeting off the cliffside and freefall for miles. There’s no disguising it. You have to bury your face in his chest to keep from crying out, clinging to him, your fingernails leaving indents like crescent moons. Aemond, fighting his own climax viciously, lasts just long enough to fuck you through the aftershocks and then empties himself not just physically but also of the shame and aimlessness of the past seven months, of his fears, of his suspicions.

“Wait,” you say as he pulls away from you. You yank a paper towel out of the dispenser and wet it with cold water. First you cool his forehead and the back of his neck with it, then you wipe his fingers and his cock. Still perched on the counter, you wet another paper towel for yourself.

“No,” Aemond tells you. “Let me.” He takes it from you, opens your thighs, and kisses your mouth—teasingly, biting and sucking your lower lip—as he spreads your folds and cleans them of his seed, abundant hot white fluid that you can feel dripping out of you. As he passes over where you are most sensitive—where you can already feel longing for him rebuilding brick by brick—you jump a little, and you both laugh. I could go again, you think. I could do this with him forever. And then, as Aemond descends from the chemical high like a plane gliding down towards a tarmac, you watch as those old familiar poisons—shame, aimlessness, fear, suspicion—begin to fill up in him again, slowly but unmistakably.

He throws out the paper towels and takes several steps back. He starts putting on his clothes, staring at the wall, then at the mirror, not at you but past you, at himself, his clear river-blue eye wide and vacant. He looks horrified by what he’s done; or perhaps, rather, by what he’s said.

You grab your panties off the counter and step into them, readjusting your dress. “Look, uh…if you didn’t mean what you said…that’s totally cool. I get it, sometimes people say things in the moment that aren’t real, there’s the oxytocin and the dopamine, and I don’t want you to feel…uh…you know…like you have to keep up a false pretense or anything…”

Aemond turns around and walks out of the bathroom, the door slamming behind him.

“Okay,” you say to yourself. “Okay. I can fix this.” You use the toilet quickly—UTIs are not welcome here—and then head out onto the dancefloor.

The lights are dim again, and thank God for that; your makeup is smudged, your hair unruly, your eyes glazed, your dress rumpled and stained. Cregan is the only person still waiting. “Hey,” he says flatly, then squints at you. You avoid his astute greyish eyes.

“Hey. Where is everyone?”

“Criston took Jace to the hospital. Baela is there too. Rhaena and Luke are back at the hotel. Aegon is presumably balls deep in Selena Gomez. Aemond just sprinted out of this club and I’d guess he’s headed back to the hotel too. Daeron went after him. I think that’s everybody.”

You shift your weight from foot to foot uneasily. “Shelby?”

“Oh, right. Haven’t seen her. Still out with her friends.” His eyes sweep over you. “On a scale of one to ten, how homicidal would she be if she found out about whatever happened in that bathroom?”

“Nothing happened.”

“Uh huh.” Cregan strides towards the stairwell that leads down to the front door. “Let’s go.”

Back at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, you swipe your keycard and flick the lights on in your suite. You stand there alone, feeling the evidence of what you’ve done: sore muscles and bruised skin and pooling wetness, both yours and his. You are absorbed with thoughts of what you’re going to say to Aemond when you confront him, how much of your truth you are willing to bare. And then your eyes catch on the small trashcan beside your bed, which reminds you of the one back in Singapore, which reminds you of your pack of birth control pills discarded on a pile of crumpled soda cans and snack wrappers.

I haven’t taken a pill in days. How many days? A week?

“Oh my God,” you breathe. And then, more frantically: “Oh no, oh no, no no no…”

What do I do? What the hell do I do?

You race out into the hallway and knock on Baela’s door. Nobody answers. You try Rhaena’s next. She appears in her pajamas, pink and dotted with tiny green Tyrannosaurus rexes. “Hi,” she says agreeably enough, but she’s rubbing her eyes drowsily.

“Hi. I’m really, really sorry to bother you, but it’s an emergency.”

She perks up considerably. “Okay, how can I help?”

“Where’s Luke?”

“In the shower.”

“So he can’t hear us right now?”

“No, he can’t.”

“Good. Do you know when Baela will be back from the hospital?”

“Not anytime soon,” Rhaena says. “She messaged me that Jace needs stitches and has a concussion. They’ll be there all night, at least.”

You exhale, a defeated little squeak. “Is Aegon around? With or without Selena Gomez?”

“No, they haven’t come back yet. I have no idea where they are.”

“Okay.” You swallow noisily.

“What’s going on with you?” Rhaena asks, concerned.

“This really is not a Rhaena situation. This is a Baela or Aegon situation.”

“Alright, but neither of them are here. So I’m who you’ve got.”

You stare at her. “I need Plan B. Do you happen to have any Plan B?”

“Plan B…? Like, you just had unprotected sex with someone Plan B?”

“Yes, exactly, that one.”

Rhaena gapes, scandalized. “With who?!”

“Confidential,” you say briskly. “Do you have any or not?”

“No, I definitely don’t have any Plan B lying around.”

“No,” you groan. Tears are welling up in your eyes. “What am I going to do? How do I get Plan B in Japan?!”

“We’ll figure this out,” Rhaena says. She dashes to her nightstand to grab her iPhone. “Don’t panic. It’ll be okay. Let’s Google 24-hour pharmacies in Tokyo…”

You don’t have Criston here to summon an Escalade—nor would you willingly risk him finding out about this—but Rhaena uses Google Translate to ask the hotel’s front desk to call a taxi. She shows the taxi driver an address, figures out how many yen you owe him, and then asks him very politely (if haltingly) in Japanese to wait ten minutes while you’re inside the pharmacy so you can take a return trip as well. He seems to agree.

Rhaena accompanies you into the pharmacy and repeats these steps: Google Translate, an exchange of yen, the receipt of a service. She tells you that based on her quick research, Plan B is usually by prescription only in Japan, but pharmacists will sometimes be willing to prescribe it on the spot to a patient in need. Rhaena spends a long time typing out a message for the middle-aged, bespectacled pharmacist, then points to you. This is my friend, the maybe-pregnant slut from Missouri, you imagine her saying. She needs emergency contraception. It’s really in all of humanity’s best interests for her not to continue her bloodline.

“You have to show him your ID,” Rhaena tells you.

You give your passport to the pharmacist, and then he hands you a small package. You and Rhaena purchase a bottle of Coke Zero as well. You gulp down the single tablet as the pharmacist watches with bushy raised eyebrows, amused. You are pleased to discover that the taxi driver has waited, and within fifteen minutes you and Rhaena are back at the hotel.

“You’ve talked to a lot of people tonight,” you tell Rhaena matter-of-factly as you ride the elevator back up to the band’s floor.

“Oh, yeah. I guess I did. I mean, I’ve been practicing. And you needed me.”

“I’m proud of you,” you say.

Rhaena smiles sheepishly. “Thanks.”

“And I’ll be even more proud of you when I get my period.”

She giggles, she trots off to her suite, you retreat into yours. You collapse onto the floor and gaze up at the ceiling, studying the specks and grooves in the tiles like constellations.

“It was only one time,” you say to the ceiling. “I was on the pill for years. That takes a while to leave my system, right? I mean, what are the odds? It’s fine. It’s totally fine. Nothing’s going to happen, right?”

Right?

[race-week]

obviously Merc has a shit strategy but what happened there even it seemed like they truly are deliberately sabotaging lewis with fuck up strategies ever since then to make George look good or to make it look like he has what it takes to beat Lewis ( even deliberately shooting Lewis confidence for Ferrari next year even ) like toto is deliberately using lewis as their experimental person for the car and he can't say no to it like how many times has LH ignored toto just this season it tells me something that he never really is friends or that close with Toto to begin with and only close because of Niki lauda

Is this you?

In all seriousness let’s take our tinfoil hats off for like 2-3 minutes please?

Okay so first of all,

I think from the very beginning they’ve used the wrong word regarding these ‘experiments’ because what they are is set up changes. People are acting like these set up changes are Mercedes throwing shit at the wall and hoping it sticks, when that is not the case.

What they are/will be is the driver complaining of understeer in a corner or oversteer or just general poor handling of the car and the engineers go back to the data from the track, from the wind tunnel and from the simulator and use that data to make educated changes to the car that should fix said issue.

They aren’t just going “oh I wonder what will happen if I change this part drastically”, these are typically very minute changes.

What the problem is, is that the Mercedes seems to have quite a narrow operating window and is quite sensitive to other changes, so track temperatures, wind, distance to other cars etc, and it’s not always easy to have all of this data to hand, hence the cars sometimes behave differently in the race (but this goes for all teams).

Now let’s talk about the strategy, I must admit when I heard Hamilton was starting on softs, I raised my eyebrows a bit but I was also somewhat commending Mercedes, recently (the past few years) they’ve been a bit too safe with strategies and this is something they’ve been criticised for a bit, and this was actually a good opportunity to try something.

Now looking at the data it makes sense what they did it, if you do the same exact strategy as those in front of you, you will always be behind them. Plus up until that point Norris had never held P1 after the opening lap, so Hamilton starting on softs on the clean side of the grid made sense as a way to make up a position or two and then pit under the safety car which was expected (because it’s Singapore)

Also Hamilton is an adult, so don’t infantilise him, he can make his own decisions, I highly doubt that he had absolutely no say in his starting tyres or his race set ups.

Toto Wolff and Mercedes aren’t just strapping random things to the car and saying ‘right off you go’ there’s meetings about these things, countless meetings over the course of a weekend.

Teams don’t deliberately sabotage their drivers, because at the end of the day they need the drivers to score points and make the team look good, Mercedes in particular want to try to stay as close as possible to the teams in front, in particular McLaren as getting beat by your customer team isn’t a great look for them.

Now have a think about what I’ve said before you inevitably put your tinfoil hat back on

[needyoulikeaheartbeet]

Eras Tour Surprise Songs - 2024 Version

A list of all the surprise songs played at the 2024 shows!

🎸 Dear Reader (Tokyo - February 7th, 2024)

🎹 Holy Ground (Tokyo - February 7th, 2024)

🎸 Eyes Open (Tokyo - February 8th, 2024)

🎹 Electric Touch (Tokyo - February 8th, 2024)

🎸 Superman (Tokyo - February 9th, 2024)

🎹 The Outside (Tokyo - February 9th, 2024)

🎸 Come In With The Rain (Tokyo - February 10th, 2024)

🎹 You’re On Your Own, Kid (Tokyo - February 10th, 2024)

🎸 Red (Melbourne - February 16th, 2024)

🎹 You’re Losing Me (Melbourne - February 16th, 2024)

🎸 Getaway Car x august x The Other Side Of The Door (Melbourne - February 17th, 2024)

🎹 this is me trying (Melbourne - February 17th, 2024)

🎸 Come Back... Be Here x Daylight (Melbourne - February 18th, 2024)

🎹 Teardrops On My Guitar (Melbourne - February 18th, 2024)

🎸 How You Get The Girl (Sydney - February 23rd, 2024)

🎹 White Horse x coney island (Sydney - February 23rd, 2024)

🎸 Should've Said No x You're Not Sorry (Sydney - February 24th, 2024)

🎹 New Year's Day x peace (Sydney - February 24th, 2024)

🎸 Is It Over Now x I Wish You Would (Sydney - February 25th, 2024)

🎹 Haunted x exile (Sydney - February 25th, 2024)

🎸 Would've, Could've, Should've x ivy (Sydney - February 26th, 2024)

🎹 Forever & Always x Maroon (Sydney - February 26th, 2024)

🎸 Mine x Starlight (Singapore - March 2nd, 2024)

🎹 I Don't Wanna Live Forever x Dress (Singapore - March 2nd, 2024)

🎸  long story short x The Story Of Us (Singapore - March 3rd, 2024)

🎹  Clean x evermore (Singapore - March 3rd, 2024)

🎸  Foolish One x Tell Me Why (Singapore - March 4th, 2024)

🎹  This Love x Call It What You Want (Singapore - March 4th, 2024)

🎸  Death By A Thousand Cuts x Babe (Singapore - March 7th, 2024)

🎹  Fifteen x You’re On Your Own, Kid (Singapore - March 7th, 2024)

🎸  Sparks Fly x gold rush (Singapore - March 8th, 2024)

🎹  False God x "Slut!” (Singapore - March 8th, 2024)

🎸  Tim McGraw x cowboy like me (Singapore - March 9th, 2024)

🎹  mirrorball x epiphany (Singapore - March 9th, 2024)

🎸  Paris (Paris - May 9th, 2024)

🎹  loml (Paris - May 9th, 2024)

🎸  Is It Over Now? x Out Of The Woods (Paris - May 10th, 2024)

🎹  My Boy Only Breaks His Favourite Toys (Paris - May 10th, 2024)

🎸  Hey Stephen (Paris - May 11th, 2024)

🎹  Maroon (Paris - May 11th, 2024)

🎸  The Alchemy x Treacherous (Paris - May 12th, 2024)

🎹  Begin Again x Paris (Paris - May 12th, 2024)

🎸  I Think He Knows x Gorgeous (Stockholm - May 17th, 2024)

🎹  Peter (Stockholm - May 17th, 2024)

🎸  Guilty as Sin? (Stockholm - May 18th, 2024)

🎹  Say Don’t Go x Welcome To New York x Clean (Stockholm - May 18th, 2024)

🎸  Message in a Bottle x How You Get The Girl x New Romantics (Stockholm - May 19th, 2024)

🎹  How Did It End? (Stockholm - May 19th, 2024)

🎸  Come Back... Be Here x The Way I Loved You x The Other Side Of The Door (Lisbon - May 24th, 2024)

🎹  Fresh Out The Slammer x High Infidelity (Lisbon - May 24th, 2024)

🎸  The Tortured Poets Department x Now That We Don't Talk (Lisbon - May 25th, 2024)

🎹  You're On Your Own, Kid x Long Live (Lisbon - May 25th, 2024)

🎸  Sparks Fly x I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can) (Madrid - May 29th, 2024)

🎹  I Look In People's Windows x Snow On The Beach (Madrid - May 29th, 2024)

🎸  Our Song x Jump Then Fall (Madrid - May 30th, 2024)

🎹  King Of My Heart (Madrid - May 30th, 2024)

🎸  The Prophecy x long story short (Lyon - June 2nd, 2024)

🎹  Fifteen x You're On Your Own, Kid (Lyon - June 2nd, 2024)

🎸  Glitch x Everything Has Changed (Lyon - June 3rd, 2024)

🎹  Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus (Lyon - June 3rd, 2024)

🎸  Would've, Could've, Should've x I Know Places (Edinburgh - June 7th, 2024)

🎹  tis the damn season x Daylight (Edinburgh - June 7th, 2024)

🎸  The Bolter x Getaway Car (Edinburgh - June 8th, 2024)

🎹  All Of The Girls You Loved Before x Crazier (Edinburgh - June 8th, 2024)

🎸  dorothea x It's Nice To Have A Friend (Edinburgh - June 9th, 2024)

🎹  Haunted x exile (Edinburgh - June 9th, 2024)

🎸  I Can See You x Mine (Liverpool - June 13th, 2024)

🎹  Cornelia Street x Maroon (Liverpool - June 13th, 2024)

🎸  This Is What You Came For x gold rush (Liverpool - June 14th, 2024)

🎹  The Great War x You're Losing Me (Liverpool - June 14th, 2024)

🎸  Carolina x no body, no crime (Liverpool - June 15th, 2024)

🎹  The Manuscript x Red (Liverpool - June 15th, 2024)

🎸  I Forgot That You Existed x This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things (Cardiff - June 18th, 2024)

🎹  I Hate It Here x the lakes (Cardiff - June 18th, 2024)

🎸  Hits Different x Death By A Thousand Cuts (London - June 21st, 2024)

🎹  The Black Dog x Come Back... Be Here x Maroon (London - June 21st, 2024)

🎸  thanK you aIMee x Mean (London - June 22nd, 2024)

🎹  Castles Crumbling with Hayley Williams (London - June 22nd, 2024)

🎸  us. with Gracie Abrams (London - June 23rd, 2024)

🎹  Out Of The Woods x Is It Over Now? x Clean (London - June 23rd, 2024)

🎸  State of Grace x You’re On Your Own, Kid (Dublin - June 28th, 2024)

🎹  Sweet Nothing x hoax (Dublin - June 28th, 2024)

🎸  The Albatross x Dancing With Our Hands Tied (Dublin - June 29th, 2024)

🎹  This Love x Ours (Dublin - June 29th, 2024)

🎸  Clara Bow x The Lucky One (Dublin - June 30th, 2024)

🎹  You’re On Your Own, Kid (Dublin - June 30th, 2024)

🎸  Guilty as Sin? x Untouchable (Amsterdam - July 4th, 2024)

🎹  The Archer x Question...? (Amsterdam - July 4th, 2024)

🎸  imgonnagetyouback x Dress (Amsterdam - July 5th, 2024)

🎹  You Are In Love x cowboy like me (Amsterdam - July 5th, 2024)

🎸  Sweeter Than Fiction x Holy Ground (Amsterdam - July 6th, 2024)

🎹  Mary’s Song (Oh My My My) x So High School x Everything Has Changed (Amsterdam - July 6th, 2024)

🎸  Sweeter Than Fiction x Holy Ground (Amsterdam - July 6th, 2024)

🎹  Mary’s Song (Oh My My My) x So High School x Everything Has Changed (Amsterdam - July 6th, 2024)

🎸  right where you left me x All You Had To Do Was Stay (Zurich - July 9th, 2024)

🎹  Last Kiss x Sad Beautiful Tragic (Zurich - July 9th, 2024)

🎸  closure x A Perfectly Good Heart (Zurich - July 10th, 2024)

🎹  Robin x Never Grow Up (Zurich - July 10th, 2024)

🎸  the 1 x Wonderland (Milan - July 13th, 2024)

🎹  I Almost Do x The Moment I Knew (Milan - July 13th, 2024)

🎸  Mr. Perfectly Fine x Red (Milan - July 14th, 2024)

🎹  Getaway Car x Out Of The Woods (Milan - July 14th, 2024)

🎸  Superstar x invisible string (Gelsenkirchen - July 17th, 2024)

🎹 “Slut!” x False God (Gelsenkirchen - July 17th, 2024)

🎸  Speak Now x Hey Stephen (Gelsenkirchen - July 18th, 2024)

🎹 this is me trying x Labyrinth (Gelsenkirchen - July 18th, 2024)

🎸  Paper Rings x Stay Stay Stay (Gelsenkirchen - July 19th, 2024)

🎹  it’s time to go x Better Man (Gelsenkirchen - July 19th, 2024)

🎸  Teardrops On My Guitar x The Last Time (Hamburg - July 23rd, 2024)

🎹  We Were Happy x happiness (Hamburg - July 23rd, 2024)

🎸  the last great american dynasty x Run (Hamburg - July 24th, 2024)

🎹  Nothing New x Dear Reader (Hamburg - July 24th, 2024)

🎸  Fresh Out The Slammer x You Are In Love (Munich - July 27th, 2024)

🎹  ivy x Call It What You Want (Munich - July 27th, 2024)

🎸  I Don’t Wanna Live Forever x imgonnagetyouback (Munich - July 28th, 2024)

🎹  loml x Don’t You (Munich - July 28th, 2024)

🎸  mirrorball x Clara Bow (Warsaw - August 1st, 2024)

🎹  Suburban Legends x New Year's Day (Warsaw - August 1st, 2024)

🎸  I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can) x I Can See You (Warsaw - August 2nd, 2024)

🎹  Red x Maroon (Warsaw - August 2nd, 2024)

🎸  Today Was A Fairytale x I Think He Knows (Warsaw - August 3rd, 2024)

🎹  The Black Dog x exile (Warsaw - August 3rd, 2024)

🎸  Everything Has Changed x End Game x Thinking Out Loud with Ed Sheeran (London - August 15th, 2024)

🎹  King Of My Heart x The Alchemy (London - August 15th, 2024)

🎸  London Boy (London - August 16th, 2024)

🎹  Dear John x Sad Beautiful Tragic (London - August 16th, 2024

🎸  I Did Something Bad (London - August 17th, 2024)

🎹  My Boy Only Breaks His Favourite Toys x coney island (London - August 17th, 2024)

🎸  Long Live x Change (London - August 19th, 2024)

🎹  The Archer x You're On Your Own, Kid (London - August 19th, 2024)

🎸  Death By A Thousand Cuts x Getaway Car with Jack Antonoff (London - August 20th, 2024)

🎹  So Long, London (London - August 20th, 2024)

[mileapo]

Mile & Apo: It takes two to triumph

IN THE GLITZY REALM OF entertainment, where talent often shines like a beacon, there occasionally emerges a pair of stars whose chemistry transcends the screen. Such is the case with Mile and Apo, two charismatic Thai actors whose TV show KinnPorsche has become a global sensation, watched by millions of viewers from Russia and India, to Poland and Peru.

The two have risen from relative obscurity to become the new ambassadors of Dior, mobbed by teenage girls when they arrived in Mumbai earlier this year to attend a Dior fashion show.

On the surface, the Thai series KinnPorsche seems to have thrown the rulebook of “How to make a hit TV show” out the window. It is a mafia story filled with surly men, bloody gang fights and epic shoot-outs – which, yes, is a mainstay of TV programming. But the radical twist is this: the two main characters are a mafia boss’ son (played by Mile) and his male bodyguard (played by Apo) who – surprise, surprise – fall in love with each other.

In the history of TV, there has never been a hit crime series centred on a gay plot. But when KinnPorsche debuted in April 2022 on Thai TV and global streaming service iQiyi, it almost instantly became the top trending title in neighbouring countries such as Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines.

Soon after, it claimed Europe, finding particular popularity in Poland, Turkey, Italy and France. Then it stormed its way into North and South America, where it was a top trending topic in the US, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador and Colombia.

No one – not even the cast and producers – thought the show would be this successful. It seems to have fed into some untapped market for female audiences who love action shows, but don’t care to see yet another threateningly perfect actress couple up with their fantasy man.

If you ask any fan what it is about the show that makes them sweat, swoon or quiver with delight, they’ll answer quite simply: Mile and Apo.

Double or nothing

At their photo shoot in Bangkok’s top restaurant Nusara, which overlooks the splendid temple complex Wat Pho, the models-turned-actors are in their element. They tailor their bodies and facial expressions instinctively for the camera, conveying a range of emotions, from sultry and mysterious to bright and playful. The slinky Dior suits, with their clean lines and minimal embellishments, don’t hurt either.

Mile (or Phakphum Romsaithong) and Apo (or Nattawin Wattanagitiphat) recently released their new film Man Suang in cinemas. It is a big-budget political thriller set during the 19th century reign of Rama III, replete with historically authentic sets and costumes.

Apo plays a traditional dancer who is recruited to spy in an elite club and uncover a plot to overthrow the order of the king. Finding a kindred spirit in the club’s taphon drummer (played by Mile), the two team up to stop the underground rebellion.

Speaking with the help of a translator, Mile, 31, explains: “We hope the movie reaches out to a wide audience. We wanted it to have both commercial and critical success, something that could show Thai history and culture to the world, but also be fun and entertaining enough to be a popcorn movie for the masses.”

Both actors note how T-pop (the shorthand for Thai popular entertainment) has been hyped as the next global sensation after K-pop and J-pop, following the massive success of Thai stars such as Lisa Manobal, Bright Vachirawit and Win Opas-iamkajorn.

“And it can happen,” says Apo, 29, also through a translator. “Thai people are very humble, gentle, hardworking and friendly. We can blend into any culture. If anything, Thailand has served as a melting pot for different cultures – just as Singapore has. Our culture can be easily embraced by the world.”

The duo believes that the global audience has transformed in recent times. “They’re now more welcoming of stories from different parts of the world, especially if those stories involve characters going on a journey to discover themselves and make themselves better, stronger, wiser and happier,” says Apo. “That’s why when I look for new projects these days, I look for the ones that carry the messages of self-actualisation.”

Mile concurs, adding: “I’ve always believed in ‘high risk, high return’. KinnPorsche was a risky proposition, because it took a mafia crime genre and placed it in the Boy Love category (a niche genre involving gay romance). But I believed in the project’s potential from the start – even if I never thought it’d become the cultural phenomenon that it is today. Its success has only strengthened my belief in ‘high risk, high return’.”

One-two punch

The road to success has been winding for both actors. Though born with the magnetic allure of leading men, they’ve had to work hard to secure roles over countless rivals, as strikingly handsome as they are. Having appeared in smaller parts before, it was the smash success of KinnPorsche – a show that almost didn’t get made because of funding issues – that catapulted them into not just the Thai limelight, but the global stratosphere.

Asked what Dior’s artistic director Kim Jones thinks of KinnPorsche, the duo laughs. Apo says: “We don’t know if he’s seen the show – we didn’t ask him. But we do know that our fans had been bombarding his Instagram account for a while, telling him about us, asking him to check us out, before he signed us up – well, at least that’s what he told us when we met him for the first time.”

“But for all you know, he could be binge-watching the series right now,” quips Mile, prompting another round of chuckles.

As the two men trade jokes in Thai, it’s clear that they share a genuine friendship. Their camaraderie is palpable, adding an extra layer of authenticity to their on-screen chemistry. Their behind-the-scenes antics and playful banter in candid posts have become fan fodder, launching thousands of TikTok videos and memes.

Mile says: “We’ve only become better friends in these past two-and-a-half years. We’ve become more synchronised, and our mindsets and energies are moving at the same pace. I can look at Apo and more or less understand what’s going on in his mind. We have small conflicts, of course – it’s normal among friends – but it’s usually something so minor, we can resolve it quickly.”

The best part of their friendship? Their shared love of dad jokes – that genre of silly, cheesy jokes with predictable punchlines that fathers supposedly love to tell their kids.

But Mile confesses: “I don’t tell dad jokes because I like them, to be honest. What I really, really want to tell are smart jokes, witty jokes… But I’m so bad at making jokes that they always come across as dad jokes, no matter how hard I try.”

Apo interjects: “Do you wanna hear a good dad joke?” Then, switching from Thai to halting English, he says slowly: “Hey you… watch where you walk… or you will… fall… into… my heart.”

[sixminutestoriesblog]

new years traditions around the world

Humans like their superstitions. The world is so random and abstract and there is so much that we can't, no matter how hard we try, control. And yet, its human nature not to be content to let 'Fate' decide our - well - fate. Some of our oldest stories are about heroes doing exactly that, trying to avoid what life has set down for them. Often they don't succeed but it doesn't stop the next hero's story from trying.

And - every now and then, some hero, somewhere, does win.

What better time to try to set the record straight, determine the future and ward away disasters than as the clock turns over and gives us an entirely new year? So, today, let's talk about New Year's Eve superstitions and see just how many we're willing to do, not because we believe them but because, deep down, we figure why not?

Do you want to travel in the upcoming year? In Columbia, they walk, or run, around the block carrying empty suitcases to call it into the new year.

Hoping for a baby in the new year? In Greece, hang a bundle of onions over your front door. Not only will this up your chances of fertility, but onions encourage good luck too.

Want to make sure there are no evil spirits in your house? In Ireland they use their leftover Christmas bread to bang on the house walls to drive any lingering mischief out. In Puerto Rico, they dump a bucket of water out the window to wash evil spirits away. In Japan, Buddhist temples ring their bells 108 times before midnight, each toll driving away a specific vice or sin so that the new year can start clean. Fireworks can drive off evil spirits too. According to the historic Chinese, the loud sounds scare them off.

Want some predictions for the new year? In the Czech Republic, they cut apples in half. If the apple's core looks like a star than next year everyone will meet again, happy and healthy. If it's a cross, someone will soon be very ill. In Columbia, they place three potatoes under the bed, one peeled, on half peeled and the other left alone. At midnight, grab one. If its unpeeled, you will have financial woes. Still in its skin? A year of prosperity. And half and half is - well, half and half. In Ireland, hiding mistletoe under your pillow will let you dream of your future spouse.

Had a bad year you can't wait to see go? Open your doors and windows on new year's eve to let the old year out and the new year in (I suspect this is easier for people living in warmer climes). In Ecuador, they build paper effigies of the bad, usually politicians, and set it on fire! Bonus good luck if you can jump over that fire twelve times. In Japan, they clean their house to wash away the old year and have it fresh and ready for a brand new year.

Looking for a long, healthy life? In Japan, they eat soba, noodles that are as long as the life the consumers want to have.

Aiming for prosperity? In Turkey, they smash pomegranates on their doorstep. The more pieces and the bigger the mess, the better. In the Southern US, you need to get yourself a meal of Hoppin John. Round shapes resemble coins so in the Philippines you want to eat twelve round fruits at midnight. Don't count on the fruit alone though, in the Philippines its also good luck to wear polka dots the last day of the year.

Have a wish you want to come true? In Singapore, they float wishing spheres, giant floating balls people write their wishes on, in the Singapore River. In Russia they write the wish on a piece of paper, burn it and then drink the ashes down in a glass of champagne. In Brazil, jump over seven ocean waves - you get a wish for each one.

Do you just want general good luck? There's a lot of traditions for that. Eat fish - they only swim forward and so will carry you forward into the new year. In Denmark, get your dishes and go break them on your friends' and family's doorstep. The more broken pieces, the more the luck. In Spain, they eat twelve grapes as the clock strikes midnight for good luck but make sure you pay attention to what you're doing and finish by the end of the chimes or you get the opposite in the upcoming year. In Denmark, stand on a chair and 'leap' into the new year as the clock strikes midnight for good luck. Farmers should wish all their livestock a good new year first thing in the morning. Several countries hide a coin or an almond in the new years eve's dessert and whoever finds it will have good luck in the new year. In New York, they sell candy peppermint pigs that come with their own hammers. Smash the pig, eat the candy and get luck in the new year - and help burn off some holiday stress. In Armenia, the first batch of bread baked on the new year bakes in the luck for the rest of the year's cooking. In Turkey, as the clock strikes midnight, sprinkle salt on your doorstep for good luck. In Japan, waking up early to watch the first sunrise of the new year is supposed to bring good luck. In Romania, they toss a coin into a river on new year's eve.

And finally - don't forget to dress for the occasion! In Brazil, they wear white on new year's eve to bring in a year full of peace. You can still be racy though. Apparently the color of your underwear makes a difference.

White – peace and harmony

Silver – innovation

Blue – serenity and friendship

Green – good health and hope

Red – passion

Yellow/gold – money and happiness

Pink – romance and love

Purple – spiritual connection

Orange – creativity

Black – independence

So there you have it.

Happy New Year!

[bunnytalksf1]

Would you mind explaining undercut in depth? I'm a new fan and it seemingly played a big part in Max's race last week!

Undercut / overcut is one of those things that I understand well, but it's notoriously difficult to explain. I'll have a go though!

So in basic terms undercut is when one driver overtakes another off the track by pitting for fresh tyres first, and putting in a fast outlap to close the gap between them, with the driver ahead having a slower inlap on older tyres. This is why a driver behind might trigger drivers ahead to pit - even if th driver behind is just outside the undercut window, the undercut is more effctive the longer the driver ahead is left out. There's an undercut "window" specific to certain tracks since the pitlane time loss is different, as is the laptime. In general, the undercut window is usually around the two second mark for an undercut in one lap, but if the team ahead messes up their strategy and doesn't bring the driver in straight away, then the undercut can work from a bit further back.

So: Undercut

Driver A is ahead of Driver B by less than the undercut window

Driver B pits first, outlap faster than Driver A's inlap by more than the gap between them before Driver B pitted.

Driver A pits.

Driver B is now ahead of Driver A.

Overcut is the opposite, where there is an advantage to be gained by staying out longer than your opponent. Usually this is more to do with factors like clean air, traffic, or using less pitstops overall rather than just staying out longer, but in some cases tyre compound can be a factor.

So overcut example:

Driver A is ahead of Driver B

Driver A pits first. They get caught in midfield traffic, put on a slower tyre that takes longer to warm up, or releases Driver B into clean air.

Driver B, with a new pace advantage because of the above factors, has faster inlap(s) than Driver A's outlap(s).

Driver B pits, and is now ahead of Driver A.

Undercut / Overcut is part of the pitwall strategy, and is not part of the driver's role. It is solely the role of the strategists / pitwall to pit the drivers at the right time to gain positions. That being said, some tracks have a very powerful undercut, due to how difficult it is to overtake on track. Monaco is a prime example, as are Singapore and Hungary. At Spa this weekend, the undercut still exists, but the easier and more effective way to gain places is overtaking, since there's a lot of opportunity there. In mixed conditions on any track, the undercut becomes more powerful as the track conditions change and the teams try to pinpoint the right time to switch between inters to wets to slicks. It played a huge factor at Silverstone this year in hugely changeable conditions.

Hope that explains it somewhat, anon!

[carlimuja]

Furniture Maintenance: How to Keep Your Dining Chairs Looking New

Investing in a set of stylish and comfortable dining chairs can instantly elevate the overall ambience of your dining area. Whether you have chosen classic wooden chairs or modern upholstered ones, it's crucial to maintain them properly to ensure their longevity and keep them looking new. Let us explore the tips and tricks for maintaining your dining chairs in Singapore, helping you preserve their beauty and functionality for years.

CLEAN REGULARLY TO PREVENT BUILD-UP:

Regular cleaning can prevent dirt, dust, and food particles from accumulating on your dining chairs. Start by vacuuming the chairs to remove loose debris. Use a soft, dry cloth to wipe any remaining dust from wooden chairs. 

Upholstered chairs can be vacuumed or brushed to remove surface dirt. If there are any spills or stains, act quickly and follow the manufacturer's guidelines for stain removal.

PROTECT WITH CHAIR COVERS:

Consider using chair covers to safeguard your dining chairs from accidental spills and stains. These covers protect the chairs and add a touch of elegance to your dining space. Opt for chair covers made from durable and easy-to-clean fabrics that match your overall decor. Remember to remove and wash the covers regularly to maintain cleanliness and freshness.

AVOID DIRECT SUNLIGHT:

Excessive exposure to sunlight can cause fading and damage to the materials of your dining chairs. To protect them, position the chairs away from direct sunlight or use curtains, blinds, or window films to filter the harsh rays. This simple precaution will help preserve the colour and integrity of the chairs for a longer time.

CUSHION ROTATION:

If your dining chairs have removable cushions, rotate them regularly to ensure even wear and tear. It helps prevent permanent indentations and extends the cushions' lifespan. You can also distribute the weight evenly, avoiding imbalances and maintaining a comfortable seating experience by switching cushions as often as possible.

TIGHTEN LOOSE SCREWS AND BOLTS:

Over time, regular use can cause screws and bolts in your dining chairs to become loose. To prevent wobbling and potential damage, inspect and tighten them periodically. Use a suitable screwdriver or wrench to ensure the stability of the chairs. Taking care of these small maintenance tasks can significantly prolong the life of your dining chairs.

CONSIDER FLOOR PROTECTORS:

To protect your dining chairs and your floors, consider using floor protectors. These simple accessories, such as felt pads or rubber caps, can be attached to the bottom of the chair legs, preventing scratches and reducing noise when moving the chairs. 

AVOID EXCESSIVE WEIGHT:

While dining chairs are designed to support weight, it's crucial to avoid placing excessive pressure on them. Avoid using chairs as stepping stools or placing heavy objects on them. It will help prevent structural damage and maintain the overall stability and integrity of the chairs.

CONCLUSION

By following these practical tips for furniture maintenance, you can ensure that your dining chairs in Singapore remain in good condition, preserving their beauty and functionality for years to come. Regular cleaning, using chair covers, protecting from direct sunlight, cushion rotation, tightening loose screws, utilising floor protectors, and avoiding excessive weight are all essential steps to maintain your dining chairs effectively. Take care of your investment so your dining area will continue to radiate style and comfort.

Remember, well-maintained dining chairs not only enhance your dining experience but also contribute to the overall aesthetics of your home. So, make these maintenance practises a part of your routine and enjoy your beautiful dining chairs for a long time. Visit our website today to discover a wide range of dining chairs in Singapore. Invest in quality furniture and create a dining space that reflects your style and stands the test of time.

[mouldremovalservice]

Achieve spotless Window Cleaning Singapore. Our expert team ensures your windows shine and enhancing your space's appeal. Visit our website for premium service that brightens every view.

[cleanerssingapore]

Over the past ten years, there has been a significant increase in demand for property management services and other related amenities. At first, the locals thought that one company's services were entirely different from those of temporary workers. In the descriptions of their facilities, the majority of office cleaning services Singapore today mention housekeeping services.

[luckyluan]

CHAPTER 3.1: THE STAKE OUT

They dashed around the debris and the two of them reconvened at the back door. Maxim was dressed in all black. He wore a turtleneck, jeans, boots, and gloves. Antwan hiked the lengthy black zipper of a khaki jumpsuit up to his chin. 

“That’s what you’re wearing? In the field?” Maxim admonished. 

“It was my anniversary before it became a mission, Max, and I think you should think about what is under this jumpsuit...” Antwan teased. 

“Twenty pounds of Kevlar and an armory of razors and knives, I’d wager.” Maxim chortled. 

“Damn right.” Antwan confirmed. “Let’s go.” 

They did not bother to secure the gaping hole in their dining room. Antwan, instead, trailed a vial of copper blood onto the burgundy rug under the table and knocked over a few vases in the den. Maxim turned up the volume of the downstairs television up to an obnoxious level. Antwan lifted the window over the kitchen sink and launched himself to the ground. He landed with ag runt while Maxim, noiselessly, lifted his body over the sink. He lowered himself on to the ground and signaled his husband to follow him. 

Antwan nodded and the two of them set off at a jog. Maxim pointed to a sizable light fixture fastened to the corner of their transitional style home and Antwan understood. They kept low to the ground and cut wide arcs in their manicured lawn. He unlatched a concealed lock—obscured by a colorful birdhouse—and Antwan pushed a small section of the wooden fence aside. Maxim allowed the barrel of his gun to lead the way into the passage as he and Antwan slunk into the woods beyond their suburban alcove. 

“Head for the Honeymooners.” Antwan said. “They’re on vacay until next month.” 

“Cliff and Eden are on vacation again?! What are we doing wrong?” Maxim whispered. 

Antwan gave him a nudge and the pair trudged through the murky woods in silence. Maxim did not question his husband when he stared off into the towering trees. He simply let him gaze until he whispered an order. 

“Left.” Antwan whispered. “No... other way...” 

“How do you know where we’re going?” Maxim called. 

“I marked the trees with Radiant Squid Ink.” Antwan explained. “Eagle did a biology project on bioluminescence last month. I took advantage. Keep up, old man.” 

Antwan pinched his cheek and Maxim squinted after him as he sauntered off into the winding shadows. A high stone wall came into view and Antwand handed Maxim his picnic basket as they approached. Maxim dropped to bended knee and Antwan climbed up on his leg. He launched himself onto the wall and straddled the stones. He held out his hand and Maxim offered him the picnic basket before he bounded up the rough stone wall. He dropped into the neighboring yard with Antwan beside him and his husband aimed a middle finger at him. 

“You never accept my help.” he pouted. 

“I’m sorry, baby.” Maxim conceded. “You’re right. I could lean on you a little more. May we continue?” 

“Get the cameras.” Antwan growled. 

Maxim busied himself with the fuse box after Antwan disappeared through a narrow window and the electricity of the luxurious house faltered when Maxim used his copper blade to slice through a blue wire. 

“Get in here, negro!”  

Antwan’s gloved hand dangled out the window. Maxim threw a leg over the low windowsill and crawled into a well-organized laundry room which smelled of clean linen. Maxim steeled his nerves as he drank in the refreshing scent. 

“This won’t be like Singapore.” he said. 

“Agreed.” Antwan said. “Secure the perimeter.” 

“Set up for a long night.” Maxim finished. 

They crept into the shadowy hall and Maxim signaled Antwan to sweep the first level before he set off up the stairs. A few moments later, he called down to his husband. 

“Upstairs is clear.” 

“Down here too.” answered Antwan. 

Maxim loped down the right of the imperial staircase and swiped a stubborn patch of dust off the black banister. 

“Anything?” Maxim asked. 

Antwan sat cross-legged on a plush cream blanket while he carefully laid out his guns. He straightened his weapons as he counted. Maxim observed the assortment of right facing hilts. Guns, cartridges, machines, and knives littered the wicker picnic basket and Antwan jammed his hand into its depths for more bullets. 

“Nope. Don’t see anything, but I had a thought. You don’t just attack people like us. You surveil them. Whomever attacked us was watching us.” 

“You think it's someone from The Order?” Maxim gulped. 

“Yes, dear.” Antwan rolled his eyes. “I believe it was another one of The Order who took the same oath to never fire on family. No, ding dong. I think it was something Abnormal though. They attacked us at night. That’s not a coincidence.” 

“Most of us use nightfall. That’s training. I don’t think it’s a coincidence, but I also don’t think it’s significant.” Maxim challenged. 

“If you said what I just said it would’ve been gospel.” Antwan unleashed. 

“True, but I’ve been doing this longer.” Maxim winked. 

‘Anyway, I think I’m right.” Antwan continued. 

“Of course you do.” said Maxim. “But I am inclined to agree. This attack is not random and coming in the night was not just strategy. It was necessity.” 

“Vampires.” They groaned in tandem. 

[purpleowl666]

𝓦𝓮 𝓵𝓲𝓴𝓮 𝓪𝓵𝓵 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓬𝓸𝓵𝓸𝓻𝓼 𝓫𝓾𝓽 𝓹𝓲𝓷𝓴 𝓳𝓾𝓼𝓽 𝓵𝓸𝓸𝓴𝓼 𝓼𝓸 𝓰𝓸𝓸𝓭 𝓸𝓷 𝓾𝓼~

𝓟 𝓹𝓻𝓮𝓽𝓽𝔂

𝓘 𝓲𝓷𝓽𝓮𝓵𝓵𝓲𝓰𝓮𝓷𝓽

𝓝 𝓷𝓮𝓿𝓮𝓻 𝓼𝓪𝓭

𝓚 𝓴𝓸𝓸𝓵!

I'm so glad to finally introduce my Stardust crusader Oc, Sarah Luna in a little collage💓.

Name: Sarah Luna

Nationality: Mexican-Japanese

Age: 18 years old

Birthday: October 3rd, 1969.

Zodiac sign: Libra ♎

Mbti type: Istj 4w5

Height: 1.70 cm

Weight: 54 kgs/ 119 pounds.

Stand: Moon Lullaby (ability: Can put any life form to sleep and make them to experience livid dreams or nightmares)

Likes: Pink, jewels, any type of stones (as long as they're rare or pretty), feathers, kickboxing, reading and shopping.

Dislikes: Maths, churches, any kind of religion in general, bugs, grains, sea water, closed windows or small spaces, people who don't take showers, long skirts, people who are physical affective, authorative people.

Appearance:

Sarah is a young woman with pink hair with big eyelashes, round lips, bright dark brown eyes, tan skin, always try to look clean and beautiful, she loves to wear eye shadows and purple lipstick, she has a mole close to her lips. She usually wears fashionable pink or pastel clothes.

Personality:

Despite her smiling and feminine appearance, Sarah is a quiet, square and lonely young woman. She is very dedicated to her own family goals and interests. So, despite looking like the typical frivolous and bimbo girl, Sarah is a much more gloomy and repressed by her past and family. But little by little she lets go more and lets her true self be free. Her way of dressing is her only escape from herself, which contrasts with her personality, but at the same time it's the aspects that she would like to release more, being sassy, more confident of herself, flirty and playful.

History:

Sarah grew up in Quintana Roo with her mother, Juana Luna ( mexican, she used to be a secretary from a big hotel in Cancun) , her father, Takeshi Shiobana( a Japanese banker) and her older sister, Ima Shiobana.

Sarah grew up being constantly compared to her older sister, being branded as ugly and she used to be fat as a child. Sarah always had difficult with socializing and doing sports, Ima on the other hand, was always very prominent in dance and gymnastics, as well as being very beautiful and social, so her parents and family were more attentive towards Ima than Sarah.

Thanks to that, Sarah worked hard to try to be outstanding academically, but not getting the attention of her parents or anyone, she set out to look for some talent, which she lacked for almost anything. Defeated and resigned, she dedicated herself arduously to being an exemplary student, but despite her efforts, she never stood out or won awards from her school, increasing her anger and frustration and then, when she becomes 8 years old, her parents gets a divorce.

Her father left with Ima to Japan and never had any type of communication with Sarah again, and her mother, started to become alcoholic and controlling. A year after the divorce of her parents, Sarah looses all hope in herself and decides to become a nun, so she spends the rest of her teen years in being educated in a convent, where she secretely escapes during nights to visit the city and being on touch with the news and trends, is when she discovers more about her wishes and passions; nevertheless, She founds herself between a rock and a hard place to decide if she wants to become a nun or just live her life but the fear of not getting approve from her mother or the church terrifies her, For better or worse, when she becomes 16 her family took her out of the convent, unwilling to continue paying for her studies since her mother needed help given her alcoholism, forcing Sarah to work and support her mother. And since back then Sarah became a pawn for her family, willing to be used and obey.

But one good day, and because of the forces of the destiny, she ends up accidentally in Singapore, where after joining the Crusaders, she finds herself in her own journey to be who she wants to be.

[theerastoursurprisesongs]

The Eras Tour Surprise Song 2024

Surprise songs in Tokyo, Japan

Night 1

• Guitar: Dear Reader

• Piano: Holy Ground

Night 2

• Guitar: Eyes Open

• Piano: Electric Touch

Night 3

• Guitar: Superman

• Piano: The Outside

Night 4

• Guitar: Come With The Rain

• Piano: You’re on Your Own, Kid

Surprise Songs in Melbourne, Australia

Night 1

• Guitar: Red

- announces "The Bolter"

• Piano: You're Losing Me

Night 2

• Guitar: Getaway Car × august × The Other Side of the Door

• Piano: this is me trying

Night 3

• Guitar: Come Back...Be Here × Daylight

• Piano: Teardrops On My Guitar

Surprise Songs in Sydney, Australia

Night 1

• Guitar: How You Get the Girl

- The Albatross

• Piano: White Horse × Coney Island with Sabrina Carpenter

Night 2

• Guitar: Should've Said No × You’re Not Sorry

• Piano: New Year’s Day × peace

Night 3

• Guitar: Is It Over Now? × I Wish You Would

• Piano: Haunted × exile

Night 4

• Guitar: Would've, Could've, Should've × ivy

• Piano: Forever & Always × Maroon

Surprise Songs in Singapore

Night 1

• Guitar: Mine × Starlight

• Piano: I Don’t Wanna Live Forever × Dress

Night 2

• Guitar: long story short × The Story Of Us

- announces "The Black Dog"

• Piano: Clean × evermore

Night 3

• Guitar: Foolish One × Tell Me Why

• Piano: This Love × Call It What You Want

Night 4

• Guitar: Death By A Thousand Cuts × Babe

• Piano: Fifteen × You’re on Your Own, Kid

Night 5

• Guitar: Sparks Fly × gold rush

• Piano: False God × "Slut!"

Night 6

• Guitar: Tim McGraw × cowboy like me

• Piano: mirrorball × epiphany

Surprise Songs in Paris, France

Night 1

• Guitar: Paris

• Piano: lolm

- Added TTPD on setlist

Night 2

• Guitar: Is It Over Now? × Out of the Woods

• Piano: My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys

Night 3

• Guitar: Hey Stephen

• Piano: Maroon

Night 4

• Guitar: The Alchemy × Treacherous

• Piano: Begin Again × Paris

Surprise Songs in Stockholm, Sweden

Night 1

• Guitar: I Think He Knows × Gorgeous

• Piano: Peter

Night 2

• Guitar: Guilty as Sin?

• Piano: Say Don't Go × Welcome To New York × Clean

Night 3

• Guitar: Message In A Bottle × How You Get The Girl × New Romantics

• Piano: How Did It End?

Surprise Songs in Lisbon, Portugal

Night 1

• Guitar:

• Piano: Fresh Out The Slammer × High Infidelity

Night 2

• Guitar: The Tortured Poets Department × Now That We Don't Talk

• Piano: Your On Your Own Kid × Long Live

Surprise Songs in Madrid, Spain

Night 1

• Guitar: Sparks Fly × I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)

• Piano: I Look in People's Windows × Snow On The Beach

Night 2

• Guitar: Our Song × Jump Then Fall

• Piano: King Of My Heart

Surprise Songs in Lyon, France

Night 1

• Guitar: The Prophecy × long story short

• Piano: Fifteen × You’re on Your Own, Kid

Night 2

• Guitar: Glitch × Everything Has Changed

• Piano: Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus

Surprise Songs in Edinburgh, Scotland

Night 1

• Guitar: Would've, Could've, Should've × I Know Places

• Piano: 'tis the damn season × Daylight

Night 2

• Guitar: The Bolter × Getaway Car

• Piano: All Of The Girls You Loved Before × Crazier

Night 3

• Guitar: It's Nice To Have A Friend × dorothea

• Piano: Haunted × exile

Surprise Songs in Liverpool, England

Night 1

• Guitar: I Can See You × Mine

• Piano: Cornelia Street × Maroon

Night 2

• Guitar: This Is What You Came For × gold rush

• Piano: The Great War × You're Losing Me

Night 3

• Guitar: Carolina × no body, no crime

• Piano: The Manuscript × Red

Surprise Songs in Cardiff, Wales

Night 1

• Guitar: I Forgot That You Existed × This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things

• Piano: I Hate It Here × the lakes

Surprise Songs in London, England

Night 1

• Guitar: Hits Different × Death By A Thousand Cuts

• Piano: The Black Dog × Come Back...Be Here × Maroon

Night 2

• Guitar: thanK you aIMee × Mean

• Piano: Castles Crumbling with Hayley Williams

Night 3

• Guitar: us with Gracie Abrams on the piano

• Piano: Out Of The Woods × Is It Over Now? × Clean

Surprise Songs in Dublin, Ireland

Night 1

• Guitar: State Of Grace × You’re on Your Own, Kid

• Piano: Sweet Nothing × hoax

Night 2

• Guitar: The Albatross × Dancing With Our Hands Tied

• Piano: This Love × Ours

Night 3

• Guitar: Clara Bow × The Lucky One

• Piano: You’re on Your Own, Kid

Surprise Songs in Amsterdam, Netherlands

Night 1

• Guitar: Guilty as Sin? × Untouchable

• Piano: The Archer × Question...?

Night 2

• Guitar: imgonnagetyouback × Dress

• Piano: You Are In Love × cowboy like me

Night 3

• Guitar: Sweeter Than Fiction × Holy Ground

• Piano: Mary's Song (Oh My My My) × So High School × Everything Has Changed

Surprise Songs in Zürich, Switzerland

Night 1

• Guitar: right where you left me × All You Had To Do Was Stay

• Piano: Last Kiss × Sad Beautiful Tragic

Night 2

• Guitar: closure × A Perfectly Good Heart

• Piano: Robin × Never Grow Up

Surprise Songs in Milan, Italy

Night 1

• Guitar: the 1 × Wonderland

• Piano: I Almost Do × The Moment I Knew

Night 2

• Guitar: Mr. Perfectly Fine × Red

• Piano: Getaway Car × Out Of The Woods

Surprise Songs in Gelsenkirchen, Germany

Night 1

• Guitar: Superstar × invisible string

• Piano: "Slut!" × False God

Night 2

• Guitar: Speak Now × Hey Stephen

• Piano: this is me trying × Labyrinth

Night 3

• Guitar: Paper Rings × Stay Stay Stay

• Piano: it's time to go × Better Man

Surprise Songs in Hamburg, Germany

Night 1

• Guitar: Teardrops On My Guitar × The Last Time

• Piano: We Were Happy × happiness

Night 2

• Guitar: the last great american dynasty × Run

• Piano: Nothing New × Dear Reader

Surprise Songs in Munich, Germany

Night 1

• Guitar: Fresh Out The Slammer × You Are In Love

• Piano: ivy × Call It What You Want

Night 2

• Guitar: I Don't Wanna Live Forever × imgonnagetyouback

• Piano: loml × Don't You

Surprise Songs in Warsaw, Poland

Night 1

• Guitar: mirrorball × Clara Bow

• Piano: Suburban Legends × New Year's Day

Night 2

• Guitar: I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can) × I Can See You

• Piano: Red × Maroon

Night 3

• Guitar: Today Was A Fairytale × I Think He Knows

• Piano: The Black Dog × exile

Surprise Songs in London, England

Night 4

• Guitar: Everything Has Changed × End Game × Thinking out Loud with Ed Sheeran

• Piano: King Of My Heart × The Alchemy

Night 5

• Guitar: London Boy

• Piano: Dear John × Sad Beautiful Tragic

Night 6

• Guitar: I Did Something Bad

• Piano: My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys × coney island

Night 7

• Guitar: Long Live × Change

• Piano: The Archer × You're On Your Own, Kid

Night 8

• Guitar: Death By A Thousand Cuts × Getaway Car with Jack Antonoff

• Piano: So Long London