#I AM ALWAYS FUCKIN DOWN TO TALK SOME LITERATURE
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that book list I promised
//rubs my grubby hands together happily
Boy howdy do I ever have some book recommendations. This would’ve been posted earlier but mobile decided to go fuck itself. Just a heads up, this is gonna be long
I mostly read series because tbh teen fiction is some of the best. It tends to take the most risks with both style and characterization. (Granted, it also tends to fall risk to some of the worst tropes imo like abuse stalker creepy guy is hot cause he loves protag)
Anything Garth Nix has ever written in his whole life. He’s one of my favorite authors and tends to stick to series. Keys to the Kingdom is 7 books and the first is Mister Monday and you read in order of the days of the week. No really. You’ll see why. His Old Kingdom series is 5 books and a short story so far and starts with Sabriel. It’s about necromancers who keep the dead down rather than raise them. Like I have the biggest boner for this series it’s not even funny
Terry Pratchett is my absolute favorite author of all time (besides Shakespeare) and he’s written over 50 books. You don’t have to read them in any particular order but he does follow characters across books sometimes. I recommend starting with Monstrous Regiment, Small Gods, or Going Postal first. If you want to start in chronological order, I think The Colour of Magic was written first
If you’re patient, read the whole Lord of the Rings series from The Hobbit onward. Tolkien sucks his own dick and describes clouds for a whole page cause he’s a world builder kind of writer. I haven’t had a chance to try the series again but I remember enjoying The Hobbit. Just know this is a very tedious option and may result in more boredom
Less boring is The Chronicles of Narnia but there are a few books that are just an absolute bear to get through. I recommend this right after lotr because these stories are a result OF THE SAME DRUG TRIP because Clive Staples Lewis (no really that’s what CS stands for) and Tolkien were college roommates. And because Narnia is a fucking fun place to visit
George RR Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire cause it includes more detail than Game of Thrones and because I’m always a slut for kingdom musical chairs and dragons
Speaking of dragons, The Inheritance Series which is Eragon etc because it’s like lotr for people who can’t stand reading about a cloud for two pages, almost entirely action. Plus, in one of the books, they (Eragon and Saphira) do a couple of really stupid, slightly offensive things to the elves and admit their mistakes which I thought was cool cause it feels like sometimes protagonists don’t apologize in books
Chris D'Lacey also writes these REALLY COOL books about dragons called The Last Dragon Chronicles where these ladies make dragons out of clay and I’m 90% sure The Fire Within is the first book. There are at least 7 and I really need to catch up
Angie Sage writes about a boy named Septimus Heap who’s the 7th son of a 7th son and those books start with Magyk and there are at least 6 maybe 9. They’re fucking awesome and full of magic and adventure and I’m pretty sure he gets a pet dragon somewhere
Suzanne Collins also writes a lot of great stuff but I REALLY like her Gregor the Overlander series. Think Alice in Wonderland with a guy and no drugs and it’s awesome
Anything Rick Riordan has ever written in his life. I love love love the Percy Jackson series and he also wrote Children of the Lamp which is the bomb dot com about djinn children
Douglas Adams has a whole Hitchhiker’s Guide series and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is the first and it’s just bonkers and loads of fun. Basically earth gets blown up and the protagonist has to deal with it. An absolute riot
James Rollins writes the Blood Infernal series about vampires and were-beings not just werewolves. The first book is Sanguine and the protagonist’s best friend is a werewolf. The first two books don’t have much to do with each other aside from being in the same universe but book three picks up at the end of book one and ties them both together. I’m pretty sure there’s sex
I’d also recommend anything Edgar Allen Poe or Shakespeare ever wrote. I know that’s more Classical Canon or whatever the fuck but honestly? Delightful. Same sentiment for Stephen King
I can’t remember the names of all the series I’ve read but these I definitely do. So onto individual books!
I, Coriander by Sally Gardener set in 17th century London and has to do with a fairy world if I remember correctly
Fairest by Gail Carson Levine about a really ugly inn keeper’s daughter and it’s kind of a retelling of Snow White (She wrote other stand alones but I haven’t read them. Based off this, though, I’d recommend them)
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie about a girl who immigrates from Nigeria(?) to the US and it’s just really really good
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe set in Nigeria(?) right when colonialism happens. The first part is pre-colonialism and then it gets into the beginnings of it and all this happens within the lifespan of one man. Trigger warning though for mentions of abuse, explicit child murder and explicit suicide. Like it’s a good book but it’s gonna be a rough ride if you don’t know what you’re in for
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez is good, if tedious. It’s a Latin American book so the story is circular and told in spirals. I literally have no other way to describe it. Also don’t ignore the family chart at the very beginning because people get the same names across generations and it’s absolutely hellish. Trigger warning for incest, I think rape, definitely abuse, and a baby gets eaten by ants at the end which is more gross than anything
Black Rain by Kuroi Ame is about the bombing of Hiroshima. I’m pretty sure that’s all the trigger warning you’re going to need
The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie is a collection of short stories about various Native American characters living on a reservation
Black Elk Speaks by John G. Neihardt is about a Blackfoot medicine man who finally talks about his life but it’s less interview and more John interpreting things so this needs to be read a little critically
Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions by Richard Erdoes is a book where a Sioux medicine man talks directly to Erdoes from a Native perspective about various things from sex to politics. Was a joy to read honestly. Very enlightening
Hagakure by Yamamoto Tsunetomo basically entails the way of the bushido or the samurai code more or less. Kind of technical but I enjoyed it
Blood and Chocolate by Annette Curtis Klause is about the werewolf protagonist trying to fit into her pack and figure out how to be a teenager. There’s at least one graphic mention of death (I think). It could also be suicide) so heads up
The Silver Kiss by Annette Curtis Klause is a vampire romance set in the 90′s and has absolutely nothing to do with the other book and was definitely something I loved. The protagonist watches her mother waste away from illness so avoid if that’s not something you can handle. Apparently, there are more stories (which I’d LOVE to read) and I’d recommend them just based off the two I have read
The Spook’s Apprentice by Joseph Delaney was amazing and I’ve just found out it’s a series not just a stand-alone so I know what’s going on my to-read list. It’s about an apprentice to The Spook who puts down evil things that hide in the dark. Kind of spine-tingling so if you don’t do horror, don’t read when it’s dark. It’s not horror-horror but if it’s not your thing, definitely read during the day
A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner is the only thing Faulkner ever wrote I can possibly stand. It’s a short story and the time is out of order but I still liked it
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is also a short story and my absolute favorite
Also not a book, but I greatly enjoy the Puritan poet Anne Bradstreet but not everybody does because 1 early American literature and 2 Puritan but that’s something if poetry is up your alley
Black Beauty by Anna Sewell is about the life of a horse set from the horse’s perspective. No seriously. With I statements and everything. I thought it was very interesting. (I was also like 8)
White Fang by Jack London is by wolves. I don’t remember much more than that because of how long ago I read it but it was probably decent since it stuck in my mind
The Whipping Boy by Sid Fleischman is about a prince’s whipping boy which is a thing because you can’t spank a prince directly so you have to punish somebody else. V interesting
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl was very enjoyable. I like Roald Dahl anyway but the concept of a chocolate factory was awesome. I also read it before I saw either movie and before the remake
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley is pretty good but skip the epistolary at the beginning and read it after if you want to spare yourself some headache
Dracula by Bram Stoker is a classic and just really fun and I can definitely see why it’s a classic
The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman was really interesting and honestly, I’d read anything that man writes after I read that
The Help by Kathryn Stockett is even better than the movie but there’s abuse mentions in it like even more so than the movie. If you haven’t seen the movie, heads up for graphic depictions of miscarriage, racial violence, and I don’t remember if the one death mentioned is graphic or not but it’s a heavy book
I’d have more but I can’t remember their damned names right now and it’s bugging me. I also have obscure video game recs because I’m one of those indie freaks. They tend to really draw me in
Also, if you like manga, I’ve read like idk how many series but a shitload and the day onemanga shut down was the day my soul died
Anyway, I hope this is fine. It isn’t even the half of what I’ve read. Like I spent almost all of my childhood reading and I enjoyed most of it. I just wish I could remember book names. Their stories are floating around in my head, just not their names. If I remember any more, I’ll probably add to this list
#original post#words#i just recommended at least 500 books probably#maybe more even??? idk#kizamimai#god im so sorry i just love books so much#IF YALL HAVE READ ANY OF THESE HIT MY ASS UP#I AM ALWAYS FUCKIN DOWN TO TALK SOME LITERATURE#its why im an english major tbh
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just like magic with marvel cast, the vibe is----- a perfect song for a lil b*tch with a good heart and a sarcastic mouth
just like magic is the song we ALL need for 2020😌 Start manifesting ya’ll🖤 Also thank you sm for the request I am so so sorry this took so freakin’ long😭 Love u, happy reading🖤🖤 Tried to add my own lil twist to your request:)
(A lil different from the request, but I tried to make the reader have a bit sas.)
💌.
just like magic
Growing up within the Marvel Cinematic Universe was probably one of things you were most grateful for. When you first started out you weren’t that social. You were new to the business, you didn’t know anybody and you were intimidated by every single actor you crossed paths with.
At first you didn’t feel like you fit in. You felt as if you were a burden to everyone else. You barely talked to anyone which made the others approach you out of force by the Russos. Everyone around you was talented while you were just some newcomer who had jack shit as experience. The first few years you were insecure of yourself mentally and physically. You weren’t as pretty or fit as the other women in the MCU nor did your skills live up to theirs. Which led to some unhealthy habits. Plus there were haters and movie critics who would say horrible things about you and your acting.
You had a rocky start unlike Tom Holland and even Lexi Rabe. Until one day when you realized that you had to change how you were thinking. It took you a while but all that negative thinking you were doing was only bringing you negative energy. So when you had a break from filming movies, your number one goal was to improve yourself.
Wake up in my bed, I just wanna have a good day (Mmm, ah)
Think it in my head, then it happens how it should, ayy
Twelve o'clock, I got a team meeting, then a meditation at like 1:30
Then I ride to the studio listening to some shit I wrote (Oh)
You woke up with smile on your face in a sense of calmness. The sun shined bright hues into your room as you got up from your bed. Today was the first day back on set. You guys were finally filming Civil War and you were honestly so excited. As you did your morning routine, you went over how the day would go in your head. You’re genuinely excited to see the entire cast. It has been almost half a year since you’ve seen everyone and you couldn’t wait to be back.
You took one last look at yourself in the mirror. Compared to the previous year, you looked and felt healthy. Your eyes shined and you looked well relaxed. You know like one of those face cleanser commercials? That’s how you felt. You felt like a breath of fresh air.
The ride to the studio took a good 30 minutes but it felt like seconds. You entered the set with a new sense of confidence and pride. The energy was practically radiating off you.
“(Y/n)?” You hear someone call from behind you. You turn around and see Scarlett looking at you.
“Hey!” You greet her as you approach her. You pulled her into a hug, startling her.
“Oh! Hello to you too, honey.” She laughed as she wrapped her arms around you. “How are you?”
“I’m doing great! Life’s been good.” You answer as a toothy grin graces itself on your face. Scarlett’s eyes are filled with shocked. From the previous times she’s talked to you she’s never seen you so loud or open. You were always shy and closed off from everyone on set.
Good karma, my aesthetic (Aesthetic)
Keep my conscience clear, that's why I'm so magnetic
Manifest it (Yeah), I finessed it (I finessed it)
Take my pen and write some love letters to Heaven
Eventually everyone on set caught on to your new attitude. Though they tried to be discreet about their reactions and shocked expressions, you could still see how they were caught off guard by your sudden change of nature.
Anthony watched as you conversed with Elizabeth and Scarlett on the couch in Robert’s “village” . You were probably the most smiliest person in the room beating Evans, who was eating his lunch.
“She’s like different. But in a good way. It’s like she’s bloomed.” Anthony thought out loud to the men beside him. Chris (E) and Sebastian look in your direction.
“Bloomed?” Chris snorted as he swallowed his food.
“Yeah, like she’s growing into a woman.” Anthony hummed proudly as he went back to his own lunch. Sebastian smiled at you, “I think she’s gained some confidence in herself and finally realized how good of a person she is.”
“If she’s finally realized that, I’m glad she did. She’s like a ball of sunshine, it’s adorable.” Chris smiled proudly at you as your hands move around animatedly while explaining some story to the two women in front of you.
“Y’all think it’s a boy?” Anthony wondered. Sebastian rolled his eyes at his friend. Before he can even respond Anthony is calling you over. You approach the men with a smile and take a seat beside Sebastian.
“What’s up?” You greet them. Chris nods at you as he chews on his sandwich. Sebastian greeting you with a quiet “hey”.
“So who’s the lucky man?” Anthony asks teasingly. Your brows knit together head tilting to the side.
“Man?”
“Yes man, or boy, whatever. Who’s got you feelin’ yourself, (y/n).” Anthony wiggles his brows as he shimmies closer to you. Sebastian, who’s in between you two, cringes at the man to his left.
You didn’t take any offense to the question, knowing that everyone was curious as to why you were so unlike yourself.
You chuckled before smirking at the older man, “Anthony, honey. I don’t need a man to be feelin’ myself. I did this on my own.”
Chris and Sebastian’s mouth drop at your answer. Chris laughed as he pointed out Anthony’s face. Sebastian slung an arm around your shoulder bringing you into a side hug as he laughed with Chris.
“To be fair” Chris began to say but started to laugh, “To be fair, you deserved that.” Anthony’s face went flushed as he nodded to himself. You suddenly felt bad that you put him on the spot.
“Alright, stop laughing at him.” You playfully glare at Chris and Seb. You poke Anthony’s arm, “To answer your question, I’ve just been working on myself. Thinking more positively, I even tried manifestation.”
“You know what, that’s good. You’re taking care of yourself mentally and physically. I’m proud of you for doing this for yourself, we all are.” Anthony tells you as he motions to the two other men.
You look at all three of them, all of them looking at you with pride, “Thanks guys.”
Just like magic (Baby), just like magic (Oh yeah)
Middle finger to my thumb and then I snap it
Just like magic (Yeah), I'm attractive (Oh yeah)
I get everything I want 'cause I attract it (Oh)
As the months passed, the more you evolved into another version of you. You walked with determination, carried yourself with such grace and you’ve gained confidence in your career. You didn’t let your insecurities get to you, instead you faced them and overcame them. You were tired of letting them control you.
Your change in attitude and perspective on life has definitely affected your life in many ways. Manifestation was one of the things that have helped you the most. Writing about your goals and putting that energy out to the world has helped you persevere in your job. You’ve only faced good karma; sending out positive energy and receiving it back from the universe.
So far you’ve been casted in two new projects and have a campaign lined up with Gucci. If you were told a year ago that you’d be working with big time directors and freakin’ Gucci, you wouldn’t have believe them. Life has been unreal ever since you decided to change your life around. But of course you had to thank your Marvel family, without them and their support you probably wouldn’t haven gotten to where you were today.
Looking at my phone, but I'm tryna disconnect it (Oh yeah)
Read a fuckin' book, I be tryna stay connected (Yeah)
Say it's tricky at the top, gotta keep a slim ego for a thick wallet
Losing friends left and right, but I just send 'em love and light (Oh)
As many people recognized your success many people still tried to pull you down. Some fans on social media have noticed your change in behavior and have even praised you for practicing self care. While others still tried to push you off the mountain of success you were currently on and drag you across the ground.
These were the reasons as to why you were barely on your phone anymore. You used to be invested in your phone but after realizing how much negativity it brought you, you’ve decided to slowly disconnect from it. Which led you to becoming more interested into books.
Chris (E) had even brought some of his favorite arts of literature for you to borrow. You were currently on your third book of his, Sapiens A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari. You were sitting outside your trailer in a fold up chair under the shade. Your peacefulness was interrupted by Tom (Holland) who had a worried expression on his face.
“Have you not seen it yet?” He asked you as soon as he was in front of you. Being the two most youngest actors on the current set, you guys were closer to each other than with the adults.
“Seen what, Tommy?” You put a finger in between the pages you were reading to save your spot. Tom pulls his phone out and began to type. He tapped on his screen and turned the screen to you.
“She’s been talking crap about you for days.” You read the article and saw that one of your “friends”, Sabrina has been speaking out about your success and how it’s changed you as a person.
“She’s going off about how the more money you get in your wallet, the more bratty and arrogant you become.” He grumbled as he turned his phone off.
“I could care less, honestly. I know I haven’t done anything to her and if I did I was unaware of it. Plus, she stopped talking to me after I said I couldn’t get her a part in a movie.” You shrugged as you placed a proper bookmark in the book.
“You’re not upset?”
“I mean it’s sad that she’s acting so two faced. But if that’s how she wants to roll, then be my guest. It’s her loss, not everyone has great taste.” You flicked a piece of hair away from your face with your hand.
“You’re not gonna release a statement against her?”
“No, probably just wish her well with her life and move on with my own.” You answered much to Tom’s dismay.
Redesign your brain, we gon' make some new habits
Just like magic (Just like magic), just like magic
Filming has officially ended a few months ago and now you guys were doing press tour for Civil War. Before you were the new and improved version of yourself, you dreaded press tours. Some interviewers were nice and respectful, but there were those who would ask inappropriate questions and were just rude in general. All you could remember during those past tours was wanting to leave those rooms as soon as possible.
The q&a panel at New York had a packed room. There were many journalist crowded in the room shoulder to shoulder. You were sat in between Elizabeth and Scarlett, two of the women who have been guiding you and teaching you about life as a woman in the business. They were also like your older sisters.
The panel had been going smoothly for the first half hour until a man with a snobby face and cocky demeanor approached the mic.
“Hello, I’m Keith and my question’s for (y/n).” He began. You nodded in his direction, motioning for him to continue.
“I think everyone’s noticed how you’ve changed and developed as a person. Obviously something’s changed in your life. So I want to know if you’ve had any intimate relationships with any of the men in the cast?” You were surprised at the man’s question. First it was bold of him to ask such a question and second it was just disrespectful to you and the others on the cast.
“I mean someone’s gotta be fucking you good to make you crawl out your shell.” The man finished shrugging nonchalantly. Robert was about to interject but your mouth was quicker than his. The men of the cast were disgusted at the man while they sat at the edge of their seats.
“Well last time I checked my contract, my job was to act, not sleep around with the men who are part of these movies.” You spoke into the mic. All the attention was on you while the room was at a standstill.
“It’s also very upsetting that you think a girl needs to be fucked in order to be confident in herself. I hate to break it to you but women are completely capable of turning their lives around without the help of men and that says a lot about you, sir. So if I were you, I’d take myself back to my seat and rethink my life because if one of us has to redesign our brains it’s you.” You finished as you placed your mic on your lap. The room was silent until the cast began to clap. This was your first time standing up for yourself, usually Robert or Scarlett would swoop in and save you but this time, you were saving yourself.
You shook your head as you blushed, shoving your head in your hands. You felt some pats on the backs and cheers from your dysfunctional family. You look up and see Scarlett and Elizabeth smiling at you proudly.
“Isn’t she amazing?” Robert asked the crowd as he hugged you. The crowd cheering you on.
Just like magic, your life felt like a dream come true, knowing that you were worth it and enough for the people around you and for yourself.
#marvel#mcu#avengers#chris evans#chris evans x reader#Sebastian Stan#sebastian stan x reader#anthony mackie x reader#Anthony Mackie#Scarlett Johansson#Scarlett Johansson x reader#marvel cast x teen!reader#marvel cast x reader#ally’s 700 celebration#ally’s requests
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Apocalypse - Matthew Gray Gubler x Reader
“You’re finally taking Cinema and Literature.” I felt him smile against the skin of my shoulder. He said it so casually. As if my underwear weren’t on his floor and the room didn’t reek of last night’s sex and Absolut.
CONTENT WARNINGS: Semi-Graphic Descriptions of Sex, Alcohol, Language, Implications of fighting/angst, toxic relationship
A/N: You can’t tell me that little collage isn’t exactly what it would be like to date college Matthew. He was the embodiment of NYU Film Major. Looked fucking hot doing it too. Cigs After Sex is the soundtrack to your relationship, by the way. Listen to Apocalypse here.
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NYU TISCH SCHOOL OF THE ARTS
9:05 AM - Saturday, August 26, 2000 Sophomore Year
It was early Saturday morning. I was naked and petrified. Bare back faced to Matthew Gray Gubler. I didn’t know if he was awake, and if he was what the hell would I say. I hoped as soon as he realized the naked girl in his bed was me he’d kick me out. Save me the shameful, deer in headlights bra collecting exit. I prayed he would tell me to leave so I just....would. I heard pillows and sheets rustle, and I just hoped he just did what was best for the both of us.
Tell me to leave Matthew.
Like always though, we were absolutely not on the same page.
“So..” His big hand slid over my hip from behind me, his palm gently forcing me back onto him, “You’re finally taking Cinema and Literature.” I felt him smile against the skin of my shoulder. He said it so casually. As if my underwear weren’t on his floor and the room didn’t reek of last night’s sex and Absolut.
“Yeah.” I answered. His short finger nails dug into his hips as his chest met my back. Neck craning over me. I shuddered and he noticed.
“You like it right?” It was a painfully obvious double entendre and I couldn’t figure out either of the answers. The Cinema and Literature professors unconventional teaching methods were a circulating debate at NYU, but fucking my ex AND staying the night the first weekend back on campus was indisputably wrong. Problem was I really enjoyed both.
Wet lips began to pepper equally wet kisses on my neck. My ability to move or speak was stripped. It was embarrassing really; I couldn’t focus or function when he touched me. Matthew liked that. A lot. Somethings never change.
“Your opinion on Scorsese?” His hands traveled through sheets and onto the bare skin of my chest. I sucked in a deep breath and looked him in the eye for the first time since last night. He had a cocky, stupid hot smile on his face. His hands slipped under me and I knew I was gone so I looked away. I didn’t want to see what he was thinking. This was so incredibly self destructive. We were swiftly undoing all the slow healing we’d both already done.
My brain spun all its gears at once to get out an answer while his hands practically methodically massaged my boobs. The feeling was the best kind of familiar. “You value my opinion?”
A hand made it’s way to my face, pulling it to his so that we could look at each other again. “Always did.” His voice was soft with sincerity that affected me more then I would’ve liked it to.
God, why? Why did things end the way they did? Why did....Why was.... Just why? There were so many whys, way too many fucking whys. Just tell me why, Matthew, please.
Then he kissed me, and it felt like time didn’t exist anymore.
Your lips, my lips
Apocalypse
Time was like that for awhile, non-existent. The only thing that existed and mattered were the lips attached to mine and the torturously clever hand in between my legs. He stroked me with such tender care and affinity, I almost forgot we’d exchanged “Fuck you” more times then “I love you”. My breath got heavier and my moans got louder. I’d always meant the “I love you” more then the “Fuck you”.
“Come on pretty girl, come for me.” The strokes and rubs of my clit and insides got more intense as his mouth nibbled at my earlobe, “I know you missed it.”
“S-shit!” And like that, I let go. I gave him what we both wanted too badly for our own good.
He got up first. I tried not to look as he dressed himself, but I couldn’t help it. He manipulated all of my senses, vision included. My eyes couldn’t leave him and he smiled when he noticed my shy stare.
“I was surprised when you said Hi last night.” He said, absent mindedly zipping his fly.
“It would’ve been weird if I didn’t.” I responded, forcing myself to say it plainly.
“Not really, all things considered.” He rummaged through still unpacked boxes, “You need a shirt?” It was cheeky and unappreciated, but I still took the offer.
It was brown and striped, a personal favorite back in the days of cuddlefucking and PDAs in front of all of our friends. This boy was too clever. He tossed it to me before putting on his own and laying back down. I shimmied the shirt on. It smelled like his detergent and the butterflies in my stomach were having a field day.
“I uh--I annotated the first lecture if you want it.” The sentence coming from him was uncharacteristically low pitched. He’d run out of things he could say without one or both of us choking up.
“S-sure.” I nodded, “That’d be help-”
There was a pounding on the door, and instantly in my chest.
“C’mon Gube! It’s first Saturday back! We got Bloody Mary’s and chicken wings calling our mothafuckin’ names!” It was Danny. Matthew’s best friend, my dormmates friend, all of my friend’s friend, and obviously, MY friend. It was the worst possible person to be knocking on the door right now.
“Gubler, you bitch!” He laughed, “I know you’re in there man.”
I was silent as a mouse. We could play this off. He’ll leave eventually.
“Well motherfucker, I’m coming in! Rick gave me his key. Hide your dick if you’re jacking it!”
Fuckin’ Rick. His dormmate. Didn’t know much about him other then he had good weed and definitely was not here last night.
I was frozen in fear and Matthew’s hands wiped his face and then didn’t leave. They were trying to hide a smile. I was absolutely horrified and he was slightly amused. One word. Typical.
“Holy. Fucking. Shit.” Danny’s jaw had swung open when he entered the room and saw what was happening.
His best friend and the ex-girlfriend he’d probably, no definitely, proclaimed extreme hatred for were sharing a bed and clothes on a Saturday morning.
“So like.... is it exactly what it looks like?” Danny tried and failed miserably to stifle his laugh when he saw my face.
“Shut your fucking mouth and get out.” I practically screamed. Thankfully, he listened.
I was seething. At myself, at Matthew and at fucking Danny for being such a goddamn jackass.
“Hey..” Matthew rushed to calm me down but I hissed at him before he could touch me.
I launched myself out of bed and scrambled to get my things. “Phone, keys, wallet...what am I missing?” I muttered to my stupid, hungover, fucking mentally exhausted brain. I was answered with shimmery fabric peeking from behind a sheet. “Dress.”
“Here.” Matthew threw me some basketball shorts. I didn’t thank him.
Without a word, I was out the door. Fuck.
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The walk back to my dorm was pitiful. I scurried down the halls with dress and heels in hand, in clothes that were so evidently not mine, receiving mixed looks I didn’t have the brain capacity to decipher. I just wanted to cry.
I laid down in my freshly unpacked dorm, and there were two very distinct scents. My dorm mate Lo’s soy linen candles and my regret.
This kind of regret was laced with confusion and animosity and anger, and as much as I wanted to ignore it, there was a growing feeling of longing. Longing for Matthew and the way those skinny ass arms felt wrapped around my waist.
I couldn’t think about it for too long though, because Lo and her girlfriend, Jen were now in the doorway. Donuts and coffee in hand. God didn’t hate me so much after all.
“Give me one, right now.” I snatched a chocolate glaze from the box.
“You good?” Lo laughed and Jen gave me a look.
Shoving the donut into my face, I figured the best way to do this was bluntly. Danny was going to tell them within the hour anyway. Swallowing, I started rambling immediately. “I fucked Gubler last night.” I took another bite and kept talking with my mouth full, “Woke up and--Shit.” Sprinkles were falling everywhere. “He fucked me again.” I opened my eyes wide, “With his fingers.” I sighed, “They’re so long and--”
“Do NOT finish that sentence.” Lo interrupted. “Girl, why?”
“You think I fucking know why?” I threw myself back on my bed. “I barely remember what happened last night. All I know is where I woke up.”
“You’re fucked kiddo,” Jen said patting my head. “You get your bag, babe?” she asked Lo.
“Yeah,” Lo came out the closet and gave me a kiss on the forehead, “Sleep well my child.”
They were gone and so was my ability to not let tears stream down my face. There was a light knock on my door. If it was Matthew I think I would scream.
-----------------
Thank you for reading.
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Not Even For A Minute || Poussey Washington Imagine *Requested*
Summary: Poussey has a crush on the reader and thinks she doesn’t like her back, but she does.
Pairing: Poussey Washington x Reader
Warnings: Fem!reader, lewd language/comments, language, reader doesn’t have a preferred sexual orientation, use of R slur, angst, fluff
A/N: Holy shit! This is my first piece of writing in actually only a couple of months, but I’m claiming years because I am officially back like I was in high school. I’m so sorry if this is not my best, I am EXTREMELY rusty, so take it easy on me for now :)
It was dinner time at Lichfield and it was only my second meal in my new home. My new home filled with almost 200 other women. For the next 5 years, I will see the inside of this cafeteria 3 times a day, 21 times a week, 1,095 times a year and a whopping 5,473 times in total. You’re probably wondering why that matters, but it matters.
I take my tray and do a quick search for a place to sit. I find a spot at the very end of one of the middle tables. It was the only seat with no one in a two foot radius of me. I sit down and look at the food in front of me. My first dinner includes spaghetti, two mini oranges, a salad, and a brownie. It’s not horrible when you think about it. It’s a pretty standard meal. Well it would be without the questionable odor coming from the meatballs. I close my eyes and sigh.
“Maybe she’s deaf.”
“She ain’t deaf.”
“HELLO!”
“She can’t hear you if she’s deaf, dummy.”
“Fine, then you try, Angie.”
I was so deep in my own world that I almost didn’t notice the cherry tomato that hit me in my head.
“Hey, girl!”
I opened my eyes and looked to my left.
“Are you talking to me?” I asked with a hint of a nervous tone.
“Uh yeah, have been for the last 5 hours. You retarded or something?”
“5 hours ago? No that can’t be right. Remember, we was in the laundry room 5 hours ago, Tucky.”
“Jesus, Angie! I was being snide.”
“You mean sarcastic?”
“Snide means sarcastic.”
“Then why not just say sarcastic?”
I watched as “Tucky” closed her eyes and tilted her head in annoyance.
“I’m sorry, but did you guys need something?”
Tucky’s eyes snapped open, “Uh, yeah. Why’re you sitting here?” She took her bottom lip into her mouth as she waited for my response.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know anyone was sitting here.”
“She never said that,” Angie said while flashing her pearly browns.
“I’m confused.”
“Wow maybe she really is retarded,” Angie said.
“Tucky” nodded at Angie, “I think you’re right, Ang. Here, I’ll break it down real slow like for you: You don’t belong here.”
“Look, I don’t want any trouble. Just let me finish my dinner and I’ll never sit with you again.” I tried to reason with the little troll, but she just wasn’t having it.
She nodded her head while picking up her milk carton. She then poured it all over my food. “Seems to me like you’re done.”
All I could do was stare with my mouth open.
“Why did you do that?!”
“BECAUSE YOU DON’T BELONG HERE!” She screamed as she stood up and let one of her fist hit the metal table.
“Dogget! You’re done! Empty your tray.” A CO finally intervened from the next row over. Dogget and her Meth Mates got up from the table and walked out.
All I could do was sit there with my head hanging low as I let a few tears escape. I’m not usually this weepy, but in my defense, all I wanted was that little brownie...which was now swimming in a pool of used milk.
*A few tables over*
“Fuck was that about?” Poussey asked her family as she nodded her head over to the other table; finally arriving with her tray.
“Mmmm, Meth Mouth and her cult were fuckin’ with one of the newbies,” Janae replied in the middle of finishing her bite.
Poussey hovered over her chair to get a good look at the bothered inmate and sat back down while shaking her head.
After having a mini pity party for myself, I got up and dumped my spoiled tray before leaving the cafeteria. I go back to my temporary bunk and buried myself under my blanket.
“Cheer up, Kid. You’ll be out of here sooner than you know.”
I gave a pitiful grin to the nice older woman.
“I like your eyeshadow.”
“Duh,” she said as she threw me a wink.
I let out a sigh, got comfortable and laid in my bed until morning.
I finally fell asleep, but only for 2 hours. At the ass crack of dawn, I was woken up by the morning announcement, which had absolutely no enthusiasm. “Good morning, ladies. Try to seize the day. The world is your oyster.”
“You’d think she’d quit if she hates her job so much.” That was the first time I heard the redhead with the horrible bed head speak.
“Bell is about as enthusiastic as a wet bag of hair, but she’s one of the good ones.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” she said groggily.
“You joining us for breakfast?”
I drifted back to sleep before I could hear her response. I woke up in what seemed like an hour, but was only 30 minutes. For the slightest second I forgot where I was. I opened my eyes and was met with DeMarco standing right in front of me.
“Well good morning sleepyhead! Nice of you to join the living.”
“What? What time is it?”
“You see a clock in here? What I do know is that you got 10 minutes left for breakfast. You better hurry.”
I hop down off my bunk and start to change.
“Thanks.”
“You don’t talk much, do you?”
I gave her a shrug as I zipped up my jacket and headed for breakfast. I arrived in the cafeteria and was able to get my food right away since there was no line. Some tables are still filled, but some are also empty. I scan the room and pick the table farthest away from Doggett and her followers. I was in the middle of eating my eggs when Angie walked by and sneezed on my tray.
“Oops, ‘scuse me,” she said with a shit eating grin.
“God damnit,” I whisper to myself while trying not to deck this bitch.
“You shouldn’t say the Lord’s name in vain like that.”
I look up at her through hooded eyes, “Walk the fuck away.” My voice was low and I kind of scared myself.
“Oooo, devil eyes. Hey! She’s got devil eyes,” she says louder than the first time, except now she’s giggling and pointing at me while backing away. Doggett sucks her bottom lip at me while flipping her hood and getting up to walk out. I can feel people starring so I do a very quick observation and then stand up to leave.
“Empty your tray,” the guard at the door told me. “Get some coffee while you’re at it. It’ll help you stay full until lunch.”
I look up at his name that’s stitched into his shirt. Ohhhh, so this is O’Neil. I heard some of the girls talking about his scandalous relationship with CO Bell. Good for them. I turned around and went to dump my tray before following the advice and going for the coffee.
“Yo, why they always fucking with her?” Poussey asked the table as she watched in disapproval as Y/N dumped her tray.
“Why do you care?” Taystee asked while rolling her eyes.
“For real? You ain’t notice that ever since China got out, Prince Charming over here been lookin’ for a new helpless, basket case? I mean, shit.”
“Aye don’t talk about Brook like that. Not cool, Cindy.”
“ “Cindy”? Bitch, fuck you think you is? My mama? Ugh, check ya tone.”
“Whatever man. I’m just tired of seeing Meth Madness fuck with people like they run the place.”
“Again, why do you care?”
“Shit just ain’t right, is all.”
“Mmmhmm,” Taystee replied as they got up from the table.
I turn around after filling my mug and notice that it’s just me, the inmates that clean up and the CO’s supervising them. I carry my warm mug through the halls and I notice there’s not as many people crowding them as there were last night.
“Inmate! Where you are supposed to be?”
“Uhm, I’m not really sure.”
“Wrong answer!”
“Wrong?”
“Don’t get smart with me. Jefferson! Tell inmate...Y/L/N where she’s supposed to be.”
“Well, since it’s after lunch, we’re supposed to be headed to our work detail. Not whatever you was doing, apparently.”
The tall guard with the creepy mustache looked down at me and raised his eyebrows.
“Thank you, Jefferson.”
“I don’t have a work detail yet.”
He closed his eyes and sighed. When he opens them he looked back at Jefferson, “you work in the library, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Take her with you.”
She sucked her teeth, “Man, what do I say when someone asks why she’s there? No offense, but I ain’t taking no shots just because she’s somewhere she’s not supposed to be.”
“What’s a shot?”
“Jesus fuck. Will you both get out of my goddamn sight?”
He snatched my mug; Jefferson and I gave each other a look and started towards the library. When we got there it was almost empty.
“You know, the labels are there to help the books be put back in their respectful place, not to look cute. I mean, damn.” I notice Jefferson chuckle at the girl we hear before seeing. She’s talking to a pair of inmates who are whispering to each other before tossing another book down and scurrying off.
“Are you fucking kidding me?!” she calls after them, but to no avail. She sighs to herself before returning back to work.
“Hey, P! Whatchu up to?”
“Practically cleaning up behind bitches. I mean, why is it so hard to put a book back in its original spot? Jane Eyre belongs in literature, not SAT Prep,” she called back.
“Truly first world problems,” Jefferson said unamused.
“Yooo, you ever heard of “Oedipus”? It’s mad crazy. Like this one part where the main dude...” she kept talking as she rounded the corner to finally come face to face with us.
“...who’s this?”
“Our puppy dog for the day,” Jefferson said as she rolled her eyes.
“Oh alright then. Well I’m working over here in history. Y’all can start in fiction. It’s a fuckin mess over there.”
“Um, then why don’t we all work in fiction?”
“Did you not hear me say it’s a fuckin mess? Have fun.”
I walked away, smiling to myself. I didn’t think anyone here would care for books like I did.
After the work day was over, I separated from the two friends and went back to my temporary bunk until dinner. The next day I followed Jefferson back into the library.
“Oh, puppy dog is back.”
Jefferson turned her head to me, “Don’t you know when you gettin your work detail yet?“
“Sorry, still no.”
“As much as I’m sure you love the view you get, I’m gettin tired of you following me.”
“I can ask someone if I can work somewhere else.”
“T-ha! And make me look like a problem? I think not.”
“Nah, we could use the extra help in here since bitches can’t put shit back where it’s supposed to go. Hate to break it to y’all, but foreign language is even worse than fiction was.”
“My god. Can’t you help us over here instead of doing whatever it is the fuck you doin?”
“Uh no.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m President of the Library.”
“Says who!?”
“Suzanne,” she said as a matter of fact while leaning forward to show us her ID that read “President Washington: Library”.
“Aw damn. It’s official and everything. Man, that’s some bull shit,” Jefferson said as she walked away.
All I did was look at the Presidential badge and smile.
“Since you don’t complain like some people, just know you’re first in line for Vice President. Just don’t tell Taystee,” she told me on the sly.
“Taystee?”
“Jefferson.”
“Ohh, got it.”
“I’m Poussey, by the way,” she said extending her hand.
“Y/N. Nice to meet you.”
“Yeah you too.”
She has a beautiful smile.
Towards the end of the work day, I found myself near Poussey’s section. Since our work for the time being is pretty much done, I start to browse the shelves when I spot a book dear to my heart, “Alice in Wonderland”. I get a mini rush of serotonin and pop a squat up against one of the shelves. I lose track of time, until I realize I no longer see anyone. “Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality”. You are right about that, Mr. Carroll.
“Hello?” I’m immediately startled. I start to shuffle to my feet and by the time I stand, I’m met with someone else.
“Whoa, shit. My bad. I didn’t think anyone else was in here.” Shit, I must’ve I said that out loud.
“Sorry, I guess I lost track of time.”
“It’s cool. So you haven’t been assigned a work duty yet, huh?”
I shook my head.
“I, uh, I must admit that this is the best job. Call me bias, but it’s the truth.”
“Thanks,” I say with a slight smile.
“You’re the one Pennsatucky and her crew keep messing with.”
“Yeah, that’s me.”
“Y’all got beef on the outside or something?”
“No, but I found it’s better to not provoke a methed out mental case.”
“Not wrong there. Well, I’ll see you around. Oh and be careful with Alice, she’s my favorite.”
The next few days were the same. I would follow Taystee into the library and listen to her and Poussey be absolute clowns. Poussey and I got to be closer since we were usually the last two to leave. We talked about how much time we have, our family, and she even told me about the Vee drama. During my stint of unpaid work in the library, I was finally able to change out of the highlighter jumpsuit and into a khaki set.
After an hour or so into a shift, I found myself distracted with my favorite book, “In Five Years”.
“Oh uh, that goes on the second to last shelf right behind you.”
“Huh? Oh yeah. It was actually already in the right spot, but it’s one of my favorites,” I tell her as I put the book back.
“What’s it about?”
“This woman named Dannie-“
“Y/L/N!”
We both looked towards the door and saw and the same pasty CO that sent me here.
“With me.”
I gave Poussey a grin and walked towards the CO,
“Where are we going?”
He didn’t answer me and just kept walking. I followed him to a warehouse that smelled of Clorox and musty water.
“Janitorial. Your job assignment. Morello will fill you in on what to do.”
“Oh yeah I can do that. No problem.”
The first couple of hours involved cleaning the halls, but I moved on to the Spanish bathrooms. Poussey was right, the library was the best job to have.
*A few weeks later at dinner
“I don’t know why you’d let Edward Scissorhands cut your hair and not me.”
“Because Danita only charges me a bag of Doritos. Not two cokes. Plus, she don’t even ask for the Cool Ranch flavor!”
“Beggars can’t be choosers. I do two cokes worth of work, Child.”
I laughed at Taystee and Sophia having their little banter in the food line. I walked with them to the table and sat down.
“...but then the dragon realized the little ghost girl was friendly, even though she was cold as ice. Fire and ice, that would never work!”
“Why not? What happened to opposites attract?” I ask sort of challengingly.
“Mommy said ice is used to put out fires. Well, technically water is used to put out fires but ice is just water in solid form. So the fire would go out!”
“But do you know what happens when fire and ice mix?”
“The world goes dark?”
“No. They make steam,” I gave Poussey a “subtle” smirk.
“Mommy says steam is for showers, crab legs and “fun times”.
“I miss making steam with a fine gentleman with a curve on that dick.”
We all laughed along at what Cindy said and I agreed with her.
“There are just some things your fingers can’t accomplish,” I said jokingly while being serious. She pointed her fork at me, “I like her.”
Poussey was noticeably quiet throughout the rest of dinner. Only chiming in to seem interested. She didn’t even finish her tray before she was dipping out.
“Wait I’ll come with you.”
“Nah, stay and eat. I’ll catch you later.”
“Uh oh. Trouble is Lezzy Paradise?”
I almost didn’t hear Cindy as I kept watching Poussey leave the cafeteria.
“Stop it.”
Taystee rolled her eyes and shook her head.
For the next few days, it was hard to get ahold of Poussey. Since we knew each other’s schedules, it was easy for her to avoid me.
Meals were no better. She made sure to get there early so by the time I was sitting down, she was done.
“Aye, you need to fix that,” Janae told me with her eyebrow raised.
“I don’t know what the problem is.”
“I know you are not that dumb,” Boo said as she sat across from me.
“She’s kicking her own ass because she broke the #1 rule of being interested in pussy...” she continued.
I looked at her as I was waiting for her to continue.
“Never fall in love with a straight girl!”
“Love? What-When did I say I was straight-”
“The other night when that one was talkin bout curved dick and you chimed in basically foamin at the mouth at the thought,” Taystee said.
“Noooo, I was joking.”
“Yeah well, apparently she don’t know that.” I looked at Janae and sighed.
I had to wait until the weekend to see her. It was pouring rain and there was a leak in the library and the cleaning warehouse had a slight flood, so neither of us had work.
I snuck my way to her bunk only to discover her to not be there.
“There’s only one place she’d go...” Janae told me.
I made my way down and opened the door.
She was right.
“...there was another before you, but she got out. There’s a time machine in the laundry room. That was their place. That’s where she goes to think.”
“How’d you find me?”
“Your bunkie.”
“What do you want?”
“What’s going on? Why are you being so weird?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said standing up.
“Are we not friends anymore?”
“Friends,” she said with a sarcastic chuckle.
“Can we please sit?” I gestured to the inside of her hiding spot. She backed up slightly to let me further in to the time machine and we both sat down. Neither of us said anything for a while until I did,
“I’m not gay...”
She nodded her head with a sad smile on her face.
“...but I’m not straight either. I’m just me. I’ve dated guys, I’ve had experiences with girls-”
“Experiences? But you’ve never dated a girl?”
“No, but for the past few weeks, I’ve really wanted to,” I said with a slight smile.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because of this. I didn’t want to say something stupid and mess this up. And because I’ve never dated a girl before, but I have dated guys, I didn’t want you to think I was using you. I thought that because I don’t identify as anything, you wouldn’t like me back.”
“I thought you didn’t like me.”
“I didn’t want you to get hurt.”
“Look, I got my heart broken not too long ago by a girl that promised me forever. She didn’t identify as anything either and she ended up falling in love with a dude when she got out. We were both in a dark place when we met and getting to know each other and eventually falling in love helped. I could’ve given up on love and fate, but I haven’t yet. Look, maybe this-..this connection that we have, challenges what you thought you were. And maybe I'm gonna get my heart broken in a thousand different pieces again. But those are maybes. You can't live your life according to maybes.”
The next few months were bliss. Poussey and I have connected on a level I didn’t know was attainable.
Today is Valentine’s Day and right now we’re back in the time machine. We’re both laying down, holding each other and looking up at the ceiling.
“It’s about a woman named Dannie who’s this a high-powered corporate lawyer. She’s one of those types who has everything planned out. The story has a lot of twists and turns because her five year plan goes differently than she thought.”
“So why is it your favorite if it’s so inconsistent? For a woman who knows what she wants “Dannie” sure seems okay with settling.”
“It’s my favorite because it mirrors me. It mirrors us. In five years I saw myself at some job a teenager would have with my only responsibility being my phone bill.”
“What do you see now?”
“I see me with our dog, Keith, holding signs with your dad on your release day. Then I see us heading to our apartment where you can see it for the first time in person. Then we’ll go to our jobs, pay rent, and hound our parents for travel money.”
“I’m in your future?”
“You are my future.”
She gave me a kiss when there was a bang on the cardboard door, “Hey kids! They’re doing interviews in the bunks,” Boo informed us.
When we got to her dorm, there were a few guards asking ladies questions about love.
“Does anyone else want to be asked questions?”
“Yeah, I do,” Poussey said while raising her hand.
I feel Taystee put her elbow on my shoulder, “What the hell?” The rest of the family comes around.
“Okay Washington, what is love?”
“Love. It’s just chilling, you know? Kicking it with somebody, talking, making mad stupid jokes. And, like, not even wanting to go to sleep, ‘cause then you might be without ‘em for a minute,” she looked at me, “And you don’t want that.”
•taglist: @mina672
#poussey washington#poussey washington imagine#orange is the new black#orange is the new black imagine#Pablo Schreiber#pablo schreiber imagine#lgbtq#lgbtq community#loveislove#shawn mendes#one direction#5sos#justin bieber#Criminal Minds#criminal minds smut#dr spencer reid#spencer reid x reader#spencer reid#aaron hotchner
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Can’t believe that Eomer of ALL fuckin characters is getting hate, wtf. This modern bs of blaming every problem a female character has on the men in her life or making her be this flawless, perfect, and amazing in everything creature is absolute trash and totally not feminist. Fandom has become fandumb.
Btw on a lighter note, what other Tolkien couples do you like/ship? And other fictional couples in general? Love your stories ❤️
I guess it's easier to pin the blame on the men close to her rather than look at the whole picture or others' point of view (and it’s certainly convenient for certain agendas). I myself don't see how it's useful or even truthful to use specific men of her family as scapegoats, especially when there are so many signs to the contrary. In this day and age mental health problems ought to be understood better; I'm not saying things like abuse and manipulation can't cause or contribute to mental illness, but that's hardly the case with Éowyn - except for what Gríma Wormtongue did, but he was never even mentioned in the original statement, which is surprising because he's literally right there and we have the actual text saying that he stalked her and fed his toxicity as much to her as he did to Théoden. Somehow the actual stalker is not to be blamed at all, but the people who do love her.
But it's a delicate issue, not necessarily well-handled in discourse, and often it means individual men get thrown under the bus, no matter if they deserve it or not. Which I think feminism shouldn't be about, but I digress. And like you said, making women into perfect and flawless martyrs doesn't do any good, and it's certainly not doing them any justice in the context of their stories. Neither does it do any justice to men, and it's ignoring the larger structures of society that impact both men and women in harmful and toxic ways. In Éowyn's case, if you wanted to be one-sided and biased, you could blame her for abandoning her people in a time of great need and letting down her family, but somehow that doesn't happen. It's generally recognised she deserves compassion for the state she was in and for her circumstances, and you'd think the same would apply for her family, though they are men.
Anyway, thank you for your message. I believe I won't be answering (publicly) more asks about this issue, because I don't want to drag it out more, but I'm happy to talk further in private messages!
I have always had a soft spot for Aragorn/Arwen, and Faramir and Éowyn are one of the most wholesome couples I've ever come across in literature; so much about them is mirrored in each other and answers to specific troubles they go through during the story. Tolkien writes a more convincing and rewarding romance between them in one chapter than some writers do in entire book series. Also I do love the story of Beren and Lúthien, it’s one of my favourite parts of The Silmarillion. Moreover, I am fascinated with the story of Andreth and Aegnor, although it’s among the most tragic of Tolkien’s relationships, and I wish there was more about them.
Outside of LOTR, I enjoy Lizzie Bennet and Mr. Darcy, and I have to admit, I enormously liked Mary and Matthew in Downton Abbey (poor Matthew, though!). Another well-written relationship is Agnieszka/Sarkan (from Naomi Novik's Uprooted), although I'm not sure if I could be called a shipper. One of Ye Olde Goode Ships of mine is Henry and Danielle from the film Ever After (which I really should rewatch soon!). I haven't been reading or writing anything about Tanz der Vampire (a weird European musical) lately, but I still feel for Alfred/Krolock. I generally have a weakness for the Beauty and the Beast type of situation, and the Disney film was my big favourite as a kid.
Also, this is probably going to sound weird considering what I normally post: I loved InuYasha as a teenager, and used to read the occasional fanfic years ago when I came across this brilliant story with Kagome/Sesshoumaru (titled Tales from the House of the Moon) - lo and behold, I've been a grudging shipper ever since. I don't really read InuYasha fanfiction anymore and I certainly don't participate in the fandom, but that one story I still return to now and then.
Thanks for the ask!
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moving your mouth to pull out all your miracles
April 2021 - Gamzee Makara
You don’t like the way your thoughts proceed on halo, helldog, or haloperidol, or whatever Karbro calls it. After you take it, the world feels blunt, impersonal, and grayscale, like you’re a motherfucking puppet with a head full of straw. Your brother used to love a poem about that, about some guys with straw heads, but mostly about the world ending.
Kurloz liked a lot of motherfucking things before he did nine months in Rikers for cocaine distribution. Originally it was only supposed to be six months, but he got into a fight and got three months added on. When he got out, he was thoughtful and quiet, even a word of acknowledgment seemingly beyond him. You’ll be damned if that ever happens to you, if you let the system hollow you out until you can’t express the simplest serendipity.
Right now you’re sketching your friends, quick sketches with the charcoal set Dr. Levin brought you. One of Karkat having a rare smile for June, one of Sollux and Roxy talking about programming, one of Dr. V addressing the group about healthy coping mechanisms, and one of Porrim braiding Calliope’s hair. You always feel more like yourself when you’re sketching or painting. Fewer thoughts in your head to get jangle-tangled together and create nonsense. You can keep your miracles straight this way.
You’re cool. You’re easy. You’re loose. No snapped strings, heads full of straw, or blasphemies here, no motherfucking way. The ativan caravan marches through your head, sings your sharp edges to sleep. Nurse Dolores knows what’s up, she only makes you take the medications you want to take. Your cognition flies free, like birds in a breeze, a calm going on between your ears.
Roxy turns and grins at you, her face pale as the moon against her dark hoodie and darker lipstick. She has a smile all her own, a knowing smile like the two of you are in on the greatest secret in the world. You wish you knew precisely what that was about, but everyone has their own internal workings. You can’t know and fix everything about everyone all the time. That’s what you were trying to explain to Sollux last night.
He’s a good guy, but he takes too much on. Same for Karkat. They take on everyone’s issues and make them their own. Only the mirthful messiahs should be able to do so much; humans like trying that hard is a minor sacrilege. If the pair of them would just stick to themselves, maybe they wouldn’t be so sick. You’ll fold more flowers for them - paper flowers that banish repetitive, ruminating thoughts.
You like Roxy a lot, though. She dances through each emotion in its totality, riding the waves of her feelings without fear. Okay, maybe not fearlessly, but with more abandon than you would expect. When she looks at you, you feel warmth all the way to your core, the way you are when you’re about to fall asleep all curled up in your sheets.
Speaking of sleep, Dr. V says that if you keep sleeping through the night, and keep what he calls “disruptive outbursts” about the Dark Carnival to a minimum, maybe you’ll get discharged in a couple of weeks. You’re not exactly in any rush to go home. Home means having to fend for yourself, and fewer friends to keep you in good spirits. Besides, Kurloz is home, and for all that he may be your brother, he gives off bad motherfucking vibes. You wish he’d be easy, like old times, but those days are a long way off.
You remember when you used to be able to relax at home. Relax, smoke a joint, sell an eighth or two, and have dinner without having to fend off your brother’s brooding.
Karkat takes the seat next to you, and you clap him on the back. Physical contact may be discouraged here, but there’re no narcs around to encourage law and order at the moment. You think a support team got dispatched to address Feferi wandering around with no clothes on again.
“What’s up?” Karkat asks.
He nevertheless looks preoccupied and far away. That’s unfortunate.
You take another folded flower out of your pocket and hand it to him.
“There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance; pray, love, remember; and there is pansies, that’s for thoughts,” you recall from a play you had to read in AP English a couple years ago. You can’t exactly remember what the play’s about, but stray lines here and there stick out to you like a sore thumb. Except neither of your actual thumbs are sore.
“That’s from Hamlet, isn’t it?” Karkat asks, shaking his head at you. “What’re you, the bard of 3 East?”
Now you’re not certain about that, but you’ll take it.
“Someone’s gotta be, ain’t they? I got more poetry if you want it.”
Karkat sighs. “Yeah, lay it on me, Makara. Dr. Vandayar told me I’m not getting discharged next week so I’m not feeling great at the moment.”
Poor Karbro looks like he’s full of thunderstorms. Maybe a calm vista will quiet him down. You pull a few lines of poetry free from your memory.
“I shall wear white flannel trousers and walk upon the beach... I have heard the mermaids singing each to each... I do not think that they will sing to me.”
“Go on,” Karkat says, looking all at once pensive and a little sad.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves... Combing the white hair of the waves blown back... When the wind blows the water white and black,” you recite. Now, Roxy, Calliope, and Porrim have stopped to listen to you. You go on, establishing a proper rhythm.
“We have lingered in the chambers of the sea... by sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown... ‘till human voices wake us, and we drown.” When no one says anything, you interject, “That’s the end of the fuckin’ poem, y’all.”
“It’s beautiful,” Porrim whispers. “Did you write that?”
You shake your head in the negative. “Naw, that’s some other motherfucker’s ideas outta my mouth. I wrote a couple of my own lines last night if you wanna hear ‘em, though.”
“Sure,” Calliope says, smiling and clapping her hands once.
“My muse distills my melancholy, pins it to the corkboard with a tack. She presses down upon the pigments, bleeds my blues into the boldest black.”
Even Karkat looks surprised. He narrows his eyes at you.
“If you don’t go study art or literature, or something along that line, I’ll fucking kill you.”
“Ain’t no need to resort to murder, brother,” you reply. “And while I’d like to go sit in a motherfucking college somewhere, I ain’t got shit for tuition.”
“If I have to take up a goddamn collection, I am sending your ass to college. Tout-suite.”
You guess now is not the time to inform him that you straight up flunked outta college after you kept forgetting to go to class. You sat in the grass memorizing poetry and sketching the first dandelions of March, which got in the way of your learning anything or taking your exams, or any of the shit college students are supposed to do. You didn’t mean to forget, but you’ve never been great at any routine shit.
And you’ve always had a knack for going where your thoughts take you. When you were a kid, you would leave the house and walk up and down the streets of Harlem unattended. Your grandmother used to read you the riot act for doing something so reckless and nonsensical. Later, during your hospitalizations, you learned that the way your thoughts stuttered and tangled was called schizophrenia, and doctors medicated you accordingly. They called your prophecies delusion, and you beg(ged) to differ.
The medications ground your thought process to a stuttering halt. You hated it. You hated being cut off from yourself. So you stopped taking your meds. And here you are again, with your strange thoughts and remembrances.
“Alas, poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio,” Karkat murmurs.
You grin at him. He understands more than he lets on.
June winks at you, and then walks away to the women’s side of the unit, presumably to call her father. She calls him every day at 8 am and 3 pm, like clockwork. Karkat gazes at her as she walks away, the back of her short dress fluttering behind her.
“June looks nice today,” you say to him.
He stops staring and glances at you for a moment.
“Yeah, um, she looks nice every day,” he replies. “Not that I make it my business to notice.”
You point to the delicate paper flower he has in his hand. “Sometimes the most miraculous thing you can fuckin’ do is give another person a taste of serendipity.”
Roxy smiles her cheshire cat smile from her seat by the television.
“That’s right, Crabby. Dontcha think June deserves her very own miracle?”
Karkat reddens, looks at the flower in his hand, and takes off for the women’s side.
“Hey, Egbert!” he shouts. “I have something for you.”
By the time you see June again, she’s wearing the small red flower in her hair. Roxy gives you a satisfied little nod, then asks you if you’d like her to put your hair in braids.
“I’m not as good as Pomary with hair, but I’m alright, I guess. Your hair looks like some birds took up residence in it, dude.”
“Why, thank you,” you reply. You take a seat at her feet, after she grabs her comb, brush, hair grease, and spray bottle out of sharps.
She’s right. She’s not a thing like Pomary when it comes to braiding. You’re used to the gentle motions of Porrim’s hands as she manipulates flowers into your hair, but Roxy tugs great fistfuls of your hair into twists. It feels nice, like she’s tethering you to the present, to the here and now.
You tell her that, thank her for bringing you back, and she blushes crimson.
“Aw, I’m not tryna do all of that,” she responds. “Just tryna work through my anxiety. Dolores gave me an ativan an hour ago, and I don’t feel it yet.”
Roxy bends low, and plants a kiss on your forehead, right where your skin meets your greasepaint. Her lips are the softest thing you’ve ever felt.
She keeps braiding, manipulating your hair into cornrows. With Roxy near you, you don’t necessarily have to be a prophet or an apostate of the mirthful messiahs. You don’t have to deliver special messages to special people. You can just be Gamzee Motherfucking Makara, doing you as per usual.
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Contraband (3.1k words)
Tamara 3/23/2021 - @_ourladytamara
cw’s: CNC, vomit, throatfucking, betrayal, systemic/state violence, demons, gross alien horsecock, guns (but no live rounds)
With trembling motions you shuffle to the front of your apartment and lean against the door, draped in the moonlight seeping in from the single, prison-like window behind you. You’d woken up mere minutes ago to the unmistakably stomach-churning clack of Demonic heels marching up your domicile block’s central stairway, and already the fear’s driven you to sweat. Blocks like these were explicitly human-only, servicing the slaves in the surrounding ammunition plants; Demonic hooves never graced the overcrowded slum without very compelling reasons.
Unfortunately for you, they clearly had one. Their steps were audibly burdened, heavier than the freakish things usually sounded as they marched over the shoddy linoleum flooring. A glance back at the clock read 2:30 AM – you had work in three and a half hours. Nausea struck like a knife. It cut deep and quick into your stomach as you pulled back from the doorway – just in time to jump against the body of your roommate, Ninety-Seven.
That wasn’t actually her name, of course, just like yours wasn’t actually Twenty-Two; it was easier to say than your full designations of 117-654-882-28-97 and 009-655-119-18-22, respectively. Unlike you, though, Ninety-Seven refused to tell you her actual, human name, adamant on her designation. She always weirded you out, obviously still doing so after waking up in the dead of night. Still, she told you she’d been here for years longer, and you chalked her high strangeness to the insurmountable trauma certainly weighing on her young mind.
“Why are you awake, Twenty-Two? It’s just some commotion, isn’t it?” she asked, only the slightest twinge of sleep in her words.
“Ninety, are you fuckin’ for real? Listen.” you hiss, gesturing for her to approach. For a moment she seems to hesitate, fixated on your hand. She shakes her head and comes closer, pressing her ear to the door as you’d been seconds earlier while you hold her shoulder. She cocks her eyes, turning to a scowl; you can hear the Demonic footsteps even standing, now.
“I… okay? What’s the problem?” she replies, almost… befuddled by something. You don’t understand.
“Do you not hear the literal Demons goose-stepping up our stairwell? Why the fuck would they be coming in here so -”
Before you can even finish speaking the alarms begin to blare. You’d lived here a year without even hearing them, and the instant they begin your mind starts to panic. It’s nothing like a human warning signal – it’s essentially a mechanical caterwaul, like the dying yell of someone caught in a machine and ground into paste. Every second it throbs against your skull.
“- early.”
Ninety-Seven looks up at you and widens her eyes, as if elated. The noise blocks your ability to yell at her, every word from your lips now totally drowned beneath the din. You gesticulate, pleading physically where your verbal ones had fallen short.
Without another word she opens her mouth and speaks in tune to the Demonic voice now echoing off every surface.
“BADH AN MARAB QA-ALADAV. YA DAEKAVA MA KADAR FA MAKH.
You cover your ears in pain and lean back against the wall, totally overwhelmed by the panic, noise, and exhaustion. Without thinking you dart away from the door, rushing to the pile of loose blankets and pillows allotted as “furniture” by your Demonic overlords. Ninety-Seven cocks her head and tracks you as you move, still repeating the announcement by heart as it begins to loop in English.
“A CONTRABAND SEARCH IS UNDERWAY.” it, and by extension Ninety-Seven, booms. “COOPERATION WITH ONSITE JUDGES WILL BE REWARDED.”
For a minute longer the Hellish alarm wails before its steel throat closes up – only to reveal just how loud the Demonic footfalls outside have truly grown. Each sounds only a single room away.
You shoot a look at Ninety-Seven, a mix of anger and ringing pain.
“You’ve been through this before?” you ask, darting from the pile of pillows you’d buried your head in for safety towards the girl.
“Of course – they used to be a lot more regular.” she replies, rubbing her legs together. “It was a lot more exciting back then, I think.”
Now beside her, you grab her by the shoulder as to speak more quietly. Knocking – on the door beside yours! It snaps you out of the conversation and draws your eyes inextricably to your own apartment’s flimsy defenses. Ninety-Seven stood between it and you, now glaring at you.
“Twenty-Two, I feel like you’re being overly hesitant.”
“ADDAKH!” comes the scream of a Demon in the hallway. “MAR VAL YGDASH.”
Seconds later, a kick, a thud – screaming and heavy footfalls. A gunshot – the screams grow louder, turning to a howl that chills you to the bone.
“O-Overly hesitant? Hello?” you nearly scream-whisper, attention divided. Something wasn’t adding up. “I’m being overly hesitant because,” you lean in, “there are fucking armed Demons outside our door? N-Ninety, are you fully awake?”
“I’m much more than fully awake, Twenty-Two – I just think this level of recalcitrance towards our Owners is undue.”
Every hair on your neck stood on end. Few things bothered you worse than hearing another human say that word, call them that name – and now it was coming from the only one you thought you’d be able to trust in the nightmare you now knew as life. Nausea reared its ugly head through the swamp of anxiety now living inside you. Next door, the Judges finished their grim duty; their hooves clacked along the red linoleum in the hallway once again.
“W-We have to… o-oh, my God, we have to do SOMETHING, I -” you mumble. This really sets her off.
“No. I’ve heard enough – you’re just like the other ones, aren’t you?” she mutters in reply, pulling away from you and shaking her head. “Just like the ones on level 29, right?”
You blink. You… you knew a couple on level 29. They were odd, definitely unlike you – clearly victims of Hell’s penchant for population shuffling, from Iran or something, you were never sure – but one of the only other friendly faces in the basalt-and-tallow sarcophagus you were forced to call home. During your fifteen minutes of allowed recreation you’d visited them a few days ago.
Something sinks like a rock in your stomach.
“N-Ninety-sev-”
“Is religious literature permitted material, Twenty-Two? Is it?”she barks, far louder than you would’ve dreamed of being knowing who was standing just outside your thin walls. This draws the attention of the Judges, clearly; the footsteps quiet as they whisper among themselves for some time.
They’d shown you their copy of the Quran, hastily handwritten into a falling-apart notepad – their one belonging save what Hell gave them.
A knock on your door. You can’t move, you can’t think – tears well up in your eyes.
“ADDA-” begins the Demon, but her shout is interrupted as Ninety-Seven opens the door.
“Oh, good! You came quickly – I’m glad the report made it in time.”
In your door stood a hulking Demon. She was clad entirely in some kind of black metal and blacker robes, flesh almost entirely concealed. A dim red glow emanated from the lenses of her metallic facemask; you could see muscles rippling beneath the thinner parts of her robe, flexing with each subtle motion.
“Huh?” she replies, regarding the girl for a moment like one would regard a particularly-stupid dog.
A gauntlet-clad hand shoves her out of the way, long finger on the trigger of her shotgun and totally ignoring the girl as she began to undress. You panic, yelping in fear and leaping away from the Demon as she steps closer. An instant later, a gunshot rings out – are you dead? Is it over?
No, that would be far too easy, sadly, and you buckle over in pain as the rock salt pellets slam into your back. It digs into your flesh and forces you to the floor like a hogtied animal. Fuck, you thought the salt shotgun thing was a myth. In a few seconds the pain of impact begins to subside and the burning begins. Every inch of your back is on fire; you grit your teeth and crawl into a fetal position, desperate to undo your jumpsuit yet horrifyingly aware of what undressing in a room filling with Demons would entail.
“Ooooohhhhh, that was you?” replied a third, smaller being, speaking Demonic as she entered behind a second. Your state-mandated grasp on the tongue was definitely weak, but you could still listen in. “My Cliquemate in block administration told me about some overly-enthused human babbling about contraband in-between mouthfuls of cock.”
“Found it.” said the second Demon, her voice a booming, cavernous depth. They laughed together before a hand from the first, their leader, silenced all of them.
“Stop talking to the fucking animals and search – save your breath for the next hundred and ten levels.”
You lived on the fifth.
A steel-clad fist to your stomach knocks the wind out of you and intensifies every ache and burn inside your overwhelmed body. The leading Demon looms high above you, a red-glinted flashlight shining from her shoulder through your tiny shared bedroom, toilet, and closet. Jumpsuits, ration tins, tissues, lubricant – but no contraband. Other than those sun-bleached and coffee-stained pages 24 floors above you, you hadn’t seen an unapproved object in what felt like years.
It didn’t stop them, though. By now Ninety-Seven was already completely nude, a visible line of slick running down her thighs as the two Demons behind the leader began rubbing her with their metallic hands. They prodded at her nipples, slid down her thighs and abdomen toned with years of hard labor; you felt yourself rising to vomit before the leading Judge struck you down again.
“Luckily,” she hissed with a click of her flashlight, “you got stuffed up in here with a delightful little housepet who kept you nice and clean, animal. You ought to thank it for that when we’re through with you.”
“N-Ninety-Seven, what the FUCK?!” you scream, ignoring her words against your own judgment. She doesn’t reply, now taking the third Demon’s fingers into her mouth as she kneels before them on the floor. The Judge grips your jaw in her fingers and pulls your gaze back towards her glowing eyes.
“Clearly she didn’t keep your mind as clean as your living space. What a shame – usually putting you two in a cell kills off resistant personality traits faster than this.”
She brushes a gauntlet against what you now realize is her cock, bulging up against the black fabric of her robe. “Look at this. If it weren’t for your little helper you might’ve been to rebellious to get to taste it. That’d be a shame, wouldn’t it?”
You crawl away in terror, but every tug of your jumpsuit makes the pain in your shoulders and back all the worse. By the time you manage to get an inch away, she grips you by the legs and pulls you back across the linoleum, leaving you between her powerful hooves. From here you can practically feel the heat coming off of her; it radiates like a pot of boiling water even through her armor and padding, most powerfully coming from her crotch.
All this time living in Hell and you’d – rather luckily – had until this point to really look at a Demon up close, let alone prepare yourself for what you inevitably knew came next. Obviously you would’ve preferred to keep it that way; the horror stories you’d listened to for the past years did little to compare to the reality of one standing right above you.
The Judge grips her Hellish leather belt and unhooks it from her waist, dropping the black robe – which you now see is a two-piece loincloth and hood - around her waist to the ground, landing around your neck like a scarf. Her cock pops out unrestricted with a heavy flop. It’s easily the length of your forearm and definitely thicker, with a dripping, flared head. The entire thing reeks of blood, salt, and some savory alien stench your nostrils struggles to even make sense of. Thick strands of gooey pre drip from her slit, one of them snapping off and landing on your forehead.
“I suppose you’ll need a reward for good behavior, won’t you?” she coos, slinging the shotgun over her shoulder and taking her length in hand. “It’s not often we find an entire domicile level without a single piece of contraband!”
“N-”
She squats onto your face before you can muster a syllable. Her weight is crushing almost immediately, forcing the wind from your lungs as she leans her ass back onto you. The heat is overwhelming; buried between her cheeks you have little option but to struggle with every muscle for breath, her taut asshole pressing into your face closer with every motion. You press your entire face into it without so much as noticing, and before you realize what’s happening, you’re halfway eating her out in confusion.
You can make out a pleased chuckle from above you. The Judge’s ass begins moving rhythmically, her hips grinding into your nose. Flailing, you desperately grab at her cheeks for even the slightest leverage – but you find none, your actions coming off as little more than playful pinching; the Judge pops her hips back triumphantly before rising from your face.
“Ugh. I fuckin’ hate it when they’re too enthusiastic – not like those dipshits.”
Your vision is spinning. In a stupor you manage to slink an eye back far enough to see Ninety-Seven on her knees. With both hands she’s enthusiastically stroking the second, largest Demon off between her tits, the third balls-deep down her throat and forcing her neck to distend in a way you were pretty sure human necks weren’t meant to. Her eyes are wide-open, a deeper satisfaction in them than you’d ever seen on the girl.
By the time you return your gaze upwards the Judge is stroking her cock mere inches from your face. The tip dominates your vision, like the barrel of a loaded gun; you tremble beneath it and mutter to yourself.
“Empress, no wonder you two were so compliant. Whores – like usual.” she hisses, briefly touching the head to your cheek. A thick strand of nigh-opaque pre stretched between your face and her tip as she pulled it away. “You’re far warmer than they usually are, though, pig – keep that up, the fear makes you tighter.”
She grabs your head and spreads your lips. A scream is stifled in your throat as her enormous prick is forced down your gullet, stretching your mouth wide open. In processing, so many years ago, they outfitted you with an adjustable ring-gag to test your gag reflex – that was nothing compared to the sheer girth being forced into you now. It splits you open, fucking your mouth like a pussy; by the time she starts to pull out again you can feel the pulsating heat from her grapefruit-sized balls against your cheeks.
Your stomach growls at the intrusion. Even if you wanted to vomit, there wasn’t much place for it to even go; teary-eyed, mouth filling with water, your gag reflex continues to alert your body to the obvious intrusion even as you lay helpless to it. The Judge grips your head in both hands and adjusts her squat before thrusting forward again. She’s using you like a hole, fucking your tear-and-spit-soaked face like one of their relief stations. Just as you feel you’ve had enough, she forces herself deeper and deeper still. You can practically feel it in your stomach, now, your guts being rearranged from the opposite side. Leathery ball-skin brushes against your chin, slick with sweat and liquids you couldn’t even begin to know the origin of.
A trembling hand once again attempts to brush against her ass in defiance. It’s hard to even get a grip on her, now, hips thrusting forward with reckless abandon as she abuses your mouth. Every thought in your head is systematically fucked out of you; your head drops limp in the Judge’s hands, now relying solely on her to keep you upright. Another glimpse at Ninety-Seven; she’s covered in cum from head to toe, what seemed like gallons of it slowly seeping from her mouth and nostrils as she lay on the floor. The two other Demons stand above her, holding their cocks as they bask in the afterglow.
“Hnnf, fuck, s-stay loose like that for – there we go.”
You’re conscious for just long enough to feel the first jet of cum impact the back of your throat – and feel your vision swim as you run out of air. Everything fades to black. Anxiety, strain, and exhaustion had finally done you in – maybe this was the afterlife, after the Grim Reaper juked you out with the salt shotgun earlier?
You were never that lucky, of course. Points of light trickled into your vision like snowflakes. Your floor, your walls, your grim little existence – it was all still here and you were still on the ground. The Demons are dressed and armed, again; they slink out of the room, chatting quietly, as they return to the stairwell, refusing a further word.
Cum seeps from your mouth and nose. It feels like your entire head is full of the stuff; you learn your stomach is just as packed, brushing a hand against your now-distended and semen-filled abdomen. The motion forces some of it up; you roll to your side and heave, vomiting at long last only to bring up more cum and very little else. It soaks into your jumpsuit and sticks to the skin beneath like glue, your entire upper chest and shoulders coated in it. From the amount on your face, the Judge must’ve cum all over you. You wipe it away from your eyes and onto the legs of your jumpsuit.
Ninety-Seven lays in a heap in front of the wide-open door. She, too, is absolutely plastered in the stuff; it clings to her hair, chest, tits, and face, among others where she’d clearly intentionally smeared it. Her body rises slowly with every tired breath, a deep satisfaction on her cumstained lips. You couldn’t have been out for more than a minute or two, but in that time the snitch had clearly tuckered herself out.
Every bone in your body aches. It goes far deeper, into your very soul itself, a frigid burning that seems to annihilate everything it touches. You’d made it so long, dealt with so much, cried and screamed and panicked so often – all to avoid the fate your one remaining friend gleefully brought upon you. It’s more than violation, more than betrayal; you feel like a match snuffed out in a glass of water, just like Ninety-Seven. Hell had broken you, after it had spent so long trying and failing. A glance at the clock: three AM.
You have work in three hours. You drop your head against the cum-soaked floor and cry.
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Amor (The Letter)
Length: 1485 words
TW: Made Grem Mad at me (None)
Brief: A blast from the past, Magnus and Romune’s last time seeing each other.
Credits: All characters are mine
Here’s the song I listened to while writing this!
Magnus slammed drawer after drawer in his office, frantically searching for an envelope. How did he happen to have not a single envelope in his entire office!! He heard a knock on the door and looked up with a startled expression.
Maldov stood in the doorway, mid-length hair pulled back in a ponytail. His claddagh tattoo poked out from the v-neck undershirt he wore. He lifted up an envelope with a slight grin.
“Aye, boss, thought ye’d be needin’ ona these fuckers. Can ne’er find ‘em in yer office ‘cos Zakrai steals ‘em all; the damn rugged fucker he be.”
“Molly, I never thought I’d be relieved to hear your stupid accent. Give me that damn envelope and get off this fuckin’ ship, you bastard.” Maldov held the envelope out for Magnus to snatch away, but the rust didn't leave. He leaned against the doorframe and crossed his arms over his scrawny chest. He watched as Magnus messily folded up a letter and stuffed it inside, only to scribble out a name on the front. The highblood hesitated for a moment, then added an exclamation point following the name.
“Still can’t figure out what damn quad, aye boss?”
“At this point, I don’t care what quad. It doesn’t matter. You know how it is....You and Leuken, right? What do ya call him?”
“Materail. Too flush fer pale, too pale fer flush.”
“Such is the folly of the Fleet, my dear Molly.” Magnus clasped a hand on Maldov’s shoulder and gave a knowing nod. “Now, I told you to get off this god forsaken ship. Go grab Leuken and hunker down on the planet for a few days. Hit up some bars or whatever it is you weird rusts do.” Maldov just laughed, and Magnus made his way off the ship.
The ship had landed planetside for repairs. Much to Magnus’ dismay, they were not stationed at the repair shop where his favorite blueblood worked. That was fine though. Romune wasn’t supposed to work that day. Magnus had called him a few days prior and ensured the blueblood would be hive.
Magnus decided to just Uber his way to Romune’s hive. It was better than carrying the box he had prepared, complete with one of his shirts and the letter, all the way to Rom’s hive. He was nervous, of course. He could barely keep his leg still on the entire ride to Romune’s hive.
It took a solid minute before Magnus could knock on the door to the hive. The door never opened. Instead, he heard the lock shift. His heart sank for a moment, until he tried to open the door and found it had been unlocked rather than locked. Great news. He entered the dimly lit hive, gently closing the door behind him. Just as he entered, the door to Romune’s block slammed shut.
Now, Romune was always a touch moody. He was also secretive. The blueblood didn’t want anyone- let alone the Fleet - to know about him and Magnus. What started as a torrid pitch fling turned into something more. While Romune remained moody, he also had a special kind of softness to him that drew Magnus in. Everything about him screamed home to Magnus. The way he smelled like oil and metal, but there was a touch of sweetness from his deodorant. The way his hair fell in front of his eyes when it was pulled back lazily. Magnus so often found himself longing for the blueblood while out in space.
Magnus carefully made his way to the closed door. His movement was slow, almost fearful. With the box tucked under his arm, he reached for the doorknob.
Only for the door to fly open on its own. Romune halted to a sudden stop, arm frozen over his head as he was in the process of pulling back his hair. His eyes were wide. There was a rubber band between his lips.
Magnus smiled slightly at the sight of his startled…friend. He leaned forward and pressed a kiss to the blueblood’s lips, stealing the rubber band with a cheeky grin as he did so. Romune furrowed his brows in annoyance, and let his hair free to cascade down his neck. He crossed his arms over the Fleet symbol on his shirt.
“Hey, asshole, I needed that.”
Magnus stepped backwards, back towards the door, raising a brow playfully. A come and get me gesture. Romune was not amused. He followed Magnus, lurching forward for the hair tie. As he did, Magnus lurched backwards to avoid him, still holding the hair tie between his teeth. That actually got a laugh out of Romune. Magnus considered it a success.
Romune finally gave up reaching for the hair tie, and just held his hand out. After taking it out of his mouth, Magnus set the rubber band on Romune’s hand. Of course, this was a trap. He pulled the slightly taller man close so he could steal another kiss. Romune let out an exasperated sigh. Despite his annoyed tone, he did lean into the other man. He rested his head against Magnus’ shoulder. Magnus only had one hand that wasn’t holding a box and currently that hand was holding Romune’s hand. So all he could do was press another kiss to a spot on Romune’s neck that had been exposed.
“Lovlus asked me to cover their shift for them.” Romune broke the comfortable silence after a moment, and Magnus felt his heart sink once more.
“You said no, right?” Magnus spoke softer than Romune had. He almost found it difficult to get the words out.
“No, I told them I would. It's only a few hours. I promise I’ll be back before the sun comes up.” Only when he was finished speaking did Romune lift his head and take his hand back. He turned his back to Magnus so he could pull his long hair up in a ponytail. Magnus watched silently.
“Don’t be so somber. I’ll be back. I’ll pick up East Alternian on my way hive. Beef and Broccoli, right? With extra duck sauce?” Romune looked over his shoulder back at Magnus. The purpleblood just nodded.
“Great. Stay here and keep HyenaMom company while I’m gone. Grubflix password is on the fridge. There’s snacks….somewhere. What am I saying, I’m coming back with food. Duh.” Romune gently bonked his own forehead with his palm, then returned into his block to finish getting ready. The two shared another kiss before Romune left.
Magnus seated himself on the edge of Romune’s large bed. He stared down at the box in his lap with furrowed brows. After waiting for a moment to ensure that Romune wasn’t going to burst in the door claiming he forgot his keys or something, Magnus finally tore open the box himself. He took out the letter and opened it to reread what he had written.
Romune Iscatu,
You like literature. Do you remember what omnia vincit amor means? Its from that one epic written in Latin about some poet. You told me all about it one of the first days I spent in your hive. You had been reading it and even read an excerpt from it. I was too stupid then to realize how much that book meant to you. I was too busy thinking about the way your eyes lit up when you talked about that dumb book. I realized later it was because I was jealous. I wanted to be the reason your eyes lit up like that.
Omnia vincit amor means love conquers all. Or so Goregle Translate tells me. I was trying to be cheesy and romantic because I know how much you hate that shit. Guess I still haven’t figured out what quad we are after all.
I know what you’re thinking. Quad? We’re not in a quad. No, not yet. This is me asking you to be my quad. Any quad. I could spend forever annoying you. I could spend eternity loving you. It doesn’t matter to me. All I know is I want you. Romune Iscatu. I’d have nobody but you.
Please think about it.
Magnus
And then Romune never came hive.
Magnus waited for him. For days, he waited. He heard of an explosion at one of the ship repair stations, but it wasn’t Romune’s. He didn’t have worries until the second day. With no sight of Romune, and the deadline to return to his ship drawing near, Magnus tried everything he could. He texted, he called, he called Romune’s friends. But nobody was picking up. Even HyenaMom seemed worried. It was as if Romune never existed, and yet, Magnus slept in his bed those nights he waited.
On the fifth night, Magnus said goodbye to HyenaMom, to Romune’s hive, to Romune. He left the box, re-wrapped and sealed with duct tape, on Romune’s bed. And he returned to his ship.
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singing here’s to never growing up
more batkids shenanigans - this time inspired by a comment on a YouTube video of Avril Lavigne’s “My Happy Ending”. thank you so much to the Capes & Coffee Discord for brainstorming this fic with me, and helping me figure out ages! and an especially huge thank you to Bumpkin and Oceans on that server for being my betas for this fic!!
this fic is set in 2020. the character ages & years born are:
Bruce: 37 - born 1983
Dick: 25 - born 1995
Jason: 20 - born 2000
Tim: 17 - born 2003
Damian: 11 - born 2009
title is from Avril Lavigne’s “Here’s to Never Growing Up”!
please REBLOG - DO NOT REPOST
AO3 Link
Teen
1,276 words
Tim Drake & Dick Grayson & Jason Todd & Damian Wayne & Bruce Wayne
part of my batkids shenanigans series
Summary:
Dick is just trying to get in touch with his inner angsty teenage girl. He didn’t ask for an existential crisis. Tim is making him have one anyway.
- - - - -
“…and it’s not like most plot-driven things – movies, books, shows, whatever – where the side stories might be briefly referenced but you don’t have to read them to understand what’s going on. The side games are absolutely crucial to understanding the plot.”
Jason snickered as Tim ranted about the Kingdom Hearts series. Sure, all Jason said was that he had only played the second game and was thinking about playing the first to understand the plot better, but that was ridiculous!
“If you play the first game and then go straight to the second, you’ll end up completely lost,” Tim huffed. “It starts with totally different characters and very little explanation of where they came from. That’s why you play ‘Days’ and ‘Re:Chain of Memories’—”
“Shhh,” Jason hissed, covering Tim’s mouth. “Do you hear Avril Lavigne?”
Tim paused just before he bit Jason’s hand and listened. Down the hall, he could faintly hear music.
“’All this time you were pretending. So much for my happy ending.’” Okay, that was definitely Avril Lavigne. With a tilt of his head, Tim gestured for them to investigate.
Down the hall, one of the lesser used sitting rooms had its door cracked open as the music spilled from inside. Tim slowly pushed the door open more and poked his head in. From the line of heat along his back, he knew Jason was leaning over him. That, and the chin that rested on his head because Jason was an asshole that took every opportunity to remind Tim that he’s shorter.
Tim blinked. Above him, Jason turned a near-silent snicker into a cough. Laying upside-down on the couch – feet dangling over the back and hair brushing the floor – was Dick, lip-syncing the words as dramatically as possible without changing position.
“Dick? What are you doing?” Tim asked, giving up the pretense of being sneaky and just walking in. The quiet curse behind him told him that Jason hadn’t been prepared to suddenly lose his support.
Either their older brother knew they were there or he was too good to visibly startle – each as equally likely – but it meant that Dick didn’t jump or even bother looking at them. “I’m getting in touch with my inner angsty teenage girl,” he explained.
Jason sprawled on the other end of the couch, leaving Tim to sit on the coffee table. “Any particular reason, Dickiebird?”
Dick spread his hands in an approximation of a shrug. “It be like that sometimes.”
Here’s the thing: Tim had gone through a bit of a phase years ago, and during that phase he was curious about when Avril Lavigne’s songs were released – he was a weird kid, okay? He never expected that information to come in handy, but it was his job as a little brother to torment his siblings. “Hey Dick,” Tim grinned, “guess how old I was when this song came out?”
“Why?” Dick asked, already sounding suspicious.
“I was about a year old, depending on the month,” Tim told him cheerfully.
“Nooo,” Dick whined, “Tim, why? Oh my god, you were a baby! And now you’re a teenager that’s nearly an adult and I’m old!”
“I was twenty-one,” Bruce scoffed, leaning against the doorway and drawing everyone’s attention. “I’m thirty-seven now. Please Dick, tell me about being old.”
“You don’t understand, B! At least you were already an adult, and now you’re just a more adult-adult. Tim was a tiny little baby and now he’s practically all grown up! I was a kid, and now I’m an actual adult! With a job! I’m having a crisis right now!”
Tim hummed. “Then I probably shouldn’t mention that her song ‘Sk8er Boi’ is older than I am.”
Dick wailed as Jason started howling with laughter so much that he grabbed his ribs.
“Tim! Why would you say that?!”
Damian walked in right then, scowling. “What idiotic nonsense is Drake spewing now that has you in a fit, Grayson?” Before anyone could answer, his brows furrowed and he added, “And why are all of you listening to such old music?”
That set Jason off again and Tim joined in. Their combined laughter wasn’t nearly enough to drown out Dick’s small, quiet sob as he slid off the couch to be a human puddle of existential crisis on the floor. “Babies,” he whispered. “I’m surrounded by babies. All of you are children. Oh my god.”
“Hey! I’m not a fuckin’ child, I’m twenty goddamn years old!” Jason argued.
Dick shrieked, “You can’t even legally drink!”
“Did you know you’re older than Google by three years, Dick?” Tim said. Dick whimpered.
Rolling his eyes, Bruce lightly cuffed Tim on the back of the head. “Give him a break, kiddo.”
“I have yet to have an answer as to why you all are listening to this infernal racket,” Damian demanded.
Within a couple seconds, Jason went from wheezing for air to completely solemn as he looked at Damian. “Sometime, kid, you just fuckin’ need to get in touch with your inner angsty teenage girl, and Avril Lavigne is the shit for that.” His faux-serious expression shattered with a smirk as he tacked on, “Also, I’m pretty sure Jon’s got this album.”
Damian scoffed and stormed out, muttering about being surrounded by idiots – Dick must have shown him Lion King then – and Tim snickered again. On the floor, Dick was still muttering and moaning about children and babies and “I’m so old, I’m like the Crypt Keeper”.
Tim bit his lip to stop himself from telling Dick that Freaky Friday – which was already apparently a remake – came out about a month after he was born. That could be saved for the next time Dick had a crisis about his age.
- - -
Two weeks later, Tim stopped halfway through ranting at Dick for only playing the main titles of Kingdom Hearts to stare down the hall. Much like the last time he was on a tangent about the game series, he could hear Avril Lavigne playing from somewhere. Except the only rooms down that hall were their bedrooms, and Jason and Dick stood on either side of him. The three glanced at each other, and Dick immediately grinned and bounced down the hall. Jason was smirking as he followed, and Tim trailed after hoping this wouldn’t end with Damian trying to stab him again.
Dick burst in as soon as he reached Damian’s room, where the music was definitely blaring from behind the door. “Dami, you’re listening to Avril Lavigne!”
When Tim peaked in, Damian was face-planted on his bed with his face towards the foot of the bed.
“I do not wish to talk about it,” he snapped, muffled as it was.
“Aw,” Dick pouted, “do you want a hug?”
Snarling, Damian lifted his head up enough to glare at all three of them. “I would prefer for you to leave my room at once!”
“Alright Dickie,” Jason said, grabbing and hauling Dick out, “leave the brat to fuckin’ wallow in his anti-social, pre-teen angst. Sometimes you just need to angst it out alone, as you damn well know.”
“Aren’t you the literature nerd? I mean, really, Little Wing, ‘angst it out’?” Dick snarked.
Tim pulled Damian’s door closed and followed after. “Hey, language is fluid and always changing,” he added.
Gesturing at him for emphasis, Jason declared, “Fuckin’ exactly! All words were made up at some point, and English is already a fucking mess of words from different languages smashed together! And at least a shit ton of the rules have exceptions!”
Tim nodded, “Like the ‘I before E except after C’ rule.”
“Here we go again,” Dick muttered.
“You fuckin’ started it!”
#batfam#batfamily shenanigans#batkids shenanigans series#fanfiction#crack fic#elyrey writes things#tim drake#dick grayson#jason todd#bruce wayne#damian wayne#dcu#batman#red robin#red hood#nightwing#robin#avril lavigne songs referenced#tim drake is a little shit
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Previous anon! I think you mentioned a literature degree in a post a while back. (But the tags you left on the ask certainly showed evidence of it haha). I was curious and wanted you to talk about it but wasnt sure if i should straight up say "pls talk about your degree i am very interested and curious"
lollll i mean as a lit major i feel like i’m morally obligated to drag myself for it bc like i deserve it but yeah i’m down to talk about my degree!! uhhh idk if you have anything specific in mind, feel free to ask me whatever you want to know bc it turns out when asked to talk about my degree i don’t even know where to start rip also if you’re looking for someone who can advise you on what you can do with a lit major i am the wrong person to go to sdkjfnsdkjsnfd what i do for work now has basically nothing to do with what i studied but i’m honestly good with that bc it was always something i studied more because i wanted to than because i wanted to turn it into an actual career
Trying to remember what lit classes i liked the best... off the top of my head: contemporary women novelists, modern english lit, black literature in europe, post-colonial lit [by far my favorite lit class ever, that reading list fuckin slapped]; there was also a class that i don’t remember what it was called anymore but i loved it bc we read a lot of more nontraditional writing that also focused a lot on intergenerational trauma [so like Maus and the Photographer which are graphic novels were on the reading list, and we also read a poem called Zong! and experimental plays and things like that]
hmmm not knowing what specifically you wanna know about i guess i’ll just give some general thoughts about being a lit major [and tossing a cut here bc i got rambly... i’m sorry... you asked a lit major about being a lit major this is what happens i guess]
as one might expect it involves a fuckton of reading and writing literary analysis which might be a con for some but definitely not for me. but like i am the kind of asshole who actually likes reading three books in a week and writing a 7 page close reading comparing the roles of Persuasion’s Ann Elliot and the Bride of Lamermoor’s Lucy so, you know, i certainly don’t expect what works for me to be a one-size-fits-all kind of thing lol
One thing I really liked with the classes i took was the opportunity to push back against the typical canon of the Dead White Man that i feel like was really prevalent in public school. tbf there was still quite a bit of that in some of my classes [James Joyce meet me in the fucking pit] but if you’re strategic with the classes you sign up for you really get the chance to get exposed to a lot of unique and diverse perspectives, i feel like the foundation i got in those classes helped me form a baseline for where to start in finding more literature like that
Although as mentioned i did still have a lot of issues with that in my department. like idk if that was just my school or being in undergrad or whatever but i feel like a lot of lit majors I knew had a very prescriptive view of what “counts” as literature, we got into so many discussions about what qualifies as ~art~ [which if you know me i think is such bullshit like who are we to judge what is more artistic than something else particularly when for so much of history what has been deemed ~proper literature~ was written by white men but anyway we don’t have to get into it right now lol] and while i got the sense that the culture was slowly changing while i was part of it i do still feel like there’s a lot about the lit academia world that still kinda has to catch up, like it can be a field rife with elitism and narrow-mindedness depending on where you are in it. but of course that’s just my own take on it! ymmv and all that
i feel like this major taught me way more about how to read than about how to write, like at my school at least especially in a lot of the upper level classes there was basically no guidance for how to write your papers you’re kind of already expected to know how to write good literary criticism? also tbh i didn’t always love writing papers, in fact sometimes it fucking sucked having to write long analyses about topics i didn’t give a shit about and sometimes you have to do a FUCKTON of writing about shit you don’t care about [especially during finals week rip college Sarah you will not be missed]. but i think the analysis skills i developed while studying lit are genuinely really valuable even if i don’t really do anything directly related to my field of study career wise, like they help me be more thoughtful about pretty much everything i read and watch from the news to fiction and also be more thoughtful about my choices in my own creative writing all of which i really appreciate esp since it’s stuff i’m interested in just in general so I definitely don’t regret this choice of study!
sidenote but big rip to anyone who goes into this major and likes reading for fun in their downtime sdfknsnf i had way too much reading always to do any of my own reading outside of class [anthro is a very reading/writing heavy major too BIG rip to college Sarah] and when i did have breaks i was like fuck no i’m not thinking about words until i ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO [by going back to class] [god i’m so glad i’m not in school anymore]
Lord that got rambly skjfnskdjfnsd idek if any of that is anything you’d be interested in but yeah feel free to ask me more specific questions if you feel like it! then maybe i won’t go off on a million tangents [disclaimer: i probably still will]
#the college struggle#jesus haven't used that tag in a while sndkfdsk#but like it's relevant so w/e#Anonymous#answers
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Harry Potter Next Generation Headcanons
im bored. im full of emotions, and am rly missing the HP world... i just want to write down my headcannons for the next gen kiddos tbh.
please remember these are just my opinions? its okay if yours are different. im just bored and want to share my thoughts,,
Teddy Lupin
his name is Theodore Remus “Teddy” Lupin. it’s just what it is
I don’t care what JKR says, to me his name will always be Theodore
i can’t do this “Edward” stuff im so sorry,,,
h u f f l e p u f f
proper school uniform? never heard of it
messy hair, messy clothes
punk rock child
we’re talking like,,,at least two (2) lip piercings ok
absolutely terrible in herbology. do not leave this child alone in a greenhouse, bad things happen
fuckin hoards chocolate
its a problem
dating Victorie Weasley
random bursts of dancing
keeps a lock of hair pink for his mother
lives with the Potters, enjoys pretending to be Ginny to ground his siblings
“Lily, why aren’t you coming out of your room? Dinner’s ready?” “You said I’m grounded! You tell me!” “What? Oh, for the- THEODORE REMUS LUPIN-“
s m i r k s
effortlessly cool,,, but so so dorky,,, in a cool way
Victorie Weasley
ravenclaw!
looks a lot like her mother, Fleur, but inherited those Weasley freckles
a little confused a lot of the time
absolute sweet tooth (teddy abuses this fact a lot)
Mom Friend™
will help you with your homework
always got a book on her
super beautiful and like,,,, the absolute nicest person,,, but
cannot dance
like at all
adores Charms class
a softie you don’t want to cross
“I’m the oldest”
Dominique Weasley
inherited the Classic Weasley Red Hair™
idolises her Uncle Charlie
“I wanna save animals and work with cool dragons, just like Uncle Charlie does!”
Bill almost has a heart attack
always bringing stray animals home
(“is that a lizard in your pocket, Dominique?” “Yes! His name is Blob.” “You know how your father’s afraid of reptiles, sweetheart, you can’t bring it inside.”)
Gryffindor child
favourite class is definitely Care of Magical Creatures, she and Hagrid like to talk about proper care methods for rare creatures
perpetual dirt stains
BIG middle child vibes
doesn’t really label her sexuality… just kinda does what she wants rly
all the pets in Hogwarts love her
rumours are she’s got an innate, natural magical ability to make them all love her
(she feeds them under the table)
it’s a mystery
big advocate for animal rights
f e m i n i s t
willing to throw hands at all times
usually all smiles though
one of those people who use their whole bodies to laugh
kind of an accidental heartthrob
romcoms
Louis Weasley
looks the most like his mother
ravenclaw
absolutely filled with curiosity. always reading or talking or learning
random facts
(how do you even find that sort of information?
you don’t want to know)
coffee boy
sort of musically talented?
he and James Sirius preach the importance of skincare to all who will listen
secretly full of sass and dry wit
vry graceful and fluid
e y e r o l l
awkward smiles? can never smile properly in photos
on the ravenclaw quidditch team
Ravenclaw Prefect
(“You might be older, but I’m taller.” “Fuck off!”)
only watches High Quality™ tv shows/media
kind of a disaster, despite the gracefulness
Molly Weasley
Classic red hair
comes across as a bit uptight, like her father
I don’t care what you think. (She really cares what you think.)
E y e b r o w s
death glares
drinks like 5 cups of coffee in the morning
studies,,, like a lot
definitely a Gryffindor though
mom jeans
always ready to debate a topic. will destroy opponents.
has been trying to start a successful Debate Club for like 4 years now
naturally falls into the position of a group leader
would be a teacher’s pet, if she wasn’t ready At All Times™ to debate the relevancy of the course syllabus or outdated teaching methods
got into a fight with Severus Snape’s portrait in Headmistress McGonagall’s office.
(Dumbledore’s portrait was laughing, until she turned and ragged on him for a bit. Minerva thought it was absolutely hilarious, so she just let Molly go at it for a while).
full of rage towards everything, but wears a very careful mask of aloofness
to calm down, she likes painting her nails
she’s very good at it
she’s also very good at painting and art in general, weirdly enough
Lucy Weasley
G R Y F F I N D O R
adores shitty puns and has a terrible sense of humour
brown hair, not red
loves to prank people, which makes her Uncle George very proud
Percy complains about her behaviour, but makes sure he knows he’s proud too
(charming all the cauldrons in the potions classroom to scream whenever they’re stirred takes a more complex understanding of spell work than one would expect).
a pit of a punk streak
rly loves hip hop
high key drama queen
does she ever stop yelling? we’re yet to find out
average grades in terms of theory, but she’s the best in terms of applying information
especially for her pranks
has allies throughout the castle, from the portraits to the students
the bigger the prank, the better
but is a firm believer in “confuse, don’t abuse”
all her pranks are mostly harmless
is a surprising lover of older literature, like Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, an influence of her sister
a bit rebellious
Fred Weasley II
name isn’t officially “the second”, but it sounds cooler
James Potter, Lucy Weasley, Molly Weasley and Fred Weasley are like the Marauders 2.0
says “squad” and “lit” unironically
niche humour
hipster vibes
avid music lover
smiley sunshine child
takes after his mother the most in looks, just like his sister
a chill type of gryffindor
plays quidditch, and is an excellent chaser, just like his mother
the absolute undisputed King™ of puppy-dog eyes
just,,,, beautiful
the True teacher’s pet
hands in his work on time,, asks lots of questions,,, likes helping students understand their work,, what a boy
can hella nyoom
runs so fast
look at him go
as you might expect, loves a good prank. always down for a laugh
Roxanne Weasley
Gryffindor and pROUD
absolute Queen tbh
was definitely Head Prefect or Gryffindor Prefect at some point
loved by the school
absolute legend
G I R L P O W E R
infectious laughter
has a soft spot for Louis Weasley and Scorpius Malfoy
these poor disaster children,,,, they need a Mother
M O M
big mom vibes
mothers the hell out of all the first years
a feminist through and through
can be found nodding aggressively to Molly Weasley’s semi-deranged, furious ranting
YAAAASS
loves slang. uses so much slang. always up to date with trends and memes
has all the gossip
becomes a mess around pretty girls
absolute blushing, stuttering disaster around cute girls oh my god
her eye make-up game is killer
sparkly
Distinguished Lesbian
Rosie Weasley
did someone say Weasley™?
red hair and freckles and curls oh my
on the autism spectrum, has trouble socialising sometimes
hella passionate about stuff
hangs out with Scorpius and Albus, the Golden Trio 2.0
f em ini st
her jokes are the best. high quality sense of humour.
Ravenclaw
likes to read. it’s quiet in the school library, which is nice.
abysmal at herbology
surprisingly good at Care of Magical Creatures though? Animals are just,,, so much easier to deal with
overall, really good grades though
bit of a silent type, but she’s actually a riot to hang out with
actually pretty good at quidditch? She’s not on the team, and she’s not super interested in playing, but?? She’s not bad??
She can land a solid hit with a beater’s bat
(eyes you judgementally over the top of a book)
dry wit humour
will throw hands over chess
Hugo Weasley
hufflepuff
unbeatable at chess, like his dad
a lost puppy
someone please help this child
softie
kind of low-key emotional
so supportive!! and loyal!! high-key best friend material
foodie. loves food. please feed him.
takes a bit more after his dad appearance wise
loves to cook. spends lots of time with grandma Molly and his dad in the kitchen
Professor Longbottom is his favourite professor, because he’s more chilled and laidback.
other professors and classes fill him with Distress™
loves astronomy too
maths whizz, so good at arithmancy
(“uh, actually-“)
a little bossy, like his mother
is trying so hard
maybe a little too hard
a bit insecure and nervous, but so soft
please treat this child carefully and with love
James Sirius Potter
Gryffindor
L O U D
a fucking disaster child
what’d you expect, putting “James” and “Sirius” together?
DRAMATIC GASPING
flails his hands around when he talks
s t r u t s
bisexual mess, had a crush on both the Longbottom children at some point
is better than you at everything
including being a different gender
fuck you that’s why
so pretty
he’s so pretty
is thIS CHILD EVER NOT LAUGHING AT SOMETHING OH My god
laughs at everything
all the time
always
high-key emotional
badly timed finger guns
looks like a model in photos? wtf?
gets invited to Girls Nights™
wears nail polish and makeup
loves to yell at people about gender roles and defying stereotypes
TEA SIS
not on the quidditch team surprisingly enough, even though he’s pretty good
prefers to be in the stands, doing A+ commentary on the games
if he can get Fred to stop mid-air due to unbearable, suffocating laughter at least once a game it’s a win in his books
has it OUT for the hufflepuff quidditch team and no one knows why??
definitely makes puns on his name
it drives everyone insane
harry always replies he’s just making his namesake proud
that also drives everyone insane
smug lil shit
Albus Severus Potter
“It’s just Al.”
S L Y T H E R I N
will always find a way to get what he wants, eventually
“dad, why did you name me this way?”
unimpressed
sigh
hella smart. is topping at least five classes
Aunt Hermione is his favourite. She’s the fucking Mistress of Magic! All that power, the ability to make change and improve the Magical World as a whole-
sass master
the reason headmistress mcgonagall keeps a bottle of scotch under her desk at all times
the only potter child to inherit The Eyes™
absolute insomniac
kind of emo, but turns into a fucking softie around Scorpius Malfoy it’s hilarious
adverse to violence. prefers a verbal beatdown method
really tall? despite having shorties for parents??? no one saw it coming
(especially not Teddy. He’s always scared of losing his last few inches of height)
Functional Gay
he’s on the slytherin quidditch team, as a seeker
Lily Luna Potter
Gryffindor
FEMINIST
do not mess with lily luna potter
she may seem cute and sweet, but she will destroy you
inherited her father’s black hair
disaster lesbian
transfiguration is her favourite subject, by far
has no idea what she wants to do with the rest of her life.
Existential Crisis Father-Daughter Bonding Time™
do you ever sleep?
takes after Ginny the most in personality
also, kind of the most like James Fleamont Potter in personality, too?
Loves to help her brother out with pranks, laughs at him when he gets caught and she gets away with it
The only one of the Potter Children who hasn’t got into a fight with Severus Snape’s portrait
because she just ignores him instead
loves talking to the portraits around the castle
Super good at Quidditch, is on the team as a Chaser
Quidditch Captain at some point
adores Hagrid, but who out of the Potter children doesn’t?
Idolises Minerva McGonagall
just as oblivious as her father
Scorpius Malfoy
Actually in Ravenclaw, not Slytherin, much to many people’s surprise
abSOLUTE DADDY’S BOY
super close with his dad
Draco is just so supportive of like everything he does (unlike his father)
classic blonde malfoy looks
actually really funny?
a cuddler. loves hugs. always leeching warmth off of someone
he and Rosie sometimes finger-tip-touch which is their version of a hug, because he know’s she’s not super comfortable with touch
was basically adopted by the Weasley’s and Potter’s
James Sirius will murder for this child
booknerd, always rambling to Al and Rosie about new books coming out he’s interested in reading.
has had a crush on Albus Potter since like 1st year
always worried about making his dad proud, and keeping up the Malfoy name
sweet tooth
he’s just,, soft. just a warm, happy child. he wants love, and affection. someone tell him he’s doing okay, please.
needs,,, validation,,,
he’ll tell you out loud that he has no favourite aunts or uncles, but he secretly really likes spending time with his Uncle Ron
they had a talk, once, in like the middle of the night at a sleepover with Rosie and Al, about feeling insecure in comparison to others, and learning to be proud of yourself for your achievements
there were a few tears, but it was nice
Ron was actually the third person he told, besides his dad and Rosie, about having a crush on Al
openly a disaster romantic. trash taste in romance novels.
always welcome in the Potter-Weasley households
#harry potter#harry potter next generation#next generation headcannons#headcanon#it's just my opinion#please don't hurt me#teddy lupin#victorie weasley#dominique weasley#louis weasley#molly weasley#lucy weasley#fred weasley#roxanne weasley#rosie weasley#rose weasley#james sirius potter#albus severus potter#lily luna potter#scorpius malfoy#scorbus#scorpius x albus#next gen hp#next gen harry potter#next gen kids#headcannons#headcannon#slytherin#gryffindor#hufflepuff
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under the cut you’ll find saint’s intro, its just a brief run down for now until i get bio pages up but it should help get a sense of the boyo all the same !! he is gentle and friend shaped is all i can say ajjdfg. THIS HAS NOW BEEN UPDATED WITH LIKE FIVE EXTRA LIL MORE CURRENT HEADCANONS! [ they r just like for his own growth nothing major has happened with saint and he’s still fundamentally the same as he was bc he’s always been a more laidback and less tragic muse but feel free to read em bc they do help contextualise how he’ll be career wise and with grandmami] :
CHWE SAINT:
so for the best part of his life saint was raised with his ‘grandmami’ as he terms her, but she’s better known to the whole island as ajumma solmi. for this reason he’s very doting toward her and a real grandma’s boy. he bakes with her often and they can often be found on street corners selling cheap priced but some of the finest flowers to the citizens because it’s grandmami’s tradition and its mostly done in hope to uplift the islanders and bring joy to their day in a small way and act of love.
when i say doting i mean doTInG, he will help her in and out of chairs, help her cross streets, hold the groceries for her as she crosses, open doors for her even if grandmami insists he stops fussing because ffs saint ur making me look ancient and i’ll have u know i am still fighting fit and could knock any idiot on his ass with a fliCk of my finger. ajdhf. she is v fiery, if saint is like the picture of elegance and good manners then grandmami is the sTARK contrast. she has one hell of a potty mouth and just a no time for ur shit attitude. if anything saint is keeping her in line, not the other way around.
his quirk is warp gate. he rlly just uses it to entertain himself mostly and help give his pals quick escapes when a prank of some sort has gone wrong. he can basically create portals out of a dark fog which can either be emitted through his breath or openings at the end of his fingers which he can activate, anyone can also use his portals to travel so long as he’s given them permission.
he just exudes sunshine rlly. is well known round the island for his out of this world smile which has been known to charm many. he is a very eligible and sought after bachelor but saint is like...not interested mostly bc he just like has no romantic awareness ahdhfhf not bc he doesn’t want it. and also bc he doesn’t like the way it’s mostly super young girls and guys just like awestruck by him. it feels a little too much like he’s a collective childhood crush by his groupies so yeah he is OBLIVIOUS.
very humble and incredibly polite. just really down to earth whenever spoken to but being raised by an elderly person kinda makes u a little outdated, for this reason saint is kind of demure and bad at conversation mostly due to the fact he can easily talk for hours about his plans for baking with grandmami later, the book he read her this morning, the lovely walk they took in that gorgeous spot which he rlly recommends etc but he is god awful at talking about like typical young people stuff.
lot of ppl think he plays hard to get, this is not true, saint just fr does not know how to fuckin speak and is the most oblivious person in the world to how to flirt, he’s easily flustered but bad at knowing when he’s being flirted with or if this person is just rlly nice and is usually too shy and respectful to rlly push luck by flirting in response hfhfjkg. USELESS.
very 70′s/80′s aesthetic bby boy, sweet summer child. he is obsessed with old classic black and white films, had a collection before he moved to the island which he misses like everyday but luckily he has memorised ten million quotes. also collected records. obsessed with anything retro, is a collector of gaming merch. but he didn’t get to sneak much to the island :-( the only thing he rlly snuck was a small record stash. liked roller skating, bowling, drive in movies. dresses very retro but refined and classy with lots of layering. rlly good knowledge of classic literature.
most likely to find him at the arcade in the funzone now on the island, he is a master at all the games but esp the old retro ones, usually goes early morning or late evening so he can spend hours uninterrupted on them and beat his high score everyday a bit more. if not there then he’ll be at zen’s computer gaming instead. he likes all tech really but prefers retro, he’s still figuring out modern. before coming to the island he was rlly getting into VR. if he’s not in either of these places, he’ll be on the beach in a volleyball match or doing a jog. still v much into his sports.
ultimate sike power cause people think he looks like ur typical jock fuckboy but jokes on u he is pure of heart and dumb of ass himbo just blessed with ethereal looks, he is the breed of good lil boyo and that is all.
obsessed with milkshakes and popcorn at the diners if he’s ever there u can guarantee that is what he is snacking on or treating himself to. his weakness is churros he fucken thinks that shit SLAPS. he’ll do anything if the prize is churros. sMH someone help his diet. also loves fiddling with the jukeboxes there ajdjd.
has two pet geckos one is peach colored and called zelda, the other is black and white leopard spotted and named zeus and he also has a chonk of a fluffy grumpy white cat called yoshi. he is the best. saint is a huge animal lover but probably still not on nyx’s level of dog worshipper.
weeb. not as big of a one as nyx but he likes haikyuu, kuroko no basket, given, fruits basket, free! and yuri! on ice. he is very into anything that is slice of life or sports anime.
has the nickname ‘koda’ bc of the movie brother bear, nicknamed after the lil baby bear cause he just reminds people of a baby bear ahdhd.
he studies art, spends half his life in the studio working, big art nerd. once he gets in the work mode, he just does not stop for anything but water and snacks and goes at it all day into half the night. usually does big projects bc he loves a challenge. mostly paints, sometimes sketches. u know those vids of people mixing paint colors like a swatch of gold and turquoise? saint fuckin loves those so bad unf he does that all the time to calm himself.
still lives with grandmami currently, he’s looking at getting his own place bc everyone tells him if he ever wants to have his own life then he needs to but he’s just v anxious about leaving grandmami on her own bc she getting older by the day and she’s all he has sO she cannot get hurt!!
also in a bit of a dilemma with his art bc he kinda wants to make something out of it, like maybe teach some classes sort of thing and use it more as a career but right now he does not have the confidence in his ability and is mostly just doing it for fun and as a calming thing ( he’s an idiot he’s rlly fucken good pls someone make him take himself seriously )
never cusses but does say bitchin a lot, only ever uses fuck in bed basically so if u ever hear him say it then u know something next level has gone down bc saint refuses to swear even if he stubbed his pinky toe.
looks like a cinnamon roll but HE FUCKS!! boy is a kinky freak however saint has no shame or embarrassment like he will discuss it as casually as a discussion of what to have for dinner not bc he is like lewd but purely bc to him its rlly natural and like another form of art and he does not get the embarrassment or secret nature of it all like it is just factual to him that we come into the world like that and ppl enjoy it sometimes ajsj.
gardening enthusiast!! has a fascination with studying plants and insects tbfh. still uses 70′s and 80′s kewl kid slang like unironically someone help him pls. sjjdjf. cute bonus fact: has freckles all over his shoulders and down his back. UWU.
COUPLE OF CONNECTION IDEAS OFF THE TOP OF MY HEAD??:
i would love for him to have a muse for art and/or to be someone’s muse. also and maybe interchangeably someone to kinda be his art mentor and be like saint u could pursue this fr if thats ur dream, then do it pls share this talent dont let ART DIE!!
someone he does gardening and insect studies with who gets his nerdy enthusiasm over it.
a regular who gets flowers from him and grandmami, maybe he makes a special bouquet for them every day which always has a different meaning in the flower language bc he is soft like that ajjfl
someone who he can take on loads of cute lil platonic diner dinner dates bc he is a huge foodie as we can tell. this one is super fun like I imagine they scam tf outta restaurants that are over priced and for the elite by being like we all kno married couples or people getting engaged, celebrating anniversaries etc tend to get better deals on their meals. so he’s essentially doing this one bc he likes ur muses company and enthusiasm for food but also bc it means cheaper high quality meals for both and a guaranteed good time.
someone to nerd out with him over classic literature or films bc that would be hella cute
maybe someone who is also close with his grandmami and rlly loves spending time with her as well so he kinda trusts them to take care of her and trusts their judgement when they r like saint chill let the lady live okay go and do ur own shit akskf
he usually jogs alone but it would be cool for him to have someone to do that with and like table-tennis and shiz cause he just loves fitness activities and active leisure stuff too.
maybe someone who is tryna teach him a little more about how to uH TALK LIKE SOMEONE HIS DAMN AGE AND STOP BEING SOME RETRO MAN STUCK IN MODERN TIMES AJDJD
UPDATES:
so a lot about saint hasn’t overly changed because like he just is and has always been a very wholesome laidback boyo but just a few bits of like additional info for his personal growth can be added:
he’s owner and manager of the florist now, grandmami is also there most of the time and handles a lot of stuff when she’s feeling up to it but with her getting more tired more easily from her illness saint needs to head everything really.
he grew up in a neighbourhood on hosu which like consisted of his entire street pretty much being full of his aunts and uncles so now like it’s a street just littered with all his tiny cousins who like to follow him about everywhere and play ball games etc on the street with him and kinda take it over shs. you can hear their joyful playing from like streets over it’s very cute.
his mother gave him up when she realised she was pregnant with him and too young to raise him and that it would hinder her from pursuing the life she wanted with his father. saint doesn’t hold any resentment for her choice, it only bothers him that his grandma has always had a serious illness since the early days of talks of her having no choice but to take him on and that despite this his mother allowed him to be left to her care and another burden on her when she was already so ill.
grandmami is now at a point where she’s hanging in there but she won’t have long left and saint is essentially now her live in carer till her final days which is hard af for him but he refuses to let it show. he’s not sure how he’ll function when he loses her. right now he’s trying to extend the florist business into a wellness one as well and more of an apothecary so he can keep himself stable and busy.
this is more just a cute fun fact but he’s a Christmas Eve baby. uwu lil boyo was born on the night before Christmas bc of course he was sdjdj.
#quirks:intro#listen saint just makes me think of that fucken scott mccall meme#WHERE R U GETTIN UR JUICE SAINT??!!#HIM INCREDIBLY CONFUSED: MY GRANDMAMI DOES ALL THE GROCERY SHOPPING???#SDJFJKF
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may knows zero shame: the novel, the ramble, the procrastination
haha she thought being the sole normal human in a cast of heroic spirits on this multimuse was gonna save her from my angst and fluff touch
listen it’s about what it means to be human but in the context of what it means to be a person, okay? literature loves a foil and so do i so NATURALLY my ocs foil each other and i’ve gone over andromache - sadhbh but today we’re rambling on yua and sophia (ayyyyyy i have another blog @abendrotbrav check it out) because they are, in fact, foils to each other and today i’m gonna ramble bitches
yes i AM gonna reblog this there too but i understand that yua very much needs it more than sophia so it’s going here first
all this is going under a read more cause it’s gonna get fuckin LONG guys. you don’t want this on your dash without it trust me.
so first off foils, which i’m gonna explain cause taps blackboard i’m professor may now apparently but i also wanna make sure i’m getting the point across, just skim this if you got it
so foils are a concept in literature which is basically a characterization and theming device. it’s easier to describe something by comparing and contrasting it to another thing, and this heightens the characteristics of both things. a mouse looks much smaller next to an elephant than just next to a dog, and the elephant looks larger next to the mouse than the horse. so pairing up characters that have opposites naturally makes both of them stand out
BUT the way i generally use it is also to heighten the similarities. if we use fate for an example, kadoc and ritsuka are good foils, because their similarities help the player understand who they both are as much as their differences. if they didn’t have those similarities they wouldn’t be as compelling to put against each other and see the differences.
here are some of my own stupid oc’s as examples of me doing this and overthinking things greatly out of love and passion
i naturally do this with my own oc’s because i’m a failed creative writing major and i have far, far too much time on my hands and passion for this kinda bullshit. can you compare any two characters, yes, but some more naturally play into each other and that’s where you got them foils, babey, as i have so neatly mspaint demonstrated here with my own muses. vagueness in language is generally fully intentional here. ( his mun! is full of love and caring and deep deep adoration of Themes and Symbolism so here we go)
yua and sophia are connected by themes of kindness, learning about the world’s cruelty and the response to that reality, the idea of ‘innocence’, and determination to prevent suffering.
sadhbh and andromache are connected by themes of how to deal with emotions you cannot ever shake, loving deeply, and being forced to move on without something/one vital to you and how to cope. (aka, early literature Wife Syndrome.)
paris and melpomene are connected by themes of powerlessness in the face of those with power, being ill-equipped for your role, the awareness of one’s flaws and mistakes, and knowing that you failed people you love.
connla and fafnir are connected by themes of knowing you are a minor part of someone else’s story, idea idea of heroism, being ‘not the hero’, finding contentment in a life you cannot change, and how to react to someone who killed you that you cherish still.
am i probably gonna talk about those other three (six) examples in other posts slash in your dms if you encourage me? yes. but right now it’s time for mage society to fuck up to perfectly (dis)functional ladies, and that means it’s time for yua and sophia to get overanalyzed!
first off, it’s very easy to start with the fact that sophia and yua have DRASTICALLY different situations in terms of family
sophia has one single person who is family, truly, which is her sister. while this is a loving relationship, she also is basically her sister’s sole friend, emotional rock, big sister, and functionally her mother all at once because fuck if their mage parents are doing any emotional support in this house.
likewise onto that parents point sophia’s parents just Do Not Care about sophia’s emotional wellbeing they care about a good tool to use and utilize and see her as an experiment more than anything else. the coldness but also lack of expectations is a contrast to her relationship with her sister, warm but also FULL of expectations.
meanwhile despite having pretty decent ranking spots in the Japanese mage family circuit, yua’s family specifically are AVOIDING her being subjected to running the ‘useful tool’ circuit. this, unfortunately for their good intentions, comes at the cost of sheltering yua to the extreme and basically viewing her as, however much they love her, kind of incompetent.
the one relationship yua doesn’t have is her mother, because her mother literally forgot she exists, which roots into her mystic eyes and also why her father and aunt are really not keen on her trying to learn about them and still think she has no idea they exist. her mother is largely absent because not remembering you have a literal kid and marriage and you’re suddenly years older than your last memory is fucking WEIRD.
sophia is absent of love except for one person who she loves deeply; yua is heavily loved by all those she knows (because she barely knows anyone) except for one person who doesn’t love her at all.
built into this explanation is the next section which is naivety or innocence because this is a huge contrasting point.
sophia is largely pretty knowledgable about how the world Fucking Sucks, like, a LOT guys, because she’s mostly known how much it sucks and like, honestly not much else. sure the world is probably good but like, she doesn’t really know that much about the world being ‘good’ and ‘worth saving’ and stuff, so it’s new to her when she meets good people because her expectation is that they will not be good because that’s what she’s used to.
sophia’s journey is about learning to find value in the world, if only for the selfish stake that she wants to experience the world now that she holds the agency to be able to experience it. it’s about learning that people are not always cruel, and that the world can be a beautiful thing.
yua, however, knows jack fucking shit about the world! she’s been so sheltered and the little she knows about the world through are depictions of reality that are so heavily skewed she’s just even more confused when she encounters how the world really is. she doesn’t expect people to be cruel even if she’s afraid of them but is also happily surprised when they’re kind because she doesn’t know anything about the world.
yua’s journey is about learning to know about the world, ugly as it is beautiful. she’s kind because it’s easy and she’s a people-pleasing doormat, but the point of her character is that even once she learns how awful the world can be, she sticks to her guns and stays kind, because she is not naive, she wants to be kind.
kindness is part of the contrast and comparison between them. sophia is more capable of true kindness initially than yua is, because yua really doesn’t have any stakes in her kindness.
yua has never had to suffer drawbacks for being ‘kind’. she has never had to give up something to be nice to someone, never had to deal with having her kindness rebuffed and what that means, whether she wants to be kind if she doesn’t get that immediate reward of someone liking her more. yua may be nice but she’s also a pushover and has never had to really bother with deciding whether or not to be kind. she’s never really been kind!
meanwhile sophia is rarely truly kind, because she does it to be liked more than out of any genuine caring. she absolutely knows this, she’s a hardcore fake ass hoe and she knows it. sophia has never deluded herself into being a good person and rarely has a crisis over this until she has five million crisises over it at once.
but the difference is that upon being confronted on this fact, they react differently! sophia would generally roll her eyes because of course she doesn’t actually act out of kindness, that isn’t a shock to her, because she has seen the world is cruel and actively in return to that acts the way she does.
but yua would be actually hurt by the idea of her not really being kind and actually examine her own behavior. when confronted by the world sucking, yua’s response is to pull a move not so unfamiliar to type moon veterans by instead doubling down on her kindness and saying that, okay, so she wasn’t truly kind before, but she is now because she’s going to continue to be kind!
but ultimately it like culminates because i’m running out of steam here but i’m still full of unquantifiable love, is that they are opposites who ultimately need to follow similar paths
sophia has only truly known the cruelty of the world, and for her growth to be healthy, it must come from taking back the idea that the world can be good for herself. there are so many ways she can grow in unhealthy manners, ways she’s already done many times, but to make healthy progress she has to learn that she can be vulnerable without being stabbed in the back! she can be kind without being immediately exploited. she has to learn how to make her own future, and she will do it no matter what happens, the only difference is whether she learns how to make her own future in a way that’s constructive to her own mental health or ultimately destructive.
sophia has to learn that she can open up without immediately mcfucking dying, or she will absolutely immolate herself and turn into the very kind of person she hates and loathes. it is an inevitability; for her to learn to trust, or for her to turn into the cold, exploitive, apathetic kind of person she hates. she’s already half-way there; tick tock sophia you gonna grow in a healthy manner or continue to fester in your own defensive mechanisms that will eventually, left unchecked, turn you into the person you hate?
sophia needs to be trusted, to be given faith, so she may begin to give it in kind. she has to actually face kindness to be able to reciprocate it because she truly believes that kind of kindness does not exist. she has to face it, face that the world can be good, to begin to change herself for the better.
yua meanwhile knows very little about the world and this isn’t a good thing. her innocence isn’t something that should be preserved, it isn’t doing her any favors, and in fact over-valuing her innocence by thinking she will be too weak to handle the world is ultimately what her family, well-meaning but still not doing her any favors, is doing and thus halting her own development. she must see the world, for all it is, so that she can actually make informed decisions and create her own future.
yua is ridiculously sheltered and it’s bad and it does, ultimately, need to stop. because only by facing a world that will not shelter her can she actually learn. like, i’m not saying she has to be treated like shit, but i am saying that she has to actually fuck up and experience the world in a genuine manner rather than a controlled and artificial one. it’s only by actually learning how the world truly is that she can determine that yes, she is going to be kind anyways, because fuck you that’s why.
she cannot learn that she has the strength to spit someone in the eye and continue to reach out her hand unless she is put in the situation that she has to be strong to survive. she has to learn that she can survive the world. she needs to have faith and belief placed in the fact that she can survive.
anyways tld:r smth smth the power of kindness, the way someone can be kind without being naive, the way kindness can truly save people, smth smth smth as much as i lord over being an angsty emotional gutpunch queen of getting sudden “HOW FUCKING DARE YOU” dm messages as a sign that i did good, ultimately i am and try to be a hopeful and optimistic writer who truly believes in the goodness that people can achieve even as i continue to write bastards because it is the belief that these unhealthy people can ultimately better themselves, find peace and happiness, and be able to achieve a good ending for themselves before it’s too late for them is what fuels me to write them, because as much as i make my muses suffer, i also dearly cherish and hope they will be able to carve out happiness for themselves rather than perpetuating their suffering in attempts to prevent it.
#inside a doll's innerworkings.yua headcanons#please read for more! or don't.meta tag#((oh god. oh god. i'm a nerd. i'm a nerd. it's so long. oh god.#((please don't judge me or hold yourself to my insanity#((i have WAY too much time on my hands#((time to. reblog this. on my other blog too.#((oh god. don't shame me i already have shamed myself enough
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Nick Tosches’ Final Interview
On Sunday, October 20th, 2019, three days before his seventieth birthday, Nick Tosches died in his TriBeCa apartment. As of this writing, no cause of death has been specified. It represents an Immeasurable loss to the world of literature. The below, conducted this past July, was the last full interview Tosches ever gave.
***
In Where Dead Voices Gather, his peripatetic 2001 anti-biography of minstrel singer Emmett Miller, Nick Tosches wrote: “The deeper we seek, the more we descend from knowledge to mystery, which is the only place where true wisdom abides.” It’s an apt summation of Tosches’ own life and work.
Journalist, poet, novelist, biographer and historian Nick Tosches has been called the last of our literary outlaws, thanks in part to his reputation as a hardboiled character with a history of personal excesses. But he’s far more than that—he’s one of those writers other writers wish they could be. He’s seen it all first-hand, moved in some of the most dangerous circles on earth, and is blessed with the genius to put it down with a sharp elegance that’s earned him a seat in the Pantheon.
Born in 1949, Tosches was raised in the working class neighborhoods of Newark and Jersey City, where his father ran a bar. Despite barely finishing high school, he fell into the writing game at nineteen, shortly after relocating to New York. He quickly earned a reputation as a brilliant music journalist, writing for Rolling Stone and authoring Country: The Twisted Roots of Rock ’N Roll (1977), the Jerry Lee Lewis biography Hellfire (1982) and Unsung Heroes of Rock ’N Roll (1984). After that he staked out his own territory, exploring and illuminating the deeply-shadowed corners of the culture and the human spirit. He’s written biographies of sinister Italian financier Michele Sindona, Sonny Liston, Dean Martin and near-mythical crime boss Arnold Rothstein. He’s published poetry and books about opium. His debut novel, Cut Numbers (1988) focused on the numbers racket, and his most recent, Under Tiberius (2015) presented Jesus as a con artist with a good p.r. man.
While often citing Faulkner, Charles Olsen, Dante and the Greeks as his primary literary influences, over the past fifty years Tosches’ own style has evolved from the flash and swagger of his early music writing into a singular and inimitable prose which blends the two-fisted nihilism of the crime pulps with an elegant and lyrical formalism. Like Joyce, Tosches takes clear joy in the measured, poetic flow of language, and like Dostoevsky, his writing, regardless of the topic at hand, wrestles with the Big Issues: Good and Evil, Truth and Falsehood, the Sacred and the Profane, and our pathetic place in a universe gone mad.
For years now, Tosches’ official bio has stated he “lives in what used to be New York.” It only makes sense then that we would meet amid the tangled web of tiny sidestreets that make up SoHo at what remains one of the last bars in New York where we could smoke. Tosches, now sixty-nine, smoked a cigar and drank a bottle of forty-year-old tawny port as we discussed his work, publishing, religion, the Internet, this godforsaken city, fear, and how a confirmed heretic goes about obtaining Vatican credentials.
Jim Knipfel: When I initially contacted you about an interview last year, my first question was going to be about retirement. You’d been hinting for awhile, at least since Me and the Devil in 2012, that you planned to retire from writing at sixty-five. And since Under Tiberius came out, there’d been silence. But shortly after I got in touch, we had to put things on hold because you’d started working on a new project. As you put it then, “I find myself becoming lost again in the cursed woods of words and writing.”
Nick Tosches: It is unlike any other project. I am indulging myself, knowing nobody has paid me money up front. Is it a project? Yeah, I guess anything that’s not come to a recognizable fruition is a project. So yeah. I do consider the actual writing of books to be behind me.
JK: Did thinking about retirement have anything to do with what we’ll generously call the dispiriting nature of contemporary publishing?
NT: Oh, very much so. Very much.
JK: There’s a remarkable section in the middle of In The Hand of Dante, it just comes out of nowhere, in which you launch into this frontal attack on what’s become of the industry. I went back and read it again last week, and it’s so beautiful and so perfect, and as I was reading I couldn’t help but think, “Who the hell else could get away with this?” Dropping a very personal screed like that in the middle of a novel? And a novel released by a major publisher, in this case Little, Brown. Was there any kind of reaction from your editor?
NT: Okay, is this the same passage where I talk about all these people with fat asses?
JK: Yeah, that’s part of it.
NT: Okay, my agent at the time, Russ Galen, said he heard from {Michael} Pietsch, the editor who’s now the Chief Executive Officer of North America. And the moment he became so, he went from being my lifelong friend to “yeah, I heard of him.” He complained about the fat ass comment, and my agent told him, “If you go for a walk with Nick Tosches, you might get rained on.” Apart from that, no. And I have to say, he considers that one of his favorite novels, ever. When I tried to get the rights back because of a movie deal, he said “no I won’t do that.” I said “Why?” And he said because it was one of his favorite books. So no, there was no real backlash. A lot of comments like your own. A lot of people saying “Boy, that was great.”
JK: As we both know, marketing departments make all the editorial decisions at publishing houses nowadays, and over the years you must have driven them nuts. There’s no easy label to slap on you. You hear there’s a new Nick Tosches book coming out, it could be a novel, it could be poetry, it could be a biography or history or anything at all. I’m trying to imagine all these marketing people sitting around asking, “So what’s our targeted demographic for The Last Opium Den?”
NT: I just set out to do what I wanted to do. If they wanted to cling to the delusion that they could somehow control sales or predict the future of taste, fine, let them go ahead and do it. I’ve always found it’s the books that gather the attention, they just try to coordinate things. All they’re doing is covering their own jobs. If they can wrangle you an interview with Modern Farming, well, there’s something to put on a list they hand out at one of their meetings… They’re all illiterate. Thirty years ago there was still a sense of independence among publishers. Now they’re just vestigial remnants that mean nothing because they’re all owned by these huge media conglomerates.
JK: To whom publishing is irrelevant.
NT: Right. It’s all just a joke.
JK: I guess what matters is that the people who read you will read whatever you put out. If you put out a book of cake decorating tips, I’d be the first in line to buy it. Actually I’d love to see what you could do with Nick’s Best Cakes Ever, right? It’s something to consider.
NT: Maybe not that particular instance, but what you have so kindly referred to as my current project, which is very…eccentric. It’s the herd of my obsessions that will not remain corralled as I intended.
JK: What brought you back to writing? You’ve said in the past that writing is a very tough habit to kick.
NT: Well, what brought me back? I have no idea. Maybe just actual, utter, desperate boredom. There was none of this Romantic need to express myself. Just a lot of little obsessions, that’s all. As I said…well, I didn’t say this at all. There’s nothing at stake. There’s no money, there’s not going to be any money. There’s no one I need to give a second thought of offending or pleasing. But that having been said, I’m taking as much care with it as I have with everything else. I’ve always thought of myself as the only editor. And having had the good fortune to work with good titular editors, which means their job consists of perhaps making a suggestion or stating a preference or notifying me that they do not understand certain things, and beyond that leaving it be. As I told one editor,I forget when or where or why, “Why don’t you go write you’re own fuckin’ book and leave mine be?” He had all these great ideas. The best editors are the ones that aren’t frustrated authors.
JK: I was lucky enough to work with two editors like that. One had a nervous breakdown and is out of the business, the other just vanished one day.
NT: Well, you’re fortunate. Not only do most editors, a majority of editors, which are bad editors, like the majority of anything, really. If they don’t interfere with something, and nine times out of ten make it worse, they’re not justifying their jobs. The other thing is, we’re recently at the point where the new type of writers, which are the writers who are willing to do it for free, think the editor’s the chief mark of the whole racket. But it’s not—he’s not, she’s not. Their job is to get you paid and leave you alone. That’s the thing. Now you got pseudo editors, pseudo writers. If you think of a writer such as William Faulkner. Now there’s a guy who just screamed out to be edited. Fortunately the editors were willing to publish him and leave him alone, which is why we have William Faulkner. That was the editor’s great contribution, protecting William Faulkner from that nonsense. People speak about, what’s that phrase applied to Maxwell Perkins? “Editor of Genius.” Well, the genius was you find someone who can write really well, and don’t fuck with ‘em. There’s something to be said about that. It’s to Perkins’ credit.
JK: If I can step back a ways to your early years. You were a streetwise kid who grew up in Jersey City and Newark. Your father discouraged you from reading, but you read anyway. So what was the attraction to books? Or was it simple contrariness on your part because you’d been told to avoid them?
NT: I got lost in them. It was dope before I copped dope. I used to love to drift away, in my mind, my imagination. I loved books. My father was not an anti-book person, but he was the first generation of our family to be born in this country. A working class neighborhood where okay, this guy worked in this factory, and that guy owned a bar, and that guy delivered the mail. Nobody was going any further than this. And I remember my father saying, “These books are gonna put ideas in your head.” I guess I enjoyed that they did. Terrible books, some of them. Terrible books, but it didn’t matter.
JK: You’ve also said that very early on you wanted to be a writer.
NT: Yes.
JK: Or a farmer.
NT: Or a garbage man or an archaeologist. Those were my childhood aspirations.
JK: Considering the environment you were coming out of, three of those seem counterintuitive.
NT: Garbage men got to ride on the side of the truck, and that looked great. Archaeologists, wow. I didn’t know they were spending years just coming up with little splintered shards of urns. Yeah, writer. Writing had a great attraction for me, because writing seemed a great coward’s way out. You can communicate anything while facing a corner, with no one seeing you, no one hearing you, you didn’t have to look anyone in the eye. It’s a great coward’s form of expressing yourself. That coupled with the fact that what I felt a need to express was inchoate. I didn’t even understand what it was I wanted to express. Sometimes I still don’t.
JK: You’ve also said that in your teens you started to listen to country music, which given the time and place also seems counterintuitive.
NT: Did I say my teens? Maybe I was nineteen or twenty. Yeah, I never listened to country music until the jukebox at the place on Park Avenue and West Side Avenue in Jersey City.
JK: It was right around that time, when you were nineteen, twenty, that you published your first story in the music magazine Fusion. Which means we’re right around the fiftieth anniversary of your start in this racket.
NT: Let’s see…that was 1969, so yeah, I guess so. Fifty years ago.
JK: Then for the next fifteen-plus years you wrote mainly about music. You were at Rolling Stone and other magazines, and you put out Country, Hellfire and Unsung Heroes of Rock ’n Roll. So How early on were you thinking about branching out? About writing about the mob, or the Vatican, or anything else that interested you?
NT: Before I ever wrote anything. You have to understand, these so-called rock’n’roll magazines provided two great things. First as an outlet for young writers whose phone calls to The New Yorker would not be accepted. And they all, back then before they caught the capitalist disease, offered complete freedom of speech. So yes, in the course of writing about music you could…or actually, forget about writing about music, because nobody even knew anything about music. We were just fucking around.
JK: I remember an early piece you did for Rolling Stone back in 1971. It was a review of Black Sabbath’s Paranoid album, but all it was was a description of a blasphemous Satanic orgy straight out of De Sade.
NT: Yeah, I remember that one.
JK: It was pretty amazing, and even that early, your writing was several steps beyond everything else that was happening at the time. But from an outsider’s perspective, your first big step away from music journalism was actually a huge fucking leap, and a potentially deadly one. So how do you go from Unsung Heroes of Rock ’N Roll to Power on Earth, about Italian financier Michele Sindona?
NT: After Hellfire, someone wanted to pay me a lot of money to write another biography. But I realized there was absolutely no one on the face of the earth whom I found interesting enough to write about other than Jerry Lee Lewis. I’d caught sort of a glimpse of Sindona on television. My friend Judith suggested “Why don’t you write about him?” But how am I gonna get in touch with a guy like that? And she said I should write him a letter.
JK: He was in prison at that point?
NT: Yes, he was in prison the entire time I knew him, until his death. He died before the book was published. I met him in prison here in New York, then they shipped him back to Italy to be imprisoned, and I went over there.
JK: You were dealing with The Vatican, the mob, and the shadowy world of international high finance. Were there moments while you were working on the book when you found yourself thinking, “What the fuck have I gotten myself into?”
NT: Well, yes, because the story was too immense and too complicated to be told.
JK: Something I’ve always been curious about. Publishing house libel lawyers have been the bane of my existence. Whenever I write non-fiction, they set upon the manuscript like jackals, tearing it apart line-by-line in search of anything that anyone anywhere might conceivably consider suing over. And I wasn’t writing about the likes of Jerry Lee Lewis, Dean Martin, or Michele Sindona.
NT: “Conceivably” is the key word in this country, where anyone can sue anyone without punitive repercussions. That’s the key phrase. What these libel lawyers are also doing above all else is protecting their own jobs.
JK: Were you forced to cut a lot of material for legal reasons?
NT: Yes, including proven, irrefutable facts. So yes I did. And it’s not because it was libelous, but because it was subject to being accused of being libelous. It’s a shame. Some of the things were just outrageous. I once threw a fictive element into a description that involved a black dog. “Well, how do you know there was a black dog there?” I said there probably wasn’t, that it was just creating a mood. “Well, we gotta cut that out.” So what’s offensive about a black dog? It sets a precedent. Misrepresentative facts? Morality? I don’t know. These guys.
JK: I don’t know if this was the case with you as well, but I found out I could write exactly the same thing, and just as honestly, but if I called it a novel instead of nom-fiction. They didn’t touch a word. Didn’t even want to look at it. As it happens, your first novel, Cut Numbers, came out next. Had that been written before Power on Earth?
NT: Let me think for a moment…Well, the order in which my books were published is the order in which they were written. The only putative exception may be Where Dead Voices Gather, because that was written over a span of years with no intention of it being a book. So yeah, Cut Numbers. What year was that?
JK: I think that was 1988. I love that novel. There’s a 1948 John Garfield picture about the numbers racket, Force of Evil.
NT: Yeah, I’ve seen that.
JK: But of course they had to glamorize it, because it was Hollywood and it was John Garfield.
NT: I like John Garfield. Terrible movies, but a great actor.
JK: What I love about Cut Numbers is that it’s so un-glamorous. It’s not The Godfather. It’s very street-level. And I’ve always had the sense it was very autobiographical.
NT: I’ve never written anything that wasn’t autobiographical in some way, shape or form. The world in which Cut Numbers is set was my auto-biographical world. “Auto,” self and “bio,” life. My auto-biographical world. The world I lived in and the world I knew. It’s a world that no longer exists. Like every other aspect of the world I once knew. Except taxes. Which I found is a really great upside to having no income. I’m serious.
JK: Oh. I know all too well.
NT: I mean, but It comes with “Jeeze, I wish I could afford another case of this tawny port.”
JK: A few years later, after Dino, you released your second novel, Trinities. While Cut Numbers took place on a very small scale. Trinities was epic—the story spans the globe and pulls in the mob, the Vatican, high finance. You crammed an awful lot of material in there. It almost feels like a culmination.
NT: I wanted to capture the whole sweep of that vanishing, dying world. It was written during a dark period of my life, and I was drawn to a beautifully profound but unanswerable question, which had first been voiced by a Chinese philosopher—sounds like a joke but it’s true: “What if what man believes is good, God believes is evil?” Or vice versa. And we can go from there, the whole mythology, the concept of the need for God. To what extend is our idea of evil just a device? We don’t want anybody to fuck our wives. So God says thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife. We don’t want to be killed, so thou shalt not kill. It’s a bunch of “don’t do this, because I don’t want to suffer that.” I don’t want to get robbed. I dunno, what the hell. Yeah, this has something to do with Trinities, and I somehow knew as I wrote Trinities I was saying goodbye to a whole world, not because I was leaving it. It was basically half memory, as opposed to present day reality.
JK: I remember when I first read it, recognizing so many locales and situations and characters. At least from the New York scenes. That was right at the cusp, when all these things began disappearing.
NT: Yes, and now it has to such an extent that I walk past all these locales, and it’s a walk among the ghosts. That was a club, now it’s a Korean laundry. This was another place I used to go, now it’s Tibetan handicrafts.
JK: I don’t even recognize the Village anymore. I used to work in the Puck Building at Lafayette and Houston. Landmark building, right? It’s since been gutted completely and turned into some kind of high-end fashion store.
NT: Yeah, it’s all dead.
JK: Now, when Trinities was released, I was astonished to see the publisher was marketing it like a mainstream pop thriller. You even got the mass market paperback with the embossed cover treatment. I love the idea of some middle management type on his way to a convention in Scranton picking it up at the airport thinking he was getting something like Robert Ludlum,, and diving headlong into, well, you.
NT: I can explain why all that was. It was volume. It was the same publisher as Dino. They were happy with Dino. Dino was a great success. I think that was 1992, because that was when my father died. This is now, what, 2019? There has not been a single day where that book has not sold. Not that I could buy a bottle of tawny port with it. So whereas with Cut Numbers I was paid a small amount and eagerly accepted it. Eagerly. In fact it’s one of the few times I told the editor, ran into him at a bar, and said all I want is this, and he said “Nah, that’s not enough, we’ll pay you twice that.” Then Dino was double that. And look, I really want to do this book Trinities and be paid a small fortune for it. They had to say yes. They had to believe this was going to be the next, I dunno. Yeah, mainstream. Most of these things are ancillary and coincidental to the actual writing.
JK: There were a lot of strings dangling at the end of the novel, and I remember reading rumors you were working on a sequel. You don’t seem much the sequel type. So was there any truth to that?
NT: Not that I was aware of. I’m sure that if they’d come back and said, “Well, we pulled it off,” and offered twice that, there would’ve been a sequel. Because I loved that book, so if they were going to offer me more to write more, I would have. I hated saying good bye to that world and the past.
JK: Maybe you’ve noticed this, but the people who read you often tend to make a very sharp distinction between your fiction and your non-fiction, which never made a lot of sense to me. To me they’re a continuum, and any line dividing them is a very porous, fuzzy one. Do you approach them in different ways?
NT: Oh, god. Do I approach them differently? Yes. In a way, I approach the fiction with a sense of unbounded freedom. But parallel to that, that blank page is scarier knowing that there is not a single datum you can place on it that will gain or achieve balance. With non-fiction, I am constrained by truth to a certain extent. That’s also true in fiction. They just use different forms of writing. There are poems that have more cuttingly diligent actuality than most history works. It comes down to wielding words. Tools being appointed with different weights and cutting edges and colors. Words, beautiful words. Without the words, no writing in prose is gonna be worth a damn. Used to be, I get in a cab, and back then cab drivers were from New York, and they’d ask me what I did. Now I don’t think they really know what city they’re in. They know it’s not Bangladesh. But if I told them what I did, it was always, “Oh, I could write a book.” ��Yeah, you’re gonna write a book. Your life is interesting. So what’re you gonna write about? Great tippers, great fares? Become a reader first. Read the Greeks sometime. I decided next time a cab driver asks me what I do for a living. I’m gonna tell him I’m a plumber. “Oh, my brother-in-law’s a plumber!”
JK: As varied as your published works are, there are two I’ve always been curious about. Two complete anomalies. The first was the Hall and Oates book, Dangerous Dances, which always struck me—and correct me if I’m wromg—as the result of a whopping check for services rendered. And the other. From thirty years later, is Johnny’s First Cigarette. Which is, what would you call it? A children’s book? A young adult book?
NT: Right. Of course they’re many years apart. Okay, Hall and Oates, Dangerous Dances. I knew a woman who was what you’d call a book packager. I owed money to the government. Tommy Mottola, who was at the time the manager of Hall and Oates, wanted a Hall and Oates book. She asked me if I wanted to do it, and I said yeah, but it’s gonna cost this much. And Tommy Mottola, in one of the great moments of literary judgment, was like, “How come he costs more than the other people?” She said something very nice about me. He has got on his desk a paperweight that’s a check for a million dollars in lucite. We weren’t talking nearly that much. So I came up with the title Dangerous Dances. I had never heard a Hall and Oates record. So I met them. It was over the course of a summer. So I did that and made the government happy. That’s one book I try not to espouse. But everyone knows I wrote that, it has my name on it. As I wanted, as my ex-agent says.
Now. Johnny’s Last Cigarette, which as I said was many years later. I don’t even think that was ten years ago.
JK: I think that came out in 2014, between Me and the Devil and Under Tiberius.
NT: I get so sick of all this political correctness. I mean, every man. Every woman was once a child. And there are all these good. Beautiful childhood moments and feelings. Which is the greatest step on earth that we lose. It’s not a nefarious book like Kill Your mother—which may not be a bad idea—but sweet. Why do we rob these kids of the dreaminess of the truth? So Johnny’s first Cigarette, Johnny’s First whatever. I was living in Paris at the time when I wrote that.. I knew a woman who was one of my best translators into French. We put the idea together with a publisher I knew in Marseilles and a wonderful artist-illustrator we found and were so excited about.
To tell you the truth I think the idea of legislating feeling is like…How the fuck do you legislate feeling? And forbidden words. It may have been Aristotle who said, when men fear words, times are dark. You and I have spoken about this. Sometimes we don’t even understand what it is about this or that word. It’s like that joke—a guy goes in for a Rorschach test, and the psychologist tells him. “Has anyone ever told you you have a sexually obsessed mind?” And the guy says, “Well, what about you, showing me all these dirty pictures?” What do these words mean? I don’t know. Why is it a crime to call a black man a crocodile? I have always consciously stood against performing any kind of political correctness. And I have written some long letters to people I felt deserved an explanation of my feelings.
JK: Whenever people get outraged because some comedian cracked an “inappropriate” joke, and they say, “How could he say such a thing?” I always respond, “Well, someone has to, right?”
NT: Yeah. So one book came from the government’s desire to have their share of what I’m making. We’re all government employees. The other was, why can’t I write something that’s soft and sweet with a child’s vocabulary that’s not politically correct?
JK: If Dangerous Dances and Johnny’s First Cigarette were anomalies, I’ve always considered another two of your books companion pieces. Or at least cousins. King of the Jews an Where Dead Voices Gather are both biographies, or maybe anti-biographies, of men about whom very little—or at least very little that’s credible—is known: Arnold Rothstein and Emmett Miller. And that gives you the freedom to run in a thousand directions at once. They’re books made up of detours and parentheticals and digressions, and what we end up with are essentially compact histories of the world with these figures at the center. They strike me as your purest works, and certainly very personal works. More than any of your other books, it’s these two that allow readers to take a peek inside your head. Does that make any sense to you?
NT: Yes, it makes perfect sense. In fact I couldn’t have put it any better myself. This whole myth of what they called the Mafia in the United States—there’s no mafia outside of Sicily. Or called organized crime, was always Italians. The Italians dressed the part, but the Jews made the shirts. It was always an Italian-Jewish consortium. And this Irish mayor wants to play ball? So now it’s Irish. Total equal opportunity. It was basically…Well, Arnold Rothstein was the son of shirt makers. Not only did he control, but he invented what was organized crime in New York. He had the whole political system of New York in his pocket. Emmet Miller was this guy who made these old records that went on to be so influential without his being known. Nobody even knew where or when he was born. The appeal to me was as both an investigator and then to proceed forward with other perspicuities, musings and theories. I never thought of them before as companion works until you mentioned it, but they are.
JK: People have tended to focus on the amount of obsessive research you do. Which is on full display in these books, but what they too often overlook, which is also on full display here, is that you contain a vast storehouse of arcane knowledge. It’s like you’ve fully absorbed everything you’ve ever read, and it just spills out of you. These forgotten histories and unexpected connections.
NT: I’ve always kept very strange notebooks. I still do, except now it’s on the computer. There’s no rhyme or reason to these notebooks, it’s just,”don’t want to forget this one.”
JK: Speaking of research, has your methodology changed in the Internet Age? I’m trying to imagine you working on Under Tiberius and looking up”First Century Judea” on Wikipedia.
NT: The Internet demands master navigation. There are sites which have reproduced great scholarly, as opposed to academic, works. There’s also every lie and untruth brought to you by the Such-and Such Authority of North America. This is what they call themselves. I experienced this within the past week. It was not only complete misinformation, but presented in the shoddiest fashion, such as “Historians agree…” I mean, what historians? I couldn’t find a one of them.
So my methodology. I love Ezra Pound’s phrase, “the luminous detail.” Something you find somewhere or learn somewhere…They don’t even have a card catalog at New York Public Library anymore, let alone books. You want an actual book, they have to bring it in from New Jersey. Who cares anymore? What they care about is who’s in a TV series, and they whip out their Mickey Mouse toys and, “look, there he is!”
JK: I was thinking about this on the way over. You and I both remember a time when if you were looking for a specific record or book or bit of information, you could spend months or years searching, scouring used bookstores an libraries. There was a challenge to it.
NT: It was not just a challenge. It was a whole illuminating process unto itself, because of what you come to by accident. So in looking for one fact or one insight, you would gather an untold amount. That is what it’s about.
JK: Nowadays if I’m looking for, say, a specific edition of a specific book, I take two minutes, go online, and there it is. I hit a button, and it’s mailed to me at my home. Somehow it diminishes the value, as opposed to finally finding something I’d been searching for for years. Nothing has any value anymore.
NT: No, definitely not. When I was living down in Tennessee, all those Sunday drives, guys selling stuff out of their garages. Every once in awhile you hit on something, or find something you didn’t even know existed. Now education on every level, especially on the institutional, but even on a personal level, is diminished. People are getting stupider, and that probably includes myself.
JK: And me too. Now, if I could change course here, you’re a man of many contradictions. Maybe dichotomies is a better term. A streetwise Italian kid who’s a bookworm. A misanthrope who seeks out the company of others. A libertine who is also a highly disciplined, self-educated man of letters. It’s even reflected in your prose—someone who is always swinging between the stars and the gutter. It’s led some people to say there are two Nick Tosches. Is this something you recognize in yourself?
NT: Yes. It’s never been a goal, it’s just…
JK: How you are?
NT: Yeah. I’ve noticed it, and much to my consternation and displeasure and inconvenience, yeah. But there’s no reward in seeking to explain or justify it.
JK: One of the most intriguing and complex of these is the savage heretic who keeps returning to religious themes, the secrets of the Church and the sacred texts. And of course the devil in one guise or another is lurking through much of your work. Again it’s led some people to argue that since you were raised Catholic, this may represent some kind of striving for redemption. You give any credence to that?
NT: No. Absolutely not.
JK: Yeah, it would seem Under Tiberius would’ve put the kibosh on that idea.
NT: I don’t even consider myself having been raised Catholic, in the modern made-for-TV sense of that phrase. I was told to go to church on Sundays and confession on Saturdays, and I usually went to the candy store instead. I was confirmed, I had communion. To me, it was a much deeper, much more experiential passage when I came to the conclusion that there was no Santa Clause than when I came to the conclusion there was no God. I remember emotionally expressing my suspicions about Santa Claus to my mother. Toward the end of his life, I was talking to my father one day, and I said, “By the way, do you believe in God?” And he said no. I said me neither. And that was about the only real religious conversation we ever had. I think religion, without a doubt since its invention—and God was an invention of man—is a huge indefensible evil force in this world. When people believe in a religion which calls for vengeance upon those whose beliefs are different, it’s not a good sign. Not a good sign.
JK: This is something I’ve been curious about. Two of your novels—In the Hand of Dante and Under Tiberius—are predicated on the idea that you come into possession of manuscripts pilfered from the Vatican library. The library comes up a few other times as well. You write about it in such detail and with an insider’s knowledge. Either I was fooled by your skills as a convincing fiction writer, or you’ve spent your share of time there. And if the latter, how does a heretic like you end up with Vatican credentials?
NT: Okay. You go buy yourself a very beautiful, very important let’s say, leather portfolio with silk ribbon corner stays that keeps the documents there. Then you set about…Well, my friend Jim Merlis’ father-in-law, for instance, won the Nobel Prize in physics right around then. So I went to Jim and said, “Hey Jim, do you suppose you could get your father-in-law to write me a letter of recommendation? I know I never met the man.” Had a tough life, but won the Nobel Prize. Did a beautiful letter for me. I don’t even know that I kept it. You put together five letters that only Jesus Christ could’ve gathered. And he probably couldn’t have because he was unwashed. It was twice as difficult for me, because I had no academic affiliation, not even a college degree. But the Vatican was so nice. There are two libraries. One involves a photo I.D. and the other one doesn’t. They gave me two cards, and they made me a doctor. That’s how you get in. So what do you do once you’re in? They have the greatest retrieval library I’ve ever seen. The people that you meet. One guy was a composer. Wanted to see this exact original musical manuscript because he wanted to make sure of one note that may have changed. So this was all real—I just hallucinated the rest. If you can use a real setting, you’re one step closer to gaining credibility with the person who reads you. I still have my membership cards, though I think they must’ve expired. They were great. You go to a hotel and they ask you to show them photo ID? “Ohhh…”
JK: One of the themes that runs throughout your work is fear. Fear as maybe the most fundamental motivating human emotion.
NT: Any man who thinks he’s a tough guy is either a fool or a liar. Fear is I think one of the fundamental formative elements. And I’m just speaking of myself becoming a writer. Choosing to express yourself with great subtlety in some cases, when what you want to express is so inchoate. But that was a long time ago. I still believed in the great charade. These days I’m just living the lie. But it’s so much better than fear. To convey fear. The more universal the feeling, the easier it is to convey powerful emotions. There was a line in Cut Numbers; “He thought the worst thing a man can think.” Michael Pietsch my editor said, “What is that thing?” And I said “Michael, every person who reads that will have a different idea.” It’s an invocation of the Worst Thing. One woman might read it and think of raping her two-year-old son. Some guy might think of robbing his father. To you or I it might not be that bad a thing, but to that person it’s the Worst Thing.
JK: That’s the magic of reading.
NT: That is the magic of reading. That’s the bottom line. Writing is a two-man job. It takes someone to write it and Someone to read it who’s not yourself.
JK: Exactly. Readers bring what they have to a book, and take away from it what they need, what interpretation has meaning for them.
NT: It’s also possible to write certain very exact phrases and have them be evocative of nothing but a thirst for an answer that the person who wrote them doesn’t know. Readers never give themselves enough credit. Now all the experiential and soulful depths of all our finite wanderings, roaming imaginations and questions thereof are relegated to a Mickey Mouse toy. That’s what I see, people who interact with these toys instead of another person. I don’t care. I was here for the good times.
JK: There’s another idea that’s come up a few times in various forms and various contexts in your work, where you say, in essence, “once you give up hope, life becomes more pleasant,” which is a wonderful twist on Dante.
NT: It’s true!
JK: I know, and I’m in full agreement with you. Hope, faith, belief, are all great destroyers. But I’m wonderinh, when did you come to that conclusion?
NT: A lot of the things I write or think I do put in that notebook I mentioned, and I usually put the date. That was one where I did not put down the date. I do believe it’s true. People say, “never give up hope.” Why the hell not? If you don’t give up hope, it leads you, at a craps table, betting you’re aunt’s car. Where did hope ever get anybody? It’s terrible.
JK: Now, there are two quotes which have appeared and reappeared throughout your work, and I think you know which two I’m talking about. The first is from Pound’s Canto CXX: “I have tried to write Paradise// Do not move/ Let the wind speak/ that is paradise.” And the other’s from the Gospel of Thomas: “If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.” As you look at your life and work now, and look back over the last half century, do you think you’re closing in on that point where Pound and Thomas finally come together?
NT: Yes. I never thought of that phrase you choose, “come together,” but yes. They’ve become more and more deeply a part of my consciousness. Yes, every day I pause. And I still hold the 120th Canto to be the final one. It was just one person who insisted no, this is not how he would have ended. Which is why the current modern edition of the Cantos goes two cantos more. There’s this line that is so bad. It’s hilariously bad. The joke of history. The line that Pound was supposed to have written to go beyond that beautiful line was, “Courage, thy name is Olga.” The other of course, the meaning of that line, that line being the one you were referring to, if you bring forth what is within you it will save you, if you do not bring forth it will destroy you. Of a hundred translations from the Coptic, that, to me, is the perfect translation. What is that thing? That’s what everybody wants to know. That’s me. That thing is just the truth of yourself. If you do live in fear, that will destroy you. If I speak the truth, the worst it’s going to do is frighten another. That will save you. That will set you free. Those two things, yes. And there’s another element, if I can add it unsolicited. I’ve noticed this pattern with people such as Pound and people such as Samuel Beckett. The greatest depth, the most majestic wielders of language as a communication form, slowly trail off to silence. Which is what Pound refers to in what I know is the last Canto. Be still. Paradise. Ezra Pound’s own daughter, Mary de Rachewiltz, translated The Cantos into Italian. Her translation had moments when it was an improvement on his phraseology. In Italian, “Non ti muovere” is much better than “be still.” Books, reading, writing, lend themselves to interpretive subtleties which are by no means pointless. What can people get out of an app?
by Jim Knipfel
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I See You: Part Five
A/N: As you get ready to hear what Billy has to say, both of you go through some of the last conversations you had. *this one contains a prompt from @littledarlinhavefaithinme ‘s “10 Marvelous Things I Hate About You” challenge. Prompt is highlighted*
Warning: Language, violence, tiny bit of lemon zest.
Word Count: 3,920
Crimson leaves fluttered and fell from the sugar maples that lined your street, the sun shining through them like stained glass before they touched down on the cobbled sidewalk. The crisp September air made you shrug a little more deeply into the thick cable knit scarf that Lexi had given you for your birthday- along with a bottle of vodka that she’d helped you finish- but the below average chill did nothing to douse your spirits. You paused to lean down and tie the laces on your boots, adjusting your phone between your ear and shoulder so you could carry on your conversation without interruption.
“Can’t you send me somthin’ romantic next time? Why’s it always gotta be these deep, dark, melodramas?”
You rolled your eyes even though he couldn’t see as you finished with your laces and straightened up, taking your phone back into your gloved hand. “Because, Russo, you asked me to help make you seem cultured, not cliche. If all you want is some lukewarm, watered down garbage, just quote Romeo and Juliet at her. Chicks dig that bullshit.” You could picture him biting his lower lip to keep from laughing, that devilish look in those coal black eyes that you’d seen the first night you’d met. “But if you really want to impress a woman, you’ll show her your mind, Billy. So I’m sending you stuff that will make you use it.” You grinned preemptively, running your tongue along your top lip as you prepared to deliver your next line. “You’re the one actually choosing to read what I send you, ya know?”
There was a part of you, although you were perfectly content to keep Billy as a friend, that secretly hoped that he was reading all the books you sent him because it was you that he was trying to impress. You knew there were plenty of fly by night floozies and paper doll cut outs to occupy his empty hours, and that didn’t bother you. You knew he didn’t feel anything for them, knew he was only trying to keep an acceptable amount of booty calls on rotation by keeping them interested enough to put up with the extreme lack of commitment that Billy put into any of his “romantic” endeavors. But you’d be completely lying to yourself if you said you hadn’t at least thought about what it might be like to have something more than friendship with him. You reached the end of the block and stopped with a small group of pedestrians waiting for the signal to change.
“Yeah, yeah, you got me there,” you heard him expel a burst of air through his nose in a snarky, one-of-a-kind Billy Russo laugh. “Just sayin’, it’d be nice if you sent me somthin’ less...I dunno, serious?”
You mentally ran through the last few books you’d sent him- Wuthering Heights, Frankenstein, and the one sitting on your kitchen counter, boxed up and ready to send to his next deployment in Kandahar, The Picture of Dorian Gray. Shit, he’s got a point. “What have you got in mind then? Any of these girls you see recommend any great works of fiction?” The light changed and the group of people around you started to move forward into the crosswalk on Charles Street. “You want me to send you one of those trashy romance novels with Fabio on the cover?” An older woman a few feet to your left caught your question and made a face, and you looked down to see a book sticking up out of her bag. swirling violet lettering reading Ravaged and the unmistakable luscious hair of the model you’d just mentioned in jest were just visible and it was clear from her scowl that she didn’t appreciate you deeming her literature of choice as “trashy”. You mouthed a “sorry” and shrugged at the disgruntled woman and choked back the giggles that were desperate to burst forth.
“The last one... Ashley?”
You pulled the phone away from your ear and rolled your whole head with a dramatic groan.Of course he doesn’t remember her name. Her bra size though, bet he remembers that. “Allison, Russo, her name is Allison. C’mon write ‘em down if they’re so hard to keep track of. Or, and stay with me here, ‘cause this one’s a doozy...you could actually get serious with one of them. Cut down the list of names you have to know.” You know my name, Billy.
“Right. Allison.” He ignored everything else you’d said and you wondered if he ignored Frank when he gave the same advice. “She suggested Hemingway, said he was-”
“Romantic? Hemingway? He was an abusive, alcoholic misogynist who squandered half of his life hanging around Picasso trying to nail his leftovers. Sounds like Allison knows about as much as you regarding the classics. You two are made for each other.”
Again he ignored the relationship advice. “Hey, Picasso probably had some good leftovers.” You heard a zipper being pulled closed and the soft thud of his fist hitting the full duffle like a punching bag. He’s all packed up, I probably only have a few more minutes…
“Billy,” your tone shifted as you came to another corner, turning right down Mt. Vernon Street, lined with beautiful red brick buildings, bright shiny front doors, and carriage style lanterns. It wasn’t as busy; there weren’t as many shops and cafes as there were on Charles Street, so there wasn’t as much foot traffic. You took advantage of the less crowded sidewalk to stop and lean against a concrete stair rail to finish your conversation. “You know you deserve more than leftovers…” Over the years you’d lost count of how many times you’d tried to convince him that he deserved much more than what he allowed himself to have.
There was a pause on the other end of the line and you dared to hope that he was thinking about what you’d said- that maybe the ten thousandth time would be the charm. But before that hope could swell too much, he poked a hole in it with his response. “I dunno, cold pizza makes for a pretty good breakfast.”
You squeezed your eyes shut, unable to keep your mind from shuffling through millions of moments before it reached the one and only time that Billy Russo had spent the night at your apartment, and the pizza that you’d shared both for dinner and as your first meal the following morning. You recalled walking out into your living room to see him sprawled on your couch, one long leg hanging down onto the floor, one muscled arm bent and thrown across his face. The soft pewter blanket that you’d given him was tucked up beneath his chin, his dark hair spread out over the white couch cushions. You remembered how peaceful he looked then, and how your heart had turned to cement and dropped through your ribs, wishing that you could flop down onto the couch with him. You’d wished that you could climb beneath the blanket and waste the morning in his arms, showing him what it felt like to be with someone who cared for him. You opened your eyes and you were back on Mt. Vernon Street, a maple leaf caught in your scarf. Plucking it out you realized that a good 6 seconds of silence had passed, and Billy was repeating your name.
“You still there? This fuckin’ service…” his voice sounded distant as he pulled the phone away from his ear to check if he’d lost the connection. “Keeps dropping out, you there?”
“Yeah, sorry, Billy, I’m here.” You cleared your throat. “Breakfast pizza. Right.” The leaf fell from your fingers as you tried to recover quickly. “Just saying, pancakes and eggs and bacon makes for a pretty good breakfast, too, Russo.” You deserve more than stale pizza crust.
“You’n Frankie, I swear you’re tryin’ to turn me into some soft, domestic type.”
The laugh that slipped out wasn’t forced or faked at all, and you were glad that the awkward moment was over. “That what you think of Frank? He’s a softie?”
Then it was Billy’s turn to chuckle. “Hell no, not Frankie. Toughest son of a bitch I ever met.”
“Besides yourself,” you stood up straight, taking a step away from the railing that you’d been leaning against, and resumed walking.
“Besides myself, that’s right.” He repeated, and you could hear the grin you imagined he was wearing. You heard rustling on his end and knew he was shouldering his overstuffed duffle, and then another few seconds of silence. You knew he was heading out the door, knew he only had a minute or two more before he had to leave or else he’d be late, which was completely unacceptable. But you also knew that he hated ending the conversation, so you knew you would have to do it for him.
“You all set over there, Marine? Headin’ out?” You knew you had no right to feel the tightness in your chest that you felt, knew that you were already missing him, missing his voice more than you should, but there really wasn’t much you could do.
“Yeah, just about,” he’d answered quickly , and you knew he was grateful.
“Alright then, Russo, you take care of yourself, you tough son of a bitch.” Stay safe, Billy. Stay safe, come home.
He laughed. “I will, always do.” You heard his front door open, heard the jingling of keys in his hand as he pulled it closed to lock it up. “Lookin’ forward to your next terrible book recommendation.”
“Ha. You know, one of these days I am gonna send you a flouncy Fabio novel, and then we’ll see who’s laughing.” You suddenly felt the chill that had been in the air the whole time, as though talking to Billy had kept it at bay, and now that the conversation was ending, it was back. You sniffed, rubbing your nose with one hand. “I’ll talk to you soon, Billy.” You had a rule, when either of you left on a deployment, and that was that you didn’t end a call with “goodbye”, both of you hating the way it sounded. When you were both stateside and as safe as any civilian was, “goodbye” wasn’t a problem. It was a different story when gunfire and bombs were involved, when there were rockets digging craters and IEDs buried in the sand, or submarines gliding below the deep blue depths, threatening your aircraft carrier with silent missiles.
“Talk to you soon,” he answered, and you knew that as soon as he could, as soon as he was settled and had a free moment and an internet connection, he’d fire off an email to you. He hung up then, because if he didn’t the call would never end, and you knew it, too. You took a deep breath of autumn air, and pocketed your phone. I’ll miss you, Billy Russo.
That had been one of the last real conversations you’d had with Billy… with the Billy that you knew. The last deployment had changed him, had been harder, different from the rest. His emails were short and lacked the sarcasm you’d come to expect. The few times he’d been able to call you he’d sounded deflated, exhausted, and not just physically. As you led him to the park in silence under the city lights, you wondered how those changes had affected the man you’d come to love. You’re still in there, Billy, I know you are...
. . . . . . .
Billy had spent his entire shift shuffling through every conversation he’d ever had with you; every laugh he’d caught through the phone line, every picture you’d sent while at sea, every single time he’d thought about you since he’d deleted your number. He’d smirked at the security camera on his way to the time clock, knowing that Frank had access to it, making sure he showed up when and where he was supposed to. But where normally he’d spend the night mopping bathrooms and banks, seething about what Frank and Lieberman had reduced him to, tonight he’d been consumed with you. What to tell you, what not to say, what to ask and not to ask… wondering if it could possibly ever go back to the way it was, if you could ever possibly forgive him… if he even deserved your forgiveness. A vivid memory took hold as he dumped the mop bucket and finished up at his final location for the evening.
Billy’s breath was hot as he lowered his mouth to one thigh. His lips and tongue and teeth trailed towards his destination as his hands found the soft flesh of the ass that had been driving him crazy all night. A few strands of hair fell out of place as he looked up, dark eyes on fire, to enjoy the view before him. His vision was blurred from the bourbon, but his hearing worked just fine. He grinned as he flicked his tongue against the slick heat at the apex of the legs his head was lost between, the soft moan of his name urging him on. “Billy… oh, fuck…”
His eyes rolled back as that bimbo’s voice was replaced with yours in his mind, and he increased the pressure he applied with his tongue. Ashley? Allison? Fuck it doesn’t matter… she had her hands in his hair, holding him in place, and he groaned, imagining your fingers gripping and tugging instead. He slipped his tongue into her, dreaming of what you would taste like, and the thought alone sent him for a spin. Finally, completely spellbound by his secret desires, he turned to kiss her thigh, but it was your name that fell from his lips. And it wasn’t the first time, either.
She stiffened, instantly pushing away from him and sat up, a look of pure disgust etched into her carefully painted on face. “Are you fucking kidding me, Billy? Fucking again?” She pulled her legs back from over his shoulders and stood from the bed, scoffing as she tossed her long blonde hair and shook her head. She bent down to retrieve her discarded clothing and started getting dressed.
Billy just sat up, a complete lack of guilt, embarrassment or whatever Allison thought he should be feeling clear in his eyes. He shrugged and shifted so that he was leaning against the headboard, reaching for the phone on his bedside table. I could call her… tell her I’m back…
He’d called you as soon as he’d had his boots back on U.S. soil, but he hadn’t told you that he was back. “Gettin’ out of this hell hole in two weeks,” he’d said while he drank a coffee in his kitchen. “Can’t wait to get the fuck out.” Pinching the bridge of his nose, he lied through his teeth. Fuck, this is hard. He’d always been able to bend the truth to suit his needs before, but not with you, and he felt his stomach turn.
“Two more weeks? That’s not bad, Marine. You and Frank taking care of each other?” He heard the tingling sound of a spoon clattering into the sink and guessed that you’d just made yourself a coffee, too.
Billy set his mug down and rested his forehead in his hand, raking it back through his hair. His mind immediately went to that night, in that tent, after that mission had lead them straight into that ambush resulting in the greatest loss to their unit that they’d ever suffered.
“Did you complete the mission?” Rawlins barked the question repeatedly, even while his men bled and suffered- the ones that had made it back, anyway. His clean white shirt and well rested mind didn’t belong in that tent. Covered in blood, some of it his own but most of it Frank’s, Billy sat in silence. Wringing his hands, a dull hum drowning out the noise, he considered things he never thought he would- he considered a transfer to a different unit, considered leaving the military completely. This shit… its all wrong… this isn’t right, not what I signed up for… The abrupt sound of a metal folding chair crashing to the ground as Frank, still bleeding from a gunshot wound, launched himself at Rawlins out of rage as the entitled asshole asked his question again broke him from his thoughts. Aw shit, Frankie. In two strides Billy crossed to where Frank had just landed a brutal punch that punctured the man’s eye socket. He’s gonna fuckin kill ‘em. He grabbed his brother by the shoulders and hauled him into the next room, tossing him through the door.
“You’re gonna fuckin protect him, Bill?!” Frank’s voice was uneven, his eyes flashing. “Sends us into a goddamn ambush when we told him, I told him and you’re takin’ his side?!”
“I’m protecting you Frank. This is never gonna be on him. We’re here to take the fall, Frankie, not Rawlins… and I’m done. I’m out… and you should think about it too.” He left Frank gaping like a big mouth bass, needing to be anywhere but in the room with the words he’d just said aloud.
“Yeah,” he answered your question. “Yeah Frankie’n me got each other’s backs, like always.”
He heard you swallow on the other end of the line before you spoke. “Hey, you okay Billy? Something you’re not telling me?” Shit, she’s too good at this… at knowin me…
“Yeah, yeah I’m fine. It’s just…” he rubbed the heel of his palm into his eye. “Things are different this time… just… lookin forward to gettin out, ya know?”
“Okay, well… just keep your head up, Russo. Two more weeks until beers and burgers.” His chest tightened as you tried to reassure him, tried to give him some tiny spark to get him through. I don’t deserve her… she’s … this is why I have to do this, cut her out… she’s too good for my bullshit… “Hey what’d you think of the book I sent?”
“Think it was perfect for me,” he answered, staring out his window at the gray New York City morning.
You’d laughed, and his chest tightened another notch. “It’s about a man who sold his soul to the devil, Billy. You may be dark and mysterious but you’re not the devil.”
Least I got to hear that laugh again. “If you insist… but I did like it… I highlighted a line for you. You’re always highlighting things for me so I did one this time…” the last time.
Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic. That was the line that he’d selected, the line he hoped would help you understand; understand that he had made his choice, and that he couldn’t take you with him.
He shook his head, enraged shouts pulling him away from the memory of your last phone call, just a few days before. Allison was still berating him for being a womanizer and an asshole, for using her for sex- I use you because you make it too easy. Yeah, I’m an asshole, everyone knows that, what’s your goddamn point?- but he didn’t care, just scrolled through his phone until he found the photo he’d been looking for, the one from the night that he met you.
The fact that your roommate was perched in his lap barely registered when he looked at it. He didn’t even see Frank anymore. All he saw was the frozen laughter on your face, the happiness captured that night that felt worlds away now, even as he sat in the same city that the photo had been taken in. He used two fingers to zoom in until only you were visible in the frame of the picture. I really fucked up… He never told you, but that picture kept him going on some of the worst days; reminded him that there was at least one person who gave a shit about him, one person that believed in him...one person that saw him for who he really was and kept him in their life anyway, asking for nothing but the same in return. Allison was shrieking his name, trying to get him to pay attention to her as she made a show of gearing up to storm out. Billy zoomed back out on the photo before he pressed delete, erasing your number while he was at it so he couldn’t make any more mistakes with you.
“...knew you were fucked up, Billy, but Jesus. You want to fuck her that bad, go the fuck ahead, see if I care. Then she can feel like shit, too when you forget her name... ”
Rage bubbled up at the thought that he could ever forget you, at the idea that she meant anything to him, anything close to what you meant. He stood, tossing his phone on the bed and advanced on Allison, fists curled at his sides. She took a step back, bottom lip quivering but eyes locked on his. “Don’t you fucking talk about her. You don’t get to say anything about her, you hear me?” His nostrils flared and his eyes flashed. “You mean nothing to me, sweetheart. You’re nothin’ but a nice ass in a tight dress and that’s all you’ll ever be, and ya know somethin’ else? I don’t think this,” he gestured between her and himself demonstratively with his pointer finger, “is gonna work out anymore. Get the fuck out.”
She opened her mouth to unleash more insults, but Billy just gave her a look that shut her up once and for all. “I said get the fuck outta my place.” He growled, and she turned, walking quickly towards the front door, slamming it behind her. Good. She’s gone. She’d never be you, and he knew that. None of the women he fucked would ever be you. I don’t deserve her… she deserves better than me...better than the bullshit I’m involved in… It sliced at his heart like shards of glass, cutting you from his life so finally, but you’d been the only one who mattered, and he wouldn’t allow you to become a target. Attachments are weaknesses…
He reached your apartment at 9:30 on the dot, and you’d been waiting like you said you would be. “Let’s take a walk,” you’d suggested, leading him down the block with the use of a long cane that you held out in front of you. His heart hammered and his mouth ran drier with every single silent step, as he prepared himself to tell you everything- everything he’d done, every choice he’d made, everything done to him and why he had to let you go. The curved wrought iron fence surrounding the small patch of green that New Yorkers called “parks” came into view, and you walked through it to a bench near a fountain. You took a seat and released a shaky sigh, and it hit him how hard you were trying to keep it together. You took your dark glasses off, folding them and setting them in your lap before turning your face up to his. Your eyes, once bright blue and always shining, we’re now a frosty, icy color, some light scarring around the edges of the right one, and his fingers twitched, aching to reach out to you. “Take a seat, Billy,” you softly requested, patting the bench beside you. “We’ve got a lot to talk about.”
@something-tofightfor @my-little-dumpster-fire @suchatinyinfinity @lexxierave @agent-bossypants @zaffrenotes @songforhema @thesumofmychoices @fireeyes-on-teller-dixon-grimes @lysawayne @ethereal-heavcns @ymariejp
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#i see you#billy russo#billy russo x reader#billy russo x you#the punisher#the punisher alternate ending#billy russo fanfiction
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Senior Hues
part twoes.
ch. 1 pt. 2
Reddie!
Promposal!
Sonia meets Bev!
Sh*t hits the fan!
Stan!
Absolute Fluff with a chef’s kiss of jealous angst.
the shortest of this series, maybe, wc: 2600+
♡
Stanley was amazing at most things:
Observing, Listening, Responding with a gentle harshness.
He was not the best at some other things:
Not telling Eddie to shut the fuck up right now.
“Eddie, listen to me,” he grasped his friend’s shoulders tightly, speaking through gritted teeth, “Richie is an asshat and I can’t understand why the fuck he is so damn important to you. He just dicks around all the time. Dicks with you all the time.”
Eddie begins to retreat from his soap box of anxious paranoia. Stan loosens his grip and his eyes soften.
“But he’s not dicking with you, this time,”
Beautiful strawberry blonde curls danced in the winter evening wind, caressed by the setting sun. Stan would consider this poetic if it didn’t involve the trashmouth, mozying over to the awaiting Melissa. She was tossing her hair and smiling obscenely over her shoulder.
Stan was ever grateful he could always find the best vantage point to watch the birds go at it. He knew meters away Eddie was already attempting to piece together what was unfolding right before his privileged eyes.
“Melissa,” Richie called with a rigid awkwardness, “Your glasses. You left them.”
“Oh! Silly me!” she hesitated over his hand taking her glasses back.
He did not savor the touch.
“Hey, um,” she begins twisting her lip between her teeth as he made a move to escape.
Richie wants to roll his eyes but really doesn’t want to piss her off in uniform on the main street.
“Prom’s coming up and I can’t go unless I go with a senior. Some stupid fuckin’ bet I have with Avery,”
she nods her head over to one of the vultures watching this scene.
“You know what,” Richie feels particularly evil today. He honestly belives half-truth she was giving him. She might actually have a brain in there.
“Yea, I’ll go with you.”
Melissa nearly cries out loud.
“Shit, um, okay! Yea, just,”
He brings up the sharpie in his right hand and asks for her palm. She hands it over. He scrawls some numbers between the three lines.
“Call me.” he turns with a wink back to the arcade, sauntering back to work.
Leaving Melissa to squeal with her posse moments later.
Stan scoffs before kicking his bike off and finding his friend.
“He is absolutely fucking with your whole heart right now, dude.”
Eddie’s jaw hangs open while his heart droops further.
“Stan, what the fuck, you don’t know what you’re talking about,” He croaked out, suddnely defensive of his other friend.
“I saw him write his number on her hand after you bolted in gay panic.”
He wasn’t sure whether to dignify Stan’s offhanded insult with a response or be discouraged by the thought of Richie going with someone else.
Stan watched a piece of Eddie’s heart fall to the floor and he wondered if he really made the right choice.
“Look,” he started backpedaling,“He could have just given her a fake number-”
“Why on the fucking earth would he go and do all that extra shit?”
“I don’t fucking know? You know him as good if not better than me!”
“Clearly I don’t.” Eddie’s tone hushed. He turned away from Stan, plunging himself into thought.
“Hey, Eddie, come on. Don’t go there.”
“Where else can I go, you DROVE me here?”
“We biked.”
“Not the point! Really?”
“Sorry, I’m sorry.”
Silence settled over Stan’s room as they hoth contemplated the true facts.
Stan’s eyes don’t lie. Eddie knows to trust him more than he trusts the others. He isn’t super sure about all this, though.
He assumes only time will really tell.
The next few months were spent in an unfortunate game of tug-o-war between Eds and Rich. They would only be around the losers if for sure the other would not be present. In the absolute worst case scenario they both end up sitting at the same table for a brief second before realizing they were at odds.
Richie was afraid to say anything to Eddie and Eddie was frustrated by his presence. They both feared the uncertainty the other brought with them.
Valentine’s day came and went.
Both Richie and Eddie called in sick that day. If their friends had no idea of the circumstances they would call them lovesick. One of them was working and the other was distracting himself. They both shared in longing, that much was obvious.
Saint Patrick’s Day yielded Eddie in no green claiming he forgot the holiday. Everyone had a field day. Richie snuck a pinch in while they passed in the hallway. It would have worked if he had been a few inches shorter.
Eddie spotted him instantly and bolted after him only to lose him at the main hallway.
After what felt like an eternity to everyone involved, April came. It brought the feeling of spring and budding young misguided romance.
Also, promposals.
Ben asked Beverly right before April fool’s just to make sure she couldn’t prank him instead.
Stan and Mike just started declining every offer, fake or otherwise, making sure to give each other a glance after each attempt.
Bill fixed his sights on one of Melissa’s friends, Avery Ann, whom enjoyed all of the short stories he told in his advanced literature class.
Richie gagging upon hearing Bill recant the tale of his proposal and nearly fainted at the thought of double dating with BILL AND all that noise.
Eddie had been avoiding their lunch table for a few weeks straight at this point and his sudden presence that Wednesday afternoon caught everyone (Richie) off guard.
“Woah! Hey short stack! Where’d you come from?”
“Bio, what’s it to you?” he set his bag down and squeezed in opposite his current rival.
“Nothing, I was just wondering.” Richie returned to his passive silence as per late usual.
Eddie saved the expression he was given for future reference.
“What’s new, Eddie? I feel like I haven’t see you in a week now!” Mike questioned with his warm and welcome tone to break a part of the tension.
“Nothing too crazy. Just some weird shit.”
They all stopped grazing to stare at him with expectance.
“What weird shit?” Beverly asked.
“Fuckin’ Melissa called my house twice.”
Richie froze. Everyone else held their breath.
Stan leaned back in his seat knowing all too well the screaming match to follow. He glanced at Rich to assess his mood and noticed the color had vanished from his cheeks.
“Asking for YOU both times!” he was standing, accusing the pile of messy black hair across from him, pupils darting away from eye contact.
“My mom nearly crucified me, asshole! What the fuck?!”
Richie kept his gaze on the juice box at the center of the table. He wondered whose it was. Maybe he could have a sip.
“HELLO?! Earth to shithead!” Eddie was getting loud. He knew it. He recognized his level of rage but at this moment nothing mattered but making a fool of him in front of the others. Proof he wasn’t jumping to conclusions.
He was, though, he learned from Stan.
“Why the fuck did you have your girlfriend call my home phone? Twice?!” he was shrill now.
Richie could not believe his ears.
“Wait what?”
“Did you guys fuckin’ prank call me after you got done making out or what!?”
Richie could feel this only getting worse so he got up from the bench.
“Hey, what wher-”
Eddie was cut off by a rough ‘let’s go’, led out of the cafeteria by Richie’s grasp.
This needed to be settled somewhere immediately.
Eddie expected to be escorted to Gretchen but his heart ached when Richie’s didn’t slow at the parking lot.
They kept walking in uncomfortable silence for a good three blocks before Eddie stopped, flabbergasted.
“Wait, what the fuck, where in the shit are we going?”
“Just follow me.”
He begrudgingly pursued with a groan.
They ended their journey at the local mechanic.
“You need a tune up, Eds?”
The smaller boy responded with a fury in his gaze, “No.”
“Gretchen did,. . does.”
He released the breath he held captive in his chest.
Eddie was silent behind him for a moment before squeaking out, “I thought you were getting rid of her.” he had not called her anything besides 'it’ until now.
“I was yea,” he rubbed his forehead with the back of his arm, “I wanted to surprise you for pr-” he cut himself off.
“Prom?”
Richie hissed. It was all in the open now, sort of.
“Yea, Eddie, I didn’t want to take you without her.” Richie slapped his forehead with the realization he could not lie to his closest friend.
“What do you mean? I thought you asked Melissa.” he sheepishly trailed off and toed the crack in the sidewalk. After finally looking back up to meet his taller friend’s gaze he noticed Richie had disappeared.
“In here, Eds.” he heard a voice call him from around a corner, leading into the shop.
Eddie followed the voice to find Richie, kneeling, holding a small bouquet of tickets taped to look like daisies.
“Would you,”
Eddie’s blood was fickle sometimes. Running to all these body parts for no reason. This was one of those times. His face burned with the amount of red he was probably sporting.
“Edward Gaspbrat,” Rich croaked out from his awkward seat on Gretchie’s hood, a smirk peeking through his words.
Eddie’s eyes saw his brain for a good three seconds giving his boy friend the eye roll of the century. It gave him enough reprieve to recirculate his blood flow from his cheeks back to where it belonged.
“..Bemydatetoprom?” Richie sputtered out in almost a whisper.
They both paused, watching each other for a minute. Crickets chimed in almost on cue.
Eddie did the sizing up.
“Are- Are you asking me to prom? Rich, don’t fuck with me,” the younger boy stuck his finger out at the other, instinctively scolding him even now. In this moment.
Richie could not believe his eyes.
“Maybe… yes. I am.”
He shrugged but his choice was concrete. The flustered little man before him made sure. “so, please?”
Eddie took a good four seconds to respond. Richie took this time to assess how good they would look in matching suits and ties in front if all those fucking twats. Melissa included. Melissa especially.
“Of course?“
The effect of gravity seemed to have left Eddie and he started to freak before he realized it was Richie picking him up into a gangly bear hug.
“OkayOkay! Put me down!” he started to squirm, “You’ll crush my snickers!”
Richie finally listened when he heard the word snickers.
“You have snickers? Hidden in those tiny things?”
He pointed to Eddie’s pair of very short jogging shorts he would always wear but never jog in. After four years you’d think someone would change style but no.
Richie then took a second to remind himself he was currently wearing an open tommy bahama shirt before criticizing Eddie further.
“I don’t dummy.” he quickly readjusted his fanny pack to his right hip. “I keep them in here.”
He pulled two snickers bars from it.
“Was this,” Richie takes a snicker and turns it over just to be extra sure that : yep it’s a snickers, “a reward or some bullshit? Did you know I was gonna ask you?”
Eddie started to look upset and opened his mouth for a reply.
“No I-”
“You little shit, you wanted me to look like an asshole in front of the losers and ask you and this was, what? Your gift in return? What the fuck?”
“Dickie! Shut. The Fuck. Up!” he screeched. “They were for you. For us? Like a bribe or some shit when I-” Eddie realized his train of thought was derailing so he cut himself off. His gut turned, however, when he saw the twinkle in those deep brown, enlarged eyes.
“When you what?”
Shit.
“Uh.. Nothing. Just, saw you. And I did, so… Just eat it.”
“No, no, I want to know what you saved these for. These are the special ones your mom hides in her table next to that dil-”
“Beep, fucking, BE E P!” Richie fell shut his mouth tight.
“I-I wanted to go to that hill we went to in eighth grade after I was gone for two weeks, right before spring break.”
“Oh shit, I remember! I kissed your cheek and you slapped the fuck out of me.”
“Bill was right there you fuckin-” he closed his eyes and sighed while pinching the bridge of his nose.
“That was the last time I felt happy, for a long time. My mom went apeshit the next morning about me being out so late right after being in the hospital.”
“I was going to ask you to prom and these were a bribe since I thought you were into Melissa.” he hissed through the ‘ss’.
“You thought I’d need a snickers to pick you over that?”
“I didn’t know what the fuck you were gonna do! I did what I could to prepar-” he was cut off by Richie’s mouth. He instinctively jumped but then succeeded into his touch.
Richie pulled away right as Eddie’s kissed him back.
“Eds, sometimes you just need to sit back and relax, daddy’s got you.” he patted the other boys back a little too heavy handed before leaning in to kiss him again.
When he regained his balance Eddie put his pointer finger to the other’s lips, preparing to scold him.
“First of all: Eddie, second: don’t eVER call yourself that or we aren’t going.” he waved his finger at him while withdrew it from his mouth.
“Fine, but after prom I can say what I want?”
“We’ll see how prom goes first, bubba.” Eddie noticed Richie start to open his mouth and figured there was really only one way for them to shut each other up.
Richie would be lying if he said he hadn’t figured that out seconds before Eddie.
I’ll never be quiet again.
He thought as Eddie kissed him senseless.
Saturday came quicker than he had expected.
Eddie hit the button on his alarm clock and stopwatch before groaning and throwing the covers over his head.
Prom is in 12 hours… Get fuckin’ ready.
He went through his daily morning routine swiftly but reluctantly. Beverly would be at his door in less than an hour and he hadn’t even had breakfast yet.
“Eddie-bear! Breakfast!”
He fist pumped for the amazing timing; ignoring the childish nickname it accompanied.
“Coming!”
Maroon Stacked Doc Martens skipped up the steps towards Eddie’s house, stopping on the austere “welcome” mat.
Not super welcoming.
She rapped on the door.
Mrs. Kaspbrak sighed at the interruption and made her way towards the culprit.
She looked through the peephole which just showed her empty porch. She assumed it was some dumb ding dong ditcher and returned to the living room before hearing another knock on the mahogany.
Fed up, she unlocked the door to figure out who was behind this disturbance.
She came face to face with none other than the she devil herself, Beverly Marsh. That dirty-
“Hi Mrs. Kaspbrak,” she said cheerily.
“What do you want with my son?” her eyes seared through Beverly’s.
“He wanted me to help him go prom shopping this afternoon I’m here to take hi-”
“Hi Beverly, sorry to keep you waiting,” the man in question popped out from behind the doorway to their kitchen.
“Hey Eddie.” Beverly smiled with pain in her eyes.
“Well bye mom, gotta go seeyoulaterloveyoubye!” Eddie shoved past his mom and followed Beverly down the steps to her car.
“Did my mom say anything too awful?” he asked after they were in the car.
“Nah, she didn’t have time.” she laughed into the back of her hand, other resting on the wheel.
"Okay.” Eddie sighed, shaking like a branch in the spring wind, “Let’s get this shitshow over with.”
*Cue prom shopping montage*
Thaks for reading!! 💖
#reddie#richie tozier#eddie kaspbrak#it#it 2017#it fanfiction#hardly any of this is canon#two yr old draft again#reviving my dead content#gaspbrat#beverly marsh#mike hanlon#ben hanscom#stanley uris#bill denbrough#fics
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