#SOMEBODY BETTER GIVE HIM A COMPETITIVE CAR NEXT YEAR!
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★ Happy Birthday to the people's princess ! (Charles Leclerc the Prince of Monaco)
#charles leclerc#a baby is now 26#going to cry#SOMEBODY BETTER GIVE HIM A COMPETITIVE CAR NEXT YEAR!
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Hold On
Summary: This is based on the song "Hold On" from Chord Overstreet. After weeks and months of arguments, hurtful words and pain Spencer's daughter is convinced that this is the only option for both's happiness.
Warnings: attempted suicide (not specified how), hospitals, angst, sad, hurtful words, mean Spencer in the beginning
Wordcount: 2k
✨Masterlist✨
_____________________________
Loving and fighting, accusing, denying
I can't imagine a world with you gone
The last few weeks weren’t easy in the Reid household. There is not one day, where no loud screamed arguments are thrown through the entirety of the apartment.
“(Y/N), you have to see things from my point of view, too! My job is demanding and I can’t be there for every little competition you have”, Spencer tries to reason with his daughter.
“I have to see things from YOUR point?! Little competition?! DAD! This was the math olympics and, mind you and your busy schedule, it was not the ‘petty’ school round. I went against people from the WHOLE country! Just- I- Sometimes it would be nice to feel like I have a father caring for me for at least an hour. But I see, your job is more important than your child.”
Her father looks at her, speechless. He didn’t know how far she came in that competition. (Y/N) hasn’t said a thing, didn’t make a noise about it. How is he supposed to know all that then?
“Just because I’m a profiler doesn’t mean I’m able to read your mind. Just try and cut me some slack here, I- I need you to understand how important the things I do are. Can you try to be a little less ignorant, please?”
It feels like Spencer has punched her in the guts. For years (Y/N) backed down, knowing that her father’s work is in fact important. He is saving life for crying out loud, but is it really that selfish to ask for his attention every once in a while? Ever since she is basically able to be on her own it seems like he stopped caring for her.
“Ignorant? Oh Dad, you really are an amazing profiler”, the teenager says, her voice dripping with sarcasm, “You know what? Try and profile that!” She begins to walk out of the living room, showing him the bird. Seconds later her door smashes into the lock.
The joy and the chaos, the demons we're made of
I'd be so lost if you left me alone
Is he really that bad of a father?
When (Y/N) was born, he swore to himself to be the opposite of his own. Spencer wanted to be there for his daughter any time she wanted him to. School dances, spelling competition, kindergarten graduation, the whole nine yards.
But when was the last time they did something as a family. From cooking and eating dinner together nearly every night they went to occasionally seeing the other at the breakfast table before heading out.
Spencer understands her now. He is not better than his father at the moment. He just missed a big event in his daughter’s life and blames it on her. He called her ignorant, even though he is the one that didn’t pay attention. The oh so amazing profiler forgot to show his child that he loves her. That she is more important to him than anything in his life. He needs her in order to function, her love is the only thing that motivates him to do anything.
He knows he has to talk to (Y/N) about it, he was wrong and mean. Spencer just wants to give her time to cool off.
Meanwhile the teenager sits on her bed, staring at the wall. He did it again. He said these hurtful words. Tears stream down her face, but she is numb to them.
Everytime he calls her something, (Y/N) memorizes it. She doesn’t have an eidetic one, but when it’s about mean things, everybody has an elephant’s memory.
Ignorant.
Selfish.
Egoistic.
Childish.
And many more.
And her father is right. She is all of the above and so much more.
Maybe he is better off without her. Better off without having to act like he cares for her.
She is a burden, she knows that. Her mother knew that from the beginning, why else would she have left them? Left her? Nobody’s life wouldn’t be better, if she isn’t in it anymore.
(Y/N) thought long and hard about this. Tonight just confirms her thoughts and boostes her decision.
Quietly she makes her way over to the bathroom, locking the door without making a noise. Hidden under towels is her little box. The contents she complained about using for so long.
You locked yourself in the bathroom
Lying on the floor when I break through
I pull you in to feel your heartbeat
Can you hear me screaming? Please don't leave me
Twenty minutes have passed since (Y/N) smashed her door. Spencer hopes it is enough time for a teenager to cool off. He knocks on her door, waiting for an answer.
Nothing.
He tries again.
Nothing.
“Sweetheart? May I come in?”
The silence is louder than any gunshot he heard.
“Sweetheart, I want to apologize. May I open the door?”
Still nothing.
Spencer enters the room, finding it vacant. Oh of course, the moment he wants to talk with her she is in the bathroom. The Reids always had a thing for timing.
He knocks at the bathroom door. “Sweetheart, are you in there? Of course you are. Dumb question. I- I want to apologize. What I said wasn’t right and it was hurtful. Can- can you come out? There are a few things I have to make right.”
To his bewilderment there is no answer. No noises. A whole lot of nothing. This scares Spencer. “(Y/N), please say something. I care. I do. I love you, please answer me”, he desperately says.
Still no answer.
Spencer feels like he doesn’t have a different choice. He takes a step back and a deep breath, remembering what Derek taught him. With a loud crash he kicks the door open.
There she lies. His child. His daughte. The one human he promised to protect no matter what.
Her body lifeless, a small box next to her. Spencer identifies the contents immediately. His heart drops faster than he thought it to be possible.
In an instant he kneels next to (Y/N), pulling her in. His hands are shaking as he tries to take her pulse. “No no no no. NO! (Y/N), baby please open your eyes. Don’t leave me, no! You can’t do that, I love you, I love you so much. Don’t leave me, I need you!”
Hold on, I still want you
Come back, I still need you
Let me take your hand, I'll make it right
I swear to love you all my life
Hold on, I still need you
(Y/N) is in and out of consciousness. The dark seconds are terrifying to her. She regrets her choice.
In the seconds she is conscient, she hears a warm voice. The teenager feels safe now that it is there. At first the voice is quiet and blurry, but she is still able to catch a few words.
“Don’t” “Me” “Love you” “Much” “Need”
As her body finally slips away, she feels at ease. These words, it feels like lotion on her wounds. Because she also loves the voice and its person. She needs them like they need her.
Long endless highway, you're silent beside me
Driving a nightmare I can't escape from
Helplessly praying, the light isn't fading
Hiding the shock and the chill in my bones
Spencer acts quickly. He knows his daughter doesn’t have much time left. He picks her up, trying to grab as many important things on his way out as possible. The genius runs to his car, hoping and praying to all the gods above that it will work after months of not using the vehicle. The motor does turn on to his relief.
The drive to the hospital feels longer than any roadtrip Spencer ever went on. The seconds tickle down and just like that (Y/N)’s chances. Chances of a happy ever after with him in her life, hopefully.
Not once does she move, her body looking more like a doll than a human being. Spencer just prays that it won’t be like this for long. He needs her, the light of his life. She can’t fade, she is not allowed to. It will break him. Darken his own light.
He has to be strong now. The glass is half full, the hospital only a few minutes away. (Y/N) will make it. Spencer doesn’t have any other option than that.
They took you away on a table
I pace back and forth as you lay still
They pull you in to feel your heartbeat
Can you hear me screaming? Please don't leave me
“I need a doctor! A nurse! Somebody! My daughter, she-” Spencer screams, entering the ER with her lifeless body in his arms. He can’t end the sentence. But it’s also not necessary. A whole team of people crowd around the young man, one of them pulling a stretcher behind him.
Reluctantly Spencer lowers (Y/N) on it, knowing that he can’t do anything more. His child’s fate lies in the hands of the medical staff now. He has to trust them with her. With his lifeline.
One doctor takes her arm, trying to take a pulse. He shouts something, but Spencer’s ears are deaf to his words. Everything goes silent as they pull her away. Away from him.
He falls to his knees as reality hits him. He may not be a father any longer. And it’s his fault and his fault only.
“Please don’t leave me”, Spencer whispers.
Hold on, I still want you
Come back, I still need you
Let me take your hand, I'll make it right
I swear to love you all my life
Hold on, I still need you
Lights flash her. They hurt her eyes. But there is a greater pain (Y/N) can’t locate where it’s coming from. Where is her father? She needs him. She has to apologize. There are so many things she wants to say to him. To reassure him that she knows her decision was wrong.
As people continue to scramble around her, the pain intensifies. It becomes nearly unbearable and stops suddenly. The last thing she hears after a shrill high pitched tone is the voice of her father.
“I love you.”
I don't wanna let go
I know I'm not that strong
I just wanna hear you
Saying, "Baby, let's go home"
Let's go home
Yeah, I just wanna take you home
“Family of (Y/N) Reid?” A doctor asks into the waiting room, looking exhausted. Spencer looks up from the floor. He memorized every little bump while pacing back and forth. He hasn’t called anybody. He doesn’t want to alarm then, not now. The young doctor needs time to understand what’s happening.
“Is she breathing?” is his first question. The doctor's face takes a pitiful look. “We stabilized her. But (Y/N) is still not through. We can’t say if she makes it through the night. If she does, we are sure she will be on a good way to a full recovery. Tonight will be critical for that. But (Y/N) showed us she is a fighter, maybe the chances aren’t that bad.”
Spencer is led through several halls to her room. He sits down in an uncomfortable hospital chair next to his daughter’s bed. Her hand is cold against his warm one. His are still shaking as he brushes a strand of her hair out of her face.
The only thing that Spencer wants right now is for (Y/N) to open her eyes and ask him to go home. He wants to take her there so desperately. But he can’t. Because he is the ignorant one.
“Hold on, I still want you
Come back, I still need you, Sweetheart”, Spencer says, pressing a kiss onto her knuckles.
Taglist:
All works:
@dindjarinsspouse @big-galaxy-chaos
Criminal Minds:
@averyhotchner @mggsprettygirl @herecomesthewriterwitch @ash19871962
@ellyhotchner
#spencer reid x reader#spencer reid x daughter!reader#spencer reid#spencer reid x teen!reader#criminal minds#criminal minds fanfiction#reader insert#x reader#x teen!reader#x daughter!reader#tw: suicide#Spotify
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Follower Recs
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Hello Mojo, hope you're doing well and that you had a good break! I wanted to signal boost the MDZS May Diaspora event collection on AO3, and point out my favorite fic from there: 归心似箭 | Longing to Go Home by dragongirlG! It's both tender and bittersweet and it features such mature writing. The author got some hate for it when it initially got posted so I wanted to counter that and give it some love instead! [Who would do such a thing?! @dragongirlg-fics I’m sorry that happened to you, and here, have *so many hugs!* I’ll try to do a thing just for the diaspora event, but meanwhile, I’ll just treat this as a follower rec.]
归心似箭 | Longing to Go Home
by dragongirlG (M, 8k, wangxian)
Summary: The destruction of the Yin Tiger Seal does not kill Wei Wuxian; it ages him instead. He takes shelter in a cave expecting to die, but instead he lives, slowly learning to embrace life with each new day.
Thirteen years later, a young man with a Lan forehead ribbon stumbles into the cave. His name is Lan Sizhui.
~*~
Hi Momjo!!! I recently read the most *adorable* fic, and I loved it so much that it dragged me out of seclusion (read: social anxiety cave) to rec it. It's called 'Covered in Bees' by ScarlettStorm in which the Cloud Recesses is an apiary, and Wei Wuxian has suddenly found himself host to a swarm of bees. ~ @akyra-talanoa
Covered in Bees
by ScarlettStorm (T, 8k, wangxian)
Summary: “Cloud Reccesses Apiary,” says a toneless, deep masculine voice, with zero question in it. Wei Ying doesn’t care, because whoever possesses that voice is probably going to come save him from bees like a fucking hero while wearing like, a suit of armor. That’s what you wear to catch bees, right?
“I have like, so many bees outside my front door right now,” he says, mouth running out ahead of him before he can even begin to think about reining it in. “It’s like a sandstorm of bees out there. There are so many bees. I got out of my car and there were just bees and I don’t want these bees. Do you want these bees? Please tell me you will come get these bees. I can’t leave my house and I have enough food for maybe a week but then I’m gonna have to learn how to cook dry beans and no one wants that, especially not me.” Wei Ying runs out of air, takes a breath, and belatedly adds, “My name is Wei Ying. Hi.”
Or: The beekeeping AU that no one asked for.
~*~
Hi, you are a bless to this fandom. Your blog feels like a library, so thoroughly arranged and always within hand reach. [Thank you, wow!] Recently, I was going through Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn is a Wēn tag and came across a fanfic, it has 3 chapters till now and is so intriguing that i thought to recommend it to you. I don't know if I can recommend or if you have already checked the story, The legendary Phoenix and his Dragon by Devipriya. I am in love with this story. I hope you will enjoy it too, do check it out
The legendary Phoenix and his Dragon
by Devipriya (T, 7k, wangxian)
Summary: Wen Wuxian, the essence of who he is, he is a naughty child, a prankster, an enchanting dizi player, a graceful dancer, an irresistible lover, a truly valiant warrior, a ruthless vanquisher of his foes, a man who left a broken heart in every home, an astute statesman and kingmaker, a thorough gentleman, a righteous individual of the highest order, and the most colorful incarnation.
He has been seen, perceived, understood and experienced in many different ways by different people. Different people saw different facets of who he is. For some, he is God. For some, he is a crook. For some, he is a lover. For some, he is a fighter. He is so many things.
But the phoenix, seen from the eyes of time was just a playful man. A man who plays with his awareness, with his imagination, with his memory, with his life, with his death. An individual who does not just dance with somebody. He dances with life. He dances with his enemy, He dances with the one he loves, He dances even at the moment of his death.
To taste an essence of who is Wen Wuxian, be with me in the journey of exploration, NO! playful exploration of life of a playful man.
~*~
Hi! Thanks for running this blog, it's helped me find so many fics. For your next follower recs post, I wanted to rec "This love like a flood, a fire, a fear" by natcat5. Its summary is vague (which I suspect is why it isn't better known) but it is a beautiful retelling of canon from LWJ's POV with slight canon divergence. I love the author's characterization of him and the prose is gorgeous. It is easily my favorite fic in the entire fandom, and I don't say that lightly. ~ @nyanja14
This love like a flood, a fire, a fear
by natcat5 (M, 57k, wangxian, lan wangji & lan xichen)
Summary: “I will love you as misfortune loves orphans, as fire loves innocence, and as justice loves to sit and watch everything go wrong.” - Lemony Snicket
~*~
i came to this ask to rec this baseball one called "Waiting for Spring" by thievinghippo on ao3. It somehow made me care about baseball soooo 'nough said ~ @scifikimmi
Waiting for Spring
by thievinghippo (E, 131, wangxian)
Summary: “It is a well-known fact across the major leagues that one does not smack Lan Wangji’s ass.”
Wei Wuxian rolls his eyes. Everyone smacks everyone’s ass in baseball. It’s how the game is played. Lan Wangji does not get to be exempt from this most sacred of baseball traditions.
Wei Wuxian will make sure of that.
Or, a Major League Baseball AU
~*~
hi mojo! i wanted to rec Something Good by boxoftheskyking (a loose sound of music/canon divergence au) and also MDZS: The Golden Engine by iffervescent (immortal wangxian modern au where they gotta solve a mystery and save china, featuring jiang cheng/lan xichen)
Something Good
by boxoftheskyking (T, 43k, wangxian)
Summary: "That Wei Wuxian, you know he used to be such a promising cultivator. Head Disciple of the Jiang Clan, can you believe it? You see, juniors, the punishment for traveling the path of demonic cultivation. No golden core, not so much as a whisper of spiritual power."
As a punishment for real and imagined crimes, Wei Wuxian is sentenced to work at Cloud Recesses as the lowest of servants. When a surprising reassignment lands him with eleven children to care for, everything changes again.
A Sound of Music AU
MDZS: The Golden Engine
by iffervescent (E, 82k, wangxian, xicheng)
Summary: In the modern era, immortals Lan Zhan and Wei Wuxian return to Gusu. New evil and old friends + new friends and old evils.
~*~
Hi Mojo! First of all let me just tell you that you are amazing and this blog is like a gift from the gods! Bless you and your endless patience and hard work. [Oh, thank you so much!] I know that you have just accepted follower recs and I have missed miserably but I still wanted to write and bring attention to a writer by the pseudo Xiao_Hua on ao3, I think they are quite good and I just recently found the account with so much content. If you do have the time to check them out, I'd rec catfish, my fox or the red ribbon.
The Red Ribbon
by Xiao_Hua (M, 21k, wangxian, TGCF crossover)
Summary: Wei WuXian died but not before saving HanGuang-Jun and A-Yuan, leaving so much more behind than just his ribbon.
My Fox
by Xiao_Hua (E, 13k, wangxian)
Summary: Once he headed to YiLing that all changed for him. His priorities have been mingled with and ordered in complete disarray even without him noticing as he was left heavily influenced by a creature.
Or one where Lan WangJi is a dragon-spirit and he finds his mate in the form of a fox.
Catfish
by Xiao_Hua (E, 15k, wangxian)
Summary: Wei WuXian has a common sense that believes it has a nine-to-five job while Lan WangJi finds that incredibly hot.
Or one where two catfish realise that neither of them truly catfished.
~*~
Hi Mojo i'm recommending this amazing fic it is called song of joys and regrets. it's a time travel AU it's amazing. And your Blog is a Godsend Thank you! [Aw, you’re so sweet!] ~ @highgoddess
Song of Joy and Regrets
by HelloKitten (not rated, 59k, wangxian, WIP)
Summary: The Archery competition at Qishan this year has hit a snag. As the Sects face the wrongs perpetrated by their future selves, Wei Wuxian finds himself adopted by half of the cultivation world who are determined to save him from himself.
Baby Wangxian suffers. Adult Wangxian's job here is done.
"I'm starting to see a pattern to all his plans..."
"Do they all involve him being bait?"
"Yes" came deadpanned responses.
~*~
Here’s a 2021 Reverse Big Bang entry, in time for Father’s Day; [Oops, my bad, sorry!] Under a Blanket of Black Wings, by ChaoticAndrogynous (#31398395); LWJ, recuperating from the 33 lashes, tells A-Yuan a series of fairytales about a heroic monster and the brave little boy he befriended. Vampire! WWX (in the framing story as well as the story-within-the-story); happy ending.
Under a Blanket of Black Wings
by ChaoticAndrogynous (T, 19k, wangxian)
Summary: Lan Wangji tells A-Yuan a bedtime story about a beautiful monster and the brave little boy who was his friend. Thirteen years later, the monster returns.
~*~
Hello Mojo! Have you read ‘Key Differences’ by Pupeez4eva? Its a MDZS!WWX meets CQL!WWX and its really good! [It’s on my list!]
Key Differences
by pupeez4eva (T, 6k, wangxian)
Summary: “I don’t understand,” Wei Wuxian said, while his alternate self continued to stare at him with almost a look of hurt in his eyes. There was longing in there too, which Wei Wuxian would have easily recognised if he paid enough attention. “How could you not get together, after everything. What even went on in the Guanyin Temple if you didn’t confess?”
“The Guanyin Temple,” Wei Ying repeated incredulously. “You’re asking me if I confessed at — honestly, a lot went on that day. It was a life and death situation. There was no confessing.”
Wei Wuxian stared at him, appalled.
(Wherein Wei Wuxian ends up meeting an alternate version of himself who, much to his horror, never married Lan Wangji. Obviously he has to do something to fix this).
~*~
Hey Mojo i would recommend this fanfic if you already haven’t, it’s called “ take me back to a time “ by DizziDreams. It’s sooooo good
take me back to a time
by DizziDreams (T, 144k, wangxian, 3zun)
Summary: Wei Ying has a lot on his plate right now.
It’s finals week -- which isn’t so bad. He’s never had to study much to do well in classes. But that just means that things are that much more tense with Jiang Cheng, who, as far as Wei Ying can tell, only takes study breaks long enough to glare at Wei Ying where he sits on the couch playing video games.
It’s not studies that have Wei Ying stressed out. It’s everything else. It’s the recruitment for the research trial he’s coordinating. It’s jiejie and her impending marriage to His Royal Douchebag Jin Zixuan. It’s the volunteer work at the palliative care facility. It’s Wen Ning’s worsening condition. It’s Wen Qing working herself thin to care for her brother and Wen Yuan. It’s the way Wen Yuan never seems to have enough food.
So, yeah. There’s enough on Wei Ying’s plate already, meaning it’s not entirely welcome when he comes home and finds a man standing in his bedroom. A man in extravagant white robes, a ribbon tied around his forehead, long hair gathered into a topknot, fist clutching a sword at his side, who asks him, “Where am I?”
~*~
Idk if this has already been rec’d (I’ve been off the grid for a while now), but there’s this absolutely incredible fic called Restitution by an anon on ao3 people should definitely check out!
this one?
on restitution
by Anonymous (M, 78k, wangxian, jin ling & wei wuxian, lan sizhui & wei wuxian, WIP)
Summary: When Wei Wuxian regains consciousness, he is in a bed. A real, proper bed, not the slab he called a bed in his cave in the Burial Mounds.
Jiang Cheng is glowering above him.
Wei Wuxian doesn't die during the siege of the Burial Mounds. Rather, he is captured in secret and confined at Lotus Pier.
Things change accordingly.
~*~
Hi momjo! I feel like every time I come to your blog there's twenty more new and amazing fics for me to read. Thank you for everything you do for this fandom! [Thank you, sweetie! And yes, I think there ARE 20 new fics every day out there in the fandom. It’s amazing!] Today I come bearing my own rec to you. I've recently read this and it's IMO one of the best fics out there. It's called Lapsteel by carriecmoney and it's a modern stormchaser AU featuring country songs and coming home. ~ @manaika-chan
Lapsteel
by carriecmoney (T, 42k, wangxian)
Summary: Now and then, I think about you now and then...
It's been thirteen years since Wei Ying ran for the prairies, leaving behind a family in shambles and a secret on the Pacific wind. What happens when the storm he swirled catches up to him?
Modern AU with country music star Lan Zhan, stormchaser Wei Ying, and shared crossroads.
~*~
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What thing? What type?
Seongjoong college au?? Ft. Wooyoung; ONESHOT 😚 no warnings, humor ig
Yeah idk where that came from, I'm in my seongjoong feelz, mingi is back, I love woo, anyways besties enjoyyyyy ✌ also just in case anyone is still waiting for the promised minsung au! It is in the making!
"I cannot believe they've put all of that into one exam!", Wooyoung cries out, knuckles turning white around the strings of his backpack."Like, what am I - a robot?!"
"Maybe if you started studying earlier, you wouldn't have that much stress now."
"Nobody ever does that!"
They're on their way from the student dorms to Hongjoong's apartment - not for the first time, but this time, Seonghwa's car is standing in the parking lot.
"Oooh", Wooyoung makes. Your hot roomie finally home for once?"
"God, I wish I never told you that."
"But you diiiid", the younger cheers, wrapping his arm around Hongjoong's neck only to pull him down with his full body weight, making him groan.
With work, university and producing his tracks, the dorms weren't an option for Hongjoong anymore. Too loud, too smelly, too...first semester vibey. So, he saved up, worked through vacations and even during normal periods - and voila. His own, tiny, little room, a living room, a CLEAN bathroom he doesn't have to share with 727272 people, simply put : heaven. Sure, he might be a little tighter on budget now, but at least he was able to remain his sanity, and that's a win.
The apartment is not that cheap; sharing it makes it easier. And with Seonghwa, a business major in his 3rd year, it was a good catch.
He's nice, friendly, tidy - too tidy if you ask Hongjoong, especially when he is bitching about the coffee mugs in the sink, like, who the hell cares - but he is also very, very pretty, and caring, and that, ladies and gentlemen, isn't a good thing, at least not to his heart because he is - well, in some cases of being near him, and especially when Seonghwa smells good, becomes - the definition of a useless gay.
That's how bad it actually is, but luckily, only Yunho knows that.
For the rest of his friends, the older is just known as "hot".
Which is also very, very true.
"Hey!", Hongjoong shouts, tossing his keys onto the shelf next to the door.
Seonghwa is busy watering the plants. "Ah, hey! How was your scenery project?"
"Good, good!"
"What, this is it?", Wooyoung hisses, taking off his jacket. He pinches the older's waist. "If I called your storyboarding a scenery project you would have behaded me."
"Well you are a brat", Hongjoong whispers back, to which the younger only rolls his eyes, only to add a louder "brought someone with me today. Seonghwa, this is Wooyoung."
"HEEEYYYY", Wooyoung gives him a wave and earns a chuckle. "Nice to finally meet you, you know, Hongjoong always talks about his infamous roommate."
I'm going to kill that kid.
"Ah, really?" Seonghwa shoots him a glance, and he can't read an expression from it before it's already gone. "He talks about his friends too." Hee points at Woo with the water in his hands. "I'm guessing you are the loud one?"
"He is", Hongjoong quickly states before the younger has enough time to answer. "And you're just here to pick some notes up, c'mon. I got things to do."
With that, he pulls him into his room.
"What, you're not even inviting me for dinner?", Wooyoung says fifteen minutes later as he is getting dragged out by his friend.
"Exactly. You're a vaccuum when it comes to food, and I'm broke."
"You're mean, that's what you are-"
"Yeah, yeah, you're gonna survive it."
He somehow managed to get the boy into door-and-floor-space; he knows how long it can take to get him actually past the frame.
"Now go home and study. And use the notes!"
"You know I would be better off if you helped me study!"
"I got my own stuff to do."
"We could study together."
"I will clean my desk now. Go ask San!"
He sighs at the whine the younger lets out.
"Yah, hyung, you're really no fun. You don't even care about me or my grades."
"I literally just gave you all my notes."
"Yeah, but you got a monster brain and I don't understand them-"
A soft giggle makes them both turn around.
Seonghwa is done with the plants - he now seems to be cleaning the dining table, and for that, he's taken off his hoodie.
The tshirt he's wearing is white, a perfect match to his skin. His tan, muscular arms flex lightly at his movements.
"Huh." Wooyoung stares for a moment, tilting his head.
"Hongjoong hyung?"
"Hm?"
"You know the thing...you told me earlier?"
"The thing? I-what thing?"
"That thing."
"Oh. Yeah. Let me guess. You get my point now?"
"Definetely. Yeah."
Hongjoong leans onto Wooyoung's shoulder with one arm.
Four eyes are on Seongwha, who is painfully oblivious, probably not even listening. He's holding a can in his hands.
"Juice, anyone?"
"He's kinda like a mum. You're kinda like a mum, Seonghwa."
"I-what?"
"That's his way of giving somebody nicknames, I think. Either that or he's got both mommy and daddy issues. He told me I sound like a dad-"
He coughs away the pain as the younger smacks his stomach; for a moment, Seonghwa's eyes are on him.
"You know, hyung, I agree with you", Wooyoung says right before he's out the door, getting his revenge. "Your roommate is hot, you were right about that."
Snitch.
Hongjoong, however, did not expect anything less. He deals with it the way he always deals with pretty boys : joking about it until it hurts because he doesn't stand a chance anyway, vibing in the frequency of an awkward wave.
Hakuna matata.
"I know I am - I'm always right!", he shouts after the younger friend although the door is already closed.
Just be shameless, nobody knows you're dying of embarassment until you show it.
And maybe he is a little competitive as well. Maybe.
He doesn't even look at the older; he plays it off with a soft chuckle, focusing his attention back on his desk that, he must admit, looks like a battle field of supplies. Brushes, pencils, notes, papers, folders - a cup of coffee here, a computer mouse there. Sweet sweet college life.
It's quiet around him, nothing unusual, Seonghwa is a calm person after all. If he's honest, Hongjoong is glad to have found a roommate like him. (If only he wasn't so handsome that it's hard, like, really hard, to focus. He can't complain though.)
The weird knot in his chest forces him to go against his anxiety and look up. He meets Seonghwa's eyes immediately.
Again.
"What?", he asks, breathing out a laugh that - he hopes sincerely - doesn't sound nervous.
"He just gave you a compliment, that's Wooyoung for you."
"Mhm", Seonghwa makes.
"Aw, are you getting shy? Don't you know how to handle a compliment?"
A light hint of pink appears on the older's cheeks, which is weird because at the same time, he's furrowing his brows. Hongjoong wishes he didn't enjoy teasing him so much.
(Spoiler alert: not really.)
"What? No-"
He grins.
Cute.
He might be smiling through the pain when it comes to the next comment, but hey - Nobody has to know. (How would they know?)
"Is it because he's pretty? Is he your type?"
That's how you do it. Just drop hints and make him date another dude, to cope with the fact that you might develope an unhealthy crush on your roommate and don't stand a chance.
Hah!
But who would do such a thing, not Hongjoong.
Obviously.
"He's a really great guy", he cheerfully adds, focusing on his organization again. "A little loud, but maybe that's a match. I could totally set you guys up."
He doesn't even know what paper he has in his hands.
"Well, yeah", a deep voice suddenly murmurs in his ear and he nearly jumps.
Seonghwa is standing right in front of him.
"You could do that...but", he inhales softly, grabbing a pastel pink pen from the tornado of chaos Hongjoong calls his work place. It's got a little plastic strawberry on its tip.
"He's not really my type."
And then, almost like a whisper, and a lot closer to his ear, he just says: "You are."
And then he leaves, letting Hongjoong alone in the living room, with the words "I think that's my pen, thanks", and Hongjoong just stares at the wall.
#yall are underrestimating Seonghwa and it shows#PLSSS IMAGINE THE GAY PANIC HAHA#kpop#ateez#hongjoong#funny#au#college#soft#one shot#seongjoong#honghwa#matz#mars#park seonghwa#kim hongjoong#seonghwa#8 makes 1 team#fanfiction#wooyoung#slice of life#atiny#kingdom#cute#boys#crushes#bxb#lol
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Sunday Mornings 6/?
Notes: Because I feel like these two fluff muffins would playfully bicker about whose more romantic, but they certainly would be competitive with other couples... Shout out to @cosmicclownboy for the inspiration.
Week 6:
If Michael is being honest, he wasn’t sold on the idea at first. When Alex had woken him up at 5am, telling him to grab his shoes and meet him at the car, Michael hadn’t been thrilled. After all, 5am is incredibly early for his day off and he’d been really looking forward to sleeping in. But now that they have arrived, Michael has to admit, he’s coming around.
After all, being driven out to the middle of the desert, to the same spot that they used to come to when they were kids, just to watch the sunrise together? It’s a pretty smooth move. A move made even more romantic when Alex reveals that he’s packed breakfast for the two of them.
Michael pulls down the tailgate as Alex grabs a blanket to spread out over the bed of the truck. Just like old times.
“You know, you don’t have to work so hard to get laid,” he teases as he helps Alex climb into the back. He’s careful to send him a wink though to let him know that he very much appreciates the effort.
“You’re welcome.” His smile is big and unguarded. It has Michael rocking back on his heels.
Fuck. He’s seriously the most attractive person in the entire world. Looking at him when he’s like this always catches Michael’s breath. He still doesn’t understand how he’s finally being allowed this after all the shit he’s done, but he’s not going to fight it.
Michael shakes his head clear and crawls up after him. Alex is already lounging attractively, arms open, inviting Michael to join him. He wastes no time snuggling up beside him. They lay there like that, Michael with his head on Alex’s shoulder, staring up at the few remaining stars they can still see as the sky turns a light blue. Sunrise is nearing.
“Did I miss an anniversary or something?” Michael asks after several minutes.
“Can’t I just want to do something romantic for my boyfriend?” Alex asks.
Michael rolls onto his stomach and puts his arms on Alex’s chest before resting his head against them. “You can. I was just curious what inspired this?”
“It’s nothing,” Alex says in a way that means it’s most certainly something. Michael stares at him until he continues. “It’s just something stupid Rameriz said to me the other day.”
“Rameriz? That douchey sergeant who works the gate?”
Alex nods.
“What the fuck did he have to say?” Michael asks, silently thinking that whatever it was, he probably still owes him a beer for getting Alex to plan all of this.
“He was talking to the guys, trying to get advice for this romantic anniversary he’s planning, and then made a joke that I didn’t have to worry about that stuff because I’m dating a guy,” Alex said. “I don’t know, it’s stupid. But it annoyed me.”
Michael sits up. “What because we’re two dudes, we can’t be romantic?”
Alex sits up to join him. “Apparently,” he says with a deep sigh.
Alex rolls his eyes and Michael finds he’s just as annoyed. “Did you tell him that we’re like romance goals?”
Alex snorts. “Romance goals?” He quirks his eyebrow at Michael, teasing him and damn, Michael just wants to tackle him and have his way with him… but that will have to wait.
“I don’t know,” he says, ducking his head to hide a blush. “That’s what Isobel calls us.”
“Good,” Alex replies, and Michael looks up to see him puffing out his chest a bit. “I’m glad somebody appreciates a decent love story.”
“Decent?” Michael scoffs. “What happened to cosmic?”
“I just… If I have to hear about Liz and Max and their stupid handprint story one more time, I’m going to scream,” Alex says.
Michael is about to agree, because he has noticed that Max has a tendency to talk about his relationship like it’s the end all and be all. As if he’s the only one that found his soulmate in high school and spent ten years pining… Then Alex’s words click.
“Do you want a handprint?” he asks, seriously.
“No,” Alex says instantly then pauses, actually thinking about it. The tension in his body relaxes and he reaches out for Michael’s hands.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean that,” he says much softer this time. “If you ever decided that was something that you wanted to share with me, I would 100% welcome your handprint on me. Because there’s not a single part of you that I don’t welcome. What I meant was… I don’t need it. We fell in love without all of that. When Liz or Max tell me that story, I don’t get jealous, because I know and see all of you without any handprint. And I know you see me too.”
Michael smiles at that. He feels the same way. He’s sure one day, he’ll try it with Alex just to see how it feels. But the truth is, he’s never done it with Alex because it always seemed like a crutch. Max used his handprint with Liz to show her how he felt about her because he couldn’t say the words. Most of his problems with Alex have stemmed from an inability to communicate, and if he wants this to work, he’s determined not to take any shortcuts.
“You know, Max is always asking Isobel how to win back Liz,” Michael explains. “I’ll be sitting right there and he won’t even think to ask me about it, even though, between Iz and I, I’m clearly more likely to have advice on winning back your soulmate after you’ve messed up.”
“That’s because everyone thinks all we do is fuck,” he says, dragging over the cooler he’d packed to start pulling food out.
“I mean, we do fuck a lot… but that’s not all we do,” Michael argues.
“Yeah, I don’t think they believe either of us can be romantic though,” he says. “They look at us and see a repressed airman and…” Alex waves his hand over Michael, searching for the right word to describe Michael.
“Sex god?” Michael teases, earning him a shocked laugh.
“I was gonna go with emotionally stunted cowboy with too much swagger, but that comment probably says enough.” Alex glares at him playfully.
Over Alex’s shoulder, Michael catches the first glimpse of sunrise as the horizon lights up a bright orange. Michael nods towards it. “We gonna watch this thing?”
Alex spins around on the spot to face the sunrise and Michael pulls Alex back against his chest and hugs him from behind, hooking his chin over his shoulder.
“Anyone that thinks you can’t do romance, is an idiot,” Michael tells him, kissing the side of his neck as the sun slowly paints the sky vivid shades of red and orange, making Alex’s skin just glow.
Alex smiles at him over his shoulder before turning back around, resting his head against Michael’s shoulder.
“This may be more romantic than the first time you took me to look at the stars when we were kids.” Michael doesn’t need to see Alex’s face to know that he’s looking smug.
“Mmmm,” he hums in agreement. He may find Alex’s confidence sexy as hell, but he certainly can’t allow it. Because this morning has been pretty impressive, but Michael has had some pretty smooth moments himself.
“Well it’s more romantic than me taking you to see the stars, but less romantic than when I surprised you at the airport after your first tour,” he points out, playfully pinching Alex’s side, earning him a laugh.
“I’ll take your airport surprise and raise you a love note slipped into your wallet before my second tour,” Alex says.
And, yeah. That’s fair. It had taken Michael a few days to find it once Alex had left, but damn… It had been a hell of a note. Michael still has it in his wallet to this day. Those ten years hadn’t been great, but that doesn’t mean that they haven’t had some truly brilliant moments.
“No no no. See, I bought an airstream so you could come home on leave and not have to see your father,” he argues, enjoying messing with Alex, mostly because Alex was always super competitive. “I win the romance game.”
Alex scoffs. “You bought an airstream so you wouldn’t have to sleep in a truck.”
“I bought an airstream so you wouldn’t have to sleep in my truck,” Michael says.
Alex sits up and looks at him with narrowed eyes, trying to see if that’s the truth or not. Michael continues to smile at him, refusing to give anything away. Alex eventually huffs.
“Let’s just agree that we’re both awesome,” he says, grabbing some of the fruit he’d packed before settling back in against Michael.
“Is that Alex Manes for ‘fine you win?’”
Alex laughs. “You’re a real jackass.”
“Your jackass,” he says, stealing the strawberry from Alex’s hand and eating it himself.
Alex huffs. “There’s literally more strawberries right next to you,” he complains.
“It tastes better when it’s yours,” he says, repeating the same argument Alex always makes whenever he steals Michael’s coffee. Alex glares at him for a minute and Michael just smiles back sweetly until Alex’s face relaxes and he melts back into him.
They sit there for several more minutes in silence as the sun seems to settle and the sky returns to a more natural blue, all traces of red and orange gone. Even then, Alex doesn’t move and Michael has no plans to make him. They eat their breakfast in comfortable silence, Michael stealing Alex’s food every so often and Alex randomly bringing their joined hands up to place kisses at the back of Michael’s hand.
They have nowhere to be and no reason to rush.
At some point Alex starts humming a song Michael doesn’t recognize, which probably means that it’s the secret song he’s been writing for the last week. The song that Michael isn’t allowed to ask about but will get to hear with everyone else at the next open mic night.
If there is such a thing as a perfect moment, this is it. He suddenly feels the need to immortalize this morning, even though he really isn’t much of a ‘document the moment’ kind of guy.
“Do you really wanna piss the heteros off?” Michael asks.
“What?” Alex sounds resigned, but Michael knows him well enough to know that he’s already agreed without needing to hear whatever Michael is about to say, and he loves that about Alex. He reaches into his pocket and hands Alex his phone.
Alex smiles at him in understanding, taking the phone from him. He types Michael’s password in and he opens up the camera app and holds it out in front of him, careful to include both of them in the frame as well as their picnic.
“Ready?”
Michael nods and at the last second, as Alex is taking the photo, Michael kisses Alex’s cheek.
And that’s how, twenty minutes later, they both end up updating their social media for the first time in over a year talking about love, surprises, and sunrise meals. #RelationshipGoals.
Tagged: @callieramics
As always if anyone wants to be tagged, let me know!
#roswell nm#roswell new mexico#malex fic#malex#fic: sunday mornings#michael guerin#alex manes#Domestic Bliss#fluff fest#soft boys
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Accidents Happen - Playing With Fire
Summary: Roman works to get closer to Janus, and finds that he isn’t sure how much he likes this new side of himself.
Content: food mention, panic attack, vomit mention but only very briefly, fire mention
Words: 5,936
{Part 1} {Part 3}
Janus was a surprisingly decent study partner.
Well, the fact that he was a good study partner was not the surprising part. He was a perfect student, one of the very few people in their year with better grades than Roman over all of their subjects, and had won several debate competitions over the last few years, both solo and in a team. If Roman had been surprised that Janus was a good student, he would have been even less observant than the main character in one of the books he had read once. That guy had managed to live in the same dorm room as somebody for seven years and managed to misinterpret the intense attraction between the two of them as hatred and rivalry. And had managed to miss the fact that he was his own worst enemy. Roman wasn’t that unobservant.
The surprising part was that Roman had failed to prepare himself for the fact that Janus might actually be good at pretending to be a good person, and that it was more difficult than he had hoped not to actually like him or appreciate his good qualities, like being a good study partner.
Fortunately, Roman was a good actor. He had plenty of practice at keeping the line between real life and a role.
When, after they had been staring at Roman's notes for an hour and Janus made some comment about how he should have chosen a study buddy with better handwriting, one with handwriting he could actually read, Roman only laughed because that was what Janus expected of him. It wasn’t as though the snake was actually funny, or anything.
“I’m serious. The only reason I believe that this is your real handwriting is because I’m watching you produce these illegible scrawls as I speak.” Janus had leaned back in his chair, staring with some kind of fascinated horror at the fountain pen in Roman’s already ink stained fingers.
“It’s not that bad! If it were illegible, I wouldn’t have passed any of my exams,” Roman pointed out. Although he sounded amused, irritation had flickered to life in his gut. If his handwriting was that distasteful, maybe Janus should go and find somebody else to help him catch up.
“It is that bad,” his companion drawled. “It’s almost bad enough to think that you’re deliberately trying to sabotage my attempts to catch up! How you revise from those things is beyond me.”
Again, Roman had laughed at that. Perish the thought! Him, sabotage Janus? Never! Well, not until he found proof that he had actively had a hand in Remus’ fate. Until that time came, he would just have to wait and watch, gain the snake’s trust until he was ready to spill his guts, and be a minor inconvenience from the shadows.
For example, when a tall man wandered into the kitchen and gazed in mild surprise at Roman before going to the fridge and returning with a pack of chocolate biscuits to offer around, Roman took two, rather than one.
"I didn't know you had friends over, Jan. Should have said something." The man had to be Janus' father. They had the same slender build, the same delicate grey eyes, the same narrow hands. A silver band was around the man's left ring finger.
"It's one friend, Dad -" Roman was a master detective "- and he's helping me catch up on the work I've missed."
Well, Janus was definitely lying there. They weren't friends - they barely knew one another! And if Janus could lie about something like this, he could definitely lie about why he was in the car with Remus. (Yes, Roman was aware that he was probably making slightly too big a deal out of absolutely nothing at all. No, he was not going to stop. Any reason to be hopeful was a good reason to be hopeful).
He was brought out of his triumphant musings by a hearty chuckle as Mr Sinclaire patted Janus genially on his shoulder (the unscarred side, Roman noted). "That's my boy, nose to the grindstone as ever! Alright, you kids have fun."
"Studying, sir, is the epitome of fun,” Roman deadpanned. Well, it wasn’t as though he could just sit there and say nothing - but from the looks that both Sinclaires were now giving him, he rather wished he had stayed silent. Janus was looking as though he rather wished that Roman would crawl back into whatever drain in which he had originated. His father looked as though Roman was something a barely tolerated cat had dragged in through the door after finding it already dead on the side of the road.
Then Mr Sinclaire let out a brief laugh and clapped Janus on the shoulder again. “A funny one! Well, I’ll let you get back to your thrilling pastime.”
Janus chuckled briefly and waved his scarred hand in a shoo-ing motion, and his father left as Roman began to wonder if he had imagined their distasteful expressions. To quell this line of thinking, he took another two biscuits and added them to the two sitting beside his notebook.
By the time Janus was glancing at the clock and telling Roman that he should probably leave now because he had dinner in half an hour (Roman could smell whatever it was coming through from the kitchen. It was probably more worms, maybe with beetles mixed in, but damn did it smell good), there were eleven biscuits stacked neatly beside his elbow. Janus raised an eyebrow at them, pushing the small stack of notes he had been deciphering back toward Roman. “You know, you weren’t going to get kicked out for refusing them if you weren’t hungry.”
Rather than bristling in irritation, Roman chuckled and picked up one of the cookies. They were raisin - squashed fly biscuits, Remus always called them. “Who said I wasn’t hungry?” It was like sawdust in his mouth, but he forced himself to swallow anyway. Janus didn’t look impressed.
Actually, Roman wasn’t sure he’d ever seen Janus look impressed.
“Ah, I must be mistaken. Where I come from, stockpiling cookies rather than eating them is not the mark of the hungry.”
“Then you, sir,” Roman replied, pointing his half-eaten biscuit sternly in Janus’ direction, “have a lot to learn.”
Janus chuckled his serial-killer chuckle and gestured toward the door in a motion that was almost a mockery of a bow. “I shall look forward to my next lesson, then. For now, Princey, I shall bid you adieu.”
Roman looked at him. “What?”
“Adieu. A - D - I - E - U. It’s French, means-”
“I know what it means,” Roman said, interrupting Janus’ exaggerated eye-roll. “It was the Prince part.”
Now it was Janus’ turn for confusion to slip over his features. “I… Sorry. It’s just, you know, your surname meaning ‘king’ and everything, it just slipped out.”
“I didn’t know you spoke Korean.”
“Oh, I… Just a few words.” The burned side of Janus’ face had gone a strange blotchy red, and it took Roman a few seconds to realise that he was blushing. Huh. It seemed that Janus wasn’t always as smooth as he seemed from a distance.
What would Janus do if Roman pressed the point? He seemed flustered. It didn’t make much sense for Janus to just happen to know the meaning of his surname - had he researched him?
Janus was rubbing the back of his neck now, trying to make the fact that he was avoiding Roman’s eyes seem natural rather than bizarre as he showed him to the door, and a peculiar idea struck him. Most people - especially not ones as reserved as Janus Sinclaire - didn’t come up with nicknames after just a few hours studying together, during which they had hardly exchanged more than a handful of words each. Nor did they research the names of random people they had just met.
Was it possible that Janus had a crush on him?
Roman knew he was fairly easy on the eyes. Not in a conceited way - he didn’t think he was conceited, anyway. It was hard not to get used to the fact when every relative commented on how attractive he looked these days, or when his brother had been calling him the handsome twin for years. He was intelligent, kind, outgoing, sometimes funny, and usually a fairly good friend. It wasn’t impossible to believe that Janus could be interested.
On the other hand, it did seem fairly improbable. Thanks to a few too many fistfights and biking accidents, Roman and Remus weren’t exactly identical anymore; even ignoring Remus’ chipped teeth and the scars on his face and hands, Remus was about an inch shorter than Roman and rather more muscle than him. But they still looked similar enough that it was very hard to look at Roman and not see Remus lurking behind his eyes (and vice versa), and Roman couldn’t quite believe that Janus was stupid enough to have a crush on somebody so reminiscent of the person that had (supposedly) lured him into a car and then nearly killed him.
Janus could be faking it, of course. What would he gain from that? If he was guilty of anything more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time, creating openings for Roman to poke around could only lead to the truth being discovered. Maybe he thought that he could outsmart Roman - maybe he thought that Roman was stupid. Maybe he was planning something else, something devious, something that this time the other Wang twin would take the fall for.
He would have to keep a much closer eye on Janus than he had originally thought.
On Monday, Roman found Janus in the library toward the end of lunch, and ended up helping him find a book on some long-dead philosopher. He accidentally-on-purpose allowed their fingers to brush when he handed the book over, watching Janus’ face out of the corner of his eye for his reaction. No blush. No stammering. He barely even seemed to notice the lingering touch.
Janus
Evidence for crush: 0
Evidence against crush: 1
On Tuesday, Roman’s fountain pen exploded halfway through his calculus class, covering not only his hands in black ink but also his favourite scarlet sweater and the page of exercises and notes he had been working on. He missed the rest of class trying to wash the stuff off in one of the bathrooms, but when he arrived at his locker to collect his script at the end of the day he found a page of notes in neat calligraphy had been taped to the metal door. At the top of the page was written ‘Thought you’d need these. J.S.’
Janus
Evidence for crush: ½
Evidence against crush: 1
Evidence for being a creepy stalker: 1
Roman deliberately ignored the fact that he knew where Janus’ locker was as well, and for far more devious purposes than handing over missed notes.
On Thursday morning, Janus was waiting by his locker.
(Evidence for being a creepy stalker: 2)
Roman didn’t look at him, unlocking the door and depositing half of the textbooks he had brought with him that morning. “Wasn’t expecting to see you here, Sinclaire. Don’t you have Chem first? On the other side of the school?”
“Memorising my timetable, Princey? Most people would call that stalking, you know.” There was a playful note in Janus’ hoarse voice that made Roman’s eyes dart sideways toward him. A small smile was lingering on the edge of his lips.
(Evidence for crush: ¾)
“You must be lucky, then. Most people don’t have such a handsome stalker.” Roman closed his locker, shouldering his rucksack again, and leaned against it to look Janus in the eye. Did this count as flirting? Roman hoped so. If flirting with Janus got him closer to the truth, Roman would happily take the snake out to dinner and a movie.
Janus’ smile widened almost imperceptibly, and his eyes flicked away from Roman’s. Did the burned side of his face grow ever so slightly redder, or was Roman imagining it?
(Evidence for crush: 1 ½)
“Or one so inept as to admit they’re a stalker, stalker.”
Roman flushed. “Did you want something?”
“Hm?” Janus looked briefly startled. Then he brought his hand up to adjust the chocolate coloured beanie on his head until it was no longer covering his ears. He was wearing what looked like thin leather gloves. “Ah, yes. It has been brought to my attention that I have missed a lot of practice time for our oral presentations for Espanol, and I-”
“Español.”
“Exactly. I was hoping you wouldn’t mind studying with me again tomorrow?” Janus didn’t look that perturbed by the fact that he had been interrupted. Maybe he had bungled the pronunciation deliberately to give Roman the opportunity to show off and correct him. Roman had no doubt that he was capable of it. Manipulative jerk.
(Evidence for being a creepy stalker / manipulative jerk: 3)
There was a few seconds of silence as Roman just stared at Janus, who was beginning to look somewhat uncomfortable by the time it occurred to Roman that he had just been asked a question. He shook his head, and Janus’ face fell. Then he nodded, and the small half-smile returned to Janus’ lips. “Oh. Uh. Sure, yeah. That sounds good. I’ll… Bring my notes.”
“Awesome.” Janus nodded once, as though they had just completed a low-risk business transaction, and then hitched his satchel back onto his shoulder (it had slipped down his arm whilst they had been talking) and turned to walk away.
When he got to Janus’ house on Friday afternoon, there was already a plate of biscuits in the middle of the table, and a second empty plate in the place Roman had sat the previous week. Janus greeted him with a nod toward it: "For your galleta hoarding needs."
Roman flipped him off, then chuckled and sat down. "I appreciate the compensation for the vicious mockery you give my handwriting, in any case."
"My mockery is justified. You write as though you were taught by racoons. Rabid racoons."
Roman hid his snort by leaning down to dig his notes out of his bag. "Sit down, Sinclaire. It's Spanish time."
When he straightened up, Janus was still standing next to him, staring absently at the table. Roman waited for him to move, and when nothing happened, he reached up to poke his cheek.
"Ah!" Roman jerked his hand back as Janus flinched away, one hand coming up to cover his face; Roman realised much too late that he had just prodded his still-fresh burns.
"Oh, fuck, dude, I'm so sorry! Are you alright?" Standing, Roman reached out automatically to try to do something - what, he had no idea - but Janus batted his hands away. He was still wearing the gloves from earlier that morning.
"Fine. I'm fine. Sit down, Roman. Sit down." Janus rubbed his cheek again, walking around the table to his own seat.
Roman obeyed, forcing himself to ignore the guilt rising in the back of his throat. He could feel guilty later, if - and only if - Janus turned out to be completely innocent. If he wasn't, which Roman was almost completely certain was the truth, then he deserved every little inconvenience that Roman could give him.
They sat in silence for a short time, Janus staring at his gloved hands, Roman staring at Janus. There was a clock somewhere in the kitchen, and it filled the quiet air between them with a rhythmic ticking. After a total of ninety-four seconds, Roman cleared his throat. "Um… Janus? Are you okay?"
Janus nodded slowly, rubbing his fingers against the palm of the opposite hand, and then looked up. "Yeah. Burns are still pretty sore to touch. I'm… Heh. I'm gradually reducing the number of painkillers I'm on, so…"
"Got it. No more poking." Roman offered Janus a nervous smile, which grew when it was met with the semi-amused half-smile. "So… Spanish?"
Would Janus have opened up to him like that if he thought Roman was investigating him? He must trust Roman at least a little to share that much information about his injuries. There was no way Janus thought Roman was a threat to him, or likely to come close to uncovering the mess of lies he had wrapped around Remus.
Of course, he could also be innocent.
But he wasn't: Roman knew it. There was no way the snake sitting opposite was innocent of anything that had happened in Roman's car that night.
He wished he hadn't hurt him, though. Roman didn't want to hurt people. He didn't want to be like Remus, and have the crowds of people at school part for him as though being closer than two metres was a death sentence.
It was another week until Roman tried his luck and asked about the gloves. They had started spending lunchtimes together, usually in the library, meeting after Janus had eaten to study. Roman was beginning to suspect that Janus wasn't as behind on his Spanish as he was claiming to be: on Wednesday, he had left to find a reference book for his biology class and come back to find Janus correcting part of his essay.
(Janus
Evidence for crush: 5
Evidence against crush: 8
Evidence for being a creepy stalker / manipulative jerk: 7
Reasons not to trust: 11)
Roman had ended up coming over to his house on Tuesday and Wednesday, both times to revise for their exams, which had started that week and would continue into the next. On the Wednesday, Janus had left his phone on the table while he went to the bathroom, and Roman had seized his chance.
Unfortunately, his attempts to gather more information on his study partner were fruitless: Janus had password protected his phone, and Roman didn't know him well enough to even attempt to guess it. His lock screen offered no clues: a picture of a building made of pale brick, with ivy climbing the sides that could be anything from an old home to a stock photo of a museum. It showed the time, and there was an 'If found, please call' message underneath that, with a number just below. Roman studied the number for a moment before taking a picture with his own phone and returning Janus' to the table.
By the time the brunet returned, Roman was nose-deep in deciphering his own notes on the future perfect tense.
An image search of the photograph he had taken showed up only adverts for different phones, and he couldn’t find anything about the number when he had searched it online (not that he was expecting to - it was probably for one of Janus’ parents). The picture of the building had seemed promising at first, but Roman quickly discovered that the sheer number of pale brick, ivy-covered buildings that appeared when he tried searching online would take until Remus’ sentence was up to comb through.
Friday marked the end of their first week of exams, and the first time that Janus invited Roman up to his bedroom to study. “No biscuits this time, I’m afraid. But that means we can go upstairs, which is more comfortable,” he had said, gesturing up the sweeping staircase with one hand.
Janus’ room was just as neat as Roman had expected it to be. A single bed was pushed against one wall, looking as though it had just been made that morning (Roman felt a stab of embarrassment for his own bed, which looked as though half of Simba’s pride had been using the duvet for hunting practice) (as opposed to Remus’ mattress, which actually had stuffing leaking out of it from an ‘accident’ with a bow and arrow); an oblong fluffy brown rug took up a large amount of the floor in the middle of the room, and Roman wasted no time in throwing himself down upon it as Janus crossed to the large desk by the window. There were no posters or pictures tacked to the pale yellow walls, but a single photo frame stood on the bedside table. Roman craned his neck to see it and found, disappointingly yet predictably, it contained a picture of a younger Janus clutching an award. A book was resting beside it, a brown tassel poking out from somewhere near the middle. There was a wardrobe against one wall, a chest against another, and a bookshelf containing what looked like every psychology and law textbook ever written.
Maybe neat had been an understatement. Janus’ room was practically spartan; it could have belonged to anybody. Take away the picture frame and Janus would completely disappear, leaving it free for anybody to use. The thought made Roman a little sad. Janus was pulling papers from his rucksack; rolling over, Roman glanced toward the door - and as he did, something under the bed caught his eye. A smile spread over his face.
“What should we start with? I’m thinking Chem, given that we have that on Monday, and then-”
“You do have a soul!” Roman’s voice was positively gleeful as he got up and crawled toward the bed, and he had to admit that his enthusiasm was genuine. Maybe the room wasn’t so spartan after all.
“What? Ro, wh- oh. No, put those back, we're studying here, not…" Janus trailed away, exasperated, as Roman straightened up clutching a stuffed snake that had to be over a metre long, and a cuddly green octopus.
"Not that your room isn't charming in its utilitarian-ness, but these add so much, don't you think?" He squeezed the octopus thoughtfully before positioning it carefully beside Janus' pillow. "Did you hide these because you knew I was coming around? Because that's just sad, Sinclaire. You never have to hide your stuffed toys." Roman gestured emphatically with the snake, then moved a little closer and used its blunt snout to ease Janus' hat off of his head as the other buried his face in his hand.
"...your obsession with stuffed animals…" Roman heard him mutter, and then, "Stop it, you oaf, stop…"
"Make me," he replied maturely, and started bopping Janus on the head with the yellow animal.
With a theatrical groan that Roman was almost impressed by, Janus started half-heartedly batting at the snake. Roman responded by chuckling and hitting him again. "You'll have to try harder than that! Come on, Jan…"
"Listen, you…"
The next time the snake went near Janus' now messy hair, he grabbed it and tried to jerk it out of Roman's hands. With a cry of laughter, Roman pulled back harder, managing to jerk his nemesis off his chair.
Which would have been fine: Janus would have stood, pulled harder, the snake would have been his for the taking, and that would have been the end of it.
Only Janus managed to trip on the edge of the rug that Roman had been so enjoying a moment ago, and the momentum from their tug of war pushed him off balance. He crashed into Roman, who stumbled from the unexpected weight, and then they were both on the floor.
Or, more accurately, Roman was on the floor with an aching head and tailbone, and Janus was lying on top of him, wincing. "Fuck, Wang, how are you so boney?"
Roman made a (highly dignified) squeaking noise, too winded to speak. Janus' scar went that same blotchy red as it had the other day.
"Oh. Sorry, let me just…" He rolled himself off and sat up, and Roman took a deep breath as air rushed back into his lungs. "You alright?"
Roman waved a hand. "Fine, fine… Just gonna lie here… a second…"
"Here." A hand wrapped around his, and Roman felt himself being pulled back to his feet - apparently Janus was stronger than he had thought. "You're lighter than I expected. All good? Happy to go back to studying now?"
"Why do you wear those things?"
They were still holding hands, and Roman was staring at the yellow glove against his brown skin. It was smooth to the touch. He didn't realise that Janus was staring at him until the silence became uncomfortable enough for him to look up; shaking his head, Roman pulled away with a nervous chuckle. "Sorry. Sorry, that was… Don't worry about it. You're right, let's…" he gestured helplessly at Janus' desk.
Janus rubbed the back of his neck slowly, then shrugged and sat down. He handed Roman a stack of flashcards. The top one read 'endothermic reaction'. "Layer of protection against infection. Only one glove is weird. Besides, people stare less at the glove than they did at the scarring, and they already stare enough at my face. I think I'll spare the hands. Quiz me."
Roman stared at him. Janus was facing the window again, not looking at him anymore. His back was perfectly straight, the sun shining bronze through his shoulder-length wave of hair, and Roman was struck with the urge to rest a hand on his shoulder, to comfort him. "Janus… If-"
"Quiz me," Janus interrupted, insistently. "Chemistry test on Monday. Final grade. Flashcards. Go."
So Roman quizzed him, telling himself that it was for the best. He didn't want to get too close to Janus, didn't want to feel sympathy for him. Janus was hiding something about Remus' and his accident, which meant that Janus could have kept Remus out of jail, which meant that Janus couldn't be trusted no matter how nice he might pretend to be or how high the guilt rose in Roman's throat.
On Monday morning, they sat their chemistry exam in the sports hall, and Roman could only find one question that he didn't feel confident with. Janus, he knew, must have aced it. He hadn't gotten a single flashcard wrong on Friday.
Then they had a written Spanish exam, and then lunch. Roman toyed with his bento for ten minutes or so, then put his lunchbox away again and went to join Janus in the library to revise for their practical assessment that afternoon.
Roman wasn't paying attention when everything had gone wrong. His focus had been solely on the copper sulphate solution he was attempting to crystallise, checking the timer to make sure he noted down the temperature of the solution every fifteen seconds; the first he knew of a problem was a hoarse cry, a few screams, and the slamming of the heavy classroom door.
He looked up apprehensively, although he thought he already knew what he was going to see.
Sure enough, Janus was missing from his station; Virgil, his lab partner, had his back pressed against the window a full three metres away from their work and was looking as though he had been on the verge of jumping out. The pairs at the stations around theirs were all staring at him, and Roman was willing to bet that his had been one of the screams. Their teacher was staring at the door with an expression of great concern on his face.
Roman was out of his spot before he had thought it through, shrugging off his lab coat and ignoring the whisper of annoyance from Melanie, his own lab partner. "Sir, Mr Sanders? Can I go make sure he's alright?"
Their teacher nodded gratefully at him. "Thanks, Mr Wang. Tell him he doesn't have to come back to finish, alright? The rest of you have… Eighteen minutes until the end of the test."
Roman closed the door on the sound of people scurrying to get back to their experiments, and looked up and down the corridor. Janus was nowhere in sight. Where would he go? Not his locker: that was too public, and Roman had a feeling that Janus wouldn't want anybody to see if he was freaking out. The gym? No, there was a French assessment happening in the gym at the moment. So… The bathrooms, maybe. Roman took off at a brisk jog toward the toilets by the science staircase.
He knew he had the right place the moment he opened the door. The sound of strangled sobs and gasps was coming from the middle toilet cubicle, and when Roman closed the door they stopped briefly, as though Janus was holding his breath, before starting again in a rush. Roman winced.
"Janus? It's me."
"Go - Go away!" Janus' voice was more strained than usual, and Roman sighed quietly before moving forward to knock gently on the cubicle door. It swung open under his touch - Janus hadn't locked it.
"Can I come in?"
"Can - can I st-stop you?" Janus tried to snap the words, but they came out unsteady and breathless.
He was curled up on the closed lid of the toilet seat, knees pulled to his chest and one arm wrapped tightly around them. The other was braced against one knee, hand fisted in his brown beanie as he hyperventilated, face and eyes red. The smell of burnt fabric lingered around him; the left sleeve of his lab coat was blackened and burned.
Roman took a small step forward, then knelt down in front of him. "Can I touch you, Jan?"
Janus shook his head, then unwrapped his right arm from around his knees and held out his hand. Roman took it and squeezed gently, and was met with a vice-like squeeze. He didn't pull away.
"Do you want to try a breathing exercise?" A nod. "I'm going to count, but no pressure. Ready? Breathe with me. In for four, yeah? Two, three, four, and hold for four, two, three, four, that's it, and out for two, three, four, five, and six. And in, two, three, four… You're doing really well, Jan. You're here, you're safe… And out, two, three, four, five, six…"
“I - This - I shouldn’t-”
“It’s okay, Jan. With me, in, two, three, four… Hold, two, three, four, and out, two, three, four… That’s it…”
That wasn’t it, actually. Janus’ breathing was still ragged, only slightly calmer than before, but Roman kept up his gentle stream of encouragement until he spoke again.
“The - the fire, my - my sleeve, I couldn’t, I…” He broke off in a dry sob, and Roman ran his thumb gently over his knuckles.
“You’re safe now. You’re safe. I promise, alright? All you need to worry about right now is breathing, and squeezing my hand. You’re here, buddy. I’m here. It’s going to be okay…” He might never have done this for Janus before, but Roman was hardly a stranger to helping his brother through panic attacks like this one. Remus had had problems with enclosed spaces ever since they were nine and he had managed to lock himself in the cupboard under the sink, and sometimes got overwhelmed in large crowds, but whilst the triggers were different the end result and the care needed was usually the same.
He knew what it was like to be in Janus’ position, too.
Janus' grip on his hand never decreased in ferocity, but gradually the other boy's shoulders slumped from their hunched position, and he closed his eyes in exhaustion. They continued the breathing exercise for another few minutes before Roman broke the flow of counting and reassurance again. “Hey. Do you feel up for a hug?”
The tired silver eyes opened and studied Roman for a second. Then Janus shrugged. Roman hesitated until he actually nodded, standing to wrap his arms loosely around his shoulders. Janus rested his head against Roman’s chest, exhaled a long, slow breath, and murmured so quietly that Roman would have missed it had he not been right next to him, “Thanks.”
It was evening, and Roman was in his room, staring blankly at his notebook.
Janus
Evidence for crush: 9
Evidence against crush: 11
Evidence for being a creepy stalker / manipulative jerk: 12
Reasons not to trust: 16
He had stayed with Janus that afternoon, stayed until they heard the tramping of feet in the hallway outside that meant that the school day was over, until Janus had pushed him away and stood, muttering something about not wanting to keep his parents waiting. Roman had showed him how to splash water over his face to reduce the redness in his eyes, and then watched him walk away, his mind in turmoil.
He couldn’t keep investigating Janus. Not after that. Roman had observed and had enough panic attacks to know a genuine one when he saw it: Janus had been really freaked out by the small fire in their chemistry assessment. The crash had clearly had far more than just a physical impact on him. The guilt in Roman had risen so high that he had found himself doubled over a toilet, retching what little lunch he had eaten until only bile would come up. How could he have suspected Janus of deliberately doing something to get Remus locked up? Janus didn’t even know Remus. Roman was definitely in the wrong here.
He should put this whole mess behind him. Janus actually seemed like a nice person - and Roman couldn’t just ghost him now, not now that they were almost friends. If he just stopped speaking to Janus now, he would surely assume it was because Roman had been too freaked out by seeing Janus panic like that, and that wasn’t fair at all.
None of this was fair on Janus.
Roman should do something as an apology. Not that Janus needed to know it was an apology, of course, it just needed to be something they could do as friends. They hadn’t actually hung out together yet, unless studying counted - which it most definitely didn’t. They could see a movie, or something. Maybe Roman could host, and they could watch something lighthearted - a Disney film, or something similar. Nothing too violent or firey. It would be a good break from revision, if he could schedule something in for the weekend.
Not wanting to wait to see Janus the next day, Roman pulled his phone from his pocket, and had gotten as far as opening the messaging app when he realised that there was one minor flaw in this plan: he didn’t have Janus’ number.
Oh.
What did he have? He knew they all had school email addresses, but also knew that nobody ever checked those. Besides, who sent emails to ask friends to hang out? If he asked Virgil for Janus’ number (and Roman had no doubt that Virgil would know it), he would end up owing the most twitchy guy in school a massive favour - and he’d probably never live down the teasing. Virgil would tell Patton, because he told Patton everything, and as lovely as Patton was, he had no idea how to keep a secret.
Roman lowered his phone slowly, frowning. Now what? It wasn’t as though he had any favours he could call in or -
Call! He had one of Janus' parents' numbers in his camera roll from when he had taken a picture of his lock screen! Pulling his gallery up, Roman scribbled the number into his notebook and then dialled it, slapping the phone to his ear as soon as he had hit the last letter and waiting for the dial tone to go away. He would explain that he was Janus' friend, that he had managed to lose Janus' number, and could he please-
Then the voicemail message started playing, and the colour drained from Roman's face. He waited for the beep, then hung up, lowering his phone slowly.
It looked as though the investigation was back on.
"Who the fuck calls people these days? Send a text like a regular dickhead, sheesh! Whatever, if your voicemail boner is really that hard, just go ahead. This is Remus' phone - but you already knew that."
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The Monogamy Monologues (Preview)
Status: Currently writing
Posting Date: February 7th (tentative)
Creative Contributor: @underthejoon for this lovely banner!
Genre: Rom-Com / Humor / Smut
Pairing: Jungkook / Reader
Synopsis: The year? Some point after college. The occasion? Namjoon is getting married and the Rich Man’s Crochet Club has convened once again. Somewhere between the drinks and the laughter, everyone has the same realization: Jungkook has never been in a serious relationship. In the name of all that is holy (Overwatch and booze), the club’s mission is revived. Now though, their goal is much more perilous. Now, they aim to find Jeon Jungkook a girlfriend. (Part of The Rich Man’s Crochet Club series)
Estimated WC: 40K
Rating: 18+
Preview: 2,088
“JIMIN!”
“JEON!” Waving wildly, Jimin flags Jungkook down as he steps off the escalator.
There are still several people between them, but none of them prove to be a match for Jungkook. Dodging them easily – spinning, at one point around a family of five – Jungkook dramatically runs towards the exit.
“JIMIN-SSI!” he yells. “I’M COMING!”
Jimin rolls his eyes at the display. “Get your ass over here, Jeon! Sorry,” he apologizes to the same family of five.
Although the mother shoots them both a dirty look, she hurries her kids towards the Taxi stand and does not look back. Jimin opens his arms just as Jungkook crashes into his chest.
Lowering his cheek to Jimin’s hair, Jungkook closes his eyes to whisper, “I think you got shorter.”
“Fuck off,” Jimin grunts, shoving him away before laughing.
Jungkook grins. “Anyways,” he says, slinging an arm about Jimin’s neck. “Are you ready for the best weekend of our lives?”
With a good-natured shake of his head, Jimin leads Jungkook out of the terminal. Always the excellent host, Jimin actually parked his car at the airport and walked inside to greet him. Jungkook cannot remember the last time his family did that for him, let alone a friend.
“Ready to assist Namjoon, you mean?” Jimin gives Jungkook a look. “You know – on his wedding day?”
“Yeah, yeah. That.” The moment they step outside, Jungkook takes a deep breath. “Ahh,” he groans, slowly exhaling. “You smell that, Jimin?”
“Car exhaust?”
“No. Lack of humidity.”
Jimin snorts, striding forward when the crosswalk turns green. “Still not sold on Miami?”
Jungkook opens one eye. “Miami’s fine,” he says automatically, following Jimin as they enter the garage.
Over his shoulder, the garment bag keeps banging his ass. As much as Jungkook hoped this would keep his suit from wrinkling, it is looking more and more like he will need an iron.
Not believing a word Jungkook says, Jimin raises a brow. “If you say so.”
As they reach the next aisle, Jungkook takes in deep gulps of air. Jimin shakes his head at his antics, but Jungkook could not care less. This city always smells like home to him. When they reach Jimin’s car, though – a sensible, gray Subaru – Jungkook’s feet falter.
“What happened to Liz?” he blurts, taken aback by the trade.
Liz was their college nickname for Jimin’s car, stemming from the infamous Liz Lemon of 30 Rock. So dubbed because Jimin’s old car was a complete piece of crap – a lemon, from the time he drove it off the lot.
Jimin pauses, flipping the keys in one hand. “Traded it in,” he says stiffly, pulling open the door. “Too many memories.”
Realizing what Jimin means, Jungkook winces. He had nearly forgotten about the break-up. Granted, it has been almost four months since Jimin and Olivia called it quits, but the two had been dating since college. Slightly longer than Namjoon and his fiancée.
Whereas Namjoon and his fiancée grew closer after University though, Jimin and Olivia were the opposite. Jimin graduated summa cum laude with an acceptance to one of the top medical schools in the country. His painful notetaking really paid off, as Namjoon was wont to say. When he moved to Chicago and began med school in earnest, Olivia left for New York to join a consulting company.
With their busy schedules and early twenties lives, the two drifted apart. Jimin was the one who held on, not wanting to end things with the first girl he loved. It was only when he surprised Olivia in New York over Valentine’s Day he realized it was over. Not that Olivia was cheating on him, or anything – maybe it would have been easier if she were. At least then, there would be somebody to blame.
No, Jimin merely realized they did not fit anymore. Olivia had her friends and interests; he had his and the two no longer meshed. Without realizing it, they had both reached a fork in the woods and turned down different paths.
Ever since their break-up, the chat has been wary of even mentioning her name.
Jungkook glances hesitantly at his profile. “You okay, man?” he asks as they enter the car. Tossing his duffle bag over the backseat, he prays it does not land on his suit.
“Okay?” Jimin places the car in reverse. “Could be better, I guess. Could be worse.”
Jungkook nods as they pull from the spot. Slouched in his seat, he stares out the window because in times like this, he is useless. When it comes to matters of the heart, Jungkook considers himself to be woefully inept.
“Sorry man,” he says quietly. A car honks in response as they get on the highway. “Wish I could say we always hated her, but you know that’s not true.”
Jimin snorts from the driver’s seat. “Yeah, I know. I can’t really bring myself to say that, either.”
“Well, maybe you two will –”
“No. We won’t.”
Seeing Jimin’s face, Jungkook shrugs and resumes looking out the window.
After a minute, Jimin exhales. “So, how’s Miami really going?”
Jungkook’s head whips sideways to face him.
The corner of Jimin’s mouth lifts. “Thought you hid it well, huh?”
“Better than five minutes into the car ride, yeah.”
“Well, you don’t.”
Jungkook snorts. “Miami is… fine. I don’t know. It’s not really Miami I have a problem with.”
“Your job, then?”
“Yeah, and… I don’t know. Everything.”
“Be a little more vague.”
Jungkook’s lips twitch. “I just…” He pauses, collecting his thoughts. “It was so much simpler in college, you know? Things were difficult, but it all had an end date. Right? Get through four years, and you’re done. I’m starting to realize… this doesn’t have an end date.”
Jimin’s lips purse at the road. “The end date is whenever you want it to be, JK.”
“I guess,” Jungkook grumbles, slouching lower in the seat. Any further, and he might slip off the edge. “But then I’d have to admit that I failed. That I spent eight fucking years of my life either in this job, or working towards it. What was the point if I quit?”
“What’s the point of spending another eight years doing something you hate?”
Jungkook stubbornly chews the inside of his cheek, knowing Jimin is right. The problem is, though – even if he quits, Jungkook has no idea what to do. Sure, he likes photography, but the field is competitive as hell. Jungkook wants to do something he loves, but he also wants to succeed. Taking such a massive leap terrifies him.
“Let’s talk about something else,” he mumbles, turning to Jimin.
Although Jimin arches a brow, he reluctantly lets the subject go. “Sure. Let’s talk instead about how Seokjin is bringing a date to the wedding.”
“Seokjin?” Jungkook’s brows shoot so far up, they near-disappear. “Who?”
“Some girl from LA.”
“No shit,” Jungkook exhales, slowly shaking his head. “Wow. We’re all settling down, huh? Soon, it’ll just be you and me, Jimin,” he grins, leaning over to punch Jimin in the arm.
The wheel jerks at the action, swerving them towards the next lane. “Hey!” Jimin blurts, straightening them out with a scowl. “At least I dated someone during the past five years, Jeon. Who’ve you been seeing?”
“No comment.”
“Huh. I don’t remember her. Was she the blonde?”
“Shut up,” Jungkook laughs, reaching out for the stereo. As the latest pop song fills the car, he pointedly stares out the window.
Jimin smiles, shaking his head. Namjoon’s wedding is being held in the city. His fiancée’s father is some big shot at a downtown law firm. From what Jungkook has gathered, the ceremony spiraled from a small, romantic affair into one of the biggest events of the season.
Jungkook’s lip quirks. That is how you know Namjoon’s fiancée’s family is rich. They use phrases like event of the season and christen their yachts with only the most expensive champagne. Having been to several yacht-christenings in Miami, Jungkook has never understood the event. What is the point of buying something expensive, only to ruin it?
Actually, maybe that is the point.
Pushing Miami from mind, Jungkook stares at the highway as they drive towards the city. The wedding has taken on a mind of its own, according to Namjoon. So detailed, so elaborate, they were forced to hire a wedding planner. Jungkook can only imagine Namjoon, micro-manager to the extreme, being forced to trust someone else with his life.
It has been a while since Jungkook last visited Chicago. Namjoon’s family is from here, and whenever they visited in college, they always had a great time. His mom sent them off each morning with fresh fruit and eggs – it was sweet; reminded Jungkook of home.
The familiar skyline arching above brings a smile to his lips. All in all, Jimin and Hoseok do not realize how lucky they are. If Jungkook lived here, he would – cutting the thought off, Jungkook sits up in his seat. Jungkook does not live here, so there is no point pretending.
Glancing down at his phone, Jungkook feels a modicum of guilt. After placing himself in airplane mode, he has not turned the device back on since he landed. Jungkook knows there will be a fresh wave of texts from his boss and for now, wishes to delay the inevitable.
“Where’s the wedding again?” Jungkook asks, turning his head.
Jimin shrugs as he rolls down his window. The night wind ruffles his hair, sending strands flying all over the place. “Some hotel by the river. Hear it has a great view.”
“And what’s the plan for the weekend?”
“Jungkook!” Jimin scolds, turning down the radio. “Did you even read the agenda Seokjin sent?”
Jungkook glances at him guiltily. “Um, I looked at it.”
Seokjin’s is Namjoon’s best man for the wedding. It makes sense – the two of them have been roommates since sophomore year of college, not to mention they both live in LA. Jungkook knows Jimin has also helped Namjoon with wedding details, since he lives in Chicago.
The look Jimin gives says he knows Jungkook is full of bullshit. “There’s a copy of the itinerary in my glove compartment,” he says with a nod. “I printed out a few just in case.”
“Why the fuck,” Jungkook grumbles as he opens the clasp. “Alright, here we go. Wednesday.”
“That’s today,” Jimin prompts.
“I know what day it is.” Jungkook clears his throat. “Alright, Wednesday. Bridesmaids and groomsmen arrive.”
“That’s us,” Jimin adds, shooting Jungkook a look.
“Yep, yep. Thursday – booze cruise. Woo! Seriously?”
Jimin rolls his eyes. “You really didn’t read this, did you?”
Ignoring him, Jungkook continues. “Friday – rehearsal ceremony and dinner. Be at the church by 4:00 PM.”
“Dressed.”
“Doesn’t seem like a necessary clarification,” Jungkook says, flipping over the paper. “Saturday, ceremony starts at 2:00 PM. Photos and reception following. Sunday, brunch.”
Jimin nods. “Don’t be late.”
“Jimin.” Jungkook lowers the sheet. “It’s Wednesday. How can you seriously tell me not to be late to brunch on Sunday?”
“Because I know you.”
“Touché.” Jungkook grins, crumpling the paper despite Jimin’s groans.
There are not many people heading into the city on a Wednesday night – turning on his blinker, Jimin switches lanes to pull off on an exit. As they slow, the buildings around them seem to stretch towards the night sky. Craning his head out the window, Jungkook exhales. When he pulls back, he finds Jimin watching.
“What?” Jungkook asks, somewhat defensive.
Jimin’s upper lip curls. “Nothing. You know, Hoseok and I’s roommate leaves at the end of the month. If you ever wanted to come to Chicago…”
Jungkook glances away. “C’mon, man. I can’t quit my job.”
“Can’t… won’t…” Jimin trails off at Jungkook’s expression in the mirror. “Anyways, the offer stands. Think about it, okay?”
Slowly, Jungkook nods. “Alright, I’ll think about.”
Jimin smiles, appeased and returns to the road. His hands stay firmly at the ten and two ‘o’clock position, which is so Jimin, it makes Jungkook smile. As they wind through the streets, Jungkook cannot help but think about what it would be like to live here.
He would probably be miserable if he simply transferred to Chicago. Maybe a little less so, since Hoseok and Jimin would be here – but nothing would really change in the long run. If he quit his job, though. Jungkook sighs. For now, that type of change remains firmly in the abstract.
“There!” Jimin squints at the building ahead. “That’s the hotel.”
[ TO BE CONTINUED ]
© kpopfanfictrash, 2020. Do not copy or repost without permission.
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Electric Hearts
gif not mine (but i have it saved on my phone and i watch it everyday over breakfast)
~ Pairing : Nakamoto Yuta x Reader (Rival Bands AU, Bassist x Vocalist)
~ Genre : Fluff, Humour, Kinda Maybe Not Really Angst
~ Summary : In the span of four years, you go from acquainting with Yuta to hating Yuta and then finally dating Yuta, all against the backdrop of a summer band competition.
Strangers to Enemies to Lovers
~ Word Count : many (14,327)
~ Warnings : alcohol consumption, mentions of drug use, swearing, very slow burn, me waxing lyrical for too many paras about how much i love and miss being on stage
~ A/N : it is HERE and it is GLORIOUS and it makes me want to PERFORM give me a MIC PLEASE anyway yeah yuta hot g-idle hot everybody is hot basically. stream electric hearts by wayv.
i’d love to hear feedback! spread the love!
masterlist in my description.
~~~
Year 1, Eleventh Grade
The flyer lands square on your nose, momentarily blinding you before you primly pluck it off, turning it around so you can read the contents while flipping off Kun, who leans on the grill next to the school wall that’s identically holding you up.
‘Annual Summer Bash - Battle of the Bands 2018’ the brochure reads in bold, red font, followed by registration and contact details. Not that you require them.
“Why do we need this?” you ask, confused. “We've been going and winning every year since middle school, I’m pretty sure I have the organiser's number memorised.”
The drummer fixes you with a dark look. “We might not win this time,” he says, cryptically.
Disbelieving, you scoff, “Oh, come off it. Who’s gonna beat us, Verve?”
“Actually, yes.”
“Sure, and Ten's gonna get a sport’s scholarship,” you reply, sarcasm dripping from your voice, very obviously referring to your keyboardist and his inability to kick a ball.
Kun sniffs in disapproval. “I wouldn’t be so confident, if I were you. They’ve got a new bassist, some kid who’s just moved here.”
“It’s going to take a fat lot more than a new bassist to fix that mess.”
You get a glare in response and roll your eyes, conceding, “Okay, fine. They aren’t that bad. But still, we don’t know how good the new person even is. What happened to Johnny anyway? Too cool for us little people, now that he’s gone to college?”
“Johnny’s judging this year.”
Your eyes widen in surprise. Kun's displeasure is evident in his pursed lips and stern eyes.
Dramatically, unnecessarily so, he continues, accurately taking your silence for incredulity. “We've got all the odds stacked against us. If we want to win, we need to practice harder than ever before.”
“What do you mean, if we want to win. Of course we want to win,” you reply in a disgusted tone, looking him up and down in judgement.
It’s his turn to roll his eyes now. “Yes, yes, we want to win. But we still need to practice more if Johnny’s judging. Verve's been coming in second only by a couple of points for the last two years, they’re getting better,” he insistently says.
Pushing yourself off of the wall, you straighten up on noticing a black car moving on the road, slowing down as it nears the school entrance next to which the two of you are poised. You pick your bag off the floor and sling it over your shoulder.
“We'll be fine, we have four months left. We’ve done incredible on less,” you say, slowly backing away from Kun, as you speak in a reassuring voice.
Blatantly disregarding what you just said, he digs his phone out of his pocket while muttering distractedly, “We should have a band meeting today. I’ll tell the others.”
Cheerily, you shrug at him. “Can’t,” you declare, as the car pulls up next to curb right in front of you.
Eyebrows scrunched, he looks up, as he asks, “Why not?”
“Got a hot date.”
The window of the driver’s seat rolls down and your girlfriend sticks her head out.
“All right, Kun?” Soyeon asks with a genial smile, as you give him a wave and a slightly apologetic ‘Meet tomorrow!’ strolling over to the other side of the car.
“Can’t complain,” he replies to her greeting with a shrug, while simultaneously throwing you a dirty look. “College going fine?”
You open the passenger seat door and enter, shifting your backpack to your lap, as she says with a grin, “Ah, spring break. Can’t complain.”
And with one last ‘Tomorrow, I promise!’ at a disgruntled Kun, you and Soyeon drive off.
You aren’t as worried as he is. The competition has always gone your band's way. You’re damned if you're going to let some new bassist come out of nowhere and change that.
________________________
Three weeks later, you and Ten are setting up in his garage where the band always practice, now knowing the routine like the back of your hand.
After forming in middle school as a group of kids who just wanted to make some music together and shockingly winning the annual city-wide band competition, the group has stayed tight-knit, despite Lisa and Hendery (electric and bass respectively) moving to a different high school. You perform at charity events during the academic year and win the Summer Bash every summer without fail. You work like a well-oiled machine, easily picking up cues on stage and figuring out last minute set lists, and even with how everybody roams in different social circles now, the group chat never stays silent for long.
Meeting up for an arbitrary practice session every month is a given, but the time you guys spend preparing for the competition every year is easily your favourite.
Hendery announces his presence in the make-shift jam room with a loud ‘What’s up, fuckers,’ before the usual hugs all around (“Hendery, you stink,” courtesy Ten, followed by a genuinely touched, “Thanks, dude!” from the man himself, who has a look of abject glee on his face at the comment).
He settles next to the keyboard, plugging in the amp and tuning his bass, as you and Ten arrange the drum kit.
“Where’s Kun?” Hendery asks, lazily fiddling with his G string.
“Talking to the organisers. He’s been obsessed with trying to find out more about Verve’s new bassist. Calls him, and I quote, the one thing that could stand between us and eternal glory.”
Hendery gives Ten an offended look. “What’s he going and asking the organisers for? He can just ask us, can’t he? Yuta's joined Bayshore High after all.”
“Yuta?” you ask quizzically.
At the same time, Kun emerges at the garage entrance, mouth agape. “He what?”
Hendery's face immediately splits into his signature grin at the drummer's appearance, getting up and placing his guitar on the side so he can give him a hug.
“Never mind that,” Kun snaps, quite hurtfully in your opinion. Hendery’s being nothing but nice. And also high, if his slightly dopey eyes are anything to go by.
“Why didn’t you tell me he’s in Bayshore?” he demands from an admirably quickly recovered Hendery, who’s now wrapped his arms around Kun's waist, despite the latter's greatest protests.
Stoned Hendery is physical Hendery.
At that moment, Lisa totters into the garage from the door at the back that leads into the house, guitar bag strapped to her back, lugging her amp in with both hands, cheerily calling out, “Why are we talking about Bayshore, what happened?”
You rush over, helping her carry the amp to the other end of the garage as you return her grateful smile with an amused one of your own.
“Kun wants to know about Yuta,” Hendery says, voice slightly muffled by the drummer's old-man jumper, ass cocked out at an angle so his head is at chest level.
Kun gives an exasperated groan, prying your bassist off while whining, “Why are you guys talking like he’s your best friend or something?”
“He sits next to us during lunch!” Lisa explains cheerily, as she connects her guitar to the amp.
“He’s got the best goods, dude,” Hendery enthusiastically says.
Kun rolls his eyes. He looks like he’s aged twenty years in the last ten minutes. You make eye contact with Ten and have to look away so the two of you don’t burst into giggles.
“I really don’t care about where he sits or the quality of his weed, I just want to know if he can play,” he says, making his way to the drum kit at the back.
Both Lisa and Hendery look at each other contemplatively.
“We haven’t heard him play,” she thinks out loud. “Yeah, can’t say I’ve even seen him around with a guitar,” he nods in agreement.
Kun takes his seat, now looking a little calmer after getting in position. “Well, try finding out,” he says, tugging his sticks out of the backpack near his stool.
You walk towards the mic stand in the centre, Lisa on one side and Hendery on the other, Ten on the far right corner and Kun directly behind the lot of you.
After a bit of shuffling around, everybody gets ready, and as Kun counts down and the bass line begins, you let yourself slip. Yuka, or whatever his name is, won’t know what hits him.
________________________
The heat doesn’t let up, even after sun down, humidity lingering thick in the air, but it’s the last thing on your mind. You let your sneakers repeatedly scuff against the skirting in the large waiting room, as the rest of your band moves around you, pacing and tuning and flipping drum sticks. There are multiple groups littered around the hall like yours, everybody in various degrees of nervousness, heavy in anticipation. A couple of other regulars come over, wishing you luck and getting the same in return, but a usually polite Kun seems weirdy distracted, as he stands on his tip toes and appears to be looking for somebody.
His eyebrows scrunch up in apparent dissatisfaction, and he comes back down mumbling, “They still have only three people, where's Yuta?”
Despite their greatest efforts, Lisa and Hendery weren’t able to get any concrete information on Verve's new bassist, and it’s been driving Kun insane. You know that once he gets behind his drum kit on stage in front of the crowd, he’ll be unstoppable and completely in the zone, but until then, the lot of you put up with his grumbling and head shaking, knowing that if he doesn’t have something to obsess over, he'll most likely spontaneously combust.
You fiddle with the rings on your fingers, body already in overdrive, the taste of the stage so very close, and as you catch a glimpse of the PAR lights switching on amidst deafening cheers from the growing audience, your heart swoops up, threatening to burst if you don’t get in front of the mic soon.
Conversation slows to a hush as three people enter the room, looking very important with their name tags, and everybody’s head swivels to land on them.
You can tell that Johnny enjoys all the attention, as he gives a charming grin before saying “Hey, guys! Just thought we'd wish you luck before you went on stage. Keep it fair and remember to have fun! It isn’t a competition, it’s a concert.” He ends to the sounds of appreciative chuckles from some of the newbies, but majority of the seniors, including your band, look at him with deeply mistrusting gazes. Ten leans towards you and bitterly mutters, “Smarmy git. Like he didn’t try tripping Hendery last year before we went on stage.”
Johnny appears to be unfazed, directing a quick wink at his old, grinning (still three member) band, as the other judges, a high school music teacher and an ex drummer of a one-hit wonder group, give their own ‘Best of luck!’s.
Before you know it, you can hear the MC on stage welcoming everybody, and that spring in your stomach compresses more and more, almost painfully so, just waiting to be out there, under the lights, in front of the audience, surrounded by your band with the mic in your hand.
Rosewater (stylised as Rosewater! by your resident future arts major, Ten) is the second last group in the line-up, right before Verve closes out the show, and you have no doubt that you lost that last spot all because of Johnny. The infamous Yuta hasn’t made an appearance yet and distantly, you wonder how the rest of his band is holding up so well, looking as if the man's just going to appear out of thin air, with barely five minutes left for the competition to begin.
The bands that go on before you don’t pose much of a threat. Some of them are new, most you’ve competed against before, but either way, you aren’t worried. When you walk up the steps to the stage to sounds of thunderous applause after the MC announces, “Now it’s time for our four time champion, Rosewater!” you can feel your blood pounding in your ears, the coil in your abdomen now wound excruciatingly tight.
And finally, as Kun's counting down, the keyboard starts, there’s a mic in front of you and hundreds of wide, excited eyes staring at the stage, you feel that coil abruptly unwind rapidly until it completely disappears. You wrap your fingers around the stand, shooting a confident wink at a grinning Soyeon in the first row, and as you open your mouth to sing, you know you’re home.
In what feels like the blink of an eye, you’re all off stage, adrenaline coursing through you and sweat making your clothes stick to your frame. The applause and cheering continues till you’re backstage, bottle of water in hand, and the grin you’re already sporting grows even wider, satisfied and elated with another good performance. You’ve got it in the bag, you’re sure, and if Kun's bouncing and smug smile is any indication, he agrees, all concerns about Verve out of the window.
After returning all your in-ear mics in the waiting room, the lot of you move backstage, crowding in the wings as you watch the last band set up. You can’t see the bassist from this angle, but when Jaehyun (vocals and keyboard) announces him as their newest member before starting, the crowd screams and you’re sure you hear an only half-joking voice from the audience shout, “Marry me, Yuta!”
You roll your eyes in exasperation, meeting Lisa’s amused gaze. ‘Pretty boy,’ she mouths at you with a blinding grin, still high off of the performance.
Kun seems to share your sentiment, his expression half gleeful and half relieved at your combined assumption that this Yuta is nothing more than a prop. They needed a bassist so the got the best-looking one they could find.
But the moment the music starts, your jaw drops. They’ve opted for a very Arctic Monkeys-esque, bass prominent beginning, and the skill with which the strings are being plucked makes you want to drown in the beautifully deep sound.
Not just a pretty boy apparently.
You want to be annoyed, you really do, but it’s difficult not to resist the pull of the music. It’s like they’re a completely different band, with Taeyong drumming harder than you ever remember him doing and Lucas shredding on the guitar.
You’ve long held the belief that your instrumentalists are the best in the competition, all these years giving you no reason to suspect the contrary, but this? This whole new band can give them a run for their money, you grudgingly admit, head helplessly bobbing to the beat.
Kun's face runs through shock, displeasure and reluctant admiration just in the span of the four bar intro. Around you, Ten, Lisa and Hendery seem to be having the time of their lives, apparently having given up on feeling attacked by the universe for this unexpected turn of events. The drummer shoots you a betrayed look, but all you can do is give him a soothing pat on his shoulder as your body begins to move as well.
For a split second in the middle of the show, you catch a glimpse of the elusive Yuta for the first time, face gleaming with sweat, dazzling grin on his face as he looks down at his guitar, plucking the strings effortlessly almost, body swaying and head bobbing.
You feel a grudging respect for him, as you observe him look up at the crowd, stage persona oozing charisma as he shoots a wink at some poor soul in the audience, cheers instantly growing that much louder.
As their performance progresses, the cockiness you felt at the end of your own slowly begins to morph into subtle worry as you consider the unthinkable occurring.
Losing.
And twenty minutes later, when all the bands are huddled on stage, waiting for the winners to be announced, you’re forced to seriously think about it happening. Kun nearly crushes your hand in a death grip, as Hendery worriedly chews at his long thumb nail on your other side.
The MC announces last to first, until there are just you and Verve left, vying for the top position. You’re certain you’ll never be able to feel your fingers again, but the pain seems oddly distant, all of your attention focused on the man standing in front of the two bands, everybody on stage facing the crowd.
As he’s waiting for the applause for third place to die down, you chance a glance at the other band standing next to you. Yuta looks infuriatingly calm, smug even, and your fledgling dislike intensifies.
“And now it’s time for first place-"
Please, please, I’ll go to the temple everyday for a week, I promise.
“In a surprise turn of events-"
I’m sorry for not believing in you earlier and for writing my English essay on atheism. I’ll make it up to you, please.
“For the first time in four years-"
Fuck off.
The cheers are deafening, and you’d almost forgotten how awful it felt to lose. It comes rushing at you, this out of body feeling, as the crowd doesn’t even wait for the band name to be announced. The rolling trophy that has ‘Rosewater!’ written on it four consecutive times, now with a new, shiny addition at the bottom, reading ‘Verve', is handed to the winners. You try not to let the dejection show, politely clapping and bowing, just like the rest of your band as the MC announces, “Congratulations to Rosewater on placing second!”
You walk off stage with a bitter taste in your mouth as you see Johnny hooting loudly and the band taking turns holding the trophy. As much as you want to believe that they won simply because an ex-member was judging, deep down, you know that they were much, much better than they used to be.
________________________
Every year, after the competition comes the real Summer Bash-a party organised for all participants and judges at a nearby party hall. It’s always super crowded, given that no less than twelve bands at the very least sign up every time, with three or four judges and multiple organisers scattered across the room.
You’ve always enjoyed the party, loving the attention as Rosewater totes the trophy around, greedily accepting congratulations and trying not to gloat at the other bands. Partway through the night, the person in charge of making sure no minors go to the bar always mysteriously disappears, so everybody has free rein with the alcohol, and it’s where you met Soyeon last year, after her band finished third before disbanding.
But the party feels like nothing short of hell right now, as you stand slouched against the wall in the corner with Kun, Lisa and Ten. Hendery entered the crowd a while back, leaving you to stare in astonishment and betrayal at the gap between writhing bodies that he had disappeared through. However, you know that in a room full of high school and college kids, most of them his regulars, he'll make one hell of a killing with his...products, and who are you to begrudge a good business plan?
The four of you plaster on fake smiles whenever somebody comes over to talk, but most of the time is spent glaring daggers at Verve preening in the centre of the dancefloor, trophy being tossed high in the air as they lap up the attention. They’ve always been decently popular in the party scene, on accunt of the fact that they all look like they’ve been carved from marble, but with Yuta, it’s like their popularity's skyrocketed. You don’t remember ever having those many people around you whenever Rosewater won.
Entering your line of vision, Soyeon comes fighting through a gap, holding two drinks high up in the air. She hands one over to you, coming to stand right in front of your frame. You take a sip of the Cranberry juice vodka mix and give her a grateful smile, before getting up on your toes so you can continue glaring at Yuta over her shoulder, as he begins a handstand to the sound of loud cheers from the surrounding crowd.
Your girlfriend huffs in amusement. “They can’t see you, there’s really no point.”
Mouth set in a grim line and arms crossed, Kun replies, “It’s the principle of the thing.”
“Ten, go dance so they stop getting attention.”
But Ten's too far sunken in despair to listen to Lisa, settling for a sad, soft hum before he pushes himself off the wall. “This party stinks. I’m going home.”
Kun’s pleas to get him to stay because ‘they haven’t felt all of our wrath yet' falls on deaf ears, as Ten just gives a tiny, subdued wave before walking towards the exit.
With a decisive nod, Soyeon says, “I agree with Ten. You guys are ruining it for yourselves. Stop moping and have some fun, will you? You can win next year.”
She doesn’t get anything in response except some grunts, and with a roll of her eyes, she grabs one of your hands in hers before tugging you off the wall. “C'mon, Y/N. I go back to college in a week, I wanna hang out.”
Powerless to resist, you throw an apologetic look at Kun and Lisa, before allowing Soyeon to drag you away in the same direction that Ten had left, along the wall of the room towards the door on the opposite end of the hall.
Her grip is tight around your hand, as you two skirt along the edge of the crowd, making sure your drinks don’t spill. You look up from the floor your eyes have been glued to for a second, just to see how much farther before you can get some fresh air without worrying about stepping on somebody’s foot, and you catch the eye of none other than Yuta. Like he was waiting for this, as if in slow motion, gaze locked intently and unwaveringly on yours, he brings the trophy up to his face and presses his lips to the plaque.
White, hot rage pulses through you and for a second, you seriously consider letting go of Soyeon's hand, storming over to him, and smacking the cocky smirk right off of his damn face. But you see your girlfriend mouth, “Not worth it,” and you allow yourself to be dragged away, silently fuming.
That night before you fall asleep, you vow that next year, Yuta will regret waltzing into your competition and acting like he’s all that.
________________________
Year 2, Twelfth Grade
Sticking your hand out, you tug at Ten’s arm the moment he rounds the corner you’ve been waiting at for the last ten minutes or so. With a surprised yelp, he ends up next to you, as you immediately let go of him and adjust your scarf that had gotten displaced. The frigid January air makes you rub your gloved palms together as Ten gives you an affronted look, massaging the inside of his elbow where you had pulled.
“What was that for?” he asks, in a wounded manner.
Wordlessly, with a follow me motion, you turn around, bag swinging behind you as you begin a rapid, determined march, face set, weaving in between the stream of students about to leave at the end of a long school day.
Next to you, you can practically feel Ten's eyes roll as he easily keeps up with you, strolling next to your deliberate, serious walk.
“Are you going to tell me where we’re going?”
Again, you don’t give him a response, speeding up as you near your destination. He huffs in annoyance.
Drawing up to a closed classroom, you shoo Ten until you’re both crowded against the door, ears pressed to the wood.
He looks at you quizzically, eyebrows scrunched. “Why are you acting weird?”
You shush him as you closely pay attention to what’s going on inside the room, ignoring the weird looks that are being thrown at the two of you from students around.
Muffled, through the door, you can make out the teacher explaining homework, and you manage to jump out of the way just in time, dragging a thoroughly confused Ten along with you, right before the door is pulled in, and the teacher walks out.
“Y/N, this is getting really annoying,” he whines, exasperated, as you grab his elbow and walk into the classroom full of students who are packing up, moving in until you’re directly in front of Kun's bench. His head snaps up to you, his conversation with Sicheng next to him coming to a dead halt as he processes your resolute expression and Ten's half-irritated, half-bemused one.
Once you make sure that you’ve got his attention, you swiftly turn around and stride towards the door. Proving that he’s your favourite member, he simply sighs a little in defeat, before you hear him bid Sicheng goodbye and clap Ten on the shoulder in solidarity.
You hear both their footsteps behind you as you lead them out to the car park. Their loud whispering isn’t exactly subtle.
“Is she fine?”
“I'm not sure, she pretty much just kidnapped me from the corridor a while back.”
“Yikes. Finally hit breaking point, do you think?”
“Fairly certain, yeah. Or maybe this is another one of her weird post-breakup rituals.”
“Oh no, I don’t think I could handle another evening of sitting curb side and screaming at all the black cars we see.”
“Can we just tell her that Soyeon got a new car? Maybe then she’ll let up.”
“Ahem,” you interrupt them, spinning around on your heel once you’ve reached Kun's shiny, grey sedan.
They immediately shut up, waiting for you to explain with expectant looks, not even having the decency to look properly ashamed.
After fixing them with a dark glare, you continue. “We need to go to Bayshore,” you say without preamble.
Kun looks at you like you’ve grown another head. Ten just looks bored.
“Why?” the latter asks.
“And why in my car?” Kun adds.
With a deep sigh, you firmly explicate. “We need to practice. And your car is the only one that can fit all of us.”
“Practice for what?”
“What do you mean all?”
The two of them look at you suspiciously.
“For the Summer Bash, obviously. And I mean the three of us and Lisa and Hendery.
To your great annoyance, the reply you get is Ten lifting his hand to rest the back of it on your forehead. “Are you sure you’re alright?”
Kun looks at you, equally worried. “The last time Hendery sat in my car, it took a week for the smell of weed to disappear.”
Now thoroughly irritated, you impatiently swat Ten's hovering hand away from your face. “Look, I know it’s a little sooner than we usually start-"
“Y/N, it’s January. I doubt the organisers have even starting planning it.”
With a glare towards Ten at the interruption, you continue, “-but we have to win.”
It’s like Kun's spirit from last year has taken over you. You’ve spent the last month carefully planning multiple possible set list options, highlighting each member’s strengths and figuring out songs that will capitalise on the same. You’ve got a road map ready and a practice schedule drawn up.
Kun and Ten have rather resigned looks on their faces. Which is fine by you, really. As long as they’ve stopped outright protesting.
You move to the passenger seat and look at Kun with a pointed expression, waiting for him to unlock the car.
“We aren’t getting out of this, are we?”
“Nope,” you cheerily reply, popping the p.
With a long suffering sigh, he moves to the driver’s seat as Ten groans in reluctant acceptance, walking towards the back.
An hour later sees the three of you along with Lisa and Hendery sitting at a corner table in a small, aesthetic coffee shop near Bayshore High, one of those places that has low rise furniture and bean bags and naked, hanging bulbs with edgy posters on the open brick wall.
The other two didn’t put up too much of a fight, being relatively less high-strung. Lisa just gave some weird mixture of an eye roll and a smirk and Hendery outright snorted, but after some strategic glaring on your part, they fell in line quick enough.
There are steaming cups on coffee on the table in front of you, but they lie forgotten in favour of the A3 sized sheet you had stolen from the school art room last month. At the top, you’ve written ‘Summer Bash 2019 - Rosewater! Road Map to Victory'. The rest of the sheet is filled with sub headings and bullet points, all colour coded and properly indented.
Lisa and Ten ooh and aah over the chart, as you smugly take in what you’re sure is your greatest artistic work, but all Kun says is, “Okay, but how come the chemistry notes you lent me look like a four year old wrote them with their non-dominant hand using a leaky ink pen?”
You refuse to deign to reply, pretending to have not heard him as Hendery snorts on your other side.
“This chart is our holy Bible for the next four months,” you say, once everybody’s settled down.
“Aren’t you Hindu?”
Once again, you give no verbal reply to Kun’s nonsense, simply whacking the back of his head and ignoring his whines of protest.
“As I was saying, this is our plan. Clearly, today is meeting one-,“ you indicate the first bullet point, “-and meeting two is this weekend. By the end of this month, we should have a set list.”
Lisa asks in awe, as she pores over the sheet, “How much time did you spend on this?”
Images of you staying up nearly every night with sketch pens spread around you, and working on it under the bench in classes, not to mention in lunch as your friends laughing and chattering rush into your mind. With a self-deprecating wave of your hand, you reply nonchalantly, “Don’t worry about it.”
Ten looks like he’s about to say something when you hear a high, drawling voice from behind you. “Oh, look! It’s Rosewater.”
Somehow, despite the fact that you’ve never actually heard him speak, you know who it is. He sounds exactly like the voice that screams in your head every time you punch your pillow picturing it’s his face.
Lisa and Hendery look happy enough, waving up at him as Yuta rounds the table to stand on the side, but Ten and Kun have identical uncertain expressions on their faces.
And you? All you feel is a flash of annoyance that you immediately tamp down. No need for him to know how riled you are.
In as dignified a manner as you can, you begin to fold the sheet in front of you before Yuta can notice it, but you’re too slow. He crouches down, sarcastic smirk giving way to a genuinely amused grin, as he quickly places his palm flat on the surface of the paper before you can gather it.
His face is inches from yours as he bends over the sheet. “And what’s this? Road map to victory? Surely you aren’t starting practice so soon?”
Kun tries, and fails, to sound threatening as he replies, “So what if we are?”
Yuta’s grin, if possible, only grows wider. You feel yourself frozen on the spot, unable to look away as you watch his head slowly swivel until his eyes meet yours directly.
“It means you feel threatened. Do I threaten you, Y/N? Is that why you’ve made this middle school art project?”
Your throat goes dry at his low voice that’s directed straight at you. With great effort, you let out a scoff that sounds fake even to your ears. Forcing yourself not to look away from him, you bite out with as much venom as you can muster, “You wish, Yuka.”
His smile, much to your chagrin, doesn’t dampen as he lifts his hand off of the sheet and lets you wrench the sheet away.
Infuriatingly blasé, he rises from his squat. Looking down at the table, he says, cocking his head to a side, “Actually, I’m glad you guys are starting so early. It should put us on an equal footing, yeah?”
And with one last condescending wave, he turns around and struts back to whichever shit hole he crawled out of.
You let out a breath you were unaware you were holding and jump in alarm as you hear a growl next to you.
Kun looks murderous, eyes boring holes into the door through which Yuta just disappeared.
“We’re gonna win the fuck out of this bitch.”
________________________
You’d think you’d be used to the pre-performance combination of anxiety and excitement after so many years of being on stage, but it hits you as hard as ever, festering deep in your bones as you aimlessly fidget around the tiny 24×24 tile that you’re stood on in the corner of the waiting room, careful not to step outside the box.
The sound of participants around you is nothing more than background noise to the stark, white emptiness that’s currently occupying all the space in your head. Lisa's plucking at her strings, the sound muted because her guitar isn’t connected to an amp, and Kun's hitting a nervous, complicated beat with his sticks on the wall. Ten and Hendery are engaged in a highly mindless game of chopsticks to pass the time.
It’s like you have this little vacuum of quiet surrounding you. You can feel the anticipation rolling off of your band in waves. You’ve always been well prepared, but this year, you feel confident enough to take on any professional music group in a one-on-one battle.
After that first meeting, everything went according to plan. There were no more run-ins with Yuta (as a band that is, because Lisa still has two classes with him and he’s one of Hendery's favourite crack buddies), and you’re glad that the rest of Verve all go to a different school because if they came anywhere near yours, you’re sure your and Kun’s blood pressures would’ve hit astronomical levels.
The judges this year are all new, people you’ve never met before with no known connections to any of the participating bands, and this information only serves to boost your confidence.
You hear a hiss next to you, and you zone back in to catch Kun whispering, “They’re here.”
Your gaze goes up until it catches first Jaehyun’s nod, then Taeyong's mock salute and moving to Lucas’s tiny wave before finally settling on the devil incarnate. He stands there, guitar strap around his neck, his eyes swimming with obnoxious mirth, lips upturned in a cocky smirk. You determinedly refuse to look away, but a traitorous voice in your head suggests that maybe the reason you aren’t breaking contact is because you can’t.
You might hate his guts, but there’s no denying his attractiveness. And especially right now, with his ripped, black, skinny jeans and his loose, off-white Ramones t-shirt, he looks like the epitome of edgy punk bassist in his partly silver-dyed hair. There are chains hanging from his neck, and his veined forearms lead to long fingers that are lazily resting on the guitar neck.
He makes no gesture, cold smirk telling all. You return it with a sneer of your own. You’ll leave the gloating for once you’ve won in the next two hours or so.
Rosewater is last in the line up this year, right after Verve, and you hear their performance from the waiting room that’s now empty except for your band. With a jolt of glee, you notice that they have pretty much the same vibe as the previous year going.
Lisa scoffs, apparently thinking the same thing that you are. “How very one-trick pony of them.”
Kun warningly replies, “Let’s not get too cocky.” But if the blaze of confidence in his eyes and the determined set of his shoulders is anything to go by, he’s having a hard time not feeling like you’ve got this in the bag too.
And finally, the last four months of ardent practice come to a glorious zenith as you perform the best, most exciting show of your Summer Bash career, deafening cheers emanating from the crowd as the lot of you play like a single unit. The ending chord, the last drum roll, the final head bang, all give way to spectacular applause and hooting, and you lap it all up, head spinning from the adrenaline rush and the high you always get from standing on stage.
You stand there panting, feeling on top of the world as the rest of your band gathers around you for the signature Rosewater ending bow, and as you’re surveying the crowd with a wide smile that feels like it’s been permanently etched onto your face, you catch sight of Verve near the back of the audience.
Your grin only grows wider as you catch Yuta’s sour look, resembling a spoiled child whose demands haven’t been met, and as you come up from your bow, you drop a deliberate, obnoxious wink in his direction, ensuring that he knows it’s directed at him.
Twenty minutes later, you’re all stood on stage again, Verve standing next to you, waiting for the MC to announce first place. It’s a twisted sense of deja vu, when you’re so sure of a different outcome after experiencing the exact same situation in the past. You know you’ve won before they even announce it. So does the crowd. And so does Yuta, if his narrow eyes and disgruntled expression are anything to go by.
He drops a venomous sneer as Ten and Lisa accept the rolling trophy, but nothing can dampen your spirits in this one moment, your gaze stuck in satisfied awe at the Rosewater! on the plaque and that feeling of elation settling deep in your bones, expanding so large that you just might burst from the perfection of it all.
________________________
This is the life, you think, as Kun passes the trophy over to you. You’re not one for crowds usually, but when you’re surrounded by people cheering your band name with said band equally excited next to you, in the middle of the flashing lights and the trashy dance music with a glass of green apple vodka in your hand, you think you don’t mind it every once in a while.
Go one year without winning, and suddenly you’re thirsting for this fan adoration like a singer parched.
You triumphantly thrust the trophy up in the air single handed and soak in the renewed loud shrieks, feeling powerful and satiated.
You’re brought out of your reverie by Lisa ducking her head to come to your ear level as she whispers, “Washroom,” and ten minutes later sees you standing outside the lady’s toilet in the quiet, empty corridor, waiting for Lisa to finish up. It was difficult to extricate yourselves from the insistent crowd, but now that you’re here, back leaning on the wall, directly facing the gender neutral toilet that’s in between the lady’s and gent's ones, the silence is a welcome reprieve.
You can still faintly hear the bass thumping through the wall as you indifferently count the number of tiny cracks on the tile you’re stood on, head bowed, enjoying the empty silence and wondering if you should just call it a night and go home.
Hearing a door open in front of you, you’re about to suggest as much, but you stop short as you lift your head and see not Lisa, but Yuta.
The door to the men’s room swings shut behind him as he stands frozen as well, caught as unawares as you are.
You shut your mouth abruptly as Yuta opens his to say something, but he shuts his mouth too, and now the two of you are left gawking at each other stupidly in the middle of a party hall corridor.
Why it’s so awkward, you don’t know. You’ve just beaten him. Wasn’t that the goal for the last four months?
Distantly, you wonder what’s taking Lisa so long.
Before you can make an excuse to escape into the washroom, you hear him mutter something under his breath. If he weren’t looking straight at you, you’d have thought he was talking to himself.
“I’m sorry, what was that?”
“Congratulations,” comes the sullen reply, and you’re so thrown by it that it takes you moment to reply with an unsure ‘Thanks.’
He doesn’t stop there, though. “You guys were incredible.”
His body language is incredibly uncharacteristic, as he fidgets and his dark brown eyes hold none of the usual coldness. There’s no cocky smirk, no challenging stance. It’s almost like he’s being...genuine.
Huh. Who would’ve thought?
You recover yourself, your gaze drawn to the multiple tiny studs he’s wearing on both his ears that you had never really noticed before. “Thank you,” you stiffly repeat, a little distracted by the new discovery.
If he notices, he doesn’t say anything. He just giving you a short nod before he turns and walks back towards the party, leaving you to stare at his back, shocked as you catch sight of a hint of black ink peeking out of the sleeve of the t-shirt on his right tricep, clearly visible from this angle.
You have no time to dwell on it as Lisa steps out into the corridor in that moment, drying her palms on her dark blue jeans. “Ready to go back?” she asks, linking your arm with hers as she begins to trace the path that Yuta just took.
Gently disentangling your limb, you slow down to a stop. “Actually, I think I’ll head home,” you say, not meeting her eyes.
She frowns, halting as well. “Okay,” she starts unsurely. “Are you alright? You look a little pale.”
“Yeah, yeah, just...it’s been a long day. I think I just need some quiet. I have to finish packing for college anyway.”
Her expression morphs into one of pity and comfort from her previous suspiciously concerned one. Quietly, in a pacifying voice, she says, “It must have been painful to see Soyeon in there, huh? Do you want me to drop you home?”
Glad to have this excuse handed to you on a plate (Truth be told, you never even noticed that your ex had come for the Bash this year, leave alone attended the party. Somehow, nobody seems to believe that you aren’t cut up or brooding about the breakup that happened six months ago, how many ever times you tell them that it just wasn’t working and you both had mutually decided to part ways.), you try to muster as sad a look as possible while replying, “No, no, it’s alright, you go have fun. I’ll book a cab.”
That night, as you lay in bed, sleep eludes you. You’re still elated from the win, body slightly buzzing from the remnants of stage adrenaline and the single glass of alcohol you had consumed. But something else nags at you, something that you’d been avoiding throughout the cab ride and the whole time you changed into your pyjamas. Or rather, somebody.
In the dark, with cool air entering your room from the open crack in the window making your body pleasantly shiver under the blankets, it’s harder to ignore the memory of Yuta's hard, true gaze boring into yours as he congratulates and praises you with no underlying motive. You can’t forget the way his lips curve when they aren’t stuck in that stupid sneer, and your mind seems hell-bent on remembering the images of the silver hoop glinting on his upper ear lobe and the dark, fresh tattoo on his arm. The room suddenly doesn’t feel so cold anymore.
The vicious punches you deliver to your pillow that night in frustration are less with the assumption of the fluffy cotton being Yuta’s face, and more along the lines of your own thoughts, trying to drive them out. Unconvincingly, you chalk it up to tiredness and slight tipsiness, before falling into a restless sleep.
________________________
Year 3, Freshman Year
“Can you hear me?”
“I swear to God, Kun, if you ask us if we can hear you one more fucking time, we'll kick you out and have this meeting ourselves. We’ve been able to hear you and your cereal chewing for the last five minutes, get on with it.”
Kun swallows a mouthful of said cereal with a reproachful look on his face before softly sulking, “I was just checking.”
Before Ten can blow up again, Hendery pacifies soothingly, “Yes, Kun, we can hear you. Go ahead, what’s the plan?”
You tilt your laptop screen up so you can see everybody’s faces better, eagerly waiting for Kun to start as you take a bite of the granola bar in your hand.
“I don’t have a plan.”
Well, that was anticlimactic.
Lisa chuckles before she says, “Okay, funny. I have dance practice in twenty minutes, though, so why don’t you tell us the real plan.”
Kun just shrugs. “I’m serious, I don’t have a plan.”
Ten moves his head closer to the laptop screen so you’re given a lovely close up of his nose. Suspiciously, he asks, “What do you mean, you don’t have a plan?”
“I mean I don’t have a plan. I don’t see how we can possibly practice over a video call. The lag is horrible and Y/N’s frozen half the time.”
Hendery mildly says, “That’s just her resting face.”
Flipping him off, accurate as he is, you swallow your granola before you ask, “Lisa and Ten, you guys are sure you won’t be able to make it home for spring break?”
They both shake their heads.
It’s that time of the year again, mid-February, Summer Bash practice time, but there’s a new challenge to work around. The fact that you’re all miles away from each other in different colleges, and you haven’t been able to have a single jam session in the last seven months because everybody’s schedule never seems to line up. It went without saying that Rosewater would participate this year, but none of you had anticipated how difficult it would be to coordinate practices.
Kun continues. “The only option we have is those two weeks between the beginning of summer vacation and the actual competition. It isn’t much, but it’ll have to do.”
Hendery mumbles something and you think it’s just his mic acting up again, but on prompting, his grainy voice comes a little stronger but still sheepish. “One week.”
You stop mid-chew. Kun and Lisa stare at him with wide eyes, and Ten’s eyebrows are furrowed.
“What was that?” you ask. Your mouth is still full, but your message gets across clear enough.
He gives a little sigh. “I need to stay back in college for an extra week to discuss my internship, I won’t be back home until the 17th.”
Kun sinks back in his chair in disbelief as Lisa lets her forehead fall on the table with a dull thunk.
“We’re so fucked,” Ten whispers.
But a thought occurs to you and urgently, you ask, “But what about Verve? Does anybody know if they’ve been practicing?”
Moodily, Kun replies, “They were all home for Christmas, they must have practiced. And I met Taeyong at the dinner hall a couple of weeks back, he said he’s, and I quote, super excited to get with the guys and jam during spring break.”
All hope extinguished, you glumly fold your empty granola bar wrapper.
“At least with Kun and Taeyong in the same college, we have a little bit of inside information,” Lisa says, but her voice carries none of her usual cheerful optimism.
For a moment, it seems like the remaining ten minutes of the call are going to go in a similar vein, morose grumbling as you all let yourself wallow in self-pity and annoyance about things out of your control, but you’re brought out of your depressed rumination by Ten, who utters in the same tone of voice, “Y/N should just drive down to the UC's and get more information from Yuta. Or break his hand so he can’t play.”
Immediately, your fingers still on the wrapper you were fidgeting with. The others take it as the joke it was meant to be and pay no mind, except for an approving grunt from Kun, but your head goes into overdrive.
You haven’t met Yuta since that night, but you find yourself thinking about him more than you’d like. You’re not obsessed or anything, but your brain occasionally startles you with images of him guitaring whenever you listen to certain songs and you catch yourself thinking about how well he’d play the bassline. Or when you see somebody walking around with a tattoo you’re curious about and realise with a bolt of shock that you want to know what Yuta’s means. Or when you got your upper lobes pierced and you were fiercely, vividly reminded of his.
It’s manageable most of the time. You’re constantly remembering little things about your friends, and he’s just a really great bassist that happened to make an impression on you. But sometimes, it’s harder to make these excuses, like when you’re drunk at a party and making out with the person who sits next to you in calculus and you find yourself vaguely wondering what making out with Yuta would be like. Or when you hear your roommate talking to her boyfriend who goes to the same college as Yuta does, and you desperately, greedily want to know if they’ve met each other, just for some information, some semblance of a personal contact, however convoluted.
But also, you’re great at avoidance and compartmentalisation, so you manage to it just be like that sometimes your way through these more dangerous thoughts.
The call goes on, gloom and acceptance settling heavy in all your bones, until Lisa has to leave for her practice, and your roommate comes back and nags at you to turn off your laptop because the screen is too bright.
When you all left for different colleges, it seemed to go without saying that you’d participate in every Bash that you possibly could. Now, you’re left wondering if that was a conversation that Rosewater should have had.
________________________
In the last seven years of your life, you’re fairly sure that this is the most embarrassed you’ve ever felt. The night breeze ruffles your dyed hair as you lean on the open balcony railing. From somewhere in the building, you can still faintly hear the sounds of the after party raging.
The rest of Rosewater has left and you’re not sure what you’re still doing here. By all means, you should be sleeping in bed, or completing your summer classes, or pretty much doing anything else but this. But an hour after the most disastrous performance of your band’s career, you’re six feet under your thoughts and feelings on an empty balcony, wondering how you hadn't seen this coming.
The beer can that you had snuck out of the party remains three quarters full and abandoned, precariously perched on the railing next to your elbow. It’s an oddly cool and windy night for the peak of summer, but you relish the feeling on your super heated skin, still slightly flushed in mortification.
Memories of a broken high hat, an excessively distorted electric solo on a malfunctioning amp, and a fucking voice crack play on loop in your brain and there’s nothing you can do to stop them. Unseeing, you face the city in front of you, unable to forget the shocked but polite applause Rosewater had received at the end of the performance, the dismissive, pursed lips of the judges and the sound of the MC announcing, “And in sixth place, we have last year’s champions, Rosewater!”
Seven bands had participated.
You hear the door creak open behind you and you whip around, already formulating an excuse about why you’re two floors up from the party and standing alone on a dark balcony, but coherent thought stops when you see who it is.
Yuta had done his whole I'm better than you act before the concert, making your blood boil despite the fact that you were sure they were going to beat you. A week of practice is not nearly enough. But once you had finished performing as the last band to go up on stage, all you got was a blank, confused stare which had morphed into pity as your eyes met his across the stage as you all waited for the results. And that’s just the icing on the cake, isn’t it? Being pitied by your fucking nemesis slash the person you sometimes think about kissing but only out of curiosity.
You didn’t watch their performance, too embarrassed to stay after your show, but it’s a small blessing that Verve placed second and not first. Not heartening enough to pull you out of your funk, but better than the scenario where they win.
You’re too tired and depressed to start a verbal sparring match and you tell him as much, letting out a little sigh at the end as you turn around to face the railing once again, expecting him to leave.
“Who said I came to fight?”
You hear him walk further into the balcony, leaning next to you, elbow nearly brushing against yours, as you force yourself to seem nonchalant and ask with a cocked eyebrow. “Did you not?”
He doesn’t answer immediately, instead picking up the beer can and giving you a questioning look. You wave your hand in permission and he lifts it to his lips, taking a large gulp. With difficulty, you tear your eyes away from his exposed neck, tilted upwards.
“Okay, maybe I did come to gloat.”
“Go ahead, then. Tell me about how much we sucked.” At this point, you’ve beaten yourself up enough that you’re sure nothing he says will seriously affect you.
“It wasn’t that awful.”
You fix him with a steely glare, snatching the can from his grip.
He gives up the act as he drops his shoulders and nods, amending, “Okay, fine, it was pretty pathetic. I honestly thought you guys would come last.”
It feels calming somehow, to hear those words. Everybody’s been tiptoeing around you since the competition, refusing to say the truth, and it feels right and solid to listen to a no-nonsense statement like that.
You hum in acquiescence as you have a sip of the bitter beer, wordlessly passing it to him when you finish. And so it goes, the two of you taking turns quietly drinking until the can is empty, after which he drops it into the tiny dustbin in the corner.
You’re not sure how you feel so calm, especially after noticing his very evident tattoo in his short sleeved t-shirt, something written in Japanese, and the fact that he’s got a new helix piercing, but you’ve hit a state of being where your head just keeps repeating, ‘How can things possibly get worse after a shit day like this one?’, so you’re feeling simultaneously reckless and exhausted.
He comes back and stands next to you, resuming his previous position. On impulse, you ask, “So what did you come here for, if not to gloat and drawl and strut your second place about?”
He snorts at your wording and splutters indignantly, “I don’t strut.”
“Oh, you most certainly do. Like you own the bloody place.”
With narrowed eyes, he demands, “Well, what about you, then?”
“What about me?” you coolly ask.
“Not exactly angelic, are you? With all your cocky winking and smirking. Makes me want to tear my fucking hair out.”
You feel a perverse sense of glee, that you manage to get a reaction this intense, and with a smile of benevolent cheer, you shortly nod your head in thanks in his direction.
He chuckles and just like that, the two of you settle into silence again, with you feeling lighter than you did a couple of minutes back.
You’re looking out onto the city and the lights twinkling in the dark, when you notice shifting in your periphery and see that Yuta's turned around now, back to the railing as he leans languidly on it, elbows resting over the edge. His gaze is fixed on yours and when you meet his eyes, he doesn’t look away, expression serious.
Unable to break eye contact, you stare, transfixed, as he starts, “I've been thinking-"
“Yuta! There you are!”
Both of your gazes dart to the doorway comically fast to see Lucas barely holding himself up, eyes slightly red, obviously drunk.
Rushing to him before he can fall, Yuta grabs his arm, tugging it over his shoulder, propping the man up.
Lucas seems to catch sight of you for the first time and he exclaims, slurring, “Y/N!”
You lift your hand in an amused wave, mind still slightly reeling from Yuta’s proximity.
“You guys were shit!” he continues in the same, excited voice, and the tiredness hits you like a truck all over again. You instantly want nothing more than to go to bed.
“Thanks,” you reply dryly, as Yuta apologetically winces.
He shrugs in helplessness, as Lucas continues to ramble about ‘that note you didn’t hit, dude, I was so ready to get hyped', before he hoists his arm up higher on his shoulder.
Clapping a hand over Lucas’s mouth, effectively reducing the volume of his drunken mumbles, he unsurely says, “I should, uh, probably get him home.”
Suddenly feeling stiff again, you nod in agreement. “Yeah, probably.”
“So I’ll see you around?”
“Sure, cool.”
And just like that, he’s hobbling away with Lucas hanging onto him, leaving you wondering exactly what the fuck just happened.
________________________
Year 4, Sophomore Year
Your vast prior experience and success in the competition will be a valuable asset and we would love to have you on the judging panel this year. Please let us know if you will be available and willing for the same on or before the 23rd of January via return email.
You read and reread the last few sentences on the screen in front of you, not quite registering them. Taking off your glasses, you wipe them with the bottom of your t-shirt and put them back on, squinting at the email. Like a cruel joke, your phone is lying face up next to your laptop, the Rosewater group open with a message from Hendery that’s been read by everybody but without a single reply.
Are we doing it this year?
23rd of January. That gives you roughly two weeks to figure out what you’re going to do.
Your phone vibrates and you look away from the blinking cursor on the white reply screen on your laptop to see that Ten's responded.
Do we really want to?
Lisa starts typing, then stops. It’s radio silence from Kun's end too, but you can see that he’s online and reading the messages.
You picture them in their dorms and apartments, sitting like you on their messy beds, phone in their hand as they anxiously look at the screen, waiting for somebody else to say what they’re too scared to type.
You wonder if any of them got an invite to judge the competition as well, but it’s incredibly rare that more than one person from a band is on the panel. The last time it happened was when Rosewater was in eighth grade and two members from SHINee were judging. But you know that no band since, including yours, has reached their level of talent and expertise.
The tea begins to bubble on the stove and you lift the laptop off of your lap and place it on the bed, moving to the kitchenette in your tiny, rented, one bedroom apartment, phone in hand.
Setting it down on the counter, you pour your tea into a cup through a strainer, trying to think of something to say, something that might make the decision easier.
Two-fifths of the band wasn’t in town during Christmas, the other three won’t be able to make it in spring break, and the memory of last year’s disaster still plagues you.
You take a sip, thumb undecidedly hovering over the keypad for a few minutes, before you lock your phone, unable to come up with anything concrete.
The opportunity to judge the bands is an incredible honour, and one you’ve wanted for a long time. Of course, nothing compares to being on stage, but the thought of getting the validation, the respect and the chance to watch bands like yours perform and decide which one is the best gives you a rush of simultaneous pride, power and gratification.
And with things apparently going the same way, you’d rather not have a repeat of last year’s fiasco.
Mind made up, you place your empty cup in the sink and move to the bed, taking a picture of the email from the organisers and sending it to the still-silent Rosewater group. Then, in true Y/N, Empress of Avoidance fashion, you switch off your phone completely before anybody can reply.
You stare at your laptop screen and it stares right back at you, as if it’s goading you to do something reckless like reply in the affirmative immediately like you so, so dearly want to. But your members' betrayed faces swim to the forefront of your mind and you shut it before you can give in to the urge.
At the top of your laptop, next to the tiny GitHub sticker in the corner, you’ve stuck a post it note with your to-do list.
Unbidden, as they seem to do so often these days, your eyes run through the first five academic items before settling on the last one.
stop thinking about him
There’s no question as to whom it’s referring to. Unlike the other points on the list that all have messy, satisfied pen scratches over them signifying that they’re complete, this last one has half-hearted, incomplete lines drawn partway through the sentence before they stop abruptly.
You had made that list four months ago before starting to stick the subsequent notes on your mini-fridge instead, but you can’t peel it off of your laptop until you tick off, or rather scratch off, every point.
The remainder of the holidays post the competition the previous year was agonising enough, knowing that that catastrophic show wasn’t going to leave you alone anytime soon, but the days seemed to get more stressful as you had to combat all those new, uncomfortable thoughts about him, which suddenly grew so much more intense after that night you two had spent on the balcony.
All at once, you were seeing him in every book you read, hearing him in every bass line you heard. Heck, you almost got a heart attack when you saw that somebody in your coding summer course had a name that started with ‘Y'. He wouldn’t leave you alone, ending up at the airport the same time as you for his flight back to college. You had ducked behind a large group of tourists to avoid him, but the deafeningly loud thumping of your heart and the whoosh of your blood pounding in your ears made you feel so exposed. His black jeans and large, comfortable sweater paired with dark, full-rim glasses that you had never seen him wear before, with his jaw length, then bright red, hair tied in a small, messy ponytail, strands falling out in the front, had made you want to fling everything down on the floor like a petulant child and whine at the universe for making things so difficult for you.
You had hoped that things would be easier once you got busy with college, but despite the immense workload that you miraculously were on top of, he still managed to sneak into your thoughts, making you jump and scurry away every time you caught sight of the mural near your apartment that had a bunch of instruments painted on it, eyes automatically drawn to the bass. Or when you and your friend went to get your first tattoo, it was all you could do to not let out a startled yelp as you were going through the designs in the book, catching sight of the very same Japanese characters that wouldn’t leave your head.
Adding that last point to the list was a necessity.
Absently, you wonder if anybody from Verve has got the invite to judge, and then with a heady thrill that leaves you positively reeling, you’re hit with the possibility of being able to sit right in front of the stage, with a perfect view and an even more perfect excuse to watch Yuta play, openly observing, greedily drinking in the way he works his instrument and the audience, under the equally intoxicating guise of judging and scoring him.
Feeling like the villain in your own story, you selfishly hope that the rest of Rosewater won’t want to play this year.
________________________
“Alright, Y/N?”
“Peachy,” you reply with a thumbs-up as you tug the lanyard over your neck. Soyeon gives you a cheery grin in answer to your own unasked enquiry in return.
When you had entered the venue, later than you usually do since you don’t have to go through sound check or finding out the performing order, you didn’t expect to see her standing near the judge’s table, next to the same high school teacher who had been on the panel three years prior (a Mr. Smith, you have been informed). But it didn’t throw you too much. In fact, it’s a bit calming, having somebody you know so well next to you, even if it’s someone with whom conversation has been restricted to ‘Happy birthday!’ for the last two years.
Especially after Hendery had insisted on going on about how intimidating all the other judges were going to be on the way over, nonchalantly taking his hands off the vehicle periodically while driving to wave them around in exaggeration, making you jerk sideways to catch the steering wheel while screaming bloody murder so you didn’t end up in a ditch before reaching the ripe, old age of 22.
The rest of Rosewater were all very excited on hearing about your judging invite, partly because they knew how much you wanted it, but mostly because it provided the band with a convenient excuse that they really, really needed to not participate without bringing up the trauma of the previous year.
You catch sight of them idly loafing around in the audience enclosure to your right, waiting for the competition to start. You don’t know what’s weirder, the fact that you aren’t with them, or the fact that none of you are in the waiting room for the first time in seven years.
The organiser who had handed you the ID cards that had your names and JUDGE written on them asks, “You guys wanna talk to the participants? They go on in roughly twenty minutes, might be a good idea to ease their nerves a bit.”
Oh no.
Ever since Kun had mentioned that Verve would, in fact, be participating this year, this was the moment you’d been simultaneously dreading and eagerly anticipating. But not so soon.
Unable to come up with a convincing excuse about why this is a very, very bad idea, you mutely nod along with the other two judges and follow the woman who leads all of you backstage to the waiting room that you know like the back of your hand.
You have to stop yourself from feverishly scanning the room for a sight of him, eager to see what colour his hair is now, whether he’s got any new piercings or tattoos in the last year, if he’s looking at you with the same, soft, genuine expression that you last saw him sporting on that balcony.
Morphing your features into an encouraging smile as Soyeon gives a tiny, heartening speech next to you, you let your eyes rove over the participants, nodding in cheerful acknowledgement at the ones you’ve competed against before but really on the lookout for just one, specific band.
You spot Jaehyun first. He gives you a wave and you return it, stomach tightening uncomfortably in a guilty sort of glee now that you know that any second, you’re going to be seeing Yuta for the first time in a year in person and not in your memories or imagination. Taeyong does his signature salute and you incline your head cordially to him and Lucas before your eyes land on him.
They’re standing at the corner, and through a tiny gap in between the crowded bodies, you ravenously scan him, toe to head. From his black sneakers to his tight, dark washed jeans with holes at the knees giving you a peek into his skin that feels gloriously forbidden, up to his plain, black t-shirt, short sleeves folded up even further so the ink is visible. Eagerly, unable to stop your eyes from roaming, you look at his ears, noticing with a jolt that there are new snug studs on both sides, before you stop short at his chin length, lavender ombre platinum blond hair.
Your gaze slides down to his face and your stomach gives an annoying swoop when you see him boring holes into your eyes. He looks cocky, smug at having caught you very obviously eye-fucking him, but there’s also something else in his expression, a twinkle that’s kind and amused.
You hear a polite cough next to you and you’re drawn out of your staring competition feeling like you’ve been pulled out of a lake after nearly drowning. Soyeon and Mr. Smith look at you expectantly. The organiser gently prompts, “And most of you probably know her, but for those who don’t, this is Y/N from Rosewater. Her band's participated in and won the Summer Bash multiple times.”
She trails off, looking at you anticipatorily. You suddenly become very aware of the rest of the room staring at you with wide eyes, obviously waiting for you to do something.
Shaking your head slightly, you softly clear your throat before saying in as ebullient a voice as you can muster when it feels like you haven’t had a sip of water in days, “Good luck, guys! Have fun on stage. May the best band win!”
No namby-pamby, wishy-washy ‘It isn’t a competition, it’s a concert!' nonsense from you.
Cheers and applause follow and you all turn around to leave. You catch Yuta’s eye and see that he’s looking at you with an entertained grin, obviously pleased at having distracted you to such an extent, and you actively have to fight the blush that’s threatening to take over your face, a dry voice in your head cursing at you for acting like a dithering fool.
You’re all guided to the table in front of the main stage that has three clipboards with sheets containing the list of the participating bands, along with pens on the side. With a little wave at the growing, eager crowd and a special grin towards the rest of Rosewater who are all gathered near the front and giving you excited cheers, you take your seat in between the other two judges as indicated by the organiser.
You force your heart to calm down, the sight of your band aiding in the process as you read the names on the list in front of you that ends with 13.Verve.
As the PAR lights are flicked on and the audience becomes louder, Soyeon ducks her head towards you and asks with an insufferable, knowing grin, “What was that about?”
Playing dumb, refusing to look at her lest she can tell from your eyes that your heart’s just picked up pace again, you reply, “What was what about?”
“I might not have seen you in person for two years, but I remember what you look like when you’re trying to hold in a blush.”
You’ve never really regretted your relationship with Soyeon, but you’re mighty close to doing it now.
Sniffing, you say, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She chuckles amusedly. Good to know she’s entertained. “It's the Verve bassist, isn’t it? You definitely have a type.”
Kicking her under the table only begets more laughter, but you hate how called out you feel by that statement. So what if Soyeon's a bassist as well?
Further conversation is halted as the MC announces the beginning of the competition, and the next hour you spend jotting down marks and sometimes, random doodles when a particularly boring band comes along, guiltily grinning when Mr. Smith notices and gives you a scandalised glare.
It truly is something else, watching from the frontlines as other groups perform on stage, and you wonder exactly how the judges sit here, with screeching crowds right behind them and bright lights hitting from the front. However, you’re quite enjoying the experience of watching and deliberating scores, not really keeping track of which number is on stage, and you’re thrown for a loop when the MC announces, “And now, it’s time for our last band of the night, Verve!”
You resolutely look forward, practically feeling the cheeky grin that Soyeon throws at you, even though you would very much like to return it with a bonk over her head. But your gaze is trained on the amp that’s there near the front of the stage, too scared to look up.
You know that the moment you see Yuta in all his glory on stage, you might as well rip up the post it into a hundred pieces because you’re never going to be able to scratch out that last item.
But the pull is too great, the bass too deep for you to not look, and despite your greatest misgivings, you shift your eyes up just when Taeyong hits the snare with an almighty rim shot and the scoop lights suddenly turn on with the beat, illuminating the members on stage in a frenetic glow.
It’s like it’s all happening in slow motion. You can’t remember why you didn’t want to see a sight this wonderful, with all the members very clearly feeling themselves on stage. It’s quite easy to see their appeal when you aren’t competing against them, you realise. You can barely bear to tear your eyes away from Taeyong having the time of his life behind the drum kit but with bated breath, you move to look at Yuta, and suddenly you feel like oxygen is in very short supply at the moment.
No smugness, no kindness, just pure, unadulterated joy radiates from his very being, beautiful, wide smile that you’ve never had the absolute honour of seeing before etched on his face and head bobbing blithely, as he switches between looking down at his guitar and straight up at the audience. You’re hit by a rush of regret as you wonder just why you never bothered to watch their shows like this, as a part of the crowd, and not just through tiny peeks from backstage or refusing to look at all from the waiting room.
You’ll freely admit to yourself, that in this one moment, you don’t want to look away. And then, like a flash, he looks straight at you, buoyant smile still plastered on his face, before giving you a slow and quite deliberate wink, right in the middle of a solo.
If you were expecting to feel angry, going by past experiences with his winks, you’re in for a mighty surprise. Breathlessly, you remember a voice screaming, “Marry me, Yuta!” and you think that maybe that audience member from four years ago had the right idea.
It feels like it’s over before it ever began as they walk off stage to raucous applause, with you, Soyeon and Mr. Smith giving standing ovations. In the middle of it all, Soyeon ducks towards you once again to be heard and says while clapping, “Good choice.”
You can’t even be mad at her. Your heart feels like it’s being held together by that last, deep note and it comes as no surprise that on the sheet in front of you, the maximum score is in the column next to 13.Verve.
Ten minutes later sees the three of you on stage next to the MC, Soyeon holding the trophy that’s waiting to be handed over to the winner that’s yet to be announced. Not that it’s a surprise to anybody. You feel a strong sense of pride as you see Rosewater! written on the plaque multiple times, and suddenly feeling very grateful for your band, you look out into the crowd, giving a wide grin to Lisa, Kun, Ten and Hendery who are all beaming back at you, clearly similarly effected by the last performance.
One by one, the groups exit the stage to polite applause, until you hear the MC announcing, “And for the second time, our first place champions are Verve!”
You definitely aren’t expecting it when Soyeon shoves the trophy into your hands with a shit-eating grin, but in front of the hooting audience and the quickly advancing winners, you have no choice but to accept it before turning to Yuta who’s still sweaty from the performance, your fingers tightly clasped around the neck to prevent them from shaking.
His hands brush against yours as he’s accepting the trophy, and there’s a flash of a grin from him that’s dangerously toeing the line between gratitude and flirtation. Feeling light-headed at the contact and the half-smirk, you give a flustered bow before stepping back and allowing the other judges to congratulate the band, hoping nobody around you or from the audience can hear your heart veritably whomping in your chest.
________________________
“Didn’t expect you to be the running away type.”
The high drawl comes from directly behind you, right as you’re climbing into the back seat of the cab, and you freeze on spot, one leg inside the vehicle and one leg out.
Flashback to twenty minutes ago, after you had scurried off stage with your face burning, refusing to make any more contact with Yuta. Soyeon had not been able to stop giggling, even when the two of you were politely bidding Mr. Smith goodbye. You tried to no avail to stop blushing, but the more Soyeon poked and teased you, the redder you became until you felt like your entire body was on fire.
You had severely regretted the decision to walk with her to the car park and see her off, because she had spent the entire time asking you when you were going ask him out, under the guise of ‘We should totally catch up, it’s been so long.’
As you had watched her drive away, you felt entirely different kind of butterflies in your stomach, ones born from anxiety and worry about actually dating somebody you like, and pleading a headache to a fairly disappointed Rosewater, you had booked a cab home to avoid going to the after party and possibly coming face to face with Yuta.
Obviously, your master plan hadn’t worked.
Cut to the present, and you know there’s no escape, now that he’s seen you trying to leave. Exhaling deeply, you slowly turn around to watch him standing about twelve feet away, looking at you with his head cocked to the side, challenging look in his eyes and a single brow lifted in gentle surprise.
He’s slightly panting, like he ran from the party to find you, and you refuse to let the tiny balloon of hope in your chest grow any larger, popping it immediately as you reply, “I’m not running away from anything.”
He scoffs, clearly disbelieving, and takes a few steps closer, obviously intent on discussing this, until he’s around nine feet away.
“Are you going to pretend you don’t feel anything?”
It gives you a shock, hearing the words you’ve spent so long trying to deny to yourself, and you immediately lash out, irritation coursing through you, with the full objective of putting him on the spot like he’s just done to you.
“I’m not pretending anything,” you spit out. “Just because your big, fat ego can’t bear the thought of somebody not liking you-"
“I like you, though.”
“-doesn’t mean the world has to revolve around-what now?”
He looks at you, any and all traces of smugness removed from his face. He’s wearing the same expression that he had that night on the balcony, when he was about to say something before being interrupted by Lucas, and it’s open and frank, no deceit or cunning in sight.
You’re left gaping at him, trying to remember what words are, attempting to get your brain to catch up with your rapidly beating heart as he slowly steps closer and closer until there are roughly five tiny feet between your bodies.
“I like you,” he repeats simply, although there’s a trace of something like nervousness in his voice now. “And if I’m not mistaken, you like me too. But if I am, say the word and I’ll leave right now and let you get home to nurse that fake headache of yours.”
Fucking Kun.
You’re saved the bother of answering him immediately by the Uber driver who rolls down his window and gruffly shouts, “I've got another ride, do you think you could speed it up, maybe? Or can I cancel your booking?”
You jump in alarm, having completely forgotten about the cab waiting for you. You look at Yuta, feeling like your heart has crawled up to your throat as you scan his face for some sign of amusement, for a signal that this is all one big joke. But then you remember the winking and the flirting and the sharing of a beer can on a dark, abandoned balcony after he had comforted you when he didn’t really have to, and you find nothing but genuineness in his candid gaze.
He waits patiently for you to make a decision, although you notice him subtly shifting his weight from foot to foot, probably toning down his fidgeting so as to not startle you too much.
Without allowing yourself to think too much about it, you turn around to the driver and say, “You can cancel the booking. Sorry for keeping you waiting.”
He gives you a dirty look as you shut the still open back door, grumbling to himself, but you can’t pay attention to it, too distracted by the wide grin that’s slowly spreading over Yuta’s face.
He takes another step closer, and now the two of you are barely three feet apart. This close, you can see the tiny dimple on his right cheek, the sparkle in his eyes and the white, gleaming rows of teeth, his smile making you feel like you’re drowning but in the good way. You can count the number of earrings he’s wearing on each ear (four), and you feel an intense desire to reach out and tuck the wispy, escaped strands of his chin-length hair back into the small ponytail.
“So I wasn’t mistaken, then?” he asks, confirming what the both of you know, but what you’ve been too wimpy to say out loud.
“No, you weren’t,” you softly reply, unable to stop the embarrassment from your previous outburst from consuming you.
Taking a deep breath, you’re the one who steps forward this time. He startles but stays his ground, probably surprised that you’ve taken the initiative.
You have to tilt your head up to look at his face now and you do, as his neck bends down as well so he can make eye contact.
Shakily, you lift a slightly trembling hand, overly aware of his calm but pleased gaze, and gently tuck his soft hair behind his left ear, fingers grazing his helix stud in the process.
It’s like that one touch released a tightly wound spring in both of you, and suddenly, you’re both rushing forward, lips meeting in a firm kiss as his hands come up to cradle your face and yours loosely wind around his waist, not quite touching, but close enough to feel the heat of his body through his t-shirt.
You feel him grin against your lips and you can’t stop yourself from doing the same, feeling like an anchor that’s been tugging at your body has finally been pulled up.
Pulling away, with no real bite in his voice, he softly teases, “For somebody who looks so cool on stage, you sure are a worry wart, huh?”
“Shut up,” you petulantly whine, blush having returned in full force as he chuckles, amused at your reaction. You’d be more annoyed, but from this angle, you can see the flush on his neck and it eases you, knowing that he’s just as effected as you are.
From somewhere nearby, you can hear the beginnings of the party, bass boosted music reaching your earshot, and with a light grin, Yuta takes your hand in his, cocking his head towards the sound.
“Want to go listen to people talk about how great your performance was?”
Entangling your willing fingers in his, with a cheeky smirk that really shouldn’t be that attractive, he replies, “Always.”
~
#thekpopnetwork#kwritersorldnet#ultkpop#nct#yuta#nakamoto yuta#kpop#fluff#nct 127#kpop imagine#yuta imagine#nct imagine#kpop fluff#yuta fluff#nct fluff#kpop scenario#nct scenario#yuta scenario#j writes#wayv#ten#kun#winwin#hendery#johnny#taeyong#jaehyun#lucas#lisa#blackpink
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Happy Birthday, Edward!
Technically, Edward’s birthday isn’t until tomorrow, but I was too damn excited!!
I really wanted to do something special for Edward’s birthday, so I thought I’d write him a little something to celebrate!
There’s also some self-indulgent Chredwis in here, because there isn’t enough of that out there.
Characters: Edward Quinton, Chris Jackson, Drew and Nevin Jovel, Isaac Beamer, Ell Fisher
Word count: 2,164
Warnings: Swearing
The boys belong to @onebizarrekai, Ell belongs to me, and the picture was drawn by my good friend @oakskull!
Fic is under the cut!
Happy birthday, Edward!
***
Chris was ten seconds away from a fucking panic attack. He was pacing back and forth, muttering to himself, finishing off his fourth chocolate bar in the span of ten minutes.
“Okay, so Ell’s baking the cake, Nevin’s cooking other stuff, Drew’s finishing up the playlist for the party…wait, what about the decorations? OH GOD, ARE THE DECORATIONS DONE?! THIS PARTY’S GONNA SUCK ASS IF THERE ISN’T ANY DECORA-”
“Calm your tits, man!” Isaac sighed, walking in the room with a box of handmade decorations. He put them down and held up a banner that said, ‘Happy Birthday, King Edward Quinton!’ There were crowns drawn on it with shiny markers, and it was covered in rhinestones and glitter. “Also gonna toot my own horn and say it’s some of my best work.”
“Oh, thank Kai,” Chris sighed, relaxing. “...Why is it so shiny, though?”
“It’s Edward’s birthday. Everyone knows that your birthday is the one day per year that you get to feel important!” Isaac grinned. “Plus I wanted to use a ton of glitter and rhinestones.”
“Isaac, honey, I love you, but how much did you even USE?” Drew cried, squinting at the banner and shielding his eyes.
“You remember when I went to the arts and crafts store with the five hundred dollars Ell gave me?”
“Yeah?”
“Two hundred and fifty dollars were spent on anything that sparkled.”
Drew facepalmed.
“Well, the aesthetic does look pretty nice,” Chris nodded. “Ell, do me a favor and use your telekinesis to help hang all of these up.”
“Gotcha, Chris-cross!” Ell grinned, lifting her hand. The banner lifted in the air all on its own. She lifted the box up with her hands and wandered off to decorate the rest of Chris’s house.
“I can’t believe that your dad’s okay with holding Ed’s party here,” Isaac said. “I figured that he’d say no to this.”
“Oh, Dad doesn’t know,” Chris replied. “He’s been on a business trip since Monday. He won’t be back until late next week. As long as we clean everything up afterwards, he won’t suspect a thing.”
“Damn, you’re being a rebel, aren’t you?” Drew raised an eyebrow.
“Yeah, because this is important! Tomorrow is Ed’s big day!” Chris cried. “Tomorrow has to be absolutely perfect! Just like he is…”
“What was that last part?” Nevin asked, leaning closer to the monochromatic teenager.
“NOTHING!” Chris shouted, face going red, turning to Ell. “Ell, you’re gonna pick Ed up later so he can spend the night at your house, right? You know, to keep him busy so we can set up the finishing touches the next morning?”
“Uh-huh!” Ell gave Chris a thumbs up. “I’m gonna get up early and sneak over here to bake and decorate the cake. If all goes well, I should be back before Edward even wakes up.”
“Remind me why Edward’s gonna stay the night at Ell’s house, again?” Isaac asked. “He could’ve stayed at my place. We’re on pretty good terms.”
“Ell lives the furthest away from all of us,” Chris reminded him. “I’d have him stay at my house, but obviously we can’t, since we’re having the party here.”
“And we all know what Chris would do to Ed if they spent the night alone with each other,” Ell added.
“Jesus fucking Christ, guys! It’s not like that!” Chris cried. “We’d just play birthday games.”
“Birthday games?” Drew repeated.
“Yeah! Like Spin the Bottle, 7 Minutes in Heaven…”
“Chris, those aren’t birthday games,” Isaac facepalmed. “Those are the types of games that horny teenagers play at parties.”
“Hey, who can blame him? That’s how I would want to ring in MY birthday.” Ell’s face started to turn red. “But with somebody else, if you catch my drift…”
“Ell, stop it. You’re gonna bleed on the carpet.” Drew sighed, pulling out a tissue and handing it to Ell.
“Alright, everyone regroup here tomorrow morning at 8 am to put on the finishing touches! Ed’s… er, cronies will arrive a few hours before, and Ell and Ed should be here at noon! Don’t be late!”
Everyone said their goodbyes and went their separate ways, Isaac getting into his car, Drew and Nevin heading home, and Ell walking towards Ed’s house.
Chris shut the door behind him, sliding to the floor. He was nervous. So, so nervous. This party was one of the many surprises that he had for Edward, when tomorrow came.
“Tomorrow is going to be perfect,” Chris said aloud to the empty house. “It has to be. For Edward.”
********************************************
Edward’s cake looked amazing. It was several layers tall, and was frosted in different colors, and even had a tiny little Edward made of modeling chocolate and fondant.
“It’s not really one of my best creations, but Ed’ll like it,” Ell shrugged, wiping some frosting off of her cheek.
“Not one of your best?!” Chris cried. “This is the best birthday cake I’ve ever seen in my life! How did you even manage to make this in two hours?”
“I’ve been in a ton of baking competitions before. No biggie.” Ell blew some hair out of her face. “You gotta learn to work quickly in those sort of things.”
“Did you win a few of them?” Chris asked, intrigued.
“Nope. I won them all.” Ell grinned. “What did you think all those trophies in my living room came from?”
“Martial arts competitions,” Chris replied without hesitation.
“You’re not wrong, actually. I just keep those trophies in my room.” Ell checked the time. “I better go. Ed’s gonna wake up any minute now, and I need to keep the B-day boy distracted.”
“Alright,” Chris sighed. “I’ll call you if I need you to distract him for even longer.”
“That won’t happen.” Ell smiled at Chris, confident.
“How do you know?”
“Let me ask you a question.” Ell leaned in close to Chris. “Do you love Edward?”
Chris’s face went completely and totally red.
“Well, the same generic and platonic love I share with all of my friends and family-”
“No, you dumbass! I mean romantically! Sexually! That kind of love! Do you love Edward in that way?”
Chris balled his hands up into fists. He could lie in this situation, say that he didn’t, but Ell could read minds, and on top of that, she could instantly tell whether someone was lying or telling the truth, so denying that he loved Edward in this situation proved moot.
“Yes. I romantically and sexually love Edward,” Chris admitted, his cheeks warming.
“In that case, I believe that you’ve got this in the bag,” Ell smiled. “You won’t let anything go wrong for him. It’s his birthday, and you want to make it really special for him. You want to give him a birthday that he’ll never forget, in the best way possible. And you’ll succeed.”
“You really think so?”
“I don’t think so. I know so. Telekinetic’s intuition.” Ell tapped her head, looking like the guy from the “you can’t do” meme.
Chris chuckled. “Thanks, Ell. You’re the best.”
“You’re welcome. That’ll be thirty bucks.”
“WHAT?!”
“I’m kidding! God…”
******************************
Edward felt something sit down on his chest, followed by a heavenly smell. He opened his eyes, and Ell was sitting on him, a party horn in her mouth, holding a tray.
Ell blew on the horn, and she took it out of her mouth using her telekinesis. “Bon anniversaire! Feliz cumpleanos! Happy birthday!”
“You made me breakfast in bed? That’s awfully nice of you!” Edward grinned, taking the tray. “Ooh! French toast!”
“Not just any French toast!” Ell grinned. “It’s my grandmother’s special Nutella French toast! The recipe’s been in my family since the day Nutella was first sold in 1964!”
Edward took a bite of it, and his eyes lit up. “Holy shit, this tastes amazing! Nevin would probably kill for this recipe!”
“Yeah, I figured, which is why I haven’t told him about this,” Ell chuckled. “Do me a solid and keep this under wraps, will you?”
“It’s the least I can do,” Edward nodded, taking another bite. “Damn, I gotta say, you’re a really good cook.”
“Oh, thanks. I’m mostly self-taught.” Ell crossed her legs. “So, do you have any plans for today?”
“I usually go out for dinner on my birthday with my family, but I’m pretty much free until then,” Edward said. “I think I might go see Chris. My cronies probably got me something. Well, at least Cody, probably.”
“Oh, I bet you’ll see them soon,” Ell smiled. “Trust me.”
“Okay…” Edward took another bite. While he was distracted, Ell checked the time. She needed to keep Edward distracted for four hours. While some people would think that was impossible, she knew how to do it.
“You know, there’s this new store that opened up nearby that’s full of weird stuff,” Ell said, rubbing her thumb and forefinger together. “And I heard this rumor from one of the librarians that the place had some haunted items…”
“Haunted? As in, ghosts?” Edward leaned forward.
Ell nodded.
“Well, what are we waiting for?! LET’S GO!” Edward shoved the rest of the toast in his mouth and started taking his shirt off.
“HEY! Girl in the room!!”
********************************
“You want… that book?” Ell asked, raising an eyebrow as Edward held up a dusty, old book with some kind of symbol on the cover.
“Yep!” Edward grinned.
Ell breathed in deeply. “Dude, I know it’s your birthday, and I don’t mean to shoot you down on your special day, but I haven’t seen you pick up a book that wasn’t assigned to you for class.”
“Well, unlike you, I do all my recreational reading in the comfort of my own home, and only there,” Edward said, holding the book to his chest. “Besides, this book is just oozing with supernatural stuff. I can feel it in my bones.”
“Alright, if you say so,” Ell shrugged, giving the cashier several hundred dollar bills. “Keep the change, m’theydy.”
The cashier looked confused, but put the money in the register without complaint.
It was almost noon. Time for Ed to get so fucking surprised.
“Hey, Chris just texted me,” Ell said, looking at Edward with a gleam in her eyes. “He asked me to bring you over to his house. He has something for you.”
Edward’s cheeks dusted pink.
“Edward? You alright, buddy?” Ell asked.
“I-I’m fine!” Edward said rather quickly. “L-let’s hurry up.”
Ell grinned, grabbed Edward’s hand, and fucking ran. For someone who was the shortest person in Foxfield High School, she was fast.
“Ell, slow down! Christ alive!” Edward cried, stumbling to catch up to his younger friend.
Ell finally screeched to a stop in front of Chris’s house.
“Chris said to just go on in,” Ell said, panting slightly. “I’m gonna go use the bathroom.” She dashed inside the house, opening and shutting the door quickly.
“Okay, everyone! He’s here!” Ell whispered.
“Okay everyone, go and hide!” Chris hissed. “When Ed comes in, count to three, and then jump out and yell, ‘Surprise’! Got that?”
Everyone nodded, scrambling to find a hiding spot. Ell used her powers to turn the lights off as she hid behind the couch next to the twins.
Edward opened the door, entering the dark house. “Hello? Chris?” He squinted, looking around the pitch-black house. “Are you home?”
Ell turned the lights back on, and everyone jumped out from their hiding spots.
“SURPRISE!” Everyone yelled. “HAPPY BIRTHDAY!”
“W-what? A… a party?” Edward looked around the room in disbelief. “You guys set this all up?”
“Actually, it was Chris,” Isaac admitted, elbowing Chris in the side. “He got the idea in the first place. The rest of us helped in our own little ways. I made the decorations, if you can guess.”
Edward held back laughter as he looked at the extremely glittery banner that was hanging on a wall. He turned to Chris. “You planned all of this by yourself?”
Chris nodded, his face turning slightly pink. “It’s your birthday. I wanted to make it really special for you. I hope you like it.”
“Well, I don’t like it.”
Chris felt his heart sink. “O-oh. I’m-”
“I love it!”
Chris blinked. “Y-you do?”
“Yeah!” Edward grinned. “I can’t believe you went through the trouble of planning a huge surprise party just for me. It’s such a great birthday gift.”
Chris looked at Ell from the corner of his eye. She gave him a knowing look, and nodded, as if she was telling her to go for it. Chris took a deep breath.
“Well, can I give you another gift?” Chris asked.
“Sure! What is-”
Chris grabbed Edward, dipped him down, and gave him a long, deep, passionate kiss. Isaac and Nevin fucking sceamed, while everyone else stared in awe.
After thirty thrilling seconds, Chris separated from a blushing Edward.
“Happy birthday,” Chris grinned.
Edward stood there, frozen for a good while, before he smiled back, tears of joy streaming down his face.
“Thank you.”
#sugar's writing#ibvs#edward quinton#chris jackson#isaac beamer#drew jovel#nevin jovel#ell fisher#chredwis#happy birth to ed!!
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Brother Dearest Pt 27
Portia in the room beside yours once in the hall smiled taking your side saying, “Hey there Bunny.”
In a giggle you replied, “Hey Portia. Where are you off to?”
“Art History, you?”
“Same,”
“Ooh, goody, we can sit together and head to lunch after. They do have a cafeteria here and on the Men’s Campus, but I know there’s a nice little diner nearby that my driver can take us to.”
“Sounds good.” You replied noticing her looking you over curiously.
“Do you have a driver?”
“No, took the subway.”
“Alone?!”
You shook your head, “No, James and his brother Victor came with me. But I’ve taken the subway alone before.”
“Some ladies have bikes, would that be easier?”
“For me? No. I live in Brooklyn. It’s half an hour on the subway.”
“That far? You can’t move closer?”
“I grew up in Brooklyn, plus for what it cost to buy my old home we couldn’t afford half the space in Manhattan.”
“How big is your place? We have a penthouse apartment with five bedrooms and the most incredible view from the second floor.”
“Five story brownstone, James and Victor bought the building we remodeled over the summer.”
“The whole building?!”
You nodded, “I was a bit stunned but the whole block was up for sale nearly and we used to have an apartment in the building growing up but they really wanted to give me a good home while I study with room for all of us.”
“We are just going to have to plan a dinner to have you all over so Daddy can meet you all and Preston can come out to meet up with you again.”
“Sounds like fun.”
Her hand tapped yours saying, “And when your home is ready do let us know.”
“It is ready. Had our Priest over on Sunday, first in town outside of Eddie’s family. Starting to build up a sort of competition to see who can get invited first.”
A giggle escaped her and she said in rounding another corner drawing your eyes to the groups of ladies looking between the two of you wondering why you were again speaking to the woman in the bright yellow dress and white cardigan beside you, bright and sunny with pearls around her neck and on studs in her ears. “In no time we’ll have steady teas and dinners around our study groups, because I know one of the only ways I am getting through my language course, and I have no clue what is up with that History Professor.”
You giggled again, “Did you sign the contract?”
“Yes, Daddy didn’t raise a quitter.”
“Well if you need a museum buddy I practically live there and I know the half off days and free days by heart.”
At the doors she paused looking at you when you pulled it open for the both of you, “Why would you know the free days?”
“Oh honey, my parents came here from Ireland. First generation American, free days and coupons are a second language to me. Practically lived in the Public Library before the war.” You looked her over stepping with her through the door, “I have some investments now, much better off. New to having money, part of why the guys wanted to keep me back in my hometown.”
“Where do you like to sit?” Together you compromised to five steps up near to the aisle in the far right section of the tiered seating below the projector. Once there she said, “Well I can’t wait to have somebody from New York show me what I might have missed out on.” Her eyes dropped to your bag as she said showing you her own sunflower coated carpet bag, “Would you look at that. Great minds and all that,” she smiled at you making you giggle to yourself pulling out a fresh notepad.
“Victor surprised me with it yesterday.”
All through the seating that was barely half filled the other ladies filled their seats and your head tilted to shift your braided ponytail off your shoulder hearing whispers of others commenting on your choice of a friend. Once the Professor began to speak one of the upper classmen claimed the slide box and it was straight to work with almost every student around you giving an answer while you gained glances from others wondering if you had known the answers at all. Only Portia however could see that you were writing out the names of each and their origins and dates moments after the image had popped up.
Out of nowhere silence came with a surrealist painting to throw off the other ladies with something not on the syllabus. Wetting your lips you raised your hand drawing the eyes of the formerly smirking Professor’s eyes to you in the lowering of your hand again. “La persistencia de la memoria,” parting her lips, “Also known as, The Persistence of Memory, Painted by Salvador Dalí in 1931.”
Shifting on her feet she asked, “How-?”
“It’s been hanging in the MoMA since 1934. One of the most recognizable works of Surrealism.”
“Do you prefer Surrealism?”
“Depends on the piece and subject. I do enjoy the imagination behind it. I would rather have that on my wall over paint splatters or Picasso, but that’s just me.”
With a nod she took a second glance your way and had the slide switched over with scattered naming of the next row of paintings that when others couldn’t again you were looked to showing that you’d studied up well outside what was expected to be covered. The last thing she said was, “For your first assignment I want each of you to sit down and write me four pages on a piece of artwork that was in your house growing up. What the subject was, style and most importantly what the piece meant to you and affected your family each day. Due in our next class.”
Tilting your head in a hushed sigh you copied the assignment in your daily planner you added to your bag with everything else. Portia stood first with you to follow her to the aisle as she said, “The car should be by that lovely tulip garden for us.”
“You don’t approve of my assignment?” The Professor asked when you were passing her by low enough to not cause a scene with only you two to hear it.
Smiling at her you replied, “I will have it for you on Thursday. Have a nice day, Professor.” Her eyes followed you to the door curious about your reaction and what it meant.
Waiting on the other side of the door a group of ladies you remembered with a few clubs trying to recruit you smiled asking, “Bunny, were you heading to the cafeteria?”
“Actually we were heading to a diner nearby campus if you wanted to come.”
Timid shakes of heads came and another in the group said, “We brought our lunches, maybe another time.”
You nodded and returned their waves as they walked away. Portia in your continued path onwards sighed saying, “I don’t think I’m going to make many friends here.”
“Well you’ll do better than me no doubt. I tend to be unpopular in school. They’ll see how bubbly and sweet you are and snatch you up.”
“Everyone knows your name, you are in the papers. You met the President and a King who are both invited to your wedding.” She fired back playfully.
“Doesn’t make me fun enough to entertain hundreds of people expecting to be friends with me for hopes of getting closer to some imaginary famous group of friends I might have for having met a President and a King. Up in Canada I work in a diner, you are the closest person I could count to some elite list of connections I could boast on.”
Her arm eased through yours and she squeaked out, “That is so sweet of you to say,” making you giggle and watch the path she led you on to memorize, “Have you picked any clubs yet?”
“No, not yet. No doubt they will be circling this week.”
“I have a synchronized swimming tryout after my last class at two.”
“Sounds like fun for you.”
Smiling at you she said, “You don’t want to try it?”
“I’m not the best swimmer. Nearly drowned a couple times in the public pool when I was little. I swim up in the ponds up in Canada on their land.”
Looking you over she asked, “Have you, lived with James long?”
“Well we lost our apartment in Canada when Eddie got drafted, we moved on base, so when we discharged we didn’t have a home to go to.”
“Oh,”
“And for years through the war they had said we could move in with James and Victor. I know living together is sort of a timid subject for some people.”
Shaking her head she said, “No, I didn’t mean it like that. I would never assume anything improper. Eddie lives with you too?”
“Yes, him, his wife Dawn and son Teddy have their own floor in our place.”
She gasped, “You’re an auntie?! Congratulations!”
You giggled again, “Thank you, he’s crawling already and getting onto solid food. Absolutely love him.”
Black and polished a car was waiting and to the shock of people looking on you were seen climbing into the car after Portia. All over campus the elite of the North seemed to be holding a common thought that the Southern money Heiress was to be kept at arms length while you were to be drawn into the fold as per the alumni’s orders. A thought clearly needing to be adjusted if you continued your interest in getting to know the social outcast.
Quaint and open the diner sat with more students who waved to you luring you both to them, or more precisely the half booth table beside theirs. In a try to help her gain some friends you bubbled out your personality to do so, politely to the waitress you spoke ordering and made sure to tip well through the conversation centering around classes you had and Professors who seemed to be difficult or up to trying for adding the most work to the course load as possible.
“How are you taking 14 courses?” One of the most diligent on recruiting you for her club asked bewildered at her nine that seemed to be stressful for her third year.
“Not all of them are every day. Some are one semester.”
“What do you have next?”
“Um, Philosophy on the Men’s Campus. Then back to Barnard for Mythology.”
“That’s a jump.”
You giggled saying, “Possibly. I have my other two Columbia courses tomorrow.”
Portia, “Three classes with the men?” Portia asked making you smirk and slice off another piece of your meal.
One of the other ladies said tapping her finger to her bare ring finger, “She already has her fella.”
Her friend next to her said, “But could always put in a good word for us single ladies.”
Giggling again you said lifting your fork, “If I hear any guys wanting a dame I’ll tell them about the diner for lunch.” Earning giggles and squeals in easing the food between your lips.
“Any thoughts on clubs yet?” Luring eyes to you again.
“Um, not exactly. I know Portia is trying for synchronized swimming.” Moods slightly deflated a moment until you said, “My future brother in law, Victor, taught me how to develop film, and I have my brother Steve’s camera, so maybe a photography course, but I think they only have that for Columbia guys.”
The head club lady shook her head, “No, no, we have one. They work with the paper and yearbooks mostly, however their instructor is out until tomorrow. What sort of camera is it?”
“An old Kodiak Vigilant Junior. Over ten years old, but Victor helped me to clean it up maintain the hinge and everything. Unless they require a newer one, then no doubt he’ll go and buy me the biggest best one out there.”
“Oh how sweet.”
“Well I started my job at the diner in Canada and they bought me a purse, started my ged course and they bought me a new typewriter. Start here they bought me my bag. If they had their way there would be a line of presents to circle the block for me when I get home.”
Portia patted your arm, “You picked a great man to marry.” Gaining agreeing nods from the group.
More clubs came up in conversation until the time was checked and on your feet the head of the group said in a pat on your arm, “I’ll check with Julie and send her your way about the photography club she’ll give you the basics.”
Her friend said, “And for an art club we do have a comic section in the paper that we lost our artist for last year, also handles the portraits added to stories for Professors and locations and such. I’ll let Amber know to add your name to the list. Might need some sketches to see what your skill level is if she’s found some more names to go against.”
“Thank you.” You said splitting from the others and joining Portia to her car again.
“That was fun,” she said on the drive back where you saw she had the driver drop you at the men’s campus.
“Yes, maybe that might calm things a bit.”
“Who knows we might get on the paper together. Had an article back home on ours. Handy tips for ladies around the house. Had all the girls wanting to build their own shoe cubbies.”
“One way to do it,” making her giggle and turn her head subtly primping seeing curious guys stealing glances at the car. “Thank you for the ride.”
“Any time. Hopefully I can run into you again after school.”
“I’ll keep my eyes peeled.”
You said with a wave sliding to the door you opened to climb out seeing a nearby guy peer inside and once you were up at Portia’s statement of, “Just dropping my friend Bunny. But thank you,”
“Timothy,” Offering his hand that she shook.
Nodding her head saying, “Well thank you, Timothy.” Waving at him as he closed the door smiling at her while you passed through parting groups of guys looking you over wondering where you were headed.
Passing by Professor Crane’s class you found your way to another tiered set of seating with long tables you sat on the aisle in the second row of the first section of desks you reached hopefully ensuring nobody absurdly tall would block your view. Packed to the brim this class seemed to be with the other ladies choosing to sit in your row and the one in front of yours filling those five seats with the men taking up the rest of the space. The Professor knew this might not be one of the most female populated courses but even sticking to his stern teaching methods he tried to encourage the few females who would sign up to possibly encourage others to sign up the next year.
Right off the bat he stirred up a debate that got heated to the point one of the guys headed to the rows of books along the walls to find his proof for his opponent only to glance your way ending his huffing battle trying to flip through the hefty book when you gave him the page and paragraph number. Carrying it to the one he was arguing he asked you, “How’d you do that?”
Meeting his eye you replied, “I remember everything I read.”
“Everything?” He asked.
And you repeated, “Everything.”
“Must come in handy.” Another guy said.
To which you replied, “No, it would be handy if you could do it, it’s just a trick when I do it, like a bear on a unicycle.”
The Professor said, “Gender topics will be head on next semester.” He grinned at you, “But fair point all the same Miss Pear.”
“Miss Pear,” another male student said, “Bunny Pear? Who won the Medal of Honor, that Bunny Pear?”
Another guy said, “I read about you, said you tore Nazi planes out of the air. How’d you do it?”
“Magnets.”
Another guy scoffed saying, “Impossible.”
“So were airplanes not so long ago until the Wright Brothers got it to work.”
“And you didn’t have any help? None at all?”
Another glance back had your eyes on the doubter who scoffed at your smirk, “There goes that bear on a unicycle again. Couldn’t possibly have a brain and wear dresses, must have stolen the credit,”
He murmured again, “Took more than credit-,”
“Oh yes, must have spent years on my back too to get home safely,” that had the guy paling when your eyes caught him in a harsh cold gaze, “Heard that one too. For men with fragile egos like yours who couldn’t possibly exist in a world where a woman could accomplish anything on her own it’d be easier to find a jellyfish in the ocean than an intelligent successful woman who hasn’t been called a whore.” That had the rest of the guys jeering and ladies blushing through their muffled giggles looking away as you kept your eyes fixed on his until he turned away.
Chuckling the Professor said clapping to help lull the students down again saying, “Looping around again.” Bringing the discussion back to another topic he wished to cover starting off what he hoped to be a good year of thorough open discussions and healthy debates. This was one class you knew you would take a bit part in verbally and for once you didn’t feel concerned about possibly doing that, feeling fully welcomed to do so by the Professor and cheerful students passing you on the way out. “Brilliant point.”
Breathily you chuckled lifting your books and bag saying, “Thank you, and sorry, I’m not certain if my wording was out of bounds.”
He chuckled again shaking his head, “When used academically no. Very well said. If I may, any plans on what field you might try for? Or a degree?”
“I know I want a Masters,” spreading his smile, “No clue on the subject yet.”
“Why Masters, you do know-,”
“That the percentage of women who earn one is 3.5% out of female college graduates, two percent lower than it is for men. Only two women have earned a Medal of Honor, one had it revoked because she wasn’t a woman in uniform. I’m the first female officer in Canadian Forces. My Dad wanted big things for me, I will settle for a Doctorate, but I am aiming for a Masters Degree.”
“Once you get to graduate school level I’ll keep my eyes peeled and you’ll have a vote from me in your favor to be accepted to Columbia.”
“I could go here full time?”
“For graduate courses, if you win a majority vote they would allow your transfer. Not common, but it is possible.”
“Thank you, thought I might have to triple my train time for Yale.” He shook his head as you eyed the next class coming in, “See you tomorrow, Professor.”
“See you tomorrow Miss Pear.” Nods from him welcomed his entering female students and in the hall you smiled rejoining your fellow female students who had lingered a few moments hoping to walk together assuming you were all headed back to the female campus.
“What are you off to?” You asked getting a varied set of answers.
One of them asked once you were out of the cramped halls to the open walkways again, “Did you get in trouble?”
Shaking your head you answered, “No, he merely asked what sort of degree I might be hoping for. I haven’t picked yet but I do know I want to go to graduate school.”
One of the women said, “Me as well. I was hoping for a counselor for children, maybe at a camp or a school.”
Another said, “Fifteen generations of men in my family were lawyers or judges, I have no brothers, I hoped to keep the tradition alive.”
A third said, “I read librarians require graduate courses, always wanted to work with books. Spent last summer helping to clean up at our library back home my grandmother is the librarian there.”
“I practically lived in the Public Library growing up. Such a lovely job.”
Back at the entrance the group split up and between streams of giggling women off to their dorms after their final class you paused at a peach clad woman smiling at you widely, “Kimmy told me you were interested in Photography club.”
“Yes, Julie, right?”
“Yes,” from the books pinned to her chest she brought out a sheet she passed you, “Tomorrow is our first meeting, at three, don’t forget your camera so our instructor can give it a once over. That has the room number and everything.”
“Okay, thank you.”
She hurried off to join her friends and you kept on going to your class pausing again to reach out for a paper a running redhead passed to you, “School paper meeting on Thursday at 3.”
“Thank you.”
“Bring some sketches.” Wetting your lower lip again towards your class slipping the paper against the books to your chest you hurried. Wide open the door sat and flashing a grin to Professor Randolph who was readying a set of papers he was to pass out to all of you.
Tiered desks waited in the oddly cramped theater style room with decorations of objects from various myths and cultures spread around the room with what turned out to be filled two thirds of the way. Around you in your chosen row more ladies from clubs settled hoping to make friends with you. Pages were handed back and in the lights turning off Professor Randolph walked to the lit up projector on a table a few feet from his desk aimed at the blank screen on the wall showing the Great Sphynx in Egypt.
“Ancient Egypt,” he began, “For the next few weeks we will be delving into this world and culture to explore the Gods that the people shaped their lives to please and serve to their dying breaths.” Mainly talking through the class he stole glances of various students taking notes throughout with sheets forgotten. Until the final few minutes when he turned the lights on and stated, “And for those of you who have not forgotten the sheets I passed out kindly fill those out as much as you can, we have nine minutes, no books I would like to see what you point of view is on the subject.”
Putting your notepad away you looked over the sheet and smirked at the first question, ‘Which Greek God would you prefer to leave your wife with while you stepped out to the shop; Zeus, Narcissus, Hephaestus, Dionysus?’
‘One traded his eye for knowledge, One gave birth to a six legged horse and other beasts tied to Ragnarok, One guards a rainbow bridge. Which name does not apply?
Loki, Njord, Heimdall, Odin.’
This question earned some scoffs for how simple it seemed only to be followed by another seemingly odd question.
‘Who would win in a poker game?
Bragi, Hod, Forseti?’
You barely got to fill out your answer when he said, “That is our class, I will take your pages on your way out.”
Before you could stand groups already planning their post school day plans hurried out nodding to the grinning Professor accepting each taking notice that you were merely waiting out the rest of the herd to leave to not be in the way. Back in your hold your books and bag settled post subtle shift of your skirt over your thighs to straighten it with sheet in hand you made your way down to the Professor now at his desk. “Thank you,” he said turning as you arrived to accept the sheet you held out for him, taking notice of your eyes dropping to the familiar pendant around his neck draped on top of his tie.
“Sorry, Professor, but where did you get that pendant?”
Settling your sheet on top of the others he added to his bag he grinned to say, “My father was given this by a Queen from a, far away land you probably haven’t heard of.”
His eyes fixed on yours eyeing the pear tree centered on the pendant with runes all around it hinting to markings in one of your dreams of your former life with James. The same pendant your father used to keep with him at all times only showing it to you before he died. “My Dad had one. Do they sell them? He was buried with his.”
“No, no one sells them. However I would love to share about the land sometime if you would agree?”
You nodded and said, “That would be nice, thank you.”
Motioning his hand to the side he said, “Shall I walk you out?”
“Sure,”
“Already packed up, thought I would stop for something to eat. My lunch was interrupted.”
“That’s no fun. I got poached for mine.” He glanced at you curiously and you giggled out, “Clubs are determined to claim me. Tomorrow Photography and I have to do some sketches to give to the paper to see if I’ll fit for their comics and illustrations. Doubt I would.”
“I would not bet on that, the last one was quite ghastly from what I have looked up, did a rendering of the Dean ended up nearly suspended.” Making you giggle to yourself in his soft chuckle. Passing through the emptying hall he asked, “If I might ask, Pear is an interesting surname, do you know where it originates from?”
“Oh, um, when Eddie took custody of me we picked to change our names to Pear. From the medallion actually. Dad used to say he was born under the pear tree in the center of it, that it was unlike any other pear tree on the planet. Somehow alive.”
Tapping his medallion he said, “The Queen of that land was the source of this tree. It sprouted in her first breath, and after each battle she and her children fought those would sprout up in the battle field.”
Smirking at him you said, “Is that culture on our syllabus?”
“No, in fact no one believes those lands to even exist.”
“Then where did the medallions come from?”
He pointed at you, “Exactly.”
Smiling as you did not noticing one of the other female Professors watching you pass by her classroom having watched from your tours and enrolling how fixed on befriending you he seemed to be. Just like the club members tasked to poach you to their elite numbers. “Do you give many exams?”
“No, not many. One a month most likely, small quizzes in between with mini essays. I have to admit I am not overly fond of grading compared to delving into mythologies, though Egyptian culture has the most quizzes merely on the glyphs and other details.”
“Sounds good, haven’t gotten to Egyptian culture yet so I am learning a great deal.”
Avoiding students you answered questions about your other classes you had around his the following day for the rest of the way to the front entrance, where just across from you on a bench James and Victor stood catching sight of you exiting the school. Their grins spread in your approach and Professor Randolph nodded his head, “James, Victor, lovely to see you. Since you two are here I shall leave her to your watch I am off to eat before I am drug back for another meeting on simple politics, which I simply abhor, everything is always politics at those things.” Tottering off down the walkway behind Victor’s back to avoid the sight of another Professor to reach his car the three of you chuckled and turned homewards.
Victor grinning said, “So, how did it go?”
“Not bad. History will be strict, we had a lovely discussion on the gold rush and the crossing of mountain ranges and the effects on everything from social status to clothes and market values, distribution both medical and otherwise. Leading to the jump in crime and of course the rising profiteering of the funeral business.”
“Of course,” James chuckled out. “She bring that up or did you?”
“Me, she asked me what my opinion was on the gold rush, I asked which part and then elaborated at her continued confusion.”
Victor nodded, “Italian and Latin then? Since you insist on both this year.”
“Well I need both so I can load up on Lit courses for my second semester courses and next year as well. Technically I don’t need two languages for credits, but the Italian for the language and the Latin can go for another credit for my Lit Masters.”
James beamed at you, “Full Masters degree, I’m glad to hear you’ve decided.” Accepting hold of your books finally subtly eyeing the sheets with notes of times and locations for your club meetings.
His eyes shifted to you again as you said, “Italian should be fine but I hear my Latin Professor likes to be friendly, but he seems to enjoy drawing out excitement from students in class.” You wet your lower lip and said, “Art History was next, everyone seemed to know everything on the slides until she got to the Surrealist genre not on the syllabus. Which I knew, and she seemed stunned I knew. Asked me about my preference on Surrealist paintings and I said they seem more imaginative than paint splatters and I prefer them to Picasso’s.”
Victor, “Agreed.” Earning a nod from James. “How was Miss Portia?”
“Good, she’s in the class too, finally got to the topic of me not being from money and possibly being more boring than others give me credit for when I mentioned free days and half off days to museums and such. But she’s set on tea visits at her place and study groups and possibly dinners ahead. They have a five bedroom penthouse in Manhattan, her brother’s name is Preston, still don’t recall the name. I’ll have to see him.”
James, “I’m still putting my money on Mr Biscuits.”
Victor, “Did she have that rough a time in Art History?”
“No, mainly her language course she said she’d need help in. Nothing hard so far except our first assignment.”
James, “How so?”
“We have to write four pages on a piece of artwork that was in our homes growing up and how it touched our lives and families.”
They both said, “Oh,”
“I think I can work something up about my mural of stars. She said it doesn’t have to be a big name to count.”
Victor, “I’m certain it will be a wonderful paper.”
“Well, it was either that or the wallpaper design Steve sketched on the wall.” You let out a breath and said, “Anyways, lunch was fine, Portia had us driven to a diner where a group of girls were there, sat by them to push the inevitable, and to try and help her get some friends, two different worlds of money don’t mix it seems. We get to talking and they bring up clubs and Portia is joining sync swimming, I told her I’ve had rough history with water or I’d try it. Then the head club girl seemed about in tears so I mentioned your dark room and that I thought the only photography club was for the guys,”
Victor, “Ooh, nice choice.”
“But she said they have one and it mainly works with the paper and yearbook,”
James, “Very nice.”
“The instructor is out, can’t recall why right now, but they meet tomorrow so she said she would inform a Julie to inform me about the club. Then it gets brought up Eddie is on the paper and I might do some cartoons, which led into those little illustrations for the paper, which is meeting on Thursday. So I have to sketch some things up and bring them on Thursday so they can go over them against some list of other possible applicants for the job.”
The pair said, “You’ll get it.”
You rolled your eyes and Victor asked, “So, photography club,”
“Before you say buy me a camera I’ll just take Steve’s. Should be fine. Poor thing has been in a box for ages.”
James, “Yearbook, paper, photography club, great mix to your credits.”
Victor, “Not to mention your Masters.”
“Ooh, I talked to my Philosophy Professor after class and he said that for my graduate courses they can vote as the staff to accept my transfer to Columbia graduate courses. Said I’d have his vote.”
James, “On the first day?”
Victor, “Must have left a mark on him. How did class go?”
“Rather well actually. He brought up some topics and let us debate, my memory came up in helping a student find the quote he wanted and he said that was handy, I said for a man it’s handy for me it’s more along the lines of a trick, like a bear on a unicycle.”
Victor, “Hmm,”
“Anyways, Professor says we’ll cover gender later on but compliments me, another student recognizes my name asks how I managed to tear planes out of the sky I said magnets.”
James, “This can only go well.”
“He said impossible, I said so were planes until the Wright Brothers made them.”
Victor, “Well done.”
You giggled adding, “Another mumbled something after I said that I managed it on my own that I had another sort of help to get through the war-,”
James and Victor paused, “Who am I hitting?”
Patting their arms you said, “It gets better,”
Victor, “Please tell me he’s dead or bleeding.”
“I told him that for a man with such a fragile ego as his not to believe a woman could manage on her own it would be easier to find a jellyfish in the ocean than to find an intelligent successful woman who hasn’t been called a whore.”
Unable to help it the pair chortles and smoothed their hands over their mouths to hide their proud grins, “Even the Professor said my argument was brilliant and the guys in class lost it jeering at him. Of course I clarified I was uncertain on the use of the term whore in class to the Professor afterwards but he said academically it is acceptable, just not in a slur hurled at another student. Then we talked about my plans going forward. He did try to let me know how few women do get above a four year degree.”
Victor, “3.5%, that I remember from when you brought it up,”
“Which I pointed out to him as it’s only 2% below men, and the other achievements I have gotten, said I would settle for a Doctorate.”
They stepped forward along with you chuckling with James easing his arm around your back, “There’s the vote,”
Victor, “You are going to be stunning. Now, what are you sketching once your paper is done?”
“Not sure, thought I might be able to catch you and the puppies napping again.”
Victor chuckled resting his hand on your back in a stolen kiss to your forehead once James had leaned back from kissing your cheek, “That can be arranged, Pipsqueak.”
Pt 28
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Hey!! I looove your writing and was wondering if you can do 12, 14 & 16 of your blurb prompts she/her with four, but like they’re teammates and they got something going on and one finds out about it?:)
Parkouring Between Ghosts [Blurb]
12. "Please, don't do that ever again." 14. "You need a hug, I shall provide." 16. "This wasn't planned at all." // You are teammates with Four, even something more, but One finds out about it...
How ironical that Eight and Four were the two parkour experts. One insisted on “hiring” after Four showed you a video of you, winning the Chase Tag competition in London last year. In less than five seconds, you caught the guy you were chasing, with agility and precision, the right way of thinking and intelligence. Thanks to you, your team was Champion of the World in the discipline, and that made you proud. And One thought it could be an advantage to the Ghosts, having two parkour experts would allow you more range and more freedom in movements. And somehow, you ended up dying, bad landing off a building as your comrades went down to find you, they couldn't. Nobody could find you, and so, you died.
You clicked with Four pretty quickly, for obvious reasons and began to train together, on the abandoned planes, in the desert and in the haunted houses around your living space. Lazily, you spent most of the time with your head on his lap as you sat on the couch in the common living room, listening to One's plans and new destinations for missions, which always thrilled you both because you used to sneak out to jump from building to building,together, laughing as you sat on the edge and looked at the city, Queen and King of the city, you used to say as Four smoked a cigarette and laughed too. From there, everything spiraled pretty quickly towards a friendship with benefits, which wasn't bad at all.
It especially began after a party you all went to, after a successful mission: Three found the right place and brought you all there – even One. And little they all knew, but you were a party animal, dancing and drinking were your favorite activities during a party, along flirting and getting drinks from strangers. And with Four by your side, you felt comfortable and not threatened, because you knew he would protect you somehow, because you would do the same for him. And because you drank, you got drunk pretty quickly, and pretty clingy too and Four had to prevent you from dancing with this man right there, because he smelt the rat. So he came up to you, taking you by the hand, and putting it around his neck as you began to giggle a bit.
“I wanna hug you,” you chanted, alcohol aromas in your voice.
“If you need a hug, I shall provide,” he replied, pulling you closer to him as you buried your face in his neck.
“You so cute, I'd kiss you,” you admitted after a long moments of your head resting in his shoulder.
“If you were sober, I'd kiss you too,” he teased you, ruffling gently your hair as you pouted.
“Kiss me tomorrow then,” you replied confidently looking into his eyes, yours shining under these purple lights.
But he didn't kiss you on the next day, even if he wanted to. He knew you were drunk last night, and your hangovered face reminded him how little you perhaps remembered from last night. But you did remember what he said to you, and gifted him with lovely glares when nobody paid attention to it, smiled sheepishly, and became more tactile than usual when One was speaking about the next move – your hands were more often around his neck as he sat on the chair, and you hugged him from behind, your hand looking more for his, your fingers caressing lazily his forearm. Nobody notices these soft attentions, as you usually are clingy around him, and others too – but less. You could feel Fours goosebumpsas you touched him, see them as you smiled, and feel the same butterflies in your stomach he felt too. And you craved for these lips, right here, right now, in front of them all. You didn't care, you wanted to kiss him as badly as you wanted, needed it, yesterday in the club.
At the end of the meeting, both of you went to this "haunted" house, to practice parkour together, as usual, nobody found it really alarming when both of you were gone for a long time, together, alone. And you used that free time to pin him against the wall of this house, looking at him as he lowered his head to look at you, all flustered.
“I'm sober right now,” you stated looking at him, fluttering your eyelashes, “you can kiss me now.”
“What,” he asked, more surprised than he ever was, hoping that he was dreaming somehow, or that he would wake up.
“I said kiss me Four,” you repeated, standing on tiptoe to reach his lips.
He didn't hesitate twice. As you expected, he put his hands on your waist, pulling you closer to his chest, your hands going on his jaw as you passionately kissed him. Hands wandering in his hair, on his neck, before you both gasped, looking for air as your foreheads touched.
“For a parkour expert, you chickened out pretty quickly,” you teased him, still catching your breath, a smile on your face.
“Fuck off Eight,” he replied, “I”m not the type of guy to kiss a drunk girl.”
“I was sober for the whole day today,” you said, before he bit your lips.
“That was the goddamn problem, I never know what you remember or not after a wasted party.”
“I do remember you.”
“This wasn't planned at all,” you hissed as Five sew your wounded body – again.
Your middle name was apparently “reckless”, Four commented as he sat on the ground. You wanted to finish this mission as soon as possible, and this was how you didn't stuck to the original plan you had with Four. Now, you were grounded for a few weeks by Five, unable to train with Four now. Great. You had to jump off that building, and fall down as the men tried to shoot you down, thankfully Four attracted them towards Seven so he could shoot them down. But as you fell, you didn't break anything, you just fell on a fence, opening one of your sides and bleeding. To death, as Five later added pressing some fabric against your wound as Four looked at you on the backseat of the car.
“You never plan anything,” he replied, bitter, “and here you are, hissing and screaming because you're wounded, again,” he groaned finally.
“Shut up,” you complained before hissing again as Five pulled the string harder. “Thanks for repairing me Five.”
“Pleasure.” She winked as cleaned the sewing delicately. “Four, be nice and grab your Chaste Tag reckless Champion to her trailer so she doesn't have to walk please.”
“Your words are my command,” he said as he got up and carried you out of the place, and when you were far enough from the others he looked at you, rolling his eyes. “You reckless stupid thing, don't you ever scare me like this.” He wanted to kiss you, but he feared somebody noticing you.
“I'll consider it next time, only if you give me a good reason,” you teased him, but deeply you knew that one, if you were injured you weren't able to do parkour and two you were a burdento the team. Two things you did hate. But for the sake of teasing, this answer was gold. And Four's reaction even better.
“Don't you tempt me.”
You did tempt him, one time, after a meeting in the Ghosts room as everybody left the place and only the two of you remained, looking at the plan of the city you were going in. He hugged you from behind, resting his chin on your shoulder as he looked at the plan, carelessly.
“We really need to know that,” he asked you, almost annoyed.
“We do Four, or one of us will die, I may be reckless but I'm not completely stupid you know,” you answered, putting your index on his nose. “Besides, I don't want to bury you for real or whatever.”
“Not happening,” he said, making you turn around to face you, before pulling you closer and pressing his lips against yours. A chaste kiss turning into passion. Your hands on his cheek, his hand in your hair.
“Oh,” you heard from behind you. One entered the room, probably looking for something he left and there he found the two of you, making out. Damnit. “Millenials you... Gross, absolutely gross. I hate it, I hate it,” he complained, a hand before his eyes as he advanced towards you and the table. “Please, don't to that ever again, not in front of my holly eyes. Get a room, or whatever, oh, gross, worse than Two and Three. I'm disgusted andflabbergasted,” his disgusted tone making the two of you split for a moment, Four letting you go and making a step back.
“Flabber what,” you asked, your eyes wandering from One to Four.
“Lack of vocabulary but knowing how to play with tongue: classic millenials,” One concluded as you felt absolutely lost.
“You're not mad,” Four asked, frowning in surprise.
“I'm dead, you're dead, we're dead, I told you the rules, Two and Three broke the rules,” he concluded sadly before grabbing a folder on the table. “I also told you to not reveal your names but as soon as Seven showed up his little nose you all revealed your names so, at this point, I'm not mad or surprised, just... Disappointed,” he stated.
“You know each other's names,” you exclaimed looking at Four who rose his shoulders in defeat, “and I'm not even in this privileged circle!”
“Talk with Four, he'll maybe reveal your some things other than his tongue. I'm gonna head out, so excuse me”, he pursued as he began to walk towards the door.
“And we're the millenials here,” Four said as One left the room without any reply.
“You,” you said pointing at Four. “I hope your name is fucking hideous because if you hid it from me it better be.”
#thank you nonnie 💕#this was super interesting to write!!!#i hope you like it! ^^#ben hardy#four x reader#four!ben#four/billy#four ben hardy#ben hardy four#6 underground ben hardy#6 underground#six underground ben hardy#six underground#ben hardy imagine#ben hardy blurbs#blurb
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Raw nerves ch 7
Pennywise x Beverly
summery: 7 years after pennywise tricked those kids into thinking they won, he unintentionally explodes a gas pipe. he wakes days later to discover hes being treated by Beverly. too weak to even walk he is forced to live under her roof. questioning her reasons for keeping him and why none of the other losers have come to end him. without knowing, the two join a path to heal each other.
status: complete
rated: M - fowl language and gore
previous chap: Raw nerves ch 6
next chap: Raw nerves ch 8
_____________________________________
~ch:7 Life of the party~
Shaking her head. “just amazed to see everything labeled as paid.” pausing to stare at the newspaper. Clearing her remaining tears away.
In large bold letters the heading read: MAYORS COMPUTER EXPOSED EXTREME ABUSE
the article underneath going into detail how mayor tom rogan left his laptop open while he was answering questions for his upcoming campaign. News men passing by discovering a open computer file filled with extreme sexual abuse of his power. Hidden cameras in his bedroom filming multiple girls being brought in. showing tom giving threats of blackmail if they didn't have sex with him.
Tom was tracked down by police in his limo after leaving the diner he owned. After Tom shoved his driver out of the limo there was a short car chase. The limo slipping off the road to crash in a river. Police rushed down only to discover Tom had fled on foot and is now on the run from police. His whereabouts are unknown and he is to be assumed dangerous and to not be approached.
At the bottom of it all was contact information for victims to call a report in or to give a tip of a sighting.
she asked the clown standing nearby. “were there any videos of me?”
“there were, but they won't ever see the light of day. Unless you want to get involved.”
“i don't. I never want to deal with tom again.” crumpling the newspaper with Tom's mayor photo on it. “what happens now? What about the diner and the house?” she questioned.
“the house is fully yours. He won't be able to prove otherwise. The diner is not set yet, it'll be open a little longer, unless you want that to be yours too.”
“mm, I did like the diner as long as Tom wasn't around. I'd hate to see it close down and becoming just another empty building rotting away in Derry.” picking up the end pages of the newspaper to look at the wanted section. “this town can't afford to lose any more businesses.”
“i can give you whatever you'd like. You don't have to search the wanted ads.”
“i know that, but I want to. Before the whole tom mess I wanted to get into fashion. If I am going to do that I don't want to be flung straight to the top. It's funner to actually build for it. Earn your way there where you can relax in knowing it's all yours and wasn't just a gift of sorts.” looking over the paper. “i wanted to make something that would last. Something to build up for myself without working in somebody's shadow the entire time I am “on top”. i don't know exactly where to start though. I am really tired of secretary work, but I hardly know the industry.”
“i can get you into fashion college courses. Would you like to start there?”
“yeah, that sounds like a good way to hop in.” smiling as she set down the papers. Getting up to go change into work clothes. Allowing pen to tag along to work as long as he stayed out of trouble. Entering the office she discovered he redecorated it for her. Nice and clean with a new desk plaque shining her bright golden name off. All of toms things thrown into the dumpster out back.
Smiling over all the new furniture to breathing in the fresh smell of paint floating around the room. “never knew this office could be so nice. Feels like I can do stuff in here now.”
“not have to worry about bumping something that could get you screamed at later.”
“definitely that.” sitting down into the office chair.
“What will miss owner's first task be?” halfly joking around.
“major upgrades that toms been badly neglecting. We only have one stove barely working. And an oven on its last legs. The whole diner needs new carpeting and better upholstery that's not held by duct tape.” sighing at thinking of all that needed replacing. “fixing things here was like pulling teeth when talking to tom about it. Never could push either for fear of pissing him off.” sitting back up to search on the desks computer. “how do people know I own the diner now? Have I “always” had it?”
“You and Tom were co-owners, but he had the bigger share. Up until now with his arrest upcoming. All the shares belong to you now. Don't worry about any money accounts, they won't empty.” he informed.
“good, I'll need all I can get.” beginning her search for new kitchen supplies outward into business re-decorators. Spending almost her whole work day in the office. only stopping for a small lunch break to snag a meal in the kitchen. Returning back to the desk to eat a light salad that came with a side of beef stew. Letting pen claim the soup as long as he drank it away from the computer.
she was happy to leave at a reasonable time since forever when the work day finished. Satisfied that she got so much done today without being harassed by tom. Closing up the place before walking back with pen to drive them home.
“what did you get done on that computer?” he asked.
“ordered new stoves, ovens, kitchen cookware sets. Ordered all new booths, chairs with tables with a appointment to set them all up. Trash all the old junk. Painters and carpet replacers were also appointed. The outside signs will be repaired. Won't have a possible lawsuit anymore from the giant letters hanging on by a single nail.
Got in touch with the more local farmers and butchers. Tom always wanted the more expensive stuff out of town. Even though it was junk and mostly rotten when it got here. This will be a great helper to keep other businesses afloat in this small town.”
“you really like helping others don't cha?” he chuckled.
laughing back. “Pfft, you of all people should know that.”
“if you do get high in the fashion industry. What will you do then? Still have the diner or sell it away?”
“mm, don't know. I don't think I'd be able to give it much attention then. I'd still like to help people somehow. Maybe help fund small businesses to get back on their feet? Lead some rally for a new cause?” she shrugged. “i don't know.” parking the truck up into her driveway. “can't believe I am making it home at six. Tom always forced me to stick around way past eight. I have so much free time, what am I even gonna do? Can't start dinner yet.” heading inside.
The clown not too far with an idea. “i know how to pass the time.” hugging her from behind to kiss along her neck.
“hungry already?” she giggled.
“just a round of fun this time.” scooping her up into his arms to carry her into the bedroom. Kissing her the entire way before setting her down on the bed.
Her needing him to pause for a moment. “let me put these away.” she chuckled in putting away her name tag and car keys. Barely closing the drawer when she was pulled back over for more attention. Covered by kisses and licks around her neck to down her chest.
Clothes popped open to reach more bare skin for him to enjoy. Moving down to slip more clothing off her. Licking up her inner thighs for the final sweet tasting. Licking lovingly at her entrance to slip his tongue in. licking deeper each time for a far better tasting of her soft walls. Her lengthy moans bringing him up from between her legs.
Covering her with himself as he wedged his hips between hers. Hearing her let out a lovely hum against the steady grinding he was working into. Letting her hands travel up to pull away his clothes. The silk falling away with little resistance against her pulls. Hands rubbing across his muscled body to wrap over his shoulders. Distracted by the deep tonguing kiss pushing her back into the bed. Gasping at his girth squirming in to fill her for the fabulous friction.
Relaxing back to enjoy his firm thrusts pushing her further down into the bedding. Hands grasping along his arms and shoulders out of need to place her hands somewhere. Making it easier for her he flipped her over. Wrapping his arms around her waist to grip her hips to aim himself deeper. Picking up his pace to keep going. Burying his face into her neck to breath her scent in. driving him wild in breeding his female without any more competition.
His hot breath building moisture over the back of her neck. Licking the spot he gently bit into. Lessening any red marks he may have left. Cautious about how strong his bites were in not wanting to hurt her. Each time he did he got another heated scent of excitement from her. Losing himself as he shoved deeper off his inner instinct screaming him to while he could. His rod coiling up on itself to lock within her ready to release its load.
Swelling as the two reached their peaks. A thick warmth filling Beverly's core while she lay limp under him panting for air. Picking most of her into his arms he flipped them over. Giving her better breathing space as she laid on top of him.
“comfortable?” he teased.
“soon as I catch my breath” she smiled through her panting. “getting home early is going to be much more exciting from now on.” kissing him.
Returning the kiss. “I'll be happy to keep that way.”
“i am sure you will.” jokingly shoving him. “Time to start dinner for me. I bet you're too full to hunt anything.” moving to get up to redress.
“wait don't – ow!” cut off by her accidentally yanking on his knot still swelled in her.
“shit, sorry! You okay?” attempting a gentler try at removing him. Slipping him out by hand doing no good. “Are you stuck?” she asked.
“Yes, we’re knotted for a while.”
“How long is a while?”
“15 minutes.”
“15?! shit, looks like I am waiting for dinner.”
“could order pizza.” he laughed.
laughing along. “pfft, I ain't answering the door like this.”
“Ah, I can help you cook. Need only a bit of maneuvering.” rising them both onto their feet.
“this feels sooo weird.” shivering at all the shifting she was feeling from him. Grabbing the blanket off the bed to wrap them up. Along with a shirt to fully cover herself. Helped down to the kitchen to make a meal in one small cooking area to not move so much. Settling on relaxing on the couch to eat instead of at the dinner table.
“So what are the new mayor's plans for the town?” he asked from nowhere.
“what? We have a new mayor already?”
“yes, you.”
“me?!”
“Yes, why not? You want to change things for people. It's the best position in the meantime before you really get into the fashion business.”
“ … yeah.” she agreed on a bite of food.
“most of Derrys bad state was to keep my hunting secured. Don't really need it anymore. Tomorrow morning you get recognized into office. And your first political party later in the night.”
“ugh, political parties are the one thing I am not looking forward to.” taking another bite of food.
“I can think of a way to make them exciting.”
“You always have an exciting plan Mr. clown.” feeding him a small bit of steak. “So what is your idea? Or is a simple guess all I need to figure it out?”
“some of both. I am sure you can guess, but I do want to make it into a challenge.”
“oooh.” already turning interested in what he planned for the party. Dinner passing by they both headed for bed. Beverly taking time to carefully pick an outfit for tomorrow morning.
The next morning she made herself look nice and clean for the presentation. Driving down to the town square before the official announcement would start. The clown by her side going unnoticed by the crowd gathering to congratulate her. Talking with various groups and how they were doing. Gaining an idea of where she should start on changes. Called up to the stage to be announced her new position. Small interviews of how she feels and what she may plan. Then it was the start of a small celebratory party with catered meals served. When the fun was over she headed back to help at the diner.
Getting started on removing furniture for the appointed painters and carpet replaces. Chucking the broken down kitchen appliance to clean out the place thoroughly. Readying for a new appliance set to be moved in. by closing time the kitchen looked brand new. The rest of the diner needed only for the new furniture to arrive the next day. The Ticket system no longer relies on just a pen and paper drop off. Now all automatic on a portable menu the servers carried table to table.
“today's really been busy, but so satisfying. Are you finding it fun?” asking the clown as she closed up the refreshed diner.
“all that meat at the party sure was. My main course will be at the political party though.” he teased.
“sure it will be.” she teased back. Hopping into the truck for a temporary rest at home before the party. Refreshing herself in the shower and into another nice outfit. “You gonna tell me your exciting plan now?”
“nope, later into the party.” he grinned.
“better not do something weird.” gesturing him to follow back to the truck.
“oooof course not.” hopping into the passenger seat.
During the party he didn't say anything. Letting her speak with a bunch of people first for small interviews. It was when she was standing around looking bored did he then step in. “ready for the exciting challenge?” speaking behind her as she stood around with a small glass of wine.
“mm, your big challenge?” asking with interest.
“yeees.” he nodded.
“finally figured one out?” she joked. “what is it?”
“Your goal is to stay in the party as long as possible.”
“i am going to be honest and say that's not very exciting.”
“my goal is to grab you at some point and knot you. I knot you I win.” smiling at the bright red blush Beverly turned.
“how am I supposed to win? Suffer through the party until it ends?”
“yes. Do you accept?
“yes. … but we are definitely not having some invisible sex in the middle of a crowd. Got it?! You'll have to get me in some closet first or something!”
“All the more challenging for me. Catch you soon.” he left with a wink.
Hiding himself around the large town house hosting the political party. Watching Beverly pull the smart move of talking more between crowds. Avoiding any closets or pantry's he may try to snag her into. He'd have to get creative on this particular hunt. Gazing over the various rooms for a trap he could set up. Figuring something out, although when he sprung it he'd have to check with her. Slipping away to the shadows to stalk over to his lunging position.
Watching Beverly travel about the room. Chuckling as she looked over her shoulder now and again to try spotting him. He waited and waited for his moment. For her to wrongly step a bit too close to the table of snacks and drinks. Making her mistake when she reached to grab some water after her wine glass. Surprised when she was yanked under the clothed over table. Entirely unnoticed by anyone else in the room thanks to the clown.
“gotcha!” he gloated while Beverly was left stunned in his arms.
“you grabbed me under the snack table?!”
“yes, can I have my prize here? Nobody can see with the table cloth touching the ground.”
“ugh! … yeah, but be careful.” pushing on his face teasingly. “You haven't won anything yet either.”
when he got the go ahead he was quick to get her clothes off. Slipping his upper ware off to comfortably lay her on. Providing some soft fabric to lay against rather than hard flooring. Kissing and licking over her chest to gentle licks up to her neck. Grinding into her hips for her to feel his squirming length. Slipping some moans from her he needed to cover her mouth. Not wanting too much noise sounding from under the table. Keeping one hand over her mouth while his other removed her lower clothing.
Shifting himself for firmer friction between her legs to excite himself faster. Taking a hold of one of her legs to hike over his hip when he thrusted in. shallow thrusts turning deeper each time to reach his winning goal. Drool building within his mouth over the filling pleasure he was receiving. Holding back on rutting hard and deep becoming a slow losing battle. His instincts took over to knot her deep for a large breeding amount of cum.
His length twisting up for its final faze. A sudden grip at his base releasing the load way to early. Half of it spilled out onto the floor in a puddle. Realizing after that Beverly had grabbed his base to firmly squeeze a release from him early. His knot going limp in exhaustion after such a surprise. Beverly took her chance while he was stunned to slyly slip away with her clothes. Rejoining the party wearing a smirk on her face for the rest of it.
He huffed. “I'll let her have this one.” laying there satisfied either way. Relaxing in hiding up to the party's end. Meeting back with Beverly out in the truck to head home. “like the challenge?” he asked on the drive back.
“mhmm, especially since I won.”
“beginners luck.” the two chuckled. “that trick won't work the next time.”
“bring it on clown.” She happily challenged for the next party.
Parking the truck in the driveway to head inside. Beverly needed another shower after those events coating her a little. He clothes keeping it hidden during the remaining party. Pennywise laying in waiting for her like he had before. Not letting her get in bed before he pulled her down against him. Arms tangling around her to hold her close in a warm embrace. A peaceful rest coming on to them, but not lasting through the night.
Pennywise woke to a strange scent. Rising up in bed on alert to what it was. Waking Beverly from her sleep at his stiff movements jostling her in his arms.
“what Is it?” speaking through her sleepiness.
“there is a strange male outside.” growling aggressively over the intrusion.
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Dark Desire [Chapter One]
Billy Hargrove x Reader x Steve Harrington
Warning: Language
Yeah sorry, I don’t even know what this is. It’s a mafia au and a mess but I hope you enjoy it!
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The room was dead quiet. All eyes were on Billy. He never started a meeting without his right-hand man. He knew Steve was going to be late. Billy could have easily pushed the meeting to a later time, but he enjoyed watching the others squirm under his watchful eye. A toothpick hung out of the corner of his mouth. He anxiously chewed on it.
Steve and Billy were an unlikely pair. They were rivals in school. Both of them had grown up in the business. Steve’s father was a huge mob boss. Ran all of Indiana, almost half of Ohio, and the lower part of Michigan. Billy was a nobody from California who got transferred into the private school in Hawkins.
Billy never hated Steve. He just saw him as competition, but that all changed when the two of them got stuck in detention together and Billy learned that Steve wanted nothing to do with the family business. He hated his parents. Steve had wanted to go out on his own and make a name for himself.
That’s when Billy had struck up the deal between the two. After high school, they would head back out to Billy’s old stomping grounds in California. They would build an empire from the ground up together. Slowly, make their way back and take everything from Steve’s father. Surprisingly, Steve didn’t even hesitate to take the deal.
The boys shook hands and that was the end of the rivalry. It had begun a beautiful friendship and partnership. That’s exactly what happened too. After graduation, Steve told his parents to shove it, packed up most of his belongings and then headed west to California with Billy at his side.
Billy had the reputation back home. When he arrived with Steve in tow it didn’t take long for the two of them to start building that partnership. They took down other mob families. Gathered up all of the surrounding territories. The two of them continued to on the warpath right up until it brought them to Indiana.
The pair wanted to make Steve’s dad sweat. Make him a little nervous. At first, they left Indiana alone. They took control of all of Ohio and the whole lower peninsula of Michigan. Then with one last trick up their sleeve, they snatched most of the territory in Illinois and upper Kentucky completely surrounding Steve’s father.
The pair had been successful. Steve’s father stared at Billy from the other end of the table. Billy sat up a little straighter when the door to the room finally opened. Steve and all of his glorious hair stepped in the room. He shot Billy a brilliant smile and Billy couldn’t help but smile back.
“Steve?” Mr. Harrington said in confusion.
“Sorry to keep all of you waiting,” Steve apologized as he came to take the seat right of Billy.
“No worries, we have all the time in the world,” Billy smiled.
Mr. Harrington looked at his son horrified.
“You’re doing this to me? You’re the one who is trying to flush me out?” Mr. Harrington asked.
“Come on now, Pops, you can’t be completely surprised. There had to have been some whisperings about what I was up to,” Steve said tilting his head to look at his aging father.
“I’ve heard things I just couldn’t believe it,” Mr. Harrington said shaking his head.
“Now that my business partner is here I think we have something to discuss,” Billy said.
“Business partner?” Mr. Harrington said in disbelief.
“I told you years ago, Pops, I wanted nothing to do with your business, not the business itself,” Steve explained.
Mr. Harrington sat back in shock.
“Now, I’m sure you’re all aware that we have taken over almost all of your territory around here. Including other territories from other families,” Billy began.
“Hawkins is the last piece of the puzzle,” Steve said.
“Do you really think that I would willingly sell you, Hawkins?” Mr. Harrington asked in disgust.
Billy smiled.
“Well, you don’t have much of an option, Pops. You either willingly give us Hawkins and we take it from you. And trust me you don’t want us to take it from you. Ask the Andersons how well that worked out for them,” Steve said.
Billy laughed. “Oh right, you can’t, unless you head to the bottom of Lake Michigan for a little chat,”
“This is my home. Our home. Where would your mother and I go if I were to give this to you?” His father asked.
Steve looked bored. Rolling his eyes, he sat back in his chair, his hands went behind his head with a calm and relaxed face. Mr. Harrington surged to his feet. He stared at Billy then locked eyes with his son.
“You will have to pry my money, my home, and my town from my cold dead fingers,” Mr. Harrington snarled.
Billy started to laugh. Mr. Harrington glanced a look at his son, but Steve was only staring at him. There was no sympathy or regret in his eyes. No, his son, his only child looked at him like he was nothing.
Billy sat forward resting his hands against the table. Mr. Harrington watched him with careful eyes. Billy’s laughter faded and his smile fell. He nodded to somebody behind Mr. Harrington. Two large hands came to grab Mr. Harrington by his arms. He began thrashing around trying to free himself.
“You know what to do with him,” Billy said.
“Sir,” Tommy said with a nod before dragging Mr. Harrington from the room.
When his father was finally gone Steve sat up a little straighter. He looked at the other men in the room.
“You have two choices here gentlemen. You can either jump ship, come to work with Billy and me or face the same ending as my father,” Steve said.
The men all looked around at each other.
“I always knew you’d be a better leader than your father,” Mr. Miller said.
A small smile tugged at the corner of Steve’s lips.
“Is that how everyone else feels?” Billy asked.
Slowly, the others nodded along in agreement.
Billy clapped his hands together in excitement. He had won. This was everything that he wanted.
“Perfect, when Tommy returns he’ll tell you what happens next,” Billy said standing.
Steve stood, straightened his jacket, and then ran a hand through his hair. Saying nothing else, Billy left the room with Steve hot on his heels. The screams of his father echoed down the hallway as he followed Billy out of the warehouse. The slick black Camara that was Billy’s pride and joy sat at the curb waiting for them.
The men climbed into the car. Billy started the engine and then looked over at Steve. His friend was staring straight ahead. Billy knew that Steve wasn’t regretting his decisions or having second thoughts, but this man was still his father.
“You know you’re doing the right thing,” Billy began.
Steve whipped his head to the side to look at his partner.
“Oh, I know. I have other things on my mind,” Steve replied.
“Your mother?” Billy asked.
Steve shook his head. “Somebody else from my past,”
“Do you want to talk about them?” Billy asked.
Steve sighed. Billy may be one tough son of a bitch and fucking psychotic but he was one damn good friend.
“Not right now. It’s a discussion for another day,” Steve said.
Billy nodded and dropped the subject. When Steve was ready to talk Billy would be ready for him. Pulling away, Billy drove them back to Hawkins where they were staying at the hotel until they could decide on where they wanted to settle in yet.
The pair stopped for some supplies and dinner. When they entered the hotel lobby the girls behind the desk greeted them with large grins and giggles. Steve rolled his eyes, but Billy ate up the attention. They rode the elevator up to the penthouse level, the elevator dinged, and the door slid open.
Steve and Billy had barely stepped off and into the penthouse with a fiery redhead was there greeting them with a scowl on her face and her hands on her hips.
“What took you so long?” She demanded.
“Maxine,” Billy greeted his sister.
Max scoffed. “Stop calling me that,”
Steve only smirked as he handed her a bag of food.
“Sorry, sweetheart, something came up at the office,” Billy said flopping down on the couch.
“You were supposed to register me for high school today,” Max said.
“Steve and I will take care of it tomorrow,” Billy said before shoveling some fries into his mouth.
Max dropped down on the loveseat next to Steve. He kicked his feet up on the table and let out a sigh. She bit into her burger as she scowled at her brother.
“Listen, I’ll make it up to you,” Billy started.
“Oh, this should be good. There’s nothing to do in this bumfuck town,” Max complained.
“Language!” Steve hissed around a mouthful of milkshake.
Max rolled her eyes. “Well let’s hear it,”
“We’ll take you house hunting. You can have a big say in what we buy,” Billy said.
Max’s eyes lit up.
“And if I want a pool?” Max asked.
“If that’s what you want,” Billy said.
Max glanced up at Steve. He winked at her and she smiled.
“Alright, fine, that’s fair, but be warned you’re going to hate that you just agreed to that,” Max said.
Billy let out a loud laugh. “Oh, little sister, I already do,”
After dinner, Billy and Steve made sure that Max had all the right papers for her transfers. Confirmed their plans for tomorrow and then left Max to get around for bed. Billy received a phone call so he left Steve to his own. Max was staring at him from the bathroom.
“What now?” Steve asked.
“I haven’t seen Billy this happy in a long time. Did everything go okay?” Max asked.
Steve nodded. “We got what we wanted,”
“Then why do you look like shit?” Max asked.
Steve sighed. “This place just brings up a lot of memories,” Steve told her.
“Like a certain girl?” Max asked.
“Yeah, you could say that,” Steve said with a small smile.
“Are you going to tell her you’re home?” Max asked.
Steve shrugged.
“Why not?” Max asked.
“I’m not the guy she thinks I am,” Steve said.
“Who cares,” Max said.
“That’s easy for you to say,” Steve said.
“Steve you’re great. You’ve made my brother a better person and I never thought that was possible. Talk to her,” Max said.
Steve narrowed his eyes. “When did you become such an expert in the romance department?”
“I read a lot,” Max grinned.
Steve chuckled and then ruffled her hair. Billy called out for Steve. Max shut the bathroom door as Steve headed into the living room area of their penthouse. Billy sat on the edge of the couch he was just lighting up a cigarette.
“Well Tommy went over all of the paperwork your father had stashed away in his house,” Billy said.
“And what did Tommy find?” Steve asked.
“There’s one piece of major property that your father doesn’t own,” Billy said.
Steve looked at him in confusion. And then slowly it all started to make sense to him. More than five acres of woods was owned by Jim Hopper. The Chief of police. And her brother. His girl’s brother. Fuck.
“Chief Hopper isn’t just going to give up his property. There’s a reason why he never sold out to my dad,” Steve explained.
“Well maybe we can be a little more convincing,” Billy said.
Steve took the cigarette from Billy and took a hit.
“Actually, I think I know of another way,” Steve said.
Billy cocked an eyebrow.
“Really?” Billy asked.
“Chief Hopper’s younger sister is two years younger than us. She was my best friend growing up,” Steve began.
“A cop’s sister friends with the mobster’s kid?” Billy asked with a laugh.
Steve smiled. “Seems funny, but Chief Hopper never told her about what was going on. She was kept in the dark. She doesn’t know about me and my connections to the mafia,”
Billy was intrigued.
“Well I think it’s necessary that I’m introduced to this young lady immediately,” Billy said.
“Soon. Could I talk to her first?” Steve asked.
“Of course. You do what you think is necessary,” Billy replied.
“She could be our ticket,” Steve said.
“You were friends. I trust you to talk to her, Steve,” Billy said.
“I’ll go after we take Max to register for school,” Steve told him.
“What is the Chief of police’s sister up to?” Billy asked.
“I heard she was a florist,” Steve said.
Billy tipped his head back and laughed. “Perfect, we’re almost out of black roses. Be a dear and see if she can get any in stock for us and keep them in stock,”
Steve shot his friend a look. “Don’t you think that’s a little suspicious having the local florist keep our signature on stock?”
“I think it sounds like a fun time. I’m not trying to hide who we are and why we are here Steve,” Billy said.
“But I want to do this without dragging her into the mess,” Steve argued.
“Do what you need to do, Steve,” Billy said.
Steve sighed.
“Be a dear and pour me a glass of whiskey,” Billy said.
Steve pushed up off the couch and headed over to the bar in the corner. He poured two glasses of whiskey. He handed Billy one glass and then sat back down on his friend. Billy leaned against him as he sipped at his drink.
“I forgot to tell you,” Billy started.
“Tell me what?” Steve asked.
“Welcome home,” Billy grinned with a small chuckle.
Steve snorted as he brought his glass up to his lips. “Yeah, sure, welcome home,”
#Billy Hargrove#Billy Hargrove x Reader#Steve Harrington#Steve Harrington x Reader#Billy Hargrove x Reader x Steve Harrington#fan fic#mafia au#stranger things#aged up characters#max mayfield
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All the President’s Men (1976); AFI #77
The next review marks the halfway point through the AFI 100 and it is of the political “thriller,” All the President’s Men (1976). The source material was created by reporters involved in the uncovering of the Watergate scandal and one of these reporters contributed to the writing of the screenplay. The film was in theatres and earned Oscar nomination only 4 years after the Watergate incident occurred which made the film a Hollywood dramatization of the news. I am not aware of another film quite like this as far as release vs. incident dates that wasn’t a documentary. Even documentaries, although filmed during or immediately after events, do not often come out in theatres so soon. They definitely don’t get nominated for 8 academy awards like this film did. So what was behind this movie that made this a one-of-a-kind film that landed it on the list of the top 100 American movies? I want to go over the basic events, since that is the plot of the film, and then discuss the good and bad aspects of this quick production:
SPOILER WARNING!!! I AM GOING TO SPELL OUT ALL OF THE CONTENTS OF THE MOVIE!!! IT CAN BE BETTER SPOILED BY A HISTORY BOOK, BUT I WILL GET TO INACURACIES WHICH MIGHT RUIN THE FILM! SO SPOILER ALERT IF YOU WANT TO WATCH THE FILM FIRST!!!
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The film begins with a lot of stock news footage and then a reenactment of the break-in at the Watergate hotel in 1972. Five men who were connected to the CIA and the Committee to Re-Elect the President (nicknamed CREEP) were caught with wire tapping equipment in the Democratic Party headquarters at the hotel. More stock footage of news reports lets the audience know that there is something fishy about this break-in.
At the trial for the five burglars, a young Bob Woodward (Robert Redford), who is a reporter for the New York Post, notices that a high priced lawyer is representing the five and yet it has been stated earlier that none of the burglars had used their phone call. Woodward keeps finding this lawyer and attempts to question him about why he is there and how exactly the burglars are attached to the CIA. Through consistent pressure, Woodward is able to connect the burglars to CIA agent E. Howard Hunt and a member of the White House Counsel, Charles Colson.
Woodward attempts to take on the story but finds that another reporter keeps taking his submitted drafts and altering them in an attempt to take over the story. This reporter is Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman), a much more seasoned reporter at the Post that believes he should get the story. The editor puts them both on the case noting a lack of reliable sources, but tells them to keep digging.
Here is where it gets a little weird because Woodward talks about a secret source that he cannot name that was a senior government official. He went by the codename “Deep Throat” and Woodward meets him in a parking garage in the middle of the night. The sources does not say anything specific nor does he give any names, but he famously tells Woodward to “follow the money” which means to find out who paid the burglars to break in.
Through basically unreliable resources, Woodward and Bernstein are able to make connections between CREEP and the money that was paid to the burglars. This is weird because it seems pretty assured that Nixon would easily defeat his competition to secure re-election, so the editors at the newspaper have doubts about putting the story on the front page.
Woodward and Bernstein are able to contact the CREEP treasurer Hugh Sloan, Jr. and are able to connect a slush fund to White House Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman and former Attorney General John Mitchell, the current head of CREEP. It is discovered that this wire tapping and sabotage had been happening since Nixon was trailing during the primaries.
The editor demands thoroughness in obtaining reliable resources, so Woodward and Bernstein go around to employees of the the treasury for CREEP, and they are all young ladies that are afraid for their safety but are compelled to give up information to the reporters. I somewhat question the accuracy of the story at this stage of the film, but I will address that after the summary.
Woodward goes out and meets Deep Throat again and the source reveals that Haldeman was behind the Watergate break-in and cover-up. This cover up was not just to deny CREEP involvement, but to hide covert operations involving US intelligence agencies like the CIA and FBI. He warns Woodward that the two reporters could be in danger.
The Washington Post runs the story and the White House vehemently denies the allegations and chastises the press for shabby reporting. Woodward and Bernstein go and meet the editor in the middle of the night and decide to keep running with the story...and that is basically the end of the movie.
There is some footage of the two typing vigorously and then stock footage of the news reports and teletype printing out what happened in the news. It is not much of an ending, but this is likely because the story had not finished when the movie went into production.
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So I have some major issues with this film and these problems have revealed themselves over multiple viewings. The first time that I saw this was in class as a senior in high school. I was in Mr. Sly’s Government and Economics class and we watched the movie over two class periods with many breaks for explanation and a lot of forwarding through the filler. At the time, the teacher was very excited at the topic (he hated Richard Nixon) and the movie was fascinating because he only showed and subsequently explained the good parts. Also, his enthusiasm for the topic was contagious. He was a very good teacher.
The next viewing was a full 15 years later when going through the AFI list for the first time. I could not figure out what I liked so much about it and had to rewatch multiple parts because I kept falling asleep. There were no thrills and there was so much filler, I remember thinking that this should have been a 20 minute film and it would have been almost completely newsreel stock footage.
This final time I can see what the problem is with the film...and I like it even less. The film is over 2 hours long and more than half of it is stock footage from the news, walking around quickly (there is some running in the newsroom for no reason), extended conversations due to fear of “somebody finding out” (the threat is never established as real so it is just annoying), a lot of parking lots (it shows the same car driving from the same parking spot out into the street on 3 separate occasions), intense research and typing, and establishing shots of buildings. It has as much filler as a B movie and costs about the same, but because it was so close to the event with big name actors, it was treated as something special. In fact, it is talked about like a documentary in many reviews that I read with words like “important” and “powerful” scattered about, but I don’t see it.
Robert Redford bought the book rights because he knew it was an interesting topic that people would want to know about. He was correct, but it wasn’t enough fact to make a full movie, so he let one of the reporters, Carl Bernstein, punch up the screenplay with his stories of how he enchanted female story leads into giving out information. Those conversations are completely unnecessary. At some point, the writers realized that there was no clear and present danger so they had the secret source bring up safety and Woodward becoming paranoid...but absolutely nothing happened.
This movie needed to be a 30 minute documentary with some re-enactments or it needed to wait until more details became available to replace the filler. I respect that it was different from anything prior or since, but it doesn’t make the movie good or even interesting. It kind of broke me when the two main characters were going over a list of people that they needed to visit as possible leads and all they did was read names over a shot of the city. You might as well read out the phone book for 2 minutes as it was just as boring.
The poster calls this the most devastating story of this century and I agree... devastatingly boring. No other film on the AFI list has less story than this film. Some of the other films have annoyed me more, but I could see why some people liked it or at least why it was interesting. This is not interesting and it is presented like a documentary when it is not. Variety magazine said this film was “ingenious” and overcame the difficult lack of drama that a story about reporters running down a story might otherwise have. Disagree vehemently.
Roger Ebert gave it 3.5 stars, so critics I have the utmost respect for seem to have enjoyed it. I was not alive when the film came out and agree more with Dave Kehr who called the film “pedestrian” and “a study in missed opportunities.” For my money, National Geographic TV did a one hour special that was just the facts and it was so much more interesting. Here is a link to that and I would suggest skipping the Hollywood version.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWkS-sOia-Y
So does this film deserve to be on the AFI 100? Well...I guess maybe? It was something different and likely the most accurate and up to date Hollywood film like none before or since. It used real names and was written by the actual people involved. It just wasn’t that interesting to me. Would I recommend it? If you are suffering from insomnia. Otherwise, no. If you want to see an accurate retelling of the story in one third the time, click the link above. Let the Robert Redford film be an experiment that made for very uninteresting results.
#all the president's men#dustin hoffman#robert redford#AFI 100#movie review#70s#watergate#political thriller#boring#news#reporter#new york post#introvert#introverts
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Betty Carter
Betty Carter (born Lillie Mae Jones; May 19, 1929 – September 26, 1998) was an American jazz singer known for her improvisational technique, scatting and other complex musical abilities that demonstrated her vocal talent and imaginative interpretation of lyrics and melodies. Vocalist Carmen McRae once remarked: "There's really only one jazz singer—only one: Betty Carter."
Early life
Carter was born in Flint, Michigan, and grew up in Detroit, where her father, James Jones, was the musical director of a Detroit church and her mother, Bessie, was a housewife. As a child, Carter was raised to be extremely independent and to not expect nurturing from her family. Even 30 years after leaving home, Carter was still very aware of and affected by the home life she was raised in, and was quoted saying:
I have been far removed from my immediate family. There's been no real contact or phone calls home every week to find out how everybody is…As far as family is concerned, it's been a lonesome trek…It's probably just as much my fault as it is theirs, and I can't blame anybody for it. But there was…no real closeness, where the family urged me on, or said…'We're proud'…and all that. No, no…none of that happened.
While the lack of support from Carter's family caused her to feel isolated, it may also have instilled self-reliance and determination to succeed. She studied piano at the Detroit Conservatory at the age of 15, but only attained a modest level of expertise.
At the age of 16, Carter began singing. As her parents were not big proponents of her pursuing a singing career, she would sneak out at night to audition for amateur shows. After winning first place at her first amateur competition, Carter felt as though she were being accepted into the music world and decided that she must pursue it tirelessly. When she began performing live, she was too young to be admitted into bars, so she obtained a forged birth certificate to gain entry in order to perform.
Career
Even at a young age, Carter was able to bring a new vocal style to jazz. The breathiness of her voice was a characteristic seldom heard before her appearance on the music scene. She also was well known for her passion for scat singing and her strong belief that the throwaway attitude that most jazz musicians approached it with was inappropriate and wasteful due to its spontaneity and basic inventiveness, seldom seen elsewhere.
Detroit, where Carter grew up, was a hotbed of jazz growth. After signing with a talent agent after her win at amateur night, Carter had opportunities to perform with famous jazz artists such as Dizzy Gillespie, who visited Detroit for an extensive amount of time. Gillespie is often considered responsible for her strong passion for scatting. In earlier recordings, it is apparent that her scatting had similarities to the qualities of Gillespie's.
At the time of Gillespie's visit, Charlie Parker was receiving treatment in a psychiatric hospital, delaying her encounter with him. However, Carter eventually performed with Parker, as well as with his band consisting of Tommy Potter, Max Roach, and Miles Davis. After receiving praise from both Gillespie and Parker for her vocal prowess, Carter felt an upsurge in confidence and knew that she could make it in the business with perseverance.
Carter's confidence was well founded. In 1948, she was asked by Lionel Hampton to join his band. She finally had her big break. Working with Hampton's group gave her the chance to be bandmates with artists such as Charles Mingus and Wes Montgomery, as well as with Ernest Harold "Benny" Bailey, who had recently vacated Gillespie's band and Albert Thornton "Al" Grey who would later go on to join Gillespie's band. Hampton obviously had an ear for talent and a love for bebop. Carter too had a deep love for bebop as well as a talent for it. Hampton's wife Gladys gave her the nickname "Betty Bebop", a nickname she reportedly detested. Despite her good ear and charming personality, Carter was fiercely independent and had a tendency to attempt to resist Hampton's direction, while Hampton had a temper and was quick to anger. Hampton expected a lot from his players and did not want them to forget that he was the band's leader. She openly hated his swing style, refused to sing in a swinging way, and she was far too outspoken for his tastes. Carter honed her scat singing ability while on tour, which was not well received by Hampton as he did not enjoy her penchant for improvisation. Over the course of two and a half years, Hampton fired Carter a total of seven times.
Carter was part of the Lionel Hampton Orchestra that played at the famed Cavalcade of Jazz in Los Angeles at Wrigley Field which was produced by Leon Hefflin, Sr. on July 10, 1949. They did a second concert at Lane Field in San Diego on September 3, 1949. They also performed at the sixth famed Cavalcade of Jazz concert on June 25, 1950. Also featured on the same day were Roy Milton & His Solid Senders, Pee Wee Crayton's Orchestra, Dinah Washington, Tiny Davis & Her Hell Divers, and other artists. 16,000 people were reported to be in attendance and the concert ended early because of a fracas while Hampton's band played "Flying High".
Being a part of Hampton's band provided a few things for "The Kid" (a nickname bestowed upon Carter that stuck for the rest of her life): connections, and a new approach to music, making it so that all future musical attitudes that came from Carter bore the mark of Hampton's guidance. Because of Hampton's hiring of Carter, she also goes down in history as one of the last big band era jazz singers in history. However, by 1951, Carter left the band. After a short recuperation back home, Carter was in New York, working all over the city for the better part of the early 1950s, as well as participating in an extensive tour of the south, playing for "camp shows". This work made little to no money, but Carter believed it was necessary in order to develop as an artist, and was a way to "pay her dues".
Very soon after Carter's arrival in New York City, she was given the opportunity to record with King Pleasure and the Ray Bryant Trio, becoming more recognizable and well-known and subsequently being granted the chance to sing at the Apollo Theatre. This theatre was known for giving up-and-coming artists the final shove into becoming household names. Carter was propelled into prominence, recording with Epic label by 1955 and was a well-known artist by the late 1950s. Her first solo LP, Out There, was released on the Peacock label in 1958.
Miles Davis can be credited for Carter's bump in popularity, as he was the person who recommended to Ray Charles that he take Carter under his wing. Carter began touring with Charles in 1960, then making a recording of duets with him in 1961 (Ray Charles and Betty Carter), including the R&B-chart-topping "Baby, It's Cold Outside", which brought her a measure of popular recognition. In 1963 she toured in Japan with Sonny Rollins. She recorded for various labels during this period, including ABC-Paramount, Atco and United Artists, but was rarely satisfied with the resulting product. After three years of touring with Charles and a total of two recordings together, Carter took a hiatus from recording to marry. She and her husband had two children. However, she continued performing, not wanting to be dependent upon her husband for financial support.
The 1960s became an increasingly difficult time for Carter as she began to slip in fame, refusing to sing contemporary pop music, and her youth fading. Carter was nearly forty years old, which at the time was not conducive to a career in the public eye. Rock and roll, like pop, was steadily becoming more popular and provided cash flow for labels and recording companies. Carter had to work extremely hard to continue to book gigs because of the jazz decline. Her marriage also was beginning to crumble. By 1971, Carter was single and mainly performing live with a small group consisting of merely a piano, drums, and a bass. The Betty Carter trio was one of very few jazz groups to continue to book gigs in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Carter created her own record label, Bet-Car Records, in 1969, the sole recording source of Carter's music for the next eighteen years:
....in fact, I think I was probably the first independent label out there in '69. People thought I was crazy when I did it. 'How are you gonna get any distribution?' I mean, 'How are you gonna take care of business and do that yourself?' 'Don't you need somebody else?' I said, 'Listen. Nobody was comin' this way and I wanted the records out there, so I found out that I could do it myself.' So, that's what I did. It's the best thing that ever happened to me. You know. We're talking about '69!
Some of her most famous recordings were originally issued on Bet-Car, including the double album The Audience with Betty Carter (1980). In 1980 she was the subject of a documentary film by Michelle Parkerson, But Then, She's Betty Carter. Carter's approach to music did not concern solely her method of recording and distribution, but also her choice in venues. Carter began performing at colleges and universities, starting in 1972 at Goddard College in Vermont. Carter was excited at this opportunity, as it was since the mid-1960s that Carter had been wanting to visit schools and provide some sort of education for students. She began lecturing along with her musical performances, informing students of the history of jazz and its roots.
By 1975, Carter's life and work prospects began to improve, and Carter was beginning to be able to pick her own jobs once again, touring in Europe, South America, and the United States. In 1976, Carter was a guest live performer on Saturday Night Live′s first season on the air, and was also a performer at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1977 and 1978, carving out a permanent place for herself in the music business as well as in the world of jazz.
In 1977, Carter enjoyed a new peak in critical and popular estimation, and taught a master class with her past mentor, Dizzy Gillespie, at Harvard. In the last decade of her life, Carter began to receive even wider acclaim and recognition. In 1987 she signed with Verve Records, who reissued most of her Bet-Car albums on CD for the first time and made them available to wider audiences. In 1988 she won a Grammy for her album Look What I Got! and sang in a guest appearance on The Cosby Show (episode "How Do You Get to Carnegie Hall?"). In 1994 she performed at the White House and was a headliner at Verve's 50th anniversary celebration in Carnegie Hall. She was the subject of a 1994 short film by Dick Fontaine, Betty Carter: New All the Time.
In 1997 she was awarded a National Medal of Arts by President Bill Clinton. This award was one of thousands, but Carter considered this medal to be her most important that she received in her lifetime.
Death
Carter continued to perform, tour, and record, as well as search for new talent until she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in the summer of 1998. She died on September 26, 1998, at the age of 69, and was later cremated. She was survived by her two sons.
Legacy
Carter often recruited young accompanists for performances and recordings, insisting that she "learned a lot from these young players, because they're raw and they come up with things that I would never think about doing."
1993 was Carter's biggest year of innovation, creating a program called Jazz Ahead, which took 20 students who were given the opportunity to spend an entire week training and composing with Carter, a program that still exists to this day and is hosted in The Kennedy Center.
Betty Carter is considered responsible for discovering great jazz talent, her discoveries including John Hicks, Curtis Lundy, Mulgrew Miller, Cyrus Chestnut, Dave Holland, Stephen Scott, Kenny Washington, Benny Green and more.
On June 25, 2019, The New York Times Magazine listed Betty Carter among hundreds of artists whose material was reportedly destroyed in the 2008 Universal fire.
Discography
CD compilations
1990: Compact Jazz – (Polygram) – Bet-Car and Verve recordings from 1976 to 1987
1992: I Can't Help It – (Impulse!/GRP) – the Out There and The Modern Sound albums on one compact disc
1999: Priceless Jazz – (GRP) – Peacock and ABC-Paramount recordings from 1958 and 1960
2003: Betty Carter's Finest Hour – (Verve) – recordings from 1958 to 1992
On multi-artist compilations
1988: "I'm Wishing" on Stay Awake: Various Interpretations of Music from Vintage Disney Films
1997: "Lonely House" on September Songs – The Music of Kurt Weill
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Lacuna// Teen wolf Rewrite
Wolf Moon Part 2
Part 1
Masterlist
Pairing: Stiles x Reader (Eventually)
Warnings: none really
A/N: I really love to put visuals, its my favorite part of writing. But if it gets too annoying then ill stop. I’m trying to make the reader as bad-ass as possible. I really wanted her to be extroverted and forward, basically the opposite of me. Hope you enjoy!
You awoke early, 30 mins before your alarm. The events from last night still fresh in your mind. It’s time for school, so you began to get ready. Lucky for you, you had been planning your first day outfit for a while, it was laid on your dresser ready. Before you got ready, you went to check your bandage on your leg. It was almost soaked but dry with blood, it looked like it was even turning black. But then… you removed it, and the bite was gone. Completely gone. ‘Did I imagine it all?’
You heard keys clinking and steps coming up the stairs. “Knock knock, sleepy head” your aunt began to open the door. You quickly grabbed the bandage and tucked it under the sheets. Thank god it was dried blood. “Oh!” She exclaimed “You’re awake. That’s surprising. You excited to go to school! Make some friends?” She started to dance to you, sitting next to you and poking your sides. Even though she worked a full night shift. She still had so much energy.
“Ughhh” you groan, falling back into your bed and pulling your pillow up to your face to block her out. “No! No new friends. Just get through the rest of high school.” She stands and starts to walk out. Chuckling to herself lightly.
“Okay, okay. Well. Get ready! And let me know when we need to go.” She walks out and shuts your door.
You grabbed the outfit and made your way to the bathroom to do your makeup and hair. You put on your outfit and stare in the mirror.
You actually look good, taking into consideration how you feel.
Your aunt dropped you off a little later than the other kids because the principal wanted to meet with you beforehand. You walked onto the walkway leading to the front doors of the school, you saw a girl digging through her bag on the phone with someone. Then a man came walking towards the both of you.
“Sorry to keep you two girls waiting” she looks up at him then to you. “Allison, this is Y/n.Y/n this is Allison.” She holds out her hand.
“Nice to meet you.” A gorgeous smile graced upon her lips.
“Nice to meet you too!” You reply, a bright smile as well.
“So y/n you from Seattle?” The man states as he walks towards the door.
“Yes I am, but I lived here before. Years and years ago.” You smile
“Oh yes, and Allison San Francisco isn’t where you grew up?” He asks as he opens the door.
“No, but we lived there for more than a year, which is unusual in my family.” She replies. Already peaking your interest
“Well hopefully beacon hills will be your last stop for a while. Both of you.” He turns his head and looks at you. You smile, nodding your head. He opens a door leading you both in. “Class these are your new students, Allison Argent and Y/n Y/l/n. Please do your best to make them feel welcome.” He exits the room. And you see a seat open by the window. Allison lowers her head and walks to another seat, a boy turning and giving her a pen. She gives him a puzzled look before smiling and saying “Thanks.”
You sit down setting your stuff down and preparing to highlight the hell of the syllabus. “Well begin with Kafka’s Metamorphosis on page 133.” The teacher says.
You feel a tap on your shoulder so you turn slightly. “Hi, you said your name was Y/n” you nod feeling slightly uncomfortable. “Did you live here before? My names Stiles.” You lightly gasp as you start to recognize his features.
“Yes, yes I did live here, umm hi Stiles. I don’t know if you remember me. I mean hell I barely remember you.” You smile.
“Ms. Y/l/n, please turn around.” You slowly turn to pay attention. Slightly red in the cheeks for already getting called out.
You feel the boy behind you start to sit up and whispers “I remember the name.” You smile. Still looking forward. Happy he remembers. Even if it’s only slightly.
The bell rings, finally school ended and you see Allison up at her locker. You decide that it might be easier to be new girls together then apart. “Hi!” She jumps a little you start to say sorry but she stops you.
“Y/n! I’m sorry for being so jumpy! Just a little bit overwhelmed.” She opens her locker pacing her binder in it.
“Tell me about it” you laugh a little. “So I was thinking you know, it’s probably better being new girls together rather than a-“ some redhead walks up and interrupts you.
“That jacket is absolutely killer. Where’d you get it” you can tell Allison is a bit uncomfortable. She gives you soft look and looks back at the girl.
“My mom was a buyer for a boutique back in San Francisco.” She nods slightly
The redhead looks at you. “And that outfit, I can tell I have some competition this year” She laughs. Points at both Allison and you and says “and you two are my new best friends.”
At this point some boy comes up the her and starts sucking her face. You didn’t even know this girls name, at least you can tell your aunt you already made friends. You jerk your head a bit when you hear a girls voice loud and clear in your ear “can somebody tell me how new girls are here all of five minuets, and they’re already hanging out with Lydia’s clique?” You look away, trying not to make it obvious you can hear their conversation clearly. How strange.
Another voice comes through. You recognize it as Stiles from earlier. “Because they’re hot. Beautiful people herd together.” You blush a little bit. “Scott you see that one girl. Yeah I think that’s y/n from when we were you-“ your focus is cut off from their conversation as Lydia starts to talk about a party this weekend.
“Yeah Friday night, you should come.” Jackson says looking at you and Allison like we would be insane if we didn’t go. Allison begins making excuses of not going. But honestly to you, it seems fun.
“Yeah sure totally I’ll go.” Lydia, as you now know because of that one girl from earlier, looks up at you and smiles
“Everyone’s going after the scrimmage” Jackson says.
“You mean football?” Allison asks.
“Footballs a joke in beacon.” Jackson laughs “the sport here is lacrosse” interesting. Seattle was all about football. “We’ve won state championship for the past three years.”
Lydia goes on about how amazing Jackson is but you couldn’t stop thinking about how you could hear the other’s conversation a while ago. Was it just a Fluke. “Perfect. You’re coming” she grabs both Allison and your hands leading you to the field. You sit in between Allison and Lydia, really not excited about being there. You throw a quick text to your aunt about staying after school and that you’d just walk home, she was sleeping, but you liked to make sure she knew what was going on.
You see stiles walk into the field with the same boy from first period. He didn’t see you, but you couldn’t help but stare. “Who is that” you hear Allison say.
“Him?” Lydia replies. “I’m not sure who he is.”
“Isn’t that Scott? Scott Mcall. Always hanging around Stiles?” You say. Making the connection. “We all used to be really good friends when we were young.“ you look away slightly red in the face.
“He’s in our English class” she says. Then the refs whistle goes off. Scaring you a bit. It was loud. But you look to the field and notice Scott cowering and grabbing his ears just like you, only his seemed worse. You wondered for just a bit if he was experiencing the same thing you have been.
Scott gets hit in the face and you flinch. That must have hurt. You see stiles in the corner of your eye shake his head. Just like that Scott started to catch balls perfectly. You hear stiles chirp with happiness. Making you smile, he really was goofy.
“He seems like he’s pretty good!” Allison says.
“Very good” Lydia replies.
You start to zone out at this point. Staring at Stiles. He was jumping around like a maniac. He’s actually super cute, isn’t he.
After practice, you make the trek home. Smiling to yourself about how well today actually went. Then you realized something. The bite, it’s healed. So is your wrist. Could the hearing and sense of smell be some kind of response your brain is making to the bite! Is it rabies. Oh dear, I hope it’s not rabies.
Your scrambled thoughts are interrupted by a car passing by. It’s a bright blue Jeep. It stops abruptly maybe 20 feet or so in front of you. You walk up, slightly worried you’re about to be kidnapped. As you get closer you can hear who's in there.
“Let’s just pick her up. She walking all by herself. That’s not okay!” You recognized the voice of Scott.
“Okay, but if she turns out to be some kind of serial killer, coming for revenge of all her childhood friends. I’m leaving you in the dust” Stiles says. You laugh a bit and walked the last 10 feet up to the window.
“I promise I won’t kill you” You say in an ominous tone.
“Ahh!” Stiles jumps and turns around. “Jesus, you heard that? How’d you hear that? You were like 20 feet away.” Scott look at you, head cocked a bit and squinted eyes.
“You speak louder than you think.” You say with a chuckle. “So… a ride?”
If you have any requests or just want someone to talk to, i’m here!
#teenwolf#teenwolfrewrite#teenwolf rewite#teen wolf#teenwolf masterlist#series rewrite#stiles stilinksi x reader#stiles stilinksi imagine#stiles stilinski#stiles stilinkski imagine
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