#jay is supposed to be way bigger in that drawing but someone fucked up with proportions and was too lazy to fix it
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strong boi
#just roll with it#jrwi riptide#gillion tidestrider#jrwi chip#jay ferin#my art#sketch#jay is supposed to be way bigger in that drawing but someone fucked up with proportions and was too lazy to fix it#oh well. it is what it is.
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ipytm ep 3 (thoughts + spoilers)
this is going to be a tough post for me to do bc honestly...this ep just left me feeling so run down. i know that the cast and crew have always strived for realism and authenticity with this series, but this one was just a lot to take in :/ my thoughts are gonna be even more all over the place than usual but idec at this point. having to rewatch this ep again is really fucking hard (even harder than itsay ep 4 bc even though that makes my heart ache, i still feel some sense of satisfaction from the development we get...this just leaves me feeling defeated in every way).
you know the drill: not an analysis, just me ranting as usual bc free therapy (and boy do i need it after this one)!! i had so many feelings watching this ep (esp towards teh but what’s new), so here goes.
we begin with the drama students rehearsing for jai’s new play, and the introduction of the plum wine which will be the recurring motif in this whole ep. the use of the plum wine in this also kind of reminds me of how teh initially disliked coconuts until he started falling in love with oh-aew and started to like them instead...i’m guessing that’s the parallel they’re trying to draw with the plum wine comparison in this.
teh’s having a hard time getting into character (which we already know from last ep was always going to be one of the toughest challenges for him as an actor). his character in the play is supposed to have a sex scene, but he’s struggling with this bc he can’t put himself in his character (akin’s) shoes, so jai ends rehearsals early.
jai gives them all logbooks which he basically wants them to treat as diaries where they’ll write everything they feel/learn and hand it back to him (he’ll be the only one reading them). ngl this already had me feeling kind of yikes (esp now as i rewatch this knowing how everything went down) since jai already has inside knowledge about teh’s feelings on his relationship with oh-aew which he can take advantage of :/ more on that later though...
it’s sad to me that so much time has passed since teh’s argument with khim and he's STILL avoiding her. khim was someone that he respected immensely (and was such a great mentor for him) so it just sucks to see that their relationship has deteriorated so much since the first two eps. teh might have had his reconciliation moment with oh-aew last ep, but there’s still a lot that he’s not ready or willing to address yet.
i understand that teh’s just encouraging jai about his work when he tells him to stop having others comment on it, but at the same time, i disagree with him bc i think it IS important to get other peoples’ opinion about your work. how else will you ever be able to see things from other perspectives if you don’t?
anyway, teh tells jai he’s seeing a play, and jai asks teh if he’s bringing oh-aew...the look on teh’s face is telling enough that things aren’t going great between them (at least on his end). this brings us to the logbook scene, where teh’s homework for the day is to write about the similarities and differences between himself and his character in the play. this gets teh to reflect on how he feels his relationship with oh-aew is changing, or specifically, how oh-aew seems to be changing so much that teh feels like he’s becoming someone else entirely...and does that mean that he still loves him the same?
i feel like this is a fairly common issue with people that have been in a relationship for a while (and this is their third year together now), so i understand how teh might start having doubts. it’s nothing that oh-aew’s done, it’s just that sometimes all these small changes can keep mounting up to the point that they feel much bigger than they actually are. oh-aew’s really just doing what everyone else does, which is grow and change as they get older, but teh’s still stuck in the past trying to hold onto what they used to have instead of evolving with oh-aew. the way teh picks at all these little changes of oh-aew does make me think that he’s self-sabotaging himself. he’s just so afraid and insecure that oh-aew will change so much he leaves him, that he has to nitpick at reasons why oh-aew’s the one that’s growing away from him (though when we watch the whole ep we know that that’s not the case at all). it’s like a ‘if i push him away first, then he won’t push me away’ sort of self-defence mechanism. either way, teh’s a constant overthinker...and he’s always been his own biggest enemy since the start, so it makes perfect sense to me that he would do this to himself here too.
i know that they’ve been together for years at this point, so things are not quite as exciting as they used to be, but it hurts to see oh-aew be so happy about getting an A for his class, and teh be so unenthused about it. oh-aew has to basically beg teh to give him attention and praise. remember when teh used to get so worried when oh-aew did badly in chinese class...and now it’s like whatever to him just bc he’s not tutoring him/they’re not in the same major anymore :((( i know it’s prob both bc teh’s still hurting that oh-aew transferred majors, and from seeing oh-aew succeed while he feels like he’s failing, but still...
also, not inviting him to see the play with him bc he thought oh-aew wouldn’t be interested/oh-aew kept falling asleep whenever they saw plays together ;;; i get the reasoning from both povs, but it still is nice to be asked :(
so one thing i have to say about the progression of their relationship here is that i just feel this huge disconnect from last ep and this ep?? i know it’s bc of the time skip (since it’s a year later basically), but to go from the end of ep 2, where they’re promising to love each other forever, and then to teh feeling disillusioned/as though he’s falling out of love with oh-aew basically right after that?? it’s so jarring. i feel like we lose so much with these time skips bc the transition from ep 2 to ep 3 is never really shown, so there’s this lack of flow there. like we’ve skipped a step entirely and something’s missing. this is the disadvantage of only focussing on one year per ep since there’s not enough time to explore as much character and relationship development when we’re only seeing an hour long snippet of an entire year. it just makes things feel superficial since so much of what we should be seeing is missing...and we basically have to fill in all the gaps ourselves.
okay, back to oh-aew ranting to his friends about how he feels like his relationship with teh is fading away bc they don’t have the same interests anymore, but also wondering if that’s just normal for long-term relationships. bless that boy that came to ask oh-aew for his ig :’) at least he knows that he’s wanted and has options, even if he obv turns him down bc of teh (for now).
plug and mangpong are dating!!!!!!! and mangpong does a horrible job of trying to hide it 😂 sidenote, but i love the way pp delivers lines sometimes (like the “just shocked”), he’s so cute. plug and mangpong’s legs touching...and the wave of nostalgia that came over me (and oh-aew) during that ;;; oh-aew seeing their blossoming relationship would make him reminisce back to his own experience of falling in love with teh...when everything was still so fluttery and new. so when teh texts him about using his car to help jai move, he looks happy. like he wants to rekindle those feelings again too.
that being said, it’s kind of sad to me how even jai shows more interest in oh-aew’s major than teh (when he asks him for his opinion on how to get people interested in his play). oh-aew’s got some good ideas and is more than willing to help (esp since he wants to connect and find a common interest with teh again). also, just bc oh-aew doesn’t want to be an actor anymore doesn’t mean that he’s completely uninterested in it. god, watching this part again hurts bc oh-aew looks so happy and optimistic. he worked so hard to help teh (and jai) only for them to betray him like that. it made me mad originally, but now it just breaks my heart :(
jai’s running acting classes again for his play, and this time it’s a workshop to help them tap into their feelings. it’s like an intimacy exercise where they give one another consent to touch certain body parts. teh is still struggling a lot with this. i think teh craves intimacy, but as he doesn’t feel that connection in his personal life to oh-aew anymore, so it’s difficult for him to draw on his experiences. he can’t even remember the first time he had sex with oh-aew properly anymore. as usual, teh’s too in his own head to just go with the flow and ~feel things (which isn’t new since teh’s had problems with this since itsay), but it’s def something that he’ll need to learn how to do if he wants to become an actor. he’s trying, but the fact that he can’t get to that place makes him feel even more insecure than ever that he might never be able to get there. imo one of the reasons teh works so hard, and is as driven and ambitious as he is, is that he’s afraid that he’ll never be good enough. he puts so much pressure on himself, and the issue with that is that he’ll never be able to live up to his expectations that way.
teh is also very much alone now. oh-aew has his group of friends to talk to about his relationship with teh, but teh just has jai at this point. he’s pushed khim away...and he and oh-aew aren’t communicating effectively (which is also why they’re on SUCH different wavelengths in terms of where their relationship is at), so there’s literally only jai for him to talk to about all his relationship issues. and to me at least, jai seems to have ulterior motives (particularly when you consider that the subject matter of his play is pretty much the same thing that teh’s going through rn). it’s times like this when i do feel kind of bad for teh, but then again, he brought this upon himself the way that he almost always does...and it leaves me frustrated instead.
jai kissing his professor though...also their conversation?? i have QUESTIONS...
that whole interaction with teh when jai catches him spying on him and the professor was SO awkward. idk what it is about teh but i have never encountered a character that has given me as much secondhand embarrassment as he does. when he starts touching the bars and avoiding eye contact i just- why, teh why?????
moving on, i’m thinking there’s prob more to that scene that we don’t know about bc jai’s shifty like that...but it’s purpose is also to shift teh’s perception of jai. before this, he pretty much just saw jai as his friend and mentor, but seeing him kiss someone else pushes him to think of jai in another less platonic light. like the first spark of attraction.
the both of them go to see the mime show (babymime), and i know that the point of this is so teh can learn to just feel and let go the way that the mimes in this play do, but idk it’s just kind of funny to me the contrast between the last scene and this one.
the leg touching scene again but this time with teh and jai...thanks, i hate it :///
teh’s already feeling like he and oh-aew’s interests are making them drift apart, so by connecting with jai, it’s that initial feeling of attraction that he used to feel with oh-aew all those years ago. jai is that cool senior that he respects...he’s goal-oriented and has so much in common with him (in a way that he feels that oh-aew doesn’t anymore), so it doesn’t altogether surprise me that teh latches onto jai in this way. esp when all their conversations revolve around what teh’s most passionate about, and what dreams they’re striving towards in the future.
it doesn’t surprise me bc teh’s affections shifted in a similar way from tarn to oh-aew when he was first starting to realise his feelings for oh-aew too (though at least he and tarn were never officially dating during that time...)
there’s a genuineness to the way teh praises and encourages jai that isn’t there when he’s doing the same to oh-aew :( and that coupled with teh lying to oh-aew about him having dinner with jai while oh-aew is at home, completely oblivious, painstakingly photoshopping his boyfriend’s face on the poster of the play TO HELP TEH instead of doing his own uni work, makes me so fucking upset for oh-aew.
it’s interesting to see how different their personalities are even when it comes to something as simple as the way they read their texts. oh-aew is so ready to accept whatever teh tells him at face value, but teh overthinks everything to the point where he jumps to a certain conclusion in his head about it instead.
but yeah, it’s just really tough to see oh-aew try so hard for teh, only to see teh do nothing back for oh-aew in return. there’s only so much one side can give. it’s the absolute lack of effort on teh’s part to even try to make things work with oh-aew that is the most frustrating thing of all. oh-aew is carrying their entire relationship rn and it makes me feel all “and for what?? why should he even bother??” about it.
sneaking to sit at the river with jai is like this forbidden, new experience, so it just enhances that feeling of attraction that teh is already feeling towards jai. and esp when he starts telling him about his previous relationship with james, the significance of the plum wine, and how jai ended up breaking up with him. since it’s reflective of teh’s own experiences atm (even in how he kind of self-sabotages himself to push people/oh-aew away first), he clearly takes it to heart. and it makes him want to do an even better job since the play is an autobiographical one for jai. not to mention, teh supposedly being the only one that jai told his story to makes him feel ‘special’......and we all know how teh likes feeling as though he’s special to someone. you can see it in how dejected he is when he thinks jai only told him his story bc he wanted him to get into character better, but perks up the moment jai says he actually told him bc teh’s been doing such a good job (and to encourage him). like i mentioned before, teh’s already feeling vulnerable and isolated from everybody else, so hearing any sort of praise (and esp when it’s from someone that he looks up to as much as jai), is going to pull him in.
when they were hiding from the security guard i was like ughhh i know where this is heading and i. don’t. like. it........
the problem is that i know where teh stands on this. like i know that there’s some attraction on his end. but i don’t know where jai stands. is he intentionally manipulating teh’s feelings for his play? is there any sincerity there? i think it’s obvious that he can tell teh is attracted to him from the glance that they share in this scene, but i can’t get a handle on what he actually wants (which i guess is the point of making his character as mysterious as it is but still). and if he can tell, and he doesn’t actually like teh back in that way, it makes the end scene even more yikes imo.
hmmm teh lying in the pool trying to recreate that feeling right before their first kiss when the both of them just let everything go and sank down into the water. that’s how you KNOW the next scene is supposed to be angsty...bc just like how their first underwater kiss had a sense of sadness to it bc they were hiding, their first (on screen) sex scene has that same sense of sadness, only this time it’s bc teh’s using his attraction to jai/his method actor desire to get into character to fuel the sex instead of bc he genuinely just wants to have sex with oh-aew. and if his reasoning for the sex is bc of that, then his task to recreate their first sexual experience will never live up to the actual first time they had sex (when they BOTH wanted it, and there were no other factors involved).
that’s not to say i don’t think teh doesn’t love oh-aew anymore. i think that there HAS to be some level of love still there amidst all of the confusion, but it feels a lot more like he’s testing his love/attraction to oh-aew during this scene (sort of like how he did with tarn in itsay) than a proper ‘love scene’. like he’s trying to reconfirm his feelings, whilst using oh-aew as inspiration for his role at the same time. it makes my heart ache that this is the first love scene we get from them this series, and it’s marred by the context of what we know is going on in teh’s head. like i said, it’s this permeating sadness throughout...and just knowing that oh-aew has absolutely NO IDEA what’s going on with teh and why he suddenly wants to have sex makes it worse. oh-aew’s been trying to make things work, and in his mind, teh spontaneously coming over like this prob makes him think that things are getting better between them since this is also the closest thing to teh showing any sort of initiative to work on their relationship in this ep so far...
and that’s not also taking away how beautifully this whole scene is shot. i’ve always loved the way that teh and oh-aew play and flirt with each other (bkpp’s chemistry is honestly unparalleled!!) so it was nice to see them be kind of playful before they started kissing again (if you ignore how sad this scene really is). i LOVE the inter-splicing between their first time on the beach and the present. the way the score swells, and little moments where you can see their feet and fingers interlocked on the beach. it gives you such a visceral visual (and totally takes me back to itsay days when that sort of imagery was used a lot more). i just hate that since we know the truth, this scene is more uncomfortable than satisfying despite how nicely shot it is.
i wish we got more domestic moments from them. i know their relationship has sort of grown past those initial moments of flirtation, but it truly makes me sad that we don’t get to see more of them as a couple in general in ipytm. moments like this where they’re lying in bed cuddling each other are so few and far between that i always feel like i have to cherish every little fleeting piece of fluff that i can get. even if idek if this can really be called fluff since the context sort of ruins it.
oh-aew’s still got his heart attack bag :’)))
he was soooooo happy when he met up with his friends 😭 but also, how the hell is it possible for teachers to move deadlines up like that. i FEEL that panic... poor oh-aew...
teh’s in rehearsals again and this time he’s wearing his moon shirt which...i do NOT need those ep 3 itsay vibes rn when i was already dreading this last ten minutes with everything i have in me :((( but anyway, jai’s brought plum wine to class and we know that teh doesn’t usually drink, but he does this time. he tells teh that the taste will change over time (it symbolises the ageing of the relationship process), and teh says it’s a pity he won’t get to taste it next time since jai wants to go abroad to study. then teh tells him he’s worked on the acting exercise and wants to try it out with jai, and i feel like we all knew where it was going to go from here.........
they really had to hammer it in with him missing oh-aew’s call too huh :/
as soon as they started the touching/intimacy exercise again i was just waiting for the catch. even on this rewatch i’m still sitting here chanting “don’t do it teh don’t do it” knowing full well that he kisses jai and there’s no changing that. but then when they cut to oh-aew walking up the stairs with the posters and you hear just how much time he’s sacrificed to help teh/jai on this...sacrificing time EVEN NOW just to go over to their uni to give them the posters when he has a presentation due tomorrow that he and his friends still haven’t finished working on...it’s just heartbreaking knowing what he’s going to end up walking in on.
whether it’s itsay or ipytm, teh’s default state is confusion. so while i think that there’s a certain amount of attraction towards jai there of course, i kind of get the feeling that he’s confusing his feelings of connection with jai (bc of their shared interests and passion) with him falling in love with jai. i feel like his attraction to jai reminds him of what it was like when he was first attracted to oh-aew, and since things have changed so much between him and oh-aew, it’s like he wants to recreate and capture that feeling again with jai (which is also why he wears the moon shirt...he wore that during itsay ep 3 beach scene, which was the moment when the attraction really started to burn between him and oh-aew). he can’t feel that same spark with oh-aew anymore, so he transfers his feelings to jai since, at this point in time, he feels closer to jai than anyone else. instead of growing alongside oh-aew, it’s like he’s choosing to revert back to a time when he was happier.
we know that teh has always been the type of person that will act on his impulses when he feels them. that’s WHY it was so hard to watch...bc i knew while watching that last scene, he was never going to restrain himself or put a stop to those feelings bleeding over into action. and esp not when it could benefit him in some way with his acting too.
in the end, it just makes me so devastated for oh-aew. and i really hope that he doesn’t let this go bc he thinks it’s just teh method acting or getting into character or whatever...i know that teh’s feeling a lot of conflicting things rn, but that’s not an excuse. he really fucked this one up.
the thing is, it’s not that i don’t think teh is capable of acting this way (i’ve seen a few people say that this is ooc for him, but it really isn’t? this confusion and impulsiveness has always been a part of his character from the very start...he was always the one that had the most trouble dealing with his feelings out of the two of them), but the time skips don’t do him any favours bc we lose all those moments that take him to what he’s currently feeling. when we don’t have those moments, then it’s a lot harder to sympathise with him. in itsay, bc we always knew how teh got from point a to point b, even if he did frustrating/silly things, i always understood where he was coming from. i always felt for him. i GOT his struggles, which was why i was always able to empathise with what he was going through. in ipytm, he just comes off as unlikeable bc of how superficial his feelings seem (from what we’re being shown on screen at least).
falling out of love with your significant other/starting to feel things for someone else is obv a fairly common experience, so i don’t blame teh for FEELING like this, but it’s how he treats oh-aew throughout this that doesn’t sit right with me. even if you feel like you’re falling out of love with someone, or that they’ve changed since the first time you fell in love with them, you’d think there’d be some motivation to at least TRY to make things work with them before giving up. we never see that from teh at all. instead, he just see him becoming infatuated with jai (so we barely see teh/oh-aew together in the first place). and while i can see now that a lot of this is due to his own insecurities and inadequacies, it’s also just so disrespectful to oh-aew who's the one that we see putting in all this time and effort (it calls back to their whole “don’t give my time to others” scene in itsay bc we see oh-aew giving so much of his time to teh through helping him out with his play, while teh’s giving that time that should be for oh-aew to jai now). no matter his reasoning, watching teh act that way towards oh-aew does make it increasingly hard to root for him. there’s just too big a disparity in how the two of them choose to act and devote their time to their relationship.
what’s frustrating is that in itsay, teh would fuck up but he would always try to make amends with oh-aew in some way. he would always come forward to try to sort things out after...but there’s nothing here. even after their dinner fight in ep 2, it’s OH-AEW that reaches out to him first (even though it’s teh’s fault that they fought in the first place). where’s that boy that dressed up in his old school uniform in order to talk to oh-aew at his school? or made a whole chinese idioms scrapbook for oh-aew? or gave up his uni admission for oh-aew? i understand that characters and motivations change (and he was obv hopped up on his first love with oh-aew at the time), but it’s just really, really sad to see teh keep messing up and not even try to meet oh-aew halfway with this. yes, you can fuck up, but there are only so many times you can keep fucking up before it starts to look more like a pattern of shitty behaviour than a few forgivable missteps.
another issue is that there’s been so much focus on teh and his flaws that a lot of the time oh-aew comes off as a side character to teh’s story. previously, i understood that since teh was grappling with his sexuality. it made sense that his journey was the primary focus of the plot and character development. but i always felt that there was more room to explore oh-aew’s story (and i thought that we would get a lot more of that in ipytm...esp after ep 1), but it just feels like we kind of skimmed past all of oh-aew’s growth and struggles adjusting to bangkok/uni life so we could turn the attention back to teh again. i just hate that we never get to see more of how oh-aew’s changed in teh’s eyes (other than the surface level things like his hair, new car and major), and that we never get to see more of oh-aew’s life when it’s not related to teh in general. i hope that we’ll get more of oh-aew in the last two eps, but i really don’t know what they’ll give us anymore.
at this point, i don’t even want them as endgame anymore given everything that’s happened in the recent ep. and it pains me so much to say that bc teh/oh-aew are so immensely important to me, but they’re just in such different places in life. and teh esp has so much more growing to do (i think i said this last week too? teh...). oh-aew deserves to be with someone that can see his worth as he is (that won’t cheat on him for one!!). i just want him to be with someone that can make him happy. what i wanted most for them out of this was for the two of them to grow to a better place (together and as individuals), and while i still want that for them as individuals, it’s hard for me to want them to be happy together anymore. at least for the time being.
i’m kind of at a loss for how they’re gonna work through this (and i genuinely want oh-aew to be able to explore his options too...particularly with someone that will actually treat him better than teh’s treating him atm). so at this point it’s kind of looking to me like a break up is inevitable? but i do think it’s necessary for both of them rn. i feel so heartbroken about it though...like ipytm is actually making ME go through the breakup...breaking up with all my beloved itsay teh/oh-aew memories :((( anyway, i think a break up is also conveniently the best time to put a time skip tbh...so we’ll see if that does end up happening now in future eps.
this one took such a long time to write up bc i wrote like a quarter of this RIGHT after i finished watching the ep (so you can clearly tell which parts were me right after the ep, and which parts were me after i had some time to sit on what happened 😂), but i thought it was best to take a bit of a break. i didn’t rewatch it again until i calmed down a little and sorted out my thoughts some more (though i know this is still pretty messy). but yeah, i’m still very much interested in watching how they things are going to progress from here...but i can’t deny how sad i’ve been feeling after this.
#i promised you the moon#ipytm#text#i feel like i always need to rewatch ipytm eps bc i'm so HEATED during the first watch#but then by the second one i've usually calmed down so much more#like i obv still have a lot of things that i'm not super happy with (and rewatching this again didn't really bring me joy) but still#i get so invested in itsay/ipytm that sometimes i just gotta take myself out of the situation and go live my life for a bit#i was meant to post this yesterday bc it's been sitting in my drafts for too long but i just woke up (it's 2am) so what better time hah
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G1 Climax 30 preview
This is New Japan Pro Wrestling’s annual heavyweight singles tournament, scheduled for 19 shows between September 19 and October 18. The winner receives a trophy and a contract for an IWGP heavyweight championship match at Wrestle Kingdom on January 4. Whoever holds the contract is expected to defend it in singles matches, sort of like a championship. If the IWGP heavyweight champion himself holds the contract, he may name his own challenger for January 4.
The G1 is a 20-man round-robin tournament, split into two blocks of ten men. Each participant has a match against every other man in his block. That works out to 45 matches in A Block and 45 matches in B Block. Points are awarded for each block match, and whoever has the highest score wins the block. The A Block winner then meets the B Block winner in the final on October 18, to determine the winner of the entire tournament.
Each match is worth 2 points--the winner gets 2 and the loser gets 0. A 30-minute time limit draw awards 1 point to each participant. I could do a deep dive into scoring and potentially complicated tiebreaker scenarios. But through the magic of pro wrestling, scoring is mostly straightforward, and usually each block comes down to two guys who just happen to face each other in the deciding match in the last round. So I’ll go over the three final shows (October 16-18) in more detail when we get there.
Western wrestling fans are more accustomed to single-elimination tournaments, so newcomers might find the G1 Climax a little confusing and arduous. It’s nineteen shows, all in one month, with ninety-one tournament matches. The story is mostly told in the ring, with few if any angles. And it’s fairly predictable, so a cynic could just skip to the last few shows without missing a lot of bracket-busting surprises. The actual point, though, is match quality. Every participant wants to deliver their personal best performances of the year, so you’re kinda guaranteed about a dozen four-star matches. Besides, it’s perfect entertainment for staying at home binging TV--I have been going nuts waiting for this since the pandemic started.
Let’s take a look at the participants...
A Block
Jay White - The leader of Bullet Club and a former IWGP heavyweight champion. White has been the de facto top foreigner since Kenny Omega left. Prior to that New Japan kind of had a “Big Four” (Okada, Tanahashi, Naito, and Omega) that would be heavily favored in big events like this. Now it’s more of a “Big Five” (Okada, Naito, Tanahashi, Ibushi, and White), and I would argue White just barely makes the cut by virtue of being the top heel and the biggest dick in the company.
Other than a couple of matches for New Japan’s LA-based show, White has been out of action since February. I actually almost miss the bastard. Before he left it felt like questions were brewing about KENTA eclipsing him as the biggest dick in Bullet Club. While they were both away, Bullet Club reorganized around EVIL as the dickiest dick that ever dicked. I smell a very slow burn storyline. Since White’s not in the same block as the others, we probably won’t see him meet Evil or Kenta during this tour. But I expect it will be very interesting which of the posts the best performance.
White’s style is to counter offense, often by going limp on the mat to prevent an opponent from hitting a signature move. He’s honed this into some very solid chickenshit heel work that gets massive heat from the crowd, but I’ve found it incredibly tedious to sit through. His matches with Okada, Ibushi, and Ishii will probably be heavily promoted as main events, but I’m more curious to see how his shenanigans will mesh with Taichi, Will Ospreay, and Minoru Suzuki.
Jeff Cobb - He’s a free agent, although it’s been strongly rumored that he’s about to sign with somebody and it’s probably going to be New Japan. Because of the pandemic, there are a lot of hurdles for non-Japanese wrestlers to come in for a tour, so I’m pretty glad this absolute unit made it in.
Cobb was in last year’s G1, but many of his opponents this year weren’t in his block last time, so he’s got a lot of fresh matchups. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen Cobb vs. Okada, Cobb vs. Ibushi, or Cobb vs. Suzuki.
The big issue for Cobb is that he ought to do better than his 8-point performance in last year’s tournament. To get to 10 he’s probably going to have to score a big upset. A victory over White is plausible but probably not in the cards. Okada, maybe?
Kazuchika Okada - The leader of CHAOS and a five-time former IWGP heavyweight champion. This seems to be a rebuilding year for Okada, as he takes a break from the limelight to give Naito a chance to shine. That could mean he’s set to come roaring back in 2021, which could mean he’s booked to win this tournament. On paper he’s a clear favorite, so I suppose he’s my pick to win A Block. But as far as winning the whole tournament...I’m not feeling it, for some reason.
Ordinarily, Okada is either the defending champion or a top contender, so he loses very few tournament matches, which makes it a big deal for someone to actually beat him. This year, though, Okada has been feuding with the likes of Taichi and Yujiro Takahashi, and getting pinned by Toru Yano. So maybe they figure Okada won’t be back in title contention for a while, so it’s okay to make weaker opposition look stronger against him. If he fails to win at least 10 points, that would be a very ballsy storyline. At the very least, they might tease the possibility with an early slump.
Okada’s match with Will Ospreay on October 16 is probably going to decide the entire block, so I expect that to be a centerpiece for the tournament. Okada vs. Ibushi is a rematch from Wrestle Kingdom and should also be excellent. I’m personally most interested in Okada vs. Shingo Takagi, since I can’t recall them ever meeting one-on-one before.
Kota Ibushi - The 2019 G1 Climax winner, and a former IWGP intercontinental champion. He represents Hontai, the default “home team” faction for all the purest babyfaces. Ibushi has been a fan favorite for years, but New Japan never went all the way with him because he was a free agent. That changed last year when he signed a long-term deal, although I was surprised they still had him choke at Wrestle Kingdom. Nobody has won the G1 Climax two years in a row since Hiroyoshi Tenzan in 2003-2004, but I could see Ibushi doing it.
The story for Ibushi this year is that he needed to recover from going 0-2 in the Double Gold Dash series at Wrestle Kingdom, and he found new purpose in a tag team with his idol Hiroshi Tanahashi. But the new Golden Ace team lost the tag title to Zack Sabre Jr. and Taichi, and it quickly became apparent that Tana is the weak link in the team. So there’s intrigue about whether Tanahahi should pack it in, and whether Ibushi should leave him behind to pursue a top singles title. An Ibushi-Tanahashi match in the finals would be a really easy story to tell. Or they might be saving that for a non-title match at Wrestle Kingdom, which would mean neither of them are winning this tournament.
Ibushi has two modes--daredevil flippy guy or stiff strong-style mean guy. So his matches with Will Ospreay and Tomohiro Ishii are always scary and nuts, for wildly different reasons. I personally get a kick out of Ibushi vs. Suzuki, because Suzuki is all >:( and Ibushi is all :D
Minoru Suzuki - The leader of Suzuki-gun and current NEVER openweight champion. Last year’s G1 was so stacked that Suzuki didn’t even make the cut, but he’s back with a vengeance. The cool thing about Suzuki is that he’s old as balls, but he’s scary as fuck, but he’s not invincible. So it’s sort of like having the Undertaker in the G1, except he can do four or five jobs and maintain credibility so he doesn’t have to squash everyone.
There are plenty of fresh matches for Suzuki in this field, but I’m particularly interested in Suzuki vs. Taichi, since they’re in the same faction. Suzuki-gun vs. Suzuki-gun matches tend to be wild, vicious brawls, and I don’t remember these two ever meeting one-on-one before. This is probably the year to do it, since Suzuki is only getting older and Taichi’s career is at an all-time high right now.
Anyone who beats Suzuki during the G1 should be in line for a future title match, although big-name guys like Okada, White, and Ibushi may pass on it to pursue bigger opportunities. In terms of setting up future challengers, though, I think Ospreay, Cobb, or Takagi would all make sense.
Shingo Takagi - A member of Los Ingobernables de Japon and a former NEVER openweight champion. Shingo is big and mean and tough and I like him a lot. I’d like to think he’s being set up for bigger and better things down the road. But for now he’s a middle-of-the-pack guy, and middle-of-the-pack guys don’t win the G1. It’ll be a moral victory if he finishes in third or forth place for the block.
I’m kinda looking forward to all of Shingo’s block matches. He’ll demolish Yujiro, he’ll give Taichi and Jay White the fight of their lives, and he’ll hang with big mean guys like Ishii, Cobb, and Suzuki. Takagi vs. Ospreay might have been my favorite match in 2019, so that should be treat this year.
Taichi - One of the IWGP heavyweight tag team champions, and a member of Suzuki-gun. The tag champs have not appeared in the G1 in recent years, but Taichi is a full-time regular, and he was in the tournament last year, so it’s not like being a tag champ was going to be held against him or anything.
I’m not expecting Taichi to do particularly well, but he needs some wins or else way too many guys will be in line for tag title shots. It’ll be interesting to see which guys they’re willing to feed to him, because it’s hard to imagine most of the field jobbing to him.
Tomohiro Ishii - Basically the #2 guy in CHAOS and one of the NEVER trios champions. Ishii is always an imposing obstacle in the G1 but he never actually strings together enough wins to really matter in the endgame. So I think they’ll make a big deal about the threat he represents to guys like Ospreay, White, and Ibushi, but then they’ll just beat him like it’s no big deal.
Oddly, the one Ishii match I’m really interested in is with Taichi, because they were doing a program last year where Ishii brought out the best in Taichi and motivated him to fight honorably. I’m interested in how they revisit that.
Will Ospreay - A member of CHAOS and the RPW British heavyweight champion. Last I heard, Ospreay planned to live in Japan, but he got stuck in the UK when the pandemic travel bans went down.
I heard a lot about how Will’s mental health was suffering from being away from wrestling. Then he was distraught about Hana Kimura’s suicide. Then he got called out amid the #SpeakingOut movement. If I understand correctly, he was accused of helping to blackball a woman from the BritWres scene because she claimed a friend of his sexually abused her. So there’s a lot going on here, and I’m not sure how it all will affect his career or relationship with the industry and fans.
In light of the allegations against him, I expect some Western fans will not be happy to see him back in New Japan. I get the feeling New Japan will ignore the controversy, which may frustrate fans agitating for Ospreay to face consequences. Speaking personally, I considered Ospreay a sentimental favorite last year, and I’m not sure the things he apparently did rise to the level of “kick him out of the business,” but it feels weird bringing him back like nothing happened. I’m not sure how he can repair the damage to his reputation, and I don’t think I want New Japan to give him a free pass on doing that.
Dave Meltzer has suggested that, before the pandemic, New Japan planned to start pushing Ospreay hard as a heavyweight, with a lot of key wins in the G1. If that really was the plan, could the pandemic have changed all that? I guess we’ll find out.
Yujiro Takahashi - Bullet Club’s resident prelim guy. This is his first G1 in five years, and even back when he regularly appeared he didn’t score very well. I strongly doubt he’d be in this thing if they’d been able to fly in more foreigners. But someone has to lose a lot for the big names to rack up points, and he’s suited to the role.
The most interesting thing about Yujiro is that he’s accompanied by PIETER, who is hot. Unfortunately, Pieter is not exactly what you’d call an essential worker, which is probably why she hasn’t appeared at all since the pandemic. Watching a Yujiro singles match without Pieter is kinda like just reading Playboy for the table of contents. Actually, the most compelling thing Yujiro could do here is a match with Taichi, and that’d mainly be to see Pieter interact with Miho Abe, who probably also won’t be on this tour.
B Block
EVIL - The turncoat who betrayed Los Ingobernables de Japon to join Bullet Club. Evil captured both the IWGP heavyweight title and IWGP intercontinental title from Tetsuya Naito earlier this year, but lost them back to Naito a few weeks ago. Everybody was kinda “Really? You’re pushing Evil? Really?” So it’s fair to say he’s got a lot to prove.
I don’t expect Evil to win the block. But as a recent former champion, he needs a strong showing, if only to sell the idea that anyone who could win the title is a serious threat. You don’t want to Jinder Mahal this guy, and I think New Japan knows better than to do that.
I think everyone in this block has had a singles match with Evil, but few have worked with him since the heel turn, which freshens up those matchups. I’m curious how he’ll interact with Yano or Sabre, for example. There’s obviously a grudge match in Evil vs. Naito, but Evil and SANADA were tag team partners for years, and we’ve conveniently avoided getting Sanada’s take on the Evil turn.
The big deal, though, will probably be the match with KENTA. I’d rather see Jay White have to face Kenta or Evil, but this will have to do. Every Bullet Club vs. Bullet Club match in the G1 kinda plays out the same, but every year I put on my clown wig and hope we’ll see a real rift form in the group.
Hirooki Goto - One of the NEVER trios champions, representing CHAOS. Last year they made a big deal about Goto reinventing himself at the LA Dojo, but it’s a year later and he’s pretty much the same Goto. I just don’t have any confidence in him to score a win that’s going to move him up the ranks. He’s easy to take for granted.
I’m all for seeing Goto pleasantly surprise me with a hot run, but how would he even do that at this point? I guess he could pin Naito to set up a title match, but that wouldn’t get me to believe he could actually win said title match. A victory over Evil or Tanahashi would be more doable, but does that really get him anywhere? Maybe he could beat Sabre to set up a tag title program, but I’m so bored with matching the six-man tag champions against the regular tag champions.
Hiroshi Tanahashi - The eight-time former IWGP heavyweight champion and leader of Hontai. He’s already won this tournament three times, a stat that puts him up there with legends from the 1990s and early 2000s. But New Japan has been increasingly playing up the idea that age is catching up with him. At 43, he’s not the oldest guy in this tournament, but the idea is that his knees are shot and he’s only hanging in at this level through sheer god-given talent.
In principle, you can always do a “living legend proves he’s still got it” story with Tana defying age and the odds to win one more G1. The problem is, they already did that story in 2018, and there’s no good reason to rehash it so soon. So I figure he’ll probably get beaten down a lot in the early going, to build sympathy for him having a bad run, and then he’ll rebound to give fans hope, and then he’ll come up short in the very end.
The biggest marquee match in this block is Tanahashi vs. Naito (they’ve been kept apart for a few years now). But I’m more interested in seeing him battle fellow white-meat babyface Juice Robinson, or mega-dicks like Kenta or Evil that he hasn’t worked with much since they turned. Of course, the strongest grudge match for Tana is against Sabre, playing off the recent Golden Ace/Dangerous Tekkers feud. That one’s set for the last day of B Block, and I get the feeling it’s because Sabre is finally going to put Tana’s knees out of their misery.
Juice Robinson - Joliet, Illinois’s favorite son is finally back in Japan. Juice had a memorable feud with Jay White in 2018 to win the IWGP US championship and take a big leap forward, but unfortunately it’s been choppy sailing since then. He benefited from feuding with Jon Moxley and the Guerillas of Destiny, but he also lost those feuds. At the same time, Will Ospreay has kinda leapfrogged him as the top babyface foreigner. We’ll never know how he might have recovered from all that if not for the pandemic. But the road back starts here.
Even as a Juice fan I don’t think he has any business winning the block. But he’s one of those guys that is in striking distance of finishing a G1 with 10 points, and I think that would be a big milestone at this stage of his career. Trouble is, I don’t even see four matches where he’d be the favorite, let alone five. To get that 5-4 record he’s going to have to shock someone like Sabre or Kenta, and that’s pretty hard to imagine.
KENTA - Kenta came to New Japan for last year’s G1, and then turned heel and joined Bullet Club at the end of the tour. Since then he’s held the NEVER openweight title, but he’s probably more infamous for beating up the retired Katsuyori Shibata, and ruining Tetsuya Naito’s celebration in the Tokyo Dome. In a faction of dickasses, Kenta is the dickest, assest one of them all. It’s almost admirable, in a dickish sort of way.
Before the pandemic, Kenta’s heel heat was so hot that it seemed like he was a potential rival for Jay White’s leadership of Bullet Club. Then most of Bullet Club was unavailable this summer, and what was left kind of reorganized around Evil. So does Kenta just accept being the #3 guy in the faction? Or does he remind people he’s still in the “who should lead Bullet Club” conversation? The answer is probably somehwere in the middle. But his performance in this tournament might give us a clue.
SANADA - The dark horse of Los Ingobernables de Japon, and maybe the whole promotion. At the end of 2019 I was dead-certain that Evil and Sanada were stuck as the two guys just below the Big Five, with no hope of upward advancement, so they’d just keep winning World Tag League forever and ever. Now Evil’s been the champ, and Sanada fandom is heating up. Pretty sure I saw some betting site give Sanada the best odds of winning the whole tournament. It seems kinda crazy to me, because I’ve been watching him fade into the background for years. But I sure wouldn’t mind if he just went and won the big one.
There’s not really anyone in this block that Sanada can’t beat. I don’t think he ever has beaten Naito or Evil, but I certainly believe he could. Really, the only guy that consistently makes Sanada look like a chump is Okada, who is conveniently in the other block. Sanada having to beat Okada to win the G1 would be a really good story. So I don’t know, maybe it really could happen.
Sanada vs. Naito and Sanada vs. Evil are clearly the big things here, but for my money you can’t go wrong with Sanada against Yano or Sabre. Those matches always go down smooth, for incredibly different reasons.
Tetsuya Naito - The leader of Los Ingobernables de Japon and the reigning IWGP heavyweight champion and IWGP intercontinental champion. Neither of Naito’s belts are on the line in this tournament, but anyone who beats him during the tournament is practically guaranteed a title shot by the end of the year. To that end, he will probably lose very few block matches. But since the point of the tournament is to name a challenger for January 4, it doesn’t do much good for the champion to win. So watch for him to finish at like 7-2, but still come up short.
The usual pattern for a champion in the G1 is that he loses a couple of matches to set up main events on the Destruction and Power Struggle tours in September, October, and November. That’s tricky this time because the G1 is so much later in the year, so there will be fewer big shows between now and January 4 to book Naito title matches. In addition, Naito is a double champion, and has expressed a preference to defend each title separately. So maybe they could do a thing where he loses G1 matches against, say, Goto and Kenta, and then they book Naito vs. Goto for one belt and Naito vs. Kenta for the other on the same tour. But it’s pretty clear New Japan is kinda playing 2020 by ear, so they may not even be sure where they’re going with this stuff.
For several years now there’s been a lot of concern about Naito’s body being “thrashed,” and whether he can keep up with the physical demands of a top champion. In New Japan, working the G1 is the most demanding of those physical demands. He had a few months in the spring to heal up, but that was a couple of tours ago. Now the real grind begins, so if he’s still having problems, that probably doesn’t bode well for his long-term career.
Toru Yano - The first KOPW titleholder, representing CHAOS. Yano’s gimmick is that he seems like a prelim comedy guy, but he’s so good at cheating and misdirection that you have to take him seriously. He’s not going to win the block, but he can definitely hang in long enough to play spoiler. Last year he notably handed Jon Moxley his first New Japan loss--it was by count-out, but two points is two points. You underestimate Yano at your own peril.
Yano’s matches are often pretty short, and don’t involve a lot of hard work for the wrestlers. It’s sort of like each of the other guys gets a “night off” by playing his game. Some fans think he shouldn’t even be in there, but I’ve come to look forward to all the different ways he’ll try to steal wins. For fans expecting “sports entertainment” in the G1, this is your guy.
YOSHI-HASHI - One of the NEVER trios champions, along with Goto and Ishii, from CHAOS. Yoshi is a journeyman, who just won his first NJPW title after 12 years with the company. There’s a “lovable loser” quality to the guy, and he has his fan following. But in terms of the G1, he’s a jobber. He hasn’t been in the tournament since 2017, and that year he went 2-7. I’m not expecting much better this time around.
Zack Sabre Jr. - A member of Suzuki-gun and Taichi’s partner in the IWGP heavyweight tag team champions, Dangerous Tekkers. Sabre’s emphasis on chain wrestling, grappling, and submissions causes the style of his matches to stand out from the rest. Where other heavyweights train for size and strength, he stays lean and noodle-y to wriggle out of holds. He’s completely different, which is vital to avoid the feeling that every G1 match is just, like, two strong style dudes slapping the shit out of each other.
Sabre has always impressed me but that doesn’t translate into big pushes for him. They’ve given him some key feuds over the RPW British title, but it never feels like he’s really truly in the mix with the top guys. I’d like to see that change, and maybe get him back into the 10-point range. But in a way he’s kinda like Ishii and Sanada, where they talk like he’s a big deal but then he loses a lot to make other guys look better for beating a “big deal.”
Like I said before, Sabre vs. Tanahashi is a natural grudge match and will probably be the main focus of this tour for Zack. But I think it’ll be interesting to see how he handles Evil and Kenta now that they’re heels. And Sabre vs. Sanada is always a treat.
Predictions
I think I’ve talked myself into an Okada vs. SANADA final, but I could see New Japan going in other directions. Ibushi vs. Tanahashi would be a rehash of 2018’s tournament, but that was a great match so I don’t know if anybody would mind. The biggest match they could do might be another Okada vs. Tanahashi match, but I don’t know if this is the right year to go there again.
Of course, the G1 final doesn’t have to be a dream match. You can put the guy who’s going to win in there with someone that nobody thinks can win. Kenny Omega vs. Hirooki Goto in 2017 and Kota Ibushi vs. Jay White in 2019 were foregone conclusions, but they made you believe that maybe there’ll be an upset when you kinda knew there would never be. I could see them doing something like that with Ospreay, Takagi, Kenta, or Sanada. Actually, an Ospreay-Sanada final might be hot because they’d both feel like underdogs, so you wouldn’t feel like one of them definitely has to win.
If that was like picking a Royal Rumble winner, I’d think WWE wants to pick a new guy to push as a top babyface challenger, and Sanada would make sense. But I’ve seen so many years where New Japan stuck with what works that I’m reluctant to pick anybody outside the Big Five. So I guess I’m going to pick Okada to win the G1, and then kinda hope I am pleasantly surprised.
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Chapter 6/15
Mature
Chapter 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
@turtlepated, @anyamercury, @beetlewise-and-pennyjuice
(I’d like to thank @porkchop-ao3 for reading and offering opinions on some of this chapter. She’s not in the fandom but is an excellent author; if you’re in the Red Dead Redemption 2 fandom, check her stuff out. Seriously.)
He didn’t realize it was possible to be in an even fouler mood. Forget the business cards. A drop of his spunk landed right between her knees! Out of nowhere a gob of jizz hit the water! What in the actual fuck did she think it was?! A drop of water appeared from a non-existent leak in the roof?!
The only thing non-existent in this fucking house is me, Beetlejuice thought blackly.
When there was still no acknowledgement of him, no fear, no investigation, not even any goddamned curiosity, his rage fizzled out. It left him in a dismal place. He felt small and hollowed, like a husk, and thought more than once that the Lost Souls room couldn’t be any worse than this. When the bureaucracy wanted to punish someone, they sure as fuck knew how to twist the knife and cause the most damage. Beetlejuice would have tipped his hat to them, if he didn’t hate the Netherworld so fucking much.
He drifted aimlessly, lifelessly, in his corner of the room. He rarely even turned his head when Lisette was around; the cracks in plaster of the wall held his interest now. He felt closer to crying than he had in centuries, but what the fuck would that accomplish?
Beetlejuice didn’t know how long he stayed in that corner. A day? A week? A month? Till the sun was about to burn out? Time had no meaning.
But words still did. Despite his best efforts, when Lisette clearly spoke the word, “Shoggoth,” again, he lifted his head to look blearily over to her.
She was sitting cross-legged on her bed, in pyjama pants but only wearing a bra for a top, staring down into her journal. She seemed upset, scribbling notes into the book with a fervor he’d not witnessed before. At one point she grimaced and underlined something so many times the page tore. Then she threw up her hands and dropped everything to the quilt.
She buried her face in her hands for a moment.
Whatever her frustration was, it was a negative enough emotion to interest him. And she was basically topless again, which was always a bonus. Beetlejuice let himself descend from his corner near the ceiling like gravity actually worked on him, and settled on the mattress to her right.
He leaned over a bit, to read whatever it was that was affecting her, but at the moment Lisette slammed the journal shut irritably, leaving the pen trapped in its pages.
Beetlejuice scowled. Annoyance flashed through him, and he went to flick her on the cheek. It wouldn’t be to sip any life force, although the minor touch would be a nice pick-me-up. It would just let him . . . he didn’t know! Do something! Let her know she pissed him off!
But just as his fingers were near her face, Lisette turned her head. He only touched her hair, and she batted at him again like he was a gnat, just like her first night in this fucking house. Her fingertips grazed the side of his hand, sending a tiny warmth radiating out from the point of contact, but then she scooted off the bed opposite of him with an exasperated sigh and left the room, mindlessly shaking her hand as she went, like it had fallen asleep.
The sadness that he’d kept himself wrapped in threatened to pull him into its folds again. That was easiest. Nothing mattered. He didn’t matter. It was the price he was supposed to be paying for all his transgressions.
But before he succumbed to it, a hot burst of rage clawed its way through the suffocating despair. He wasn’t going to rot in this house while the stupidest woman in the world just lived her life in it!
With a roar that he knew only he could hear, Beetlejuice leapt from the bed, making it squeak. He flung an arm out over the bedside table. The wrath that fueled him gave him the strength to physically knock her stupid fucking books and the lamp over as well, sending everything crashing to the floor. The ceramic lamp shattered.
The books fell open and he saw he’d torn their dust jackets.
He shoved the wrought iron bed frame into the dresser, using enough force to gouge the wood, then he flipped the bed, mattress and all, upright on its side against the other piece of furniture. His anger was enough that he grabbed her clothing through the bed and dresser drawer and pulled them out, sending them into a whirlwind of ripping chaos throughout the room.
The maelstrom created by his rage made the floorboards groan and the glass in the windows creak. Cracks appeared in the plaster on the walls, and a more substantial crack split the ceiling. The overhead light swung erratically. Dust drifted down and was immediately caught in the gale, giving it a more solid appearance, with particulates occasionally reflecting the light.
Shards of glass from the broken lamp were swept up too, as well loose papers like his cards, and her pen.
It felt marvelous to be this powerful again, even if it was only going to last momentarily.
There was no way for Lisette to deny anything now! This room was going to be wrecked! Like a tornado hit it! He was going to laugh and laugh in his corner when she saw it! He was going to carve his name into the floorboards with a piece of glass. He was going to take her now torn socks and panties and spell his name out with them. He would cut into his own hand and smear his name in ectoplasmic blood in her precious journal and she would say finally it and he’d be here again and it would be glorious--
As Beetlejuice snatched a shard of glass from the air so hard it sliced his palm, his foot caught the “Twilight” book he’d thrown to the floor. It spun a little, staying open. He glanced at it.
He’d never read “Twilight”, but he was pretty sure it was written on standard white paper with standard black print.
The pages in this book were tea stained brown. The writing inside was calligraphy, and the ink was a faded ochre.
What the--?
Beetlejuice bent over to have a closer look.
The unholy tempest he’d created knocked “Outlander” against his heel. It was the same. No mass market hardback here; it had the same antique parchment and faded text inside. It wasn’t written in English. Maybe it was French? But some of it looked Arabic, and there was a drawing he glimpsed that niggled the far reaches of his mind and gave him a pleasurable little shiver. The wind made the pages flip erratically, and then snapped the book shut. The dust jacket that proclaimed it was covering “Outlander” lied.
He reached out to grab it for a closer look, but couldn’t quite make contact with it. That made no sense; he wasn’t that weak. He would be soon though; the storm of his rage was already tapering in his confusion. Both books, however, scraped along the floor away from him, to join the whirlwind in the center of the room.
Puzzled, Beetlejuice stopped. He stood like a statue, one hand outstretched towards a book that wasn’t within reach any longer. It didn’t make sense.
Something fluttered under the upturned bed.
Lisette’s journal.
It was caught between one of the iron legs and dresser. Beetlejuice went to it, crouched down, and released it. He could touch this leather bound book with no problem, which only deepened the mystery of the other one. His palm left a bloody smear on the cover.
If he’d expected to find the diary of a boring woman who should probably just post her daily pap on Facebook, he was mistaken. He started slow, then began flipping wildly through the handwritten pages. They were filled with nonsense ramblings and sketches:
“--full moon, quarter moon, new moon IS BEST--”
“--mixture of myrrh and sand; use a crow’s feather for dark or a blue jay’s feather for light--”
“--Tindalos--”, with a never-ending circle repeated over and over on the page--
--a penciled drawing of some archaic symbol in various sizes--
“--shoggoth as described--”
“--do not, repeat, NOT look at it directly. Use a mirror, or put your eyes out--”
Wait, shoggoth?
Shoggoth?!
Beetlejuice pulled the book open to that page so hard the spine cracked. He skimmed the page:
“--a shapeless congeries of protoplasmic bubbles, faintly self-luminous, and with myriads of temporary eyes forming and un-forming . . . shoggoth as described by Lovecraft. Would an Elder Sign work? No mention of any abilities to mate. But the mere fact that Shoggoth is used as a name may suggest otherwise--”
If he’d had to breathe, Beetlejuice would have felt like all the air had been kicked from his lungs.
What was this? What did this mean? His head was in a bigger whirl than the dying cyclone behind him. He didn’t understand! How could this stupid woman have his name in her book, and obviously be trying to put down her thoughts in the matter?!
He had to find her. He had to understand what the fuck was going on. Beetlejuice released everything that had been swirling in the air to drop into a mass on the floor. He kept hold of Lisette’s journal. He was going it find her and find a way to make her explain all this--
“Beetlejuice!”
Something punched him in the gut and grabbed his innards. It was the most beautiful hurt in the world: his name.
SHE SAID HIS NAME.
His name was an irresistible pull; he didn’t want to and he couldn’t deny it. Like he’d been stung, he scrambled to the bedroom door, grabbing hold of the doorframe to assist turning into the hallway.
“Beetlejuice!”
SHE SAID HIS NAME A SECOND TIME.
Beetlejuice grinned. He’d go to her. He’d be right beside her and when the last syllable of the third repeat fell from her lips he’d be visible and free and he’d fucking kiss her right on her breather mouth before making her piss her pants and run screaming for the door.
The pull was stronger now. If he’d tried to resist, he’d split in two. In his haste and forgetting he was spectral, Beetlejuice slipped on the floor; he caught himself and continued running on all fours for a moment, before he could right himself again. He tugged at the crotch of his trousers with the hand that wasn’t holding her journal; he’d gotten a hard-on.
Her voice was coming from the small bedroom, the one with the “good light”; he wanted to get there and stand in glory when that final, orgasmic moment arrived that would free him--
Beetlejuice crashed through the partially opened door of the small bedroom. If he had needed to pant for air, he would have. As it was, a wordless, pathetic keening noise escaped his mouth.
This was it, this was it, this was it--!
As he burst into the room, several things happened at once. The journal he’d been holding was plucked out of his grip. A hand shoved him hard between the shoulder blades, making pleasure radiate through his chest. He stumbled forward with the extra momentum, but something was wrong; for a split moment he slowed, like moving through molasses. He sucked in a mouthful of dust, then the sensation was gone and he tumbled forward, off balance, falling to his knees and skidding on the floor in real time.
The pleasure from being touched by a live person ate away the pain in his knees from the floorboards.
That meant he had at least one foot in the living world; just one more time, just three more syllables and he was out!
Beetlejuice twisted on his knees to face Lisette. He was sure the expression on his face was needy desperation, and he was still making that whining pleading noise.
She was ignoring him, hastily drawing a line and writing symbols on the wooden floor between him and the door. The thick piece of chalk she used quickly wore away and left dust hanging in the air.
Although he didn’t understand exactly was what happening, Beetlejuice got up and rushed towards Lisette. At his movement she awkwardly pushed herself to her feet, clutching her journal to her chest. She looked concerned but stood her ground. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to grab her and beg her to say his name one last time, or strangle her.
He made it to the chalk line when he hit a wall. He couldn’t move one step closer to her. He looked right and left and saw the same chalk circle and writing on the floor, surrounding him, corralling him, trapping him.
Realization came quickly and his wordless plea died. Beetlejuice snarled. He threw himself at the invisible barrier, pounding at it, and was repelled.
One step away from him, Lisette let out a breath.
She stared him directly in the eye as she said, “I wasn’t sure that was going to work.”
tbc
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I thought I lost you kisses with Nadya and Jade
Did you mean some hurt and comfort with a side of I thought I lost you kisses...? Cause that’s what I ended up writing. -
A popping noise sounded, followed by a sharp, pained yelp that cut through the air, making me snap my head in the direction that it came from. My breath caught in my throat when I saw the hunter closest to Jayde’s wolf form lower his rifle, that he had obviously just fired at her, and slammed the butt of it into her head. The white wolf fell to the ground unmoving, which was already a terrifying sight on its own, but then the hunter abandoned his strange looking rifle to unsheathe a silver knife from his belt. I was already running to them as he knelt down and raised his blade to finish her off.
I’ve already killed for Jayde once before and wasn’t eager to do so again, but if he gave me no other choice, I knew I couldn’t hesitate. “Stop!” I shouted once I was in front of them, summoning as much power into my voice as possible and raising my gun. I fired it once above his head as a warning and that thankfully got him to freeze. “Get away from her!”
The hunter fixed me with a patronizing stare similar to the first hunter I shot, and he shook his head at me, “Do you know what you’re doing with that thing?”
“Drop the knife and go.” I told him firmly, adjusting my aim down to his chest, “You don’t have to die today, I just want you to leave her alone.”
“That’s not how this works, girlie.” he replied with a sickening smile, “See, I’m the dog catcher and this is the problem mutt. I promise to be humane, if that’ll make you feel better.” Then he glanced down at Jayde and raised his eyebrows, “She might be on her way out anyway.”
I tried to ignore his words and the fact that I haven’t seen Jayde move at all since she fell. She’s only unconscious. I thought to myself. Nothing you won’t be able to fix. “I’m not going to tell you again. Go away.”
I saw a black shape slowly moving behind our enemy while he laughed at me. Toby. His black wolf form was stalking the hunter, looking for the right moment to pounce. I just needed to keep him distracted.
“I’ve killed one of you people before.” I said threateningly. “I know what it’s like to pull the trigger. You really think I won't do it again?”
Just a few more feet and Toby will be in the perfect position.
“I can see in your eyes that you’re not a killer.” the hunter sounded so sure of himself, “You aren’t even a fighter.”
“Drop the knife.” I commanded slowly.
Toby was so close.
“Drop the gun.” he countered.
I made eye contact with Toby and then met the hunter’s gaze once more, “Okay,” I lowered my arms.
Just as the hunter smiled triumphantly and started to bring his knife down on Jayde, Toby shot forward and clamped his jaws down on the back of his neck, yanking him back and away from me and Jayde. I immediately rushed to her still form, trying not to listen to the sounds of the dying man while Toby tore into him.
The first thing I noticed on Jayde’s body was something sticking out of her shoulder. It looked like a dart of some kind and when I pulled it out, I realized it was a syringe that had clearly injected her with an unknown substance. Hopefully just a sedative and not a poison. Though the hunter’s comment made me fear the latter. There weren’t any other injuries on her that I could see besides a gash under her eye where she had been hit with the rifle, so I tried to check her pulse, but her fur was too thick for me to find it.
I bent down and set my ear to her chest, her fur tickling my face, and listened as intently as I could, though the frantic beating of my own heart made it difficult. What if it was a poison? What if she was already gone? No, I won’t accept that. I shut my eyes tightly and forced myself to focus, her life could depend on me right now. A faint, but unmistakable thump echoed in her chest, causing me to sigh in relief. But that only confirmed that she was still alive, there could be an even bigger issue with whatever was running through her veins right now.
“Jay,” I urged after I sat back up and gently shook her, trying my best to rouse her. There was no response. “Jay, can you hear me? I need you to wake up.” I shook her again. Still nothing. Not even a twitch.
My drumming heart started to carry panic throughout my body. I barely noticed that Skye had arrived and picked up the empty syringe dart from the ground where I threw it aside. She sniffed it and balked in disgust, dropping it like it had burned her. “Fucking shit.” she cursed under her breath.
“What is it?” I asked, terrified of the answer, but hoping that it was something within my abilities to remedy, “Why isn’t she waking up?”
“It’s that liquid silver shit I told you about.” She answered bitterly and crushed the dart under her shoe. Toby came over and sniffed the remains of it on the ground, snorting and shaking his muzzle in disgust, reaffirming what Skye said. “Guess they’re distributing it to hunters now.”
I recalled what she was referring to. Skye once mentioned that one of the weapons that was tested on Jayde during her captivity was a liquid concoction that had silver in it. The intention was to find the right amount to incapacitate a werewolf, but too much of it was fatal and may have even been what killed their mother. My anxiety skyrocketed with this revelation. If the dose was too high, Jayde won’t survive.
My hands grabbed fistfuls of Jayde’s white fur, silently willing her to have the strength to get through this, “Is there anything- anything at all that can counteract the effects of silver?”
Skye stared at her older sister with a mixture of fear and sorrow and shook her head, “No.”
“Then we just have to wait?” I asked incredulously. “Wait for it to pass or wait for her to...” the unbearably cold shiver that went up my spine stopped me from finishing the sentence.
“Nadya, I don’t know.” Skye said hopelessly, “I think that’s all we can do.”
I groaned in frustration, feeling nausea creep up on me at the prospect. I wasn’t used to this, being unable to do anything while someone I love suffers. Feeling useless. It made me want to scream. “We have to get her out of here. Somewhere safe.”
Skye, and Toby after he shifted back, helped get Jayde in the backseat of the car. Her massive wolf form was almost too big to fit in the back with me, even with her head in my lap. I kept checking if she was breathing and if her heart was still beating every few minutes because it was so faint that I was terrified of her going in my arms any second. My hand constantly brushed through her fur soothingly, hoping that she would just wake up and reassure me. I didn’t know how I could endure losing her again. Maybe I’ve already lost her…
“I need you to fight this, Jay.” I said to her quietly, “Just stay with me.”
It took some skill, but we managed to sneak Jayde into the motel room we rented for the night unseen. Someone spotting us moving a big white wolf inside of a room would’ve raised some unwanted attention, even in the seedy part of town we were in.
Hours passed and Jayde was still unconscious in her wolf form. I thought maybe she would shift back in her sleep, she’s done that sometimes, but it was like she wasn’t even there at all. The only movement I’ve seen was her chest rising and falling in slow breaths.
I watched her lying on the bed carefully, pacing back and forth while Toby and Skye took turns getting rest and keeping watch. I suppose it would be more accurate to say that they were watching Jayde with the same level of anxiety that I was rather than actually getting any sleep. None of us knew if she would pull through.
At around two in the morning, when I was sitting in a chair by the bed and fighting my own exhaustion, I noticed her body jerk. I sat up, suddenly wide awake and waited in case I imagined it. Another jolt went through her, drawing Toby’s attention away from the window. Skye hadn’t noticed yet, she had slumped in the lounge chair across the room, staring up at the ceiling and lost in thought.
“Jayde?” I asked softly while standing up, wanting nothing more than to see her head perk up at me.
I went to reach for her, but then Toby yelled, “Nadya!” and pulled me back just as Jayde snarled and turned into a writhing white blur.
One moment she was on the bed and the next she had flung herself off of it, crashing into the nightstand and smashing it to pieces like it was nothing. Skye was next to us in a second flat, using her body to shield me just like Toby was, blocking most of my view of Jayde. All I could make out was a glimpse of heaving white fur from her labored breaths and then another slamming sound. I guessed she had thrown herself against the wall in the far corner of the motel room.
“Jayde, you gotta relax.” Skye said carefully, but the wolf only started to growl furiously.
I was still struggling with what exactly was happening, but then realized that Jayde was probably disoriented and in incredible pain. Maybe this even pushed her into an episode, making her relive the trauma she’s suffered. It made tears start to well in my eyes, both in frustration and heartbreak. What could I do to make this better? Was there anything I could do?
“Jayde, it’s us.” Toby chimed in carefully, still keeping me behind him. I understood that Jayde was being unpredictable and they just wanted to keep me safe, but I didn’t think she would hurt me. “We’re all here, we’re safe. You’re safe.”
Jayde’s growls were still ferocious and warned everyone in the room to stay back.
“Nadya’s here too, Jayde. She’s fine.” the growls quieted a fraction at my name and Skye motioned for me behind her back while keeping her gaze glued to the terrifying wolf, “Nadya, call to her.”
“Jay?” I peeked my head out from behind Toby’s shoulder and Jayde’s golden eyes immediately landed on me. She was still growling and panting hard, looking like a cornered wild animal, but she clearly hesitated at the sight of me. That gave me enough courage to step out from behind Toby and Skye. “Jay, it’s me.”
I kept my steps towards her slow and cautious, watching closely for any signs of an attack. Jayde remained where she was, watching me as intently as I was watching her, and I was encouraged when she stopped baring her fangs at me. Another inch closer and her growls began to dissipate. I started to breathe a little easier. She knew it was me.
There was a bit of blood staining her white fur, probably from splintering the nightstand, and I also noted the large dent in the wall from her ramming into it. Hopefully nothing was broken. I knelt down before her and carefully extended my hand. It felt like the whole room held its breath. Maybe I had gotten this all wrong and she couldn’t see me. It would only take her believing I was a threat for one second to prompt an attack.
“I’m right here,” I cooed, holding out my hand for her to inspect, “It’s me, Jayde.”
The white wolf had stopped growling all together now, but her breathing hadn’t slowed and her body visibly trembled. Still, she leaned forward and sniffed my hand. My scent must have finally confirmed who I was, because her ears flattened and her head bowed, exhaling a low whine of regret and pain. I released the breath I had been holding too and moved forward to wrap my arms around her, holding her and running a hand up and down her back to comfort her.
“You’re gonna be okay, I’m here.” I promised and placed a kiss to the top of her head. She almost went limp in my arms, huffing and whimpering quietly. “You think you can get back on the bed?”
Once we helped her back into bed, I was surprised to see that she was actually shifting back. Looking at her in her human form didn’t reassure me that she was getting better. Her skin was pale and damp with sweat, making her hair stick to her gaunt face. I also noticed something peculiar besides the shallow scrapes and cuts from the nightstand. I quickly found my glasses to get a closer look.
There was a discolored dot on the back of her shoulder where the dart had been stuck in her and dozens of thin tracks leading from it along her skin that looked like darkened veins. They spiderwebbed down her back and up her neck and I realized this is what the silver is doing to her. It must’ve felt like she was burning from the inside out. She was shivering almost violently, gripping the blankets and sheets in an iron fist.
“Are you cold?” I asked, placing a hand on her shoulder. She nodded even though her skin was practically on fire. I wrapped her up in the covers and asked Skye or Toby to get some water before turning back to Jayde, “Do you know how long this will last?”
“Too fucking long.” she answered with a voice that shook as much as her body did.
She was unfortunately right about that. It took hours of Jayde writhing in pain in the bed and me being completely powerless to stop it. It got so bad that my fear of losing her resurfaced. As a result, I was constantly checking in with her or reassuring her that she would be okay if she just hung tight and waited for the pain to pass. Surely this will pass?
Eventually Jayde fell into some kind of tortured sleep. The others resumed their routine watch, also keeping a close eye on her for any sign of improvement. I was completely spent and decided it couldn’t hurt to rest my head beside her on the bed and close my eyes for a few minutes.
I woke up to the sensation of someone running their hands through my hair and sunlight illuminating the entire room. There was no way to tell exactly how long I was out for, but the light told me it had to be around afternoon. My whole body was stiff thanks to my sleeping position and all the stress that knotted my muscles. I groaned and twisted my head to look for who was touching me. I remembered what happened as soon as I laid eyes on Jayde and suddenly sprung up in my seat.
She was sitting up in bed, looking a lot better, albeit exhausted from everything she went through. She even had clothes on now and I could see under her open collar that the discolored veins on her neck were almost completely faded away. I was so consumed by relief and the weary smile she gave me, that I didn’t think twice about pitching forward and wrapping Jayde in a fierce hug.
Despite still being weak, she eagerly returned the embrace, wrapping her arms around me in a silent plea to never let go. I had no desire to, burying my face in her neck to plant my lips on her recovering flesh and feel her warmth, which was now seemingly at its normal temperature instead of the boiling hot that it was at only hours earlier.
Jayde simply pulled me into her lap so that there wasn’t any distance between us and I appreciated every bit of contact just a little more after being so scared that she was going to leave me again.
“Are you okay?” I asked, my voice shaky and muffled against her skin.
She nodded, “I’m gonna be, yeah.”
I leaned back to cup her face and study her. Jayde looked like she had been through hell, but there was already a major improvement. Some color had returned to her cheeks and the gash under her eye from the rifle had already sealed up and bruised. The fact that she was smiling at me reassured me of her words as well.
I couldn’t resist pressing my lips against hers in a desperate passion. The intensity that she returned my kiss with revived the warmth in my heart and banished my fears. Knowing that I came far too close to never feeling this again made me kiss her harder and deeper, until there wasn’t any composure to it at all. Only a need to feel her as fiercely as possible and remind myself that I hadn’t lost her. I ran my fingers through her hair, leaning into her more when her arms wrapped around my waist and her fingers brushed the skin just under my shirt, committing all of these sensations to memory.
“I thought I was going to lose you again.” I mumbled against her mouth in between kisses, “There was nothing I could do, but watch you go through that and wonder if I was going to have to watch you die.”
Jayde shook her head, bringing a hand up to caress my cheek and trace my bottom lip with her thumb, “I’m okay,” she promised, kissing me again, delicately this time, “I’m not going anywhere.”
I matched her soft and gentle cadence, letting her words comfort me. “I won’t lose you like that. Not ever again.”
“You won’t.” Jayde agreed.
“I love you, Jay.” I said, feeling increasingly breathless with every movement of her lips, “I love you so much.”
She released a small gasp before replying with a distracted, “I love you too...” like she was in a flustered trance.
Just then the door to the room opened and I heard a surprised squeak from Skye, who promptly pulled the door shut again, “Well, I’m glad Jayde’s feeling better, but did you guys have to mentally scar me?” she called through the door.
I felt embarrassed for having completely forgot that Skye and Toby were with us. I suppose I just got too caught up in the relief that Jayde was alive and recovering, “Sorry!” I replied and slipped off a chuckling Jayde.
Skye came back into the room with her hand covering her eyes, “Is it safe?”
“Yes.”
My answer was immediately followed by Jayde saying, “Or maybe not, you willing to gamble?”
“Jay,” I scolded through a giggle and got off the bed.
“I just wanted to let you guys know that we have to check out or pay for another night.” Skye said with her eyes still covered.
“Okay,” Jayde started to slowly get off the bed and I reached out to help her. She was wobbling a bit on her feet, but I was encouraged by the fact that she could stand at all, “We should get going anyway.”
“Cool, I’ll meet you guys in the car.” the younger blonde stated quickly and backed out of the room.
I shared an amused look with Jayde and we moved to follow Skye out of the motel room.
#asks#anon#ok so this took a while for me to get to sorry#and also became longer than I intended#but i hope yall like it!#my ocs#My writing#Jayde#Nadya#Skye#Toby#Nadya pov
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aaaand here is a gift for @rorykillmore ‘s birthday! you didn’t say what you wanted which is good because i made you something completely fucking ridiculous instead. i call it “villanelle suffers”. also uh cw for graphic deaths
(also shoutout to jay for helping me brainstorm a bunch of this)
meeks!! i know its been a weird and difficult year, and you’ve been putting into so much hard work and dealing with a lot. i dont know if anything i alone can do can pay you back for all that, but i hope at least this can brighten your day a bit! you deserve it. and to get a bit sappy, you’re one of my best friends, and my life has greatly improved for knowing you. anyway i hope next year is more settled and all that hard work pays off!!
“Ah, quite the opposite. I’m here to congratulate you.” Konstantin sits down next to her on the couch. “I didn’t even have to tell you to make that last one an accident! Good job.”
Villanelle realizes she has two options: tell Konstantin the truth, or take credit for the freak accident.
“You know me, I just want to make you happy,” She replies in a sing-song voice.
“...Officials now believe that the incident started because of a mechanical failure in the pulley system, which caused it to snap and set off a chain reaction that sent the three elevators at the Delta hotel plummeting, killing twenty-three people.”
“Whoa,” Villanelle hums between mouthfuls of popcorn. “How terrible.”
The droning of the television doesn’t quite drown out the sound of Konstantin entering her apartment. Villanelle pretends it does and ignores him. He lingers near the arm of her couch, looks between her and the TV, and then grabs the remote and shuts it off.
“Hey, I was watching that!” Villanelle throws some popcorn at him. “That’s very rude.”
“I didn’t take you for the sort to watch the news,” Konstantin brushes himself off.
“Half of it nowadays is fake. So it’s like watching a soap opera!” Villanelle waves a hand dismissively. “Anyway. You have a job for me? You didn’t come here to watch TV with me, I guess. Too bad. I ‘borrowed’ Devil from my neighbor. It looks terrible.”
“You’re really selling this,” Konstantin responds dryly as he pulls a postcard out of his pocket. “But you should really get some rest. This one’s big.”
That’s curious and exciting enough that Villanelle can’t quite think of a good quip when he leaves.
By “big”, it turns out that Konstantin did not mean that it was exciting or dangerous, but that literally it was a bigger body count than usual. Five whole people this time!
Cursory research shows that they’re all a bunch of nobodies. No, literally! Most of them are college students from the same college. The only interesting thing about them is that they’re the five survivors of the weird elevator accident that was all over the news.
It could be some weird insurance fraud kind of thing. It’s gonna be real suspicious if all the survivors happen to die. But it’s not Villanelle’s job to care about that kind of stuff.
The first on her list is Jay, engineering, who she watches from across the street at a cafe. She notes them by their major because otherwise they blend together like the boring as of a B movie.
Right on time, exiting the building, there he is. She’s got a couple ideas in mind, most involving stabbing, but... then he takes a slight detour and goes over to a nearby payphone.
“Who even uses payphones anymore?” She grumbles to herself and gets up to find a good position to hang around in wait. Might as well lurk at nearby wall and pretend to look at her phone. He seems pretty serious about whatever call he’s making.
Villanelle’s there for barely more than a minute when the edge of the phone booth starts to spark ominously. She blinks, and before she can process it, he starts convulsing like he’s being electrocuted. She, and a few other shocked passersby watch in confused and terrified silence. Some smoke rises off his shoulders.
With no warning, he launches backwards and through the glass. It shattered and he sprawls out on the sidewalk below, blood starting to seep from cuts on his face and embedded glass in his shoulders and arms. Someone in the crowd screams. About five people reach for their phones, either to call for help or take a picture. Someone else rushes to his side, feels his wrist, and then (pathetically) starts trying CPR. Too late, Jay’s clearly dead.
Well. That works too.
The footsteps this time have a definitive lack of stomping, which means that Konstantin must be in a good mood. Great! Because Villanelle didn’t want his grumpiness to interrupt her painting her nails.
“If you tell me to hurry up, I’ll throw paint at you,” She warns. “Five is a lot! I’m working on it.”
“Ah, quite the opposite. I’m here to congratulate you.” Konstantin sits down next to her on the couch. “I didn’t even have to tell you to make that last one an accident! Good job.”
Villanelle realizes she has two options: tell Konstantin the truth, or take credit for the freak accident.
“You know me, I just want to make you happy,” She replies in a sing-song voice.
“O.K. Cool. Keep up the good work.” He gives her a thumbs up.
“Please never do that motion with your hands again. You doing that is -- ugh.”
The next one on her list is Charlie, art major. The first thing Villanelle notes about her is that her outfit is terrible. It’s like what a hangover would look like as clothes. Artists!
Villanelle tracks her to a mall. The parking garage is just a bit too full right now, but maybe she’ll stalk her through the mall until she comes back. She watches the girl enter the elevator (haha, ironic) heading down to ground level. Too bad there’s a couple other people in the elevator. That’s fine, Villanelle can just take the stairs.
Just as she turns to head down the stairs she hears a faint commotion. Someone in the elevator bumps into Charlie just as the elevator springs into motion. As she stumbles towards the door, something snaps and the elevator jerks and falls. Charlie’s positioned conveniently enough so that her head is separated clean from her shoulders as the elevator plummets. The freed head bounces along the floor and rolls almost to Villanelle’s feet.
The screaming from the elevator (which sounds like it’s stopped the next floor down, not crashed, now THAT’S ironic) is the perfect soundtrack to Villanelle’s disbelief.
“Wow,” She says, “Just like that movie! Genetic!”
-------
Bizarre accidents aside, Villanelle is not about to lose her momentum. The last three survivors all end up congregating on the beach. Villanelle, with a pair of new designer sunglasses coming out of her next paycheck, listens to their hushed conversation from an inconspicuous distance away. Who talks in hushed whispers about something serious at a beach? Seriously?
“I’m telling you, what if death has a plan, and we messed it up?” One of them, who Villanelle remembers as Billy, philosophy, is drawing something in the sand. “We were supposed to die in those elevators, but we didn’t.”
“Because of your... vision, or whatever?” Tommy, film, rolls his eyes. Villanelle also rolls her eyes.
“Yeah, because we got off. And now it’s coming to hunt us down one by one. If we can just see the signs, maybe...”
Villanelle doesn’t hear the rest of what he says, because a stray gust of wind blows sand into her face. She sputters even as some paper flies behind her to where they’re sitting.
“This is-- ow.” Villanelle glances back to see the last of them, Sara, dance, toss a book down. “Papercut. Anyway, this is ridiculous. Death isn’t stalking us. Get real.”
“You tell them,” Villanelle mutters to herself. Except she gets drowned out by some seagulls squawking ominously, which is weird, how can that obnoxious noise sound ominous?
“I’m going for a swim.” Sara stands up pointedly. “You two can keep making up nonsense.”
“Sara, wait--” Billy reaches out, but she’s already heading down the beach.
In the water, it’s easy enough to bump against someone with a concealed knife. So Villanelle stretches and languidly rises to her feet. Sara’s already wading past the shallows as Villanelle follows her. Except the shape of something cresting through the water slows her, and she watches the events unfold in dizzy shock.
Just as Billy shouts Sara’s name, a shark leaps from the water and drags Sara under. The water bubbles up red and someone behind Villanelle screams. After a few seconds, Sara actually does resurface and stumbles out of the water. Villanelle winces at the bite wound on her leg. Sara manages to limp back onto the beach when a rogue blast of wind hits. Nearby beach goers, still watching Sara, hold onto their hats as a beach umbrellas is ripped from its post. The umbrella goes spinning in the wind, gaining momentum. And then comes to a dead stop by impaling Sara.
“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” Villanelle says.
“You lied to me,” Konstantin accuses.
“Whaat.” Villanelle doesn’t bother to get up from where she’s sprawled on the couch. “I did not.”
“You did,” He counters. “Those were all accidents. You didn’t actually do your job.”
“Oh. That. Okay, maybe I did lie.” Villanelle cranes her neck to look up at them. “But they’re dead either way, so does it really matter?”
Konstantin raises a finger to scold her, then hesitates and lowers it. He sighs. “Okay. Well. The Twelve aren’t angry, but they’re not going to pay you if you’re not actually the one doing it.”
“What! It’s not my fault the freak accidents are beating me to the punch!”
“Then get more clever about the last two. I know you can.” He turns and waves as Villanelle crosses her arms and pouts.
“Stupid... death, or whatever.”
This time, okay, this time she’s not gonna get one-upped by random acts of violence. Villanelle tracks Tommy to the library where he’s studying late into the night. Much better. There’s lots of quiet little opportunities for murder and ways for her to manipulate the situation.
For example: she’s put a wet floor sign in front of the bathroom on the ground floor so that he’ll be forced to go to one that’s more remote. It shouldn’t work, but it does. Perfect.
The corner of the library outside the third floor bathroom is perfectly quiet and dark. Lots of narrow corners to catch him where nobody else will see. Some of the books might get some blood on them, but… That’s a sacrifice she’s willing to make.
There’s a noise from inside the bathroom and Villanelle is just about ready to explode. But no, it’s fine, he emerges a moment later grumbling with wet shoes and a sizable trickle of water coming from the bathroom. Something must’ve broken, but it wasn’t his head!
Before anything else can happen, she turns around a corner to block him between some shelves.
“Can I help you?” He asks, glancing between her and the direction of the bathroom.
“You could... no, you know, I’m not really in the mood for clever lines.” She just shrugs and pulls out a knife. It spooks him enough that he turns and darts back. “Hey!”
He slips on a nearby puddle and bumps into one of the shelves, which sways and then collapses in his direction. It takes a moment of coughing for Villanelle to see through the dust that it kicked up. The shelf has him pinned face-down on the floor, but from the way he’s struggling he’s still alive.
“See? That is what you get for running.” Villanelle sighs dramatically and walks around the toppled shelf. “This would be easy, they said. And now I’m going to have to lift this off of you. That’s not easy at all.”
She shakes her head to see that he’s just twitching occasionally. Uh-oh. She goes to work lifting the shelf off of him, which is a little easier with all the books having fallen out. She moves it just enough to get to a point where she can lift him up, and….
He’s dead. His face is dripping wet. Villanelle looks down at the puddle on the ground.
“You drowned in a puddle.” She shakes his corpse. “You drowned in a puddle! How could you.”
This time, Villanelle’s just taking a walk through a park at like 1am because someone is playing a cosmic joke on her and she hates her life and goddamnit shes gonna find somewhere that serves ice cream and/or alcohol at 1am. One of those is easier than the other.
What she gets instead is Billy, wandering through the same wooded park that she is. Due to an extremely convoluted series of events that might be called a narrative climax, she’s sure. Villanelle just kind of stops and stares at him.
“It’s you,” He gasps, “The specter of death. You’re death itself.”
“No,” Villanelle answers. “Well, yes. I mean, I am here to kill you. But there’s nothing weird and supernatural about it. Get a grip!”
Billy stares at her for another second, and then fucking books it. Villanelle just sighs because of course, and follows him. She’s going to get this paycheck, damnit.
Her heart leaps into her throat when their chase rounds a corner and he stumbles into a wood chipper. She watches in horror as he goes tumbling in head first, and she holds up an arm to protect herself from a spray of blood...
...Only an annoyingly sinister leaf lands on her arm. Oh. The wood chipper wasn’t on. She goes over and wrenches Billy free of it, but he manages to squirm out of her grasp.
“Come back here!” She calls. Her voice is drowned out by a loud creaking.
Her last target turns to look at her while running and, before both their eyes, one of the trees inexplicably leans and then comes crashing down. Villanelle’s mouth hangs open as she watches it fall directly onto Billy and the comically horrific crunch that follows.
A moment of shocked silence hangs in the air as the leaves all settle.
“I give up,” Villanelle announces. “Okay, Death. You win! Give a girl a break, geeze.”
“I can’t do this anymore,” Villanelle confesses when Konstantin comes in.
His pace slows to a stop. Something churns behind his expression. Concern, maybe? The realization that she might need to be taken care of?
“I can’t be upstaged by freak accidents anymore!” Villanelle wipes a tear away. “Do you know what this is doing for my reputation? For my self-esteem?”
Konstantin’s choked laugh just makes her glare dramatically. “Don’t worry. Your next job is in Florence. Political. You love that kind.”
Villanelle perks up. “Oh, good! You always know how to cheer me up.”
Kostantin smiles. “Okay, but tell me one thing. Did a tree really fall on him, or did you just make that up?”
“Of course it did! Would I ever lie? Okay, fair. Would I ever lie that badly if it’s warn’t true?”
“Mm. Fair enough.”
#rorykillmore#My writing#I DONT KNOW HOW ELSE TO TAG THIS#anyway this idea struck me out of nowhere#i hope you enjoy
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I think I’m losing my mind
Trying to stay inside the lines
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The phone rings and keeps ringing until it stops. Machine answers, familiar voice next. Jonah sighs.
From behind him, Jax asks, “Got anything?”
Jonah looks up, even through the shoddy, fingerprint-covered mess of the phone-booth’s glass, he can make out the mess of blonde curls and bright eyes. Jax is bouncing in place, impatient and glancing over his shoulder every couple seconds.
Jonah decides to hang up the phone, letting it clatter and dangle on the hook. Such an old thing, there’s grime caking the numbers. A light drizzle greets him when he leaves the phone-booth, he doesn’t bother lifting his hood, glancing up towards the darkening clouds.
There’s no stars out tonight, if it weren’t for the neon pink lights of CRUISIN’ shining down on them, there would be no way to see at all.
“Nah,” Jonah says, sighs again. It’s all he seems to be doing as of late. “They must not be back yet.”
“Yeah,” Jax hesitates, “Wanna go back inside?”
“Sure.”
Jonah wishes he could calm his nerves, Jax goes out of his way to throw his arm out and wrap it around his shoulders, like he’s trying to make Jonah feel better. He appreciates it, leans into his side gradually.
It’s the weekend, so it’s not like CRUISIN’ is missing any patronage. The place is filled to the brim with people. Usually, the locals come — mainly teenagers or twenty-somethings, rent their skates, order a few drinks, or try their hand at the old-as-dirt arcade games. Dark purple casts all over the room, save for the flashing neon every other moment. Jax seems as if he’s right in his element, and Jonah can’t wait to leave.
Don’t get him wrong, he’d offered to come. It’s usual for business. And Gus works here, so Asher and Tate and Fitz get in free. Jonah has always been a homebody, even more so over the last couple days, burying himself in his studies. Jax had been the one to force him out of the house, practically tugging on his arm to pull him off the couch.
“Look, there’s V!” Jax has to shout in Jonah’s ear to be heard over the loud bass of the speakers, shaking the walls each time the tempo speeds up, “She looks pissed.”
Yeah, she does. When they get closer, Jonah is able to see she’s talking to someone, almost spitting her words, eyes narrowed and mouth deep-set. It’s Melody, who’s rolling her eyes and shifting her weight onto one foot. Of course, she’d be the only one brave enough to go toe-to-toe with Veronica.
“--told you we’re not taking anymore of that shit. Some kid OD’d in the fucking bathroom last month,” Melody is saying, eyebrows creased, “No more laced shit, got it?”
“Maybe you should be more careful,” Veronica replies, flippant and annoyed, “Stop sellin’ to kids. Ever thought of that?”
“They’re most of our customers, in case you haven’t noticed,” Melody leans closer, “And we don’t sell to them unless they’re over fifteen.”
Veronica scoffs, “Yeah, real fuckin’ smart--”
“Hey, hey,” Jax breaks in, leaving Jonah’s side to try and simmer the flames between the two girls, “What did Rob say? No fightin’ before he got here.”
Veronica rolls her eyes, Melody backs off. With a flip of her blonde hair - never mind that she almost smacks Veronica in the face with it - she turns on her heels, “I’ll go let Mr. A know you’re here.” Her voice is very sing-songy, the exact opposite of before, sarcastic twist to her lips.
Veronica is left staring after her, Jonah can’t help but think Veronica’s eyes could burn a hole into someone’s head or scare Death himself if she tried hard enough. She could be really scary when she wanted to be.
She looks to Jonah and Jax next, eyebrows lifting faintly. “You talk to ‘em?”
“Nobody answered,” Jonah shrugs his shoulders, his voice might sound a little more down than usual. He adds, unsure, “What if something happened?”
Veronica makes a face at him, “Oh, Christ. Don’t do that. Don’t do that - worried thing. Trust me, I know better outta anybody, those idiots can take care of themselves.”
A couple of teenagers skate past them, full of laughter and shouting. It’s hard to make out any faces in the limited lighting, though. Veronica is always on edge, even more so without a certain someone by her side, clicking her teeth out of annoyance.
“Great. Just fuckin’ great. So I gotta deal with these assholes on my own, huh?”
“Don’t worry, you got us!” Jax pulls Jonah closer by the shoulders again, Jonah is able to get a whiff of light sweat and hairspray, “We’re behind you one-hundred-percent, V!”
“Shut up.”
“C’mon, V, don’t be so--ow!”
She swats at his arm before he can rope her into the one-armed hug, just as Jonah. Jonah only watches the two of them bicker for a second or two before William is joining them, in his usual skates and rainbow hoodie, gesturing all over the place once he’s close enough.
“Yo, ya’ll hear them tunes? Fuckin’ with my whole vibe out here, man,” William’s complaining, readjusting his glasses, “Weak, I’m tellin’ you. My cousin runs a side hustle, could’ve totally hooked Mr. A with some sick--”
“Hey,” Veronica isn’t in the mood, she still has a tight grip on Jax’s wrist and is twisting it little by little, “Pay attention. Focus. I don’t have time for--”
“I’m focused, V,” William breaks in, all smiles now, even with her crass attitude, “Don’t be mad, mami. Y’know I got your back when Jay ain’t here.”
Veronica lets go of Jax when he begins whining, curling himself backwards behind Jonah as some type of shield, “That’s what bothers me.”
Jonah feels like sighing again. Maybe he shouldn’t have come after all. And of course, William notices, leaning closer to him when Veronica attention is diverted. He picks up his eyebrows, purses his lips in that annoying and cute way of his, practically begging Jonah to spill with his expression alone.
Jonah almost smiles. Almost. “Just worried.”
“Don’t be, man,” William says, like it’s so easy, “I got you.” He nudges his elbow into Jonah’s side, encouraging in his own way.
Veronica is the first to move towards the concession area when something catches her eye, and they’re all forced to follow. Jonah’s steps are shuffling and slow, glancing towards the EXIT sign every few seconds, as if he expects something. Constance is running the concession stand tonight --- mainly the place to trade your money in for tickets or to get a cheap snack. Among other things.
Sabryna is there too, seated in the corner, flipping a magazine and feet propped up. She barley looks up when two teenagers approach the stand, patting their pockets and looking nervous. Constance notices them, blows a big fat bubble in their faces when they hand over a wad of cash.
Sucking it in thereafter, she squares them both with a sharp look, “How old’re you, kid?”
The first boy withers under her stare, “F-Fifteen.”
“Mhm,” she blows another bubble, pressing a few buttons on the register so it falls open, tossing the money inside and handing over his change. Once she’s finished, Constance slides across a baggy, “Careful with this, got it?”
The two teenagers nod, run off with their purchase. Constance can only shake her head, attention shifting when she notices Veronica out of the corner of her eye. Marginally, her expression becomes less hostile, weight leaning against the counter.
“Hey, Veronica,” She draws out her name, that only makes Veronica cross her arms over her chest, “Where’s your boy-toy?”
“Ha,” Veronica says, “How much’re you sellin’ that shit for?”
“Don’t worry, we’re not dubbing your prices,” Constance says, not at all offended, “Mr. A actually wanted to go higher.”
“You’re supposed to be talkin’ to him today, right?” Sabryna asks from the corner, looking up from her magazine briefly, “He’s in a bad mood.”
Constance nods, “Definitely.”
Veronica’s nose wrinkles up, “Fuck’s he gotta be upset for? Stickin’ my neck out far ‘nough for the guy.”
“Bet’cha you won’t say it to his face,” Sabryna sing-songs, snorting, “White girls all bark and no bite.”
“‘Ey, don’t be talkin’ about my girl V like that,” William says, leaning far over the counter to frown at Sabryna, which she only sticks her tongue out at, “Got bigger balls than yo’ mans.”
Sabryna flips him off, Constance looks tempted to laugh.
“I’m here, I’m here!” Cory burst in, wet curls from the rain, shaking it out and causing Sabryna to squeal and jump from her seat, ducking out through the way he came. Constance grimaces at him, but puts up no fuss, “Sorry, I’m late. All the talking literally kills me.”
“Break up with him, then,” Constances tells him, twirling her gum around and around her index finger, “You have the patience of a saint.”
“I hate being single,” Cory is whining while he bends down behind the counter, plucking up a crate and setting it atop. He doesn’t get a chance to rifle through it, however, his attention is on Jonah, even though he’s been quiet throughout, “Jonah! You look cute today.”
Jonah blinks, looks down at himself. He was rushed out of the house, so he’s not wearing anything particularly special. One of Vito’s hoodies, some old jeans and sneakers. But still, he says, “Thanks.”
Cory balances his chin into his hand, ignoring the look William is giving him, eyes set on Jonah, “Are you seeing anyone? Please say no.”
“The answer is always the same,” William grouses, “Don’t know why yo’ass keeps--”
“I’m seeing someone,” Jonah says, goodnaturedly, almost looks apologetic when Cory’s expression crumbles, always melodramatic, “Sorry.”
“Geez. You never make time for me.”
“I’m sorry.”
William is still going, “You not his type anyway--”
“Hey,” Constance says, “You’re scaring off my customers,” She’s pointing past them, where a threesome has stopped to linger by the stand, appearing anxious to step any closer, “Flirt somewhere else.”
“I’m not some errand girl,” Veronica looks annoyed again, her arms tight across her chest, jaw locked, “Mr. A wants to see me, needs to make time. I ain’t waitin’ around for anybody.”
“Melody will come get you when he’s ready,” Constance is quick to reassure after she finishes with her customers. Cory holds out the tip jar, the metallic sound of coins hitting the bottom of the glass, “Relax, Veronica.”
“Yeah, your vibe is totally killing the mood,” Cory purses his lips, “Wanna freebie?”
“Do I want the shit I just sold you?” Veronica sneers, “No.” With that, she turns and walks away, Jonah doesn’t hesitate to follow after her. William only stays to poke more fun at Cory, Jax eager to take up the freebie offer.
The music is able to drown out mostly everything, but Jonah can hear Veronica mumbling beneath her breath, shoulders lifted up to her ears defensively, even more tense than her usual self. She half-turns to Jonah, eyes scanning the crowd, “You sure nobody answered? Did it just - go to voicemail or somethin’?”
Jonah’s stomach is twisting, expression falling by only a small degree. He tries his best to keep his expression in check, “They’re usually back within a couple days, right?”
Veronica shrugs, “Depends. Rudy can be a real fuckin’ asshole when no one’s keepin’ him in check.”
“He’s . . . something.”
“Always talkin’.”
“It never stops.”
“For such a big guy, you’d think he’d know when to shut the fuck up. Nah, he’s like one of those . . . yappin’ dogs.”
Jonah smiles at her, withdrawn but still there, “It’s hard not to love him.”
“Yeah,” Veronica’s only quiet for a small moment, “He’s still an asshole. Don’t know why Vito puts up with him. ‘Specially after all the shit.”
Ah, yeah. Maybe Jonah’s heart can just be a bit too big sometimes, but he was never angry with Rudy, not for that. Understands his reaction in a way, because he’s had it happened to him before. The anger and confusion that comes with it. Sometimes, he worries for Vito even more than he lets on, with his family and friends and peers, people who could look at him differently just because Jonah remains beside him.
He shoots Veronica another smile, grabbing a hold of the rink’s railing and leaning back a little, “Rudy’s a lovable sort of guy.”
“Don’t let him hear you say that.”
Jonah didn’t say that. Neither did Veronica.
She’s the first to turn towards the sound of the voice, but arms slip around her waist, pulling her back and she’s quick to melt into the embrace. Even so, she puts forth her most grumpy voice when she says, “What took you so long, asshole? Gonna give me a fuckin’ heart attack.”
“Aw, Ron,” Jacob rests his chin on her shoulder, pressing his nose into the curve of her jaw, kissing there, “Didn’t know you cared so much.”
“Fuck you. Jonah called your place and you didn’t answer.”
“Just got back.”
Veronica tilts her head a bit, “Somethin’ happen?” To which Jacob whispers something in her ear, Jonah is unable to make out through the music and limited lights. Veronica nods though and rubs his wrist.
But if Jacob is here, that means ---
“Where’s Vito?” Jonah can’t help but ask, lighting up at just the thought, “Is he here? Did he come with you?”
Jacob seems amused with his excitement, tightening his arms around Veronica and rocking the two of them lightly. With one finger, he points over the way, past the rink and the crowd of teenagers strapping on their skates, “Yeah. He was lookin’ for you, back over there.”
Jonah is polite enough to excuse himself at least, but it comes out pretty rushed. He speed-walks in the direction Jacob said, shouldering his way past others, mumbling apologies when he’s given dirty looks. It doesn’t take long to find Vito in the crowd, though --- he’s taller than most, appears completely out of place. He spots Jonah coming and they meet halfway, Jonah throwing his arms around him once he’s close enough.
They talk at the same time.
“I’m sorry--”
“I was so worried--”
Vito stops, “You--”
“No, you first.”
He fumbles with his words for a second or two, before he leans down and kisses Jonah. And Jonah is quick to oblige, hands lifting to cradle his face, pulling him in deeper. Music seems to dull, people disappear, all he can focus on is Vito in moments like these. It feels like coming home, every time, welcomed by his scent and voice and touch.
“I’m sorry,” Vito says again when they part, pressing one more kiss to the corner of Jonah’s mouth, “Sorry, Jonah.”
“It’s okay, I’m just happy to see you,” he says, he threads fingers through Vito’s hair, it’s getting longer than usual and a bit damp from the rain, “You said you’d be back yesterday and I just--” Vito kisses him again, gentle as ever, “I missed you.”
“I thought you’d be mad at me.”
Jonah blinks, incredulous sort of smile on his lips, “Why would I be mad?”
“’Cause,” Vito backs up some, maybe only an inch or two between them, but Jonah keeps a tight grip on his shoulders, feeling them tense underneath his fingers, “The whole...Texas thing. When you went to get your award and those professors were bein’ so - that fuckin’ word you used---”
“Supercilious.”
“Yeah, bein’ fuckin’ assholes to you. The whole time. I didn’t mean--”
“That’s why you left with Manuel after we got back?” Jonah had wondered if things felt off, but hadn’t thought anything of the trip. He doesn’t blame Vito for being defensive and hostile around people who think they’re smarter and better than others, it was kind of hard to keep reminding even himself of that. “I thought you were mad at me. ‘Cause I made you come with--”
Vito’s eyes are wide now, disbelief visible on his face, “No. No, Jonah. Shit. Fuckin’ - sorry. I didn’t think--” This time, Jonah kisses him quiet, a soft press of his lips, reassuring in every way possible.
Unfortunately, Jax had went out of his way to come and find them, clearing his throat loudly to gain their attention. Jonah can only turn his head, flashing a quick smile, relieved, “Vito’s here.”
“I can see that,” Jax says, greeting Vito softly, which Vito ignores for whatever reason, “Veronica’s leaving with Jay.”
Jonah pulls away from his boyfriend, but Vito’s arms keep tight around his waist, unwilling to let him go fully, “Why? What happened?”
Jax shrugs one shoulder, appearing nervous, “Said they had somethin’ to take care of. Looked pretty important, I think.”
Vito snorts into Jonah’s ear, “Sure.”
Jonah occupies himself by playing with Vito’s fingers, noting the caked grease underneath the nails, can’t help but wonder just what he’d done while he was gone. But he won’t ask, he allows Vito to slowly open up whenever he prefers. It works better that way than to ask the endless amount of questions that pop into Jonah’s head at random. Tenderly, he kisses the knuckles of Vito’s hand, right on the scar there that stretches a few inches - perhaps from an accident or a fight.
“Rob should be here any minute,” Jax blabbers, he ducks his head whenever he meets Vito’s eye for too long - Jonah gives them both a confused glance, “He’s gonna talk to Mr. A for us.”
Jonah suggests, “We can just ask Tripp--”
“Don’t think so,” The blond shakes his head fast, stringy blond curls everywhere with each movement, “Rob and Tripp had a fight.”
“When?”
“Couple days ago. I don’t think they’re talkin’.”
“Great,” Vito huffs again, shifting one hand into his pocket and letting Jonah hold the other, “Just great.”
“Okay,” Jonah’s tone is subdued, thinking, “Okay, we’ll just wait then.”
And they do wait. Turns out Jax was right: Rob is in a horrible mood about something and it shows. His shoulders are hunched in, he doesn’t look like he’s slept, and he glares whenever one of them speak. William is the only one who can’t take a hint, he keeps talking, even when Rob disappears into Mr. A’s office without a word.
“What the fuck is up with him?” William complains, irritated, “Would rather deal wit’ V if he gonna be like that. Fuck ‘im.”
“He’s goin’ through some stuff,” In the short amount of time, Jax has managed to acquire a slurpee, sucking at the straw eagerly, “Go easy on him.”
“I’ll kick his ass.”
“William,” Jonah scolds, but it holds no scorn, William merely grins at him, “Don’t be a jerk.”
“You’re in a better mood,” William ignores him, using his chin to gesture towards Vito, who’s standing off to the side but never too far away from Jonah, “Boyfriend come t’save the day?”
Jonah glances over in his direction, and then back to William, lowering his voice. “I don’t like when he goes on ‘jobs’ with Rudy.”
William looks curious, interested.
“He’s . . . difficult. Vito complains about it all the time.”
“Maybe Vito should stop doin’ ‘jobs’ then.”
Jonah sets his jaw, one more look taken towards Vito. This time, Vito catches him staring and smiles a little. Even with the limited lighting, Jonah is able to make out the different browns and hazels in his eyes, “Maybe.”
But then he thinks of Felicity, her offer, her price. He’s not short on money or anything, but . . . the things he could learn. His mother had always told him he was a lot like his father, always grabbing for any information he could get, here or there. Compared them often to Hungry-Hungry Hippos, they’d stay up all night reading and stretching out maps and researching whatever suddenly interested the two of them.
Jonah wants to learn more, wants to be more. He’s good at what he does, wishes other people could see it. Not Veronica and Rob’s loose change, but something else.
He shakes his head to himself, he shouldn’t think like that. Ever. Vito had already told him his concerns, cast the idea aside like it was nothing, fiercely protective when he has no reason to be. He supposes he can see his side, given the recent circumstances and difficulties of this business, but Jonah himself never puts up a fuss when Vito has to suddenly leave, or when Veronica takes him out in the middle of the night for ‘something’, or when he’s gone for days on end without an update.
He worries, a lot. And he’s painstakingly lonely when he’s away. Which seems to be more often, ever since word of Dex being back in town flooded.
"What’re you guys doing here?” It’s a new voice, but familiar. Sydney stands to the side, Falen next to him, both looking thoroughly confused to see them all. “Can you not take a hint?”
William is already pushed off the wall before anyone can say anything, “Chill the fuck out, white boy. Just here to see your boss--”
Sydney looks pretty pissed, and menacing. Even in his light-up skates and sweater with a giant heart on the front, “Good. Maybe he can finally tell you the news.”
Jonah blinks, “News?”
“We’re not dealing with Veronica or Rob anymore,” Falen says, there’s a Blow-Pop in her hand that she uses to gesture towards the group, “After what happened.”
“What happened?”
Sydney shrugs, looks the least bit intimidated with Vito stepping closer and William glaring at him, “After he says whatever to Rob, you guys can screw off.”
“What’s that su--”
“Sorry,” Falen continues, sympathetic tilt to her eyebrows as she walks past them, “Not personal.”
“Totally personal,” Sydney follows behind her, ignoring William when he flips him off, “Broke Tripp’s heart. Not cool.”
“Wha--”
They’re gone after that, and Jonah is left staring after them. He looks to Jax for help, who’s been noticeably silent throughout, but he just seems uncomfortable and out of place.
“What was that about?”
William is still frowning, deep and unpleasant lines set to his face, “Yeah, fuck’s up with ‘em?”
“Maybe it’s worse than I thought,” Jax mumbles, barely heard over the music, “I don’t--”
Rob comes out of Mr. A’s office. He appears even worse than before, thin layer of sweat over his face and staring off into space, stumbling past them without saying anything, again. Jonah is only still for a few seconds before he’s taking Vito’s hand again, jogging lightly behind Rob to catch up. The others soon follow.
“Rob?” Jonah tries, “What happened?”
“Nothing,” Rob says over his shoulder, voice low, “We gotta go.”
“Why? What happened--”
“Gotta meet with somebody.”
“ . . . okay? Who?”
“Yeah, thought this was gonna be an hour thing, Rob--”
“What did Mr. A say?”
“Is everything alright?”
“Just--” Rob’s voice raises an octave. They’re outside now, the sky is pitchblack and it’s almost eerily quiet, besides the music from CRUISIN’. Rob’s face is pink, he’s biting at his bottom lip hard before he speaks, “We can’t come here anymore. Gonna do this last thing for him then . . . that’s it.”
Jonah’s forehead has crumbled, concern etched onto his expression, “What happened? Is this about Tripp?”
“No,” Rob laughs - it sounds frustrated and not at all humorous, like he’s laughing at himself and the ridiculous situation, “No. It’s - it’s me. Let’s just . . . go. Okay?”
Vito and Jonah exchange a look. But the others are falling right into step with Rob, loading into his car. Vito keeps a tight grip on Jonah’s hand, lightly pulling him back to him, eyeing Rob’s back, “We should go home.”
Jonah smiles some, just a slight tilt of his lips, “Yeah. After this, okay?”
Vito shakes his head, “Better if we don’t get involved.”
“It’s Rob, Vito. Plus . . . he looks really upset.”
“I--” Vito looks like he’s struggling to say what he really means, anxious and tense, “When I was gone, all I could think about was comin’ back to you. I wanna go home, together. Not have to worry ‘bout shit like this, yanno?”
Silent, Jonah just holds Vito’s hand in his, stroking. He can see the stress and exhaustion in his face, and he knows words are difficult things for him, spreading himself so thin when there’s nothing left to give. Jonah wishes he could say something to comfort him, give him a calmer mind and a softer place to relax.
But--
“You guys comin’?” Rob yells from his truck, peeking his head out only for a second, “C’mon, let’s go.”
Jonah visibly hesitates, one look taken to Vito’s face. It’s enough to make his boyfriend melt, just by a bit, blowing out of a breath like it takes everything in him to agree. But he does, and that’s what matters. Perhaps, Jonah’s a bit too thoughtful, considerate and caring when it comes to his friends, especially when they seem so at odds, typically the glue within the group and doing his very best keep everyone together and tempers somber.
There’s no more room in Rob’s ride, so Jonah goes with Vito, buckling in as soon as he’s inside, the familiar smell of cigarettes and pristine leather. There’s not much talking as the two of them tail Rob, Jonah fiddling with the radio until he finds something suitable, a soft and amicable song that Jonah somehow can’t remember the name of.
It’s a long drive, Vito readjusting the heat when Jonah shivers, one hand on his thigh and rubbing soothing circles into the knee. Which Vito seems to do a lot lately, like he needs to be sure that he’s there and solid. Jonah doesn’t mind, sometimes he needs a reminder too. The smell of seawater is strong when they part near a truck-crossing bridge, right next to the shipping ports a few miles up the road.
Even in the darkness, the shapes and shadows of William and Jax are easy to see as they get out of the car. Jonah looks to Vito, sheepish, “Sorry for making you come out so late.” His tone sounds suggestive, like he’s trying to say Vito is free to go if he’s too tired from his day. To which Vito picks up on easily, eyebrows pinching together and lips pressed tight.
“Not leavin’ you here, Jonah.”
“I know.”
“I don’t like--” He makes a vague gesture with his hand at the windshield, towards Rob’s truck, “I don’t trust them.”
“It’s Rob, Vito,” he repeats himself from earlier, beseeching, wishing he could see his friends how Jonah does, “Nothing’s going to happen.”
“It’s not just him,” Vito says, “The other one, too.”
Jonah finds himself befuddled, once again glancing up to see Jax is closer to Vito’s car, hands in pockets and rocking on his feet, constantly moving. He’s waiting for them, meets Jonah’s eyes briefly and flashes a smile. Jonah looks back to Vito, “I don’t get it.”
“Just keep an eye on him,” Vito’s voice is serious, locking eyes with Jonah quick, searching, “Alright? For me.”
Jonah nods before he can think about it, reaching across and taking Vito’s hand in his again. It seems to help, Vito’s shoulders kind of relax, he sighs and reaches over to switch off the car and pocket his keys. With one more shared glance, the two of them leave the car.
It’s bitterly cold from the rain earlier, and being right on the water isn’t helping. Jonah burrows deeper into his hoodie, leaning closer into Vito for some type of warmth. Which, Vito isn’t shy with sharing, he wraps his arms briefly around him, chin on the crown of Jonah’s head.
“You two are fuckin’ worse than V and Jay,” William complains once they’re in view, he looks pretty pissed, Jonah can only wonder what argument had transpired inside of the truck. He doesn’t keep his attention on them though, he turns halfway to look at Rob, “Hey, gonna say anythin’? Could use an update, over here freezin’ our asses off.”
“Do you always have to talk so much?” Rob snaps, it makes Jonah blink in surprise at his tone, “Had to listen to it the whole fucking ride.”
“Well, excuse me,” William says, “I came out for V, not you. Didn’t want to be riding for this shit no way.”
“Then follow Veronica,” Rob turns to face him, eyes narrowed tight, “See if I give a shit!” Gaze flickers over to Jonah fast, accusing, “You, too? You wanna go too?”
At first, Jonah doesn’t have much to say. The sudden shift in Rob is startling to see, he’s almost unrecognizable, cold in the eyes. Jonah’s pretty sure he’d seen it once before, awhile ago maybe. He holds up his hands in surrender, still tucked half-way behind Vito, “It’s cool, Rob. I’m not leaving.”
“Yeah, just chill out,” Jax pleads, nervously rocking again, shoulders up to his ears, “You’re freakin’ me out, man.”
“What the fuck is up with you?” William isn’t backing down, never really does, he spits his words, a diluted cloud hovers around his mouth each time he speaks, “Don’t take your shit out on us.”
“It’s--” Rob throws his arms out suddenly in Vito’s direction, gesturing to him like he’s an annoying fly that he can’t get rid of, “Why’re we workin’ with them?”
“What?” William and Jax share a confused glance with each other, “Fuck’re you talkin’ about?”
“Italians,” Rob supplies, “Since when do we work with them?”
Vito has kind of tensed from beside Jonah, jaw locks with an audible click. Jonah nudges his shoulder into his, just slightly.
“‘Cause of V,” William talks slow, like he’s explaining it all to a child, “She’s dating Jay--”
“So we’re all dating fucking Jay?” Rob blusters, “Things were just fine without all this shit--”
“V knows what she’s doin’--”
“Does she? Seems like she’s got into nothing but shit since--”
“Rob--”
“Let’s all just calm--”
“Don’t tell me to fucking calm down right now!”
“Okay, fuck this, I’m leavin’--”
Click.
They stop at the noise, somehow deafening in the midst of their argument. Maybe because they all know what a gun sounds like, even in a moment like this. Tentatively, Jonah turns his head, towards where it came from, heart stopping in his chest.
Jax is as still as ever, muzzle of the pistol pressed against the back of his head, bottom lip trembling and eyes big. There’s a stranger behind him, a man Jonah’s never seen before, but from one glance at Rob’s face, Jonah can tell that he knows him. William almost jumps out of his skin when he turns around, Rob hasn’t moved, Jonah wants to take Vito’s hand but he’s not really able to get his body to work, cold sweat breaking and nerves heightened.
“What the fuck,” William mutters, shuffling a step backward - he was the closest to Jax, after all, “What the fuck, what the fuck.”
“Nobody move!” The guy is about as tall as Vito, just more gangly, long legs and arms, eyes darting over their faces, one after the other. His gun presses harder to Jax’s head, nudging and insistent, urging him forward. Jax does just that, stumbling over his own two feet, but somehow managing to keep upright, “Nobody move...”
It’s quiet, but Jonah’s heart is racing a mile a minute, in his ears so loudly that he’s afraid Vito will be able to hear it. The glint of the gun in the limited street lights brings back memories, some that he’s tried painfully hard to forget over the years.
No one’s able to really get anything out, William’s mouth moves uselessly, opening and closing, searching for words, until Rob speaks up, “Rench,” he says, hands lifted from his sides and held out like he’s trying not to spook him, “what’re you doing?”
“You know him?” William balks, throwing a panicked look over at Rob.
“Rench,” Rob says again, ignoring William pointedly, “Put the gun d--”
“No, he doesn’t know me,” Rench, Jonah is guessing that’s his name, growls, aiming his gun wildly towards Rob, gesticulating with it in violent motions, causing William to curse, “You don’t know me! Step the fuck back!”
“From the garage,” Rob finally supplies, he’s not moving towards him anymore, “You work with Nico and Theo. We met once through--”
“I only know Tripp!” Rench keeps going, “Only him! I only deal with him!”
“And we understand that--”
“Shut up!”
“But I--”
“Rob,” William mumbles, and it only makes Rob glare at him again, “Shut the fuck up.”
“Mr. A sent us.”
“Don’t fucking lie to me!” Rench is yelling, flushed in the face, speaking through his teeth, “You think I don’t know? You think I don’t see what kinda shit you’re in? Huh?”
William’s brow crumbles in confusion, “What--”
“I said shut up!”
“Chill the fuck out!”
“Rench!”
Jonah’s eyes have flickered between the gun, Vito’s back, and Jax’s expression. The blond has stopped struggling, seemingly limp as Rench wraps an arm around his throat and tugs him backwards, gun pressed to his temple. Jax’s face is sort of blank, eyes far-off, Jonah’s worried that he’s gone into shock of some kind. That thought in mind, he reaches for Vito’s sleeve to tug at it. The movement catches Rench’s attention, who spins halfway and jerks the muzzle of the gun in their direction, specifically at Jonah.
“I told you not to fucking move!”
“Watch where you’re pointin’ that shit!” Vito’s voice is cutting, he moves halfway in front of Jonah, as if he’s fully prepared to take a bullet. Jonah, growing desperate, grabs at Vito’s hand, pulls in a futile effort to bring him closer - it doesn’t do much.
“Vito,” Jonah whispers, “Vito, don’t--”
“Hold on,” Rench blinks several times, slightly off-putting, leaning around Vito awkwardly with Jax still plastered to his chest, “Hold on, hold up. I remember you.”
Jonah finds himself blinking too, stopped short by his words. His fingers fall away from Vito, heart in his throat, “...me?”
“Yeah. Yeah, fucking you. I’ve seen you.”
“Fuck you,” Vito spits, “Put the fuckin’ gun do--”
Jonah is still staring, keeps glancing at Jax, “I don’t think so.”
“You were there. With V and my brother.”
“Your...”
Rench’s jaw clenches tight, a muscle in his cheek jumps, “My brother.”
“Alex,” Rob says, hands falling back to his sides, breathing out deeply like he’s come to some sudden realization the rest of them haven’t, “You’re - fuck, I forgot--”
“Rape-y Alex?” William’s voice is high with his confusion, “You’re fuckin’ Alex’s brother?”
That’s enough to drive Rench into action again, his face screws up, flushed and pinched, and in that moment - Jonah can see Alex through him. The sandy curls, the light freckles, the same noses even. Kind of makes sense, you don’t get into this business without family, really. He looks as if he doesn’t know whether to keep the gun trained on Jonah or smash it against the side of Jax’s head, he jumps between the two motions hastily and unsteadily. Jax barely reacts.
William is shooting glances from Jonah to Rob, as if he’s trying to communicate something he can’t get out properly, “Put the fucking gun down, man. Nobody’s seen Alex in months!”
“I saw him!” Rench thunders, his pistol jerks towards Jonah again, Vito hasn’t moved from his spot, and Jonah’s too stunned to try and tell him to move again. He tries to think over the amount of time since he’s last seen Alex, his mind and thoughts racing like his heart, “I saw him with you!” He says it directly to Jonah, eyes fierce and guarded, “With you!”
It all comes back to Jonah in a nauseating wave - he’d volunteered to go and see Alex with Veronica, free from class for the day, and it’d been a usual : the two of them going back and forth, Alex making an inappropriate joke that made Veronica’s nose wrinkle up. The garage had reeked of gasoline and oil, Nico had been dismissive with the three of them, Theo greeting Veronica like they were longtime friends, and Rench had been there. Even though Jonah hadn;t known him at the time, he’d been there and Alex had hugged him, pulled him to the side to tell him something. Rench, paranoid as ever, kept glancing over in Veronica and Jonah’s direction even as Alex tried to reassure him it was fine. That was the last time Jonah met with Alex, and he hadn’t even considered why. With a chilling realization, he looks towards Vito, lost.
Vito doesn’t meet his eyes.
There’s a bunch of yelling, William is pointing at Rench aggressively, left only to bargaining for Jax’s life now. Rob is telling William to shut up over and over again, growing in volume and intensity every time. Vito is the only one quiet, tense in front of Jonah, eyes trained solely on the pistol. And Rench is cursing at them all, spitting his words. He knows, he can read it in all of their faces.
Alex is gone.
“Shut up, William! Shut the fuck up for once, would you?” Rob yells, throwing his hands towards him in frustration, “Don’t you know how t--”
“This is your fuckin’ fault!” William growls back, gesticulating towards Jax frantically, “You’re gonna get us fuckin’ killed ‘cause of your shit!”
“My fault?”
“Yeah! You, Tripp! All of your--”
“I--” Jonah’s voice cuts through it all, Vito’s shoulders straighten when he steps from behind him, hands held in a placating manner towards Rench, like he’s a bird threatening to take flight. Vito makes a grab for Jonah’s arm to pull him back, but Jonah doesn’t let him, he keeps his eyes locked with Rench’s, “Can you let Jax go? Please.”
Jax, oddly enough, still hasn’t moved. He looks almost dead in Rench’s arms, and Jonah would’ve thought so if Jax wasn’t blinking every so often. Rench can feel his lack of reaction, he keeps squeezing his bicep tight against Jax’s throat, but it doesn’t really do anything.
“Where’s my brother?” Rench’s voice breaks towards the end, it’s raw from screaming, “What did you fucking do to him?”
William and Rob have gone quiet, Jonah can feel their stares digging into him. Vito is the hardest not to look at in this moment, especially as Jonah keeps shuffling steps closer, head of the gun aimed at his chest, trembling in Rench’s grasp.
“Can you just--” Jonah’s breath catches and comes out as a sudden rush, “Can you please let Jax go first. I’ll tell you whatever.” But he had nothing, lying tasted bitter on the tip of his tongue, “Just let Jax go.”
“Fuck you. I’m gonna blow his fucking brains out.”
“Jonah,” Vito’s voice is desperate, just less than a foot away, “What’re you--”
“Don’t do that,” Panic rises in Jonah’s throat like bile, “I don’t know what happened to A-Alex, but killing Jax isn’t going to--”
“Isn’t gonna what?” Rench doesn’t even need him to finish, spittle flies from his lips, “What! Say it! Isn’t gonna bring him back, right? Because you fucking killed him!”
Jonah wants to flinch under the bite of the words. But he finds himself staring at the tip of Rench’s gun, aimed at him, cocked. His eyes are twitching, he looks like he’s in pain, furious and demanding. After that, things kind of happen in a blur - and a lot happens. Vito grabs a hold of Jonah’s arm and yanks, William yells something, Rench clenches his finger around the trigger.
The gunshot that rings out doesn’t come from him though. It comes from Rob.
Jonah hates that he sees every second of it. In the movies, they make it seem as if it happens so fast, but it doesn’t. A cruel lie. Because Jonah sees the wide-eyed shock on Rench’s face, the bullet lodging into his cheek, the sheer impact enough to make him stumble back. He releases his hold on Jax, loses his footing, and falls to the ground, lifeless.
His own gun clatters a few feet away, near William’s feet. But he’s too shocked to really react. For a moment, they all just stand there, taking it in gradually. William is the first to make a noise, a strange wheezing sound in the back of his throat, hunching over like he may vomit, “What the fuck, what the fuck!” He keeps repeating.
Jonah stares. Rench’s face isn’t really a face anymore, his cheek has dissolved in on itself, bullet exited through the back of his skull. Blood spreads, an inky color in the dark night. Jax blinks several times, broken from a trance, breathing in shakily and scrambling away as fast as possible.
Attention shifts onto Rob - Rob, brown-eyed, nice smile, warm jacket Rob - a gun of his own in his left hand, still aimed as if he’s ready to fire again, the sound is still reverberating off the empty bridge and water below. Nobody knows where he even got it, he’s never had one before, he’s always vehemently been against it. Looking at him now, he’s unrecognizable.
Jonah loses the feeling in his legs. If it weren’t for Vito’s constricting grip on the crook his elbow, Jonah would’ve collapsed where he was. He curls into himself, gasping, Vito releases him out of worry, gathers his shoulders in his hands, rubbing soothing circles that Jonah barely feels. Together, the two of them sink onto the wet concrete.
Blood pounds in his ears, his veins. His heart is soaring in his chest, desperate to break through his ribcage. And despite it all, he can’t breathe. His lungs tighten, close like a door slamming shut. He can’t take his eyes off of Rench’s limp body, who had once been moving and alive and talking, he’s dead. Just a second ago, just a split decision.
Like Alex. Like his friend Reggie in the fifth grade. Like his dad.
He can’t breathe. He can’t.
Vito’s face comes in and out, his voice sounds far away, like Jonah’s submerged in water. A tremor takes to Jonah, his entire body won’t stop shaking, doubling over. He wants to throw up, reflexively almost, but he hadn’t eaten anything today out of worry for Vito’s sudden disappearance.
“Jonah, baby,” Vito’s hands are on his face, tilting it towards him. In that moment, all Jonah can see are his brown eyes, “Look at me. It’s okay, baby. Breathe. Breathe with me.” He enunciates the rise and fall of his chest, coaxing Jonah to join him. And Jonah tries his hardest, there’s pain in his abdomen, “Calm down, it’s okay.”
It takes a total of eight minutes to get Jonah to come down from it all. A few pumps of his inhaler - Jonah was surprised to see that Vito even carried it with him - Vito touching him as much as possible, speaking quietly between the two of them. Jonah’s eyesight is still blurry, but he can’t really tell if it’s from tears or lack of oxygen.
“I’ve got you,” Vito is saying, “Breathe.”
Through the soothing sound of Vito’s voice, there’s others. William, Jonah realizes vaguely, is yelling again. Pointedly at Rob, jabbing a finger at him, Jax wobbly and unstable between them, trying to keep them from going at each other’s throats. Jonah can only watch, wheezing, clutching his inhaler like a lifeline.
In his peripheral, past Vito’s shoulder, he can still see Rench’s body.
“--stop, guys!” Jax is breathless from the entire thing, “Stop! William - c’mon, just--”
“Are you fuckin’ stupid? You braindead? You tryin’ to get us all killed?” William is shouting at the top of his lungs, trying his best to get to Rob, “I’ll kill you my goddamn self--”
“We gotta move him,” Rob’s voice is kind of dead sounding, numb. Like Jonah, he’s staring in Rench’s direction, he can’t look away, “We can’t leave him here.”
Vito’s lips sneer up in the middle of a gentle whisper of Jonah’s name, he twists his head around to glare at Rob, “Can you shut the fuck up?”
Rob blinks, like he’s just now noticing Vito and Jonah were still thee. He steps towards them, ignoring William. “Jonah,” Rob says, “Help me move him.” He’s staring right at Jonah, but not really. Through him, almost. He’s pale, there’s a shake in his hands, this is what “in shock” looks like.
Vito stands before Jonah can even open his mouth and make sense of his friend’s words. He’s in Rob’s face before anyone can stop him, eyes deadly. The thing about Vito is, he doesn’t have to make threats like Rudy or Jacob to get his point across, everything about him says enough. Rob shuffles a step back, but doesn’t heed to the warning.
“We need to move him,” He says again, restless, “Someone could’ve heard--”
Vito sets his teeth, “Don’t touch him.”
“What--”
“Don’t touch him,” Vito’s voice is final, steel, “You’ve done enough.”
Jonah spaces out around that time. He keeps thinking of the moment the bullet hit Rench. He thinks of his dad, and his mom - what they’d both say if they could see him right now. To calm his breathing, he puts his head between his knees and counts until he gets to two - hundred. He can still hear them, arguing, going back and forth like this is something so trivial, something that happened every single day.
Maybe it did.
Jonah lifts his head a scant, swallowing, his eyes on Vito - who stood only a few inches away, refusing to leave Jonah’s side. But his attention was on Jax, Rob, and William, as they each grabbed a limb of Rench, hefting him from the ground with great difficulty. Repulsed, Jonah looks away, back to his boyfriend.
He hadn’t even flinched at the gunshot. He didn’t look disturbed in the slightest.
As if feeling his stare, Vito turns his head and gives Jonah a tight-lipped smile of reassurance. He crouches down to his side again, rubbing one hand at the top of his back gently, “Better?”
Jonah shakes his head“Can we go home?”
Vito helps Jonah from the ground, his expression is almost pained, and grows more severe when he meets eyes with Rob. By then, they’ve moved Rench’s body to Rob’s truck, throwing a spare tarp over it. William and Jax were going back and forth over where to dump it, but Jonah couldn’t hear much after that, because Vito helped him into the car and closed the door. The voices are muted, he can’t make out what they’re saying too much.
Vito says something when he walks back over to them, his stance is aggressive and agitated, he’s patting at his pockets like he wants to grab his carton of cigarettes. And then he shoves his hands into his jeans, glowering. Jax is tentative to speak up, William cutting him off at every time he opens his mouth, and Rob is carefully smoothing down the edges of the tarp, methodical almost, barely sparing Vito a glance as he speaks.
Rob talks. Vito does too. William looks annoyed. Jax is staring at the ground. Thanks to the headlights of Vito’s car, Jonah is able to make out each of their expressions - they look hollow. Whatever agreement they come to, Rob is dissatisfied with it, but he shuts up with one look from Vito.
Jonah feels sick again.
Vito gets into the car, settling into the driver seat familiarly. He finds his cigarettes finally, but doesn’t light one. He just looks at Jonah, who’s staring straight ahead, not really seeing anything, but still there, “Hey.”
Jonah turns his head to look at him.
“I’m gonna take care of this, alright?” He reaches over and takes Jonah’s hand, his fingers feel numb and he realizes he’s still grasping at the inhaler as tight as ever, “Nothing’s going to happen.”
Jonah wonders what that means. There’s always consequences when it comes to death, especially in this line of business. What about Veronica, what about Tripp? What about Mr. A? Theo, Nico - how could Jonah look them in the face anymore?
Rob’s truck starts up, tail - lights flickering.
Vito’s face is grim, voice tight, “Let’s go home.”
.
.
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By David de Beer
All You Need To Make A Movie
Movies and TV have a strange relationship with guns. On the one hand you regularly have some actor coming out and declaring him or herself anti-gun. This is to be expected from people who are mostly liberal democrats. On the other hand you have lots and lots of guns in movies. Guns add drama, conflict and even humour. Frankly, without guns in movies and TV, there would be far fewer movies and TV series made, and what would be available to watch would be pretty boring.
It is pretty strange how a lot of the actors that come out as anti-gun are the very ones who have made a career out of portraying characters who use guns. Let me correct that, they play characters who use guns BADLY. Yes, these very same characters who are supposed to be CIA assassins, FBI agents, cops and Special Forces regularly do things that even new gun owners know are unsafe and stupid, never mind unprofessional.
Now you may say “Dave, what the fuck does it matter? It’s fiction, DAVE! It’s just some light hearted fun!” Of course, nobody ever imitates what they see on TV, right? So you could imagine that a person with very little formal firearm training or experience could be doing things he’s seen on TV, and in that way the anti-gun actor’s reckless portrayal is probably contributing to accidents and injury in real life. Irony can be a bitch that way.
And stupid gun mistakes aren’t only made by anti-gun actors. Despite an actor’s proficiency with firearms and the advice of a skilled armourer or consultant, a director might instruct them to do something totally insane with a gun because it looks good on film. Yes, I do realise there are times when you have to break the basic safety rules to tell a story. How can you show someone threatening suicide without having them point it at themselves? I do realise sometimes there’s artistic merit to it, and that it’s usually done in a controlled, safe environment. But the portrayal is often skewed, and characters who are supposed to be extremely proficient with firearms make glaring, basic mistakes.
So what is Hollywood & Co. getting wrong about guns? I’m not talking about physics defying acts like bending bullets in Wanted, I can concede that that is fiction, and if people try to imitate that, they have bigger problems with reality than I can help them with. I’m talking basics here, so let’s look at the four basics rules of firearm safety:
All guns are always loaded. Treat them so.
Movies guns can range from real guns shooting blanks to rubber guns with no moving parts, so no real guns with real ammo are used in the movies, why should we care about this?
Well, firstly, there is the example being set. These guns represent real guns. Even sci-fi ray guns used on screen can show people how to handle and treat guns. Without a real life influence to guide them away from the stupidity, this is how they think guns should be used.
And secondly, who remembers John Erik Hexum? He’s a shining example of why all guns are always loaded, and where do you think he got the idea for the Russian roulette joke that ended his life? Probably in a movie or on TV.
Never let the muzzle cover anything you’re not willing to destroy.
The sweeping, oh dear lord the sweeping! A character moving with a gun is bad, more than one character moving in the same scene is so much worse. They sweep the muzzle across their own body; they sweep it across friends, enemies, children, animals, aliens and every sort of background actor. They even sweep the leg. (Yes, that’s a Karate Kid joke, deal with it)
Moving the muzzle of a gun, where metal exits it at high velocity, across anything that’s alive is extremely stupid. In any situation this is at the very least frowned upon, even if the gun is obviously unloaded (All guns are always loaded, remember?)
Next time you watch an action movie, keep an eye on the muzzle direction and you’ll spot it some serious sweeping going on:
Jay Baruchel sweeping Jack Black’s ass, if not the whole squad.
Jack Black about to return the favour in Tropic Thunder.
Some Suicide Squad sweeping at head level.
I know some will say “But in a conflict/contact/group situation sweeping someone is almost inevitable!”
Yea, it’s not. If you’ve ever seen properly trained professionals do their job, you’d know they go to great lengths not to sweep the muzzle of their gun across anyone’s body.
Here’s how it happens in real life:
Keep your finger off the trigger until you’re ready to shoot.
Obviously nobody has ever told Pinewood Studios to keep their booger hooks off their bang switches. I have always considered this to be the most fundamental rule. None of the four basic rules may be broken, but even if you break the other three, someone can only get hurt if you also break this rule.
I suppose if you look at the bright side, at least James’ gun is pointed in a safe direction. But pay attention, you will often see actors walking, talking and sweeping their friends with their fingers on the trigger.
Be sure of your target, and what’s behind it…
..and what’s behind that. Captain Deadpool knows this rule and uses it to good effect in his triple headshot.
In the movies you have good guys shooting at bad guys with crowds in the background, in busy marketplaces, in subway stations and while driving. No concern is shown for innocent bystanders, crouching down a little always seems to make sure they survive (Unless killing an innocent civilian is a plot point).
So there you have the very basic rules of firearm safety. Just safety, something most people who use guns learn early, and practice religiously. And yet our friends in the entertainment industry seem to feel shooters trained to a point where their ability is almost mystical, wouldn’t practice these basics.
Besides basic safety, there’s a lot more the movies get wrong.
Does your gun say “Leatherman” on the side? Because some movies seem to think guns are multi-tools. Splitting the rope above someone about to be hanged is the classic here, but you also have them shooting chains, shooting out lights, shooting levers to activate gears and close doors and using their guns to hit people with. Ricochets only happen when the story needs them to.
Then there’s accuracy. Not only can this vary wildly for the same character during the course of a movie, but it can also reach superhuman status in movies with no super humans in them. The same character that repeatedly missed an entire car elsewhere in the movie can suddenly shoot the gun out of someone’s hand or shoot them in the ear, arm or leg right from a quick draw.
Use of optics and sights is also pretty dubious. If you’ve seen any kind of Walking Dead meme recently, you probably know thatRick is especially bad at this. In this photo he’s doing even worse than usual.
And then you have all the people who shoot by feel, mostly because it’s a movie and we need to see their faces. Who cares about accuracy, either of the shooting or factual kind, when we’re paying Bruce Willis’ salary? Show the face!
Now, how about humanity and compassion? Surely writers, directors and actors can get that right? I mean, almost all of them are human after all. Wrong again!
How many of you have seen a real person directly after that person has successfully and justifiably defended their own life from an attacker that meant to physically harm them? I hope very few have seen this for themselves, because it’s not pretty, but it can also be a big eye opener. Experienced policemen who deal with violence on a daily basis and who have been in those situations before are very shaken up by an experience like this, civilians do much worse.
Think about that the next time the hero of the story breezes through a building full of people, killing one after the other, or executes the villain after finally defeating him. Do you know who reacts to violence and death that way? Psychopaths, that’s who.
The last point I’d like to make has less to do with guns directly, and more to do with the general culture of gun ownership. The core reason why most of the things above are mentioned is that they go so strongly against what most gun owners stand for. We are a lot more concerned with safety than people who do not own guns, we want to enjoy a day at the range without anyone getting hurt, and if the shit hits the fan big time we want to be able to protect those we love and not be the ones who cause them or anyone else harm. Safety is drilled into us, and rightly so, until it becomes second nature.
So to “advertise” gun ownership the way these characters do, as reckless, unsafe, and uncaring already portrays us in a bad light. For the person who brings that character to life and makes millions of Dollars in the process to then turn around and tell us we’re the threat is a double betrayal.
Movie and TV studios in general don’t care how they portray gun use, gun ownership or gun owners. They care about making money from things that look flashy and exciting. It seems unlikely that guns will disappear from popular culture anytime soon, and equally unlikely that Hollywood & Co. will suddenly decide to portray the use and handling of these guns in a realistic and responsible manner. So I guess it’s up to the real life gun owners to show the public that we do not behave like the irresponsible sociopaths Hollywood sells to them as heroes.
Anti-Gun Actors/Directors/Writers/Producers Who Have Used Guns On Screen
(Source : NRA/2A Check, verified on IMFDB)
Jessica Alba – Actor Krista Allen – Actor Richard Dean Anderson – Actor David Arquette – Actor Ed Asner – Actor Alec Baldwin – Actor Drew Barrymore – Actor Kevin Bacon – Actor Lauren Bacall – Actor* William Baldwin – Actor Candice Bergen – Actor Richard Belzer – Actor Beau Bridges – Actor Benjamin Bratt – Actor James Brolin – Actor Mel Brooks – Actor/Director Steve Buscemi – Actor George Clooney – Actor Kevin Costner – Actor Sean Connery – Actor Billy Crystal – Actor Matt Damon – Actor Danny DeVito – Actor Michael Douglas – Actor Richard Donner – Director David Duchovny – Actor Mia Farrow – Actor Carrie Fisher – Actor Sally Field – Actor Jane Fonda – Actor Jodie Foster – Actor Richard Gere – Actor Louis Gossett, Jr. – Actor Ethan Hawke – Actor Mark Harmon – Actor Dustin Hoffman – Actor Helen Hunt – Actor Diane Keaton – Actor Stephen King – Author Kevin Kline – Actor Lisa Kudrow – Actor John Leguizamo – Actor Spike Lee – Director Rob Lowe – Actor Mike Myers – Actor Jack Nicholson – Actor Leonard Nimoy – Actor Julia Ormond – Actor Sarah Jessica Parker – Actor Rhea Perlman – Actor Michelle Pfieffer – Actor Aidan Quinn – Actor Dennis Quaid – Actor Debbie Reynolds – Actor Paul Reiser – Actor Robert Redford – Actor/Director Julia Roberts – Actor Tim Robbins – Actor Tim Roth – Actor Renee Russo – Actor Meg Ryan – Actor Susan Sarandon – Actor Martin Sheen – Actor Mira Sorvino – Actor Sylvester Stallone – Actor Meryl Streep – Actor Patrick Stewart – Actor Sharon Stone – Actor Uma Thurman – Actor Steve Tisch – Producer Eli Wallach – Actor Harvey Weinstein – Producer Sigourney Weaver – Actor Catherine Zeta-Jones – Actor Jennifer Aniston – Actor Jason Bateman – Actor Kristen Bell – Actor Steve Carrell – Actor Courtney Cox – Actor Zooey Deschanel – Actor Cameron Diaz – Actor Will Ferrell – Actor Jennifer Garner – Actor Debra Messing – Actor Julianne Moore – Actor Gwyneth Paltrow – Actor Jeremy Renner – Actor Chris Rock – Actor Paul Rudd – Actor Mark Ruffalo – Actor Brooke Shields – Actor Reese Witherspoon – Actor Quentin Tarrantino – Writer/Director/Producer/Actor
Guns 'n Hollywood By David de Beer All You Need To Make A Movie Movies and TV have a strange relationship with guns.
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Andrew’s Jury Answers
Dan:
I would have probably put my trust level for you on a 7/10. I didn’t really see you as having a reason to betray me or stab me in the back because I wasn’t sure of how many other strong allegiances you had. I saw us as pretty tight and I was hoping we could have navigated merge together. One thing that did concern me was your idol. When Sam G had gone looking for it (during our alliance with her), she found that it had already been taken, and upon telling the alliance chat, you said that you meant to have told us you found it. This wasn’t the biggest read flag in the world, but it admittedly had my trust for you waver. However, I all in all think I could have trusted you pretty solidly.
David:
I think what happened with us socially was kind of a mutual indirect thing we did where we relied on Sam B for info. That’s not the best way to go about game, and I admit that. But it also got to a point where I really saw you with Jordan, and Jordan was not someone I wanted to heavily affiliate myself with. So I think it ended up being a case of ending up on seemingly opposite sides. It’s obviously nothing against you personally, although I do wish I made a bit more of an effort talking to you because I do like you.
Sara:
I feel like Steffen does not deserve to be here because I feel like he hid behind the bigger targets of others. But at the same time, I don’t feel like he did it on purpose. I feel like Steffen played a more cowardly game, and it showed through his lying. He told me when he voted me at final 4 that it was through self preservation. However, the only way Steffen’s name came up was through if I would rather go up against him over Drew in a tie breaker. There was too much unnecessary lying and honestly the only way I saw Steffen deservingly getting here was through a goat’s game, which is not very commendable anyway.
I feel like Jordan does not deserve to be here because he was very reliant on idols and advantages. And I feel like through those advantages, it either intimidated people against making a move on him or forced people into working with him as to not be taken out by one of his many items. I had a conversation with Sam B later in the game where she said that these games weren’t just about who can find the most items and win the most immunities. There has to be strategy. I feel like, while he is a strategic player, Jordan relied too heavily on the fact that he had so many advantages. He didn’t give himself enough room to genuinely strategize through each and every vote, and in my personal opinion was just seeing how he could use his items and see who he could take out with them.
Drew:
I believe that the disadvantages I had to overcome were harder than Steffen’s. I feel like Steffen had more consistent numbers while I was left to float a bit more. He also didn’t end up being as much of a target for Jordan than I had thought, seeing as he made himself a goat relatively quickly come the merge and thus made Sam B the one to get taken out over him had people tried to take out the duo. I just don’t think he was at any point as close to the bottom as I was.
I feel like when I woke up and really thought that I could truly attempt getting to the end was after I used my idol to vote out Stevie. I initially felt hopeless, but then realized that you don’t lie down and quit. It really took to merge to see that I could lay a path to get to the end, but I knew that there would always be a way to get to the next tribal. And that was my longterm plan. Get to the next tribal. See the next day. Don’t ruin your game, but do what you have to do to survive.
To get to the end, I at least knew I couldn’t go completely AWOL or off the handle. I had to keep a level head. Of course I wanted to blindside a bunch of people and fuck up some shit, but at the same time I had to let the bigger personalities like Jordan and Steffen draw the drama in. I had to make my moves tactfully as to not draw attention to myself as an immediate threat, and I had to do what I could to make sure I wasn’t the one going home.
Had myself or Steffen won immunity, I hope you believe me when I say I would have followed through with voting out Jordan. At that point, it was about loyalties and I wanted to see you, Steffen, and I to the end. We had all been through a lot by the end of the game and that’s just the way I wanted to see it. Obviously, immunity went differently than we expected and I had to adapt to the situation at hand. But yes, I would have followed through in voting out Jordan.
I think the reactive gameplay should be enough to gain me the win. Because it wasn’t all just on a whim. Having a longterm plan in this game scared me because I saw that as something that could have been a detriment to me in this particular game. I didn’t know who for sure was or was not with me, I didn’t know what idols or advantages would be played when, and I had to take opportunity when the opportunities came (deciding between voting out David or Sam B, for example). I felt that if I looked too far ahead, I would trip on what was in front of me. So I did what I felt would be best for me and I think it was effective gameplay for me to get to the end.
Jay:
I don’t truly know if this is any compensation for not talking to you as much as Steffen or Jordan, but I can say I didn’t lie to you. I didn’t want to lie to you about the vote because I felt it was unnecessary. And honestly, I was worried how close you were to some people that I was against. I was worried I would slip up with information, or get close to people that I would quickly have to vote out, etc. It was honestly pretty dumb on my part but I wanted to be cautious. And we did talk, I did enjoy our conversations. You were one of the only people I could really talk about Pokemon with so I kinda really enjoyed that tbh. And I do hope we can talk more outside of this game, and even get into a season or seasons where we can link up again. I’m sorry I didn’t talk to you as much as the others, and I dunno if that’s enough to garner a jury vote from you, but I didn’t mean anything personal by it. And I hope we get to see each other in another game very soon.
Kevin:
I feel like Jordan does not deserve to win because he hid behind his idols and advantages too much. He had expendable allies because of the fact that he had so many of these, and I think he didn’t need to work as hard. I also believe that from a social game standpoint, Jordan let more than a few people go to jury who really weren’t happy with him. I think that was a detriment to his game and it could have lost him jury votes.
I feel like Steffen does not deserve to win because I don’t think he played a very commendable game. He lied far more and lied far more unnecessarily to people. I think he hid behind the stronger players and didn’t do much for himself, and I think with the lies he said by the end of the game, he just wasn’t looked fondly upon. I think him trying to do what he could to survive or what he THOUGHT he had to do to survive ended up really pissing some people off, so I think that really hurt him in getting his jury votes.
Ash:
Honestly someone I think I missed a social connection with was you. I wish I had gotten to talk to you before I had left for exile because you and Kevin ended up going at the double tribal and I never really got to secure that bond. I didn’t expect you to go, and I was hoping that we would have been able to talk more had you not been voted out at the time you did. But unfortunately, me being gone during the double tribal said otherwise.
Sam B:
I dunno if you wanted a response but I’ll send a quick one anyway just to say my piece. I never expected Jordan to play an idol on me. I had lied to him about 3 tribals before the one where you went and I saw you as biggest threat to win. Not Sara. Sure, Sara went next, but only because neither her or Jordan won immunity and it felt like that was the time to strike. It just felt smarter to take you out right before Sara. I didn’t want to get to the end of this game with Jordan, however I feel like you had a better chance at beating him, so this is a better chance for me to win. And I’m sorry. I came here to win this game. I know you won’t believe this, but I was never scared of Jordan. Otherwise I wouldn’t be trying to beat him in finals.
Sam G:
I believe I was an all star because of not only the strategic play I had but also the journey I took here as well. I was supposed to be voted out early in this game. I should have gone, but I got to play an idol. And I found myself in this game because playing with 32 people was intimidating. And I thought there was a very slim chance of me being here. I think we all did. But I saw that I could really play this game. And I took that momentum and ran with it. And tried my hardest. Because whether you believe it or not, this was one of the hardest games I’ve ever played. The level of paranoia and backstabbing and looming of dangerous advantages made this game absolutely HORRIFYING to play. And I’m sitting here somehow. Not because of advantages. Not because I hid behind allies. Because I worked with what I had and I worked with the momentum I was given. If I saw a way to get through a vote, then I took it. A game has never been more about survival for me than this one. It wasn’t the normal “look ahead” game I would normally play. It was so much more. This game is called Survivor because naturally, we are surviving. And I had to survive a challenge by challenge and tribal by tribal basis while I think the other two people next to me were only focused on the circumstances they wanted to get to the end with. And I think it bit them. I think it bit them in the fact that plans fell through and maybe this isn’t the optimal situation or vision in their head that they wanted. But this is what I wanted! I wanted to get to the end. I didn’t know who it would be with or how it would be done because there was a journey that had to be taken. And I fought through every part of the journey that swing at me. I used what I had and what information I could get and what social connections that I could magnify at the time and even hold a damn water bottle over my head for 2 and a half hours at one point to get me to the next round. And the next. And the next. Until I got here. I played to get to final tribal and say that I’m proud of the game that I played. And I think that’s all star worthy.
Dan - Gryffindor because I think you hold a lot of pride and confidence in yourself and what you do in a very endearing way.
Mitch - Hufflepuff because you are just too pure for a community that is constantly surrounded in drama, and you’re just a very loving person amidst the chaos.
Jay - Gryffindor because I think you stand up for what you believe and aren’t afraid to hold yourself in a way that you don’t care about what others think. You just be yourself and take what the world throws.
Kevin - Slytherin because you know what you want and you aren’t afraid to show it. I know you’re an ambitious person and you fight for your success.
Ash - Gryffindor because I think you’re very passionate about these games. You really want to do your best to get far and I think that’s very commendable
Gage - Ravenclaw because I always feel like you’re thinking. Not in a conniving way where you’re looking to get ahead, but in a way that you’re always observing and soaking up information.
Sam G - Gryffindor because you’re a person who I think exudes a power that holds pride in what you do. I know you love what you do, and you always seem super confident in your abilities in a way that other people can’t.
David - Hufflepuff because I’ve always seen you as a sweetheart around this community. You’re someone who I’ve never had a negative encounter with or seen involved in a negative encounter with someone, and I think that’s important not only for this community but for life in general.
Sam B - Hufflepuff because you’re honestly one of the sweetest people here. I know you have your dark (super sexual) side but that doesn’t save from the fact that you’re incredibly nice and genuine, and you genuinely care and love for your friends.
Sara - Ravenclaw because I think you’re a bit of a more drawn back person like me who just sits back and observes. Even just the talk we had about Reddit scary stories showed some weird similarity I had to me where I think we’re both just people who enjoy our reading/alone time.
Drew - Ravenclaw. You’re a librarian damn it! Okay not to stereotype, but you always just seem like an intellectual who really looks at everything from all angles and really takes information around them. I think you love to learn and see the information around you and just take it all in.
Mitch:
Honestly voting you out was complete shit. You’re such a kind hearted person who I feel just doesn’t deserve the negativities that these games can throw at these people, and this goes all the way back to Hawaii. But in all honesty, it was idol paranoia (and you did end up having an idol). Not that that was a complete excuse to lie to you about the vote, but it was honestly a huge worry that you had an idol you would play at a later time. And I didn’t know if that idol play would fall into my agenda. Whether it was going to or not, point being is that I felt like that was what was best for me at the time, and I’m sorry that that all happened to you. People were just worried about threats. I was worried about threats. And again, I am very sorry for what I did to you.
Gage:
I would vote for Jordan over Steffen. I think that Jordan played a more respectable game than Steffen, who relied far too much on his unnecessary lies and sneaking by to win. I think that Jordan has at least owned his game and is willing to wear it on his sleeve, while I feel like Steffen is not doing that as much. I just think that Jordan played harder than Steffen and it worked better for him, and I can’t see myself awarding Steffen this game.
I think you will end up voting Jordan just based on your connections to him. I want to say myself because I think you would maybe respect me being a bit more under the radar than Jordan, but I think you’re going to want to stick to voting someone who you had more loyalty to over. I can’t say for sure, but my best guess would have to be Jordan because I see you as someone who could value the loyalty and social aspects more.
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Final Battle preview
Rush vs. PCO - Rush is defending the ROH world title. As far as I can remember, Rush is undefeated in Ring of Honor. The only singles loss in ROH that I could find for PCO was his last shot at the world title. It is probably worth noting that each man’s contract is expiring at the end of the year, and there has been little word on whether either of them plans to re-sign.
Rush is probably the hottest star in wrestling that isn’t signed to WWE, AEW, or New Japan. You see his entrance and you can tell this guy is a big ass deal, far beyond anything else going on in ROH. I’m still surprised they managed to sign him. Pierre Carl Ouellet, meanwhile, is a minor name from the 1990s enjoying a cult resurgence as a monster brawler with a Frankenstein gimmick. At 51, PCO isn’t a hot prospect bound for the big leagues, but he’s a can’t-miss draw at the super-indy level. So this is arguably the biggest match ROH could deliver in 2019. It reminds me of a big match from ROH’s early days, where a WWE fan wouldn’t get the appeal but hardcore indy fans saw it as a dream match.
Even someone like me, who only half pays attention to ROH, can see the appeal of this match. Rush’s matches are fast and intense, and he quickly destroys guys with big explosive moves. PCO’s matches are about how he feels no pain and keeps getting back up to do increasingly insane spots. This is, fundamentally, the irresistible force meeting the immovable object. I can’t believe we’re getting such a match from “The guy who taught Tetsuya Naito how to be cool” versus “The Mountie’s tag team partner,” but such is wrestling in 2019.
Ring of Honor has really fallen off a cliff this year. The core of their star power left to found AEW, and their alliance with New Japan seems to be at its lowest ebb. The whole controversy of CMLL firing Rush and Dragon Lee, who have become key figures here, would also seem to be a bad sign for the ROH/CMLL alliance as well. So it’s been a rebuilding year for the company, and frankly I haven’t been impressed with what they’ve rebuilt. Except for this one match. This is very symbolic of their one shot to turn things around for 2020. I hope they don’t blow it; I expect that they will somehow.
My gut tells me Rush is moving on to greener pastures, whereas PCO probably can’t do much better than being a big fish in a small pond. Wild as it sounds, I think we might get a title change tonight.
Jay Briscoe & Mark Briscoe vs. Jay Lethal & Jonathan Gresham - This is for the Briscoes’ ROH tag team title. The biggest question mark here is that Lethal broke his arm back in October, and although he’s vowed to make it to this match it remains to be seen if he’ll be healed enough to really go.
I haven’t followed the story closely, but Lethal and Gresham were friends until Gresham decided that he needed to cheat to get ahead, and then they fought over that, and then they reconciled, and now they’re both whacking the Briscoes with chairs. I’m still not sure if the Briscoes ever officially turned babyface this year. So to me this is a pretty standard 2019 ROH story, where there are no heroes and everyone’s an asshole.
In theory this should be a down-and-dirty brawl between two teams that would prefer to fight than wrestle. But since it’s not officially billed as a street fight or anything, what we’ll probably end up with is a basic wrestling match where they just sneak a few weapon shots and low blows behind the ref’s back. That’s fine to build to a bigger, wilder spotfest later, but not so much to be a featured tag match on Final Battle. I guess Lethal and Gresham will win the belts with shenanigans to set up a rematch.
Shane Taylor vs. Dragon Lee Ryu Lee - Taylor is defending the ROH television title. Dragon Lee had been a big name in CMLL, and a frequent representative of the company in New Japan, and of late he’s been getting involved in ROH through his brother Rush. But since CMLL suddenly fired him, and they own the rights to the name, he’s now adopted the name “Ryu Lee,” using the Japanese word for “dragon” to honor his new deal with New Japan. Lee’s preference among those three companies is to work for New Japan, so now that he’s got that contract I am very curious whether he remains a ROH regular. I suspect this match will be the first clue. Taylor has been a dominant champion but Lee has friends in high places, so the one they want to push should be very telling. I’m kinda thinking Taylor retains.
Matt Taven vs. Vincent - Vincent used to be Vinny Marseglia, a member of The Kingdom stable with Taven and TK O’Ryan. I’m not sure what happened to O’Ryan after Taven lost the ROH world title, but Vincent turned on Taven and has gone all in on the gimmick of being a horror movie slasher. This means Taven is doing the “asshole champion you come to respect drops the title and then improbably turns babyface” thing. I’m not sure I buy that, but I guess ROH kinda has to make the best of what they have to work with. All I know is when I see Taven plugging his DVD I’m just reminded of when TNA put out that Jeff Jarrett retrospective as if he was Triple H or something. Anyway, I guess the King of Kings King of the Mountain King of the Kingdom needs to win this match.
Mark Haskins vs. Bully Ray - This is being billed as a street fight, so the match cannot end by count-out or disqualification. Bully Ray has been playing the bitter veteran bullying young guys for the better part of two years now. He was mainly feuding with Flip Gordon, but even after they blew that off he just kept doing it, and when Flip turned heel they just sort of switched to Haskins. They’ve even got Bully going after Mark’s wife like he did with Flip’s wife. It’s the exact same fucking thing. Which, I suppose, means Bully has to win this match to generate more heat for more rematches. I would literally rather be escorted into a room where Bully bitches me out for being a bad fan than watch this crap one more time.
Marty Scurll & Flip Gordon vs. Bandido & Flamita - All right, so months ago Juice Robinson came to ROH to found a stable called Lifeblood, with the goal of elevating some new stars to replenish the roster after the AEW exodus. Well, in an apt metaphor for ROH’s fortunes in 2019, Lifeblood quickly fell apart with half the team disappearing from ROH, leaving Bandido, Mark Haskins, and Tracy Williams. They tried to recruit various guys to fill the void, but nobody has stepped up and Flip Gordon even turned heel on them to join Scurll’s Villain Enterprises. Then Flip blew out his elbow during the heel turn. Anyway, Haskins has his hands full with Bully Ray, and I don’t even know where Williams is, so now Bandido is starting a new tag team with Flamita and this is the closest we get to blowing off the Lifeblood/Villain Enterprises feud.
Scurll’s contract with ROH actually ended a couple of weeks ago, but he has a handshake deal to work this show and the one on December 15. The big questions now are which company he’ll sign with and how ROH will write him out of the company. But presumably those questions won’t be answered until the 15th, so even at this late date we’re still in a holding pattern, and I’m guessing they’ll keep acting like everything is normal.
Logic would suggest Scurll should do the job so ROH can put over Flamita and Bandido. Then again, it wouldn’t shock me to learn that Bandido is getting ready to leave, so you never know.
Jeff Cobb vs. Dan Maff - This is basically a battle of two big mean guys. Cobb is just back from a month-long tour with New Japan. Maff is a recent acquisition, and notably filled in for Brody King to help Marty Scurll and PCO defend the ROH trios title. That kinda makes me wonder if Maff could end up playing a role in the final fate of Villain Enterprises, but that probably won’t affect this match.
Cobb is--say it with me this time, folks--expected to have his contract come up soon, and may or may not be getting ready to leave. If he’s staying, he should probably win this match to build him up for whoever is champion going forward. If he’s leaving...well, Maff seems to be a budget version of Cobb, so it would make sense to have him be the guy to send Cobb packing. We’ll just have to see what happens.
Angelina Love vs. Maria Manic - Love won the women’s title at the last ROH show I watched, but it turns out she lost it back to Kelly Klein shortly thereafter. Then Klein suffered a concussion, which turned into a pretty big story abut ROH not taking care of her and letting her contract expire, and I don’t know what’s going on with the women’s title anymore. I occasionally wonder if they’ll even continue to have a women’s division after this show. Manic is clearly their big new project, but apparently they almost let her go to NXT before locking her into a contract.
The story of the match is that Manic is a big mean monster and Love is terrified of her. Usually in this kind of story the heel gets to demonstrate that they can come up with some clever way to outwit the monster, and the match is about whether that works or not. But as far as I know they haven’t given Love anything--she seems to just be a lamb led to the slaughter. It’s possible Love is preparing to leave and this is the blowoff for her character. If so, I’m not sure who will be left to fight Manic. There’s only like five other active women in the official roster, and I haven’t seen any of them wrestle in months.
Dalton Castle & Joe Hendry vs. Silas Young & Josh Woods - This is scheduled for the pre-show. Young and Woods are apparently calling themselves “2G1T” (“Two Guys, One Tag”), which is possibly the most alarming sign of the creative energy left in this company. I think Castle and Hendry have been passive-aggressively feuding and teaming for months and I’ve kinda given up trying to figure out where this is headed. I guess Castle and Hendry win.
Rhett Titus vs. Kenny King - Another match set for the pre-show. Titus and King were a tag team ages ago, but now King is a wannabe top heel and Titus is a prelim guy. Well, I guess they’re both in the pre-show so technically they’re both prelim guys. I assume the point is to give King a win, but if this guy was ever going to be something in ROH, he would already be well beyond the point that beating Titus would mean anything.
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