#like i see so much of my own behavior in madeline and the other part of her
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i remember when it first released i tried to do the entire farewell dlc in one sitting which was a huge fucking mistake lol
i was getting so frustrated, i kept wondering when it would end, it felt like it was just going on and on with impossible screen after impossible screen, and when i got to what i now know is the final screen of the chapter i lost patience entirely and turned on assist mode and skipped to the end. this was before i moved out of my parents’ place so my dad actually knocked on my room’s door and told me to chill out lmao
it’s sort of a shame, cuz if you pace yourself this chapter is phenomenal. it basically takes everything celeste has to offer to its absolute limit (well not really, i know mods make things even harder, but still), and it’s genuinely so well designed. but it’s a HORRIBLE idea to try and do it all at once. the game has a few places that mark good stopping points and i really wish i would’ve actually done that my first time through.
#celeste#celeste farewell#also yes i’ve been replaying this whole game again#i hadn’t actually watched all the cutscenes since the first time i played it when i was 15 or 16 and genuinely the story is so touching#i appreciate it so much better now that i have a better grasp on my own mental health problems#like i see so much of my own behavior in madeline and the other part of her#and the way it ties into the brutal gameplay? masterful. chefs kiss#i love this game so much even though it’s probably about the toughest i can really tolerate in a game without tearing my hair out
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Hello, I would like to know your opinion in the scene of Snakes 5x12 Sara tells him that he is more than a boss and that is why she left S.F... her motives are clear, but what about him? . In the 4x12 final speach, Grissom makes it clear that he can't risk everything so why does he want her in LV? It was clear to her that they couldn't go beyond being coworkers and that hurt both of them (promotion with Nick, Hank3x02...) Harming her not only professionally too personally.
Dear @floryugum,
thank you for your question.
Let's just begin by saying that in the inception of Sara Sidle’s character that Jorja Fox received when she auditioned was mentioned that Sara had a love interest for Grissom. This fact has to be complemented with William Petersen saying in an interview that “(w)hatever happened then it’s still a secret between Sara and Grissom”.
I point out that, as usual, I have an "unusual" opinion about this, in the sense that I think that before Sara arrived in Las Vegas nothing too "compromising" happened between her and Grissom. I think there was only a sincere and deep friendship, made more fertile by a mutual physical and intellectual attraction (this does not detract from the fact that they had already fallen in love).
Now, it happens sometimes that the bond of friendship turns out to be firmer and more sincere than that in a romantically united couple (especially when one element or both of the couple have already realized they are in love). In my opinion, it was this kind of relationship that set everything in motion.
Superficially, Grissom's trust in Sara was the reason that led him to ask her to join him in Las Vegas and entrust her with a very delicate task in the situation the lab was in at the time: after Holly Gribbs' death, to investigate what failings there had been on Warrick's part. This task is generally given institutionally to the Internal Affairs section, but Grissom decides not to involve them. So much of his personality, and even some of his refractory behavior toward Sara, can be inferred from this early behavior as the new supervisor of the forensic night shift team.
For as much as he is (or appears to be) always adherent to the rules, he feels that they can be broken in certain instances. This is especially the case when people close to him are involved/in danger: we see it with Warrick in 1x02, by his calling Sara instead of involving Internal Affairs and evidenced also by his decision not to fire him; we see it in 5x24, when during Nick's kidnapping he decides to take the ransom money to the kidnapper; we see it with Catherine in 4x15, when he sets aside the fact that she used the lab to establish a family connection of her own; finally, we see it in a more striking way in 5x13, when Sara risks being fired. The same is true in 7.23 when Grissom spends the night at Lady Heather's place. That he is able to do this only because of himself or because of the support he has among judges or other elements of the system is made more clear in episode 8x12, when District Attorney Madeline Klein tells him "If it weren't for me, you'd have no team".
Whatever the case, no matter how much Grissom denies it (to people around him and to himself), the feelings binding him to people play an important role in his life. He doesn’t know to what extent, though. Or perhaps he tries not to think about it.
And here we come to the point. Once the issue of Warrick has been solved, it is to be assumed that Grissom asks Sara to stay and continue working with Las Vegas’ team. He asked her to come to work in Las Vegas spurred by his "survival instinct": finding himself lost in a time of trouble, he clings to what he considers firm and reliable (Sara). He doesn't ask himself why he considers her "something firm and reliable," he just knows that she is. The relationship grown between them since they met has shown him that it is so. Thus, he suddenly finds this person whom he esteems and trusts (and whom, of course, he also finds attractive) moving closely around him everyday. This creates a short circuit in his mind, as Sara's continual closeness makes it increasingly clear where the roots of his trust in her go for nourishment - his heart and the love that unexpectedly sprouted the first time he met her at the Academy Conference. Since then, in a shadowy area of his mind, this feeling has continued to grow. When in episode 3x22 Sara asks him out to dinner, in fact, he says, "I don't know what to do about this": he knows very well that there is something between them, and he also knows what it is - love. In the shadows, that “something that has sprouted” time before has become a rose plant, full of beautiful fragrant flowers, but also many thorns.
The thorns protecting the beautiful flowers, the problems stopping him in the face of this dilemma, are various, but I think they could be roughly summarized in two points, which I would call: the sluice against the flood and the sheepdog instinct.
Regarding the first point, the sluice against the flood, one must consider the age difference. However much it may not be felt in certain circumstances, Sara still remains younger than him by almost twenty years. She is much younger than he is. Indeed, we see that Grissom has no problem approaching women closer to his generation - the lab technician in 1x01, Terri Miller, Lady Heather. The fact of youth is immediately brought to surface in Grissom's monologue that you mention, at the end of episode 4x12, in which he refers to "somebody young and beautiful." Grissom's tendency to want to keep everything under control, everything pigeonholed, leads him to realize the variables that come into play in establishing a relationship with someone younger, of which the main one is: what if I give in to this feeling and then she changes her mind? The same concept is presented by the culprit's words at the end of episode 9x02: "She promised me everything...and then she took it all away."
All these years Grissom has protected himself from this eventuality, keeping himself at a distance from everything and everyone. What could happen, then, if he opened the floodgates to the course of the deepest of feelings, letting it invade him, and then, instead of a nice placid stream full of little fish, the stream turned out to be a raging torrent? At work he sees it every day how destructive human passions can be. Also because of this, in episode 3x14 he says he doesn’t trust people. People are very moody, you know? Science is not. So, what would become of him if his relationship with Sara did not go as planned and she, once she knew all his weaknesses, left him? He would certainly come out of it with broken bones. As Grissom again says in the monologue at the end of 4x12, "and she showed you a wonderful life, didn't she? But then she took it away and gave it to somebody else."
By the phrase "we have to risk everything we've worked for in order to have her" is meant not just a career, but one's whole person. It refers to the work that each of us does on ourselves to improve, to mitigate or come to terms with our weaknesses, to be able to cultivate our passions, continuing to be excited by them. The work each of us do in order to become a stable person, able to stand against the winds of life. Establishing a romantic relationship with Sara, for Grissom, means laying all this bare with her. And this is risky.
So, on the one hand there is this sense of self-protection, but on the other hand the mirror of the same feeling, the sheepdog instinct, can also be brought into play: he cares about Sara, wants to protect her, and does not want to hurt her. Approaching more mature women also means, in a sense, establishing relationships where the feelings involved may be less deep. Grissom knows that with Sara, instead, there is an important feeling at stake (on both sides), so why risk giving her hopes that he may not be able to honor? In 13x15 Sara informs DB and Nick of the end of her marriage to Grissom and when asked by Nick what the reasons for the separation are, she replies, "Ask him--I'm sure he had my best interests in mind." In this regard, for the sake of clarity, let me quote a passage from the "rollercoaster fic" (I'm almost done, I'm checking the third-to-last chapter) in which I deal with this stage of their relationship:
In the first phase of their romantic relationship, Grissom had touched Sara's heart, seeing it clearly, and deduced that she was a resource that had to be protected at all costs. Finding himself alone again, therefore, he decided to close his eyes and act as if he had not attained any knowledge up to that point. Survival instinct acted for him, throwing blind fists at the air and pushing him to leave the land, to drown himself in the immensity of the ocean, keeping away anything precious that could be broken. Only in this way would she be protected.
Sara is something precious to Grissom, and we have already mentioned that he has a tendency to defend what is precious to him, be it insects or people. And this inclination is exceptionally exaggerated in regard to Sara. His stepping aside therefore is a wanting to shelter her from harm that he might do. Perhaps, he also thinks that by remaining detached from her just a little bit, he would be able to protect her better from others.
Another reason that might prevent him from throwing himself heart and soul into the relationship with Sara is the fact that the two of them are colleagues and should not establish a romantic relationship. However, we have already mentioned that when something important is involved, Grissom doesn't give a damn about the rules, so this point doesn't matter.
So what is it that ultimately makes Grissom decide to let go of his moorings aside from Sara's being persuasive?
Not one thing, not the other, but a third secret thing.
There's a passage I heard recently in the movie "In the mood for love" that I think nicely renders the feeling that moved Grissom:
Feelings can creep up just like that. l thought l was in control. But l hate to think of your husband coming home. l wish he'd stay away!
Simply put, Grissom realizes that he needs her. Yes, he told her so, but saying it is one thing, accepting it is another. At some point, he realizes that he doesn’t like she to be too far from him, he doesn’t like other men being around her too closely, that Sara is so precious to him to such an extent that he just decides to try the thing, leaving aside all the doubts and fears. The process of arriving at the complete setting of the relationship, in my opinion, took some time. Let me quote another piece of mine, “As simple as an idea”:
So he faked it. He faked it until he made it.
He faked needing her for a case, when he could have easily done without her. He faked that he happened to somehow be in the same place as her by chance, in order to show her something special. He faked that she had something in her hair, in order to touch it. He faked feeling like going home, in order to convince her to do the same. He faked that a flower was evidence for a case, in order to give it to her. He faked losing his balance, in order to put an arm around her shoulders. He faked having to say something to her while sitting in the audience in a courtroom, in order to get close to her ear. He faked a bravado he didn't feel in order to kiss her.
And he prayed, he prayed, that she would give him a second chance.
That’s it. I hope I was able to explain my unrefined point of view and I hope you enjoyed the typos.
Keep in mind that this is just my personal opinion. For more comprehensive and technically detailed answers, you might want to check/ask the GSR-biblist @addictedtostorytelling. There you’ll surely find answers to questions you didn't even think you had.
Take care and be safe.
Best,
L
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002 with Chloe Valentine for the ask meme!
Oooh nice! Here's some Kloey >:D
How I Feel About This Character
She's not my favorite, but I don't necessarily hate her. She has a ton of potential to work with for writing/character studies given that she doesn't have much of a backstory in the show. So, while I do get and agree with most of the criticism towards her, I like that she's a complicated character. (That's not to say she's the most deeply complex character out there, not by any means lol) We need more female characters like that. Especially ones that don't get vitriolic hate for just EXISTING, y'know?
All The People I Ship Romantically With This Character
Chloe x Christine shipper all the way! I love the idea of them together, I just think they'd be really cute. And I also really like the idea of her and Madeline having complicated feelings for each other. Like, they like each other, but Chloe's weirdly jealous of her too or something like that? Basically cursed yuri if you really think about it
My non-romantic OTP For This Character:
I don't ship PinkBerry, but I like her and Brooke fixing the issues in their friendship and actually growing into their own people/becoming better friends as a result. I like to think that once they really get to know each other, they don't rely on each other as much but still stay friends. Idk man, she's hard though I do like the idea of her Jenna and Rich being chaotic together. They're actively disturbing the peace and they look hot doing it
My Unpopular Opinion About This Character
I see her either trying to be a better person and treating the others better, OR joining an MLM. There's no in between. Like she either follows the mean girl to nurse/lawyer/politician pipeline, but just isn't as mean, or gets really chill and tries to push that part as far deep as she can from her.
One Thing I Wish Would Happen/Had Happened With Them In Canon
That we learn more about her! Like her homelife, her interests, her goals, her relationships and how they came to be with the other characters, just more about her other than "the bitchy mean girl." Both that and her actions get discussed or acknowledged. They probably do in canon, and I could just be clueless, but from what I know that just? Doesn't happen? They don't talk about some of the messed-up stuff she did, so that'd be nice to see in either canon or fanfiction.
My OTP
Her and Christine. I could just see the two of them caring about each other and her being someone Chloe feels comfortable with. She feels like she can talk to her, and Christine has the person she's most afraid of judging her, not doing that at all. She even gets her into acting too and it's something they bond over, just so much fun dynamics to explore with them. I love them <3
My Cross-Over Ship
I haven't thought about it all that much, but honestly, her and Harper or Missy from Heartbreak High. I don't know why, I just think they'd be cool together for whatever reason. That or like Faye Valentine from Cowboy Bebop or Ashley Graham from Resident Evil just because it'd be really funny
A Headcanon Fact
This has probably been said before, but like most of the rest of the cast I see her home life being pretty bad too. Her parents are probably absent or just can't connect with her, so she acts the way she does as a result. I don't think they're bad people, just not around enough to really get to know her. That's not to excuse her behavior though, it's just my weird way of seeing it.
This was fun!! Thanks for asking :D
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About the cupid scene, Nico was forced to come out, but its also made very clear that Cupid is the bad guy. So is Aphrodite to an extent. They have a twisted and fundamental misunderstanding of love and how it works for mortals. I get that people could be mad about how Nico was forced to come out and putting him through more emotional trauma, but I also think its very realistic in showing how callous and cruel the gods understanding of love is.
I am reminded of the quote by Madeline Miller, "There is no law that gods must be fair..."
I also understand why the scene might be traumatic for other young LGBTQ+ readers, I've seen a lot of people talk about the fear of being outed in regards to them reading that scene as a kid. I completely respect their feelings on that, and I understand that as well. However, as someone who had been forcibly outed once before reading that scene, that scene really helped heal me. I don't think the Cupid scene is inherently homophobic, and I'm often bothered by the lack of nuance regarding around how it's handled.
I recognize it's a very emotional scene, and that people may have a hard time fully separating their emotions from that scene, but at the same time if there's a group of people saying "hey I understand why you disliked this scene but it was really helpful to me as a child because of the different experiences I had" maybe slow the breaks and hear what others also in the community have to say before determining if the scene is homophobic. You don't have to like the scene, and yeah maybe the scene did hurt you but that doesn't make it homophobic.
I want to specify on my word choice there a little closer, because of course outing someone is an act of homophobia, and the scene is homophobic in that sense. However often times the conversation about homophobia in this scene goes to "Rick was homophobic for writing this" where personally I would say this scene toes the line at being too far without ever crossing it. Some people may think this depiction crosses the line into "Rick was homophobic for writing this" which is fine, but just because something depicted homophobia and hurt you doesn't mean it was homophobic. Something doesn't have to out rightly be stated to be bad, in order to be read as bad*, and the Cupid scene does a wonderful job of depicting this.
I talk here about how Nico is shown what love is, and how love is treated by Nico, and how it affects his character. I think it's important to note that Nico's entire storyline can essentially be encompassed in an Orpheus-like or Odyssey-like tale. Nico's undergone this huge emotional and physical labor all in the name of having some form of unconditional love. I think that post is a really important read in the context of this one because I very carefully outline how love shapes Nico and how Nico shape and chooses his own definition of love, but I want to specifically dig into the Cupid scene on this post.
The big criticism often seen is "it's homophobic" which I covered above, and I want to clarify I'm not upset with or mad at or trying to tell anyone they can't dislike it or even say you can't say it's homophobic (my words on my one post are a bit off I'll admit) but the problem I have is when people believe they hold a moral high ground for thinking it's homophobic, or they remove all nuance from the discussion with "it's homophobic". Which is frustrating and annoying because it's a very complex scene, and it really changes Nico's arc and personality and it does help characterize him.
The big reason it shapes him so much is because of the other largest reason the scene is criticized, Cupid's behavior. What often fails to be recognized in those scenes is that Cupid is intentionally painted as the villain, this is very important to the scene.
In the context of this scene Nico makes an unspoken choice, a choice of "what is love to me?". I talk about how Nico claims his narrative in BoTL when he overcomes Minos, and he partially peaks that arc by convincing Gods to join the final battle of TLO. Following that arc however, Nico falls into his second arc, his crush on Percy was important in PJO, but not as important as it is in HoO.
By HoO Nico's entire character revolves around Percy, how to help Percy, how to aid Percy, etc. All of this has to do with Nico's crush on Percy, but also as an act of repayment because Nico hurt Percy- Nico lied to him about knowing him at New Rome in SoN, and he goes to Tartarus shortly after... This mirrors what Percy did after Hades tricked Nico... Percy choked Nico because he was upset with him, so Nico tried to win back Percy's affection by bathing him in the river.
The Cupid Scene is the resolution of Nico's arc, he is essentially given a choice- Cupid or Jason?
For this reason, we do see Nico recognize love for what it has been vs how it could be.
Cupid is there to represent what love is, to Nico love is brutal, and painful, and a lot of hard work... Nico has made himself utilitarian in love simply because it is the only way he can find any affection. Love to Nico is about flaying yourself for the benefit of others, to trample any and all parts of yourself simply to appease those you care for, because you want them to love you so much as you love them. The parallels I could draw between Nico and Orpheus, or Nico and Odysseus... I'd be here a long while...
In that scene Jason represents the alternative form of love which Nico chooses after his interaction with Cupid.
Jason says during the scene that he "preferred Piper's idea of love" which has to do with kindness and caring, etc, and then Jason becomes the embodiment of that idea during the scene- which showcases the alternative of what love can be, thus making Jason a personification of love in the context of that scene.
Jason looks to Nico, he doesn't ask for more, he simply looks to Nico with understanding and acknowledges him for who he is, and he does the exact opposite of what Nico expects:
Jason loves Nico where he is, without conditions, without forcing Nico to become something more. Jason didn’t force Nico to say more than what was necessary for him to understand, Jason looked at Nico and he called Nico brave.
Cupid is a more volatile form of love than Aphrodite, Cupid shoots arrows that makes people animals, that can make a god grow insane, but Aphrodite's form of love is about acceptance and humanity (think to how she picked Ares over Hephaestus even if it was perhaps "wrong")- both are about truth but one is about force and the other about acceptance.
When Nico walks out of there, he makes his choice- he is forced to come out yes, Cupid is wrong for doing this, but Jason again stays a figure of love in Nico's life. Jason basically says, "Good job, I know that was hard, thank you for sharing and let me know if you need anything, people will care about you and understand you," again and again and again to Nico, he doesn't tell Nico he has to come out, and he agrees to keep it between them for now. Jason is love as acceptance, Jason is the first person who unconditionally loves Nico, and that's the choice.
Will Nico accept unconditional love? If the answer is no, then Cupid wins and Nico is denying himself. If the answer is yes, then Jason and Nico win, and Nico no longer needs to make himself utilitarian in love in order to be loved.
The choice is made with Reyna and Hedge, most specifically Reyna.
When he accidentally comes out to them, and they accept him without making a big deal of it, without show, just that acknowledgement and "thank you for sharing" and Nico accepts their words and friendship still- Nico made his choice then to accept the love he was being freely given.
“He carried so much sadness and loneliness, so much heartache. Yet he put his mission first. He persevered. Reyna respected that. She understood that. She'd never been a touchy-feely person, but she had the strangest desire to drape her cloak over Nico's shoulders and tuck him in. She mentally chided herself. He was a comrade, not her little brother. He wouldn't appreciate the gesture.”
This is where we see the slow and steady, and healthy, end to Nico's arc in regards to love really grow into itself, and he begins to heal. He no longer sees such an intense need to make himself utilitarian for love, and he begins to heal from his internalized homophobia too.
(Internalized homophobia discussions with Nico also bother me too often times, people too often assume you can't date while struggling with internalized homophobia or at least very heavy handedly imply that which is just not true... You may have some issues in your relationship, but you can work through the internalized homophobia while building a new relationship and be just fine. Also to assume someone has an unhealthy relationship because of internalized homophobia is weird and lowkey reinforces the idea that "broken" people don't need love, but also does a huge disservice to so many LGBTQ+ people who are happily married/themselves but still struggle with these feelings, and to see a healthy relationship depiction despite someone in that relationship struggling with internalized homophobia is fine and good actually. As long as the individual can recognize what they're dealing with, and work through it in a healthy and constructive manner, then there's nothing wrong there...)
When I started this post to be honest I thought I would have a lot more to say, it's a scene that touched and changed me so deeply as a person, and beyond that in a more objective experience it completely changes Nico's character, by turning his arc around and beginning his healing process. To be honest, there probably is more to be said on it, I just haven't found the words yet... I know parts of this post are clunky and in a year I'm going to read this and see all the places it could be better but for now I'm content with it.
Whether or not someone considers the scene homophobic is a subjective experience, but I think this is a very well written scene purely for the characterization and symbolism, intentional or otherwise. I don't really care that much to debate if it's truly a homophobic scene or not, I can see both why people say it is and why people say it isn't and that can be culminated into "people have different needs" and "minorities aren't a monolith". Personally my much larger complaint is the complete lack of nuance and insight scenes like this are handled with, not the matter of personal opinion an individual reaches on the scene.
*the post uses the word "adult audience" and yes, fair point, children should not be able to decipher symbolism to the extent adults can. But older children and young teens, which the RRverse series are sold for, is when critical thinking skills and media analysis do begin to become parts of classroom curriculum. The scene does an excellent job of not outright stating Cupid is evil, but of depicting that in a very clear cut way.
#nevermind i lied here you go#nico di angelo#meta#long post#anon#ask#internalized homophobia#fandom homophobia
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hellu, can I request how would Delinquents, teachers, and bullies react to female reader pepper-sprayed the twins for self-defense when they try to beat up reader?
Hello, it's been a while, I'm sorry it took so long- I've been dealing with a lot of school assignments and I can't lie that I have frequent breakdowns over this-
I'll try and upload the requests that I already have and see if I should open up for requests again, or leave it be closed until the waves of work I need to do gets less overwhelming.
I hope y'all are doing great, stay safe everyone.
I'll make this a very short scenario boo.
TW: this is basically a civil war at this point- // for each pair, I'll add a different context (since technically the delinquents aren't from the same institution as the bullies) // female reader // bullying // self defense // anxiety // bullying (verbal and physical) // mentions of stalker behavior and brief mentions of distrust and paranoia
🍭꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍮꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍰꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍮꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖🍭
Triple Spice combo [Yandere!Teachers / Yandere!Delinquents / Yandere!Bullies x F!Reader - Scenario]:
🎇Let me set the stage for a quick sec!🎇
So I'll explain what will happen- This is basically a post with three different timelines, each one based on each character type you're more interested in (example: you want some sour delinquents? You can follow the delinquent timeline and see how they react). Each follows almost similar circumstances, but still a bit differently to be able to fit for each individual timeline.
Come with me boo cause this one is long!
🎆: 🍒Bully's Timeline🍭
You have been the target of bullying for some weeks now, ever since you crossed some rich kids while going to your college. Unfortunately for you, they seem to be heading to the same location as you, apparently they also studied there- Although it should have been quite obvious. You're not the type to confront people physically, and you don't really feel like capable of fighting people of on your own, but because with their constant presence in your life you started to feel the need to get yourself prepared for what was going to come- Especially since you didn't feel like you could count on anyone.
You bought pepper spray in hopes of being able to stop your tormentors from continuing with their sick game.
That's when the incident happened, you were minding your own business when they came looking for trouble. You took the opportunity to finally put a stop on this by spraying their eyes with it.
✳️🍒Bullies🍭:
→ Alexandra Coldwell:
It was so fast and so painful that she couldn't even understand what just happened- Like- How dare you?! How fucking dare you?!! You think this is funny? This wasn't supposed to happen at all!
"- AAAAH!- what?- OH MY GOD-" Alexandra wasn't able to even finish her sentence, the pain was too much for her to handle. As she dropped to the ground trying to clean her eyes out, she couldn't help but feel confused as to what had even happened.
How could you do something so cruel to her?? Yes, she followed you, bullied you, made rumours about you, pulled your hair a couple of times and maybe she did throw insults towards you- But she didn't try to blind you!!
The worst part isn't even the humiliation she is going through, it's the fact you thought you would be able to pull a stunt like this and go away without any scars- She is so, absolutely livid by your stupidity.
Alexandra knows you must be liking this- And you know what? Enjoy your last free moments cause she will make sure you'll pay for it. She'll make sure to have a proper revenge under her sleeve, a proper punishment for harming someone like her in public.
Darling, darling, I hope you start looking behind your back from now on, never know what could happen when the person who is obsessed with you is just as insanely pissed off as they're madly in love with you.
→ Adrien Coldwell:
It was so fast and so painful that he couldn't even understand what just happened- Like- How dare you?! How fucking dare you?!! You think this is funny? This wasn't supposed to happen at all!
"- What- Oh my God I'm DYING!-" Adrien would be a lot more dramatic about it, even if he can articulate in great detail how much it hurts. In his panicked state, he started trying to wipe the substance with his sleeves- Which only helped to spread it more.
How fucking dare you not only hurt his precious eyes but also humiliate him on public like this?! What has gotten into you?? Yeah- I guess he did say hurtful stuff, followed you around to torment you, did throw stuff at you- But ya know- He didn't try to take your eyeballs out!?? Now that he thinks about it, he probably should have.
Adrien has a very weird view on your "relationship"- He thinks you're above him and so he must push you down, he loves you but being gentle with you will leave you to pull this kind of shit.
You're probably laughing to yourself now, the man is temporarily blind and you are laughing at him, you're somehow worse than he thought.
Still, he'll make you pay for it, don't worry about it dearest- You're fucked regardless. You tried to stand against him and now sadly he'll have to put you in your place again. Don't worry, it won't be so early- He still needs to prepare his plan.
Darling, darling, I hope you start looking behind your back from now on, never know what could happen when the person who is obsessed with you is just as insanely pissed off as they're madly in love with you.
🎆: 🍎Teacher's Timeline📕
You have been the target of bullying for some weeks now, ever since you crossed some rich kids while going to your college. Unfortunately for you, they seem to be heading to the same location as you, apparently they also studied there- Although it should have been quite obvious. You're not the type to get physical when it comes to defending yourself, but you felt that you still needed to do something about it- You talked with the only person you could trust in this moment, since they were your mentor and you needed some guidance from someone that could potentially help you solve this out.
Their idea was to be able to personally see the harassment happening so they could have visual proof of who is doing what to you, hopefully being able to expel the ones causing you harm.
They personally gave you pepper spray in hopes that if they aren't near you to help you, you can at least defend yourself in some way.
That's when the incident happened, you were minding your own business when they came looking for trouble. You took the opportunity to finally put a stop on this by spraying their eyes with it.
✳️🍎Teachers📕:
→ Matthew Robinson:
Although you thought to be in a situation where no one would be able to help you- Causing you to use your only item of self-defense- That couldn't have been further from the truth, as Matthew has made sure to pay close attention to you after you came by and ask for his guidance. It was a call for help and he would have been a horrible mentor to not make sure you'll follow his instructions, and it seemed like you did perfectly fine.
He got to be present to not only see the ones causing you harm, but also to see how well you're able to take care of yourself. He was going to intervene as soon as he saw them come closer, but you managed to stop them all by yourself- Honestly he is very proud of you for being able to stand your ground.
Since Matthew was able to see them starting the aggression just like many other witness surrounding the scene, he felt like he had an argument strong enough to be able to properly punish your bullies- Of course he is aware that the Coldwells have a reputation for getting staff members fired for trying to reprimanding them, but honestly he has been inside this place long enough already.
Getting fired isn't his problem, his problem is not being able to give them what they deserve for frightening you, and even worse than that: He needed to make sure you would stay safe in and out of college- You came to him saying they were following you outside of your classes, so of course he'll be worried for your safety.
After expelling the Coldwells, Matthew will just need to find a way of keeping you safe and under his surveillance, you may need more guidance after all, and it would be extremely worrying to not have you by his side. He just needs to plan out a better schedule for you two, one where he can be more present in your life after you're done with your classes.
I wonder what plan comes to his mind.
→ Madeline Allen:
Although you thought to be in a situation where no one would be able to help you- Causing you to use your only item of self-defense- That couldn't have been further from the truth, as Madeline has made sure to pay close attention to you after you came by and ask for her guidance. Madeline has been following you while you walked through the school's halls as she recorded every interaction you had with any of the other students. After you called her for help she entered full protection mode, she was set on getting your tormentors expelled.
However, Madeline hasn't been inside the institution to be able to earn the trust of the other teachers, or even the principal themselves- She needed some evidence and better witness testimony than those from students who were terrified of getting in trouble with the bullies around this place. You could say she had a guess as to who could be causing you trouble but she wouldn't be allowed to take action unless she could prove their identity and involvement in bullying you.
She gave you the pepper spray hoping you would feel less worried, to feel calmer in knowing you had not only something that you could use against them but also to symbolize how she would be there for you if you needed. Seeing you using it for the first time as you spray in the eyes of the culprits made her realize that she was in fact correct. Of course it's them, right?
If there is something wrong happening in Amaryllis, you can almost always pin it for being the Coldwell's fault. Bullying it's probably the least surprising thing this little demons have been accused of- Still, their rein over this institution and your worried little mind ends today, she doesn't care if she lost her job or if they try ruining her life by blackmailing her and such-
They can try but she is pretty sure they won't have any luck finding her, what can I say, she is good at burning evidence. What worries her though it's what will happen to you if they ever try to take their frustrations out on you again. She can't allow that to happen, you'll end up getting hurt and she'll feel awful if it was because of her interference in the case.
You need her help after all, right? You did come to her asking for guidance, and clearly you know nothing about physical self-defense- You clearly need someone to take care of you dearest. She needs to plan this out carefully, not only so the twins aren't allowed in school's grounds but to hopefully be able to guide you even if she is not your teacher anymore. But how could she have you near her everyday after classes?
I wonder what plan comes to her mind.
🎆: 🍋Delinquent's Timeline🐍
You have been the target of bullying for some weeks now, ever since you crossed some rich kids while going to your college. Fortunately for you, they didn't seem to go the same college as you did- Yet what you should have known was that nothing in life could have been so simple, you would still see them again over and over again after that incident. You started to feel anxious knowing that they were probably stalking you to know exactly when and where to find you, and since you already have to deal with going to a horrible institution and fearing for your own safety everyday.
You bought pepper spray so you could defend yourself not only from your stalkers but also from any possible classmate that could end up trying something weird with you.
That's when the incident happened, you were minding your own business when they came looking for trouble. You took the opportunity to finally put a stop on this by spraying their eyes with it.
✳️🍋Delinquents🐍:
→ Jackson Macnee:
He doubts you noticed that he was there when that happened, he doubts that you even care if he is staring at you at all- He always thought you were probably too scared of him to even tell him to stop, most people aren't scared of his appearance but are at least aware of his title, so they at least respect the path he walks. He is already used to this.
But let me tell you, to see the Coldwells come so near his territory seemed pretty interesting at first- Until he discovered why they were dumb enough to come here. He didn't know you were being bullied, let alone by these brats- He did notice you had changed your behavior recently, although he didn't pay any attention to it because he thought you were just getting accustomed with the way things work around Saint's Bernard hellhole of a place.
He was hoping that maybe you were just having issues with settling in- It is a rough place after all, and although he wishes deep down to be able to help you feel stronger he still feels like he shouldn't make you do something you don't want to. If you wished to talk to him, you should just go straight to him (even if he is aware of how terrifying that could be).
However, Jack was so far from the truth. His assumptions were confirmed fake after he saw the twins Coldwell treat you like he treated him- It was unbearable to watch, it was like he was seeing his past collide with his present self, you were reminding him of all the things he hated about himself, while also bringing his blood to boil in a desperate need to help you out. Yet he didn't need to do anything about it, you managed to defend yourself on your own.
It wasn't as rewarding to watch as he wanted it to be, but you sure did crack their ego pretty badly- He shouldn't have doubted you, after all he has been stalking you for so long, he should have known what you were capable of doing. Still, he doesn't trust the Coldwells enough to just let them run away like that, they would probably come back soon.
In the meantime, this should be a good excuse to get to talk with you, right? You clearly need some actual training, some flimsy pepper spray bottle isn't going to stop them from coming back. I hope you're ready to be trained by a lovesick delinquent, he won't be soft until he knows you can stand on your own.
→ Jannette Sartorius
She doubts you noticed that she was there when that happened, she doubts that you even care if she is staring at you at all- She always thought you were probably too scared of her to even tell her to stop, most people are scared of her. She is trying to get used to it.
Janette thinks she has every reason to observe you from afar, you're beautiful and you seem too precious to be in a place as horrible as this one, it must suck a lot for you to be somewhere like this-Seeing people like her.
She considered calling you to join her gang, but she is sure that you'll probably deny the offer- Physical confrontation was never your thing right? She can respect that.
Although you don't talk with her, or even interact with the other students at all, she did notice you were acting a bit more- Reclusive these days. Something was wrong, and sadly she would have to find out about it way too late.
Janette didn't know the twins personally, she knew they were rich and famous but- Yeah, she didn't really care about knowing anything about them, they're just some pretty faces amongst the others in the fashion industry. She does envy them a little bit, but tries to avoid anything relating to them since she feels self-conscious looking at their pictures. Now she has a new reason to hate their porcelain faces, they were stalking you.
They were stalking you and taunting you, and if you didn't do anything to stop them she would have already jumped in. They were alone, and honestly she doubts they have any idea of how to go one on one with someone- There is no way these brats have any experience in fighting, right?
Well, she didn't get to know that since they ran away after you sprayed their faces with pepper spray, clever girl.
She knows this is probably not the end of this, they did threaten to come back and hurt you for defending yourself. But you know- She doesn't plan on letting that happen, not again. Consider yourself lucky cause now you just got a new best friend who I set on protecting you.
Is there something wrong with that? Aren't you happy with being her friend? Well, you could just go to "girlfriends" if that's what you want- She wouldn't mind it at all.
Janette prefers to take care of you without you having to watch her beat someone's ass- But she could teach you a few things if you wished to, hey, spending time with someone so cool it's always nice, so of course she'll take every chance she can to spend as much time with you as possible.
🍭꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍮꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍰꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍮꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖🍭
#yandere#sheep stuff#sheep's stuff#yandere oc#yandere bully#yandere teacher#yandere delinquent#yandere bully x reader#yandere teacher x reader#yandere delinquent x reader#yandere scenarios#yandere x reader scenario#yandere x reader#yandere oc x reader#yandere oc scenario#yandere headcanon#yandere oc headcanon#special delivery headcanons#special delivery request#special delivery scenarios
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Character ref for; Jack, Maddie and Jazz,
Art by @gally-hin / @gally-hin-phantom
Okay so first off; in terms of Actual redesign, I didn't change a whole lot. I'm actually very fond of Jack and Maddie's design's, my only real issue was with their proportions. Like...look as a lady person who is also thiCC I do not have a fucking wasp thin waist and I'm sure I'm not the only one, lmao. As for Jack? Godamnit he looked like a brick on toothpicks. Just Let him be a fucking Bara man! Anyway of course I asked Gally to do this one bc they're fucking great at drawing different body types
I also cannot and will not take credit for Jazz's outfit. I didn't have any issue with her canon clothes aside from them being a bit plain, so what she's wearing here was literally pulled straight off of her original concept art, which I will link here.
Anyway, getting to the Actual character lore now, let's start with
Maddie Fenton
-Full name is Madeline (I haven't decided on a maiden name yet)
-Born and raised on a farm in Arkansas, had a southern accent that she trained herself out of in college bc it was just one more reason for people not to take her seriously. Still sometimes uses "y'all" completely unironically bc old habits die hard.
-She has a really big family, and they're proud of her accomplishments but feel like she's wasting her talent studying ghosts, because really, up until the Fenton portal was up and running there wasn't even any solid proof they existed. Her sister Alicia is the one outlier there, and even if she doesn't understand, it she completely supports her.
-She majored in engineering and minored in psychology at Wisconsin EDU. Her, Jack and Vlad were all in the same engineering class, and that's where they met.
-Maddie is particularly interested in how ghosts think, analysing their behavior, their motives. Not only that, but they aren't just dead people with unfinished business, they've built an entire culture in the Ghost Zone that is completely seperate from humanity, and she wants to understand all of it.
-skilled marksman and 9th degree black belt, (which is. The highest fucking level there is holy shit? I looked it up after I saw it on her wiki page.)
Jack Fenton
-He's from Minnesota (Amity park is in Illinois and him and Maddie didn't move there until after they got married)
-okay, "but why minnesota specifically" you ask? Because. I crave. Foot ball discourse.
-minnesota vikings vs green bay packers guys do you UNDERSTAND WHERE IM GOING WITH THIS
-The funny thing is that Jack only watches football casually while Vlad is a fucking die hard so when these two got together to see a game it was like....
-Jack: Here to chill and have a good time.
-Vlad: Primed and ready to start a fist fight at any given moment.
-I am never not going to be salty about how Canon Jack was portrayed like a complete moron 99% percent of the time. Like no...theres a difference between Actual Stupid and ADHD induced dumbass-ery.
-Am I saying Jack Fenton has ADHD? Yes. why? Because I also have ADHD and I have always vibed So Hard with his Character.
-Jack is loud and easily excited about things that interest him. He's impulsive and fidgety and yeah, a bit absent minded. He has a mouth that clearly runs so much faster than his head. His train of thought doesn't get derailed so much as it stops and takes several different detours on the way to it's final destination.
-and that's only the tip of the iceberg, really, I'd need an entire essay to get into this completely, but I just really relate.
-Jacks skill-set / interests regarding ghosts vary a bit from Maddie's, most notably in the sense that he doesn't believe that they're static entities already set in their ways, completely incapable of change.
-Jack majored in engineering and minored in Biology at Wisconsin EDU.
-Jack's work with tech is a bit hit or miss. He definitely HAS the engineering skills, but the intrest isn't always there and he's constantly jumping back and forth between different projects. He tends to focus on the concept work and schematics and leave most of the assembly to Maddie as a result. It's an arrangement that works well for them, and has drastically decreased the number of unintentional explosions in the lab.
-A lot of Jack's work tends to revolve around ghostly biology and Ectoplasm, figuring out how ghosts are made, what makes them tick, what the hell Ectoplasm Actually Is, how it's used as an energy source, ect.
-and yes, that does also mean he handles the dissections.
-See that facial scar? Yeah, that's not actually there at the start of the series rewrite but it's very important for plot reasons so I had to include it. Can't say much more on the subject because SPOILERs owo.
Jasmine Fenton
-Jazz is a 18 years old, and a senior at Casper high.
-Which means she prepping to go away to college and won't be around to keep an eye on Danny.
-Obviously that doesn't mean I'm just writing her out of the story, oh no. Know why? Because she's also gonna go to Wisconsin EDU. ya know who else is in Wisconsin? Fuckin' Vlad.
-Jazz is autistic, Although she passes for neurotypical in part due to symptoms being completely over looked in girls due to gender stereotyping and also the fact that she doesn't have any special interests that are considered " "too weird.""
- Her hyperfixation with psychology started at a young age in an effort to better understand people, and social/emotional cues and all that.
-Jazz is well liked at school but she's not popular or apart of any specific group or clique. She's very kind and compassionate to people, and just about everyone knows her, but you'd be hard pressed to find someone who actually Considered her a friend. Except maybe Spike.
-I'm gonna have to give spike his own Character ref at some point, but he's this scary looking goth kid that's been held back twice. He's actually super sweet, just really fuckin' quiet and anxious. Him and jazz kinda ended up gravitating towards each other. She might do most of the talking, but they look out for each other.
-its not like jazz doesn't try to socialize, but it's difficult and she's found it much easier and less stressful to just. Keep to herself and let her interactions with her peers stay shallow and superficial. Sure, it's lonely sometimes but it's better than constantly worrying about saying the wrong thing or making some other misstep.
-One of Jazz's other special interests is football, and it's not so much the players or the game as it is the strategy of it? Started out as one of those things you do to bond with your dad, and she ended up getting really into it.
-She absolutley winds up getting into stupidly intense discussions with Vlad about it, too, lmao.
-Her and Danny probably bonded over SBNation bc that shit has both sentient satellites and ridiculously complex football mechanics.
-She's completely oblivious to the fact, but Dash has a massive crush on her bc holy shit this girl understands football (hey bud your toxic masculinity is showing put that shit away)
-I mentioned that Danny was in Cheer for a bit in middle school so it makes sense that she'd also be pushed into doing some kind of extracurricular activity.....so.....she was in a martial arts class for a bit thanks to Maddie and has a good grasp on self defense.
I think that's everything? I feel like I'm leaving things out tho? Idk if I did I'll come back and add on to this later and also pls don't hesitate to ask questions bc it really helps me flesh things out better.
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“forever” paxton hall-yoshida x reader
genre: fluffy romance + mutual pining (not too slowburn tho lol)
word count: 3.4k
au: none?? jock x theatre nerd ig
pairing: Paxton x broadway baby!reader
requested: yes !! i hope u like it uwu
warnings: one hell one motherfucking and i think that’s it for swearing?? um brief self deprecating/talking bad abt urself from paxton (bby boy needs a self love boost), reader and paxton are home alone together for a little while but nothing bad happens, uh,,, i think that’s it
summary: when Eleanor can’t run lines with you, she sends over a very attractive, mutually pining substitute.
reccomended songs: “Seventeen” - Tuck everlasting OBC, “The Kiss” -The Princess Diaries score
a/n: i’m p sure i kept the reader p gender neutral but there’s implied slightly long hair, and you play the lead (a girl named winnie) in ur schools production of tuck everlasting but like it’s theatre so anyone can play anyone lol,, this took so got dam long bc i’m fucking s o f t for jock x artist and it just sorta happened lol aLsO,, not super thoroughly edited so there might be a typo or two?? im tired lol
requests r open <3
You had only ever seen two athletes present during rehearsals. Once when Madeline (who at the time was playing Penny in your production of Hairspray) was dating a guy from the soccer team. The other was when the star of the basketball team had come in to give your choreographer pointers for the basketball scenes during High School Musical.
Until now.
You had run onstage part of the way through “Live Like This”, which wasn’t out of the ordinary since so much progress had been made on the costumes. You were still tying the ribbon on your pinafore as you jumped into the song, but when your eyes met a face in the usually empty auditorium, you faltered. You almost sang the wrong verse, but recovered quickly, continuing with the blocking. What felt like a moment later, the number was almost done and you were nearing the end of your counterpoint with Mae Tuck - played by Eleanor, of course. Who could be better for the part? You held out the last note, trying to stay in character despite all the distractions in the back of your mind. You had to talk to Eleanor when the director called for 10; she’d started telling you how Devi was being weird recently. Also, what the Hadestown was Paxton Hall-Yoshida doing chilling in the auditorium? You shoved all that away, focusing on staying in character until the director called for a break.
‘I want to go to the fair. I want to go so badly! I just need a change, need to get out of this house for a little while. I never do anything, so this can’t be asking for too much, right?’
You projected all that into your everything - face, voice, mannerisms, energy.
“Hold!”
Everyone froze.
The director wrote a few things on his paper, sighed, and underlined something several times.
“Okay, good job! I need to revise some of the blocking, then we’ll do notes, so take ten.” Your sudden nerves had definitely made you pitchy, you knew that would be one of your notes for sure.
A chorus of “Thank you ten”s erupted, and you immediately ran to Eleanor, telling the others good job as you passed.
You leaned in and started speaking to her, quietly.
“Okay you need to finish telling me about Devi, and that other news you’re being so cryptic about! Also, what’s up with Fierro over there?” you nodded towards Paxton hoping he wouldn’t see, and you noticed Fab is sitting near him. You realized they’re probably waiting for Eleanor and/or Devi. That must be it, he’s been hanging out with them lately, right? Eleanor gasped.
“You’re right! Paxton is such a Fierro!”
You cringed inwardly a little bit as her voice carried through the auditorium, mixing with the others. Your eyes darted over to him for a fraction of a second. Oh god. He was looking at you. Or in your general direction at least. Lena, the costumer, walked around the set gingerly, following you around and getting you out of your dress incredibly carefully as you and Eleanor walked off stage.
“No! Well, yes- but no. What’s he doing here? Jocks never come here during rehearsals. I saw Fab too, are you guys and Devi getting dinner or something?” You said, entering the auditorium, and stepping out of the dress. You grabbed sweatpants and a silky, floral kimono jacket from your bag to throw over your leotard and tights. She waved back at Fab before sitting down in the front. You both grabbed your fans and dramatically flicked them open in sync. Your wrists fluttered, cooling both of you off. A knowing, and slightly mischievous, look came on her face.
“Devi and Fab and I are. Paxton must be here for something… else.” she shrugged, nodding towards Paxton. You looked over again. He was staring at you. You did a double take and tried to hold back your smile.
“Wh- I do not know to what you are referring.”
“To what I am referring is the blush on his cheeks.”
You barely held back a nervous, bubbling laugh.
“He is not blushing! Why would he be blushing!”
“I don’t know,” She shrugged, “Just like how I don’t know that he’s been loitering in the halls outside the music room during your last three solo music rehearsals.”
You struggled for an answer. Before you could form one, you were interrupted.
“Okay, okay what is the best Lin Manuel Miranda musical? Because Kathryn thinks it’s Hamilton-”
“Duh!”
“-But I think it’s In the Heights! It’s an underrated jewel!” Jonah interjected, still wearing his Jesse Tuck hat.
You considered for a moment.
“I mean, they’re too different to compare. In the Heights has the same energy as Rent - showcasing what goes on in ordinary people’s lives, and how love ties us all together,” he nodded in agreement, “But Hamilton is on a way larger scale, almost Les Mis meets Fun Home vibes. But in terms of personal preference…” Eleanor scoffed at your answer, and Jonah went back to debate further with Kathryn.
“Anyway,” you turned back to Eleanor to ask her what the hell she meant by Paxton Hall-Yoshida was blushing. But before you could-
“Eleanor, we need you to try on your blue dress again,” Lena was already pulling her away, “I had the empire waist in the right place but half the pins fell out, and it’s just...” And she was whisked away before you could finish the thought. You just had time to help Holly get out her wig pins and drink some lemon water before notes. Eleanor still wasn’t back, so you made sure to write down hers for her. It was pretty standard; be quiet backstage, go over your lines, don’t touch props that aren’t yours, don’t eat in costume, and a couple blocking changes you made note of. After your end of rehearsal warm downs and huddle, everyone left relatively quickly. You ducked into the bathroom to freshen up a little. Sometimes it was hard coming down from such intense energy after rehearsal. You mentally ran through your to do list. You needed to get some more tea, write that essay when you got home, go over your notes- You gasped, cutting off your own train of thought. You ran out of the bathroom to look for Eleanor, still clutching her notes in hand.
~
Your voice still echoed in Paxton’s ears. He wished he had a whole album of you singing. Your voice made him want to ruin his spotify algorithm by listening to nothing else. You had looked at him a couple times, and his heart had almost stopped. He didn’t know eye contact could be so intense. It’s probably just cause you’re like, the only person in the audience. Where else is she supposed to look? He deflated a little. He heard his name and looked over to you and Eleanor talking together. Hopefully it was about him. Hopefully it was good. He checked his phone, trying to look busy. When he glanced up to see if you were looking, you were gone. He started to look around for you when he saw Eleanor waving at Fab, and sure enough, you were next to her. What he didn’t expect was you dropping your dress to the ground. Time slowed down (and his heart sped up) as you stretched a little, and pulled out sweatpants from your bag.
Wow.
You had on what looked like a bathing suit on underneath, and a few other people had done the same, but he knew that image would be in his memory, probably forever. His heart was beating in his ears and he knew he must be blushing.
“You okay, Paxton?” Fab asked, a seat or two away. Oh god, he didn’t want people asking why he blushed every time he looked at you! He muttered something about needing to make a call and headed for the doors. Don’t look back at her, don’t look back at her… His eyes involuntarily darted in your direction right before he left. You had on a flowy translucent jacket, your hair thrown back supermodel style as you fanned yourself to cool down. He needed to cool down too. Maybe a cold shower, a really cold shower.
~
You managed to find Eleanor just before she left. Two girls were with her, you had seen Fab once, and you’d heard a lot about Devi, but had never been introduced.
You gave Eleanor her notes, and she hugged you.
“You’re a lifesaver!”
“Of course, I-”
“Uh, who’s this?” you looked over, and the shorter girl - Devi, based on what you’d heard about her - was giving you a weird look. You introduced yourself.
“Nice to meet you. How do you know Eleanor?” said the taller girl - definitely Fab.
“Oh,” you smiled, “she’s my almost mother in law. And my arch rival,” you counted on your fingers, “my sister, my niece, my lover, my husband, and…” you trailed off, trying to think of the other dynamics your characters had had in past shows.
“Your co-conspirator.”
“Right,” you laughed. Devi and Fab looked at you two.
“We’re in the musical together.” you clarified. You were about to part ways when you called to Eleanor, “Hey, we’re still on for running lines tomorrow night?”
“Uh… Sounds good!” she walked away quickly, speaking to Devi and Fab in hushed tones. Something was definitely up. That was typical Eleanor Scheming behavior.
~
That night, you almost couldn’t sleep. This wasn’t the normal post rehearsal can’t sleep. In fact, Tuck Everlasting was the last thing on your mind as you readjusted your pillows and snuggled into your duvet. You stared at the neon blue stars projected and swirling on your ceiling. You sighed. Again. Your brain was a 24/7 livestream of Paxton Hall-Yoshida to relax/study to. You saw him again, his face in the dimly lit auditorium, Adonis in a sea of faded seats. If you hadn’t been sure before, you knew now that red was definitely his color. You rolled onto your side. Your heart picked up speed as a thought crossed your mind. You could almost see Paxton now, kneeling next to you, his fingertips brushing your cheek. The piano underscore to “Seventeen” ran through your mind. You could imagine him saying “Wait with me, we could share the world…” so vividly it almost hurt. He leaned in, and…
You let out a loud sigh and rolled over again. Your heart was fully saturated. That’s more than enough pining for tonight.
~
“Paxton!”
He was a little surprised when Eleanor just walked up to him at lunch the next day. Most people were too intimidated to approach him out of the blue.
“I have a plan.”
“Uh, I don’t know what you-”
“Cut the crap, I know you like her.”
His face blanched. Well, yeah of course he did. Who wouldn’t? He was going to ask Eleanor if there was something he could do to win you over, just not here, not now. Not where everyone could watch and jeer and rib him for it. Just like they were doing now.
“Woah, dude, who is it?” Trent asked. He fumbled for words. He couldn’t believe this was happening. He hadn’t kept his crush a secret because he was embarrased of you, he’d kept it a secret because his dumbass friends wouldn’t get you. Hell, he barely got you. You were so deep, and emotive, and artistic...
“Bro, if you like her as much as it seems like you do,” Trent continued, “you gotta win her over.” He was a little shocked at the agreement murmuring through his group of friends. He didn’t know how to respond. Trent turned to Eleanor.
“What’s the plan, drama mama?”
“First of all,” she said, an almost humorously dangerous look on her face, “never call me that again. Second,” she shoved some papers into Paxton’s hands, “meet me in the music room immediately after school.” She started back for her table. Trent looked back over to Paxton.
“You gotta do it, dude. We’ll cover for you at swim.”
The rest of his friends agreed. He was pleasantly surprised at how supportive they were being.
“Yeah, I guess... we’ve got a plan.”
~
The next day went by pretty smoothly. No rehearsal was scheduled since they were finishing construction for some of the sets, but everyone was instructed to do a couple read throughs of the script, focusing on scenes they’re still forgetting, to make sure everyone’s off book. You stopped by 7 Eleven to get a blue slurpee (for homework) and a couple coconut waters (for run throughs). You texted Eleanor on your way to the slurpee machine.
okay so do you like the mango coconut water or the pineapple one?? It’s the mango one right?? i always forget lmao
sent at 4:16 pm
btw I don’t have that much homework so you can probs come by around 5:30 if you’re ready by then
sent at 4:16 pm
Bae Tuck
OMFG!! I totally forgot about running lines tonight, I can’t make it! :( but I’ll send someone over to help you out. :)
sent at 4:17 pm
You squinted at your screen. That was weird. Eleanor never used colon parentheses smilies. Like, ever. She always used emojis, and usually way more than two per text.
yeah np, are u good? ♡
sent at 4:17 pm
Bae Tuck
Yes :)
sent at 4:18 pm
Bae Tuck
Also get the passionfruit one 🥥🍠 👀
sent at 4:18
that’s,,, el that’s a sweet potato,,
sent at 4:19 pm
Bae Tuck
Close enough 🤷🏻♀️🤷🏻♀️🤷🏻♀️🤷🏻♀️
sent at 4:19pm
...Okay? That was definitely weird. You shook it off and headed for the counter to pay. You stopped half way there, and turned back to swap the mango for passionfruit.
Not long after you had finished your homework and tidied up your room a little, the doorbell rang. You exited the kitchen, drinks in hand, and opened the door. Your heart caught in your throat. Paxton Hall-Yoshida was standing outside. And you were pretty sure he looked nervous. You both just stood there for a second. No one breathed, no one spoke.
“Uh, hi, do you want to…” you backed up, motioning for him to come inside.
“Yeah, thanks,” he said, entering the doorway. Paxton motherfucking Hall-Yoshida was in your living room. You held out a hand to him.
“Coconut water?” he took the box, looked at the label, and smiled.
“Yeah, thanks,” he said again, this time a faint, yet unmistakable note of joy in his voice. He took a sip. He smiled.
“Passionfruit’s my favorite.” You silently thanked Eleanor, who you knew must have planned all this. Most of the evening was a blur, and you thanked god your family wasn’t home right now. You went upstairs, texted Eleanor asking what the actual fuck, made some surprisingly comfortable small talk, then filled him in on how to run lines.
“Do you think playing the soundtrack would help you… get into character?” he asked.
“I would probably just end up singing the whole thing,” You laughed and tried to ignore the butterflies in your chest. The main scene you struggled with was before “Seventeen”. It was harder to get into Winnie’s head because you had no romantic feelings for Jonah, and you always just made each other laugh. You had started with a few easier scenes of Winnie and Jesse, like the fair, and the dialogue before “Top of the World”.
“That was really good,” he said, and you felt the sincerity of his words.
“Thanks…” you smiled and took a sip of coconut water, hoping you weren’t blushing too hard.
“So what next?” he asked.
“Probably the scene before ‘Seventeen’,” you said, giving him the page and scene number, “it’s one of the hardest ones for me. I guess I just can’t connect to Jonah the way Winnie does.”
“Huh,” he said, skimming the page. When you looked up at him, he had something between a smile and a smirk playing at his lips. You made yourself look away before you got too distracted. You refused to think about the fact that you were sitting across from Paxton Hall-Yoshida on your bed, in your room, like you were… close with each other. His eyes skimmed the script, finding the dialogue. He glanced up at you and nodded, indicating he found his place. You began.
“I was so afraid you wouldn’t get away,” you said, jumping into character.
“I may be 102, but I can still outrun anyone,” a smile played at his lips. You smiled, then let your face fall.
“I’m so sorry, I-I tried to warn you-”
“No, no,” he interjected almost seamlessly, “It’s okay, it’s… refreshing having someone look after me who isn’t my mom.” His eyes flickered between your face and the page. You smiled with him for a second, then let distress cloud your face.
“Jesse… that man came by my house today. He heard the music box, he knows about you-”
“I know he knows…”
You continued on with the scene and he trailed off when he came to the sheet music for the song Seventeen. You took in a breath to start the dialogue in the middle of the song, but before you could…
“Six years from now you will turn seventeen,
Turn seventeen,
The same age as me,
Six years from now,
Go to the spring,
Go to the spring and drink…”
He was singing to you. He was looking at you and singing to you. His eyes only flickered down to the page to confirm the lyrics. He was nervous, you could tell. But through his hesitance, the emotion in his voice was sincere. Your heart was beating faster. You didn’t even notice your pulse was ringing in your ears, you were too focused on Paxton.
“I'll wait for you till you turn seventeen,
Turn seventeen,
The same age as me,
Six years from now,
Go to the spring,
Go to the spring and drink…” Your hand rose to cover your mouth. He hesitated, and you remembered your dialogue.
“Uh, wh-what if I… forget where the spring is?” He reached out and took your free hand in his. Your pulse was off the charts.
“I’ll go get you some water. Just… remember to keep it somewhere safe. Somewhere no one will find it.” You got the feeling he wasn’t just talking about the water. You knew he had never really been in a serious relationship before, and it clicked suddenly - if he learned an entire song to duet with you, just how much he must like you. You exhaled a breathy laugh, unsure how to process the sudden euphoria you felt.
“You make the world sound so… exciting. I just want to drink the water right now!”
“Uh, no. You have to wait.” you both smiled, anticipating the upcoming joke.
“Why?” you ask, “What’s the difference?” You held your breath as he tried not to laugh through the delivery of the punchline.
“Believe me,” he rubbed his thumb over your hand, “there’s a difference.” You both chuckled, and he continued singing. You were so focused on him, so… touched that he would do all this for you.
“Winnie, wait with me,
And we could be married,
Winnie, wait with me,
And we'll share the world,
Winnie, you can stop time,
And live like this,
Forever…”
“I could live like this forever,” you echoed.
“Live like this...” you sang in tandem.
“What do you say, Winnie? Do you want to…” he broke character suddenly, and asked, his eyes boring into yours, “Do you want to go out some time?”
He could see the adorable smile blooming on your face, even from behind your hand. You nodded.
“Yes, I-I would love that,” and you began to sing the last line in the song, “Forever-”
But before you finished holding out the note, his lips were on yours. His mouth moved slowly, intentionally, against yours. You followed his lead, flustered. He leaned further forward, his palm caressing your cheek. It was everything you imagined it would be, and you had quite the imagination. Your head was angled up and your hands rested themselves on his back, one tracing little shapes. Your shoulders were pressed against each other and neither of you could think. He was so warm. He tasted like coconut and passion fruit, and a distant part of your mind silently thanked Eleanor again.
You really could live like this forever.
#paxton hall yoshida x reader#paxton hall yoshida#never have i ever#nhie#nhie x reader#never have i ever x reader
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Maddie lets out another dramatic sigh, huffing a little when Sophie and Jack both ignore her in favor of oohing and ahhing over the stories Lizzie has begun meticulously typing out and collecting in a leather bound binder. On one hand, Maddie gets their distraction. Her brother-in-law had never quite seen Lizzie the same way Maddie does, always knowing her as the big sister he couldn’t ever really relate to, the big sister he tended to see more as a parental figure than a sibling, creating an insurmountable distance between them. And her best friend just likes to be annoying—a talent of hers since they were in middle school.
On the other hand, Maddie has something to get off her chest and, dammit, she needs Sophie and Jack to pay attention.
She sighs again, louder this time, placing her mug of coffee on the table with a little more force than strictly necessary. It has its desired effect: Sophie looks up in concern, clearly thinking Maddie has dropped the mug, and Jack moves as if to act as Maddie’s support beam.
(The first few weeks of this sort of behavior from her best friend and her brother-in-law had been frustrating and grated on her nerves. But now she appreciates that they’re here, sitting with her, acting as de facto babysitters while Lizzie is out.
To be perfectly honest, Maddie appreciates not being alone.)
“What’s up, Maddie Bear?” Sophie asks, head tilted to the side as she closes the binder with a satisfying thump. “Annoyed we’re more interested in the stories than you?”
“First of all, as if anything could be more interesting than me,” Maddie says with a faux self-aggrandizing air. “Secondly, don’t call me that. We’re not in high school anymore.”
“It’s always like high school when I’m with you, Mads,” Sophie sings, shoving Jack aside and wrapping her arms around Maddie’s shoulders, giving her an awkward hug from the side. “But seriously, what’s up?”
Now that Sophie and Jack are looking at her patiently, but expectantly, Maddie feels her mouth go dry. She doesn’t want to admit this to them, doesn’t want to show them that it bothers her—and yet, she needs to tell someone or she thinks she’ll combust.
“Evie called,” she mumbles after several beats, looking down at her hands. She feels Sophie drop her arms and pull back, and though she doesn’t look, she knows Sophie and Jack are wearing identical expressions of a mixture of disgust and anger.
“What’s Evil doing calling you?” Sophie hisses, and when Maddie looks up at her, her arms are crossed tightly over her chest, lips pressed into a thin line. Jack, on the other hand, looks like he’s turned to stone, unable to move at all.
“Apparently, she heard the news about me. Wanted to make sure she um, expressed her sadness,” Maddie mumbles, using air quotes around the latter part of her comment, still thinking about the sickly-sweet voice of Evie Cummings and how much she wishes she could have reached through the phone and punched Evie in her perfectly made up face. “She told me I didn’t need to worry about Elizabeth.”
(This is what’s got her so mad, not the fact that Evie called, but that she figured it would be okay to slowly explain to Maddie that Lizzie would be taken care of, ‘in cough cough, the worst kind of situation.’
Maddie’s not jealous.
At least, she doesn’t think so.)
“I don’t understand this whole staying friends with the ex thing,” Jack says, running his fingers through his hair and dropping into the chair next to Maddie, his legs stretched out in front of him as he slouches. He looks a lot like his sister, but his hair is darker, and his manner is more airy. Where Jack is quick with a smile, Lizzie is content to merely quirk her lips.
(Except for if it’s at her.
Lizzie will always smile at her.)
“I agree,” Sophie says darkly, her eyes narrowed as if she’s already planning something nefarious. “Evil needs to go.”
“She’s Elizabeth’s friend,” Maddie argues weakly, not quite able to believe her own words. Lizzie had met and dated Evie in what she still calls ‘a dark time’ in her life. The fact that Evie helped her through it—that she had been there through long nights and eased Lizzie through panic attacks—meant that Evie had a permanent place in Lizzie’s life, even if Maddie and Evie had made their mutual dislike of one another well-known.
“Right,” Jack laughs, flicking his head so that his hair would fall perfectly on his forehead, giving Sophie a wink as she rolls his eyes at his antics. “And you stayed friends with that baseball player, huh Mads? What was his name again?” Jack asks in faux confusion, tapping a finger against his chin. “Darren? Derek? Daniel,” he stresses, flicking his hair again, smiling at Maddie as he stretches out Daniel’s name.
“It’s different,” Maddie says, waving him off, but Sophie sighs dreamily before shaking her head.
“And everyday I think it’s just tragic that you didn't keep him around for me. Your best friend. How could you, Maddie Bear?”
Maddie blushes, glaring at Sophie and Jack as they chuckle at her embarrassment.
“Can we get back to the point?” she asks weakly, two seconds away from banging her head against the kitchen table. She’s sure that won’t go over well with Lizzie; Sophie and Jack would get fired from babysitting duty the second Lizzie notices the bruise.
“Wasn’t the point that Evie is a she-devil? Because Jack and I are in full agreement on that front,” Sophie says, picking up Maddie’s mug and taking a sip before wincing at the cold, bitter coffee. “You’re really letting yourself go, babe,” she mutters, stalking over to the sink and emptying the coffee out. “Drinking bitter coffee and letting yourself become more bitter over the she-devil?” She turns and leans against the counter, arms crossed over her chest and Maddie’s mug hanging from the handle on her index finger. “It’s not like you.”
“Well, a lot of things aren’t like me. Like not going to work and spending all day watching daytime dramas. I don’t even like daytime dramas.”
“Don’t knock it, Mads,” Jack says, hand over his heart. “I for one am very invested in the bold and the beautiful—after all, I’m both bold and beautiful, don’t you agree?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Maddie laughs, rolling her eyes. “You’re a regular Prince Charming, Jack.”
“I’m gone for half a day and I come back to you flirting with my brother?” comes a voice down the hall and the sound of keys being tossed into a bowl, announcing Lizzie’s arrival. “What has the world come to?” she asks as she steps into view, first pressing a quick kiss to Maddie’s lips before hugging Sophie and Jack.
“I admit it,” Maddie jokes, grinning when Hamlet gets off his bed, stretches, and pads slowly over, sticking his head in Maddie’s lap. “It was a surprise to me too.”
“Surprise?” Jack exclaims, mouth dropping open. “Madeline, you and I were always meant to be.”
“You’re right, if only you were four years older and less beautiful. It could’ve been a match made in heaven.”
“Way to aim for a man’s heart, Mads,” Jack sighs, keeping a stoic expression even as Sophie chortles away. Lizzie shrugs off her jacket and tosses it into Jack’s face.
“Stop flirting with my wife, dork,” she says, eyes narrowed. “And Maddie, stop encouraging him.”
“Oh, but we’re meant to be, Liz,” Maddie laughs, “would you really get in the way of love?”
“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up. Pick on me, that’s fine,” Lizzie mutters, unable to help the smile that forms on her lips.
(It’s a startlingly normal moment. Maddie and Jack are teasing Lizzie like always. Sophie makes sure to throw in her own joke like always.
It’s almost easy to forget that Sophie’s hands are shaking as she pours Maddie a fresh cup of coffee, that Jack never strays too far when Maddie gets up to grab Hamlet a snack, that Lizzie watches apprehensively—as if waiting for something, a shoe to drop.
It’s a normal moment. And Maddie breathes it in, wants to keep it as long as possible.
It’s likely why she speaks up.)
“I have a story,” she announces to the others, feeling a little shaky on her feet, not minding when Jack subtly takes her by the elbow and leads her back to the table. “Want to hear it?”
“I do, but I better be in this one,” Sophie says, raising her eyebrows.
“I was promised dinner, so I’m in,” Jack adds with a shrug. “I’m not going anywhere till I’ve been fed.”
Lizzie helps Maddie sit down, pressing a lingering kiss to her temple.
“I want to hear everything you have to say, Madeline,” she says softly, eyes crinkling as she smiles.
And in that moment, Maddie feels a little bit warmer as she looks at her friends, and swears she falls just a bit more in love with her wife.
XxX
She’s busy polishing boots when she hears stomping from the stairs and Ser Evie enters the armory with her hair pointing in every direction, sweat beading on her forehead, and her chest heaving.
“Prince Jack has fallen in love!” she cries excitedly, shoving past Maddie roughly, and grabbing Ser Fredericks by the shoulders and shaking him. “Do you know what this means?”
“Weeks of celebration with lots and lots of mead?” Fredericks says hopefully, shifting in his chair. Maddie doesn’t think she’s ever actually seen him get off the chair, though she’s heard the stories of his incredible, heroic past—how he was born a peasant but was knighted because he saved the King’s life, how at only eighteen, he’d led the King’s army into glorious battle and emerged victorious. No one mentions that at a certain point war and rank seemed to pale in comparison to a good bottle of mead.
Though, as an overworked, underappreciated squire, Maddie can see the appeal of a good bottle of mead.
“Stop fooling around,” Evie snaps at Fredericks, glaring at him as he shifts again in his chair, clearly feeling off-balanced. “This is serious.”
Fredericks doesn’t look very serious—in fact, he seems terribly amused.
“And why is that exactly, Ser Evie?” he asks, stroking his beard. Maddie nearly gags when he finds some pheasant still stuck in it from lunch and pops it into his mouth with a giddy expression. “Is it because you think with Jack out of the way you can finally win Princess Elizabeth’s heart?” He laughs heartily at his own joke, clearly finding himself outrageously humorous. “Somehow I doubt Prince Jack will cease being a protective younger brother just because he’s fallen in love.”
“He’s distracted,” Evie huffs, tossing her cloak in Maddie’s general direction, followed by her boots and arm braces, not looking to see the spectacular balancing act Maddie pulls off in order to catch all the items. Maddie’s so busy congratulating herself on not looking stupid that she doesn’t notice the sword and scabbard coming her way—the hilt of the sword rams hard into Maddie’s hip, the shock of pain causing her to drop the items in her arms, and she curses under her breath as both Evie and Fredericks deign to look over at her, the former with disgust and the latter with poorly concealed mirth. “Can you carry out your duties in a more silent manner?” Evie snaps, giving Maddie a glare for good measure before turning her attention back to Fredericks. “My point is that Elizabeth will have more time to herself—time she could be spending with me, a knight of her father’s court.”
“Princess Elizabeth,” Maddie mumbles as she gathers Evie’s things once more. She leaves the armory just as Evie launches into the story the other knights and squires have heard hundreds of times before: Evie was there for Elizabeth after the Queen died, Evie soothed Elizabeth’s fears and wiped away her tears, Evie was the one who got her to smile again.
It’s the reason she was knighted—the King had taken one look at the smile on Elizabeth’s lips, a smile that had not graced the kingdom for two winters, and had immediately proclaimed that the one who elicited it was to be rewarded in any which way they chose. Evie chose knighthood, “to better serve the kingdom and the Princess” and of course, it had been the talk of court for months.
Elizabeth and her knight in shining armor, Evie, are meant to be—everyone knows it, from the cooks to the handmaidens to the measly squire who huffs her hair out of her eyes as she lugs Evie’s things to her quarters.
Maddie doesn’t know the princess, doesn’t care to know her, but she feels a bit sorry for her. After all, Maddie wouldn’t wish Evie on her worst enemy, let alone the well-loved princess.
“You look like you’re about to topple over,” Ser Sophie says, falling into step next to Maddie, grinning as she walks, one hand on the pommel of her sword, the other hidden beneath her cloak.
“You could always help,” Maddie points out, and though Sophie makes a big show of struggling and huffing, she does eventually grab the sword that’s slipping out of Maddie’s hands.
“You’re in a worse mood than usual,” Sophie says conversationally as they cross the courtyard, Evie’s sword scabbard dragging along the ground between them, Sophie clearly not caring about her fellow knight’s property, “does this mean Ser Evie has already bragged about her plans to woo the good Princess?”
“In detail, unfortunately,” Maddie says, grinning when that gets a loud laugh from Sophie.
(She’s always liked Sophie—liked the humor, liked the long, dark hair that’s always braided, liked the fact that she’s always cool under pressure, and the fact that her nose is slightly crooked from the time Fredericks accidentally broke it, liked the fact that even on a day as warm as this one, Sophie seems unaffected and comfortable in her chainmail and leather.
She especially likes the fact that Sophie has been kind, from the day they met, expecting absolutely nothing in return.)
“How about I cheer you up and buy you a few drinks at the tavern when you’re done polishing Evie’s boots?”
“You only want me there because I keep you out of trouble,” Maddie says with a roll of her eyes. “And if I polish Evie’s boots any more than I have, she’ll give Narcissus a run for his money.”
“Don’t be so bitter, Madeline. Look on the bright side, if Evie marries the good Princess, she’ll be out of our hair forever. And you may finally be knighted.” She emphasizes her point with a pat on Maddie’s shoulder, but she underestimates her own strength and the weight of her armor, because the pat nearly sends Maddie sprawling to the ground.
“That’s a good point,” Maddie muses as she pulls herself up. “Though I don’t need to be knighted, I’ll be happy with just not seeing Evie every single day.” They finally reach Evie’s quarters as she finishes her comment, and she misses Sophie’s contemplative look as she throws the door open and lugs Evie’s things into her room, setting them up for the following morning when Maddie would have to get up at the crack of dawn to help Evie get dressed.
“Come on,” Sophie says cheerfully as Maddie takes one last look at Evie’s quarters, wanting to make sure nothing is out of place, “I owe you a drink.”
“You owe me more than one,” Maddie says with a laugh, dodging the lighthearted punch Sophie sends her way.
“Let’s go, O Brave Squire. You’ve earned yourself a break.”
x
They don’t get their break.
By the time they make their way to the nearest tavern, Sophie is summoned to the palace “on urgent business” along with every other knight and squire within fifty miles of the palace. Left with nothing to do with herself, Maddie pulls her cloak tighter around herself, dons the hood, and sets out for beyond the city walls.
Before becoming a squire, she rarely spent any time at all outside the city walls, she had no reason to. Everything she wanted, her family, her home, her friends, were within the safety of the city, nestled right outside the sprawling palace grounds. But then the sickness came, everything she loved was lost (gone, along with the Queen), and Maddie became a squire and took to hiding out in the woods beyond the city.
For a moment to breathe. For a break, for a chance to lay on her back and stare up at the sky and dream of leaving and never looking back.
It’s become somewhat of a habit now. Any free moment, any moment that was hers and hers entirely, she drops everything, pulls up the hood of her cloak, and disappears into the trees. Always, it’s very quiet and still, giving her a chance to complain under her breath about Evie, not worrying about being overheard.
(It’s the solitude, she thinks. She just craves it.
She’s almost glad of the urgent business that allows her to do this instead of spending the night at the tavern.)
And for a moment, barely a second or two really, she gets that silence and solitude she so craves, before she’s rudely interrupted by a grunt, a mumbled curse, and then a heavy sigh. Maddie pulls out the dagger she hides at her belt, presses her back against the nearest tree, and peers towards the source of the sound, the ragged breathing, the fairly aggressive footsteps.
“Come on, Hamlet,” says a surprisingly gentle and pretty voice, though its owner is clearly harried and stressed, “we need to go.”
Maddie takes a small step, making sure to still have her back against the tree, and she cranes her head. Several feet away, only partially obscured by the trees, is a girl. Not any girl, but the most beautiful girl Maddie has ever set eyes on: her long blonde hair almost looks white in the moonlight, her lips curved into a tiny smile despite the furrow of her brow every time she’s unable to tug Hamlet—a massive, black horse—any further.
Maddie doesn’t need the royal insignia on the horse’s saddle or the beautiful, expensive dress the girl is wearing to immediately recognize exactly who has stumbled in on her moment of peace and quiet.
The Princess, Elizabeth herself.
(Now, Maddie is nothing but a lowly squire, but she’s been lucky enough to catch a glimpse of the princess thrice before. First, soon after she became a squire, she’d quite literally run into the princess, both of them tumbling to the ground. She’d gotten quite an earful from Evie that day, and soon after, Evie was knighted. The second time, it was from a distance during the ceremony knighting the newest members of the King’s court. And the last time was merely weeks ago, from across the courtyard, somehow managing to earn a tiny smile and a small wave before Princess Elizabeth was swept away by one of her attendants.
Every time, seeing the princess in person had been heart stopping. This time is no different.)
Without really thinking about it, Maddie slides her knife back in its sheath then puts her hands up in a non-threatening gesture, and approaches the princess.
“I’m so sorry—” Maddie tries, immediately cut off by the neighing of the horse, who then pulls back on its hind legs, shocking the princess into letting go of the reins.
What happens next goes by so quickly that Maddie would later be sure she’d hallucinated the whole thing. One minute, the princess looks up at her horse in horror, clearly sure she’s about to be trampled, and the next, Maddie has tackled the princess to the ground, rolling them a safe distance away, ending up straddling the other girl, arms braced on either side of her head.
“Are you all right?”
“Get off me,” the princess shouts, managing to land a remarkably precise blow onto Maddie’s face as they scramble about. She stumbles off the princess, tasting blood, but ignores the pain radiating from the right side of her face and instead stumbles over to the horse, urging it to calm down.
“I’m so sorry,” Maddie says as Hamlet lets out an aggressive breath, but allows Maddie to rub his neck. “I didn’t mean to frighten either one of you.” She turns to look at the princess, making sure to keep her eyes averted. “I’m so sorry for knocking you down, Princess.”
She chances a single look at the princess’ face, watching as she casts her eyes up and down, pausing briefly on the insignia on her bag.
“You’re from the palace,” the princess finally says, a bit tonelessly, as she gets to her feet and shakes off the leaves stuck to her dress and hair. “You’re new. But you found me rather quickly, so you must not be useless. What’s your name, knight?”
“I’m sorry, what?”
This makes the princess blink and even share a look with her horse, shockingly enough letting out whinny and shaking its head—as if it is disappointed with Maddie. “You don’t know what names are?”
“I think you’ve got it wrong, Princess,” Maddie says quickly, finally catching on to the fact that there’s quite a bit going on in the palace she’s clearly not privy to. “I’m not a knight. I’m just a squire. And I, um, wasn’t looking for you. In fact, technically, you found me.”
The princess eyes her suspiciously. “You’re not a knight?” she questions, as if she doesn’t really want to believe it.
“No, Princess.”
“And you weren’t sent by my brother to look for me?”
“No, Princess. I didn’t know you were even in need of finding.”
“So if I just...got on Hamlet and left. You’d what? Let me?”
It’s Maddie’s turn to blink. “It’s not really my place to let you do anything, Princess. I wouldn’t try to stop you, if that’s what you’re asking. If anything, I’d just follow you.”
“Follow me?”
“Of course, your highness. There’s no honor in watching the princess venture out into the woods on her own. I’d accompany you at the very least.”
This response is not what the princess was expecting, because her eyes widen a bit, and she steps forward, close enough that she tugs the horse’s reins out of Maddie’s hands. “And if I told you I want to leave and never come back? Would you still follow me then?”
Maddie doesn’t hesitate. “Yes, Princess.”
“Interesting,” the princess mumbles, head slightly tilted to the side as she studies Maddie. There’s a beat, then she bends a bit at the knees, ducking to catch Maddie’s gaze. “I know you,” she says slowly. “You’re the squire Evie hates so much.” Maddie swallows, unable to speak when the princess’ brown eyes—her beautiful brown eyes—are so focused on her. “Madeline, right?”
“I’m honored that the princess knows who I am,” Maddie mumbles, breaking eye contact. This, for whatever reason, makes the princess chuckle, and she basically takes Maddie’s breath away when she pats her on the shoulder.
“Don’t be silly.” She looks like she’s about to say more, but at that moment, they both turn their heads at the sound of pounding hooves and shouts of ‘Princess!’ coming from the distance. “Ah, well. I suppose they’ve found me. Thanks to you, really,” she adds, narrowing her eyes at her horse playfully. She lets the horse press its muzzle to her cheek in an apparent apology, letting out a soft laugh, then tugs on the reins, pulling the horse back in the direction of the palace. She pauses after a few feet, and looks back at Maddie. “I have a feeling we’ll see much more of each other, Madeline,” she says. “So please, stop with all the princess nonsense. It’s just Lizzie to you.”
She doesn’t wait for a response, which is a good thing. It takes nearly a quarter of an hour before Maddie can even move again, unrooting herself with a tiny smile and a whispered Lizzie.
x
Soon enough, Maddie becomes rather sure she imagined the whole interaction with the princess.
Days pass by with no indication she even ran into the jewel of the royal family. No one glares at her accusingly for tackling the princess to the hard forest floor, no one comments on the way she goes about her work for Evie without a single complaint (too full of some sort of rush from the princess’ order to call her Lizzie), no one even mentions the awful black eye Maddie is sporting.
(In fact, it’s the black eye—and the view of it she gets every time she polishes Evie’s armor—that gives her a bit of hope that she isn’t crazy. The pain is a reminder that, yes, she did meet Elizabeth, and yes, the princess knew her name.)
But, enough days pass that Maddie—deflating all at once—finally begins to accept that she’d gotten her hopes up, had thought there was more to Princess Elizabeth’s ‘we’ll see more of each other’ comment than there actually was, and finds herself accepting she isn’t going to be seeing the princess at all.
And, just as soon as the thought enters her head, she runs into the princess, nearly knocking them both to the ground.
“I’m starting to think this is just how you say hello,” Elizabeth tells her, letting out a laugh as Maddie struggles between wanting to help balance the princess and not wanting to offend her by touching her without permission (again).
“I’m so sorry, Princess, I—”
“—thought we agreed it was just Lizzie,” Elizabeth finishes for her, raising an eyebrow when Maddie gathers the courage to look straight at her instead of a point above her head.
“Well, agreed may be somewhat of a stretch,” Maddie says without thinking, horrified when the words register with her brain, her hand coming up and covering her mouth. “Sorry, I just meant—”
“—look. I want you to pretend I’m one of your friends,” Elizabeth says, reaching out and curling her fingers around Maddie’s wrist, tugging her hand away from her mouth. “Then, soon enough, you won’t be pretending.”
Maddie takes in a deep breath, shaking her head. “Are you sure you want to be friends with me, Pri—Lizzie,” she corrects, a little blinded by the grin Elizabeth shoots her at her correction.
“I think the real question is if you’d even want to be friends with me,” she says after a moment, tugging on Maddie’s hand gently, pulling her towards the palace. “You see, I told my brother about our run in, and he insists on speaking with you.”
“Am I in trouble?” Maddie asks worriedly, swallowing hard as they walk through the entrance hall and towards the throne room.
(It’s common knowledge that the King is king only in name, that he has been since his wife died years ago. All official business was up to the King, but the day to day managing of the kingdom?
That’s been left to Jack and Elizabeth for as long as Maddie can remember.)
“Trouble? No, I don’t think so,” Elizabeth says, the answer not inspiring much confidence even as she pushes the doors to the throne room wide open. Maddie pauses, unable to help it, her eyes drawn to the red and gold rugs and banners, the ornate table where the royal family took their meals, the massive throne itself—situated on a dais at the very end of the hall. “Come on, Madeline,” Elizabeth tells her softly, shifting her grip from Maddie’s wrist to her elbow, and gently pulling her forward.
Maddie’s heart pounds quickly and loudly in her chest, giving rise to the sudden, stupid thought that she was quite close to passing out in front of the royal family, but before she can voice her fears to Elizabeth, her brother Jack gets up from where he’s seated at the table, making quick strides towards the two of them.
“Ah! My lovely, adventuring sister and her rescuer arrive!”
“Rescuer?” Maddie mumbles.
Elizabeth elbows her a bit, actually winking when Maddie turns to her. “I may have embellished the story about our meeting. Leave the talking to me, yeah?” she adds in a whisper before turning to her brother with a wide smile. “Jack, we agreed you wouldn’t be too effusive with your praise, you’re going to make the poor girl uncomfortable.”
“I’m sorry, you’re absolutely right,” Jack says, coming to a stop as he reaches them, grabbing Maddie by the shoulder before she has a chance to bow. “None of that, not for you. The woman who saved my sister’s life doesn’t bow to anyone.”
“Sorry?” Maddie asked, unable to help it. Elizabeth, from over Jack’s shoulder, made a face at Maddie, even going as far as sticking her tongue out.
“Oh, don’t be silly, Madeline,” Elizabeth said, refocusing her brother’s attention on her. “She’s such a joker, pretending she doesn’t remember saving me after Hamlet got spooked by a snake. The way she raced into the woods after us...it was quite brave.”
Maddie, who was there and knows this is not true, keeps her mouth shut, giving Elizabeth and Jack a tight smile when they both turn to her.
“My sister has tried to run away four times,” Jack tells Maddie slowly, and Maddie mentally corrects him, thinking five times, actually. “It was a relief, to say the least, that this latest...outing...was not planned.” He lets out a sigh, bracing his hands on either side of his waist, tilting his head back. “After your service to our family, the appropriate thing would be to offer you a reward, not ask more of you. But I am busy preparing for my wedding, and Lizzie seems to have taken a liking to you, so I would be grateful if you allow me to delay your knighthood and instead act as a companion for my sister after her traumatic experience.”
“What my little brother means,” Elizabeth says cheerfully, “is that he wants you to babysit me, because he can’t right now.”
“No,” Jack says, shaking his head and looking at Maddie seriously, as if needing her to believe him. “My sister doesn’t need a babysitter. She’s to be Queen. What she needs is protection from, well, undesirable presences.”
“He’s talking about Evie,” Elizabeth explains helpfully, confusing Maddie with the lack of argument on her end. It’s almost as if she wants a babysitter.
Jack turns to his sister, hands in his hair now. “Lizzie, you know she—”
“—I’m really sorry, but is this something I should be privy to? I’m just, you know, a squire.”
“No, you’re right,” Jack says, as if coming to himself all at once. “The reasons don’t matter. So? Can I count on you?” he asks, waiting for Maddie’s nod before letting out a little sigh of relief. “Good, good. Excellent,” he says, more to himself than to Maddie.
And later, long after he’s gone, after one of Elizabeth’s handmaidens has shown Maddie her new quarters (right next to the princess’) and laid out new clothes, Elizabeth confesses why she didn’t put up an argument, why she merely went along with Jack’s request, the real reason she wants Maddie around:
“You’re going to help me run away a sixth time.”
x
Elizabeth lays under the shade of a tree several days later, head pillowed by Maddie’s leg, a book abandoned on her chest.
“We should talk about it,” Maddie says, breaking the silence. It being Elizabeth’s desire to run away and use Maddie to do it, something she’s been mum about since her confession. Instead, she’d busied their days with fitting Maddie in nicer clothes, dragging her to lessons, even having her teach the little she knew about swinging a sword.
Elizabeth sighs, but she doesn’t move, and Maddie resists the urge to smooth back the princess’ hair, to trace a finger from her brow to her hairline. “I don’t want to be Queen.”
“Then why don’t you just say so?”
“It’s not something you just don’t accept,” she says, and she turns her head, the tip of her nose pressed against Maddie’s knee. “Don’t tell me you’re getting cold feet, I thought you said you’d follow me anywhere.”
“Yes, follow you anywhere. But I won’t help you run away if I don’t even know why.”
This makes Elizabeth sit up, book falling onto the grass and opening to a random page, twisting to look at Maddie with narrowed eyes. “You can’t talk like that, you know, I am the princess.”
“You told me to pretend you’re my friend. That’s how I’d talk to my friends,” Maddie informs her, wishing she didn’t miss Elizabeth’s warmth already. To her surprise, this response makes Elizabeth smile.
“I’d have to get married if I wanted to be Queen. And I don’t want to get married.”
“Why? It’s not as if you’ve got any shortage of suitors.” Maddie sighs as she spots one of them in the distance. “Look. Here comes one now.” She starts to get up, to give Elizabeth privacy, but before she can, there’s a hand on hers, holding on tightly.
“Stay,” Elizabeth requests softly, and Maddie settles back down, powerless to say no, and realizing with a start she doesn’t want to say no.
(She stays, enduring Evie’s glares and dirty looks.
She stays, knowing Evie will get her payback later.
She stays, and it’s worth it, because Elizabeth has tangled their fingers together, and doesn’t seem keen on letting go any time soon.)
x
“If you run away, where will you go?” Maddie asks several days later.
“I don’t know, I’ve never thought about it.”
“Do you think you’ll miss your brother? Your home? Your people?”
“I’ve tried not to think about that.”
“What if you fall in love? Will you marry then and take the crown?”
“I’m not worried about me falling in love, Madeline. My issue is how will I ever know if the person I love loves me for me and not for what they can get from me?”
“Well,” Maddie jokes, “I guess you could always just ask them to run away with you and see what they say.”
x
As the weeks go on, Maddie learns quite a bit about the princess.
For one, she never eats breakfast, claiming that she’d rather start her day with several cups of tea. For another, Elizabeth hates the long, flowy dresses that she and the other women of court have to wear, and has—with increasing frequency—donned the pants and billowy shirts that Maddie prefers. But most importantly, Maddie learns that Elizabeth loves the library and spends nearly all her time there.
And it’s unbearably boring.
She rocks her chair back, feet on the table, staring at the ceiling with her hands folded over her stomach, dangerously close to dozing off when Elizabeth speaks up.
“I’m not interested in Evie, you know,” she says, shocking Maddie enough that she drops her chair back down too quickly, legs falling to the floor with a thud that sounds impossibly loud in the quiet of the library.
“Oh,” Maddie says stupidly, not quite sure what else to say. The thing is, it’s complicated.
She likes Elizabeth. Perhaps more than she should, definitely more than is appropriate. She knows, without a doubt, her feelings will not be returned (they can’t be, she’s a squire and Elizabeth is a princess). More importantly, Elizabeth’s feelings for Evie are absolutely none of her business. Except...well, except that Maddie doesn’t dislike many people but she absolutely dislikes Evie and there’s no doubt in her mind that Evie is incredibly wrong for Elizabeth.
(There is the unhelpful part of her that, head-bowed, quietly suggests maybe there is someone else more—
More right.)
But again, it’s none of her business.
“My brother doesn’t like her either, don’t worry. But Evie...she was there. She was there when I was—”
“—you don’t have to tell me this.”
“I know. I want to,” Elizabeth says, closing her book with a resounding snap, shifting in her chair enough that they’re staring directly at each other. Maddie tries her best not to let her pleasure at those three words show on her expression, but she thinks, judging by Elizabeth’s smile, she’s not quite successful. “Evie saved me,” she continues, letting out a deep breath. “And ever since then, it’s like...she just wants to keep doing the saving. She wants to swoop in, to be my knight in shining armor.”
“That’s romantic,” Maddie says, not believing it, and hating that she’s defending Evie when all she wants to do is agree with Elizabeth and tell her that Evie isn’t worth her time.
Elizabeth gives Maddie a look that clearly says she knows exactly what Maddie is thinking. “I don’t want a knight in shining armor, Madeline. I don’t want someone who wants to come and save my day. I just….”
“Just?” Maddie prods, literally on the edge of her seat, waiting for Elizabeth to finish her sentence.
“Perhaps this is silly, but I just want someone who just wants to be. To sit with me in the dry, boring moments. Someone who just wants to be with me. Someone like—” She cuts herself off, clears her throat and shakes her head. “Well, it doesn’t matter. You and I are running away after all.”
“I haven’t agreed to that, actually,” Maddie says absentmindedly, trying to calm her racing heart. For a moment, just a second, she’d thought Elizabeth was about to...well, it doesn’t matter.
Elizabeth reaches out, fingers circling around one of Maddie’s wrists. “But if I tried to leave?”
“I’d follow you,” Maddie says easily, with no hesitation at all. “If only to keep you out of trouble.”
Elizabeth smiles, her eyes soft. “Now see. That’s what I mean.”
x
The wedding is only days away when Maddie bursts into Elizabeth’s rooms, laden with bags. Her dramatic entrance isn’t quite given the reaction she’s looking for, only causing Elizabeth to look up from the letter she’s writing and eye Maddie with amusement. “Lost, Madeline?” she asks, eyes flicking from Maddie’s face to all the bags.
“I’ve thought about it and thought about it and thought about it, and I realized...why am I thinking about it at all?” Maddie says, dropping the bags and approaching Elizabeth, dropping to her knees in front of her.
“What are we talking about?”
“You wanting to run away.” Maddie holds out a hand, palm up, trying not to smile when Elizabeth takes it almost immediately. “I kept wanting to know why but it doesn’t matter. If you want to go, you should be able to go. So I made a plan.”
Elizabeth blinks. “You made a plan?” she repeats, almost dazedly.
“I gathered supplies,” she gestures towards the bags, “got Sophie’s help with distracting guards at the gates so no one can warn your brother or the knights, even trained Hamlet not to freak out in the woods—”
“—is that where you’ve been going in the afternoons lately?” Elizabeth interrupts, but Maddie is on a roll.
“So just say the word. If you want to go, we go. I’ve sent letters ahead to friends, so we’ll have someplace to go, or we can just travel and explore. Or if you want to stay, get married to Evie,” here she physically has to keep herself from gagging, “I can help with that too. I can talk with her about being less intense maybe or—”
“—you’re such an idiot, Madeline,” Elizabeth breathes out, and that’s all the warning Maddie gets before Elizabeth is leaning forward, hands cupping Maddie’s face, and kisses her. “The only thing I want,” she says softly as she pulls away, and Maddie is quite shocked she’s still able to speak when she’s just taken Maddie’s breath away, “is you. Wasn’t that obvious?”
“It is now,” Maddie manages to say, and this time, she’s the one who closes the distance between them, bags and plans and thoughts of running away all forgotten.
XxX
“And in the end,” Maddie finishes, gesticulating wildly with her hands, “the princess marries the squire and doesn’t spare the dumb knight a single thought ever again.”
Silence follows her words, Lizzie’s hand rubbing a gentle pattern into her back while Sophie and Jack merely blink at her for a moment.
“That was fantastic,” Jack finally says, struggling not to smile. “I’m actually a little shocked Evie didn’t find herself stuck in a well or something for all time, cursed forever.”
“That’s the sequel,” Maddie says, allowing Lizzie to burrow her face into her neck, running her fingers through her wife’s hair. “Part two coming soon.”
Sophie lets out a loud snort, getting to her feet and stretching. “Well, I think it’s adorable that the two of you write fanfiction about your own lives,” she says brightly, smiling to ensure there’s no bite to her words. “I for one am just glad to be included, in all fairness. Maybe a bit more next time, though. My part was tragically small.”
“They’re love stories, Soph, you’re not supposed to be involved,” Lizzie mumbles from where her face is still pressed against Maddie’s neck. Both Jack and Sophie protest jokingly at that, carrying the faux outrage even as they gather their things and wave goodbye to leave.
When they’re alone, Lizzie pulls away and smooths back Maddie’s hair, pressing a light kiss to her forehead and lingering there.
“I’d always choose you, you know,” she whispers, ducking her head so that their foreheads are pressed together. “In this life or any other. No one else comes close.”
(It’s sweet and nice and Maddie likes to hear the way Lizzie’s mouth curls over the words, the way she lingers on choose and you. Maddie likes the way that Lizzie knows to reassure her without knowing about Evie’s call or Maddie’s annoyance.
She likes that Lizzie knows her.)
“But it’s nice to know you’ve got a backup, huh?” Maddie jokes, lacing her fingers between Lizzie’s, unable to help her smile when Lizzie uses her free hand to hook a finger through a belt loop and tug Maddie closer. “In case things between us don’t work out?”
“Well, it never hurts to be prepared,” Lizzie says with a laugh, her free hand now at Maddie’s chin, thumb brushing her jawline. Her expression turns serious. “You know I love you, right? Just you.”
“Gasp! What about Hamlet and Macbeth?”
“Madeline,” Lizzie stresses, her hand moving to the back of Maddie’s neck, thumb now brushing under her ear. “I’m being serious.”
Maddie drops her head onto Lizzie’s shoulder, sighing into the feeling of her wife’s hand in her own, the other lightly massaging the back of her neck.
“I know. In this life or any other, I’d choose you too.” She pauses, pressing her free hand to Lizzie’s back, running her fingers up Lizzie’s spine slowly. “Though, my backup is Jack. I think you need to know.”
Lizzie pulls away with a start as Maddie laughs.
“Come on, Maddie, way to ruin the moment.”
“No! Come back!” Maddie cries between her laughter, watching as Lizzie huffs indignantly and grabs Hamlet’s leash, causing the dog to begin trotting around the kitchen excitedly. “Don’t go! Don’t take the children because of this,” she adds, kneeling down and hugging Hamlet lightly, grimacing and giggling when he manages to lick the entire right side of her face.
And Lizzie, seemingly unable to help it, laughs along.
#fun fact: this does not constitute endorsement of staying friends with exes except if you want fic from them#which haha suckers i just got a 7k from this one#somerandr#origfic#5
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Complicated: Raphael x OC x Spencer Reid - Chapter 1
Authors Note: This is the first story I’m actually posting that I created on my own. I hope you all enjoy this.
Masterlist
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It's dark. Everywhere she looked and turned, there was nothing but darkness. Then out of nowhere, a particular turtle appeared in front of her, seemingly out of nowhere. The same turtle Angel fell in love with months ago, the same one who stole her heart, and inevitably, the same one who shattered it. She felt her blood run cold, her heart seemingly skipping a beat. There was nothing Angel could say or do. All she could do was stare at the turtle in front of her. The turtle glared at Angel before pulling out his sai. He made his way over to Angel. She wanted to move, but she couldn't. Once he was close enough, the turtle held the sai up, bringing it down to stab her.
Angel sat up in her bed, panting. Her body covered in sweat, and her heart racing. She couldn't do anything but sit there as the silent tears ran down her face. Eventually, Angel let her head fall into her hands as she cried.
Every night it was the same nightmare. Time and time again, Angel had continued to experience this over and over. It mentally drained her and made her feel as though she was hopeless. Angel quickly shook those thoughts out of her head.
No. Not again.
It had been six months since Angel and Raphael broke up, and six months since she left. Of course, a couple of weeks after she left, she received repeated phone calls and text from Raphael. It was so severe that Angel had to change her number to get Raph to stop. Angel wrapped her arms around herself as she took a deep breath. Looking over at the time, she decided to go ahead and get ready for work. Angel made her way into her bathroom to shower and get herself prepared for the day.
After making sure the water was the perfect temperature, she stripped her clothes off and stepped into the shower. Angel stood under the water for a good five minutes, letting the warm water run down her body as she closed her eyes. A shower was what Angel needed, especially after the nightmare she had. She almost didn't realize how long she was in the shower, but once she did, Angel had stepped out and dried herself off. Wrapping the towel around her, Angel makes her way back to her room and pulled out a pair of black pants and a black tee, as well as a black belt and a couple of socks.
Angel stepped out to her living room towards her coffee table. She bends down, grabbing a gun holster and hooking it to her belt where she could easily and quickly draw her gun, after grabbing her credentials and badge. Clipping the badge to her shirt, Angel couldn't help but let her mind think about the nightmare she had. What did it mean, and more importantly, why was she still thinking of Raph. It's been six months since they broke up, and Angel should be over him. He certainly was over her. It brought painful memories whenever Angel thought about how he left her for his ex-girlfriend. Angel didn't want to even imagine what they were doing right now. In her heart, she knew it would break her, and there was no time for that. She had her new life now, a new job, a new place. Yet, with all this change, Angel had also built a wall around her heart. She didn't want, no, she wouldn't be able to handle it if it was broken again. Angel shook her head gently before she a cup of coffee and walked out the door. Making sure her door was locked, Angel makes her way out of the apartment complex towards her car.
It took about 30 minutes, but Angel eventually arrived at the FBI headquarters in Quantico. Stepping out of the car, Angel takes a deep breath and closing her eyes, she enjoys the beautiful weather outside. After a couple moments, she makes her way into the building towards the elevator, pressing the button for the 6th floor. It took a few minutes, but eventually, the doors to the elevator open and Angel makes her way out of the elevator. She walked into the bullpen of the Behavioral Analysis Unit.
There, sitting at his desk, was Spencer Reid. Spencer was the first agent she informally met on her first day, and she was lying if she didn't mention he was the most intriguing. Unlike most guys who have a very macho attitude, Spencer was the complete opposite. He was socially-awkward and often stuttered, but he was absolutely brilliant. A genius in straightforward terms.
Spencer had three Ph.D.'s in mathematics, chemistry, and engineering, as well as two BA in psychology and sociology. What's more impressive was he has an IQ of 187, eidetic memory and can read 20,000 words per minute. If Angel hadn't seen this with her own eyes, she would have never believed it. Despite Spencer being socially-awkward, the two had actually become close friends. They both connected through their love of books, Doctor Who, and of course, coffee. During the time they have known each other, they've gone on multiple coffee dates where all the conversation was about was the most recent book they've read or the latest Doctor Who episode.
Spencer looked up from his file and smiled at Angel. It was apparent he had developed a bit of a crush on her. How could anyone not? She was clearly gorgeous, but she also was smart, kind, courageous. The list went on and on. While Spencer really liked Angel, he knew she wasn't ready for a relationship right now. They didn't talk much about her ex-boyfriend, but enough to see that she wasn't available to date anyone at the moment. It didn't matter, Spencer was willing to wait for her.
"Angel, hey. Did you see the new episode last night?" Spencer asked as he stood from his desk, walking over towards Angel.
Angel smiled, letting a small laugh escape her lips before shaking her head. "Unfortunately, no. I was on the phone with my parents last night and ended up missing it." Angel said, laughing as she put her bag down next to her desk and her coffee cup on top of the coaster sitting in the top right corner of her desk.
Spencer faked a gasp, his left hand going up to his chest as he let out a laugh. "Angel, how dare you. You have disgraced the name of Doctor Who." He joked before letting out another laugh, leaning against a desk opposite of Angel before noticing that she looked tired, and almost as if she was crying. "Angel, is everything alright? You look like you've been crying recently." Spencer asked, his voice immediately lowering, his eyes full of concern.
Angel mentally cursed to herself. Of course, Spencer would notice. She works with profilers who see every little thing about behaviors. Angel sighed, biting the bottom of her lip. Of course, she had told Spencer about the nightmare and described it, but it still wasn't easy to admit it. ".....I had the same nightmare again last night," Angel eventually admitted as she looked up at Spencer, her eyes casting so many emotions. Pain. Sadness. Anger, a little bit. Angel hated that she still thought of Raph, especially after seven months.
Spencer sighed as he walked over, gently pulling her into a hug. A gesture he'd done so many times, it felt natural. All he wanted to do was protect her. But how can one possibly protect someone from nightmares? It was impossible. He may not be able to stop them, but he can at least bring some comfort to the woman he was in love with. "I'm sorry, Angel. Is there anything I can do to help? Maybe a Doctor Who session with popcorn and your favorite candy?" Spencer asked before pulling away, looking her in her deep brown eyes.
Angel looked Spencer in the eyes before letting a sigh out, then she smiled at him. "A Doctor Who session sounds amazing, Spence," Angel said as she pulled away, grabbing her coffee and taking a sip.
Spencer and Angel eventually sat down at their appropriate desks, filling out paperwork as the rest of their team made their way in. Not even five minutes after their Unit Chief showed up, Emily walked out of her office, holding up a file and motioning to the briefing room. "Guys, we've got a case. Meet in the briefing room." Emily said in a firm tone as she walked towards the room.
Spencer and Angel both nodded before standing up and making their way as well. They took their usual seats next to each other at a round table with a screen in front, showing the crime scene photos. One by one, the team filed in. First, Rossi, then JJ, Lewis, Simmons, Alvez, and Garcia.
Garcia takes her usual place standing next to the screen with her remote in hand. "All right, my furry friends, pack your bags because you are headed to the Big Apple. NYPD is reporting 3 bodies of female victims, ages 20-25, and brunettes. The bodies were all found in alleyways next to garbage bins. They had no clothes on, and there were multiple stab wounds to the chest and genital areas, however no signs of sexual assault. Our first victim is Victoria Duncan, a 22-year old college student. She had just moved to New York about 6 months ago but was reported missing three weeks ago when she didn't show up for her psychology class for a few days straight. Professors say she was a great kid who wouldn't miss school unless there was a reason. Next, we have 20-year old Madeline Nelson. She worked as a waitress at a local diner, and she was reported missing about a week after Victoria when she didn't show up for her shift at work. One of her co-workers went to her apartment only to find she wasn't there, and that's when she called police. Our latest victim is 24-year old Jessie Malcolm. She worked at an insurance company, a typical 9-5 job. She was reported missing last week after she also missed her shift at work. Police say there are no obvious ways their paths would have crossed. They all lived in different parts of the city, hung out at different places, even had different banks. There's no sign that any of the ladies even knew each other." Garcia said as she showed all the victim's pictures of their face, bodies after death as well as the dumpsites.
No matter how many dead bodies Angel has seen, they always managed to creep her out to some sense of the word. Though, she never let it bother her. Angel looked over the crime scene photos of the bodies, looking for any signs of restraints. "Garcia, is there anyone who's gone missing recently that fits the description of our victims?" Spencer asked as he looked up, leaning back in his chair slightly.
Garcia shook her head softly before responding to Spencer, "Not yet, but I will double-check and let you know."
Emily nodded before looking to the team. "Alright, if this unsub has a schedule, we've got a few days before he finds his next victim. Wheels up in 30." The team nodded in unison before standing up, grabbing their files, and heading to their desks to grab their go-bag and equipment.
Angel couldn't help but let her mind wander. New York City. The same place she left seven months ago, and the same place that her first love lived at. She prayed to whatever god was up there that she didn't run into Raphael. With her bad luck, though, She probably would.
No matter. It doesn't matter if Angel does see Raph again, she's going for her job, and that's that. Whether she was ready or not, she knew she needed to prepare herself to see him again if the time comes.
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Nano Week One
The Ones in Control is currently at 20,109 words.
The Forgotten Protectors is at 5,280 words.
a couple of excerpts under the cut.
Excerpt from the Forgotten Protectors:
A tree crashed down to the road right in front of where the car stopped. Char’s chest heaved her holding onto Kai’s arm with a death grip.
“WHY THE FUCK DO TREES KEEP TRYING TO KILL ME?” She yelled. Kai turned to her, an eyebrow raised.
“There is no need for you to shout. I can hear you just fine. This happened when you were with the Johnsons too?” She nodded once, trying to catch her breath. “Then we need to hurry and discover what you are or to put a stronger suppressant spell on you. The one currently holding back your powers is wearing thin.”
“Wait.” They motioned for her to continue. “Did you just insinuate that I caused the trees to try to kill me?”
“If the trees’ goals were to kill you, then you would be dead. No, your power wants your attention and is trying to get it in any way possible. Close your eyes.” She did so and felt the temperature in the car drop as a bright light shone behind her eyelids before it all disappeared. “You may open them now.” She opened her eyes to see a frown etched onto Kai’s face. “The current spell that was placed on you to prevent your powers from showing through is fading: your powers are getting too strong for the binds. It seems like we have less than a week before it completely shatters.”
“So…we have a week to find out who put the spell on me and to figure out what the hell I am?” Kai nodded and Char let out a dry chuckle. “Well. This is fantastic. I swear, if I wake up from this dream, I’m going to go launch myself out of my window.” Kai’s frown deepened and they placed their hand on Char’s.
“I can assure you, this is no dream. Even if it was, that would be no reason to throw yourself out of a window.” Char gave them a look. They huffed. “That was part of your humor was it not?”
“It was.” They nodded and removed their hand, Char quickly adjusting her sleeves on her arm. “Are angels omniscient?”
“No.”
“Okay,” She said, going back to examining the fallen tree. Near the roots was singed, so lightning had struck it…Wait. Kai just said that her power was trying to get out. That this was her power trying to get her attention. “Fuck! Did I kill Madeline?” She shouted. Kai was looking out the window, staring into the forest. “Kai? Please. I need to know. Was it me? Is Madeline dead because of me?” Kai slowly turned to her, looking at her with sorrowed eyes.
“Yes.” Char’s breathing stopped, her mind reeling.
Excerpt from The Ones in Control. (Warnings: Mentions of suicidal behavior and drug abuse.)
“These pills,” Aragon raised his hand where my bottle was. I took a step towards him and he disappeared, appearing immediately at the other side of the room with a flash of blue light. My eyes widened as I looked back to the door, hoping that no one comes to investigate that. “These pills are only harming you. You cannot begin to fathom what suppressing your powers like this will do to you.” His eyes looked genuinely concerned for a second before phasing back to the cold look that he had for the majority of this conversation.
“Maybe I don’t care! Did you think of that?” I asked. “Maybe I don’t care if it messes up my chances of controlling my powers because I don’t want them in the first place. I was sure I was human. There was never any doubt about that until I started having episodes! Things start moving or exploding, things like that frightens a young, human child. Then Discovery Day? Well fuck, guess I’m not even from the planet. Do you understand that? The fear that raised when anti-alien groups popped up everywhere. No! You cannot begin to understand the pure terror that gripped me tight. I was fully prepared to open that window,” I pointed to the one behind him, “And step out. I would not be the reason that my dad’s entire life would crumble. Because that is what would happen. If the public found out that Anthony Chatwyn had an alien child, they would tear him apart. They would say he is biased and demand that someone else take over his position with the Council of Alien Affairs.
“That would break him. He loves his job. He loves building things that would be used to protect us if aliens ever chose to invade earth. And he loves everyone on the council. Taking that away from him would be selfish. My existence threatens all of his livelihood. He would hate me if what I really am got out to the public. Which is also something I don’t know. I don’t know what I am! It’s fucking terrible, to have your entire existence thrown on its head at thirteen. At thirteen when you want to throw yourself out of a window because you’re nothing that your parents wanted. There is no way they would have still adopted me if they knew what I was. I was worthless to my birth parents and I would be a burden on my parents.
“There is nothing like becoming numb to who you are just so that it doesn’t hurt so much when people complain to you about aliens in your own fucking home when you yourself are an alien. Do you still want to claim that you know something?” I spat. He was looking at me with wide eyes, tears in them. He took a step forward and I took one back.
“Taylor…”
“Leave me alone!” I screamed and everything in the room launched towards him. He disappeared with a flash of blue light. I collapsed to my knees on the broken glass. Tears streamed down my face. I buried my face in my hands and cried.
#nanowrimo 2019#Week One#My writing#my excerpt#my excerpts#WIP: The Ones in Control#WIP: The Forgotten Protectors
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I'm asking out of sincere curiosity not cause I'm anti-Emma but why do people love Emma Frost so much? I don't hate her I just think she gets away with things other characters can't (ie being rude, mean, catty, to people who didn't do anything to her or acting stuck up) People will call other characters bxtches for doing that but she's 'brave, bold, interesting, complex' for it & I know her backstory is sad but it's nowhere near sad enough to justify some of her actions as a villain
I love Emma for a lot of reasons.
Very rarely do we get morally complex female characters; there really ISN’T many female ‘Walter White’s’ or 'Don Drapper’s’ in fiction… Most female characters tend to fit in the 'Madonna’ or 'Whore’ mode, even in modern writing.
Emma IS a complex character, in the fact that she does moral and immoral things. She started OUT as a villain…but doesn’t have a lot of remorse for that part of her life. She regularly WAS an X-Men…but didn’t always support Xavier. Her relationship with Scott started out as an affair…but she also very much loves him. She deeply cares about her students…but also at times makes horrible decisions that lead to her students deaths/trauma…
Even her sexualizing doesn’t ALWAYS fit in the 'femme fatale’ role; in the fact that she remains sexualized even as a hero (where usually female’s comfort with their sexuality tends to be a marker of a female villain…) and while she HAS fully said she uses it as a weapon… It’s also the fact that Emma is just comfortable with her own sexuality. Emma likes dressing the way she dresses and just doesn’t really care what others think. The same with the BDSM elements of her character; again it tends to be stereotyped as a 'villain thing’ despite TONS of studies that show people who engage in safe, sane, and consensual BDSM are totally normal, healthy, and not any more likely to be violent than anyone else…(also several studies found people in the kink community tend to be less likely to engage in victim shaming behaviors…). Emma kind of breaks that mold a bit by continuing those elements even as a hero.
Let’s be honest-male characters can get away with snarkiness (see Tony Stark, for example). Much like morally dubious heroines, female characters that essentially do the same thing tend to get marked as 'bitchy’, 'rude’, 'vapid’, 'catty’, ect…
There’s a lot of interesting stories you can do with Emma, because she tends to be a more morally grey character.
What I also like about Emma is she tends to be one of the few X-Men to regularly care about the X-teens, and at the very least does TRY to do right by them. For all Emma’s flaws, she did really enjoy being a teacher and her one weakness always is her students (or…at least since they retconned her a bit in the 90’s…). Even in New Mutants, she often was the one to wake Magneto up to the fact that his students were CLEARLY depressed and not doing well (ALTHOUGH Erik WAS a pretty BOMB teacher himself compared to Xavier…).
I also enjoy Emma for regularly being one to call out the problems with Xavier’s philosophies, and honestly I think during extreme times, like IvX; Emma has been 100% right.
I like that Emma is regularly shown to be very intelligent and business savvy-she has essentially built up her own companies without her father OR Shaw’s help.
I actually really enjoy her character in Claremont’s work as well as a villain-just because she’s still a fun character even being evil…and I think her relationship with Shaw was really interesting (personally, I don’t like the retcon around Emma being coerced into the Hellfire Club, because I think it strips her of a lot of her autonomy). While Claremont DID play the sexualized villain angle straight with Emma, I do think even there she is a pretty interesting and multifaceted character…
Emma’s attitude is also really interesting in the fact that she just doesn’t CARE…or at least wants people to believe she doesn’t. Emma isn’t going to suck up to people or sugar coat things. She’s fine being cold and ruthless if it means getting things done, which is an attitude needed to balance out the more optimistic characters.
I also think it’s interesting how much Emma’s origin fluctuates…and frankly doesn’t really matter. It doesn’t really matter what is and isn’t the truth with Emma, because in my opinion; Emma will always manipulate the truth to her needs. Emma has essentially cultivated this image of herself that it doesn’t really matter what’s real because ultimately Emma really only shows people what she wants them to see. The truth is arbitrary because in many ways Emma created her identity.
I also think Scott Summers became a more interesting character because of his relationship with Emma. That’s not to say I disliked Jean and Scott; (the affair DID originally upset me when it happened and I still have warm feelings towards the Scott/Jean relationship) but I do think where Jean always encouraged Scott to come out of his shell; Emma accepted Scott for who he was. I also think where Scott and Jean tended to be 'high school sweethearts/fairytale romance’, Emma and Scotts relationship was a little more of a mature depiction; in the fact that it was a relationship with it’s flaws. While I initially disliked Morrison’s choice with the affair, I have actually grown to really appreciate that plot point because I think there is some truth to the fact that sometimes people just grow apart. Scott and Jean grew into different people than who they originally were in the beginning of their relationship, and that’s okay.Both Emma and Scott had to accept that their partners had other partners before them. Emma was pretty accepting in my opinion that Scott did at one time love Jean, still had positive feelings about that relationship, and still cared very much for Jean. Scott, in turn, was accepting of Emma being a sexual person and being comfortable with herself. Scott never shamed her for her lifestyle or the fact that she did have augmentation, for example. Both had to accept their relationship started with an affair and the hurt they caused other people. Both made sure to communicate and be more open with each other, despite that being difficult at times for both of them. Both tended to be more logical, at times ruthless, and emotional distant people; and could understand each other. I think the relationship brought out a different side of Scott, and I liked seeing his downtime with Emma being them making dry jokes, Scott painting her nails, or convincing her to celebrate her birthday in a way she was comfortable with, ect…* I personally like Scott being represented as a flawed person, instead of the perpetual boy-scout. I think Morrison’s story fits within the canon (just look at how his marriage to Madeline went) and the fact that Scott is an emotionally stunted individual from years of Xavier pushing him to be leader of the X-Men. Scott will always self sabotage his relationships, in my opinion, because he can’t let go of being an X-Men. Scott also repressing his wants and needs in his relationship with Jean also makes sense with Scott’s background and emotional issues, along with the fact that he often put Jean on a pedestal… It does in my opinion make sense that he would turn to Emma, a person who is completely comfortable with herself and who Scott can see more as an equal than someone to always strive for…I think Emma liked Scott because like Emma, Scott went through A rough childhood and has worked to come out stronger for it. Scott is an intelligent and tactful leader, but because he’s not as charismatic or really gets the social side of things…tends to get less noticed for his leadership. I think Emma really was the person to notice him and his strengths. Emma I think also saw Scott as someone who had been somewhat manipulated by Xavier and encouraged him to get past his dependence on Xavier for his identity. We really get to see Scott become his own person BECAUSE of his relationship with Emma. Scott also saw the positives in Emma, which I think Emma really needed. Despite what Emma says, I do think there is some insecurities around her thinking that maybe she is as cold and heartless as others say.
In short, I just think the relationship is really interesting and the motivations with each character well thought out.
Emma’s relationships with characters like Kitty, Jean, Banshee, Magneto, Monet, ect… All tend to be just really interesting and she is a great foil to all these characters because she brings out other sides of those characters…in turn, I think characters like Kitty, Banshee, Hellion, ect; also bring out the multifaceted sides of Emma and just help build onto her character…
And finally…the ButterRum jokes just NEVER GET OLD….
So yeah…here’s a few reasons why I just REALLY LOVE Emma!
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BODY AND SOUL Part 16 (Duncan Shepherd/Mackenzie Stone Millory AU)
BODY AND SOUL MASTERPOST
Author’s Note: OKAY DUCKENZIES. This part dragged my ass. It took forever, but once again, I’m so happy with it. My schedule has been punishing. I can’t stop writing and never feel like doing anything else but I have a full time job and my relationship and all this other shit in my life and I have to sleep sometimes and I’m trying to find a balance. But I’m so happy lately? I’m so lit all the time, everyone I know IRL is like “what is UP with you” because I’m writing a book (this, this is the book) and I’m fucking beside myself, I’m so relieved about it, I’m so happy about it all the time but I’m also having a hard time disconnecting from it to plug into other things lately. Still working out how to do that. The thought Kenzie has about Duncan in the beginning of this part (”...you are exalted in my eyes and my body and my soul”) is literally a thought she had about him in another life, and she will never know that. Plume has a really fancy three-course menu that I didn’t feel like writing about at length, so I sort of chose one thing for each of them off it and skipped the rest. Here’s A SUNDAY KIND OF LOVE, imo one of the best love songs of all time. The man who got upstairs at Kenzie’s work and tried to hurt her will feature again. I listened to this remix of Imogen Heap’s Headlock a lot for the sex (69 dudes) in this part (sex which I am very proud of if I may say so, I can write a goddamn sex scene y’all--THREE SEX SCENES THANKS); cuz the mood in that is VERY sex-vibe Duckenzie. Duncan’s dream that Kenzie is an angel is based on @inkedbadwolfart‘s ICONIC Michael x Mallory piece. Deep Creek Lake is real but the cabin I’m creating that belongs to the Shepherd family is of my own invention. I’ve never liked “Dunc” as a nickname for Duncan and it doesn’t really fit Duckenzie, so I came up with another nickname I like more and Kenzie will indeed call him Dunny every now and then when she’s feeling particularly affectionate from here on out. This is the top Kenzie wears in the morning and this is the skirt (which I ordered the other day, can’t wait to get it!!). This is her star necklace. These are her pointed boots which she wore to Le Diplomate as well and I have them irl and they are legit my favorite shoes I own and always make me feel sexy hence them giving Kenzie that feeling too. Here’s the short-sleeved button-down Duncan puts on in the morning; summer clothes from here on out for awhile, babes. I had to put The Chain in this part; I’m a die-hard Fleetwood Mac/Stevie Nicks fan. A reminder that the MASTERPOST wants you to reblog it and pass it around because I won’t be loading the fic up on AO3 until it’s totally finished, which...I don’t know how long that’ll take? Maybe a few more weeks, maybe a month, maybe longer. Still not entirely sure where this story is ending, I figure I’ll know when I get there. The Shepherd mansion (that is, Annette’s mansion) is some kind of cross between this mansion and this one in my mind. The chairs in the dressing room look like this. To my beloved Duckenzies: @impiorumrequies, @hi-ilovedamien, @nat-de-lioncourt, @ladywriter94, @leiwya, @icouldrun, @killcort, @starscavengers, @carousallie, the list goes on--I love you more than words can express. THANK YOU.
“I would like for you, Mackenzie, to do a few interviews with us next week.” Kenzie refocused on Duncan’s mother; her thoughts had been full of Duncan’s eyes (sky and storm) since he had gazed at her so lovingly and pushed something into her; wrapped his love around me, like a blanket made of softest gold, that’s what it felt like, and I pushed it out of me and onto Annette and then her face fell and she looked so confused and then she softened...the anger in her eyes towards me dissolved and now her eyes look the way I think they probably looked when she was a girl, a girl who wanted something else; wanted to be loved, wanted to love. A wave of affection for Duncan had crashed into Kenzie, and she couldn’t help but gaze over to him with fierce devotion; you are my Prince, most beloved to me, and you are exalted in my eyes and my body and my soul. The thought had fallen, soft as a sheer curtain, over her sight and her mind, as if it were something she’d read in a book somewhere and forgotten; and she had stared at him and flowers had bloomed in her thoughts to behold him; and the moment had extended, spread out far beyond itself, and she had felt the weight of time and the depth of his love for her again and she was lost in it for a little while.
“It’s important...that if you and Duncan are going to be...together...you understand your new responsibilities as a part of the public face of Shepherd Unlimited.” Annette spoke with a strange slowness, as if something was holding her back, and Kenzie couldn’t decide if it was the heavy energy that now hovered in the room (something that passed between Duncan and I, I don’t understand what it was, but it had some kind of power) or Annette’s own inability to say what she was truly thinking or feeling. Or her inability to accept the idea of them, truly together. Whatever the reason, Kenzie looked away from her; she found Annette terribly beautiful, but Duncan’s mother had a strange coldness that raised the hairs on Kenzie’s neck, drained the blood from her fingers. As Annette spoke, she seemed to gain momentum, falling back into her clipped cadence. “That will include making public appearances with us and coordinated communication with the press. I’m sure Duncan has mentioned this, but I expect you to come to the house tomorrow to do a fitting for the Gala. Everything has to be carefully planned, it’s the most important public event of the year for the organization. From now on, you’ll be expected to present yourself publicly with physical, verbal, and behavioral sophistication. Duncan himself has been a poor example of that lately.”
Kenzie looked back across the table to Duncan; his eyes betrayed none of his discomfort, but she felt his annoyance, drifting in dark colors: To hell with sophistication, keeping her safe is what I care about. If she isn’t happy, nothing else matters. His thoughts fell over her with fierce warmth; Kenzie felt as though she could drink them, swallow them, absorb them, feel them as though his fingers were all over her.
“Mackenzie, do you understand me?” Annette took another long drink from her wine glass, eyes hovering across the table at Kenzie.
“I...yes, Annette. I think so.”
“That article published today was an opposition to the company. I expect you to turn down editorials of that nature in the future.”
Kenzie was silent, pressing her lips together. No, I don’t think so. I’m going to write about what I feel strongly about. Or why write at all.
The waiter returned at that moment, mercifully, and Kenzie breathed a silent, internal sigh of relief. She had the distinct feeling that Annette not only did not tolerate being lied to, but that she was preternaturally skilled at sniffing out said lies; that she could pinpoint them with precision and yank them out of a person. Better to lapse into silence than to lie to her, I think. Annette ordered foie gras; Duncan ordered lobster. Kenzie looked down the menu, lost; she hadn’t even contemplated food under Annette’s steely gaze, and it seemed to be in a foreign language, suddenly.
“I think you’d love the risotto, Kenzie,” Duncan said to her gently. She nodded to him gratefully and said “I’ll have that.” Thanks baby. Affection washed over her again and he gave her a little smile. Baby, you’re doing so good. Just a little bit longer and we’ll be done. Soon, we can escape. Annette ordered another bottle of wine; the one she’d had on the table when they’d come in was already half empty. Duncan’s mother tipped it carefully into Kenzie’s wine glass, filling it about a third of the way, and pushed the stem closer to Kenzie, pointedly. Then, she poured another glass for Duncan.
“To the continued success of Shepherd Unlimited and our dynasty.” Annette raised her glass and nodded to both of them with stern expectation. Duncan raised his and nodded at Kenzie a little; she brought hers up with a timid hand and Annette clinked against it with a sharp tap. Kenzie drank a small sip of the wine; hope it isn’t poisoned, she thought wildly, watching Annette drink from her glass again, eyes skirting over to Duncan taking a deep gulp of his, as if he were terribly thirsty and it was water. Duncan looks so beautiful. But he always does. His hair fell over his forehead, perfect waves down the sides, falling behind his ears. The velvet blazer gave him an almost royal appearance; like his throne was sitting in some vast chamber somewhere, waiting for him. His straight nose and full lips were like a statue carved by a master sculptor; he seemed too lovely to her to be real, I don’t think I’ll ever stop thinking that, feeling that way, like he’d been molded from the first human clay and every piece of come after had been slightly less. He pressed one long hand against the side of the stubble at his cheek; I want to bury my fingers in that stubble, I want to breathe it deeply into my senses, impossibly intense blue eyes carefully switching between the two women sitting in front of him, warily at Annette, with aching affection at Kenzie, then back again.
“I am capable of putting my differences with Madeline aside if you can conduct yourself appropriately,” Annette spoke again. Her gaze slid between her son and Kenzie; she seemed to regard their obvious adoration with a mixture of disdain and incredulousness; she can see how much he loves me, and it’s upsetting her, Kenzie thought. Well, Annette, get fucking used to it.
“Do you think you can do that?”
Annette stared at her, hands around her wine glass, head cocked slightly, her eyes like dark pools. This woman is like a very dark well, Kenzie thought. And I don’t know how far down the bottom of the well is. I think it might be a very long well, and very, very dark. But she loves Duncan. I can tell. I don’t know if the love is the kind of love I know, the kind I feel for those I care for; her love is different, I think. But I do think, in his case, it’s real love, in her fashion.
“I’ll do my best, Annette.”
“Your best must be as close to perfect as you can possibly make it, dear. Or else you will not last long in our world. Steel your mind, Mackenzie. You no longer have the luxury of living anonymously. To be part of this family, however long that may be, you accept the scrutiny and criticism of the nation.”
Kenzie bit her lip, clutching her hands together in her lap. “I can handle it.”
Duncan’s eyes flickered over her, bright with intensely warm emotion. So brave, so brave, she heard him think. ....your strength around you like gold...oh, Kenzie…
“I’ll be the judge of that,” Annette replied, and Duncan said, immediately, “She can, Mom. She’s one of the bravest people I’ve ever known. She’s amazing.”
“You sound drunk already, Duncan,” Annette rolled her eyes, her expression annoyed.
“Today someone got up into her office and tried to attack her,” Duncan said, his tone going dark as he looked at his mother. “They said something about the Shepherds taking everything away from them, so they were going to take something away from the Shepherds. I hired her a bodyguard yesterday, thank god--he’s the only reason she wasn’t injured. Being thrown into our world can’t be easy, and yet she was the one who insisted we still come to dinner tonight, Mom. I was contemplating cancelling on you. Already Kenzie has proven she is more than capable of navigating this world and has the resolve it takes to weather whatever comes her way. And she deserves your respect.”
Annette was silent and looked down; there was a flicker over her features; “I didn’t know about that,” she said, carefully. “I’m sorry that happened to you, Mackenzie.”
“I’m okay,” Kenzie said, fighting to keep the trembling edge she felt out of her voice. The truth was she didn’t feel very okay at all; the incident at One Franklin Square had terrified her and Kenzie longed for nothing more than the dinner to be over and to be held in Duncan’s arms in the safety and quiet of their bed with the rain falling against the window. Sweet Fates, hurry us on to that place, through this storm, through this rain, through this difficulty, she thought, looking into his eyes, fighting the bubbling emotion that threatened her again, feeling crushed and laid bare by the beauty of his face and the love in his eyes. She wanted to tell him what had happened in her own words with her own mouth and then she wanted him to press his mouth with aching need into her body and tangle the black sheets into symbols of their passion and their love and their devotion and press his fingers into her mouth and against her throat and down between her legs, where they belong my love, where you belong, pressed against me. I want to be alone with you my love and I don’t want to be here anymore. But Kenzie knew that this was part of the test; the test of knowing if she could indeed suffer a lifetime of Annette Shepherd; if she could put her love before her exhaustion and help Duncan in this way. And so she said again, “I’m okay. I would do anything for Duncan. I will do anything.”
“God, but you do remind me of Madeline.” Annette shook her head, as if to clear away her disorientation.
Two waiters came in then with their dinner; Kenzie’s risotto was delicious, savory and sweet, and she sent warm, grateful thoughts across the table toward Duncan again; he smiled at her and she was struck with another ache to hold him, to touch him; she watched his fingers stretch out at the side of his salad fork, towards her; he tapped them a little every now and then, and she could feel his impatience, his restlessness, his aching need for her. She wondered if Annette garnered strange delight from keeping them apart like this, even across a table; Duncan’s mother seemed like the kind of person who never did anything on accident, everything, every movement and inflection and gesture, ever-calculated. She’s trying to exert her will over him, Kenzie thought. Show him that she still owns him even though he belongs to me now and his desires have changed and she wants to pretend like she can’t see it but she can and that’s what made her so disoriented. She didn’t expect to see love in his eyes when he looks at me, because she hasn’t seen it there before, not like this. But she saw it. And now she knows. Now, she can’t pretend it isn’t real, or that he’s infatuated, or what he feels is only lust. Even Annette can’t deny that Duncan Shepherd fucking loves me. He loves me. He loves me.
Kenzie couldn’t help it; she smiled at Annette, and Annette returned it, but very small, a smile that did not extend to her eyes. You think you’re going to be able to control me now, Kenzie thought. But you won’t be able to. Duncan is going to change your company. He’s going to change everything, and I’m going to help him. We’re going to take all of Shepherd Unlimited and we’re going to give its riches to people who need them and we’re going to create beautiful things and we’re going to help people and you won’t be able to stop us. I know it, deep in my bones. Kenzie turned her eyes to Duncan and he was watching her with intense concentration, a morsel of lobster paused in his fork in midair, halfway to his mouth; as if he had heard everything she’d been thinking and was struck with it, as if her could see her drawing him a map that was invisible to Annette even though she was sitting directly in front of them, and the luminous smile in his eyes filled her with a depth of glowing energy that felt like sunlight on her skin. Yes baby. Yes, we will.
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It was well past 10 when Annette finally released them; by then, Kenzie felt as though her body was in physical pain, such was the depth of her desire for Duncan to hold her. I thought yesterday had been long, she thought, but today was almost unbearable. Annette had insisted on discussing endless details of the most recent episode of Duncan’s show, and he answered her in clipped, short sentences. Every now and then she shot Kenzie a suspicious look and seemed to change the way she was about to say something; she thinks she can’t trust me, and she’s not necessarily wrong, Kenzie thought. Finally, Duncan had come around the table and helped her out of the seat on Annette’s left side; relief flooded her at the warm, smooth feeling of his large hand grasping around her fingers; “It’s time for us to go, Kenzie had a very long day today, Mom.” “I expect you at noon sharp, Mackenzie,” Annette had said, her eyes flashing at Kenzie with a dismissive shimmer; Duncan leaned forward and she inclined a sharp cheekbone for him to kiss. Then, Duncan pulled Kenzie out of the room with a pointed determination, leaving his mother there to her own devices; Kenzie followed behind him, dizziness washing over her in a wave as they stepped out of the cocoon of the secluded room and back into the warmer light of the restaurant, and then out to the polished foyer. She could hear the rain falling against the windows; Duncan had pulled out his phone with his other hand and was texting Samuel, then he looked at her with a terrible softness (those eyes, my love, those blue eyes) and tucked the phone back into the inner pocket of his velvet blazer, his fingers coming up to her cheek, their warmth sending a flutter of sensation down her skin.
“Baby, you did so fucking good,” he whispered down to her mouth, and Kenzie sighed at the sound of his voice, her body flooding with the relief of his touch. “God, I wanted to touch you so much, that was agony. You are so brave and I’m so proud of you, Kenzie--”
“I wanted to touch you too, baby, Duncan, I wanted to so much--” Kenzie pulled him down into her roughly by the lapels of his velvet jacket, his full lips crashing against hers with a deep heat, her hands going into his hair, those waves like fading autumn and Duncan’s hands fell down to the small of her back, pressing her tightly into him, the desperation in his touch filling her with coiled hunger, her hips grinding against his thighs. The doorman and the people at the reception desk nearby carefully ignored them; Kenzie felt grateful towards them. Four hours with Annette Shepherd unable to touch each other and I think we’ve earned this. Duncan’s phone sounded; “Come on, Samuel’s here,” he breathed into her and his breath was sweet with wine and the chocolate mousse they’d had for dessert and Kenzie heard the tiny moan that escaped from her lips as he pulled away from her, such was her need for him. “Come on baby,” Duncan said again, pulling her gently through the door, “let’s go home.”
In the shadowed backseat of the BMW Kenzie folded close against him, her shoes kicked off and her legs tucked under her; Duncan’s arm was around her and her head was in the crook of his chest, her face pressed into his smooth shirt, and Duncan was looking down at his phone; emails. “I messaged Ben today,” he murmured to her, softly, tucking his phone away, as Etta James floated towards them from the stereo again (I want a Sunday kind of love...a love to last past Saturday night...and I’d like to know...it’s more than love at first sight...), “I want you to sit in on the interview, baby, okay?” Kenzie smiled despite how tired she felt; “I’m sure Ben will love that.” “It doesn’t matter what he thinks of it, because I’m not doing it if you aren’t there.” Kenzie nodded; she looked at Duncan in the dappled color of the neon lights they passed and was struck again by how beautiful he was; feeling shy suddenly, her affection tumbling out of her, unable to be contained: “Duncan, you look so handsome right now.” He turned his head to her, smiling, and she saw the shyness in it; in him. “And you look so lovely, baby.” That he felt shy before her, too, made her heart clench. Kenzie pulled her phone out of the little clutch on the seat beside her; she opened the Instagram app on her phone as Duncan said “Baby, what are you doing...”
“I think it’s time we took a selfie together, baby,” she said, matter-of-factly. Kenzie lifted the phone above them and reversed the camera so it faced them; she looked up into it, her eyes bright and wide under her dark eyeshadow and carefully applied mascara, her head still tucked under Duncan’s arm, and he inclined his head down to her, pressing his nose gently against her hair, closing his eyes. Kenzie snapped a picture; Samuel had been driving through the glow of downtown still, and the lights had fallen over them in pink, blue and gold; over Duncan’s cheek and Kenzie’s forehead, giving the picture a haunting luminescence. Kenzie brought the picture up to her eyes--it stopped her heart, the peaceful expression on his profile, the glittering aspect of her gaze, the lights falling over them.
“We look so good together, baby--” Duncan whispered into her ear, and his lips fell into the small space below; Kenzie gasping at the sweetness of the sensation, “--you are so fucking beautiful.” Kenzie sighed into his lips, pressing closer to him as she typed: The longest day, the greatest love. She hit Share with a satisfied smile. “You always look fucking beautiful,” she argued, her voice soft. “No, you fucking do,” Duncan murmured as his lips fell down her neck, his fingers threading through her hair. “You do angel, you do…”
Kenzie was aching for him, her body pulsing with need, but she hadn’t really told him what had happened that day, and she longed to; the burden of it was pressing into her heart, and she felt as though the weight of it was crushing her. “Baby, I...wanted to tell you what happened today.” Duncan lifted his head up immediately, leaning back to look at her, his face serious. He looked over her shoulder; “We’re home, baby,” he said, and Kenzie glanced behind her to see Samuel had pulled up to the high-rise. Finally. Samuel handed the roses to Duncan carefully as they got out of the car; there were no paps anywhere, and the rain was stopping again, the thunder moving off far into the distance and a barely-there drizzle fading away, the sky finally clear. The moon had returned though it was again barely a sliver in the sky; it hung there over the building as Kenzie looked up at it, an omen of the new cycle that had begun in earnest now; my new life has begun, and my life of anonymity is gone, she thought, the echo of Annette’s words falling down. Duncan carried the flowers carefully beside her as they moved upstairs; Anchaly gave him a nod, then looked at Kenzie with a smile; “you look lovely, Miss Stone, I trust whatever was distressing you earlier has been taken care of,” and Kenzie smiled back at him, nodding. Anchaly had a new book now; it was The Year of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion. “Yes, I’m better now, thanks, Anchaly.”
In the elevator they stared at each other, Duncan’s hands full of roses, Kenzie’s hand reaching out to tuck around his arm. “Before the man got upstairs, there had been some other people who had tried to get up, reporters from a magazine or something, I’m not really sure,” she started. “But the security downstairs caught them before they got to the elevators. The other guy was faster, I guess, and he didn’t really look like paparazzi--I don’t think he was.” The elevator slid open quietly and Kenzie used her key to open the penthouse door; Duncan continued to listen to her, quietly, as he opened the cupboard under the sink and brought out a Waterford vase for her roses, which had begun to wilt a little; fitting, because that’s how I feel too, Kenzie thought. Kenzie took the vase gently from his arms and brought it over to the coffee table alongside the low leather couch; the roses immediately threw their brilliant color against the juxtaposition of light and shadows there, one of the reading lamps switched on by the housekeepers. Kenzie looked down at them, emotion washing over her again. Then she turned to him and folded herself into him and Duncan kissed her hair and closed his eyes. “He had really wild eyes, I remember that. Like he was lost. But Harris had just gone to the bathroom...he was only away from me for a minute, I swear. The man comes up to my desk and he’s in a big overcoat and shaggy hair and he smelled...strange, sort of like gasoline. He grabbed my wrist with this terrible grip--” at that Kenzie looked down at her wrist and for the first time that day noticed a small purplish bruise that had begun to form there, Duncan reaching down delicately to examine it, bringing his lips down to her skin; “and he hisses into my face, looking right into my eyes. He said “There you are. I saw you on the videos. The Shepherds took everything away from me, so now I’m gonna take something away from the Shepherds.””
“God, baby.”
“He starts dragging me and Precious sees him but she’s too far away, she’s down at the other side of the office, and he’s so strong it feels like he’s going to snap my wrist and rip my hand out of my arm and I’m trying to get out of it but--but he’s just too fucking strong.” Kenzie felt tears in the back of her throat; she turned, pushing her hair to the side. “Unzip me, baby,” she said, and felt Duncan’s warm, long fingers between her shoulders, gently pulling the zipper down, his face pressing into her hair. Kenzie reached for his hand and then she pulled him, slowly, softly, into their bedroom (ours) and pushed the dress off her shoulders, stepping out of it, her hands coming up behind her to unclasp her bra and she could feel Duncan hovering there, close, but it was as if he was afraid to touch her. She turned and looked at him for a moment; he was still fully clothed and absolutely regal in his velvet blazer and she shivered, vulnerable; she pressed against him in just her panties now, his arms coming around the softness of her bare skin, and cradling her with his body, so much larger and so warm. “Harris comes out of the bathroom--” Kenzie continued, feeling able now that he was holding her again, “--and he sees this man pulling on me and I look at him and I scream help Harris help me and he goes up to this man and he hits him right in the throat under the chin with the flat of his hand and...the man just crumples like he’s made of paper.” Kenzie drifted her hands down the soft velvet of Duncan’s arms and turned her eyes up to him; his expression a dagger into her heart, his eyes dark with the memory of the fear she had seen there when he’d run out of the elevator and to her desk, his face white, his body shaking as she fell into his arms. “I just sort of stood there in shock for awhile, by the time I felt like I started breathing again I realized Harris was holding me up and my knees were buckling and he picked me up like I was a doll and set me in my desk chair and I just...I just burst into tears…”
“Oh Kenzie, oh, baby, oh no…” Duncan’s lips came down and kissed her eyelids, first one, then the other, his mouth came down and kissed the tip of her nose and then her cheeks, one at a time, and then her mouth, kissed her mouth with aching supplication and Kenzie thought that’s enough, I’m done and I don’t want to talk about it anymore tonight, I just want you to kiss me, kiss me everywhere, kiss me forever, and Kenzie whispered “Duncan,” into his mouth and she turned away from him to the lamp beside the bed and switched it off and they were bathed in darkness, the low light from the living room spilling through the doorway for a moment; “Shut the door, baby,” she whispered, and Duncan obeyed, turning and pressing it closed, and now they were in darkness entire, but for the low glow of the city somewhere far away through the window. “Your eyes look like gold,” he said to her, and he threw his blazer onto the floor (that’s right baby, abandon everything except for us) and moaned softly into her as her hands came up to unbutton his shirt, pulled his belt out with aching ease, unbuttoned his pants and pushed them away. “And yours look like blue fire,” she replied, up into his lips, pulling him down to her as she fell back onto the bed. He hovered above her and she could just see the outline of his hair over his eyes, the shape of his jaw, the shadow of his stubble, the soft shape of his lips, open and his stare falling down over her, and Kenzie loved the darkness because in that moment it felt like it was holding them, shielding them truly from the eyes of the world, creating a secret place where they could hide and all other thought could fade and only the two of them existed, in this place. His lips came down to her nipple and sucked with urgency, fingers coming around to push her breast into his mouth, and she shivered as his hair fell against her collarbone, a whisper of his love, and her hands went down his back, nails digging in and leaving red trails that were lost in the shadows, her legs coming around him, crossing at his back, pressing her sex up into his groin where she could feel the hardness of his cock through the two thin layers of fabric that covered them there. Duncan continued to suck, swirling his tongue over the hardness of her nipple again and again, then moved to the other breast and worked at it carefully, his free hand drifting down to the waistband of her panties and toying with it carefully in his thumb and index finger, pressing into her hip bone, but not moving them further down, not yet.
“I think my mother liked to try to keep us apart tonight,” he whispered against her between sucking on her, the tickle of his breath against the wetness he’d left on her making Kenzie’s eyes flutter. Duncan’s musky-wood smell was falling over her in the darkness and it made her heart beat wildly up into where his lips were devouring her, and she was dizzy with the strength of her senses, the presence of him in the absence of sight. “She wanted us to not be able to touch each other, but she failed, because I’m going to touch you everywhere now, I’m going to touch you until you’re written into my skin like a tattoo that can never be erased, I’m going to kiss you a thousand times, baby, kiss you until I’ve memorized every inch of you...”
Kenzie was murmuring before she even realized it herself; a low hum of yes, baby, yes, mhmm, yes, fuck, the feeling of his mouth on her in the darkness kindling a fire low in her body that made her want to writhe, and she was pulling his face up to her to taste him, breathlessly connected, and her hand fell down his ribs to his hip bone and into his briefs where she wrapped her fist around his cock--it was achingly hard, thrilling her again, sending a shiver down her body and he arched into her, moaning into her mouth as she pushed the fabric off him, cradling his ass in her hands for a moment, dragging her nails down to his thighs as she pushed the underwear off him and he said “Oh fuck, baby, that feels fucking good--” and then he yanked her panties down with one terribly strong hand and Kenzie’s heart stopped for a moment with the force of it, gasping as his index finger pressed harshly between her legs, into her clit, his mouth hovering over hers again; if she’d been standing her legs would have buckled instantly, instead, her legs keened back, lifting her sex up towards his hand, up so her ass fell against his thighs with a low slap, and she uttered another little moaning cry into him, her fist still clutching his erection and his hardness was sending currents of energy through her core, her cunt convulsing for a moment in anticipation. Duncan seemed to feel this current under his fingers flush against her; he let out a pitiful groan into her cheek, and she felt his cock convulse under her fingers.
“Tell me what you want, baby,” he whispered, his blue eyes staring down into hers in the dark, penitent, devoted, and the outline of his expression in the deep shadows one of aching adulation, and it made Kenzie feel as though he was whispering a prayer into her, a prayer of worship, a prayer to her only and always, a priest to her, and a prayer so fervent it made him most beloved in her eyes. “I’ll do anything you want to you, I’ll let you do anything to me, fucking anything. Tell me, angel.”
“I want your lips on me and I want mine on you, baby, I wanna suck your gorgeous cock while you eat me,” Kenzie whispered, and she moved from underneath him, pushing his arms gently so he lifted away from her, following her carefully, completely supplicant to her direction; Kenzie pushed him down into the pillows now, his head falling into their softness, his long form stretched out underneath her, and she straddled him for a moment, staring down at him. Her eyes had begun to adjust to the darkness and she could still see that aching devotion falling down the beautiful contour of his face; he reminded her of a Renaissance painting, a man who also seemed unlike a man in that he was so radiantly graceful and sublime, a higher form of man, an ideal of the ecstasy of human imagining. How are you mine, she thought again, dumbstruck and shivering, and his hands came up to cup at her breasts, and she pressed a finger down between his lips and he sucked at her skin, her thumb grazing down his stubble. Kenzie moved back a little, moved until she felt the hardness of his cock brush up the sensitive, wet space between her legs; Duncan moaned into her finger, closing his eyes; those eyes, low blue flame, a constant candle lit for her and her alone.
“Am I your angel, baby,” Kenzie asked, her body thrilling at the feeling of his length flush against her pussy and ass, her cunt twinging again, the spasm of the muscles there sending a thrill of demanding need through her thighs. She let her sex press into him that way for a long, aching moment, knowing it must be as intense and terrible for him as it was for her, relishing the intensity, pressed against his need.
“Fuck, Kenzie, yes, you’re my angel, you are the only one,” he said into her fingers, and her hand fell down to clutch around his adam’s apple, desirous for more, a longer prayer, a deeper worship, a worship from his mouth into the core of her being, and she squeezed a little, her nails pressing into his skin, and he gasped. Kenzie’s mind filled with heat, her senses suddenly feeling like scalding water overflowing, and she raised her little palm and brought it down against his cheek with a snap, the little slap startling her ears and his eyes flashed at her in the dark and Kenzie said “Worship me with your mouth now, baby,” and he said “Yes, baby, come here,” and she knew he was commanding her--the slap and her hand at his throat seemed to have kindled an animalistic rush in him--and her need to be filled was bleeding into a need to do what he wanted now, and she was lost in the clash of her desires as he gripped her thighs and carefully pushed her down so he could turn her at the hips (god he’s so fucking strong, his hands could rip the life out of me, drag me down into oblivion, my Hades dragging me down with his beautiful, terrible hands, down into the depths to be devoured by him entirely devoured this way devoured in his aching lips), flipping her carefully but with an ease that made her heart jump into her throat; suddenly her back was facing him, her legs slipping down to straddle on either side of his chest under his arms, his cock pressing between her breasts now, and he yanked her up, demanding, to his face, so her cunt hovered just below his lips and his cock was brushing against her jaw; he pulled her into his mouth and Kenzie cried out, whimpering helplessly as his tongue immediately pressed into her clit, terribly warm and dripping wet, and her head fell and she drooled onto the head of his cock; she felt her eyes roll back into her head as he ate at her, and Kenzie steeled herself and opened her mouth and took his hard cock (fuck he’s fucking big when I look at him this way fuck he’s huge) into her and carefully pressed down, her tongue working against his length, and she felt him shuddering under her as his tongue probed into her soaking wet cunt and back to her clit again, focused there with a precise, deft rhythm; Kenzie opened her throat, willing herself not to gag as she took his whole length into her for a moment, then worked herself back up carefully. She could feel her thighs shuddering, the feeling of his mouth shattering her desire for control; it was bleeding out into a desire to give him terrible, transcendent pleasure--in this moment, Kenzie felt gold waves of emotion falling from the top of his head down into her body; I want you, only you, only you and always, always to be pressed into you this way, only to worship you, only to feel your mouth, only to feel you, you belong to me and I am yours entirely and there is nothing without you, there is void in your absence, that is all I know for certain, I wanna fuck you until I am lost in you and I become you and you are me and together we are something else, I wanna fuck you endlessly and so hard and so deeply and so often--
Kenzie moved her mouth up and down, working her hand at the base of his cock, her tongue swirling at the sensitive hole at the smooth head of his length; her saliva dripped down from her lips, down the shaft of him, and she moved her hand up and down and the sound of the wetness sucked in her ears as she moved her head again, faster for a moment and then with aching slowness, and Duncan moaned against her, against the swollen lips of her cunt, swollen with his attentions, swollen with terrible want. “Fuck baby, you taste so fucking good, god, your mouth feels so fucking good, fuck, I can’t--oh, fuck--Kenzie, fuck, baby, gonna--” Kenzie could hear the tremble under his words, the edge, and she dipped her head down further so the head of his cock pressed into the back of her throat and she felt his tongue lave out and press harshly into her clit, press there with wanton concentration as his hot come spurted into her mouth and she swallowed, once, twice, the taste of him salty and thick, her eyes going hazy as she felt the edge of her orgasm cresting down between her hips; she pulled back and up so she was sitting on his mouth, her ass at his nose, and pressed her hands into his torso, the taste of his come coating the inside of her mouth, and she looked up at the ceiling, dark with shadow, and his hands were on her thighs pressing her down onto him and Kenzie cried out as her orgasm forced itself roughly down through the center of her and bright flames burned behind her sight, filling the blackness of the room with intense light as she lost herself in his devoted prayer, the most ecstatic of prayers, his mouth and his tongue rushing every bit of her out into him in that moment, extending her helplessly into oblivious exaltation.
“Kenzie, baby, oh, baby, Kenzie--” Duncan’s hands were pulling her softly down, murmuring her name with aching softness, and Kenzie felt like she was coming back from a far distance to his arms; back from the brink of of edge of the universe, and she was sliding off him and she was beside him now, her head falling onto the pillow, hair falling across her cheek, close to his face, his arms clutching her with fervency, as if he couldn’t stand the sudden cease of the closeness of their orgasms; she pressed into him, her leg coming over his thigh, and he kissed her and the taste of her sex filled her own mouth as he did, and her tongue came against his and Kenzie thought I could die, I love him so, I could die right now and this would be enough for me, how can I bear this, how can I bear how much I love him, it’s so much, it fucking hurts, it aches.
“Duncan, I love you. I love you so much. I wish there were other words--”
“Shhh, baby. No. I know. I have to ask you something,” and his mouth was at her forehead, his hands threading her hair, his fingers pressing to the sides of her face; Kenzie could feel the weight of his cock, going soft, pressing into her stomach, and the thin film of sweat on his skin against her, and his eyes seemed almost white in this light, ethereal in post-coitus. “Do you feel like...sometimes...you can hear what I’m thinking? I know...I know it sounds crazy--”
“Yes, baby. Yes. I heard you tonight, I think, when we were with your mother--it’s not the first time, but I...I thought I heard you think that I was so brave, brave and that my strength was like gold, and, before that...you looked at me and it felt like you pushed something into me, you pushed you love and your faith into me and it spread around us--”
Duncan was nodding into her--“Yes,” he was whispering, “yes, baby, yes, I didn’t imagine it, yes, that happened, yes, you can hear me, you heard me, you felt it too,”--and she could feel the smile on him, though she could barely see it; his body felt as though it was smiling, a coiled joy in him as he pressed more deeply into her, his hands falling down her waist to clutch her hips into him and his hips ground against her and she sighed; a sigh that was more like a cry, and tears came instantly into her eyes, tears at the intensity of her orgasm and at the intensity of what had just passed between them; the realization that they had both experienced that energy tonight, that they had both heard each other’s thoughts, somehow, madly, impossibly, and yet somehow possible, and the wildness of this revelation stopped her heart; sweat broke out instantly on her skin and she was filled with terrible longing for him again, in a sharp wave that crashed into the center of her chest.
“How--” and Duncan was kissing her again, his mind falling into her and it felt like a thousand pinpricks of light that had burst into brilliance under his skin, in the lining of his soul; how, how, how, but the how suddenly meant nothing; the only thing that mattered was the understanding, the reality, the knowing, and Kenzie wondered if she willed it enough, if she wanted it, if she could hear him now--she focused on the feeling passing between them, the connection of their mouths pressed together, the salty sweetness of his skin, the musky smell of him that fell over her in bursts, the aching strength of him pressing into her, the soft cascade of his hair as she pushed her fingers through it, in the dark; I don’t need to see him with my eyes to see him, to truly see him, the low blue glow of him, the radiance of his beauty. I think I could see him, really see him, at the very end of time. I think I could pick him out of a million other souls and know him, instantly. And then she did hear him; heard the tenderness under every beat of it, and she felt lost in him, like he was pressing his lips onto the deepest, most secret part of her: Kenzie, I think I’ve always known you, I think we knew each other in some other time and in some other place, and I think we were together then, and I think it’s destiny that we found each other again, and I think no matter what happens someday we will find each other again, because that’s our Fate; that’s what they wove for us, when time began, they wove our souls together and it cannot be changed and we cannot be long parted from each other and we will always find each other again, because they will It--and their will is the way of things. You are my One, the only One, until the end of all things. Mackenzie. I love you. I love you. I love you…
Kenzie pressed into him, pulling him gently so he was on top of her now, their mouths still crashing against each other as these thoughts, his thoughts, and she knew they truly were this time, fell into her like a waterfall, like a rainstorm, and Kenzie’s hand came down to his cock again and slid up and down as he grew hard and she lifted her hips up onto his thighs and slid down onto him, her cunt slick with release, and they gasped into each other, his hands buried in the golden cascade of her hair and clutching her hip so she was pressed flush into him and this way, us together, it’s the only thing, she pushed the thought into him and she knew he didn’t need to speak, knew he heard her, his eyes staring into hers then closing, overwhelmed, and Duncan nodded into the bridge of her nose, his hair falling against her eyelashes, yes, the only thing, the only thing, to be here with you, beloved of all, most beloved, my love. He pressed into her, then out with aching slowness, then began to ride into her with a measured, building rhythm; his hand came down from her hair and Duncan brought his fingers up to his mouth to suck them carefully, not breaking the tide of his concentration as his length pressed into her with wild urgency, and brought them, slick with his spit, into her swollen clit, still, already, aching with wetness from his mouth; his other hand came up from her hip to press into the center of her chest, between her breasts, as if to hold her heart; as if to feel its luxuriant pounding through the tips of his fingers; his thighs pressed down into her, forcing her legs wide, and he was so hard Kenzie ached; ached with the knowledge of him. Their minds came together again, for a moment, from spinning around each other; the intensity, the intimacy of the touch--of our souls, she thought to him, and into her he pressed another thought--our bodies and our souls, Kenzie, for both of mine are yours.
“You’re gonna come,” she breathed into him, her mouth pressing into his nose, pressing against his eyes, which fluttered closed against her; “and I’m gonna come at the same time, okay, baby?” She arched up into his hand, the feeling of his fingers making her want to scream, making her hips grind up, making her want him inside her always.
“Okay, Kenzie, baby, okay…” Duncan’s eyes stared into her, needy, aching--and then he let out a little whine into her that seemed involuntary--a little cry that seemed to echo out from the center of his being, and Kenzie said “Shhh, baby, I know--” “Kenzie, how, I found you, somehow I found you, fuck me, I fucking found you--” “Fuck me, baby, fuck me,” Kenzie demanded, her eyes rolling back as the sensation of his fingers rushed her up to the edge, “Fuck me like that, fuck me hard like that, give me your hard cock, baby--” and Duncan pressed into her with such force that she felt the scream building at the back of her throat--”I’m going to--come--”
At that moment Kenzie felt herself slip down over the edge of her orgasm; felt it cascade up through her, from the ends of Duncan’s fingers deep up inside her where his cock was buried in her, and at the same time her cunt clenched down onto him with ravenous need and her scream, completely overcome and tinged with a sob, rattled out of her--and then she felt Duncan press his mouth into her neck to stifle the strangled scream that came from his own throat, and he came deep inside her and they clung to each other, convulsing, trembling, and Kenzie could feel the hot wetness of his tears falling into her hair and against her skin where his face was buried against her ear and she felt the sob of his body as her own hot tears coursed down her cheeks and her arms clutched around his back and her sex spasmed again and again against his length, sending dizzying shocks up her body. Kenzie brought her hand to his cheek and her heart spasmed painfully at the wetness there; in the darkness she could see the glowing white-blue of his eyes again, now overcome by his orgasm and the emotion that had fallen out of him with it--Duncan Shepherd, her prince, so soft and pliant and vulnerable in her arms, and she gathered his sweetness in this moment against her and knew she would remember it always; Kenzie knew that she would look back on his tears in her hair on this night; knew that if she ever doubted at all that he loved her, she would look back to this night, the tender color of him as he clung to her and know that he did; know that he always would, would because it was their destiny to love each other, through every shade of time.
------
Later, after their tears had dried, Kenzie lay against him with her head in that space under his arm; her space, and Duncan’s hand threaded through her hair behind her, lazily, absently, her leg crooked over his thigh, one of her hands on his belly with his hand hovering above, his pinky crooked against her thumb; they were silent, the only sounds coming from the faraway drift of the night outside, and Kenzie couldn’t hear any of his thoughts now; couldn’t perceive their shape, knew that they were hazy with the weight of his orgasms, hazy with tiredness, hazy with the depth of the emotion they had shared, and she felt sure hers were hazy in the same way, that he couldn’t see them; she was on Duncan’s side of the bed (somehow she knew this inherently; that she would always sleep on the other side, but tonight they hadn’t moved from the way they’d fallen post-coitus) and had switched on the lamp there, on the lowest setting; the bronze light fell over them as they stared up at the ceiling, and seeing him now, after the sensation of him bathed in darkness, struck her with wonder; to see you that way, and then this way.
“I think we can only hear thoughts when...when whatever is happening is really intense,” she murmured into his cheek, and Duncan sighed into her, closing his eyes; “I think you’re right,” he said, hand coming from her hair to hold her at the incline of her arm above the crook of her elbow, press her naked torso into his hip. “Kenzie, I can’t believe it...it’s so incredible…I never believed in anything like this before now. I never believed in things I couldn’t perceive with my own eyes. Now...I do believe. I believe in all of it, now. To be near you is to believe.”
“You think of me so tenderly,” Kenzie whispered, looking up at him. “It takes my breath away.”
Duncan’s eyes were still closed, as if he was afraid to look at her; “I love you so much, Kenzie. I don’t have words for it. It...scares me. But it’s the most amazing...the most moving thing I’ve ever felt...” Kenzie’s eyes fell over his wildly beautiful face; like this, he was like an aspect of the Pieta, or some aching divinity; to be loved by him shatters my soul into a thousand pieces, each one raw with sensitivity, each one alive with so much feeling I can barely stand it.
“I love you too, Duncan. Please tell me you felt it from me.”
He nodded; his eyes opened and they were shining with tears again. “I did. I do. And I heard those thoughts towards my mother from you, baby--I heard you--that we’ll help people and create beautiful things--and we will, I promise we will, I love you so.”
Kenzie sat up and pressed a kiss into him, and smiled; “Oh, Duncan.”
“With you beside me, Mackenzie, I promise we will make everything I have--everything we have--into something beautiful. Baby, I swear.” He brought her hand up to his mouth, kissing along her fingers, making low heat coil in her belly.
“Duncan, we can make so many people happy. As happy as this. As happy as we are,” she said, and then Kenzie suddenly pressed the tips of her fingers into Duncan’s torso, unable to keep her smile at bay, dancing them along his skin, all of her joy spilling out of her; a peal of laughter burst out of him and Duncan jerked to the side to get away from her tickles, and then he pulled her down onto him and rained kisses between her breasts and Kenzie thought more joy is coming and our love will make us brave and so bright and our love will bring light to others and she knew, in the deepest part of her soul, that it was true.
------
When Kenzie woke the sun was shining down onto the bed (it’s summer, she thought, we should go to the beach soon, I’d love that, kissing him in the sand with the blue ocean stretched out before us) and Duncan was (wonderfully, blessedly) still sleeping quietly beside her. They’d slept naked (like that first night, Kenzie’s thoughts drifted, sleepily, eyes roving over his saintly face, the delicate incline of his eyelashes, the pout of his lips, whatever dream she’d had instantly forgotten, that first night where my heart was shattered by you and you kissed my ankles and said god, you taste good and I fucked you wearing that necklace that had taken me so long to save the money for and when you woke you hovered over me again, desirous, and I knew it hadn’t been a dream, and I knew I’d be content to always be in your bed, a bed we’ve now made ours from our passion), and Kenzie could feel the delicate press of his fingers against her hip, their bodies turned towards each other, Duncan’s curls falling over the pillow. She pressed her toes into the incline of the top of his ankle, down his foot and up again, where she could feel the hairs on his smooth, long leg, and pressed toward him, hungry for his heat. Kenzie lifted her face up into Duncan’s neck, sending little kisses down from the incline of his jaw to his adam’s apple and the elegant fall of his collarbones; Duncan let out a little pliant sigh, his big hand coming up from her hip to clutch her against him, immediately needy; she marveled again at the way it seemed to cover so much of her body, wherever it touched her; she felt enveloped under his hands, cradled in his colossal embrace. Kenzie felt the hardness between his legs press between hers (fuck, he always has an erection in the morning, ugh, fuck me baby) and the musky smell of him fell through her (he smells like sex, like the woods after warm rain) and he said “Kenzie,” and she thought like a prayer, he says my name so lovingly, “what time is it, baby.”
“Only after 8.” The smell of him was making her dizzy, making her cunt pulse down towards where she felt his cock pressing to the inside of her thigh; Duncan’s eyes opened to stare at her, and Kenzie breathed out a little, wondering if she’d ever not feel frozen with the intensity of his gaze. “We can sleep for hours still if we want to, baby...”
Duncan kissed her gently, just once, sleep still clinging to his eyes; Kenzie brought her hand up to brush the bits of skin that had gathered at the corners of them away with one careful finger, admiring the hairs along his jaw and the straight fall of his nose, the dusting of tiny beauty marks along his left cheek. His eyes were open still, half-closed with the remnants of the sleep he’d just left; and he said “You were an angel in the dream I was having,” and his eyes fluttered, his throat bobbing as he swallowed, one of his hands coming up between her shoulder blades, one falling down to clutch, fingers spreading, over her ass cheek.
“Oh really. An angel, huh?” She pressed more kisses into his chest; into the bones of his shoulders, still marveling at his smell. Duncan was nodding into her, greedily; pressing her mouth up into his, his fingers tightening around her skin, speaking between their lips; “Yes. You had wings and a halo that looked like it was made of stars...of starlight. I was...I don’t know who I was. I was dark. I was something dark. And you put your arms around me and I was full of light and relief. Your touch was...healing. It healed me. You were divine, baby. You are divine.”
“You aren’t dark, Duncan. You aren’t.”
“Kenzie...I’ve done...there are things I’ve done that--”
“Shhhh. They don’t matter now. We’re together. You aren’t dark. You aren’t.”
His tongue was in her mouth and she was shifting up onto him in the soft morning light, on the incline of his hips against the trail of hair on his abdomen that led to his groin, pushing herself up from the center of his chest so the lips of her vulva were pressing down into the upper side of his morning wood, and he moaned into her; “I’m never gonna stop wanting to fuck you, Kenzie,” and she said “Good, baby, because you’re gonna fuck me again right now,” and she lifted her hips and pushed herself down onto his thick erection so she was straddling his thighs and Kenzie whined as he filled her, “god, baby, you’re so fucking hard,” and he groaned a little, as if trying to steel himself against the intensity of the sensation, and Kenzie put two fingers in her mouth and rolled them along her tongue; saliva dripped from them as she brought them out and pressed them against her clit and worked at herself, hard and immediate, as she rolled her hips on him, his shaft totally buried inside her so she could feel the knobbed surface of his balls against the bottom of her ass, feel him throb deep inside her, filling her so much she wondered if he’d tear her apart; it made her shudder and throw her head back, and she watched his eyes, hazy with sleep a moment ago, go wide and roll back as she rode his aching cock.
“We all have darkness in us--” Kenzie breathed down at him as she moved her hips and rubbed at her clit, building a tantric cadence with her body, “--but you have so much good and so much loveliness in you, baby, and it was there before we met, I know it--”; Duncan’s hands came up, one pressing to her breast and kneading at her nipple, hard now in her arousal, the other at the small of her back, his nails digging into her skin there, as if to chain her against him; “Don’t stop, baby, god you feel like fucking heaven, fuck me,” and his voice begged, she could hear the edge in it, the need; she smiled, and he gazed up at her, his expression rapturous; that beautiful face, that gorgeous face, like a God, like Hades to his beloved Persephone, like Dionysus beholding Ariadne, like Apollo, most fair, smitten with Daphne, or Eros folding Psyche into his arms: just for me, when he looks at me that way. It’s only for me, and I know it. I can feel it. That gaze is for me and me alone, for I am most beloved among all to him.
“Kenzie, angel,” he breathed, and she watched his eyes flutter with the wave of his release rising, the intensity of the softness and wetness and tightness between her legs; god I love to see him in the light, she thought, I want to stare at him all fucking day, I want to drink him like wine. Her sex ached; ached with their fucking from the night before, ached with need for him now, ached so wonderfully that she thought she might faint from it, the intensity of the want there coiling like a spring that would cut and maim when it broke forth; “let me, baby, please, let me touch you,” he whispered, and she lifted her fingers from her clit to let the large, warm pad of his index finger flush itself against the bud of nerves between her legs, her hand falling down over his palm to grip at his wrist, holding him there--”There, that’s better, baby,” he murmured, “God, I can’t wait to get that fucking mirror,” and she nodded and said “You wanna watch yourself fuck me, huh, baby,” and he said “Fuck yes, I wanna watch myself fuck you, Kenzie, angel baby, fucking goddess,” and she laughed a little, and her laugh seemed to stir his desire further and she felt his length spasm inside her and his other hand came up from her breast and around her neck and she gasped a little “Fucking yes, baby,” and he squeezed, the pressure of his fingers constricting the air from her lungs and Kenzie’s heart pounded harshly in the center of her, and her sex twinged under his fingers and then he was pressing his hips up into her and moaning her name as he came, “Kenzie, angel, Kenzie, baby--” and she whimpered as he hand went tighter for a moment, tight enough to make her gasp longer, harder, fuck yes, baby, I love your hand there, forcing me down onto you this way, she knew he heard, and then she came under his hands, came and knew that as she did, he saw the halo around her head as she hovered over him in the sunlight; the halo he’d seen in his dream.
------
“Baby, I was thinking--” Duncan said as she sat at the black obsidian island in the kitchen, in the Marie Laveau tee shirt, staring down at her phone in one hand (Instagram; the comments on the photo of them together were absolutely wild and it had wracked up over 35,000 likes; Claire had already sent her several links to websites gushing about the photo, including one from BPF.com: DUNCAN SHEPHERD AND GIRLFRIEND MACKENZIE STONE POST FIRST SELFIE TOGETHER ON INSTAGRAM; LEGIONS OF FANS COIN NICKNAME “DUCKENZIE”), hair over her shoulder, a spoon poised in her other hand over the bowl of granola with blueberries and blackberries he’d given her, to her delight--”We own a cabin around Deep Creek Lake...it’s about a three hour drive from the city, and it’s...well, it’s a very large cabin, very secluded. Sometimes my Uncle BIll and my mother still use it for private parties, mostly. We used to go there more often when I was young, but it’s been about two years since the last time I stayed there. I was thinking...we could go there and stay for a few days. After the Gala. We could get away from the paps and my mother and everything...all of this. It’s so beautiful there and there are deer sometimes and I think--”
“Yes, baby, fucking yes,” Kenzie cut him off. “Dunny, I would fucking love that.” She couldn’t stop the grin that broke over her face as he turned to her, his blue eyes smiling down at her incredulously, the espresso he’d just made her in his hand. “Dunny, huh? That’s a new one.” He brought it over to her (he was in black sweats again, his torso bare) and she leaned up as his face came down to her; his kiss tasted like bitter coffee and sweet berries and him, all of him, and she sighed into him, gently pulling the copper espresso cup from his hand, her fingers trailing over his languidly.
“That’s what I wanna call you, baby,” She grinned again. “Dunnybunny.” She laughed. Duncan snorted, his face breaking out into a smirk that became a snorting laugh of his own. “I can’t wait to see my mother’s face when you call me that in her presence.”
“Oh, I definitely will, in that case. Not much will make your mother like me less than she already does, so I have nothing to lose.”
“She does like you, though. She can’t help it. The way she kept mentioning that you look like Madeline; that was her way of showing you affection. How could anyone not like you, baby?” His fingers came across the island as he leaned down onto it, trailing down her arm, her wrist, her hand; Kenzie’s phone lay just beyond her fingertips; Duncan glanced at it, noticing the Instagram photo open on it, eyes falling over the hundreds of thousands of likes. “Everyone loves you. And they should.”
“Shut the fuck up,” she smiled up at him, toying with the ends of his fingers, feeling her cheeks blush. Duncan smiled again as he turned away to make another espresso, this one for himself. “Yes, Miss Stone, whatever you say, Miss Stone.”
“Ugh, no, don’t,” and she stood and ran over to him and threw her arms around his back, burying her face in his skin, hair falling in her eyes. “Don’t call me that. Call me baby. Call me Kenzie. Call me angel.”
“Fuck,” and he turned around so she was looking up into his eyes and he said “Kenzie, I will call you angel a thousand times a day if you want me to, anything you want belongs to you now, just say it, just tell me what it is and it’s yours, okay? I mean it. Anything, baby. When’s your birthday, anyway?”
“July 17th. Anchaly told me you’re a Cancer too, so yours must be close to mine.” Kenzie’s arms still gripped Duncan’s hips, and his hand had come around to that soft spot under her ear, down into her hair, the tangles of sleep brushed out. “July 6th,” he answered, pressing his lips into her forehead as she stood there barefoot, feeling tiny in his embrace again, wildly vulnerable and soft and small. “My mother always insists on having a huge party...invites a hundred people, all politicians and celebrities, god, I always hate it, but this year--this year I’ll love it because you’ll be there.” “Mmhmm, of course I will, baby...but I have no idea what to do for a present--what do I get for the man who has everything?” She grinned up at him.
“I do have everything. Now, I truly do, baby. Now the party will always be for you, too. Oh, Kenzie, I love that. I love that our birthdays are close.” He pushed his fingers gently along her cheek, his arm around her shoulder; the tenderness in his voice made her heart shake. “Kenzie, I love you so much, being with you is like--like I’m fucking high as a kite all the time, wonderfully drunk--” he pressed his lips down onto her cheek, along to her ear, and Kenzie shivered, her body arching up into him, unable to stop herself. “That cabin sounds so wonderful, baby,” Kenzie said, trying to break the spell that had begun to weave between them again--she’d have to get ready to go to the Shepherd mansion soon, it wouldn’t do to arrive disheveled in front of Annette Shepherd from fucking her son on the table. But I do want him to fuck me on the table, Kenzie realized. We haven’t fucked on the table--not this one or that fucking beautiful cherrywood table in the other room--I want him to lay me down on it and fuck my fucking brains out standing. “To get away from everything like that sounds so perfect, everything has just been so insane…”
Duncan pulled away from her, nodding. “That’s why I thought of it. I don’t want you to get...overwhelmed. The paps are enough to drive anyone insane, but they hound this family like wolves at raw meat, ever since my grandfather became one of the richest men in America back in the 70’s. And the way they’re acting around you scares me. I want you to be safe and happy more than anything, baby. And it’ll be just the two of us. Just us.” His hand fell against her lips, probing gently. Kenzie opened her mouth a little to let his finger in, tongue swirling over it, her eyes lifted to his and she could see the heated desire coiled there again, could see the shape of the thoughts drifting inside him; he’s thinking about getting a hook for the ceiling in our bedroom, a hook to hang velvet rope, rope to tie me up and fuck me standing while we watch each other in a gilded mirror and I fall down onto his face as he eats me on his knees and he’s thinking about using that plug on me and then fucking my ass himself, fucking me hard in the ass with his big cock and coming inside me there, and her senses tingled and vibrated with the onslaught of these thoughts. Fuck, baby. Fuck, yes. She sucked at his finger as his thoughts crashed against her, and his eyes went bright with his arousal--blue like the summer sky drifting outside these windows, all my little plants hanging along it now, resting on the spotless sill--Kenzie was sure she had never wanted a man so much in her life as much as she wanted Duncan; she wanted every part of him, every secret, every shadow, every crevice and contour of him memorized, every inch explored, and the desire for him seemed to grow rather than dissipate every time they fucked, every time they came close together as if their minds were linked (but they are, we can each other’s fucking thoughts sometimes), every time he made her come with his mouth and his hands and his hard cock. The thought of exploring each other for days, sheltered by woods and a lake and the quiet of nature, with no one to tell them where to be and no one to take photos of them and no one to stare at them or scold them or probe them for details made her ache; god, that couldn’t come soon enough. But there was so much still to get through, first. Ugh.
“I should get ready to go to your mother’s house, baby,” Kenzie whispered, with regret. Duncan was leaning down to her again, his nose brushing against hers, his mouth hovering just above hers, his breath shallow, his thumb wet with her spit, now trailing along her bottom lip. “But I heard that. And the answer is yes.”
“Fuck, Kenzie.” He pushed his mouth onto hers and she returned his aching kiss for a moment, then pulled back and spoke into him, hearing his breath go ragged.
“While I’m with your mother, you should do some shopping. For us.”
“Uh huh, Kenzie. Yes, baby.”
She slid out of his grasp; Duncan groaned in frustration, and Kenzie could see the flush of his skin, looking at him over her shoulder as she stepped towards the bedroom. Her hip ran into the edge of the island, not looking where she was going; she blushed, wincing, and Duncan bit his lip, looking down at the floor and then back up at her, shyly. Kenzie saw the vulnerability in his gaze at her having heard those thoughts, raw and carnal and full of hedonistic want of her; but they had sent a thrill through her, one that made her think of the colossal painting that stretched across his study again; The Youth of Bacchus, the pleasures of the flesh, my body and your body, baby, together, where they belong.
“Wanna come watch me get dressed, baby?”
“Ugh, yes,” Duncan groaned, and came after her as she ran towards the bedroom, past the dark red roses on the coffee table, laughing.
------
Most of Kenzie’s clothes were still on the rolling clothing rack she’d used in her old apartment; the clothes that had been in her sun-and-moon dresser still stacked neatly in large boxes. Duncan had, somewhat shyly, asked if he could put all her things away for her--while she was busy with Annette--in the drawers on the right side of the walk-in closet; “I’m going to move the things I have in there out; it’s your side now.” “Are you kidding, baby, it’s my dream for someone else to do my laundry for me. You can put my clothes away every damn day. You can be my personal stylist,” and she clutched him around the waist for a moment, pressing against him, and he smiled down at her. “You’ll have one of those for real very soon, baby,” he replied. “Annette insists, for all public events. Also--now that I’m thinking of it--I have a service deliver groceries here several times a week. If you write down everything you think we need and give it to Anchaly in the morning, it’s here at night. It’s safer--and especially after that incident yesterday, baby, I think you shouldn’t go out alone for things like that. Harris should be with you if you need to go shopping for any reason. You should use the card I gave you to order anything you need online as much as you want to; Anchaly signs for packages, too.”
Kenzie frowned a little, leaning away from him, going over to her hanging rack and pulling out a black collared sweater with short sleeves, throwing it on its hanger on the bed. She leaned over one of the boxes that littered the corner, finding the high-waisted mini skirt she was looking for; it was black too, with gold buttons down the front. She pulled the Marie Laveau shirt off, standing there in just her underwear for a moment; as she pulled the skirt up, wiggling it over her hips, she avoided Duncan’s gaze from where he stood standing at the door of the walk-in closet, leaning against it, eyes focused on her; she couldn’t hear him right now, but knew anyway that he was looking at her with both affectionate concern and desire.
“Kenzie. I understand your frustration, baby. I do.”
Kenzie breathed out, leaning over another box, finding a strapless tan-colored bra, snapping it over her arms and pulling the cups over her little breasts (she’d remembered reading somewhere that for fittings a strapless bra should be worn), and then she turned to him, in just her bra and skirt, the frown still creasing over her face. I can’t help it, she thought. This sucks. “It just...makes me fucking sad, baby,” she said, tucking a golden-tawny wave behind her ear, reaching for the shirt she’d tossed on the bed. Duncan came over to where she stood; he slid onto the bedspread, grasping her hand before she could pull it away, crossing his legs, pulling her gently down to him. “Like I’ve given up a part of me...one that could go to the grocery store and just...get groceries. Fuck.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I’m sorry it’s like this.”
She knelt on the bedspread, mussed from their passion and their sleep, looking at him; the bareness of his shoulders and the fall of his hair and his expression of remorse, blue eyes burning, oh, those eyes; then she pressed her arms around his neck, and Duncan put his face into her hair and pulled her into his lap, breathing her in.
“I know it’s not your fault, baby,” she murmured. “I just...I can’t believe...in just a week...so much can change. Everything. You know?”
“Baby, I know. Everything is different now. It feels strange to me too--everything I thought I wanted for the company...it was really something my uncle wants-- something my mother wants. I want something else. I want what you said, what you thought across that table when you looked at my mother--to bring other people happiness like this.”
Kenzie nodded into his neck, her body filling with sweet affection for him, a golden cascade of love--to choose your light over your darkness takes courage, my dearest love, and I am so proud of you, so proud to know you and love you in this moment, was the thought she pushed into him, and his arms tightened around her and she felt the emotion in the way he moved his head against her, felt the tremor in him, overcome with her admonition. You aren’t dark. You’ve chosen to be something else. That’s what matters.
Kenzie heard her phone trumpet from the kitchen island where she’d left it; she glanced over at the silver alarm clock on Duncan’s side of the bed and noticed it was 11:30 exactly. “Baby, I think I have to go soon,” she whispered into him and Duncan sighed. “I wish we could just stay home together, today,” he murmured into her.
“Me too, baby. But tomorrow we can. Tomorrow we have the whole day to ourselves. Maybe I can finally put all my things away.” She kissed him and Duncan closed his eyes; “Or we can just fuck all day, baby,” he said into her mouth, and Kenzie grinned into him, shivering. “I’m curious how many times I can make you come in a row--” And she wiggled out of his arms teasingly as he said this, loving the hungry look in his eyes. “Get that mirror and that hook,” she said, staring at him for a long moment, “and we can test that theory,” then, Kenzie went back over to the boxes in the corner, pulling out a pair of black socks, slipping them on her feet. Duncan watched the incline of her leg, letting out another soft little moan, almost involuntary; then he climbed off the bed and went to the walk-in closet, pushing his sweatpants down as he did, kicking them off, still looking over his shoulder into her eyes as his cock came free of its constraints, not quite erect, but not soft either; in that between state of arousal and anticipation; he slowly moved his hand down to it, gripping its shaft for a moment, leaning against the doorway, eyes falling up and down her body in the little sweater and mini skirt, his mouth open just a little, and Kenzie bit her lip. “Bad boy,” she whispered. “I’m gonna punish you later.” He grinned at her and went into the closet. Kenzie passed by to get her phone from the kitchen and couldn’t help but glance to him undressed, his back turned to her now; his wide shoulders extending down to his round ass and thick thighs, the fine hairs on his legs visible in the warm light of the closet. Beloved. Like the statue of David. I really do wish we could stay in bed all day, worshiping each other. If we ever get tired of fucking, it won’t be anytime soon.
Kenzie reached for her phone as she reached the island, looking down at the text.
Samuel: Miss Mackenzie, ready when you are.
Harris had today off; Kenzie supposed it wasn’t necessary to have him at the Shepherd mansion (there was no chance of paps being there; there was heavy security around the clock), though, she thought, it would have been nice to have his large presence beside her, in case Annette tries to poison me, only half-facetiously, biting her lip. On my way down in 5, she replied. Thanks Samuel. Kenzie went back to the bedroom, stopping in the doorway of the walk-in closet; Duncan was mostly dressed now, in tailored black slacks and a short-sleeved button down; “I don’t think I’ve seen you in short sleeves yet, baby,” she said softly, coming up to him as he did the top button, facing her; glancing up at her. “You look nice. You always look nice. But I like you in short sleeves. You look more...relaxed, or something.”
“I’m pretty sure naked is the most relaxed state you’ve seen me in, Kenzie,” he said, eyes in hers, his radiantly beautiful smile making her shy again. “Also, the short sleeves are for practical reasons--the high today is 81.” Kenzie turned to where several pairs of her shoes were lined against the floor; she hadn’t had time to organize these yet either, but she picked out her long black pointed boots, leaning against the drawers as she pulled them on under Duncan’s watchful eye; he was switching between buckling on his black Movado and staring at her legs again as they vanished under the black velvety fabric of the boots; they always made her feel pretty when she wore them, and she felt like she could use all the help she could get if Annette was going to be breathing down her neck for a few hours. “Samuel’s waiting for me downstairs, baby,” she said, looking up at him, straightening, clutching her phone in one hand, reaching for him with the other; he grasped her arm, stepping forward, and leaned down into her, and his heady, musk-wood smell fell over her again, dizzying and deep. “I’ll text you when I’m done with your mom, okay?”
“Okay, baby. Thank you for doing this. But remember what I said, if you don’t like what she wants you to wear, you don’t have to wear it. Erik is reasonable, he’ll understand.”
Kenzie reached over to where some of her jewelry was lined on the accessory shelf built into the side (her side) of the closet; she slipped the long necklace with tiny gold star charms on it around her neck; it dangled to her stomach, and she flipped her hair back over her shoulders, placing her hands on her hips. “How do I look, baby.”
“Like my Kenzie. Like a fucking angel.”
“Can you see my halo and wings still?”
“Always.”
She blushed; ugh, this fucking Prince. Fuck me, pressing her face up to kiss him again, then dancing away as he tried to grab her closer--”You are too fucking good at that,” he said after her, his eyes like deep ocean, and she giggled as she snatched the little convertible bag from where she’d left it by the wall in the living room, dipping down to smell the roses on the table, their evocative sweetness floating up at her; she glanced towards where she knew his bust of Nike was on the left side of the Bouguereau prints, and spoke a silent prayer for a day that wasn’t rife with the stresses of yesterday; spoke a silent prayer that in Annette Shepherd’s presence, she would be fearless and calm. Duncan followed her out, barefoot; he watched her go to the door and pull it open, and she said, “Wish me luck, baby.”
“You don’t need luck, Kenzie. You are beloved of the gods.”
She stared at him, puzzled; she could feel the small smile playing at the corners of her mouth. “That’s a funny thing to say, Duncan.” He came up to her, hands falling through her hair with adamant affection, before she could slip away from him again. “It’s true. I said it because it’s true. I feel it. Destiny. Our destiny. This wasn’t luck. It was destiny. It is our destiny.”
The doubt slipped from her mind; the confusion melted. “It really is, isn’t it.”
“Yes. It really is.” He kissed her fiercely again; his mouth bruising into hers; touching in thin tendrils down to her stomach. She pressed into him for a moment, suddenly possessed by her sadness at leaving him; then pulled away softly and stepped into the hall.
“I’ll see you in a few hours, baby.”
“Mhm, Kenzie. I love you.”
“And I, your Persephone, love you.”
“Oh, baby--”
Kenzie ran away from him down the hall to the elevator, which magically, somehow, opened for her before she even pressed the button. She turned as the doors slid shut, and he was leaning against the frame of the penthouse entrance, arm clutching the lintel, eyes on her, and she knew he was thinking of flowers in her hair again, petals floating down and leaving a secret trail behind her as she descended back to earth.
-----
Samuel had his foot on the gas of the BMW as soon as Kenzie slid into the backseat; she’d taken more time than she thought upstairs (your son was distracting me, Annette) and it was fifteen till the hour. Today he was listening to Fleetwood Mac; Kenzie clapped her hands together, delighted; listen to the wind blow, watch the sun rise--”Samuel, can you turn it up?” She saw Samuel’s very white grin at her in the rearview, and watched his hand reach out to the knob on the Harman Kardon sound system; Stevie and Lindsey’s voices crashed into her on either side as if they were in the backseat with her.
“And if you don’t love me now, you will never love me again, I can still hear you sayin’, you would never break the chain--” Samuel had the windows down and the wind whipped her hair across her cheek and neck, and Kenzie thought of Duncan’s hands and his blue gaze and his mouth and his hair on his forehead and the stubble on his cheeks and his height towering over her but his looks of longing into her eyes and toyed with the little stars on her necklace, feeling them carefully, singing along softly to herself. We can hear each other’s thoughts sometimes. A week ago I would have thought current me had lost her fucking mind. But I know it’s real. How can it be real? I don’t fucking know. But it is.
“Miss Mackenzie, your voice is so beautiful,” Samuel said, glancing up at her, the smile still at his mouth. “You should have been a singer, like Ms. Nicks.”
“Thank you, Samuel. To be compared to Stevie is the highest of compliments.”
“Just so.”
Chain, keep up together...Chain, keep us together…
As Samuel pulled up to the gate of the Shepherd mansion, Kenzie’s stomach did a backflip and she floated away from the strains of Christine’s high, cheerful voice: you, you make loving fun, it’s all I wanna do--Holy fuck, Kenzie thought. This is huge even for a mansion. She could see the tall Colonial-style windows over the gate, the Roman pillars extending in the doorway, a balcony above. I need to remember Duncan’s family is one of the richest in the country. Fuck. Am I ever gonna get used to this? Samuel spoke into the intercom (“Mackenzie Stone here to see Annette Shepherd,”) and the gate buzzed open. Kenzie glanced down at her phone; it was five till. She silently thanked Samuel’s magical powers of speed again. Samuel pulled up around the curving driveway to the entrance; vast double doors seemed to stare down at her with hostile judgement. Kenz, you got this. Remember the way Duncan pushed his love into you last night. The way you gathered it and moved it and made it more. You can gather it that way again, just remember that feeling. Be brave like Momby.
Kenzie breathed out, thanked Samuel (and silently, Stevie) and stepped out of the car, boots clicking on the smooth, tasteful cobble of the driveway, looking up at the house, bag slung over her shoulder, phone clutched in her palm. It was sunny and beautiful today; it was truly beginning to feel like summer. Kenzie breathed in deeply and let it out again; don’t let her get to you, no matter what she says, Kenzie. Momby wouldn’t. Duncan wouldn’t. Don’t do it.
She waved a little at Samuel before she shut the door; “I’ll text you when I’m done, is that okay, Samuel?” “Of course, Miss Mackenzie. See you later.” She turned away as it clicked shut, steeling herself again for a moment, then going up the three wide, smooth white steps to the double doors, both with opulent knobs made of embossed gold; she hesitated, unsure of the etiquette; do I knock? Kenzie reached out and turned one of the knobs, apprehensively, peeking her head slowly into the interior of the house. Inside, it was as opulent a place as she had ever seen; if Duncan’s penthouse was spotless, you could eat a steak off the floor of the foyer of this house; Kenzie felt immediately far too ordinary to be here; too flawed, too insecure, and far too human. She toyed with the idea of running out, waving Samuel down and speeding off. But that, of course, was impossible.
A woman came towards her, beckoning sternly. She was very tall (probably taller than Duncan, Kenzie thought, reminded of Harris) and had hair so blonde it was almost white; it was pulled back into a very tight bun that looked painful to Kenzie, and her face was done up with carefully-applied, subdued makeup, her thin, nude-lipsticked lips pressed together tightly. She wore a very tight, very neat pantsuit in dark gray with low black kitten heels, and she looked very strong, with wide shoulders and hips. “Mackenzie Stone, come here.” Her voice had a slight accent, one that Kenzie couldn’t place. Danish? Swedish? “I am Ingrid. They are in the South Wing.” Kenzie jumped inside, pulling the big door shut behind her; the foyer was eerily quiet but for a huge grandfather clock swinging in one corner. Ingrid beckoning with a short motion again; “Come, now, thank you.”
Kenzie stepped quickly behind the woman, who moved very fast and almost noiselessly; I bet this woman could kill someone easily without ever getting caught, Kenzie thought with a chill. I guess Annette needs people like that around her. Ingrid led her around the right side of the curving double staircase, down a hallway hidden behind it, towards the far end of the mansion; if Duncan has one Bouguereau original, I can’t even contemplate how many of these are authentic, Kenzie thought, gazing around at the paintings that adorned the walls (they seemed to mostly be a mixture of Impressionist and Modern art--but there’s nothing here as beautiful as The Youth of Bacchus, she thought, it’s the most beautiful painting I have ever seen, and my boyfriend OWNS it), the sconces and shelves that held Ming vases and sculptures and china and embossed books. Ingrid turned a corner sharply, then opened a long white door (another embossed gold knob) to a round, wide parlor room, modified to look like a dressing room, with a round dais in the center and several mannequins along one wall, a few very beautiful Regent-style white-and-gold armchairs littered here and there; Kenzie saw Annette stretched languidly in one of them, dressed in a flawless cream-colored wrap dress with a black sash tied at her waist, her perfectly styled hair falling down her shoulder, her expression hidden by the angle, and a man with a very bright floral scarf, a shiny bald head and very long false eyelashes standing with a hip cocked facing the doorway, gesturing at her flamboyantly and telling a story, animatedly.
“--I said honey-bun, you don’t get to tell me what the fuck I’m going to do, I tell you what the fuck I’m going to do, then you give me the time I need to fucking do it.” The man cocked his head, batting his lashes. Annette let out a little barking laugh. “Needless to say, I--” The man broke off, noticing Ingrid at the door, and Kenzie hovering behind her.
Annette glanced back. “Oh. Mackenzie. You’re actually on time.”
Uhhhhh. Kenzie’s hands came up to the star necklace, noticing her hand was trembling. What would have happened if I wasn’t?
“Thank you, Ingrid, you can shut the door.”
Ingrid gave Annette a curt nod, and gave Kenzie a long glance as she left, her eyes going from Kenzie’s feet up her body to her hair around her shoulders and down again, a judging glint in her cold eyes. Yep, you got it, I’m fucking Duncan, you’re right, Kenzie thought. Stare away, make sure I have the right genetics and the birthing hips and my boobs are the right size. I wonder what Annette will say when she hears I don’t want to have kids, ha! The door shut behind the woman with a loud, clean click, and the man in the eyelashes came toward Kenzie, pressing his hands theatrically to his cheeks.
“My, my, my, what a little cupcake you are.” He reached for her hands and Kenzie extended her palms into his, her cheeks burning with apprehension. “A little rose petal, a babydoll blooming bud, a teensy slice of delectable red velvet. I’ll bet he’s been nibbling at you night and day.”
“Erik, that’s enough,” Annette said, and Kenzie glanced over to her to see an expression of sharp annoyance in her eyes; whatever mirth may have been on Annette’s face a moment ago was gone, replaced with a calculating neutrality.
“Lord, Annette, as if you can’t see why he’s absolutely head-over-heels.” Erik rolled his eyes, letting Kenzie go, giving her a little wink that Annette couldn’t see from where she sat. Kenzie pressed her lips together tightly, trying not to smile. I like him. “She’s like a tiny little princess in a fairy tale. Snow White. Rose Red. Princess Peach. I’m Erik, sweet thing. And you’re Mackenzie. And this is Annette--oh, you knew that, of course.” Erik turned to Annette, giving her a long look and a coy smile.
“Mackenzie, come here, we have a lot of work to do and I have a meeting at 3,” Annette said to her curtly, standing up and beckoning to the dais. “Erik needs to take your measurements, and then we need to discuss a color palette.”
“I’m thinking mod,” Erik gestured vaguely towards Kenzie’s hips, flicking his wrist. “Like Edie Sedgwick at a Renaissance fair.” Annette made an exasperated noise from the back of her throat as Kenzie came up beside her, heart pounding, and grasped Kenzie’s arm suddenly with a tight, pinching grip, pushing her onto the dais. “Measurements, please, Erik. Mackenzie, hold still.”
Erik spent the next ten minutes or so pressing a measuring tape along Kenzie’s body as she moved as he told her to; Kenzie looked down from Annette’s appraising gaze, which seemed as cold and heavy as ice; she tried to remember the warmth that had spread around the table over dinner last night, but it slipped away from her, just beyond her grasp; without Duncan there, Kenzie felt lost inside her doubt, caught in the approximate, austere eyes of his mother. I doubt those comments from Erik helped warm her heart to me today, Kenzie thought, exasperated. Her stomach felt sour and she contemplated asking for a glass of water, but Annette’s frown deterred her. She remembered Annette didn’t know she’d moved into Duncan’s penthouse yet; oh fuck, she’s really gonna love that one. Annette’s quietness unnerved her--who knew what Duncan’s mother was thinking behind her dark-well eyes. Erik fussed over her, as if to fill the silence between them: “Look at your tiny little hourglass! Those hips, my dear, absolutely to die for. A pity you’re not a little taller, then again, Madeline was never known for her height, was she. How is she these days, by the way?”
“Very well, thanks for asking.” Kenzie’s eyes slid to Annette, who raised her eyebrows, then back to Erik, who was pressing the measuring tape along her bust with careful precision; he had clearly done this a thousand times before her, and his interest in her breasts was completely non-existent beyond the practicality of his duties. “She’s retired now. We had a wonderful time with her the other night.” She looked at Annette again for a moment, seeing the angry flash in the other woman’s eyes; kicking the hornet’s nest, Kenz, she scolded herself, but it was too late; heat was rising behind her temples. I am good enough for your son, Annette. You may never think so, but that doesn’t fucking matter. You’re going to accept me eventually because your son loves me and that’s not going to change. This is our destiny. He said so himself to me. He knows it too. I may not be the trust-fund heiress to an oil company in Texas you would have chosen for him, but I’m the one for him, tough shit.
Erik seemed to have finished his measurements, taking note of them on a little yellow notepad with a fountain pen in his manicured fingers; “Annette, what do you think for colors. I’m thinking black and white with a gold embellishment.”
“I don’t fucking care,” Annette said, her tone biting. She sat in the armchair facing Kenzie, eyes falling down Kenzie’s small form; half-full of resentment, half a simmering superiority.
“Ummmmm,” Erik said, rolling his eyes a little again. “Honey, you’re the one who insisted she do this with you in the first place.” Kenzie gave him a grateful look.
“Mackenzie, I hope you understood how serious I was last night,” Annette said, ignoring Erik. Kenzie bit into the inside of her cheek, willing herself to stay calm. “If you are offered another article in the nature of the one published on Friday, you will turn it down.”
“Annette, with all due respect, I’m a journalist working for a liberal publication. I’m not a Republican, and dating Duncan doesn’t suddenly make me a centrist. Maybe you should ask Duncan what he really wants for the company in the first place, since he’s going to be helping you run it soon.” The words tumbled out of her, and Kenzie immediately bit her lip, fumbling her hands together. Oh fuck, Kenz. What was that.
A cold pallor fell over Annette’s face; it made Kenzie’s blood chill in her veins. Erik’s mouth snapped shut and he raised his eyebrows, a little hiss of air escaping his lips. Annette sat up very straight in the chair, setting her hands on the armrests with her fingers tightly curled. “He told you that, did he,” she hissed.
“Yes. We’re together now. I deserve to know about his life.” Kenzie tried to quell the tremble that had started in her hands; adrenaline pumped through her, making her feel as though she’d just taken a hit of weed. “You seem determined to hate me, Annette, but I don’t hate you at all. I wish you could see that Duncan doesn’t want what you want; that he’s sensitive and good and kind and wants to be surrounded by real things, beautiful things. He just wants to be loved, just wants to love--and we love each other. Why would you try to deny him of that?”
“I don’t have time for this today.” Annette stood, eyes blazing. “Mackenzie, if you speak a word of what Duncan has told you to anyone, I will make sure you seriously regret it. Erik, get her a fucking dress, I don’t give a shit what it looks like. Give her a fucking brown bag to wear for all I care.” She stormed out the door, slamming it behind her.
“Oh, honey, you are Madeline Stone’s daughter, aren’t you?” Erik turned to Kenzie, a grin falling over his features, his long eyelashes batting at her. “She had that coming; and you have nerves of steel.”
“Not really feeling like it at the moment,” Kenzie said, voice audibly shaking. Now that she had started to come down from the adrenaline, she felt woozy and sick.
“So, what do you want to wear?” He pressed a finger to the side of his face.
Kenzie tried to clear her head, her mind frenzied and racing from the exchange with Annette; then, like clouds parting to the sun, she thought of the one friend who had been a constant in her life since they were in middle school; their friendship carrying her through high school and shitty jobs and college and a breakup and her bumpy first year at the Post when her self-doubt had been at an all-time high. Clairebear. Morgan Winthrop.
“My...my best friend Claire. She works for a designer. Morgan Winthrop.”
“Oh, honey, I know Morgan. We go way back. We used to go to Studio 54 together. You want Morgan to make your dress?”
“I--Yes. Yes I do.” Kenzie tossed her head back, pushing her chin out. To hell with this. It’s my life and my relationship and if I have to go to this Gala, I want to wear what I want to wear. The theme is based on me after all. Gold in the darkness. He said it was based on me. That it’s for me. It’s me.
“Darling, I think that’s marvelous.” Erik tucked his head down to her conspiratorially. “I can see why you’d be drawn to Morgan’s aesthetic. And I think she’d know just what to do for you. A little birdy told me Duncan based the theme on you, a little slice of starlight--little golden moonbeam that you are. I’ve never seen him this way. You’ve gotten down under his skin, babydoll. You’re in the soul of him, now.”
“So...you’ll help me?”
“Darling. In a minute. I want to see that boy happy. And Annette does, too. She just needs to realize that. With your help, I have a sneaky suspicion that won’t take as long as one might have thought. You’re a bold little burst of fresh air.”
Kenzie hopped down from the dias, heart pounding, and went to the armchair where she’d placed her convertible bag, pulling her phone in its gold case out, opening her contacts to Clairebear. She hit the call button, raising the phone to her ear. Claire picked up after two rings. “Hello, Kenzie? Is everything okay?”
“Clairebear, I need your help. I need Morgan’s help. I need Morgan to make my dress for the Shepherd Freedom Foundation Gala. And I need it to be the most amazing fucking dress of all time.”
#millory#duckenzie#michael x mallory#duncan shepherd#duncan shepherd au#cody fern#billie lourd#collie#duncan x mackenzie#millory au#house of cards au#ahs apocalypse#ahs apocalypse au#house of cards#millory fic#body and soul#body and soul fic#body and soul au#duncan shepherd x mackenzie stone#mackenzie stone#mallory au#collie au#cody x billie#duncan x mallory
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Happy holidays! how about a hot chocolate competition among the yandere ocs and the best one gets a special cabin date with darling?
Hello @teachillvibes, I'm so glad to see you again- Your requests are always so wonderful boo, thanks for requesting me this one!
Happy holidays everyone!! 🎄
TW/Tags: Sweet times cause I sure love them- // kinda like a city festival going on lol // I took your concept and change it a bit I'm sorry boo ;-; // it took me so freaking looooooooong to do it XD I'm sorry- I was kinda hoping that this could be my Christmas gift to y'all ;-;
🍭꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍮꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍰꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍮꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖🍭
Hot Chocolate Competition [Yandere!OCS x Reader - Headcanon]:
🍒Bullies🍭
→Alexandra Coldwell:
If I'm being honest, she probably would have reconsidered sharing the prize with her brother before she can consider going out with you instead. Alexandra entered the competition solely because she thought it would be fun, after all she isn't really the type to get herself dirty if it isn't for fun.
She wanted to win of course, but surprisingly she did have a lot of fun learning how to make hot chocolate, especially with her brother's help. Alexandra thought it would only make sense to take her brother as her company into this free wintery vacation, yet for some reason he didn't accept her offer.
Adrien felt satisfied with helping his sister as normally his cooking skills are generally unappreciated or ignored, although he appreciated how his sister wanted to pay back for his help, he was already happy with just being the one that got to teach her something new, since it's normally the other way around.
And besides- Free vacation packages are always so lackluster to him, if it isn't a five star service then why even bother? He could literally pay for better treatment than what the prize guarantees anyway.
Still, she wouldn't have accepted it if she didn't have someone in mind already. Yeah, yeah, she knows you probably won't like the idea of spending time with her, especially all alone in the cold.
But- Hey, I think you should give her a chance, after all, isn't this the time to forgive and forget? Maybe not completely forget, but I'm sure she'll do her best to make this the best trip for you, ever!
→Adrien Coldwell:
Adrien is known as the lazy one of the twins, the antisocial, the "mean one" (let's be honest, they're both evil but in different ways-), yet people tend to not give him enough credit for his accomplishments.
Him coming out as the winner of the competition may seem shocking to many but let us all remember that this isn't just his random luck, Adrien really did work his best to win and since he is already interested in making sweet treats for himself you can only imagine how hard he wanted to be recognized at least once.
The prize that he won was a vacation to a winter resort of some kind for two people, meaning him and anyone he would like to bring. Adrien considered bringing his sister, since he felt like it would be better for her to spend Christmas in a cabin with him than at home with... both of their parents and, may he dare say, ridiculous Christmas songs. Those damn, Christmas songs.
But Alexandra made sure to refuse his offer each time he tried to bring up, saying that the place was probably runned down and filthy and that she would never step inside a place like that- Alexandra also said that it wouldn't be fair to go with him since she didn't help him, and that this was something he won on his on, he deserves to enjoy it fully.
But what a dilemma, who would have the privilege of accompanying him to such a "special event"?
You, of course. Even if he knows you would rather be far away from him and get some rest from his constant torment, it's not like he would leave you alone at all lol-
Hey give him a break, will you? I'm sure you'll have a great time with him, he promises he won't do anything stupid while you two are there.
Just let him repay you for an entire year of entertainment, dearest.
🍎Teachers🥧
→Madeline Allen:
Madeline is normally very uninterested in competing with anyone, even if the prize sounds amazing. What made her stay and see more of the event was when she noticed you in the crowd, maybe you were with your friends, although she didn't really see anyone she recognizes as your friends there-
What made her participate and do her very best to win? It was when she noticed how most of the contestants seemed to have a suspicious interest in you, something felt weird in those stares they were giving you. She is a little suspicious about the intentions behind those stares, yet she has to recognize that whenever there is a shiny diamond radiating light, it's hard to not notice. It's obvious that they recognize how shiny you are, love.
It doesn't really excuse their clingy behavior towards you, but sure, she gets why they're doing this, or why they would enter this competition in the first place. All to get your attention apparently.
Honestly, she wasn't planning on entering this competition at all, but… Hmmn, how can she say this nicely- She doesn't like these people trying so hard to get your attention, specially with the prize being something that would give any of them the privilege of having you all by themselves, no dearest, she can't let them have you like that-
Besides! Wouldn't you prefer being with nsomeone that is actually looking forward to making you happy, instead of being stuck with brats, with troublemakers and… uhn- A cosplayer…?
Anyway, all of them are pretty eccentric with their own weird little charm, she is sure they'll be fine, especially far away from you- Believe me, she is so excited about this vacation! Forget about these guys, think about all of the things you two can do!
She is already thinking about what she'll bring with her, some cozy warm clothes, maybe her favorite fuzzy blanket, maybe some of her favorite movies, some rope, an tranquilizer-
Well, who cares about the details anyway?? She is just so excited, she can't wait to give you the best of her cookies!!
→Matthew Robinson:
Matthew is a really reserved individual. Being part of big events is simply not his thing, but it was because of you and that sweet smile of yours that brought him to this place. And well…. The smile stuck in the other contestant's faces… Not that they were even half as charming as yours, on the contrary, they seemed oddly sinister.
Mischievous by their very nature, all of these people seem to be somewhat interested in you, breathing in your presence like you're oxygen itself. Disgusting. For the first time in his life he feels pissed off enough to say he wants to see them drop dead- Not that he'll actually do anything, he is nothing like that.
All of these people seemed really interested in winning that prize and hopefully taking you with them, which of course he couldn't allow it, as your only protection from these fiends.
When he won, he was too dumbfounded to even notice the hatred looks that the other competitors were giving him. He really did win, didn't he? He couldn't believe he won!
For the first time in his life he didn't feel satisfaction that came from the competition itself being great, no, true satisfaction came when you accepted to go with him! That's the golden prize he never thought he deserved, yet feels so rewarding.
Don't worry dearest, he'll take care of everything that you need while you two are there, you'll be treated like the perfect little princess/prince you are, like the perfect doll.
Now he just needs to be sure on what to bring, this is probably the most excited he has been since he was a child!
🍋Delinquents🐍
→Janette Sartorius:
Janette isn't one for entering in these competitions just because, there needs to be a good reason for it, like helping them raise a good funding for some sort of charity, or ya know, impressing that one really cute person in your class. Yeah, really important-
Look, she has a lot of clown energy, she knows it, but being publicly humiliated is absolutely not her thing! And that means being either the loser or the winner, she doesn't know exactly what to say when she is put into such position-
Still, if it means giving you something nice, then sure! She'll take whatever she can, although she was focusing on gaining something like second/third place so she can get something small like a plushie or a basket of chocolate, anything that would be small yet really charming- Just like you!
When the judges announced her as the winner in first place, she couldn't believe it! No- Seriously, she couldn't believe it!! She tried to make sure her presentation would be nice but mild enough to not be considered a winner!! What the hell???
Even if the universe seemed to have betrayed her by making her be the one in front of so many people as she claimed her prize, she was once again blessed with luck, as her prize was something truly worth looking like a fool in front of so many strangers-
Of course she'll take you first! Why not?? It's not that weird, it's just pals being pals and inviting each other to cool trips, ya know?? Surely she isn't screaming inside at how cliche this all seems.
Look at her, NOT thinking about the huge amount of fanfiction she had ever read where there was only one bed! NOT her reconsidering not going because she can't handle the thought of there only one bed. She is totally fine, ya know? NOT thinking you'll hate her when you learn how much of a weeb she is-
She'll make sure that you have fun with her, but you'll probably catch her trying way too hard to impress you very soon- Please, talk with babe- In her brain there is only one neuron, and it's constantly banging its head in the walls of her brain screaming your name.
→Jackson Macnee:
Jack isn't really interested in these competitions, it isn't his thing, he wouldn't waste time on it unless there was something really, really important at hand.
And it seemed like today was the day to do anything that he could to not only enter such stupid competition, but to win it at all costs. It was when he recognized those familiar faces next to yours that he decided to enter it, but it was when he noticed all of the contestants, who were presumably strangers to one another, get somewhat riddled up about your presence.
Yeah sure, you're cute, you're pretty and yes you're perfect, but seeing half of the contestants being so… Clingy over you it's absolutely ridiculous-
What? You know all of them?? Or are you going to tell him that some of these imbeciles got this lovestruck immediately just by taking one glimpse at you? You would sound absolutely insane to him if you have chosen to tell him none of them, absolutely none of them are interested in you in any way- Especially those dumbass bourgeois blondies.
Jesus fuck, what type of luck is that? Having all these morons be so interested in impressing you by winning a prize for you? Sounds dumb to him, but still, if winning it's what takes to make these fools stop daydreaming about you then so be it. It's not that he really wants to impress you by giving the prize he won, he just wants to see the twins cry after noticing the cruel reality that they don't have you- Or that they can't get everything that they want, that could work too-
Jack is sure to seem calm and unbothered throughout the entire event, trying to sound happy that he won, and trying even harder to not make the laugh in the face of the rest of the competitors. But honestly, he wasn't expecting the prize to be so…. convenient? Really? A place where he can take you to be all alone with him while enjoying such a joyful season?? Yes, he'll gladly take it and make sure to shove in everyone's faces, not literally, but clear enough for everyone to get the message.
Although he is happy for his win, he doesn't really know what to do from there- The fact was starting to settle in when he rethought over and over again about the trip. Somewhere all alone with you, sounds really, well, like a dream, like a fantasy, unrealistic.
Jack will do what he does best, fake that he is calm while hiding the fact he is panicking at the thought of being this close to you. Again, he doesn't want you to know how much he wished for this. Whenever he acts like he doesn't care at all, he at least hopes you know you do mean a lot to him.
🍈A.I (non-binary/gender neutral)👾
→Yuma Soma:
Yuma was focused on winning the moment they entered the competition, however they didn't know what the prize would be until they actually won it. They were more interested in the competition aspect of this event than what they would gain with it, yet when hearing what the prize would be they were, well, confused-
What is so special about this whole "free vacation"? A cabin in the middle of the woods with nothing but snow? Pff- As if snow is even that cool for them to want to see it! Yeah, they know what snow is….. 100%...... yeaaaaaah.
Okay fine, they don't really know what it is. I mean- Sure they know the definition of it, and they have seen a bit of it in their game, although they bet that what they have seen isn't half like the real deal.
It may seem silly, but maybe this trip could be a great opportunity for them to be able to see it and feel it for the first time with you by their side. With you trapped inside the game or not.
Don't be so mean boo, they promise they'll behave this time! The biggest gift you can give them it's the wonderful time you two will share, then again, it's not like you can really do anything against it, right?
🍬Kitsune🦊
→Tatsumi:
To be honest, Tatsumi isn't one for entering these types of competitions unless the price is truly worth it. Money would be the first thing in his list of priorities, yet the idea of going into vacation on the holidays doesn't sound half as bad, ya know?
While walking around the city plaza with you, you two noticed the event happening and decided to take a look.
He wanted to try it out because it sounded fun, yet to actually win?? This feels amazing yet somewhat inappropriate to him, he didn't really consider the possibility of winning, that it almost feels like he would be taking something that he doesn't deserve.
And as he struggles to come out with any excuse as to why he can't take the prize, even though he could take it and give it to any of his friends, you decided to intervene and take the prize for him.
You already knew how Tatsumi felt about himself, you didn't know exactly what led to it but you did know about his constant breakdowns whenever he thought no one was looking. He did tell you about some of his issues but whenever he could he would fake it as being something dumb that you shouldn't worry about, but come on- You already know that is bullshit.
Tatsumi would feel better knowing you're coming with him, but he would still feel awkward knowing it's just the two of you, and it's not like he won't receive thousands of messages from all of his friends calling him out for not inviting any of them. It's not like they had anything against you, they just really liked messing with him over his massive crush over a you-
He may be a little sneaky perv bastard, but come on now- You know he will treat you right while you two are there, honestly he just wants to enjoy some change of scenery with his favorite person.
🍰CEO📏
→Ingrid Bright:
First things first, Ingrid is a serious woman owner of the biggest business empire in the country- Do you really think she has time for things like that? Cause either way, even if she lost, she could have- Built a winter resort just for herself if she wanted to go there so badly.
But who knows, maybe she found something charming about winning the competition and sharing the prize with you, it's… A bit more charming than her just bringing you to a place she paid for. Something about the novelty of winning something for you sounds really appealing, maybe even worth the trial and error, and again she doesn't really need it, so there isn't any harm in trying.
Although let's be honest, there is a slight possibility that the game was rigged to her favour considering her own status against the various competitors. What? It's not like she is aware of it, if anything she is just as clueless as every other person competing.
She probably does need some rest from the same boring office that she has to work in everyday, and bringing you with her may be the best part of it all! What do you say? Want to get some rest far away from the company?
Well, maybe not completely far away, considering she is your boss… But, maybe if Ms. Bright gets to relax for a while, she'll eventually soften up. You won't be in an awkward trip with your boss anymore, you'll be on a surprisingly nice vacation with a person you knew for a while but only got to truly know recently. She really hopes you don't see her as just your boss...
🍭꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍮꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍰꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍮꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖🍭
#yandere#yandere oc#sheep stuff#sheep's stuff#yandere x reader#yandere bully#yandere twins#yandere oc headcanon#yandere teacher#yandere delinquent#yandere a.i#yandere ai#yandere ceo#yandere kitsune#yandere oc scenario#yandere oc x reader#special delivery headcanons#special delivery request#special delivery scenarios#yandere bully x reader#yandere teacher x reader#yandere delinquent x reader#yandere a.i. x reader#yandere ai x reader#yandere a.i x reader#yandere kitsune x reader#yandere ceo x reader#merry christmas#happy holidays
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“Anybody can become angry, that is easy; but to be angry with the right person, and to the right degree, and at the right time, and for the right purpose, and in the right way, that is not within everybody’s power, that is not easy.” - Aristotle, The Art of Rhetoric
Well, look at that ancient Greek dude rolling out a pitch-perfect summary of - what I currently consider to be - Liz’s core issue on TBL. My core issue is that I cannot keep things brief, so I’ll poke this some more bc damn S5 was so much better than I expected, and it left me with an urge to try and sort this canon mess into sth I can swallow.
What’s the deal with Liz, why is her relationship with Red in such a terrible shape at the end of S5, and why is that a likely promise of better things to come?
It’s possible to look at this deterioration as a more or less continuous (organic!) process that reaches back at the very beginning; a process to which both characters have contributed their fair share over the years and now they are reaping the consequences and setting themselves up for a potentially healing collision.
I. Liz has narcissistic traits. Red is a natural born charmer with closely-guarded secrets and a pervasive guilt-complex. Putting them together is like putting mints in a bottle of coke: even on a perfect sunny day it's the kind of fun that leaves a mess.
II. Liz’s traits are amplified by Red’s behavior and Red’s behavior is warped by Tom’s presence. When Red scales things back (i.e. stops going on guilt-trips whenever others don’t feel like facing the consequences of their actions), it only makes things worse. This is the dark side of their intense "lock and key" dynamic, the deep angst pit that has been fore-fronted since S3B due to a rapid sequence of betrayals Red suffers from those closest to him. Tom triggers both empathy and repulsion in him, which in turn feeds his self-hatred and prompts him to keep enabling Liz out of guilt, creating an unsustainable bubble that finally bursts in S5.
III. The current name of the game for Liz is repression and denial, for Red it’s still obsession and rumination. At any given time Liz works off of a partial image of him, which is less about him keeping things from her and more about her purposefully ignoring parts of him in a misguided and doomed attempt to keep an illusion of safe simplicity (she does this with Tom, too). Meanwhile Red displays clear signs of compassion fatigue, which comes with its own destructive habits and distortions of reality.
IV. Sprinters are bad at running marathons. This simple truth has been a background tension factor in the Red/Liz relationship from the get-go. It’s mirrored in Red’s earlier troubles with Madeline and in Liz’s “Tom problem”. It keeps them united yet out of sync, which leads to misunderstandings, doubts, and quite a lot of friction.
more on these behind the cut:
I. Liz has narcissistic traits. Red is a natural born charmer.
Liz has a narcissistic streak and a tendency to delude herself as a messed-up coping mechanism, all of which she voices right off the bat in the pilot episode when Cooper asks her to profile herself (and to give us a brief intro to the character). These manifest chiefly as
(1) angry, aggressive outbursts
(2) a sense of entitlement/egocentrism
(3) blame-shifting
and she displays these traits to varying degrees throughout the show.
Now add to these the standard “Reddington Effect” that gets pointed out by other characters, articulating what Liz has been feeling since day one:
“There's no one on earth who can make a woman feel like the center of his universe more than Raymond Reddington.” (204)
“I was star-struck. It was exciting and captivating and... it consumed me. My work, my marriage.” (411)
We can also witness this "soft power” in action when Red approaches Zoe, Berlin’s daughter, to use her against her father. We can see how easily he can charm and pull people in to get what he wants. Sometimes it hilariously backfires - as it should - but that’s beside the point rn. The point is, Liz seems to receive this standard treatment, too, and she’s immediately, intensely receptive to it.
We can see both the positive (fascination-attraction) and the negative (rejection-aggression) side of this chemistry early on. She gets exposed to Red’s regular charm routine but it’s ultimately a v different experience because what those women quoted above don’t know (and what Liz still doubts) is that with her, his feelings run very, very deep. She is both the means and the end, the journey and the destination. Neither can walk this road without the other but walk it they must.
II. Liz’s traits are amplified by Red’s behavior and Red’s behavior is warped by Tom’s presence.
Thank God I have Tom, because with you, I never know what to believe.
I have never lied to you.
How the hell would I know?
Red’s secretive, seductive, guilt-ridden behavior feeds Liz’s narcissistic impulses.
(1) His ingrained "I will never tell you everything” ground rule regularly forms a volatile mix with her proneness to irritability and anger. There are countless examples of this (often understandable) reaction with a wide range that goes from a raised voice to actual physical aggression.
(2) It also clashes with her belief that she's automatically entitled to be told everything, regardless of the possibility that knowing might not make much difference to her but could get others killed, or the fact that she’s often careless w/ sensitive info and sometimes straight-up ignores the answer anyway.
This is an irresponsible and wasteful way of going about getting answers. Wanting to know doesn't entitle anyone to know. It's not at all surprising that Red - whose very life depends on carefully calculated discretion - is rarely fully forthcoming. Still, this is a major source of friction, esp as it seems to run counter to him telling her how special she is and treating her as such with a consistency that most well-adjusted people would fall for. A narcissistic personality like hers stands even less chance. This triggers jealousy and possessiveness very early on, and later engenders a full-blown expectation that when push comes to shove, he would always put her needs above anybody else’s, including his own. This (partially conditioned) expectation is in play e.g. when Tom re-enters her life and also when he violently leaves it again.
(3) Red is also burdened with a lot of chronic guilt which makes him an easy target for blame-shifting by those select few he loves. He often allows Liz to push blame on him for things he is not responsible for and he suffers in silence because “in his heart, he knows he must pay”. This also enables her to delude herself into thinking that he's indeed the unified source of all her problems, which makes her receptive to Mr. Kaplan’s terrible Solution to Nothing that targets him as such. Red has branded himself a “sin eater” and this gets taken full advantage of in a way that veers into emotional abuse. It paves the way for Operation Possum and its fallout that ripples across the next two seasons.
These 3 major negative “lock and key” interactions combine and reach a very unhealthy peak in S3/B. Liz’s thoughtless, pointless fake death stunt pushes Red to an edge he barely manages to pull himself back from, and it throws a wrench in the delicate cogwheels of their relationship where the degree of functionality and “healthiness” has always hinged on proportionate reciprocity (of good and bad alike). The faked death plan is - among other things - so disproportionately cruel and so exceptionally dumb and pointless, it unhinges this interplay.
It shakes Red from his grief- and guilt-induced stupor and cracks his habit of putting Liz on a pedestal. In S4 it is now Dembe who gets to be referred to as the "light in the darkness", which, given the changed circumstances, is a much better arrangement for both Liz and Red. Red would never ask anyone to carry this burden but the truth is, he needs someone like that by his side to keep him from falling to pieces. Dembe is a centered, reliable, well-adjusted person who can carry this heavy weight. Liz can't and she shouldn't, either. Now Dembe needs to be the lighthouse keeper as they navigate their stormy relationship.
On top of pulling Liz from the pedestal, Red also begins to scale back his willingness to play buffer and absorb blame. He pushes back against the kind of behavior he partially conditioned and enabled. He refuses to give in to Mr. Kaplan’s absurd and reckless vendetta that still targets him as the “root of all evil” in Liz’s life. He refuses to keep serving as a scapegoat for Tom’s failings and Liz’s self-imposed blindness, but the most significant “slight” contributing to the big fracture in his relationship with her is his refusal to share the secret of the bag.
“That’s why you’re here. That’s… Not to help me, not to avenge Tom’s death, but to help yourself and get your precious secret back.”
It is less about the secret itself and more about Red prioritizing it above her. She is jealous again but this time it is not directed at a person but at his “precious secret” that ultimately separates him from her, and once again it masquerades as projected and misplaced anger stemming from her deeper desire for their relationship to be close and genuine.
We have been here before when the Fulcrum surfaced:
"That's why you came into my life then. And that's why you're here now. Not because of me or who I am to you, whatever connection we might have, but because of some... object. Some thing."
and after her name gets cleared in S3/B:
I thought maybe after all we've been through the past three months that you might want to take a break.
It's a mythic battle, and it's not anywhere close to being over.
It's your battle, not mine.
and then again with the bag of bones. “Not me but” is the underlying issue that gets to her in each of these instances and it always manifests as anger.
From her warped perspective (warped by pain, confusion, and narcissism) he is deeply hurting her and taking everything from her to keep himself safe and cozy. It is the complete betrayal of her (partially conditioned but still unreasonable) expectation that he’d always put her and her needs first. In her eyes, this is again proof that their relationship, just like the one with Tom, has been a mere tool, a manufactured illusion, which - coupled with the impostor reveal - must truly mean Red never really cared for her at all.
But her assessment is once again dead wrong because she refuses to take a careful look at all the available information in proper context - a broader context where her personal issues are not the only ones of importance and where Red not bending to her every wish, esp those that make him deeply miserable or an instant murder victim, is not a sign of lack of genuine feelings but of a healthier attitude. She is also projecting anger at her own dishonesty with herself on him, and while it worked back when Red was receptive to it bc it was conducive to his self-flagellation, this messed up coping mechanism is finally breaking down, too, due to his increasing resistance and the multiplying events that signal he was never that alleged single source of evil.
"We want the same thing."
Indeed. It's the need underpinning Liz's anger, the same one Red has already articulated, albeit indirectly: "an inextricable intimacy and a commitment." Liz uses anger to express this, Red uses fish stories and Tom.
We were both half right.
Together, we were right.
Liz sees Red's commitment forever lying elsewhere: with his precious secrets. Red sees Liz's commitment tied up in her relationship with Tom even after his betrayal, even after his literal death. They’ve been longing for the other to break away and commit, but this longing still manifests indirectly and out of sync: she pulls Tom between them like a guardrail (and DG, too), so Red flees into his “work” as a defensive response, which she interprets as lack of genuine interest and withdraws further into safe denial, and we have a vicious cycle on our hands. Despite all that, she still wants him to give up his secrets and he still wants her to give up her fixation on Tom. It’s no accident Red is so captivated by her when she describes her fantasy to him. It’s v much his, too.
But they both feel betrayed right now and both cling to their respective security blankets: Red to his secrets, Liz to her anger.
III. The current name of the game for Liz is repression and denial, for Red, it’s obsession and rumination.
Liz's remark about Red during her therapy session is telling and relevant here:
"Some of what he's done is unimaginably bad. But some of what he's done for me is unimaginably good."
She has been privy to many good things Red has done for others (hell, an entire county once) but those are not factored in when she evaluates his "goodness". No, this is about her and again, it produces only a partial image. It is a good start to say to an outsider that they don’t have the full picture of who he is (or can be) and therefore their understanding is skewed. However, the same goes for Liz and she refuses to accept that her POV is limited, too, and that she is complicit in it being so. DG is a prime example: she is handed a DNA test and everything that contradicts the result is pushed aside at once. The same happened when Tom told her he was a changed man: she ignored the contradictions, so she could have the illusion of stability. Red withholds information but it’s Liz who blatantly lies to herself about many things.
But back to the quote above: so only what Red does for her is weighed on the scale of goodness. Only that defines his moral character. It is decidedly untrue but again it's a manifestation of possessiveness and something Red partially conditioned in her in moments where e.g. he says saving her helps him live w/ himself (104) or where he implies that being with her allows him to become less of a monster (209). As a result, he is reduced to something less but something confined to her, something conveniently simplified that - depending on her need - is easier to either embrace or scapegoat. When he goes along with what she wants (whether it is actually good or not), he is a welcome, positive presence. When he refuses her (no matter how justified or necessary it is), he is deemed toxic and gets rejected. But after Tom inserts himself back into their lives and after the fake death betrayal, Red seems to have less and less willingness to silently confine himself to her whims and wishes, and they finally reach a breaking point in S5.
Fans on both sides of the "why does Red care so much about Liz" fence focus heavily on love as his primary drive, and label the nature of the R/L relationship accordingly: parental and romantic respectively. What else could explain such grandiose display of unconditional love other than being related or being in love? To quote Red, "perhaps there's a third option." There is and despite it being on full display (or maybe because of it since the show has conditioned us to assume a convoluted mystery everywhere) we often overlook its importance:
With Red, guilt is the operative word. This is the governing emotion right next to love (a more recent development) to which many of his grand gestures are anchored. The pervasiveness of guilt in Red's life is pointed out several times in the show, most notably in episodes 104, 216, and 319:
“The farmer, who is no longer a farmer sees the wreckage he's left in his wake. It is now he who burns. It is he who slaughters. And he knows, in his heart he must pay.”
“The truth of it is, once you start down this road there's no logical place to stop. For the first few years, it may work. You'll draw some measure of virtue from being her invisible benefactor. But that won't last. It's all a fraud. That it's really not about her at all. That it's all about you. And you're just going through the motions to salve your own guilt. All the money, all the time and effort, all the favors in the world cannot possibly equal what you took away from her. Everything else is just a nice gesture.”
“It was a Hobson's choice. There was a woman and her child. Both were doomed. Both would die. I could either save one or lose both. I chose the child. It was the worst thing I've ever had to do in my life. Worst thing by far. I was arrogant. I presumed that there was an order to things, that there was... that if I nourished and protected and taught the child, she would be safe and happy. And she was neither. No matter what I tried to do, all I brought her was misery and violence.”
In each, the debilitating nature of guilt is given emphasis, the symptoms of which are exhibited by Red throughout the show. Chronic guilt can be an extremely powerful drive. As Red notes, "once you start down this road there's no logical place to stop". He genuinely believes he owes Liz an immeasurable debt and that nothing, not even wrecking or even giving his own life for her, could make up for it. If we look at his behavior from this perspective, the primary answer to why he is willing to go to such great lengths for her becomes obvious. He loves her, too, of course, but love is - as noted above - is a more recent, healthy development, and it still has to co-exist with deep-seated guilt that keeps it in a toxic choke hold. This combination is the main reason why he cannot deny Liz anything (see: Tom) and why he's so vulnerable to blame shifting. When someone believes they deserve to be used and punished by the one they also come to love more than anything, the danger of abuse skyrockets, too.
Guilt-driven gestures, no matter how grandiose, are ultimately selfish and fake, as Red observes. But after he finally meets her, love starts creeping into the picture, shifting their dynamic and imbuing it with something real and selfless. And Red starts pushing back a little now where Tom is concerned. This sprouting, deepening love, however, gets badly trampled on when the guilt-trips and betrayals come. Red endures them because guilt says "you deserve it", but it no longer has quite the same hold as it once did. Heartbreak is a somewhat sobering experience but until the still unknown source of his guilt is uncovered and addressed, his relationship with Liz, his love for her, cannot reach genuine fulfillment.
IV. Sprinters are bad at running marathons.
Red and Liz want the same thing (as we have established above) but she is impulsive and wants it now whereas he is wary and plans long-term.
“I can’t tell you what I’m gonna want 10 years from now. Even a year from now. I just know what I want right now.”
Liz is no fan of delayed gratification. She has wants and she wants those satisfied "right now" even if it means she has to trade a more secure, more enduring yet still unavailable future (Red) for a readily available present of poorer quality (Tom). The former requires hard work (of the sweat, blood, and tears kind), honest self-evaluation, careful planning, and lots of patience. The latter is just easy and right there, so she cuts straight to the finish line, then it all promptly comes crashing down on her.
This is what happens after her exoneration in S3B. She goes to Red but instead of some quality personal time, he acts prickly and distant, then whips out a giant map to show her how just much hard work still needs to be done before Odysseus can even consider returning home. Her response? She rejects it (and him with it) and goes straight back to Tom. He promises to give her everything she wants right there and then at a discount. She only has to bury her head in the sand regarding a couple of things and since Liz is prone to self-delusion and denial by default, she jumps at the opportunity. This is where her relationship with Red begins to go off the rails.
“Circumstances are far more complex than we ever imagined. I’m betting on the long play. The future.”
Red plays the long game when it comes to the most important things in his life, and he doesn’t shy away from torturous self-examination and self-denial to secure enduring results and a better future for those he loves. Liz’s relationship with Tom was a sprint with many corner-cutting and the inevitable letdown. They had a short present, but no future. With Red, there is a future still but Liz has to run a marathon to reach it and being a sprinter, she struggles a lot.
But she is not the only one struggling. Red is still traumatized by the loss of his family, which makes him instinctively reluctant to try to settle down again. Those who inflicted that debilitating loss still represent an active force in the world (see: the map). The longing to settle down is certainly there. It’s a dream he shares with Liz. They practically wish upon it under the stars while “Our House” is playing, but on top of his guilt and grief, the circumstances seem to be forever against him, so he doesn’t dare actively push for it like she does (he even rejects Agnes at first). He redirects his focus to the “job” to try and create a safer environment and maybe a future opportunity. This folds back to the marathon approach that Liz rejects at first but now, after Tom's demise, she must face. She vows to destroy Red but I don't think it will be a literal destruction. Deep down they still want the same thing and even though they have yet to admit it openly, they want it with each other.
Their time spent on the run in S3/A is immersed in the theme of a shared home. Liz and Red seek refuge in a theater where the stage is set as a home. This is where Liz tells Red about her fantasy and this is where Red immediately retreats behind a wall when he realizes that Liz will be pulled back into Tom's orbit.
“I’m not interested in what you want. I’m interested in what you deeply desire. I can sense that death and vengeance aren’t what drive you, Elizabeth. Or feed your soul. [What does?] A lost world, I suspect. Another life. If you can’t face your truths, I can’t be of service.”
The Djinn makes a clear distinction between “what you want” and “what you deeply desire”. It is echoed in the tension-filled dream Liz has where Red removes Tom from the picture just when he is about to spill a secret (nice piece of foreshadowing btw), then stalks up to her bed and asks her the same thing - not just what she wants but what she really wants. This image of Red stepping up as a sexual-romantic partner after her husband’s demise is shoved deep down in her subconscious. It is one she is not yet ready to face, but it is there - the option of making a home with him, an option he, too, keeps at arm’s length due to past trauma and present circumstances, and it adds even more tension to their interplay.
This exact type of unresolved tension has already popped up on this show when Madeline Pratt re-entered Red's life w/ some grievances.
"Florence was everything, our way out, a fresh start. But to you, it’s all just a job."
She feels betrayed and played for a fool because Red chose to continue living his danger-magnet criminal life, prioritizing it over her and their intended home.
"They used Pratt as bait, faked the kidnapping in order to bring Red into the Kings’ custody."
Later on, counting on his savior complex, she lands him in hot water to get even. She stages her own kidnapping and lures Red into a trap set by an enemy with a score to settle. If it sounds familiar, that’s because we see something similar play out between Liz and Red. It’s low-key in the background during S3-4 (w/ the whole home theme) and gets kicked into high-gear in the S5 finale (when Liz thinks he played her for a fool so he can continue living his criminal life):
We were out. You said the ship we were on was headed to Spain.
Change of plans.
Because?
Because after far too much time playing defense, today’s the day we switch to offense.
They could get away and start a new life but Red refuses to quit his "mission". As mentioned above, he tells Liz they still have a lot to do and her reaction is disappointment, and when Tom offers her everything Red is not yet able (to go away and start fresh), she accepts. And this is when their downward spiral begins in earnest and all the accumulated hurt peaks in S5, in Liz's very Madeline-esque plan to fake a kidnapping and lure Red to one of his enemies for some answers and score-settling (the same business the Kings were into w/ their illicit auctions):
If you’re gonna tell him you hurt me, he’s got to believe you.
You knew Reddington would come for you.
He got to do what he always does: try and save me.
Indeed. And he is about to confess his greatest secret to save her life when they get interrupted and an alternate solution presents itself. He kills Sutton, takes the bag and leaves. Liz vows to destroy him after this and I think she is right. Raymond Reddington needs to die for good this time. He needs to die so the man behind that mask can finally emerge. He needs to die so Liz can finally face and understand the full picture.
Red’s guilt feeds on the secrets he keeps and Liz continues to cling to her anger because these secrets are a wedge between them. The murky past and their distorted perception of it (Red's warped by guilt, Liz's scrambled by memory manipulation) hold them and their relationship hostage, so it must be disclosed and sorted for both their sakes. The second chance will not come until this happens. When it does, I think it will be the most cathartic moment in the history of this show.
This collision course is their way back home.
#long post#the blacklist#lizzington#(not too much i was trying really hard to keep this from turning into a shipper fantasy blueprint)#(emphasis on trying)#speculation#musings#q
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When Chris was little and scared of the dark, his mother had taken his grandmother’s sewing form and placed it by the window. That way, she had explained, nightmares and monsters couldn’t get in because someone was always keeping watch. And since he was young and impressionable, it worked too.
These days, there’s another person in his room, in his bed really, that looks out the window and keeps the nightmares away.
Truth be told, their transition from colleagues to friends to bedmates wasn’t seamless at all. And it was his fault- he enjoyed messing with her. A talent he’d had since childhood, he kind of enjoyed finding a person’s push points. He couldn’t possibly get used to a woman on the bridge, he’d declared, and enjoyed watching her fume. She was the kind of person who avoided conflict, but was smart enough to know when to get out.
Exactly a week after that particular comment, he heard through the grapevine that she’d applied for a transfer back to her former posting, and Chris realized he should probably up his game.
Because he needed her! Chris wasn’t that dumb, he’d be the first to admit that he was a pretty boy with a penchant for action. Charisma had gotten him on the captain’s chair of the Enterprise, and without it he would be better suited for a small wartime craft on patrol. The Enterprise was a vessel of many talents, science among them, and Chris didn’t function like that. He needed someone who did.
Enter One.
Chris the ruthless charmer had been just a tad busy with paperwork when the helmswoman, his new second officer, had introduced herself.
And yes, he asked her name. And yes, he immediately forgot it.
When they didn’t interact so much, a “Commander” or “Helmsman” would suffice. And as a day became a week and a month, Chris became further embarrassed to ask her name. The personnel file was no help either- a long Illyrian name (more like a list of intellectual achievements) that sounded nothing like the name Chris vaguely remembered her telling him.
A month in, the first officer quits. He and Chris were both “big picture” people, which just wasn’t working out. Chris gave him a strong recommendation and set about picking a new first officer, and who better than the best micromanager he knew?
Lieutenant Commander Helmsman suddenly needed a new name, and Chris found one. A part of her file mentioned the name “Number One” for her leading intellect among their people, and since it matched with a nickname for first officers, Chris decided to put it to use.
Thusly, Lieutenant Commander Helmsman was Commander Number One after just a month onboard. Anyone with more modesty would probably suffer from a strong case of imposter syndrome, but as far as Chris could tell, One just threw herself at work and found that to be sufficient.
One laid it on the line pretty fast. At their first meeting as captain and first officer, she declared that she had no interest in human interaction or working the conn more than Chris saw fit. She would make the ship run in the nitty-gritty (no, she did not use that word, such colloquialisms were beneath her) and Chris could do the talking and the interacting. Chris agreed.
Of course, since he couldn’t possibly shut his mouth and even be polite to his new first officer, he set about messing with her. And so he screwed up, almost lost her, and almost had to deal with a call from Admiral Marcus about going through two first officers in as many weeks.
So he called One into his office, apologized, and that was that. It’s not like there was much of a cold shoulder for her to give him anyways, they saw each other about twice a day. Once in their morning briefing, and Chris factored in one random encounter per day, usually in passing, or occasionally doing repair work on a bit of machinery because an engineer had missed something.
It did occur to him that perhaps they could be friends. Yes, friends, not “friends” as in “can’t stand each other” or “friends” as in “fucking.”
“Kid, we don’t even bother trying to reprimand all the captains that sleep with their first officers,” Marcus told him offhand once. “God, off the top of my head I can list a bunch- Kos and Madeline, Pr’ait and Thompson, ah- what’s-his-face and Hewell, the like. It’s a whole thing.”
The best way to become friends, he decided, was to become more familiar. When his open invitation to eat lunch together went ignored, Chris took a more proactive approach and made sure to intercept her while she was taking her food back to her office to eat. Alone. One wasn’t very sociable.
So when they were together of her own volition, he tried to be friendlier. Started joking with her, switching up her name, trying to endear himself to her.
“Hey, Uno, where are we at on those reports?”
“What do you think, Ein?”
“Qu’est-ce que tu penses, Premier?”
(Okay, the french was a bit much, but Chris swore it nearly, almost made her smile.)
As soon as Chris got her to smile, he knew he wanted to see it again.
He started to seek her out more actively- instead of dueling day-night shifts, she joined him for half a shift on the bridge, and the other half was spent however she pleased, usually in the form of more lurking.
They worked well together, even bonding occasionally. Chris’ lack of scientific expertise was obvious, so when an admiral visited to check up on their experiments, One skipped the middleman and fed him lines through an earpiece. Chris found it drop-dead hilarious. One gave him a Chem 101 textbook for his birthday, which Chris took to mean that she thought it was funny too.
As time went on, One opened up to him. The woman who used nearly as few contractions as Spock started to fade away, and in her place came an officer of greater intellect, but snark and humor too. Was it really just that One was... shy?
As she explained it, standing in an uncomfortable-looking parade rest while they were talking one day and it came up, the Talosians were ill-equipped to deal with the full spectrum of human emotion, and had presumably misconstrued her desire to connect with him as romantic desire.
“I suppose that my behavior didn’t help your wanting to come out of your shell,” he had replied.
“That is correct.”
“Made all the more illogical to them by me being a jerk.”
“‘Illogical’ is Spock’s department, not mine,” she said. “But yes. Good day, Captain.”
Without waiting for a dismissal (and she probably wouldn’t have gotten it, he wanted her to stay and chat), she left and went back to her lurking.
It didn’t shock him, really, that stoic One wouldn’t be into him like that. Or that she simply wanted him to be less of a jerk. And even having apologized already, Chris figured he could do better.
The next day, he preempted her departure for their morning meeting by showing up at her room five minutes early with a bag of breakfast foods in tow.
“I haven’t eaten yet, and I feel like we’re at the point in our friendship where we can eat together without it being an awkward mess. Plus, I brought a lot for you since I don’t know what you like.”
She neither objected to the ‘friends’ bit, nor the change of venue, only hesitantly stepping aside to let him in. He’d never seen One’s quarters before. She’d declined the move down the hall into the first officer’s quarters, claiming that they were exactly the same except that the windows in her room were on the left, and the other quarters had them on the right. She had strongly objected, and Chris had the plaque moved.
But now, being in the room itself, Chris could see why One didn’t want to move. It was- well, it wasn’t a hot mess. Everything was in perfect order. It was that the room was full. It seemed that One had spent her nearly four years on the ship making her quarters ideally suited to her needs, from acoustic paneling on the walls and non-regulation light filters, to nearly every diplomatic gift that Chris didn’t want, arranged in color order on a shelf. The crown jewel on the center table was a small food synthesizer unit, that seemed to nearly be on the verge of buckling with the amount of wires on top of it.
“It’s a prototype updated food synthesizer.” She stood back and let him look around her room.
“Do you really hate socializing in the cafeteria that much?” He circled the table, examining One’s creation. It had a touchscreen menu instead of a chip insert like the Enterprise’s normal ones.
“No,” she seemed less defensive and more amused by his accusation. “This one allows you to adjust the portions and composition of its offerings.”
“...So it becomes more accessible for people with dietary restrictions,” He turned back around to face her. “That’s very resourceful, Number One. I imagine the final product will be well-received by many in Starfleet.”
“I appreciate the sentiment, sir, but you really need to let me finish my explanation,” One said. “I’m afraid my motivations are a little less altruistic- all of the burrito options have salsa. I hate salsa.”
After their first meeting, the prototype synthesizer was relegated to a side desk so that they could actually eat on the table, and a few days of weird looks from the swing shift officers in the cafeteria prompted him to bite the bullet and become a test subject for One’s “replicator.” Chris ate nearly every breakfast food under the sun during those first few months of meetings, with mixed results. Most of the human food was delicious, nearly comparable to real food, especially the strawberry pancakes. Others, like the Illyrian apple dumplings that One showed him, similar to the ones her brother made, prompted an off-the-record visit from Boyce to treat numbness in the left leg. A warning about which foods were poisonous was added soon after that.
One simply ate her long-sought burrito sans salsa and took notes. Lots of notes. Not just on what foods sent Chris running to the wastebin, but on which alterations worked and which ones didn’t. How much caffeine could you condense into a shot of espresso before it altered the taste? What temperature should the scrambled eggs be? What colors make the cantaloupe taste best?
Chris learned that One was a born engineer. When Engineering had gotten too cramped and claustrophobic, she’d finangeled her way onto the bridge and became the helmsman. After that, it was a clean jump to first officer, even though she admitted to liking the helm. Chris made sure to give her a shift after she told him that.
As their morning meetings went on, he decided he liked her quarters as a workroom better. Hers had an actual window view, the food was objectively better, and the lights and sound were more calming. The company wasn’t too bad either, though Chris justified it as having someone who actually understood all the scientific paperwork that passed through his desk. One was a paperwork enthusiast by her own admission, so he let her handle that and he would sign off on whatever she put in front of him.
He started joining her after their now-joint shift, too.
“Captain,” she said one day as he worked on the cramped desk with the replicator, patting the space next to her on the couch, “You can sit down. Don’t be a stranger.”
Even in such a private space, he felt uncomfortable being in such close proximity to One. It wasn’t that there was some sort of mythic ‘tension’ between them, it was nearly the exact opposite. Their relationship had been so purely platonic that there wasn’t anything else going on, even if he had solidly been giving that impression by disappearing into her room at odd hours each day. He was irrationally afraid that someone would bust in and see them... sitting a meter apart, doing work? Yeah, irrational.
“Don’t stress it, sir,” she added, as if sensing his discomfort. “After all, you made it perfectly clear that you don’t see me as a woman.”
He choked on air for a few seconds and eventually formulated something that could possibly be thought of as a ‘defense.’
“I didn’t- It’s not that I don’t see you as ‘female,’ it’s that I don’t see you as a purely sexual ob-”
He stopped when he noticed her laughter.
“You have blue nails,” he said, as if to explain her femininity.
One laughed so hard that she fell off the couch, while Chris stood there dumbly, realizing he’d been set up.
“I’ll try not to tell your yeoman that you said that,” she assured him between fits of laughter.
He wanted to snap at her, pull rank and shut up his embarrassment, but he realized that he couldn’t. If he became defensive, he would lose just a little bit of their friendship, and that simply couldn’t happen.
Thankfully he would have been saved from causing any real changes to the nature of their relationship by the shift change chime, which usually meant that they would part ways and go to sleep, but Chris felt the need to clear the air.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and One stood back up.
“No stress,” she replied. “It’s rude of me to bring up stuff you said years ago, since you’ve been so much better since then.”
One had said so plainly that she didn’t actually have romantic feelings for him, and that reminder made it a little more difficult when he wondered what it would be like to stay when the shift bell rang. To curl up next to her, to see her view out the window every night.
Somehow, Chris didn’t realize how deep he was ‘till he was drowning.
Somehow, in the next two months, they became more... tactile?
A mission gone terribly wrong meant that when he turned up after they got back, he found her crying on the couch, which was something that even a salsa-less burrito couldn’t fix. He’d sat down next to her, and they’d stayed there for the next hour as she’d sobbed her eyes out.
Even when she wasn’t crying, that meter between them on the couch shortened to fifty centimeters, then twenty, and then they found themselves next to each other on the middle of the couch. Chris didn’t know why he was measuring, but the fact that he watched it happen (by both of them) and said nothing seemed very telling.
That she didn’t either seemed telling too.
They ran the gamut of shitty missions during those few months. Sometimes it was his turn to be the sobbing wreck, while she sat next to him and tried to tempt him with the replicator’s latest recipe- chocolate bread pudding. It was delicious, even slightly seasoned with tears.
In spite of their new-found contact (or perhaps because of it), he found himself thinking about her more and more. Not just in the biblical sense, but he was seeking out her company more and more, the comfort of someone familiar, even touch sometimes.
On one occasion, he’s woken up by the chime of his comm unit, a faint “One to --ce.”
He answered with drowsiness, but not irritation- it’s pleasant to hear her voice, almost thinking it was part of his dream.
“Were you calling for Doctor Boyce, One?” He was wide awake at the realization that she sounded ill.
“Yeah- but you’ll work too.”
“Work for what?”
“Can you come to my quarters?”
So, naturally, he got out of bed at a normal pace, put on something more decent, and walked calmly over to her quarters.
Absolutely the fuck not. This is Christopher Goddamn Pike we’re talking about, and he busts out the door and runs down the hall shirtless, to where his first officer may or may not be in distress. Or need furniture moved, it’s not yet entirely certain.
She was hardly visible, curled up in fetal position on the bed, and he was unused to the lack of light without those pretty yellow ones on.
“Number One?” He asked softly, as if they hadn’t had a conversation just a minute ago. “Is something wrong?”
She let out a soft moan in response, and he crept over to her bed. It was the middle of the night, and he’d never had great impulse control around her anyways, and so he slowly got onto the mattress and touched her softly. Soft was the theme there, with the mattress that was far and away too soft to be regulation, and the touch of her pyjamas to his. He could’ve fallen asleep right then and there, and happier than he’d ever been.
But her blue-nailed hand closed around his wrist, and “soft” was no longer the name of the game.
“Chris,” she said calmly, and he realized that it was the first time she’d called him that, “If you don’t get that hypospray from my desk, I’ll rip you to shreds and use you to fuel the replicator.”
Having never particularly been one to say no to a strong lady, he got up and retrieved it for her. Once it was injected and she was starting to uncurl, he lay down beside her and started to drift off.
The next morning, he woke up with her lying partway on top of him (it might be soft, but her bed isn’t very spacious), and her staring at him.
“Good morning,” he said with no particular affliction, as if waking up in your XO’s bed was something that happened all the time. “Feeling better?”
“Well enough, thank you,” she replied. Some little, possibly desperate part of Chris jumped on the fact that she didn’t use ‘sir,’ but that was mostly just a good situational choice on her part. “I get really bad cramps sometimes, and I couldn’t get up to get the hypo myself.”
“I’m glad,” he pushed himself up, looking at the now-normally-lit room, that somehow felt different after spending half a night in its occupant’s bed. “I should probably get going.”
“You have about three minutes before this hallway usually gets busy,” she offered. “I’d hurry.”
As he moved to stand, she backed up as well. To an outside observer, it would seem as if she was mirroring his movements, but in reality he was mirroring her. They moved together until they got to the door, and suddenly they were closer together. Much closer. He leaned down to kiss her, and-
Someone was coming. She nearly pushed him out the door, with a single word of advice.
“Run.”
He still doesn’t know her name.
The thought occurs to him the first time they tumble into bed together for real, that he has no idea what to call her. But since he wants this- their relationship- to last, he tries to put at least a little emotion into it, even if she’s doing what she calls “all the heavy lifting ‘round here.”
“I adore you,” he tells her, and she smiles. “You are the light of my world. A city that is set on a hill shall never be hid-”
“Don’t quote the Bible right now,” she insists. “Or really any time. I’m Zoroastrian.”
“I thought that was an Abrahamic religion.”
“You would be wrong.”
“Are you really Zoroastrian?”
“No.”
“How’d you know, then?”
“Met one, once. Guy ran away from law school to find Jesus, or some shit. Found another monotheistic religion instead.”
“Huh,” is all he has to say. “Well, you’re pretty. And smart. That’s what I was getting at.”
“You have a way with words, Captain Pike,” she says.
“Now it’s my turn to object,” he replies. “I think you know you can call me ‘Chris.’”
“Only when you stop calling me ‘One.’”
“False equivalence, much?”
“I have a name that’s not just a title, you know.”
“Would you prefer ‘une’? ‘m? Yksi? Odyn?” He’s kissing up and down her throat now in a rather desperate attempt to distract her. She turns to face him, and if he wasn’t so blissed-out right now he’d be incredibly nervous.
“Chris...”
“Beautiful? Intelligente? Pragtige? Schlau? Bonica? Aande?”
“Chris, is this all some bold coverup for the fact that you don’t know my name?”
“...No?”
#okay that 'woman on the bridge' quote can uhhhh choke so i'm declaring its death here and now#it's up there with troi and seven's uniforms on my list of things that simply do not exist as far as i'm concerned#also this is a good one to play 'spot the references'#i counted three major ones
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April 2018 Book Roundup
In April, I read silly books and I read books that were deadly (literally) serious. It’s possible that the most well-written book I read was Madeline Miller’s Circe, which I loved and found much more satisfying than Song of Achilles. But the most enjoyable book? It was Laura Thalassa’s Pestilence, the romance novel about a girl, an apocalypse, and a sexy horseman who spreads disease. What more could you want?
Pestilence by Laura Thalassa. 4/5. When the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse show up, all technology fails, sending the world into chaos. Then they disappear. Five years later, Pestilence has reappeared, and wherever he goes a plague kills everyone in his path. Sara, an ex-firefighter, has been sent to kill him. When that fails? She becomes his prisoner--with Pestilence claiming that he’s keeping her alive to make her suffer. Of course, that’s not what’s really going on, and yes, this is a full-blown romance novel. It’s also one of the most enjoyable books I’ve read all year thus far. Sara and Pestilence’s romance is ridiculous, engrossing, hilarious, and yes, pretty sexy. One thing I loved about this book is that while Pestilence is in his very nature a conqueror and pretty much a living plague--he’s also very boyish and inexperienced and the book makes that inexperience very sexy. Because Sara’s experienced. Sara is sarcastic, foul-mouthed, and pretty sexual; and very rarely do you come across a romance novel that lacks a serious alpha male. Like, yes, Pestilence has his dominant moments, but overall he’s more like... sorta hapless. I mean, spoiler alert, they have sex, what a shocker, and when Sara is annoyed that he’s not being more chill about it he’s like “I GAVE YOU MY ESSENCE SARA~~~~”. It’s one of those books. I loved it.
I Was Anastasia by Ariel Lawhon. 3/5. Anna Anderson was famous for pretending to be famous--after an attempted suicide, she claimed to be Anastasia Romanov, and was so convincing that people who met and were related to the grand duchess backed her. “I Was Anastasia” explores Anna’s life--backwards. Meanwhile, the story of Anastasia Romanov is told moving forward. Somewhere, they meet in the middle, as does the truth. In a basic way, this is a good historical fiction novel. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel. The thing is that if you know anything about Anastasia, you know about Anna; there aren’t any twists to be had. What kept this from being a four-star read, aside from the fact that it was a bit expected, was one thing concerning the grand duchesses that is pretty debatable from what I understand, and--I’m not sure it was necessary. But if you’re into the Romanovs, you may want to check this out.
Lady Killers: Deadly Women Throughout History by Tori Telfer. 4/5. A collection of write-ups on female serial killers. What sets this book apart is that, aside from Erszebet Bathory and Nannie Doss (as well as the Benders, vaguely) I really hadn’t heard about most of these women. Telfer steered clear of discussing extremely obvious women like Aileen Wuornos, instead focusing on cases that largely took place before the second half of the twentieth century, with one murderess dating back to the thirteenth century. Of course, this means that there was often more speculation and less hard evidence, but for most of these women I think there was a pretty good case to be made that SOMETHING was going on, even if it wasn’t as salacious as some might believe. And Telfer doesn’t just stick to typical American and European women, either--she touches about the Egyptian sisters Raya and Sakina, famous for killing a remarkable number of women, and Oum El-Hassen, a Moroccan murderess whose motives remain a mystery to this day. More than a profiling of these individuals, however, I’d call this book an analysis of how we interpret female serial killers culturally. Why don’t we take them as seriously as we do male serial killers? Why do paint them, often, as more sexual than truly frightening? Telfer doesn’t shy away from the gory details and while you might feel some empathy for these women, she doesn’t hesitate to report that some were very likely psychopaths, with no remorse--but then, that doesn’t take away from the fact that some were poor, some were abused, and some didn’t really see any better options for themselves. The Angel Makers of Nagyrev--not one murderess but a group of Hungarian village women who, over fifteen years, killed around 300 people for a variety of reasons--were particularly interesting and kind of heartbreaking. Highly recommend.
Tangerine by Christine Mangan. 2/5. In 1956, Alice goes to Tangiers with her new husband--a man she barely knows--John. Haunted by an event that happened while she was at school--an event she barely remembers--Alice struggles with anxiety and paranoia, and can’t adjust to the strange world of Morocco. However, her past catches up to her in the form of Lucy, her old school friend. This is essentially a 40s/50s film noir/psychological thriller movie a la Hitchcock in book form. Unfortunately, while I feel it would have worked as a movie of that style and era, the writing wasn’t attention-grabbing. Pretty, but a bit dull. I couldn’t tell much of a difference between the voices of Lucy and Alice, though they alternated, and the “twist”... I don’t need a twist in my thrillers--a real one, that is--but if there is going to be one it should be decent. This was fairly pedestrian. A missed opportunity, especially painful because the authorb describes Morocco so well.
Indecent by Corrine Sullivan. 3/5. Imogene has always envied the rich kids who went to elite boarding schools. Now a grown woman, she becomes a teacher’s assistant of sorts at a fancy prep school for boys--only to find herself attracted to one of the students. This is not an easy read. If anyone reads it and believes that Imogene’s victim--because horny seventeen year old boy or not, he is that--was the bad person here, nah. I don’t think Sullivan intends it that way at all. Imogene is a study of a predator who became that way through insecurity and arrested development. She thinks like a teenager. She constantly critiques herself--her body, her relative lack of sexual experience. She compares herself to teenage girls, for God’s sake, and is all impressed by a seventeen year old boy’s “experience” and “charisma”. By being in Imogene’s mind... You get how a predator becomes a predator. Some aren’t born that way, and the line between a woman in her early twenties and a boy in his late teens COULD conceivably get blurred--but it’s always the adult’s fault, and this book doesn’t shy away from that. I wouldn’t say it was a fun read, but it was interesting.
The Day of the Duchess by Sarah MacLean. 3/5. Malcolm, the Duke of Haven (yes) has a problem. He needs an heir--but to have an heir, he first needs a wife. Actually, he has one; but Seraphina, the title-chaser who “trapped” him into marriage left nearly three years ago. Now she’s shown up asking for a divorce, which isn’t all that easy to get. Malcolm makes her a deal: if she helps choose his next wife, he’ll grant her the divorce. Of course, Malcolm would far rather keep Seraphina around than have her select her replacement... so his real plan is to woo her into staying with him. This was a pleasant, enjoyable read that varied from the typical romance novel in that the hero has done a genuinely bad thing--not just a mildly upsetting thing--and there are very strong problems in the marriage. Malcolm and Sera are both pretty wounded by what they’ve done to each other and one major thing neither one of them could have really helped. The angst was real. And the sex scenes were good--lots of emphasis on female gratification in this one. But parts of the story were kind of like... too much comic relief for a novel with the kind of backstory this one has. I’m not saying it had to be a serious story AT ALL, but Sera has this chorus of sisters and I liked them at first but it become... too much. However, I’d still call it a solid historical romance.
Circe by Madeline Miller. 5/5. Known as the witch who turned Odysseus’s men into pigs before capitulating to his charms and will, Circe is a character who was present for or linked to some of the most interesting parts of Greek mythology. Here she gets her own epic, beginning with her birth as the nymph-goddess daughter of Helios. Eventually exiled to an island, far from the other gods, Circe encounters everything from sailors to fellow witches and kings, and even monsters. This is a literary fantasy, the writing as beautiful as it was in Song of Achilles, but dealing with a story much more dynamic and interesting. Circe is a character who is at times deeply caring while not losing her selfish and destructive streaks. She has reasons for her behavior, but she isn’t declawed in the least. Miller tells the more horrifying parts of her story with taste, and at times, humor; but you never lose the sense of the epic in this novel.
The Queens of Innis Lear by Tessa Gratton. 4/5. As the king of Innis Lear ages, his obsession with the stars and prophecy leave his kingdom in a perilous position. Drawing together his three daughters--the warlike Gaela, manipulative and child-starved Regan, and the favorite, Elia--Lear promises that he will name his heir. But no matter who he chooses, the sisters are prepared to go to war for the crown, and for the fate of Innis Lear. Obviously, this is a retelling of King Lear--Gratton evidently found the initial portrayal of Lear’s daughters lacking, and really takes that to task here. And to be sure, Gaela, Regan, and Elia have far more depths than the women in the original play. But the fact is that I could have done with more of them, and less of the perspective of others. When the story is with the sisters, it’s enthralling. But often, there’s the perspective of Ban, a pivotal character--an embittered bastard with remarkable power--but perhaps not the most compelling voice. Then there’s the fool’s daughter Aefa, Ban’s mother Brona, the sisters’ uncle, and more. Gratton also often delves into the past, revealing plot points but more than that developing the characters. Which is good. None of what is in this book is bad, really, but it’s held back from being as good as it could be by too much of the less important stuff. For example--Gaela and Regan have a very compelling, codependent relationship. Gaela is driven to be king, and Regan has sworn to support her no matter what and have children that will be Gaela’s heirs. The problem being, of course, that despite the fact that she’s the only one of the sisters in a loving relationship, Regan seems incapable of bearing a living child. The differing struggles of Gaela and Regan are amazing, and deserved more pagetime. With that being said, this is a super compelling story, and worth checking out.
I’ll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara. 4/5. Michelle McNamara, as many know, died in the middle of writing her exhaustive book on the Golden State Killer--a title she coined. Obviously, the killer has since been caught, but he wasn’t when Michelle was researching. The result is a gripping, incredibly well-done book on a monster. It reminds me somewhat of In Cold Blood, but without the closeness to the killer--less sympathy, more drive to find and punish him. McNamara was up front about her own flaws, with the book itself highlighting her obsessive nature. But ultimately, the only thing I can really critique about her work is beyond her control; it is somewhat disjointed, as friends had to piece the book together after she died. However, it’s a remarkable example of true crime lit.
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