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peejsocks · 2 years

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casual - bam margera x f!reader

PART 3 - Seen through

a/n: my favorite chapter! not much to say here this time. let me know your thoughts please!!!

disclaimers/warnings: graphic smut. nsfw. a little jealousy ;)

summary: reader will not admit she has a crush on bam. they keep their distance and it’s better that way. until bam makes a suggestion and everything changes fast. no Y/N

Part 1

Part 2

Part 4

Finale

PART 3 - Seen through

Returning from Canada means a break for the entire crew. Mostly. Pontius, Steve-o and Knoxville had a couple of extra projects to shoot that they wanted to get a headstart on, and you promised you'd help them. You really didn't mind. You would never tell, but those three were your favorite and spending time with them could barely be called work, it was just fun. Bam left to visit his parents and old friends. No calls, no texts.

Chris was the first one to notice your bad mood. "Pouting is for babies. What's up?" He asked after a particular day when you were especially non verbal and standoffish.

"I was doing it unconsciously, I guess." Answered without so much as glancing at him. "Sorry, do you need something?" He leaves you alone after that, and you feel bad.

Fine, you missed him. You had grown stupidly attached to the kid, and now you’re fucked. The best you can do is not call him and pretend he doesn't exist. Of course, handling it like an adult.

At the end of one of the days shooting with the boys, you're all sitting outside, chilling under the sunset, you decide to ask Chris, "What do you do when you get caught up in something you weren't supposed to? And it's your fault, because you knew from the get go what it was and what it wasn't."

"Deal with it. Sure, you knew, but you're still human therefore succeptable to falling for the traps of your own feelings. Whatever it is, communication is key. Go for what you want." Ok, not the answer you were looking for at all.

"Boring. You're a grown up." You stick your tongue out to him and turn to the man sitting to the other side of you. "Steve-o?"

"What Pontius said, man." He quickly spat out in his gravelly voice. "Gotta own up to what you feel."

"Geez, when did you all become so mature and well resolved? That's not what I want from you guys." You say, and Knoxville lets out a hearty laugh, staying out of the matter completely, which was suspicious.

Three weeks later, Bam was back. You had predictably decided to ignore the advice from your friends and just lived your life as if Bam Margera was a totally unrecognizable name to you. Hard to do, as hanging out with your non-Jackass friends meant always watching MTV, but it was a good exercise to see him and force yourself to not feel a thing. It was going well. Until it wasn't.

As soon as he was back, Bam called you to invite you to a skate statewide competition thing. Not really strange after a few months of getting acquainted through rough casual sex, though delightfully unexpected.

Sure, if you could bring friends. He asked again if any of your friends were cute. Ouch, that stings. You say yes, and confirm you're going.

It's a scalding hot day, your skimpy outfit is not even helping. Standing by the big pool Bam was supposed to skate through next, cursing this stupid handsome on-the-verge-of-emo boy for dragging you there. You like skateboarding as a sport, what you don't like is being crammed with a bunch of other sweaty dudes and hormonal girls acting as if this is a Foo Fighters concert, on a sunny day. Friends by your side, even less dressed than you, for their sake you hope they find a cute skater boy to fulfill their wet dreams. Bam is up next, they announce his name and you cheer in support. He's looking for you in the crowd, or so you think. No, he is, because when he sees you, a big smile spreads on his face.

He finishes his routine, you clap, everybody loves him. While waiting for the whole thing to be done and the winner to be announced, you step away from the crowd to buy a bottle of water. In line, a brunette tall man strikes up conversation with you. He's nice, maybe you'll introduce him to your friends later.

Unbeknownst to you, Bam is watching the whole thing. You get back to your friends and discretly point out the guy still in line to them, Bam sees this too.

Unsurprisingly, he wins. There's a trophy, some interviews, and later on press. Whilst he's still under the spotlight, you cheer him but he keeps avoiding your gaze. Weird. No, you were there as his friend, not his girlfriend. God, when did you become friends? This is his moment, it's fine. When it's all done, you shoot him a text.

"my friends wanna meet you, is that cool?" The two girls wait right by your side, excited.

"sure, come to the back and tell them ur name, ur already cleared" He answers quickly.

The three of you do just that, encountering little resistance from the event's team. 'Guess Bam may have already set everything up earlier, you thought, they seemed to be expecting you backstage.

Seeing him again after the break was awkward. You hug briefly, he's shirtless and still very sweaty. The white with thin red lines band of his boxers visible, sticking out of low riding baggy black pants. Your friends are right behind you, holding back squeals. You sigh and look at him funny, he doesn't mind, which bothers you. Letting him bask in the seemingly welcomed attention, you introduce them and take a step back, leaning onto one of the wooden tables they had holding up merch and other items, as they talk and take pictures.

You're looking through the stuff when he comes up behind you. "You want anything?" He asks shyly, you swear.

"I'm good, thank you." You respond, shy as well. This is bad, the air is different between you two.

He looks at you for a couple more seconds, sucking in his bottom lip. God, his hair looks divine. Lengthy and dark, defined curls magically in place begging to be ruffled during an energetic and messy dispute between limbs and lips. Translation, you wanna fuck him bad. It fills you with rage.

Glancing away quickly, you notice your friends in the background talking to some boys with VIP passes. Bam grabs your hand and says "Follow me."

He takes you to a tent set up with more merch. It's hidden way in the back, and it's a full tent, meaning it's covered from the sun and has a zipper. Probably where the press conference would happen. Reading your mind, he adds, "Don't worry. Nobody's supposed to be here until 3pm. We've got an hour." A simple smile, and you feel butterflies in your stomach. He is speaking so softly, looking directly into your eyes, not the slightlest bit uncomfortable. Maybe happy. This is really bad.

He grabs your face gently, and kisses you slowly. It's new. You don't know how to keep that pace though and quickly are at each other's throats, literally, nibbling and biting. His bare back is slippery with sweat, but you don't mind because he looks so good like this. Calm and a little cocky that he just won something he clearly works hard for and cares about. Your nails dig into his skin and he groans. He stops your making out session, bodies still pressed together. "I saw you. Who was that guy?" He asks lowly. You look confused, so he explains. "Lanky dude in line for water, red super mario shirt."

You scrunch your nose and let slip a small laugh. "I don't know, just some guy. He was nice, said I might introduce him to my friends later."

Bam hums. "I have like an infinite amount of water back here, you didn't have to buy any."

"I know, babe, but I-" You stop. Babe? Urging to recover from that before he notices, might be too late as he displays a self satisfied grin on his face. You try, still. "I was thirsty. He must have seen through me."

Bam's face falls at the implication. "Yeah?" He lifts you up by your thighs and sets you down on one of the wooden tables. You're pretty sure you're sitting on a "element" t-shirt right now. The dark haired boy doesn't even hesitate before pushing your black mini skirt up to your stomach and pressing his palm on top of your covered slit. You suck in some air.

"Show me how thirsty you are." His eyes are darker now. It's been so long, you don't know how to play this game anymore. You missed his touch too much, you're not in control here.

You push him to go under the white thin fabric you're wearing to no success and you whine, letting a "please" slip past your lips, pathetically. He motions to his hand and you notice he's wearing thick silver band rings. Thumb, index and middle finger. His thumb is pressed to your lips and you immediately understand. Opening up, the index slides into your mouth. You suck until the ring is off and sitting comfortably on your tongue, then do the same with his middle finger. “Good girl.”

With those now coated in your spit, he pushes your underwear to the side and inserts his fingers unceremoniously into your pussy. You would curse, but he's already kissing you, free hand placed on the back of your head. Moving his perfectly arched digits in and out as his ring-clad thumb circles your clit, you can't help but pull away for air, finally choking out a moan. Stuck in position by his grip on your locks, stomach muscles flexing with intensity.

He doesn't pull you back in for a kiss, enjoying watching you squirm for him too much, his rings still inside your mouth, hand still knotting your hair. The visual of Bam, right after winning a skateboarding competition, abs shining with sweat and scratches with dried blood around his ribs, fingering you when he could have any of the girls screaming his name in that park was enough to bring tears of pent up sexual tension to your eyes.

"You're my favorite fucking whore, you know that?" He spits out in that beautiful low voice, after noticing your eyes well up and your bottom lip swelling. "That's right, you're my whore." His fingers still working you, mercilessly slow. The one truly seeing through you. "Mine. Say it."

And you do. You say it, you're his. It's defeating, but you come nonetheless.

—————————————————————————

tags: @satanrius @srhxpci

if anyone wants to be tagged just let me know!

notes: next chapter is full angst. if you’ve been waiting for that, strap on

#bam margera #jackass #bam margera x reader #johnny knoxville #casual.#jackass fanfic

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ectonurites · 2 years

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tbh i hate coffee tim but i’m getting frustrated with the same people who complain about it turning around and doing the exact same thing with him like skateboarding or whatever. like taking something you’ve seen him do twice and trying to force it as a main aspect of his character until he’s just another unrecognizable caricature AGAIN headcanons are fun but can we please relax on doing this

I agree with your point as a blanket thing- in general reducing a character to a trait that only shows up a few times is stupid- but I... wanna critique the use of that argument in this specific situation.

Because the way the fandom is with the coffee thing has an inherent difference from an activity like skateboarding! For me the core problem with 'coffee tim' is that far more often than not it becomes 'coffee addict jokes' and any sort of jokes about addiction (yes even something like coffee) are just... not funny! That's what pisses me off about it, the butt of the joke becomes 'haha Tim is addicted to this and can't function without it' the majority of the time- when that is not and never has been the case in the source material. Sure some content with 'coffee tim' comes at it more seriously- that's the stuff that doesn't bother me as much- but that sort of thing feels few and far between... and honestly feels like a counter/reaction to the humorous stuff- like it wouldn't exist in the first place if people hadn't been joking about it to bring up the idea.

Tim skateboarding or even just any sort of activity like that... does not have that same connotation. Nobody jokes about Tim being genuinely addicted to skateboarding- that he couldn't function without his skateboard, etc. So that's just categorically very separate to me.

Like, I agree reducing his character to just another trait like that is also not good to do, but I think... one is significantly more harmful than the other the way people actually are about it.

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axels-corner · 2 years

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Chapter 5

Hello welcome back to my High school AU for the council called skateboards and leadership

Chapter one Chapter two Chapter three Chapter four ao3 link

I’m excited to write the next couple chapters because they kinda flush out Oralie, and Kenric’s realationship

“C’mon I have something to show you.” Oralie says gently pulling him to his feet. They walk out of the building and into the forest, it was noon the next day, so the light was shining through the trees illuminating the dirt path they walked on. Oralie led him through the trees and down a hill to the stream he and Bronte had crossed yesterday to find Oralie and Alina. They both sat on the damp grass, it must've rained earlier Kenric thought.

“I have a question.” Oralie says as she fidgets with her hands. Kenric leans back trying to look relaxed

“Go for it.” he tells her

“Did you see those shadows too before you found Alina, and I?” Kenric tried to remember that day but he had been so worried about Oralie that it was hard. Just as he was going to tell her he hadn't, a memory popped into his mind.

He and Bronte had been about to cross the river when two kids, they couldn't have been over 13 ran across, and even though it was bright and sunny out the forest covered them in shadows so they were nearly unrecognizable.

“ I saw them, but I couldn't make out much of their features. Except for their was one boy, and one girl, they both had blonde hair. Oh! Also the girl had brown eyes.” Kenric tells her, they sit in silence for a few minutes when Kenric looks over he sees Oralie lost in thought looking at the picture of her and her sister. He bumps her shoulder “Hey they’re probably still out there, from the few times I hung out with them they were smart and good problem solvers.” He watches as she nods seemingly in a different universe. His tone turns more serious as he asks her a question of his own, “That's why you came here wasn't it? To see if you could find her, or at least some clues to her disaperance?” Oralie nods more tethered to reality, he watches as she looks at the photo with Sophie in it it gleams in the sunlight as the breeze blows along the bank. Suddenly a strong gust of wind comes along, and despite Oralie's tight grip on the photo the wind snatches it like, it was lifting a feather and it drops into the river, Oralie screams

“NO!” Without a second thought Kenric dives into the river after the photo.

Kenric swims after the photo finally reaching it and grabbing it, he swims to the bank and heaves himself out of the water. His hair and clothes are dripping wet and he lies on the bank staring up at the bright sun. He hears Oralie running and then a shout

“Kenric!” she falls to her knees beside him and shakes him, he opens his eyes and extends the photo to her,

“I got your photo.”

“Really I appreciate it Kenric but you can't just go jumping into freezing cold. I could've lost you!” He smiles sheepishly at her and then shudders as another breeze of wind blows through the air. Oralie tucks the photo back into her bag and helps him stand up “Come on let's get you back to camp before you catch your death out here.”

Writing taglist (ask to be added or removed): @gay-otlc @fintan-pyren

#KOTLC fanfiction #my writing #councillor Oralie #councillor kenric

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thespaceinmybed · 2 years

Text

I posted 238 times in 2021

228 posts created (96%)

10 posts reblogged (4%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 0.0 posts.

I added 795 tags in 2021

#poetry - 227 posts

#writing - 227 posts

#poem - 224 posts

#spilled thoughts - 53 posts

#spilled ink - 27 posts

#spilled poetry - 13 posts

#thoughts - 12 posts

#spilledthoughts - 7 posts

#quotes - 3 posts

#words - 2 posts

Longest Tag: 16 characters

#spilled thoughts

My Top Posts in 2021

Maybe you are broken

Like I am

But in different places

So we will never fit together

Sometimes I think the pit inside me

Is as empty as the sky

As hungry as the ocean

I want someone to lean into

And feel safe

Who touches my hair

Who whispers in my ear

I want to be filled with laughter and warmth

I want none of this darkness

None of this fear and hurt and sorrow

That eats away at me

Day by day

Tell me how

To rid myself of these bitter stains

That cling to my life

That feed and pulse

And grow

Until

I cannot breathe

Until

I collapse

And lessen

And choke

8 notes • Posted 2021-10-04 17:57:01 GMT

And so the night comes

Again and again

And with it the heaviness

Of things best not remembered

Right when my skin was almost ready

to feel something

I found myself

In a room with a stranger

Panicking

But isn’t everyone a stranger these days

How to place yourself in danger

To be

not just consumed

But decimated and remade

Until you become unrecognizable to yourself

Again and again

Why do some hands seem only made to harm

To silence

And

take apart

8 notes • Posted 2021-09-28 05:34:29 GMT

Remember when you wrote me that poem

That was when

I convinced myself

You were in love me

I guess it’s never too early

To start lying to yourself

I remember laughing and stealing your sandwiches

Laying down on train tracks

Letting you teach me things

I already knew how to do

Kissing in your sound studio

In your living room

On your skateboard

In your bed while other people

Were sleeping in it

Slamming your truck door

After you drove me home

Because I was upset that you wouldn’t

Couldn’t

Love me

Waiting in the cold for you

After your show

Waiting for you to convince me

To go home with you

When you pulled me into your lap

I fit

More than anywhere I’ve ever been since

But it was a minute

A few seconds

A few nights spent

Ignorant and happy

You never did go out of your way for me

It was a glimpse

A sprinkle

A flickering light

A promise without intention

A heart and initials

Carved into a tree

It’s saying forever

When you don’t know what forever means

You used to call for me

You used to shout drunkenly

Where’s my wife

And I knew

When I heard your voice

Where I belonged

But it was an end before it was a beginning

You were always looking

Everywhere else

As these things go

Women looked at you

You looked at them

You took what you could

But I will never forget

Watching the Crow on wine stained carpets

You touching my face to turn my head

The way your lips owned mine

So effortlessly

I will never forget the nights I spent

Listening to the songs you played

And the way your hands just knew

How to warm every part of me

9 notes • Posted 2021-05-17 22:10:40 GMT

It’s moments like these

In the quiet

In the laughter

In the fresh cold air

That I wish would last forever

Contentment in romance

I’ve never found

But love

I feel it here

In the wilderness

In the open spaces

In the clearness of the stars

If happiness comes in bits and pieces

I’ll take what I can get

I’ll hold it in my mind

For when I go back

To the places where misery touched me

I’ll hold it in my fists

That refuse to open

For anyone

Until its warmth feeds my bones

I’ll hold it in my silence

In the parts

That aren’t free

I’ll let the joy seep until it expires

If my blood only has eyes

For terrible things

Then I’ll

Make sure none spills out

Anymore

I’ll braid my hair

Like my she told me

To take the pain away

Pain that shouldn’t be

This close

Why does everything that feels real

End with the absence of hope

I would ask

But I maybe I don’t want the answer

I’m too busy feeling

And never saying anything

10 notes • Posted 2021-11-22 05:49:09 GMT

The stars have been talking to me

They say

It’s ok to be alone

They whisper to me tonight

And I listen

Because they are close enough

To touch

It’s ok to be broken

It’s ok to not belong

To feel sometimes

Like your skin isn’t yours

And your name is lost

They say

It’s ok

To sink sometimes

To have nothing solid to hold on

To lose your words and your meaning

And your heart

It’s ok to feel

Like nothing

Sometimes

It’s ok

To be

Uninhabited

To be

Unable to gather

Anything that matters

It’s ok

To be

The ruins of a person

They whisper

We don’t judge

117 notes • Posted 2021-11-22 06:18:12 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

#my 2021 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review

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black-streak · 4 years

Text

Maribat March - Day 6 - Unconventional Weapons

To be real with y'all, this is actually a snippet from Saturday's Alright that's been sitting in my drafts for 4 months now. Whoops. Still, works way too well for the prompt to not post it. Timinette obviously.

Permanent list of peeps:

@naoryllis @throneoffirebreathingbitchqueen @my-name-is-michell @daminett4life @dast218 @novicevoice @shizukiryuu @princess-of-fangirls @bigpicklebananatree @pirats-pizzacanninibles @abrx2002 @breemeister @darkthunder1589 @thestressmademedoit @severelyenchantedwonderland @isabellemasen @multi-fandom-freak0221 @fantasyloversblog @bzz75 @cloudiedraws @jardimazul @orbitsvt @gingerdaile @sotheresthatthought @kadmeread @novaloptr @unabashedlyswimmingtimemachine @crazylittlemunchkin

~---~

Marinette might've lied to Tikki about the reasoning for not using the Ladybug Miraculous in Gotham. Well, lying felt too harsh a word, especially with how she disliked doing so. More like, gave multiple valid points, without divulging the more embarrassing one.

"I'm sorry Tik, but the ladybug is too recognizable nowadays. It would put a spotlight on me and let people know the miraculouses were here. And in a crime ridden, chaotic city like this, there are so many rogues who'd be interested in getting their hands on it. Ladybug is better suited to the daylight anyways. Plus, I'm really wanting to keep things on the downlow here. The Bats have quite the claim on this city and the last thing we want is them shoving their nose where it doesn't belong due to some misguided need to know the ins and outs of literally everything. It's not a risk I can take."

Tikki had been saddened, but very understanding, agreeing to retreat back into her box, accepting that the rest was well needed anyways.

That didn't change the fact that Mari had another reason for keeping Ladybug out of Gotham.

Back in Paris, she'd been known for her… more interesting lucky charms. Okay, so it might've become a bit of a meme at this point. Pictures of her annoyed expression with sayings like, "when you're sick of this bullshit but your magical girl powers won't give you a gun" or her more dumbfounded looks with little bits on them such as, "I don't think this is meant for that type of use," or her personal least favorite, a picture of her lit up expression of joy while gesturing to a bar of soap that said, "Is this a weapon?"

Needless to say, it got old real quick. The only upside was that anything related to the Heroes of Paris or Hawkmoth situation had stayed locked down to only the local area, not reaching outside of France. Meaning she was free of the stigma in Gotham.

Of course, by the time her and Tim became public as a couple, he already knew her past though he hadn't seemed to look further than watching some of the actual battles, respecting her wish to keep the past mostly that.

Now though, now it had been over a year since she used Tikki and the poor Kwami was itching for a run with her chosen. And Mari couldn't say no to the sweet little goddess who had been waiting so patiently for this opportunity. So they went out on a night patrol that seemed to promise some quiet, not really wanting to get into a fight with any rogues, despite the upgraded stealth design making her near unrecognizable if not for the powers and traveling method.

She ran into Red Robin about halfway through the night, having each been doing a solo patrol for once. And well, he had never seen her transformed as Ladybug, so obviously he couldn't leave well enough alone.

Which went about as well as she expected.

"Is that a fucking Yoyo?" He asked as he dropped beside her.

"Yeah, sure, judge me from your skateboard," Mari bickered back.

"How do you know about that? Did you look up clips of when I was Robin?"

She had.

"Like you didn't look me up before now and wait for this moment to point out my questionable choices."

Not choices, but whatever.

His eyes narrowed behind the mask, but conceded, "... Touche, yoyo girl."

Really, she's just glad she didn't have to use any lucky charms that night.

#timinette #maribatmarch2020 #maribat march #ml x dc #maribat #lucky charm salt?#I kinda wish these were real memes now #saturdays alright snippet

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blstys · 4 years

Text

tomorrow / @shockpop —— ans. ask meme —— one word prompts ; accepting.

are you sure that was a good idea? kirishima had prompted the night before, as kindly as humanly possible. bakugou had shrugged, placed an empty glass on the table top and replied what’s a little heartbreak between old friends?

the answer did not need to be given, it was known plainly. kirishima had served it to him piping hot, drenched in that same kindness, anyway: it isn’t just a heartbreak and it wasn’t exactly little, bakugou. the two of you didn’t even try to stay friends and now you’re going to live together?

he hadn’t known it yet but the words would bruise, darkening over the span of the next day; become sore to revisit, even at the surface level. grossly out of character to the person he’d been trying to be, he was defensively hopeful and still littering swears between meaningful sentiments, in parting; money tucked under the rim of his empty glass enough to cover both parties: since when has there been a god - damn statue of limitations on fucking trying. it will be fine. we’re not stupid kids anymore.

now, standing in the doorway to the life denki’s lived without him, katsuki comes to the crispy realization once again that he was probably wrong about where his own limits exist. he shoves them down, steps inside.

denki beats him to it, already tucked toward the television, coiling wires for gaming consoles before katsuki’s shoes are toed off, respectful habit ingrained. eyes size up the place. cozy, but not unkempt. a decent size for a single person and a sushi roll but terribly overpriced for its location. chipped paint and ancient light fixtures. unlike the apparently empty expanse of his industrial penthouse that intends to house them both starting tomorrow, denki’s small space appears, well, lived - in.

where his walls have lain bare - brick and white paint, only the necessary furniture and katsuki’s previous belongings having dwindled down to the span of a couple bookshelves and a too - large bedroom; there is hardly an inch of denki’s place untouched by well - loved belongings. it has the clutter of an actual life lived.

it, too, appears so painfully denki in appearance that for a terribly ( nostalgic ) second katsuki swears they’ve stepped right back in time to denki’s u.a. dorm room. the second passes onto the next, as it always does, and divorces the dream from reality. it is a process that he has nearly forgotten how to do outside a hungover morning.

a blink, the gentle clink of dog - tags getting in the way of a quick collar - pull, another glance. steady breath reveals the obvious truth: familiar items are there but much fewer and further between than unfamiliar ones.

a flannel he’s worn before hangs off an open door handle; at least three more, unknown, lay over unoccupied corner surfaces. one is tucked under the coffee table. there is one potted cactus that katsuki remembers giving a name and several unrecognizable plants spilling out of their terracotta homes. light folds in where it can, sunlight spilling from the single bedroom window into the living space to turn the place pale yellow. there’s a corner of a bed visibly unmade illuminated, too. a small laptop lays atop the least - mussed end like a silver cat. the kitchen, for all its lack of breadth is haunted by only ( as far as he can tell ) a graveyard of kirby drinking glasses that do not appear to be of any particular matching set. memorized licence plates hang on the wall like the eyes of doctor t.j. fucking eckleburg while faces that are familiar but distinctly not his peer at him from their strung - up photographs.

crimson eyes glaze over a guitar with fret spacing his fingers remember and stick to a red cassette tape player before flitting quickly away.

purpose remembered, katsuki moves, as originally tasked, to the god - forsaken skateboard bookshelf to assist with the packing. he scans titles, new and misplaced, as he puts them into the open mouth of the box that waits at the shelf base and aches to think of the box of mixed tapes collecting dust in the top shelf of a closet in his guest room. he’ll have to move them sometime today before denki's un - strewn flannels can lay claim to the space.

even meticulous hands have difficulty shaking off the odd tremor when they reach for a haphazard tower of miscellaneously stacked things. it sears through the center of his chest like an arrow re - sunk into an old wound to disassemble it.

“ so you’re still stacking things, huh ? — sootball's gonna love that. ”

#❛ the world is so big & you’re so restless / ans. memes.#❛ ii. win. because that’s what heroes do.#❛ ii. with / shockpop.#i am sorry this was not Better #talk to me about the weird run on sentence #shockpop

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skybound2 · 5 years

Note

David x Michael, on a road trip, arguing over music choices (or whatever permutation of that you would like to use!).

Hey, so 500 years later, I know, but I’ve written a thing! Well, several things, sorta? This is basically a series of short ficlets each focusing on a different song, but all connected, and is basically a direct follow on to the response I wrote MONTHS ago for a different prompt (You Are My Sunshine)!

THANK YOU SO MUCH for the prompt, it helped get me out of a rut, LIKE A LOT. (Also, I had a TON OF FUN thinking up songs to set each piece too :-D)

Takes place in my Walk Unafraid universe sometime after Michael has gone full vamp, and is maybe just a little bit cracky ;-P

Hope you enjoy!

Billy Idol “Rebel Yell”

Michael frowns as the first few beating notes of the song start pouring out of the speakers. Before the first line is over, he’s a freshman again, shuffling into the streamer and tinsel decorated nightmare that was his first (and last) high school homecoming dance.

He hadn’t wanted to go. Would rather have been playing chicken with his skateboard on the highway. Or at home, babysitting Sam and rewatching that movie with the talking rats for the fiftieth time.

Or working on his math homework.

Really, just about anywhere else doing anything else would have been preferable.

But he’d made junior varsity on the football team (Thanks, he’s sure, to him being a year older than the rest of the freshman class. Flunking third grade. So helpful.) and even though he hadn’t played a second of that day’s game, it had been made clear that he was expected to attend that evening’s festivities.

To support his team. And school.

Rah rah rah.

He hadn’t given a rat’s ass about any of it, not when the girl he’d been seeing (if you could call one awkward make-out session ‘seeing’) had broken things off with Michael the day before, opting to go to the dance with Michael’s friend Keith instead.

The situation might have been less of a mess, Michael suspects, if the sight of his friend and former almost-girlfriend dancing together had sparked the expected kind of jealousy for Michael.

Which of course, it hadn’t. Instead, it had dosed Michael with a confusing case of adolescent ‘what the fucks’ when he’d caught Keith and Jenny kissing mid-dance, and he’d realized just who he was jealous over.

The whole thing had gone topsy-turvy not long after, in a spectacular (sloppy, messy, pathetic) fist fight between Michael and Keith on the dance floor to the tune of that damn overplayed Billy Idol song.

Michael had been suspended for two days following the fight. Which had been fine by him, as it gave him time to first come to terms with what he’d been feeling, and then to find a careful place in his psyche to shove said feelings into, to be dealt with never.

Three years later, Michael had moved away, the bond between him and Keith forever broken.

As the memories play back in Michael’s head, Michael finds that the old agitation, that bitter ache of confusion and loss he’d always felt in the past, is muted. The scene’s a faded sort of matte gray, instead of technicolor. Like it happened to someone else, and he’s just catching the repeat on late night TV.

Which in a way, he guesses it kind of had. The person he is now so far removed from who he was then as to be unrecognizable.

Different person or not, he still hates the song. (Maybe he hasn’t changed that much.) And so Michael’s lip lifts up in a sneering approximation of the blond singer’s trademark curl as he reaches for the knob and seeks out another station.

“Hey. I was listening to that.” The complaint from the driver’s seat is annoyed but without any real heat.

Michael keeps twisting the knob, not looking at his companion, skipping over white noise in search of something - anything - else. “We’ll find something else. Can’t stand Billy Idol.”

Even though Michael knows it’s not actually possible, it feels as if the temperature inside the car drops several degrees. Shock reverberates across the link between Michael and David loud enough that it bounces Michael’s brain around inside his skull, forcing him to turn his head away from the radio towards the blond as he continues to spin the dial.

David appears downright scandalized as he stares back at Michael, eyebrows making friends with his hairline. “You can’t stand Billy Idol?”

Michael nods, head tilting at David, confused by the obvious annoyance rolling off of him.

And also a little worried by how long David has kept his eyes from the road, regretting having let the blond take over driving duties at the last gas station. “Uh, yeah. Leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Can you watch the road, David? Don’t feel like getting up close and personal with the guardrail.”

David sneers, but turns his head back to the road, grumbling incoherent words beneath his breath that, try as he might, Michael can’t pick out.

Not that it matters, as when an audible sentence finally does work its way up and out, Michael’s still as confused as when all he’d heard was gibberish. “I’ve made a mistake.”

Michael frowns. “With what?”

“Making you immortal. I can’t spend eternity with someone who doesn’t appreciate Billy Idol.”

Michael snorts, his hand dropping away from the dial when he locates something less detestable to listen to. The fast pace guitar chords and beats of Mötley Crüe playing through the speakers as a backdrop, he leans back in his seat, head angled towards David, the better to watch the exaggerated play of disgust on his lover’s face. “Too late. No take backs.”

David’s frown deepens, but there’s a twitch at the corners of his mouth, like he’s fighting the upward tug of a smile. “Never too late for anything, Michael.”

Michael smirks at him, stretching his legs out and dragging his tongue across his bottom lip in a deliberate attention grabbing move that pulls David’s eyes straight to his mouth. “Yeah. Right. After how hard and long you fought for me?” Michael drags the words out with dirty intent. Feeling playful, and eager to wash away the lingering remnants of that earlier time, of that earlier life. He draws upon more recent, much more pleasurable memories, letting them hover at the front of his mind. The spike of lust that floods the air between them all the proof he needs that David’s on the same page. “Yeah. That’s what I thought.”

“So damn sure of yourself, aren’t you?” The question is spoken with careful neutrality that does nothing to disguise the visceral want pouring off of David.

A growl thrums across Michael’s vocal chords. “Pull over. Let’s find out.”

David does.

And they both forget all about Billy Idol.

Abba “Fernando”

Sated and settled back in the passenger seat on the road south, David knows what song it is from just the first couple of notes. He has no intention of subjecting himself to it, so he reaches for the dial only to have his hand smacked away by Michael. Shocked, he looks up at the man behind the wheel, the driver’s blue eyes alight with mischief as he starts to sing along with the music while David watches on in horror. “No. No absolutely not. Turn it off. Right now.”

But Michael’s hand stays covering the dial as his voice gets stronger. When he hits the title lyric he leans heavily away from the wheel in David’s direction and croons it in his face. David’s frozen in place by the disturbing sight. “Why do you even know the lyrics?”

‘You’ve met my mother and my brother, you honestly think I wouldn’t know the lyrics?’ The thought jumps from Michael’s mind to David’s, but Michael’s singing voice doesn’t falter at all as he sings about crossing the Rio Grande.

Under any other circumstances, David would be damn proud of Michael that his ability for telepathic multi-tasking has come along so far, but as is, he’s too distressed to feel much of anything else.

“Is this a method of torture? Is that why you’re doing this? Testing the waters? Because if so, bravo. Very effective. But it’s time to stop now.”

Michael cackles. Cackles! As he smacks David’s hand away from the dial again, the sound bleeding into an off-key “Liberty” with a devilish grin upon his face as he turns the volume up.

David sinks as deep into the leather bench seat as is possible, all the way against the door, trying to put distance between himself and the… horror happening on the other side of the car. “Just stake me. It would hurt less.”

The gleam in Michael’s eyes is pure evil as he sways towards David again, all his earlier concern for road safety seeming forgotten in his Abba-induced haze.

He manages to keep the car between the painted lines and away from any ditches as the song comes to an end - though it weaves a considerable amount. The smile on his face when he looks David’s way on the final note is wide and brilliant and blinding. Pleasant waves of giddy happiness echoing across the bond so strongly, that David’s own treacherous emotions race to sync up with those of his tormentor.

David hates himself a little for being so far gone on the bastard, but the shared laughter that fills the car between them feels good all the same.

Deep Purple “You Keep On Moving”

Another tank, another station, another song.

Michael smiles as the beat of a tune he never hears getting radio airplay hits his ears. He drums his fingers against his knee, mouthing along to the lyrics and bouncing his leg in time. Thinking it might be fun to finally learn how to play something other than his kneecap. The drums, or the guitar even. Or hell, why not both? He’s got nothing but time now, right? Why shouldn’t he spend it learning how to play a dozen instruments if he wants?

David speaks up when the song hits the third verse and Michael’s halfway through an imaginary worldwide tour as the next biggest drummer since Bonham. “Paul had a copy of this album.” He chuckles, once, the sound dark and heavy. “Two copies, actually. One he’d worn down to nothing. Sounded like garbled shit, but it was the only one he’d play. Said he was keeping the other ‘for posterity’ or something.”

Michael returns from his European stage debut and looks to David, trying to judge the meaning behind the story. The other man offering up information on the absent boys so rare, that he figures there must be a reason for it.

There’s not much light to illuminate him, the dash on the old vehicle mostly dark, but Michael’s eyes don’t need much light to see by these days. Not that it matters, as there’s nothing to read on the blond’s face, his expression that disconnected mask that Michael’s grown so familiar with in the past year.

“Think he bought the first one on account of the cover, but turned out he liked the music too.” David’s voice is muted - not so soft as to be wistful, but a next door neighbor to it maybe.

Michael digs through his brain, trying to recall what the cover looked like, but comes up empty. He prods at David for some help, snorting when David reproduces in Michael’s mind the image of the band’s disembodied heads floating in a wine glass of dark red liquid, with the tagline ‘Come Taste the Band’ scrolled over the top. He guffaws at the sight. “Why am I not surprised?”

“Paul was always easily amused.” The comment is said with a quiet intensity that peters out to a heavy silence, despite the song still rocking through the car.

It leaves Michael feeling like he’s intruding on something he shouldn’t be. He inches back and forth in his seat, tapping the leather seating between the two of them instead of his knee. “You, uh, you want me to change it?”

David glances at Michael, the expression on his face a little mournful, but not despondent or angry as it may have been in the past. “Nah. It’s a good song. Let it play.”

Michael nods once, and the song plays on.

Fleetwood Mac “Landslide”

“…”

“I - you can change it if you want.”

“Course I can.”

“…”

“Are you gonna change it or…”

“Nah. Took too long to find this station. Probably just be static everywhere else.”

“Yeah. You’re probably right. So…we leave it then?”

“Might as well. It’ll be over soon.”

“Okay.“ Michael takes a deep breath, uncertain about what he’s about to say, but unable to stop himself. “This was Star’s-”

“I know.”

“And you still don’t mind-”

“No. Should I?” The questions is flat. Unconcerned, but Michael doesn’t miss the way David’s face tightens when he asks it.

Michael moves his right shoulder in an awkward shrug. “Just got the impression you didn’t care for her much.”

David makes a low humming sound. “Liked her well enough at first. Liked her a whole lot less later on.”

Michael doesn’t have a ready response for that, knowing damn good and well why David’s feelings towards Star changed.

“You heard from her lately?”

Michael whips his head towards David, surprised by the question.“No. I haven’t.“

David hums again, fingers flexing on the steering wheel as he does. “Sure about that?”

“When exactly do you think I would have talked to her, David?”

“No clue. It’s why I asked.”

Michael thinks that’s a lie, but doesn’t call David on it. Instead, he settles back, letting Stevie Nicks serenade them for a few verses before offering what little he does know. “She calls my Mom sometimes. They…talk.” David’s gaze stays firmly on the road, though Michael can feel the way tension thrums through his frame. “Think she’s still with Laddie, wherever they went. I don’t - I haven’t spoken to her since she left.” It’s the truth, but for some reason it feels like a lie.

“She took Laddie back to his father I take it?”

Michael gives a noncommittal bounce of his head. “Think so.”

“Hmm. Maybe we should pay them a visit.”

Michael lets out a low laugh at the comment. “Doubt we’d be welcome.”

A sly smile that Michael knows can’t mean anything good lifts the corner’s of David’s mouth. “Never know if we don’t try. Could pencil it sometime after Phoenix.”

Michael rolls his eyes, knowing he’s being baited and not about to be caught. “Yeah sure. Why the hell not?” Michael smirks at the way David’s forehead scrunches up at the easy agreement. He means it - he’s curious enough about where Star ended up and what she’s been doing that visiting her isn’t the worst idea he’s ever heard - though he’s not so much of an idiot that he doesn’t know that David’s reasons for wanting to see her are far from benign.

No longer in the mood for the song, Michael changes the station.

Billie Holiday “You’re My Thrill”

David hums as he twists the dial through station after station of white noise. He spins it past an old jazz tune, but then twirls it back again, making an appreciative noise as a crooning female voice starts to spill from the speakers.

Satisfied with his find, he slouches back into the leather upholstery, eyes closed and an almost dream-like smile on his face.

From his spot in the driver’s seat, Michael goggles at him. “Seriously?”

“Michael Emerson, if the next words out of your mouth are that you don’t like Billie Holiday either, I’m leaving you at the next truck stop and you can find your own way back to Santa Carla. I don’t care how close to sunrise it is.”

The way his voice doesn’t falter when he says it brings Michael up short, making him think that it may be more than just an idle threat. (Not that Michael would let him leave him behind without a fight, but that’s beside the point).

Michael manages to keep his mouth shut for a cool twenty seconds, during which he watches David out of the corner of his eye. Watches as the bleached-blond, spiky-haired murderous vampire clad all in black - not a small amount of it leather, hell, there are spurs on his boots for Chrissakes - quietly enjoys the old-fashioned song. The disconnect between the image he presents and the one the song evokes makes Michael laugh. “Damn, what decade are you from, Old Man?”

“The seventies, Michael.”

Michael snorts, rolling his eyes. Not that David can see him with his own eyes enjoying the view behind their lids. “Yeah sure. You’re younger than me. Explains the occasional tendency to throw tantrums still.”

“The eighteen-seventies, Michael.” David says, calm and cool and not at all joking.

Michael’s hands on the wheel jerk sideways in surprise, sending the car swerving over the line before he can yank it back where it belongs. David’s eyes crack open at the disturbance, leveling a glare at Michael, but he doesn’t react otherwise. “Seriously?”

David smirks at him, slipping the cigarette he had stowed behind his ear down and to his mouth. He doesn’t give Michael an answer, just flicks his lighter open and sets flame to the stick, puffing on the end to get it to light, and settles back into his seat, eyes half-closed.

Michael molls the unexpected tidbit of information over in the space between verses. One particular thought standing out in greater relief against the rest. “Shit…you’re older than my Grandpa. By a lot.”

“I am. And if you want to be too one day, shut it and let me enjoy the song!”

It’s only the lingering shock of the information that keeps Michael quiet. It has nothing to do with the amber gleam in David’s eyes.

Really.

Besides, as far as old-as-sin songs go, it’s not half-bad.

Starland Vocal Band “Afternoon Delight”

Approximately one point five seconds into the song, David’s hand meets Michael’s as they both reach for the dial. David growls, fangs dropping. “I will break your hand, your arm, and all your fingers if you try and stop me from changing the station, Michael.”

Michael’s hand raises up in the air in a placating gesture that David doesn’t trust. At all. “Hey! I was trying to change it too.”

“Sure you were.” David twists the dial, spinning it through endless seas of static and snowstorms and a whole lot of absolutely nothing else.

“I was.” Michael’s voice is pleading, but there’s mischievous glint in his eyes that doesn’t match the sound.

David gives him a sideways glare. “Somehow, I don’t believe you.”

Michael breathes out a heavy-handed sigh. “So little trust. And here I thought we’d really been getting somewhere this past year.”

David rolls his eyes. “You forfeited all rights to musical trust after that horrendous ‘Mamma Mia’ sing-along.

“Hey! First off, it was ‘Fernando’, and second: you enjoyed that. You were smiling. I saw you.”

“That was a defense mechanism, Michael.”

“Liar.”

Which is true, but David’s not about to admit it. So he ignores him, and stops the dial on a patch of white noise; settling back in his seat to enjoy the scratchy sound of absence.

Less than a minute of quiet passes between them before Michael’s hand inches for the radio. David’s voice is curated calm when he says: “Try me, Michael.”

“Idle threat.”

“When have you ever known me to be idle, hmm?”

Michael scoffs, giving David a tilted smile that tells the elder vampire just how little Michael thinks of David’s threats. “Go ahead, tell me all the ways that you’re gonna torture me if I change the station. What’s it gonna be this time? Something more creative than holy water dipped knives, I hope?”

“You ever heard of ‘torpor,’ Michael?” David asks, dipping into the darker part of his psyche. To the blackened memories of his early life under Max’s so-called-care. Fully intending to shower Michael with the visual of being trapped - buried - deep beneath the earth in a impenetrable box, screaming for his maker to let him out. To let him go. Screaming until his throat runs dry, and the blood in his veins slows to a trickle. Skin gone paper-thin, and ashen. So desperate to be released that he’ll say anything. Do anything.

David doesn’t plan to exact such a punishment on Michael of course, but he’s not above a little mental torment. Especially not after being trapped in a car for two-hundred plus miles with Michael and his previously undocumented love of country music and disco.

But before David can so much as conjure up an image of a box or a handful of dirt, Michael frowns in his direction. “Don’t think so. That a New Wave group or something?”

A surprised bark of laughter bursts out of David, amused eyes latching onto Michael. “What? No, it’s-” He shakes his head, small peels of laughter leaking out of him as he does. David’s laughter grows in time with Michael’s confusion. The uncertain look upon the younger vampire’s face endearing to David in a way that it has no right to be.

David shakes his head, his plans to teach Michael a lesson forgotten. “You know what, never mind.”

A frown stays planted on Michael’s face for a while longer, the confusion fading at a snail’s pace. But he drops the subject, and the two of them drive on in silence.

A silence that lasts for the length of time it takes Michael to forget why the radio was off in the first place.

But David hasn’t. So really, it’s Michael’s fault that David launches at him, teeth bared, and the car is sent skidding off the road.

At least there aren’t any guardrails to hit.

And if the only casualty of the accident ends up being the radio, well, they were do for an upgrade anyway.

Preferably one with a cassette deck.

~End

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kayfabewannabe · 6 years

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I don’t think the Avatar fandom understands...

That you can acknowledge the mass of contributions made to the show by Aaron Ehasz without throwing Bryke under the bus.

It’s a pattern that’s repeated OVER and OVER with fans of many things throughout history. Someone makes something that is wildly popular. Popular thing is successful and receives praise. Creators move on to create more things which aren’t as popular and get criticized. Suddenly, the creators are hacks and there’s a rush to disprove that they were ever good in the first place. George Lucas and the prequels, Peter Jackson and the hobbit, hell, basically the entire career of Shamalyan. It’s not enough to say “they didn’t write this thing well”. You HAVE to prove “Nothing that they ever wrote was good in the first place”. It’s a retroactive reframing of the narrative surrounding the media’s creation that conveniently scapegoats the creators to maintain the illusion that “Good writers don’t write bad stories”.

Like, Korra wasn’t stellar. There were many missteps, often at critical junctions of the plot. Bryke were definitely responsible for how the show turned out as well. But the backlash to Korra had to extend backwards to their previous work. And Avatar isn’t perfect either! Bryke were responsible for a lot of the flaws of the original as well. But that doesn’t mean they weren’t responsible for some of the good parts as well. There’s this persistent fandom myth that “Aaron Ehasz saved Avatar”, and to some degree its true. Without the changes he made to the original pitch (basically some major change to all of the character’s characterization in one way or another), the show probably wouldn’t have been as good as it ended up being. But to say he “saved” it? That he was the true “genius” behind the show? That downplays the collaborative nature of television. EVERYONE who worked on the show contributed to it in some way, from the artists to the musicians to the voice actors to the showrunners and yes, even to the head writers. There’s no singular genius behind the shows inception, rather a whole pool of talent, none of which would have been able to make it without the others.

The real problem here is the reductionist nature of the Genius/Hack dichotomy. They’re boxes we put these creators in. You’re either “A Good Writer”, which means everything you write is genius, or you’re “A Bad Writer” which means everything you touch is cursed. And yes, there is some degree of talent involved in writing. But you can be a “Good Writer” and still make utter shit. Writing isn’t a Yes/No binary of good or bad, its far more qualitative. Writers can be ‘Good” at worldbuilding but “Bad” at dialog. Writers can make great choices one chapter then fuck it up completely the next. Every writer is like this. Every writer has some good and some bad. Whether or not the work ends up good mostly matters if they play to their strengths or not.

Let’s take Peter Jackson for an example. The Lord of the Rings trilogy is arguably one of the most popular film series of all time, and among the best received in the fantasy genre. The Lord of the Rings succeeded at capturing it’s audience due to the strength of its adaptation, to make an otherwise inaccessible book into something with widespread appeal. LOTR is a phenomenon and one of my favorite film series of all time. The cast is wonderful, the music breathtaking, but most importantly, the thematic basis of the story stayed (mostly) true to it’s roots. But LOTR as a book wouldn’t work as a movie. Characters had to be rewritten, events reorganized. The action was emphasized as was the comedy to give it more mainstream appeal. And it succeeded.

Then came the Hobbit, a series of films that as an adaption, are almost unrecognizable from the source material. There are many problems, but at the same time those problems were both strengths and weaknesses in LOTR. The action was even more emphasized with newer cg technology, now to the point of absurdity. The “comedy” was even more present with characters like Bombur and Alfrid, but without the dramatic backup to support them, they fell flat. Everything that was bad about the Hobbit was already in LOTR. Legolas skateboarding with a shield on Helm’s Deep was already in LOTR. Jackson brought the same style, the same touches, the same values of storytelling to the Hobbit as he did to LOTR. One time he dropped the ball, another time he didn’t. They don’t cancel each other out. In one he controlled his tendencies, in another they got out of control. Peter Jackson isn’t a “Bad Writer”. He isn’t a “Good Writer” either. He’s both.

And that brings us back to Avatar. With Korra fresh in our minds and the new live action coming soon, helmed by Bryke, it’s easy to scapegoat them. We can say they ruined Korra, but much of what people didn’t like about Korra was already present in Avatar, just turned up (stilted romance, deus ex machina conclusions, MY COUPLE DIDN’T GET TOGETHER AND I RIOT). they leaned away from the strengths of Avatar to try something new and experimental with Korra and thats commendable. They tried to make a character who was functionally Aang’s opposite, but brought the same style of writing to what was fundamentally a different concept.

But without Bryke, there wouldn’t be Avatar. There wouldn’t be any of the good, there wouldn’t have been the chance to try something different. I respect Aaron Ehasz very much, and i have high hopes for his new series. But we can commend a creator without them being a genius, we can criticize a creator without decrying everything they made. We can acknowledge one creator without throwing another under the bus.

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lara-raeanne-ross-blog · 5 years

Text

Prologue (Warnings: Language)

Lara felt heat rise to her face, as she entered her brother’s apartment building. She was soaked, water pulling her clothes right to her, and she pulled her hair out as she opened the front door.

“Everett, I’m home!” she called. Instantly, she heard the tiny patter of feet.

“Mommy!” Kali squealed, her dark, bare feet smacking against the hardwood tile. Lara laughed, and picked her up, “hi, Baby Girl.” Peppering her daughter’s face with kisses, she moved into the kitchen, to find her brother making dinner. Without turning, Everett greeted her, “hey, sis. How’d it go?” Lara pursed her lips, as she put Kali into her high chair.

“I didn’t get the job,” she told him, once she had the tray in place. “Someone had same experience, but higher qualifications.” Lara didn’t even dare look at her brother, as she sat down and untied her boots. But there was nothing from Everett, only a look at her sopping wet form.

“How’d you get so wet?” He finally asked, turning back to the stove.

“Skateboarder knocked me into a fountain,” Lara told him, grabbing an apple and taking a bite from it. Everett raised an eyebrow, “oh? Lara nodded, wiping apple juice from her lips, “yep. He rammed into me.” Everett chuckled, and shook his head, but said nothing.

* * *

“I knew you’d come,” a deep, baritone voice said. Lara barely looked up, before a sad smile formed on her face, “well, I signed the Accords. Why would I miss this?” She did not meet the eyes of the man in front of her. It caused her too much pain. She had once loved the man in front of her, but in the end, she had to be sent away. To save both her career and his name.

“You could have called me, Lara,” the man whispered, his dark hand reaching for her face. “Or wrote, or something.” Lara shook her head, “no. Your father, he didn’t want me to, T’Challa.”

“Izigqibo zakhe akuzona zam,” T’Challa whispered, before turning and walking away from her. He went down the street, towards a crosswalk, and when he had disappeared from sight, Lara turned and went into the International Center. They had time, but Doug was waiting inside for her with their spots, no doubt sitting near Natasha. As she slid into her seat, she could feel a pair of eyes watching her, so she looked up, and met them. King T’Chaka was staring at her, hardly listening to the man he was speaking with. T’Chaka excused himself, before making his way over to where Lara and Doug sat.

“Your highness,” Doug greeted for the both of them. With a fake smile, Lara greeted T’Chaka in the traditional Wakandan way, wishing to be polite.

“May I spare a word with Miss Ross?” T’Chaka asked. Lara nodded, and stood, “of course. Excuse me for a moment, Doug.” She stood, awkwardly smoothed out the sleeves of her jacket, and followed the king of Wakanda.

“How is your child, Miss Ross?” T’Chaka started, creating small talk between them.

“Please, call me Lara,” she told him, with a small shake of her hand. “And Kali, she is well. She’ll be five here in a week.” The Wakandan king smiled, “has it really been that long since-.”

“Since what?” Lara interrupted. “Since you sent me away from Wakanda? Sent my child away from any future with her father?” Her voice was bitter, not a tone that should have been used towards a king, but she didn’t care. T’Chaka had taken away her daughter’s father before she was even born. “Why don’t you just cut the crap and tell me the real reason why you wanted to talk to me.”

“I was just going to tell you that I want you to stay away from my son while you are in Vienna,” T’Chaka told her. “He finally has someone that is actually good for him.” Lara felt her face burn, “you mean someone you chose for him.” T’Chaka shook his head, “no-.”

“Ok, I think conversation is over,” another voice said, a hand landing on Lara’s shoulder. Glancing over her shoulder, Lara gave a breath of relief when she saw Natasha. “Come with me, El.” The two walked away from T’Chaka, and that was when Lara released a breath of relief.

“Thanks, Nat,” she said. Natasha waved her hand, then tucked it back next to her other one, “anytime. And hey, drop the damsel-in-distress expression. It’s very disheartening.” Lara laughed, as she lightly punched her friend’s shoulder, “I’ll try.”

* * *

Lara tried to pay attention to T’Chaka’s opening remarks, but she could hardly listen to the king’s voice without anger coursing through her. He had sent her from Wakanda, and yet he was the one who was angry. She didn’t understand.

Don’t let anger get the best of you, Lara told herself, before focusing her attention back into T’Chaka. But it was at the wrong time. In that moment, she heard T’Challa’s voice yell, “everybody, get down!” That was when the blast went off, and Lara’s world turned dark.

When she came to, Lara was only partially aware of the figure that stood over her. What she was more worried about was the fact that she was stories below where the actual ceremony had started and it was now night.

“Wake up,” the figure above her hissed. The voice sounded feminine, but unrecognizable. “Wake up, now.”

“Who are you?” Lara asked. “What are you doing?” To herself, her voice sounded weak.

“I am the Scourge,” the voice hissed. “And when I’m done, people like you will cease to exist.” Lara let out a deep breath of air, almost like a hiss, “you wanna know something? You’ve messed with the wrong people.” Her legs shot to the sides, latching onto the ankles of the figure. The figure fell on top of her, having been caught off balance, and Lara pushed her off. Her vision was shaky as she stood, but she shook it off as she teetered away. Her steps started to become quicker, and soon she had came to a run, reaching the street, where chaos still ensued.

* * *

“Tony, you don’t understand, but whoever she was nearly killed me,” Lara said, smacking her hand against Tony’s worktable. It was three days later, and she still did not understand who had caused the attack on the International Center.

“No, you need to calm down. You’re angry,” Tony replied. He glanced down, before holding out the bag of blueberries he held towards Lara, “blueberry?” Lara shoved the bag away, “I don’t want blueberries, I want answers!”

“Well, I am fresh out of those, I really am,” Tony retorted. “Y’know, I have noticed that when Pepper is mad, it sometimes ends up being because she’s hungry. Do you want a blueberry?”

“No,” Lara said, her bottom lip now starting to quiver. “Stick your blueberries.” Tony sighed, and put his hand on her shoulder, “I know it’s been rough for you, that’s why I’m offering you some of my food. Now take a Goddamned blueberry.” Lara laughed, before holding her hand out, “fine.”

“See, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” Tony asked, as he poured some into her hand. “As for whoever this ‘Scourge’ is, we’ll find her. Just like we’re going to find Barnes. Ok?” Lara nodded, the quivering in her bottom lip gone, “ok.” Still eating the blueberries, she turned, and left the lab, where finally she broke down. The stress of the last few days had been wearing thin on her.

“I will find you, Scrouge.”

Translations:

Izigqibo zakhe akuzona zam: my Father’s decisions are not my own

#black panther #marvel #shuri #tchalla #civil war #infinity war #endgame #killmonger #SPOILERS

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microsoftedgy69 · 5 years

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November 11, 2428

It’s still bad.

You’re not surprised; things took a sharp turn for the better in the past few days, but it is still November 11. Five years P.D., post Dirk.

When you moved to your boat, permanently, you locked yourself out of accessing Corpsefridge’s coordinates on your transportalizer, to keep yourself from going back there for any reason. You’re all about sabotaging yourself into good things, now. You’re trying, at least.

You programmed it to let you back over today, because that’s different.

Today’s different.

Still bad.

Your lightweight body feels heavy as you drag it onto the pad. You don’t want to go, but you know that you’ll hate yourself if you let this anniversary pass without paying him a visit. It’s the least you can do, you think, and send yourself off.

You are immediately surrounded by water.

The apartment, as you had anticipated, has completely flooded in the few months that you weren’t here. It is not technically a problem--you are waterproof from head to toe, and you spend a lot of time underwater. As your feet leave the transportalizing pad and you float weightlessly towards the ceiling, you find yourself thinking that it is kind of nice, actually.

The window has burst from the water pressure, and the door to the bedroom is missing entirely. Many of the little things--skateboards, hats, computers, his pillow--aren’t here anymore, having been carried off by the tide while you weren’t here. Furniture is suspended seemingly in mid air, and the silence of the place is all encompassing. The apartment is almost unrecognizable now, and you find solace in that.

In the water, you turn, and push your feet against the ceiling to dive down. It takes you a bit of effort, but you wrench the transportalizer free from the apartment floor. With it in your hands, you swim out of the broken window, and go up.

You surface to the murmur of waves and the screams of seagulls. The roof of the apartment is still dry, so they’re still here. The enormous birdhouse you built them is still standing strong, albeit covered in shit. You spare it a crooked smile as you climb ashore.

For today, you're wearing black, and your clothes are clinging to your body with ocean water while you deploy the transportalizer. The sun is shining, though, and you'll be dry in no time. You pay it no mind when you message your brothers to let them know that it's safe to come over now.

Sawtooth and Squarewave are advanced enough to read your moods and quiet down when you're sad, but not to feel sad themselves. They arrive in all black and silence, and you're thankful for it.

It's Brobot you're worried about. He is still getting used to emotions, still trying to name them all even, and you have no idea how he’s going to take this. But he has his own free will now, and he wanted to come, and you are in no position to say no to him. You let him come over last, and then it’s the four of you again, up on that high-rise, four robots without their maker, four kids unbothered by the ocean breeze.

The four of you stand at the ledge, and you look out into the sea, neverending until it cuts into the horizon. If you stared at it long enough, you could almost think you’re at home on your boat. But the seagulls scream, and pull you right back.

You put your arm around Brobot’s shoulders. He can’t feel it, not physically, but he sees what you’re doing and you trust he knows how to interpret the gesture by now. Sawtooth’s big hand is on Squarewave’s hat, and you take Squarewave’s little metal hand in yours. You can’t cry, in this body, because you have no fluids at all, but you think you probably would if you could, right now. You imagine that it would be quiet, maybe dignified even, and you think that would be nice. Not too long ago, you had full sobbing fits when you thought about this, so it is progress.

“We’re not gonna be able to come here next year,” you tell the sea. “Shit’s sinking and all. So this is it, buddy.” You pause, and try to let the realization of this wash over you once more. You did all you could to help Roxy, Jane, and Jake out of this timeline, and the only one left now is the dead body of a boy you had to throw out the window and call it a sea burial four years and nine months ago. You squeeze Squarewave’s hand--he can’t feel it, but you can--and say, “Bye, Dirk.”

The sea doesn’t answer you.

You stay a bit longer, like this. You make sure to hang out with Brobot here, make sure to offer to talk, make sure it’s not too much for him. You want him to know he’s not alone with any of this, before you send him back home.

Once all three of them are back on the yacht, you sit down on the roof and take your shoes off. It’s pointless in a way, because they’re already soaked, but you want to feel the ocean water between your toes when you let your legs hang off the edge of the roof.

“So,” you say, and in stark contrast to all those times you spent imagining this exact moment, you smile. “Last time, huh.”

You snort, and look down into the water. It’s still fairly clear here. Faintly, you see the outlines of a city long forgotten in the depths.

“I don’t know how true that really is. Sometimes, when I talk to myself, I still imagine I’m talking to you. I guess they’re the same thing, right?” You start kicking your legs, and watch the water slosh around them. The shark skin makes you very hydrodynamic. This feels smooth, and good, and a little like home. Your fingers tighten on the ledge, but only for a second.

“Life’s good on the yacht,” you say. “And I pulled Brobot out of Hellmurder, and gave him emotions, because you and I are the same and history repeats itself. I also got a bunch of plants, and a kitten, and an aquarium. And a family.” You pause to think of them, and smile. “I’m making new memories, better ones. October and November are still hard, but I think I’ll be better next year. I have a safety net that’s made of people, the way you had. The way I had, before things went to shit.”

Your abdomen makes a mechanical noise. You tilt your head back and look at the sky. It’s blue, cloudless, and unforgiving as always.

“I’m dating Jake now,” you say, and you laugh. “Not ours. That one is never going to trust me again. No, I’m with a different version, one that treats me like a person. It’s nice. I’ll try not to screw it up.”

For a minute, you stay like this, looking up into the sky, thinking about your boyfriend. He said you’d go get burritos later, and he makes you feel like a real person. When you told him about Dirk, he said that what happened to you was horrific, and if you hadn’t been shades at the time, you would have wept like a baby. Because he said what happened to you, not what you did, and it was a perspective that you had been entertaining, but felt like you didn’t deserve.

But Jake thinks you deserve good things. And your new, found family thinks you deserve good things.

You sigh, and tilt your head back down.

“Neither of us wanted things to go like this,” you say, softly, to the gentle waves. “You know that. I hope that, somewhere, you knew that. Because I do. You weren’t a bad person, and neither am I, I think. It just sucks it turned out this way and--and those are Front Bottoms lyrics, actually.” When you snort, it comes out strained and wonky, the autotune on your voice jumping a little. “I’m still sorry. It’s awful--what happened to us. It shouldn’t have happened and it’s all fucked up and I’m sorry about it all, even if it wasn’t--wasn’t my fault.”

The waves, too, don’t answer you.

But you nod to yourself.

“It’s still shit. You had a whole life ahead of you and I feel bad sometimes for living it. You know that. I tell you all the time. But there’s nothing we can do about it, and I’m done punishing myself. I want to be done.”

Again, you nod, then you pull your feet out of the water and stand. You look around, to the vastness of the ocean expanding to either side, to the birdhouse and the seagulls. You said goodbye to this place months ago, and you find that it doesn’t hurt, anymore. You don’t live here, and maybe you never fully did.

You slide your hand into your damp pants pocket, and pull out a pair of tacky triangular shades. Looking down at them, you turn them in your fingers, and let the edges dig into your thumb, before you flick them into the water.

“We buried you without a pair of those,” you tell him, and step onto the transportalizer. “Thought I’d rectify that. They’ll find you.”

You think, to yourself, that that was a weird thing to say. Then you look out into the ocean of your home timeline, November 11, 2428, in what used to be Houston, for the last time, and smile.

“Goodbye, DS,” you say. “Until we meet again.”

You send yourself off, to November 11, 2018, the Atlantic Ocean, and despite the wet clothes weighing you down, you feel a thousand times lighter.

#posted ooc #action post #death mention #no other big warnings #general grief atmosphere #ends on a positive note though!! its uphill for this lil guy now #as always sorry mobile users

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frasier-crane-style · 7 years

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Watched Star Trek: Discovery

It was naht good, you guys.

-First off, mucho annoying having half a dozen ‘buy CBS All Access’ commercials. Plus, it was a two-hour premiere and to get even the second half, you have to buy their shitty streaming service. So I feel like I’m not getting a fair taste of the series before being expected to pay for it. This is the thanks I get for taking a chance this show, not even getting a complete story? Completely anti-consumerist.

-This seemed way more like Kelvin Timeline: The Series than anything set in the Prime timeline. In the first hour along, we have callbacks to the opening of Star Trek Into Darkness, a callback with Burnham strapping on an Iron Man suit and flying through space (which Kirk already did twice), a callback to Spock’s childhood... they can’t even have member berries for something that doesn’t have Chris Pine in it.

-Speaking of Kelvinverse, it’s amusing as hell that the show’s idea of showing Starfleet on a humanitarian mission is having them blow shit up for the greater good. Next up, humanity must end the strife between two feuding species by doing some radical skateboard tricks!

-They’ve also adapted the Kelvinverse habit of ‘conflict’ that’s manufactured out of one person being a psychotic jackass and the other person going ‘maybe don’t be a psychotic jackass’. Seriously, after Burnham assaults a superior officer and attempts to take over the ship, how is she not spending the rest of the show in Space Leavenworth? And how does Captain Supercop no-sell a Vulcan nerve pinch? It’s not a cup of Nyquil, it doesn’t just make you drowsy!

-The pilot really only introduces three characters and 2/3 of them are awful (I take it from all the “I don’t want you to die” stuff from Burnham that Yeoh is totally going to die). So, Sarue--how does a species whose hat is being a giant chickenshit end up third-in-command of a starship? When Burnham and Yeoh were down together on the planet, apparently the acting captain was a guy who would shit himself and die if someone sneezed. Fine, he’s a science officer--don’t give him the conn! Jesus! The chain of command on the fucking Orville is more stable than this: first officer is a paranoid warmonger and second officer is a pussy!

-The new Klingons (and their ship design) looks awful. Just totally generic ‘we are evil’ stuff. They might as well have been Uruk-Hai, or Reavers, or a dozen other mean alien species. And their ships look like a Decepticon’s dildo. Why bother using an iconic Star Trek thing if you’re going to make it completely unrecognizable--to the point that even their language sounds like they’re all chewing a sandwich as they talk.

-Also, I get that they’re trying to be topical by making the Klingons Trump voters or something--yeah, yeah, stay woke--but if the Klingons and the Federation haven’t had contact in 100 years, why do they feel so threatened? I guess they kinda imply that Federation territory is encircling the Klingons, but it seems like in all the other, ‘later’ series that the Klingons are still way off in the distance, with even a literal ‘Neutral Zone’ between them and humanity. Only I guess fifty-some years before that, they’re going “holy shit, the humans are right on our doorstep”?

-Speaking of, I thought TPTB were trying to make the Klingons more nuanced, but apparently their way of declaring war is

A. Show up on the enemy’s doorstep.

B. Get their attention and allow them to call for reinforcements.

C. Then and only then call for your allies, who you can only hope will show up.

D. Without any sort of strategy or battle plan, go to war.

That seems way more Stupid Klingon Tricks than the Klingons have ever been before.

-Even with Fuller gone, they do a bunch of flourishing, psychobabble lines meant to be poetic and falling on pretentious. Like Mohindar in your average episode of Heroes. I know all Treks are guilty of this to some extent, but it just feels wrong to have Sarek talk about how Burnham is ‘facing her demons’. I thought Vulcans were all about logic, not slam poetry.

#star trek

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tryveryhard · 5 years

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Six years

One. Tangled up in those big “look-at-me” necklaces, hung in the same cheap wood paneled-closets where women hung such things decades and decades before we, ourselves, were on the verge. So we got to talking. And we hated it, I’m sure. My hair thin and pressed close to my head, braces squeezing my teeth — this was still an era of low-rise jeans and believing life could end in acne-prone boys named Luke and Jake back home in Michigan. A had purple, died hair and didn’t believe in abortion, nor feminism. S had a heart-shaped face and a dimple at the end of her spine and believed in both. We all agreed upon peanut butter and cheap sheets. We were complete strangers doomed to share a room for at least a year. We would have to see one another’s breasts, our curved moons hanging in the dark. We would have to tell one another everything. We would have to share secrets across the room, across that wavy dark carpet, and think: adulthood. We would fall in love with one another by Christmas break.

This all seemed terribly exciting, our semi-sheer shirts and dining-hall salads. I wrote none of this down. I watched a boy get carried out of our dorm hall — Washington Hall, 49 E. Green Drive — and into the ambulance that waited for him on the slick pavement. I watched this scene from the window of my dorm stairwell, all covered in cracked plaster, and thought about how it felt awfully like the slick tile of the bathroom walls in my elementary school. Exotic, cool. I cried several times that year in public, and would pace around the lobby in that yellow glow, all panicked, calling my parents while I sobbed on the floor of the single bathroom that locked. And it always felt so haunted back then, that place. I realize now that’s because the whole placed dripped with the choking sobs of other young people. I touched at least five strange penises that year. I fucked at least two that I can remember. And that year, I became both addicted and un-addicted to Camel Blues. I got my braces off and grew my hair past my ears. I went to Pittsburgh for the first time, teetered around in high heels, and realized I still had growing up to do. The girls I fell in love with, we’d forget one another soon. But I left letters for them the day we left that room. And I think of them each day, trapped in that small square, us crashing against the walls of our teeny-tiny brains. Two. This was the year I got a better down comforter for my twin-sized mattress and became inextricably involved with people in the military. My roommate that year, H, had an eating disorder and a boyfriend who didn’t want to fuck her when she was bloated. She also wanted to be a nurse in the Navy. She studied relentlessly. And somewhere between Pittsburgh and leaving that room, I had fallen impossibly in love with a boy who would leave for a military base that October. I did not realize then that every woman must go through this at least once, this plot. I loved him for his height and for his almost endearing violence when he kissed me in parking lots. Naturally I never told him any of this, but as a matter of perseverance I’m sure he and two other men loved me that winter. I did not know then that it was odd for a 25-year-old to lure a 19-year-old to bed — a bed in his parents’ house, then a guest bed in his sister’s house — when he got off his job at Lowes. This felt perfectly in-line with my trajectory, what I was supposed to be doing when not coaxing my roommate to eat something other than a can of corn and $15 handle of vodka. He broke up with me over text, I threw myself into the student newspaper, then a skinny, short boy who would hold my hand as we left philosophy class. He lent me several hoodies I never returned, and I had sex with him until he told me he loved me and I determined I couldn’t do anything but ignore him for the rest of my life. Nonetheless, I remember wondering if I could marry a short man, if this was my life. Then back to the student newspaper. Work, work, work. Many nights in a fluorescent hallway, fingering the gray carpet and whispering into the phone the whole, I. Can’t. Do. This. One night, after covering a student protest, a boy walked me back to my dorm and kissed me, suddenly. This was the sweetest moment of that year. His dorm room smelled entirely of garbage but it allowed me to climb the steepest set of stairs on campus and observe, so viscerally, the campus I had grown to know in the past year. I never felt afraid. This boy and I, we went to church. Then I took his virginity, and I determined I couldn’t do anything but ignore him for the rest of my life. He asked if we could have one last kiss which I, cruelly, found pathetic. Especially sad because he had once carried me home when my heels were too bruising, and no man would ever do that again. Work, work, work. I suddenly woke up to the fact that my life had been rife with problems. My mother was a drug addict. How did I not realize this before? I did, I did. I started making both more destructive and more impressive decisions with this knowledge. I went to a conference in Atlanta and ate brisket and began telling everyone all at once that my life was a tragedy. I drank cheap wine with strangers and decided, weeks later, to aggressively kiss a boy I had just decided to love. Then I took him back to his home, crashed into his cheap blue sheets, and I told him he was weird, and we saw each other for the next year, just like that. Me thinking he was weird. Me taking him home. Those girls from the first year, at that point, had melted into background noise. But I lived in the attic of S’s mom that summer, which is astounding now that I think of it. I moved into a home with humid green trees, a grand staircase, no furniture. And my bedroom, larger than the one in Queens now, had two windows that framed the bed and buzzed with cicadas. I went there every weekend, and I have no memory of what exactly that meant. I became editor of the student newspaper for no reason at all, except for that I wanted to feel something. I went to New York City for the first time as an adult and drank chilled sangria in Harlem, radiating terror.

Three.

This was the year of machinery. Synapses in my mind click, click, clicking to remind me I was knocking out my minutes and careening toward the end. I made big promises that that are difficult to think of now. I ate so many meals in bed. I was playing dress-up at 20 years old, with all those adult meetings and tears and assumptions that life began and ended with the student newspaper, with my own thoughts. In some ways, I was half-right. I grew my hair long, met with professors constantly. Studied, studied, studied. After all that swallowing of misery, I began the fast climb out of the pits, desperate. I do not remember if I wrote this year. I do remember that I fell out of love quicker than I had fallen into it, would go weeks without talking to that man, would try to end our relationship over and over to no avail. Everyone hated me this year and I could feel it cloaking me, that dismay. I started drinking white wine out of coffee mugs, laying in bed watching documentaries all weekend and thinking about how I was on fire. Big, magic, the life waiting for me outside. This was the year of optimization, the year of Girl Boss. I am sure there were many cardigans in my closet. I sent many emails. Too many emails. I started to have the impression that I was becoming something bigger than myself, bigger than my past, bigger than this school. I kept crying in meetings. This was mania, pure mania, after all. I worked until 4 a.m. some nights, slept until 8 a.m., went to class, never anywhere else. I was made to constantly meet with old men who didn’t care for me much. I went down the hall to sit in Ian’s bed, nightly, drinking beers in silence, thinking that I had never been so exceptional. Every once and a while I completely lost my mind, but never quite openly. I would sometimes get phone calls late at night, a message from the newspaper printing facility saying something had gone wrong, and I’d drive barefoot back to that tower where we made the thing nobody read so I could I’d fix it. And maybe it’s the prospect of fixing that made me feel so unrecognizable and knowing that year. There was so much that was broken, after all. I forgot my one-year anniversary with that guy, yet realized I was fine doing the same thing two years in a row. I do not remember when I discovered I had gotten that internship. I do not remember when I realized I’d move to New York after all. I do remember that before all of that transpired, all of that hope, I cracked and slipped back into angst. I went home and pressed myself into the ink-stained jeans I wore throughout high school, bought magazines on foreign policy, lied to my parents. I was 21. I met with my ex-boyfriend at a Coney Island, laid in his tobacco-scented scrawny arms, and kissed him, shaking with anticipation. A reintroduction to my 15-year-old self after all those nights spent pretending there had ever been anything else, and many more nights trying to forget. We shuddered with all the years we had lost, and I slid under his body again, and we watched skateboarding videos on a thin mattress on his floor. Before I left for New York, I realized it would unlikely work in the long-term. Then I hit his friend’s car on accident, moved to an unfamiliar city, and for whatever reason, slept in the same bed as my ex-boyfriend every night for three months in an apartment that smelled like new paint. He pissed in an Uber. I developed an odd relationship with a comedian named Alec, who I saw once in person, like a mirage, getting off the 2 train and walking away from me. I discovered a new egg and sausage sandwich at Clark Avenue, and I wandered about with Seth, slowly losing my mind. My calves, though, were hardened by all the nervous pacing I did that summer. I got a plane and went back home, with the newfound strength to wear slip-on vans with sheath dresses that hit below the knee. Four.

My room in Athens was haunted by cicadas, rainy mornings. Always impossible hot, yet I surrounded myself in blankets and pillows. I still drew on my eyeliner thick. And my bathtub still clogged with hair, soaking my feet in cold, gray water. I still felt those minutes click, clicking away but I also felt desperate to gain them back. The first night, a Friday, I wore a tank top and met Reba at a wood-paneled bar called Tony’s, drinking white wine, thinking: just like Manhattan. I met my ex-boyfriend from sophomore year thinking: he’s not gay, I think. And I had sex with him half-heartedly that night in one of those dingy college-guy rooms, with the bad sheets and a handful of the posters and the sense that this is all fading fast, just for kicks. But he only lived up the hill from my home, and I knew I could stumble on back to my own bed before 2 a.m. And I did just that. That morning, I ate three scrambled eggs on a plastic plate. I prepared an three boxes amount of pasta because I was determined to have people like me that year. I walked it over to the home of a boy I knew only marginally, named Alex. I wore a black shirt, patterned shorts, sandals, and that thick eyeliner. I was still in a fit of insanity from the night before, thirsting for all my new bad decisions. His roommate was tall, lanky, wore black pants and a short-sleeved button up shirt. I thought: he’s balding, and covering it up with a hat. I thought: he’s odd. He came up behind me when I was drinking my second bottle of red wine in the basement, all caked with alcohol, all under the glare of an ex-boyfriend from my sophomore year. I was playing Danzig, and he made some comment I was too drunk to process. I went up to that yellow-lit kitchen and tried to clean the dishes I had brought. I wanted everyone to eat pasta. I wanted to clean up everything as if I had never been there. I wanted so badly to stop thinking the past three years were for nothing. The boy, the roommate with the hat, stopped me and told me I didn’t have to wash the dishes. Don’t worry about it. I asked him if he wanted to kiss, and he nodded and leaned into me, and we feverishly toppled onto the front porch. I took him to the same bar where I was the night before, kissed him, and he took me into the other bar I was at the previous night — the wood-paneled one — and walked me home. Inexplicably, we sat in my bed while I talked about the summer I had just crawled out of. I told him about the articles I had written, Manhattan. Does this sound impressive? Does this make me likable? He did not kiss me goodbye. He merely disappeared down the stairs, long legs carrying him back to the kitchen with all the dishes I wasn’t allowed to clean. I knew his first name: Michael. And he waved to me the next morning, sat behind me as if I had not disclosed all those things and kissed him on his porch. He left without a word, turning to walk beneath the tall oak trees flush with summer, stepping into that flickering light. And I loved him, honestly. Would’ve died for him. But I spent the next few months tumbling into his bed, trying to deny that. Trying to pretend I was still my productive self from the year prior, but always thinking of him and wishing I were beneath him. One autumn night I ran out of his home, terrified of him, and straight into a field where I laid down without my phone. I thought: I hope I die. Instead, I told him I loved him that January. Instead, I replaced some of my ambition with his Friday nights. I spent my last night of college on his floor, watching heat lightning ripple across that Ohio sky, and was unable to figure out whether I had been incredibly stupid or incredibly astute these past four years, falling in and out of love with many things and people. I did not talk to my roommates from the first year anymore. I did not talk to my roommates from the second year. I was hardly talking to my current roommates, having practically moved into Michael’s. I was still doing the student newspaper six days a week, but part of me didn’t feel as committed because I had gradually become less insane. I thought. I did not write my name on the wall with the rest of the people who had worked there, at the same time, did not say goodbye, because I thought: these people still hate me. And I drove out of Ohio without any tears.

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