#which is unfortunate. because they’re putting me in a dress today for the sake of pictures. which I will not be looking at. because I can’t
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“Natural” - Chapter 15 - Embry Call x Reader
I was stirred from my sleep at the sound of something in my room.
My initial panic subsides when I hear Embry’s soothing voice in my ear.
“It’s just me. Don’t worry.” He says, climbing into bed next to me.
I feel his warm arms wrap around me and I press my face into the crook of his neck.
“What time is it?” I mumble.
“It’s a little past midnight.” He kisses my temple, stroking my hair.
“Oh wow, I’ve been asleep for a while.” I chuckle.
“Yeah, you never answered my texts. I figured you’d fallen asleep. You had a long day.” He chuckles, pressing soft kisses to my neck.
“That I did. We all did.” I sigh.
“We’ll find him, don’t worry.” Embry whispers.
“I don’t know, Em. I’m really worried. I don’t recognize my best friend anymore.” I say, tears falling from my eyes.
“I know, I know. He’s still there, he’s just going through the ringer.” He soothes me, rubbing comforting circles in my back.
“I know, I just want to help him. He’s been there for me through so much. Jacob’s like my brother.” I sniffle.
“I know you do, bean. But you can’t fix what’s going on with him. He’s heartbroken and he’s gonna take some time for himself to heal.”
Embry’s voice and touch always soothed me, but the thought of how much pain one of our best friends was going through was still plaguing my mind. I had no idea where he was or what he was doing.
“Did you look for him today?” I look at Embry.
“Quil, Sam, Paul, and I all went out earlier. We’re going to be taking shifts looking for him.”
“Nothing?” I ask with defeat.
“No, we lost his scent. We can’t hear his thoughts. We went all the way to the Candadian border. We’ll find him, he just doesn’t want to be found yet.” He chuckles softly, trying to lighten the mood.
“The Canadian border? How much further could he be?” I ask surprised.
“Who knows, he’s fast. We’ll find him eventually. We will.” He promises.
“I hope so.” I murmur, pressing my face deeper into his neck.
The smell of pine needles and teakwood throwing my senses into a frenzy.
“In other news, we picked up the scent of another leech seemingly on its way to Forks. Quil and I got him, though. Gotta make sure nothing else comes here.”
“It’s crazy how casual this is for all of you. I still can’t completely grasp it, yet. It’s just so common, Vampires in Forks. Months ago I never knew they existed, and here we are. They’re just everywhere.” I giggle.
“Isn’t it? But it makes sense why they like it here. They’re just surprised to see us, most vampires don’t even know we exist. Makes our job a little easier.”
“How many do you think will be at the wedding next month?” I ask.
“I’m not sure. We’re gonna have to figure out who we do and don’t have to worry about, though.” His raspy voice laughs softly into my ear.
“That’s a really good point, I didn’t consider that.” I giggle.
“I know, I’m just here to remind you of it all. But you definitely wanna go?” He asks me, looking into my eyes.
“Well, yeah. I’m intrigued, I wanna see what it’ll be like. I wanna see the wedding, I’m sure it’s going to be beautiful. Seth was really excited, too. So I wanna go for his sake, he’ll need some backup. Plus, Billy is going because of Charlie. I can’t leave Billy all alone. I’m going, but if you don’t want to, I won’t force you. I know you aren’t exactly fond of them.” I give him a soft smile.
He leans up against my headboard and pulls me with him. He looks into my eyes with a soft smile.
“Babe, if you think I’m gonna let you go to a wedding without a date, you are mistaken. I would love to go with you. Anywhere, really. Besides, I can’t leave you with that many vampires. It’s rule number one of vampire weddings.” He chuckles.
“Awe, Em. Thank you. How silly of me to forget rule number one.” I smirk as I place a kiss on his lips.
“I don’t know how you could.” He pulls me in for another kiss.
His large hands find my hips, pulling me further into him. The kiss grows deeper, feeling his hungry lips on my own.
“What time do you have to go home?” I exhale, pulling away from the kiss.
“Pretty soon, unfortunately. My mom’s gonna be looking to see if I’m in my bed soon.” He sighs.
“I understand.” I nod before placing my forehead on his.
“I’m sorry, bean. We can have another sleepover soon.” He smiles, kissing the tip of my nose.
“I can’t wait. You’re still coming over for dinner tomorrow, right?” I ask.
“Of course.” He smiles.
I laid against his chest until he had to leave. His heartbeat thumping against my ear put me to sleep faster than anything else really can.
I start to stir as I feel movement in the bed.
“I love you. I’ll see you tomorrow.” He kisses my forehead before walking to my window.
I felt my eyes drooping shut before he reaches it.
“I love you, too.” I mumble into the pillow.
I pull my blankets closer to me as my main source of heat has since left my bed.
I woke up to see the sun peaking through my curtains.
I check my phone and see a missed call from Leah. It was only nine in the morning, weird that she called so early.
I then saw a text from her, asking me if she can come over when I’m awake. I text her back telling her she can come over now.
I get myself dressed and ready for the day and make my way downstairs.
I pop some waffles in the toaster and await for Leah’s arrival.
Though it wasn’t long as a few moments later there was a knock on my front door.
“Hey Leah. Come in.” I swing the door open further and she quickly enters.
“Hi.” She smiles softly.
“Are you hungry? Do you want anything to eat or drink?” I ask her.
“I’m good with water.”
“Sit down, Leah.” I smile.
I bring her a glass of water and she gives me a small thank you.
“So, what’s going on?” I smile at her.
“Just the Alyssa thing. I explained it all to her. I just feel so bad about how she learned about all of it. She was so… afraid. It hurt to see her so afraid of us. She looked like she saw a monster.” She sighs.
“I understand. I think it’s natural to be afraid in a situation like that. But what matters is how she handles it from here. Jake made it a difficult introduction, but it seems like a fixable situation.” I place my hand on her shoulder comfortingly.
“For sure. I get it. She said she needed a day or so to herself, and I get it, I do. But this is painful for me. I showed her me, and she seemed alright but… just really shaken up.” Leah confesses.
“I get it. I talked to her, she said she didn’t wanna lose the connection she has with all of us, with you. She just needs to take some time to absorb it all. The girl watched a giant boy turn into a giant wolf. Then, she watched another one turn into another giant wolf. Then, she almost saw them fight. And then, she learned about vampires and how they’re running crazy through her hometown. She got a very harsh and rushed introduction, the girl feels like she’s nuts.” I chuckle, placing my hand on Leah’s.
“Yeah. But she said she doesn’t want to lose the connection she has with me?” She smiles.
“Of course that’s all you heard.” I roll my eyes.
“Oh shut up.” She laughs.
I walk over to go get the waffles I toasted and hand one to Leah.
She thanks me and eats it.
“I thought you weren’t hungry?” I tease.
“That was before I heard good news.” She smiles, taking a bite out of the eggo waffle.
“Okay, fair.” I chuckle.
“By the way, I just want to let you know that I’m relieved you’ll be going to the wedding with Seth. I couldn’t bring myself to go, but you and Embry can keep an eye on him.”
“Of course. Ya know, despite all the drama this girl brings, he’s still really excited for that wedding.” I laugh.
“He’s just happy to be anywhere. He loves love and he loves the Cullens. Don’t really get why, though.” She rolls her eyes.
“Well, I think Seth sees things in a different light than everyone else. He’s kinda his own sun. I love it, I wish I could be more like him, sometimes.” I admit with a small smile.
“I agree, Seth is really warm. He’s kind. He tries to only see the best in people. Which is why I worry for him, especially at a party full of leeches. So I find comfort in knowing you guys will be there.” She takes a sip of her water with a smirk.
I shake my head, laughing at her. But in reality, it made sense to feel that way. It made so much sense.
“So, what’re your plans with Embry for the day?”
“Well, my dad wanted to have dinner with us. So what I have to do is either feed him before or feed him after, because he’s expressed his concern with eating too much in front of my dad. He doesn’t want to raise any suspicions.” I giggle.
“That’s a good point. I guess that’s something to consider.” She picks at the skin on her thumb.
“Are you actually okay?”
“I mean, I will be fine soon. It just kinda physically hurts.” She purses her lips.
“Well, let’s go have some fun, then. I don’t have anything to do until my dad gets home from work.”
“I mean, I don’t have to go on patrol and search for Jacob until 3. We could do something.” She smiles.
“Alright, let’s go.” I grab my car keys and we are on our merry way.
“What’s the plan?” She asks as I turn the car on.
“Uh, not sure. You got anything in mind?” I turn to her before driving off.
“Not a clue.” She smirks.
“Okay, well we can go play in the woods. I know you’re doing that later, so I don’t know. We can mess with the guys, maybe? Drive around until we find something? We could go get lunch later, maybe?” I start throwing ideas around.
“Okay, uh. Those are all great options.” She laughs.
“But?”
“But, I don’t know what to do.”
“We can hang out on the beach. Maybe look for some seals? I need a dress to wear to Bella’s wedding, but I don’t think you’d be very interested in dress shopping.” I chuckle.
“Not usually, but we could do that if you’d like. I’d like to go see some seals, though. That could be fun.” She smiles.
“Alright, seals it is.” I smile.
We drove over to the beach, blasting some fun music.
Seeing Leah in a good mood was something that I enjoyed, it was something I didn’t get to see often anymore. She really deserved the happiness the world has to offer; and I’m glad she’s finding it.
After our jam session, we pulled up to the beach and got out. We began our walk, which wouldn’t be too long, hopefully.
“Do you think we’ll see any baby seals?” I ask.
“Maybe, I think this is like the time when they’re born.” She looks around.
“Great. I love fluffy seal pups, it’s all I need to see and then I’ll be content with my life.” I giggle.
“Wow, that’s all it takes?” Leah teases.
“Well yeah, have you ever seen a seal pup?”
“You got me there, they are very cute.” Leah laughs at me.
We continue our walk down the rocky shore for what feels like an hour or so before she tells me there are some coming up soon.
“How do you know? Those are just rocks.” I ask her.
“I have really good vision now, one of the perks. Plus, I can smell them. They don’t smell that great.” She laughs.
“Jeez, all the things I forget to consider.” I laugh.
The sudden realization dawned upon me, what if I smelled bad and didn’t know it? They could all smell so well.
“Leah, you would tell me if I smelled bad right? I’m gonna need you to do that for me.” I lift up the corner of my shirt, smelling it.
“(Y/N), you do not smell bad. But yes, I will tell you.” She laughs.
We continue walking, rounding the corner.
“Wow, there they are.” I whisper in amazement.
“Beautiful.”
We sit and stare at them from afar for a bit. Talking about life for what feels like hours.
And suddenly our sunlight was blocked by two figures.
“Can I help you?” Leah’s annoyed tone rings through the air.
“Yeah, we were wondering if we could sit with you two lovely ladies. We figured you might want our company.” One tries to shmooze.
I look up and see two young guys. One a bit taller than average, lanky build. He had blonde hair and a smile plastered on his face. I look at the other one standing next to him, a little stockier than his friend. He was a few inches shorter and his hair was a light brown, he too was smiling at us.
“Well, you did not figure correctly.” Leah scoffs.
“Wow, someone’s feisty.” The blonde teases.
“You’re a little quiet, though.” The brown haired boy smiles at me.
“It is with the advice of my lawyer that I remain quiet.” I smirk up at him.
Leah looks over at me, realizing what I’m doing. I can tell that she’s holding back her laughter.
“What?” The blonde one asks.
“My lawyer? Just ever since my case, he said that I shouldn’t talk to men like you guys anymore. It was what provoked me the first time.” I shrug.
“He was right. It was like something snapped that time. She just missed a sentence by *that*.” She pinches her thumb and her index finger close together.
“Yeah, my boyfriend’s crazy, too. He just got out of prison. He should be here any minute, though. If you guys wanna meet him?” I smile at them.
“Uh, no thanks.” The blonde one quickly says, grabbing his friend’s arm and walking away.
“Bye! It was nice to meet you!” I call after them, causing them to walk faster.
After they were out of earshot, Leah and I burst out into laughter.
“That was impressive.” She laughs.
“Thank you. You did great, yourself.” I laugh.
“I see how you managed to keep up with Quil for all these years.”
“Oh please, I made Quil the snarky boy he is.” I smirk.
A few minutes later we decided it was time to go.
Our walk back consisted of throwing around random things to do.
“I mean, I could go for ice cream.” I chime as we near my car.
“Who am I to say no to ice cream?” She laughs.
So we made our way to the local ice cream spot.
“Can I have sprinkles on the bottom? And extra sprinkles on top?” I ask the woman making my ice cream with an awkward smile.
“Of course!” The kind girl smiles as she packs on the sprinkles.
“Jeez, (Y/N). You want any ice cream with those sprinkles?” Leah laughs as she licks her ice cream.
“Not really, I’m in it for the sprinkles.” I laugh as I pay and thank the woman.
Sitting on the bench outside of the ice cream shop I look at the time.
“Can’t believe it’s already noon.” I laugh.
“Wow, time flew. But what do we do now?” Leah asks, throwing out her napkin.
“Well… I still need that dress. And there’s a dress store like fifteen minutes away…” I say, voice trailing off.
“Alright, let’s go get you a dress. I just have to go on Jacob and leech patrol at 3.” She reminds me.
“You got it, boss.” I smile as I stand up and throw out my empty cup.
The dress shop was small but offered a substantial amount of options.
“Thank you for helping me, I need an honest opinion. This isn’t really my thing but I have to get it done.” I smile at her, shuffling through dresses.
“Of course, what else are friends for?” She chuckles.
“You got me there. Do you think long or short?” I ask.
“Uhhh, either works. What color are you thinking?” She asks.
“I like emerald or purple.” I shrug.
“Okay, those would work.”
After about a half an hour of shuffling, we grabbed a few good options and I made my way to the dressing room.
“No.” Leah says as I walk out in a deep purple dress that came to my knees. There was only one shoulder on the dress.
“Yeah I don’t like the top of it.” I shrug.
I make my way back in, and after we hated all of them I lost hope.
“I found this one, try it on.” She says handing me an emerald green dress.
“Thank you.” I smile and make my way back into the dressing room.
I put it on and look into the mirror. The gown flowed beautifully, complimenting my complexion and figure well. The straps and neckline held my chest together well. A modest, yet beautiful dress. It was perfect for this wedding. There was a hidden slit in the dress, I didn’t notice it until I brought my leg forward. I think this would be the dress, as long as Leah gave me the thumbs up.
“What do you think?” I ask as I exit the dressing room.
“That one looks great.” She smiles at me.
“I agree. I think this is the one I’m gonna buy.” I smile before going back into the dressing room.
I get dressed back into my normal clothes and bring the dress over to the register.
By the time we got into the car, it was a little after 2:00.
“I’ll drive you home. Thank you for the fun day.” I smile at her.
“No, thank you. I had fun. Scaring men is a great way to pass time.” She chuckles.
“It is, we should absolutely do that again. The guy was lucky Quil wasn’t here to add to it.” I laugh.
“Oh yeah, it would’ve escalated to some kind of mafia story.” Her laughter echoes in the car.
We got to her house and I said hello to Seth.
“Hey Seth.” I wave.
“Hey! How’re you doing?” His cheerful voice fills my ears.
“I’m good. I’m gonna go pick up Embry to get him food before we eat dinner with my dad.” I giggle.
“Yeah that makes sense. He eats almost as much as Quil, which is a lot.” His smile beamed like sunshine.
“I know, it’s crazy isn’t it.” I laugh.
I say my goodbyes and make my way over to Embry’s house, calling him to let him know I was on my way.
I park my car and see him waiting for me outside with a smile, a few flowers in his hand.
“Hey, Em.” I smile, giving him a soft kiss on his lips when he gets in my car.
“Hey, bean.” He beams as I pull away and begin the drive back to my house.
“How was patrol?” I ask, tearing my eyes from the road for a second.
“It was alright. Good news is that we didn’t find any vampires. Bad news is that we didn’t find Jacob. But, I saw some pretty flowers and I thought of you. So I picked them.” He smiled, holding up the flowers for me to see.
“Embry, they’re beautiful. You’re too sweet, thank you.” I blush.
“Anything for you, babe.” He smiles, pressing a kiss to the top of my hand.
His head looks into my back seat, noticing the dress bag.
“Oh you got a dress for the wedding?” He smiles at me.
“I did, Leah helped me pick it out today. It’s a little long for me right now, but I think heels will fix that.”
“I can’t wait to see you in it.” Embry says, causing me to blush.
“I can’t wait to see you all dressed up, I’m excited.” I smirk.
“I guess that’s the silver lining of this wedding.” He chuckles.
We drove back to my house, jamming out to our playlist.
I pull into the driveway and lead Embry into the house.
“What’re we cooking for dinner?” He asks.
“Well, I figured you could find something in the fridge to eat before he gets home and then I’ll make spaghetti and accessories to spaghetti for actual dinner.” I suggest.
“Spaghetti accessories?” Embry laughs, raising an eyebrow.
“Ya know, sauce, garlic bread, that kinda stuff.” I giggle.
“Wow. Accessories.” He teases, pulling me in for a kiss.
“Alright, eat some food so that we can start cooking.” I kiss the tip of his nose.
I place the flowers in a vase and admire them for a few moments as Embry ate some leftovers from dinner last night. I brought the dress upstairs to my room before returning to the kitchen.
We began cooking and before I knew it, it was after 4:00. My dad should be home at any moment so our timing worked pretty well.
“You know how they say you can tell if spaghetti is done?” Embry asks me.
“How?” I ask with a smirk, knowing damn well what he was going to do.
He grabs a piece of spaghetti out of the strainer and throws it at the wall behind me.
“Oh, no you’re supposed to throw it at someone, not a wall.” I joke with a grin.
I take a piece of spaghetti and throw it at Embry, and it got stuck to his arm.
“See, it’s done. It sticks.” I giggle, walking over to him and the wall to throw out those pieces.
“Wow, babe. Harsh.” He giggles, wrapping his arms around my waist.
“It’s what I am, coldblooded.” I joke.
“Oh yeah, totally.” He rolls his eyes.
Suddenly, his eyes are ripping themselves from my waist.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, slightly worried.
“Your dad’s pulling up into the driveway. I hear his car from up the block.” He laughs.
“Wow, super hearing. I forget about that.” I laugh.
My dad opens the door and greets us.
“I’m just gonna change and then I’ll be right back down for dinner.” He says before jogging up the steps.
I finish setting everything else up and Embry and I take a seat at the table, waiting for my dad.
“Hey, Embry. I’m glad to see you again.” My dad says to him with a smile.
“It’s good to see you again, too.” Embry smiles.
“How was work?” I ask my dad.
“It was alright. John messed up one of our clients’ accounts, so that was a fun thing to fix for the rest of the day.” He says, voice filled with sarcasm.
“Oh, sounds like a great time.” I joke.
“Of course, always is. But how was your day? What did you guys do today? Where did these flowers come from?” He asks before taking a bite of his garlic bread.
“Oh, I brought them for (Y/N). I saw them on a hike with Quil and I thought she’d like them.” He smiles.
“That’s really nice of you, Embry.” My dad smiles.
“Leah and I hung out. We went seal watching, scared some men, got ice cream and went dress shopping.” I took a bite of spaghetti.
“Sounds fun, but how and why did you scare men?” My dad raises an eyebrow.
Embry too was interested to know the story, judging by his face.
“Well when we were sitting at the beach, two guys came up to us. Flirting with us and thinking they were sooooo smooth. They didn’t get the message that we weren’t interested and didn’t want them around. So I told them my lawyer advised me to stay away from situations like that after what happened the last time. I said I barely made it out without a prison sentence. I wanted them to fear me. Then, I told them my crazy boyfriend who just got out of prison would be there any minute if they wanted to stick around and meet him.” I smile, taking a sip of my water.
Embry laughs way too hard at the absurd words coming from my mouth and my father looks proud yet concerned, he too began to laugh.
“I mean, it worked right?” My dad asks.
“Of course it worked, they looked so scared.” I smile.
“I’m proud of you. Glad to know you’re still my snarky daughter.” My dad smiles at me.
“I’m proud of your quick thinking, it’s great. But you should call me next time.” Embry says with a concerned face.
“Yeah, you never know who you’re talking to. Thankfully they weren’t crazy.” My dad agrees.
“I know, but Leah was there.” I defend to Embry.
“You’re right, I forgot she was there for a second.” Embry nods.
“What does Leah being there do?” My dad asks, confused as to why that meant everything is peachy and safe.
“Uh, she’s just intimidating. Plus I wasn’t alone.” I try to save myself.
“I mean, that’s true. It’s better to be with someone than by yourself.” My dad agrees.
Can’t exactly tell my dad that Leah is stronger than any other human that could be threatening me. That she won’t face any physical damage from them, that she could snap them like a twig. That she can shift into a giant wolf.
“How was dress shopping?” My dad asks, breaking the silence.
“It was good, I bought a dress.” I smiled.
“That’s great, I wanna see it after dinner.” He smiled.
“Of course, I have to show Embry, too. The wedding is just a few weeks away.” I say.
“Very fast, very rushed. The invitation just got here the other day.” My dad says.
“The whole thing is a rush.” Embry agrees.
“I mean, yeah. But they’re in love. And it’s what she wants.” I say to Embry.
I knew he was referring to Bella becoming a vampire more than the wedding. It was a lot on Jacob, making it a lot on everyone else. Nobody understood her desire to become one.
“That’s important, I would hope she wants it.” My dad laughs.
“She definitely does.” Embry agrees.
“I heard Jacob ran away. Billy’s made missing flyers. You guys haven’t heard from him at all?” My dad asks.
“Nope, not at all.” Embry says with a devastated face.
“No, I wish he would come back. He disappeared after he got the invitation in the mail.” I say, pursing my lips.
“That’s a shame. Hopefully he comes back soon. Billy’s so upset. Jake doesn’t need her, he’ll find someone.” My dad says in a disappointed tone.
“I know, he’s just inconsolable about it.” I say as I take another sip of my water.
We finish eating dinner, talking about everything and nothing. We clean it up and sit in the living room.
“Alright, hon. Let’s see the dress.” My dad smiles.
“Okay, I’ll go put it on.” I smile before walking upstairs, leaving Embry and my dad on the couch.
I put the dress on and walk back down the stairs, lifting it up so I don’t trip.
“Right now, it’s a little too long but when I put heels on I think it’ll be okay.” I smile awkwardly.
“You look beautiful.” Embry says with a smile plastered across his face, eyes almost glazed over with admiration.
“You do.” My dad smiles proudly.
“Thank you.” I blush.
I walk back upstairs and throw some pajamas on, ready to watch some tv with Embry and my dad.
My phone rings and I see Quil’s name flash on my screen.
“Hey Quil, what’s up?” I ask into the phone.
“Yeah, I have him with me. I don’t know why he’s not checking his phone. Yeah, yeah I’ll tell him. Okay, relax there, bud. I’ll bring him over, calm down.” I say into the phone.
“What’s wrong?” Embry asks.
“Sam needs you to come over, there’s an issue with his truck and he’s afraid the engine is gonna be destroyed if you don’t look at it. Jacob’s not there to help anymore, so it’s gotta be you.” I smile.
“Oh, okay.” Embry says, trying to stay calm.
“It was good to hang out with you guys. Hopefully you can help him.” My dad smiles and says goodbye before we walk out my front door.
“What’s actually wrong?” Embry asks.
“Quil’s words were ‘there’s a few leeches and they need you immediately’ so I couldn’t exactly say that.” I look at him.
“Of course there is. I don’t want you outside, you’re gonna stay inside Sam’s house with Emily and Kim. I’ll meet you there and then Brady and Collin will wait with you guys there. I’ll come get you after we get them. Okay?” Embry says as he makes sure I get into my car.
He shuts my door and runs into the woods, phasing to catch up with everyone.
I sped the whole way to Sam’s house, going far too fast. But it was necessary. I would see Embry soon.
I call Emily to let her know I was on the way and she told me that Brady and Collin would be outside waiting for me. I kept on driving.
“Hey guys.” I say, getting out of my car.
The two wolves nod at me, coming closer to let me run my fingers through their fur.
Emily swings the door open for me to come in.
I sit on the couch with her and Kim.
We talk for a little while before deciding it was time to watch cheesy movies.
A few hours in, I felt my eyelids grow heavy. It became harder to keep my head up, bobbing in and out of sleep.
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Word Count: 5106
I II III IV V VI VII VIII VIIII X XIR XIE XII XIII XIV XV XVI XVII XVIII XIIII
#embry call#embry call x reader#embry call imagine#embry call fanfiction#leah clearwater#seth clearwater#paul lahote#jacob black#sam uley#quil ateara#jared cameron#twilight#twilight x reader#twilight imagine
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debutante
previous chapter | chapter two | next chapter
part of the wyliwf verse.
warnings: mention of creepy adults/pedophilia, transphobia, memory loss problems, food mentions, kissing/making out, arguing,
pairings: logince, moxiety
words: 21,995
notes: there are spoiler warnings for the first three seasons of downton abbey, and dee and logan have a discussion of journalistic ethics that includes a mention of a teacher that is creepy toward teenage girls; it’s an abstract idea for the sake of argument, there is no actual creepy teacher, but i wanted to put a warning in here anyway.
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he really needs to get on patton about getting a new rug for his bedroom, virgil muses.
his bare feet are resting against the hardwood of patton’s floor. patton, who usually clings to inanimate objects with an intensity fueled almost entirely by reminiscing, even patton had admitted he probably should let go of the raggedy bedroom rug, and he’d been meaning to replace it, but. he hasn’t yet. so virgil’s sitting on patton’s bed, waiting for patton to finish brushing his teeth and washing his face, so that they can curl up in bed and go to sleep.
that’s a new thing—it’s not entirely new, but new enough that virgil feels too awkward to just curl up in patton’s bed and wait for him to come back. so. virgil is sitting here, in his pajamas, thinking about patton’s bare bedroom floor and his need for a new rug.
and not thinking about the various strides he and patton have been making in their relationship, slow but sure. virgil knows that patton’s really excited, and eager to move forward in their relationship, and virgil is too, but, surprise surprise, virgil’s anxious about it, so patton’s been very understanding about moving at a much slower pace than he’s used to—“you’re worth it, honey,” patton had said, his chin hooked over virgil’s shoulder as they cuddled at night, “there’s no rush at all. it’s been this long, ya know? i want to do all of this right,” and really, virgil did not deserve patton, he really didn’t.
there’s the sound of bare feet padding down the hallway, though, and virgil looks up, smiling despite himself, as patton opens the door.
“hey,” he says warmly, closing the door behind him and shutting off the light—the lamps on the bedside tables are still lit—and patton continues his path, only detouring to lean down to kiss virgil sweetly before he sits down on his side of the bed.
“hey,” virgil echoes, and at last swings his legs up on the bed, settling back against the pillows. “how was your day?”
this part he likes a lot, too—this, sitting in the same bed, talking about their days. it’s cavity-inducingly domestic.
patton hums, already squirming to be under the covers, and virgil copies him; they’ll move to cuddle once they’re done talking, virgil knows, so he mostly just stays where he is.
“the usual,” patton says. “um—got news of a wedding incoming, so i’m sure i’ll be going nutty about that in… a year and half or so.”
virgil knows that the weddings held at the inns hold some of patton’s favorite and least favorite parts of the job—helping make people happy, seeing people fall in love all over again, making everything so beautiful and lovely, but also, bridezillas and flighty grooms—and he smiles, mentally calculating. “you don’t usually get fall weddings, right? that’s mostly a spring/summer thing.”
“i know!” patton says brightly. “i hope they timed it nice so that it’s a warm fall day, and they get all the pretty leaves falling, and the sun hits the ceremony just right…”
“that sounds nice,” virgil says honestly, because it does—a picturesque fall wedding, sookie making some fancy version of an apple fritter for appetizers, a pumpkin-flavored cake. “fall wedding, i mean. it’s so pretty here in fall, i know we get boosted tourism because of it, but. not many weddings.”
“not many weddings,” patton agrees, and squeezes his arm. “and it’s a lesbian wedding, too, so from the conversation we had, i really think they’re gonna lean into the whole witchy-alternative vibe. the word celestial was thrown around a lot.”
“oh, that’ll be really fun,” virgil says, refining his mental image—black dresses and a tux, maybe, star-studded hairpieces, lots of fairy lights. “you’ll have to remind me when it’s actually being set up, i want to see how they decide to decorate. you never get to do witchy lesbian alternative celestial-themed weddings.”
patton laughs, and leans in a little closer to virgil. “no, i can’t say i’ve ever gotten to help out with a witchy lesbian alternative celestial-themed wedding. so that’ll be fun!”
patton continues with other work things—he has a much sooner wedding in spring, and unfortunately it is not a lesbian wedding, but a double wedding of two sets of insufferably rich twins, so there’s a lot to deal with there—before he winds down and says, “well, that’s about it with me, really, how ‘bout you?”
“um, pretty calm, pretty typical,” virgil says, before he reaches over and squeezes patton’s thigh. “oh, before i forget, the middle davis kid—”
“yeah?”
“—going by brick for now, while they’re trying to figure out what fits better,” virgil says. he leaves his hand on patton’s thigh, because. well. he can.
“brick,” patton says, delighted. “oh, that’s a great nickname for them—every time i see them, they’re insistent that they’re gonna bulk up and hit a growth spurt any day now.”
virgil allows himself a grin—brick is a pretty ironic nickname for a skinny little korean-irish kid who’s been hankering for their growth spurt since they could have possibly hit puberty, and now at age fourteen it was definitely becoming a bit more plaintive, but they also said it’s because they have the subtlety of a brick, so it fits in at least one way.
“they are still using they/them pronouns, right?” patton checks.
“yeah, still they/them,” virgil says. “you’ll have to ask them if they’ve added any pronouns when they turn up for your get cultured day—which is why i brought it up, brick brought by their dress for me to try and alter so that sequins don’t constantly scrape, so that’ll be a fun little challenge.”
“ooh, i hated wearing sequins at their age,” patton says sympathetically, and pats virgil’s arm. “good luck with that one.”
“other than that, though, today was mostly boring, my interesting stuff all has to do with the debutante ball,” virgil admits, rubbing his thumb back and forth over patton’s thigh. “oh, except for the part where kirk’s trying to sell topical funny t-shirts now.”
“ah, kirk,” patton says fondly. “where would the town be, without kirk and his seemingly millions of part-time jobs?”
“yeah, well, the best he could come up with today was rudy ate oatmeal, so i’m not really holding out hope for the funny t-shirt business,” virgil says.
patton snorts, and then tries to pretend he hadn’t—but, really, kirk becomes way less aggravating when you take him as comic relief. virgil knows, it’s the way he’s managed to stand all of kirk’s eccentricities over the years.
“anyway, yeah, that’s about it,” virgil says. “how'd the dinner go—i mean, i know emily at least gave you the dress, so that went okay, right?”
patton shrugs a shoulder and says, “i guess. i mean, i have a feeling this isn’t over, but… gosh, you should have seen her and logan stare each other down.”
“intense, huh?” he prompts, when patton goes quiet. he squeezes his thigh again, because physical touch is one of patton’s top two love languages. he knows, they took the test together.
patton chews his lip, before he says, “he looked like me. back then, i mean. the look on his face. my mom must’ve seen it a million times when i was his age.”
virgil squeezes a little tighter.
he knows that patton’s teenage years were rough. again, patton doesn’t really like to talk about them—virgil doesn’t blame him—but virgil did see patton struggle through the later end of his teens, and he was there for him when he’d broken down in tears. now, with as old as he is, as removed as they are from it, having seen logan and roman grow up and realizing how truly young patton was when they first met, the thought of teenage patton—struggling so fiercely in a house full of people who hadn’t understood him just made him, how hard patton had had to work to get a better life for himself and his son, the years of therapy patton had gone through—just made him want to grab patton in a hug and never let go.
“so,” patton says, pauses, and lets out a sigh. “i don’t—i don’t know. it went okay. but seeing logan copy me like that, i just…”
virgil leans over to kiss patton on the cheek.
“the difference between you as a teenager and logan as a teenager is massive,” he says lowly. “because logan’s got you, and me, and roman, and ms. prince, and rudy. he’s got this whole bizarre town. you had you, and christopher, i guess, but he didn’t understand. you’ve learned coping mechanisms that you passed onto logan, so he knows other ways to redirect his feelings. if he’s being rebellious to help protest something he thinks is sexist or unjust, i think that’s a pretty good reason to rebel. you did a great job with him. he’s a great kid. yeah?”
“yeah,” patton says very quietly. “yeah, he is.”
“you’ve come really far,” he says, and leans to see patton better, and gently pokes at patton’s cheek, just to make him smile, and he adds, “plus, i’d think if teenage-rebel you came to the future to see that your son’s protesting the gender stuff you’d been struggling with, i think that would’ve made you pretty happy, huh?”
and, yes, patton does smile at that, and something in virgil relaxes at the sight.
“yeah,” patton says. “yeah, i think it really would’ve.”
“well, good,” virgil says, and kisses his cheek, before he decides to just kinda go for it and lean in to wrap his arms around patton, initiating the cuddling early. “so, other than that déjà vu—”
“it went okay,” patton says, wiggling into virgil’s arms. “i mean—still weird to look at the dress that my mom bought for me. but other than that, it was okay.”
virgil hums sympathetically, and presses a kiss to patton’s head.
“well,” he says. “i’m gonna adjust it so that it’s logan’s dress, and his dress only. does that help?”
he feels patton smile against his collarbone.
“you know,” he says musingly. “i think it really does.���
⁂
logan has never walked into a store afraid to touch something before.
granted, most stores he walks into are grocery stores or convenience stores; clothing stores, sometimes, mostly before the school year or whenever roman decides he simply must check out the latest collection of things that the outlet mall in woodbridge had to offer. most of the time, the stores logan knew were quiet, maybe with some inoffensive music piped in, with products he knew how to use, or how they looked.
this was not the case in a bridal boutique.
which is where logan and roman are; though logan had the dress once intended for his father, roman still needed to get his own, and had so enticed logan to come along with him to help him choose.
it’s a saturday afternoon, and they’re technically on a date. there’s a bookstore just across the street, and a frozen yogurt parlor near there, and a thrift store they could dive into so logan could see the second-hand books and roman could hunt for some kind of retro statement piece.
logan inspects his hands again. there’s a stray inky blue smear across his hand that must have gotten there when he was taking his notes earlier today. he eyes the pearly-white tulle suspiciously, and takes a step closer to the center of the room, away from any of the merchandise.
objectively, he knows that touching these delicate, temperamental fabrics and testing the sensation of them by running his hand along the skirts won’t harm them, but. logan has laid eyes upon the price tags in this room. he is not going to even slightly risk ruining these dresses, somehow.
roman’s spinning some kind of tale for the bemused, yet seemingly enthusiastic dress attendant—something something debutante ball, something something drag family induction, something something the most experimental stuff you’ve got!—and logan considers a dress a shade of blush pink so light it’s practically white, with a delicate, lacy flower overlay, the whiteness of the flowers being the only thing to really give away the pinkness of the dress itself. he wants to reach out and rub the material between his fingers.
he also knows that, with the location in the store and the quality of the material, the dress likely costs upwards of five thousand dollars. possibly more. maybe even double.
“logan!” and logan looks away, to where roman’s waving him back toward the dressing room section. thank god, somewhere to sit and not worry about accidentally tripping over a dress and leave an irreversible mud print from his shoe, or something.
the attendant burbles something along the lines of “so supportive!” that logan doesn’t really listen to, and doesn’t really have to respond to, because she’s pointing roman in the direction of a dressing room and logan gets to sit down in a chair and finally not worry about catching a ragged edge of his fingernail in a veil and accidentally ripping it in two.
logan waits until the attendant leaves, and says, “you’re really getting a dress from here?”
“it’s not all high-end,” roman says. “they have some old samples that they’re desperate to get rid of—that’s the kind of thing i want.”
logan nods, absorbing this, and his shoulders start to relax. obviously, roman’s monetary discretions are not up to him, at all. considering it comes from either his mother or working at his mother’s studio, therefore it should primarily be roman’s concern or ms. prince’s concern, but it is reassuring to know that roman isn’t about to ransack his college fund to get a pretty dress he’ll wear once as a prank.
the attendant comes back with armfuls of tulle, which roman claps his hands at with excitement, and steps into the dressing room with her. the door closes behind them, and logan can just barely hear their muted conversation beyond the door.
logan digs around in his backpack and pulls out his history textbook, his history notebook, and a pen; he may as well study while roman’s getting primped.
he gets through about a third of the chapter on enlightenment ideals by the time the door opens again.
he puts down his pen and glances up in enough time to carefully fold his lip under his teeth in an attempt not to laugh.
roman makes sure the attendant is occupied with adjusting the train before he pulls a blech! face at logan, one he’s accustomed to seeing whenever someone attempts to serve roman anything with cauliflower.
blech, logan thinks, is right. the fabric looks like it’s made of aluminum foil. it’s all bunched up in the front, like the dress is made of paper that’s been crumpled up by a giant hand, but there’s a long train in the back, and the whole thing is bedecked with big, chunky gems, like plastic rhinestones.
of the pair of them, roman’s always been the more fashionably-minded one, but even logan can tell this dress is not good.
“what do you think?” the attendant asks.
“it’s…. unique,” roman says diplomatically, smoothing his hands along the fabric; the bodice is strange, and clearly not fitted to suit roman’s chest. “definitely on the right track toward campy. but, um—”
“you tend to favor golds over silvers,” logan offers, which is true; one of roman’s signature colors was gold for a reason. “the crumpled look isn’t the best, either. you could certainly pull off a, um—”
he makes a hand gesture, and roman offers, “high-low skirt.”
“—right, high-low skirt, but the bodice isn’t the best, either,” logan continues. “something more theatrical would suit your personality, certainly, but i think that’s more in terms of, you know. a very outdated dress, or maybe something ostentatious, but not—”
“not this kind of ostentatious, yeah,” roman finishes for him, and the attendant looks between them, seemingly starting to question why she took in two teenage boys to try on dresses. the look falters, though, and she pastes a smile onto her face—professionalism must prevail, logan supposes.
“back to the dressing room, then!”
she trots roman out in a few other options—an a-line dress with a lacy bodice and a tulle skirt, a trumpet dress with chantilly lace and a sheer back, a relatively simple a-line dress that roman keeps twisting around in to gleefully poke at the massive bow perched at the small of his back—and logan offers commentary when asked. as she sees roman adjust the bow again, the attendant smiles.
“you like the bow?”
“i like the bow,” roman agrees, grinning. “i look like a birthday present.”
“all right,” she says. “i’ll bring out something a bit more experimental again—”
at the looks on their faces, she adds, “not quite as avant-garde as the first dress. actually, it’s fairly old-fashioned, but i think it might have that theatrical aspect you’re looking for. i’ll go back and change you out of this one and bring it back for you so you can take a look, does that sound good?”
roman agrees, and accepts her hand down off the stand, with a wink at logan, before they go off into the dressing room together. logan turns again to his history textbook; he’s nearly done with the chapter, which means one less thing to stress about when he should be focusing on a date with roman.
he can hear roman laugh from inside the dressing room and, unbidden, the corners of his mouth lift, too. either this dress is hilariously terrible, or roman’s thrilled at the idea of wearing this dress which he thinks is perfect for him.
when roman hops up onto the stand, logan honestly can’t tell which it is.
it’s like some fashion designer decided to stick every terrible fashion trend from the eighties onto one dress. there are big, puffy balloon sleeves made of tulle, secured with rosettes, in addition to typical spaghetti straps with smaller rosettes all over them; there’s a panel of beading down the bodice; there’s an overlay of rows and rows of ruffly tulle over a skirt of satin.
and, of course, there is a big, fluffy bow, perched right at the small of roman’s back.
it is extra. it is absurd. it is dramatic.
“i love it,” roman says gleefully. “oh, my goodness, it’s so much!”
it is, of course, roman.
“you look beautiful,” logan offers, and roman flashes a radiant smile in his direction, before he turns to offer his exuberant thanks to the attendant, who seems relieved (”we’ve had that sample longer than i’ve worked here, i’m sure they’ll be thrilled we’re rid of it!”) and takes roman into the dressing room, to help him out of the dress and go ring him up.
logan packs up his history book with some satisfaction; he has succeeded in taking notes for this chapter, which meant that frees up some time tomorrow, which meant he could probably work to get ahead in his latin class.
or, more likely, his dad would insist he go out and do something fun, despite the fact that he’s clearly doing something fun now. and yes, fine, he’s brought his textbooks, but clearly there was time to study here, so logan will provide this chapter of notes as an example as to why studying in the midst of a date was necessary.
logan slings his backpack over his shoulder just as roman emerges from the dressing room, in the same outfit he’d been in before he’d enlisted on a dress-shopping extravaganza; despite the fact that he’s wearing a red linen button-down tucked into a pair of high-waisted, dark-washed jeans, along with a dark overcoat to fight any of the last of the spring chill, a look that still seems very put-together—it seems almost like he’s a little underdressed, after all of the wedding dresses.
he doesn’t voice this—underdressed or not, roman constantly looks lovely—and instead he offers his arm, saying, “shall we go pay?”
“we shall,” roman says in an officious british accent, probably making fun of logan, just a little, but he laces his arm through logan’s anyway, and tugs him out of the dressing room area, to the front, where he chitchats cheerfully with the attendant and takes the truly massive garment bag, hoisting it above his head to avoid letting it drag on the ground.
“virgil’s going to have a hell of a time with this dress,” roman says gleefully. “should we go and grab a cummerbund for him? you know, just to make things easier for him.”
“he’s going to complain the whole time he gets all dressed up,” logan points out.
“i know,” roman says brightly, and tugs logan again. “c’mon, let’s go drop this in the car so we can go get fro-yo. i hope they’ve got gummy worms, i wanna make the super-fruity bowl this time.”
“so it falls to me to make some chocolatey flavor, i suppose,” logan says; for the pair of them frozen yogurt, unlike lucy’s, is prone to sharing, and as to avoid unfortunate flavor combinations, such as pineapple tart and whoppers, each of them make a bowl for each flavor—one for fruity flavors, and one for chocolatey flavors. “do you think i should combine coffee and fudge brownie?”
roman kisses him on the cheek, even as he’s pushing the door of the dress store open. “you’re a genius, my darling love.”
logan realizes in the middle of a bowl of coffee-chocolate frozen yogurt that roman’s managed to get him to leave behind his textbooks in the car, along with the dress.
he can’t bring himself to mind all that much.
⁂
this plan straight out of the plot of an early 2000s movie, if early 2000s movies had meaningful and visible trans characters, is somehow working.
dee still can’t believe it, somehow, even after a weekend of getting texts from known-but-aren’t-supposed-to-be-known members of secret societies like the porcellians (the porks, to those in the know, and dee is most decisively in the know) and the clairs and the skull and dagger and the sphinx club and the order of the gorgon’s head—truly the secret society names at this school were something else.
he’s consulting his list on his way to meet up with logan to give him a morning update (could use some more involvement from the knights of the lamp and the old crows, and if he’s truly dreaming big he’ll try to crack all twelve of the twelve peers) when he glances up to see logan at his locker, looking truly startled as he’s being accosted by a freshman, who is waving a piece of paper at him with a fierce look on her face, her voice loud, but dee can’t quite make it out over the chatter and clatter of the morning crowd getting their books for the morning, and catching up over the latest weekend gossip.
as he gets closer, he realizes who it is. poppy mcmaster, whose legal full name is so genuinely atrocious that he could only feel pity for her when he’d scanned all the freshman’s files early in the year. who in their right minds named a child coppelia parthenope mcmaster and expected them not to get brutally bullied? unless, of course, they somehow preternaturally knew that poppy would turn out with the kind of aggressive, single-minded ambition whose brashness made her preschool teacher cry.
he mostly knows her because their families move in similar social circles, as ten generations of mcmaster have attended harvard. she stands at all of 5’2”, quite a bit shorter than logan, and yet she seems to be threatening him.
dee sidles closer to get a better look at her—dirty blonde hair pulled half-up, intense dark brown eyes, chilton uniform in perfect regulation—and approaches right as she’s saying, “some discretion, for the love of god—”
“dee,” logan says, spotting him. “um, this is—” and he glances at her, eyebrows furrowing. “you didn’t say your name.”
“coppelia mcmaster,” dee says, partially to show off but also because, coppelia. “or are you going by parthenope again? or something short for parthenope, anyway.”
poppy scowls at him, fierce, and snarls out, “poppy.”
“of course, of course,” dee says placidly. “poppy. how long has it been? i don’t think we’ve spoken since your bat mitzvah. mazel tov, once again.”
“todah,” poppy says, with the kind of tone one usually reserves for saying thanks for a present they resoundingly dislike. “you’re involved in this whole debutante plot, aren’t you?”
“well, yes,” dee says. “logan’s brainchild, of course, but one could say we’re co-parenting.”
poppy then proceeds to shove a familiar piece of paper into his hands, and she says, “mr. gardiner nearly saw and grabbed this if i hadn’t pretended it was a participation sheet from the student council.”
dee sucks in a breath, turning over the sign-up sheet—oh, wonderful, they have gotten another member of the twelve peers—but his eyes also land on the Contact Logan Sanders for details.
“thank you,” dee says at last, and turns his eyes to logan. “how many of these are up around the school?”
“three,” logan says. “that one included.”
“well, we’ll have to take them down,” dee says decisively.
“what?” logan says.
“you’ll get in trouble,” poppy says. “detention, suspension, maybe.”
“we are planning to disrupt a large social event for the daughters of the american revolution,” dee says, and glances at logan. “as you can likely imagine, social protest is not exactly the kind of press attention chilton would like to receive.”
logan scowls, and says, “tinker versus des moines—”
“—was a public school,” poppy says impatiently. “i know you came from the backends, sanders, but this is a private school. different rules apply to us.”
“plus, we’re recruiting for protest,” dee says. “i’m not sure how well the tinker test will hold up for us, and i’d rather not find out. the word’s been spread enough, we can further recruit over private text message and dms.”
logan concedes this point with a nod, and he says to dee, “i’ll defer to your judgement.” then, to poppy, “thank you for interfering. that would have complicated matters unnecessarily.”
poppy shrugs, and says matter-of-factly, “it’s common knowledge that either of you will likely be editor when i enter the franklin junior year, i may as well attempt to establish myself as one of your proteges this early on to improve my chances for being assigned the better pieces junior year, and to provide an even clearer path to editor senior year.”
logan looks startled at that, and dee turns admiring eyes to poppy—he’d known her ambitions, of course, but planning this far in advance was preparation that dee could appreciate.
she says to logan, “do you have an escort yet?”
“um,” logan says. “no. no, i don’t.”
“all right then,” poppy says, and fishes out a reporter’s notepad from the side pocket of her backpack, removing a pen from her breast pocket, scrawling, and then ripping out the paper and handing it to him. “consider the slot filled. i’ll do it.”
logan looks at the paper—her phone number—and then back at her. “you’re joining?”
“obviously,” poppy says. “the clairs are involved. my cousin was a clair, her mother was a clair. the connections you make with clairs last the rest of your life. if this helps me get closer to joining with them, i’ll do it, just so i won’t have to spend all year killing myself to get in. plus my mother has been insistent i attend a debutante ball for ages now, she’ll be crushed i’m doing it in a tux, and crushed that i’m not going for the puff route like her, but these are the sacrifices we must make.”
she doesn’t sound particularly sorry about crushing her own mother, but logan acknowledges this with a nod, digging around in his own backpack for a flyer before handing it to her.
“everyone is going to attend a sort of crash-course in debutante ball culture,” he says. “the dance, the bow, the curtsy, so on. here is the address and any supplies you should bring. do you already have a tux, or should i send you some information for rentals?”
“rentals,” poppy says, and exchanges a look with dee—dee knows logan wasn’t raised in all this, but seriously, a rental?
“i take that as a no,” logan says, undeterred, before he zips up his backpack again.
“fantastic,” poppy says. “i was wondering about the strategy for establishing a working relationship with you, i’ve known him,” she flicks a dismissive gesture toward dee, “for years. it just so happens that this route will also help take care of my social life and allow me to enact some form of teenage rebellion, because it’s been scientifically proven that teenagers who rebel constructively form a robust sense of self and are more likely to a have a clear sense of direction, beliefs, or relational commitment, and those who don’t may find it hard to settle or focus on building a meaningful and satisfying life. this is excellent multi-tasking.”
poppy looks delighted. logan looks like he might be developing a headache. dee has found this a typical reaction to people within proximity of poppy.
⁂
virgil looks up as the bell rings and immediately steps out from behind the counter.
brick is struggling cheerfully with a stack of tupperware in their arms, and virgil takes the top few so that brick can see.
“i got it,” brick complains.
“i don’t want you tripping over chairs, i’m sure you can handle the weight,” virgil says. “i was thinking you could set up over at this table here—right by the door, but out-of-the-way enough so that you don’t have to deal with anyone bumping into you. that cool?”
“yeah, that’s cool,” brick says. “thanks, virgil!” and immediately sets down the tupperware on the table in question. virgil follows suit, setting down his own load, and arches his eyebrows, impressed.
“you guys could put fran and lucy out of business with all these baked goods,” he says.
because that’s what brick is here for—the first shift of kids manning a table for a bake sale, to raise funds to make sure the sideshire kids can afford their slots in the debutante ball.
brick stares at him for a few seconds.
“sarcasm,” he elaborates, because brick doesn’t really pick up on that too well, most of the time.
“got it,” brick says. “um, i’m gonna go help ellie—they brought a few other things, so save up that comment for them, i’m sure they’d get it.”
“need any help?” he says, knowing full well that brick will say—
“nah, i got it!” brick says, and darts out of the diner again. virgil waits by the door, just in case they need someone to open it for them—which they do, brick with another load of tupperware, and elliott with a poster tucked under their arm, a register in hand, and a plastic jar under their other arm.
“hi, elliott,” virgil says.
“hi, virgil,” elliott says.
“right over here,” virgil says, gesturing to the table, “do you need any help?”
“um, do you have tape?” elliott asks, frowning. “i just realized i don’t have any.”
“tape, got it,” virgil says, and ducks into the back to see if he’s got any in his office.
by the time he’s come back out, brick and elliott are already seated behind the table, arranging the last of the opened tupperware, with the plastic jar having a sign taped over it saying DONATIONS FOR THE BALL, and virgil pauses to dig a ten out of his pocket, dropping it in the jar before he hands over the scotch tape.
“thanks, virgil!” brick cheers, as elliott quietly thanks virgil for the tape and goes about taping the poster to the front of the table. it’s definitely homemade—there’s glitter, and marker, and there’s a little flyer taped beside it that explains what exactly they’re trying to do at the debutante ball.
“you want drinks?” virgil asks, tucking his thumbs into his front pockets. “on the house.”
“ooh, cocoa, please!” brick says. “the—the minty one. do you still do the minty one?”
“i still do the minty one,” virgil says. “peppermint should be a year-round flavor. ellie, you want anything?”
“cocoa/coffee,” elliott says.
“that stunts your growth,” brick points out.
“i’m taller than you,” elliott tells brick, who bristles and immediately opens their mouth, and virgil ducks out to get their drinks.
by the time he brings back the two steaming mugs, brick is finishing off their tirade with “—i’ll end up built like korra, and then you will see.”
“drinks!” virgil says, and sets the mugs down in front of them. “uh, just so you know, we hit one of those weird lulls, so we’ve probably got half an hour or so before things start picking up for dinner rush.”
both of them make noises of acknowledgement.
“so,” virgil says, settling in a chair near them. “elliott, i know you were thinking about what you were gonna wear slash do, did you decide that?”
“i, um,” elliott says, fingers tracing the rim of the mug. “i thought i’d wear, like, a half-dress half-tux thing. i dunno if i’m gonna debut or escort yet, though, that kinda depends.”
“that sounds cool,” virgil says encouragingly. “do you have a picture?”
elliott does, but since it’s only partly designed—their sister liked messing around with fabrics like that—it turns out all the sideshire kids who are planning on going to the ball are in a groupchat, so after elliott’s phone pings with a message from there, there’s a brief tangent that ensues because elliott sends out virgil says hi to everyone and a picture of the bake sale, so virgil gets to hear about everyone’s plans which is also cool. and he also records a video with brick that brick pinky-promises to just send in the chat, so he ends up learning one of the latest memes that the kids are watching these days. god, he’s old.
“the debutante thing’s really awesome,” virgil says. “i kind of wish i’d gotten the chance to do it back in the day.”
elliott looks up at him, and says, “you do?”
“yeah,” virgil says. “i mean, i’m not roman or anything, but i still wear makeup a lot of the time, i’ve got a few makeup palettes, i wore some skirts back in the day—”
brick’s head snaps up at that, and they say, “you did?”
virgil blinks—he’s not sure why this is surprising, but.
“yeah, i did,” virgil says. “i bet i’ve probably still got them buried in my closet somewhere. my heels, too.”
this also gets elliott’s attention.
“you do?” elliott says.
“i mean, maybe,” virgil says. “i might have donated them, i dunno, but—”
“why don’t you wear skirts or heels anymore?” brick says.
“well, right now?” virgil says, and gestures to the outside. “it’s cold. but, uh—i don’t really know.”
and it hits him—he doesn’t really know. he just kind of kept going for jeans.
“just a habit, i guess,” he continues to the kids, because i don’t know is a bit of a weak answer. “it’s easier to match things with jeans. plus, it looks kinda weird to wear a nice flowing skirt and then just, like, a hoodie and a pair of sneakers i wear all day because i stand all the time. and wearing heels while i stand all day is just asking for a sprained ankle.”
“yeah, that makes sense,” elliott says. “sneakers kinda clash too.”
“but you wear boots too,” brick says, and points. “you’re wearing boots today.”
virgil glances down at his combat boots, the ones that he’s also got the gel foot insoles in. “well, yeah. i guess i am.”
“and leggings or tights would probably help with cold,” elliott says.
virgil looks between them, and says, “you two want me to wear a skirt, don’t you?”
“yes,” they both chorus, unapologetic.
virgil pauses, considering this. well. he definitely has at least one skirt, maybe more, they���re probably just tucked away where he doesn’t see them everyday. and he is fully down for these kids running in there and shaking up the patriarchy. and he does support men, or anyone on the gender spectrum who doesn’t fit soundly in the box of “woman,” wearing more traditionally feminine clothing, as long as they’re comfortable with it. and the surprised looks on these kids faces when he’d mentioned he used to wear skirts more often, and then the studies he’s read of how much representation means to kids...
he turns and calls out, “jean?”
“yeah?” jean calls from the back.
“i’m gonna run upstairs for a second, would you mind keeping an eye on things out here?”
jean calls back an affirmative, and brick and elliott exchange a look, before turning back to virgil.
“are you—?”
“maybe,” virgil says, standing, feeling a strange sort of excitement just from their excitement, but also, it’s been a really long time since he’s worn a skirt, and he’d liked wearing skirts. “again, i can’t remember if i’ve donated ‘em, but—”
“awesome,” elliott says, while brick is nodding along with them, wide-eyed.
“all right,” virgil says, and then, “uh, cool” and makes his awkward exit, heading upstairs for his apartment.
it takes a bit of digging, but he does manage to find where he’s stashed his skirts over the years. he’d even managed to fold them neatly before he put them away, so they’re not even that wrinkled or anything. and then he remembers the various struggles of matching an outfit with a skirt, because in his mind, a skirt outfit has to be at least a little fancy, and so after he examines and discards nearly every shirt in his wardrobe he ends up pairing a plum, long-sleeved button-down with a black pleated skirt that falls down to his ankles, even after he tries to make the skirt a bit high-waisted.
and then he gets a little more carried away, and smokes out his dark eyeshadow and pops some purple glitter in the crease and the inner corner and does a little cat-eye for the eyeliner and puts on plum lipstick, before something in his brain says back away from the makeup products, you are in danger of re-enacting your teenage emo phase, and so he does, not without a bit of a longing look at the black eyeshadow, because this is fun. why hasn’t he done something like this in so long?
he has to pick up his skirt one hand as he walks his way down the stairs, before he tugs aside the curtain that covers up the stairs that lead up to his apartment, and steps out from behind the counter.
brick and elliott swivel to look at him in almost-hilarious unison. and then they just. stare.
oh, the staring. the whole staring thing is why he hasn’t done something like this in so long.
virgil clears his throat, running a hand through his hair to make sure it isn’t too messy. “is it that bad?” he tries to joke.
“i,” brick says, voice strangled, “am gay.”
“uh,” virgil says, unsure of what to really say to someone less than half his age declaring that, then, “i’m with patton, happily so, and also, i am way too old for you, you are a kid.”
elliott rolls their eyes, and says, “they mean you look, um. good. you look really good,” and then they elbow brick in the ribs. brick shakes themself.
“yeah!” brick says. “you look. good. you look good!”
the bell above the door jangles, then, which means brick and elliott are distracted by attempting to sell baked goods, and virgil escapes to behind the counter, ready to start up for the dinner rush.
(he does take a few seconds to remind brick and elliott that anyone over eighteen is too old for them, at the moment, and the dangers of grooming, and also he is here if they need to talk about being concerned for anyone or if they need someone to talk to, in general, before brick says, “ugh, fine, jeez, you sound like the guidance counselor” so that takes care of that particular situation, virgil guesses.)
virgil does get a few compliments on his appearance, throughout the dinner rush, and also a few questions about why he’s dressing up nice, which means he can direct their attention to the baked goods table (brick and elliott leave after a couple hours, and so a couple more sideshire high students start their shift) and the cause that they’re raising money for, so. things are going well.
he ducks back in the kitchen, for a minute, when the staring gets to be a bit Much and he needs to take a second to breathe. he’s not super anxious, necessarily, it’s just—well, he frequently has the thought people are looking at me, which tends to make him anxious, and that’s true tonight, so. he needs to take a bit of a breather. and so he cooks.
cooking’s been a good outlet for his anxiety, ever since he was a kid and didn’t really get what anxiety was, ever since he was an asshole teenager who had recently been wrangled into his first therapy session by his parents following a doctor’s diagnosis. it’s almost always the same—if you follow the same directions, you’ll get the same result, almost always. and, sure, it could be an outlet for creativity, too, if he so chose, but right now he’s grilling burgers and assembling salads and making pasta. it’s an adventure in multitasking he does almost every day. he knows what to do, and so he does it.
he feels calmer by the time they’re in the midst of the dinner rush, partially because of the time spent in here, but also because the increased business is something that’s also familiar and somewhat comforting. so he chances poking his head out of the kitchen door, evaluating if he’s ready to enter back into the fray and start helping out with the waiters.
he pokes his head out just in time to see roman, logan, and patton sliding into a booth, and he breathes a soft sigh of relief—those are people he can definitely go over to and not start to feel nervous just because they’re looking at him.
he’s about to fully step out and make his way over unnoticed by everyone else, except—
roman looks up, and makes eye contact with him, and declares “virgil! i came as soon as i heard!” loud enough that virgil can hear it over the background music and the dull roar of the dinner rush conversations.
virgil winces a little, before he sheepishly walks over to the table. he probably should have expected this, given roman’s vocal and often repeated desires to give virgil a makeover.
all three of them come into view—roman, eager at last that virgil is stepping outside of his typical fashion comfort zone; logan, mostly neutral if a bit curious; and patton, who is staring at him, eyes wide behind his glasses, and visibly swallowing. a flare of heat burns to life in virgil’s stomach at that, and so he turns his attention to roman, so that he doesn’t start blushing and his thoughts don’t become immediately obvious.
roman looks him up and down, surveying him, before he says, “you look like a goth femboy version of a librarian fantasy.”
virgil runs a hand down the skirt, a little self-conscious. “oh.”
“but,” roman says, pulling a face at him, seemingly detecting virgil’s mood change, “at least you’re showing some sense of style. this is an improvement over your daily wear, believe me. one would even say substantial.”
“oh,” virgil says, more sarcastic this time, with an eye-roll to boot.
“however,” roman says, “can i request that you at least extend your color palette to something that would not look at home as a poster for an emo pre-teen? and your foundation, virgil, you do not have warm undertones, you have neutral undertones, if you’re going to start wearing makeup more you need to have a summer and winter foundation—”
virgil reaches over to flick roman’s ear, and roman complains “heyyy” before logan glances up at him.
“why wear a skirt today in particular?” logan says.
“oh,” virgil says, and jabs a thumb in the direction of the bake sale table. “y’know, i figured i’d support you kids. people ask me why i’m all dressed up and so i get to point ‘em there, and then, you know, solidarity,” he says, taking his skirt in hand and swishing it a little. “win win.”
“all right,” logan says and looks across the table at roman, cocking his head.
“roman,” he says. “what is a ‘femboy.’”
roman folds his lip under his teeth.
“um,” roman says. “well, y’see—”
“i’ll get you some waters!” virgil says, before he has to bear witness to roman explaining that concept to his boyfriend and his boyfriend’s dad. he knows that a femboy is just people who are male or non-binary presenting themselves in a feminine way, the word kind of started around his teenage years, but he also knows that particular expression on roman’s face means that virgil has probably missed some segment of Youth Internet Culture that might provide the backstory behind the newfound popularity of the word a bit… complex.
by the time virgil comes back, logan is jotting something down on one of the notecards he carries around with him all the time, and roman looks normal, so the conversation must not have been too awkward, but patton—
well. patton looks at him, once again looks like he’s swallowing his own tongue, and turns his face back down to the table, but not before virgil can spot the pinkness in his cheeks.
oh. interesting.
virgil has to swallow himself, before he readies the notepad.
“what do you want for dinner?” he says, in a tone that is perhaps a bit gruffer than normal, and patton immediately and not-very-subtly puts a hand over the back of his neck to hide that that’s going pink too.
very interesting.
virgil doesn’t get much of a chance to observe this interesting phenomenon—it is dinner rush, after all, and he’s got other customers—but when he does observe it, it brightens that low flame in his stomach, like someone slowly turning the knob on a gas stove, and patton grows gradually more bold.
looking at patton’s general personality, one would probably assume that he’s a generally shy boyfriend—hand-holding and kisses aplenty, to be sure, but fairly unassuming when it comes to public displays of attention.
looking at patton’s general personality, one would probably not assume that patton is a flirt.
but he is—he is absolutely a flirt, and a startlingly adept one at that, so when virgil swings by the table perhaps a bit more frequently than he usually would, patton stares at him with a little smirk on his face and with zero shame as his eyes roam over virgil’s face, his arms, his mouth.
patton looks up at him from under his eyelashes, biting his lip just so, and virgil nearly drops patton’s plate—and notices, distractedly, that patton has managed to use virgil’s distraction to finesse his way into a helping of fries instead of the vegetables or salad that virgil would usually suggest.
and when virgil brings over the bill, handing it to patton, patton takes the bill and then takes virgil’s hand and kisses his knuckles with a cheerful “thanks, honey!” and virgil has certainly forgotten any anxiety that might stem from someone staring, because it’s patton who’s staring at him.
patton, who had gotten so flustered at the sight of virgil in a skirt that his eyes nearly popped out of his head; and now, patton, resting his lips against his knuckles for just a moment, lingering, and virgil feels like an elizabethan maiden about to make her way to the fainting couch because of it.
virgil excuses himself to settle the bill, and also maybe rest a cool hand against his own cheek. honestly. it was a kiss on his hand.
he’s about to go back the table and hand back patton’s card, but he glances up as the bell jangles, roman and logan already leaving, and patton stepping close to the register, his hands behind his back, rocking up onto his toes and back onto his heels.
“hey,” virgil says, and shakes himself, before he offers patton’s card. “um. here.”
“thanks,” patton says, tucking the card into his pocket, before he bites his lip. “um. could we go up to your apartment and get the book i asked to borrow?”
what book, virgil wonders, before patton hastily adds, “if you have time, i mean, i don’t wanna—take you away too long,” and oh, he wants to go—okay. okay.
“i have time,” virgil answers, maybe a little too quickly. “um—sarah,” he calls, “me ‘n patton are going upstairs for a little bit, so—”
“we’ve got things down here,” sarah says, “go, go” and so they go, patton reaching out to grab virgil’s hand and squeeze, running a thumb over his knuckles. and so they ascend the stairs.
virgil shuts the door behind them, and turns to face patton.
“i was, um,” patton clarifies. “i was asking to come up here to see if you wanted to kiss for a little bit.”
“i know,” virgil says, then adds, because consent is important, “i do.”
“oh thank god,” patton breathes out, and before virgil can get out a response, patton surges up against him, rocking up onto his tiptoes and pressing virgil back into the wall, and virgil barely has the time to wrap his arms around him before patton’s kissing him with searing heat.
patton is a remarkable kisser, genuinely the best that virgil thinks he’s ever been fortunate enough to kiss, and patton knows the precise angle to tilt his head and the precise way to possessively splay a hand at the back of virgil’s neck to make the kiss deep and heady and excellent, a kiss so downright lascivious that virgil’s thoughts about retiring to a damn fainting couch doesn’t seem near dramatic enough.
virgil is distantly aware that patton must be rocked up onto his tiptoes, and he splays his hand at patton’s waist, squeezing him gently, giving himself the excuse that it might help patton keep his balance a bit better, and also because his hand fits so beautifully at patton’s waist it could make virgil cry, the warmth of him even through his sweater and the way he can feel patton breathing in unsteady breaths, so maybe virgil isn’t the only one who is losing it here a little.
simultaneously, like they’ve choreographed it, they stumble back together until patton’s knees hit the arm of the couch and virgil practically falls on top of him, virgil barely breaking the kiss to make sure he hasn’t crushed him before patton’s twining his fingers into virgil’s hair and dragging him back into the kiss, wriggling a little so that his thigh is pushed between virgil’s, and virgil groans into his mouth, patton greedily swallowing the sound.
time goes a bit fuzzy, then, everything narrowed down to patton’s breathy gasps and the slick slide of his lips and the warmth and pressure of a thigh between his own and patton’s wandering, unabashed hands in his hair, on his back, wandering down to give him a cheeky squeeze, gripping at his thigh, like patton’s using the touches to punctuate a sentence that virgil has no hope of reading but it sure sounds nice anyway.
and then there’s a loud sound—someone’s dropped dishes downstairs—and they break apart, the pair of them looking toward the apartment door, startled, and as soon as it sinks in what it is that’s happened, they look back at each other.
patton’s smiling up at him, plum lipstick smeared all around his mouth, coy and unashamed, but with a little quirk at the corners that tells him that make out time is probably over. it is an image that immediately sears itself into virgil’s brain that will probably pop up at incredibly inconvenient moments, but he cannot really feel bothered about that right now, because christ is that unexpectedly hot.
virgil clears his throat, because there’s never exactly a non-awkward way to end something like this, that is until patton’s brow creases and he reaches forward to touch virgil’s lips.
“oh, no,” patton says, a little distressed, “i messed it up!”
“i can redo it,” virgil promises immediately, barely even thinking of the words before they’re out of his mouth in attempt to make that coy little smile come back, and he clears his throat to try and make his voice go back up to its usual octave, not the gruff and low near-growl that came out of his mouth. “um—you kind of have—”
patton’s brow creases even more, before he wiggles a hand free from under virgil and smears a finger beneath his bottom lip, holding it up to see for himself, and he giggles.
“i guess i do,” he says, and beams up at virgil. “be a dear, would you? i don’t wanna walk out there and make it too obvious that we’ve been mackin’ on each other this whole time.”
virgil nods, and, regretfully, rolls off of patton to go to the bathroom, attempting to steady his breath the whole way.
he bends to get the makeup remover from under the sink, and straightens, at last looking at himself in the mirror.
he looks thoroughly kissed.
his plum lipstick is smeared all around his mouth, down his chin, which shows off how his lips have reddened and gone a little swollen; his black hair is ruffled, especially sticking up in the back; and the generally gobsmacked, slightly stupid look on his face is a dead giveaway that he’s been spending time kissing patton.
there’s the soft padding of footsteps, arms wrapped around his waist, a face pressed between his shoulderblades, before patton pokes his head around him to see himself in the mirror, too.
he bursts into more giggles at the sight of them—matching messy lipstick, matching messy hair, matching slightly stunned look, except on patton it doesn’t look stupid at all, it looks like he’s thrilled with himself, a smirk playing around the corner of his mouths, like a particularly flirtatious cat who’s caught particularly prettily painted canary.
virgil can’t help but grin, too, and patton arches up to press a deliberate kiss to tendon of virgil’s neck, and virgil’s grin turns into a groan, more out of frustration than anything.
“what?” patton says, smiling playfully at him in the mirror.
“if you keep doing that,” virgil says, and then he’s at a loss for words, but patton seems to get it, slipping out from behind virgil but still leaving an arm wrapped around his waist.
“i don’t particularly want to stop, either,” patton agrees, before he reaches up to turn virgil’s attention away from the mirror, and so that he’s looking directly into patton’s eyes instead. patton continues, voice lush and full of promise, “i’d keep you up here all night, if you wanted, but, well.”
“we’re taking it slow,” virgil says ruefully.
“we’re taking it slow,” patton agrees. “plus, you’ve got a diner to close, and i’ve got a kid at home who’ll probably stay up too late reading if i don’t bug him about bedtime.”
“yeah,” virgil says, but he can’t help but sigh a little—they’ve both agreed that moving slowly is the responsible thing to do, they’ve talked about it a lot, first to agree to slow then later to refine their mutual definitions of slow, which turned out to be pretty damn different at first, but. well.
“i know,” patton agrees fervently. and he really does—he’s literally the only other person right know who understands exactly how virgil’s feeling, and that sets him at ease more than anything.
“all right,” virgil says, and peels back the top of the makeup removal wipes package, removing one. “lemme see your face.”
patton obligingly tips up his chin at virgil, smiling.
virgil cups the underside of his jaw and works to clean off patton’s face, gently rubbing away the plum smears around patton’s mouth with a purposefully soft hand.
it takes a few wipes for virgil’s lips to twitch up into a smile, too.
“stop it,” virgil scolds, without any heat.
“stop what?” patton says, still smiling.
“you’re smiling at me,” virgil says.
“what, i can’t be a little happy that i spent some quality time with my fella?” patton asks.
virgil ducks his head, because that’s one of his top two love languages, and patton knows it. instead, he says, “‘course you can, i am, too. but you’re gloating.”
patton’s grin widens, and virgil sighs, lowering his hand—he won’t be able to help patton at all with patton grinning up at him like that.
“i have,” patton says, “the prettiest fella. i’m allowed to feel at least a little smug that you’re the belle of the ball tonight, darling.”
“stop,” virgil grumbles, looking away.
“what?” patton says. “it’s true! you’re gorgeous, honey.”
virgil mutters under his breath and rubs at the back of his neck—he isn’t the best with accepting compliments, he never has been, especially when it comes to things like this.
but, well—
“so,” virgil says, staring at the makeup wipe in his hand. “you… liked it?”
“liked it?” patton says.
“y’know,” virgil mumbles, and gestures vaguely up and down his body—the skirt, the makeup. “it.”
patton grins up at him, and tugs him down a little so that they’re eye-to-eye.
“i,” patton purrs, “love the skirt.”
it takes a little bit longer to get polished back up after that. and if, perhaps, virgil walks around the diner a bit more at ease than before, with a bit of a stupid smile on his face even after patton blows him a kiss on his way out of the door, well. that’s virgil’s business.
⁂
christopher calls when logan’s studying at the diner. his dad’s already headed home, most of his dinner conversation having been rhapsodizing his deeply-held desire to put on his pajamas. virgil’s busy behind the counter settling everyone’s bills now that the bulk of dinner rush is over.
it’s still unusual enough to logan that christopher brings himself to call semi-regularly now—even stranger that it’s weekly, and on a set schedule. wednesday nights at seven. he even remembers to call precisely on schedule, most of the time. but still—every time his cellphone buzzes and lights up with a photo of him and christopher and dad at a sanders-hosted thanksgiving a few years back, he’s surprised.
it takes quite a bit of work to unlearn sixteen years that consisted mostly of irregular, unscheduled visits and not showing up when the visits are actually scheduled, logan supposes.
“hey, kiddo!” christopher says brightly.
“hi, dad,” logan says, digging around for a bookmark, before giving up and placing a clean knife in his science textbook to mark the page and closing it.
a moment later, logan curses his mental preoccupation with studying and the upcoming phone conversation he’ll have to have—the napkins are right there.
“so, what’re you up to?”
“studying.”
“you’re always studying,” christopher says, and there’s something in the tone that sets logan’s teeth on edge; he knows that christopher isn’t exactly academically inclined, and in fact would likely be better described as an academic anarchist, seeming to disdain upon the opportunities and privileges he was given with no strings attached that logan would almost certainly kill to have, not to mention many other people who would put it to better use, but. it’s not the time to pick a fight, logan supposes.
“yes, well,” logan says. “i have science test this week.”
“you’ve always got tests.”
“chilton is an academically rigorous school,” logan says, in a tone that implies he’s explained this a hundred times, because he has. “and i would like to maintain my position as a competitor for the top of my class. how are… things?”
this allows him a brief reprieve—since the official collapse of christopher’s business, not too long after he’d visited last fall, he’s been picking up a variety of odd jobs and temporary work, whatever catches his interest—christopher spends about five minutes explaining that he’s found some temporary work at a bar, now, to make some spare cash as he looks for something more permanent during the day.
“—but yeah, that’s about all that’s going on with me right now.” a pause. then, christopher prompts, “how about you?”
logan shrugs, even though christopher can’t see it. “not very much. the test. i think i did well on a pop quiz on monday—”
he explains his various schoolwork and extracurricular activities—christopher hums in all sorts of places—before he adds, “oh, and roman and i went on a date on saturday.”
“hey, finally, something fun!” christopher says. before logan can even say something like but the debate team’s mock trial was fun, he says, “what’d you do on your date?”
“we had frozen yogurt,” logan says, “and roman wanted to go to a thrift store to get some things, and we both got a couple books, and roman got something for the ball, so that’s good—”
“whoa,” christopher says, “hang on, rewind. the ball?! what ball?”
logan winces.
because, well. it’s complex to navigate building a relationship that he initially blackmailed his father into, rather than have him propose to his dad. it’s even more complex to figure out how to handle a dad who had, for sixteen years, mostly showed up in irregular, unscheduled visits and not showing up when the visits are actually scheduled.
he has a dad. for the vast majority of his life, patton has been the only biologically-related adult on whom he could rely. if there was ever anything a parent needed to be involved in, whether it be a parent/teacher conference, or parent’s night, or a parent volunteer for his classroom—he’s always penned down patton sanders without a second thought. virgil, occasionally, if he’d known that his dad had a scheduling conflict, but—always, patton first. that’s just the way it is. christopher had never even stepped foot in sideshire before last fall.
but now, well. now, he has to navigate should i have asked him to come back for this? because the rules say he needs his dad to escort him.
and for so long, he has been so used to only having one of those. (well. two, but one biological dad. the other one kind of adopted him on sight and now he fusses after logan getting proper vegetable and protein intake.)
having both parents be involved in your life is even more unnecessarily complicated than i could have anticipated, logan thinks, before he pinches the bridge of his nose.
“um, yes. a ball. the daughters of the american revolution debutante ball, to be more specific.”
“you’re kidding,” christopher breathes out. “jeez, what kind of dirt does emily have on you that you had to recruit your boyfriend to escort some girls, too?”
logan blinks. “i have no idea why a handful of soil would motivate me to do that?”
“no, like—” christopher begins, and, perhaps, logan was overemphasizing his usual ignorance for use of slang just to give himself a break.
“well, that isn’t the case, regardless,” logan says, before he decides to just get it over with. “he was getting a dress. we both have one. we’re going to be the debutantes, not the escorts.”
there’s a pause.
“is this a gay thing?”
logan cringes, ever so slightly—christopher sounds more bemused than anything, so logan doesn’t think it’s a necessarily passive-aggressive comment, rather a more genuinely ignorant one.
“no, it’s not—” logan says, and pinches the bridge of his nose a little harder. “it’s not, um. a gay thing. we’re recruiting a lot of chilton students and sideshire kids to join in, it’s more of a public statement than anything.”
“oh,” christopher says, still with that tone of bemusement. then, “a public statement of what?”
“we’re making a statement about how sexist it is that society still deems it appropriate to trot young women around like that,” logan says. “we—the boys, i mean—are wearing dresses as a gesture of support and solidarity with them.”
“oh,” christopher repeats.
there’s an even longer pause.
“how many people did you say you got to join in?”
“we’re almost at forty, the last time i checked,” logan says, and christopher whistles lowly.
“your grandma’s gonna throw a fit.”
“we told her, actually,” logan says. “i wanted to see if she still had the dress she was going to make dad wear.”
“and how’d she take that?”
“she’s making me wear heels,” logan grouses, and christopher laughs.
“well, can’t say i expected her to be especially nice about anything,” christopher says. “so, tell me all about this massive prank you’re cooking up, then, i knew that some of my teenage troublemaking had to rub off on you somehow.”
though logan wants to say it’s not a prank, he supposes that it doesn’t exactly harm the movement if christopher thinks that; it’s not like he’s about to tell christopher the real reason, after all.
but logan tells him, all about the chilton kids, and the sideshire kids, and the upcoming Culture Day that his dad and isadora were organizing, and the bake sale that the sideshire kids were doing to raise money to actually enter into the ball in the first place, and the way logan’s had to hide sign-up sheets from teachers, and it seems to go okay.
that is, until christopher says, “hey, i guess if you’re going as a debutante, you need your dad to escort you, right?”
“oh,” logan says, and coughs. “um, actually, dad’s already doing that.”
there’s another long pause.
“oh.”
“i mean,” logan says, and shrugs, even though christopher can’t see it. “you’re saving up for other things, you hardly need to come out from california just to do this.”
“i would’ve,” christopher says, defensively. “if you’d asked.”
“right,” logan says, and the sarcasm slips through before he can even really attempt to modulate it into something resembling politeness.
“i would’ve,” he repeats, more insistently. “i know i haven’t been the best—”
“look, i have to get back to studying,” logan says, cutting off whatever platitude about i know i wasn’t present for you throughout your childhood, when you most would have needed the stability of your other parent, but i am trying now after you had to blackmail me into not upsetting your life, “next week, we’ll talk?”
another pause. a defeated sigh.
“sure, kid,” he says. “yeah. i’ll talk to you next week. same time. love you.”
logan flounders, for a moment, before he says, “next week, then, bye,” and hangs up before christopher can return the farewell salutation.
logan takes a moment to lift his glasses so he can press the base of his palms into his eyes, before he resettles them on his nose and opens his science textbook again.
the conversations with christopher are… something. they tend to go cordially most of the time, even, it’s just—
well. like he’d thought earlier. he’s so used to having one parent, and christopher only ever making contact irregularly. no guarantee for birthdays, no guarantee for christmases, no guarantee for thanksgivings. no guarantee for if logan really wanted to lean on someone, if he’d be there, solid and steady, or if logan would be sent sprawling to the ground. metaphorically.
it’s a bit like that cartoon that logan recalls, as a child—lucy, holding the football, insisting that she wouldn’t yank it away at the last second, leaving charlie brown tumbling head-over-heels.
christopher has insisted that he wouldn’t yank the ball quite literally since logan was born. forgive logan if sixteen years of ending up flat on his back hadn’t exactly endeared him to exactly trust that christopher would hold the ball steady, even if christopher had ended up being much more punctual and consistent with phone calls than expected.
it’s just—difficult. to adjust. to really believe that christopher might stick around, this time.
he suddenly feels his (already immense) sense of respect for patton rise all the more, because he trusts people like this all the time, no matter how many times he’d ended up flat on his face; logan’s thought it naivete for so long, that now that he’s attempting to practice it, he finds himself… well, if he’s to continue the metaphor, he’s found himself unwilling to even attempt the run-up to the ball.
logan attempts to shake himself, as if the thought is something that he can dislodge, like water in his ears. he refocuses on his textbook and readies his pen for any notes that he needs to take. which he does, for a while, his pen scratching a familiar rhythm under the quiet rush of other people’s conversation, and the soft, inoffensive music the diner plays, that is, until the plastic of the pen cracks under the force of his grip. logan scowls, and tosses the pen aside.
“here.”
logan looks up, startled; virgil’s standing over him, holding a small plate. he’s wearing another skirt today—purple, and it falls just below his tights-clad knees.
“what’s that?”
virgil sets down the plate, careful to avoid any notebooks, pens, or textbooks. there’s a slice of loganberry pie on it, which is actually logan’s favorite, despite the downside of the many puns his dad has made about logan liking loganberry pie.
“you look like you need pie.”
“i do?” logan says cluelessly.
“pen tossing usually signals the need for pie,” he says.
“you,” logan says. “brought me pie.”
virgil arches his eyebrows. “i could take it back.”
“thank you,” logan says quickly, sliding the plate toward himself, as if virgil would snatch it away, and virgil snorts, reaching out to ruffle logan’s hair before he retreats back to the counter, and—
and it really is just the sugar that has logan’s shoulders relaxing as he stares at his science notes, he tells himself.
⁂
the science test is predictably grueling. logan sits at his lunch table, his brain still tracking over various formulas and small facts he’d memorized, as if in a half-stunned stupor.
there’s the sound of a tray clacking on the table. logan looks up, startled.
dee, in his usual cape and hat, looks over at him, and arches his eyebrows as if daring him to say something. after logan blinks at him owlishly, dee resumes settling himself, as if he has sat at logan’s lunch table a great many times and not at all as if this isn’t the first time he’s done this.
come to think of it, logan’s uncertain if he’s ever even seen dee during their lunch period before. he sets aside the question of then where does he eat??? and instead reaches into his lunchbox, grabbing something at random to start eating.
a clementine. okay.
logan starts peeling the clementine as dee gets his lunch tray in order, and dee says, very casually, “would you like to come over so we can discuss arrangements?”
logan’s fingernail catches; he resists the urge to curse as he punctures the fruit, and instead reaches for a napkin to wipe his hand dry of juice.
“arrangements…?”
dee looks at him. “for the project.”
logan’s test-addled brain then proceeds to panic and mentally trace over every single one of his shared classes with dee, attempting to pinpoint how on earth he possibly could have overlooked an upcoming project, before—
oh.
“i—yes,” logan says, and resumes peeling the clementine. “yes, that works out fine, i think. um—do you live near a bus stop?”
dee flaps a gloved hand at him dismissively. “i’ll have one of the drivers take you back home.”
one of the drivers??? then, he has even one driver???? what on earth necessitates plural drivers???
“i… sure,” logan says, rather than comment on that, “i’ll text my dad and tell him i’ll be home late.”
dee nods, and so logan eats his clementine in sections as dee’s lunch tray depletes with a rate of speed that would already be impressive if not compounded by the fact that logan doesn’t even really see him eat, before he pulls out his phone and texts his dad, I’m going over to Dee’s after school, I’ll let you know how long I’ll be there when I have a better idea of the time frame.
he’s walking to his next class when his phone buzzes, and he glances at his phone.
Dad: okay!!! say hi to the adults and be on your best behavior! love you, have fun!!!
he is uncertain how much ‘fun’ will weigh into the activities for any event at dee slange’s house.
⁂
dee’s pretending to be on his phone almost the entire time a chauffeur drives them back (he could have driven, but he hadn’t felt like it this morning, so therefore he didn’t have his car in the afternoon) but really he’s looking out of the corner of his eyes at logan.
logan is sitting stiffly, and he has been since he’d gotten into the car; it’s as if he’s nervous he might scuff up the leather if he moves. he’s holding his backpack in his lap, and his eyes keep darting to the driver, suit-clad and silent, and out the window, before glancing at dee, and then back out the window.
as they creep up to the gate, and the chauffeur inputs the code that’ll open the gate so they can drive up the maple-lined driveway, to the house, dee has abandoned the ruse entirely, because logan looks the most confused dee’s ever seen him look.
the look only grows more obvious once they break past the trees, and logan actually gets a good look at the house; dee knows the townhome was designed to be magnificent, especially on first glance, but he’s been so accustomed to it that seeing logan’s eyes dart from the fountain in the middle of the driveway to the sprawl of primroses and lavender and hydrangeas and all the rest of the landscaping, and the towering height of it all, the brick crowded with overgrown ivy and climbing roses. the historic townhome may not have multiple wings, and it might not really hold a candle to the ultra-modern mansion where his parents live, but it still, certainly, is impressive.
“you live here?” logan says, stunned.
“obviously?” dee says.
he’s tempted to say something like if you ever saw my parents’ house, maybe pull up that old e-edition of a magazine that had covered it once, just to see logan’s eyes pop out of his head, but the chauffeur puts the car in park and logan’s saying “thank you, sir,” and scrambling out of the car as quick as he can.
dee arches a brow, and the chauffeur moves to open the door for him, because he was raised with manners, jesus, wasn’t this emily and richard sanders’ grandson? one would think he’d know something about how to comport himself.
his brain provides several mental images, though: the little yellow clapboard house logan lived in, the absurdly picturesque tiny town full of brick buildings and repurposed barns and colonial charm, logan’s voice saying, my dad and i were effectively homeless until i turned six, and feels a strange clenching in his chest.
dee shoves it down and arranges his face into his typical boredom by the time he’s walking up to the front door, logan quickly falling into step behind him.
he opens the door—the chauffeur’s going around to the servant’s entrance—and by the time he’s stepping through the door, nanny has materialized at his side, and looks only slightly surprised that there is another teenage boy with him.
logan is too busy looking around at the entry hall—the rugs, the paintings, the furniture, the post-its stuck up on the front door—to really notice any of that, for which dee can’t help but breathe a little sigh of relief.
“hello, we have a guest,” nanny says.
“i told granmè,” dee says, and his stomach sinks as nanny gives him a sideways look, as if to say you know better than to let that serve as a notification system anymore, before she refocuses on logan.
“your name, young sir?”
“um, logan,” he says, looking boggled that he’s being called sir, and adds, “sanders. logan sanders.”
“emily and richard’s boy?”
“their grandson, yes,” logan says, looking to dee for some kind of help; dee would shrug at him, if he wasn’t kind of enjoying watching the usually unflappable logan flounder a little bit.
nanny nods, and says, “welcome to the lavandelands,” which is technically the townhome’s name, but they only ever use it to introduce the house to new visitors, so dee forgets the townhome has a name at all until it comes up again—it’s the same with the manor, which is technically the hearthfields. logan doesn’t seem to notice, nodding at her like he can’t think of anything else to do.
nanny turns to dee, instead, and asks, “would you care for any refreshments?”
“just the usual tea should suffice,” dee says. nanny looks at logan.
“um,” he says again—dee is a little delighted, because he has never heard logan get so knocked off-center before, and after all this attempted antagonizing about his grades all it took was bringing him to his house—“just—just water’s fine. thank you.”
nanny nods, says, “i’ll be with your grandmother in the greenhouse. mr. sanders, it was a pleasure to meet you, please have mr. slange ring for us if you require anything,” and sweeps off.
“you have a greenhouse?” logan says blankly.
“we have a greenhouse,” dee confirms. “you can see it later, if you’d like. shall we go study?”
logan nods, and falls into step behind dee; dee considers going to the dining room, the way logan did when they were making posters at his house, but he wants nanny, bertie, ingrid, and martha to have plausible deniability in case his parents demand to know if they’d heard anything about this, and so he leads logan up the staircase and into his room.
it’s been cleaned today recently, he can tell; it smells like the lemon candles he likes, the ones martha lights whenever she airs out his room, so the room is in its tidiest iteration; vacuumed rugs, swept and mopped hardwoods, dust-free surfaces, with a made bed and no mess anywhere anywhere.
it practically seems like a hotel room, if not for the legal pad on his desk with his handwriting on it.
and of course, logan crosses almost immediately to the desk; dee only catches on a minute later, when he bends slightly to get a better look inside the vivarium.
“luke, leia, and han, right?” logan says, glancing at dee for confirmation before scanning the plants and rocks; dee crosses over, too, and gestures toward the rock in the back corner—mostly hidden by plants, but the sun lamp shines directly upon it.
“they like to nap here,” dee says, and he’s right—luke and han are curled up, sunning themselves, and logan makes an ahh noise when he spots them too.
“they’re larger than i expected,” logan says, staring at them, eyes lit up with curiosity.
“mm,” dee says vaguely. “females tend to be longer and bulkier than males. leia’s biggest, she’s a little over two feet.”
“where is she?” logan says. “you said she was the checkered one.”
dee tries his hardest not to seem surprised, but—logan remembers his snake’s markings. from a a throwaway comment he made nearly a month ago.
“probably hiding,” dee says. “she likes to stick near the water, so she’s probably curled up under the lip—”
logan kneels down, all the better to see, and he says, “i see her!”
“asleep?”
“i think so,” logan says, and frowns. “i’m not as familiar with snakes as i am with other reptiles, though.”
dee blinks. “which reptiles are you familiar with?”
“frogs, mostly,” logan admits. “lots of frogs and toads would be around the pool, when we lived at the inn, and they’re very common in the pond there. salamanders and lizards, sometimes, during summers. i had a brief phase of hunting for reptiles and bugs, i thought i would be a reptile research journalist, or something—i kept bringing them home and dad had to pretend he wasn’t scared of any creepy-crawly bugs or scaly things, he’d call over virgil so that there was someone i could show all the bugs to who wouldn’t get freaked out.”
dee has a mental image, then, of logan—shorter, and baby-faced, holding up a salamander and babbling to this mysterious virgil about its various properties, who would nod and ask questions and generally care what a child thought, his dad shoving down his fear long enough to listen to logan, because it’s something that interested him, something that logan cared about.
and then a memory of himself, hip-deep in snake research books, trying to tell his new adopted parents all about why snakes were so interesting and cool, and receiving three snakes for his first birthday state-side and overhearing maybe she’ll shut up about the stupid snakes now, his mother saying at least we won’t have to see them, they’ll be in her room, maybe she’ll stay there more and children should be seen and not heard as nanny and martha tidied up the wrapping paper from his birthday party—
he squashes the not-jealousy with extreme prejudice.
“oh, and the occasional turtle,” logan adds, breaking dee’s train of thought. “not many snakes, though; not many of the inn’s employees were keen on letting the five-year-old try to find out if one was venomous or not, so i’d be stuck watching if they ever found one.”
“...right,” dee says, unsure of what to really say to that. also, he’s a bit busy listening to the purposefully-heavy footsteps coming down the hall.
“so i’ve never seen snakes up close like this,” logan finishes, and dee just. nods.
fortunately, a knock on the door breaks any lingering awkwardness; dee calls out “come in!” and nanny comes in with a tray of a typical afternoon tea.
“just leave that on the storage bench, thank you, nanny,” dee says briskly, and so nanny sets the tray of snacks on the bench at the base of dee’s bed, before she presents a water bottle to logan, and says, “there’s a chilled glass for you on the tray.”
“oh,” logan says, and takes it. “um. thank you.”
almost as if he’s unable to help it, his fingernails tap-tap-tap against the water bottle as he looks at the design, whatever sense of culture shock that might have faded after looking at the snakes rearing right back.
“thank you, nanny, that will do,” dee says, and nanny nods to him, before she departs and closes the door on the way out.
“this water bottle is made of glass,” logan says, as if it’s a question.
dee arches an eyebrow at him. “do you not like water served in glass? do you only like plastic containers for your water? shall i call for nanny to get you a plastic cup?”
“no,” logan says, “no, it’s just—” and he squints at the label, before he looks up at dee and says, “this bottle of water is from a glacier.”
“you can keep the bottle, if you like,” dee says, “we have plenty more.”
“the source is only accessible from the ocean.”
“yes, i heard you,” dee says. “it’s not like i would already know this, since i have lived in this house and had that water for years, but do go on.”
“our goal was to create the world’s first luxury premium glacier water product with unmatched quality—purity—elegance. created from an award-winning source, from the hat mountain glacier in beautiful british columbia, canada, we have captured the hearts of water connoisseurs worldwide,” logan reads from the label, and looks up at him. “dee.”
“i don’t understand what your issue is with the water,” dee says, even though he’s very aware that logan’s issue is primarily you even have fancy WATER?! but it’s fun to see how absolutely bemused he is over it. “if it’s good enough for water connoisseurs worldwide, it should certainly be good enough for you.”
logan hesitates, before he sits on the bench at the end of dee’s bed, and picks up the chilled glass. oh, nanny set out to impress, that’s one of the nice crystal glasses that granmè only ever really brings out for parties.
it also has the added benefit of logan’s eyes becoming even rounder behind his glasses, and looking between the water bottle and the glass, as if weighing if he’s blue-blooded enough to consume it, or if he’s so much of a commoner that taking a sip of it will cause him death, like the false grail in indiana jones.
evidently, the combined hayden-sanders genes must win out, because he carefully pours himself a glass, and then looks even more hopelessly confused when he turns his attention to the tea tray.
really, dee at the start of the school year would be clapping his hands in absolute glee at how much he’s managed to catch logan off-guard.
“are these cucumber sandwiches?” logan asks faintly.
“ooh, yes,” dee says, plucking one for himself and promptly shoving it into his mouth, fast, so that sanders won’t notice while his attention is captured by their snack. “plus pear and stilton, here, and ham-brie-apple, and pesto chicken, and those ones are prosciutto-fig, i think. of course there’s scones and clotted cream, battenburg, crumpets...”
“you,” logan says, looking hopelessly lost, “you just asked for tea?”
dee looks at him, amused, even as he’s pouring himself a cup of tea. “my grandfather was english, sanders. it’s afternoon tea.”
logan blinks, before he says, “i didn’t know that. that your grandfather’s english, i mean.”
“and my grandmother’s french,” dee says. “my particular branch of slanges relocated to the americas much later than your branch of sanders did.”
“you know that?” logan says, startled.
“of course,” dee says. “sanders’ came over on the mayflower, daughters of the american revolution, et cetera et cetera. our grandmothers have been friends for years, did you really think i wouldn’t know?”
he waits a beat, before he adds, “and, well. know your enemy.”
“i suppose you took that much more seriously than i did,” logan says at last, before he reaches for a safe option—a blueberry scone—and cracks it open, spreading it with jam.
“yes,” dee says pridefully, “yes, i did.”
logan rolls his eyes, even as he plops a generous helping of clotted cream on top—
“oh, cornish method, interesting,” dee says, just to see that confused look come rearing back, and is immediately satisfied—
before logan shakes himself, and says, “why did your grandparents relocate here, anyway?”
dee tries his very best not to brighten too obviously, it’s just—it’s been so long since someone so blatantly handed him an excuse to spin stories on a platter.
“well, that’s a very interesting story,” dee says, leaning back, “and really, it all starts with my great-grandfather. or, rather, my great-grandfather’s very distant cousins. you see, my family had a lordship—”
logan looks at him, surprised.
“—a very minor lordship,” dee says, “technically barons, not dukes or anything. you probably wouldn’t have heard of them, it’s not like they were major members of the house of lords or anything. anyway, my great-grandfather didn’t know that, because again, he was a very distant cousin, and the main line of the family had three daughters. no women could inherit.”
logan frowns. “sexist.”
“mm, quite,” dee says. “anyways, they were counting on a closer cousin to inherit—a second cousin, i believe—but he tragically died in a boating accident, and so the family came calling to my cousin—who was a solicitor at the time—and brought him to the estate, which was called,” dee quickly casts about for an alike-enough name, “...upton priory.”
and so dee goes on cribbing details from the first three seasons of downton abbey, changing names and having a merry old time. logan gets close to realizing—he says “that sounds rather familiar, actually,” when dee reiterates the whole plotline of his supposed great-grandfather’s valet getting arrested for supposedly murdering his wife, to which dee says, “it was quite a scandal, perhaps you’re remembering the details from your grandmother, goodness knows she’d find it fascinating,” which buys him even more time until he kills off his great-grandfather, the matthew stand-in, after the birth of their second child.
logan frowns, and says, “well, that’s rather sad, but—i thought you said your grandfather was eldest? why would he give up a lordship?”
“why else, sanders?” dee says, and gestures expansively. “love.”
logan arches his eyebrows, and takes another sandwich—he seems quite partial to the pesto chicken and ham-apple-brie—and says, “go on, then.”
and so dee goes on stealing details and weaving a story, this time from the king’s speech, explaining how his grandmother was a divorcée (she is not) and his grandfather wanted to marry her anyway, as they’d met and she’d become his mistress during an outing to new york (possibly true, but in the same way that the moon landing being faked is possibly true) but as she was a divorcée (again, untrue) and he was a prominent member of the church of england (as far as he knows his grandfather was a catholic) to have a lord marry a divorcée had caused quite the drama between the family, and then dee cribs even more details from downton abbey to describe the fight, mounting and dramatic and full of high passions, going on for another fifteen minutes, until his grandfather finally decided—
“to abdicate the throne?” logan finishes dryly; they’ve picked the tea tray mostly clean of snacks, by now, and logan’s long since finished his water and has stolen a cup of tea. “i didn’t realize you were a descendant of edward the eighth. should i have been calling you your majesty this whole time?”
dee tries his very hardest not to pout, but he does cross his arms. “how long have you suspected?”
“around the time you said he gave a lordship ‘for love,’” logan says, “but i knew for sure when you started talking about how your grandmother became a mistress in new york. she’s french.”
“damn!” dee says, not really angry at all, but still, he had to keep up appearances. “i managed to fool brad with that whole backstory until he saw the king’s speech five years later.”
and then dee waits; he waits for logan to get mad, or to snap at him for wasting time, something that dee will attempt to brush off and maybe even laugh at. he waits for logan—journalism-obsessed, fact-checking, scientifically-minded logan—to react to what was dee, essentially, lying straight to his face for about half an hour.
but then:
“well, that’s brad,” logan says, “it doesn’t take much to fool him, i’d imagine.”
dee smiles, pleased. “no, it doesn’t.”
“so where was the other stuff from?” logan says. “upton priory, i mean. i’m assuming that doesn’t exist. i know the story from somewhere.”
he’s… curious.
he’s curious??? dee repeats to himself—this is logan, who is, as stated, journalism-obsessed, fact-checking, scientifically-minded—he doesn’t seem mad. he just seems… intrigued.
this bears much more investigation that dee would have thought prior to inviting him over.
“downton abbey,” dee allows. “i can’t believe you caught onto the historical significance of edward the eighth meeting his mistress in new york, and yet i throw three season’s worth of downton abbey at you and not even a little bit of recognition.”
logan shrugs. “i’m not very good with pop culture. that’s more—” and very suddenly he looks like he wants to slap a hand to his forehead, if logan was at all prone to dramatic, cliché gestures like that. “roman. he was going on for days about matthew dying in the same season they killed off sybil, that’s where i heard all of it before, it’s from roman.”
“the boyfriend,” dee says.
“yes, the boyfriend,” logan says, “who is very excited for the excuse to wear a pretty ballgown, by the way.”
dee accepts this for the subject change it is, and digs out his notebook and a pen.
“right, then,” he says. “as previously discussed, i’m handling chilton participants, and i’m pleased to announce that with the addition of ana salazar, the entirety of the clairosophic society are involved.”
“oh, excellent,” logan says, and so dee goes on listing chilton students they’ve enlisted—he’d been right, recruiting the puffs and the skull and dagger had caused a wave of wannabes to join in too—and they discuss setting up a form for people to ensure that they’ve paid their way in, dee eventually digging out his laptop and making a couple drafts of one.
as he does that, logan talks about the sideshire students (behind on payments, but they’re doing an ongoing bake sale at virgil’s, which, dee doesn’t know how small town things work, but he supposes he should trust that logan knows what he’s talking about) and logan taps his own notebook with his pen, going over all of the entrants and discussing anything that needs finer-tuning—not very much on their end, it turns out, but they’ll definitely need to have another meeting after what logan’s dad is apparently calling get cultured day, where he and logan’s boyfriend’s mother will teach everyone the dance they’ll need to know and the proper way to curtsy and so on.
logan scans over his notes, nodding in satisfaction, before he says, “we were a bit oversaturated on debutantes, the clairosophic society should help balance things out with escorts.”
“ana wants to go with janey,” dee corrects. “so she and janey are already taken, but otherwise—”
he blinks. “ana and janey are dating?”
dee looks at him, amused. “you know nothing about the social stratosphere at chilton, do you?”
“i don’t have much tolerance for gossip,” logan says.
“really?” dee says. “i’d think that as a journalist you’d keep an eye out for these kinds of things.”
“i don’t report on gossip,” logan says. “what do i look like, francie jarvis? anyone else who lives and breathes that rag?”
“what, the jefferson?” dee says. “are you kidding? that’s the most useful thing that chilton’s ever provided me, and i’m including the education, here.”
“useful?” logan repeats, looking as offended as dee had expected him to look when logan would catch on to dee lying his ass off for half an hour straight. interesting.
“well, admittedly, they can be rather behind when it comes to certain things,” dee says thoughtfully, “but the chaos that happens on the day it comes out? masterful.”
logan frowns. “i thought you wanted to work on the franklin.”
“oh, i do,” dee says. “like i said, they’re not exactly cutting edge, i can do better with a well-coordinated social media check than they can do with an entire staff full of rumormongers. the whole,” and he flaps a hand, “truth and investigation thing, for the franklin, that’s interesting. besides, the franklin has more effect when it targets adults; with the jefferson, they just want to confirm that the algebra and the calculus teachers are having an affair, which they are—”
logan looks perplexed. “how do you—”
“—don’t ask,” dee says. “believe me, i wish i didn’t know.”
his eyes narrow, as if to say why should i believe you? which, good. he’s learning.
“but in the franklin, one can publish a deep-dive anonymous investigation and get shady male teachers tossed out of the schools on their ear for their too-frequent uniform checks and saying that uniform skirts are distracting. the franklin has more real-world power.”
“not that an investigation of an adult potentially preying upon teenage girls isn’t important,” logan says, “because it certainly is, but journalism isn’t about acquiring power. it’s about holding those in power accountable.”
“isn’t that the same thing?” dee points out.
“no,” logan says.
“but it is,” dee says. “because the concept of holding power is so multi-faceted. everyone’s idea of power is different. the upper class has power, the president has power, the people protesting have power. people like francie jarvis and tristan have power, but then, so do you and i. but all of those kinds of power are different.”
“well, that i agree with,” logan says cautiously, and then he frowns. “how do i have power?”
dee looks at him. he looks at him harder.
“what?”
“you’re kidding,” dee says. “you’re a sanders and a hayden.”
“the haydens are not particularly pleased that i am a hayden,” logan says. “the haydens would adore nothing more than to tidily remove me from the family tree.”
interesting.
“but they can’t tidily remove you being a hayden from everyone’s memory,” dee points out. “and, well. power can be privilege.”
“well, i certainly have privilege,” logan says. “i’m white, i’m a cis male, i’m attached to an affluent family.” he frowns, and amends, “families, i suppose.”
“oh, good,” dee says. “you’re a sane person who recognizes white privilege, i won’t have to kick you out.”
also—attached to an affluent family, not part of an affluent family. more intrigue.
“anyways. you have plenty of power—take chilton, for example. say you wrote that piece on a pedophilic teacher that i was talking about. it would be due to your actions, your hard work and diligence, that removed him from his post. that doesn’t seem like power, to you?”
logan shakes his head, and repeats, “that’s what journalism’s about. just because there are effect from the story i write, to hold said teacher accountable, that doesn’t mean that is personally driven from me. that would be a response—from parents, from students, from headmaster charleston, eventually. there are responsibilities that journalists have, important ones, and we serve a purpose for society. perhaps the story has a powerful impact, or the story is emotionally powerful. that doesn’t mean that i am powerful. i didn’t direct people to fire him, i didn’t influence anyone. i would have presented the facts and exposed his wrongdoings, that’s all.”
“well, i suppose it does depend on your definition of powerful, that’s accurate enough,” dee says thoughtfully. “but the more philosophical idea of what is power? isn’t what i’m trying to address, at the moment, i’m addressing you. another example, then—academically, you’re powerful. tristan dugray would pay a tidy sum for any one of your study guides.”
logan frowns. “i wouldn’t cheat.”
“yes, yes, you’re very moral and ethical, good for you, you’ve passed the after-school special test,” dee says dismissively, “but specifically, for this definition of power, it’s a certain level of strength. but that’s a different kind of power, than, say—”
“tristan dugray never getting in trouble for his foolish pranks because of who his father is,” logan says.
“right,” dee says, “although you’re wrong on that front, he’s a prank on a bad day away from being sent to military school, but—yes, you’re seeing my point. power varies, power changes.”
“well, i never disagreed with that,” he says. “but those aiming for power—their main idea is almost never let’s be a journalist! unless they’re decisively within the yellow journalism era, or if they are fictional character charles foster kane. and even then, he was a media magnate, his attempts at journalism were just to manipulate public opinion and make a lot of money.”
dee sighs longingly and says, “if i were white, that would be my ideal era to work in.”
“what,” logan says, and suddenly they’re talking about yellow journalism—logan is very boring and against it, because he likes things like accuracy and facts—and then logan looks like he’s about to blow steam out of his ears when dee tells him that his ultimate career goal is to write for and maybe run something like the national enquirer, which leads to even more discussions on journalism, things like what qualifies someone to be a journalist and who decides what journalism is, and they’re on a little side-tangent about journalism as portrayed in films when there’s a knock on his door.
“mister slange, mister sanders, dinner is ready,” nanny says, and dee tries his best not to startle, because—logan’s been here for three hours. and he has not once gotten annoyed at dee for reasons outside of journalistic, ethical, or moral debate, and even then, logan seems to set all of that aside relatively easily.
and dee, apart from making up his entire ancestral backstory, has barely even lied.
“coming!” dee says, and then to logan, “i hope you like snail caviar.”
an expression of panic pops up on logan’s face, and dee laughs at him.
“kidding,” he says reassuringly. “it’s french onion soup and croque monsieurs.”
logan looks relieved, and he even laughs, and then proceeds to bump into dee, the way that friends on tv shows jostle each other when one tells a particularly biting joke, and then logan pauses, looking at dee.
very suddenly, dee thinks, oh.
does he think he’s my friend?
they’ve been debating for the better part of two hours, and dee lied to him for half an hour, and dee has been purposefully throwing as many rich-people things into conversation as possible to get logan looking baffled, and logan thinks that they are friends.
is that what friends do?
dee clears his throat, before he grabs logan’s bicep in a way he hopes is normal and does not at all give away that he has not had a friend since he immigrated to the united states, and says, “come on, then, i’ll let you stick your head in the library on the way.”
“you have a library?!” logan asks eagerly, following along as dee tugs him down the hall, and dee tries his very best not to smile too openly.
⁂
dee’s house is…a lot. it’s a lot.
(dee had pulled up a picture of his parents’ house to show off how it could be his own personal xanadu, when they’d been talking about citizen kane, and logan has mentally tabulated the publication he was talking about to fact-check that, because that—that was just absurd, even more so than this one.)
but the smell of french onion soup and croque monsieurs—essentially french ham-and-cheese, either sandwiches or baked lasagna style—is a little more comforting. logan knows these smells, baking bread and ham and melting cheese and onions—granted, virgil’s diner does a french onion soup, but he’s sure it’s not as fancy as what he’s about to eat with dee.
and, as they cross into the dining room, his grandmother, seated at the head of the table.
logan’s technically had lunch with mrs. slange before; it had been at the country club, and he’d been more preoccupied with glowering at dee, but he has met her and spoken with her. she’d been nice; she’d spoken to his grandmother quite a lot about landscaping, and flowers. azaleas in particular, he’s fairly certain.
she’s a rather diminutive woman, her already short stature shrunk down even more from age; her hair is thin and pure white, fluffing up in a way that makes logan think of dandelion fuzz. her face is wrinkled, especially with smile lines around her eyes, her mouth. she’s wearing a cardigan over a button-down, much like his grandmother wears on particularly casual days, but whereas his grandmother prefers solid colors, mrs. slange’s cardigan is white with embroidered pink and purple flowers; it matches her pastel pink button-down.
by all accounts, she should register in logan’s mind as a fragile old woman; a nice one, one that seems to have more concern about her flowers than anything else. but there’s something glinting in her eyes—flinty, icy blue—that reminds him very much of dee, despite the fact that they are not biologically related.
it’s cunning, logan thinks, or intelligence—she must have both in spades, to help raise someone like dee.
she smiles at dee, and says something in french—logan can manage a basic spanish conversation due to his proximity to the princes, and he’s taking latin classes, but he’s absolutely hopeless with french unless he lucks out and they say something with a latin root word—and dee responds in kind. logan notes that their accents are different. logan puts together, barely a second after he notices, that one of haiti’s two official languages is french.
logan spares a second to wonder if dee can speak the other, haitian creole, before his grandmother turns to him directly and says—something in french. he has no clue what.
“il ne peut pas parler français, granmè, utiliser l'anglais,” dee says, looking almost a little amused at logan’s expense—well, logan can put together he can’t speak french, use english, just based off of context clues.
she starts a sentence in french, pauses, furrows her brow, as if unpuzzling it, and then continues in lightly accented english, “welcome to our home.”
“thank you very much for having me,” logan says, his dad’s be on your best behavior! text at the forefront of his mind, with his dad saying evelyn, right? i always liked her shortly behind. “your home is beautiful; the landscaping’s lovely.”
her wrinkled face settles into its worn lines she smiles.
“mer—” she begins, shakes her head, takes a breath, and then continues, “thank you very much. the roses are finicky little things, this time of year, i’m quite pleased with how they’ve turned out. i think they’ve thrown their last primadonna fit until fall rolls around again.”
and from there, it’s easy to prod her into conversation as they eat the soup course—logan mentally apologizes to virgil, but if he’d taste it, he’d probably agree that this french onion soup is better than his, too—just by asking about the various plants she tends to favor, the particular conditions that each seems to like. the conversation seems perfectly fine, if not for dee staring at the pair of them out of the corners of his eyes, as if monitoring their conversation to make sure neither of them says anything unseemly.
which is a little unsettling—logan doesn’t think he’s said anything horribly rude to an old person lately, unless one counted his paternal grandparents last fall—but the conversation seems to be fine. logan admits that most of his knowledge of plants is theoretical, scientific, which prods her into asking about their shared science course, and dee takes over that conversation.
it’s fine. the whole dinner is fine, and it seems to be going well, even, and he keeps on thinking so and thinking so as he digs into the main course of croque monsieurs, and she says—
“how do you find the meal, christopher?”
it takes logan a second to register what’s wrong with that statement, and, as soon as it does, unwittingly, his eyes flash to dee.
dee has frozen, fork halfway to his mouth. it’s like he has to buffer for a moment before he visibly stiffens, setting the fork down. logan is about to excuse it as a slip of the tongue—she had known both his parents, surely, perhaps it was just a misstatement. most people in his grandparents’ sphere exalted his resemblance to christopher, even though he was quite clearly a carbon copy of patton excepting his sharper bone structure, straighter hair, and thinner frame, until—
“logan, granmè,” dee says, in a very gentle tone that does not at all match his fists curling up on the table. “this is logan, christopher’s son. do you remember? we had lunch with him and emily.”
her brow furrows, and she says, “right. of course. logan.”
she quite sounds like she thinks that dee is pulling one over her head, and she’s going along with it, the way one did when a small child was pulling an incredibly obvious joke on them.
she maintains that tone and slips a couple more times—christopher, how are straub and francine? as logan’s halving his croque monsieur; christopher, didn’t you say you were going out to california? when the maid, as tight-faced as dee, is setting dessert on the table.
and it dawns on him, slowly: why dee had to prompt her to use english, when she was born speaking french, and why it had taken her a few seconds to clearly switch over in her head when dee went from french to english at the drop of a hat; why there were so many post-its near the front door; why the household staff had seemed surprised at a visitor, despite the fact that dee had told his grandmother he was bringing home a guest; why his grandmother had said she’s coming out less and less lately, it’s been a while since we’ve had a good, long chat; dee keeping a keen eye out, as if he’s monitoring what they’ll say; not for him, logan realizes, for her.
she has a disease. she’s aware enough that her gardens are in splendid shape, she’s aware enough that she clearly knows who dee is, but. but she can’t remember who logan is.
it is an exceedingly awkward dessert.
he can’t deny the chocolate-raspberry souffle is absolutely delicious, though.
⁂
the dinner is over. nanny is taking granmè to the library. logan and dee are left alone at the dinner table.
dee has been mentally preparing for this since his grandmother’s first slip—comebacks, things to say, particularly acerbic and witty things he could summon up if logan is rude about it. he’s ready.
that is, until logan just says, “can i see the greenhouse?”
dee blinks at him. “what?”
“the greenhouse,” logan repeats. “you said i could see it after dinner. can i?”
okay, dee thinks. changing the setting of the argument. he isn’t sure what logan’s play is here, but—
“sure,” dee agrees, and stands, purposefully languid and unhurried. “follow me.”
and so he leads logan through the narrow hallways of the house, mostly ignoring logan as they go (“is that a velázquez?” he demands of a painting, which dee doesn’t really deign answer to—of course it’s a velázquez, does his family seem like the type to settle for a framed imitation) and at last comes to the door of the greenhouse, which he opens without ceremony.
logan walks in. dee expects him to maybe go to sit down, and ask dee why his elderly grandmother thought he was his estranged father, but no—logan beelines straight for the hostas.
well. okay. dee trails after him, meandering vaguely around the greenhouse. logan’s route seems to make sense to him, and only him, but he pokes his nose close to each plant, adjusting his glasses on his nose as he crouches to examine the soil, the roots; if dee was walking into this situation with no prior context, he’d think perhaps that logan was an enterprising botanist who had just gained entry to a highly regarded greenhouse.
but logan is just in the greenhouse of an old lady with memory problems, who he did not know was an old lady with memory problems until she repeatedly referred to him by his father’s name.
and so dee follows as logan examines fauna, and flora, and the goddamn soil. everytime logan hums with interest, dee thinks it’s a precursor to the beginning of this conversation, but no, he’s just humming at the plants. the plants. they’re plants, his grandmother’s plants, so he’s used to his grandmother being very fond of them and rambling about them even if he’s mostly indifferent about them, most of his emotion toward plants being if it makes granmè happy. the key word in that sentence is granmè. he does not particularly care if these plants make logan happy. he cares what logan will say about his grandmother.
they’ve looped three-quarters of the way around the greenhouse by the time dee’s patience runs out.
“well?!” and it tears out of him in a kind of snarl. logan, from where he’s crouched beside the lilies, blinks at him, his fingers resting on the arm of his glasses, as if he’s about to adjust them again.
“what?”
“what,” dee repeats, then, “what?!” and before he can even think about it, he has his bowler hat in one hand, thwacking logan over the head with it.
“ow!” logan says, clearly more out of the surprise of being thwacked when he wasn’t expecting it. that, or logan is a big baby, dee didn’t even swing that hard.
“what,” dee repeats, jamming his hat over his head again before logan can see any semblance of hat hair, “what, are you kidding me, sanders, of all the times to go quiet when you clearly have questions, you choose now?! say something!”
logan blinks at him, before he says, very slowly, “about…”
“my grandmother,” dee snaps.
“ah,” logan says, then, almost like he’s reciting something for his latin class, “i am… sorry that she is ill, and i respect your privacy during this time?”
dee actually leans forward because of the force of the Look he is giving logan.
“you know i’m bad at this kind of thing,” he says defensively. “what do you expect me to say?”
“i don’t—!” dee says, and nearly throws up his hands, but he is not allowing himself to get that carried away. “i expect you to say something! not just wander around the greenhouse and let me wait and see if you say something stupid!”
logan looks at him, and says, “was that insensitive of me?”
dee’s eyes must look close to popping out of his head, because logan’s hands are already rising to protect the crown of his head, like he expects dee to hit him with his hat again.
“do you,” he says, and gives dee a strange look, “do you want to talk about it?”
“not particularly!”
“that’s what i thought!” logan says. “i assumed the prior agreement of you wanting to speak to me about anything that particularly affects you would take precedence—”
agreement, dee mouths, and mentally backtracks, until—
“my parents wanting to out me and you coming up with this whole debutante plot and my grandmother having dementia are two different categories!”
“i didn’t think that a statement like ‘if you want to talk about it, i am here’ needed categorization!”
“the previously agreed upon ‘it’ was specifically about my parents’ plot to out me by way of american daughters of the revolution!” dee says, near-hysterical.
“okay!” logan says, “okay, fine, i put forward the terms of that particular definition of ‘it’ being broadened to anything particularly troublesome in your life and wait on your acceptance, or your proposal on how exactly to renegotiate ‘it’, does that help?”
dee stares at him, jaw hanging open, and says, “there is no way that you are an actual person, are you serious?!”
“i don’t know what you want from me,” logan says, near-mournful, and the absolute absurdity of the situation sinks in enough that dee starts laughing.
his parents want to very publicly out him without his consent, his grandmother has dementia that will only get worse and worse and it will only be a matter of time before his parents realize what is happening and send her into a nursing home and force him to move back in with them, the household staff who are the closest people he had previously considered friends have no choice but increase their focuses on spying on him for his parents in order to distract them from noticing anything wrong with granmè, or else risk unemployment, and logan is here talking about renegotiations like they’re on a legal team, and talking sure as shit isn’t an option, so dee can’t do anything but laugh.
“christ,” he says, and half-crumples, half-slides to the ground beside logan, who looks very bemused. “putain de merde, sanders.”
“i’m assuming that’s impolite,” logan says primly, and dee snorts.
“yeah,” dee says, in the same tone would say duh. “yeah, impolite, let’s go with that, shall we?”
logan pauses, for a few seconds, as if allowing dee to get his bearings, before he says "dementia?" with a tone of curiosity that has dee swiveling his head to glower at him.
"sorry," logan says, not sounding particularly sorry.
"journalist habit," dee mutters, beating logan to the punch for his own excuse.
"yes."
they sit in silence for a little longer.
"i didn't know she knows that particular side of the family," logan says. "the haydens, i mean."
"oh, yes," dee says absently. "we probably lunch with them about twice a year, sometimes more—less now, though, now that they've moved away."
"huh," logan says, then, "what are they like?"
"what, you don't know?" dee says, glancing at him.
"not particularly," logan says. "i've only met them three times, and considering i was still in the hospital post-birth for one of them and was learning how to crawl for the other—"
"huh," dee echoes.
how weird it must be for logan, to hear that dee's had more regular interactions with his grandparents. both sets, probably; he would have remembered if logan had gotten dragged into various family gatherings the way he has.
"they," logan says, purses his lips, and says, "the haydens were particularly transphobic."
"yeah, well," dee says. "that doesn't surprise me."
"homophobic too," logan says, and he glances at his hands before he looks sideways at dee. "deviant was the exact word used in my presence. i'm assuming there was more, but dad kicked me out of the room before i could hear anything else."
dee rolls around various replies in his mouth. he could offer sympathy, or something equally socially accepted and something dee would have no problem letting roll off his tongue like a well-rehearsed monologue.
but.
he would tell all of those monologues to people who don't know that he's trans, that have never been to either of his houses, that have never listened to him spin a lie for half an hour and not be mad about it. he would tell all of these monologues to someone who didn't know that his grandmother has alzheimer's.
so dee doesn't offer a monologue. he offers something that he assumes logan might appreciate, something he'd recognize in a fellow colleague: curiosity.
"which dad?" dee asks. "patton or—"
"patton," logan says, cutting him off. "christopher walked me out, though, to make sure i actually stayed out."
another pause. it seems like curiosity hasn't been the outright wrong move, so dee strives for more questions.
"are you close?" dee says. "with christopher. i've only met him a couple times."
logan's mouth twists downward at the edges.
"i don't suppose you'd be willing to offer definitive parameters for close, would you?"
"no, not really," dee says. "closeness is subjective."
logan shrugs a shoulder. he looks almost uncomfortable.
"what?" dee says, interest now piqued—because if he didn't know any better, he'd say logan looked guilty.
"i," logan says carefully, "might have blackmailed him."
"you what," dee says, turning to face logan head-on, not even bothering to hide his shock. or his delight. he doesn't bother hiding that either.
"after the visit last fall, he," and the corners of his mouth twist down even further. "well, that doesn't matter anymore. anyway, i dug up as much of his public financial and legal records that i possibly could and made him a deal that i'd extend equal efforts in getting to know him as he would getting to know me. we have a standing weekly phone call now."
"you blackmailed him?" dee says gleefully.
"with public information," logan says huffily. "it's not like i hired a private investigator or anything—"
"nuh-uh, nope, you used the word blackmail," dee says merrily. "you don't even have to justify it with saying where you got the information, you still used information you dug up on him to coerce him into a deal. that is the textbook definition of blackmail."
"i don't know if it's the textbook definition—"
"nope!" dee says. "nope, i'm not listening to your semantics. you blackmailed someone."
"you don't need to sound so thrilled about it," logan grumbles.
"are you kidding?" dee demands. "this is by far one of the most interesting things i've ever heard about you. please tell me there's more misbehavior like this in your past—no, no, wait! i'll figure it out myself!"
"good luck with that," logan says. and then, almost randomly, "everyone says i look like him."
dee stays quiet—give the interviewee time to consider their answer, if it's short, mel had lectured once. always leave a couple of seconds for them to think about if they want to add on to their answer before you move to an entirely different question.
"i mean," logan says, and runs a hand through his hair. "other than this, i don't particularly understand why. i pretty clearly favor my dad—ugh, patton, i favor patton, this is the problem with two dads—but everyone says i look like christopher. my grandparents—both sides—their friends, a couple teachers. it's usually rather frustrating, and though i can't prove it, i have a feeling it's somewhat rooted in transphobia, for most of those friends."
he pauses a beat, as if understanding where he's going with this particular line of conversation. dee suddenly feels a lot less excited about the potential for uncovering any more of logan's past misconduct.
"but," logan says. "it, ah. it makes more sense, if your grandmother has more recently had contact with that particular side of my family—"
"don't," dee says, and the exhaustion in his voice almost stuns him.
"don't what?"
"don't," dee says, and flaps a hand. "don't make excuses for her. she has alzheimer's, she's not stupid. everyone's patronizing her now and i hate it, even though i find myself doing it sometimes, it's like everyone's scared that they'll somehow catch the alzheimer's if they don't talk to her like she's a toddler."
and now logan's the one who's quiet, just for a little bit, like he's strategizing how to carry out the rest of the interview.
except, dee thinks, this isn't an interview. this is a conversation. this is that talking thing that logan offered so readily, back when dee had come out, back before logan came up with this whole absurd debutante plan.
it's just—difficult. to consider turning this strategizing, conniving part of his brain off. he isn't sure if he ever has, ever since he was first notified it was there in the first place. why would he turn this piece of himself off when it protected him, when it kept him aloof and above it all and safe to conduct himself in the way that felt most true to him? if it took lying and manipulating along the way, so be it. he has no patience for attempts at moralizing the way he lives his life. immanuel kant was a fucking moron who would have gotten himself and his friend killed because he decided his perfect duty was to always tell the truth. what was the point of something like truth if it hurt you? if it put you in danger?
it's not even a choice.
or, at least. it has never been a choice. because logan is no murderer at the door, or machiavelli-wannabe gossip, or high-society rich person who held so much more power than one could even think of through backdoor deals and secret donations, who had adopted a poor orphan from haiti because it might look good as an accessory, and people would think them charitable, and they would barely even thinking about that poor orphan from haiti growing into their own person with pesky, inconvenient things like wants and needs and opinions.
telling the truth would logan would be... telling the truth to logan. logan, who lived in a tiny, pleasantville knockoff town with things like dance marathons and punnily-named cat-themed stores. logan, who had once blackmailed his own father in order to obtain a standing weekly phone call. logan, who had a trans dad, and who had a boyfriend that he had brought to the school dance, and danced with him, and kissed him, and it didn't even occur to him to care who might see, who might disapprove.
logan, who was once homeless and penniless, and who had extended various sources of information that dee had in his hands, ready to drop into the public eye at any given moment.
logan, who had just sat and talked about citizen kane with him and didn't catch onto three seasons worth of downton abbey but immediately clocked a reference to wallis simpson. logan, who had looked helplessly confused at the sight of fancy water and finger sandwiches and afternoon tea.
logan, who might think that they are friends.
it might become more of a choice then, dee thinks.
so when logan asks, very quietly, "how long have you known that she's sick?" it only takes dee swallowing down the saliva rising in his throat to be able to answer.
"she was diagnosed about three and a half months ago," he says. "but i've known something's wrong for a lot longer than that."
logan swallows, too, and dips his head in a brief nod, as if to show he's absorbed the information.
"i'm sorry," he says.
dee could say any number of things: she could live as long as twenty years after her diagnosis, but it's more commonly four to eight years. or one day she's going to forget who i am and i am absolutely terrified. or when my parents catch on they're going to send her away to a nursing home, and i won't be able to live here anymore, and i'll go crazy if i have to stay in that house for too long, their screaming and shouting will drive me crazy. or you don't even know the half of it, the household staff that you probably think are so nice and who practically raised me have no choice but to spy on every little thing i do because otherwise they'll get fired.
but for as much as dee can briefly turn off that part of his mind, he cannot turn it off all at once. there is no way he's opening the floodgates of information like that. they might be friends, but dee isn't in hysterics. he can control himself. he can control this.
"yeah," dee says, and tips back his head to look up at the ceiling; half of it is glass, leading up to where it joins the rest of the house. the sky is bleak and black tonight, with no moon or stars in sight. "yeah, me too."
⁂
the chauffeur closes the door behind logan, and logan has to fight the urge to jump, even though the chauffeur was also holding the door open for logan to get into the car in the first place.
he has to shake himself before he turns to look at the front door of the lavandelands; dee is standing outside, letting the light spill out of the house and backlight him enough that logan can see him leaning against one of the columns, one arm casually wrapped around his stomach. his bowler hat overcasts his eyes.
"your address, sir?" the chauffeur says, and logan has to fight the urge not to jump again. he tells the chauffeur the address to virgil's, anyways, and turns his head to look at dee again.
haltingly, he lifts his hand and waves, just a little bit awkward. dee's shadowed form doesn't move.
there's a brief moment where logan's left with his hand raised in the air, and he cringes to himself ever so slightly before he starts to lower it.
but then, dee lifts a gloved hand, and tosses logan a lazy, three-fingered salute off his bowling cap, and logan tries to smile a little bit. he can't quite manage it, but he's pretty sure the chauffeur isn't judging him for not looking pleasant enough, as the chauffeur’s a bit busy pulling the car into a neat, three-pointed turn, before beginning to drive away.
logan glances over his shoulder, just enough to see dee, shoulders slightly slumped, re-enter the house. logan lets out a breath he didn't know he was holding and redirects his attention to his phone, which he's mostly been neglecting this entire bizarre sojourn at dee's.
he takes enough time to text his dad and virgil that he'll be dropped off at virgil's, so he can pick up a study snack before he heads back to their house, and reassures his dad that he doesn't have to wait up for him or anything.
he reads a text from roman—a brief complaint about a girl in his dance class, not one of the ones he teaches but the class he actually takes, and logan sends a response that he hopes sounds like the proper, thoughtful response to a mostly inconsequential venting message from his boyfriend.
and then he sits and stares at his homescreen, still that selfie of roman, his dad, and virgil that they took last fall, when he was staying at his grandparents, before everything with thanksgiving and patton's pneumonia had rather tidily messed that week up.
because he has his dad, and his other dad, and virgil, who consists as a dad figure, and he has ms. prince, in her way, and he has roman, a wonderful supportive boyfriend who he has always been able to talk to throughout most of his life. he has rudy, even if he has never particularly leaned on rudy as a means of support. he has maria, and meredith and mark, and his host of cousins from the danes side of the family. he has his grandparents in their own strange ways, even if their relationship prior to this school year would best be described as stilted. he has friends from sideshire high and his teachers and mentors that he left there.
dee has practically no one.
it seems so obvious, looking back at the start of the school year, how dee had seemed so desperate to cling to his academic superiority over everyone in the grade, because that's what he has. he has an ill grandmother, and exceptional grades, and three snakes. he has a former nanny and the rest of a household staff who seem more preoccupied with his grandmother's care. he has his secretive stance in the chilton social ladder, but he didn't have friends.
logan worries his lip between his teeth. he is incredibly ill-equipped to handle this kind of situation. honestly, he's probably fortunate he only escaped with dee hitting him with his bowler hat; anyone who attempted to have an emotion-centric conversation with logan knew that he wasn't exactly the ideal person to talk to. that's never been his forte.
it has always been his dad's. his dad, who dee had seemed fascinated with, who certainly had a certain level of similarity in their life experiences. and though logan, of course, would never betray confidences...
he could, perhaps, offer some of his vast support system for dee to partake in. leave the choice to him, of course, but. but at least logan would have tried.
and so logan takes a breath, and sends out a text.
Logan Sanders: Dad, would it be all right if I asked Dee sleep over the night of the Culture Day you're planning with Ms. Prince?
#my post#text#my fic#sanders sides fanfic#sanders sides fanfiction#the sideshire files#moxiety#logince
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ssm 2k20 day 1: stuck with you
Title: us and these walls
Rating: M (for sexual content)
Disclaimer
Day’s Notes: this prompt was selected by my patrons on Patreon and I decided to make it a modern au...a quarantine au lmao so here’s a smutty quarantine au for y’all I hope it’s enjoyable. As a heads up SasoObi is mentioned often throughout the fic and it’s a minor pairing...well it’s Sasori/Obito/Third Kazekage but they’re background. I mostly put them in there for Kitty who made me fall in love with SasoObi lol this is super late but I hadn’t planned on any of my entries to be long and I failed ‘cause this is long. This fic was almost longer than it is.
us and these walls
It started with a couple of White Claws. And it ended with Sakura in the wrong bed and severely under dressed.
Sakura woke up with a start, giving an unattractive snort before clutching her aching head. The throbbing around her eyes delayed her in realizing that there was an arm slung around her waist and something hard poking at her ass.
No, Sakura grumbled inwardly. No no no no.
She already knew exactly who was in bed with her. There was only one person that she had been stuck with for the past two weeks in her cousin Sasori’s house.
Obito, Sasori’s husband, had a younger cousin that she was always grouped up with at family events because he was the closest to her age, only being eight months older than her. Other than sitting next to each other at brunch or at holiday meals, the both of them didn’t really talk much to each other. Not that Sakura didn’t want to.
Sasuke Uchiha just made it so difficult to get to know him as anything other than Obito’s ridiculously hot cousin.
Two weeks ago, Sasori had asked Obito to call Sasuke over to fix the sink in the kitchen. Sakura wasn’t sure what it was exactly that Sasuke did for a living, only that he had remodeled parts of the house before Sakura moved into her cousin’s house and he may or may not have also been the bartender in the blurry photos Ino had sent her one night many weeks ago.
Because Sasori was the way he was, Obito had called Sasuke at eleven at night and for some reason the man had responded and was awake at the time. Instead of letting him go home, Obito begged Sasuke to stay the night in the guest room.
And then the quarantine order was issued.
Somehow, Obito was able to convince Mikoto Uchiha that it was best for Sasuke to remain at his house for the quarantine. Somehow it had worked and of course Sasuke had no choice but to listen to his mother. And somehow the two of them ended up stuck living together alone because Sasori had packed his and Obito’s bags and took off.
Whoever the fuck the man that went by the moniker “Third” was, Sakura had to assume he was loaded. The morning of the second day of quarantine all she had was a note left by her cousin about where he and his husband went off to and three days later there was a post to his Instagram about how he and Obito were living it up by the pool at their boyfriend’s mansion.
It was no wonder Sasori had ditched her. She wasn’t that surprised he had. Sakura felt more betrayed by Obito.
Warm breath fanned against her temple and the arm slung around her waist pulled her in closer. Sakura adjusted herself so Sasuke’s cock nestled between her thighs instead of digging into her behind and Sasuke released a content sigh, curling around her more.
God.
This wasn’t like her. She didn’t have casual sex. Sakura had been suffering from a three year dry spell ever since she had ended her last relationship. Sakura wasn’t the kind to go out and find someone just for the sake of hooking up. She could almost hear Ino and Karin chanting in her head, “One of us. One of us. One of us.”
“Anything we need to do today?” Sasuke mumbled into her hair. Sakura tensed up. She hadn’t noticed that he had been awake.
“We already went shopping yesterday for groceries and the essentials.”
She and Sasuke tried to stock up on everything they needed the day before. They had almost ended up going home with nothing when a middle aged man without a mask on got too close and Sasuke opened up a disinfectant spray they were going to buy and sprayed him in the face.
They had also stopped at the liquor store because nothing said essential like alcohol.
Which is exactly how they ended up in their current predicament.
Sakura wasn’t sure how to take Sasuke’s behavior. He didn’t seem to mind that they had woken up naked and spooning and was even nuzzling her hair. She wasn’t opposed to the bit of affection but she would have preferred it happened when she wasn’t feeling nauseous and had a headache.
“I think I’m gonna be sick,” Sakura mumbled, disentangling herself from Sasuke’s hold and rushing to the hallway bathroom.
She was dry heaving and spitting up bile for all of a few seconds when she felt Sasuke’s presence next to her on the floor. He stroked her hair, pulling it back away from her face until her heaving stopped.
“Thanks for putting pants back on.”
“Yeah. Here.” Sasuke handed her a black shirt that must have been the one he had been wearing the night before. Sakura pulled it over her head and tugged it so it covered her until midway down her thighs.
Sakura was grateful that Sasuke had the mind not to turn the light on in the bathroom; the open bathroom door casted a strip of light from the hallway.
“So…” She opened the conversation, not entirely sure what it was that she was trying to say. She blanked out, not having an actual thought beyond her ass being cold from the tile floor and so she shifted so she was sitting on the fluffy bathroom mat.
“Do we, uh, need to get anything?”
Sakura scrunched up her nose in confusion. She was too hungover for conversation. Sasuke looked at her pointedly, raising a brow and it finally dawned on Sakura what he was getting at.
“Oh, no. No. I’m on the pill.” Sakura averted her gaze, chewing on her lower lip in discomfort. “And I’m clean.”
“Same.”
The both of them sat on the bathroom floor in silence for an awkward amount of time before Sasuke cleared his throat and said he needed to make a call.
Well, this is shit, Sakura groaned inwardly, pulling her knees to her chest and running her hands down her face.
.
.
Sakura kept herself busy with preparing orders for her online store. She was fortunate enough to be self-employed but there was going to be a delay with her orders because the mailman kept missing her scheduled pickups.
“Do you think Sasori would kill me for this?” Sasuke asked her, putting down his drill.
Sakura looked up from her sewing machine and up at the racks Sasuke had made for her bolts of fabric. He wasn’t able to go to any of his jobs and ended up using his free time on small projects in the house. Sasuke had helped her organize everything by creating a proper work studio in the spare room that was originally Obito’s exercise room. Sasuke had moved all of the equipment into the garage.
“Oh, definitely.” Sakura went back to stitching the pair of tulle panties with an embroidered butterfly motif. “But you put a nifty set of cubbies in his mud room.”
Sasuke moved around her to measure for a set of shelves she had wanted.
“You’re making panties?” He raised a brow at Sakura’s current project.
“Yeah they’re a parallel set to that dress.” She pointed at a mannequin with a tulle sundress with the same butterfly motif. “My shop’s name is Naughty & Nice. That’s the nice and this,” she lifted the finished pair of panties, “is the naughty.”
“Those are too cute to be naughty,” Sasuke scoffed.
“Well I also have those.” Sakura pointed to a different mannequin dressed in a custom leather harness.
“Huh.”
“Yup.”
That was how the past two weeks had gone. Sakura would work and Sasuke would exercise or keep busy making improvements to Sasori’s house. Sometimes Sakura would find him playing video games, speaking to his friends over his headset.
Sasuke had to break his lease with his landlord. It was the loudest Sakura had heard him as he argued with the man about granting him an extension to pay his rent the following month. It hadn’t sounded good and the man couldn’t be reasoned with.
Unfortunately for Sasuke, his parents thought it would be better if he continued to stay at his cousin’s house. Due to the kind of jobs his parents had—police captain and nurse—they thought it would be safer for Sasuke to stick to the house where the only other occupant didn’t leave unless she absolutely needed to.
Sasuke had placed a majority of his belongings in storage and brought over his cat and anything he thought he would need and the guest bedroom became his.
At some point Sakura became curious about his finances. He had no job that she knew of that he could do from home, but he still had money for all of the takeout that he had been ordering until Sakura had put an end to it and told him that she would cook enough for the both of them as long as he helped provide the groceries. She was used to cooking for three anyway and Sasuke ate enough to make up for Sasori and Obito.
They were the only two occupants of the house and had to work around each other. It forced them to communicate beyond the uncomfortable small talk they were accustomed to.
Sakura found it easier to carry discussions without the presence of their family members, especially that of Mikoto Uchiha who always gave her soft yet sly smiles whenever she stood or sat closely to Sasuke. It was a calculative expression she was used to seeing on her older cousin whenever he wanted something and knew he was going to get it.
As much as she wouldn’t have minded to get to know Sasuke better, Sakura was sure that whatever his mother wanted to happen wasn’t what Sasuke wanted. They had worked well together and cohabitated amicably, but the closest they got to anything beyond that was a drunken tryst that she wasn’t even sure was going to be repeated sober.
.
.
He fucked up. He had fucked up.
It started with simple boredom. Sasuke had been stuck living with his cousin’s husband’s pretty cousin because Sasori couldn’t be bothered staying in his own house during a quarantine and had blackmailed Sasuke into playing babysitter.
They had been watching a marathon of slasher films and decided on turning it into a drinking game. Sakura curled up on the small extension of the L shaped couch with her pack of White Claws and Sasuke laid out on the other end with a pack of Ithacas. Somehow that had ended up with Sasuke joining Sakura on the extension and his fingers curled inside of her panties, stroking her as she clutched onto his arm and released high pitched cries of joy.
He’s not sure how they got to a bed, but he wouldn’t doubt it if he had just thrown her tiny body over his shoulder and carried her to the guest room that had become his temporary room.
That wasn’t how Sasuke had planned on dealing with Sakura and his ridiculous crush on her that wouldn’t go away.
It hadn’t taken much convincing for him to come fix the kitchen sink in the middle of the night. Besides Sasori blackmailing him because of his OnlyFans account, Obito had sweetened the deal by mentioning that if he stayed over he would be fed a free breakfast. Obito was a mediocre cook but free was free and he would be able to spend some time in Sakura’s company without his mother hovering with her knowing smiles.
He hadn’t expected to wake up to the smell of something cooking and walking into the kitchen to find Sakura wearing nothing but a baggy cream colored button down cable knit cardigan that hit mid thigh and a pair of black thigh high socks.
Sakura hadn’t expected him either. She had thought she was home alone because of a note from Sasori explaining that he and Obito had taken off to their boyfriend’s place. Sakura had called Sasori immediately for answers, but he didn’t pick up his phone.
At least, that’s what her flushed face and drawn down brows made it seem like. He hadn’t been paying attention to the phone calls she was trying to make but to the curve of her pert breasts that peeked from the v-cut of her cardigan. Sakura hadn’t been wearing a bra and he just wanted to drag his tongue up her sternum.
He was distracted from those dangerous thoughts when he received a phone call from his mother about the quarantine orders and how Obito had already told her that Sasuke was staying at his house. Sasuke didn’t have much room for an argument, especially considering his landlord Kakuzu wouldn’t give him an extension for his rent and Sasuke had had enough and broke his lease.
He cursed Kiba for moving out to live with the blondie he had been dating for the past few months and had only made it official a month ago. Kiba had been mostly staying over there and using Sasuke’s and his place for storage so it had made sense for him to officially move in but that had left Sasuke with paying the full rent on his own because he refused to move.
That decision was biting him in the ass now that he couldn’t bartend or go do some jobs as a contractor. He was heavily relying on his not safe for work accounts where he posted nudes for pay.
And speaking of not being safe for work…
It was three days after the drunken bedroom incident and Sakura needed help taking photographs for her online shop.
When Sakura had told him what she did for work he had been impressed that she had owned her own business and at how talented she was. When she told him that usually Sasori modeled her prototypes and she took the photos for her site, he was slightly disturbed. Looking at Sakura wearing her dresses and her lingerie, he couldn’t imagine Sasori wearing the same things and it looking as well as it did on her.
There may be some bias though. He was actually attracted to Sakura and he and Sasori were more enemies than they were friends and unfortunately related because Sasori was married to Obito.
“Move your arm back like this,” Sasuke instructed Sakura as she posed in a tulle panty and bra set that left nothing to the imagination. The butterfly patterns tastefully covered her nipples but didn’t do much to completely hide the small, pink thatch of hair between her thighs.
He was supposed to be focusing on showing off the lingerie to advantage, but his eyes kept drifting to the small bruises scattered on Sakura’s inner thighs and the red blooms of kiss marks that made her body look well loved.
“I can edit those out,” Sakura remarked shyly when she noticed where his gaze was directed. “I do it for Sasori for my site. He prefers keeping them though for his personal collection of photos.”
“I didn’t need to know that about Sasori.”
Sakura laughed at his discomfort and took her camera back from him. “Thanks again for the help.”
“Any time,” Sasuke muttered, watching her walk through the living room and down the hall to her bedroom.
.
.
Sasuke had the terrible━wonderful━habit of going without a shirt and exposing his tattoos when he was stuck inside all day.
It had been barely five days since their drunken mistake and the hickeys all over her body and bruises on her inner thighs and hips from the rough pounding she must have taken had yet to completely heal. Which also meant that the scratch marks on Sasuke’s shoulder blades, the hickeys all over his neck, and the bite mark on his left shoulder were still visible as well.
They hadn’t discussed what had happened. They spent the first day in an awkward state of avoidance and kept to their respective areas in the house. The second day had them going back to normal and just silently agreeing not to mention it.
But the curiosity was there now. It was there when they shared meals. It was there when he walked in from the garage after working out. It was there when he lazily strummed his guitar aimlessly. It was there when she finished her yoga routine and he was waiting to use the living room to watch or play Call of Duty.
It was there when they sat around reading in the living room and drinking tea. It was there when he made sure she took proper breaks instead of keeping herself hunched over her sewing and embroidery machines. It was there when she randomly heard his drill or hammer or the dragging of planks of wood and other materials into the house when he found something to fix or improve.
The curiosity became a yearning when she found him laid out on the couch, watching some aquarium building show. Sasuke just looked so cozy and she just wanted to curl up with him. Or straddle him.
Straddling him was definitely a favorable option.
Sasuke was immediately on alert, body stiffening under Sakura as she settled herself over him, straddling his hips. His hands slid across the sides of her bare thighs and over her small cotton shorts, until he gripped her hips through her thick oversized pullover.
He watched her warily as she pressed her hands on his stomach. His abdominal muscles twitched under her fingers as she slid her hands up his stomach.
“I was thinking…” Sakura’s cheeks heated up as Sasuke’s hands slid under her sweater and he took hold of her waist, his thumbs massaging circles on her skin. “Do you want to try it sober?”
Sasuke sat up faster than Sakura had expected him to move. In lieu of an answer to her question, he gripped the back of her neck, fisting her hair still damp from her shower, and pulled her closer to slant his mouth over hers.
There had been heated stares and what Sakura had hoped were looks of longing. Here was proof that she had been right.
Sakura sighed contently as Sasuke palmed her breasts, squeezing and fondling her with his large hands. Pulling back for air, Sasuke laid his forehead on hers, looking her directly in the eye as he continued to massage her flesh and tug at her nipples and roll them under his thumbs.
“You sure about this?”
“Absolutely.” Sakura cradled the back of his neck with both of her hands and pulled his mouth back to hers. Using her hold as an anchor, she fell back slowly, guiding Sasuke to follow her and nestle in the cradle of her thighs.
Sasuke pulled back, giving Sakura room to remove her sweater. It had barely been tossed aside when he returned to her, pressing kisses to her stomach and trailing his mouth up to her breasts, sucking on the underside of them before rolling her nipples with his tongue.
While Sasuke laved at her nipples and sucked on the flesh of her pert breasts, he worked on sliding her shorts off. When he didn’t find anything under them except for skin he looked up at her, head cocked quizzically.
“I planned to be out of them so why bother putting on undergarments?”
“Next time,” Sasuke pressed a kiss to her knee and then the other, “let me take them off.”
“Next time,” Sakura’s breath hitched as he gave her clit a flick of his tongue, “huh?”
The look Sasuke gave her was all heat as he sucked one of her nether lips into his mouth before working her with his tongue. Sakura sank her fingers into his thick, black hair and wondered if he had done this for her the other night. If he had it was a shame she couldn’t recall it or had a heads up to just how wonderful Sasuke’s tongue was. Her fingers tightened their hold on his hair, keeping him in place as her thighs trembled around his head. She cried out, high and sharp, when Sasuke pressed deeper into her, his tongue working harder as he alternated between strokes and suckling on her hardened little nub as if it was his reason for existing.
Sakura’s ankles locked behind Sasuke’s shoulders as her hips grinded against his mouth to chase the wave of her orgasm. With a keening cry she collapsed back onto the couch, her chest heaving from exertion. As she tried to control her breathing, Sasuke made his way back up her body, pressing kisses and nips to every bit of skin he could. Humming with satisfaction, she cupped his face in her hands and pulled him back up so she could kiss him hard, tasting herself as she rolled her tongue against his.
“Take off your pants,” Sakura panted, sliding her hands down to the waistband of Sasuke’s sweatpants.
Sasuke shook his head and licked up her sternum with one sure lick, pressing his tongue hard between her breasts. “Turn around.”
His voice was a low rumble, vibrating against her breastbone, and causing a shiver to run down her spine. He used a hand to guide her to turning around until she was stomach down on the couch. With her back exposed to him, Sasuke pressed open mouth kisses down her spine. She flinched when he reached the center of her back, the spot surprisingly sensitive. He palmed her ass with both hands, massaging the cheeks before biting down on a fleshy area.
“Hey!” Sakura squealed at the sensation. He chuckled against her, sliding a hand between her thighs to where she was softest.
“I think you liked that.” He stroked her with his fingers, spreading her folds and dipping his middle and ring fingers inside of her. “I know you liked that.”
“Hmm, maybe I did.” Sakura pressed her cheek to the couch cushion and lifted her rump higher in the air and rocked her hips from side to side teasingly.
Sasuke sat up on his knees and grabbed her by the hips, pulling her closer to him. He pressed his hips against her and rocked back and forth, his clothed, hardened length digging against her core. Sakura moaned softly against the couch cushion as Sasuke grinded against her in alternating rhythms.
“Just put it in already,” Sakura pleaded.
“Fuck,” Sasuke hissed as she rocked back against him. “Do you want me to go get a condom? I think Obito has some in the master bedroom.”
“Don’t bother,” Sakura panted. “Don’t make me wait.”
“Alright.”
Sasuke stood up and pulled his sweatpants and boxers off. He helped her turn back around and settled himself between her legs. Bracing himself on one forearm, Sasuke licked his fingers and rubbed the tip of his cock before taking himself in hand and gave himself four quick pumps before guiding himself inside of her wet heat.
Sakura moaned at the fullness as he stretched her pleasantly. She cupped his face in her hands once again and kissed him wherever she could reach with her mouth—his chin, the corner of his mouth, his upper lip. She hadn’t realized how empty and aching she was feeling until this moment.
“You good?” Sasuke asked, keeping still but adjusting her legs around his hips for her comfort.
Sakura nodded, wrapping her arms under his armpits and clutched his shoulders. She tilted her hips up and rolled them until he began to thrust.
She didn’t know if this was how they did it the other night, but she was enjoying it. Sakura expected him to grope at her breasts and her ass as he pounded into her, but Sasuke kept to a steady pace and with his forearms caging her head, he wrapped her hair around his fingers and kissed her languidly. It was so warm and affectionate she almost forgot that it started as her just wanting a fuck on the couch to figure out if it was as good as she had thought it would be and to make up for being robbed of the experience by her inebriation.
“Harder,” Sakura demanded and without missing a beat Sasuke gave her exactly what she asked for.
He sat up on his knees and lifted her legs straight up so that her ankles crossed behind his head and he thrust harder, holding onto her knees to keep her in place. One of his legs slipped onto the ground so that he could brace himself with his foot and make sure they didn’t fall off the couch.
“You feel so good,” he praised her, kissing her left inner ankle.
“Yeah?” Sakura smiled mischievously up at him and squeezed the muscles of her core, causing Sasuke to falter in his movements. She giggled at his expense but choked on air when he readjusted his footing and thrust particularly hard into her.
Sasuke pushed her knees up into her chest and held her there as he set a punishing pace, hitting her repeatedly in a spot she liked. Her staccato cries of joy filled the room, drowning out the sound of the television.
She fell apart again and Sasuke slowed down his thrusting in favor of feeling her flutter around him and kissing her lazily. They lay like that, him still inside of her, and they exchanged kisses.
“Your turn,” Sakura murmured against his mouth as he stroked her side, brushing her ribs with his knuckles.
“Flip over,” Sasuke ordered, voice low and causing her stomach to clench in anticipation. Settling behind her, Sasuke chased his finish, his chest pressed to her back and panting in her ear.
They both collapsed on the couch and Sasuke turned on his side so that he could pull Sakura against him. They lay in a boneless sort of manner and sated, intertwining their legs and their bodies slick with sweat.
After a moment of silence, Sakura spoke up.
“Well that was definitely better sober.”
Sasuke snorted, his silent laughter rumbling in his chest and vibrating against Sakura’s back.
.
.
He was supposed to be getting some water. Somehow a trip for water turned into him making out with Sakura. She was seated on the kitchen island and he stood between her legs, one hand pressed to the small of her back and the other cradling her face.
“I’m supposed to be making dinner,” she whined but made no move to pull away. She gasped when Sasuke slid his hand between her thighs.
“We can order pizza.”
.
.
She couldn’t remember what her question was. Not with the way Sasuke moved underneath her, breaking her rhythm and holding her hips down to meet his every thrust. He had her crying out and collapsing onto him, weak to his relentless pounding.
Sakura panted, struggling to catch her breath after they both came, as Sasuke rubbed her back soothingly.
“Yeah, I’ll change the bulb in the hallway closet.”
That was the question? Sakura frowned against Sasuke’s clavicle. Well, alright then.
.
.
“Shut up!”
Sakura hid her face in her hands, trapping the heat radiating off of it with her palms.
“Tell us everything,” Ino insisted. Karin nodded vigorously in agreement from her window on Sakura’s monitor.
The three of them were using Zoom to video chat and it was supposed to be wine and movie night, but it had instead turned into a gossip session now that Sakura admitted to them that her three year dry spell had ended during the quarantine.
“We keep fucking,” Sakura whined, pulling her knees up to her chest and falling sideways on her bed. “He’s like the fucking energizer bunny: just keeps going and going.”
Karin snorted, earning herself a glare from Sakura. “How is that a bad thing?”
“It’s not.” Sakura chewed on her lower lip. “We hang out and do other stuff too.”
“Like what?” Ino asked, blowing on her nails. She had taken out her nail polish and had given herself a pedicure as she waited for Karin to pick their movie and their change in plans hadn’t stopped her from continuing.
“We watch movies and take care of Obito’s garden and his plants. I’m teaching him how to cook.” Sakura sighed and groaned softly under her breath, “We take naps together and just...cuddle.”
Besides sex being added to the list of their activities, the only change to their cohabitation was that sometimes they curled up in Sasuke’s bed just to sleep together or hold each other as they lay in the comfort of the blankets. It sometimes led to sex, but that wasn’t the goal. They simply liked being together and exchanging kisses between the sheets and listening to music.
It was sometimes more enjoyable than when he was making her come like a train. Sometimes. Alright, always. Coming was nice but she had a drawer of toys for that. She couldn’t cuddle and joke with her vibrator.
“Now that you’re boning him,” Karin smirked at her, “do you think you can introduce me to his older brother?”
The three of them burst into laughter, Sakura burying her face into her pillow to drown out the sound.
.
.
When Sasuke had remodeled Sasori’s master bathroom, he had found a bath to install that would fit his cousin’s tall frame perfectly inside. It was for that reason he knew he and Sakura could both fit comfortably, considering he and Obito were the same height.
“This is nice,” Sakura sighed, settling between his legs and resting her back against his chest. “I thought Sasori had locked his bedroom before leaving to Third’s.”
Sasori had in fact locked his bedroom, but Sasuke had picked the lock so that he could use the master bedroom for the setting of his photos for his OnlyFans. Sasuke had money to make and he needed privacy and also didn’t want to get into Sakura’s way while she worked and took care of the house.
Things had been good so far between the two of them. They hadn’t discussed what they were doing, but Sasuke was enjoying being trapped in the house with Sakura. Her affection for him even traveled outside the walls of Sasori’s house. She would hold his hands as they walked down aisles when they went shopping for things they couldn’t order or when they went for walks around the neighborhood.
Now they were taking a bath together. Sasuke had used the large bathtub for some photos, carefully placing bubbles to cover his penis, but then making them dissipate with a flap of his hand to take uncensored shots for his Patreon tiers that involved full nudity.
It was as the water cooled and the bubbles became flat that he thought about Sakura and if she would want to relax with him.
When he suggested a bath to Sakura, her eyes lit up and she found all of the candles in the house, played some soft music, and prepared the bath with scented oils and bubbles.
“This has got to be a fire hazard.” Sasuke gestured around the room at all of the candles. Their flames reflected against the tiles of the bathroom, creating a nice ambience.
“Shhhh.” Sakura kissed the inside of his wrist, and snuggled into him more. “Don’t be a killjoy.”
Sasuke leaned back and closed his eyes. This would probably be a little better if I were high, he sighed inwardly. He should have rolled a joint before they got into the bath.
“Would this be considered a date?” Sakura asked, breaking the comfortable silence between them.
“Some people would consider it a date. I would rather be clothed during most of a date.”
“I don’t mind,” Sakura chirped. “You’re exactly how I would want you to end up anyway.”
Heat that had nothing to do with the bath traveled up the back of Sasuke’s neck and settled in his ears.
“If the world wasn’t so fucked up right now, where would you wanna go?”
“Hmm…” Sakura hummed one thought, her knees swaying from side to side. “For a walk in Old Town to get some ice cream. Maybe check out the hibachi spot and then watch the boats on the river.”
“I don’t even like ice cream and that sounds good. Just to be outside.”
Two months had passed since the quarantine had begun and Sasuke was beginning to feel restless. He didn’t usually care about going out, only really went out for work, but now that he was forced to stay inside all day, every day, he just wanted to go out and do something.
After the quarantine was over, he and Sakura were going to need to take a road trip just to feel normal again.
“My friend Karin got tested and her results were negative so she’s going to come over and give me a haircut.” Sakura tugged at the ends of her long hair. “I procrastinated getting one and then everything was shut down.”
Sasuke huffed air out of his mouth and blew at his bangs. They had grown long enough to fall to his chin. “You think she’d mind giving me a haircut too?”
.
.
Sakura couldn’t stop giggling. She rubbed the back of Sasuke’s head, right at the nape where Karin had shaved his hair so it was a close crop. She had buzzed him into an undercut before Sakura and Sasuke could say anything about it.
“I just needed a trim.” Sasuke scowled. Karin had done a really good job and the hairstyle looked great on him, but Sasuke had only wanted to take care of his unruly bangs. “If I put my glasses on, I’ll look like a wannabe Skrillex.”
Sakura snorted, curling up in his lap. “His undercut is on the side like Karin’s. Yours is on the back.”
“Whatever. Don’t you dare give her my brother’s phone number.” Sasuke ran his fingers through Sakura’s new bob cut and kissed her forehead. “Anything you wanna do before bedtime?”
For the past few weeks they had tried to make sure they were preoccupied so that they wouldn’t get bored. Sakura was still attempting to teach him to cook but she has better results teaching him yoga.
“We could have a Lord of the Rings marathon?” Sakura wrinkled her nose in thought. “I can work on some crochet crop tops while we watch.”
They had settled into a comfortable, domestic routine. Sakura was enjoying living with Sasuke and didn’t care about Sasori and Obito having ditched her. She was kind of glad they did. She was especially glad for it the week before when Sasuke made her ginger and honey tea and always had a hot water bottle ready for her when the cramps got really bad. Sasori had the weird idea to feed her liver whenever she was on her period. He never cooked it, always handing it to her raw.
It was nice living with Sasuke. Sakura wasn’t looking forward to when Sasori and Obito returned and ruined the tranquility they had.
She prayed things wouldn’t change when they were around other people. That they wouldn’t go back to how they used to be when they sat awkwardly next to each other at holidays.
.
.
Usually a morning person, Sakura was always first to wake up out of the both of them.
She woke to the feeling of him pressed against her back, erection settling against her ass and warm breath puffing against her nape. His arm wrapped around her body and held to her chest as her fingers were laced with his.
“Sasuke.” Sakura attempted to separate their limbs. “Sasuke. We fell asleep on the couch again.”
Sasori’s couch was ridiculously comfortable and with the wide extension sticking out to make its L shape, Sakura found herself falling asleep on it often. During the quarantine she always lay there when watching TV or movies which was pretty typical from pre-quarantine life, but now instead of selfishly taking up the best spot, she was sharing it with Sasuke who was surprisingly cuddly.
“Sasuke,” Sakura whined. The more she tried to pull away, the more he clung to her. She disentangled their legs and he bit down softly on the back of her neck. “I have morning breath and, dude, I definitely need a shower…”
“Like I care.”
Sasuke was talented at distracting her. One moment she wanted to get ready for the day and in the next all she wanted was to roll around in bed all day. Sakura made no protest when Sasuke helped her remove one of the shirts she kept stealing from him and pulled off her sweatpants and tugged her panties off. Thanks to Sasuke, she was spending an incredible amount of time naked on Sasori’s couch.
“I was supposed to,” Sakura’s breath hitched when Sasuke bit the inside of her left thigh, “be making breakfast.”
“This is preferable,” he murmured against her folds, burying his face between her legs.
During the weeks of their cohabitation, Sakura had discovered that Sasuke liked going down on her more than he enjoyed when she returned the favor. He apparently liked to take advantage of the fact that she could have more than one orgasm in a single round of sex and even though getting blown was nice, he didn’t like the recovery time or how sensitive he became afterward.
Sasuke was in the middle of getting her to the first orgasm he wanted to give her when the front door opened. Not that Sasuke or Sakura had noticed.
“Oh my God,” Sakura sighed breathily, sinking her fingers into Sasuke’s hair.
“Oh my God!” Obito cried out, snapping Sakura out of her pleasure induced daze.
“My couch!” Sasori hissed, eyes narrowed in distaste.
Sakura sat up, almost kicking Sasuke in the face, and saw both her cousin and his husband and a giant man almost half a foot taller than Obito on the other side of the couch.
“Oh my God,” Sakura moaned softly in horror, grabbing the throw she kept on the couch and wrapping it around her body. Sasuke straightened himself and took a seat next to her, bare as the day he was born, cock hard and hair mussed, with a shiny smear on his chin from the activity that had just been interrupted.
“Holy shit, Shisui was right.” Obito stared in awe at Sasuke’s crotch, only snapping his attention away when Sasori slapped his arm and shot him a look of disgust. “What? I thought he was exaggerating how big it was. Oh, fuck. I owe him one-fifty now.”
Sasori rolled his eyes and made his way to the kitchen, calling out behind him, “Please tell me you mean a dollar and change.”
Obito rubbed the back of his neck nervously. “No. Hundred fifty.”
“Hello.” The giant man waved at Sasuke and Sakura, flashing them what in a normal situation would have been a charming smile if it weren’t for the severe lack of clothing and what he had walked in on. “I’m Third, It’s a pleasure to meet you.” He held out his hand. He put it down as soon as he realized they weren’t going to shake his hand. “We came over because Obito has been raving about your cinnamon chip scones and Sasori said that you could teach me to make them for him.”
“You could have called first,” Sasuke drawled, bending over at the waist to reach for his sweatpants and boxer briefs.
“You could have not been fucking on my couch!” Sasori’s voice carried in from the kitchen, followed by the slamming of cupboard doors.
Sakura rolled her eyes and stood up, careful to keep the throw wrapped around her body. Leave it to her to be caught by her cousin, his husband, and their boyfriend getting eaten out in the early morning in the middle of the living room.
“Come back in one hour and I’ll teach you how to bake anything you want,” She told Third, craning her neck to be able to look him directly in the eye. “But you gotta take them with you.”
“Anything?”
“Anything.”
Much faster than she expected someone of such great bulk to move, Third was escorting Sasori and Obito━who had already found her homemade yogurt and was eating it━out of the house.
“Are you really going to be teaching their boyfriend to bake?” Sasuke asked, yanking his pants up and following her as she walked to her bedroom. Sakura snorted and shook her head.
“I can teach him over FaceTime. We’re changing the fucking locks.”
.
.
Day’s Notes: There’s a high chance I may revisit this AU because I used some AU ideas of mine and mashed them up to make this fic and I’m very attached to my OnlyFans Sasuke AU. I have so much to write for it.
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Thanksgiving in Quarantine
(A/N: more Pixar AU!! no there's not really a plot I just wanted to write something for thanksgiving. Also friendly reminder I've never cooked a day in my life so Imma just be vague on those details)
"Alright Pixars, listen up!" Mike called to get everyone's attention. After their conversations died down, he stepped forward towards the front of the room so all eyes would be on him. As the group leader, it was his job to host the monthly meetings and inform them of recent events or decisions made by him or their creator, Luxo Sr.
Once he was sure they were listening, he proceeded to explain, "So as you all know, even though we aren't affected by Covid, we still have to stay in quarantine for the sake of others. So that means that this year, we won't be spending Thanksgiving with the Disneys—"
"YES!!" Everyone cheered ecstatically, some standing up to pump their fists or high-five each other.
Mike was taken aback by their joyous reaction. Not just because it was a response to what he said, but he couldn't remember the last time all of them were that excited about anything. "—like we usually do.." He finished.
"Oh don't act like you're not relieved about it, Mike." McQueen said, "You hate the Disneys just as much as we do."
"Excuse me, but we do not 'hate' here." He said, "We just strongly dislike. Anyway, I'm not that relieved like you guys are. I was actually looking forward to our tradition."
"Well, I'm just glad we won't have to be greeted by them singing 'Be Our Guest' for the millionth fucking time." Woody scoffed, earning some murmurs of agreement from the rest.
Their relationship with the Disneys was complicated, to say the least. Luxo Sr. started the alliance with Mickey Mouse himself several years ago, and thus they joined the Disney family. But the Pixars were never given a say in the deal, and while they did admire the Disneys and were grateful for the success they brought them, that didn't mean they were tolerable to be around. The Pixars didn't hate them (despite constantly joking that they did), they just despised their arrogance and their random outbursts of songs every ten minutes.
"Wait so if we're not going to the Disneys, we're gonna have Thanksgiving at our house?" Marlin asked, "You do realize we haven't done that in like, 14 years? And obviously the family's grown since then."
Mike nodded, "I understand that, but if we're able to somehow survive Halloween, Easter, Christmas, and New Years on our own, then how hard can Thanksgiving be?"
"Your optimism is appreciated." EVE said, "But from past experience, this feels like yet another disaster waiting to happen."
"Yeah, I mean, who's even gonna cook dinner?" Remy asked.
"You are." Mike shrugged.
The rat man widened his eyes, "Say what now?"
Remy was a great cook, and honestly he was the only one who actually knew how to use an oven. But cooking an entire Thanksgiving meal for the whole group was asking a bit much.
"I can't cook that much in one day by myself!"
"You won't, some of us will help you. Right, guys?" Mike asked. But he got no responses, instead everyone just awkwardly looked away.
Remy sighed, "Come on, guys. Do you really want to eat burnt turkey for Thanksgiving? Imelda?"
She put her hands up in defense, "Don't look at me. I don't know how to make white people food."
"Okay, relax. We'll have WALL-E help you." Mike said, gesturing to the robot man—who gave an enthusiastic wave.
But this offer didn't make Remy feel any better. Out of all the Pixars Mike could've suggested, it just had to be WALL-E. "Seriously?" He asked, "You know he burns toast, right?"
"He'll be fine." Mike waved a dismissive hand. "..probably. Okay, does anyone else want to help with Thanksgiving dinner?"
Once again there was nothing but silence and awkward glances. Remy looked around with a pleading face, trying to get anyone to agree, but no such luck. Well, until Atta got tired of the lack of responses and and decided it was best to take one for the team. "Alright fine. I'll help you." She said to Remy.
"Thank Luxo." He sighed with relief, "You are a saint, Atta."
She shrugged, "I try."
"Then it's settled." Mike said, "Thanksgiving will be hosted by Remy, Atta, and WALL-E. Let's pray they don't screw it up."
The three gave him a cold look, while the others nodded in agreement.
—
Thursday came sooner than they realized, and unfortunately due to the pandemic, buying groceries was a pain in the ass and getting what they needed for dinner took longer than they would've hoped. Luckily they were able to have it all in their kitchen and (hopefully) would have enough time to make it. And even though they were spending the holiday by themselves, the Pixars still got dressed up and decorated for the occasion.
Since the kids would be joining them at the table as well, that meant having to cook for even more people. Remy, WALL-E, and Atta were hard at work in the kitchen making gravy, deviled eggs, sweet potato casserole, pumpkin pie, mashed potatoes, etc. And of course, turkey. At first it didn't seem like cooking was going to be so bad. They got an early start before most of the Pixars even woke up. If all went well, they would have dinner done by the afternoon.
"Okay guys, we've got a full house of hungry Pixars so we gotta get this done quick." Remy reminded them, "Atta, you're on pie detail, and you're gonna help me with the turkey. WALL-E, you focus on the casserole, eggs, and making sure Atta stays away from the marshmallows."
Atta slowly looked over at him while he pointed at her, "Yeah, I see you."
She narrowed her eyes at him before slowly reaching her hand toward the bag of marshmallows. He scolded her as she popped another one into her mouth, smirking at him and holding back a laugh. But then the two quickly moved on, since they couldn't waste much time on banter and jokes.
"I don't see how the Disneys do this every year." WALL-E commented, taking a bite of bread.
"Well, they don't actually make it. They have a whole cooking staff that serves them every meal. Which is kinda why they invite us in the first place." Atta explained to him, helping Remy baste the turkey.
Remy scoffed, "And yet there's only one chef in this house. Man, I'd love it if I could get more help around here. Hopefully the new Pixars will know how to cook."
"That's what you say every time." Atta chuckled.
"Maybe if I keep saying it, it'll happen." He shrugged.
After a few minutes, the turkey was ready to cook. They placed it in the oven and set the correct amount of degrees and time. Now all they had to do was wait and finish the rest of the meal.
Violet walked into the kitchen, inhaling the strong scent of half-cooked food. "Mmm, smells great in here." She commented, opening the fridge to grab a water bottle. "So how's slaving away for the others going?"
"We're not 'slaving away', Violet." Remy rolled his eyes. Although now that he said it out loud, it kinda seemed like they were, considering not a single other Pixar was offering to help. Instead they were all hanging out around the house doing who knows what. "Regardless, we're doing just fine."
"You wanna help us?" Atta asked with a mouthful of marshmallows—which earned a scowl from Remy.
Violet sighed, shutting the fridge. "I'd love to, but Joy's taking me out shopping for Christmas presents.
"But stores aren't even open today." WALL-E said.
"That's what I told her." The teen shrugged her shoulders, "But she insisted on taking me and a couple others. I honestly think they're just trying to get out of the house so they have an excuse not to help out."
The three exchanged an annoyed glance. While they expected that sort of behavior from their friends, it was still irritating to know they didn't care enough to even stay home for Thanksgiving. But then again, ditching her friends when they need her didn't sound like something Joy would do.
Before they could question it, they heard Violet's name being called from the other room, signaling her to walk away. "Well, good luck with dinner, guys." She said.
"Okay, have fun today." Atta said to her right before she left. The three then gave each other the same confused expression, all thinking the same thing. But it was a short-lived moment, as they quickly got back to work.
"Alright, making conversation is nice and all, but we can't spend much time having social interactions." Remy reminded them, "From now on, no more distractions, okay? Focus is key."
He turned around, seeing a certain someone once again stuffing three marshmallows in her mouth. "Atta!"
"Leave me alone!" She retorted.
—
Several hours passed since the three started cooking, and they were getting close to being finished. It was hard keeping the kids out of the kitchen to stop them from sneaking bites of the food, since they always did that even when eating at the Disneys' place. But in a display of irony, Remy always shooed them away or chased them out with a broom.
A little after noon the meal was finally ready to be gorged. Everyone had a little bit of everything on their plate and had to pull up a few chairs and small tables so they could all sit together in one spot (one of the tables was actually just an old nightstand). Usually when eating meals, the Pixars would just sit in different areas around the house since the table wasn't big enough for all of them to sit at. But since this was Thanksgiving, they wanted to be together.
"Alright everyone, before we eat, we should go around and say what we're thankful for." Woody said, "And I'll start if that makes it easier."
"It would." They all agreed.
They all joined hands as Woody began, "Well, I'm thankful for all of you. You're not just my friends or people I'm forced to live with, you're my family. Which is kinda the same thing but has better meaning. I'm also thankful for our success, and I'm thankful we're doing this here and not at Disney hell."
A few of them laughed and nodded, although they never thought they'd hear the words "Disney" and "hell" in the same sentence.
"I'll go next." Sulley said, "Let's see, I'm thankful for the food on my plate, and the hard-working people who made it for me."
Remy, Atta, and WALL-E smiled at him.
"And I'm thankful to have the privilege to celebrate this holiday with the people I love."
"Awww!!" They cooed.
Barley leaned towards Sadness to whisper, "Wait, are we supposed to say meaningful shit like that every time?" The girl merely shrugged in response.
Once everyone had a turn saying what they were thankful for, they were finally able to dig in. The turkey was even better than they were used to. The whole meal tasted far better than what they would've received at the Disneys' Thanksgiving. Except the sweet potato casserole appeared to be missing quite a few marshmallows.
"I'm so glad it's Thanksgiving." Joy said, a little out-of-the blue.
"Why's that, Joy?" Bob asked her curiously.
"So I can finally get in the Christmas spirit without people telling me to 'wait until Thanksgiving'." She rolled her eyes.
Out of all of them, Joy was definitely the Christmas fanatic, so much that all other holidays around the end of the year were irrelevant to her. The Pixars didn't mind it, though. They loved Christmas, and they were glad she was always the one to go all out on decorations so they didn't have to.
"Can't argue with that." Jessie said, stuffing a piece of pie in her mouth. "But sadly it's not gonna be the same this year."
"No kidding." Merida scoffed. "If people had just done what they were told back in March, this wouldn't have happened."
McQueen raised a brow, "Dude, we had a whole ass celebration for the Swearing-In in March—"
"That was before quarantine, shut up." She was quick to defend.
"When's quarantine gonna be over?" Dash asked, "I'm tired of staying inside all day."
Mike sighed, as he dreaded this topic every time it came up in conversation. But as the leader, he had to be the voice of reason. "Look guys, I know it's tough, okay? We can't even die from Covid but we're being forced to stay at home, and I know it's frustrating. Heck, there's probably not even gonna be a Swearing-In ceremony for 'Soul'."
"There's not??" Dory asked with a frown.
"If things stay this way, then no." He said, even though it hurt to admit. Swearing-Ins were a big deal for the Pixars. It was what made them apart of the family. "But there's nothing we've been through that we've faced alone, right? We've always had each other, and we always will."
Even though they were still sad about the situation, and even if what he said was a little cheesy, they knew he was right. They were the Pixars for crying out loud, they could handle any challenge as long as they stuck together.
Mike raised his glass, signaling everyone else to do the same. "I propose a toast. To our Pixar family."
"To our family!" They cheered, sipping their drinks afterward.
#pixar#the pixar au#mike wazowski#remy the rat#wall e#princess atta#woody the cowboy#lightning mcqueen#toy story#cars pixar#ratatouille#a bug's life#imelda rivera#coco pixar#eve the robot#marlin finding nemo#dory#violet parr#the incredibles#bob parr#joy inside out#barley lightfoot#sulley#Jessie the cowgirl#princess merida#brave pixar#onward pixar#monsters inc
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Close Friends - pt. 8
A/N: Yeah...Hahha....I’m currently not having any idea what I’m doing but I’m having really fun with this.
XX
It was awfully quiet in the Gryffindor dorm of four. Nobody much said anything. Sirius was writing the last minut essay, as well Peter, meanwhile Remus was laying bed with a book in his hands and James was peeking out of his magazine quite suspiciously.
“Is something about to happen?” he asked and Remus looked up from his book. Sirius heard him but his head was currently filled with herbs and long, professional words meanwhile Peter dozed off. “Because I have a feeling something will happen.” he said. “It’s quiet.”
“I like the quiet.” Remus said and put up his book again.
James watched. There was always the comfortable silence between the four but today just felt a bit different than usual.
Sirius cracked his neck and shoulders, streching for a moment before diving back in, scribbling down everything that came to his mind.
It was quiet... all up until James could hear footsteps approaching to their door and all of a sudden the door swung open.
“REMUS JOHN LUPIN!” you shouted and made your way to his bed, beaming and throwing him pieces of clothing. “Get your arse dressed! We’re going to have SOME FUN!” you continued meanwhile all four boys started to stare.
“(y/n), what the hell?” Remus lifted up the clothes as he continued to stare confusely.
“They’re my cousins- don’t worry. They are washed and dried, clean as they can get now get your arse up- come on!” you saw he didn’t budge, so you grabbed his long arms and started pulling him off.
“Alright! Alright!” he walked to his closet. “I’m not wearing-”
“You are. Your clothes are all old grandpa clothes and ripped for some weird reason- now put these on. I want you to look good and meet some of my friends.” you continued as he started changing, taking off his shirt and putting on the clothes you gave him, enought for you to catch a glimpse.
You rushed to him and lifted up his shirt.
“OI!” he pulled it down as you stared at him with shock.
“YOU HAVE ABS?!” you asked pulling up his shirt again as he pulled it back down with a glare.
“OI! Stop!”
“No, no, no, no, no. You’re telling me that under those grandpa clothes you wear, you have abs. Like all you do is sit behind books and eat and you have abs?!?!”
“Can you shut up?” he narrowed his eyes, trying to put on some pants but stopping as he did so. “And turn around please. I don’t want you to look at places-”
You let out a laugh as you turned around and crossed your arms. “How can you be so insecure, Remus. You have abs.”
“And so you’ve said.”
“Do you have a night fighting club or something-”
“You could say that.” you heard him chuckle behind you . “But honestly, (y/n). What’s the deal with you bursting in and dragging me away?”
“There’s a secret party.” you turned around and unfortunately his pants were on already. You dug your hands into his tidy hair and started messing them up.
He didn’t even try and fight it, only sighed in defeat. “Party?” he asked, feelign the attention of two boys on him. “And why me?”
“Because all my friends are invited and they already have a plus one, meanwhile I thought since you’re the only person who speaks to me and does not ignore me, you’d be a great plus one. And a bonus, you have abs- so that’s fantastic.” you smiled, grabbing his hand and pulling him away.
But before you could leave, you stopped and narrowed your eyes at two boys, raising your wand. “Accio map.” and a map flew directly to your hand. “Just so the secret stays a secret.”
“THAT’S NOT FAIR!” you heard James shout after you as you slammed the door shut, laughing as Remus walked after you.
“What are you doing?” Remus chuckled and you only nudged him, giggling to yourself.
“I’m playing games- just like them.”
---
Remus was standing in a corner the whole time since you left to find your friends. He lost you for a few minutes but it didn’t take him long to find you again.
He hated this. He hated parties because he was a real introvert and if he was honest with himself, it was easier if James, Peter and Sirius were around, making him loosen up. But all he felt was being used for you to get back at the two boys. He couldn’t leave either because he was a coward and he wanted to be nice.
It was so frustrating. You pointed your finger at him and all the girls started giggling and whispering to you, making him extremely uncomfortable. He could hear the anxiety in the back of his head talking to him but before it could get more severe, you made your way to him with a wide, drunken smile.
“Told them about my abs?” he started to tease and you laughed.
“No. Not yet.” you returned, taking a peek in his full cup and throwing it away. “Here.” you gave him a bottle of beer.”
“What-”
“Remus.” you put your free hand on his shoulder and looked him in the eyes. “I know you don’t like alcohol and I don’t want to pressure you into something you don’t want but for god’s sake, you need to loosen up. It’s our last year! Now, raise the bottle and lets toast to discovering the new, wild Remus.” you clinged your bottle next to his, chugging down as much as beer as you could.
He quirked an eyebrow, not sure.
“Come on, Rem. I’ll be here looking after you.” you winked and waited for him take the first gulp of the beverage.
“You know what?” he said, looking down at his beer and you were sure by the look he was giving it, he would just walk away but to your surprise, he clinged the bottle against your and chugged it as well. “Why the hell not?”
---
The moment you left him to get some more drinks, the girls started gathering around him like sheep. You tried to watch if he’d flirt with any of them but you noticed he was rather extremely uncomfortable by the lack of personal space around him.
You heard a song a come on the speakers, so instead of grabbed two shots and walked to him, chugging your shot to free one of your hand and taking his to pull him out.
He was so relieved when you saved him from all the giggles and drunken girls clawing all over him. You put the shot in his hand and started dancing lightly to the beat, waiting for him to drink the liquor and without a second doubt he did.
He continued to watch you raise your arms aboive your head, moving so elegantly to the sound of the song that for a moment all of the soberness left him. He could feel the alcohol move his feet for him. He didn’t even think about anything else but just wanting to do whatever you said and currently your body and eyes were telling him to dance with you.
And he did. He walked towards you, stiffed and tense, not knowing excatly how to do the dancing part.
It made you chuckle a bit to his lack of experiance but you only wrapped your hands around his neck and pulled him closer. “Just follow my lead.” you smiled cheekily, feeling his large hands plant themselves on your hips as his body moved alongside yours.
He felt incredibly sweaty before the song was over, mostly because the liquor inside him and your body so close to his made him nervous but loose at the same time.
“I’m not a great dancer.” he smiled nervously and you laughed, letting your face get excessively close to his so only your eyes were in his frame of sight.
“Just let go, Rem.” you whispered and as the next song started playing he wasn’t afraid anymore to think.
He gave into the music, his body relaxing against yours. Smiling as you felt his hands roaming your body freely, you turned around, back to his chest and both of you moved in sync. Left and right until you felt his hands lift your arms and let them wrap themselves around his neck. His nose dug into your neck, his lips brushing against your skin and his hot breath caressing it.
Feeling your whole body sweat, your palms go sweaty and your lungs suffocate on the stiffed air, your turned around finding him watching you with drunken, hungry eyes.
“This is a bad idea...” you heard yourself mutter but the thoughts immediately ran away as his hands went on your lower back, pressing you against his body and his soft lips crashing against yours.
It was a sloppy kiss at first. You didn’t know which way to tilt your head, your nose kept getting in the way and you felt guilty at first but when he pulled away and looked at you with the same eyes as you did before, he only whispered back. “Just let go, (y/n).” he said and with no restrictions anymore, you pulled him into a more tender, wet, harmonical kiss. You let him take the lead, his body pressed close to yours as his fingers dug into your hips, making you let out a whine and causing him to pull away, bitting your lower lip in process and smirking at your expression.
His kisses were so much more addictive than James’. He knew exactly what to do with his hands, his tongue and his body. It was as if this kiss wasn’t just two lips together but your whole body, your every sense, every emotion inside of you sparking into a flame, leading into a bonfire of messy but perfect kisses.
If only you knew where these kisses with Remus would lead you to...
#sirius black#sirius black imagine#sirius black x reader#sirius x reader#remus lupin x reader#remus lupin imagine#Remus Lupin#remus x reader#james potter imagine#james potter x reader#james potter#marauders fanfiction#the marauders
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Ice Cold ~Part 1
A/N: Very exciting new series! I’m pumped! Hope you guys like it! If not please be gentle with me I’m not doing great rn lmao Just kidding constructive criticism is always welcome. Enjoy!
"Alright (y/n) one more thing." the lady interviewing me said while closing my portfolio. "Welcome to the team."
"Really?" I said incredulously.
"Yes. You do amazing work and we would love to have you on our photography media team."
"Thank you so much! When do I start?"
"Well we're going to do some paperwork today, introduce you to your partner and get you cleared to go photograph the Maple Leafs game Saturday."
"Alright that sounds great!"
The day passed by in an excited blur. I did all the paperwork necessary and all the confidentiality requirements that go along with working for Roger's sports and media. I met a lot of people but the most memorable were my partner Amy and a journalist named Peter. Amy seemed like someone I would have a lot of fun with and Peter was just cute and kinda funny. I made sure to get their numbers before I started my walk to the subway to get back home. I put on my favourite podcast, Cult Liter by Spencer Henry, and started walking. I don't know if it was the podcast or just being in the middle of downtown Toronto but it felt like I was being watched. I shook it off and went into the underground to get home.
Two days later I was walking into the Scotiabank arena to meet Amy outside. I was so nervous but it was so exciting. My love of sports and my passion for photography coming together so perfectly. I found Amy pretty quickly, her green hair making her easy to spot.
"Hey!"
"Hi! You ready to go in?"
"Yes! I'm so excited! I love hockey but I've never been able to afford to go to a game so this is actually super cool."
"Yeah I'm not really into sports but I love photography. I'm excited for you though, that's gonna be so fun for you!" She said elbowing my side. "Do you like either of the teams playing?"
"I'm not a fan of Toronto to be honest. I like a lot of players though. I really like Montreal though so this should be fun!"
"Yeah that'll be cool! So just so you know, we're going to have to go through a lot of security and pat downs. It sucks but it is what it is."
We really did have to do a lot of security stuff. I was kind of surprised but at the same time not really. We were going to be going through close to the players and seeing them after the game. I kind of followed Amy's lead through everything.
We got to our place where we would take pictures and started setting up our equipment. As soon as the guys came out onto the ice I was so excited. I started snapping pictures of all the guys. I was mostly supposed to take pictures of Toronto but hey I'm not letting an opportunity to photograph the literal perfect man Max Domi go. I was taking pictures of Fredrik Andersen when he skated into frame. He was staring at me and I lowered the camera making eye contact with him. It was a weird moment, probably only a couple seconds, but it felt like forever. It was a little unsettling but I was so intrigued. I really loved him as a player and it was kinda cool that he acknowledged me. I got nervous though and looked away.
"That was weird." Amy said quietly.
"Okay good so I'm not the only one who thought that was strange?"
"No that was definitely weird. I've never seen Nylander do that before."
"Weird.." I looked back up and he was shaking his head laughing. "It's probably just because I'm new."
"Yeah that could be it."
We focused again on taking pictures throughout the game although I definitely started actually watching and cheering which Amy found hilarious. She ended up taking a picture of me when Montreal got a goal. There were a couple more awkward times where he just stared at me. One time he got a goal while never taking his eyes away from mine. I was definitely impressed but I always was with him so it wasn't exactly a surprise.
Toronto ended up winning unfortunately. 7-4. After the game was done Amy and I went to upload the pictures to a company hard drive as backup.
"We are going out drinking to celebrate your first day!"
"I'm hardly dressed for a club."
"Who cares everyone's gonna be drunk. I want to celebrate with you, get to know you better."
"Alright fine I'm down. Let's go!"
We went to a pretty lowkey bar that was close to the arena. We went up to the bar and sat down ordering two vodka cranberries. We just talked about what had brought us to where we were now. What happened in our lives. I really trusted her and I found myself thinking we were going to be best friends.
"I don't mean to interrupt your story but uh, William is in here."
"Oh?"
"Yeah behind us, 3 o'clock." I turned slightly to look and found him already staring with a grin on his lips.
"God how long has he been looking at me?"
"Since they sat down about 5 minutes ago."
"Unbelievable." I said scoffing. "What's his problem?"
"Maybe he wants to know you?"
"Then why wouldn't he come over here and talk to me?"
"We could go talk to them?"
"Amy! As if my anxious brain would ever let me approach a group of hockey players if I'm not forced to for work."
"Well maybe you won't have to. He's coming over."
"Oh for fuck sake." I downed the rest of my drink as he sat down on my right. Amy got up and went I don't know where. I turned to look at him.
"Hello." He murmured, a glint of mischief in his eyes.
"Uh hi."
"What are you having?"
"Vodka cranberry."
"A baby drink." He turned to the bartender and signalled for two more to be brought over.
"Yeah well."
"I'm William."
"(Y/n)."
"You're new." It wasn't a question but I treated it like one.
"Yes today was my first day."
"How was it? I noticed you not cheering for us."
"It was good. I've never been to a game so it was fun as well as work. And yes you noticed right. Toronto is not my hockey team."
"Ouch you wound me."
"Want a bandaid?"
"Pfft no I think I'll manage." He said with a chuckle. "You're funny."
"Yes I am. Thank you for noticing." I said with a grin.
"I like your smile."
"Shut up that's not even my real smile." I laughed.
"Yeah but I got one right there and i like it too." He smiled then frowned looking behind me.
"What's wrong?"
"I'm afraid my friends don't like that I'm over here talking to you."
"I'm sorry I didn't mean to steal you from your friends."
"You didn't, it's not that, I promise. It's uh.. complicated."
"Complicated how?"
"We have this agreement."
"What kind of agreement?"
"Man you ask a lot of questions."
"I'm sorry." I said blushing immediately.
"Don't be. We have an agreement to not talk to girls when we go drinking."
"Oh how come?"
"We're the rookies. Doesn't really look good on us to be seen with women all the time."
"So they're mad that I'm talking to you?"
"They think I'm trying to sleep with you."
"Are you?"
"Not right this moment." He said with a wink making me laugh.
"Then what are you doing William?" I asked, still smiling at him, resting my head on my hand.
"Making a good first impression I hope. Starting to get to know you perhaps?"
"Why?"
"You're very interesting. Intriguing even. I want to know you."
"That's bold of you to assume. I'm pretty boring you know. Nothing special here."
"I don't agree at all." He said seriously, holding my gaze with warm eyes. "Hey do you maybe want to get out of here?"
"Nylander, I thought you weren't trying to fuck?"
"I'm not. I'm just sick of the glares." he said pointing back to his table. I looked back and locked eyes with an angry Auston Matthews.
"Brr. If looks could kill I'd probably be dead right now."
"Let's go." I must have looked unconvinced because he added, "I promise you'll leave me with your virtue intact."
"Pfft it's hardly intact. What about my friend though?"
"Check your phone, I heard it vibrate, it might've been her." I stared at him hard. "What?"
"You heard it vibrate? In my winter coat pocket?"
"Um maybe it was something else but I thought it was a phone. I have good hearing."
"Ooohkay." I said taking my phone out. "Well you were right. Amy met up with her boyfriend and is headed home."
"So will you come with me?"
"I guess so." I shrugged putting my coat back on. I jumped off the stool and waited for him. "Lead the way."
"You're smaller than I thought."
"Sorry..?"
"No no you've got nothing to apologize for. I'm just usually not off with my perceptions."
"You're a strange one William." I said as he opened the door for me and we stepped out into the frigid winter air.
"You could say that yes." He said with a smile. "Would you be alright to walk around for a little bit? I love when it snows. Something about the snow falling at night is so peaceful."
"Yeah that would be fun. I agree. I love walking in the snow at night time."
"Do you often walk around Toronto at night?"
"No not often. I'm too paranoid to do it much."
"That's probably a good idea. You never know what dangers lurk out here at night."
"Crackheads." I said nodding solemnly, making his burst out laughing.
"That's not exactly what I meant but yes crackheads are not to be messed with."
"I'm more paranoid when no one is around. I think I hear things and I'm on red alert all the time. Sorry that's kinda weird."
"No, you're fine. I understand, although I'm much more nervous about people than I am the lack of them."
"How come?"
"People lie. People will pretend to like you. Learn your secrets and destroy you. It's very rare that I trust a person to get close to me at all."
"Do you trust me..?"
"Yes. You're different, I can tell. There's just something about you that makes me think you'd keep a secret to your dying breath."
"You're right about that. I'd never share something that wasn't mine to share unless someone was in immediate danger. Kinda like a therapist. Confidential until someone might die."
"That's a good way to be. No one likes a snitch." He said making me laugh.
"Dude aren't you cold?"
"No I'm fine."
"But you're just wearing that flimsy jacket. It can't be very warm."
"I promise you I am perfectly comfortable."
We walked around for a while longer talking about hockey mostly before we split ways to head home. As I was going down the steps to the subway I could've sworn I'd seen Auston glaring from across the road. I shook the thought, that would be crazy. I couldn't get past the feeling of being watched though so I made sure to lock up the windows and doors, even checking them twice before going to bed.
#toronto maple leafs#william nylander#william nylander x reader#leafs#maple leaf imagine#maple leafs#mitch marner#auston matthews#kasperi kapanen#morgan rielly#vampire#halloween
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seven sins | chapter three.
pairing: bts x reader (kim seokjin x reader ; park jimin x reader)
fandom: bts
warnings: non idol!au ; historical!au ; princes!bts ; concubine!reader ; sex ; impregnation!kink
genre: smut ; angst
previous: 1 ; 2
summary: even in times such as yours, you still led a privileged life with nothing to ask for. that is until first your father, then your mother died and you were left to care for your two younger sisters. the position for royal physician seemed to be open and with your father having been a general and your mother having been a maid for the queen, you thought you might be able to get it.. little did you know that your visit to the palace would put a completely different offer on the table.
a/n: okay a little bit of story in this one lol. I DO actually have plans.. plot wise. I know that’s kind of hard to believe but really hahahaha
The two girls that took care of you were very nice, but also very quiet. They didn't say much other than that they were here to make sure you were alright after the encounter with a prince.
You assumed that it had something to do with you being very important if you indeed turn out to be pregnant.. but you couldn't exactly tell them: I won't be, I'm taking herbs for that, right? They'd throw you straight out of the palace.
You had a nice hot bath, which was very pleasant after that session with Hoseok and then returned to your room to rest.
And that really was what you needed.
But just when you had closed your eyes, you could hear music coming from outside.
At first you thought about ignoring it, the exhaustion was quite hard to push away, but eventually you did manage to sit up, rub your eyes and then slowly get out of bed again.
It sounded like there was a party going on, to be honest. People were laughing, cheering and the music was happy. It seemed like they were celebrating.
But what were they celebrating?
“Oh, you're here!” Eun was the first to spot you.. well, or maybe the first who spotted you who wanted to talk to you.
“What's going on? Why is everyone celebrating?”
“There's a few new girls here for Prince Seokjin. He's.. very decisive when it comes to his future wife, because he knows she will be the future queen. So we usually do something like this to impress the girls. And..-” she pointed at another Prince.. dancing?
“Oh.. he's.. good!”
“Prince Jimin usually ends up sleeping with the girls because they're so impressed with his dancing,” she whispered into your ear with a giggle, “But don't tell that to his older brother, or they might fight.”
She gently pulled you along with her, noticing your tired eyes, “How are you feeling, by the way? Was it.. alright?”
She must think it was your first time too, “Yes. It was quite alright.”
“When we're alone later, you have to tell me everything.”
“I will.. if you tell me who your secret prince is.”
“I will,” she winked, “I'll get you something to drink, wait here and enjoy the performance.”
Oh, that you could do.
Prince Jimin was a natural. All eyes were on him, he was moving his body to the rhythm and everyone was cheering for him. Everyone here had a great time.. except for Prince Seokjin.
He seemed to be the only one who wanted to leave.. despite all of this being for him.
You narrowed your eyes at him, observed him for a while and then let your eyes follow him when he got up and left.
And.. nobody seemed to notice.
Odd.
Weren't the girls here for him? Why was he acting so indifferent?
You waited until Eun's eyes were on you, then you pointed at the house that Seokjin had just walked into to signalize her you would be gone for a moment. You waited for her nod before following him.
To your surprise, no guards were at his side.
He was completely alone as he sat down on an empty bench, sighing deeply as he pressed his hands against his face.
You kept your distance, didn't think it was right to talk to him in a moment like this, especially because you didn't even know him. The last time you had seen him was years ago and both of you were chasing each other for fun as kids.. oh, and that time in his father’s chambers, of course, but there wasn’t exactly time for introductions.
There was something troubling him.. and it didn't seem as if he had anyone he could talk to about it.
“Are you going to continue standing there and observing me or are you going to offer to help me release my tension?” he hadn't turned around, yet he still knew that you were here.
You thought about running away, but that would probably be even worse, so you approached him and then bowed.
“Forgive me, your majesty.”
“Ah, it's you.. the newly appointed concubine for all seven princes. How lucky you must feel,” why did he sound so spiteful?
You thought about your words very carefully, but then just settled for, “It is an honor to..-”
“Don't lie to me. You aren't like the other girls here and every single one us knows. That's why my brothers wanted you.”
“But.. not you,” you stated.
“It never matters what I want,” he said full of self-pity, “I'm the heir to the crown. I never get to decide what I really want.”
Ah.. so that's what this was about. He was forced to find a partner, he was forced to marry and forced to bring an heir into this world.
“May I speak freely, your majesty?” Jin looked you up and down, but then just shrugged, so you took that as a yes, “I'm the oldest of three, too. And while I may not know the burden of the crown, I know the burden of always trying to protect your family. I can see that you're angry at the world for putting you in this position, yet you are also angry at yourself for not doing more to help the cause, the cause being finding a wife. And this is not for your sake, but for the sake of your brothers. You know that if you fulfill that burdensome task, your brothers will be able to live in peace for the rest of their lives, without having to worry much about anything anymore.”
Seokjin seemed to be surprised, because everything you had just said was true.. despite you not knowing him.
“How did you..- Who are you?”
“I'm the oldest sister. I know what you're feeling in some sense, because I've been feeling it for a long time too.”
Actually.. maybe now was a good time. True, he was not the king, but he seemed to understand your struggles. Maybe he could help you! Maybe he could talk to the king and put in a good word for you!
“Your majesty, I was wondering if..-”
“There you are, you're expected,” Prince Namjoon and Prince Hoseok approached the two of you, you immediately bowing and blushing a little when you saw Hoseok smirk.
“How are you, (Y/N)?” he wiggled his eyebrows.
“I'm very good, your majesty.”
“Not today.. this is hyung's day. So come on, let's get back to the party,” both brothers tried to cheer the visibly upset Seokjin up and he did smile a little when he walked back.. but you just sighed in disappointment.
This could have been your chance.
But knowing now that Seokjin understood your struggles was valuable information. This might help you in the future.
Last night had ended relatively uneventful thankfully. You had been scared that one of the princes might have the glorious idea to invite you over, which would have been alright by you in general, but not yesterday. After that tumble with Hoseok, you had been so glad to just lay down and then sleep through the entire night.
At least today, you were fully ready to face whatever you had to.
And what you 'had to' face was Prince Jimin, apparently.
In his room.
Which was.. massive, first of all, and incredibly beautiful.
He wasn't wearing much when you entered, just a very, very thin white blouse and some pants that weren't even closed properly.
“I was quite disappointed when you left early last night,” he said with a small pout as he casually strolled towards you, “I thought I might impress you with my dancing skills.”
“You have, your majesty.”
“No, no, no, Jimin is fine,” he sat down on his bed and licked his lips as he cocked his head to the side, “Did you really like it?”
“I've.. never seen anything quite like it. You are incredibly talented.”
“So are you, from what I heard,” he grinned, “My brother spoke quite fondly about you.”
“I didn't do much, your..- Jimin.”
Jimin chuckled and nodded, “Well.. maybe that can change today,” he extended his hand and waited until you were standing right in front of him, before he looked up at you, “May I undress you?”
May he..-? Wasn't that why you were here? Quite kind of him to ask, actually.
You smiled and nodded, letting him do whatever he wanted to do.
But it wasn't much.
Because once your dress and your undergarments were on the floor and you were completely naked in front of him, he just admired your body for a very long time. His fingers were caressing every part of your body, smiling each and every time he found a detail as if he wanted to ingrain it into his memory.
This was.. very romantic and not like you had imagined this to go at all.
“You are very beautiful, (Y/N).”
You weren't sure what was allowed here and what wasn't, nobody ever went over the rules with you, but Jimin didn't seem to mind when you were cupping his cheeks. He looked a little surprised, but he didn't push you away.
You leaned down to kiss him ever so softly, but at the same time, with a lot of passion. Only for a moment, then you leaned back and looked directly into his eyes, “Thank you.”
Jimin smiled, then he pulled the shirt over his head and got up to pull down his trousers.
And then it was you admiring him.
You hadn't seen much of Hoseok unfortunately, but Jimin let you take it all in. He let you caress his muscles with your fingertips and when they reached his hard dick, he let out a soft, high-pitched moan that made you smile.
Whereas Hoseok was clearly the one who wanted to have power, Jimin seemed to be someone who liked to be intimidating at first, but ultimately didn't mind if you took over control.
And so he let you gently push him back onto the bed until he had slid all the way to the back and waited for you to crawl after him, grinning from ear to ear when you sat down on top of him.
“This is a first for me, you know? The others would never do that..” he watched you position yourself.
“Do you want me to stop?” you gently bit down on his lower lip and pulled slightly on it with your teeth, your wet folds rubbing over his hard penis.
“No,” his hands gently ran over your curves, “I never want this to stop.”
Especially not when you finally slid down and he was all the way inside of you.
While your head fell back in pure pleasure, Jimin could not keep his eyes off you. Not even for a second. He wanted to see just what exactly it was that you were feeling.
Yes, he knew he was a good lover and he knew the pleasure his girls were experiencing wasn't fake, but sometimes.. they exaggerated a little.
But you.. this.. this was the best sex he's ever had and it just began. And from the way you were moaning and the way you kept telling him how good he felt inside of you.. you were having a good time too.
“Look at me,” Jimin demanded, waiting until you did so, before gently kissing you, his hand wandering up to one of your breasts to softly massage it, “Your skin is so beautiful.. soft.. warm.”
Your pace was slow, you forced yourself not to speed things up.
This wasn't the time for rough sex like yesterday, you enjoyed this a lot more with its softness and the romance it held.
The way that Jimin smiled and moaned, the way he continued to give you compliments and the way this felt so intimate.. you cherished it all. Every little moment.
Your forehead leaned against his, your hips now doing circular motions, “Can I be honest with you?” he whispered, his fingertips running up and down your spine, making goosebumps form on your skin.
“Please always be,” you moaned lowly.
“My father said the only one who is supposed to spill himself inside of you is my oldest brother.. because if anyone should get you pregnant,” he stopped you, so that he could tell you this important piece of information, “It's him.”
Well.. Hoseok didn't tell you that. Not that you were pregnant, but..-
“But?”
“But I really want to come inside of you,” he said in desperation, now him being the one who pushed you back and forth with his hands on your hips, but not roughly. “Fill you up with my seed.. I want to see you carry my child.. know that I am the one who put it inside your belly.”
“Do you want it to be our little secret, then?” you giggled, kissing him once, twice and continuing to fasten your pace, until all Jimin could do is moan out: “Yes!” and come inside of you like he wanted, completely spill himself inside of you until there was nothing left.
You hadn't reached your orgasm with Hoseok yesterday, but you did with Jimin, at the same time as him, actually.
You fell forward against his chest, assumed that he'd push away and not let you stay because of the whole thing with Hoseok yesterday, but Jimin wasn't Hoseok.
He held you in his arms and gently caressed your back, kissed your temple and stopped you when you wanted to pull his penis out of you.
“No.. I want to be like this for a little longer. Feel you like this,” he whispered, “May I?”
“Yes,” you smiled.
And so you stayed.. until you fell asleep in his arms.
And that's probably not what concubines were supposed to do.
#bts imagine#bts x reader#bts#bangtan#bangtan boys#kpop#kpop imagines#bangtan sonyeondan#reader#mine#bangtan x reader#bangtan boys x reader#park jimin imagine#park jimin x reader#jimin x reader#jimin imagine#park jimin#jimin
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i was gonna give this a fancy title or something but i decided not to bother. anyway today i’m going to be examining the vocaloid song alice in ny by teamOS and comparing it to the original alice in wonderland series. this song seems like it merely has alice in wonderland imagery slapped onto it, but i’m going to be taking a look and seeing if there are any other parallels--whether intentional or otherwise.
so the first thing notable is that alice, in this video, is a boy, as played by kagamine len. i will be calling this character alistair in the future as it will be easier for me to remember. i have no problem with this, it is an interesting decision.
the white rabbit that alistair follows is played by hatsune miku, whose role is decidedly different from the original story. despite this, we can see similarities: the white rabbit leads alistair to chase her, and the shattering heart seen in the pv suggests that they may have been in a relationship of some sort, or perhaps alistair just had a crush on her. either way, his chase leads him into the ‘wonderland’ that is new york (new yorkers, weigh in?) where he becomes a fashion designer. this part doesn’t have any direct parallels that i can figure out, but i do think it’s interesting when you compare it to how alice’s classic outfit has become so recognizable and taken on so many different forms over the years and adaptations. (this also will be seen later in the pv.)
alistair in this is described as timid, dull, and unstylish, which serves as a great contrast when he’s placed against the tall skyscrapers and glimmering lights of new york. the parallel between alistair and alice, very average people suddenly in a world that seems far too strange and sometimes far too big, might very well be intentional. furthermore, new york is described as a place where everyone puts on airs. many of the characters in alice in wonderland act superior to her in some way, from the talking flowers to the queen of hearts herself.
we are next introduced to the characters of the cheshire cat, as played by megurine luka (WHY NOT NEKOMURA IROHA, HUH. WHY. TELL ME WHY) and bill the lizard, played by mayu. this part is where it really hit me that there might be more to this song than just some scattered alice imagery, because pretty much no one ever includes bill the lizard. bill the lizard is horribly underrated. i was very excited to witness this part.
next, we are introduced to the ‘selfish queen’, labeled specifically as the queen of hearts, and portrayed by meiko. okay. i am so happy that there doesn’t seem to have been any mixing of the queens here! i’m full of delight. moving on, though. she is introduced specifically as saying she won’t forgive timid shortcuts. this actually has a really clear parallel to the original book--we see the queen angry at several card soldiers because they planted white roses instead of red. the timid shortcut here is in the way that the cards decided to paint the roses red, their fear of the queen leading them to take a quicker solution than replanting actually red roses.
the caterpillar, as played by kaito, has a really interesting design here. i’m not exactly a huge fan of it, although i do like the way they designed his pipe, but it’s interesting...
next, we move to alice, played by kagamine rin. she’s chasing the white rabbit in her own way--namely, by wanting to be her. she meets with the caterpillar by chance, who asks her to be a model. this caterpillar is way more helpful to alice than the book caterpillar... once again we have alice described as timid, dull, and unstylish, but this time the contrast is with the fashionable world of the modeling industry. i like to think of it as in comparison to the scene in through the looking glass where she meets the talking flowers. (they are a bit rude.)
next we have the mad hatter’s crew! they’re all together as they should be, with gakupo as the mad hatter, gumi as the march hare, and ia as the dormouse. i adore the designs here, as an added note. they’re incredible. the ‘mad fashionista’ won’t accept ‘safe tastes’, and so alice ends up in a whirlwind of fashion instead of tea. still, she’s definitely swept off her feet by the experience!
then comes bill the lizard, who, for the white rabbit’s sake, steals the dress that alice was going to wear. this is also a parallel--in alice in wonderland, bill is the rabbit’s gardener, who is sent in after alice when she accidentally starts literally outgrowing the rabbit’s house. (that’s what you get for sending in a random person without checking to see if they are who you think they are!)
unfortunately, the part where the caterpillar and the queen of hearts compete against each other has literally nothing to do with the books. it would be super cool if it did. but it doesn’t. same with the whole alice vs the white rabbit thing, that just doesn’t happen.
after that, there aren’t really many leftover parallels. i do however like to think that the repeated mentions of the ‘alice in the mirror’ is a reference to through the looking glass. that would be cool.
also, the cheshire cat still smiling no matter what happens... well, that really checks out, doesn’t it?
#alice#also the whole song is so gender but that has nothing to do with parallels it's just really gender
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Thotty Thursday: Part 2
The second installment of Thotty Thursday is upon us. Rejoice, heathens!
Now, let me just say that I’m picking dudes at random while trying to keep things balanced between old shows and new ones but ... y’all really bout to notice some patterns the more we do this so I’m just gonna wait for someone to call me out tbh. 😰
FYI, I like to think of myself as an equal opportunist thirster and if a dude is hot then he’s hot. I’m not one to question this shit. But when you get right down to it I have like four types: high IQ smarty pants, dummy thicc, dad and bad boy bastard. Our next snack belongs in the last category, without question.
He’s honestly prettier than me and that is not an exaggeration but don’t let his good looks fool you
This Arabian Nights styled dime piece has a mean streak a mile wide. Because of Reasons, ofc, but that don’t change the facts
Not only did he once punch a child in the face for no other reason than to assert his dominance (fact) he also pretended to cry in front of the person he hates most just to laugh about how they fell for his (flawlessly executed) act
He honestly may or may not have a few screws loose but that’s part of the appeal, you see. It adds a dash of spice to the meal
And you know what they say about crazy bitches in bed 😏
Full disclosure, I started reading Magi: Labyrinth of Magic before the anime aired and his name was originally translated as Judal so that’s what he’s always going to be in my mind. The official translation is Judar, and I respect that, but at the end of the day I do not know her
Judar who?
Can I also just take a moment to point out that gloriously long, thick braid he’s sporting tho
This man has hair for days and there’s just something I find incredibly attractive about that
I want to take it all down and carefully comb through it, play with it and style it again
Really show him the attention he deserves
If he decided to suffocate me with it, well, I guess I wouldn’t complain about that either
Now, the setting alone had my interest PIQUED right out the gate because I love Middle Eastern inspired aesthetics and I truly don’t think it’s utilized as a setting half as much as it deserves to be. It’s very beautiful imo and the anime team did a pretty good job of capturing that vibe but if I’m being honest I think the manga was better (up to a point)
However there ain’t nothing quite like seeing your man move on screen or hearing his voice with your own two ears and when I say Judal put on a show each time he showed up ... 🥵
I think I can safely say my pussy clenched whenever I got so much as a whiff of him possibly making an appearance, PHEW
He’s just so pretty and mean
My favorite combo tbh
“But why do you like mean boys so much 🤔?” You ponder aloud and my answer to that is “I don’t know. I just do.”
Judal gets my kitty purring for a variety of reasons but the biggest is probably that I can’t look at him without imagining myself as his feisty little slave girl, wearing nothing but sheer silk and delicate gold chains, completely at his mercy ...
Oops, did I say that out loud? 😳
I mean, can you really blame me when he’s running around in those baggy harem pants though?? Can you really???
So the first thing you probably thought was: damn. This guy kinda dressed like a thot 👀
And you’re not wrong
Does he HAVE to dress like that? Strictly speaking, no. But I am definitely not complaining about his fashion choices
His titties are so close to popping out of that tiny little shirt that we’d be getting nip slips left, right and center if he had any more meat on his bones than that and trust me when I say he did that shit on purpose
This boy is SUCH a fucking tease and he loves the attention it gets him - first and foremost because he’s used to being the CENTER of attention but we’ll get more into that a little bit later
Hes just a tad 👌 narcissistic, loves to show off, definitely bipolar and is in a constant state of feeling himself so he’s hitting all his marks as far as I’m concerned
In short, he’s perpetually oozing big dick fuck boy energy and I live for it
That’s why he’s always showing up with that stank ass attitude, he knows damn well he can pull the baddest bitch around AND her man too
He’d fuck you and your boyfriend at the same time just to prove a point, that’s actually how petty he is
Honestly though I’d like to see ANYbody maintain their resolve when he’s laying on the charm and Judal’s just cruel enough to do it for shits and giggles
Probably wakes up in the middle of his sprawling imperial bed at two in the afternoon and says something like “damn, I need a little pick me up today” and then proceeds to manipulate and harass his lucky unfortunate victim of choice
He’s relentless too and will stop at absolutely nothing to get what he wants, even if that means breaking you in the process
Again, I like the challenge he represents
But also I just like a man who can make me cry 🤷♀️
And I don’t doubt he absolutely would. Tears probably turn him on tbh and I’m positive he’s got a bit of a yandere streak too
Are y’all seeing those patterns yet??
So did you guys notice that wand he keeps twirling around like a goddamn baton?
He’s a magic user, or in this case a magi which means he’s literally at the top of the food chain in this universe
He’s special special
Every ounce of confidence he has is rightfully deserved and even tho he’s not the strongest per say, he IS extremely powerful and his destiny as a magi is to influence the world
THE WHOLE ASS WORLD YA’LL
That’s why he’s got such a big fucking ego
I promise these aren’t major spoilers, so you don’t have to worry about that
When he was still a (too precious for words) child, he was abducted by an evil cult so that they could manipulate him and use his powers to influence shit in a bad way. The exact details of what they did to him are hazy, but based on the snippets we did get it seems like they basically put Judal on a pedestal and raised him as if he were some kind of god or a king
I’m talking waiting on him hand and foot, giving him whatever he wanted, essentially worshiping him and using persuasive mind control magic to convince him that he’s the best thing to happen since sliced bread
And it worked
Can you tell exactly how fucked up this kid is right now
Keep in mind here that I’m not saying his screwed up personality isn’t the result of some seriously bad mojo
Magi are supposed to be what tips the scales of fate in this setting which, generally, means for the betterment of the world and this whack ass cult pointedly steered him down a path he otherwise would not have gone
But it’s this tragic past of his that really brings the whole package together
He could be a mean pretty boy for no other reason than because he wants to and I’d still drop into a split on his cock
I like mean for the sake of mean too
It’s just that knowing what made him the way he is gives us the perfect amount of insight to truly feel sympathetic despite all the bad shit he has done and will continue to do
Personally, it makes me want to be the one to show him genuine, tender affection no matter how much he’s initially appalled by the mere suggestion so in a lot of ways it’s similar to how I feel towards Hiei
But that doesn’t mean I want him to change and start being n - 🤢 start being nice - 🤮
He’s perfect just the way he is and there’s just something about big, confident egos that gets me going like little else
And Judal seems to truly believe he’s the greatest gift the world has ever received and he’s not wrong about that imo so yeah he definitely has an attitude problem
But that also means he’s a spoiled brat tho and he’s definitely one of those dudes who needs to be dommed on occasion to really get the full experience 👀
I am not too shy to pin him down and milk his cock for all it’s worth, that is all I’m saying fam
And can I just point out how breathtakingly gorgeous he’d look all flushed and sweaty, whimpering like a needy little bitch in heat while having his prostate relentlessly teased for hours on end?
Goodness, it suddenly got HOT in here, is that just me??? 💦
Ofc the only way that’s gonna happen is if he allows it - which I don’t see being a common occurrence - but that’s why you gotta take advantage of that shit when it does 👀
On the topic of Judal being spoiled, I want to mention that there are actually TWO very different backdrops that I can thot around with him in, and I like that
There’s the fantasy Middle East setting ofc which I personally can’t get enough of
I’m wearing the slave girl Leiah outfit in my mind right now btw
But he also spends a lot of time in this worlds version of ancient China complete with all the dramatic robes and elegant architecture to really set the mood
He has an entire imperial palace on lock and if that doesn’t get you even a little bit horny then idk what to tell you
The royal family for the most part treats him like one of their own despite not being related in any way, if that tells you exactly how much clout he pulls in this setting, and even tho they’re essentially using him for their own gain Judal doesn’t seem to mind it one bit
He likes being at the top and having the freedom to do whatever he wants so if that means doing a little dirty work for the Kou Empire then so be it
And I’d be lying if I said I wouldn’t be a ride or die on these little errands
Like, just imagine this pretty boy pulling up to you on his flying carpet (that’s not a joke or something I just pulled out of my ass btw) and asking if you want to come back to his crib for some fun
You say yes, because you might be a thirsty slut but you’re certainly not STUPID
And he straight up takes you to a fucking palace
Be honest with me guys, how fast do the panties come off tho?
Be real with me here
This is actually just the plot of Aladdin but with the gender roles reversed 🤣
Fr fr though, A Whole New World plays softly in the back of my mind every time I think about this dude, except it’s much darker and ... explicit 😏
But my point here is that Judal’s got basically everything he could ever possibly want so he really just needs a pretty little concubine at his side to complete the picture
And I dead ass feel like it should be ME
When I say this man could get it ....
OOF
He is TROUBLE in its purest form and I regret nothing about my choice in fictional men
Absolutely nothing
He could honestly fuck me up seven ways to Sunday and I’d thank him for the honor
Spit on me, king. Please. I don’t need nothing else to sustain me
Unless you want to throw some of that choice dick in for free? 👀
Lord have MERCY
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Daminette au: Slow burn
I’m writing this instead of my fic because I just got hit by a little bitch, named inspiration.
Au by the great and powerful wizard of Oz @ozmav
Tags owo: @mindfulmagics @realrandomposts @chloe-bourgeois-is-big-gay @slytherinsheashire @kelelamentia @justatempo-writes @jaynintodd @maribat-archive @starry-bi-sky @ayuchan07 @kaitlinmarley @miraculous-mangoes
ՁՁՁՁՁՁՁՁՁՁՁՁՁՁՁՁՁՁՁՁՁՁՁՁՁՁՁՁՁՁՁՁՁՁՁՁՁՁՁՁՁՁՁՁՁՁՁՁՁՁՁՁՁՁ
15 year old, the meeting
Damian Wayne was never the social type. He mostly kept to himself and tended to stray away from any social interaction. There was plenty of that at home. He repeats to himself every time he gets upset over not having a friend.
He walked up the steps of Gotham Academy so he could escape whatever embarrassment Jason was planning on putting him to. The kid around him began whispering, and although immune to it (they talked about him a lot), he couldn’t help but eavesdrop at th conversation going on two feet away. He didn’t want to be obvious so he didn’t lean in too much, but he heard snippets.
...new girl...
...Paris...
...just moved...
A new girl? Interesting. He would look into that when he gets the chance. He made his way to the science classroom, bumping into an unfamiliar body. The people around them quieted down, staring curiously. The body ended up being a girl, who unfortunately dropped her books. She blushed in embarrassment and started speaking in a language he knew, but never really spoke.
She was rambling in French.
She was unfamiliar to him.
Oh... she was the new student.
She stopped when she noticed the silence and looked down, probably more embarrassed than before, if that was even possible.
“Damian Wayne.”
He had no reaction to the voice of Olive Silverlock (a real character I swear I looked it up) who marched up to him with a steely gaze.
“Are you trying to scare our new student on her first day?” The silver haired class president didn’t give him a chance to answer since she turned to face the flustered French girl, “You’re Marinette, right?”
The girl managed to nod. Olive grinned and locked their arms together, “Let’s get you settled in your dorm, ‘kay? And then I’ll give you a tour.”
The girl smiled at that, her blue eyes shone brightly. She let out a soft ‘merci’ to Olive and she turned to Damian before being dragged away.
“Je m’excuse.”
16 years old, the first step; starting out
Damian Wayne was not one to go out with a girl. That was Dick’s job. And yet, he looked at his best friend, whose head rested on his shoulder as she thought of a new design.
They were at the park today. Marinette mumbles something about the need to be inspired. They were in the manor at the time and Titus, with his amazing timing, wanted to go outside. It was a win win for everybody.
Damian watched as she focused on the blank page she seemed to be at war with. It was actually funny to see her this frustrated. He tried to hide his chuckle and failed. It was rewarded with a bone-chilling Marinette Dupain-Cheng glare. He put his hands up in surrender and smiled sheepishly. She went back to her glaring match with the paper.
Damian sighed and leaned back against the bench, “Don’t stress too much about it Angel, inspiration will surly make its way to your lap in no time,” he gestured towards the book set on her thighs.
It seemed like someone was in fact listening to him. A pretty pink petal had landed in the middle of the sketchbook. Marinette picked it up curiously before letting out a gasp. She turned to Damian with the biggest smile he’d seen today, “My best friend Damian,” she started, “I was hit, by a little bitch called inspiration.”
Damian let out a laugh. Only Mari.
17 years old, the second step; accepting
Damian Wayne didn’t like a lot of people. And Chloe Bourgeois was far from being one of the few. She arrived in Gotham, claiming to be a friend of Marinette’s. He was doubtful but the girl kept insisting and frankly, he wanted her to shut up.
Turns out the blonde girl was right because the next think he knew she was being tackled by his best friend. They were both on the floor, laughing in the lobby of the student dorms.
They sat in the cafe and he couldn’t help but notice how much lighter Marinette seemed to feel with this girl. She looked happy.
Damian decided that Chloe Bourgeois wasn’t so bad. As long as he got to see his Angel smile, he was content.
18 years old, the third step; falling
Damian Wayne was not an emotional person. He didn’t cry when he failed that one exam. He didn’t cry when he got badly hurt in a fight (though he tried to reassure Mari he was okay but she was not having it and he kept flinching every time he moved). Hell, he didn’t even cry during graduation.
So you can imagine the shock he was feeling when he felt a tear rolling down his cheek as Marinette stepped out of her dorm room in her prom dress. He could see Olive smirking at him from the corner of his eye but he paid no attention to her, he was to busy gawking at the beauty in front of him.
He never left her side during the party. And if she ever walked off to talk to some friends, he would always be watching her. Some guys kept telling him how ‘whipped’ he was. He did was he did best and ignored them.
The last dance of the night was surely something he’d remember for the rest of the night. They held each other closely while the music was playing in the background. He stared at her bluebell eyes as though nothing else mattered. It was just them.
It was safe to say he wasn’t expecting a slow kiss. But it happened. He enjoyed it. And he kissed back.
19 years old, the fourth step; realizing
She left.
Well, not entirely. She just wasn’t in Gotham at the moment. And she wouldn’t be back until Christmas.
Marinette had gone off to college abroad, in Paris, specifically, to pursue her fashion career.
And even tough they video chatted every weekend, it wouldn’t fill the gaping hole in his chest. He wanted her there, with him. He wanted to snuggle up to her while they watched one of those cheesy rom-coms she enjoyed so much. He wanted to sit in the kitchens and watch her hum a Disney tune while she baked. He wanted to hold her whenever she cane running to him with good news. He wanted to be with her while she sat down and sketched. He thought it was adorable the way she scrunched her brows in concentration, or how she stuck her tongue out when she was sketching, or, whenever she had artist’s block, when she’d doodle little things on his hand. He wanted to hold her dammit. He wanted to take her out, court her. He wanted to be with her, and for her to be with him. He wanted to hug her so tightly and tell her how much he loved her.
Huh. Love.
That’s something he hadn’t thought about before. Did he love Marinette? Or was this just admiration?
No. Fuck that. Fuck admiration.
He loved her. He fucking loved her.
He was in love with Marinette Dupain-Cheng.
20 years old, the final step; confessing
Damian Wayne was not nervous. Of course he wasn’t! He was Damian Wayne! He was Robin for fuck’s sake. Surely that would be harder than a little confession.
Right?
That was what he had initially thought.
And he was wrong. Oh so very wrong.
Damian Wayne was a fucking wreck.
Marinette had been rambling about one of her design projects. One she, obviously, passed with flying colours. That wasn’t what he had been paying attention to though. Maybe it was how the July breeze seemed to brush her hair, making it fly. Maybe it was the way she used her hands so animatedly whenever she told him a story. Maybe it was the way her eyes sparkled when she got exited over something.
“I love you.”
That made her stop. And it made him regret opening his mouth.
She stared at him, mouth agape, face as red as the strawberries in the bowl she was holding.
“I...you...what?”
Well, he couldn’t take it back now. And he did mean it. God this was noth how he had imagined confessing.
“I love you,” he took a sharp breath, “I’ve loved you for quite some time now actually. I only realized it last year.”
He raked his had through this hair and let out a shaky breath, “I honestly don’t know how it happened, but it did. And I’m glad it it.”
He looked back at her to see how she’d react. Her eyes were still wide and it didn’t seem like she’d be saying anything so he decided to continue.
“You don’t have to answer immediately! I was uhh... wondering if... you would let me court you... you don’t have to accept I mean you already have so much going on but if you’re willing—”
He was cut off. It took him a second to process what was happening.
She was kissing him.
Holy shit! She was kissing him!
But before he could kiss back, she pulled away, much to his disappointment.
“I love you too, silly,”she gave him a big toothy grin, he swallowed the lump in his throat. He could practically hear his hear beating in his chest.
She intertwined their hands and leaned in, “And I would love for you to court me.”
They were about to kiss again, but, this time, someone else decided to interrupt.
A faint ‘yes!’ was heard near the bushes, the voice sounded scarily familiar to Dick’s, which followed by a slap and an offended ‘ow’.
“Should we tell them we know they’re spying on us?”
His Angel laughed and shook her head, “Let them have their fun.”
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Last post before I start school!
#maridami#daminette#maribat fic#marinette x damian#marinette dupain cheng#miraculous ladybug au#made me emotional
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Nikah: May
Story Masterlist
Nikah: noun, Arabic, meaning the contract of marriage.
Bucky marries Peter’s former tutor because her student visa’s about to expire and the government isn’t granting her a green card. Can she find a way to permanent residence by marriage, and if so, will it be at the cost of their hearts?
Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Reader
Warnings: Angst.
A/N: Written under the Arranged/Accidental Marriage trope for @mermaidxatxheart ‘s writing challenge.
The scent of spices and tea slides like silk into his bedroom, a thief in the night rousing him from his slumber. It's a quarter to three, and he can hear sizzling from the kitchen, adding to the comfortable heat of an early summer night. He curses himself as he scrambles to get up, untangling the maze of sheets around his legs. Almost trips over her prayer mat on the floor on his way out, the lights in the living area blinding, but he has now identified the scent. Lentils. She's reheating the daal maash from last night for her sehri, and a peek over her shoulder from several paces behind her shows him a paratha on the pan.
"You didn't wake me," He laments, noting how the situations have been reversed since the first time they woke up together. It isn't morning now, but the principle remains. One upset that the other is cooking alone, albeit for different reasons entirely.
"To no avail, evidently," She answers, sunflower smile wilting on her tired face, although her spirit is anything but. Not a morning person in the first place, this preparation for the day's fast is an exhausting ordeal for his wife, and that's why he wakes up with her.
To tell the truth, he’s still in awe over the phenomenon of Ramadan, and how she not only survives, but thrives in it. Eating and drinking nothing as long as there is daylight, and yet going about her day as if it is ordinary, with no change in her routine except for a brief nap in the afternoon.
He knows hunger, too, the Depression one of the few things he recalls before everything else. Hunger out of obligation, not choice. Not out of the will to rid yourself of all material needs, not out of the will to sympathize with the unfortunate, and become more grateful for your own fortune, as she says she is. Fasting is a sacred, beautiful ritual, even though he does not like that she is suffering.
Even in preparation for said suffering, she is calm. Tired, but content, elbow grazing his as they set the table together. Sehri is peaceful, but he will not appreciate that until he looks back upon it in time from an iftaari that is anything but.
He’s beside himself with worry by the time she gets back from her job interview, in spite of her regular texts informing him of her delay. Perhaps it’s because he’s sent too many I’m fine messages to not recognize someone else’s. And indeed, he knows for certain that everything is very much not fine the moment she enters the apartment. The storm in her eyes is a brutal warning, even though she uses a brief hug to umbrella him from it before heading into their bedroom to change in preparation for dinner.
His friends have invited themselves to iftaari, on the condition that they bring the food. It’s something she’s been looking forward to, cautiously, hesitantly, but it seems that whatever happened today has eliminated even that. Bucky assumes the interview didn’t go well, and this suspicion is strengthened when she brushes past him to start removing bits and bobs of a busy household - tea coasters, pens and pencils, loose notes - from sight. No further comment on how the day went.
“How did the interview go?” Bucky takes the initiative.
“I didn’t get the job?” She answers, stopping her neat-freak cleaning in front of the hallway mirror at the sight of her hair. The dark locks fall down her back as she opens the bun.
“Why not?”
“Guess they had a better candidate.” She shrugs, refusing to meet his eyes in the mirror as he stands behind her.
“Darlin’,” Bucky presses as she ties off the braid, letting it fall across her shoulder. It swings over and like a pendulum in front of her back as he follows her to the living room.
“Dearest,” She teases, the joke not reaching her eyes as she begins to fold a throw blanket.
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
“What happened?” He persists, pressing the pillow he’s adjusting into the back of the couch. She spares him a glance over her shoulder while she puts the drying dish towels back in their drawer.
“Nothing happened, Bucky. Job rejections are a part of life. This isn’t my first and it sure as he- heck won’t be the last,” She says, back still to him, stumbling over what could be considered a swear word. Apparently, anger and swearing is also off-limits.
“Then what’s the matter?” Bucky gets up from the couch while she comes to sit on it, Quran in her hands.
“Nothing.”
“Yeah, right, and I’m the damn President.”
“What’s your problem, Buck?” She sighs, closing the book she has just opened, face worn and torn.
“My problem? Honey, you walk in here pissed off like Sam after a bad mission and ask me what my problem is?”
“I’m not arguing with you now,” She says dismissively, looking down again, beginning to read, and Bucky respects her, he does, really, but he can’t let this one go. Not now, not like this. Too many problems arise from a communication gap, from not talking, from leaving people to their own devices. He can’t deal with that.
“Like hell you won’t. I’m not tryin’ to start a yelling match here, sweetheart, but we have to communicate.”
“You sound like a therapist.” She doesn’t look up.
“Maybe you should listen to one,” He retorts, turning his back. This gets her attention. Rising from the couch, she walks around to face him, face livid and tears already ready.
“Fine. You want to know what happened? Yeah, I didn’t get the job. Apparently, I’m too “high profile”, and-”
“Oh, so this is my fault?” Bucky asks, voice tempered and low.
“No. It’s B.S. is what it is. They said my high profile would raise controversy, and reader might not trust reviews I write because of my background,” She finishes, arms flailing agitatedly, brow furrowed and furious. Bucky’s confused.
“You’re overqualified, doll. I don’t know why you’re applying for these jobs when you’re already a lecturer,” He says. Book critics aren’t PhDs, not usually, and she deserves more.
“I’m visiting faculty. On a contract, which can be renewed, but a visiting job doesn’t provide me with enough basis for a work visa.”
“Work visa? What about the green card you’re doing all this for?” He asks, not realizing he’s using the word you, instead of we. Somewhere along the line, sometime in the past five months, this has become more than a favor. She has become more than someone in need.
“Those things expire. Have to be renewed, and mine won’t be once this is-” She stops, face falling.
“What? This is what?”
“Nothing.” The anger resurfaces as he understands what she’s alluding to.
“Once this is over, right? That’s what you were about to say? Why’d you stop? You think I don’t know? You think I’m deluded into thinkin’ you could want to stay with me?” Every question mark is another step forward, three steps back.
“Bucky, I-” Saved by the bell. She wipes her eyes with a corner of her dupatta, and goes to answer the door. Bucky steels himself, the anger now a resting mass of resentment in his stomach, pasting a rubber smile on his face as they enter. Sam, Peter, Sharon, Wanda, and Vision, all come in and greet them with noise and the mouth-watering scent of achari chicken. Bucky hopes, for their sakes, that they went easy on the spices, until she reappears in front of him, and he remembers he has bigger problems.
Of course, there is no space to hash it out in a houseful of guests, so they do what they must. The show must go on. Bucky convinces himself they’re doing well at keeping up the pretense with silver tongues and iron smiles, until he overhears a sliver of conversation from the kitchen, where she and Peter have just gone to retrieve cutlery and glasses.
“You fought, didn’t you?” Peter asks, and he curses the kid’s brightness.
“It’s nothing, Pete.”
“You’d tell me if it were though.” It’s a statement, but the question hangs, suspended in the air, until she shoots it down.
“Of course.” A smile, and they return to help the others set the table.
Peter’s concern, the idea that he, Bucky, could be a cause of concern, tugs the carpet out from under his feet and he feels like he’s falling. Down into his memories like the Harry Potter movies she will stop her channel surfing on, even though she insists she doesn’t like them all that much. Down into the memory of Peter’s first show of brotherly caution.
Bucky had insisted on wearing a suit. Nothing fancy, a simple black two-piece, the collar of his white dress shirt undone. He feels like he’s preparing for a funeral instead of a wedding, tying the laces on his dress shoes. Peter only reinforces this sentiment, grave face set to mourn the fact that one of his mentors is being tied to a ticking time bomb.
Bucky knows that isn’t fair to Peter, the boy has never treated him with anything other than respect - it’s the nerves talking, mostly. It appears that they aren’t the only ones with something to say today. Peter shuffles awkwardly, gusto evaporating at Bucky’s undivided, intimidating attention.
“Spit it out, son,” He tries to help things along, and Peter’s eyes widen.
“Look, I know you’re doing this because you want to help, and you have no idea how grateful I am,” Peter begins, wringing his hands at his sides. Bucky leans back, raises an eyebrow.
“But?”
“But you have to be careful with her,” Peter rushes out, looking at him anxiously as he gets up to comb back his hair one more time.
“I thought this was the 21st century. Let women do their own thing and all. I mean, I always believed in letting them be, but it wasn’t the norm the way it is now,” He says, putting the brush back in the drawer and turning to Peter.
“Yeah, I know, but still. She’s been through a lot,” Haven’t we all, Bucky thinks, tightening his watch around his wrist. “ And she needs your support. Be careful with her, Mr. Barnes, please,” Peter urges, eyes appealing for his sympathy. Bucky walks up to him, puts a hand on his shoulder and tells him:
“Alright, kid. Alright,” And he hopes this is enough to convey his promise.
He’s let Peter down. Bucky sees it in his eyes as he’s the last to leave, stomachs full and happy, the other Avengers already halfway down the corridor to the elevator. Peter doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t need to. The look in his eyes is enough of a knife in Bucky’s heart, too clear an image of the one he seems to have planted in Peter’s back.
She’s in the kitchen, quiet, silent, dark. He stands next to her for several long, tense minutes until she exhales, and the room holds it breath for whatever she’s about to say. Except, she decides not to. Leaves the kitchen, heads for the foyer and pulls on her shoes until Bucky asks her where she’s going.
“Out. I need air,” Is her only answer, and he can’t stop her, doesn’t know how to as she leaves. The aftermath of the fallout envelopes him and he thinks: now what?
Taglist: @suz-123 @mermaidxatxheart @buckyreaderrecs @shield-agent78 @corneliabarnes @readerandcinephileingeneral @stevieboyharrington @notsomellowmushroom @veganfangirl5 @mood-pancakes @lbuck121 @starnight-charmer @redhairedfeistynerd @geeksareunique @samingtonwilson
#ayesha writes#bucky barnes#bucky barnes x reader#bucky x reader#bucky barnes fanfiction#bucky barnes fluff#bucky barnes angst#bucky angst#bucky x desi!reader
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❀❀ a list of lines from every single work-in-progress to be linked later when i actually post them just bc i’m bored ❀❀
ashton irwin
And I get that it may seem obviously to other people, but... I’m not watching this on TV and you’re not here and I don’t know what people are saying about me being my back
If she’s not back by sunset, I’m leaving camp to look for her. And if something happened to her, you’re dead
I don’t care about what everyone else will say -- I care about you and your safety, so you can either stay with me at my place until everything with him is sorted out or I can sleep on your couch, but I am not leaving you alone
She deserves better than that, Ashton! She deserves better than you!
I’m a burden on everybody! That’s why I’m here -- that’s why they threw me in a mental hospital and left!
Nothing ever means anything to you anyway
She’s still my ex! Just because she ‘needed help’ doesn’t make it less weird!
Remember how you said if I needed anything, you’d do it...? C-Can I just have a hug?
You fucking heard me. Stop the fucking car
I’m not dating your ex. I asked her out if that’s what you mean
Maybe you could argue that ‘just friends’ do that too, but it’s not ‘just friends’ when Ashton does it for you
I just... I can’t...handle losing someone right after I almost lost you
Are you tall enough to ride the merry-go-round at the fair by yourself?
I’m all for taking credit for my work, but I’m not taking credit for this because 1) I didn’t do it, and 2) it’s sloppy as hell
She clearly needs someone right now and unfortunately for me, she chose you
I’ve heard your friends talking... I know no one thinks he’s still alive
I may be desperate for money, but I’m not selling my body for some rich, entitled frat guys to jack off to!
If you want to be embarrassed, that’s fine, but I’m not going to stand here and listen to you berate yourself like this
Those spirits at the prison we investigated a couple weeks ago really liked you
awsten knight
What could possibly be so hard for her?! She’s a Princess, for Christ’s sake!
Can’t imagine keeping everything bottled up is any easier than letting someone in
calum hood
I know you don’t like her, but telling her she’s not allowed to hug me around you is fucking ridiculous
Do you make it a habit to spy on people or am I just today’s lucky winner?
You can’t lie just to get me there -- I would have gone anyway
I’m not lying to Calum; I’m just not telling him how I feel
You know how you said I should be falling in love instead of living in that house...? I’m glad it’s gonna be with you
How am I meant to have fun with him around?
You wouldn’t do the things you do if you really loved me
When you’re not here, it’s easier to pretend you still love me
I have a question -- why is that guy looking at his corn dog like that?
Please don’t make me say it again -- the first time was embarrassing enough
If he knew he was going to meet you, he never would have told her those things
I can guarantee you that baby’s not his
I never stopped wanting you either
He wouldn’t have dumped me if he was still in love with me
If you were getting tired of me, you could have just said so
Always knew I’d cry if I met you guys -- just didn’t think this would be the reason
I can’t just not pay you for watching my dog for 5 months
Will you at least let me know what it’s like to kiss you?
Do you know how weird it is to have feelings for your boss?
If they want nothing to do with you, then I want nothing to do with them
Secrets don’t stay that way forever; They all have to come out eventually
He keeps asking if he can call you Mummy
It’s heartbreaking in all the right places
I told you getting the blonde put into your hair was a bad idea
cody carson
The day you get something different from Starbucks is the day I let Pistol sleep in your bedroom
At least I’ve never lied when I told you I love you
Wait, someone tried to kidnap that little girl on your lap?
dacre montgomery
My worst nightmare is disappointing Steve Irwin
damien haas
Am I even on this show right now? Is this all just some freakishly realistic dream?
harry styles
Would you have apologized if your daughter hadn’t made you?
Daddy doesn’t love me anymore
Since when are you afraid of getting rejected?
jamie follese
I can’t help when I disappear! The cake batter calls to me and I must answer her!
He asks if I love you all the time even though I always say yes
I think I could talk my way out of jail
louis tomlinson
Nothing’s ever scared me more than the thought of losing you
luke hemmings
If I’m feeling this bad about meeting his friends, I don’t know what I’m gonna do when he wants to tell the fans
We’re only here for a few days; You’re just going to have to deal with sharing a bed until we leave
We made a bet on which one of you would confess your feelings first
Even if it wasn’t what he wanted to hear, he still needed to
She closes the store alone tonight -- you didn’t hear it from me
How many strings did my husband have to pull for this?
She doesn’t even want him! She’s only with him because she knows I do!
You know I don’t like when you do this to yourself
I got my ass handed to me by an 11-year-old and her Pokemon master of an aunt
I have nightmares almost every night, but I only come in here when they’re about you
She’s a hostage in a bank robbery! Of course I care about her being in there!
You’re by yourself in the stables at 11pm with tears on your face. Don’t tell me nothing’s wrong
Don’t be mad just because your siblings love me more than they love you
You know that means nothing to me! Stop bragging about having colors!
Even I’m not heartless enough to leave you without a dance partner
marshall traver
Nobody is alone -- not even in this world
You’re only apologizing because I’m the Princess; You wouldn’t be if I were a nobody
maxx danziger
I told him you hate water; I told him and he decided to try and throw you in anyway
Too used to blowing me off on the phone, you forgot how to talk to me in person?
I think they deserve a teacher who wants to see them succeed
If she’s still wearing her ring, she’s clearly not ready to date other people
You’re staying even though my dad’s an idiot, right?
We’re gonna circle back to the fetish thing later because I don’t believe you don’t have one for a second
michael clifford
Wouldn’t want you to stay longer than you have to just because of me
If you never say ‘I love you’ back to me, that’s completely okay
You’ve been crying, kitten; I can tell
Is there any point when you’re not going to be useless to us?
You fired her because you’re in love with her?!
What can I say? His parents are raising him right
Don’t even think about touching my brother again
Hit me like you mean it
Last day of camp -- won’t be able to do this until next summer
I know you paid my rent
Nothing would piss off that asshole more than getting the girl he wants
Since when would he jump at the chance to defend me?
I know you’ve seen how different he is with me now
The first thing I heard when I woke up was ‘I wish that I could wake up with amnesia and forget about the stupid little things’ and I did
Unlike the girls you sleep with, I actually like being with a guy who can make me cum
It can’t possibly get worse than the hell you’re living right now
I love Michael... Oh my God... Ashton, I’m in love with Michael
Please bless us with this work of art
The only good thing about this tie is that it’s blocking some of the brightness from how pale you are
Why do you even have this song on cassette in the first place?!
She’s safe -- that’s all I’m allowed to say
How did two 11-year-olds manage to pull off the biggest switch ever?
You know they’re not going to let you marry me
I’m not a stranger to staying with people who treat me poorly
If I can handle you, I think I’m prepared for pretty much anything
You make Mumma forget about him and be happy and I like when Mumma’s happy
You said you weren’t going to let go of me
Can you write a song telling your soulmate to be less depressing? It’s really starting to worry me
I’m not stupid; I’ve seen your face -- I know I’m not getting out of this alive
I can either push past you or you can let me go, but I am going to go kiss my wife whether I have your permission or not
Not the worst injury I’ve ever had and definitely won’t be the last
This is not who I expected to be kissing when I put this dress on
ryan follese
Best of luck with your engagement to the Princess
I can’t put myself in a relationship I know won’t last
spencer reid
I didn’t marry a profiler, Spencer! I married you!
Any of us would have gone in to save your daughter -- it just happened to be me this time
tom holland
I know you love me, Tom -- I know you do... But it hurts that you don’t want other people to know it too...
trevor collins
I kinda wanted to wait and see if you were actually real before I said anything...
You may not be irreplaceable to the company, but you’re irreplaceable to me
I know you’re not sick; I know you just said it because you wanted to leave work early
zach dewall
I told you they were gonna be angry when they said it...
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That Krispy Cat: A Warning, part 3
The last of the images cause I don’t want this bitch on my computer anymore.
Knowing tumblr I kept the images hidden JUUUUST in case no one reads the fine print and can’t tell I’m being critical of this and gets me in trouble.
VVV ((Just in case you thought the JewishGriffon piece assured everyone that Crispy couldn’t POSSIBLY hate people of color, some of her earliest Nazi art had her character Klaus beating up Amigo Bear. She also made Amigo into a liberal strawman. )) VVV
((Dialogue to one of her TROLLARIOUS pictures that featured Amigo:
Amigo Bear: *muttering* "Your leader was a !@#$% little #@%^!@$^*!, you fascist feather duster..."
General Klaus: "Fräulein, Ich vant you to cover your ears und shut your eyes as tight as you can."
Crispy: "How come, General?"
General Klaus: "Klaus ist about to say und do very bad sings zhat he does not vant his little Edelweiß to see or hear."
Crispy: "Alrighty!"
General Klaus: "WHO SAID ZHAT ABOUT DER FÜHRER? WER DIE FICK GESAGT? WHO'S ZUH SCHLEIMIG LITTLE COMMUNIST-SCHEISS SCHWANZLUTSCHER DOWN ZHERE, WHO JUST SIGNED HIS OWN DEATH VARRANT? NIEMAND?! GOTTVERDAMMT STALIN SAID IT! HERVORRAGEND! VHICH VUN OF YOU VANTS TO BE ZUH FIRST TO FIND OUT ZUH HARD VAY VHY MEIN FEINDE CALLED MIR DER BUTCHER BIRD?" ))
^^^ ((BUTOPHERARTISGOODSOYOUCAN’TCOMPLAIN
also the disc. for this pic before it was deleted had a ‘joke’ about cooking Jews in ovens. Oh and yes, that IS Hitler she’s giving that ugly ass cupcake too.))
^^^ (( - Thanks dA I never would have known I had a notifications unless eclipse blah -
This is one of her rants about how #Triggered she is that Starlight be compared to the Nazis when she runs a communist cult. Because A) that’s the real problem here and B) I too get upset when people say my OC is based on Jeffrey Dahmer when he’s so CLEARLY based on Ed Gein, Bwwwaaaah D> D> D> !)) ^^^
VVV ((Ugly art of her friend’s awful OCs.)) ^^^
VVV ((Crispy showing off why no one wants to be a patriot in our country.)) VVV
((FYI, Crisp, that attitude will make the Hamilton fans stronger so just keep that SJW-flinging coming you little SJW.
WHAT?! Social Justice is a broad term and as Crispy’s plainly demonstrated, you can circle it around and make a majority-class sound like the real underprivledged if you have enough fancy frou frou know-how and furries. Also, if a Social Justice Warrior constitutes someone who takes their cause soooo seriously that they’re annoying/petting/cruel/stupid about it....idk I think Crispy qualified.))
^^^ ((Crispy and her friend muse about what other races occupy the world of MLP in her headcanon. This, more than any other dA disc. and picture shows you her brand of “Segregationist-Nationalism is OKAY” thinking, cuz the art of these different races isn’t super offensive or cruel and neither are the characters. BUT if you scratch under the surface you’ll find that Crispy really likes these different people staying in their place and not in “someone else’s” country.
THEN, this same kind of thinking is used to convince you any mix of cultures is just cultural appropriation, again acting like she and her Nazi-stans are the only ones standing up to actual bigotry.)) VVV
^^^ ((Crispy makes the world a worse place by bringing up actual decent points; like how Americans dress Thanksgiving up as progressive and for the natives when we all know that’s not true...all to better her worldview.
fyi, GET OUT whenever you see a selfproclaimed Nazi fawn over Native Americans, because: Nazi Germany had a deep fascination with American Indians and used their struggles about their land being taken away from them to justify their eugenic genocide.)) ^^^
^^^ (( Crispy laughing it up on Furaffinity how she couldn’t be banned from her Furaffinity and then mysteriously never using her site there wowie.)) ^^^
^^^ (( Crispy complaining about SOPA cause her freedom of speech and blahblahblah.
Freedom of Speech is important. Unfortunately what people like Crispy don’t understand or care for is there’s no freedom of consequence. )) vvv
VVV ((LOL Joseph Mengele was such a stinkah let’s tell blithe jokes about him. At least WE AREN’T LIKE HIM!!!)) VVVV
VVV ((Early onset eugenic BS from her Spyro stuff that would be easy to miss if you didn’t know what this woman was talking about)) VVV
((Crispy admitting she thinks gays are pointless cuz they don’t reproduce but apparently loves them anyway. Also big shock Crispy’s seen Hetalia.)) VVV
VVV ((Crispy probably wanting Weeaboos to attack her cuz aren’t Japan’s animations so laaaaaaazy?!!?!? GUUdd think’ I’m a naziaboo! Germany’s never made any shitty animation evah. You know what, I lied. She doesn’t deserve Hetalia. She just doesn’t.)) VVVV
VVV ((Crispy dragging Brazil down with her as the apparent “Best South American Country”. Yikes.)) VVV
VVV ((More “it’s trolling ergo it’s not harmful” shit. Bulgarians probably do deserve their own Care Bears, but they certainly don’t want yours Crispy.)) VVV
VVV ((Disc. for her Richard Spencer bear art)) VVV
------
I know, I know...this isn’t what you wanted to read today, guys. I know it’s offensive and I’m sorry if it made you ill. I also know I’m putting my own blog under fire by showing these images here but I think that should say something about dA’s bad policies that this art gets a filter slapped on it and nothing more when the artist is blatantly pro-fascist.
Crispy resonates with me so much - and no it’s not cause I DARED to be “triggered”.
It’s because, for one, she was talented. I MEAN I HAVE EYES! That’s some nicely drawn digital stuff I’m not gonna deny. She had some cool rewrites and sequel ideas that, had it come from someone else I would have eaten up and faved to hell and back onceupona2012. But I didn’t, where a ton of MLP and furry fans did because they undervalued their own talents and would say “well it’s pretty who cares about the message?”
Unlike so many commercial+published artists, it’s REALLY hard to separate the art from the artist here because the artist is so connected and a part of her art and storytelling. If you fav her art, even if you didn’t like her, that was telling Crispy she’d won. It’s so defeating to have other artists say their gonna ignore their gut for the sake of prettypretty-Don-Bluth style art. And yes, that stigma DOES affect my view on 2D purists btw.
Crispy was so holier than thou’, and that attitude also was appealing to dA folks, not to mention her knowledge of art history by the time she dropped off the radar. Crispy was the kind of person who’d make long, detailed, justified rants against the design and color choices in Hazbin Hotel and then a bunch of antis would eat her redesigns up only to learn the awful truth later and embarrass themselves cuz they were so taken up by the craft they didn’t know they were reblogging a fucking Nazi.
Not to underplay Viv’s wrongdoings of course, but I’m sorry; the two aren’t comparable on the problematic artist meter. THAT’S HOW BAD CRISPY WAS.
If this somehow was just a faze and she’s come to her senses or doesn’t really think this shite she preaches...I don’t care. She said some vile shit and fuck no I’m not forgiving her. It’s like KenDraw or Shadman. You’ve changed your life around and realized you’ve done/drawn nasty shit that’s done real harm? Cool....I’m still not talking or ever promoting you, ya dingbat. You ain’t no Roman Polanski or Doug Tennaple. You’re a singular internet artist and any support of the project has to go to you - and you suck!
ThisCrispyKat was a wakeup call that showed me these people not only still exist but will be allowed to get away with it. I was very touchy bout this kind of thing back in the day. Fuck, I STILL AM TOUCHY. The rabbit holes I found thanks to Crispy opened up to reveal communities where people think my hair color’s going extinct. People would detail how much they wanted to rape me - a natural blonde - and kill my friends and family for not looking like me. That they want to jerk off in my naturally curly hair and see me in glowy German princess gowns preparing them dinner.
Crispy and other Nazistans would look at me; a blond-haired blue eyed Polish/German American woman and think I need to be “fixed” because I DARE to repeat propaganda that the Nazis were bad. They’d call me a traitor for thinking that celebrating the Nazi party ISN’T German pride.
HOW DARE YOU TELL ME THAT’S GERMAN PRIDE! I’LL SHOW YOU GERMAN PRIDE YOU EGOSTROKING-LIMPDICKED ATTENTION WHORES.
People like Crispy make it 1000x harder to actually show interest in German things. Because I AM interested in German shit btw.
Like for real: it’s a country I’d love to visit one day (at least the black forest, which is where my mom’s fam comes from). I love German art and German fairytales slap. I really do want to explore my heritage through art and stuff.
But guess what? Much as Crispy would argue to the contrary I DO know my WWII history and beyond and FUCK YOU if you honestly think jerking it to cuddly Nazi-furs is empowering or just “showing your interest in history”. Take your own advice and read a god-damn book.
TL;DR: I DO NOT have to be proud of Nazis to enjoy German culture and if you think otherwise, FUCK YOU. It’s a slap in the face to everyone even if you are ‘just trolling’ and it in no way values actual German’s feeling on the matter. It’s annoying how people undervalue real people just for the sake of fan art.
The Nazis were evil. They were racist, eugenic-genocidal idiots who killed over six million Jewish people, Romani, Slavs, Jehovahs Witnesses, disabled people, Poles, homosexuals and prisoners of war. They would have killed my dad’s side of the family if they were in Poland at the time. They made bullshit tanks that killed the people making them and didn’t work on the battlefield. Their leader was a fat, farting one-testicaled bastard who preferred animals to people.
They ruined everything for everyone and then took the easy way out, leaving the Germans that were left in the hands of the also-genocidal Soviets and Americans. Germany is still paying their war debts and now, 70-80 years later everyone else wants to laugh off this dark period of history with memes and forget what they did, and as such, are forgetting the victims of the genocide.
I have 0 tolerance for Nazi things for the sake of HUMANITY, let alone the individual groups they target. I don’t have to have German ancestry or know a single Jewish person to tell you any of this. It’s fucking history.
Eat shit.
#tw: nazi#tw: neonazi#tw: swastika#tw: antisemitism#cultural appropriation#kimba the white lion#thiscrispykat#altright#classic spyro#My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic#balto#animals of farthing wood
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The Wolves (A White Demon’s Love Song, Part 5.)
Series description: A new job was what the reason you found yourself on a lonely roadtrip on the western coast, ending up in the woods of Olympian Peninsula. Yet a sudden car malfuction was what cause your unplanned stay in Forks. To your surprise, there was a lot of sinister things going on under the veil of fog.
Part summary: The wolves now had to come up with a different strategy since the vampires coming so close to the town was a thing no-one expected so soon. Yet, a secret was to be revealed that night.
A/N: Heavily inspired by the Phascination Phase (Carter Burwell for the Twilight movie), because... Idk, there’s something so ambient about the track.
Tagging: @missdictatorme
Word count: 3.7 K
Twilight playlist: ✨ Twilight Crackheads ✨
Series masterlist: H E R E
A few hours ago, La Push, Emily's house:
Jacob stood in the opened door for not longer than a moment, watching you leaving the garage in his black towtruck. For the most part, you should be safe. Why the hell was Jacob so stressed about keeping you safe? You were, for now, just a normal Forks citizen like everyone else. Maybe it was just that you were his personal responsibility for some time now. He offered you a place to stay - naturally, you accepted the offer because you counted on being safe. And just ten minutes ago, a leech almost made you their personal lollipop or worse, they might've made a newborn out of you. Thanks to God, the shifter scent was too strong for the vampire. She saw Jacob waiting for you in the opened back door, but it was the typical stench that made her stop.
Jacob saw her for a fragment of a second, just standing there and watching you laying on the ground. Then, she gave Jacob a teasing smile and in the next second, she was gone. It was at that moment the man knew he had to send to some location which was overseen by the shifters all the time. There was also a second reason to keep you at Charlie's - that bitch surely smelled your scent. Since you didn't really live at the small flat, the werewolf scent wasn't covering you enough - and the raincoat didn't help much anyway. At the end of the day, it was you, who was still just a normal human being.
As soon as the truck disappeared behind the high school, Jacob walked to the back of the building and walked into the woods. Fuck the motorbikes, he was way faster on all four. He could borrow something from Sam, so he just bound the tore sweatpants around his upper thigh and let the animal take the lead. Of course, Leah and Quil noticed immediately - there was confusion in the group shared telepathic web. - 'Did something happen?' - Leah asked, but hadn't moved from her spot. She knew better than to annul the formation because Jacob had just shifted. At first, Jacob didn't answer and just let both her and Quil to look inside his mind. At first, both of them got way more confused when they saw the strange girl jumping out of the woods - yet then they felt it. The humongous smell of rotten tomatoes, the wolves could feel her presence and they saw her, just standing there with her eyes wild and hungry, the grin on her face was threatening.
'Okay, now I get it.' - Leah muttered after a moment. Sure, there was still a hint of confusion and curiosity regarding you in the shared consciousness, but honestly, you weren't that important in the bigger picture. - 'I can't believe she came so close! She was trying to get through here... I guess the cold one must've caught her scent. Are we going after her?' - Quil asked immediately, getting ready to run to Jake's position. - 'They're just trying how much closer they can get and top of that, that leech has already run away. I'm on way to Sam, we'll be trying to figure out a different system of watching Forks.' - Jake said in a calm voice, running in the direction of La Push at the highest speed he was capable of. - 'I'll be checking on the southern part of the city... Quil is on the west. Sam has five boys here today, so there will be no problem to run in circles around the town.' - Leah told Jake and since Quil caught on what she was doing, he immediately started to assure their leader as well. - 'No chance they're slipping, boss.'
Since that moment, both of them kept their thoughts silent. Quil and Leah were a good team - ever since Leah left Sam's pack, she became quieter and calmer. Now, she wasn't such a pain in the ass. And Quil didn't want to disturb with too much of empty thoughts in case something might've happened. For once, it was nice not to deal with Seth's endless sunshine energy. - 'I won't tell my little bro a thing, but thanks for the compliment.' - Leah laughed inside Jake's head. The phase where he was rolling his eyes after every word Leah said out loud was far behind him, now, he snickered lightly as well. - 'I would appreciate that. Okay, I'm at Sam's. Once we figure something out, I'll let you know.'
Jacob didn't wait for their answer and changed into his human form. Hastily, he put his old sweatpants on and ran to the house and knocked on the door. The twins, Emily and Sam's small girls, were running around the place and as Emily approached the door, she tried to calm the kids down. Yet as soon as they saw Jacob behind the door, they started to yell excitedly again. Emily wasn't stupid - as soon as she saw Jake visiting them during the day, even if Sam and Jake usually met during the nighttime watch, she knew something happened. The woman let Jacob inside and put cookies on the big plate in the middle of the table, saying... - "Give me a minute, I'll wake Sam up." - With that, she disappeared inside the house.
Sam was always taking his time getting up - yet when his wife said Jake's name and that he came just so he could talk with him, he tried his best. When he finally walked into the kitchen, half-dressed uncle Jake was sitting at the table with a muggle full of fresh coffee and watched small Brianna and Ellie drawing with various colors of wax crayons. It was just a small, peaceful moment that was not to last long. As soon as Jacob looked up to Sam, the older man could see the emotion in Jake's face. It... It wasn't fear, not even horror - it was rage. The younger man wasn't shifting, he was just angry. - "Angels?" - Sam smiled tiredly and kissed both of the twins on their temples. Both the girls smiled at their dad, but before Sam started talking again, Bri was already babbled at him, because both her front teeth fell out. - "Daddy, look! I drew you and mamma. And this is uncle Paul, auntie Rachel and... Auntie Leah and..."
The picture was more or less a formation of stickmen - each of them had a crazy hair color... But sure, it was the La Push family. - "You should go play to your room for a bit, my birds. Come on, I need to talk to uncle Jake. You can have him later." - Sam smiled. The girls hadn't got a favorite - but they were super pumped when Jacob came back to La Push since he was now living in Forks for the most part. Rachel and Paul were taking care of Billy, so he had more time for himself and his love for cars. - "Okay!" - Ellie cried out happily, picked a few crayons, and ran to their room with loud, happy squeals, Brianna following right after. These kids were always happy. Jake could see all the things Sam was fighting for. He had a lot to lose.
"Start talking. I know you're not here just to say hi." - Sam muttered out with a loud yawn, pouring some coffee into a mug as well. Emily was standing behind the stove, preparing some eggs and bacon for both the men. At that point, she didn't even ask - Jake just had to eat everything Emily had served. - "Yeah, something like that. That vampire bitch just showed up behind my house. Not even an hour ago." - "Did you try to catch her?" - Sam fired back immediately. Even though they had their differences back in the day, even if they argued a lot when Jacob left his pack, Sam was still worried about his brother in arms. For God's sake, they knew each other since they were small boys. Sam was just five years older. - "Unfortunately... Listen... She wasn't hunting me down, she was after someone else." - "That girl who's car crashed here? I've seen her in your head, just a glimpse." - Jake nodded.
"Well, this is getting worse and worse, I'm not going to lie. How did the girl get into trouble?" - Sam asked just when Emily served the breakfast; then she quickly kissed Sam's cheek, smiled at Jake, and left to the children's room so she would make sure they don't hear anything. - "I think she just went on a walk, she seemed off when I found her. Sam, Y/N realized something was in the forest with her." - "What did you tell her?" - "Well, I tried to misguide her, tell her that it was just a mountain lion." - For a moment, both the men fell silent. - "She might be on the target list now." - Sam muttered out after a moment. It took a while before everything clicked in Jake's brain. - "That girl borrowed my raincoat, but her scent was still too strong..." - "And if she saw you there, she might figure out that she's our weak spot. Where is she now? Is she safe?" - Sam didn't care who the hell you were - it could be anyone from Forks, La Push, Port Angeles and he would still care the same. The Protectors committed to protecting everyone in the town, no matter if they were a tourist or a local.
"Y/N? She's at Charlie's now, but he'll be coming to La Push later this afternoon. I asked him to take her with him. My people are here, your people are here - if they'd feel the slightest hint of the leech's stench, they'd go right after them. Leah and Quil are helping with watching the city boundaries." - Jacob leaned his back to the chair. His back was hurting really bad, but there was no time to rest now. - "How could the bloodsucker just slip past us? I don't understand?" - "We should call the doctor finally, ask him about the things regarding this group of leeches... I don't have a single good feeling about them."
Just ten minutes after Jacob proposed the idea, Sam was debating with Carlisle on the phone, describing everything about the group of vampires living near to Forks now. Carlisle said to Sam that this behavior can be considered normal - except the noticeable skills, these had with hiding their smell and tracks. Such vampires tended to be old and experiences - they had most probably encountered their first group of extremely good trackers; ones such as James was. After some time, the vampires who lived too long already wanted to feel the thrill of the game. James's talent was tracking - yet such things could be learned through hundreds of years of experience. It could be significantly harder since the shifters hadn't estimate how many of the players were out there. Sam's pack had encountered one, Jacob was one hundred percent positive there was a second one... But there could be one more. And once the vampires would figure out the right formation, there was nothing that would stop them. Well, this wasn't any good news. Fucking trackers.
"Do you think these old vampires might show here, doctor?" - Sam mumbled, listening to Carlisle's calm, enjoyable tone on a speaker. - "The Volturi?" - "Yes, I mean these we had already met. Can these be sent by them?" - For a moment, Carlisle was quiet, yet both men could hear chatter in the background. - "Hardly." - Alice's jolly voice answered suddenly. - "I can't see them even thinking about Forks or going there, or sending their people there. Aro is still hoping that he might get us, but... No. He doesn't choose to send his people your way." - She explained quickly. - "Are the vampires too conspicuous? I hadn't seen any news reporting murders in Forks." - Carlisle muttered after a moment, audibly going through some newspaper. This made Jake grin a bit; the man was still looking after his former place of stay. - "No." - Jacob said simply, which made Carlisle sigh. Well, that didn't mean anything good. - "Then the Volturi will hardly come to dismantle them, unfortunately. As long as the vampires aren't violating any laws, they won't be stopping them. Do you think that you need help?"
Clearly, Carlisle was asking 'should we come to help you?'. If there would be any sign that the pack can't do it on their own, they would spend no time sitting around. No matter what were the pack's members' opinions on the Cullens, Jacob had to say that the liked this family of leeches. - "No. We're doing just great, I just wanted to be informed. Have a nice Carlisle, nice hearing from you." - With that, Sam hung on the phone after the doctor said his goodbye and wished the men good luck. The news wasn't good at all. A pack of damn tackers who wanted to play a game with the pack.
After all, they were there to hunt - yet they were willing to take their time, wait for the pack to grew tired and then slip by in the dead of the night. What could've been worse? And the Volturi were neither behind this operation or about to stop it. There were dark clouds on the horizon, which wasn't making them any calmer. Both of them went for a short walk around Sam's house, trying to figure out... Something. And the only solution was... - "No. Sam, this isn't happening." - Jacob put both his hands on his chest, having the typical expression of an angry five-year-old. - "It's just a t-shirt." - Sam answered back, rolling his eyes. - "I already told her there are mountain lions... Sent her to a stranger's house and to a place she never been at. Now, I'll be stealing her clothes?" - Jacob snickered, shaking his head.
"She's the weak spot right now. They want to start a game, we will start a game, then - and on our own terms. All we need is her scent." - Jacob knew Sam was right, but... Seriously, you've been thinking about his ill intentions (killing you, let's be honest for a minute) since the first moment you saw him. And now, he was supposed to steal a piece of your clothing? Well... - "Okay. Okay. I'll try to get something. When we're talking about clothes, can you lend me some for the afternoon? I'll be picking her up on the beach." - With this question, both men walked back to the house for Jake to keep the promise. He spent playing with the girls a huge portion of his day, just before he fell asleep on Brianna's bed, snoring on the whole house.
To get to the beach, he certainly didn't use his human form. That would be too slow. He called to Billy's, making sure you're still at the beach - or if you decided to take off and maybe run away from Forks. Jacob wouldn't flinch at that. He wouldn't be surprised if you did. Yet, you still were there - with Rachel. The man groaned at that, as all little brothers do, rolling his eyes. He could only imagine everything Rachel told you about him. Dear Lord. Now, you could justify thinking like a killer when talking about him. Rachel didn't spare his good name at all, Jacob was positive there.
It was a busy day at the beach. Normally, Quil would spend his time there with Claire - yet the boy knew that sometimes, protecting the place because of the people you love is important as well. For a moment, he was just standing there and watched the sea lazily waving around - he knew that somewhere in the woods, there was Jared looking after the La Push territory. And just when he was thinking about that, he saw you and Rachel walking out of the forest side by side, laughing at something. Great. He could only guess how many stories did Rachel pull out.
Of course, he wouldn't Rachel walk home alone - it was almost six miles to their home after all. But he didn't plan on stopping on a visit either. Billy, who was in the elder council, naturally understood that Jacob was rather busy in the last few days - but Charlie did come to the car and made you roll down the window. - "I just wanted to ask... Hm... How was the beach?" - It looked like genuine interest from Charlie's part, which made you grin. It was nice of him to ask. - "Rachel showed me around... It was pretty impressive. I need to tell my friends about it, definitely." - Then, the cop shot a quick gaze at Jacob. For the love of God, he was hoping that the boy won't drag you into some funky business with him. - "If anything happens, I'm at the phone number all the time, okay?" - Charlie reassured himself before patting the side of the truck and leaving without waiting for you to answer. You were just watching him leaving back to the house, with a small smile on your face.
Jacob tried to ask you about your day, but you could tell that the 'worse' Jacob was now in the position. He didn't seem to smile a bit, he was kinda mumbly and quiet for the most part. As you walked into the garage again, you knew you had to do something. This couldn't wait two days. No. You had to do it immediately. As soon as he would sneak out, you'll follow right after. Yeah, mountain lions, sure... This made you grin as you worked on the paperwork once more. Throughout the whole time, you hadn't seen Jacob - the whole time, he was outside and worked on your Beetle, changing the smaller parts he had with him. It was obvious that you will have to visit a wrecking lot soon - in search of working components, hustling the best prices out of that. By the way, the components were even on sale - those which your car needed so desperately. The wrecking lots were your last chance.
Around the same time as the previous day, you've just told Jacob you're going to take a shower and go to sleep - which he only barely acknowledged. He was too busy working and thinking about Sam's theory. It wasn't right. The vampire girl saw Jacob looking out for you and even though she didn't know you two have nothing in common, she most likely connected you as partners of sorts. He could steal one of the t-shirts you've put into the laundry, couldn't he? All it took was an article of clothing to lure the leeches somewhere where they wouldn't be in advantage - like a huge plain, the one next to Ozette Lake. Fuck, this was uncomfortable. He couldn't even look you in the face.
That night, when he was leaving for the watch, he didn't even lock the door - it wouldn't be functional against a vampire. He was to stay nearby the town, looking after the damn house - while Embry and Seth, as humans, got their orders from Sam. Jacob didn't know what the strategy was - he had only Jared and Brody on the watch in Forks. Jared could be only barely counted in since he was sleeping while walking. The boy took a 24 lasting shift, no wonder he was so done.
As soon as you noticed Jake marching to the woods, you put his raincoat on, since it was raining again, and went after him, lurking in the shadows. If Jacob would be in his normal human self, he would hear you. He wouldn't smell you, since the rain and wind was making the scent trail fade away rather quickly, but he would know somewhere's there based on the sounds. You weren't as dumb to walk straight after him - you could barely see him, hiding behind the trees, but you could still hear him breathing. Dear God, was he breathing loud? You hadn't noticed before. Suddenly, he stopped and started to breathe quicker and quicker.
Curiosity got the better out of you, let's be honest here, as you sneaked past a few trees, getting closer to him, finally catching a good look at the man. He was... Breathing really quick, shaking. His muscles were visibly tensing under his skin, but you knew that something wasn't adding up here. Was he having a seizure? Was he chanting himself before another kill? Or was this the ritual after which the second part of his split personality came out? Fuck, you were confused. Your nails dug deeper into the tree and your breath hitched as the tension got the better out of you. Unknowingly, you pressed to the wet, cold tree and didn't blink from that point on.
It was fascination at its best. You didn't even jump when growls cut through the silence, resonating through the whole, quiet forest. The man fell on his knees, growling and grunting in immersive pain. And that was when you saw it - a strike of russet fur flying out of his body, traveling on his spine. And then... Jacob exploded. He quite literally was torn to shreds, just like his worn-out pants and instead of a man... There was a wolf, bigger than you. This animal could eat you like an appetizer and barely blink about it. No matter how beautiful the animal was, your brain couldn't grasp what was happening at the moment. In combination with holding your breath for the last minute, it resolved in one thing. As you forcefully grasped for any air, your head spun. Once, twice, and then you felt your body falling to the ground. Maybe, you would've got up, but you felt the back of your head hitting a root on the ground. A dull thud sounded through the forest as it started to fade away.
You fainted. This caught Jacob's attention as he realized something terrorizing - he had a lot to explain now.
#it's just a t-shirt#imma getting this tattooed hoes#sam uley be a legend#sam uley#emily young#sam and emily uley#jacob black#jacob black x reader#leah clearwater#seth Clearwater#embry call#quil ateara#the twilight saga#twilight saga#twilight crackheads#twilight renaissance#we be getting spicy here#la push#forks washington#charlie swan#rachel black#paul lahote#billy black#carlisle cullen#alice cullen#james the tracker#oh yeah baby
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tw: transphobia😭 hi I'm a radfem cisgirl (I hate using "cis" and "trans" words but here I need to for the sake of the story) I've got a friend from ny highschool (we're in college now) who's also a radfem and is always sharing great feminist stuff. Yesterday, she shared the comment of a girl saying "this fight for abortion (it is illegal in my country) is for men/people with vaginas too!" and mocked it. I preferred not to make up any opinions about her because of one single post. But today, she shared a picture of Miss Spain 2019 (a trans girl) who talked about her experience with sexism, and mocked her too. This time, it was obvious to me she was just being transphobic trash. She received lots of backlash and deleted the post, but instead made a new post complaining about people caring about transphobia but not about sexism (a very stupid post, if you ask me). This time, along with some comments from other girls respectfully telling her to stop being cruel and mocking towards trans women, she received a lot of support from other TERFS (although these TERFS said they hate being called TERFS just for being honest and brave lmmfao). They said that transwomen don't belong in radfem because they just suffer from discrimination, not oppression, and listed some reasons why: according to them, trans girls don't suffer: obstetrician violence, forced pregnancy, feminicide, child marriage, genital femenine ablation, glass ceiling barriers, being implanted "maternal sense" while kids, getting their ears perfored while babies, among other stuff, and that differentiate ciswomen biological reality from trans women biological reality isn't transphobia. Other girls said they knew transwomen who were mean to them, using derogatory terms to refer to ciswomen and they were mean and cruel, using this argument to generalize about all transwomen smh.
I'm just so stoned that people could be so cruel to transwomen and set them aside from the feminist fight when they suffer from already being excluded from so many things. It sickens me that some people don't belive trans people exist and treat them that bad, specially trans girls. I wish I could debunk the info this TERFS are spreading because it's so dangerous and enables transphobics to keep harming transpeople and I find that unbearable, but I am not as informed as I should be to debute all their lies at once. Could you help me?
So starting with the question of transwomen in radfem spaces, I don’t think many (if any) transwomen would say that they experience the exact same type of discrimination that cis women do. There’s often this idea that “trans people don’t believe in biology”, but that’s a bad faith argument. Trans people understand biology very well, often more than their cis counterparts do, because it’s such a big part of their identity.
Yes, transwomen don’t suffer obstetrician violence, forced pregnancy, child marriage, genital feminine ablation, etc. (I can’t even find any articles on the ear thing). They do experience femicide, at way higher rates that cis women do. Transwomen are women, and they’re discriminated against in their own way; sometimes that’s because they’re women, and sometimes that’s because they’re trans. Transwomen are largely supportive of fighting with cis women to rid the world of discrimination for all women, cis and trans alike.
By contrast, TERFs seem to think that because transwomen sometimes suffer a different type of discrimination than cis women, they can’t be “real women”. But that argument makes no sense to me. The vast majority of affluent, white, straight, cis women will never suffer the violence that is apparently so central to the cis female experience. They’re extremely unlikely to experience femicide, child marriage, genital mutilation... and yet they can acknowledge that those issues are feminist issues, even though they’re not universal to all women. Why shouldn’t the discrimination that transwomen face also fall under that umbrella? And if they can accept that women who have had hysterectomies, or women who have chromosomal differences, or women who are intersex, or women who present butch are all women, why shouldn’t transwomen also fall under the umbrella of womanhood?
Further, is that really all that womanhood is to TERFs? Experiencing the trauma and discrimination that so often accompanies being a cis women? I don’t think inclusion to a group should be predicated on the amount that one has suffered or how many “oppression points” they’ve amassed. And I don’t think being a woman should be predicated solely on biology, especially given that we never really know what kind of biology a person has just by looking at them. What “being a woman” is is a metaphysical question that derails the discussion of trans feminism, and it’s a question that I don’t think a lot of TERFs actually have a good answer to. It’s just an easy way to put the burden of proof on trans people and trans allies and waste our time (but if you’re interested, I do have an opinion on this. I just think it’s best saved for a different time).
In terms of trans people being oppressed, there’s all sorts of data to suggest that trans oppression is very real. In the US, trans people were banned from serving in the military under the Trump administration, a decision that was only overturned a few days ago, and the Trump administration also reversed the Obama- era Title VII policy that protected trans employees from discrimination. Trans people are overwhelmingly lacking legal protections- there are no federal non-discrimination laws that include gender identity, and in some states, debates over limiting the rights of trans people to use public bathrooms are ongoing.
About 57% of trans people faced some type of rejection from their family upon coming out. Around 29% of trans people live in poverty (compared to 11% in the general population and about 22% in the lesbian and gay populations), and that number is higher for trans people who are Black (39%), Latinx (48%), or Indigenous (35%). 27% of trans people have been fired, not hired, or denied a promotion due to their trans identity. 90% of trans people report facing discrimination in their own jobs. Trans people face double the rate of unemployment that cis people do (about 14%) and about 44% are underemployed. This is despite the fact that a reported 71% of trans people have some level of post-secondary education- actually higher than the general population, which is about 61%. It’s often cited that women earn 77 cents on the dollar compared to men, but that statistic doesn’t even exist for trans women.
54% of trans people have experienced intimate partner violence (compared to about 24.3% of cis women), 47% of trans people have been sexually assaulted (compared to about 18% of cis women), and about 10% are physically assaulted in a given year.
About 22% of trans people and 32% of trans people of color in the US have no health insurance (compared to about 11% of cis women), and 55% of trans people who do have insurance report being denied coverage for at least one gender affirming surgery. 29% of trans adults have been refused healthcare by a doctor or provider because of their gender identity. In one study, 50% of trans people said that they had to teach their medical providers about trans care. Trans people are four times as likely than the average population to be infected by HIV. 41% have attempted suicide at one point in their lives, compared to 1.6% of the general population.
20% of trans people have been evicted or denied housing due to their gender identity, and trans people are four times more likely than cis people to be homeless. Only 1/5 of trans people report that they have been able to update all of their identification documents, and 41% have a driver’s license that does not match their gender identity. 22% of trans people report that they have been denied equal treatment by a government agency or official, 29% reported police harassment, and 12% reported having been denied equal treatment or harassed by judges or court officials.
75% of transgender students feel unsafe at school because of their gender expression, 60% are forced to use a bathroom or locker room that does not match their gender, 50% were unable to use the name and pronouns that match their gender, and 70% of trans students say that they’ve avoided bathrooms because they feel unsafe. 78% of trans students report being harassed or assaulted at school.
And these are all statistics that focus on trans people at large. The discrimination is worse for transwomen and especially transwomen of color. All of that certainly sounds like systemic oppression to me.
Every person who chooses to be a TERF perpetuates this discrimination. It’s just bigotry towards trans people, plain and simple. And for what? A reactionary fear that all transwomen are secretly sexual predators and all transmen are confused girls who don’t know better? Unfortunately, men can be sexual predators just fine without having to jump through the convoluted hoops trans people go through to be recognized as their true gender identity, and transwomen are way more likely to be sexually assaulted than they are to be sexual predators. There are no reported cases at all that transwomen are dressing up as men to assault women in bathrooms. There aren’t even statistics on how frequently trans people are sexual predators. And transmen are just as capable of making informed, thoughtful decisions as cis women.
TERFs shouldn’t be pitting themselves against trans people. There’s just nothing to be gained from doing that. They should be working alongside trans people to fight the patriarchy and the discrimination that cis and trans women both face, regardless of what that discrimination entails.
Last thought. Not to be a stan or anything but if you’re interested in learning more about these issues, Contrapoints has a number of really good videos on the topic of TERFs (including one that just released today!). They delve a bit deeper into the actual questions that TERFs often bring up and provide some nuanced answers.
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