#David kettle head

[open-music-reviews]

Dave Kettlehead

Dave Kettlehead’s music is the protective bunker of hope in a citadel by the desolate mountains. Those that feel and see beyond the slopes gather in hidden warm places to be healed and empowered by the music to make epic voyages beyond the horizon line.

Recommended songs: Falling Star, Faraway From Home, Leaving Town Blues

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[miley1442111]

opening night- aaron hotchner

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a/n: i imagined a fem reader but as per usual, imagine what you like :)

summary: aaron misses your opening night, he forgot all about it.

pairing: aaron hotchner x broadway performer! reader

warnings: angst, feelings of disappointment, hurt, etc. +

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He wasn’t coming, you knew it. Yes, it was your opening night, and yes, he knew how important it was to you. Yet he still didn’t come. 

It was embarrassing. You would’ve understood if the team was called away on a case, or if Jack wasn’t feeling well, or even if he wasn’t feeling well. But the team sat front row, Jack beside Spencer, Aaron nowhere to be seen. 

It was humiliating. 

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You walked off stage, already feeling the bitter sting at the back of your throat, the sting of tears threatening to come. Your castmates congratulated you as you walked to your dressing room, your friends taking your mind off of it for 20 minutes as you got out of costume and makeup and back into regular clothes, feeling yourself again. The only issue with that is that you wanted to be anyone else. You wanted to be like Megan, your castmate, her boyfriend had actually shown up. 

At least his team, your friends, were there. 

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Stage door was a nightmare, fans screaming your name and pulling you in every direction for 40 minutes, but in the end you were met with the kind eyes of Spencer and a sleeping Jack beside him, in his lap. 

“Congratulations! You were amazing,” he smiled.

"Thank you," you smiled as he wrapped you up in a hug.

"Aaron didn't show up, is he ok?" He asked and you sighed.

"I think he forgot," you sniffled. "It's fine, he's busy."

Spencer's lips pulled into a frown. "Well, I'm sorry he missed such an amazing show, and such an incredible leading lady," he smiled at you.

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Your spirits were lifted momentarily as you and him split a taxi to his hotel, then brought Jack up to your rented loft apartment to be put to sleep. You walked inside after putting Jack to bed in the other room to be met with the sight of Aaron working. 

Anger coursed through your veins. 

“Busy night?” You asked as you grabbed a glass of water. 

“Extremely, thank you for taking Jack out for the night,” he smiled at you. Not only did he not show up, he completely forgot. 

“No problem,” you scoffed, dodging his open arms. “Goodnight.”

Aaron’s brow furrowed and his brain quickly mulled over if he had done something to annoy or offend you, and he came up with nothing. He settled on the idea that you were just tired. 

Wrong. 

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“Dad! Y/n was so amazing last night,” Jack smiled over breakfast. You hadn't surfaced, though Aaron found it odd that you hadn’t insisted on cuddling last night. 

“Oh yeah bud? What did you two do?” He asked, flipping your pancakes. 

“Well first, Y/n brought me to the theatre, and she gave me the whole tour, then uncle Spencer and I went for dinner with uncle Derek, uncle David, auntie Jj, and auntie Emily, then we went back to the theatre and it was full of people! Y/n had a long dress and she sang so beautifully! She sounded like a princess!”

Aaron’s heart sank. Tonight wasn’t your opening night, yesterday was. He was the worst boyfriend in the whole world. “What bud? Isn’t tonight her opening night?”

“Nope, it was yesterday,” Jack took a bite out of his pancakes and Aaron could’ve cried. The door to your bedroom open and you walked out, knuckling your eyes as you yawned.

“Morning,” you mumbled, pressing a kiss to Jack’s head, then starting the kettle. 

The entire reason Aaron and Jack had come to New York, to see your fucking broadway debut. Yet, Aaron missed it. He stayed at home doing paperwork. He thought you had just gone out for the night with Jack. 

Even the team showed up. 

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“Aaron?” You repeated. “The pancakes will burn.”

Aaron snapped back to reality and finished up the pancakes, putting them on a plate for you.

“Thank you,” you smiled. “Your flight is at 5, right?” 

Aaron’s heart broke further, he had to leave tonight and you were in New York for the next 9 months.

“Yeah,” he sighed. “We’ll pack soon. Hey J, why don’t you go and start packing up your things?” Jack ran off with a smile on his face.

“How was work last night?” You asked, genuinely wondering. You weren’t even angry anymore, just disappointed and hurt. But you still wanted Aaron to know you cared.  

“I’m so sorry,” he sighed, putting his hands on either side of you, essentially caging you against the counter as you sipped your tea. “I’m such an asshole.”

“It’s alright,” you shrugged. “It’s the same show every night and you probably know the entire thing just from being around me.”

“I should’ve been there.” 

“And you weren’t, which is ok too,” you ran a hand through his messy hair. “You’re busy.”

He hated how understanding you were. He hated how many chances you gave. He hated himself for squandering them.

“Never too busy for you,” he promised with a kiss on your exposed shoulder. 

“But you are Aaron,” you sighed. “If you don’t have time for this relationship I’d understand Aaron. You have to focus on Jack and you.”

Aaron could feel the familiar sting of tears in his eyes. “No. I love you, I’m so sorry I missed last night, I’ll go to every show  if that’ll make it up to you,” He promised as he held you closer, punctuating his words with his kisses on your skin. 

He had never said ‘I love you’ before. You two had only been dating for 11 months, you hadn’t said it yet. 

“I love you so much,” he said against your neck. “Please let me make it up to you.”

“I love you too,” you smiled. He pulled his head out from your neck and smiled at you. “It’s ok Aaron, we all make mistakes.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“It’s ok.”

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criminal minds masterlist :)

navigation for my blog :) (criminal minds, obx, the bear, marvel, top gun, the hunger games :)

[ghoulie-67-baby]

Don’t want to sleep alone - Poly!BAU team.

Summary: After a hard unsub takedown you and Spencer end up cuddled together on the sofa, being admired by your Polycule.

Warnings: Poly!BAU (I will go down with this ship), typical Criminal minds stuff, fluff, mentions of sub/dom dynamics, subspace, cuddling etc.

Pairing: Poly!BAU x GN!reader. Spencer Reid x GN!reader.

Word count: 968.

My body groaned in protest as I climbed the steps to the jet. The sooner I was in the comfort of my own bed the better I would feel. I set my bag down on the floor beside the sofa before trudging to the kitchenette, shoulders heavy and head thumping.

"Anyone want a drink whilst I'm here?" I called out, mid-yawn, humming at the collective replies. I waited on the kettle boiling, pouring David a scotch and Emily water before pulling out mine and Spencer's matching Doctor Who mugs.

"Thank you, Dolcezza," I shuffled to hand David his drink, grinning as JJ brushed past me, hands brushing my hips gently. My body sang happily when the Italian pressed a kiss to my hand and squeezed it gently. I felt a pat on my butt as I walked past Derek to Emily who pressed a small peck to my lips before settling into her seat.

I finished making our tea in a comfortable silence, handing Spencer his, warning him to be careful. My body sagged in my chair across from the sofa Spencer had claimed and I sipped my drink with a heavy sigh, wincing as my bones seemed to scrape each other.

"You okay Sweetie?" My eyes met JJ's in a soft glance and I smiled reassuringly. "You still hurting?"

"Hmm, I'm okay." I bit my lip, hoping she didn't sense the hesitance.

"Y/N." Aaron's voice was low with warning, so he had cottoned onto my dishonesty. My eyes flickered to his, noticing the softness in them despite his tone.

"Honest, I'm fine, just tired and sore." I flexed my neck, grimacing at the crack that seemed to reverberate through the jet. "That guy was huge, knocked me through that door like I weighed nothing but I'll be fine."

"Awww poor baby, do you want a massage?" I shook my head at Derek's teasing, and stuck my tongue out at him, noticing the flash of darkness in his eyes at my cheekiness.

"You need a long hot bath and those essential oils that Penelope bought you when we get home. I'd be more than happy to wash your hair and pamper you." JJ's voice was sweet and gentle as her motherly instincts kicked in and I couldn't help the warmth that fluttered through my body as I nodded in agreement.

"That and hydration and rest will do you the world of good, it's one of the best ways to recover sore muscles along with active healing like running and other exercise." I sent a small glare to the genius, a small smile slipping onto my face when he shrugged in surrender. "But I have a feeling you don't want to be doing that."

"Yeah maybe not baby, think I'll go for the hot bath." I smiled at Spencer, relaxing in my seat as much as my muscles would allow and observing my team as they settled down. Derek's headphones were on, Emily was reading over the case files with Aaron, David was nursing his scotch, JJ was texting and Spencer was slouched on the sofa with his book, eyes drooping as he attempted to read. I watched in amusement for a few seconds until he jerked himself awake.

"Spence, you're going to end up hurting your neck sat like that." I chuckled to myself softly and stood, grabbing one of the big blankets kept on board for situations like this. My scolding was soft, feeling myself slipping into exhaustion too but ignoring it in favour of looking after my genius. "Lay down properly baby, get some rest." I didn't realise the attention I'd brought to us both as I draped the blanket across the sweet, sleepy doctor.

"M' not tired, honest, m'just having a minute" he tried to fight it, the glassy look in his eyes proved it to be a blatant lie and I cooed at him, brushing his curls from his eyes.

"Don't you lie to me," I whispered, "Don't let Aaron hear you telling fibs." I shook my head as I slipped a little into my head. When I got tired it was so easy to slip into subspace, so easy to feel small and in need of love and comfort, in need of a cuddle and sleep and after the case we'd had I wasn't surprised I was slipping fast.

"Don't wanna sleep on m'own." Spencer's voice was small and vulnerable, bringing tears to my eyes at how sad he sounded. His arms snaked amount my thigh as he pulled me closer to him "Stay with me, please." I hesitated for a moment before letting myself slip a little further with a nod. Sliding off my shoes and jacket, I motioned for him to scoot back before pulling back the blanket and crawling onto the sofa. Arms instantly wrapped around me, pulling me by the waist back against his chest as he spooned me. I winced as he pressed against my bruised ribs but held back any noise so he didn't think he'd hurt me. After a little shuffling, we finally got comfortable, his hand clasped in mine, draped over my waist and bodies pressed together sweetly. I suppressed a little moan of happiness as his warmth seeped into my sore body, soothing me and making me drowsier.

My eyes felt heavier and heavier by the second as Spence's heartbeat slowed against my back and his breathing evened out. Soft breaths puffed against the back of my neck where he'd nestled his face, pressing a last kiss to my nape as he nodded off. My eyes did one last swoop of the jet, comforted by all the soft smiles and admiring eyes I saw until I finally succumbed to sleep, comfortable in the company of my family and the arms of our baby boy.

[pia-nor481]

Sick Day

Daniel Ricciardo x reader smut 18+

Season two spoilers for doctor who. This may or may not be based off of how I spent my time while unwell

1.8k words

“I’m back” Daniel yelled through the house as he closed the door. He was so excited to be back with his girlfriend, he was gone for three weeks now and just really needed to see her. he rushed through the hallway and his excitement dialled down as he noticed the silence. Normally she would have some form of music playing rather loud, wanting to drown out the silence of being alone in their shared home.

The sneezing caught him off guard and so he picked up his pace and saw her sat on the sofa; drowning in blankets with her eyes focused on the television. The volume was no higher than ten so he could only hear the mumbling of the actors voices. “What happened to you? baby, you must be so unwell to be watching tv without me.” He walked closer and saw her drained eyes and slightly reddened nose. “Danny, I’m so happy your back, I missed you so much.” Her voice came out strained and nasally. “Oh look at you, you’re so sick. What happened?” He said reaching out to her as she spoke again. “I didn’t wear a jumper when I went out. But I had a scarf on, I promise.” Daniel shook his head at the statement and walked towards the kitchen, turning the kettle on a reaching for the tea. He then poured an unnecessary amount of honey in the mug and placed it on the table.

Daniel finally pulled his hat off of his head and placed it on hers, knowing she was still feeling the chill. He moved the covers slightly to slip under them, and to touch her, knowing it would comfort her. “No, don’t. I’ll get you sick.” She was so happy he was back in a formula one car, she was so stressed for him upon hearing that he had broken his hand during the free practice at zanvoort, then the engine issues at Austin and now, he needed to keep well to ensure he would have a seat next year. “No you won’t.” He almost whispered out leaning closer to her, pulling her body towards him, resting her head against his chest, wrapping his hands over her waist. “Oh right, you’ve got your vitamins.” He laughed out lightly upon hearing her reply.

“So what are we watching?” He said, diverting his eyes towards the screen. “Doctor who.” She whispered, trying not to hurt her voice further, just as the TARDIS came on screen. A smile creeped a way on to his face, he had no idea what was going on as Cathrin Tate appeared on the screen. “So what’s happening?” She leaned further into him and pulled the blankets higher for extra warmth. “Well, the Doctor is really upset about Rose, who’s in an alternate universe with her mum, Jackie, and her alternate universe dad, who saved her life twice, I think. And some how Donna played by Cathrin Tate, has ended up in the TARDIS while getting married.” She explained like it was super simple and he was already aware. Daniel smiled, knowing this was something she enjoyed and so wanted to hear more. “Babe, Who’s Rose?”

“She was in season one with the Ninth Doctor, then he saved her life and became the Tenth doctor. In season two she employed her boyfriend Ricky or Micky, something like that, to help her and The doctor. So they went to a school when the teachers were evolved bat-vampires who were brainwashing and killing students. They also meet the girl that the Doctor originally traveled with and Rose got pretty jealous. But I would be too, David Tennant is pretty hot.” She laughed out lightly, shifting in Daniel’s lap. “Hey, I’m right here…At least he got dark hair, I’ll take that.” A grin covered her face, ear to ear.

“Anyway, they all then go the alternate universe because something happened with the TARDIS, and lots of people have been disappearing and alternate universe Micky or Ricky and his friends are trying to find out what had been happening . They then find out that the people are being turned into cybermen and then alternate Ricky or Micky dies saving everyone, Alternate Jackie also dies at some point, then Rose’s boyfriend Micky or Ricky stays to replace him and be good or something. So her and the doctor travel back to normal earth.” She said, having to pause every now and then to catch her breath. As much as Daniel felt sorry for her he didn’t want her to stop. “So Micky or Ricky and Rose are still dating, even though they are in a different universes?” He said, passing her the tea to sip on, hoping it would ease her throat.

“I can’t really remember but she kissed him before she left so probably. Anyway, some other stuff happens and they end in a Torchwood building because of some random ghosts appearing all over London. Then the find out it’s actually the cybermen slipping through the void and into their universe. And obviously they are trying to kill everyone because reasons, then a metal circle thing opens revealing the last four daleks, they are robots that started a war against the time lords, including the Doctor. At this point I started to hate Mickey or Ricky, because he touched the metal and released a lot of imprisoned daleks who want to kill everyone as they think they’re superior. So the Daleks and Cybermen try and kill each other.” She paused for a quick cough and another sip of tea. “Here, Love” Daniel said, handing her a throat sweet. “Continue.”

“So the Doctor sends everyone back to the alternate universe as they would be sucked into the void because of the travelling, apart form Jackie obviously, but Rose stayed. They have these massive magnets… Don’t laugh at that, I can’t believe you are laughing at the word massive. To continue, the lever moves so rose let’s go of the magnet to fix it and almost falls into the void but Pete, her alternate universe dad, jumps through the universe and saves her, taking her back with him. Then the void closes and she starts crying hysterically because she can’t ever see the doctor again.” She could feel Daniel nod, he truly loved to hear her talk, he wanted to make her feel listened to. “But she’s dating Micky or Ricky, right?” She shifted slightly before speaking again. “Yes, it’s bad right? But they get led to some beach where a hologram of the Doctor appears and she all crying again. Then she’s says ‘I love you’ and he just stares at her for a second, her family are all there by the way, and the Doctor says ‘Rose Tyler, I’ and the hologram fades.”

Daniel gasps, “Right in front of Ricky-Micky. What a hoe.” She laughs a bit louder than expected. “I know, it’s unbelievable.” Daniel always loved gossip, no matter where it was from. “You are such an nerd baby… Oh don’t make that face, I still love you.” He dropped his head into her neck as she spoke, “I still don’t feel any better.” He let her comment sit in the air for a minute, not sure if his idea was a good one, he needed to debate it before making a decision. “I know what will make you feel better.” She looked up at him, still unable to see his face, “What?”

“An orgasm.” He mumbled against her neck with a smile. “Is that so? She replied, trying to move to face him, but his hands were firm, ensuring she wasn’t moving anywhere by keeping them on her hips. “Yeah, I heard it’s really good.” His hand slipped up her top and began to slide down her abdomen and into her underwear. She let a high sigh, just at the feeling of him touching her skin, he’d been away for far too long. “That’s it, Love, relax for me.” As soon as his fingers made contact with her clit she miss out, loud. Daniel began to run slow and teasing circles into her skin, not wanting to build her up too quick. She could feel his touch all over her body, and it just felt so good to be back in his arms, the smallest touch was euphoric. She hummed when he applied more pressure, and he pulled her flush against his chest again, needing to have full control of her body. She pushed her hip against Daniel’s hand as she began to kiss and suck on her neck. He knew this was a massive turn on for her, and so, it would heighten her pleasure. “Uh, Daniel, please” she moaned out, almost over the edge. “Go on babe, you can cum for me.” He climax was so overwhelming that her whole body was shaking, she shook her head side to side involuntarily, and pushed her hands deep into the cushions of the sofa, it felt so phenomenal that she had no control.

“Good girl.” He whisper in her ear, making her whine and squirm in his lap again. They sat there for a while, enjoying each others company. Daniel moved to kiss her lips softly, kissing always felt more intimate than sex, it was one way of showing her that he truly and deeply loved her. She shifted slightly, laying on her side, so her ear was pressed up against his chest, hearing his heart beating. It was relaxing, peaceful even. Daniel rubbed his hands up and down the side of her torso and down her thigh, making sure she felt loved during haze of her climax. “I love you.” She whispered, knowing that he would want to hear it back. It wasn’t as if he was insecure, he just like to hear how much she loved him, it made him feel appreciated.

“Come on, let me up.” He lightly smacked her thigh to move her. He felt a chill run through his body after leaving the warmth of the blankets, and her body. “Hot lemonade and paracetamol, that’s what you need.” He said, noticing her yawning. So he reached in the cupboard for another mug. “Or do you want some nightnurse? it will make you sleep better babe.” He looked back to the sofa, seeing his girlfriend smile sent a feeling of joy through his body. “Hot lemonade and nightnurse it is.”

Daniel picked her up from the sofa and brought her to the bedroom, she was exhausted, anyone could tell that. Once he got her placed on the soft mattress, he tucked her body tightly with the quilt, ensuring she stayed warm. “Danny, you’re so sweet.” He smiled, before reaching for a t-shirt to sleep in. “It’s because I love you.” He turned around to see her fast asleep, all cozied up on his side of the bed and he chuckled. She was perfect, no matter what. “Good night love.” He said as soft a possible as he got under the covers with her, pulling her body against his.

[bairdthereader]

Let's have some tea with the Nelsons.

One of my favorite little throughlines in Heartstopper is the making of tea as a gesture of comfort, welcome, or care in the Nelson household.

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The first time we ever see Nick in his kitchen is after Charlie leaves on their snow day. Sarah is already at her customary place at the table with a cup of tea at her elbow, and Nick is gazing contemplatively into the middle distance while waiting for the kettle to boil. You get the sense that this is a well-worn routine in the Nelson home, and that Nick and Sarah have created a deeply loving and understanding relationship over many past mugs of tea at this table. As Nick prepares his tea, Sarah begins talking about Charlie: how nice he is, how different to Nick’s other friends, how Nick seems more himself around Charlie. As Nick takes his first sip of tea, you can see his perspective on his friendship with Charlie shift just a tad, a new, lovely facet revealed. Charlie helps Nick be his true self, and that, Nick realizes, makes him content.

When Sarah comes home to a troubled Nick—notably, waiting at the table where big discussions happen—trying to work through the love triangle he's somehow found himself in, she listens and offers her usual Sarah Nelson style of lovingly straightforward advice. You can see that Nick is at least somewhat comforted by this clear-eyed approach to the problem with Imogen; it confirms what he already knows deep down. And then, unaware of Nick’s changed relationship with Charlie, she says, "The right girl will come along" . . . and Nick dies inside just a little. But, she's getting two mugs out of the cabinet, so at least there will be tea.

After Nick’s day at the seaside with Charlie, he comes home very ‘smiley,’ having settled a lot of big things with Charlie and within his own mind. In an almost mirrored setup to the snow day tea, Sarah is having a cup at the table, and Nick heads over to the kettle to start making a mug for himself. While he waits for the kettle to boil (a good time for rumination if ever there was one), he remembers his words to Charlie: he wants to start telling people. He screws up his courage and sits down with Sarah to have the bravest conversation he’s ever had to have with her. And in that place of safety and comfort, over nurturing and calming mugs of tea, Nick shares this most important part of himself with his mother, and Sarah surrounds her son with accepting love.

Of course, we have this really satisfying interesting moment when David is initially denied tea because of his rudeness. Sarah’s quietly bolstering Nick while putting David in his place just a bit. She’s saying, you can only be part of this ritual if you honor the care and safety that is the hallmark of the Nelson home. (And we all know David is incapable of that.)

When Charlie sneaks out to visit Nick after his rough day, they relax in Nick’s room; Charlie, typically, falls asleep. When he wakes up, Nick offers dinner, which Charlie declines, asking for tea instead. This one’s hard, because we know that in this moment tea is Charlie’s way of getting around food and all of its challenging implications for him. Nick doesn’t know that, though, so he responds with joking affection, “You’re such an old man.” (Giving you the side-eye here Nick, since you drink more tea than anyone else in this show.) Nonetheless, he goes to make Charlie’s tea, a small gesture of care, and of intimacy in the sense that Nick knows how Charlie takes his tea and will be sure to fix it that way. That this lovely, domestically caring moment is interrupted by David’s cruelty is crushing. Those cups of tea will go cold on Nick’s bedside table.

After what is easily one of the most stressful evenings they’ve both experienced, Nick is recovering in bed while Charlie makes tea. Nick and Charlie need some time in a safe and comforting place to recuperate; not just Nick from physical illness, but both of them from the social pressures and challenges of the party in the woods. This overhead shot of Charlie stirring the tea is one of my favorites. Those three mugs in a row symbolize how Nick, Sarah, and Charlie all care for and support each other. Charlie may be a relative newcomer, but Sarah loves him already, and she has enveloped him in the safety of both her person and her home. Charlie clearly appreciates and cares for her in return. So even though he’s making this tea for a tired and ill Nick, he’s also caring for and thanking Sarah in this small way. And she returns the gesture with one of her own: validating words. “Nick's so lucky to have you.”

Tara and Darcy have just been through hell on a night that was supposed to be very special to both of them for a lot of reasons. The Nelson house becomes a safe harbor where they have time to be alone, with supportive and dear friends nearby, to discuss at long last the problems that have been plaguing their relationship all summer. It’s an incredibly challenging, honest, raw conversation, but Tara is patient and understanding, and Darcy is vulnerable, and they land on solid ground at the end. When the Paris squad sees that they are happily dancing together, they come to offer their additional love and support. Understanding that this is a time when comfort and closeness is needed, Nick does what Nelsons do: he offers tea.

Bonus: Tea at the Nelsons respresents Nick developing wider, deeper, more authentic friendships, as teatime progresses from a family-only affair, to a family + Charlie affair, to a Paris Squad affair. 💕

Honorable mentions go to . . .

Tea at Tao's, to help with hard truths:

Hot cocoa at Charlie's, with excessive marshmallows to bribe your friends into letting your secret boyfriend come to your birthday party:

AND

Every single teacher needs tea to get through this day (maybe there's a dash of whiskey in those mugs) . . .

Except this guy, who is clearly a sociopath:

[word-wytch]

Don't Stand So Close To Me — Chapter 8

Eddie x Teacher!Reader

Chapter 8/? 5.5k. Series Masterlist

✏︎ Eddie goes to a Halloween party on business while you have a different sort of celebration. 

✏︎ Series Summary: Forced to move back home to Hawkins after your fiancé cheats on you, you begin to fall in love again with an audacious 20 year old metalhead, only there’s one problem — he’s still in high school and you’re his English teacher.

While you struggle starting over in a place you never thought you would return, Eddie struggles feeling stuck in a place he can’t manage to leave — until you offer to help him. Of all the lessons learned, the most important are the ones you teach each other.

✏︎ Series CW: forbidden romance, slow burn, smut (18+ mdni), true love, internal conflict, student-teacher relationship, 10 year age gap, mutual pining, sexual tension, emotions, drama, angst, character development, happy ending :)

Chapter warnings: heavy grief, heavy angst, depictions of depression, sibling death mention, drunk driving accident mention, drugs, alcohol, bullying

Saturday, October 26th 1985

There was a shadow on your heart.

It was there from the moment you woke up. A fog that made you not want to leave your bed. Not want to do anything at all. 

You didn’t, not for a long while until your bladder forced you to. And when you did, you would move from room to room in a daze. Eyes unfocused, hair and teeth unbrushed. You would search for your motivation all day, what there was left of the day anyway.

You hoped that you would find it. Somewhere in the pile of dirty dishes or in the half eaten microwaved breakfast burrito that you could barely stomach, still sitting on your table getting stale and dry — waiting for you to come back. The quiet, hopeful part of you thought that maybe you would.

Maybe it was somewhere in the pile of papers you still had yet to grade, or in the laundry you still had yet to fold. Maybe if you sat in front of the TV long enough the right song would find you on MTV and you would feel something else besides numbness and self-loathing.

David Bowie couldn’t do it. Neither could Whitney Houston. Michael Jackson tried too, over and over. You were tempted to reach for the remote if you heard “Thriller” one more time.

You wanted to murder the sky. Grey and indifferent, the pale, cold light only amplifying the heaviness inside you. Was it mocking you? Casting down drizzle, unable to expend enough for rain?  

You knew what day it was. You figured after 17 years it would be just another one, but feared for the same all at once. 

Numb as you felt, your head was anything but empty. There was all sorts of noise in there. It was loudest when the commercials came on. There was one in particular — an ad for Pumpkintown, a local attraction at one of the many farms that surrounded Hawkins. Every half hour you would hear little voices sing the familiar jingle, see their bright puffy coats as they ran through corn mazes, see their little, uncoordinated hands painting pumpkins and eating kettle corn.

Grief, as you would come to know it, was loudest in the great what if. In the wondering what might have been if things had turned out differently. Would you have nieces or nephews? Would you be on your way to Pumpkintown with them instead of sitting alone on your couch wanting to cry? You would never know.

The phone rang. It cut through the air, shrill and intrusive. You sat there for a few rings, contemplating letting it go but you were afraid the noise would just return moments later. That it wouldn’t leave you alone. 

You peeled yourself off of the couch and slugged into the kitchen. The breath you took before picking the phone up off the receiver was ragged. 

“Hello?” you answered, your first word all day.

“Hi dear, it’s mom.”

“Hey mom.” You wondered if she could hear the difference between a feigned smile and a real one. 

She wasn’t really listening though. Not that there was much to listen to in the weak “Oh yeah?”s  and the handful of “That’s nice”s you had to offer. She would talk about her book club and the drama she overheard from a friend of hers. She would talk about canning vegetables and the pumpkin pie she made the other day, how you really ought to come over and have some before it’s all gone.

“Anyway, thought I would just catch up with you,” she said finally. “How are you?”

The question surprised you. You wondered for a moment if you should answer honestly. 

“Oh, you know,” you said with a sigh, twisting the cord around your finger. “Just thinking about Mickey.” 

It was a name that was rarely said anymore. It was met with silence, rare for her. 

“Yes, it is that day,” she said finally. 

You knew she couldn’t have forgotten. You wondered about the noise in her head too, if gossiping and canning vegetables helped quiet the great what if. She hardly ever spoke about it since it happened. That always bothered you.

“I miss him,” you said weakly.

Her sigh filled another pause. “I do too.”

______

Eddie flicked his lighter and ignited the end of his cigarette. He leaned up against his van in Gareth’s driveway and took a long drag, looking around the neighborhood at the carefully groomed lawns. The wet, fallen leaves brought down by the wind the only thing that littered the pristine sidewalk. 

He exhaled the smoke into the damp night air, watching as it wafted across the driveway, up toward the glowing street lamps. 

The garage door startled him when it opened. 

Gareth hobbled out, lugging an amp. “Hey man, sorry it took me so long. Jeff left this here for you, he got his fixed so he doesn’t need it anymore.”

Eddie tapped the ash off the end of his cigarette and slid open the side door of the van. “Thanks, uh, you can just slide it in behind the back seat.” 

Gareth waddled over and set the amp down with a heavy thud as Eddie opened the driver’s side door and crawled in. He took another drag of his cigarette as Gareth fussed with the amp, sliding it back in the cabin behind the long bench.

The movement paused for a moment. “Dude what’s up with all the napkins back here?”

Eddie whipped his head around. “Don’t touch those.”

Gareth looked at him — wary and wide-eyed as he slowly exited the side of the van, coming around to take the passenger’s seat like he was afraid to even ask.

Eddie held the cigarette between his lips as he dug through the pile of tapes in the center console. “Bingo,” he said, popping Motörhead’s Overkill into the tape player and slamming it shut. He flicked his wrist and the Chevy Nomad roared to life.

Eddie banged his head as Gareth air drummed the solo to the opening track. He cranked the shift stick and hit the gas to back out. They took off, cruising down the dark suburban street with a roar and a rumble. 

“I just stopped at Rick’s right before you so we’re gonna have to roll as we go,” Eddie shouted over the music, tapping his hands against the steering wheel to the beat.

“Sounds good man,” Gareth shouted back, hammering at the dashboard with his hands.

By the time they arrived, the party was already raging. People still arriving in droves, parked cars piling up in the woods and down the long street outside of Tina’s house. Typically Eddie liked to arrive fashionably late, but after he and Gareth had to wade through a sea of bodies just to find Tina, he was having regrets about that. The thing was, Eddie needed a place to be for his operation. A table and a place to sit and roll was not only preferable, but rather necessary considering the party size.

Thankfully she wasn’t wearing a wig or a mask or they might have never found her on the back porch. Instead her mousey brown hair was styled in a 60s bob and tied back in a headband, completing her go-go girl look.

She led them into the packed living room.

“Move, dealer needs the table,” she shouted over the music, nudging the guy in the toga parked on the loveseat with her white go-go boot.

Her demand was met with looks of annoyance, but Tina just stood there with her arms crossed until they resigned, leaving only wet rings behind on the glass coffee table.

“All yours, boys.”

Would people know where to find him? Should he put up a sign? He supposed the best he could do was Tina’s word of mouth and their ongoing operation for everyone to see in the middle of the living room.

It turns out that was all he needed. They would sell for $5 a pop. And probably quicker if Gareth wasn’t so shitty at rolling.

“Woah, woah, man that’s like way too much. Here—” He took the overflowing paper out of Gareth’s hands and demonstrated. “You gotta use the filter as a guide, and start with like half as much dude.” Eddie rolled it in his fingers until it evened out, then he tucked the paper behind the filter licked along the edge to seal it, twisting the end in a final flourish. “See? Like that.” 

 Gareth snorted and took a swig of beer. “Ok Edward, master of the roll.” 

Eddie gave him a look, doing a piss poor job at hiding his smirk. “I mean the point is to make money, man. If you roll them too fat it not only looks terrible but we’re just giving away weed.”

Gareth sighed and looked at him over the can at his lips. “Got it, sensei.”

“Good ‘cause we’re selling fast.” Eddie loaded up the grinder, feeling the grit of the resin as he twisted it in his hands. 

His mind wandered, as it always did, to you. He thought about you at a Halloween party. Wondered what sort of costume you would have. Probably something smart like Nancy Drew, or geekishly obscure like Jane Eyre, or maybe you would go the fantasy route and be Arwen, elf ears and all.

He wondered how you would be at a party. Pensively sipping your drink, making keen observations about the partygoers. Maybe you’d have fun too, after a few more. After a song you liked came on and he dragged you out of the corner to dance like fools. 

He wished that you could be here. Well, maybe not here watching him sell weed but maybe in another timeline. In the absence of the wall that was built between you long before either of you had any say in it. 

Eddie tapped the contents of the grinder out onto his rolling tray and got to work.

There were so many people that had come by his table that they were all starting to blend together. How many devils, ghosts, and cowboys would he see before the night was over? It was yet to be determined and the night was very young.

What was hard to miss was the gang of jocks in leather jackets and white t-shirts, hair slicked back like greasers. There were at least five of them, and they all came in at once together like some wannabe boy band, lead by none other than Jason Carver.

It was also hard to miss the angel standing next to him. Literally. Chrissy Cunningham in huge feather wings, a tight white dress, and a sparkling gold halo.

He was certain that his gaze would be lost in the sea of people. He hoped that it would be. Hoped that they would walk right past and never even see him. 

But Chrissy did. By some split second miracle, some sixth sense.

Her eyes found his from across the room. She smiled at him, bright and blinding.

______

The darkness in the room alarmed you when you opened your eyes, struggled to rather. Bleary and squinting against the white light from the television, you rubbed the sleep from them. 

You sat up on the couch and wiped the drool off your face, wondering what time it was. The clock on your wall said something like 8:30, but it was hard to tell and your eyes were still adjusting.

Your stomach growled and you thought about the breakfast burrito still sitting on your kitchen table. It was still the last thing you had eaten. You ran your tongue across your teeth, scummy and in need of brushing. The pile of laundry was still there too, sitting crumpled in a basket next to you. The papers still sitting in a pile on your coffee table, untouched.

“Thriller” was playing. Again. Your hand itched for the remote but it was buried somewhere in the couch so instead you just sat there. You sat there and watched like you had done half a dozen times already today. You watched as Michael Jackson danced around like a werewolf in his red suit, unable to peel your eyes from the screen.

You watched him and thought about Eddie Munson at a party. 

Thought about him in a darkened basement, the air thick with smoke and sound. Crowded with people like him who wanted to get away, muffled music coming through ceiling from upstairs. He would be there, strewn across a couch or leaning against a wall. Cigarette in one hand, beer in another. He would bring the bottle to his lips and look at you with those dark eyes. Lids heavy as the buzz washed over him, relaxing deeper into the space he occupied. He would drape his arm across the back of the couch, beckoning you to sit closer.

It was easy to imagine. How easy it would be to slide up next to him. To lean in a little too close. To feel the heat from his body as he talked about music, his bright voice filling the space between you, what little there was. To catch the scent of his clothing, of his skin as he leaned closer to talk over the noise, his lips ghosting the shell of your ear. 

How easy it would be to turn your head and catch those lips in yours. Soft, plush, and needy. You imagined how his tongue would feel as it coaxed against yours. Smoke acrid, the taste of beer still lingering on it. 

It was easy to imagine those strong hands of his, how they would feel gripping your thigh or your hip as he pulled you closer. Those tendons and bones you recalled so vividly when he’d graced you with the chance to touch him. You could imagine how they would feel other places.

It was easy to imagine that just about any girl would see him and want the same thing.

And who would he be to say no? To some girl dressed as a cat or a rabbit barely wearing any clothes, looking at him like she wanted to take a bite. 

Your stomach lurched.

It would be easy. Easy for them to find a quiet place to take things further.

You imagined, for a moment, what it would be like to be her. To be in that darkened basement, amidst the laughing and shouting and chaos of others around you too wrapped up in their own world to notice how his hands are wandering. How his lips are wandering too. Dizzying as they track across your jaw, down your neck. How his tongue lathes at the skin there, the buzz from the drink in his other hand only amplifying the need you can feel in his teeth. 

He would look at you with those dark, lust-blown eyes and you would know exactly what he wants. He would mutter in your ear and let his palm slip from around your waist only to take your hand. To lead you out of the darkened basement to a bedroom, or out to his van. 

You imagined those strong shoulders of his. How they felt under his t-shirt and how they would feel without it. If he would even bother to remove it or if his need would render that too inconvenient.

It wouldn’t be that hard — to find a spot to sit in the back of his van. Dark and quiet save for the deep bass and muffled voices from the party raging on in the distance. To lose what little clothing you had on and crawl atop his lap. To wrap your arms around those solid shoulders as his curious fingers explored you below. 

How could he help himself? When you’re right there, wanting him so evidently. When it’s something he can feel with his fingers and taste on his tongue when those fingers leave your heat. Who would he be to stop himself from giving you what you want? 

And his voice. Would his voice still be as bright as he sunk himself into you or would it be colored differently — shaded with hoarseness as his heavy sighs filled the space between you? How would it color the thick night air as the pressure mounted inside of him? Would he use his words? Would he be able to when the pressure was too much? What new colors would there be then? 

It was easy to imagine. 

So easy that it made you sick. 

It sat in the pit of your stomach and gnawed at any fleeting hunger you might have had when you woke up. Like a tapeworm.

It whispered things to you. That he would be better off with a girl his own age anyway. That you were a short-lived fascination in his fast life. That he would grow tired of you too. Things that sounded truer the longer you sat with them in the darkness of your living room.

There was shame too. Shame for even letting yourself get to this point. For feeling this way about your student of all people. For having hope to begin with. After all, he had done so many things to give it to you.

You thought about all the parties you never went to. All the darkened basements you were never led away from. All the colors that you never got to hear, and taste, and touch in sacrifice for good behavior. 

It was an experience that you would give anything to have. 

You thought about Eddie Munson and his boyish smile. The way his hand felt when it took yours. The kindness in his eyes. The shame you saw in them too.

You thought about him coming home from the party. Cruising down a dark, winding road in his van, taking the curves and bends with a reckless abandon, fueled by the music pounding in his speakers and the vices in his veins. You thought about his wild hair catching the wind from the window he lowered to taste the rush of being alive.  

You thought about him taking one of those bends too tightly. How top-heavy vans could be. How slick the roads were. How easy it would be not to notice someone else coming around the corner.

And just like that you were in your pyjamas again, barefoot on the carpet of your childhood living room. Your heart pounding into your throat as you watched your parents from behind at the front door. The flashing of red, white, and blue from outside the big front window the only light in the darkness. It streaked across your family photos and painted the paneled walls. 

You wondered what they would say about him. What all the other teachers would say when he didn’t show up to school on Monday. What the whole town would say when their papers and televisions told them he would never show up to school again.

Would they change their tune or would it only make them sing it louder? That he was always trouble. That it was his own fault. That it was only a matter of time. That he had no future anyway. You could almost hear Ms. O’Donnell. Almost hear the half-hearted comments from the others about what a shame it was, the truth of their feelings masked with a weak display of sympathy for a day or two.

Would he amount to nothing more than a warning? A cautionary tale at school assemblies? An example of how not to be?  

Your hands gripped the couch, stomach churning. 

It was easy to imagine. As easy as it was to remember.

______

Eddie had never been to a house party that wasn’t obnoxious. Obnoxious was kind of the point.

He wasn’t sure if it was the shitty music, or the fact that people kept kicking the back of the loveseat he was stationed at, or the drunken caterwauling from the sexy inmate in the corner as she sloshed her drink all over the carpet. Maybe it was the kick drum that pounded in his chest and forced him to smell the beer on the breath of his buyers as they slurred their orders.

He brought his own can to his lips and took the last swig of the warm beer that remained in the bottom of it. His arms felt like jello. Even still, he wished that he was more numb than he was. His mouth was cotton dry and Gareth still had not returned with the drinks that he said he was going to get half an hour ago. He was well past the point of agitated. 

The whole room was packed shoulder to shoulder and smelled like cigarettes, beer, and sweat. He was cornered in it, but he couldn’t leave his goods sitting out without someone to watch them and he couldn’t leave either or he would forfeit his spot. Where was Gareth? He was going to strangle him. 

Eddie glanced around the packed room, his heart kicking up in a panic. Hindsight pierced his haze. He should have brought Jeff too, but he hated these kinds of house parties. Now that he was alone with a table full of drugs and a lunchbox full of money, he was starting to realize how dangerous that was.

That’s when he felt a dip in the seat next to him.

Chrissy Cunningham leaned back into the couch with a heavy sigh, crushing her feather wings behind her. Her gold garland halo sat crooked atop her head.

Eddie’s stomach dropped.

“Hey,” she said breathlessly, “Mind if I sit here? My feet are killing me.” She stretched her legs out, smooth and polished. The rhinestones on her stilettos caught the light as she kicked them off.

“Sure,” he said hesitantly, glancing around again. “You don’t think your boyfriend would mind?” He couldn’t hide the suspicion in his voice. 

Chrissy rolled her eyes and propped her plush cheek against her hand, her elbow resting on the back of the white leather couch. “He’s outside doing keg stands, I don’t think he even noticed I left.”

Eddie sat back a little in his seat, unconvinced. “I uh, brought a friend too but it seems like he ditched me.”

“Oh no,” she mumbled, scooting closer. “I can keep you company.”

He froze, noticing how dangerously close her red drink was to her white dress. The way her hand jerked as she struggled to keep it balanced. “You uh…you ok?”

“Yeah ‘m good, ‘m good,” she muttered, “Thanks for asking.”

Drunken hollering filled the silence between them as Eddie racked his brain over what to say next. The packed bodies in the dim living room swayed to Rockwell’s one hit wonder.

I always feel like

Somebody’s watching me

“Nice costume.” It was the best he could do.

“What are you dressed as?” she teased, playing with one of the pins on his vest. 

Eddie swallowed, glancing down at the pearl white nail polish on her delicate fingers as she twisted the pin. “Just your friendly neighborhood drug dealer.” 

Chrissy batted her eyes at him. “Mm yeah, you are friendly,” she breathed, scooting even closer. She tucked her legs underneath her and rested her head against her arm on the back of the couch. 

He could feel the heat from her body. Smell the sugary drink on her breath as it ghosted over his face. He was close enough to notice the patches on her lips where the red had rubbed off onto the cup. Close enough to see how the redness in her eyes intensified the green irises under her hooded lids.

She was sitting so close that he failed to notice how many greasers were crowding around the table. In fact he didn’t until one of them said something.

“Hey,” Jason barked. He reached over the table to snatch one of the joints, his smile dripping with acid as he waved it in front of Eddie’s face. “How much to leave my fucking girlfriend alone?” 

Eddie felt his ghost leave his body.

“Jason—“ Chrissy balked.

“Get up.”

“I was just looking for a place to sit, these heels are—“

“I said get up,” Jason spat. 

Chrissy stumbled off the couch, pulling down the white, skin tight dress that had ridden up her thighs. She almost tripped over her shoes.

“Why do I keep catching you and my girlfriend together? Hm?” Jason rolled the joint around in his fingers. A few gelled strands of his slicked back hair had come as unhinged as he was.

Eddie rolled his eyes to mask his panic. “Calm down. She’s been sitting here for like two minutes. Jesus.”

“Yeah, yeah. You know,” he said, looking around, “There just aren’t any other seats in this whole goddamn house are there?” He laughed dryly. “Not a single one!”

Eddie’s eyes flashed to Chrissy. Would she say something? Did Jason know she invited him? Was it a secret?  

It was the panic in her eyes that told him. “Apparently not,” he said curtly. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have business to attend to.” He gestured to the joint in Jason’s hands. “That’ll be five dollars.”

“Oh I’m not finished with you, freak.”

“Jason—“

“Why don’t you go find a seat somewhere else, babe.” His words were a gentle venom.

“I’m fine,” Chrissy choked out.

“You know I’d really hate for those pretty feet of yours to get a blister,” he threatened. “Why don’t you go find Tina and have her get a chair for you, hm?”

Chrissy looked hesitant, eyes meeting Eddies for a split second before darting back over to Jason. Met with only daggers, she picked her heels up off the carpet and stormed off.

“Now then,” Jason said as he took her seat on the couch. The jocks in jackets crowded closer, closing off the table from the rest of the pulsing room. “Why don’t you tell me,” he started, grabbing Eddie’s lighter off the table to ignite the the joint in his fingers. “What makes you think you can talk to my girlfriend?”

Eddie seethed, his chest pounding, and not from the kick drum anymore. Where is the fuck is Gareth? 

“What makes you think you’re above paying for shit like everyone else?” He snapped back. “Your daddy teach you that?”

An audible ripple of shock emanated from the jocks in jackets.

“Wow look at that boys, he’s as funny as he is brilliant,” Jason retorted. “Let me ask you something else, freak.” He leaned in close enough for Eddie to smell the beer on his breath. “What the hell were you doing with our English teacher after school the other day?”

Eddie’s stomach dropped. “I—“ he steeled his face for the lie, “Jesus I just saw her in the hallway, man. We were both leaving, why the fuck does it matter?”

“See my buddy Donnie over here has a few questions for you too.” 

Eddie looked up. That’s when he recognized him. The athlete. The cigarette. 

“You a little hall monitor now, Munson? Huh?” Donnie uttered, earning jeers from the others.

“See I have a theory” Jason leaned even closer, blowing smoke in Eddie’s face. “That you’re turning into a teacher’s pet.” 

“Get the fuck out of my face,” Eddie spat. “You can keep the joint.”

“Ooh see that boys?” Jason laughed. “So defensive. You know what I think? I think the freak has a big fat crush.”

The crowd erupted, practically tripping over themselves now.

All Eddie could offer was dry laugh, shaking his head. His voice caught in his throat, face hot. Gripping the seat of the couch was all he could do to stop his hands from shaking. Where the fuck is Gareth?

“See look, he’s not denying it!” Jason announced to his cronies. The response was uproarious laughter. “You’re a real fuckin’ perv aren’t you?”

Eddie seethed. “You’re an entitled cocksucker in the way of my customers.” 

Then there was the commentary from the peanut gallery. Even over the music he could hear it.

“He can’t even get girls his own age,” Patrick muttered.

“Yeah he’s so old he’s going after the teachers now,” wheezed Donnie.  

Eddie felt the blood drain from his face. Felt a deep shame bubble up from the pit of his stomach. 

“You know what, I’m out. You can tell Tina who’s fault it was.” Eddie flipped open his black metal lunchbox with one hand and grabbed a handful of joints with the other, tossing them in unceremoniously.

“Woah woah who said we were finished?” Jason said through a crazed laugh. “You’re here to make deals right? Well I came here to make a deal too.”

Eddie offered him nothing more than a glance, packing away his grinder, his papers, his filters.

“Here’s the deal,” he said leaning in closer. “You stay the fuck away from my girlfriend, and I won’t make your life even more of a pathetic nightmare.” 

Eddie bit his lip. Better get her a collar then so she knows who she belongs to. 

It killed him not to say it. Physically hurt him not to. He wanted to spit it in his face but the lunchbox in front of him full of drugs and money kept his mouth buttoned. They could steal it all if they wanted. They could steal it all right now and get away with it too.

Jason grabbed him by the collar of his shirt, forcing Eddie to face him. “Do we have a deal, freak? I know you’re good at deals.”

“Deal,” Eddie spat,“Now get your fucking hands off me,” he said with a shove.

Jason sat back in his seat, smoothing his hand through his hair. “See? That wasn’t so hard was it?” 

______

Eddie stormed through the house. He surged through the kitchen, the dining room, the basement. He pushed through the sweaty bodies packing the stairwell and banged on all the bedroom doors, only to open them to half naked couples yelling at him from the darkness. He had been at this for twenty minutes now and still no sign of Gareth.

He wanted to scream. He wanted to just leave him. He was about to.

But then he thought about you. He thought about your brother. About how wasted everyone at this party was and how Gareth would find his way home. Eddie had sobered up plenty.

He thought about the looks on all their faces when they mentioned you. A familiar shame twisted in his gut. He knew the serpent well. Felt its sting since he could remember. The sting that came from bringing an ugly self-made peanut butter sandwich to middle school and unwrapping it in front of kids who’s moms packed notes.

Today the sting came from clean cut jocks at a normal party dressed in normal costumes looking down at him and his table full of drugs and saying that his heart was ugly too. That the flutters it felt when the kindness in your eyes soothed him like a balm were monstrous and disgusting. 

When he finally saw the glow of Gareth’s face by the fire pit he couldn’t tell if he was more relieved or enraged by the sight of him. Beer in hand, yucking it up with some chick dressed as Velma from Scooby Doo.

Eddie marched over to them, fuming. “We’re leaving. Now,” he barked.

“Dude what the fuck?”

“Thanks for leaving me back there for the past hour.” 

“Well I wasn’t gonna sit there all night, that was kind of the deal.”

“Oh yeah? Well you could have at least told me. At least come back and let me take a piss for fuck’s sake. You know I can’t exactly leave drugs and money unattended.”

Gareth sighed, glancing over at Velma with a wince. “Sorry man, I kind of got sidetracked. Cindy this is,” he gestured in annoyance, “Eddie by the way.”

Eddie, tight lipped, waved his hand unceremoniously.

“Come on, just sit and hang out with us.”

“I don’t wanna hang out, I just wanna go,” Eddie said, looking around anxiously.

Gareth looked him over, eyebrows knitting. “Did something… happen, man?”

Eddie glanced at Cindy, at the wary concern painting her face. He shifted his eyes toward the other people packed around the fire, laughing and drinking. “I’ll tell you in the car.”

Gareth met him with a wide-eyed mixture of disappointment and worry. “Come on, man. Give me like half an hour?”

In the waning of his rage, Eddie could feel the exhaustion setting in. Feel how thirsty he still was, how his ears were ringing from the noise, how his chest still rattled from the fear. His eyes turned to pleading. “Please.”

Gareth sighed, defeated. “Fine.”

______

A/N: Fun fact, I use a real calendar from 1985/86 to outline the story and I checked out of curiosity what day the Halloween party her brother attended would have been and it actually was Saturday, Oct 26th 1968. 1985 and 1968 use the exact same calendar. I wasn’t even planning on making it the exact anniversary but it just worked out that way. 

Another fun fact, Eddie dealing at Tina’s Halloween party as a plot point and the fact that Jason and the boys were dressed like greasers was inspired by one of my absolute favorite fics Oh, Baby by @inknopewetrust. Seriously, go read it. One of the best.

Thank you so much everyone, you know what to do — If you loved it, share it and let me know!

I really do try my best to respond to all your comments. 💋

Taglist: @mermaidsandcats29 @toxicjayhoo @ooo-protean-ooo @jadequeen88 @wroteclassicaly @kissmyacdc @mantorokk-writes @loveshotzz @newlips @chainsawmunson @trashmouth-richie @bebe0701 @latenighttalkingwithgrapejuice @bibieddiesgf @idkidknemore @alizztor @godcreatoreli @shotgunhallelujah @ethereal27cereal @munsonsgirl71 @luna-munson83 @eddiemunsonsbitcch @tlclick73 @emxxblog @siriusmuggle @sidthedollface2 @dollalicia @lma1986 @catherinnn @eddiemunson4life420 @readsalot73 @ruby-dragon @3rriberri @princess-eddie @nightless @eddieswifu @thew0rldsastage @quinnsfineline @jo-harrington @chaoticgood-munson @edsforehead @hanahkatexo @eddiemunsonsbedroom @beep-beep-sherlock @emily-roberts @averagemisfit03 @vintagehellfire @haylaansmi @carolmunson

[daysofyellowroses]

myosotis

a little fic based off this very lovely request 💗 | 1.3k | tw: mild language

Kerry looked up from stirring his tea as he heard the doorbell, taking the spoon out of the mug and leaving it on the counter before heading to the front door. He raised a brow as he saw David on the other side, stepping aside to let his brother in.

“Why didn't you just use your key?” Kerry asked, heading back to the kitchen.

“Forgot it didn't I?” David laughed, following Kerry into the kitchen and sitting down at the table. “what are you making?”

“Tea,” Kerry replied, looking over to his brother. “You want some? Kettle is just boiled.”

“Why not,” David nodded, glancing around. “Who's home?”

“Just me,” Kerry got another mug from the cabinet. “Everyone's out.”

“Where?” David asked, sitting back and resting his hands on his stomach. “Anywhere interesting?”

Kerry shrugged as he poured some hot water into the empty mug.

“Kev is out with Pam. Mike has band practice. Mom is shopping and Dad's at his office.”

“And you ain't got plans?” David asked, looking up to the ceiling. “Not like you.”

“I'm just enjoying the peace,” Kerry grinned, dropping a tea bag into the hot water and stirring it. “Not all that often this place is empty.”

David laughed as he nodded, stretching his arms up slightly and letting out a yawn.

“Hey, I need your advice on something.”

“Oh yeah?” Kerry asked, taking the mugs to the table and setting one down in front of David. “What's on your mind?”

“I was thinking of asking Sylvia out,” David shrugged, picking up his mug. You know that girl from the bank?” 

“Yeah I think so,” Kerry nodded. “She's pretty cute. Why do you need my advice? Just ask her out.”

“Well I..fuck this is stupid,” David sighed, taking a long sip of his tea before setting the mug down. “I just..I get so awkward around her. I never know what to say.”

“Really?” Kerry grinned. “You can't tell me you get nervous around a girl? You're constantly running your mouth, giving attitude. Why should it be different with her?”

“Because it is!” David groaned, sitting up and resting his head in his hands. “I don't want her to think I'm some big dumb loudmouth.”

“So you just don't want her to know the real you?” Kerry teased, laughing as David flipped him off. “I'm just kidding. You're overthinking this, it really ain't that complicated.”

“What do I do?” David asked, lowering his arms and looking over to his brother. “Like..what would you say?”

“Me?” Kerry raised a brow, looking up for a moment. “Hm..I guess I would say something like..Hey Sylvia, my brother David has a thing for you. You know him, tall, blonde hair, big mouth. He was too shy to ask you out so he sent his younger brother. You free Friday night?”

“Oh get fucked,” David groaned as Kerry laughed. “Come on, you're better at this than me. What do I say?”

“Alright, let me think,” Kerry grinned, taking a sip of his tea. “Okay, try something like..Hey Sylvia, I hope this ain't too forward but I think you're really great and I would be honored to take you out and get to know you better. If you happen to be free on Friday night I'd love to show you a great time.”

“You think it will work?” David asked, resting his palm against his mug. “I don't want to screw this up.”

“You won't screw it up,” Kerry grinned, getting up from the table. “Just be yourself. Don't stress about it. Worst case scenario she says no, not the end of the world. We got any cookies?”

“Top left cabinet,” David waved his hand. “Do you really think she'd say no?”

“I don't think so,” Kerry opened the cabinet and looked through it. “If you do it right.”

“No pressure,” David sighed, sitting up. “I hate being so awkward about this.”

“It's normal when you like someone,” Kerry took a pack of cookies and brought them to the table. “You don't want to look like an idiot in front of them.”

“Fair,” David nodded, reaching for the cookies. “What about you? You using your own advice?”

Kerry laughed softly and shook his head.

“Nah, I'm not really looking right now. If something is meant to be, it'll happen.”

“Look at you getting all wise,” David grinned, taking a couple of cookies before sliding the pack over to Kerry. “I guess single life is suiting you.”

“So far,” Kerry nodded. “I'm happy to focus on work right now. Big match on Saturday night, hope you won't be too distracted by your girlfriend.”

“Shut up,” David rolled his eyes with a grin, stuffing a cookie into his mouth. “she'th noth my girlfriend.”

“Not yet,” Kerry laughed, taking a sip of his tea and looking over to David. “You know..I've been meaning to tell you, I-”

“Hey, I'm home,” Kevin's voice sounded from the front door.

“In here,” Kerry called before looking to David with a smile. “I'll tell you later.”

“You better,” David grinned. “I'll be waiting on the edge of my seat.”

“Hey,” Kevin smiled as he walked into the kitchen, going to get himself a glass of water. “Did you have company?”

“No,” Kerry raised a brow, looking over to Kevin. “Why?”

“There's an extra mug on the table,” Kevin gestured to the mug sitting on the table across from Kerry. “Unless you just didn't feel like washing up?”

“Nah nothing like that,” Kerry shrugged with a smile. “David was here.”

“David..I see,” Kevin nodded, taking his glass to the table and sitting down across from Kerry. “I see him too, sometimes. Talk to him.”

“I know it's a little silly,” Kerry gestured to the untouched mug across the table. “But I really feel like he's there. Like we're just having the same conversations we woulda had.”

Kevin nodded softly, looking at the mug

“It's not silly. I do the same thing, I tell him about Pam and the boys and all of us. It feels like I could reach out and give him a hug, he's so real.”

“Hey, you ever tell him you miss him?” Kerry asked, letting out a sigh. “I always feel like I should. I want to tell him I'm sorry I wasn't there when he needed his family. That we let him die alone..”

“Hey, I won't hear it,” Kevin held his hand up. “We didn't let him die alone. He wasn't supposed to die, how in the world was it his time? Every time I see him I want to tell him that we all miss him, we love him. But I can't do it, I'm afraid if I say it then he'll really be gone.”

“I know,” Kerry murmured, looking up for a moment and taking a deep breath. 

“One day he'll stop showing up and maybe I'll regret not telling him but..I just want to remember the good times when I'm with him. I don't want to remember he's not really there.”

“Well while we're still here, so is he,” Kevin smiled softly. “We keep him alive like this. I know we ain't ever gonna forget about him but..it just feels important. What were you talking about with him this time?”

“That girl down at the bank,” Kerry smiled, looking over to Kevin. “Sylvia. Just giving him some advice. He always had a thing for her.”

“He sure did,” Kevin laughed softly. “His ears used to go pink when she smiled at him after church.”

“The only time he wasn't running his mouth,” Kerry laughed, shaking his head. “who knows what coulda happened, it's just fun to think about I guess.”

“Yeah,” Kevin smiled, checking his watch. “You wanna come pick Mike up?”

“Why not,” Kerry nodded, looking over to the mug before standing up. “maybe I can repurpose that expert advice of mine.”

[daisyblog]

Two Pink Lines

Harry's House Masterlist Summary: YN and Harry find out their expecting a baby.

"Shit"

Staring back at her were two pink lines. It explained the nausea, the extra tiredness and the one reason she took the test, her period was 7 days late. Something that she never experienced in the five years of starting puberty. YN was feeling all the emotions right now, scared, happy, sad, excited, terrified, anxious, overwhelmed.

---

Since she was young, it was her dream to be a Mum one day. Provide them with love, warmth and a happy healthy home. Something she longed to feel. Growing up with her father and stepmother was anything but loving, kind and happy. YN was ten when her mother was involved in a tragic car accident and she passed away in hospital the same night.

Lillian, or Lil as everyone called her, was loved by all for her kindness, her loving ways and her want to make those around her feel special. YN and her mum were joined at the hip, mother and daughter but best friends too.

She remembers playing in the garden with Harry at his house one day during the summer, Anne was pottering around in the kitchen when she called them both inside, sat YN down and explained that her Mum had been in an accident and in Anne's words "She's with the stars angel". How else could she tell her best friend's little girl her mother was no longer here. That night YN stayed at Anne's, cuddled up with love and security in a welcoming home.

A few days after the accident, YN went to live with her father and stepmother, Emma. She remembers how cruel they were when they saw her crying and grieving for her mother.

"what are you crying for?"

"she never loved you otherwise she'd still be here"

"she's gone just get over it"

"she's so selfish 'cause now we've got to look after you"

That was only the beginning. Most children would do anything to spend one more minute in their beds, trying to get an extra few minutes as their parents shouted up the stairs telling them they were going to be late for school. Not YN, she loved the sound of her alarm going off in the early mornings, rushing around the quiet house as her father and Emma was still sleeping due to being up all night drinking and who knows what else.

From a young age, she had to grow up quickly, she matured overnight. Not many ten-year-olds were getting themselves up, washed and dressed and taking themselves off to school. Anne noticed, she noticed everything. She approached David and Emma, thinking that perhaps they needed some help with YN, she knew how hard it could be raising a child, she was a mother of two herself. But Anne was told to mind her own business and not interfere. So instead she made an extra packed lunch in the mornings and slipped it into YN's hand in the schoolyard in the mornings and as Harry and YN grew older and headed off to secondary school, she would give Harry some extra money with a "make sure YN eats please".

It was when the pair were around fifteen, Anne noticed the change in Harry and YN's friendship. Their friendship group included six of them, Harry, YN, Jonny, Fern, Jenny and Noah. The six of them were inseparable, a true friendship group, always loyal to one another. She smirked as she caught her son gazing at the young girl as she spoke when they sat at the table for dinner, she'd chuckle to herself when Harry would stumble over his words when he tried to talk to her, despite them being friends since birth.

It was a Saturday evening and the six friends had gathered in the garden of Harry's house. Anne was standing peaking out of the double glass doors that opened out into the garden. The group were spread out on the wicker furniture, Harry and YN sitting next to each other with Harry's arm laying behind YN as his fingers played with her loose hair.

"Dear god woman..leave them alone" Robin startled Anne as he entered the kitchen and walking over to where the kettle was and flicked the button.

"But look she's letting him play with her hair...it has to mean something she's hated any physical affection since she went and lived with her father"

Robin closed his eyes for a moment "Anne..darling...just leave them be..if they're together then great but try not to look into everything they do..I mean yes she doesn't like affection but who could blame her after living with those idiots"

"I'd say they're more than idiots...the poor girl has no confidence...and then they decide one day to leave and go and live in Spain and leave her without a home...Lil and I always promised each other we would protect our children and I will keep my promise" Anne explained.

The sound of footsteps walking into the kitchen, interrupted the conversation. Gemma entered and picked some grapes from the counter "What are you doing?"

Before Anne could answer, Robin quickly spoke "Your Mum is spying on Harry and his friends", causing the older girl to laugh as her mother sent a glare his way.

"I'm not spying..I'm..uh..I think Harry and YN are more than friends and are hiding it" Anne admitted.

Without hesitation, Gemma spoke as she popped another grape into her mouth "Oh they're definitely more than friends"

"See..even Gemma has noticed" Anne sent Robin a proud grin, causing him to roll his eyes playfully.

"Well it was a bit hard to miss when they had their tongues down each other's throats"

Robin chocked on his tea, Anne's head whipped around "W-what..what do you mean?"

"Yeh we saw them a few days ago up the fields by the river..I tried wiping it from my memory" Gemma shivered as she relived the moment she and her friends spotted her younger brother and YN kissing by one of the trees.

"I knew it" Anne exclaimed, a wide smile sitting on her face as she claps her hand dramatically. Gemma and Robin looking on pitying the young couple sitting outside completely unaware of the grilling they were going to be up against.

---

She wasn't sure how long she stood there and stared at the positive pregnancy test, but what snapped her back to reality was hearing Harry singing from the kitchen where he was currently making them breakfast. Harry was unaware that she was standing behind the closed door with his baby growing inside her.

His career had just begun, the tour was underway, and they were heading to Australia soon. Would he be happy? Would he blame her? Would he leave her to raise the baby by herself? The band, management, the fans. What would they all say?

Taking a deep breath, YN decided she need to rip the band-aid and leave the bathroom and tell Harry. This was her Harry after all, not Harry Styles from One Direction. He was Harry, her best friend since birth, Harry who looked after her and make sure she had eaten when her pathetic father and stepmother didn't care, Harry who showed her love and how to enjoy physical affection, Harry her boyfriend of three years, Harry the love of her life.

Picking up the plastic stick that held their future, YN found herself walking towards the kitchen where a topless Harry was serving up their breakfast. Tea, toast and scrambled eggs.

As Harry noticed her walking in, he smiled "Hey..you alright?..I thought you'd disappeared for a moment" he joked. But as YN placed the test down on the counter in front of him, displaying the two pink lines, she notices Harry gulp and stare down at the item in front of him. Panic was written all over his face.

"I'm pregnant"

Silence. Silence and more silence.

The silence was painful, it was like YN was being punished. She wanted him to say something, anything. But instead, he stood there frozen, not looking at her.

"Harry please say something"

Harry found her eyes and nodded his head slightly, acknowledging her "Uh..um..I...sorry I'm just in shock"

Tears blurred YN's vision, before she pitty-fully pleaded "Please don't leave me"

"Babe..I would never" Harry panicked, before walking around to pull her into an embrace "C'mere..I'm not going anywhere...I'm just in shock that's all"

YN's arms were wrapped around his bare torso, while his arms laid on her shoulders, his head leaning on top of hers. Now and again leaving a peck to her hair.

"What are we going to do?" YN asked quietly as she stayed wrapped in her arms.

"We're going to have some breakfast 'cause you've got a baby to grow" Harry spoke casually, a slight smirk on his face.

YN looked up from her position "Are you sure about this?"

"I've never been more sure" Harry reassured her.

"I love you"

"I love you too" Harry leaned down to meet her lips with his, and YN didn't miss the way his finger rubbed against the fabric covering her tummy.

Tag List: (let me know if you would like to be added)

[cellarspider]

12/30 Things come to a head

(Previous) | (Index) | (Next)

⛬

We return to that shambling mass of a film, Prometheus.

Content warnings for body horror, contagion-y stuff, something that loosely be described as medical horror, It’s Been 0 Days Since Our Last Incident, and me, going on a ramble about movie gore to distract myself from The Madness.

There's a lady in this scene who's had a number of speaking lines so far–the maybe-chemist. She has a name, but it doesn’t matter.

But I'm going to call her Doctor Frankenstein.

They have just got the helmet off the head, revealing that it’s truly, unmistakably humanoid. They have noted that there are “new cells” on the head. In the business, we call that “decomposition”, but Doctor Frankenstein is not concerned with this. In fact, she immediately proposes a new plan.

Doctor Frankenstein has had the brilliant idea to plug a big cable into the head like it’s a guitar amp, and zap it with electricity to wake it up.

Yes. This is what the movie goes with.

You know, Alien included a similarly shambolic first examination of an alien subject, but it was performed because said alien was attached to a man’s face, and all they had to try and fix that was the contents of a cargo ship’s medbay, with the only qualified personnel being the corporate android who had been ordered to consider the crew expendable. The crew of the Prometheus has no such excuse.

Well, except for David, he has precisely the same excuse, but he’s not trying to poke wires in anybody’s ears.

Doctor Frankenstein calls for enough amperage to run three electric kettles (cite 3), then all the way up to two Titan RTX graphics cards before the head starts to get what appears to be a massive migraine. 

I know this expression well, migraines can feel very much like someone is subjecting me to unnatural horrors.

This is getting a little extreme, though. Yes, when the head starts pulsing, they realize they may have made a mistake. 

I’d say this was inexplicable behavior on their part, unbelievably hasty and foolish–and I will say it, actually, it deserves to be said. But in context, this is the team that did so little prep for entering the alien structure that they didn’t notice the giant fuckoff skull carved into the outside of it.

Knowing how much Shaw and Holloway read into the intentions of the Engineers from the depictions they found on Earth, they probably would’ve interpreted this as a good sign, somehow.

Anyway, they put a sneezeguard down over the head before it explodes.

Good job everyone. This is like what would’ve happened if Napoleon’s savants took one look at the Rosetta Stone and decided “maybe we should try hitting it with hammers. Surely that’ll make the knowledge fall out.”

From a horror perspective, this scene only works in two contexts: First, gross-out. Generally found in schlock, exploitation, and outsider art flicks, the tone of gross-out content can be highly variable, but there are two general trends I'd mention, which are of relevance to this movie.

First, gross-out tends to exist in that weird alternate space where lots of comedy movies do: characters will behave in unreasonable ways for no apparent reason. Within the film, this is treated as the universal norm, besides maybe a straight man character who highlights the absurdity. Gross-out is often like that, but pushes different boundaries of acceptable behavior than a traditional comedy.

This is, bafflingly, what Prometheus increasingly feels like. It feels like it's transitioning into gross-out schlock, and yet it never goes all the way.

Second: the audience for gross-out is largely self-selecting. If you're watching John Waters' Pink Flamingos, you expect things to get messy. You are looking forward to things getting messy. A head exploding is perfectly par for the course in gross-out horror. One might even be disappointed if there wasn't an exploding head.

But again, this movie was not marketed on gross-out. It was marketed as a tense, Alien-esque horror movie. If you followed that premise like I did, you're not in the theater to view a debauched spectacle, you're there for the movie to put a well-paced squeeze on the characters and your nerves, where half the horror comes from having the room to really think about how frightening the core concepts of the series are.

Does Alien involve some shocking gore? Sure does! But in Alien, Kane's fate is not there to make you laugh and exclaim "ewww!" at how far the film's gone, the film tries to make you very aware of how horrifying his demise is.

So, there's an alternate way this scene works, if you're coming in from that perspective. I don't think the movie intended this as much as the gross-out, but it's what I drew from it at the time: the scene works if you decide not to focus your sympathies on the human characters at all, or even David, and think about it from the perspective of the head. 

It’s patently impossible that what they did actually “woke up” the brain inside that skull. But if we sink to the movie’s level and entertain the idea for a moment, what in the hell have they just done to this Engineer? The last thing the head would’ve remembered was running, falling, decapitation, and then this. They just tortured this poor bastard for no adequately explained reason. There’s none! “I think we can trick the nervous system into thinking it's still alive” is the entirety of the explanation. It makes about as much sense and seems as thoughtlessly violent as anything in Mad God (2021, content warning for body horror). 

I already spent all my anger about desecrating bodies in the name of shambolic pseudoscience, I have no more rage to give for now. And similarly in the theater, I hit my limit. I’d already hit a different limit back when they landed the Prometheus on top of some archaeology, but now I’d fully given up on this movie being what I’d hoped it would be. 

The maddening thing that keeps me obsessed with it is that it keeps throwing random scraps of that hypothetical movie into the mix anyway, bouncing me like a yo-yo between scenes. 

But for right now, the yo-yo is still on the descent. Having exploded the first sample of alien biology ever touched by science, they apparently stuck some of it in a generic, science-y DNA machine. What does the DNA machine tell them? 

“DNA match”. 

The movie does not actually explain what this means. It thinks it does, but in a very vague and handwave-y way that ends up being even more hilarious than if they’d just been out-and-out wrong. Because this is what I do for a living, I want to science at this for a bit. 

But I’ve written enough about it for an entire post on its own, so that will wait until next time.

⛬ 

(Previous) | (Index) | (Next)

⛬ 

Citations for alt-text rambles, as well as some text-text rambles:

1. https://www.behance.net/gallery/78297841/Semiotic-Standard (contains a high-quality download for the symbols, should ye wish them for yourselves)

2. https://www.sculpturedepot.net/clay-wax-tools/product.asp?Steel_Tools 

3. Doctor Frankenstein calls for 30 amps first, then 40, then 50 in the space of several seconds. According to wikipedia, an electric kettle is about 16.6A, and a 288W high-performance graphics card would require 24A. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(current) That graphics card isn’t mentioned by name, but it matches up with the wattage reported by Tom’s Hardware for a Titan RTX (cite 4). Running with two of these things, you might be able to run 4k Ultra settings on some games without tanking your framerate. They could’ve been playing video games and seen way more exploding heads.

4. https://www.tomshardware.com/features/graphics-card-power-consumption-tested 

5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_(film)#Design

6. https://www.reddit.com/r/MovieDetails/comments/f4rf63/for_the_chestburster_scene_in_alien_1979_the/

7. https://i.pinimg.com/736x/8e/2f/9b/8e2f9b0716746aac7ce5b2f369bf4082--aliens--scene.jpg

8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karyotype#Human_karyogram 

9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centromere 

10. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centromere#Telocentric 

11. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_banding 

12. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proteinogenic_amino_acid 

13. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hula_language

[heyybaejjk]

SAU LA'U TAMA AULELEI ! - CHAPTER 5

pairing; teen miguel o'hara x fem samoan oc

summary; Manaia hates the weekend.

warnings/notes; manaia getting walked in on, CREEPY UNCLE WE ALL HATE EM YK. a little junior x manaia sibling moment 🥹 this was indeed proofread poorly. HA.

series masterlist | prev chap | next chap

Manaia had spent her Saturdays either working, cleaning or babysitting. Often, it was all three in that exact order. She'd wake up at 6 am and get ready for her job that paid absolute shit, and return home to a filthy house. Of course, her mother was no use. Her uncle that just moved in was no use. However, they'd complain about anything and everything not looking the way they wanted it to. Her other siblings who liked to be in and out of the house were also no use. And Junior, well, he is still a clueless child who's barely explored the world, let alone school. To Manaia, she'd admit babysitting was the worst of them all. Her mother and uncle were out, leaving an underaged child to look after another underaged child.

Now, if there was one thing more annoying than a Saturday full of deep cleaning, then there wasn't much to be excited about on a Sunday morning. At all.

For it to only be 6 am, it was too early for it to be this loud. Manaia groaned into her pillow, blocking her ears as she heard her mother's loud voice echoing through the walls. Her younger brother was hugging her arm trying to dwell more in dreamland, but they both found it useless as they were unable to fall back into slumber.

"Get up! Get ready for loku! [church]" the elder's voice rung through every corner of their small house.

"Mhh," Manaia got up, scratching her head in anger as the yelling turned into chants of her name repeatedly. "Okay, I'm up," she says to herself as a response.

She finds herself laughing as she watches her younger brother, Junior, consumed by all three thick blankets. So that explains why she was cold throughout the whole night, "Wake up, baby, we have to get ready."

"But I'm tired," the boy gets up and rubs his eyes, Manaia wraps an arm around his shoulder while smiling, "I know, but you'll see your friends at church the faster you get ready, yeah?" She tries to sway her brother.

He smiles immediately at the thought, "You're right."

"I always am, now go wake up Pele before mum starts yelling again," She laughs as her brother sulks at the thought.

Manaia had spent her sweet time looking around for the perfect dress to go with the sei Miguel had gifted her, but every dress she had was either too dark or too light to suit the colours she had. She dug further into her cupboards, squealing with excitement as she found the perfect puletasi.

Changing immediately, she sat on her bed and took off her top. Midway of changing without a single warning, the door swung open. Manaia yelped in surprise, wrapping her front with her blanket.

"Sorry, your mum told me to tell you to hurry up." A deep voice informed, a hint of smug in their tone.

She looks at the door and there stood a relative of hers. One she never liked. He was cocky, prideful, as well as a fucking creep. Manaia knew well to keep her distance.

Frightened to respond, she nods her head and mutters a small thank you.

"Where's my ofu loku? I gave it to you to iron."

"No, you didn't. You said put it in the wash."

"YOU- Kiuga, don't fuck with me right now."

Both latter's shut their mouth as a shout runs through the walls of the small house, "Kiuga! Siana and her kids are coming over so we can go loku together, did you puga the kipoki!?" [ boil the kettle? ]

Kiuga groans in annoyance looking over at David, "I thought I told you to- nevermind," he sighs, yet think nonetheless that standing and doing nothing about his problem would do anything, "Okay, find me a white button up and a black ie at least? I'm going to clean before Nai comes," he leaves the room.

Manaia could feel herself growing a migraine. She was stuck between a guy who seemed to be scared of using deodorant - who also had the choice to sit in the empty front seat - and a kid who did nothing but cry because his mother yelled at him and sent him death glares through the rearview mirror. It didn't seem to help when her phone was on 7% and her headphones were forgotten at home.

Her hopes of a good morning are high when their car is parked outside Kiuga's house. She wishes to run out the car and knock on the door, but is crushed when her mother demands she help Junior fix his outfit as it's stained with snot and tears. He would not have been crying if her mother had learnt not to be so aggressive in the morning. Or in general.

Her mother and uncle leave the car.

She sighs, her heart breaks at the sight of her brother looking up at her with teary eyes. Gently wiping his snotty face, she cupped his cheeks and gave him a comforting smile, "Are you okay, my honey?"

Junior shakes his head, hiccuping back a cough. His breathing slows down.

"It's okay not to feel okay, baby. Would you like a hug?"

Without an answer, he wraps his arms around Manaia's waist.

"Mum's a meanie," Junior whispers with a pout on his face.

"Mum's just getting old. She can be very impatient, she doesn't mean to hurt other people's feelings," she runs a calming hand up and down his back.

"Are you going to be mean to me when you're old?"

"No, Jay. I can never be mean to you," she sighs.

Manaia looks out the window, just as Kiuga rushes to the door of the car and opens it with a wide smile, "Manaia!"

He looks over to Junior who's engulfed by his friend's arms, "Hey, Jay," he says softly, he takes a seat beside Manaia. Placing an arm on her shoulder as he smiles at the small boy.

"You're a strong boy, you'll be fine," he ruffles his hair. Junior smiles through his tears.

"Where's David?"

"Right here!"

The three look over at the opened car door, the feeling of being squished together in a small car was no problem at this point in their life, this wasn't their first time doing so. David pushes Kiuga over, forcing his big form into the car.

Since young, Manaia wasn't fond of finding friends. Places like school, family gatherings, and drink-ups her mother would host were insanely too much. It was crowded and full of people. Church of all things were the worst. Something about teaching people how to live "right", don't do this, don't do that, would be drilled into their ass, only for sin to be penetrated right into their minds right after a sermon. Hypocritical kids who would make fun of her for having a mother who drank and drank, who all unknowingly had fathers that were long gone because of the same sitch her mother was in. Her older siblings were no help to her problem either. They only made things worse for her at home.

She had her baby brother. He was enough. He was everything.

Until two beaming families had joined. There, she was introduced to Kiuga and David. Two cousins who lived a few houses down from each other, but shared the bond of two siblings. Just like Manaia and Junior.

They hung out at church. They hung out at Bible studies. They moved to her school and grew even closer. And that was where they all met Sione. Her now, best friend.

Speaking of which, Manaia's phone dings.

Sione <3: Naia, can you bring those white chips you gave me last time? 😞😞 I'll come early to school if you do i swear

"You're only use your messaging app? Did you delete your socials again?" Kiuga asks upon seeing seeing Sione's contact name.

Manaia nods her head, "Only for a while so I can study properly without my mum complaining. Do not Disturb barely works on me because I end up going on my phone anyway."

buzz buzz

(bololicker) M.Ohara_99 has sent a message to pussy eatersssss

M.Ohara_99: Good morning, everyone. I hope you have a good service today at church. Blessings to the three of you.

A smile creeps onto David's face.

"Is that the girl you've been texting for a few months now?" Kiuga asks beside him. He shakes his head.

"Nah, just Mig being Mig," he whispers, hoping the mention of Manaia's small crush doesn't get her all flustered.

"You know.. she's wearing the sei he got her," David raises a brow, "I think you should show him."

The two whisper to each other, Manaia looks over to them in concern, "Are you okay?"

They nod their head and smile at her.

David intervenes in their moment of silence, "Oh Naia, can I take a photo of you wearing your sei? I just want to make sure I get the right one for my mum when I go shopping next week," he winks slyly at Kiuga, who which he rolls his eyes at.

Manaia agrees blindly, "Get Junior and I in it! Come closer, baby," she wraps her arms around his head and he's forcefully squished between her arms and stomach, nonetheless the boy giggles.

"And.. there! Thanks, Nai."

David hits send and grins evily at Manaia.

"What is it?" She asks.

"Nah, nah, nothing."

buzz buzz

David chuckles to himself at Miguel's reaction.

M.Ohara_99 has replayed your photo!

M.Ohara_99 has taken a screenshot of your photo!

M.Ohara_99 is typing...

M.Ohara_99: She's effortlessly beautiful.

bololicker: you should come and tell her that yourself miggs 😼

"Ew! Get off, you're drooling on me!" Manaia squeals moving her shoulder as Kiuga groans at the interruption of his slumber.

"Sorry, what did I miss?"

"Nothing much," David whispers, "Pastor just mentioned another funeral we have to save money up for."

"Nothing much? Another funeral? David, that's so mean. That's so much to miss!" Manaia growls both the boys off for their behaviour.

"Who the hell died this time?"

Their voices were hushed down to a whisper as they sat at the back of everyone.

"It's so cold, why do they always blast the AC in here?" Kiuga comments.

"Cause everyone's too broke to have an aircon at home so they use it as much as they can-"

The three big AC's on the walls turn off.

"It's hot now, thanks a lot, Kiuga," Manaia says.

"How is it my fault!?" Kiuga bursts out as David and Manaia shake their head disapprovingly at him.

"I don't know, maybe God got sick of your complaining and turned the AC off for you to shut the fuck up."

"David, we're in church!"

"Ugh, it's so hot!" He leans back into his chair.

"If it's hot here, then imagine the heat in Samoa."

"Imagine the heat in Hell! If you three don't quiet down, I'll make sure you'll quiet down there!" An old lady that was sat right in front of them turned around, sick of their banter.

"Sorry, aunty," Manaia apologises, giving a toothy smile.

David groans, "Why couldn't it be her funeral we're going to?" He sneakily whispers to his close friends.

"David, don't be mean."

"I'm just saying."

"Manaia, I'm going to look so fucking good at this funeral. My chains and rings, all that shit."

"Kiuga, stop talking about it like it's a party. Someone died."

"Well everyone cries, then eats at the big ass table of food right after the service like it was nothing."

"Yeah," David chimes in, "Why go somewhere with a big feed and not look good?"

"...You're both right."

"When are we not?"

She shoves Kiuga in the side as he laughs.

Looking across the other side of the hall, she tries to spot her younger brother sitting with his friends. Smiling happily at the sight of Junior listening attentively to the sermon. She internally cringes at the sight of her uncle looking back at her.

Awkwardly looking anywhere but at him, Manaia focuses her attention back to the front.

"The hell is your uncle doing here? I thought he got deported." An annoyed Kiuga says.

"I thought he got deported twice back to Sa," David comments.

"My mum is letting him stay with us, don't know how long for."

"Speaking of your mum, where's Pele?"

"Home," Manaia says quickly, "She got into an argument with my mum this morning-"

"Are we going to ignore your creepy uncle just looking at you?"

"I rather just ignore him, stop looking his way-"

"If you three do NOT be quiet-"

prev chap | next chap

@zdawg14 hi :>

[fanficshiddles]

The Redbridge Hunts, Chapter 4

The following morning, Loki sat in the teacher’s lounge having his tea before classes started. David, Matt and Hannibal were in there too.

‘Chris is up to something, I can feel it.’ Loki grumbled as he sat down next to David.

‘He can probably tell she’s your soulmate, so is trying to rub you up the wrong way. Don’t fret on it too much.’ David assured him.

‘I don’t know, I think he was pretty serious last night about hunting her. If I hadn’t been there, I dread to think what he would have done.’

‘But you were there, so it didn’t happen. Don’t think about it.’ Hannibal grumbled. ‘Besides, you’ve only spent one day with her, can’t be that special yet.’

‘If she is his soulmate, of course it’s special.’ Matt argued.

Hannibal huffed in response, he didn’t believe in soulmates, he had a partner that he loved dearly, who was also a vampire.

‘Just because you haven’t met your soulmate, doesn’t mean you can be a grumpy git about those that have.’ David said as he threw his newspaper at his fellow vampire.

‘There’s humans coming.’ Matt warned everyone quietly.  

‘Not just any human… Claire.’ Loki said, sounding a little panicked already and she wasn’t even in the room. He wasn’t prepared to see her yet, he’d left his vaseline in a drawer in his classroom, and her smell was already starting to waft into the room.

‘That’s Claire?’ David asked after sniffing the air. ‘She smells incredible.’ He growled low.

Loki’s eyes snapped to David, his jaw clenched. ‘She’s’ Loki was cut off from saying anything else as the door opened and in walked Michael and Claire.

Loki instantly covered his nose with his hand and tried to make it look like he was just resting his head. He still looked a little odd, though luckily Claire didn’t notice.  

‘Hey everyone. I found Claire on her way in this morning. Loki, you didn’t tell her about the teacher’s lounge!’ Michael said as he went straight over to the kettle to make himself and Claire tea.

‘Ah, yes. It totally slipped my mind. Apologies, Claire. How are you this morning?’ Loki said chirpily, he brought his cup of tea up to his mouth and took a long, slow drink while she answered.

‘That’s ok, there’s so much to take in anyway, I would have probably forgot.’ She said brightly.

Loki noticed David, Matt and Hannibal all shifted in their seats as Claire walked past them to get her tea from Michael. Loki had to focus hard on keeping himself calm while he introduced her to them all.

‘There’s also Severus, Jessica and Jeremy that you haven’t met yet. I’m sure they’ll be along soon.’ Michael said as he took a seat and motioned for Claire to sit down too, she took a seat next to Matt, who stiffened up, but he smiled warmly at her.

When Jessica, Severus and Jeremy walked into the teachers’ lounge a few minutes later, Loki observed that Jessica and Severus both tensed up as soon as they caught scent of Claire and looked at her with a slight hunger in their eyes.

‘Morning guys, this is our newbie, Claire. She’s Loki’s soul….’ David caught himself before saying the wrong thing. ‘…ful new assistant!’

Loki raised an eyebrow at him for his choice of words and internally face-palmed.

Jessica and Severus did manage to snap out of it, albeit looking a little stressed. David, Matt and Hannibal were slowly calming down and becoming accustomed to her scent. Loki wasn’t though, he wanted nothing more than to pounce on her already.

Claire chatted with everyone and felt quite relaxed meeting all of her new colleagues. She initially thought being one of only two females working there would be a bit intimidating, but they all made her feel very welcome.

‘Well, we best get to our classes.’ Matt said when they could hear the corridor getting busier with students arriving.

Loki and Claire headed to their class together. On the way there, Claire noticed Loki walking quite fast and every now and then he kept pressing the back of his hand up to his scrunched up nose. She held back a little and subtly sniffed her underarms, worried incase she forgot to put on deodorant that morning. To her relief, that wasn’t the case.

As soon as Loki and Claire got into class, Loki turned and sneakily put some Vaseline on around his nostrils. It worked well yesterday, so he hoped it would work just as well today too.

‘Ready for your second day?’ He asked Claire with a smile as she began putting papers onto each desk.

‘Yep, I was born ready.’

Loki found himself smiling while he watched her, or more, stared at her. The way she had a small smile on her lips the whole time as she moved seamlessly around the room, how she just seemed really happy to be here. He caught himself in time before she noticed him watching her and he began writing some notes up on the board.

Claire enjoyed observing Loki while he taught. He wasn’t an overly strict teacher, he was very fair and made sure that no one was left behind. Students felt comfortable to ask him for help, he never mocked them or told them off for not knowing something. He made learning fun where he could. Though he didn’t stand for any mucking around or nonsense, he especially didn’t tolerate bullying of any kind, but he knew when to have a laugh, too. Because of that, most of the students respected him and he was one of their favourite teachers.

‘Now, we are going to move on to the Holocaust.’ Loki announced.

Before he even had a chance to go and get said books from the back, Claire was already there getting them out, making him smile.

One of the students raised their hands, a new student who had just moved to the city a few months ago.

‘Yes, Billy?’ Loki asked.

‘Can we learn about the history of Redbridge and the red river?’

A low mumble spread through all of the students.

Loki chuckled and folded his arms over his chest. ‘Calm down, everyone. There’s not much to learn, Billy. Everything I’m sure you’ve heard are rumours, not facts. We can certainly look into the history of when the bridge itself was built.’

‘The river though, it’s true. It was red the other night, I saw it!’ Billy continued. ‘The story about vampires, it must be real.’

Some students looked at one another excitedly, while others looked a little apprehensive.

Claire listened rather intently as she handed out the last book and made her way back to her seat in the front corner of the room. Loki glanced briefly at her, then back at his students.

‘There is no such thing as vampires, Billy. There is a perfectly reasonable explanation for the red water.’

‘Like what?’ Another student asked.

‘Well, no one knows for sure. It’s highly likely to be run off from a local farmer’s field, the chemicals they use on their land can cause a wide range of issues, especially near water sources. Or it could simply be someone pulling a prank every year, trying to keep the excitement of the city alive.’ Loki shrugged.

‘Sir, farmers wouldn’t be spraying at this time of year.’ Another student called out.

‘Alright, enough of you all just shouting out without raising your hands, and enough talk about Redbridge. As I already said, there will be an explanation for it, that I am sure will become clear sometime. Now, on to the Holocaust.’

Some of the students groaned in disappointment.

At lunch time, Loki originally planned to go to the teacher’s lounge to eat as usual, but he thought of something else instead.

‘Claire… would you like to just have lunch here with me today? I’m not really in the mood for the trivial chit chat of the others today, though I would like some company.’

‘Yeah, that would be nice. Not sure I’ll be any less trivial though.’ She grinned.

Loki chuckled and motioned for her to pull her chair over to join him at his desk. ‘Conversation with you could never be trivial, I’m sure.’

The couple both fell into easy conversation together, aside from Loki doing his best to just smell his food and not her, they were really comfortable with one another.

‘Have you always wanted to be a teacher?’ Loki asked her.

‘Nope. When I was younger, I wanted to be an astronaut.’ Claire laughed. ‘I was determined I was going to walk on the moon. However, I quickly learned that I wouldn’t be able to achieve that.’

‘How come? You can do anything if you put your mind to it.’

‘Well, being afraid of enclosed spaces is kind of a big deal if you’re an astronaut. The thought of being enclosed in a glorified tin can was enough to make me start hyperventilating.’

Loki laughed. ‘Ah, yes. That would not be ideal.’

‘My parents are both teachers and I looked up to them, so that sort of planted the seed. Aside from space, I’ve always been interested in history, so it made sense to go down that path.’

‘Ah, following in your parent’s footsteps. They must be proud of you making it this far, it’s not an easy road.’

‘Yeah, they are. They’re not the most affectionate of people, but they do express how proud they are of me. And they helped me through college and to move here.’

‘What do they teach?’

‘My mum teaches geography and my dad is a primary school teacher.’

‘I often think I should have gone down the primary school route, sometimes the teens here can be a bit of a handful.’ Loki said.

‘I dunno, looking after kids under ten doesn’t sound so fun either from some of the stories I’ve heard. They still throw temper tantrums and get sick often. It’s not as easy to get them to focus or listen.’

‘Good points.’ Loki chuckled.

‘What about you, have you always wanted to be a teacher?’ Claire asked as she finally took a bite of her sandwich.

Loki finished his mouthful of food before responding. ‘I have actually. I don’t know why, but even as a child I would often play pretend as a teacher. Similar to yourself, I had an interest in history so knew it was the path I had to take. I was lucky that I managed to get a job here as soon as I finished college. I had a bit of sneaky help though. My dad set this school up, it helps fund the hospital that he also set up and founded. So, he was able to get me this job as soon as I was ready.’

‘Oh wow. Well, knowing the right people is a big plus.’ Claire smiled. ‘I’ve heard of your dad, his name is Lucius, right?’

Loki nodded.

‘I’ve read about him, he’s brought a lot of money into the city. Making lots of jobs with the hospital and doing his best to keep costs down for people in need of medical care, often free. Makes sense that he set up this school to help with that.’

Loki couldn’t stop smiling. ‘You certainly did your research.’

‘I like knowing the history of cities.’ Claire said with a little blush from the way he looked at her, she diverted her gaze down at her sandwich and continued eating.

‘What do you think of the blood river now?’ Loki asked.

Claire’s head shot up at that question. ‘Well, part of me thinks like you said, there must be a reasonable explanation. Although, there’s another part of me that does wonder… or perhaps, wants to believe, that there’s maybe something more supernatural going on. Maybe, just maybe, the stories about the vampires are real? I don’t know, I guess it’s maybe just the child within me that would like to believe in vampires.’ She laughed nervously.

Loki raised an eyebrow at her. ‘Vampires aren’t real, it’s all just a big fairytale and made worse by all the silly fantasy novels and movies.’ He scoffed. ‘Have you been back to the bridge?’

‘Yes, I went last night again. I know you said it’s dangerous, but I couldn’t help myself. Though that’s the weird thing, I was following the fence that’s in the forest, and a bat began acting very strange. It was flapping around my face, chased me out of the forest. Not normal behaviour for a bat.’ She frowned.

‘Really? Hmm, that is odd.’ Loki waited till she looked down at her food then he quickly applied more vaseline now he was finished eating. ‘Perhaps you just spooked the bat, or it sensed danger and was trying to warn you, maybe.’ He shrugged.

‘Yeah, maybe. I guess animals are good at sensing danger. I’ll see what happens when I go back on Friday night.’

Loki’s eyes widened. ‘You’re going back?’

‘Yep. I really want to try and find a way through the fence. See if I can find this chemical spill it might be.’ She smirked.

‘It’s really dangerous around there, Claire. It’s best to be avoided, especially in the dark.’ Loki said with a firm tone, not much different from the tone he used with his students when they were getting a bit rowdy.

‘I’ll be prepared, don’t worry about me.’ She smiled. ‘I appreciate your concern though. Or are you just worried about losing your new assistant?’ She teased.

Loki chuckled. ‘Well, that too. It would be most inconvenient, the amount of paper work I would have to do…’ He sighed dramatically. ‘It would eat up all of my spare time.’ He shook his head with a smirk as Claire laughed.

‘I will do my best to make sure you don’t get a bunch of paper work.’

-

‘Two visits in a row, to what do I owe the pleasure this time?’ Lucius chuckled when he entered his office and found Loki there, looking out of the window.

‘I need some more advice.’ Loki said sheepishly.

Lucius motioned to the sofa, they both sat down and Loki began.

‘My colleagues, that are vampires, are also attracted to Claire. Not in the same manner as me, I don’t think, but they seem to be attracted to her smell a little more intensely than other humans. This worries me as I obviously don’t want anyone feeding off her.’

Lucius hummed. ‘They didn’t attempt though, did they?’

‘No… but they all looked to be struggling at first.’

‘Well, that’s the main thing. They were able to keep themselves under control enough to not actually attack her, and if it got easier over time then you don’t need to worry. Some humans just smell more appealing than others, and she is obviously one of them. Similar to how some foods smell more appetising than others, they’re not all the same. Claire must be the equivalent of a prime cut of filet mignon steak. Luckily for you, you are surrounded by decent vampires who know how to control themselves well, or they wouldn’t be teaching.’

‘I guess so.’ Loki sighed. ‘Aside from one…’

‘Yes, but we both know he’s not your average vampire. As ruthless as he can be, he has the most self-control out of all of you.’ Lucius reminded him.

‘I know, I know. That still doesn’t ease my worry of him sniffing around. Plus, Claire is going back to the river on Friday night. She’s determined to get behind the fence, into the hunting grounds. I know there’s nothing there right now, but who knows what kind of vampires are lurking around there… or if Chris is hanging about. It wouldn’t surprise me if he has eyes on her most of the time.’

‘Hmm, that is a concern.’ Lucius pondered a moment, tapping his lip. ‘I have an idea.’

‘What is it?’ Loki asked, perking up.

‘Leave it with me. Go with her, keep an eye on her. Allow her to get behind the fence, don’t keep her out, only interfere if you need to.’

‘What are you planning?’

‘Just trust me, Son.’ Lucius patted Loki’s shoulder.

[jahayla-parker]

You Are The Sun : Nikolai Lantsov x Reader

Part 2

2k wc

Previous parts can be found here.

Nikolai watched Y/n as everyone gathered in the dining hall for their shared supper. He studied her facial expressions as she kindly greeted literally everyone as they entered the large dining room. It was by no means her job, but it had almost become expected by now as she had become known for her warm and bright spirit. Y/n had never been asked to greet any of the palace’s guests previously, she just chose to, as she wanted to. Nikolai knew it was as simple as that; y/n cared about every staffer, friend, and guest. He smiled to himself as he watched her enjoy herself.

“Your heart is in your eyes,” Tamar murmured, suddenly beside Nikolai.

“Huh-what? I uh-“ Nikolai faltered, not having even noticed anyone approaching.

Alina smiled as she took another step to stand beside Nikolai instead of slightly behind him. “She’s right,” she hummed. “Are you interested in my sister, Lantsov?” Alina inquired. She felt happy at the possibility but knew given their situation she’d have to hide it from their guests.

“Y/n is my favorite person,” Nikolai acknowledged. He gazed over at the woman in question before turning back to his other friends. “She’s my best friend. But, that’s all.” Nikolai knew there’d often been rumors about the two of them, but neither had paid them any mind. As such, it was easy to brush these aside speculations aside tonight too.

“Then why are you smiling like that, Your Highness?” Tamar commented, smirking at Alina.

“How could I not?” Nikolai questioned, answering the question with one of his own. “Have you ever met someone that was sunshine in the human form?” He inquired calmly. Nikolai turned his eyes back to y/n and smiled, “that’s just what happens.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Nikolai saw Tamar and Alina share a look. He rolled his eyes as he excused himself from them and their gossip. He steadily made his way across the dining room to go greet his best friend.

Y/n just finished greeting Genya and David for the evening when Genya pinched y/n’s arm suggestively as she parted. She didn’t even have to turn around or wait for Nikolai to speak to know that meant he was behind her. She wanted to smile widely knowing he’d (although it was a constant occurrence & therefore shouldn’t affect her this way anymore) come to see her. But, she knew there were many guests who had their eyes on him tonight, so she composed herself before turning around.

“Miss y/l/n,” Nikolai greeted with flair as she turned to him. He bent at his knees slightly as he bowed, holding his hand out for her to place hers in.

“I do not believe a King is supposed to bow to anyone,” y/n mused with a lift of her left brow.

Nikolai smirked coyly. “Good thing you’re not just anyone,” he retorted with a wink as he grabbed her hand.

“Zoya would warn you against it as she believes it signals weakness,” y/n explained. She wasn’t truly concerned about the action, she knew it meant nothing. But, playfully scolding Nikolai over it was a helpful distraction from the way his smirk made her stomach flutter.

“Good thing you’re not Zoya,” Nikolai grinned.

Y/n lightheartedly rolled her eyes playfully but giggled and shook her head. “I wish I were,” she admitted with a smile as she looked across the room to where their friend was standing.

“Why?” Nikolai asked, his eyes moving back off of Zoya and onto y/n.

“She’s gorgeous and a total badass,” Y/n complimented casually. She shrugged with a smile as she tried not to laugh as she watched some poor male guest who was clearly trying to flirt with Zoya.

Nikolai stared at y/n’s profile while she gazed across the room. “That’s calling the kettle black, isn’t it?” He hummed with a warm smile.

Y/n’s chin dropped down to her chest as she pressed her lips into a fine line. Her toes curled in the formal dress shoes she was wearing as she tried not to fidget. She blinked rapidly as she lifted her chin and gazed upwards to see the man who was the cause behind her childish glee.

Y/n’s glee faded slightly as she saw the all-too-familiar smirk on Nikolai’s face. He was clearly once again pleased at how flustered he was able to make her. She laughed it off so as to not dampen the otherwise pleasant mood. But it still hurt, it did every time. As his barely contained pride over her bashful reaction to his complaints served as a painful reminder that they were only said for that reason; to get her worked up. “You shouldn’t make such declarations,” y/n advised. “Given that now you are betrothed,” she explained. “Especially not ones directed towards your bride’s sister, Your Highness.”

Nikolai groaned.

Y/n wasn’t sure if Nikolai was complaining about about not being able to tease her this way anymore or over y/N’s consistent but playfully corrective statements tonight. “I’m sure you’ll survive while still keeping your flattery in check, My King,” she encouraged, earning a smile from Nikolai. “Saints knows you’re set be able to flatter countless guests from other countries soon,” y/n smiled, squeezing his bicep as she got up enough courage to approach her sister.

Nikolai watched from the side as Y/n smiled warmly and hugged Alina and Mal. He remembered sensing something was off between the sisters based on his interaction with Y/n this morning. Yet, he noticed that no one would be able to tell by looking at them. Y/n was just as sweet as always, making what seemed to be pleasant small talk with Alina and Mal in a way that made them smile throughout the conversation. Nikolai made a mental note that he’d have to look into the matter more to understand the slightly gray cloud that seemed to suddenly be hanging around his best friend even as she easily outshined the dull fog accompanying it.

The dinner went by relatively quickly. Nikolai was relieved of his duty to keep his guests engaged thanks to y/n. She was seated a few chairs down from his place at the head of the long dining table. It was odd to not have her sitting directly beside him at such a function. And Nikolai didn’t care for the way it made his stomach tighten into a knot. Fortunately, her infectious smile made it a bit easier. He always felt better when he knew she was doing well. She was his best friend after all.

Nikolai was intrigued at how y/n would always notice when a guest might be feeling overlooked or left out of whatever conversation the others were having. As always, it made it easier for him to keep their guests happy as they felt acknowledged and welcomed when she’d create a segue to bring them back into the group. He’d always known and admired this talent of hers, but tonight it stood out even more as he’d been forced to watch it from afar rather than directly beside her.

Nikolai’s attention was drawn away from watching the evidently hilarious conversation between y/n, Zoya, and Nina who were giggling when a few guests suddenly began asking questions about his and Alina’s engagement. He shifted his gaze towards the merchants who were questioning where they’d get their decorations and other supplies from.

Y/n’s bliss evaporated into thin air as a merchant’s voice rose over the side conversations everyone was currently having. Whatever snide joke Zoya had been trying to make was cut short as their attention was pulled back to the elephant in the room. Y/n felt Nina and Zoya’s eyes on her and wished they’d look away; she was appreciative that cared, but they were making it too obvious. She pasted on a stoic smile as she turned her gaze to her table placement setting, suddenly intrigued by the familiar engravings on the ends of the cutlery.

Mal droned out Nikolai and Alina’s voices and leaned closer to y/n. He knew he could always count on y/n to let him vent. Other than her or Alina, there were few people in this room that he felt he was permitted to share his frustration over the engagement with. But, fortunately, he’d been seated beside y/n tonight, giving him the opportunity to complain in a hushed manner as she sat just to his right.

Y/n listened politely as Mal complained to her about how he loved Alina and therefore had agreed to be on board with the engagement but hated it nonetheless. She sympathized with Mal, knowing how painful it was to watch someone you loved be with someone else. But, she couldn’t help but wish she was at least as fortunate as Mal still was in her eyes. After all, at least Alina reciprocated his feelings and they had each other. She forced herself to keep nodding respectfully as Mal continued to brag about how great Alina was and how that was why he was able to understand why this engagement was needed.

When Mal was finally pulled into another conversation, this time by the fisherman beside him, Genya tapped y/n. She smiled sympathetically as y/n turned to her. She could see the tiredness in her friends eyes as she tried to maintain her stoic façade.

Y/n leaned to her right with a forced but slightly relieved smile as Genya signaled she wanted to talk to her.

Genya sighed tenderly. "Do you still not see it?" She wondered, her eye quickly darting to the head of the table and back.

"See what?" Y/n questioned, barely making her voice audible. She was too tired to follow Genya’s gaze.

"The difference between her and you,” Genya spoke warmly, her hand resting on y/n’s arm. “Is that, sure anyone looks at her like she's the prettiest girl in the world, but the way he looks at you..." Genya tsked gleefully as she smiled, "It's like maybe you're magic."

“Who?” Y/n asked. She’d just been talking to Mal, well listening to Mal as he talked that is. But, she knew it couldn’t have been Mal that Genya was referring to.

Genya once again flickered her eye to Nikolai and back to y/n. This time much slower and more dramatically. As her eye refocused on y/n, she raised her brow and gave her friend a knowing look.

Y/n sighed and gave her friend a smile before facing her plate again. She really didn’t want to be talking about this. She wasn’t sure why everyone was trying to encourage her to carry such false hope. They always had tried to tell y/n they were sure he felt the same way. But since the engagement news came out, everyone but Zoya only seemed to increase their efforts. Y/n was pleased at least Zoya knew better. Nikolai needed to do what was best for him and for Ravka; and even if he felt the same way y/n did, that wasn’t y/n, it was Alina.

Nikolai watched as y/n turned from Genya and silently picked at her dessert. It was her favorite. Nikolai knew she’d had a rough morning for one reason or another and had specifically requested his kitchen staff to make it for tonight; for her. Yet, she seemed like she wasn’t interested in it at all other than to push bits of it around with her fork.

Nikolai watched as y/n took a deep breath before she looked up and she smiled at Nina as the Grisha rose from the table for the night. He observed the way y/n caused a wide grin to turn on Nina’s face as she undoubtedly included a compliment as they said goodnight to each other; the way Nikolai knew she always did. Even with whatever was troubling her, she wasn’t letting it impact how she treated others. Nikolai admired that. But, he still wished he knew what was bothering y/n.

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[ackermanbitch]

david shaw x sick!angel blurb

i woke up horribly sick yesterday and i did not even know abt the video until halfway thru this LMAO also this is like pretty far into their relationship, hence davey not being a jerk

warnings: sickness, fluff, like one innuendo cus its angel guys, also angel likes chai because i dont believe theres anyone who doesnt like chai so im sorry if u dont like chai and cant relate hjbasvgbx

Angel was awoken by their own pounding headache, keeping their eyes closed as they blindly reached out for the duvet to pull it over their head with a groan. They so badly wanted to get up and pull the curtains closed, rather than rely on the blanket to shut out the light that was only worsening their quickly growing headache, but alas, their sore muscles screamed in protest when they tried to sit up, ultimately failing and falling back onto the excessive amount of pillows with a soft thump.

They reached for David but he was too far on the other side of the bed, as they usually ended up after a night of cuddling, when the warmth became uncomfortable. Now all they really needed was warmth, sudden chills breaking out across their body.

"Davey.." They called out, the hoarseness of their own voice startling them.

He wasn't exactly a heavy sleeper, grumbling in response.

"Can you please close the curtains?" They groaned, shifting closer to him.

He hummed, taking a second or two before finally climbing out of bed and strolling to the window, pulling the curtains closed the rest of the way.

"Migraine?" He questioned softly, not bothering to pull the blanket from over their head as he sat back down, knowing the general drill for this sort of thing.

"So much worse." Angel rasped a bit dramatically, following it up with a drawn out whimper. David sighed, bringing a hand to rest on what he assumed was their head hidden under the duvet, "Isn't the flu going around your office right now? I told you to be careful."

Angel gasped, slowly pulling the blanket down. "How dare you chastise me when I'm so vulnerable." They accused, the creases between their brows deepening.

David chuckled, "I'm just saying, I warned you. Every time you get sick, it hits you like a train." He teased, moving his hand to their a face, his thumb pressing gently against the space between their brow.

"Thank god it's the weekend." They whispered, closing their sore eyes, David humming in reply.

"And if it wasn't, I wouldn't let you go to work like this, even if it meant chaining you to this bed."

"You know, I'd probably be-"

"-into that, yeah I know you would, you perv." He laughed, pulling the blanket back up over their head before standing from the bed with a yawn. "I'll get you some tea."

"Chai, please." They requested almost inaudibly but David didn't need to hear them to know exactly what they wanted, headed to the kitchen to put the kettle on.

Angel rolled over, bringing their hands up to cover their eyes as if they weren't already under a blanket. They'd curl into a ball if their back wasn't too sore to do so, every little movement triggering a flare of pain up and down their back. Since when did the flu become so brutal?

"David! Please bring tylenol too!" Angel shouted, momentarily peeking out from under the blanket and immediately regretting the volume they used as it made them painfully aware of how sore their throat really was. They groaned for the umpteenth time that morning, opting for pulling a pillow over their head instead of a blanket.

David came back a few minutes later, a steaming mug of tea in one hand and two pills in the other. "We're out of tylenol but I brought ibuprofen." He explained quietly, setting the cup and meds on the table. All he got in return were soft snores, a small smile breaking across his face as he lifted the pillow.

"Angel," He whispered, "C'mon, you gotta drink something."

They awoke with yet another groan, slowly sitting up. They winced as they leaned against the headboard, holding out both hands. "Feels like someone took to my back with a hammer."

"Well leaning over a laptop all night isn't gonna help with the muscle aches." David lightly scolded, handing them the mug and the two pills.

After downing the ibuprofen and some gulps of what they thought was the best cup of tea they ever had, they moved to lay back down.

David sighed, placing the tea onto the nightstand before sitting on the edge of the bed, bringing a hand to Angel's arm. "I could draw you a bath," He suggested, "Would really help with the aches."

Angel huffed, "Only if it feels like I'm bathing in lava."

He let out a genuine laugh, standing to make his way to the master bathroom.

"And if you carry me!"

"You are so dramatic."

[abubblingcandle]

For the word / 15 minute sprint thing:

Cameras, steal, hiding

Thank you love!! Amazing words

Cameras - from Everybody Wants To Be On TV (my big bang fic)

“So, our last pair. Roy Kent and Jamie Tartt,” the interviewer smiled from behind the camera. She didn’t enjoy this bit, all the posturing for the cameras but it was a side effect of the job. Julie scoffed, rolling her eyes. “Those two, the oddest of pairs. They shouldn’t be too hard to catch. Footballer, fit so we won’t want to face him in a footrace but, well, he doesn’t seem to be the sharpest tool in the shed,” she chuckled.

For this one in the sprint I wrote 231 words!!

Steal - from The Richmond Job (I know why you keep including these crime words)

The next morning Ted had the jitters. He knew the team wasn’t going to like this, of course they wouldn’t like this. It was a stupid idea but it was too late to back down now. If they were going to steal the Davids back then they needed an insider, an insider that wasn’t completely devoted to Nate and Rupert. Ted had only managed to find one of those. But the team wasn’t going to like it. Ted groaned and slumped backwards, heels of his hands pressing into his eyes. “You alright there Lasso?” Beard’s voice startled Ted but he quickly returned to his wallowing. “No,” he groaned. “Well sucks to be you,” was Beard’s incredibly sympathetic response before the footsteps told Ted he was heading towards the table with the mini fridge and kettle.

This sprint was a great one with 188 words on Ch3!

Hiding - from Dutch Courage

“I guess, I don’t need to keeping hiding now,” Jamie sighed loudly. Jan paused and turned on his heels to face back at his teammate. His hands were hooked in the neck of his hoodie, pulling down on it and the drawstring was hanging loosely from his mouth. “Like, she’s been arrested ain’t she so I can go home,” he shrugged, toe scuffing against the concrete. “If you have something to ask Jamie then ask it. We all have better things to do rather than waiting for you to articulate your thoughts in such a roundabout way,” Jan asked, crossing his arms over his chest. “You’ll want me to move out now won’t ya?” Jamie’s lips downturned as he looked over Jan’s shoulder. Now it was Jan’s turn to sigh, “you can if you want to. But I didn’t tell you to.”

And for this sprint I got 274 words!!! This chapter will be hitting your screens soon.

[posttexasstressdisorder]

Music

How Bob Dylan Viciously Cut His Competition Down to Size

THINK TWICE

In this excerpt from “Talkin’ Greenwich Village,” veteran journalist David Browne revealed how Dylan could make his fellow folk singers shrink with a “withering gaze.”

David Browne

Published Sep. 16, 2024 5:00AM EDT 

Michael Ochs Archives/Getty

The below has been excerpted from Talkin' Greenwich Village: The Heady Rise and Slow Fall of America's Bohemian Music Capital ©2024 David Browne and reprinted by permission from Grand Central Publishing/ Hachette Books /Hachette Book Group.

As the scene was growing more amped up, in every way, its unofficial clubhouse remained the Kettle of Fish. But with Bob Dylan’s success and the pressure and attention that came with it, the dynamics at those gatherings began to shift. In 1964 Robert Shelton of the Times watched—with a sense of wonderment rare for such a fixture on the scene—as Dylan entered the Kettle one night with the Supremes and members of the British band the Animals, whose sulking, electrified makeover of “The House of the Rising Sun” had given the ballad an audience far beyond the coffeehouse crowd. Those pop stars were a departure from the small, insular posse Dylan generally preferred, one that protected him and, many thought, egged him on as he dissected the peers and strivers at the Kettle on any given night. For extra privacy, Guido Giampieri would close and lock the front door at a late hour.

Dylan’s gang was usually led by Bob Neuwirth, his road manager, side-kick, and would- be bodyguard. An artist by trade and education, the Ohio- born Neuwirth had attended art school in Boston, where he learned to play guitar and banjo and eventually made his way into the Village; Dylan would recall first seeing him in the audience at the Gaslight. Neuwirth’s barbed-wire gibes and hipster persona were also of a piece with Dylan’s. As a source told Rolling Stone a few years later, regarding Neuwirth’s arrival in New York in 1964, “Dylan started to change at that time. Part of it was Neuwirth; he was a real strong influence on Dylan. Neuwirth [was] stressing pride and ego, sort of saying, ‘Hold your head high, man, don’t take shit, just take over the scene.’ He was the kind of cat who could influence others, work on their egos and support those egos.” Neuwirth’s striped pants would soon be seen behind Dylan on the cover of Highway 61 Revisited, the album that announced, as much as any, that the folk revival had passed its expiration date.

Thanks to his work with Dylan on records and on stage, including playing with him at the chaotic Newport Folk Festival, Kooper was often at Dylan’s table and saw how perilous it could be for anyone in the vicinity. “If Dylan focused on you, you were in trouble,” he said. “He could out- think anybody.” David Blue was a recurring member of the posse, although, as Ramblin’ Jack Elliott would recall, he was rarely if ever the brunt of Dylan’s withering gaze or comments. “Blue had a certain kind of stature,” said Elliott. “He was a large guy, way bigger than Bob, and he had a certain composed personality.”

Talkin' Greenwich Village: The Heady Rise and Slow Fall of America's Bohemian Music Capital

Hachette Books

To Dylan biographer Anthony Scaduto, Van Ronk theorized that Dylan zeroed in on particular targets for a reason: in Van Ronk’s mind, they all wanted to “get rich,” too. Whatever the motivation, the atmosphere could be fraught. “The level of ‘rapping,’ as we called it, was tough,” said Arthur Gorson, the manager who sometimes found himself amid the Kettle gang. “People fell by the wayside. They would talk about songs and someone would say, ‘Hey, man, you can’t use that word—I used that word.’ Eric Andersen was slightly damaged by Neuwirth’s taunts.” Andersen would later pen “The Hustler” about Neuwirth and those times in that bar. In the fall of 1965, Dylan him-self would unveil “Positively 4th Street,” a stern single that sliced and diced someone—or some group—who hadn’t supported him. He never specified who, but some in the Kettle posse wondered if it were one of them.

One especially tense evening, Andersen witnessed Dylan lacing into Phil Ochs. As Dylan drifted from topical writing, Ochs fully embraced it—and was being lauded for it within their world. Reviewing Ochs’s performance at Newport in 1964, Shelton opined that he was “rivaling Bob Dylan as a pro-test spokesman.” Broadside also weighed in, commenting, “Ochs is much more deeply committed to the broadside tradition.” With one album under his belt and a second, I Ain’t Marching Anymore, due in the early months of 1965, Ochs was primed to be an even more socially conscious voice of his generation than Dylan was, and the two men had a “love- hate thing,” as Paxton put it.

At the Kettle one evening, Dylan and Ochs got into a verbal match that ended with Dylan dismissing Ochs as merely a singing journalist (which, in Dylan’s defense, wasn’t too far from the truth at that point in Ochs’s career). Andersen, who had grown close to Ochs (he had encouraged Andersen to add more verses to “Violets of Dawn”) and would often crash at the apartment where Ochs lived with his wife, Alice, was suitably offended. As Andersen observed (and Scaduto also reported), Dylan turned on Ochs another night as well: “You oughta find a new line of work, Ochs. You’re not doin’ very much in this one.” As an appalled Andersen recalled, “He said it right to Phil’s face and really insulted him, and I said, ‘Stop picking on him. Cut it out.’” Dylan, said Andersen, retorted, “Look, I’m buying all the wine here. I can say whatever I want to say. What do you want me to talk about, the sunset over the Hudson and the deep blue sea?”

For a brief period, Ochs and Dylan were both managed by Albert Grossman until Ochs felt he wasn’t receiving the attention he deserved, and late in 1965 he asked Gorson to take over. (In a poke at the name of Grossman’s company, ABG, Ochs asked Gorson to use his initials for his own management firm, which became AHG.) But Ochs had an emerging star power of his own: cov-ering his January 1966 debut at Carnegie Hall for the Times, Shelton felt that Ochs still needed some seasoning and admonished his melodies and guitar playing but noted that the audience was “predominantly teenaged.”

Later that year, in preparation for recording Pleasures of the Harbor—a lavishly produced record intended to be his moment of arrival as a full- on record-ing artist—Ochs introduced songs like “Outside of a Small Circle of Friends” and “Flower Lady” at Carnegie Hall. The latter—seemingly about a mysterious middle- aged woman who would walk into Folk City and sell bouquets of flow-ers, supposedly purloined from cemeteries—was set to one of his most sumptu-ous melodies. He and Dylan weren’t far apart in some ways: they’d both grown up with rock and roll and eventually turned to acoustic music. With Kooper adding one of his recognizable keyboard parts, Ochs even recorded a plugged-in remake of his antiwar rouser “I Ain’t Marching Anymore.” But he and Dylan remained mirror images of the Village, the acoustic and the electric, the old world and the new world, circling each other and staring each other down.

David Browne is a senior writer at Rolling Stone--and author of eight books, including ‘Talkin' Greenwich Village: The Heady Rise and Slow Fall of America's Bohemian Music Capital,’ who moved to New York to attend NYU and never left. He started covering the city's music scene long ago for the New York Daily News.

David Browne

[notinmyvocab]

apologies for my tongue (and never yours)

was encouraged by @yourlocaldisneyvillain to explore this fic a little more, so here's a snippet of genderbent David Copperfield!

title is subject to change

Felicity Copperfield was born at midnight at her home, the Rookery.

Her mother, Clara, had spent the better part of the day writhing in pain with a panicked housekeeper running around, no more useful than a headless chicken.

“Peggotty!” Clara Copperfield cried.

“Keep breathing, ma’am!” Peggotty instructed. Water! She needed to get water! Oh where was that blasted doctor?

Just then, a face appeared in the window. Miss Betsey Trotwood pressed her nose against the glass so that it became perfectly flat and white in a moment. “Mrs. David Copperfield?” she called from beyond the glass. “Miss Trotwood, you’ve heard of her I dare say?”

“Y-yes!” Clara managed to choke out as Peggotty opened the door and allowed Miss Betsey in.

“Well, now you see her,” Miss Betsey stated proudly. “Goodness, you’re a young one, aren’t you? A mere baby yourself! May I ask: why Rookery?”

“Do you… do you mean the house? It was Mr. Copperfield’s idea,” Clara explained through clenched teeth. “Peggotty!”

“I’m here, I’m here!” Peggotty bustled into the room with warm wet rags to press against Mrs. Copperfield’s forehead.

Miss Betsey frowned. “Peggotty? Do you mean to say that any human being has gone into a Christian church, and got herself named Peggotty?”

Taking offense, Peggotty stiffened. “Sorry, and what did you say our name was?”

“Trotwood. Betsey Trotwood.”

“Of course, my apologies, I thought it was Pot-Kettle-Black.”

“Peggotty!” Clara snapped, and the housekeeper returned to dabbing away the sweat. Clara was very agitated at this point, and red in the face. Leave it to her husband’s great aunt to show up at the worst possible time!

Miss Betsey turned to her niece. “Ah yes, the child. Your baby boy! I have no doubt it will be a boy, and I intend to be his friend and godmother. And you must call him David, as his father was named.” For David had been her favorite nephew. His passing had been sudden and tragic, and while this boy would not know his father personally, Miss Betsey would see that the boy knew of his father.

Of course, the child could always be a girl, but before Clara could point that out, she let out a strangled cry, feeling as if she were being torn in half. Just then, the doctor came through the door and with Peggotty’s help, Clara Copperfield was brought upstairs. It was then Miss Betsey took cotton out of her purse and placed it in her ears to drown out the yelling.

Hours passed. The sun sank beneath the horizon. Evening turned into night. Finally, Dr. Chillip came downstairs. His shirtsleeves were splattered with blood, but he looked pleased.

Miss Betsey stood up, taking the cotton out of her ears. “And how is he, doctor?”

“I’m sorry, ma’am, he?”

“The boy, how is the baby boy?”

“It’s a girl, ma’am,” Dr. Chillip informed her. “A perfectly healthy baby girl.”

Miss Betsey’s face fell at this news. A girl. A girl who would not be named David. Well, that was that.

Miss Betsey Trotwood retrieved her purse and promptly left the Rookery, never to return.

The baby girl was christened Felicity Copperfield.

There wasn’t much Felicity could recall from when she was a baby. She did remember warm smiles. She remembered Peggotty’s fingertips feeling like pocket nutmeg graters: rough and ticklish when grazed lightly against the skin.

As she grew up, she gravitated towards books. She swallowed words whole, storing them inside of her. With paragraphs, she built fantastical palaces in her mind, envisioning scenes of princes and princesses.

Though it never felt quite right when a story ended with a princess being rescued by a prince. In her head, she would rewrite the endings where the princesses would have to save the princes and in turn became knighted. It made for a much better story.

The months turned into a decade turned into seventeen years. Letty was a young woman living with her mother, and they were happy.

Letty was happy, anyway.

Clara Copperfield desired more. She adored her daughter and she was grateful for Peggotty’s company and help. But it did make her smile when Edward Murdstone called on her for an evening stroll.

It became a habit. Every evening, he would call on her and she would join him and Letty would be left behind to watch her mother come and go with this stranger.

One evening, after her mother had disappeared down the lane with the stranger, Letty grabbed a book and spent time in the garden reading until she heard her mother return. And of course, right there with her, was the man with the eyebrows. Letty put aside her book and approached Clara.

“Did you have a pleasant walk, Mother?”

“Oh Letty darling,” Clara pressed a kiss to her daughter’s forehead. “Come and meet Mr. Murdstone.”

“Felicity Copperfield,” the man said with a small bow. “It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

“Charmed, I’m sure,” said Letty coldly.

She did not know Edward Murdstone, but she could see ill omens in his eyes. She bid him a pleasant evening before returning inside the house and going straight to her room.

Through her door, Letty heard Peggotty and her mother discuss the evening and then their conversation became hushed, as if they were aware that they were being listened in on. Annoyed, but resigned, Letty settled into bed for the night.

But sleep did not come. Hours passed and she fidgeted beneath her sheets. Eventually, she gave up. At this point, Peggotty had retired to bed, but Clara remained awake in the kitchen, sipping on warm milk.

Wordlessly, Letty joined her mother in the kitchen, pouring herself warm milk from the saucepan.

“How did you find Mr. Murdstone?” Clara asked.

Letty shrugged. “There wasn’t much to find.” It wasn’t the answer her mother was looking for, though. She could see that in the way the light in Clara’s eyes dimmed. “But he seems very agreeable.”

“Yes, I think so as well.”

There came a long pause, both women sipping their soothing drinks, unanswered questions hanging in the air between them.

“You like him very much, don’t you, Mother?”

Clara gave her daughter an almost sad smile. Surely she thought her pathetic for wearing her feelings so plainly. Felicity was more of a mystery. Though kind, Clara sometimes felt that she barely knew her daughter’s true nature. Felicity was like a book that required reading until the end to fully understand.

“He’s asked me to marry him,” Clara confessed. “He’s good to me, Letty. And he likes you very much; he always asks about you. And I’m so…” Clara stopped herself. How could she tell her daughter that she was lonely?

Letty placed a hand upon her mother’s forearm. “He’s a capital man, Mother. If he makes you happy, then let him make you happy.”

In truth, she did not care for her mother’s suitor. Her brief meeting of Mr. Murdstone had only irritated her. She had never known her father, but Mr. Murdstone was no replacement.

But Clara wasn’t asking to replace David Copperfield. Only to let someone take care of her for once. It did hurt Felicity that she and Peggotty were not enough. But the love of a man could not be replicated, could it? And Letty was not going to deny her mother.

So Clara Copperfield and Edward Murdstone wed.

And trouble began.