#He had taken my dope off of me for some reason and so he was charged with possession of fentanyl and arrested right away

[mezmer]

Making amends with those I hurt during my addiction has been super easy, too easy. A Man I traumatized with an overdose and literally got arrested.. long story and not deliberately. But I saw him at a house show a few months back and apologized deeply and offered him money. He said no, he's proud of me and happy to see I'm sober and a mother. Hugged me. What on earth? My karma is going to catch up sooner or later.

[octuscle]

Every Friday Night

What do you give someone who actually has everything? My friend Daniel is celebrating his 40th birthday next Saturday. We've been inseparable since high school. By his own admission, he's had a good life: he's a fairly successful doctor, most people appreciate his pleasant if somewhat reserved nature, and time has only given him the occasional gray hair, a slight tummy and shallow laugh lines on his gentle face.

Although he has had to make some sacrifices over the years to achieve his professional and social status, he admits that it has all been worth it. Until now, I always believed that too. What reason did I have not to? Until we had perhaps one or two too many glasses of wine yesterday. The wine loosened his tongue. And Daniel said wistfully that he regretted not having a more rebellious youth.

Shit, I've had a bit too much wine myself… I'm afraid I've been up to some shenanigans. At least I have a Chronivac app on my phone and I get text messages that my subscription is activated. And there's a countdown. Shit, I have a bad headache. And no idea what's going on.

Daniel calls me and asks me what the calendar entry is for Friday evening. It says "Gym" in the calendar. Yeah, right. Gym. Friday night. Isn't that what we always do? I'm a bit confused. Daniel too. "Yes, of course!" he says. Gym on Friday. As always. Will I pick him up? For some reason, I tell him to meet me at the bus stop. Sure, says Daniel. We haven't taken the bus since school days.

Friday evening. It feels normal to meet Daniel at the bus stop. We're both still wearing our casual business outfits from the office. And a sports bag with us. When was the last time I went to the gym? Shit, last Friday of course. We go every Friday. At least. Daniel greets me with a fist bump and offers me a cigarette. Neither of us smoke.

When the bus arrives, Daniel goes straight through to the back. He sits down in the last row with his legs apart and starts rolling a fag. I sit down next to him. Damn, he smells of sweat and tobacco. i start playing with my cell phone. since when do i have a tiktok account? A guy gives me tips on taking Trenbolone. Daniel looks at my screen, grabs my cock and says that the stuff makes me a muscle whore and shrinks my balls. i ask him why that's a problem. We laugh. The people around us roll their eyes. The bus arrives at our station. As we walk to the exit, Dan lights his cigarette. Before we're even off the bus, I take it out of his mouth and take a deep drag. Fuck the smoking ban!

I think the gym sucks, but Dan really wanted to train here. The other guys are pumping iron in our neighborhood. It's closer and you can go straight to the pub with the lads afterwards. But Dan is obsessed with the big boys. He really wants to become a freak. And shit, we're bros. I have to go with him. And to be honest, I totally dig his gym acne. I bet he's going to be a freak.

Training was like, totally lit, dude! The big boys have our backs all the way, major props. That's so dope. But Dan, he's such a poser, always flexing with pics and posts. And TikTok, non-stop! But man, he's already got a squad of followers. Now we're heading to the pub to meet up with the boys, but we're stuck on this darn bus for another freakin' half hour. The shower situation is a total bummer anyways. A quick spray of Axe under the pits, a dab of wax in the hair – good to go! Hey, Dan nailed it with the fresh cut, maybe I should chop mine off too.

Saturday morning. I feel a bit like I've been run over by a bus. In general… Buses. Shit, what have I been dreaming about buses? Tonight is Daniel's birthday party. He's celebrating at the Savoy. Cocktails at the bar, dinner at the grill… I still have to get my tuxedo from the cleaners. And I still need a present… Stop, wait… Didn't I already give him a present?

The birthday party was nice. A bit stiff. At around 02:00, we sit at the bar for one last drink. And Daniel asks me if I can remember last night. Funny, I have no idea what I did. Neither does he.

Thursday evening I receive a message via WhatsApp. Unknown number. We are supposed to pick up our stuff tomorrow at 16:00. Same place as usual. I have no idea what it's about. Daniel calls me to say that someone has told him that we still owe him 100 pounds for some stuff and that we should fucking bring it tomorrow. We both have no idea what it's about…

I get another message at midday on Friday. I ask if we can bring the appointment forward to 5pm. It's not my new iPhone. It's an old scratched device with a cracked display. I reply: "I'm sorry, but we're still at the gym until 18:00. Unfortunately, I can't make it any earlier." My fingers are moving as if remote-controlled. And now I have to go. The disco-poser biceps don't pump up by themselves.

Yo, so check it out, Dan's out here thinking he's this mega athlete, but homeboy be puffin' on them cancer sticks like there's no tomorrow, I'm talkin' 'bout 10 to 15 smokes a day? Psshh, child's play! Dan be double dosin' that, like he's tryna set the world record for most Marlboros inhaled in 24 hours or somethin'. And then, to top it off, dude's pullin' shady moves like stealin' cash from his pops just to fund his steroid stash! Man, I'm grindin' my butt off every night at the slaughterhouse just to keep up with them gym beasts, and this dude be relyin' on his daddy's wallet? Nah man, he gotta get a real job! Then, as if things couldn't get any wilder, my boy Liam starts talkin' 'bout Tren, that hardcore juice that supposedly turns you into a freakin' beast. I've heard stories, man, dudes growin' extra body parts and all! But me and Dan, we playin' it safe, stickin' to our old school supps for now. Ain't nobody tryna grow a third nipple just yet, you feel me?

I swear, Dan is like a walking perfume factory of pure musk. If he just lifts his arm, he's got every dude and babe in the gym drooling over him. Meanwhile, I'm just here, living my best life at all times. And now, the tattoo sesh with the artist is a no-go. Total bummer. I was so stoked to get my full-on sleeve inked up tomorrow evening. It's just way cooler to flex those guns in a tank at the club, you know? I love flaunting my hard-earned biceps. Gotta keep grinding, you feel me?

I slept naked tonight. And as rumpled as my bed is, I had wild dreams. I've got a movie tear again. My last memory was of strange messages I received on someone else's cell phone. When I walk into the bathroom, my heart almost stops. I have a bloody tattoo on my forearm! I raise my arm to see if there are any more. Dude! Eileen usually epilates my armpits every two weeks. Where did the bush under my arms come from? And why does it smell like I haven't showered for three weeks? I really need to take a shower. Although I have an urgent urge to go to the gym again straight away. That rarely happens. My inner bastard usually wins out at the weekend. And if I'm motivated, I should take advantage of it. I could ask Daniel if he fancies a game of squash at the club, I think to myself as I soap up. When I get out of the shower, I get a message from Daniel. He asks me if I have any idea where his tattoo came from. And whether I fancy a game of squash at the club.

I have no idea what's happening to us. On the one hand, I feel much fitter than I did a few weeks ago. On the other hand, Daniel and I have both started smoking. And we got tattoos. Obviously in a drunken stupor. At the age of 40! Who does that? I mean, Daniel seems so much more relaxed. At work, in his private life. And that pays off. He's never received so much positive feedback… And it's hardly any different for me. I feel so much more agile. And shit, I think about sex all the time. And mostly sex with Daniel.

On Thursdays I somehow always start to get restless. I used to primarily look forward to the week being over. But now I'm looking forward to the weekend starting. Kind of like it used to be. At school or university. And Saturdays and Sundays aren't much different than they were a month or two ago. And I can't remember the last few Fridays for the life of me. And the funny thing is that Daniel obviously feels the same way. It's almost Friday morning when I get a new message from the same number as last week. "Ive got a hell of a lot of m1y on u. Dont let meh down. And if u W, ill owe u 1". I really have no idea what that means. For some reason I save the number under "Liam".

Normally "casual friday" for me means wearing chinos with a blazer. Sometimes with just a white t-shirt underneath. But usually with a button-down shirt. Today I'm wearing a sweat suit with a hoodie top under a down vest. The neckline of the tank top underneath is so low that you can see the gap between my pecs. I actually didn't think about it. It just felt right. And no one in the office questioned it. On the contrary, I get a lot of compliments. My boss personally praises my tight ass. At 3:00 pm I get a message from Daniel: "Dude, were r u? fite starts @ 20:00. Didnt we want 2 trin beforehand? n da photo shoot is b4 tht 2!" I call him and ask him what that shit means. He can't remember any message he's supposed to have sent me. But the fact is that I have to go now, even if I still have no idea where I'm going or why.

Oh my god, this night is straight up LIT AF! Had a sick sesh at training with my ride-or-die homie. Then my first presser, ya boy's the ultimate underdog for this brawl. Cameras flashing like crazy. And then the showdown. Damn, your boy's killin' it. But KO in round two? No one saw that coming. Except Liam, he had faith. Dan's hating, thinking it's all fake. He's just salty. Bros gonna hate, but we're tight. Now we're popping bottles for the win. Liam's shouting that tonight's on him. We ain't gotta be told twice, let's partyyyy!

I could swear my nose looks like it's been broken in more than one fight. Somehow I remember boxing matches from the past. But when? At university? I was more of a debating and astronomy club kind of guy. Shit, Daniel and I need a new sports club. This stuffy country club is for wimps. Yes, we're 40 years old. But fit as fuck. There may be customers and colleagues who turn up their noses at us because of our tattoos. But hey, we weren't born with a silver spoon in our mouths. We've fought for everything we've achieved. And Dan and I agree that we've been really successful.

Yes, we like our jobs. And we're both good at it. But real life starts on Friday afternoon. Damn, you can bet your life on it!

[luckystarchild]

Today I was the Ambassador

I had a migraine and sat in my workplace's storage warehouse for a bit to rest, away from noise and in the dark. Glasses off, phone away, just sitting in a chair with my eyes closed in the quiet. I had taken medication that makes me quite loopy, and it had kicked in a little while prior.

Soon a dude I didn't recognize wandered into the warehouse to take a phone call. Loudly. And when he was done, he called out to me from like 50 feet away, "Sorry, I didn't see you there! Hope I'm not disturbing you!"

And I, politely, because I wasn't sure which of my colleagues this might be, and because I'm generally a friendly person who doesn't shy away from social interaction, replied, "It's all good. I have a migraine and am just resting in a quiet place."

To which he replied, "A migraine? What's that like?"

[Long post below the cut, sorry]

For the next ten minutes he stood over me asking questions. What's it feel like? How do you treat it? What causes it? Why do you get them? How bad does it hurt on a scale of 1-10? I reiterated several times I needed quiet, but the hint went untaken, and he kept asking questions. I still didn't recognize him, but I had my glasses off, so I thought perhaps this was someone new, and I felt I needed to be polite just in case.

Eventually, curiosity assuaged, he said, "You never know what a person's going through. For instance, you told me you had a migraine, and I could've walked away. But I didn't, and I came over here, and now I know all about migraines and how bad they are!"

Me: "Yep, that you do. That's empathy for you."

Him: "Yeah! I could've just told you to shake it off. Like I could've told you it's just a headache. But I didn't!"

I was pretty doped up on my migraine meds and therefore not feeling belligerent, nor particularly sharp, but even through that haze I recognized the multiple points of irony studding the conversation. Alas, I was too doped up to think clearly about how to end the interaction, and I just said something like, "People say that a lot to me, to be honest, and I'm glad you didn't."

Him: "People say that a lot? What do you mean?"

Me: "Well, pain is invisible. Some people don't believe me when I say I have a migraine and need to sit somewhere quiet and dark." (No reaction; nuts.) "Some people don't take a minute to empathize. They just tell me it can't be that bad."

Him: "That's terrible. People really say that to you?"

Me: "Yeah. My mother does every time I tell her I have one."

Him: "Oh wow. Do you have a good relationship with your mother?"

Me: "Oh. Uh. No."

Him: "Wow, really?"

Me: "Really. But I came out as queer a few years back though, so the migraines aren't the reason why."

Him: "What's that mean?"

Me: "Which part?"

Him: "That you came out as queer. What does 'queer' mean? How are you queer? Can you explain it?"

This is where I kind of came back to myself through the medication fog. That was a deeply personal question. Many of the questions had been. I only belatedly realized the level of prying happening (see again: medication) and it occurred to me I still wasn't sure who this person actually was. Did I even want to share this with this person? Blearily I put my glasses back on and looked at him. Really looked.

He was wearing a Trump hat. Blue. "Take America Back," it said. Not being the instantly recognizable red to which I am accustomed, and without the aid of my glasses, I hadn't recognized it for what it was.

I also realized I didn't know this guy. He was not a coworker. But my addlepated brain slowly pieced together that there were contractors in the building working on [some maintenance project or another], and this must be one of them.

Normally I would not reveal anything about my queer identity to a stranger in a Trump hat. People wearing them have chased me shouting threats and obscenities based on presumptions they made based on the cut of my hair and my style of clothing alone. Normally I wouldn't be caught dead revealing anything about my gender or sexuality to a stranger in a Trump hat. But here I was, already deep in it, and in an isolated place, and suffering from pain, and being stared at expectantly by someone whose nature and temperament were yet a mystery to me.

But.

Generally speaking, I can tell when someone is asking a genuinely curious question. It feels markedly different from someone asking a shit-heel question that will lead to eventual antagonism. And this guy was not acting like the latter. He looked at me frankly, and his body language was neutral, and while his questions were blunt, he hadn't raised his voice. So far, he hadn't actually been antagonistic. Just blunt, and insistent, and maybe a little tone-deaf.

So, perhaps against my better judgement, I said: "Well, in my case, both my gender and my sexuality inform my choice of the word 'queer' as a personal label. I'm bisexual and nonbinary. 'Queer' covers both gender and sexuality, and for me it feels comfortable to use as an umbrella term." Realizing I did not want to arm this person with a word he shouldn't have carte blanche to use, I added: "But some people in the LGBTQIA community don't like the word 'queer,' so I wouldn't use it to describe a person unless you know that's the term they prefer. The word was once used as a slur, but some of us have reclaimed it, and I'm one of those people."

Him: "OK." A beat. "What's 'nonbinary' mean?"

So I explained. And it took a long time, because (as I soon learned, and expected from the outset) he did not know the difference between sex and gender, nor that male/female are used to describe sex, and that man/woman and male/female are not actually interchangeable terms when discussing gender and sex. He didn't not know there was something called a gender binary, nor that anyone could exist outside it. He didn't know what 'cisgender' meant (he had never heard the term). He didn't know that your sexuality and you gender exist independently of each other. He didn't know the words he could use to describe himself, if he were so inclined.

There was... a lot to cover.

Me: "So, I'm to assume you are a cisgender man."

Him: "I don't know what that means."

Me: "It means you were assigned male at birth and told you were a boy by a doctor/your family, and as an adult, you identity as a man. The identity you were assigned and the one you feel fits you best is the same. It's never changed."

Him: "Yeah! That's right!"

Me: "May I assume you're heterosexual?"

Him: "What does that mean?"

Like I said: There was a lot to cover.

And cover it I did. I was patient. He had some trouble with the lingo, of course, since it was all so new. He got words mixed up, and I fear there were parts I didn't explain properly. I wasn't exactly prepared to have the discussion that day, and I was in pain besides. I spent the entire time on tenterhooks, carefully waiting for any hints of antagonism or mockery in case I needed to fish or cut bait.

No mockery came. He got a little frustrated, I think, when he messed up some words, but he never snapped, or argued, or tried to tell me I was wrong about any of it. He just seemed curious.

"But what does nonbinary feel like?" he wanted to know. "Does it feel weird? Do you walk around feeling weird all the time?"

Me: "Kind of, yeah! Ever since I was a little kid, I never felt like I belonged anywhere. I didn't feel comfortable around girls, or around boys. Neither label fit me."

And he listened as I relayed a few anecdotes illustrating how that felt. And when I mentioned that my parents never really understood me as a kid, his brow furrowed.

Him: "They didn't get it?"

Me: "No. My parents were cattle ranchers."

Wide eyes. WIDE eyes. And that reaction cemented a hunch that had been growing in me since we started talking.

I live in Texas. I grew up here. I know how people think, even the ones I disagree with. To me, this guy seemed the type who might vote a certain way due to the influence of those around him, but one who doesn't know much about politics or anything outside his family or in-group. The one whose family "always votes Republican" but has never actually bothered to look up how a tariff works—and I know the type. I know how to work with someone like that. You have to find in-roads to empathy with these folks. Speak their language. If no one has actually fed them damaging misinformation (and it did not appear that anyone had!), there's an opportunity there to do some good.

Thus, sensing we were at the point of terminology overload anyway, I changed tactics. It was time for emotion, and personal experience, and giving him a touch-point for empathy. He was from this state, and the reaction to my folks being cattle ranchers was telling. So I leaned into that, hard.

Me: "We lived in the middle of nowhere, and my folks don't get it at all. There was nothing in my upbringing to really influence this. We were Baptists, on a ranch, in Texas. I didn't know a single gay or transgender person, but here I am."

Him: "So your parents didn't know anything about it at all."

Me: "Nope."

Him: "It was all you, and from when you were a kid!"

Me: "Yeah! They were absolutely baffled when I started telling them I didn't feel like a boy or a girl. It was just how I felt, and they didn't understand for a second."

Him: "Wow. WOW. It really was just a part of you, huh?"

Me: "Yup."

Him: "It's just how you felt inside. Wow!"

I realize these transcriptions, if read looking for sarcasm, could seem disingenuous. But he sounded sincere. He sounded utterly, painfully sincere. He looked surprised, and baffled, but also rather excited. Like he'd learned something new and was happy about that.

We chatted about a few more subjects after that: he wanted to know what transgender means, and why transgender people feel the way they do, sometimes without having the language to accurately convey his questions. But I listened, and I tried my best to educate. I stressed that gender is something people feel, and it can be hard to understand, but that it's up to an individual to know who they are best. And he nodded along, and never once argued, and asked questions frequently along the way.

We get tired, though, all of us. I was tired, and even though he was still asking questions, I think he was reaching information fatigue as well. So eventually I walked back to something we'd discussed before that I thought he could feel good about. End on a happy note. That feeling would hopefully stick once we parted ways, and color the memory thereafter.

"Y'know, you mentioned empathy earlier," I said. "Walking in another person's shoes."

Him: "Yeah!"

Me: "I think it's OK to admit we don't always understand exactly what a person feels, or why they feel it. It's OK to say you don't really get it. But if someone is living their best life, and they're not hurting anyone, it seems like we should just let them live it. That's what we'd want for ourselves, right?

Him: "Yeah, I agree with that!"

Me: "Transgender people are less than 1% of the world's population, too. So when you see people getting really mad over transgender people, it's like...why are they so mad? We're just living our lives. Don't they have bigger issues to worry about?"

Him: "Oh yeah. Much bigger. You're right!"

The conversation ended after that; maybe a few more light remarks, but nothing worth noting. I invited him to ask more questions if he had them and if he saw me in the building again. He said he would, and he thanked me, and we parted ways.

I relayed the conversation to a friend not long later. They stared at me for a second before asking, "Why in the world didn't you just walk away?"

And the honest answer, at first, was that my migraine made thinking clearly too difficult! But once I focused up, I made the decision to continue the conversation.

My reason for staying will probably resonate with folks from various groups: I stayed because in that moment, I had become the Ambassador.

When encountering a person who seems to have never met anyone from your group, and they realize you are a part of that fabled minority, you are placed (whether consciously or unconsciously ) atop a pedestal. In that moment, you are not an individual. Like it or not, you have become the spokesperson, the mouthpiece, the Ambassador of your entire social group. Anything you say can and will be used against your entire social group by whoever has elected you the Ambassador. If you react poorly, or yell, or scream, that person may leave the interaction thinking everyone in your group will yell, or scream, or react poorly to them. If they deem you, the Ambassador, unreasonable or rude, they may think everyone in your group is unreasonable and rude. And they may carry that opinion with them into the world, and they may inflict that opinion onto someone else.

This is unfair, of course. It's awful. Because these questions are invasive, and personal, and uncomfortable. Reacting poorly would be totally reasonable when asked something so deeply personal. Boundaries are healthy, and if you don't feel safe enough to discuss your gender/sexuality with a stranger in a Trump hat, you should absolutely walk away. Your feelings come first.

I'm lucky, though. I have an accepting workplace, and people who love me exactly as I am, and a support system. My state is a terrible place for queer folks, but given the above, I have some insulation from the worst of it. I'm also gregarious, and I've had some training talking to people off the cuff. If there's anyone who can manage playing the role of Ambassador for the afternoon, it's me. I have the spoons, so to speak. I can be the Lorax for half an hour, and I can try (try!) to give the random dude in the warehouse a quick education on my community.

He's just one guy. But he may know others. And if you can get through to even one unlikely person, why not make the time to take that chance?

So that's what I did today. He might not remember the terms we discussed, or the finer details on gender expression, nor the difference between sex and gender. But I hope the man in the Trump hat remembers the queer person who spoke calmly, and treated him kindly, and didn't get upset when asked invasive personal questions. And maybe (just maybe), I hope in my optimistic little heart that if someone else in a Trump hat tells him transgender people are a scourge, he might remember me, the queer kid who wasn't indoctrinated and came from the same Texas roots he did, and say, "I dunno. They're just out there living their best lives. That's what we want for ourselves, right?"

I can only hope I read him right. I can only hope he was truly listening. But even if I was wrong in that, I'm still glad I took that chance. Big things have small beginnings, as they say, and it never hurts to be kind.

(The only lesson I didn't teach him was to be careful asking such invasive questions, but given this all started over a migraine, I don't think I would've had much luck on that front, anyway. Haha!)

[badfanfictionaire]

Five years, three days, and nine hours.

That’s how long he’s been in love with her.

The problem used to be that she was taken, betrothed to another man.

Lately there was an even bigger problem: she was missing.

And the other compounding problem was that Eddie was being blamed for her disappearance.

See, Chrissy had out of the blue asked to meet in the woods to buy some dope off of him. He didn’t say no, obviously, he wasn’t crazy enough to turn down the Queen herself. One thing had led to another, and while he didn’t end up making a sale, he did make plans. Chrissy was set to come by his place later, not to pick up weed but to borrow some tapes of his. But then she didn’t show. At first he thought she chickened out, but then when he saw on the news the next morning that she was missing, he went out to help look for her and found her bike propped up by the front step. He thought he could move it and no one would be any wiser, but someone had already seen it, because next thing he knew he was right there on the news next to her, but with wanted scrawled underneath his ugly mug.

Thank Satan for his friends, because they knew better than to believe everything they saw. They got his side of the story, and agreed to hide him away until they figured out what really happened to Chrissy Cunningham that night.

It was March, still a little too cold at night to do much more than sit inside and stare at the woods surrounding Rick’s boathouse. The kids had been by earlier to bring him some dinner and Steve had dropped off a case of beer. His stomach was full and he was a little drowsy. That’s why when the candle on the mantle place randomly flickered to life he thought maybe he was drunker, or more tired, than he realized. First of all, why did Rick of all people have a scented candle over his mantle place? As if that was going to cover up the smell of all the fucking weed. And second of all, why the fuck would he, Eddie Munson, have lit said scented candle?

“I need to go to bed,” he mutters to himself, blowing the candle out.

He turns off the light and goes to walk down the brief hall to the bedroom when the candle lights again.

“Umm, what the fuck?”

He rubs at his eyes, but the candle is still aflame.

“…Chrissy?” he asks the empty room, “If this is some sort of sick prank, you can stop now. I get it, poor little freak is about to shit his pants over a candle. Did Jason put you up to this?”

He moves to blow the candle out again but as he does a wave of cold air washes over him and he freezes.

“Come on Chrissy, I don’t like this.”

The candle flame flutters like someone is half heartedly blowing at it, but not enough to blow it out.

“Ok, um, I’m gonna leave. Please don’t burn down Rick’s place, he’ll kill me.”

The candle flickers again.

“Is that a no or a yes?!”

Nothing.

Frustrated he pulls at his hair. “Ok, ok, fine, I’ll play the game you creepy demon ghost thing. One flicker for yes, two for no, got it?”

The candle flame bobs once.

“Ok, cool, I’m officially fucking losing my mind.” If you can’t beat your delusions, join ‘em…

“So, are you Chrissy?”

One flicker.

“Wonderful, I can’t think of anyone else I’d rather be haunted by. Um, ok, next question… are you, uh, dead?”

Two flickers.

He breathes a sigh of relief. “Oh thank fuck. Ok, so, just invisible then. That’s… unnerving. Have you been following me this whole time?”

One flicker.

“Cool cool cool. Can I like, undo this invisibility thing somehow?”

One flicker.

“Great, uh, ok, I might have to ask for some backup-”

The flame bobs twice.

“Hey, I’m a super senior here, I don’t exactly know how to undo voodoo. You’re going to have to let me bring in an expert on weird shit.”

One flicker.

“So we’re on the same page then, lovely. Fuck, why did you wait until today to contact me? I’ve been here for two fucking days, and you could have just candle messaged me in the trailer! Nope, you know what, it’s fine! I’m sure there’s a valid reason. Like… maybe it takes a long time for ghost powers to accumulate enough for candle magic.”

One flicker.

“Of course, because why would anything ever be easy right off the bat… I’m sorry I called you a demon... You haven’t been, like, watching me sleep or anything have you?”

Two flickers.

“Yeah, that would be weird.” It’s not like I don’t dream about you every night though… “Is there and easier way to do this? Is candle shit difficult?”

Two flickers.

“Ok, good.”

He plops down on the sofa and buries his face in his hands.

“Maybe we should call it a night, I’m not thinking clearly and you’re invisible. I think I need coffee before I can wrap my head around how you just poofed out of existence.”

The candle bobs twice and then goes out completely. The wave of cold air washes over him again and he realizes it’s Chrissy’s presence that he’s feeling.

Once again he starts for the bedroom, but then the faucet in the kitchen turns on full blast.

“Holy shit,” he shrieks, running to shut it off before the splashes completely soak everything. His hand is on the knob when he spies the glass coffee carafe being nudged along the counter toward him.

“You’ve got to be kidding me, Cunningham. I meant in the morning!”

He swears he can see her crossing her arms over her chest and pouting at him.

“Fine, fine. I imagine you’re anxious to be un-invisibled.”

Begrudgingly he fills the carafe and dumps the water in the machine. Once the pot is full enough he gets a mug down and then pauses.

“Can you drink or anything? Oh wait, how am I supposed to ask you without the candle?”

A fridge magnet lands on the counter.

“Uhh, ok. If it’s no, flip the magnet over I guess.”

The magnet flips to the backside.

“So no coffee then, got it.”

He pours himself a cup and adds some of the powdered creamer Rick keeps in a porcelain cow shaped container. There’s no sugar, so just cream it is.

After a few slurps he looks back over at the magnet. “This would be so much easier if you could just write shit down.”

The magnet flips so it’s on its side.

“Yeah, I know, too much to ask. Jesus H. Christ, I’m taking to a magnet right now, I mean I’m assuming I’m talking to a person but there’s a 50% chance I’m high as tits right now and I’m talking to a goddamn magnet.”

The magnet reattaches itself to the fridge, and instead a different magnet flops to the counter. This one is a cutout of Betty Boop riding a horse and twirling a lasso.

“Rick’s late wife was named Betty,” he tells Chrissy, “She didn’t look a thing like Betty Boop, but, that was what Rick called her. Boop, or Boopie, or Boopadoodle. Kind of disgustingly sweet in a stoner kind of way. I’m sure Carver called you all kinds of cute-”

The magnet aggressively flips over.

“Ok, Carver’s a sore subject I see. Well that’s alright sweetheart, we don’t have to talk about him. Rather not, actually, since he’s currently dying for my head on a pike over your being gone. Speaking of, do you have any idea how this happened?”

The magnet flips to its front.

“Genie?”

Back.

“Old hag?”

Nothing.

“Shooting star?”

Betty Boop reappears.

“Seriously? You what, wished on a shooting star to disappear, and you did? In my front yard nonetheless, Jesus H. Christ.”

He downs the rest of his coffee.

“So I’m assuming we probably need to un-wish this to bring you back onto the visible plane.”

Betty Boop stares at him.

“Fucking great,” he groans, “I’m definitely gonna have to bring in the geek squad for this, I have zero idea how to predict when there’s a suitable shooting star or if it’s just a fucking statillite. And I don’t want to fuck this up, because I kind of was looking forward to hanging out.”

Betty doesn’t move.

“Did you want to hang out?” he asks, suddenly feeling quite shy.

Betty stays put.

“Oh. Good. God, I wish I could hear your voice right now. Or I wish I could see your face at least, talking to my-”

The lights in the boathouse shut off abruptly.

“Chrissy, that’s not fucking funny!”

“That wasn’t me,” a voice says in the darkness.

Eddie scrambles for the light switch. And there, in the middle of Rick’s putrid yellow kitchen, is Chrissy Cunningham herself.

“Welcome back,” he smiles.

The sight of Chrissy smiling back at him is the best thing he’s ever seen in his whole fucking life.

👻👻👻👻

(Read on AO3)

[sheabuttahwrites]

in the Morning

story masterlist Shea Buttah Bakery Masterlist

.

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sounds// Peabo Bryson - Feel The Fire, Isley Brothers - Spend the Night (Ce Soir), The O'Jays - Forever Mine

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IV.

“Oh, shit. What’s up?” He smiled back and it was even more killer in person. Especially with the surprise of gleaming gold fangs and the matching slugs I could see peeking from behind his bottom lip. I had to remind myself to breathe. “You came.”

“I told you I was on the way.”

“Nah, I thought you was fucking with me.” Laughter took over the conversation as he opened the door a bit wider, stepping aside. “Come on in.”

Hell, I could barely believe I’d shown up myself. I had never really been shy, but he’d brought a boldness out of me that even I hadn’t seen.

When I passed him, I noticed that he was still significantly taller than me in four inch heels. Damn. Not like I wasn't overdue for a climbing lesson anyway. The scent of his cologne was also quite alluring. The woody, smoky fragrance pervaded my senses, warming all the spots that shot had missed. Of course he would smell just as good as he looked. He may not have believed I would be there tonight, but he had damn sure been prepared. 

“I can take your jacket.” 

“Oh, sure.” I went to slip it from my shoulders, but he circled behind me and took the collar into his hands. 

“Here, I got you.” 

Taken aback by his unexpected chivalry, I was stuck watching him walk back to the closet to carefully put it away. 

“This is dope. The gold on here go crazy.”

“Right? I thought the same thing. Had to have it.”

“Good choice.” He grinned as he strolled back over to me. “I like your whole get-up, though. You look good, girl.” The intensity he radiated in person was unreal. His blinding smile. Those piercing brown eyes. The once-over he gave me felt like he was sexing me up already. 

Of course, I was a flustered mess. “Thank you.”

“What’s in the bag?”

I held up my bottle for him to see. “Wine. Actually, could I put it in your fridge?”

“Yeah.” He reached for it, so I gave it to him. Then he nodded to the left. “This way.” 

We left the foyer and I followed him past a gorgeous living area, subtly admiring my surroundings. The height of the ceilings had caught my attention right away. All of it was stunning. Far from the bare walls, futon, and flat screens I had half expected. Off white walls and dark wood floors made up the most of it, but the decor was so sophisticated and refined. I’d already clocked a painting and coffee table that I wanted for myself. I could tell it had been carefully curated. I should've known he would give nothing less. We walked through an arched doorway into a kitchen that made me feel like cooking for some strange reason. Just like everything else I’d seen, it looked like something from a magazine. Shades of gray, black, white and green complemented each other well among all the satiny stainless steel. There were even fresh tulips sitting in the middle of the island. I was giving one of them a smell when he came over, leaning up against the marble counter with me. 

“I put it in the freezer for you.”

“Thank you.”

“No problem.” Having to look up was already doing something different for me, but the way he was smiling down at me made it so much worse. Prolonged eye contact was his thing, I’d already gathered. It felt like he was staring into my soul. Whew! “I’m glad you came.”

“Yeah?”

“Mhm. Not every day something this fine just lands on your doorstep.”

My head dropped into a faint laugh. “Baby, you ain't gotta butter me up. I’m already here.”

“I ain't tryna do nothing of the sort. I meant what I said.”

“Ok. So, you just be up in here by yourself?”

“Most of the time, yeah.”

I smacked my lips, less than convinced. “Yeah, aight.”

“You a trip,” he chuckled.

“Nah, you the one.”

“How?”

“Nothing. Don’t worry ‘bout it,” I said, grinning as I waved him off. 

“I got no reason to lie, mama. Like you said, you already here.” He wet his bottom lip before moving his eyes down my body once more. I shuddered. “I really don’t be having company like that, though. I know it might not seem like it, but I’m usually a pretty private person. I don’t like too many people in my business.”

“So, why you breaking all your rules for me then?”

“I don’t know…” He leaned a little closer. “Just something about you.” 

I rolled my eyes through the inevitable smile that followed his and that sly admission. “You know what, I know I just gave it to you to put away, but could I pour myself a glass?”

“Oh, yeah. Fasho.” He walked back over to the freezer and pulled out my bottle. Then he went to a cabinet for a wine glass before taking an electric corkscrew from a drawer. Once the bottle was open, he stepped back, presenting it all to me with an outstretched hand. 

“Thank you.”

“No problem.”

I poured myself a big glass, just low enough to prevent any spills while I walked.

“You only brought one glass. You don't want any?” 

“Nah. I’m more of a Hennessy man, myself.”

“Aah, ok.”

“I can put it back for you, though.”

“I think I’ma just keep it.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, this is good enough.”

“Aight.” He reclaimed his position at the island. “So, um, I feel like you breaking some of your rules for me, too.” 

“…Maybe,” I said, after finishing a big sip. 

“How you get so brave?”

I frowned. “Why you saying that like you about to chop me up and plaster me into your walls?”

“Damn, girl.” I cracked at the sudden shock that appeared on his face and we laughed so hard. “I’m just saying. You know women ain’t safe out here. Especially Black women.”

“Yeah, my girl wanted me to stay home real bad. But I don't know. Sometimes you just gotta take a chance. Plus, you didn't give me serial killer vibes. Didn’t see a windowless van on the premises either, sooo…”

His smile was beaming as we shared another laugh. “You funny.”

I shrugged a shoulder, preparing for my next sip. “So I’ve been told.”

He waited for me to finish before he motioned his head toward where we had just come from. “Come on.” Then he turned to walk off, and, once again, I followed. 

“And, anyway, for all you know, I could be crazy.”

Without hesitation, he replied, “Oh, I can take you.”

I gasped in false disbelief. “Excuse you. I could have weapons of mass destruction.”

“What? Like a chainsaw?” 

He glanced back at me as we neared the stairs and I busted out laughing. “Now that wasn't even me. My girl put that one in my head.”

“What she think, I’m Leatherface?”

“Shit, you never know nowadays.”

“You ‘bout right. But you can let her know you in good hands.”

“I figured as much.”

He smiled, stopping at the stairs. “After you,” he said, holding his arm out for me to step ahead of him.  

After giving him my bottle, I grabbed the glass railing with my freed hand. I made my way up the curved staircase, swaying my little bit of booty in case he was watching, and losing count of how many steps I was taking. 

“You better catch me if I fall.”

“I got you.” I laughed to myself as we finally reached the top. I waited for him to take the lead again and he came around me, settling his hand on my waist. “This way, mama.”

A floral, citrusy scent met me as soon as I stepped into his bedroom. Probably from the candles lit in various spots all around it. They also provided the light, along with two lamps on the wall framing the head of his bed. “It smells so good in here.”

“I tried to hook it up for you a lil bit.”

“I like it.” The click of my heels on his gray hardwood floors was briefly muted as I strutted onto an oversized circular rug en route to his bed. The couch was nice and spacious, but the bed was much more inviting. The comforter looked cloudlike and the corner of the sheet that was exposed looked fresh. It was huge, too. Likely out of necessity. I sat on the edge and stared over at the window wall across from me as I took a feel. It was just as comfortable as I’d presumed, maybe even more. “Why you way over there? You got—what you called me?—‘something this fine’ all in your bed, and you just gon’ stand there?”

He smiled. “Yeah. That’s what I said.”

“Come here then.”

“You on my side, though,” he teased, swaggering toward me in his crisp white tee and gray joggers.

I kicked my shoes off before sliding myself to the opposite side. “Better?”

“Much.” He came over and sat against the fluted headboard as I sat just a couple feet away from him. At that point, I took my phone from my purse and killed the power. I was not about to let anybody spoil my night. “What kind of music you like?”

“I’m an R&B junkie.”

“Ok.” He picked up his phone, plugged up on the table beside him. “Let me guess. 90’s and early 2000’s, right?”

“Duh! I love my oldies, too, though.”

“Word?”

“Yes. I spent the first fourteen years of my life almost exclusively with my grandparents. They blessed me.”

“Ok. What you know about this then?” After a couple taps, ‘Spend The Night’ by The Isley Brothers began to play. 

“Boy, what? This my shit.” 

“…You grooving your ass off, this really your shit.”

I howled, because I hadn’t even realized. Maybe it was the near-emptiness of my glass that had my shoulders and waist moving without my knowledge. 

“Anyway. So, what’s your favorite genre?”

“My music taste kinda eclectic. I like a lil bit of everything.”

“Like what?”

“Funk. Bounce. Jazz.”

“Okayyy.”

“R&B,” he continued, making sure to look me in the eye for that one. “House.”

“Ooh, I love House.”

“Yeah. But that’s just a few.”

I nodded. “Ok, next question.”

“What’s up?”

“Why you sit my bottle so far awaaaay?” I whined, staring longingly toward his dresser as I went to leave the bed. He laughed. 

“My bad. I’ll get it for you.”

“I’m just messing with you. I got it.” I walked over to fill my glass again, bobbing my head to my jam. 

“You mind if I smoke?”

“This your place, baby. You can do whatever you want.”

“Yeah, but you my guest. And, if I’m a bad host, you might not wanna come back.”

I squinted up at him, twisting my lips to try and hide my smile, but it didn't work. The charm was just too potent. “It’s cool. Spark up.”

“Aight.” 

He leaned over and reached into his top drawer for this little box. I couldn't see inside it, but he pulled out a pre-rolled joint and I just assumed that there were more. This nigga was a stoner in the truest sense. 

The level of my glass was starting to fall again and the wine had to be going straight to my feet. Instead of returning to my seat, I opted for a cute little two-step and a couple of slow spins, quietly singing along with Mr. Biggs and Angela Winbush between sips. The song sounded better than it ever had. 

“I’m glad I chose this cut.” 

I opened my eyes to see that Yahya had changed his position, lying back on his elbows at the edge of the bed and facing me. It took all I had to keep it together. My face was on fire. “Why?”

He smacked his lips at me and took a long drag from the J. I giggled as he aimed his face toward the ceiling to release the smoke, promptly sucking it back into his mouth before it could get away. “I think you know why.” He brought his eyes back down to mine, smiling while smoke rolled from his lips and nose. 

I returned his smile. Of course I knew. “What that shit taste like?”

“You never smoked before?” he asked with a wrinkled brow.

“Nope. I told you I didn't smoke, remember?”

“Yeah, I know. But you never?”

I shook my head. “Not even once.”

“You wanna try it?”

I bit the inside of my lip, not really sure if I should. The scent of weed was something I usually just tolerated, but this didn’t smell too bad. Either that or my fascination with this man had me highly delusional. Probably. “Mmmm…” Fuck it. Might as well since I was taking a walk on the wild side for the night. Plus, I’d always wanted to try it at least once. Just to see what all the fuss was about. “Yeah.” I shrugged it off and left my glass on a nearby table, but then it hit me that I had been drinking. “Wait. Should I be doing this with alcohol?”

“It ain’t gon’ do nothing to you.”

“But am I really supposed to mix the two?”

He just sat up and reached for me, signaling me over with his fingers. “C’mere.”

I sighed, quelling most of my concerns and taking his hand. He didn’t let me make a single step, pulling me right into his hard chest. He hurried his arm around my waist as my screaming morphed into shared laughs. “Oh my god, don’t do that!” I looked down into his eyes, resting my arms on his shoulders to help get my bearings. The laughter soon faded. Smiles went next. 

“Mmmm,” he groaned, biting his lip with those gold fangs on full display. 

That same breathless feeling that had hit me at my computer, smacked the shit out of me again. Just a hundred times stronger. Seeing his brand of fine this close up was devastating. Everything that looked so damn good from afar held all of its integrity and then some. The beard, the lips, the skin, the teeth. Truly immaculate.

“Youuu… are dangerous.” I capped the sentiment with a giggle, but I was not joking. 

He frowned with a telling grin in the forefront. “What? I’m harmless.” The elevation in his tone further confirmed the lies.

I pushed myself back up to my feet, flustered as fuck and almost hating how he could make me this way so effortlessly. I really had no idea I was so foldable and, though the circumstances were lovely, I didn’t know how to feel about it.

“Fuck that.” 

He laughed and held the joint up to my lips. “Go slow.”

I looked at it and then back to him, still slightly unsure, but I went ahead. The regret was instant. I choked, coughing up what little smoke I had brought in. And, to make matters worse, he had the nerve to be laughing while I was fighting for my life. 

“Naaah, not like that.”

I shook my hanging head. “That’s ok. I don't want to anymore,” I said, fanning myself and trying to catch my breath.

“Come on. I got you.”

I smacked my lips, looking into his half-lidded eyes with my own, and caved without an ounce of pause. Shameful. “...Ok. But, if I don't get it this time, I’m done. And don't laugh.”

“Aight, aight. I won’t laugh.”

“You better not,” I teased, rolling my eyes. 

He brought that shit up to my lips again, but, this time, he rested his free hand on my hip. I didn't pay it much mind. I was more focused on preparing myself for this second pull that was probably about to kill me.

“Go slow.”

I followed his instructions and took a relaxed drag. But I forgot to stop, and this nigga just let me keep going. My eyes popped when I realized what I had done. I stood there, cheeks puffed to the brim, not knowing what the hell to do. Again, Yahya was cracking up. I, on the other hand, started to freak out, groaning frantically and tapping at his arm.

“Just open your mouth, girl.” 

I opened up and the smoke billowed out and began to float away. 

“Now catch it. Inhale.” 

I did what I was told once again and watched as some of it disappeared back into my mouth.

“Ok, hold it… now breathe.”

I let go and, surprisingly, all of it came out without me bringing a lung up with it. “I did it!” I beamed, celebrating my first successful puff of Mary.

“Started off a lil rocky, but you finished strong.” I laughed with him, feeling too triumphant to check him for rejoicing in my struggles. “You wanna hit it again?” he asked, after taking another puff. 

I nodded. I felt like I had it down, but I just wanted to make sure it wasn’t a fluke. If I could do it two times in a row, that meant I could really do it. Feeling myself, I even took it from his hand when he brought it over to me. 

“Oh, shit. Ok. You a pro now, huh?”

I was too tickled, but in the merriment I still noticed that he had led his newly unoccupied hand down to my other hip. He kneaded his fingers into me, getting a nice, thorough feel. Naturally, my mind began to wander, imagining all the filthy, disgusting things he could do to me with those huge hands. I looked down at him and he was already staring back. His face was the most relaxed it had been all night. He took his gaze down to where my thighs met and I would swear I heard my girl sigh. This man was so fucking sexy it was almost infuriating. I had to look away. I took another successful pull, reveling in all of this delectable sin, and he carefully slid his hands around to my ass. The pungent smell of weed had possessed the air, the taste of the flower and a little wine were sweet on my tongue, and the sensual poetry of love songs gave us all the right directions. I couldn’t remember the last time I had been this bad. 

“How you feelin’?”

I opened my eyes, tilted my head and brought my hand up to mimic a chef’s kiss.

“See? Stick with me, I can show you some thangs.” I tucked what was left of the J between his lips and he hit it one last time before sitting it over in the ashtray. Then he pulled me closer. 

I smiled and bit my lip, gently placing my hands to his chest. When I started to back away, he smiled up at me and loosened his grip, but I could tell he didn't really want to let me go. 

“Where you goin’?”

I simply shook my head as I left his grasp. I just wanted to play around with him, make him chase me a little bit. The O’Jays were singing ‘Forever Mine’ and, somehow, I could feel it in my body. Whatever Yahya had for me, I was readyyy! I turned away and clutched the bottom of my shirt with both hands, pulling it up over my head and dropping it to the floor. Not a second later, I could see his reflection in the window standing from the bed. Off came his shirt in one swift motion as he walked, then I felt him slide up behind me. The chase was over. 

With his hands at my sides, I swayed to the hypnotizing melodies, savoring how good his bare skin felt next to mine. “I love this song.” I spoke quietly, fully entranced. My hands found their way to his, and the difference in size fucked me up even more. I was leading them around to where I needed them, when he latched onto the softness of my belly and started to move toward the window. I shuffled the short distance with him until I was standing directly in front of it. He eased his hold on me and grabbed my hand, placing it onto the glass a little above my head. I looked out over his backyard, wondering if any of his neighbors could see us. Part of me hoped someone could as he played around with the waist of my jeans, touching my skin in light whispers. He crept over to the button, undoing it, what felt to be, intentionally slow. My zipper came down at the same chilling pace. With parted lips, I looked toward his hand as I felt it slide into my pants. He started to rub my pussy over my panties and they soaked through on contact, trapping my next breath in my throat. 

“Say. How you like it, mama?” He easily caught the rhythm of my subtle grind. “You like slow and steady?” 

I scratched the glass with his hand still on top of mine, feeling his dick right against my ass. Flames flickered in the near-darkness, but, clearly, we were the hottest in the room. He moved my panties to the side and slipped through the flood until my clit was pounding into the tips of his fingers. A shy moan had barely made it past my lips when he sank them deep. I whimpered loudly, gripping his arm and bending my other hand into a fist, buckling under the pressure.

“Or you like that hood shit?” He brought his hand down from the window and fixed his arm across my chest, guiding me back into him while he clung to my breast. “Hm?”

I didn't answer. I wasn’t even breathing. Despite me being highly inebriated, my heart was about to beat out of my chest.

“Why you bein’ so quiet?” he finally asked, lips brushing sweetly against my ear. Then he laid a soft kiss just underneath it. “You said you came to fuck. Don’t get all shy on me now.” 

@19jammmy @twistedcharismaaa @lemmewritesomeish @thisiswhatshefelt @teheeboo @shanisims @honestpreference @iamfredtina @blackerthings @judymfmoody @lyrarodriguez @fendionmyfeet @fadingbelieverexpert @chaneajoyyy @astoldbychae @cecereads209 @90sisthenew80s @daddiespamm @lovethecheri @xo-goldengirl @miyuhpapayuh @buttrflybby @jiminie-08 @queengodiva619 -taglist-

[crownedinmarigolds]

The Stakebait Coterie! Khloe and her boys are out there saving the Atlanta Waterbloods or get Final Death'd trying! (I'll type it all beneath the cut because I know.. my handwriting)

The main characters of the Poisoned Peach - ATL by Night chronicle my beloved is running for me! Khloe is my character, and the boys are my unbeatably dope team.

Name: Khloe Mariah Osbourne

Born: 05/04/1993, Embraced: 2022 by a Ventrue, came out Thinblood, Physical Age: 29

Height: 5'5", Hair: Dark Brown, Eyes: Hazel, Gender: Miss (She/Her), Nationality: American

Likes: Coffee, True Crime, Tabletop RPGs, Being a Minx, Staying Busy

Dislikes: Disappointing Others, Being Unprepared, Not knowing what's up, Her body, Tiktok-Style Ads

A little history: Khloe grew up the only child of very normal people who nastily divorced when she graduated high school. An avid reader and over-thinker, Khloe has immersed herself in many fantasy worlds and strategy games to the point where she seems to think of everything. A people pleaser who has a lot of good acquaintances yet no friends, the lack of companionship was hard-felt when COVID rolled around and kept everyone inside. Had a few partners, though none lasted. One night after visiting her mother, she found herself on a backroad all alone, save for the oncoming headlights that may be straying in her lane. (Where the Poisoned Peach begins!)

Name: Kyle Johnson

Born: 2/3/1994, Embraced: 2020, Sire unknown, but came out Thinblood, Physical Age: 26

Height: 5’10", Hair: N/A, Eyes: Sexy-Boy Brown, Gender: More man than your man (He/Him), Nationality: American

Likes: Feeling needed and helping others, Parties, Drinking cocktails with stupid names, Reasonable reactions.

Dislikes: Being late, people that CAN help and just don't, the MINIONS, Improperly labelled content warnings.

History: His mom was a nurse, her mom was a nurse, and so on. His sisters didn’t want to carry on the tradition, so he decided to go into the medical field himself as an EMT. The stress of the job brought on early balding, but he thrived both on the clock and in the club. One night, he drank a few too many and he woke up in a dumpster the next night, completely clueless. The sunlight began to hurt, nothing sat right in his stomach. Everything was the same yet all so different, better and worse. He spiraled, confused and depressed, until the Dusk Angel found him and helped him come to terms with his new existence. Now Kyle proudly helps the Thinblood Revolution as a kind face to help ease the new blood in, just as he had been.

Name: Randolph "Ralph" Gaylord King III

Born: 10/09/1996, Embraced: 2021 by a Nosferatu, came out Thinblood, Physical Age: 25

Height: 6'5" (Even pre-Embrace, him just big), Hair: Brown (Has to shave the remnants every evening, used to be long and thick and in a man-bun), Eyes: Yellow-Orange (Brown pre-Embrace), Gender: BOI (He/Him), Nationality: American

Likes: Guns, Bad Jokes, Strategy Games, Annoying Christian, Being a right menace

Dislikes: Himself :(, Whiny people, Beer, Signs with sayings meant to be taken serious.

Some Background: Born in St. Louis Missouri, Ralph had a pretty standard lower middle class upbringing. He followed his father and older brother and joined the army when he turned 18 right out of high school. Years of prep and hard work paid off as he went through candidate courses, eventually making it into Special Forces. His career was short-lived however after losing his right foot on his first deployment. Depression and dead-end jobs seemed to be his future until as a joke he started posting thirst-traps on social media, but it got real when his follower count spiked and sponsors started making offers. He was thrown into the life of an Insta-Thot - specifically Fitness Inspo - ultimately landing him in a party in Atlanta, Georgia, where his soon to be sire, Bill - a jealous and spiteful Nosferatu - lurked. Ralph was alone as he stumbled to his hotel room, and Bill could contain his hate no longer. To him, Ralph deserved to be as ugly on the outside as Bill thought he had to be on the inside. Little did Bill know, he messed with the wrong guy.

(Not written due to lack of room, we clearly don't play favorites here...) Eventually found in the sewers by the Dusk Angel, Ralph now serves in the Thinblood revolution, using every skill he's acquired in order to get revenge against the Fullbloods.

Name: Christian Ottavio

Born: 01/16/1989, Embraced: 2017, Gangrel sire but came out Thinblood, Physical Age: A rough 28

Height: 6'1", Hair: Dark Brown, Eyes: Brown, Gender: The MAN (He/Him), Nationality: American

Likes: Beer, Relaxing nights spent inside, Napping, His truck

Dislikes: His family, Wearing tight jeans, Bro-Country music, Fullbloods

A bit of background: Born and bred in Georgia into a rich family with ideals he couldn't wrap his head around. Went into the workforce at a young age in an effort to escape them and be on his own. He's had to sleep in his truck many a night, but eventually got everything together enough to get a roof over his head. That was until some uppity lick decided to draft him into the army of the damned during the Atlanta Sabbat civil war. He was one of many forced to fight during the schism, and one of the few to come out "alive." Before his sire could take him behind the proverbial tool shed, Christian was saved by the Dusk Angel, and now is a proud Thinblood freedom fighter.

[popculturebuffet]

May as well pop this, let's try the Adult Swim cartoons. Favorite character from their initial wave of shows: Space Ghost Coast to Coast (technically started on Cartoon Network first before Adult Swim began in 2001 but it gets lumped in as Adult Swim these days), Harvey Birdman Attorney at Law, Seelab 2021, The Brak Show, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, and Home Movies (began on UPN but continued production under Adult Swim). Throwing in Baby Blues, Mission Hill, and The Oblongs as bonuses that began on The WB but also finished on Adult Swim when The WB didn't bother finishing airing them.

Thank you. I may gloss over some later stuff, and you don't seem as into adult animation, so I appricate this. (And correct me if i'm wrong on that). Plus I can see you like doing these. But I grew up on the shows in this block's early days and some of it's middle days, so let's cook.

Space Ghost Coast to Coast: Moltar. IT's a hard choice as the main trio as a whole are all uniquely great, but I love his awkwardness and hidden monstrosity. And his attempts at knife fights. Coast to Coast is excellent and well worth checking out if you haven't. It's funny, got only funnier with time, and a handful of it's best stuff lives rent free in my head, something common among a lot of adult swim shows. And while this did predate adult swim, Space Ghost feels like why the block happened at all and it's earliest shows that weren't taken from the WB or UPN all kinda ape the formula of taking a classic cartoon and bending it, and joined it as soon as the block formed. Without it we woudln't have all these other great shows... I mean we might but it's a razor thin margin. It had a perfect comedic trio of the egotistical stupid manchild spaceghost, the cooler but blantatly evil and self destructive zorak and the also evil but awkward as hell moltar. A true classic and I badly miss C Martin Croker who played Zorak and Moltar and wrote this classic.

Harvey BIrdman Attorney at Law: WHOSE THAT CAT WITH THE BEAKKKKKKKKKKK? This theme song is dope as hell and is the reason this got made. Okay so faviorite character is Phil. HA HA obvious choice. But Stephen Colbert owns every scene he's in as Phil and the show rolls with it as it goes, letting Phil just getting into weird fucking hyjinks, the highlight being blackwatch plad where he hallucinates several things that never existed being stolen, somehow reads harvey's thoughts and institutes code rush's seminal album moving pictures. This show was a lot of funa nd introduced me to the bulk of hannah barbera's catalogue, finding fun ways to deconstruct the classic libraries from Fred as Tony Soprano to leaning on the fact Shaggy isn't actually a stoner but really, REALLY comes off as one, while getting better as it went by expanding on it's own weird cast, with Peter Potamus in paticular being pretty great. Add in some great Stephen Colbert performances before he had to leave for his own show, a killer soundtrack and one of Gary Cole's best performances as our bumbling hero just kind of ping ponged around by his clients and zany boss, and you have a show I now really want to rewatch. Adult swim would have better and shows I rewatched more, but the power of attorney is still strong to this day.

The Brak Show: Dad. George Lowe is just allowed to go into incredibly weird places with this man and I support it. The show itself is an underated classic these days, and while I try not to be too old man yelling at those them kids, this is a show the younger set who didn't grow up with it shoudl check out as it's absurd goodness. Brak started on space ghost and cartoon planet, but was too big to contain resulting in this lovely bit of nonsense that defined what an adult swims how not riffing on a cartoon could be. I mean it still did a little as it kept brak and zorak from space ghost but recast them as a loveable teen dummy and an agent of chaos.. the same people but in a new scenario that let them go hog wild. The show even got experimental as it went with batshit weirdness like Braklet Prince of Spaceland that puts the cast in hamlet (And dad as hamle'ts dad sans pants) or all I desire is you where the cast is suddenly in a soap opera). It's good stuff with a psycho musical, an election where Dad claims his opponent is killing pets with pet bombs nad fails the instant he actually has to debate, and of course

Sealab 2021: Accidently put this one out of order but it might be my faviorite of this batch, with one other jockeying for the crown. Captain Murphy is my faviorite and while the show had a few classics after his actor Harry Goz's tragic passing, it never felt quite the same. Sealab 2021 is the first abriged series and a damn good one. While the show skidded at times, at it's peak this was just pure comedic chaos under the sea, and the cast bounced off each other amazingly. The show wasn't afraid to experiment either and out of the shows here, while brak dabbled later, seemed to do it the most and made it stand out: as early as the end of season 1 we got a waking life full episode take, an episode following the cast as actors on the show, my personal faviorite tinfins that takes this concept and applies it to the making of a movie, a backwards episode, and one repeating the same running gag with variations over and over. The show had a great ensemble, mostly anchored by goz and later his son, and cemented Adam Reed as a legend in adult comedy.

Home Movies: Coach McGurik. It was John Benjamins brekout: While Dr Katz had welcomed him tot he world, McGurik made him a star and would eventually lead him to bob and archer, and he's still one of his best roles, a sardonic drunk who bonds with kids, yet also should not be around them and once claimed BRENDON SMALL IS ON DRUGS and tried to get a bunch of children to do an intervention.

I could honestly quote McGuirk moments all day and he frankly stole the show half the time, to the point the bulk of later seasons has him in his own weird b-plot, from gambing on a boat with the host of his seminar, to buying a bunch of swords when drunk, to telling a bunch of kids to go upstairs in a hurricane because being in the same rooms mean they'll all bump into each other. The last one isn't a subplot, it's just comedy gold.

The show had an easy dry improved style: While they did put in scripts after the first season, it was still mostly "get to this point" and let Brendon Small, a voice acting and comedy legend in his own right, and co cook. The result is a funny show with detailed charcters: Narccisitc control freak at only the third grade brendon, entirely out of it jason, only sane woman till she isn't melissa and Brendon's mom Paula who alternates between voice of reason to her child and her life being a hurricane. It's one of the best shows Adult Swims ever made and they hit the jackpot pickign it up

Mission Hill: Gus. While the joke could easily be "GET IT THE GUY IS REALLY MANLY BUT HE'S GAYYYY" they let him go beyond that and while his queerness is integral to who he is, he's also funny> We also get that great subplot of a knife just.. jutting out of his shoulder for a whole episode. The show itself is pretty good and worth a revisit from me, a nice hipster's pardise. The odd couple coulld get boring but Andy and Kevin play off each other well: Andy does need to grow the hell up, and I like the reveal both of his friends, while also cooler than thou slackers.. do actually have stable jobs. not saying a 9 to 5 job is growing up, I don't have one, but more that andy needed to change as a person and the series lets him grow, while Kevin bursts out of his shella nd misconceptions. The show was too good to last and i'm sad the spinoff fell apart. It was fantastic.

Baby Blues: Carl. What could easily be just the more grumbly testorone guy to the goofy darryl is a pretty fun slob. The show itself was solid. Is it anything like the comic strip? Honestly not really, having read the strip both early and not: It does deal with the difficulties of having a baby (Something Zoey was for the early years of the strip), but it's more it's own thing and honestly finding baby blues mid, that's a good thing as the show baby blues is pretty solid. Nothing super standout, but still memorable enough to stick in the brain.

The Oblongs: Down in the Valley where the chemical spill. Pickles. it was, unbenownst to me my first experince with jean smart and it's a good one. This is a show i'll give another shot someday as I wasn't a huge fan as a kid but in hindsight. it's really good. not nearly as mean spirited as I thought.

[savagesneversleepnyc]

THE GONG SHOWS

(Thoughts on COMEDY, HIP HOP, HARD WORK and RESPECT)

I had come to DENVER in the FALL of 1996 on a GREYHOUND BUS. The trip was relatively uneventful. I watched a braggart kid from CONNECTICUT who ran his mouth the whole way get yolked buying drugs on the street outside the station in CHICAGO. Those places were very dangerous in the 90’s at every stop. It was a cheap way to cross the country, but it would lead a person through a gauntlet of bizarre dead-end places where the dirty dog stopped to collect the living attempting to find greener pastures.

GREG had talked me into coming. I saw him that summer and he was quite pointed about the perilous state of my plight should I choose to not leave NEW ENGLAND and get out west to escape the headaches and severe DOPE CRISIS that was breaking like a wave at NAZZARRE. It was the 90’s and things were seemingly very prosperous and the severity of QUID PRO QUO was profound. CREDIT, LIFE, DEBT, and CHOICE all loomed as they impeached the president and I went away from the dark strange world I was raised in and got on a bus to build a thing in a blank form.

Our doings would lead to a myriad of things and alliances. VICTOR IZITT aka PRIZNA 101 aka DJ RICOCHET, our roommate, and I formed a GRAFF crew quickly with some other kids and would throw our first parties in 1999 as 314 BREAK CORP with our mentor ED SANTIAGO aka NRG BOY. This event would feature many of the crew mates who would charge at endeavors they found clever and proliferated to levels of dopeness to deep to touch here in any correct manner.

COUNTDOWN was held in DEC in 1999 at BUMP AND GRIND cafe on 17th and PENN in DENVER. CLIFF T, the owner, and our big brother let us use the space last minute as our initial plan fell through. The BUMP AND GRIND was a coffee shop, bakery, and drag brunch destination of over 15 years in DENVER prior to much of that type of culture being more mainstream. CLIFF had lived in NY in the 90’s as well as had taken the gritty attitude of DETROIT where he grew up and fused it with the NY roots he came to earn. His hard work supported many of us and allowed a real family of artists and outsiders to gather around a father figure.

GREG and I would riff. It would lead to him pursuing comedy and eventually our collaborations in this space. We threw events in different spots despite the stigma of music and comedy. I was in two HIP-HOP groups at the time and GREG was running the SQUIRE LOUNGE open mic that lasted over a decade. We were speaking on the GONG SHOW I had thrown with BABAH FLY of BUGABOO, one of the two groups I was in. The show had been a cool idea but the spot was some odd biker bar in a pocket no one even knew existed. While this may have been sick if we wanted to stage some COCK FIGHTS or perhaps get that FIGHT CLUB we kept hinting at starting in motion.. But BAD IDEAS tend to stay stagnant for good reason.

(It is not possible to remember which idea really came first as the dates for them were close)

We stumbled into the idea of doing an actual GONG SHOW but really making it more in the mean-spirited SQUIRE LOUNGE model GREG had already formed. He pitched his comedy partners who were a decent size crew at this time and all agreed it was a great idea. Initially, the idea of YOU SUCK GET OFF THE STAGE and putting DAVE SOTO in a CASER suit was all just the ball rolling downhill. We somehow found the real GONG SHOW GONG that MR CHUCK BARRIS himself had WACKED to end the MEAN JEAN dancing and so many other people's blind charge at FAME.

The show was a nightmare in a lot of ways. It’s easy to DJ or just do COMEDY. Not a lot of moving parts. The show we built had a shitload of performers of a varying degree of skill, songs that would need to be played and cued, video and audio cues to be flown in live from the board, and an entire banter of judges on stage as GREG paraded the stage of the ORIENTAL THEATHER. He would take the stage as the monster he would allow himself to transform into called BOBBY VALENTINO. This person was a version of my boy but was the EVIL PURE SITH version of him that was the DOG he kept muzzled at all times. The act of letting this person stand on stage and act out this mustachio’d fever dream of filth was stepping deep into the chummed waters in a sausage suit…

The show went off in flying colors despite the massive technical problems mostly due to the use of DVD content in the live show. Most of the performers and the actual content given to my AV guy were OLD and used DVDs that were not fit for home play much less a production. These disasters would really rock the booth and boar but ultimately it was never a thing I let get to me. The shows would run 3 nights usually and we ran it 4 times I feel like. Each one is more complex and pro than the last. The first show did have the BUKAKKAE ALARM CLOCK skit GREG and I wrote like so many bits just being fools talking shit at the BUMP AND GRIND.

The roots of that CRUEL demand for the best and funniest stuff were rooted in that hungry world we came out of. The characters we came up with in that scene have gone on to define a era in COMEDY and put our CITY on the MAP. It’s a proud thing to look back on. So many names that are too numerous to mention respectfully. It’s been amazing to see the organic way true people delivering and producing shows and working with love will invariably rise up and create a legacy. I do not ever claim anything beyond what I know I’ve done and never waited for anyone to tell me it was ok. This was offputting I guess and it made me leave DENVER. I’m proud to represent my home even though it’s not where I was born. DENVER is a place where many writers find themselves on the journey. It’s a strange and mythic place I love and hate in equal measure. So many memories of joy and such deep loss and sadness. Some of the faces of the sublime humans I know still knock on my door as I awake daily. But the faces of the EVIL folk who I had to face and pass on were not jokes and warned the young people that it is not a joke.

The West was won in AUDACITY. The concept of MANIFEST DESTINY is a QUID PRO QUO of taking the land from those who were there in AUDACITY and clutching a GUN and BIBLE on the other hand. This is not a debatable fact. But to forget this trespass and pass on is silly. The West was won in BLOOD and ACTIONS GOOD, BAD, and UGLY. But the actions of simple passion and love all live side by side as those monsters ride off to rob another train or train their sights on the next slow-moving animal to poach.

The GONG SHOW is a moment in the AMERICAN MYTHOS that represents the common person being allowed the 15 seconds ANDY has promised in jest. But the AUDACITY to be a FOOL or be COOL is a thing that most don’t know. It’s easy to see a comic, deejay, producer, artist, writer, chef, or human as a thing you get to judge and talk out an opinion on. This is everyone’s right. BUT PLEASE KNOW. If you do not make, do, say, think that thing you choose to run your YAP ABOUT… It is fully permissible to have a REAL ONE tell you quite simply and plan that it’s not your place and it’s probably best to respectfully STFU.

FOR G.B. 314 and VICTOR PRIMO IZZIT 314

5:37am 4.14024.000003

[the-firebird69]

Watch "Star Trek: The Motion Picture (7/9) Movie CLIP - VGER is Voyager 6 (1979) HD" on YouTube

I don't know who those two actors are the man and the woman but I think they die. And I have to tell you something you guys are seeking our people and are sick but they're right there okay they're entitled to be a little sick and they're entitled to have a little bit less fear than everybody else you people here are nuts there's nothing to see there's nothing to find there's nothing to talk about but there is right there on those two ships I don't know why you're so nuts and asinine we don't have any justice justified reason except maybe a racist being destroyed and I understand that as you would know it's a bone chilling experience and I have more people and somewhere else but really that was horrifying enough to support network it's gone. And I noted spok lost his township Stone chip and I think that he's Trump and that Mac is fighting them all that the balls of the way you were AI and all kind of enemies and the computers are there enemies so they just go right through it and they're going right up to it to try and see if they're single received that's interesting it's also interesting that it looks like those two died.

Zues

What's interesting to me is you're not trying to cover it up you don't care who sees it you don't care what goes on but still you all want to see it and you all know what it is I want to know what it is in our opinion and reactions and stuff cuz you beat yourself senseless for about 15 years to try and find something like this and books or what you're saying or what other people saying you don't quite mad but here it is for real. I believe I know who the actress is an actor and they're not special people it's a Mac and his wife and he says I don't think so he's right they're doping. And she is Sarah and he is cheesman's I think after Star wars is pulled from the fire and they thought they were transported they know that one. I looked at my husband's theory and they could have been transported out of their brain case and the Giants skulls would be the evidence and apparently those removed from the headgear and you can't tell when they're from the videos and the tapes and the pictures no you can see it doesn't look like any of them had a line. And some pictures were fantastically clear taken from only hundreds of feet away but still you need a microscope. The one in the short of it is it might not just be the AI it's in the computers it might be that people who built it and the egg that John remillard AKA Trump is sitting on is too great for him and he thinks will make him president because he's sitting on it as if he won't kidnap one person he thinks advertising is going to make it better for him and my husband to set a time and time again it gets your client eliminated and it is right now. The reason for the ACT on Mars would be the fake their deaths and try and make it work and have an exit plan and they always had one and afraid they did and they're sitting in those ships and they know about how long they have they can tell that the radiation is getting to them. I

sitting there fighting over Voyager and my husband says they're not doing it now and it's not the only thing they're fighting and it's true too and they know all about but they are held off and it held off by a crazy containment field that does not look like it's agreeing with them and we think that Tommy F grabs ship flagship a black Chip and the other one is his number one and he came back and it's supposed to be one of the crew and we think we know what happens next the spaceships you see and one of them goes to a Droid ship and these things are not small they're like half mile to a mile they say they don't have any food and there's tons of food a mile of food laughs my husband about 200 years and stored properly and not even taking up that much room just like a mile by 4 ft by 4 ft and I know it's done that many times the calculation we're going to let father speak

Hera

This is outstanding work it shows where it is and we need that and he's idiots they say good did you see where they go and it's very strange what an odd place for them to go right into the lion's den right now they're stuck out there and they can't get a signal out and trying to and it competed to do so but hey guys have to try and we have to jam it cuz it might be having a computer. Needless to say they go out with the Enterprise and something happens and the two ships are a problem and they're stuck together and Sarah supposedly beamed out and back when she decided the thing and said we have to go look at it and started acting weird had a bless her for the stage presence I've done some kind of action on film someone was watching the movie that I had and she goes wow that's sweet not what you have there is some kind of very dangerous situation and I think they had clothing and his second command fighting over the AI That's too much they left and come back with you and the most dangerous things on the computers. So they're on the fix okay they're in trouble and if they escaped it's amazing it's just getting a fight and the AI leaves and it has excellent clothing and shows up in a bunch of places screwing around with a bunch of you

Thor Freya

Olympus

[icallhimjoey]

Easier In Greece

♥ ♥          Joseph Quinn x Fem!Reader 

Summary: Joe's in an interesting stage of life when he's offered an equally interesting project. You whisk him off to Greece and spend eight days together on a boat with high expectations of which none turn out to be true. CW / disclaimer: rpf (don’t read if this makes you uncomfy), fem!reader, brief mention of claustrophobia, dead octopuses, fish touching you, Joe loses those sunglasses - no nvm its all silly shit, you'll be fine

Author’s note: this is so completely out of my comfort zone, and i felt weird all throughout writing it, but i had kind words of @ghostinthebackofyourhead​​ to coach me through - hope you liiiiiike, replies and reblogs are appreciated!

Wordcount: 7.9K

Again, Joe and love didn’t meet, even though he so desperately had hoped that this had been it. 

The one. 

It very muchly hadn’t been, and in hindsight, he didn’t really know why he’d ever thought it was. 

Now in his late twenties, Joe decided to stop and have look at the stats. Maybe an industry party wasn’t the best location to take time to reflect, but the stunning woman who just shot Joe down forced him into looking inwards for a second. 

What am I doing wrong? Joe thought. 

Unsurprisingly, Joe concluded that the stats weren’t good at all. 

So, just for now, for the foreseeable future, the summer at least, Joe was done with women. Sure, they’d be all shiny and smiley in ads, on Instagram, in films… but those same women would never come over to his flat and just sit on his Ikea sofa with him after a long day’s work. 

Looking back, Joe realised that he’d chosen a tactic that felt oddly similar to what American boxers call dope-a-rope; no matter how hard your competition, or even yourself, tries to get you down, you won’t actually get down until you hit yourself in the face. At least, that’s what Joe thought dope-a-rope meant, anyway. 

Failed first dates, failed second dates, situationships that never turned into relationships, relationships ending over all sorts of different reasons – Joe forgot about them fast, in hopes that he’d know exactly what to do when he’d finally run into her; the one. 

Joe was young still, you know, if you asked anyone older, but he already had enough of all of this bullshit. 

So. Bye, ladies. 

That’s what he decided would be the right plan for him that night. Tell love goodbye. Easy enough to say it aloud, and it was a decision that after four drinks felt totally right, but Joe hadn’t anticipated what it meant to actually try to stick with it. 

He felt a bit like a mad, distraught toddler whose balloon had just popped.

When he saw the head of Olivier Magazine walking up to him, someone he met previously and wouldn’t really consider a friend, but he had some pictures to show that they at least knew each other, he decided to take it all out on him. 

“Matthew,” Joe started when he walked into earshot.

“Joe,” he replied, unaware of Joe’s intentions. “Good to see you, mate. I’m going to call you tomorrow with a real fun project for you.” And then Matthew walked right past him, leaving Joe without words.

The next day, hungover-Joe got the phone call. 

“Joe, it’s Matt, say… you’re a single man, aren’t you?” 

“… yes.”

Then the conversation had taken a surprisingly strange turn. A journalist had a spread in mind for Olivier Magazine with a very specific focus: tour companies for single people who invite ambitious travelers on somewhat of a budget who are looking to meet and connect with like-minded people while exploring new and exciting places along the way. She really wanted to focus on single men. The trip abroad would more so just be the background for it. 

It sounded like an accumulation of every nightmare Joe had ever had. 

“I’m sure you’ll appreciate the break, and we’ll get some fantastic photos taken!” 

Joe listened to Matt’s pitch as he swiftly opened his laptop where he googled the name of the journalist that he’d mentioned. It only took a couple of seconds for Joe to find himself staring at a picture of you. A pretty girl, around his age, smiling at him like those women did in the ads, and on Instagram. 

“You-” Joe interrupted Matt who still was in the middle of talking about how beautiful the Mediterranean Sea was this time of year. “-are not being serious, are you?”

About a week later, Joe got an e-mail from you. “Hey Joe, have you heard? We’re going to go on a trip together.” 

Day One: London to Athens

Greece was where you were taking Joe. The place where Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love, left her footsteps in the sand. It was precisely the wrong thing to tell Joe upon first meeting him, but you didn’t know, and he also didn’t let on. 

You were looking at an eight-day boat trip with Joe, and you still weren’t sure how you’d gotten Olivier roped in on it. The idea seemed too bold to even be taken seriously at all, but maybe that was exactly why Matthew had decided to go for it. And he knew just the guy for it too.

Had Joe not accepted to go on this trip with you for you to write about single men on trips designed for single people, you probably still would’ve been sat at home, hoping that maybe another magazine would have only even considered listening to you talk about your ideas for original spreads to grace their pages. 

But Joe had accepted, and now you were both on a boat from the organisation One Wave that was a lot smaller than you had expected. The captain of the boat, nicknamed Mr Wave by you, but never when he was around, had told you about the 2500 Greek islands and about the same number of singles that had been on the very boat you’d be staying on. 

You had only just met a couple hours earlier, a quick handshake before boarding the plane in London. There had been some pleasantries e-mailed back and forth to at least try to get some knowledge of who either of you were before venturing out across Europe together, but it had all been quick, shallow words on screens. It was entirely different to be able to look into Joe’s eyes when you spoke to him. 

Joe was charming. 

Maybe not exactly your type, but... something oozed from him that you hadn’t been able to witness through his e-mails.

You were relieved to find out that you weren’t sat together on the flight. There was no need for small talk, or other awkward conversation. And from your seat, you had a pretty good view of him, which was even better. It gave you a chance to scope him out a little, see how he treated the flight attendants, the people he was sat near, what he’d do if the plane was to plummet over France somewhere and crash… all for the article you’d write, of course. 

When Matthew said that Joe Quinn was game for your plans, you’d silently cursed at him. 

An actor? 

A single actor? 

One who was on pretty much every guest list of every award show right now? 

Big ask for him not to be absolutely full of himself. 

But so far, he seemed fine. Normal. Almost a little boring. 

To be able to take off on the boat, you were going to have to find it first. A difficult task on the first night in a country of which neither of you spoke or could even read the language. 

It was dark and the harbour was larger than you thought it’d be. Joe was using the flashlight on his phone to shine at every boat’s name in hopes of accidentally finding the right one within the first few minutes. 

You were surprised that you felt a little responsible for your travel buddy – this whole thing had been your idea, and had you had more time to prepare, you’d have taken Joe to the right boat immediately.

Joe had been gracious enough during your search to offer to carry your bag. He immediately regretted helping out when he felt the weight of it as he threw it over his shoulder, but he didn’t mention it.

Joe was happy you weren’t as shy as he would’ve been in this situation had he been in your shoes. You had no issue asking for the right way a million times, using hands and feet to signal what you were looking for, until you finally pinpointed the correct boat.  

When you finally set foot on board of the boat named Paris – named after a Greek Prince that seduced the beautiful Helena, or kidnapped her, depending on how much of a feminist you were – you met the other travelers. 

Tim, who brought his six-year-old son, which was weird. It made Joe and you look at each other funny, clearly thinking the same thing. 

Dan, a guy from Manchester who kept saying, “Maybe I’m just old-fashioned, but,” before everything he said. 

And Martin, the owner of the boat and thus your captain for the week. 

There were other guests, more of them, who weren’t sat on deck; either already asleep inside, or still on their way over. 

The two of you would obviously also be sleeping on the boat. That led to one of those things Joe hadn’t even fully thought of yet: sleeping arrangements. 

Did you want a small, tiny room with bunkbeds originally designed for two children? Or did you want to sleep in the one double bed left located in the front of the boat?

Joe swallowed hard when he looked at you, the choices echoing in his mind. Stay in a bed, with you? Joe might have bid farewell to love, albeit temporarily, he was still a man.

“Joe?” 

 “It’s your call.” ever the gentleman. 

And after a quick tour and a swift look at the options, it was an easy choice to make. There was no way the bunkbeds were going to fit Joe’s legs.

“We’ll take the double bed.” 

Day Two: Athens to Epidaurus

The mornings were busy on the boat. Besides the guests you met the night before, you got to meet the other passengers of the Paris. Charlie, Martin’s son Jesse, who happened to also be Charlie’s best friend, and two older lovers, Daisy and Frank. 

It’s entirely not the vibe you thought you’d find on this trip, island hopping in Greece, being amongst travelers on the lookout for other singles to meet and mingle with. There was a child and a couple within your group, and it threw you for a loop. 

This wasn’t exactly what you had in mind for your multiple page opinion piece that would feature stunning photographs (you imagined, they hadn’t been taken yet) of a bronzed Joe Quinn, an open white shirt loosely hung over his shoulders, billowing in the wind on a luxurious yacht, with a deep blue sea and Grecian islands in the background. 

The mental image of it had been so dreamy, but this felt a bit like a weird family trip with a bunch of relatives who had seen you last when you were in diapers still. 

You learned later that the couple was only there because the divorced Frank had already booked the trip before he’d met Daisy through online dating, and he hadn’t been able to get a refund. They were very apologetic about it. What was worse, and not entirely clear to Joe and you just yet, was that Frank and Daisy had immediately taken a liking to the both of you because they thought they weren’t the only couple there.

There were other boats from One Wave, and when you bobbed out of the harbour onto the open sea, you could see that there were at least eight of the same boats, traveling alongside you. There wasn’t enough wind to let the sails down, but that was alright. Slowly hours passed as you passed the islands, sun beaming down, sunscreen thick on your nose and tops of your shoulders. 

As a journalist, you’d decided to use your skills to get Joe talking. 

When you sat down next to Joe on the edge of the boat near the front, legs dangling over, catching splashes of the seawater below, Joe hadn’t expected your approach to have been teaching him an unasked lesson about time and space.

“So, think of this,” you said. “There’s no time. It’s not there, doesn’t exist.” Your facial expression was utterly serious as you rambled about past, present and future all stacked on top of each other. You tried your hardest to get a reaction out of Joe. “Really, the universe just has its way to take care of you, trust me.”

Joe wasn’t convinced. What you’d hoped would’ve happened was that Joe would’ve either outrageously agreed or disagreed with you. It held the opportunity to either dive deep into a philosophic chat or would have the two of you bickering. Either one would’ve given you food for thought for your article. 

What you hadn’t anticipated is where Joe took it. 

Humour. 

After three minutes you had to ban him from making further jokes about it. 

After a full day of getting to know everyone, you all stepped off your boats in Epidaurus around four in the afternoon. Adding all the other boats and their passengers to your group, you ended up in a company of about thirty people.  

The group held more men than women, but to your surprise, there were also women in their thirties who had brought their children along. And over dinner and drinks you learned that Dan, from your boat, also had a son around the same age as Tim’s he had wanted to bring along. It was due to a miscommunication with his ex-wife that that hadn’t happened. 

Joe caught Dan looking at Tim’s boy with sad eyes and had cleared his throat loudly before changing the subject over to Jesse and Charlie, the two lads in their earlier twenties. 

Unbeknownst to you, Joe found himself to have a lot in common with them when they talked about girls, and how they had given up on them for a bit. The chat at your table turned almost therapeutic; everyone shared why they were single, and it was all different, but all complex. 

You didn’t share, and neither did Joe. No one pressed it, which was nice.

And then it dawned on you. 

People go on these trips more so to avoid couples all together. 

To not be surrounded by public displays of affection from lovey-dovey coupled-up friends and family. 

To be on a trip where you’re not the third or fifth wheel amongst them. 

To be in a group of like-minded people and to just hang out together. 

It’s why there were children there too – how lovely must it be to take a trip with other single parents who share the same hardships as you? The whole world suddenly seemed to be catered towards couples only, unfairly so. 

You felt like you discovered a secret treasure not meant for your eyes. Your revelation blew fresh air into your passion project, right there at the dinner table, and you tapped away in your notes app on your phone to capture as much of your trail of thought as you could. 

When you noticed Joe peeking over you shoulder, you shoved him away.

“Are you not meant to be writing about me?” Joe smirked, having caught some of what you were writing down.

“I was.” You said pointedly, closing the app and putting your phone down.

Day Three: Epidaurus to Poros

For the second time, Joe woke up next to you which ultimately wasn’t as weird as he thought it would have been. 

Should have been. 

You both were very adult about it together. But sometimes a bigger boat would pass, and it’d make your boat dance over larger waves. Not an issue, maybe a little nauseating, but it meant that you’d accidentally touch a lot in the night. You were both level-headed about it though. Definitely well-trained professionals. Joe tried to think of another job where people had to sleep in the same bed, for several nights, in sticky Mediterranean heat after hanging out in swimwear all day. 

Nothing came to mind.

It hadn’t just been the sleeping arrangement that had helped grow the sense of familiarity between the two of you fast. Standing in one of the tiny bathrooms of the boat, you were both brushing your teeth, and Joe wasn’t sure why or how he felt this was a totally normal thing to do, but he’d lean over your shoulder to spit into the sink for which you would then turn the tap on to wash it away.

Professionals.

You started that day with a big sigh. There was a bus excursion planned to a museum in Epidaurus, but you weren’t in the mood for it. 

“I’m not a huge fan of seeing things,” you protested with a shrug. It was a weird hill to die on, entirely made up of lies. You were just moody. “Things are places. I get it.” 

It made Joe remember why he’d sworn off love.  

“So, don’t come then.” Joe tried. 

“No, no,” Another sigh. “I’ll come.” 

Women.

When you got to the museum, Joe didn’t understand how you were still fun to be around when grumpy. He wondered if he was fun to be around, just so that this trip would at least be a little bearable for you, but you hadn’t mentioned anything to Joe about it yet, so he figured he was fine. You seemed the type of person to tell him straight away if he was boring, and he kind of liked that about you. 

Because the old Greeks didn’t have microphones, obviously, the museum you had set foot into was known for its acoustics. Every room had been designed for sound to travel. When Charlie and Jesse had gleefully decided to test it by singing Sweet Caroline, they had your entire group join in within seconds. 

“Hands… touching hands… reaching out… touching me… touching you…”

They became louder and rowdier, dancing now too, arms reaching and touching each other. Smiles grew bigger when no one seemed to stop them. The other tourists there however did not seem very happy with the disruption, and Joe saw you take a few steps away from the group.

“Having fun?” Joe yelled, trying to speak over the echoing voices practically shouting the chorus, half of them adding boisterous ‘so good, so good, so good’ whilst punching the air to fill the short silence in between. Meanwhile Dan had found a table to drum the beat onto as others clapped.

“This is really embarrassing,” you mouthed at Joe, seeing the judgmental eyes from strangers that hurriedly left the room you were in. It only prompted Joe to be more embarrassing as he tried to rope you back into the group with cheesy dance moves and singing in a comically deep voice. 

And you couldn’t actually believe it, but something about the joy that Joe could let shine from his eyes made you give in and join them in their antics. 

After that, things got better. 

Your mood got better. 

Especially when you found a hotel where everyone was allowed a five-minute shower. It was likely to be the last good shower that you would get for the week. 

That afternoon you sailed your way over to Poros, and you were struck by how much every single place you visited looked like it wasn’t real. Too picturesque. As if built for multi-million Hollywood films.  

Poros, Martin told you, had a boulevard, so you could go shopping if you wanted to. Immediately excited, you helped dock the boat, having learnt a thing or two by now. You managed to jump of the boat swiftly, and caught the ropes thrown at you with ease, quickly tying them onto the thick hooks meant for them.

When Joe helped you get back onto the boat, something happened that made him feel for you: your sunglasses fell into the water. Joe watched them slowly sink deeper, and he was touched by how much the two of you were alike. Losing your sunglasses in the water was something so typical for Joe to do.  

“Quick! Get them!” you called out, but Joe looked into the clear water and saw how they were already so close to the bottom. The two of you just watched as they hit the sand. 

“Shit,” you muttered. “Those were such a good pair, too. Now you’ll have to get new ones.”

Hang on a minute, what? 

Confused, Joe reached for the top of his head. 

“Oh.” 

Those sunglasses weren’t yours. 

They were Joe’s. 

Losing sunglasses in the water wasn’t something Joe would do. It’s something he did.

You spent the afternoon walking the boulevard and perching pairs of sunglasses on Joe’s slightly sunburned nose, in search of finding a pair that you both liked on him.

“What about these ones?” Joe asked you and turned his face so you could see. 

You looked up from your phone at him shortly. 

“Those are nice.” 

And to be fair, you liked most of them on Joe, but Joe wasn’t as easy. He was after a pair similar enough to the ones he’d lost and took the job seriously. 

“Listen, I know you’re here to do a job,” Joe placed his hand over your phone and pushed it down slightly. “But right now, your job should be to tell me how beautiful I look in these instead of writing about it.” Joe joked, and it was enough to make you laugh and slide your phone back into your pocket.  

“You look stunning.” 

“Okay, I’ll get them.”

Day Four: Poros to Vathy

“You’re single because you don’t know how to have a proper argument,” a friend of Joe had told him before he’d gone on this trip. 

Joe had heard so many sentences start with “You’re single because…” but this was a new one. And Joe had agreed. Joe was quick to admit he’d been wrong, even if he hadn’t been, would just listen to complaints and then adapt, giving the other person no pushback. It was just easier that way.

This trip, however, wasn’t the time to practice arguing for the sake of getting better at it and perhaps enhancing his luck in relationships.

On the boat you laughed a lot. 

The way you’d envisioned all of you to be a weird make-shift family had kind of become reality in the best sense of the word. You had revealed to be a journalist who was merely on the trip to write about it, and it had intrigued everyone. 

Charlie and Jesse had immediately come up with pseudonyms for themselves: Charlie would be Jesse, and Jesse would be Charlie. It was such a stupid joke; it had left you giggling just thinking of it hours later. 

Joe had then also told them that he was there as your subject, which made it sound as if you held full power over him. You realised then that you sort of did and wondered if that was how Joe had felt the whole time you’d been around each other. You hoped he hadn’t, knowing it would be so much nicer if Joe would just be fully himself without also keeping busy doing guesswork as to what you’d write about him later. Plus, you’d kind of grown fond of the Joe you had gotten to know, so imagining him not being fully himself stung a little.

Once you got off the boat and stepped into Vathy, your legs felt wobbly stepping onto land. “Sea legs,” you said when grabbing hold of the closest thing to you to find your balance. 

“Here.” 

The closest thing had been Joe, and he held out his arm for you to link yours through for your walk. 

More of your company felt their legs had to get used to being on steady ground again, and Martin had given you the advice to go for a run around the island. It would get jitters out, but more importantly pump oxygen into your muscles which would prevent funny legs later in the trip. 

The sun was high in the sky, and Joe really didn’t want to work out, but after lunch you managed to talk him into it by challenging his ego. He threw it right back at you; there was no way you would be able to keep up with him, that’s obviously why he hadn’t wanted to go running with you at first, but if you really insisted on learning how slow you really were, you were Joe’s guest. 

Joe mentally took back every joke he made when he later saw you fighting up a hill in the blearing heat of the late afternoon. 

On your run together through winding, sandy lanes you were stopped twice by sheep and cows crossing the street. It was almost ridiculous how cliché it all felt, but Vathy really was more beautiful than you’d seen online. On your left you were looking down at the sea where the light was dancing on the waves like liquid diamonds. 

Far from the harbour, more out to open sea, a dozen or so shapes bobbed up and down on the water, and with their shiny black bodies, they could easily be mistaken for seals. But if you looked closer, you’d see they were surfers waiting, watching for their next wave. 

You had pointed them out to Joe, but secretly, Joe only had eyes for you. 

Maybe it was just the air up there, Joe hoped, but you were so pretty like this. 

Sweaty cheeks, lips flushed, chest heaving. 

Joe didn’t mind you taking the lead, running two, three steps ahead, turning into side roads and deciding which way to go. It gave him all the more opportunity to look at you.

When you stopped for some water, body pumping with endorphins, you noticed how Joe’s white T-shirt was drenched in his sweat, its white fabric now translucent enough for you to see his nipples through. 

Seeing them like this was inherently funnier than seeing them when Joe would be topless, swimming, diving off the boat and climbing back on only to dive off again. 

You smiled through heavy pants and after screwing the top back onto your water bottle, you used a finger to poke him right in one of his nipples before scurrying off, continuing your run.

Day Five: Vathy to Perdika 

Today you were harshly reminded you were on a business trip instead of a family holiday when you were called by Olivier Magazine. There was only just enough reception for you to take the call and talk through the material you had so far.  

You’d snuck into the bedroom for it, so others wouldn’t hear, but you’d forgotten the hatch window in the ceiling that opened to the deck where Joe was laid out to sunbathe. 

“Not yet, I don’t want it too forced, you know? I’ll have to sneak a few,” 

“I could just use my phone,”

“Yea, I have it, it’s just huge,” 

“Not really… but, yea, no, okay,”

“Okay, I will.”

Joe didn’t like how you sounded defeated as you ended the call, but moved over quickly, away from the hatch window. 

When you stepped out in a shy-making short dress, carrying a big camera, Joe understood you’d been given an awkward task. It was absolutely impossible to sneak pictures of him with that, so he decided he’d help out. 

“Ooh, give that to me!” he held out a hand from all the way across the boat, encouraging you to make your way over and hand him the camera. Joe took it like a child would take a toy, turned it on and immediately started playing with settings, taking test shots of his feet dangling over the edge. 

You internally sighed with relief and thought of what else your writing should include. Joe’s helpful demeanour, for sure. 

You let Joe play with the camera, warning him not to drop it from the boat like he had done his sunglasses, forcing him to wear the strap around his neck at all times, and you made your way back into the cabin. 

It was time to get some words out, from your phone and from your brain onto your laptop and hopefully in a coherent enough manner to get some of it over to Olivier for feedback. 

So, you sat down opposite the kitchen and organised everything you needed. 

You could hear people laugh up on the deck, and you imagined them posing for photos Joe was taking of them. It took some pressure off, knowing Joe had fun without you meant you could just sit inside for a bit to get work done.  

It had been over two hours when you heard the camera’s shutter a lot closer to you than you felt was possible with you being the only one inside. You looked up from your laptop to see a hand holding it stuck through a hatch window in the ceiling, lens pointing at you. You smiled but said you’d delete that later. It was met with loud groans from the deck, followed by Daisy who told the boys to leave you alone.  Another 45 minutes passed.

“Jesse, you’re lowering the anchor in three minutes!” Martin called out as he stepped down the ladder into the cabin. 

“Have you ever snorkelled before?” he asked you as he reached for a cabinet, revealing a pile of different kinds of goggles inside.

You didn’t think you’d ever felt more claustrophobic in your life, breathing through a tube with your face down under the water. The fact that the water was clear enough for you to see how deep it was really didn’t help. 

And even though very pretty, fish would get very close to you and you didn’t want to touch them. 

“Come here,” Joe swam over when you’d sputtered and coughed again as you attempted another go at it. 

“You know how to float on your back, right? It’s the same, but face down.” 

And Joe’s hands guided your body as his legs kicked underneath him to keep himself above water. He placed one hand on your stomach that pushed up slightly. 

“That's it.” 

His other hand was for you to grip onto, because panic hadn’t left your system yet and Joe held onto it until you’d gotten the hang of it. 

Day Six: Perdika to Korfos

Joe was sixteen when for the first time something happened in his life that was love-related. He was sitting on a bench and had been inches away from kissing a girl. He could still see himself sitting there, but strangely enough he really couldn’t remember for the life of him if he got to actually kiss her that afternoon, or not. 

It was a thought that was wrecking his brain whilst laying out to tan on the Paris. 

You were next to him, and you were reading – or at least, holding onto a book, but away from everyone else, you fell into easy conversation together. 

Joe talked about the girl on the bench when he’d been sixteen. 

Your chats had been borderline forgettable on day one, but nearing in on a week later, your chats had gotten deeper, and Joe fed you information for your piece. 

You wondered if you should mention that nothing was off the record with you as Joe’s chats got more private, but you didn’t want to ruin the moment and shut him up. 

Joe talked about the women from the ads, Instagram and films and how none of them ever found themselves sat in his living room. How he’d been shot down as he had tried to flirt with someone at an industry party where he’d ran into Matthew. 

You were at that party too, but you refrained from telling Joe. 

You hadn’t seen him, but it stung a little that he’d been there and had been willing to flirt with strangers. You could’ve been one of them. You remembered Matthew telling you that night that he had green-lit your pitch, and you’d gotten plastered. 

Who knows what would’ve happened had actually ran into him that night.

To break the tension a little, Joe pointed a passing boat. 

“Look,” he said. “That’s what I think–” and then Joe looked at you before sarcastically adding a side comment, “way, way, after you of course,” you raised your eyebrows and looked in the direction of Joe’s pointing finger. “– is a pretty lady.”

“Are you joking?” you couldn’t help but chuckle. 

It was entirely too predictable. 

Joe’d pointed out a gorgeous blonde girl who couldn’t have been older than 20 at most, wearing a bright pink shimmery bikini with a huge sunhat that shaded her face perched on top of her head. 

Of course he thought she was beautiful; she was textbook pretty.

“If that’s your type I want to formerly apologise for you not having met any on this trip.” 

You turned over onto your stomach, letting the sunbeams dance along your back to even out your tan. 

“Dolphins!” Martin suddenly shouted, making Joe eat whatever his reaction to your comment was going to be. 

You both sat up immediately and saw them shooting over the water. It was a perfect image: the calm blue sea, green mountains from the islands you were passing and the stretched out blue sky with dolphins playing along the side of your boat. 

It felt like a fairy tale, and you were lucky someone handed you your camera in time for you to capture it. 

Sailing led you to a new island and a new village. 

Korfos was a place so small, there wasn't even ATMs there, and Martin only knew of one restaurant for you to go to. There you were greeted by something you’d never seen before in your life. Outside, bordering the seating area where you all sat down, there was a tight twine bound between two trees that was filled with hanging octopuses, drying out in the sun side by side. You learned it was a traditional way of preparing them, but that didn’t take away your slight alarm at the sight. 

At dinner Martin told old sailing stories, you pointed at blonde girls for Joe which you found a lot funnier than he did, and Dan got drunk. When he, at the end of dinner, helped two young children buy ice cream, he looked back at your table and shouted, “Just like old times! Kids, man, they’re the best thing that can happen to you!” And no one poked fun or told him to calm down. The sheer acceptance felt ‘round the table could’ve make you cry.

When back on the boat, all tucked into bed, Dan was still drunk. 

“Ay, ay captain!” he kept yelling from his bed, and the both of you were doing a bad job stifling your laughter. It had you rolling into each other in between the sheets. 

“Hey,” Dan yelled, and the both of you froze in anticipation of what as going to be coming next, big eyes looking into each other’s. 

“I might be old-fashioned,” his catchphrase made laughter escape Joe’s throat loudly. 

“But don’t put me on the cover of your magazine, alright?” 

You could go into detail of why what he just said was wrong, because you didn’t yield that power, the magazine wasn’t yours, and he was just Dan from Manchester, a single dude who missed his son. Why would he be on the cover of Olivier Magazine? 

But obviously, you didn’t do that.

“Okay, Dan, I promise.”

Day Seven: Korfos to Athens

You had been woken up by Joe carefully peeling your arm off of his chest and sliding away from your embrace. 

It was almost painful when you realised what he was doing, and the gentleness of his fingers that tried their best not to wake you made it worse. 

Your arm must have snuck its way over in the night, and you hadn’t been aware, but it left you embarrassed enough to avoid Joe’s eyes during breakfast.

While the day had started with a beautiful sea for all of you to dip into before setting of back to Athens, it wasn’t your day. Which was a shame for your last full day in Greece. 

You thought it might have been the looming end of your trip, or the pressure of finishing up writing that you really should have done so much more of. But you kept mulling over the fact that Joe had moved you away from him in bed that morning, and ultimately, that was what had affected you the most.

At noon, when there was time to walk into Athens and have some fun, Joe pressured you to join him, which you felt you couldn’t. 

Also, he couldn’t, because you needed photographs of Joe on a boat with an opened white shirt that billowed behind him in the wind, like you’d envisioned when you booked this trip for the two of you. 

But you weren’t going to ask him to pose for you, because you felt dumb for having to do so. 

And Joe’s chest was peeling because he hadn’t been using sunscreen properly. 

None of it was right.

Suddenly, you were fighting. And as friendly and professional you’d been all throughout the week, so mean were you towards each other now. You were all biting remarks, scratchy words, and angry tones.

“You can’t not come, it’s our last full day!” Joe had roped Dan and Martin in on it too. Three against one, entirely unfair, especially after his rejection of you that morning because that's what it had become in your mind.

“Wanker,” you muttered before shutting the flimsy door to your bedroom and shutting him out. Joe thought you were being absolutely ridiculous, but it really pissed him off when you shouted, “Yes, I’m a horrible person!” putting words in his mouth.

“God, you’re not a bad person! I never said that!”

You were still hissing at each other when you joined Dan and Martin, piling into a taxi together to go and climb the Acropolis of Athens. Martin had managed to talk you into it and you’d angrily given in. When Joe looked surprised, and offered to help you get off the boat, you’d refused and had taken a big jump. 

Joe pretended he hadn’t seen you almost fall over and scrape up your knees. 

The climb to the top had been a silent one. Dan would stop to take photographs with your camera, and you were glad the task of capturing Joe was in someone else’s hands. 

At the top of the Acropolis, you thought to yourself that more than only the Parthenon had been damaged. 

And for what? 

Stress over work? 

From up here, you looked down behind you and felt silly at the problems you’d created for yourself down there. 

Dan passed you your camera, and you caught Joe looking over at you.

“Do you still like me?” Joe asked when he started growing doubtful if your friendship was still mendable, to at least finish the trip nicely. 

“No,” you answered, but you smiled. 

The sun within you had risen. “Can I take your picture?” you asked, the source of the initial problem now out of you.

“Of course, go ahead.” 

Back from all the ruins, you put Dan and Martin in a taxi back to the harbour and decided to go for dinner and drinks in Athens. To see what the night life was like here. 

“And we’ll see if we can find you a nice blonde girl!” 

You laughed at the fact that what you had originally thought this whole trip was going to be, the great purpose of going on a trip designed for single people, got boiled down to this last evening on the last day of the full thing.  

But first, there was dinner.

You found a cosy little restaurant tucked away in an alley and Joe knew that the connection he felt to you then was much stronger than before because of the fight you’d had earlier. 

“They all thought we were a couple, hey?” Joe said, speaking truths that had been left unspoken up until then. 

“Yea,” you nodded. “Made me feel a little proud on our first day here,” you confessed, and you saw Joe bite the inside of his cheek.

Joe thought that was the nicest thing you’d said to him, and it was going to be weird that he wasn’t going to be seeing you anymore in two days. Because you weren’t his, he knew that. It felt a little like, how the classic Paris had kidnapped Helena, Joe had kidnapped you for a week. 

“You know,” you started. “You don’t have to be so mythical about women. Really, it’s all way easier than you think. Sometimes just ‘are you free tonight’ is enough if it’s the right one.” 

Were you flirting? 

“Easier, huh? I’ll try and remember that. Can I tell you something crazy?” 

“Sure,” you had your doubts about how crazy whatever Joe was going to tell you was going to be. 

The Joe you had gotten to know wasn’t crazy at all. He was kind, soft, funny, and caring. 

You’d formed a weird friendship, where sometimes you’d catch him staring at you and he’d look away quickly. 

The boundaries you had initially felt between the two of you that served its purpose for you as a journalist to keep at least a little distance had been completely shattered on that first night in bed together. 

“When I agreed to do this trip with you, it was only because I’d sworn of women.” Joe started, not making the best case for himself. 

“Interesting, is it men now?” you joked, before pointedly adding, “Everything’s on the record here, choose your words wisely.” which made Joe laugh.

“I’m sure you have those moments where you’re just exhausted with the whole premise of dating, right? Especially in London.” Joe relayed it back to you, which was smart. It instantly meant that if you were going to answer, you wouldn’t want to include it in your piece. 

So, you shrugged in a non-answer. 

“I made a pact with myself that, for at least the summer, I wouldn’t try to chase it.” 

“Chase what?” 

“Love.” 

You froze for a second and looked up at Joe. 

“And how’s that gone so far?” 

The air felt charged and you could see the straight path you wanted Joe to walk right towards you, but with every word Joe’d say, there was the possibility that he’d stray off of it. 

Every next word out of Joe’s mouth was either going to be terrible or magnificent.  

“Oh, it was so effortless for the first few days.” Of your trip, Joe meant. “You’ve seen our group.” Joe then stated, and you laughed. 

“We’re not exactly surrounded by temptation, are we?” 

A silence lingered, and you tried to imagine what Joe was thinking. Did he disagree? Were you temptation? Had Joe not removed your arm from his body because he felt disgusted by it, but because it would open doors he didn’t feel he could open? Should open? Or, had he been just hot and uncomfortable under your sticky limb? You just realised that had been an option too.

“I didn’t think I’d have so much fun on this tip, though. I think I’ve come to love all of you a bit.” Joe then smiled, and you copied it. 

Yes, he was right. 

Tim and his kid had become your somewhat distant uncle who relished in teaching his son how to play sudoku. 

Dan was the drunk uncle who had so much weight on his shoulders, it had turned him funny. 

Martin was the father, and not just because Jesse would call him dad all the time. 

Jesse and Charlie were your younger brothers, maybe even twin brothers, who were annoying sometimes but hilarious always. 

Frank and Daisy felt like grandparents, even though technically they weren’t old enough unless a string of teen pregnancies tied you together. 

You weren’t sure who you and Joe were in this family, or what you were to each other for that matter.

“Me too,” you said. “It’s going to be a weird couple of pages in Olivier next month.” 

 “Yea?” 

“It’ll have your face on, I’m sure it’ll do good, but it’s absolutely not what I expected it was going to be beforehand.” 

Joe just looked at you. 

“Which is probably good, if I had found exactly what I thought I was going to find, I might as well not have gone.” 

“What did you find?” Joe pressed.

“Ah, you’ll have to read that in the magazine like everybody else next month, I’m afraid.” You teased. 

And so, he did. Joe’s management had received a copy of the magazine about 4 days before its release date. 

Summer was over, and the autumn issues were about to come out. It graced Joe on the cover, sat on the side of the boat, legs dangling over the side, arms and head resting on the metal bar that prevented him from falling into the water. 

You could see his peeling chest and his sunburnt nose, and with the sun shining bright, Joe hadn’t opted to slide the sunglasses from his hair, but instead he had shut one eye and squinted at the camera with a smile. It was very boyfriend of him, entirely too dreamy not to have been chosen as the cover shot. You hadn’t taken it, and it had cost you precious company time to figure out who did, feeling like proper credits were in order. 

It had left you with contact details to every single person you’d gotten to know on your trip, and you’d promised yourself you’d share all of it with Joe once the magazine would be out and you’d have a reason to e-mail him. 

You’d managed to get twelve pages in. Twelve! It was double the amount you’d ever gotten in a magazine before. It was nine pages of photographs, and three pages of writing. You were nervous of what Joe was going to think of it, not even knowing if he was ever really going to read it. 

Joe did read it, though. 

Turning pages of photos, he was sad there hadn’t been any of you in them. 

Some of the others had made it in; there was a smaller picture of Joe, Charlie and Jesse as they posed near the bow of the boat as if they were Greek Gods; a photo Daisy had taken of them. Martin was there too, sat behind the boat wheel wearing a captain’s hat that you hadn’t seen him wear for the full trip. 

Joe was surprised by how much he missed it all; it truly felt like he was flipping through a family photo album and his chest filled with nostalgia. 

“Got a copy. Need to call you. I don’t have your number, and Matthew won’t give it because he says I’ve got your e-mail.” 

Joe sent an e-mail and had to wait entirely too long for you to reply to it. 

“What a way to induce an anxiety attack on a Tuesday afternoon.” You’d e-mailed back, followed by your phone number. 

It only took seconds for Joe to call.

“Sorry, no need to panic!” were the first words out of his mouth before you’d even gotten the chance to say hi.  

“Bad choice of words on my part, sorry, but I’m looking at Olivier now and, I know it’s probably not customary to ring the writer with some feedback, but... it’s beautiful.” he followed. 

“Hi,” you grinned as you got the word in.

“Hi,” Joe replied, sighing a laugh. 

“I’m glad you like it.” 

“You’re not in it.” Joe meant with a picture. He’d taken many of you, so he knew there’d been options for you to try.

“I am. Just in the words.”

“I like that you got some of the others in. Have they seen it yet?” 

“No, but they will. I’ve gotten my hands on everyone’s details.”

“Is it weird that I miss them?” 

“It’s not,” you laughed. “I miss them too. Especially Dan.”

“Especially Dan.” Joe agreed. 

“So, summer’s over.” Joe closed the magazine and looked at his own face on the cover of it. 

“It is.” You confirmed, unsure where Joe was going.

“I erm… I took your advice on not being so mythical about women.” 

“Oh, good!” you were genuinely happy for Joe, and thought that maybe he was going to say how your trip had fixed him and he had now found the one woman who did look like the women do in ads that would also sit on his sofa in his flat with him. 

“Are you free for dinner tonight?”

Oh.

“I- …. Yes. I am.” 

---

The Taglisted: @kiwisa @jasminearondottir @josephquinned @cancankiki @sidthedollface2 @dylanmunson @munsonsgirl71 @alana4610 @emmamooney @xomunson @sadbitchfangirl @jssmth5 @bagelofthelord67 @nobody-000 @lluviamg06 @thatonefan-girl @kylakins88 @paola-carter @eddiemunsonfuxks​ - add yourself  

[thislovintime]

David Crosby and Peter Tork backstage at Monterey Pop Festival, June 1967; and, from the Reelin’ In The Years Photo archive comes this rare photo of Peter, taken on that same occasion (photographer unnamed). (It was a mirror image on the website, so I’ve taken the liberty of flipping it.) No copyright infringement intended.

Peter Tork: “First, I met Crosby when I was a Village hippie. Nothing had happened for me yet, I was still singing folk songs with my little banjo and passing the basket. I knew McGuinn, who had been in the Village scene with me; we used to play guitar together in the apartments and smoke a little weed and sing and play together, and I knew him pretty well. He went off to L.A. and came back with the Byrds, and they were doing a TV show, and they came back to the Village. McGuinn said, ‘Let me show you my old stomping grounds,’ and they walked into some of the cafes that I used to inhabit, so I had dinner with those guys once and met Crosby there. Interestingly enough, I remember McGuinn and Crosby, and I hardly remember the other guys at all. I met them all there; all five were there, but I hardly remember anybody, except for some reason, Crosby was there. Beard-less, mustache-less, but still with that kind of subtly gleeful look on his face that he always has.” [...] Q: “Crosby has fond memories of you, but he remembers you as ‘a little innocent.’ Do you have any sense of what he might have meant by that?” PT: “I guess he was starting to screw around with some pretty serious drugs. 
In terms of the drugs, I smoked dope and I did my share of acid, but as far as the harder stuff — what we called the harder stuff — I wasn’t averse to a nighttime cocaine run, but amazingly, I never got addicted to it, I never got caught. In the middle of a nighttime run, you want more, but you go to bed and you wake up the next day, and you’re not like, ‘Oh God, I’ve got to have another one; I’ve got to have another one.’ For some reason, I’m a pretty addictive personality, but coke didn’t grab me, and I didn’t ever do enough of anything else to tell the tale. I don’t know that Crosby was talking about drugs when he was talking about my innocence. I am absolutely of the optimistic believer in the better angels of our nature type of guy, and I absolutely was then. Being that way, you tend to overlook the harder realities. The British have this expression, gobsmacked, which is a great expression — it’s like being hit with a big wet fish. As reality hit me, I was gobsmacked at every turn, and years and years later, now, as we’re talking, I think I’ve had my education and I’m not stupid about the way things are, but I still believe in the sunnier angels of our nature. I’ve just become less sanguine about how we were going to fix the world by tomorrow. That’s clearly not going to happen, because too many people have too much of a stake in what’s wrong with the world, as far as I’m concerned, and I believe it’s all fear. I don’t believe anybody, given the full choice — except for sociopaths — would prefer to be operating on a basis of greed and acquisition, because everybody knows that the actual possession of things themselves does not generate any longterm satisfaction. Everybody knows this, and yet people keep chasing the carrot, even though they sort of know that it’s tied to their own heads and they’ll never get it, they still keep chasing it because they don’t know how to.” - 2007 interview, published by Rolling Stone in 2019

[pyroclastic727]

Owl House said fuck capitalism

So this episode was interesting. Lilith pretty much killed her sister. Why the fuck would she do that?

Even more interesting: why is Belos like that? How did Hooty put his head through one of those guards? Who the fuck is the Titan, and why does everyone like him? And how are these all tied together?

This episode was a metaphor for capitalism

...and another delicious step towards radicalizing the youth into dismantling this fucked-up neo-feudal system.

We’ll start with Belos. 

Emperor Belos is a weird name, don’t you think? We all thought it was spelled “Bellows,” but it wasn’t. In fact, it’s five letters, starts with Be, ends with os, and describes a megalomaniac emperor that restricts people’s freedom in order to accumulate wealth for himself.

Sound familiar?

Emperor Bezos Belos created capitalism. He saw the beauty of magic and decided to make himself the most powerful.

Belos created a system that destroys the masses and boosts his power.

 I’m dipping into fan theory a little, because the fan theory fits. We know that people get branded with coven magic that makes it so they can only specialize in one area. We know that Belos is the most powerful witch in the Boiling Isles. We know that the excess magic, magic created by restrictions, has to go somewhere.

It’s the same system that many viewers see all the time. A job takes up all your day and tires you for the night, so you can only do one skill for the rest of your life. Jeff Bezos is the most powerful man in the United States. Excess money, money taken by restrictions, has to go somewhere.

The magic goes to Belos, like how the money goes to Bezos. Belos created capitalism, and he won it.

The guards aren’t real. 

Look, we’ve never seen their faces. They’re all the same. Why would you work so hard to get to the top, just to become a nameless, faceless killing machine?

Oh, also Hooty stuck his face through one. There is nothing under the armor.

Why? Well, it’s the same reason you see all those celebrities going around flaunting their wealth and bragging about how hard they worked. Like all those songs about how they grind every day and work harder than everyone else while you’re out clubbing, and that makes them dope. And then you take a closer look at them and see that they had a small loan of a million dollars fueling them, or an entire talent agency behind them, or their dad was a famous country star in the 80′s. 

They’re fake. They’re hollow. They’re a ploy created by the capitalist emperor to try to delude you into working harder. 

Let me put this into perspective. I guarantee that every single one of you has heard stuff like this: “Hard work makes you successful.” “I put in the work, and that’s why I’m successful.” “If you work hard enough, then you can be as successful as Mark Zuckerberg.” 

And unless you’re a robot or really lucky, I’m sure all of you have failed at this. Maybe they told you that hard work would make you good at math, so you spent 22 hours a week working on calculus, only to pass it by 3 percentage points and have it destroy your perfect 4.0 GPA. Maybe they told you that if you talked to people enough, then you would make friends, so you spent a lot of time talking to people, only to end up lonely and friendless. Maybe they told you that if you did well in school, you would get a good job, so you spent all your time working hard to be a good student, and then ended up in a soulless, dead-end job.

The guards are there to delude you. Look, who really gains from you being productive? The answer is the ruling class, the CEOs, the government, the bourgeoisie. It has always been that. All you get from working is a paycheck that lets you survive. They get a paycheck that lets them get rich. Just like Belos gets the magic and productivity of the specialized coven witches.

The guards are there to trick you. The truth is that nobody can join the Emperor’s Coven. It’s just there to make you think that hard work will make you successful. Then you spend your entire life working hard, trying to prove to the person in charge that you’re worthwhile. You give your whole life to the Coven, and they give you nothing. 

Magic is supposed to be something you pursue for fun. Being skilled at things, being good at something beautiful...that’s supposed to be something you do because you want to. But they took that and made it into a source of productivity. It doesn’t matter if you make good content. All people fucking care about is if you upload the day of premiere, if you make a lot of content quickly, if you maintain a million different conversations with strangers who expect you to be the most interesting person in the room. They don’t care how it hurts you. They don’t care how you crack from the stress. How you cry when you think no one can see you, and then you check your phone and someone can see you, someone did see you, and you have to put on your face and be the charming, magnetic person they want you to be. (oh by the way that’s why I wasn’t online much last week)

And it ruins it. Suddenly you can’t watch The Owl House without being stressed. You can’t make any content. You can’t make spells as powerfully as you want to. Your passion is replaced by perfectionism and insecurity, a voice telling you to keep being the best at what you do, or else they’ll forget you and let you die.

There’s also the Titan. 

So nobody has mentioned him before, because in addition to the Boiling Isles being a hellscape full of witchcraft and queerness, it’s also full of atheists. 

But suddenly we have people saying all this shit about him? Shit like, he gave witches the gift of magic, and then they learned to use it in a civilized manner, since being uncivilized was disrespectful?

I mean, first off, that’s fucking wrong. The island gives people magic. The island, which just so happened to be shaped like a titan-sized human. But the island/titan gives everyone all types of magic. Hell, even Luz gets to use magic, and she’s human. 

It sounds really fucking familiar. (tw for discussion of homophobia and colonialism and misogyny). It sounds like when the news is on and they show some Tr*mp supporter talking about how fetuses have more rights than people and it is their holy duty to take away a woman’s control over her body and force her through unbearable pain and into an 18-year commitment she didn’t want to make. It sounds like all the times people tried to say homosexuality should be illegal, citing a single line in a book written two thousand years ago and heavily edited by a European king. It sounds like all the times people said God wanted them to conquer, to own the entire earth, to force the other races into pain to support them.

This is that bullshit thing people do where they commit awful sins and justify it by citing the will of God. 

Or, it’s the Coven using religion as an excuse for evil.

Look, the Emperor’s Coven is clearly colonizer-coded. Saying that people’s original form of magic was wild (and showing a picture with the same joyous, rowdy energy of an 18th or 19th -century Black or indigenous party), and that it was God’s will for them to be “civilized?” Sounds like that thing that powerful white people did where they went and murdered people and forced them into their twisted capitalist system. God, gold, and glory, is what they said, because history books just love to omit the gore.

Lilith is passing the abuse cycle along. 

You know, like a good little colonizer. God I fucking hate her. She’s a MILF, in the sense that she’s a Mother I’d Like to Fling off a cliff. 

Ah, enough screaming about how much I want to drown Lilith in a tub of Hooty’s mucus. Let’s go into why I want to do that, and how she took the evils of capitalism and just...adopted those.

So, Lilith is sick and twisted for what she did to her sister. But, uhh, that’s the point. You see, there are so many other people out there like Lilith who would do the exact same thing, if given the chance. These are the people who do mean things when the teacher isn’t looking, and then act nice and try to frame you. These are the people who will hate you if you’re better than them. These are people who would do anything to bring you down, if you dare outperform them.

It’s greed, my friends. The mental illness that capitalism blesses us all with.

Lilith herself said it: she dedicated her entire life to the Coven. What she wanted was to be the best. And she almost was...except for her own sister. Someone who lived with her, annoyed her at home, bested her at school. Someone she could never beat, no matter how hard she worked. And her sister was younger than her, too! How insulting was that? Lilith wanted to be the best, and someone in her exact situation did better than her.

Lilith was insecure. And it consumed her.

But why? Why does insecurity consume her? I mean, no one can be motivated by insecurity forever. Well, not unless someone conditions it into you.

The lovely thing about the capitalist system is the morals it teaches you. Things like: “You’re only useful if you’re the best.” “Being school smart makes you smart, while being social smart or sports smart or creative smart or fandom smart is worthless.” “Your worth can be quantified by numbers and is based off arbitrary measures like your income or your grades.” Things that can and will drive us crazy if we let ourselves believe them.

And it did drive Lilith crazy. She got so twisted by a society that said being good at magic is her only worth. Look, Lilith used to be good at things, probably. She was good at sports. At times, she slips up and does an okay job of being Eda’s sister. She has a powerful presence when she’s in a room. And she’s wicked good at manipulating people. 

But that didn’t matter. Lilith bought into the lies. She let herself believe that magical skill was the only way to measure her worth. And since she needed to be the best, she hurt Eda for it.

The beautiful thing is, Eda didn’t buy that. "It’s my power, kid. And before you showed up, I spent my whole life wasting it.” Is what Eda said, as she used up the last of her power, the last of her life, to save Luz. In her final moments, she proved that she’s not like them. She’s stronger than them.

None of this matters. Not magical prowess. Not the hierarchy. Not the promise of joining the Coven and having more power than anyone else.

The only thing that matters to Eda is her family. Her real family. Her Luz, King, and Hooty. And by extension, Willow, Gus, and Amity. Those are Eda’s real reason for fighting, for dying: to protect them. Look, there’s no way she would’ve come out of that fight alive. She has a family, and her love for them is stronger than greed or jealousy or capitalism. 

Lilith never understood that. She thought the water of the womb was thicker than the blood of the covenant. Or, that the water of the womb and the blood of the covenant are stronger than the bonds of found family. She thought it didn’t matter if Eda loved, her, only if the Emperor loved her. Fucking bitch.

And now, a little something to worry about, before we go. Amity Blight. The girl who wanted to join the Emperor’s Coven more than anything, who dedicated her whole life to doing well in school, to being the best, to being perfect.

And then she met Luz. She fell for Luz. Now she’s in a tricky place, where habit and conditioning want her to join the Emperor’s Coven, but her heart wants her to do the impossible and destroy capitalism.

She wasn’t in this episode. Funny that being injured and unable to work ended up saving her from watching her future mother-in-law die. So she bought some time.

But Luz’s true mom is dead. This is the second mom she has lost, and she’s only fourteen. As powerful as King and Hooty are, Luz needs Amity. Luz needs Amity to support her and help her get back her mom.

So Amity has to make a choice. Fear and insecurity, or love and a high chance of death? 

She’ll probably choose death. Because that’s the message that this family-friendly show is giving us kids. Fuck capitalism. All you need in life is to do what makes you happy and be with the ones you love.

[skinnyducky]

lullaby (pt. 2 to cherry) // v.h.

This part went through so many changes. Originally, they weren't getting back together but I ultimately decided for Y/n to take Vinnie back because I'm a sucker for happy endings and second chances. Kinda came out longer than I wanted it too, but meh. This part is heavily inspired by the song "Lullaby" by Mariah Carey. Other than that, I hope you enjoy!

link to part 1

Word Count: 2219, unedited

WARNING: language, mentions of partying, alcohol, drugs, and a very fluffy yet cheesy ending.

---------

It had been a few months since you and Vinnie had bid your goodbyes. Within those months, you were doing great. You had aced your first semester classes, you just moved into your apartment, and you were at the highlight of your life. The only thing you lacked was someone to bask in the happiness with. To say you missed Vinnie was an understatement, but you were too prideful to actually tell yourself that.

You tried dating again, but no one could hold a candle to your Vinnie. Plus, you hadn’t been keeping up with him on social media or anything, so you didn’t know if he had moved on and forgotten you. You didn’t want to reopen old wounds, so you refrained from contacting him.

But little did you know, not a day went by that Vinnie didn’t think about you. He constantly thought about what he did, beating himself up for even having the thought of another girl while he was with you. But he didn’t know what to do. Your relationship was dying, and none of you bothered to even talk about it. So, to him, he thought there was nothing that he could do…thus causing him to do what he did. Thankfully, he didn’t go too far with the girl, but still…he knew what he did was terrible.

Dating for him was pretty much impossible. Much similar to your situation, there was no one who could fill your shoes. The way you danced around in his head during the day and ruled his dreams at night…no one could do that for him. You were one of a kind, and with as many offers he got, he was torn that none of them were from you. He was a funk…a really bad one.

His friends and housemates took notice of this and being the best friends they were, they decided to drag him out of the house and to a party at Triller Compound because that’s what every heartbroken friend needed when they’re down. To be surrounded by booze, loud music, and sweaty people…oh yeah, that’s what he definitely needed right at this moment.

“C’mon, at least smile a little bit.” Alex said, looking back the upset boy through the rearview mirror.

“Smile about what? Going to some party that I didn’t even want to go to.”

“You seriously need to get over, Y/n.” Thomas sighed, turning to Vinnie from the passenger seat. “What happened between to you two happened for a reason. You just gotta let it go.”

Mia scoffed from beside Vinnie and slapped Thomas on the shoulder. “Thomas, it’s not that easy!”

“I’m just saying, if it were me, I wouldn’t be all upset and everything.”

“So, you’re saying if we broke up…you wouldn’t be sad?” Mia responded sharply, obviously joking.

Thomas nearly choked, looking back at his girlfriend. “I-I’m not saying that. I mean, if…it’s just that…it’s different, okay. He cheated.”

“Did you have to bring that up?” Mia rolled her eyes and turned to Vinnie. “Don’t listen to him, okay. It was your relationship, and sure you messed it up, but…you still can be sad about it. I think.”

Vinnie huffed and stayed silent, no bothering to listen to anyone. He didn’t need people reminding him of his mistakes, that was the whole reason why he was being a downer. He just couldn’t forgive himself. There were no ounce of words or speeches that anyone could give him that would make him feel better. This was just something that he’d have to get over with time.

It was only minutes before they pulled up to the packed mansion and stumbled out of Alex’s car, Vinnie being the last out. He watched as his friends rushed to the house before heading inside. Upon entering the house, scenes of people grinding and drinking came into his sights. The sound of trap music filled his ears as the strong stench of weed brushed across his nose. He sneered before walking to the backyard. He scanned the area for any sober person he knew, hoping to find someone to complain about his situation to.

As he searched, his eyes landed on a familiar head of y/h/c hair. He furrowed his brows, trying to get a better view of the person. “That can’t be who I think it is,” he thought to himself as he moved in closer.

That was when you looked to side, and he caught a glimpse of your profile. His heart nearly stopped beating the minute he saw your face. He breathed hitched in his threat as he tried to keep himself from hyperventilating. He never thought he’d see you again, yet here you were…just a few feet away from him. He had forgotten the fact that you two had mutual acquaintances, so it came to no surprise that you’d come to this party.

Vinnie watched as you threw you head back in laughter at something one of your friend’s said. There wasn’t much he could do but stare at you. He didn’t know what to do. It’d be risky to even think you’d want to talk to him, so he refrained from walking up to you. He didn’t want to bring up painful memories. It was a good thing you hadn’t seen him yet.

---------

“You’re joking!” You smiled. “Come to think of it though, Bryce would be the one to try and drink tequila off your tits.”

Your friend, Y/bff/n snorted, “I know right!? I was like…sir, I am not that kind of a girl. Please have a good night.”

The two of you continued to laugh at her situation before you heard her go silent. You calmed yourself down, looking at her shocked face. Confused, you followed her eyes and turned around to see what had her so shook up. At that moment, your eyes met the very person you had least expected to see tonight…

Vinnie.

He was staring right back at you. The minute he realized you were looking back at him, he nearly freaked out. He attempted to look around, playing as if he hadn’t been eyeing you, but you had already caught him in the act.

“Is that…?”

“Vinnie, yep. That’s him.” You said, placing a hand on your hip. “I wonder what he’s doing here.”

Y/bff/n snickered. “It’s a party, Y/n.”

“I know that, but I honestly didn’t expect him to be here tonight.”

You two watched the boy look around frantically and you couldn’t help but smile a bit. You missed him and judging from the sight in front of you…it seemed as if he did too. But still, you were a bit out of the loop. Who’s to say he hasn’t already moved on. You couldn’t intrude on his happiness, that wouldn’t be fair.

“You should go talk to him.” Y/bff/n said.

You looked at her with your eyebrows raised. “You really think so?”

“It’s obvious he’s still into you, babes. And considering the fact you’ve been looking at him with those goo-goo eyes, I think you’re still into him too.”

“I don’t know, Y/bff/n. I mean…what if he’s seeing someone else.”

“There’s no way. If he’s trying that hard to pretend that he wasn’t just staring at you, he’s still hung up on you. And, even if he is seeing someone, that doesn’t mean you can’t just go and talk to him.”

You shrugged. “I guess you’re right.”

“Atta girl. Oh, and on your way back, make sure you grab me one of those little mini cakes. I’ve been craving one since we got here.”

Rolling your eyes at the foolish girl, you proceeded to leave her side and head over to Vinnie. The moment he saw you, he practically froze. You could tell he was nervous; his awkward stance and wide eyes told it all.

Within seconds, you stood before the boy, a slight grin on your face.

“Hey, Vinnie.” You greeted, placing your arms behind your back.

“Y/n, didn’t see you there!” He laughed. “Well, I did see you there but like, I wasn’t watching you or anything…yeah, totally wasn’t watching you.”

Your smile grew wider. “Yeah, sure. So, how’ve you been?”

“Good, uh…definitely good. You?”

“Um, my classes are going well, and I just got a new place…so, can’t complain.”

“That’s dope, Y/n. Glad to hear you’re doing good.”

You nodded, looking down at your feet. “Same to you. I’m sure you’re, y’know…enjoying everything with your girlfriend.”

Vinnie looked at you with a puzzled expression, your statement taking him back a bit. To be honest, he couldn’t be surprised that you thought he’d be taken by now because he thought the same about you. However, at the same time, with the way he was acting right now, he was shocked you didn’t realize he was still head-over-heels for you.

“I don’t, um…I’m not seeing anyone.”

You grinned to yourself, trying to keep your cool as you tilted your head at him. “I’m sorry, I just thought you’d be with someone.”

“It’s fine. I definitely get it. To be honest, I thought you’d be here with someone.”

“Technically, I am.” You replied.

It was at that moment Vinnie felt his heart explode and despair run through his system. He weakly put on a happy face, shooting you a thumbs up.

“That’s g-great.”

“Yeah, Y/bff/n just was dying to come with me. She’s been begging to go to one of these parties, so I thought why not?”

“Oh,” Vinnie breathed, feeling his heart piece itself back together. “So, you’re not seeing anyone?”

You shook your head. “Not right now. I’ve been on a few dates and stuff, but no one has ever made me feel like y-”

You stopped yourself, locking your lips together to keep that last word from leaving your mouth. You didn’t know why, but something in you didn’t want you sharing your feelings with Vinnie. Maybe it was the small ounce of hurt that clung to your heart like a child from Vinnie’s infidelity. Or maybe it was the slight fear that he may not want to get back together. There were so many thoughts in your head, all speaking at once. It was so loud, that you didn’t even catch what Vinnie had said to you.

“…and-…Y/n? You listening?” He tapped you gently, bringing you out of your head.

“Sorry about that. I was in my head for a moment. What were you saying?”

“I was just saying that I’m sorry for what I did. I was just so confused on where we stood in our relationship, not saying that it justifies my actions, but instead of coming to talk to you, I went and…well, did what I did. Believe me, I never meant to hurt you, and I totally understand if you don’t forgive me.”

You sighed, “I’m not gonna lie, I didn’t know where our relationship was headed either. Honestly, I was planning to break up with you that night.”

“And I ended up giving you even more of a reason to do so.”

You both laughed before meeting each other’s eyes.

“I wish we had talked about it, y’know? Communicated and all of that suff. It would’ve saved us both a heap of heartache.” You continued. “I can’t lie, even though life has been good, it sucks not being able to share it with you.”

Vinnie smirked, taking your hands in his. “Y/n, ever since we broke up…I haven’t been able to think about anything but you. I hadn’t streamed, I barely left the house…I couldn’t do anything. I just didn’t know how to function without you. You have such a hold over me…I didn’t know how to get over you.”

“I guess this whole goodbye thing really wasn’t a good idea after all.”

“No, I think it was. I think it happened for a reason. That reason being, so we can fall in love all over again.”

At this point, you were a smiling mess and there was nothing you could do to hide it. Vinnie wasn’t any better, you could tell he was in pain by the way he hadn’t stopped showing his pearly whites. It clear to both of you now that you two were still in love, if not more than before.

“That’s so sweet, Vin.” You said. “But also, cheesy. You were always the sappy one in the relationship.”

“As if, Miss Hopeless Romantic. I’m not the one who freaks out over Valentine’s Day.”

“Mmhm, sure you don’t.”

The two of you stood there for minute in silence, your hands entangled, and your gazes planted on each other. It felt good, and it was almost as if all that hurt…that fear…it was completely gone and now replaced with passion and security.

“Y/n, I know you probably have some resentment towards me, but I love you too much to care. So, if you’re willing and there’s enough forgiveness in your heart…I wanna restart, right from the beginning.”

Without much thought or hesitation, you said, “We can restart. For sure.”

“Well, in that case…Hi, I’m Vinnie.”

You smiled as the feeling of love washed over you. To say you were happy was an understatement, you were in paradise. Life was great, and now you had your boy back to share it with.

“Nice to meet you, Vinnie. I’m Y/n.”

[starlessea]

Here Comes the Sun: XX. More Than A Feeling (Daryl Dixon/Reader)

Series Masterlist: Here Comes the Sun

Summary: Daryl Dixon scares the hell out of you climbing out of that damn creek. It takes hauling his ass halfway across Georgia and taking a bullet for him to realise that you're not half bad. He slowly starts to come around, despite grumbling about how much he doesn't like your singing, or that you can't use a gun for shit - and don't get him started on that ugly yellow tent of yours. It takes him a while before he starts to see for himself that he's found a best friend for life, and that he doesn't actually mind the colour yellow that much, after all.

Words: 6480

Chapter Warnings: Language, Violence, Injury.

Your head pounded like an alarm clock you couldn't shut off. The explosions hadn't done any favours for your tinnitus, either. The high-pitched ringing noise was constant, and only intensified the more you tried not to focus on it. Even now that everything had settled down, it still seemed like you could hear walls crashing around you, or feel the vibrations as the stone crumbled and settled at your feet.

Except, it wasn't brick walls that were sending shock waves over the ground; it was Daryl's footsteps as he paced. You could feel them through your own boots, and sent him a look to try and coax him to sit down. 

"It's a sprained ankle, Daryl. I didn't lose my leg." You said gently, before someone cleared their throat.

You looked down at Hershel, who was in the process of wrapping the bandages, and winced as he raised an eyebrow at you.

"Sorry." You muttered, awkwardly.

Everything had gone mostly to plan. The governor and his men had been driven away, and the others had returned from Woodberry with even more survivors. You hadn't gotten the chance to see them yet, but the ruckus drifted up the stairs and you could feel the marching of the stampede as though they had been part of the army themselves.

The prison remained standing, albeit missing a watchtower and seeming a bit dilapidated in a few places - but your home was once again yours. You'd sacrificed so much for it. Lori, T-Dogg, Axel, Oscar, and Merle had all lost their lives just so that you could sit here now, complaining of flesh-wounds and mild injuries like they were the most perilous problems you could face.

Daryl didn't seem to agree, however, and narrowed his eyes at you - or more specifically, at the bandage wrapped around your head. You'd taken a bit of a fall, but it wasn't like you'd cracked it open. Though, that didn't stop the man from treating you like Humpty Dumpty - trying to fix all of your pieces despite them not actually being broken.

"I don' care!" Daryl yelled, and you felt Hershel flinch as he made another pass with the bandages.

The man slung his crossbow onto the mattress, and you felt the bed dip beside you from the weight of it. His face was all scrunched up into a scowl, and you wanted nothing more than to hold it in your hands and bring his cheek to yours.

"What the hell d'ya try an' pull tha' for?" He asked, but this time his voice had lost its fight. "You could've gotten yerself killed." Daryl said quietly, like it almost killed him to say, too.

The older man stayed silent as he continued to do his job, and you felt guilty for having let him get caught up in this. 

"But I didn't." You reminded Daryl, before shooting a light-hearted smile his way. "Certain victory, remember?"

Your eyes glanced down to his hand, and at the shoddily drawn rune you'd given him with a sharpie earlier in the day. He didn't say anything back, but his pacing had stopped - and he looked straight at you as you spoke.

"And although the governor got away, don't you think he'll be easier to find with a bullet in his shoulder?"

If you had anything to show for your injuries, at least it was that. You offered a teasing smirk to the man - one that probably made him wonder if you had a concussion.

"I think I know a pretty good tracker, too." You joked, nodding in his direction.

Daryl didn't smile back. You watched as the man took a seat next to you on the mattress, and noticed the way his eyes rested on Hershel as he tended to your injuries better than he could have. 

"Ya should've followed the plan." He mumbled, so quietly that you barely caught it.

You let out a sigh, unable to hide your guilt. Daryl had an expression you'd only seen him wear once before, and you didn't like it in the slightest.

"I had a clear shot." You reasoned timidly, like you were trying to convince yourself of your words.

You had done; it was true. Except, you should have taken a moment to consider your actions. You thought that you were in fact the hypocrite - since when the time came, you'd been the one to shoot first, and ask questions later.

"If my aim was a little better we wouldn't even be having this conversation." You told him, and offered a sheepish smile alongside it. "I'm sorry I missed."

Hershel tightened the knot as he finished wrapping your foot. You lifted your leg and outstretched it to examine his work. Tentatively, you wiggled your toes, and thanked the man when you felt no pain in doing so. Daryl sent a nod in his direction too, before turning back.

"I don' give a damn if ya missed." He told you, barely above a whisper.

Hershel ushered himself out of the room as quietly as he could manage, trying not to intrude any longer. As soon as he'd left, Daryl let his head drop onto your shoulder, and you could feel his warm breath over the crook of your neck.

"I only care tha' yer alive." He admitted, mumbling against the skin there. "I can't lose you, too."

You leant back against the man. He seemed so downtrodden, but for the first time since the farm, you felt safe. You remembered that first night after you'd cleared the prison, sitting out in that field around the campfire. You'd asked him then if he thought this could be your home. Now, you decided, it was.

"Have more faith in me, Dixon." You told him, and stroked his hair - letting your nails run along his scalp gently. "I think I must be pretty hard to kill."

Despite the head injury, the events of that morning were as clear as day to you - as clear as the cloudless sky had been when you all took your positions. The strategy had been to ambush them when they came, and you had been the one to dissuade Rick from utilising the watchtowers.

"They'll be their first target." You'd said, and luckily he had listened.

You and Daryl had been checking the guns, before deciding to take one last walk around the perimeter. You'd scouted their vehicles en route to the prison, so you knew it was only a matter of time before all hell would break loose. The day was otherwise serene, and you hoped that once all of this was over you'd get the chance to revel in the sunshine and celebrate your certain victory.

You smiled over at the man, remembering what you'd wanted to tell him. The two of you were checking for breaches in the fences, making sure that the governor's men couldn't infiltrate from anywhere you wouldn't expect. You watched as Daryl pulled on the lattice wire to make sure it was secure, and you slipped your hand into his other, free one. 

He gave you a subtle glance, but didn't make any sarcastic remarks in return. The two of you walked hand-in-hand alongside the fences, as though you were going on a mundane, morning stroll in the sun. It was silent, and you both seemed to just bask in the peace whilst it still lasted. Though, once you had gone full-circle, and had ended up back where you'd started, you stopped in place.

You fished around in your pocket and pulled out the sharpie you'd scavenged from Glenn earlier in the day. Daryl looked at it suspiciously, but let you do as you pleased - just like always. Carol had noted how much of a soft spot the man had for you, and you couldn't even deny it at this point. The two of you had woken up entangled in each other this morning, and it had taken you the better part of half an hour to coax him to let you get up. You could tell he was scared of what the day would bring. Despite claiming to be a man 'not scared of nothing,' you knew that Daryl Dixon was afraid of one thing above all else - and that was losing you. 

"Give me your hand." You instructed, and pulled the cap off the top of the pen with your teeth.

The man eyed the permanent marker, before looking down at your interlocked hands.

"Yer holdin' it." He grumbled, and you rolled his eyes at his dry humour.

"The other one." You clarified, pointing in the direction. "It needs to be on the same side."

You took his hand in yours before he had time to question you further, and pressed the sharpie to it. You drew the simple pattern, watching as the ink bled out slightly over the cracks in his skin.

It was the same rune of Týr that you had tattooed on your hip - the one Daryl claimed 'looked like an arrow.' He stared at it once you'd finished, stretching out his fingers before balling his hand into a fist. Maybe it was a little childish to want to wish him luck in this way, and you thought that Daryl was a man quite capable of victory by himself, but you'd wanted to do it nonetheless.

"Look, we match." You exclaimed with a smile, but the words felt familiar on your tongue.

Daryl must have thought so, too, as you saw some kind of recognition flash behind his eyes. Then, you remembered it. The memory washed over you like a wave coming onto shore. It had been back on the farm, where you lay next to each other on that springy, double bed. He'd had an arrow wound in his side, and your bullet hole matched it nicely. You'd pointed it out to him with a grin, too doped up on medication for your own good. It felt so long ago - back when you'd been more young and naive to the world, and he'd been more angry at it.

"I guess some things never change." You admitted, and you could tell that he understood.

You felt him squeeze your hand, and looked back down at the semi-tattoo you'd drawn haphazardly. 

"An' other things do." He replied.

When the first explosion rang out, your mind immediately thought back to that moment. The front left watchtower had been decimated, just as you had predicted, and the tanks began to roll in through the field. Whilst some of the group were hidden away in the prison interior, waiting to ambush those who came in, you stayed outside with Maggie and Glenn - ready to catch any stragglers who made it back out.

Daryl hadn't wanted you to be in the thick of it, and you could tell why. From the looks of it, the governor's army was partially made of toy soldiers. From your position, you could make out young boys and girls barely through their teenage years, and adults who looked like they had never held a weapon before. You would have found it hard to kill them - even if you needed to.

From your hiding place, however, you couldn't see the governor. The group was too dense, and he was probably lurking somewhere in the middle - just like the coward he was. You stared down the scope of your rifle, trying to get a better view. All around you, you could hear the sounds of crumbling stone, and the flicker of flames as they burned the tower to the ground. There had only been a couple of warning rounds shot at the building, but they'd done more damage than you were comfortable with. You just hoped that Daryl and the others were alright inside. 

The whole thing seemed to last a couple of minutes at most. As quickly as the group had entered the cellblock, they were forced back out in a shroud of smoke and gunfire. Maggie and Glenn had their guns aimed, but it looked to be a clean retreat. The govenor's makeshift suicide army had all turned back, and were fleeing into the forest - so you didn't shoot at them.

That had been the plan anyway, until you caught sight of a familiar eyepatch and the man who wore it. You jumped up from behind the bushes like someone had set them alight, and ran over to the wall for cover. Maggie and Glenn shouted at you, but you continued until you reached it. It was part of the fence you'd reinforced with steel, and you ducked behind it to peer through the gunhole. 

The man was returning back to the tank, mowing down anyone who got in his way. You stared through your rifle scope, finger hovering the trigger. You would have pulled it, but a civilian got in your line of sight at the last second. 

"Shit." You whispered, below your breath, and slung the rifle back over your shoulder.

You hopped the fence and started running, making your way to the blazing watchtower that was set alight like a torch. The base was still steady, and it provided good cover whilst allowing you to move in closer. The calm summer's day had been transformed into a warzone in a matter of minutes. Shouts and gunfire rang out around you as you dashed to the burning building. When you reached it, you quickly ducked down and pressed your back to the stone as you set up your rifle. 

It hasn't been part of the plan; you knew that. Though, you didn't just want to let the man walk free, either. If you weren't the one to do it, it would be someone else - perhaps Rick, or Michonne, or even Daryl. You wanted to pull your weight, especially if it meant that their shoulders wouldn't have to bear the burden of it.

The tower creaked and groaned above your head, and your eyes quickly glanced upwards to catch sight of the flames that licked the sky - creating an amber haze that resembled sunset. You ignored the sound, and locked onto the governor once again. This time, he was clambering into the vehicle, and you knew that it would be your last chance. Your line of sight was clear, and so you let your finger squeeze the trigger - and felt the jolt of the gun as it hit back against your shoulder.

The bullet connected, and you watched the man stagger backwards. He turned to face your direction, and your gazes caught for a split second - like you could see it all unfold in slow motion. Then, you heard a crash, and time resumed as normal.

Glass shattered above your head and fell onto you like jagged raindrops, and the stone debrid came following like lightning after it. The tower shifted, and you watched it crumble for a brief moment before the adrenaline kicked in. You abandoned your rifle and jumped up, starting to run in the opposite direction. Rubble came pouring down and bounced over the concrete at your feet. You felt small pieces nick your legs, but continued to sprint as you heard Maggie and Glenn call your name in the distance. You couldn't outrun the collapse, but you'd managed to dive behind one of the fences just in time to shield yourself.

You'd squeezed your eyes closed as the tower fell, and huddled your knees to your chest to protect yourself. The stone structure made the most almighty crash as it caved to the ground, and suddenly the courtyard was completely shrouded in dust. It wasn't until the smoke cloud had settled and you recognised figures emerging from the fog that you realised you'd made it. 

Your head stung, and you pressed your fingers to your temple only to notice that something had drawn blood there. You must've been struck by some stray piece of rubble, you thought. You were a bit dazed, but you could make out voices clearly as they shouted your name. You recognised one in particular, and your heart sped up in response.

"C'mon, Teach!" Daryl yelled, but you couldn't pin-point where from. 

You tried to call back, but your throat was dry and your voice barely made its way out of your lips.

"Can ya hear me?" He shouted again. "Call out to me if ya can hear me!"

Clearing your throat, you tried again.

"Daryl!" You screamed, and this time it resonated. "I'm here!" 

You noticed a shift in the fog, and figures got clearer as they made their way through it.

"I'm over here!" You yelled again, your voice breaking over the words.

The man came running over to you as soon as he could tell where you were. You'd been hidden behind the sheet of metal, sat amongst a pile of debrid, but he still found you. You could feel the fresh blood trickling down your forehead, but you wiped it away with the back of your hand and sent him a watery smile of pure relief. Daryl took in the sight, and the way your foot seemed to be turned in an awkward angle beneath you - and his eyes widened.

"What did you do?" He asked, rushing over to your side in an instant.

You looked back at him with an equally dumbfounded expression.

"I shot him." You admitted. "I shot the governor." 

After Hershel had left your cell, you and Daryl stayed sitting on the mattress together for a little while. You let him rest his head over your shoulder, which soon turned into lying on your chest as you both slumped back into the pillows. It was a little different from what you were used to, but you held his head and stroked his hair gently. You thought that he needed the comfort, and you were fine with being able to return it for once.

Maggie and Glenn had informed you that they'd seen everything go down - and that you'd actually hit the governor in the shoulder, rather than his chest. It was a bitter disappointment, but they'd reassured you that you'd still done a good job - after they'd given you a scolding, that is. You weren't entirely sure what had possessed you to do it - to abandon the plan. Maybe it was the images of a beaten Glenn and an inconsolable Maggie that you weren't able to rid yourself of, or perhaps it was the nightmares you had of cowering beneath Axel's body. More likely, it was the recent death of Merle, and what it had done to Daryl as a result. Whatever it was, you didn't regret it. The governor had deserved everything that was coming for him, and you'd just happened to be the one to pass the sentence.

Daryl's eyelids seemed heavy, and his breathing had evened out. You knew that if you didn't rouse him now, he'd probably fall asleep within a matter of minutes. It was selfish, but you didn't want that. You wanted to celebrate your victory - no matter how certain it had been.

"I'm sorry, Daryl." You whispered, and gently moved his hair back from his face.

The man inhaled sharply, and you watched his eyes flicker as they adjusted to the light. You let out a soft chuckle, which you were sure he could feel resonate through your chest.

"Can you help me down the stairs?" You asked sweetly, hoping to coax him awake. "I want to meet everyone."

He'd already carried you out of the rubble once today, but you hoped he'd be generous enough to lend you an arm as you hobbled down the metal steps. Daryl sat up and stretched his neck side to side before glancing over at you, his eyes immediately resting over your bandaged forehead to check it was still alright. You offered a smile to reassure him, and eventually the man nodded in return.

"It's gonna get a lot nosier 'round 'ere." He grumbled, but it didn't sound like he really minded.

Daryl had your arm slung over his shoulder as you both attempted the stairs. His other hand was on your waist for support, and he waited patiently as you took each step - going along with your pace. You'd heard the commotion from your cell, but nothing could have prepared you for the sheer amount of people that had been brought back from Woodberry. 

As your foot hit the final step you were greeted by an unexpected round of applause, interspersed with the occasional cheers. You almost stumbled back in shock, but Daryl caught your arm before you could trip.

"There she is!" Glenn yelled over the crowd. "Our suicidal sniper."

You shot Daryl a side-eye glance, but the man just shrugged in response. Your gaze ran over the unfamiliar faces as they smiled, or looked at you curiously, and you suddenly felt inadequate in comparison. You stood leaning against Daryl in your dusty clothes and bandages, and sheepishly lowered your head as they stared. Eventually, Daryl shooed them all away, warning them to 'get out of your face.' 

It made you laugh, and you aimed some teasing remarks in his direction - pestering him if he'd like to become your bodyguard. The chatter buzzed around you like nothing you'd ever heard before. Even in the old world, the atmosphere couldn't compare. You didn't know how long it had been since you'd even laid eyes on so many people at once. You knew that you'd have to clear out some other cell blocks just to make room for them all. This was the start of something; you just knew it.

Someone called your name from amongst the fray, but Daryl didn't stop ushering you over to a nearby seat. You whipped your head around in confusion, but continued to shuffle along until you had the opportunity to sit down. He leant against the table next to you, resembling a diligent guard dog. Daryl was the most loyal man you'd ever met, and everyday he reminded you not to settle for anything less. You wondered how anyone could ever come close to him - past or present. Your ex had been a mere speck of poorly-chosen dust in comparison to Daryl Dixon. 

The man seemed to be able to read your thoughts, as he glanced in your direction with perfect timing - causing you to look away. You heard your name through the thick of the crowd again, and this time tried harder to locate the source. Only a few seconds later, someone emerged from the centre of the room, pushing past everyone so that she could get to you. 

The woman had neat brown hair to her shoulders, and was wearing a sundress that looked like it had been recently pressed. All of the former Woodberry inhabitants looked clean, but she definitely stood out due to how beautiful she was. Her eyes were a warm coffee colour, and her smile was bright as she looked over at you.

You choked on your words, immediately standing up only to stumble into Daryl's shoulder. He quickly got a hand under your arm to steady you, but had a disapproving expression on his face as he did so.

"Vanessa?" You spluttered out, and she gave you an excited nod in return.

Daryl barely had time to step aside before the woman bounded up to you and flung her arms around your neck. She squeezed you so tightly that you forgot how to breathe, but you hugged her back with the same force - clasping your arms around her back.

You were utterly speechless. The last time you'd seen the woman, the two of you were witnessing the complete horror of your camp being destroyed. You'd looked for her in the days following, but she'd seemed to simply disappear into the night. You hadn't even thought she'd made it out alive. She'd been your colleague before all this, and then your campmate. But, most importantly, she'd been your friend.

You stared at her as she pulled away, and she giggled at your dumbfounded expression. Her smile was as pretty as you remembered, and you suddenly felt pale in comparison to her rosy cheeks and honey complexion. She was as quick-witted as ever, and wasted no time in regaining her composure to tease you like you'd never even spent any time apart.

Daryl watched in silence, not wanting to interrupt, but you could tell that he was starting to put the pieces together.

"You were the one who shot him?" She asked, as though in utter shock.

She had her hands on either of your shoulders, and looked you up and down before settling over your one foot that you kept hovering above ground.

"Yeah." You replied sheepishly, and glanced off to the side.

The woman slapped your arm in disbelief, and Daryl shot her a warning look that made you snort. She looked over at the man, too, and raised an eyebrow.

"What on earth happened to you?" She questioned, meeting your eyes this time.

You stared at the floral pattern of her sundress, secretly wishing you had something equally as pretty, and shrugged.

"Well, I hit my forehead and sprained my ankle-" you started, but the woman cut you off.

"I don't mean that." She remarked, with a disapproving tone.

She sounded the same as she did on those days you'd spend your lunch breaks together, or go and get coffee at the local shop - trading gossip and work secrets. She grinned at you mischievously, and it didn't go unnoticed by Daryl.

"Where is the timid girl who sang 'Yellow Submarine' to us from her tent every night?"

The man beside you was the one to laugh this time, and you jabbed him with your elbow in response. 

"I really do miss that tent." You mumbled under your breath, and thought you could hear Daryl weakly protest below his.

Vanessa eyed the two of you, and her mouth upturned into a grin you recognised all too well. It was the one she wore when whispering to you about cute baristas, or when sliding her number across the bar. 

"And who's this?" She said, in a tone that was equally as familiar.

She turned to face Daryl, and gave him a quick once-over like she was checking for any visible flaws. You couldn't contain your laugh; she always did lack subtlety.

"This is Daryl." You told her, and slipped your hand into his. "My-" you paused, furrowing your eyebrows as you did, "boyfriend?"

It came out like a question, and Daryl snorted uncharacteristically from beside you.

"'M too old for tha' word." He grumbled, but it was still light-hearted.

You took the opportunity to have some fun, and pressed your chest against his arm as you got closer to his ear.

"What do you want me to say, then?" You asked teasingly. "My partner? Sweetheart?" 

The man seemed completely taken aback to hear you call him anything besides 'Dixon.' 

"My other half? The old ball 'n chain-" you continued, but were abruptly interrupted as he shrugged you off in embarrassment.

"D'you wan' another head injury?" He asked - a little too quickly and a lot too loudly.

Vanessa laughed her usual dainty laugh, and you'd almost forgotten that she was even there. Daryl's cheeks were dusted a light pink, and you knew he would remind you of this later when you were alone.

"You two are good together." The woman spoke, causing you to look over in her direction. "I'm glad you found someone in all of this." 

You gave her a shy smile, before looking down at your feet. You'd never been good with compliments, but she always seemed to have an abundance of them to give.

"After everything you've been through," she went on, this time glancing over at Daryl with a look that could only be described as approval. "You really deserve someone who can make you happy."

Happy. That is what this feeling was. You'd almost forgotten what the word meant, but you were suddenly reminded. Daryl had made you feel a lot of things since you'd met him - first a lot of nerves and sometimes even frustration, but eventually it became comfort and security. However, you realised that all along there were moments of happiness. Even back at the farm, the man never did fail to make you laugh - intentionally or unintentionally. Whether it was his dry sense of humour, or the wise-cracks he'd make in those days where he seemed younger, and more willing to fight the world. 

You looked over at the man like you'd only just come to the most obvious of realisations. Daryl Dixon made you happy - like nothing else had before.

As the night started to settle down, the atmosphere fizzled away along with it. Everyone had taken to their temporary sleeping arrangements, and you could tell that Daryl was holding back his yawns as he helped you clamber over the people left chatting on the floor. The day felt like it had gone on for a week, and you couldn't wait to just sink into bed and let your bandaged head meet the pillows.

Across the block, you spotted Rick talking to some of the new residents, and urged Daryl to return to the cell ahead of you. The man glanced down at your foot and then back up to your eyes, as though needing to state the obvious. You shook your head, telling him that you'd get Rick to help you up the stairs once you were done. You just wanted to talk to the officer briefly, and didn't want to keep Daryl up any longer than he needed to be.

He didn't seem entirely convinced, but he left you propped up against the wall where you instructed him to. His stubbornness had definitely rubbed off on you, you'd realised, and he could hardly attempt to fight against it.

"Deputy Grimes!" You called, once Daryl was out of ear-shot. "Get over here for a second."

The man looked up from his conversation, and you watched him excuse himself before making his way over. He looked equally as exhausted as the rest of you, and stepped heavily over the stone floor. Still, he gave you a small smile as he approached, and squeezed your shoulder.

"You did good today." He drawled, praising you for the second time tonight.

You rolled your eyes and slapped his chest with the back of your hand. 

"Don't let Daryl hear you say that." You warned, with a teasing look. "I could have died, remember?"

You'd said the words in Daryl's Southern accent, impersonating the man the best you could. Rick laughed in response, and you quickly glanced over your shoulder just to double-check that the archer wasn't still looming there.

"Never knew him to be so uptight." The officer replied, and you shrugged.

"He just needs a good night’s sleep." You explained, glancing over at the staircase leading to the second floor. "I think we all do."

Rick especially seemed like he was dead on his feet, but he held it together well. You couldn't imagine the pressure he felt having to keep everyone safe during times like these. You wanted to ease that burden a little, or even just throw some distractions in the mix to make him forget about it.

"Anyway, I heard that Glenn found a camera at Woodberry." You started, watching as he raised an eyebrow at you.

A few hours ago you'd hijacked it, and briefly kidnapped the Grimes children for that photoshoot you'd been threatening. The polaroid had turned out even better than you'd hoped - and you had almost been tempted to keep it for yourself.

You pulled the picture from your pocket, careful not to bend it, and passed it to the man. His eyes squinted as he looked at it, flat atop his palm. Both Carl and Judy were sporting their sheriff's hats, and the older Grimes had his sister perched on his lap.

"Thank you for everything you've done for us, Rick." You told him, and watched as he brought the picture closer to his face. "I'll never forget how you were always there for me."

It was rare that you ever saw the man speechless, but in that moment you were sure you saw a glimpse of the same Rick Grimes you'd first encountered back at the farm - that officer friendly who would give anything for his family.

He shook his head wordlessly, before tucking the picture into the inside pocket of his jacket.

"You don't give yourself enough credit." He said quietly, before slinging one of your arms around his neck. "And I don't think you ever will."

You returned to your cell soon after that, bidding the officer goodnight at the door. He gave you a quick kiss on the cheek before reminding you to change your bandages in the morning. You laughed in response, wondering why all the men around you treated you like glass.

The room was quiet as you ducked under the sheet hanging at the doorway, and you shuffled inside. Daryl had lit the small lamp on the table, and it cast a warm, golden glow over him where he lay. He had his eyes closed, but you noticed he had your headphones on - connected to the walkman that was left at the edge of the mattress.

You could hear the faint din of the music as some sound escaped, and slowly made your way over to the bed - not wanting to startle the man. He was still fully dressed, and had his arms tucked under his head as he lay on his back. You didn't think he was asleep; rather, he seemed to be waiting for you.

You knelt down onto the mattress, feeling it dip beneath your weight as you crawled up beside him. He didn't react, so you pulled one side of the headphones from his ear, and brought your lips close to it.

"Boo." You whispered, and blew hot air there to make him shiver.

This time he cracked an eye open, and pulled you down beside him gently. He continued to be mindful of your head, and plumped a pillow up for you to lay on. He then removed the headphones, and twisted the ends of them so that the speaker parts were facing outwards. 

You chuckled at the action, suddenly thinking back on your childhood where you'd share a pair with your friends. Daryl placed them in the space between the two of you, so that you could both listen to the songs together. You heard something by The Beatles play muffled, and closed your eyes to take in the melody.

The two of you talked briefly, and sleepily, for a bit. Daryl grumbled about you using him as a makeshift crutch for the majority of the night, and you just hummed in response. You caught him glancing over at you every now and then, but he made no attempt to pull you closer like he usually would have. You knew it was because of your head; he didn't even have to tell you.

"Hershel said it might leave a small scar." You told him, like it was a secret you felt needed to be disclosed.

You didn't really mind all that much, but you knew Daryl had a tendency to look at you guilt-stricken whenever he saw you injured. You just wanted to warn him - just in case.

"Like Harry Potter or some shit?" The man mumbled, and you rolled your eyes.

"Maybe." You replied.

The chatter downstairs had settled, and all that remained was the tinny sound of the music that quietly played near your ear. You swallowed thickly, staring up at the ceiling to see the uneven cracks that marred it.

"Will you still love me if I have a gawdy scar over my forehead?" You asked teasingly - but a part of you felt nervous to hear the response.

Then, your eyes widened as you realised your choice of words. You sat up, immediately feeling the blood rush to your head as you did so.

"Wait-" you stuttered, noticing the man's expression. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean-"

He cut you off before you could finish.

"I will."

You blinked, but he pulled you back down to him - this time letting you lay your head gently over his chest.

"Know I ain't said it before, but-" he paused, "I love ya." 

His heartbeat pounded quickly against your cheek, as though proving his words.

"I love ya so goddamn much, so don't ever pull that shit on me again."

You felt tears start to well up in your eyes, and hoped he couldn't feel them dampen his shirt.

"I love ya - you crazy woman who shot the governor an' took a bullet for me."

You swallowed thickly, trying to hide the wateriness of your voice as you responded.

"I love you too, Dixon." You admitted, wondering why you hadn't done so before.

You'd loved the man almost as long as you could remember; but it was one thing to love, and another thing to be loved in return.

"I won't let anything on this earth take me away from you." You mumbled against him. "You don't have to worry about that."

Daryl breathed in deeply, and you moved along with the rise and fall of his chest. This is what happiness felt like, you decided. Happiness wasn't as perfect as you had once thought it to be - back in the old world. It wasn't that amazing job, or the hard-earned paycheck, nor was it the men who called you pretty whilst giving you an ugly stare. Happiness for you was now walking around the perimeter of a dingy prison, hand-in-hand, as you stared up at the morning sun preparing for a fight. Happiness was those nights you'd stay awake, listening to the laughs down the hall of Maggie and Glenn as they whispered about their future together, and noticing that Daryl was eavesdropping, too. Most importantly, happiness was the man who you woke up next to, and the sound of his voice as he told you 'good morning.'

You looked down at his hand, resting on his chest, and saw the ink there that had smudged throughout the day. The walkman finished its tune, and there was a brief, few-second silence before it skipped to the next one. A familiar melody rang out, and Daryl placed a careful kiss over your hair.

"I like this song." He whispered against you, and you nodded in return.

"Yeah, me too."

A/N It took 20 chapters, 120k words, but they finally exchanged their ‘I love you’s.’ I think it was obvious that they already loved each other before this, but hearing them say it out loud just- 

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[r0-boat]

so i sent in the team flare ask, and i realized that i meant to say they’re lack luster as an evil team which SUCKS because lysandre has a dope battle theme but messed up my sentence structure oops

but yeah lysandre is definitely the most memorable part of team flare — even if the first instance you meet him in the games he might as well just yell “HEY I’M THE BAD GUY”

team flare is def a bad rip off of team rocket but lysandre himself just reminds me of a bad rip off of cyrus

cyrus at least had some back story to explain his outlook on life — you can speak to his grandfather on route 228 in platinum. when he sees that you have the badge from sunyshore city’s gym. he’ll tell you that despite being a successful student, cyrus could never meet his parents’ harsh expectations of him.

an excerpt (you can find the rest online):

“my grandson grew up in that city by the sea. worn down by trying to live up to his parents’ expectations, he found refuge in tinkering with machines. i wonder even now if i should have taken him and raised him myself”

it’s implied that this childhood trauma is what led him down the path he takes in the games. it doesn’t excuse his actions at all but it makes him more understandable and human.

i won’t speak for others but lysandre just kinda annoyed me — he had similar-ish goals to cyrus but no real understanding behind his reasoning?

in my opinion, some of the best villains are those who aren’t aware of how they’re actually the bad guy. cyrus actually thinks his cause is just and we see in his backstory how enduring trauma and hurt during the key developmental years of his life (aka childhood and adolescence) caused him to go down that path.

i also think the best villains are also the ones that are relatable — cyrus growing up feeling rejected and like he wasn’t ever enough as a result of his parents is something a lot of people can relate to. having gone through something similar with one of my parents, i really understood that pain and i’m sure others do too.

lysandre just feels like a villain who is bad for the sake of it with his “keep the world beautiful” reasoning being so hard to grasp or make sense of?

anyways i’ll shut up now

cyrus is just my fav villain in the series and i think he’s cooler than people give him credit for

And I absolutely agree with you about Cyrus in Team Galactic but let me tell you in my opinion Team Plasma is Team Rocket done right!

I absolutely hate Ghetsis but I can't deny he is one of my favorite Pokemon villains.

God I fucking love Team Plasma, especially in Pokemon Black and White 2

In my opinion not only Team Plasma's (b/w2) costumes our overall 1 billion times better than what we had before and after Gen 5.

All their battles are so memorable how can you forget that jamming song that plays every time you battle a grunt.

You literally go from cultists to Sky Pirates What?!

And their motives... their motives weren't bad at first " liberate Pokemon from their poke balls" okay like somebody could totally see that as a good thing. Like Pokemon are stuck in small little orbs and they're supposed to be wild animals you know they need space to run around and some trainers are absolutely abusive.

But then later it wasn't about a liberating pokeballs it was about using Pokemon as tools to rule over the world.

In Pokemon b/w2 they mentioned that after an basically turned over to your side the group who chose to serve N and the ones who wanted power light gets us pretty much split and you actually see the conflict and in some cases fight alongside them which is *kiss* Noice!

Team flare was just very obviously a bootleg version of Team Rocket and

team yell which is even more obviously a bootleg version of Team skull but they washed and wrung out all of the things that made team skull funny and Charming.

Other than Team Galactic, Team Plasma always felt so professional if that's a word I could describe it. As if evil organizations was a business

Tldr: Team Plasma is my all-time favorite team. The fucking cool they have their own little Side Story. Cool ass music, cool ass boss fights. Gen 5 may have been a blur but Team Plasma will always be Unforgettable

[ecto-american]

Stuck (Stubbornly)

Phic Phight Oneshot for @deuynndoodles​ : Jack and Maddie are stuck in the Ghost Zone. Fortunately for them, Phantom's around and willing to help out. However, they'll rather be arrested by a ghost warden and put in ghost jail before they'd allow some teenage menace to help them. Oh wait...

Read on AO3 or FFN

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"Should we call Jazz or Danny?" Jack suggested.

Maddie stared out into the unending void of the Ghost Zone. It hurt to think that their voyage, a trip that they had been planning out for months, would end so soon already, but they had barely made any progress when they realized just how much fuel the Specter Speeder was guzzling. Something was wrong.

"...Not yet," she determined. "We should have emergency fuel. We should be able to get back without any problems. Can you refill?"

"You got it," Jack replied, and he got out of the co-pilot seat. She could hear him go to the back, and shuffling around. He didn't say anything for a while, and that immediately began to unnerve her, but she kept her attention on the dashboard, trying to think of what went wrong when building. Was their fuel lines loose? Was there gas leaking everywhere? "Uh, Mads? I'm not seeing it?"

Her blood froze, but no need to panic. Maybe he just didn't see…

Maddie walked to the back and checked. And checked. Moved some stuff around, checked some more.

They had no emergency fuel.

"Why don't we go outside and check the engine?" Jack suggested. "Maybe we can figure something out." With a dry mouth, she nodded, and they hesitantly went outside to check.

There were no ghosts around, thankfully, just an endless green void. They knew that they would be safe breathing in the GZ air, thanks to their prior tests and experiments. They hooked themselves to a rope using a carabiner clip, the other end tied tightly to the speeder. Floating unnerved her, and she kept a hand on the speeder as they went to the front of the speeder. Jack popped the hood, and smoke floated out, making Maddie's heart sink. This was definitely not a good sign at all, or something that could be a simple fix.

"Need some help?"

Maddie looked over her shoulder to see…

"Absolutely not," she scowled. Phantom was floating nearby.

"Are you sure?" he asked. He floated up a bit higher to glance at their vehicle. "Looks like you got. Well, uh, basically car trouble."

"Leave. Now."

Phantom opened his mouth to say more, but Maddie pulled her ecto-gun out.

"We don't want help from some lowlife ghost!" she hissed. Phantom put his hands up in surrender and flew away.

----------------------------------------------------------------

An hour passed, and they decided to take a break working on the engine. Every possible problem that she could think of had been exhausted, and she had to take a break to both cool down and think. She sat on the steps leading into the speeder, with Jack deciding to lay on the floor of the inside.

"Fuel line wasn't broken, none of the lines were cut or had knicks. There's no reason it should be draining so much gas," Jack thunk aloud. "There shouldn't be anything besides the engine that the gas is going to, and there's no weird random connections to anywhere else. The battery's still good."

"And we forgot the emergency fuel," Maddie slumped over. Jack sighed.

"It's my own fault," he replied. "I should have checked to make sure Jazz and Danny had properly put all the supplies in. A proper exploration team always triple checks before a voyage."

Maddie could only give a low hum of agreement as she stared out into the zone. She felt somebody pat the side of the speeder, and she scowled as she saw Phantom grinning at her, giving a half way.

"What are you doing here?" she hissed.

"I brought help this time," Phantom told her, and he jerked a thumb behind him. It was finally then that she noticed the Red Huntress. Maddie raised an eyebrow.

"How in the world…" she murmured, only to trail off as she stared at the two of them. Jack sat up, and he poked his head out of the speeder.

"Oh dope! It's my favorite huntress!" Jack boomed. Red seemed bashful at the comment, shifting her weight onto her other foot and rubbing her upper arm.

"I mean, if you don't trust me or want my help, I figured you'd be willing to let a human help," Phantom explained, motioning towards Red.

"So, do you need help?" Red finally spoke up. She reached down to pat her left calf. "I have some tools with me, but I can always go and fetch more."

Something in Maddie's gut told her that this was very, very odd. Humans and ghosts working together so...willingly like this. She had taken note that Phantom and Red hadn't hunted each other down or fought like they used to, but she just assumed that they didn't quite run into each other that much anymore. Both were unpredictable with odd schedules and routines.

She glanced at Jack, who despite his initial enthusiasm, seemed to share her feelings, and she shook her head no.

"We'll be fine," she insisted. "You two should leave."

Red stared at Phantom, who shrugged his shoulders.

"So, wanna just go get some boba tea?" Phantom asked.

"And just leave them here?" Red scowled, motioning to the Fentons.

"They don't want our help," he replied. Red glanced from Phantom and the Fentons, who studied the two of them. She finally shrugged as well.

The two began to idly chat as they flew off, their conversation becoming more and more distant.

"That was weird," Maddie mused.

"Yeah, I thought she and Phantom were rivals," Jack mused. Maddie shrugged. Right now she wasn't too invested in the mystery. She'd worry about that later when they got home.

----------------------------------------------------------------

Judging by their phones (which they had worriedly learned that they oh-so-helpfully had no reception in the land of the undead), another hour passed since Phantom and Red had left. Jack was deep into the engine, fiddling with a possible solution to the problem as Maddie stood nearby. She continued to think as she looked around. She was surprised that they hadn't been bothered by now.

"Trespassing in an unauthorized vehicle that is also a real world item," a deep southern voice boomed. Well, she absolutely spoke too soon.

They whipped their heads to see a huge, hulking figure, an all white man with a black hat, black gloves and wearing a suit of white.

"Ghost!" Jack squawked. He scrambled to grab his gun, Maddie already having hers drawn. The ghost frowned deeply. Maddie was finally very aware of just how many ghosts were surrounding them. Too many to count, but they all looked exactly like the ghosts that terrorized Amity Park years before, all identical and matching in uniform that resembled a SWAT team. There was also vehicles resembling police cars and police vans.

"Resisting arrest. That's against the rules," he continued. He opened a large green and white book in his hands, flipping to another page. "Assault and battery with a deadly weapon." He glanced up at them with an angry glare. "Y'all are going away for a long, long time."

"We're not going anywhere," Jack frowned. He charged up his weapon.

Maddie looked around, and she shivered anxiously. There was no way they could take on all these ghosts. She nudged Jack, and he side-eyed her curiously. She lowered her weapon, and she used her head to motion around them. Jack blinked as he looked himself, and all of his confidence left him. He also lowered his weapon.

"We'll go," Maddie finally spoke. The ghost smirked, and he knocked on the side of a police van. The back opened up.

"Surrender your weapons," he ordered.

One of the SWAT ghosts came forward with his arms outstretched. Reluctantly, the adults handed their weapons over, detaching themselves from the speeder and getting into the van.

----------------------------------------------------------------

Their cell was a lot like a normal cell, and it was just them. Iron bars, no windows, single toilet, and four bunk beds. Jack was laying on one of the beds, facing the fall, as Maddie laid on the one across from him, staring up at the bunk bed above her.

Of course. Of course they ended up in ghost jail. It was just their luck. Though a scientist part of her was giddy at knowing that ghosts had some kind of legal system! Who would have known!

As she tried to start figuring out what on earth to do, she heard something banging against the jail bars.

She immediately sat up, staring to see Phantom making the noise by banging something in his hand on the bars. He was staring at them with a bright smile, and it only made her mood drop even more.

"Phantom!" Maddie hissed, standing fully and going up to the bars. "How did you find us?"

"We came back to check on you guys and see if you changed your minds," Phantom explained. Jack got up from his own bed to come over, looking surprised to see the infamous ghost teen. "Technus and Skulker were looting your speeder, and they said Walker arrested you. So we came by as quickly as we could."

The Fenton adults could see Red nearby, glancing around the corner. She was keeping watch.

"We're not going with you," Jack replied. Phantom rolled his eyes.

"Okay, and what? Stay here forever? Never see your kids again?" he asked. Their faces instantly dropped. "So do you wanna go home or not?"

Maddie narrowed her eyes at him before noticing that he was holding a metallic-looking cup of boba tea and raising an eyebrow.

"You brought a snack with you," she said. Phantom shrugged, offering it to her.

"Want a sip?"

"No! Just!" Maddie glanced at Jack worriedly, and he mirrored her expression. They, unfortunately, knew that they really...didn't have a choice. "Get us out of here!"

"Danny, you may wanna hurry it up," Red's voice called out softly to them. Maddie did a double take. Oh yeah. Danny Phantom. Huh, she kinda forgot about that.

Phantom nodded, and he dropped the boba tea, letting it float in the air as he phased them out of the jail cell. Maddie stared at him.

"Wait, you can just phase through?" she asked. Phantom shrugged.

"Uh, sorta yes, sorta no," he replied, grabbing his tea.

"Danny!" Red's voice hissed. Phantom glanced to her.

"Okay, so super quick rundown of Ghost Zone rules. In the Ghost Zone, you guys are the ghosts, so you basically can fly and phase through objects, so Red can phase through objects and you guys too, but this is also a human cell that only I can get you out, and speaking out getting out, we need to leave. Now," Phantom quickly explained. As soon as he finished, he motioned for them to follow him.

He began to fly towards Red, and they jogged after him. Phantom peered around the corner before pulling back. Red did too.

"How's our escape route looking?" Phantom asked. He took a sip of his drink as Red pulled up a map on her suit. She studied it for a bit.

"Hmm. We may run into some trouble," Red mused. "Best bet is for me to take Mr. and Mrs. Fenton and phase with them out of here, and…" She gave a weird pause. "We'll uh. Wait for you to escape on your own." Phantom sucked on his drink, and the sound of air coming through as he ran out of boba tea grinded Maddie's nerves.

"Oh would you just!" Maddie scowled, and she slapped the cup out of Phantom's hands.

"Hey! I paid for that!" Phantom cried out. He scrambled to pick it up. "They were having an unlimited refills special if you got that cup!" Red snorted in amusement.

"Danny, they kicked you out for getting too many refills anyway," she reminded him. Phantom made a face.

"Well maybe they shouldn't advertise it as unlimited refills then," he retorted.

"Most people don't drink twelve cups of boba tea," she replied.

"Maybe I should be rewarded for being able to drink that much then."

"Hm, we'll debate it later," Red replied. "Look, I'll get them out and meet you on the other side. Got it?"

"Got it," Phantom replied. To Maddie's horror and shock, Red lifted her visor up, but not all the way. Just enough to expose her lips, and she leaned into Phantom to give him a light peck on the lips.

"Be careful," she told him. Phantom nodded.

"I will," he promised. "If I'm not with you in five minutes. Just." He paused. "Leave without me, get the Fentons home, and then come back for me." Red nodded as her visor went all the way down.

"Grab my hands," Red instructed the Fentons. Maddie blinked, reluctantly taking one of her hands. Jack took the other. Red summoned her board, jumping in the air and allowing it to manifest beneath her. She held onto them tightly and flew through the walls.

Instinctively, Maddie closed her eyes as she flew through. Only to feel no impact. A blur of walls impaired her vision with constant flashes of the darkness of being in a thick jail wall and the light of the prison rooms and hallways. She blinked as the neutral green skies of the Ghost Zone finally greeted her, and Red continued flying until they were a decent distance from the prison. And now that she had a moment to think…

"What the hell are you thinking?" she exclaimed to Red. The huntress snapped her attention to her in confusion.

"What? You would have died if we let you stay in there!" she scowled.

"No, not that!" Maddie clarified. "I mean, thank you so much for helping us, but you? And Phantom?"

"Exactly!" Jack agreed. "He's an absolute menace! He's a danger! Don't you guys fight? What happened to all of that?"

She could see a glimpse of Red's face under her heavily tinted visor, and Maddie was sure that the girl looked embarrassed and was likely turning as red as her suit.

"Oh man, it's a looong story," Red sighed heavily. "Uh, best and easiest and quickest way I can explain it is; a lot of the things that made me angry with him was a misunderstanding, and I found out that he's...actually a really sweet guy. I know it's weird to say, but, um. Well, I've never met a guy who was so kind, thoughtful and romantic. My life's kinda hectic, and he just...he really goes out of his way to make it easier on me."

"How so?" Jack wondered.

"Well, like. He does a lot of my household chores and stuff like laundry, bringing me lunch when I have long shifts at work, listening to me when I have a bad day," she explained. "He makes life a lot easier and better."

How cute. If it wasn't between a dead teenage menace and this poor, obviously manipulated girl. It honestly reminded Maddie a lot of her own Danny and his little girlfriend, Valerie. Valerie told her a few times about Danny doing some of her chores at home since Valerie was so busy working and doing school. It kinda pissed Maddie off, since Danny never seemed to remember his own chores at home, but she never felt like bringing it up to him because, well, at least he was really good to her. She'd be ashamed of him if he was any lesser.

"Hey!" Phantom called out as he zoomed towards them. "Let's go! Quick!"

Red nodded. She passed Jack off to Phantom, and the two teenagers flew the Fentons home.