#I found one on Jade last night and that's more than I ever want to see | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

blues824 · 1 year ago

Note

Hello! May I request twst wonderland first years or dorm leaders reacting to a kokushibo(demon slayer) yuu?

Feel free to skip if you like.

Have a nice day/night!

Gender-neutral reader with the Housewardens. Jichael Mackson is totally going to be the rip-off version of Michael Jackson from here on out.

Riddle Rosehearts

He was honestly so relieved to see another rule-follower, but you were more severe than he was. You learned all 810 rules in the span of an hour, and you have threatened students with a fight when they broke them. You weren’t exactly loud about it, though. Instead, you just launched yourself at them.

Your eyes are definitely what he noticed at first, then the katana that was sheathed in its saya at your hip. You were not one to joke around, and neither was he. You both saw eye-to-eyes when it came to the rules, and you made sure that everyone followed them. It had gotten to the point where they were begging him to call you off before you left them with a black eye and a few cracked teeth.

Then there was your loyalty to not just him, but also the Queen of Hearts. Ever since being teleported to this world, you have found it hard to control yourself. It was because of him that you were able to find faith in humanity once again, and so you calmed down a bit. You hadn’t eaten anybody yet, just tackled them like a football player.

Leona Kingscholar

About as opposite as you could get at this point, because he disregards the rules. Because of your strength as a demon, you have the power to pick him up and hoist him over your shoulder as you drag him to class. His attendance record has improved drastically because of your efforts, so it counts for something.

He wasn’t exactly creeped out about your appearance. He honestly thought you were probably a spider or insect beast-person, but came to find out that you are a demon. He was rightfully wary of you, as he didn’t know much. However you explained that you had control over your urges and that if you wanted to eat him, you would have already.

You were quiet, compared to all of the other students, so he found himself able to nap around you once you got closer. You at some point swore your loyalty to him, so you were with him all of the time. You acted as a rather unorthodox knight/guard, and you became close with Ruggie because of it.

Azul Ashengrotto

You scared him, to say the least. It wasn’t your eyes, though. He has seen much weirder and scarier creatures in the ocean. It was your ability to turn him, Jade, and Floyd into diced fish within seconds because of your power as a demon. He had no idea what an ‘Uppermoon’ was, but the fact that you were #1 definitely did not slip his mind.

Because of your desire to follow the rules, you offered to act as a bouncer to the Mostro Lounge as long as you were compensated properly. He thought you wanted a human to eat, but you were just trying to make that bank. He agreed once the misunderstanding was cleared up, and damage costs were decreased because now there was someone to escort disruptive customers to the exit.

The aura surrounding you was an unnerving calmness, and it really worked for your position. You honestly were annoyed by the contracts that were being made, and the line for you was crossed when Ace, Deuce, and Grim were all under them when they had an unfair chance. You held your sword to the cecaelia’s neck. The tweels weren’t even able to help because of how quickly you pinned them down.

Kalim Al-Asim

The only problem he had was how you were so quiet. He wanted to know more about you, so he liked to ask you questions as you answered them with barely enough words. You appreciated his efforts, as you can’t remember the last time someone really cared about you… not since your brother or even your spouse from however many years ago.

He’s definitely a bit more fun than you were, as you want to stick to the rules and he didn’t mind bending them. It was his spontaneous idea of hosting a dad joke session that actually managed to put a smile on your face. They were just so horribly bad that you couldn’t help but smirk at one of them. Kalim let out a loud cheer as he hugged you and in a sing-song voice stated that he made you smile.

This guy does not pick up on why so many people are scared of you. You smile as you shrug, telling him that you had no idea what it could be, knowing full well that people were afraid of your ability to wield your katana as well as you being a demon. It might be true that you hadn’t eaten anybody yet, heavy emphasis on the yet, but you were still a killer who had the blood of thousands, if not millions, on your hands. But Kalim didn’t need to know that.

Vil Schoenheit

Your eyes are definitely the first thing he notices, as well as your rather unique way of dressing. It kind of looked like a more traditional and… vintage?... version of the Pomefiore dorm uniforms. However, he does not judge a book by its cover, so he does ask you about yourself whenever you come to Pomefiore for something.

He tends to follow the rules, as it means that everything falls into a routine and nothing is left up to chance. You also follow the rules, but to a much more hardcore degree. You’ve tackled and fought people who dare go against the rules of the Fairest Queen’s Dorm and against Vil. He has had to tell you a few times to reel back in the aggression, but he understood that your training under Jichael Mackson caused you to be like this.

Honestly, as long as you don’t kill or eat anybody, you’re alright in his book. He enjoyed your company, as you were a good person to rant to because you listened. You’ve gotten to the point where threats alone are enough to strike fear in anyone, which is more than the actor can say for himself. You were in a position of power, which intrigued Vil because not anyone could do that in such a short amount of time.

Idia Shroud

You reminded him of a character from ‘Help! Jichael Mackson turned my sister into a demon and now I have to find a cure for her!’ Excuse him if he gets really shy around you because now one of his favorite demons was right in front of him… in the flesh. He thought you never would have noticed him, but it would be hard to not meet someone as extroverted as his younger brother, Ortho.

Yeah, the younger Shroud brother had walked up to you and scanned you, and you were very weirded out. However, it started a rather pleasant conversation between the two of you. You eventually saw Idia’s tablet, and you asked what it was. The cyborg explained that Idia had social anxiety, and you nodded before moving on with your day.

Anyways, when you both finally meet in-person for the first time, you thank him for creating such a person as Ortho, as he was the first true, respectable friend that you had made in your brief amount of time in Twisted Wonderland. Congratulations, the older Shroud brother is now passed out as his hair is burning bright pink.

Malleus Draconia

Well, you both bonded over the fact that many people are afraid of you two. The only difference is that you wanted them to fear you, Malleus did not. During your walks underneath the moonlight, he asked about your story. He was not afraid of you, so you decided to spill the tea. You told him about your rank in your former master’s army, and how you were the strongest. The fae prince was so intrigued that he clung onto each word you uttered.

The pain you must have suffered not only in your human life but also your afterlife is incomprehensible. You told him about your brother and how envious you were of him, but he still cared for you anyways. Then seeing him pass away in front of you was absolutely heartbreaking and kind of Ctrl+Alt+deleted your emotions.

You became very loyal to Malleus, but not as bad as the others. You were someone he could confide in, while you tackled anyone who dared bring him harm. You’ve even thrown hands with Sebek for annoying you and you won that battle, and that made him erupt in pure, uninterrupted laughter. The way you were able to keep a dead-straight face after just made him, Lilia, and Silver continue laughing.

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irwinsblender · 8 months ago

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hi hiii could i request an ashton or luke x reader fic based on the song constellations by jade lemac?? thank youuu <33

thank you for this request!! i hadn’t heard this song before and i tried to interpret it in my own way. i’m sorry if this fic seems a little rushed, i finished it while still in a kind of writers block mode, but i hope you like it <3

—

constellations

based on the song constellations by jade lemac

pairing: ashton x reader

summary: you always find it hard when ashton has to leave for tour, but you’ve found your own way to stay connected to him

warnings: none

word count: 2.3k

✩ ✩ ✩

as a teenager, you were always going to concerts. music was your life, it got you through more than your friends or family ever could. seeing your favourite musicians in person was everything.

never did you expect a few years later you’d be dating one.

ashton irwin. the drummer from 5 seconds of summer. of course you’d heard their music occasionally before you started dating, however, you wouldn’t call yourself a hardcore fan.

you’d been dating for a few years now, and every second of that time had been absolutely wonderful. well, mostly.

you got to travel the world, see places you’d never thought you’d ever see in your lifetime, all because of him. most of all, seeing him up on that stage, performing, was a big highlight for you. it was incredible.

the downside was when you couldn’t be there for certain shows. having to go home in the middle of a big tour, or not even getting to go with him at the beginning. you’d never forget the times that schedules had changed suddenly, stripping you and ashton of any sort of goodbye.

you’d been with ashton on tour for the past month, and now their tour would be heading to europe. this was your time to unfortunately say goodbye.

you, along with the band, were at a hotel at the airport last night. you would be taking a flight back home while they take a flight over seas to a whole different country.

you and ashton had experienced this before, you both knew you could deal with the distance. but it never got easier. especially with the time difference always making things difficult.

waking up today, the last morning you’d be together, you wanted to make sure to enjoy the last few moments you’ll get together.

last night was wonderful. after getting to the hotel, you ordered room service, eating on the comfort of the bed while talking about a few tour related things as well as discussing what you’d be doing at home while he’s continuing to tour the world.

you both got ready for bed, quite early at that, putting on a movie while you laid in bed together. not long after the movie started, it got forgotten about. wanting to take in this last night to make the most of each others company before you’d be apart for some time.

now, you were still in bed, snuggled up together. ashton had ended up being the little spoon, that didn’t always happen, but when it did, you loved wrapping your arms around him, hugging him close, it was comforting.

you glanced over at the clock on the desk, seeing it wasn’t long before you would have to be getting up. sighing, you tried to focus on being this close to ashton before you’d have to leave each other.

ashton laying shirtless in bed, you pressed a couple of soft kisses to the top of his back. you held him as close as you could, cheek resting against his back. today was going to be hard. you didn’t want to say goodbye. you’d both be okay, but the thought of not being together for a while was a feeling you were still taking time to get used to.

ashton woke up shortly after you, yawning as he leaned to see if you were awake. just about seeing that you were, smiling at you as you smiled back.

“morning, baby,” he took your hands in his that were resting on his stomach. “how’re you feeling?”

“same as always,” you sighed. “don’t want you to leave.”

“i don’t want to either,” ashton pulled at one of your hands, kissing the back of it softly. “wish you could come with me.”

he felt you nod, then feeling something different. you started tracing your index finger around his back, between his shoulders. he hummed quietly, liking the feeling.

you traced around his freckles, connecting the dots that were scattered across his body. they were like constellations, just like the stars were in the sky. something you both use to feel close to each other when you were actually miles apart.

he moved a while after you started, rolling onto his side to get a good look at you before you’d have to start getting ready for your departing flights.

“how long is your flight?” you asked him.

“eight hours.” he frowned. a long time for you to go without speaking. “yours is five?”

you nodded, going quiet again. ashton shuffled over to you, pulling you closer to make the most of cuddling before you couldn’t for a while.

“you’re gonna update me every day right?” you asked, as if it wasn’t the same every tour. “and call me whenever you can.”

“every day,” he promised. “i’ll figure out timezones, find a good time i can call you.”

you nodded again, looking up at him, “i’m gonna miss you.” you reached up to run a hand through his hair.

ashton went to say something, when his alarm started going off on his phone. not a wake up alarm, more a time limit alarm. meaning you’d spent as much time as you could staying in bed. neither of you moved.

“i love you.” ashton leaned down, pressing a kiss to your lips. moving to leave the bed right after.

“i love you too, ash.”

it was a rush after that. you took until the last minute to be ready. avoiding a lot of calls and texts from the guys, telling you they’d leave without you if you didn’t get out of the hotel room soon.

once ready, you were quick to make your way towards security where a few checks would be done, as well as checking a few boards to make sure both of your flights would be on time.

although a delay might have been nice.

you’d already agreed that you’d wait at the same gate as ashton, for his flight. his flight was scheduled slightly earlier than yours, so you could be with him until the second he left.

you sat next to each other in the waiting area, fingers linked together, the guys sat opposite. you didn’t speak a whole lot, this time was enough without needing to say anything.

it was only when an announcement was made that boarding would begin soon that you knew the goodbyes would be coming soon.

“can i change my mind and come with you?” you half joked. knowing you couldn’t do that.

“i wish you could, love,” ashton leaned over to you, kissing your temple. “but work just can’t cope without your expertise.”

you laughed, he was right, your job always seemed to mess things up when you were on tour with ashton instead.

and then boarding started, people standing to make their way over to the gate, tickets started being scanned before going down to the doors.

you said your goodbyes to the guys first, letting them get sorted and go ahead to get onto the plane. you and ashton always needed that extra time to make sure you’d said everything you wanted before you’d be apart.

“why does this never get easier,” you asked. trying to keep your emotions at bay. “we do this every tour and i still hate it.”

“i know, baby, i know,” ashton pulled you into his embrace, rubbing his hands up and down your back for comfort. “we’re gonna text and call all the time though, i promise.”

“gonna miss you, ash.” you looked up at him.

he cupped your cheeks, caressing his thumbs back and fourth as he leaned down to press a few love filled kisses to your lips.

“i’ll miss you more.” he smiled softly.

“don’t start,” you laughed. glancing over to the gate after the next section of the plane had been called to board. “i guess you’ll have to go now.”

he pulled his backpack onto his back, your hand in his as he pulled you towards the check in desk. the line wasn’t too long, letting him take his time. the person there scanned his ticket and checked his passport, giving him the all clear to board the plane.

“i’ll see you soon, baby.” ashton pulled you in for a final hug, holding onto each other as tight as you could. “i love you, so much.”

“i love you,” you replied, pulling back slowly before letting him go. “text me as soon as you can.”

he walked through the first gate, you followed where he was going, sticking to where the seating area is. the railings stopping you from going any further.

“i will,” he called over. “i’ll call you tomorrow.”

“please do!” you called back.

ashton gave you one final wave, disappearing around the last corner that leads to the plane, gone in the blink of an eye. like normal, you sat there, waiting until his plane left. it took you time to move after, everything felt weird once he’d gone.

it was always hard for you, boarding your plane on your own, sitting next to a stranger, knowing ashton was heading in one direction and you in another.

you’d had conversations about quitting your job so you could be with him all the time on tour. but it never got any further than light talk. going by how hard you still found it, it might be time to bring it up again.

when you got back home, it was strange. too quiet. you were alone in your house to unpack, to get back to work, to cook meals for yourself. you didn’t like it at all.

it took you at least a week to settle back in. you would text back and fourth with ashton for a little while, but it was never long. it was hard with the time difference and him having to go to rehearsals, soundchecks and the shows.

you hadn’t talked over the phone as much as you’d promised each other. you endlessly wanted to call him, but the lack of texts from him told you that he was too busy with tour. which you always understood.

it was a few weeks in when you started leaving voicemails in the early hours. late for you, the middle of the night in europe. which is because you knew he wouldn’t answer, so you could say what you wanted for him to hear when he woke up.

one day in particular, you’d missed ashton a lot. things had gone wrong at work and it had tired you out. he’d normally be here to help you through the stress, but he was on the opposite side of the world.

you thought about getting an early night, skipping dinner, and to no surprise you couldn’t sleep. when ashton was here, you’d sit outside on your back porch to feel the fresh air of the night, it always used to help. just being surrounded by peace and the stars above.

you sat there, on your swing seat. clicking on ashton’s name to call him. it was almost nine at night for you, ashton wouldn’t be up for another few hours where he is, so you hadn’t expected him to answer.

you waited for his answerphone message to start playing, instead, you were met with ashton’s tired voice.

“hey,” he answered. you were silent for a moment. “you there, love?”

“yea, sorry, i thought you’d be sleeping.” you replied.

“only slept an hour,” you could hear him sigh. “couldn’t sleep after that.”

you tucked your legs up beside you, wishing ashton was here with you, “what city are you in?” you asked. “one that i’d like?”

“paris,” he smiled. “i know you love it here, can’t stop thinking about you.”

“is it still dark there?” you questioned. “are the stars out?”

you heard shuffling on the line, followed by silence, and then what sounded like a door opening and closing. ashton let out a long breath as stepped onto his balcony, he looked up at the sky above him, it would be getting light soon, but the stars were definitely still bright.

“yea, they’re out.” he sat down on the singular chair perched to the side.

“and now we’re together,” you smiled to yourself. “for a little while at least.”

“you’re stargazing?” he sounded surprised. “wish i could stargaze with you.”

“but you are, ash,” you rubbed your eyes tiredly. “no matter where we are, the stars can bring us together.”

you were both quiet, looking up at the sky. the beautiful night sky. the stars reminded you of him, the way you both loved stargazing, loved spotting the constellations.

“i can see it,” ashton had a smile to his voice. “orien’s belt. it’s there.”

those stars stood out the most, “we’re looking at the same stars.” you smiled. “i see it too.”

orien’s belt was one of the things you always pointed out to ashton, that felt like the closest you’d get to him now, the only thing connecting you both while you sat under the stars in two different places.

you’d make shapes out of the different constellations. much like you’d trace the constellations on ashton’s body. his freckles that you love. it’s a part of him you’d always remember, even when he’s miles away. just like right now.

“baby?” ashton said quietly.

“hm.” you responded, letting him know you were still there.

“i love you.” he almost whispered. wishing he could be there with you, hands on your waist to hold you.

“i love you too, ash.” you replied in the same quietness. happy that you had this time to talk a little. “call me later?”

he didn’t answer for a moment, taking one last good look up at the stars to make him feel like he was with you before the light took over once again.

he smiled, this short conversation making him feel much better than before, “i’ll call you later.”

✩ ✩ ✩

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#5sos #5sos x reader #ashton irwin #ashton irwin fluff #5sos fanfic #ashton irwin angst #ashton irwin fanfic #5sos imagines #ashton irwin imagines #ashton irwin x reader #5sos imagine #ashton irwin imagine #5 seconds of summer #writer #ashton irwin fic #irwinsblender writes

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thlayli-ra · 3 months ago

Text

Punkintyre; a twisted love story (ii)

Welcome to the next part of my Punkintyre ramblings. Last time I spoke about the players and their motives, now I'll be delving into my favourite themes of the ship.

***As always, please note that this is just my own headcanons and are for a spot of fun***

'Look me in the eye when you speak to me, please?'

Punkintyre is all about obsession; mainly Drew's obsession with Punk. Or to be more exact, Drew's obsession with getting Punk to look at him.

He notoriously said 'don't lower those eyes, Punk. Look me in the eyes when you speak to me, please' (and my lower half burst into a million pieces). There was so much to that one line. How it belittled the veteran; Drew was telling him that things had changed in the WWE since his absence, that Punk was no longer the top dog, nor was Drew the young, starry-eyed upstart. He was telling Punk that their roles were now reversed and that Drew was the one making the orders around here now so Punk better damn start listening!

But then... he said 'please'.

And all the power slipped away from his statement with that one, solitary word. Because he wasn't 'telling' Punk, he was 'asking' him. Asking him to look Drew in the eye and give him his attention, his respect. Everything that Punk had denied him their first time around in WWE. Drew is still bitter about it and now he wants that attention more than ever. When the jabs on social media and on-air didn't get the reaction he hoped for, Drew put Punk front and centre at his match at Wrestlemania as a special guest commentator. That way Punk has no option but to look at him at long last.

That should have been enough! But it wasn't, and after winning the title, Drew found himself drawn to Punk, wanting to lavish in the older man's attention up close and personal. Crawling towards him on the table, rubbing the belt in his face, getting to his feet so that Punk has to stare up at him as he insulted him. And for a while, Punk didn't bite... until he did!

Drew finally got what he wanted; Punk's attention. But it was a double-edged sword and cost him dearly. First Wrestlemania, then the no.1 contendership the following night, then Clash at the Castle, then Money in the Bank. The finger on the monkey paw had curled and Drew discovered too late that Punk's gaze is a curse. He'd opened a can of worms and couldn't just cram them all back in again.

Which leads us nicely onto...

Broken Dreams

At the Royal Rumble 2014, Punk had his last match in WWE. He didn't know it at the time - all that he knew was that he was burnt out, jaded and tired. Tired of the constant struggle, the backstage politics and above all, this sickness that had festered inside him for months. He couldn't eat, couldn't sleep, the medicine he was prescribed was wreaking havoc with his bowels until he'd shat himself on live television and an angry boil seethed beneath the waistband of his trunks.

As he sat in the trainer's room in Cleveland before Raw the following night, suffering from a concussion that he'd picked up during the Rumble, a medic thrust a cup in his hand and told the famously straight edge wrestler to piss in it. It was the final straw and Punk walked away. Some months later, the WWE fired him. On his wedding day.

At the Royal Rumble 2024, Punk had his first match back in WWE in ten years. He didn't need to return - it had taken a lot of pride-swallowing and bridge-mending - and he had already accomplished so much in his tenure with the company. Except... for one. His holy grail. His white whale. The prize catch that had slipped through his hands time and time again.

Main-eventing Wrestlemania!

And it was finally within his reach, all but guaranteed. His name was big enough, his draw undeniable. He ran into the Rumble with a purpose, a rejuvenated spirit and love for his profession.

Until he was caught on the wrong end of a Future Shock DDT...

At Wrestlemania 2020, Drew McIntyre won the WWE Championship. This was a culmination of his entire life's work and dedication, of pushing through the bleakest of times when all hope had gone, of working through addiction, of picking himself back up and igniting that spark again to light his way back through the shadows. At long last, he'd been rewarded for his efforts. Heaving himself up from his knees, tears in his eyes, he clutched his beloved prize and climbed the turnbuckle to show it off-

-to an empty room!

Drew's greatest moment would always be tainted by the presence of Covid-19. Where there should have been crowds cheering, noise and atmosphere was instead an empty silence. It hardly echoed the weight of this victory for him personally.

At Wrestlemania in 2024, Drew won the World Heavyweight Championship. It was everything that his victory in 2020 hadn't been. Dubbed the Biggest Wrestlemania in history, the noise from the capacity crowd was deafening, almost shattering his ear drums. He stumbled to his wife and brother in the crowd, presented them the title he had won, hugged them, kissed them.

Then, he spied CM Punk, sitting at commentary clapping with the rest of the crowd. He could have turned and left, ignored the call of the siren but he didn't...

At Clash at the Castle in 2022, Drew was the Hometown Hero. Well... close enough! It may have been Wales but it was the UK and he was the biggest name in the company from these parts so he was the one chosen to be the face of the PLE and to main-event it. And what a main event! It was Drew's chance to stare down the barrel of the Tribal Chief, Roman Reigns, and hope was high for a de-throning. Drew had pushed Roman to his limits in the build-up and reduced the Head of the Table down to his knees.

But it was not to be. Despite a valiant effort from the contender, the champion retained, though, not without an unfair advantage from the Usos and their baby brother, Solo Sikoa, making his main roster debut. But Drew was given no time to wallow; there was still minutes on the clock and he was forced to pick himself up, put on a fake smile and entertain the crowd until they went off the air, unable to show the world how his heart was breaking.

At Clash at the Castle in 2024, Drew was the Hometown Hero. For real this time! They were in Glasgow, Scotland, his home country, a mere thirty miles from where he had grown up, in the city where he had studied at university, where he had trained to wrestle, where he had cut his teeth and, above all, the city that had welcome him back with open arms when he had failed. It was here that he had reinvented himself, became something bigger and better, rejuvenated his gimmick and, in turn, his career. He returned a conquering hero, at the top of the mountain and ready to give back to the city that he loved so much.

The stars were aligned so perfectly, like a beautiful constellation that could only be witnessed every thousand years. He could finally feel the darkness of the past few months lift, he had a chance for redemption, to become the hero he was destined to be as he pinned Damian Priest to win the championship that had eluded him all Summer in front of his people, his town, his country.

The referee slid into the ring and counted the one, two...

It's highly appropriate that Drew was the one to kick-start this feud by shattering Punk's Wrestlemania hopes considering that his previous entrance music was called 'Broken Dreams'. Since then, it's his own dreams that have been ripped from him time and again by a vengeful Punk who has vowed that Drew will never hold another championship as long as he's breathing.

As the feud has progressed, there has been less focus on this theme, yet it remains the main crux of it and what it boils down to; having something precious stolen away.

Speaking of which...

The Scarf and the Bracelet

There has been a lot of talk of the similarities between Punk's feud with Drew and his incredible feud in AEW with MJF. The psycho-sexual obsession, the wily veteran taking on the younger talent who's now more established, the match where they are literally attached to one another, the ambiguity between who's right and who's wrong, um...whipping... the list goes on.

But one similarity that I like yet I've never seen brought up is that both feuds involved something getting stolen. In AEW, Punk stole MJF's scarf and walked in the following week wearing it around his neck. He said he was hoping it would evoke a reaction from Max, but then he discovered that it was a cheap replica, one of thousands that cost a few bucks on Amazon. It meant nothing. It was a callous way for Punk to call Max hollow, a poser acting like he was somebody important when in actuality everything he did and possessed was empty and meaningless.

In WWE, Drew stole Punk's bracelet.

And it's acknowledged from the start that it's a cheap piece of plastic, worth only a few cents. But unlike Max's scarf, its sentimental value is priceless. It was lovingly crafted by a fan, a gift for her hero and on it, a sequence of little white cubes spell out the names 'AJ' and 'Larry'. The two people who make up the entirety of Punk's world. He's found himself at the bottom, he's cut ties with his biological family, he's walked away from a lucrative career, leaving behind friends and colleagues who have lived in each other's pockets for years, he's been beaten bloody and humiliated on live TV, he's had his name and reputation dragged through the dirt, he's suffered through injury and surgery and injury and surgery.

And through it all, every time he was knocked down, the two people he loves most have been there to help him back up. After his brutal defeat in his first UFC bout, an emotional Punk was asked what his wife said to him after the match. He put down the mic, leaned back, closed his eyes and took several deep breaths to compose himself. When he picked the mic back up, his voice croaked as he said 'she said she was proud of me'.

Larry was abandoned, left alone and unloved in a pound. Considered too ugly to adopt. Perhaps Punk saw a little of himself in Larry; a rough, scraggly little mutt with a lot of fight in him and a lot of heart.

It's all these sentiments and more that are contained within the colourful beads of a simple trinket. Drew could have stolen anything from Punk but he went right for the one that mattered most besides his wedding ring. Right for Punk's heart.

His family.

And looking at the way Drew handles it, it's obvious that it means the world to him too. But we'll talk about that next time. Sorry! 😈)

#cm punk #drew mcintyre #punkintyre #drewpunk #aj lee #mjf #my nonsense #headcanon

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madame-fear · 6 months ago

Note

Hi!! Could you please write a drabble for Fran Romero with prompts 84 and 112 (reader to Fran)? Thank you a lot 💕✨

𐙚 𝐆𝐑𝐄𝐄𝐍 𝐄𝐘𝐄𝐒.

ೀ amira speaks.ᐟ : Fran has the prettiest green eyes ever, no one can convince me otherwise ☝️😍💚 hope you like this my sweet love, and it was what you expected! ˗ˏˋ ꒰ summary : request above. ♡ ˗ˏˋ ꒰ word count : 913

˗ˏˋ ꒰ genre : fluff, friends to lovers (maybe?), a bit of a long drabble. ˗ˏˋ ꒰ pairing : Francisco Romero x (Fem!)Reader

⤿ 84. stargazing with [character] ⤿ 112. “has anybody ever told you how pretty your eyes are?”

Late night escapades were a common occurence in the relationship you had with Fran— they were like fun little dates that had been happening ever since you met, helplessly growing closer and nearly being glued to one another constantly.

Each shared second together, helped relieve the chaos of the usually busy days. There was no better way to end the day, rather than spending the moment with each other’s presence— the possible stress brought with the day, slipped away leisurely in each fun little date; where no one could bother any of you.

It was undeniable that the way Fran treated you in such a special manner provoked little butterflies on your stomach to flutter their wings so delicately. Were you falling deeper for him the more you spent your time together, and with all the loving things he did for you? Perhaps. You didn’t want to admit it, not even to yourself— though, the growing crush was visibly there.

But, how could you not fall in love, when those beautiful green eyes admired you constantly in a way they didn’t admire anyone else, and he treated you in the most gentle manner like no one else?

Every idea Francisco proposed for you to spend time together, was each one more special than the last one. And this time? It included stargazing. You had a soft spot for gazing at the stars quietly, and Fran knew. So, what could be better than stargazing together? Admire the bright, vivid little stars shining in the dark sky, in the stillness of the night... Just the two of you.

A calming silence loomed between the two of you, as your bodies laid in the grass of a nearby park. No one seemed to be around at such late hours— it was the most appropiate moment, and place to stargaze together. His presence alone was already soothing enough for you, and stargazing by his side brought an intensely comforting warmth.

“That must be... Orion’s Belt.” craning your head towards his side, his index finger pointed at the sky, specifically towards the three line of bright stars. You hummed in agreement softly as you smiled at him, before pointing with your own index finger at a line of five stars, forming an oddly shaped W. “Yes, it is. And that one is Cassiopeia.”

A little proud grin formed on his thin lips upon knowing he had guessed some constellations. Fran only knew them because you had talked to him about it, and he had attentively listened to everything you told him. It was undeniable that when you spoke about something you deeply enjoyed, you seemed even prettier than you already were.

“See? I told you, I’m learning how to identify the constellations now.” he remarked. “I already guessed a few correctly, and it’s only because you got me interested in it.” tilting your head towards his side, you found him already staring at you— helplessly smiling to yourself at his own prideful grin. How could you not love Fran, especially when he acted in such an adorable manner?

His light green eyes discreetly lingered on your features for several seconds, before properly making eye contact as he spoke. Much like you often did, Fran appreciated each second to quietly admire you. The beautiful green colour on his eyes could be resembled to a precious pair of jade gemstones— and under the shining stars spread amidst the dark sky, they somehow managed to seem far more bewitching.

You could spend hours being stared by those eyes. And you could spend an eternity staring into his eyes, appreciating their beauty... Just how sweetly expressive they were, enough to make your heart flutter, or even skip a beat.

“Has anybody ever told you how pretty your eyes are?” those words mindlessly spurred from your lips. It seemed as if your own admiration won over your rational, conscious actions. Only a few several seconds passed until you slowly fell into realisation that you had exposed your admiring thoughts, but you couldn’t take it back.

Noticing how his eyes slightly widened in surprise, a faint rosy hue creeped on his pale cheeks. A wider grin quivered on his lips, scoffing playfully. The least of things Fran could expect, was you flattering him with such an adoring tone— though, it was obviously a pleasant surprise. It was easy for you to woo him.

“W-Well, no...” he began stuttering softly, feeling as his heart pounded slightly faster — and harder — at your words. “Not really, much less in that sweet tone of yours.” Fran remarked briefly, almost teasingly.

His body shifted closer towards your own, this time moving to sit on the side of his body, rather than laying down on the grass. “But I thought you were staring at the stars, not my eyes. Unless you fancy them that much?” the blonde haired Argentine retorted playfully, continuing to grin to himself.

Gods, how he loved teasing you back— especially when he had the opportunity of seeing that lovely face of yours getting entirely flustered. It could be considered payback for how you previously got him all crimson-coloured with your compliment, in a way.

Allowing a few seconds of silence to pass, with your eyes attentively fixing their stare on his own, you slightly smirked. “Well, I was staring at the stars... Initially.” you paused, before continuing.

“But now, I prefer to stare into your eyes. They are far prettier than any existing constellation.”

◞ ꙳ ๋࣭ ⭑ ` taglist .ᐟ

@luceracastro @castawaycherry @creative-heart @cyliarys-starlight @deepinsideyourbeing @chiquititamia @koiibiito @lastflowrr

#彡 ꒰ ✒ amira writes ; francisco romero.── ꒱#fran romero x reader #fran romero fanfic #fran romero fluff #francisco romero x reader #francisco romero fluff #francisco romero fanfic #lsdln cast #lsdln x reader #lsdln fanfic #lsdln imagine

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midnightluck · 15 days ago

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Why doesn't Topaz like Aventurine?

Jelena becomes Topaz six and a half months before Aventurine joins the Cornerstones and she tries really hard to like him.

Getting into the Stonehearts isn’t easy, after all, and when Jade brings in someone to replace Beryl just a few months after her, she’s honestly pleased. She’s excited to have a new coworker who seems to be around her age, another newcomer.

But.

He's never in his office; when he even bothers to show up, he spends his work days wandering around different departments and levels and chatting with people and not doing his paperwork. He can be found in the breakroom playing on his phone more reliably than at his desk.

She doesn't work with him and tries really hard to not need anything from him, ever, but she can't seem to avoid him, either. He's always swanning around in their shared office areas, passing her door with a glib compliment or smart remark, and she bites her tongue and smiles at him when she can.

The cherry on the cake, the icing on the sundae, is that Numby likes him. Numby loves Aventurine; Numby goes to Aventurine first in any meeting, any room they share. Numby has no issues accepting coins and casino chips and folded up bills from Aventurine, and Aventurine has no issues teasing and spoiling Numby whenever the little treasure trotter pounces on him.

He laughs and hands out thousands of credits like it’s nothing, like it’s pocket change. Her entire job revolves around collecting debts in the twelve-plus digit range; she knows the value of money and his disregard of it is infuriating.

It's with a sense of vindictive sympathy that she catches him in the break room his second week in and asks how his first project is going. It wasn't a milk run, not quite, but it was only to get agreement for Epsilon 18 to join the System Accord.

"Mmm?" He says, looking up from his phone. "Which...oh, the Epsilon one? Done and dusted, my dear Topaz; they signed this morning."

She's pretty sure he spent all of last night drinking at a customer's party and she knows he was at the Business Development brunch this morning because she got several emails about it; a handful of them were complaints but most of them were just requests for his contact info. "That was fast," she says dubiously.

He grins and she wants to like him, she really does, but his smug little smirk is just so smarmy. "Ah, I got lucky," he says, shrugging elegantly. "It all just kind of fell into place."

She tries really hard to like Aventurine.

She fails.

#aventurine honkai star rail #hsr aventurine #hsr topaz #topaz and numby #numby loves aven fite me #answer in the form of a story #even though literally no one asked for this #all in #let's discuss the inherent trauma of luck builds: why Aventurine isn't one

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mlmxreader · 2 years ago

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Foundations | Tyler Durden x m!reader

anonymous asked: Tyler Durden with “I’m never enough” please?

summary: Tyler isn't used to being told no.

tws: swearing, mentions of sex (brief)

support your fanfic writers by reblogging what you read & enjoy

The soft light crept up the stairs in a dull golden haze, the muffled sounds of the television coming from the master bedroom, the scent of honey and apples drifting from the recently used bathroom; the taste of spices still lingered in the air from an earlier meal, as did the warmth that came with a recently used kitchen. Music.

Music was coming from the master bedroom, so sweet and so soft, yet the second that he realised what song was playing, he smiled; 'Hungry Like the Wolf' by Duran Duran. Oh, he had some fond memories of you connected to that song. He found himself humming as he climbed the stairs, the fifth one from the top creaking as usual.

Then there you were. Snuggled up in your bed, wearing one of his shirts, reading some old book about war that he didn't care enough to ask about; he didn't knock, just pulled the duvet back and took his place at your side.

"Tyler," you sounded almost disappointed. "I'm reading."

"And?" He scoffed.

"And," you put the book down, sighing as you shook your head. "I thought I made it clear - you're not to come back unless you really care about me."

Tyler leaned back, studying you for a moment; you couldn't be serious. You needed him, you desired him, you wanted him. You wouldn't push him away over something as trivial as feelings, he knew you wouldn't.

With his brows furrowed, he tilted his head to the side, daring to let out a sharp laugh. "You're not serious."

You nodded. "Deadly, Mister Durden."

Tyler huffed, bottom lip quivering slightly. "Don't be stupid."

"I'm not being stupid," you growled. "Every time you come over, it's always for the same thing, and if you find a better man, then suddenly I don't exist for the night."

He shook his head. "It's not like that and you know it."

"I'm never enough for you," you told him. "So why don't you just leave? Huh? Why don't you go out and find a different guy and break his heart?"

Tyler clenched his jaw, daring to gently hold your face in his hands as he forced you to look into his pretty blue eyes; there used to be a time where just the smallest of touches from him sent shocks down your spine and made every nerve feel like it was on fire, there used to be a time where Tyler made you feel amazing, made you feel like you were on top of the world and invincible... now, he just made you feel regret. He made you feel a fool.

"I'm here, ain't I?" He hissed. "I could be out with any guy in the world right now, I could be fucking balls deep in any guy in the city if I wanted to. But I'm here."

"So why don't you leave?" You asked, pushing his wrist so that he let go of you. "Why don't you just fuck off?"

"Because I want to be here," he argued quietly. "With you."

"No," you shook your head, starting to push his shoulder to get some distance. "Tyler, this is the last time I ever let you in... you have to leave. Now."

"C'mon, baby," he huffed. "One more chance."

The last thing that you wanted was for him to make you feel like you were an idiot again; you knew that things with Tyler would always be jaded and cracked, too many niches and crevices that caused the foundations to start to crumble, but then... he was always there. Even at your lowest, he was there. He didn't just show up when you were in the mood, he showed up a lot more than that.

He bought you flowers, always bright yellow daffodils. He made you laugh. He cooked for you. He never cleaned, but at least he didn't make much of a mess when he stayed over. He didn't do his laundry but at least he didn't have much anyway. He never disrespected you to your face, never talked about you behind your back.

Maybe it was better to have crumbling foundations than none at all, where Tyler was concerned. Your fingertips were bloody and raw from holding onto those crumbling foundations for so long, but you... you couldn't bring yourself to let go.

You sighed, swiping a hand down your face. "I don't want to forgive you."

"You don't have to," Tyler purred, moving to straddle your waist, his hands on your chest as he splayed his fingers and gave you that cheeky grin that used to make you feel so alive. "Does it look like I'm about to ask for it?"

Your hands came to his waist, fingertips digging into his soft flesh as you swallowed thickly. "No. You never will, either."

"You're fucking right there," he nodded. "You gonna give me another chance?"

You clenched your jaw, hesitant to tell him and to admit it but you didn't want to let go of those foundations. No matter how stupid and regretful you felt, no matter how much your fingers bled and bruised, you couldn't bring yourself to let go. "Fine."

He started to lean down, expecting a kiss, but you placed your hand on his throat, pushed him back and kept him at arm's length. "Oh, baby."

"You're not getting shit," you told him sternly. "Tyler, you're not making me into a fucking fool again - if you really, really want me this badly, you have to prove it."

Tyler huffed, flopping onto his back beside you as he grumbled and folded his arms across his chest; it should have been so easy to win you back and to get you to stop acting stupid, but it seemed like you were suddenly immune to him. He wasn't sure what to do.

Nobody ever told him no, told him that he had to work for what he wanted; he only ever had to apply his charm a little thick to get what he want, and that included you, once upon a time. Maybe being around him so much made you more immune to it than others.

For once in his life, Tyler would actually have to work for what he wanted.

#mlem writes #tyler durden imagine #tyler durden x reader #tyler durden #fight club 1999 #fight club imagine #fight club x reader #fight club fanfic #fight club

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wheels-of-despair · 1 year ago

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Enough | A Make Up Story | Tom Grant x You | Series Masterlist

Chapter 14: As Long as I'm With You Words: 2.2k

You didn't sleep much that night.

Tom had no such troubles. He snored away happily while you stared at the ceiling and thought soul-crushing thoughts and waited for the sun to rise.

Those three words had dragged you back to the reality you'd been trying so desperately to ignore. You were doing the same thing with Tom that you'd done with Jade. You'd inserted yourself into his life, and hoped he'd eventually decide to love you.

But Tom didn't want you any more than Jade did.

You cared about him. This sweet, goofy, heartbroken person you'd nearly hit with your car. He'd been there for you in ways no one else ever had; he listened to you, and cared for you, and understood you. He was the reason you weren't hiding under a pile of unwashed clothes and dirty dishes in your miserable flat with your unpleasant flatmate. He was the reason you finally ended the cycle of Hurricane Jade. In just a week, he'd done more for you than anyone else ever had. It pained you to think of carrying on without him.

And that's why you have to let him go.

Tom begins to stir, and you watch the muscles in his bare back ripple as he stretches. He turns to you with a sleepy smile, and it's all you can do to keep from crying. Tom Grant's heart is going to get broken for a second time this week, and this time, it's going to be your fault. You should've just let the grunting tow truck driver dump you at a flea-bitten motel in town. It would have been easier for everyone.

"Mornin'," he mumbles, the half of his face not smushed by the pillow stretching into a smile.

You turn onto your side and face him, trying to look like you aren't falling apart inside.

"S'wrong?" he asks. Betrayed by your own face.

"I have to tell you some things… and you're not going to like them."

Tom's face falls, like he knows what's coming.

"But I'm only going to say it once. So after it's been said, we are going to push it all aside, and we are going to have one last amazing day together. Alright?"

Tom nods. You take a deep breath.

"You are the best person I know. And I would give anything for you to be happy."

Tom tears up and turns away to face the wall.

"Tom."

He sniffles.

"Okay," you say quietly. "You don't have to look at me." You fight back tears and summon the strength to continue. "One day, you're going to find someone who deserves you, and you're going to build an amazing life together."

"You're leaving me," he sniffs.

"I have to go home, Tom," you tell him gently.

"You hate it there." He's not wrong.

"I can't hide out here with you forever, Tom."

"I know I don't make much, and this van's a piece of shit, but I'll take care of you. You don't have to go." Your dam bursts, and the tears start flowing down your face.

"I love you," he clarifies. You understood the first time.

"I love you too, Tom."

"Then why are you leaving me?"

Your heart continues to shatter, every memory of wishing Jade would stay exploding inside you like a jagged shard of glass.

"Tom, I would love to stay here with you forever. But I'd always wonder if you wanted me for me, or if you wanted me because I was the first person you found after Ruth. And me? I've been chasing Jade for so long, I don't even know who I am without her."

Tom's shoulders shake, but you don't reach out to him. If you touch him, you'll never be able to go through with this.

"We have to figure out who we are without them, Tom. You and I have spent years building our lives around those two. If we did this now, we'd only be trying to replace them. And we both deserve better than that. We deserve to be loved and wanted for who we are."

"I do."

You swallow hard. You want to believe him, more than anything else in the world.

You can't stand it anymore. You move closer and press your face against Tom's back and wrap an arm around his middle, holding him tight. His hand closes over yours.

"I love you, Tom," you whisper. "It's why I have to let you go."

You lay there together, pressed tightly against each other, until you both stop crying.

"You alright?" you ask quietly.

"No."

You kiss the back of his shoulder. "C'mon, let's get some food in you."

Tom doesn't leave bed until the plates of eggs and toast are on the table. He sits down without looking at you, eyes still red. You bring the silverware to the table. He reaches for a fork, but you withhold it.

"The mourning period ends when breakfast does," you say firmly. "After this, we're going to have a great day together. Right?"

"Fine," he grumbles. You reluctantly hand over the fork.

His mood seems to improve as he eats.

"There's a box near the door in April's that has black stars on the corners; those are her sheets and some clothes she should be able to get into while she's on the mend. Will you take it to her before she leaves the hospital?"

"We could go today," he says. "She'd probably like to see you again before… before you go." He focuses on arranging his eggs on the toast sandwich he's making.

"Alright," you smile. "How about we go around lunchtime. We can stop in town and pick up a few pasties, bring April and Amelia lunch."

Tom nods slowly. "I know a good place."

"Figured you would," you say fondly.

Tom picked up your plates when you were done eating and began washing them without a word. You closed your eyes at the table, where he couldn't see you, wishing you'd swallowed your speech and given him one more day of happiness before destroying him.

"D'you want to go down to the beach for a while?" he asks without turning around. "You came to the beach for a vacation, and you haven't even been in the water."

"Isn't it going to be cold?"

"Probably. But it's not as bad as you think."

"You going with me?"

"Of course."

"You're not gonna try to drown me, are you?" you ask playfully, hoping he picks up on the reference.

"Only if you survive the tumble down the dunes." He remembers.

"Alright then," you grin.

You dress for the sea, cover up with warmer clothes, grab your towels, and begin walking toward the beach by mid-morning. You got approximately three steps away from the van before Tom grabbed your hand. He didn't let go until it was time to ditch your clothes.

It was calm today. The wind wasn't nearly as harsh as the last time you were here, and the sea wasn't as choppy. You approach it together, barefoot in the cool morning sand.

"FUCK!" you screech when you feel how cold the water is. Tom laughs and keeps walking, pulling you further in. "Cold! Cold! Cold!" you complain as you wade further in with him, a grin on your face the whole time.

When the water reaches your hips, Tom turns to face you. He wraps his arms around your waist, and yours go to his shoulders. You smile up at him. Even with the freezing water lapping around you, looking into his eyes makes you feel all warm inside. And then he smirks.

"TOM, N--" You were underwater before you could finish yelling at him. You surface with a gasp. Tom had gone out a bit further. "You fucker!" You give chase, but he's better at moving in the water than you are. When you finally get close enough to see his curls dripping into his grinning mouth, you splash him. He splashes you back with a laugh. You launch yourself at him, and he catches you.

"Now what?" he asks, hot breath shocking your cold ear. You answer by licking the salty water from his lips. He pulls you closer, and you wrap your legs around him. When you finally pull away, both your lips are swollen… and turning a little blue.

"Wanna move this indoors?" you ask, as seductively as one can ask through chattering teeth. Tom nods, shivering as well, and you make your way back to shore. You wrap yourselves in towels and rush back to Tom's van, grateful to leave your sopping clothes on the floor and return to the tiny shower.

The room steams up quickly, between the hot water and your feverish kissing. You even manage to avoid injuries this time. Maybe this tiny shower isn't so bad after all.

The rest of the day went by in a blur.

After you finally got your clothes back on, it was time to go say goodbye to April. Tom packed her box of essentials in your car and drove it into town.

It was a quiet ride, but you didn't mind. You just liked being near him. He drove with his hand on your thigh, just like you'd done to him last night. (Except you were able to behave yourself.)

He stopped at a bakery, and you walked inside with him. He ordered pasties for lunch at the hospital, and a few other local delicacies he insisted you try before you leave. You nestled against his side while you waited for the sack of goodies to hit the counter. You didn't care how clingy you looked. You wanted to soak up every second of him. These memories would have to last you a lifetime.

April was happy to see you. Amelia had gone home to oversee the impromptu renovation of the craft room that would become her grandmother's bedroom, but would return in a few days to bring her home. April's hospital contacts consisted of a nurse she liked, a physical therapist she didn't, and a perky old gal from the next room that happily accepted Amelia's lunch.

She thanked you for packing, for bringing her the essentials, and for keeping "her Tommy" company in her absence. That goodbye was an easy one. It was the one coming tomorrow that you'd probably never recover from.

"Anywhere you want to go? Anything you want to see while you're still here?" Tom asked when you exited the elevator on the ground floor.

"I don't care where I'm at, as long as I'm with you."

He pulled you close and planted a kiss on the side of your head. And then he took you home.

Neither of you had much to say, but once you fell back into bed, it didn't matter. You kissed each other desperately, always struggling to get closer, closer, as if you didn't want a single atom to come between you. You treated each time like it was your last… because what if it was?

Hours later, you lay on your side, tracing your fingers up and down Tom's spine and trying to commit every freckle on his back to memory. You wish you could stay. You wish you could keep him forever. But he's not ready for forever. Especially not with you.

"I'm making dinner," he states, rolling out of bed and reaching for his favorite sweats.

"You don't have to." You don't want food. You want Tom.

"I'm going to."

"Can I help?"

"No, but you can come keep me company." He smiles hopefully at you, and you reach for him. He helps you up, and you wrap your arms around him, pulling yourself close. You squeeze him tightly for as long as you dare, then reluctantly let him go. He grins and walks to the kitchen like your heart isn't still attached to him.

You throw on some clothes and follow.

He begins pulling things from the cabinet, and you laugh. "Of course it's spaghetti."

"It's my signature dish!" he says defensively.

"And I can't wait to try it," you smile. You watch silently, as he makes the most basic spaghetti you've ever seen a person make. No salt in the water. No add-ins or extras. Just noodles and a tin of store-brand pasta sauce, with a piece of plain white bread on the side.

It's the best thing you've ever eaten.

"I can see how a person could exist on this stuff," you admire after your last bite. "Thank you, Tom. That was great."

"Alright, don't go gettin' all sentimental on me," he smirks. "Wanna go for a walk?"

"Sure," you smile.

You both dress for the outdoors, and Tom grabs the bag of local delicacies he'd bought in town. You exit the van and walk hand in hand toward the dunes, but instead of going down to the beach, you settle in on a grassy patch to watch the sunset.

You and Tom sample the bag of desserts as the sun paints the sky beautiful shades of pink and purple. You lean into each other, watching the sun set silently, and don't move until the stars appear. You couldn't imagine a more perfect date if you tried.

Finally, you returned to Tom's van for a few more last times.

#writings of despair #tom grant is enough #tom grant #tom grant x you #tom grant x reader #final chapter drops tomorrowwww

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dameronology · 2 years ago

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you and me [joel miller] - 1/2

"now i've had time to think it over, we're much older and the bone's too big to bury" - jaded, miley cyrus. a.k.a the one where you and joel see each other again and don't know what the fuck to do

warnings: angst, swearing, break-ups, swearing again because my god there is a lot, mentions of alcohol, mentions of death, no tlou 2 spoilers but probably some spoilers from the show. ok i think that's it.

this is my first full length joel fic and tbh i'm not even sure i've got the hang of his character lol. also, it's been about four years since i played the game and i'm writing this from memory of that and the show so pls forgive any inaccuracies. hope you enjoy. xx

jazz

p.s there will deffo be a part 2 to this lol dw

2 0 1 8

Life outside the Quarantine Zone was different.

It was both better and worst; better because there was no military breathing down your back, but worst because the Infected roamed free. It made Joel more tense - even when he kept you firmly behind him, rifle ready to go and finger itching on the trigger - to know that they could be anywhere. Sure, the military sucked but the biggest threat now was the Infected, and you'd come to learn a long time ago that there was no point arguing with his overprotectiveness. It was warranted, after everything he'd been through, so you operated under three rules: he went first, you went second, and if anyone was going to die first, it was going to be him. That last part was the one you loathed the most but he wasn't going to make the same mistake again.

Still, there were moments outside the QZ where he could let his guard down. When you were far enough away from civilisation, and far enough away from any hoards, he would let himself exist beside you, peacefully and at rest. Those nights camping - sometimes on the way to Bill and Frank's, or on a smuggling run - were his favourite. Sometimes it was beneath the stars, or beneath a tangle of trees. It was a tiny insight into what things could have been like in another life, without outbreaks and infected and constantly being on the move. They were moments he craved but so often, you found yourself hating them. Mostly because you knew they would eventually come to an end, but also because it was proof that you could exist out of the QZ. You'd felt like the place had been suffocating you for months. For you, it felt like a death sentence. Joel didn't love them either but he liked that you were both safe there. He could easily find you amongst the walls and you only ever left together. The thing that he thought was keeping you together was actually, in your mind, the thing that was driving you apart.

You'd pose the idea to him (for the tenth time) on a cold night, about four miles outside of the Boston QZ. The two of you had set up camp in the thickness of a forest; your tent was older than your respective ages combined and the fire was dwindling, but you were both content. Joel was leant against a tree, an arm wrapped around you and keeping you firmly to his side, free hand ready on his gun.

"I don't think I want to go back."

Joel peered down at you, quirking an eyebrow. "The hell are you talking about?"

"To the QZ," you said. "I don't want to go back to the QZ."

"This again?" he sighed - but you couldn't ignore the way his grip on you grew tighter. Tenser. "We've spoken about this a thousand times. The QZ is safe. It's...it's our home."

"Just because our stuff is that doesn't mean it's home," you murmured. "After this run, we could just take our stuff and go. We know the way out, we know how to run at this point, don't we?"

"It's dangerous out here," Joel reminded you. "We know how to be out here for limited periods of time. Those routes, those safe spaces and uninfected areas will run out eventually. So will our resources."

You sighed, sniffing. "Yeah. You're right. It's a silly idea."

"Hey...look, baby, don't get all mopey on me now," he shuffled slightly to the side, gently placing his hand on your cheek. "The main thing is that we have each other, wherever that may be. We've just gotta stick to the QZ for now but I promise, I'll get us out eventually. Just hang in there."

"Of course," you gave him a smile.

"It's you and me," he quietly added. "That's what matters."

"You and me," you'd replied. "I promise."

Still, Joel couldn't deny that he'd seen the light in you withering - the light that seemed to come back every time you were outside of the QZ. He knew you were stubborn; that once you had an idea in your head, that was it.

That's why he wasn't surprised to find you gone two weeks later.

2 0 2 3

Joel, my love,

I'm sorry. I'm never going to stop being sorry, but I tried to tell you a thousand times and you never listened.

I couldn't live that way any longer. I wanted to leave the QZ the day I got there, but then I met you, and I stayed longer than I ever imagined. You made it bearable - more than that. I just couldn't carry on anymore, especially knowing that the outside world may not be all that bad. It would be even better with you, but I can't force you to do something so drastic when you don't want to. That's not fair on you, but forcing myself to stay wouldn't be fair on me. Putting myself first feels like the worst thing in the world right now, but I have to do this. For me. I hope you can understand. I love you and I don't think I'll ever stop. I hope we cross paths again one day. It's you and me, always.

Joel Miller carried two things with, always. Three things, actually; his rifle, the letter you wrote him, and the grief that you'd left in your wake. It wasn't your fault - and Joel didn't blame you, not one bit - but he couldn't help but feel like it was his. You'd told him you'd been struggling and as he often did with his own emotions, he'd forced you to swallow it down. He thought that would have kept you together but unsurprisingly, it had driven you away.

Life, as it always had, went on. People came and went - though you never came back - and before long, Joel found himself trekking through Wyoming for the second time. Ellie had consumed all his priorities at that point. She had healed more than one of his wounds, but the night she'd found that letter in his bag and began asking questions had re-awoken Joel's yearning for you.

"Joel Miller, a relationship man? I never would have thought," she'd joked. And she hadn't really stopped asking questions since. She'd wanted to know how you met, how you fell in love, and most of all, why you'd left. Though, it didn't take a genius to guess.

The first time Joel had been in Jackson, he hadn't actually spent much time in Jackson. He'd been in the workshop, then in the bar with Tommy, and then he'd left with Ellie not long after. Now that he was there for the foreseeable future, he found himself wandering one morning. Ellie was still dead to the world, and he'd taken it as an opportunity to see what the fuss was actually all about.

Joel had never believed in ghost towns; maybe that was what this place had been for a while, but most of his ghosts resided back in Texas and Boston. Not Jackson. He had no history here; no one except from Tommy knew he was. Maybe he liked it that way. Maybe that was his chance for a fresh start, for him, and for Ellie...and for you, apparently.

He felt like he had seen a ghost the first time he saw you again. Coming in from patrol with Tommy and Maria, you were leading a horse at the front of the pack. You didn't look any older - if anything, the freedom and comfort that Jackson had brought you had de-aged you slightly. You were radiant; beautiful and shining and with the spark that Joel had always feared he'd strangled out of you by forcing you to stay in the QZ.

He hadn't meant to call out your name. It just sort of happened. It had been a whisper at first, actually, growing into a shout as he crossed the town square and towards the gates. You'd recognised his voice straight away but you hadn't actually believed it to be him. It wasn't until you saw him coming towards you that you realised. It hit you like a truck; actually Joel hit you like a truck, because he hadn't really thought about hugging you, and you in too much disbelief to hug him, so you sort of just fell to the ground in a pile-of-you-and-Joel-and-snow.

"What the fuck, Joel?!" your words had been muffled, on account for the mouthful of snow you had. "What the...what are you doing here?"

"What the fuck are you doing here?!"

"You didn't answer my question," you shot back. Joel stood up, sticking out his hand to help you up. You were happy to see him - and he was happy to see you - but before the happiness, there was the other a thousand complex emotions that had risen in your time apart. "How on Earth did you get here from Boston?"

"Couldn't I be asking you all the same things?!" he'd demanded. He sighed, then, and faltered for a moment. "Shit. I can't believe it's you."

Joel took a deep breath, anger fading; he finally held his arms open to you, taking you into a warm, desperate hug for the first time in five years. Your bodies practically thudded together, arms tangled into one as you clung onto him. You didn't regret leaving - not one bit, now that you were here, not that you were free - but god, there had been days where you would have traded all of that freedom for one more day with Joel. There were no radios here, so you'd hadn't a clue if he was even still alive.

It had been worst for him, because he did have a radio. And he spent days waiting by it, hearing story after story about people being found dead, or new Infected being found by the walls of QZ. They had matched your description on more than one occasion, and after a while, he'd just assumed the worst.

Tommy cleared his throat. "I won't ask, but if you need a moment, the bar is empty."

You glanced at Joel. "Yeah. Thanks Tommy."

Trudging to the bar, with Joel in tow, you walked in silence. It wasn't that you didn't have anything to say, it was just that you didn't know where to start. You'd gone over this scenario a thousand times in your head but now that it had actually happened, you were speechless.

The bar was, as promised, completely dead. You stepped inside and locked the door behind you, heading straight to the whiskey shelf. A double Glen Morangie for you, and a double of the cheapest stuff for Joel. That had always been his favourite.

You took a seat opposite him, sliding the drink to him.

Joel's dark eyes flickered to the drink and then back up to you. "You remembered?"

"I didn't forget a single thing," you shot back. "I promise."

"It's funny - and forgive me if I sound shitty for saying this, but I hope you can understand my position right now - but your promises...I can't say they mean much," he murmured.

You faltered slightly, heart dropping in your chest. "I don't blame for you being angry at me, Joel. I left you and obviously that hurt but can't you see it from my perspective? I was drowning. You could see that I was fucking drowning and you just...you ignored me. You brushed it aside because of what you wanted-"

"- I wanted you," he cut you off. Joel downed his drink in one gulp, slamming the glass back on the table. "All I fucking wanted was you."

"You wanted me in the QZ," you reminded him. "I told you I couldn't stay. A thousand times, Joel, and you ignored me on every single occasion."

"And leaving was the solution?"

"Yeah," you said firmly. "Yeah, it was. I wondered for a while, maybe two years or so, and then I joined a bunch of other stragglers and we ended up here."

"And Jackson isn't suffocating?"

"When I can come and go as I please? When we have running water, electricity, houses and infrastructure?" you couldn't help but let out a derivative laugh. "For what it's worth, I've missed you."

Joel's angry guard quickly came down with your admission. He reached a hand out across the table, brushing a thumb over your palm.

"I've missed you too," he murmured. "The people on the radio...they always spoke about finding bodies and Infected, ones that matched your description. I assumed after a while you were dead."

"I'm sorry," you softly said. "I wish you knew how many times I thought about turning back. Even recently, I thought about it, but I was scared I was gonna come back and find you dead, or even worst that I would find you alive and that you wouldn't want to know-"

"- you think that me rejecting you is worst than me dying?" Joel raised an eyebrow, trying to fight back a smile. "You're always so fuckin' dramatic."

You smiled. "Yeah, I know."

"It hurt, y'know," he went quieter again, voice dropping to a whisper. "You leaving...I knew you spoke about it but I didn't think you'd do it. Not without me, at least. Not when I promised to try and get us out-"

"- you hurt me too, Joel," you admitted. "It was all well and good to say one day, I promise but when is one day? Every time I tried to tell you how I was feeling, you shut me down. You shut me out and then you shut me down."

"So you're sayin' I drove you away?"

You paused for a moment; you could have denied it, you could have said it was all your own doing and that Joel's purposeful ignorance to your suffering wasn't relevant. He wouldn't have believed you. There was no point in denying what he already knew was true.

"Yeah," you shrugged. "You did. And I'm sorry about it, okay? I'm sorry that I left, but I didn't do it because I stopped loving you, or because I wanted to get away from you. I had to get away from everything and there hasn't been a single fucking day since I left that I haven't thought about you, or missed you, or wished that you'd come with me..."

You stopped then, barely able to swallow the lump in your throat or ignore the tears that had formed in your eyes. Joel was feeling a too - maybe just not as visibly - but he so desperately wanted to take his words back.

"I don't know what I'm meant to do now," you continued. "Now that you're here...I don't know how long for-"

"- for the foreseeable future," he said. "I have a kid with me. She's not my kid, but she is my kid and....she's the best thing that happened to me since you. Don't tell her I said that."

You smiled slightly. "The foreseeable future, huh?"

"Yeah. This seems like the best place to be, compared to the rest of fuckin' country," Joel replied. "Especially if you're here."

"Right," you nodded, smile not faltering. "I'm glad you're here. Despite everything."

He raised an eyebrow. "Despite everything?"

"You gotta understand, Joel, I'm over the fucking moon to see you. To know that you're alive, and well, and that..." you paused, trailing off.

One thing you hadn't expected to feel when you saw him again was hesitance. Anger, and resentment, and fucking hesitance. It was something you hadn't realised you were harbouring, but knowing that the man you loved had purposefully ignored the way you felt - even five years ago - hurt. You just hadn't realised how much til now, and seeing him had wrenched all those unhealed wounds right up, tearing them from the back of your brain and making them fresh all over again. Especially when he'd had the audacity to be angry at you - maybe rightfully so - but then not understanding why you might be angry at him.

There was an elephant in the room: what happened now? Did you get back together? Forget about everything that had happened, so that you could be happy again?

No. That ship had sailed. It had sailed, and then it had hit an iceberg and sank, and it had whatever versions of you and Joel that had existed then down with it.

You grabbed your drink, downing the whiskey in one gulp in the same way Joel had just moments earlier. "I'll see you around Joel."

#joel miller x reader #joel miller imagine #joel miller imagines #joel miller angst #joel miller x you #joel miller fic #joel miller x y/n #joe miller imagines #joel miller #tlou x reader #tlou fanfiction #tlou fic #tlou angst

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apotatomashedbybts · 2 years ago

Text

Homecoming

✉ Pairing: idol!Seokjin × secretagent!reader ✉ Genre: fluff, angst, romance ✉ Trope: married au, flashback au ✉ Word Count: 6.5k+ ✉ Trigger Warning: mentions of gun, blood, injuries. suffocating feelings. ✉ Rating: pg13 ✉ Banner: @fleurguk / @sweetieguk [My loveliest, Sana! Thank you so much for making this beautiful banner for me! 🤍 ] ✉ Beta Reader: @eoieopda [I can't thank you enough, Jade, for reading and helping me through this writing! Without you this fic wouldn't be what it is today! Thank you for all the hard work you did for me and for all the little compliments you left(⁠≧⁠▽⁠≦⁠) They mean a lot to me! Thanks for being such an amazing beta💜🌼]

✉ Disclaimer:-

↳ This fic is the revamped version of my first ever published fanfic on Tumblr 4 YEARS AGO ON OCTOBER 25, 2018.

↳ The secret organisation mentioned in the story is purely fictional. However, the other military organisations/groups do exist in real life. ✉ Author's Note(1): I remember coming up with this story, all those years ago, while doing living creature things in bathroom at night and writing this down as soon as I got out! To say that it was exhilarating would be one way to put it. But more than that I felt liberated and happy that I found something that I wanted to do! I wanted to write! And let people read It! While revamping this story I felt embarrassed about the way I wrote it all those years ago but it also reminded me of how I was so excited and confident about it and I didn't really care about criticism nor did I think I wrote bad. I miss that part of me... Now I am constantly worrying if it's good enough, continuously hoping for a little interaction... I hope I can go back to just loving my work... and not drown in self doubt. But, hey, it's all about growth, isn't it? ✉ Author's Note(2): In this story, there are a few parts where the flashbacks jump between times. I have included the times but I hope it's not too confusing.

✉ Author's Note(3): It'd mean the world to me if you not only like but also REBLOG and let me know about your thoughts on this! ♡⁠(⁠˃͈⁠ ⁠દ⁠ ⁠˂͈⁠ ⁠༶⁠ ⁠). Your feedback gives me the motivation to keep on writing ✧⁠◝⁠(⁠⁰⁠▿⁠⁰⁠)⁠◜⁠✧ ✉ Taglist: @sugarwithtea , @tangy-tangerine , @lonelystudio , @kuuipobangtan ✉ Crosspost: ao3 | Wattpad ✉ Extras: Book Cover | Homecoming Timeline

✉ Summary: When you breezed into Seokjin's life, he understood why the phrase "home is where the heart is" is so celebrated. Despite the cruel nature of your professions, both of you managed to live through it but Seokjin's worst fear clutched his throat when you disappeared unannounced for two years and he felt his very home taken away from him. However, promises are meant to be kept and one must return home at the end of the day.

— where Seokjin waits for y/n to return home.

Seokjin's life is bountiful today.

In his widely spread bright kitchen the air feels more forgiving than it has been for a very long time. The sunlight seems friendlier than usual and the incoming sounds from outside fall softer on the ears.

Seokjin could enjoy all of these consciously only if he wasn't busy removing the last of the now crumbled architectural masterpieces of spiders from the side of the oven hurriedly. But what he does notice is the clamour of his friends — except the youngest, Jungkook — as they start to swarm the kitchen with bags full of all the necessary groceries that he had requested them to bring earlier.

The third youngest whines while putting the bag he is holding on the counter, “Hyung! I want to stay with you!”

As much as Seokjin would have wanted to have them here, today is not the day. Today is a day that he wants to keep his mind full of you and only you. So, he pulls off a serious face that almost goes halfway to a pout and says, “No can do, Jimin.”

Seeing Jimin sulking, Namjoon intervenes and with a light tug on Jimin's left sleeve he says, “You know how it is, Jimin.” Then looking at Seokjin's ‘already back to being a busy body self' Namjoon smiles, “Let him be. It's for y/n.”

“We will come back tomorrow. He won't mind us then. Let's leave for now.” Yoongi states matter of factly while standing at the door, preparing to leave and waiting for others to join him.

Amidst the busy shuffling of them preparing to leave Jungkook comes back from the backyard. He informs while looking at Jin with his big doe eyes and pointing his right thumb outside, “Hyung, they have finished cleaning up the rooms and the porch. They said they’ll be done after a couple of hours, once they clean the pool and garage. Should I stay with them?”

“Yeah, no. We’re leaving.” Namjoon grabs Jungkook’s one arm and Hoseok the other. Yoongi patters forward, lightly pushing Jungkook’s figure while Namjoon and Hoseok drag him backwards.

Jungkook’s doe eyes become even bigger in surprise and confusion, “Huh? Already?”

To which he gains nothing more than a quick “yep” from Yoongi.

Seokjin mouths a small 'thank you' to Namjoon and Yoongi for helping him out. Namjoon and Yoongi don't say much but with a slight nod they wave goodbye to him and leave with the rest of the boys.

Closing the door behind them Seokjin heaves a heavy sigh and scurries back to the kitchen. He has a lot to do. Even though the day is still young, he feels like he doesn't have enough time to do everything he wants to.

While sorting out the ingredients for your favourite sushi he chuckles at how this one thing has survived all these years on your list of favourite foods. And with that his mind takes him back to the day he first met you at the fansign seven years ago.

•••••••

Fansigns had always been Seokjin's favourite. He loved interacting with his fans and absolutely adored their cute and fun way of showing their appreciation.

That day wasn't any different. He was looking forward to receiving all the love personally from the fans but that changed when you showed up. He didn't expect to fall in love himself.

He was the first member among them to meet the fans as he was sitting at the left-most seat. You greeted him shyly and handed over your album for him to sign. Jin looked at you and he noticed that even though you were kneeling you still looked as if you were almost standing. You knew exactly what he was thinking and when you were about to just say it he asked, “Sorry, but how tall are you?”

You replied almost immediately, lightly placing your palm on your forehead, smiling sheepishly at your own unexpectedly right guess, “6'3". It's hereditary.”

The time given wasn't enough. While still recovering from the heat in your ears, you took out the huge insulated container, handed it over to him and said, “I made these sushi for you all. I hope you like them.”

He made that surprised face accompanied with a 'woah' and a bunch of thank yous. Before you could say anything else you were told to move on to the next member.

Maybe it was the lingering taste of your handmade sushi or perhaps it was your sparkling eyes when you spoke - neither of which he could choose between - that made Seokjin think of you more often than not. He regretted in those moments of remembrance that he couldn’t ask for your name.

People say, when you want something with your whole heart then the whole universe mechanises itself to make it true for you. It worked for Seokjin too.

In the next fansign, you were there - with your box of sushi and that sparkling smile adorning your face.

When you knelt in front of Jin the second time, who was sitting in his usual, left-most seat, you couldn’t help but avert your gaze as you felt the gradual sensation of heat rising from your neck to your whole face at his words, “I have been waiting for you.”

Years later, on your fourth year marriage anniversary, in the comfort of your couch in your beach house, you had told Jin, while reminiscing that fateful meeting that the wishfulness of it all made it harder for you to forget the smile that nearly took the shape of a smirk on his lips and the intent gaze with which Jin was looking at you while saying that. He’d set you on fire and you stayed willfully.

You had also pointed out how all the members craned their necks to look at him losing his usual composure over you. They had made fun of him for it later but in Jin’s words, it was a very small price to pay if he could show how much he admired you.

“What’s your name?” Jin asked while signing your album.

“Y/n Y/l/n.” Your voice trembled in anticipation of all things happening around you.

For Jin, on other hand, restlessness came to him after the fansign was over. He couldn’t stop imagining your reaction when you would discover his phone number written on the page he signed, accompanied by a cheeky little note under it that said - “looking forward to a text from a lovely stranger.”

“That was super cheesy, honestly.” You had smiled, while reminiscing again while cuddling in the same couch as the sunset and the salty afternoon breeze both caressed your skin.

Seokjin had looked at you and while taming away the strands of hair on your face he wished he could just look at your happy face forever like this silently but you were looking at him expectantly with those deep eyes and he had to say something back.

But there was no taming the tempest of love he felt for you so he had cupped your face in his hands to fill it with kisses and nuzzled your neck while saying, “You loved it nonetheless, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I did.” You had giggled under his touch.

Falling in love with you was easy for Seokjin.

About a week after giving you his phone number, while everyone was busy taking rest amidst the shooting of a music video, Jin had slipped out in the afternoon through the back of the residential building.

The night before, Jin had told you through text how much he wanted to see you. For some reason, picturing his pouty face typing the text had made your heart burn.

You had the day off so you drove to Chuncheon where they were shooting and called Jin upon arriving.

You were sitting on the wooden platform over the lake, waiting for him. You saw Jin running towards you from a distance so you stood up immediately to wave at him so that he could notice you.

In hindsight, Seokjin realised it was a bad idea to run at you with everything he had just so he could hug you as soon as possible, as you lost your footing when he all but tackled you; and both of you fell into the water.

In the split second before falling, you had braced yourself for hitting the cold water in this freezing winter but the water was surprisingly warm and it felt nice.

You wiped the droplets off of your eyes to get a better look at Jin who just spat out a mouthful of water and was running his hands through his wet hair and face.

The heart burn was back and you finally asked what you had been pondering over for a couple of days now, “Jin… Can I politely ask you to go out with me?”

As awestruck as Jin was at your question, he didn’t miss a beat to answer back, “Can I… politely kiss you to say yes?”

Falling in love with you was easy for Seokjin. But loving you and losing himself in your kiss was easier.

He did get scolded when he returned to the shooting spot with all his clothes wet and make-up washed off. Everyone assumed that his red face and ears were a result of the cold and that he was smiling sheepishly because he felt guilty. The real reason was a well-kept secret between you two.

It wasn’t easy dating an idol but you made sure to support him as discreetly as you could.

Thankfully, due to the nature of your career, you were no stranger to discretion.

After finishing your three-month-long Winter Warfare training in Pyeongchang under SWC – also known as ROK-SWC which stands for The Republic of Korea Army Special warfare Command and is responsible for the army’s special operations forces – you had completed your year-long training for the 707th Special Mission Group — which was an elite counter-terrorism force made of only the best of the country. Being an ex-UDT/SEAL, it was easy for you to go through the rigorous, 10-day selection program and get selected for the prestigious team.

You thanked your stars for having you go through all that romance-is-a-luxury stuff before you met Seokjin.

Now, you had ample time on your hands before receiving your recruitment letter. So, you attended his showcases, visited most of his domestic shoots and spent nights, whenever he was available, in his apartment. You duped the hawk-eyes of lurking reporters by disguising yourself as a fast food delivery person - it was super effective.

It wasn’t easy dating as an idol but Seokjin tried his best to do his part too. Whenever you visited him he made sure to take time out of his busy schedule to be with you. On his day off he visited you at your local sparring centre to watch you practice and hype you up. Sometimes he even showed up with banners to cheer you on just like you did during his shows. And all you could do at times like those was to laugh while covering your whole face, mirror his cheering movements and do well in practice.

Since it was nearly impossible for him to take you on dates in public, sometimes he decorated his apartment like restaurants or picnic spots to give yourselves a normal dating experience.

After four months of secret meetings, longing for each other, countless kisses and innumerable laughs, Seokjin understood why people called a person their home.

As the realisation hit him, he thought it was about time he asked you if you felt the same too.

And Seokjin knew exactly how to make it special for you.

One fine spring morning, he took you to a dog park that he had rented for the day.

The night before, Namjoon had asked him if he was sure he wasn't rushing things.

Seokjin had replied that he was afraid of it being too late.

The choice of place for an early morning date couldn’t have been better since you just adored dogs. You loved it even more because neither of you owned a dog.

Like an unavoidable phenomenon, Seokjin came to you like a book that you must memorise, like a notebook that you must highlight and put sticky notes on.

And because you knew him so well, you decided not to squint your eyes at the oddity of Seokjin’s constant check-ins while you were busy playing with a border collie, his hasty retreating steps or the brittle grin that barely reached his red ears to assure you that nothing was out of ordinary.

You just smiled to yourself, preparing yourself amidst the loud colliding of your heart's beats that fought with each other like two racers trying to win first place.

You knew of his intentions and you knew that your answer was going to be yes.

What you didn’t know was that a very adorable golden retriever would grab the end of your long jacket and drag you to the only cherry blossom tree of the enormous park that stood mighty and beautifully in the middle of it. Now you understood why Jin had insisted you on wearing that in the morning.

Under the cherry blossom tree were fifteen cute little corgis that sat patiently with their tongues out and wagging tails. Each of them had one placard hung on their necks with letters written separately which read, “WILL YOU MARRY ME?”

It was a silly and tiresome feat to achieve. He knew you would have been happy even if he had proposed to you in some alleyway with a wildflower ring, but it was you; and if he could Jin would bring the whole moon to your lap to make you feel special. However, much to his pouty lips and flared nostrils, physics is an ass.

There were a whole bunch of words that Jin thought he would be feeling for the next coming moments. But when you walked over to him with your hands covering your gasping mouth and your watery eyes amidst the timidly falling petals of cherry blossoms and uttered the word “yes”, none of the words he thought of sufficed. He slipped the rose quartz ring on your ring finger and hugging you he let the world surrounding him fall silent under the sound of your heartbeat.

“How did you even manage to do all that?” You asked while on your way home in the car. You giggled remembering how all the corgis charged at Seokjin, making him roll over the ground, and climbed on top of him when he was trying to give them treats after everything was done.

He looked at you. His face was trying to do multiple expressions at the same time. He wanted to smirk, and act cocky; he also wanted to hold back his laughter. Ultimately all he could do was pout and say, “You know I could have done all of that myself but I was short on time so the people from KKA (Korea Kennel Agility) helped me.”

You laughed at his reply, “I am not running away though.”

Jin intertwined his fingers with yours and pressed a kiss at the back of your hand. His lips stayed a few seconds longer than a chaste kiss required, “Mhm.”

Two weeks after the proposal, the wedding was held secretly in Seokjin’s family home. His band members and your respective families were present. You moved into the new house that Seokjin had bought prior to marriage in a nice suburban neighbourhood. Before you let reality hit you, you gifted yourselves what you could: a breezy honeymoon getaway to the beach, for as long as possible, in each other's complete presence.

The reality that hit you two was sad and lonely.

Oftentimes as a human defence mechanism, they try to look over the harsh reality. They ignore its existence and keep it shoved inside a storage bunker above head until it comes crashing down. It was the same for both of you.

While dating, neither of you thought about how hard it was going to be to have enough of each other and live as a family even after marriage… Especially after marriage.

You were already training to be in the SWC’s 707th special mission group and Jin’s career as an idol was far from over.

Two months after your wedding was still manageable. Then, one sweltering August morning, you got summoned at the SWC headquarters to receive your recruitment letter from your superiors. It wasn’t the one you were aiming for. You were taken on by an arcane and powerful organisation. It was led by a collaboration of several governments undertaking covert missions to address sensitive and violent crimes: the Organised Crime Control Association, or in short known as The ORCA.

You were dumbstruck. Seokjin was proud of you.

He knew what you were capable of, and even though he wanted you to stay close to him he knew where you would shine the most. To him you were as smart as Sherlock and more impregnable than Jack Reacher.

You were silent and stuck after receiving the news - Jin pushed you towards your dream just like he had always done to himself.

The reporting HQ of the organisation was outside of South Korea, and you had to depart within three days’ notice. You assured Jin that you would keep in touch as best you could. But your best wasn’t always enough.

As soon as you arrived there, your internet presence was erased from every database except from the organisation itself. Being an ORCA member also required you to get rid of the phone you possessed and instead use a burner phone that they provided.

Contacting family was an extravagance for everyone and you respected that sacrifice.

Both of you lived on infrequent texts and even rarer opportunities to listen to each other's voices.

Jin would tell you about his day and you would yours. Even the most mundane things would be the most exciting thing that you both had listened to in a while.

“I have a day off today so I stayed up all night and played games. That’s why I woke up this late!”

“I broke three pieces of training equipment today so I have to wash the dishes after dinner.”

Daily flavour of monotonous life was delivered to the other side of the phone in a wrapper of - I miss you. I miss you. I miss you.

Seven months of bone-draining training later you returned home on a much deserved vacation. It was a reward for having the most impressive evaluation result, nearly making up for the broken arm and the burn your back had sustained to receive it.

It took you a month to recover and Jin made sure that it took no more than the minimum time required. He was with you all the time - taking care of the littlest of your needs.

You were grateful but seeing him always on high alert broke your heart. You wanted to tell him to relax his shoulders and peel off some of the attention he was giving to you to his own work.

But he wanted you to be healthy as soon as possible so that you could lead your normal life.

Normal life…

The life that Jin wanted for you wasn't your normal life. Your 'normal' life was out in the wilderness full of heinous crimes and the smell of blood and gunpowder.

'This' was your vacation - a way out of the ordinary.

You knew that once he heard about what really was going to happen he would break and protest. But it was necessary to let him in on some basic information so he could prepare himself for that. Moreover, you had already broken one of the core rules of the organisation by letting him know you were working for The ORCA.

One evening, after your month-long healing period, you walked over to your husband in the dining room and back-hugged him. You rested your chin on his shoulder and called out to him with a sigh trapped inside the cavity of your chest, trying not to sound too sad, “Seokjin-ah…”

He knew that tone. You called him like that only when you needed to say something serious.

But he acted clueless anyway and while setting the plates on the dinner table and placing a quick kiss on your cheek, he quipped, “What’s poppin’, good lookin’?”

You couldn’t help but scoff at his attempt to lighten the mood. You needed to tell him before it was too late. “Come on, Seok! I am trying to be serious here.”

“Yeah… I am sorry, poppins. I am listening now.” He held your arms and made you sit on a chair. Then he dragged another chair to sit facing you and held your hands in his, “What is it?”

His thumbs drawing small circles on the back of your hands didn’t soothe you much but you tried to look relaxed, “My vacation… Um… I am going to stay here until they call me back. And they are going to call me sooner or later.”

Your hands fell from Seokjin’s hold like a yellowed leaf from a branch. He couldn’t believe that you just said that you wouldn’t stay at home, that you wouldn’t stay with him, and you were planning to go back to a job that gave you a broken arm and burn marks just on the training!

You placed your hand on his shoulder and called him softly, “Seok-ah…”

His head hung low as he kept on glaring at the floor. Even if the dining room wasn’t so brightly lit, you wouldn’t have missed the teardrops that escaped your husband’s eyes and fell directly on the floor without getting the chance to glide over his quivering soft cheeks.

Seeing him refusing to get his head up and look at you, you called again, replicating your previous tone, “Seok-ah… Please listen to me.”

“NO!” An almost scream escaped his parched throat. He looked up at you quickly with glossy pleading eyes before looking down again, “You are not going anywhere.”

You leaned forward, pressing your forehead on his and held his face in your hands. Your thumb grazed softly across his cheek, swiping away the tears that slipped and stained them.

“Seok-ah…” you whispered. He begged, “please don’t go…”

“Please, look at me. Listen to me just this once.” You pleaded and he adamantly shook his head, still looking down.

“Please? Just once?” The teardrops dancing along the brim of your eyes threatened to fall.

His eyes finally met yours and your tears fell just like his.

You inhaled sharply, “Seok-ah, I can’t just quit my job out of nowhere. If I tell you to quit being an idol and do a normal day-to-day job, would you be able to? Too many people depend on you - be it emotionally or professionally. It’d be unfair. Same goes for me… It’s too important to just… leave! And you know more than me what it feels like to chase a dream and finally achieve it. I… love my job. And I can’t let my abilities rot.”

You paused. Jin didn’t say anything back; he simply continued to look at you with those big eyes waiting for you to say something more. Something convincing.

You continued, “I know you are worried and I know that this work is dangerous as fuck! I get unnerved more than I would like to admit. But if I am allowed to be a little arrogant, I am the best in my field, well — almost.” You rolled your eyes. “But still I want you to have faith in me that no matter what happens I will return to you. No matter how long it takes me, no matter what happens. Can I ask for this much trust from you?"

"It's not that I don't trust you, poppins… I trust you more than myself. But… it's just that I am so…” He gently caressed your once-broken arm while looking at it, “Scared… I just need some time.”

His eyes darted back to yours and you understood where he was coming from; if he was in your place you would be wary too.

You finally let go of the sigh you had been holding and whispered, “Okay. Let’s do that.”

At night you felt a soft hold on your hand - it jolted you awake.

But you relaxed immediately when your body understood that it was Seokjin.

He flinched a little seeing you stir out of slumber. His voice came out rather croaked, “I.. I am sorry. I didn't mean to wake you up.”

You glanced at the watch kept on the bedside table - it read 3:56 am.

You sat up. In the white light of the LED seeping in through the window from the outside, you finally made out his face - his eyes were swollen and shiny red.

He didn't let go of your hand. Instead he held the other one as well when you called him gently, “It's okay, baby. What happened? Why are you up so early?”

His voice came out but a whimper, “I just couldn’t fall asleep.”

He sniffled to speak clearly, “Your hands are calloused.”

“You know, the downside of practice,” you shrugged. You went on with the flow of his conversation. You knew he would speak his mind eventually.

There was a silence that hung around for a few seconds like that awkward friend in the group before Seokjin spoke up again, “I thought about it a lot… and it’s just not fair. Neither to you, nor to myself. But I know you…” He paused to take a deep breath as if to prepare himself to say the next words, “Promise me that no matter what happens you will come back to me.”

You felt relieved and grateful. It wasn’t like Seokjin owned you and you needed his permission to do what you wanted to do with your life but his understanding and support made the emotional burden a lot less gravitational.

“I don’t know when I’ll be able to return…” You squeezed his hands as an assurance, “But I promise that I will. You need to promise me one thing as well.” He looked at you with questioning eyes and you answered, “That you will lead your life normally keeping this faith in your heart that I am doing perfectly fine. Can you please promise me that?”

Seokjin was well aware that it was nearly impossible for him to continue living normally knowing that you could be in a life threatening situation at any given moment but if it would give you a little bit of relief, he wouldn’t mind lying. “Promise.”

“Thank you,” you whispered, pressing your foreheads together.

“Oh! I need to request you one more thing! You might come across me in the streets while I am on duty. Please ignore me and treat me as you would treat any stranger. Can you please do that?”

He nodded vigorously, and wiped his runny nose with the back of his bare hand.

You smiled and brought out a wet tissue kept in the side drawer. With it, you wiped his hand and patted his nose gently.

He kept on staring at you while you were doing so; and when you were done, with a smile that hung on his lips like a decade old incandescent bulb trying its hardest to do its job properly, he remarked, “I think I should get used to doing it myself from now on.”

The call finally came - later than dreaded, sooner than hoped for.

The thing with living in absence of loved ones is that you never get used to it, no matter how much mental preparation you had done for it.

So, when you kissed him goodbye from the doorstep instead of letting him drop you off at the airport, Jin was devastated.

Jin didn’t want to move away from the doorstep; the larger part of his brain was trying to convince the rest of it that you would emerge from the line where you disappeared and laugh at him saying that it was all a prank.

Alas! It was not.

It was summer again and Summer was sad that it had been demoted from being Seokjin’s favourite season to his most hated one.

But in all of the stifling air that hung around and inside Jin, a notification sound brought a gust of sea-scented breeze to him - a text message from you.

“Check the drawer under the staircase.”

Seokjin took a moment to blink away the surprise and then he ran inside, leaving the threshold behind.

Inside the drawer was a multi-patterned cardboard box with a note on top that said, ‘one for each day you miss me’ and within it was a pile of letters - 366 in total, in case it took you that long to keep your promise.

Days were going by.

You were keeping your promise though contacting each other while you were away was rare.

Officially, you were granted two vacations yearly. It didn’t matter which times of the year you took them as long as there wasn’t any mission that required your input. The length of your vacation also depended on the presence of operations and requirement of personnel and expertise.

To ensure coverage, the agents were given a form upon entering the organisation. It asked the agents which time of the year they preferred to have a vacation. You had filled it up as ‘I am fine with any time of the year’. Of course you had preferences in mind but the higher-ups didn’t need to know about them. The response turned out to be in your favour because some heartless asshole in the authority made sure that no agent got the vacation that they put as their preference. That made power harassment a hot topic at the dinner table among the rookies.

Even though you had years of experience and you were proficient in your job, you were a rookie in the organisation and therefore assigned to easier tasks. It was convenient because you were able to effortlessly wrap up the work in time.

You always made sure that you were home for Jin’s birthday and your wedding anniversary.

In the beginning you also secured vacations as long as seven days. As promised, you returned home unscathed.

But as years went by your holidays got shorter.

On your fourth year anniversary, you got three days for your second vacation of the year. Jin took you to the beach house where you had your honeymoon.

It freshened up memories that you cherished. And you cherished the person in those memories. You wished to stay home forever when Jin kissed you by the bonfire under the stars and your toes curled in the cold sand.

Just like any other human whose primary instinct is to adapt and survive, you both responded to your situation likewise. You made sure to make enough memories while being together - in shapes of photos and videos, laughter and smiles, kisses and sparkling eyes - to hold on to and reminisce when you stayed apart. You were living and adapting.

But life is cruel and it couldn’t tolerate that it was beginning to seem bearable to both of you.

After the last goodbye in the summer, that marked the beginning of your fifth year as an ORCA agent, Jin continued living just like he had made himself live all these years - waiting for the phone to make that special ringtone set for unknown numbers; going through the photos and videos of you and the two of you together, working consciously for the sake of everyone and himself; taking care of himself so that he doesn't get scolded once you returned home; keeping up with world affairs to make wild guesses about where you might be right at that moment and reading one letter per day.

It was hard at first but he had started to get the hang of it.

Seokjin’s worry started when you neither contacted him nor came back in winter as usual.

Things turned blue when even after the 366th letter his phone didn’t vibrate with that special ringtone and you didn’t return to him in spring like you were supposed to.

Jin felt his consciousness shutting down like a gradual power outage - one by one, bit by bit.

The members were worried about both of you, but if they were to show their weakness to their oldest brother then who would keep him sane?

“Sane…” Jin chuckled to himself in the darkness of the living room and wondered if he was ever sane for even a single day since you joined that hell of a stupid secret organisation.

Now he felt even more insane because the walls of every room in this big house were beginning to close in on him; the ghost of your presence haunted every corner of its existence.

He had to make an escape, he had to survive, he had to keep his promise.

He started to spend more and more of his time outside the empty house, in the company building - working himself to the bones, making a cocoon in his studio.

He also began to reread the letters, starting from the very beginning.

At night, he buried his screams in the wet pillow and prayed for you to be safe and alive and that you would come back to him.

“Is this too much to ask?” He wondered, “it’s been a long time…”

His prayers were answered one fateful winter morning when he was woken up with a start by the unfamiliar relentless ringing of his phone.

He fell from his couch and fumbled to take the phone out from under the letter that he was reading last night — 210th — and opened your text - ‘guess who is coming back home finally? See you tomorrow, lover boy.’

He blacked out for a good minute because of the sudden burst of serotonin in his system.

The entire day, Jin couldn’t wait for their schedule to wrap up and he kept on pestering the staff by asking repeatedly after each task, “Are we done yet?”

When finally they were free to go Jin rushed out of the building with Taehyung who just liked tagging along wherever Jin went.

Upon reaching, the forgotten house greeted them with upset cob-webs, sad furniture and prideful dust that weren’t too happy about the idea of being removed. The dust protested by invading their nasal cavities resulting in a series of immediate coughs and sneezes.

“Damn, hyung! When was the last time you came home?” Taehyung asked in a muffled voice after covering his nose and mouth with his scarf.

Jin’s forlorn gaze travelled around the space and his voice came out rather distant. “I haven’t, yet.”

•••••••

The beeping sound of the microwave oven pulls Seokjin out of his reverie. The muffins are the last one of the dishes that needed done. All the other preparations are complete. All he needs to do now is to wait - which is proving to be the hardest of all the tasks.

He is restless and he can’t stop shaking his legs and repeatedly checking the time. He is trying hard to convince himself that years are a lot longer than a few hours but he can’t make the anticipation in his heart go down with any amount of pep talk. He is finally going to see your face, hear your voice and hold you in his arms. He is finally going to feel your warmth envelope his lonely frigid heart.

Just as the sun sets, leaving the house at the mercy of the moonlight, the loud sound of the doorbell starts to echo throughout the house.

Seokjin springs up from the inner threshold where he has been sitting on the floor, and before the ringing can stop he opens the door.

A tanned smiling face lined with days of trauma greets him and Seokjin doesn't miss a beat to hug you. Keeping his ears on your chest he listens intently to the beats that greatly solace him. He squeezes you tighter in his embrace as his head moves up and down rhythmically on your very-much-breathing bosoms.

Your life is merciful today.

The water touching your body is the perfect temperature. The hands massaging your sore muscles and helping you clean are soft and gentle. The clothes you are wearing are crisp and clean. Your stomach doesn't have to growl for long and the food in front of you is warm and inviting — finally you are going to have the sushi you were dying for.

Most importantly, the person you are with now is someone with whom you don't need to stiffen your shoulders and strain your senses.

You don't realise until you see his face how much you longed to see it. Seokjin's face is like a resting place for your eyes - a balmy sight. Looking at him now reminds you of the three days straight you had once spent in the surveillance room. When you came out and saw the greenery outside the building, you cried because your eyes had felt so relieved.

Lying down on the bed with Seokjin snuggling you under the cosy blanket, the fatigue finally catches up to you and you feel yourself getting swallowed by the soft mattress. You don’t remember the last time you felt so worriless while falling asleep or the last time sleep came to you so easily, so caringly.

With drowsy eyes you look at your husband who is looking at you with a faint smile and some residual longing in his eyes and you suggest in a sleeplaced voice, “Maybe I should take voluntary retirement now.”

Jin watches you fall asleep right after making that comment. He knows that it’s most likely your body’s comfort receiver talking and you would return to your usual self after getting enough rest. Still, he can’t help but water the little seed of hope that you just sowed in his heart.

He rests his palm softly on your cheek and gently caresses the space beside your eye with his thumb. He shudders while thinking about the countless sleepless nights those beautiful eyes of yours have endured and the innumerable grotesque things they have witnessed.

His mind tells him that maybe he can try to reason with you again later but right now he must give his own tired body some rest.

Lying in the comfort of your presence in the familiar room makes him release a slow content sigh - the walls don’t feel suffocating anymore.

He scoots closer to you and places a kiss on your forehead before whispering, “We have a lot to catch up on, poppins.”

His arm moves on muscle memory and finds its way around you anchoring itself.

Seokjin has been running for a while, trying to escape from a part of his reality but now he can stop doing that and get some rest - he has come home now.

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lees-chaotic-brain · 1 year ago

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1 Year Anniversary Soulmate Color Event! (Closed)

Event Masterlist | Blog Navigation

Let me know if you want to get added to the event taglist!

It was recently my one year anniversary on tumblr, so I decided to do my first ask event! (I'm also rewarding myself because I caught up on my schoolwork)

The tag for this event is lee's 1 year anniversary event so filter it out if you don't want to see the fics from it.

Below are the rules and guide.

Here is the format:

Number (prompt) Shade (theme) Color (character)

Example:

Megumi angst with the "mark from last time your soulmate ever touches you" prompt

Would be:

#8 Jade Green

Step 1: Pick a Character (Color)

My Hero Academia:

Todoroki Shoto: Red

Bakugou Katsuki: Orange

Kaminari Denki: Yellow

Jujutsu Kaisen:

Fushiguro Megumi: Green

Gojo Satoru: Blue

Inumaki Toge: Purple

Yuji Itadori: Pink

Step Two: Pick a Theme (Shade)

Angst: blood, rust, ochre, jade, navy, eggplant, amaranth

Angst to Fluff: crimson, tangerine, pale, pine, ocean, lilac, rose

Hurt/Comfort: vermillion, dark, golden, forest, sky, plum, blush

Fluff: maroon, pumpkin, lemon, olive, baby, lavender, bubblegum

Crack: fire engine, safety cone, neon, lime, electric, violet, hot

Step Three: Pick an Prompt

#1. The closer you are to your soulmate, the warmer you feel, the further you are the colder. Basically finding your soulmate is one big game of hot and cold.

#2. You and your soulmate are attached by an unbreakable red thread tied on you ankles/wrists/whatever.

#3. Every night your dreams are actually your soulmate's memories.

#4. Once you reach a certain age you begin to feel a pull towards your soulmate, just like magnets. (someone please request a crack version of this)

#5. The name of your soulmate appears on your body only after that person falls in love with you.

#6. If your soulmate gets a wound or cut, flowers bloom out of the same spot on your own body.

#7. The first time your soulmate touches you it will leave a mark in the shape of their touch on your body.

#8. The last time your soulmate touches you it will leave a mark in the shape of their touch on your body.

#9. You and your soulmate both glow if you're in a room together for the first time. (This can get confusing if more than 1 set of soulmates are in the room)

*note: I found these prompts on Pinterest. they do not belong to me.*

At the moment, I am not comfortable writing nsfw, so please don't request it

I don't write poly relationships. It's not that I have anything against it, I just don't feel comfortable

Please be polite! I'm happy to write your requests, but please be mindful of the fact that I am also a human being with a life

Feel free to send in as many as you want, I'll try to get to all of them

The event will close on Oct. 31, meaning I will stop taking requests for it, but will continue to write and post any requests I received up until then

#jjk x reader #lee's 1 year anniversary event #event #gojo x reader #megumi x reader #yuji x reader #inumaki x reader #jjk #mha #bhna #bhna x reader #mha x reader #kaminari x reader #bakugou x reader #todoroki x reader #soulmate au #lee's brain writes

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anzynai · 8 months ago

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April Fools with the Octatrio

hello so i wanted to write something for the octatrio (as the title states) but a fic wasn’t working out so…. here’s some hcs((aka what my fic idea was GOING to be)) under the cut instead !!!

first of all, april fools was a completely new thing for the twins and azul. in tbe coral sea, its literally just.. april 1st and even the areas that DID know abt the day didn’t bother celebrating it

so imagine floyd and jade having the time of their life when they find that there is quite literally a day centered around messing with your friends

azul is less than amused when his own voice interrupts his speaking because of jade and floyd constantly poking his sides and tickling him when he least expects it

jade tends to be more subtle about it yet so teasy all the same “oh, what’s the matter, azul?” knowing damn well whats what

on the other hand, floyd is like “aww, u ticklish??” when he does with absolute no regard for who might be listening

azul doesn’t know which one is worse

but of course, azul won’t stand for it! he has allowed the twins to get the last laugh for way too long (or.. the twins.. get his (??))) last laugh… uh anyway)

so he starts off with jade because even though jade would definitely hint at it to floyd, he is a much easier person to find. jade.. if jade doesn’t want to be found, he will not be found. so he starts with jade since he’s not expecting it

and well, he really wont. not with tickling at least because azul wasn’t one to get them back all the time. but this time, he knew be needed to stand his ground (he just wants the twins to get a taste of their own medicine.. and maybe… hear their laughter..)

so azul calls jade over into his office to discuss about the monstro lounge and ambushes him. he is actually shocked at first that he manages to do it, but he does.. and of course, tickles him. it works out so much better than he thought. when hes done, he prepares himself for retaliation, but for some reason… jade doesnt?

later, after floyd’s basketball practice, azul does the same thing. corners him, and it seems as though he was expecting it. in fact, he wws encouraging it! “ur gonna tickle me, huh? well go ahead, im waiting!” it makes azul a little nervous but he still exacts his revenge and. floyd doesn’t retaliate either???

he finds out why later. jade had planned it from the moment azul had ambushed him. he was going to have azul let down his guard and ended up hinting at it to floyd. so basically, at the end of the night, they have both gone to azul and completely obliterated him (much to his embarrassment)

he did have a suspicion, but with the random pokings throughout the day still occurring, he thought that was all they may do. he shouldve known better (or maybe, he just kinda.. hoped it would happen again so didnt work to stop it hehehe)

anyways, unrelated to tickling, i feel like floyd wohld have more obvious pranks. like, silly string (he would have bought out the entire stock at sam’s mystery shop had he had enough money), jumpscares, the like. him wnd lilia have this sort of alliance on april fools and kinda terrorize the student body together

on the other hand, jade has more subtle pranks, but enjoys them nonetheless. they tend to be those ones that make u feel like u MAY be losing ur mind. like those mind games kindw pranks.. i cant think of any rn but uhh… use ur imagination.

azul simply does not participate. at least, not on his own accord. like he never starts it, but it has become a habit to try to prank jade and floyd back if they ever prank him. he wont admit, but its pretty fun thinking of ways to get one over on the twins. he really likes seeing the look on their faces when they arent expecting something.

still, that means he has to work extra hard since it IS the day to prank people, yk?? but he doesnt have a certain way of pranking someone, but is always proud when it works out.

once he got both of the twins at the same time by calling them to his office and leaving the door slightly cracked, but left a bucket of water on top. when it was opened, it would fall on them. he still remembers their expressions and thinks about it from time to time.

#twisted wonderland #octatrio #tickling #jade leech #floyd leech #azul ashengrotto #twst tickling #jai’s headcanons #headcanons #they r all ticklish #and also all participate in april fools lmao #april fool's day #i just crave content with them lowkey

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nokingsonlyfooles · 1 year ago

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Head-Wigs and Not Even an Inch

Abigail Thorn made me cry last night.

I mean, I knew this was not outside the realm of possibility. I presumed she would produce a work of stunning artistic beauty and overwhelm my jaded brain with some Profound Meaning. Or, fat chance, maybe she’d trip over something I’d written and tear it to pieces like a hamster going to town on a cardboard tube. Or maybe I’d go back to London, and spill my drink on her shoes in a dark club, and she’d thrash me with a riding crop — that’s slightly more likely than someone with a decent platform noticing my writing, at this point.

But, uh, no. That’s not how it went.

We pay money to get the bonus episodes of Kill James Bond. You should too. In fact, if you don’t, you’ll be lacking some context for this. But most of my work goes out into the void without context, so to hell with it. You can watch a theatrical version of Hedwig and the Angry Inch for free, on YouTube. Or you can probably pirate the film version with a clean conscience, I don’t think any of those performers are seeing much compensation from sales at this point.

We haven’t been listening to the bonus episodes in order. We often try to watch something close to the version of whatever-film they’re doing, and then listen to the episode with context. We’ve heard them mention Hedwig, and it seemed to be a profound, emotional experience. I really wanted to see Hedwig first. Well, we found a Hedwig available for free and we watched it. They tried to update it a bit, and I found that off-putting. A lot of the tropes in play are dated — “#problematic” in some ways, and genuinely hurtful in others. If you’re going to update something like that, you can’t just throw in a reference to Harry Potter and Title 42 and call it good. Preserve it in its original messy form for us, or rewrite the whole thing — if they’ll let you.

The way the actor playing Hedwig moved and sat in her (the character uses she/her and I have no idea about the actor) short skirt bothered me too. She had shorts on underneath, but I don’t think we were supposed to know that yet. “Nobody has ever told this person how they’re supposed to sit in a skirt,” I said to the spouse. Like, it wasn’t even as if she knew and had decided to ignore it. If one were transfeminine, or faking it to get out of East Berlin, someone would’ve mentioned it. “Maybe it’s for the character,” he said. Maybe it was. You could read it that way. But there’s a read on this where transness is artifice, and I don’t like that read very much. I hope that wasn’t what they were going for.

The ending could be read that way too. It’s all very surreal and that has the potential to be read a lot of different ways, but a male (or male-presenting) actor winds up bare-chested in shorts and the female one ends in a wig and a dress and they both seem very happy about it. One could say, “Well! Glad all that gender confusion’s cleared up! Now they’ve stopped pretending to be something they’re not!” I don’t like that the possibility is left open like that. It feels slimy and centrist.

But the music was great and there were some excellent moments and I was eager to hear the whole thing get dissected by some trans folks.

About a half hour into it, they were discussing John Cameron Mitchell, who identified as a gay man at the time and has since refined it to nonbinary with he/him pronouns. Hedwig’s gender is messy — she’s a fictional character written by an enby who was still in egg form, from a time before people were expected to define their transness as binary or nonbinary. Abi acknowledged the nonbinary actor/writer/director, and mentioned that there’s a lot of pressure to define your gender neatly these days… And said, “No.” That’s not it. Hedwig is a woman like her. Period.

I had been saying to the spouse (we talk over the podcast; we get excited) that I saw a lot of myself in Hedwig’s disaster gender, and in that way you could read the ending as her deciding to stop splitting herself between her popular, cis-passing, sellout persona, and the real, messy her. And then Abi cut me off, and I said, laughing, “Oh my god, just hip-check my identity right into the orchestra pit! What… What…” And I started to cry.

I didn’t have my guard up. I didn’t expect it. And I’d never taken a hit quite this way before. This wasn’t being denied the validity of my existence, this was the validity of my artistic merit. Abigail Thorn, a demonstrably smart person with a lot of theatre experience who loves writing and acting, will not be requiring me or John Cameron Mitchell for her interpretation of Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Not even as a possible read. Please, go find yourselves in some other character, enbies. Let the transwomen have her.

…To the point where “Hansel” is treated like a modern-day deadname of a real person, when all we know for sure is that the character got rid of it to get out of East Berlin and she doesn’t use it anymore. It could be like that, but by the end of this, “Hedwig,” another name and gender she did not choose for herself, might be a deadname too. I’m not saying it has to be like that, but it’s not so ridiculous that we need to dismiss it unsaid, is it? Especially given that the goddamn originator of the character has been on a similar journey and decided to keep “John” and he/him for the moment. A person can do that and still kick their assigned gender to the curb, you know?

I didn’t need Hedwig to be about me and only me, I just needed the possibility to be left open and discussed a little bit. Another trans egg movie, but perhaps a nonbinary one this time. Like Speed Racer, it went hard and fell short! That’s all. I didn’t even know I needed that! Until Abi said I couldn’t have it.

The spouse stopped the podcast and comforted my surprised tears. He gave me a nonbinary read — which is not hard to do! — and said I deserve to be seen. I said, “I know why she said it. I do. It’s too close to their (hers and Alice’s) own experience and they don’t want to see anything else. It’s emotion-based. But… But… Nonbinary actor (and writer/director/producer/singer)! …What about Dev?” Dev really took a backseat on this one. They saw themself in Yitzhak, and Yitzhak isn’t the main character, and Abi and Alice were so into Hedwig, and they’re all friends. Yeah. I mean, I understand that too. Back off and let your friends have this one, it’s clearly important to them both.

I wanted to hear the rest of it, because it made Alice and Abi feel seen, and a lot of other trans folks too. Yeah, there’s a lot in it that aged like milk — cringy and outdated even when the film was made — but there’s a lot of valid queer experience in there, too, warts and all. I was surprised as hell that, in the end, Abi supports the “Tommy isn’t real” theory and believes this is a story about uniting one person and making yourself feel whole. And yet, she reiterated, “No.” It’s not about being nonbinary. It’s about reconciling with the male-gendered stuff you try to cut out of you when you transition. Dev and Alice were at least willing to allow that nonbinary was possible, if not quite willing to delve into it, but not Abi. Splitting yourself in two is a binary trans thing! As are many, many other things about Hedwig that I related to.

As an enby who came up with the “splitting yourself in two” metaphor while still in egg form, for a fictional character of my own who is also still in egg form, please let me tell you — please let me tell someone — that that’s not true. I didn’t meet Hedwig until last night, but I know about performing your acceptable, cis-passing, assigned gender and hiding all the “garbage” that doesn’t fit. I know what it is to be crammed into a false persona that gets a lot of love, while the real you, when you let it out, is only worthy of snarling punk lyrics into a mic at a dingy seafood restaurant with a hostile audience.

And, oh my god, do I know what it is to have a piece of you that will not come off, and prevents you from fitting fully into either binary gender. It can feel like a broken piece, like a scar, like a botched surgery you didn’t need that was inflicted on you… But it doesn’t have to be literally that. Hedwig, both the play and the person, doesn’t seem to have much use for physical reality. She’s here to unload her emotional reality, and she doesn’t care about any other real things she might damage along the way.

KJB were rather amazed that Hedwig chose to redefine herself by a (medically impossible) surgical accident. How brave of her to own her trauma like that. But I wonder, is it trauma? Or is it the only path a nonbinary egg in 1998 could see to gain an outside that expressed his inside? This isn’t what any of you wanted me to have, this isn’t even what I want to have, but it’s still me. It’s what I have to work with. (All signs point to “Tommy,” as a character, being at least a closeted gay guy who would’ve been fine if the “front of” Hedwig had been a penis, but it isn’t. It’s not quite anything at all, and he flees because that’s just too much for him to handle. Hedwig already is one of those androgynes she envies; she doesn’t need an Adam, she doesn’t need him. But she loves him/her cis-passing self, and she’s not yet ready to let him go.)

I don’t know what it is to actually try living as the other binary gender, I wasn’t active enough in queer circles to really feel that pressure to conform to the binary before I hatched. But I see it now, and I feel the same instinctive revulsion that Hedwig feels about being a divorced housewife in a trailer in Arizona. That’s not me either! Did I spend all this time and energy escaping one box, only to be trapped in another? Must I content myself with this simply because I don’t want to go back to the way I was? Is this only way I can get a green card that lets me access a queer space? To put on an ugly wig and pretend I’m more palatable?

To me, the revelation about wigs is not “I could be happy as ANY woman!” but, “This is a performance… This is all a fucking performance! This isn’t me, this is a hat someone put on my head. It comes off! I can have another hat! I can have all the hats!” And, selfishly, she denies Yitzhak that same joy, because he wears it better and seems happier. Hedwig clings to her suffering so tightly, it’s such a fundamental part of her identity, that she can’t bear to be around trans joy. No. There is no room for trans joy here, only trans spite. This story is about me. I don’t like transwomen, I don’t like transmen, and I sure as hell don’t like myself (yet)! In the end, after a lot more suffering, she’s willing to let that go.

In the end, Abi says she knows a lot of transwomen who seem to model themselves on Hedwig, and she wants them to know that isn’t how they have to be. They don’t have to choose between being just like a cis woman, or being a monstrous, chaotic, damaged other. You can be… Better than cis! Yes, says the cast of KJB, laughing, we are better than you! We are THE FUTURE! Three friends, having a ball on a podcast, trans joy at its finest — but you don’t find humour in feigning cruelty if you haven’t had some of that cruelty directed at you. This joy formed around a grain of spite. Not only does one often feel they have to be better than cis people, but when you’re still unhatched and stuck on the outside looking in, trans folks really do seem better than you. At least they know what their deal is.

I get it. I do. Because Hedwig fits me too. We all have our reasons to put on that perfectly ridiculous blonde wig and take the form of Hedwig, the Destroyer. Hedwig, the Chaotic. Hedwig, the Liar. Hedwig, the Truth. Hedwig, the Unrepentant Disaster. Hedwig, give me strength! But, it comes off. Look. It is literally a head-wig, a costume for your brain. I know sometimes you find a new wig and you really, really like it, and you become very attached and you want it to be just yours forever and ever, maybe even to the point of calling it your real hair, but… Someone else could still wear that same wig and feel just as happy as you, or maybe even happier. Maybe you’ll find a wig you like even better too. Transitioning isn’t just one and done, and Hedwigs don’t have to be forever. We do know this, don’t we?

Gender is a performance. Gender is a Hedwig. A lot of other things that you consider immutable parts of your identity are Hedwigs too. They are as real as any other social construct, but if you don’t like them or need them, you can just take them off. Sometimes it’s hard and it hurts, but I promise you can. Like Hedwig the character, or whoever that is, does. Inevitably, she must pick some new clothes, maybe new pronouns and a new name, too, but she’s not obligated to do that on camera for us. We can’t force her to say “Aha, see? This identity suited me all along!” No. We’re not entitled to know her or define her. She will be doing that for herself, later, as a whole person. What is so scary about the ending, what makes it look like a detransition instead of a synthesis, is that we insist on gendering her naked body as a male head-wig. Wouldn’t she wear something else if that wasn’t who she was? Well, maybe not. Or maybe so, but it’s her decision, not ours. Self-expression is not the Self, it just helps to define and validate the Self. Hedwigs are extremely fucking important for defining and validating the Self!

So, you know, you have to be willing to share.

#hedwig and the angry inch #kill james bond #nonbinary #transgender #deep dives #long post #abigail thorn #alice caldwell-kelly #devon #messy genders #messy is good - messy leaves rooms for lots of interpretation #yours and mine and theirs #you are valid #just - ya know- ow - the orchestra pit is painful #🐸🧠#🐸✏#🐸🎨

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sweetdreamsjeff · 3 months ago

Text

Hole Is A Band

Jason Cohen, Rolling Stone, 24 August 1995

While the Courtney saga continues, Hole prove that a rock & roll band is the sum of its parts

ERIC ERLANDSON was sitting on a beach in Mexico when the headline caught his eye. Hole's guitarist and co-founder was vacationing with his girlfriend, Drew Barrymore, and thus deliberately out of the loop. After nine months of touring, he was on a much-needed break, his last before the summerlong playground of Lollapalooza. He should have known better. Given that Hole's other founding member is one Courtney Love, Erlandson's blissful, worry-free escape simply wasn't to be. The day-old newspaper beckoned him from across the sand. HOLE SINGER ODS, the headline read. That was all he could make out. His thoughts swirled from annoyance to concern to confidence that everything was surely all right before settling on a slightly jaded "Wouldn't it just figure if Courtney died while I was on vacation?"

A quick look at the story revealed, of course, that Love was just fine. (What was initially reported as an overdose was eventually termed "an adverse reaction to prescription medication.") His worst fears put to rest, Erlandson was skimming the rest of the article when it hit him – a development that was somewhat surprising and most definitely pleasing.

It was the nature of that headline: HOLE SINGER ODS. Not COURTNEY LOVE ODS or GRUNGE WIDOW ODS. Nope. HOLE SINGER.

The circumstances might have been strange and unfortunate, but that headline symbolized some kind of progress. Erlandson had quietly awaited this particular Zeitgeist shift for three years, ever since Hole's music and meaning were firmly subsumed by the irresistible Love star force, with its limitless aura of spectacle, tragedy and provocation.

Conventional wisdom has suggested that a random gathering of cabdrivers, grandmothers and Vanity Fair subscribers would be able to peg Courtney Love in a police lineup, no problem. But no one would be able to pick out mug shots of Erlandson, drummer Patty Schemel or bassist Melissa Auf der Maur, let alone figure out what "Hole" is.

Hole provide a definitive answer in this year's Lollapalooza program book. Paying homage to Blondie, their page is emblazoned with the proclamation, in big rococo letters, that hole is a band. A band that definitely intends – in between Love's inevitable rants, stage dives and column inches – to speak very loudly for itself every night on the Lollapalooza stage.

If Hole's popularity were based only on celebrity, they would have sold a lot more records by now. Instead, with promotion, marketing and life as they knew it shattered by the successive deaths of Love's husband and Hole bassist Kristen Pfaff, Live Through This moved only about 100,000 copies – initially.

Then the freak-show aspect subsided, and after Hole added Auf der Maur they went about the business of playing music. The record topped nearly every '94 critics' poll and – despite never charting higher than No. 52 – was certified platinum in April.

That makes Hole, for the moment at least, the best-selling act on the Lollapalooza main stage, and one gets the feeling Hole would be the chief attraction regardless of sales figures – as was expected, a portion of the Lolla crowd is departing before headliners Sonic Youth take the stage.

Certainly, Hole's million-or-so fan base still includes legions of the merely curious as well as loopily obsessive Love worshipers and kids who see the band as only a legacy. The rest of Hole's audience might feel those things, too, but it also relates intensely to the music.

"The most frustrating thing for me is that people view most female artists as this single person," Erlandson says. "The thing is, I know for a fact that we're more of a band, and we've always been more of a band. I don't want to be in a 'backing band,' and Courtney doesn't want that, either. That's not the way we work."

SO ALLOW ME to introduce you to the four members of the band Hole. Except that I can't, because none of them have materialized in the appointed place (an obscure Manhattan hotel) at the appointed time (3 p.m.). When they do turn up, one of them is missing. We were supposed to conduct a joint interview, something that can't be done without Love, who spends her day shopping and napping.

We regroup in the evening, as the band heads over to Electric Lady Studios to do the syndicated radio show Modern Rock Live. Love walks through the hotel lobby, spraying herself with perfume, and is immediately confronted by two fans. She blows them off cold but not because she's in a bad mood or anything (although she is).

At Electric Lady, Love takes off her shoes, asks Auf der Maur to make room on the couch and Schemel to give her a light, then splays out, feet up, with a book (C. David Heymann's Elizabeth Taylor biography) and a pile of magazines. The TV is on, and Love switches channels to Larry King, whose guest this evening is Barbra Streisand, resplendent in the televised wonders of a Vaseline lens and soft-soft light. "Is that the lighting they're going to give me when I do my Barbara Walters interview?" Love asks. As air time approaches, she tells the band she's cranky and tired and doesn't want to answer all the on-air calls, even if they're directed at her.

After the show we're supposed to take another crack at that four-on-one interview, but Love doesn't feel like it. I'm not too concerned, but Erlandson says he really wants me to observe the full band dynamic. I can't help wondering what he's after. Were they planning a pseudo-orchestrated demonstration of band democracy? Was I going to glimpse a legendary Erlandson-Love blowup? Or perhaps it was just a subtle way for the other three members to say, "Look what we have to put up with!"

I get a big dose of the latter feeling the next day at the photo shoot. Love sleeps the whole way to Coney Island, in New York, in the front seat of the van. Her cosmetician tells me, perhaps indiscreetly, that she prefers it that way come make-up time because a conscious Love is a manic and fidgety Love.

As the day wears on she comes alive again, though during one break she manages a fully clothed half-minute doze right on the beach. Between takes she entertains herself by reading the Globe out loud, saying that tabloid stories are almost always exaggerations of something with a grain of truth in it. It's obviously a subject she knows about. Later she apologizes for putting me off. "I don't want you to think I'm a diva," Love says.

Naturally, Love then proceeds to throw a Kathleen Battle-like fit that's impressive in its steadfastness and serenity. It's nearly 10 p.m., and the band is supposed to have a quick dinner before finishing the shoot. But Love says she's returning to her hotel room for a nap first. There's no tantrum, no argument, no drama, just a sense of "this is the way it's going to be," even though everyone tries to dissuade her.

The overall vibe is how one might imagine things are between Prince and his band mates, albeit with less subservience: a group of distinct, individually talented people responding to its erratic, visionary fireball leader with a slightly patronizing blend of wariness and admiration. "Sure, Prince, whatever you say."

This is not a theory that the members of Hole will confirm for me. All of them are outspoken, bright and funny under ordinary circumstances but a lot more guarded when the subject is Love. "I'm used to it by now," Schemel says. "I accept Courtney exactly, everything she does."

Generally speaking, they brush off Love's unabashed Loveness as part and parcel of the ordinary lead-singer trip. But Love's not your average lead singer. It's kind of like four gorillas saying, "Hey, we're just an ordinary quartet of gorillas. Never mind that one of us weighs 800 pounds."

IF YOU WERE ever to visit Eric Erlandson's hotel room, there would be a 50-50 chance your knock would be answered by a certain well-known actress. You might find this prospect amusing. You might even suspect that the actress would be aware of this and answer the door on purpose.

This is not the case. The reason Drew Barrymore lets me in is because Erlandson is in the bathroom. "Hi, I'm Drew," she says politely, if unnecessarily. The O.J. trial is on the television, and the sweeter-than-you'd-ever-suspect couple tell me they were unnerved to discover attorney Barry Scheck on their flight from Los Angeles. They figured that, karmically speaking, the odds of a crash go up with him on board, and he's not someone you want to share recirculated oxygen with in any case.

Barrymore retreats to the bedroom while Erlandson and I talk. Erlandson is tall and affable with dyed-blond hair that hangs in his eyes and a loose, almost nasal Los Angeles-native drawl. One of seven children in a close-knit Catholic family, he actually hails from San Pedro, Calif., the recently reanointed punk-rock Mecca a half-hour south of L.A.

Erlandson's boyhood paper route included the home of Black Flag guitarist Greg Ginn, but Erlandson missed out on his hometown scene at the time, preoccupied as he was with good old '70s rock.

Now 32, a fact he gives away freely but sheepishly, Erlandson was a late bloomer. He attended college at Loyola Marymount, where his father was a dean, and also held down an accounting job at Capitol Records. Then he caught the punk-rock bug. "I started late," Erlandson says. "I didn't really experiment with anything bad for you until I was 27."

What exactly happened when you were 27? Fall in with some kind of "bad girl," didja?

Erlandson laughs. "Yeah, you could say that," he says.

You could, and Love frequently does, announcing from the stage, "Eric was my boyfriend once. He won't admit it 'cause I'm too ugly." She also refers to him as Eric Barrymore. He usually responds to this by giving her the finger, if he responds at all.

Erlandson is a soft-spoken sort, the steely guitarist who's content simply to make his music and hit the town with his (very young, movie-star) girlfriend. Within the band he's known as the Archivist, the guy who keeps track of all the live tapes and jam sessions. On a musical level he's the guy who really gives the songs their crackle. He played most of the guitars on Live Through This, while Love concentrated on lyrics and vocals.

Like Love, Erlandson is a Buddhist, though after she introduced him to the religion he became the more devout practitioner. All in all, unlikely rock-star material, but then, what fame Erlandson has is not entirely his own.

"Yeah, it's ironic," he says. "The two people in my life are like these people that are everywhere. It's pretty sick for me to go to a newsstand." (At the time, Barrymore's Rolling Stone cover was out, as was Love's Vanity Fair.)

Erlandson met Love in 1989 when he answered a free classified ad (no, not the personals – the MUSICIANS WANTED) she'd placed. "She called me up and talked my ear off, and I was like 'Who the hell was that?'" Erlandson recalls. "We met at this coffee shop, and I saw her and I thought, 'Oh, God, oh, no, what am I getting myself into?' She grabbed me and started talking, and she's like 'I know you're the right one!' And I hadn't even opened my mouth yet."

There were many false starts, but what basically kept them together was a love of god-awful clattering. "We were one big, screaming mess," Erlandson says. "I was just like 'OK, this is cool, this is noise.' I was always into the No Wave thing, but it never caught on in L.A. I was like 'Wow, I finally found someone who's into doing this stuff.'"

A pair of singles followed, one of which was on Sub Pop, and then came 1991's Pretty on the Inside, co-produced (with Don Fleming) and heavily influenced by Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon.

What's often forgotten is that Pretty on the Inside was pretty well-received and not a half-bad record. Love's vividly scabrous lyrical tone – part self-immolation, part outwardly directed paroxysm – was well established, and beneath the cruddy goth-punk caterwauling there were hints of New Wave sense and songcraft sensibility.

The band on that record – Love, Erlandson, drummer Caroline Rue and bassist Jill Emery – didn't last very long, but even through the period in which Love was most famous for whom she loved, Hole got it back together. In 1992, Erlandson and Love signed with DGC/Geffen and eventually roped in Patty Schemel.

The first thing I learn about Schemel is that she gets cranky when she hasn't eaten in a while, which is why we head for an Italian restaurant. As she digs into some gnocchi, we chat about supermodels; she's particularly fond of Kristen McMenamy. When Schemel is done eating, New York's new anti-smoking law forces her to step outside.

Auf der Maur is along as well, as is Schemel's girlfriend, Stacey, who in a touching testament to the faith and folly of mixing business with romance also works as Love's assistant. Merely for her platinum hair, Stacey is always mistaken for either Barrymore or Love by people on the street. Schemel recently got her own apartment in Seattle, but during the past year, when the band wasn't on tour, she was living with Stacey at Love's house. The band was almost always on the road, though. And it's a big house.

Schemel's parents were New Yorkers who still have the accents to prove it, but they moved to Marysville, Wash. (about an hour north of Seattle), before she was born. Dad still works for Pacific Bell; Mom was at GTE ("We're a communications family," Schemel says). Schemel took up the drums when she was 11 "because it was something girls didn't do," she says, and to this day her mother still complains that Schemel doesn't project enough good cheer when she plays.

"We played this show, and my mom is up in the VIP balcony hanging over the edge, waving, like 'Smile!'" Schemel says with a laugh. "Flashback, I'm 11 again, playing the school recital. After Unplugged, she called and said, 'Not much smiling, but you sounded great.'"

Otherwise, Schemel says, her parents were always supportive of both her music and her sexuality. "My dad was always instilling that if you can do your art, your passion, and also get paid to do it, that it's a great accomplishment." The rest of Marysville wasn't so accommodating on either front.

"There were all these cowboys, and then there were rockers – no punk rockers," Schemel recalls. "Punk rock was a good place to go where there were other people who felt like me."

Seattle beckoned. The only genuine Rock City scenester in Hole, Schemel ran with such nascent luminaries as Sub Pop honcho Bruce Pavitt, checking out the pre-grunge scene and forming a band called Sybil with her younger brother. They didn't get very far, but Schemel established her reputation as one of the city's best drummers. She would have to be, what with that tattoo of John Bonham's rune (the triple circle) on her arm.

Schemel's only mistake was missing out entirely on the local explosion. When Erlandson and Love tracked her down in 1992, she was living in San Francisco, where she'd moved two years before, "thinking that was the next big city," Schemel says. She tried out for Hole on her 25th birthday and spent the rest of the year learning the old songs and feeling out new ones with Erlandson.

Given the varied psychosexual meanings implicit in Hole's existence, Schemel adds an extra dimension to the mix. Hole have something for everybody, regardless of gender, preference, fetish or taste. Schemel's not on a pedestal about it, but she says it feels good to be a role model in a band that connects so profoundly with its audience.

"It's important," she says. "I'm not out there with that fucking pink flag or anything, but it's good for other people who live somewhere else in some small town who feel freaky about being gay to know that there's other people who are and that it's OK."

MELISSA AUF DER Maur is sitting at the bar of the alterna-hip New York watering hole Max Fish. Melissa Auf der Maur is also on the wall of the Lower East Side hangout. See, a year ago, Melissa Auf der Maur – OK, so a simple she would probably suffice at this point, but what fun would that be? – was just a third-year photography student playing in a Canadian indie-rock band, and tonight one of her many self-portraits is part of an exhibit here.

Auf der Maur was quite happy back in Montreal, too, which is why when Smashing Pumpkin Billy Corgan told her she should try out for Hole, she thought he was out of his mind. This is probably what sealed her fate, at least from Love's point of view.

"Billy was going on about this hot babe who could really play, and I was like 'Yeah, right, you're giving her the girl leeway,' because Billy is sort of a pig," Love says. "But I thought I would try her out, and I pursued her a little bit, and what I thought was hot was that she said no. I thought that was really cool."

"That's a thing to like, I guess," Auf der Maur deadpans. "That's attractive. Yeah, I was just, like, in my space, in my life, with my band. I had been at the New Music Seminar handing out my demo tapes and putting my 7-inch together. I was like 'No way, I've got my life – what, you think I wanna leave my life?'"

Soon enough, however, she realized it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, so she went to Seattle to audition. Two weeks later, she was playing in front of 80,000 people at the 1994 Reading Festival. "I felt nothing," she says. "I was like 'This is just a reflection of what I'm about to do with my life.'"

Only 23 years old, Auf der Maur had already led something of a storybook life before joining Hole. Her mother was never married to her father ("She barely knew the guy") and was living with Frank Zappa (platonically) during the pregnancy. Mother and daughter spent their first two years together in Africa and London, living with a zoologist friend. Dad, meanwhile, is a high-profile Montreal politician and journalist.

"For my entire life I was Nick Auf der Maur's daughter, and all of a sudden he's Melissa Auf der Maur's father," she says. "He gets such a kick out of it, that little kids are reading his name."

If Love is, for better or worse, the aggressive female role model of the band, then Auf der Maur would be the favorite of Hole's Y-chromosome following. Apparently she attracts crushes the way Love attracts headlines. "She's amazing," Schemel marvels. "So many boys, it's like, God." It's not too difficult to figure out why: While Auf der Maur is self-possessed enough to compare herself (convincingly) to Botticelli's Birth of Venus in her self-portraits, she's so graceful and open that there's nothing off-putting about her.

"Melissa's like a well-bred, quiet, pretty version of me at her age," Love says, though it's unclear what exactly would be left of Love with those caveats. "She's a bit of a Heather. Everyone else is a geek. Patty was like a chosen geek, and me and Eric were born geeks, but Melissa's well mannered and ethereal and very spiritual, but she only knows about astrology."

That actually helped Auf der Maur before the audition. "Before I met them, Eric called me up, and he's like 'I have three questions to ask you,'" Auf der Maur says. "One: 'Are you a drug addict?' No, far from it. Two: 'Do you play with a pick?' Yes. And three: 'What sign are you?' Pisces. And Pisces being the most emotionally full sign, it was perfect. I'm definitely drawn to emotionally full situations, so it made sense to me. I've always been told that I'm too sensitive or too aware of other people's things, so I was like 'Well, finally I'm going to be able to use that to my advantage.'"

"IF YOU'RE GONNA sit here and call that a valentine, I'm gonna kick your ass!"

At long last I've been granted my audience with Love, and I've made the innocent mistake of uttering the words Vanity Fair. Apparently she's a bit sensitive to charges that her recent VF cover story was, shall we say, clean – so clean that Love's breasts were likened to "great cakes of soap." I'm told that if I want to see a real valentine, I should reread this magazine's Drew Barrymore piece. "That girl will never need toilet paper again in her fucking life," Love gripes.

It's safe to assume that Love and Erlandson and Barrymore don't spend a lot of Saturday nights together renting movies and popping popcorn. What's irritating, though, is the way Love's self-made feminist iconoclasm leaves room for an old-fashioned cattiness that borders on misogyny, usually directed at people who aren't dissimilar to her – such as Barrymore or her old friend Kat Bjelland from Babes in Toyland or a laundry list of female rock critics who've faced the same sexist groupie stigma Love has.

But everything that Love does is half acting out, half conscious manipulation and half practical joke. (Yeah, that's three halves, but who says Love adds up?) She's astoundingly intelligent, maddeningly contradictory and a total force of nature – it's exhausting just being in a room with her.

"I fake it so real I am beyond fake," goes the oft-quoted lyric from 'Doll Parts', and it's clear the line was meant to resonate at every possible level – as truth, as irony and as a mockery of both herself and her audience. With Love it's a question of how much she can get away with and how much she decides to give away.

Take Jeff Buckley, for instance. Right now you're probably thinking to yourself, "How did Jeff Buckley get into the middle of this Hole story?" Relax – there's an answer to every question, and you can't very well have a Hole story without the presence of at least one cute and slightly famous rocker boy.

Buckley has been on Love's mind a bunch the last couple of days. Supposedly, Auf der Maur met him in Canada and has what Love calls "a minicrush on him. I'm just sort of putting her in her place." So Buckley and Love have been trading phone calls and answering machine messages, trying to get together – friendlylike, don't get any ideas. And most of these phone calls have been made in front of me, the unobtrusive, all-seeing journalist. And Love... well, she's not the type of person who does things in front of the media by accident.

Now we're in the middle of our interview, and time is at a premium because Love intends to catch the Broadway production of Hamlet with her prospective pal. So she calls him two or three more times in front of me to nail down the plans. And then he comes to her hotel room while I'm still there. And then they go to Hamlet, and brilliantly, Love stops to ask directions from – get this – a professional photographer. By intermission – go figure! – the paparazzi are already about.

In the next couple of weeks, the nonexistent couple gets items in USA Today, the New York Post and People. Buckley ends up being thoroughly freaked out by the experience – so much so that he calls me from England to try to clear his name. Buckley is a sensitive sort and more than a little naive. "Who the fuck am I?" he wanted to know. "I'm not like a Dando. I went out for one night, and I'm thrust into this weird, rock-star charade heavy thing." He feels used.

"Y'know," Love had said to me before Buckley came to pick her up that night, "sometimes I would love to just put out my music and have people leave me alone so I could go to see Hamlet with Jeff Buckley, and you might not hear a word about it."

Ordinarily, there's only one response to such an utterance. That response is "Yeah, right." But Love is more complicated than that. She doesn't have to distinguish between the crazy things that happen to her and the crazy things she makes happen. She's perfectly capable of encouraging photographers herself and then feeling put upon when they start taking pictures. Both emotions are genuine to her. Even this article raised her contradictory hackles – she was very concerned that Rolling Stone give the band its due instead of focusing on her, but at the same time, after brushing me off for two days, she fretted that I hadn't spent enough time with her.

Which is why, just like Erlandson, concern was not the only thing running through my head when I heard about Love's airplane OD incident. What actually came to mind was "more publicity." Many people, including some who have worked with the band, say half-jokingly that they no longer pay attention to Love's headlines because they seem so well planned, almost military in their precision.

Plus, during our interview the week before, Love had told me, rather matter-of-factly and contrary to the party line, that "I don't do drugs very often, but I do."

Nevertheless, three days after she left the hospital, Love leaves me a message at home, so I call her up to find out what happened. In a nutshell: "I was on an airplane, and this doctor gave me some pills before I left because I always take pills to fly, to sleep, and then we had a layover, and I just accidentally took too many. I woke up and there were tubes in my nose and things in my mouth, and they thought I was suicidal, and I just fucking went ballistic. They wish."

Maybe it's because of the airplane incident, or maybe it's just the usual, but during this conversation, Love is a bit less brazen about the subject of drugs. "I'm not putting it down, I don't think God necessarily put us here to be sober all the time, but I also don't think he put us here to be junkies," she says.

"Besides, nobody would deal to me. Like, if I wanted to do drugs, I couldn't get them, because I'm me, and it's too much of a risk [for the dealer]. It's not that I want to be dealt to, but I think that four months ago this one evening I did, so, y'know...I can be a little naive about saying, like, what my drug usage is because you're supposed to say that you never do anything, blah blah blah."

"MELISSA AND I were talking – just hypothetically, not real life – and we decided there's not really anybody on Lollapalooza that I wanna fuck," Love says. That will probably come as a relief – just hypothetically, not real life – to Pavement's Stephen Malkmus. But Love is actually making a larger point here. For all its underground hipitude, the show is somewhat lacking in rock & roll star power – star power in this case being that combustible combination of mass popularity and massive sex appeal. (No, Beck does not qualify.)

"Rock is really about dick and testosterone," Love says. "I go see a band, I wanna fuck the guy – that's the way it is; it's always been that way. I love competing with that, but I didn't come in here to, like, change that. So I just feel like [Lollapalooza] is dickless, straight out."

Initially, Hole did not want to do Lollapalooza, but the back-to-basics lineup drew them in. Still, as the tour began, Love had a big problem with this year's slate of bands. "It's all Sonic Youth approved," says Love. "The Sonic Youth butt-kiss nation. Even us – we're Sonic Youth butt-kiss nation because they produced our first record. Still, I would rather be here with Sonic Youth. I don't want to be out there in the world with Billy and Trent and Eddie."

With Lollapalooza, Hole have plenty to prove, the latest trial by fire in a year that's been full of them. When they play and the music is allowed its own space, everything else falls by the wayside. Some of the moshing, screaming fans might respond most strongly to Love's antics, but many others are rapt, coiled and reverent, feeding off the music's introversion and aggression simultaneously. The audience really can look at them and go, "Oh, yeah, Hole is a band."

"We've stayed together because we're good," Love says, "and when we play together, we know we're good."

"As far as Courtney's celebrity compared to our band, there's this gap," Schemel says. "But within this year of playing out and being a band, that gap's been getting shorter. Every time we play a show, people are blown away by the band."

#jeff buckley #jeffbuckley #Hole Is A Band #Jason Cohen #Rolling Stone #24 August 1995 #rolling stone magazine #magazine

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