#I grew up watching him play as Chandler

[comfortableinthesilence]

Waking up to the news about Matthew Perry passing wasn't something I was prepared for today. Fuckklkkkkkk. I grew up watching and loving his role as Chandler in Friends its my go to comfort show still to this day. Now it's going to break my heart anytime I watch it knowing he’s gone.

Rest in peae Matthew Perry, you brought laughter and comfort to me growing up and still do to this day! Your role in Friends is iconic to many and will always be that to me!

[formulaforza]

miss americana & the heartbreak prince

—01. all american girl —word count: 6.4k —warnings: none :) —a/n: this is queued so I'm sound asleep right now but trust when I wake... I will be throwing up about having posted this

It’s nine in the morning on Friday, and the kindergarteners at Robinson Elementary are getting picked up from the gymnasium and taken to their classroom to start their day. It’s nine in the morning on Friday, and their teacher, Chris Elliott, is running four minutes late to the first day of the U.S Grand Prix. Her fingers flatten down stray flyaways, working in tandem with the extra strength hairspray she found in the back of the Walgreens beauty aisle last night. Her makeup is strewn about in chaos atop the stark white marble countertops, a single folded piece of toilet paper in the trash can, remnants of her lipstick kissed onto the fibers. 

She played it safe on the outfit today, still hasn’t been able to pinpoint exactly what the dress code for this race is supposed to be. Her Dad has been no help–he can get away with wearing jeans and a short-sleeve button-up just about anywhere he goes. More is expected from her, though. Three days, three outfits, always walking the line between casual streetwear and Kentucky Derby without a fascinator. She settled for something painfully classic and American, figured a European sport would be eating up the concept of everything being bigger in Texas. Levi’s, a white tank top, and a beat up pair of cowboy boots should do a good enough job at letting anyone curious know she’s authentically American, without screaming out for attention. That’s the goal for the weekend; blend in and keep Dad company. 

Dad, who is not-so patiently tapping his foot against the floor, watching pre-race coverage of the Dixie Vodka 400 on his iPhone 7,  is a guest of honor for Ferrari this weekend. It was a classic Bill Elliott commitment, one he makes and then forgets about until he’s getting sent an email a month ago to remind him. One he makes when he forgets his son is racing the same weekend. That’s how Chris ended up here with him, instead of her Mom or instead of Chase or Chandler. They’re all in Florida for the Cup Series. Well–Chandler isn’t. Chandler’s at her hot-shot job in the big city living her life blissfully away from racing. 

She can count on a single hand the amount of times her dad has missed a Cup Series race in the years since his retirement. Even if he’s moved on from driving the track, racing is in Elliott blood. It comes easier to them than breathing does. Chris won’t be the first to admit it, but she's the NASCAR nepotism equivalent of a Baldwin baby. She’s no Kennedy, the first-families of NASCAR are closer to the Petty’s and the Earnhardt’s, but, you ask a NASCAR fan about the Elliott Clan and you’re sure to get an earful. Champion, Hall-of-Fame inductee father, supergenius transmission and engine mechanic uncles, and a superstar fan-favorite older brother, the Elliott family racing history spans generations of fans.

Never the Danica Patrick-type, Chris has always preferred to watch the races rather than compete in them, but she still grew up at the track and was always up for a trip to visit her dad at the auto-shop. 

“Mums,” her dad says, peeking his head around the corner into the hotel bathroom. It’s a stupid nickname, Mums, Chrysanthemum. She’d roll her eyes if it was anyone but Bill still calling her by it. “We gotta go, darlin’.” Chris nods at him in the mirror, flattens her hands along her thigh and tucks one final strand of her bang behind her ear, and then they’re finally leaving the hotel for the track. 

It’s a strange kind of first for Chris, in that it’s not really a first at all. She’s been to COTA before, multiple times. Hell, she watched in the garage when Chase won the inaugural Cup Series race here in May last season. She’s even been to the U.S Grand Prix before, back when it was still in Indianapolis, when Chris was too young to remember if it was big or if she was just little. She’s used to the crowds, spends almost every weekend with upwards of fifty-thousand people, but this? This is the kind of crowd she can’t fathom being among, and it’s only Friday. If it takes them an hour and a half to get through traffic on a practice day, she can only imagine what the next two mornings have in store for her. 

“No antics today,” Bill tells her in the car. “They’re not like us. Trust me, I know.”

Last time you went to one of these races, you were still a driver, she wants to tell him, but doesn’t. He doesn’t take well to the implication he’s an old man. Walking into the paddock with a yellow pass hung around her neck, FERRARI-GUEST-17 and a picture of the team logo popping up on the screens at the turnstiles, she’s beyond taken back by the pomp and circumstance of it all. She’s barely through the entrance and she’s already spotted half a dozen people who could buy her without it making a dent in their pockets. It’s nothing like walking around a NASCAR track. There isn’t a single Bud Light knight or backs sunburnt into American flags or t-shirts turned muscle tanks. It’s just… rich people. Lots and lots of rich people. 

In the Paddock Club tent, Bill manages to find a couple of his old buddies. Guys he raced with back in the day who’ve turned up for whatever with whoever this weekend. It’s unsurprising, stock car racing is nowhere near as exclusive a club as Formula One. They aren’t any of the guys Chris remembers being a part of her childhood, none of them pseudo-uncles in the way some other drivers were. You’re all grown up, they tell her, note her height and her features and one of them even asks if she’s in college yet. She plays along, pretends she remembers them fondly and that they haven’t been on the recipient list for the annual Elliott family Christmas newsletter for the past thirty or so years. His buddies are much more comfortable talking about Chase, anyways, about his racing and his fiancee and his little boy than they’ve ever been talking about Chris or Chandler. The concept of a quote-en-quote girl dad wasn’t such a thing in the nineties.

Chris makes small talk with one of the wives. They can’t be that far apart in age, she’s definitely of a different generation than her husband. Gross. Chris lets the woman lead the conversation; she talks about the polka dots on her skirt and Chris’ cowboy boots that are, apparently, perfectly authentic. 

They separate from the group of former NASCAR drivers and their child brides within the hour. Bill has to be in Ferrari hospitality by one o’clock for a special meeting. He’s still not sure what he did to get selected for this specific group of people who get to do a hot lap with one of the Ferrari drivers, but he isn’t about to ask any questions that might get him out of it. He sets off to hospitality and Chris sneaks out of the paddock and into the rest of the track. 

There’s only so much to see inside the paddock. Hospitality after hospitality after hospitality, just in different colors with different modern structures with pictures of different cars. She wants to experience the event, not just the rich people who can pay their way into the upper echelon of the pinnacle of motorsport. If she’s going to be on her own for an hour and a half, she might as well be fully and truly on her own. 

She ends up in the beer garden. More specifically, the bar tent. You can’t separate a NASCAR fan from the Natty Light. The pass around her neck gets her into the VIP area of the tent, which… feels like an antithesis of itself.  Her phone buzzes in her back pocket when she’s waiting on her bottle from the bartender. It’s her dad. 

Brad Pitt is here. Crazy. 

She makes quick acquaintances with a couple who looks about her age. She compliments the girl’s denim jacket and then she’s in. The DJ is playing country music with a techno backtrack at the other side of the tent and they all three spend a good fifteen minutes trying to decide if they love or hate the set. “It’s not the worst thing I’ve ever heard,” the guy says. 

“It’s definitely not the best, though,” Chris winces, spots a Ferrari pass hanging with the VIP one around the girlfriend’s neck. “Are you guys here with Ferrari?” She asks. 

“Oh, “ she says, looks down at the pass and fiddles with it for a moment. “Yeah, Will’s a golfer and they invited him for a tour and to do this golf event with ESPN.”

“Oh, that’s sick!” Chris nods. “Have you guys ever been here, or is this your first time?”

“We’ve come every year for…” Will starts, looks to his girlfriend for the rest of his sentence. 

“Four years,” she nods. “What about you?”

“This is my first time,” Chris explains, leaves out the technicalities because she barely cares about them, doesn’t expect a stranger to even half-care. “My dad’s here with Ferrari, and I’m here to babysit my dad.” She laughs. 

The woman nods, makes a quiet ah sound. Will asks for clarification. “You guys lose each other, or something?”

Chris nods. “Or something.”

Charles sees her before he hears her. She appears in his peripheral on the top floor of Ferrari Hospitality, moving swiftly through the groups of strangers with a confidence that makes you think she owns the place. He half-prepares to excuse himself from his current conversation–not that he’s understanding more than forty-percent of the words coming out of this guy’s mouth–to take a photo with the short brunette bee-lining it over to him. 

“Excu–”

“I think I saw Brad Pitt on my way here,” she says, and the man he’s been talking to for fifteen minutes laughs. Oh, he thinks, that’s mortifying. She’s not here to intrude on his conversation and ask for a picture. She’s here with this guy. 

“This is my Chris,” Bill says. 

“Hi,” Chris says. Chris. Chris. Chris is a woman. A woman extending her hand, thin and well manicured with a single ruby ring, for him to shake. “Chris.”

“Charles,” he says, hesitates. “You are not what I was expecting.” 

There wasn’t much he understood from Bill Elliott during their hot lap, not that Bill didn’t talk. Charles just didn’t have the focusing capabilities to drive the car in an entertaining way while also deciphering the thick southern drawl of the man sat in the passenger seat. It was thick, heavy, and sounded like maybe he’d smoked a pack a day for a few years. That, or he was straight-up making up words in a bit that only he was in on. One thing he did understand, though, was the kids’ names. I have three, he’d said, Chandler, Chase, and Chris. He’d assumed all boys. Chandler, Chase, and Christopher. Christian. Cristiano. The last thing he was expecting was a beautiful girl with a firm handshake. 

“You were expecting me?” She asks, and her voice is a million times easier to understand than her father’s. 

“No, no. He just,” He gestures absently to Bill. Chris doesn’t break eye contact. She has wonderful eyes. “I thought Chandler, Chase, and Chris are three brothers.”

“Oh,” She laughs like it’s not even close to the first time she’s had to follow behind her dad and correct the miscommunication, and a piece of her bangs falls loose from its tucked position behind her ear. She fixes it without thought. “Well, you’re one for three.” 

She asks Bill about the hot lap, asks if he had fun and he laughs. They’re very laugh-oriented people, he’s noticed. Laughy and almost intimidatingly good at holding eye contact. He’d always heard Americans had an issue with eye contact, and if that really is the case, these two practice their active-listening skills enough for the rest of the country. Their kindness is in their expressions, soft eyes and small smiles that keep you from feeling like an intrusion on the conversation. He notes all of his findings internally, categorizes them together as if he’s spent the last ten minutes looking at anyone but her. 

She’s horrendously his type. It’s painfully apparent with every passing moment. The hair and the face and the build and the smile. Just, God.

“Why didn’t you do one?” He asks, “A lap?”

“The need-for-speed bug skipped the women in my family, unfortunately.” She tucks her hair again. He wonders if she’s growing it out or if she always keeps it at such a length that it’s just too short to stay where she wants it to. 

“We could go slow,” he offers and she chuckles, closing her eyes long enough to roll them without him actually seeing them roll. 

“I don’t believe you.”

“It’ll be fun, I promise.” He’s never been good at flirting, always found it off-putting in the beginning, trying to walk the line between what one person finds fun and another person finds horribly uncomfortable. Once the dust settles, he can manage, but making those first few moves? He might as well be a deer in headlights. Semi-truck headlights. 

“I don’t know,” she says, drags out the vowel sounds and he’s oblivious to whether or not she can tell he’s only making this offer as a chance to spend more time with her. He’ll get an earful for it, no doubt, but if she agrees it’ll be worth it. Bill chimes in, eggs her on with a guilt trip. You should do it, don’t be a party-pooper. Charles wonders if Bill can tell he’s flirting with his daughter. Probably not, he’d bet. “Okay,” she says, and his stomach does a celebratory flip. Before he can say anything more, Mia is pulling him off somewhere. He hadn’t even seen her coming, but he fills her in on the walk.

“Domani c'è un'aggiunta al programma dei giri veloci.” There’s an addition to the hot laps schedule tomorrow, he says. Mia glares at him and he pretends not to notice, flashes her a toothy-grin as an unapologetic apology. 

When she’d agreed to do a hot lap with the gorgeous racing driver standing a foot away from her, she assumed it would be forgotten the moment he stepped away from the conversation. She never would have agreed to it if she actually thought it was going to happen. Chris was sorely mistaken though, when later that afternoon, a man dressed head-to-toe in Ferrari red finds her to gather her information. 1:10, he tells her through a thick Italian accent, be in hospitality at 1:10. 

It was wonderful, really. Perfect, fantastic, great, legendary. This is an amazing opportunity. She isn’t going to regret agreeing to this, no chance. Even for the queen of optimism, this one is hard to put a positive spin on. 

There is no underestimating just how much Chris hates going fast. She’s never liked it, spent the majority of her childhood getting carsick in a vehicle maxing out at forty miles an hour. Her sister and brother used to think she was faking it just so she could always ride shotgun. She’s not even allowed to drive the car if she’s with her dad or her brother because they can’t bear it. To her, a speed limit is just that, a limit. To everyone else, it’s a minimum. 

Her only hope is that she doesn’t vomit all over an expensive supercar at 1:10 tomorrow afternoon, or worse–the cute guy driving the car. 

In the meantime, she can distract herself with the Green Day performance and remind herself that only so much can happen in five minutes. Anyone can survive five minutes. 

– – –

They eat the continental breakfast at the hotel the next morning. Bill has pancakes and Chris has cereal because, as she’ll tell anyone, there’s just something about cereal from a plastic container. She’s also three coffees ahead of where she was this time the day before, all of her nerves personifying themselves as desperation for caffeine. She’s responding to a work email on her phone while Bill has a call with Chase. 

Somewhere on a race track in Florida, Chase is calling between practice and qualifying sessions. They talk every day during a race weekend–Bill and Chase–and it’s almost never about racing. Her dad might drop an occasional that’s not what I would’ve done or a well, that looked like fun, but that’s usually the end of race-talk. They used to fight like cats and dogs about driving when Chase was younger, so much so that Chris’ mom banned them from talking about racing inside the house for three straight years. The who of them are better now, now that Bill’s been able to let Chase find his own way and go through his own racing journey. 

“Your sister is doing a Hot Lap today,” Bill says, and Chris can hear Chase’s laughter from the muffled speaker. 

Bill and Chris are driven to the track on Saturday because traffic is so bad. It’s hot and windy and Chris has her window rolled down the entire drive, her fingers dancing through the dry air. She’s always loved the heat, the sun shining down on her skin, kissing her in a million different places all at the same time. She loves the heat, and the heat loves her. 

The morning flies by. They start the day with a tour of the Ferrari garage, where they’re introduced, or re-introduced, to their drivers. They end up with a couple other very important people hunched over Charles’ car while he explains how much pressure needs to be applied to the brake pedal for the car to actually brake. Bill eats the semantics up, cars and their mechanics run thick in his blood, braided deeply into his DNA. Chris, however, has always enjoyed the more delicate things in life; the pink hair bows and the dollar store makeup kits and spinning herself dizzy in a flowy summer dress. She never spent exorbitant amounts of time at Dad’s engine shop or Grandpa’s Ford Dealership, it just wasn’t in her lane of interests. She sips another coffee–her fifth of the day–and listens attentively to Charles talk, bites her smile at his wild gesticulations. He’d make a good kindergarten teacher, she thinks, with his huge personality. 

When the whole tour group is being shuffled out of the garage to be replaced by a new set of prying eyes, Charles makes a passing comment. See you later for the world’s slowest hot lap, he remarked, put his hand on her shoulder and gave it a soft squeeze as he moved past her. 

She doesn’t know why, but she’d convinced herself that it wouldn’t actually be him she would be doing the lap with. It was qualifying day, after all. Surely, he had about a million and one better things to be doing than driving a random girl around a track a few times. She figured it would be a driver, but not one of the drivers. 

After lunch, she makes her way back to Ferrari hospitality, to where she was told to be waiting at 1:10. She’s the only person who looks like they’re here on instruction. Nobody else is nervously picking at their cuticles or vibrating in place as a reaction to their seven coffees that morning.

She spent the night before grilling her dad about his experience, forcing him to give her a moment-by-moment breakdown of everything he remembered happening, from the safety briefing to the conversation afterwards. But, when it came time for Chris to actually do hers, there was no safety briefing warning her about the million different ways she could die. Instead, the same man who’d tracked her down the day before escorted her from the top floor of hospitality to the bottom, out the back into what she can best compare to an alleyway, and then to a red supercharged Ferrari. 

Charles is there, talking to what appears to be a personal photographer and another man dressed in Ferrari garb. She re-introduces herself for a third time in twenty four hours. “I know your name, Chris,” Charles says, smiles and shakes her hand anyway. She doesn’t like the way her brain reacts to him saying her name like it belongs on his lips. 

“Duh,” she laughs, “sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

“Right,” she nods. “Yeah, sorry.” Charles laughs out a sigh, cocks his head and smiles. Chris bites her tongue not to apologize again. It’s a reflex. She puffs out her laugh and shrugs. 

If she manages to make it out of these couple laps with her life and the contents of her stomach still intact, she’s sure to still look like a clown–a fact she realizes as she pulls the tight helmet over her head. She’s worn racing helmets a handful of times, but it’s not muscle memory to her in the way it is to him. It takes her a minute to tighten the chin strap just right and despite his genuine offer to help her, Chris turns him down and blindly works her fingers under her neck until it’s just right. 

“Why don’t you get a fun Hot Laps helmet?” She asks while she fights with the strap. 

Charles knocks on the side of his helmet with his knuckle. “Custom fit. Safety reasons.”

Chris knows, she was just messing with him. She nods like she never could’ve guessed that was the reason. “My safety doesn’t matter?” She comments, pulls the strap tight for the final time. 

“You think I’m going to crash?”

She shrugs. “Maybe.”

“I would never crash with Chris Elliott in the car.” There he goes again, saying her name all annoyingly French and nice and easy. 

“Whatever,” she says, turns away so he can’t see her squished cheeks flush pink against the polyester. He opens the passenger side door for her, knocks his knuckle on her helmet this time, and horribly mocks both her words and accent before shutting the door behind her. 

Chris has her seatbelt buckled before he can get around the front of the car and into his seat. Her leg bounces anxiously against the floor mat. Charles starts the car and moves to shift into drive, but stops short. “Are you scared?” he asks, and in a moment of vulnerable honesty, she nods. She’s more than scared. She’s terrified, and despite his brief attempt to reassure her that it’s going to be fun, her leg is still bouncing when they peel off from the group already awaiting his return. 

A hot lap, she’d come to learn in the last day or so, would be more accurately referred to as hot laps–plural, multiple, several. Three, to be exact. One out lap, one push lap, and one cool down lap. Three laps. Hot laps. They should really start referring to it as a plural. 

The best thing she can compare it to is a roller coaster. The turns share the feeling you get at the tipping point, right before your body thinks you’re free falling. Her stomach is left behind three turns back and it never really catches up to the car once they start. The straights are like that first hill, fast and crazy in a way that pulls from her lips screams she hears before she consciously chooses to release. It’s like a roller coaster, if the person sitting next to you is completely unaffected by the ride and spends the entire time trying to carry out a conversation with you between your screams and their giggles. It’s like a roller coaster, if the cart never leaves the ground. 

On the cool down lap, when they’re going at a speed that allows Chris to pick up her soul when they drive through turn four, he asks her if she’s single. It comes at her from left field. 

“Are you flirting with me?”

He laughs, takes a hand off the wheel and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Yes!”

“Oh,” she says softly. If he notices the surprise in her tone, he doesn’t mention it. “I am.” 

“Can I get your number?” She swears that his fingers are shakier than before as they hover over the paddle shift. They were sure-footed just minutes earlier, she’s sure of it. She’s sure of it, but there’s no way it’s a genuine observation. There’s no way she’s making him nervous. 

She laughs, because what on God’s green Earth is a European Formula One driver going to do with a small town American girl’s phone number? 

“I’m not abandoning my dad for a hookup,” she says, and he rolls his eyes, repeats the question. “Why do you want it?”

“Because, Chris Elliott,” she wants to scrape the way he says her name out of his voice box and pin it in a scrapbook. It’s like a tick, the way it burrows into her skin. Nobody should be allowed to make her name sound like that. “You are a very beautiful girl, and when a guy sees a beautiful girl, they act like an idiot and ask for her number.” 

“Oh, my God,” she giggles, shakes her head and looks out the window like it might ground her, or like it might reveal that she really is in some fever dream state and none of this is real. She’s not even in Texas, maybe. That’s how insane this whole conversation is to her. 

“Too cheesy?” He asks, grimaces. She shakes her head, holds her hand out for his phone. 

“Just cheesy enough.”

When they get back to where they started, someone asks Chris if she’d had a good time. She nods, flattens down the static-electricity charged flyaways on her head and tells them yes, even if she’ll be just a little bit nauseous for the rest of the day. It’s not a lie, either, she did have fun. She was scared out of her mind, but in a way that makes her happy she did it. 

They pose for a photo together in front of the car, the picture snapped by the only guy with a camera around his neck, the only one besides Chris not covered head to toe in Ferrari branding. When they pose, Charles’ arm wraps around her lower back and, almost like he remembers himself in the middle of the action, his hand doesn’t close around her side. Instead, it hovers just beyond her body, open and stiff and flat. How gentlemanly. “Good luck tomorrow,” she says.

He nods his thanks, “I hope I see you around this weekend,” he adds, and then they go their separate ways. Good thing, too, because she’s still blushing over it when she gets back to her dad in the Champion’s club. Bill is too distracted by the live feed on Chase’s qualifying laps on his tiny phone screen to notice Chris’ presence, much less the coloring of her cheeks. He qualifies third and they celebrate quietly with drinks from the bar and FP3 on the big screens. 

They stumble into more NASCAR old-timers while in the Champion’s Club and Chris spends the time fifth-wheeling their conversations about Chase and watching the second half of qualifying on one of the TVs. 

She doesn’t really understand the format of the weekend. In theory, she understands the basics, didn’t have to read Formula One for Dummies on the plane ride over, but the intricacies of it are beyond her. In NASCAR, drivers are split into two groups and then are only given, at max, two laps to set their qualifying times. It varies depending on the track that weekend, but it always hits some of the same points. From what she can gather from the low-volume televisions mounted on every surface around her, F1 is definitely different. 

They head back to the hotel directly after qualifying to ‘beat the traffic’ which is code for Chris is still nauseous and they’re both feeling a little too heat exhausted. They stop for dinner on the way back, at a barbeque place right by their hotel. Bill orders the chopped brisket with potato salad and Chris gets the pulled pork sandwich with a tomato zucchini salad. 

Chris has been really busy with work, with settling into the new routine with her new group of students, and Bill wants to hear all about it. She always struggles in September and October, feels inadequate every time the other teachers find their footing with their new class weeks before she does. It’s the first time alotta ‘em have been in a school, Bill reminds her and she shrugs it off, tries to find something more upbeat to talk about. 

Chris and Bill have really gotten close over the past couple years. Growing up, she and her sister Chandler were massive daddy’s girls, had him wrapped around their little fingers from the moment they came into the world. But, when Chase started to really take racing seriously, the girls lost a lot of their dad to their brother and spent the majority, if not all, of their time with their Mom. As a teenager, Chris did what all sixteen year old girls do and rebelled against any and every rule in the book. While Chandler was touring colleges and getting 1550s on her SAT and singing in the church choir, Chris had other plans. Whether it was stubbornly refusing to clean her half of the shared room with her big sister, ratting Chase out for coming home at 2am drunk, or sneaking out of the second-story window to go out with her all-too-old boyfriend, she tested all of the waters. It wasn’t until college, until she moved away to Athens and was out of the house for the first time in her life that she realized just how important family was to her. She’s been attempting to make up for lost time since. 

That night when she plugs her phone into the charger and shuts it off for the night, she realizes she’d been half expecting a late night text from Charles. It didn’t come, and disappointed isn’t the right word for the tiny little pit in her stomach because she wasn’t really expecting anything to come from typing her number into his contacts.  It’s not disappointment, it’s something closer to acceptance or rejection, maybe. It’s not like he would’ve been searching out anything but a hookup, anyways, and Chris made it perfectly clear that she wasn’t into that idea. 

She would never hear from him again, and that’s how it should be. The whole interaction turning into anything but a story she can tell in a couple months when she’s drunk would be entirely too complicated of an outcome. 

She doesn’t let herself think about it any longer, leaves her phone face down on the side table and tucks herself into bed. 

– – –

Traffic on race day is true-crime inducing. They’re driven, again, escorted and still spend an hour and a half in the backseat of an SUV. Bill and Chris watch from the VIP stands and Chris has never seen anything like this, especially not at COTA. Even Talladega and Daytona barely hold a candle to this spectacle. 

If she has one critique, it’s that F1 should really hire some B-List at best celebrity to scream drivers, start your engines! At the start of the race like they do in NASCAR. It would really add some flare, she thinks. 

She and Bill share Chris’ airpods, one in each of their ears listening to the NASCAR broadcast. Charles starts twelfth, for whatever reason. She can’t be bothered to look into it, knows it’ll probably be a penalty she doesn’t understand and she’ll be tumbling down a rabbit hole before she knows what’s happened to her. 

While it’s not Chase’s best race–he finishes fourteenth with a single sigh from Bill–Charles puts on a show, fights his tires all the way up into third. 

They watch the podium celebrations on the TV screens and nobody looks happy to be up there. They look miserable, almost, and she understands it to an extent. It’s hard to have energy after a race, she’s witnessed it first hand more times than she can count. It’s hard, especially at the end of the season. Burn-out is real, but still. They look bored. She didn’t know spraying champagne could look so tired. 

Bill grumpily flies them home to Georgia late Sunday night. He’d wanted to wait until Monday morning, after all the billionaires and their super-jets take off right after the race, but Chris refused to miss another day of work this early in the school year, not when she was already going to be missing time in December for her brother’s wedding. 

Bill’s been flying planes since before any of his kids were born. His most recent purchase is a Cessna Conquest II that he uses to fly the family around for short distances. In another gene that skipped the females in the family, Chandler, Chris, and their mom all prefer to be passengers. Chase, however, followed in Dad’s footsteps once more in becoming an avid aviation fan. 

By the time they take off, any thought Chris had of getting a text from Charles has faded far into obscurity. He’d probably gotten dozens of numbers from girls this weekend. He was probably at a club somewhere right now still pulling women. Women more his type, probably. He seems like he’d be more into the refined type, the girls without the ‘cheap’ accents who were all worldly and spoke seventeen languages fluently and had long legs that carried them down runways across Europe every other weekend. 

Little southern girls get texts from little southern boys, that’s how it goes. That's how it’s always gone, and Chris is beyond naive to think anything different for even a moment. 

She grades papers on the flight home. Purple pen, because she thinks that color is fun and red is too cruel to grade with. Puffy stickers for everyone, even the kids who aren’t anywhere near the right track because she doesn’t want anyone to feel less than just because they struggle a bit more. Chris has always been a firm believer that the student is never the problem. If someone isn’t learning what she’s teaching, she needs to adjust the way she teaches it to cater to their learning style. 

It’s her job to teach them, not their job to learn. 

Joris has been laughing at Charles from the hotel room armchair for fifteen minutes now, beyond entertained by his best friend’s restless pacing, providing absolutely zero aid to his current predicament. This act has been going on for some time now. Charles, pacing for five minutes before pulling out his phone and typing up an opening message to Chris. Each time, he starts to read it out to Joris and then stops himself short, deletes it, and paces for five more minutes. 

Hey, Chris. This is Ch–no, that’s stupid. 

Sorry it took me a minute to text–absolutely not. 

What’s up? It’s Charles, how–someone should just stop him from speaking to women all together. 

There’s half a dozen renditions before Joris breaks. “Mate? What is your problem?” He finally asks. “It’s just a girl.”

“I know,” Charles sighs, “I know.”

“Then why can’t you send her a text?”

“Because.” He doesn’t really know why he can’t land on a message, why everything he types sounds entirely too casual or formal or nothing at all like what he would say to another human being. This isn’t a problem that he’s used to having. It’s the in-person flirting that fucks him up, not the texts and DMs and comments. She was just… he doesn’t know what she was. She was just. End of sentence. 

It’s no help that he doesn’t know American texting culture, unfamiliar with how long he’s supposed to wait to send a message or what he’s supposed to say in the opening text. 

“Here,” Joris says, holds his hand out for the phone. “I’ve got the perfect text.”

“Don’t send it,” Charles warns, but passes the phone to his friend. 

“I… won’t,” Joris says slowly, struggling to multi-task. He doesn’t type for more than a few seconds and then hands the phone back to Charles, with the message already sent. Charles’ look of sheer panic is met with a smile and a chef’s kiss from Joris. 

She turns her phone off while Bill is shutting the plane engine down in the hangar. Because of his love of aviation, Bill had bought some land out in the woods a couple decades ago and turned it into the family’s private airstrip for their planes.  Elliott Field, they coined it, stored all their extra vehicles out on the property. She slips it into her back pocket as her and Bill disembark and lock up the place, and the entire time she can feel it vibrating, the notifications from the hour and a half flight catching up now that she’s on the ground again. 

It’s not until she’s in her car that she checks them, pulls her phone out to plug it into the aux and play some music for the drive back to her house. Right at the top of the dozens of notifications is a message from an unknown number with an unfamiliar area code. 

[one unread message] the notification reads. She unlocks her phone to check the message. 

She closes the messages app on her phone and opens up Spotify, shuffles her favorite playlist. She doesn’t reply to his text, doesn’t know if she wants to or even what she might say back. She’s sleepy, more than ready for bed after a long weekend in the sun, excited to be back with her students bright and early tomorrow morning. 

The text from the cute race car driver can wait for another day. An issue for tomorrow, maybe. 

masterlist next chapter>

[baddiecarl]

Streamer! Carl Grimes x Streamer! reader

Like Chandler Riggs, Carl Grimes in a normal world would also totally be a streamer. Here’s a peek into what it might be like to be his streamer crush!  (Also I’m pushing a slight resident evil agenda in this, I grew up watching my dad and brother play them and waited with bated breath to actually be able to play them myself!  It’s my favorite video game series of all time if you can’t tell lol)

For maximum enjoyment, please watch the clip I put right under this because I referenced it in this story!

  “Do I know who (your screen name) is?”  Carl says, reading his chat.  “No, I’ve never heard of them, gimme a second.”  He picks his phone up off his desk and types the name into google, coming up with endless pictures of you playing video games, doing cooking and baking streams, making art, reacting to the memes people made for you, all the things your streams are widely loved for.  Realizing he was quiet for longer than he probably should’ve been, he speaks up. “Oh yeah I’ve seen her before, she does awesome resident evil speedruns! I didn’t recognize the name at first, but yeah, I know who she is!”  

“Omg he’s blushing!”

“Is bro blushing rn?”

“Looks like no one’s immune to the charms of (y/s/n) lmfao”

  The teasing comments poured in while Carl did his best to play it cool and laugh them off, “yeah she’s pretty cute,” he admits through a soft smile as he focuses on the game he was streaming before he looked you up.  Teasing chats trickled in every once in a while, but for the most part, the topic was changed completely and by the time the stream was over he had almost forgotten about the situation entirely. 

  Little did he know that the next day your viewers would also ask you if you knew Carl.  Having been a streamer for quite some time you’ve seen a lot of clips of other streamers and you immediately recognized the name Carl.  “Oh my god, is that the dude who sucks at fall guys?”  You joked as you pulled up the clip of him failing epically at fall guys. “If you get eliminated at this part then you don’t deserve a single win,” he said, seconds before getting eliminated on the exact part he was referring to.  “He’s fucking hilarious,” you remarked as you smiled while you watched the video.  Well, that didn’t go unnoticed by any of your viewers either.

“She’s straight up giggling and kicking her feet lol”

“He called you cute on his stream yesterday”

“He called you cute on his stream yesterday”

  Man, did your fans come in clutch or what?  Returning to your game, you saved that bit of information for later, knowing that it probably got clipped and posted by now.  After you finished up your game and ended the stream you finally got to look up the clip.  You couldn’t help but laugh while you watched him read the comments and grow more and more red with each one that came in.  “Yeah, she’s pretty cute.”  THERE IT IS! HE ACTUALLY SAID IT!!  This was all you needed to want to reach out. 

  A couple of days later, Carl was streaming again as usual when he felt his phone vibrate.  A DM from…(y/s/n)??  Holy shit, okay, play it cool.  He tried to hide his shock and excitement as he opened the message but still, a goofy smile crept onto his face while he read it.  

“Hey, Carl!  It’s come to my attention that we have quite a bit of an overlapping fanbase so I thought it’d be a great idea to play a game together sometime!  Don’t worry, I won’t ask you to play fall guys ;)”

  By the time he was done reading your message, the grin had broken out into a full-blown smile and he hid his nervous and excited laughing behind his hand.  To no avail, his viewers saw this immediately and began teasing him, asking if (y/s/n) was making him blush again.  “No guys, that’s not it, don’t worry about it,” he said, still trying to hide his bashfulness.  Yet, again clocked by his fans, they knew he was lying.  But they weren't the only ones who knew he wasn't telling the truth, because you had joined the stream just before you sent your message.  You wanted to see him blush just by the sheer mention of you one more time, so you arranged to send it while he was streaming.  You were overjoyed to see him pick up his phone, and judging by his reaction you knew he had to have read it. 

He’s quiet for a minute while he types on his phone and you watch the text bubble pop up on your phone.

“I’ve noticed the same thing haha! I think that’d be awesome, but for the record, we will be playing fall guys so I can prove I’m not ‘the guy who sucks at fall guys’”

  You grinned at his message, not failing to see the humor in the fact that he did the exact thing you did, looking up the clip from your stream where the chat had brought him up.  You respond to his message simply and sweetly.

 “Fair enough! I get to pick the game we play next time we do it then!” 

“Sounds like a deal!”  Carl replies, his heart skipping a beat at the implication of you wanting to do a stream with him more than once.  Carl’s voice coming from your computer removes your attention from your phone. “Alright sorry about the pause there guys, I had a very important message to respond to,”  he says, refocusing on his game all while he's still being teased for his very obvious change in behavior since his phone buzzed.  Giggling at him regarding your message as very important, you sat back and watched him play his game, cracking up at the jokes he made.  After he wraps up his stream, you’re left sitting at your computer, alone with your thoughts and they’re all about Carl.  

  About three minutes into zoning out, you're startled by the buzzing of your phone.  You unlock your phone to see another DM from Carl. 

“Do you think I could have your discord or maybe your phone number if you don't have that? I just thought it might be easier to communicate that way if we’re going to be doing streams together.”  How does his nervous dorky voice translate so well through text?  It’s almost like you could hear him stammering over asking for your phone number.  Doing your best to reassure him, you reply: “I do have discord! But you can have my number too!  It’s ***-***-****!”

“Thanks (y/n), I’m really excited about collabing with you!  I was kinda shocked to see that you messaged me, even though I’m pretty sure this was orchestrated by our followers lol”

What can you say?  Your followers really do come in clutch!

Me again! I hope you guys like this while you wait on the next part of Carl Grimes x Dhampir! reader! Also I hope you enjoyed that clip of Chandler sucking at fall guys, I really wanted to include that in this fic lol

[grayox27]

Dating the men in F.R.I.E.N.D.S.🍬(gn!reader)

Just some simple hc’s lol

Joey Tribbiani

- one second you’re just having a sip of coffee, the next there’s this handsome man leaning on your table with a ‘how you doin?’

-most people would’ve found this unattractive, but you found it endearing.

- for your first date, he takes you out to a fancy restaurant

- bold is Joey’s middle name

- while on the outside he is confident, he’s actually quite insecure on the inside. You find yourself constantly reassuring him on multiple topics.

- his love language is words of affirmation, so he calls you many cheesy nicknames all the time. In fact, you rarely ever hear him call you by your name.

- first kiss:

You held your breath as Joey nervously picked up the phone.

“Is this Mr.Tribbiani?”

“Yeah, that’s me” Joey says, not letting his nerves change his tone, but you could read it all over his face.

“We’ve decided that you are a perfect fit for the role” They announced.

Joey put the phone down with a shout, “I MADE IT!” He said, rubbing his hands together.

“Jo, I’m so proud of you!” You said with a smile. He ran over without thinking, crashing his lips to yours.

He awkwardly pulled away, scratching at his neck “Sor-“ before he could even finish his sentence, you had pulled him by the collar and reconnected your lips.

“Mr.Tribbiani? Hello?” The phone sounded. “Oh shoot” He mumbled, rushing over to the phone.

Chandler Bing

- you would have to ask him out first

- you had bravely approached him while he was working, and asked him out. He gave you a look of surprise before accepting.

- he is insecure like Joey, but he’s more outward with it.

- for your first date, you guys go out to see a movie

- his love language is acts of service, one time you mentioned that you missed cereal, and the next day, it was on your counter

- first kiss:

You returned to your apartment with Chandler at your heels late at night. He insisted that he walk you to your door.

“Tonight was wonderful” You said, giving a genuine smile. “Yeah…it really was” He says, looking anywhere but your face.

The two of you kind of awkwardly stood around, Chandler shifting on his heels. You grew tired of the silence and leaned in slowly, giving him the opportunity to back out.

He let out a shaky sigh. “Does my breath smell bad?” He whispers, practically talking against your lips. You let out a small chuckle, “No”. Your lips finally connect.

“That was SO cheesy!” Monica shouted with a laugh, which earned her an elbow to her ribs. “Shut up, I think it’s sweet!” Rachel countered.

Chandler pulled away from you with a shy smile, his ears burning red. “I’ll see you tomorrow” You laughed, watching him scuttle away.

Ross Geller

- After some hyping from Joey, he asked you out

- he tried to ‘play it cool’ but it wasn’t long before he started to share facts

- for your first date, he actually took you Roa museum and geeked out

- it started to become a competition between the two of you to see who knew more

- he lends you his books all the time

- his love language is literally just info sharing. It excites him because you’re one of the only people who actually let him go on

-first kiss:

“Did you know that kissing could lower your blood pressure? It can even burn a few calories, in extreme make out sessions of course, but it’s still cool” Ross rambled on.

“Wanna test that?” You pipe up.

“It can even reduce plaque build up because when you’re kissing more saliva-… what?” He cuts himself off, turning beet red.

You moved closer to him, “I said, do you want to test that?” You whispered, keeping eye contact. “O-okay” Ross says with a shy smile, and the two of you shared a very sweet kiss.

[prismasnotebook]

Omg thank you for writing Nolan stuff he's so underrated 🥲 could you do more fluff like the first one you did (i love it when Karl is teasing him ) if u could use she/they pronouns that would be nice but im fine with any ❤❤ thanks

Pretty Little Distractions - Nolan Hansen

Summary: slightly nervous reader has to be the one to work up a little nerve if her and Nolan are ever going to work.

CW: she/they reader, lil cheesy, lil wattpaddy

“Nolan,” You asked curiously as you white balanced your camera. “Aren’t you supposed to be doing something right now?”

“I am doing something, I’m making sure your doing your job,” he responded and you rolled your eyes. He’d been watching you set up the camera for a couple a minute or two and you couldn't lie

“Well, shouldn’t you be doing you job,” you asked, double checking that your camera was good by getting Nolan in the shot. “You know what you get paid for.”

“Well, it’s what you should be getting paid for,” he said and you furrowed your eyebrows looking up from the camera screen to Nolan.

“What?”

“You should be getting paid to be in front of the camera.”

“Oh, so i can embarrass myself indefinitely on film.”

“Because, you’re so pretty it doesn’t make since for you to be behind it,” he answered and you quickly shifted your gaze back to the camera screen as you felt the heat rush to you face. You couldn’t help but smile as you saw the red lightly tinting Nolan’s face though.

“You really think so,” you asked pretending to adjust the camera’s settings some more, and Nolan’s smile widened.

“Of course. You’re the prettiest person here,” he said and you heard a dramatic gasp before turning to see Chandler wave you off like it was the most offensive.

“No, Chandler, buddy,” Nolan feigned sympathy with a small laugh before Chandler gave a smile.

“Karl said that you’re a simp and need to stop flirting and get back in your spot, so he can go golfing later,” Chandler said and Nolan sputtered a bunch a sad defense against him being a simp as he followed Chandler and you smiled to yourself. Before Jimmy hollered for and waved you down.

Oddly enough you were right back with Nolan and Karl, and half of you knew it was going to go terribly, mostly because the same series of events happened everytime you had to film for Nolan.

He started out strong, his commentary was good, he ended up giving you too much attention, you're filming became a little sloppy as you grew increasingly nervous at the amount of attention he was giving, Karl made a teasing joke to many, you both look like tomatoes, and you're having to ask Tareq to trade spots with you if possible.

And, that's exactly how it was going this time, and you and Tareq we're going to have to be quick about it if you weren't going to miss something important, but you didn't get out without catching Nolan’s words to Karl’s.

“This happens everytime, I think she knows I like her, but they keep avoiding me. I just want them to like me. What am I doing wrong?”

You're heart broke a little at the statement and the tone in his voice, but you didn't have time to stop and tell him any different, and you didn't see him again until the end of the night when everyone was closing the warehouse, and the fact that he was with Karl and Jimmy made you want to die little.

“Hey, uh Nolan,” you hollered and all three of the paused making you want to shrivel up some. “I- can we talk?”

He gave Karl a look and Karl just platted his back before moving onto conversation with Jimmy as Nolan back tracked to you.

“Look, if I’m- if you don't want me hanging around, I uh get it. I don't want to be a distraction or anything,” he said trying to play it off with a soft laugh as he let his eye wander elsewhere.

You debated it for a split second before leaning to press a kiss to his cheek and he quickly looked back at you as you pulled away, “I think that you're a lovely distraction. And, I also think that you're lovely to be around in general. I am just easily flustered, and I didn't want to embarrass myself in case it was super obvious.”

“So, when you kept swapping places with Tareq-”

“-I just didn't want to make myself look dumb in front of you. I think you're cute and funny, and really sweet. I just- I don't know,” I admitted shrugging. “I just like being around you a little too much I guess.”

“Really,” he asked and you nodded as you looked at him, his eyes widened ever so slightly.

“Hopefully I’m not reading this wrong, but do you want to go bowling or something tomorrow night. I mean it doesn't have to be bowling it could be anything you like.”

“Bowling sounds good. Meet you here?”

[humorisstoredinthetits]

Veronica's Ideology & Heather McNamara

This is a bit different than what I normally post, but this is something that I've been thinking about for awhile. This isn't gonna be super in-depth or anything its just something I've noticed.

ALSO TRIGGER WARNING FOR TALK OF S*ICIDE, I'm gonna be talking about what happens with Mac after Shine A Light Reprise so if that triggers you, don't read this

So we know that Veronica strongly believes that all people have the ability to be good and change, hell its the first thing that she tells the audience;

[VERONICA, spoken] September 1st, 1989 Dear Diary: I believe I'm a good person. You know, I think that there's good in everyone

Like before her name is ever said on stage (Her name isn't actually stated until after Fleming leaves the bathroom in Beautiful, which is super weird), Veronica tells us exactly how she sees other people and what she believes about them. Her views come down to that people were once good, are no longer good, but still have the ability to change and become good once again. These views come into play when dealing with JD, because Veronica believes that she can fix him. This is in contrast with JD's ideology, who believes that almost everyone is beyond saving and should be removed from the equation all together, and this contrast is what ultimately drives a wedge between them and causes JD to go off the deep end and try to kill everyone.

Now we all know this, its all obvious if you've watched the musical or even listened to the recording, but I wanted to get into if her ideology on people is true or not.

There are 7 major characters in Heathers, including Veronica herself, and I'm going to go through each of them and compare them to Veronica's ideology.

Kurt, Ram and Heather Chandler:

[VERONICA] Dear diary: I'm going steady Mostly he's awesome If a bit too “rock and roll” Lately he's bumped off Three of my classmates God, have mercy on my soul They were just seventeen They still had room to grow They could have turned out good And now we'll never know

These 3 die early on into the musical and so they aren't able to grow, and yet Veronica still believes that they would have the ability to do so. This is despite how right before they died, they were all awful to her, Chandler declaring her socially dead, and Kurt and Ram trying to SA her during their 'date'. Even in death, their ghosts still act as they did in life, being an annoyance at best and antagonistic at worst. But, because they are dead and are seemingly stuck as the way they were in life, Veronica's ideology is proven wrong, as they are incapable of change.

Martha:

[VERONICA, spoken] Martha Dunnstock. My best friend since diapers She's got a huge heart. 'Round here, that's not enough

Martha is initially the only exception to Veronica's belief that people have only gotten worse as they have gotten older, besides herself. Martha still acts rather childish, believing that her crush from Kindergarten will eventually work out and thinking that everything will have a happy ending. Veronica acknowledges the flaw in her thinking, not that it's wrong, but that other people have a problem with it and see it as a sign of weakness, and that in the Westerburg food chain any sign of weakness means bullying. Despite all of this, Martha is the exception to Veronica's thinking, not a model for what she believes everyone could be. Martha is the only person who has somehow remained good despite how society has forced them to change as they grow up. But, if you're already good, you can't exactly change to be good, so Veronica's ideology does not apply in the case of Martha. Perhaps the way she acts is the reason Veronica developed her ideology, and she always knew 1 person who remained good, and that led her to believe that it was possible for everyone to be like Martha, if not for some outside force causing them to become mean as they grew older.

Heather Duke:

Note: I'm going to be using the OBC versus the West End for this, I understand that West End made some changes to her character but I also haven't seen West End so I can't exactly comment on those changes.

Duke is the character who changes the least during the course of the show. Initially pushed aside by Chandler until her death, she becomes the Queen Bee and does to Mac what Chandler did to her, and then Veronica steals the scrunchie and Duke is pushed off to the side, symbolically losing the power she so desperately craved. She doesn't die and isn't reformed or has her thinking changed, she remains relatively stagnant. What's weird is that Veronica, despite her ideology seems to have written off Duke as a lost cause, even if she stops JD from murdering Duke.

VERONICA and HEATHER MCNAMARA are playing croquet. (HEATHER DUKE enters) HEATHER DUKE: Hey, guys! Missed you after 8th period. VERONICA: Yeah, we were avoiding you.

She doesn't even attempt to extend the olive branch to her, instead choosing to exclude and ignore her, which is extremely out of line with what she said earlier about people being able to change. This is probably due to how she treated Mac after Lifeboat, but even still it doesn't line up with her stated ideology. Even during Seventeen Reprise, she pushes Duke away and doesn't offer her a hand like she does with Mac. Ultimately, Duke shows the failure of Veronica's ideology, as she does not change, shows no sign of being willing to do so, and Veronica doesn't even try, all being the complete opposite of what Veronica believes.

(Again, I know West End changed this, but I haven't seen all of it so I'm going only based on OBC)

JD:

As stated previously, JD is the antithesis of Veronica. He is someone who only sees the worst in most people and doesn't care about wether they become better or not, only caring for himself and those he deems worthy, which only includes Veronica, and to an extent the people she cares about.

JD: But why’d you have to go and mess with McNamara? One more dead Heather’s a good thing. VERONICA: She’s my friend.

JD: If she’s such a good friend, why let Duke live? The bitch who made McNamara want to die, nothing ever changes! Unless-

Here is a perfect example that JD's morals are the opposite of Veronica's. His can shift based on the person he cares about, while Veronica's stay firm. JD's opinions shift based on what Veronica says, because he is easily influenced, unlike Veronica. For example, throughout the entire musical, Veronica never lets JD change her beliefs. She never agrees to kill Kurt or Ram and has to be tricked into helping, same with Chandler too, the drain cleaner being sneaked into the mug while she's not looking, and she puts her foot down when he tries to convince her to kill again.

VERONICA: Fine! We’re damaged Really damaged But that does not make us wise We’re not special, we’re not different” We don’t choose who lives or dies

Despite all of this, Veronica senses a kindred spirit in JD, someone who sees the society of Westerburg for what it is, just plain bullshit. It's just that they both have different ways on dealing with it. Veronica believes in rehabilitation, while JD says fuck 'em, let them die. This is what initially drives Veronica to JD, the fact that he simply doesn't care about the social structure and is willing to exist outside of it, something Veronica desperately hopes that everyone would do. Upon discovering how broken he actually is, Veronica believes that he is a perfect target for her ideology to be proven correct. She thinks that she can 'fix' JD with her love and that he can become good, despite everything he's done. Seventeen is literally Veronica stating that their love can fix each other, an idea which JD had earlier brought up in Our Love is God and which Veronica had agreed with, although under duress.

BOTH: Can't we be seventeen Is that so hard to do? If you could let me in I could be good with you

JD: I was alone I was a frozen lake But then you melted me awake See, now I'm crying too You're not alone VERONICA: You're not alone

Despite all of this, Veronica is ultimately unable to change JD, a fact that she is initially unable to accept, but eventually does.

VERONICA: Oh my God—

JD: And once I disappear VERONICA: Wait, hold on— JD: Clean up the mess down here VERONICA: Not this way! JD: Our love is God Our love is God Our love is God Our love is God VERONICA: Say hi to God

This is the ultimate failure of her ideology. The person she tried to fix, who seemed like the perfect template for what she believed all people were capable of does not change, never disavowing the beliefs he held, instead choosing to die with his failed idea to cleanse the world of the people Veronica has spent the entire show saying can be changed for the better.

Now I've spend this entire rant discussing how Veronica's ideology was a failure in every sense, and it would be if not for one singular person, the only character in the entire show who proves that Veronica was right at least on some level, that at least some people are capable of change.

Heather McNamara:

Mac starts the musical as a Heather, a Queen Bee, Solid Teflon, whatever you want to call it. After Chandler dies things start to spiral, being placed in the position Duke held as the punching bag, and once Kurt and Ram died there was no one there to care for her, even if just at a sexual level.

HEATHER MCNAMARA: My sort-of boyfriend killed himself because he was gay for his linebacker. My best friend seemed to have it all together but she’s gone, too. Now my stomach’s hurting worse and worse and every morning on the bus I feel my heart beating harder and faster and I’m like Jesus, I’m on the freakin’ bus again because all my rides to school are dead...

Like seriously, Duke couldn't even bring her to school. Fucking Kurt or Ram, whichever one she was dating idc about Kurt or Ram enough to know at least could bring her to school and they viewed her only as a sex object.

Tangent over, Mac's mental health starts to deteriorate to the point of suicidal thoughts, and after Duke humiliates her in front of the entire school she runs to the bathroom and tries to end it all, foiled only by the dastardly childproof caps.

And this is where Veronica steps in. Mac has done nothing kind to her the entire musical. She's gone along with Chandler or Duke's schemes, never stands up for her, and volunteers her for date-r*pe, even if unknowingly, and yet Veronica rushes into the bathroom after her with not a second thought and stops her from ending her life. She talks her down, reminding her that not everyone is gonna be happy all the time and that she can't just be a follower. Veronica has no reason to help Mac, and yet she still does. And this is where Veronica's ideology is shown to be right. After this, Mac stops hanging out with Duke and starts to spend time with Veronica, even standing up to Duke.

HEATHER MCNAMARA: What you did to me sucked.

(Side note, but like honey she drove you to the point of suicide I think that more than sucked.)

Then finally comes the defining point for Veronica's ideology. Mac has been standing next to Duke since Veronica came back from the field where JD blew up, Martha has come in and Veronica offers to have movie night like they've always done, and then Veronica sings this and offers her hand to Mac.

We can be seventeen Still time to make things right One day we'll change the world

And Mac takes her hand, and for the rest of the song they hold hands and sing together, signifying that she has changed and is putting her past as a Heather behind her and is becoming a new and better person, just like Veronica said all the way at the beginning of the musical. Mac is important to the story, because she is the only one who shows that Veronica was right in the end. She is the only one who changes for the better, proof that people can and will change, and ultimately proving JD wrong.

TLDR; Mac is the only person who changed by the end of the musical, meaning that Veronica's idealist ramblings during Beautiful had at least some merit and weren't just statements made from a naive teenager.

[i-luv-carl-grimes]

☾꙳all the things I hate about you꙳☀︎ pt.1

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Chandler Riggs x Fem!reader (he is 16 and you are 15)

Summary: you recently got booked for a acting job playing a character in the walking Dead, it just so happens that you play the love interest for a character named Carl Grimes played by Chandler Riggs, you soon realize you two hated one another

Warnings: swearing

꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳

Hello my darlings! This is VERY important so please read. Okay so this is part.1 of a series I will be starting I'll try to Update as much as possible but I hope you enjoy<3

꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳

I walked out of the studio where I was auditioning for a character from the walking Dead, I was over the moon about it! I mean there we're only 3 other girls there so there was a really good chance I could get the part, and maybe I am getting my hopes up but the thought of meeting CHANDLER RIGGS I couldnt help but kick my feet and laugh like a little girl.

I was a HUGE fan of Chandler, I mean I've been watching the walking Dead since I was 8 and Carl was my favorite character, that's also when it hit me

Omg, if I get the part, I'm play his love interest and once again I felt my stomach fill with excitement and again I shoved my head in my pillow and let out a scream, once I calmed down I grabbed my phone and seen that Chandler had Twitted I opened it and see that he was talking about the casting

@chandlerriggs

I just seen the new casting, it'll be out tomorrow afternoon good luck! And check your emails

Chandler always seemed so nice, his streams were always funny the clips of him and even his interviews he just seemed so...i don't know how to put it, lovely? Yeah I guess. "Y/n! Dinner!" my mom said and I turned my phone of and almost skipped down the stairs, I NEEDED this part

"How did the auditions go?" my mother asked as I set the table. "Not sure, all I know is that if I get the part I will freak out" I said sitting down and she put f/f (favorite food) on the table. "I know how much you love that show and that boy, what was his name? Carl? Anyway when do you find out if you get the part?" my mom asked. "Chandler Riggs the actor for Carl said that they'll be out tomorrow afternoon" I said shoving food into my mouth. "I really hope you get it dear" she said grabbing my face and I gave her a soft smile. I hope so too.

After I had finished eating I said goodnight to my mom, put my hair up, brush my teeth and washed my face all before I jumped on my bed and grabbed my phone to see another twit from Chandler

@chandlerriggs

I'll be streaming at 8:00 pm for a bit, and PLEASE do not ask me who got booked for the audition, I can't say

I realized it was already 8:12 so why not? I opened the stream and seen Carl playing minecraft. I then seen Carl's eyes move to look at chat when a question popped up about the part I had auditioned from.

@/therealone: what are your thoughts on having a love interest

"Hmm I'm not sure actually, its cool I guess, I just know that the rest of the cast it gonna be a bit annoyed also, guess who was able to pick" he said then pointed at himself. "I aware there were 3 girl who actually got to do the audition but only 2 made it to actually being picked they wanted me to, why? I don't fucking know, I think they wanted me to pick who would look the best with Carl so I did, and I think I picked right but we'll see" he said and for some reason I felt anxiety rise in my chest, what if I was let go? What if I was the girl who didn't make it, I then started to type

@/(u/n)(username)

I look forward to maybe working with you!

I said and I seen his mouth curve. "Maybe huh?" he said, what was me implying, did I get the part? Was he messing with me? No he wouldn't, would he? My god I dont know anything about him, sure I thought he was cool but I don't really KNOW him know him. My anxiety grew and I sat up when my phone dinged

(F/n) (friend name)

Hey n/n (Nick name) I was wondering if I could come over and see if you get the part, that alright?

N/n

Sure! God I'm so nervous about it

F/n

Don't be! If you dont get it I'm gonna beat the producers ass, anyway get some sleep, I love u and good luck!

N/n

Ty f/n/n (friend nickname) I love you too good night

I then went back the Chandler's stream and leaned back resting my head on a pillow. Me and f/n we had been close for YEARS I honestly don't think I could even get where I am without her, but that's just the thing, there filming in Georgia and I just so happen to live hours away in y/s (your state/country) , so if I do get the part then we will no longer be neighbors, but that's also one of the reason my mom wanted me to get the part because we had family in Atlanta

"Also, one more thing before I head out, to the girl who did win, before you worrry about moving, I hate to tell you this but, your mom already knows we told her as soon as we know who we wanted, so we already gave house recommendations and I'm pretty sure you'll move in 2 months from now, anyway bye and to the new girl see you soon" he said then ended the stream,

I wish I'm the girl he's talking about, and with that i plugged my phone in and layed on my side, I needed this please just please I needed this. I slowly fell asleep even though I was filled with both excitement and exstream nervousness.

- (time skip) -

"Y/n it's already 9 you need to get up F/n said she was on her way" my mom said the walked out of my room, I groaned before I sat up and stretched before completely getting out of bed, I then walked over to my closet I grabbed some pajama pants and a black tank top (if you don't like the outfit just out what you like<3) something basic and simple for the possibly the best day of my life, that's also when worry once again filled me as well as the memory of what Carl said. 'Your moms already know' MY MOM KNOWS!? I put my hair half up (again if u don't like it just think of smt else) and ran down stairs

"Mom!" I said rather loudly and he turned with a worried look on her face. "Did I get the part or not? Chandler said you knew" I said and she let out a deep breath. "Y/n this is something you have to see for yourself" she said I then went down to sit on the steps. Thoughts ran through my head about everything that could go wrong till I heard the doorbell ring I got up and opened the door and F/n brought my into a huge hug, I returned it without hesitation. "You okay?" she asked and pulled away to look at me. "A little nervous" I said giving bet a small smile. "Well I mean one little email could possibly change your whole life, of course you are" he said letting out and airy laugh . "Geez what am I gonna do without you" I said referring to the fact that I had to move if I got the part. "I dont know, but I do know that you'll still be everything to me" she said, her voice was soft and reassuring. "Thank you f/n/n" I said and we hugged again she then pulled away and got comfortable.

"Did you eat anything yet?" she asked and I shock my head. "If I tried I think I might puke" I joked and she chuckled. "Well whatever happens happens" she said and I nodded then went up stairs to grab my phone

11 am

Just one hour

"Y/n! Hurry upp" I heard f/n yelled and I went back down stairs when my mom stopped me. "I am so proud of you" she said and I smiled. "Thank you mom" I said and she turned back to what she was doing and I sat down next to f/n waiting till I got the email that would either ruin or change my life I began to pick at my sick, something I picked up from my mom when I get really scared and Lord I wasn't just scared I was horrified.

"Y/n I got it" my mom said and I shot up. "Read it please" I said and she

"Y/n l/n we are-

꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳

So? What do you think? Should I continue this series? If so please let me know!!

꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳꙳

[jonathantaylorthomas]

Hollywood heritage...

latimes.com/sports/nfl/la-sp-chiefs-andy-reid-20181113-story.html

Andy Reid draws from California roots, and now brings his masterpiece of a Chiefs offense to face the Rams in L.A.

Kansas City Chiefs head coach Andy Reid grew up in Los Angeles and has frozen Tommy’s burgers flown to Kansas City. They’re “good for your joints — the grease. Keeps you lubed up, man,” he says.

(David Richard / Associated Press)

BY SAM FARMER

STAFF WRITER

NOV. 13, 2018 4:40 PM PT

Reporting from kansas city —  

Every so often, the artist comes out in Andy Reid.

It has nothing to do with coaching, instead those times when he puts pen to paper and allows his mind to wander.

“One time when we were talking on the phone, and he was telling me how much he remembered about when we were growing up,” said his brother, Reg, nine years older than Andy. “While we were talking, he sketched a picture of me, then emailed it. It’s just a sketch of my head, but it’s pretty realistic.”

Fans of the Kansas City Chiefs have a deep appreciation for Reid’s creativity. He draws up the offense for one the NFL’s hottest teams; finds new ways to harness the spectacular talent of quarterback Patrick Mahomes. Even now, in his 20th season as an NFL head coach, Reid remains a pigskin Picasso.

That figures. His dad, Walter, did jaw-dropping work as a scenic artist in Hollywood, creating backgrounds and props for film, television and stage production.

“My dad worked on all the Broadway plays that would come to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion,” said Reid, 60, sitting behind his desk at Chiefs headquarters. “They had these huge backdrops they’d lower from the second floor, whether it was ‘Annie Get Your Gun,’ or ‘The Wiz’ back in the day. My dad went down and worked on ‘Hair.’ It was unbelievable. You’d stand up there and look over the edge, and if you took a wrong step, you’d go down like a mile.”

The Chiefs too have reached toe-tingling heights. They’re 9-1 heading into Monday night’s game against the 9-1 Rams at the Coliseum, moved there by the NFL on Tuesday when field conditions in Mexico City became unsatisfactory. On paper, at least, it would have been the most compelling international game the league has staged. Now it will be the Rams’ first Monday night home game at the Coliseum since Nov. 19, 1979, when 54,097 watched a 20-14 victory over Atlanta.

Reid has been in plenty of huge games throughout the course of his career, including coaching Green Bay’s offensive line when the Packers won the Super Bowl in the 1996 season. Reid coached Philadelphia from 1999-2012, led the Eagles to five NFC title games and a Super Bowl, then took over in Kansas City in 2013.

There’s still a lot of Los Angeles in Reid, who grew up on Holly Knoll Drive, just around the corner from John Marshall High, his alma mater, and Walt Disney’s first California home. Reid still eats Tommy’s burgers, and not just when he’s at his offseason home in Capistrano Beach. He has frozen ones delivered by mail.

“I love those things,” he said. “It’s good for your joints — the grease. Keeps you lubed up, man.”

Comically gruff and unrevealing with the media, Reid is beloved by his players, who refer to him as “Big Red,” his hair color at an earlier age.

“He’s actually more funny than you would think,” running back Spencer Ware said. “Most people think of him as just serious. I can kind of relate to him because I always kind of have a serious look on my face and people think that I might be mean mugging. Maybe I’m joking around. So I can kind of relate to Big Red in that area.”

Reid might show his lighter side to his players, but he also gets to the point. They appreciate that.

“The biggest thing is he treats us well, treats us with respect,” tackle Mitchell Schwartz said. “I know he’s got a hard training camp and practices are long and all that. But we don’t have 20-minute meetings every day with rah-rah speeches. It’s just, ‘These are the goals, these are the expectations. Now, it’s on you to go do them.’ So he doesn’t have to be up there every day trying to get us to work hard.”

Reid, a onetime offensive tackle at Glendale College and Brigham Young University, developed his work ethic at an early age. His mother, Elizabeth, was a radiologist, and his father got him occasional work in the entertainment industry. Once, young Andy got a job serving food in the green room of a popular TV talk show, and his rule-following ways clashed with one of Hollywood’s biggest stars.

“I’m not sure whether it was the Merv Griffin or the Johnny Carson show,” he said. “But they put me in charge of dishing out the sweet-and-sour meatballs — they were unbelievable — and I was told I could only give three of them out to people.

“You name it, all of Hollywood would come through those shows. I knew all the athletes, so if it was Wilt Chamberlain or one of those guys, they’d get as many meatballs as they wanted.”

But when John Wayne asked for more than three, the kid had to break the bad news.

“I found out later he was a great athlete,” Reid lamented. “Maybe I should have given him a few more meatballs.”

Reid was enormous for his age. There’s a hilarious video clip of him in a Punt, Pass and Kick competition in the early 1970s. He’s a 12-year-old man-child in a Rams uniform, with a line of kids behind him no taller than his beltline.

“The kid behind me was 8,” Reid is quick to note. “I was like 12 or 13.”

Whatever. The YouTube video leaves his players doubled over.

“Damn, that boy was huge,” Chiefs receiver Tyreek Hill said. “He’s the size of Justin Houston.”

Well, maybe Reid wasn’t the size of that 6-foot-3, 258-pound Kansas City outside linebacker, but he was big enough that when he was a waterboy at Marshall, some of the varsity players asked him why he didn’t join the team.

“Mike Haynes was between my brother and me,” recalled Reid, referring to the future Hall of Fame defensive back. “He and his buddies were riding me, ‘How come you’re so big and don’t play?’ I said, ‘Listen, I’m in sixth grade.’

“They go, ‘No way!’ It’s like, I’ve been doing this waterboy thing longer than you guys have been around. I’m like the professional waterboy.”

Haynes recalls that, and more.

“I remember that when our kicker would kick the ball through the uprights, our field was so small that the ball would leave the school property and go across the street,” he said. “Andy would go get the ball and bring it back. He’d wear his youth football outfit.”

Nowadays, Reid wears shorts to practice, even when the temperature drops below freezing. He’s spent most of his adult life in cold-weather cities and is hardy like that, an artist whose medium is now Xs and O’s, a Southern Californian in spirit only.

sam.farmer@latimes.com

.

[cuhe]

I read Matthew Perry's memoir last year. In the wake of his memoir, I'm so sad to learn of his passing. He seemed like he was doing so well.

He's that guy who's been making us all laugh... my whole life. Friends started the year I was born, and I grew up watching Matty and the cast for hours and hours and hours, on repeat. Back in the days of VHS tapes, I loved Friends, but only had 1 video of 4-6 episodes of Friends. I'd watch it on repeat, play with it, play-acting pretending I was part of the show. I truly think I learned my comedic timing and humour from Friends. I remember as a 9-year-old having a crush on Chandler (and even as an adult, going through phases noticing how attractive he is). Then I started collecting the DVDs, whenever coming across another of the boxsets convincing my dad to buy it for me. Starting with Season 5, and watching the latest season I bought on repeat, until I finally had the whole collection. I was only allowed 1 hour on the internet a day after-school, and I'd fill the rest of the time with 3 hallmark TV shows. Friends, Charmed, and Scrubs. Watching Friends every weekend at my dads, putting on the Thanksgiving special episodes when eating dinner. Bringing joy and laughter to my life during high school, a tough phase.

Getting to college and making best friends because of our mutual love of Friends. Quoting Friends together for consistent laughs. Being known for being able to link any event to something that happened in Friends. The show was such a big part of my life. Something you have in common with almost everyone.

Now as an adult, I went through a big chunk of time where I was a bit bored of watching Friends, afterall I'd watched it a million-gazillion times. Luckily, in the past few years, I started watching it again, every few months I'll start watching through Seasons 7-10 again. My favourite...

I always noticed that Matty's weight had fluctuated a lot throughout the show, I never researched it but I speculated that he must have an eating disorder. It wasn't until 15 years later that I finally learnt the truth, once I got my hands on his memoir. I'd had no idea the difficulties that were going on beneath his jokes. We should have known, his humour always came from a dark place. He played up on it, but it did. How even through his troubles he managed to persevere and put his pain aside for 10 hours a day, and bring pure joy to the world. And he truly did impact the world. From America to New Zealand, Iceland to South Africa, this shown is watched and loved. Matty Perry is watched and loved. Bringing laughter and relief to all who enjoy it. It's a pity that happiness couldn't somehow make its way back into his soul.

He did suffer, and it's a tragedy. A tragedy he speculates in his memoir that started with doctors drugging him up as a baby, creating a dependency, a thirst; difficult, in his words almost impossible, to overcome. I owe him so much for helping me understand a condition that I've witnessed firsthand... It's one of the most difficult things to wrap your head around when you yourself don't suffer with it, but somehow, he helped me learn. He helped me get something I really, really needed to get. Framed it in a way I don't think I ever would have come across unless I'd read his book. His book where he helps people. A book where he says he hopes he's remembered, not for Chandler, but for helping people.

But, I don't think the two are mutually exclusive. He helped people with Chandler. He helped people with his sponsoring, advocating for drug and alcohol assistance, doing what he could to make the world a better place. But, he had made the world a better place. A place with joy, laughter, something that people no matter where they are can have in common, form a friendship on, be there to help and comfort them, entertain them.

R.I.P. Matty. May your demons be gone, and your goodness live on. 💙

[bbyskars]

absolutely heartbroken. i grew up watching friends and it had such a huge impact on me. chandler was such a comforting character for me and so many, and matthew perry played him perfectly. rip matthew perry, you will be missed by so many ❤️

Absolutely devastated by the news 💔

[forthegothicheroine]

The King in Yellow, 1949

Much of this story is true.  Warnings in the tags.

When I had pneumonia in my early teens, my mother brought home an armful of VHS tapes from the library to alleviate my misery.  Knowing my snobbish preferences, she had grabbed copies of whatever she found in black and white.  I remember something musical that I suspect was Busby Berkeley, I remember Mildred Pierce (a bad choice, as it turned out- the plot includes a young girl dying of pneumonia), and I remember a period piece called The King.  I faded in and out of consciousness while I watched it, but it soothed me while I was awake and filled my fever dreams with sparkling images.  I could never find it at the library again, nor at Hollywood Video or even early Netflix (once my father got the subscription service where you could order practically every DVD.)  It was a bit odd that it seemed to be so obscure, given that it starred old Hollywood legend Ingrid Bergman (and, although I initially forgot it, Marlene Dietrich.)  But even big stars make films that fall by the wayside in public memory, and it seemed that this was one of them.  Google was no help, and at the time that was that.

I didn’t see the film again until I was watching Turner Classic Movies at my grandparents’ house.  I loved watching that channel with them while filling out the crossword puzzle that came in their little TCM catalogue (all of it based on movie trivia, the only kind of crossword puzzle I’ve ever been any good at.)  I recognized a certain scene where Bergman stood on a balcony, looking sadly at the moon.  Her face had an expression of unutterable melancholy, and the crescent moon reflected in each of her eyes, giving the impression of two moons in one sky.  I had very little time to catch up on what I’d missed before we had to go meet my cousins at the local Italian restaurant.  I knew logically that the movie would be long over by the time we returned, but I turned on the channel anyway.  Of course it had moved on to the lesser known Alfred Hitchcock film Stage Fright, but then I heard Marlene Dietrich sing before I could reach the remote to turn the tv off in disappointment.  I knew that I had heard her sing before, and I knew it had been in The King.

Dietrich’s singing often comes across as somewhat campy today, with its Rs pronounced as Ws and it’s up-and-down tone.  Madeline Kahn parodied it brilliantly in Blazing Saddles, such that it was a bit of a disappointment when I finally saw Dietrich’s western Destry Rides Again and found it to be lifeless and inconsistent next to the parody.  Still, we remember her voice for a reason, and when I remembered it that night, I knew that its sardonic loneliness had rung through The King and made me shiver in my dreams.

The TCM schedule didn’t list The King in its time slot, but something else.  If I had taken down the name, maybe it would have helped me find it.  Sometimes the same movie runs under multiple names.

I didn’t see the film all the way through for many years, after I graduated college.  I had found a web page that listed public domain film noir, including one called The Masked Guest.  The website described it as a costume noir, and I curiously clicked on the link.  Once I took in the credits running on the youtube window, my eyes grew wide and I did not move from my place on the bed until the movie had run its course.

The credits did indeed list it as The Masked Guest, but I recognized the strange repeating design on the title cards.  They told me that in addition to starring Dietrich and Bergman, it was directed by Fritz Lang, and a character called The King was credited to “???”  (I hadn’t seen that kind of credit since the first Karloff Frankenstein.)  When the King finally appears on screen, though, it is unmistakably Orson Welles’s voice that booms out from behind his elaborate costume.

Here are the things I understand about The King, or The Masked Guest, or The Man in Yellow, or any other title I’ve found for it on public domain archive searches.  Dietrich and Bergman play princesses named Cassilda and Camilla, respectively.  Though Dietrich’s accent is German and Bergman’s is Swedish, they blend together to give the film the impression of being set somewhere on the map that I can’t quite find.  The scenery and camera angles are very Freudian, with a great deal of archways and pillars.

The first act of The King involves frankly dull romantic plotlines, and the only thing that really saved it was the feeling that the suitors were supposed to be insipid, a suspicion lended credence by the fact that the love interests were listed so low on the credits.  Dietrich is the scandalous sister and Bergman is the responsible one, though each takes on aspects of the other as the film goes on.  Dietrich sings her song at a party, dressed in a fake 17th century gown and leaning against a piano.  Although just a moment ago she had been laughing and joking with her gentleman friends, her song takes an abruptly serious tone (not seductive, not sentimental) as she tells the story of a city lost to time and memory.  Bergman slips away from the party and onto the balcony, where we see that wonderful shot of the moon in her eyes.  Is she mourning?  Is she longing?

Dietrich cuts off the song by abruptly screaming “Not on us, King!  Not on us!”  She flees the party weeping and shaking, and from there on the film goes mad.

Though uncommon, it is not unknown for movies to switch between black and white and color, done most famously in The Wizard of Oz.  The film The King recalls here is the silent Phantom of the Opera, which had a masqued ball scene tinted in shades of red and green that tried to provide a whole spectrum of color.  The effect is even odder in the masqued ball scene in The King- the only color that appears is yellow, highlighting things like candlelight, Dietrich’s hair, a passing gown, a vase of tulips.  It also highlights one particular masked figure, whose expressionless mask was decorated with a black pattern against a sickening yellow canvas- the same pattern I had seen in the opening credits.  The color of his costume causes him to stand out from the crown even when he is far off in the background, just one head among many others.  It must have taken long and painstaking hours of work to color in every frame.

Dietrich still seems broken up days after her song, though Bergman tries to coax her into joining the dance.  Finally, at midnight, Dietrich goes out to face the party, but only to demand that every guest remove their mask.  The yellow man with a voice that once warned America about a Martian invasion tells her that he wears no mask.  Bergman reacts with disbelief, but Dietrich starts laughing like a woman unhinged.  As she laughs, the yellow hue seeps out of the King’s clothing and face- if that really is his face- and begins to color the entire ballroom crowd.  I think that what follows is bloodshed, but if there is any carnage (doubtful under the Production Code censorship), the blood must be tainted yellow and splashed across the camera like daubs of paint.  Dietrich’s laughing face is doubled and tripled on screen until it dissipates, but even when it has faded offscreen, it feels as if her ghost continues to watch the proceedings.  

By the end of the scene (filled with German Expressionist camera angles and mad violin screeching), only Bergman remains alive, cowering behind a grandfather clock.  It does not hide her for long.  The King steps towards her and extends his hand.  Reluctantly, but with a fatalistic expression, Bergman takes his hand.  They walk away together hand in hand.  The screen shifts back into black and white, and then the credits roll before we can get a good look at all the bodies in the scene.  The credits say it was based on a play called The King in Yellow, although Raymond Chandler of all people apparently had a hand in the screenplay.

As I said, that’s what I think I understand.  It’s an oddly experimental art film for the era, and it may be awaiting rediscovery by the film festival crowd.  I feel as if I alone know about it, though that obviously isn’t true.  It is my little secret; I tell myself that my husband doesn’t need me to show it to him, it would be too odd for his taste.  I’ve rewatched it many times, even if it seems like each time I search for it I have to find a different video platform or torrent.  Naturally, no subscription site has it available.  Maybe I am the last person who will ever watch it.  Maybe no one will ever think to look for it again after me, and it will be completely forgotten.

When I was hospitalized, they let me use my laptop at night before I went to sleep (no power cord, though, in case I tried to hang myself.)  I found a youtube link for The Man in Yellow, and I watched it every night.  It wasn’t a soothing sort of movie, but having it in my mind all day and then watching it in the evening allowed me to think as opposed to crying endlessly while the other patients shot me awkward looks.  I clutched the childhood stuffed animals my mother brought me when she visited, and I always held them extra tight when the masquerade scene started.

I watched the movie when I had to move away from my beloved San Francisco.  I watched the movie when I lost the last of my grandparents.  I watched the movie when a doctor unwisely took me off my medication and I couldn’t manage to eat for a month.  I watched the movie when the whole world got sick and we all locked ourselves away from each other.  I don’t mind that I don’t entirely know what it means.  I don’t mind the nightmares.  In the hospital they kept telling us about mindfulness exercises, and maybe the fact that I can focus on every aspect of the film so closely that all else falls away is the reason I keep coming back to it.  I’m being mindful.  I’m not letting any stray thoughts invade my head.  I’m just watching and waiting for the next beat of every scene, leading inexorably to that yellow-stained bloodbath.

Streaming media doesn’t last forever, and each time I find The King, I worry that it will be the last time I ever can find it.  My efforts to download it have so far been unsuccessful, odd considering that it is in the public domain.

When I watch The King, I am once again a child in my bedroom being cared for in the throes of agonizing sickness.  I am once again sitting on the couch with my grandparents in front of the tv, both of them alive and lucid again.  I am once again in the hospital, all alone except for my stuffed animals and the staff trying to keep me alive.  The film reflects in my eyes like the crescent moon in Ingrid Bergman’s gaze.  It sings to me.

I am determined to find a way to obtain The King under any name so that I never have to worry about losing it.  During some of the worst times in my life, it is the only thing that has kept me sane.

[superangsty]

for DOA - how ross found out abt chandler and joey? <3

aaa thank you anon! This took me AGES to write despite being quite short but it was very fun :)))

send me ficlet prompts for DOA so that I can put off writing the next chapter!

“We should cancel dinner plans more often,” Chandler says, taking a final drag of his cigarette before flicking it into the mug on Joey’s bedside table.

Joey sighs, half out of contentment and half in an attempt to expel some of the second hand smoke from his lungs, and he rolls closer to Chandler, slinging an arm over his waist. “You think Monica’s gonna be mad?”

Chandler smirks. “Oh, totally,” he says, “but don’t worry about it, she likes you. It’s me that’s the problem, she thinks I’m a corrupting influence.”

“Shouldn’t that be the other way round?” Joey asks, because really, he’s only met her twice. One and a half times, really. Surely she should be more critical of the new boyfriend than of the guy she’s been friends with for years?

“Hah, no, she thinks I’m a tool. But you, she thinks you’re this, like, beautiful Italian cherub who actually seems pretty normal for a catholic that grew up with Janice.”

Joey props himself up on an elbow to look bemusedly at Chandler. “Weird phrasing, but sure, I get the picture.”

“Oh no, that’s a direct quote,” replies Chandler, eyebrows raised. Joey pokes him in the shoulder.

“Still, I feel kinda bad. Maybe we should go out with her tomorrow?”

He watches for a second as Chandler counts the days on his hands, then lolls his head back with a groan.

“Ugh, I can’t,” he says, “I’ve got a thing with Ross.”

Joey’s not met Ross yet. He’s the only one of Chandler’s friends that he hasn’t, actually. Obviously, he’d already known Janice, and Monica and Phoebe living across the hall from him meant he was bound to run into them eventually. Awkward, though, that the first time he’d met two of his new boyfriend’s best friends was when he’d had said boyfriend pushed up against his front door to make out.

He’s not sure Chandler would ever have introduced them if that hadn’t happened. He’s awkward about stuff like that, talking about his love life. Maybe that’s why he’s reluctant to let him meet Ross.

Though, to be fair to Chandler, because Chandler’s great, maybe it’s Ross that’s the problem. When they’d first started dating last month, Janice had given him a run-down on Chandler’s little gang (Monica: control freak, Phoebe: hippie, Carol: annoyingly nice), and when she’d got to Ross all she’d said was “Ross sucks, don’t bother with him,” and also “but oof, I still would, y’know? Like, no questions asked.”

Still, he really likes Chandler. Like, he really likes him. And Ross is Chandler’s best friend, so Janice’s opinions aside he still feels like he should try get to know him.

“Got room for one more?”

“Joey…” Chandler sighs, wiping a hand over his face. “It’s Star Trek. The thing I’ve got with Ross is sitting on my couch eating takeout and watching Star Trek.”

What a fucking nerd. Joey desperately wants to kiss him. “Hey, no, Star Trek’s cool,” he says. It’s not. He leans up to press his lips to Chandler’s. “I like the doctor, uh, Crusher? Talk about milfs, right?”

Chandler groans. “Dear god, I hope you never meet my mother.”

“So, Star Trek?”

“Fine. Star Trek. My place at 7, and you’re buying the pizza.”

*

In the month they’ve been dating, Joey’s showed up early for every single thing they’ve planned, so Chandler’s pretty certain he’ll show up a while before the new episode starts. He just hopes he’s not so early that Chandler doesn’t get a chance to talk to Ross first.

Or, maybe he does want him to be that early, because Ross is sitting across from Chandler and he just really, really doesn’t want to be having this conversation.

So, Ross, he should say, I’ve been dating this guy, and I want you to meet him. And, just in case Ross tries to protest, he should add: he’s paying for the pizzas and he’ll be over in a few minutes, so play nice.

Or: So, Ross. Remember Janice, my good friend and your ex-girlfriend from freshman year? Well I’m screwing her cousin, he’ll be over in a few minutes.

So, Ross. I’m pretty sure I’m falling in love, isn’t that the most fucked up thing you’ve ever heard? Anyway he thinks Dr Crusher is a milf and he’ll be over in a few minutes.

Yeah, right.

“So, Ross,” he says, shoving his hands into his pockets. “I probably should’ve checked with you first, but I invited a friend to come watch with us tonight?”

“Huh?” Ross looks up from his textbook. “Oh, sure man, whatever. What’s his name?”

“Joey. His name is Joey. My friend.” Chandler rocks on his feet, staring at the wall past Ross. “He’s my. My good friend.”

“Oh, like – like a friend friend?” Ross asks. Chandler really fucking hopes the blush he feels rising isn’t visible. “You want some, uh, privacy? I can go?”

“Nah, man,” Chandler replies, cringing at the way he automatically switches into ‘bro mode’, how his voice gets just that fraction deeper. “It’s cool, I mean. I just wanna hang out with my best friend and my – and – him. He’s bringing pizzas.”

Ross shrugs and goes back to scribbling in the margins of his textbook – PhD students, honestly – and a few minutes later the buzzer sounds and Joey comes up wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, two pizzas and a six pack of beers in his hands.

His whole face lights up in a smile when he sees Chandler, and his hair is ungelled and hanging over his eyes and christ, Chandler wants to kiss him, but instead he waves Ross over to introduce him.

“Nice to meet you,” Ross greets, polite but uninterested.

“You too,” Joey says, polite but sincere, same as always.

Ross glances down at Joey’s sweatshirt, the corner of his mouth twitching up. “You like the Knicks?”

Joey grins. “Hell yeah, dude!” he says, and raises a hand to offer Ross a hi-five.

Ross hi-fives him, and his shoulders seem to lose some of their tension. He nods over at the TV, sitting on its sad little stand. “Here, sit wherever you like, it’s nearly time for it to start.”

[rosedforbes]

agree with everything!! especially with the wolf thing.

here some of my headcanons about Eve <3 sorry, ik it's a lot, but I'm really invested, you know that :')

always steals Klaus' jackets because "they're cool, Dad!" (he has to buy new ones every week because he can't say no to her)

an hard-core sweet tooth! she ALWAYS have candies in her pockets. Kol is the one who buys them for her, mostly because he wants to be the fav uncle, and also because he knows it annoys the hell out of her parents when she gets too much sugar.

jealous, like, a lot. Not necessarily in a romantic way! she'd pout if Care is playing with another kid, if Klaus spends more time with Marcel (even if it's just business), if Elijah/Kol/Freya can't have lunch with her because they're with their partners, if Bekah can't babysit her because (again) she's with Davina or Marcel.

Despite that, she goes along with pretty much everyone; since she grew up with mostly adults, she finds it harder to get along with kids, but she still manages!

calls Marcel "Marcy" because she knows he hates it, lol. He's more of a big brother than an uncle to her.

very stylish! and she'd never wear flannels. (Caroline is 100% sure it's Klaus' fault, and he laughs whenever Eve says that she'd rather go to hell rather than wearing one)

loves physical touch, ESPECIALLY from her parents.

even tho she loves her pack, she kinda feel anxious everytime she goes to the Bayou, since it reminds her of when she was young and they had to let the wolves babysit her because there were troubles and it was too dangerous for her.

Whenever she's around, NOBODY dares to talk about Klaus in a bad way. She goes nuts whenever it happens, even if it's one of her family (doesn't apply to Caroline, tho, "she's mom, and mom is always right, she can say/do whatever she wants").

Very close to her family, especially her parents. She shares everything with them, can't keep a secret/lie to Care and Klaus, even if she'd want to.

Loves to draws, but her style is more "cartoon-ish". Nonetheless, she has her own pink desk in Klaus' studio, they always draw together.

Elijah memorized her favorite songs at the piano (because he also want to be the fav uncle, ha!) and Eve constantly asks him to play them.

has Klaus' dark humor and he's so proud of it. Sometimes she mocks his accent because she knows it annoys him (x2) BUT! he let it slide, just because it's her.

sarcasm as a copy mechanism, in a Chandler-Bing-kind of way.

doesn't really share anything (I.e. pencils, candies, rubber bands, make up...) UNLESS it's Caroline.

as a matter of fact, she's very protective towards her mom. Eve knows that Care was always a target when she was young, and that she's not a OG, so she can be killed as easily as every other vamp, and it kinda freaks her out.

has at least one matched outfit with every member of the fam.

can't take a no, lol. Caroline's is working on that, Klaus can't see the problem tho.

can be worse than Klaus when she gets mad, but, he's the only who can manage her in this state.

has dark-blonde hair, like Klaus, but hers are lighter since she's younger. Ofc, she got both dimples and freckles, not as many as Care tho.

None of the Mikaelsons calls her by her name, unless she's in trouble. it's always: sunshine (Caroline), littlest wolf (Klaus), little one (Kol), darling (Elijah), sweetie (Freya), baby girl (Bekah) and princess (everyone).

she hates horror movies (ha! x2), spicy food, people touching her hair (this is me projecting) and surprises. On the other side, she loves cartoons, plushies (projecting x2) and making hand-made gift (usually it's drawings)

Klaus got her a bracelet with her moonstone + his and Caroline's, since she's in love with the necklace he gave to Caroline after the ceremony.

Loves star wars, she always watches it with at least one of her uncles or Aunts (usually it's Kol or Freya).

AAAND THAT'S IT!! again, sorry, ik it's a lot, but they didn't gave me a canon KC love child, so, I can only use headcanons to escape J.P.'s cruel reality.

let me know if you agree/disagree with any of them <3

hi bby <3 how are you? i hope things are getting better at work :(

I was wondering, do you have any headcanon about teen!Eve?

i.e. her persona, how she likes to dress, her relationships with the fam and the pack, if being a trybrid might be both good and bad for her, fav movie, color, song, etc...

I may or may not have some headcanons, if u want to know! <3

have a good day !!

Hi, friend! How's it going? Unfortunately work is still going strong and driving me crazy lol It will be like this until at least Sunday. 🥲 Sadly I have not won the lottery yet or have found out about an old rich aunt that can leave me an unexpected inheritance, so I have to work 🥲

About Eve headcanons. Tbh, I haven't thought much about teen Eve? 😂 I have talked about it with some friends in the past because they asked me if she would be like Hope and I said definitely not. The whole broody teenager would not be a thing for her.

I can see her being a Caroline++ kind of person as a teen. Caroline's personality, but dialed up because of Klaus. She would be competitive and bossy and perfectionist and definitely too smart for her own good, but she would have a bit of a temper to go with it. Not that she would be mean or evil, but just maybe too hard on herself and others. I think being Klaus' child definitely comes with a lot of anxiety too lol Particularly about being the family's precious little princess and knowing everyone has so many expectations about her. This idea that she always has to be perfect and do everything right all the time. It also can't be easy to navigate life as a Mikaelson knowing everyone basically hates your family lol I can see her getting in a few squabbles because of that 😂

I think she'd have a good relationship with everyone in the family, really. I can't see why she'd be at odds with anyone. Even the Crescents as well. I know Caroline is not a werewolf, but she makes a point of wanting Eve to be in touch with the pack so she won't grow up with the same kind of issues she witnessed with Tyler, for instance, because he didn't understand his own nature, or even Klaus, who lives in denial about what he is.

Also, I remember Hayley being very encouraging about Hope triggering her curse and turning into a wolf, just telling her about how wonderful it was, making her want to become a wolf, and I don't think Caroline would ever encourage that. lol She'd be terrified of Eve triggering the curse. I mean, you have to kill someone for that, so she'd for sure do her best to make sure Eve understood her werewolf roots, without necessarily triggering it.

It's all very basic stuff 😂 Like I said, I haven't thought much about that. But if you have headcanons, please! Share them! I'd love to hear it!

[quillsink]

who's chandler bestie?

BESTIE YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE JUST UNLEASHED

So you’ve probably heard of Friends right, the 90s american sitcom everyone’s watched, this shit

So Chandler is one of the characters in this show! He’s the dude on the left :D

So his full name is Chandler Muriel Bing and he’s played by Matthew Perry! He’s one of the main six friends in the show and he is very hot and also he’s very gender

So basically he grew up in a pretty weird household—his mom writes trashy novels with a ton of sex stuff and earns money from that. When he’s ten, his dad comes out as gay and his parents get a divorce—his dad fucks off to LA and basically becomes a drag queen, and his mother dumps him in a boarding school and continues writing novels!

Chandler meanwhile is insecure as fuck, desperate for any sort of approval or affection, and now fucked up by his parents splitting up! At age ten he starts smoking to cope, and he struggles with smoking his entire life

Due to his parents splitting up bc his dad was gay, he subconsciously associates being gay with the shit his parents pulled on him and turns out to be a homophobic piece of trash

Oh also as a kid he frequently walked in on his father in weird sexual situations with men and also his dad used him for dance routines and stuff—It’s a bit unclear and he doesn’t mention it often but it’s clear Chandler’s childhood was fucked up and his dad wasn’t the best—

So yes anyways to cope with all this he became really sarcastic and also funny (he’s so funny lmao) but yeah! He’s known for his humour and sarcasm

Anyways he goes to college and befriends Ross Geller, who’s the brother of Monica Geller, and her best friend is Rachel, and that’s how the gang begins to form!

Chandler’s really insecure so he basically clings to Ross lmfao, he also sucks at dating and all that shit (I theorise it’s bc he saw his parents relationship go to hell and he’s scared smth similar will happen to him) and anyways yeah he gets through college and he gets a job as a data processor!

Chandler doesn’t rlly have a job he hates or loves he just works as a data processor lmao

Anyways-

So after college he moves into an apartment across Monica’s and Ross has a house nearby, and Phoebe, a girl Monica meets, becomes her roommate, and then Chandler’s looking for roommates and he meets Joey Tribbianni, an actor, and they become roommates :D This is Chandler and Joey (i ship them lmaooo)

Anyways did I mention Chandler is fucked up and bigoted-

So yeah I like to ignore canon and pretend he’s bi and trans and just live in fanfic universe but unfortunately in canon Chandler is quite fucked up!

He makes a few transmisogynistic jokes, calls a man a “man slash woman” when he wears makeup, the typical stuff, also low-key homophobic, and also lesbophobic (ugh) he’s the typical cishet guy fetishising wlw yknow that guy? Yeah that’s Chandler and I hate it. He’s the type of guy to be homophobic and then watch wlw porn and I’m going to hit him over the head with a chappal istg yeah he’s fucked :/ He had so much POTENTIAL i hate canon so much i’m just gonna binge read gay chandler fics and pretend he wasn’t a piece of shit lmao-

I totally see Chandler as bi and very repressed, 99% of the fandom does, he was written to be gay but they made him straight at the last minute ugh

Reasons why he’s gay-

Have you SEEN him and joey together HAVE YOU SEEN THEM OH MY GOD

When his coworker thought he was gay and tried to set him up with a guy he found out who the guy was and immediately said “well, he’s no Brian,” (another guy) and proceeded to say he could totally get Brian to date him

He kissed a guy in a bar once and when Ross brought it up he was like “In my defence, it was dark, and he was a VERY PRETTY GUY!”

He comments multiple times on attractive guys to the point where the girls stare at him weirdly 

One example is when he sees a pic of a guy Phoebe shows him and goes “WOOOAH” and then immediately goes “dont tell my girlfriend I said that-”

Come on this man is Not Straight

Anyways I sorta went on a whole rant about him lmfao, but yeah that’s my boy Chandler!!

[whatareyousearchingfordean]

Happiness Continues

Part 12: Home

Summary: Jensen and Y/n are adjusting to being new parents when an unexpected visitor turns everything upside down.

Pairing: Jensen Ackles x Plus Size Reader

Word Count: 3.9K+

Warnings: Language, mentions of postpartum struggles, home invasion, attempted kidnapping

Author’s Note: Thank you all for the endless love, my girls who are always there to cheer me on, and my amazing beta @emoryhemsworth xoxo Alex

Catch up with the series masterlist and then check out Alexandra’s Library for more by yours truly!

4 Weeks Later

Steam billowed up from the mug that sat on the counter. Y/n dipped the teas bags in and out of the boiling water, letting the flavor steep out. Once she was satisfied that it had been long enough since she’d initially dropped the bags in, the mother pulled the soaking pouch from the mug, squeezing the excess water from them into the sink. She pulled open the tabs of the nursing bra she was wearing and stuck one bag into each cup, allowing the warm, humid, heat to surround her swollen nipples. 

“Every time I walk into this room you are doing something strange in our kitchen.” Jensen’s voice had her popping her head up, a soft smile on her face. Her husband was cradling their son in the crook of his arm, the infant cooing as he looked up at his father. 

“I looked it up online; it’s supposed to help with pain,” the noise that fell from her mouth was almost a whine… almost. 

“Have you talked to the doctor about it?” 

“Yeah, it’s likely he’s just cluster feeding because he’s going through his first growth spurt. It should taper off in a few days, but for now, he’s attached to my fucking breasts, so they are not having a good time.” Y/n picked up her mug and headed into the living room to plop down on the couch. 

It was no secret that parents, especially new parents, tended not to get much sleep, but nothing had prepared her for this level of exhaustion. Since birth, Y/n felt like she didn’t get any time to herself. She was a walking milk machine with her body attempting to heal at the same time, and more than once, she found herself in tears out of pure frustration. Jensen had been wonderful, of course, and having Donna around during that first week was a godsend, but they could only do so much, especially now that he was cluster feeding. The fact that Ezra was even letting Jensen hold him at the moment was something of a miracle. She was hoping the tea might help her sleep a tad more soundly, something she had been struggling with since her son was born, her body hyper-aware of everything happening around her, but she had to be careful and watch how it affected the baby. The tip about the tea bags on her sore nipples was a lucky bonus.

Jensen followed her to the couch, sitting beside her as their son babbled away in his arms. The new mother couldn’t even stop herself, her attention immediately on Ezra. She smiled brightly down at him, using her free hand to wipe away the flyaway hairs at the crown of his head. Her husband watched the exchange, an equally wide grin on his face. 

“He’s a growing boy, that’s for sure,” Jensen agreed, watching his wife with an amused smile. 

“Yeah, well, I wish he would stop.”

“Don’t all parents wish that?” He sat back in his seat, laying out Ezra along the length of his lap. The little boy peered up at his parents, his chubby legs and arms thrashing about. 

“I don’t know,” she admitted, her voice high as she played with the giggling baby during their conversation. Y/n continued to make faces at the smiling baby as she spoke, her attention divided between the men in her life. “I just know it makes me feel old.”

“It makes you feel old?” He scoffed out a laugh at her comment.

“You know what I mean. He’s already growing out of outfits. I blame you and your damned height for that.”

“Oh, as if height doesn’t run on your side of the family,” Jensen pursed his lips and she laughed at him. 

“Fine, you’ve got me on that one. I’ll just blame my dad.” She turned her attention from the infant, whose eyes had begun to grow heavy, a beaming smile on her face as she looked at her husband. 

“Sounds good to me,” he smiled back at her, leaning in to peck her lips. “I’m going to see if he’ll let me rock him.” 

“Okay, I’ll see you in bed.” Y/n watched as Jensen shifted Ezra back into his arms so he could stand. He turned to her as he got to his feet, the tall Texan bouncing the infant in place as he spoke. 

“It’s seven-thirty.”

“Yeah, so I’ll see you in bed,” she repeated with a pat to his behind as she stood along with him. Jensen shook his head as he headed off, leaving her to get ready for the night with a smile on both their faces. 

****

The cries ringing through the house grew insistent, the pitch rising fast through the baby monitor before she was jolted awake. Her body jumped from the bed on instinct, startling the sleeping man next to her. 

“Again?” He husked, his voice like gravel as he didn’t bother to open his eyes, but he recognized the sound filling the bedroom. Y/n wiped her hand over her face, rubbing her knuckles into her tired and sore eyes. 

“Yeah, it’s the damn cluster feeding,” she replied as she tossed the covers from her body. Jensen moved to get up from the bed at the same time, but she gently urged him back against the mattress. “I’ve got him.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, unless you want to breastfeed him.” It was supposed to be a joke, but she was too exhausted to attempt to hide the aggravation behind her statement. Her adamance about avoiding a bottle had turned into Ezra refusing them, which meant that she and her nipples got no breaks. Not to mention if they wanted to break the cluster feeding, baby-to-breast was the quickest way.

A wide yawn broke across her face as she fetched her robe, slipped it on, and headed to the nursery. She let her muscle memory guide her body through the house, her eyes still struggling to open fully as she shuffled across the floor. The fatigue in every cell of her body was fighting against being awake again. 

Y/n pushed open the door with another yawn, her eyes on the crib as she entered. Between the cries, the white noise machine, and the lethargy, her brain didn’t process that something was off until it was too late.

“Hello, Y/n.” Y/n whipped around, her breath catching in her throat at the sight in front of her. Seated in the glider in the corner of the nursery was Chandler, her son wailing away in his arms as the man rocked the chair back and forth. Y/n opened her mouth to talk, but for once she was truly speechless. Adrenaline was now coursing through her blood, the only thought in her head on getting her son away from him. 

“There’s no way...” When she finally willed away the lump in her throat, the words slipped past her lips, cracked with fear. Chandler’s menacing grin somehow grew wider on his round face as she spoke. 

“Where there is a will, there is a way,” Chandler chuckled to himself as if he’d cracked some code and not just uttered one of the most common idioms in the English language. “See, I overestimated your security system at first. It messed up my whole plan, and I had to improvise. No worries though, he will not notice anything.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Her mind was reeling. Part of her was attempting to assess the situation, looking for any way out, while the other half listened to the deranged words of a sick man, but it seemed Chandler was the priority. That is until he no longer had her son.

“He thought he was doing the right thing by changing out the system when in fact he just made my job of freeing you that much easier,” Chandler went on as if she hadn’t said anything. “Hooking everything up to the Internet just makes it easier to hack. Besides, I was already on your computer—”

“Wait, my computer?” Her voice broke through his rambling. 

“I’ve been waiting for years now to save you, but I had to make sure you were safe in the meantime… so I have been keeping an eye on you,” Chandler explained to her, the nonchalance in his voice terrifying as her son continued to cry in the man’s arms. 

“You cloned my computer.” The realization hit her like she had been slapped. 

“More or less,” Chandler rolled his eyes at her statement. That action somehow irritated her more than the fact that he was holding Ezra hostage at the moment.

“You keep saying ‘save me.’ Save me from what?” At this point, Y/n was only trying to buy herself some time to come up with a plan of her own. Her eyes flickered around the room, landing on the baby monitor sitting high on the wall. The green light on the side of the camera was not shining, signaling that it had been turned off. Whether it was Jensen or Chandler who had done it, she couldn’t be sure. Both her and Jensen were guilty of shutting the device off in the past if their son was still fussy as someone was attending to him in the middle of the night. It was the only way they managed to get an inkling of sleep some nights. Now she was afraid that it could be her undoing. 

“This obviously,” he indicated the child in his arms. The infant was still fussing, but his cries had grown softer in the mere minutes since she had walked into the room. “This cliché of a life you’ve gotten yourself into.”

“What if I told you I loved my life?”

“I sincerely doubt that.”

“You don’t even know me!” Y/n reared back at his observation, more than irritated that she had been dropped into the lunacy of this man’s head once again.

“I do know you!” Chandler yelled back, the roar in his voice startling the fussing baby and sending him into another frenzy of cries. He rose to his feet then, and she could now make out the holster on his hip. Y/n stepped back, the revelation of the possible escalation of the situation heavy on her shoulders. “I know you’re way too good just to be someone’s wife and mother!” 

It took her a moment to find her voice again, the frightened woman shaking where she stood as she kept her eyes on her son. All she wanted was for him to put Ezra down, but she had to be careful how she went about it. There was no telling what might set him off next time. 

“So what now?”

“We leave,” Chandler allowed the grin to return to his features, the triumph in his eyes not lost on Y/n. “You and me.”

Y/n bit down hard on the tip of her tongue, wanting to say anything but what she ended up saying next. “Okay.”

****

The faint sound of a distant shout and the continued muffled cries from across the house pulled Jensen back to consciousness. He blinked in the darkness, confusion taking over as he realized what he was hearing. 

He rolled over in the bed, noticing Y/n was still up, making the cries of his son unusual. The still groggy man crawled across the bed and snatched the baby monitor off of the nightstand. He hit the power button, bringing the screen back to life in no time. As it adjusted to the darkness of the room, he could see where his wife stood near the doorway, but she wasn’t holding Ezra, and Jensen couldn’t see him in the crib. The scene perplexed his tired mind. That was until his wife’s voice came through the small monitor.

“So what now?” 

“We leave.” 

The sound of a second voice in the room had Jensen on his feet in an instant. He cursed under his breath as he ran back to his side of the bed and pulled his pistol out of the locked compartment at the bottom of his drawer where it had been waiting for this very moment. Somewhere deep down, he’d always suspected they hadn’t seen the last of the man that haunted his wife’s dreams. Though he’d hoped that it wouldn’t play out this way, he hadn’t disregarded any of the potential scenarios where Chandler may re-emerge. 

Jensen expertly checked the magazine and chamber before flipping off the safety. He ripped his phone from the charger and dialed 9-1-1, putting it on speaker in front of the monitor before sprinting from the bedroom. His long legs brought him to the nursery in no time, his wife’s name on the tip of his tongue.

“Y/n!”

****

“Okay?”

“Yes, just—” The sound of her name had her spinning on her heel, her husband skidding to a stop behind her. His brow creased in the center of his forehead as they made eye contact before he lifted the gun in his hands. The glare that settled into his features as he took in the scene in front of him was downright terrifying to look at. “Jensen, no!” 

“I would listen to her,” Chandler challenged, his actions mirroring that of the enraged husband and father. With the baby in his grip, he was at a disadvantage physically, but the reality was that meant he now held all the cards. 

“Please?” Y/n put her hands up, one towards Jensen and one towards her stalker. Tears were streaming down her cheeks as she turned a pleading gaze on her husband. “Jensen put the gun down.” 

“Y/n—”

“I’m leaving,” she hiccupped, hoping he would understand what she was doing, that every action from here on out was about making sure Ezra was safe. Most of all, she hoped Jensen knew that no matter what, she loved him. “Put it down.” 

Jensen searched her face, his eyes scanning over every inch of her tear-stained features, searching for anything to hint she was lying to him, but the truth was she had every intention of going. If it meant Ezra was safe, she would leave and figure the rest out later. It was all she had right now. He nodded, his eyes glistening as he succumbed to the truth in her words. He clicked the safety back on and set it on the ground before kicking it away from him. 

Y/n turned back to Chandler. “See, I’m coming with you, but you’ve got to put my son down. Please, just put him in the crib and I’ll go wherever you want.” The man eyed her before glancing at the crying infant. Carefully he placed Ezra into the crib, his eyes never leaving the couple as he did so. A shuddering breath escaped her chest as soon as her son was out of the line of fire. 

“Go,” Chandler indicated out the door with his gun, the action causing Y/n to flinch, but she did as she was told. Jensen was forced to step back and watch as the woman he loved was carted off at gunpoint. Instinct was yelling at him to go after them, but one false move could mean he risks her life and he had their son to think about too, so instead, he let her go. 

Y/n kept her head forward, blinking back the tears that were blurring her vision as she walked. The unknown laid out before her with every step she made, and it took everything in her to keep from breaking into hysterics. Her chest ached with every fractured breath she attempted, bordering on hyperventilating. Chandler grabbed her arm as she passed the door outside, tugging her back and out the door into the courtyard. She shivered in the night air, the stone wet and cold under her feet as he dragged her along. Her whole being wanted to protest, but there was no use anymore, she was at his mercy. 

He continued to drag her down the driveway and into the road, his grip tightening on her bicep. Her feet shuffled beneath her, her toes going numb from the cold with every step. There was no telling where or how far he would take her. She only hoped someone would be able to find her, or one day she’d be able to find her way back.

Chandler walked up to a parked car sitting at the end of the street less than two houses down from her home. He guided her to the passenger seat, unlocking the door and tugging it open for her. Y/n let out a huff as he shoved her forward, biting her tongue to stop the comment she wanted to spit at him. She turned her back on him before she got in, her eyes going straight to his hands and the gun where he was flipping off the safety. The once irritated woman saw his guard down as her opportunity to run, her stomach now in her throat. It was now or never. 

The woman used this momentary distraction to disarm him, the gun skidding against the asphalt and behind the car. She lunged for the device as he howled from the pain she inflicted to his wrist, picking up the pistol in trembling hands and bolting across the street. Temporarily dazed, Chandler unintentionally gave her a head start before chasing after, anger enticing his actions. His hand reached out just as she got to her feet, gun in hand, his fingers gripping a sliver of the tie of her robe to tug her backward, making Y/n lose her footing. Her body tumbled to the ground, the wet concrete slicing up the exposed skin of her extremities. 

“Stop!” She screamed as she hastily rolled onto her back, the gun aimed at his head as he loomed over her. Her heavy breaths fanned into the night sky in a plume of white mist as she laid out on her back in the middle of the street. 

“Ha, you won’t do it,” he snarled, taking in the way the adrenaline and cold had her whole body shaking. 

“Try me,” she growled back, refusing to give him the satisfaction of hearing her break yet again. His eyes narrowed as he contemplated whether or not she was capable, but Y/n held her ground, refusing to move first. The sound of police sirens hit before the blue and red flashing lights began to bounce off the nearby houses. Y/n let out a breath as a police car skidded to a stop just in front of them, the headlights bathing the two in blinding light. 

“Drop your weapon!” She heard the shouts coming at her, but she wasn’t ready to give in. More than anything she wanted to shoot him, for the months of worry and stress to be over once and for all, but she knew deep down that it was over. Y/n put her hands up in defense, dropping the clip from the gun before setting it down slowly and pushing it out of her reach. 

Then everything happened in a blurred mess. She was on her stomach, her hands being pulled behind her back and secured into metal cuffs before the officer brought her to her feet. It was now that she finally let the floodgates open, every emotion hitting her at once and racking her body with sobs. The cops must have thought she was crazy, but she honestly didn’t care. 

“Shit, Y/n!” Jensen’s voice had her popping her head up. He was jogging down the street towards her in just his boxers and a robe. The cop turned on him as he approached, stopping in his path. 

“Sir, please, you’re gonna have to stand back.” The cop grabbed him by his shoulders as Jensen continued to try and pass him.

“The hell I am! You have my wife in handcuffs!” Jensen barked as he knocked the hands of the cops away from his body. 

“This is your wife?”

“Yes, now will you tell me why she’s being detained?” Jensen kept trying to peek over the cop’s shoulder, trying to meet his wife’s eye as she continued to sob. The sight hurt worse than watching her walk out the door. After everything she’d been through, now this, and he couldn’t even be there to hold her. 

“She was pointing a gun at this man when we pulled up,” the police officer explained.

“Maybe because he was trying to kidnap her!”

“Sir, please, it's just procedure. Let us take both your statements and we can go from there,” he assured Jensen. 

“Can I at least see her?” The annoyance was heavy in his words. The cop nodded and Jensen didn’t think twice before rushing to her side. He pulled her body into his arms, cradling her head against his chest as he began to cry with her. “Don’t you ever do anything like that to me again.” 

“I’m sorry, I had to for Ezra,” she wept, her inability to hold him as well making everything worse. Jensen sighed, his whole body going slack when her words registered in his head.

“Shhh, I know, I know. I just—I can’t lose you.” He kissed the crown of her head, one hand moving to rub up and down her back as he continued to try and soothe her. 

The police officer returned with the gun now in an evidence bag. Y/n couldn’t believe what was happening. She felt like she was watching someone else’s life through their eyes and not her own. It was all so surreal. The officer took Jensen’s statement before she insisted he go back to the house. He didn’t want to go, but he’d been gone long enough, the baby monitor in his pocket not sufficient for anything longer than he had been away. He reluctantly left her in custody, placing one last kiss on her forehead before he returned to their son.

Once the paramedics arrived on the scene a few minutes later, the cops released her, Y/n’s statement, and Chandler’s record enough to explain the scene they had arrived at. She didn’t want to let the medics clean her wounds, her mind focusing only on returning home, but she eventually relented that it was the best course of action. The second they cleared her, Y/n was on her feet, running back to her house as if her life depended on it because honestly, she felt like it did. 

Jensen was waiting in the kitchen, attempting to feed a fighting Ezra a bottle. He turned when he heard the door opening, relief washing over him that she was back to him. The still shaking woman ran to her family, allowing her husband to properly wrap her in his arms as she held both of her men against her chest. Her face was shoved into his robe on his shoulder as she let the floodgates open, soaking the fabric in her tears. Jensen shushed her through the release, her body shaking as it came down from the high of everything that had happened. There was no stopping the trauma the night had inflicted upon her, no matter how much she tried. 

So she chose instead to let it out. At the end of it all, Y/n would push it all aside and move forward because she refused to let the experience control her any longer. All that mattered was continuing to build and nurture the family that she and Jensen had started. It wouldn’t be easy, but time would heal the wounds if she worked through them now, and her promise to the guys in her life was to figure it out. Her promise was one of a future filled with nothing but continued happiness.

Epilogue 

Forevers: @22sarah08 @akshi8278 @anathewierdo3467 @atc74 @awesome-badass-cafeteria-sauce @briagallen @callmekda @dawnie1988 @deandreamernp @deanwanddamons @ellewritesfix05 @emoryhemsworth @foxyjwls007 @hobby27 @janicho88 @jensengirl83 @katehuntington @lyarr24 @malfoysqueen14 @miss-nerd95 @mrsjenniferwinchester @msmarvelouswinchester @polina-93 @sleepylunarwolf @stiles-stilinski-24-dylan @smol-and-grumpy @suckmyapplejacks @superfanficnatural @supraveng @talesmaniac89 @tatted-trina6 @thoughts-and-funnies @tranquility-or-chaos @waywardbeanie @winchest09

Happiness Continues: @afangirlreacts @anaelsbrunette @ashleyrose0117 @austin-winchester67 @cno92 @deanbowlegsackles @deangirl93 @deans-baby-momma @death-unbecomes-you @dvnmbabe @fangirl199813 @harryhook-lover @hoboal87 @itsdesiree86 @jbsgirl4eber11 @let-me-luve-you @linki-locks11 @lunarmoon8 @neverland14353 @onethirstyunicorn @parinarain @rebeccathefangirl @rebelemilu @smoothdogsgirl @spnfamily-j2 @squirrelnotsam @stoneyggirl @supernatural3002 @traceyaudette @winchestergirl82 @winqhster @zpandaqueen

If your username is crossed out, Tumblr will not let me tag you. Sorry!

[impala666]

The One With The Candy Hearts Part Three (Janice is Back)

So this one might be rough, I’m tired from school, work, and overall adulting. But at least there’s a new update, right!? Sorry in advance if it’s bad.

Last Part (Part Two), Series Masterlist

It was early in the morning when you woke up, you had a hard time falling asleep because all you could think of was that guy that you had met last night at the coffee house and how you’d agreed to go out with him, you also kept thinking about how Phoebe mentioned that Joey wouldn’t like you going out with other guys. But who said that he got to decide, he broke up with you. Plus he was already seeing other people, maybe you should be too. Finally, you willed yourself to kick your covers off of you and make your way into the kitchen that you now shared with Ross since you had officially moved in. You smiled and greeted your roommate who sat on the sofa with a cup of coffee in his hand, you were about to grab yourself a cup when the phone started to ring. Quietly groaning at the fact that you were going to have to talk to someone before you had your safe amount of caffeine. “Hello?” You greeted the caller with minimal to no enthusiasm. 

“Oh, hi, Y/N. Put Ross on the phone, too. There’s someone I want you to say hi to.” Monica’s happy voice sounded through the ear piece. 

“Alright?” You questioned but did what she said anyway and walked over at sat next to Ross as you motioned for him to listen in as well. 

“They just happened to call,” You could hear Monica give to someone as an excuse. 

“Hello? Y/N? Ross?” An annoying and shrill voice sounded over the phone causing both you and Ross to perk up and look at each other in excitement for what torcher Chandler must be going through because of another stupid thing he did.

“Hey Janice!” You and Ross cheered. 

“Yes, that’s right. It’s me, how did you know?” Janice asked since it clearly wasn’t obvious to her. 

********

Now that Ross was on his date, Chandler breaking up with Janice (again) on Valentine’s Day,  and Joey doing who knows what. It was late enough in the evening that you were over at Monica and Rachel’s once again, and this time all you girls were going to get some sort of closure for all of the crap your past ex’s have put you through. The four of you had quite a handful of stuff to burn. So you sat on the couch next to Rachel with a glass of wine in your hand as Phoebe read the directions over the fire that was burning in a trash can. “Okay, now we need the sage branches and the sacramental wine.” Phoebe read off the next ingredients that would need to be added to the fire in order to do the ritual properly. 

“All I had is oregano and a Fresca.” Monica told her as she held the seasoning and beveridge in each hand. 

“Um…” Phoebe looked down to see if that would work. “That’s okay!” Phoebe told her as she took the oregano, but before she could take the soda in Monica’s hand you decided to contribute. 

“Oh, here! Use this, it’s not sacramental but it’s wine.” You smiled at how you were helping as you held out your glass. 

“Oh, perfect, thank you.” Phoebe told you as she dumped the oregano and the rest of your wine in before handing the glass back to you so you could refill it. “Now we need the seman of a righteous man.” She announced lastly, to which Monica, Rachel, and you shared a look. 

“Okay, Pheebs, you know what? If we had that we wouldn’t be doing the ritual in the first place.” Rachel partially joked with her blonde friend. 

“Can we just start throwing things in?” Monica asked. 

“Um, yeah. Okay.” Phoebe said as she immediately threw the instructions for the ritual into the fire. The three of you were about to stop her when it was too late, and you all just wanted to get to burning. 

“Okay, Barry’s letters. Adam Ritter’s boxer shorts.” Rachel started as she threw her items into the fire to be burned forever. 

“And I have the receipt from my dinner with Nokulule Oon Ah.” Phoebe announced as she followed Rachel. 

“Here’s a picture of Scotty Jared naked.” Monica announced drawing you, Phoebe, and Rachel to look at it. 

“Oh, let me see.” Rachel told her. “Hey, he’s wearing a sweater.” Rachel pointed out, thinking that Monica just got it wrong. 

“No.” Monica answered unfortunately. 

“Eww!” All of you shrieked. How could someone even be that hairy, you wondered? 

“Let’s see,” you started as they looked to you for your turn. “My ticket for the first play that I saw Joey in,” you watched it burn, “the room service of the place Joey and I stayed at for a weekend, and a VHS tape.” You murmured the last part to yourself.

“A what now?” Rachel asked, her voice high pitched as the other two looked at you with shocked faces.

“You guys made a tape?” Monica wasn’t sure if she wanted to be impressed or grossed out; you nodded. So they all just nodded in understanding. 

“But I thought Joey treated you really well?” Rachel asked because maybe she didn’t know everything about your relationship enough for you to burn his stuff.

“Oh, believe me. He’s treated me better than any man I’ve gone out with. But then he broke up with me in that sweet way, then went on that date right after.” You explained, which made you angry.

“Oh, I could imagine.” Phoebe said as the others nodded in agreement. “You still love him though, don’t you?” She was hesitant when she asked but all of them could see on your face that you still do.

“Ok, we were supposed to be burning old things and feeling better, whose turn was it?” You tried to move on and have the attention off of you. So Rachel decided to help you out. 

“Ok, and here we have the last of Paolo’s grappa.” Rachel smiled as she opened the bottle and dumped it on the flame without thinking. 

“Wait, Rach. Isn’t that almost pure-”Monica started to warn her, but it was too late. By the time the alcohol reached the fire, the flame grew to almost three times its size causing each of you to shrink and hide back from the intense heat.