#I should logically put my phone down because this is literally killing me in terms of I feel So Bad rn

[s-ccaam-era-crepe]

I HATE MIGRAINES I HATE MIGRAINE RGHRGSHRGRH

[darkdevasofdestruction]

Hold Me, I’m Soft ~ Mammon x Reader

This is going to refer to the DevilGram story with Madi the Witch, because it didn’t sit right with me how Mammon got used and laughed at for being sexually assaulted, especially when I related to that in more ways then I’d want to admit, so there it is, a short little fic to give Monnie some love, especially since his birthday will be this week and I will be at the mountains, unable to actually post anything other than a Happy Birthday maybe.

Ever since she got to the Devildom, Y/N wondered to herself why in the world would the brothers bully Mammon so much, to the point that he’ll break down in tears when nobody is around?

He’s the most gentle of the brothers, yet he’s met with nothing more than taunts and mocking because of his greed. It’s not like he can help it, it’s his Avatar sin, he didn’t choose it. People get annoyed at Beel for eating too much and constantly raiding the fridge, for when he indulges in the pleasure of greed, he’s suddenly the scummy trash brother who’s just a waste of space. The family’s embarrassment.

But why should he be that, when he’s the only one who never gave in to his demonic power from rage? Never tried to attack or kill her and never got in his demon form to lash out at her?

Mammon was the first one to ever call her by her name and even give her nicknames. He was the first one to call her out to the cinema, concerts, shopping, pranking time, board games, card games, and even video games or just some quality time together.

He was the one to taught her how to be an undefeated Blackjack player and how to spot when someone is lying. He was the one to taught her how to flawlessly cheat in games and how to protect herself if something happened.

Even more, he was the one who graciously asked if she wanted to workout with him so she could be stronger and faster if anything were to happen and he wouldn’t be around, just like how it happened long ago, when Levi lost control and almost attacked her.

And, of course, he was the only one who constantly asked her if she was okay, if she was happy, if she needed anything. He would always pamper her whenever he thought she stopped smiling for one split second, or if he thinks she was faking it. He would grab TSL and some comfort food, hot chocolate with marshmallows and would cuddle her all night, playing with her hair.

It really pissed her off, but no matter what she did, and no matter how much she tried to make the others at least tone it down, of course, millennia of habits cannot be so easily tamed.

These were the constant thoughts that plagued Y/N’s mind, yet the white haired man will never know, because she is a girl of few words and many actions.

Today, however, as usual, was the time for some new shenanigans, as Lucifer and Satan must be the escorts of some powerful witch, as per Diavolo’s request, since he literally can’t stand her - And that speaks loads, when it comes to the benevolent Demon Prince.

“Hey, is it really gonna be okay to leave those two by themselves like that?” Mammon asked with a worried expression on his face. “Well, neither of them are saying anything...For now, at least.” Asmo held the same expression as his elder brother. “Yeah, you just KNOW that they’re going to blow up any minute. It’s so exciting!” Levi spoke with a chuckle. “Hey, why is it that you only ever come outta your room at times like this, Levi? I thought you were s’posed to be a shut-in.” Mammon raised his eyebrow at his little brother. “Well, this is Lucifer and Satan. They almost NEVER work together, much less when it’s just the two of them! I mean, if I’d missed an event like this, I’d regret it for the next 800 years.” Levi grinned, his shoulders shaking with laughter. “Diavolo was pretty bold to make them work together, if you ask me.” Y/N muttered, crossing her arms and peeking through the door creak.

Saying that, the four of them leaned in the peek better and listen to their conversation.

“Be careful. If Maddi takes a liking to a man, she’ll bring him back home with her.” Lucifer smirked at his younger brother. “As if you need to remind me...I recall how Mammon went home with her that one time. Mammon must have regretted going with her, because by the time he got back, he was on the verge of tears. I remember it like it was yesterday!” Satan shook his head in disbelief, making the girl gasp, covering her mouth with her hands. “HEY! I wasn’t!” Mammon frowned at what he just heard, making Asmo shush him quickly so they won’t be heard. “I don’t even want to THINK about what must’ve happened between those two that night. I can’t understand what possessed Mammon to willingly go home with a woman that dangerous. It’s fortunate she didn’t trick him into making a pact with her while he was there in bed half-asleep.” the blond continued speaking, making the girl bite her lip from the shock and pain in her chest. “But there’s no doubt that Mammon didn’t have a good time, because for a while after he came back he had nightmares, and he’s moan in his sleep. He even stopped spending money left and right...MAMMON, of all demons. Still, Maddi IS attractive. She rivals the succubus who won the Queen Contest in terms of beauty. In fact, Maddi might be even MORE beautiful. I’m a little worried that you’ll end up like Mammon - That as soon as she uses her feminine wiles on you, you’ll fold like a paper airplane.” hearing that, she couldn’t stop herself and she fled the place, going to her room to regain herself, not giving anyone any explanation.

She already made up her mind that, despite being the middle of the day, she will skip both lunch and dinner, so changing in her pyjamas, she got in bed, cuddling the hellhound plushie Mammon got her, and wrapped herself in a tight cocoon with her blanket, not wanting to see the light of the day.

So many thoughts were swirling in her mind, each of them more and more degrading, overpowering one another, guilt taking over her completely.

She prided herself with being a ration person, she really did! She always put ration and logic over hindering emotions...But now...When she can overthink in peace...The ration she held completely dissipated, and here she was, crying her heart out once again.

Why WAS she crying for, anyway?

Was it because she felt Mammon’s pain at having being used like that, against his will, because he’s an innocent and peaceful push-over? 

Was it because she remembered what happened to her, and her heart started aching like crazy, and she began to spiral? 

Was it because she felt plain, ordinary and completely nothing special, when she heard Lucifer saying that Maddi is the most beautiful person in the world and that’s why Mammon was lured in by her?

Or was it the guilt of being affected by jealousy and self-hatred before the pain from what that vile woman did to him?

What the hell was going on through her head, anyway? She heard enough opinions about her and how terrible of a girlfriend she was, why should she even have any hope that Mammon would ever like her? And why the hell was she worrying about that, when she should be worrying about the poor demon?!

She’s really nothing more than a selfish jerk.

As if on cue, she heard the familiar sound of a received message on her D.D.D., and curiosity won over her self-deprecating sulking, and she checked it out, making her heart skip a few beats.

It was Monnie, and he was asking if she was okay and why she left.

Tears started brimming in her eyes, and letting out a few more sobs, she realised that, even thought he doesn’t romantically love her, he will always be her best friend, and she was at least content with that, no matter how selfish she is.

She quickly texted him, asking if it was okay if she came over later, for a sleepover, and of course, he agreed, so the girl put a cardigan over her so it wouldn’t be too obvious she was in her pyjamas - Not that it mattered, anyway - and got some snacks, made some hot chocolate and went to Mammon’s room, finding him in a tanktop and some large pants, playing some game on his phone.

“Took you long enough!” Mammon grinned, making room for her to join him. “What’s with that face? You stormed out of there, so somethin’ must’ve bothered ya. Come on, y’know you can tell me.” he got in a sitting position, looking at her with a concerned look, but was met with silence for a many seconds, in which he feared he must have said something wrong. “I, uh...I guess I got worried about you after what they said...But I didn’t have the best reaction...I needed some time to think things over. It was pretty selfish of me to do that, instead of talking to you first...But I guess I’ve always been pretty selfish, haven’t I?” she chuckled nervously, still standing up, next to the bed. “What the hell are ya on about? Is it about that Maddi thing? Forget it, it happened long ago, it doesn’t bother me anymore.” he shrugged, looking away for a split second, only to look back at her. “I...Don’t think you’re over it.” she bit her lip, looking down, sucking at her teeth to stop herself from sketching any gesture on her face. “What do ya know about that, anyway? Come on, shut up and put the movie on, I ain’t got all day!” he tried to make her stop talking already, but she wasn’t exactly paying attention. “I had a similar experience too and...When I heard what happened, flashes of what happened went in front of my eyes and I started panicking. That’s why I ran away.” she spoke, her eyes glossed and unfocused. “Is that why ya wanted to hang out?” Mammon muttered softly, seeing her slowly nod her head. “I never told anyone...And so, nobody was there to care about me. But you always cared about me...And I wanted to do the same, for once.” she gulped, blinking and putting everything on the nightstand next to his bed. “...Come’re, dummy.” he sighed, tugging on her hand and making her sit on his lap, as was their ritual whenever one of them needed comfort. “Did I upset you, Monnie?” she asked, barely audible, making him put his hands on her shoulders, so she could properly look at him. “What?! Upset me?! ‘Course not! I-I’m happy that you thought of me, okay? It’s just...Yeah, it wasn’t nice, duh, but I’m a demon. I can take many things. But you’re such a frail little human. You’re small, fragile and soft, and since nobody wanted to bother getting to know such a nice gal like you, then I will always be there for you.” he put his hands on her face, trying to reach through to her. “...I was supposed to comfort you...Why did it go the other way around...? I was supposed to make sure you okay, that you’re smiling and that you can manage to get over what happened in the past...I wanted to be the one you can count on, for once...But I’m failing even at that...That’s how much of a selfish jerk I am...You deserve better than me, Monnie.” she hung her head, resting her forehead on his shoulder, not realising her words made him stiff, and tears prickled at his eyes. “Shut up, dummy! You’re a dummy! Dummy! Dummy! Never say things like that okay, got it?! Listen, I-I care about you, okay? I don’t care if you manage to comfort me or not, I just care that you think about me, okay? You’re the only one that gives a damn about me, and I appreciate that, okay? You see part of yourself in me, and I see a part of myself in you, so of course I want to keep you safe.” Mammon sighed, holding the girl close to his chest, playing with her hair, as he always did. “Monnie...Can I tell you something?” she muttered. It was now or never. If he hated her, so be it, but at least he knows. “Of course ya can, dummy. You can tell me anythin’ you want.” he said with an encouraging chuckle. “I...Left because I felt guilty. Because...My first thoughts were creeping with jealousy, instead of worrying about you and what happened, first and foremost. My brain fails me big time. And I feel really bad, ‘cause you deserve much better than some idiot who gets jealous over someone vile like...Her.” she let a few tears fall down her face, but poor Mammon was lost in his own head.

Jealous? Why the hell would she be jealous? What could she be jealous of? What is going on even?

“Why would you be jealous of her? You’re better than she’ll ever be, in every way. What the hell is going on through that head of yours, Y/N?” he frowned, flicking her forehead, unsure of how to react. “You heard how Lucifer and Satan spoke about her...And they are Lucifer and Satan. They spoke only praises about her...A-And I didn’t want her to be around you. Y-You’re my first man, Monnie, please understand what I’m saying.” she hid her face with her hands, her bottom lip quivering from embarrassment and guilt. “O-Oh...Ya like me?! Like...Like-Like me?! For reals?!” his voice became so cheerful and hopeful, and as soon as he saw her nodding, he started laughing very happily, kissing her forehead and taking away her hands from her face, his grin bright and dazzling like the first sunshine of Spring. “Cool, ‘cause I love ya too! I was sure you liked one of my brothers, they ain’t as problematic as me, but you like me, your first man, and I couldn’t be happier!” he started kissing her all over her face, making her blush like a tomato. “Why wouldn’t I like you? You’re the best. You’re the only one who has been genuine with me since the very beginning and cared about me. And spending time with you always is always calming and...You always make me happy. I forgot what it’s like to be happy since that happened...But whenever my brain goes stupid and I start overthinking, you always manage to keep me grounded...And I really appreciate you for that.” Y/N spoke out, making Mammon’s eyes water, and with the ordinary greedy impulse he had, he grabbed her face and kissed her deeply, without even realising what in the world happened. “Don’t fluster me like that, Y/N...Actually, do, I love it, but I’m not used to it.” he chuckled nervously, making the girl smile softly. “Can I do anything to make you feel better about...The past?” she asked sheepishly, her hands hanging awkwardly, unsure of what to do with them. “Well...The hot chocolate is going to get cold...And there’s snacks to eat and  movies to binge-watch...” he trailed on, snaking his arms around her waist, making her put hers on his shoulders. “Also...I want to make sure you’re comfortable with me, okay? I dunno what happened to you, but if it’s similar to what happened to me, I want to promise you that I will never do anythin’ you’re not okay with. I pinky promise.” Mammon spoke in a more serious voice, yet just as gentle. “I know, Angel eyes. I trust you the most out of everyone in this world. And I can promise you the same thing.” she managed to give him a proper smile, throwing her arms around him, hugging him tightly, feeling the comforting warmth of his body.

That embrace alone felt, for the both of them, like the sole safe home they ever had, and there was nothing that could break this dream-like state they were in. There was no negativity and no bad thought going through their mind, as the warmth and love of the hug was enough to disperse of any pest lingering and purging their sanity.

When they finally got the courage to let go of each other, fearing that they would disappear from this serenity state, they cuddled together in bed, drinking the now room temperature hot chocolate, eating so many snacks that they resembled Beel, and watching TSL on the huge plasma TV on the wall.

“Monnie?” Y/N raised her head to look up at him, love and admiration obvious in her sparkling eyes. “Thank you for existing in my life. I know you go through great lengths to take care of your brothers and make sure they’re happy...And I know you get hurt a lot in the process...But I really appreciate everything you’re doing, both for me and for them. I’m sure they see it too, they’re just too stupidly proud to admit to themselves...As usual.” she chuckled, reaching to hold his hand and intertwine their fingers together. “Thanks, Y/N. You’re the best. I’m really happy you came to talk to me...And I’m really happy you’re here with me. I love you.”

[hopeymchope]

Wonder Egg Priority finale thoughts

My Tumblr has a lot of anti-bully content, so it was probably no surprise when I began to watch and enjoy Wonder Egg Project this past spring. The series famously hit production delays that forced them to put out a mid-series recap episode, and that decision in turn forced them to push the final episode until late June. But now that the series (or at least season 1) is out there and complete, I thought I’d talk about how it all shook out in the end as well as the questions it left me sitting with.

For the uninitiated, here’s a bit of the context: Wonder Egg Project deals with four middle-school teen girls who’ve undergone hardships either at home or at school or both. They all lose someone they care about to tragic suicides, and then they discover the titular wonder eggs. They get these eggs from a vending machine and then, when they fall asleep, they enter a dreamworld where these eggs hatch to reveal a young person who recently committed suicide. For that night, it is the duty of the girl who got that egg to fight and defend that suicide victim from monstrous enemies that represent their abusers and oppressors. The girls are told that if they protect enough of these victims over many nights, they will be able to resurrect the specific person they lost to suicide. But of course, if you get injured or killed in the dreamworld, it affects your body in reality as well. 

The squad: Ai, Neiru, Rika, and Momoe.

Obviously, bullying is among the topics most frequently explored here, but we also deal with so many other terrible things that people might experience during childhood and adolescence. Physical, verbal, and sexual abuse are all on the table. Coming to terms with one’s gender identity is raised. It’s a show that manages to tackle a lot of heavy subjects through the lens of what’s essentially magical girl combat. I mean, there are no outfit transformations or any of that stuff, but still.

With THAT out of the way, let me talk about how the series wrapped up.

It’s clear to the viewers that there’s a lot that doesn’t make sense during the show — it’s intentionally very trippy and ethereal at times — and there’s also a lot that raises obvious questions even if you grasp it. Where do the eggs and their connection to the recently deceased come from? How do the psychological traumas of the various egg-children manifest as monsters that can literally kill you? What’s the deal with Acca and Ura-Acca and their freaky dummy bodies? What are they getting out of this whole deal with the eggs and the girls? What do the repeated references to the “temptation of death” mean? How does access to the Egg Garden even work? Is it really possible to resurrect their dead friends? Is Mr. Sawaki a predator or a chill guy or what? Why did Neiru’s sister stab her? And so on. 

The writers could’ve opted to keep things mysterious and hazy and metaphysical for the entire run or they could’ve provided lots of explanations and tried to ground this weird story in some sort of strange logic, but I’m actually pleased that they opted to go down the middle. There are answers for many things, but not for all. And when those answers come, they typically just raise more questions as well as doubts to their validity. 

SPOILERS for the finale/”special episode” below the cut.

So, obviously the answers for Acca and Ura-Acca are centered around Frill. Frill is this interesting fusion between the artificial and the organic; her body can be injured like any regular physical body, but she’s actually an A.I. on the inside. Acca and Ura-Acca are the exact reverse of this — they’re human minds inside of completely artificial bodies. Exactly how Frill started invading girls’ minds to lure them towards suicide is kept incredibly vague, but she serves as the embodiment of the “temptation of death” that was so-often referenced in the show. Frill doesn’t really appreciate life or care about the finality of death, making her a pretty natural foe for the heroes who have spent the entire series learning to appreciate their lives and bemoaning painful losses.

Can you even believe this bitch?

Acca and Ura-Acca also have documents talking about how warriors of Eros need to battle against Thanatos, the embodiment of death, but what’s that all about? We don’t really get into it. Is Frill somehow Thanatos herself? I mean... I guess maybe you could go that route, but I sincerely don’t think that’s meant to be the case. I assume she’s just another player in the game, and she happens to have taken Thanatos’ side in things. Her artificial existence and resentment of her fathers leads her to treat death flippantly. She was programmed to be selfish sometimes, and that selfishness has ultimately manifested itself in the worst possible ways. Intriguingly, we see Acca and Ura-Acca act similarly selfish in how they drive our four heroes to risk their lives just to battle Frill. Acca in particular shows that he’ll risk anyone’s life to get to Frill, who killed both his wife and daughter. But Acca never has to risk his own life. He’s just risking other people. Both sides of the equation are treating human lives like disposable pawns in some kind of war game. 

Y’all are SUPER-SKETCH.

It’s never really clear how these eggs work. We’re told that the Accas created the eggs, and honestly, I could’ve figured as much on my own. But they don’t try to explain how the eggs can contain the souls of suicide victims or how they manifest those people into dreams, and frankly, it’s probably better not to try.

I was really shocked that the girls actually manage to resurrect their dead friends. I was 100% certain that was going to be a scam and the point was going to be about learning to move on and live for the moment and appreciate those bonds while you had them, etc. And there is some of that. Alas, the price of resurrecting those people they care about is that the people in question no longer know them or remember them. That was pretty brutal... having our heroes nearly die over and over in service of people who ultimately will no longer care about them at all. Although they did the impossible and brought someone back to life, they had to lose those people all over again. I suppose this, like much fo the finale, emphasizes that we should appreciate our relationships while they last, because you can lose them for so many reasons. Regardless, I’m not surprised that Momoe just wanted to quit and avoid getting hurt after that. It’s understandable.

There’s a lot of discussion around parallels in the last two episodes. Parallel worlds with alternate versions of the self are raised multiple times, Ai gets an awesome encounter with a parallel version of herself that really brought her emotional journey to a head, and we even have to deal with a doppleganger of Neiru at the end. This leads to the revelation that Neiru looks exactly like her formerly deceased sister... a fact that presumably was part of what drove the sister to attack Neiru in the first place. Given that we’ve already been told that they were both genetically engineered, their identical appearances don’ seem that strange. But then the finale tells us that Neiru’s one dream is “to be human,” and suddenly the characters assume Neiru was an A.I. just like Frill. That... seems like a leap to me. I mean, she was genetically engineered to lead her company and never had a family of her own; no wonder she feels inhuman! So I’m not sure if I should take this at face value.

Neiru real or fake challenge

Another thing that I don’t think we can take at face value is Mr. Sawaki’s explanation of Koito’s death. In episode 12, we meet a parallel version of Ai who actually killed herself. The big boss monster for Ai to fight while protecting Alt-Ai? It’s a dark, abusive version of Sawaki. And our Ai inexplicably assumes this monster was made from her own fears. A very bizarre conclusion to jump to when you remember that every single boss monster has been the abuser of the victim that the girls were defending in that episode. By all available evidence, the Sawaki monster should be a parallel-world Sawaki who is very much exactly the scumbag he appears to be! Notice how Alt-Ai never says a damn word about the Sawaki Monster - never asks who he is or why he’s like this, etc? She’s not even surprised. That just lends further credence to my belief. FOLLOW THE EVIDENCE.

So in the finale, when our version of Mr. Sawaki claims (via a VERY awkwardly inserted voiceover) that Koito’s death was an accident after she tried to ruin his reputation because she fell in love with him, why should I believe any of it?! The previous episode introduced me to Abusive Sawaki! Sure, we don’t have any reason to assume our Sawaki is That Dick, but we JUST learned that he’s certainly capable. Furthermore, how could Koito suddenly be the ONLY accidental death among all of the available suicide victims in the dreamworld? She shouldn’t have even appeared there if it was just an accident! Although I’d like to believe that Sawaki was someone who Ai and the girls were jumping to conclusions about based on nothing... but it sure doesn’t look that way from here. And given how the show ends things, I fear we may have a hard time learning anything else about Sawaki. Ai changes schools and runs away, there is zero comment on what happened to Sawaki’s relationship with her mom... he’s just gone now.

As the final episode winds down, we see Rika and Ai fall back into bad habits, as they all treat Neiru just like they treated the girls they tried so hard to save. Rika acts disgusted by a friend and abandons her, treating Neiru the same way she treated Cheimi. When Neiru finally reaches out to Ai and calls her, Ai ignores the call and throws her phone away, thereby ignoring her friend’s needs in the same way she ignored Koito’s when she failed to record the bullying Koito was experiencing. You might even be able to connect Momoe’s choice to walk away for the sake of self-preservation to her decision to reject Haruka and walk away, honestly. And to compound the bad news that the show gives us near the end, we skip forward months to learn that Ai, Rika and Momoe have all drifted apart. Ai is in a new school, but we don’t see her with any new friends. She’s back where she started the show.

The difference, however, is that she doesn’t seem hopeless and lonely. She seems wistful, sure, but she never seems beaten down. She still treasures the friendships she built even if they wind up fading away. So there’s still a message in here about moving on, because even if you lose a person or a connection, it will forever matter.

*insert engine rev-up noises*

In the final moments, we see Ai preparing to run in the exact same pose she used back in episode 1 when she first stood up to the abusers within the dreamworld. This time, she runs to grab her chance to reunite with a dear friend. She takes charge of her own future and her own self-worth, somehow gets back into the Egg Garden (even though Rika wasn’t even allowed to enter after she rescued her specified victim, so uh... how did Ai get back in exactly... ?), and insists she’s going to use the eggs to see Neiru... even though the eggs only let you see the dead up to this point, so uh, that doesn’t really make any sense either. Consistency, motherfucker — DO YOU USE IT?

Amidst all the uncertainty that the finale left us with, at least we can see Ai find herself in a more confident place. She spends much of the series learning to stop running from her problems in the real world. Even after she gains confidence in the battles of her dreams, she struggles to face reality. It’s a huge step when she returns to school. Yet even in the very last episode, she opts to run away to a new school rather than cope with seeing Koito each day. But at last, she decides to take charge of her reality and try to reunite with her new best friend, Neiru. She’s wavered on her path, but ultimately, she’s grown. Although you could simultaneously argue that she’s failing to learn the lesson that rescuing Koito should’ve taught her...

“Ai Ohto is BACK!”

I don’t think any of us expected this finale to be a cliffhanger coming into it.  And unfortunately, we don’t know if there will ever be another season or a movie or anything. Given how people reacted to this finale with such overt hate, I really don’t expect anything more. And I think that would be a goddamn shame. Even with a finale that doesn’t quite stick the landing, I still found it fascinating and engaging. The series is more than worth the trip for the characters, for the themes and topics it explores, and even for the fluid action scenes and music. And this is a series that was made by first-time writers and a first-time director! Yet I’d easily call it one of the best animes from the past couple of years. For total newcomers, that’s a goddamn TRIUMPH.

So I hope we reunite with these girls again. I hope Ai manages to get the band back together, find out exactly what’s going on with Neiru, and face down Frill. Even if they never wind up in some ultimate battle with Thanatos, I don’t know that that’s the point. All of us are in a battle with Thanatos every single day, after all. They just need to show how they’ve all gotten stronger together and truly overcome the “Temptation of Death” by beating back Frill (and her ridiculously powerful dreamworld bug-people) as a unit. 

But maybe that’s too obvious and simplistic of a message for a show like this one. Maybe this complex ending centered on the main protagonist’s self-actualization and the value of fleeing relationships is more in keeping with the melancholy nature of the series. 

... I still really want to see the more obvious happy ending, though. I think they deserve it.

[ushidoux]

Lesson - Atsumu x Reader

Summary: You drop Atsumu for bad behavior and he’s struggling to understand. (~1.4k words)

Warnings: super toxic Atsumu, toxic relationships, fem!reader, references to sex

A/N: literally don’t date a dude like this i’m not promoting anything lmfao. also it’s just bad feeling in this fic, no one gets gravely injured.

Song: S**c*dal by YNW Melly

---

I thought that we were meant to be

You took my heart and made it bleed

I gave you all my ecstasy

I know you'll be the death of me

One ring, two rings, three rings, four. No response. 

In the pitch dark of his bedroom, his face incompletely illuminated by the light of his cell phone, Atsumu Miya sends his fifth text of the night. 

Pick up, please.

One ring, two rings, three rings, four rings, five rings. Again, no response.

Atsumu feels his chest tighten, and his face flushes even redder than before, but he’s not yet angry. He’s still desperate to hear your voice. He sends yet another text.

I’m sorry, I’ll change... I’ll do anything you want. Just please just pick up the phone.

He gives you time to respond. That’s what you’ve always asked from him, right? Time, in terms of attention, in terms of patience, in terms of advancing the relationship in a direction that you thought was fruitful.

He hated so much that you always wanted to set the pace. Whether it was when to become exclusive, when to start having sex regularly, when to meet the losers you called your friends, when to meet your parents. You wanted to control everything, and even that you had essentially cut him out of your life, you were again controlling his reactions.

Why else would he still be up at 4am, trying so hard to get your attention? All his better logic told him you were asleep, maybe even asleep in that piece of shit’s arms, but multiple shots of Hennessey told him it was right to text and call and beg. After all, you had said once that you’d be by his side no matter what. 

So why was he alone in this bed?

Ten minutes pass and he calls again.

One ring, two rings, three rings, four rings, five rings, six. No response.

I know it’s late, but I need you, he texts, and then he calls again.

One ring and the phone abruptly cuts off, and Atsumu’s bottled up emotions explode.

“Sorry, the person you are trying to reach is not available -”

“Fuck, ___! Ya stupid fucking bitch, you.. You always wanted me to care for you so here I am caring, why the fuck would you do this to me, why the fuck… are you serious? Why…,” his slightly slurring voice loses steam and trails off instead as tears start to well up in his tired eyes.

“Why would ya give up on me now?”

Left lipstick on my Hennessy

Felt like you took my soul from me

You gave me all your ecstasy

I thought that we were meant to be

Atsumu was always confident and having your unconditional love and support despite the way he treated you only served to supplant that arrogance. You’d never leave him, you always grinned and bore anything he threw at you.

“Shut the fuck up at my matches.”

“Stop embarrassing me in front of the team.”

“I’m not interested, ask somebody else.”

“Find something better to do than follow me around, you’re so needy.”

He barely looked at you when his words were harsh, so he couldn’t see your smiles towards him deepen into frowns every time he spoke to you without respect until eventually all that remained was contempt when you looked in his direction.

But would he have realized then? Maybe your own regard would have simply fallen in line with the way others saw him. He didn’t care what others thought. He was sure he didn’t care what you thought. Until now. 

Baby, you took control of me

And I got too many enemies

I knew you wanted to fuck him 'cause I could just tell

Check my back, now I'm, now I'm in my bag, yeah

You did me bad, you did me bad

But I said, "Fuck it," and I ran up my bag, yeah

Atsumu never hung up the phone as he blew up, despite holding back warm tears that clouded his vision even more so than the pitch blackness of the room.

“Fucking whore, I bet you’re at his place now, you stupid, stupid slut!” He yelled into the phone.

But you’d never cheated. You’d just quietly asked him to treat you better or you would leave him, and he had simply laughed.

“Do you think you can find better?” He had asked, and your stomach had turned at the cruel way his smile upturned as he stepped closer to you, towering you with his height and gripping your face with two fingers. “You may be pretty, little piggy, but there’s not much better than me, silly.”

“I-I don’t want to leave you… I just want you to be a little less mean.”

“A little less mean, or a little less me?” He teased before planting a kiss on your trembling mouth, biting your lower lip just slightly as he parted.

“‘Sumu please…,” you insisted, flustered that he still made you hot despite how much you realized he was objectively awful to you.

“Why should I be nicer to you when you’re desperate for my cock anyway?”

So sure that you would never take your eyes off of him as he perfected his tosses game after game, he didn’t notice you slip away. He didn’t notice the increased time you spent out with friends distancing yourself from him or that the way your face now lit up when you received texts from heaven-knows-who.

Why would he have to? You would always be by his side no matter what.

But you didn't even put it all on the line

For me, no, oh, I'm sorry

This is the end of us

It's crazy 'cause my heart is dangerous

“Let’s break up.”

He laughed when you said those words right on the phone, right when he was on his way to meet you.

You? Breaking up with him?

“Yer so funny, ___. Anyway, I had a rough day babe, so you already know what I need.”

“I’m serious, Atsumu. Don’t come here… I-I won’t open the door.”

Your resolve had been shaky, but you were firm. So firm in fact that he found himself standing in front of the door banging as hard as he could for your attention, as you remained inside, using loud headphones to block out the racket as well as the expletives now filling the hallway. You considered for a moment calling the police, but you knew it would kill a man as proud as Atsumu to be escorted out by authorities on your behalf. 

Again, for his sake and for the last time, you endured it.

Felt like you took my soul from me

Like the devil got a hold on me

Everybody wishin' bad on me

Everybody wishin' bad on me

“She’s a stupid fucking slut, I should have known from the start, can’t trust these bitches no matter what they tell you,” Atsumu grumbled, seated at his brother’s restaurant, now that he had taken a moment to stop roasting the quality of the free onigiri his brother had offered him and had enough time to be vulnerable.

Osamu’s droopy eyes, not unlike his furious brother in front of him, looked almost exasperated.

“I mean, you’re sort of a douche,” he finally replied flatly.

“And?”

Osamu would have added something else if not for the fact that Atsumu had started choking on the food he was wolfing down with reckless abandon. While Osamu said nothing further, he made a mental note to expect Atsumu way more often and to check in. It was painfully evident that his twin was way more hurt than he let on. 

It was only after he got drunk enough that he finally admitted,

“I wish I had listened to her.”

You taught a lesson to me that I had to learn

And I'm so sorry 'cause you let our bridges burn

I said I loved you and I wish I never did

I swear to God, I swear to God, you stupid bitch

“I fucking hate you, ya know that? I hate you so fucking much. I hate you, I hate you, I hate you...”

His voice warbles from alcohol and now he’s repeating that phrase over and over again; the message seems to go on for forever, but you listen to every word. The fact of the matter is that you miss him, and you wish you didn’t. You know he needs you but you need him to be better. 

So you continue to listen, not because you want to hear him suffer and not because you want to be with him anymore - at least not right now, anyway - but because you need closure. Evidence. Reassurance that he was really not ready to love you.

He curses you for leaving him for what feels like forever, but then nothing more is said and you’re sure he’s fallen asleep, but his last words haunt you:

“I loved you so fucking much.”

[prorevenge]

[Long] How we destroyed our teacher and principal:

Apologies in advance if some details are blurry as this happened almost 14 years ago. Also, this is going to be a long one, so bare with me, I swear the result is worth it, at least it is to me.

The beginning: It all started when I (M25) was 12 years old. My grade 7 teacher (M46 at the time) was infamous for being intimidating and, in my opinion, abusive to his students. He was the disciplinarian of the school. He was in charge of keeping track of detentions and announcing who will be sitting every Friday during assembly.

We suspected at that time that the reason why he never got fired was either because his students were too scared to report him, or because of the fact that the principal was his brother-in-law.

Reasons why I hated him: He was constantly making vaguely racist remarks, complaining about the "New South Africa" and constantly bringing up how his life was better during the Apartheid regime (He's a white guy who was raised on a farm).

I always felt like he had an issue with me as a person because I'm a practising Muslim. He would make the class laugh at how "funny" Muslim women looked with their heads "wrapped up". His jokes about Muslims missing out on eating bacon were endless, in fact, he one day purposely stood in front of my desk eating a cheese and bacon panini.

He used to often rant about how the school is no longer a "pure Christian institution as it once was back in the day". He would say these things and glance at either me, my twin sister, or the black students in the class who practiced their own African religions.

When it was his birthday, my mom encouraged me to buy him a gift. I spent of my pocket money, which was already limited (my parents didn't believe in allowances) to buy him a big slab of chocolate and a long piece of Droëwors (dried sausage). Throughout the day, he would get gifts from students in his class and others.

He would get up from his desk to greet and thank them, and then shake their hand. I remember noticing this because I always found it weird when students shook hands with teachers because of how small our hands were compared to theirs.

However, when I gave him my gift, all he did was look at me for like a second, look away and nod his head slightly. I remember being thankful for not offering my hand out for him to shake because I thought he might have ignored it in front of the entire class. To say I felt like shit is an understatement.

The experience that made me hate him the most happened just before we wrote 2nd or 3rd term exams. I was walking with my friend David (fake name) back from the tuck shop during interval. We took a shortcut between the English and Afrikaans kindergarten classes and saw a group of boys huddled together.

One of them walked towards us and I saw that he had one of those camping multi-tools with the folding knife out, and instantly got a fright. He told us "Give me your stuff before I cut your neck" and then started laughing and walked back to his friends. It was clearly a joke but David looked close to tears and I had a very bad fright because of what he done. I told the guy (Fake name Xander) that he's not allowed to have knives at school and that I'm going to tell my teacher.

We walked straight to our teacher and when we spoke to him, David burst into tears.

We told him what happened and David was sobbing when he said he felt like he was going to die. Our teacher barely looked up from his computer while we were speaking and when he asked for the guy's name. We told him the name and he said he will deal with it and for us to go out for interval again.

I went home and told my mom who I felt didn't fully believe me at the time.

The next day we saw Xander were basically making fun of him for getting into trouble with our teacher and likely getting expelled at worst, or sitting a Saturday detention at best. He laughed back at us and said our teacher just came to his class, asked to speak to him and told him to never bring it to school again. No detention. No suspension. Basically nothing. He still had the knife on him for the rest of the day before.

We were so upset we went back to our teacher and I told him that Xander said that he didn't get into trouble for having the knife. He gave me the ugliest look as if I was bothering him, and coldly said to me that maybe I should fix my late-coming problem before I try to get other people in trouble.

I would come late 4 or 5 times a month because my mom's car's battery terminals were broken so the battery would run flat and she couldn't afford to have it fixed. She had to put the neighbour's battery in her car, start it, and then idle it while she took that battery out and put her own battery back in to charge up. My mom taught me the value of always having a number 10 spanner in your car lol.

I felt betrayed by my teacher. The person who was supposed to make us feel safe while we were away from home.

When I spoke to my friends about it, they told me that Xander was actually the principal's son, meaning he was my teacher's nephew. I decided to take the opportunity to speak to my friends about getting evidence that our teacher is treating students unfairly.

3 of my 4 close friends had camera phones. I sat in the far left corner, my one friend sat in the opposite corner by the door, our other friend sat in the middle, and the last friend was right at the back of the class by the window on the left. One thing about our teacher: he did not give a fuck about where we sat as long as we answered him when he done roll call and didn't bother anyone when we swapped seats.

We came to an agreement that whenever our teacher would sound like we was going to say something vaguely racist or islamophobic, we would all discreetly take videos of him.

Any private conversation we had with him was voice recorded on our phones. We caught him on camera telling a really racist joke about black people, and saying that Hindus must have a lot of problems since they have so many Gods. We caught him saying a lot of bad things, but a lot slipped through our fingers because we weren't fast enough.

It was extremely difficult to keep our friend group motivated to record him and not tell anyone else about it. It was especially difficult because at the time I had a hand-me-down Samsung D900 which was seen as an expensive phone at the time.

My mom prohibited me from taking it to school. She instead bought a cheap R79 ($5) phone for us that could only make calls and send SMS's. This was in case she needed to reach us in an emergency. I got caught several times sneaking my camera phone to school. My biggest mess up at school was when my mom phoned me on my Samsung and I answered it. Big oof but I was a dumbass.

After I think a month we decided that we couldn’t let it go any further.. One of our friends was a black guy named Tatenda (fake name). Tatenda was a problem child. His mom died when he was four and his dad was an alcoholic. He was raised mostly by his uncle who up until today I think was a pimp. He used to act out at school because of undiagnosed ADHD, his dad and uncle didn't believe in learning disabilities and always assumed he was just lazy and badly behaved.

Tatenda especially got onto our teachers nerves because not only was he black, but because he would bring broken calculators from home and take them apart during class. One day our teacher told him to clear his desk and throw away the bits of plastic and calculator shit. He ignored the teacher. The teacher then started screaming at him, and Tatenda done the only logical thing an 12/13 year old would do in such a situation: he mockingly put two pencils into his ears.

Our teacher lost his shit, grabbed Tatenda and threw him against the door. The narrow window pane cracked and Tatenda's head was bleeding. He told us he was fine during interval afterwards and we put money together to buy him a Sprite. I almost cried when my friend who sat way behind me said he got the whole thing on camera. We didn't even trust that the whole class' testimony would get him into trouble. We decided that enough was enough.

The revenge: First we showed the video to Tatenda's uncle, who showed it to his father. Then I showed my mom all the other videos and recordings.

She. Lost. Her. Mind.

One of my friends sent all of it to his older sister who had a Facebook account and she posted it there and tagged the school and as many parents as she knew. It blew up. Parents and people from around the province phoned the school demanding answers as to what is going to happen to our teacher. He was immediately suspended.

There were rumours circulating that he had to go into hiding because Tatenda's uncle and his friends were looking to kill him. I even met Tatenda's dad for the first time in the weeks after the whole thing exploded. He liked to joke that his dad sobered up especially for this lol.

The principal pulled Xander out of the school. We never saw him again. My mom told me an investigation was launched against the school because of the improper handling of bullying complaints. If I remember correctly, 3 English kids in my class alone spoke out against teachers dismissing their complaints of bullying by the Afrikaans kids. We were a mostly white, Afrikaans speaking school with 3 Afrikaans classes but only 1 English class per grade.

They called us"souties" which was short for "soutpiel" which literally tranlates as "salty dick". It's a derogatory term for English speaking, white South Africans. It means your one leg in is South Africa, your other leg is in England, so your dick is hanging in the ocean.

We only saw our teacher once after he was suspended. He looked badly beaten up, and was accompanied by a policeman and two other male teachers so he could gather the rest of his stuff from his class.

But it didn't end there.

Because so many kids needed the evidence that they were being bullied and nothing was done because of it, the CCTV footage was brought up. My friend's mother who was part of the school governing body that time, told us a few years ago that when they reviewed the footage, it became apparent that the principal was having an affair with one of the grade 2 teachers.

He could be seen grabbing her ass at the furthest point away from the camera. They slipped up a few times and kissed in clear view of the camera, but I guess once you're surrounded by the cameras everyday at work, you forget that they're there. It was very apparent that sometimes they thought they couldn't be seen.

My mom's friend's sister (basically my aunt) sells Tupperware and one of her regular customers and close friend's is the principal's ex wife. Not only did she leave him, but they were not married in community of property due to a prenup agreement. The house they lived in was in her name since before marriage, so she effectively made him homeless because none of his family wanted to take him in.

He ran into severe debt from staying in guesthouses and burned many bridges from overstaying his welcome at friends. As for my teacher, his reputation was destination fucked. He served jail time, don't know how long, and eventually left the country because it seemed everyone knew his face from the media attention he received.

The reason why I made this post: I was never going to tell this story on Reddit as I've told it over and over through the years since primary school. But I felt I had to because of what I experienced at the beginning of this year.

My family is part of a non profit organisation that has feeding schemes all over the country. The last Friday feed of February I'm standing security as I usually do since we're few volunteers and there's many homeless people and most are on drugs and can get violent.

I'm walking down the line to make sure there are no fights or anything that could start a riot, and I see a familiar face. My old principal is standing in the line, waiting for a bowl of stew and bread, with absolutely no idea who's standing beside him. Obviously he wouldn't have recognised me, but I never forgot his face. I'm not gonna lie, I cried quite a bit behind my sunglasses. Seeing him brought back the feelings I had when I was 12 years old in 7th grade, trying absolutely every excuse in the book to not have to go to school and be bullied by my teacher.

So yeah, for those of you who are still reading, this is the end of how my friends and I destroyed the lives of my teacher and principal.

If you got this far and are feeling depressed, worthless, or less than your peers, I love you. I appreciate you, and you, are seriously fucking awesome. Bye Bye..

(source) story by (/u/Mobi_Wan_Kenobi786)

[kinetic-elaboration]

September 17: 3x07 Day of the Dove

I am incredibly discombobulated today—usual weekend nocturnal shenanigans I guess! Anyway it’s somehow midnight. Gonna try to write up these note on the Classic episode The Day of the Dove in as efficient a manner as possible.

Hmm, a planet with wavy pink Fraggle plants. I like it already.

But where is Spock? Very suspicious.

I really appreciate Kirk giving a little speech to set up the overall question/issue for us. (I know he does this all the time with the Captain’s logs but this is out loud and so… more obviously expository.)

Oh no, it’s our old friends…the Klingons.

I will admit that this ONE TIME, the Klingon is being reasonable. Like, it is reasonable to think that Kirk and the Enterprise attacked his ship, given that his hip WAS attacked, and who else would it be?

Three years of peace between the Klingons and the Federation? That is inclusive of the show so all this tension must technically be “peace” and also implies there was something more like a direct war going on, like, right before Kirk got the captaincy.

Zoolander voice: What is this, a colony of the INVISIBLE?

“We have no devil. But we understand the habits of yours.”

No takers? No takers on the torture? No volunteers to be mercilessly tortured by the Klingons?

Star Trek Beyond could have had Kirk and Chekov bond over being brothers! I mean, to other people.

They’ll kill 100 hostages at the first sign of treachery. He does know there are only 400-some people on the ship right? Maybe you should pace yourself, Kang.

Kirk’s so badass he needs MULTIPLE guns trained on him just to use the phone.

Oh-ho secret message to Spock. Which version of the iPhone will be capable of doing THAT?

The Klingons are “suspended in transit” is an awfully nice way of saying they’re just dematerialized atoms in space. Philosophy major and/or Bones nightmare fuel.

How did Kang not see this coming, by the way? Like, he just says “I’m taking your ship now, me and my 6 men versus your 400-some men, and I’ll do this by simply declaring it to be so. Now let’s beam up to your ship, where I’ll be greatly outnumbered, and there are armed security guards all around me.” Guess he’s been reading The Secret!

WIFE AND SCIENCE OFFICER

Aka the most important part of this whole episode.

Kirk’s face is very ?????? You can have both????

It’s legitimately not even important for her to be the science officer tbqh. Like that is so gratuitous. That’s just in there to drive me insane.

"We're prisoners, somehow, after I demanded to come on the ship, assuming they'd just give it to me without any kind of fight. How DID this happen?”

Federation death camps lol—someone’s been watching Fox News.

I do kind of wonder… is this an actual rumor that goes around the Klingon homeworld or is it something that the alien entity put in her head specifically to make her angrier right now? I mean it really could be either.

I also appreciate this episode for being pretty much the only one to actually attempt to give the Klingons a reason for being as they are. The Romulans… maybe aren’t well-described, but they do have a sort of regalness to them, appropriate for being related to Vulcans, and you can kind of imagine that they are the way they are because they’re Vulcans without the intense self-control. Plus they’re literally only in 2 TOS eps and in the second, the Federation are the aggressors. But the Klingons show up a half-dozen times only to be depicted each time as just like Cartoonishly Bad, aggressive, violent, and selfish for basically no reason. And I mean, some people really are!! But TOS has so much nuance in other places, that it always seemed a little disappointing to me that the Klingons are really just like ‘well we’re just bad and we hate everyone and we really like killing I guess.” At least in this ep there’s a little more added to that: that there is poverty on their world, that they feel aggrieved, that they feel unprotected, that taking and conquering is how they look after themselves…

I think that’s later in the episode though.

He’s detaining them in the LOUNGE lol. With their favorite dishes available to them to eat. Absolutely barbarous conditions.

I can’t believe Chekov is hanging in the elevator with the cool kids. Like, one of these things really isn’t like the others.

Kang is officially sure of himself for someone currently imprisoned in the lounge, that most fearsome of Federation death camps.

Hmm, could the glittery light alien have taken over??

You know what, that's a lot of tasks for Johnson to do all by himself: search the whole ship, fix the engines, and free 400 people.

Sulu would love this: everyone gets a sword!!

“Bridge. I gotta show this to Sulu immediately.”

Klingons have maintained a dueling tradition. That’s interesting. Finally some characterization going on.

Spock is really living up to his logical nature today. Everyone else has gone off the emotional deep end and he’s like “have you considered this completely rational explanation that accounts for the actual, observed facts??”

Whoops Chekov is actually an only child. Scratch that previous Beyond headcanon. (Interesting that his dead brother does really resemble Sam though—killed on a research colony??)

Love that Sulu knows that about him though.

Oh, that’s a pretty schematic picture of the Enterprise. I want that on a t-shirt.

Lol the pan out to the armory, now filled with… swords!!

Do ALL of these men have a fetish for swords? Sulu and fencing, Spock displaying swords in his quarters, and Kirk in his San Francisco apartment, and Scotty salivating over this Scottish blade.

“Klingon units.”

Finally Sulu gets his sword! It’s what he deserves.

Love that the shiny light alien also has a fetish for swords.

Oh no, it’s our old adversary, an alien life force.

What is the alien’s purpose? Um, I’m pretty sure its purpose is to start shit.

“An appropriate choice of terms, Captain.” I don’t even remember what this is referring to but I think it’s pretty clear that Spock is enjoying himself during a crisis again.

Bones, being so dramatic. Were there atrocities? He’s talking about the Klingons as if they were literally hacking off limbs—it’s a few stab wounds here and there, chill.

Oooh, time to behave like military men—strong words. (But I thought it wasn’t the military?? @ S**** P****) (This might not even be my best argument, given the context of this episode, but I’m sticking with it.)

This is like a giant game of capture the flag.

AU that’s just about the Enterprise crew playing capture the flag with the Klingons.

Sulu in the background standing guard with his sword

Damn, turning on Spock with the slurs now!!

Spock was absolutely ready to kill him. Like he would 100% have taken him out with a blow to the head. And he’d been doing such a good job of not feeling the alien’s effects so far! Admittedly, that was a strong provocation though.

Honestly, I really like this scene. It’s uncomfortable and tense and you can really see how the alien is bringing out the worst possible influences of their respective races. And I liked how Spock was definitely full on pre-Reform Vulcan for a minute there. It was a more effective portrayal of what that might have looked like than All Our Yesterdays tbqh.

A result of… stress?

Kirk got himself out of it first. He’s so strong. He knows himself so well, he cannot be outsmarted by any alien.

“We’ve been taught to think in terms other than war.”

“The alien brings out the worst of us—patriotic drumbeating…even race hatred.”

He’s so sad; he can’t imagine thinking like that about Spock :(

Sulu in a Jeffries tube! A man of many talents. It’s okay bb, take credit for turning on the lights.

The alien must have been getting bored. The Klingons must have been doing too well, and the playing field needs to be leveled for maximum shit-stirring.

“Let’s find that alien.” That’s how I ALWAYS feel.

Oh, Kang, you’re so close—“What power supports our battle but thwarts our victory.” So, so close to getting it.

ALIEN DETECTED.

Spock takes his sword, of course.

“Jim.” Obligatory Jim moments hit differently when they’re not so obligatory.

“Jim—stop hitting my protégé. And put that sword down.”

Kirk looks so sad, picking Chekov up to carry him bridal style.

Also in addition to ‘race hatred’ I think we need to add ‘rape-y tendances’ to the bad stuff that the alien is inspiring here.

“A brief surge of racial bigotry. Most distasteful.” Spock winning for understatement of the year.

They're assuming the alien is trying to test out their relative powers but I think it just wants entertainment. I mean, doesn’t it look like a naughty little thing?

Mara’s outfit is… little shorts? Interesting. Usually not my style but she makes it work.

Spock doesn’t even look at Johnson as he falls lol. Another one bites the dust.

“It exists on the hate of others.”

What does this remind me of? Oh, the Vast of Night and the whole “aliens made us do every bad thing ever” conspiracy theory. At least this one makes more sense, in part because it is not quite so overwhelmingly broad!

All hostile attitudes must be eliminated, he says, and there's Mara right behind Kirk giving him a death stare lol.

Kang is so obviously posing. Google Earth, always taking pictures.

Only a few minutes before drifting forever in space becomes inevitable? Good thing Kirk works well under pressure.

“Well… do whatever you can, Scotty. You know the drill.” Doesn’t even bother giving real directions anymore. We’ve been in this scenario before.

“So we drift in space, with only hatred and bloodshed aboard.”

And the 392 people below just get to…live in Enterprise prison, I guess.

Star date: Armageddon. So dramatic!

I’m not even making that up; that’s an actual quote. Can you imagine being an Admiral listening to this?

“Stop the war now.” An actual line, really aired on television.

Spock wants to threaten the wife lol. That's the old pre-Reform Vulcan seeping through. Surak who?

Damn, Kang is cold. “Eh, she gets the concept of being killed in battle.” They’re gonna need marriage counseling after this.

“There is another way. Mutual trust and help.” Yes that’s my hero!!

“No one can guarantee the actions of another.” Can’t remember the context of this entirely anymore, but great line.

The entity is loving this—multi-person choreographed sword fight!!

"Those who hate and fight must stop themselves. otherwise it is not stopped.” Another baller line. Spock has a lot of deep thoughts today. And so does Kirk. And Kang.

Kirk tries to reason with the alien. Nice try.

“Shoo. Shoo, alien. Off the ship, go away.”

Omg that last moment—Kang slapping Kirk’s back way too hard, Spock’s completely ridiculous wide-eyed expression when he does, like some sort of combo of amusement and confusion, and then Sulu just passing on by in the background….

Then the alien just yeets itself into space. And that’s the end!

Always feels weird when there’s no wrap up on the bridge.

Also, what are they going to do with the Klingons? They have no ship. They really did come out of this a lot worse than Kirk and co. No ship, huge casualties—and no one to blame even, but the alien.

I feel like the alien messed up a little in killing so many Klingons. Like, it could have accomplished its purpose, angering the Klingons and turning them on Kirk, by attacking the ship a little less violently—you know they’d react to 5 deaths pretty much the same as 400, and then there would be many more people to fight forever and produce that sweet sweet anger!

Maybe the alien’s powers aren’t strong enough to influence 800 people though. Also it wants equal forces and 800 people wouldn’t fit on the Enterprise, one assumes. So it still makes sense.

That was, of course, an excellent episode. 100% agree with is classic status, even though the main things I remembered going in were the wife + science officer bit, and everyone laughing at the end in a really forced, fake way, in order to make the alien go away.

I thought the Klingons were a lot better/more interesting today than usual. First, I think Kang is a better character, or a better actor maybe, than the others; he has a certain way about him that is… more watchable, more sympathetic. And he’s always saying these really dramatic things that make it seem likely he writes patriotic Klingon war poetry in his off time. Also, including his wife made them seem more… not human obviously, but normal. Not just cardboard cut-out villains. And of course the actual lightly specific motivations I earlier mentioned helped too.

Also, the plotting was very good: it built up slowly but surely over time, so at first the alien’s influence wasn’t that obvious, and then it became more so, and then it became horrifically obvious and extreme. And then you had to re-evaluate earlier moments: was that the alien changing facts in their heads, or a real part of the animosity between humans and Klingons? And it wasn’t always clear, which I appreciated. The tension when the people were at their worst wasn’t overdone, like in that moment with Scotty, Spock, and Kirk—or even in Chekov’s assault on Mara, tbh. The various strategies of the different sides were very entertaining too; there was never a dull moment, and they fit in a lot of straight-up actions and twists into 50 minutes.

The possible threat was truly terrifying, also: stuck in a space ship, forever, unable to die, feeling the worst possible emotions all the time, besieged, angered, despairing, fighting a war that can’t be won, being injured and suffering only to recover and fight again, and it never stops… A perfect nightmare mixture of insanity and violence and pain. And the alien, in encouraging hatred and anger, doesn’t discriminate between sides: they turn on each other just as much as on the Klingons, breeding paranoia and infighting. For eternity.

The episode also felt much more strongly anti-war than I remember tbh. Like it was not subtle. Kirk literally says “stop the war” in so many words. He has a part in his speech where he talks about the possibility of other aliens out there, encouraging other wars. And while I do think “maybe the aliens are making us do it” is a cop out explanation, or would be if it were real, the scenario gave the show a lot of room to say, like, pretty ballsy things: to include “patriotic drum beating” along with “race hatred” in a list of corrupting feelings they were experiencing; to show how the same instincts that lead to warring also lead to sexual assault and the aforementioned ‘race hatred;” to reveal the true horror of an endless war by making the participants unkillable and sticking them in a singular space ship in the middle of nowhere; to imply that the combatants of war gain nothing from it, but outside or third-party entities will pull strings of their own design to profit from the conflict as long as possible; even to make an impassioned plea to camera to stop the endlessness of the conflict. Like I can’t even totally unpack this but it is a lot!

Finally, it was also a great Kirk episode, which of course is my most important factor. He’s smart; he’s strong; he’s so sure of himself and his values that he cannot be manipulated to mindless hatred, he represents the values of the Federation, and the show itself; he treats even his enemies with basic respect and humanity; and ultimately, he saves the day.

Okay I was not efficient in writing this up at all! It is very late!!

[evermorehaikyuu]

Eclipse

In which Hinata Shoyo discovers himself between the two sides and one of them now owes him.

Word Count: 1500 words

Taglist: @our-tall-slytherin-queen @gg9183 @airybby @wheeshllumi

Note: I saw this one fanart of mechanic Hinata and that’s literally where I got the inspiration from. Yes, I also got inspiration from the book Cinder too, I just put a little twist in it.

He was the one that had chosen his job and where he would do it. Hinata had known his budget wasn’t exactly the best thing in the world, but his job would give him enough money to survive each month and every single day.

Once he had found a good place to live, he immediately submitted his application to the place. There was an area underneath the apartment where he could work in and the upper floor of the apartment would be his flat to live in. It came at a fairly cheap price. Unfortunately, the reason it was so cheap was because of the area it was in. 

The streets were practically run by criminals and to be perfectly honest, he didn’t want to go back to living in a safer area where he barely had enough money to scrape by. Plus, with the amount of accidents occurring, his pay was a lot higher than before. All he had to worry about were the thieves trying to get into his place at night but he was already planning to have alarms for it.

However, everything changed when Hinata woke up late one morning. He didn’t think such a little event would cause a major butterfly effect, but he was incorrect. Racing down the stairs while putting his boots on (he had mastered the way on how to put shoes on while not falling down the stairs), he found himself staring at the person in front of the entrance. There was a little counter that separated the workplace from the outside world and this person was leaning on it.

“Hi, I’m sorry for being late, what can I do--” Hinata’s breath caught in his throat, his eyes widening at the person before him. 

She was incredibly nonchalant, perhaps even innocent if he hadn’t known better. A well-known criminal, one of the most wanted ones in the entire cities, she was known for her sly ways of pulling off a heist and always getting out of the worst situations. A danger to society, many police officers had called her. Hinata knew Yamaguchi’s long-term job was to capture her and here she was, a sitting duck right in front of him.

“It’s okay, don’t worry about it, we all have our days.” She smiled a bit and it took the logical part of his brain to remind him that she was the one everyone was looking for.

Yet somehow...his body wasn’t moving towards the phone. Maybe it was because of the fear. Maybe it was because of her charms. “You’re Y/N L/N.” He blurted out.

“Yeah, unfortunately. You’ve probably seen it all at this point. Stealing, blah blah blah, the whole ordeal.” Y/N shrugged, acting as if it was all below her.

“Aren’t you...also a killer?” Get a hold of yourself! She’s a criminal! Hinata scolded himself.

Y/N laughed and it was the kind of laugh that would make anyone bend to her will. Maybe that was how she got away with everything. “No no no, they’ve fed you wild stories, haven’t they? I don’t really care to correct them, they’d capture me on the spot if they tried.” She tilted her head at him, scrutinizing every detail, from his messy ginger hair to his grease-caked boots. It wasn’t a judgmental stare at all, making Hinata relax slightly. “I just steal what I need to in order to survive. It’s how we do things around here.”

“I get that. I just got this place for a cheap price but I didn’t realize the area it was in until I moved in.” Hinata said slowly. He gripped the hammer at the side of his belt and it didn’t go unnoticed by her.

“Heard you were the best mechanic in the city, I came to you because I need a favor.”

This made him falter and let go of the hammer, making him tilt his head. “Huh?”

“It’s my car. No, it’s not a getaway car, you can chill out about that, it’s a car that I’ve owned since it was passed onto me. I should be giving it to the junkyard but I really don’t want to. It’s like...giving away something you adore, basically. Although, I don’t know why I’m attached to a car of all things.” Y/N scratched the back of her neck, looking down at the counter, bewildered about how much she had spilled to him.

Hinata stared at her and frowned a bit. “You want me to fix it?”

Y/N nodded. “Of course, I understand if you’re busy, I wouldn’t want to pressure you in any way--”

“Hold on a second, isn’t this where you tell me you’ll ransack my place if I don’t do it?” Hinata was utterly confused, this wasn’t the way things usually went. They always went one way, was this actually the most wanted criminal herself?

“Excuse me?” Now it was Y/N’s turn to look very confused. “Do I look like a criminal to you?” With one look at his face, she shook her head. “Never mind, don’t answer that. No, I’m dead serious, I’m not going to do anything bad to you, it’s just that I’ve heard a lot of stories about you and I wanted to see you in person. Plus, as I said before, you’re the best mechanic in the city.”

Is she actually a criminal?, Hinata asked himself before looking behind him at the lone car that he was almost finished fixing. It couldn’t hurt, could it? Would he count as an accomplice? “Okay.”

Y/N’s eyes widened and she beamed at him, making him smile as well. But the smile faded as she realized something. “I can’t pay you right now, it would take me a while to get you that amount of money.”

Hinata felt sorry for her and then he heard her next words. “But I can pay you in a favor. It’s practically the way I pay everyone. You could ask me for any favor and I’d have to do it. Like say for example, your protection. I could do that, but that’s a bit of a lousy payment compared to money. I can probably scrounge up the money for you--”

“Are you kidding? I’ve been living on a dangerous street for a few months and this is a lousy payment? I’ll take it!” Hinata exclaimed, grabbing her hands. Y/N was taken aback and Hinata quickly let go of her, stammering apologies through it all.

She covered her mouth with her hand, laughing. There was something shining in her eyes when she looked at him again. “You’re really cute, you know? Thank you, Hinata.”

“How do you know my name?” Hinata now got scared but she laughed again and pointed at a spot on his chest. 

“Your name is on there.” 

“Oh, right, I forgot.” Hinata grinned sheepishly at her. “So you’re really not that bad a criminal?”

“Mm, I guess thieves are criminals, but trust me, if you were in my position, you’d do it too. It’s against my morals to kill someone, even if it pays more. I just don’t want to do it, taking an innocent life is not something for me.” Y/N looked down at her hands as if wondering what they would look like if she took another path in life. She snapped her head up and saw him staring at him with an expression she didn’t recognize. “Can I bring the car next week?”

“Oh! Yes, of course, I’ll be waiting.” Hinata replied, nodding eagerly.

“And maybe can I take you out for dinner sometime?” Y/N asked, a smirk crossing her face.

Hinata’s cheeks were dusted with pink before saying, “But won’t you get caught?”

“Nah, I know a place, they owe me anyways. Saturday night at 8?” 

“S-Sure.” He stammered, staring at her in a whole new light. He was going to go out with a thief, why wasn’t he denying it? Was it because of the favor? 

“Great! I’ll see you then. Take care, Hinata.” Y/N left, running into the shadows of an alleyway a few meters to his left. He slumped over the counter, shock in his mind. He just agreed to--was it a date?--a rendezvous with Y/N L/N herself. However, as he started thinking about what she said, he couldn’t see any trace of a lie in her facial expression. In fact, it looked like she was wearing her heart on her sleeve.

Saturday at 8, huh? Definitely. Hinata put a hand over his face, smiling into the palm of his hand before starting to get to work on the other car. The whole conversation played over and over in his head as he kept working. She was a genuine person, maybe a bit reckless, but there was no mistaking the truth behind her.

She was someone that still chose the right thing, even though she chose the life she led.

[wesimpforxiao]

My Backstory (IRL)

Before I begin, if you want nothing to do with hearing about abusive relationships, possible eating disorder, anxiety disorders/depression/suicide, sexual assualt, manipulation, gaslighting, sexual harassment, etc, SKIP THIS POST.

So, I would like to start off by saying the NSFW content I *try* to write always falls stale, 1. being because I get embarrassed or ashamed by my writing my own thoughts, and 2. because of the rest of this post.  So the Albedo NSFW may not happen, but I asked just in case (i have some of it written out, but it is very stale).  And also because I may or may not have accidentally triggered a trauma response as I was writing the Albedo post (oops...)

To begin, freshman year of high school, 14 yrs old, (I’m 20 and in college now), I started dating this guy that was in my grade.  I have an anxiety disorder, so when we started going out, I immediately stopped eating because I constantly felt sick to my stomach.  It wasn’t because I thought I was fat or anything, I just felt sick.  Think butterflies in your stomach times 10 and ALL the time.  We dated for a month before he broke up with me.  During that time, he had suddenly brought up the idea of me sending nude or bra/undie pics to him.  Him and his friend (who was in the call with us) tag-teamed and said that it was normal and asked when I would be ready to send pictures.  Both of them asked that.  Red flag number one.  I said 3 months just to please them, not that I was actually going to do it.

Once he broke up with me, I was DEVASTATED. I feel A LOT, and it was my first ‘relationship.’ Exactly a month later, he texted me, saying he wanted to be friends.  I said okay.  He never acknowledged my presence at school, often avoiding my eyes.  Sometime into that he had asked me what I would do if he had asked me out again, and when I said I’d say yes, he immediately texted back and said “i am so sorry, my friend [insert name] was texting you on my phone and I didn’t know until now.”  Red flag number two.

Then, after we had stopped being friends, a month passes.  He texts me again, this time saying “It’s been 3 months.”  Yeah.  Did you read the part where I said I’d consider sending pictures at 3 months? That only applied if we were dating for that long (and I still wouldnt do that), so where is his logic?  Now, I don’t know why I even got back together with him, but I did.  For a week.  And just like the first time, I felt sick to my stomach.  I always look back on this as a warning from God.  And this time, he wasn’t hiding his intentions.  He was CONSTANTLY making sexual jokes, sending inappropriate emoji ‘jokes,’ and asking for nudes.  He did not stop asking even when I told him to, and even when I told him it made my stomachache worsen.  I did not trust him, but I stayed for a full week of hell.  Eventually I slightly caved, showing him on facetime me in my bra and underwear (My thinking: he couldn’t save pictures that way).  He covered his camera.  Did he take screenshots or something? I don’t know.  It was awful.  I kicked him to the curb the next day, still feeling like *I* should be the one apologizing.  He eventually “tried” to apologize thru text, but was too much of a coward to apologize in person when i requested that.  He says he had cancer or something, I honestly don’t care. His actions were inexcusable and it was pathetic that he used it as an excuse.

I hated him so strongly for the next 3-4 years, but the story doesn’t end there.  A new guy, senior, 17 yrs old.  End of my freshman year.  We get together.  He didn’t properly ask me out, just assumed we were dating after we confessed our feelings EVEN THOUGH I told him my dad said to wait 3 months.  Red flag number three.  So, by the bf’s standards, 6 months into the relationship, I stay over at his place for New year’s.  I will admit that we did stuff over the phone prior to then, but I consider to be fine with that timeline.  At some point while we were planning to do stuff (if ya know what I mean but NOT full on hoo-ha stuff okay) for New year’s, he said “Who knows, maybe we’ll get carried away ;)” Red flag number four.  This immediately made me uncomfortable, and I was not fully comfortable when the day came either.

We were making out (consensual, but I feel like i was forcing myself a bit), I let him touch me down *there* (which he sucked at lemme tell ya) (also it was fine when he touched me before this day), and then he asked to touch my chest.  *Previously, he had stated if i wasnt sure, hed touch over my bra first and go slow.  He did not do either, instead immediately slipping his hand under my bra.* That is when something inside me snapped, and I felt number than I already was. Red flag number five.

I didn’t stop him because I wanted to feel something, anything.  I got nothing.  And then came the time when he decided to say “Now its your turn,” grabbed my hand, and put it down his pants, ignoring me, who was saying “I don’t know how to, I’m not sure I want to.”  

I felt nothing for a few days, and then depression set in.  It didn’t feel connected to that incident, and i didn’t connect the dots until later.  It got so bad I had almost decided to kill myself three months later.  My anxiety was through the roof, and every day my trauma manifested itself in the question “Do I actually love him?”  It was a living hell to be inside my head all the time.  He at one point asked me “Are you sure you were okay with what happened on new year’s? You’re acting like you’ve been raped.”  When I said I wasn’t, he said “oh.” and we never talked about it again.

The relationship continued for another year despite my obvious depression and anxiety that revolved around him. He lied to me on several occasions, disregarded my boundaries (i.e. continued to make sexual jokes even though they clearly bugged me after the assault), and refused to get a job so he could smoke weed all day.  My parents urged him to prove himself (he was out of high school by this time), and when I eventually took their side and gently nudged him along, he said “You are in a relationship with me, not your parents.  Its either me or them.”  Red flags six through ten right there.

When I managed to break it off with him, a ‘friend’ apparently took his side.  This is the girlfriend in the “His Reaction to Your Ex(es)” post(s).  This friend was actually an adopted cousin of mine, and we were not on speaking terms at this point because she had taken my first bf’s side, saying that *I* had to forgive him and that I was in the wrong for not wanting to talk to him or accept his half-assed apologies. (She was not at our school during the time me and that guy dated so she literally knew nothing).  I cut her off because of that.  Turns out she had a massive crush on the dude and he was already taken by someone else.  

So, this same chick sides with the second bf, telling people that I’m the one who hurt him and whatnot.  I come to find out that him and her are now dating and honestly, it is hilarious.  Even I think she deserves better.  He has no future, and I came to realize that, knowing that if i stayed with him longer I would have 100% actually killed myself, or died spiritually.

So yeah, that’s my story, hopelessly in love with fictional characters now because I am too traumatized by what they have done.  I cannot be touched sexually without reverting to a depression or an anxious mess.  Even if I did manage to be in a relationship after that, I don’t think I’d ever be able to have sex with someone. And finally I cannot have a healthy relationship, because what is that, really?  I’m just gonna live alone with some goats LOL.

[gin-and-luce]

You killed our dog! Adriana of The Sopranos gave me strength to navigate life after a breakup during a global pandemic lockdown

I’m going through a breakup. It’s come at the worst time but also the best time. He ended things with me (more on that later) after three years in the most Beta-Male way...but this is what happens when your type can be boiled down to softboi. I can’t see my friends in the conventional way, so I made some new ones on screen to help me navigate the end during quarantine.

Over ten weeks ago I started watching The Sopranos. It doesn’t need justifying, everyone knows it’s the best television series of all time, but I’d never seen it, and I knew a global pandemic induced lockdown would provide optimum viewing circumstances. My favourite thing to do is completely throw myself into the female narrative and experience I’m watching on screen. I prefer a long deep drama over a film. I like being able to see my girls every night. 

People have said to me before “you should start a blog”, but I could never escape the feeling that doing so is massively narcissistic because it *is*, unless you have something actually relevant to write about. Alternatively, the image of Gretchen Weiners leaning in and going “you let it out honey, put it in the book” floats across my conscience, and everything embarrassing that I’ve ever done, plays in a montage in my mind. 

Who gives a fuck what I have to say about anything…….. especially about a cultural phenomena that is quite literally regarded as the best TV show of all time?

I’d been wanting to write this after I watched Long Term Parking. I lay in the dark for 45 minutes after the episode ended. I’d never felt like that watching a television show or film before. My throat had seized up but I didn’t cry, even though I felt like it. I knew it was coming from the moment Adriana met the agent. I wasn’t surprised, but I was heartbroken and absolutely fuming. I still am. 

I’m not angry with Christopher, Tony, or Silvio, but just the general unbalance I’ve felt when I’m in a relationship. The loss of self, relationships being a series of compromises. From what I have found from my own experiences and my girlfriends’, women are just much more willing to compromise, but don’t consider it to be a compromise. Men can only take into consideration their own reality, an evolutionary selfishness that just doesn’t translate. 

Just as lockdown began I texted my boyfriend to say I loved him and I missed him. He responded with “Can’t say I feel the same”. Nearly 3 years were over just like that. We had the obligatory phone call, where I was hysterical and he was smarmy and smug. Yet when it was over, I felt nothing. It’s allllll a big nothing.

My personal Gospel is Sex and The City (shout out to HBO!). This was my Berger moment. He essentially scribbled “I’m sorry, I can’t. Don’t hate me” on a post-it. The irony of the whole thing is that when we watched it together, he himself said he was most like Berger. Thinking about it makes me wince.

My life opened up in front of me, I was exposed to his weakness regarding the situation in full when his sister-in-law messaged me on Instagram a few days ago. He hadn’t told his family, nor had he told his flatmates (another shout out to my sleuths at the back, you know who you are!). 

The Sopranos is a show about life. The Mafia structure provides a vehicle for us to question morality and mortality. You take what you get from it. When I watch it again at a different stage of my life, I will get something else out of it. 

For me now, while I stew in my own emotion during quarantine, Adriana represents emotional labour and the expectation for women to behave in a certain way in relationships. 

At first when my ex’s family members were messaging me, I was confused. It is frankly humiliating to smile as if everything is normal, so as to protect someone that in the end would not do the same for me. I know he wouldn’t do the same because there was just no courtesy in what happened weeks ago. I am trying to move on but things like this stunt your personal growth.

The struggle with emotional labour hones a guilt that someday I’ll regret giving my early 20s to something that didn’t work out. I felt like I was on borrowed time.

These are obviously my own insecurities spurred on by the fact that I’ve read enough “10 things I wish I knew in my 20s” blogs to know that these are my selfish years. Still, it is ultimately devastating to see the last 3 years of your life conclude via a text that displays a failure to realise that there is no real clean cut for a long-term relationship. 

I respect him for the blunt statement because it means I get to reference the Berger SATC breakup and say “casually cruel in the name of being honest” (Taylor Swift, 2012) a LOT, which softens the pity in the social scenarios that I invent in my head in the shower.

When Tony calls Adriana to tell her Christopher has tried to kill himself, that was like my final phone call too. This is the end. Her youthfulness was why I related to her most in the show, but at the same time having nothing to lose made her easily expendable. Youth makes you put 100% into something knowing it is a gamble. 

I’m not comparing my ‘borrowed time’ to Adriana because she ends up dead, but there was a disregard for her life that was so harrowing because she did nothing but try and do the right thing. I watched Adriana put Christopher first willingly for 5 series. He supported her music management dreams but ultimately ended up making it all about him. He gave her the Crazy Horse but this ultimately was just another mob hangout. He sat on her dog, he continued to use heroin, shag other people, and so on.

“You could start writing again,” she tells him in her last episode, to which he responds  “I could do my memoirs, finally,”. Here is Adriana still!! STILL!! catering to Christopher’s ego to give herself some confidence. Very me.

All the way through she was just too good for him. Her ties to the Famiglia aren’t as tight as Carmela and Co. No children, still young, there’s chance for Adriana to get out if she wanted to. Of course this makes her prime FBl bait, but shows she sticks by Christopher through everything purely out of love. In the end she dies on her knees, subservient, with Heart’s Barracuda the last song she hears. I know Adriana had to go. That’s the way it is in the Famiglia because Christopher took an oath. But in a way she also had the carpet ripped from underneath her, just like me. 

There are lots of men writing on the internet about how Adriana is greedy and hypocritical. I just don’t understand where this reading is coming from other than obvious misogyny. I’ve read others that say if she was really that strong she would have simply left the relationship years ago. I believe that she believed things would improve for both of them, and that most people are just slut shaming her for her past. 

Still, Drea DeMatteo won a Best Supporting Actress Emmy for the episode. Fuckin’ A. 

I rooted for the woman. Before I was made redundant while working from home, I would spend half my life at my desk willing it to be 5:30pm, so I could slither back to the settee and spend the other half of my life in New Jersey. I’d phone my mum to discuss the episodes. She loves the show too, it’s always been a favourite in my household. We’d talk about the women like they were our friends and how we relate to them. The Sopranos is like a big mirror urging you to question everything. The answer to life is simply what are ya gonna do? 

Men love making things black and white so it is easier for them, when really women are in the background sorting out the shades of grey. 

Don’t get me wrong, Adriana’s significance is massive, albeit more so because of her death. You watch Christopher and Tony’s relationship start to crumble afterwards. It's shattering to see the disregard for Christopher’s sobriety and how despite his loyalty, he still sees him as a liability and weak. 

On the other hand, for Adriana’s sake, I am still enraged that he couldn’t see the bigger picture at the time. She is collateral damage in his path to finding his precious arc - “Wives, girlfriends, they can complicate life in a major way” Tony expresses to Jennifer as he runs from his own guilt. 

Christopher is desperate for Tony’s approval but is more than happy to use his blood connection as a protective leeway whenever he steps out of line. Again the irony is that he comes to tell Tony about Adriana first, just as the old Famiglia values say he should, but there is no real personal reward for doing so despite the personal sacrifice. 

I think Christopher regretted it in the end, and rightly so. When he is faced with his potential alternate life at the gas station, we assume that this was what made him go to Tony. It’s a family with loads of kids. Adriana probably can’t even have kids??? What kind of male logic?!  #justiceforadriana

I can’t help but feel for him when JT screams “Chris, you’re in the MAFIA!”. It’s the same kind of reality check that Chief Cubitoso gives Adriana, it’s an ultimatum and it’s the realisation that they are trapped in this life. Just ask Gene.

Carmela knew. I read her dreams as a testament to a woman’s intuition. She knows her friend isn’t what everyone is describing, she knows Adriana wouldn’t just disappear. She is all too aware of the emotional labour Mob women carry. When she sees Adriana with Cosette on the banks of the Seine, it is as sad as it is when we dream about people who have died. 

There is a scene in an early episode where Carmela says “Don’t we all?” in response to Meadow squealing “She’s MARRYING a BABY?” at a painting of The Marriage of Saint Catherine. I thought about this again when Christopher dies. Carmela passes her instinct off as hysteria, she isn’t to know. “So quick to blame, what is the attraction in that?” she cries during the aftermath of the car crash. There is a critique in her own femininity here that just makes you want to shout “NO CARM!!!!!!!”. As she believes she mothers Tony, there is the double-edged sword whereby he protects her through keeping her in the dark. “Heaven only ever sees my love making a fool of me” sings Emmylou Harris at the start of season 5. Carm’s power is taken away but she doesn’t even know. 

Carmela dedicates her life to being a mother but it’s not enough to save Meadow from her surname. We get some sense that AJ ‘Break Stuff by Limp Bizkit’ Soprano might be on a new path when he feels like the burning of his car among the autumn leaves of death was cathartic. As a man, he just has more freedom anyway. 

Miss Meadow gained her independence by getting her driving license, but in the end we see that she is still held back in the final scene by her inability to parallel park. She slots right in, eventually. As she does, she slots into the Soprano cycle after years of doing the most to get out and pave her own way. After every breakup with someone without links to the Famiglia, no scrubs, she returns and dates someone closer to home. Her career path is left tenuous to us, it would be all too easy for her to become a kept woman, which feels like it is the only real option should she settle down into the lifestyle with Patrick Parisi. It isn’t what she envisioned for herself, so part of me wants to hope that her story ends up a little bit more like Elle Woods. Legally Italian. 

I probably wouldn’t even have remembered her saying anything about parallel parking if I wasn’t terrible at parallel parking myself. It’s the pepperings of these subtle callbacks that make the show so beautiful. As the guitar solo plays on during the frustration, you’re invited to reminisce over Meadow’s journey. I fully wept watching her struggle to get the damn car parked because I’m trying to get my car parked too. Don’t stop believing, Meadow. 

I admire all the women in The Sopranos. The show is feminist, and that is a hill I am prepared to die on. It’s definitely up for debate as it is obviously littered with gratuitous nudity and women are commoditised. We have to allow this for cultural context for the show, but real life is basically exactly the same too? 

I read a post on Reddit where a dude is asking whether he should watch the show with his girlfriend. He types ‘“It’s a masterpiece of film but she probably wouldn’t get into it as I am”, and you don’t have to look much further to find more comments about how women and their puny minds just won’t get it. It’s an odd perspective to take given that Tony’s psychiatrist is a woman, but of course women could never grasp something so complex. It’s bullshit if you ask me, the female narrative prevails throughout all scenarios. 

The Pine Barrens seems to be everyone’s favourite episode. It’s not my favourite but there are two major elements that resonated with me. The first is Meadow looking down at the three letter words Jackie Aprile Jr had placed on the Scrabble board, and the second is when Gloria says to Tony:

“What you said was that you didn’t wanna piss me off..which implies that you’d have to deal with me, which is more about sparing YOU than my fucking feelings”. Don’t need to elaborate on that. Rest in power, Gloria. Legend.

Of course I could write pages and pages of hot feminist takes on all of the women - Jennifer, Janice, Livia, Angie, Svetlana, Charmaine. Lord knows I could probably write a book on Tracee.“ 20 years old, this girl”, I bashed Living on a Thin Line by The Kinks for about a week after that episode. It is the male gaze of the show made me love the women more. Carmela is my mother and I’ll probably name my first born Meadow. 

Carmela is the powerhouse and backbone of The Soprano household even though Tony provides. She represents stability, emotional labour, and putting on a brave face regardless. In some ways, it is as if Carmela represents the human emotion side and the fragility of organised crime. She is secure, but not enough, and her lack of ability to stand on her own two feet plagues her conscience through time. She is totally complicit, but must be to ensure her future with Tony as he pays anything to roll the dice just one more time. At the end of Long Term Parking, she and Tony stand looking at where she will build her spec-house. The forest looks the same as where we lost Ade, it’s a grim reflection that Carmela wouldn’t have this life if it wasn’t for the quick disposal of those like Adriana.   

Yeah okay, what the hell is a show with a feminist underpinning trying to say about wider society about a woman who exercises her beauty, loyalty and ambition?? Is it that she is not to be trusted?? Adriana’s a rat, but before this she is already deemed “damaged goods” anyway. She dresses provocatively, but that’s because she just looks MINT always. You would dress like THAT if you looked like THAT. When you Google her, ‘Adriana Sopranos Tennis’ comes up. I roll my eyes. Fucking men, eh? To take it down to a basic Sixth-Form-Poet reading, Adriana is Curley’s Wife and Daisy Buchanan all in one. She loves a red manicure too, and it might have worked out better for her if she had played the complicit beautiful little fool. 

This isn’t ‘Why The Sopranos is good!’, but a love letter to Adriana and her strength, because there is basically little or no content written on the women of the show when I have Googled.  I needed there to be more things written about her that isn’t just “bitch had it coming” when in fact she is a martyr. 

When Adriana was on screen, there was my mate. I knew her, she wanted what I wanted, but she sacrificed so much of herself for others and it was heartbreaking to watch. She barely gets a look-in in early episodes, but when she does she is usually wearing something animal print, which automatically made her the number one character on my radar. I am choosing to believe the theory that she is the cat in the final episode too. 

Still, I have been struggling and questioning why an episode that aired 16 years ago, with no plot that links to my own circumstances, has had such a monumental impact on me. 

I saw a tweet that said “have we ever sat down and thought about why relationships only work if the guy is more invested than the girl or is that just something we accept” (@anugov1). Adriana invested more in Christopher, even in the end, than she ever did herself. 

As I navigate this transitional period in my life, I am Adriana driving in the vision we see when we think she is going to start her new chapter. We can’t leave the flat, I have no job. The Sopranos has provided the most cathartic escapism for me. As I enter into whatever new world follows this nightmare, I wanted my mate Adriana to find her new world too, turning the classic rock up to 11.

[spelling-checked-mostly]

Idk if you do fic writing but maybe GO -because I'm obsessed and "nanny, why are you crying?" Idk. Kinda feeling angsty. If you don't do fic that's cool too. Idk, feeling bored in here on this Friday afternoon... iloveyourworkpleasestartpostingagainokaythanksbye

Oh uh... wow okay hi. I do write fic, thanks for the prompt. I'm not great at angst /lies/ but I can try. Note that I am typing this on my phone. Warlock was singing- internally of course. Nanny wouldn't approve of the future ruler of hell literally singing. Unless of course, he sings queen. So Warlock sang internally, voicing his joy only in his head. “Yes father, I would love to go.” It’s the first time he has really been allowed to go to an event like this. “I can behave. I promise.” “I’m sure you will not embarrass me. Especially with your nanny there to keep you in line.” Crowley's head shot up. He had very little interest in going to these events. Of the very few things humans did that he actually had an influence in- he hated dinner parties the most. He just found them dreadfully boring. “Yes sir, of course.” He wanted to sit in his room and drink that night out of existence. “I'll make sure Warlock is the perfect son.” As soon as his father had left Crowley told Warlock to go play in the garden. He followed of course. Hunting down the one being on this planet who would understand his opinions on the matter. “Sometimes, Francis, I really hate being perfect.” Crowley ‘leaned’ against a shrubbery and watched Warlock chasing after a rabbit he had found. “You are far too vain, my lady. Though that may be your only flaw.” Aziraphale stood, wiping the dirt off of his hands. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your company this afternoon?” Crowley sighs dramatically and looks away. “Do you recall, oh it wasn't that long ago of course you do, when politicians and debate first started developing into a less- er… civil manner. I suggested to some minister or some such that they all get together for a party.” Azira nods. “Honestly, they do seem to resolve things better when they are all in a good mood.” he sighs, “I suppose I should have thanked you for that.” Crowley shrugged. “But are the decisions they are making actually good ones? I had to use a lot of questionable logic to not get in trouble for that.” Aziraphale laughs, only a little. “Well anyway, I have to go to one with the antichrist. I can't imagine it will be enjoyable in the slightest.” And Crowley can see the way his angel physically deflates. Because something is wrong. “Everything alright Angel?” “Hmm? Oh yes, everythings just… tickety boo.” And Crowley rolls his eyes- not that you can tell, but he does it anyway. “We have been over this. No one who is tickety boo actually uses the term tickety boo. What's wrong, come on now tell me. We’re partners aren't me. If you have concerns about the child… or something else?” And aziraphale sighs, and frowns and crowley doesn't like it at all. “It's just… I've been thinking recently… Warlock is getting older and- and well he's not spending so much time at home anymore and you always go away with him and I-I just feel like when you go… I feel- you get more chances to tempt the child than I do is all.” And Crowley laughs. And Aziriphale will never tell him how much it hurts when he laughs at him. “Oh Angel, you should have told me sooner why- we could have certainly found some excuse for you to come with us. Might need a miracle but I can certainly work something out… If that's really what you are so down about.” And Azira forces himself to smile. And Crowley can see through it but he doesn’t say anything. And Warlock comes running over. “Nanny, nanny come look, I’ve killed it.” And Crowley smiles. And Azira gasps. And they go together to find the poor creature. “Very good.” “Now now, Warlock. We should respect and love all of god's creatures. How about a proper burial.” Aziraphale doesn’t give him a chance to argue. He takes the rabbit up in one hand and leads him over to a steadily growing wildlife cemetery. “But Nanny says that-” “The one thing you should respect is your elders.” Crowley smiles softly over at his Angel, even if there is no acknowledgement of what he has said. “Yess nanny, I’ll get the shovel.” “Thank you for that dear.” Aziriphale says it quietly and doesnt turn around. ~~~~~Convenient time skip for exposition~~~~~ “He called me dear. Can you believe that? I mean I know he does it all the time. It’s just his nature. He calls everyone dear. It just felt different this time, you know?” He continued gently misting his plants. “He's a terrible gardener, but I can forgive that.” There's a light rustling and crowley stops. Resting his hand on his hip with all his demon sass. “We have been over this. It’s not like that. Satan though, I wish it was. But could you imagine?” He laughs and goes back to tending his own little garden in his room. “I’d have to teach him how to dance though. Angel only knows one dance and-” “Nanny who are you talking to?” Crowley shrieks and spins and nearly sprays Warlock in the face with the spray bottle before catching himself. “I wasn't talking to anyone. Do not sneak up on me.” He sets the spray bottle down and leads them out of the side closet into the main area. “Sorry. I’m jsut bored because i was listening to father talk about work and i started thinking and - Oh yeah i came up to ask you something.” Warlock grins and Crowley can't figure out if he is proud of or afraid of the demonic gleam in his eyes. “Do you have a date for the party Nanny?” Crowley nearly falls out of his chair. “No-I- Well- Am i supposed to?” He straightens out his skirt and tries to compose himself. “Well, I was listening to father and he was talking about how one of his partners got a new girlfriend and father hates her but he just knows that his partner is going to bring this girl with him and it got me thinking that you are a fairly pretty woman. At least, far prettier than my friends' nannies so i figured you must be seeing someone.” Warlock pauses for air so Crowley takes the chance to cut in. “Well, if ruling hell doesn’t work out I suppose you could make a career in flattery.” He decides he is definitely not going to address the issue of his love life with the antichrist. “It's just that i'd really like to meet him. So i asked father if he hated all boyfriends and girlfriends or if it was just the man he works with and he said that they weren't all bad and he wouldn't even mind people bringing dates to things like this if they weren't so insufferable as that girl so i asked if he would let you bring your boyfriend and he seemed really confused but he said that your boyfriend couldn't possibly be as bad as that girl so as long as you do your job and i really want to meet him nanny.” And again warlock pauses for breath. This time Crowley doesn’t speak. He thinks for a moment before opening his mouth. “Say you’ll take him to the party or I- I’ll- when i take over hell i won't let you have sweets.” Crowley laughs. “Would it still be as exciting if you had already met him?” Crowley could laugh from the look on the boy's face. “You aren’t dating Clyde are you? It would be just like you to date another nanny and he's just so bossy and he doesn’t even believe ill take over hell and… I don’t like him or stupid Jackson and his stupid new toy train.” Warlock folds his arms over his chest and pouts. Crowley does laugh this time. “No, Clyde is too… too much of a nanny. No Warlock, I would be bringing Francis.” Warlock does not look as surprised as Crowley would have expected. “The gardener? I mean I guess I see it but he's so soft and you're so- uh..also soft. But like dark soft.” and crowley nearly growls. “I. Am. Not. Soft. And if you say it again you’ll be going to bed early.” He can hear the plants rustling behind the door. “Well it's just… he looks like he escaped from a male convent.” “A monastery?” “And you look like… you. Like you are waiting for people to find the body of your ex husband who disappeared three years ago so you can play the grieving widow and inherit his fortune.” “You are very creative, warlock. I am eager to see what your future looks like. Yes, seeing as I am aloud I will be bringing Francis as my date to the party. Go play in your room for a but, Nanny has something to take care of.” As soon as Warlock is gone Crowley pops back down to the garden. “Brother Fran- Oh don't scream Angel, it’s just me.” Crowley waits for him to calm down. “I told Warlock we are dating.” “You did what!” “Oh for Satan's sake angel I said don’t scream.” Crowley smiles and brushes his hair back. “Yes, Miss Ashtoreth, I won't scream but I must ask dear. You did what?” “Its brilliant really Angel. And Warlock gave me the idea. Maybe you really are having an influence on him.” The comment goes right over the angels head. “I've told him we are dating. Then you can be my date to parties and things. It’s fine with his father by the way. No miracle needed. You can have just as much chance to influence the boy as me.” And Azira smiles. And Crowley knows it's still fake but he can’t possibly figure out why. So he leaves it alone. “I guess when you put it like that it’s okay to lie.” Oh. Oh right. “Of course Angel. So may I tempt you to join me for a dinner party?” “I suppose. Yes. You could.” ~~~ Time skip because i hold all the power ~~~ “He said yes. Can you believe that. Of course he says its all a lie so he doesn’t really love me but i suppose we've known that this whole time haven’t we? Yes I suppose we have. We’ve been over this.” Rustling. Crowley sneers. “Oh you know what, shove it up your roots Phil. I would run you through the disposal if you weren’t the second most perfect specimen i’ve ever seen. Don’t tell the others of course. How will i strike the fear of- uh- me into them if they know i treat you like this.” ~~~ Time skip because that was just self indulgent~~~ "Oh, Miss Ashtoreth, who's your friend" Crowley cringes at the sound if that voice and grips Aziraphale hand a little tighter, trying to sink into the wall. "Not now Clyde, I'm trying to watch Warlock. Unlike some people, I take my job seriosly." "Oh please, what trouble can they really get into here? Be polite, introduce me." Crowley pouts. Legitimately pouts. And Azira pulls his hand away to offer it to 'Clyde' "I'm Francis, Lady Ashtoreth' partner." Warlock watches Crowley's mental battle to not rip Clyde's hand off when he reaches out. "Im Clyde, of course. I nanny for one of Warlocks friends. Miss Ashtoreth and I are very close, funny she didn't mention you." Azira laughs nervously. "Yes well, as a couple were fairly-" "Private." Crowley takes his hand bag and drags them away. "I hate that man. Honestly, he dares question the legitimacy of our relationship. We are perfect together." And Azira forces are smile. Because he knows. And Crowley can tell it's forced, but he doesn't press it. Because he doesn't know. "So this is the uh… boyfriend Warlock talks about" they spin to the new person, crowley doesn't let go of his hand. It's an awkward turn. "Yes Mr. Dowling." Crowley is beaming. And Azira hates it because his adversary is trying to tempt him again and he can't get in trouble. "I must be honest, I never would have suspected. Of course, my wife always has more of a sense for those things" he nods a little, like that makes sense. "Well sir, we do try to be professional at work." Wonderful excuse Crowley. A genius you are. "Thank you for allowing him to come with us though." "Yes well, you seem to still be watching after Warlock so I don't see the harm in letting you have some life" he sighs, looking around. "Er… would you mind telling Warlock he can't stay for dinner. There are really some important decisions to be made so we are rereading some ending the children home early." "Of course sir" Crowley was not looking forward to upsetting the antichrist. He resigned himself to it, and set about locating the boy again. Every person who cast doubt on his relationship with aziraphale upset him more until he was eager to get out. But of course, every time he looked back at his angel, Azira seemed to be having fun. Laughing and chatting with whoever they had bumped into. And of course, there were people who weren't entirely surprised. Which made it a little easier for Crowley to stomach socializing. Every chance he got to tell someone that he and Azira were dating, he took. He adored being able to say it. Although, he noticed, it did seem to put his date a little on edge. Finally they found Warlock. Or... he found them. "Nanny this is boring, I want to leave." Crowley sighed. "Well you're in luck. Your father is sending you home. Come on now, let's get your things." If crowley were anything other than a demon he might be ashamed to admit that he used a minor demonic miracle to get than hem out without people noticing. As an angel Aziriphale is rather distraught over his own use of a miracle to keep people from noticing them. On the drive home even Warlock can tell that it's tense. Azira waits for Crowley to put the child to bed before saying anything. But as soon as he walks down the stairs. "I can't do this." And he can see Crowley break. Anthony Janthony Crowley, demon from hell, nearly starts sobbing on the stairs. But only for the fraction of a second when that wave of emotion first hit's him can you tell. Then he carefully packs it away. "Can't do what Angel?" And Crowley knows. And aziraphale gives a sad little smile, because he knows. "We aren't right Crowley. Every single person could tell. You could tell" "Aziraphale it's not about what some stupud humans think. We are doing this because- so that you can spend a little more time with the kid. Put us on even ground. Who cares what people say. We can do this." And Crowley hates that he's practically begging and Aziraphale hates that he's practically begging and they both hate this situation. "I can't do this Crowley. I. Me. I cant. I'm an angel Crowley and it's just wrong to lie about something so... intimate. So human. It's wrong to lie to everyone." And Crowley can see that tidal wave comming in again. So why not swim out to meet it. In a flash he's right in front of his Angel. Holding his face. Pleading. "Why does it have to be a lie?" And he hates himself for leaning foreward and kissing that stupid, stupid angel. But for the briefest second he sees heaven. Then Aziraphale pulls away. "I've said it once, I'll say it hundreds of times. Until you understand. You go to fast for me" It crashes over him and he's drowning. "Go. Go away. Go back to your own house tonight. Don't bother comming in tomorrow. Itll be too rainy for you to get any gardening done" "Oh, Dear don't-" "Get. Out. Aziraphale." And he leaves. And the door closes. And Crowley barely makes it up to his room. He doesn't make it up to his room. "Nanny, why are you crying?" Warlock steps out of his bedroom door and puts a gentle hand on Crowley's arm. "That party was just so dreadful" and -for the first time since Warlock had learned to walk- his nanny picks him up, carries him to bed, and tucks him in. "Thank you, Warlock." And then he leaves. ~~~Time skip brought to you by a lazy author and stuff~~~ "He HATES me Phil." Crowley sits in the corner. To dry to cry. He just sits there, staring at the plant. "He he's me and you know what I hate me too and I bet you hate me. Warlock doesn't hate me though. The one person that I need to hate everything doesnt hate me." A dry sob shakes his rib cage. "I've made a discovery though. I do believe angel saliva is some weird form of holy water. I thought ink he was about to kiss me back. Right before he pulled away. His eyes were closed I know it." It's silent for far too long. "I love him, Phil." Ahnhdmhxnabdh I haven't gotten a prompt in like ever. I love you sm. I haven't written GO fic in forever. I did more research for this than for my actual writing projects because I did not preciously know what a male nunnery was called. This was fun. Btw- Phil is a fake plant. Crowley doesn't know yet.

[aelysalthea]

The Secret Lives of Neil Josten

Summary: Neil's life has been a mystery for so long that it was all but expected that a sliver of unexpectedness would reveal itself to the Foxes on occasion. Sometimes it wasn't as unexpected as it perhaps should have been - but sometimes it most definitely was.

Rating: T

Chapter 1: Nicky’s Taste in Music

"… have no idea how my shit gets so all over the place," Nicky said into his phone, shaking his head as he shuffled along Matt's TV cabinet. Tipping his head sideways, he frowned before plucking another DVD case from the collection. His. He was pretty sure it was his. "Seriously, I don't even remember bringing this in here."

"Are you sure it's even yours?" A yawn chased the end of Erik's words, a testimony to the time difference between them. Eyeing the case in his hand – yes, it was definitely his – Nicky considered offering to hang up once more only to disregard the idea. Erik was a morning person, but he always clung to wakefulness to speak to Nicky after he'd finished his classes for the day.

"I'm sure," Nicky said. Shaking his head, he muttered more to himself than to Erik, "hell, Matt, keep tabs on your own junk and your paws off mine."

He wasn't really annoyed. More correctly, it had been a long day that was only just coming to a close, and Nicky was thoroughly sick and tired of packing. Or, even more correctly, tired of searching for his far-flung possessions. He'd never realised just how deeply he embedded himself in Fox Tower until the end of term and the inevitable clean-up came around.

It would be worth it, though. Catching a plane the next day, for the first time in years entirely by himself – it would be worth putting in the hours. In spite of his disgruntlement for Matt's oblivious thievery, Nicky couldn't help but smile at the very thought.

Piling the stack of retrieved DVD cases into his arms, Nicky rose from his knees to weave his way back across Matt and Aaron's room. What would be his room next year too if Wymack's idea took root. It would be strange not living in the same suite as Andrew, strange to the point of disconcerting, but Nicky was kind of excited for it. Andrew was better these days than he'd been on his meds, but even so, it made the prospect of yet another year at university that much more appealing.

"How's it coming along?" Erik asked sleepily as Nicky paused alongside the kitchen. Was that his mug? How the fuck had his mug gotten into Matt's room? Probably by way of Aaron, but still. Dammit, Matt. If he wasn't so nice to look at, Nicky might even resent him for it sometimes.

"I've got two suitcases packed already," Nicky said, juggling his DVDs as he struggled to hook the handle of the mug onto his pinkie finger. Fucking hell, it was dirty too. Damn Aaron too for being a slob.

"So you're nearly done?"

"Are you kidding me? I'm not even halfway yet. I've literally spent the last hour in Matt and Aaron's rooms."

Erik laughed, a dopey little sound that Nicky could picture perfectly coupled with an equally dopey smile and heavy eyes. A smile planted itself on his own face at the sound of another stifled yawn. "You and your baggage."

"Yeah, well, at least I'm leaving a good chunk of it behind this time." Nicky's smile became a little rueful. Baggage in the form of twin cousins wasn't exactly easy to manage, but it would still feel strange after working them into each and every one of his plans for years. Nicky thought he could almost miss the struggle. He wouldn't have changed anything, not for the world, but…

"You'll miss them?"

Nicky shrugged, turning towards the door. "Maybe. Definitely more than they'll miss me."

"It's only for a few months over the summer."

"I know."

"You'll call them?"

Nicky snorted. "Only to make sure Andrew hasn't killed anyone –"

Nicky cut himself off as the door to the suite swung open in his face. Jerking back a step, he lowered his phone to his shoulder, covering the mouthpiece as Matt nearly barrelled through him. "Jesus," he exclaimed, louder than even he would admit was necessary. "Slow down much?"

Matt ground to a halt before him. He had a bundle of balled-up washing in his arms, apparently deeming a laundry basket far too logical for his purposes. When a shirt slipped from his pile to the floor, his muted pout bespoke abrupt regret of his oversight.

"Dammit," Matt cursed under his breath. "I nearly made it the whole way, too." He glanced up at Nicky, gaze darting across Nicky's own armful. "You're still in here?"

Nicky shrugged. "Apparently you've stolen a whole bunch of my stuff," he said.

"Probably Aaron bringing it in," Matt said.

"Sure, sure, blame Aaron. Where is he, anyway?"

"How should I know?" Matt peered over the top of his clothes pile, eyeing his dropped shirt as he tried and failing to pick it up with his toes. "Probably with Katelyn or something."

Nicky smirked. "As if they won't be spending practically every second together over the summer."

"Yeah, well." Matt shrugged himself before finally managing to flip the shirt onto a finger with a wobbling manoeuvre and proceeding to skirt around Nicky. Like everyone else, he too had been packing too when Nicky had intruded early that. The girls' room was like a thoroughfare for the movement of bodies through the doorway and down to the cars, and Nicky was adding it next to his list. His own wasn't much better, even if just about everyone – Foxes included – were more than aware that Andrew didn't appreciate being walked in on. Last checked, he'd neglected his own packing and had been attempting to contract emphysema double time by working his way through a packet of cigarettes at the window.

Nicky didn't – and couldn't – object to Andrew smoking, but he'd admit that it would be a bonus of living in a different room to him in the coming year.

Passing down the hallway, Nicky managed to prop his phone up against his ear once more. "Are you still there?" he asked by way of a greeting return, slipping back into German as he did so. "Did you fall to sleep on me?"

"Mm," Erik mumbled in reply. "Not quite."

"Not 'not quite'. You're practically sleep talking." Nicky smiled. "Go to sleep. I'll call you later."

"No," Erik replied, the stubborn ass that he was. "I said I'd stay awake to make sure you got everything packed. You're not done yet."

"Yeah, well, maybe I – wait, hold on a sec."

"No, you can't convince me otherwise."

"No, Erik, I –"

"You're terrible at keeping yourself motivated for this kind of thing. Don't deny it, you always –"

"Shut up for a second, babe." Frozen mid-step, Nicky barely heard Erik's surprised grunt. His eyes were fixed instead upon the door into his own rooms, his ears pricked attentively. What was…?

"What is it?" Erik asked, curiosity dispelling some of the sleepiness of in his voice.

"I'm not…" Nicky trailed off as the voice rose from within once more. "Hey, I'll call you back in a second, 'kay?"

"What? What are you –? Nicky, what's –?"

"In a sec." Hanging up, Nicky tucked his phone into his armload and edged towards the doorway into Andrew's room. When he was close enough, he peered almost tentatively around the doorframe.

The room was as much of a mess as everyone else's, a battlefield of discarded clothes, possessions strewn across beanbags and every available surface, and trip hazards in the form of forgotten socks, shoes, and bags half filled. Kevin was nowhere in sight, likely still lost in the bedroom flipping through forgotten notes from the year exactly as Nicky had left him, but Andrew and Neil were in the main room. Andrew was still at the window, the stump of a cigarette between his fingers and legs extended across the desk, while Neil…

"What the hell?" Nicky whispered, mostly to himself but also hoping just a little that Andrew might answer him.

Andrew didn't seem to hear. Neither did Neil for that matter, though that was likely because he had an earbud in his ear. The iPod Nicky had demanded he be introduced to only a week ago, courtesy of Allison's bank account after they'd simultaneously unearthed the horror of Neil's lack of musical awareness, had been forced into his hands with the express command to use it well. Nicky was rather proud of the selection of tracks he'd chosen to clutter the memory bank with. He'd filled it to practically overflowing, too.

Neil was bemused, then exasperated, then proceeded to use the iPod as little as humanely possible. That was until Nicky stuffed an earbud into his ear with his own fingers and scrolled to a tune.

"Listen," he'd said. "And learn. Jesus, this is what people do in their down-time, Neil. That, or watch movies, which you still suck at doing."

"I'm fine without -"

"Say you're fine again and I'm going to have to hit you. Accept your fate quietly, child. If nothing else, you can use it when you go for a run or something."

Apparently it hadn't been as much of an outlandish idea as Neil's answering flat stare had suggested, for he did just that. Nicky was nothing if not proud; he'd always felt just a little bit gypped that Matt, for all of his admittedly skewed taste in viewing, had been able to infect Neil's movie-virgin mind before him. At least Nicky was getting a foot in the door in the music department.

He just hadn't expected that Neil had more of an ear for music than he could have anticipated. A voice for it, too.

"Those three words," Neil all but mumbled, the words just loud enough to carry the tune of the song, "are said too much…"

It was… quiet. Calm. A little detached yet unexpectedly lilting. Neil trailed in and out of truly singing, murmuring words as he flicked through the distraction of whatever he was doing. Nicky wasn't even sure what it was; something that involved papers, shuffling some while crumpling others. It didn't really matter, because Nicky didn't care. He didn't care one bit, because –

"… would you lie with me and just forget the world…" Neil sang, the gentle rise and fall of his voice vague as he held out a paper and frowned at it before tossing it onto the pile beside him.

Neil can sing? Nicky shot a glance towards Andrew where he sat, still gazing out the window. At Nicky's wordless, barely audible bid for attention, or maybe feeling his affixed attention, glanced towards him with hooded eyes. Unblinking, he didn't say a word but raised a finger and pointed it at Nicky as nothing if not warning. The meaning couldn't be clearer:

Don't say a word.

Nicky didn't understand. He didn't really know why, how, or when Neil had started to sing, absentmindedly disregarding a watching world or perhaps oblivious to his own singing it entirely with the tune playing in his ear. How he'd been able to hide it for so long was even more frustrating. Nicky always seemed to stumble across such nuggets of gold when it came to Neil. That he could sing and Nicky was only just finding out now? It was far from satisfying but rather only served to make him wonder what else Neil had overlooked in telling them.

Edging into the room, Nicky lowered his stack of DVDs to the floor. He took a step towards Neil, opened his mouth to ask, then flinched as a pen bounced off his cheek.

Hissing, Nicky shot Andrew a frown. It slid off Andrew's blank-faced stare like water from a duck's back. His only comment was to flick his finger in Nicky's direction once more much as he'd flicked the pen, an even more pointed demand that required verbal instruction even less than his previous one had.

Nicky pouted. He glanced at Neil again where he was sitting, slumped in a beanbag and singing to himself as he worked his way through his papers. He shot another look at Andrew, met Andrew's flat stare, then gave a huff before backing through the door he'd just stepped through. He couldn't quite withhold an abrupt grin, however, as he all but bumped into Allison striding down the hallway in the direction of the girls' room.

"Watch it," Allison said without heat, striding past him.

Nicky barely heard her. Sparing a glance into his rooms, lingering just a moment to catch a final chime of Neil's poetic murmur, he eased the door closed behind him. "Allison," he hissed darting after her and flapping a hand at her in a grasp for immediate and absolutely necessary attention. "Oi, Allison, guess what? You're not gonna believe this…"

Neil was sure he'd seen this page before. Hadn't he already gotten rid of it? He thought he had. Maybe not. Maybe he should just – no, he'd keep that one. Just in case. The urge to toss anything that didn't have immediate value was an instinct that he'd had for as long as he could remember, a part-and-parcel of having to carry everything he owned in a single bag. It wasn't like that anymore, and he wouldn't. Especially not after Kevin's severe talking-to.

"Don't toss out anything you might use next year," he'd said, reaching into the bin that Neil had just discarded his notes into. "This is valuable study material. It could save your academic career if you take a follow-up unit."

"I'll just write more if I need to," Neil had replied.

"No," Kevin had barked, almost angry in his condescension. "Don't make more work for yourself than you need to. It'll cut into your practice time, and we both know that's unacceptable."

Kevin had dumped the disorderly stack in his hands and all but forced Neil into a beanbag to 'sort through it properly' before disappearing into his room with his own school notes to do was the same. Scowling after him, Neil had begrudgingly followed suit. He considered it more than a little unfair that Andrew wasn't forced to do the same, but then, Andrew probably didn't need to. He more than likely didn't even take notes at all.

Winding an earbud into his ear, Neil flicked the iPod Nicky had given him onto the first song he glanced at. He didn't know much music, but Nicky was apparently attempting to remedy that perceived inadequacy. What had been an affront at first had turned into something not so bad; it wasn't a distraction as it could have been, and even proved to be comfortable accompaniment sometimes. Even better when Neil could focus on tune and lyrics to the abandonment of unproductive thoughts. Provided he was still aware enough of his surroundings, it was almost pleasant.

Listening was easy. Listening and learning was easy, and the words of the song he'd absently picked rose to the fore on his tongue before Neil could think to withhold them. It was just like picking up a language, really: listen, repeat in his mind, and mimic. It didn't even take conscious awareness to do it.

Almost like with Mom, Neil thought distractedly as he frowned at another page of notes. He was sure if he'd seen that one already too. Was he going through his 'to keep' pile? But no, he surely would have tossed that one, wouldn't he? Why did he need to keep repeated columns of Spanish nouns? Words were easy to remember. Mom never pulled me up for singing along in the car, either, even though she got pissed about so many other things. I never thought to ask why, but…

The tug of the earbud from his ear had Neil pausing in his note-shuffling. Glancing to his side where he hadn't even noticed Andrew lower himself to into a crouch beside, he cocked his head. Andrew ignored him in favour of flicking through Neil's iPod, the stunted end of a cigarette balanced between the fingers of his scrolling hand. Neil dropped an elbow onto his knee, watching and waiting. Maybe he shouldn't listen to the music so loudly if he didn't even notice when someone approached him. He'd thought that leaving one ear free was enough, but apparently not.

"Did you want it?" Neil asked, though he already knew the answer. He'd asked before when Andrew had done just the same thing and received the same answer.

Andrew didn't quite shake his head, but he glanced up at Neil and met his gaze in a clearer answer as he handed the iPod back to him. Neil shrugged, accepted it, and pressed the earbud back into his ear. He turned back to his notes, began the arduous task of flicking once more, and listened with half an ear to the opening notes of the song Andrew had chosen. A cover, he noticed, but still distinct.

The Sound of Silence was ironically fitting as Andrew's choice. Oddly enough, he didn't complain when Neil sang either.

***

A/N: Thank you so much for reading!!! If you’ve got a second I’d love to hear your thoughts. Please feel free to leave a comment or even just say hi over on my AO3! xx

[89tczier]

People are talking

The other five chuckle at the two’s antics, and it’s only then that something dawns on Ben so quick he nearly chokes on his beer.

“Holy shit,” he splutters, because how the fuck did it take him this long to fucking realise.

read on AO3 

word count: 3.9k

7 days before

“–and keep an eye on Ben and Bev!” Richie shouts, “I don’t want my bed broke–” he’s cut off by a very exasperated Eddie.

“Can it, Trashmouth,” He snaps, pulling Richie the rest of the way through the door by the lapels of his jacket. For some reason, those two were being trusted to bring back some actual alcohol rather than the shit Richie’s always left with at the end of the month. They all know its gonna take them twice as long than if anyone competent was sent, but the others are frankly just too lazy to offer themselves.

The other five chuckle at the two’s antics, and it’s only then that something dawns on Ben so quick he nearly chokes on his beer.

“Holy shit,” he splutters, because how the fuck did it take him this long to fucking realise.

Bev’s quick to respond, patting his back and giggling in a way that makes Ben feel a little loopy, “jeez, babe, you alright?”

Ben nods, composing himself under the watch of his friends, clearly interested in what could have possibly caused this outburst. “Yeah, sorry, it’s just,” Ben casts a glance back at the door, “they’re like… totally in love, right?” He’s met with nothing but confused looks.

“Richie and Eddie?” Stan asks incredulously while perched in Mike’s lap.

“Richie and Eddie,” he confirms.

Bill, currently nestled under Mike’s arm, snorts like it’s one of Richie’s stupid jokes, “the f-fuck are you on about?”

Ben almost gawks like he didn’t just figure this out, but he did kind of expect the pieces to fall quickly into place once he pointed it out, “have you not seen the way they act? Textbook married couple.”

“They’ve always been like that though,” Bev shrugs, her brows furrowed as she appears to be trying to follow Ben’s logic (he loves her for trying).

He raises a finger. “My point still stands,” and goes on to explain, “they’re literally always together, hanging off each other… who’s the first person Richie asks for at a party? Who does Eddie always sit next to on movie night? They just– how can you guys not see it?”

“You’re talkin’ absolute bullshit, Benny,” Mike shakes his head, “Eddie’s close to ripping Rich’s head off half the time.”

“Oh come on, if he was really that annoyed he’d have said something about it. Eddie doesn’t stand for anything he doesn’t like.” Ben takes a pointed sip of his shitty beer to punctuate and this point seems to land, and Ben would be lying if he said he didn’t feel the least bit satisfied with himself. He’d always had an eye for this stuff, even if he was rather shitty at acting upon it himself (but hey, it worked out pretty well for him).

“Leave it to Trashmouth Tozier to flirt with someone by annoying the life out of them,” Bev smiles.

“And leave it to Eddie fuckin’ Kaspbrak to flirt back with threats and holy fuck Ben I think you’re right.” Mike’s face goes blank.

“See!”

Bill still seems like he’s considering it, “it would explain a l-lot, mainly how Eddie hasn’t actually k-k-killed him yet… a-nd the fu-fucking hammock!”

A chorus of ‘holy shit’s go around the circle. Then it all becomes clear.

“God, they’ve had this since high school?” Bev snorts.

“Why haven’t they said anything?” Mike asks, “It’s not like we’re gonna care, we’re one big lovey mess,” he squeezes both Stan and Bill for emphasis.

“I don’t think they’re dating, necessarily, they’re just… in love.” Ben shrugs.

Bill grins, “now that guh-gives me an idea…”

“You’re hot when you scheme,” Stan hums, resting his head against Mike’s.

“Tell me about it,” Mike agrees, and is poked gently by Bill.

“I think, and I s-say this only for the b-benefit and happiness of my two dumbest friends, we should… encourage them to get a fuh-fucking move on.”

Bev shuffles forward and straightens up, “like… goad them together?”

Bill raises his bottle, “exactly,” and takes a sip while Mike and Stan nod to each other in agreement.

“Smokin’ hot.”

Bill chokes, and laughter fills the room as he curses his boyfriends out.

“Sounds like we’re missing out on something, Eds, they’re officially kicking us out,” Richie pretends to mope as they enter Richie’s apartment again, a bottle in both of his hands. Eddie scoffs.

“Maybe you, asshole, you’re the one who got held up by some dog on the street,”

They all wait for it.

“And don’t fuckin’ call me Eds!”

Richie grins like he’s won a prize.

–

6 days before

Bev isn’t the least bit fucking surprised when she wakes up to see she’s been added to a group chat called “operation: let’s get our two losers together”. She smiles, shifting some in Ben’s arms. He stirs, letting out a warm breath against her skin that makes the hairs on the back of her neck stand straight.

“You see this?” She asks, turning the screen some so he can see. He squints and lets out a sleepy chuckle which makes Bev melt a little. She runs a hand over his forearm and locks their hands together, squeezing for good measure.

“God, this is either gonna go great or really terrible,” he murmurs, pressing a kiss to the skin where her neck meets her shoulders.

She hums, turning to face him, “I don’t know… I have a good feeling about this.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah… they seem meant for each other, I guess…” she pauses, smiles, and kisses him, “we all do.”

Ben smiles against her mouth and is about to return the favour when a string of texts floods both their phones.

put it away Benny Boy, we’ve got matchmaking to do ~ Big Bill, sent at 08:23

Meet us in our flat ~ Stan, sent at 08:23

guys, give em the chance to wake up, they had a long night ;) ~ Mikey, sent at 08:24

they need to hurry up and get a move on, we’ve been talkin all night and they need to get caught up ~ Big Bill, sent at 08:24

Well, not all night ~ Stan, sent at 08:25

…cease ~ Big Bill, sent at 08:25

“On second thought, this is the worst idea ever.”

She cackles, dragging both of them up and towards the bathroom. The boys could wait a little longer.

“Casa de Stan, recently co-owned by Bill and Mike too, speaking please?” This is always how he answers, the dope.

“Hey Mikey,” Ben says, voice still a little groggy from sleep. God, he’s hot, Bev thinks to herself, slotting a gloved hand into his.

“Hey guys!” The door clicks open, and they breeze up the first flight of stairs.

Bill greets them at the door, still in his sleep shirt. “Don’t,” he deadpans, right as Bev’s about to poke fun at the bruising around his neck and chest. She grins slyly at him, patting him on the back as she passes him.

“Benny! Bev! Get in here!” Mike calls from the den. Bill follows them in, taking a seat next to Mike and throwing his legs over his boyfriend’s lap. Stan’s stood hunched over the small stove on the other side of the room, scrambling some eggs which smell unfairly delicious to a moderately hung-over Beverly.

“You’ll get some in a minute,” he states, reading her mind.

“Always knew you were my favourite,” she said, which earns a ‘hey’ from both Mike and Bill.

Bill calls them all to sit down, explaining that they need to actually plan this out as quickly as possible. Richie and Eddie were the only ones with early classes that day and it would be suspicious (and mean) if they were told to keep at bay while the rest of them hung out.

They chow down on some scrambled eggs (which exceed expectations, Bev reminds herself to get the recipe off of Stan), and it ends up working out like this:

They’re going to pry for a few days, see if they can get a rise out of either of them, then at the end of the week they’re all going to meet up at Stan’s place. Using an excuse they haven’t though of yet, they’re going to try to get both Eddie and Richie into the bathroom at the same time and then block the door.

“N-nothing like a confined space and a l-little bit of drink to get the vibe g-going,” Bill grins.

“Speakin’ from experience there, Big Bill?” Beverly playfully chides, giggling as Bill’s ears go pink.

Ben hums quietly, “what if they don’t go for it?”

“They looked three seconds away from mauling each other last night, I think they’ll jump at any excuse they get,” Mike points out, and the plan is set.

They say their goodbyes afterwards, and as Bev fiddles with the key to their flat, Ben takes her wrist gently, turning her around and pulling her into him.

“I love you,” he says, and kisses her in that wonderful way he does that leaves her wanting so much more.

“I love you too,” She grins, draping her arms over his shoulders, “always will.”

–

4 days before

Richie is head over fucking heels, Bill decides.

The two of them offer to help Eddie study terms for a quiz at the end of the week, which fuck knows why they had any hope of that working.

They start off well, Richie and himself trading roles as Eddie nailed each piece of terminology about cognitive processes with detailed explanations to boot. It takes about ten minutes of their relaxed sprawling over Eddie’s floor for their resolve to break. It starts with Richie’s foot-tapping Eddie’s shin to the beat of whatever song he’s humming as Bill reads from the flashcards. Then it’s the complements, and holy fuck, how has Bill never caught this before.

“So smart, so cute!”

“Rich, if you don’t shut up, I’m trying to concentrate.”

“Can’t help it, I’m like a mama bird watching her baby take flight for the first time. Just wanna puke some worms into your mouth.”

“Richie! That’s fucking disgusting!” Eddie near screeches, pushing himself up and lunging forward, knocking Richie back onto the ground and pinning him down. Richie’s laughing like it’s the funniest thing he’s ever seen, and Eddie is too. He can’t believe these assholes are in college.

Okay, this is perfect, Bill thinks, as right on cue, Eddie leaves the room to grab his textbook.

“Got somethin’ on my face, Billy?” Richie asks once he catches the ‘care to explain?’ look Bill is giving him.

“Don’t w-worry about it,” Bill gives his best nonchalant shrug, “it’s just cute, that’s all.”

And he catches it, the signature ‘i’m fucking whipped’ look: the dopey smile, the avoidance of eye contact, the excepting laugh. Gotcha, bitch.

“Isn’t he just?”

–

2 days before

Stan’s starting to fret.

The text came through a few minutes ago, and Stan is reeling.

eddie said he met a guy last night??? went home w him and everythin??? ~ Bevvy, sent at 13:03

“A one night stand?” Mike asks, leaning over Bill’s shoulder to read with Bill’s glasses on because his own are fuck knows where.

“Fucking apparently?”

“Okay, this might not be as b-bad as it seems. They d-don’t know about the other l-liking them, yeah? Eddie’s p-probably, like, in denial or coping or som-something.” Bill slots his glasses off of Mike’s face.

Stan stops pacing and takes a breath, collapsing onto the arm chair opposite, “you’re right, probably just Eddie being stubborn.”

“‘Atta boy, Stan,” Mike grins, shifting to the side and stretching out his legs, resting them in Bill’s lap.

did eddie seem interested in the guy? ~ Big Bill, sent at 13:11

not really, didn’t really talk about him much ~ Bevvy, sent at 13:12

They all sighed.

“Why are we so invested in this again?” Stan mumbles.

“Because it’s gonna be entertaining as fuck if we pull it off.”

–

1 day before

Mike has more luck.

He, Bev and Eddie are browsing around the grocers, preparing for tomorrow when they hear a yelp from the isle next to them. Mike peeks around, seeing a very excited looking Richie pick Eddie up from behind, bouncing him around like he weighs nothing. Mike expects a slew of curses, but Eddie giggles like Mike’s never heard before.

“Put me down, you asshole! You’re gonna knock something over.”

“You’re the one flailing your limbs, Eds– Mike and Ikes! Fancy seeing you here!” He damn near drops Eddie, who’s flushed and breathless.

“We’re trying to shop, you asshole, can’t we have five minutes peace,” Eddie gives him a light shove.

“Oh I know, I’m on a last minute supply run.”

And Mike’s stupid enough to fall for it and ask, “why?”

“Pickin’ up Eddie’s mom, need condoms.” He wiggles his eyebrows, and they both laugh as Eddie goes ballistic.

“Get the fuck out of here, Trashmouth, before I commit a crime,” he shoots Richie daggers, and Rich gives him a salute.

“Sir yes sir,” he half-shouts, sprinting over to a very tired looking cashier.

Eddie’s still watching him, “asshole,” he says with so much fondness Mike thinks he might start floating.

“You don’t seem to mind,” He pokes at Eddie’s pinked cheeks, snorting as Eddie smacks it away from his face.

“Hey dipshits,” Bev calls, carrying a basket full of crisps and liquor, “did you get the chasers?”

Eddie sighs, turning on his heel and walking back to the fridge, which Mike’s guessing was where he was heading before Richie snatched him up.

“Will diet do?”

“Sure, go crazy.” Mike says, as he quickly types.

eddie’s absolutely gone for him, this is gonna go great ~ Mikey, sent 21:33

–

The night of

It’s a slow day for Eddie. His test has been eating away at him slowly and painfully (no matter how  many times Richie said he’d crush it) and while he left feeling confident, he knows he’s still gonna stress about it. It goes fine, but he’s still thinking about it during his shift and the worry hasn’t left him.

It’s just a stupid test, he thinks as his stomach continues to knot itself. Thank god he’s getting drunk tonight.

Eddie lives the furthest away from Stan’s (and Bill and Mike’s) and he really doesn’t wanna walk that far in the cold so he stops by Richie’s after class, knowing he probably has a couple of nice shirts left over there from nights where he’s really too drunk to go home, inevitably leaving the next morning in one of Richie’s shirts instead (huh, funny how that happens). He also knows that if he so much as catches sight of his roommate, he’ll fucking blow up.

He fishes Richie’s key from his pocket, lets himself in and thinks Christ, would it kill Rich to clean up a bit? He’s certain that the pillows from the couch are still there from last Friday. He steps over them after pushing off his shoes in the corner.

“Rich, You fuckin slob! Clean your apartment,” Eddie calls out in place of a hello.

“Afternoon to you too, Eddie!” He hears back. Eddie follows his voice through to the bedroom and finds himself lost for fucking words.

Richie’s standing in front of his bathroom mirror, shirtless, drying off his mess of curls with a towel. He doesn’t notice him for a moment, and Eddie takes that moment to curse the way those jeans hang from his hips. He lingers on Richie’s wiry frame for just a moment more than he probably should.

Damn, Tozier he huffs.

“You peeping on me, Eddie?” Richie’s dumb Southern Belle accent should drive Eddie up the wall, and Eddie does roll his eyes, though it’s really just for show. They both know that.

“Your den is a mess.”

“I like it that way,” Richie’s quick to reply, brushing past Eddie as he heads for his dresser.

“Tough shit, I don’t,” Eddie snaps back, now back in his rhythm as the blood returns to his brain.

Richie grins as he picks through his shirt, taking his sweet time with it and all Eddie can focus on is the hint of his happy trail poking out above the waistband of his jeans. He chooses one, and now Eddie can actually look away as Richie holds the tee up for his approval.

It’s his The Cure one, black, matching his nails and jeans, and easily Eddie’s favourite, both on Richie and to wear himself (it’s comfortable, and it definitely has nothing to do with the looks Richie gives him in it).

They kill time by fixing up Richie’s couch and watching weird ASMR videos on Richie’s laptop. Eddie’s sure the effect is lessened by only having one earbud, but it’s still uncomfortable but so worth hearing Richie snort each time Eddie cringes.

“Is it just me,” Richie says, hitting pause on a woman in cat ears about to pretend to ask them out, “or have the others been acting weird.”

“Right?” Eddie yanks the earbud out, “Bev’s been like… weirdly invasive… like more than she usually is.”

“They all have, what do you think it’s about?”

“I have a funny fucking feeling we’re gonna find out.”

–

There’s a weird fucking vibe in the place when he and Eddie arrive.

“We miss out on the world’s weirdest orgy or something?” Richie asks, mostly joking, as eyes fall on the two of them.

Stan makes an exaggerated gagging sound, and Bill’s face screws up. What a great audience he has.

“Shut up and sit down, Trashmouth, we’re doing shots,” Bev playfully snarls at him.

It gets a little less weird the more Richie has to drink, but he’s either going crazy or there’s something going on. He looks at Eddie, and Eddie shrugs right before he throws a shot back, and Richie gets to watch his Adam’s Apple bob and his eyes squeeze shut and his nose crinkle up because Eds–

“–cant fuckin stand tequila.”

God, he’s cute.

He meets Richie’s gaze, “what the fuck are you smirking about?”

He’s hot, too.

“You take every shot like it’s your fucking first, Eds,” he teases back and it’s huskier than he means it to come out, because he’s tipsy and can’t stop staring at that little drop of liquor running down Eddie’s chin.

Bill chokes, sending everything in the shot glass over his face. Mike cackles.

“Rich, can you go g-get me a f-fuckin washcloth.”

And it’s there that everything ramps up to fuckin’ eleven. Ben starts grinning, Stan’s got that fucking look on his face that can only mean trouble.

“Why the fuck do I have to do it?”

“C-cuz you m-made me spit every-w-where!”

Richie puts his hands up in mock defeat, “alright, alright, damn.” And he stands up, shuffling into the bathroom.

“Oh!” Stan calls after him, “my contacts too!”

“Aye aye!” Richie yells back, scanning the mirror cabinet for anything resembling a fucking contact case. Disinfectant, no, flavoured lube, nice but no… Richie’s squinting as if that’s gonna fucking help. “Can’t fuckin find ‘em, Stan!” He calls back out to them.

He hears a soft “Eddie, go help him,” from Mike.

“You’re going blind for real, fuckface, lemme see,” Eddie rolls his eyes at him, and tries shoving Richie out of the way with his side, but really just ends up pushed up against him. He’s warm and smells of spirits and vanilla, Richie doesn’t fight back, nor does he notice the others approaching the bathroom either.

He’s so focused on the way Eddie’s tongue pokes out of his mouth ever so slightly when he’s concentrating he’s a second too slow to realise.

“When did Stan start wearing contacts– oh shit, Eds, wait–” Richie’s barely gotten the words out before the bathroom door slams shut, making Eddie jump closer against him.

The other losers are whooping and hi-fiving from the other side of the door, and Eddie turns to stare at Richie as if to say what the fuck just happened???

“Beats me.”

“Admit it and we’ll let you out!” Bev says in what Richie assumes is a terrible Terminator impression.

It takes a second (again, because liquor and Eddie) to realise, and he flashes Eddie the biggest grin he can muster.

“Golly gee, Eds, I think they figured it out!”

He’s not being loud, but the others can apparently hear him, because they’re gloating stops in an instant.

Eddie matches his grin, “fucking finally,”

“Wait, what?” Mike sounds confused.

The door opens, and the others are staring at them like their fucking martians.

“Wait what the fuh-fuck?”

Hm, that’s interesting.“I have a feeling there’s been a big misunderstanding,” Richie starts, still grinning.

“Did you guys do it already?”

Eddie snorts, Richie scratches the back of his neck, “uh, gonna have to ask you to be a bit more specific, Benny.”

“Confess. Did we not hear it?”

Eddie frowns, “confess to what?”

“Don’t be difficult, Kaspbrak,” Stan groans, “that you’ve been secretly pining for each other for fuckin’ ages?”

“Is that what you shut us in there for?” Richie asked, his voice creeping up an octave because oh, this was delicious.

The five of them answer simultaneously “yes!”

Richie looks down at Eddie, who holds his gaze for all of one second before they dissolve back into shit eating grins.

“God we really gave you guys too much credit.”

“Stop being coy, trashmouth!”

“We’ve literally been dating for three months, holy shit, guys.” Eddie rubs his face like he’s exasperated.

“What?” Ben nearly yells.

“Here we are thinking you dumbfucks finally figured it out–”

“In fairness, Rich, they got halfway there.”

“When the fuck were you planning on telling us?” Stan demands, keeping a hold of Mike’s arm for balance.

Eddie volunteers to explain. “Well, it took a few weeks to kinda… figure stuff out, and we were gonna tell you then but then Rich wondered how long it would take you guys to figure it out on your own–”

“So you guys kept this shit on for three months?”

There's a mixture of confusion and amusement around the room. Richie had been kind of worried that they’d be angry that the two of them had kept this for so long, but upon learning that they’d also been scheming themselves for the past week, Richie feels pretty fuckin justified now.

Eddie gives his best ‘are you fucking joking’ face, “you guys never said anything! And as much as we wanted to just get over with, it was so fucking funny to see how much shit you guys would let us get away with.”

“Such as?”

“The fact that you, Beverly, bought “I needed a shirt after my ‘walk of shame’” as a reasonable excuse as to why I was standing in Richie’s kitchen, wearing one of his dumb band tees, absolutely covered in hickeys.”

The other four turned to look at Bev, who pursed her lips and mumbled, “understandable,” as Stan whisper yelled “how the fuck did you miss that?”

“Stan you literally walked in on us mid makeout!”

“What? When?” He demands.

“You burst into my flat, mid-rant…”

There’s a good five minutes of the two of them listing all the times there beautiful, supportive, oblivious as all fuck friends had missed what was so clearly in front of them. The energy shifted into something warm and jovial.

“So,” Richie takes Eddie’s hand, “which one of you started this.”

Everyone answers “Ben.”

Eddie grins up at him, and Richie swears he’ll die right there, “told ya so.”

[worryinglyinnocent]

Fic: Dead Man Walking (2/?)

Summary: Prime Ministers don’t normally wake up in morgues after they’ve been murdered, but that’s exactly what Robert Sutherland has just done. Right in front of Lacey’s nose. With limited resources and not knowing who to trust, Sutherland and Lacey must work together to get to the bottom of the attempted assassination.

Based loosely on this dream I had.

Rated: T, eventually E.

Note: This is meant to be ‘darkly humorous and amusing mystery’ rather than ‘gripping political thriller’...

[One] [AO3]

---

Dead Man Walking

Two

Robert Sutherland was not having a good day.

The last thing he remembered was trying very hard to stay awake. He had been in his office in Chequers, attempting to look over the latest proposals from the Foreign Office regarding a potential delicate trade crisis that had only come onto their radar as Parliament had been breaking up for summer. Not wanting to cause a panic by recalling Parliament, he’d decided to just host a few meetings at Chequers to try and get ahead of the game before everything started up again later in the year.

Now he was thinking that probably hadn’t been such a good idea, since instead of waking up in his office where he had failed in his fight against oncoming exhaustion despite the copious amounts of coffee he’d been drinking, he had woken up in a morgue. God only knew where. On an autopsy table. With no clothes on.

He tried to count his blessings. At least he hadn’t woken up in one of the fridge drawers.

That was pretty much the only blessing he could think of right now, because his head was pounding, and the young woman who’d rescued him wasn’t letting him have any painkillers. He wasn’t sure if rescued was the right word for it.

“Think about it,” she was saying as she searched through the morgue office’s drawers and filing cabinets for something, muttering under her breath about her father not keeping anything in a logical place. “You were dead. A doctor declared you dead and you were about to be autopsied so that they could determine the cause of death. Then some official looking men in suits – maybe MI5, I don’t know – started delaying the autopsy. Why would they do that? You’re the Prime Minister. You’re pretty much the most important man in the country. They would want to know how you died asap so that they can announce to the country at large that you’re dead and parliament can start performing damage limitation and everyone who hates you can start partying in the streets.”

“You are not helping at all,” Sutherland growled.

“Just stating a fact. Anyway. They keep delaying the autopsy, the police are convinced your death was suspicious and the Suits were livid when Dad sent your clothes for forensics.” Lacey shrugged. “They’re trying to cover up the fact that your death was suspicious. You didn’t die, Prime Minister. You were murdered. Only, whoever murdered you didn’t quite succeed. And since you have no markings of a violent death…”

Sutherland did not need to be reminded that Lacey had seen him completely starkers.

“…Then that leads me to believe that you’ve been poisoned. With something that would make it look like a natural death, a heart attack or something. And the Suits, who are likely working for whoever poisoned you, want to delay the autopsy so that whatever it was that was used to poison you has had time to break down and won’t show up as anything suspicious on the toxicology report.”

Lacey slammed the final drawer shut and cursed under her breath before going out into the main morgue, telling Sutherland in no uncertain terms not to wander off. Sutherland had no idea where he’d wander off to in the first place; someone would probably find him traipsing the corridors in search of an exit and assume that he’d escaped from a secure ward, and if he told them that he was the Prime Minister, then he’d simply be branded as delusional.

Lacey returned, triumphant, holding up a sterile syringe still in its wrapper, and a couple of test tubes.

Sutherland edged his chair away from her.

“No.”

Lacey rolled her eyes. “I did three years at medical school and I’m in my sixth of studying forensic chemistry. I have taken blood before, you’re in safe hands.”

“No!”

“Look, do you want to find out what killed you or not? If we don’t do it soon then it’ll have broken down in your bloodstream and there’ll be no evidence.”

“I want to get the fuck out of here!”

“Yeah, well…” Lacey let out a heavy sigh, leaning back on the desk. “Look, I’m trying to help here, ok? I could just as easily throw you to the wolves in Suits out there and see how you get on then. I didn’t ask to be saddled with a not-dead Prime Minister whose party I didn’t even vote for. I have even less idea who I ought to trust than you do! Anyway, no painkillers until we work out what poisoned you. I don’t want to re-poison you by giving you something that’ll react to whatever it was that you were given before and I don’t want the painkillers to mask whatever it might have been so that we can’t work out what it was in the first place.”

Sutherland sighed, rubbing his forehead and willing the pain to go away. They were stuck in a stalemate, but at least Lacey did seem to have his best interests at heart, even if her bedside manner left a little to be desired. Maybe it was a good thing that she hadn’t finished medical school.

Still, he was as morbidly intrigued to know how he’d been unsuccessfully assassinated as Lacey seemed to be, and it made sense to get evidence against his would-be killer whilst he could. Against every better judgement that was currently screaming at him, he held out his arm.

“Very good. I knew you’d see reason in the end. If only you could see reason about that student loan forgiveness.”

To give her credit where it was due, she was very professional about the whole thing, washing her hands thoroughly and putting on gloves before swabbing his arm with disinfectant.

“Now, because they’re usually getting blood out of people without pulses down here, there are no tourniquets, so we’ll have to make do.” Lacey pinged an elastic band around his arm and twisted it to make the veins in his elbow bulge. “Hold that and make a fist.”

Sutherland did as he was told, mainly because Lacey was now holding a hypodermic and he didn’t want it being jabbed anywhere that it shouldn’t be.

“OK. Look away now if you’re squeamish. Sharp scratch.”

Within a few seconds, Lacey had filled two test tubes and was releasing her makeshift tourniquet, pressing cotton wool down on Sutherland’s elbow as her other hand searched for plasters before giving it up as a bad job.

“So, now that you’ve drained me dry, what next?” he asked.

“Well, someone needs to do a toxicology report on these samples,” Lacey said. “I’m slightly too invested in the case to do it myself. I mean, someone has to keep you alive now that you’re, well, alive. Also, amazing as I am, I’m not fully qualified so anything I do probably wouldn’t stand up in court. But we’re in luck, because we are in fact in a hospital and I happen to know a lot of pathologists here.”

She grabbed her phone before Sutherland could protest, hitting a speed dial.

“Hi Dorothy! You know you owe me a massive favour for setting you up with that cute nurse from A&E? Yes, well, I’m cashing it in now.”

Sutherland zoned out as she talked, trying to remember something, anything that could have any bearing on the case. Everything was so fuzzy, but he couldn’t remember anything out of the ordinary.

If he had been poisoned, then it had been by someone close to him. There had been so few people around and they were all known to him personally. The thought was chilling, and he wished that he knew who he could trust. It was a horrible feeling, metaphorically looking over his shoulder all the time. Politics involved a lot of backstabbing, he’d been in the business of it long enough to know that, but at the same time, he never thought that anyone meant it quite that literally.

It was probably the coffee. He’d been drinking a lot of it and he’d forgotten dinner, so intent had he in his forceful mission to get everything solved before it dragged on too far into the summer recess.

Sutherland began to feel slightly queasy.

“Are you all right?” Lacey was off the phone, stowing the blood samples in her rucksack. “Come on, let’s get out of here before one of the Suits comes back and finds that you’re not dead after all. Or my dad comes back and tries to autopsy you anyway.”

Sutherland took a deep breath. “I need to call someone.”

Lacey raised an eyebrow. “All things considered, are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“All things considered, we’re a dead prime minister and an almost-forensic chemist hiding in a morgue we’re not supposed to be in. I think back-up might be useful.”

“Ok, ok, I get your point, and I suppose I did just bring Dorothy into it. Who are you going to call?”

“Carrie, my chief of staff.”

“You trust her?”

“With my life.”

Lacey snorted. “Well, given the circumstances, you’d better.”

X

Moe had finally finished signing all the waivers, and the man in the grey suit with the grey hair whom all the other Suits were calling Sir had basically told him that if he broke any of the top secret agreements he’d just signed, he’d be locked up and the key thrown away and no-one would ever know where the body was buried.

He’d also told him that if anything ‘unusual’ were to crop up during the autopsy, then he should tell the Grey Suit Sir and no one else. It should not go on the autopsy report.

Moe valued his life and freedom too much to disagree. He was already in trouble for sending the PM’s effects to the police without leave from Grey Suit Sir.

Now, his shift was over and they still hadn’t given him the go ahead, so he had informed the Suits in no uncertain terms that he was going to have to go and put the Prime Minister away until he came back on shift now, because otherwise they’d have to go through the entire rigmarole again with another pathologist.

The Suits had actually seemed rather relieved about that, and Moe’s suspicions of them were growing by the minute. Still, he kept his mouth shut, and he didn’t complain when one of them accompanied him down to the morgue.

That was when things started to go pear-shaped. Because the morgue was empty.

Not only was Lacey no longer in the office, the Prime Minister was no longer on the table.

The Suit looked at Moe with a look that was slightly anger, but mostly fear. A kind of ‘oh crap, I’m so fired’ expression.

“Where’s he gone?” he asked.

Moe shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve been under observation ever since he arrived. Maybe he snuck out whilst I was in the canteen and you were chatting up that nurse in the purple scrubs.”

The Suit scrubbed a hand over his face. “This is impossible! He was dead! He can’t have snuck out anywhere! He must have had help! I mean, someone must have stolen him.”

Moe just shrugged again, collecting his coat from the morgue office and surreptitiously sliding Lacey’s discarded headphones into his pocket before the distraught Suit could see them.

“Well, if you’d let me get going on his autopsy sooner, we wouldn’t have this problem,” he said calmly, although he was feeling anything but calm. Someone had stolen the Prime Minister, and it was looking very likely that the someone was his own daughter.

He thought back to the brief conversation that he’d had with her in the canteen whilst the Suit had been distracted by the purple scrubs. About how he didn’t need to worry about the PM going off overnight. And asking where his effects were. And Lacey had been in the morgue the entire night, unbeknownst to the Suits.

Moe was beginning to think that the Prime Minister wasn’t actually dead after all, and he really wasn’t sure whether that was supposed to be a good thing or a bad thing.

[exyjunkies]

Pynch + 12

yay i’m back

p.s. yes, ronan is in college for this one HAHAHA

fic meme 1-100: pynch + 12. “I think we need to talk.”

send me a ship and a number and i’ll write you a drabble (1-50) (51-100)

~*~

The way Gansey explained it was logical, almost common sense. But they were still in college, and Ronan believed that no one was supposed to have their life completely figured out at the age of 22. That was strictly an Adam Parrish thing, and Ronan sometimes made fun of him for it. Because Ronan and Gansey had the same two-hour break, Gansey had taken the liberty of schooling Ronan on how people operated, relationships-wise.

“So I take this to mean that your date did not go as planned?” Gansey prompted, sipping from his coffee. Ronan was frowning down at his own cup, the swirls in his cappuccino already far from pretty.

“No man, it went,” Ronan leaned backward, crossing his arms, “really fucking well. Like, I never would’ve dreamed it would go that well. And you know me with dreaming.”

“Mhm.”

“Nate and I talked more than we touched our food. It was that kind of connection, and I honestly felt like the whole thing lasted half an hour. Even if we closed down the burger joint. And left each other’s company at 2 in the morning.”

Gansey cocked his head to one side. “And then you asked if he’d wanna go out again.”

“And then I asked if he’d wanna go out again. To dinner again and maybe a movie. Then, he drops the bomb on me by saying he just sees me as a friend. Through text. Can you believe that?”

“Again, Ro’, as I’ve said, yes I can. If you knew how dating worked, you would know that people can drop out any point.”

“But why can’t we just try.” Ronan closed his eyes, feeling the urge to whine come up again. He felt heroic for being able to quash it. “We had so much fun.”

“You guys just don’t have the same priorities. Differing philosophies and all. You care about the effort, he cares about the sparks.”

Ronan did care about the effort. He believed in how the work it takes to keep a relationship going was always going to be more important than the emotions. With Nate, he really felt the potential - they had so much in common, and they vibed well enough that Ronan actually didn’t employ his exit strategy. He even found the guy attractive enough to want to kiss after the first date.

Too bad Nate wanted to stay celibate until after marriage. That was probably the kicker for Ronan, but still. It’s not like he couldn’t have adjusted.

“Fine.” Ronan broke off a piece of his pastry. “I’ll delete his number.”

“Atta boy.” Gansey nodded approvingly, typing out something on his phone. “I’ll ask Adam if he has other people he would want to set you up with.”

Putting a hand up, Ronan shook his head. “I’m going to have to pass on that. Thanks though. But maybe the dating thing should be put on-hold for now.”

“Suit yourself. Hey, wanna see this cool thing Blue sent me?”

~*~

The dorm room Adam stayed in was the only tidy one on his floor, and Ronan was oddly grateful for it. His last class ended with someone vomiting all over the teacher’s table (read: student drinking before class), so it was a relief for him to smell the clean air in Adam’s room.

“So what brings you here? If it’s your dating stint, it’s gonna have to wait,” Adam said, stacking books on top of one another. “I do have a guy in mind already though, but exams take precedence.”

“Actually, well, it’s about that, but it’s also not about that,” Ronan replied, flopping unceremoniously down on Adam’s bed. The sheets smelled fresh and flowery.

“Vague, but continue.”

“I might’ve overheard something, and… well, I think we need to talk.”

And Ronan was glad that he was lying down and looking at the ceiling, because if he were looking anywhere around where Adam actually was, the tension would’ve been bigger than he actually felt it was. The silence, though, was thick enough that Ronan blinked a few times, then sat up to face Adam.

Adam was leaning back on his table, studying Ronan with slightly narrowed eyes.

Then, his eyes went a little wide. “Oh no–”

“Oh yeah, that,” Ronan nodded, suddenly very conscious of the space around him. He was also mildly impressed that Adam got it immediately. “And I would’ve told him I heard, but–”

“Please, can you,” Adam took a small step forward, then took a deep breath. With his eyes closed, he continued, “Can you say exactly what you overheard?”

It wasn’t like Ronan planned on eavesdropping. He really just needed Gansey’s help with calculus, and the door had been ajar.

Stumbling over his words, Ronan struggled to form a coherent sentence. “Ah, well– he said something– huh, well, it was along the lines of… how do I say this– he said, “Adam, why not set yourself up with Ronan? You know you’ve been wanting to–”

“Ahhhhhhhhh oh God Gansey really did say that–”

“No– I mean, yes, he did, but,” Ronan sighed, looking at the way Adam hid behind his hands, “there’s no need to be embarrassed about it–”

“What do you mean there’s no need to be embarrassed, Gansey was literally the only person who knew and–”

“Adam.” Ronan said, standing up and reaching out to hold Adam by the arm. “It’s okay. I do not mind it at all.”

Breathing heavily, Adam shook his head. As Ronan squeezed his arm, Adam put his hands away from his face, and continued, “Sorry if it’s weird now, knowing what you know. Like, the whole I-set-you-up-with-guys-thing. It’s a friend thing, you know? I’ve known you for so long, I figured it’d be fine if you went out on dates so long as the guys I knew were the ones you were going out with. And I was fine, because I had all these other things to focus on, and Gansey always told me you had fun. The fact that I had good taste helped kill the teeny bit of jealousy I felt whenever Gansey would report back to me. And, okay, on my part, I never shot my shot because I was always so–”

“Freakishly studious?”

“I prefer future-oriented, thanks very much,” Adam replied, rolling his eyes. “Anyway, I already knew you were the long-term type of guy, and all my views of the future don’t include an idea of how my significant other could be, so when I got to establish that I did like you, it sort of just… threw me off-course.”

They were both standing a foot apart, and Ronan could hear nothing but the sound of his heart beating. One thought roared through Ronan’s brain: don’t fuck up don’t fuck up don’t fuck up–

“Parrish, if it’s not too much to ask,” Ronan said slowly, holding out his hand, “how do you feel about actually going out? Just once. Just to see what it feels like.”

Before Adam could open his mouth, Ronan put up a finger to signal that he wasn’t done. “And if the date ends and we don’t see eye-to-eye on seeing each other again, it’ll be fine. You’ll still hang out with Gansey and me and Noah. This is just so… y’know. Just so we both know. How it would feel like.

“Besides,” Ronan said, putting his hands in his pockets, “I am a little into you too.” He smirked a little, finding that the admission was not actually a lie.

Adam laughed softly, the amused creases around his eyes reassuring Ronan that all the tension was gone. “You know what? Fine. One date. But I pick the place. And I’ll have you know that I’m so kickass to be around.”

“Oh yeah?” Ronan said, reaching out to hold Adam’s hand. “Am I going to have trouble turning down a second date?”

“Not just that, dude,” Adam replied, reaching for his jacket, “You are so going to fall in love with me.”

[smoljoelito]

break up with your boyfriend, i’m bored part 2 || richard camacho

Part 1

word count: 1,556

description: Richard left you with an ultimatum last time you spoke, and now you have to make your final decision

warnings: fluff and some language sorry nothing too bad. 

masterlist

tags: @quierick @mepuserojito @ericks-mala-actitud @woowoodaaboo

A/N: I did something in one of my paragraphs with a dancing illustration while talking about Richard (you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about) let me know if it makes it hard to read in the comments I’m nervous. 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It’s been a week since you last spoke to Richard.

It’s been a week since you last spoke to your own boyfriend, Peter.

And it’s been three days since Richard broke up with his girlfriend.

Guilt is eating you alive every single second of the day, digging its claws into any outlet it can find, your stomach, intestines, and head, leaving behind a wake of pain and discomfort, untouched by any drug store pain medication. Your migraine only seems to grow worse every time the ringtone you set for your boyfriend goes off, whether it be text or call. Immediately, you silence it, but since you get a lot of calls from management, you’re unable to completely turn the ringer off. 

The turmoil set in your body is also resulting from the disagreement you’re having between your heart and your head. What you want to do, and what you should do. You don’t want to lose out on what you have with Peter by any means. For years, he’s been your rock, always having the best advice possible for any situation you’re met with. He just always knows what to tell you to say or what decision to make. Where you’re spontaneous, he’s planned. Where he’s logical, you’re fun. He balances you out, but almost like a best friend would.

A gasp escapes your lips as the truth hits you in the gut so harshly, your hands wrap around your abdomen to make sure you weren’t impaled. 

You’re afraid of losing your best friend. Peter compliments you in the ways your best friends do, but not in the way a lover should. You do love him, but it’s not deep gut-wrenching love. It’s not the kind of love that would make you feel like your heart has been ripped out if you went a week without talking. 

Your heart burns, hurts, and aches for Peter, but only because of the pain you’re going to put the sweet boy through. 90% of the ache comes from the feeling of losing your other half.

Richard doesn’t just compliment you, he completes you. Just like on the dance floor, the relationship is smooth. You offer an idea, to the right, he builds off of yours, he steps right. If you need advice, step back, he knows exactly what to tell you to make you feel better along with what the situation needs to get better, he steps back. You laugh at his joke, you sway your hips, he will go out of his way to make you laugh even harder, just to keep you happy, his hips mold against yours. 

Your boyfriend may be your rock, but Richard is like a breath of fresh air. His presence cleanses you of any worry, sadness, or anger you have. When you’re with Richard, it’s like hitting a refresh button on your day or mood. Any situation, he makes better by simply being there, not even saying or doing anything. The sad part of all of this is, some of the most fun memories you’ve had in your life, have Richard’s face all over them, not your boyfriends.

When the, now obnoxious, ringtone goes off this time, your body is oddly calm. The only thing you can hear is the AC, softly blowing out cool air to keep you cool in the time of stress, not your heart beating in your ears. Your headache is calming down along with the aching in your abdomen by the second. The decision has been made, the winner is clear as day, the war is over.

On the last ring, you pick your phone up, tapping the green button sadly. The conversation lasts merely twenty minutes, yet the mixture of emotions seems to be that of an hour-long fight. Your calamity completely faded when your boyfriend started accusing you of cheating on him with Richard, which you kind of deserved since you haven’t talked to him in a week. When he brought up Richard though, like he always does when he’s mad, it started a war. There were tears, a series of fuck you’s from both sides, then silence before he decided to be the first to hit the “end call” button. 

A quiet ploof is heard as your phone falls gently onto the mattress, with you sitting in the same position, brain still racking over the details of the conversation. It only takes a few minutes before the tears stop. The decision didn’t kill you like you thought it would. Being on tour, away from him, caused the feelings to lessen, and actually brought many things to light, like how he didn’t make you laugh or how you didn’t truly love him. For months, you knew the truth about your relationship, but coming to terms with the wasted years kept you locked in it.

The tour also showed you who you do love. It showed you where your heart is, and whose hands it’s in. Without a single doubt in the world, you don’t want it back. 

Before your mind can even react, your feet are already moving. As quickly as possible, you make yourself look presentable before running out the door of your hotel room, only your hotel room card and phone in hand. With each step you take towards Richard’s door, your heartbeat takes it as a means of beating even faster. By the time you’re in front of his door, you can hear it in your ears. 

Slowly, your hand raises towards the door, contrasting with your rapid breathing. Your eyes flutter closed for a moment as you inhale deeply, calming yourself before you knock twice on his door.

It only takes a few moments for the door slowly opens, revealing Richard, staring at you with furrowed brows. Your heart literally hurts for a moment as it skips a beat, stops, then starts again. At first, neither one of you speak, but just stare at each other,

“What are you doing here Y/N?” He asks hesitantly as if he doesn’t want to know the answer.

“Ibrokeupwithmyboyfriend,” You blurt out quickly causing him to look even more confused as before.

“You what?” Taking in a deep breath, you shut your eyes for a moment before meeting his intense gaze.

“I broke up with my boyfriend,” You say slowly, but confidently. For a moment, neither of you move, but then suddenly his lips are on yours. 

Just like being with him, it’s like fresh of breath air, but once your lips begin moving against his, the feeling changes completely. The kiss is fire, a complete raging fire in your veins. Your body feels completely alive and focused, zeroed in on one thing, him. Before you even know what you’re doing, your arms are wrapped around his neck, head tilted towards the side to deepen the kiss. His hands are suddenly on your waist, pulling you flush against his body. yet arching you back, allowing him to get more access to your lips.  The kiss is passionate, yet gentle, hungry, yet caring as if he’s trying to show you what you missed: passionate, kind, fiery, soft love. It causes fireworks to explode behind your eyelids and fingers tingling all the way to the tips, leaving you gripping each other to minimize any space between you both. It’s a kiss you’ve never felt before from anyone, and one you would never stop doing if possible.

When your lips detach, neither of you open your eyes as you pant, still trying to live in the moment just a second longer. You’re the first to draw back slightly, still staying in his arms, but giving yourself access to look into the warm brown orbs you’ve grown to love.

“I pick you, Richard Yashel Camacho Puello. You’re the one I want.”

The bright smile that covers his face makes something inside you stir, heart skipping a beat yet again before your smile matches his. 

“I knew you’d pick me.” 

Before you even have the chance to respond, his lips are on yours again as he gently steps back into his room, and you, for the first time, follow. 

[where-dreamers-go]

“Top Ten” Kylo Ren x Earthling! Reader

(Anon asked: “I loved your post about Kylo Ren and the reader being from Earth! Do you think you could do one with the same idea of the reader being from Earth and is dating Kylo? She gets him to react to the top 10 dumbest tweets because they’re just so funny and it makes it even funnier when you know that there is a lot of people out there that are really that stupid. (Mostamazingtop10 is the channel on YouTube)”

Warnings: Dumb tweet mentions and reference to their content.

Word Count: 1,751 )

Being Supreme Leader of The First Order had its advantages. One such advantage being that he made his own schedule. A second such advantage was that Kylo Ren had no one who would ridicule him nor tell him to spend less time with his partner.

For you, living in amongst The First Order was definitely something you never saw coming. Honestly as someone from Earth you only expected so much in terms of being involved with events other than those of your homeworld. Space travel was one thing you were still trying to mentally grasp even after a year of knowing and dating the Kylo Ren.

Despite a schedule that could be changed on a whim, you found yourself having quiet time with your boyfriend. No creepy helmet, no barking general, and no training. It was the perfect alone time.

“Feeling better today?” You asked as you joined Kylo on the dark-colored couch.

“Always better with you.”

You shook your head at his smirk.

Over the past couple of days Kylo had been feeling a tad under the weather not that the medical droids diagnosed him with anything besides fatigue. Thankfully, you were someone he’d listen to, especially when it came to taking care of himself.

You had a way of putting your foot down and speaking logically.

“How about we get our minds off of business for a while and entertain ourselves,” you suggested.

“That sounds very agreeable.”

“YouTube it is!”

“You—what?”

“Videos online,” you reached over for his Datapad.

“Earth thing, right.”

“How….about…oh. Top tens. Umm….how about dumbest tweets?”

Kylo ran a hand over his face.

“Out of everything we could be doing with now you want to watch a holovid about idiots?” Kylo looked at you strangely if then with an amount of judgement.

“Well first I have to remember how to find all of the,” you tapped away at the Datapad, “Earth based sites. They run differently…”

Kylo draped an arm behind you on the couch.

“There we go.”

Once finding the right links the rest of your search was easy.

“Over fifty videos?”

“We’re not going to watch them all. Chill.” You patted his leg in reassurance. “I mean, it’s funny to a point until you realize it’s real. They’re people who just…don’t get it or something. It’s really sad if you just think about it. Disappointing and slightly-worried sad because how have they gotten this far?”

You pressed for the very first video to play.

Kylo sat quietly, seemingly giving the video a chance.

How long would that last exactly? If it did.

The video started as a countdown from ten. Added that it really did start off pretty foolish. In a pay-attention-to-what-the-sentence-actually-was sort of way.

Obviously the first person did know what the phrase ‘I’d rather kill myself’ actually meant.

You could feel Kylo’s eyes as they peered over at you.

“They don’t realize what they’re saying…usually that’s an excuse.”

“Or they have no idea at all,” Kylo said.

The following tweet included the idea of the Earth having a birthday. Or rather someone thinking that the planet was only 2,014 years old.

“I forgot that Earth still has their own—.”

“Shh!”

His only comment and response afterwards being an exaggerated exhale through his nose.

“Earthlings are stubborn to keep things how they like them.”

“Is that why there’s a group that prohibits the idea of space travel even while a cargo ship supplies them with food?”

You shrugged.

Number eight of dumbest tweets came in the form of not knowing the answer meanwhile the answer was in their question. Also known as: when someone doesn’t realize that the name most people refer to a president by is their last name.

“Wow,” your shoulders shook with laughter. “How’s American History class going for you?”

“This is old.”

“I know. Shh.”

He flicked your shoulder.

You bopped his knee.

You were messing with your boyfriend, but also messing with how it wasn’t entirely the person’s fault for not knowing the last name of a president. Names were almost used as nicknames in some cases.

“Couldn’t they have searched it on the Holonet? Were they that lazy?”

“Shh.”

Tweet number seven on the list had a lead up that was already having Kylo cringing.

A tweet that included someone believing something online without thinking about the real life, common sense, science. Against what the person tweeting had read, a microwave that heats up food or drinks was not ever going to charge the battery of a phone.

“No. No, no….they—they did,” he groaned.

“Good lesson though.” You suggested. You couldn’t even imagine what information they lost on their SD card let alone the condition of the microwave.

“And if it wasn’t? What if after all of that, they still believe it?”

You shrugged as it started the next tweet soon after explaining the why it obviously didn’t work.

A tweeted question appeared about whether the amount of months a woman was pregnant doubled or not if she had twins. That was definitely different. Not to mention odd.

“Only child?”

“Probably,” you said.

“Did poorly in health lessons?”

“More likely.”

“That would be an extremely long time. They should have thought about their question longer. Would have taken them eighteen months.” He chuckled.

“Have you thought about it?”

He didn’t say a word.

Number five on the countdown had a person who had no idea that apples also had a variety of green.

“Does she live on a desert planet?”

You elbowed him lightly.

“It’s food. A common one, right?”

You nodded.

When the host mentioned about the colors of bananas and oranges to tell the person who tweeted, you both started snickering.

“Wanna send Hux some oranges?”

“Too expensive. Earth is too close to wild space.”

“Could you do it for my birthday?”

Your snickering continued a little longer as the next tweet involved someone who, though excited, did not know whether they’d be an aunt or an uncle.

“I’m guessing their parents are both the only child.”

“Yeah,” Kylo leaned closer to you. “This one isn’t so bad. The heating up a phone was pretty ridiculous. It went against knowledge of two machines.”

“True, but here they somehow managed to think that the baby’s gender, no matter how that works out, determines whether they are an aunt or uncle. I have a lot of questions about this. Did someone tell them something? Did they mishear or—?”

“It’s the next one. Last three.”

You could actually hear the amusement in his voice. That was a happy change. Also an almost rare one.

Well the third in the list was definitely something. It was a mixture of ignorance, poor grammar, and a bit of rudeness. Long story short, they believed that the Earth was flat. They firmly believed it.

Pausing the video, Kylo waited for you to face him before he made a ‘you serious?’ expression.

“It’s not my fault that even with space travel people on Earth thought or still think that the planet’s flat.”

“How do they not believe what’s…what they are living on?”

“I don’t know. I guess they don’t look out onto the curved horizon or a lunar eclipse.”

He threw his head back and slumped in his seat.

Again you patted his thigh, but this time in an effort to comfort him from others’….lack of knowledge.

“Oh, no,” you watched tweet number two as the video panned down on a tweet that included pictures. “It’s literally the same name and face. Read the credits, sweetie.”

“What’s a bel air?”

Whipping your head in his direction, you had a realization.

“You’ve never watched it.”

“Is…is it a show?”

“Yes. That’s next on your learning-from-Earth to-do list. I was wondering why you weren’t giving much of a reaction.”

“It’s still stupid.”

“Language.”

The number one dumbest tweet appeared on screen. The finale of the video. Yet it only took the image of someone’s debit card to raise a response from Kylo.

Loud groaning from your boyfriend drowned out the audio from the video.

“She literally was giving away all of the information they should have told her to keep to herself. What did she think was going to happen? Is no one telling her? No sense. She deserved that one.”

“Maybe somewhere and somehow she figured it out.” You said.

“Doubt it.”

“Give the earthlings a chance.”

“There’s only one earthling worth chances.”

You smiled to yourself despite everything.

Once you thought that the tweet’s story was at a close, it wasn’t. You both heard the continuation of the tweet.

“She did the same thing again? Seriously? Did she not learn anything from people using her card? Is it going to take her ten times to figure it out?”

“Chill, babe. Chill. You don’t have to deal with it.”

By then the video was wrapping up nicely and advertising more videos.

“There. It’s over.”

“I can only take so much stupidity.”

“You’ll be okay,” you leaned down to kiss his forehead. “And be nice.”

“And just so we’re clear, I think it’s safer for you never to return to your home planet for the sake of your intelligence.”

“It’s not all that bad. There are a lot of intelligent people from Earth.”

He rose a dark eyebrow at you.

“Don’t give me that attitude, mister.” You poked his nose.

An unseen action pulled the Datapad from your grasp.

It did not surprise you nor did it baffle you. Your boyfriend was a Force user. Common knowledge.

Kylo set the Datapad aside as he refocused on you.

“You took those tweets very well.”

He eyed you suspiciously.

“Want the truth?”

He nodded.

“I’ve heard worse while still on Earth.”

“My earlier statement is now an order. You’re not traveling back. I will give you more duties here. Have you deal with Hux.”

“Please, no.”

There was his familiar chuckle, only seen and heard by you, as he proved that he was slightly teasing. He respected and valued you; he wasn’t about to ruin your day by forcing you to spend time with Hux or not pick where you could go.

“So…,” you leaned closer to play with his dark hair. “Wanna watch Fresh Prince of Bel Air?”

“I think I’ve watched enough holovids today.”

Your boyfriend, the Supreme Leader, had other ideas in mind to spend his time with you in company.

~~~

(If you love my writings and want to support me, I have a Ko-Fi where you can buy me a coffee. I would be eternally grateful. coffee

Best wishes and happy reading.)