#I want it i need it i have it lyrics ditch it trash it

[pinerlinux]

I want it i need it i have it lyrics ditch it trash it

Ray Lotto's El Raton was the third place Express 27. "And Rocket's a lot of work." Thirteen Express 27s raced, and Get Happy!! passed Magic Bus in the last few miles to win the division. This year they took Brendan's Express 27 Get Happy!! "I like one design racing," he said. ©2014 īrendan Busch and Ian Klitza sailed the D-Class Cat Rocket 88 the last three years. They finished second out of six Wabbits behind Aaron Sturm's Wild Bunch. This year, the wind softened at the Benicia Bridge and remained mellow the rest of the way.Ĭolin Moore's Kwazy Wabbit along the lazy river. Usually, the wind pipes up in San Pablo Bay, builds in the Carquinez Strait approaching Benicia, builds more in Suisun Bay, and really honks in New York Slough past Pittsburg and Antioch. The Extreme 40 SmartRecruiters flies a hull in San Pablo Bay. These are Magic, Don Quixote and Mistress Quickly, all from Santa Cruz YC. The Santa Cruz 27s eked out a one design division at the last minute with six boats. Nothing to do with the drought, just insufficient depth on a minus tide on the east side of San Pablo Bay. The J/35 Jarlen was the first victim of the water shortage. The first division, Light 1, starts popping chutes right away. The NOE flags were for Noe Goodman, who fell in the water and drowned at Stockton Sailing Club following last year's race. Saturday morning at the Richmond YC docks. The current was shifting from ebb to flood as the divisions started north of the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, and stayed with the fleet the whole way to Stockton. Many boats were even able to carry past Mark 19 in the usual 'white sail reach' portion of the San Joaquin River. The wind direction cooperated, with spinnakers going up at the start and staying up. The weather was warm but not blazing hot as in some years, with temps peaking in the 80s. A light air year, there was plenty of time for telling jokes, flirting, and quaffing cold beverages out of cans. We’re laughing all the way to the river bankīrad Paisley could have sung those lyrics for this year's Delta Ditch Run, saving the inner tube for Sunday. It ain’t like we really need a million dollar yacht, 'causeīut we have got each other and gas in the tank You know even if our ship came in and this is all we got The normally nukin' New York slough was relatively tame for Saturday's Delta Ditch Run.

[niskoo]

[21:00]

pairing: Bad boy! Jungwon x reader

genre: fluff, a bit of crack ig euwoa

warnings: mmm punch spilling on reader mmmm

word count: 1.6k words

a/n: TOTALLY NOT INSPIRED BY THE JUNGWON DANCING AND SPILLING SUNOOS DRINK ON HIM INCIDENT HAHA ALSO SFTU I MISS TAKI LET ME INCLUDE HIM HERE

Parties were always the best, for most people at least. You were having a good time with your friends, at this random party at whoever’s house.

The beats of the enthusiastic song blaring over the speakers nearly deafen you, but you smile and vibe along nonetheless, feeling the ground shake as how many people jump at the dance floor. You turn to your friend, Niki, who’s yelling the lyrics in fake passion and serenading Taki (STFU IM PUTTING HIM IN BECAUSE I MISS HIM), tapping the both of them. “Dude I’m parched, I’m gonna go see if they have sprite in the kitchen.”

They both nod, ushering you off with a wave and a request of some punch for Niki whose throat is burning from screaming lyrics the past hour.

You start your journey to the kitchen of the unfamiliar house, walking around and asking a few strangers where it was. At some point you meet the host of the party, one of your seniors, telling you the directions and a tip of ‘if you can’t find it, just look around for a blonde dude, he’s there all the time, eating chips. His name’s Hueningkai,’

You think of this ‘blonde dude’ wondering if he’s thrown up by now because nobody can last that long with so many bags of chips.

Your quest continues, as you push through groups of dancing people and occasional sobbers, so far not a single blonde dude, which is really surprising.

At last, you find another part of the crowded house, and there’s a blonde guy with chips sitting on the counter. You smile in delight at the success of your mini expedition, quickly approaching the lad, “Hey, are you Hueningkai?”

The boy nods enthusiastically, swallowing the few chips in his mouth, “Yeah? You need anything?”

“Is this the kitchen?”

Hueningkai nods, gesturing all around him, “Hell yeah it is! What do you want?”

You can see the bottles of sprite and pepsi behind him, shaking your head and pointing at them, “I found it,” the teen nods and shoves a few more chips in his mouth, telling you to help yourself.

You gladly do, grabbing 2 plastic cups and filling them with your designated drinks you craved. You leave right away, after seeing a group of friends mixing a bunch of drinks and trying it out.

Now, is the hard part. You don’t remember the way back, and you have 2 full cups in your hand. How would you ever survive? By walking and warning others of the drinks in your hand, just like what you’re doing right now.

You excuse yourself through crowds, to which they diligently make way for you. You’re somehow in the dancing circle, with people jumping all around you. You bite your lip and try maneuvering away, sipping a few gulps from your cup to make it easier to walk around.

You eventually empty it instead, it’s better to walk around with just one cup. The moment you throw your empty red cup away in the already stacked trash bin, you hear a familiar voice around you. Almost too close to you.

Whipping around, you find out your assumptions were correct. Yang Jungwon and his brothers are not too far from you, chatting lively and laughing at some joke Jay Park makes.

‘Ah fuck!’ It was with no doubt that you had a huge crush on Jungwon, how could you not? You don’t even have to name reasons to seem whipped for him. Cursing under your breath, you quickly turn to see other ways of going around his group of friends.

Unfortunately, there is a huge mob of girls jumping and yelling the lyrics to one of the songs of Olivia Rodrigo’s album ‘sour’. You would totally join, but there is a drink in your hand and you’re having an internal mental breakdown.

You contemplate ditching Niki and his drink to bop along to the song, but a sudden push to your shoulder causes the drink to spill all over your shirt.

You freeze in surprise, pulling your shirt to let it dry quickly as the person who pushed you panics and tries to help. You don’t realize who it was, chuckling and shaking your head and mumbling small reasons of how it was alright.

“Ah, shit... I’m really, realllyyy, sorry.”

This time, you are completely aware of the voice, becoming more self conscious when your head snaps up to meet Jungwon’s guilty eyes. “I- it’s really fine, Jungwon, it was just an accident, right?” (Behind Jungwon, Sunoo squeals and flees away in fear of getting caught as the culprit of pushing Jungwon.)

Heat spreads across Jungwon’s cheeks and neck as he hears you breathily chuckle name, and you swear you could see the light tint on his face. “I- uh- you know my name?”

A hearty laugh erupts from your throat, as you simply nod and pull tighter at your shirt, “Of course I know your name, it’s the most popular among the girls, you know?”

At that, Jungwon’s smile grows shyer and smaller, scratching the sudden itch at his wrist, “A-ah, I see.”

The tension is awkward after that, just standing and looking at each other as everyone around you jumps and screams lyrics. You look back at the kitchen, gesturing to it and stiffly turning its way, “I better get some tissues,”

Your crush jerks up, already walking and beckoning you to another way, “Let me help you, the bathroom is way cleaner.” His fingers enclose around your wrist, lightly pulling you with him to the bathroom. You can only stumble on your feet, and words, and stare at his hand around your wrist in astonishment.

The bathroom is reached, and just as Jungwon said, it’s a lot cleaner. And a lot lonelier as well. Your hand is finally free from Jungwon’s gentle grasp, and he ushers you into the bathroom, “Call me if you need help. Or when it’s a bit more faded.” Before the door is closed at your face.

You can feel your heartbeat erratically beating in your chest, it has your knees wobbly and stomach twisting unhealthily as you process what’s just happened. Turning around to face the mirror, you clasp both your hands on your face, smiling at yourself in pure glee.

Your glee didn’t last too long though, as you felt your punch soaked shirt sticking to your stomach uncomfortably. Quickly, and with much force, you grab the tissue roll next to the sink and rip a long stripe off, before scrubbing the material on your shirt.

After many minutes, your shirt is left with a pink-ish stain and wrinkles of how much you’ve probably stretched and rubbed at it. You finally decide to let Jungwon in, unlocking the door for him to enter.

As soon as he enters, there’s a guilty expression plastered all over his face, and even his body language can describe how bad he feels. “I’m so sorry I did this.” A chuckle and a pat at his arm is his only response, and he continues with what he’s been thinking of saying while waiting outside.

“Y-you know Y/n,” Your gleaming eyes bore into his, causing his chest to tighten up and the confidence to slowly slip away from his mind, “Your outfit’s really nice- well it was nice until I ruined it- b-but you still look great! I mean you look worse from before- but that’s from the punch! Oh god I thought I practiced this...”

Jungwon’s small outburst causes something in you, affection, you would recognize, and you laugh out at his attempts at a conversation. “Thank you Jungwon, you really cheered me up,” there’s a small laugh in the end from you, and it causes him to giggle out as well.

“U-um, you can cover the stain w-with my Jacket? Here, you can borrow it for the rest of the night,”

It’s no use arguing, Jungwon is already shrugging the soft material off, and swinging it over your waist to tie it. “Nobody will notice,” he mumbles as he ties a tight knot around you. You’re sure a bunch of girls will notice how it’s his hoodie he uses almost everyday though.

“Now, let’s get back! I can get you another cup of punch, and protect you from it if it spills, and we can just enjoy the rest of the party!”

And yet once again, Jungwon’s grasp is wrapped right around your wrist, but this time to run enthusiastically with him back to the kitchen, where he gets a new cup and hands it to you. He keeps his word and warns (read: yell) at people to be cautious of the drink nearby. You end up giving the punch to Niki, who quickly chugs and continues serenading Taki.

You spend the rest of the night talking to Jungwon, and eventually meet the criminal of pushing Jungwon into you, sharing what kind of face masks you like and recommending some to each other. If it wasn’t for him, you wouldn’t be exchanging numbers with your crush, without him you wouldn’t be texting him halfway home because of his sweater you forgot to return, without him you wouldn’t be running around and yelling in happiness when he replies with a ‘keep it, it looks better on you.’

[quicksilverownsmysoul]

Sparks Pt. 5

It has taken me forever but I finally updated Sparks! I’m sorry for making y’all wait so long but I’ve been busy with other stuff and I keep starting series before I finish the first one (I need to stop doing that). I know it’s been a while, if you need to reread the old ones they are all linked in my masterlist, it��s pinned on my page! Anyway I hope y’all like it!

You can read Part 4 Here 

Summary: 

Warnings: None, this is pure fluff

Word Count: 2298

The ride there was an experience to say the least. Scott drove which meant Jean got shotgun, the rest of you were piled into the backseat. Kurt kept hitting Jubilee in the face with his tail, her hair blew into your face every time the breeze hit, and you were so cramped that you were practically sitting on Peter’s lap. Peter was thankful you couldn't move to turn around, or else you would see how red his face was. He was sitting extremely still too scared to even move. Because if you moved even an inch over, he knew his leather pants wouldn't hide what would form. Scott looked at you guys through the rear view mirror, flashing you a cocky smile. “You guys comfortable?” Jubilee flipped him off while the rest of you grumbled out a no. He laughed and turned back to face the road. 

Scott pulled up to a diner and parked, hoping out to open the door for Jean. Kurt wiggled his arm free and opened the door causing you guys to fall out of the backseat. Jubilee fell onto Kurt’s back and Peter ended up falling on you, he caught himself with his hands, you guys inches from one another. You watched his eyes dart down to look at your lips before glancing back up to meet your eyes. You smirked up at him. “If you’re going to pull something like that, at least buy me dinner first.” 

Peter felt his face heat up and he started to sputter. You laughed at his flustered state and after a moment he did as well. He liked how casual you were about this and how you were able to joke to ease the tension. He smirked back down at you. “Well maybe after I do buy you dinner we can continue this.” It was your turn to get embarrassed. 

“Really guys?” You both looked up to see Jubilee standing with her arms crossed. “Right in front of Kurt.” Kurt was covering his face out of respect for you two and shielding himself behind her. You both turned red and scrambled to get out of the car. Peter let you get up and then hopped out of the backseat behind you. Jubilee pulled you to the back of the group with her and gave your arm a squeeze. “He likes you.”

Peter glanced back at the two of you in between bugging Scott and Jean. He saw you and Jubilee talking in hushed voices and giggling with one another. He felt himself gulp, something told him you guys were talking about him. He caught your eye and whipped his head back around, hoping you didn't catch him staring. 

Scott made his way to the front of the group to announce where you were but Peter hip bumped him out of the way. Scott cussed and Peter just sent him a wink and a smile. He turned back to face the group, his eyes locked on you. “Welcome to our favorite diner, Gus’ Games and Grub.” Peter stood at the front of the group his arms held wide open, showing off the diner. You felt yourself smile as you looked around the place, there was an arcade attached to the restaurant, with a prize cabinet and about a million blinking lights and sounds. 

“This place is awesome.” Peter watched as you took it all in, his heart swelling at the fact he was able to impress you with his favorite diner.

“So do you guy wanna do for dinner, do you wanna split a pizza or get-”

“Let’s play.” Peter said, cutting off Scott. 

“The whole reason we came here was for dinner.” 

“No, it was to have fun.” Peter smirked. “Something you wouldn't know anything about.” 

“Ooooo.” Jubilee responded as her eyes darted back and forth between the boys. 

Scott surged forward but Jean used her powers to stop him, pulling him back towards her by the collar of his sports jacket.

“You guys are acting like children. There is an easy way to decide this.”

“You’re right Jean, battle to the death it is.” Jean rolled her eyes at Peter’s comment. 

“Let’s just take a vote. Who wants to eat first?” Jubilee, Kurt, Scott and Jean all raised their hands. “Who wants to play the arcade first?” Peter's hand shot in the air, he sent you a wide smile when he saw you agreeing with him. “Sorry Peter, looks like we’re eating first.” Jean turned toward the counter and Scott sent him a condensing smirk behind her back. Peter stuck his tongue out in response. He didn't care that he lost the vote, he had you on his side. 

Dinner was filled with easy conversation and stolen glances. You and Peter kept trying to catch each other’s eye from opposite sides of the booth. He had wanted to sit next to you but Jubilee had beat him to it and she refused to move. As soon as you finished eating Peter slid into the booth next to you as Jubilee got up to throw the trash away. He slung his arm behind the booth and you scooted closer to him, making him blush. He leaned down and gently moved his hand to cup the back of your neck. “Wanna go have some fun.”

“What kind of fun is Maximoff?” You teased, loving the way it made him flush red. 

“The best kind there is.” Peter sped off you with you, ditching the other guys as you made your way to the arcade. Peter stood near a dancing machine game and held his hand out towards you with a slight bow. “May I have this dance?”

You curtsied back at him. “Of course.”

You hopped up on the dance floor as Peter put coins in the machine. He used the buttons to scroll through the songs, he stuck his tongue out in concentration trying to find just the right one. He made his selection and joined you on the mini stage. The music started playing and you felt your smile widen. “Oh my god I love this song!”

“Me too!” 

You guys turned back to the screen and started to dance, doing your best to coordinate with the colorful arrows on screen. But it was hard to pay attention when you both were too busy looking at one another and singing the lyrics back and forth. You saw Jubilee approaching the machine out of the corner of your eye. She leaned on the bar behind you, Kurt and the others not too far behind. “I was wondering where you guys went.” 

“We went to totally dominate this game.” Peter bragged as he scored three bads in a row on the game. 

“I can see that.” Jubilee watched as the song ended and the screen showed off your guys' score. It was ranked a D- with a 22% accuracy. 

“Man you’re bad at this.” Scott said.

“What like you could do better?”  Peter scoffed as he hopped off the stage offering you his hand. You took it and hopped off as well. 

“Watch me.” Scott and Jean took your guys places on the game and inserted the coins to play. You and Peter watched with your mouths hanging open as they scored perfect on every step. The song came to an end and they stared at you guys with matching smirks. 

“Okay you so totally did better than us.” You admitted. Peter just grumbled out an agreement. 

“Because we are better.” Scott remarked. 

“Wanna bet?” Peter asked as he crossed his arms across his chest. 

“What kind of bet?”

“Not again.” Jean muttered. 

“Whoever wins the biggest prize by the time the place closes gets the keys to your car for the rest of the week.” Peter smirked.

“What do I get?” Scott asked, hesitation in his voice. 

“I don’t know what do you want?”

Scott scrunched his face up in concertation for a moment before he answered. Knowing exactly what he wanted if he won. “If I win I get your pac-man machine.” 

Peter’s eyes widened, you could see him weighing the risks in his mind. He glanced over at you. He wanted the car so he could ask you out on a date, he wanted to do it right, with a car instead of speeding you somewhere. You gave him a smile and that made up his mind. He turned back to face Scott, a challenging look in his eyes. “I’ll take that bet.” 

“Okay so how are we going to do this? Teams?”

“Sounds good to me.”

“So it’ll be me and Jean, you and (y/n) and Kurt and Jubilee.” 

“What? Why are we playing? And why do I get Kurt?” Jubilee asked with her arms crossed. 

“Hey!” Kurt whined. 

“Sorry.”

“It’s more interesting if we all play.” Scott said. 

“Plus it’s not like you guys are going to win, it’s either going to me or Scott.” Peter joked and Scott nodded in agreement.

“Really?” Jubilee narrowed her eyes. “We’ll see about that. Come on Kurt.” With that they were gone. Now it was time for the games to begin. 

Peter and you sprinted over to the skeeball machines. He put a coin in each one and sped back and forth throwing the ball down the lane, getting the highest scoring points each time. You collected all the tickets, your heart pumping full of adrenaline. You played all the games you could while Peter ran around the arcade beating all the games and winning all the tickets. They made an announcement over the loudspeaker that they would be closing in five minutes, so you and Peter finished off your games and made your way to the counter. Jean and Scott were already there, their ticket pile paled in comparison to yours. Peter opened his mouth to mock them but Jean held up her hand and pointed to the right. You turned and saw Jubilee and Kurt sitting on top of the prize counter. She had three different pairs of sunglasses on and Kurt had about a million scrunchies wrapped around his tail. They were both drinking slurpees, a giant stuffed pink gorilla by their feet. Jubilee lowered her glasses as she took a long sip of her drink. ‘’’Sup losers.” 

Peters was gaping at them, glancing back and forth between the giant gorilla and them. “I- huh.. How? WHAT?”

Jubilee held her arms out and slung one around Kurt. “We won.”

“How?!?” Scott asked. “You guys only played like two games!���

“Yeah we won 67 tickets!” Kurt said excitedly. “That’s how we got the sunglasses and scrunchies!” He held his tail up showing them off. 

“That still doesn't explain how you won.” You asked with an amused smile on your face. 

“My cousin is the manager, I bribed her into giving us the biggest prize.” She pointed down at the stuffed gorilla. “Meet Barbara.” Scott and Peter stared at her with huffy faces getting ready to protest her winning. ‘Hey you never said we couldn't cheat.” Jubilee took another sip of her slurpee. 

“Yeah but you still cheated.” Scott argued.

“What like you guys didn't?.” She pointed at Scott and Jean. “I saw Jean using her powers on the basketball machine.” She motioned towards Peter. “And don’t even get me started on this one.”

“Damn you go Jubilee.” You cheered her as she gave a little bow. 

“So we win!” Kurt cheered. 

“Indeed we do.” Jubilee stuck her hands out in a grabby motion “Keys. Give me.” Scott reached into his pocket and begrudgingly tossed the keys to Jubilee. She caught them with a smirk. “I’ll see you guys in the car, I’m driving.” 

You cheered her on as she left. “Never underestimate Jubilee.” 

“Agreed.” 

“So what are we going to do with all these tickets?” You asked. 

Peter took them from you and came back a second later, arms full of prizes. “We can take them home to the kids at the house.” 

“That’s so sweet Peter.” He smiled at your praise.

“I uh.. I also got something for you.” Peter set down the prizes in his hands and riffled through them. He pulled out a stuffed turtle from the pile and nervously brought it over to you. You took it in your hands, heart swelling at the action. “His name is Mister Dibbles.” 

You looked down at the gentle face of the toy, smiling at it and then back up at peter. “I love him.” Peter gave you a wide smile. 

As you guys made your way out of the diner Peter fought with himself back and forth on whether he should still ask you out. By the time he got to the car he had made up his mind. He opened his mouth to ask you but Jubilee grabbed him by the arm and pulled him off to the side. 

“You can have the car after tonight.”

“What?” He asked, shock evident on his face. 

“You can have the car.” She shrugged. “I know you wanted it so you could take (y/n) on a date.”

“How did you know that?”

“You’re pretty easy to read.” Peter smiled and rushed forward crushing Jubilee in a hug. “Stop that, put me down!” She giggled out. 

“Thank you so much.” 

“Mhmm and don’t worry I’m not going to take your pac-man machine. But you owe me.” 

“Anything.”

“I wanna style your hair.”

“Anything but that.”

“Ugh fine.” 

Jubilee and Peter made their way back over to the car. You smiled as you saw Peter getting closer to you. He returned it. “Hey can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“Would you maybe… like to.. I don’t know...go out with me?” You felt your face split into a wide smile. 

“Of course I would.” 

Taglist: @chiswritingandreadingcorner @enemy-of-wonkru @xxspqcebunsxx @coffeeandteaintheevening @kitwalkerangel @xmaximoffic @livingmybestfictionallife @evanmybeloved @kaismessiahbb @bugboy-and-icegirl

[queerdraws]

Cleaning Out the Rooms - a Harry Du Bois playlist Alcoholism, getting better?, memory loss, being a superstar, The Final Dream, forming political opinions, bad breakups, past transgressions, being a strange and inconsistent being, and persisting despite it all 26 songs (r-slur warning for Turnin’ on the Screw - QotSA)

including: David Bazan, They Might be Giants, The Mountain Goats, British Sea Power (of course), Queens of the Stone Age, and more.  Full track listing and lyric excerpts under the cut

---- Turnin' on the Screw - Queens of the Stone Age (This is the opening track on Era Vulgaris, seemed like an appropriate opening song / introduction to Harry's general essence) ----

... They say those who can't just instruct others And act like victims or jilted lovers You can't lose it if you never had it Disappear, man, do some magic

Want a reason? How's about because You ain't a has been if you never was

I sound like this

Scared to say what is your passion So slag it all, bitter's in fashion Fear of failure's all you've started The jury is in, verdict: r******d

I'm so tired, and I'm wired too I'm a mess; I guess I'm turning on the screw

---- Bless this Mess - David Bazan (Harry being a drunk and a general mess, things going in cycles) ----

God bless the man who stumbles God bless the man who falls God bless the man who yields to temptation God bless the woman who suffers God bless the woman who weeps God bless the children trying her patience Trouble getting over it Is what you're in for So pour yourself another 'Cause it'll take a steady pair of hands Holy or unholy ghost Well now I can't tell, but either way you cut it You should get some distance if you plan to take a stand God bless the house divided God bless the weeds in the wheat God bless the lamp hid under a bushel I discovered hell to be the poison in the well So I tried to warn the others of the curse But then my body turned on me I dreamt that for eternity My family would burn Then I awoke with a wicked thirst

---- Don’t Sit Down Cause I’ve Moved Your Chair - Arctic Monkeys (general Harry vibe.  off-kilter) ----

Break a mirror, roll the dice

...

Find a well-known hard man and start a fight Wear your shell suit on bonfire night Fill in a circular hole with a peg that's square

But just don't sit down 'cause I've moved your chair

...

Bite the lightning and tell me how it tastes Kung fu fighting on your roller skates Do the Macarena in the devil's lair

But just don't sit down 'cause I've moved your chair

---- I've Been Seeing Things - They Might be Giants (feels very Harry's detecting style, surreal happenstance) ----

I've been seeing things I've been seeing things Don't have answers but I've got lots of questions

Carpool's up, someone gets out Hand someone else a violin case I'm trying not to let them see me looking at them But I'm pretty sure there was a dollar sign

Keep your eyes peeled and you'll see stuff Which at first seems like unimportant irrelevant things

Can't just ask some perfect stranger "What are you hiding in your violin case?" Shadow them at a distance instead Try to get inside their head

Where'd they go now (Where'd they go now) I got distracted (I got distracted) Begging me to stay (Begging me to stay) Wearing a disguise (Wearing a disguise) That lady (That lady) Must have ditched the kid (Must have ditched the kid) Hidge the down (Hidge the down) [???] What's she up to now? (What's she up to now?) Trembling cold by the airport road Watching them stack containers in rows Seagulls, helicopter, windblown trash Something doesn't add up

I've been seeing things I've been seeing things No one asks but I'm packing all kinds of attention

Later I'm watching a news report Camera pans across a crime scene Unremarked upon detail Empty violin case Okay maybe not the same case Different material, different color Still you have to wonder Am I the only one who knows

I've been seeing things

---- Music is the Victim - Scissor Sisters (breakup Harry.  drug-addled disco Harry) ----

I left my heart in San Fransisco It's at some motherfucking disco The people there where dancin' on it And that's including Ms. Matronic

Hell if music is the victim then so am I Of lovin' and a cheatin' the snake gon' bite I beg and I scream and I cuss and I cry If music is the victim then so am I

Of your bad fun Money's all gone but you need some Lover's on the phone but they got none Daddy ain't home from the dog run And you're riding through the city with a shotgun

I left my bag in Pasadena Where all them girls was doin' Tina Them bitches sure were crunked up on it I said I'd rather smoke some chronic

Hell if music is the victim then so am I Of lovin' and a cheatin' the snake gon' bite I beg and I scream and I cuss and I cry If music is the victim then so am I

---- Down to Your Soul - Right Away, Great Captain! (about the Final Dream and pre-game Harry) ----

And I see things I actually don't see. I knew it wasn't actually you a few feet from my reach. I looked into your eyes and I began to lose my teeth, And I felt you were dreaming the same thing.

And I know you don't know what I'm capable of But if you give me just one more minute I'm sure That you would be shaking right down to your soul And I'd hope that the fear of the lord brings me home. I'm a man in a body of water so tall Could swallow you whole and forget where he's going But I carved a map in the back of my arm Don't worry I'm coming home I said don't worry cause I'm coming home

---- No Surprises - Radiohead (suicidal harry, pre-game.  Maybe immediately before the game.  A little Big Communism Builder) ----

A heart that's full up like a landfill A job that slowly kills you Bruises that won't heal You look so tired, unhappy Bring down the government They don't, they don't speak for us I'll take a quiet life A handshake of carbon monoxide

And no alarms and no surprises

…

This is my final fit My final bellyache

…

No alarms and no surprises, please (get me out of here)

---- Cleaning Out the Rooms - British Sea Power (The instrumental part seems to have been used / referenced for a background music track.  And also the name of that one thought project. as expected, it fits beautifully.  Wake up in a new life, down by the seaside.  Cleaning out the rooms.  She’ll be coming soon.) ----

Where life is good in a way Swept away upon our hearts, in cold coal ceremonial On a rainy day, hang it up Get the vacuum and suck it in Cleaning out the rooms, I'll clean it up Dark cloud, drifting out of view I'll never know, she'll be coming soon, that is all I'll wake up in a new life, ship shape and shoe shine Cleaning out the rooms, I'll clean it up She'll be coming soon Drifting into view, way in the west, white cloud If everybody knew, I never knew, she'll be coming soon I'll wake up in a new life, down by the seaside In a new life, down by the seaside Cleaning out the room, I'll clean it up Dark clouds, she'll be coming soon Down the chimney, out the window, that is all

---- In the Morning of the Magicians - The Flaming Lips (waking up with no memory, but bad vibes) ----

In the morning I awake

And I couldn't remember What is love and what is hate

The calculations error

Oh, what is love and what is hate? And why does it matter? Is to love just a waste? And how can it matter?

Oh...

As the dawn began to break I had to surrender The universe will have its way Too powerful to master

---- Once in a Lifetime - Talking Heads (Huh??  What's happening??  same as it ever was, same as it ever was) ----

And you may ask yourself, "How do I work this?" And you may ask yourself, "Where is that large automobile?" And you may tell yourself, "This is not my beautiful house" And you may tell yourself, "This is not my beautiful wife"

...

Same as it ever was, same as it ever was Same as it ever was, same as it ever was

...

And you may ask yourself, "What is that beautiful house?" And you may ask yourself, "Where does that highway go to?" And you may ask yourself, "Am I right? Am I wrong?" And you may say to yourself, "My God! What have I done?"

---- Don't Change - David Bazan (alcoholism, cycles of wanting to get better, depression, slipping in to old coping mechanisms, plus a little bit in here about dreams.  This is a song for if Harry continues partying after the memory wipe, I suppose) ----

He seems nice You met him once or twice But you wonder what he's like When he's sober

Then again You hear he has no friends Just people that he spins To do him favors

When he wakes up in the morning he tells himself Today I'll make a change But falling into his bed at night he thinks Man it was a beautiful day to stay the same

I'm so deep That only in my sleep Do the secrets that I keep Float to the surface

So I hold them down Till they don't make a sound Like they accidentally drowned Except on purpose

And when I wake up in the morning I tell myself Today I'll make a change But falling into my bed at night I think Man it was a beautiful day to stay the same

---- Airbag - Radiohead (born again, back to save the universe) ----

In the next world war In a jackknifed juggernaut I am born again In the neon sign scrolling up and down I am born again

In an interstellar burst I am back to save the universe

In a deep, deep sleep of the innocent I am born again In a fast German car I'm amazed that I survived An airbag saved my life

In an interstellar burst I am back to save the universe

---- A Comet Appears - The Shins (puppeting a man-body around pretending to be a living thing. drinking, depression) ----

One hand on this wily comet Take a drink just to give me some weight Some uber-man I'd make I'm barely a vapor

They shone a chlorine light on A host of individual sins Let's carve my aging face off Fetch us a knife Start with my eyes Down so the lines Form a grimacing smile

Close your eyes to corral a virtue Is this fooling anyone else? Never worked so long and hard To cement a failure

---- The Communists Have the Music - They Might be Giants (Big Communism Builder, but especially Harry's shallow understanding of Communism.  Party-boy communist) ----

I got handed an Ayn Rand sandwich Straight from the can, it tasted so bland I asked a lass to pass me a glass Of Engels' Conditions of the Working Class

Right away they dragged me to the committee To explain my un-American activity They're gonna see they made a mistake If they'd only let me play my mixtape

I'm not partial to the martial Or the plutocrats, in their beaver hats And the fascists have the outfits But I don't care for the outfits What I care about is music And the communists have the music

---- Harlem Roulette - The Mountain Goats (Harry thinking about Guillame le Million?  Generally: that vibe of secret, maybe supranatural machinations happening just outside your field of view.  A kinda lonely, pensive vibe, sprinkled with past drug use, driving...memory) ----

Unknown engines underneath the city Steam pushing up in billows through the grates Frankie Lymon's tracking "Seabreeze" in a studio in Harlem Its 1968. Just a pair of tunes to hammer out. Everybody's off the clock by 10:00. The loneliest people in the whole wide world are the ones you're never going to see again. Feels so free when I hit the avenue. Nothing like a New York summer night. Every dream's a good dream, Even awful dreams are good dreams, If you're doing it right. Remember soaring higher than a cloud. Get pretty sentimental now and then. The loneliest people in the whole wide world are the ones you're never going to see again. And four hours north of Portland, a radio flips on. And some no one from the future remembers that you're gone. Armies massing in the dusky distance. Ghosted in the ribbon microphone. Leave a little mark on something, maybe, Take the secret circuit home. Nothing in the shadows but the shadow hands. Reaching out to sad, young, frightened men. The loneliest people in the whole wide world are the ones you're never going to see again.

---- Suture up Your Future - Queens of the Stone Age (Harry's gonna fix his mess) ----

I'm gon' suture up my future I ain't jaded, I just hate it See, I been down too long It's kinda hard to explain Burned and buried, all I carried

...

Tried explaining unexplained Got caught in the plan All this talking at once I've been giving my love away To the things that tear it apart I'm gonna suture up my future

---- Lampshades on Fire - Modest Mouse (Harry trashing his body / having already trashed his body, just kinda a Harry-vibe song) ----

...

Well, the lampshade's on fire when the lights go out This is what I really call a party now Well, fear makes us really, really run around A-this one's done so where to now? Our eyes light up, we have no shame at all Well, you all know what I'm talking about The room lights up, but we're still dancing around We're having fun, having some fun now

Pack up again, head to the next place Where we'll make the same mistakes Open one up and let it fall to the ground Pile out the door when it all runs out

...

As our feelings are getting hurt Oh, we want you to do the work Our ass looks great inside these jeans Well, we want just our water clean

Well, this is how it's always been And this is how it's going to be So you just move on

---- Seven Nation Army - The White Stripes (Harry "can-opener" du Bois.  Talking to the skills, solving things, detecting, generally being a terrifying force of nature / the pale) ----

I'm gonna fight 'em all A seven nation army couldn't hold me back They're gonna rip it off Taking their time right behind my back

And I'm talking to myself at night Because I can't forget Back and forth through my mind Behind a cigarette

And the message coming from my eyes Says, "Leave it alone"

Don't wanna hear about it Every single one's got a story to tell Everyone knows about it From the Queen of England to the Hounds of Hell

And if I catch it coming back my way I'm gonna serve it to you And that ain't what you want to hear But that's what I'll do

And the feeling coming from my bones Says, "Find a home"

---- Body of Years - Mother Mother (Harry's past that follows him, Harry's half-decomposed body that marks the years of abuse it's been through) ----

All the remains of a cadaver of days I keep hidden away, keep them there just in case I wanna visit that place Blow the dust from the bones Off a body of years that I leave all alone Just a body of years

See the skin disappears And the blood turns to stone In a body of years now a pile of bones Like a sheet of veneer Each a piece of my soul It's a body of years that I leave all alone

It's Just a body of years, now a pile of bones You know Old soul who falls down Can't stop trippin' on these Old roads I go down Get back up and get my foot in the door And my face on the page Make my mark in the world With a bat and a blade It's a body of work that you can't ever change Like a body of years that you take to your grave It's just a body of years that I leave all alone It's just a body of years, now a pile of bones Like a sheet of veneer Each a piece of my soul

---- The Cap-m - They Might be Giants (just a Harry vibe song) ----

When I talk you keep looking away from me 'Cause you probably think that I'm high on pot But I'm not, I'm not

Look me over, I'm the Cap'm You say it's such a joke But I don't see you laughing

People seem to think you can't be called the Cap'm Unless you drive a boat Well, I don't I don't

Look me over, I'm the Cap'm Go ahead and mess with me You'll find out what will happ'm

...

Did you say what I think you just said My hat looks good on me? I agree, I agree

Look me over, I'm the Cap'm You act like it's a joke But I don't see you laughing

---- Broke - Modest Mouse (oops!  all mistakes.  Broke it all.  Want to forget it but can't) ----

Broke account, so I broke a sweat I've bought some things that I sort of regret about now Broke my pace and ran out of time Sometimes I'm so full of shit that it should be a crime

Broke a promise 'cause my car broke down Such a classic excuse it should be bronze by now Broke your glasses, but it broke the ice You said that I was an asshole and I paid the price

Broken hearts want broken necks I've done some things that I'd love to forget, but I can't

Broke up, and I'm relieved somehow It's the end of the discussions that just go 'round and 'round And 'round, and 'round, and 'round ... It was like everything was evidence of broken time

You're living on fancy wine You'll drink that turpentine You're starting conversations You don't even know the topic

---- Spent Gladiator 2 - The Mountain Goats (Defiantly alive) ----

Like a spent gladiator, Crawling in the coliseum dust. Who can count on his remaining limbs, All the people he can trust. Like the one who stands behind him, Cheering him on. Ecstatic when he stands defiant, Wild with abandon when he's gone. Just stay alive. Keep your eyes on the pay line. Like a village on the step, About to get collectivized. When the men emerge with rifles from the haystack, Everybody looks surprised. Like the mice in the forgotten grain, Way up on the top shelf. Like someone who's found a small town to escape to, Keeps one eye on his abandoned, former self. Stay in the game. Just try to play through the pain. Like a fighter who's been told its finally time for him to quit. Show up in shining colors, And then stand there and get hit. Like the clock that ticks in Dresden, When the whole town's been destroyed. Like the nagging flash of insight, You're always desperate to avoid. Like the bloody-knuckled gunman, Still stationed at the breach. Like that board game with the sliders, And the children on the beach. Stay alive. Maybe spit some blood at the camera. Just stay alive. Stay forever alive.

---- You Only Live Once - The Strokes (just general Harry, talking about the skills, choices you can make, what kind of cop you can be) ----

Twenty-nine different attributes Only seven that you like, oh-oh Twenty ways to see the world, oh And twenty ways to start a fight, oh

...

And countless odd religions too It doesn't matter which you choose, oh, no One stubborn way to turn your back, oh This I've tried and now refuse, oh

Oh don't, don't, don't get up I can't see the sunshine Oh, I'll be waiting for you, baby 'Cause I'm through Sit me down Shut me up I'll calm down And I'll get along with you

---- Pork and Beans - Weezer (Superstar Cop) ----

They say I need some rogaine to put in my hair Work it out at the gym to fit my underwear Oakley makes the shades to transform a tool You'd hate for the kids to think that you've lost your cool

I'ma do the things that I wanna do I ain't got a thing to prove to you I'll eat my candy with the pork and beans Excuse my manners if I make a scene I ain't gonna wear the clothes that you like I'm fine and dandy with the me inside One look in the mirror and I'm tickled pink I don't give a hoot about what you think

Everyone likes to dance to a happy song With a catchy chorus and beat so they can sing along Timbaland knows the way to reach the top of the charts Maybe if I work with him I can perfect the art

I'ma do the things that I wanna do I ain't got a thing to prove to you I'll eat my candy with the pork and beans Excuse my manners if I make a scene I ain't gonna wear the clothes that you like I'm fine and dandy with the me inside One look in the mirror and I'm tickled pink I don't give a hoot about what you think

No, I don't care I don't care

---- Freaks - Surf Curse (head filled with skills, The Final Dream) ----

Don't kill me just help me run away From everyone I need a place to stay Where I can cover up my face Don't cry, I am just a freak

I am just a freak(x3)

My head is filled with parasites Black holes cover up my eyes I dream of you almost every night Hopefully I won't wake up this time

I won't wake up this time(x3)

---- The Smallest Church in Sussex - British Sea Power (oh yeah this is mandatory) ----

[reincarnated70sbaby]

maritime madness

led zeppelin x reader

warnings: swearing, drug use

an: so I was sailing yesterday and I was thinking about this the entire time I might have nearly capsized the boat

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“I can’t believe we’re actually doing this” I spoke, staring out at the large blue yacht that rested on the waters of Normandy. It all started the day before, when we were all throwing around tripped out ideas in our hotel room.

“What are we gonna do tomorrow?” Jimmy asked. I sat by his side, my head resting on his bony shoulder. My dose of LSD had just kicked it, and as it was my first time it probably hit me quicker than the others. I tried to speak, but it felt like every time I moved my mouth, it felt like I would stretch my mouth out of shape, like putty.

“Let’s go explore that cathedral, the big massive one, y’know? The one with the hunchback. Maybe we could bump into him or something”

As soon as the words left Robert’s lips, our entire entourage burst out in giggles. I myself, was having hard time controlling my breathing. I had to rest my head in Jimmy’s lap, Jimmy being doubled down over me clutching his stomach.

“Percy, you dumb fucker, y-you know that’s not a real story” Jonesy informed, all his words all broken up by loud chuckles.

Roberts jaw immediately dropped open in shock, along with his eyes widening and brown trashing in confusion.

“Nah, yeah it was, the uh, the hunchman did the um, bells. Yeah, the bells”

“No he didn’t, because he never existed you nonce. It’s a fairytale from the 19th century” Jimmy piped in, adding his extensive knowledge of mythology and folklore into the conversation.

“But me ma said he existed, you’re gonna say my mum lied to me all those years?”

“Well obviously Perce, it’s just a bedtime story” Jonesy added, still chuckling to himself at Robert’s gullible nature.

“Fine then, someone else give an idea since all of mine always get ridiculed” Robert stated, crossing his arms and craning his head back against the footboard of the bed and staring at the ceiling in a huff.

“How about Père Lachaise?”

“What the actual fuck is pear la chair Pagey?” Bonzo asked, pronouncing the words all wrong in his thick Englishman accent.

“It’s Père Lachaise” Jimmy corrected in a perfect French accent, “and it’s a graveyard in Paris, loads of famous people are buried there - Oscar Wilde, Frederic Chopin, Jim Morrison, Edith Piaf”

“Jimmy you must be as mad as Morrison to think we would waste our day off in a fucking dead person museum. Jesus Christ how did we pick you up” Bonzo sighed, rolling his eyes.

“Okay, what about Mont Saint-Michel? It’s this cool island off of the coast. There’s a bridge but once the tide comes in you can’t get in or out. Wouldn’t that be good craic eh?” Jonesy suggested

“No” Bonzo, Jimmy and Robert all said at the same time.

“Ah! You’ve been outnumbered Mr Jones haha. Maybe you and I could go out another time Jonny boy, we could go exploring and see the spirits trapped on the island” I said with a chuckle, the psychedelic in my system making this whole situation very funny.

“Jesus Christ what the fuck did she even say. That her first time on acid?” Robert asked to Jimmy.

“Must’ve been, it hit her pretty quickly” Jimmy replied, staring into my largely dilated pupils. He swore he could’ve seen something dancing in my pupils, but maybe that was just the drug in him.

We all sat in silence for a couple minutes, all of us enjoying our high.

“Innnnnnnnnnnnnnn fourteen hundred ninety two, Columbus sailed the ocean blueeee” I sang, the lyrics being the only words of a song I could think of to fill the silence. A beat of silence passed and I wondered if everybody suddenly passed out, either into sleep or another dimension.

As I started the next line, everyone else joined in with me. We eventually finished the entire song, even an encore requested by the boys. I sung the encore in a horrendous, deep operatic voice while prancing round the hotel room. A round of applause sounded, and I took my theatrical bows in front of my supportive crowd.

“That’s It! I know what we can do tomorrow. God that is a good idea!” Bonzo declared, jumping up to his feet, not before nearly tumbling backwards.

“Go on then Bonz, don’t leave us guessing mate” Jonesy suggested, breaking the dramatic silence that had ensued.

“Rent a yacht! We can go out early in the morning and stay overnight since our flight back home is in the evening anyway! All we need to do is hire a skipper or something”

We all were stoked at idea of having a private boat to ourselves. Sure, none of the boys were experienced sailors, but that’s what a professional skipper was for, driving rich people around in yachts right?

“Do we really have to do this” I said, making our way through the marina to our yacht.

“The skipper will probably dive off the boat when we get started tonight” Jonesy commented, sharing my lack of enthusiasm for the maritime adventure. “We should have ditched them and gone to Mont Saint-Michel”. I only hummed in response, dragging my overnight suitcase over the gaps in the planks of wood on the dock.

“Um yeah, about that skipper. We couldn’t exactly book one on such short notice” Cole confessed.

“What the actual fuck Cole? Are we just supposed to sail ourselves and drown? I can’t tie a knot to save my bloody life” Robert shrieked. We all stopped in our tracks and turned to the tour manager, glaring at him through our sunglasses.

“Of course not Percy, why would we do that to our cash cows hm? And this is a motorboat, no ropes involved. It’s basically like driving a car. In water. In fact, all you need to drive it is a drivers license, which I’m positive you all have judging by your expansive car choices. Forgot to mention that myself and Peter have opted out” With that note, Cole dropped the yacht keys into Bonzo’s hand and scuttled away.

We all stood there, bags in hand, confusion over our faces as we watched Cole’s figure disappear behind the hundred of other boats.

“Well shit” Jonesy said, the sourness in his voice barely hidden.

“Let’s just go check it out, we don’t even have to leave the marina if we can drive it, we’ll just park out all night” Bonzo affirmed, being unusually optimistic.

We all found the boat and as the boys started embarking aboard, I thought out loud.

“I can’t believe we’re doing this”

“Cmon darling, let’s just see what it’s like. If you hate it we’ll do something else” Jimmy compromised, outstretching his hand to me.

The boat bobbed a bit on the water as I stepped on.

“It’s not hating it I’m worried about, I was practically raised on a boat Jim, I’m just not sure 4 rockstars and a boat is a great combination”

“It’s okay we won’t go too hard, at least one of us won’t, I guess. Anyway, you were raised on a boat? Like a houseboat or something?”

“No, my dad was a skipper. Whenever he was home from trips, he would teach my and my siblings to sail. Y’know the whole nine yards, all the different knots, pulling in the ropes, steering, navigating charts. It’s just been a while since I’ve been on one and I hope I can remember everything”

“Gosh you are fabulous, my dear, I learn something new about you everyday” Jimmy said, pulling me in for a kiss. There was a loud bang of the engine, which we both jumped apart at.

“What the fuck are they at now, Christ” Jimmy sighed.

“Here, go set down our stuff in the biggest room, I’ll go see what they’re messing with”

We both parted, Jimmy heading downstairs, myself climbing onto the helm.

“Oi, Bonz, Percy, step away from the wheel until I get us out of this parking lot” I commanded. Both Robert and Bonzo looked at me funny, before slowly raising their arms and stepping away.

“And you know better?” Bonzo asked, still not sure where my bossiness came from.

“I think I do, unless you have your skipper license on hand?”

“Wait, you have a sailing license?” Robert interjected.

“I actually don’t, but I know everything you need to not drown. My father was a sailor and he taught me how to run a boat. Thank god we have a motorboat, as we might’ve been a little trouble if we have a proper sailing yacht. If we were, it wouldn’t have been as relaxing as simply steering a wheel” I answered, switching the engine on.

We warmed up the engine for a couple minutes, then casted off and finally escaped the madness of the marina. Soon were out on the French coastline. We continued sailing perpendicular to the coast, not wanting to stray too far. All the boys took turns steering, with Jonesy being the best skipper in-training out of all of them. Only once had we had anchored the boat again was the real party going to start.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

if only sailing was this easy in reality 😒

anyway I’m gonna do a spicier part 2 riiight now😎

leave any comments/ideas down below!!!!

navigation

tag list : @rebel-without-a-zeppelin @princesspagey @dreamersdrowse

[hawksward]

F**k Him, He’s a DJ (Hawks/Reader Music Industry AU)

Summary: A year after your separation from your former girl group, your solo career is just getting started. It only needs some extra oomph. Enter world renowned DJ, Hawks. Here to give you more than what you bargained for.

Pairing: DJ! Hawks (Keigo Takami)/ Singer! Reader

Rating: E+

Word Count: 3.7k

Warnings: sex without a condom, drunk sex, cunnilingus, ragging on DJ’s, dirty talk if you squint

Notes: Hi All! Its been a hot second since I’ve written smut and this is the first time for my favorite bird boi. Music Industry AU’s are a weakness of mine. Please enjoy!!

Special shout out to @shinsotired​ for beta-ing my trash 

“No. Absolutely not. Under no conditions will I work with him.” Water splashed everywhere as you slammed your water bottle onto the table. “I’ll take anyone else you give me.”

Maya, your manager, let out a hefty sigh before adjusting her tight ponytail. She had only taken the position a short year ago after you ditched your former girl group the moment you turned 18. They couldn’t pay you enough to sign another contract describing in detail the ‘cute’ and ‘pure’ image you were expected to maintain. It was time to turn a new, edgier, leaf.

Just not with an insufferable asshole as your first collaboration.

“Hawks has been the only DJ on the top 10 list consistently. Plus you work for the same label. He’s already created the track and we’ve written the lyrics. All you have to do is show up and sing. Maybe do some appearances on his tour.” Maya didn’t take her eyes off her tablet “You’re an established name, but you need to prove yourself again. Now suck it up, he’ll be here any minute.”

The door nearly flew off its hinges with the force Hawks used. You’d never seen him in person before, and he was definitely shorter than you imagined. Not like you could talk. He wore a beige bomber jacket lined in sherpa and a simple pair of jeans. Far simpler than you’d seen him wear on stage.

“Y/N,” Maya put on her biggest, most professional smile, “I’d like to introduce Keigo Takami, or as he more commonly goes by on stage, Hawks. Keigo this is Y/N.”

“Ah good girl gone bad.” His smirk was infuriating. “So this is what I’m working with.”

He circled you, like a bird ready to strike its prey. Taking in every inch of you. Anger continued to rise in the pit of your stomach as he came to a halt. Putting his fingers to his chin in contemplation.

“Something to say?” You questioned, arms folded across your chest.

“Nah.” His fingers raked through his blonde locks “This’ll be fine. I always liked a challenge.” He gave you a wink.

Offended didn’t come close to how you felt about his comment. A challenge, not for you but for him. The bastard probably thinks you don’t have what it takes to succeed in a solo career.

“A challenge?” You rose from your seat to meet him head on, despite being a whole head shorter.  “I’ll have you know I’m a fucking professional.”

“She’s got small dog syndrome too!” He nearly folded in half with laughter “Don’t worry, Maya, I’ll play nice with her.”

He knew all the right buttons to push to send you into a rage. Half moons formed on your palms as you exercised every ounce of self control you had. You wanted nothing more than to tell him where exactly he could shove his bullshit.

“Great!” Maya grabbed you by the arm “She will see you in the studio first thing tomorrow morning!” There was no mercy as she pulled you through the door, not giving you the chance for the final word.

The next morning came too fast for your liking. You arrived 15 minutes before your scheduled meeting time, canister of warm tea in hand, wishing it was coffee instead. You were no stranger to the ins and outs of taking care of your voice. It was your livelihood after all.

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

“Morning Chickadee”

You recoiled at the name, noticing Keigo standing in the doorway. Takeout coffee in hand. He sauntered in, throwing his jacket on the back of his chair before setting his coffee down on a nearby table. He pushed himself in his chair over to his soundboard, letting everything boot up.

“Do you need a minute to warm up or are you already ready for the main event?” He gave you a quick wink before diverting his attention back to his equipment. You couldn’t stop yourself from rolling your eyes.

“Like I said before, I’m a professional. I’m ready to start whenever you are”. You took your place in the soundbooth on the opposite end of the room. Slipping your headphones over your ears before checking to make sure your mic was on.

Take. After take. After take. He had a problem with everything.

“You’re too pitchy in the chorus”

“What the fuck is this breathy shit? Stop making it weird.”

“Are you even capable of being sexy?”

The last one bothered you the most.

“Stop being picky because you don’t fucking like me!” You ripped the headphones off before storming out of the booth “There was nothing wrong with that take!”

Keigo rolled his eyes, straightening himself out in his chair before removing his headphones. “You think I’m being picky? My fans will never buy whatever fake sexy shit you’re selling.”

“ Your fans?” The fangs were coming out now “Do you even have fans? All you do is stand behind a laptop and wave your arms around like an idiot.” DJs had no performance value in your mind. Sure, they could make a good track but they were worthless live.

“Yeah, my fans.” He didn’t seem phased at all. Even his body language exuded confidence. “This is my track, Sweetheart. You’re just the feature.”

Your muscles tensed as he said it. Maya had you convinced that this would be the last track on your album, something to really set you apart. You should have known this was a publicity stunt to gain you some of his fans. The room went silent. Hawks shook his head.

“Have you ever even seen a live set?” He rested his elbows on his knees, folding his hands to hold his chin “Not some prom shit. But an actual, full blown set at a club? I’m talking about mixing your own tracks to spinning.”

You scoffed “When would I have time? Some of us are trying to debut.”

“Tonight.”

Taking a step back, you narrowed your eyes. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“I’m taking you to a set tonight. Consider it part of the creative process.”

He rose from his chair, tossing his jacket over his shoulder before walking out the door. A quick wave and a nod was all Hawks gave before he left the studio. You were dumbfounded.

A loud buzz came from your pocket revealing a text from an unknown number.

I’ll pick you up at 10. Wear something sexy.    -Kei

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

At 9:55pm you stood outside the apartment. After spending hours trying to determine what was considered ‘club sexy’ you settled on a short black dress and the highest pair of heels you owned. Crisp night air filled your senses as you took in the city. It would have been peaceful if it weren’t for some douchebag pulling up to the curb in a sports car, flashing the lights like a strobe.

The window rolled down to reveal Keigo in a slim fit shirt and jeans. He let out a low whistle, his eyes trailing down before returning to your own. “You clean up nicely”

You rolled your eyes, walking to the passenger side and easing yourself into the car. The dress slipped up your thighs as you adjusted in the seat. Keigo made no attempt to hide his eyes drifting to your legs during the ride to Sky Parlor, Tokyo’s premier nightclub.

He was in his element. Bodies parted around him as he led you to the roped off center area of the club. The place was already full and from what Keigo said, the headliner had yet to perform. You nestled yourself into a corner of the booth, careful not to trip over the short table in front. Someone already dropped by to place a bucket full of ice along with a bottle of tequila onto the table.

Keigo popped the bottle open with ease, filling two shot glasses to the brim “What do you say we toast?” he shouted into your ear, barely coming across as a whisper muddled in all the noise “To a successful partnership?”

You grabbed the glass out of his hand, clinking it to his before shooting the liquid. The burn warmed up your insides as you grabbed the bottle to pour another “Better do two to be safe.”

You weren’t sure how much time had passed, but the bottle was half empty. There was now enough liquid courage running through your veins to let loose. It didn’t hurt that your girl group reputation wasn’t there to drag you down either. As much as you hated to admit it, the DJ was putting on a good show.

Your hips moved with the beat, hands running down your body before making their way up to the air. The atmosphere was intoxicating, your body moving in time to the bass. You hardly noticed when Keigo snaked his arms around you, allowing his hands to drift to your hips. He pulled you tight to his chest, his body moving in time with your rhythm.

If you were sober you might have put up more of a fight when he began to grind his hips into you, greedy for more contact. Your arms moved up to snake around his neck, bringing his face closer to your own. Keigo’s breath grazed the shell of your ear as you moved in sync, seeming to raise the temperature in the room by at least 10 degrees.

You turned to face him, allowing his knee between your legs as you continued to grind your hips into him. His eyes were lidded, lips barely parted open.  Your fingers traced along his jawline, your lips parting to meet his.

Before you had time to process the music began to fade, the DJ picked up his mic to pass it over to the next artist.

“Thanks everybody! Hope you’re having a great time tonight!” The crowd cheered “We’ve got a really special guest here tonight. Rumor has it he’s going to let us preview a new track. Everyone welcome to the stage HAWKS!”

Keigo detangled himself from you at a speed you didn’t think possible, flashing a large smile to the crowd. Bouncers guided his way to the front stage, keeping him safe for all but the roaming hands of strangers. You slid into your seat, pouring yourself another shot of tequila to make up for your disappointment.

When Hawks took the stage he exuded energy. The hum of excited crowd chatter filled the club while he set up. “How’s everyone doing tonight?” His cheeky smile radiated under the harsh lights. The entire crowd erupted into cheers. You even managed to catch a few I love you’s and a Fucking marry me already!

Hawks winked at the crowd, blowing a kiss in the direction of the rogue comments. “I have a special treat, it’s a new track I’ve been working on off my new album.” He let out a laugh before continuing “This one’s dedicated to a special someone who thinks all I do is push play on my laptop”

The blood rushed to your face as the track started. Thankfully he decided not to drop a name or else his fans might have mauled you.

He was good, great even. Almost good enough to make you admit it. His energy on stage was contagious, waving his arms in the air causing the crowd to follow. You could see why he was #2 on the charts. Maybe Maya was onto something.

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

The night was a blur of stolen glances, tequila shots, and deafening music. Keigo, ever the gentleman, booked both of you an Uber back to his place. Something about ‘strike while the inspiration is hot’.

Keigo’s apartment was the penthouse of one of the tallest buildings in the city. The place was beautiful. Tall ceilings, windows open to the glow of the city night. Everything someone would expect from a successful artist.

“Follow me” Keigo motioned “I have a home studio. We should be able to get some work done in there.” He led you to a smaller room, crammed with every piece of recording equipment imaginable. “Start from line 17.”

Shimmying through a sea of tech, you made your way into the corner where a small mic was set up. No glass to separate you from the rest of the studio. Tequila still running through your veins, you began to wonder if now was the best time to record. Your words were probably slurring already.

The words came out like vomit. Completely unsexy. You caught Keigo’s eye and could already tell he was pissed. At least if he came home drunk to work he didn’t have to worry about opening his mouth.

“What the hell was that?” He asked, eyes narrowed. “Is that what you call sexy?” Keigo removed his headphones and leaned back into his chair. “Let’s try something. Seduce me.”

“I’m sorry, what?” arms folded across your chest.

“You heard me. If I don’t buy it, my fans won’t.” Fuck, the man didn’t shut up about his fans. You tentatively walked over to him, unsure how to fulfill his request. No one asked you to seduce them before. The man sitting before you looked unphased as you slid your hair to the side, exposing your neck. You ran your hands down your chest, moving down your thighs. You were too drunk for this shit.

Keigo laughed, “have you never seduced anyone before?” He rose from his chair, inching closer to you, like a predator fixated on his prey. “No bringing a boy band member home and hoping no one finds out?”

Your back was against the wall as he slammed his hand into the foam soundproofing, keeping you locked in place. “Trying to keep quiet so your roommates don’t hear you breaking the rules?” His breath was hot against your ear as he whispered “Don’t tell me you’re a virgin.”

Blood rushed to your face “Of course not!” you practically shouted “I’ve slept with multiple people.” Which was not any of his business. You weren’t sure why you blurted it out.

A smirk graced Keigo’s features. He was enjoying the rise he was getting out of you. His other hand pushed a strand of hair out of your face, succeeding in making you even more flustered. Your nerve endings were on fire, begging to be touched. Tequila swirling in your mind, encouraging you to give in.

“You’re supposed to be seducing me, not the other way around.” His breath caused goosebumps.

“Please just shut up.” You turned your head to avert your eyes, the blush still painfully apparent on your cheeks. Keigo grabbed your chin, pulling your eyes back to his.

“Only if you make me.”

Never one to back down from a challenge, you went for it. Grabbing a fistfull of his hair, you closed the distance between you. It didn’t take long for him to take the lead, his lips bruising your own. His teeth pulled on your lower lip, causing you to let out a small sigh. Keigo used the chance to grant his tongue entrance, fighting your own for dominance.

Limbs intertwined, your hands clenched the back of his shirt. Keigo’s mouth moved from your lips to the edge of your jaw, trailing lower as he kept your chin in place with his hand. His mouth continued to trail lower as he sucked on the sweet spot by your collar bone. A moan left your mouth, causing Keigo to bite down. Your nails dug into his back, eliciting a low growl from his throat. He grabbed a fistfull of your hair with his opposite hand, pulling to give himself easier access.

Your eyes closed as the room started to spin around you. It was euphoric. It was hard to tell whether it was the booze or the way his mouth moved across your skin, but it felt like heaven. Enough so that when he removed his mouth from your skin, the first feeling was disappointment.

“What?” your voice came out as a harsh whisper “Don’t stop.” You’d beg if you had to, not that you’d tell him that.

“Stop?” Keigo smirked “Baby, I’m just getting started.” In one swift movement he pulled the shirt off his head revealing his sculpted chest and adonis belt. If you were a lesser woman you might have actually drooled at the sight. Being a part of the entertainment industry you were well aware that taking care of your body was important, but it was clear that his was a labor of love.

“LIke what you see?” He smirked, signifying your staring hadn’t gone unnoticed. He was hot, sure, but he was still a cocky bastard. You rolled your eyes before pulling him back into another heated kiss, allowing him to lift your arms up before he pulled the hem of your dress up and over. Leaving you in your bra and the smallest pair of panties you owned.

“I’m nothing if not a gentleman, so ladies first.” Keigo kept eye contact as he dropped slowly to his knees, taking the strings of your panties down with him. Leaving you on display. Your core twitched in anticipation when you felt his hot breath on the inside of your thigh. Planting light kisses as he moved his way upward. He tossed your leg over his shoulder, unbalancing you for just a moment, for better access.

Your eyes rolled back as he lazily traced shapes onto your clit with his tongue. Back pressing further into the wall to arch yourself into him, you grabbed a fistful of his hair. Desperate for something to hold on to. He alternated between fast and slow, short and long before using his fingers to tease at your entrance.

“Damn Baby, are you already this wet for me?” He pulled away if only for a moment, his index finger pushing past your lips into your core.

“Fuck Kei.” You groaned as your head arched back, “Do you get off on hearing yourself talk?”  It was your current opinion that there were other things you would rather his mouth do. You felt him smile into your folds, slipping a second finger into your wet pussy. The new sensation filling you up from the inside, making you feel like you could crack at any moment.

Heat continued to build inside you as Keigo’s pace quickened. Curling his fingers into a spot none of your previous lovers had even tried to find all while keeping pace with his tongue. It didn’t take long for you to boil over, moaning out his name. Keigo removed his fingers as he rose to meet you, lips crashing into yours allowing you to taste yourself. His fingers quickly moved, fumbling against the clasp of your bra, clear that the tequila still had a hold on him as well.

Fabric fell to the floor as he grabbed your breast in his hand, playing with your nipple while he took the other breast in his mouth. Tongue flicking and sucking until you reached a stiff peak. Your hands made their way down to his belt, trying to ignore the sensation enough to concentrate on the buckle. Clear that you were struggling, Keigo removed himself from you to unbutton and throw down his pants at an almost inhuman speed.

Even his dick was magnificent. The brief thought passed your mind of how many other people he brought back to his penthouse after a recording session. Drunk and ready to make bad decisions.

His hands grabbed onto your ass, giving it a squeeze before hoisting you into the air and back down onto his hips. You could already feel his rock hard erection teasing at you. Keigo pushed your back into the wall, causing a small gasp of air to leave your lips. He positioned himself so he was at your entrance. His head grazing your lips before thrusting himself inside, your sufficiently soaked pussy allowing him to bury himself in one motion.

Keigo let out a moan, his forehead resting on yours briefly as he let himself acclimate to just how tight you were. It was difficult to describe just how full and amazing he felt inside you. Your breathing picked up as he slowly began to thrust in and out.

The small ‘oh’s’ and ‘ ah’s’ from your mouth filled the room, mixing with the sound of skin slapping on skin. Keigo’s mouth returned to your collarbone as he picked up his pace, nearly removing himself from your cunt before pushing himself back in, almost punching you in the cervix. Every vein felt like it was made to please you, sending your nerves into a frenzy.

“Holy fuck you feel good.” His breathing matched your own, rough and uneven. Enough to send shivers down your spine. Your head arched back, enjoying the sensation of his cock while he adjusted himself to put your nipple in his mouth. Nails traced thin white lines down his back, lightly breaking the tattooed skin.

The building sensation was quickly becoming overwhelming. Your mind unable to focus on your surroundings, only your impending release. “Oh Fuck, Kei. I’m gonna cum.” You grabbed a fistful of his hair, your other hand gripping onto his shoulder. Your words causing him to go feral, his pace increasing exponentially as he gripped harder into your thighs. His fingertips sure to leave bruises. He brought his mouth back up to yours, his tongue thrashing with your own in a sloppy kiss.

The bundle of nerves inside you, that kept winding tighter and tighter exploded. You gripped harder as the wave of sensation washed over you, continuing to hold on as Keigo reached his own release, emptying himself inside of you.  You rested your forehead against his, enjoying the moment of bliss before he pulled out.

“So..” Keigo smiled “Think you’re ready to record a number one single?”

[sole-cuore-amore-e-droga]

Cyprus brings shampoo to Rotterdam 2021

I FELL IN LOVE, I FELL IN LOVE, I GAVE MY HEART TO PRODUCT PLACEMENT.

Though I do see where they come from. Everyone from Panik Records, from her to Eleni Foureira featuring Perfectil on the “Fuego” MV, gonna need that sweet sweet money all of the time. But has Greece’s economy not really recovered for them to constantly need to advertise products on music videos or am I just losing my mind overthinking things?

Eitherway, this review may or may not appear before or during their rehearsal day, so see how do I make a fool of myself by trying to estimate Cyprus’s chances!

ARTIST & ENTRY INFO

This year we have a 26 year old Elena Tsagrinou from Greece here (the way they were last represented by a somewhat Cypriot on 2017?). She did music early on in her age, also participated in the Greek version of Got Talent. Though, before breaking out as a solo pop sensation in ways you cannot imagine, she used to be in a pop band OtherView. Strangely enough, I’ve heard of them because of this song below but I could’ve NEVER estimated it was her and never could have I predicted she would land herself a Eurovision entrance all alone:

The band has had quite a few successful enough singles with her, she did some music shows participation and hosting, her band switched labels midway through (guess into which one they eventually landed, hint: some of the screenshots in this review have this peculiar logo), and in 2018, she had to “withdraw” from the group to go ahead and pursue the aforementioned solo career, somewhat. She continued doing a lot of shows (particularly seen on the MAD music channel related events), and doesn’t have as many singles as she had with OtherView right now, but she’s possibly well on her way to blossom as an artiste. Some of those reading (lol who am I kidding who even reads these) may be familiar with this little song of hers:

You’ve heard way too many things about “El Diablo”, her 2021 entry, so idk if I feel like explaining the technical side of things all by myself or you already know everything. But in these reviews I repeat everyone else regardless, so let me just say that “El Diablo” is an obvious pop song, with a lot of Swedish related touches to it, because at least one person on this song also worked on Alvaro Estrella’s Melodifestivalen 2021 entry that glorifies at least a handful of the same cliches that “El Diablo” does lyrically. Dear Eurovision lyricists, you can use more foreign languages than Spanish for your obligatory foreign language incorporations, thanks~

Although I’m not sure about whether it is more Laurell Barker’s fault as much as it is Joker Thörnfeldt’s, but it’s easier to blame them equally, because the former probably came up with “ta-taco, tamale” and the latter couldn’t get enough of the word “mamacita” they used for the aforementioned Melodifestivalen entry. Anyway, the lyrics, from what I get, is that she’s in love with an eeeevil guy because he’s sweet talking her, they do some sexy stuff together (presumably), pour sauce on their bodies for no explicit reason other than “obligatory-foreign-reference-itis”, she’s breaking the rules (and idk if it was “mama-mamacita” telling her to do it), got the icy edges that the spicy is melting for her, throws eyelashes on the floor when she’s got no wigs to throw (but that doesn’t matter because even without a wig, she can flip her hair and make him look twice), and there’s as much as you need to know about the song’s lyrics as I feel like I should show to you, because eh. Eurovision has suffered from worse cookie-cutter lyricism through the years, “El Diablo” is painful but not the worst.

REVIEW

But I do like the song somewhat!

“El Diablo” was initially compared to Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” upon release, and I totally kind of see why, because in all the right spots you can absolutely hum over the chorus to that over the one of “El Diablo”’s, it just exchanges gratuitous French translation of one of the already sung lines on the bridge for obligatory inserted Spanish terms just for the sake of being trendy with the crowds of the nowadays, because as we learned nothing these days, having a lot of Spanish in your song is apparently trendy. And Elena does nothing absolutely batshit insane on the music video (other than advertising) - no lapdance for the devil Lil Nas X style, no being forced into a bath, no person to sell her body to (not even the titular diablo), no dancers that rise out of their Christian sleep pods. Just Elena singing behind lots and lots of trash bin bag wrap.

Honestly the bigger issue for me than the song being “sAtAnIc because it is called “the DEVIL!!!”, aside from the lyrics, is that the MV does not come with any forewarning whatsoever for the people that are seizure prone when they see strobe lights? And that happens for some extended periods of this clip? I know you are indulged in your advertising and good for you but don’t just care for the companies that pay you if you use their products, do care about people’s wellbeings too, sometime.

But enough about the MV.

The song is decently sounding. It has interesting uses of what sounds like hi-hats during the verses (e.g.: a moment when this happens for the first time on the song is after Elena sings “tonight we’re gonna burn in a par-tY” the second time, and then there’s something that sounds soaring - that’s what I think that the hi-hats did.). It also has some sort of a synth piano on the second verse to boost the song’s sound rather than just relying on 808s and beats. I quite like how the chorus is so instant somehow, idk why but it is for me. Might have a gripe with that childish choir singing “I LOVE EL DIAB-LO” in the tune of standard kindergarten children teasing tune (aka ”NA NA NA BOO BOO”), as well as the constant breathing sounds, but they don’t distract me from generally “fucking” with this song, lol. It’s just that likeable imo.

I just can’t cope with the fact that Cyprus can’t seem to dare to go at least a little bit original with their song, yanno? Ever since 2019 they were called out as being a ripoff of something... hell, everyone since 2016 except Eleni was a ripoff of something. Alter Ego? “Somebody Told Me” by The Killers. Gravity? “Human” by Rag’n’Bone Man. Replay? “Fuego” itself. Running? “Lose Control”, Meduza x Becky Hill. Now we have a Lady Gaga song wannabe that even caught the attention of another singer that the music video looked like it was ripping off, and the Eurofandom caught up in hysterics:

Heads up, folks: not EVERY short haired blonde with messy hair, silvery tank top and shortpants that writhes on the floor is a Zara Larsson clone. And I don’t know who stirred controversy first - her or the fans - but this was ridiculous to see, even for me.

Although for a second I saw where they were coming from.

Now see why I want Cyprus to go original for at least once? Because I guess that the way “Fuego” was conjured up, it brought Cyprus so much success with how the package was, how Eleni sold it, and how the song sounded. You know the first thing of everything potentially going wrong for you later on is if you find the formula you’ve been looking for, but you proceed to be using the exact same formula that got you this far in the first place, without realizing what was it in the formula that you needed to bank on to further to make it click, but instead proceed to copy everything like it was an easy, fill-in-the-blank form. You can and should do better than that.

Though that doesn’t stop me from ranking it 11th this year.

Thing is, I really expected it to be the one female pop song of the year I would have the constant impulsive need to replay, replay, yeah. Ever since the chaotic entry MV drop that occured on some random-ass Cypriot TV show where three guys talked a lot (and before that, we got a cooking show), and kept growing increasingly agitated that no one is liking their show, until at some point one of them erupted in “IN TWU MEENETS... EL DIABLO... ON UR TEEVEE”; I was really devastated I couldn’t be able to break the replay button because of Panik Records deciding to rather benefit for themselves to have the MV on their app, then on Youtube, THEN on Spotify in that order. So I listened to a few video rips that I received / had for myself, and it was a fun time... until I realized the desire to play it declined much faster than I thought it would when it actually dropped on Spotify, oops. So I can’t really let myself rank it higher, when there are at least some catchier female bangers with better overall sound, better lyrics, and better multiple-replay factor. But I can’t really settle for a much lower rank for her than 11th, anyway. Girlbanger 2021 power y’all!

That and vocally she’s actually not that bad, even if she has shown up singing her song drunk in a handful of Instastories for some event of some party house, and at the time people overreacted, but I think that at least a large audience of those same people has collectively dropped their “Cyprus obvious NQ” talks come the pre-parties.

Panik Records, when will you put the yeehaw El Diablo on streaming? Now THAT’S a version that has replay value, and I might never get bored of it instead :(

Approval factor: Yeah, there exists some for me in it Follow-up factor: CyBC did one of the nastiest in terms of following up their 2020 arc of “Bring Your Artist Back for Revenge Year” that was 2021, straight up ditching Sandro probably right after Eurovision was done (well it doesn’t look like the case because CyBC published a statement later, but I sense that it might’ve been the case), because “Running” wasn’t doing so well with the “YAS QUEEN” branch of the Eurofandom. Which sucks because Sandro would’ve actually been down to be asked again for Eurovision, as he revealed it to NikkieTutorials during many of her interviews with last year’s class of. “Agreement from both parties” my ass, unless Sandro secretly realized that like Tom Leeb, he was too busy for 2021 Eurovision, which I doubt. It actually sucks imo that Sandro can probably be considered as even a forever non-returnee, because Sandro is more of German roots than Greek, and if we learned anything about the Mukuchyangate 2021, is that Germany will never send a returning artist, at least one that didn’t represent their country first and foremost. So Greece could only ask Sandro nicely only if the contest comes on to Germany, I guess? How do you think they decided on getting Stefania, who still ever so regularly appears on Dutch music, to represent them this year? So on that regard the follow-up from CyBC stinks, eventhough I think that entrywise the follow-up was rather decent, at least in the usual Cypriot way of sending female pop (going from “Replay” to “El Diablo” which I like more than “replay”), and eventhough I’m falling out of the hype for Cyprus I once used to have, their 2015-2021 entry streak had entries that I largely feel positive for overall, so in that regard, the follow up is decent. Qualification factor: In a year of Semi 1 Female Banger Slaughterhouse, Elena goes out in my eyes with several scratches, but not enough to completely kill her chances. If anything, given the divisiveness of Ireland’s rehearsals, Elena is likely to obliterate any last memory of Lesley Roy any first time viewer has ever had, except for her stage graphics. Even if Elena’s staging will not be as mindblowingly cartooney as the last, once a bop comes on, everyone forgets the slower song and gives into the bop, at least that’s how the draws work when choosing what insignificant song to put on 2nd and wedge in between the opening banger and some lesser-key banger, right? I know that “Replay” barely qualified, but I find “El Diablo” slightly better, and it all goes well, it will barely just as qualify as well. Because in a Semi 1 Female Banger Slaughterhouse, she can’t be the losing one, really.

INTERNAL CORNER

I already told everything that was noteworthy about Elena’s journey in previous sections, honestly.

• That I said that CyBC likely ditched Sandro right after cancellation just like Hooverphonic ditched “Release Me” should they have had a chance to keep or toss their entry. It doesn’t present itself as the case, but I just feel like it is.

• That the song was revealed on a Cypriot talkshow where three dudes were aware that we were waiting for “El Diablo”, trying to throw some gratuitous English our way, hating that we didn’t like our show, but promising that “El Diablo” MV will be shown in “TWU MEENETS”, which wasn’t but worth the wait eh?

• That people were cackling at Zara Larsson joining in the talks of Elena’s MV having aspects of her own song’s MV plagiarized.

• That Elena performed her song in a private-ish event when drunk and having heaps of fun and people cried that it was gonna be a NQ.

And do I really need to elaborate about the local Cypriot church scandal? It just so happened that a bunch of people read into a song’s title so much, thought it was rude of their country to sing about the devil (eventhough the bigger offenses made here is the gratuitous Spanish more than anything), and hoped that the broadcaster will disqualify the very song they okayed to be internally chosen because they are displeased with it - and if it’s not disqualified, they even threatened to burn the headquarters down. No, really. That’s like the most amusing part of that whole spectacle. Imagine burning a broadcaster headquarters down for a song... if I did it for every favourite of mine that lost to other broadcasters, the broadcasters would run out of locations to rent, because everything else good is pre-occupied or the ashes of their lost headquarters staring back at them.

Imagine being toxicly Christian in 2021... How long until Elena’s face gets photoshopped on the main protagoniste of The Unholy?

ANY LAST WORDS?

Even if I’m with this song, part of me kind of wants me to fail to make Cyprus realize that their formula is starting to wear thin and they got to be somewhat of a versatile nation in Eurovision if they want to be on the radar of not just one specific niche. But then again, they learned nothing when they flopped with Tamta, because she sneakily qualified as opposed to failing even harder than Tulia, ah well. Will they ever learn?

But why would I openly wish this to a top 11 song of mine, oh dear. Good luck Elena, may God be on your side, I guess. :P

[renaerys]

PPG One-Shot: You Going to Todd’s? (Brick/Blossom)

My Powerpufftober fic! Still rocking the high school AU for this, so consider it a part 5 to the Shooketh, Not Stirred series. As always, can be read alone, but happens in the same universe as part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4. This is also posted on my AO3.

Summary: Brick and Blossom go on a Halloween scavenger hunt. It sucks.

xxx

Blossom checked her watch for the fourth time in ten minutes. It was already a quarter past 9 p.m., her Frankentini was going flat in its plastic neon martini glass, and she was starting to regret coming to Todd’s overhyped Halloween party at all.

“Oh, hey Blossom,” said Harry Pitt, ferrying three bright glasses of the same watered down mixed drink Blossom was too preoccupied to enjoy. “You hanging out?”

Blossom smiled politely. “Hi, Harry. Just waiting for someone.”

Harry’s extra padded shoulders slumped in his pinstripe mafia boss costume. “Oh, let me guess.”

Blossom frowned, a reply on the tip of her tongue, but she bit it when precisely at that moment, Brick stormed through the front door like he was running from a zombie horde and desperate for a weapon. Todd himself spread his arms with a “What, your hairdresser keep you late?” and was almost mowed down with a cursory “Shut up, Todd.” Curiously, Brick made a beeline for the unpopulated second floor. He didn’t even see the other high school Seniors who barely dodged his path. Todd grimaced in his fake vampire fangs and chugged the rest of his beer. “Cool, catch up with you later, bruh!” he said, but no one was listening.

“Sorry, I have to go.” Blossom didn’t have time to feel bad about Harry’s dejected sigh as she ditched her drink and followed Brick upstairs. The Spotify Halloween playlist booming in the speakers faded to a low bass din as Blossom rounded the corner in the upstairs hallway. “Brick?” she called, a little annoyed.

No text, no call. He could have at least told her he’d be late so she could have timed her arrival better. With a mouthful of grievances and a heart full of him, she pushed open the lighted bathroom door at the end of the dark hall. “Brick, did you hear me calling—”

A fluttery and spine-chilling laugh slithered past the crack in the door and sank into her flesh like a snake bite. It arrested her where she stood halfway over the threshold, shackled in the throes of a very specific terror she could never forget.

Brick stood at the pedestal sink, his fingers attempting to fuse with the porcelain as he gripped it hard enough to crack and stared with manic focus at the mirror. All around them, the lyrical voice reverberated:

“Poor, angry boy, there’s yet no end to your suffering! For this next task, I want you on your knees groveling. Hide your tears And sharpen your shears— To save your brothers, make me a true offering.”

Brick snarled at his reflection, as if his demon might appear there in the mirror to throttle. But there was only him in the glass, furious and frothing under his red hoodie. “You have to be fucking kidding me.”

It took only a moment for Blossom to shake her stupor as instinct and training took over. “Brick,” she said, crossing the small bathroom to touch him.

Red eyes narrowed at her approach until the moment he recognized her beneath her smeared costume lipstick and dark eyeliner. “Blossom?” he rasped. His surprise made sense when she caught a glimpse of her own reflection in the mirror. Crop tops, fake bloodstains, and fishnets weren’t her normal style, but in a parallel nightmare universe perhaps they could have been.

The blushing eighteen-year-old boy in him went straight for her midriff, but his distress stayed his hand. “Fuck.” He rubbed his eyes.

“What’s going on?” she demanded.

“Nothing, just— Let me get in there.” He reached around her to pull open one of the drawers next to the sink in search of something.

“It’s not nothing.”

He didn’t answer as shut the drawer and checked the one below it.

“Brick, hey. You could have called me—”

With a snarl, he slammed the drawer closed and glared at her. “I was a little busy.”

“Talking to Him?” Blossom held his glare like a hand grenade with her thumb through the pin, ready to pull. “I’d never forget that repulsive lilt. Tell me what’s going on.”

He chickened out of answering her and dove for the drawers on the other side of the sink, where he found what he’d been looking for. Blossom barely had time to question the large scissors he’d pulled out before his hood was down and his man bun toppled into the sink with all the finality of a guillotined head.

Blossom gasped. “Brick!”

Somber as a corpse, he fished out his shorn bundle of hair from the sink, and Blossom watched as it burst into flame in his palm. Smoke curled through his fingers and rose high above them in an angry, red miasma. Its stink was saccharine and brought tears to Blossom’s eyes.

And then, it moved. In swirling, bloody tendrils, it slithered through the cracks above the bathroom door and down the hall as though it had a destination in mind.

“Oh, shit.” Brick dashed after it, and Blossom dashed after him down the stairs. His hand was hot in hers when she caught it and yanked him back. The split second in which their eyes met was an eon of understanding, bone-deep and cauldron-brewed. He looked like he’d seen a ghost. He looked like he needed a friend.

“I’m coming with you,” she said.

“Blossom,” he tried to argue.

“I’m coming with you.”

“Blossom, hey babe, wanna flip some cups on my team?” Todd sidled up to Blossom with a stack of solo cups. Then he noticed Brick’s serrated haircut. “Buddy, what the shit happened to your hair?”

“Please go away,” Blossom said at the same time as Brick said, “Choke on my dick.”

She grimaced at Brick’s vulgarity, but Todd took a step back. Before he could snap back, he noticed the red smoke wafting through his house out the open window. “Oh shit, fire?”

“There’s a fire?!” someone else exclaimed, and panic ensued.

Blossom was about to intervene when Brick snatched her hand and dragged out the front door. “Where did it go?” he said, squinting in the dark.

Blossom swallowed her instinct to calm down her fellow partygoers (there was no fire, they’d be fine, surely…) and looked around for the demonic smoke. “There! It’s heading east.” She rose into the air to fly after it, but paused when she noticed Brick hadn’t followed her. Instead, he jogged down Todd’s cul-de-sac toward the main road. “What are you—hey!”

She landed on the ground in front of him, cutting off his dash. He tried to go around her, but she easily blocked him. It was like he wasn’t even trying to move past her, unless…

“You’re powerless,” she said.

That was the wrong thing to say. “It’s just a temporary setback,” he said in the same choke-on-my-dick tone he usually reserved for Todd.

When he tried to get around Blossom again, she put her booted foot down and cracked the asphalt. He didn’t try to pass her again. “I’m not going to ask you again.” Then, more gently: “Please, let me help you.”

The last of Brick’s petulant pride dissolved to ashes just like his ruined hair she knew he loved, and yet he’d viciously cut it off anyway. Hesitant, yet stubbornly determined, he held her gaze. “It’s Him. He’s fucking with me. Sapped my powers and said my brothers and I will pay the ultimate price unless I solve this idiotic scavenger hunt by midnight.”

“…Wow.”

“Yeah, so it’s not like I have much of a choice.”

Blossom cupped his cheek. His chopped hair was not a total disaster, but it needed cleaning up. All that time he’d spent growing it out again…

Brick sucked in a sharp breath at her tender touch. He was as rigid as a pole, gritting his teeth hard enough to shatter. Blossom’s gaze hardened, and an old but fierce fire ignited in her Super-powered veins. “We’ll beat Him’s game. I promise you. Nothing’s going to happen to you or your brothers.”

Brick let his eyes fall closed as he touched his hand to hers, and that was probably the most intimacy she was going to get out of him in the middle of a murder-y scavenger hunt on Halloween. Maybe after they booted Him back to whatever pit he’d been living in all these years she could salvage what should have been a fun, romantic date with her sort-of boyfriend.

Blossom cleared her throat. “So, evil limericks?”

Brick just groaned from the bottom of his tortured soul. He took her hand and led the way after the demonic smoke before they could lose its trail. The smoke led them to Townsville High School a few blocks from Todd’s, specifically to the annual haunted house experience the Senior class spearheaded every year. Plenty of students dressed in their ghoulish finery crowded in the lawn socializing and lining up to take a turn through the haunted house.

Bubbles was on duty as part of the social committee in charge of managing the exhibit. When she spotted Brick and Blossom headed for the cafeteria door that had been transformed into the haunted house’s black-curtained foyer, she bounced over to them. “Hey, I didn’t expect to see you guys here tonight! I thought you were going to Todd’s. Wait, Brick, did you cut your hair?”

“It’s a long story,” Blossom said.

“Whoa! Slow down. You can’t go inside without a costume.” Bubbles blocked Brick’s single-minded steamroll inside after the last of the curling, red smoke slithered past.

“Bubbles, move,” Brick spat.

“No way. You can be a party pooper at Todd’s all you like, but you’re not bringing any of that into my super scary haunted house that I spent all day decorating.”

“I swear to god—”

“Bubbles, do you have any eye liner?” Blossom interrupted before Brick could say something to her sister she would make him regret for the rest of his life.

Bubbles, dressed in glam trash Powerpunk solidarity with her sisters for the night in fishnets and glitter, grinned as she dug in the pockets of her spider web-patterned black tutu. “Great idea, Blossom! C’mere, you.”

“What—hey!” Brick was literally powerless to stop Bubbles from manhandling him into a quick makeover. “There, it’s purr-fect!”

Despite the possibility of Brick’s gruesome end by satanic evisceration looming at the end of the night, Blossom could not help but laugh at the cute nose and whiskers that transformed Brick from grumpy boy to grumpy cat.

The flash on Bubbles’ phone went off.

“Hey!” Brick was redder in the face than his ruined hair.

Bubbles preened as she easily danced out of Brick’s reach before he could nab her phone and delete the evidence. “You look so cute!”

Brick turned to Blossom as his final saving grace, but there were tears in her eyes as she tried to pull herself together. “I’m so sorry, but she’s totally right. You look very cute right now.”

“Fuck this,” he grumbled, bright as a tomato as he shoved past a floating Bubbles and stormed inside the haunted house.

“Oh no—Brick, wait!” Blossom tried to tone down her giggles as she ran after him. “Bubbles, come on, this is actually serious.”

The sisters headed inside to a spooky banshee screams playlist past Ms. Keane’s bubbling cauldron and the football team zombified in a cardboard graveyard, until finally Mr. Green welcomed them to the final stop with a frightful flourish. “Step on up, boys and girls. See your future, if you dare. Mwahahahaha!”

Brick took one look at the over-eager demon teacher and tried to leave. “Maybe I should just let Him kill me while I have some dignity left.”

Blossom caught up to him and slipped her hand in his before he could turn back. The sobering reminder of why they were even here sent a chill all the way to her fingers, and she squeezed his hand in what she hoped was reassurance. “I’m not letting that happen.”

“What’s going on?” Bubbles asked, peering around Blossom’s shoulder.

But Blossom was too preoccupied by the unnatural red smoke swirling around the final, purple-draped room and its sole occupant: Robin Snyder in a truly rocking dead fortune teller costume. “Come in, come in! Let the spirits foretell your Halloween future!”

Bubbles giggled and skipped inside. She planted a very loud, very adorable kiss on Robin’s head.

“Bubbles, what’re you doing in here? You’re supposed to be on welcome duty!” Robin complained, but she reached for Bubbles’ hand and pulled her down into the chair next to her.

“I wanted to see you, obviously!”

Brick’s hand in Blossom’s squeezed uncomfortably tight, and she soon realized why: the red smoke had descended upon the ouija board set up on Robin’s table and absorbed inside it. Bubbles and Robin did not seem to notice it at all.

“All right, let’s get this shit over with,” Brick said, taking one of the empty seats across the table.

“Wow, such enthusiasm,” Robin said flatly.

Blossom took a seat next to Brick and asked their costumed host, “How does this work?”

“It’s a séance. We’ll ask the spirits what we want to know, and the board will do the rest. Everybody put a hand on the planchette.”

The moment everyone’s hands touched the plastic planchette, red smoke bubbled up from beneath it and swirled around them. In a panic, Robin tried to pull away, but found that she couldn’t. Everyone’s hands were stuck to the planchette.

“What—” Bubbles sputtered, but Him’s cotton candy creep show voice slithered from the smoke and stole her breath:

“This clue is not for the fainthearted: Unearth your next destination uncharted. Absent any confession, To the board pose your question And divine who among you just farted!”

“What the hell was that?!” Robin said at the same time as Bubbles wailed, “Oh nooooo!”

Before Blossom could respond to Robin’s very reasonable question, her arm was yanked across the board still stuck to the planchette: “B”.

Brick’s smoky cat-eyes were wide and slightly manic as he looked at Blossom, and she looked at him. She flushed so badly that she nearly swallowed her own tongue to say, “It wasn’t me!”

“Well, it sure as shit wasn’t me,” he shot back. And then, understanding dawning, they both looked across the table.

“Bubbles?” Blossom said.

“I DON’T WANT TO PLAY THIS GAME ANYMORE!” she screeched.

“Bubbles definitely farted,” Brick deadpanned. He dragged the planchette and everyone’s hands still stuck to it toward the “U” and then back to the “B” until the board spelled out Bubbles’ name. As soon as the planchette settled on the “S”, it released everyone’s hands in time for the heady, red smoke to engulf the board entirely.

Bubbles, distraught, shot out of her chair and covered her eyes in shame.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Robin tried to coax her back down from the high corner she’d flown to. “Come on down from there—Bubbles, really, I can’t even smell anything!”

“You’re just saying that because you love me!” Bubbles complained.

“Oh my god,” Blossom said, too preoccupied with the board to worry about her sister’s mortification. “Is that—”

“A map of the city?” Brick finished her sentence.

The ouija board was transformed into a mini map of Townsville, if a preschooler had drawn it in crayon.

“Here we are at THS.” Blossom pointed her finger to a collection of buildings scribbled in blue crayon. “And here…” She followed a crosshatch path to the edge of the map where a horned, red, devil face sticker grinned up at her. “The cemetery.”

Brick stood up so fast his chair fell over. He stood there for half a second, his face screwed up, and then: “Goddamnit!”

He’d forgotten he couldn’t fly.

“I can carry you.” Blossom held out her hand.

“Is everything okay in here? Robin, the next group is waiting.” Mr. Green poked his horned head through the thick drapes and sniffled. “Ew, what’s that smell?”

“Oh my god!” Bubbles turned beet red and disappeared in a flash of blue, knocking down the rest of the chairs and Brick too, if Blossom hadn’t caught his elbow before he could break his nose on the tiled floor.

“Bubbles! Sorry, Mr. Green.” Robin dashed after her.

“Wait just a minute—”

In the chaos, Blossom let Brick slip out of her grip, and he stormed out the opposite door back outside.  

“What are you doing?” Blossom asked when he stopped at the sidewalk.

“Calling a Lyft.”

“I just said I can fly us both.”

“Hard pass.”

Blossom crossed her arms over her chest. “What’s wrong with it? Flying would be faster, and it’s free.”

“I’m not letting you carry me like some damsel in distress.”

“Honestly, Brick. There’s a demon threatening to kill you and you’re worried about your masculinity?”

“No, I mean—look, this isn’t your problem, okay?”

“You did not just say that to me.”

He scowled so deeply that it should have given her pause, but the painted whiskers somewhat ruined his menace. He clenched his phone hard enough to crack if he’d still had his powers. “I didn’t mean it like I don’t want you here.”

Blossom materialized inches from his face in an unnecessary display of power that nonetheless felt fantastic. “That’s better.”

Brick flushed, but not from anger. When she slipped her hand over his, he eased his grip and relinquished his abused phone.

“That’s better,” she said again, more honey than venom this time.

Like hell was she going to send him off to his possible doom alone, powerless and with a really bad haircut painted like a cat.

“Blossom, I’m—”

Her kiss shut him up, and with it any further excuses to go it alone. And despite his increasingly desperate situation, he kissed her back like he’d never get the chance to again.

A car horn honked. “Hey, are you Brick?” asked an older guy in a Honda Civic with a fuzzy, pink mustache attached to the front bumper.

Brick very briefly broke their make-out session to reply, “No,” and then tightened his arms around Blossom’s waist and got right back to it.

The Lyft driver squinted between the profile picture on his phone and Brick. “Wait, really?”

“Never heard of the guy,” he mumbled against her lips, proving that if she wanted to get something done, she’d have to do it herself.

Blossom rolled her eyes and removed his hands from her. Before he could do anything about it, she hoisted him onto her back and hooked her arms under his knees. “Come on, let’s go thwart your imminent murder.”

The Lyft driver watched them take off in a blur of pink. “Goddamn teenagers.”

He canceled the Lyft order and left Brick a one star rating, which was probably fair.

xxx

When Blossom touched down near the entrance to the graveyard, it was back to business. “How much time do we have?”

Brick checked his phone. “About an hour and a half.”

She jogged to keep up with his longer stride as they made their way deeper into the graveyard. “Okay, that’s plenty of time to figure this out.”

A peal of laughter stopped them in their tracks on the gravel path for the split second it took them both to recognize that particular manic cadence.

“Butch,” Blossom said at the same time as Brick said, “Motherfucker.”

Beyond a small hill near the base of a huge oak tree, Brick’s brothers, Buttercup, and Mike Believe sat among the granite tombstones with a pillowcase full of candy passing a joint around. Buttercup had just blown a smoke ring in the shape of a star.

“Bitch, I’m too stoned for this fucking tongue witchcraft,” Butch said. He made an appropriately chilling sight all in black with his face painted black and white in the design of a skull.

“Hey, can you blow a heart?” Boomer asked.

“You sap.” But Buttercup took another drag and hopped off the tombstone she’d been sitting on. Moonlight glinted off the spikes on her black leather jacket as she reeled back and blew three perfect, concentric hearts from her red-painted lips.

Boomer sat up from his place under Mike’s arm and snapped a picture on his phone. “You officially have the greatest special power out of all of us, no contest.”

Mike laughed and accepted the joint when Buttercup passed it to him. “I’m gonna have to agree with that one.”

“That’s because you’re one hundred percent whipped,” Butch said.

Mike shrugged. “Eh.”

“Buttercup.” Blossom approached her sister. “You’re smoking here? What if someone catches you?”

“Somebody just did,” Boomer said under his breath.

“Damn, Blossom, you girls doing a three-way theme tonight?” Butch slipped off the tombstone he’d been draped over to admire her fishnets and then Buttercup’s matching set. “I like it.”

“Give me that.” Brick took the joint from Mike and snuffed it out under his foot.

“Whoa, whoa,” Mike said. He stood up, and at his full height in a 1920s-style adventurer’s costume, he was a Sight™ to behold, if Blossom was being completely honest.

“Brick, what’s the matter?” Boomer peered around Mike in his homemade mummy costume. “And why the hell are you wearing cat makeup?”

“Oh shit, he is,” Buttercup said with a snort.

Before Brick could lose his temper, Blossom said, “Brick, the clue. We don’t have all night.”

“What clue?” Boomer asked. He peered at them seriously. “What’re you two doing here, anyway?”

“Yeah, I thought you were going to Todd’s,” Mike said.

“Todd’s parties blow,” Buttercup said.

Blossom ignored them. “Something about unearthing a destination uncharted. What could it mean…?”

Brick made for quite the adorable pensive cat as he considered. He seemed to come to the answer at the same time as Blossom.

“No,” Blossom said. “There’s no way.”

“We’re going to have to,” Brick said. “What else could it mean?”

“It’s extremely illegal.”

“Yeah, well, I’m fucking cursed!”

“We can’t dig up a bunch of graves!”

“Wow, so that’s what that creepy limerick meant?” Robin approached the group with Bubbles looking windblown and totally ready to get her hands dirty digging up some goddamned graves.

“Bubbles,” Blossom said. “Look, I’m sorry about before—”

“This is Him’s doing,” Bubbles said flatly. “I recognized the voice when I calmed down and we followed you here. Just tell me what the plan is.”

“Did you say Him?” Boomer said soberly.

Buttercup put her hands up. “Okay, what the fuck is going on?”

Brick pulled down his hoodie and revealed his ridiculous haircut. “This is what the fuck’s going on.”

Boomer looked close to tears at the sight of Brick’s mangled hair.

“Him cursed Brick, and we have to solve a scavenger hunt before midnight or he and his brothers will pay the ultimate price,” Blossom said.

“The ultimate price?” Mike said, aghast.

“What the fuck.” Butch advanced on Brick. “What bullshit did you get us into this time—”

Blossom materialized in between Brick and Butch before the latter could carry out whatever violence he intended. She tapped him hard on the chest, and he stumbled back, probably too stoned to hold his normal balance against her Super strength. “Not today, Butch. Him took Brick’s powers.”

“Shit,” Boomer said. Blue sparks jumped in between his toilet paper-wrapped fists. “Okay, what’s the plan?”

Blossom looked to Brick, who was clearly outnumbered and they both knew it. With a groan, he ran his hands through what was left of his poor hair. “We’ll split up,” he said.

“And do what?” Buttercup said.

“Somewhere here, there’s bound to be a clue left by Him. I know that’s not a lot to go on, but it’s all we’ve got right now,” Blossom said. “Split up and cover as much ground as possible.”

“And what are we looking for?” Robin asked.

“Red smoke, demonic laughter, a general feeling of imminent disembowelment,” Brick said.

Bubbles cracked her knuckles and tightened her pigtails. “The usual, then.”

“Fuckin’ right.” Butch began to crackle with pent up green power.

With four other Supers plus Mike and Robin helping cover ground, Blossom hoped they could at least glean some inkling of what Him’s last clue meant. She stayed with Brick since he didn’t have his powers anymore, and together they wandered deeper into the graveyard. Lampposts along the gravel path cast a saturnine glow amidst the trees, fey and eerie on this most eerie of nights.

“Blossom,” Brick said softly. “If we don’t figure this out before midnight—”

“We will,” Blossom said.

He stopped, and Blossom turned to look back at him. Even powerless, there was a presence in his red eyes, beyond mortal and brimming with fire. Even as enemies, even when she couldn’t stand to breathe the same air as him, she had recognized that counterpoint in him, that tranquil confidence that there was nothing in this world he couldn’t overcome. It was a part of him and no one, not even Him, could take it away.

“But if we don’t,” he pressed.

Blossom’s throat wrenched to see him so calm. Not much scared Brick, not truly, but his softness spoke volumes here where only ghosts could hear them. Go, his eyes entreated her, forget about me and go before it gets you too.

She marched up to him and placed her hand on his chest. Ice froze her breath to mist as her anger clawed its way out of her, and she let him see it. “Then Hell will tremble to watch me drag you back out.”

Brick said nothing. He slipped his hand over hers and curled his fingers. Even now, he was far warmer than anyone she had ever known, and she clung to that certainty.

“Come on,” Blossom said, pulling him along after her. “Let’s solve this so we can go home.”

They followed the floating lamp lights east. Fog gathered at their feet, heavy and strange, but Brick held her hand, and secretly she was grateful not to be alone in such a creepy place. When a laughter they both wished they didn’t recognize reached them on the wind, Blossom’s heart leaped into her throat and she took off running with Brick hot on her heels.

The cachinnation petered out when they came across a man in a grey uniform and hat with a flashlight. “Hey, what’re you kids doing here?”

“We were just—” Blossom began.

“Enough,” Brick said, stepping forward. He put an arm out to block Blossom’s path. “I know it’s you.”

“Brick,” Blossom said.

“Son, I don’t know what you mean,” the graveyard worker said.

Brick ignored him. “I played your shitty game. This is the end. Stop hiding behind that pathetic mask and show yourself.”

The portly graveyard worker dropped his flashlight with a heavy crunch on the gravel. Watery, blue eyes bled to baleful red, and his pasty cheeks stretched to accommodate a smile far too wide for his human face. A low chuckle built deep in his chest like termites in a kicked mound, bubbling up through his throat to bursting.

“H͓̼̯ḭ̠̣d͜i̞᷊̯᷂͜n̨͇͟g̤̱͓,̼͎ a̮m̱̪̫͚͢ I̤̜̗?̨̞ T̨̳̻̜h͚̟̖̜͢a͖̻̠̜͇t̨̹ s͖i̹ṃp̨̟͈͕͢ļy̢͔͜ w̨̱o͈̜̟̠͟n̹̮̖’̳̝t̮ d̪̟̪̝o̹̠.͕̫̙̩”

The booming, sinister voice came from that mouth full of teeth, but it seemed to grow out of Blossom’s bones. She felt it in her lungs, her fingertips, as a tingle on her lips Brick had kissed. And she remembered he was vulnerable, under attack by this very thing standing before them now masquerading in a meat sack.

Well, screw that.

Blossom lowered Brick’s wrist and stepped around him. No matter how hard he pushed against her, he was no match for her power—power she leaked now like gasoline fumes hungry for a spark. The gravel at her feet froze, and her eyes faded to ghastly pink as she faced her childhood nightmare. “Hello, demon,” she said.

“Y̹o̬͟u̢̡̳.”

The lampposts flickered and popped, plunging the earthly ossuary into chilling shadows, but Blossom did not fear the cold. Her fists frosted over as she clenched them, and her step summoned an ice floe in the gravel that bridged the crevasse between her and the coward who dared to haunt Brick and his brothers on her watch.

“Well?” she said. “I’m waiting.”

His meat sack shrank back. This was no child Him was taunting, but a fully realized Super who was no longer afraid of his mind games. He closed that heinous mouth and cleared his throat with a dainty, sausage-fingered hand over his heart, and recited in Him’s more lyrical pitch:

“You’ve served all night at my gracious pleasure. Now the final test to determine your true measure: Find the lady who slumbers In her crypt sunk in umber. X marks the location of my precious treasure.”

No sooner had Him given them their last absurd clue than the graveyard worker seized and fell to his knees. Blossom dashed to catch him before he could injure himself. The man coughed and wheezed as if he’d held his breath for too long.

“What in tarnation…?” he muttered, dazed.

“Sir, you had a dizzy spell. You’re all right now,” Blossom said, clinically calm as she discreetly checked him for signs of blood or other wounds. She found none. “Maybe you should take a break.”

“Who… Hey, you kids shouldn’t be here!”

Brick growled and grabbed Blossom’s elbow to haul her back up. “Let’s go.”

“Take it easy, sir,” Blossom said, and let Brick drag her along before the man could think to call security on them.

When they were out of earshot, Brick whirled on her like he was about to get scary, but she held up a hand for silence.

“Before you get mad, I was just trying to—”

His kiss was not as unexpected as she once may have thought it would be. Feverish, frantic, like a boy about to die in twenty-odd minutes, sure, but not unexpected. “Fuck, Blossom,” he panted when they parted for a breath.

Blossom’s heart swelled at his raw emotion on full display, as rare as it was true, and she almost lost herself in it. But they had work yet to do. She tucked his too-long bangs behind his ear.

“So, a lady who slumbers,” she said. “I’m guessing it’s a special statue.”

“A crypt sunk in umber,” Brick said, licking his lips. “A mausoleum, maybe.”

“That narrows it down, for sure. Must be older if it’s sinking.”

“I saw a map of the cemetery at the entrance.”

Blossom grinned and put her fist in the air. She fired a pink blaster that lit up the night sky and would summon their siblings soon. “Let’s check it out.”

He didn’t complain this time when she carried him on her back for a speedy trip back to the entrance and a quick check of the map. There were four mausoleums in the cemetery.

“Found something, Leader Girl?” Buttercup, Butch, Bubbles, and Robin were the first to catch up to the Reds, and Blossom filled them in just as Boomer returned with Mike.

“Four mausoleums? Sounds like we need to split up again,” Mike said.

“If you find anything, send a signal,” Brick said.

Chance. Brick’s and his brothers’ lives were up to the one-in-four chance that they would find the right crypt. All around them, Him’s lollipop laughter followed them like a demented poltergeist.

“This isn’t it!” Brick slammed a fist against the innermost tomb in their chosen mausoleum. “There’s nothing here.”

Blossom was about to respond to that when a bright, blue spark crackled in the air. Boomer and Mike had found something. “Hurry!”

The mausoleum Boomer and Mike had picked was guarded by a lichen-infested statue of a woman with angel wings in a bed of grassless, brown soil, so dark it could have been umber in daylight. Bubbles, Robin, and the Greens arrived soon after Blossom and Brick charged inside.

“Check it out.” Boomer indicated the innermost tomb carved with two crossed sabers.

“X marks the spot,” Mike said grimly. “Oh crap, it’s almost midnight!”

“Move!” Brick tried to push the crypt open, but it was too heavy for him, so Blossom helped. The heavy stone slab groaned when she pushed it, and a plume of foul, red smoke burst from the opening.

Him’s maniacal laughter rose with the smoke that swirled on the domed ceiling and opened two glowing eyes and a cheshire smile. “My my, cutting it a bit close, aren’t you?”

Bubbles shoved her phone at the unholy miasma. “It’s midnight! We beat your stupid deadline, see?”

“Bubbles, please don’t antagonize the ancient evil,” Robin whispered nervously.

“Technically, Blossom met the deadline since Brick was too weak to open the tomb,” Him crooned.

“You took my powers!” Brick said.

Him’s sinister smile fell. “Oh…did I? My bad. Here you go.”

The red smoke converged on Brick and passed through him with the force of a sword through the gut, and he collapsed to his knees in a circle of fire, gagging. Bubbles and Boomer were lightning fast as they swept Robin and Mike as far away from the conflagration as possible.

“Butch, shield!” Blossom commanded, and Buttercup shoved him so hard he tripped and crashed against his own hastily-erected shield bubble. It contained the explosion of power well enough to keep the mausoleum standing.

“Tsk tsk tsk, this won’t do. All I wanted was to play a little father-son game with you, and you had to drag your girlfriend into it. Parenting is so hard these days. I’ll just have to teach you boys a lesson.”

Blossom’s heart twisted. If Him was truly serious about killing Brick and his brothers, he would have to go through her first.

“Like hell,” Buttercup spat, her fists glowing green.

Brick got to his feet groggily. He looked like he just survived a bad case of seasickness.

Him burst out laughing. “Choice words, Buttercup. Now boys, time to pay the ultimate price!”

The tomb lid slid to the ground on unseen forces, revealing the horror within. Blossom readied her pink blasters, and her sisters did the same. Brick took one look in there and recoiled. “What the fuck—”

When no hellspawn burst from the tomb to attack, Blossom approached and peered over the edge. Inside were hundreds of polaroids of young children in dresses with their hair styled as they posed like Victorian paintings. Blossom reached for one.

Buttercup burst out laughing. “Holy shit, is this you?!” She had two polaroids in her hands as she flapped them in Butch’s face.

“Give me those!” Butch snarled.

“Wow,” Robin said, torn between hysteria and horror as she gawked at a picture of six-year-old Butch with bunny clips in his hair wearing a frilly white dress. “Wait until my therapist hears about this.”

In the picture Blossom had selected, Brick’s hair was expertly braided over his shoulder as he sat on a stone throne surrounded by candelabras and horned skulls in a flowing, white dress. He did not look happy to be there. He looked even less happy to behold this childhood shame years later.

“I burned those,” he said in a voice from beyond the grave to no one in particular.

“I made copies!” Him sang. “And now, all of Townsville will get to see you in your pageantry finest!”

“I’m gonna fucking kill you!” Butch screeched as Buttercup took off flying with a fistful of polaroids laughing her ass off. “Get back here!”

“You know, I think I look pretty cute in these, actually,” Boomer said.

Mike laughed. “Yeah, you totally do.”

“This is what you meant by paying the ultimate price?” Blossom asked the incorporeal demon head floating above them.

Him grinned. “Why, of course. Oh! You didn’t think I would murder my own sons, did you?”

The sinister glint in those yellow eyes told a very different story, one that may have ended poorly if she hadn’t forced Brick to involve her in whatever was going on.

Or maybe Him was just bored of his perpetual existence in a hellish void where a cute photoshoot with his re-spawned Super sons was the most exciting thing that had happened in a millennium, and he was feeling nostalgic.

The tomb erupted in flames all of a sudden when Brick breathed fire over all the polaroids.

Bubbles gasped. “Brick! Those were a work of art, how could you?!”

Brick glared at her with glowing, red eyes. “We’re never speaking of this again. Give me those.” He snatched the photos Robin was holding and burned them too.

Blossom hastily pocketed the picture she’d nabbed of baby Brick before he could notice.

Him disappeared in a swirl of smoke and laughter. “Happy Halloween! Remember to brush your teeth…”

“I can’t believe I came all the way here for this,” Robin said. “Literally, the weirdest shit is always happening to you guys. Can we just have a normal Halloween, like, one time? Just once?”

Boomer laughed. “Tall order, Robin.”

A loud explosion outside told Blossom the Greens’ fighting was going too far, as usual.

“Brick? What’re you doing?” Blossom asked as she and the others followed him outside.

“Helping Butch destroy the evidence your sister stole.” He took off in a blaze of red.

“What a killjoy,” Bubbles pouted.

Blossom bit her lip and revealed her pilfered polaroid. Bubbles’ smile turned downright sinister as she greedily snatched it. “Blossom, I love you.”

“That’s for emergencies only. I mean it, or he’ll kill me.”

Boomer threw an arm around her shoulders and grinned. “Nah, he’d never turn on his girlfriend.”

Bubbles gasped. “Oh my gosh, you’re right!”

Blossom flushed. “But we’re not exactly—”

“Him said it, so it’s gotta be official by now,” Boomer teased.

“Ooh, true. There’s nothing more official than a primordial force of chaos acknowledging your relationship status,” Mike said.

“Hey, you damn kids! You’re not supposed to be here!” shouted the no-longer-possessed groundskeeper from before. He had a shovel that he shook at Brick, Butch, and Buttercup locked in a game of cat and mouse as the brothers tried to reclaim the evidence of their dignity.

“Time to go,” Blossom said.

“Hey, party at Todd’s?” Mike asked.

“Great idea!” Bubbles chirped as she gave Robin a leg up onto her back.

As Blossom found herself back at the same party where she’d begun the night on the sofa next to Buttercup regaling everyone who would listen with the story of Butch’s child beauty pageant past (sans evidence because Brick had managed to burn it, unfortunately), she found her gaze drawn back to Brick. He was up getting them drinks, his haircut cleaned up thanks to Boomer, snickering at something Mike had said.

“Blossom, where are you going?” Bubbles asked when she got up.

“Just going to talk to Brick,” she said. “Officially.”

Bubbles lit up and grabbed the nearest hand to crush her feelings into, which happened to be Butch’s. “What the—ow, woman, let go!”

Brick saw her coming and stared at her growing smile like the baffled teenager he was underneath it all. With all their friends’ eyes on her, she walked right up to him and kissed him in front of everyone.

Let them see, she thought. Let anyone who was watching and biding their time to strike see, and let them try.

Lyrical laughter echoed somewhere on the edges of hearing over their friends’ laudatory cheers and loud calls for celebratory shots, but Blossom tuned it out as she smiled into her kiss.  

xxx

Like Boomer, I am a sap who loves a happy ending. Reds are finally official in this AU?! Took us long enough. Also, I always saw Him as this weird dichotomy of ancient murder-y evil and chaotic good mom. I feel like trolling the Boys would be a favorite past time of his. Might write more Him in the future and explore that more.

Happy Halloween y’all. Get spooky, and stay safe!

[inspirationdivine]

End of the Line || Kaden, Agatha, Ariana, Chloe, Kelly, Todd

Timing: Current Parties: @chasseurdeloup, @letsbenditlikebennett @detective-keen @itsyaboytodd Summary: Pain.  Warnings: Significant discussion of domestic abuse, emotional abuse, drug manipulation (leanan-sidhe kiss), vomit

There was no waiting anymore. No avoiding the inevitable. When Kaden mentioned that Lydia should be leaving town, Ariana knew this was the only chance they had to get the humans she’d taken hostage out of there. How many humans Lydia currently had living in her basement was unknown, but they needed to be out. They needed to get their life back. She hadn’t been able to do it for Ace, but she could help these people. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she had the worry she felt for Athena shoved away. She was capable and she had people on her side helping her against Lydia. She would be okay. She had to keep telling herself as much. Being on separate sides of this mission did little to squash her worries, but this was bigger than that. These people needed them, so she’d step up and went over everything Athena told her about fae promises in her head over and over. She’d only seen Agatha once before, so she turned to Kaden and asked, “You’re sure she’ll be out?” 

 Kaden had been grazed with a fucking bullet earlier tonight. He shouldn’t even be out here but he couldn’t sit back and let this lie. Not when he had a shot at actually making this right. For once. “Positive,” he told her. What he failed to mention was why he knew that. What he’d failed to do. What it might have cost. This was his mistake. He should have waited for the fucking plan. He took a deep breath, steeled himself, readied himself to push past the pain. It wasn’t like it was anything new. “Keen was a last ditch effort. She’s banking on her promises,” he assured them. Not to mention the ones he bound her to himself. Part of him hoped she’d be there waiting and she’d see him again and feel a fraction of the pain she caused others over the years, selfish as that hope was. Reality set in. This wasn’t about him. Or even Lydia. This was about protecting humanity, always came down to that. He peaked around at the entrance to the house in question. The garden was trashed, glass everywhere, the windows were either gone or covered with tarp. Regan’s work if he ever saw it. “It looks like security’s gone. Maybe.” He shut his eyes a moment, tried to listen harder, make sure. “I can’t tell one way or another. We should be careful,” he said, looking back at both Ari and Keen before reaching down to unholster his gun. Better safe than sorry. 

 Agatha stood beside the pair. Staring into the void, she recalled what had happened over at Kaden’s flat. She still couldn’t make any sense of what had happened to her, but if what she had understood was real, as nonsensical as it seemed, then there were people being kept inside Lydia’s house, against their will, just like she had shot Kaden against her own. The mention of her name managed to draw her out of this day dreaming. She gave her co-worker a glance, worried, and feeling as if she would never forgive herself for what she’d done. She had shot an innocent, and it felt like the right thing to do. How. How. All she wanted now was to get in there, and make sure that Lydia would not harm anyone ever again. But first, they had to get her captives out. Kaden seemed sure of himself when he claimed that she was not here, and wouldn’t be here in a while, still Agatha worried of what would happen if the woman came home early. She had put on her bullet vest, and prepared herself for what she understood would not be a piece of cake. Following after Kaden, she glanced at the kid with a frown of disapproval. Perhaps Ariana was capable, but what was she doing here? This was going to be intense, dangerous perhaps, and she did not want to babysit while she was working.  

 Somehow even though Lydia wasn’t home, the house seemed daunting. Ariana wasn’t sure she was ready to see the conditions Sammy lived in. Where he had spent his final days before Lydia had done the unspeakable. She bit back the wave of emotion that threatened to spill over. She could be sad later. Right now, the other people in Lydia’s home still needed their help. There was only one way to go from here. She closed her eyes momentarily and concentrated on what she could hear and smell in the home. There were only a few people in there, tops, and they smelled vaguely familiar. Outside the door, it was still too difficult to tell. “I don’t think security is here. There are a few people from what I can smell.” She had no idea what Agatha knew about all of this, but it was too serious a situation for her to mince her words and not communicate clearly with Kaden. Let the detective think she was weird for all she cared. She turned to Kaden and asked, “You up for breaking down the door with me?” She waited a moment for confirmation before charging the door. A few sturdy slams and it busted open revealing the lavish mansion that Lydia called home. Something about it sent a chill through her. It was nicely decorated and there was art there, but knowing where the art likely came from only served to make her stomach turn. She took a few sniffs and pointed, “We should start upstairs, I think.” 

 Couldn’t smell them? Kaden’s face scrunched a moment, trying to push away any discomfort trying to burrow its way inside him. He wasn’t exactly used to working with a werewolf. Funny enough. Still, he trusted Ariana. He had to remember that. Still, he paused and shut his eyes a second, listening for any heart beats. He heard his, Agatha’s was pounding, and so was Ariana’s. He didn’t hear anyone immediately nearby. Didn’t mean there wasn’t anyone inside; even combined their senses were only so good. “Breaking down the door?” He didn’t see any reason why not to. It’s not like the house was in good condition right now. Maybe they’d get lucky and the previous banshee destruction would work in their favor. With a quick nod, he turned and threw himself into the door right alongside her. Putain. He forgot how much he still hurt, how recent his fight was. His face contorted and he took a deep inhale before slamming into the door with her a second time. Shit. He was going to regret that. Hell, he already regretted that, cradling his arm in his hand a moment as he winced. At least the door broke down relatively easily. No doubt Lydia wasn’t here considering how simple that was. That and the fact that there were no security guards waiting for them on the other side. The house was strangely normal. He wasn’t sure what he expected, honestly. Something darker, maybe? Danker. More like the prison and torture chamber that it was. He waited and listened some more. There were traces of something, but it was hard to pinpoint. “Sure, might as well.” It was a big place, it would take a while to comb through. His hand still gripped his knife as they climbed the stairs, shoes occasionally crunching on shards of glass. There were plenty of doors. Even with the destruction, the house was bright, clean and almost inviting. It sent a chill down his spine, knowing what he did. “Should we split up? Or stick together? This place is big.” 

 The ache of Lydia’s absence was beginning to sting in Chloe’s chest. She worked quietly, occasionally tapping a rhythm against the table to test how the words of her lyrics would flow. Todd and Kelly had calmed down enough, although she couldn’t help but occasionally glance over at them whenever they were in the same room. Lydia had left them with lots of carefully prepared meals in the kitchen, as she always did when she planned to spend some time in fairy rings. It was better when she didn’t come back for a few days, even when it hurt. Chloe was jarred out of her reverie when the door downstairs banged and clattered. She glanced at Todd, in the music room with her, but Kelly was elsewhere. Swallowing, she gestured for him to hide, walking silently over to the door of their room and turning the lock. You won’t ever let any guest of mine know you’re here. She retreated a little further back, remembering the red eyes of the last man who had broken into this hellscape sanctuary. She looked around cautiously, but Lydia’s upstairs office was the only place she could creep to with another lock on it, so she backed into it, locked that door too, and sank down against the wall, cradling her knees against her chest as the promise gnawed at her skin. 

 Kelly panicked, the moment she heard people smashing through the door. She looked around wildly, before scuttling into the one place Lydia didn’t take most of her guests - her bedroom. It was only once she was in there that Kelly realised that Lydia had several guests she did bring in here. Oh god, could she maybe hide in the bathroom? With a squeak, Kelly locked herself in Lydia’s bathroom, and clambered into the warm towel cabinet, pulling it closed behind her. 

 The days that had turned into weeks since Todd first found himself trapped in Lydia’s home, they’d passed by in a daze of confusion, longing, and pain. Pain, because he didn’t understand what Chloe and Kelly tried to tell him. He couldn’t make sense of the words that bound him to this place, didn’t understand any of it. Magic? It was magic? But, magic wasn’t supposed to do things like this, right? He had been in the sound studio when he’d first heard the door being knocked down, the impact shaking the otherwise still house. And, for an instant, he’d wanted to scream. But, the sound died in his throat, the promise that bound him to Lydia searing his vocal cords shut with a sharp lance of pain. Clutching his throat, Todd felt his body move, seemingly on its own, looking for a place to hide. Because that was one of the many promises he’d made-- he would hide, he would stay out of sight, and he would remain quiet. Rising from his chair, Todd locked the door of the room, the pain easing slightly as he did so. He tip-toed across the floor before squeezing himself in the gap between the wall and the desk. His hands pressed against his face, teeth biting into his fingers to keep from shouting. He had to keep quiet. He had to obey.

 There was something eerie about Lydia’s home even though she knew the woman wasn’t home. Maybe it was because she knew all too well what happened here, but on the surface, it looked like just an ordinary home. Like Lydia was just an ordinary albeit wealthy person. The art that hung on the walls was a bit pretentious, but homey in its own way. How someplace could look so welcoming and yet be so dark was a lot to digest. Ariana knew better than to get too caught up in any of the small things lying around. Getting these people out alive was their priority here today. She closed her eyes and focused on the smells around her. There were two that smelled familiar, but one pulled at the heels of her feet. “Wait,” she said as she reoriented herself to follow what she was smelling when realization hit, “That bitch.” There was venom in her voice as she could smell Todd. That was why he had been taking time to work on projects and not perform. She felt her fists ball up at her side as she stomped forward toward an office. “Someone’s this way. I-- Kaden, I know who it is.” It only pushed her forward further only to push right into a locked door. “Fuck,” she grumbled as she grabbed a bobby pin out of her hair. “Don’t worry, I got this one,” she told Kaden and Agatha. She pressed her ear against the door and fiddled with the pin until she heard the click of a lock. She let out the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding and softly said, “Todd? I know you’re in here, it’s okay, we’re not guests.” She hoped that statement somewhat helped work around Lydia’s promises. 

 Please just go away, please just go away, Todd thought to himself as his body continued to contort in pain, filling his bones. What had he done wrong? He was hiding, he was doing what he should, he was doing what Lydia wanted-- as he tried to figure it out, the doorknob rattled and he heard a voice. A… familiar voice. Megan? No, her name was Ariana, wasn’t it? No, no, no, no, no, please, he wanted to say. But, he still had his hand pressed firmly against his mouth, trying not to make a sound. If he kept quiet, if he kept quiet, the pain would stop, wouldn’t it? When she said his name, when she specified they weren’t guests, the awful feeling lessened and he let out a breath. “Y-you can’t be here. You shouldn’t be here. Sh--” His throat closed as he tried to say Lydia’s name, the promise that had originally gotten him into this mess reminding him of its presence. Gasping, he shook his head. “No, no, no, no.”

 Kaden’s mouth pulled into a thin line as Ari went off by herself. Something about this house, he didn’t like the idea of leaving her behind. What if Lydia had added layers of words binding the humans since Sammy was killed? What if there was something horrible waiting for them in each of these rooms? No, there wasn’t time for that. He didn’t think. And either way, he had to trust Ariana could handle herself. She’d proven that much. “Okay. I, uh… Left it is,” he said with a shrug and went towards the door across the way. He tried the knob and it opened easily enough. It almost unsettled him more to know he was entering somewhere that wasn’t off limits. He gulped back the uneasiness that had settled in since stepping through the threshold of this place and walked into the room. “Woah.” The words left his lips without a second thought. The room was huge. Possibly bigger than his apartment. And this was just the master bedroom? 

 Kaden shook off the awe. This was nothing to be jealous of. And it wasn’t why they were here. He wandered in, quietly and carefully. There weren’t any signs of movement, not yet. He couldn’t hear any new heartbeats just yet but he kept moving through the room. It felt like a home. Normal, almost. Queasiness dropped into his stomach. Still, he found his feet moving towards the dresser in the corner, practically drawn there by something, like there was a string pulling him along. There were pictures of smiling faces, Lydia with what had to be friends and family. She looked so normal, so much like any other human. His eyes drifted down to the bones sitting on the dresser, arranged lovingly even if in the corner. His fingers ran over them, feeling the smooth, cold surface. Banshee gifts if he ever saw them. Were they from Deirdre? Regan? Maybe both. He clenched his jaw against the tears pricking at his eyes. This was too complicated. It couldn’t be. This couldn’t be about Regan or even Lydia. He shut his eyes and concentrated, pushed past the barriers he put up around his senses and listened. A new set of thudding pounded in his ear. He tried to the right, quieter, then the left, louder and louder as he went. “Hello?” he said tepidly, opening his eyes as he walked slowly towards what looked like the bathroom. “I’m not here to hurt you. And I already know you’re here so it’s not breaking any promises to answer.” He didn’t know if that was true, but it didn’t hurt to try. He tried the knob. Locked. “I won’t hurt you. At least-- I’m not a friend of Lydia’s. Please. Let me in.” He tried the handle again. Nothing. He waited for a response, anything. If nothing changed in a few seconds, Kaden had no issues wrenching the handle open himself. 

 Kelly pressed her hand over her mouth, trying to suffocate her whimpers and hummingbird fast breathing. She heard Lydia’s bedroom door open, and imagined some creeping, monstrous shadow of a creature creeping through the room, like the Mindflayer in Stranger Things. Hello, it called, and the image in her head shifted. It was something bipedal, its limbs distorted and a voice like an angel only to disguise a maw full of teeth. Lydia wanted her to stay hidden. She whimpered as the closet door whimpered, the promise burning her lungs. She was going to stay quiet. She would be good. 

 As the two others decided to stick together, Agatha chose to go the other way. Just like them, she climbed up the stairs, but when they turned left, she went to the right. Alone now, she had gotten her weapon out, ready to fight back should she be there, somewhere, waiting to get them one by one. She arrived in one of the most spacious living room she had ever seen. She moved around grazing the walls, checking on every door. Some of them were closed, while others were not. Although, upon inspection, she had found, aside from a large amount of beds in one room, not found anything shocking. She noticed that there was not a single computer in sight, nor was there a phone, or anything that could have facilitated communication with the outside world. Will there was an obvious and expected lack here, there were none as far as the bookshelves were concerned. She couldn’t help but gaze for a short moment at the book spines, wondering what those were about. Her eyes were drawn toward some of the names. “The Eyes to the sky?” Her brows furrowed as she picked up one of the books that bore Lydia’s name. Wait, she was that Lydia Griffin? Under her breath, the detective muttered one particularly surprised what the fuck as a photograph of the woman on the other side confirmed it. “Well now you gotta tell me what face cream you use,” she commented, dropping the book back on its shelf. Now perhaps was a good time to see what all these doors were hiding. One of them was a recording studio, kicking the second door open, she did not expect to get so lucky on her second try. In there, hiding in a corner, there was someone. Remembering what the other two had said, she put her hands up and calmly, she explained: “I’m not a guest, I’m... “ Well the badge certainly helped get her point through. Damn, this room was busy, she thought to herself, for a split second turning her attention toward the rest of the office. “It’s going to be okay, I’m just going to talk with you, alright? As a not guest.” 

 Police officer. Chloe stared at the badge, trembling. Hives were beginning to raise along her skin as the blonde woman stared at her. No one ever came up here, not without Lydia. Remmy hadn’t come in here in the months they’d been here. It was only ever business associates. But she’d heard the wood of the oak door splinter downstairs. The door in front of her had been kicked open. Something had changed. Something was changing. As a not guest. The emphasis was weird, strangely knowing. Chloe felt a horrible ache in her chest. If there were police here, Lydia wouldn’t come back. She’d never knowingly betray herself. Chloe had known for years that Chloe needed Lydia more than Lydia needed Chloe. That was the way her brand of intoxication worked. Fuck. “Why are you here?” She asked hoarsely, pushing herself onto her feet, pressing herself against the back wall as hard as she could. “Who are you?”

 Seeing Todd’s pained expression sent a fresh wave of rage through her body. While it stood she didn’t have it in her to deal the final blow, Ariana could only hope Luce and Athena made it painful for all she’d done to these poor people. Her heart sank realizing she hadn’t even known Todd would be here. She should have been a better friend, reached out and checked in on him more. She’d been so caught up in her own shit, that Lydia managed to get yet another one of her friends. “Hey, shhh,” she assured him as she reached out a hand for him, “It’s going to be okay. I should be here, you’re not doing anything wrong.” It was hard to gauge what his promises were, but he was in pain and she could only hope Lydia would be dead sooner rather than later. “I’m going to make sure you’re safe, I promise.” She looked to him with pleading eyes using a word she had promised herself to never use again, but she planned on delivering. There wasn’t another option. She refused to let Lydia take another friend from her. “Lydia’s not here. I’m not a guest, friend, or company-- Well, I’m your friend but-- Please come out, Todd. The pain should fade soon, but don’t push too hard.” 

 As Ariana came into view, a wave of relief rushed over Todd as he saw a friendly, familiar face. Well, friendly wasn’t quite how he’d describe how she looked at him. Worried, more like. Really, really worried. And, he was too. As she kept talking, he could feel the sharp edges of the promise start to dull, the pain lessening. She wasn’t a guest, she wasn’t a friend of Lydia’s. There was wiggle room with the magic, like the silence between notes of music. And that was what he could use to-- Swallowing, he didn’t dare let himself think about that, knowing full well what the promise would do to him. “How are you here?” He managed to say, his hands shaking with fear and dread as he stared at his friend with wild eyes. “I-- I’m trying. I’m trying.” He repeated as he managed to pull himself from the corner he’d shoved himself into. Ariana wasn’t a friend of Lydia’s, she wasn’t a guest, this wasn’t covered by the promise, which meant it was okay. The mental gymnastics of the magic were hard, but they were all that allowed him to stand upright and take a shaky step forward. “Kelly. And Chloe. They’re here too.”

 Shit. There was no response. Kaden knocked again just to see. Alright, guess there was no other choice. He yanked the door knob and forced it open, breaking the handle and pushed the door open. Shit, the bathroom was huge, too. He peaked around the corner and saw the huge jacuzzi tub and vanity. Right. He approached and… no one there. He looked in the actual bathroom. Nothing there. Not in the shower, either. “I know this is probably terrifying but I’m not going to hurt you. I pr--” Shit. That word. That stupid fucking word. Whoever was here had heard enough of that word. “I know you’re probably bound a million different ways but I’m going to help. I’m… I’m with the WCPD.” Kaden wasn’t sure if that was going to help or make things worse. There was only one place left to look, though. One door. He opened up the door to the linen closet and saw a terrified, shaking girl. Shit. Shit. His heart shattered and he wanted nothing more than to haul her out of there and make a break for it out of this fucking house. Instead, he took a deep breath and held up his hands in surrender. “See, not going to hurt you. Can you speak to me? Are you able?”

 Kelly screamed as light flooded into her cupboard, jerking back so ferociously she banged her head against a warm pipe, and tried to pull a towel over herself to hide. The promise was broken, it was already too late, Every muscle felt like she’d pulled it without warming up, but she still tried to hide. “I don’t know. Please- please go away!” Kelly scrambled forward, reaching for the cupboard door, and tried to pull it shut to hide her back in the dark.

 She had to be careful about what she would tell that woman. Since Agatha did not fully understand the extent of the manipulation, she felt like she was a tightrope walker, 30 feet above the ground. Her hands still up, she lowered them to place the gun back in its holster. At least that woman allowed herself to speak with the detective, she realized, relief making her shoulders loosen down just a little. This was good news, although it did not look like she saw Agatha as her savior, or like she wanted to leave the place. While having never encountered this in the past, it reminded her of those articles she read on Stockholm’s syndrome. All she hoped was that this was not bad to the point of attacking the people who were here to save her. 

She did not move closer to the other woman immediately. That woman was terrified, and nothing good would come from forcing her out of the room. This was Agatha’s ultimate resort, and one she did not intend to use. Lowering her voice, her tone was a bit calmer, soothing like a caress.  “Do you mind if I have a look around?” She asked. An excuse to get closer, as well as an excuse to talk to her. “I’m Agatha, it’s nice meeting you,” she pushed a strand of hair behind her ear, doing her best to appear as friendly and welcoming. Slowly, she moved toward the desk. Each and every drawer and cabinet was closed. Great. Her eyebrows raised and she glanced at the woman. “Do you know how I can open it? I really don’t want to damage anything,” everything in here was evidence, and she was sorry in advance for ruining the room for forensics. “Do you think you could help me perhaps?” Agatha had had a promise in her head for just a few hours, and it had been hell, she could not imagine how that woman felt, and she wondered for how long she had been there. 

 “You’ll get us in more trouble,” Chloe replied, still hard against the wall. She didn’t match Agatha’s gentle demeanour, but mouthed the name back at herself. Agatha. Agatha, the cop, rummaging through Lydia’s home. Something prickled in Chloe’s chest. “I don’t think I should help you. She’s coming back. She’ll come back. You can’t- She would want me to stop you.” But Lydia had never said anything about a police officer rummaging through her things. “Under the books. Nineteen forty nine.” There was a keypad. Chloe looked away, her insides churning. Just as quickly, she added, “We chose to be here. We want to be here. She’s going to come back, you know, and that- that’s good.” Two sides, always struggling. Lydia was going to be so upset when she came home to all this damage. The other two didn’t know better yet, but Chloe- Chloe watched Agatha and felt a tiny match in the darkness of her despair. She couldn’t think like that. “It really would be best if you just left, or talked to Lydia when she’s back. It’s not what you think, whatever you think it is.”

 Something akin to relief washed over Ariana as he stepped out from his hiding space. Working within the bounds of everything Lydia made them promise wasn’t easy, but she so desperately wanted to get them out of here alive. It wasn’t a guarantee, but hopefully once Lydia was dead some of these promises would be released. She knew better than to ride on that though. She did her best to hide the nervous energy that was pulsing through her. Unlike her, he didn’t have the advantage of supernatural hearing and probably couldn’t even tell that her heart was practically racing. How she was here was a loaded question and there was hardly enough time to explain. “It’s a long story. Lydia had another one of my friends hostage before, I got help. She won’t be keeping you or anyone else like this anymore.” Her eyes nearly dared to plead with him, but she kept herself confident. Todd needed to believe her. He needed to think he wasn’t breaking any promises to find that small space between them. He needed to believe he could go back to his normal life. The certain brightness and enthusiasm he had possessed before seemed so diminished now and it only served to further her hatred for Lydia. Then he said the name Kelly and she felt herself turn queasy. Not her too. That absolute bitch. “Kelly? Singer who is about my age- she- what?” It had only been a few weeks since she last watched her open mic night. How had she forgotten to check back in? “Okay, okay. I didn’t come here alone. We’ll help Kelly and Chloe, too. We just have to find the others.” 

 He could walk, he could follow her, Todd thought to himself, willing himself to take step after step behind Ariana. It hurt, all of this hurt. It would just be so much easier to stay here. He could hide himself away, tuck himself back in the corner and wait for Lydia to return. It would be better than this pain, wouldn’t it? Swallowing, he stared at Ariana as she talked to him. She knew someone else who’d been here? Someone else who’d been trapped in this house? “I-- Okay. Okay. Chloe, she, she was here with me before, but I don’t know where she went now. Maybe the office? But I want to,” His body contorting in on itself as he let out a wince of pain as he forced himself not to think about leaving, not even dare to hope for it. “I’ll follow you.” He said shakily, the words just enough of a loophole for the magical pain to stop clawing at him. Would this work? Would any of it work? He just wanted to be free.

 Shit. She hit her head and Kaden’s first instinct was to reach out and help her, apply pressure, check the wound. But he had a feeling that would only make this worse, cause more pain than he already was. “Sorry, I’m--” Putain, how could he help? He had to-- “What did you promise? We’ll-- Is it that I can’t see you? I’ll shut my eyes or, or-- If you have to hide, we’ll-- put a towel over you and you’re hidden. Right? I-- Just please. Please, I’m going to help. I just want to get you out of here.” He put his hand out for her to take, wedging himself between her and the door, wishing it was enough. She looked so young and so broken already. And he didn’t know what to do. But he had to try. “I know it hurts. It’ll be over, soon. Please. Let me help.”

 Kelly just shrank even more deeply into herself. “No, no! You’re lying!” Some part of her knew, deep down, that Josh wouldn’t want her to be like this. Her brother would want her to reach out and take his hand. She knew, god, she knew that leaving was the right choice. Everyone had explained so much, but it still didn’t seem real. Was it really wrong to want the stability and warmth that Lydia offered? As long as she did the right thing, it would be okay. It would be awesome, the music she’d already written in the last couple weeks would more than catch the attention of a crowd bigger than the local bar.  But she didn’t know this man, and if she did the wrong thing… well, Chloe’s scars told a story of their own, didn’t they? “I’m being good. Please go away.”

 Agatha, her heart heavy in her chest, looked Chloe in the eyes and with all the assertiveness she could muster, assured her that Lydia was not coming back. Never.  She made sure not to promise anything, but rather spoke just as calmly, explaining everything she was doing as she moved across the office. 1949. Agatha repeated the number in her head and searching through the books, found a concealed safe. The code provided opened it, and within it, Agatha found what she was looking for. “Thank you,” she gave her a warm smile and sat down at the desk, opening the cabinets one by one. “Do you have any free will left?” She glanced up from the drawer she inspected, once again searching for a hint of anything in the other woman’s eyes. “I do not think anything. I find evidence, and then I draw conclusions,” and what she was seeing was not comforting. In a box, within the drawer, she found a stack of identity papers, some expired, some dating back to a few decades ago. All of those belonged to different faces, and Agatha had to take a deep breath to stop her head from spinning. What the fuck had happened here. Who the fuck was Lydia? Well, at least now she knew who the other woman was. “Chloe, you’re Chloe,” she had a small sigh of relief and a sunny smile for her. “It’s good to meet you Chloe.”

 Agatha’s words hit Chloe like a waterfall, crushing her. She didn’t believe it, not at first, but the whiplash sting of Lydia’s biggest rejection hit her right in the chest. She wouldn’t have. She couldn’t have. Chloe hadn’t always behaved, but Lydia wouldn’t lie about going to a fairy ring, would she? Why wouldn’t she- Chloe covered her mouth and stifled an unwelcome sob, determined not to fall apart here, not under the force of toxins she had no control over. That didn’t make it any less real now, her brain could not separate the ache as clearly as it could the intent. “How do you know?” She breathed, scratching at the hives on her neck as Agatha began digging through Lydia’s desk. Finally, she summoned the courage to step away from the wall, staring at the box Agatha pulled out. “That’s a loaded question. I’m still me. It’s- it’s not like I’m just a puppet.” The instinct to protect Lydia even now left an acrid taste in Chloe’s mouth. As Agatha opened the box, her mouth ran dry. Right on the top was Todd’s and Kelly’s drivers licenses, but as Agatha began to sort through, there were more faces than Chloe could begin to recognise. Some, she did. One was a very young Anneliese, who had been taken seven years before her death, barely twenty at the time. Sammy, who looked almost the same, except there was a sparkle in his features in the dull photobooth photograph that she hadn’t seen in his real smile for months. Owen, too, and then there she was. Four years ago. The face there was almost unrecognisable. Agatha smiled warmly, and Chloe could barely force a half smile on her lips. “I guess I’ll find out if it’s good to meet you, Agatha.” There were voices coming from beyond, catching her attention. “Who else is here? More police?”

 The pain so clearly etched on Todd’s face only furthered her desire to see Lydia dead. Well, perhaps not actually see her, but at least know she was stopped. Everything in Ariana wanted to grab him and just run out of here. She couldn’t be that reckless though. A broken promise could do more harm than good and she had to get him out of here. Everything about Todd had always been so genuine and sweet from the moment she’d met him. He was the absolute last person who deserved to be trapped here. She should have noticed something sooner. She placed a gentle hand on his shoulder and assured, “You don’t have to say anything else. I know it hurts. Kaden and Agatha will find the others.” She couldn’t shake the sick feeling in her stomach as she wondered if Kelly was her Kelly. If her decision to not trade her to Lydia to free Sammy or break her promise had been all for nothing. She put on a brave face anyway. Todd needed to believe in her right now even if she didn’t quite believe in herself. He agreed to follow her so she led him out of the room, not daring to leave his side. 

 Ariana took her time with him and listened for the others until they walked by a room with an open door. Curiosity compelled her to peek inside and she felt her breath hitch in her throat. “I-- we need to go in here first.” The room had a decent stock of pottery along the shelves and she knew they had to be Sammy’s. Her fingers ran along some of the vases as if touching the same clay he once touched would connect her to him again somehow. Her hand stopped on one that had some motifs of the moon decorating it and a sad smile crossed her face. Sammy had to have made it. Without thinking about whether she should, she grabbed it off the shelf and looked back to Todd with strengthened resolve. “Okay, let’s get to the others. Are you-- How are you feeling? We can go slow, just tell me if it hurts too much and we can stop. Figure out a way around it.” 

 Todd trailed behind Ariana in mute silence, because if he did not talk, he couldn’t lie. He just focused on putting one foot in front of the other, keeping pace with the girl. If he didn’t think about what he was doing, he couldn’t break his promise. If he could just keep his mind clear and just let it happen, the nightmare would end, right? He would be free. Shoulders hunched over, he thought about all the things he would do when he got back. He’d call his parents. Call his siblings. Let them know how much he missed them. Tell them he was sorry for not talking to them more, for not listening to them. He’d call Winston and Ricky and tell them that he hadn’t wanted to lose them. He’d tell them that he hadn’t wanted to cut them off. He’d tell them the truth, that magic was real and that he wanted nothing to do with it anymore. He just wanted to be free. When Ariana turned to look at him, he realized she’d asked him something. Rubbing his arms nervously, he nodded, “I’m… It’s okay. It’s okay right now.” He said. It wasn’t true. He’d been thinking of what would come after all this, and with the thinking, the pain had returned. “We should-- do this. It’s gonna be okay, it’s gonna be okay.”

 “I’m not. I know it must-- But I’m not lying. Please. Let me help.” Kaden’s hand stayed there, outstretched and untaken. He knew this wasn’t going to be easy, but he hadn’t prepared for this. Not in the slightest. He was used to dealing with tough scenarios between police and hunting work, sure, but there was a reason he preferred animal control to standard jobs. Dealing with people was hard. Especially when they were going against their best interests so painfully. He knew he must look like a monster, coming in and dragging her out of what was, unfortunately, her home. He couldn’t even imagine how he appeared to her, his face beaten and worn, half of him bandaged and certainly worse for wear. “I’m sorry,” he said before he reached in and pulled her out of the closet, trying to sling her across his back in a fireman's carry. Kaden winced, the pain of everything that came before settling into his bones as he did. It didn’t matter. He pushed it away, he could hurt later. For now, he was sure she was going to resist and fight him tooth and nail. He was going to get her out of here. She could thank him later. “I’m sorry. She’s not coming back. We have to get you out of here.”

 Kelly screamed, her voice hoarse from all the singing she’d already been doing the past few hours. She tried to grab the inside of the cupboard, but no matter how hard she pulled it didn’t even slow him down. Terrified of him and terrified of breaking the promise, she trashed her legs and squirmed, but he wasn’t letting go. “Stop it! Let me GO!” She screamed. “YOU’RE HURTING ME! TODD! CHLOE! HELP!”

 “That’s my job, dear,” she had a hint of confidence in a smile as she glanced at Chloe, one that matched the light in her eyes. Knowing things was something Agatha had always done quite well, and she did not care for those who called her a Know it all. As if it were an insult. Better a know it all, than a know nothing at all, she had always told herself. Still the look on Chloe’s face took its toll on the police woman’s morale, and she approached Chloe carefully, putting her hands on her arms, and looking her in the eyes. Truth was, the detective was not feeling too great herself. She had just shot a coworker, found out that some people could make you do things, put you in some sort of trance, and now, she had to deal with a case that was getting more horrific the more she found out things. And yet, she kept her chin up, no matter how heavy her heart felt in her chest, no matter how much she wanted to cry and scream as she remembered how scared and helpless she had been back at Kaden’s. She kept her chin up, and she looked at Chloe with a look on her face that said everything is going to be okay, you’re under good care. With Chloe by her side, she had looked at the different IDs and would have kept doing so, had it not been for the screaming. “I’m with another police officer, and a …” She frowned. “Someone who’s great at finding missing people,” well that covered it. “Let’s go have a look, alright? Stay behind me,” she closed the drawer, locked it and took the keys with her as she went out of the office.

 “That not an answer,” Chloe replied, squaring her jaw, as if she could make herself immune to Agatha’s gentle demeanor. She didn’t- couldn’t believe it. Lydia had made herself the center of their universes, the sun and stars set at her beck and call. It wasn’t that Chloe missed her, it was that a world without her was impossible to imagine. It was impossible not to want to sob about the pain they’d caused Lydia just by being caught. Chloe was about to ask more about the police officer and the person find her when Kelly began to scream. “Wh-” As soon as they were through the door, when Chloe saw Kelly being hauled around, she didn’t stay behind Agatha at all, running over to Kelly. She almost lost her balance at the last second, staggering slightly as she got close to Todd. It wasn’t a fae promise to Lydia that propelled her forward, but a promise to herself. It had admittedly been about not letting the two kids absorb any of Lydia’s wrath if she could avoid it, but considering Kelly was currently slung over a stranger’s shoulders- she swallowed, grabbing a pencil from a nearby table, as if it could serve against any kind of weapon. “Please… please put her down! You’re hurting her, she doesn’t understand!” Chloe’s head whipped around, looking at Todd, and the girl standing next to him, away, and then blinked. It couldn’t be. Sammy wasn’t that good of a sketch artist.   

 Okay was such a relative term for Todd to use here when it stood that absolutely none of this was okay. He never should have been here. Ariana should have noticed he was gone. Should have checked in on Kelly more. “Good, just keep pushing forward. Everything is going to be okay,” she assured while placing a gentle hand on his shoulder. Was it to steady herself or reassure him? She couldn’t really tell anymore. The vase Sammy made was clutched tightly in her other arm though she nearly dropped it when she heard a scream echo through the hallway. It confirmed it was in fact her Kelly. The very Kelly she decided to keep away from all of this and yet here she was anyway. Fucking bitch. She hoped Athena got a nice stab in for her though immediately chided herself for that thought. “Don’t worry, Todd, she’s just scared. I know all of this is hard and scary, but I’m going to make sure everyone gets out of this, okay?” She desperately hoped she could live up to that statement. They quickly approached Kaden who had Kelly slung over his shoulder. She raced up to comfort Kelly and let her know a familiar face was here. “Hey,” she said softly, getting a good look in Kelly’s eyes, “It’s okay, it’s me, Ari. This is Kaden, he’s not going to hurt you. We’re going to get you out of here, alright? You’re not safe here.” 

 Even though Todd was doing his best to keep himself together, it felt like his brain was going to explode as he tried to keep himself calm. And then, he heard Kelly screaming, heard her yelling, heard her begging for his help. Then a man, who was carrying her. Terrified, Todd felt the pull of the magic begin to curl in the back of his throat, choking him until he reminded himself that they weren’t friends, that they weren’t guests, they weren’t invited. Which didn’t count, it didn’t count, this was a loophole. Even so, he’d heard the fear in Kelly’s voice. He hoped that Ariana was right, that he wouldn’t hurt them. But, what choice did he have? He knew he couldn’t stay here, even though every inch of his body wanted to curl up and hide and wait for Lydia to return. He had to do this. The very thought sent another sharp wave of pain stabbing through his side and Todd staggered a bit, leaning against the wall. “We… We’re not safe here.” He repeated, because it was true and it wasn’t bound in magic. “Hurry. Hurry.” He urged the others. This nightmare, this hell? He just wanted it to end.

 Chloe looked from Agatha to their other rescuers, to Todd, his face scrunched in concentration. Her stomach churned, her insides turned inside out at the thought of how disappointed Lydia would be, at the promises that she was so close to breaking with every breath. “We’re not going anywhere special, okay? We’re going to go look at the Magritte. If you lied to me-” Chloe turned to Agatha, her voice trembling, “If you lied, you could be killing us. But, we’re not doing anything special right now this second. We’re just going to get some inspiration from the Magritte painting. Without Lydia around- Without Lydia around we can just get some second hand inspiration from one of her ancestors.” The painting downstairs, near the front door. She looked back at the blue haired girl, and thought about the glaze Sammy had ordered in just that shade of blue. Could it be?

 Kaden was used to screams in his ears. And she wasn’t even a banshee. Not that it stopped her from trying to rival them, that was for sure. He winced under the weight of her kicking and thrashing against his back. If he clenched his jaw, maybe he wouldn’t feel the pain shooting through his arm, maybe he could just ignore it. As he entered into the foyer, he saw Ari and Keen along with two others. They must be the other hostages. His brow furrowed as the woman begged him to put Kelly down. Guilt seeped deeper into him as he did as he was told, placing her down gently as he could and taking a step back. “Sorry, I-- I’m-- She wouldn’t leave the closet and I didn’t know what else to--” Before he could apologize any further, he felt the pain flashing through his arm again and rubbed the wound. “I’m not trying to hurt you. I--” As Ari said his name, it occurred to him that he never introduced himself, either. Why the fuck was he even here? He certainly wasn’t fucking helping, was he? “That’s right. I’m Kaden. Officer Langley. And this is Detective Keen. And we’re--” His face scrunched up in confusion again when Chloe explained even further. “Just…. here to… admire the, uh, the art.” Was that right? Was that what she was suggesting? There must have been layers upon layers of word binding and fae magic at work. And certainly she’d know how to work around it better than him. “So let’s all head downstairs and make sure we get a good look.” He held out his hand and gestured for them to go ahead of him. He’d make sure they made it down the stairs one way or another. As much as he didn’t want to have to carry on as he had been. 

 Kelly almost bolted the second she was set down, and would have if Ariana hadn’t been right there, alongside Todd. “I don’t understand. Ariana? Are you here too? Did she get you too?” She looked from Ariana to Todd to Chloe, who was slowly lowering her pencil. She looked at Todd, then Chloe, her face wrinkling. “I-... I don’t want to go. We should be staying here, for Lydia.” She looked at Kaden Langley, who was apparently a police officer, which meant… which meant… “Just… Just looking at the art, right. Um, okay.” She agreed, and cautiously walked down the stairs, to look at the Magritte. 

 Shit. She rushed after Chloe, and stopped in the foyer, where the rest of them were. So there were two other hostages then. At least two, she corrected herself, observing what was going on. She almost said something about Kaden’s way of handling the issue, but decided against it. Agatha refused to demolish his authority in a situation as unstable as this one, even if she did not like this. “Well now she’s out of the closet,” this was not intended as a joke, and she kept her upper lip stiff. “Alright, yes. We were going to go downstairs to look at the Magritte,” wait they had a Magritte in here? What the fuck. Her face remained neutral, but the cogs in her heads were starting to hurt, as it seemed that she was hopping from surprise to surprise in this house. As one of the people in the room mentioned that Lydia could come back, she looked over at Chloe and shook her head, to remind her that no, Lydia was gone. Apparently the person Kaden had been carrying was not ready for that, and it was probably best to persuade her out of here through other means. She approached her coworker and, her eyebrow raised, she commented: “this is even worse than we imagined, isn’t it?”

 Magritte? Who was that? Todd wasn’t sure what they were talking about; hadn’t Ariana told him they were going to get-- A fresh spike of pain had him leaning heavily against the hallway, grasping at his side. No, no, no, no. No, they were just going to see Magritte or whatever and they were… he was being good. He was listening, he was keeping his promise. He wasn’t disobeying. He was here, he was here, he was here. “Uh huh. Uh huh.” He nodded, trying to keep his mind as clear of this as he could. But, it was getting harder and harder to not think of the circumstances when he realized that the two not-guests Ariana had were police officers. “Let’s go look at the art.” He nodded in agreement.

 The inclination to run was evident on Kelly’s face and she couldn’t ignore the guilt churning in her stomach. Ariana should have figured out a way to warn her, she did know she was perfect prey for Lydia. She reached out to give her shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “It’s me,” she said softly, “She didn’t get me. I figured out what was going on here.” The other woman had to be Chloe. Sammy had mentioned her and she had hoped she’d still be here. That she hadn’t been too late. There was something akin to relief running through her, but they weren’t out of the clear just yet. She nodded, “Chloe’s right. We should all get some inspiration from Magritte.” Whoever the hell that was. It hardly mattered if it helped them out of here. It was only a matter of time before Lydia was dead if she wasn’t already. Kelly didn’t seem ready to face that news so they’d focus on one thing at a time. 

 Magritte was a painter Lydia liked to show off several times a year, because his bizarre art style was often popular, even in the less expensive and famous pieces that she owned. Had owned, if she had abandoned it all here. Chloe paused the group in front of the painting, her hand curled in a tight fist to distract from the pain of thinking about this. “She’s not coming back,” Chloe said softly to the other two, taking Kelly’s hand in her own. Sickeningly, it reminded her of how Lydia comforted them from time to time, so she dropped that hand just as quickly. “It’s going to hurt more the longer we wait.” Chloe had been here too long. Her bones felt stiff, her body weary. She couldn’t frighten them off, especially Kelly, who was struggling to understand so much. “You’re going to have to break a promise. These-” Chloe looked at Kaden, who Lydia had once described as the most monstrous french creature in town, with frightening strength, and then to Ariana, who was a werewolf, that Sammy had waxed lyrical about. “These people can help, but it’s going to hurt, okay? But you’re going to go first, both of you, and it’s going to be -ah,” Chloe curled in on herself as the promise against lies pulled a stitch in her side. “We’ll figure it out. She’s not coming back, leaving isn’t disappointing her.”

 “And it’s not over yet,” Kaden said quietly to Keen. He lingered behind in the foyer, let everyone go down ahead of him, hand hovering by his pistol, just in case. He knew there was no one else here, but something about this place made him worry that anything could jump out at them at any time. That it couldn’t be as simple as walking right out the front door. When they got down there by what he assumed was the Magritte, he turned the door handle and pushed. It was nearly silent, and yet the sound of the door swinging open on its hinges echoed around them. He took a step past the threshold of the house like it was simple. For him, it was. “She’s right,” he said after Chloe spoke. “This isn’t going to be easy. Even if Lydia’s gone and never coming back.” There was no guarantee this would work, that the promises wouldn’t hold post death. As far as he knew, they did. That’s what the fae all said, at least. Words were more powerful than mortality. “Is there, uh, any more inspiration outside? On the grounds, maybe?” he asked tentatively, trying to catch Chloe’s eye for some confirmation that he was on the right track. There wasn’t much left in the garden that wasn’t destroyed, not now. But that wasn’t the point. “Kelly? Are you okay to find out? Maybe take a look?” he asked, shifting his focus to her and tentatively holding out his hand. 

 The moment of truth was upon them. They were coming up on the door and this was where things would get difficult. Ariana took in a deep breath to keep herself steady as she spoke. “That could work, I know the promises are varied,” she said in a hushed tone mostly meant for Kaden and Agatha to hear. She stood closer to Agatha, but she hoped Kaden’s handy dandy hunter hearing would come into play here. “She usually makes them promise not to leave her home. Not to make any sounds when guests are present, they can’t even sneeze. She’ll turn anything they say that she can into a promise. I’m not sure what our work around should be.” 

 Agatha still didn’t understand how this worked, it was most likely hypnosis, but there was a way to go around those, as she’d found out earlier, as she shot Kaden without causing too much harm to him. As Ariana mentioned Lydia’s home, the detective had a small, and yet malicious smile. There might have been a way for them all to get out of here, and no one getting hurt, she thought to herself. She felt her heart lifting in her chest as she took a deep breath. “This is not her home anymore,” she glanced at Ariana, then at her coworker and added. “She left, and this is a crime scene. This place is now under custody of the police department,” her smile brightened and she gave Chloe a look full of hope, nodding at her.

 Kelly stared at Kaden’s hand, as he offered it, and took it cautiously. She was pretty sure it didn’t work like that, and one look at Chloe’s face suggested it wasn’t very convincing. But Ariana… Ariana just knew, apparently, she knew things about Lydia that Kelly hadn’t until it was way too late. Finally, she looked to Agatha. “It’s- A crime scene? But, I want.” Chloe swallowed. “She left. It’s not her home. I- okay.” She turned back to Kaden, grit her teeth, and tried to move. Her joints locked up, freezing her in the doorway.  “Help,” she breathed, her muscles beginning to burn as if she’d run a marathon rather than just walked down the stairs. Everything in her strained to stay inside the house, to drop his hand, to return to their bedroom and curl away from the world. It felt like it was breaking a promise, it felt wrong, even if this wasn’t Lydia’s home. She didn’t even know if her hesitation was psychological or the promise itself. It was embarrassing, all these people watching her. But suddenly her muscles moved and Kaden pulled and she had to put her foot down just so she wouldn’t fall on her face, and… she was outside. Kelly stared up at Kaden with the biggest look of confusion, then back through the door. “I’m… okay? I’m okay!”

 This all sounded way too easy. Kaden wasn’t sure if they could just walk out the door and be perfectly okay. Would Keen’s idea even work? He held his breath and waited, watching Kelly take tepid steps towards the door. It felt like she stood there forever. Maybe she couldn’t do it on her own. And when she asked for help, it was clear that she couldn’t. Help. He was trying, but he didn’t know if he was doing the right thing. That didn’t stop him from trying. He reached out and pulled her across the threshold. He braced himself for her to collapse into pain or try to run back, something, anything. “You’re okay?” he repeated. The tension held in his chest dissipated as relief started to wash over him. One down. This would work. They’d be okay. They could save them. “You’re going to be okay,” he assured her with a smile before looking back to see who was next. 

 A tiny ball dissolved in Chloe’s chest as Kelly’s eyes lit up properly in the outside floodlights. Kelly looked from the door to Kaden and the outside again. It would start to ache soon enough, she knew. Not the promise, perhaps, but biochemical need to be with Lydia. Chloe just didn’t point that out. She also didn’t point out that Kelly and Todd only had a couple dozen promises between them, far fewer things to trip over than Chloe’s hundreds of promises. She looked at Agatha briefly, and tried to match that smile with one of her own. Maybe Lydia being gone meant Lydia being dead. Chloe swallowed, and tried to smile even more brightly for Todd. “You next, tough guy.” She gave him a quick hug, just in case she didn’t make it to the other side with them. 

 Thankfully, Agatha seemed to say the right thing and with a little push, Kelly was over the threshold. Ariana felt like she could breathe a little easier. This could work. They were going to get everyone out of here. She wasn’t going to fail all of them the same way she failed Sammy. She just needed to keep herself steady and confident to give the other two the push they needed to get out of here. They were relying on her so she did her best to hide her shock. “You’re okay,” she said with a soft smile before turning to Todd. Chloe had given him a quick hug and she stood beside him. Ariana placed a hand on his shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze. “You got this, we’re almost there,” she explained and offered up her hand if he wanted to take it. 

 Listening intently to the others, Todd tried to reassure himself that they were right. This wasn’t Lydia’s home anymore, it wasn’t hers. It was a crime scene. And he’d be able to leave a crime scene, right? She didn’t live here, it wasn’t her property, it wasn’t hers anymore. She didn’t own this place and she didn’t own him. He watched, with bated breath, as Kelly stepped over the threshold and out into the yard. And, for a long moment, all eyes were glued on her. But, if the punishment was going to come, wouldn’t it have happened already? A rush of relief washed over him as Kelly celebrated. Swallowing, he nodded at the others around him. “I got this,” He mumbled, cheek pressed against Chloe’s head as she hugged her tightly. “I got this. We’re getting out of here. We’re getting out of here.” He said and looked at Ariana with a nod. 

 Todd took a deep breath, steadying himself. This wasn’t her home, it was a crime scene. It was a crime scene. Those were the words he kept repeating to himself as he leaped forward, forcing himself to push through the pain that threatened to bring him to his knees. It wasn’t hers, he wasn’t hers. He was going to be free, just like Kelly and then Chloe would join them and they’d all be free. He’d be able to tell his parents how sorry he was, he’d apologize to Winston, he’d tell them everything about what had happened, he’d make it up to Ariana for having to rescue him from this. He’d do so much, once he was free. And, as he staggered upright in the front yard, he looked around with wide eyes.

 But that’s not how Fae promises work.

 Excruciating pain stabbed through his chest, starting in his heart and exploding outwards. It felt like someone had injected liquid metal into his body, boiling hot, and burning him from the inside out. A choking scream escaped his lips as Todd’s knees buckled underneath him, unable to keep him upright. He collapsed onto his stomach, body shaking with tremors as his hands reached up to grip his skull. His head felt as though it was imploding, like someone had stuck his brain in a vacuum, like it was going to collapse in on itself. His fingers clawed at his chest, his forehead, scraping at the flesh in an attempt to relieve the pain. He scrabbled against the earth, screaming, weeping, bleeding as he tried to crawl back to the house. But, he’d broken his promise.

 With a shuddering gasp, Todd’s eyes rolled to the back of his head. A final violent tremor ran through his body and then, the DJ was no more.

 “You totally got this,” Ariana assured as he prepared himself to step outside of Lydia’s home. Kelly making it over the threshold had given her confidence that Todd would be okay. That he’d leave here and she could tell Winston they’d need to look after him from here on out. She’d be a better friend. She’d check in on him more and make sure no more vile women like Lydia went near him ever again. If she hadn’t completely erased the word from her vocabulary, she would have promised him as much. She stood just outside the doorway now, ready to give him a hand if needed. There was a momentary proud look on her face as he began to step out of the house that was quickly replaced with one of horror.

 “No,” Ariana whispered to herself, “No.” She quickly knelt down to try and hold Todd up, but the way he was clawing at his own chest made it impossible to do so. The pain on his face and in his screams was enough to make her feel sick. She reached out unsure of what to do. “Todd, no, breathe.” Come on, just breathe. Please don’t. “You’re over, it’s over, you’ll-” Her voice was strained and her hands felt useless trying to find a way to keep him upright. There had to be something she could do, but she was paralyzed by trying to find the answer, hands still extended hoping he’d reach for them and find a way to steady himself. Grip to her through the pain, she could take it. What she couldn’t take was what happened instead. 

 Defeat was evident in the way her features contorted on her face. Ariana dropped down to the ground beside Todd, hoping against all better judgment that this wasn’t it. That he just needed to be carried out of here. Her ears felt as if they were about to pop with the pressure that was building up as she bit back tears. Still, she listened for any sign of a heartbeat, but there was none to be found. Shaky hands reached down to feel for Todd’s pulse even though she knew better. She knew she failed Todd just like she had failed Sammy. “I’m so sorry,” she breathed out soft enough that no one with ordinary hearing would be able to hear. She was frozen in place, staring down at the damage as if she could will it to change. Will Todd to move again, to stand up and say this was all some sort of joke. She wanted to move, wanted to remember that Kelly and Chloe still needed her, but she couldn’t find it in her to stand back up. They were better off with Kaden and Agatha anyhow. All she seemed to do is make this whole thing worse. 

 Kelly watched Todd with wide eyes as Todd stepped over the door, her own smile cautiously watching him. For a second, when his foot touched the pavement, he was fine, and Kelly was about to be ready to celebrate with him when he contorted. She jumped back as he screamed, her hand flying over her mouth as he clutched at his head. “Do something!” She cried out, but stood frozen on the ground as Todd collapsed to the ground. “Do something!” He tried to crawl back, but it was too late. He shook, once, twice, as Kelly leant against 

Kaden and wept, but the silence after his last scream was so much worse. Watching Ariana, Kelly found the courage to move forward too, cracking her knees against the pavement as she knelt over him. “TODD!” Kelly shook his shoulders, and then did the only thing she could think of, a move half remembered from a training video she’d watched years ago.  Pounding on his chest, Kelly begged him to come back, or anything. 

 For all the misery in Kelly’s scream, the sound Chloe made was even more wretched. She choked and gagged after trying to scream herself, silent tears spilling down her face. “Don’t ever scream again,” Lydia had once told her, and Chloe had promised without hesitation, Sammy’s blood still soaking her clothes. Her tongue swelled up as if stung by a bee. Chloe clutched her chest until the coughing subsided, but when she looked up, Todd was already dead. “No,” Chloe breathed, sagging against the wall. Surrender was so much easier. “No, no.” She could clean it up. She could fix the door and sweep up the glass and make everything fine, so Lydia wouldn’t be upset. Todd wouldn’t have to bear the weight of Lydia’s wrath if Chloe was- She swallowed. Todd was dead. It was too late.

 Kaden stood and watched as Todd started to walk forward. He knew he shouldn’t be as hopeful as he felt, and yet, he was sure this would work. Up until the kid collapsed. Part of him wanted to reach out, but Ari was already there, so he held Kelly back instead for the moment. The last thing they needed was for her to go back into that place. And Ari had it. Didn’t she? He would be-- But he wasn’t fine. He seized and Kelly and Chloe screamed. Kaden wasn’t sure what he did because the world seemed to stop and stand still. His grip on Kelly fell and all he could do was watch as she and Ari tried to bring Todd back to life. The sounds finally hit his ears and the world was turning again. He didn’t need to feel his pulse, he saw Ari check it and he could hear that his heart was no longer beating. There was no more hope left for Todd. He thought about pulling Kelly away, Ari, too. But he thought better of it. There was nothing more he could do there and they were okay as they could be. But Chloe. What was going to happen to Chloe? His pulse spiked as he looked over at her. “Hey,” he said trying to catch her attention from the other side of the doorway. “Chloe, I know-- Don’t give up. Not yet. Don’t--” He wasn’t sure he was any help. His eyes darted to Agatha, hoping she might have an answer. Forcing Chloe out of the house seemed so much more dangerous now. But she couldn’t stay, could she? Putain. What did they do?

 All she could do was watch, watch Todd drop to the ground, Kelly beg, Chloe turn back to the state she found her in back in the office. She’d never been one to stand and watch as things happened before her, and yet, here she was completely speechless as she tried to make sense of what had happened here. Elation had given room to death and despair much too soon. If her heart once again felt heavy in her chest, she put it aside, refusing this desperate situation to take control of them all. If Kelly had managed to get out, then maybe Chloe would be fine, or maybe Agatha would regret this. Sourly. Gathering all the softness that she could muster, the detective squatted down, sitting just a little lower than Chloe, and with hope in her eyes, she looked straight into Chloe’s and reached for her hands, slowly. She would have usually gone straight to the other side of the door, see if she could do anything to help save Todd, but there was something inevitable, almost prophetic about the way he had died. Brutal, ruthless, with no chance of survival. Yet, Agatha believed. She looked at Chloe as someone who believed, and when she spoke, if it felt like walking on a line high above the ground, she made sure not to look down. “We’re going to try. You and I, we’re going to try, because we know she’s gone for good, and I know there’s a lot for you out there, so much more than in here. Think of all the places you’ll go, and see. The beauty,” there was a quiver in her voice the more she spoke, but she did not break. “Let’s try, please.”

 “I gave up years ago,” Chloe snapped at Kaden, instantly regretting her words as Kelly whimpered. She rubbed her face, trying to get the tears against her face. She pulled a face that she hoped looked like an apology to Kaden, but her gaze slid back to Todd, dead on the floor. Like Sammy, trying to escape in his own way. Sammy had meant to come back, but it hadn’t made any difference. Chloe had cleaned his brain off the wall because of it, and she had thought then that she was proud of him having tried to escape. Maybe a quick death was better than what Anneliese had had in the end. Taking Agatha’s hand, she stood up shakily. Every atom in her wanted to split itself into two: the part that needed to stay, and the part that had seen Lydia for the viper she had been from the start. She didn’t listen to Agatha’s pretty words. Pretty words held lies and half truths. Everyone was looking at Todd’s dead body, and wondering how hers would survive if his hadn’t. They all used different words, which to fae made all the difference, but Chloe could barely remember what words she’d used before this. Hell, a single tense could kill her or save her. She just… couldn’t say that. She couldn’t tell them that she’d resigned herself to dying in this dragon’s lair years ago. She couldn’t extinguish the hopes on her rescuers’ faces before trying.

  “Look away,” Chloe said to Kelly, and didn’t even try until Kelly had. She took a deep breath, nearly throwing up with the effort of pushing her muscles over the edge. It was like trying to get through tar. Maybe it wasn’t worth the fight at all. She could live here comfortably until her natural death, which was what Lydia would want. She could avoid the pain of breaking this promise. She grit her teeth. Life in a gilded cage was still caged. Then, like an elastic band snapping, she was over the threshold and felt nothing trying to pull her back in. Chloe inhaled the chilly, winter air, and thought maybe she should have grabbed a coat before all this. Then lightning tore through her mind, blood spilled on her face from her nose, and Chloe went the same way Todd had, right to the ground. 

 Everything around her kept moving, but Ariana remained frozen for a moment, staring at Todd’s lifeless body. If she stared at it long enough, maybe it would distort back to how it was supposed to be. Kelly and Chloe’s screams barely even registered in her ears until Kelly was beside her beating on Todd’s chest. Kelly. She’d wanted so badly for her to never know this kind of pain, so much so she put herself through more just to avoid it, but it had all been for not. Hadn’t they lost enough? Seeing Kelly’s panic awoke something in her and she took a shaky breath. She could be strong for right now. She could be strong for Kelly who needed someone to be strong for her. Kaden and Agatha were already with Chloe. After her failed attempt with Todd, it only seemed right to leave that to them. This, she could do. She placed her hand gently on Kelly’s shoulder and softly said, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, but he’s gone. We need to keep moving and help Chloe now, okay?” 

 “Well I haven’t,” Kaden replied, not combatively but with no room to argue. He knew hope hurt like hell. He didn’t know how long she’d been there or how she got there, but he could only imagine that trying to hold onto any spark of hope in the situation she found herself in would have torn her apart. He was getting used to holding onto hope for someone else, carrying it for them when they couldn’t bear to conceive of it. He’d do it for her now if he could. And thankfully, so would Keen. He was grateful she was there, keeping them level and together, standing beside Chloe. He nodded and waited on the other side of the door, just in case anything went wrong. Now that there was no doubt just how possible that was. 

 He watched her closely, monitored each step she took. He saw the struggle on her face, but there was a brief pause where she looked like she was just fine, like she would face the same fate as Kelly. And then the blood poured from her nose. “No. No, no,” he started and she tumbled down towards the ground. Kaden lunged out for her, catching her before she toppled to the ground, stumbling down to his knees as he did. “Chloe! Chloe, no,” he shouted, giving her one shake to try and revive her. She couldn't die. She couldn’t. They were going to fix this, they were supposed to save them. Losing Todd was horrible enough this-- “Chloe, please, don’t--” He could feel his own breaths get shallow and then remembered to check her pulse. Her heart had slowed, but it was still beating. “I think she’s alive. She should be--” Please wake up, please. These people deserved so much better and Lydia didn’t deserve a single victory, even in death. 

 For a short moment, Agatha had wondered whether Chloe would step over that threshold or not. Perhaps she should have, she thought to herself. No, no, absolutely not. A life spent in this house was not a life, and the detective was both proud and full of sorrow as she reflected on Chloe’s last action. No, this could not be her last. No, no, no, no. The detective repeated the word under her breath, exiting the house last to rush to Chloe’s side. “I’m calling an ambulance,” she declared, glancing at everyone around her as she dialled the number. She would call for backup next, but for now they had to save Chloe while they still could. “Put her on her side,” she commanded, standing up and walking aside to speak to the 

Operator. 

 “No,” Kelly said, tear tracks on her face. She looked over to Ariana. “No, I can’t- I don’t understand. I don’t understand what happened. He- he was fine. Chloe- Chloe, don’t!” She stared at Chloe before nodding and squeezing her eyes shut. She whimpered as she heard Kaden yell, her eyes flashing open to look at Ari. It wasn’t until Agatha said she was calling an ambulance that she dared look back okay. “Is it over?”

 There were warm arms around her. A chilly breeze tickled her cheeks. Grey winter light streamed through her eyelids. There was more pain than Chloe had felt in months, but there was more than that too. She blinked open her eyes, and tried to sit up. That- that was a bad idea. “I think- I think I’m going to stay down here,” Chloe murmured. She squinted up at the three of them, Agatha walking away with her phone, Kaden holding her and Ariana holding Kelly. That blue hair... “You’re the one who tried to save Sammy, aren’t you?” She asked Ariana softly, her voice croaking. Her eyes drifted back over to Todd, his eyes shuttered. No one home. She moved just enough to take his hand. There was so much pain. There was also something else. 

 Ariana couldn’t refrain from outwardly cringing when she saw the struggle Chloe went through upon exiting the home. Prison. Whatever someone would call it. This couldn't be happening. Lydia couldn’t be having this much of a victory. Not in death. Her stomach turned as she was unable to take her eyes off the scene in front of her. A comforting hand remained on Kelly’s shoulder though at some point she had to wonder which one of them she was even supporting. The blur of sounds around her stopped mattering as she remained hyperfocused on the sound of Chloe’s heartbeat that wasn’t quitting. She was still there. Still fighting. Hope wasn’t lost yet though the fear of it being crushed yet again was far from gone. An ambulance was on the way and Kaden was supporting Chloe, keeping her on her side. The storm had died down and she calmly said, “It’s over.” As much as it could be over. She knew better than to believe they wouldn’t be living with the scars long after this. “You’re free,” she assured Kelly as she still stared at Chloe. Her voice sounded strained, but Sammy’s name rang out in her mind. She nodded slowly and said, “I-- That’s me. I’m sorry I didn’t. But you’re getting out of here and she’ll never do this to anyone again.” She knew Athena would make sure of that. Everything still felt like hell and she could hear the sirens approaching in the distance, but it was over. This was finally over.  

 Kaden tried to get Chloe on her side before she pulled herself up. “Hey, wait, don’t--” Thankfully she figured it out before he had to pull her back down. He nodded at Keen as she went over to call 911. “We have to call in the death,” he added. It was meant to be nothing more than matter of fact, procedure. It hit him harder than he expected. They were supposed to save them. All of them. He wasn’t even sure if Chloe would remain okay. If she had broken free from all of the promises. But she was here. And breathing. And out of that prison of a house. He looked up at it, most of the windows broken or covered. It was shattered, just like the illusion of who Lydia was. Forever. He wanted to burn the place down, be rid of it and her once and for all. But they needed the evidence still left there. They’d make sure that no trace left of Lydia Griffin would be praised or lauded ever again. And make sure that Kelly and Chloe got justice they deserved, some compensation or retribution for this. And that meant leaving that awful place intact. “It’s over,” he repeated. “You’re safe,” he said, looking from Kelly back to Chloe. He hoped that was finally true. 

Returning to Chloe’s side, Agatha assured her that an ambulance would come soon, and that she would be taken good care of. Her eyes then drifted toward Kaden’s arm, then to him. A silent nod answering his demand, the detective once again stepped away from the rest of the group, this time calling the morgue. She looked away, the group fussing around Chloe, responding mechanically to the operator's injunctions on the other end of the line. A tear came to burn her cheek, then another. With an audible sniff, she turned her back to the others, and walked away a little further. Behind his back, she heard Kaden repeat: You're safe, and although she was often optimistic this time, the idea that this nightmare was over did not seem to satisfy. Not that she thought all was well that ended well, but because it was hard to believe until Chloe got out of the woods.

[youwantstubby]

Stubby had been left alone his first five days out of the hospital. Well -- alone wasn’t quite true, not with the 24/7 security detail that his father insisted stay posted up inside Stubby’s flat. But there had been no visitors, and frankly that was a relief. The worse of his withdrawal had passed at St. Mungo’s, but the headaches and the tremors and the nausea that lasted past St. Mungo’s surely would only have gotten worse if he’d had to deal with his parents or worse, Hestia’s positivity. Instead he’d slept most of them off for a few days that seemed to blur together and woken up feeling remarkably clear-headed. More than he had in a long time. His flat was quiet. All his mail deliveries had been forwarded to his parents’ house so there was no fan mail or copies of the Prophet or Witch Weekly with stories about what happened to “Ferdi.” 

There were no potions or liquor in his flat -- he’d drank all he had before he’d ended up passed out in that ditch. The events leading up to that moment were gone from his memory, but the desperation wasn’t. And it was still there, urging him to go out and get more potions, more alcohol, to fill the hole that hadn’t gone away. But his head wasn’t pounding like it did most mornings he woke up craving a drink. His body wasn’t aching. And he could still remember what the healers had told him, that if he kept drinking and taking potions it would kill him. This morning it was quiet, he was up at 6 am with a cup of coffee he’d made himself, he could see the sunrise through his kitchen window, and he couldn’t help thinking maybe he didn’t want to die today. Instead he took his favorite guitar from where it was displayed on his wall and sat down on his couch, strumming a few notes, putting melody to the lyrics he’d scrawled on the back of his letter to Hestia at the hospital. Then he was getting more parchment and expanding the words, tinkering with more verses and changing the chorus a few times, alternating between writing words and playing notes, lost in the process until a knock at the door startled him out of it.

Stubby looked around, disoriented as he realized from the shadows of the light on his walls that it was late afternoon. Oh. He considered ignoring the knock; he hadn’t been expecting anyone, nor was there anyone he wanted to see. Then the knock came again, more insistent. He looked at his security guard, surprised to see the one there had changed shifts at some point while Stubby had been absorbed in writing his new song. “Whoever it is, send them away,” he said, turning back to what was now a mess of parchment spread out over his coffee table. He couldn’t remember the last time he’s felt this absorbed in the process of songwriting -- or the last time he’d gone so long without thinking about where he was going to get his next drink or potion. 

And then his father’s voice came through the door. “I hope you’ve enjoyed your little vacation, Stubby, because it ends tonight. Your fans are asking too many questions and you’re not going to cost us the expense of another cancelled concert,” Sanford said as he stalked through the door, pausing as he took in the sight of Stubby with his guitar and parchment. His eyes narrowed. “What’s this?” He snapped. “Let me see.” Sanford didn’t wait before he snatched up a couple pieces of parchment and scanned over the words scrawled across them. “Wait, it’s not done yet--” Stubby started, but he was cut off as his father threw the paper down on the table with a scoff. “I thought I told you to stop writing this kind of nonsense, Stubby. This isn’t what your fans want. Playtime’s over, you’re due in your dressing room in 20 minutes.” 

A show. He had a show tonight. Of course he did. In an instant that familiar sensation crawled back over him, an empty feeling that started in his chest and spread over the rest of his body. It was accompanied by dread at the thought of standing on a stage, the bright lights beating down on him, belting out that bubblegum pop trash to another sold-out crowd. His hands felt clammy; he could feel his chest tightening. It had been a long time since he’d had a panic attack, but it had been a long time since he’d been sober enough to feel that same level of anxiety. He tried to take a breath, but his breathing felt shallow. “I can’t --” he said in a shaky voice that Sanford cut off with a derisive, “Pathetic,” as he pulled a vial of potion from his pocket and set it down on the table. Instantly Stubby’s eyes fixed on it. It shimmered an impossibly bright shade of red that Stubby hadn’t seen since Rich cut him off. Stubby’s reaction was instantaneous and overwhelming: his heart racing, his mouth watering, his eyes fixed on the shining liquid as it called out to him, singing promises of filling the hole inside of him. He needed it. But before he could reach for it another voice spoke up, so unexpected it distracted Stubby. 

“What the hell are you doing?” Stubby and his father’s heads turned sharply in unison to face his security guard, the one who Stubby could never seem to shake as easily as the others, even when he wanted to. “He just got out of rehab,” the guy said and Stubby stared at him in shock. The guards were not supposed to speak to Sanford Bishop, especially not to interfere in business matters. And what did he care whether Stubby drank a potion? 

“Excuse me?” Sanford said in a voice that was quietly seething. “I wouldn’t expect someone like you to understand what a performer needs, but I can assure you I know what’s best for my client.”

His client. Stubby was his client. Of course he was. A father wouldn’t be giving him potions after they’d almost killed him. But Stubby’s manager cared only about getting Stubby onstage to make him more money. Stubby reached for the vial as the hole inside him clawed at his insides. But he paused again in surprise when the guard spoke up a second time. “He almost died from that stuff, clearly you’re not concerned with what’s best for Stubby.” 

Did that just happen? Stubby’s eyes widened as he looked from the guard to Sanford. His father. Who clearly wasn’t concerned with what was best for him. Only what he could get from Stubby, just like everyone else. Sanford was seething, but Stubby spoke up before his father could. “I’m your son,” he said, his voice soft and pleading even as his hand holding the vial of potion trembled. He wanted it. It would make this all go away. Or maybe his father could make it all go away. “I’m not just your client,” he said. “I’m your son.” Please. 

Sanford’s face twisted into a sneer. “Your little stunt’s made you sentimental, has it?” Sanford sneered. “You are Stubby Boardman. So why don’t you fucking act like it?” 

Stubby couldn’t take it anymore. Whatever else his father was shouting at the guard felt far away as Stubby spared one last glance at the bloke and then downed the whole vial of potion his father had brought. The relief was instantaneous. The clawing sensation inside him dulled, the trembling ceasing as if he’d been wrapped in a blanket. Everything felt lighter. Farther away. Nothing compared to this feeling and it had been too long since Rich cut him off. But it wasn’t enough. “I need more,” he said, his focus sharpened on Sanford now. Sanford pulled another vial from his pocket and Stubby’s eyes locked in on it. “It’s yours,” he said, but he pulled it out of Stubby’s reach as he grabbed for it. “After you get to the show.” 

The show. Of course. The show. And this was how Stubby always got through his shows, wasn’t it? “Fine,” he said, and he got to his feet. 

________________________________________________________

Stubby had never noticed how even before Rich cut him off, the other had been keeping an eye on his intake. Giving him smaller doses of the good stuff. Never a full vial all at once. Definitely never a second shortly after. And then there’d been the whiskey backstage. Some other drugs one of the drummers brought. Stubby was flying higher than he’d been in ages. He was numb. He was elated. He was nothing. He was everything. He took to the stage wild-eyed, his body going into autopilot as he sang through the first few numbers, the potions still coursing through his veins as the crowd cheered and called his name. That was its own kind of drug. They wanted him. They all wanted him. All Stubby wanted was to keep feeling like there was something inside of him, not just the ever-expanding emptiness that was always clawing at his frayed edges. “Thank you, London!” He shouted after only three songs, stumbling offstage and pushing past a couple of startled and confused stagehands and production assistants in the wings and grabbing the bottle of whiskey he’d left in the green room, downing another few swigs as he heard his backup singer saying something to the crowd about ‘a classic Stubby Boardman prank.’ A second later and a stage manager was snatching the whiskey from his hand and pushing him back toward the stage. “No,” Stubby pleaded. “I need it. Just another --” He grabbed the bottle and downed the rest of the contents, burped loudly in the stage manager’s face, and then stumbled back onto the stage to a sound of thunderous applause. They still loved him. Of course they did. He grinned a delirious grin and stepped back up to the mic. “Gotcha,” he said into it, as if he had indeed planned a hilarious fake departure, and the crowd ate it up just like they ate up everything he gave them. They took and they took and they’d keep taking until there was nothing left of him. 

He strummed the guitar around his neck, playing the first song of their set, realizing too late the other band members hadn’t joined in. “What the hell are you doing? We’re on song four,” the bass player hissed at him. Stubby laughed into the microphone. “Song four!” He said, instantly playing that one without cueing the rest of the band members like he was supposed to. They caught up to him and the crowd seemed eager to overlook the weird moment. They’d paid too much to see him, after all, to dwell on any hiccups. Only what happened halfway through the song was not so much a hiccup as Stubby stopping abruptly, lifting his guitar strap from around his shoulder and gently setting it down gently even as the rest of the band kept playing, shooting him death glares, and then shuffling a few steps over to vomit on an extremely expensive piece of sound equipment. The bassist groaned and left the stage, but Stubby did his best to straighten up and said. “I’m okay!” As he heard the crowd murmuring. “Don’t worry, London!” He slurred out the words into the  bassist’s mic. “I wrote a new song, just for you!” he moved to the keyboard, shouldering the keyboard player over, who rolled his eyes, shook his head and said, “I’m not dealing with this shit anymore,” and then stalked off the stage. Stubby was unconcerned as he started playing some upbeat chords. “This is what you want!” He sang into the microphone as he played the bubblegum pop notes. “But it’s all bullshit!” The drummer stalked off next and Stubby let out a loud cackle. “This was all rehearsed,” he was still singing, playing the keyboard with only one hand now so he could turn and start banging on the cymbal of the drumset with his other hand. “Everything is fake fake fake fake fake FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE,” he played the same note over and over again, banging on the cymbal, going from singing to shouting the word over and over again. When he finally stopped, he looked out into what was now a dead silent crowd. He laughed. The stage lights were blinding, obscuring all the faces in the crowd. Stubby’s stomach heaved again and he couldn’t even turn away before he vomited on the keyboard. Normally when he got wasted to the point of illness, throwing up, while unpleasant, made him feel better. Tonight he felt worse afterwards. He felt woozy. He blinked rapidly as the lights became spotty, then they dimmed. He swayed on the spot. He leaned forward into the mic. “Help me,” was the last thing he said before he lost consciousness.

[cxptain-capsicle]

Hello! Could you write something using Niall's song "New Angel"? Like Peter/Tom having a recent breakup,maybe not sooo recent,like 1 month? And finally going out with his friends,he sees the reader and it's like well maybe it's time to get my shit together bc holy shit she looks like an angel.

New Angel

Pairings: Tom Holland x Reader

I was supposed to see Niall in concert and I’m so upset cause I bet it’ll get canceled, I was so excited :((( this is also my first song request and Tom imagine so this is new territory but I actually really like this one

I also added Tom to my Taglist so if you would like to add yourself please go to my bio or send me an ask/message

It’s been a few months now since you and Tom broke up. It wasn’t a clean split at all, there was fighting and yelling and Haz and your friend, (Y/f/n) were dragged into it. Tom had been busy and wrapped in work which you understood but it had gotten to the point where that excuse wasn’t cutting it anymore. Every time you were together you’d argue and when he was in town you’d both come up with excuses about why you couldn’t hang out. Tom had started it but after being ditched and yelled at so many times you started to put up walls.

Too many hours in the night

Every second is about her

Once the break up happened Tom was happy, he felt free but now he began to realize that maybe he wasn’t as happy as he thought. It was dark as he said in his bed, alone and with a cold spot where you used to sleep. He thought he was totally over you but once mutual friends started telling him how much better you were doing he realized that part of him still wanted you to love him because maybe he still loved you.

“Come on, get up!” Harrison’s voice shocked Tom out of his daze as he was hit in the face with a pillow.

“What the fuck?” Tom looked at his assaulter. “When did you get here?”

“Doesn’t matter, get up we are leaving.” Harrison now was rummaging through Tom’s closet and throwing some things onto the bed for him to put on. “We’re going out.”

Too many feelings in the light

I just need a new distraction

“Don’t worry Tommy, we’ll find you a nice girl to have a few drinks with and you’ll be done with this whole Y/n thing.” Harrison wrapped an arm around Tom’s shoulder and earned a glare. “Oh come on, we all liked Y/n but that ship has sailed by now don’t you think?”

Maybe Haz was right, maybe you had moved on and it’s time that he did too.

“Okay fine, but just a few drinks and that’s it.” Tom finally gave in hoping his best friend really did know what was best for him. Tom certainly didn’t.

Tom loved you so much, he had no idea where things went so wrong but he knew it was his fault. You were an angel, kind, selfless, beautiful, loving, and he didn’t treat you like one. He swore he would give anything to turn back time and get a second chance to treat you like the angel he knew you were. 

I need a new angel

The touch of someone else to save me from myself

“Out with the old, in with the new, we are replacing bad memories with good ones tonight.” Haz patted Tom’s shoulder

Haz told the driver to pull over in front of an Irish pub that Tom remembered all too well. It was small and quaint, somewhere people go to hang out, not just drink. This pub was where he had met you for the first time. Haz had pulled him there similar to how he was tonight, the two of them sat in the corner booth, both holding beers and watching the crowd of people dancing to a song that was playing overhead. When the song ended the group receded back to their booths and it gave him a clear shot of the girl at the bar. She was sat with a friend wearing a dark purple dress that wasn’t too short and also not considerably tight and drinking a drink that was an unnatural pink color, Tom would later learn how you resented wearing short, tight dresses and strong alcohol.

The boys stepped out of the car and went into the bar. They both ordered a beer and went to the only booth left, the booth that was sat in the far corner of the bar. It was pretty late so by now the people who had been here for hours were beyond drunk. People were singing and dancing to the song playing on the stereo. Their singing almost completely drowned out the music but Tom heard the lyrics they were singing:

Each time I close my eyes

She’s in there running wild

I’m hoping you get her out of my mind

I need a new angel

I need a new angel

Tom chuckled at how it almost exactly described his situation. Tom and Haz had both finished their beers by the time the song ended. Tom stood up, offering to go get another for the both of them but was stopped in his tracks when the crowd cleared and he got a view of the girl at the bar. She sat next to her friend laughing as she sipped from a bright pink drink and wearing a plum dress that flared slightly as the waist and hit above her knees. 

“Oh shit, that’s bad luck.” Harrison sat up in the booth as he recognized the girl as well.

“No, I’ve got it,” Tom said in a trance-like state as he pulled himself up to the girl. As he saw her laughing and smiling with her friend he realized how different she looked than she did at the end of their relationship. He also recognized that smile from the first time they went on a date, their first kiss, first time saying “I love you” and he was determined to be the cause of that smile again. So as he approached you, trying to come up with the perfect thing to say that would convince you to try and forgive him for everything he had done, he came up short and when you turned to see him in front of you he sputtered out the first thing he could think of. 

“Hey, Angel.” Because he didn’t need a new angel, he needed his angel. 

@futuremrspeterparkerholland @zabdisamor @ouchiemyfinger @peterpandco @delicately-important-trash @whatdafricklefrackle @saturn-aka-six  @teellmeyourwish @fearlessprncss

[writingsorrantings]

Friends Don’t Look at Friends That Way Pt 3 (jj x reader)

(Final chapter)

Word Count: 2k

Warnings: Alcohol mentions, light mention of abuse, angst 

Music Rec: Mean It - Gracie Abrams (OOF not a perfect fit but damn)

Part One  Part Two

Recap: “She reached into the backseat and handed you the bottle you had snagged earlier and after spinning the top off you took your first of many shots that night. “You deserve to have a good night. Without JJ. Let’s fucking do this.”

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After a week of feeling nothing but stress and hurt, you were more than happy to take a break from feeling anything at all, including all of your limbs. You had never been as drunk as you were tonight, but you wouldn’t consider yourself trashed yet. You and Kie had only been at the beach for about a half hour, staying regulated to the mob of dancing people, yet you still hadn’t run into any of the guys. Although you missed John B and Pope you were in no rush to see JJ tonight. That being said, you couldn’t wait for him to see you. At this point most of the anger you had felt had dissipated and you were focused solely on having a good time no longer needing the help of the boy you thought was your best friend. 

Another song had started and it was one of your favorites. The lights hung up around the beach were blurred as you spun, hands in the air and hips moving. You had ditched your shoes a while back and you sunk your toes into the still warm sand smiling because you felt great. The thoughts that had been plaguing you were replaced with nothing but the lyrics of the song booming from the speakers and the hope of food soon. Vodka and beer had done their job tonight. You were brought back to reality seconds later when a tall body pushed against your back and an arm was secured around your shoulders. You tensed up, but kept dancing. Hell, you were drunk and maybe the guy was cute.

 “Hey (y/n)! Where’ve you been? We missed you!”

 The drunken words of John B. floating into your ear made you soften into his embrace gently hitting his chest for getting your hopes up. You both remained arms around each other as you made your way to get another drink. Leaning on each other for balance, the only way you could describe it was blind leading the blind, but it felt nice to stumble around with your friend clinging to you.  

“Livin’ and breathing babe, just livin’ and breathing.”

“And drinking apparently.” John B. chuckled at his own joke stopping only to continue his questioning. “What’s really going on? I mean you went AWOL, JJ’s been tripping shit, and even Pope is weirder than usual. Is it something I did?” John B. knew what it was about, but even with a mind clouded with cheap beer, he knew that you would confess to him before you ever let him blame himself. 

“No, no! B. it has nothing to do with you, I’ve missed you soooo much.” You cringed at the prominent slurring of the words. “I love you John B. you are the greatest…I just...JJ has an issue with me and I don’t know what to do. I mean he won’t talk to me and I… I wish I was mad, but honestly I just miss him.” 

“JJ is a dumbass, (y/n), you know sometimes he just gets like that.”

“Yeah, I know. It’s just never with me.”

John B. started to get frustrated. He loved you because you were a part of his found family. It was complete bullshit that JJ’s stubborn ass had not only separated you from the group, but also had deeply hurt your feelings and John wouldn’t stand for that. 

“C’mon let’s go dance. We can have fun.” he said as he pushed your hair back smiling. You both downed your freshly filled drinks and  made your way back to your previous spot.

JJ was the polar opposite of you, his mood worsening by the minute but he wouldn’t let that stop him. He decided to stay towards the edges of the crowd, finding a girl every so often that he would begin to flirt with. He had already talked to about four girls, but each time proved less fruitful than the last. The latest tourist he had sat down with was talking to him about something, but JJ could not be less bothered with it. It wasn’t that he was trying to ignore her, but when he saw you and John B. dancing in the crowd all he could hear was a ringing in his ears. After a week of doing everything in his power to compartmentalize his emotions for you, pandora’s or in this case JJ’s box went flying open and all of the feelings and memories came back. The tourist noticed he wasn’t listening and huffed carrying herself over to another attractive boy and JJ didn’t even flinch. 

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. He wanted nothing more to replace John B. and dance with you. Shit he’d even settle for just sitting on the beach, no words, just enjoying each other’s presence. He couldn’t deny it, you looked great. Oh god, his eyes made their way to your almost bare back, only a small string tied holding the top around you. Continuing his gaze downward, he focused on your ankle to find that you were still wearing the anklet that he stole for you about two years back. His eyes flitted back up when you flipped your hair, the loose beachy waves bouncing back into place below your shoulders and his fingers itched to go over and push the one stray behind your ear so he could see your smile better. Braces had corrected your horrendously crooked teeth when you were younger, but one tooth on the bottom shifted ever so slightly. No one could see it unless you were truly smiling, not just faking it. JJ was the first to notice the tooth and quickly figured out this secret. He decided to keep his little discovery to himself. Next he admired your subtle freckles that dusted your cheeks and nose. You were practically glowing. And that hurt like a bitch. It just proved his point that you were better off without him. Yet, before he knew it his feet were carrying his alcohol riddled body towards your dancing figure unsure of what he was planning on doing once he reached you. 

Out of nowhere you feel someone’s eyes on you and you quickly glance to see JJ is staring at you from where he is seated and you knew that your plan was working. His face was soft, jaw slack and he had a hand tugging at his hair.  You quickly put your focus back on Kie and John B., but not even a minute had passed before JJ was in front of you an unreadable expression on his face. You felt like you were going to shit yourself(not really but frankly you were looking for any way out of this situation.) 

“hey”

Your brain was going a hundred miles a minute but you wouldn’t let him see that.

“hey”

JJ couldn’t will his voice to be steady so he settled for a head gesture to a quieter place outside the crowd and put out his hand for you to take. You glanced at his hand dumbfounded, but your composure remained steady as you pushed past his hand to head outside the dancing mob. He hurt your feelings. You’re talking to get closure. Answers. Nothing else. You sat down on a log and JJ carefully sat down next to you, neither of you looking at the other, instead focusing intently on the waves in front of you. Gave you a feeling of dejavu, but the pit in your stomach reminded you it wasn’t.

 “How are you?” JJ said, taking the lead in the conversation.

“What do you think?”

“I...I’m sorry (y/n)--”

“--Don’t be sorry, I’m fucking fantastic actually. Life gets a lot better when people stop pretending to give a shit.”

“(y/n), come on that’s not fair. You know I care.”

A memory of JJ consoling you in the middle of the night hit you like a ton of bricks. You had gotten into a fight with your parents over the immense pressure they put on you to perform. They were so intent on you being successful, the need to be perfect was always present in your mind and JJ was very understanding. He was one of the few to check up on you, the girl who was always there for everyone else. That night he held you while you were sobbing and crumpled on the floor. He never told you but that night his dad had hit him a few times, yet he still took care of you physically and mentally. Despite the aching in the bruised shoulder you were leaning against, he stayed still only moving to slightly rock you and kiss your head. After you had calmed down and helped onto the bed, he grabbed your pj’s for you to change into while he snuck downstairs to get you a glass of water, an Advil, and ice cream. When he came back up, your head was propped up on his shoulder while you ate and watched Netflix.

Ouch... how could two people go from that to this? No! No. Don’t let him do this. Care?! No he cared! Cause if he still did he would at least talk to you!

“How would I know? You haven’t talked to me.” 

JJ didn’t know how to respond. You were right. No questions asked. God he loves you so much but he can’t risk hurting you anymore than he already has.

With no pause, his response came out in a whisper, “I’ll always care about you (y/n). No matter what.”

“So then what happened? Why…I just don’t know... Did I do something?” you said, the alcohol pushing you to form incoherent but honest sentences. At this point you had shifted your body to face him and all bets were off. Tears had filled your eyes as you prepared for the worst. 

JJ mimicked your body language and grabbed your hand as if to make sure he got his point across while saying “no” forcefully. He wasn’t aggressive, rather he was just intense and his eyes bore into your own matching that energy. At this point you were frozen. It just doesn’t make sense. How could he ignore you for a week with no reason, but look at you like that. 

“JJ. Just tell me. Whatever it is, I’m here and you know that.”

He wouldn’t. He couldn’t. It would mess up everythi-- “I love you.”

Your lips parted and your eyes grew wide. You and JJ were always close, but even as friends you guys had found your way to maneuver your way around those words, so you knew what he meant. You couldn’t take your eyes off of him, but his eyes were darting around focusing on anything other than your own. 

“Fucking hell JJ…Wait is this why...You ignored me because of this?” you chuckled. Before he had time to misinterpret it you continued, “JJ I love you too. I was going crazy without you. I was so scared you had found out and were never gonna talk to me again.” 

“God (y/n) you just.. I mean I just didn’t--don’t want to hurt you.”

“And you thought this was a good idea?” At this point you were both laughing and leaning against each other. 

JJ sat back up facing you and then glanced down at your lips and then back up at your eyes. For once he was afraid of making the first move. He would only do this if you wanted to. You wouldn’t wait a second more slowly bringing your lips to meet his own and dove your fingers into his hair as he held your hip under your shirt gently squeezing. As you pulled away all you could do was smile and JJ was the same.

“Can’t tell you how long I’ve waited to do that. I mean tonight you looked so good I couldn’t---” JJ was interrupted by John B. as your three friends approached.

“---Can’t be much longer than we waited. Shit, you finally made a good choice.” 

JJ tossed an arm around you pulling you to his chest as you all laughed.Your friends joined you on and around the log passing a cup around laughing and singing happy to finally be together again. JJ leaned closer and put his lips right next to your ear and whispered.

“Yeah, I think I did.”

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And that’s a wrap!! Thank you so much everyone who left notes and comments it really inspired me to write more so I really do appreciate it. The quarantine has been difficult, but getting kind messages from you all has been so helpful. Hope you are all doing well. Let me know if you have any requests. Thank you guys!!!

@ ashhh27, @sarahsmaybank​, @tempestades-de-verao​

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

Eccentricity [Chapter 2: You Can Run Around Infinite In My Head]

Series Summary: Joe Mazzello is a nice guy with a weird family. A VERY weird family. They have a secret, and you have a choice to make. 

Potentially a better love story than Twilight (we’ll let @killer-queen-xo​ decide when it’s all said and done 😉).

Chapter Title Is A Lyric From: Rome by Dermot Kennedy.

Chapter Warnings: Language, mentions of violence. 

Other Chapters (And All My Writing) Available: HERE

Tagging: @queen-turtle-boiii​ @bramblesforbreakfast​​  @killer-queen-xo​​ @maggieroseevans​​ @culturefiendtrashqueen​​ @imnotvibingveryguccimrstark​​ @escabell​​ @im-an-adult-ish​​ ​ @queenlover05​​ @someforeigntragedy​​ @imtheinvisiblequeen​​ ​ @seven-seas-of-ham-on-rhye​​ @deacyblues​​ ​ @tensecondvacation​​ ​ @brianssixpence​​ 

Please yell at me if I forget to tag you! 💜

Missing In Action

I wish she would stop staring at me.

Lucille sat at the Lees’ usual table and apathetically picked through a heaping salad. (Friday was salad bar day, which I appreciated considerably more than the chicken finger obsession that marred Mondays at Calawah University.) Every once in a while, Rami nudged her and Lucille would spear a cherry tomato with her fork and bite it in half with perfectly even, white teeth. But her large blue-green eyes—they reminded me of webs of seaweed tumbling in the cold, frothing La Push waves—always found their way back to me, strangely focused, inquisitive, perhaps accusatory.

Ben probably told them how much he hates me for whatever nebulous reason and now they all hate me too and I’m going to spend the next two years being death-glared by five ridiculously attractive and somewhat incestuous foster kids.

Chemistry was a three times a week class. Ben hadn’t shown on Wednesday, and I was 99% sure he would skip again today. I spotted him around campus periodically, always from a distance: dropping quarters into a vending machine, clandestinely vaping behind dorm buildings (what self-respecting pre-med student VAPES?!!), browsing YouTube videos in the library next to a tower of unopened textbooks, biology and chem and physics and calculus. He wasn’t home, he wasn’t sick; there was no attempt made to construct any sort of pretext. He was patently avoiding me.

I stabbed moodily at the serrated disks of cucumber in my salad. Jessica was blathering away about the latest season of The Bachelor and ranking the contestants’ eyebrows from best to worst. “...Like seriously, has she never heard of microblading?!”

“For real,” Angela offered, not especially invested but forever a good sport.

Lucille’s eyes settled on me again as she sipped a cup of steaming tea, staring until her forehead crinkled with the effort, staring hard, almost leering.

“What’s her problem?” I muttered.

Jessica shot a glance towards the Lee table and slurped her Sprite. The great mystery surrounding her potential Mormon-ness persisted. “Who? Lucy?”

Only Lucille’s friends called her Lucy. Jessica, a shameless aspiring socialite, presumed she was everybody’s friend unless they explicitly informed her otherwise, which of course no one ever did.

“Yeah,” I answered glumly.

“Maybe it’s your dress.”

“My dress? What’s wrong with my dress?”

Jessica wrinkled her nose and surveyed me as if I were a bug, and not a cute bug like a roly-poly bug or The Very Hungry Caterpillar or whatever. Like a really hideous bug. Like one of those spider-cricket hybrid things that hopped straight out of a hell dimension and into the dark, drippy corners of your basement. “It’s, like, very 1960s. But not in a sexy Woodstock way. In a ‘I’m about to join a hippie murder cult’ way.”

“I got it at TJ Maxx. It was on sale.”

Jessica snorted. “Probably for a reason.”

“That’s it. I’m giving all the hippies in my new murder cult your address.”

She and Angela laughed. Mike and Eric, the missing pieces of our daily lunch puzzle, were preoccupied with a campus protest to convert fried fish day (Thursdays) into tacos day. I sympathized with their efforts, but didn’t feel that my one-week tenure as a Calawah University student gave me much right to go around overhauling the dining hall schedule.

“I doubt she’s actually offended by a dress,” Angela said, nibbling on French fries that shed grains of salt like snowflakes.

Jessica sighed dreamily. “But Lucy’s just so fashionable...and that accent...” She drifted off into some daydream which began—I could only assume—with Lucy’s invitation to go shopping together and concluded with marrying Ben on some lush tropical island in the South Pacific.

Lucille was definitely fashionable, especially today: short black dress with sheer sleeves that ran to her fragile wrists, black polka dot tights, black heeled oxfords, dangling ruby earrings like beads of blood. She would have blended in perfectly at Paris Fashion Week. Rami was wearing a cardigan and khakis, per usual; Joe was in dark fitted jeans and a roomy U Chicago hoodie despite the fact that Forks was at minimum a thirty-four hour drive from the Windy City. What did Angela say his major was? Finance? No, Mathematical Economics. So he’s probably aiming at Chicago for an MBA or Econ PhD someday. Angela had told me that Joe was wicked smart. He better be if he’s entertaining fantasies of grad school at the University of Chicago.

Scarlett had come straight from Fencing Club and was wearing bright pink yoga pants and a t-shirt with the sleeves cut out, sprinkling Hot Cheetos into her open mouth, her blonde hair secured in a tight French braid. You know those girls who are so irrationally, gluttonously, unfairly beautiful that it doesn’t seem possible the genetic lottery could spit out so many winning numbers at once, and you comfort yourself with the certainty that there must be some set of circumstances that would level the playing field—I bet she looks like anyone else without all that makeup, she just has a really good sense of style and knows how to maximize her assets, there are definitely some goofy oversized ears hiding beneath that hair and that’s why she always wears it down—and then one day you run into them wearing sweatpants and a ponytail in the tampon aisle at Walmart and they’re still so perfect it stings you, baffles you, makes you feel like there must have been some divergence in the evolutionary chain because there’s no freaking way you’re the same species? Yeah, Scarlett was one of those girls. Scarlett was the queen of those girls.  

Ben was conspicuously absent from the table.

Scarlett’s pink leopard-print iPhone rang and she answered. “Hello?” She turned to Joe. “Dad says you left your phone at home. Do you need it?”

Joe was gnawing his way through his third slice of pepperoni pizza. “No, I’m good, thanks though.”

Scarlett relayed the message. “Dad says he’s going to bring it by just in case.”

“Oh my god, ScarJo, I’m fine! Tell him not to!”

“Dad says he doesn’t trust you and he’s going to be here in fifteen minutes. He’s also bringing the Game Theory homework you left by the hot tub.”

Joe groaned and rolled his lively dark eyes as Rami grinned at him; Lucille was still watching me and entirely oblivious.

“Isn’t it weird that Ben and Lucille have accents?” I asked Jessica. “That they’re from the U.K.? I didn’t think fostering kids was an international thing.”

“It’s not that weird. Dr. Lee is British too. Maybe there’s some kind of exchange system, I don’t know. But you know what I do know?”

“What?” Now my interest was piqued.

She smiled. “That the British accents are hot.”

“Ugh,” I exhaled involuntarily.

“Please get a hobby,” Angela begged Jessica. “Start a YouTube channel. Make care packages for orphans. Grow marijuana. Adopt a cat. I have a shift at the animal shelter this Sunday morning, you want to come with me?”

“Sorry, can’t. I have a temple thing.”

Temple on Sunday. The mystery is solved. She’s a Mormon for sure. I mentally resolved not to let her set me up with anyone unless I was still single on Valentine’s Day. Which, obviously, assuming I’m not dead in a ditch somewhere, I will be.

I gathered up my trash and slung my backpack over my shoulder. “Okay, well this has been a bizarre lunch to be completely honest, and now I have to go to Chemistry so I’ll see you later and hopefully we can brainstorm some more alternatives to Jessica’s current life trajectory on Monday. Because I am not looking forward to being a bridesmaid in these impending Lee nuptials.”

“Oh please!” Jessica lamented. “He doesn’t even know I exist. You, on the other hand...”

I scoffed. “Yeah, he wants to kill me. I truly have a gift.”

They waved as I left. I could feel Lucille’s eyes on me until I reached the door.

Sure enough, Ben wasn’t in Chemistry. I tried not to notice. I drew my atoms, wrote my equations, took my notes diligently and in my favorite sky blue ink. But I felt the emptiness in the chair next to me like a black hole, like an immense and dragging weight, like a snag in the fabric of all those interwoven strands of physics that orchestrate the universe like an immortal puppeteer. Why can’t I forget this guy? Why do I still feel like I’ve met him before?

Halfway through class, I hauled my emergency sweatshirt out of my backpack and pulled it on over my dress, floral and flowing and golden yellow like the sun, the sun that never shines here in Forks. I had liked it plenty under the florescent lights of the fitting room at TJ Maxx, and I had still liked it this morning; but Jessica’s words hummed around in my skull like wasps. The zipper of the sweatshirt was broken, but it accomplished the task of obscuring my dress well enough.

After Chemistry, I journeyed to the campus library to find a book I was supposed to read and present for a different class. I looked it up in the computer catalogue, spent an embarrassingly long time trying to figure out how the Dewey Decimal System works, eventually wound up finding the book on the highest floor of the library...and, to add a little extra peril to the mission, on the highest shelf. The book mocked me from its lofty, unattainable stronghold. The title was embossed in gold letters down the crimson spine. The Walruses And Me: A Transformative Experience. Idiotic title, I’m aware. It’s about some marine biologist who spent months alone in the Arctic studying the lifecycles of walruses. A noble pursuit, sure, but still a terrible title.

There wasn’t a chair or stepstool in sight. I tested my weight by stepping up onto the second-lowest shelf. The metal immediately squealed and shifted in protest. I retreated back down to the carpet, defeated by gravity. I scowled up at the book and sighed melodramatically. Ugh.

“Need something?”  

I spun around to see Joe in his University of Chicago hoodie and pale flawless skin and intangible magnetism, that bewildering trademark Lee ethereality. I instinctively crossed my arms, clutching the sleeves of my sweatshirt, shrinking inwards like a startled armadillo in the Arizona desert.

“Are you, uh, anemic...?” he ventured.

“Oh no, I’m not cold. I’m just trying to hide my dress. My friend said it was too hippie-murder-cult 1960s.”

I figured he’d laugh, make a snide comment, maybe just blink in confusion. Instead, he glimpsed down at my dress—what could still be seen of it, anyway—and shook his head. “The neckline isn’t right for the 60s. And you seem like you’ve showered at least once in the past two weeks, so definitely not a hippie.”

I smiled, completely unexpectedly. “I didn’t realize Econ majors knew anything about leftist counterculture.”

“Disparaging it is our favorite pastime. Are you trying to get a book or are you just disrespecting university property for entertainment?”

I pointed. “The big red one.”

“The Walruses And Me...?”

“I know, it’s a horrible title. Not my personal preference. It’s for a class.”

“Bestiality 101?”

“Good guess. Marine Mammals.”

“Ahhh.” He glanced up and down the aisle, tapped his chin with agile fingers, pondered something I wasn’t privy to. “Turn around for a second.”

“What? Why?”

He waved his hand mysteriously in front of his grinning face. “It’s a magic trick. I’m going to make your problem disappear.”

“You can’t climb that,” I warned. “You’ll fall and break your neck. Or you’ll knock the whole shelf over and cause a tragic domino effect and the university will withhold your diploma until you pay them restitution.”

“I’m extremely athletic.”

“Are you sure?” I appraised him with exaggerated skepticism for comedic effect. “My dad refers to you only as the spindly annoying Lee.”

Oh my god, WHY did I say that?

Now he would definitely hate me. Now I’d have two mortal enemies on one campus. I mentally calculated how humiliating it would be to transfer to some Florida college, any Florida college, after only one week at Calawah. Hi mom, yeah I’m coming to live with you and Paul, a gang of hot pasty foster kids wants to slaughter me.

Instead, Joe threw back his head and cackled wildly. A librarian—mid-fifties, angry red hair from out of a box, fuzzy cat sweater—glared into the aisle and shushed him.

“Chief Swan...he actually...he calls me that? Really?!” Joe managed, wiping his leaking eyes. “That’s hilarious. I’m so glad my life is in his hands. Okay seriously, turn around.”

“Why would you help me?” I asked suspiciously.

“That’s just what I do. I’m a friendly guy.”

“This friendliness must not run in the family.”

Again, Joe’s cheerful demeanor didn’t falter. “You mean Ben? Forget about Ben, he hates everyone. Don’t take it personally.” Then he added: “Plus, as I’m sure you know, we’re not biologically related. No overlapping genetic material whatsoever. I didn’t get the male supermodel gene, he didn’t get the irresistibly charming gene, life’s not fair but the world keeps spinning.”

“It sure does,” I agreed softly. Unexpected wisdom from my new favorite Lee. I turned away from him. “Fine, I’m not looking, go ahead and dazzle me with your supernatural friendliness—”

“Done.”

“What?” I whirled around. Joe held The Walruses And Me in his hand. “How...did you...?!”

He passed me the book as I sputtered incoherently. “I told you. Magic trick.”

“I don’t....?!” I gawked up at the top shelf, at Joe, back to the top shelf. Sure enough, the space where The Walruses And Me once lived was now just a vacant slit in the row of dusty books. How could he have climbed up there that quickly? How could I not have heard anything? “The shelves didn’t even creak,” I murmured shakily.

“Yes, well, that’s due to my conveniently spindly physique.” Joe winked. “Any other problems I can help you solve at the moment, Baby Swan?”

“No. And don’t call me Baby Swan, or I’ll push this whole bookshelf over and tell the feisty librarian lady you did it.”

“That’s cold, ma’am.”

I liked that Joe didn’t make me feel like Ben did: unworthy, unloved, infuriating. Joe made me feel something else, something lighthearted, casual, buoyant; like the world didn’t have anything in it worth worrying about, regretting, agonizing over. Like unadulteratedly myself was all I ever needed to be.

I heard a muted buzz and Joe slid his iPhone out of his jeans pocket. Dr. Lee must have successfully delivered it. “Whoops, I forgot that Ordinary Differential Equations existed. Got to go. See ya.”

“Bye,” I replied. And then Joseph Lee was gone, very quickly, a little too quickly, the same way that Ben had vanished on that first afternoon after Chemistry.

Forks is weird. Calawah University is weird. And the Lee kids are super fucking weird.

Long Walks On The Beach

“Can I ask you a random question?”

“You just paid me $100 for an oil change that took fifteen minutes. You can ask me anything you want.” He grinned, flashing bright teeth and deep dimples.

It was Saturday afternoon. I had shoveled down a Chipotle veggie bowl as Archer changed the 1999 Accord’s oil in a small garage with a cracked concrete floor and the searing pungency of gasoline fumes thick in the air. He had apprenticed all through high school and rented his own shop after graduation. Archer now had a loyal clientele that encompassed virtually the entire Quileute reservation and a growing chunk of Forks...including Charlie and me, of course. Archer was the only child of Larry Foxchild—Charlie’s best friend since they worked together at Dairy Queen as teenagers—and the closest thing to a son my dad would ever have. I guess that made him like a brother to me, something that seemed intuitive now that I’d thought of it.

After the Accord was serviced we drove it down to La Push to walk on the beach, climb the salt-lashed rocks, toss pebbles into the roiling surf, reprise our childhood enthusiasm for poking dead washed-up marine creatures with shards of driftwood.

“Do you know anything about the Lees?” I asked Archer, investigating a deceased green shore crab.

His brow furrowed. He looked so serious like that, suddenly so much like Larry: the same tan skin, jet black hair, umbral eyes like oil wells, strong jaw overlaid with the stubbled shadow of a beard. We really aren’t kids anymore, are we? “The doctor and his kids?”

“Yeah. The foster kids. They’re really pale and strange and half of them are British.”

Archer chuckled. “I know who you mean. They’re hard to miss.”

“Are they...” Just eccentric rich people? Traumatized from abusive childhoods? Government experiments? CIA agents? Secret murderers? The image of Ben in that first Chemistry class came roaring back to me, including the adjective that had flashed red behind my eyes like an emergency exit sign: fierce. Finally, I decided: “Dangerous?”

Now Archer full-on laughed, gripping his belly, shaking his head. Drops of saltwater flew from his short hair. “Seriously?!” he exclaimed. “Come on, they’re freaks but they’re not, like...that kind of freaks.”

“Are you sure?” I was starting to feel better already. Of course they’re not actual demons, you fucking idiot. This is Washington, not The Twilight Zone or Black Mirror. Not goddamn American Horror Story.

“Yeah.” Archer skipped a grey pebble over the water, something I’d never been able to do. “I’ll be honest, I don’t know them all that well. They usually keep to themselves. But I’ve never heard anything bad about any of the kids. And everyone respects Dr. Lee and appreciates him for taking the pay cut to come to some bumblefuck town like Forks. He’s insanely highly credentialed, has degrees from Harvard or Yale or somewhere like that. Super impressive. We’re lucky to have him. I definitely sleep better at night knowing he’ll be the one to fix me up if I ever get a few fingers ripped off on the job.”

“Don’t even say that. Then who would I grossly overpay for oil changes?”

Archer smiled, then sobered as he peered out over the Pacific Ocean.

“What?” I asked, feeling a plummeting in my guts like primal fear.

“Well...okay, so there is one thing that’s always bothered me. You remember Grandpa Foxchild?”

“Yeah, of course.” He had been an impossibly ancient man with long grey braided hair, a low rumbly voice, gnarled arthritic hands, ceaseless wrinkles. I remembered Charlie calling me when he passed away last spring. Renee and I had picked out a flower arrangement to send to the funeral.

“So,” Archer said slowly, like he was still puzzling it out himself. “Grandpa used to say things like ‘That Dr. Lee has been around a long time.’ Which of course makes no sense, the Lees moved here like two years ago. And I’d tell Grandpa that, but he completely ignored me. He would just keep repeating it. ‘That Dr. Lee shouldn’t still be here.’ ‘That Dr. Lee should go on home to where he came from.’ ‘That Dr. Lee isn’t right.’ Creepy shit like that. My dad and I always assumed it was the dementia talking, but...I don’t know. It just bothered me. Because Grandpa...he wasn’t just being gossipy or suspicious. He was angry. And he was afraid. Grandpa was at Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima and he would talk about that no problem, mention landmines or flesh melting off a soldier’s face like it was nothing. He was a tough guy. Immeasurably tough, I’ll never be half the man he was. But if you mentioned the Lees, Grandpa got scared. Why the hell would he be so scared of them?”

I didn’t have an answer for him, not a single word. I just stared at Archer, my eyes growing huge, my heart sprinting, blood pounding in my ears. He knew. Grandpa Foxchild knew there was something off about them, and now I know it too. I don’t know how I know, but I do.

Archer tittered nervously. “Anyway, that was genuinely disturbing. But like I said. It was probably just the dementia.”

“What if it wasn’t?”

“It had to be,” he insisted. “There’s no other logical explanation.”

“I guess,” I agreed, scooping up the green shore crab corpse with my bare hands. I hurled it out into the waves, imagined it sinking through murky water and suspended grains of sand, the body settling into prehistoric silt, the scavengers descending upon it, the inescapable wheel of birth and death and resurrection through those who unwittingly carry our atoms with them into the next generation, into the perpetual future.

That night my dreams were full of pale skin and scorching eyes, Ben and Joe and Rami, Lucille and Scarlett, crashing waves, cold water and bleached bones; and Grandpa Foxchild’s mistrustful refrain: That Dr. Lee has been around a long time.

Benjamin

I soared down the staircase and through the dining room. Gwil was working late at the hospital, Mercy outside tending the animals, everyone else presumably scattered throughout the house. I had to get out before anyone noticed me. I had to get out without Rami or Lucy knowing.

I yanked open the door to the back porch. Rami was waiting there.

“Good evening,” he greeted me in that slow, thoughtful drawl.

“Stay the fuck out of my head.”

“You know how it works, Benny Boy. I can’t ignore the loud thoughts. And you’ve been having some very loud thoughts lately.”

I stared down at my shoes, all black Adidas. Black is good. It doesn’t show stains. For example, purely hypothetically, splatters of human blood and organs. “I can make it quick. I can make it painless.”

Rami’s aura flared maroon; not enraged, no, not quite that, but certainly revolted. I was always finding new and horrifying ways to revolt them, whether I was trying to or not. “She has a family, Ben. A father. You know Chief Swan, you’ve seen him around town. He’s a good person. She’s a good person. You really want to do this? You really want to relapse like this?”

I didn’t reply. I didn’t have to. Hearing thoughts is a tricky thing, and not a gift that I would ever want; unspoken words are rarely a steam and usually a storm, disjointed and twisting, interrupting each other, bottomless layers of whispers and screams. But I was sure Rami could catch the important parts: that I didn’t know the difference between good and bad people, that I didn’t know what to think of people at all, that for me her blood was not a desire but a compulsion. I couldn’t stop envisioning it spilling over my tongue and teeth, down my throat, hot and pulsing erratically and fading. “Why can’t you hear her? Why can’t I see what she’s feeling?”

Rami shrugged, characteristically placid and restrained. It was maddening. “There are seven and a half billion people on this planet. So maybe every once in a while you get one that lives in our blind spots, there’s something chromosomal or psychological that puts them on a different frequency. I don’t know. How the hell should I know? All I know is that you definitely shouldn’t be seriously considering...well. What you’re considering.”  

“Have you ever met someone whose thoughts you couldn’t hear before?”

“No,” Rami admitted; and was that a ghost of unease that crossed his face?

“Please, Rami. Let me go. Pretend you never saw me.” My words come out strained, hushed, like a spilled secret, like a confession. I’ve never wanted anyone’s blood like I want hers.

He heard that; I could see the dismay in his eyes. Now his aura is dark grey, almost black. Disappointment. Resignation. Mourning. “I told you what Lucy saw.”

“What she saw is impossible and you know it.”

Again, Rami shrugged. That blind, mindless faith. I wished I knew what it felt like. “She’s never wrong.”

“Have you told him?”

“Who, Joe?! Of course I haven’t told Joe. He...”

“He wouldn’t believe it either?” I snapped, like it was a victory.

“No,” Rami amended carefully. “No, he would believe anything Lucy saw.” Lucy had visions: flashes of the future, the past, the present. They were rare and unpredictable, often fragmented, snapshots rather than arcs. But they were always true. Or, rather, the other Lees claimed they were. The real Lees. “I don’t know what he would do about it,” Rami said finally. “So I’m waiting it out. And killing one of the primary participants is definitely not waiting it out.”

I seethed as I glared at him, hating him in that moment, hating myself only slightly more; and he heard that too. But then that wispy, fleeting haze around him was a pink like the last threads of sunlight sinking into the Western horizon. Forgiveness. Attachment. Love.

“Come with me, Ben,” Rami said gently, opening the door. “Come back inside. You can beat this. You’re better than this. You’re a good soul. You wouldn’t be with us if you weren’t.”

I tried to laugh. It came out like a snarl. “I haven’t had a soul in a long time.”

[iamdorka]

Mad

Nobody asked for it, but I wrote it because it was a conversation topic between my friend @pixieontheave and me. Hope you will like it! 💋

Being mad at him:

- Sometimes (to be honest most of the time) he acts like a child, with which you don't usually have a problem because that's one of the reasons why you two are together, because you can act live him too but sometimes he just takes is further than usual.

- Like the time when he broke his new car and... he just laughed at it. He really believed that it was just a joke at he could laugh it off which he actually did... you on the other hand couldn't do such a thing.

- This time you really had enough. And the fact that you didn't know about the crash from him but Mod... it was just the cherry on the top.

- 'Chill out babe, everything is fine. We can get it fixed it no time.' he said it to you when you left him a short, but very powerful voicemail which said 'I'm going to kill you'.

- You didn't give shit about his car because yeah that was 'just another material thing' but this mentality what he was having just pissed the hell out of you.

- (Even if his car looked cool and hot as fuck especially with him in it but your heart had another favorite... Slim's bad baby boy. Even if you didn't have a license you knew you would steal it from him in the near future... probably with C but that's another thing.)

- He didn't really realise that you were mad at him until you later swinged by the studio because you were cooking already lunch for yourself on your day off so you thought it would be cool to give them some home cooked meal while they are working. To be honest for him the only meat you would bring him would be your fist in his face but you awkward smiled at him not really saying a word or doing anything else.

- 'You are leaving already?' he asked when after like a little bit more than 30 minutes you were already on your way leaving them here. 'Ohhh yeah... I just have a car to crash, I would love to being in an accident then just laugh about it because it's so damn funny' you grinned at him and without giving him a goodbye kiss you were out of that place.

- You are just as stubborn as him, and he would like never admit it but you knew you were even worse than him in that case. So being in this state with him was like a ticking time bomb waiting to be explode than destroy everything around it and around you. At least it was like this while he was not around but you knew when he would come to yours... you would open your mouth and that would be it. But to be honest you hoped that he would not come near you that day. You needed your distance.

- You ditched your phone for the day, the only thing from that thing which interested you was your spotify playlist which helped you being fueled while you were cleaning your apartment. When you are mad, you usually clean so it wasn't that much of a surprise that your place was as shiny clean to the time you were done with it as if it was just new.

- You didn't really think that he was coming to yours that day knowing about his stubbornness quite well so you were surprised when he showed up.

- 'You know I have keys too' he said when you didn't let him in and you just put your headphones on and with the maximum volumen listening to your favorite A Day To Remember songs you kept going. But you knew damn well that the chains won't let him in even if he tried his best.

- You were happy with your music on, it distracted you the best way possible. You put all of your attention into understanding the lyrics and the little dancing you did. Fuck it... it wasn't dancing at all, it was like a fish getting to to dry beach and fighting for its life but you called that your dance so that was it. Jumping around, letting every part of your body doing what they wanted.

- Probably that's why you didn't notice that your dumbass boyfriend was coming into your aparment...through your window. To get to your balcony was a challenge to begin with because there were no stairs and the only possibility to get there was from your neighbor's balcony which included some real dangerous climbing.

- You spinned because a new song started playing and that's when you noticed him, getting an intense heart attack because of him being a surprise there.

- There he was, smiling at you like he hadn't done anything bad, like everything he was doing was the most normal thing ever.

- 'I will call the police' you said while doing what you had started before not caring about that he was there with you.

- 'No... you won't' he replied than he was behind you and took your headphones off.

- 'But I will cut your hands off if you touch me again. You can believe me on that.' you threatened him not even looking at him.

- And there he was, not saying a word, just having that smirk on his face while looking at you. You didn't know what his tactics were (usually it involved make up sex because he knew you couldn't say no to him) but you couldn't care less so you did what you wanted: not giving your attention to him, like he wasn't even there.

- Calm before the storm. This is what is was. You just let building it inside of you while he was there... just existing. The universe just needed that spark to light you two on fire... and there it was that spark.

- You just reached a point where you couldn't hold yourself more. He had the chillest look on his face while scrolling through his phone sitting in your kitchen counter while you...while you were just there, like the calmest boiling water... from the outside. your inside was another thing.

- You thought it would be a good idea to make yourself a smoothie to help your nerves calm down but when you were almost done, he took it from you and that was the moment when you simple just broke. Not even thinking you just throw it at him. 'You want it? You get it. Enjoy your meal asshole.'

- And there it started, the fire. You didn't hold yourself back, you burned him to the ground because you had enough of his bullshit attitude. You said everything to him what was inside your head, your mind, your heart, your soul.

- He tried to argue with you and even if most of the times he had what it took to debate with you... now he didn't even have a chance. If looks could kill... he would be that dead already.

- 'Sweet talk won't be the answer. Your dick won't solve a thing this time'. your truest reaction for his intentions when he wanted to get closer to you, choosing his 'go to' strategy. He just couldn't wash that mischievous smile from his face. And that pissed you off even more. He danced on thin ice.

- 'I see you don't take me serious... so please... fuck off. You know where the door is. I can't keep arguing because when I say a word you don't seem to want to understand it, not a single word. I lost my interest in this fight.' as your final words left your lips you slowly walked to the door and this time you opened that for him.

- 'I can't take it serious because nothing big happened. Not a scratch on me. Nothing. It's just a car.' you just couldn't understand how he could keep saying this.

- 'But that car wasn't alone. YOU were in it. It's just hurts so much that you are thinking this way. I couldn't survive if something happened to you because your drunk, high as fuck ass sit behind the wheel without thinking. And from now on I don't even think I can sit in a car... And I wasn't even there with you. How can you not see that you mean the world to me asshole?'

- 'You are overreacting babe... really... I didn't want to hurt you... I never even would think about that.' he said, stopping his steps in front of you.

- 'I still wanna have you gone... ' you couldn't just let him win, not this time. You wanted to show him that his actions have consequences. Now it meant some time alone.

- 'Okay...' he agreed then leaned closer to you just to blow a kiss on your cheek. It was a small, sweet kiss. In your belly those butterflies wanted to fly... but you killed them. You had to.

- Even if it took you every strength in your body, you let him go. You had to have that day to think... without him.

- The thing you wasn't prepared for that when later that night you wanted to leave your apartment to bring the trash out your boyfriend was sitting, technically laying in front of your apartment in the corridor passed out, with his phone between his fingers.

- How could a grown ass man, who is bat shit crazy and irresponsible most of the time be this calm and cute when he sleeps? A whole ass different person was in front off you. It almost had you. He almost had you.

- You wanted to touch his face, just to feel his soft face on your fingertips but when you almost did that.... he opened his eyes.

- 'You still hate me?' - he asked with his raspy voice. That was your wakeup call just to get away from him. Far far away.

- 'You still an asshole?' you asked back.

- 'What are you doing?' he asked quietly and for a moment you thought he was a different person.

- 'Just bringing you some company... ' you pointed to the sack you were holding before and now it was beside him and with that you left him there with it.

- You knew you would solve it later... tomorrow but at that moment you just couldn't look at him.

- Being mad at him is always the hardest thing to do but sometimes you just couldn't escape from it... nor could he.

Tag list (write me if you wanna be on it❤)

@no-shxt-sherl @kiss-yall @bakerkells @backoftheroomandnotbelonging @mgk-rooklover1997 @just-a-normal-fangirl18 @southernmgkpunk @thegunnerkelly @lovemythsworld @painkillerash @thegunnerkelly @rosegoldrichie @pinksocktingz @itjustkindahappenedreally @cclynn88 @bluehairedtracii

[nearlynorth]

we can’t even be in the same room

The breaking of Luke Patterson and Julie Molina.

Or the fic that shows the aftermath of heartbreak.

Notes:

Now you may be thinking, Nicole, you've never been in a relationship or been broken up with, why are you writing a breakup fic? That's a good question that I don't have an answer to. This is the first of a three part series that I'm working on. The next part will be Julie.

I highly recommend listening to Same Room by JP Saxe when you are reading this. I listened to it on repeat while writing this. If anyone wants the playlist that I so creatively titled "Juke Breakup Fic" it's at this link. Link to spotify playlist

This is technically an au because the boys were never ghosts, but that isn't really something that is addressed or is needed to be known.

Also cross-posted on ao3. This is the first in a three part series that I will eventually manage to get the other two saved into a masterlist on here when I write them.

Disclaimer: I don't own any italicized lyrics or the Julie and the Phantoms characters. I'm also not the first person to write a breakup fic.

I watched a TED Talk on heartbreak

He had a smart person accent

He said, "Don't look through the photos"

Then I looked through our photos

Luke doesn't even know how he does it. How he resists looking through the camera gallery on his phone, the memories documented in photos. How when his heart is pulling itself apart he resists looking at the very things that could sew it back and then tear it apart again.

Luke does know a few things.  He knows the post-breakup rules. He's watched a TedTalk, the man speaking with an accent that he knows that she would've loved. And he's already breaking them.

One.

He knows that he isn't supposed to look at the photos. He puts his phone in the car, pretends like it is just a normal day. He lasts two hours. Two hours spent staring blankly at the wall, wondering where they went wrong. He knows, he knows. Two hours and then he breaks. He unlocks his phone and pulls up the photos, the videos, all of what they recorded. Their history was in front of the camera, well-documented and heart-breaking. He lasts two hours and he breaks his first rule.

Two.

He knows that he's not supposed to think about her, to not let himself wallow in his self-pity. But it's hard. It's hard to block her from his mind when their apartment, his apartment, feels like her. Everything reminds her of him.

He will see the wilting dahlias on the counter, their petals falling to the marble. His last-ditch effort, when words failed and he just wasn't enough. Yet he can't bring himself to get rid of them, to finally toss them into the trash. He sees the looks that his friends shoot them when they come over to make sure that he isn't dead. He lets the blossoms rot just like what was supposed to be his great love.

He will see the empty drawers on the other side of their (cross this out) his bedroom and he will remember. It will all come flooding back to him, of how she tore through like a hurricane, pulling clothes out of hidden places and taking it all. She left him nothing, in a million pieces, with nothing left to pull himself together again.

But no, that's not true. He will see a shirt that she forgot, lying alone in a closet. It still smells like her. It's from their first tour, when they were still fumbling teenagers, sneaking glances at each other and pretending like they didn't see the chemistry between them. What he would give to go back to that time, when they were still young. It becomes stained with tears.

He breaks all the rules that he put into place for himself, watching his face in the mirror when he breaks.

I'm tempted to distract myself

I'm trying not to

Cuz I'll make myself feel all of this

If it's all that I got left of you

He debates whether or not he should drown out his sorrows with noise. To fill his days with as many activities as he can, leave no time for his brain to reflect. But his pain is all that he has left of her. All that he has are his wilting memories and his rotting heart.

When the pain goes away she will be gone forever. He will only have half-concocted dreams and plans that have holes as gaping as their bond. He will only have her from the eyes of others, never through the intimate lens of knowing someone so wholly that you know them better than they know themselves.

He will never have a connection that deep, not when they both brought each other back from the brink. He will never love like that again, never be loved like that again. It breaks him.

He takes his pain and he keeps it close to him, his last bitter remnants of something so good.

You came to Portugal in 2014

Just to spend a couple days with me

You flew halfway 'round the world for me

It's a week after she left that he thinks about how they got there. How they got to the point of breaking. He skirts around the bad memories, the ones that he sees now climbing the stairs to the final plateau. He doesn't want to feel the pain but maybe happy memories will make it worse. He doesn't care.

He thinks about a time where everything felt high, long before everything dipped so low. He thinks about a time that he was in Portugal, for a reason that he can't even remember now. He knows what she was doing, shooting her first movie halfway around the world. He remembers how it felt to be apart from her that long, and he remembers how he vowed to never do it again.

She flew half-way around the world just to see him, to make good memories. He remembers the way that her eyes crinkled at the corners when she got off the plane, her smile growing and growing. He remembers the way that he rushed to her, the way that they felt like two puzzle pieces clicking back together as cameras flashed around them.

That separation was only temporary. Now they made the final cut, he broke his promise. They closed the pages of their book, snuffed out their flame. They lost the pieces of their puzzle. He remembers the times when they burned bright, feeling like they would never go down. What he would give to go back.

I swear I'm knocking out the next guy

Who says, "At least you'll get some breakup songs"

'Cause it ain't nearly been enough time

He loves all of the fans. Those that knew him from Sunset Curve and those that found him through Julie and the Phantoms. He loves them, he really does, but sometimes it gets to be too much.

They were public with their relationship, and that only made it so much harder when it came crashing down. Julie and the Phantoms broke up. There was nothing that they could do about that, when it was impossible for the two of them to be in the same place without a shouting match, words being hurled like daggers back and forth. And Reggie didn't need that.

So they had to tell the fans, a bland statement crafted by PR that they posted to Instagram. And then they went silent. They refused to say anything, and the two biggest stars in the music industry dropped off the face of the planet.

Even though he wasn't speaking, it didn't mean that he wasn't listening. He read the comments, saw the direct messages, fans flooding him with praise and support. He appreciated some of it, but some of it only hurt. The messages about songs were his least favorite.

He didn't want to write songs about her, at least not now. Not when the wounds are still bleeding fresh. Not when his heart still beats for her. Not when he hasn't moved on.

They promised each other, when they first started, that they wouldn't write sad songs about each other, at least not at first. They also promised to never leave each other. He is a man of broken promises.

He ignores everyone who says things about breakup songs, even as he listens to a playlist full of them. His Spotify knows him too well. He starts crafting lyrics in his head.

For two weeks, he is silent. No notes slip from his lips, from his fingers. No music comes out of him. He only lasts two weeks. Music comes pouring out of him, lyrics in chicken-scratch inscribed onto paper.

The music is personal, painful, not for him to sing in public. It's not for the band, not for whatever solo album his record label wants him to put out. It's been so long since he's written music just for himself, not because someone told him to. He imagines her doing the same thing, her curls hiding the paper from view. He remembers how she bit her lip while thinking about a song lyric, how she looked up through her eyes lashes when she asked him what he thought.

He remembers it all and he turns it into a song. He sings it to himself and it doesn't make him feel any better, but it's a start.

It's a start down the path of healing, the start of his wounds knitting together. It's a start as he sings himself to sleep, tears collecting in his eyes.

It's hard to summarize three years

More like four years

Depends where you start counting

It don't matter

He doesn't know when they first started. He doubts that she knew either.

If he goes from when they first met, their story starts a lot differently.

She was sixteen, he was seventeen. They were young and naive and bright and starry-eyed. They were two chemicals mixed together in the same beaker, begging to combust. They had a chemistry that they couldn't deny, that everyone could see. They were so high, floating on the clouds. They were performing and they were singing and they were friends.

If he goes from when they became something else, the story changes again.

She was seventeen, he was eighteen. They had been a band for a year, been playing and writing and singing for a year. The time flew by, each day long and full and good. They were so, so good. They finally gave in to the chemistry, let themselves combine and combust.

Their first kiss was electric, the start of something new. Something new grew and twisted between them, green and young and alive.

They lasted for three years like that. For three years, everything was happy. For three years it felt like nothing could ever pull them down from the sky. They were young and they thought that they would be together forever.

She was twenty, he was twenty-one. He could tell that they were heading down the road of breaking. And he knew that she knew and that the band knew.

It was in the glances that used to be light and were now just dark. It was in the songs that used to be perfect harmonies and were now dissonance. It was in the shows that used to be played smoothly and now were peppered with mistakes. They gave each other so many signs.

The signs were what saved them in the end. The signs were what prevented the massive blowout, instead letting them down into a field of heartbreak gently. The signs let them leave each other silently, quiet tears and half-baked apologies.

My friends are making sure I don't see you

I strategize a path to the bathroom

So I don't walk past you

He knows that they put Alex and Reggie in an awkward spot. He knows that they are still friends with her, how could they not be, when she is who she is.

He sees the texts when he takes their phones for some silly reason, feels the pang in his heart when he sees Jules 💗.

It takes seven months until the two of them are in the same place at the same time. It's some awards show, where he can check out and people watch, not up for any trophies or shiny things.

It's all going well until he hears her name be called, sees her walk up onto the stage. It's the first time that he's seen her, really seen her. Whenever she comes up on the tv or his phone he always swipes away, hiding from it. He doesn't know what she's winning (he is a liar) and he doesn't care (liar, liar).

She looks stunning and it hurts because he knows that she isn't thinking about him as much as he is thinking about her. She talks and she smiles and she laughs on stage until he can't take it anymore.

He can't take it and he feels himself spiraling. He plots his way to the restroom, making sure he doesn't pass her or any of their old friends. He knows that the paparazzi are snapping photos of his face, of the way that he flees instead of confronting his emotions. He doesn't care, in the moment, what they get. They will get him, his raw version, not the polished PR perfect version. Good. Let the world see someone in pain.

He hides in the bathroom for the rest of the show, until he can't anymore, and then he leaves. They are screaming out his name, cameras blinding him as he rushes to his car. He ignores them all. He turns his phone off, makes the driver drive in silence, the only sounds his breathing. He almost breaks down there again, not the first time that he would've cried in a car. But he pulls it together, catching the eye of the driver in the mirror.

When he is at his apartment that still feels too big and too quiet, even all these months later, he has texts from Alex and Reggie. He responds and he catches the Daily Mail already reporting on his abrupt exit. They get everything wrong and he's not sure how much more of it he can bear.

You leave before the concert is finished

It takes a year before he is ready to perform again. If he knew that their last performance together was going to be their final goodbye on the stage, he wonders if he would have done it differently. He wonders and it eats at him but he pushes through. He swims through the acid to the other side.

It's not a proper concert, more of an opening act than the main show, but it's something. It's a step in the right direction. And she just happens to be there. He wasn't warned, he wasn't given a sign. He wanted one, so he could have prepared himself to look at her. When she looks so happy, her arm slung around Flynn.

And he knows that she doesn't know that he is here, because otherwise there would be sour lemon puckered lips on what is a sweet lemonade smile. He knows because otherwise, she wouldn't be here.

He only has a few songs, classic covers chosen by his PR team. It feels like they choose everything that he does now, they monitor his every move. He wants to be raw, to be honest. He is not a perfect man.

He gets up on stage. She isn't looking at him, still hasn't glanced his way. Flynn sees him, and she gives him a bittersweet smile.

He starts singing. It feels like him but not, the backing band roaring to life. It's so different from performing with Julie and the Phantoms, as he sees her recognize his voice and turn around. He sees her smile drop and he feels his heart break again. She watches him and he feels like his body is collapsing. But he keeps going, keeps singing, just like she did, just like they did right before the end.

There's one song left when he makes his decision. What comes out of his mouth is not the pop-punk song that his PR picked out for him. It’s a song that he listened to all those months ago, in the aftermath of the tragedy. He watches her face as the lyrics pour out of him, watches her leave before he is finished.

Because they can’t even be in the same room.

[velmalav]

if you’re too shy (let me know) {h.s.}

warnings: nsfw mentions, swearing, pretty damn sexual i’m not sorry

synopsis: inspired by the lyrics of the 1975 song of the same name. you’re a cam girl and harry can’t get enough.

word count: 3k+

Insanity; doing the same thing and expecting a different result. I’d heard this definition so many times, throughout so many years of my life in so many different forms, and not once did I think twice about it. It was just a word and a definition and it didn’t apply to my life at all.

Not once did I think twice about it.

But tonight, yeah, maybe I will.

---

I met you just like most people meet their lovers nowadays – the internet. But in the way Jason met his wife of three years Heather on Tinder, I met you through a cam site. Yeah, I know, it’s not the most romantic thing in the world, and I probably should’ve saw the red flags right then and there, but God knows that’s never how stories like this go.

My friend, Cody – well, more like just a coworker that I have drinks with now and again – sent me a link to the site months back. On Valentine’s Day. As a joke. And I simply rolled my eyes and dragged it into the trash, reassuring myself I “never needed to stoop that low to get off.”

I guess you can tell where my feelings are on that now because three months later, in an effort to distract myself from the overflowing regret of a miserable three week relationship, I took a dive into my trash folder.

You were the fourth one I clicked on. Pretty eyes, suggestive smile, your name seemed attractive enough. But it was your voice that did it for me. It was hollow, pretentious, but smooth. Every word had me on the edge of my seat and my pulse racing for more. And I swear you knew – knew that I was sweating every time you curled her lips into a smile or moistened them between words. I can’t lie – I’d never spent so much money on anything in my life. I was hooked.

You’d go live every Thursday night at 7 pm. I never missed a show. I was never left unsatisfied. It went on like this for weeks, maybe even a few months, before things really started to take a turn.

---

Cody and I took a business trip down South one week – the first week I missed a show. It was a seven hour trip there and back, and we just happened to leave on a Thursday morning. We arrived at our shitty hotel for the next few days MINUTES after your show would have ended and by God was I frustrated. Every missed turn, every piss stop, every inconvenience kept circling my mind in rage. I blamed Cody and all I wanted was to try and forget about you for the night. Cody suggested what any 25 year old business major would – the cheapest, filthiest bar on the strip and asap.

“Shit’s packed. How are we going to find a seat?” Cody had asked out loud to a sea of empty tables. Three times.

Three times before we entered an even rustier kind of bar. I mean, hey, it was our last resort, and looking back, there was no way in hell I’d expected what was coming for me in there.

After a couple hours huddled at a booth in the back corner, seven beers down, the front door bell chimed for the hundredth time. I glanced up to see a very familiar set of eyes flouncing inside, an even more familiar, sweat-inducing smile set on your mouth.

There was no fucking way. And yet there was, because you were there in front of me. Cam girl, approaching with a sway in your step, clueless to the lanky, curly-headed man boring a hole through you.

“Bro, you good?” Cody waved a hand in front of my face, the other knocking his bottle of beer onto the table loudly. You turned at the noise, pretty eyes softening at the sight of me.

I didn’t even answer him. I stood up, closing the large gap between us for a much smaller one. Cody said something but you’d be crazy to think I heard him with you staring at me like that.

“You need this booth?” I muttered, suddenly realizing just how pathetic and meek my voice sounded. But you didn’t skip a beat, coy smile on your mouth as it opened.

“Oh, god, could I? Didn’t think this place would be so busy. It never is.”

So you frequent this bar. Yet I could never see you here on a casual occasion, or any for that matter. But the more I eyed you, the more it suited you. Anything could’ve suited you.

“All yours,” I breathed, finally finding my deep, raspy voice. Your eyes perked up at the words, but you didn’t move for a few beats.

You went to say something, but caught sight of Cody. Fucking Cody.

“I would invite you to join me, but I wouldn’t want to be rude to your friend,” you murmured breathily, lips centimeters from my face as you passed me to approach the booth. Just like I had, Cody stumbled from it, extending his hand to you.

You wave his hand off as if you’re shy and murmur a, “No need,” before you turn back to me, and the cute, fragile front you’d just put on for Cody vanishes underneath the limelight of you and me. “I’ll see you around.”

---

I honestly cannot stress how fucking quickly I ditched Cody that night. I told him I was feeling under the weather and that I was going to head back to the hotel room, and as soon as he tucked in for the night also, I went straight back to you. Who the hell knows when I’ll get back around this area, and I need more than what you’d given me.

You were surprised that I’d returned. Your eyes didn’t hold the same flirtation, they were cold and only cold when they were on me. I tried playing the game – assuming it was a game – but after an hour of eyeing you from the bar, I realized what you were all about.

I didn’t need to beg you. In fact, I didn’t want to, for your sake. God only knows how many of guys like me have done this to you, desperately waited for your long-awaited, never to be heard call. As much as I wanted that same tension as before, I’d rather have the memory than be labeled as a creep.

I turned to leave, disappointed. I shove my hands into my jacket pockets and step out into the cool air. I watch my breath as I trudge back to the car, and God does this feel like shit.

“Must be later, I guess,” your voice calls, and it’s finally it’s not long-awaited or nonexistent. You’re here and jogging in your little heels to catch up with me.

“Must be,” I plainly remark. I don’t understand you, and I’m expecting another short-lived memory I can use as an exaggerated fantasy tonight. “You need a ride or something?”

“Something,” you smile, teeth and all. “Definitely something.”

I go to send yet another signal that I’m annoyed when I catch the way you’re looking at me. Those same flirtatious eyes. And you’re almost giddy, hands in your pockets, cheeks red. You know I’m down for you and you’re just waiting for the green light.

In my confusion and realization, I stutter out a breathy laugh and touch my fingers to my stubble. That’s really all it takes for you to click forward on your little heels, closing the gap until we’re uncomfortably close. “I have to tell you something.”

“Took you long enough,” I repeat my nervous laugh.

You dip into me until your chin molds into the space between my ear and my shoulder. No hands, all lips as they graze the skin under my ear. Even in those heels I’ve got so much height on you. “I’d like you so much more if you took off your clothes right now.”

I tip back just enough to see your expression, and to my surprise your coy smile is gone. The coldness is back yet I’m burning up staring at you. I’m reminded of the way you touch yourself on the live cams and my heart starts racing and racing until I swear you can hear it against the wind and your inner thoughts.

You catch my Adam’s apple bob before I sputter out something pathetic. You snake your sweaty hands onto my face and attach our mouths together.

It’s a blur between the groping and angry kissing from outside to the back of my car, but we find our way. I imagine all of the weeks I spent pining after you and your body as my hands feel every square inch of it. I soak you in like the sand absorbs the tide, every kiss and bite and grasp burned into me. And I don’t know if its habit to moan so loud, so pornographically from your live shows, but you do and it among many other things sends me over the edge.

Even after its over and I’m pining over these moments in my hotel room in the early hours, I see flashes of your fingernails digging into the leather seats of Cody’s SUV and the pressure of hot skin against me. Your half-lidded eyes, your open mouth. I thrive off of it for days after and then it’s almost like it was a fantasy, a sick fantasy I’d created in absence of that goddamn missed week. Because every passing day you’re not here to remind me of the leather seats and the heat and your cold expression, it’s a missed week.

---

After the night, after the business trip, after you slide me your phone number on the second night I see you, I still watch you every Thursday night. I can’t help myself, you’re addicting and I doubt you’d mind – the amount of money you make from just me is quite ridiculous. I doubt I’ll see you for a long time, if ever again, and things start to fall back into the sad, Thursday night and office work week routine and I miss you.

And I thought – since I have a lot of time to think these days – about it; I don’t just miss you because of that night. I miss you for all of the other reasons I can think of. Most of it sexual, but in the midst of it is beauty and arrogance and a livewire strapped to a pole. You bring all of those things into my life, and now I’m desperate for more.

So I call you one night, digressing from wanting you in every way possible to wanting to hear you moan in my ear again. I know it’s strange and pathetic, but you make me nervous and no woman has that effect on me.

You answer your phone with that same breathy voice. I notice the lilt, the sensuality of the way you respond and I know you know something you couldn’t possibly – I’m naked and at your every whim. It’s nearing 9pm and your Thursday night isn’t up.

It’s not much more but it’s also everything, what you give me over the phone. And I guess cams would be more skin, more visuals, but with you I don’t need that. Your tongue speaking words meant for just me is enough to send me over the edge a thousand times, and the way you make me feel I swear I do. Topple, again and again and again.

“I miss you,” you say when it’s over. A phrase I couldn’t fathom leaving your mouth. You’re a one type girl and I’m trying to figure out why this night is so three dimensional.

I want to reciprocate and make sure you know what you’re doing to me, but I say nothing. Because as much as I want to, you’re a one type girl. And a one type girl seeks a many type guy only to destroy him later. And boy am I aware of later.

---

I can feel your grasp on me one particular afternoon. The office is suffocating and you’re the only thing I’ve been able to think about all day. Over the course of five months I’ve figured out the inevitable – I think I love you. And it’s a tough call and an even tougher call five minutes later in the office bathroom when you beg me to come see you.

And I’d do anything for you now, and my tongue won’t hold back for long. I’m so close to spilling how I feel for you and the second I roll into your city I know the floodgates are going to open.

The drive is excruciating and the thought of losing all of those hours of work is even less so the closer I get to you. It’s so depressing, the thought of falling for a cam girl after one physical night and countless virtual ones, most of which you don’t even know about.

“I think I love you,” is on my mind as I fill up my tank halfway through and again when I see the city limits sign. I know you’re giddy when my phone blings and the sun is going down and I can feel my pulse beginning to quicken already.

And then you’re in my car and not Cody’s but it feels all the same. You don’t hesitate to get the ball rolling. I grab your feverish hands and gently nudge you back into the front seat. Your rosy cheeks burn more, cold stare freezing over. “What’s this about?”

“It’s fucking freezing in here.”

“I can warm us up. Just give it a second-“

“Wouldn’t you rather be more comfortable in a bed?”

You stare, same ivy flashes across your face. You’re impatient and stubborn, but I don’t care. My leather seats don’t recline like Cody’s do and the windows aren’t tinted.

The only place you’ll consider going to is a grimey motel on the west side of your city. It sticks out like a sore thumb in consideration of the other tall, modern buildings around it. Why would you take me there? I hardly have time to ask because your timer is running out.

The motel worker stares at us, a match you’d all but expect, especially at a place like this. God, we look like a CEO and his mistress and I can’t help but inch away from you. “Sorry, we’re closed today.”

“But you’re here,” you blanch, rosy cheeks reddening. You’re not shitty to her but you sure are impatient.

“Yeah, I know,” the worker spits. “But there’s an active crime scene in one of the rooms and I was told not to rent out any other rooms for the day.”

“That’s fucking stu-“

“Fine. Fucking fine,” I interrupt you, inching back towards you to wrap my arms around your waist. “Let’s just settle for the car,” I murmur into your ear. And I’m sad because I wanted a bed regardless of the dodgy stains and the noisy springs. I wanted to eye you from the foot of the bed as I mouth the words I’ve been waiting to say for months.

---

“I love you,” echoes into the frosted foyer of your apartment building after another escapade in my tight fit Honda. My hands fidget, eyes shift around your face.

And then you laugh. “You don’t know me.”

---

I don’t know you and yet I think I love you. I take the laughter in stride and watch you go with the coldness I always knew you were capable of. My heart hurts, but I still can’t scratch my itch for you.

So I call you days later. Tell you I lied, that I got carried away and I wanted to see your reaction and genuinely every excuse I could muster. You laugh again, but warmly this time, and assure that you already knew all of these things. And just like that, things go back to normal.

I wish I could tell you that’s how it went. That I simply took the quick release every Thursday night and casual random phone sex, but God did I hate that I lied and I hate that you won’t let me feel the things I feel for you. I let you fuck me over again, once every few months. A trip I never regret until it’s Thursday night and you’re naked and acting like you want every other man but me.

And I say it again. Every trip I say it and you laugh and mention that I’m insane. And I stare at you and and lie again and then shake my head and tell you what I feel is right. And you laugh.

Because it doesn’t matter. It’ll all end up the same anyway.

---

A year in and I hate myself and I think I hate you. Things can’t go back to normal, as if there ever was one. The phone sex is weird now, and I don’t call. I skip Thursday nights every other week and even on the phones I sit in on, I hate every second of my release. It’s not real anymore. It never was.

A year on the dot and I feel my phone vibrate for the thousandth time as I cruise down the highway. My pulse is racing and I’ve still got an hour to go. I’m almost to you, and I swear this time it’ll be different.

“I love you,” I think to myself. I know it’s true, and I know this time she’ll say it back. No woman in their right mind wouldn’t after so many months of what we have.

A year since I clicked on your cam and now seeing you online makes my stomach flip. A year since I felt your cold stare across the bar and your hands first grabbing my face for a first kiss.

A year since I first told myself I wanted you more and more. A blossoming thought of love that I thought over and over as I drove into you.

A year of the same build up and break down. But I swear this time will be different. It has to be.

I never thought much about the definition of insanity.

But, yeah, maybe tonight I will.