#I’m sad because I couldn’t wear the trousers NOT BECAUSE I HAVE A BIG BUM AND THIGHS

[its-a-hare-pom-pom]

Yk I really don’t like the fact that I found these trousers I really liked and went to try them on and they were too small, then I told my mum and we put them back. Then I went on Pinterest and the first ad I saw was a weight loss one. I am so ridiculously glad I’m confident in my body because it’s so easy to fall into that trap

[dreamieofu]

Finding You

pairing; superhuman!mark x reader word count; 4.5k genre; strangers to lovers!au, soulmate!au, small angst, fluff, sci-fi(?)  summary; Mark falls in love, but it’s not the real him who meets you for the first time. It’s his clone. And although he can’t really remember everything, he’s desperate to find you again. 

( prologue. )  please read this to understand the following ♡ 

You remember the first time you saw him. 

Guitar on his back, beaming eyes and a polite smile. You were standing behind the till taking orders at your campus cafe, your part-time job on most weekdays. You gleam at him, as he smiles up at the drinks menu. He adjusts his guitar strap on his shoulder when you finally meet eyes. 

“What do you recommend?” His voice was a little deeper than you initially thought, it was nice. 

You watch him for a few seconds, briefly chewing on the inside of your bottom lip, before looking at the drinks menu behind you as well. You already knew your answer, but you wanted the moments in front of him to last a little longer. And why not? There wasn’t a line being held up, so you turned to him with a smile, “How about a caramel macchiato?”. 

He nodded at your answer, his hand already digging into his front pocket to retrieve his wallet. You punched in his order, asking him for the size of his drink and if he had any special requests for his milk and so forth. He still held that infectious smile on his face, shaking his head at your questions and handing you his money. Before he could walk away, your fingers are quick to reach the black marker next to the cashier. 

“Your name?” You say, a bit breathless, with fluttering eyes and the tip of the marker on the side of the paper cup. 

“Mark.” 

“I hope you enjoy your drink, Mark.” You say his name as a little whisper, while writing his name. 

He offers an eye smile, as he looks into your eyes. A small moment connected you both before his gaze left yours to walk away. You mindlessly watch him walk further away from your view, to wait for his order. Your hand places his paper cup on the side for your colleagues to make, as the next customer comes forward, pulling you out of your trance. Something about that moment made you feel a bit lightheaded yet so grounded, you couldn’t help but think about him for the rest of your nightshift. 

The second time you saw Mark was a few days later. Sporting a comfy tee and jeans with his hair a little messy, as he walked around the campus. He was walking with a couple of guys, all equally as handsome. But Mark stood out to you the most though and this time his laugh grabbed your attention. He held himself a bit different, shoulders weren’t as tight. Almost relaxed, as you see the group settle onto the grass between the classroom/lecture halls where people hung out. If this didn’t confirm you were both attending the same school, you didn’t know what did. Yet, you never approached him. Maybe a bit shy that he wasn’t alone, but a part of you wanted to know if he did end up liking the drink you recommended. Mark was then pushed to the back of your mind as you put your books into your bag from where you were sitting, to leave the table. It was almost a week or so since the last time you saw him, and you were beginning to forget the small infatuation you managed to develop on Mark. That is, when he walks through the cafe doors. His head low and his eyes on his phone. The cafe was kinda empty considering the late hour. As he slowly approaches you whilst you were behind the till, your body posture gets less sluggish. Standing up right when you see Mark as places his phone in his back trouser pocket. “Hey,” He speaks with the same beaming smile you couldn’t get out of your head. “I’ll have a caramel macchiato,”. Your eyebrows raise at this, “So I’m guessing you enjoyed the drink?” Your hand reaching out to get his paper cup, writing his order before tapping it into the system. “Yeah, I did actually. It wasn’t bad, thanks for that,” He takes out his phone from his pocket to pay for the drink contactlessly. You write his name as he pays, and you notice he looks at you as you do so. “You remember my name?”. 

You feel a little embarrassed, flushed as you timidly nod. Mark chuckles at you, “Cute… What’s your name?”. A part of you doesn’t really process much, because this is the longest conversation you’ve had yet. “Y/N,”. 

“Cool, nice to properly meet you, Y/N,”. 

You could only blink at him, liking the sound of your name on his tongue. Offering him a small smile you answer, “Nice to meet you too,”. 

After a few days, you noticed Mark became a regular at the cafe. He came by the place for most of your shifts, around the same time. He mixed up his choice in drinks, but each time he walked through that door, you felt more connected, more familiar. You begun having small conversations when he’d stay on late nights studying, when the store was empty. He often sat near the till, on the outer bend. 

From what you gathered, he was hardworking, he was into a lot of creative things. Overall he seemed like a really nice person, and a part of you really wanted to get to know him closer… without the barrier of the till and wood separating you both. And today, you decided to do just that. 

You waited. For Mark to walk through the doors. Your eyes peering over to your watch every half an hour. But he never showed up. You’d be lying to yourself to say you weren’t the smallest bit bummed out he never came to study tonight. You locked up that same night, pushing back questions of where he was… what he was doing. Ultimately, deciding to take the long way home. Walking through the campus, you passed a few students who were probably making their way to the library or doing the same as you. Making their way home.  As you walked alongside the street lights towards home,  a certain laugh caught your ears, and you turn towards it. An unexpected smile reaches your lips unknowingly to you. When you see the figure coming your way from behind you, you realise it’s Mark with a duffle bag in hand and wearing a tracksuit. 

He wasn’t alone though, but it didn’t stop you from mindlessly reaching out your hand to wave hello as he came towards you. His friend talking beside him as Mark briefly catches your eye. Before walking straight passed you. Without question. 

It did kinda hurt you, and maybe by now you were making excuses for him all day. But you had no reason to, if you were being truthful. 

You slowly lower your hand, completely embarrassed that he didn’t recognise you. Slapping your face lightly a few times, you then cover your eyes with your hands trying to erase the image of him away from your mind. The way he side glanced at you, and how your eyes were literally looking at each other. You weren’t sure if his friend noticed you there also but you just shook the thoughts away. You readjust your bag on your shoulder, and pout the whole way home never once looking away from your feet until you just about reached your front door. 

“Hey, what’s the long face?” Mark’s back with that same goddamned smile. You childishly huff at him, motioning your head away from him. “I don’t like you right now.” He chuckles in response, and moves to the other side of the table that you were wiping down to clean.

“Hey, don’t be like that. What did I even do?” Humour laced in his tone, as he stands in front of you. 

Mark pulls out the chair on the table and peers up at you, sitting down. Big eyed, and eyebrows knitted in concern; because he feels like he genuinely made you upset at something. You stopped cleaning the table to look down at his puppy eyed face, sighing at his unintentional cuteness. 

“You walked straight passed me when I saw you the other day,” You confess, shrugging. Your grip on the cloth tightens a bit whilst he says silent. 

“I did?” His voice was so soft, and he seemed confused even. “I don’t think so,” Mark’s direct with his words, and he feels like he genuinely believes so. You narrow your eyes at his expression. Maybe he forgot, maybe he really didn’t recognise you. You could’t tell, but the way he looks up at you, made all your petty sadness disappear. You laugh at him, a few moments after he slips in his silence trying to decipher his thoughts of said meeting. “If you say so, anyway… You want the usual?”. 

Mark nods up at this, perking up with happiness taking over his expressions, smiling with a “No more long face.” As you both giggle to each other. 

When you told you colleagues about his order, you turn your head over your shoulder to see if Mark was still sat on the table. He had his head in his hands whilst in deep thought. It concerned you that maybe something really was troubling him, but you ignore it. 

[Mark’s POV] 

Lately he’s been getting dreams about a reoccurring girl. The way she smiles, the sound of her laugh. But it was always blurred out. More often than not, they were nice dreams and whenever he saw, said girl in his dreams; he would have a good day after he woke up. Through the weeks of seeing her in his dreams, he’s developed her into his good luck charm. He would find himself smiling in his sleep whenever he heard the melody of her laughter. The dreams gave him inspiration to write about love songs, about a mystery girl. “Yo, I swear she’s an actual dream girl,” Mark’s waving his hands in front of him, laughter in his eyes as his friends goggle at him. Johnny slaps an arm over Mark’s shoulder, shaking his head. “Yeah, yeah. Same girl in your dreams last night I’m guessing,”. Mark just chuckles alongside them, and pushes Johnny’s embrace away playfully. “But don’t you think it’s strange you’re seeing and hearing the same girl?” Jaehyun nods over to Mark on his left, arms leaning forward to rest his elbows on the table. Hands clasped together and against his lips with curiosity. Mark thought about Jaehyun’s words for a moment, slightly agreeing. He knows in his heart, it’s the same girl. Strangely enough not putting the pieces of his dreams and memories together. “I guess, but I’ve never seen anything like her.” You plagued Mark’s thoughts continuously as he went through his days. But he never seemed to click on anything. And in some sense almost feeling magnetic to the small cafe, furthest away from his dorm. 

That’s where they were currently. 

Mark stands up, with a hand out in generosity, “You guys want a drink?” He suggests to Johnny and Jaehyun at the table. They both shake their head ‘no,' their conversation fading out behind Mark as he walks over to the till. 

That’s when he met you, girl of his dreams unknowingly for the first time. “Hey, a… hot chocolate, please?” Mark smiles at the cashier girl, his hands reaching out to pay. He looks up to you, a small smile entranced him as he sees you. The way you stood there, your aura. And then you connect eyes. He’s stood in place as the world blurs out, focal on you as you mouth his name. “Excuse me?” 

“Mark, haha… I asked about your day.” You giggle at him, and he watches you put in his order though the machine before glancing behind you. Mark was a little confused about how you knew his name. But still played along, especially since he’s heard your laugh. The way warmth hugged his soul, as you laughed made him glue to your presence. “I had a ,yeah, a good day,” He slightly coughs up his words almost stuttering, as you raise your eyebrows questionably at him. He quirks his lips, a bit timid under your gaze. “Listen, I’m free later tonight, if you wanna catch up and talk a small while. I feel like I haven’t seen you around,” you suggest at him, and in Mark’s knowledge he knew better to decline. He liked the idea, even if you were a stranger. “Sounds good,”. Mark waited at a nearby table, in a not so creepy way, watched you ever so often as you interacted with other customers. It was like he was in disbelief that you were there. That you were real. He melody of your voice playing like the dreams he’d have. Mark felt like the universe was playing a tiny game with his reality. But the thought that you were a stranger never seemed to leave the back of his thoughts, regardless of how intrigued he was with you. Johnny and Jaehyun left Mark alone after an hour. And throughout the time they were there, Mark didn’t mention you. Maybe too scared to speak you out into the universe and cause you to slip away from his reality. Messed up with his own thoughts, and the lingering time confusing him, he walks out. Too scared to face you, and be in right in his tiny theories he’s made up while waiting for your shift to end. Mark knew it was wrong to agree with you then result in leaving. He just, felt overwhelmed by you. And he doesn’t understand why. 

[Back to You] 

You were confused, stopping midway in your conversation as you watched Mark leave. Maybe an emergency? But, your heart sunk a little watching him leave. His facial features unreadable as he pushes the door open and walk out. 

When you locked up that night, and made your way home, the thoughts of Mark still replayed in your mind. He felt a bit different earlier, a bit distance yet still as you remember him to be. You were happy with these little interactions you’d have with him, wishing on stars on your night walks back home that something would bring you closer. You wish you could have had his number, so you could message him. Ask if he’s okay. But you couldn’t, and being fair, by now you’ve developed a little more than a small infatuation on him. Deciding to yourself, that you do like him. And that next time you see him, you promise to yourself that you’ll tell him. No more hiding away from it. And you do see him, next day. Around campus, alone with that same guitar strap on his shoulder. “Mark!!!” You shout, jogging up toward him. Courage pumping your heart, as you approach him. 

He stands there with a welcoming smile. The same distant feeling, but you ignore it. Pushing all your luck to gleam up to him, “Mark,” you whisper. “Yes? Can I help you?” Mark’s eyes lowered to your figure, and each passing second you start to feel more nervous. “You left yesterday… before I could talk with you,” You start to fumble with your fingers seeing Mark’s facial features become more and more unreadable. “I know, so crazy… But I really like seeing you come by the cafe. And I don’t know… Spending time with you is really fun and I want to get to know you more. I think maybe I like you, I don’t know, crazy! I know,” You’re starting to ramble because he seems a bit put off, and confused. 

“You like me?” Mark’s gathered, that in some sort, being in a band and being friends with some popular guys would mean a few girls here and there would approach him. But seeing your flustered self, and the mention of spending time together, rings a little bell. Realisation settling in when he finally connects a few dots that, maybe it’s not the current him that you’ve taken an interest to. And as complicated as it seems, he’s still hopes that you’ll not feel in any way bad when he says, “I think maybe, you’ve got the wrong person,”. 

His heart breaks a little watching you step back. You felt a bit defeated and confused by his words. Technically you haven’t got the wrong person, he knows that. You know that. But what he says is true. He knows, somewhere along his dreams and you. He understands you’ve been with his clone. 

This part unknown to you.

Yet, he feels something connecting himself with your aura and presence as you stand there speechless. He still has those wavering feelings from the day before when he first saw you. “I- “ Before he could explain further, you’ve already started to walk off embarrassed. He walks behind you, “Hey,- Urm…” He tries to find memories of your name, to call you, but he doesn’t know your name. “Hey…” He calls out again, his hand reaching your elbow to stop you from walking away. To face him. `

He’s taken aback at the glazed tears brimming at your eyes, and he feels bad having to tell you. Trying to find the best way to explain to you, especially since he doesn’t know how to. He’s only ever told his best friend, Donghyuck and obviously his dad knows. But somewhere along the way of finding you, he didn’t think he’d need to tell anyone else. Mark feels it by the way his fingertips graze the skin of your elbow, you don’t feel like just anyone and he really wants to know you, he feels it. And maybe by the way you look up to him, he understands also why his clone was drawn to you. The way your eyes flutter up to him, waiting for answers. He gets why his clone kept coming back to you. He feels it, feels the way your presence wraps around his mind, and makes him feel grounded. Even if you were a stranger. 

“I’m sorry,” You say, in the softest tone that it makes Mark let go. Already tangled with the million thoughts that ran 100 miles repeatedly. Mark curses at himself for having a complicated life, for having met you as his clone. “Don’t be,” He reassures you, his hands mindlessly grabbing hold of yours. There was a lingering silence holding your connected gaze. And you don’t find it in your strength to walk away. 

Even stood at the campus, with people minding their business and surrounding you both. The tension between you both holds you still. “Listen to me,” Mark pleads a little, his eyes quickly casting over your surroundings before he takes hold of your wrist in hast. All of a sudden, your body has a mind of its own and it’s effortlessly following Mark. His fast steps towards a classroom. You watch him in silence as he finally reaches away from people. Mark looks into the small viewing window to check in the lecture room was in use. Seeing the lights off, and empty seats, he opens the door with his free hand. He guides you into the room, with a bit of strength, making your bag strap fall off your shoulder. You whip your wrist away from his grip, fixing your bag strap. “Sorry!” Mark’s quick to apologise, a small pout on his lips, one that you’ve grown familiar with. All the tension from before rolls away from your shoulders, “Why did you bring me here?” You ask, turning around to turn on the lights before hearing his sigh. “I-“ Mark is lost for words again. “I-, I want to explain to you, something, about me, and-“ He tries to start again, but pauses a few times to gather his thoughts. A part of him is thankful you’re so patient with him.  You just watch him, with an awkward encouraging smile. One that he feels comfortable returning. That same from you aura calming him, as he finds his words to attempt to explain to you again. “I’m a clone.” He spills out. Mark’s own eyes widening as you knit your eyebrows in disbelief and humour. “A clone?” You repeat after him, laughing a bit. Even he was taken aback at the way he tried to fend and explain himself.  

“Yeah?” He replies. 

You scoff at him, rolling your eyes at his words. “If you wanted to make some lame excuse about rejecting me, you didn’t have to do it in here. It was fine out there,” You reason with him, turning your back at him to leave the room. 

“Wait- No, I’m serious…” Mark sounds a bit defeated, and you turn to look over your shoulder to see him with that same deep in thought look. 

“Okay… I’m listening.” You cave into him, just like that. 

He looks up to you hopeful, a small smile gracing his features. “I really am a clone though…” He tries once more. “It’s hard to explain… but, I think maybe you’ve been talking to my clone and… not well. Me.” There’s silence after that, before he sighs. “I usually use my clone for little things, and obviously I can’t do it all the time… but, I can… show you,”. 

This peaks up your interest, seeing the way his nervous demeanour might be because he was somehow telling the truth. And you stay silent even more, hesitantly nodding your head at his suggestion. Mark saw it coming, but he didn’t really want to accept that you’d actually say yes. He kind of chuckles aloud, that your reaction was somehow similar to what he predicted. “Okay… Then can you close your eyes for a small moment?” Mark asks, still evidently a bit timid, but you whisper a small “Okay,”. Mark knows, he’s done it for years. But the feeling of turning into a clone always feels new to him. The way he feels his limbs stretch out, but feel contained all together is something he’ll never get used to. Thing is, he can make his clone for however long he wants, but his body’s always reconnect and he’s back to normal after 24 hours. He figured, a small show and tell to the girl of his dreams, wouldn’t hurt. And with that, you feel his hands… Soft, gentle over yours which covered your eyes. He pulls them down slowly, revealing your then shut eyes. He smiles to himself at how cute you were before he whispers, “You can open them now.” You peel your eyes open, catching his eyes. A few centimetres away from your face, a small glint of sparkle in his eyes as he looks into yours with a little concern. Mostly for his behalf. You stay like that a few moments before you catch a figure behind him. Your gaze diverted, and all of a sudden its like your vision expanded too fast as Mark steps back to reveal, just as he said he would, his clone. 

You squeak out a small noise before clapping your mouth shut with your hand. Eyes widened as you watch them both, same facial feature; an awkward smile. Mark was telling the truth, he’s a clone. You shake your head at the thoughts, slowly walking towards them to use both your hands to poke each one of his cheeks. “No way, this is real,” You exclaim, looking at his clone and then back at Mark. “There’s no way,”. You repeat your words, and his clone takes the back of your palm into his hand. Leaving Mark with his cheeks poked. His clone smiles at you, as your other hand returns to your side, anticipating what’ll happen next. “Y/N… It’s me,” His clone smiles. The same smile from when you first saw him… “So your name is Y/N,” Mark interrupts, a small chuckle falling from his lips. “Cute,” He then follows after his words. You really became speechless, eyes continuing to look between the both. Mark really was a clone. You fell in love with a clone. “How…?” You whisper more or less to yourself. Mark takes both your hands, separating both his clone’s and yours touch. Guilt eating at him a bit since your gaze went to look back at his clone. “I told you, ‘You’ve got the wrong person,’," you chuckle at his words, shaking your head again to find your own theories of ‘How?’ “Listen, even though it was my clone… That you originally met. If I’m honest, I’ve been having dreams about you.” Mark leads on, but you get distracted seeing his clone start to fade into nothing. Another inaudible noise from you as your hand escapes Mark’s to point at his disappearing clone, Mark lets out an airy laugh at your reaction, “I’m making him disappear… Making him return to me,” He explains, and there’s genuine disbelief in your eyes, but you telepathically tell him to continue what he was saying. Somehow he understands, “I think the dreams I’ve been getting about you are from, well, him.” Mark smiles. “I mean, usually as a clone he writes little notes in my phone about what he does, but he never mentioned anything about you.” Again, finding things hard to comprehend, you still stay silent. Trying to understand. “And maybe, somehow we’re meant to be… I remembered you. Your laugh, your voice. I knew it was you the first time I saw you. I felt it,” It was Mark’s turn to stay silent. A part of you wondered if this was all real, trying to understand that maybe this was all true. That destiny was real, maybe even soulmates, as Mark stands there with you. Both your hands interlocked, and all that makes sense to you is how he made you feel. Regardless of his clone, it seemed that everything about him, made you feel like the world was okay. You’re reminded of the night shifts you spent waiting for him to come through the doors. You’re reminded of his smile, and his laugh. Even the tiny things, like how he’d look out the window when he say at the cafe. The way he sat so effortlessly handsome, reeling you in with each drink he bought at the cafe. Making you fall deeper into him, each time you wrote his name on a paper cup. His whole presence bringing happiness to you. “I felt it too,” You confess. 

You accepted him, just like that. 

Mark felt the upmost relief wash over him, every inch of anxiety he felt left his body as you smile at him. Especially when you let go of his hands to bring him into a hug. He melts into your embrace, thankful that you were so understanding. “You know, even though it wasn’t really me that spent time with you. I’d like the opportunity. Please stay with me,” He whispers into your embrace. A smile reaches you lips as you tighten your grip around him, liking the way he was being so endearing. You thank all the stars you wished on for granting your wish. You reply to him with clarity in your heart and with him in your mind, “Nothing that happens is ever forgotten, even if you can’t remember it.” 

Mark smiles to know he finally found you.

a/n: i finally finished... let me know what you think. this is the first time i’ve written something a little out of my comfort zone. i know close to nothing about clones lmao, but still this was fun to write! let me know if you want anything more from this... idk, i’m shy haha... anywho, thank you for reading!! ♡♡ 

[themattgirl]

First Time Solo

This is the first one... give me feedback, please!

Warnings: a bit fluffy I guess

Word count: 1,611

Enjoy!!!🦋

Today was the day of Harry’s first concert as a solo artist. His girlfriend, Y/N wasn’t allowed to go with him and be there through the whole process to support him and help him to be less nervous. Management said, “She would only distract him and ruin it” or “It wouldn’t be a great idea to show Harry’s girlfriend off because of his young female fans.”

But they didn’t understand it, still don’t, because their relationship is not a secret anymore. They kept it to themselves at the beginning, yes. But now they walk around the city holding hands, kissing if they want to, not caring about cameras catching them.

They didn’t manage to talk the bosses into letting her at least watch him on the little TV in his dressing room, though. But Y/N reassured Harry that she’d be waiting and praying for him in their hotel room and that’s exactly what she does. Fortunately, one of the stylists is a very close friend of her and proposed to FaceTime Y/N during the show so she can see the performance, regardless of what the others allowed or didn’t.

“Don’t hang up yet, Harry must be here in a second!” the stylist tells her after they watched him go off of the stage. How could she ever say no to seeing Harry?

Y/N sits up on the bed, she has only now realised how uncomfortable the position she was in has been. Harry just blew her mind and made her forget everything else. He always does, but this time was different. This time he was alone. It was just the soothing sound of his voice going through the headphones into her ears and making its way straight to her heart, transferring her into a state of ecstasy she has never felt before except for when he kissed her for the very first time.

“Heyyy, superstar!” Y/N hears the stylist greeting someone. She stretches her neck in order to see if it’s the person she thinks it is, but of course she sees nothing. It’s not some sort of 3D FaceTime call, after all. Though, she swears she heard her boyfriend’s voice somewhere in the background, very distinct but it was there.

Y/N wonders why her friend asked her to stay on the phone if she was going to hold the camera so that all she sees are legs and the floor, anyway. But then the phone is being lifted up and Harry’s sweaty face appears. “Babe, I need you here!”

A big smile immediately takes over the place of the previous frown on her face when her eyes meet his through the display. She notices how sparkly they are, just like always when he is on a high.

“You definitely didn’t need me, you were amazing!” she tells him what she knows he needs to hear right now. She knows how insecure he always feels after a show. His self-criticism is always on the highest level, so high that he sometimes ends up hating everything about the performance - or whatever he was doing - and even stopped talking for a while because he was so mad at himself. Ever since they started dating and Y/N noticed this side of him, she always tries to prevent him from thinking too badly about himself, and she became pretty good at it with time.

“Thank you, lovie! But I really want to be with you right now. I wanna be in your arms and I wanna hear your soft voice telling me that I didn’t mess up! I miss you, Y/N!” Harry’s words in combination with his big doe-eyes make her heart melt right away. It’s only been a few hours since they last saw each other but she knows exactly what he means, she feels it too.

“You better hurry up to me then, before I fall asleep!”

Of course she will not fall asleep, she’s not even tired. But maybe this way he would quicken it up a little more, who knows?

“No, babe, don’t! Wait f’me, I’m on my way!” Not giving her the chance to speak he has already disappeared and Y/N is left with an image that moves way too fast for human eyes before the face of the owner of this phone takes over the display.

“You know, you two are a really cute couple,” she claims and makes Y/N blush a little.

“Thank you!”

After Y/N thanks her friend again for doing what she did for her they end the phone call.

***

Only twenty minutes later, Y/N hears the door of the hotel room being opened so she gets up and rushes to her boyfriend to wrap her arms around him and pull him as close to her body as possible. Harry places his hands on her bum so he can lift her up. She wraps her legs around his waist and he walks them to the bedroom. Only when she pulls away from him she notices that he is still wearing his outfit from the show.

“You haven’t changed yet?”

Harry looks down on himself, almost like he has forgotten it. “Was in a rush, y’know.”

Y/N giggles to herself and slides his black, glittery jacket down his arms to put it on the bed. “Go take a shower, baby! Then we can cuddle and talk, yeah?” she suggests and he just nods before he gives her a kiss and makes his way to the bathroom.

Usually, she’d go with him and rub the shower gel on his body but she’s already had her shower so all she can do now is taking out fresh underwear for him and wait for him to finish and come back. It doesn’t take as long as she thought it would, fortunately.

Soon enough, they are snuggled up in bed. Harry has his arms wrapped around her waist, his head is resting on her tummy while she massages his scalp.

“I’m really proud of you, my love! You did a fantastic job!” Y/N tells him and makes him smile.

“You liked it?” There’s a tone of uncertainty hiding in the back of his voice.

“I loved it, Harry! Everyone did, I’m sure. You took my breath away through the display, how about all the people who were there? I wonder if they’re still alive. You’ve always been great on stage, but this one was incredible. You were so entertaining, I couldn’t take my eyes off of you. You sounded... ugh, I don’t even know how to describe it. And on top of that, you even looked so hot. Like, you had no business looking that handsome making me jealous of all the women around you. This was just your first show, what’s about to come is gonna be huge! I can’t believe my boyfriend did that!” she showers him in compliments.

Harry’s cheeks are bright red by now, “Stop it!”

“I’m just telling the truth. Damn, you were brilliant, breathtaking!”

“Thanks but stop, please!”

Even though Harry is pretty much a narcissist sometimes, this situation makes him blush like never before. Y/N just makes him feel so good about himself. He knows exactly she has much more to say because she always pays attention to everything, everything. She has her eyes on every detail, that’s how his girl is. But he’s heard enough. He’s afraid he’ll melt if she keeps going.

“I’m not stopping until you say it yourself. Say you won Switzerland’s heart and the rest of the world is yet to follow! You-“

To keep her from talking any more he presses his lips on hers. “Okay, just stop!” he says in between kisses.

“Say it!” she mumbles into the kiss.

“I was good,” he says before he locks their lips again. But Y/N is not having it. She cups his face to separate their faces and glare at him, not needing to say a word for him to understand.

“Okay, I was very good!”

“You were amazing!” she corrects him and connects her lips with his again.

“I love you so much, Y/N! You won’t believe it but I literally felt that your presence was missing the whole time. I was so nervous, I needed my anchor but you weren’t there,” he sounds both, sad and angry at the same time.

Harry is now lying on his side, propping himself up with an elbow so he can look down at her.

“These fuckers didn’t let you be with me,” he adds to make sure she doesn’t think it’s her fault because he knows she’d find a way to blame herself.

“We’ll talk to them again. I promise, we will find a way! And even if it takes a few tries and you have to do it without me again, just know that I’m always with you, at heart! I love you, H!” she reassures him while he strokes her hair.

“I love you more!”

“Speaking of emotions, I saw you tearing up a bit during Sign Of The Times,” she teases him playfully.

“Don’t know what you’re talkin’ ‘bout,” he denies, his thicker accent giving away that he’s lying.

“Don’t act dumb, Bambi! It’s okay to cry, it’s an emotional song!”

“Yeh, yeh, whatever!”

“I saw something else too.” She pokes his lower stomach.

“And what’s that, lovie?” he wants to know.

“I saw the bulge in your trousers!” She let’s her hand wander even lower.

Harry’s eyes widen at first but not much later the corner of his lips curves up, his dimple makes an appearance. “Oh, did ya?”

“Mhm,” she smirks.

[babbushka]

Blue Moon (5/?)

New York, 1987. The air was filled with smog and the streets were ridden with crime. Just another day in paradise. Your quiet life turns upside down when a striking man moves in across from you. You’re falling, fast, into a love that could never, ever, happen…or could it?

Pale x Reader

(Could be interpreted as modern!au Kylo Ren/Reader for those who don't know who Pale is, but really this is Pale from Burn This!)

Word Count: 7200 (I know it’s a bit shorter, my apologies, school kicked my ass over midterms lol)

Warnings: N*FW content! (Language, mentions of drug use, explicit content), Violence (graphic depictions of violence [not against reader])

Also on AO3! 

Chapter 5: Presents

He didn’t know what to do with himself, didn’t know how to stop shaking like he was.

He wanted to yell, he wanted to scream. He had you in his arms and felt sane for the first time in a long time, but like he was going crazy too. Was it always like this? There was somethin’ wrong with him – he had to go to the fuckin’ doctor, ask the doc why his heart was beatin’ so fuckin’ fast, ask him why –

“You’re back.” You sighed, and everything stopped, and you were holding him tight, and everything was okay.

“I told you I would be.” Pale said, not trusting his voice but talking anyway. It sounded raw and hoarse, like he’d been yelling – of course he’d been yelling. He’d been yelling for all of two fucking weeks.

“You smell like the ocean.” You said, taking in deep breaths, big deep breaths like you were trying not to cry.

Wouldn’t that’ve been somethin’? Someone crying happy tears over him.

“I haven’t fuckin’ washed these clothes, didn’t expect to be gone longer than I was.” He grumbled, and you looked up at him, smiled at him so big he could see all your teeth.

“I missed you.” You were plastered to him, wearing nothin but a pair of panties and his jacket – so you had found his jacket.

Did you find the other shit he left you? The money and the food? You looked like you were tired, like something bummed you out. Maybe you meant it, what you said. Maybe maybe maybe – he hoped you meant it.

“Yeah I bet you did.” He said, giving you a smile of his own, a certified grade-A smile.

“Kiss me?” You asked, and it was like any ounce of restraint he had had vanished.

He ripped – literally fuckin’ ripped – your panties off, pushed the jacket off your arms until it was a sad leather heap on the floor, and kissed you.

He was on you in an instant, held your upper-arms in a death grip. He wondered if you could feel his hands shaking, if you could tell they were bruising you from the strength of him. He crushed you against him, kissing you, biting at your lips, feral almost.

He felt cagey the whole fucking time he was down in Miami – a fuckin’ circus animal pacing his cage, too much pent up frustration to even fucking think straight.

“God I’m gonna fuck you so hard, I didn’t even so much as jerk off the whole fuckin’ time I was down there – can you fuckin’ believe that?” He bared his teeth at you.

You kissed him, sucked gross wet kisses onto his lips, his chin, his cheek. Licked into his mouth and walked backwards to the bed, god he had missed your bed, your shitty bed that was way too fuckin’ small but somehow just right all at once.

“You’re here now, you got me to fuck now.” You said, breathing in sharp little breaths when he gripped you too tight, pushed you onto the bed and crawled over your body.

He tweaked one of your nipples hard, made you make a face at him. He did it again, you smiled. Fuck, that smile did something to him.

“Yeah that’s right, my whore waitin’ for me – god you’re fuckin’ beautiful.” He couldn’t help but say, prying your mouth open, shoving his fingers there getting them wet.

“Are you high?” You asked, sounding funny with his hand in your mouth, all muffled.

“Yeah yeah yeah I’m high. You’d be too if you had to deal with those fuckin’ people. I don’t like planes. I don’t like the fucking turbulence or whatever the hell they tell you it is when the giant metal death trap in the sky starts rattling. So what if I’m high? Let me taste you.” He licked his lips, gathered up your spit and smeared it between his fingers, before pushing them into you.

“Pale – !” You said, a bit of a laugh to your voice, like you had been waitin’ for this for a long fucking time. Well, so was he.

“I ain’t fuckin’ had a bite of you in two fucking weeks, I’m starving over here.” He said, and you nodded, kissed him, pushed his shoulders down and spread your legs for him – fuck he loved it when you spread your legs.

He made out with your cunt, drank you down like he had never had a drop to fucking drink before. He buried his nose right between your folds, so it nudged at your clit when he worried his teeth at you. He was getting drunk off the noises you made, the little fucking whimpers and gasps, like you hadn’t been fucked in years and years and years.

Your hips kept moving, kept pushing onto him, and he almost wanted to smile, too hungry to bother. He wrapped his arms around your thighs, yanked you down to the edge of the bed where he could kneel and get proper leverage. He was so much fucking stronger than you, it made him dizzy, made him dizzy that you wanted him, wanted him to fuck you – to eat you out, to make you feel good – he was drunk he was high he was on fire.

He spared a glance to look up, but all he saw were your perfect fucking tits. You must’ve thrown your head back, and he did smile then.

You didn’t give him a warning before you came, he could just feel it, feel the way your thighs clenched down around his head, how you cried out. He tasted your come on his tongue, sucked it down and rolled your clit until it was too much and you arched your back off the bed.                                  

He pulled back, grabbed at the flesh of your thigh, bit a hard mark there.

“You ready for me? Huh? You slut.” He asked, wiping his mouth on your stomach, making his way up your body.

He took your hands and pulled them to his belt, you quickly got the memo and undid his belt and popped the button of his trousers off, unzipped him.

“Yeah, please, give it to me, I missed it – I need it.” You said, reaching inside his pants and stroking at his cock.

“What do you need?” He panted, already dying for you, for the feeling of your now pleasantly stretched pussy swallowing his cock.

“Your big dick, please, I’m starving too.” You said, looking up at him with big eyes.

He wanted to set something on fire for you, the way you looked at him.

“We got a lot of fucking time to make up, don’t we sweetheart?” He grabbed at your jaw, and you smiled and re-settled yourself further up the bed, bringing him with you.

“Fuck.” He groaned, pushing into your wet heat for the first time after so long of not having you.

He understood now, why there were people addicted to sex, sex addicts. He got it, got it completely when he fucked you, thrust into you hard, drew those noises out of your pretty fucking mouth – he could drown in those noises.

He hiked your leg up, there were so many positions he wanted to try with you, but fuck he liked you on your back – liked the way you took him so well.

“Say my name, say my fucking name you slut.” He pushed into you harder, fucked you so hard the headboard was slamming into the wall, he was gonna fucking break it, he was gonna break the fucking wall and the headboard and he wouldn’t stop fucking you even if he did.

“Pale! Pale please, you’re so good, fuck, Pale!” You grabbed at him, your hands were all over him, in his hair digging into his back and shoulders.

He pressed a hand against your neck, covered your mouth with his own and breathed into you, breathed in your air until you were both dizzy. He spit into your mouth, right on your tongue, and you swallowed it – because of course you did.

“That’s right, god – you’re mine, ain’t that right?” The headboard slammed and slammed into the wall, solid fucking wood meeting concrete.

“I’m yours, only yours – fuck Pale!” You shouted, loud loud loud, tears in your eyes kind of loud.

You reached down for a second, but he snatched your wrist and bit down on your hand, pinned it above you.

“No – you get to come on my cock or not at all, you got that whore?” He wanted you to come just from this, just from his dick fucking into you, just from the force of him.

“Okayokayokay.” You nodded, crying – so wet, slippery all over, sweating crying, coming, and coming and coming and coming.

“I’m – fuck I’m going to come.” He had wanted to last, but it was too much, so much all at once, you felt too good, he could feel you coming around him.

“Do it, please, come in me, Pale.” You nodded encouragingly, hands flexing from where he had it pinned.

“Fuck – !” Pale said, shoving so far up into you that he pushed you up the bed with the force of it.

He came and he saw stars and fireworks, and there was all this fucking applause inside his head –

…Until he wasn’t so sure it just in his brain, and he wasn’t so sure the fireworks weren’t real, and he was confused and exhausted and the coke had worn off and he didn’t know what the fuck was going on.

“What the fuck was that?” He asked you, panting into your tits, just wanting to feel his skin on yours. He was too hot, sweating in his clothes.

“It’s New Year’s eve.” You said, breathing hard just the same, your eyes glazed over and a satisfied smile dancing on your lips.

He experimentally thrust his hips slowly, starting to go soft but wanting to shove all his come deep inside you, smiling at you when you hissed at the oversensitivity of it.

He pulled out, discarded the rest of his clothes, threw them right on the fucking floor, not giving a shit about the pleats in his pants.

You reached for him, and something in his chest hitched, the way you reached for him.

He laid down next to you, pulled you too close, too tight to him, but you were like putty in his arms, still pliant and so so fucking warm.

He was exhausted, the stress, the flight, the fucking – all of it.

Out of the window you both watched the fireworks, a calm coming over Pale that he hadn’t felt in a long fucking time.

He’d deal with that later.

For now, he wrapped an arm around your waist, his chest pressing into your back, and watched the fireworks.

“Happy new year, (Y/N).” He whispered when he could feel his eyes growing heavy.

You turned around to face him, shuffled as close as you could, and kissed him sweetly, too sweet, sweeter than he fucking deserved. You gently nuzzled your nose against his, pressed a kiss to his cheek. Sweet, sweet, sweet.

“Happy new year, Pale.” You whispered back, and it was, for the first fucking time – it was.

He stayed the night again, couldn’t bear to leave you yet, not after just fucking getting back. Not yet. He’d stay. This wouldn’t become regular, he told himself as he blinked awake, he wouldn’t get used to this, but for now he’d stay.

You were still asleep.

He liked the way you looked when you were asleep.

It wasn’t peaceful exactly, and that troubled him, but fucking everything troubled him, so he didn’t read too much into it. If something happened, you’d tell him about it.

He missed you. Fuck what a sentimental thing to think, he thought, but he missed you.

His hand felt strange, naked without his ring. He felt naked, like he was lying. He was a liar. But he wasn’t really, not if you really think about it. Or so he tells himself.

It was too early, always too early and Pale was awake.

So he watched you.

Watched the way you puffed breath out of your lips onto his chest, watched how your nose twitched and your fingers clenched every now and again. He wondered what the fuck you were dreaming about, if you remembered your dreams. He hadn’t had a dream in a long time. Maybe he’d ask you when you woke up.

He had his arms around you, smiled at that. See? He’d say, see it’s fuckin’ natural, you bein’ in my arms. Don’t even need to be awake to know that’s where you fuckin’ belong.

He’d say that, maybe.

Maybe he did say it, out loud.

It was too quiet, too hard to tell.

It didn’t matter, you weren’t awake to hear it anyway.

“I’m gonna take you to central park.” He whispered, “I’m gonna rent us a fuckin’ rowboat and kiss you on the fucking lake. It’ll be like a post-card. You’d like that, huh?”

You didn’t answer – of course you didn’t, you were asleep.

Why the fuck would you answer?

He waited a minute for you to answer anyway.

“I used to collect post-cards as a kid, we didn’t travel much though, it wasn’t a very good fuckin’ collection. I almost sent you one from Miami – what a fucking nightmare of a trip that was.” He whispered, talking to you, wondering if somewhere deep down in dream-land you could hear him.

You just breathed, in and out, drooled on his chest.

“You got me, you know that? You got me real fuckin’ good. I think I’m dying sometimes, when I think about you.” He frowned, not liking how that sounded, “Not in a fuckin’ bad way or nothing. Or maybe it is. I don’t know. This ain’t bad, you ain’t bad. You’re too good. Too good for me, too good for your own good.”

In and out, in and out.

“Sometimes you make me feel like I’m losin’ it. Maybe I am fuckin’ losing it. I don’t know. You make me jumpy, I’m always fuckin’ thinking about you. I’d do anything you want, you know that? Any fucking thing. I’d kill someone for you, no fuckin’ joke. That’s how good you got me.”

He stared out your window, stared at his own, cold apartment.

“You know I didn’t even check my place yet?” He whispered, “I came straight here. Fucking threatened a guy with a tire iron for a parking spot, that’s how fucked you got me. I had to see you, and now look at you, you’re asleep.”

He didn’t need to look back at you to know you were still asleep, so he kept staring out your window.

 He stared until the sun came up.

 Stared until you stirred in his arms, and then he blinked, and suddenly the room was filled with golden light, like he had missed the part where it was all fuckin’ bright and pink and pretty, that’s how long he’d been staring.

“Pale?” You beamed up at him, and he found he didn’t miss the sunrise so much.

“The one and only.” He said softly, getting that starstruck fuckin’ feeling again.

You hummed a sleepy laugh, started stretching out on top of him, easing out the sleep from the muscles in your legs, your arms.

You couldn’t get very far, he was holding you too tight. He didn’t want to let you go get, not yet.

He could feel the heat of your cunt from where it pressed against his thigh, let one of his hands roam on over, slip into you.

“Mmm.” You sighed, your eyes closing again, licking your lips as he stroked your pussy.

“Just stay relaxed for me, would ya?” He asked, sliding out from under you.

You buried your face into his pillow, took in big breaths, getting the smell of him. He moved behind you, kneaded your ass in his hands.

His cock was hard, like it always fucking was when you were around, and you were so hot from sleeping that it was practically fucking drooling all over you, begging for you. He didn’t even bother denying it, he lifted your hips and held them as he thrust into you, making you make little gasps from over on the pillow.

Your cunt made the most obscene noises, even more so when he spit onto his dick and fucked it into you, making the drag easier.

“Pale.” You sighed, tucked your calves under you to prop yourself up better for him.

“Fuck, (Y/N).” He mumbled, pushing his hips right up against you, holding you there, holding your ass right in his fucking hands at seven-thirty in the fucking morning.

He was glad he told Jerry he’d not be back for another fucking day or two, glad he didn’t have to stop fucking you.

He fucked you like that, not nearly as hard as he was gonna after breakfast, but hard enough to get you coming all over your bedsheets, hard enough to come in you.

He pulled out, fed his come back into you, pushed it all right back into that fucking cunt of yours. He patted your ass, he was fucking thirsty.

“Good morning.” You grinned at him, blissed out.

“Nine-teen-eighty-fuckin’-eight.” He whistled low, caged you in his arms, hovered over you.

“A whole ‘nother year, can you believe it?” You asked, reaching up to kiss him. You tasted sour, but he didn’t mind, he kissed you back.

“No.” He said, making you smile. He rolled off, stretched his back and his arms, “We gotta use the bathroom, come on.”

“Will you make breakfast?” You asked, lookin’ real fuckin’ pretty with your nipples out and perky like that.

He just had to lean over and kiss at your tits, who the fuck could blame him?

“What kind of rhetorical fuckin’ question is that, of course I’m making breakfast. But you don’t want to fuckin’ sit at the table covered in dried sweat and come, it’ll itch.” He said.

“It’s already itchin’.” You laughed, and he smacked your thigh lightly.

“See?” He pulled you up, you held onto his hand on your way to the bathroom.

He tried not to think about that feeling in his chest.

“It’s really incon-fucking-venient you don’t have a shower, you know that?” He frowned, wrinkled up his nose at the thought of getting into an entire bath.

He had forgotten for a fucking second, that you didn’t have a shower.

“Yeah I know.” You smiled, settling into the hot water.

You didn’t bother with bubbles, this wasn’t a long fuckin’ soak, this was a scrub-down, and he could at least appreciate that. He climbed in after you, settled behind you, washed your back.

You felt kind of distant, it made him anxious.

“You okay?” He asked, real serious. He could be serious, he was always fuckin’ serious.

“Yeah, I’m okay, promise.” You said taking his hand, his left hand, kissing the knuckles there, not sayin’ nothing about the ring, or lack there of. “Just thinkin’, is all.”

“Thinkin’ about what?” He prompted, letting you hold and kiss his hand.

“Lots of things. I got you something for the holidays.” You smiled at him.

“Why the fuck’d you do that?” He frowned back, making you smile even bigger.

“Because I felt like it. It ain’t nothing big, don’t worry.” You let go of his hand, but he just grabbed yours anyway, his turn to kiss at you.

“I got you something too.” He said, and you rolled your eyes, he could practically hear you callin’ him a fuckin’ hypocrite.

“We can have a good ol’ fashioned exchange.” You hummed happily.

“After breakfast?” He asked, with a raised eyebrow. He needed to go down to his fucking car and get everything for you, it was a lot of stuff.

“Yeah, what’re you making?” You asked, and he splashed you with some water, trying to wipe the smug grin off your face.

It didn’t work.

He didn’t mind.

 The two of you stayed in the tub until you were clean and impatient, toweled off and shrugged into clean underwear. Pale tugged a wife-beater on, briefs and a pair of socks, it was fuckin’ cold in your kitchen. You were wearing one of his shirts, and he had to kiss you for it, just fucking had to.

“You like tea?” He asked against your lips, kissing the corner of your mouth before going on a hunt in the cabinets for a kettle.

“I don’t drink it that much, not as much as coffee.” You said, and he liked that about you, liked that you were honest like that. “But yeah, I like it.”

“It’s calm, you know? Good to start the year off with calm.” He said, all sorts of shit clanging around in the cabinets as he pulled out one of those old-fashioned-whistle-on-the-stove kinds of kettles.  

“You started the year off with come.” You said, a big cheesy smile on your face.

“You think you’re real fuckin’ funny, don’t you?” He asked, fighting a smile of his own.

“You’re laughing, ain’t ya?” You asked, and fuck, he did let out one then.

“Come here and put that mouth to good use.” He said, putting the kettle on the stove.

It was gonna need some time to heat up anyway, and you looked too good sitting in his fucking shirt like that.

He was thinkin’ you were gonna just come over and kiss him, so when you sank down to your knees and rubbed your face all over the front of his fuckin’ briefs, he had to almost steel himself against the counter with how hard he got so fucking fast.

Looking up at him, you tugged his underwear down his thighs, wasting no time at all sucking him off.

You were an actual fucking angel, he decided, right then and there. An angel with a tongue sent straight from Heaven.

He took a fistful of your hand and held your head in place, but you weren’t in any hurry or nothin’, sucking his dick and drooling all over yourself.

“I’m gonna fuck your throat.” He announced, and you hummed around him, opened your throat for him, stuck your tongue out for him.

He thrust lazily into your throat, wished he could see the way it looked bulging out your neck as he did, but the way your eyes shut and the corner of your mouth lifted was good enough for him – it was more than fucking good enough.

He fucked your mouth until he was close to coming, and then backed off, letting you suck and suck and lick and kiss his cock and his balls and scratch at his thighs until he was there, painting your smiling mouth and cheeks.

The kettle whistled, startling you.

“Tea time?” You asked, wiping your face with the back of your hand.

“Yeah,” he replied, dazed, “Tea time.”

  He kept you in bed all fucking day, fucked you for most of it.

He just couldn’t get enough of you – didn’t want to. He’d never ever fucking get tired of this, get used to it, the feeling of your skin on his, the faces you made for him and the noises he ripped out of your throat.

You were so loud for him, doing all the right fucking things that drove him wild – you drove him wild, did you know that? Did you know? He didn’t know, he was balls-deep and he didn’t fucking know anything.  

He was fucking you when there was a pounding on the front door, kept fucking you still, thinking it was just the headboard – how’d you not put a fucking hole in the wall yet?

The banging didn’t stop, but it was clearly aggravating you just as much as it was him, so he slowed his hips enough – not all the fucking way, but enough – to try and pay attention.

“What the fuck is that?” He asked, looking down at you.

You were covering your face, mortified.

“Oh my god, Pale – I think that’s the neighbor.” You said, trying not to burst into a fit of embarrassed laughter.

“Neighbor?” Pale asked, and then he laughed, making you laugh then, freely.

He swore he never fucking laughed this much during sex – wasn’t so sure he hadn’t laughed this much ever.

“Yeah, Eric, he normally works day shifts, I guess he’s home for the holiday.” You burned, the mood practically destroyed with each fuckin’ bang on the front door.

“Fuck this – ” He sucked his teeth, pulling out of you cold turkey and rummaging around the floor for his briefs.

“Pale!” You gasped, watching him storm out the room.

He heard you yank the sheet off the bed, saw you wrap it around yourself through his peripheral vision as he made his way to the pounding front fuckin’ door.

He yanked it open, coming face to face with a pasty brown-haired guy that was maybe half Pale’s fuckin’ size.

The guy, Eric, immediately gulped, clearly not expecting him.

“Hey man, I’m glad you two are having a good fuckin’ time over here but you gotta knock it the fuck off, it’s one in the afternoon. We’re trying to have lunch.” Poor fuckin’ guy tried to stand his ground.

Unlucky for him, Pale didn’t like that attitude too much.

“What the fuck you say to me?” He asked, clenching his jaw.

Eric must have just fuckin’ noticed the state of things, and awkwardly looked away – served him right, bastard coming over to ruin the fuckin’ party.

“Jesus could you put some clothes on?” He asked, and Pale glared.

“Listen pal, go back to your fuckin’ apartment before I make you regret this little fuckin’ interruption.” He said, tall and unmoving as a fucking mountain. “Me and (Y/N) were having a real nice time before you decided to get off your flat ass and walk over to our door and bang on it like you were some fuckin’ fireman checking for a heads-up. You ever heard of ringing the fuckin’ doorbell? You tellin’ me you’re so fuckin’ uncivilized that not only do you gotta interrupt a man fucking his woman, but you don’t even have the decency to ring the doorbell?”

“I don’t mean no fuckin’ trouble, it’s just embarrassing hearing all the fuckin’ yelling.” Eric said, blushin’ real bright.

“You got a girl?” Pale clicked his tongue, growing impatient.

“What?” Eric asked, dumb.

“What?’ A wife, a girlfriend, a fucking fuck buddy?” He snapped.

“Yeah I got a wife.” Eric gulped.

“Then why the fuck are you standing here instead of eatin’ her pussy, huh?” He asked, and you groaned.

“Pale, oh my god.” You covered your face, had to leave the room you were gonna start laughing so fucking hard.

Pale wasn’t laughing. He was pissed he wasn’t coming all over your tits right now.

“Maybe if you made your old lady yell half as loud, we wouldn’t fuckin’ be here, huh?” He sneered at Eric, before slamming the door in his face.

“Pale! You’re gonna get me evicted I swear to god.” You shook your head from the living room.

“Yeah? So what, you’re too good for this fucking place anyway.” He sucked his teeth, tugged your hand and walked into the bedroom. “Come on, we’re gonna have a little fun…”

 Soon he was fucking you harder and faster than he had, making a real big show of it, making you shout and yell and slamming the fucking headboard against the wall, pounding against the concrete with his fucking fists.

“Fuck! God you’re so fucking good.” He panted, holding your jaw and licking your teeth.

“Oh – oh!” You could barely get any words out, that’s how fucking hard he was ramming his cock into you.

“Say my name, you whore, come on say it!” He couldn’t keep his own grunts and groans quiet, the effort from fucking you alone had his throat raw.

“Pale! You’re so fucking good – I’m your whore, yours Pale.” You shouted, an angel an angel an angel, all for him, his fucking whore, his girl, his his his.

“You fuckin’ hear that? You hear that 5-A? You fucking hear that 5-B? 5-D?” He shouted, the veins in his fucking neck popping from the volume of it.

“Pale you’re going to get the cops called on us.” You laughed, burying your face into his neck, moaning high and loud as he railed you.

“So what, let them come, I’ll fuck you right in front of them.” He sneered, eyes lighting up when he felt you clench real fuckin’ hard around him. “Oh, you like that? Dirty girl, you like giving shows, that’s right, that’s fuckin’ right, isn’t it?”

“Fuck.” You blushed, and fuckin’ bingo.

“Maybe I’ll invite them over, make em watch as I fuck you right in front of them, spread your fucking pussy for them – they can look but they can’t fucking touch, ain’t that right?” He was sweating, always so fucking sweaty, he bit down on your jaw.

“Yeah, only you Pale.” You nodded, before another loud cry slipped outta your lips, making him smirk.

“God you’re so fucking sexy, you know that? Perfect fucking slut, fuck.” He couldn’t look at you without coming right on the fucking spot, wanted to make sure you got to first, had to warn you “I’m gonna come in you and you’re gonna fuckin’ thank me for it, you got that?”

“I got it – Pale, let me come? Please?” You begged, sounded so fuckin’ pretty when you begged.

“Say it louder honey.” He said, and you smiled, smiled so wide for him.

“Can I come? Please let me come.” You yelled, breaking into a laugh that he muffled with a hand over your mouth.

“Go ahead.” He grunted, grinding into you hard and fast, and you came

“Fuck – ”

“Oh shit.” He came with you, and he slapped his fucking hand against the wall one last time before his muscles shook from the thrill of the whole fucking thing, and he fell down on top of you, the two of you breathing real hard.

“Thank you, thank you Pale.” You said, dizzy, blissed out and fucking perfect.

“Anything for you doll.” He found himself saying, anything anything.

  “I got your voicemails.” You said, a long time later.

It was well into the afternoon, the two of you alternating between eating, dozing off in the sunlight, and fucking like rabbits.

You looked good in the sun, looked good in general. He missed bein’ able to look at you, drank in the sight of you. He was so thirsty.

He smoked a cigarette, the nicotine soothing his nerves, how the fuck was he so relaxed and so fucking jumpy at the same time?

“Some of them weren’t too pretty, huh?” He finally said.

The voicemails were the only fucking thing keeping him sane, down in Miami.

Down in Miami, that should be the name of a fuckin’ movie, he thought.

Down down down. He’d been real down. Yellin’ and fighting and yellin’ some more. In lows and wives and kids and aunts and uncles, it was too fuckin’ hot in Miami.

He’d done too much coke, down in Miami. That sounded like a line to a song.

Maybe he was losing it.

“I liked hearing your voice, I wish I coulda called you back.” You said, and he sighed. He wished you coulda called him too.

“I couldn’t risk her picking the fucking phone up.” He explained, but you just nodded.

“I know, I know.” You said, real gracious – you had always been so gracious about him, about his fucking mistakes and his fuck-ups.

He wondered what went on in your head, how you rationalized all of it. He didn’t think he’d ever find anyone like you, anyone that liked him like you liked him. You made him dizzy, he told you that once, didn’t he? You were always too gracious, too sweet, making him dizzy.

Miami had been bad, but maybe it wasn’t Miami. Maybe he’d take you down there and bring you to the beach and rub sunscreen all over you and fuck you real good while the sun set over the ocean. Maybe he’d show you where he threw his fucking ring over the pier, maybe he’d see some loser with a fuckin’ metal detector finding it, fishing it out of the ocean. It wasn’t worth much or nothin’ there were no diamonds on it, it was just the silver band.

But it was at the bottom of the fucking ocean now, and he was here, in your bed, and you were kissing his neck real sweet, too sweet.

“Catch me up, what’d I fuckin’ miss while I was sweating my ass off down there?” He asked, tucking some of your loose hair behind your ear, pinching playfully at your earlobe.

“Nothin’ much. Went to work, came home.” You shrugged.

“That’s all?” He frowned, that couldn’t be all.

“That’s all.” You shrugged again, and he gave you a stare that brooked no fuckin’ argument, making you sigh. “Well, there was this thing, with Marty.”

His blood ran cold.

“I’ll kill him.” He went real still real fast, mind already spinning.

“No, I’m okay, he was flirtin’, that’s all. Wouldn’t quit it. I didn’t like the way he was talking about you.” You frowned, and he sat up real fast, the room spinning.

Flirting. He was flirting with you, that no good son of a bastard fucking bitch –

“What’d he say about me?” He asked, jaw clenched and eyebrows knit.

The universe was hell fucking bent on pissing him off today, wasn’t it?

“Nothing but bullshit.” You said, frowning too. Pale didn’t like it when you frowned like that, made your forehead all creased up, made your big eyes angry. No one was supposed to fucking make you angry.

“He touch you?” Pale asked, quiet, so quiet, like if he spoke he’d scream. Maybe he would scream.

“Tried holding my hand.” You nodded.

He snapped.

“I’m gonna fucking kill him.” He snarled, and threw the covers off of him.

His blood was pounding in his ears, he could only think about one fucking thing at a time but a hundred different fucking thoughts came at him all at once.

What if he had hurt you?

Did he make you cry?

He had to teach the fucking punk a lesson, but first he had to find his fucking pants.

He picked up the wrinkled pair that he had thrown down the night before, the pleats were all wrong but it didn’t fucking matter because he was about to get blood all over them anyway. Where was his shirt? No shirt no shoes no service.

“Hey, why don’t you kiss me a little first, huh? Calm you down some.” You tried, bless you you fuckin’ tried, but he wasn’t having it.

He found his shirt, angry, so fucking angry – he goes away for two god damned weeks and the scum of the earth thinks it can run fuckin’ wild and free, not on his watch, not now that he was fucking back.

“Is he downstairs?” Pale asked, careful not to be harsh with you, careful to be gentle.

He didn’t want you to be afraid of him, but fuck he couldn’t stop, he had to do something – had to teach Marty not to touch what was his.

“Of course he’s downstairs.” You said, not sounding afraid.

Thank god for that, Pale thought.

“I’ll kiss you later, we’re gonna go have a little fuckin’ chat with him.” Pale scowled, leaning in to kiss you anyway.

You looped your arms around his neck and he kissed you and you kissed him and and and. He was shaking, shaking from rage, he wished he were drunk, or high, or maybe that he could just keep kissing you. He had to beat the shit out of Marty – fucking Marty.

“Pale you can’t go killing the deli guy, who’s gonna make our sandwiches if you do?” You asked, and he laughed, how were you so perfect?

“I can fucking make them.” He said, smiling and kissing you before the smile dropped and he was shoving his feet into his fucking boots and you were scrambling to get dressed while he stormed downstairs.

 The deli was thankfully, empty. It was Friday, but it was just before the fucking lunch rush.

Marty glared at him through the fucking window, and Pale shoved the door open with a little more force than necessary. Maybe he slammed it a little too hard, maybe. Who fucking cares, he thought. Two seconds later you showed up, lookin’ real pretty with your hair pinned up and in whatever decent clothes you had close-by. Pale opened the door softer for you, held it for you as you walked in, held his hand in your own.

Marty didn’t like that, didn’t like the look of you standing with your hand in his, so he turned to leave, but Pale wasn’t having none of that.

“Hey!” He called to get Marty’s attention, fuming, absolutely fucking seething with rage. “You fuckin’ botherin’ my girl?”

That got his attention, and he spun on his heel, lookin’ incredulous in a stupid way.

“Since when is she your girl?” Marty demanded, a crazed look in his eye.

Pale was smart enough to know all the fuckin’ ways this guy probably knew how to butcher something, but he was also mad enough to not give a shit. He gave your hand a squeeze without even realizing it, detangled your fingers from his own so he could walk right up to the counter.

“Since always, dipshit – now listen, I’m a real reasonable fuckin’ guy, so I’m only gonna break your face into two pieces instead of two-fucking-hundred, you got that?” He asked, cracking his knuckles.

“What – ” Marty didn’t even get a fucking sentence out before Pale had grabbed him by the apron, and was hauling him over the counter, away from the fucking knives and the machines that could probably take his head off.

He hadn’t gotten into a good ol’ fashioned fist fight in a couple of months, he was itching all over from it, crazy, he felt crazy.

The first punch landed right in Marty’s gut, his stomach tensing but not having enough muscle to do much about it. He went reeling, doubling over from the pain of it.

The second punch was right to his fucking face, right on the cheek – he’d knock out a couple fucking teeth if he were lucky.

Marty managed to get a couple hits in, staggering to his feet and throwing his fists wildly, they were uncoordinated, he was clear he didn’t know how to fucking fight. He did get a couple hits, right in Pale’s side and an upper-cut that knocked his jaw up a little, but Pale just went feral on him, beat his face into oblivion.

Pale couldn’t focus on anything, too focused on everything all at once. He pushed and shoved Marty into shelves, up against the counter, choked him and punched him and punched him and punched him. Even kneed him in the fucking stomach, knocked the wind right out of him.

“I told you he wasn’t gonna like it.” You said, leaning against the door, blocking the view from anyone seeing or coming in.

Pale grabbed Marty by the front of his now very stained apron, pointed his face in the direction of where you were standing.

“She don’t want you to fucking touch her, you don’t touch her. She don’t want to flirt with you, you don’t fucking flirt with you, you got that?” He seethed.

“Fuck you, you piece of shit.” Marty spit blood out onto the floor, onto his own fucking floor – now Pale had seen a lot of poor restaurant practices, but that one took the fucking cake as far as he was concerned – before glaring at you. “Aren’t you gonna fucking do something?”

He didn’t mean that to be to you, did he? He had a whole ‘nother fucking thing coming if he thought he was going to fucking talk to you like that.

You shook your head, shrugged at him, and Pale growled low in his fucking throat, ���You don’t get to talk to her like that.”

He had half a mind to snap the man’s fucking neck, but he settled on bashing Marty’s head into the counter and letting him fall to the ground unbalanced.

If he went any further, he’d kill him.

He looked back at you, still standing there, just watching, wary. You didn’t run away yet, didn’t call him dangerous, didn’t tell him you were afraid of him, not yet anyway. He took Marty’s dishtowel and wiped his hands down, decided not to kill him.

Instead, he looked Marty dead in the fucking eye as he picked the phone off the wall, dialed 9-1-1.

“Operator? Yeah, there’s been some kind of fight here – yeah sure thing, no he’s okay, just a little beat up.” He answered the questions the woman on the other end of the line asked, and then hung up.

He took out a stack of hundred dollar bills and went around the counter, stuck it in the fucking register.

“Don’t fuck with her again.” He said, jabbing a finger in his fucking direction.

Marty nodded, sitting up. He really wasn’t that beat up, just had some nasty bruising and maybe a broken fucking nose. Big deal, who didn’t have a broken nose every once in a while?

“We cool?” Pale asked, and Marty nodded again.

“Yeah, we’re cool.” Marty said, “Sorry (Y/N).”

“It’s alright Marty.” You replied, reaching your hand out to Pale.

The fucking knuckles were split, and he knew your medicine cabinet didn’t have everything he needed to stitch them back up, which meant –

“Come on, let’s go.” He said, taking your hand in his, leading you out of the deli.

No one on the streets had known nothin’, not one single person bothered to look or to care. Pale crossed the street, actually fucking waited for the little green man to pop up on the sign so you wouldn’t get hit by a fuckin’ car – no one knows how to drive in this damn city – crossed the street and held your hand and tried to breathe.

“Where are we going?” You asked, confused.

“To my place.” He sighed, and you immediately perked up with interest, about to ask probably a thousand questions – and rightfully so – but he put a hand up, “When we get inside, okay? I’m bleeding all over the fuckin’ sidewalk.”

“Everyone bleeds on the sidewalk sometimes.” You shrugged, but you were smiling, and you weren’t running from him, or crying, or hurt, or angry, and that’d what mattered to Pale in that moment.

So much for starting the year off with calm, he thought, but with the way you were smiling at him, the way you held onto his arm like you were his date at some big fucking gala, the way you helped him push the button on the elevator, the way you just were, he knew things were going to be okay.

  Tagging some pals! As always, if you’d like to be added or taken off the list please just shoot me a message!  @fullofbees @spinebarrel @dreamboatdriver @thecurlycaptain @bourbonboredom @driverficarchive @aweirdlookingtree @rosalynbair @redhairedfeistynerd @adamsnackdriver @glitzescape @arwarz @adamsnacc-kler @kyloxfem @fallin-for-youreyes @kylo-renne @attorneyl

[moonwest]

Full Ben Whishaw Interview in Sunday Times Magazine

Ben Whishaw, the voice of Paddington, the millennial Q in the Bond films, the next generation of Mr Banks in Disney’s epic Mary Poppins reboot, is fresh off the plane from LA. He is wearing a navy shirt, dark wool trousers and a fluffy knitted hat over his lush curls. It’s a strange combination of quirkiness and elegance. At the start of the year he won a Golden Globe and a Critics’ Choice award for his captivating portrayal of Norman Scott opposite Hugh Grant’s Jeremy Thorpe in A Very English Scandal. Of course he says he didn’t expect to win, and of course he says it feels great, but when I ask if this recognition from Hollywood means he’ll spend more time out there, he says: “No idea. I don’t feel it’s my world. I just sort of dropped in and it was a lovely thing. I would like to drop in more often. Maybe it opens doors. I guess we’ll see.”

For now, it’s back to the day job. Whishaw, 38, is rehearsing a play called Norma Jeane Baker of Troy, in which he plays a man who likes to dress up as Marilyn Monroe. “We just got the costumes,” he says. “I wear a dress that’s a replica of the one she wore in The Seven Year Itch — the white one where the wind comes up. They’ve also given me the bum, hips and breasts. I don’t think they’re as big as Marilyn’s, but they’re proportionate to my body. It’s a strange thing. I’m not playing Marilyn, I’m playing a man who’s infatuated with her. The play is set in the year she died and he’s in mourning for her. Apparently there was a spate of copycat suicides that year.”

To research the role, Whishaw has been reading a book called Fragments. “It’s bits of Marilyn’s diary, notes on hotel paper, poetry,” he says. “She writes beautifully. Arthur Miller was here with her when they were doing the film The Prince and the Showgirl, and she opened his diary and read about how disappointed he was with her, how embarrassed he was being around his intellectual friends with her. Apparently this was devastating to Marilyn. All these men say how difficult she was. It makes you want to strangle them. But she really was amazing. She had a lot going on, a lot of sadness on her plate, poor darling. To be a star in that star system and those men.”

If she had been born 50 years later, does he think she would have been part of the #MeToo movement? “I’m sure she would have. I’ve been listening to interviews with her. She doesn’t seem afraid of anything.”

Fearless and vulnerable. It’s a contradiction that could possibly describe both of them. “Yes,” he smiles.

Almost 15 years have passed since Whishaw, fresh out of Rada, was acclaimed as one of the best ever Hamlets in the Trevor Nunn production at the Old Vic. His portrayal earned him an Olivier nomination and opened the door to film and television roles. He voiced Michael Bond’s Peruvian stowaway bear in the two recent Paddington films and is lined up for a third, as well as an animated TV series for Nickelodeon. Perhaps his best known role is Q in the Bond films Skyfall (2012) and Spectre (2015). As soon as he’s finished his Marilyn, he will begin shooting the next one, though no one in a Bond movie can tell you in advance what it’s going to be like. “I think they’re probably trying to figure out what to do with the storyline,” he says. “At least I know that my character is the same. Someone did tell me there might be a scene with Q’s cats.”

I immediately want to sort out an audition for my cat Roger Moore.

“Does Roger travel?” he asks. “Could he go to Pinewood? And can he cock an eyebrow?”

Yes, he can. That’s why he’s called Roger Moore.

“I’ll get onto Barbara Broccoli about it,” he says.

Whishaw has created an ever-widening niche for himself — he has made room in film, theatre and television for malleable, sensitive male characters that are sometimes described as androgynous, but what they really are is sexually ambiguous.

“Do you think I’m androgynous? I think I’m quite male-looking. Androgyny is different to non-binary, but I hate all these labels. I get mixed up.”

It’s true, there are many labels; nonetheless Whishaw is a 21st-century man. When you think of those macho actors of the last century, men like Rock Hudson, who revealed he was gay only when he was dying of Aids, it seems so different now.

Whishaw entered a civil partnership with the Australian composer Mark Bradshaw in 2012, but for a long time he did not discuss his private life. He would say things like, “An actor shouldn’t reveal their sexuality because it pigeonholes them.” Once he had come to terms with it himself, however, hiding it became difficult in a different way. “People assume there’s some juicy secret,” he says. “But I don’t agree any more with that statement [about being pigeonholed]. I don’t think it’s the be-all and end-all, and since revealing my sexuality I haven’t had any negative effects.”

Perhaps that’s because he is such a skilful actor, perhaps the pigeonholes aren’t as rigid as they used to be, or perhaps the revelation has actually helped him. He shrugs. He doesn’t mind talking about it now, it’s just he can’t be conclusive.

At one point, Whishaw was lined up to play Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody, although he was never given a contract or confirmed officially. Various versions of the biopic had been on the cards for about 10 years. Sacha Baron Cohen was in the frame first of all, then Whishaw, and ultimately Rami Malek. The film has been accused of not being “gay enough”, but, for all the criticism, Malek’s career-defining role won him an Oscar.

We talk about how hard it was for Mercury to admit that he was gay and how he would refer to himself as bisexual. But then perhaps he was. He certainly had sexual relationships with women. “I think it’s very unfair when people say they’re bisexual and they’re accused of being gay really,” Whishaw says. “If we’re honest about these things, perhaps most people are on a spectrum.”

Whatever the risks he took in revealing his sexuality to the public, Whishaw found it much harder coming out to his family. “I’ve gone through a few difficult things,” he says. “There was a moment in my early twenties when I did not feel very good about myself. It was to do with my sexuality and not knowing how to be myself and hating myself. I did know [my sexuality], I just couldn’t tell anyone.”

When he eventually told his parents, they weren’t surprised, but he still struggled. He sought therapy. “It really did help,” he says.

He carries himself with such a sense of otherness that I am surprised to learn he is a twin. “We were born on the same day and we came out of the same place at the same time, but we are totally unalike,” he says. “Perhaps you can see we are related, but we don’t look alike. He’s blond. He came out first and was very pink and chubby. And I was this squashed, dark thing that popped out a few moments after. We were so different, but we were always dressed the same and taken everywhere together, even to things I was not interested in, like football. So I’ve always defined myself by him, but in opposition to him. I like everything different to him. There’s not a single thing we have in common, except we both liked the scary rides if we were taken to a park.”

Don’t twins normally have a kind of supernatural understanding? “No. No understanding, no telepathy. When I told him [about being gay], he wasn’t surprised, of course, but still.”

He notices a black crystal around my neck and I explain that it was given to me by my hypnotherapist.

“I’d like to try hypnotherapy,” he says. For what? “Smoking,” he says. “It’s so frowned upon. You feel ostracised from the world if you smoke. And there’s the hair twiddling thing.” He starts twiddling his hair. “I’ve probably been doing this for the whole interview.” He hasn’t, but apparently it’s been a lifelong habit. “I’ve done it since I was a baby. I don’t know why I do it.”

I recall the title of a Peter Cook anthology: Tragically, I Was an Only Twin. That’s what Whishaw seems like. I can’t imagine him with a brother. “My dad says if my brother and I were one person we would be an amazing, perfect human,” he replies.

It’s often reported that his father works in IT, but that’s not true. “He lives in the countryside and raises chickens behind a farm. He used to be a footballer and he now works in sports with young people. He’s not an IT person at all,” Whishaw laughs. His mother works in cosmetics. They split up when he was a young boy, but he has good relationships with both of them. He talks about them with love.

The last time we met, Whishaw told me he was afraid of meeting people. “I haven’t got over that,” he says. “I love people, but I’m just shy of meeting new people, especially when they’re famous.”

In particular, he was bashful around Meryl Streep, whom he starred alongside in Mary Poppins. “I’m so completely left speechless when I’m in the same room as her. Do you never feel that speechlessness come on you?” he asks sweetly. “Even though she seemed to be the nicest person, I was very timid and shy around her.”

It’s odd how someone so shy can look so confident — smouldering even — on screen.

He walks off in the furry hat that makes him look part man, part mole. It’s certainly a statement. But perhaps the most curious thing about Whishaw is we’ll never entirely know what that statement is.

Norma Jeane Baker of Troy is showing at the Shed’s Bloomberg Building, New York, April 6-May 19; theshed.org

[officialcherubcampus]

CHERUB Jr - Spies in Training

WHAT IS CHERUB?

You’re not allowed to know where CHERUB campus is and don’t bother searching on any maps, because you’ll never find it.

CHERUB Campus is so secret that you’re not even allowed to fly over in an aeroplane. But if you could, you’d see more than a dozen buildings, a forest big enough to get lost in and lots of neatly trimmed grass. You’d also see tennis courts, football pitches, an outdoor swimming pool and one of the scariest, muddiest, assault courses in the world.

If you looked out of the aeroplane with binoculars, you’d be able to make out some of the children who live on CHERUB campus, riding their bikes, playing sport and walking along the gravel paths between lessons.

You might think you were flying over some posh boarding school, although the uniforms would seem a bit weird.

Cherubs - as the children who live on CHERUB campus are called - don’t wear blazers and ties. They wear waterproof boots, combat trousers with lots of pockets for putting equipment in and coloured T-shirts. It makes them look a bit like soldiers.

Only very clever children are picked to become cherubs and they are expected to work extremely hard in school. As well as normal classes like history, English and maths, cherubs have to do special lessons: karate, kick boxing, survival skills, espionage, and computer hacking.

These lessons aren’t always as exciting as they sound. In fact they can be just as difficult and boring as normal lessons. But cherubs have to learn tons of extra stuff because they’re training to be spies.

WHAT USE ARE KIDS AS SPIES?

The most important thing for any spy is that the people you’re spying on don’t know that you are one.

Because no sensible grown up believes that kids work as spies, cherubs can get away with all kinds of stuff that grown up spies can’t.

WHY ARE ALL THE CHERUBS ORPHANS?

Mums and Dads are very protective of their children. So are grannies, grandads, aunties, uncles, foster parents, or whoever else looks after them. They like making sure that you cross the road safely, they like tucking you into bed at night and always knowing where you are and what you’re up to.

Mums and Dads would never let their children go off on dangerous missions and become spies. That’s why every child on CHERUB campus is an orphan.

And since it’s impossible to be born without having two parents, it means that every single cherub has a sad story to tell about how they became an orphan. This book starts with one of those sad stories.

If you don’t like sad stories, you might like to skip the first two chapters and go straight to chapter three where all the chasing, fighting and rolling around in mud starts!

(1) THE BIGGEST HOLE IN THE WORLD

Playing in holes is fun. The biggest hole in the world is in America and it’s called the Grand Canyon. It’s more than a thousand kilometres long and two kilometres deep, which means that if you fell into the deepest part, you’d have three and a half minutes to regret putting your foot on that slippery piece of rock before you finally hit the bottom and went KER-SPLAT.

Lots of people play inside the Grand Canyon. They climb up the walls, they ride rafts down the river that runs along the base and some people even jump off the edge in hang gliders and fly down to the bottom.

If you think that flying to the bottom of the world’s biggest hole with a little glider strapped to your back is too scary, a more sensible option is to go down in a helicopter.

Lots of people do this and during tourist season dozens of helicopters swoop in and out of the canyon, keeping close to the edges. Most passengers get a thrill out of seeing the scenery whiz by, though it has been known to make some of them a bit queasy.

The pilots who fly into the canyon are very skilful and helicopters are very safe, so things never go wrong.

Well, almost never...

(2) YOU MUST BE THIS TALL TO FLY!

Five Years Ago

Four year old Zoe King and her three year old brother Rob were on holiday in Arizona. They spent the night in a motel a few kilometres from the Grand Canyon.

Before setting off to visit the canyon the next morning, the two youngsters were taken out into the desert sunshine and made to stand on the bonnet of their family’s rental car.

Their Mummy, Daddy and older brother Louis stood alongside them and they got a lady who was walking by to take a photograph so that the whole family could be in it.

Afterwards, the King family got in their car and set off for the canyon.

When they arrived, Rob escaped. The toddler clambered between the metal railings and leaned over the biggest hole in the world before his mother dragged him away.

“You’re a very silly boy, Rob King,” she said sternley. “Stay away from the edge or I’ll make you wait behind when everyone else rides in the helicopter.”

“But I want to goooooooooooo in the helicopter,” Rob whined.

He kicked at the desert sand and made a big fuss as his mum grabbed his hand and marched him towards the heliport.

By the time the five members of the King family arrived at the landing pad, Rob’s face was a mess: bright red, with snot and tears running everywhere.

To make things worse, Rob’s twelve year old brother Louis wouldn’t let him look through his binoculars and his four year old sister Zoe was behaving like a perfect little lady and generally showing her brother up.

But Rob forgot about his tantrum when he saw the helicopter coming in to land. It was silver. It had an American Indian painted on the side and it made such a racket that he jammed his fingers into his ears.

The pilot jumped out, dressed in a flight suit, ear protectors and sunglasses. He opened the back doors while the blades pulsed just a few centimetres above his head and helped two overweight men to clamber out.

As the men waddled towards the terminal building, the pilot waved the King family towards his helicopter. But he frowned when they got close. He leaned inside his craft and pulled out a measuring stick.

He lined it up against Zoe and Rob and shouted terrible news over the roar of the blades:

“They’re too short to fly, Mrs King. You have to be taller than my stick to ride in my helicopter.”

Rob’s mum looked very upset.

“But it was so expensive,” she said. “We booked tickets for the whole family as a special treat.”

“It’s in the terms and conditions, maam. You should have read them. Our safety belts aren’t designed to hold small children.”

“What if my husband and I hold on to one each?” Mrs King asked.

“I’m very sorry, but it’s against regulations. I could lose my licence if I let you do that.”

Rob was too little to understand what was going on as a smiling lady came running out of the terminal building and handed ice creams to him and Zoe.

“I’ll make it up to you both,” Rob’s mum said, as she leaned down and gave her two youngest children the kind of smile she usually saved for injections and trips to the dentist. “You’ll have to wait inside, but we’ll only be away for twenty minutes. The lady will look after you and she says they have a play area and a big box of toys.”

Zoe looked upset, but Rob was more concerned with tearing the wrapper off his ice cream, as his parents and older brother climbed inside the helicopter.

“So long, suckers!” twelve-year-old Louis said, giving his little brother and sister a wave, as the pilot slammed the door of the helicopter and jumped into his seat.

Zoe looked upset, but Rob was finding his chocolate covered ice cream a highly satisfactory alternative to a helicopter ride, especially when he got inside the big glass terminal building and saw the play area with a giant model helicopter and a trampoline.

“Cry baby bunting,” Rob sang to his sister, as he raced up the steps of the slide with his ice cream held aloft in one hand.

As he glided down on his bum, a flash of orange light tore through the window, followed by an earthshaking bang.

Everyone started screaming.

When Rob hit the bottom of the slide, he raced outside behind all the grown ups to see what was going on.

“Mummy!” Zoe screamed, holding her hands over her face.

The air was filled with black smoke and the smell of jet fuel from the exploded helicopter. Chunks of smouldering metal were scattered all around in the snad.

“Oh lord,” a large man cried as he stared up at the cloudless sky. “I just saw a family get inside that thing.”

“Mummyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy,” Zoe screamed again.

Rob felt very strange. He was too little to understand what had just happened, but the hot sun was making his ice cream melt all over his fingers to he thought he’d better concentrate on licking it up.

Rob’s mum always got cross if he made a big mess with an ice cream.

(3) COMPUTER HACKING CLASS

Rob King was now eight years old. He lived on CHERUB campus and was training to be a spy.

He didn’t remember much about his dead mum and dad, but he could remember the helicopter crash and hadn’t eaten a mouthful of ice cream since that sad day.

Ice cream seemed like extremely unlucky stuff.

It was Friday afternoon and Rob was in computer hacking class with seven other kids. Each kid had a computer on the wooden bench in front of them. Their task was to unscrew the metal case, remove some of the bits inside, pull out a wire on the back panel, install a special thingy called a key-logger, then put everything back together again.

And they were only allowed ten minutes to do it in.

“Two mintues left,” Miss Weller said firmly.

Rob felt hot and the tension was making his stomach turn somersaults. He’d pulled lots of stuff out of the computer and fitted the key-logger. But now he had a pile of bits left over and couldn’t work out where they’d all come from.

Even worse, three other kids had completed the task and the rest all had the covers back on their computers and were calmly finishing off.

“Ninety seconds remaining.”

Rob looked helplessly at the loose wires dangling inside the computer and the green circuit board in his hand. He glanced pleadingly at the dark skinned girl who sat at the next bench, with her task complete and her arms neatly folded.

Her name was Lyra. She was also eight years old and she was Rob’s room mate and best friend - even though she was a girl.

“Connect that to the yellow wire,” Lyra whispered, trying not to move her lips.

But Miss Weller was the sort of teacher who could hear someone farting three floors down.

“Don’t help him, Lyra,” Miss Weller said angrily. “This is not a team assignment.”

Rob had taken Lyra’s hint and fitted the yellow wire to the circuit board. But he still didn’t have a clue where to fit the board inside the computer.

Even worse, everyone else had now finished. The room was silent apart from the sound of Rob’s white gloved fingers fumbling helplessly inside the computer case.

“Thirty seconds left, Mr King. You’d better get your skates on.”

As Rob made a desperate last attempt to force the circuit board into the wrong slot, it made a sharp crack and snapped in two.

“Nooo!” Rob gasped.

His hopeless task had now become an impossible one. And to make things even worse, a couple of his classmates sniggered at his misfortune.

“Time’s up,” Miss Weller said airily, taking a final glance at her watch. “Everyone who has finished their task can leave. Have a lovely weekend and don’t forget to read chapters thirteen and fourteen in time for Tuesday’s lesson.”

All the kids except Rob and Lyra grabbed their backpacks and filed out of the small computer hacking workshop.

“You can go, Lyra,” Miss Weller said.

She shrugged. “I’ll wait for Rob. We’re going paintballing together.”

Miss Weller looked surprised. “I thought you were both banned from paintballing.”

“It was only a three week ban,” Lyra said. “It ended yesterday.”

Miss Weller tutted. “I’ll tell the medical unit to expect heavy casualties if they’re letting you two back on the paintball range.”

“We’re not that bad, Miss,” Lyra said, grinning guiltily.

Miss Weller now stood beside Rob and looked at the tangle of wires inside the metal case.

“A disaster,” she announced, shaking her head. “How old are you Rob?”

“Eight miss.”

“Nearly eight and a half, isn’t it?”

“Yes, Miss.”

Miss Weller shook her head gravely. “In less than a year and a half, you’re going to turn ten and be sent on CHERUB basic training. You’ve lived here for more than two years already. You’ll be expected to pass first time and qualify as an underage spy. But that’s not going to happen if you produce sloppy results like this, is it?”

“No, Miss,” Rob said sheepishly.

“You’ve removed circuit boards and wires that you didn’t need to touch and you snapped that piece by trying to force it into the wrong slot.”

“Sorry, Miss.”

Miss Weller tutted. “Will sorry cut it when you’re working as a spy? What if that computer belonged to a drug dealer or a terrorist? Your life might be in danger if you messed up their computer. Have you even read the chapters in the textbook?”

“Of course,” Rob lied, as he shot an evil glance at the battered copy of the CHERUB Guide to Computer Hacking on the desk in front of him.

“What did the chapters tell you to do with the DVD drive?”

“Unplug it?” Rob guessed, as Lyra frantically shook her head.

“Hah,” Miss Weller said triumphantly. “You haven’t read it. Those chapters don’t say anything about the DVD drive. Do you even know waht a key-logger is?”

“Something to do with, erm ... logging keys?” Rob said weakly.

“Once installed, a key-logger records everything typed by the person using the computer. We can return to the computer a few days later, remove the key-logger and we’ll know every password and security code that the owner typed in.”

Miss Weller grabbed the hacking guide off of Rob’s bench and pressed it firmly against his chest.

“Study it properly,” she said. “I’ll be expecting you to repeat this exercise after class on Tuesday. If you mess up again, I’ll make you run twenty punishment laps around the athletics track. Is that understood?”

(4) ZOE - THE EVIL SISTER!

Rob and Lyra bolted out of the classroom and slid down the banisters to the first floor. They flung their heavy backpacks into their bedroom, making a noise that startled the two guinea pigs who lived in cages on the window ledge.

“I’ll just give Emily and McFlurry some carrots,” Lyra said.

“There’s no time,” Rob gasped, as he grabbed another backpack that he’d already packed with a towel and a clean set of clothes to put on after paintballing. “We have to get there first and nab some good equipment.”

Lyra knew Rob had a point. The CHERUB paintball shooting range had thirty-five sets of guns and protective gear. If you arrived late, you ended up with one of the tatty old guns that didn’t shoot straight, a battered helmet and a padded suit that smelled worse than feet.

“I’m faster than you, I’ll catch you up,” Lyra said, as she grabbed a plastic bag filled with carrot sticks and began sliding them between the bars of each cage.

Rob ran out of the bedroom, scrambled down to the ground floor and raced off across the squelchy football pitches towards the paintball range.

Paintball was all about running around in a helmet and padded suit, getting extremely muddy and shooting at your mates with brightly coloured paint pellets. If there was something in the world more fun than paintballing, Rob had yet to discover it. And today he was even more excited than usual, because he’d been banned from paintballing for the past three weeks.

Getting hit by a paintball doesn’t usually hurt, but it’s dangerous to shoot someone from close range and Rob had gotten in very serious trouble for shooting his big sister Zoe from less than the two metre minimum shooting distance.

Even though Rob couldn’t run as fast as Lyra, he was still quick and there was some good kit left when he arrived at the changing hut on the edge of the paintballing area.

The mud splattered room had three long wooden benches. A bunch of noisy eight and nine year olds were excitedly changing into protective gear.

Some had only just arrived and were still peeling off their boots, while others had already zipped themselves into thickly padded suits, strapped on protective helmets, pulled down their face visors and slid on gloves.

Rob happily grabed the last two really good guns and rummaged inside a plastic crate until he found overalls for himself and Lyra. All the overalls were muddy and disgusting, but he’d found a couple that were slightly less disgusting than some of the others.

“Thanks, mate,” a girl growled from behind him.

Rob turned to see the girm faces of his sister Zoe and her half German best friend, Gerda.

Zoe was only a year older than Rob, but she was much bigger. She looked more like an eleven year old, with a beefy neck and powerful shoulders. Gerda wasn’t quite as scary, but was still bigger than Rob.

Rob backed up to the wall and shook his head.

“This stuff is for me and Lyra,” he said. “I got here first.”

“I got here first,” Zoe squeaked, mocking her brother’s voice as she gave him a shove and snatched the gun out of his hand.

Gerda quickly grabbed the other gun and the two suits. “Danke,” she growled, using the German word for thank you, but clearly not meaning it.

Rob was upset, but he’d never let it show in front of his sister. He screwed up his face and tried to sound fierce.

“I don’t care what guns me and Lyra have got,” Rob said. “We’ll still wipe the floor with you two.”

“Oh, I’m sooo scared of little Robee,” Zoe giggled, as she gave her brother another shove. “You said little shrimp.”

(5) WHEN I GET HOLD OF THEM...

Ten minutes later, fifteen pairs of cherubs stood eagerly at the wire gate of the paintball compound, with their visors down and pockets stuffed with ammunition.

Rob scowled at Lyra. “I’m gonna get my sister so bad,” he said. “I don’t care if I’ve got a rubbish gun. When the gates open, I’m gonna follow her and...”

But Lyra shook her head firmly. “We’re not here to go after your sister. We’re here to have fun and win the game.”

“But we’ve got to get my sister back,” Rob said indignantly. “She ripped off our guns.”

“Zoe and Gerda are bigger, faster and older than us. If we pick a fight with them we’ll lose,” Lyra said sensibly.

Lyra usually acted a bit more grown up than Rob and he realised that she was right, as usual.

“Us getting banned from paintball was totally bogus,” Rob moaned. “Zoe shot me from close range before we shot her, but we were the only ones who got done for it.”

“Forget Zoe,” Lyra said. “There’s nothing you can do about her.”

“Why does Zoe always have to pick on me?”

“You’re almost as bad as she is,” Lyra reminded Rob. “You broke her CD player, you poured water on her school books, you even put itching powder in her underwear drawer that time.”

Rob cheered up enormously as he relived one of the happiest moments of his life: “Oww, oww! Miss, my private bits have gone all red!!

The paintball game was being run by a fearsome looking instructor called Mr Pike. He clapped his giant hands together to get everyone’s attention.

“OK you horrible brats,” Mr Pike yelled. “The rules are simple. You must obey the safety code at all times. The game lasts for forty minutes. Each team has ten envelopes and there are ten letterboxes hidden around the paintball compound. Whichever team posts a letter in the most boxes wins the game. If you get shot three times by a member of another team, you’re dead. As soon as you’re killed, you must raise your hands above your head and leave the training compound by the nearest exit.

“Today we also have one extra rule. We’ve had a lot of rain over the past week and some of the trenches are very muddy and waterlogged. Therefore, all trenches are out of bounds.”

Mr Pike raised a whistle to his lips as he opened the gate of the compound. “Spread yourselves out and don’t start shooting until you hear my whistle.”

The thirty youngsters all cheered as they raced into the compound. Lyra watched to see which way Zoe and Gerda went before dragging Rob in the opposite direction.

(6) UNDER FIRE

“It’s so good to be back playing paintball,” Rob grinned, as his boots slipped and squelched across the muddy ground.

It was spitting with rain. The canopy of dripping leaves over their heads made it dark and creepy as they jogged past tree trunks splattered with brightly coloured paint from hundreds of previous battles.

As well as the trees, the compound had a number of manmade features designed to make paintball games more exciting: small wooden forts, climbing nets, rusted cars with all the glass removed and pitch black tunnels full of mud and rats that only the bravest cherubs venture in to.

Lyra stopped running when she spotted a red plastic box nestled between two trees. It was lucky to find one of the mailboxes before the exercise had even started.

As Lyra crouched down to post one of the ten letters, Rob twisted his boot deep into the soggy ground. When Lyra turned around, Rob flicked his leg forwards and splashed her with mud.

“Aaarghhh!” Lyra giggled, as she retaliated by skimming her boot through a deep puddle.

A great wave of muddy water pelted Rob’s protective suit.

The mud fight might have turned more serious, but Mr Pike blew the whistle to start the game. Within a second, Rob and Lyra heard the distinctive pulse of air from a paintball gun and ducked down as two green pellets whizzed between their helmets and splattered into the tree trunk behind their heads.

“Ambush,” Lyra shouted.

“That was too close,” Rob gasped as he and Lyra ducked down and started running.

More paintballs whoosed through the low branches and soggy leaves around their heads.

After running twenty metres, they reached a wooden fence and dived behind it, but not before Rob felt a distinctive stinging sensation in his bum.

“I’m hit,” he yelled, as he looked over his shoulder at a splat of yellow paint stuck to his trousers.

But there was no time to stand around worrying. Rob and Lyra both raised their guns into firing positions and peered through slits in the wooden fence.

“Can you see them?” Rob whispered, knowing that his companion had a knack for spotting tiny movements in the darkest places.

Lyra nodded. “See the branches moving between the two trees over on the left?”

“I see ‘em.” Rob nodded.

“You move around that way,” Lyra said, pointing towards a line of shrubs. “I’ll blast them out and you can nail them as they try to escape.”

“Good thinking,” Rob nodded, as he crept away.

He crawled through the undergrowth on his belly, to a position twenty metres away between two prickly bushes. He gave Lyra a wave to signal that he was ready and eyed his opponents - two friends of his called Mark and Craig.

As Craig crept towards the little red mailbox to post his letter and score a point, Lyra jammed the muzzle of her paintball gun between a broken section of fence and began rapid firing.

The first shot hit Craig on the back and Lyra’s blaze of paintballs forced him and his companion to retreat.

Unfortunately for Craig and Mark, they ran directly into Rob’s line of fire and he showed no mercy, blasting Craig once and Mark twice before they made it into the trees.

“Run and hide, you wimps,” Rob yelled triumphantly as the two boys scrambled away.

“Two hits on each of them,” Lyra smiled as she walked towards Rob.

They made a high five with their thickly padded gloves.

“Nice shooting,” Lyra said.

“This is the greatest game in the world,” Rob said, as he grinned from ear to ear.

Lyra spoke breathlessly, “Let’s go find another mailbox.”

(7) HALF AN HOUR LATER...

After thirty minutes of paintball action, Lyra and Rob were exhausted. Their legs ached, they had sweat pouring out of their hair and they could hear their hearts banging in their chests. But they didn’t care because they were having so much fun.

“Do you think they’ve gone?” Rob whispered, as he lay flat on the ground behind a line of shrubs.

Brown water dibbled down Rob’s visor as he pulled his face out of the mud and looked up for an enemy that had shot at them a few moments earlier.

“Only one way to be sure,” Lyra said.

She sat up, half expecting a paintball to come flying out from behind a tree and explode against her helmet.

But it didn’t.

“Whoever they were, it looks like they’ve cleared off,” Rob said.

The pair stood up and looked around cautiously. They each had two splats of paint on their suits, meaning they’d be dead if they were shot one more time.

“It was definitely around here somewhere,” Lyra said as they started walking.

“Right there,” Rob grinned, as he spotted the red mailbox hidden in a bush.

They’d seen the box before they’d been shot at, but hadn’t been able to post their letter because they’d come under attack as soon as they got close.

“Now we’ve got nine points out of a possible ten,” Lyra smiled, as Rob slotted the envelope into the box. “Eight or nine points usually wins the game, so we must be in with a chance.”

“Seven minutes to go,” Rob whispered, glancing at his watch as they scurried up a small hill. “Where do you think that last mailbox is? If we get to it, no one can beat us. They can only draw at best.”

Lyra shrugged, “We’ve hardly been over the east side, I bet it’s over there.”

“Oh wow,” Rob gasped, as he looked over the top of a hill into a meadow.

Lyra thought he’d spotted a mailbox, but then saw that it was Zoe and Gerda. Gerda was leaning against a tree, holding on to her ankle like she’d twisted it or something. Zoe had her back to them, with a distinctive blob of green paint across it.

It was perfect. Within a second of seeing her sister, Rob raised his gun up to eye level and blasted off three well aimed rounds. Each one splattered into Zoe’s back between her shoulder blades, making her stumble forwards.

“You’re dead, fat head,” Rob hooted.

Lyra had shot Gerda in the side, but Gerda dived forwards and managed to crawl away into the undergrowth, despite clearly having something wrong with her leg.

Zoe spun around angrily with her gun and almost pulled the trigger. But the rules of the game said she was dead, which meant she wasn’t allowed to shoot back and there were surveillance cameras all over the compound to make sure nobody cheated.

“Butt wipe,” Zoe yelled sourly, as she stood up.

But Rob and Lyra had allowed their triumph over Zoe to interfere with their concentration and Gerda had slipped out of sight.

Despite being injured, Gerda managed to scramble up the hill through the undergrowth and rattled off a shot that hit Lyra in the thigh.

“Now I’m dead,” Lyra complained, as she scrambled behind a tree and handed the final envelope to Rob. “Take it, try and find the last mailbox.”

Rob gave Lyra a friendly pat on the back. “There’s not much time, but I’ll do my best.”

(8) ZOE’S REVENGE

As Rob raced off between the trees towards the eastern side of the compound, Lyra walked downhill towards Zoe and thought she’d try being nice.

“Good game today,” Lyra smiled.

Zoe looked Lyra up and down sniffily, trying to decide if she was worth talking to.

“Wasn’t bad I suppose,” Zoe said, as she unscrewed the ammunition clip from her paintball gun.

The two girls headed towards the gate together, eyeing each other warily while holding their hands in the air to show that they were out of the game.

“We posted eight letters,” Zoe said. “I reckon we’re in with a chance of winning.”

“We’ve got nine already,” Lyra said brightly. “I don’t suppose Gerda will get any more with her dodgy leg.”

Zoe didn’t like the idea that she wasn’t going to win and gave Lyra a mean look.

“You were out of order, shooting me when Gerda was injured.”

“Oh give over,” Lyra said acidly. “It’s not against any rules and it serves you right for stealing the guns off Rob in the changing room.”

Zoe bunched her chunky fist in Lyra’s face. “Maybe you should shut that mouth of yours, before I cram this in it.”

“It’s sad that you and Rob don’t get on,” Lyra said thoughtfully. “I mean, I know most brothers and sisters have fights, but you two really hate each other.”

“Shut your gob,” Zoe said. “It’s none of your business.”

Lyra didn’t fancy pushing her conversation any further. Zoe was tough, clever and would probably make a very good spy when she passed basic training. But she certainly wasn’t a very nice person.

A few seconds later, Zoe proved that she wasn’t very nice by grabbing Lyra around the neck. She dragged her away from the path and into a giant boggy puddle.

“What are you doing?” Lyra screamed, as Zoe’s beefy arm crushed her windpipe. “Leave me alone. I can’t breathe.”

“You think you’ve got porblems now,” Zoe sneered, as she stopped walking at the edge of one of the trenches that had been declared out of bounds. “See how you like it down there.”

Zoe let go of Lyra’s neck and gave her an almighty shove. Lyra skidded down a slippery embankment, before splashing head-first into thirty centimetres of runny mud.

The freezing sludge blinded Lyra as it poured inside her helmet and filled her nostrils. She coughed violently as she sat up, ripped off her helmet and spat out a mouthful of foul tasting liquid.

“Ooops,” Zoe grinned, as she kicked a giant clump of mud down on to Lyra’s head. “Well tootle-pip, I’d better be going.”

“I’m gonna get you for this,” Lyra shouted, as the lump of mud slithered out of her hair and splashed into the water. “You wait and see if I don’t.”

(9) THE LAST POST

Rob had to locate the final mailbox and post the tenth letter. He was puffed out, but that didn’t stop him sprinting as fast as he could towards the eastern side of the compound.

A couple of shots rang out as he ran. One whizzed by just a few centimetres in front of his chest, but he didn’t stick around to shoot back, because there were only three minutes until Mr Pike blew his whistle to end the game.

With less than two minutes to go, he spotted the last mailbox. It was strung up between two trees, several metres off the ground. The only way to post the letter was to climb up a rope net tied beneath it.

Normally, Rob would have taken a good look around to make sure nobody was hiding out in the trees, but there wasn’t enough time to be cautious, so he grabbed the letter out of his pocket, jumped on to the net and began clambering up.

His heart thudded as he reached up and pushed the soggy envelope through the metal flap. As the flap noisily snapped shut, another sound erupted and a splat of red paint hit Rob in the back. A second splat hit his gloved hand, making him lose his grip and a third whacked his thigh as he slid down the net.

“OK, OK,” Rob grinned. “Stop shooting, I’m dead.”

He didn’t care that he’d been shot. It didn’t hurt and he’d posted the tenth and final envelope before getting killed, which meant that he and Lyra couldn’t be anything less than joint winners.

As Rob grabbed hold of the net to haul himself off the ground, he heard Mr Pike blowing his whistle to signal the end of the game. Rob flipped up his face visor as his friends Mark and Craig jumped out of the trees. Their padded suits were caked in mud.

“So we’re wimps are we?” Craig grinned, giving Rob a friendly shove. “At least we didn’t get killed. How many letters did you post?”

“All ten,” Rob said proudly.

“Oh,” Mark said, sounding a little sad. “We only got nine. We thought we were in with a chance of winning.”

“Never mind,” Rob said. “You might have won if you’d killed me a second earlier.”

Mark and Craig both nodded in agreement.

“We won last Friday though,” Mark shrugged. “You can’t win ‘em all.”

“I’d better run back and tell Lyra. She’ll be well happy when she hears that I posted the last envelope.”

(10) ZOE’S PUNISHMENT

When Rob arrived back at the noisy changing hut, he stepped past all the other kids and found Lyra sitting on a bench with tears streaming down her face. Her hair was caked in mud and she had a big graze down her cheek.

“What happened to you?” Rob gasped, putting her arm around his best friend’s back as he sat on the bench beside her.

“Your idiot sister happened,” Lyra said, pointing at Zoe.

Zoe stood at the opposite end of the hut, facing the wall with her hands on her head.

“At least Mr Pike caught her doing it on the video cameras,” Lyra continued.

“Doing what?” Rob asked.

But Mr Pike charged into the hut before Lyra could tell him.

“RIGHT,” Mr Pike shouted furiously as he slammed the metal door.

He grabbed Zoe by the scruff of her muddy vest, bundled her into his office and shut the door so that nobody could hear what he was saying. But Mr Pike shouted so loud that everyone heard anyway.

“What on earth do you think you’re playing at, young lady...? Pushing Lyra into a trench is unacceptable and don’t you dare lie to me. It was not an accident. I saw exactly what you did and you’re going to be severely punished.”

Rob smiled at the thought of his sister being severely punished, but nothing seemed to cheer Lyra up.

“Come on, mate,” Rob smiled, giving Lyra a squeeze. “You’ll be fine once you’ve warmed up in the shower and had some dinner.”

Mr Pike continued to rave at Zoe in the office. “You are banned from all paintball activities for two months. You are going to run fifty punishment laps over the next week and do you see this?”

Rob looked through the glass in the office door and saw that Mr Pike was holding up a grubby towel.

“When all the others have taken their showers, I am going to give you this rag and make you clean the entire changing room with it,” Mr Pike yelled. “You are going to scrub every bench, every floor tile and every wall until there is not a speck of mud to be seen. I don’t care if it takes you an hour, two hours, or even if it takes you until midnight. That room is going to gleam.”

Mr Pike stormed back out of his office and glowered at everyone else.

“I am now in a very bad mood,” Mr Pike shouted. “Unless you lot want to join Zoe King on cleaning detail, I suggest that you take your showers quickly and quietly and then head off to the main building for your dinner.”

Rob noticed a tiny smirk on Lyra’s face as he rubbed her back.

“That’s the spirit,” he said.

Mark and Craig sat on the bench facing towards Rob and Lyra. They’d already pulled off their muddy boots and started undressing to go in the shower.

“Here’s the thing,” Craig said, as he pushed a fist inside his boot. “None of us likes Zoe, and the muddier it is in here, the worse her punishment is, right?”

“So, what are you getting at?” Rob asked.

“This,” Craig said, as he squished the muddy sole of his boot against the wall and used it to draw a thick brown line.

“Oh yes!” Rob giggled. “Zoe’s got to clean that up, hasn’t she...? And this,” he added, as he scraped his own boot across the front of a radiator.

Lyra cheered up quite a bit as she swept her hand through her muddy hair and made brown palm prints on the wall.

There were quite a few kids in the room who’d been pushed around by Zoe and it wasn’t long before they were all rubbing muddy clothes along the walls and scraping boots on benches.

By the time everyone had showered, changed into casual clothes and headed off for dinner, it looked as if Zoe would be lucky if she finished her punishment by midnight.

(11) MONEY, MONEY, MONEY

Rob and Lyra had eaten a big dinner in the CHERUB dining room. Now they were lying on their beds feeling stuffed. Rob was concentrating on a particularly difficult section of his computer hacking textbook, while Lyra had finished her homework and was flipping through a store catalogue.

“I want to get your sister back,” Lyra said bitterly. “She’s always pushing us around.”

Rob rubbed his eyes as he looked up from his homework. “Zoe’s still over there cleaning up mud,” Rob smiled. “I reckon it’s a fair punishment for what she did.”

“But we’ve got to show her that she can’t keep being horrible to us,” Lyra said. “She cut my face and made me cry in front of everyone.”

“She’s bigger and stronger than us,” Rob said. “You said it yourself: if we go after her, we’ll probably come off worst.”

“We will if we just go chasing after her like idiots,” Lyra smiled. “But not if we plan it all out carefully.”

The room went quiet for a couple of minutes as the two youngsters concentrated on their books.

“Eureka!” Lyra yelled, as she tore a page out of the catalogue and showed it to Rob. “Look at item C.”

Rob looked at the picture of the biggest, meanest, water cannon he’d ever seen, before reading the description written beneath it:

Item C. Drenchmaster 5000, air powered soaking gun. Holds two litres of water. Exclusive air pump system squirts water up to forty metres. Quite simply the most powerful water gun available. NOTE: This item is unsuitable for children aged twelve and under. Price £16.99. Catalogue number 261 272

Lyra tapped on a banner at the top of the page that said, Special offer, buy one get one free.

“Imagine if we sneaked up behind her with two of those Drenchmasters and... BLAMMO!”

Rob rolled back on his bed and cracked up laughing. “That’s a cool idea.”

“Do you know when the best time to get Zoe and Gerda is?” Lyra asked.

“When?”

“They always put on ear rings and fancy clothes when they out shopping. They walk around the mall pretending they’re all sophisticated, like teenagers or something.”

“I’m up for that,” Rob giggled. “I’d even pay some money towards the water guns if I had any.”

Lyra’s face dropped. “I thought you had thirty quid. You were saving up to get the hard drive for your Playstation.”

Rob shrugged. “I was, but I bought that Arsenal shirt instead, remember?”

“Bums,” Lyra moaned. “I was hoping you’d lend me some of your savings to pay for them.”

“Sorry,” Rob said. “All I’ve got is three quid. Haven’t you got any money at all?”

“Fifty-three pence and a one Euro coin left over from our trip to France.”

“I guess that plan’s out the window then,” Rob said, shaking his head. “Christmas is months away, our birthdays are even further...”

“Maybe someone will lend us the money,” Lyra said. “You could ask Mark or Craig and I could mention it to some of the girls.”

“Doubt it,” Rob shrugged. “Maybe they’d lend us if we were just a few quid short, but nobody will lend us the whole sixteen ninety-nine.”

“We could ask our carer for an advance on our pocket money,” Lyra said.

Rob burst out laughing, “You’re dreaming. You’d have better luck trying to rob the bank of England than getting extra money out of Mad Madeline.”

Lyra growled and pounded her fist into Rob’s mattress. “I’ve got to get my hands on enough money to buy a pair of Drenchmasters.”

A thought popped into Rob’s head as he looked at the toys and games scattered around the room.

“Why don’t we try selling some of our stuff?” he asked brightly.

(12) EVERYTHING MUST GO!

Rob and Lyra crawled around the floor looking for things they didn’t play with anymore. They ended up with a backpack stuffed with an odd assortment of Playstation games, action figures, Lego sets, a couple of DVDs and even a giant pink bunny called Mel that Lyra had slept with every night untill she was six years old.

They headed out into the corridor and began knocking on the doors of the other kids in the junior block, carefully avoiding rooms where older girls who were friends with Zoe lived.

Rob sold a Tonka truck and a big stack of trading cards to a little five year old called Martin. Lyra sold a couple of CDs and a Playstation game, but when they ran out of doors to knock on, they were still short of their £16.99 target.

“How much have we got?” Rob asked Lyra, as they turned back into their room.

“Six pounds sixty-four,” Lyra said miserably. “Even with the pocket money we had to start with, we’re still seven pounds short.”

Craig stuck his head through the doorway. “Did you sell much?” he asked.

“Not enough to get the Drenchmasters,” Rob said, as he stared miserably down at his socks,

“Shame,” Craig said. “I’ll take those two Playstation games if you want, but I can’t pay you until pocket money day.”

“No way,” Lyra said. “Everyone will have money on pocket money day, but we want to go to the shops tomorrow.”

“Oh well,” Craig said, looking at his watch. “It’s nine o’clock. I’d better start getting ready for bed, or Madeline’s gonna do her nut.”

“Is that the time?” Rob gasped, as he glanced around at his clock radio. “I thought it was earlier.”

“See yous tomorrow,” Craig waved, but as he headed out into the corridor he had a brainwave and turned back. “Here, you know who might be able to help you?”

“Who?” Rob asked excitedly.

“Kyle Blueman,” Craig said.

Kyle was a sixteen-year-old cherub who lived in the main building. Everyone on campus knew him because he was always trying to earn money by making and selling pirate copies of movies and video games.

“How can Kyle help us?” Lyra asked.

“He gets kids to run errands and do jobs for him,” Craig explained. “Jake Parker made over two-hundred pounds copying DVDs for Kyle and Wendy made a mint selling photocopied Harry Potter books.”

“And you think he’ll give us a job if we go over and see him?” Rob asked.

Craig shrugged, “It’s just a thought. But if you want to see Kyle tonight, you’d better hurry up. Madeline will be locking up any minute now.”

Rob and Lyra looked uncertainly at each other.

“What do you reckon?” Lyra asked.

“It’s our only chance of getting our hands on the money in time to go shopping tomorrow,” Rob said. “We might as well give it a try.”

As Craig stepped back to his room, Rob and Lyra belted out into the corridor and started running downstairs to the ground floor. Unfortunately, their carer, a chubby woman called Madeline Darko, had beaten them to the door.

“And where exactly do you two think you’re going at this time of night?” Madeline asked, as she turned a key in the lock.

“Miss, we just have to pop across to the main building to see someone,” Lyra said.

“I left my comic over there at dinner time,” Rob added.

“Did you really?” Madeline said as she tapped on the face of her watch, clearly not believing either excuse. “It’s two minutes to nine and I can assure you, you’re not going anywhere except upstairs to the washroom to brush your teeth and then back to your rooms to put your PJs on.”

“But...” Lyra said.

“No ifs, no buts,” Madeline said firmly. “If you two aren’t in bed in ten minutes flat, I’m going to want to know why. Now move it.”

(13) THE DARKNESS

Rob and Lyra cleaned their teeth, put out the light and climbed into bed. Madeline stuck her head inside their room to make sure they were both behaving, but their heads popped up as soon as she shut the door.

Lyra flicked on her torch and pointed it at Rob. “Are you ready?”

“Ready,” Rob nodded, as he swung out of bed.

He pulled jeans and a hoodie over his pyjamas, before sliding his feet into his trainers and heading for the door.

“Quietly,” Lyra cautioned, as Rob grabbed the door handle.

Rob poked his head out into the corridor and looked both ways to make sure that Madeline wasn’t around.

“Looks OK,” Rob said, as he crept into the corridor and moved quickly towards the swinging doors that led on to the stairs.

The exit door was locked, so they headed down an unlit corridor that had classrooms on either side, turning the knob on each door as they went. The first three doors were locked, but - much to Rob and Lyra’s relief - the fourth one swung open into a maths classroom with graphs and counting charts on the wall.

Lyra placed a chair by the window, then stood on it and reached up to unscrew the catch that locked the window. While she pushed the chair out of the way, Rob opened the window and swung his leg out over the ledge. He slid his bum off and his trainers crashed noisily on to the gravel path that surrounded the building.

“Ssssssssh,” Lyra said anxiously.

But there’s no quiet way to jump on to gravel and Lyra made as much noise as Rob had done. They both looked around anxiously, but there was no sign of Madeline coming after them.

CHERUB campus is big and it was over a kilometre from the Junior Block, where Rob and Lyra lived, to the main building where all the older cherubs who were qualified to work as spies lived.

As they crept around the side of the junior block, Rob and Lyra eyed two electric golf carts standing under a canopy. The carts were used by teachers and other staff to move quickly around campus. Children were only allowed to use them with permission and they’d only get it if they had something heavy to carry, or if they were looking after another kid with a serious injury like a broken leg.

“Let’s drive,” Rob grinned.

“Are you mad?” Lyra said, shaking her head, “We’ll be made to run about a million punishment laps if we’re caught driving a cart without permission.”

Rob shrugged, “But we’ll get to the main building and back so much quicker, which means there’s less chance of getting caught.”

“Well I suppose,” Lyra said. “Bagsy I’m driving.”

Rob wasn’t too happy about Lyra driving, but she raced off and was in the driving seat before he got a chance to complain.

“Bags I’m driving back,” Rob said, as Lyra flipped on the headlamps and squeezed the accelerator pedal.

(14) KYLE BLUEMAN

Rob and Lyra parked the electric buggy at the rear of the eight storey main building. There was a permanently staffed reception desk in the front entrance, so they had to sneak through the fire doors at the back and walk upstairs to Kyle’s room on the sixth floor.

They felt nervous as they moved along the corridor. There would be big trouble if any of the staff caught them out of bed.

The older cherubs lived in the single rooms that branched off both sides. Most of the doors were open because there was a party going on. Loud music thumped out of several stereos and teenagers lined the walls holding cans of Coke and paper plates, while a banner had been hung from the ceiling saying, Happy Birthday Gabrielle!

Kyle lived in room 616, but when Rob and Lyra reached the door, they discovered a blonde haired boy called James leaning against it snogging his girlfriend.

“What are you two squirts doing up here?” James asked. “Shouldn’t you be in bed?”

“We’re looking for Kyle,” Rob explained.

James tutted, before knocking on the door. “Kyle, I’ve got a couple of little customers for you out here,” he said.

“Just a minute, James,” Kyle answered from inside.

As Rob and Lyra waited anxiously for the door to open, three girls charged out of a room across the hall and began fighting with pillows.

“Sorry, little dude,” one of them shrieked, as a pillow skimmed over Rob’s head.

The whole scene of older kids partying, snogging and chasing around made Rob and Lyra uncomfortable. When Kyle opened his door, they barged inside without waiting for an invitation.

“Come in, why don’t you?” Kyle smirked as he pushed up the door. The slender teenager was dressed in baggy jeans and seemed younger than sixteen.

Rob looked all around and marvelled at the neatness. Everything in Kyle’s room was tidy, from the stacks of magazines on the bedside table to the polished boots lined up on a rack near the door.

“If you’ve come looking for DVDs, I’ve got them all,” Kyle said, as he knelt on his carpet and slid an aluminium case out from beneath his bed. “Three pounds for movies, five for Playstation games, two for music CDs.”

“Are they pirate copies?” Rob asked, as Kyle flipped open the box, revealing almost a thousand silver discs.

“Of course,” Kyle grinned. “You can’t get real ones at those prices, but they’re all tested and guaranteed to work.”

“Where are the games?” Rob asked, as he knelt down excitedly and started flipping through the disks.

“AHEM,” Lyra said, noisily clearing her throat. “We didn’t come here to spend money.”

Kyle looked surprised as he stood up. “Well what did you come here for?”

“We were hoping you could help us to earn some money,” Lyra explained.

“And how am I supposed to do that?” Kyle asked.

Visiting Kyle had seemed like a good idea when Craig suggested it, but now Lyra felt stupid.

“Someone told us you give kids jobs to do,” Lyra explained. “Selling stuff and that.”

“Jake Parker said you paid him nearly two hundred pounds for copying some DVDs,” Rob blurted.

Kyle suddenly sounded annoyed. “Jake Parker is a big mouth who nearly got me kicked out of CHERUB. No offence, but I don’t trust little kids to work for me anymore and even if I did, I wouldn’t pick you two. I hardly know you.”

“Can I buy this?” Rob asked, as he slid a Playstation game out of the case.

“Sure,” Kyle said. “Five quid.”

“No you can’t,” Lyra said angrily. “We’re saving up for the Drenchmasters.”

“You might as well give up,” Rob said. “We’re never going to get the money and this game is a total bargain.”

Lyra tutted and stamped her foot. “Oh go on then. Buy your stupid game.”

Rob grinned at Kyle and handed him five pounds in change. Kyle reached across the room and put the money in his desk drawer.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t be more helpful,” Kyle said, sympathetically. “I tell you what though, seeing as you came all this way to see me I’ll let you have another game for half price.”

“Sweet,” Rob said, as he started flipping through the pirated games in Kyle’s case. “Two pounds fifty, they’re like forty pounds in the shops.”

“What can I say,” Kyle grinned, “I’m a nice guy.”

Rob picked another game out of the rack and happily handed Kyle the money, but his smile vanished when he saw the angry scowl on Lyra’s face.

(15) ILL GOTTEN GAINS

“I’m sorry, Lyra,” Rob said, as they reached the bottom of the stairs and headed back towards the electric cart.

“You spent all our money on two stupid Playstation games,” Lyra growled. “You don’t care about my feelings at all, do you?”

“I’ll let you drive the buggy back,” Rob said.

Lyra huffed as she got into the driving seat. “You know, when I buy the Drenchmasters tomorrow, I’m not sure if I’m going to let you use them.”

“Well we’re not getting them anyway, so it doesn’t matter.”

Lyra grinned mischievously. “Aren’t we?” she said, as she peeled a twenty pound note out of her tracksuit top.

“Where did you get that?” Rob gasped.

“When you gave Kyle the five pounds I watched him put it in his desk drawer. I noticed that he had about a hundred pounds in there. I sneaked in and pinched a twenty while he was selling you the second disk.”

Rob’s mouth dropped open. “You stole Kyle’s money,” he gasped angrily.

“Keep your stupid voice down,” Lyra said.

“Are you insane?” Rob spluttered. “Kyle’s sixteen, if he finds out that you nicked his money, he’ll kick our butts.”

Lyra shrugged. “He had loads of money in there, he’ll never notice.”

Rob was shaking his head. “What’s gotten in to you, Lyra? You’re usually more sensible than me, but you’re acting like a total nutter.”

Lyra grabbed Rob by the scruff of his hoodie and pulled him close. “I’m sick of the way Zoe treats us,” she snarled. “Tomorrow, we’re going to get her back, or die trying.”

(16) THE SHOPPING MALL

Saturday is a free day for all the cherubs who live in the junior block. They can hang around in their rooms and play, go swimming in the campus leisure pool, play sport, or go on an outing in one of the CHERUB mini busses.

There are usually six choices of outing, which include ten-pin bowling, trips to the cinema, caving and go-carting. But the most popular choice is always shopping, especially amongst the girls.

Lyra and Rob hadn’t got back to their beds until past ten o’clock and almost overslept. They scooped down bowls of cereal as fast as they could and made it to the mini-bus heading for the shopping centre seconds before Madeline closed the sliding door.

“Phew,” Lyra gasped as they stepped along the cramped aisle inside the packed mini bus.

They ended up sitting directly opposite Zoe and Gerda. The two girls had both put their hair up. They wore high heels. short skirts and carried matching handbags.

“Ooooh look at the ladies in their fancy clobber,” Rob mocked.

Zoe tutted. “We can’t all go around with greasy hair and dirt under our nails like you and your tomboy girlfriend.”

“Hey,” Lyra said angrily.

Lyra was a bit of a tomboy, but she had a habit of thumping people who said it to her face.

“Did the little tomboy wash all the mud out of her hair?” Gerda asked sarcastically, as Madeline drove the mini-bus through the main gates of CHERUB campus.

Rob noticed that the backs of Zoe’s hands were all red and sore. “How long did it take you to scrub the hut?”

Zoe shrugged, trying to make out that the punishment had been easy. “Not long,” she said.

“You weren’t back when we all went to bed at nine o’clock,” Lyra said.

“You two are totally immature,” Zoe spluttered, as she raised her palm. “So talk to the hand, ‘cos the face ain’t listening.”

It took half an hour to drive from CHERUB campus to Shopping World. It was one of the biggest shopping centres in the country, with just about every shop you could think of.

The only trouble is that Shopping World is always packed on a Saturday. Madeline yelled out instructions as she led twenty cherubs across the giant car park towards the main entrance.

“Under eights must stay with me,” she yelled. “Eight and nine year olds can go off on their own, but one of you must have a mobile phone and you must stay in pairs at all times. We’ll meet back outside WH Smith at one thirty sharp. Do NOT be late.”

(17) ITEM 261 272

Rob and Lyra raced along the shiny floored corridors of Shopping World to the catalogue store.

“They’d better be in stock,” Lyra grinned as she entered.

And they were.

Five minutes later, they emerged through the automatic doors, each holding a huge cardboard box with a brightly coloured Drenchmaster 5000 inside.

They found a bench, tore open the packages and began removing the mass of twisters, clips and wires that held the guns in place.

“I wish it was black,” Rob said as he raised the brightly coloured gun up to eye level and aimed it at passing shoppers. “That would make it so much cooler.”

“Let’s fill ‘em up and try ‘em out,” Lyra said.

Lyra went into the ladies and Rob into the gents. Unfortunately, the sinks at Shopping World had the kind of taps that you had to keep pressed down with one hand, which made filling up the guns a pain.

After several minutes, and several concerned looks from adults using the toilets, Rob emerged with water splashed down his t-shirt and soggy tracksuit bottoms.

“They’re really heavy now they’re full,” Lyra said.

Rob spotted a chubby woman accompanied by some of the youngest cherubs approaching the bathroom.

“It’s Madeline,” Rob gulped. “She’ll do her nut if she catches us with these.”

Unfortunately, they were stuck in a corridor and their only escape route was through a fire door. The pair charged through the door and outside into bright sunshine.

They were in a courtyard at the back of the shopping centre, which was designed for giant trucks to pull up and make deliveries to the shops. But there were no trucks or grown ups around at this time on a Saturday and the flat concrete had been taken over by hundreds of pigeons.

“Let’s try this baby out,” Rob grinned.

He grabbed the handle on the side of the gun and pumped it frantically to build up the pressure inside. A little gauge on the side of the gun showed when it was fully charged.

“I hope this is good,” Rob said, as he prepared to pull the trigger.

Lyra knew what Rob meant: there were lots of toys in the world that looked amazing in catalogues and on TV commercials, but were complete rubbish when you got them home.

But the Drenchmaster 5000 wasn’t one of them.

Rob broke into a huge grin as two streams of water roared out the front of his gun. One pigeon took a direct hit and hundreds more fluttered into the sky as the powerful jets sprayed the concrete.

“Wow,” Rob giggled, as Lyra frantically pumped her gun.

She aimed the gun at Rob’s lap and gave him a tiny squirt.

“Ha-ha, you peed yourself.”

Rob turned his gun to get Lyra back, but when he pulled the trigger all he got was a little dribble out of the end.

“Man, it runs out fast,” Rob said, then he realised Lyra was giving him one of her most evil grins. “Don’t soak my clothes, Lyra,” he grovelled. “We’re here to get Zoe and Gerda, remember?”

“I’ll tell you what,” Lyra said. “I won’t squirt you if you tell me how lovely I am.”

Rob tutted. “Lyra, you’re lovely.”

“Hmmmmmmm,” Lyra said thoughtfully. “You didn’t really sound like you meant that. Say it again, with more feeling.”

“Lyra, you’re as ugly as a pig’s butt and you smell even worse,” Rob sneered, before spinning around and running away.

(18) THE GREAT FOOD COURT STAKE OUT

Lyra only squirted Rob a little bit when she caught him. They went back inside and refilled their guns.

They were too heavy to drag around all morning and Madeline would go bananas if she caught them walking around Shopping World with loaded Drenchmasters, so Rob and Lyra decided to hide out in the food court and wait for Zoe and her friends to get lunch.

The food court was huge, with McDonalds, Burger King, KFC and hundreds of round tables. They found a table right at the back, stashed their guns beneath it and waited.

The only thing worse than waiting a long time for something is waiting a long time for something that you’re excited about.

Rob and Lyra killed time by eating Happy Meals, trashing the action figures that came with them and then making paper aeroplanes out of the cardboard packaging.

When they ran out of cardboard, Rob found a newspaper that someone had left behind and they made giant paper aeroplanes and started throwing them about.

Eventually, a security guard came over and told them to stop messing about because they were disturbing customers eating at the other tables.

“There she is,” Rob grinned, when Zoe, Gerda and two of their other friends finally arrived.

The four girls joined the queue at Burger King. They all wore boots and short skirts, and carried handbags.

“They really think they’re something, don’t they?” Rob sneered, as he sprung out of his chair. “Let’s go blast ‘em.”

But Lyra dragged him back.

“They’ll just run off,” Lyra said. “Wait until they’re all sitting down. Then it will be much harder for them to get away.”

“Good thinking,” Rob nodded.

So they waited another few minutes as the four chattering girls bought themselves burgers and sat at a table on the opposite side of the food hall.

“They haven’t even seen us,” Lyra grinned. “You creep up behind that wooden partition and I’ll come in from the other side.”

“OK,” Rob said, trembling with anxiety.

Rob grabbed his Drenchmaster and bent down low, so that you could barely see him moving between the tables. He ended up crouching beside the partition, less than a metre from the table where Zoe, Gerda and their two friends were unwrapping their burgers.

“I really want to go back to Claire’s Accessories,” Zoe babbled as she took a delicate bite out of her cheeseburger. “I got the blue beads, but I’d really like the pink ones...”

“Ooooh you’ve got to get them,” one of the other girls said. “They’ll really go well with that blue top you bought last week.”

“And you should get that nail varnish with the glitter in as well,” Gerda added.

Rob heard a clanking noise, like someone tripping over a chair leg.

“Oh look, it’s Lyra the little tomboy,” Zoe tutted. “What are you creeping around for, bonehead?”

“You’ll see,” Lyra shouted, as she raised her Drenchmaster.

Rob bobbed up from behind the partition just in time to see the twin jets of water blasting Zoe and Gerda in the head.

Rob aimed at Zoe from the other side and hit her from point blank range, then moved his aim down so the water blasted all the food on the table and sent trays and cups of Coke and Fanta skidding across the tabletop and clattering into the four girls’ laps.

“My best top,” Zoe wailed, as her friends waved their arms in the air and screamed like insane cats.

Zoe sprung angrily out of her seat, vaulted over the partition and charged towards her brother.

Rob scrambled backwards, but Zoe knocked him down and pinned him to the floor. Water dripped out of her long hair as she twisted the gun from Rob’s grasp and held the nozzles right in front of his nose.

“Prepare to die, freak,” Zoe said.

Fortunately for Rob, the security guard wrapped a fat arm around Zoe’s waist and plucked her off the floor at the exact second she pulled the trigger.

Unfortunately, the guard was yelling, “How dare you behave like this in my food court,” at the top of his voice and the two streams of liquid shot into his mouth.

Rob clambered off the floor, as the guard roared with anger. He looked for Lyra and spotted her sprinting between tables with Gerda and the other two girls chasing after her.

Rob decided to run away, but he gulped as he saw Madeline and a train of little kids steaming towards him. He spun on his heels, only to find another security guard closing in on him from that direction.

Rob was trapped. All he could do was watch the chaos for a few more seconds before an angry adult grabbed hold of him.

Lyra tripped over a chair leg and got bundled by Zoe’s three girlfriends, while Zoe wriggled free and floored the soggy security guard with a well aimed Karate kick.

Rob stared at the food and drink all over the floor, the watery streaks and puddles everywhere and the shocked expressions on the faces of diners at the surrounding tables.

He felt light-headed and his stomach had shrivelled up into a tight little ball.

Maybe this hadn’t been such a good idea after all.

(19) THE MOST TROUBLE, EVER!

Madeline was too angry to shout. She calmly ordered all of the kids back to the mini-bus and drove to CHERUB campus with a furious red face and her fingers gripping the steering wheel so tightly that Rob thought it might crumble to dust.

When they arrived, Madeline told Zoe, Rob, Lyra and Gerda to go upstairs and wait outside Miss Green’s office.

Miss Green was the Head Carer, which meant that she was in charge of all the cherubs who lived in the junior block. You only got sent to Miss Green’s office if you were in BIG trouble.

The only other time Rob had been sent to Miss Green was when he kicked a football through his bedroom window twice in one week.

Rob hadn’t got wet, but Zoe, Lyra and Gerda were all dripping onto the vinyl floor outside Miss Green’s office.

Miss Green sat inside while Madeline explained what had happened at Shopping World. The four kids couldn’t hear this explanation, but after ten minutes they heard Miss Green stand up, pound on her desk and yell at the top of her voice.

“This is totally unacceptable.”

Rob, Lyra, Zoe and Gerda all jumped to attention as Miss Green ripped open her office door.

“I didn’t start it, Miss,” Zoe blurted. “Rob and Lyra bought the water guns.”

“Did I ask you to speak?” Miss Green shouted, with a roar that made Rob wonder if flames were about to shoot out of her mouth.

Rob felt like crying as he promised himself that he’d never go along with one of Lyra’s crazy plans again.

“This is too serious for me to deal with,” Miss Green said. “You’re all going to have to come with me to Dr McAfferty’s office.”

Rob gulped. He’d never been in enough trouble to get sent to Dr McAfferty’s office before.

Dr McAfferty was the Chairman of CHERUB. He was in charge of everything and he was the only person who could kick you out of CHERUb and send you back to an ordinary children’s home.

“Please,” Lyra said, as she started to sob. “This is all my fault. Don’t take me to the Chairman. I swear I’ll never do it again. I don’t want to get expelled.”

Gerda burst into tears next and that was enough to set Rob off.

“Not the chairman,” he sniffled. “Please Miss Green.”

Zoe liked to think she was tougher than the others and refused to cry, but she started turning very white and by the time they arrived at the Chairman’s office in the main building, she looked so pale that the Chairman’s secretary asked if she was going to be sick.

(20) AN UNUSUAL PUNISHMENT

Madeline and Miss Green went into the Chairman’s office to explain what had happened. It only took a couple of minutes, but Rob was so worried that his arms were shaking and the wait felt as if it went on for a hundred million years.

Dr McAfferty was an elderly man who spoke with a Scottish accent. He was usually very friendly. Every year he dressed up in a Santa suit and handed out presents on Christmas morning. But after hearing what had happened at Shopping World, he didn’t sound friendly at all.

“Rob and Zoe King, come into my office now,” Dr McAfferty yelled, from behind his big oak desk.

“Sit down,” he added, as the two siblings shuffled into the room.

“I didn’t...” Zoe said.

“Quiet,” Dr McAfferty yelled. “Whatever it is, I don’t want to hear it. I want you both to sit still and listen carefully.

“Now, I get the feeling that despite being brother and sister, you two dislike each other. Is that true?”

“Yes, sir,” Rob and Zoe nodded.

“I find that very sad,” Dr McAfferty said. “But some people don’t get along and that’s just the way the world is. However, while we don’t expect everyone here on CHERUB campus to like each other, we do expect everyone to behave themselves. The battle that’s going on between you two has lasted far too long and it must stop, right now.”

To make his point clear, Dr McAfferty picked up a heavy book and thumped it against his desk. Rob and Zoe both jumped, before the chairman continued his speech.

“Miss Green tells me that you’ve both been made to run punishment laps, you’ve written letters of apology to each other, been confined to campus, been confined to your rooms, been banned from various activities, but you still keep getting in trouble. Can either of you give me a good reason why I shouldn’t boot you both out of CHERUB?”

“It was Lyra’s plan,” Zoe said. “She admitted it in front of Miss Green.”

“Me and Zoe could be put in different parts of the building,” Rob suggested. “If we don’t come near each other, there won’t be any more trouble.”

“No,” Dr McAfferty said firmly. “You two must learn to get along with each other. If there is one more row, fight, or any other kind of incident between you two, I’m going to kick both of you out of CHERUB. Is that understood?”

“Yes, sir,” Zoe and Rob said.

“But I’m not going to make it easy for you,” Dr McAfferty added. “You’re going to have to prove to me that you’re worthy of your places at CHERUB.

“As you know, most of the rooms in the junior block are designed for two kids. But on the fifth floor, there’s a small room that’s only big enough for one bed. It hasn’t been used for a few years and it’s pretty dingy. But I’m going to have a set of bunk beds put in that room and you two will be sharing it for the next six months.”

“But...” Zoe gasped.

“Sir, no,” Rob gasped. “Anything but that.”

Dr McAfferty smiled. “If you don’t accept my offer, you can pack up your bags, say goodbye to all your friends and we’ll find you somewhere else to live.”

Rob and Zoe glowered at each other.

“Well, I suppose,” Zoe said.

“I don’t want to get kicked out,” Rob shrugged, “So I guess I haven’t got any choice.”

“I guess you haven’t,” Dr McAfferty smiled. “And remember, if there’s so much as a squeak, a scream, or an object being thrown inside that room, you can both pack up your belongings and say goodbye to CHERUB.”

“What about Lyra?” Zoe asked bitterly.

“Lyra will be punished,” Dr McAfferty said. “But that’s my business, not yours. Now go back to your rooms and start getting your things ready to move up to the fifth floor.”

(21) THE DINING ROOM

Madeline told Rob and Zoe to get lunch in the dining room before doing anything else.

Rob was so miserable that even finding his favourite fish burger and curly fries on the menu didn’t cheer him up. Zoe stood behind him in the queue, but they didn’t speak to each other and found tables on opposite sides of the room.

Lyra had been kept back to recieve her punishment from Dr McAfferty and by the time she joined Rob, he was licking ketchup smears off his empty plate.

“You should count yourself lucky that you’ve only got to move in with donkey breath,” Lyra said. “Because it was my idea to buy the Drenchmasters, I’ve got to run ten punishment laps every day for the next month, I’ve got to scrub dishes in the kitchen every night and all my pocket money for the next month is going to pay towards cleaning up the mess at Shopping World.”

“I’d rather do all of that than spend one night sharing a room with Zoe,” Rob said. “Besides, I’ve had my pocket money taken away too.”

“Pah,” Lyra said. “You got off light.”

“I was thinking,” Rob said. “Would you mind looking after McFlurry for me? I don’t want him in my new room. There’s no window and Zoe will probably try to poison him.”

Lyra thought for a second before nodding. “I don’t mind feeding him and doing his water bottle, but you’ll still have to clean out his cage whenever it stinks of wee.”

“Deal,” Rob nodded as he felt a large hand sliding around the back of his neck.

Lyra felt a hand sliding around her neck too.

“Fancy bumping into you two again,” Kyle said.

Rob and Lyra both gulpled.

“Hey Kyle,” Lyra said, trying to sound innocent. “Is something the matter?”

“Yes there is,” Kyle said. “Before I left my room last night, I looked in my drawer and found that some money had gone missing.”

“How strange,” Lyra said.

“It wasn’t us,” Rob added. “There was a big party going on outside, maybe someone snuck into your room and took it.”

Kyle slowly shook his head, “I locked my room when I went out. The only ones who came into my room were you two.”

Lyra frantically shook her head. “We didn’t take your twenty quid, Kyle. I swear.”

Rob smacked his hand against his forehead as Kyle grinned triumphantly.

“How did you know it was twenty quid then?”

“You just told us,” Lyra said.

“I told you some of my money went missing, but I didn’t say how much.”

“Oh...” Lyra gasped.

“Luckily for you, I’m not a snitch and I’m not the sort of person who goes around thumping eight year olds,” Kyle said. “But I do want my money back.”

“The thing is...” Lyra stuttered.

“There’s a bit of a problem,” Rob explained. “We spent it.”

“On what?”

“A pair of Drenchmaster 5000s,” Lyra said.

Kyle thought for a second, before breaking into a grin. “Drenchmasters are a good laugh,” he said. “Give them to me, plus the two Playstation games I sold you and we’ll call it even.”

Lyra shook her head. “You can have the games, but Miss Green confiscated the Drenchmasters after we used them at Shopping World.”

“Well, whatever,” Kyle said. “You two still owe me twenty quid. Now, I know you little kids get six pounds a week each. So in two weeks, you’ll have enough to pay me back and -”

“No we don’t” Rob interrupted, “We’ve both just had our pocket money confiscated for three months.”

The boy called James who’d been outside Kyle’s room the night before came up to Kyle and slapped him on the back.

“Hey, Kyle,” James said, “why are you hassling eight year olds?”

Kyle turned sharply and glowered at James. “They might look small and innocent, but these two nicked twenty quid off me last night.”

“Good for them,” James grinned. “You’re always conning people with that dodgy gear you sell.”

“James, can’t you butt out?” Kyle asked. “I’m trying to do business here.”

“Leave them alone, Kyle,” James said firmly. “They’re only little and it’s not as if you’re short of a few quid.”

Kyle swept his hand through his hair and thought for a few moments.

“OK,” he said finally. “You two can forget about my money, but I’m warning you both, stay away from my room or there’ll be trouble.”

Rob and Lyra smiled at James as Kyle walked away.

“Cheers, James,” Rob said.

“You saved our butts,” Lyra added.

James put out his hand and Rob and Lyra gave him a high five.

“I heard what you two did at Shopping World today,” James grinned. “Everyone’s talking about it. It sounds hilarious.”

“You reckon?” Lyra said miserably. “I bet you wouldn’t say that if you’d seen our list of punishments.”

(22) AND NOW, THE END IS NEAR

Rob stumbled into his new bedroom holding two giant boxes of clothes and toys and threw them on to the bottom bunk.

The room was horrible. It smelled like rotten fruit, the wallpaper was peeling off and there wasn’t even a window. Zoe sat on the top bunk with her legs swinging over the edge.

“There’s not enough room for all your junk in here,” she said acidly.

Rob looked around and saw that Zoe had already brought in more than twenty boxes of stuff.

“There’s no room because you’ve got so much junk here already,” Rob said angrily. “And I want the top bunk. I can’t stand sleeping with someone else making the springs squeak on top of me.”

Zoe smiled, “Well I got here first and I’m bigger than you, so tough titty.”

Rob slumped miserably on to the bottom bunk, which looked like being his for the next six months. Then he had an anxious thought about his glass picture frame. He’d deliberately left it on top when he packed so that it didn’t get squashed and break, but everything had tumbled out of the boxes when he’d dropped them on to the bed.

Rob snatched the frame from beneath his spare boots and was relieved to see that the glass hadn’t broken.

The picture inside was the one that had been taken of his family just a few hours before his mum, dad and older brother Louis died in the helicopter accident.

Rob reached towards the only shelf in the room and saw that Zoe had already put a ghastly pink and yellow frame with daisies on it up there. But as Rob closed in, he saw that Zoe’s frame had exactly the same picture inside it.

“Hey,” Zoe said as she jumped down off the top bunk.

Rob was expecting to get thumped, but he was surprised to see Zoe smiling at him.

“I didn’t realise that you had that picture too,” Zoe said.

“Of course,” Rob nodded, “I love it. Mum and Dad’s heads look a bit funny on your one.”

Zoe flushed red with embarrassment. “When I was little, I used to kiss their faces goodnight.”

“Ahh,” Rob grinned. “Do you ever wonder what they’d be like now, if they were still alive?”

Zoe nodded. “Our Mum would probably have some grey hair, Dad might have gone bald.”

“Or gotten fat,” Rob grinned.

“Louis would be eighteen,” Zoe said. “He’d probably be at university, with a girlfriend.”

“Yeah,” Rob said. “He might even have had a job, and bought us presents.”

“I can’t hardly remember,” Zoe said. “But I still think about Mum and Dad every day.”

“And me,” Rob nodded, as he felt a tear welling up in his eye. He looked around and saw that Zoe was upset too.

“You know what?” Zoe asked, as she pulled a coin out of her pocket. “I don’t reckon Mum and Dad would want us to fight all the time. I’ll toss you for the top bunk. Heads or tails?”

“Heads,” Rob said.

Zoe flipped the coin and tried to catch it, but it slipped between her fingers and rolled across the grubby floorboards.

“Looks like heads,” Zoe said. “You get the top bunk.”

“Nah, you keep it,” Rob said. “You’ve already got your duvet and pillows up there.”

“Well, if you’re sure,” Zoe said.

As Zoe climbed back on to the top bunk, Rob sat down on his new bed and smiled, because he’d just had the first normal conversation with his sister since...

Rob thought very hard and realised that it was the first normal conversation he’d ever had with his sister.

“Here, Zoe,” Rob shouted. “Are we friends now?”

“We’ve got to live together in this room for the next six months, so it’s probably best if we try not to kill each other,” Zoe said.

“I reckon that’s what Mum and Dad would have wanted.”

Rob saw Zoe lean over the side of her mattress and reach down with her beefy arm.

“Shake?” she asked.

“Sure,” Rob said.

Then he reached up and grasped his sister’s hand.