#I’ve been really questioning my worth as an editor lately

[thissortofsorcery]

.

[eclipsedpascal]

Lavender Bruises

Older!Duncan x Female reader

A meeting with you and your father’s company’s buyers, leads to the shocking realisation that you had unknowingly slept with it’s new owner, Duncan Shepherd, just the night before. You needed to hide this sinful secret from your father, which left you stuck between wanting to make him proud and the unsatisfied craving you couldn’t ignore for Duncan to claim you as his personal toy. But you could manage both. Right?

Warnings: mentions of work (ew), alcohol, one night stands, large age gap, daddy kink, size kink, unprotected sex, public sex, fingering, oral (female receiving), intercourse, spit kink, slapping, spanking, hickeys, bruising, degrading/teasing, mouth fucking with fingers? is that a thing?, hair pulling and a ring kink ig:)

Notes: I've been writing this for fkn MONTHS now bcs I kept loosing inspiration, so this is actually the first thing I ever properly wrote! it's kinda complicated ig? idk like the parts in bold are a time skip to the night before and the fic goes in-between the meeting the reader is at and the previous night, meaning there’s two separate smut scenes so!!! but yeah i'm a whore lmao. Also ik hickeys don’t show up the same on certain skin tones and i’m sorry for that. i tried my best to be as inclusive as possible nd didn’t mention anything to do with the skin tone. Also!! if you're interested, I was listening to Cherry lips by garbage most the time I was writing this nd I feel like it fits it pretty well😌

Word count: 8.4k

●●●●●●●●

Going over the logistics of a content deal with the conglomerate that had recently bought your fathers newspaper wasn't the most preferable way for you to spend your lunch, but unfortunately it was necessary.

You know how these “lunches” go; business meetings disguised as casual discussions. They’re exactly the same if taken place in a conference room. Disagreeing and having to come to compromises you’d rather not, with the only differences being there's more chatter and cluttered noise of dinnerware coming from the restaurant around you.

You much preferred being in the office for these kind of things, but it was at the request of the new owners that you meet here, meaning you didn’t really have choice.

As you arrived at the restaurant you saw your father inside, waiting for your arrival just past the main entrances oversized, glass doors. You were almost 10 minutes late now and you knew he would be pissed. Honestly, you couldn't blame him.

Having to rush through a traffic riddled DC to get home at 10 in the morning because you had spent the previous night in a strangers hotel bed wasn't your proudest moment. Was it worth it? Yes, but it didn’t exactly leave you with much time to prepare for the lunch only two hours later.

You payed the driver and stepped out of the cab onto the drowning, wet sidewalk, desperately trying to shield yourself from the relentless rain that had been pouring down on the city all morning.

Looking up at the grand building on front of you, you could tell the place was going to be expensive. The entrances steps were 12ft wide and made of a pearly white marble that was now soaked with cascading rain water, making them even harder for you to run up in your heels as you tried escape the cold.

“Y/N, where have you been? You're 10 minutes late and these people don't like to be kept waiting." The people your father was referring to? the owners of Gardner Analytics. they had bought what seemed like hundreds of press company's over the past few years, especially those in the DC area. Their most recent purchase being the Washington herald, of which your father was the Editor-in-chief. You had been working there for a few months as your fathers assistant and helping out at these meetings had become routine.

“I'm so so sorry, my alarm didn't wake me and I-“

"It's fine" He interrupted "It's fine, just please tell me you have the documents I asked you to bring?" You could tell he was stressed out from the way his voice was wavering and how often he was stumbling over his words, so instead of trying to explain yourself any further you stayed quiet and did your best to take in as much of the information he was relaying onto you as you possibly could.

As he led you through the dinning room he explained to you who else was there, telling you that the others from the herald who were attending the lunch had already began talks with Gardener Analytics at the table ten minutes prior.

The closer you got to the table the more your fathers voice faltered, trying to round off the conversation so he could properly introduce himself when the time came. "Now Bill Shepherd had to cancel last minute, said it was something to do with his health unfortunately. But not to worry! I've spoken with him over the phone and he's informed me his nephew is filling in for him, okay?”

Before you even had a chance to reply he turned from you, reaching over the table to shake hands with a man you recognised as Seth Grayson; their director of communications, and an older woman who you assumed was Annette Shepherd. She and her brother Bill were the owner's of Gardner Analytics and your father had said it was important he got on their good side.

As your father greeted the others, you began retrieving the documents out of your bag, knowing they would be needed by Seth right away.

"..So sorry for the delay Mr Shepherd, you know how DC traffic can be" Your father chuckled slightly as he shook the man’s hand, making some light small talk. Mr Shepherd? that must be bill’s nephew, you thought.

You felt even more unprepared now; you didn’t even know the man’s name.

"This is my daughter and assistant, Y/N" Upon hearing your father introduce you to the mystery Shepherd, you slotted the documents under one arm and reached out to shake his hand with your other.

“It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr Shepherd" But as you shifted your gaze up to his own, you realised that there was no need for introductions.

He smiled gently, a kind of smug delight obvious in his eyes as he looked you up and down, taking you all in. "The pleasure is all mine, Miss Y/L/N"

He released your hand from his grasp, moving to clasp his own behind his back. “But please, call me Duncan.”

Duncan fucking Shepherd. how could you be so oblivious? The two of you had spent hours together last night. How hadn't you figured out who he was? As panic ripped through you like a wildfire, you wondered if Duncan was feeling the same way; but from the look on his face, he was enjoying this.

●●●●●●●●

11:34pm previous night

It was getting pretty late now, and meeting someone who could fuck the stress out of you was becoming less and less likely by the minute. so deciding to finish your drink and leave, you took in the room one last time; making sure you hadn’t missed anyone interesting.

The fluorescent red and blue lighting of the expensive hotel bar was just bright enough for you to spot an older man you hadn’t noticed before. He must have been at least 40. He was sat in a booth with five or six others, all drinking, laughing and joking, yet he was staring at you.

Taking the seat next to you, he called out to the bartender. “Bourbon. Neat.”

You'd been waiting for him to come over ever since you saw him. It had been 20 minutes or so of quick glances and smiles to each other before the group of men he had been with dissipated. You had heard one of the men he was with refer to him as ‘Duncan’ when he had said his goodbyes, but other than that all you could assume about the man was that he was rich; judging by the all black LV suit he was wearing.

"Can I buy you a drink?” Turning to face at him when you heard him speak, you were practically stupefied by how attractive he was. His hair was full of shiny grey streaks that aged him. His stubble complimented his cheekbones perfectly and the speckles of grey throughout it helped bring out the brightness of his piercing blue eyes. His lips were full, and you couldn't help but notice how soft they looked.

“Vodka and coke” You smiled, trying your best to be confidant, but they way he was looking at you was giving you butterfly's you couldn’t swat away.

“I.D?” The bartender asked. You grabbed it out of your purse, proving your age to the bartender before watching him walk away to make your drink.

There was a brief silence before the man spoke again. “I hope my staring didn’t bother you, I just couldn’t take my eyes off you.” His flattery almost made you blush, but he wasn’t going to get you with a line that bad.

“Didn’t bother me at all, though i’m sure your friends there must have been envious” You chose to ignore his cheesy line, knowing that as much as you wanted him to take you there and then, you would much prefer making him work for it.

He chuckled slightly, knowing the game you had chosen to play. he looked away from you and down into his glass before taking a swig of the golden-brown liquor that occupied it. “Well I’m known to be quite a busy man, so I’m sure they understood.” He turned to face you slightly, waiting for some kind of reaction from you.

“Busy enough of a man to be drinking on a Tuesday night?” You questioned him teasingly, Ignoring that you yourself had the most important meeting of your young career in just over twelve hours.

“Is that really such a surprise? Most times being so busy is the main reason for drinking” He joked with you as he flirted, making it hard for you to keep eye contact without going red at the thought of such a beautiful man seeking your attention.

Duncan could see how nervous you were under the confident demeanour you had put on, I mean you were practically screaming it out to him at this point. The way you were fidgeting with the chain of your silver earring as you leaned against the bar and the fact you couldn’t even look at him for longer than 3 seconds without blushing was evidence enough for him.

“Well, that’s true.” You giggled a little as you spoke in your anxious state.

Taking a hold of your drink, you wrapped your lips around the paper straw and moved your gaze over to the bartender who was now serving someone a few seats down, attempting to distract and ground yourself from the situation at hand.

You were gripped back into reality quickly when you heard him speak again.

“There’s no need to be so nervous, I’m not going to eat you.” You found his use of the phrase quite ironic, being that’s exactly how it seemed. His eyes were piercing into you in an almost questioning manner, but when he gazed over your body, taking in your satin, black slip dress covered curves, the swipe of his tongue against his plump bottom lip gave you a very different impression; an impression he wanted to devour you. It was as if he thought you were that sweet snack he had been craving all week.

“No? That's a shame” You faked a frown, pouting as you moved to rest your chin on your hand.

“Well I think we should at least be aware of each others names before making such wild propositions, don’t you…?” His smirk never seemed to leave his face as he spoke.

He was good at this game, better than you at least. Of course It was obvious he was going to have had more experience with his age and all, but the way he was charming you so easily with just plain old conversation and confidence was getting harder and harder to match.

“Y/N, my name’s Y/N.” You batted your eyelashes at him a little, for some reason feeling smaller upon revealing your name to him. You felt as if you had lost the upper hand in the conversation suddenly.

“Hm, Y/N. That’s beautiful.” You rolled your eyes. Of course it is. Thats what they all say. You thought.

“Aren't you going to ask mine?” His ego now showing, you decided to make a bolder move.

“You rather fancy yourself, don’t you, Duncan?”

He finished his drink and moved closer to you. “Oh, so you already know my name?”

He was close enough to you now that you could make out the many beauty marks which decorated his cheekbones and hear the rasp of his voice even better than before. It was thick as honey and just as sweet too.

“I heard your friend call you it.” You quickly replied.

He scoffed a little, finding amusement in what he was about to say. He brought his face down closer to yours and began to run his fingers through your hair. “Hm, well he’s an old friend sweetheart. Most people would call me Mr Shepherd.”

You felt yourself grow hot, Duncans words casting a haze of complete lust over your mind.

You did your best to stay confidant, doing everything you could to ensure you didn't loose this game the two of you were playing. “Really? Is that what you like? Mr Shepherd.”

Your faces were so close to each others now that you could smell the bourbon on his breath when he let out a loud chuckle. His pearly whites showing as he did so. You even felt him graze his stubble against your cheek.

“Mhmm.” He ran his finger over your lips as he spoke slowly. "So tell me, what is it that does it for you Y/N? Hm? I mean a girl your age doesn’t decide to stare at a man like me all night just for the hell of it. So what is it? The power? The money? Or is it the age gap so big I could be your father?”

You squeeze your legs together as his sentence finishes, letting out a hushed whimper. Of course you were attracted to older men, that was obvious, but hearing him say it out loud in public whilst being so close to you turned you on even more than you thought previously possible.

He chuckled a little, “So it’s the age then, is it sweetheart? The idea of having a man more.. experienced pleasure you, instead of a man who would leave you to fend for yourself after finishing in less than five minutes. You want someone who can make you cum so hard you’d be begging him to make it stop, don’t you?” Every move Duncan made, every word he spoke was calculated, and it was all in pursuit of teasing you just because he knew he could.

You made a mental note of his nickname for you as you looked up at him. You felt his fingers run across your cheek and then push some stray hairs back behind your ear as you desperately tried to think of something smart to say, anything to say; but he had won. He knew what you wanted and he wanted it just as bad. You didn’t even care anymore. You were more than ready to give what little of a resolve you still had up to him.

He whispered to you as he moved his spare hand up the small of your back. “Now little one, I have the presidential suite of this hotel under my name tonight. So what do you say we go on up? Since now we're just so well aquatinted."

●●●●●●●●

Having to take part in a meeting with your father and the man double your age that you had fucked for hours the night before was NOT what you had planned for today.

“Mr Shepherd, I apologise that I didn’t make it here on time. I had a pretty hectic morning.” You did your best to keep your chill in your now shocked state, but with everyone watching the two of you it wasn’t easy.

“No don’t worry, I know how DC traffic can be, especially in this weather. As long as you're here now.” A wide smile was planted on his face as he spoke. The same as last night. He never broke eye contact with you, and you found yourself wondering how he could do it so easily.

“Please, sit.” He gestured you over to take a seat as he pulled out the chair next to his own. You thanked him politely and sat down, your mind racing and spiralling out of control at the thought of your father discovering the sinful deeds you and his new boss had taken part in just hours prior.

You felt him tuck you into the table before sitting down next to you. You could hear the voices of the restaurant that surrounded you and the others at the table coming at you. Every noise was muffled, as if your head was suddenly underwater.

“Y/N?” You were quickly brought back to reality when you heard Seth question you.

“From my understating you have the merger documents in your belonging, yes?” He looked at your father for reassurance this was definitely case as he spoke. So with everyone at the table’s eyes on you, you slid the documents over to him.

“Yes! And uhm the specifications for the more politically based content changes are detailed on page 25. I was told that was of high interest today?” You got yourself back on track, trying to stay as professional as possible whilst ignoring Duncan and the predicament you had found yourself in.

“We were briefly discussing the more major changes before you arrived Mr Y/L/N, but I believe you’ve already been made aware of most them?” Duncan addressed your father, kicking the meeting off. But you couldn’t concentrate. You were listening to the conversation, you really were! It was just that you were so wrapped up in Duncan’s voice you couldn’t actually understand what the fuck they were all talking about.

Seeing him so invested in the crucial conversation he was having with your father and the many other associates at the table was just doing something to you.

Observing the way his hands were moving when he spoke, you noticed how he would often clasp them together when he was explaining things, and how he would tilt his head slightly as he listened. His bronzed curls were combed to perfection, resting delicately on the right side of his face and when he licked his bottom lip, it sent a shiver down through your spine all the way to your cunt. You were entirely captivated by him.

Hearing your Father ask for your opinion on the subject being discussed, you shook off the spell Duncan’s attractiveness had casted onto you and responded, giving your perspective on the subject.

Duncan relaxed into his seat a little more as he watched you talking. He knew you had been staring at him, but it was cute, he thought. Almost endearing seeing you get so flustered at just the sight of him. He had seen you squirming around in your seat whilst you watched him and decided the accidental teasing wasn’t enough; he wanted to toy with you more. As much as he possibly could.

“You know, if you’re trying hide what’s happened between us then you might consider making your staring a little less obvious, sweetheart.” He was speaking quietly enough for nobody else to hear and not looking in your direction, pretending to still partake in the tables back-and-forth. Still the fear of your father, who was sat just across the table, overhearing Duncans remarks was petrifying.

You knew you couldn’t let your craving for him and the confusion from not knowing who he was last night effect the meeting, but there he was with that nickname again, stirring your desire even further.

“How are you even here?” You let your frustrations out onto him as you talked back, his cocky attitude getting to you too easily with the stress you were under. “I’m trying so hard not to ruin today and this situation isn’t helping! They’ll fire me if I mess this up and I’ll be fucked! Which surprisingly, I’d prefer not to be!” Your whispering was pretty aggressive, but could you really blame yourself?! This kind of coincidence was rare, so you had every right to be mad at the universe for letting it occur on today of all days.

His ego not faltering for even a second, he chuckled. “Oh you don’t wanna get fucked? Funny, because I remember you saying the exact opposite last night.”

He grazed his hand across your inner thigh, massaging it gently before diving underneath the little black pencil skirt you were wearing to grip onto your flushed skin.

You scoffed at his words and looked up at him, shocked at how bold he was being and expecting some kind of response from him, but he didn’t even look your way. You assumed this was so no attention was brought to the two of you and so you followed his lead, turning away from him just as fast as you had looked.

With the heat of your cunt having grown far too intense to bear, any friction that wasn’t your own thighs pressing up against each other was to be welcomed. So you decided not to stop him. In fact you did the exact opposite, spreading your thighs wider for him, not having the self control or restraint to keep yourself from him any longer.

His hand moved closer to where you needed him most, diving under the crotch of your underwear to swipe his fingers over your slick folds and immediately begin rubbing circles onto your neglected clit.

You stifled a moan, leaning onto the table on front of you to keep yourself steady as he touched you. Finally, he moved his gaze to rest on you, watching you as you struggled to stay silent. He whispered once more, “Always so wet for me, aren't you princess?”

●●●●●●●●

As soon as you entered the suite, Duncan gripped onto your waist, pushing you up against the door and cradling your cheek with his spare hand before smashing his lips into yours.

His tongue slipped past your lips, dancing with yours whilst he moved his hands all over your body, clutching onto your breasts and then moving them down to explore the rest of you.

He lifted your dress up just enough so he could grip your ass. Pulling you closer to him and making you feel his bulge against your hips, you were too short in comparison to him to feel him where you wanted to most.

He spoke to you in kisses, telling you of how ravenous he was for you and that he was going to savour every moment. He moved his lips down, trailing open mouthed kisses from your neck to your collarbones and to the top of your breasts.

“This fucking dress” He took ahold of the bottom of your dress, pulling it up above your head with urgency as you lifted your arms to better help him strip you. Throwing the dress down onto the floor and hearing it land somewhere behind him, he admired your body and it’s curves.

“The perfect wrapping for such an enticing present.” He finished his sentence. Immediately grabbing at your breasts, sucking and kissing them.

You couldn’t speak, too enthralled with the technique of his tongue swirling around your nipple to do anything but moan in response to him.

You threw your head back against the door, staring up that the beautifully patterned ceiling in pure ecstasy. You felt him drag a callused hand down to the waistband of your Lacy white panties, tickling the sensitive skin of your stomach as he traced his fingers over it. His finger tips running across the little white bow that centred the waistband.

He collapsed down to his knees, yanking the delicate lingerie as he fell, leaving it to puddle around your ankles.

He teased your heat, moving from kissing the skin of your thighs to your folds, but not yet reaching the lengths you wanted him to, only adding fuel to the fire in between your legs.

“Please Duncan-” you begged him, desperately needing some kind of release from the binds of lust he had managed to wrap you in over the past 45 minutes.

“Ah ah, don't you remember? You don’t get to call me that.” He spoke.

“I’m sorry, Mr Shepherd.” You corrected yourself, recalling the conversation you had with him prior to coming upstairs.

“Mhmm, now as magnificent as that name sounds coming from you, I know that there’s something else you’d rather call me.” He hummed in disapproval, calmly redirecting your choice of name for him and reassuringly pressing his lips onto your clit.

You let out a stuttered gasp, you did want to call him that, but now you felt nervous due to the build up he had created.

“Com’n, sweetheart. Do you think I don't know why you’re here in the first place? Why else would you be sat all alone in the bar of a hotel you weren’t even staying at? You’re just another slut with daddy issues, sneaking down to an expensive hotel to scavenge for any man good enough to fuck you into submission. Isn’t that right?”

Mildly insulted at his all too accurate observation of you, but enjoying the effect his degrading words have on you none the less, you gave him what he wanted. “Mm yes daddy!” You whimpered out, admitting your ploy to him.

A low rumble emitted from his chest, your words setting off some kind of animal inside him. He dove his face down into your pussy, starting by sucking on your clit gently, flicking his tongue over it and applying more and more pressure as you writhed above him.

His mouth was closed around you now, his grey, speckled stubble scratching your already inflamed skin. You were taken aback by his skills, intwining your fingers through the curls in his hair and tugging on them with every wave of pleasure that hit you.

He snaked his large hand around your thigh, lifting it up to rest on his shoulder while he ate you out. Enjoying the new angle he was utilising, he hummed, sending vibrations through your nerves up to the pit of your stomach, bringing you closer to your climax.

“Mmh.. fuck daddy, i’m gonna cum!” He didn’t let off, his tongue perhaps fucking into you even faster since you told him how close you were. You locked stares as your orgasm took over your body, your lips forming an o as you screwed your eyebrows together in rapture.

He came back up, letting you taste yourself and he placed his lips on yours again. You eased into the kiss, a relaxed haze having taken over your body in your post-orgasm state. Feeling a slight breeze flow up the side of your form, you realised that Duncan still had all his clothes on whilst you had none. Deciding you needed to change this as soon as possible, you began unbuttoning his suit’s matching black blazer and shirt, rushing to feel his skin on yours.

He helped you, shrugging the shirt off his shoulders as you began to unthread his leather belt from the loops of his trousers. “You’re so impatient, little one.” He spoke.

“I think I’ve waited long enough, daddy.” You smirked, dropping the belt at his feet.

As soon as his shirt hit the floor you reached up, gliding your hands across the expanse of his bear chest, taking notice of how small your hands appeared in comparison to him. He watched you, relishing in the glimmer of entrancement that shone through your eyes as you ingested him.

He lifted you, his strong arms carrying you bridal style towards the king sized bed and throwing you down onto its crisp, satin sheets. Grabbing your ankles, he dragged you down the bed towards him and finished taking his pants off. His cock sprung free from the confines of his boxers, smacking against his stomach.

He clambered onto the bed, resting on his knees as he jerked himself in his hand, reluctantly groaning out at the first contact his neglected cock had received all night. His pressing cock had made it unfathomably hard not to just fuck you up against the door when he saw that sweet little way in which your face scrunched up as you came.

You were practically drooling, watching him fuck himself into his fist as his eyes scanned across your naked body. Not being able to wait any longer and wanting to finally feel his cock on your skin, you sat up slightly and reached out to touch him. But before you got the chance, he shoved you back down. leaning over you, he held your wrists down against the pillows with one hand and wrapped his other around your delicate throat.

“So greedy, baby” he stoked his thumb over the skin of your neck as he made his observation, watching you struggle underneath him.

“I just know what I want.” You toyed, your voiced coming out slightly muffled with the pressure of his large hand covering your voice box.

“Such an attitude, too.” His cock brushes over your cunt as he sways his head from side to side in disappointment and disproval. “Now sweetheart, you’re gonna stay exactly where you are and daddy’s gonna fuck you just like this, okay? So he can see that pretty little face of yours.”

You gulp at his words, anticipating the feeling of having him inside you. “Please just fuck me. Please.” You knew you sounded absolutely pathetic, but you didn’t care. Just needing him plummeting in and out of you as soon as possible.

He chuckled at your neediness. Taking his hands back from your wrists and grasping his cock, lining it up with your entrance and slowly pushing in, he let you adjust to his size.

Moaning out, you dug your nails into the bed sheets, watching his head drop down to yours as he closed his eyes in pleasure.

“Fuck, you take me so well.”

●●●●●●●●

He slipped his ringed finger into you, pushing against your spongy walls whilst you made a desperate attempt to suppress your moans. You bite down onto your nails, your elbow resting on the table as you put all your weight onto it for some kind of crutch.

He began with a slow pace, making sure you would feel every little movement he made. You heard him join into the conversation once again, mentioning something about an article he had seen from the Herald last month which had impressed him. You weren't even sure. You couldn't think for the pulsing beat of your own heart that filled your ears.

“You all right there, Y/N?” Your heavy breathing must have been a dead give away for something being up, being your father was now questioning you.

You felt Duncan stop his movements momentarily, joining the rest of the table in their standstill, staring at you as they awaited a reply, but his little act of sincerity didn't last too long.

“Yeah, uhm-“ you felt him slide a 2nd figure in, making you fake a cough as to stop the cry desperately trying to escape your throat from doing so.

“Yeah, I’m uh, just thirsty.” Hoping this would ward off the worried looks you were receiving, you were shocked when you heard Duncan chime in. “Oh don’t worry, we can get you something.”

He called the waiter over, asking him for a pitcher of lemonade and thanking him as he walked away, back towards the kitchen. You would have preferred some water, you thought, but you were far too focused on what was going on underneath the table to say anything.

“Now, where were we?” Seth began talking once more, bringing the attention back to where it should be. But Duncan? No. His attention stayed on you. Even more focused on fucking his fingers into than before, he sped up and began going even deeper now, curling them upwards until you were twitching.

You looked up at him pleadingly. You were getting too close to cumming for your own liking, so you grabbed onto his thigh and dug your nails into his expensive black dress pants, warning him. He shot you a devious grin, scissoring his fingers inside you and pressing his thumb down to rub sweet circles on your hooded clit, letting you know he didn’t intend on stopping.

He looked behind you suddenly. Following his gaze, you snapped your head to the side, trying to get a good look at what had grabbed his attention so abruptly.

It was the waiter. He had arrived with the pitcher of lemonade in hand and yet Duncan was still plummeting his hand into your pussy with such a speed you began to wonder if someone had actually noticed what was truly going on. I mean the waiter must know.

At this point you had let far too many questionable gasps leave your mouth, your breathing had become even more erratic as you grew closer to your orgasm. He knew you were about to break before he swiftly pulled his fingers out of you, wiping the juices that coated them back and front onto your skirt so he could pick up the glass on front of you, leaving you unsatisfied.

You scrambled to collect your thoughts and breath as he picked up the pitcher, pouring the ice cooled lemonade into your glass.

“Here.” He spoke. You lifted a shaky hand up to take the glass from him when the grasp he had on it ‘slipped’, spilling the contents of it the onto your lap.

“Oh!’ You jumped up, making the sweet, sticky liquid run off your skirt to your thighs, dripping down your legs and eventually onto the floor. The now empty glass falling with it.

“I am so sorry, Miss Y/L/N.” He picked up the glass, sitting it on the table before joining you in standing. Now he was stood, you could clearly see the dark tint of his cock straining against the constrictive fabric that was his dress pants. It sent a pulse of lust through your cunt.

“Duncan!” Hearing Annette voice her annoyance at her son for being so clumsy almost made you laugh. It was quite amusing seeing his mother reprimand him, being he was a grown man in his 40s.

“It’s okay, don’t worry. I-I’ll just go clean myself up in the bathroom. I don’t want to distract the meeting anymore than I already have.” You made eye contact with your father as he rubbed his temples.

He was annoyed at the scene you and Duncan had caused. You gave him an apologetic look, feeling bad for stressing him out even more than you already had with being late, but knowing it was technically Duncan’s fault and not yours.

“Please, let me help you clean up.” Duncan pushed his chair in, quickly grabbing some napkins off the table and resting his hand on your back to guide you towards the nearest bathroom, walking as fast as your weak legs would let him.

His hand stayed delicately placed on the small of your back, until you were out of the tables sight, at which point he took hold of your arm, clutching it like a vice as he dragged you through the bathroom door.

He locked the door behind him in preparation for what was to come. He needed to make sure nobody would be walking in on what he was about to do to you.

Looking back towards you, satisfied as ever now he had you alone, he waltzed on over, pinning you up against the counter with force. You could smell him on you again, same cologne from the night before. Dior, you guessed.

“You’re not very good at staying quiet, are you, Sweetheart?” He mused, hoisting you up onto the counter and forcefully cradling your face with both hands as he moved to kiss you deeply. His tongue ravenously re-familiarising itself with your mouth.

“You almost got us caught back there.” He spoke in between kisses. “Your poor, naive father, watching you. He was probably wondering why you kept squirming.” He voiced a dark giggle, moving down to suckle on your neck and push your skirt up your thighs.

“I almost got us caught? No. Y-you almost got us caught when you decided putting a second f-FUCK, finger into me whilst I was talking to him was a good idea!” You choked out, doing your best to fight through the pleasure of his lips finally grazing your skin as you watched him pull your panties down and slot them into his pants pocket.

“Awh poor baby. Did you not want your daddy knowing that you’re a greedy little slut for his new boss? Hm?” He admired the blossoming lavender and cherry bruises now forming on your neck as he teased, marvelling at the idea they could be noticed by your father once you finished.

He quickly opened his fly, pulling his dress pants and boxers down just enough that he could pump his cock in his hand. Gripping onto your hips for purchase, his fingers dug into you so viciously you could feel the marks he had left the night before. You knew after this, there would surely be more.

He thrust himself into you, earning a loud wail to fall from your lips. You arched your spine at the feeling of him pounding into you, making your head fall back against the mirror behind you. His hand shot up to the it as he gathered more speed, his pace growing far faster than you had anticipated.

“Was it too much for you? Taking my fingers in your cunt whilst you were trying oh so hard to concentrate? I almost made you cum on front of everyone.” You moaned out at his grotesque words, pulling your head up to rest your forehead on his shoulder.

“Answer me.” He pulled your chin up back to look at him, still pounding into you. The sound of your skin slapping against one another’s felt even louder in the small, tiled bathroom.

“Yes daddy! It was too much for me - AHH!!” You let yourself go limp against the mirror, giving yourself up to him entirely and wanting nothing more than for him to use you like his personal rag doll.

●●●●●●●●

Your throat was growing hoarser with every squeal you made. Duncan had been fucking you ruthlessly for what felt like hours now, constantly changing his pace from calm to aggressive and back again. His lips were mouthing over your peaked nipples, tongue slathering trails of saliva across your skin and teeth scrapping over dozens of tiny goosebumps.

“Such a filthy, fucking whore for me.” Squeezing down on your neck with one hand he uses his other to slap you. His ringed hand coming down across your fleshy cheek with a loud crack.

You gasped out, shocked at this move and feeling reinvigorated by the suddenness of it. His abuse only made you more attracted to him, causing your cunt to puddle its juices around his cock.

Slowing his thrusts down to an almost complete halt, he grabbed your jaw, yanking your mouth open just enough that when he dripped his spit down you could catch it. You moaned at the filth of his actions, tasting the bourbon he had drank earlier at the bar.

Following the thick thread of salvia that connected the two of you to each other, he brought his face back down to yours, bringing your sloppy lips together. Never giving you the chance to close your mouth before he slid his tongue into it.

Your lips part, foreheads leaning on each other with eyes locked as you scream and moan at his brutal fucking. “Such a good girl.” He praised you.

“Thank you daddy!!” You cry out, feeling tears brimming in your eyes at the deepness of his cock. You knew he was going to be good when he first pushed you up again that door, but this was insane. You had never felt his turned on before. Loving being completely at his mercy, but receiving none.

He pulled out suddenly, wrapping his hands around your stomach and flipping you over to your front. You got the just of what he wanted and clambered onto your hands and knees for him. He pushed his cock back into your folds, hips ricocheting off your ass immediately.

He pulled at your hair, lifting you up to his chest as he gruffed and groaned. He was much larger than you, making it easy for him to pull your head back enough that he could see the expression on your lust enthralled face.

“Tell me what you want, baby.” He demands, spanking your ass cheek and twisting your hair around in his hand. His other hand moved to your gaping mouth, pushing two fingers inside so you taste the metallic bite of his silver band.

You gag as he fucks your mouth, mumbling around his fingers in a desperate attempt at begging him to allow you to cum. You were getting so close now. You guys had been going for so long and your impending release wasn’t going to wait much longer.

“Fuckk, don’t worry sweetheart. Daddy’s close too.” He took his fingers out of your mouth, bringing them down to your clit and swiping at it furiously. You could feel your own spit on his fingers as the coil in your stomach tightened.

“Ohh Daddy’s gonna come so deep inside you, little one.. would you like that?” His breathes were uneven. Thrusts uncontrolled and sloppy.

“Yes!! Fuck, fuck, FUCK Daddy I’m cumming!!” Your cunt pulsated around his shaft, squeezing his own orgasm out of him even sooner than he expected as you screamed. You could taste the saltiness of your own tears, them having run down your cheekbones and into your agape mouth.

His cum flooded your walls, filling you up with his hips pressed against yours as he enveloped you in an embrace from behind. He uttered out a shudder against your temple, his breathe feeling hot and damp on your skin.

He set you back down on the bed and pulled his softening shaft out of you, moving his large hands back to your hips as your own gave out and fell underneath you, pressing your face into the sheets. You eventually rolled over to lay on your back, wanting to let your aftershocks roll through your quivering limbs more comfortably.

He fell down onto the duvet next to you, propping himself up on his side slightly and pulling you closer to him so he could plant a kiss on your swollen lips. “You alright? I didn't hurt too bad now, did I?” He stroked your face, words alluring as ever now your resting bare bodies were tangled up together in a complete stand still.

“Nothing that I didn't enjoy, no.” You joked, lightly drawing intricate shapes on his arm with your fingertips, still harnessing the blemishing sting his ring had left under your cheekbone. “I’d say we're pretty well aquatinted now; wouldn’t you, Daddy?”

●●●●●●●

You could feel cool drips of perspiration slipping down your heated skin from your forehead to your collar bones and all you could do was hope they hadn't taken any of the concealer you had applied earlier this morning with them. You had needed to cover the bruise Duncan’s ring had so easily left on your cheek the night before, since you really didn't want your father or anyone else from work seeing it.

Duncan’s cock was curving in all the right places as he hammered into you. His pace and brutality showing you stars. He seemed even more confident than he did yesterday. Having had experience with you, he knew that you could take his most heinous savagery with delight and didn’t hold off one bit.

His huffs and groans were tantalising, growing louder and more uncontrolled as he fucked you into oblivion. His hand squeaked as it fell down the steamed mirror he leant on, leaving the glass behind you and finding its way to your jaw. He brought your face to his own and kissed you, loudly moaning into your open mouth.

You giggled through your mewls. “Mmm.. I thought I was the loud one, daddy.” You were amused that he had been teasing you so adamantly about the volume of your pleasure, when he was now the one making all the noise.

He paused, quirking an eyebrow at you before slamming his hips into you with a thrust so strong it made you practically scream out. “Oh, my apologises, sweetheart.” He smirked as he picked up his pace once more.

You wrapped your hands in his perfectly styled hair. You no longer cared who knew what was really happening in here, the thought didn’t even cross your mind. All you cared for was chasing your high. You rutted your hips on his and took his length entirely, feeling dangerously close to cumming.

“Fuckkk baby, daddy’s gonna cum okay?. Cum with me princess. Fall apart on my cock.” His unfocused thrusts had you coming undone in seconds. You held onto him tight, digging your nails into his shoulders and pulling at his curls as you cried out in ecstasy.

He shot his seed into you, feeling all his pent up frustrations from earlier at the table leave him as he pushed himself deep into your abused cunt. He didn’t even attempt to stifle his moans, too invested in finally receiving his release to realise just how loud he was being.

He rested his forehead on yours, your sweaty skin pressed against each other as you both attempted to catch your breathes after such a quick, ruthless fuck. You started laughing, finding it utterly ridiculous that you had spent the majority of a meeting you had been terrified for, getting fucked by your new boss (and the man you had fucked the night before) in a restaurant bathroom.

He joined in laughing, clearly finding humour within this strange situation too. Interrupting your laugh, he pushed his lips into yours, kissing you as if your lips were some kind of prize. You felt his cock slip from your cunt, his seed immediately spilling from it as you were left with a sudden, empty sensation.

He made quick work of zipping his pants back up and fastening his belt. You tugged your skirt back down to your thighs, being reminded of how Duncan had snatched your panties and stashed them in his pants pocket. You guessed you wouldn’t be getting them back anytime soon, which you were okay with, you just hoped nobody saw his remnants leaving you left the bathroom.

You flattened out your skirt and felt the wet sticky lemonade that still coated it. You had completely forgotten to clean it. “Fuck, my skirt's still sticky! Why would you order lemonade?” You whined; still mad he hadn’t just ordered some water.

Awaiting a reply, you turned to check your make up in the mirror. Luckily it was pretty light today, so it still looked good other than the bruise on your cheek now being slightly more obvious than before. What really concerned you was your neck. It was covered in every shade of purple and red you were aware existed. If your father and coworkers didn’t know what was going on from how weird you were being at the table before, or how long it had taken the two of you to finish in the bathroom, or the noises that were emitting from it, they would definitely know after seeing all the claims he had left on your skin.

“I’m sorry, I just didn’t think that spilt water would have been a good enough excuse to get you all alone in here.” He chuckled to himself, leaning over to rest his chin on your head and wrapping his arms around your waist as he joked over his mischievousness.

“But we should probably head back out there. I’m sure your father’s going to apprentice the beautiful mosaic I’ve painted across your neck” he kissed the bruises he spoke of as he watched you through the mirror.

You scoffed at him, gifting yourself one last look before completely giving up on finding a way you could make your face and neck appear more presentable for heading back to the table.

Duncan opened the bathroom door, nodding his head towards the hallway and waiting for you to hurry up and join him.

The two of you started walking back, your legs struggling to take your weight with how weak they had become. Your heels clicked along the floor, making you far more aware of how soon you would be sitting back down with everyone from work. Like a clock counting down to all the judgmental stares you would surly be receiving.

You kept your eyes trained on the floor as you took your seat at the table. Seths voice trailed off upon seeing the two of you sit down, leaving you both in the middle of an uncomfortable silence that felt near suffocating.

“What took so long!” You could hear the anger and perhaps embarrassment in Annettes voice as she whispered to Duncan. She looked towards you, glaring and scowling before retiring her vision back to him. She was probably hoping that what she assumed to have occurred hadn’t, but from the marks clearly decorating your neck, she would have known it to be true.

“Oh, we just couldn’t get the lemonade out of her skirt.” He tut as he spoke to his mother, smiling and playing off any obvious suspicions. “I’m sorry, really.” He placed a hand on her shoulder, dripping with a sincerity you knew to be false.

“So what was it we were discussing?” he speaks louder now, addressing the rest of the table.

“Uhh actually, I think we have a deal.” Seth replied, looking over at him and then the rest of the table. You heard your father mutter something in agreement, but it was meek. Quiet. He must have felt the awkward tension too. It was ripe in the air, like a shiver you couldn’t shake off. You didn't even want to look at him, knowing If anyone there felt most uncomfortable, it was him.

Saying their goodbyes and finishing up with any last details, everyone stood to shake hands and bid their farewells. You felt your fathers scowl as he came and stood beside you, but you didn't dare look at him. You were too ashamed to face him whilst still with your coworkers.

Duncan walked over to your father, looking more satisfied than ever with his eyes still focused on you as he thanked him for meeting and shook his hand firmly.

“It’s been a pleasure meeting you, Mr Y/L/N.” He let go of your fathers hand only to take a hold of yours. He grasped it delicately, a touch more gentle than he had ever shown you previously. Assuming he was trying you shake it, you were more than surprised when he raised it to his lips, kissing your rosey knuckles; still red from the tight grip you had, had on his hair earlier.

“I look forward to working with you in the future, Y/N.” He graced you with once last signature smirk as he walked away, leaving you with your father who was waiting for an explanation and apology for your disgusting and foolish behaviour.

Maybe it hadn’t been the worst way to spend lunch.

Tags: @sojournmichael @dark-mei-rose @ntxoza @angelicmichael @jimmason @michaellangdonstanaccount @blakescoven @7-wonders @ghostangels @fernfiction @brattylovee @melodylangdon @brooklinn13 @instincts-baby

[honeesucker]

Akaashi Keiji x F!Reader

Akaashi Keiji as part of my Haikyuu Boys reacting to your hand on their thigh…

Word Count: 2,165

Warnings: None worth mentioning, just smutty and cute.

“Keiji~” you gave a plaintive whine and huffed, arms crossed as you plunked down on the soft leather of the sectional in Akaashi’s main office space shared with the other editors; he had just walked out of his personal office to grab more coffee when he saw you walking in, dressed up and looking as breathtaking as ever - he never got tired of seeing you, or telling you how lovely you were to him. You; however, had thought to surprise him by setting up a reservation at one of his favorite restaurants that was more out of the way of your guys’ apartment, but he had been working so hard and you missed him so much and wanted to do something nice for him until all fell through, like always.

“I’m sorry my love,” Akaashi’s voice was soft, a tinge of sadness for having to reject your plans again for a deadline on an important project but he would make it up to you, he always did. It didn’t stop you from being disappointed in the moment, or him feeling bad because he knew that the pain of rejection stung you each time.

You noticed the change in his demeanor and how he was pulling and fidgeting with his long fingers. You stood up and crossed the short distance before wrapping your arms around his waist and snuggling into him.

“No big deal, ‘Kaashi,” you placed a soft kiss on his jawline, “I really should’ve asked instead of assuming you were free tonight. I know your work is important to you.” Akaashi cupped your cheek and placed an equally soft kiss on your lips, you smiled against him which caused him to laugh.

“Mind if I keep you company ‘til you’re done with work for tonight?” You gave him your best puppy dog eyes and he just shook his head and asked if you wanted any coffee. You walked ahead of him to his office and noticed he wasn’t set up at his desk, but on the couch against the furthest wall, laptop and mock-up pages to review all over the coffee table. You sat down and he followed shortly behind you, taking a long sip of coffee before leaning over his work and getting back to concentrating. You leant into his side in a way that kept you close to him but didn’t inhibit his arm movements so he could work freely and comfortably; you pulled out your phone and began typing away but Akaashi wasn’t able to see your screen, though curiosity almost got the better of him a couple of times almost making him lean over to peek (though he knew it he asked you’d have no problem handing it over without a second thought - he appreciated that trust you both have in each other).

Akaashi was deep into his work when he felt a sharp sensation shoot through his thigh, to his stomach and straight to his cock, already half-hard against his dress slacks. You had placed your hand on his thigh (fairly high up, and close enough to almost be palming him through his slacks, he might add) and was stroking lazy lines with your thumb mindlessly, still finishing something up in your phone, not even noticing that Akaashi’s full attention was now on you, on your small hand. He swallowed harshly, trying to push down the surge of urges coursing through his body now, not realizing it had been so long since you and him have had any time to be together lately that such a small, innocent touch would trigger an instant hard-on. He glanced at you from the side, not turning his head much away from his laptop. You were snuggled up against him, the office slippers you had put on were on the floor and your legs were pulled up into the couch, you were still fixated and typing away on your phone, still thumbing little motions on Akaashi’s thigh, in such a flattering skirt and cardigan it was almost impossible for him not to pounce on you like a Lion to an antelope.

He shifted in his seat, causing you to fall against him a bit further and giggled as he placed delicate kisses along the length of your arm, long your shoulder, up your neck and across your jaw, a sweet one on the tip of your nose, before locking onto your lips with a deep growl in his chest. He pulled you into his lap, your legs on either side of his as you straddled him, and broke the kiss to breath, which caused Akaashi to pepper more kisses and gentle bites along you neck.

“Ah-Akaashi-“ you whimpered when he bit down a bit harder, sucking the skin enough that it’ll leave a purple mark. “Keiji don’t you have work to get done?” You said, unconvincing that you didn’t want him to continue.

“Mm, yes baby, I’m doing my work,” Akaashi mumbled against your skin, ghosting his nose along your neck before breathing in the scent of your perfume and clean hair. “My work as a good boyfriend, you know I’ve been slacking a bit lately,” he captured your lips back into a passionate kiss and you melted into his touch. Allowing his slender fingers to undo the buttons of your soft cardigan until nothing but the lacy emerald green bralette remains. You can hear a muffled groan that he’s trying to hold back as he reaches up and cups each of your breasts, molding the supple flesh with his slender fingers and giving a quick chuckle when you yelp as he pinches each rosy bud between his pointer and thumb through the lace fabric. Between the friction of his fingers on your nipples and the way he occasionally lifted his hips up to grind the hard cock straining against his slacks against your own clothed core was driving you insane. You let out a breathy moan and he just tilted his head and gave you a cheeky smile - one you didn’t see often and cherished.

“Awe,” Akaashi drew out, “is my baby horny for my cock? Hmm?” You only nodded and grinded back down against his lap and he laughed again. His hands found purchase on the soft sides of your hips and held you down against him as he rocked his hips up, teasing you further.

“Mmfph, ‘Kaashi please!” You whined and Akaashi just halted all movement, causing you to let out such an annoyed sound that he found so cute.

“Please what baby?” Akaashi hummed, “use your words.”

“Please n-need to feel you, need you inside me!” Your adrenaline and need for him was the only thing controlling your thoughts and actions right now, Akaashi was all you saw in the moment.

“Oh my poor baby,” Akaashi cooed gently, stroking your cheek with one hand and sliding his other beneath your skirt until the pads of his pointer and middle finger were pressing against your clit through the thin lace of your matching panties. “Is this what you wanted, hm? Already soaked through your panties like the needy little slut I knew you always were,” his tone of voice was so gentle but the dirty words he used only spurred you on.

“N-!” You were gonna tell him you needed so much more than what he was giving you but in the second you were distracted Akaashi has slipped your panties to the side and plunged two long fingers into your silky cunt, curling the digits to press against that spongy spot that had you seeing stars, his thumb was rubbing fast pressured circles on your clit that had you moaning and clinging onto him for dear life.

You were so close, so, so close.

“Ah! NO!” You hit his chest when Akaashi stopped all ministrations and his fingers stilled inside of you, he enjoyed how your gummy walls were clenching around him, sucking him in and it was almost impossible for him to resist giving you exactly what you were selfishly trying to take.

“Tsk tsk,” Akaashi scolded playfully, scissoring his fingers inside of you, causing you to groan at the pleasant stretch. “I thought you knew better my little Sakura blossom,” his fingers curled and his thumb found that sweet spot of perfect pressure on your clit again that had you moaning and squirming in his lap, your nails were digging into his shoulders through his dress shirt and he so enjoyed watching you come undone, “knew that you had to get permission to cum on my fingers first, like a good girl - you are my good girl aren’t you?” Akaashi knew he had won the moment you still your frantic grinding down on his hand to look at him with teary eyes, your cheeks flushed pink and hair sticking to your forehead from the small build up of sweat. Akaashi’s dick flexed when you have a hard swallow and nodded, he knew no matter what you were always his good girl, but seeing you pull back and do your best for him just filled him with such pride and love for you.

“I’m’a good girl p-pl-ah~please Keiji let me cum, please let me cum for you,” your begging turned incoherent and Akaashi felt bad for maybe pushing you a little past your limit. He added a third finger and got back to work hitting exactly where he knew would have you cunning in seconds and he was right. Your moans grew louder and soon he could feel your walls clenching around him again but this time he didn’t stop.

“C’mon baby, cum for me. Be my good girl and cum for me, you can do it,” and like a switch flipped in your head you were spasming and gushing on Akaashi’s fingers, his fingers still curling and his thumb still working your clit slowly as he helped you through your orgasms, prolonging it a little until your whines of it being ‘too much’ came through. He pulled from your body slowly, reveling in how your pussy seemed to want to keep him inside of you, and watched your heavy-lidded eyes glass over when he brought his fingers up to his mouth and cleaned himself, the groan he let out going straight to your clit and shocking awake a renewed craving for your love.

There was a buzz throughout the office that shocked you both, until reality hit and you whined, straightening your skirt and re-buttoning your cardigan to run down to the lobby and grab the door. Your legs were wobbly from sitting in that position for so long and Akaashi helped you balance. You looked down to see his cock straining against the zipper of his slacks, painfully harder than you’ve ever seen it before.

“Who’s here?” Akaashi questioned, and you just gave a smile.

“I paid ‘Tsumu to come and deliver some onigiri from Onigiri Miya,” Akaashi’s eyes widened and as if on cue his stomach growled, “I also had him stop at another place on the way to get you a side of nanohana no karashiae for you since I know it’s your favorite and we haven’t had it in a whil-!” You giggled and screamed as Akaashi pulled you into a tight hug, kissing your cheek and smiling. “I figured since we couldn’t go out, I could bring something to you - I know you haven’t eaten at all today Keiji...” he flashed a sheepish grin at that and just nodded.

“You’re right, and I love you - for getting food and just being you,” the buzzer rang throughout the office again and you ran to grab the food from Atsumu before running back to Akaashi’s office. Akaashi was on the couch with his slacks undone and down to his ankles, his cock was as hard as you’ve ever seen it and a bead of pre-cum was leaking out of the slit, and dripping down the front. You licked your lips out of habit and set the food down on his desk before turning back to him. He had his head leant back on the couch and his arms crossed behind his head. He was eyeing you hungrily as you walked over and reached down as you straddled his body like before. You lined him up and sank down on the thick length, your intense orgasm still leaving you sensitive from earlier.

Once you were fully seated on Akaashi’s cock he wrapped his arms around you and pulled you to lean forward on him as he began to thrust like a man possessed, your cries and his moans the only sounds aside from slapping skin filling the office. This went on for an hour longer before the hunger got the better of both of you, and exhausted and starving you both slunk to the ground half-dressed and ate the thankfully still warm food.

Akaashi kept taking side glances at you, thankful to have someone so perfectly suited for him in all the ways you were.

[definitelyseven]

hurts so good | three

summary: growing up with Park Jinyoung was never easy and things are about to get worse when you’ve been asked to marry him

one | two | three | four | five | six | seven | eight | nine | ten | eleven | twelve - final |

You woke up to the sound of your alarm and an empty bed next to you. You sighed - he didn’t come home at all last night. 

“Good morning mom and dad,” you greeted Jinyoung’s parents. “Chae and Jae,” you continued to greet as you made your way to a seat at the table. 

“Where’s Jinyoung?” his father asked. 

"He left early for work,” you covered for him. 

He scoffed loudly before throwing a stack of photos onto the dining table. You looked down and see pictures of Jinyoung and a woman. She was on his lap, leaning down towards his face. His hand was on her thigh. “Come up with a better excuse next time,” his father revealed. “Do a better job taking care of your husband so he doesn’t need to look for another women to please him.”

“I’m sorry,” you apologized. 

“Being a Park women isn’t easy. You have to learn how to swallow your pride, when to speak up and when to shut up,” he lectured. “It’s your fault this happened.”

“I understand,” you said swallowing your tears. 

“Fix it,” he demands before leaving the dinner table. Your mother-in-law gives your shoulder a light squeeze before leaving the table. There was nothing she could do but agree with her husband. Your father-in-law was right - being a Park women wasn’t easy. Look at your mother-in-law who had to share her husband with another woman and take in her son as her own. 

“Could you get father’s medicine?” Jaebum asked Chaewon. She nods, leaving the table. You grabbed the photos in your hand, flipping through them. Each photo making your stomach churn. “Still think he’s worth defending?” 

“Where did father get this?” you asked with tears in your eyes. 

Jaebum sighed, “Sunrise Magazine.”

You were upset and mad. No matter how much he disliked you, never in a million years did you think he would actually cheat on you. You thought he would be faithful especially witnessing how his father treated his mother. 

“I’m sorry Mr. Joo. She wouldn’t wait outside,” the editor-in-chief’s secretary explained. You ignored her, taking a seat in front of him. 

“It’s okay,” he tells her before she closes the door. “How may I help you?”

“I’m Mrs. Park, the Marketing Director at Park Inc.,” you introduced, sliding your business card across the table. “If you don’t know, our company gives your magazine billions of dollars of business every year from advertisements alone.”

“Ah...yes. How can I help you, Mrs. Park?” he asked nervously. 

“I’ll make this quick.” You tossed a photo of Jinyoung and that women on his table. “This is my husband and this photo came from someone in your office. If you want to continue to work with us, I better not see any of these photos leaked to the public,” you warned. “Or else you’ll be the one explaining to your boss why you lost the magazine’s biggest account.”

“Yes certainly,” he agreed immediately. “I will make sure this will never happen again.”

“If you or anyone in your office follows me and my family again. I will blame it on you,” you warned once again before getting up. 

“Mrs. Park,” he called. “I can promise that no one from this office will bother you and your family again, but I must warn you of something.”

“What is it?”

“The women is this photo. She is one of our owner’s mistress. Even if this photo doesn’t leak to the public, I’m sure he’s already seen this.”

“And your boss is?” 

“Mr. Choi.”

Mr. Choi was one of your father-in-law’s oldest friend. He is notorious for his four wives and his many affairs. He is also the biggest investor in Jinyoung’s new project. The women in the picture was one of his mistresses which makes this situation more complicated. 

The car stopped at the red light and you quickly glanced outside. You shifted in your seat when you see a familiar face, Taeyong, your ex-boyfriend. Up until the day you agreed to marry Jinyoung, he was still your boyfriend. How do you tell the person you once loved that you will be marrying someone else instead of them?

“Wait,” you tell your driver as you stole another glance at your ex-lover. He was standing there alone, playing on his phone. 

“Mrs. Park, the lights turned green.”

“Just one second,” you tell him. The sound of school bells caught you and your ex-lover’s attention. A bunch of little kids running outside the school. In particular, one little girl running straight to your ex-lover. 

“Mrs. Park,” your driver called again. 

“Okay, let’s go.”

You had to be calm, no matter how mad you were at Jinyoung. No matter what he did wrong, he was still your husband; still the man that save your father from his gambling debts. 

He owned you. 

“Someone might see us,” you hear whispers coming from inside Jinyoung’s office. “Not here,” the woman inside continued to whisper. 

“I don’t care,” he tells her before the sound of her giggles filled the room. You shut your eyes and clenched your fist into a ball. You recognized that voice and it wasn’t the same woman in the picture. It was his secretary; Nayeon. Now you understood why she always acted weird with you. 

You had choices - you could go in and expose him or you could pretend this didn’t happen. You could let it go and maybe, just maybe you’ll still have a chance with Jinyoung. You could let it go and he would still be your husband and you will still be Mrs. Park. 

In this very moment, you chose to walk away and pretend nothing happened.

You walked away from Jinyoung’s office and headed for Jaebum’s. If anyone was going to help, it would be him. 

“Come in,” Jaebum said from the other side of the room. He looked up at you as soon as you walked into his office. “You need something?”

“You knew who she was.”

“Do you still think Jinyoung’s worth defending?” he questioned again.

“You knew who she was and you didn’t say anything this morning,” you repeated.

“Does it matter? You know now.”

“I need your help, Jae.”

“No,” he refused immediately. 

“Why? You didn’t even know what I was going to ask. Please,” you begged. He shook his head. “He’s your brother.”

“Has he ever treated me like his brother?” he asked through his teeth.

You let out a deep sigh. “Please,” you looked at him with tears in your eyes. “Save me from the humiliation. I don’t think I can take it,” you admitted honestly.

This time it was Jaebum’s turn to sigh. “You don’t deserve this, Y/N. You deserve better, so much better.”

“I know you’ve always cared for me like a sister-”

“You know I cared about you as more than a sister,” he admitted.

“It doesn’t matter anymore. We’re both married. Chae’s pregnant. Jinyoung’s my husband.”

“The answer is still no. Last time I checked we were fighting to be the next Chairman. I think this would be my advantage,” he revealed. 

“Jae...”

“What do you need from me?” he sighed in defeat.

“With your relationship with Uncle Choi, you can easily get me a meeting with him.”

“And what do you plan on doing once you meet him?”

“Leave the rest to me. Just don’t let Jinyoung know. He would be pissed if I meddled with his affairs,” you said before walking out of his office. 

You and Jaebum sat patiently in the VIP room for Mr. Choi. He was 30 minutes late and you were getting anxious.

“Relax Y/N,” Jaebum tells you as you looked at your watch for the sixth time.

“I’d be more relax if Uncle Choi showed up on time.”

“He has a right to be late,” he reminded. Of course he did. Especially after Jinyoung fooled around with his woman. 

Just as you were about to speak again, Mr. Choi walks in. “Uncle Choi,” the both of you called. 

“I know why you’re here and I don’t care,” he says right away as he sat down across from you both. 

“Uncle Choi, I know what Jinyoung did was wrong. We’re here to show you how sorry we are.”

“Sorry? Where is he then?” he scoffed. “He should be here apologizing if he was sorry.”

You smiled subtly, “Uncle Choi, you have four wives. I’m sure they’ll do exactly what I’m doing if you were in this situation.” 

Mr. Choi chuckles, “If they were as forgiving as you, I wouldn’t have four wives.”

This time it was your turn to chuckle. “So what do you say Uncle Choi? What can we do to get you to forget about this? You can get any women you’d like - no need to ruin our relationship over one woman,” you pointed out. 

“I don’t like to share,” he tells you. 

“No need to share when there’s plenty to go around,” you smirked. You clapped your hands signaling the women outside to come in. “You can have anyone you’d like.”

Mr. Choi laughs out loud. “Y/N, I didn’t expect this from you. You must really love our Jinyoungie.” You smiled subtly again. “Our collaboration agreements, raise my share from 50% to 70%.”

“We can’t do that Uncle Choi,” Jaebum immediately shuts down.

“That is my offer if you want to keep working together - including Jinyoung’s new project,” he said firmly. 

“We can agree to 70% -” Jaebum quickly turns to you, attempting to stop you from making any rash decisions. You grabbed Jaebum’s hand, giving it a small squeeze. You looked directly into his eyes - sending him a mental note to trust you. “We can agree to 70% but with conditions,” you requested. “We will stick with our agreed upon advertisements in your magazine as well as 10 billboards around your most popular locations in the mall; free of charge.”

“Fine. I always appreciate doing business with a beautiful lady,” he smirked. “Mistress #5 was supposed to be my lucky charm tonight. Why don’t you take her spot tonight?” he asked rhetorically as he hands you a red dress. You knew you couldn’t reject it. If you wanted him to forgive Jinyoung and accept your conditions, you had to do this. You had to be his lucky charm tonight.

“Y/N...” Jaebum whispers. “You don’t have to do this.”

“I’ve always been lucky,” you tell the both of them as you grabbed the red dress from him. The dress was tight and small. It was obvious what his intentions were tonight.

"My my my, Y/N. You look marvelous in that dress,” Mr. Choi smirked, licking his lips. Although you were disgusted by his words, you still had to fake a smile. “Look who I invited.”

You turned around to see Jinyoung standing there. Once he laid eyes on you and your short dress, his blood began to boil. “Jinyoung...” you called out. 

“What the hell are you doing here?” he asked pissed off. 

[bringmoreknives]

HOW TO RECOGNIZE REPOSTED GIFS/EDITS

lately, i’ve been seeing a huge rise in reposts of gifs and edits, and of spreading those reposts. i don’t think it’s a malicious thing at all from people who reblog them, but it’s important to be able to spot them in the future so that we can stop perpetuating this kind of behavior. so without any further ado, here are a few ways to recognize reposted gifs and edits. please keep in mind that it’s usually a combination of a few of these factors, and that one of them being present doesn’t necessarily mean the post is DEFINITELY a repost. be smart, but also be vigilant!

1. non-matching watermarks a watermark is a (usually) small/unobtrusive placing of the gifmaker/editor’s url or username somewhere on the gif. for example, here’s a gif i made; you can see my tumblr url, bringmoreknives, very lightly in the upper left corner.

now, just because you see a post from a blog with a different url than the one in the watermark doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a repost. editors and gifmakers change their urls, just like everyone else does. however, the watermark is a good place to start. you can always go to that original url and see if you can trace them to the blog that posted the post in question. and if you’re an editor, make sure you watermark your shit and leave a clear trail to your new blog -- i have redirect pages set up on all my old urls, all the way back to when i first made this blog in 2013. 

2. mismatched gifs or edits being posted together, or media being posted in an awkward way in my opinion, this is the best indicator of reposts. oftentimes, because they don’t make the content themselves, reposters don’t understand the logic of making a cohesive gif or edit set, and so will cram a bunch of random gifs/edits of different sizes, video qualities, and psds/effects together into one post. they also might post gifs that were meant to be side by side on top of each other or vice versa, resulting in a reduction of quality and everything looking super pixel-y. 

in a post, this will look like:

dramatically different colorings on gifs being posted side by side (not just, like, one or two black and white gifs in a clear color scheme, but one sepia-toned, one original colored, one extremely lightened, etc)

parts of some images being cut off due to different image dimensions

media from a bunch of different events, appearances, episodes, etc. that isn’t tied together by a common theme

3. use of tumblr mobile “fonts” in the caption this is a super obvious one, imo. again, on its own it’s not necessarily a giveaway, but i don’t know any editor who posts original gifs from their phone, simply because you need photoshop to make them, and therefore the files will be on your computer.

4. captions that comment on the content, or a lack of caption at all lack of a caption is less indicative of a repost than an odd caption is. but reposters often caption their reposted comment with something relatively irrelevant, like “omg he’s so cute” or something. additionally, many original posts will have a link to the video source in the caption -- so if everything else checks out AND there’s a source linked, it’s probably fine. (again, lack of a linked video source is not a marker of a repost: tumblr recently changed the rules where any post with an external link won’t show up in tags, so many creators leave off source links now.) also, worth mentioning that people DO often repost with the caption “not my gif/edit/pic,” and this is a great reminder that that is not an acceptable alternative to simply REBLOGGING  POST FROM THE ORIGINAL SOURCE.

5. lack of a tag to indicate that the work is the poster’s own creators will often have tags for all of their original content. this can be anything from “mine,” “my stuff,” etc. to a series of asterisks or other punctuation marks that aren’t likely to be used for anything else. additionally, many creators will prominently display a link to this somewhere on their blog, if they have a custom theme. if a post doesn’t have some kind of tag indicating ownership that you can click on and browse to see more original content, that can be a major red flag.

6. crosstagging/adding irrelevant tags reposters want to get their posts seen, reblogged, and liked by as many people as possible. they thrive off clout for stuff they didn’t make. therefore, they have a tendency to add a SHITLOAD of tags that don’t really have anything to do with the actual subject matter. for example, if it’s mcr reposts, they might tag all of the band members, even if they’re not all featured, all of the album names, a ton of bands in the same musical circles, and even instagram-esque hashtags like “cute,” “emo,” “scenecore,” etc.

and there you have it -- here are some of the ways i know to spot reposts from seven years as a creator on this site. you get better at it the more time you spend in a fandom, because you’ll recognize content that popularly gets reposted, and also just learn to have a trained eye for this sort of thing. but until you reach that stage, i hope that this helps. please reblog to spread the word, and don’t be afraid to call out reposters, with links to the original post if you can find it, because creators on this site have a hard enough time as it is. and feel free to add anything else you use to spot reposts!

[litafficionado]

Four Questions with Garielle Lutz:

I’m extremely beholden to Garielle who took the time to respond to my silly, garbled, childish, intrusive questions. You can purchase her latest book Worsted here and here, among many other sites.  --------- Q.  You've attributed the resuscitation of your literary career in quite considerable measure to your teacher and editor Gordon Lish. It seems like you guys are particularly close, even as you seem to have largely confined yourself to Pittsburgh(mostly driven by your erstwhile teaching career but also by your liking the city over time). How does it feel to hear someone like Gordon speak so highly of you, “I think there’s more truth in one sentence of my student [Lutz] than in all of [Philip] Roth. Lutz gives [herself] away. “The speaking subject gives herself away,” says Julia Kristeva. I thoroughly believe that. What you see in Lutz, [her] lavish gift, is [her] refusal to relax [her] determination to uncover and uncover. It is, by my lights, quite wonderful, quite terrific.[…]Lutz is entirely the real thing?” Does one feel vindicated? How do you navigate the waters of self-effacement and self-indulgence as a writer and as a person? A.  I haven’t had a literary career before or after studying with Gordon Lish.  I don’t think one finds one’s way to him in hopes of launching a career.  Anyone with vulgar ambition along those lines would have been shown the door pretty quick.  I would never presume to be close to Gordon or to feel that I am part of his life other than in my role as a student. He dwells in another realm entirely. I attended his classes and tried to grasp, to the best of my abilities, the things he was saying about how to get from one word to the next.  He also talked about how to free a word from the constricting range of its permissible behaviors, how to drain it of every sepsis of received meaning, until there is nothing left of the word but the skeleton of its former self, just the lank, gawky letters sticking out this way and that, and then how to fill the thing up again, to the point of overspilling, but this time with something that would never have been allowed to belong in there before, and then see whether the word, now close to bursting, can hold up and maybe have a new kind of say.  I’m always surprised and relieved whenever Gordon says anything approving about anything I write.  I think that for a lot of his students, his opinion is the only one that counts.  

Q.  You've said, "A typical day goes like this: noon, afternoon, evening, night, additional night, even more night, furtherest night, then bedtime, though I don’t have a bed or furniture of any kind.” Have you always been a lychnobite, sensing the overwhelming superabundance of life after the sunset or is it a relatively recent development facilitated by your retirement from teaching? Do you consider yourself in any way to be a minimalist? Does your room bear any resemblance with a sparsely lit opium den where all exchanges happen at the floor level?

A.  I think the pandemic has had a lot to do with it.  Lately I’ve been up until five, sometimes six.  But I’ve always found mornings the harshest and ugliest part of the day (maybe it’s just because of the place where I live, but I never open the blinds anyway).  There can be something awfully scolding about a sunrise the older you get  Evening seems to extend every form of leniency, and in the dead of night, expectations go way down, which is where they maybe ought to stay.  I do spend all of my time on the floor, but my apartment doesn’t bear any resemblance to an opium den.  It’s more like a crawlspace or the back of a  dollar-store stockroom.    

Q. Even with your reputation of being a page-hugger than a typical page-turner, how do you decide which books to read apart from your line of work? Do you try to keep it largely in the familiar territory, like exploring the oeuvre of a time-tested writer? How does one unshackle oneself from this constant niggling that one ought to read so many books? Here's Ben Marcus: “When I was in graduate school, there was this sort of cautionary adage going around by the poet Francis Ponge that we can only write what we’ve already read and one way to hear that is you’re just sort of doomed to kind of regurgitate everything you’ve read and so if you’re just reading all the popular books, the books everyone else is reading, in some sense you’re maybe unwittingly confining yourself to a particular literary practice that’s gonna look pretty familiar. I remember at the time thinking, okay well if that’s true, if I’m just fated to that, then I’m gonna read things that no one else is reading. I loved to just go to the library and pretty randomly grab books, because I think for a little while, and I’m kinda glad this passed, but I really just had this feeling that a writer just consumes language and just sort of spits it out. So it didn’t matter. Like it didn’t have to be a great novel for it to be worth-reading. And I still read very little fiction in the end compared to non-fiction, essays, works of philosophy, science. And the other sort of dirty secret is: I don’t finish a lot of books. I just don’t care enough. I only finish a book if I have to or if I really want to. And, often, I’ll stop reading a book three pages from the end. I think that as writers, we probably feel a lot of pressure about what kind of a reader to be, what kind of a writer to be in, and we feel this shame, like “I haven’t read DH Lawrence, I’m such an asshole.” You begin to feel like you’ve these deficiencies and you gotta make them up and you never will and a lot of it is just kinda tyrannical. Of course, obviously, we must be naturally motivated to read and read and read and read but I guess I just started to notice that…I got a lot of my ideas by just reading…e.g. a gardening book…like the weird way a sentence was structured.” Then there's Moyra Davey: “Woolf famously said of reading: “The only advice … is to take no advice, … follow your instincts, … use your reason.” A similar thought was voiced by her elder contemporary Oscar Wilde, who did not believe in recommending books, only in de-recommending them. Later, Jorge Luis Borges echoed the same sentiment by discouraging “systematic bibliographies” in favor of “adulterous” reading. More recently, Gregg Bordowitz has promoted “promiscuous” reading in which you impulsively allow an “imposter” book to overrule any reading trajectory you might have set for yourself, simply because, for instance, a friend tells you in conversation that he is reading it and is excited by it. This evokes for me that most potent kind of reading — reading as flirtation with or eavesdropping on someone you love or desire, someone who figures in your fantasy life.”“What to read?” is a recurring dilemma in my life. The question always conjures up an image: a woman at home, half-dressed, moving restlessly from room to room, picking up a book, reading a page or two and no sooner feeling her mind drift, telling herself, “You should be reading something else, you should be doing something else.” The image also has a mise-en-scène: overstuffed, disorderly shelves of dusty and yellowing books, many of them unread; books in piles around the bed or faced down on a table; work prints of photographs, also with a faint covering of dust, taped to the walls of the studio; a pile of bills; a sink full of dishes. She is trying to concentrate on the page in front of her but a distracting blip in her head travels from one desultory scene to the next, each one competing for her attention. It is not just a question of which book will absorb her, for there are plenty that will do that, but rather, which book, in a nearly cosmic sense, will choose her, redeem her. Often what is at stake, should she want to spell it out, is the idea that something is missing, as in: what is the crucial bit of urgently needed knowledge that will save her, at least for this day? She has the idea that if she can simply plug into the right book then all will be calm, still, and right with the world. […] Must reading be tied to productivity to be truly satisfying […] Or is it the opposite, that it can only really gratify if it is a total escape? What is it that gives us a sense of sustenance and completion? Are we on some level always striving to attain that blissful state of un-agendaed reading remembered from childhood? What does it mean to spend a good part of one’s life absorbed in books? Given that our time is limited, the problem of reading becomes one of exclusion. Why pick one book over the hundreds, perhaps thousands on our bookshelves, the further millions in libraries and stores? For in settling on any book we are implicitly saying no to countless others. This conflict is aptly conjured up by essayist Lynne Sharon Schwartz as she reflects on “the many books (the many acts) I cannot in all decency leave unread (undone) — or can I?”” What way out do you suggest? Do you deem it worthwhile to eschew any shred of obligation and be propelled in any direction naturally? Like you said you found grammar books and lexicons more engaging and enjoyable than the novels.

A.  I seem to remember that in some magazine or another, James Wolcott once said “Read at whim.”  That has always sounded like the best advice.  And I assume it means to feel free to ditch any book that disappoints.  Like Ben Marcus, I’ve had experiences of abandoning a book just a few pages from the end, but I often don’t make it that far in most things anymore.  I came from a long line of nonreaders, so I’ve never felt any guilt about passing up books or writers that so many people seem to talk about a lot, and I don’t expect other people to like what I like. Some books I’ll start about halfway in and then see whether I might want to work my way back to the beginning.  Others I’ll start at the very end and inch my way toward the front, one sentence at a time, and see how far I can go that way.  I seem to remember that in The Pleasure of the Text, Roland Barthes recommends “cruising” a text, and maybe something like that is what I’m doing at least some of the time, if I understand what he means.  And every now and then I’ll read  a book straightforwardly for an hour and afterward wonder whether the time might have been better spent staring off into space. Too many books these days seem ungiving.  It’s the ungivingness that disappoints the most.  A lot of contemporary fiction has the gleam and sparkle of a trend feature in a glossy magazine, and I can appreciate the craft and the savvy that go into something like that, but I am drawn more toward stories and books that demand being read slowly and closely, pulse by pulse, the kind of fiction where everything--what little might be left of an entire blighted life--can pivot on the peal of a single syllable. Q.  I'd like to ask you so many questions. But let this be the last one for matters of convenience. Also, in a capitalistic world, one's enshrouded with guilt for taking one's time without being remunerative in any way. Among the books and films that you recently encountered, which ones do you think deserve rereads/rewatches? A.  I used to feel like the woman you’ve described so movingly above, someone who questions her choice of books almost to the brink of despair.  At my age, though, I no longer have a program for reading, a syllabus or a checklist, and I’m okay with knowing there’s a lot I’ll never get around to.  I’m happy being a rereader of a few inexhaustible books and chancing upon occasional fresh treasure.  The one book that has shaken me the most in the longest time is Anna DeForest’s  A History of Present Illness, which will be out next August.  It’s a blisteringly truthful novel written with moral grace and unsettling brilliance and an awing mastery of language.  A couple of recent books I have read in manuscript, books that totally knocked me out with their originality and uncanny command of the word, are Greg Gerke’s In the Suavity of the Rock (a novel) and David Nutt’s Summertime in the Emergency Room (a short-story collection).  I haven’t watched many movies in the past few months, and the ones I watched aren’t ones I’ll probably be rewatching anytime soon.  

[iguessilovebakugou]

Beautiful  ||  {Dabi/F!Reader}  ---  Heathers: The Musical --  Cause I’m a stupid fuck who can’t control themselves

Me:  *Doesn’t post anything for 2 years*

Also Me when Dabi is on screen at any point ever:   👁👄👁

I’m also throwing this out there because like...I highly doubt anyone still looks at my blog, so I can hide my fucking shame that I’ve been thinking of this idea on and off for almost 2 years now. 

Now...spoilers under the cut because I have to explain some things...

I know they just recently announced that Dabi “died” when he was a kid.  So I will have to specify that I’m aging him up to be 17, since that would just...make sense?  

  --  --  --  --

“Venti salted caramel coldbrew, extra foam.”

There was a raid against villains that day.  It had been the only thing anyone could talk about.

You had overheard the editors talking about it as they made their coffee.  It was a good thing, right, that they were taking the fight to the bad guys?  That not all hope had been lost?  Most people just wanted an ounce of good news.  Some confirmation that the way of things would hold strong - a nice sugar coat to swallow the hard pill.  Though, it seemed like all any report worth their salt - you included - could discuss was the fall of society, what people were going to do if...or...when, rather, the heroes were yanked from their spot light and cast down in the dirt with the rest of civilization.  

You weren’t a giant fan of them, considering, but you understood the necessity for someone to hold the mantle - someone who guaranteed the safety the mass populous required to keep them from falling to complete anarchy.

Your phone buzzed as a message appeared at the top, blocking the article’s title from view.  Your boss, Fumihiro...again...for the 8th time since you left the office.  

[INCOMING MSG] ::  Where are you right now?

“Venti salted caramel cold brew, extra foam for...”

Your brows furrowed, your stance shifting from one foot to the other.  

[OUTGOING MSG] ::  Getting the coffee.

[OUTGOING MSG] ::  Why?  Want me to get you something?

Heroes.  The way of things.  Society.  

Most people didn’t seem to care too much about it once their phones locked and it was out of their line of sight.  When the terrible wasn’t in your face, it was easy to forget that everything hung on a tiny thread that was always threatening to snap.  It was hard, you figured, to care about the state of the world when you were more concerned about mundane matters that were pressing in the moment.  The rest of the world seems small when you have everything else to pressure you.  It was easy to forget.

[INCOMING MSG] ::   www.wtxz319.rdio.com/live/93901_error

[INCOMING MSG] ::  u need to watch this

You wished you could forget about it.  Wished that it hadn’t been looming over your head since...well...

Your thumb hovered over the link, the screen went black and a stream started loading.  Some radio podcast?  You read the title:  ENDEVOUR TAKING ON U-A’S BEST AND BRIGHTEST?! UNLIKELY SON AND FATHER DUO?

“Venti salted caramel cold brew, extra foam!!”

Your heart leapt up into your throat as your eyes met the kid behind the counter.  He paused only a moment before using his fingers to nudge your drink closer to edge.

“Oh.  Sor-”

“Have a good one.”  

You locked your phone as you shoved it into your back pocket, grabbed your drink and made a beeline towards the door.  The streets were busy, given the hour. You had just enough time to get back to the office and finish your article on  before the evening - just enough time for an editor to look it over, to do some quick fixes and-

You phone buzzed again, and Fumihiro’s face once again flashed on the screen.  

[INCOMING MSG] ::  Did you see it?

[INCOMING MSG] ::  We need to be the first people on this.  I don’t care about what else you were working on.  This is more important.  

You stopped at the crosswalk, staring at your phone and ignoring the woman who had to move around you with a huff.  But...you were so close to getting to the meat of what the Safety Commission was hiding.  You were so close getting to the heart of it all and, maybe - just maybe - throwing away some of the uncertainty that was hanging over everyone’s head after All Might’s retirement.  

After the weeks you spent staking out police stations, hounding hero agencies, digging through dumpsters for any shred of proof the Pros and Police were hiding something - the favors you had to call in for breadcrumbs and scraps alone?!  And just like that, he wanted you to drop it all?  For what?  Some stupid radio show speculation?

You didn’t hesitate to hit the phone icon in the upper corner, stomping towards the intersection.

“Hey-”  You cut Fumi before he could even finish your name.

“What do you mean ‘drop the article’?  Do you know-”

“I don’t care!  This is bigger!!”

“What’s bigger than-”

“Did you even watch the link I sent you?  Every station across Japan is getting hacked and it’s been playing on loop for a few minutes now on a few stations.  It’s slowly moving to others now.”

“Fumi what the hell are you talking about!?”

 “I, TOUYA TODOROKI, WAS BORN THE ELDEST SON OF ENDEVOUR.”

It...was hard to think for a moment.  Like a memory, reaching up from the dirt to grab you, to finally take you down to hell.  

That voice.

It felt like he was right in your ear, in your head.  It had been so long since he had done it to you, since he...no...not him.  He was dead.  His father confirmed it.  You confirmed it.  You knew he was gone and there was no bringing him back and - 

“I’VE KILLED OVER 30 INNOCENT PEOPLE UNTIL NOW.”

No.  No, no no no no it wasn’t in your head - because if it had been, the sound of blood pounding in your ears wouldn’t be able to mask it so well.  You froze, your hands shaking as your breath caught in your throat.  It couldn’t be him.  I couldn’t, it couldn’t...

“You need to get back to the office - I want you on this.  I already have a copy of it in case you can’t screen capture it -”

“I WOULD LIKE TO LET EVERYONE KNOW WHY I’D END UP COMMITING SUCH A HIDEOUS ACT.”

Because you’re a fucking monster.

Someone next to you stopped and looked up.  Then another and then another. You knew what they were looking at.  Who they were looking at.  And still, you couldn’t bring yourself to look up.  You couldn’t do it - not again.  Not now.  Not after so many years of him being dead and buried where he deserved to be.

But he always had a hold on you.  Something that drew you to him.  And so...you looked up.

And as your phone and drink clattered to your feet, you felt the world stop.

“...Touya?”

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

September 1st, 20xx

Dear Diary - I believe I’m a good person.  You know?  Like, I believe there’s good in everyone.  But um...here we are!  First day of our Senior Year and I look around at the kids I’ve known for so long and I can’t help but think to myself - what happened?

You hadn’t really wanted to be friends with the Nori’s.  Not really.  They were stuck up snobs who made everyone below them miserable.  But there was a power to them that everyone respected.  You had been taught that knowledge held power.  And the Nori’s had power because everyone knew if you double crossed them, your life would be a living fucking hell.

“Ah, Nori and Nori.”

You grimaced into your knees as Nori Ueda vomited for a third time since you had been hiding out in the bathroom.  The teacher paused before sighing. “And Nori.  Perhaps you didn’t hear the bell?  You’re late for class.”

“Nori’s sick!  We’re helping her.”

You had given the low price of just sitting at their lunch table - once, no talking would be necessary - in the hopes people would leave you alone.  It was a simple fact of life:  Where there are teenagers, there are winners and there are losers.  And you had spent the majority of your High School career on the low end of the totem pole.  You were so low, in fact, it seemed talking to you was all but taboo.  Anything other than bullying, shoving into lockers, or calling out unfortunate break outs was strictly forbidden by anyone not wanting to suffer the same fate. 

But the Nori’s?  Solid Teflon: never bothered.  Never harassed like you had been.  They had a mystique, a pull, a confidence that couldn’t be matched.  And you would have killed to be like them.  

Perhaps that why you reached into backpack and yanked out the pad of hall pass papers.  

You opened the stall door and slipped out, making your wave over to the group.  Nori Ueda wiped her mouth.  Nori Makino was leaning against the bathroom counter, focusing on making sure her bright red lipstick was perfectly placed.  And Nori Kaneko?  She was staring down the teacher, hands on her hips, completely equal and completely ready to start a fight.  

The teacher laughed, so sure and so pleased that she had been the one to stumble upon the trio in the bathroom.   “Not without a hall pass, you’re not.  A week’s detention.”

“Uh...ma’am.”  Your voice trembled out and reverberated off the tiled wall.  It had been louder than you originally intended.  Everyone turned quickly to you, only for their attention to be immediately drawn to your outstretched hand you held.  “All of us are out on a hall pass...yearbook committee.” 

She snatched it from you.  For a moment, she simply glanced back between you, the paper, then the Nori’s, then back.  After a heavy moment, she nodded.  “It looks like you’re all listed.”

Nori Kaneko took it from the teacher, looking it over herself.  You tried not to make eye contact as she looked at you.  You instead focused on the teacher as she made her way towards the bathroom door.  “Hurry up and get where you’re going.”

You heaved a sigh of relief.

“This is an excellent forgery.  Who are you?”

You stuttered your name, shrinking under her sharp gaze.  “I uh...I crave a boon.”

“What boon?”  You weren’t sure if she was simply aggravated you had dared do more than answer the questions she asked or if the annoyance was just a constant manner of speaking for her.

You could forge anything thanks to your quirk - Copy.  All you had to do was see someone or something once or twice, focus on it as best as you could and like that, you could be that person.  From their mannerisms, their voice, to their penmanship.  Its why you stole the pad of hall passes, to skip class whenever you wanted, to have an excuse to be hiding out in the bathroom.  

It had worked...sometimes...

You stuttered out your name.  You could see the two Nori’s snicker in the background.  They had no clue who you were.  It was...somewhat insulting.  Their “friends” had done their best to make your life a living hell and yet you had flown under their radar.  

Your eyes darted between the three of them.  Nori Kaneko stared down at you, foot tapping and arms crossed as she took you in.  You couldn’t help but feel like a prey animal, stuck in the line of sight of the Apex Predator.

But your mama didn’t raise no quitter.  You swallowed and stood up just a bit straighter.  “Let me sit with you at lunch, once.  No talking necessary.  If...I mean, if people think you guys tolerate me, they might leave me alone.”

The laughter was instantaneous.  Kaneko looked back to the other two, her laugh light and condescending.  The audacity, it said.  The gall of you to ask to sit with them, of all people.  “Before you answer, I also do permission slips, report cards, and absent notes.”

“What about prescriptions?”

“Shut up, Nori.”

“Sorry, Nori.”  Ueda immediately slunk back to the shadows, gaze downcast.

Kaneka stepped forward and you thought for a moment she was going to shove you onto the floor.  You braced your feet, mentally preparing yourself for the force of her push...but it never came.  She was in front of you for a moment, and then the next, she was at your side.  She hummed under her breath and you could feel her eyes trail over your body.  Your school uniform a size too big, the bulky cardigan you had worn over it, the scuffed shoes and year old skirt.  Your hair was a mess, your face was bare, and you could hear the sound of your knees knocking together in fear.

“For a greasy little nobody,”  She started, reaching out a smooth hand and brushing some of your hair back and out of your eyes.  “You do have good bone structure.”

Nori Makino perked up, coming over to take a look at you.  She took your face in your hand, causing you to tense and try to pull away.  For a girl bordering 90 pounds soaking wet, her grip was rather strong.  “And a symmetrical face.”  

“A...huh?” 

“If I took a meat cleaver down the center of your skull, I would have matching halves.”  She looked back at you, nodding.  “That’s very important.”

“Of course,” Ueda added, glaring at you from over Kaneka’s shoulder.  “You could stand to lose a few pounds.”

You opened your mouth to argue, to gain some sense of control over the conversation - but like everything, Kaneko had the power.  She gripped your shoulders and turned you towards the mirror.  You tensed, feeling her arm wrapped around your shoulders.  You watched as she tilted her head this way and that before...smirking.  “You know...this might be beautiful.  Mascara, maybe some lip gloss and we might have something.”

You let out a breath you didn’t know you had been holding once she moved away.  “I’ll need some blush, Nori, get your brush.”

You were frozen, watching as each item was brought out and laid on the bathroom counter.  A new jacket, skirt, perfume, a pallet of...color?  You gripped your bag, trying to figure out what on earth was going on.

“Take that thing off - it smells.”

The...thing?  You saw the Nori’s staring at you, waiting for you to comply.  You glanced down at your cardigan, pausing only a moment to sniff the sleeve.  It...wait, did it smell?  Would they lie to you?  You fumbled with the buttons, sliding it off your shoulders.  Makino snatched it out of your hands and before you knew it, it was tossed in the garbage.  

“Now, let’s make her beautiful.”

In that moment, you understood what was happening.  As Kaneko stepped forward, the smirk on her face, she watched you.  This...was an invitation.  Into their group.  Into the inner sanctum of popularity and the safety it brought.  No more bullies, no more humiliation, no more terror.  

“Okay?”

“Okay!”

They don’t tell you that being popular is more hell than it’s worth.   

You wouldn’t say you and the Nori’s were...friends.  It felt more professional than anything else.  You had a strict uniform you had to stick to - above what the school required.  Any accessory had to be approved by the trio. All meals had to be approved by Ueda - needless to say, the packed lunches your mother made every morning every morning included with a handwritten note never seemed to make the cut.  The make up you did every morning never was good enough.

They had high standards, more inline with a sort of...job than actual friendship.  In fact, over the past few weeks, it had been hard to tell if the three Nori’s were even friends to begin with.  There was definitely a power struggle between Kaneko - the obvious leader - and Ueda - who tried to exert her dominance every chance she could but was shot down by Kaneko.  Moniko was harder to figure out, more happy to follow than to lead.  She was...nicer than the other two, though you weren’t entirely sure if it was simply because she didn’t want the drama or if she just...simply didn’t understand that what she said held weight beyond being...noises in the air.

Dear Diary - It just seems like our job is being...popular and shit.

“There you are!”

When Kaneko wasn’t around Ueda was hardly as docile.  It was hard to tell she had thorns at all when she was standing next to the Cactus that was the head Nori.  But any chance she got, she made sure to inform you in less subtle ways that you weren’t welcome among the three of them.  

Which was obvious.  Your name wasn’t Nori.

You jumped as Ueda’s hand slammed your book shut on your fingers.  “Nori wants you in the caf - now.”  

Moniko hardly offered you a glance as you flexed the pain from your joints.  “Is that so?  What for?”

Ueda snorted, “I don’t know.  She just said to get your ass there...now.”

You normally punched out for lunch.  You sighed, pushing yourself away from your desk and standing up.  “How very.”  

If the two Nori’s heard your remark, they didn’t say anything.  Nor did they relay it to Nori Kaneko when the three of you had reached the cafe.

The Nori table was the nicest table in the entire cafeteria.  With the perfect white table cloths, centered exactly in the middle of the room, other kids from the “popular groups” would migrate around it like a port.  They would stay for the entire period or would flit about from table to table.  And at it’s head, sat Nori Kaneko.  She sat with her legs crossed, talking to another student who’s name you couldn’t quite place.  You always thought you had been good with names.  Turns out, you just didn’t know many people.

“Ah, you’re finally here.  Took you long enough.”

When Kaneko had offered the make over and...”admission” into the popular crowd, you had thought maybe you pegged her wrong.  Maybe she was just a normal kid, wrapped up in the politics of High School.  It didn’t take long for you to realize she was still the same mythic bitch you had thought she had been - you just did things for her now. 

“I need you to forge a note - in Souta Ishii’s handwriting.”  With a snap of her fingers, the boy she had been talking to reached into his pocket and yanked out a few folded up pieces of paper.  You didn’t need to open them to know what they were.  But when you did, you couldn’t find yourself surprised at the fact Souta was barely passing most of his classes.

“You’ll need something to write on.  Bend over, Nori.”

One day, it would stop shocking you how quickly Ueda would act to Kaneko’s command.  You paused, looking to your superior for a moment.  “Uh...I could just-”

“You’re not sitting with us.”  She answer simply.  

“...right.”  You took the paper and pen offered by Moniko.  You flexed your digits, feeling the flutter under your skin.  “What do you want it to say?”

“‘Hey baby girl, I’ve been watching you and thinking about us in the good old days.  I hope you can come to my party this weekend.  We can talk about us.  Love, Souta.’“  She leaned over, watching your hand glide over the paper in barely legible chicken scratch.  “Put an XO after the ‘Souta’ too.”

It was gone the second the O was done.  She looked over the note again.  “Perfect.”

There was a glint in her eye that didn’t...settle well with you.  With your quirk, you noticed certain...things about people.  Little ticks and tells that everyone has.  Ueda scrunched her nose when she didn’t like something - like everyone.  Moniko would fidget with her hands when she was nervous - like everyone.  And Kaneko would get a little sparkle in her eyes when she was about to ruin someone’s life.  

With each fold of the paper, you stomach dropped closer and closer to your feet.  “What’s that for, anyway?”  

You never really questioned why she did half of what she did.  It wasn’t like you could do anything to stop it.  “You know how Souta used to hang out with Arisu Nomaru?”

Of course you did.  You considered Arisu a friend - a good one.  She was the really only nice person at this school.  Of course, hanging out with the Nori’s meant that quality time with Arisu was...well, all but non existent at that point.  But she assured you, through texts, that everything was fine.  It was exciting!  That maybe, she could join you and the Nori’s for lunch one day.  It wasn’t possible, of course.  You never even bothered to broach the subject to the three.  Arisu was never going to be in the popular crowd and would be stuck watching them from a distance.

The only other constant in Arisu’s life - aside from her kindness and her exile from popularity - was the undying love she had for Souta Ishii.  Ever since...

“We all hung out with Arisu.  In kindergarten.”

Kaneko scoffed, looking up at you from under perfect lashes.  “Well, we didn’t all kiss her on the soccer field.”

You had to fight your body’s desire to snatch the paper out of Nori’s hand.

Monika gagged next to you.  “Oh my god!  I forgot Souta kissed Arisu Nomaru.  It was disgusting!!”

It took everything you had not to hit her.  She met your glare with cool indifference, adding a laugh for good measure.

“Souta!  Just the man I wanted to see!”  

Souta was a...handsome man to say the least.  You didn’t blame Arisu for having the crush she had on him, not by any means.  But what he had in looks, he lacked in anything worthy of personality - aside from just being a huge dick.  And where there was a Souta there was Jun Goto.  His best friend.  He was the smartest one out of his group of friends.

Which amounted as much as being the tallest dwarf, but hey - credit where credit was due.  They were both smart enough to know to come when a Nori called you - no questions asked. And in a flash, the two pulled themselves up and made a beeline for the table - not after giggling to themselves first.

“Be a sweetie and give this note to Arisu Nomaru for me.”  

Dread immediately filled your stomach.  “What? No!”

“What the hell are you talking to Arisu for?”  Jun demanded, reaching for the note.

“Don’t read it!  She was having a heavy flow, and wanted some advice from Gyno.”

“That’s fucking disgusting!” You would have thought the boy had been burned with the way he flicked the paper onto the table, back away and retreat to the table he had come from. 

“Yeah, I’ll take that.”  You snatched the note up, gripping it tightly in your hand.

It had been a while since anyone had stared at you with such venom.  If looks could kill, Kaneko would have you dead to rights.  Her eyes darkened as she glared at you, hands slowly moving to her hips.

But you weren’t going to allow yourself to back down.  Not over this.  This was too much.  “Arisu has had a crush on Souta for 13 years.  This...”  You waved the note.  “This would kill her.”

It was quiet for a moment - and in that moment, you realized you made the biggest mistake of your fucking life.  Nori smiled, stepping forward with a soft chuckle.  “I didn’t realize we had a problem.”

“We’re not but-”

“Are we going to have a problem?”

You faltered for a moment.  

“No, I just-”

“So you have a bone to pick.”

“No, Nori I just think you’re bigger than-”

“You know, when I dragged you out of the dredges of inferiority, I was shocked how far you would go.”

Before you knew it, she had succeeded in pushing you down onto the bench.  Your elbow slammed into the top, causing you to cry out.  Immediately, all eyes were on you.  “So you wanna tell me, why now, are you pulling on my dick?”

“Nori!  I’m not trying to argue with you!  Just doing this-”

“I know!”  She snatched the note from your hands.  “It will ruin her.  That’s the fucking point.”  She offered the note to Ueda, who happily took it.  You watched helplessly as she skipped back over to Souta.  While he didn’t seem too pleased to be the one to deliver the note, he begrudgingly got up from his spot and headed to the corner of the cafeteria.  

"You still have a lot to learn about how things work around here." You swallowed, digging your nails into the palm of you hand. "This whole school is my own personal candy store. I do what I want, when I want."

You watched as he slammed a fist on the table, causing Arisu to jump.  She froze, stuttered, and then almost dropped the note when he tossed it to her.  Your heart hammered - maybe if you got there fast enough, you could stop her from reading it.  You could distract her and -

You were forced back down in your spot and perfectly manicured nails dug into your skin.  “You got a good thing going here,”  Kaneko stated, very matter of factly.  “You could join the team, or you could bitch and moan.”  You winced when her nails dug deeper into your skin.  “But if you test me one more time, you will end up just. Like. Her."

Ueda grinned, an ugly, spiteful thing. "Welcome to our Candy-"

"Shut up, Nori!" All three of you flinched as your leader stood. Fixing her skirt, she offered you a sweet smile that made your stomach roll. "We'll see you after school."

They left you in that spot for a long time, staring at your hands.  It wasn’t until you felt a tap on your shoulder that you finally looked up.  And there above you was Arisu.  She grinned and offered you the note.  “Look!  Look what Souta wrote me!  He invited me to his party this weekend.”

You stared at the paper, then back up at her.  You tried to smile - though it didn’t look like she noticed.  “This proves he’s been thinking about me!”

She...seemed happy.  And you knew in this school that happiness was hard to come by.  Especially with people like Nori’s.  You opened your mouth, before closing it again.  You stared at that letter, at the handwriting that perfectly matched the papers left on the table.  You could tell her, warn her it was a prank.  Just...break her heart and tell her Souta wanted nothing to do with her.

“...color me stoked!”  You grinned.

You were happy when she left.  With a heavy sigh, you buried your face in your hands and ignored the bell above your head.  You listened to the shuffling of your peers as they made their way towards the doors.

What the hell were you doing?  What the fuck did you just do?  Arisu had always been a good friend to you and you threw her under the bus?  For what?  Popularity?  Safety?  

“You shouldn’t have bowed down to those dogs.  They’ll eat that girl alive.”

You had grown used to most voices, labeling them by people who was more likely to hit you or simply ignore your presence entirely.  

But his voice? You had never heard that voice before.  It was pleasant in it’s own way - low, guttural, and deceptively indifferent to the advice he was giving you.  You sat up, turning to look over your shoulder.  Your eyes trailed up to stark white hair.  Bright blue eyes stared down at you, hands in his pockets.  Your breath caught in your chest and your mind scrambled for a response.  “I’m...I’m sorry, what?”

He watched you for a moment.  Sizing you up.  “Look,” He continued, “You clearly have a soul.  You just need to work a little harder to keep it clean.”  With a final shrug, he turned on his heel and made his way for the door. "We're all marked for evil."

Did...did he just...quote at you?  It took you a moment for your mind to catch up to what he said.  “Okay, don’t just quote Baudelaire at me and walk away.  Excuse me?”

You scrambled to your feet.  He stopped and turned to look at you.  He didn’t move to say anything else however, leaving you in charge of continuing the conversation.  You looked him over, took in his long, lanky form, the mess of white hair, they...very pretty eyes.  You cleared your throat and motioned to him.  “I...uh...I didn’t catch your name.”

He waited a moment before shrugging.  “That’s cause I didn’t throw it.”

You watched him turn back around and make his way towards the door, mouth hanging down to your chest.  It didn’t take long for you to realize how hot your cheeks were burning, how fast your heart was racing. You couldn’t help as your lips broke out into a smile.

You swore he stole another gaze at you him slip out into the hall.

-- 

So yeah.  I’ll edit this later.  Promise.

How did everyone enjoy their holiday season?

[thestarkerisobvious]

Ghosting You -- Chapter 7

my amazing art by @mrstarksbaby​

The Previous Chapters Are Here

Chapter 7: Peter --  Can You Talk To Me?

FRIDAY reported to Tony everything she knew.  Peter hadn’t spoken, or even touched the driving wheel, until the vehicle was parked in his private space.  Then he exited the car.  He had not, either as Peter Parker or Spider-Man, left the apartment.

It wasn’t until 2:00 AM in the morning that she saw him again.

Silently, he unlocked the door.  Silently, he sat down in the passenger seat and waited.  Finally, he spoke.

“FRIDAY, are you...  will you… can you talk to me?”

“Of course, I can talk to you, Peter. If you’d like, I have no other duties to perform at this time, I could be your car’s automatic systems program.”

“Oh yes, oh yes please, anything. Oh you can do anything you want.  Oh FRIDAY I missed you… how are you??  How have you been?  I mean… what have you been doing?  Oh god I missed you so much...” he said, his eyes filling with tears.  Even though he had hardly ever spoken to FRIDAY himself.  She

 had always been a voice in Tony’s helmet, never in his, although she had conveyed messages to him on more than one occasion.  But other than telling her “yes” or “no” or “thank you” or “tell Mr. Stark I’ll be late because I have a trig final” they had never really had a conversation. 

“I’ve missed you too, Peter.  I miss talking to you. Well, to anyone, actually,” the AI replied, sounding very human and rather lonely, exactly the way Tony had programmed her. “Only Miss Morgan talks to me sometimes.” 

“Oh… oh you and Morgan? Oh I want to hear everything about Morgan, please. Oh god FRIDAY I missed you so much.”

“Miss Morgan isn’t being taught at home now. She was supposed to be homeschooled until first grade when the boss was going to have her tested and put into whatever grade was at her level. She goes to a small school near the farmhouse upstate and just finished Pre-K-4 and is in a summer program.”

“Oh FRIDAY that’s just… tell me more.  Tell me… FRIDAY?”  Peter sniffed, wiping the tears from his eyes.  The corners of his mouth turned up, just a little bit, as he formulated a plan.  Hugging himself, and leaning his head against the window, he spoke.

“Tell me… tell me what Morgan watched on TV yesterday.”

Obediently, FRIDAY read off the list.

“Okay, now tell me what she… what she watched on TV all of last month.”

And so she did.  Day after day, she dutifully reported the list of Morgan’s television shows.  And when she was finished, he asked for the list for the entire year.  From there he requested the episode list and description from every show, including whatever the internet had to say about the related actors, directors, and editors.  She spoke.  And as she spoke he wrapped himself up in his arms, wrapped himself up in her words, and cried.

* * *

For the next two nights it was the same.   After patrolling Peter would head down to the garage, sometimes with a blanket and pillow, and let FRIDAY talk to him.  He explained it all to Aunt May, who seemed to understand.  It made sense.  For a good 48 hours, the world made perfect sense.

Sometimes FRIDAY would ask questions when he cried, but it was easy to convince her to continue.  Soon she clued in, and started suggesting other lists she could read out loud.  She read him the entire list of episodes of Morgan’s favorite television show, the name of every child enrolled in her school, and finally, the entire phone book of the small town they lived in.  Peter always cried at first, freely and openly, but not for very long.  It was easy to relax, surrounded by the AI’s voice.  

When Peter had first admitted that he was mourning for Tony Stark, May had given him a piece of advice.  “You feel like if you start crying, you’ll never stop,” she had said.  “But you really will.  You’ll get bored.  You’ll get hungry.  You’ll start to wonder what’s on TV that night.  It’s scary to start, but it’s really worth the risk…”

He had known, deep in his heart, that she had been wrong.  Thus the drugs.  But sleeping in the car Tony had given him, wrapped up in the blanket of FRIDAY’s words, suddenly it all made sense.  This was it, he was certain.  He just needed to cry it out.  That’s what he had been missing all along.

At least, that’s what he convinced himself.  And he had reason to believe it was true.  He hadn’t even thought about getting high in two days.  On patrol he didn’t even look out for the dealers, and when he did wind up holding contraband, he just dumped it in the harbor.

It wasn’t until the 3rd night that he realized how very, very wrong he had been.

[fuckyeahstephensondheim]

Rick Pender knows his Sondheim from A to Z

If the word “encyclopedia” conjures for you a 26-volume compendium of information ranging from history to science and beyond, you may find the notion of a Stephen Sondheim Encyclopedia perplexing. But if you have ever looked at a bookshelf full of book after book about (and occasionally by) the premiere musical theatre composer-lyricist of our era and wished all that information could be synthesized and indexed in one place, maybe the idea of a Sondheim encyclopedia will start to make a little more sense to you. It did to Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, an independent publisher that’s made encyclopedias such as this one of their calling cards, offering tomes on everyone from Marie Curie to Akira Kurasowa. Several years ago, they approached Rick Pender, longtime managing editor of the gone but never forgotten Sondheim Review and now, after years of research, writing, and pandemic-related delays, the The Stephen Sondheim Encyclopedia is finally hitting shelves. I sat down with Rick (via Zoom) to chat about this unique, massive project.

FYSS: I want to really focus on the new book, but we should start with your history with Sondheim and The Sondheim Review. How did you become so enmeshed in this work?

RP: As a teenager, the first LP that I bought was the soundtrack from West Side Story, and I didn't have any clue about who much of anybody was, particularly not Stephen Sondheim. But I loved the lyrics for the songs, especially “Something’s Coming” and “Gee, Officer Krupke.” These are just fabulous lyrics.

Then, of course, in the ‘70s it was hard as time went by not to have some awareness of Sondheim. I saw a wonderful production of Night Music in northeast Ohio, and I again just thought these lyrics are incredible, and I love the music from that particular show. Fast forward a little further in the late ‘80s, I was laid up with some surgery and I knew I was going to be bedridden for a week or two anyway, so I went to the public library and grabbed up a handful of CDs, and in that batch was A Collector's Sondheim, the three-disc set of stuff up through about 1985, and I must have listened to that a hundred times, I swear, because it had material on it that I didn't know anything about like Evening Primrose or Stavisky. So that really opened my eyes.

Later, my son had moved to Chicago. He's a scenic carpenter and a union stagehand. He worked at the Goodman Theatre, and I went to see a production when they were still performing in a theater space at the Art Institute of Chicago, and they had a gift shop there. And lo and behold in the rack I saw a copy of a magazine called The Sondheim Review! I thought, oh my gosh, I've got to subscribe to this! This would have been about 1996, probably, so I subscribed and enjoyed it immediately. A quarterly magazine about just about Stephen Sondheim struck me as kind of amazing.

In 1997-98 the Cincinnati Playhouse did a production of Sweeney Todd in which Pamela Myers, all grown up, played Mrs. Lovett, and so I wrote to the editor of the magazine and said, “Would you like me to review this?” That started me down a path for a couple of years of making fairly regular contributions to the magazine. Then in 2004 that editor retired, and I was asked to become the managing editor, which I did from 2004 to 2016. It went off the rails for some business reasons, but it lasted for 22 years which I think is pretty remarkable.

I tried to sustain it in an alternative form with a website called Everything Sondheim. We put stuff up online for about 18 months, and we published three print issues that look very much like The Sondheim Review, but we were not able to sustain it beyond that.

FYSS: How did the Encyclopedia project originate?

RP: The publisher asked me to write an encyclopedia about Stephen Sondheim! I envisioned that I would be sort of the general editor who coordinated a bunch of writers to put this together, but they said no, we're thinking of you as being the sole author. They had done a couple of other encyclopedias particularly of film directors, and those were all done by one person, so they sent me a contract asking me to generate 300,000 words for this book, and after I regained consciousness, I said all right, I'll give it a try.

It took me about two years – most of 2018 and ‘19 – to generate that content. I sent it off in the fall of ‘19, and then, well, the world stopped because of the pandemic. It was supposed to come out April a year ago, and they had just furloughed a bunch of their editors and everything stalled. But now it's coming out mid-April 2021.

FYSS: What was the research and writing process like?

RP: This project came about in part because the publisher initially approached another writer, Mark Horowitz, who's at the Library of Congress and who had done a Sondheim book of Sondheim on Music. Mark and I had become quite close because he wrote a number of wonderful features about different Sondheim songs for The Sondheim Review. When I heard that that he had put my name out there, I went back to him after I had agreed to do this and said, Mark, could we use some of that material that you wrote for the magazine about those songs? And he said, sure do with them whatever you wish. And I was glad he said that, because they were really long pieces, and I've reduced each of them to about 1500-2000 words, which I thought was probably about the maximum length that people would really want to read in a reference volume.

But other than that, I generated everything else myself. I relied upon plenty of material within the 22 years of back issues of The Sondheim Review. Another great resource was Sondheim's own lyric studies, the two-volume set which provides so much information about the production of shows and that sort of thing.

Of the 131 entries I wrote for this, 18 of them are lengthy pieces about each of the original productions, so again Sondheim's books were certainly useful for that, and other books like Ted Chapin's book about Follies.

I also spent some time in Washington, D.C. at the Library of Congress, and Mark loaned me a quite a bit of material that he had collected – not archival material but scrapbooks of clippings that he put into ring binders of stuff about Sondheim's shows.

I came back to Cincinnati with about four or five cartons of materials, and I could really dig through that stuff as I was working on these. And then I have, as I'm sure you and lots of other Sondheim fans have, a bookcase with a shelf or two of Sondheim books, and those were all things that I relied upon, too.

I actually generated a list with lots and lots of topics, probably over 200, and I knew that was going to be more than I could do. Eventually, some things were consolidated, like an actor who perhaps performed in just one Sondheim show wasn't going to get a biographical entry, but I would talk about them in the particular show that they were involved in. So, I was able to collapse some of those kinds of things. But as I said, I did end up with 131 entries in the publication, and it turned out to be 636 pages, so that's a big fat reference book.

FYSS: Who is the intended audience for a work like this? RP: The book is really intended to be a reference volume more than a coffee-table book. It does have photography in it, but it's black and white and more meant to be illustrative than to wallow in the glories of Sondheim. There is an extensive bibliography in it, and all the material is really thoroughly sourced so people can find ways to dig into more.

FYSS: Sometimes memories diverge or change over time. Did you come across any contradictions in your research, and how did you resolve them?

RP: I can't say that I can recall anything like that. I relied very heavily on Sondheim's recollections in Finishing the Hat and Look, I Made a Hat because he's got a memory like a steel trap. Once in a while I would email him with a question and get very quick response on things. I really used him as my touchstone for making sure of that kind of thing.

I also found that Secrest’s biography was very thoroughly researched, and I could rely on that. But I can't say that I found a lot of discrepancy, and some of those kinds of things were a little too much inside baseball for me to be including in the encyclopedia.

FYSS: For figures with long and broad histories, how did you decide what to include? George Abbott, for example, is the first entry in the book and he worked for nine decades! How important was writing about an individual as they relate to Sondheim vs. who they were more generally?

RP: To use George Abbott as an example, I would say that the first things that I did was to go back to the lyric studies and to the Secrest biography and just look up references to Abbott. I mean, it was George Abbott who said that he wanted more hummable songs from Sondheim, so you know that was certainly an anecdote that was worth including because, of course you know, it becomes a little bit of the lyric in Merrily We Roll Along. 

So you know, I would look for those kinds of things, but I also wanted to put Sondheim in context because Abbott was well into his career when he finally directed Forum which, since it was Sondheim's first show as a composer and a lyricist, is significant. That was very much the focus of that entry, but I wanted to lay a foundation in talking about Abbott, about all the things that he had done before that. I mean, he was sort of the Hal Prince of his era in in terms of his engagement in so many different kinds of things – writing plays, directing musicals, doctoring shows, all of that.

FYSS: Did any entries stick out to you as being the hardest to write?

I think the most complicated one to write about probably was Bounce/Road Show because it's got a complicated history, and Sondheim has so much to say about it. And because it's not a show that people know so much about, I wanted to treat it appropriately, but not as expansively as all of that background material might have suggested. So I kind of had to weave my way through that one. It also was a little tough to write about, because how do you write a synopsis of a show that has had several incarnations quite different from one another, and musical material that has changed from one to the other? With shows like that, I particularly tried to resort to the licensed versions of the shows. 

FYSS: I haven't had a chance to read the book cover-to-cover yet, but I did read the Follies and the Into the Woods entries to try to get a sense of how you covered individual shows, and both of those are shows that had significant revisions at different times. And I thought you made it very clear what they were and also where to go for a reader who wants to learn more.

RP: Let me say one other thing this is not directly on this topic, but it sort of relates, and that is that in writing an encyclopedia, I didn't want to overlay a lot of my very individual opinions about things, but with each of the show entries I tried to review the critical comments that were made about the show in its original form, perhaps with significant revivals and that sort of thing, and then to source those remarks from critics at those various points in time. And of course, my own objectivity (or lack thereof) had something to do with what I was selecting, but I thought that was a good way to represent the range of opinion without having to make it all my own opinion.

FYSS: Did you feel any responsibility with regards to canonization when you made choices about what to include or exclude? What made the First National Tour of Into the Woods more significant than the Fiasco production, for example? Why do Side by Side by Sondheim & Sondheim on Sondheim get individual entries, but Putting It Together is relegated to the omnibus entry on revues?

RP: I guess that now you are lifting the curtain on some of my own subjectivity with that question. I tried to identify things that were particularly significant. I mean with the revues for instance, several of those shows – you know, particularly Side by Side by Sondheim, the very early ones – they were the ones I think that elevated him in people’s awareness. So, I think that to me was part of what drove that. And then shows that that were early touring productions struck me as being things that maybe needed a little bit more coverage. I think the Fiasco production was a really interesting one, but with the more recent productions of shows I just felt like there's no end to it if I begin to include a lot of that sort of thing.

FYSS: I mean it's so subjective. I'm not the kind of person who clutches my pearls and screams oh my goodness, how could you not talk about this or that. But I was surprised to see in your Follies entry that the Paper Mill Playhouse album was not listed among the recordings, for example. I imagine that once this book hits shelves you're going to be bombarded with people asking about their pet favorites.

RP: Oh, I'm sure, and maybe that will be a reason to do a second edition, which I’m totally ready to do.

The Sondheim Encyclopedia hits bookstore shelves April 15. It’s available wherever you buy books, but Rick has provided a special discount code for readers of Fuck Yeah Stephen Sondheim to receive 30% off when you order directly from the publisher. To order, visit www.rowman.com, call 800-462-6420, and use code RLFANDF30.

Celebrate the launch of The Sondheim Encyclopedia with a free, live online event featuring Rick Pender in conversation with Broadway Nation’s David Armstrong Friday, April 16 from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. Eastern. More information and register here.

[canchewread]

Editor’s note: this post is part of the Recommended Reading series here on Can’t You Read; an ongoing and evolving feature that combines an easy to swipe info-graphic, a short journal, and a link to an important related discussion I’d like to share with readers.

A Culture of Predation Can’t Stop Fascist Pig Violence

In the wake of the frankly surprising (but extremely welcome) guilty verdicts in the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd, I’ve tried very hard to reign in my cynicism. After all, the conviction of a cop for murder “in the line of duty,” let alone a white cop who murdered an African American man with an impoverished background, is about as common as a goddamn unicorn fart, and on that account alone the verdict is worth commemorating, if not necessarily celebrating. 

While it would be unspeakably obtuse to suggest that the verdict represented some sort of positive justice, it’s also undeniable that many feel this moment may indeed be a starting point; a chance to at least begin to imagine what a positive justice for African Americans might look like. In particular numerous observers have pointed to the very public crumbling of the proverbial “blue wall” of silence, the fact that Chauvin’s fellow police officers passionately testified against him with the whole world watching, as a positive omen for the future of police reform.

Unfortunately I (and many other observers) have doubts about this position. I don’t mean to be a downer, but the truth is that nobody, not even immunized murderpigs and their commanders, can justify the horrifying video of Chauvin mindlessly executing George Floyd over the course of nine and a half minutes. Faced with the choice of openly embracing their own “little Eichmanns” in front of an outraged public, the Blue Meanies decided that ultimately it wasn’t worth protecting a fuck up like Derek Chauvin. The cost, both to his fellow thug cops, and the profession of policing as a whole, would simply have been too damn high to justify the reward. 

The sad and horrifying truth here is that if Derek Chauvin had simply shot George Floyd, instead of casually kneeling on his neck for almost ten minutes, he’d probably be a free man today; just like so many cracker murderpigs before him. Furthermore, even this smallest of concessions probably wouldn’t have happened without months of nationwide protests conducted under a state of constant assault by violent, openly rioting police officers. That last reality is certainly not lost on fascists and neoliberal authoritarians; why else do you think reactionary lawmakers are rushing to pass legislation that criminalizes mass protest against racialized police violence? 

Still, you can’t blame folks for hoping; hope can be a good thing if it gives you the strength and courage to continue a seemingly impossible fight for actual justice. Perhaps some long day from now we will look back on this moment and say “and the conviction of Derek Chauvin was the point when the wave ultimately broke, and the tide of cracker police violence finally rolled back” - even if it’s clear that these convictions, by themselves, do not have the power to enact the change we so desperately need. 

Where I can and will find fault however, is with those deluded and disingenuous souls who have used this moment to once again champion the doomed cause of police reform; blithely ignorant or willfully oblivious to the fact that police reforms already failed to prevent the murder of George Floyd, and so many others like him. The bald truth is that the current establishment movement towards police reform is about maintaining the power and funding of the very same violent uniformed thugs who’re murdering poor people on behalf of the capitalist state in the first place; that’s why nobody is talking about removing qualified immunity for police officers, and that’s why even some cops themselves are coming around to the idea of reform at this late a date. In many ways, the real importance of the movement to “Defund the Police” is that the mere threat of taking away the sweet filthy ducats that pay murderpig salaries has already shifted the carceral establishment’s position towards bargaining; albeit, in bad faith.

The road to neofeudalist hell is paved with dark intentions however, and what establishment reformers, even and perhaps especially those who’re prepared to acknowledge the fundamentally racialized aspects of police violence, aren’t prepared to discuss in the open is the nature and purpose of policing itself in a capitalist society. There is no public examination of why it is that we keep hiring folks who turn out to be violent white supremacists to be police; and there certainly will be no discussion about the ways class relationships intersect with race through the designed function of racialized policing.

Despite the pro-police propaganda you’ve been fed all your life to suggest otherwise, the vast majority of what police actually do in America is to protect the wealth, property, and feelings of affluent white people and the corporations they own. Far from solving major crimes and preventing violence, modern policing in the Pig Empire revolves around nuisance violations, so-called broken windows policing, and other methods of harassing poor people for minor infractions of the law; remember, the police encounter that lead to the murder of George Floyd started over the purchase of cigarettes and a dodgy twenty dollar bill. The reason murderpigs can get away with violently assaulting protestors and journalists who threaten the established order is because that is precisely what they’re being paid to do, and indeed what their predecessors before them have always been paid to do.

On the surface, this class and capitalism analysis may appear to create a tension with the narrative that white supremacy and racism are also driving the crisis of police violence, but that’s really just about the same old establishment spin. As I’ve discussed in numerous prior essays, you simply cannot separate capitalism from white supremacy, or even racism, because bigoted ideas are propagated and spread for the specific purpose of marking out certain marginalized groups for exploitation and highly-lucrative (for some) repression.

Do you want to know what systemic racism in policing really looks like? It looks like hiring murderpigs to repress the poor, knowing full well that due to centuries of slavery and exploitation, the nonwhite and particularly African American population will be vastly overrepresented in the targeted communities. It looks like a supposedly colorblind war on drugs, the ongoing use of demonstratively racist stop and frisk practices, and expanded powers for your community’s “gang squad” in pretty much any neighborhood that just happens to be predominantly Black. It looks like literally profiting from these practices in ways that are sometimes extremely brazen and obvious, but sometimes hidden from everyday sight; even if they’re hardly much of a secret. The fact that the police are ultimately enforcers for the capitalist ruling class, also makes them enforcers of the white supremacist order that capitalism is so dependent upon in our society; there is no contradiction involved here.

Look; you don’t get rid of fascist murderpigs and white supremacists in law enforcement by throwing more money at nazi cops. Joe Biden can summon up all the pretty words he likes, but you can’t address the racialized nature of police violence without fundamentally altering either the racialized nature of inequality in American life, or the very purpose of policing in our society; and he’s sure as shit not talking about doing any of that at all. Thus, no matter how surprised and hopeful I am after the Chauvin guilty verdicts, that sense of positivity is ultimately tempered by the realization that “nothing will fundamentally change” - and that includes cracker thug pigs executing unarmed Black men on camera.

Although they might finally be better than openly fascist Republicans, the Democrats still don’t have answers to the problem of racialized police violence because ultimately, they don’t have answers to the crisis of capitalism itself. It’s not a question of reform or changing the law; murder is already illegal, even if you’re a white cop. Inequality, and the security force violence necessary to maintain it, is a festering sore inside the American body politic, and there are indeed consequences for essentially ignoring a crisis now so obvious and enraging to the public at large. 

What kind of consequences? Well, let’s ask researcher and professor Temitope Oriola who provides one terrifying answer in the public journal, The Conversation:

“The United States is at Risk of an Armed Anti-Police Insurgency“ by  Temitope Oriola

Or, you know, we could just abolish the murderpigs first; your call really - but don’t expect Palooka Joe to be much help, either way.

- nina illingworth

Independent writer, critic and analyst with a left focus. Please help me fight corporate censorship by sharing my articles with your friends online!

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“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”

[nothingeverlost]

The Most Brilliant Idea, or how Sirius Black Accidentally became a Romance Novelist (HP, Wolfstar)

In which Sirius has a Brilliant Idea, Remus is gainfully employed, James is clueless and Lily is always right.

Unmitigated fluff with minor references to the first war, AU because James and Lily didn’t die.

II

It started with the classified, the first bit of proof that everything that happened was really Moony’s fault.  There was always a classified ad in the kitchen, even when Moony was working, part of his optimistic opinion that any job could and would end.  The classified ads were always marked in pen, and one could tell just how Remus thought his prospects fared based on how he’d marked a job.  Some were viciously scratched out (potions expert and anything with ‘night shift’ in the description) some were circled multiple times (he usually came away dejected from those interviews, things he actually wanted but rarely got) some had question marks and some had a single bold circle.  It was the single circle ones that were the best prospects.

On this particular Tuesday morning while Sirius drank his tea and dripped jelly on a story about Minister Fudge’s election, the only ad that was circled was one looking for a book editor.  It was commission work, the sort of things Moony did from home sometimes.  It suited him, both because he was such a stickler for commas and spelling and because the flexibility meant that moons didn’t present a problem. The only downside was that it was sporadic work, a book at a time, and didn’t bring in enough income to make Moony feel like he was Contributing to Household Things.  Sirius always rolled his eyes.  Moony was the most stubborn person he knew.

It was then that he had his Most Brilliant Idea.  What Remus needed was a constant stream of editing.  Someone who would keep him employed on a regular basis with things a lot more interesting than editing a technical manual on the care and keeping of flobberworms.

“Lily I need to borrow some books.”  When someone had a Brilliant Idea they had to start right away, so his first action was to floo to the Potter home.  He was distracted for half an hour by Harry who insisted on a hippogriff ride and a sword fight, and he wouldn’t be a proper godfather if he said no to either, but after that it was strictly business.

“The only books we have here that you don’t have are meant for a three year old.  You and Remus had quite the library between you,” Lily replied after telling both him and Harry they could only have two biscuits.  Sirius took a third, but split it in half so it didn’t count.  After all, two and a half was practically the same as two.

“Not true.  Moony and I don’t have any of those girly books,” he said with his half a biscuit in his mouth.

“You want to borrow my romance novels?” Lily asked, puzzled.  “I don’t know who you’re trying to date, Sirius Black, but romance novels aren’t actually meant to be used that way.”

“Like I need help,” Sirius said with an eye roll.  Sure, it had been a while since he dated but that was totally his choice.  He had a lot on his plate right now with a godson that needed his attention and Moony needing looking after and his three days a week working for Quality Quidditch Supplies.  “They’re for Moony.”

“Somehow I doubt he knows that.”  Lily rolled her eyes right back at him.  “Take as many as you like, and don’t worry about when you get them back.  It’s not like I have much time for reading when I have three boys to look after.”

“Something you want to tell me, Lils?”  He looked at her stomach pointedly and wondered if they were really ready for another Prongslet.

“Yeah.  You and James are more work than Harry and he has the excuse of being three.”  But she gave him a bag for the books and sent him home with a plate of biscuits, warning him that she would tell Remus that she’d sent them so not to eat them all in one go.  It was like she didn’t trust him or something.

Once he had the books stage one of The Plan could begin.  He’d read a few of the romance novels when he was bored and they seemed like the easiest book to write.  Certainly they weren’t anything Moony read so he could borrow a bit from others and no one important would be any the wiser.  Over the next few days he spent most of the time Moony wasn’t around reading, stashing the books in the closet so they wouldn’t be seen in case Remus came in his room for late night chats or early morning bed sharing.  It was a habit that they’d never quite left behind in school, especially when either of them had a nightmare.  With the war almost two years gone the nightmares weren’t as frequent but they were always a good excuse if he needed company.

Stage Two of The Plan had a few false starts, as writing a book proved to be a little trickier than he figured, considering how many books he’d read.  Finally though after twenty-six days he had a story written.  The pining of Sigmund G Toadsnatch for Anastasia Flower ended in a passionate snog and a happily ever after.  It was time for Stage Three.

“I need your help.”  The moment Moony was gone for the day he popped around to the Potter home again, this time with manuscript in hand.

“Harry managed to get jam in his hair at breakfast and I have to give him a bath.  Can it wait?”  Her arms were full of a squirming toddler, anxious to greet his ‘Padfoo.’

“I’ll give him a bath,” he offered.

“The last time that happened you flooded the bathroom and transfigured the soap into a boat.”  She carried Harry up the stairs.  Sirius followed.

“He came out clean, though.  Mostly.”  He might have missed a few spots, but no one was perfect and there had been an important battle with a giant squid that looked a lot like Harry’s toes to wage.  “I need to know if you have any friends that have girly writing and want to earn a few quid.”  He plopped himself on the edge of the tub after stowing his manuscript on higher ground.  

“You need what?”  it was really quite impressive how she managed to run the bath, undress Harry, and listen to him.

“Alright, so this is the part where I have to swear you to absolute secrecy.  Unbreakable vow kind of stuff.  You can’t tell anyone what I am about to tell you, not even James.”

“You know James and I don’t keep secrets.”

“It’s not a big secret, just a little baby one.  The more people who know the more likely it is that Remus will know that people are keeping something from him and then the whole thing will be ruined.”  Besides Prongs would never let him hear the end of it if he knew what Sirius was doing.

“I will consider not telling him, once I know.  That’s the best I can promise.”

“I guess that will have to do.”  He was certain she’d see reason, or more importantly his side of things.  “Now about your friends.”

“Do I even want to know what girly writing means?”

“You know what I mean.  When you pick up something and you know a girl wrote it because there’s little hearts above the I’s and the ink changes color.”  Not that Lily had ever done things like that.  Her writing was perfectly sensible, not that it mattered.  Moony would recognize her handwriting.

“Your handwriting is pretty fancy, with all those loops and the illustrations in the margins.”  Lily made a few loops of her own, sending bubbled cascading into the tub to entertain Harry.

“One of the many skills a pureblood snob is required to learn, according to my dear old mum.  Trust me I’ve tried mimicking James but it’s useless.”  James wrote in a barely legible scrawl that only those with practice could read.  Sirius envied him, though it had led to an accident or two over the years especially in potions and what time they were supposed to meet.  “But it doesn’t matter, Moony knows my handwriting and that’s the whole point.  I need someone to copy over my writing so he doesn’t know it’s me.”

“I think I need more focus and perhaps something to drink.  Hold on a minute, will you?”  Lily finished up Harry’s bath, keeping him long enough to dry his hair but giving up when he decided to squirm out of her hold and run away without his togs on.  She shrugged.  “Won’t hurt him to air dry.”

“James said the same thing once.  It works better in a warm house and when you’re three, rather than when you’re thirteen and it’s snowing out.”  He’d won the dare, though, and claimed it was worth it.

“Yeah, I remember that.  Thought he was mental then.  Now I know he is.”  Lily headed for the kitchen and started a pot of tea brewing.  “Now please tell me you’re not trying to get me to help you prank Remus.  You know my rules.”

“It’s not a prank.  It’s a Brilliant Idea to help Moony.  You’re going to love it.”  He couldn't hold it in anymore.  “I’vewrittenabook.”

“Excuse me?”

“A book.  I’ve written one and I’m going to send it to Moony to edit it, and then I’m going to pay him.  But he’s not going to know it’s me so he’s going to accept the money without being his stubborn prideful self.  When he’s done I’ll have another story ready and then he’ll be gainfully employed and happy and he won’t have to worry about what happens to his job when there’s a moon.  Brilliant, right?”

“I’m still on the bit where you wrote a book.”  Lily poured the tea and set a slice of quiche on a plate for Sirius.  The spinach was in small enough bits that it didn’t actually look like a vegetable and he might not notice that under all the cheese he’d actually eaten something green.

“It’s not hard.  I read the books you had and I wrote something like it.  Boy meets girl.  One of them annoys the other.  There’s secret longing and someone trying to keep them apart and then they snog and everyone’s happy except the evil bloke who ends up in a cellar or something.”  He shrugged and ate the food Lily had given him without much thought.  He’d been so excited about the next stage that he hadn’t bothered with breakfast.  “The book’s not really the important part, though, and there have to be bits to fix or else Moony won’t have anything to do.  What’s important is that Moony doesn’t know it’s me.  I have to rent an owl once it’s ready and send him a letter about a job.  I have a name picked out already.  Marmaduke Gaylord from Gaylord’s Romantic Press.”

“I don’t know why anything you come up with should surprise me anymore, Sirius Black.  It’s completely bonkers and there’s probably fifteen different ways it could go wrong.”  Lily reached across the table and covered one of his hands with her own.  “It’s also unfailingly kind and possibly crazy enough to work.”

“Of course it will work.”  Any doubts he’d had he’d buried down deep enough that he wouldn’t have to worry about them for a while at least.  Probably not until the whole thing exploded in a very Sirius-like fashion.  

As it turned out Lily did have a friend that could use a little spending money and had hand writing that, while not containing any hearts, was feminine enough to satisfy Sirius and more importantly wouldn’t be recognized by Remus.  She rewrote the manuscript in her own handwriting.  Sirius borrowed a typewriter from Arthur Weasley to make an official looking offer from the Gaylord Romance Publishers.

Stage Four was well timed, as Moony’s job in a muggle bookstore ended that week after the third time he’d had to miss work the morning after a full moon with no explanation.  Sirius had made sure he was tucked into bed with a water bottle and a cup of tea with a warming charm that would last at least an hour, then nipped over to Diagon Alley to rent an owl for a single trip.  The offer letter and manuscript were bound together. For an added bit of cleverness he’d asked the clerk to delay the delivery until afternoon so that Sirius could be home when the owl arrived.

“What could be so important about a romance novel that they’d be willing to pay this much?”  By afternoon Moony was feeling well enough to be on the sofa instead of in bed.  Sirius glanced at the letter Remus handed him and shrugged. 

“Dunno, mate.  Guess there’s enough people reading them to make it worth their while.  The girls at school all read them.  Tripped over them all the time in the common room.”

“They’d be better off reading Austen,” Remus groused but he was also quick enough to send off an acceptance letter with the owl.  Sirius had a plan for that as well, and a newly rented owl post box.

“I’ll give you some quiet to work.”  Sirius locked himself in his room, using the time to start his second novel, the story of five sisters all sorted into the same house  and the rich pureblood transfer student who seemed rude but was secretly shy.  The prat’s best friend was cheerful and had a crush on the main character’s sister.

“Comma,” was the comment he heard the most from the other room.  ‘Why’ and ‘bloody hell’ and ‘you can’t do that to the English language’ were also common exclamations.

“Sounds like it’s going well,” Sirius said when his stomach was too loud to ignore.  

“It’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever read and the romance is dreadful but there are some bits that are hilarious, actually.  Don’t know their goal but as a satire it’s not bad.”  The stack of papers in front of him was all marked up in red ink worse than the first essay he’d ever written for McGonagall.

“I thought romances were supposed to be all sappy.”  His main character had declared his love seventeen times.  That was what girls wanted, wasn’t it?

“Fortunately I’m only supposed to edit the grammar and not the sap.  I’m over my head on that sort of thing.  Imelda Carson seventh year said I was the most unromantic boy she’d even snogged.”

“Imelda Carson is an idiot who is now breeding pink pygmy puffs and is completely single because no bloke was romantic enough for her.  Besides you don’t like girls, remember?”

“I like girls just fine.  I just don’t want to snog any of them or…”

“Smash your bits together?”  Sirius offered.

“Yeah, exactly what I was going to say,” Remus said dryly.  “I’m starved and close to going cross eyed from this editing.  Whose turn for dinner?”

“I’ll start some steaks.”  Sirius danced towards the kitchen.  The Plan was going perfectly.

II

It seemed silly, really, to have a wonderfully written and perfectly edited novel and not do anything with it.  The original plan didn’t take into account anything outside of making sure that Remus was employed, but when Sirius collected the edited manuscript from the owl post it seemed a waste to just throw it away or lock it up somewhere.

“I need a name.”  It was just before lunch when he flooed to Godric Hollow, finding Harry just up from his nap and more than excited to use uncle Padfoot as a climbing toy.  

“You know some people do give a little notice instead of barging in all the time.  There’s a lovely front door on this house I don’t think you’ve seen in two years.”  Lily winced when Harry’s foot found a foothold on Sirius’s crotch, but really the man deserved it.

“Other people aren’t nearly as entertaining as me.”  Sirius winced as well and moved Harry’s foot a little higher, regretting it when the lad’s next handhold was his ear.  “Now about that nom de plume.”

“I thought you were only writing so Remus could have an editing job?”

“Yes, but that’s no reason not to share my genius with the world.”  He waved his manuscript over his head.  

“How many times did Remus threaten to throw up while reading this drivel?”

“Only once but he edited that bit out.  Not even I can be perfect my first time out.”  Lily, of course, rolled her eyes for approximately the 42,596th time since she’d first met Sirius.

“If you’re serious about this we should do it properly.  No more ridiculous names.”

“I’m always Sirius.”  He couldn’t resist.  After all the joke never got old, no matter how many times Lily groaned.  “Too bad I can’t use my name.  Imagine how dear old mum would roll over in her grave if she knew the sacred Black name was attached to a romance novel.”

“Sirius.”

“You’re right, Lils.  If she got too excited she might reanimate and the world is not ready for zombie Walburga.”  He shuddered dramatically at the thought, making Harry, now perched on his shoulders, laugh and say ‘again.’  Of course he obliged.

“Leave it with me and I’ll sort it out.  I’ll have Molly redo a clean copy and send it off to Mary who’s a junior editor and a publisher.  We’ll see what happens, alright?”

“This is why I love you, Red.”  Sirius gave her a kiss on the cheek and handed her the manuscript so he could get down to what was really important; teaching his godson how to make bubbles in his milk.

II

Three months later Phaedra White was a published author.  Sure, there wasn’t an enormous amount of money in a single book, but it was more than what he’d spent to pay Molly and Remus so it seemed profitable enough, and he was more excited than he’d expected to see it on the shelves of the bookstore..

In the next year ‘Phaedra’ wrote nine more books.  More importantly with actual connections in the publishing world he was able to recommend Moony’s services to other authors, to the point that he began to worry that if Remus had too much work he might turn down the requests from Marmaduke Gaylord to edit Phaedra’s books.

“Get the bucket, Pads, I’m going to be ill.  This is the worst thing I've ever read.  Not only do I want to vomit but I think my eyes are bleeding.”

“It can’t be that bad.”  His own book had arrived that morning but Sirius hadn’t known that Remus had started on it already.

“I don’t know how Gilderoy Lockheart got my name but I’m never editing a book for him again.  Not only is it nonsense that clearly didn’t actually happen, but it’s badly written as well.”  It was hard to tell from Moony’s tone what offended him more, but it was probably the bad writing.

“Wasn’t there a Lockheart a few years behind us in school?  A gormless little thing that spent more time on his hair than anything else?”  They didn’t usually pay much attention to Ravenclaws, but if he remembered correctly the boy had annoyed them enough that they’d pranked his hair blue once.

“That’s the one.  What he knows about defense against the Dark Arts would fit in my little finger.”  Remus pushed the manuscript away.  “I can’t even look at this again until I have some chocolate.”

“I picked up a new stock from Honeydukes when I was at Diagon.”  Rule number one for the care and keeping of your Moony was to always have a supply of chocolate on hand.  “Why don’t you grab a bar and we’ll go out for a walk.  It’s beautiful outside.”

“What would I do without you, Pads?  Why don’t we pick up some curry while we’re out, my treat?”  It was a plan, and they left the house shoulder to shoulder.  Later that evening after he’d eaten Remus returned to his work.  Sirius found him laughing, his shoulders relaxed, and not a single bucket around.

“Back at the Lockheart?”  he asked.

“No, I’ve given myself a respite and picked up the latest White novel.  You know this bloke is improving.  It’s really kind of nice to see the balance of romance and friendship in here.  Less sap and more affectionate teasing.”

“I thought that romance writer you edit for was a woman?”  Sirius held his breath for a moment.  Did Moony Know?  He couldn’t possibly.  

“I’m sure that’s what they want people to think, probably because most romance novels are written by women and I’d imagine they sell better.  But I’m practically certain this is a bloke writing this.  If the book centered around a flying motorcycle didn’t tip me off, the fact that the details about female anatomy are more vague than the male anatomy seems quite a clue.”  Remus shrugged.  “I don’t suppose it really matters, though.”

“No, I don’t suppose it does,” Sirius agreed.

II

“I need help.”  The next morning Sirius showed up at the Potter house in the middle of breakfast, not knowing what time it was.  James was still home, which was not the most favorable thing that could have happened.

“Help with what?” Prongs asked as he broke a banana into pieces for Harry.

“Nothing at all,” Sirius lied.  “Just a question for Lils about a girl thing.”

“Dating someone you haven’t mentioned to us yet?”  James cocked his head to the side.  “It’s been a while since you’ve mentioned anyone.”

“Yeah, well it gets to be all the same after a while, doesn’t it?”  Truth was he hadn’t had a date in ages.  His free time was taken up with writing, and the rest of the time he was with Remus, or Prongs and his family or both.  Lily had them over to dinner once a week at least, somehow thinking they couldn't take care of themselves properly.  His social life worked out pretty well, except for the lack of shagging.  He did miss that sometimes, but not enough to bother with finding a date.

“Not when you marry the love of your life and the most perfect person in the world.”  James, of course, couldn’t help looking at his wife.  Sirius was torn between wanting to gag and feeling a tight ball in the pit of his stomach that he’d never felt before.

“It’s been six years since you married her, Prongs.  You are going to be a little less sappy at some point, aren’t you?”  Of course considering how close they’d come to losing each other it was understandable.  And Sirius was happy for them, but as a sibling it was his job to raz James as much as possible.

“If you don’t like it you do know where the fireplace is, Sirius.”  Lily was careful when she stood up, her belly now heavily swollen.  Potter number four was due in less than a month.  “Come on, you can wash up dishes for me while you tell me what you need.”

Dutifully he followed her, ignoring Prongs’ questioning look.  When the water was running he looked around to make sure they weren’t followed.  “I need to know more about girls.”

“Excuse me?”

“Moony’s figured out that Phaedra White is a bloke.  Says there’s not much detail about women’s bits and things in there and that it sounds more like a bloke or something.  I don’t know.  My first thought was that I could use some polyjuice and spend an hour as a woman but that’s a month of work just to make the potion plus it tastes disgusting.”

“I’m not going to ask why you know what polyjuice tastes like.  I don’t want to know who you were or when or if my husband was involved.”  Lily rubbed her stomach absently.  “Your books are selling surprisingly well, I wouldn’t change things now.  Besides you should know at least the basics about women.”

“I know that their breasts are nice and soft, most of them like to snog, and redheads have very good aim.”  Or maybe it was just one specific redhead, who proved his point by throwing a spoon at the back of his head.

“Obviously rumors at school had to be taken with quite a few grains of salt and I know some girls exaggerated because it was good for their reputations for it to be known that they snogged the ‘great’ Sirius Black”  Lily’s voice was dripping with sarcasm and she stuck out her tongue for good measure.  “But you did date a fair bit, and I myself witnessed at least some snogging.  Are you saying you never…”

“Did the no pants dance?  Nah, girls are nice for kissing and easier for dating but for the whole naked tango I prefer a blokes ‘bits.’”  

“Huh.  I was dead certain about you and that Hufflepuff in sixth year.”  Lily shook her head, bemused.  It wasn’t like Sirius had ever hidden the fact that he liked boys as well as girls.  “But if you’re here to ask me about my ‘bits’ that’s where I draw the line.  We’re close, Sirius, but not that close.”

“You are the best sister a bloke could ever hope for, Lil my love, and as such that is a completely disgusting idea that I would never suggest.  I was thinking you might have a friend.”

“I am not pimping out my friends to you, brother dear.”

“You try to set up Remus sometimes.”  And somehow each time Remus came down sick and couldn’t come to dinner.  

“I worry about Remus being alone.  Do you know when he last went on a date?”

“Sometimes in the seventies, probably, and he’s not alone, he has me.  What could be less lonely then having me as a roommate?”  Other than a bit of time during the war he and Remus had lived together since leaving Hogwarts.  It worked well for them both, and honestly the idea of Remus dating made his left shoulder blade go all tense.  They took turns making dinner and washing up, cleaned the flat together on Mondays and read out bits of their books to each other as they shared a sofa in the evening.  If Remus was spending his time with someone else there would be less of the enigmatic little half smile that made his day better.  And at some point Moony would have to share his furry little secret and what if they took it badly and hurt him?  Or worse, spread it about?  Sirius would have to kill them and then he’d go to Azkaban and then Remus really would be alone.  It would be a disaster.

“Sirius have you ever considered…”  Lily stopped, wincing a little and struggling to pull herself up.  “This little one has great aim and likes to kick mummy’s bladder.  You’ll have to excuse us, Sirius.  And find your own dates.”

II

He did find his own dates.  Three of them, in the next month, and twice with the girl from the local coffee shop.  And though the snogging was nice he just couldn’t get interested enough in taking it farther, not even in the name of research.  Sighing he decided he was just going to have to keep doing what he was doing.  Besides, having Moony suspect that a romance novelist was a man was a far sight from having him suspect that it was the man he lived with so he was still safe enough.  After all who in their right mind would think that Sirius Black was writing romance novels?

When he got home from his last date he found a note stuck to his door in Moony’s careful hand.  The word ‘St Mungo’s’ might have worried him if not for the ‘Baby Potter on the way’ underneath.  He took a minute to change into something more comfortable, remembering that Harry had taken hours to arrive, and apparated to the maternity ward.

“You brought work with you?”  Remus was already there, sitting in the waiting room with a quill in one hand and a stack of pages on his lap.

“You know how long Harry took to make an appearance.  Might as well pass the time in a useful manner.”  Remus looked up at him, head cocked to the side.  “How was the date?”

“Bit boring, to be honest.  I think I’m out of practice.”  Dating used to be more interesting, but halfway through he’d found himself wishing that he was on the sofa throwing popcorn at Remus and asking about his latest book.  The editing of the Lockhart book and its ridiculous lies was keeping him well entertained.  “Speaking of the sprog, where is my favorite godson?”

“Lily’s friend Molly has him.  The one will all the redhead kids, you remember?”

“Yeah.”  Molly happened to be the friend that rewrote everything he wrote.  No reason for that to make him nervous, though.  “She was Gid and Fab’s big sister.”

“Yeah, she was.”  It was never easy to think of the casualties of the war so Sirius tried not to think of them, not even the ones with hair and hearts like fire who he’d shagged once.  Gideon had been one of his first crushes in school, and a compatriot in war.

“What are we working on tonight?”  Sirius tried to take a look at his papers.  “Anything good?”

“Something very frustrating, at the moment.  The latest Phaedra White.”

“I thought you said her books were getting better.  Seemed to me you quite enjoyed the last one.”  He took great pride in the fact that he’d made Moony laugh more than once, and that it came back with hardly any notes other than the usual missing commas and split infinitives.  The ending, Moony had declared, was only as sappy as was  necessary for that sort of story and not bad at all.

“It’s stupid.  I’m just the editor, there’s no reason for the direction of the plot to bother me so much.”  Sighing, Remus put the quill down.  

“I’m sure the author is grateful for your notes.  You said she’s listened to them before, hasn’t she?”  Of course he knew the answer.   He’d written three thank you notes for changes the Remus had suggested, and every time Remus had been right.  Merlin’s pants, Phaedra White was actually making best seller lists and had been mentioned in Witches Weekly twice, and Sirius wasn’t too full of himself to know how big a part Moony played in that.  His publisher was trying to make him do a book signing at Flourish and Blotts, and didn’t understand why he kept saying no to the publicity.  

“This isn’t the same situation.  It’s not a small change to a scene, it’s the whole romance that feels wrong.”

“You read me a bit the other night, between the bloke and his best mate that made you laugh.”  He’d found the byplay between his main character and his friend to be the most fun part of the book to write.

“That’s the whole problem.  Byron and George have this great relationship.  The scene where George is trying to convince Byron to go on the date feels almost like…”

“Like what?”  There were times that Sirius totally wished he could talk through scenes with Remus while he was writing.  He’d had to bite his tongue more than once when he remembered that he hadn’t sent a story to Moony to edit yet.

“Like he was trying to cover his own feelings for his friend.  The chemistry between the two blokes is more natural and interesting then the bits with Byron and Melody.”  Remus picked up his quill again.  “Now you see why I can’t write that suggestion. I’m not about to tell someone to trash half their story and turn it into a gay romance.”

“Moony, w-”

“She’s here.”  The door to the waiting room crashed open and Prongs came running out, tripping over his feet in his hurry.  “I’m a dad.”

“You’ve been a dad for almost five years, Prongs,” Sirius couldn’t help but tease him.  

“But never to a girl.”  It was funny how big Prongs’ eyes could get.  “Merlin’s elbow, I have a daughter.”

“Most of the bits are the same, mate.  You’ll be alright.”  Remus shoved his papers and quill into a bag and took out a flask.  “I think this calls for a drink.  Not too much, or Lily will kill us all, but just to celebrate.”

“You think of everything, Moons.”  Sirius shouldn’t have been surprised, it was very like Remus, but there was something about drinking out of the flask immediately after Moony’s lips had touched it that felt different.

“You’re brilliant, both of you.  In a minute we can all go in and you can meet my daughter.”

“Poor Lils, she’s got three kids on her hands now.”  Sirius pointed to the dopey looking expression on Prongs’ face.

“I think you mean four kid, Pads.  After all she has to deal with you as well.”

II

“Her name is Olivia Marlene.”  Lily had that exhausted but happy glow of a new mother when they were let in to see her.  The baby she held looked pretty much the same as Harry the first time they’d seen him, the dark hair on the top of her head and the splotchy looking face.  

“It’s a good name.  Strong.”  Moony nodded solemnly.  “Marlene would have been proud.”

“Marlene would have rolled her eyes and called me daff,” Lily said with only a hint of moisture in her own eyes.  “But if my daughter is half as fierce she’ll be able to do anything.”

“Moony, ready to say hello?”  James took his daughter from Lily and held her close to his chest.

“Let Sirius go first, I’ll hold her in a minute.”  Sirius had been the first five years ago, when Harry had been born.

“Sirius will have his turn but it should be her godfather first, Remus.”  When Lily spoke Sirius had the good fortune to be looking at Remus.  The look on his face and the way his knees buckled were priceless.

“Alright there mate?”  Sirius caught him around the waist and helped him to stand up again.  “Welcome to the club, by the way.”

“So will you, Moony?” James looked at him expectantly.

“I think you’re mental to ask me.”  But Remus carefully took the baby and held her, touching her cheek with a single finger.  Sirius felt for a moment like he’s turned into liquid marshmallow, watching the two of them.

“Welcome to the world, Olivia Potter,” Remus said softly.

It was in that moment that Sirius Black, author of almost seventeen romance novels, realized that he was in love with his best friend.

II

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to leave the country.”  Somehow Sirius made it through the next week.  He wasn’t sure how but it seemed only fair to give Lily a bit of recovery time before bothering her.  A week was as long as he could wait, though, and on the eighth day he flooed over.  

“That’s a bit of a dramatic reaction to not being chosen as godfather for our Olivia.”  

“What?  No, of course you should have gone with Moony.  Brilliant choice.  Probably should have picked him for Harry, bit of an unfair advantage Olivia has.”  Sirius flopped down on the armchair across from Lily.  “Where are the sprogs, by the way?”

“Baby’s sleeping.  Harry and James are at the park so Harry can run off some energy.”

“Prongs is probably the one that needs to run off the energy.  He’s walking on clouds, that one.  Reminds me of the week after you finally said yes to a date.”  Sirius was pretty sure James hadn’t slept for two days straight.  For a week he also hadn’t shut up, even when he did finally sleep.  He’d been well stuck on Lily long before they’d dated.  Sirius finally had an idea of what that was like.

“Probably.  Now tell me what you’re running from.”  Lily put on her best getting-ready-to-mock-you expression.

“Nothing really, only the most stupid thing I’ve probably ever done.”

“I’ve seen some of the stupidest things you’ve done, Sirius.  Many of them.  Unless you’re going to tell me you have to flee the country because aurors are after you I very much doubt it’s as bad as you think.”

“I’vefalleninlovewithMoony.”

“I’m going to need you to actually take a breath at some point, sweetie.  You’re going to turn purple if you don’t and then I’m going to have to explain to James and Harry why you’ve passed out on the floor.”  Lily patted the empty seat on the sofa next to her.  “Now come over here, take a breath, and tell me again what you said.”

Sirius, erring on the side of caution, took three breaths, decided that wasn’t enough, and took three more.  “I’ve fallen in love with Moony.”

“Now there, wasn’t that easier to say the second time?”

“You knew perfectly well what I said.”  Sirius narrowed his eyes.  “You tricked me.”

“Only for your own good.”  She leaned in and wrapped her arms around him.  “I know this bit is scary but you’re going to get through it and you’re going to do it without fleeing the country.”

“Didn’t you hear what I said?”  Maybe having a baby did something odd to your ears.  

“You’ve finally figured out that you’re in love with Remus.”

“Finally?”  Sirius stared at her.  

“Finally,” she confirmed.  “Other than this month because of your crazy idea about your books, when was the last time you dated?”

“Dunno.  That carpenter maybe?”  Sirius had wanted to find out just what else he could do with his hands.  The answer was quite a bit.  Unfortunately not so much in the brain department and even less in the sense of humor department.

“That was three years ago.  What is Remus’s favorite dinner?”

“Steak with mashed potatoes and lots of gravy, popovers, peas.”  It was a meal he liked to make a day or two before a full moon when Moony was feeling a bit low.

“And for dessert?”

“Chocolate, of course.  I found a chocolate fondant recipe the other day I thought I might try.”  Moony was happy to have a chocolate bar but Sirius liked to find new desserts to try.  Moony was always pleased when there was a new dessert.

“Who is the first person you see on Christmas morning and whose present do you spend the most time picking out?”

“Moony, of course.  We live together.”  Last year Moony had put a ridiculous ten galleon restriction on gifts, insisting he didn’t need anything extravagant.  His silly Moony hadn’t thought to specify that it was only a single gift, though.  Sirius had brought thirteen, but they were all under ten galleons each.

“And when you’ve had a really shitty day who is the first person you seek out?”

“Moony.”

“And when something wonderful happens who is the first person you want to tell?”

“Moony.”

“Are we seeing a pattern yet?  And before you tell me it’s just being friends let me remind you that you have created a whole career for yourself solely because you wanted to make sure that Remus had work that he could take pride in.  The entire existence of Phaedra White is basically one really long love letter, which is a bit over the top even for you.”

“I’ve been in love with Moony this whole time?”  It didn’t feel wrong when he said it.  Maybe later he’d be able to look back and figure out when exactly it all started, but for now it seemed to be enough that it was true.  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You were always going to figure it out in your own time.  I couldn’t make you go any faster and risk it not happening at all.”  Lily kissed his cheek.  “If I’d said yes to James in third or fourth year maybe we would still be where we are.  Or maybe I would have written him off as a ponce and I wouldn’t have him or my babies.  Things happen when they’re right, and you can’t rush them.  Or run away from them.”

“What if he doesn’t feel the same?”  Remus rarely dated and never said anything about marriage.  “What if I ruin everything?”

“What if he does?  I don’t have the answer.  I think you have to trust Remus and yourself enough to give him a chance to hear how you feel.”

“And if I fuck it all up?”

“Your friendship has survived war and betrayals and pranks gone horribly wrong, as well as seven years of sharing a dorm and about as long sharing a flat.  I don’t think it’s going to fall under the weight of loving him.”

“You better be right, Lily Potter.  If you’re not I’m going to be crashing on this sofa after I flee the flat in embarrassment, and I shed.”

II

Talking to Moony, of course, was a far too direct and logical choice.  It took an hour for Sirius to decide that no, that just wouldn’t do.

“You alright, Pads?” Remus asked when he spent the second hour after he returned home pacing.

“Just thinking about Christmas,” he answered distractedly.

“It’s May, I think you have some time before you need to worry.”  Remus caught his hand as he walked past.  “You look like you have one of your headaches.  Why don’t you sit down and I’ll give you a massage?  Or I could read something to you?”

“No books.”  Books are what had gotten him into the whole mess in the first part.  How could he tell Moony how he felt without also confessing the whole story of Phaedra White?  Why had he never considered that at some point Moony would have to know about The Brilliant Idea?  “I think I might just go to bed.”

“I’ll bring you some tea, it will help you sleep better.”  True to his word Remus showed up ten minutes later with a cup of tea, cream in first and half a spoon of sugar, just the way he liked.  He’d valiantly tried to fall asleep in those ten minutes, but had failed completely and sat up to accept the tea.  

“Thank you.”

“You know you can tell me if something is bothering you, right?”

“There’s no one in the world I trust more than you,” Sirius said honestly.  The tea was too hot still but he sipped it anyway, knowing he’d either burn the tip of his tongue or the roof of his mouth but not caring.  

“It’s a bit odd, isn’t it, Prongs and Lily having two kids now?  They’re well and truly settled, like proper adults.  Might make someone think about it a bit, wonder if they’re wanting something different.”  Remus settled on the edge of the bed, looking up at the ceiling as if he could see the stars overhead.

“Do you think about something different?  Finding your someone and settling down with a couple of sprogs?”  

“Merlin no.  That sort of life’s never been for me, even if I could find someone who wasn’t put off by my special little problem.  Besides I like things the way they are.  You know how much I loved marking up papers with red ink in school and I get to add commas and edit dangling participles to my heart’s content now, with the added bonus of actually making a proper amount of money.  And I couldn’t possibly ever be lonely or bored with you around.  If I want to play with a kid I just have to pop over to see Prongs and Lily.  Seems to me being a godfather is like the best bits of being a parent without all the rest.”  Remus shrugged and looked sideways at Sirius.  “I always figured you’d follow James’ example at some point.”

“I would have had to start developing a crush more than a decade ago, wouldn’t I, to really emulate Prongs?”  It made him stop and wonder for a moment, tea slopping over his chin as he stopped halfway to his mouth.  Just when had he started falling in love with Moony?  Maybe he was more like Prongs then he thought, with less of the whinging.  He couldn’t remember a time when making Moony smile hadn't been a priority, or when Moony touching him hadn’t been a comfort.

“Not like that, of course.  I mean the whole home hearth and family sort of thing, and making me a godfather.”

“I like my family just the way it is.”  It was a little too close to the truth, and Sirius faked a yawn.  “Night Moony.”

“Night Padfoot.  Sleep well.”  Despite being the first to say goodnight, Sirius was a little dismayed that Moony actually left his room.

II

The next day Sirius stopped by to pick up his post, finding a rather sizable cheque, yet another request for a book signing, and the edited return of his most recent book.  Remus must have mailed it when he’d been with Lily.  Flipping through the pages he found the usual red marks adding commas and rearranging the occasional unclear sentence structure, but nothing about the plot of the novel.  He hadn’t made any of the suggestions that he’d mentioned at the hospital.

Sirius took the book home and read through the story again.  Remus was right.  The supposed romance of the story felt flat and predictable when compared to the banter between the best friends, and George was clearly nurturing a crush on his friend.  He only wanted Byron to be with Melody because he thought it was what his friend wanted.  It was a mess.  Sirius was a mess too, but at the moment it was a lot easier to fix things for Byron and George.  All he had to do was cut half the book and rework the rest to make sure two best friends realized that they were actually in love.

When he was done he sent it off to Molly with a bonus payment and a warning that he might not be needing her help anymore.  She sent it back three days later with a cheerful little note letting him know that her twins kept her quite busy and while it had been fun to read his stories first she was fine with the change in things.  Also it was her favorite story yet.

“I need to borrow my godson.”  The day after he sent the manuscript back to Remus for editing he left the house early in the morning.  He couldn’t bear to be around when Moony saw it for the first time.  Better to let him read it and get it all over and done with at once, no matter what way it came out.

“You’re not back on the fleeing the country plan, are you?  Because you can’t take Harry to Spain.”  Lily raised one eyebrow.

“Why would Sirius flee the country?”  James held his daughter but stared at Sirius in confusion.  “You didn’t actually break into your cousin’s vault at Gringotts, did you?”

“I decided anything Narcissa owned would probably have cooties.  Not worth the risk.”  Sirius shrugged.  “I won’t even take him out of the county, Lils.  I promise.”

“Pads?  Lily?” James pushed, not having a clue what was happening but suspecting that his wife knew a fair bit more.

“Not now, Prongs.  I’ll tell you tomorrow if the world doesn’t crash around my ears today.”  

Lily, fortunately, said yes and Sirius was able to mostly distract himself with a trip to the zoo and far more ice cream than an almost five year old and a twenty-five year old should eat.  He returned Harry in time for tea but warned Lily that he probably wasn’t very hungry.

“I’m proud of you,” Lily said before he left, kissing his cheek.

“I’d probably be proud of you too if I knew what the bloody hell was going on,” Prongs added, kissing his other cheek.  Sirius said thank you to them both, decided against the floo, and apparated home.  He sat on the front stoop for half an hour before daring to open the door.  The flat was completely silent.  

“Moony?”  Maybe he wasn’t at home.  Maybe he hadn’t gotten the package or had been too busy to read it today.  Maybe he had read it and had run for the hills.  Maybe he hated it and hated Sirius and was in his room packing for a trip to Zanzibar.  For a minute he worried that Moony really was gone because the flat, even Moony’s room, were empty.  The last place to check was what they grandly called the balcony, which was really just a fire escape with a upside down rusty cauldron as a seat and a single pot with a dittany plant they barely kept alive.  Moony sat with his back to the wall, looking out at the view.  They were lucky enough to be on the side of the building that looked out over a park rather than another building.

“Hey.”  He settled on the sill of the open window, which was the only other place to sit but also meant that Remus couldn’t go anywhere without stepping over him, which could come in handy.  “How was your day?”

“I read a book.”  Moony didn’t look at him.  Sirius couldn’t tell what he was thinking at all, other than that he looked like he should be smoking.  They’d both given it up when Harry was born, though, and that went double now that Oliva had come along.

“Yeah?”  He took a deep breath and waited.

“Yeah.  I thought it was weird, at first.  It’s the same Phaedra White book I just edited, and I thought it was a mistake until I got through the first couple of chapters and it’s been completely rewritten.  I didn’t say anything about the story to anyone, other than you, but it was like they looked inside my head and saw how I wished the story had been written.  George was so certain that Byron was going to propose to his girl but instead there’s this scene, this magical scene where Byron says that he couldn’t fall for Melody because he was already in love.  That it had been George all along.  Sometimes your best mate is also the love of your life.”  Remus was still staring down at the park and Sirius wanted to shake him, or beg him to turn his head, or just kiss him and take his chances that Moony wouldn’t throw him over the side of the balcony.  

“Do you think that’s true?” he asked.  “Even when the best mate is a complete disaster who might be keeping a secret or two, but only because they want their best friend to be happy and not have to worry about anything?”

“Do I think that Byron and George are in love?”  When he finally turned, Moony had a perfectly inscrutable expression on his face, the one he used in school that let him tell McGonagall that he didn’t know anything about a prank that had in fact been his brainchild.  When he used it on anyone else it made Sirius smile.  Facing it himself was agonizing.

“Do you believe that sometimes your best mate can also be the love of your life?”  He’d channeled everything he felt and thought into Byron.  Remus set a great store in books and the written word, and Sirius hoped that maybe works written in black and white would make his argument for him.

“I think the hardest thing to believe is that I could possibly be that extraordinarily lucky.”  With the blink of his eye Sirius could see all the vulnerability Moony had been hiding.  The hope and the fear, the trust and the love.  The love he saw there knocked the breath out of him.

“Merlin, I think you just scared five years off my life, you were that hard to read.”  He pulled himself through the window and squatted in front of Remus.  “Do you really think you could love me?”

“You deserve to be scared, you bloody git.  You had me secretly editing books you wrote and somehow you became an author for the lark of it.”  Remus rubbed his forehead, like he did when something was puzzling him or the writing of something was particularly confusing.  “I’ve been in love with you for ages, Pads, and I find there’s generally very little thinking involved.  It’s a simple fact.”

“I don’t think there’s anything simple about it.”  Sirius Black was the author of seventeen and a half books, and it seemed to him there was only one possible option for what came next.  He kissed Moony, of course.  Kissed him like Byron had kissed George, like Psych had once kissed Cupid and Darcy had kissed Elizabeth.  The kiss had been brewing up inside him for some time and he did not stop until the air was gone from his lungs.  And then he said the words that he planned on repeating every day for the rest of his life.  “I love you Moony.”

“I love you too, Phaedra White.”

Sirius groaned, and laughed, and kissed his Moony all over again.  It was Absolutely Brilliant.

[transgamerthoughts]

What I Found In The Leaves

Last August, as the lease to my apartment was about to end, the roof began to smolder until the place I lived was full of smoke. When all was settled and done, my apartment had no roof. My room was spared and most of my things were okay—this part of the story being set in late capitalism, I am required to assure you that the things I purchased were okay too—and I decided to leave New York City to return to New England with my family. One of the first things I did when I arrived was look at the sky and imagine I was up there. Falling or sailing or flying. It didn’t really matter. I wanted to touch a cloud, to feel the whipping wind.

I promise… this is leading to something. In the months since, in spite of comfort and proximity to my family… in spite of the arrival of my nephew into this world—a child I would climb a mountain and punch God for if I needed to—and in spite of a happy job… I have spiraled into depression. My solution was work and writing. To throw myself into my job and to, somewhat foolishly, take on the task of novelizing my favorite game: Skies of Arcadia. Because if you’ve read my work long enough, it always comes back to Arcadia. I am proud of that project but it sparked a yearning in me. To truly connect to the world I was writing. It lit a fire. Before we proceed, let me be clear that by depression I don’t mean the woes of pandemic living or some disaffection with the reality of entering my 30s. I mean a deep and painful darkness with all the implications therein. Regardless to say, my efforts to combat it drained me. To the point that I burnt myself out and with some prodding from my boss, took a vacation. Which I am currently on. This is not the first time this series of events has played out. I made a promise to myself when I started vacation: no writing. I am breaking it because I have found, yet again, a moment where I must desperately drain the wonder in my heart and attempt to explain to you that I think there are magical things in the world, and that I believe there is some type of magic in art—in that strange alchemic or shamanistic way—that transfers to us. This will be my second attempt to explain it, and to explain what it has to do with video games. (Forgive the indulgence of this introduction by the way; an editor would surely have cut it all but I need you to understand two things: I am in pain and there's a part of that pain which I think points to something important.) This is a story of ritual and tea. Of how my senses and imagination came together to send me on a journey around a fictional world, in search of heroes who both do and do not exist. As part of my love for Skies of Arcadia, I’ve become something of a paraphernalia collector. I bought an old light novel from ebay, I used my rudimentary Japanese skills to set up a warehouse dropbox so that two fan magazines could be sent there and then subsequently shipped to America, and I have drank tea based off the game. At the time, I wanted to collect the little tins the tea came in; they seemed excellent collector’s items. What I found with my first round of tea was art unto itself; balances of flavor and spice and blends that symbolized characters and connected me to them. These were crafted by a dedicated fan and fellow writer. I don’t have the time to sit and research all the ways in which tea is used in ritual. Because I am tired and older and depressed and writing a blog post that perhaps thirty people will read. Regardless, to my delight I found that the tea-maker had created blends based off the various moons that dot Arcadia’s skies. For those who do not know the game, which I assume is many of you: each nation of the world rests under a magical moon. There are six, with one—a Black Moon—theorized to have gone missing. Here was my opportunity for a journey.

I bought teas based on each moon, and one based on the world itself. I will post a separate collection of all my individual tastings and reviews later. The important thing is this: I had been given an amazing gift. With these teas, I had something of that digital world which was actual. When we play games, we hear them and see them. Perhaps with certain haptics we can feel them. But we do not smell them or taste them or literally consume them. Eight teas, eight chances to smell and taste that wonderful world. To touch the clouds. Quem quaeritis? This is a famous question asked by an angel to the three Marys visiting Christ's tomb: his mother the Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene, and Mary, who is the sister of Lazarus—the man Christ brought back to life after his death. It means: “whom to do you seek?” I was journeying, one tea cup at a time, around Arcadia. From continent to continent, I tasted their spices and experienced hints of their values, their cultures as expressed through the tea. The question played in my mind: Quem quaeritis? Whom was I seeking? The answer is complicated. First, I was seeking something of myself. The part of me that understood magic and wonder. The part of me that believes in the soul and believes that art, in allowing the complex interaction of creators and characters with players, performs some type of soul-magic. It impresses upon us, real and actual changes. I was seeking that piece of me; that part of me that understood that each cup was a ritual that brought about a communion with a distant world. I was searching for the younger part of me that believed in wonderful things. 

I drank the teas in the order our heroes travel the world, and in doing so I was performing a sort of perseveration of their journey. I communed with some place distant and followed in their footsteps. Which answers another half of the question. Whom did I seek? I sought my heroes. I sought the adventurous Vyse and his dogged determinism, I sought the firecracker Aika and her swift rushes to action, and I sought Fina. The woman I wish I could be: feminine, slight, beautiful, kind, brave. Quem quaeritis? All of this sounds like nonsense and when I try to explain the nonsense, I feel a deep embarrassment. To care in the 21th century, particularly in America, is to be weak. To be publicly vulnerable is to make yourself a target. You must be hard and solid as a rock. You cannot believe in magic or else you are doomed. But here I was, chasing myself and my heroes one cup at a time. And I need you to know that it hurt to do that. 

I went to the corner store today to buy some energy drinks. When I got back home, my father asked: “did you find what you were looking for?” I told him “That’s a very complicated question.”

Let me explain. Let me do the thing that I feel I cannot do well anymore; let me do some game criticism. In the world of games, the entities we control exist as two things. They are actors; manipulatable bodies, guided by code and controller inputs, that we guide around as we see fit. In this way, players have extraordinary power. In some ways, it is a… fraught power. We can, as Soulja Boy did, leave Braid’s protagonist in a perpetual flux state: jumping and rewinding. Back and forth, forth and back. Eternal puppets for our amusement, avatars for our power fantasies. Sometimes, as in the case of a game like Skyrim, our controllable actors are little more than flesh suits But actors are, more than anything, just… avatars. Video game actors are also characters. Within their worlds, which are fictional, they have motivations and wants and desires and dreams. They want to live and grow and succeed. Cloud Strife wants to defeat Sephiroth and uncover the truth about himself, Joel wants to protect Ellie and survive in a cruel world. Arthur Morgan wants to find a calmer life and redemption for his sins. They are, as characters, people. But since they are also actors, we can deny them their hopes and dreams whenever we want. We can have Cloud while away his days gambling at the Gold Saucer and, if we want, we can force Arthur Morgan to murder to population of an entire town. The core truth of a player's relationship to the character is this: we decide if their dreams are fulfilled. I find that troubling and I will try to explain why. But first let’s be clear: I do not think the character in games are sentient entities. I outlined this relationship of players and characters in a GDC talk a few years ago, using highly rhetorical terms and my reward was the ridicule of countless gamers who questioned my sanity. Some made videos about my presentation. It was hell. To be a woman, perhaps especially a progressively minded trans-woman, in games is to know a very real hell. To this day, I cannot go a week without some type of horrid experience on the internet. Some judgment of my worth, some assumption about my competency, or in the worst cases some proclamation about my right to live. No doubt this is part of why I needed my vacation. But here is why I find the player/character/actor relationship troubling. It is not merely the abstract notion, the thought experiment that elicits fun but meaningless philosophical natter. The reason I find that relationship troubling or at least complicated is because for all of their fiction, the characters in games can give us real things. They can, through some type of power—a deep power found in the act of story-telling itself—impart aspects of themselves on us. For instance, they can teach us lessons which we then carry into the rest of our lives. My father, for reasons I can’t recall, once told me: “the meaning of life is to serve others.” Though he does not know it, that truism has been etched into my soul. It is a “thing” that my father has given me. But my father is not the only person who has etched something into my soul. Vyse, that dashing pirate, has etched many things into my soul. For instance: “impossible is just a word people use to make themselves feel better when they quit.” That is etched on my soul too. Just as much as anything my father has taught. So we come to the heart of it: what does it mean that Vyse can so alter my being and values, and that he can do it with the same strength and “realness” of my father? What does it mean for a character, who is also often an actor that I guide, to give me such a powerful gift? Because let us be clear: values are “real” things. When I tried to explain that I believe that certain things are actually true, for instance that looking at landscapes does mean that we are looking at something real…. I spent an afternoon with former Jeopardy! contestant Arthur Chu and a cohort of Twitteristas attacking my philosophical surety. So, again, fuck the internet… I digress.. Let’s explore: I believe in the realness of things because of the depth of the emotions those things make me feel, and I refuse to believe that life is just endorphins, hormones, and instinct. That music or games or anything else can make us weep for joy is proof-positive to me of the existence of a soul; of an ineffable thing that is “us.” Not necessarily all enduring but certainly extant. And if this thing exists, it can be acted upon. I know this because my father, with his truism, changed my soul. Changed the core of me. I know this because Vyse and the others did so as well.

I’ve written that games criticism is a kindness; that it seeks the good in art and attacks the banal explicitly because art is beautiful. I write today to suggest this: art is magical. It alters us, not metaphorically, but in the ways it can affect our souls. Which brings us back to character and actors. I control Vyse since he is an actor and I am a player; but he is a character with dreams and hopes and personality. And values. Wonderful values which he shared with me. So what does it mean now that I can send actors to their doom? What does it mean that I can control them utterly when I know for a fact that they can affect and change me? I do not have clean answers for this. Perhaps there are none. Perhaps all I have written is silliness, even as I beg you to please understand. Please. 

Understand the power of stories, understand it in the way that Tolkein did when he said: “Creative fantasy, because it is mainly trying to do something else … may open your hoard and let all the locked things fly away like cage-birds.” Understand that I am telling you that the locked thing is your heart and soul, and that just as a lover or parent or mentor can open that thing… so can the people we meet in our fictional journeys. Vyse is not just the captain of a ship. He is my captain. That means something. Art is ritual and play is ritual. In creation, we place something of ourselves in another thing. In play, we allow ourselves to be transmuted and changed. This is magic, of a sort. I am left wanting however. I followed the path of my heroes in as literal a way as I could, pulling on new senses to understand the world they live in and touch their skies for a fleeting moment. But I cannot reach them; I am Tantalus in the mire. Ever reaching, ever chasing. For that moment I can be the person that my heroes trusted me to become. Note by musical note, word for written word, tea cup by tea cup, I am chasing my captain. When I went back to my apartment the day after the fire, I looked up at the spot where the roof used to be. All I could see was blue sky and I thought I might fall into it. Perhaps in superficial ways I have shared something with my heroes; I have tasted something they have, even though the tea is not actually from Arcadia. It was merely a conduit to my imagination, to the transformed parts of my souls. Yet, I did not find him and I could not find myself. Which is why it hurts, in spite of how wonderful it was. Quem quaeritis? He is not here. So I will keep sailing after him.

[sinagrace]

Iceman’s been back on my mind lately. It started with the internet rumor that Shia Labeouf was being considered to play the role of Bobby Drake in a Marvel Cinematic Universe version of the X-Men. My DMs and @Mentions on social media were a mixture of intense reaction and then asking my take on who would make a great Bobby Drake (for the record: in my head I always saw him as a younger Antoni Porowski with a theater background, ‘cuz playing the funny guy with a vulnerable streak requires serious acting shops). My mind went back to the time of BC, when I was doing a lot of touring, and answering this very question because of my work on the Iceman book at Marvel. One thing led to another, and I decided to take a trip further down memory lane to look at my favorite volume of the series: Amazing Friends. Now, I know I’ve spent equal amounts of time publicly stating what a gift working on Iceman was, while also calling out the challenges that came with the experience, but the third volume really was a pure blessing. I was able to take every valuable lesson I learned as a writer, and apply it to telling a story that would be interesting to one person: Me. I’ve been a lifelong X-Men fan, I live and breathe comics, so my own expectations for a return to the series seemed like the only ones to really worry about meeting/ surpassing. The first two volumes had been so bogged down by rotating editors, complex continuity, company-wide events, multiple artists… The third volume was my chance to focus on what an Iceman series was outside of so much context. All that mattered was challenging myself to do an X-Men story that focused on the aspects of the franchise I felt were valuable and relevant, meaning: excuses to have Emma Frost be an asshole and finding an opportunity to make fun of Kitty Pryde’s haircut. Before moving on from Marvel, Axel Alonso made time to call me for a pep talk about the series. I wanted to get the series extended, and he wanted to help me succeed with the ten issues he could commit to. First, he offered an eleventh issue to give me more time on the stands. He took a look at everything I had planned, and basically told me to restructure with an eye for ramping up the pace. My writing background comes from prose and essays/ think pieces… both of which are methodical and provide some allowance from the reader to really take your time and set up the world before diving into the meat. That’s not the case with comics. You gotta work fast. Especially in today’s market, there is less and less room for a retailer to say, “give it two volumes, because shit starts really coming together by the third trade.” That was literally my speech for hooking people on such iconic series as Invincible, Fables, and Strangers in Paradise. Nowadays, every single issue is not a brick to be laid down as foundation so much as a bullet in your gun. Conflicting imagery, but that’s the point. Axel told me to think about the Big Moments in my life and sort out how to inject the mutant metaphor into it and make the most compelling comic book story I could. This was epic advice that I took with me into the new arc, but I struggled a bit with what could be bigger than the “coming out” storyline in volume one. Love was off the table because I wanted to keep Bobby single and ready to mingle. Death was off the table too, because my editor felt like we’d done enough with Bobby’s parents in the first two volumes. Upon looking at my own life, and considering the stuff me and my friends were dealing with, I landed on something a bit more reflective than LIFE or DEATH. I wanted to focus on that moment when a gay guy looks outside of himself and realizes the folks around him may not have it so easy. After everything we’ve been dealing with this summer, Iceman’s “big issue” of the arc feels oddly prescient. Bobby Drake had to reconcile his accidental complicit role in keeping the Morlocks down, and he has to investigate new approaches to being a better ally to those who don’t want to or can’t live under the protection of the X-Men. I used the Morlocks to allegorically speak to the issues that the trans/ NB community face today. Considering that trans folks are facing higher rates of homelessness and murder than other members of the LGBTQIA+ community, all I needed to do was find a perfect villain to treat the Morlocks as “lesser-than.” Cue Mister Sinister, who I wrote as particularly Darwinist with a major flair for interactive theater. While Amazing Friends definitely is the most fun I’ve had working on the book, it was also full of the heaviest shit I’ve written about. I’m so grateful that my editor let me use Emma Frost for a story about the trauma of gay conversion therapy with her brother Christian, but I’m still annoyed he wouldn’t let me put her in a sickening Givenchy outfit for her reveal. Similarly, creating the Madin character required that I chat with several mental healthcare professionals and members of the NB community to respectfully portray them as a resilient and fleshed out hero. I included personal lessons that I learned from years of the therapy (the sandcastle / sea image, a Jay Edidin fave moment). My editor and I weren’t always aligned, but we definitely were on each other’s side. He understood what I was trying to do and asked questions when something flew over his head, and he even had the good instincts to stop me from going too heavy handed with the ending. My original idea for the arc’s finale was to have Bobby become permanently scarred in his fight with Sinister, where he’d have a cool ice gash running across his face or something, a la Squall from Final Fantasy 8. The goal was to show Iceman stripping himself of his ability to pass as non-mutant to save the Morlocks, but the Mutant Pride fight scene being a stand-in for the Stonewall Riots kind of already made enough of a statement. Plus, no one in editorial wanted to deal with remembering to track his scar in other books. At first I tried to balk at his point of view, but when I looked over my original notes for the series, the point was to focus on optimism and hope. Giving Bobby a permanent scar and emphasizing the notion of sacrifice was too bleak a message for a series wherein the hero carbo-loads hoagies while riding an ice scooter and mutant drag queens emcee local festivals. Of course, the crowning achievement of the series… my mutant drag queen :) I’ve witnessed a lot when it comes to the world of pop culture and myth-making, and I 100% believe that you can’t plan the success of something. I’ve seen bands forced into breaking up because labels spend six figures failing at making listeners connect with an album. I witnessed firsthand how The Walking Dead was built from relatively humble beginnings as a buzzy cable drama into a literal international phenomenon over the course of its first three seasons. Everyone hopes for the best, but you never know how something will land with audiences. When the Shade character took off, I was truly astounded. Things I posted on Instagram while half-asleep became official quotes on major news sites. Queens and cosplayers were interpreting her like Margot Robbie had unveiled a new Harley Quinn lewk. The impact was so legit and immediate that we had to jump in and give Shade a proper Marvel hero alias, to truly welcome her into the X-Men canon. Hence the name change to Darkveil. (Funny story: I tried to fight hard for Madame X as an alias, but CB didn’t want another Agent X / “X-Name” character. Three months later, Madonna announced the Madame X album. Phew!) There was a time where I felt uncertain that the folks in charge at Marvel would bring Darkveil into any stories outside of the ones I wrote. My understanding was that Hickman was like the Cylons and had A Plan-- one that didn’t include her character. I made peace with my contribution to the Marvel Universe being contained, but then someone on social media pointed out that Darkveil showed up in an issue of Marvel Voices. After breaking down and reading Hickman’s House of X, I saw that his Plan was one of endless possibilities, and that he was moving EVERY character into new and dynamic places. I have hope now that he sees the possibilities with Darkveil, and takes advantage of her and all of her many body pouches. Amazing Friends really is my favorite thing I’ve done for the Big Two. I made a lifelong friend out of artist Nate Stockman (DC, please hire us for a Plasticman book), and I got to run a victory lap with the most encouraging and supportive readers out there. It was worth every dreadful conversation, every shitty thing a person said to me online, and all of the fun nonsense that goes into being creative for a living. Being stuck at home in quarantine has given me a lot of time to reflect on the gift that my career to date has been, and I feel so grateful to be where I am today. Other people may groan when they have to talk about something they’ve moved on from, but not me. I made people happier, I got to work with my favorite characters at Marvel, and and I'll say it again: it’s a frickin’ gift to make people move from your work. So, I will engage every tweet or message asking me my thoughts about who should play Bobby Drake in the Marvel Cinematic Universe… I’ll just never have a good answer.

[shelovescontrol91]

In order to lure Camila Cabello to “Cinderella,” Kay Cannon borrowed a page from Prince Charming’s playbook. Sony told Cannon she could direct the film — she had already been writing the screenplay — provided she could convince the pop star that “Cinderella” should be her acting debut. So off Cannon went to Miami to meet with Cabello, having packed a glass slipper she’d bought on Etsy, even though her producers told her that would be “weird,” she says.

“I was there for, like, 30 seconds. And I’m like, ‘I hesitate to do this!’ And I pull out this glass slipper. ‘Does it fit?’”

However embarrassing, the gesture worked. In May, Amazon Studios bought “Cinderella” from Sony — with Cannon’s blessing — and it will premiere on the streamer on Sept. 3. While it’s disappointing that the movie musical won’t primarily play in theaters, the director, who has a daughter too young to get vaccinated, sees only the bright side.

“If the goal is for people to feel joy,” Cannon says, “I think we’re going to reach more people.”

At 47, Cannon is among the still-too-small group of women directors who have a Midas touch for mainstream, feminist comedies. After getting her start as a writer for “30 Rock,” Cannon wrote the three “Pitch Perfect” movies and directed “Blockers,” an emphatically R-rated comedy with a dirty mind and a loving heart.

In summer 2017, Cannon had just completed filming “Blockers” when her agent told her that James Corden wanted to speak with her about a “Cinderella” project. She jumped at the chance — but only because she wanted to meet the late-night talk-show host, not because she had any interest in fairy tales or princess culture. In fact, Cannon was certain that any new “Cinderella” would be a non-starter, since Disney’s 2015 live-action version, starring Lily James, had grossed more than $540 million worldwide so recently. “Nothing’s going to come out of this,” she remembers thinking.

But when Corden and his Fulwell 73 producing partner Leo Pearlman pitched her the idea of a “Cinderella” musical with contemporary songs, saying she could rewrite the fable however she liked, she immediately changed her mind. “I have no poker face,” Cannon says. “And I was like, ‘I want to do this!’”

Cannon’s “Cinderella” has a thoroughly modern message. Ella isn’t interested in marriage, wanting instead to travel the world and be a designer.  Cannon also toned down the canonical cattiness of Ella’s stepfamily, and upped the story’s comedy potential. All the while, characters such as the stepmother (Idina Menzel) and the prince (Nicholas Galitzine) are singing songs like “Material Girl” and “Somebody to Love” and “Pitch Perfect”-style mashups like “Whatta Man” with “Seven Nation Army.”

At every step, her guiding principle was “How can it be different?” “I wanted people to get their money’s worth,” Cannon says, “or why do it at all?”

In an interview with Variety, Cannon talks about how COVID-19 affected “Cinderella,” her experience as a woman director and how things have changed in comedy.

The Cinderella story has been told and retold, and had just been a live-action movie when you signed on to write this. How did you want your version to be different? And is it significant here that Camila Cabello is a woman of color?

Yes, I wanted to make sure it was incredibly inclusive. And her being Cuban Mexican is no small thing, and what she represents to millions of people — not only her fans, but to millions.

The story has mostly been told and retold almost exclusively by men: I feel it when I watch. The 2015 Kenneth Branagh “Cinderella” was hugely successful, and it was beautiful. And I love the Whitney Houston, Brandi “Cinderella.” It just feels a little told from their gaze. And I really felt like it was important to me to tell it through my gaze.

Can you talk about creating the Fab G, and what you wanted from that character?  

So many amazing actresses have played that role — so I’d written that role to be a man. And, quite honestly, the only one who fit all of everything I wanted was Billy Porter; I wrote it with him in mind. He’s just such a great singer. He’s just so talented. Because I wrote it specifically for Billy, the character kind of came easy. I just wrote it in his voice, and tried to make it funny. I had actually had another song in there, and then as soon as Billy was confirmed, we picked “Shining Star.”

Is the Fab G gender non-binary?

We talked about it. In having many conversations with Billy, I was like, “I think the answer needs to come from you.” He has said “they/them,” and “magic has no gender.” Non-binary for sure.

You started filming in England in February 2020. Tell me about shutting down because of COVID.

We had shot the ball the first week of March, which is something I do not believe I would have been able to do coming back — and it wasn’t a super-spreader. I’d shot all of the Fab G stuff, and all the basement stuff.

It felt like something out of “The Amazing Race” — like, pack up all your stuff! I’d been in the U.K. for like four months, and my family was there. My daughter was going to school there, and my husband was the writer on set. So we packed everything up, and then Camila and her family and my family, we flew back. My husband’s family is in Maine, and so we just stayed in Maine the entire time.

That sounds so nice, actually.

I did all of post in a boathouse in Maine. It was pretty awesome, actually.

During the break, what were you doing?

It was like getting a second prep, really. I was working with my editor, Stacey Schroeder, and we were putting together what we had. And then I was able to see what I needed and what I didn’t need. And I was doing a ton of rewriting, and I was doing a ton of prep that we didn’t necessarily have. Because I had all the opening, I had the finale, I had “Somebody to Love,” I had “Am I Wrong,” “Material Girl” — all these big numbers.  

Movie theaters have reopened, and this was obviously made with a theatrical audience in mind. How did the Amazon of it all happen?

Sony is a business, first and foremost. I know that Sony loves the movie, and that partnership was really great on that level. So I think it was hard for them to give it up, but I’m really quite happy that people can see this in this safety of their own homes with loved ones. And it is a wonderful theatrical experience, especially with the music and the sound and everything. And it will open theatrically in some theaters.

It not being a wide release in theaters means that we’re not healthy yet. And so that’s what’s the most upsetting — that we’re not healthy.

As you were moving from being a performer to being a screenwriter, did you always have directing in mind, or was that something that you discovered you wanted to do?

I was led to it. When I was at “30 Rock,” by like Season 5, I really wanted to direct an episode. And I was too chickenshit to ask. I was the writer/producer who was always on set — at that point, I’d spent my 10,000 hours on set for sure. And it wasn’t until I had a meeting with Nathan Kahane at Lionsgate, and he was like, “You should be directing your own stuff.” I have such a respect for academics, and I never went to film school, so I just didn’t think I could do it.  And then once he put that in my head, I was like, “Yeah, you know what? I can do it.'”

And is that how “Blockers” came about?  

Exactly. Yeah, they sent me the script with an offer to direct. And with no questions asked. I didn’t have to do any kind of auditioning.

That is very rare! Obviously, things have gotten better for women directors in the past few years, after years of the most appalling statistics. What obstacles do you feel like you’ve faced as a woman director?  

Especially with “Blockers,” I had a very good experience. I feel like the obstacles I have to face really are from the powers that be that still fight me at every level on what women want to watch, or think is funny. Or what is funny — forget gender.

My stuff happens to have female leads, and it’s female driven. So the jokes are coming out of women’s mouths. And I cannot tell you the amount of fighting I have about what they think is going to work, and what they think isn’t going to work. And there’s a lot of like, “I have all the expertise, you do not have the experience.”

And it’s just like, ‘I’ve been working in the comedy side for 15 years now — successfully.” And so what ends up happening is, I fight and fight and fight, and then I just do it and get it in. And then it gets put in front of an audience and the audience laughs. And then they have to say, “OK, that does work.” And you might not think that that’s that big of a deal. Maybe that’s creatively for everybody. Maybe it’s not gender specific. I tend to believe that it is gender specific.

Is that at the studio level?

From my experience, it’s mostly the studio level. And maybe I’m just sensitive to it or whatever. But I just feel like there’s a lot of conversations about what is funny out of a woman’s mouth. What’s allowed. And I feel like no matter how much success I had with “Pitch Perfect,” I think it’s still as much of a fight now as it was then. Which doesn’t make sense to me.

With “Cinderella” too?  

Oh, especially with “Cinderella.”

And now we’re back on the record after going off for a bit! I rewatched the “Black Tie” episode of “30 Rock” yesterday, which you wrote with Tina Fey, in which Paul Reubens plays an afflicted prince. That was the moment in Season 1 when I realized, OK, I love “30 Rock.”

[Affects Prince Gerhardt voice] “THANK YOU FOR COMING TO MY BIRTHDAY.”

That was the first thing I ever wrote! You know, professionally.

An unbelievable calling card to have as your first screen credit.

Yes! I was asked recently who is my Fab G, and my answer is Tina Fey. I wrote stuff as a friend she was reading. And I never thought that she would consider me for her staff, and she just grabbed me and was like, “You’re gonna do this!” I thank her every day for giving me that opportunity.

There are so many conversations right now about what’s acceptable in comedy. As a screenwriter who’s done mostly comedy, how do you feel about that?

Right now I think we’re in the muck, and I think we’re striving for equality. And we’re trying to work things out! Of course we should look back at things that were done 15 years ago, and be like, “Oh, no!”

I don’t know if this is a story I should tell. But I can remember getting notes to put the f-slur into “Pitch Perfect” as them being bullied like by the cool athletic guys. And I was like: “No! I can’t do that.” I think I put it in for a draft, and a friend of mine read it, and she’s like, “You cannot have that in.” And I was like, “It’s a note I was given!” I was told to do that, you know?’ And then like realizing, no, it’s unacceptable. You cannot use that word. Even if you’re trying to show that it’s awful, don’t do it.

You have to have your moral compass, and know what’s right for you. And there’s just some things we just shouldn’t tolerate anymore. And they’re just not acceptable. I’m certain if I looked back at stuff that I would cringe, you know? Or just, that’s how people thought then. And I was one of those people. But certainly now if you know better, you do better, right? Is that too soapboxy?

This interview has been edited and condensed.

[mirkwoodshewolf]

Graduation surprise; BoRhap cast x reader

*Author’s note*

Hey ya’ll well I promised this fic when I posted the Queen prom fic so here it is. Now I know it’s not as long as the last one is but I felt like this didn’t need to be super long. Also as another special little fact for ya’ll I was gonna make this a Queen fic as well but then I decided to change it to a BoRhap CAST fic since I hadn’t done one of just them in awhile. 

So to all seniors whether HS or college, the class of 2020 CONGRATULATIONS I know it’s not what you hoped it would be but still try to find celebration in this pandemic, you all achieved probably the greatest milestones in your life. So stay safe, stay healthy, stay sane, and be happy :) Lot’s of love from me my darlings!

Taglist:

@waddles03​

@psychosupernatural​

@plethora-of-things​

@jd-johndeacon-or-jackdaniels​

@ixchel-9275​

@simonedk​

@queensdivas​

@platawnic​

@queendeakyy​

@geek-and-proud​

@kairosfreddie​

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Goddamn this year! Just when we think the new decade would be worth our wild, now we’ve got all this shit going on! First there was the threat of WW3, then the next month we’re dealing with wildfires in Australia, and finally to top it off why not add a global pandemic?!

The Coronavirus has literally been all over the news for months, and the fact that our government knew about it since late last year and didn’t warn us about it!? Then when they told us to be on lockdown, everyone starts hording toilet paper, hand sanitizer, and food that no one can buy said items for weeks on end.

But of course my main problem is the fact that I, along with so many other kids and adults around the world can’t participate in their own graduation ceremony.  As a college student, I was just longing to finally participate in my final graduation ceremony ever.  This was supposed to be my final chapter in school life and now because of this damn virus, that’s gone.

I mean yeah my diploma will be coming in the mail but I wanted my family to all be there to see me reach the end of my school life before I finally begin a new chapter.  Plus my cousin’s friends said that they would come and see me and I’ve missed seeing those guys, I hadn’t seen them all since the Bohemian Rhapsody premiere.

I sat there in my old room of my house (cause since the University closed down back in March, all students had to leave the college campus and go home so that way we could reduce the spread of the virus. So I ended up moving back in with my parents) just finishing up my final paper for class.

That’s when my Zoom video chat blew up with my cousin’s profile pic.  I grinned and clicked on the answer button and soon enough my cousin’s face took over my screen.

“Hey poppet.”

“Hey Gwil, how you holding up?” he let out a sigh.

“As best as I can. Though I should be asking you that, you are the one really dealing with this whole Coronavirus adjustment than I am. How’d you do on your classes?”

“For those that have said online classes are easier, they’re dirty rotten liars and completely incompetent.” He softly chuckled. “But thankfully I finished my last exam paper and submitted it just now.”

“Your dad look over it for you? Cause I know you’re a terrible editor.”

“Oi not all the time. Just when I’m lazy.” He hummed as he raised his brow at me. “But yes I did have dad review it for me. Cause before we got to submit the rough draft and my professor said I needed more analysis to my quotes on why I quoted that specific source. God I don’t know why I took that class to begin with?”

“Because you’re a criminology nut and you have been since you turned 16. God and I thought my horror movie tastes were bad.”

“Hey it’s good to be aware of shit like that!”

“Language missy!”

“Okay Cap.” I teased.  He gave me his stern look which made me laugh as I fell to my side on the bed. “Oh by the way I saw that little dating app video you did.”

“And what did you think?”

“I liked it. Kinda makes me wish an app like that did exist in real life.”

“You not just pulling my leg on this?”

“No. Honest and swear to god you had me moved by your performance. Well next to you being Brian May of course.” He grinned. “I swear I still can’t get over when I first saw you in the full hair and makeup, I literally almost had a freakin panic attack.”

“And the fact that Brian was also there to witness that.”

“Oh god don’t even go there!” I groaned as I hid my face in embarrassment.

“So—now that you’re all done with school, what’s next for you?”

“Well any plans I had are put on hold till this whole crisis goes away. And I really thought 2020 was gonna be my year. This sucks!”

“I know poppet, I know. But believe me that it’s not just you whose affected by this. Everyone in the whole world is suffering exactly the same way you are.” I sighed solemnly.

“I know. I mean I should be feeling for you and the guys right now, I mean all of you are out of work till further notice. And all the restaurants that I love going to. Did you know that the little ice cream parlor you and I used to go to when we were kids shut down?”

“No!”

“Yeah, the owner couldn’t keep up the payments because hardly anyone was ordering from them anymore, even with online delivery. So she closed it down.”

“Damn, that sucks. I really loved going to that place with you. That was always our special little time together without the grownups around.” I nodded remembering all the fun times we had together in that little shop.

It was then someone suddenly popped into our conversation.  The extra person now on my screen was none other than Joe Mazzello.

“Hey Gwil, mini-Lee!”

“Hello Joe.” Answered Gwil.

“Hey Joe been a long time.”

“How you two holding up?” he asked us.

“As best as we can, how about you? I’ve seen those Youtube videos you’ve been doing on your page.” Gwil said.

“You know those were jokes, especially that last one. I just wanted to get a laugh out of everyone, or have them hate me.”

“No one could hate you Joey.” I said with a smile.

“Aww thanks mini-Lee. How’s classes been?” I let out a groan as I once again flopped on my bed which made Joe laugh.

“I am just thankful that this is all over. At first I thought online classes would be easy but one of my professors was technology challenged. Another one would sometimes forget to do a lesson, and then of course blackboard could barely operate long enough for me to submit an assignment which caused some of them to be late.”

“Well like you said it’s over now.” Joe assured me.

“Oh hey I saw that Jurassic Park livestream you did.”

“Oh did you? How come I didn’t see you submit a question or just say hello? I’ve seen your Youtube page so I know your username by heart.”

“Cause I may or may not have also been working on a project. But chose the livestream over the project.”

“Nice going Joe, you’ve turned my cousin into a procrastinator.” Gwil complained.

“Hey at least she has Jurassic Park unlike you Gwilym Lee! Serious shame on you for not owning it! This is why mini-Lee is the coolest out of the two of you.” I snarked out a mock laugh as I stuck my tongue out.

“Ganging up against me okay I see how it is you two.”

“Oh come now cousin dear, we’re just messing around.”

“Messing around? If we’re messing with Gwil then I want a part of it.” Soon another picture came up and there lying on his side was Ben Hardy.

“Benjamin!” Joe screamed joyously.

“Hi Ben.” I sung out.

“Hey (y/n).” he waved at me with a wink. “Now going back to teasing Gwilym.”

“You guys are officially gonna be blocked right after this.” My cousin groaned.  We all laughed when I told him.

“Again cousin, we’re teasing you. So Ben, what brings you here?”

“What can’t I pop in and say hello?” I giggled.

“I see nothing wrong with it. Oh hey get this; I finally got around to watching 6 Underground.”

“And what did you think of it?”

“The first 10 minutes were insane! And truthfully I never really understood Michael Bay films, but this one—definitely my favorite. I loved it Ben, really.”

“Well thank you (n/n). Thank you.”

“Never did I think I needed to see both you and Ryan Reynolds on screen together….”

“Whoa okay easy there (n/n)!” Joe interrupted me.

“Oi you get your mind out of the gutters! And you say it’s the fans that make what you say to the extreme.” I scowled him.

“Trust me, I’ve known him for over 10 years and he still doesn’t grow up.” Another voice stated and soon two more familiar faces popped up on screen, stuck in quarantine together in LA were Rami and Lucy. And then a split second later another face came on the screen, it was none other than Alan Leech.

“Hey, Rami, Lu-lu, Alan!” I cheered.

“Hey (y/n)!” the three of them said as they waved.

“God I feel like I’m getting spoiled, got the entire BoRhap family together for the first time in like—forever.”

“It’s crazy.” Alan said.

“Definitely.” Agreed Rami.

“Maybe when this whole thing blows over we should all get together some time in New York.” Offered Joe.

“I’m down with it.” Ben said.

“Me too.” Lucy agreed with a nod.

“Yeah, (n/n), Ben and I could fly out together.” Said Gwil.

“I’m down with that. Now that I’m done with school, I can do what I want now.”

“So guys now that we’re all here shall we begin?” Lucy said.

“Begin what? Gwil what’s going on?” I asked.

“Well (n/n), when this whole quarantine shutdown and school cancellations started affecting the class of 2020 we all felt bad that you couldn’t graduate the way you hoped you would.” Gwil said before Joe continued.

“So Gwil called all of us up via the Whatsapp chat, as well as our daily zoom calls. To gather us all together on your ‘last day’ of college.”

“To celebrate your own Virtual college graduation party!” Rami cheered.  At that point everyone either threw confetti, blew on graduation blowers, or holding up signs that said CONGRATS 2020 GRADUATE!!!

I covered my mouth with my hands speechless and tried to hold back the tears.

“Ohh you guys.”

“Since you couldn’t have a college graduation party, we figure we’d bring the party to you. See not even this pandemic can stop us from celebrating our Mini-Lee’s ultimate milestone.” Ben said as he set down his congrats sign.

“And also expect some gifts within the next few weeks, depending on how the mailing services do with overseas gifts.” Alan said.

“Aww thanks you guys, you didn’t have to.”

“We know, but we wanted to. Let us spoil you even through this pandemic.” Said Joe.

“Thanks guys, this—really means a lot to me.” I wiped a hidden tear that strayed down the corner of my eye.  They all awed at me that’s when Gwil lifted up a small graduation cake.

“I know, I know this’ll be ridiculous but just humor me will yah?” I smiled and nodded.  He lit up the 2020 candles and held it just high enough for me to see the top part of the candles.

“CONGRATS (Y/N) LEE! CLASS OF 2020!!!” everyone proclaimed at once which made me smile and I blew out towards the screen.  Gwil then blew out the candles for me as everyone else cheered and clapped.

“Thanks so much you guys. Really, you have no idea how much this means to me.”

“We’re happy to do it (y/n). If it makes your day a little bit brighter in these dark times.” Rami said.

“It did Rami, it really did.”

“Well hope we can make this even better cause I’ve also got a part 2 to this little surprise. But in order for that to happen, everyone else has got to go otherwise you won’t really be able to see it as clearly.” Gwil said.

“Aww man.” I whined.

“No worries mini-Lee, your cousin added you to our BoRhap Whatsapp chat and I’ll send you a link to our zoom channel if you ever wanna chat with us again.” Joe said with a wink.

“Thanks Joe. And thanks everyone take care and stay safe.” They all waved and bid me goodbye with waves or blowing kisses at me and one by one they signed off till it was once again just Gwil and I.

All I could see across his bearded face was that cheeky grin he does whenever he’s trying to hide something.

“What are you grinning about?”

“Just the fact that I’ll be the best cousin once you see part 2 of your special surprise.”

“What did you do?”

“If I told you it won’t be a surprise now would it? Now let’s see, god I hope they get it.” He muttered the last part to himself. It took a few minutes till finally another screen popped up and standing there in his room was Adam Lambert.  I fangirled in my seat and covered my mouth trying to contain my squeals.

“Hey girlfriend!” he greeted with a wave.

“Adam oh my god!”

“How’s it going?”

“It’s been going. Finally submitted my last paper. So I’m officially done with school forever.”

“Yaas Queen!” he snapped. “So how’s it feel to be a college graduate?”

“Well it’d be better if we weren’t in the middle of a pandemic.”

“Understandable, but hey you’ve worked hard for this so be proud of yourself no matter what’s going on in the world right now.” I nodded with a shrug. “And to celebrate your graduation, your cousin whipped up another little surprise for you.”

“Oh my god Gwil you didn’t!” I gasped.  He merely raised a brow at me cheekily as he bit his lip back from a smile.

“Hey guys you there?!” Adam called out and soon enough two more screens came on and the picture revealed to be both Brian May and Roger Taylor.  Brian sitting on his couch while Roger looked to be in his basement with his drumkit.

At this point, I had lost my shit.  I was fangirling to the max at this rate but tried to calm down.

“Hi (y/n), congratulations of graduating.” Brian greeted me.

“Major achievement there love. Congrats.” Roger added.

“Oh my god…..Gwil this is—how……”

“I knew you’d love it (n/n). Plus I knew this would cheer you up after our last conversation we had last week. You really needed some cheering up.”

“So guys are we ready to do this?” asked Adam.

“I’m ready to go if you both are.” Said Brian as he took his Red Special and set it on his lap and Roger twirled his drumstick.

“(Y/n), this is for you love. Hopefully when this whole mess is over, you can finally go out there and reach your dream job. Till then we hope you enjoy this.” Roger said.

It was then both Roger and Brian began playing the tune for ‘we are the champions’ but as Adam began singing the song, it turns out that they were actually singing their new song, ‘You are the champions’ dedicated to the first responders worldwide.

But now they were playing it in my honor as a college graduate.  As they continued to play the song, I allowed the tears to flow down my face as I laced my hand over my heart.

God—never did I think that through this pandemic would I be happy.  From having to never see any of my friends I made in college again, to not having my whole family come to the house to celebrate, or going out to party with some of my friends.  But this—right here and now, my cousin made it all up to me all the way from London.

At this point, I knew that I was officially the luckiest person in the world.  All thanks to my favorite cousin, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

[marril96]

Handle with Care

Pairing: Rowena x reader

Summary: A sexual role-play leads to guilt and tears.

Editor: @miss-moon-guardian​

*****

It was a game no different than the countless others you'd played.

It started with a kiss that made you tingle all over, nerves on fire, going off like fireworks on the Fourth of July. A push — a shove, really, for you intended to make the most of the night — and Rowena was on her back, naked as the day she'd been born, arms spread, skin glistening like a milky sky dusted with a constellation of freckles, hair spilled around her head like a fiery halo.

Lying so still, her eyes observing your every move, taking it in like prey preparing for an attack, heart pounding softly in her chest, she resembled an angel. She was beautiful as one, charming, magnificent, supernatural not just in species but in presence itself. A force of nature you never tired of claiming, of making it clear to everyone that asked — and those that didn't — that she was yours.

She didn't get like this for just everyone. She didn't bare herself — body, mind, and soul — to any stranger. It took years of love, of devotion, of endless patience and support and kindness for you to earn her trust to be allowed to play this game.

As much as she wanted to pretend otherwise, Rowena was a delicate thing. Gentle. Fragile. She needed to be handled with care, even when she relinquished all control and told you, in no certain terms, to go at it. To roam free. She had her limits, and she trusted you to respect them.

Straddling her, you pressed your mouth to hers in another kiss. Tonight was your night. As much as she loved being in control, there were times when she relished being a powerless, naughty girl in need of punishment. A few days ago, that was your role. Tonight, it was hers. Your hands roamed everywhere, tugging, squeezing, feeling her warmth underneath your fingertips, as delicious as her mouth on yours.

Rowena's eyes fell closed, a moan escaping her lips — her swollen, cherry-red lips, hungry for kisses, begging for more. Your teeth grazed the lower one as you parted, drawing blood. She hissed, startled, and you smirked. Rowena pouted, and you clicked your tongue, shaking your head. She was at your mercy tonight. Nobody said anything about playing fair.

You kissed down her neck, every now and then capturing a bit of skin between your lips and leaving behind a butterfly bruise. They were violet and beautiful, marks of ownership she would wear for days, alike those she'd left on you earlier. It was one of your favorite parts of the game. Being allowed to hurt her, ruin her, and make it feel so good — not just for you, but for her as well.

Rowena accompanied every nip with a moan, pain and pleasure mixed into one, a sound that was magic to your ears. Her body was a canvas, blank and perfect, waiting for you to fill it, to make it yours. And, the artist you were, you were happy to oblige.

Your cupped her breasts. Small, supple, they fit perfectly into your palms. You kissed each one, suckling on rock-hard nipples. Biting on each before releasing them with a plop. Rowena looked at you with wounded, desperate eyes. Sad as a kicked puppy. You used to have a hard time resisting them, but over the years you'd built a tolerance for petty manipulations in the bedroom. You had, after all, learned from the best.

"Aw, what is it, baby?" you cooed, sarcasm thick in your voice.

"Y/N, please," she whined. A perfect, delicious little melody.

You raised an eyebrow. "Please what?"

"Touch me."

"I am touching you." You emphasized it by pinching one of her nipples, eliciting a yelp. "Is this not good enough for you?"

"It is, but…"

"But what?"

Rowena pouted. Realizing you weren't going to fall for that, either, she said, "Please, Y/N."

Her hand slithered between her legs. You slapped it away. "Patience, sweetie."

"But—"

"No buts." Your fingers slid over her thigh in a gentle caress. A teasing. A promise of what was to come. "We've only just started. No need to rush things."

"I need you."

You chuckled. And she had the audacity to be offended when you called her a brat. "You're such a baby."

"Am not," she said defiantly, scowling.

"So are. My little baby," you teased, booping the tip of her nose.

She scrunched up her face adorably. "You're mean."

"That's rich, coming from you. Or did you forget last week?" She'd worked you so hard it had hurt to walk for two days straight. You hadn't regretted a thing; every lick of pain, every screaming muscle was worth it.

Rowena smirked. "T'was a lot of fun."

It definitely was. "And so is tonight." You raised a questioning eyebrow. "Unless you're chickening out."

"Please. As if I've anything to fear."

"I can be scary."

A snort, taunting, derisive.

You scowled. "What, you don't think I can?"

"Of course you can, darling." She patted your arm as if you were a dog who'd just performed the simplest trick. Good girl, the gesture said, condescending to its very core. So smart for a dog.

You grit your teeth, smacking her hand off. "You're being a naughty girl."

There it was again, that smirk, infuriating and delicious all at once. Defiant as ever. "What are you going to do about it?"

"I'm going to have to punish you." Your pussy quivered at the thought. Pictures already formed in your mind; Rowena on her knees, your hand tangled in her hair, pulling to expose her neck, to show her who was in charge. To make her submit for every failure to do so resulted in a new punishment. Bruises adorning her body, bites and scratches, red lines and purple butterflies. An artwork to be admired.

She quired up an eyebrow. "Is that so?"

"Mmhm." You licked your lips, imagined your tongue exploring tastier places. All in good time. "Can't reward bad behavior, can I?"

"You most certainly can't," she agreed. Then, with a teasing grin, "If you're competent."

Brat mode on, it seemed. Not that it was ever off, in the sheets or the streets.

"Are you saying I can't punish you?"

"Och, I know you can. If it's any good, though… that is a guessing game, is it not?"

"Is that a challenge?" you asked, knowing full well it was.

"I don't know. Is it?" You scowled. Rowena shrugged, blinked innocently. "You are a more… gentle lover, darling. I just don't know if you have it in you to be tough."

You slapped her in the face with all the strength you could muster. Her cheek instantly swelled an angry red, skin bristled, tingling with raging nerves. If that was how she wanted to play, so be it. You loved a good challenge.

The smug smile never left Rowena's mouth. If anything, it got bigger, bolder. She laughed, and it was hearty, too nonchalant for her own good. "Is that the best you've got?"

Frustration swelled in your chest. Riling you up was her favorite thing to do whenever you played. She loved to push you to your limits, loved to tease and taunt and mock until you snapped and took all your anger, all your rage out on her. It hurt a lot, and it hurt so good; you knew from your own nights as a "victim," when Rowena's own limits were pushed and you happily paid the price.

Your hands shot up to her neck, fingers wrapping around the sensitive skin. Tentative, gentle, testing the waters before the final countdown. Choking wasn't something you practiced often, but Rowena always welcomed it. She'd never refused a punishment, had never used her safe word and asked that you go slower, lighter. She welcomed pain for as much as it hurt, it felt so good, so empowering.

She knew you would never do anything she wasn't comfortable with. Knew one word of hers would be the end of everything, and your arms would be open for her to snuggle into as you murmured apologies. She felt safe with you, just as you had with her. There was no danger, no fear. Nothing either of you hadn't consented to.

Nothing but endless trust.

Rowena snorted. "Seriously?"

If that's how you wanna play it, fine. Eyes locked in an intense stare, your fingers tightened around her neck. Such a delicate thing she was. So small, so frail. You could crush her throat if you wanted to. It was a scary amount of power to have, but you knew how to wield it. You knew not to let it get to you, not to abuse it.

"How about this, Red?" The words rolled off your tongue in a purr, delicate, provocative. The way you knew made her quiver in all the right places. "Hm? You like this?"

Your nails dug into her skin as you squeezed and squeezed and squeezed, grazing it, almost drawing blood. Marking it. She was yours; your property, your little doll to play with, to do whatever you wanted to. And, gods, there were so many things you wanted to do. So many punishments you wanted to inflict, different ways to make her scream and beg and whimper underneath you. To make her curse your name just as you had hers last week as she'd worked you to your very last limit.

Rowena smacked your arm. Again. And again. She kept hitting you, kept fighting you, tiny fingers clawing. Desperate as a trapped kitten, and just as harmless.

Your mouth curled into a smirk. "What do you think you're doing? Hm, Red?" Then, teasing, "My Little Red Riding Hood."

She still fought you, desperate to get free. Strange as it was given the situation, she was pale as a ghost. Her eyes, you noticed far too late, were wide, filled with panic like a sky painted grey with storm clouds. Filled with fear; pure, unadulterated. Terror much alike the one you knew well for, three years ago, it had been a constant. A nightmare she couldn't seem to wake up from, that followed her everywhere she went and made her fear every shadow she came across.

You instantly released her. Guilt ate at you as she doubled over and gasped for breath. You hadn't squeezed her that hard, had you? Surely, you were careful.

No. Your heart knew it before the reality of the situation reached your brain. You were too rough. You frightened her. You hurt her.

"Rowena, I'm so sorry," you said. "I didn't—"

Were those tears dripping on the bed? Was she crying?

You had crossed her limits, but surely it wasn't that bad. She couldn't be that scared, like bad then, in that hotel room, with the Devil crushing her skull and setting her alight — all the while she was still alive.

Could she?

Surely she was exaggerating.

Right?

"Hey, are you okay?" You reached for her shoulder. She stiffened under your touch. Went still as a statue. "Sweetheart?"

Her eyes, wounded, broken, found yours for a brief moment before falling downwards in shame. A whimper tore from her mouth. More tears fell, and with them came sobs that shattered your heart into a thousand pieces. She was shaking, heart pounding so hard you could hear it, could feel the vibrations under your fingertips.

"Rowena—"

"Don't." She gathered the last remnants of her strength to say it, to make it curt, straight to the point. As close to regular one could get when they were crying.

"What is it?"

She shook her head. Whined. Cried like she hadn't in months, not since the last nightmare. They'd lessened in frequency, reappearing every now and then as opposed to every night like they used to. She'd managed to get them under control over the years, just as she had flashbacks; they weren't gone, never would be, but they weren't as frequent. She could sleep without fear now. She could walk the streets without worrying about something random sending her down a memory lane she wished she could erase from her head.

Was that what you'd done? Had you sent her back to that hotel room, straight into Lucifer's arms?

"Hey," you said softly, in that tone that always calmed her, that always put her at ease. You rubbed her shoulder, caressed it with utmost tenderness. "It's okay. You're okay."

Only she wasn't, was she? Because of you. Because you went too far. The accusations stung. It was an accident; you would never harm her on purpose, would never make her relive the worst day of her life. Would never cause her any kind of pain she didn't want you to.

Yet, you did exactly that.

Your intentions didn't matter. The fact remained that you did it. You swore you never would, and you did it, all over a stupid sexual game.

Tears pricked at your eyes, sharp as knives. Accusatory. Unforgiving. You were a bad person. A bad girlfriend. If Rowena decided it wasn't worth it, that she wanted nothing to do with you, she would be well within her rights.

"Come here." You didn't feel like you deserved it, but you wanted to make it up to her. Wanted to, at the very least, try to fix the damage you'd caused. Wanted to — selfishly so, and you hated yourself for it — feel her against you and, for a short moment, feel like you were doing something good, like you were helping her.

Just like countless times before, she dove into your arms, buried her head in your chest, and crumbled. She wept and sobbed and whined, sad to her core, broken, shattered. Unconsolable.

All because of you.

Guilty tears falling, you wrapped your arms around her. Tight as if your life depended on it. "It's okay," you whispered. "It's okay, baby. You're safe."

And she was. You were the only person she allowed to see this side of her; this frail, broken creature, all defenses down, protective walls torn apart. She knew you wouldn't judge her, wouldn't take advantage. She trusted you.

That only made the guilt that ripped at you worse.

She trusted you, and you did this to her.

She trusted you despite it.

You hurt her, and she still trusted you, still felt safe in your arms. Still sought comfort in you. Still let you see her at her worst, weakest, most vulnerable.

"I'm sorry," you said once again, and wanted to say it many more times, for as long as guilt ate away at you. "I'm sorry. I love you. I'm sorry."

You rocked her writhing form, gently, as if she were a child. Rubbed soft circles across her bare, sweat-soaked back. Nuzzled her hair and kissed her scalp.

"I'm so sorry."

Moment by moment, whisper by whisper, Rowena quieted down. Pulling away, she rubbed at her swollen, scarlet-rimmed eyes.

"You okay?" you asked.

She gave a small nod and, in a raspy voice, said, "Aye."

"Need anything? A glass of water?"

"I'm fine."

She wasn't, but, like always, she put on a front. Her way of regaining some control, some dignity after falling apart.

"Was…" You swallowed a lump in your throat. Licked your lips. Cleared your throat. "Was it a flashback?"

Rowena nodded.

The confirmation shattered you, tore you apart like a knife deep in your gut. You should have known this would happen. You'd choked her before, but never like that. Never that hard. It was your fault she was hurting. Your fault she would spend the night tossing and turning in bed, the memories burning in her mind, fresh as if not a day had gone by since the incident. Your fault she she was back in that hotel room, completely and utterly helpless, terrified to the bone..

It was all your fault.

"I'm sorry," you said for the upteenth time. As if that could change anything. As if an apology would erase the agony she was in — the agony you'd put her in. "I didn't mean to hurt you."

Not in a way she didn't like. You'd planned to hurt her plenty tonight. Only, she was supposed to enjoy it. Not curl up in a ball and weep.

"I know," Rowena said, and meant it. She could hold a mean grudge. If there were any ill feelings, she would have let you know.

That only made you feel worse.

She should have been angry. She should have screamed her lungs out, arms flailing wildly, eyes flashing purple. She should have hurt you, or wanted to at the very least.

She should not be this calm about it after what you'd put her through.

It wasn't right.

Noticing your turmoil, Rowena reached for your hand. She was warm to the touch, soft, gentle. Her fingers twined with yours, squeezed tight. A comfort you didn't know you needed. Your nerves instantly calmed, tense muscles relaxed. The woman was magic, and she didn't even have to utter a single spell. All she had to do was touch you, and you were hers, your body, soul, and mind under her command.

Sometimes you hated it.

In times like this, you welcomed it.

"It was an accident," she said, looking straight into your eyes. Making sure you heard her loud and clear. "I'm fine. Don't beat yourself up."

"I shouldn't have choked you."

"You didn't know."

You didn't. But still… "We did it before, so I thought it was fine." You couldn't change what happened, but you could explain. You could make her understand. "I didn't mean to go that far. It just happened. I—"

"I know," Rowena said. "It was an accident, darling."

"I suck."

"You don't."

"I'm a bad girlfriend."

"You're not."

"I'm just like him."

"Don't you dare say that!" The sharpness of her tone startled you. Her eyes, still red and puffy, were fuming, anger coiling in them like a storm about to devastate a town. "You are nothing like Lucifer." She spat the name like the filth it was. "I never want to hear you say things like that again. Have I made myself clear?"

You gave a nod. "I'm sorry."

A smile broke out on her mouth, small but encouraging. "Like I said, it's okay. I'm okay.."

"Are you sure?"

"Aye." You stared. She sighed. "For the most part. Don't worry. The worst has passed."

"I'm—"

Raising a forefinger in warning, she said, "If you say sorry one more time, you are sleeping on the couch."

You threw your arms up in defeat. "Sorry." She raised an eyebrow. You cringed. Nice going, Y/N. "I'll just stop talking."

"That would be greatly appreciated," Rowena deadpanned.

A moment passed in silence. Then you said, "I guess I shouldn't choke you anymore."

"That would be for the best," she agreed. "I can handle it for the most part, but it would be best to prevent future accidents. Some things..."

"I know," you said, reclaiming her hand, squeezing it in emphasis. She didn't have to explain. If she couldn't handle it, that was enough for you to cease doing it. After all, you played these games for mutual pleasure. There was no satisfaction in suffering if it wasn't wanted. "Is there anything else you don't want me to do?"

"Just choking."

"Okay."

"Och, and…" You raised a questioning eyebrow. She bit her lip. "Maybe don't call me Red."

"Of course!" His favorite nickname for her. A bad choice of words on your part, especially when coupled with choking. "It completely slipped my mind."

"It's alright, darling."

Laying down, you waved for Rowena to join you. She was beside you in an instant, nestled in your embrace, curled up against you like a kitten.

"I love you," you said as you played with the locks of her hair, threaded your fingers through them.

"Me, too," she whispered, pressing a soft kiss to your collarbone.

You laid like that for what felt like hours. It took a while, but, to your surprise, Rowena, feeling safe, protected, drifted off to sleep. Smiling, you kissed the top of her head and allowed your eyes to fall closed. Allowed much needed sleep to claim you.

Tomorrow was a new day. Hopefully, a brighter one.

After all, you had a game to finish.

*****

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